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Nectarine in peach -- a flavor, a smell, a thought -- a feeling. When that Knightly aura rolled up n frizzed the edges of his senses, feeling all too similar to a pair of storm fronts colliding. Except the storm fronts were invisible, thin as air, but still he could feel....

Albite was mid-stride step up onto a ledge, aiming to go over, aiming to go off -- and he wasn't Aura blind, but right then? He wished for it. That his actions didn't feel so much like turning his back on her and running away. He heard her voice though, firm beneath the sweet, like abs and a blade beneath the layers of lace buttons. The motif was moon and the shades were pink but the edge of *danger* was still there.

He didn't know what her staff did -- her magic -- something flammable, right? He didn't bother eying it, his gaze was for her face, searching it as he turned.

"Nectarine," ********, he couldn't help but smile even in the face of such stoicness, hooked his thumbs and leaned back on his heels, the living, breathing, embodiment of a very attentive slouch, "personally I don't mind the notes. First the Ghost-its, now the Heart-attacks. You manage to fit so much into so little space." He liked the glitter especially, the way her writing was shaped. It squeezed the softest parts of his heart even as the words had sent him into a frenzy. Maybe it should've been something he'd gone to her about first? He couldn't summon her though. Had to go to Fulgurite instead. To Faustite.

"You're right though, so hit me with it! Which thing're we talking about? N'less you want me to guess -- Please don't make me guess! M'terrible at charades."

She was too sweet, too right, because if he couldn't even get notes down then how was he gonna manage pictures? Though he wanted to believe he would've done better at Pictionary then he would've at charades! At least he had shapes to work with instead of -- what made up charades? A lot more knowledge than he had accessible probably!

"Your color schemes are on point Nec- I'd get the gist of it with the words at least, even if the gels did smudge a bit," spoken around a chuff of a laugh, a faint thing that fell off leadenly as the severity of the situation settled atop his shoulders. An uncomfortable realization of facts, and Albite stood a little straighter for that, tensed all over and stared off just over her shoulder, expression full of gravely mixed confusion, because he wanted to growl. Not at Nectaris, never her, maybe at himself? Maybe at the idea that he'd misspoken so badly as to have all of his words taken wrong.

Because that wasn't at all what he'd meant---

"I didn't threaten him directly," at least he hadn't threatened him directly about that, all his words had been so much a generalization! About safety, and the team, and--- It was a threat though, wasn't it? There was no denying that, but it wasn't a new threat, wasn't an unusual one. It was the same sort of bare faced bold as ******** threat that he embodied same as breathing; a big ol' target with a bigger smile, bigger to give a hit -- to take one. For his friends and his team and his loves where it was applicable to do so. Maybe Fulgurite didn't like the idea of him being willing to kill on his springly-spritely-behalf. Coulda been that. Fulgurite had made it plain and clear he wasn't a fan of capital-m *murder*; all the ways Sylvites soft nature n kind graces had cured him of that, "n'fact, he shouldn't be threatened by me ********, lest he's feelin' a reason to be?"

He couldn't say how Fulgurite felt, didn't even know if he was okay with -- with any of the tumbled-tangly-mess of his panic'd pacing.

"What do you think Nectarine, has our babbling-brook of a Senshi got any sorta reason to be worrying--" hissed because a part of him still wanted to be angry for reasons he couldn't quite identify. They were effusive ******** things, his unpinnable feelings. The way he missed Fulgurite like trying to catch the a shadow with his bare hands. Cause from his point of view there was nothing to worry about! Aside from the obvious of course, but all the obvious reasons never worried Albite in the same ways they worried others, so maybe he was missing some drastic piece of a puzzle he couldn't have hoped to put together. It happened. Stars above and Metallia below it happened!

If only he could just-- and Albite stepped forwards till he could sit his a** on that ledge and look down at her properly, catch all those pinks n pearls n swirls. Cause if he stayed standing he was going to pace, or run, or step off a ledge and up to her for no discernable reason.

If he was angry then it was his own bullshit and he could own that.

"Nooo--yanno what? Scratch that. M'not three way telephoning this anymore. The part where I only talk to you so it c'n be passed to him, or he passes s**t to you without cluing me in on it, or -- n at this point it's almost a six-way conversation cause it ain't by far just you n me tangled up in this anymore, right!? ********, can we call him here? Cause if he thinks the part I'm not okay on is the one involving your free will n whom y'all choose to kiss -- then it's my fault..." he'd done something badly, poorly, he realized this now. He was upset, yes, but not for any of those reasons and it didn't need to stay that way. He knew that the same way he knew that he needed a translator, a manager, someone in the middle who could mediate his maudlin, meandering mouth.

Want.

Want was an oh so very good word. Clap on clap off of a light-clicker and the way she said it caught his attention, tilted it ever so slightly from anger into a terse sort of curiosity. Cause he hadn't considered for a singular second what Fulgurite actually wanted out of all this.

Not out of their team. Not out of him. Not out of Nectaris. He could hazard daggered guesses at what the man didn't want, but as far as knowing what he did want went? Albite was sheepishly clueless to it all. Had he ever actually asked?!

"I'm not gonna lie. I don't actually know what this is about anymore," and with Nectaris right there he could settle some, could quit grinding his teeth about what he didn't understand and look to her directly for answers, wishing too that it was just about her, "I think I know all the things it's not about, at least for me? But for what it is about -- I want him to tell me -- because if I try n assume...if I guess at it all? I'mma guess wrong. M'bad at more'n just charades, n Fulgurite isn't as easy a read as I thought he'd be." the sigh he heaved was a release valve, frustration blown out in a breath. Though he wasn't frustrated with her, she was honest, and up front, and good! A traitor to the very bone, sure, but? He couldn't simply toss aside all the good she'd done before stepping off the choice ledge n freeing a whole a** princess! Everything she'd done up till the end -- save maybe some the cybele stuff? Good things! Great things! Even if there was a sour note with the cessation of her tenure in the Negaverse, it wasn't sour enough to deter him from his own pursuits.

Which maybe was the problem -- so maybe he was the problem in all this? Except that couldn't be right....could it?

"Course, afore I go n call him -- I gotta ask you if it's something you want too, right? Fairs fair on that end if we're talking about -- uhmn -- choices n such. Though, s'not like I could force him into it even if I wanted to," but maybe that didn't mean much either? That he couldn't command Fulgurites attendance because he had his wings. Albite'd never considered the power imbalance, the way that dynamic looked on the outside -- or inside -- or -- He didn't pull rank, he wasn't anybody's boss. Had he really bothered Fulgurite so damn much over such a short period time that he was going to Nectaris about it?

Well, yeah?

It felt very much like a ‘duh’ moment and in hindsight? Hearing it all spoken aloud, listening to Nectaris pause and summate the words back at him with that specific intonation. He winced for it, because he knew how backasswards it all sounded now that his thoughts were free of his own head and out in the open.

He really did want Fulgurite to tell him how to feel — didn’t he? Except no matter how he turned that phrase it just didn’t seem quite right. It was close enough though. Same shaped, wrong colored, riding the line of right on the money of the issue. He had a feeling, all sorts of feelings, he was mad for sure - at least he had been at the time while also being about ten-thousand other things, and talking it out would tell him the why of it.

It had to, it had always worked before!

“I know how it sounds—-I really do, would you believe I’m working on it?” he scraped his heels like a child, cast her a kicked dog look of an apologetic frown. He needed to get her a stamp card with all the bingos she was hitting tonight. “Starting now actually— *like* — right this second, cause maybe I wasn’t before? Uhmh, not hard enough at least…”

What was the best way to get a hold of the guy even? Her guy. His teammate. Their — what? He wasn’t going to reach for a label, instead he was going to reach for Fulgurite and follow up that suggestive tug on the chaos that bound them with a text.

*’Me n Nectarine r hanging - u willing to chat?’* —- sharks, stars, horseshoes, clovers and blue moons. All the cereal shapes he could follow the words up with to make it extra clear just how non-sequiter, unserious he was being right now!

The most no pressure invite he could ever imagine sending!

“I never claimed to be above my own bullshit, Necutie—“ he bit his lip as he hit send, staring at the phone all hopeful. Knowing he maybe should’ve been directing it all at her since she’d asked. His problems weren’t with her tho. Probably weren’t with Fulgurite either. He knew he’d figure it out. Would dig himself out if someone handed him a big enough shovel “—-and new shapes can be hard. Though I really do tend to love triangles, their not the worst shape! Course I love all sorts of shapes — whatever shape has the most sides to it? Probably love that one the most.”

Nectaris was, if she was being honest, super surprised that Fulgurite actually decided to show up. Maybe that was part of why she'd been telling Albite to get it together and untangle his own feelings, 'cause she knew if they were doing like, the asking thing, the choice, the want, that Fulgurite most likely wanted to be just about anywhere else.

Which meant, when he popped into existence looking grumpier than normal, that there was probably some kind of sense of obligation there.

She didn't know if she hoped that he was coming here out of a sense of obligation to Albite, but that was probably better than an alternative where he was out here trying to protect her or something. For one thing, she could handle herself. She wasn't weak, even if her outfit made her look like Princess Peach or some other kind of damsel in distress. For another, yeah, she was a traitor. Yeah, she was constantly gonna be in mortal danger. Albite had accepted that. The rest of her loved ones really needed to do the same instead of constantly freaking out about stuff.

She waved at him, anyway, doing her best to break through all the tension with the biggest grin she could manage.

"Hey," she said. "I was just talking to Albite about how, like, if he should be mad at someone about what I told him, it should be me, but then he said he wanted to talk to both of us, 'cause it'd get back to you anyway, just all weird, like a game of telephone."

She turned back to Albite.

"So, yeah. No telephone. We're here now, what did you wanna say? Or, like, did you figure out why you're mad yet?"

Nectaris got a smile softer than the grumpiness he was otherwise projecting at being pulled into some random conversation in the middle of his leisure time. She didn't need his sour mood and his irritable behaviour. She had seen enough of it as Sylvite, even if she didn't remember it. "Hey," his voice was soft, too, even as his expression faltered back to that grouchiness when she said that they were trying to avoid a game of telephone.

Great.

What the hell was Albite on, then, if he couldn't even decide what he was feeling?

Albite suggested Fulgurite get closer after that, and he couldn't help a stifled snort. "After our conversation a couple weeks ago?" That conversation had left him wanting to get even further away from it all if he could. He had never asked for death threats of all ******** things-- "I think I'll stay over here for the moment, thanks." Maybe he'd consider edging closer to Nectaris, if anything. Make this triangle more of an.. what was the word for it? Isosceles?

Albite was trying to figure out who Fulgurite was? Was he legitimately? Because that honestly meant that Fulgurite's attempts to separate himself from the Negaverse were succeeding. If he couldn't be figured out by the number of things the Negaverse knew about him, that meant they didn't know everything. That meant he was finally finding things that were fully his own, that at least couldn't be sussed out.

The concept of loving Nectaris brought a blush to his face. The mention of Cryolite deepened it further--he hadn't told Nectaris that one yet, he probably should now that he and Nectaris seemed to be this serious, what would Cryolite think about the fact that he now found a second person he was kissing after so many years of having no one and then only Cryolite, and she was technically of the other side--he pushed it to the side, focusing on what Albite was honestly babbling about.

What did he want out of all of this?

He wanted that yet to stop being masked, for one, because he could see it and he knew it. Albite had already threatened him. It was hard to take that back. In general, he was a threat, sure.

Fulgurite offered a wary glance in Nectaris' direction before turning back to Albite. "What do I want?" His brows rose. "To not be threatened, for one. To not be called down for a meeting where you end up saying there wouldn't be a body left. Think that's not a hard thing to understand, right?"

That was probably harsher than he needed to be. Though was it? Fulgurite pulled his hands behind his back to stop himself from balling up his fists, feeling that fear mixing with the temper that Nectaris had helped him tame when she had been Sylvite.

"To not hear that you wouldn't try to prevent your side from doing something to someone who supposedly means a lot to you just because you have a priority for your alignment over people you care about?"

He ran a hand through his hair.

"Cryolite would dry ice your bits off, though," murmured Fulgurite, affection slipping into his tone. "Nikki might bop you, too."

<********, their so sweet together!

'Nikki' was probably the cutest nickname he'd ever heard. It was cool, he could've found that point to laugh on; those few commonalities they could be agreeable on, Nikki and Cryolite. Things he n Fulgurite could've amicably shared details about! Those two peoples ways of keeping him in line, the way he liked that best about them both. Some soft squishy part of his heart wanted to see them hug, just once! Just so he could coo over it delightedly!

Then there was everything else Fulgurite said and the way it rankled sour, the way he wanted to snarl about it. Except all of those things were easy to understand -- so easy -- if only he could've taken them back. If only he wanted to. He didn't though, couldn't, wouldn't. He'd said what he meant and he'd meant what he'd said. It wasn't fair to Fulgurite, not at ******** all, but it was worse to try and lie his way back out of such blatant honesty. If him n his got hurt in ways entirely preventable? If there was really a mole. Albite wasn't the Senshi of Forgiveness....even if he could be forgiving....even if he could love people on all sorts of sides regardless of what. There sat his line, sand drawn and susceptible to change as it was. It was there, and across it sat the faces of those who'd caused irreparable harm. Sat bodies in the forms of glittering starseeds. Thos who'd done wrong. Those who hadn't done ******** or all-- and still were very much no longer alive in spite of that.

"Nectaris...if I could ever put blame on you for anything? We wouldn't be standing here now..I...and that's on me, yeah? That's my fault. Everything in the note was right and I'm open as a void and I'm so sorry---" that he never listened to anyone. All the words spoken, wide eyed, record skip over the anger shaped like Fulgurite that he wanted to hold onto. The way it was drowned out at the first sight of his girls tears. It was a grand chasm of a flaw. One Faustite had pointed it out before, hadn't he? Explained to him behind clenched claws and in detail how --- how he made excuses, always, for the people he loved most. He made them for Faustite when it came to Aelius and Trey. Made them for Nectaris -- for Sylvite. She hadn't hurt Jet directly, had she? Just helped the person who had done the hurt and he'd so wanted to remedy that-- and what about after he realized Gany wasn't gonna be handed over on a silver platter, and that Nectaris was there to stay, that Sylvite was long gone and not in a corpse in the ground kinda way, but in the way where people changed clothes and ideals and grew into being a little bit different all on their own.

He'd have sooner raked Fulgurite over every inch of coal he could dredge up out of Faustites grate than -- than even once -- twisted any sort of blame for anything on Nectaris. She chastized him for that and he took it even if there were sharp, pointy, painful parts of what she was saying that he just couldn't agree with! But she was right enough, and he was the a*****e who'd made her ******** cry.

Because she was grown, alive, had made all her own choices and he'd failed to listen to anything he didn't want to hear...

"This is all, maybe a lot my fault. For not having my s**t together. For lashing out at him because I don't know the ******** why...." cause Faustite was dying, and their team had so many little hurts to stitch together, and he was so worried there was a damn mole that was going to get them all messily murdered by the order types who were more n willing to dish out their own kinds of retribution that exact way. Knights weren't like Senshi. Senshi felt so much like kin that it was easy as hell to talk them up all casual like. Knights were intimidating as ******** didn't play...Nectaris had been the singular exception to the rule, insofar as he knew from his own personal experiences. Senshi were a whole a** tossup, but Knights? Mars, Jupiter, Cosmos -- Even the pretty, pretty, mermaid types he reserved a sort of caution for. He'd learned. Just not with Nectaris, who he knew was good, who he loved---

"I think I was always weird about Fulgurite," and Fulgurtie knew this part didn't he?,Had hammered in on it, all pinpoint precision, the ways he'd acquired Fulgs like a castoff, secondhand subordinate because of his love for Alexa; for how desperately, pointlessly, he wanted to keep safe what she couldn't even if it was just making the one persons life slightly more comfortable. It was in fact an incredibly ******** rude thing of him to have done, "even before you were here to be talked to. Because I loved you."

Just because he knew right from wrong didn't mean he'd choose it, anymore than he'd be able to have been able to make himself leave Fulgurite alone after Sylvite had gone rogue.

"Because I still love you. We both do. M'thinkin me n Fulgs can both agree on that, right? N'that you're no ones side chick here, and you sure as ******** aren't weird, or dumb, or ---" and he looked to Fulgurite desperately. A bald faced cry of 'help me out here', because however he felt about the Senshi of Springs? Nectaris didn't deserve to hurt over it. Shouldn't've been crying over them -- over him n what he'd caused, and it was the peak of history repeating itself, the most cursed sort of hindsight, to realize that he'd done the exact thing he'd sworn he wouldn't do again!

He should've never called Fulgurite to meet that night.

Shouldn't've called him again now.

How could he blame either of them when he was clearly the one being the problem? N'maybe that was what he was really mad about. His failings to help Fulgurite with ********, except to back him into a corner with the illest of promises. His inability to make Nectaris happy more often than he made her sad anymore. Her asking about purification caught him sidelong and he shook it off because it'd never been some trap to fall for. He'd never be willing to change for anyone that wasn't himself.

Not for Nectaris.

Not for Faustite.

He didn't know what glue made up Fulgurites core, who or what he stayed darkside of the moon for, but he also didn't actually care in that moment. Maybe later he'd turn it over in his head and ask, but he couldn't bear to now when all he wanted to do was hug her till she ---

What, exactly?

Forgave him? Fired him? Told him to ******** off? Whatever took away that look on her face. He wanted that to happen. If Fulofsprings could fix it! He'd let him, would kiss his boots n try to find a way to make nice after the fact.