She should've fought. The thought settles somewhere in the back of her head as pink mists swirl around them to form an inpenetrable cocoon that blots out the stars, the building, the darkness below. And though she never releases her grip on Angelo's shirt, the world shifts into absurdity and nonsense - swallowed by dreams and desires.

"Angelo...?"

He's nowhere to be seen.

Silver eyes blink against the pool of sunlight that has no business being there. It spreads, warm and golden, across familiar floor tiles and a faded couch that looks as if it's seen better days. Blue fabric feels warm beneath her calloused palm, though it offers less resistance than she's used to.

It surprises her not at all when she looks down and her hand is halfway sunk into the upholstery. Not real.

"Where the hell...?" But that should be obvious enough. Her apartment in the Sotally Tober, her home, surrounds her. A softly snoring Dorado catches her attention long enough for a soft, lopsided smile to slip through. 

Voices drift from the kitchen. The only reason why Skyler doesn't march forward to take a peek takes the shape of a gently drifting feather and the strange cabinet she has absolutely no recollection of.

It's the only intruder in an otherwise picture perfect scene. 

So, obviously, Skyler would be drawn to it like a Dustox to a flame. The creaking of wood doesn't dissuade her as the sailor approaches, kneeling down to follow the feather's path - first with her eyes, then with sure fingers that attempt to pry the door open the rest of the way.

That she's being strung along doesn't even occur to her.

Skyler Dross doesn't consider herself fearless by any stretch of the imagination; she's simply good at circumventing the warning signs and pretending they don't exist. And once she's lost in the rush of adrenaline, fear becomes less of a deterrent and more of a fuel. Propelling her defiantly through ocean storms and death traps and pushing her to rise against anything that would strike her down - until one day she bites off more than she can chew.

But that is neither here nor there.

A cabinet door creaks open invitingly, and Skyler's heart stutters at the contents haphazardly displayed before her. It suddenly doesn't matter how fierce she is before whatever obstacles come her way, not when her breath refuses to escape past the lump lodged in her throat.

Fake gold coins. Carrot seeds. Little treasures and trinkets. Flight manuals. Key chains and apartment keys. A grand collection of blue bracelets, each faded and worn thin.

Briefly, calloused fingers catch on the bracelet around her own wrist. She'd had to ask Angelo for a replacement a couple of months back - making this her second one. 

Shit.

She sees herself a hundredfold in the slips of photographic paper strewn about: dancing joyously around a campsite, pressed against a tanned chest with glimmering trouble in her eyes, wrapped up in Angelo under the stars. She sees laughter and joy and annoyance and- the quiet moments in-between where silver and blue soften, following after the other.

A life built around their orbiting dance of unspoken devotion. 

Home.

It doesn't surprise her when her fingers are able to close around the picture of a yowling Dorado, bringing it closer for inspection. She doesn't notice it when a few more objects are added to the collection: a seashell crown from an Alolan beach; a picture of their tangled bodies at a festival's edge while she whispers promises over Angelo's lips; another picture of Skyler and Angelo bent over the kitchen counter peering down, mystified, at green eggs. Skyler looks proud. 

Perhaps their desires aren't that different after all.

Her amused snort is interrupted by a familiar presence, calloused digits stealing the sun from her eyes.

Ah, here you are.

"It's my apartment too," she replies with a lopsided grin. "I reserve the right to snoop all I want." Her voice sounds slightly different. Slightly... older?

While her head tilts to chase after the voice, she makes no effort to remove his hands. Instead, the picture in her grasp is waved about tauntingly. "Looks like you're making friends already."

Beyond the dreamed up Sotally Tober, a winds starts to pick up...

At first she thinks it's only another gust of wind that comes to howl at their door, slipping through the cracks to play with locks of golden hair and disturb sun-kissed curtains. Wisps of pink follow in its wake as the illusion materialized through shared desires stirs, flickers. For a moment, when she looks up, she can see a trail of stars.

Angelo's touch on her wrist keeps her tethered - to the illusion, to reality? - as eyes are helplessly drawn to the siren song floating up from the other side of the apartment door, familiar and haunting.

Captain's Lament.

"Do you hear that...?" Skyler has no way to know, but she doesn't look very interested in the answer either. Their surroundings become a backdrop to the pink-hued darkness that extends past the door, suddenly yawning open. Inviting. Taunting.

Skyler doesn't even attempt to resist. Not when her heartbeat chases hungrily for whatever calls her from the other side.

Something blooms wild, feral, alive in her chest as she steps past the threshold. The howling wind makes way for oceanic gusts that catch in her throat, slaves to an unrestrained rush that reflects in knife-sharp silver.

One should probably feel guilty when surrounded by visions their bad decisions, but Skyler bares her teeth in defiance of common sense, her expression set into one of careless contempt. It doesn't matter that the abyss stretches before her, glowing with familiar patterns of infernal red.

She only knows how to go too far, chasing after tempests and collecting scars as remembrance - a soliloquy of how to spit in the face of gods and fate. 

Of how to be free.

It's only when the tempest dies down, howling wind giving way to an unnatural stillness, that Skyler notices something amiss. The ocean stretches far and unknowable to spill into far shores, and yet no wave breaks past its glass-like surface. Motionless. Dead.

Watching.

This, she realizes with a creeping sense of horror that has her stepping back, is not an ocean at all. The pungent smell of stagnant water hits her nostrils not a second later, and Skyler gags instinctively. 

Dread settles into the pits of her stomach, tugging her back into the threshold. Pink mist curls around her ankles, following her retreat into the dreamed-up Sotally Tober. 

The familiar scene of a star-lit balcony seems impossibly faraway, joyous laughter and sparkling cerulean becoming disjointed pieces of a puzzle she's incapable of completing. 

Dust meets her roughened fingertips as she steps back, the previous landscape fading into darkness as her apartment comes back into view. 

Frowning, Skyler traces the faded blue couch with her eyes until they find a lone pillow by the window, empty. Huh, has she been throwing pillows while drunk again?

It settles with a dejected 'fhump' back into the couch. Skyler's already forgotten about it as she steps into the kitchen, heading straight for the fridge. She shouldn't really be surprised to see it depressingly empty - she's always been a terrible cook, after all - but somehow the sight unsettles her.

'Maybe I'll get takeaway. As always. Hmm... maybe pizza?' She's found her way to the couch again, but the phone lies still in her hand. Weirdly, she can't bring herself to call anyone. 'Wait...'

Has that cabinet always been there?

'I'll always be your home.'

It's a heavy wooden thing that looks as if it'd seen better days, but Skyler doesn't remember ever seeing it before. And once she takes notice of it, it's impossible to keep her attention away. 

A strange gravity pulls her to it, as inevitable as the sunrise. 

'Mia Amata. I'd fly to the edge of the world and back.'

She'd been expecting treasures, prizes, a few priceless artifacts at least. Instead she finds trinkets: plastic coins, flight manuals, a collection of faded bracelets. And, in-between those, pictures. 

Her face is perfectly clear, set into dozens of different expressions - and always looking at the other figure in the frame, blurry and undistinguishable. It could've been... anyone. Couldn't it?

'I would go anywhere... Just to bring you back to me, ------.'

Skyler doesn't remember a single one of these moments. But the pictures crinkle under the pressure of roughened fingers as she grips them tightly. A thumb brushes over blurry ocean blue, and something like a sob inevitably catches on her throat.

What- What did she forget?

Who did she forget?

'Did you really think (...) I wouldn't fight? I'm here, ------. I'm-'

"-here." The whisper is ragged from the thorns that have formed a lump on her throat. But they have nothing against the jolt of alarm that widens silver eyes, panic written in every inch of her face when the picture turns paper thin.

And dissolves into air in her hands.

No. No no no no-

"No!"

What was his name?!

Skyler reaches for the fragments of a life shared, a life forgotten, but her fingers find nothing but air. Her scream of frustration catches on a sob, which finally makes it to the surface. 

She hasn't cried since she was a child, but that doesn't stop the tears from running down her cheeks. Frustration. Anger. Grief. 

'I will never be far from you.'

"Fuckin' liar!"

Eventually the cabinet and its contents fade away despite her best efforts.

"Please..."  

Her plea is met by a hollow silence.

"Don't go..."