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Quite a bit of time had passed since the last time Hvergelmir had seen Labyrinthite. She always dreaded what that meant, when she didn't see someone. And though she tried to keep an optimistic frame of mind about these things, generally -- since Carmine had always tried to instill in her ways to stop focusing on predicting negative outcomes, and the tools that he'd given her were all she had left of his help anymore -- it was hard not to worry, with Labyrinthite. She knew in her memories of the future what he was capable of becoming, if things went badly. And she knew what a dangerously precarious state he'd been in.

It was a relief, then, to see him finally approaching her bench one night. Finally back -- and not to carve out her tongue, she hoped. He was a General now. From there, it was only one promotion away from the man who'd reached into her chest to try to fill her heart with Chaos. The Reaper-King.

She wore a tentative smile at his approach, and set her book aside on the bench.

"I've been worried," she said, hope lodged in her throat. "I'm glad you came."

Hvergelmir smiled empathetically. That was often how she felt, trying to summarize what was going on in her life for people like Ida or Babylon, who didn't see her on a daily basis. For Colin, or Mont Blanc. For Tara. Sometimes everything ran together and she just thought to herself, It would be more exhaustion than it's worth to explain it.

So she said then, as she said to Labyrinthite now, "Oh, I've been fine. Nothing particularly exciting to report. Just catching up on my reading and trying to remember to set my clocks back in a few days. Not really looking forward to the early sunsets -- winter's never been my favorite."

She patted the bench beside her. "How are you feeling? Better? Worse?"

She responded with a simple question.

Simple, but she thought it might not be a simple answer, for Labyrinthite. He was so greatly changed from the man who'd attacked her, years ago -- and such a far cry from the man she'd dreamed was waiting four more years down the line, into the future. He was full of nervous energy. Uncomfortable. Unhappy.

Don't be afraid, she wanted to say. That's your heart. You're trying to save yourself.

Her expression was solicitous. Caring.

What she asked was:

"Did you want to?"

Hvergelmir reached over toward Labyrinthite, one hand outstretched to rub his back in soft, soothing circles. She let her other hand smooth over his shirtfront, finding the erratic bassline of his heart.

"It's what you do," she repeated his own phrase back to him.

"It's not what you are."

She wished, more than anything, she could tell him it didn't matter. She wished she could explain that without Chaos in his soul, he could feel human again and all the pain would go away. All the uncertainty. All the conflict.

From what she'd seen, it wasn't true. He'd feel human again, if that happened -- but he'd always carry the marks of his enslavement to Metallia's will on his heart. He'd always live with the knowledge of what he'd done, and remember how little remorse he'd been able to feel.

Metallia left scars.

"You've served Chaos for a very long time now, haven't you? No wonder you're exhausted." She let the hand at his chest return to her side, but kept the other braced lightly between his shoulderblades. "There's no shame in wanting to live. There's no shame in looking at your life and wanting to make something else of it. I'd say that shows a great deal of maturity."

The hand on Labyrinthite's back went up his neck to stroke through his hair, carding her fingers through soft, dark locks. "Only people who don't believe that anyone can change think there's no difference between what we do and who we are. They are so very different -- you're not a fixed moment in time. You're not a universal constant. You're you -- and you could still be you if you stopped doing this."

She wished she could give him -- could give any of them -- some piece of her faith. She wished she could rip it out of her chest and put it in theirs, stow it in their starseeds like a little candleflame to scorch out Metallia's dark whispers.

It didn't work that way. All she could do was tell them, over and over again -- keep reinstilling the idea you could be free for as long as it held root -- then tell them once more, as long as it took.

"You're a survivor," Hvergelmir said, curling her fingers through the hair at his nape. "You can survive this, too. There's life waiting on the other side of this crossroads."

Hvergelmir clucked her tongue, disappointed. There was nothing anyone could do to bring Labyrinthite's mother back to life if she'd died -- but there was plenty to be irritated about with the news that Hvergelmir's own peers were unwilling to offer him mercy even when he tried not to fight them.

"I believe you have it in you to do very great things," she said firmly. "And I'll keep believing in you for as long as you need me to. I don't care what Iris says, or that knight, or that other senshi. There's no vow that prevents me from taking up arms against my own people. It matters to me what you want -- please know that. I would fight for you."

Hvergelmir sighed, her fingers curling soft circles in the hair at Labyrinthite's nape. "Hope is a very flimsy thing. It's always easier to stay on the path we're already on than to find the courage to break from it. Your resolve is fragile right now -- but you're trying. You keep trying. You had a setback -- someone who tried to shatter that resolve -- and you still came here. You're fighting for yourself."

She let her other hand come to rest on Labyrinthite's knee, steadying. "Now is when you need someone to believe in you more than ever. Now's the hardest time. Now is when you need to know that someone's fighting to give you a chance. That you're not alone."