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Laney's therapist Carmine was always telling her she had to talk about her problems more. It was a bit of a struggle between them -- Laney was inutterably convinced that she already talked way too much and people found it annoying, while Carmine was convinced it had more to do with the nature of the conversation and that bottling things up didn't help. He wanted her to communicate more -- but this was something she couldn't even tell Carmine, much less anyone else.

The only person in her life who knew about her alter-ego as a Cosmos knight was Tara. She definitely wasn't ready to tell Tara. Tara had been busy lately, or maybe it was Laney who'd made sure to be busy, still mulling things over after the events on Olympus. Either way, she wasn't going to Tara with this.

It would be better to talk to a knight about it anyway. The problem was, she didn't know very many knights. Of her own kin, there was just Sarras -- and he was even newer than she was. He wouldn't be able to provide much advice. Other than that, there was Camelot -- but something kept making Laney hesitate on that one.

Camelot was the one person who'd looked after her, in her faction, the one person she'd had the chance to rely upon fully. He hadn't just fought with her, he'd fought for her -- and had let her cling to him, and given her a hug, and told her she was doing her best and that was good. She didn't want to lose his approval: it was all she had.

Who else was there? Zee? To hear her talk about it, she'd always been a neutral party in this war. Laney couldn't expect her to understand. No, she needed someone who could understand what it was like to be a knight and be told there was absolutely no instruction manual, and just to choose. She just didn't know any other knights, that was all.

There'd been a lot of them, in Olympus, but they were thinner on the ground than they looked here in Destiny City. The only expectation she really had of seeing more of them anytime soon was in the camping trip flyer she'd put in the lockbox under her bed.

Maybe, she decided, though, it would be better to talk to someone who's still mostly a stranger. That had been kind of helpful, with Gemma, the boarding school girl she'd met in the park. She'd been able to talk to Gemma because Gemma was more or less a stranger to her, and less likely to judge.

And Babylon, she decided, had been nothing but friendly. And he was a knight! That meant he probably had a lot more experience to draw on than she did. Someone like that probably had his s**t together. He probably got newbie knights asking him things all the time.

Surely he wouldn't mind just one more on the pile.

Hvergelmir addressed her letter To: Babylon Knight so the universe could get it where it needed to go. After that, she wasn't sure how much to say. She didn't want to be one of those people who got weepy and emotional on twitter (even though she was entirely one of those people). No, she'd keep it brief.

Is this thing on? she wrote down.

Then she scribbled her name at the bottom of the page, rubbed her signet ring against the head of a magic marker, and pressed it to the page, stamping the star-in-the-well onto the paper.

And off it went.

Punctuality wasn't really Laney's strong suit. To be fair, although she didn't make it to the fountain within the thirty minutes he'd suggested, her aura was probably within his detection range in about that timespan -- but it was more like thirty-seven minutes before Babylon actually came into her line of sight. Oops.

As was usually the case with her, she could've easily gotten there in time. She lived well within range of the Times Circle Fountain, and had been doing a grant total of zero important things when they'd exchanged messages. She just never could seem to get going on time for anything.

(Carmine had a lot to say about what caused problems like this. None of it made her any less late; therefore none of it made her feel any less guilty.)

"Sorry, sorry," she said, half-jogging up with her skirts bunched up in one hand. "I was running a little behind!" This was, if one examined it at all, basically offering 'because I was late' as the reason why she was late -- which, while tautologically true, wasn't really any kind of explanation.

"Thanks for meeting me -- I don't know if you ever had this problem when you were starting out, but I swear it's not actually that easy to meet other knights? And Camelot, uh, well, you know, he has a family and stuff, and I'm sure he's, like, busy with all that, and I just didn't want to bug him. So you were like the only other knight on my list. I don't need help or anything, I just need, like. Advice, I guess."

Hvergelmir sat at Bablyon's invitation, turned so she could face him, one leg folded on the lip of the fountain, the other left dangling. (Her dress didn't really allow her to sit fully pretzel-style unless she bunched it up crazily, and by and large, she got tired of fiddling with it all the time.)

She was relieved by his attitude. He was just so -- friendly. He had this way of acting, she reflected, like everything she had to say -- whether it was her abrupt signet letter or her rambling apology for lateness -- was perfectly natural and perfectly okay. As someone who was well aware that she was, in the eyes of the world, neither perfectly natural nor perfectly okay, this came as a very welcome change of pace. Babylon was definitely a good egg.

"So I don't know if advice is really the right word," she opened, showing her hands in a gesture of uncertainty. "I mean, what I did, there's not really many options for what I can do. I guess it's more like -- um. Well, what you said at Olympus -- you said some Negaversers think they don't have any power without the Negaverse, but we could teach them different. It sounded like you talk to them a lot. And that's -- that's what I have to do now." She scratched absently at the mark on her shoulder, a tattoo that echoed the stamp on the letter she'd sent him, except in gold and rainbow-glitter ink. "I might have sort of done something probably stupid."

"I was at my wonder lately," she began, feeling inclined to delay the inevitable a little bit by drawing out the story. "Cleaning, because wow, dust literally piled this high on the ground." Hvergelmir gestured about half a foot between her upraised hands. "Anyway, while I was there, I found this, like, a hidden room."

She explained, as best she could, about the Code, and about the things it had shown her in the book. The exact words of the oath it had shown her weren't perfectly burned in her memory, but she remembered them, more or less, and did her best to relate what she'd seen.

"I didn't really get it at the time. But the next time I ran into a Negaverser, it was this general, and she . . . " Hvergelmir shook her head, reconsidered her words, and started over. "Since Olympus -- well, I mean, since always, but Olympus kind of confirmed the whole backstory thing -- I kind of had this idea that if the Negaverse just knew the truth about the war, if they knew we'd never tried to take over the Earth -- they'd see they didn't have to fight us."

Hvergelmir looked down at her hands in her lap. "But this general, Avalon, didn't -- she didn't care, that was never why she joined the Negaverse. They made her do it, they were going to kill her. They made her think it was the only way she could be safe. And, I don't know, I guess I just thought -- she must have been so scared, and I mean, I know how hard it is to do anything when you're scared. And I thought, if convincing her wouldn't work, then you have to convince the entire organization. Then people like her, the ones that're just afraid to die if they don't do what they're told, they wouldn't have to fight us if they didn't really want to.

"So I swore this oath -- this, uh, on-my-life oath -- not to fight Negaversers so long as they were in this war trying to protect the Earth. So they'd know we don't have to be the enemy."

What Hvergelmir really wanted, Babylon couldn't give. She knew -- she'd known -- he couldn't. No one could. Camelot hadn't even been able to, with all his power and his crystal sword. Aquarius hadn't been able to, and she was Laney's best friend in all the world. The Code itself, the universe's great font of knowledge, didn't have this one answer. What she wanted wasn't just someone to validate her decisions, to tell her she was doing the right thing -- it was someone who could tell her, at its most basic level, that everything was going to be okay.

And no one could promise that.

None of them had much confidence that this war was all going to turn out alright.

Babylon hadn't told her she'd done the right thing. She hadn't really expected him to -- he'd been at this a long time, and obviously come to his own conclusions on what his honor required: when to tilt, when to withdraw. The Code had told them all that everyone had their own path to follow.

He hadn't taken her to task for it, either, though -- and for that, she was relieved and grateful. He was offering advice instead. Whether or not he probably thought she was running headlong toward her own death, he obviously had enough care to want to try and help her escape an untimely end. Hvergelmir smiled, and if there wasn't much force behind it, if it wasn't the best smile she'd ever come up with, nevertheless, it was still there.

"I think you're right. I mean, it seems right to me. If they're losing the ability to reason for themselves," she said, picking at her fingernails, "doesn't that make it that much more important for us to reason for them -- to help them do it? If they're losing their sense of right and wrong -- if they can't see it for themselves -- we're the only eyes they have. The only conscience they hear." Hvergelmir pointed at the beautiful lantern Babylon kept with him, which she assumed was what the universe had offered him as his weapon. "A light in dark places," she quipped Tolkien, "when all other lights have gone out."

Hvergelmir drew her hand in a line through the air, pulling out the golden distaff topped with wool that she'd left tucked in her subspace pocket. (She was getting quite good at that little trick now that she'd figured out how to do it, and was relieved at her own progress.)

"I've been thinking -- the weapons we get. A weaving tool. A lamp. You and I aren't carrying axes and spears, are we? If the universe thought every problem could be solved the same way, it could've given us all swords. We're more to this universe than just fighting. We should do more than just fighting."

She tilted her head at the lantern. "Your lamp -- can it do anything else? Other than, like, you could hit people with it."

Laney didn't always bounce back from setbacks with extreme optimism -- in fact, she rarely did, or else she wouldn't be here with Babylon now, hoping to be cheered up -- but she was good at appearing functional and enthusiastic in the moment like this. It was easier that way -- focusing only on the present and ignoring the long-term to feel better. At present, Babylon was feeding her positive affirmation, however measured -- and that made it easier to feel like she still had an inner supply of sunshine and rainbows to draw upon. It was her favorite coping mechanism for life.

Hvergelmir watched Babylon raise his lantern in the air, saw the light flare around them. She didn't feel any different, but she guessed that was a good thing, if he knew some sort of anti-lying spell -- best not to tip off the liar about it.

She settled on the first lie that came to mind, and said gamely, "Your name probably isn't Luke, and I'm not your father." Absent context, it was kind of a beautiful non-sequitur remark.

Even expecting something magical to happen, her eyebrows shot up. It was kind of flabbergasting to set out to say something and say the total opposite without meaning to.

"That's absolutely amazing!" she opened her mouth to say -- and said "That's absolutely terrifying!" instead. A moment later Hvergelmir was trying to clap both hands over her mouth.

Hvergelmir watched the rest of Babylon's demonstration with a kind of mystified awe. Senshi, from what she knew, had magic -- but she hadn't seen much of it from knights. What she'd been told was that they mostly had weapons to fight with, and had to be content with that. She hadn't really thought of herself wielding that kind of spell before. And the way he flickered in and out, more like a video game glitch than a real person -- it made her eyes hurt. The human mind wasn't meant to process reality happening in a distinctly unreal form.

It was heartening to hear him speak so positively, even of someone like her and what she had always sort of seen as her dismal levels of potential. You obviously don't know me very well, she thought. But what else do I have to believe in but the possibility that you're right, that I stand any chance of making it through all this without crashing and burning?

She'd never felt destined to succeed. She wasn't really someone with a history of success. But maybe, she thought -- maybe it was just that she'd been trying and failing to believe in just herself -- her terrible, human, fallible self -- rather than finding something else to believe in. Ideals were harder to shake than people. Maybe that was what the winners had all fixed their sights to -- philosophy rather than instinct. What was the old saying, even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes? Maybe she just had to believe that even someone like her could find the occasional nut. Maybe.

Resolve really was such a hard thing to hold on to, and hers seemed to shake with every breeze.

"You're so strong and confident," Hvergelmir complimented Babylon, looking up to meet his eyes again. "Camelot too -- I just thought it was because he was older, but you and I can't be too far apart. How do you -- do that? What do you . . . " She paused, biting her lip. "How do you keep on doing this all the time? What do you fight for?"

Hvergelmir didn't have a line of ancestry tying her to her knighthood. Her family were just -- her family. It would've been nice to have parents who believed in magic and protected its potential throughout the years, but the Suttons didn't fit that bill. They believed in normalcy and fitting in with their neighbors and living out long, boring lives with no imagination in them that extended beyond selecting the occasional zany (but not too zany) necktie.

She just had herself.

There was no chain to carry on. There was no friendly ghost to paint her a roadmap. There was just Laney and a cryptic little glowing orb and occasional flashes of memory so clouded and fleeting that they barely made any sense and told her nothing.

I will seek no refuge in convention, but strive always to move forward with honor.

Babylon was right. She would find something. She was supposed to find something. Maybe she'd replant the dead garden, the one her well irrigated. It would be nice to see flowers and leaves on the trees at her wonder too.

"That's incredible," she told him warmly. "Your family's incredible. Like you! It's no wonder. I'm sure you could never let them down. You'd be amazed how enduring faith in people you love can be."

She thought of Tara, sitting by Laney's bedside for a year while she drifted deep in her coma. Tara had always believed Laney was going to wake up one day. She was the only one, but she'd always believed.

Laney wanted to be like that. She wanted to believe that people could always come back, no matter how far they drifted. She wanted to think other people could have the chance that she'd had.

Hvergelmir rested her chin on one palm. "So what's it like -- your wonder?" Then, before Babylon could answer, she sat up straight again and waved her hands in the air. "Wait, oh my God, I didn't even ask what time you needed to get going! Oh, wow, I'm terrible. I can ask you about your wonder, like, literally at any time, I've totally just been taking advantage of you. Wow, go me." She smiled. "Okay, so strike that last question; new question. Do you need to get going soon? I don't want you to worry anyone."