Welcome to Gaia! ::

The weather had turned cold, but this was Finn’s second winter in Alaska and he could handle it. He shoved his mittened hands into his pockets and took the stairs from his apartment two at a time. It was a rule of his that he never transformed into Babylon until he was absolutely certain he wasn’t being observed, and that meant walking five minutes out into the woods. It was already dark, and he lit his way with a keychain flashlight until he felt safe calling out his lantern.

The wind swirled around him, and when his cape stopped flapping, he was standing on the road outside of Virgo outpost. Babylon looked around, refamiliarizing himself with the landscape. “Virgo?” he called. “Are you here yet?”

Babylon bowed shallowly to Soldier Virgo. “And you look lovely as ever,” he said, because sometimes playing at being gallant and chivalrous made him feel like he could actually be those things. As he followed her to her temple, he glanced up at the trees. They looked as magnificent as ever, and it was warm here. Babylon unbuttoned his coat, then felt underdressed, and re-buttoned it.

“School,” he shrugged, in response to Virgo’s question, although that was really only part of it. “I’ve wanted to be a park ranger for as long as I can remember, and the university in Fairbanks has a really great program.” He smiled at her, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “And I guess - things in Destiny City got really heavy. I got scared. One of my teammates collapsed on patrol and I had to carry her home and then-” He thought about Lina, and it hurt to much, so he didn’t talk about her.

“I had a chance to get out and I took it,” Babylon sighed to Virgo. “And it was chicken s**t of me and I’m worried that the real reason Menachem won’t speak to me is because I’m a coward.”

Babylon nodded, supposing Virgo was probably right as far as his ancestor was concerned. After all, she knew him far better than Babylon did. The Menachem he knew always seemed frustrated with Finn’s immaturity, but there had been moments when he begrudgingly admitted that this freckle-faced kid was the true heir to the lights. “I hope you’re right,” he said, watching Virgo scratch lines in the dust. “I’ll help you clean up some while I’m here if you’d like me to,” he offered.

Once they were on the stairs, Babylon composed his thoughts about what he needed. “Menachem mentioned to me that I wouldn’t be a true knight of Babylon until I lit all of the lights,” he said. “To do that, I need this thing called the Wick, except I’ve only seen it once and I don’t know where he would have put it. I already searched his study. Do you know what I’m talking about?” He wanted, desperately, to be a true knight. Otherwise his cape and his furs and his lantern meant nothing.

Babylon tried not to look too hard at anything in Virgo’s ruined bedroom - it felt like intruding on her privacy. “His house?” he asked, because this was news to him. “I’ve never seen his house, only his study off of the Knights’ Square.” Thinking about it now, he felt sort of dumb. Of course Menachem had a house in Babylon, in addition to his office. He’d presumably had a family, and somewhere with a kitchen and living quarters.

“I wouldn’t know where it was,” he said, keeping close to Virgo as she looked around the room. “Do you?” He’d begun picking out some landmarks in the city, but the fact of the matter was that it was too big and too forbidding for him to have explored and memorized the entire landscape. “I’d really like to take you there when I have a chance,” he added. “You’d be a huge help in telling me what it was like in its prime. What the people were like. What life there was like.”

“That’s beautiful,” said Babylon, watching her put the vial of blue light around her neck. He wondered if he might someday learn to craft something like that. “Menachem told me that the reason the lamps go out is because they’re just echoes of the light, but yours is still glowing. So it must be a real piece of the light.”

It was awkward that he was standing with her right here and right now, and yet he couldn’t offer to take her to Babylon right that second. When they left here, they’d return to very different parts of the country, and then who knew when they’d see each other? “I might be home for Thanksgiving, or if not then, New Years,” he said, after a moment. He hadn’t considered it before, but now he was. “I’ll let you know what my plans are, and we can take an afternoon. Okay?”

Babylon blushed and hoisted his lantern awkwardly. “Yeah, it is,” he said. He supposed that it contained all the light he needed to light the city - after all, that was how Menachem always did it! “Do you think the lantern is the light, or the light comes from some bigger reservoir?” he asked, not that he expected her to know.

He considered the question as the went back downstairs. By the time they were back on the first floor, he’d made up his mind. “Could you look for Avalon of Earth?” Chris’s answer hadn’t done enough to sate his curiosity about what had happened to Tate - he wanted a better answer. “She hasn’t returned my texts lately. I’m worried for her.”

Babylon nodded seriously at Virgo, and then managed a real smile for her. “Thank you so much,” he said, leaning forward to hug her gently. “I’ll keep in touch, and I’ll see you again soon.”

He followed her back out to the road and hugged her again there. Then, with a wave, he was off for home, where the bitter cold hit him like a slap in the face.