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How much was indelible, how much was mutuable, how much was transactional. They were all good and quite honestly lofty questions that leaned into the reality of all of this. How much did Faustite stand to lose? How much did he stand to lose just because where he had gotten awakened, because of the fact that at some point he had become a half-youma and there was no easy way to get rid of the youma, how much would Chaos demand before it would let Elex free at all--

"I wish I had an answer for that," Encke admitted, glancing off into the distance but not quite looking away from them. Couldn't trust Albite, especially, not with his ready almost bragging that he would just snatch Faustite back immediately. If Faustite left and didn't want to come back, that was his right, and he would fight Albite over that. "It seems that losing some part of your memories, no matter how large or small, is a part of that process of chaos making a mark in your soul and then being taken away. It feels transactional in a way, but," he shrugged, "I will say, none of the people I've personally met who have purified have changed personality-wise all that much."

Nectaris? She was still recognizable as what he knew of Sylvite. Sedna? Oh, she was absolutely still Stillwaterite, now just with the added ability to team up with his husband to tease him.

... Himself? It got more complicated. In the aftermath, he had broken to pieces.

Would a half-youma fall somewhere into the middle, or were full youma their own special kind of transaction because so much of them had been taken that their starseed was unrecognizable to some degree? Was how he shattered a fully special circumstance because of how he had been youmaified? Was it just a sign of how all other half-youma and youma suffered?

Encke buried it down under a swallow as Albite kept talking and then spun somewhere in his chatter to come back to Encke and ask a very direct question. It was a good one--why the ******** would he want to help, of all people? He and Faustite's history was, at best, murky. Faustite nearly killed his husband. He went after Nectaris. He withdrew so many starseeds. He nearly tried to kill Encke, once, and there was a bit of him that would never forget the surge of victory he felt when Faustite had been thrown back. Considering the pile of evidence, it seemed that Encke might have been better off letting Faustite die.

How did he answer that without naming intensely personal experience as the originator?

"Because everyone deserves a chance." That sounded so overhead and missed some of the depths, but it wasn't wrong, either. Could he get more specific? "Don't really see myself as a down on my knees saviour type. But if you," he looked to Faustite directly, briefly, before looking at some point between them again, "want to be rid of chaos, you deserve a shot at getting that. Everyone does."

Encke shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"Your body swallowing you alive also isn't fair, eh? I've," was there a way he could word it, "met a couple of others that were able to leave their youma state. They often feel better for having what their bodies were before whatever caused it given back to them."

He was very careful not to imply that Faustite was broken.

If he was, it wasn't directly because of the youma.

He once tried to leave.

Oop, wait, wait, wait! That word has lots of hand claps in it — more n three — and Waru didn’t know the meaning of ‘magmamouse’ if the plural of it would be magmamooses — magmamices? His thoughts on the matter were more slushed and slurred than the sugar and ice laden liquid he sucked down between breaths, during short breaks in the ongoing conversation. The way he tried to track the bits of smart sounding verbiage lobbed between the pair. Waru decidedly didn’t do multisyllabic words. In fact? The more syllables, the less he tracked. All those big thoughts, n lofty ideals. Albite did his damndest to follow the plot, knew his following was the equivalent to drawing with sidewalk chalk in the middle of a monsoon while the pair beside him were playing chess — something bigger n chess?

Chess with magic — chess against fates n gods n grand designs that he knew he had no final say in.

If he had any ******** say at all.

Waru didn’t track—- all the language traded with kid gloves n softened barbs. Body language though? The telling tones, shifts in posture; how Eion felt heavier than he ever had before. As if his beloved couldn’t bear the weight of Order’s existence and Earth's gravity and every loose thought of the planet's billionfold beings all at once. The way that Encke - unable to trust them enough to look away - looked as honest as Waru could ever imagine a man looking. The way he believed him, deep, deep down. Knowing that Encke meant what he said. Whatever else the simplified answer may have lacked, when it came to believing him? Believing the parts that mattered?

Waru did.

He believed that Encke wouldn’t ******** them over with the rusty end of a dull edged chainsaw. That the Senshi of Order n Electrostim didn’t want to see Warus husband dusted into non-existence. Wouldn’t’ve wasted his time on either of them at all if he had — wouldn’t be sitting here — doing this ‘let’s be peaceable n civil with people I don’t trust’ meet n greet otherwise. Albite thought that maybe Encke didn’t *do* peaceable unless he had hope! Unless he believed! And if he believed there was a chance? Whatever the reason — then ********> — Albite wanted a piece of that. Needed it, the chance to siphon someone else’s optimism for a change, whatever the reason. He wanted it to be transferable, translatable, something as easy to understand as it was absolutely impossible to hold in his hands.

Intangible yet real all at once.

“C’mon firebrand, be gentle with the man who says he wants you to live ‘just cause you should’,” always Albite aimed to soften the severity of things with a layer of tease, with the padding of humor. To snare his boy in and bear the brunt of his body, to quietly assure that even if Faustite forgot how to read the map of his own life there would be people in the world that *wouldn’t*. That if he didn’t wish to forget? Then they’d stay alive and breathing and *right ******** there* to remind him; compass points n guiding north stars. Senshi s**t for sure, what else were they good for? All his lovers loves. If they couldn’t manage even that much in the aftermath, “cause there aren’t a lot like him who’ll say it that way n mean it.” Albite hummed his way through the words, through the thought, because he didn’t think there were many like Encke. Wasn’t sure who else his boy’d been talking to, what other kinds of smoke had been blown up his favorite fire starters a** in his hunt for a ‘way out alive’, if anyone else was quite as honest as this. Like the way Cybele was (A woman of her words! Always!) only the opposite end of that—

“S’long as you live— we can call it tactical-knives or well-deserved-chances. The ******** else ever— “ and he lobbed Encke a small yet sincere smile, breathed out in a sigh where Faustite was nestled close, where he could scent in his copper, moonstone, smoke; the way it’d changed to some more thick and acrid thing the more ill he’d become. “So long as he lives?” Did he tell
encke he appreciated him now? Did he do it after? Did he — shake his head and switch the subject fast enough to give himself whiplash.

“Speaking of living— some of us have bed times, n it might be hedging a bit closer to ‘half past fraternizing with the enemy’ than any of our parents would normally allow,” he snorted as he’d learned that word from Taenite specifically, had gotten many a myriad of colorful earfuls from the man. Smart man he was, their fire-whirls. Smart enough that thinking of him made Albite think they should rain check their pic-nic soon. What with no Maus to hide them, n the night stretching on.

seiana_zi

wrap time?

Strickenized

maybe a soon fin?