Welcome to Gaia! ::

Eventually they released her hands from their bonds. She didn't need her hands to invoke her magic, and in any case they kept her too weak and drained to try; and being stuck in a cage, she wasn't going anywhere. Perhaps they no longer thought there was a point in keeping her chained. Maybe the fact that she was unbound but unfree amused them.

She took to circling the large birdcage, not so much pacing as she was looking for weaknesses in the structure. There were none that she could fine. Old as the cage was, the bars were sturdy. She kicked them, shook them, tried to pull them apart, but in her weakened state her powered strength was suppressed. She felt no stronger than when she was unpowered, a weak civilian dressed like a hero.

If she'd even ever been one.

There was nothing for her to do but wait. Wait for the next agent to arrive, wait for word of Valhalla, wait for a rescue. She'd no idea whether either would happen. Perhaps the agents thought it best to let her try out a bit of lengthy solitude. Certainly they'd hold back any information they may have on her husband if the promise of an update would get her to talk. And for now a rescue seemed all but impossible. Certainly the Negaverse wouldn't make it so easy for the others to find them.

For all she knew they could have been proclaimed dead. Who'd bother to look for them then?

From the moment she'd decided to fight her way through the war, Ganymede had always maintained a firm grip on hope; one day everything would end and she could have the normal life she'd always wanted. But being here, locked away from the rest of the world with no clue as to what fate meant for her, Ganymede found it hard to find any hope left in her.

Finally. Finally.

Ganymede went to the bars of her cage and gripped two of them between her hands, looking out beyond them to the Lieutenant that greeted her not with the familiarity she was expecting, but with cold formality. She stared and took in every last inch of his figure, from the eyepatch to every last one of his bows, and she could not help the anger she felt—for him and at him.

He could have told her. He could have said something and she would have done everything in her power to help him. Everything in her power and more. All it would have taken was one word, one careful statement, and she would have done anything, anything he'd asked.

Within reason.

“You know my rank,” she said. There was bitterness in her voice, but sadness too. It was surreal, facing one another like this. “There's no need for me to tell you that. Don't the wings make it obvious?”

She thought he should be asking her other questions. More important questions. The hows and the why and the whens. Screw the feigned attempt at an interrogation. She couldn't stand the cold, emotionless facade when she knew now what it hid.

“My name is Ganymede. I'm an Eternal. I awoke four years ago, a week before my birthday in 2011. Elysion was soon after that. Do you remember Elysion? I think you fought Europa at the volcano. But I knew about all this even before that, because of what happened on Christmas Eve 2010. Were you there that night?”

How long had their respective stories run parallel to one another before reaching this point?

The threats didn't phase her. She'd heard enough threats since regaining consciousness. That they were coming from his mouth saddened her, but Ganymede brushed them off like she might swat away a fly.

She caught his eye as his gaze flicked toward another agent—a guard who typically stood on the other side of the locked door, and whose presence in the room now unnerved her. Perhaps they thought it best to have another agent present, given how many times she'd asked to speak with Wolframite both before her capture and since. Were they suspicious? She hoped not. If so, that might explain some of Wolframite's foul behavior.

It was her fault if they were suspicious. Now he had an act to keep up.

“Purified someone?”

She blinked in confusion. It was an effort to keep the bewildered look on her face when her heart skipped a beat and she wanted nothing more than to beg him to drop the act and talk to her the way they used to.

“No, I haven't,” she said. “I'm not powerful enough. Only a Prince or Princess could do that. Castor, Polaris, the one-woman-Pride-parade. You might not be able to corrupt me, but I'm still not powerful enough to manage something like purification. I know some of your buddies've been purified. Maybe you'll want to have a chat with one of them.”

“Yeah, well, you know, we can't be so fortunate,” Ganymede said as a response to the topic of Castor. “One day, maybe, but for now all we can do is endure.”

Blase as she'd been with that comment, she grew serious again and frowned as Wolframite encouraged her to talk. Talk and be safe, huh? Somehow Ganymede didn't believe that, if only because her situation was rather unique. She doubted talking was going to save her. If she wasn't released from this place she was going to die; she'd resigned herself to that soon after she'd been brought here.

But she didn't say that. She didn't want to give Wolframite any reason to second guess what she thought he might be getting at. Perhaps she was being too hopeful—it couldn't really be this easy, could it?—but the continued questions in regards to purification cheered her. Of all the things for him to ask, he had to choose that subject.

“I'm not going to break,” she told him. “I've already been through hell before. This isn't any different, just more physical.”

Delicate though she might seem in appearance, she could withstand a lot more than most people realized.

“I don't know many of their names. Avalon is one. She started as a Knight, was corrupted, and then purified. Before, I know there was another woman. I never knew her name, but she talked about the Negaverse once at one of our meetings. I heard she was re-corrupted. Seems you guys don't really take too kindly to your people jumping ship. I think there's a Knight of Mars, too, but I don't know his name. Then there was a Senshi. Spinel? I think that's it. He's not Spinel anymore. And Cyllene!” she said suddenly, grabbing onto the bars of her cage with something like desperation. “She's not purified. She was... she was corrupted. I don't know when. But she used to be one of us! She was my teammate! She's the one who brought me here.”

If she could just save them both somehow, Wolframite and Cyllene, she could die happy.

Ganymede didn't like the answer, not because it wasn't true but because it deflated a little bit of her already waning hope.

Maybe it was selfish of her to want Wolframite on her side of the war. Maybe he was perfectly content where he was and she was only making things difficult for him. She didn't understand how he could be content given how the Negaverse treated their people, but she wasn't him and she hadn't had his experiences. She would never know what it was like. She didn't want to, as that meant becoming something she was never meant to be.

But the questions still came, and Ganymede grasped on to each one like something to be cherished, because she thought it meant he was thinking about it, perhaps considering it as an option.

A part of Ganymede hoped it was because of her, though a more logical voice in her head told her it was more than likely so much more than that.

“She hasn't forgotten me, no,” Ganymede said. “She still remembers me and Valhalla. I'm sure she remembers some of the others, too. But I've heard memories are affected. I guess it's just a matter of which ones. Personally I think dealing with a bit of amnesia is better than the alternative. Of course, with Cyllene that was corruption. I... I'm not entirely sure if the same applies to purifications...”

Ganymede wished she could reach out and touch him, pull him into a hug and whisper things into his ear that the other guard wouldn't hear, but even if that had been a possibility it would have been foolish of her to try. She would always look to Ladon as her best friend, her first friend after years of pushing people away, but in that moment they were enemies on opposing sides of a war.

“Why are you wasting your breath now then?” she asked, fully aware that he may not be able to answer that truthfully, but craving the validation all the same. “Why are you asking me these things? Is this what we were brought here for, to answer questions about purification? Couldn't that have happened without the bars and chains?”

Ganymede flinched at the response but didn't immediately back down. She was too stubborn for that. She didn't want to admit that she may have made a dangerous mistake in asking for Wolframite during the battle. She didn't want to believe that she had. Her intention had not been to put either one of them in danger, but simply to talk.

Of course, it didn't matter what her intentions had been. Now she was here, stuck in a cage, bruised and bloody, and they could hardly speak to one another the way she wanted to with another officer standing guard. She deflated at that thought. Once again, she bore the guilt.

“I thought it might help the situation if we could talk, that's all,” she said. She no longer sounded so sure of herself. She looked a bit like a chastened child.

It was not an uncommon predicament she found herself in with Ladon, but it'd always been petty little things that hardly mattered in the grand scheme of things. This was different. She'd never seen him so authoritative. She'd never heard him speak so... so brutally. This wasn't the conversation she wanted to have. Yet she could hear the honesty in his voice. He wasn't lying about what was in store for her. She knew that. She only hoped that beneath the scorn there might be a touch of concern.

And fear. She would have been afraid if their positions were reversed.

“I'm sorry,” she said, when he was close enough to whisper. She held back the compulsion to reach for him, tightening her grip around the bars instead. “I'm sorry. I was stupid, I know. I've always been stupid.”

It was with sadness that she watched him back away and smooth out his uniform like a dutiful little soldier, one of the many puppets hanging from Metallia's strings.

“I'd rather you break my spine in battle than die in a place like this, if that means anything to you,” Ganymede said. “At least there'd be some honor and dignity in that.”

"I wish you could die with some dignity too. No matter who you are. No matter what side. I never thought the Negaverse would use these tactics."

He heard some voices and tensed at whoever else might be coming in. Wolframite turned to address the other office, guessing his time talking with Ganymede was over, and stood straight at attention. When Bismuthite came in, dismissing the guard, he sighed with relief. The kiss to his brow made him smile though, glad that Bis had waited till the other officer was gone, and glad for a bit of reassurance here in such a terrible place. It did nothing but make him sick, paranoid, and high strung.

Making sure that they really were alone, he gripped Bismuthite's hand tightly and took deep breathes. "This place makes me sick." Not just sick with disgust, but he felt physically ill. The darkness, the lack of windows, the blood, and the distant noises called back to memories he tried hard to repress.

As Ganymede, he finally relaxed. "You shouldn't have ever called my name. I'm on the thinnest ice. Having any association with me is a death wish to both of us, and even Bismuthite." He finally explained, looking over at his partner.

"If this continues.." He let that thought linger. The blood. The pain. He was a survivor only by luck and Tanzanite's quick thinking. What could these knights and senshi do to save themselves? What could he even do?

At another thought, he looked back at Ganymede. "I can't believe you are one of them. After all these years. I never suspected."

Even with the guard gone, it was still too risky for him to explain why. To explain how he'd been having his doubts since the Negaverse accepted the Dark Mirror senshi as allies, how he'd been doing the bear minimum for well over a year, distancing himself from the Negaverse, and how he had been waiting for Wolframite to feel the same....and now knowing Ladon's best friend was on the other side...

Bismuthite was weary, it was apparent in his reserve, in the look in his eyes, but now there was freedom within his sight, and he had Paris to thank for that, for he would never leave without Wolframite.

"Everything is on the table now," He began, not answering Ganymede's question, "there is not a life left untouched in this war, no matter what side it is they find themselves on. Things can't stay stagnant forever - this night will redefine the line, and those who find themselves on the wong side of it-" he shared a glance with Wolframite, "May find themselves re-evaluating their position. If there were any questions left unanswered."

He was vague on purpose, in case anyone were near enough to hear over the screams of others being questioned and tortured. Bismuthite had learned that this was in large an operation to corrupt those they had captured after every drop of information was extracted, and the tortures withstood. Some would find themselves dragged over the lines, whether they liked it or not.