Welcome to Gaia! ::

If rain couldn’t stop the postal service, then Babylon supposed it couldn’t stop justice, either. The knight pulled his hood tight around his head against the downpour and flicked water from the lenses of his visor, then hefted his lantern and set off into the night. He thought that it ought to be quiet - cold and rainy as it was, there shouldn’t be that many people out on the streets whether they were civilian or powered.

After a few blocks at the street level, the knight took a leap and continued his patrol along the rooftops. From up here, he could cover more ground and see further - streetlights and headlights shining through the rain. He turned his attention inward for a moment, checking for Order and Chaos power signatures in the area. He could feel a mid-level chaos signature moving at the far end of his senses, vanishing into the distance. Babylon debated taking up pursuit, but they were probably a good six blocks away. By the time he caught up, they’d already be gone and then he’d spend all night chasing someone he’d never catch.

Someone else would pick up the signature, he decided, leaping across an alleyway as he turned down another street. Babylon was going to stick to this neighborhood and keep anyone spending a late night at the coffee shop safe.

He reached up and wiped rain off his visor again, and shook water from his cape. The weather hadn’t soaked through his furs yet, but he dreaded the moment that it did - in his experience, anything advertised as waterproof would be waterproof right up to the exact moment when it wasn’t. Fortunately, he wasn’t at that point yet - his boots were still cozy and he was still warm inside his coat.

With his visor and cape taken care of, Babylon took stock of the area again. He felt another mid-level chaos signature moving through the area - or maybe the same one, swinging back around? He raised his lantern and looked out into the night. “To engage?” he asked the air. He was sorely out of practice and he knew it.

It hadn’t even crossed his mind that the captain he’d spotted zipping about on his mind’s eye might be Avalon. She’d changed, for sure, in the way that Zia assured him Chaos twisted all things. Her robes were darker, sleeker, green like a forest in the rain. But he’d know her - he’d know her anywhere - not by the shattered earth sigils on her sleeves, but by the green granite of her eyes and the red of her hair. Babylon kept his lantern raised high - not a striking hold, but so he could see her.

“Tate,” he said hollowly. Here they were at a standstill. He hadn’t meant to see her so soon, or else he would have wrapped his mind more solidly around abstract concepts like death and finality, dove head-first into some kind of grieving ritual, covered all the mirrors and torn his clothing if he thought it would give him any sort of closure. But there could be no closure when she was standing right in front of him, the black of her robes and noisy presence in his mind proclaiming what Valhalla had already told him.

Before now, he’d held out hope that it wasn’t quite true.

Babylon’s hold on his lantern shook, just a little.

“Tate,” he repeated. “Why would you do this?”

When she said she didn’t know who Tate was, he believed her. She didn’t sound like she was lying just to taunt him - he would have expected there to be some sort of cruel irony in her voice if she were - if Tate were still in there looking out, teasing him with the knowledge that she was still out in the world somewhere he couldn’t have her. He remembered what Zia said, about Chaos being a twisty thing that could make people forget themselves and their motivations. When Avalon said I couldn’t tell you why Tate would want to do this - well, that just proved the point.

He’d been through a lot of reasons for why he’d run from Destiny City - because he didn’t want to fight anymore, and because he had goals he couldn’t reach there, or couldn’t reach as well, and because- It didn’t seem right to tell a captain of the Negaverse that he’d been a coward, that he’d run from duty because that was all he’d ever been good at - fumbling through fights and running, scared little boy that he was. “I hardly know at this point,” he told her, which was hardly better than admitting his cowardice.

His grip on the lantern shook again, but he refused to lower it. “I just - I don’t understand, Avalon,” said Babylon. “If you’d told me something was wrong, that you needed me - I’d have been on the next flight back.” But she’d never said that. Tate’s text messages had been normal right up to the moment when they’d stopped - right? He was missing the why and the how.

He was a little scared to find out what the why and the how were, in case there were signs he’d missed.

Babylon’s heart skipped a beat, and he lowered the lantern from from eye level to his chest. She’d called him out - Tate or not, some part of her still saw through his bullshit and cut through it, just like she always had. But he would have gone - wouldn’t he? He told himself he would have, and tightened his grip on the lantern until his knuckles went white inside his gloves. “You never told me you needed me,” he said, and he was grateful for the rain and for his visor so she could not see the sadness in his eyes. (Or he could only hope as much.)

"You never asked," he said. It was true - wasn't it? Tate had never given any indication, had she? He had an awful, topsy-turvy in his stomach, like if he went back and reread her last few weeks of text messages, they wouldn't read the way he remembered them.

"People aren't psychic," Babylon insisted, and even at chest level, the lantern felt heavy and shook in his grip. "I'm not psychic," he insisted. "I couldn't have possibly saved you if you never told me you needed saving. If you'd just asked, I swear, Avalon. I'd have been here in a heartbeat."

It happened so fast, and then he was on the ground, wheezing from the impact. He didn’t recognize the look in her eyes - cold conviction. He tried to wriggle out from under her, and then to push her off, but with their height difference being what it was and her knees how they were, it was no use. Babylon felt the knife p***k his skin, and it occurred to him that he could very well die here at her hands.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t consider her offer, because no responsibility and no old ghosts - weren’t those things he’d run from? Wouldn’t it be so easy to just leave all of those old fears behind? But then his mind snapped into focus - better to die as yourself than be corrupted. “No, Avalon,” he said, leaning away from the blade as best he could. There was water in his hood - he could feel it pooling around his head. “It wouldn’t be the same. Because I was friends with who you were, not who you are now. And if you made me like you, I wouldn’t be me any longer.”

The thought scared him, but if he was going to die here, then he wanted to get a few words in edgewise first. “We’ll never be the way we were,” he said. “And I’m sorry that I let you down. You’ve got no idea how sorry I am. But I’m Babylon of Mercury, and I live and die by my light, and I can never, ever be like you.” Her face looked so foreign to him now - not like Tate at all, and he’d been an idiot to think she was still in there somewhere.

Babylon held his breath, and waited for the end.

Babylon did not scream when she cut him. Maybe from shock. Maybe because he’d expected something much, much worse. Maybe because her tenderness confused him, so he did not realize what she was doing until she’d already done it, and he could smell his blood mixing with the weather. He felt her gloved hand on his cheek - and then she was gone.

The pain hit him like a semi truck. Babylon staggered to his feet and pressed a hand to his cheek. He needed to get home, or to a hospital, or - anywhere, really.