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There was a Dark Mirror senshi here. Odd, that; they were a rare breed, the Dark Mirror Court. For Hvergelmir's part, her interactions with them had mostly been fruitful: there was Chariklo, the first Dark Mirror senshi she'd ever met, a firm ally and a dear friend; and there was Tantalus who'd fought by their side at Avalon too, slick and charming -- a healthier memory from a darker future. In her memory, she'd met a few others, closely or in passing -- but those had all been Princess Chariklo's allies, and therefore hers as well. She knew the court was not so unified. Their standing alliance was with the Negaverse -- and with Chaos that they both served.

Hvergelmir was at risk, then, a little bit, by letting a Dark Mirror senshi approach her from behind. It could've been anyone, anything going wrong. They could've tried attacking her -- but she allowed herself to assume the risk.

It was a basic senshi, nothing higher than that, and she was a knight. Chances were good that she was faster and stronger than the newcomer . . . and more than that. She had Eikthyrnir. She could afford to wait and let Chaos's agents come to her a little more safely now.

A voice -- oddly familiar -- sounded from behind her. She turned, squinting, and then -- quirked her head to one side.

"Persephone?" she said, bafflement coloring her words. "Is that you? What's happened to you?"

Her brain supplied horrible possible answers. Persephone was caught helping Hvergelmir and Kairatos. Persephone was blamed for helping them escape. Persephone was tortured, threatened, anything. Punished. They'd given her as a pet to the Dark Mirror Court, maybe, like Wolframite -- or been enslaved by them -- or...???

She didn't know. Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong, and it didn't quite make sense.

Memory loss. Of course.

How much did Persephone remember of what had happened to her? How much would she be able to convey?

Hvergelmir took her gently by the forearms, looking firmly in Persephone's eyes. "No, sweetheart -- no, you didn't hurt me. It's just . . . " She frowned, shifting one hand to brush hair away from the petite girl's face. " . . . you're not purified, Persephone. Is that what they told you? Do you remember what happened to you?"

Leto found Castor.

How was it not surprising that in this . . . this debacle, Prince Castor would be involved? Hvergelmir still held onto Persephone by her arms, her face turning urgent. Purified for a day!

"Persephone, no, that -- no one is supposed to be with Chaos. Who told you that? Was it Leto?"

Hvergelmir shook her head, alarmed. No, no, no -- this wasn't right. This wasn't happening. This was horrible. "Of course we would've wanted you," she said firmly. "There would've always been a place for you. This isn't about -- it isn't about being with someone you love or not. Nobody warned you that the Dark Mirror Court hurts people too? You didn't remember?"

She was trying to understand why -- how Persephone could've gotten hoodwinked into making such a doomed choice, throwing herself into Chaos's arms again. It didn't add up otherwise. Surely someone had failed to tell her something crucial. Surely Persephone didn't have all the facts.

Was it too late? Sailor Cosmos had fixed Babylon's starseed before -- both Babylons', in fact. Her powers were vast. And Zirconia had had such success with peeling the strange, wicked mirrorcoating off of the dead starseeds and setting them free, restoring their true natures -- perhaps it would work on a living senshi, too. There was no reason to assume all hope was lost, even after this. Poor Persephone -- surely there was still hope.

Hvergelmir let go when she was asked, drawing back into her own space. Persephone's belief that this was somehow her fate, that the Dark Mirror Court was somehow indistinguishable from the White Moon Court that Persephone had originally been born to . . . it was unnerving. Hvergelmir had held the starseed of Chariklo's fallen friend Bianca in her hand, had seen the way it lay dull and lifeless, trapped inside some sort of sucking little silver -- monster, some sort of life-draining being. She remembered the Dark Mirror Court's alliance with the Negaverse. She remembered tales of dangerous, violent Princess Leto patrolling the streets in their dreamed-of future. She remembered posters for missing people on all of Destiny City's bulletin boards, and all that the future-memories had taught her about where the Dark Mirror Court got their power from.

"Destiny," she said carefully, measuring her words, "is an idea we hide behind. Destiny didn't put you into the Dark Mirror Court any moreso than it did the Negaverse. You made a choice, Persephone. Both times, you made a choice."

Hvergelmir settled back into her seat and looked off into the distance. Looking at Persephone just now -- frightened, in tears -- made her more uncomfortable than she could say. But it terrified her, too, the idea of letting this stand. The idea of being asked not just to understand Persephone's decision, but to approve of it. The idea of letting Persephone go on in ignorance of her new court, willfull or otherwise.

"I don't know if you remember," she said quietly, feeling a gentle breeze rustling her hair. It shook the leaves of nearby trees, too. "But when we first met, I asked you why you joined the Negaverse. You told me your story then -- if you want to hear it again, I can tell it back to you now, what I remember. But you joined -- even knowing the kinds of things the Negaverse did to people -- because you wanted to forget what had happened that you felt responsible for." She sighed. "This is the same choice. You wanted to be in the Dark Mirror Court because you think the White Moon Court won't be happy with the things you've done. Because you want to be sheltered from that." Hvergelmir folded her hands anxiously in her lap, knotting them till they were white-knuckled. This felt so uncomfortable. "You made a choice to run away from consequences. To run away from life. Instead of trying to help Leto, you made a choice to try and help yourself. Wh-what I want you to understand is that . . . people are going to suffer because of that choice. Just because the Dark Mirror Court hasn't tortured any captives doesn't mean they don't knowingly harm people."

She looked down at her lap. Hvergelmir was still too nervous to make eye contact. "Did they give you your mirror piece yet? Did they show you how to use it to drain energy from people?"

Hvergelmir could feel herself withdrawing, the more uncomfortable she became -- drawing back and putting up mental defenses, shutting down and feeling defeated. Rejection -- like this -- had never been something she was good at coping with.

Maybe she was overreacting. Maybe she should just let Persephone go -- pretend like her choice didn't harm anyone but herself, like she didn't know it was a hopeless one that ended with her starseed dead someday inside its mirror shell, unable to get back to the Cauldron unless someone like Zirconia could set it free.

Maybe she should pretend to be happy for Persephone.

"Of course it's your choice," she said. "I would never want you to have your choices taken away from you. But Persephone, it's a bad choice. No one has the right to have their choices go unquestioned -- not you, and not me, sitting on my pretty bench like you said. And I promise you, people question my decision all the time. I question my decision all the time."

She offered a weak smile. "I know you're trying to do better than before. I know it's hard. But joining the Dark Mirror Court didn't save anyone -- leaving the Negaverse did that. What you're doing now . . . there are so many consequences, Persephone -- you have to know that. You're not borrowing energy -- you don't give it back after you take it. When you steal it from a man who's just worked a twelve hour shift and now, because of you, he doesn't have the energy to spend any time with his kids when he gets home from work, you've taken something important that you can't give back. When you steal it from a homeless woman who hasn't had water in two days, who may not make it a third day because you took that energy from her, you've taken something she needed. Something she deserved, and you didn't. When you steal energy from a meter reader, and they're too exhausted to fight off a youma -- you know you took something they might not've been able to afford to spare. When your people kidnap someone right off the street, and take them -- wherever it is they go -- and they turn up a few days later, do you think there's no harm in that? Do you think that's nothing? When they lose their jobs because they didn't turn up for days at a time, or their family files a missing person's report, and they come home and they can't even say where they've been -- when you ruin someone's job, or their marriage, or their family -- you had no right to do any of that to them. You had power of your own -- a planet that provides for you. But instead of using the tremendous power you've been given, you chose to steal your power from people who already had so much less than you."

She didn't notice when she'd started crying herself. The tears met in a wet, dribbling point on her chin. "That's what's wrong with the choice you made," she hasped, her voice raw. "Your right to swing your fist ends at the other guy's nose."

"I care very much about you," Hvergelmir insisted into her hands, covering up her face. It had been a very long time indeed since she'd sat on her bench with Bischofite that first time, explaining with shaky confidence that she didn't need to hear a litany of his crimes and judge him wanting or not. Resolving that it had nothing to do with her personal feelings, and that she cared more about the cause -- about saving people -- than she needed to about the people she was trying to help. She'd been afraid of him, then, and unsure of her own motives.

She have said, back then, that yes, she cared more about what being Chaos meant than about the person carrying it in their heart. She'd have said that she cared more about a planet than a person.

The truth was that it was neither and both of these things. She was Hvergelmir, a knight of the Cosmos, an ambassador for peace, committed to her cause and to bettering the universe somehow. But she was also Laney, a human being, an individual, a person who wanted to know people personally and cared about the ones she'd formed connections with. Both were true. Both were real.

"But that's not all there is. I'm sorry. That's not all there is."