**Warning, Mention of Character death via memories**
Also I suck at titles

Backdated to the Middle of July.

Alexandria sighed as he appeared on his wonder. For once, the Library was a welcomed change of scenery for the Squire. It had been a while since he had last been here. A long while. Thinking back on it, Alexandria realized that he hadn’t been on his wonder since before the turn of the new year… So at least five or six months. For now… He just wanted to get away and focus on something else. Something mindless that could distract him from the past.

As if that could happen though.

A lot of things had happened, since he had first been to his wonder… A lot of it was fun. But a lot of it had also been incredibly devastating.

The ‘Bitter Harvest’, as it had come to be known as, of his old team was still a fresh, open wound for Alexandria. Even though it had been almost two years since that event, the young man still grieved. He grieved for his teammates, hurt and traumatized. He hurt for Persephone, who had been broken beyond words. He grieved for Biela. A young life, taken before it’s time. He had been too shy to meet the young senshi back then, but from what he remembered, no one felt worse about Biela’s fate then Persephone and Dionysus had. They had just wanted to form a team, to better eachother, but the worst case scenario had happened instead. After that incident, he had just…. stopped, becoming Alexandria for a while. He couldn’t handle it. It had been far too much in the beginning. He hadn’t been prepared for something like that.

During that stint of absence, Rene had heard through a friend, about an incident that had been known as the White Phoenix Rising. Negaverse Agents, Order Senshi, and even a few Knights had all gathered to take out the Dark Mirrors. One corrupt had even gone as far as to sell her brother out and throw him under the bus. It had been said that they were successful in taking the seed of one of the princesses. Though, that in of itself, hadn’t lasted long. He had heard a that Persephone had been there, cloaked in black and dawning the cracked markings that corrupted senshi had. She, as well as one of the General Sovereigns had crashed the party, and returned the seed to the fallen princess. For as much as he didn’t want to believe that Persephone had corrupted, it looked like that was unfortunately the case. Alex wondered idly, if Dionysus knew.

No sooner than he came back however, was Alexandria pulled to Olympus. It was there that he met the Code. It seemed more like a guideline… then an actual code. He had met a handful of others there that day. Mimisbrunnr of Mercury, along with Valhalla and Sessrumnir, both of Jupiter stood out the most. That was of course, after he had been tackled, and somewhat scared out of his wits, by Babylon. It was not every day you got tackled by a half naked man. He had met others mind you, but… Olympus had been a lot to take in.

Depending on who you asked, that may or may not have played to Alexandria’s favor. As it turned out, after gathering at Olympus, they had all been given a task to do on Mistral’s wonder. While the others had gone on ahead, Alexandria remained behind on Olympus with Valhalla. If Alexandria were to be honest with himself, he would probably say that was won of the smartest things he’d done in his lifetime. It had turned out to be a bloodbath. All for the sake of some data to improve their signet rings.

Alexandria’s eyes flitted to the silver band that resided around his finger. Needless to say, he was in no rush to get that particular upgrade any time soon, if at all. Alex was sure, that if he had gone, it would have been like watching the events at the warehouse all over again, or much worse.

He had seen the darker side of purification as well. Revealing that it wasn’t as simple as just finding someone capable and doing it. Vespa had been chased, and hunted. Simply because he wanted to be happy. The negaverse saw it no more as a traitorous act. To be expected, the squire guessed. But had one corrupt warranted that much attention for it to be regarded as such?? He hadn’t been able to do much to help the poor corrupt, unfortunately, for a Captain by the name of Erythrite had been busy handed Alexandria his a**.

Not even his dreams were safe mind you. Alexandria, as well as most of the city, had been plagued with nightmare after nightmare of a future eclipsed in darkness. His parents, dead. His sisters, missing. His cousin, a corrupt in the negaverse. If that hadn’t been enough… So many of his friends had either ended up missing or dead. And then the only people who got him to come out of his shell, were in no better conditions. Sessrumnir and Oberon had both vanished, he couldn’t remember what had happened to them. It still hurt to think, and wonder what could happen to them. Ganymede and Valhalla however… They had died. And when they had, it was the last crack needed, to completely shattered him. He’d run to Prometheus, a young, beautiful man, whom he thought he’d known well, only to watch him corrupt. The Alexandria in his dreams had begged him, pleaded with him, to kill him and the corrupt said no.

Alexandria could remember the fight that had broken out in excruciating detail. Each scratch, each bruise. Everything. Again, Alexandria begged, and once again he’d been denied. So, in a desperate attempt, Alexandria had picked up his key staff which had been splintered and shattered in the battle, and fell upon it.

A jolt ran through Alexandria, and the young squire clutched at his chest as he grit his teeth. There was no scar there. He had checked many, many times. But he could still see it, he could still draw it from memory alone.

Prometheus would deny him a third time, even after Alexandria had fallen. With a simple call, a General Queen had been called, Sakuradite. From there, Alexandria could remember screaming, lots and lots of screaming. It was his own of course, and there was plenty of pain to accompany it. The General Sovereign had thrust her hand into his chest and grasped his starseed. He wasn’t sure what she was thinking, trying to corrupt a knight that lie there dying. But she did so anyway.The pain would later intensify tenfold. And from that point on, all Alexandria remember was thinking like an animal.

The young squire shook, wrapping his arms around himself as he sucked in a breathe. No. No… It was just a dream. It never happened. He was still human.

After that… Something as simple as a New Year’s Eve gathering had become dangerous. A hotel had been attacked, a number of people taken hostage. They had been gone days, and Alexandria had been naively blind to it until Mimisbrunnr had messaged him in a panic. As it turned out, Valhalla and Ganymede had both been taken. Fearing the worst, a repeat of those dreams, he had rushed to help. He had probably been a little selfish in his attempts to rescue his friends, focusing on them alone, instead of the other’s whom he had passed along the way. Valhalla and Ganymede were his family, they’d been through a lot together, even if it was just in dreams and nightmares. He couldn’t lose them again. His support had come in the forms of two Squires by the names Andronicus and Themiscyra of Uranus and Mars, and of course, once again Sessrumnir, Knight of Jupiter.

Thank the stars for that over sized tank of a human.

Not that Alexandria would ever admit it to the Knight, but he really wasn’t sure what he would have done if Sess hadn’t shown up when he did. Despite their near constant bickering, Alexandria was really glad to have him around. Though, he did feel a little bad for bleeding all over the side of him, and passing out on him like that… Alex made a note to finally get around to thanking the Knight for taking care of him after that, and to perhaps ask what happened after he blacked out.

After that, it had been relatively quiet, that was, until the Summer. They had been at Luna Bay. A freaking summer concert, and sure enough a massive youma struck. It tore the place apart, leaving numerous people injured and everyone with more questions that they had answers to. Adding insult to injury, the monstrous creature managed to escape, disappearing to the depths of the city to strike another day.

In all of those situations, Alexandria hadn’t amounted to much. He couldn’t really fight, his magic wasn’t very offensive. He didn’t have a summons like other knights did. Hell… He couldn’t even help heal them. All he could do was wrap his coat around Ganymede that night. And when he rescued Valhalla, he had suffered wounds of his own. Though, those were small and meaningless when compared to what everyone else went through. It was scary to think, of what was going on in the present day. Even more so to think of what the future had in store for them. Though Alexandria had to wonder which was scarier, knowing what happened in the future, or not knowing. At this point, he kind of prefered the later. Ignorance is bliss after all.

It got the squire wondering. What happened in the past? Everyone knew of the fall of the Silver Millennium, but what happened to the others? To the wonders in which they belonged. What about those stories?

Alexandria looked up at the shelves before him. Shelves that held countless sources. Tomes, scrolls, grimoires, various codexes and endless scraps of paper that held an infinite number of details lay before him. But the next question became, where to start.

It wasn’t like his library was mapped out. Alexandria was still in the process of exploring the library, and he had yet to comb over everything. After staring at the shelves for another few moments, it seemed like the best place to start, was to just pick a book off the shelf and start from there.

So that’s what he did.
The gray haired boy started pouring through books, skimming through them one after another. Word after word, line after line, chapter after chapter. Just looking for something, anything that could answer whatever questions were buzzing around in Alexandria’s head.

---

Alex wasn’t sure how long he had been there. Hours, most likely. Or how many books he had poured though, but so far, it had proved pointless. Quite a few dozen, probably. He’d gotten nowhere. Occasionally, he would find blurbs on someone, or someplace, but it was either long before or long after they had died or it had fallen. Alexandria had pulled countless things from the shelves. Most littered the table he occupied, while others had formed great piles on the floor.

Sighing irritably, he slammed the book he was currently reading closed before storming down an aisle of books once again. Nothing made sense… Course then again, Alexandria could only understand so much of what was written in the materials. There were languages he didn’t know, symbols he didn’t understand. And that was just with Earthen writing… When you added the planets and other wonders? That multiplied tenfold, at least. Was he not looking in the right places? Maybe he was looking for too broad a subject? Perhaps he should start smaller.. With something in particular, or someone. But the question once again became where to start.

Normally, if Alex couldn’t find the source of his problem… He took apart whatever he was working on and started from the beginning. But in this case, there were multiple beginnings. Knights could reincarnate… they could also pass down through descendants. How would he know where to look? “...How would Mimisbrunnr and Aishe do this?” He wondered out loud, his eyes skimming across book titles. They were both scientists, weren’t they? Would they just start somewhere and work their ways from there? Trial and Error.. when one didn’t work, try another way until you find what you want. It seemed like a good idea. It was definitely better than blindly searching through books without even knowing what he was looking for in the beginning. If he had something concrete to start with… perhaps he would get somewhere.

Resigning himself to his fate, Alexandria pulled a few books off the shelf and carried them back towards the table that he had been occupying since his arrival. Alexandria dropped the books on to the table with all the excitement of a popped balloon and dropped into a chair with a sulk. Perhaps he should have brought someone along with him. At least then things would move faster.

Oh well. No sense in dwelling on the idea now. Perhaps another time.

The first two books from his new stack proved useless. One had proven to be nothing more than a journal, hidden by, as far as Alexandria could tell, one of the hired help that had been employed around here eons ago. As to why someone would hide a journal in a public library was beyond Alexandria. The other book had been less than ideal. Some half finished, half baked story about a group of warriors trying to fight off… something. With a scowl, Alexandria tossed it to the side, where it sent one of the towering pillars of books that had grown up from the floor, crashing to the ground. At the moment, Alexandria didn’t give a damn about any and all potential harm he had just caused to the old works. He would worry about it another time. When his headache had lessened, or vanished altogether.

The third book in his pile thankfully looked promising. Blue cover, with leather binding, and on the center was a big old Mercury symbol slapped on the cover, floating over what appeared to be a well. At least, he assumed that was a well…. Whatever. He was just glad it was Mercurian. Finally something he could mostly understand without heaps of guesswork!

Or so he thought.

The book refused to open. No matter what the squire did, he could not seem to separate the leather strap from its lock. He had tried everything mind you. Wiggling it gently, trying to pry it open, tugging it. Some attempts were a little less… soft. Like the time he beat the book on the table or when he ‘accidently’ dropped it. The book clattered to the ground but never gave into the Squire’s whims.

Alexandria scowled at the book dropping his head on the table in defeat. He was ready to give up. He was cold, tired and just several different kinds of exhausted at this point. Maybe he’d take the book to Mimisbrunnr. With his luck, there was probably something technical about the book. And while he was normally very good with tech, Alexandria still had a lot to learn about this kind of stuff.

Turning his head away from that horrid little hell spawn of a book, the young man's gaze fell on a old podium, tucked away in the corner. Oh, right… He remembered that now… Alexandria had moved it on one of his earlier explorations of his wonder. What he hadn’t noticed however, was the book resting on top of it.

It was an old thing. The cover was cracked in several places, leaving Alexandria almost afraid to touch it, lest the thing break in his hands. There was a symbol on the front, almost like a coat of arms of sorts. Though as far as Alexandria could tell, the mark had no distinguishing features of just who it belonged to. With his curiousity growing, he gently flipped it open. The book appeared to be a heraldry. It had sections for each of the nine planets, as well as sections for Ganymede, Polaris, Cosmos and Castor. He’d never heard of that last one, but that wasn’t entirely surprising. He’d been staying on the downlow whenever he was out.

Casually he flipped through the pages, skipping chunks as he jumped from section to section. For a heraldry, it was missing a lot of information on a lot of people. Some sections were completely filled in. Others looked more like a genealogy record. Alex wondered if the book had been a work in progress, and it had just never been finished by the time the Silver Millennium fell. Occasionally he stopped, scanning the pages but nothing really jumped out at him. That was until, he had started flipping through pages in the section dedicated to Jupiter. A name had jumped out at him.

Serge…

He had heard that name once before… Themiscyra had mentioned it briefly when they had rescued Valhalla. Though at the time, he had thought nothing of it… Now though, he knew what she was talking about. This Serge, was apparently Valhalla in another life.

The squire found himself laughing out loud at the discovery. He had to hand it to his friend… That was the most… Electrifying name he had heard to date. A perfect name for someone associated with Jupiter. He scanned the page further, wondering what else was there, and again, he stumbled across another familiar name. This time, belonging to Sessrumnir. Alexandria didn’t laugh this time, instead blinked curiously. Funny, he would have never pegged Sess for a Percy. It was strange. It seemed to fit the tall knight, but at the same time, it was so different from what he was use to.

He kept reading, hoping to find any clues as to their where abouts, and what had happened to them. But unfortunately, there was nothing recorded beyond the dates of birth and death, and the location for both. A blessing, he supposed. Alex really didn’t want to know how the past lives of his friends died. Not like this anyway.

He had been about to flip the page, when a third name jumped out at him. This one however, was foreign to him in every way. Astrid it read. She held no official Knight title, at at least as far as Alex could tell. She was simply a medicine woman from Jupiter. There was something strangely familiar about this name. Alexandria just couldn’t figure out what.

Abandoning the book, he moved to the shelves closest to the podium, hoping- praying that he could find what he needed. Who was this medicine woman. What was so important about her that she warranted getting put in a Knight’s heraldry book. Perhaps she had a title? But then… Why wasn’t it written down? Even if the book was a work in progress. Alexandria thought that would have been the first thing written down about her. It didn’t make sense.

He pulled one book after another off the shelves. Thankfully, this search proved a little easier to accomplish. This time, he had a name. Astrid had saved a small village from a disease once. Another time she had made a near identical medicine for an ailment, just by relying on the herbs around her. This seemed to be a typical thing for her. It seemed that while most of the others relied on commonly supplied medicine, Astrid had taught herself the necessary skills to make her own. She taught others how to do this too it seemed.

Man, if that wasn’t a skill Alexandria would kill to know.

It was no sooner than he thought that, that a memory came back to him.

He remembered Astrid. He had met her once, when his past self, Ronan, had visited Jupiter for some task. Ronan had been all too captivated by her techniques, and the flowers. Given the colder temperatures on Mercury, Ronan probably hadn’t seen many flowers outside of the green houses. Astrid seemed to eat up his enthusiasm though. She reminded Alex a lot of his own mother.

She was graceful and caring. Always answering questions and never seemed to mind the wandering hands that poked around her pots and bowls. Ronan had visited her often during his trip, spending whatever free time he had, with the woman. That was, when he wasn’t busy attending to his own duties.

On the last day of the trip, when Ronan was suppose to return home. Astrid had presented her friend with a gift. A satchel, filled with little vials and things. Alex could see that Ronan looked almost surprised at it, blinking back and forth from his friend and the gift wildly before he threw his arms around her into a hug.

As quickly as it came, the memory was over.

Alex himself, blinked wildly, trying to get his bearings before he remembered where he was, and what he was doing. However, he had a new goal in mind. Alexandria needed to find that satchel. It had to be here. It was here. He knew that. If Ronan would leave it ANYWHERE, it would have been here.

Dropping the book, he bolted down the hall. He began frantically searching every room from top to bottom, almost to the point where he had completely destroyed the room by turning it up on itself. With every room he searched, he began to feel increasingly desperate. It wouldn’t be anywhere else could it? Ronan wouldn’t hide it someplace obvious, like a secret compartment in a bookshelf, would he? Alexandria paled at the thought. Oh lord he hoped not… There were hundreds of bookcases and shelves in this library. It would take him ages to find it if that was the case.

Sighing, he scrubbed his face as he walked into another smaller room.

The squire had been in this room, only a handful of times since first arriving on his wonder. His past self had turned it into a bedroom of sorts. For those days when he spent long hours in the library, and didn’t feel like returning home to sleep. Alex could certainly appreciate the idea.. There were a few times he wished he could do that in the school’s library, instead of having to go home.

Alex had always felt weird poking around in here. It was Ronan’s room. He shouldn’t be poking around in another person’s room. Even if he was Ronan. But now wasn’t the time to feel awkward. He needed to find that bloody satchel. He had to have it again. Alexandria knew it might not change the course of things, but he would feel better with it, than without it.

If it wasn’t in the Library itself, Alexandria hoped, that of all places, it would be in here. So he began combing every inch of the room with great care. He wouldn’t tear this room apart like the others. He checked every shelf, every drawer, every nook and cranny in the room, hoping that he was right.

Except… as he progressed through everything, he was beginning to see that perhaps he was very much wrong. With a frustrated yell, Alexandria let himself flop along the side of the bed in a huff. Maybe…. Maybe this was pointless. For all he knew, Ronan had lost the satchel, or maybe it was off world somewhere. He was doing all this, on something he had only seen once. Wasn't that a bit stupid? He wasn’t so sure anymore. Maybe he should talk to Aishe. She had said that Ronan and her were close when they lived. Perhaps she knew what had become of the satchel Astrid had given him. Ugh… The squire found himself wondering if there was any possible way to get the ghost off Mimisbrunnr itself, and into the library. She could find it so much easier than he could.

Groaning, Alexandria rolled over to bury his face in the mattress. He stopped however, once he felt something pressing up into his stomach. Confused, he pushed himself up into a sitting position. Maybe the mattresses were just hard after all this time? But that didn’t make sense. Climbing off the bed, and moving to the floor, Alexandria ran his hands over the bed as he looked at it at eye level. It seemed flat, he couldn’t visually see any bumps, and he didn’t feel any either, except for where he had been laying. Was there something in the mattress? Perhaps under it…

With an air of caution, Alexandria carefully worked his hands under the mattress. He blinked when his fingers hit something. A rather… big something. What the hell? So he tugged, pulling it free from it’s hiding spot, and what he found, he couldn’t quite believe.

Ronan had stuck the satchel… in between the mattresses of his bed. Like it was some kind of secret diary or something.

Alexandria couldn’t decided if he wanted to be irritated, or laugh, so instead he opened the pouch to peer inside. It contained an assortment of vials, of different shapes and sizes. There were even some things that looked like salves and balms, but he wasn’t too entirely sure. Inside each of those appeared to be a mixture of sort. Alexandria ran his fingers over each one slowly. He could understand now, why Ronan seemed so captivated by them. They were made of something so common, but they accomplished great things.

Carefully setting the vial he had picked up back in the bag, Alexandria tied the strap around his waist, securing its position there. For a long minute, the squire just sat there, thinking about the item. What it meant to Ronan. What it now meant for him, as the current Alexandria. And what it meant for others out there. He could do something more then just sit on the sidelines, or get hurt trying to rescue people he carried about. He could be worth something now. Even if that worth was something as small as helping patch someone’s wounds.

But for now though, it was time to go home. Standing, Alex left the room and went back to the main area to collect the book that he wanted Mimisbrunnr to check out. Giving it a few more test tugs, the latch still wouldn’t open. Oh well. He’d let her worry about it. If not, maybe they could ask around.

He wasn’t sure what the items in the bag did exactly, or what they even were but he knew that, with a little research, the help of some more memories, as well as some inevitable shrieking from Aishe about it, he just might find out.


[WC: 4508]