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After he'd managed to make Virgo cry by virtue of not being his great-great-something-grandfather, reborn, Babylon was feeling kind of guilty. Which was weird, because all of the angst in his life didn't come from any of the usual places - just superhero s**t, like not being born a reincarnation of someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a bitchier version of Albus Dumbledore.

Guilty meant chores and trying to make things okay again with Virgo. Chores meant skimming a pool with one of the only people on earth he could honestly say made his blood boil. Europa's talk of teamwork be damned - Babylon was going to strangle Valhalla someday.

But not today, because Valhalla looked pretty ******** bummed. Too bummed to even make it worth picking a fight with him, which was saying a lot. (Also, this was Virgo's temple, and fighting here would be sort of profane.) So, Babylon just left it alone and focused on skimming leaves out of the pool.

It was going well until Valhalla, in his apparent apathy, knocked a sodden pile of foliage back into the water. Babylon shot him a scowl. "Would it kill you to pay a bit more attention?" the squire groaned.

Babylon gave Valhalla a long look before peeling off his coat and leaning into the water to retrieve the other knight's pole. He held it out to him. "Go on," the now-sodded squire shrugged. "Take it. I'm not gonna pull you in." Tempting as it was, soaking Valhalla now seemed about as smart as dropping a wildcat into a full kiddie-pool.

Dripping, the squire got to his feet and resumed skimming with his own pole. "I'm doing this for Virgo," he said distantly. Not because he wanted to help Valhalla with chores. However, the way things had been going, Babylon suspected that if he left the page here alone... all of the leaves might wind up back in the pool.

When he glanced over a few moments later and Valhalla was still crumpled on the poolside, though... Okay. Babylon was gonna bite. Christopher Gallo might not be a fun person, but he wasn't a zombie. "Something," the squired declared, dumping another load of wet leaves onto the pavement, "Has seriously got your goat."

Maybe not his first choice of expression. Babylon cringed inwardly. Where had that even come from.

The secret was that Babylon was not a mean person. Not actually. Immature and largely self-centered, yes, but not mean simply for the spite of it. Gwen Derouen had raised her boy better than that. "I wouldn't really know anything about that," he said, frowning as he leaned against his net. "Since I don't date girls."

"I mean. I tried it once. It was overrated." If that opinion was going to make Valhalla feel better. Which it probably wasn't, because all conspiracy theories about Chris Gallo's repressed homosexual urges aside, the dude was probably straight. Well, except for the weird hand-holding with Ganymede, and now he was curious.

The squire went back to trying to round up the leaves floating around the pool's edge. As casually as he could manage, he asked, "So... you don't have some kind of thing with Ganymede?" Because, from where he'd been seated, it looked like a thing. Babylon flinched, preparing for a punch that might or might not come.

"But seriously," he added, dumping out the leaves and pushing the pile away. "Dating girls is overrated. Guys are way better kissers."

Babylon let the subject drop. It stung a bit, though, that Valhalla seemed to distrust him enough to think Vindemiatrix would ever needed to be protected from him. At least in his own mind, Babylon fancied himself a gentleman - and it probably didn't hurt that both Vin and Val were taller than him. (Then again, he suspected that Valhalla's threat extended to emotional trauma. Here, there was a bit more of a danger zone: Babylon wasn't mean, but he was sort of... obtuse.)

"If you insist," shrugged Babylon, who didn't fancy getting any wetter than he already was. There was a bit of a chill in the air, and he was still dripping from his first trip into the pool. Another would just be overkill. Instead, he focused on the leaves, trying to keep his net out of Valhalla's way as the other knight poled furiously through the water.

The silence was decidedly awkward, though. Babylon bit his lip as he brought up another armful of leaves. On one hand, he didn't want to give Valhalla a reason to push him into the pool. But, on the other, he sort of knew the Gallos were a sort of religious bunch. If anyone else out here was going to understand the crisis of faith he'd been having, it'd be Chris.

"Hey," he said lowly, setting his net aside. The pool was nearly clean - there were just a few tricky leaves plastered around the edges. "Do you still believe in God? After all this?"

He'd sort of... well, he'd been hoping that Valhalla might have some kind of interesting take on things, but that didn't seem to be happening. Picking and translating books? Finn was pretty sure he didn't have that problem since apocrypha was mostly a new testament thing. Translating, maybe, but he'd sat through enough years of Hebrew school to think he had a fair handle on how the whole thing worked: Don't kill, don't steal, don't covet, don't eat shellfish.

"I'm not sure," replied Babylon, looking up from the edge of the pool where he was picking the last soggy leaves out by hand. "It's nothing new," he assured Valhalla, as if suddenly becoming aware of Phenomenal Cosmic Powers could turn a rock-solid faith in God into Jell-o. His faith had been on rocky ground for ages, despite all efforts. Within the last year or so he'd started to feel solid on it again, but then... Knighthood had a way of throwing you for a loop.

"I mean," said the squire, "I'm trying." He gave Valhalla a long look, trying to scrutinize the other boy's face as best he could. Of course it was silly to ask Chris Gallo about these things: the boy was named after two different saints. He'd probably been an altar boy. Finn wasn't sure why these things ought to be tick-marks against him, just that they probably were.

"You don't even..." That appeared to be the last of the leaves. "You don't question sometimes?"

Babylon frowned slightly, not quite sure he liked where that or was headed. Valhalla was lucky he didn't finish the sentence, otherwise there might have been a problem. "The super-powers aren't helping, if that's what you mean," he answered. While there had been times since his awakening when the squire felt almost convinced of a power higher than himself - his first visit to Mercury came to mind - the rest of his life was still interspersed with the same crushing doubts.

"I wouldn't say they caused it, though," he assured Valhalla. "I've been sort of questioning since freshman year." Similar to his sexuality, Babylon's agnosticism was not any kind of secret. "I thought I had it all figured out in Israel two summers ago... but apparently not."

He made a face and shrugged at Valhalla. The pool was clean, and really all he was doing was spilling his guts on the nearest available person who he suspected might have an opinion. Whether or not this conversation continued was all up to the page now.

"If you question it, what keeps you going back to it?" Babylon asked, intent on getting to the bottom of this logic.

Believe it or not, Valhalla's answer was closer to what Babylon was looking for than the page might ever have anticipated. Despite not seeing eye to eye, he had to give the other boy some grudging measure of respect. For one thing, Valhalla had managed to do what Babylon had been struggling to do for years - to acknowledge that just because there was evil in the world, it didn't mean the world was necessarily bad. Babylon was still kind of hung up on it, though.

"I'm looking for that feeling," he admitted, feeling somewhat tense. Despite the present honesty, the squire still worried that Valhalla was going to throw this in his face somehow like he had his art. "I get it sometimes... but it never stays very long." Babylon had even gotten glimpses of it here at the Surrounding, but mostly he'd been too concentrated on helping Virgo to really stare at anything too long.

Staring out at a mountain range a thousand miles long, gazing into the first strains of Mercurial dawn... he'd gotten it then. It had been so solid then. "I probably should stop being so self-conscious about it, right?" he asked. Then, with a grudging smile, he added, "You're not so bad, Gallo. I misjudged you."

Babylon didn't laugh. He sort of wanted to, because the notion of Chris kissing a guy for months and having no idea was just a little bit funny to him, but he restrained himself. While it might make for a funny scenario in a frat boy comedy, he could see where it might be problematic in real life: false advertising was never cool, no matter how you were oriented. At a loss, he struggled to find something to say to make Valhalla feel less like an idiot.

"I don't think so," he settled. "I mean, have you ever been to a drag show?" It wound up sounding a bit more smartass than he'd intended it to. Babylon bit his lip and shook some excess water from his net. "What I mean is," he fumbled, "No, I don't think you're an idiot. Some guys are really good at passing for chicks. Bone structure and stuff like that. I mean, I'm the right height? But. Uh. Shoulders."

What he did have going for him was a complete lack of facial hair, but Babylon wasn't going to admit that in front of such an aggressively masculine dude like Valhalla. "Or..."

He narrowed his eyes. Leave no stone unturned in the name of human rights! "It was a guy, right?" he asked, not accusative but not entirely casual, either. "I mean, you didn't just break some trans chick's heart, right?" Because that would make this an entirely different sort of scenario entirely: Babylon couldn't really rationalize why dumping a lying crossdresser was somehow different than dumping an outed mtf, just that he could forgive Valhalla one but not the other.