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Her lips quirked as his expression passed through petulance, and then she laughed. "He pisses me off too," she agreed easily, though she was sure they had very different reasons, "Pollux will do just as well, if you can find him. Chances are he'll be a little easier to deal with and less likely to make inappropriate sexual innuendos. Unless they've both changed a bit since I knew them last. Which is possible." Horribly possible. Most likely possible. Straightening, the senshi pushed a lock of damp black hair behind her ear. she'd made him swim all the way out to this fossil, and her eyes shifted to look up the arms that led to the ledge and the massive hole in the wall- to the place her former body lay entombed. What had led this kraken here, at the end? People, inside? Desperation for a meal? Or was it something more?

Something she had said, however, seemed to have shifted some gear in this train of thought, and her head tilted, thoughts moving back to the now. Eyes drifting to the glove he was pulling off, and the hand he bared. Tattooed on mine too, he said, and she drifted closer, listening to the waves splash around the fossil of the Kraken that they stood upon. Whatever had happened, she wondered, to cause him to choose this path, away from the Negaverse? He'd said Zinkenite had warned him, when they'd first met again- said even those closest had tried to deter him from the path. And there was only one thing that she could think of that stuck out enough to be a reason that he'd abandon those loyalties. Revenge.

Gevaudan, he'd introduced himself as, Knight of my own cause.

"It's a shame." Scylla knew her voice was soft, a little sad. "If you don't remember, and Au- Lina. She didn't remember much. So who knows what they remember? What if they don't even remember what they did? What if they don't remember me? Am I supposed to show them leniency or punish them for a life they don't remember that they ever lived? A cake they don't remember eating, a friend they don't remember having, a crime they don't remember committing?" If they had taken her- Scylla gripped at one of her sheer blue arm-cloths, twisting it in her hands, disturbed. If Ares had taken her, that night, alongside others of the Court... what would she remember? Who would she be now? What price would she have paid?

She let the cloth drop, took a deep breath, the briny scent of her homeworld filling her nose. "I don't owe you, then. I owe Dioptase, Primase, Helicase. I owe the Negaverse agent I killed to save Leto's life, when she was my court member." Four Negaversers who had died during that time. One of them who she'd destroyed with her own hands. "I owe the people I failed through inaction in the years I chose to hide, after. Afraid of what was in me, afraid of the world around me, maybe. Of who I might have become if I stayed." Silence reigned for a moment before she added, "I owe myself. I have too many regrets that I can't quite define."

"Don't spend too much time in the uniform this go-round." her advice was given with a small, forced smile. "We'll all need something for when this is all over. This war. Vengeance." Spending too much time in the suit... it had cost her one friend. She'd let Ares spend enough time that Fallon had been devoured and forgotten, even before corruption. "Know who you are now. Try knitting, or writing a book. Rescue animals, learn to ride a motorcycle. Bungee jump, or do puzzles, or get addicted to romcoms on TV. And when this war gets worse, and everything is dark, hold on to those little pieces of light, and don't let them go out." Don't lose yourself to darkness and vengeance and forget again.

She almost hated the fact he was making so much sense, and she nodded silently, huffing air thoughtfully through her nose. How many regrets she had, the fact that... there was an end goal, and she weighed herself down in so much morality, in the middle of a battlefield. I know what I'm fighting for. But did she? She thought she did- make the Negaverse go away, stop it from threatening Earth, and the whole universe. She imagined was like an ouroboros, eating its own tail- Chaos ate, and took, and when there was nothing left but itself, it would probably eat that too. Protect her family. Protect what few friends she had left. Protect herself, optimistically, but...

Scylla reached up, dragging her hand through her curls. She clenched her fist at her nape, staring out at the World Pillar, gleaming in the distance, over an expanse of nothing else but blue. "Up there," she said at last, lifting a small hand to point at the hole, mad long ago by the arms of the Kraken, "that's what is left of who I was, before I was born on Earth. I go there, every time, looking for answers to a life I supposedly lived, but I can't remember. I look at her- at me- and I think about everything I forgot. I know I was married. How many children did I have? How many wives did I have? Was I ever a widow?"

That entire life died when I became a knight. Her Court had been lost, when Ares took them. And Jada had been left. Like a puppy, that wasn't wanted or needed, serving no purpose to its master. What's the point of doing any of it...that time could just be taken if I don't act? It mattered because it could be taken. Another life lost, in a flicker. But he seemed so certain. Jada almost envied that, in a way. She wouldn't want certainty gained for that reason, but... And how could she point out that this life was so ephemeral?

Weight shifted, and she stared out over the sea, eyes half-vacant, seeing the city-turtles, and simple boats, warriors piercing the water on creatures she couldn't even imagine surviving on Earth. And when she blinked, her eyes focused again, and she turned her head up there. "It's a bit dark. Kind of creepy. You can follow, if you like, but I need a moment." she needed... to adjust herself, to try and clear out the guilt that lanced her gut, thinking about never paying for the crimes she had committed from necessity, not pleasure. The people who had paid the price for her lack of judgment.

The people who had died, and yet she envied them, sometimes.

"You're right, of course." Her smile was quick, the agreement easy. "The people who lived here before are gone. Any survivors who carry their blood are so far entangled with humanity that there really ARE no survivors. They are strangers."

She led the way for him slowly, recognizing the trust he was placing in her by agreeing to follow her. "I guess... I feel responsible. It is a planet, of course, not a house plant, but... it picked me. Needs me- and the magic it gave me has saved my life. If I was just a little human girl, I would have had my starseed pulled by Serandite that night, just like my friends."

She offered him her hand as they moved up, to help him over a few slick spots. "I know why." Her voice was quieter. "Thank you for coming here. For trusting me." She led him up to the hole, and inside, in the dim light, was her past. The urns of her past lives, their gems glittering in the dim light. The icy bier, that held Andromache's body in stasis. The statuette details were easy to see, if he stepped in to look- the Messian gems provided their own small bits of light, and the bioluminescent paint on the walls assisted in other ways.

Her ritual was quick- a look at her past body, swollen with impending motherhood and cheeks flushed with hints of life- but unbreathing and unmoving, frozen forever at the end of her life, until Jada remembered the rites to set her free. "She had a child," Scylla called to the knight, voice soft, "a son. A knight, like you. I don't know who he served, or what his name was. I don't know if he was reborn, or if his blood lives on somewhere- her blood."

Sometimes, it felt like if she closed her eyes here, Andromache could draw breath again. She had been a warrior- much more useful in the fight against Chaos than a socialite. She finished her small ritual quickly, trying to minimize Gevaudan's exposure to the hazy darkness. "I'm ready when you are. We can swim back around and spar, but I think you have seen most of what Scylla has to offer, for practice areas."

There was something there, in his reaction to her tomb, that she couldn't quite put her finger on. After a moment it went away, and the moment was lost. Yet another thing for her to worry about another time. "I imagine my magic thinks the same thing as you. What's the point? It's only this human heart of mine that worries about could-have-beens."

Her smile was small, her shrug belying her thoughts on the matter. "I wouldn't really gain much from finding them," she agreed, "I think... maybe it is more like someone doing genealogy? What do children gain from researching their family history? It doesn't bring that person back from the dead, to hold their hands or tell them stories. Or- you know, archaeologists just want to understand, right? Maybe multiple people looking for answers can explain something. Recover something we forgot. Or get some closure to a life that was cut off."

She was silent as her hand reached out for Wolf- Gevaudan. "Like a haunting. Feeling gratitude and responsibility to Scylla is different than what I feel around Andromache. Her life is begging for closure, and then all of this is what I make of it." All of this, she said, indicating the glowing, watery world around them- and then in a moment it was just the two of them, on Earth, where she had taken his arm to leave their home."And all of this too. I want to make something GOOD out of it."

Letting go of his hand, Scylla stepped away. "Thank you for coming to Scylla with me, Gev. You're welcome any time you'd like to join me."