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A page and a youma.

There weren't too many combinations of auras that could really bring Hvergelmir running top speed. Mostly, however quickly she could arrive on a scene, she knew she was useless: she couldn't interfere against Negaverse agents, and most knights and senshi above their first rank could handle themselves against a youma better than she herself could. A page, though, alone against one of them . . . Hvergelmir could still remember how much difficulty she'd had in her early months. There was every chance a page needed backup. So she'd run.

As it turned out, she needn't have: the page in question, tiny Hyperborea, dispatched the monster with apparent ease -- not even ruffled by it. Then pranced right over and gave Hvergelmir a hug.

Hvergelmir thought of Teide. Why couldn't they both have had such charmed lives? Why didn't Teide get to flit around carefree like Hyperborea got to? How much longer would Hyperborea herself even get to?

The world was a cruel place. Hvergelmir returned the hug with enthusiasm.

"I've been good!" Hvergelmir said, which was not particularly true, but was what you said, especially to younger people. "How about you? How are you settling in?"

Camelot and Ida.

Good. Hypberborea could scarcely ask for better role models.

"Camelot's great," Hvergelmir offered her enthusiastic approval. "He's been like a father to me -- you can trust him for anything. If he's teaching you, that's great news. He's been a knight about as long as anyone has, and he knows how to take care of people. You can learn a lot from him. Ida, too -- she's a senshi, so she's a little different from us, but she's -- " Hvergelmir blushed. "She's great. She's got a huge heart and she'd give you the clothes off her back if you needed them. She'll never let you down. You're lucky to have either of them helping you out."

She couldn't comment about the others Hyperborea had met, Chaonis and Penthesilea -- they were mostly familiar names, rather than people she knew personally. Chaonis was Camelot's son, Penthesilea was one of the other captives from New Year's . . . beyond that, she couldn't really say.

Babylon, though, she certainly knew. "Babylon's great too, he'll really . . . " She trailed off, trying to read the cheerful look in Hyperborea's eyes. "When you say you 'won the fight,' do you mean . . . ?"

She waited it out as she was hugged again, and the explanation bubbled forth shortly thereafter.

Mistral. Who'd mentioned Mistral? Surely Babylon wouldn't have . . . or Mimisbrunnr, for that matter. What had Hyperborea been told about it?

"What happened at Mistral was a tragedy," she agreed, softly stroking a hand over Hyperborea's head. "I'm afraid those kinds of things are the reality of our lives, as knights. Someday I'm afraid you're going to see a friend die, too. It's very hard."

Sarras. Hvergelmir frowned, her mind immediately prickling with thoughts: What did he say? Did he scare Hyperborea? Is he alright? Is he alone? Is he in pain? Is there anyone to take care of him?

Hyperborea didn't need to hear any of that. Sarras's business was her own, and Hvergelmir's business with him was theirs, and all of it was too big, too heavy to put on the shoulders of a still-new page. She'd see enough of sorrow -- she didn't need to be in the middle of their ugly estrangement.

"You've been a busy bee!" she said instead, moving immediately over into the lighter topic. "Traveling all around space, visiting your Wonder . . . that's wonderful. I'm glad you're getting the chance to explore. Not everyone can find the time."

Hvergelmir's wonder was tiny -- there wasn't much exploring to do, except in the coffers of the treasure room. She mostly spent her time their weaving and dyeing fabric.

"Sailor Cosmos is very much still around," Hvergelmir promised. "She has white hair and a white uniform, and a great white staff with a winged star at the top -- and she can come to you or I if she senses that we're in pain and seeking her help . . . if she's able to get away from any other duties that might keep her. She helped save our friend Babylon once," Hvergelmir confided. "I met her then, although it was very brief. She was kind."

And, unfortunately, like most Royals, she was rare. Only the Negaverse seemed to have a notion of her activity being increased of late. "She also helped save a Negaverse General, who's now purified. I wasn't there for that, but I met the knight that that General had become after it happened."

Hvergelmir pulled away to hold Hyperborea by her shoulders, focusing on the question she'd hinted at before and the page hadn't answered. "Hyperborea . . . when you say you 'won the fight' . . . did you kill someone?"

"Well," Hvergelmir smiled, "If you'd like to see my Wonder for yourself, I'd be happy to take you there sometime. It's a small island near the center of the galaxy, so there isn't much to see -- some of the other Wonders I've been to are much bigger and grander. Whole cities where people once lived! I'd love to hear about yours."

She frowned. "Come here, though, why don't we sit down and talk for a minute. We should probably . . . we should probably talk a little bit more about what it's like for soldiers in the Negaverse. They don't have the same choices as you or I do -- their lives can be harder than what we can understand. Have you got a few minutes?"

It was a delicate thing, the balance of sharing and shielding information. Hvergelmir -- in her most self-aggrandizing moments -- fancied herself some kind of an educator, a grand liberator of information that rightfully should've been held by all. Many things, she thought, ought to have been known . . . she was not in the habit of refusing most questions, and even less so could she really justify lying. Information that might've put her colleagues at risk, though, was a special circumstance. She thought of that as not being her information to share, and used that as her explanation if pressed. It's not my right to tell you. That's not my secret to share.

This wasn't an enemy, though. This was Hyperborea -- a young, well-meaning comrade. Hvergelmir didn't think Hyperborea would intentionally do anything harmful with the information that Astrophyllite had purified, it was just . . .

People could unintentionally do a lot of harmful things. A simple statement, innocently meant, could expose Teide to the Negaverse as a turncoat right when she was at her most vulnerable.

She'd kept Avalon's secret even to people she'd trusted. She'd keep Teide's, too -- until Teide was ready to tell it.

Instead, Hvergelmir tucked the name Merlinite into her memory, rolled away and tied up with a bow to be recalled and investigated later. Another half-youma, like Bischofite. Like Cinnabar. Condemned -- and this one as punishment. How cruel.

"It can be easy to turn a blind eye to something," she suggested. "Especially if you believe there's nothing you can do about it. When we feel helpless, sometimes -- for some people -- the only thing that makes it bearable is to tell ourselves there's nothing we can do. And for some people, in the Negaverse, that's true. It's not an organization you can easily leave." She put out a hand and clasped it over Hyperborea's. "It can be easy to say what makes a hero and what doesn't -- what's good and what isn't. But most people don't live up to that kind of ideal, or they don't start out at their best. But bad people can do noble deeds -- and that doesn't make the deeds less noble. And good people can do terrible deeds. The agent you fought might've agreed today not to hurt anyone else . . . but tomorrow their circumstances might look different. Tomorrow maybe the Negaverse is threatening their family. Their friends. The truth is, most choices are hard. Most choices are something less than noble. For example -- do you think of me as a good person?"

Hvergelmir frowned, wishing she didn't have to poke holes in Hyperborea's optimistic illusions. She could remember a time in her own life when she'd believed in simple heroism, in good triumphing over evil in simple ways. She'd always thought that had been an important time in her life; she still thought so. But now she'd seen darker things -- understood harder truths. And that was important knowledge too.

"The Negaverse can do terrible things to those who cross them," she confirmed. "No one's immune -- but they can hurt their own people easiest of all."

To answer the other point of conversation, she folded her hands in her lap. "The day I took my oath, I was facing down a General of the Negaverse. She had a civilian in her arms that she was planning on killing. We spoke -- and I asked her not to kill him, not to fight me. I told her we didn't have to be enemies, and that I didn't mean the Earth any harm, as they believe. That was what I promised to prove to her . . . and I did that by dropping my weapon at her feet when she raised her sword to me. I swore my oath -- and I let her kill that man. He wasn't the only civilian I've ever abandoned. There have been other people, too, looking for me, for anyone to save them . . . and I let the Negaverse do what they feel they have to do. I still try to save the lives of killers at the cost of not protecting the people they kill." She twiddled her thumbs. "That's not the kind of hero most young people read stories about."

Hvergelmir shook her head. "I'd never ask you to. You know, in my previous life, there was this other Cosmos knight who sort of took me under his wing. Who believed in me and thought I could be a knight myself someday when I was just a child. But I asked him once, how he could stand visiting so many planets and not trying to help all the people there, even though he was a knight."

She looked back over at Hyperborea.

" 'We can’t save everyone,' he told me. 'Having great power isn’t the same as having all power.' I'm not sure I fully understood that, at the time. I'm not sure I wanted to believe it. 'It’s a hard thing, choosing which battles must be fought,' he said. 'It’s bitter mathematics. Even when we move forward pretending not to see a crossroads, we still choose. Life is nothing easy.' I'm not sure I can give you any better advice than that."