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The last time she'd been to the Surrounding had only been for a moment. She'd grabbed a small rock and a skirtfull of space dust for Zippeite, then blurred back to Earth again. She'd spared little thought for the sandstone building beyond the gate -- it wasn't hers to visit while it was untenanted.

The time before that had been her first. She'd stood there with Aquarius, on the long rainbow bridge, and seen the endless lights of the stars from space for the first time in her young life. The universe had seemed huge, then, and Aquarius Outpost, a little building in space, barely important by comparison. It was lovely and old and partially in ruin; just a place where Sailor Aquarius kept her books.

Now Hvergelmir stood before the gate not with a lump of rock in her hands, nor the warm, reassuring hand of her best friend -- only the trembling beat of her heart held invisibly between them. Only hope and fear warring for precedence. Aquarius Outpost had just been a building, then, the beautiful old inheritance of a treasured friend. Now, it was as though the universe had condensed itself down to this one place, all the rest of existence forgotten.

The only thing that mattered right now was what was in that building.

A single, quiet aura blipped on her internal radar as she approached, her skirts trailing a wide line in the sand. She paused to focus on it, her breath caught in her throat -- then let out a muffled sob when it registered with that squiggly in-between-levels senshi aura that Hvergelmir had come to recognize as belonging to the Zodiac guard. She pressed a hand over her mouth.

The rest of the trip to the Outpost proceeded at a dead run, and was over in moments. She raised her fist to the closed door where they'd entered before and began to pound furiously on it. Coherent thought had abandoned her. "Tara!" she yelled desperately, like her heart was being ripped open, having no care for her friend's secret identity. "Tara!!!"

If Aquarius wasn't real, Hvergelmir didn't want to know.

A long time ago, Tara had once kept a vigil by Laney's bedside for over a year, waiting for her to wake from a coma after everyone else had given her up for lost. When Laney had finally woken up, after all that time, they'd hugged like this. Laney's muscles had atrophied from disuse, and her arms had been terribly weak, but with brittle strength, she'd held on to her best friend like she was everything in the world (which she was).

The hug they'd shared a year ago, out on the rainbow bridge, didn't compare.

That hug had meant we're alive, and they'd only been in danger for a few minutes.

This hug, though, and the one in the hospital, both meant you're alive -- and it was entirely different. You're alive, and shame on me, because I'd almost given up hope.

She was stronger now, and Hvergelmir dug her fingers into the fabric of Aquarius's fallen-back hood with a frightened possessiveness she hadn't known she was capable of, like she'd never let her best friend out of her sight again. The horrors of Mistral's Labyrinth were still agonizingly fresh in her mind, and when she wasn't careful to keep her feelings pushed back to the corners of her mind, they swamped in to drown her. Degrasse: tiny, exuberant, dead. Cove: radiant, comforting, dead.

After that, she'd needed to find Tara -- to see her -- more than anything. Tara, the one person in her life whom, above all else, she couldn't bear to lose.

Hvergelmir was crying miserably on her shoulder. She'd thought about what she was going to say if she found Tara still alive -- but all that came out, in the end, was a broken, miserable plea:

"Why? Why?"

Hvergelmir pulled back, alarmed at Aquarius's words -- they were confusing and frightening, conjuring images of all the horrible things in the world converging on her Tara to do her harm. With the proprietariness of a best friend who considered her place in her friend's life unquestioned, she held Aquarius's face between her hands -- her precious, precious face, the one face that had always looked at Laney and made her feel like she had some kind of intrinsic value.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Are you in some kind of danger if you leave? Your brother and I were terrified; he's been out combing the city -- " She could feel a dewy wetness gathering at the bottoms of her eyes, all the worry and stress and pain of the last month starting to crest over her all at once, all embodied in the one thing she feared losing most. The person she'd been afraid to not find, and thus also afraid to find. Everything gathered in this one place, pooling at the deepest point in her heart, where even her grief for the deaths at Mistral hadn't been able to match.

"Please. Tell me what's wrong. Let me help you."

Hvergelmir was alarmed and confused by her friend's strange reactions. Despite her protestations that she was personally in no danger, Aquarius was acting like she felt anything but safe. She was hardly making sense: Hvergelmir had no idea what 'it's just everyone' was supposed to mean -- and if Aquarius hadn't been hugging her with such genuine enthusiasm a few moments before, she would've assumed her vague wording was an implication that Tara was somehow angry with her.

It was painful to see Aquarius this way, honestly -- and watching it made a big, anxious lump form in her throat. Hvergelmir watched as Aquarius turned, squinting in sudden bafflement: who is she talking to?

She was on the verge of asking just that, spinning the question around in her mind to find a tactful way of going about it, when Aquarius turned back and caught her attention again.

The questions made her nervous. She didn't know what Tara could be driving at, or what it might have to do with hiding herself away on her Outpost, not telling anyone anything. What was she supposed to answer?

How can I reach you? she wondered.

Had Laney been scared, or angry, or sad, since awakening as a knight? Had she seen things she wished she hadn't?

Cove's severed hand appeared in her mind, unbidden. Degrasse's sliced-apart face. The lieutenant dying in the street, his face beaten into mush. The dead man in the alleyway, covered in blood and trash.

Of course she had.

"Yes," she affirmed quietly. "We -- we all have."

The bottom dropped out of Hvergelmir's stomach. Could Tara . . . could she really hate herself that much? Could someone as amazing, as stupendous as Tara really think she was the cause of even a single one of the world's ills?

"Don't say that," Hvergelmir insisted, trying to chase her friend so she could grab her by the upper arms and insist she change her mind. "Please don't say that. No one kills other people just by existing. Tara, you're not some kind of a . . . a Jonah. You're my best friend, and I love you. This is -- you don't have to do this. Please come home."

The one thing Laney hadn't wanted to think about, in her entire life as a super-powered person thrust into a reincarnation war, was the possibility that she and Tara would someday start to grow away from each other.

It seemed impossible. Where Tara claimed that the worst thing that could happen would be to see Laney die, Laney, selfishly, thought that the worst thing would be to have to go on through life without Tara believing in her. Without Tara there. She'd done her best to avoid that possibility, too: skirting visits to Tara any time she was nursing the marks of some injury she didn't want her friend to see, carefully trying to keep her from finding out about the oath Hvergelmir had taken, not mentioning anything she was getting herself mixed up in.

She'd tried so hard to maintain their friendship just like it was before, even in the face of everything that was happening. Why -- why wasn't it working? Why did Tara think the world would be better off if the two of them were separated?

When had Laney let her best friend become so -- afraid? How had she failed her so badly?

She could feel the tears on her face. Really, she was surprised she had so many left -- the last few days had been full of more tears than she cared to try and quantify. This, though. This wasn't fair. Not now, not when she needed Tara so much.

I was in a coma for a year, she thought. You know that. You were there with me the whole way. I'd give anything for that time back -- are you really going to just . . . give up your life like this? Don't you want to spend time with me anymore?

"I don't understand what you plan to do," she said, shaking her head.

Hvergelmir looked around, taking in the interior of the outpost once more. She'd seen it before with fresh eyes, and been impressed; but even then, Tara hadn't seemed to notice its beauty at all. Maybe she should've taken that as a sign. Maybe, maybe, maybe. So much was maybe.

To Hvergelmir, the place was still beautiful. It still held all the quiet promise of a place that had been built with its owner in mind, a place Aquarius should've had a chance to love.

"I don't think this place was meant to be a prison," she ventured hesitantly. "What stalker ghost?"

Senshi didn't have ancestors -- everyone said so. Only knights. Maybe a knight had their wonder here somewhere, and its ghost was causing her problems? Or maybe -- (maybe, maybe, maybe, Laney, goddamnit) -- maybe it was something worse -- a possibility that hurt her heart to think about.

Maybe there was no ghost.

Hvergelmir looked around, going pale with alarm. She saw no signs of ghosts, nor heard any of the phantom conversation Aquarius was talking about -- but Tara obviously did. And whatever was going on, it was clearly terrifying her. Her voice had turned painfully, forcedly chipper, and was getting more strained by the second.

Hvergelmir wasn't helping. She was making things worse -- pushing too hard, and in the wrong way.

If not you, then who else? the painful voice of anxiety challenged in her head, giving her another possible failure to worry about. Pushing too hard has literally never, ever been your problem. Look how you handle them all, all the Negaversers you talk to, all the ones you claim you're trying to help. You're so careful of your kid gloves you've never managed to influence anyone. You told Schreibersite you were happy for him. Will you tell Tara you're happy for her too? Isn't that what's gotten her here -- your colossal unwillingness to ever challenge her at all?

She sighed. What else could she do? Aquarius was so frightened. It was agonizing to watch, to watch and not soothe.

To instead turn away, going back to the doorway from whence she'd come. It still stood open. She stopped in the entrance, turning back to look not at Tara (because how could she? How could she and still walk away, still keep her resolve?), but at the great, echoing outpost around her -- the old books, the bars of her cage.

"It was Wednesdays, right?" Her heart hammered in her chest. Hvergelmir thumbed at the Surrounding token looped to one of her bracelets. "When you came?"

She didn't look for an answer.

"I'll come for you -- every Wednesday until you come back to us. When you're ready to come home, meet me at the gate. I'll be there."

She raised a hand to trace the edge of one of the great doors with her fingers. "I still believe in you. I'll always believe in you. I'll always wait for you."

You waited for me.

Yielding the field of battle -- for now -- Hvergelmir stepped away, leaving Aquarius Outpost behind.