Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was strange that Daphne was almost getting used to the winters on Earth. She still hated them, of course.She still stayed inside for most of it, wrapped up under her piles of blankets and waiting for summer, but the frost and the wind and the snow didn’t feel as wrong as it had when she’d first come here. It was part of life now. It was part of her life now.

She could peel herself from the bed when she had to, for work of course, but even sometimes for other things.

She would go out at night to visit the grave, or just to sit in the park as Daphne.She’d been doing her best to settle into life at the bakery, but there was more to her than that. There were things that she couldn’t forget.

People that she couldn’t forget.

She was walking through the park powered up when the Chaos aura came near. Her eyes were set, maybe a little teary because she’d been letting herself reminisce. She stopped short, though, and started looking around.

“Who’s there?” she called out. There were many things that something like this could mean.

An agent. A sword. Daphne stepped forwards slowly, looking her over with a sideways glance, refusing to quite look at her directly. Her tail flicked when she saw the woman looking at it, and she crossed her arms over her chest, daring her to say something like Mauvian or alien. That was how so many of them got. Some of them got caught up on the fact that she wasn't human, as if that should change the fact that she was trying to keep Chaos from spreading across the universe.

Instead she asked if she was cold. Kind, but she wasn't about to fall for that kindness.

“No,” said Daphne, wrapping her hands tighter around herself.

She was lying. The magic helped regulate her temperature enough that she wasn’t freezing, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t going back to her blankets the second she had the chance. Her exposed skin was prickling a little into goosebumps, but she stood tall and defiant all the same.

“I am Daphne,” she said. A moment passed. “You are from the Negaverse.”

She wondered what would come next, this time. Would this be one of the ones who pitied her, one of the ones with tempting words about how Chaos was there with its arms open, about how it could fix what she'd lost? There had been times when she had been close, far too close, to accepting those promises, but today, she wasn't in the mood. There were better times, she thought, to give herself up if it came to that.

The cold, for all that she hated it, made her want to keep moving. It made her want to not give up until she had at least found somewhere a bit more comfortable for herself.

Vaguely, she wondered if it would be a fight. She didn't hate the thought of that. It would warm her up at least. She needed the practice, anyway. She still had her challenge to Alastor to live up to. If she could beat someone with a sword, she thought, it couldn't be so hard to win against him someday.

Daphne was silent for a long moment, watching. “I’m not going to try to persuade you to fight,” she said.

She was thinking of Retzian. The look in her eyes had been a little like that towards the end, Daphne thought. Not cruel or cold the way Chaos sometimes made people. Just, distant. Distant, the way that Daphne sometimes felt herself.

She wondered vaguely what had happened to the other woman. She hadn’t seen her now in so long.

Still, she wasn’t entirely sure that she should relax. “Why are you out here?” she asked, “If you don't want to fight?” She glanced over the other’s uniform. “You do have a jacket, but it would still be warmer under the blankets at home.”

Was there a point in trying to talk? Could she say anything useful? Her heart felt cold, empty. Still, she summoned a small candle from subspace, where the agent could see.

"I do not know if the effort is worth it," said Daphne, honestly.

She looked at the candle she was holding, the one lined in the gold filigree, that she'd gotten from Alastor. She'd promised, months ago, that she would burn it for her family once she'd freed her planet from the Chaos, but that goal seemed so distant now.

Even trying to be there for the living was so difficult these days.

"I understand what you mean," she said, "About the energy being hard to find. I feel that way." She paused. "Often."

So often.

"But I do not want the Chaos to destroy this world the way it destroyed mine, so sometimes I try."

"In our case, it corrupted people's minds," she said. "People turned against each other. Turned against me. There were wars. Terrible ones." She spoke about it as easily as anything else. At this point, she was numb to it. "My planet sealed me away to protect me from the worst of it, but by the time it was able to send me here? It was too late."

And it would never stop being too late.

"It doesn't stop hurting," she said, quieter.

"I wouldn't wish these feelings on anyone," she said. "This emptiness."

The curiosity of finding someone else like this, as she had, instead of someone who just wanted to fight, made her have to ask,

"Is there something in particular that has caused you to feel hopeless?"

"Alcohol?"

She would be lying if she said she hadn't considered it. It was like Chaos, where it could help her forget, only without her having to lose herself in quite the same way.

But, like with the Chaos, she'd always managed to stop herself. Just barely.

"I hope that you can stop that, if that's what you want," she told her. Her lips twitched, hearing the other woman talk about losing people who she'd loved, twice.

Daphne might not have been interested in those kind of relationships, but she understood the feeling of loss. And trying to rebuild, and then losing something again?

"It's not your fault, either," she said, because it was easier to say that than to believe it. "And I think you might be able to find happiness again, for what it is worth."

A moment passed. "If you are not going to fight, I think I will keep going, but it was nice to speak to you. Truly."

Sometimes, when people tried to tell her that things would get better, she almost believed them.