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He'd sort of... casually mentioned to Zia over coffee that he'd take her to space, except then Avalon happened and his face happened and he took some other girl to space instead and then the cosmic highway patrol wouldn't let him go back to Mercury for another week and it was a whole dumb hot mess. Anyway, tonight was clear and a little on the cold side, but milder than the past week had been. Finn texted Zia - Meet me in the park at 10 PM. Dress for snow.

Truthfully, he wasn't sure what the weather would be like at his wonder. It had seemed to be sunrise last time he'd been there, but perhaps there was some weird arctic circle s**t going on. Mercury was weird.

He jogged to the park in sweat pants and a hoodie, but then called his furs to him as he neared the meeting place. "Hey," he called, spotting Zia seated atop the picnic table. "Sorry about the hold-up. Getting your face cut open is kind of a super-dumb distraction." At least the stitches were out now, although that did little to improve the appearance of the scar. He'd wear that one for life.

"It makes me look dashing, right?" he asked, offering her his arm. "Ready to get going?"

"I meant to ask where yours came from," Babylon said, allowing his arm to be grabbed. It was nice, in a sea of wondering why the hell Valhalla even bothered putting up with him and having to act straight around Andrea's family and having to be plain boring civilian Finn for Vanya, it was nice to have one friend who he didn't need any pretenses around, and that was where Zia came in. Which was surprising, because they'd never gotten along nearly as well before he'd up and vanished to Alaska. "Was it Avalon?"

Maybe it was maturity.

"It'd be easier to show you than to explain," he said, reaching over to poke her in the over-stuffed, downy midsection. It seemed okay to skip the theatrics with her - going to space was probably old hat for Zia, not like some rookie senshi who needed to be impressed that he was a Knight and therefore kind of a big deal.

"I know you can't get over my newfound, roguish good looks, but be quiet for a second and we'll get going."

He tightened his grip on Zia's arm, closed his eyes, and let the oath tumble from his lips. The wind kicked up around them, only fading when they were standing solidly at the base of the mountain, looking up at the ancient city of Babylon. "Huh," said Babylon, noting the pinkish light. "Sunrise again."

Time was weird.

"Not sure I've ever come across Wolframite," said Babylon thoughtfully, looking up towards the city. It was breathtaking, he had to admit, even though he'd been here countless times by now. Seeing other people's reactions to his city was always part of the fun of bringing them along.

"That sure is my city," he said mildly, searching the hills for any sign of blue light and finding none. The lamps were out. He suspected they'd stay out until he lit them. "Anyway, no point in just standing here being cold," he said, not that he was, and Zia had thankfully taken his warning and dressed for the weather. "I found an old marketplace last time I was here. Want to go look around for something cool?"

He didn't know how other knights Wonders worked, if they were as big as his or much smaller. He recalled Lina saying something about hers being a park, but had never been there and honestly he didn't want to think about her. He doubted he'd be able to find it, anyway, even if he struck out into the wilderness and went looking. There was probably some sort of magic in the way. There was always magic in the way.

"Hope you're ready to do some climbing," he said, pulling her towards a wide set of stairs. "They've never heard of escalators around here."

"That works," Babylon said to the cat, reaching up to stroke her tail with a gloved hand. "I mean, I guess I should have warned you - it's all uphill." The knight was used to the climbing by now - although Zia made for extra weight. (He knew the cat was, technically, Zirconia, but he was just going to keep calling her Zia. Made things easier.)

"It's right this way," he said, modulating his breathing carefully. Used to it or not, the climbing could still make him pant. "And it's flat from here. You can walk on your own. Uh. Four feet. Or not. You're a good scarf."

The marketplace looked pretty much as he'd left it. "Gotta warn you, there's not a whole lot of stuff here," he said. "Still working on piecing together what happened in the final days of this place, but I figure even if there was a whole lot left, the weather's not exactly forgiving. I keep meaning to explore it fully, but - it's such a big place, you know. It could take my whole life to see every inch of it. And I don't think any trinkets we find here in the market are going to be important to me figuring out how to, well, I'm supposed to be working on getting all the lamps lit."

He shrugged. "Which is, you can probably guess, easier said than done."

"No idea," answered Babylon, following her. Watching her go from cat back to girl didn't phase him by now, but the brief stopover at catgirl was a sort of rare sight. "Too cold for the magical getup?" he guessed. "I'll ask Virgo if she knows anything about how things ended here. She grew up here, you know? Knew my ancestor and everything."

Which was equal parts cool and disheartening, knowing that one of your friends couldn't look at you without being sad that you weren't her reincarnated buddy from a thousand years ago. So anyway. That was a thing.

He kept mostly to the middle of the road as Zia dashed from stall to stall, interested mostly in her reaction to everything. Babylon did hold a certain measure of smug pride in his wonder - it was a cool place, okay? "That is what I'm saying, I guess," he said. "I mean, it's not like I can get a team of archaeologists up here that easily, right?" That said, there were probably some who would kill for the opportunity.

"I get these um, I guess they're visions?" he explained, continuing to watch her. "The previous knight of Babylon, my great-to-the-nth-degree grandfather shows up and yells at me. He said I won't be a true knight of Babylon until I light all the lamps. So I figure I've got to. I just don't know how. There's a tool I'm missing. Kind of a long metal thing for transferring flame."

Babylon gave her a sidelong glance as she laughed, not exactly sure what had triggered the outburst. His ancestor, apparently. Well, he didn't think that Menachem was much of a laughing matter, but he had to deal with the actual reality of stern old guy who thinks you're incompetent and not just the oh, my hallucinations tell me I'm a loser funny part of the story. So he rolled his eyes at her, "Yeah, laugh it up, fuzzball."

Which was a line from Star Wars and if she took offense, he'd be sorely disappointed.

"Anyway, you never told me your brother was a knight," he said, trying to recall if he'd actually ever met Zia's brother. The answer was... probably not. "You're not really missing anything, anyway. Just the privilege of getting screamed at by dead people."

Which was depressing, because Avalon had definitely used their trouble with their ancestors as an argument about why Babylon should join her in the Negaverse. And now he'd gone and made himself sad. ********.

"It is what it is," he shrugged. "I'm pretty sure the alternative is saying ******** it all and joining the dark side, so, you know, not happening. You find anything cool?"

"Oh," said Babylon. Of course Valhalla was involved. When wasn't he. If you asked for his opinion, everyone would be better off if Valhalla would stop sticking his nose where it didn't belong. "Well, ******** that." ******** everything. If you dismissed enough s**t angrily, it couldn't really hurt you, right?

Wrong.

Probably.

"Valhalla's a bag of dicks," he shrugged. "Let's not talk about him. He leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I don't need that kind of bad juju around my wonder. Begone, a*****e." He waved his lantern demonstrably, as if vanishing a demon.

"Neither side's all it's cracked up to be is what I figure," he shrugged, following her over to the stall she was investigating. "I mean, I'm still trying to figure it all out, but I'm pretty sure that since knights can awaken naturally and the negaverse needs to be, like, forcibly corrupted or whatever, we're probably the more natural of the pair. Like, we're what the universe tends toward, and they're kind of - like orcs? In you know, the Lord of the Rings?"

She'd gotten his Star Wars reference, so another geeky franchise didn't seem completely out of the question. "Twisted. Or whatever. Not natural."

"Yeah, well," said Babylon, shuddering. "That doesn't exactly sound appealing." He was okay with being a weakling if it meant not being evil, and seeing Avalon as basically a husk of her former self - no memories, no kindness, none of the things that had made Tate Tate - made him doubly reluctant to try Chaos out any time soon. Zia's metaphor about violating the warranty was pretty apt, though. He figured he'd borrow it for later, in case he ever needed to convince someone why the Negaverse was dumb s**t.

Well, he couldn't always bat a thousand, he figured, sighing when she didn't get the Lord of the Rings reference. "We'll have some movie nights," he said with a shrug. "I'll bring DVDs and snacks if you have a couch." He still felt weird about inviting people over to the room he rented in Vanya's apartment - as well as they got along, it was still decidedly her space, and he wasn't sure if he'd ever feel like he had equal stake in it - at least as long as she was charging him such ridiculously low rent.

And also, nice as Vanya was (and she'd taken him to the hospital and sat with him the night he got his face cut open, so she was pretty nice), she wasn't someone he could spill his guts to.

In short, she wasn't Tate. No one would ever be able to replace Tate, and the sooner he got over that, the better off he'd be. Except, not tonight.

"You'd might as well just tell me what classic movies you haven't seen," he announced. "I'll just, make a list, and then we can work through them. Did you miss Indiana Jones, too, somehow?"