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The city never looked as peaceful as it did in the small hours of the morning, at that time when sunrise was still a ways off, but when most people had retired. Traffic was lighter now, the noise far less than after the sun rose, and even foot traffic was next to non-existent, reduced to those coming home from over night work or the bar.

That did not mean, however, that there was any peace to be found in the view, at least not in Ida's mind. Not when the ghost of nightmares still haunted the edges of her thoughts and troubled her heart... not when an ache in her side that even prescriptions couldn't completely dull nagged at her. The shadows hid more evil than the innocents in their homes suspected. She wasn't sure she would ever be able to see this city as 'peaceful' or 'safe' ever again... and she was starting to suspect she'd never sleep a complete night through ever again either.

She had dreamed again tonight... the same dream she'd been having over and over again and just like always, she woke from it with a scream on her lips. Hopefully this time it had been short, or somehow lacking in volume... too often, she had woken her brother with it, sharing a wall with his room. If he had heard her this time, he hadn't come out to check on her... which was in itself something of a blessing. He and her father had made it extremely difficult to get out in the morning after she'd called them from the hospital... telling them she had gone out for a walk because she couldn't sleep meant that now she was forbidden from doing so, and Matthew in particular had taken that to heart. He never seemed to take his eyes off of her and how was a girl supposed to steal away to patrol like that?

Standing on the corner of a roof, brown eyes staring at nothing, the faint tickle of an aura approaching pulled the eternal from her broody thoughts with a slow blink and she turned her head a little as though listening to it. That felt like another eternal... One of her team, maybe? Or possibly Maia, or Ganymede? She found herself wondering what had brought them out... why would anyone be out this early who wasn't driven by inner demons?

Turning, Ida jumped from her perch to the next building and set off at a loose, ground-eating trot to meet her fellow eternal. Maybe it was Athene, cup of coffee in hand... his quiet presence would be a comfort now.

Faust grunted often, now. With every sudden jerk of Thraen's movements, his attention snapped back to their travel, senses alert, before a certain dullness settled in again afterward. Often he tensed in his grip, likely grazing the skin beneath the bodice, but Thraen never complained. This bade well; with little sleep, Faust lacked all tolerance for whining. "Damn, Thraen, git'cho head in the game!" The mauvian grunted out in yet another clawed grip.

Faust blinked, staring into the distance. "She's on the ground, there. Decked out in purple, and weird flower things. Kinda like you, but... Purple. Dark skin, dark hair. Dunno her." Maybe half that information was useful, but Faust felt too tired to be on top of his game tonight. Thraen closed in regardless, and he covered the remaining distance by bounding off his shoulder to approach at his own trot.

He greeted the eternal with a grunt, nodding his head upward once to acknowledge her. Afterward he sat in a great puff of fur on the street. Momentarily he closed his eyes, loosing a great yawn, before licking his chops. "I'm Faust. This is Thraen. Who're you? And you know anythin' 'bout these damn awful dreams goin' around?"

Faust handling greetings was its own private pleasure- Thraen should probably have been more concerned about first impressions, but it was hard to stack up against the comic value of the gruff little beast. He followed Faust's lead to the feet of the other Eternal, coming up with slow steps to stand behind the Mauvian as the pleasantries were exchanged. They know each other?

No, not they even....We all...its the girl in the purple uniform. 'Ida', then? But before there was much opportunity for converse it was plain something about the situation was tearing her down. Thraen watched impassively as this 'Ida' just started falling apart- colour gone, voice in trembles, visage in shambles. He quirked his head a little in curiosity, waiting. It was mostly likely to come out if given the benefit of patience.

There. Lower- ah.....yes.... Hers was one of the voiced screams. He coudl hear it now, though wouldn't have placed it otherwise with the lack of sleep. "You were one of his lovers. "

It was a guess, but he stated it as a fact, rote and cold. Lovers and family only break at bloodshed, so much glass before the storm. "Bischofite. Alois Scholz."

"You cannot step twice into the same rivers. Either, both, is dead as you knew them. As he knew himself. But the pieces walk, live, and seek a path yet. I have met him since." He turned his attention down to their resident Mauvian taskmaster, "You've met her before, Faust? "

You aren't the sort to have willingly gone out with Alois on some bootycall. So maybe on one of your own patrols? Was she sleeping with a General knowingly, on the field...as a senshi? Or...did they know each other as civilians? Did He bring her to the apartment?

The answer was no more or less than she expected. He was alive, and most likely the twisted monstrosity she had seen was real... which came with a slue of problems, and at the same time, not so many. So much conflict, all contained inside her head. What if he tried to see her again? What if he showed up one day on her doorstep as though nothing had changed? Her father, her brother, knew him as her friend and would let him in the house without a second thought... and there was no way she could warn them about the danger. He could even teleport right into her room, perhaps while she was sleeping, and rip out her starseed while she slept and dreamed of it...

Ida flushed a rich rose as he named her a lover, paling just as quickly to an ashen color. Pressing the heels of her hands to her eye sockets, the young woman took a deep, steadying breath, letting out before she took another. She had to get herself under control... breaking down like this, it was not the best way to meet this man for the first time.

"I wasn't... Lover is such a benign term for it. Lover implies there was something between us there clearly wasn't..." She said, her voice brittle as she lowered her hands so she could wrap them around her ribs. Her side ached... her everything ached. "I... slept with him, but everything about it was a lie, from the very start. I doubt I was anything more than a toy to be used, but its my own fault... I let him do it."

Her voice held the strain of talking about this, but she stubbornly kept it from shaking, dropping a hand to summon her pen into her palm and display it for Faust to see. Faust had indicated that Quenton was a senshi... this senshi with him could only be the one who's space she'd invaded, who's boyfriend she'd slept with for no better reason than because she had wanted to, because it had been exciting and had felt good. She would never be able to take back the mistakes she had made, but she had no doubt she would pay for them the rest of her life.

"I didn't know he was Bischofite, pretending to be a person..." She murmured as she studied Faust's honest cat face as he chewed grass like any cat would do. "I didn't know the strange young man I met was the same monster who had tried to kill me multiple times."

The scrape of stone shoes as the man moved closer made Ida flinch, tension drawing in her shoulders as she dismissed her pen. His words bit at her and she felt the blood run from the wounds he reopened with them, but she just wasn't ready to admit to the things he seemed to see with unnerving clarity. He cut through the fog like a knife, straight to the heart of it, but there was no relief in it for her. He sliced her as much as anything else...

She opened her mouth to throw the painful words back at him, claim he didn't know her, didn't know the pain she was in or what she had gone through, but the words tasted bitter and trite in her mouth, choking her in the face of the fact that this was the man Alois had been living with. He was also an eternal senshi, no doubt had as much invested in this war as she did. If there was anyone who should be hurting more, be more wounded, than she was, it was him. What was her pain to that? Her mouth closed again and her shoulders slumped as she rubbed impatiently at her face, banishing tears before they could do more than make her eyes bright. She refused to cry in front of him.

At least he gave her an out as he changed the subject and Ida grasped that eagerly, letting the painful subject drop like lead. Maybe if she had been in a better place, discussing things with this person would have held a lot of healing, but not now.

"Athene?" Her friend had messaged her something and the name struck a note. Thraen... Thraen was setting up a program for senshi. "Yes, Athene and I are part of a team with Tsui and Chaonis. He, um... he sent me a message that said you were forming up something called a Black Watch. I haven't... talked to any of them in a while, more than a few messages back and forth. I just got out of the hospital a couple of days ago, and before that... I didn't really want company."

It was unnerving to consider how many ways their two lives had touched... how many times they'd been in the same place, or with the same people, but this was the first time they'd really spoken face to face without battle rolling around them.

"Parts of it are things our team has been doing on a far smaller scale... finding new senshi, showing them what to do. Your plans are a lot larger and will do more than a little four person team could manage alone. I don't... know for sure how it will be received by the faction as a whole, but its a good idea. It has a lot of merit and its something I would participate in." If he even wanted her to... there was no telling what he thought of her behind those blank features, if he'd even want her help.

Heaving a great huff, Faust steeled himself and rose from his haunches, determinedly set on his task. Onward he marched toward Ida's legs, gaze determined, counting the steps until he made contact. Then he brushed against the senshi's leg as all cats do when trading comfort for marking of ownership, taking care to rub his face against the swell of her calf as well. Naturally his tail rose as her weight approached his tail root, though this offered little to offset his expression.

With the necessary administration of comfort concluded, he marched back to his position between Thraen and Ida.

Sitting back down, he sneezed before he ventured to add a few words. "You're lettin' him get in the way of your duties as a senshi. Ain't this exactly what he wants as a Negaverse officer? You're wastin' time dwellin' on his dumb a** when you could be channelin' that hurt into beatin' down the Chaos menace." Yeah, you got tricked, but you ain't dead. That's proof enough that you can recover from this s**t.

Obviously Thraen proved better at this than he did, and Faust was more than willing to hand over the reins of the conversation to the blonde in favor of avoiding the awkward talk while he diligently licked his paw. All the while he listened, mouth yet too full of fur to offer proper responses where intrigue or passion struck him. However, he took pause to offer his own addition to Thraen's comments on the human condition. "Ever wondered why some people, even dormant senshi and knights, become Negaverse officers? It's cuz people have their own propensity for evil, long before the Chaos entered their bodies. That's not sayin' they're evil through and through, but... The Chaos takes that touch of evil and amplifies the s**t outta it."

And at last, they moved to a more productive topic. "It ain't just sleep deprivation beatin' her down, Thraen. Ida, you shouldn't even be out in uniform. You're in no condition to deal with this s**t."

The cat very serious administration of comfort was.....
Cute. No,
CUTE. All the more that it was Faust. The referencing of thoughts on their apparently shared lover as 'dwellin' on his dumb a**' was enough of black humor to ghost a smile across Thraen's scarred lips.
The intimations that more might be apparent with her condition, however wiped it away. A cat's sense of smell is more minute than a humans. What does he refer to? Is there a wound? Antiseptic or the glue of bandages? Infection?

Ida's indignance only confirmed it, all the more than her words- 'even injured'. The magical cleanliness and repair of their uniforms when they henshined up helped to hide much. "You're wrong."

"Knowing risk, and weighing it, you should be able to come up with the mathematical probabilities of how much having a partner would mean. Any partner. There is almost never time enough, once someone picks up your signature, to properly call for help." If Bischofite was nothing, he was often proof of that. And the pair of Bismuthite and Wolframite. "There is no logical reason, if there are willing parties, not to take help that is willing. When wounded or when hale. If you had someone with you, a civilian, a regular scout, a page, a Mauvian, even so little could mean that instead of paying with life as an 'acceptable cost', everyone would make it out only wounded or perfectly safe. It could mean the difference of help being able to be called while the threat is held at bay. The life of an eternal, in a war of attrition, is too much to lose for a Youma fight gone wrong or a clever Captain. "

Explanations of sleeplessness and pacing had their merit- there was secrecy necessary to aspects of their lives. But with her other answers it also rang of some measure more escapism. "Were the Watch already established, would that it were, arrangements would be easy met for some housing- a carousel of 'friends' houses that you could visit over with if you are under 18, or an apartment of some sort. As it is, I have little to offer- my home is more than compromised due to Alois. There's been at least one corrupted eternal in it since, stealing for unknown reason..."

"I made a safe house more than a year ago now on the University grounds. You are welcome to make use of it if you need, if you can make good enough excuse. There's full camping gear in it for overnights, snacks and water, medical supply. Mauvian Ash has stayed there while her leg was injured. I've done so when I couldn't make it to a hospital. Sailor Acrucis and Phact know of it as well, though I don't know how often they check in there. The only asking is that you are exceptionally careful about being in uniform around it so as not to give its location away. " He pulled out a small, travel moleskine from keeping in his cincher, and a pen from a tuck in the foliage of a bracer. He sketched and labeled a map of streets and buildings for her as he explained it, then tore the tiny page out along the perforation to offer out to her. "It isn't much, but you are welcome. And you are welcome at the apartment again, if you need to talk or just get out. If you'd like, you can scan me, and I can also give you my regular cell. Confirmation that others are having the same dream ending, that it isn't coincidence but widespread, is important."

While Ida knew that her thinking as far as her injury in relation to patrolling was concerned, it was still something of an annoyance to be flat out told she was wrong. She knew all that Thraen was telling her was logical and sound, but that didn't mean she wanted to listen to it.

"You don't have much high ground to stand on, Thraen. If I remember correctly, after I took Penthesilea from you, you jumped right back into battle with a rather lot of bleeding and most probably a concussion to boot. You have to admit that while I am injured I could be a liability to anyone I'm partnering with. They would be more effective on their own if they didn't have to worry about or cover for me. I could be used as a distraction in the right circumstances, arguing it would be better off for my team without me there." Why was he making this so difficult for her? And then this unexpected offering of places she could go to escape the house, even an invitation to return to the apartment where she honestly felt she had no right to be... confusion put the eternal off balance and she stared at the other with more hurt than she would have liked to show.

"Why are you offering me this? Both of you? You hardly know me and what you do know isn't favorable... Thraen, aren't you at least a little angry with me? I slept with your boyfriend, I invaded your home without so much as a token 'by your leave', and you act like... I don't even know!" This didn't make any sense to her. This wasn't how things were supposed to be, but its not like anything else about any of this was anything like how it was supposed to be. The easiest explanation was that he was lying to her, but what sense did that make? What could he possibly gain from offering to help her?

Faust was not exactly helping with his rough threats to physically remove her from her fuku and/or take her to the safe house they'd mentioned. His words felt like a file scraped across her skin and she wrapped her arms around herself as she flicked her eyes from one male to the other. It wasn't fair for them to gang up on her like this... it was so hard to keep up the strength she had won from this long year of fighting and she felt it crumbling around her, remind her that she was nothing more than a young girl, struggling to stand against odds she had never been made for. She wasn't a fighter, she was a florist... she should have spent the last year doing teenage things and minding the shop, not fighting monsters and the Negaverse on a near daily basis. She had seen people die and nearly died herself multiple times, and this was not how things were supposed to be...

"Why are you doing this?" She burst out, her voice brittle.