Welcome to Gaia! ::

The sky haunted Cybele, too. It wasn't so much the moon, for her. The moon had offered her safety once or twice, and she hadn't thought about the Princess very much in a long time now. No, for Cybele it was the stars. On the quiet nights, she couldn't help but looking up at them eventually. She could pick out Megrez and Anser and Jupiter and Mars, and sometimes she could squint and picture her asteroid among them, waiting for her. Sometimes she felt like space was holding secrets from her that it seemed to give to all of her allies, but lately she was realizing that the answers might be there for her, too, if she bothered to go look for them.

Half the time, she'd find a youma at about that point, and that was what stopped her. If she spent any time poking around in ancient ruins, there would be monsters left crawling the streets.

The aura she found tonight was not a youma. It was an Eternal Senshi, a Transcendent one, too, Cybele noted, which left a feeling in her mouth she couldn't quite name.

All that faded when she saw who it was. "Ganymede! It's good to see you," she said, a softer smile than usual coming to her face. There was real happiness there, and a bit of relief. After being in the war this long, when people didn't show up for a while, she had a habit of assuming the worst.

"It's been since the battle, hasn't it?" There had been battles since, of course, but nothing came close to as intense to what had happened at the gates of the Negaverse castle. Had she seen the other woman in passing since? It was hard to say.

She tilted her head. "I suppose it's a few years too late to say that I'm glad you made it out all right." Cybele took a step forwards. "Still. I'm glad you're here."

"Carnivals," said Cybele, tensing up a bit just thinking about it. "Circuses, too. I think I've seen about four of them go horribly wrong at this point. Any gathering has a chance of getting attacked, but when I see red and white stripes or those strips of flashing lights?" She shook her head. "I don't avoid them, but I go in knowing I'll need to punch something."

Her voice was matter-of-of fact, but it lacked the dark bitterness that it had often carried in the past. Being a warrior was normal for her now. She would fight the Negaverse at every gathering in her entire life if she needed to, but she had learned to relax a bit in between. She even smiled a little as she added, "And yes. Halloween, too, but that one at least makes sense."

It was easier for the real dark and frightening things to hide in plain sight with all the decorations around.

"But, no. I've only seen a few of those kind of attacks, nothing nearly so intense as when we raided the castle." She squinted into the distance for a few moments. "Which doesn't feel like much now, but it did get the Negaverse off the streets for a few months, which is more than we can say about anything else we've done."

She snapped back into focus, though, her smile going even gentler. "Enough about all that, though. How have you been doing?" She paused. "And your family?" She thought she remembered something about a partner, at least.

Cybele nodded, her lips pressed together in a way that was meant to be sympathetic but that might have come across as more grim. She was no stranger to the constant feelings of guilt and fear, although they had faded more into the background of her consciousness, these days.

Instead of dwelling for too long on that, she quirked an eyebrow at the mention of children before smiling. "Three?" she asked. "That sounds like a handful. I'm glad they're all right, though." She didn't know Ganymede all that well, but for some reason she could see the other woman being a good mom.

"I've been well, actually," she said automatically, before she paused to actually think about it. "Not always, of course but so much more than I used to be. I mean," she turned so that her eternal wings were obvious, and she ran a finger along the soft edge of one. "White wings. I never thought that would be how this would end up, but it turned out when I stopped pushing every member of Order away, there were plenty of them who also didn’t want to be alone. Now I’m about to run my second training event.”

It felt surreal to say it like that, but it was true. She’d almost begun to settle into the role of a mentor.

Her brow furrowed, then, a more genuine expression of concern coming to her face. “And you don’t have to be alone in this, either. I know there was a time when I complained about the Princesses never being around,” she shook her head at that, given the company, “But I don’t feel like that anymore.” Maybe it was because she was an Eternal herself, but she was realizing more and more that under the magic, they were all just people.

Sometimes people who couldn’t be saved, but still people.

“If you need time to be with your children, or for anything else, that’s all right. We can watch the city for you.”

"Easier in the sense that we don't have to deal with the denial, the running, the pushing away, on top of the rest of it?" offered Cybele after Ganymede had finished, with a tilt to her head because she wasn't sure, either. "Easier in the sense that we can put our energy somewhere where it does something, instead?"

She turned back to face the other senshi, and although she stood tall, she wasn't as stiff as she could have been. "Not easy. There are still so many problems, but I can honestly say it's been nice making my own Court a home."

A community had been what she'd wanted, back when she was new and bright-eyed but confused. It had been what she needed, deep down, when she was traumatized and lashing out. Now that she was putting the effort into it, she was finding herself on a much better path.

She observed the Transcendence mark with interest. She could feel the extra brightness in Ganymede's aura, but she hadn't noticed this line before. It was more understated than many of the markings she'd seen. "I thought the running theory these days was that Transcendence had something to do with space," she said. "Or does space come with responsibilities, too? My asteroid is one of the things I've still sort of been avoiding." She glanced down, almost embarrassed, even as she held out her own unmarked palms.

"Not completely avoiding," corrected Cybele, although after a moment she gave a small shrug and glanced down. "I was for a while. You know I fell into Negaverse propaganda a bit back when I was just getting started, and then when I started seeing their true colors, I was so determined to disprove everything they’d said.” Most of that had been easy enough. Cybele had no longer believed that Order were the true murderers after a certain night. Blood and screams from back then still haunted her on the bad days.

It was Chaos’s accusations about space that had lingered longer in her mind. “I thought if I stayed on Earth, it would prove that I wasn’t from anywhere but here. It would prove that I wasn’t fighting for anywhere but here.” Now she was more aware that there was no way to disprove a spiritual connection, but she had tried for years.

“Things changed. I went up eventually,” said Cybele with a small wave of her hand. “And it was fine. It was beautiful, really. Purple skies. Deep forests. These flowers were everywhere.” She reached up to touch the vines on her tiara. “I even saw a memory. Not much of one, but enough to know I was probably a huntress.” Her smile edged sideways. "Shocking, I know."

She glanced back to Ganymede and blinked a few times, as if she were just coming to a realization.

“Maybe I still think more the way I used to than I thought. Seeing the asteroid was,” she paused, searching for a word, “Nice. Part of me wants to know more, but I still don’t want it to become more important to me than what’s going on here, in my own city.”

She swallowed. “Also, I’d never forgive myself if someone was eaten by a youma while I was off looking at flowers.”

"Beautiful, and broken, and safe," repeated Cybele, her voice going softer than it often did. Her gaze softened, too, as she looked down from the sky to the area around them, her lips pressing together ever so slightly. "I think I would like to see Destiny City get to that point," she said. "If we can get it safer, then we can start to work on fixing the brokenness, both here and in the other parts of the universe."

There was a part of her that did want to see her asteroid alive again, like she'd seen in that snippet of a vision. It was a small part, much smaller than the part of her that wanted her to see people stop dying in the streets of Destiny City, but it was there.

Cybele was practical. It didn't seem likely that this war would ever end, at least not with her alive. She didn't often let herself think about what she would do in that scenario, but in that moment, she decided that she would like to have more time to explore her world.

"What about you?" she asked, refocusing as she looked back to Ganymede. "What made you decide to start spending time on your-" she squinted, trying to think back to science class, "Moon?"

There was an almost mischievous tilt to Cybele's head. "Now, now. Size isn't everything," she said, raising an eyebrow.

"Although that applies to me, too. Cybele is one of the bigger asteroids, but I don't think it had much at all going on in the way of politics." She wasn't sure about that. She hadn't explored enough to know much at all about her asteroid's history, but when she arrived, she'd found herself in front of some sort of hunting camp, not a city or anything that seemed particularly important on a grander scale.

Her gaze softened. "I don't mean to come off as harsh about space. It's not for me, but I'm glad you found that meaning. Truly."

She'd never felt like she was thrown into the war, herself. She'd chose to fight. On the other hand, she certainly understood the feeling of being alone and in over her head. She understood anger, too, all too well. There had been years when she'd lashed out at everything she could, and she still struggled in that area at times.

She'd eventually found stability and strength in reaching out to others, Ganymede being one of them.

"You saved me, you know," she said. "A few times." The fight in the Negaverse citadel came to mind. She wasn't sure if any of them would have survived without Ganymede holding off Laurelite.

"So if your world helped you find your way in all this, I suppose it helped me, too."