Welcome to Gaia! ::

Cybele had been invested in this whole process. She'd arrived before most of the others had come, and now she was lingering as they headed out. The Chaos was gone, but of course after her own experiences with purification she was a bit wary of any damage or emptiness it might have left in its wake. If something happened, she was uninjured and only so shaken. She could help.

It seemed fine for the moment, but she was still sitting in one of the chairs, keeping an eye out, when Alastor broke away from the thinning group to check on her.

"I'm all right," she told him, with a tired smile. "It was hard-fought, obviously, but we made it through. I won't say no to a drink, though."

It had been hours at this point since she'd arrived. It was probably time to start taking care of her basic needs again. "Siegfried- I don't know if you saw him, he's my partner? He hurt his wrist, but it wasn't anything serious, and that was the worst injury we had."

He'd gone to rest, and once Cybele was sure that everything here was fine, she'd follow to check on him.

"But, it worked. I was going to congratulate you once you were done with everyone else congratulating you."

Her smile widened. He deserved all of it.

The sports drink was much appreciated. Cybele cracked it open with a nod, and she took a long drink and gave a satisfied sigh before she said anything more, although she did nod again halfway through to confirm that she'd pass along thanks to Siegfried.

Although, by the time she twisted the cap back onto the bottle, she was already raising an eyebrow. "Cleaning? With your hand like that?" Her tone was lighthearted, but she did shake her head and even clicked her tongue, once. "Adrenaline or not, if you try anything of the sort I'll be forced to start reminding you how you didn't even let me walk up the stairs."

She looked around the edges of the room, at where the lights were strung up. "Although you've already got the electricity set up, so it wouldn't be hard to get some speakers here and have a celebration whenever. You could even do it once people are here to clean," she said, and that was mostly a joke, but it still brought a smile to her face, "Blast dance music and we can all spin around with our mops like It's a Hard Knock Life."

"A Hard Knock Life isn't that important," Cybele was quick to assure him, because while it was a fun number she wasn't sure that it would be helpful to Alastor to think of it as the epitome of Earth culture. "It's from a show. A theater piece, that's all. It is cute, though. I'll show you sometime."

It was also, Cybele had found, very motivating music to play while you swept a place out, but she understood the hesitation about the speakers.

"They are a bit ugly, yes," she said, and with a look around, she tried to imagine the place restored instead of modernized. "That means you'll have to show me what these parties look like. It sounds amazing, and," glanced at her feet, and wiggled her toes inside her shoes, "I think I can start practicing my dancing again. I mean," she paused, although her smile was mostly teasing, "As long as you don't give me too many decorations to dodge until I'm a bit more comfortable with things."

"Don't make it too easy, either," Cybele insisted. "I think that challenges are fun. I know I'm a bit hobbled at the moment but I hope that I can work through it over time, you know, practice so I'm back to dodging furniture with the best of them."

It would be good practice, too, for fighting, or maybe even for trying to be in a musical again.

She smiled at the thought, although it shifted into something more thoughtful as he asked his questions.

"I think I'm going to go check on the family first," she said. "Siegfried will have Olivia to take care of him, and-" she pressed her lips together, some of the tension that she'd been trying to avoid creeping back into her face. "It was them that I saw. Valhalla dead, and Ganymede to taunt me." A beat passed. "Ganymede that I had to kill."

She'd hoped for a moment of levity, of celebration, but she didn't mind telling Alastor about it. They'd made a habit of comparing scars.

"I didn't fall for it all the way," she told him. "I knew it wasn't real, but even so I'd like to go sit with them for a while."

As Cybele listened, she was solemn. Not sorrowful, she was nowhere near that, but they were talking about fresher things now than when they'd been comparing their old wounds. She understood that, just as she understood that while things had been awful for her, and worse for others, Alastor had probably had the most difficult time of all.

The Chaos had been coming after him since the moment they'd set foot on his world, and that wasn't even counting the previous thousand years.

It was part of why she was here to check on him, just as she'd checked earlier, at the core.

He was standing, though, and asking about dances and theater, and Sessrumnir was around to keep an eye on them, and so Cybele nodded.

"I think I'll go see them now, yes," she said, and then paused, just for a moment. "But Alastor, it was good to come up here. Truly." She smiled through the shadows at the back of her eyes. "Even with everything, it was good to save your world."

And with that, she nodded, and turned to make her way back into the thinning crowd.