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Finn set the delivery bags on the table and called upstairs to Nick, “Hey, food’s here. You coming?” Kaatje had stolen Tallulah off to somewhere - probably the third floor. This was fine by him - he and Nick hadn’t really had good chance to talk since the night of his purification, and they had a lot of ground to cover. Knowing Tallulah, he didn’t doubt she was dragging her feet filling Nick in on going’s on - and that was fine, that was her way of operating. But there were certain things that only a large order of french fries could solve, and that was where Finn came in.

After popping open the clamshell packages, Finn glanced over towards the staircase, just in time to see Nick on his way down. “So, we’ve got, uh, a ******** of the best french fries you’ll ever eat,” he said, gesturing to the food, “And, uh, veggie burgers. Choose your own adventure on the toppings, bro, they gave us a bit of everything. Do you have ketchup? They skimped on the packets…”

“Anyway! How’s it going with the new ID? Anabel does great work,” he said conversationally, offering a plate to Nick. “I heard everything went smoothly at DCU and you’re right on track, no harm done.”

“Yeah,” said Finn, piling pretty much everything available onto his burger, including some french fries. “She wants me to be some sort of live-in counselor or something, even though I’m not, like, anything even remotely close to a healthcare professional.” He made a face, and squashed the top of the bun down onto his construction. “Says I’m good with people, or something. Besides, I’m taking your advice on Vanya - it’s time I had my own space.”

He actually knew, consciously, that he was good with people. Most people. People who were not apparently predisposed to disliking him, of which he’d met a few.

“Anyway, yeah, I’m taking the southeast unit up on the second floor, right at the top of the stairs,” he said, glancing up towards the lofted bedroom. “Actually, I guess it backs up to this unit.” There were only three apartments fronting onto the second floor, and a place where what had used to be the door to the space Nick’s apartment had expanded into. He’d best hope that Nick and Tallulah were not into loud sex, because that would just get… awkward.

"So,” Finn said, “I’m glad things worked out with the school. I guess it’s an advantage of going to such a big university - we can slip things like this under the radar.” He piled fries onto his plate, and then paused. “How’s your hand?” he asked.

Finn set his plate down, taking careful hold of Nick’s hand and investigating the scar. He’d like to chalk this all up to his own first-aid skills, but he knew that wasn’t entirely the case. “There’s, um, a bit of a healing factor involved with this superhero thing we’re involved in,” he explained. As for not remembering it - of course he didn’t. Finn frowned. Spinel had been the one to be cut, and Spinel had been forgotten - almost like he’d never existed at all.

“I patched it up,” he said. “While we were on Gunn’s comet. You got it from-” He sighed. “I’m gonna tell you some stuff that’s not all happy shiny galactic warrior,” said Finn, letting go of Nick’s hand. “And I want to preface it with that you got that cut saving my life, and you were on drugs but they weren’t, like, normal drugs you buy from a sketchy dude in a nightclub bathroom. Do you remember the night you became Oenone? With Iris and the rest of us there?”

He took a moment to offer Nick a can of soda from the take-out bag. “I don’t think you’re gonna like this,” Finn said seriously, “But it’s got to be done, and Tallulah and Kaatje are dragging their feet and I’m just gonna lay it out there, man to man.”

Finn took a seat at the table, and then gestured for Nick to sit as well. They had a lot to go over, and he didn’t like the urgency that standing seemed to put on the conversation. That, and he was hungry, and he wanted to get at his french fries without looking like a total pig. “Okay, so, background information, a thousand years ago, there’s this big civilization out in space called the Silver Millenium. Or I figure it’s called that.” That was what Menachem always called it, so he was just going to go with that.

“So all these civilizations out in space, nearly every planet and every star and every asteroid and every whatever’s got a senshi, like what you are. They’re these magical warriors who get their strength from the space object and, like, et cetera, it’s not my game, I’m not an expert. And then you’ve got knights, like me, we’re also kicking around, like some kind of crazy magical military serving the strongest royal houses or whatever.” The Code had tried to explain things, but it had ultimately turned out kind of incoherent and Finn wasn’t exactly confident passing that information along when he didn’t understand it himself.

“Anyway, the senshi and the knights, they all serve this big cosmic power called Order. It’s like the light side of the Force - you’ve seen Star Wars, right? So we’re all basically Jedi. We keep peace, balance, and prosperity. We fight for light and life.” This was literally the easiest pop-culture metaphor he could think of. “Anyway, so then you’ve got this opposing force, Chaos. It’s the dark side of the Force. Entropy and death and pain and suffering and whatever. It gets into people’s hearts and corrupts them, makes them unable to see the good in things, and about a thousand years ago, something tips the scales and it takes over and then boom, goodbye galactic civilization, goodbye Silver Millenium, hello Dark Ages.”

As a point of emphasis, he reached for the ketchup and squirted a mound onto his plate. “So, are you following? Because that’s all the background stuff and we’re gonna fast forward to the present day.”

He could only hope Nick was following, because he was going to continue.

“Present day. Destiny City. You’ve got the Negaverse and you’ve got the Dark Mirror Court fighting for Chaos, and you’ve got the Knights and the Senshi fighting for Order. The Negaverse is made up of corrupt knights and corrupt senshi - people who’ve given up their natural power in exchange for serving the forces of Darkness, and Chaos is one hell of a drug. It gets into your head and it makes nothing else matter as much as serving it, and purging that takes a hell of a lot of energy. It takes a princess, like Iris. And swapping sides like that - no matter which direction you’re going, some memories get lost in the shuffle.”

“Please tell me you’re following, Nick,” said Finn, cracking open his soda can.

Well, thought Finn, sighing measuredly. This was where the hard part started. The part that was maybe going to mean going upstairs and telling Tallulah he broke her boyfriend. His only context for how to handle people who’d purified was Lina and Kairatos and Zirconia, and all three of them, he thought, remembered their time in the darkness, and knew their crimes. Nick, who’d forgotten everything of his life serving the Negaverse, was an entirely different beast, and while they could have tried to let him continue in his ignorance forever - that would have been cruel and unsustainable.

“Look, man,” said Finn quietly. “I’m not gonna lie to you. That’s not what I came here to do. You were one of their senshi. They called you Spinel and they treated you like an attack dog. But I also know that you never had any choice in your corruption, and once Chaos has its fingers in you - it becomes very hard to argue against it.”

Not from personal experience, of course. He had no plans to go and get personal experience.

“No one here’s gonna hold any of that against you,” Finn added. “Okay? Are you okay?”

Finn shook his head. “Not as far as I know,” he said. “As far as I know, half your memories are always forfeit in the switch. It’s like reformatting a hard disk from Mac to PC.” It could have been worse - Avalon remembered Avalon but had forgotten Tate. Kairatos remembered Realgar, which meant he must have forgotten his civilian memories. “It can go either way. I know people who only remember their powered selves, who forget their civilian lives entirely,” he said, trying to be reassuring.

That would be a very different conversation to have with a very different Nick. “You don’t have to remember. You don’t have to worry about remembering. Because, chances are, it’s not ever going to come back to you.” He didn’t want to say move on. He didn’t want to sound callous - but there was only so much they could do about the past, and the fact that Oenone had been restored to his proper place as a white moon senshi didn’t undo everything Spinel had done, but it meant he was no longer tipping the balance in the Negaverse’s favor.

“You made the decision to leave,” he said. “That’s what counts the most.”

These were the hard questions, the ones that Finn didn’t know the answers to and wasn’t sure there was any right way to respond. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay. But one way or another you were going to lose something and we talked about this. I know you don’t remember the conversation, but we talked about this. You knew you wouldn’t remember some things once you were on the other side and would you really, really rather live with those murders every day and not remember your life, your friends, and everyone you ever cared about?”

“So you feel guilty,” said Finn. “You don’t remember the specifics but you feel guilty. That’s not an offense to them. Even if you did remember being Spinel, you probably wouldn’t remember every single death, every single person. You wouldn’t know who they were. And either way, there’s no chance at bringing them back.” How many senshi had fallen to Spinel? How many knights? How many civilians had died when he plucked their starseeds from their chests? It mattered. But it also didn’t, because it was done and it was over and Finn couldn’t bring people back from the dead any more than he could walk on water.

“You’d have forgotten Tallulah,” he said, knowing it was a low blow. “You would have looked at her and had no idea who she was. You’d lose every happy moment you ever shared with anyone. You’d spend the rest of your life wondering who you’d been and not being able to approach your identity.” He knew that was what had driven Avalon mad. He didn’t know if it would have had the same effect on Nick.

“It’s always going to feel like catch-22,” sighed Finn. “You didn’t decide one way or another, it’s just the luck of the draw, which memories you kept and which you forgot.”

Finn watched Nick pace, watched him come to a standstill. Had he expected anything quite so dramatic? Perhaps not, but then, it was a lot to take in. He couldn’t anticipate his own reactions, should their positions be reversed. Nick, from what he knew of him, and Finn had come to know him rather well, was good. He was kind. He was studying to be a doctor and to know how to put broken people back together. That just didn’t jive with the modus operandi of the Negaverse.

“You saved my life,” he repeated, because he figured it probably bore doing so. “Avalon had my starseed - my soul - out of my chest, and you disobeyed your orders to attack her and save me. You risked your own life for mine. And I don’t - I don’t know a lot of people who fight for Order who would have done that.” Most, he thought, would have counted him a traitor and left him for dead, after he’d gone willingly to Avalon’s arms like that.

He got up. He poured Nick a glass of water from the sink and took it to him. “Here,” he said. “You’re going to be okay. Trust me. Okay? Can you do that, Nick?”