Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lourdes wasn’t exactly certain what had kept her from her wonder. She’d known about it almost from day one, feeling a slight tugging on her heart once the chaos cleared and the dust settled. And she’d been well aware that she could travel to it whenever she wanted. Things in the White Moon were… well they were more instinctual than in the Negaverse. Everything that Lourdes had become… everything that she was had just… come to her. Like breathing and her own thudding heartbeat. Everything… including that… that strange little saying that just kept nibbling at the back of her brain.

I pledge my life…

Lourdes could wax poetic about why that is, about this being her natural state, whatever. About how the things that were good for people were often instinctual. About how people all knew, deep down, under all the bullshit and the denial, what they really needed. She would sit with herself and her thoughts, something that was getting increasingly difficult to do nowadays, and wonder about all of that. Peel back the layers of herself and her understanding of the world and life that she’d made for herself.

Not that it needed much peeling… if Lourdes was honest with herself, as she was trying to do more this New Year… she knew why. She knew the aching, hissing, wounded reason she didn’t visit the place that called to her in her quietest moments.

I pledge my life and loyalty…

Shame.

Shame that lingered around her actions and her motivations like a dark cloud. Shame that she never could shake, no matter how much she and her therapist worked on it. No matter how many rounds of “why do you think that is?” or “let’s explore that.” Lourdes just… couldn’t… Couldn’t do more than exact the penance that she craved from herself upon others like she used to be. Couldn’t do anything besides go out at night, power up, and fight. Fight, and bleed, rend, and tear.

And cry.

Lourdes cried a lot now. Sometimes, it was relief, like when she looked at her new friends, her brigade, however unofficial they were, or when she saw her uniform in a reflection and saw herself as a Squire of Venus. When she talked to other White Moon soldiers and laughed alongside them. When they greeted her like a friend even if they had never seen her before in their lives.

In the quiet moments as Roxxie, with Julian or Basila just existing alongside her. Not as knights, but as people. Free people.

I pledge my life and loyalty to Venus…

Sometimes it was rage. Because she’s wasted so much ******** time as Hopeite. Wasted it and squandered it and done nothing but harm and she was so pissed at herself for it. She’d done nothing of valve, only hurt and bled and harmed. Harmed someone who trusted her. A child for the love of god. She’d imprisoned and brutalized a ******** child and for what? For glory? For Metallia?

For no god damned <********> reason.

To Venus and to Lourdes…

Sometimes she was mourning. Sometimes she remembered that jar of hearts she used to be so proud of. That she used to keep on her mantle like a ******** trophy. She mourned the lives that she’d taken. That she’d consumed and would never return. She mourned… <********> sometimes she mourned herself. What if she’d been awakened as Lourdes and not Hopeite? What could she be now? Would she have a relationship with her parents? Would she have a boyfriend now? A husband? If Abbot had been given a chance to live… what could she have become?

Not like it mattered… Chaos had killed Abbot. Killed her the second it got its hooks into her. It was purify or die from the second she opened her eyes as Hopeite, she knew that now.

I humbly…

It wasn’t like she could talk to her therapist about all of this. He was just some guy. A regular guy. Lourdes couldn’t unload all of her purification trauma onto him and expect him to understand. Worse, what if he was negaverse? What if she outed herself to him? What if he reared up, all chaos as corruption, and dragged her back into hell? And she couldn’t burden her friends with this… not when they were dealing with their own bullshit…

And sure, her therapist had a point. While friends might not be clinical specialists, they were still important support systems that Lourdes needed to rely on. It was just… what if she did and they decided that she wasn’t worth the trouble? What if they realized what a weak link she was?

What if they sent her back?

I humbly request your aid…

Still, as she’d previously decided, she was trying to be more honest with herself this year. One of her resolutions that she hoped had a longer shelf life than her weight loss and her reading goal. One that revolved almost exclusively around her purification and powered self, actually. Her therapist would be so proud of her honesty.

Standing in the park, frigid January air freezing her arms and legs nearly to numb, Lourdes made a split-second decision. Made it before that wretched monster called doubt could stop her. She finally unlocked her jaw and allowed the incantation free from her teeth and her tongue after so so long locked away.

“I pledge my life and loyalty to Venus, and to Lourdes.” Lourdes’ voice trembled as she spoke, suddenly very afraid that nothing would answer her. That her wonder would turn itself away when she called for help. “I humbly… I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine.”

Lourdes blinked in the vast, frozen green of the dark park, and when she opened her eyes an instant later… she was somewhere else.