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So that was it. He was dying. Finn lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling, pondering the shadows cast by the floor lamp. "s**t, I'm sorry," he said. "I tried. I swear I tried as hard as I could."

You took me from the city and you brought me to earth, said Menachem, comfortingly. Finn sighed. You reunited me with old friends and if we die here we will both go to the cauldron. You have given your life in service to our city and you will be forever lauded.

Which would do him a fat lot of good if he was dead, thought Finn. He fumbled around on the end table and finally came upon his phone.

Might be my last night on earth, he texted Zia. Need your help. Florence Court Apartments, apt. 2A.

Finn leaned back and set the phone on his chest. So he was going to face death lying down. "********," he pronounced carefully. "********, ********, ******** class="quote">

Finn was fortunately still alive by the time that Zia got to his apartment. Granted, he may have slightly exaggerated in the note he sent to her... but it had seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. Anyway, she made it over to his side of town in like three seconds flat. (No. It was more than that. But whatever. Hyperbole was a basic human right.)

Kaatje kept talking about putting a lock on the front door of the building and making people buzz in, but Finn was glad she hadn't gotten around to it yet, because it meant that when Zia arrived, he knew it, because he could hear her banging on his apartment door.

"It's unlocked!" Finn yelled, pushing himself upright. The room spun, or maybe that was just his head. Probably just his head. He put a hand to his forehead, trying to steady things. This did not seem to help anything, so he just kind of miserably stared at the door and waited for her to open it, because he was not going to have this conversation with screams.

But, like, his eyes and his fingers were totally glowing and it was totally worrying. It was worrying Finn.

Was he radioactive? Finn wouldn't be surprised at this point if he was. "I don't know," he said, "Do you have a Geiger counter in your purse?" He probably should have been way less melodramatic over text, because Zia had taken it as a sign to panic and freak out.

Granted he'd be panicking and freaking out too, if he weren't in so much pain.

Finn grabbed onto the arm of the couch and forced himself to stand. He could feel his legs shaking, and cursed inwardly that this was not a very convincing argument in favor of him not dying. "Hey," he said. "Thanks for coming over."

And... so much for standing. Finn flopped back onto the couch. "I should have asked you this a lot sooner," he said. "But back in Zirconia's home universe, was the Space Cauldron a thing? Do you know anything about it or how I could get there? Because I kind of really need to get there."

Finn nodded - that was about as much as he'd gathered from Virgo talking about this universe's version of the cauldron. She'd been there, but only because she'd died, and she didn't know how to get back without dying again. No one did. "Okay," he sighed. "That was - I had a feeling you'd say that."

I know of Sailor Cosmos, said Menachem. I have tried to appeal to her many times to no avail.

Finn had heard of her, too - also from Virgo, who'd suggested he need to find some handmaiden of Cosmos. "I've met some of her pages, yeah," he said. "She's like, sort of a goddess, right?" The senshi of the entire universe had to wield unimaginable power. He didn't know anyone who'd ever met her in the flesh. Someone so powerful couldn't possibly have time to spare for him. And he didn't think he could bother Hvergelmir with this - she didn't owe him anything, and it was an awful lot to put on a page's shoulders.

It was at that moment that a flurry of post-it notes appeared in the air before him and tumbled into his lap, one after the other. Finn lifted the last one, recognizing the symbol stamped upon it immediately: Hvergelmir, inquiring after his health.

Well, if she wanted to be invited in, then he didn't have that excuse anymore. "I need to send some messages," he said, trying to figure out what order the notes went in by laying them out on the coffee table. God, his head hurt. "Um. There should be a notepad and a marker on the kitchen counter. Can you get it for me?"

"Hvergelmir Page of Cosmos," said Finn, holding one of the post-its up so that Zia could see the insignia stamped on it: a star rising from a well. "Actually," he said, worrying his lip with his teeth. "She might be the only person left who stands any chance of helping me."

Hvergelmir was a handmaiden of Cosmos, an experienced one but a handmaiden all the same. He'd been putting off tasking her with this since before his ordeal had started, deciding that this was not her burden to bear and that he was not important enough to impose in such a way. But tonight, with Nick's careful pronouncement that the last person he'd seen with Finn's symptoms had died in eight hours fresh in his ears, he was ready to take a chance.



He scrawled quickly on the paper, in messier handwriting than was normal for him, and stamped the paper firmly with his ring.

"Okay, so now I wait for an answer," he said, flopping back onto the couch. "Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man. No. Um. Hopefully not."

"Um," said Finn, smiling haplessly at her. He was about to get up off the couch and go wander the streets of Destiny City in his powered identity, despite doctor's orders. If that wasn't stupid as ******** then he didn't know what was. "No, not really?" he said, shrugging haplessly at her. For the most part, he was beyond helping, and that didn't exactly suit him well but there wasn't any helping it, either.

"If you wanted to help sneak me downstairs so I can henshin," he said, leaning heavily on the arm of the couch as he hauled himself up off it, "I would be forever in your debt."