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Too hard, too fast. That was Tallulah’s doctor’s professional opinion about her exhaustion, and so he sent her home to recover with strict instructions to not do anything too strenuous, not even to think too hard if it might make her work up a sweat. So, here she was, camped out on the couch in the Florence Court community room in shorts and an oversized hoodie, drinking hot chocolate and watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit on the TV. It was… relaxing.

It was also incredibly boring. She’d seen this episode three times that she could recall.

The front door opened, and Tallulah glanced over since she was in the habit of looking up every time it opened. “Anabel, hey,” she said, waving. Her friend had been in the hospital after a mishap on patrol, so she was glad to see her up and about again, even though Tallulah wasn’t. “If you’re looking for Finn, he’s out at the moment.” Finn had weird s**t going on this week, and while Tallulah was curious, she didn’t have the energy to get involved. After using deep ocean terror on something like ten people in a row, it was just a small wonder that her kidneys still functioned.

“You’re welcome to hang out with me, though,” she added with a pleasant smile, patting the couch. “I could use the company. Do you want some hot chocolate? It’s gluten free mix.” See? She could remember important details! She was a good friend!

Tallulah didn’t know the full details of the night Mistral had been injured beyond ‘Megiddo punched her in the stomach,’ and any thought she’d had to ask was quickly abandoned when the dog lumbered into the room. He was… a bit awkward looking, yes, the way many unusual mixed breeds could be. Certainly fluffy as all get out. But dignified! Handsome. “That’s great,” she said, watching the dog sniff around the community room. “He’s gorgeous. He looks really soft.”

She was not going to ask what exactly Anabel needed a medical response dog for, or if she could pet him, because that was rude, but Tallulah certainly thought about both. “Did you pick his name?” she asked, and pointed to her apartment door.

“Door’s unlocked. It’s all on the kitchen counter,” she said. “Brew at 190.”

Tallulah snorted. “It’s both of us,” she said. “Nick and I.” As if Anabel had forgotten that Tallulah lived with her fiance. They’d been engaged for something like a month and she was finally starting to feel truly comfortable with the term. “I read everything and then pass it off to him. It’s good. Keeps him from focusing too much on unponderable s**t about his past as a corrupt senshi doing unspeakable evil.”

She took the mug from Anabel, grateful for the refill, and extended her free hand down to the dog. He was, indeed, the softest. “Also, I needed him to understand references to The Hunger Games and I needed him to do it stat,” she joked. “Does he shed much? I don’t think Kaatje would mind him being up on the furniture. I’ve seen guardian cats sleeping on the chairs all the time.”

“Anyway,” she said, blowing on her cocoa. “Are you doing okay? That was kind of scary, you being in the hospital.” Said the girl who was having some kind of relapse of her mysterious wasting disease and had literally bribed Nick into going to work this morning by promising to check in with him, via text, every half hour, on the half hour. She had alarms programmed on her phone and everything.

“Get a taser,” suggested Tallulah, moving slightly to make room for sixty pounds of dog. Dr. Mendelssohn was pissed at her, too, which apparently wasn’t hard to accomplish when you were going above and beyond the call of duty to tire yourself out. She reached over to rub Mendel’s side, scratching just beneath his front legs. “Anyway, I don’t see much wrong with not being able to move if you’re okay with it. I told Nick I’d stay here until he gets home. He’s kind of convinced that if I go anywhere I’ll pass out and fall down the stairs and die.”

Which would have been obnoxious, but she’d spent so long being determinedly independent that it was nice to be taken care of for once in her life.

“He’s lucky he’s cute,” she joked. “Anyway, this episode’s almost over - we can watch something else if you want. There’s Netflix on this thing.” It was kind of a stupidly fancy TV, and it intimidated Tallulah sometimes.

“It’s a special case,” said Tallulah confidently. She tried to consider things from Nick’s point of view. It had to be hard to adjust to purified life. He’d lost his entire civilian identity and his inner social circle was limited to a select number of carefully vetted individuals, with her at the exact center. That kind of allowance could only get you so far, but it wasn’t like he was actively seeking to control her life.

“You know we met because I almost passed out at the gym, right?” she asked, rubbing her hands over Mendel’s forehead. “So, like, he’s never known me healthy. And, I mean, I don’t think I helped his confidence any by telling him that I was in a medically induced coma and multiple organ failure. So, like, my little stunt at boot camp sent me into this weird little relapse and hey, that’s scary. I almost died multiple times last time I was sick and I’m his anchor now.”

Which, she realized, was sort of horrifically co-dependent, but she didn’t mind. “We’re way less horrifically clingy the rest of the time,” Tallulah reassured Anabel. “He’s just scared for me, and rightfully so. Anyway.” She pointed to the screen. “Try that one. It looks interesting.”

Tallulah rolled her eyes at Anabel, but lovingly. “Thanks,” she said. “If anyone ever offers to drag you through a mirror in real life, though, you should probably say no.” (For the record, she had never played Dragon Age.) Tallulah continued, “but anyway, I’m sure that rehabbing my formerly-corrupt fiance sounds totally bonkers, but it’s worth it.” She was sure that, in time, he’d feel more secure that she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Yes to the documentary,” she said, shifting her legs. “About the senshi phones, um.” She frowned. Once upon a time, Tallulah had devoted her life to poking into all the mysteries of the war. “I haven’t looked into them recently. I mean, I was there when Astraea gave them to us in the first place and I know what they can do more or less, but I don’t actually know how they work work.” She doubted any senshi did.

“You could try asking Ash?” she suggested. “Little gray guardian cat, wears a visor like Babylon’s? She hangs around the building sometimes.”

Tallulah reached over and patted Anabel gently on the back. “It’s kind of the Dark Mirror Court’s gimmick,” she said, sympathizing about the lack of a primer. At least senshi had cats present when they awoke, to varying degrees of usefulness. Knights didn’t have anyone. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. These things are put in our way to challenge us, but we always get through them.”

Not that she’d be any help at deciphering ancient languages. Tallulah had less than no connection to Mercury, and she still hadn’t been able to figure out any text on her own moon! Needless to say, linguistics were so not her thing. “The cauldron is the Galaxy Cauldron,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s like, where everyone’s starseeds go to get reborn. But it’s also, you know, it’s powerful. Everyone’s connected to it. If you were going to set up a galactic cell phone network, it’d make sense to relay it through the cauldron.”

She flicked her senshi phone into her hand and showed it to Anabel. “This is what senshi have got for communication. It looks like a Blackberry, right? And before that, we had flip phones. I don’t know if the cats are co-opting human technology, or just making theirs look like something less suspicious, but I’ve got no idea if we had anything like this in the Silver Millennium.” Honestly, she knew next to nothing about the Silver Millennium beyond educated guesses and her own moon. “Anyway, the cats are still actively maintaining and updating the network. Every so often we’ll get a new feature or a signal bump or whatever. So even if you don’t think they’ll be able to read the writing, they might still be worth talking to. They could have some ideas.”

Tallulah looked at the phone, and then at Anabel, and she decided that if Kaatje had been able to get a new phone after blowing hers up, then there was definitely nothing wrong with sacrificing hers in the name of science. Ash would be by later with any luck, and it wasn’t like she was going to be doing much senshi-ing this week. “Yeah, sure,” she said, handing it over. “It’s all yours. I’ll get a new one.” She’d had this one for, like, ages, anyway. It was kind of (really) beat up.

She glanced at the blueprints, but, unfortunately, was not an engineer or anything approaching one. “Sorry,” she said, “You’re asking the wrong girl about these.” Again, it seemed like something Ash might be able to handle, but she worried she was beginning to sound like a broken record. “You get memories when you go to your wonder, right?” she asked. “Flashes of your past self? Maybe if you go to the right places, things will start to make more sense.”