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His heart dropped to the floor, and he swallowed a lump in his throat that felt, for a moment, impossibly large.

Her adventures in subspace had been fun to watch. The discovery of the stalest Skittles in extradimensional space--he might have tried one, they were, indeed, incredibly stale--had been amusing and was a fun insight into who Sylvite had been. Still loved snacks as much as Nectaris, thankfully, still loved glitter and bright pink as much too. "Glad to know you've always loved pink. Look, you match. We should buy some pink paint for your room--"

All the innocuous conversations remained that way on her side as she held out the item to him that he definitely recognized.

Magic was right.

He managed to breathe around the lump in his throat. There were a few questions here: how had she gotten that? had she taken it? was it a standard Negaverse issue? who did it belong to, and did it even matter because it had definitely been too long since she had left for the person it was from to still be living? There were also a few positives, of course: by remaining in her subspace until now, the starseed was at least safe. Safe from the Negaverse, safe from who Sylvite had been, safe from anyone else taking them who didn't have their better interests at heart--

He hoped.

"Yes," he said, looking at the way the soul she held glowed faintly.

Nectaris wasn't wrong. It was pretty.

"That's a starseed." He tapped his chest. "They're usually in here."

"Yeah," Encke confirmed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, "one of those soul things."

Nectaris' fascination with it seemed to turn from excitement about how gorgeous it was to wanting to protect it, and Encke watched as she went from squeezing it in her excitement to cradling it like a baby bird. That was good. It was a baby, in a way, especially if it didn't have a body it could have belonged to anymore--

His eyes widened in a show of surprise he didn't quite mask when Nectaris asked if there was some way to tell, and he held himself back from telling her yes right away because the answer was yes. But it was risky. Extremely risky. She would have to find a Negaverse agent who was willing to withdraw her starseed, observe it, and give it right back. Finding someone who was actually willing to do that, though, was a gamble in itself, trusting that they would actually give it back was an even bigger gamble--

"Yeah, it's bad," there was no way of getting around it, and Nectaris looked nervous about that. Encke bit his bottom lip lightly, bouncing on his heels. "I, unfortunately, couldn't tell you where you got that. You seemed pretty adamant on the other side you didn't take starseeds, though."

Enough that Encke actually believed her without patting her down the way he did with the others who approached him about purification, which considering people like Stillwaterite--

Well, it was surprising.

"But you have them and brought them to this side with you. That's good. It means we can save them from the Negaverse taking them. Because those are the only people who can take starseeds out, so far as I can tell, and also the only people who use them in the ways they do..." Encke fidgeted. "There's still a light in it, so the starseed itself is okay."

She said that with enough confidence that Encke was willing to believe it. She couldn't remember that time, sure, but if she had that much conviction about it even without her memories, it had to be true, right?

Her saying that she ran into one of her former underlings who backed that up drove in that she probably hadn't taken starseeds for her own benefit or even necessarily her team's. Her team interested him: how many people had she led? were they similar in views to her? could they also be saved? could they at least give them some insight as to who she used to be even if she couldn't remember it? It was something he put to the side, for now, chuckling quietly at the concept of not eating starseeds being a moral high ground.

He supposed, in comparison to the people they were around, claiming that at least they didn't do that was something of a high ground status.

"You do have the reassurance you didn't do that, at least, even if you guys were using it as a moral high ground," but her second question was harder to answer. There was a starseed--well, there were three starseeds, in her possession, which without the other information would definitely have pointed to her being a murderer. With the other information, it just made it murky. Had she killed three people? Had she taken their starseeds? Had she just been given them? Had she been issued them? Did she just take them as she was leaving with Ganymede?

It was hard to say.

"I can tell you what I do know: you were pretty adamant you didn't ******** with starseeds. I don't know how that translates to you having the starseeds. I didn't know you well enough. And it's possible maybe your underlings know, but they were also your underlings." They could lie. They could have also known only a part of her. It was hard to say. "But perhaps it doesn't matter whether you were or weren't, right? The best we have is speculation, and if you go down that hole, you'll spiral down it. I've spiraled before. It's not a good place to be in."

He had been a youma before. He still, on rare occasions, remembered the desire for flesh clearly.

He did his best not to think about if he had ever indulged it.

"What you do is do the best by what you have now. You got out of a place that influences people--other people or perhaps you--to take souls. You have three starseeds now. And we can get them to a place where they'll be safe. Safe from the Negaverse. Safe from anyone who might want to do them harm."

Encke bent down a bit to get himself a bit closer to her level, looking her in the eyes.

"And no matter what you were, that's in the past, alright? You're a good person. Could tell from the moment I met you, even as Sylvite. You left the Negaverse behind. You saved someone who they were torturing. You're here. That's the important part."

Oh.

The fact that she was already spiraling was a problem. He had to try and help pull her out of that before it took over her mind. Would have been easier if she had a definite: no, she didn't kill anyone, and she just had the starseeds, but he couldn't necessarily provide that. All he had was guesses, and all he had with guesses was giving her more questions--

Encke gathered Nectaris a bit closer when she wrapped an arm around him. It had helped, then.

He squeezed her supportively, rubbing her shoulder, keeping his breathing as even as he could in hopes of helping her calm down. It didn't quite stop the way his fingers tapped against his leg as he thought about the best response. The solution was obvious. Future. They get the starseeds back to where they could be safe and where they could be reborn.

"I won't tell you not to spiral, because that would be unfair," for one, it was already happening. "We'll focus on the future. It might help."

At least, knowing what to do with the starseeds would be a good distraction.

"It's been a while since you've gotten them, no matter how, because you've left the Negaverse for a while. That changes things. If it had been sooner, I might suggest running by the hospitals just to see if the starseed seems to resonate with someone," but even that was tricky, and came with very limited success. He had the most luck returning starseeds to their owners when he had witnessed it happening. He returned Basiluzzo's to his chest when he saw the starseed sitting near Basiluzzo's body, for instance...

Thinking about that was still hard, even if Basiluzzo had told him that he was going to do what he wanted.

"It's unlikely that the bodies that belong to those souls are still living. Our best bet is sending them on their way back to the Cauldron."

She was tensing up.

She was calming down, and then she was tensing up, and Encke's first thought was did he say something wrong? Because he had thought he had gotten her focused on the future because looking forward was the easiest thing to do here, the easiest approach he could see to take that wouldn't prompt questions on if she had been a murderer under the fog of Chaos--

... Okay, yeah, he had said something wrong.

She had latched onto the concept that maybe the starseeds could have been saved, but now she was definitely spiraling.

Nectaris apologized, over and over, and Encke didn't bother with any more concerns about patrol beyond making sure their two strong auras weren't attracting other strong auras as he pulled her a bit closer.

"I'm here," because maybe saying it was okay wouldn't be okay right now, maybe this was more complicated than that, maybe they were dealing with souls of unknown origin that might have been new and may also have been months old even at that point, years old even. His suggestion was offhand and something he had gotten into the habit of doing, himself. He knew who those coma patients were. If he could allow one to wake back up--

Had it ever actually worked? Was it even necessary?

"Honestly: probably not."

That sounded horrifically grim, but like Serentatis, she likely needed to hear it.

"You do have an advantage in that you have the starseeds in hand. It's better than knowing someone has been starseeded and not being able to find their starseed." He bit his lip, pondered the best way to proceed, hoped he would get through to her and not contribute further to a spiral. "But in my experience, returning a starseed to a living body is nearly impossible without being there when it happened. The most likely scenario is that you somehow received these, and even presuming you retained your memories, that wouldn't help you know where these came from, nor would it help you know when they came from. Bodies can only survive so long without starseeds."

That didn't quite resolve the case where maybe she had been the one who took the starseeds, and he knew it. Ambiguity.

Was he talking too much? Maybe. He had a bad habit of that. It nearly had gotten Basiluzzo killed--

"You not knowing the starseeds were there isn't your fault. You couldn't have possibly anticipated this -- not considering the stress you were under, not considering the loss of memories, not considering anything else."

He hugged her a bit tighter.

"They'll go to where they're supposed to go. They'll get a chance to live again."

And maybe, by miracle, that would be to a living body, but... He was happy to see them reborn and not feed the Negaverse machine. Hopefully, that could be enough.

Could have, should have, would have-- these were all what-ifs, and Encke shook his head at her exploration of them. "You were concerned about getting the princess out and living. More important than any message. And who is to say the person who gave them to you knew who they were from?"

That was the unfortunate truth, too. If they cared to take people's lives, why would they keep track of who those people were? Unless they were making a death note or listing everyone in a book which felt particularly heinous. If they were executing a specific hit, he imagined the results of that would probably have gone straight to their queen--

He didn't want to send her down those trains of thought. By the same token, though, perhaps reminding her of the realities they were facing and that they were a part of would help shift her out of the spiral.

Talking about the Cauldron might, too.

It was interesting how much she forgot. Encke and Basiluzzo had been doing their best to fill in the pieces, but somehow, an essential one like what even was the cauldron was left to the side. But it was also an interesting case, philosophically.

How did someone explain that they were all in a rebirth cycle?

"The cauldron--or the Space Cauldron, I guess--is what Cosmos guards." He chuckled lightly. "I think it's probably why she's always so busy," he, himself, had only the pleasure of actually seeing her a few times, and it had never been in a situation where he could talk extensively. "It's someplace out in deep space that I don't think many people have ever had the pleasure of seeing. I haven't, for sure, just know that it exists. It's where all the starseeds go to be kept safe and reborn."

All of them.

"Us having starseeds allows us to send them off back to the Cauldron so they can be reborn. So they can be safe."

Encke wanted to tell her that was probably assuming too much good in their enemies, or perhaps even too much care in their enemies. He imagined it was easier to wrap their heads around this job if they didn't presume to care about the humanity of their victims.

That was how it was being a youma. People stopped ... mattering.

"Literally," replied Encke, and there was a relief in his voice. A part of him was worried he'd have to stop and philosophically explain how reincarnation actually worked, but instead, it seemed that Nectaris had clung onto the idea. That made explaining all of this much easier. "A lot of us lived once before. Senshi, like me," he tapped where his starseed likely sat, "are probably some of the most prime proof of that. This starseed once belonged to the Sailor Encke of the past. King Ignatius, he went by."

King Ignatius of the First House, Protector of the People, Senshi of the Comet--

Something like that, but that was irrelevant to the conversation.

"And sending those starseeds back to the Cauldron will let them reincarnate, too. As civilians, as senshi, as knights--as whatever they were."

His smile was wistful. "And saving souls that can be reborn is one of the best things we can do, right?"