Welcome to Gaia! ::

Life was not how Sailor Almary would have pictured it five years ago. Back then he'd been a kid - a naive, impressionable little thing with a clear (and deeply flawed) view of right and wrong. He'd also been a chibi senshi, unable to corrupt but otherwise entirely useless.

That little kid was long gone, though - gone after being unable to save his mother due to his weak, unhelpful 'powers', gone after being shuffled into foster care, gone after ascending to full senshi... and gone after corrupting into the Dark Mirror Court. Owen Courcel hadn't been a person for over a year, now - but Almary still stood.

He no longer stood with order, but he stayed alive.

Alive was a pretty good thing, all possibilities taken into account.

And he wasn't without... he wouldn't quite call them friends, not any more, but 'contacts' was a good word. He had contacts with Order, and he would do what he could to make sure they were okay, at least until he could get the heck off of this rock.

Speaking of said contacts... he was meeting one now. Such meetings had to be kept quiet, outside of city limits, and uncommon, but it was worth it to know that his fri--- contacts were still alive. Still free, inasmuch as they could be free with the Negaverse's aggressive stance against them.

"Come on, Massalia," he muttered under his breath, tugging absently at his hair. "You'd better show up, dogbreath. If they've killed you, I'll have to bring you back just to kick your a** for dying." He smirked. "Or, y'know - kiss your girlfriend's tears away. Whichever would piss you off more."

"So," Almary said, casually leaning back and putting his arms behind his head. "Does this mean I don't get to kiss your girlfriend?" He smirked, brown eyes shining a little with the attempt at teasing his fr---- his contact. The smirk dropped away after a brief moment, and he returned to a more neutral posture, arms at his sides and eyebrows drawn down as he frowned.

"You look like hell, Massy," he said, more conversationally. "Little ones keeping you up often?" It was no secret to Almary that Massalia looked out for the chibis - and really, it didn't bother him in the least. Someone needed to. If they had back when he was a kid, then maybe he wouldn't have gotten so tired of what he had come to see as Order's hypocrisy.

He paused, then frowned. "Subra hanging in there?" He was trying to treat this as a normal encounter, a normal conversation in a normal world, but... no, of course it couldn't actually be anything of the sort. Nothing was normal in this screwed up world, and nothing was good. He'd grown to accept that, once his black and white worldview had been shattered into a million shades of gray.

"You didn't fail anyone, Massy," Almary said, frowning at his former teammate. "This screwed-up world failed all of us; you just did what you could to keep it from steamrolling you - not your fault you weren't strong enough. None of us were."

He paused, then added, "And you won't die. You'll protect them, but you won't die. I won't let you."

At the touch to his hand, Almary flinched and pulled it away, looking away at the same time. "Me? I'm... I get by." He was surviving; still living. Wasn't that all that really mattered?

"You didn't fail me, stupid," Almary said, patting awkwardly at the Order senshi's shoulder. "I made my own choices, okay?" He paused, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "At least you still have family left - I know, you've lost a lot and it sucks, but you still have some."

He wasn't jealous of Massalia. Not really.

The DMC weren't being hunted down like animals - yet - and he wasn't being worn ragged trying to hold together a group that lost more people every day. Sure, he had nobody to go home to - no reason to go home, but he wasn't jealous.

He... wasn't.

Almary frowned and reached out, grabbing the senshi by the shoulders and shaking him lightly. "Massalia. Massalia, stop." The blue-haired teen shook Massalia once more, not intending to hurt him but to try and knock him out of this guilt-induced self-pity.

"What happened to Mom - it..." He had to paused and swallow, then shook his head and continued. "It was bad, yeah. But it wasn't your responsibility, okay? It wasn't. It wasn't really mine, either. We were both too young, and neither one of us was strong enough to take that thing out."

He shook his head and pulled back, scowling.

"I don't blame you, I don't blame Subra. The ones I blame are the ones that rule the world now - and the ones that recruited us and then left us to flounder around on our own with no real ability to defend ourselves. The Negaverse unleashed the youma, the older Senshi are hypocrites. They're at fault."

The bitterness dripped from his voice as he spoke out against both the Negaverse and his former faction, taking refuge in the fact that he and Massalia were in private in order to express his views in relative safety.

"If I could get you and Subra and all the chibis off of this planet and somewhere safe, I would. The rest of them..." He shrugged. "This was always going to happen, Massy. Nobody cared about us. They still don't - don't let them fool you for an instant. They don't care."

Almary huffed and folded his arms, shooting the Eternal an irritated look. "I told you, you didn't fail. It was my Mom, Massalia. If anyone here failed her, I did. Not you - and beating yourself up over it's just going to kill you before the Negaverse does."

Sighing, he turned away from his fr--- his contact - to allow him a bit of privacy if he was going to break here and now. "You do what you can, I know. You didn't fail, but nothing I say's gonna change your opinion on that, is it?"

If Subra wouldn't go, Massalia wouldn't go either. Which meant neither, which...

"...Why do I bother with you, Massy?' He asked slowly. "We're not on the same side any more; you've got people who need you and people you need. I've got me. There's no reason to keep meeting like this."

Almary shook his head and swallowed, deliberately keeping his back to Massalia - he was fifteen now, nobody should see him cry.

"Even if I find a way to get off this dirtball, neither of you will come, so why should I keep talking to you? Why?"

"What good does it do for us to be friends, though?" Almary asked, turning to face Massalia and dashing the tears out of his eyes. "All I have to hope for is leaving and if I do I'll still be alone - you and Subra will die if you stay here, don't you realize that?"

His breath hitched and his shoulders shook as he stared at Massalia, trying to figure out what he was supposed to say, or do, or... he didn't know any more. He just... didn't know.

"But you won't come, neither of you will ever come. You'll die because they can't corrupt you and I'll be alone somewhere else or be alone here."

He swallowed and looked to Massalia, sighing. "...Did you never realize I wanted to protect you?"

"It's no less tiring, Massy," Almary said, shaking his head and watching the senshi absently. "We can't find a way off of the planet without energy - and you between the Negaverse's monopoly and Order's principles... there's just not enough right now."

He scowled and kicked at the ground, closing his eyes again. "Besides, they'll just come after us next. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just deluding themselves. The Dark Moon.... it'd buy you time, Massy, but I can't say it'd do anything else for you. You're..." He swallowed and tightened his hands into fists.

"You're better off staying with Subra. Let her help you; she's good at that. As for your mother and sister..." He trailed off and shrugged. "I dunno about them. But do what you can. and I swear if I can find a way to save any of the chibis I will, alright? I haven't..."

Almary swallowed and dashed tears away from his eyes again - damn it, why couldn't he stop crying?!?

"I haven't forgotten what it's like to be in their position. I haven't.... I know what we swore. I won't go back on that, promise."