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Ah, there was the other shoe drop, the real reason she was here. He knew it had to be something. There wasn’t a reason, logically, for her to be there otherwise. Diryas hadn’t known her very long and didn’t know her very well, but he didn’t think she was coming over just for a social visit. That was aside from the fact that Tobias had told him she’d be coming, and had made him promise to listen to her.

And so Diryas had promised, and so he made good on that promise by listening to her speak when she managed to segue the conversation from chemistry to chaos. Even as much as he wanted to interrupt her, he restrained himself. When she made it personal, he was able to pick up what she was putting down. He knew she had been in the Negaverse, too. Ell—no, Teegan—had told them as much. So he supposed it made sense that she had killed people.

What surprised him is how well he took that in stride. Like, oh, of course she had been a murderer. And, honestly, so what? Well, he definitely cared that the Negaverse murdered. So why did he not seem to care that she was a former Negaverser?

Was it because purification, as she said, sucked? Was he taking the fact that it sucked as her just desserts, something she’d deserved, and considering her debt repaid? He didn’t know. Diryas was able to follow her metaphors, even if the chemistry didn’t always line up, and, by the end of it, he was able to sigh quietly and pinch the bridge of his nose.

“I need to get myself something to drink.” The coffee was empty and wasn’t satisfying anymore anyway. So he got up and padded in stocking feet to the kitchen, reaching and pulling down a glass with the DCU logo on it. He filled it with water directly from the tap, downed it, filled it again, and downed it again.

What did he do, now?

He couldn’t just ignore everything she said, he’d promised Tobias. He couldn’t just tell her to get out, that this wasn’t any of her business. First of all, wasn’t it? She was Teegan’s friend, wasn’t she? And the reason that he’d ultimately left the Negaverse. Or, at least, the final push he’d needed.

Maybe that explained some of the difference, then, in how Diryas had reacted to her former life of crime and the way he’d reacted to Teegan’s. Why had Teegan taken so long to leave? Why was cutting them off, slowly, better than just being honest with them and trying to get out of a bad situation? How soon had he actually realized it was bad? How many people had Teegan drained or—worse, murdered—before he’d had his final crisis of conscience?

And why hadn’t losing them been a bad enough deterrent to keep him from staying in the Negaverse for so long? Why had he needed a final push? If he had stayed away from them because he knew the Negaverse was bad, why was the choice he made to stay in the Negaverse rather to stay with them. Diryas frowned, looking down at the empty cup and filling it again, this time slowly.

Why hadn’t they been good enough for him to leave without needing an extra push?

He supposed that was the crux of his issue, wasn’t it? Teegan had been stuck. A toxic compound made of a carbon wrapped up in something it didn’t have any way away from without an explosion, if he understood her metaphors correctly. But how had he come to be wrapped up in it? How had he managed to get that entrenched without realizing he needed to leave? What had been so intriguing about the initial invitation into the Negaverse that Teegan had said yes?

And that was the rub, too. There was no answer for anything that relied on Teegan’s memory to answer it. He didn’t remember why he’d said yes. He didn’t remember how many people he had killed. It was just an assumption that he had done so, because why wouldn’t he have taken starseeds? It was something the Negaverse did as an organization.

Plus, wasn’t the stealing of energy bad enough? Putting people in bad situations where they couldn’t defend themselves, against their will, with a total lack of anything resembling consent. Just to send it to an overlord figure who drew strength from it? Wasn’t that bad enough? Teegan had said he’d thought at first that he was genuinely protecting people, but how long could that have actually lasted?

But there was no way to know. There would never be a way to know. Teegan had purified out. Ransomite no longer existed. Purification sucked, and he’d gone through with it. Out of guilt, out of realizing his time had run out, who knew? But he’d done it.

And he’d come to them first. Even after months, years nearly, of ghosting them and unanswered texts and calls and broken promises for meeting up, he’d come to them, first. So how fair was Diryas being that he was willing to take it at face value that Livie had done bad things and earned her redemption, but Teegan hadn’t? Why was he not even allowing Teegan that opportunity to earn redemption for the wrongs against the four of them as a unit?

Why was Zebulon texting Teegan, and Tobias seeing him on the regular, but Diryas refusing to give him the time of day? <********.” It was emphatic, but it was quiet, and Diryas hissed it under his breath, looking up at the fluorescent kitchen lights above his head. He filled his glass up one last time and turned to carry it out to the living room with him. He went over to his spot on the sofa and sat down, initially without a word as he sipped at his water. He should have put ice in it. Tap water wasn’t cold enough.

He made no effort to bridge the silence until he had nearly finished his water. By then, he knew what his answer was. He wasn’t happy about it, but he knew what it was.

“Fine. You win.”

Diryas was expecting a couple of different reactions. Gloating, maybe. But he wasn't expecting an apology from her, so it took him a moment to react. "Ah." He hummed once, quietly, to himself, trying to think of what to say next. After that pause, he ventured, "you don't have to apologize." She was right. Emotions had been high. He, frankly, didn't remember what exactly she'd said to him, just the tone she'd said it in. It'd stung at the time, he remembered that much. But if she was going to be quiet and talk quiet and be open, then he could return in kind.

"You are not the only person who's snapped at me over it." Honesty was the best policy, right? "And, in some ways, I agree I've earned that." Tobias had not gone quietly when he'd moved out to the month-by-month apartment. Heated words had been exchanged between Tobias and Diryas. Nothing unforgivable, but... some apologies had been needed afterward from both sides.

"But thank you, nonetheless. And," he took a deep breath. "Thank you for what you've done for him."

"I do want him back here," Diryas answered, perhaps a little too quickly for his pride. Then he stopped, thought about it, and audibly sighed. Leaning back in his seat, he continued, "I do. And if he wants to come back here after all this time, then he can do that." He looked down to the drink in his hands.

He meant that. Something felt empty without Teegan in the house, and it wasn't just because Tobias had also left. Tobias, who Diryas had been inseparable from since they'd met back in grade school. Diryas knew how strongly Toby had felt about it even before he'd moved out, but that'd been the proverbial nail in the coffin.

But something felt empty without Teegan in the house, and it wasn't just because Tobias had also left. There was a dynamic that he had with each of the rest of them that had been sorely absent. He was Zebulon's complement. He was Diryas' kindred spirit. He was Tobias'... well, that was hard to describe. Whatever Tobias thought of Teegan was apparently something that had necessitated looking at rings.

He hadn't bought one yet, to Diryas' knowledge, but it'd come up in one of the many 'you're going to have to accept him back eventually so why not just get it over with' arguments Diryas and Tobias had ended up in. Diryas, of course, hated being told he was going to have to just suck it up with anything. It had almost made him dig his heels in harder. Just thinking about it almost made him want to dig his heels in harder--

He tore himself out of that train of thought. Back to what he'd said. If Teegan really wanted to come back, he could. Did Diryas mean that? Did he mean what he said, or was he deflecting?

...No, he meant it.

"Everyone but me seems to have forgiven him. And I'm tired of being angry about it."

Her question did wonders for the tension in the room. Immediately, he brightened visibly and leaned forward. "Not at all. It's the backbone of my field. For instance, carbon has different forms called isotopes. One of them is a very common carbon, carbon-12, but other ones like carbon-14 let us know how old things are." He'd apologize for the deluge of information coming her way, but she did ask. "Tigers are made up of a lot of carbon-12, for example, but there's carbon-14 in tiger bones."

Maybe things were going to be okay after all.

"In order to date the tiger bone, we have to take a sample of it." He leaned forward, her eyes not the only ones bright. "We know the kind of carbon based on several methods, but the biggest one is using a mass spectrometer. It's a machine that tells us how much the atoms in something weigh. If we cleaned the sample correctly and know that it's carbon, we can know which carbon by how much it weighs. Carbon-14 is a little heavier than normal carbon."

He reached for a scrap piece of paper and a pencil.

"We take tiny, tiny samples of the bone, clean them, turn them into the constituent carbon, and then once that's determined, there's this formula we can use to determine how much is left..."