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No one had come by her bench for almost two weeks. Other than that, since coming home from her Wonder, Hvergelmir hadn't gone out for any reason other than her vigils in the park; she'd stayed home and done chores for her parents and been a model child, in as much as an unemployed twenty-something still living at home could be a model child. Her parents weren't pressing the issue of an inpatient program anymore, which was a temporary relief -- but it was all she could think about, still. The memory of their cold eyes on her, when she came home one day, a terrorist with no tongue -- and the sight of their slightly disgusted, slightly angry faces when she'd woken up screaming from that particular nightmare and they'd suggested a long-term program.

They're going to hate me, she thought. I'll die if they hate me. So they couldn't -- and she couldn't let them. She could be good. Better. Laney could still -- she could go back to school. International Business, like they wanted. Like her father. She could fix it. So they'd love her. So they weren't going to forsake her someday when she came home with scars to prove she knew how to follow through on something and told them what she stood for. She could be better. They could be a happy family.

This was on her mind when she stared following the aura through the park. What she was thinking was that, on nights like this, in weeks like this, she could almost forget what the sound of her own voice was like.

Almost, and then --

right in the middle of it --

comes the smiling --

He was a stranger, sitting there on the ground with his hands around his knees like he didn't want to be bothered. She'd never met him before, didn't know him, couldn't know him -- and yet she did know him. She knew him in pieces in her hands, crumbling in her fingers. She knew him with his hands on her skin, sucking away all the light in the world, part of an impossible memory that came to her in pieces like the broken fragments of his face.

Hvergelmir gave a little sound -- just a frightened, animal whimper like a deer looking into the incomprehensible mystery of headlights -- and it was all too much; she stared, and the memories welled up of that moment, of tearing away at his shattered skin, and it hurt her head; it made her dizzy. She put a hand to her mouth, but there was an ugly, oozing feeling there, something squishing between her teeth --

An eyeball --

And Hvergelmir turned to barely catch herself against a tree and began to throw up into the grass.

There wasn't much in her stomach to bring up. Haunted by the echoes of her mother's very food-aware tones, Laney hadn't been eating much recently -- and in this case, the last food she'd had was lunch. It was all but digested by now; mostly she just dug the fingers of one hand into the bark of a tree and dry heaved until the feeling passed.

She was alive. He was alive. It was just a memory.

A strange, odd, prophetic memory, though. She'd dreamed of this man, remembered him, and never met him. And now here he was in the flesh, if a little different. He really existed.

This made all the memories even more terrifyingly real than they had already seemed.

Unable to comprehend the purpose of his declaration to her -- as though she were the killer, between them! -- Hvergelmir clung to the tree and stared back distrustfully.

"Who are you?" she demanded in a terrified, coughing whisper.

Why did it matter? Was he serious?!

I have a right to know the name of the man who's going to kill me, she wanted to say. I have a right to name and shame my murderer. If you're going to kill me, I deserve a fighting chance to try and avoid my death however I can.

And I know your name now. I didn't know your name before. That means I've already changed the future, even just a little.

She wanted to scream all of that at him, angry and bitter and afraid. She wanted to tell him that all she'd ever asked was to be left peacefully alone, but that he and his ilk had come to burn her home to the ground and kill the people she loved. But Hvergelmir looked at the man still curling himself away from her, and the desire to lash out in fear ebbed unexpectedly down to something else, something not entirely wanted.

She felt pity, looking at him, mixed in with her terror -- and had to reconsider him with new eyes. He did not look strong and soulless and powerful now. He wasn't laughing. He looked... he looked as frightened as she was.

"Kerberos," she said softly, swabbing at her damp mouth with the back of one hand. Despite his warnings that she should stay back, she was powerfully motivated to go somewhere just then -- the smell of her own vomit was not exactly proving to be cherry blossoms in springtime, and she didn't want to go back to dry heaves again. She settled for pressing her knuckles delicately under her nose to block the scent. "I'm Hvergelmir," the squire offered in neutral tones. "I -- dreamt -- of you. Do you . . . do you know who I am?"

Was she the only one who'd had the horrible dreams -- portents of what she could only assume was a future yet to come? Or did Kerberos know her face, just as she knew his?

"I'm sorry about your eye," she countered, knuckles still pressed to her nostrils. "And about, um, the smell. It's. Uh. I freaked out, sorry. Do you mind if I...?"

With her other hand, she mimed out moving from where she was to another point, distant from him, but also distant from the tree she'd been upending her stomach all over. "I'm just going to, ah, go over there."

Slowly, careful not to make any sudden or aggressive-looking movements, Hvergelmir paced over to another tree, still distant. She gave Kerberos a wide berth -- and while she was doing her best to appear as though she'd gotten over her initial reactions with speed and ease, in truth, the distance wasn't just for his benefit. It was hard to ignore the things she associated with him and his ugly, mutated senshi aura, whether it was the memory of things he might someday do (or things she might someday do to him) or the sickening resemblance to Sailor Ate, who'd radiated that same feeling of cold, sour pitch at her and who'd caved a man's face in with her knee just to frighten Hvergelmir. The squire had too many bad memories these days, for all her efforts to the contrary. Hardly a day seemed to go by where she didn't screw something up, get into some ugly conflict, or find herself back to where she'd been years ago, before she'd started counseling, staying in bed for fifteen hours at a time, staring at the ceiling and burrowing into her anxiety without finding any reasons to get up. Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays she had to function -- so she did, but barely. Everything had gotten so difficult.

'I don't think I qualify as having a problem,' Laney had told Carmine once. 'I can function when I have to. If I'm just choosing not to -- I don't think that's fair to other people who have real problems -- '

'Lots of people can function when they have to,' Carmine had interrupted Laney's stammering with his usual calm reasonableness. 'That's not uncommon, and it doesn't mean you don't deserve help with the things you're going through. What you're describing is extremely common.'

She could function when she had to. Well, she had to function right now. She had to come up with something useful to say, something to put Kerberos at ease. "The future's not written in stone," she started off slowly. "Just by knowing it, we're already changing it. But we're beings of free will, you and me. We all have the power -- and the responsibility -- to choose what we're going to become. Do you... do you believe in that?"

Hvergelmir shook her head, more aware than before of what a pitiable state Kerberos was in. Regret, she thought, was a terrible thing to bear -- and when you hated yourself, the things you hated seemed to define you. She knew, after all -- as surely as she knew what she hated about her own self.

But logically -- even if she had trouble actually believing it in her own case -- she knew it wasn't true.

"Is that what you think," she said in gentle tones. "That you're a monster." Her eyes softened on him, as did her opinion, a little.

She folded her hands in front of her. "Monstrosity isn't what we are, it's what we do. And the thing about what we do is... we can do something else any time we decide to. Sometimes it's hard, and sometimes there are costs, but -- you are no monster. You're just a human being. The minute you stop believing that -- believing that you're in control of your actions and you can change them -- is the minute you give yourself permission not to control them. But telling yourself you can't change won't make things any easier. In the end, it just -- it'll just hurt you. You don't have to feel that way."

It was such a strange, surreal conversation. Here she was, talking to the man who was someday (maybe) going to kill her, trying very hard to convince him that he wasn't a monster, while he earnestly insisted to her that he was, and he felt miserably about it. Surely it was supposed to be the other way around. But somehow -- somehow -- she looked at him, sitting pitiably on the ground, looking distraught -- and she couldn't imagine taking the other side of the argument. He was a scared boy, that was all. Whatever else he did, whatever else he might someday do -- he was a person, just like they were all just people. He felt things. He wanted to be and feel human.

There was hope for him. There was, she truly believed, hope for anyone.

Maybe what he needed, most of all, was for someone to give him permission not to give up on himself. And maybe she could convince him that if even someone like her -- a future murder victim -- still thought he stood a chance, that that meant he really did.

You couldn't give up on people in circumstances like these. Not when they so obviously were crying out for help.

"I'm not talking to some story on the news. I'm not talking to your future or your past. I'm talking to a person sitting right in front of me. You can't hide from yourself in any of those things. I believe in the you that exists -- not the one that's constructed out of a past and a future -- even a present -- that you're obviously not happy with." She put out a hand. "Can I come closer?"

Hvergelmir was starting to get used to people trying to push her away. Sometimes, times like this, it was especially sublimely odd; the person in question was young, scared, and someday going to murder her. By all rights, she should've taken the offer he presented, turned tail, and run. She was tempted, too -- she hadn't forgotten the memory of his skin flaking away beneath her hands, nor the horrible seep of energy being bleached away as her hold on life dwindled in his embrace. But here they were, and those things were still five years away. Those people were only possibilities on the horizon.

So much could change.

Instead of running, Hvergelmir stepped forward until she was close enough for a more normal conversation. She crouched down by the young man's side.

"You don't look like you're having much fun to me," she observed, voice softened by sympathy. Hvergelmir rested her elbows on her knees and folded her hands together.