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Promethei had no choice but to come powered.

It was a multifaceted thing, really. For one, he didn’t want to risk being recognized by any of the people that attended their club; it would be strange to have to explain what he was up to and also explain why he didn’t have time to chat. For another, he wanted Cybele to be able to recognize him. The Mercurian symbols made both him and Imhotep standing beside him fairly obvious.

And for three, Diryas had insisted they come powered. He hadn’t even wanted to let Elliot out until the Princess was there to take them to space. They had to find a secondary location so everyone felt safer, which meant they hadn’t a choice but to move the bookcase. Which meant they hadn’t any choice but to be on guard.

Elliot stayed powered down as an acquiescence to both Promethei and Imhotep. He’d power up once they made it to space and not before.

Promethei broke out into a yawn despite himself. “Not sure if we’re going in or just using the argon sign as something like a bat signal.” By g-d he was exhausted– “If we do go in, though, I’m keeping both you and Tobias under wraps. We ain’t gonna be recognized, but y’all will be.”

It was strange to think, too, that after tonight, no matter what happened, Elliot no longer would be known by the regulars. Now, whether that be because the purification failed somehow–he was growing more confident as he learned more, but–or because he returned as a different man with a seemingly different face, Sticks & Stones would no longer know who Elliot was.

But perhaps that was okay.

This place had always been open and accepting, and of all people, they knew.

“Remember the night we met here?” Promethei snorted. “******** wild.”

Imhotep looked to the source of the yelling immediately, hiding the fact that he was somewhat taken aback by the volume and vigor by glancing at Promethei. She’d called him out by name, after all, even if she’d followed it with ‘Mercury dudes’. Imhotep’s eyes then went to Elliot, expression flat even for him. He knew better than to let his guard down. This could be a trap.

This could all be a trap. It would be too easy for Elliot to be sent in as an agent with a sob story to lure out a princess. Sure, they would be going to Cybele’s homeworld, but Imhotep wasn’t going to relax until they were there. There would be some minutes where they would be clustered together and vulnerable.

The fact that Elliot had made it to captain had not left Imhotep’s mind. They were taking him on his word that he had never stolen anyone’s starseed or killed anyone, but he’d been lying to them the whole time about being busy at church and being unable to see them beyond sparing moments every couple months. Tobias had, indeed, been afraid that Elliot was just trying to put off breaking it off with them all, but that sort of thing hadn’t seemed Elliot’s style.

Elliot hadn’t seemed the type for subterfuge.

That assessment, it seemed, had been wrong. And it was that that Imhotep was keeping in mind as he glanced back at Elliot and then back at the people approaching them. He supposed that the woman in pink was the Nectaris that had been a Negaverse general.

Then again, she had made it to general and left. And now she was, ostensibly, helping Elliot–Ransomite–leave the Negaverse. Even Imhotep’s skepticism had to admit that the chance of Nectaris helping Ransomite lure in a princess was… unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. Not if she’d gone through all the trouble of purification, herself.

“Hello.” Imhotep inclined his head once in greeting intended for the both of them. “Imhotep,” with a gesture toward himself. He didn’t introduce Tobias but did vaguely wave in Tobias’ direction. Tobias was a civilian, with no glamour to help disguise him. So he had a hooded sweatshirt on, hood up, with just enough makeup from his drag supplies to make his contours seem unfamiliar in the streetlights to anyone walking by who might otherwise recognize him.

It had been Tobias’ idea, and a pretty good one, Imhotep had to admit.

Tobias, for his part, gave a warmer wave to Cybele and Nectaris and just as warm a smile. Releasing Elliot’s hand, he took a step toward them, but came up short when he felt Elliot re-grab his hand and tug him back. Puzzled, he looked over his shoulder to see Elliot shake his head.

“Wh–”

“This is my problem,” was the only explanation Tobias got before Elliot moved past him. Tobias frowned, this time, but left it alone. He was just glad the situation was moving toward resolution. It was almost over. Things were almost okay again.

Well.

Okay enough. He knew it would take more before Zebulon was settled, and even more before Diryas was. But this was the first step, and Tobias was glad it was happening with all of them still alive and whole.

Elliot took another couple steps forward, then stopped a cautious distance away. Cautious more for Cybele than himself. He was the Negaverse agent, after all. She was a princess, and he was a captain–powered down though he might be–but he was acutely aware of the multiple angles betrayal could come from. What if he was just bait for a trap?

“I’m Elliot. Lieu– Captain Ransomite.” A small smile Nectaris’ way, but all serious when his eyes moved to Cybele. “At least, for now.” A pause, then he rifled in his pocked to pull out a piece of paper to offer to her at arm's length. "I was going to have Promethei send this with his fancy ring ability, but I guess I can just give it to you in person."

Nectaris looked at the neon sign with a new an intense interest as Ransomite revealed himself and she recognized his face, just like that. “Well that’s cool,” she said, suddenly wanting even more to try and go inside. “You gotta tell me about it sometime.” She paused. “Or I guess, uh, maybe your husband can fill me in if you forget stuff?”

Cybele sighed internally and cut in over the babble, “Not to interrupt, but we can’t stay. There’s all ready to many of us here. We can talk more once we get somewhere safe.”

She’d talked to Promethei at least about this. She hopes the others weren’t somehow disappointed that she wasn’t going to pull out her crystal in the middle of a nostalgic dance floor.

“Here, quickly. We’re going to need to hold hands for this.”

She’d never taken this many people to her asteroid before, but supposed it would be a decent test of her power before they got to the rest.

“We’re going to have to hold hands for this,” she said, and Nikki grabbed hers far too enthusiastically, holding to other out for Elliot.

Where Imhotep looked dispassionate, Promethei looked to him and through him. He wasn’t boiling quite as severely as he was earlier when he had first learned that the man he swore he would kill when he saw him again was actually Abbán Elliot Isaac Donoghue of all ******** people. To say that the anger had vanished, though, would be a farce.

It was different now, punctured by what he had learned and what they had talked about, while at the same time gaining new dimensions and new faces and new multitudes–a multitude of a number he had trouble wrapping his mind exactly around, for one. But this wasn’t the place to discuss these things like Cybele had said.

There were too many of them in one place. It was part of why he had insisted that Elliot stay unpowered; an eternal, a knight, and two pages were probably bad enough, but if they added a captain, he was confident that all that would do would be attract Negaverse attention. And if they knew who was there surrounding Elliot, that would probably just mean that they would all suffer for it.

Ransomite wouldn’t die because he failed to purify, he would die because the Negaverse interfered before he even could.

Promethei glanced away from Elliot to Tobias, and saw the gaze he exchanged with Imhotep in specific. … Promethei was not looking forward to that inevitable argument brewing.

He glanced down to Imhotep, offering him a lop-sided smile as he took his hand and entwined their fingers, squeezing his hand supportively. For now, this would have to be enough. For now, they would need to trust everything, and trust that if everything went south, that they could handle it.

Presuming he’d need to complete the circle, he reached out to take Cybele’s hand.

“Let’s get to it, then.”

Elliot stifled the urge to reply with a dry, if stressed, 'frightened? Why would I be frightened?' and looked around the area they found themselves in. It was beautiful! The trees around him were incredibly comforting, quieting the back of his mind for the first time in longer than he had realised. Comforting in the way the silence of the sanctuary had often been for him.

"I don't know that much about the process. I know it comes with memory loss." He didn't look at the other three, his tone deceptively light. "So I wrote down who people were, just in case I forgot them." Just in case I forgot you. He had no expectations about what memories he'd keep and which he'd lose. Well, that wasn't quite true...

--Sitting by lamplight in his room at the rectory, ballpoint pen scratching against the paper of an leatherbound journal. Names listed in smudged ink, short descriptions after in script shakier in some places than others. People he knew, people he cared about. People he expected to forget after this.

He would go see them. Go say goodbye. If there was a just God, he would forget them after this. And, in time, they would forget him, if they hadn't already. It had been a while since the last text to his phone. He assumed they had given up.

He couldn't blame them. He would have.

Maybe his disappearance would be final enough to give them closure if they needed it. He had a letter already prepared for Sister Gail. He didn't know what the other priests and the bishop would tell people. But he told her not to worry about him. He would be okay. She would assume he had run off to pursue true happiness, or something of the sort. He would slip the letter under her door before he left to the others' house.

His car was already packed with the belongings he cared to take with him. He wasn't sure how transferring the title would work after he purified out. Maybe it didn't, and he would just abandon the car somewhere for the police to try and track down the no-longer-existent owner--

He wondered, briefly, what his parents would think. What they would tell his half-siblings. Maybe, if he remembered that he cared, he could track down his biological father, who knew? 'Stephen Michael Hollenbach' couldn't be that common of a name.

A name. That had taken him a while to figure out. He knew he'd need a new one, and he wasn't sure if he could pick it, but he wanted to be ready if he could. He had never met his biological father, but it would be better than the surname he already had, one that belonged to a man who regarded him with indifference at best and contempt at worst. But even 'Hollenbach' didn't feel quite right. So he'd thought more, thought about taking his mother's maiden name, but had rejected that nearly as soon as the thought occurred to him. He was an embarrassment to her. A reminder of her "ill-spent youth".

So on the front inside cover of the journal currently stashed in the car sitting in a driveway he might not ever pull into again was the name 'Teegan Isaac Hollenbeck'. Beck was Sister Gail's last name. Even when he forgot who she was, he didn't want to lose all tie to her and how much she had meant to him.

"But I'm glad to hear that I shouldn't be scared." And he meant that, even if his heart in his throat said otherwise. There was a movement out of the corner of his eye and he realised that Imhotep had powered down, leaving Diryas there instead.

"I gave my knight name, Imhotep of Mercury. Otherwise, I'm Diryas. He is Tobias." Tobias rolled his eyes.

"I can introduce myself." His tone was gentle, but exasperated all the same. "We're longtime ...companions of Elliot's." Diryas glanced up at him with one eyebrow faintly raised at the hesitation before 'companions', but Tobias refused to look at him. Diryas knew what Tobias was doing. Diryas knew that Tobias knew that Elliot's status with Zebulon and Diryas was shaky to say the least. But Tobias was establishing them as still being a cohesive unit.

There was more talking to be had later, apparently. Diryas needed Tobias to know that no amount of stubbornness on his part was going to make Diryas and Zebulon forgive Elliot before they were ready, and that there was a very real chance they never would. They were helping effectively save his life, and there was still a part of Diryas that thought it was more than Elliot deserved.

Maybe Elliot would forget them all and make Diryas' life easier--

There was stuff that Nectaris could have said that might have scared Ransomite, stuff about how purification hurt, about all the stuff that your forgot, about how you couldn't go back to your old life, not at all. He might be okay on that last one, though.

It looked like people from his old life were with him, by his side, right now, Nectaris noticed. She also noticed that not all of them were happy, but between that and whatever he'd written down, he was in so much better shape right now than she'd been back when she'd ended up leaving the Negaverse in a single, reckless, night.

"Yeah, nothing to be worried about. It'll be good. You'll be free, and then we can- oh!" Her face like up all over again. "Make flower crowns."

He seemed like a good person to make flower crowns with. He was patient enough, and also it would look really cute in the end on his curly hair.

Cybele turned to Promethei, still trying to understand whatever wasn't being said about the relationships between these four.

It wasn't worth dwelling on.

"I don't think there's a scientific way to measure what you forget," she told Promethei while Nectaris stood near Ransomite. At least, there wasn't going to be one without corrupting people, or even purifying them, just to see what the effects on memory would be.

That would be awful.

"But if he's calm, and willing, it shouldn't be as bad. Anything he forgets and hasn't written down you might have to describe to him."

Still, he was so much better prepared for this than Cybele had been when she'd run off to the woods and gone straight from there to seek out purification with Ganymede.

So there was no way to tell.

He'd just forget. He'd forget things that they might need to tell him or give him context for. While he nodded in acknowledgment, his mind was spinning. If he had forgotten them, would he even listen to their stories? Would they matter, or would they just be meaningless names in a book? Did he care? He wished he didn't care. He wished he cared more.

Was all of this a fluke? Could they even end up here again, or was it simply the circumstances they had met? Were the circumstances a lie? They didn't expect Elliot to return, considering he had ghosted, but the way he returned? As a member of the Negaverse?

He needed to calm down, but it was hard to among the sleep deprivation and the reality of everything.

She said it shouldn't be so bad if he was calm, and Zebulon wondered how Elliot could be calm with the pressure around them in the atmosphere, even as the trees encouraged him to breathe.

His gaze slid to Elliot.

Teegan.

He rolled over the name in his brain and tried it out on his tongue under his breath. Teegan. It would take a while to get used to the change, but... provided that everything else was something they could surmount, a name difference was nothing. A name difference was separate from a betrayal, from the way he had his energy drained, from the way he had no idea how many people Elliot had been with the interim, from the way he was literally aligned with the Negaverse, with the way he couldn't tell if their connection could even be restored.

He straightened his back and glanced to Elliot Teegan.

"Teegan? Suits you. I'm gonna go with Teeg." Nicknames were oft non-negotiable.

Elliot Teegan seemed surprisingly calm, confirming that. Perhaps it was Tobias. Tobias was holding his hand, squeezing it, and declaring them husbands loud and clear. Diryas didn't argue, but he could tell by the quiet sigh and the way he looked at him that he had thoughts on the matter. Zebulon did, too, and perhaps they made it into his eyes as he glanced back toward Tobias.

Probably a better support system than the standard.

But considering they had both tried to kill him less than twelve hours ago-- Considering he felt justified in that-- Considering only a few things about the situation made him waver, but even then--

Zebulon needed a nap and a drink. Maybe a trip back home.

"Should we power back up?"