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He'd put this off for as long as he could.

Carson had awakened as Triumphalis a few weeks ago, welcomed lovingly into the fold by Pharos and Bifrost's expertise and enthusiasm. He took the mantle page of Chronos with mixed emotion. Carson hadn't wanted to be involved at all. He'd already left one war with pins in his leg to show for it - he hadn't wanted to rush back into another. But if he had to fight, at least it would be for the Zodiac court.

What kind of sick coincidence was that?

Anyway, he knew instinctively that it was going to upset Elke, so he just... forgot to mention it. But right now she seemed like she was in a fairly good mood. The cupcakes had turned out perfectly, the icing was exactly the right consistency, and Elke was piping away like a cupcake-finishing machine, her swirls of lavender buttercream each more perfect than the last.

"Elke," said Carson, looking up from the pan he was carefully pulling cakes out of. "I wasn't sure how to bring this up, because it's all really new to me, but I'm a page. Triumphalis of Chronos."

He watched her hands. He'd probably just made her ruin a cupcake. He felt bad about that - his timing could have been better.

Elke was happy, maybe. She thought so. Her life seemed to be looking up, no ghosts to follow her, no youma to shadow her; she hadn't spoken to another Zodiac in months. She'd passed the civilian forms of those she knew as knights in the street without looking up from her phone. It hurt to remember, so she forgot, dropping each memory as it came up. Memories of Menachem? Stop. Memories of Serenade, of Hero, of Grayson? She cut them off as ruthlessly as she pulled weeds from her mother's garden. The physical labor of it all brought her comfort, the repetitiveness made it easy to lose herself in the process of it all.

She didn't respond to Carson's confession for several cupcakes after he'd said it, and when she did it was to slowly lift her head and set the piping bag aside. Her hands shook as she fisted them in her apron. "That's not a very funny joke," she said, olive-green eyes focusing on the iced cupcakes, searching for each for flaws. "You know that's not funny."

Carson had a lot of hypothetical scenarios for how this was going to go, but somehow he hadn't managed to anticipate Elke's actual reaction. Well, maybe a little bit. The shaking hands were something he'd expected - she shook less lately than she had when they'd first met, but it still happened sometimes when she forgot to eat, or was upset about something. He'd expected to upset her. He'd expected to make her hands shake.

It was just the fact that she was otherwise eerie calm that he hadn't counted on.

"I know it's not," he said. "I wouldn't joke about this."

He could have just... not told her. That was an option. Well, not anymore. But he should have gone with it.

Why couldn't he have lied and told her it was a joke? "I know," she said, and she picked up a piping cap and carefully clicked it into place on the funnel. Elke folded her hands on the counter, thumbnail digging into the rough skin of her opposite knuckle. "Triumphalis. Of course you're Triumphalis, I can't get away from it..." She slumped, sitting on the tiled floor of the kitchen, forehead against the cabinet. "I'll never really escape it. Carson, are you sure? Triumphalis?"

Carson wasn't sure whether to approach her. Like, sure, he could, but then he might be crowding someone in the middle of a panic attack and that typically didn't go well? She wasn't exactly pleased with him at the moment, that was for sure. But she was also down on the floor and trying to make herself as small as humanly possible, and he felt the need to respond to that somehow. "Yeah," he said, taking a few steps towards her and crouching so he was on her level. "Triumphalis."

The name felt natural on his tongue - he knew it was his. It had always been meant to be his.

"I take it you're familiar?" he asked. "Is that good or bad?"

"You were my handmaiden," Elke said, pulling her hands over her face, tangling them in her bangs. "You... you were in love with me, but there was someone else, and we were... we were friends..." She didn't know what she wanted, other than for Carson to not be Triumphalis. She thought she'd gotten away...

Elke reached up, fingers spread for his.

Carson reached back, fingers matched to hers.

"I'm not sure how I feel about us being some kind of starcrossed lovers deal," he said, inching awkwardly closer to her and adjusting his position - crouching like this was hurting his knee. "Is that what you're worried about? That I only fell for you because of some thousand-year-old crush?" Because, honestly, it kind of made sense to Carson that his past life - that he didn't remember, at all, so there - had been by Elke's side. But he was also pretty sure he could understand why that would make her uncomfortable. She'd had a terrible time being Virgo so far.

History repeating itself did not bode well for Elke Arma.

"I'm sure it's just a coincidence," he said. (He was not totally sure.)

"It's never coincidence," she said bitterly. Elke curled into his chest, tucked her blonde head under his chin. "It was more than a crush. She loved Virgo until the day she died, even though she knew I'd never love her back. Not in the way she wanted."

Friendship was enough for some people. Triumphalis, the woman she'd known, had accepted Virgo's limits, had even helped Virgo hide her illicit pregnancy. She could see nothing of her handmaid in Carson's face. Not because of differences in kindness or warmth, but because she didn't want to see. "It's not unreasonable for me to be afraid... I made so many friends here, and in the end they were all... like me."

Carson settled his arms around her shoulders. He'd expected her to want to keep her distance from him, but then he was surprised. Carefully, he settled one hand over her hair and stroked the back of her head carefully. From her description, it sounded like the Triumphalis-that-was had lucked out... but he sincerely doubted that saying so would go over well. "I'm not sure if that's what you'd want in a handmaiden," he said instead.

He pressed his lips briefly to the top of her head. "I'm sorry that I was one more disappointment in that regard," he said. It definitely wasn't something he'd set out to do, and he thought she understood that. Carson had been utterly normal when she met him last January. He'd been... completely mundane.

And now he wasn't. He was Triumphalis, page of Chronos. And apparently he was a reincarnated space lesbian. Or something. This was all very, very new to him.

Elke pressed her face into his shoulder, took a deep breath. That was when she noticed the burning smell and shot up to her feet, tipping slightly from dizziness. "The cupcakes," she said, pulling an oven mitt on and opening the oven. At least there was no smoke, just a few very toasty cupcakes.

Crisis averted, Elke sighed. "You're not a disappointment to me," she said. "I'm... very fond of you, you know. It'll take more than... this... to make me leave you."

Carson followed her to his feet, one arm extended towards her as she wobbled. No harm done, he thought, watching her set the cupcakes aside. He was going to keep his hand raised slightly above her shoulder, though... just in case. "That's a relief, he said, leaning around her to turn off the oven. "Because I - I'm fond of you, too. I'd hate to have all this come to an end over something I didn't exactly pick."

He let his hand come to rest on her shoulder.

"I won't tell you more than you want to know," he assured her. "I'll only ever bring it up if you ask about things. I know you're out of that world, and I respect that. I don't want to be the one to drag you back in, just because I wound up there."

The corners of Elke's eyes crinkled just slightly, which was about as overt a smile as anyone got from her anymore. "You say that now," she said. "But I'm trying aleppo chili peppers with that Belgian chocolate next week, and I'll need you to test it." That was as dropped as the powered-life discussion was going to get, she thought. Better to just let it be.

She rested her hand over his. It was alright now, and that was what mattered.

Carson laughed gently. "Oh," he said, "it'll take way more than Aztec hot chocolate to make me walk away from this sweet gig." Quite literally. He eyed the cupcakes. "Those'll need a while to cool," he said, stating the obvious. "Enough time for an episode of something. Care to join me?"