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She'd gone to their Princess a little too much like Jack Bauer, wide-eyed, stir-crazy from the hospital and furious when she'd learned of it. So anxious and aggravated that they'd knocked her out for the night, said she was still in shock, shock be damned -- and all Serenade Soriano's anxious pink eyes could tell her were non-specifics.

She tried to be gentle. She really did.

Where the Hell is Jude Lawson?

Serenade was a little drugged herself, on a drip for hydration -- she hadn't noticed how much she'd been pushing herself, denying herself, even if she'd thought she was keeping a close eye on how much their Princess was eating or drinking back in the stinking little gymnasium. Not enough. She'd hid it from them, not enough. All their Princess could do was haplessly say, east, he's somewhere out east -- past the borough, past the Heights.

Which wasn't a street directory. Nor a pinpoint. No compass direction. Serenade was tired. Just east -- East? I'm so sorry, Hero. East.

She'd saluted curtly, and then made her escape. Sailor Aries, Captain of the Zodiac Guard, waited for no man -- no man except Jude Lawson who'd escaped the hospital, hadn't been let go like Grayson and some of the others (and she'd followed up on Grayson -- his parents were polite, but their son was Not Receiving Calls). Jude Lawson hadn't been discharged, he'd simply escaped.

This Would Not Stand.

Aries searched out beyond the Heights, the suburbia, her armour gleaming -- thank God for armour, thank God she wasn't Abeline and clad only in a dress against the elements. Sensible. She looked like a disaffected Roman legionnaire. She would have preferred praetor. Needs must. She headed east -- headed east and occasionally called out, "Sagittarius!" at the top of her lungs and her fury, and got answered only by barking dogs.

It was a full hour and a half later when she finally approached a little park and stood at the base of it, Sagittarius having shimmied up its trunk and standing in the tall branches with his arms folded. Ignoring her. Hiding from her, which was worse. Aries wiped her brow and stood at the bottom of it, a few yards away.

What to even say.

Where to begin.

There was nowhere; she just stood there, watching him, and they were both silent in the silence all around them. This was unusual.

Aries never went away. Aries never went away even if you were still hungover and still feeling sick -- he came down out of the tree like a waxeye, clowning and slipping from bough to bough, until he landed in front of his brother, captain and -- not king. He'd never had a king. When he thought king all he could think about was a tall boy with caramel-coloured hair and a smile that was now dead. But Aries was his brother. His captain. Worst of all, Hero Barrett.

"What is it."

Never good if she was repeating what she said --

Captain Aries reached her hand back, and she backhanded him. She backhanded him with the hard carved ram's horn of her gauntlets, and she didn't hold back -- "THIS IS THE ONLY THING YOU UNDERSTAND, ISN'T IT?" He was stumbling back, but she was stalking him forward, hand raised. "This is the ONLY THING YOU UNDERSTAND! This is the only thing you EVER UNDERSTOOD! I was a -- I was a fool thinking I could ever get through to you! Me, your captain! Your brother!"

She was backing him up against the tree trunk, menacing. She was 5'8" of menace. "What is it?" Was this rhetorical? "WHAT IS IT?"

He didn't hit her back. He just looked at her, punch-drunk, smug, touching his cheek as though no part of it mattered -- she took him by the scruff of his ridiculous Robin Hood shirt and she motored him back into the tree trunk, pressing him back up against it. He didn't even pull away. Did not push. Didn't resist. He was doing it on purpose, damn it all to hell. "Not done anything yet?" she said, and her voice was low and dangerous. Her eyes were blazing. Hero had a temper like a volcano: sulfurous gases and lava. "Not done anything?"

She shoved into his shoulders again. "Don't you dare walk away from the Zodiac Guard. Do not dare turn your back on me. I know what you're doing. I know exactly what you're doing." Her breath was close to his. "You're running away with your tail between your legs. The first chance you get. The first chance you got."

Another shoulder shake.

"You don't get to run away from me."

Before he could point out how at this point it sounded like she was going to boil his bunnies, she let go of bunching his shirt and stepped back. Gave him some air. Thank God. At this point, it was like she was going to put him in a hole and tell him to put the lotion on his skin. "Don't do this to me. You don't have leisure to do this -- be asleep, or be dead, or be gone."

"Don't you dare lie to me." Imperious. "Don't dissemble." That was Hero, she always spoke as though she'd eaten a copy of Richard II and it was going down particularly slowly. But they were both building up to scream in each other's faces, and Hero's cheeks were blazing. She always went red when she was angry. "Do you call what you did fixing? Do you have some kind of baffling addiction to going off to die? Once is unfortunate, Sagittarius! Twice is me wondering how much you want to live!"

She shoved his shoulders again. She was egging him on to hit her. He could tell her body language, her bunched jaw, the set of her mouth. They were any two boys full on testosterone and anger, and she was trying to set him off as hard as she could. "You are a Zodiac. Do not forget that. Do not -- don't -- what are you running away from, Sagittarius?" She was breathing through her teeth now. "Go on. Tell me what you're afraid of. I think you're afraid of facing your own damned failure. I think you can't even look your Princess in the eye. Your princess."

Damn Chronos all to hell for him too.

"Do you want me to tether you to me like a baby? Is that what you want? Stop thinking of me as a girl and start thinking of me as your Captain."

Hero Adelaide Barrett: the girl with her own issues.

"I will beat you until you wake up from this dream you're in. Do not try me."

"Suicide is a sin," she screamed back, a trifle doggedly. They both knew about sin. They both knew about God. They both knew that she was trying to find any way to describe what they were as not sinning -- that nothing Chronos could do could be against God, could be against what they were. "You think this is over? You think this is over?"

They were both breathing heavily. But his breathing had a strained, ugly quality to it, and when she shook him again it was halfheartedly. Both of them looked exhausted. Jude had huge shadows beneath his eyes, and his eyes themselves looked sleep-deprived. What was she really telling him? This will never be over -- no matter how many lives you give, no matter how many times we die, we are stuck in a video game where we relive the same save over and over and over and over and over and over and over and

"One day you'll die and I will bury you in a graveyard and I will leave you there to sleep, but that day is not today."

"No you didn't," said his captain, "you've been swallowing gun barrels, you son of a -- " and tried to jerk away only halfheartedly; he was feverish, flushed. And more than that, he was desperately unhappy. For Jude Lawson to admit that he had placed a gun to his head, Jude Lawson who could recite with her the commandments of Moses: thou shalt not kill, which was relieved for soldiers in times of war. She shook one hand away from his and roughly put it in the back of his hair; she put her cheek next to his cheek, and recited --

"'Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you?'" Aries' voice was low, urgent. "'In you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body. Therefore honour God.'"

She had backed him up against the tree trunk.

"'When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.'"

Hero's voice was her true beauty, on account of having a manjaw to rival Janice Fitzpatrick: hers was low smoke. His captain's voice was at his ear. "Get rid of the gun, Sagittarius."

Her hand was in his hair, tightly fisted in it. Now she reached to press her forehead to his, a warrior's gesture. Peace, be at peace. There was the vaguest memory of both of them sitting in a pew in the back of a church, staunch and quiet, silent. As though being in the house of God was not for them, not any more -- his forehead was pressed against the cold metal of Aries' helmet. "There are no lost causes," she said. "There is nothing so lost you can't stand for it. Saint Jude finds, doesn't let things sit fallow or void -- amen, amen."

She kissed him, on the temple, but her fingers in his hair were angry as her mouth was light. "Jude, Jude. It wasn't a sin. It wasn't a sin. Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. You will increase my honour and comfort me once again' -- listen to me."

She'd probably try to pull his murderer away from him, too. It wasn't for her. He could not let her touch Obsidian. Obsidian was something so private as to be the part of his heart that was invisible to her, sealed away, the secret for him alone. His secret. And they thought Capricorn was secrets: his was hidden from all of them.

"'I believed; therefore I have spoken.'"

From his Captain. She tugged at his hair one last time and took his hand instead; before he could react she sliced down his palm, fiddled with the band at hers and sliced down her own with her horn-knife. She pressed their bleeding hands together and said: "Don't turn away from me, brother."

She watched him, her eyes scarlet and dark. "'You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.'"

This did not make a hell of a lot of sense, considering that even if Captain Aries looked as though she were about to announce that this was Sparta and tonight they dined in Hell, she was a woman -- woman? -- but something in her voice was eerily fortelling: "'Nor burn with lust for each other.'" But she was lifting his other hand and as he kissed hers, she kissed his, mouthing over his palm and the cluster of lines at the heel of his hand. Where the leather bracer met his wrist. They were both bleeding, each other's blood splattered over each other's hand like some kind of red stamp.

"And what if you loved me? What if you loved the road? What if you loved the streetlamp? What if you loved the tree?" (Well, that would make him a psycho for one thing.) "You don't love me more than you love running. Love your Princess. Love the Zodiac."

But what she was saying did not match up to her hand; she took two fingers and pressed them to his lips until they opened, cradled in his jaw, his mouth.