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Tallulah followed Elzo back into the kitchen, pausing briefly to pull her robe around her shoulders. "Hey," she said, knotting the belt around her waist. "So that was fun."

"Nick's out," she added, getting a glass down from the cabinet and following his lead. "He likes having you over. Everyone gets what they want."

She hopped up onto the counter and looked him over. Elzo's hair had gone from blonde to white in the years they'd been out of touch, and she'd gathered that while she'd spent as much time as she could avoiding her homeworld, he'd spent as much time as he could on his. Even here on Earth, there was a tinge of the otherworldly to him, a notion that his thoughts weren't completely present.

"You seem preoccupied tonight," she said, swirling the ice in her glass. "You okay?"

Tallulah rolled her eyes. "Yes, you're wonderful," she assured him. But she did not exist to pat Elzo Xanis on the butt and assure him he was good at things. He had other people for that. For all she knew, he had people he paid to do that. Professional ego-padders and butt patters, kept on the payroll and making $40k a year.

"The recent past?" she asked, crossing her legs. "Or further back?" He'd been married, she thought, if she was remembering correctly. Not for long - it had gone poorly. It had to be hard for him to see her and Nick so happy together, so functional.

"You were gone for a long time," she said. She bit her lip. On Europa - not that she'd been recently - there were memories lurking around every corner, visions of a past life that she knew to be true but still had no bearing on her present. Signy had stood timidly at Jupiter's left hand and trailed behind Ganymede as the second of the guard. Signy had danced with the senshi from Regulus, had plunged beneath her moon's ice and emerged shivering and confirmed in her power.

Signy had lived and died a thousand years ago. She'd had her time.

But if Tallulah had all those memories in her head just from her short sojourns to her moon, then Elzo, it stood to reason, had to have his past self's entire life, and that was a lot for one person to bear. Too much, possibly. "On Castor, I mean. I don't have a lot of memories of Europa, hardly a whole life's worth, but the ones I have are vivid. I can't imagine what yours are like."

Tallulah pursed her lips, wishing he'd be more forthcoming. He'd confirmed that something was wrong, but she wasn't looking forward to playing twenty questions to pin down what exactly. Something something past lives. He was being cryptic and flowery, and she was getting a little bit... not annoyed, exactly, but something.

"Oh, the mood's fine," she assured him. All the angst in the world couldn't ruin what she was feeling right now, though she was concerned for him.

She got down off the counter and reached around on top of the fridge. "I have something stronger," Tallulah suggested, pulling down a bottle of scotch. "How do you take this? Neat? Over ice?" They'd been drinking earlier, but the buzz had worn off a while ago. If there was anything she knew for sure would take the edge off, it was this.

Being an adult was so great sometimes, even when you had to deal with your friend-with-benefits' existential crisis.

"You're not gonna like what I have to say," she said, getting down two clean glasses. "Cuz what I'm gonna say is that you're not responsible for whatever ******** up s**t the last person with your starseed did, just like I'm not some shrinking violet little girl ashamed of her accent and afraid to dance at the ball. So, again, how do you want your scotch?"

Tallulah poured two glasses of scotch, one for him and one for herself. "Most of that was... a lifetime ago," she said, shaking her head. His argument wasn't wrong, per se, it was just stupid. Yes, starseeds were a universal constant. If you shared a starseed with someone, you shared your essence, what some theologians would call a soul. But Tallulah had never been particularly religious, maybe less so now that she'd spent the last six years of her life absorbed in senshi activities.

"So you have a starseed in common," she said. "Some basic personality traits and some coincidental biographical details. Past that, this is your life, and you're not obligated to repeat the same mistakes."

She took a sip from her glass, looking Elzo over. Lina, or whatever her name had been, was probably one of those repeated mistakes, in retrospect. They hadn't really talked about her. They weren't really the kind of friends who talked about things like that.

"So, like, whatever you've done so far that you think is similar," she said, "you don't have to keep going down that path. You're allowed to change."

Tallulah frowned. She'd had a pretty bad martyr complex at points, but honestly, how the ******** was Elzo still standing under the weight of his own huge ******** ego? "That's not your fault," she said. "If the senshi can't get their s**t together well enough to fight back, that's not your fault. You can't save people who don't want to be saved. Maybe a few years ago, someone with your power could have grabbed the reins and made everyone fall in line and follow one leader, but now? You'd kill yourself trying."

She took a large sip from her glass for emphasis, keeping a straight face through the burn. "I mean," she said, "I can't speak for everyone, but Nick and I never asked you to martyr yourself for us. Lots of senshi never asked you to be their martyr. And no one ever asked Polaris, and no one ever asked Iris. So yes, you know how bad things can get and yes you're tremendously powerful - but if everyone else can't get their heads out of their own asses long enough to stop sucking face with the Negaverse and fight for a while, that's not your fault. Yeah, so what, maybe in five years we all wind up living in the woods."

Unlikely.

"It's not your fault if that happens. One person rowing can't save a sinking ship."

Or maybe Europa was just too cynical for her own good. She wasn't a royal - what did she know?

Jack s**t.

Beryl. Now that was a name she hadn't heard in a long time. For Elzo to have had an opportunity to kill her before he was even a prince--

Tallulah shook her head and reached for his hand. "You were a kid, Elzo. Eighteen, nineteen years old, tops. I don't care what the law says, we were children when we started fighting this war. We weren't killers. We weren't ready to be. And that's not your fault. I mean - Beryl? What the <********> has Beryl ever done? She disappeared. Killing her wouldn't have done anything."

If she'd ever been more than a figurehead, well, Europa wasn't sure.

"Metallia was always there," she shrugged. "There were always more kings and queens. You didn't fail anyone." As far as anyone could tell, Beryl had been removed from the fight a long time ago - ultimately, Castor's actions were a zero sum game.

She stepped closer to him, moving her hand a little higher up his arm. "I mean, yeah, we're the underdogs," she said, "But they have the harder fight, remember? Our goal is balance. But for darkness to win, it has to destroy every last one of us - and there are always more of us."

That wasn't what he was asking her to tell him, though. "Elzo, I can stand here and tell you that you didn't fail us all that I want, but that's not gonna absolve you. Only you can do that."

Tallulah raised her eyebrows at him, stepping away. A smirk crossed her lips. "Yes, well," she said, about the wine. "You have plenty of time to pay us back, because we're not planning to kick you out any time soon." That would just be cruel. Elzo was like a puppy. A sex-obsessed puppy with phenomenal cosmic powers, but a puppy nonetheless.

"Just - stop taking everything so personally, okay? The world's not personally resting on your shoulders," she said, and finished her drink. She went for another pour, then thought better of it. "Do you want more of this? 'Cuz I'm putting it away, otherwise."

She bit her lip.

"Are you going to stay over? There's room in the bed. We can snuggle."