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Pendour went twice a week to her Wonder, like clockwork, no matter what else there might be in her life that was going on. When she'd been relentlessly pursuing Chaos, putting the burden of war and peace entirely on her own shoulders so much that she'd barely been sleeping, so much that she'd pushed away friends, or time for herself, or anything like that at all?

She'd still gone to her Wonder. She hadn't stayed long, but she'd gone.

After, when she'd burnt herself out so thoroughly that she'd broken, that she'd nearly been consumed by depression and hopelessness, and she'd sat on the Bell's couch for some time, regaining herself bit by bit with support from her friends?

She'd gone to her Wonder then, too. She'd sat in the garden for long hours, or walked to the cove and dove in, finding peace under the rippled surface.

Going there felt like taking a sip of cool water. It was something refreshing, something sustaining, something neccessary.

Only, tonight, even powering up felt heavy. She went out to the park anyway, as she often did before going to space. The view of the sky helped her clear her head. Then she closed her eyes, reached out, the way she would to an old friend, and-

Nothing.

She squinted at the sky, then closed her eyes again. She focused, cleared her mind, deepened her breath. Eventually, she sank into a nearly meditative state.

Still, nothing happened, except for her losing track of time.

Her breath was steady, slow. She could see it in her mind's eye. She could see Pendour, the sea above her, the scattering of light on her skin, the garden and the marble columns, and of course the cove. She could hear the rushing of waterfalls, the soft lapping of ripples at the water's edge.

I swear my life and loyalty to Neptune, and to Pendour. I humbly request your aid, so that in turn, I may give you mine.

She didn't have to open her eyes to tell that it hadn't worked. On Pendour, the air was warm and smelled like salt and seaweed. The park was cooler, and it smelled like dirt and grass with a hint of car exhaust.

Someone was talking to her, though, and she blinked her eyes open.

"Alya," she breathed. For a moment, the rest was forgotten. She was just happy to see him.

"It's been a little while. Do you want to sit with me?" He was one of her kindest friends. She was already reaching up for his hand with a smile.

He was asking her a question, though, and she shook her head. "There's nothing to see, though. There's nothing at all. That's, um the problem."

Her brow furrowed slightly. "I can't get to Neptune."

She'd thought that something might be wrong with her. She hadn't considered that something might be wrong with Neptune, and she pressed her lips together, even as she interlaced her fingers with Alya's, feeling the warmth of his palm.

"I don't know," she told him. "I don't know how I would tell. It was fine last time I went, a few days ago. I planted flowers."

Squinting at the sky didn't give her any answers. Jupiter was bright enough that she could just make it out, even past the city lights, but Neptune was so far away that people could barely see it even with the strongest telescopes. If it had somehow vanished overnight, would she even still be a Knight at all?

If there was trouble there, why would that stop her from going? People had Chaos spring up on their worlds all the time. She got messages from them wanting help with it sometimes.

"I was going up to clear my head," she told him. Not that the thoughts were creeping in too badly at the moment, but it was part of the routine that kept her from slipping into a dark place. "Now what do I do?"

She seemed more worried about that thought than anything else.

"Maybe," said Pendour. Nothing felt wrong, to the point where she thought she should be worried about her Wonder. They were connected, deeply. If there was danger there, maybe she would feel it.

If it was something simple, she could just wait. She was patient. "I can try again later."

For now she was happy to sit here next to her friend, to pull her mind away from a distant world and towards the sensation of his fingers tracing circles across the back of her knuckles.

"It's nothing, um, extreme," she told him. "It got bad about a year ago, but I've been doing better since then, I think, with the taking care of myself. I'm trying not to lose myself in the war."

Although sometimes the fact that she'd stepped back, even a little, made the guilt creep up, wondering if she was still doing enough.

"I had one of those clients the other day, though," she told him. "I was doing a logo set, and she was fine with everything until I sent in the final draft and then everything was wrong." Pendour shook their head, gave a lighthearted sigh.

They didn't get fed up about clients, the way that some people did, but it was still a little extra work, having to email out the policies about what edits could be done at what stage of the process.

"Well, I have policies, um, on my website and everything, about what kinds of edits I can make at what point in the process," she said, speaking easily. She'd gotten to a point where there were a few people around her who would listen to her talk about her own life, instead of only using her as a listening ear for themselves, but it was always nice to find another one.

"So I showed her that, and it was all prepaid, so I was covered, but of course she went off about how she was never ordering from me again, the way they do, sometimes."

He was a model, she remembered. That meant he might not have to deal with the customer service part of the job, but she thought he might understand something about the way clients could be. She wouldn't wish for his job.

Instead, she shrugged softly.

"Of course it's her choice what she does in the future, but it does make it a little more stressful than when those things don't happen."

If she wasn't careful, those little everyday stresses could add up.

"What about you? How are you doing?"

Pendour considered this, and she sat for a few seconds in that same kind of meditative silence as she looked for her next words. "I'm sorry that happened to you," she told him. "You hear stories like that about modeling. I've heard that it's cutthroat, that people are treated as disposable. You didn't deserve to get the worst edge of that."

It made her see his strength, though. She'd seen it before, but it was clearer now. Under that kind of pressure, Pendour knew she would have melted, but here was Alya, forging a path forwards, a path where he could be kinder than the ones that came before.

What he said about spite, that was the only thing that made her shake her head. "I don't know if that's the steadiest thing to lay your hopes and dreams on, though," she said. "Anger, I mean. Regret, revenge. Spite might be powerful, but it takes a lot from you, too, doesn't it?"

She was guessing he'd had the agency for at least a few years if he'd built it up the way that he had, but he still seemed hurt by whatever had happened before. "I'm glad that it helped you when it did, but it sounds like you have so many positive things going on now, and I'm hoping that you can hold onto them, instead. Your company sounds interesting. Different, in a good way."

For a moment, it almost made her want to step in front of a camera again, but the thought passed quickly.

She took another long moment before she added, "And as someone who used to be prettier," she traced the scar on her face, with gentle fingers, "It's hard, I won't lie about that. I used to do YouTube, did I tell you that? ASMR. I might have been able to make it my job if I'd kept going. I had a panel at a convention the week before I got attacked. I never had the heart to do it after, to see the comments."

Her mouth pressed thin, but she managed a smile. "But it wasn't the end. I found ways to be happy." She looked over at him, at his beautiful features. "I don't think a few wrinkles would make you any less pretty, but even if something like that was too much for the industry?" She squeezed his hand. "It wouldn't be the end for you. I promise."

"I don't remember if you talked about the math before," she said, lips pressing thin as she tried to think back. Maybe he had, but that wasn't the part of the conversation that had stood out to her. "But you said you were studying. I remember you asked me not to tell anyone you were smart, that, um, you wanted them to see you as a pretty face?"

She squinted at the thought, even all this time after, but she didn't say anything to contradict that.

"And I think I said that I'd tell them you were kind, and I stand by that," she told him. "You saved my life. You're being a fair person in a cutthroat industry. No matter how much time passes, I'll always be grateful to you, and I think others will too."

She didn't mention it, but she remembered the way that Cybele had looked at him, even when she was corrupted.

"The ASMR," she said, and she smiled, thinking of that. "I do think about trying again, now and then. My confidence is getting better, even if it doesn't look like it," but it was. There had been a time where she'd barely left her house, a time after that when she'd gone out of her way to hide her face. Now she looked at Alya while she spoke. It was just a big step up from that, to put something on the internet.

"I did a lot of affirmations. Some mental health focused content. The basics, too, um, spa day roleplays." That one had been fun. She'd had to buy a lot of lotions. "Oh, and I did some with painting, too. Just two, as an experiment, but that might have been my favorite." She did love art.

"It was nice, as a way to be creative. A little more open-ended than the design work I usually do."

She considered this for a long moment, considered Alya.

"Maybe I will try again," she told him. "I think that if I imagined you being the one that I was talking to, it would be easy to find things to say. Things that other people could benefit from hearing, too."

Alya couldn't be the only one who was worried about where his value as a person came from, or if those around him might someday leave him behind. Although, even if he was the only one who heard her words and liked them, the only one who saw her face and wasn't afraid, that could be enough.

"Thank you for always being sweet as sweet to me," she told him. "It's nice, talking to you, as refreshing as diving headfirst into the waters of my Wonder."

She glanced upwards again. He'd gotten her mind off of it, mostly, but she couldn't quite forget that something was wrong.

"I still need to find out what's going on," she murmured. "I should probably go home, ask the others. I, um, live with Knights now." She looked back to him, smiled. "But I do want to show you my work. Talk about things, sometime, when one or the other of us isn't in the middle of some problem."