[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]she flushes when he reaches for her wrist. embarrassment is hot and uncomfortable but his touch isn't. somehow, she doesn't jerk away. it's not as painful, anyway. the bones are healing better than they were.

"yeah i, uh," she stops, reconsiders, and heaves out a soft sigh. "broke my wrist."

she doesn't say how. not yet, anyway.

in a feeble attempt to deflect, she steers the conversation away with a question.

"are you out for a walk?" obviously, illie. the flush deepens slightly beneath the thought.

jayden cross

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]his touch, while gentle, isn't entirely unwelcome. it's soft, attentive. she relaxes slightly with his fingers on her brace, eyes tracing the path they take.

"it was worse," she comments idly. the appendage had been limp, unusable... even moving it had brought tears and stars to the eyes. now, it's mended enough to be of some use. "but time eases all, as they say." or, better yet, the lord of time does.

he asks the question she doesn't want to answer. her lips settle into a flat line, almost unwilling. and yet, she relents anyway.

"i hit it against a wall until it broke." gruesome. necessary. "my bones shattered instead of the chains."

her smile returns when his pair of umbreon join them. one is affectionate, bumping her head into illeana's side. she reaches with her free hand to stroke the black and blue fur. it's a familiar sensation beneath her palm, close if not identical to her umbreons at home. and her pair of foxes step up to sniff at the new pokemon, curious and interested. the silver ninetales, in particular, sticks particularly close to illeana's body with all nine tails curled around her calves.

"walking," she supplies. her eyes follow to the graves, to the flowers left behind. the smile turns slightly wistful. "this path helps with visiting, as well."

a soft pause follows before she's turning her attention back to him, eyes tracing his face. they linger on his jawline and drag up to his eyes.

"may we join you?"

jayden cross

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]her eyes watch him with a certain curiosity. and, somehow, a sadness. she stays neutral in expression but her skin threatens to crawl off bone the longer he touches her.

"not as painful as imprisonment, i'm afraid."

the heal pulse on freed skin is soothing, gentle, kind. it does little to aid the slowly healing bones but that's to be expected. even her own healing mist is of no use on broken bones. a shame, perhaps.

she flashes a small, grateful smile when he redoes the brace. flexing her injured wrist feels better now, if only for a small while. she's quick to tuck her arm away, then. it folds against her chest, cradled away, and holds firm.

"thank you." and she means it.

his question draws her away. graves demand her eyes and she listens as if expecting to see the wisps of ghosts. she doesn't but it's no matter; they haunt all the same.

"i have some pokemon buried here," she murmurs after a brief silence. the sentence hangs in the air with a certain solemn tone. and eventually, like all things, it fades away from existence. "i like to visit them sometimes to make sure they know i haven't forgotten their sacrifice." or the bonds shared between them. trainer and pokemon... there's nothing quite like such a bond.

unfortunately... with the graves as evidence, it's easily broken.

her ninetales welcome the curious umbreon, lada, into their midst with soft yips. her alolan ninetales is more welcoming than her shiny fox but the sentiment is the same. more friends are always a good thing. she keeps pace with jayden as her ninetales follow, the silver one almost an extension of illeana herself with how close a proximity she keeps to her trainer as they continue along the beaten path.

jayden cross

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]"as am i." the smile worn has teeth, looking out of place on a usually gentle person.

is she, though? gentle, kind, naive? no, she supposes, not anymore.

regardless, being locked away in a cell is a poor use of her mind. and god, her desk... it had been such a mess when she finally returned to work. things left as though they hadn't been touched in weeks, not even by her lab assistants. preserving her research, perhaps, but she knows better; they simply couldn't make sense of the chaos.

"it's safe to assume they do," she offers.

the afterlife, despite being such a terrifying and final concept, has its niceties in reuniting with those beyond. sometimes, in less favorable circumstances, she even thinks of the notion. reuniting with loved ones long since perished sounds comforting in a way she can't describe. and it's unfortunate, perhaps, the concept has since been overwritten by pearly purple mist and ghosts of the past coming back to haunt her.

"ghosts aren't terrible things, either," comes softly after. she, like jayden, adores the company of ghost types. there's some kind of allure to them she craves. her smile turns a little nicer at the thought. "they're quite cute, actually."

jayden cross

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]shared similarities tether them more than their mutual connection, perhaps. it's a topic not quite explored yet, as if it goes deeper than a fondness for ghosts.

and the question he asks comes with multiple thoughts.

it's complicated, in truth. what comes after isn't known well enough to have a concrete opinion from a scientific standpoint. illeana, however, has her own ideas of the afterlife experience.

"i think it's possible," she offers thoughtfully. "but i believe it depends on the life we're passing on from."

the factors, experiences, and legacy play a factor in her mind.

"some say ghosts come from unfinished business, others from grudges," she pauses, eyes flitting to his. "and occasionally, there's the idea of being stuck halfway between without knowing why."

jayden cross

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]would she like to be a ghost?

it's... difficult to say, perhaps.

"i'm not sure," she murmurs. a look of consideration rises a moment later.

"i suppose it depends on what caused my death, timing, et cetera."

if she were to, say, die at the hands of someone close to her? you bet your ass she'd come back to haunt them until their last breath.

"everything can have a sense of loneliness to it," she pauses and her eyes follow his to the graves. "even living."

there's an essence of being lonely even in breathing, in existing. she can never quite forget the feeling, as if it's carved into her bones.

"would you prefer to not become a ghost?"

jayden cross