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It had been - well. It felt like it'd been ages and ages since she'd been able to stand in these halls, or hear the rush of Destiny City traffic surrounding her as she slipped between forms to become Chrysocolla; certainly it had been maybe two years, if that, but it felt longer. Something like a tenth of her lifespan, if she counted the full lived-in years of her body and not the halfway-time that was her shortened memory; not a negligible amount of time, but hardly an odyssey's-worth of days. Going all that time without powering up nearly as frequently as she would've liked -- it'd been a little harrowing.
It wasn't as if it hadn't been worth it, rough as it had been at times. But Chrysocolla had been away from home so long, needing to stay in a skin that was barely hers and belonged to a woman who didn't truly exist if she wanted to do things right, that this felt like the greatest sort of relief possible. (General Schorl might have taught her patience, but it was an overlay on her no matter if she was Chrysocolla or Poppy, and it would never quite come naturally. Umber's long-ago corrections had set her into a way she couldn't quite shake, and had no intent to ever truly try to.)

She couldn't relax until these ill-gotten spoils were out of her hands entirely, and she counted them in subspace again and again, to be sure.

• Point one: a glimmering scepter, worn with age and dirt and rust, still flesh enough with lingering Chaos-magic to light up to her senses if she centered herself and felt out - but too antique to do anything but be an artifact, and a point of pride for anyone who would happen to steal it. Without doubt, this was ancient; she'd cleaned it as best she could, taking pains to not destroy any further of the remaining filigree, but there was only so much Chrysocolla could do. She was no sorceress and no metalworker.
  
• Point two: the starseed of a traitor, hard-won, pristine despite what brutality had been wrought unto the body it'd been claimed from. She'd ripped this out of that woman's chest without mercy, waited until Mercurian blues faded back into civilian clothes, and she had made that body lie to anyone who would discover it later. A violent death? Well, it'd been a violent something. More than well-deserved, because that was what you got if you ran away from the Negaverse, if you shed your skin and lied like a ******** snake about everything you'd been.
  
• Point three: less of an item, really, and more of a previous undertaking: documentation. Names, and photos, and documentation of everything she'd been doing over the past two years, all stored on a USB. It was -- it felt important to show she really had been busy, that it really had taken this long, that she wasn't just -- lying, or faking, or fabricating a story. That Chrysocolla was capable, in the end.

Well. If she just stood around all day, someone was going to catch her and stare and ask what she was doing here -- or worse, it'd be someone who'd been recruited in the past bit, and they wouldn't even recognize her at all, and that would be so awkward that just the thought of it drove her to knock on the ornate doors - and then slip inside, as soon as she had confirmation it was permitted.

"My Queen," Chrysocolla said, with a deep curtsey, and tried not to let on she had actually been thinking about what to say quite a lot (she didn't want to seem rude, or weird, or informal -- this was Queen Laurelite, and Chrysocolla was still, ultimately, very little in comparison), "I've returned from my mission. If you - want," and she stumbled over her words, debating how formal she wanted to sound and how awkward it would be, "I have the artifact recovered and in my possession, alongside the starseed of the traitor who stole it, and documentation of -- information I gathered while I was on her trail. About her new identity after leaving the Negaverse, and her friends, and - all of that."

Chrysocolla flushed. God, but she felt fifteen and gawky and awkward again like this, no matter how many years ago that was. It'd been Laurelite then, at the beginning of her time with the Negaverse; and it was Laurelite now, at her return to Destiny City after what felt like ages away.

She was, to some degree, trying to present herself: it didn't come off quite naturally, and perhaps it never would, but even then the woman standing before Laurelite was a far cry from the stroppy teenager from all those years ago. Elegance would never fit quite right on her, but confidence? That was another story.

As for appearance -- Chrysocolla looked older, certainly, the years she'd spent away having finally peeled away most of her residual baby fat; she might not've looked her age, but she didn't look fourteen-fifteen anymore. She was favoring her right side, but it wasn't in a way that spoke of real injury, only recovering strain.

To Laurelite, she gave a quick noise of assent, taking a moment to - focus, reach, grab the right things and not whatever else she was storing in there for ease of access - and everything she was waiting for fell into her hands, out of subspace. One glittering starseed, one USB with a starseed design scrawled on it in sharpie Cursive, and a delicate scepter with the slow, gentle pulse of Chaos magic nestled within, the withering wear of ages all across its surface. She extended it all to her Queen, gentle as anything; it'd be embarrassing to drop it all now.

"I'm -- really sorry it took way longer than I thought it would." Chrysocolla sounded... embarrassed, maybe. Certainly she sounded less brave than she had a moment ago. "She was... way more suspicious about things than I originally thought she was going to be? So it took forever just to set up a situation where we were talking, and if I came on too strong she'd just think I was some random creep... "

She sighed, not exactly gunshy but suddenly aware of how less reasonable it sounded once she put it out into the world like this. "The best way I figured out to not waste years on just getting close, once I was sure it was her, was, um. Getting into a relationship? It didn't get to the point of engagement or any of that, but we were - close. Or she thought we were, anyway."

"Close enough that she told me some secrets, because she thought she was safe, and that if anyone was going to come after her they would've done it already. Close enough she was willing to bring the scepter into her apartment, because she trusted me, and I 'deserved to know what she was so paranoid about'." Chrysocolla's smile was sweet, and demure, and it was the same expression she'd worn then too -- it was a well-used smile, one she'd perfected, one she'd practiced.

"So I thanked her, of course. And then I killed her." And a pause. "That should be all taken care of? I tried to be careful with how I left the body and the scene, but I didn't end up sticking around for long enough to make sure it passed full muster; I didn't want to take any chances she had friends she'd told anything who might come looking."

"And I'm... fine, really. Mostly just tired. It was a lot lonelier than I thought it would be. If you think it's a good idea, I can go to Medical to make sure everything's alright, but I felt it'd be best if I came to you immediately."

Chrysocolla flushed. She ducked her head as if to hide it, to distract with the curtain of her hair, and kept her hands at her sides only through practice and will; it had been one thing, to imagine how Laurelite might thank her for a mission well done, when she was struggling to justify not calling it a loss and coming home. It was another thing entirely to hear it for real, unaltered; she wanted to sit in this moment forever. Laurelite was proud. Of her.

That was unreasonable. Silly. The world went on - was going on, even - but at least this memory she could treasure. She straightened up with a very minor shudder, and tried to stay level, tried to stay even; if Chrysocolla embarrassed herself, really embarrassed herself, in front of Laurelite... well, she'd never be able to forgive herself. Being composed was important. It was so hard! But it was important.

"I, um. I don't have any accommodations planned right now, exactly? I wanted to make sure I got everything to you first before I worked on that, so I didn't get distracted." She sighed. "Before I left, General Schorl handled my civilian living situation; but she's not here anymore, I don't think? And I have the experience for it, so I was going to ask General-King Lepidolite if there were any positions open at Romano's, if he has any availability today..."

It was so, so hard to try and be stoic, be reasonable, about it; this was the kind of praise Chrysocolla lived for, the kind of things she'd always tried to get out of Cinnabar, out of Schorl, out of anyone she'd followed behind and mimicked to try and be like, to try and be liked by. It was manageable, but it was - she'd been away too long, if it felt like this, if it felt so overwhelming. She'd been gone too long.

"I'd like that," in response to the idea of a list of apartments; if someone else was willing to do it, that was less stress, less decision, if she only needed to figure out what she wanted out of a final list.
And - "I want to," Chrysocolla said, trying not to insist - not to raise her voice - but there was a flicker of a childish stubbornness behind it. "I -- don't know what I'm supposed to do with myself, if I'm not doing something, so I want to - as soon as he can see me, I can know what I'm doing again, and that's -- okay."

Like that, it sounded bad, it sounded unclear; there was so much she always lost when trying to translate between thoughts to the harsh boundaries of verbal words, of words in general. But she had been following behind people for all the time she could remember at all, and even in those flicker-fragment memories of a life long gone, dressed in white; it was one thing, to have her orders and follow them, even when she was alone. But without any orders -- that was nothing. That was worse than nothing.