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 Posted: Sun May 11, 2014 10:56 pm
The Surrounding’s rainbow pathway seemed eerie to Babylon. It was too quiet, too absolutely alien, a ribbon of magic stretching through space that he, even as an experienced knight, could not quite reconcile his mind to. The marble approaching Virgo’s outpost felt reassuringly solid by comparison, even if it was still, you know, hanging in the middle of space. He knew better than to try to cross from marble onto grass without Soldier Virgo’s invite - experience taught that it could not be done - and so Babylon stood just outside the gate. “Virgo!” he called, wondering how well his voice would carry. Space was a vacuum, right? And weren’t they in space right now? Magic was very weird. Maybe, he thought, he’d arrived ahead of her. That would mean waiting for who knew how long for Virgo’s arrival, and the surrounding gave him the creeps. “Virgo?” he called again. “Um, hi? It’s me?”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:40 am
Virgo was ever so tired lately. It couldn’t be that she was very busy, because she wasn’t. Nor was she unmotivated; every part of her had things she wanted to do, needed to do. Finn’s father was dead and she needed to be there for him. She had to keep trying to get in touch with other Zodiacs. There was work to do on her Wonder and, and… she couldn’t get up the energy to do any of it without becoming exhausted very quickly.
Arriving on Virgo early to do more dusting had seemed like a decent idea, but she’d ended up falling asleep. Babylon’s shouts awoke her, and she… tried to care that she’d been so rude… and couldn’t. Virgo got up, and took a moment to straighten her veil before she joined Babylon at the edge of the Surrounding road. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I meant to clean up a little, but… I suppose I fell asleep.” With a smile, she drew Babylon through the barrier around her Outpost.
“How are you doing,” she asked, returning to the fountain. There was blood speckling the basin, a bucket and a rag, and Virgo lowered herself down to scrub at the stains again. Like they would ever come up. “I’m sorry I didn’t stay for lunch after the funeral. I wasn’t feeling well.”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:40 am
In that case, Babylon felt bad for having woken her up. Virgo looked tired for sure - there were deep shadows beneath her eyes, and he was seriously starting to worry about her frailness. He felt like he was turning into his mother to wonder, but - was she eating enough? Was she sick? It was really none of his business, and yet--
“I’m holding up okay,” he said, following her onto the grass. Within the marble walls of Virgo outpost, everything felt a little bit more solid and reassuring - not like the road that lead to it, where he was sure you could fall right off the edge if your balance was bad enough, and there was no helpful referee like in Mario Kart to lift you back up. “It’s hard, but there’s nothing I can really do about it.”
So he sort of had to be okay.
With regards to the luncheon, he said, “It’s fine. Mistral showed up and dragged me off to space.” He’d noticed her missing, but honestly, he’d been so distracted that it hadn’t really occurred to him to think more into it than that. He glanced around, looking for something to comment on besides the blood on the edge of the basin, and settled for, “It looks good here. Cleaner. I’ve noticed the roads are smoother in Babylon.”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:40 am
She smiled to hear he was doing okay. It was always hard, losing a loved one. She ought to know. “My first boyfriend, Avery,” she said, scrubbing at the bloodstain, which did not fade even the slightest bit. “He died. The last thing he ever told me was to go away and leave him alone, because I’d never really loved him.” In the end, hadn’t that been proven at least a small bit true? Of all the people the Zodiac magic hadn’t saved, that he had to be one of them simply felt… too cruel.
“I don’t suppose you remember the Barren Pines organ ring,” she asked, dropping the rag into the water of the fountain. It’d been on her mind, lately, and there was no one--no one!--she could talk to who would remember it as she did, as a nightmare that had only pretended to end. “No one does, anymore.”
She shucked her veil, and said, “I’d like to go back, sometime, if you’ll have me. I miss home.”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:40 am
Babylon crouched by her side, watching her scrub. It didn’t look like it was doing anything - the blood was just too deep into the stone. Maybe he could find her some solvent back on Earth and bring it next time he visited. “That’s rough,” he said. “I remember a little bit about it. I don’t think I’d ever realized you’d been caught up in it.” It had been a long time ago, he thought - she must have been young.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said, placing a careful hand on her back between her shoulderblades. “I’d love for you to come back to Babylon sometime,” he said. “You’ll always be welcome there. Just let me know when you want to go, and I’ll take you.”
He wished there was some way to let her travel to and from his city without his assistance, like the Surrounding passport. That seemed like it would be a nice gift, and he trusted Virgo with his wonder. She had as much respect for it as he did.
He reached down and put his free hand delicately over hers. “Hey,” he said, “How about I see if I can find a solvent back on earth for getting blood out of marble and you can pick this up again later?”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:41 am
She smiled thinly at him. “It’s not like they published a list of survivors. Or like I’m missing any organs.” Did anyone even know the truth of what the Negaverse was capable of? Just thinking of it made her tired. “It was a Negaverse operation,” she said. “Breeding better youma, I suppose.” Virgo stopped her scrubbing under Babylon’s quelling hand, turned her head to look at him.
“I’d appreciate that, thank you,” she said, and she shifted where she knelt to a more comfortable position.
When she had asked him to come visit, she’d just wanted to talk to him. Make sure that he knew that he wasn’t alone and if he needed a hand, she was there. Virgo had ever been allies to Babylon, as far back as Elke could remember. Thinking of loss at all, especially thinking of loss in this place, at this time… “I haven’t patrolled in a very long time,” she said. “I’m always so tired, Babylon. My Court is gone. I sense Aquarius, but I can’t find her. It’s as if they’ve all simply…” Virgo made a poof gesture with her free hand, and sagged back against the side of the fountain.
“It’s out of my hands, though,” she said, tilting her head to one side and then the other, as if finding the exact perfect angle for her head to sit on her shoulders would change her shitty mood. “I wanted to make sure you knew you weren’t alone. And no one is going to let anyone near your family.”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:41 am
Babylon sank lower, sliding his legs out from under him and taking a seat beside her. He draped a careful arm around Virgo’s shoulders and pulled her closer, reasoning that clearly his chest would make a better pillow than the fountain. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not - I’m not part of your court, or a knight of Chronos, and I don’t know how to help you, but I’m here for you and whatever I can do for you.”
After debating for a moment where to put his hand, he settled it on her shoulder - the delicate perfection of how she’d positioned her veil made it seem like he wasn’t quite welcome to touch her hair. “Thanks,” he said softly. “You’re part of my family, too, you know?” In another life, she’d been one of his ancestors. Now, she was a valuable link to his past, someone whose life was worth protecting with his own. “It’s not fair that you have to do so much for everyone else,” he added. “You don’t get enough time to take care of yourself, do you?”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:41 am
The problem wasn’t that she did too much, it was that she didn’t do enough. “Babylon,” she said, and then she hesitated. It seemed impersonal, to refer to him by the city he guarded. He wasn’t the city; he was its protector. Menachem had been Babylon Knight, but he had never been anything but Menachem to her. She edited, “Finn. I let my Court fall apart. I could have stayed. If I’d done a little more, argued a little harder, Maman would’ve let me stay. I didn’t. I got scared and I let her send me to Switzerland.”
She shook her head. “I take care of myself.” Even if she didn’t patrol, she ran, and she ran a lot. “May I speak frankly?”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:41 am
“You can’t hold yourself responsible for other people’s actions,” said Babylon, but this all seemed like it was veering a bit close to talking over Virgo’s lived experiences and he didn’t think he was going to convince her otherwise (and he’d be kind of an a*****e to continue to try). So he said, “Yes, Okay. Go ahead.”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:41 am
“I’m so tired,” she said, settling her head against his shoulders. “The Negaverse has successfully killed me twice, did you know? I was twelve. They put my Princess on a bomb and blew us all up. Scorpio got away. That’s all she’s good for, getting away. They didn’t get Pisces because she was a baby, she couldn’t awaken yet, it’d be cruel. And I thought, At least it’s already over. No games this time, right? But it wasn’t. Aly--Chevalier Eon--he bargained with the Cauldron. He took himself out of reincarnation forever and ever. So we could have another chance.”
And how had their second chance gone? “And we woke up in a Negaverse trap! And I was fourteen only in technicality, I was fourteen and trapped in a burning building and I died and even then I couldn’t just rest, Finn, they made me a monster. They made my friends hate me and attack me.” She jolted forward and pulled frenziedly at her fuku, tearing the bronze star clasping the shoulder of the chiton away. There, on her olive-toned skin, was a ring of pale white teeth marks. Scars. She ran shaking fingers over them. “And now I’m here. I’m stuck. I’m not good enough to keep the Zodiac together and I never was. I’m not the Princess. I’m not Aly.”
It was so much harder, in this day and age. All anyone had ever asked of Soldier Virgo, of Aria, was that she die. And dying was easy, anyone could die, but everyone kept asking Elke to live, and that was the thing she found so hard to do. “I keep asking if I’m making the difference, if maybe there’s a reason I can’t just go, and coming up empty. And I think, how much easier it would be if I could just forget.”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:41 am
Finn inhaled shakily, and followed Virgo’s fingers across the scar with his thumb, rubbing a continuous gentle circle. Being alone, wanting to forget - these things sounded familiar to him. They were the kinds of things people said about corruption. “Hey,” he said softly, “That’s still - none of that’s your fault.” Which - he didn’t think that what Elke wanted to hear at all, but honestly, he wasn’t sure where to go with this now.
“I’ve had people try to tell me, oh, the Negaverse isn’t so bad. Oh, we need to work with chaos to find balance,” he said, moving from her shoulder to rub her back. “And that’s bullshit, because I know what they did to you, and to your entire court, and they’re not - they’re not people we can reason with. They’re a pack of murderers.”
He wanted to be able to reassure her more than he could, to speak with more experience and authority than he had. Babylon couldn’t handle losing another friend to corruption, especially if he were actually present and still couldn’t stand in its path. “What they did to you and your court was horrible,” said Finn. “You know that. I know that. Anyone who tries to argue in favor of cooperating with these assholes is delusional.” Like- like certain people he knew, palling around with Dark Mirror Royalty like this was all fun and games.
“One of these days,” he sighed, “I’m going to be able to tell you that you didn’t die all those times in vain, that your court didn’t die in vain, that Eon didn’t give up every life he’d ever have in vain. I can’t do that right now, because we’re still in the thick of it, but I promise, Elke.”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:41 am
Now, if she had the presence of mind to do so, would be the time for Virgo to say, And what happened to your father wasn’t your fault either. But the distress of the loss of her Court still pained her, even half a decade later. “It was easy when all they wanted from me was for me to die for the galaxy,” she said. “It’s not so easy now.” Because people kept wanting to inject shades of gray when everything about the Surrounding, everything about the stark delineations of Chaos and Order, screamed black and white. When she had to acknowledge there were good people on the other side of things, she couldn’t be nearly so resolute as she needed to be.
“There isn’t balance with Chaos,” she said. “It won’t ever happen. Our goals are fundamentally incompatible. The existence of one corrupted witch was enough to offset the balance before… are there really people who don’t see that?”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:42 am
“There are people who don’t understand how far the scales have tipped,” Babylon nodded, holding her close. “People who think that if we can make peace in Destiny City, that will be enough.” But they didn’t understand - Order had nothing to bargain with the Negaverse with. They ruled so much of the galaxy already. They had no reason to bargain with a small rebel force.
“People always want to look for the easy way out,” he sighed. Of course it would be easier not to fight, to not stand their posts and hold their battle lines and just go back to ordinary life. But to lie down on this issue would be to die, and he had no plans for that - his lot was thrown in with Virgo, and with his ancestor. “It’s laziness. It’s cowardice.”
He remembered his time in Alaska, and thought, it takes one to know one. “We have to fight until every last one of them is purified or dead,” he said, gazing off across the courtyard. Virgo’s outpost was peaceful, he thought. A far cry from the height of the surrounding situation a few years ago. “I’m not going to go away again. I promise.”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:42 am
She wanted to sigh, too, but she didn’t. It was altogether too easy to explain to herself why people might just close their eyes to the resurgent issues of the Negaverse and their Dark Mirror friends. So she just… didn’t. Nor did she comment on Babylon’s departure; she had left, too, though it hadn’t been her choice and she’d come back as soon as she could.
Virgo exhaled and wrapped her fingers around his, and she said, “I’ve found monsters up here recently. Chaos is spreading.”
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2014 12:42 am
Well, that certainly put a chill down Babylon’s spine. “You have,” he said, not a question, just a low repetition to confirm he’d heard her. “We’ll find people to come help guard the surrounding.” He knew more than a few senshi and knights with passports gathering dust in their sock drawers. “Force them, if we have to.”
Not that he was very sure he had any leverage, but, he’d figure that out later. “Is there anything you need me to take care of while I’m here?”
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