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Now that she'd powered down, dropped newly-minted Jenna off into what she was sure was a safe, prepared place for her, and had time to think about it, Laney's stress had been slowly building up. She was grateful to have a few extra minutes with Finn, time to talk -- his advice would surely make her feel better. It always had.

"It looks beautiful," she said sincerely, eyeing the welcoming home that Florence Court Apartments had grown into with all of his and Kaatje's hard work. The warmth of it, the careful welcome, was almost enough to make her cry -- but she bit back the impulse, fighting not to let her emotions get the better of her as they so often tended to do.

There were enough things to be upset about. That one was worth avoiding. "You've really turned the place into something amazing."

Laney sat down in one of the deck chairs , picking her feet up off the ground and folding them crossways. "So, Sarras hates me now," she said quietly, looking down at her hands. "You remember him from Mistral? He, um -- it was complicated. General Buddingtonite was about to kill him, and I convinced him to spare Sarras's life -- then Sarras tried to kill Buddingtonite instead, so I -- I got in the way. And I guess ruined his chance to avenge his dead mother." She scrubbed both hands through her hair. "I'm like the worst knight."

Laney felt her throat momentarily close up, unsure how to answer Finn's offer. I have a place of my own, she thought. There's a mattress on the floor and I cook everything on a hot plate, but it's mine. I can do this on my own.

She couldn't bring herself to say it, though. She couldn't imagine someone like Finn would understand. Someone who had an education and a job and a home wouldn't understand what it was like not to be good enough for any of those things -- to have missed out on succeeding at anything in life till it was far, far too late.

So, because she didn't know what to say, she did what she usually did: she ignored Finn's having said it at all. It was okay: he'd said other things she could talk about.

"My oath doesn't help anyone," she sulked despondently. It doesn't help anyone but me. It didn't at New Years and it doesn't now. I met this new Cosmos knight, and -- God, she's only fifteen years old -- and she doesn't know anything. None of us know anything when we start out, and there's no one to tell us. There's no Academy like our ancestors had, no one teaching anyone anything, nowhere to go -- she's so young, and she's going to be just like Degrasse, and I can't -- " She sighed, looking down into her cup. "I can't protect her at all."

Laney took a slow sip. "And it's always going to be like that. We've all had the dreams -- it'll be worse for the new knights just awakening, once they've driven so many of us out of the city. They hunt them down so easily . . . " She looked up, meeting Finn's eyes. "Don't tell me you don't think about it. How lost we all are."

This news -- news she hadn't been expecting, so caught up in her own problems -- was important enough to interrupt everything else. Laney felt a lot of things: sorrow for Finn, worry for the lost page, anger at Castor (a recurring theme on her part, she was finding). She set their conversation aside and got up, cup in hand, so she could go to her friend and give him an utterly necessary hug. "Oh, Finn," she said, wrapping her arms around his midsection and giving him her best lumberjack squeeze (which wasn't very lumberjacky). "I'm so sorry."

She stayed there for a while -- it took time for a good hug to settle, in her experience.

"Our order's falling apart," she agreed. "It has been since we first started awakening -- all of us. We've all been struggling to survive, to make it to full knighthood, without our Academy. Without any guidance, stumbling on our own powers by accident, or sheer trial and error -- there's so much potential, but . . . it's all scattered. No one knows what resources, what knowledge and ideas are already out there. I mean, even our rings -- as powerful as they are, hardly anyone uses them. We forget to ask for help, because -- we're not used to there being any help out there. We all start off alone, lucky if there happens to be anyone there when we awaken -- and the only thing that's kept us going as long as we have is . . . people are strong. People are brave, and they care -- and they fight on even when we're disorganized and confused, because the cause is good even when the deck's stacked against us."

She bit her lip. "If we fight among ourselves sometimes, or have trouble agreeing on things, it's kind of no wonder, you know? We don't know the people standing beside us. We don't know what they can do -- or what we can do. We're hanging on by our fingernails. We're not supporting each other like our ancestors and our past selves did. They had oral traditions -- formal teaching. We're on the verge of losing that -- and all because we don't have a place to call our own."

Laney thought about what Titan had told her, the ruins of the Academy . . . a great, sucking hole in the Earth. The Negaverse had been right to target the school -- without it, the knighthood could easily die out just by failing to keep itself alive.

Olympus.

Mistral had said it had responded to her need, before. Maybe . . . maybe it could again. Sure, it wasn't their Academy, but -- the Academy was lost to them. Even if it couldn't serve as a proper place for battle training or anything like that, it could still . . .

Maybe they could still make it their own. A new tradition for a new generation.

"My work -- what I do -- it's always been with the Negaverse. Trying to help people back up after they've already stumbled, to show them they can still choose another way. But with everything that keeps happening to us . . . everyone we've lost, everyone who's died -- maybe that's not enough." She nodded in agreement with Finn's point. "The day after Megiddo -- I ran into Sailor Megrez, and we talked for a little while. She told me how she'd gotten to a kind of, like, a low point. Where she'd felt so backed into a corner, I think. so alone and threatened, that she was afraid not to kill anyone she met who was Chaos. And she said that she'd been afraid of what she was becoming -- that she'd fall in with people like Castor again."

Laney reached up with her free hand to twirl a lock of hair around her finger, idle. "Thraen organized the BlackWatch to help people feel like they had resources -- like they weren't on their own. That's the right idea, I feel like -- to solve problems before they become problems. Maybe in the knighthood, we all need that attitude -- that we're a brother- and sisterhood of people. A community that's strong because of how much we each support the person beside us. The Code told some of us a great deal about our history a year ago -- but it hasn't done that again since. I think . . . " She looked her friend in the eye. "I think we're supposed to pass that knowledge on."

Something about saying all this -- about the two of them talking about it -- made Laney feel a little better. A little more hopeful, more in control. Already she felt a kinship with this one knight, with Babylon -- her true brother in the figurative sense. It would be wonderful to be able to share that feeling with more people than just her own few friends.

"We could at least ask," she said, nodding at Finn's suggestion with enthusiasm. "If you get in touch with Mistral, I can ask the Code what we can do, and how often we could do it. I've already got these coats of arms that -- " She caught herself. " -- that our mutual friend brought to me. I want to see them returned to their rightful owners. I'd thought that Olympus could be the best way. And if not . . . " Laney bit her lip, determined. "Then -- then we have our meetings right here on Earth, we find a place. We ask Mauvians to help us shield it. Whatever we have to. We're knights, right? What we don't have, we make with our own two hands."

It could be just the two of them to start out. Like Sailor Gunn had done, with her skills training -- grassroots organization. They could apply the same principles to passing on knowledge and information . . . and then, if the idea caught on, there would probably be better, more capable people wanting to take over. Maybe that would be for the best. Sometimes all that was missing was someone to light the first spark.

Laney accepted the refill gratefully. She wasn't much of a drinker, but sometimes it was just -- a bonding activity. A way that friends spoke the unspoken language of yeah? Yeah.

"Sometimes I wish I could just drown Castor in a bucket," she said sourly, pouting with her lower lip out. "He was there tonight, and he's all telling Teide she has to give the civilian name of someone else in the Negaverse in exchange for his help. And all this blah-blah-blah about 'the person you were before will diiiiiiie.' While she's terrified because she let a civilian try to murder her because she was so upset about what she'd become with the Negaverse. It was completely ridiculous." Laney frowned, stewing over the whole affair for a little while.

"Our mutual friend is . . . still healthy, for what it's worth. It's just -- you know how he is. He talks about himself like he's something to be thrown away. I wish he could believe in himself."

Laney's mouth quirked in a frown. "She gave Avalon's name -- Vanya. Because she thought Avalon was dead, and she knew she was giving a name that wouldn't hurt anyone. And of course Castor goes off on this riff about how he knows that name's no good but if she'd given a valid name it would mean she was purifying out of selfish reasons or . . . something completely contradictory, I don't know. I was so furious."

She took a longer drink from her cup. "I wouldn't put my worst enemy in front of Castor for purification," she said flatly. "Not unless there was literally no one else. I don't care whether anyone thinks losing a lot of your memories and having to start your life over is the same thing as dying, it isn't dying, and telling people don't worry, it's just like committing suicide isn't what anyone needs to hear. It's not even remotely the same."

Laney sulked a little and held her cup out for more wine. This was, what, her third cup? Well, whatever. It was wine. She was walking back to her apartment anyway.

"Camlann called him," she answered. "But he didn't exactly seem fond of him, or -- even remotely fond of his methods. I guess maybe Castor was the only royal he knew?"

Laney got up, restless, and circled her chair. "What's his deal, anyway? Castor, I mean. He acts like he's, like, the grand poobah of it -- he's got some kind of bee in his bonnet about the whole thing."