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Heat or no heat, there was no permutation of Quartz's uniform that particularly looked like normal clothing. At best, if he stripped off his gold boots, his shirt, his belt, and his arm cuffs, he could probably get away with being a barefoot man in navy pants wading into a fountain in the high heat of summer -- but short of that unlikely circumstance, Quartz was doomed to appear to be dressed pretty goddamned weirdly no matter where he went. And anyway, it didn't seem like a good idea to go wandering around powered up without shoes on -- so there it was. He was a man in gold knee-high boots wherever he went: suck on that, David Bowie.

The man he encountered, though, had the gall to mostly blend in among human beings by comparison. In fact, had Quartz not known this particular man personally, he might've walked on by, assuming the knight in the vicinity to be someone else. It was not, however, someone else.

It was Melanite. Camlann. Whatever.

"Ah," Quartz said, taking in this admission with more stride than he did Camlann's presence in general. "I fear the hypocrisy here bears pointing out, brother. I'd vary my own patrol routes more, but Cassidy's does sell the cheapest Hennessy in town, so there you go. I was just on my way."

He squinted at Camlann in the darkness. "You're well?"

Quartz shrugged in a way that was betrayingly informational -- a way that suggested the casualness with which he held opinions on liquor was a deeply important construct. A way that suggested liquor to be a crucial aspect of his life. "The trouble with having a refined palate," he said blithely, "is a desperate need for variety on a constant basis. Though I'll be honest with you -- wine's my first love. Vodka's probably down at sixth, or maybe fifth. Hennessy's somewhere in the high teens."

He didn't know how to really answer Camlann's next question, though. Vodka was so much easier to answer about. Nobody ever asked him if he was doing well. He folded his arms across his chest and looked away. "I'm peachy," he groused. "******** superb. She got me to kill somebody, so, like, there's that cherry popped."

He wasn't sure why he said it. Maybe he had the idea that this sort of thing would make Camlann keep his distance.

"As far as I know, they called them senshi that glowed. If there's a name for it, I don't . . . " He narrowed his eyes. "What happened to your hand."

Quartz abruptly didn't want to talk about wine. He didn't want to talk about murder, either, or what things people should be forced into, or even the question of who is Babylon. He didn't want to talk about Babylon calling it transcendence, which was a thing he could report to Schörl later.

It was bad enough Camlann had defected. This was . . . he couldn't be corrupted. He'd burned the bridge behind him.

There was nothing left for the Negaverse to do but murder him. And clearly, given I am not sure I am best pleased by that, Camlann was having regrets and reservations of his own. Maybe he was coming to his senses.

"This is bad," Quartz sighed. "There has to be a way to undo it -- fix this mess. Let me see your hand. Maybe it's not . . . maybe it hasn't set all the way in yet. There could still be time."

Quartz extended a hand, but not to grab Camlann's, not to try and flay the mark off his skin or anything like Camlann was envisioning. Instead, he raised two fingers with the intent to press them against the squire's mouth, lightly cautioning. "From your lips to Schörl's ear, brother," he warned. "Your secrets aren't safe with me."

Only after he'd offered this advice did he move to inspect the mark on Camlann's hand, raising it lightly between both of his own.

Camlann had small hands, slender fingers: the hated mark looked upsettingly well-suited to it, the delicate crossed H of Saturn marked with a faint, dark glow like a blacklight at midday. Without directly touching it, Quartz pressed a thumb against the nearby skin to pull it slowly sideways, seeing if the mark shifted or changed the pattern of its glow. He squinted at it.

This told him nothing, so he swept the pads of his fingers across it next, tracing out the lines for heat or texture, trying to see if there was any evidence of something foreign that might be excised from the whole of Camlann's body.

"You have to understand," he said softly, because he was standing close enough to make raised voices seem harsh, "This decision of yours -- leaving the Negaverse -- will end badly, and I won't be able to help you. I can't beg them for your life -- because there's nothing I can offer them in exchange. There's nothing General Schörl wants from me that she hasn't already gotten and couldn't just take. But this . . . " He let out a low breath, closing his eyes a few times a bit too slowly to be called blinking. "With her, it would be like giving Mengele a new pair of twins. She'd lop off your hand at the wrist just to see what it did."

He looked up into Camlann's eyes, finding the sight of what was almost literally a black mark on him to be too unpleasant to keep studying. "Try to find a way to undo it," he insisted. "And for God's sake, keep your gloves on -- it's not that bright, maybe if you found a cat to travel with, to cover your aura . . . " It was a slim hope, but still. "Try to keep it a secret. They mutilated the ones they had at New Year's."

There was something very . . . very Camlann about I do not know who Mengele is. Not in that, like, he didn't know who Mengele was, but in that that was the sum total of all he had to say about what Quartz had told him. Nothing about the fact that someone might torture him for their sick research. Nothing about how much danger he was in, and how alarming that was.

Quartz was afraid of everything. But Camlann just . . . he just made decisions and moved on. There was something in him that seemed wild and clean and beyond ruining.

Nothing's beyond ruining, his mind corrected. You know better.

"Mengele's a . . . " He waved a hand through the air. "World War II mad scientist. Did torture experiments on people, basically. Not important."

Quartz frowned. "I don't put myself at risk for anybody," he said firmly. "I'd just rather not see your dead body on a slab in a morgue."

It was a funny thing, with Camlann almost a foot shorter, that Quartz was the one to visibly shrink away. He supposed he'd forgotten, for a moment, that what he was doing right now was unsafe -- for him, for Camlann. A moment's passing encounter -- he could walk on from that, say it had been quick and he'd been unable to give chase, say anything easily written off . . . but this was a conversation. Camlann was right: the consequences for misbehavior were severe. His mind conjured a dozen ugly fates for Camlann, and he took a nervous step back, looking away.

"Keep your distance from me, brother," he said gruffly. This was why it was better to drink. Be insensate, not feel things. "Let's not meet like this again."