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Sometimes, if she moved too fast, the stab wound from Benitoite twinged. But luckily for her, she was neither moving too fast nor particularly interested in battling anyone; she was worried, and of late, sitting around in her powered form was how she dealt with feelings of fear and powerlessness. Tonight, she couldn’t say for sure what was bothering her. A mild drizzle slicked off the fabric of her coat as she watched and waited for something, for God alone knew what, chin pillowed on her fists and elbows propped on her knees. She might have sat there for the rest of the night, until the sun rose and blinded her, but for the strange aura she sensed.

By now, she knew the flavor of Babylon’s aura like the back of her hand. Clear and cold and pure, like meltwater, like ice. It should repulse her, she knew. It had, for a time. But she cherished that instinctive, revolted reaction now. It meant he was near. And she had thought about him so much lately, trying to sort out the confused feelings left to her from her other life… Tonight it was different, though, the meltwater amplified, a sensation like brainfreeze rippling down her spine. Too strong. Too pure. It reminded her of the little blonde at the warehouse, but ineffably different. More dangerous, poisonous even. This twist on his aura made her teeth ache. Avalon coughed, pressed a hand to the recent wound beneath her breast, and teleported towards the signature.

She found him quickly, of course she did, because sometimes she felt that Babylon was tattooed on her heart. He looked the same as he ever had in the light of his sickly blue lantern, and she watched him for a minute. Stumbling, he made his way down the street. Where was he going? Why?

Avalon would find out. She teleported to street level, in front of him, appearing out of nowhere and flicking her hood down even as she drew her sword from the hammerspace in which it was kept. “Babylon,” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

He was dying. Her Babylon was not allowed to die, she knew that as sure as she knew anything, he was supposed to live to be enlightened and at her side, always, like they were supposed to be. It had occurred to her to kill him, of course it had, a hundred hundred times as she stared at the ceiling over her hospital bed; he was a weakness and weakness she could not abide. The problem arose because she knew she would never be able to seriously hurt him. Never be able to do so much as maim him to make him worthless to his side, so he could be more easily brought to hers.

“Why,” she demanded, her tone sharp, plaintive. “Why are you dying? Who can stop it, if not me?” Because--if it was a magical ailment--all he would need to do is cut himself off from the source, right? Trade poison for the cleansing darkness Avalon knew as a General of the Negaverse. She could do that. She could bring him to Laurelite or Zinkenite or Apatite right now. “If it is magic, then the solution’s simple. Just let me help you. Let me take you.” Give in to the surging of the tide.

She stepped closer, the blade in her hand forgotten, to catch him off-handed. Last time she had been so close, she had been--it had been so long ago. She’d been a Captain, a shorter, weaker blade in her hand. Avalon cupped his jaw with her hand, slate-gray eyes wide and wondering for a moment before they focused again, narrow and dark. “I can make you strong, and proud, and beautiful. And who knows you better than I do, Babylon? I love you.”

There: the rotten, miserable core of her. She remembered the moment of realization, staring at the ceiling in her hospital room, that moment when it clicked: how much she loved him. How much she must have always loved him. Flickers of memory danced across the ceiling then, like a video. Sitting on a couch she didn’t remember with someone she didn’t recognize--Babylon’s civilian form?--laughing. Knocking on the wall between their rooms, smiling, feeling safe with that returned ratatat of sound. Attempting to cook dinner, getting distracted, setting the ends of the pasta on fire through neglect--

“I love you as no one else does.” She could set him free. She wanted to free him, to have him at her side. Not him as her right hand, nor her as his left, but equals. Together. As they always should have been. Because she knew now, what they had been before. She’d loved him, not the platonic love of friendship, but the kind of love that couples shared. The woman she had been in the past, Tate Konstantin, whoever she’d been, had loved Babylon with her whole heart. Would never have wanted to see harm come to him. And, whether she had all of Tate’s memories or not, she knew those feelings still rang true and were still her driving force today.

It explained so much. Why, despite her relative few memories of Babylon, she had always felt attached to him. Always needed him. He had wormed his way into her heart and stuck there, like a parasite, even before Avalon had been born. Something written in the code of her, something she couldn’t even remember, had dictated it. For once, she was glad to be entrapped this way, by a force she couldn’t remember or comprehend. Tate Konstantin was dead, but Avalon was still trapped by the feelings she’d borne… in all cases… especially this one. And she was glad, because Babylon was--ineffably good. She gloried, a little, in the idea of corrupting that innocence, that goodness, taking it and making it her own.

She wanted him. And if he was dying, if he couldn’t fight her off--she would take him. A little shiver coursed down her spine at the thought. She’d save him, and he’d be hers, bound by love and duty for the rest of his life. The sword vanished from her hand and she pressed the empty palm flat against his chest. Not inside him, no. Just there. Even through his coat and her glove, he was too warm, fever-hot. Like steel, ready to be forged. “If you’d just… forget… who I used to be,” she wheedled, running her thumb over his cheekbone, the unscarred side still smooth to her touch. “And see me as I am, for what I am. I love you. I want you to come home.” Where was home? Avalon was home, Avalon had always been his home, as long as she could remember.

Avalon had made all these arguments before. She would make them again, because they were what she had. “No more mocking, empty city. No more ancestor breathing down your neck, keeping secrets and telling you you’re deficient when you don’t know them. No more sadness or fear. No more roles you can’t fill, pointless duties that benefit no one. Why does it matter that an empty ruin on Mercury is lit? The war is here. I am here. And you could have me back, if you’d just give in. Can’t you see? The tide is turning, Babylon, and it will drown you. I’m offering you a life line. Your best hope is to join me, now.”

His hands glowed, and so inured to the Negaverse’s corruptions of the human form as she was, she found it transfixing, beautiful. Like the way sunlight through a stained glass window acquired colors. She wanted to touch him, see if the warmth of the sun bled out through his fingers with that frozen blue light, or if he would be colder there, as she was. He bowed his head into the palm of her hand and her breath caught in her throat. Would this be it? Would he, with his life on the line, take her offer? Agree to join her? She wanted it. It burned in her heart, a need deeper than words could ever dream to articulate.

No. Her hand tightened in his jacket, but she had anticipated that, she knew that. He loved her, but not enough. He loved her, but he wouldn’t corrupt for her, wouldn’t make that final sacrifice. Would she purify for him?... she didn’t know. She’d never thought about it. But it would be so much easier to make them both strong in the Negaverse, both of them Generals, someday maybe even General-Kings. Together. But no.

He was afraid. That had to be it. He feared the unknown, when there was nothing of Avalon to fear. “I split with tradition,” she said, and on some level the thought pleased her. It simply didn’t go far enough. “I spit on Avalon’s tradition.” And even that gave moisture to a place undeserving. “I hope it rots,” she said, and her gentle tones had turned malicious, hateful, her gray eyes wild in a sallow, pale face. “I hope the fruit dies on the vine, I hope it is plowed with salt, I hope it falls into the sea. That place ruined me. You know what it did. I told you what it did. And you choose that place over me?”

She could not respect a decision made from fear. She loved him, but she could not respect that. Her words hung in the air for a long moment. “You won’t accept it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t give it,” she said, finally. She would save him. His life was so much more important than his love for her, like sunlight is to the leaves of a sapling tree. “You may hate me all you like. But you’ll be alive.” She thrust her hand into his chest--

The concussive blast was not new to Avalon. She had experienced it before. Babylon’s state was more like that of the blonde senshi in the warehouse than she’d realized, if it rendered his starseed untouchable. She stayed on the pavement for a long moment, staring up at the cloudy sky with her hands pressed over the healing wound in her chest. There were no stars to see. It was an impressive sight, even if--

She lifted an arm to stop the faint misting of rain from getting into her eyes, and then sat up. Ballet lessons that she didn’t consciously remember flowed through the way she rose, shifting to her knees and rising, a little unsteady on her feet but otherwise unharmed. “You’re like her,” said Avalon. “I can’t touch your starseed.” She wanted to try again. And again, and again, and again. It, more than anything, horrified her. Disgusted her. Why would he do that, if he loved her?

Her sword came into her hand without her even reaching for it--perhaps responding to the slightest tensing of her fingers, perhaps not, but she gripped it delicately, like someone else might hold the stem of a flower. She wanted him, and if this was permanent, she would never have him. That was untenable. That was unsustainable. She would rather die a thousand times than live the rest of this life without Babylon at her side. Avalon closed the distance between them, right hand curling around his face again, tangled in his hair. She jerked his visor off his face and looked at him--his eyes were so blue, glowing so brightly that tears sprang to the corners of her eyes.

He was radiant, and it was not enough that he was alive if he could never. Be. Hers.

Her sword was light in her hand and it was easy to change the angle at which she held it; it pressed ever-so-gently against his Adam’s apple and she still didn’t speak. What was there to say? Was this permanent, would she ever have a chance to get him back? Did it matter? She made her decision in a heartbeat. The sword vanished, she dropped his visor, and she bent down to kiss him, caught his lip between her teeth and bit. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill him, couldn’t silence that part of her that insisted that she needed him. For all the hardening Chaos had given her, for all the blood she craved, his would not suit. It would not satisfy. So she kissed him, her hands tangled in his hair.

It was only a moment--only a moment, and then she drew away. His blood tasted hot and thick in her mouth, and she longed for more, but she stayed where she was, practically vibrating with a need for violence that she could barely control, let alone speak of. “When this is over,” she said, shaking still. She swallowed once, twice, and cleared her throat enough to speak. “When this is over, Babylon, I will find you, and I will have you. If you die, I will make it my mission to find your wonder and rip it apart, stone by stone, until there is nothing left, and I have given it to Chaos entirely.”

He knew she would do it. “You are mine,” she said. “I will have you. One way or another.”

“I wouldn’t believe any promise you made me,” she said. “You’ve broken too many of them.” She frowned at him, the wanting caught in her chest where she could never claw it out. Babylon. Her Babylon. He had to come through this. He would come through it and he would be corruptible again, she’d know the glimmering of his starseed in her hand again; she’d hand it to a General-Queen and she would feel that endless dark power course through him. And he would awaken, hers, forever.

She stepped back. “Write me if you live,” she said, “or I’ll kill your little Mercury pages, too.”