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Sylvite was in the park, hanging upside down on a tree branch by her knees. It turned out, it was pretty effective. You couldn't think about bad stuff too much when all the blood from your body was flooding your brain.

Of course the downside was that she was either going to have to stop eventually or pass out, but she was gonna cross that bridge when she got to it.

The other downside was that with all the brain-blood, she couldn't sense auras, which meant that she was not really ready for company. She definitely wasn't ready for Jet.

She couldn't help the gasp, or the way that she twitched. It sent her toppling out of the tree. Luckily her magical reflexes kept her from breaking her neck or something, but she still landed weirdly on her side with a wince before she went still and started blinking up at the other General.

What was she even supposed to say right now? Hi, you murdered my friend? That was just about all she could think about right now. Jet was probably a really well rounded person, but his face was making that one awful moment play on repeat in her imagination.

"Hi," she said, but managed not to say the rest. "My holidays were pretty good, how about yours?"

They'd actually been cramped and kind of awkward in her parent's tiny apartment, but she didn't say that, either.

"Aquamarine's your boyfriend?" she asked, actually curious.

She knew they'd stuck together pretty close during the secret meeting, and the generator battle, and that orientation thing where they'd talked to all the new recruits. They had the same office, too, so maybe Sylvite had her suspicions, but it was always better when she could get stuff confirmed firsthand.

Slowly, she made her way to her feet.

"It's okay. You're not bothering me. It's probably good if we talk," she said, and with all of her effort, she managed to smile.

"I mean, maybe if I get to know you better, I won't just think of you as the dude who killed my mentor anymore."

Wait. No.

She'd said it out loud that time.

She gasped as she sucked in a quick breath. The smile was gone, just like that. Instead, she bit down hard on the insides of her cheeks, like that would keep the words from getting to him. It was too late for that, though, and she knew it. Her cheeks were quickly turning pink.

"No, no, no, you did the right thing," Sylvite said quickly, even though she could already feel her face and her throat and her head getting all hot and weird.

Why did she have to say that? Everything had been fine.

"Obviously," she said, and swallowed against all the bad feelings.

She was upset about the treason. She was upset about the betrayal. She wasn't upset about what Jet had done, definitely not. At the very least, she wasn't trying to accuse Jet of cold blooded murder to his face.

"Just," she swallowed again, "Like, imagine if Aquamarine betrayed the Negaverse, and then died immediately." She blinked at him and hoped that wasn't a bad thing to say. Maybe she should've picked a different example, she didn't wanna be making any implications, but she also didn't know anyone else who Jet might be friends with.

"It'd take you a while to process it all, right?"

No, hopefully Aquamarine wouldn't betray the Negaverse, but that was kind of the whole point of the example. Sylvite had lost a bunch of people to treason at this point, and she hadn't been expecting it from any of them. That was like, the whole reason that it was hard to process.

She didn't say any of that, though. Making Jet think about what the tables being turned and her ending up killing his traitor boyfriend was probably not the best way to make friends.

Sylvite kept her mouth shut until he asked about the kidnapping.

"I was there, yeah," she said, rubbing at her wrists. The rope burns had healed a long time ago, but she could swear that she could still feel them itching sometimes, when she thought too much about what had happened.

"I was fourteen and I'd just gotten recruited like three weeks before. When they realized I didn't have any information for them like the other ones, they left me to die. Stopped giving me water. That's when I realized what kind of monsters we were dealing with, and I promised myself that if I got out I'd do whatever I could to be a good soldier to the Negaverse."

She took a deep breath and tried to keep from rubbing and scratching at her arms by just fidgeting with the fabric of her gloves.

"And yeah, I'm really mad at Ochre for leaving us to go try and help some Princess. Like, furious."

She hadn't said in so many words, not before this, and it came out louder than she'd been expecting. Her eyes flashed. Her fingers shook. "But like, he's dead, so there's not much there for me to be mad at, which makes the whole processing thing weird, like I said."

She looked up, and forced her hands to her side. "Sorry if I'm like, associating you with that moment, and projecting, I guess. I'll figure it out."

"I'm glad you have Aquamarine," said Sylvite, because it wasn't like she could think of anything else positive to say about the whole torture situation. This was also like the second or third time that Jet had talked about him, and he seemed to like talking about him more than anything else she'd mentioned. "It sounds like he's really good for you."

She sucked in a breath. "And, like, the way stuff turned out, yeah, it sucked, but I'm trying to learn from it, I guess? I gotta remember to, like, be friends with everybody, and check in with everybody, so that the don't feel the need to go looking for that from someone else."

It wasn't like she hadn't been trying before. Ever since the first betrayal, Cybele's, she'd been setting up lots of meetings with her subordinates and lots of hang outs with everyone else.

She had to do better, though. Clearly, that was what was going on here.

After all, she hadn't checked in with Ochre.

"I can check in on you, too, I guess," she said, and tried smiling. "Like, are you okay after that whole fight? Do you want ice cream?"

Ice cream was the best for smoothing things over.

Of course she had to be friends with everyone in the Negaverse. At the very least, she had to try. If they really hated her, she could take a hint and leave them alone, but she didn't think it had come to that with anybody. Maybe with Faustite, things were kinda weird with Faustite, but she was trying, even with him.

She was gonna do her best with Jet, too, and she nodded when he explained about the information that Ochre might have been able to give to their enemies, even if her eyes were a little bit blank.

"I'm sorry about your brother," she said, 'cause while she didn't talk about death much, she at least knew to say that much. "That sucks, too. Order sucks."

She didn't say anything else about Aquamarine, since she didn't actually know him, but she did think that maybe she should try talking to him later, since he obviously meant to much to Jet.

"And yeah, I'm fine. I didn't get hurt or anything." Her head might've been buzzing, still, but that wasn't stopping, so she'd been trying to figure out how to just live with it.

"If you want the ice cream now, I know a really good place that's still open," she said, and she offered her hand, 'cause sweets always smoothed over any awkwardness and made things better, right?

Plus, now that they were talking more, Jet almost seemed like the kind of person she would've liked to go get a snack with.