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Kerberos just shook his head. There was no way he was going to put her down unless he literally had no other choice.

"They're coming," he said, and he let out a sigh of relief in spite of himself when he was proven right. There was Titan and Kairatos - which meant that this wasn't all in vain. And there was no tug of summoning calling him back. So far, their rescue was undetected, as far as he could tell.

"Titan, Kairatos," he said, and his relief was obvious. "I think we could, um, use some...help..." God, he felt stupid, he should have done something in the cell to handle Hver's feet, when she was sitting, but he'd been so focused on getting her out... "Hver's feet are pretty bad off."

To put it mildly.

The good news -- the best news she'd received this year -- was that Titan and Kairatos had made it out, they'd escaped. The bad news was Kairatos wasn't walking by himself, didn't look to be in excellent condition -- and Titan had been seen helping by someone. Horrible visions swam in her mind, thoughts of what they might do to him for something so blatantly treasonous. She could picture him, terrifyingly, chained to a whipping post in the classic style, his back shredded by lashes into strips; or meeting her again, not knowing her name or face, all his memory blanked out in some sort of sci-fi horrific scenario; or dead in an alleyway, eyes blank and dull; or twisted horribly into some giant, terrible youma that no longer knew the concept of disobedience --

What will become of you?, she thought, with a rising horror that overcame other things: relief at being alive and safe, at seeing Kairatos and Titan alive and safe, pain and exhaustion, heartwarmed amusement at the eternal boy scout's ability to produce a shock blanket at a moment's notice, uncertainty about what to do next. She just felt worried.

Set down on the blanket, she did the only useful thing that came to mind at that moment. With slow, stiff moments, both from energy-deficiency and stiffness of sitting in the same position for so long, she drew her big, glimmering shawl out of the air and wrapped it protectively around herself, concentrating to active its slow glide of magic into her system. That done, she reached back to the between-space of magic one more time, drawing out the remaining small ribbon she'd crafted. She'd given one to Titan the week before all this had happened, and presumed he still had it, but she'd had just one more remaining. More would have to be made, when she was feeling better. For now, she handed the glittery ribbon over to Kairatos.

"Hold onto this and concentrate on it for a minute," she explained. "It's slow, but it'll help, a little."

Normally, she'd have passed her cloak over and kept the ribbon for herself, but in this situation, she had to admit her need was the more immediate one; she had cuts freshly bleeding.

Kerberos, at least, hadn't been seen. That was a start. "Tell them I was gone when you came in," she insisted. "If anyone asks. Tell them I was out of my chains, and I was wearing a shining cloak, and you saw a great blue stag with golden antlers, just for that first moment -- and then I was gone, before there was anything you could do." This, at least, she knew would make for a believable, verifiable story with no discernable holes in it. She knew that much, because it had been her escape plan throughout the week: the perfect one with no holes in it, that relied on drawing energy out of her cloak and using it to summon Eikthyrnir and make good her escape. A perfect plan with no holes in it except one: she didn't have the opal ring that could summon the great beast to her aid.

Things might've gone so differently, if she'd had the pale caribou at her call. But the Negaverse had no way of knowing that she didn't. That meant, at least, that as a story, it would hold water -- if Kerberos could tell it believably.

For Titan, she had nothing so useful -- he'd been seen, and would likely be reported. No lie she could drum up would be much help. Think, think, there must be something. Concentrate. Focus.

"You saved our lives," she said, trying to work up a smile to cover her worry. "Thank you both."

Titan was prepared. Of course Titan was prepare (at least one of them was, instead of flailing around idiotically, as Kerberos had been doing this entire time.)

There wasn't time, for the moment, to worry about being found out, and frankly part of Kerberos didn't care if he was. He had seen the Negaverse fully for what it was the moment he had seen what they were willing to do to captives. If they turned on him, too, then it was only further proof.

And if they broke him, it would be easier, anyway, since he saw nowhere else to go.

But he feared, silently, for Titan, who was a far nobler soul than anyone else he had met on the Chaos side of the war. He even probably out-nobled a lot of Order. Titan absolutely did not deserve whatever the Negaverse did to him, if this Cinnabar -Tanais? The name felt familiar in a way he didn't want to touch, not then - reported him.

"I hope you're right and she was struggling," Kerberos said, to Kairatos.

At Titan's direction, he carefully set Hver down, and once she was out of his arms he gave up wholly on standing and instead sat back on his heels on the asphalt, tearing at the sash to make makeshift bandages.

"I should have gotten Azurite's kit," he said, halfway to himself. Stupid, stupid. She would have given it freely, too, he was sure of that. But he had been too concerned about the whole effort to do it.

The lie Hver suggested was easy enough to repeat - it seems totally fantastical, but there before his eyes was the shining cloak she spoke of, and the stay was easy enough to visualize.

"Shining cloak, weird magical deer, vanished - I can do that," he said, and it wasn't as if his drinking problem was a secret, anyway. Surely if it was too strange, it would just be assumed he was seeing things.

The corrupt handed the shreddd strips of his sash fabric over to Titan, becaus he didn't entirely trust his capabilities now. He had bandaged in the worst throes of withdrawal, and he had managed well so far, but he didn't want to push it. Not when it was so important.

"The cloak, and the ribbon - healing magic?" He wanted to ask more, what they were, how they worked, but Hver had undoubtedly answers far too many questions this week. His curiosity could be sated later.

Their thanks he shrugged off. "It was Titan's plan. I wouldn't have done anything, on my own." Might as well admit what a coward he was, lest Hver or Kairatos see more in him than there was or ever could be.

It was an odd thing, holding one of her own shoes between her hands (one bandaged by someone, one still mercifully whole), seeing how red it was. Some of the gold detailing still shone through, but much of the pale blue had soaked through into a deep, black-red sunset that looked grim and unfamiliar. Hvergelmir poked at the little puncture in the sole with her pinky finger.

"A kind of restorative magic, I guess, yes," she answered Kerberos. "Sort of my own recipe."

She put her shoe down again and looked over at him, trying to marshal her thoughts. "True nobility is very rare," she said. "Few people have the character to act -- to do the right thing -- in the face of negative consequences, or going against their peers. It requires," she glanced momentarily at Kairatos, "incredible fearlessness -- " then at Titan, still wrapping her feet -- "or unimpeachable honor -- to go it alone. To put someone else's life ahead of yours. Being honest with you, I don't have either of those things: not perfect fearlessness and not flawless honor, either.
Most of the time, I'm a giant coward -- you just don't know that part of me. But when I'm with my friends, they make me feel like I could be brave for a little while."

It's a fine thing, when orthodoxy and orthopraxy are in alignment -- but if you can't have both, either one makes a start. She smiled encouragingly. "If circumstances were different, maybe you wouldn't have helped me. But you did. You risked your life today and saved mine, whatever got you there. I don't know what world I'd have to live in not to think that's more than enough."

The question of a message was easily enough addressed -- and no pen and paper needed, hopefully, which was a relief given the added difficulty that that might've presented. "I can do a little better than pen and paper," she suggested. Holding her ring up by her face, Hvergelmir said in a carefully clear voice, "Call Mimisbrunnr of Mercury."

As yet, there weren't too many knights she knew of who'd had Mistral's signet ring upgrade. Babylon would've been her first choice, always, of the group -- he was one of her closest friends, and easily trusted -- but he was still out of the country as far as she knew. Kairatos was sitting right next to her, and of the rest of them, she knew and favored Mimisbrunnr best for this sort of thing. Besides, she was a schoolteacher -- surely that would be good for some degree of legitimacy at the hospital.

Kerberos suddenly became very interested in getting the pen and paper, and when Hver indicated she didn't need it, he instead offered it back to Titan. For one, he felt, somehow, like he was intruding on an intimate moment between the Captain and the Knight of Mars - which he was the last one to judge for, but still - and for another, he was not exactly sure how to deal with reassurance. He couldn't make himself believe he'd done enough - not when there was obviously so much more he could have done. He could have saved them both a week's worth of torture if he had just stood up sooner.

But there was no point arguing that now, or arguing that Hvergelmir was the complete opposite of a coward because a coward would have run from him when they first met, when she looked her murderer in the face, and instead she had actually tried to make him better. Continued to try. It was maddening.

But picking an argument was not in anyone's best interest, not when whoever was on the other and of Hver's call could probably hear them, so instead he just gave her half a smile and looked like he wanted to retreat into his hair.

Mimisbrunnr had not quite made it all the way to the funhouse. The Mercury Squire had run on adrenaline for a while, but the pain and bleeding wound in her side had eventually necessitated that she stop. She had done it quietly, hopefully without being noticed, and started pulling on her new skirt to make a bandage for her side.

And that was when her ring communicator rang, and she borught it up to answer, and her entire face lit up, because she recognized the little hologram in front of her.

"Hvergelmir! Where are you?" She asked, and suddenly her injury didn't matter anymore, because there was something much more important to do.

Titan paused in his work momentarily, lifting hand from bandage on foot to cup the Mars Knight's jaw, then kissed him a moment. It still felt like lava through his veins to do so, but that would be useful enough with the hour and weather.

He broke it off and returned to his task. Another breath and the second foot was finished, so Titan carefully set it down. Then took his pad and pen to return to within his belt. Some shifting of Kairatos back to hip, Titan moved closer to Hvergelmir on the little blanket to be more directly a space heater for both of the wounded. He shifted to a one knee kneel, Kairatos on the up leg as chair to avoid any contact to his legs.

The little hologram was a marvel. Have they always had such things? Are the notes just for sending to not-Knights? It wasn't the time to ask. "This is the G8 section, the annex parking lot."

Watching Titan kiss Kairatos was a momentary distraction that made her feel sort of warm and fluttery; it was hard to tell quite how to categorize it exactly, since other feelings like cold and pain and exhaustion were muddying up the waters quite a bit, but certainly it ranked itself as some form of pleasant that she'd experienced before. She didn't think she'd have minded if they'd opted to continue, either, but for poor Kerberos sitting there with them and the general need to get to a hospital before she and Kairatos lost their endorphin high and went back to remembering how much pain they were probably actually in.

And she was, admittedly, so achingly hungry that the idea of food actually made her feel sick, if anything. So: back to business.

"Did you get that?" she asked Mimisbrunnr, leaning into the warmth and natural windbreak that Titan presented. "They were holding us in the funhouse where the others were being kept -- now we're in the G8 section of the annex lot. Could you come get the two of us, like, with a car? We need the E.R. a little."

Well, a lot.