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It had taken a bit of monkeying around with her sleep schedule, but Hvergelmir had finally gotten it to the point where she could wrap her way around most of the evening hours without starting to conk out around three and threatening to faceplant into a lit citronella candle. It wasn't so bad, either, in the end, condensing her odd little schedule to include one less sleep period than it had had, before. There were so many nightmares these days, and they seemed to come no matter how briefly she slept. There was so much blood, and being awake was so much easier.

What she hadn't quite worked out was how to properly stave off so much interminable boredom during the long hours and nights when nobody showed up. By a few hours before dawn or so, rather than sitting up practicing her spinning or demurely thumbing her way through Walden, she was sprawled out sideways on her bench, one knee kicked up and the other leg dangling, holding in the air over her head a fortune-teller she'd folded out of a spare sheet of paper torn from her steno pad and labelled with different planetary symbols.

"Knights most likely to go streaking at a keg party," she mumbled to herself, then started flipping through to see what the fortune-teller had to say for an answer.

She was startled out of learning which of the ancient and respected orders of knighthood was, in fact, most likely to go streaking at a keg party by the sudden appearance of a Negaverse aura at the edge of her awareness. Hvergelmir half sat up, dropping the little origami fortune-teller on the bench at her side as she twisted to watch for the approach of a captain coming through the darkness.

(She had a squire's aura, now, which meant her own energy projected farther afield now -- an advantage for being spotted, since she wanted that -- but it also meant she'd lost the benefit she'd once had of being a page, of her aura reading low threat level to others. It was possible fewer lieutenants would risk approaching her now -- and possible she'd be party to more attacks. Well, she'd decided she'd have to adjust. There was really no other option, anyway.)

If she hadn't known Titan's weighted footfalls, though -- or his voice, marked out so strongly -- she'd still have been able to guess which captain was, in fact, approaching this time. Not that she wanted to disabuse him of the habit, (because it was utterly charming,) but there was definitely a grand total of one person in the world who would ever refer to her as Lady Hvergelmir. Other people had generally seen her attempt to steer a kayak, or witnessed how she chewed gum, or observed her taste in shoes, and knew better.

"Titan!" Hvergelmir tried to gather herself into a more ladylike seat, in honor of her very welcome guest. Was he carrying a . . . coffee caddy? Had he really just come for a visit, like she'd invited him to? She wasn't sure she'd expected the luck of having anyone actually take her up on her offer until they decided they wanted something. She raised an arm to wave, beaming.

Hvergelmir clasped her hands to her chest in delight at this incredibly fancy presentation. Titan might well have been holding up a jewelry box of diamonds and rubies, for all the care he showed it, rather than a pink and orange paper box of donuts and a cardboard caddy with coffee and sugar packets. She reached out with both arms to lift the box lid, gingerly, like she was opening up a treasure chest. Which, in her estimation, she was.

"Oh my God, caffeine and blood sugar at 4 am. You're a saint. Thank you so much, wow." Had Titan brought her the teeth of a dragon, or the face of the moon, she might have been equally impressed.

She peeked at the assortment of flavors, grabbing the powdered donut carefully between two ends of wax paper wrapping to see if it was frosting- or jelly-filled. Satisfied with the little telltale pink residue along one side, she lifted the donut free with a giddy little victory noise at the back of her throat.

With a hand still available, she flipped a napkin open across her lap, then lifted one of the coffee cups for herself. After tearing open about four sugar packets with her teeth and decanting them into the cup, she spun a stirrer through the whole mixture and set it down on the bench at her side, declaring her coffee officially suitable for drinking.

"How do you take yours?" she asked with a broad smile, gesturing to the second cup.

Hvergelmir lifted the lid from the second coffee with a brief, stern pout. "You're foiling my attempts to learn you. Well, it'll be trial and error, then. I'll have to experiment." With a game smile, Hvergelmir considered her subject. "Okay, so, I'm going to guess you don't get this way without some serious protein." She took out two cream pods, decanting first one and then the other into the cup, then setting the empty containers aside. "And maybe just a little bit of sugar, to put the sparkle in your smile." She tugged the top of the sugar packet off with her teeth, as before, then poured it in, too. A few swishes of a stirrer to finish off her creation, then she held it out to Titan with a grin. "Okay, tell me how I did."

Meanwhile, she took a first bite of her donut -- it was really fresh, people who woke up early for work got at least one nice thing out of it -- then considered his question.

"No," she reassured him, "nothing horrible at all. It can happen that way, I guess, but -- well, I don't get up to too much trouble. I guess the universe would have to wait too long if it needed me to be in a tight spot to make me a squire."

That was putting a sunny face on it, anyway. The truth was, everything horrible had happened after she'd powered up.

Hvergelmir crossed her legs, one over the other, maybe subconsciously just because she could in her new dress with much more ease. Her demeanor grew more serious. "I meant to thank you for that. If you hadn't warned me, I'd never have made it in time. I told you before I was in your debt -- I meant it. I couldn't really say so in mixed company, but he's only alive because you cared enough to say something. Thank you for my friend's life."

Hvergelmir eyed the coffee cup, and Titan's easy acquiescence to her preparation of it, with mild suspicion. She had a niggling feeling that she could've spat in his coffee and handed it back to him, and he'd have still told her she'd gotten it correct -- which was sweet, in a way that was almost a little bit perverse, maybe, but which missed the point. I want to know how you like your coffee, not just how you'll accept it. I already believed you that you'd accept it. Well, she'd just have to try again, if Titan ever came back a second time. A different combination of cream and sugar, to see if it went over better or worse. How was he ever going to feel like someone from Order's side cared about his happiness or well-being at all, if she didn't even know him a little?

Well, it was a project, then. A place to start, however obscure: find out how Titan takes his coffee.

She stored away the little details in her memory, where she put information about people she wanted to buy gifts for. Likes sweets well enough. Eats lots of natural protein. A vegetarian? He hadn't listed any meat -- was it even possible to get to that size without being a meat-eater? Well, she'd be careful not to buy him any hamburgers till she was sure.

The playing cards she accepted with a little spark of glee. It had been a throwaway comment, after all, a light-hearted joke for someone she wasn't sure would ever show up at all. She was pleased as punch that he'd remembered. "Oh, good," she smiled over her coffee, "we can play War or something later, if you want. I'm way too braindead at this hour for anything beyond Go Fish levels of thinking."

She took another few ponderous bites of doughnut, swiping at beads of jelly and powder on her lip with her thumb. "Babylon's a good friend to have," she agreed, thinking of how well he'd taken charge of things at Mistral, how he'd given her his cloak in the snow and all of them wine afterwards, to chase the new ghosts from their footsteps for at least a little while. Balm for Degrasse and Cove, and all the ones they'd lost on Level Six. Her expression turned far away. "He's helped me through some tough times, lately, some of our own we lost in a bad accident. You can always count on him, if you ever need to. He'd be there for you."

She came back to herself with a sigh, then noticed belatedly that Titan was still just where she'd left him, still hadn't touched the box of doughnuts, still knelt placidly like it was as comfortable as anything. He evidently had manners that were leagues beyond anything she'd ever deserved.

Hvergelmir suspected just telling him he didn't have to wasn't going to achieve the desired result, either. It was his choice to kneel, his choice to bring gifts -- and if those things meant something to him, it might be kind of rude of her to disrespect them. Maybe there was a gracious way to get around it?

"Surely you won't make me break bread by myself?" she asked, nodding at the untouched box of remaining doughnuts. Hvergelmir scooted over on the bench to make room, setting down her coffee to give the empty seat space a pat. "Sit, eat." With a grin: "I would hate to be forced to accuse you of poisoning me."

(It was such an odd thing to joke about, with the enemy. And he was -- she knew that, she could feel it radiating off of him, as close as he knelt. Everything about him seemed gentle and kind and honorable -- but he wore a skull on his shoulder, and the aura around him felt like black heat, warning her not to forget what he was. Not to forget who he served. Did he love his service, no matter what form it took? Did they hand it to him like doctored coffee and tell him this was how it was best done, and never wonder what he might actually like? Did he accept it, because he believed he deserved no better?)

Oh, no. What a misstep.

Hvergelmir's eyes widened in panic. She was an idiot! She should never have joked about that -- how could she possibly expect it to go over well with the enemy? It was lucky, in fact, that his reaction hadn't been something even worse. What if he'd been offended and gone off in a huff? What if she lost her chance and never saw him again all because of a stupid doughnut joke?

"No, no, please!" she insisted, waving her hands in frantic placation in the air. Powder from her doughnut was getting everywhere to the left, and coffee sloshing over the top of her cup to spatter the ground, the bench, and part of her skirt, on the right. That was unimportant -- and for Laney, probably would've been par for the course -- so she ignored it. "I didn't mean that! I'm so sorry, it was only a joke, only a very stupid joke. I'm sorry, it was really thoughtless and rude -- I never should've said that. I don't think you'd poison me, I swear."

And so saying, there was of course only one obvious way to prove it: she popped the doughnut back into her mouth and took a huge, jelly-oozing bite.

God, he was so poised and gentlemanly in the face of her flinging doughnuts and coffee around. It really wasn't fair.

Grace Under Fire merit badge, she tacked another one on to his invisible sash. Or had she already awarded him that one? Maybe it should be Smoothing Over Awkward Conversations merit badge instead. Yes, that would do. She added it to Titan's list of talents, along with -- a little more blushingly -- Gentle Hands merit badge, which was, uh, probably getting a little bit out of the realm of boy scoutery and into the realm of Things She Ought Not to Be Noticing. Oops.

His polite inquiry was a reminder of something else she'd missed: somehow, Hvergelmir had completely forgotten to comment on the quality of gift her guest had so thoughtfully provided.

Not wanting to spit large pieces of half-chewed doughnut on Titan while he was doing repair work on her Pollocked dress, Hvergelmir held up the remainder of her doughnut in front of her mouth as a shield. "Uh muh Gobh, yush. Ush ruhlly frush," she burbled out half-intelligibly, punctuated with a giggle at her own expense for her temporary mangling of the English language. She finished chewing and took a throat-clearing drink of her coffee before continuing with her answer in a way more befitting an adult human being, and less likely to embarrass her parents. "By the time I ever get to Dunkin Donuts, the only ones left that aren't hard little briquettes are the filling ones, and even those are usually kind of crusty around the edges. This is, like, the doughnut they use to reward people who use alarm clocks. Thank you, by the way," she added, nodding at her coffee-stained uniform, "Sorry I'm such a mess. Usually I can be trusted with things like coffee, don't worry."

Titan was sitting down, she noticed. Progress! Hapless flailing was obviously a successful, if accidental, tactic. Well, every journey started somewhere. She'd take what she could get.

What Hvergelmir badly wanted was to segue into a more productive conversation with him. With most people, she lead pretty quickly into a few basic interview questions, to try and get a baseline feel for them and their experiences -- from there it was a little easier understand the person she was talking to. What do you know about the history of the war, how did you wind up joining the Negaverse -- those were her usual openers. But Titan just seemed so... so different. He'd dodged her on her first question once already (though she didn't think he'd meant to), and asking the second one made her nervous. He didn't see himself as smart -- any question she asked couldn't be something he'd fear was meant to trick him into revealing something dangerous to his organization.

Information wasn't what she wanted from him, anyway -- not when she already knew it would cost her too much goodwill and too many prying questions to try and get it from him, not when there were other people less nervous about giving it. She just wanted him to open up to her a little bit. There had to be some other way.

What could she ask about, though? What that didn't point too closely to his civilian identity? It had to be something she already knew, or that was already obvious. Something personal, something that had to have him in it, but something safe.

Well, maybe there was one thing, as long as she kept it vague...?

"So, did you always grow up on Norse faith?" she asked between sips of coffee. "Or did you come by the stories more on your own?"

Hvergelmir listened with quiet, heartwarmed pangs to the little tidbits Titan was sharing with her about his life, his childhood. She liked hearing about other people's families, when they were happy ones, or seemed to be: her own was such a . . . such a disappointment. The idea of a home filled with closeness like that, its walls decorated not with gray Ansel Adams prints but with the beloved pages of a child's favorite book, was almost staggeringly endearing. She hoped Titan and his family were still happy. She hoped they still loved each other as much as it sounded.

"Please have some doughnuts," she asked, finishing off her own. "This dress really won't hold six."

She wiped both hands off on a napkin, giving some consideration to his views on old faith in light of new facts. Having not grown up in a faith-based family, Laney had grown up far more full of wonder and uncertainty about the universe than her parents had ever advised. Of all the things about her awakening as a knight that had given her cause for disquiet, that hadn't been one of them. Generally, she agreed with Stoppard -- it was the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew was wrong. Maybe it wasn't the same for someone who needed to have faith in the infallibility of authority.

"I didn't grow up on religion. We did the days of the week, too -- Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace -- but even though that's kind of a Christian poem, my family wasn't, really. I like to think there are still things we can't see or understand, things with powers beyond just human beings, whether or not they have some kind of authority over our lives. Fairies, unicorns, God or gods -- why shouldn't those things exist? We exist -- and you and I, we both do magic, so why not dragons, too? Arthur C. Clarke says magic's just science that we don't understand yet.

"There's so much we still don't understand -- and people in history understood even less. Maybe it's not that the stories they passed on were wrong, or weren't true -- maybe it's just that they told them in the only way the understood at the time. Any holy texts anyone claims to have are still transcribed by human hands. We get stuff wrong. We try to tell stories in the way that gets the meaning across in the best way we can. The details aren't always perfect, but maybe the heart of the story still has truth in it."

She settled back against the bench, coffee held between both hands. "I may not be a well, but the well exists." Her smile glittered over her paper cup. "Would you like to see it for yourself? I can take you there."