Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was a funny thing, to think of her life as having a low point. Oh, there had been low points, sure: she'd been in a coma for a year, she'd let a man die at Avalon's hand, and another at Sailor Ate's, she'd been kidnapped and tortured by the Negaverse. But none of those things had been low points like this. None of them would've been enough to drive her to choose to approach Labyrinthite, remembering what she did of him from their possible future.

Only this time. This time, she thought, I have no job, no education, no family, no home. If he kills me, what does it even matter? Maybe it'll end up like Kerberos. Or maybe he'll carve my jaw half off. What the hell.

She approached slowly, like you were supposed to with wounded animals. Her hands were shaky, and her skin felt clammy -- she tried to ignore it.

"Labyrinthite," Hvergelmir called out softly. "Is something wrong? Do you need help?"

'Do you see me when you sleep? Do you dream of me? Do I haunt your very existence, knight? Do I make you dream of death?'

Hvergelmir took a step back, guarded -- her mind layering in General-King Labyrinthite over this younger, less frightening face -- but she forced herself not to run away. Not yet. Kerberos had tried to run her off when she'd first encountered him, and look how far they'd come since then.

"We've all had dreams of the future," she allowed, sounding calmer than she felt. She flexed the fingers of her hand, feeling the presence of her summons ring. I have a way out, if something goes wrong, she reminded herself. Eikthyrnir won't let anything happen to me. "But that hasn't happened yet. This is real."

Hvergelmir held out a hand, palm forward, peaceable. "Take a slow breath in," she suggested. Hold it for five seconds, then let it out slowly again. You'll be alright."

Hvergelmir wished, sometimes, that she were a stronger person. A stronger person could have repressed the shudder at Labyrinthite's contact with her skin. A stronger person wouldn't have flinched at his second hand, uninvited, grasping at her arm. Let go of me, she barely managed not to say -- but couldn't temper the gasping breaths she was taking, the incredible, freezing panic.

Take a moment, she thought. Get through this. It's like Kerberos -- it'll be alright.

She steadied the thumb of her free hand against her summons ring. Hvergelmir clung to the idea: she could escape any time she needed to. She was not in danger. Labyrinthite could not hurt her.

She wasn't sure if it really helped or not. It was hard to say.

He seemed different, though, from the Labyrinthite she knew and feared. That much made it through her general impression of fright: this was not her bogeyman. This man was broken and sad. This man needed help.

That shook her slightly out of her panic.

"Shhh," she said, voice small and close. "Take your time." (Was she saying it to Labyrinthite, or to herself? Or both?)

"Talk to me," she offered, more bravely than she felt. "I'm here. I'm right here with you."

Maybe Labyrinthite was just acting. Maybe she was about to get her starseed ripped out, and this was a very drawn-out way of going about it. But otherwise -- Hvergelmir knew a panic attack when she saw one.

Labyrinthite was not in a good place.

Hvergelmir knelt closer when he toppled forward onto his hands, catching his weight only a little better than he was catching his breath. "Shhhh," she sussed gently, still struggling to make sense of the situation beyond her buzzing fear and distress. "Shhhh. Focus on here and now. No one's bleeding. No one's dying. It's just you and me here. Just us." She lifted a hand to settle against his cheek, light and gentle. "That's all. Just us," she repeated.

Hvergelmir bent in to press her forehead against his, steadying. She was mindful of where each of his hands was, careful not to forget how dangerous they could become -- but the rest of him was frightened, suffering. Reaching out.

This is what I chose, she reminded herself. This is where I wanted to be. There to catch an agent of the Negaverse when they're at their lowest -- no matter who it is. There, so they won't be all alone at rock bottom.

"Breathe with me," she instructed. "It's okay. Nice and slow. Do you know what intersection this is?"

It was a simple question, and not important -- just something to ground him in the present. Something to bring him back from where he'd gone in his head.

Now there was a question for the ages.

Hvergelmir's oath did not require her to lend any particular aid to agents of the Negaverse. It obliged her only to refrain from bringing them harm -- that aside, she was well within her rights to abandon any one of them to misery or suffering or death, if any of these had already found them. There would be no consequences related to her oath if she'd left someone like Labyrinthite out to dry.

It wasn't the point of her oath, though. That had always been something more.

I'm not your enemy. It had always been about that. Proving that she didn't have to be an agent of the Negaverse to show that she meant them no harm.

This was maybe a little something more than that, besides. This was maybe something she wanted to prove to herself.

"Because I can," she finally answered.

Because I want to. Because you need it. Because you're letting me. Pick a reason -- it's simpler than you think.

Grace is when we're given what we don't deserve. Mercy is when we're not given what we do deserve. I didn't invent either concept, you know. Is your life that bleak, Labyrinthite? Is unprompted kindness so foreign to you?

"What I have to give, I give for free," she consoled quietly, anxious that he shouldn't attempt to rebuff the human contact just out of a sense of his own lack of worth. "I didn't ask you to earn it in advance, and I don't expect anything in return. The future . . . the future isn't set in stone. There's always another choice." Hvergelmir sighed, brushing her fingers lightly over Labyrinthite's face. "Would it be easier if I gave up on you? Is that what you want?"

Hvergelmir put the memory of Labyrinthite out of her mind for the moment. The blood she could almost choke on, the screams that had died out from the agony of producing them -- it was impossible to keep from remembering those things . . . but she reminded herself that she had to. That she had a duty, a responsibility she'd given herself: to wait. To listen. To not believe that these people were her enemies just because someone said it had to be that way. It was her responsibility to hold firm to that conviction, no matter how hard it seemed.

Sometimes convictions were hard to hold on to. Sometimes you had to remember to dig your nails in no matter what, and not let go. Those were the times when it counted most.

Someone had to be that last person willing to give someone a chance when everyone else had turned away. Someone had to hold the door. Gentleness could be a great strength, to the person brave enough to wield it.

"Of course it matters what you want," she said with dead certainty, her gold eyes locking hard on his. "Nobody promised us that any of this would be easy. Life never is. But listen to me, Labyrinthite -- listen to me very closely. You are worth saving." She paused, the words slow and pointed, so they could sink in. "Not just anybody. You. Don't you dare let anybody tell you otherwise."

She sighed, offering him a sad smile. She didn't pull her hand away. "You matter. Doesn't anybody tell you that? Anybody at all?"