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He'd been trying to set up a meeting with Sailor Chariklo since seeing her at Avalon a few months ago, but schedules and communication methods being what they were, the thing kept getting pushed back - rings and compacts were not exactly compatible, so honestly he wasn't even sure how he'd managed to pull this off and get this planned, finally. Good fortune, dead drops, and a lot of convincing people to act as intermediaries, mostly. Talking to Chaos was exhausting.

But hey, that part was over with and good riddance! Now, all he had to do was stand on a roof in the snow (because ********, it was snowing again, what the hell, it was almost March) and hope she showed up. Otherwise, it would be back to step one.

In one hand, he raised his lantern, hoping it might serve as a decent beacon. In his other, he loosely held a never-go-out that he planned to give Chariklo as a sign of good will - she'd helped on Avalon, and she'd helped in the dark, strange future they all seemed to remember. She was clearly a powerful ally to have... so what harm was there in trying to get on her good side?

(He still felt terribly sheepish about taking his family and running off to Babylon in his recollections. Hopefully it wouldn't come down to that again. If it did, he doubted that he'd do the same.)

Babylon looked towards the east, where he felt a powerful Dark Mirror aura approaching. He clenched his hand around the lantern's handle - hopefully, it was Chariklo. Otherwise, it was trouble.

Babylon looked her over as she arrived, and he was glad to see she'd found a coat but he was willing to bet her legs were freezing. "Let's relocate really quickly?" he suggested. "There's a carport in the alley, at least we'll be out of the wind."

That change made, Babylon gestured to a pair of upended plastic crates that would serve as good enough seats. "Sorry, I wasn't counting on this weather. That roof's a pretty nice place to sit most nights, but this polar vortex bullshit just goes on and on." He knew, from his day job, the basic science behind why winters had been terrible lately despite global warming. He was not going to bore Chariklo with it.

"Avalon's been doing well," he said, setting his lantern down beside him. He glanced down at the never-go-out in his hand, debating the right moment to hand it over - not quite yet, he decided, although surely she'd noticed it. "She spends a lot of time at her wonder," he added, "But at least it's secure now. I don't have to worry about her safety there. She never had much of a connection with it before, so... I'm glad for that, too."

He wasn't sure if Chariklo knew Avalon's whole story, so he added, "I'm not sure how much you know about her - we were pages together. She was my best friend. She corrupted while I was away at school, and when I came back - I didn't think she could be purified. She was so far gone into the darkness. But - I still don't know all the details. The fact that she's alive is a miracle."

Hopefully that hadn't been too boring. "Anyway," he said, "Thank you. For the help."

Now, he held the never-go-out out to her. "A token of my appreciation," said Babylon. "I've found they're always handy to have."

He considered her dark circles. "Is something troubling you?" asked Babylon. "If there's anything I can help with - within reason of course, please say so."

"It's a bit of the light from my lantern," said Babylon, pleased that the gift had gone over well. "You can't use it to summon me or anything fancy like that, but it's useful anywhere you would need enough light to read by." He'd never heard any complaints from prior recipients - as far as he could tell, they all found their never-go-outs tremendously handy. "Anyway, you're right, it was a defense mechanism," he confirmed. "Wonders are smart. They can fulfill requests, respond to intruders... you just have to ask correctly."

Some Wonders were more obviously smart than others, he thought, considering the computers and traps at Mistral.

The introduction of the starseed quickly drew his attention away from anything else, though. "I know Zirconia," he confirmed, eying the starseed. She wasn't so much a cat-lady anymore, so he wondered how long Chariklo had been carrying this around in her pocket. The name Bischofite was less familiar, but after a moment, Babylon placed it as well - the mad general that Avalon stabbed. That had been months ago, half a year at least, but Bischofite had survived that night, so... when had all this happened, exactly?

"I've been as close to the Cauldron as it's possible to get," said Babylon, meaning that he'd been to Hvergelmir, and that was, as he understood it, the last stop along the way. "I - I had to return my ancestor's starseed," he explained, which was a sentence that probably required a lot of explanation if one wasn't already versed in knightly happenings, and he wasn't certain Chariklo was.

"Usually, Starseeds will go on their own, unless they're being held back or they're too damaged to make the journey," he said, "But even a damaged starseed can be taken back to the cauldron." The mirror-coating presented its own challenge, of course, but his understanding was that the cauldron purified all things. Everything was made right in the fires of creation. The cycle of reincarnation was what made the universe continue to spin.

Or at least that was the impression he'd gotten.

"It's not a place you can just walk up to the gates of and knock," said Babylon. "The Cauldron is Sailor Cosmos's domain, and she's... kind of reclusive? Doesn't show up much - but her knights can pretty reliably get ahold of her. You'll want to speak to Hvergelmir or Sarras. Tell them you have a damaged starseed that needs to make the trip. They can call her. They have ways."

Bloody ways, certainly. For anything less, he wouldn't have even given Chariklo names - but this was a noble errand she was on. Every soul deserved the dignity of this final voyage.

Babylon returned her smile, pleased to have apparently made a friend. "Most things worth doing do," he replied. "Require time and effort, I mean." It would all be worth it in the end, of course. Returning Menachem's starseed to the cauldron had been, even if he'd nearly died in the doing. He could only hope that Chariklo would get the same sense of fulfillment from helping her friend's starseed along.

He watched her crush the bits of mirror, and considered what he knew about how Chaos worked. There was a trade involved - greater power, in return for needing to recharge your power source - but didn't know what would happen to someone who simply refused to uphold their end of the bargain. Would they lose their powers? Perhaps Chariklo's tired appearance was the first stage of whatever degeneration was to come.

His smile faltered slightly.

"Your time?" he asked. Maybe she already knew what the end result of her strike would be. "Do you expect the Negaverse to kill you? Or do you expect to die?"

The former he could try to do something about. The latter, well, he wasn't so sure. It didn't even occur to him to think that Chariklo's court might turn on her - the dark mirror had fought against the Negaverse in the future that never was. (He didn't recall if they'd stopped draining energy.)

Babylon nodded - her tiredness, it would seem, was from overexertion and not from any kind of process of physical degeneration. Well, that was reassuring - though it did raise some major questions about Chaos that he wanted to look into once he'd had longer to think about them. Camlann had most of his memories of his time in the Negaverse - maybe he'd know.

"Well," he said with a tight-lipped smile. "Take care of yourself. I hope that one of the Cosmos knights I mentioned will be able to help you, and that you find peace for your friend."

It was such a noble errand that Chariklo was on. He hoped she found success.

"I suppose I shouldn't keep you any longer than I already have," he said, standing. The temperature had been dropping, he noticed, and he'd hate to cause Chariklo to get frost bite. "Thank you again for your help on Avalon, and I'm sorry that I couldn't make good on my promise of safe haven. I suppose it's of no consequence now - who can say for sure whether any of that actually happened? It doesn't have to."

The future was always in motion, after all.

"Good night, then," he suggested.