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It had been years, now, since Laney had last been in school. She was old enough to drive a car (though she'd never gotten her license) and old enough to buy alcohol -- the last time she'd been in high school had been, God, what -- fiveish years ago now? The last time she'd actually finished out a school year, though; that had been longer.

Not so for Captain Zippeite, whom she was waiting to meet. The boy with the dark hair and the sullen face, the one she couldn't bring herself to believe really belonged in this war. He'd been angry, sure -- but angry and driven were two different things, weren't they? Driven was a dangerous tendency, like with Sailor Ate, driven to power and reverence. Angry was just a symptom of a problem.

A problem she hoped she could help with.

Hvergelmir had considered a lot of things she could bring with her as peace offerings for this particular meeting. In the end, she'd discarded most of them. Maybe they'd be too suspicious-seeming, maybe he'd worry they were poisoned or part of some kind of trap. In the end, all she brought was a disposable camera to give to him for the trip, still wrapped in its plastic wrapper. Hopefully it would seem harmless enough.

She waited where they'd met the last time, hoping he'd show up. Hvergelmir had tried for the past few nights in a row, not sure when he'd come -- if he was still intending on showing up -- but so far she'd had no luck.

It was something to take her mind off of the radio silence she'd been getting when she'd tried to contact Tara after Kent's worried call. She'd called, and she'd looked around the city, too, in hopes of running across Tara someplace she might reasonably end up, but so far, she'd had no luck.

Her worry was starting to build up like a rock in the pit of her stomach -- but it was too big, too terrifying to deal with head-on. Instead, she tried only looking at her feelings on the issue out of the corners of her eyes, brushing them sidelong. She wasn't prepared to think about what she was going to do if Tara didn't turn up.

Instead, Hvergelmir would focus on easier things -- like if a Negaverse captain had finished his high school classes yet and wanted to go to a trip to space.

She sucked on a Tootsie Pop, biding her time, daring herself not to bite straight down to the tootsie roll center. It wasn't much to do, but it was something.

Hvergelmir breathed a sigh of relief. He was here. He'd actually shown up.

Sometimes -- though not always -- things in her life went the way she wanted them to, and not the way she dreaded they would. She lived for those moments. They gave her hope.

Hvergelmir pulled the Tootsie Pop out of her mouth and waved to Zippeite with it still in her hand. "Zippeite! Hi! You came!"

She straightened up from where she'd been leaning against a brick wall, took two steps towards him and held out her other hand, the one with the disposable camera in the silver wrapper. "Here, for souvenirs, right? I left it in the packaging so you'd know I didn't, like, do any monkey business to it or anything."

She was excited, but he looked wary -- as wary as he had the first time they'd met. Not that Hvergelmir was exactly one to point fingers or anything where moods were concerned, but Zippeite didn't seem like a terribly happy person.

Laney had seen frightened people before -- and as Hvergelmir she had, too, though that was a different kind of fright -- but no one as perpetually, permanently frightened as this. Fundamentally, Laney Sutton lived in a small, quiet world full of relatively fortunate people. The level of mistrust this one boy seemed to harbor was well beyond her realm of experience.

And he was fighting so visibly hard to function in spite of it, his every expression agonizingly taut with the effort of manufactured emotion. She was no expert at reading people, but she didn't need to be: this boy was easy to read.

"It's not dangerous, no," she assured him. "The island's uninhabited, and not weaponized or anything. I mean, please don't hurl yourself off the edge and into open space, which would probably kill you because it's space, but otherwise it's a pretty relaxing place. The journey itself can feel kind of -- gloopy, like -- a queasy stomach feeling, basically like the first big drop on a roller coaster -- but otherwise no, it's fine."

Hvergelmir held out an open hand, palm up. "Just hold onto my hand till I tell you it's okay."

"More or less," Hvergelmir said, closing her fingers around Zippeite's -- then she closed her eyes, and reached for an image in her mind of a place far across the galaxy -- tall columns and a deep well -- and in moments, the place where they were standing was empty.