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Patrolling while ill was never a good idea. Anyone who patrolled had enemies -- some people more than most -- and one never knew when one might stumble straight into the path of someone hostile and willing to take advantage of a moment of weakness.

Fortunately for Mjolnir, it was Hvergelmir that stumbled upon her instead -- and Hvergelmir wasn't that kind of person.

She approached with her hands folded in front of her, cautious to meet a stranger. Hvergelmir had forged several strong bonds within the Negaverse, and that still didn't exactly protect her from all harm. She had considerably fewer positive contacts within the Dark Mirror Court.

"You don't look well," she opened, voice laden with concern. "Do you need something to drink?"

With the weather growing warmer, it was all too easy to overheat and become dehydrated, with all the running around and other physical exertion they all did. Powering up could be taxing in ways the body didn't always realize.

Hvergelmir didn't normally carry water. Like many knights, she traveled light, and didn't carry much of anything with her, the better to react dynamically to whatever situations presented themselves. Laney, on the other hand, carried duffel bags with little meals she'd packed for herself -- it was the contents of Laney's duffel bag that Hvergelmir went reaching into when she produced a bottle of water to offer to Mjolnir. Quite a few uses ago, it had once been spring water, fresh from some previously-untouched-but-now-mass-exploited glacier in some far-off place; now the bottle had been reused a dozen times, and held only the usual Destiny City tap water that came straight out of the faucet. It was lukewarm -- but Mjolnir looked bad enough off that even lukewarm water was probably a help.

Eschewing the bench for the moment, the knight knelt in front of the darker-clad girl and held out the bottle, moving to nudge the hair away from Mjolnir's face. "I'm Hvergelmir Knight of the Cosmos," she answered the pointed question, returning with a different and more immediately important question of her own. "What's happened to you?"

Hvergelmir smiled, unperturbed by the casual swipe at her Wonder's name. People tended to be a bit more testy when they weren't feeling well -- there was no point in holding a minor comment like that against her. "It's a name," she said with a shrug. "Like anything, you get used to it. What's yours?"

Hvergelmir accepted the water bottle back when it was returned. She was unconvinced by the woman's noncommittal response: this was an apparently severe level of exhaustion for something mysteriously magical. Some people didn't like confronting illness, though -- having a diagnosis could sometimes be frightening. And some people had other reasons to avoid the truth: but 'have you had unprotected sex recently' wasn't the sort of question you tossed at a perfect stranger before you'd even gotten their name.

She put up her hand to halt the woman's departure.

"Rest a while longer," Hvergelmir said. "I won't hurt you. Do you usually patrol by yourself?"

Hvergelmir grinned, looking away momentarily. "Because I work separately from my allies, too," she offered in response. "I'm not a warrior -- I'm just someone who tries to decide for herself what's right and what's wrong. And you seem genuinely ill -- why shouldn't I care?"

She set the bottle on the bench next to Mjolnir -- just in case she changed her mind and wanted more water. A Nordic name, just like her own.

"I'm a non-combatant," she explained further. "I don't believe in fighting people for no good reason. Talking is actually more of what I'm used to, so this is -- normal, for me."

Hvergelmir glanced the other woman over briefly looking for obvious signs of physical distress -- discolored lips perhaps, or dark veins climbing toward her heart that might be indicators of an infection. Mjolnir had said 'logic' had already failed, but that didn't curb the impulse to check anyway -- just in case. "How long have you been feeling this way?"

Hvergelmir blinked. "Not everyone sees it that way," she said with interest, thinking of the different sailor soldiers she'd met from the Dark Mirror Court, and what it had meant to each of them.

It was always Persephone and Chariklo that loomed large in her mind, at times like these. Chariklo, that had followed her own heart and her conscience back to a place where she felt like she was pursuing her ideals, but suffered all the pain and sacrifice of that choice. Persephone, that...... Persephone, that Hvergelmir had failed. What ugly choices everyone in this war came to, one day or another. What incredible, colossal torment.

"It takes incredible conviction to go your own way," she said with feeling. "No one's trammeled the path ahead of you. But you can be certain that your choices are your own -- that you're still your own person. Sometimes that matters."

Mjolnir's description of her condition sounded much more alarming, however. A sudden burst of pain, followed by-- based on her description of waking up in a different place -- fainting entirely, and now a constant energy drain along with worse symptoms. It could easily be mundane rather than magical -- and if it was mundane, than it was a rather serious mundane.

"You should see about having a CT scan done," she said gravely. "Don't rule out something that doctors can treat. "But if it's magical -- " Hvergelmir furrowed her brow, uncertain. "I'd have to ask around. For knights and sailor soldiers, we can draw more strength by visiting our homeworlds, but . . . I don't know much about the senshi of the Dark Mirror Court. I'm not sure what might affect you -- and it could be that powering up was only giving you a health boost that masked your symptoms. You -- you really shouldn't be out patrolling alone. Or at all, frankly. Surely someone else could carry the load."

Decisively, she drew her stardust cloak out of the air and held its broad expanse of shimmering fabric out for Mjolnir to take. "Put this on for a while," she said. "If you're losing energy, it should help with that a little bit."

That made Hvergelmir frown. She and Jenna, of all people, knew what it was like to worry about health care. For the Dark Mirror Court, though, to corrupt its members and then not look after them, despite having an existing power structure.... It couldn't have been easy, for Mjolnir. And it was no long-term way to live.

She shook her head. "We have more uses than just fighting," Hvergelmir insisted. "Are you sure that's all you're good at?"

Hvergelmir's brow furrowed, crestfallen. Mjolnir was, once again, trying to leave. She'd stopped her once -- it was pushing too far to try and halt her a second time, even if it seemed far too soon to let the ailing woman attempt to make her way home. They'd barely met. Hvergelmir would just have to hope Mjolnir stayed safe until they could meet again. "No one is just a blunt object," she said with certainty, remembering echoes of Titan describing himself so similarly when they'd first met. That still hurt to think of. "No one is just a tool. You're a human being -- and you matter very much. I hope we can meet again."

Hvergelmir accepted her cloak back, albeit a little reluctantly. There was no drawing this out any further. Instead, she drew out a single, shimmering ribbon and held it across to Mjolnir. "For you to keep. It's only good once -- but it should give you enough energy to get yourself home in a pinch. You just have to concentrate on it to activate it. Just promise me that, if you won't listen to anything else, you'll at least start bringing water with you the next time you go out." She touched Mjolnir's arm for a moment, lightly. "I'll message you if I find out anything that could help you."