She was, in fact, still awake.

Cyg still had a bunk on the Rocket sub, of course; a little ironclad twin with her name on it. The workshop she shared with Rory Faust was there, as well. But Cyg found it to be too much like Mauville-- too enclosed, too much canned air. The minute she’d had an excuse, she’d jumped ship, pun intended.

Her Petalburg flat was no Taj Mahal. It was quite small-- essentially the top floor and attic of an old home. The bottom floor was renovated into a bakery shopfront, with a tiny bit of seating, but mostly counter space and espresso machines. The back half, which at one time was the kitchen and bath, was now just a bigger kitchen. And no bath.

The bakery owners lived elsewhere in town, and for a long time, the second floor had been empty. Then times got hard and they needed to put it up for rent-- just about the same time Cyg got hired in at Fiorelli Florestry, and voila. It was like magic.

The front of the second floor, facing the street, was her living room, with two big windows, a tiny IKEA futon, TV stand, and coffee table; across from that was her postage stamp of a kitchen. Her bedroom was tucked away down a short L-shaped hallway, mostly taken up by her king-sized mattress; across from her bedroom doorway was her bathroom-- also very small, with a vanity and tub/shower wombo combo.

It was, all told, roughly around five hundred square feet. But it was Cyg’s five hundred square feet, and it didn’t break the bank, and it always smelled nice.

So, checkmate, capitalism.

She was forearm deep in a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips at ass o’clock in the morning when her phone went off.

She frowned at it, where it sat across the tiny peninsula, exactly where she’d tossed it. Her hair was freshly washed, still damp, and wrapped up in a towel, and she’d spent the last thirty minutes scrubbing grease out from under her nails, on account of working on her newest pet project.

I hope that’s not something I have to put my bra back on for, she thought, wiping salt on her sweatpants.

Snagging her phone with one hand, she artfully crumpled the bag of chips in the other, shoving it haphazardly in the pantry as she slid open her phone. She smiled a little when she saw who the text was from, then frowned, immediately, heart thumping dangerously in time with the sound of the shutting pantry door.

Definitely a bra-on scenario. But, as she tracked back to where she’d tossed it on her bedroom floor, she found she didn’t really mind.

Yeah, what’s up? she fired back. I didn’t feel a disturbance in the Disaster Pal Energy Force so you must be still alive.

With practiced skill, she slid into her bra without taking her shirt off.

Seriously though, you okay? Do I need to come there?

A beat.

Do you need to come here?

“Okay, Cygne,” she said, out loud, into the quiet of her bedroom, “let him breathe.”

She was worried, and her trepidation was fuel for the fire of her fingers.

⚰︎ emotional! damage!

Isaac Merlo

As okay as i can be

Okay, so, he was alive, at least, though possibly wounded, physically or otherwise. She cut across the hall to her bathroom to dig out the first aid kit and rolls of gauze and bandages she’s started keeping on hand since starting to do More Rocket Things.

His second response was turning down her invitation to go to the sub, which she was relieved about. Not out of any perceived inconveniences on her part, but just simply because she wasn’t a huge fan.

She would’ve, though, for him.

Yeah, no worries, she said, searching for wherever the fuck she’d dropped her keys when she came in the door, drive safe.

Which was asking a lot given that his choice of transportation was the Hunka Junka Death Machine.

She did a brief scan of the environment to make sure any pieces that may reveal her Big Surprise-- sketches, order lists, discarded tools-- were safely hidden away, and then had the wherewithal to fish a bag of popcorn out of her pantry and pop it in the microwave.

Of course, she heard his approach before she saw it, rolling her eyes in affection and hoping her neighbors-- and the entire population of Petalburg, honestly-- were heavy sleepers. Finally finding her keys, she sped down the steps and crossed the fake wood vinyl flooring of the bakery proper to the front door.

“Hey,” she said, smile twitching in a wince as the bell at the top of the door tinkled when she opened it.

At once, she knew he was not all right, and her grin fell away completely, bringing her eyebrows to knit together as she held the door open for him. “Arceus, you’re pale. Are you okay? You’re not bleeding from anywhere, are you?” It took every fiber of control in her body to not fall on him and start patting him down for hurts and wounds. Instead, she focused on gently closing the door and turning the key in the lock, not taking her eyes off of him for a second.

⚰︎ emotional! damage!

Isaac Merlo

His grin was hollow, feeble, a worrisome cut etched across his sallow face. “Yeah, okay, you look like shit,” she confirmed, hovering in his airspace, not knowing if she should help prop him up or, like, bridal sweep him up the stairs.

She was never the type to beat around the bush. “What the hell, Isaac? What happened?” she asked, doing a full rotation around him, a gyroscope searching for weakness, what needed repairs. He was limping, and doing a shit job of hiding it like he did a shit job of Googling things on the sly when he was curious. At least it was endearing, then. This was not so, now.

“Can you do the stairs?” she asked, pausing at the base of them, where they were tucked away in the back of the shop behind a slowly descending half-wall that was covered in paintings of still-life baked goods. “My flat’s on the second floor.” There was a couch, there, and a bed. And popcorn, she remembered, that she’d left in the microwave. And alcohol. Lots and lots of it. Which it looked like he might need.

⚰︎ emotional! damage!

Isaac Merlo

When he started, he was very abstract. Sterile. A defense mechanism, Cygne realized. If you keep it in technical terms, the mind can pretend. Like it was just a matter of faulty intelligence. Like it was a distant thing. Act like it happened to someone else, if need be. The Agent, who was not presently residing in this form, this mind.

But he seemed to falter, like a loop curling back in on itself. An adherence of organs, glued to the sticking place. Then all of it came spilling out like steam out of a kettle, heated and just as painfully shrill.

Her first instinct was to interject, but she withheld. Did not draw back, though. She stayed, ever present, a moon in his orbit. A gravitational pull, suggesting at some stability. Some routine. Like a shadow, she shifted to his side as he leaned against the wall, displacing water in the pit. A balance. Here to catch him, if need be.

I watched someone die.

It was a punch to the gut and yet as sharp and debilitating as a pin to the eye, the brain. And then he was crying, crumbling, heaving. Falling. Not shattering, it wasn’t sharp. It was a dull, fractious pain-- a persistent thump to knock the bricks out of place.

She moved to him, then, sliding one arm under his free one, stooping slightly to match his height. She brushed one thumb over the apple of his cheeks, his tears, cupping his head, fingers threading into the fine, blonde mess at the nape of his neck, and then pulls him in, face to chest, taking his weight off the wall and the world as she tucks him up under her chin and holds him as he continues to come apart.

She was supposed to protect him from this.

Teeth sank into the inside of her cheek to divert her own tears. She could feel sorry for herself later.

In a spur of the moment decision, body roiling with defensive, righteous anger and adrenaline, she reached down and grabbed his thighs, hiking them up her own legs to her waist, before surging up the stairs to her flat, where she continued to carry him, sleepy child-style, into her bedroom, before depositing him gracelessly on her bed. Her flat smelled like popcorn. Her lumbar region was shaking from leaning backwards all the way up the stairs to keep him pressed against her chest.

She stood over him like a protective, slightly out of breath titan, t-shirt damp from his tears.

"Take off your shoes," she said, beginning to arrange pillows.

⚰︎ emotional! damage!

Isaac Merlo

Her sheets were blue and her comforter was blue. Her pillowcases were blue, and the curtains on her windows-- blue, but a lighter blue. Her bed took up a solid seventy percent of her bedroom, with just enough room on both sides to crawl into it, a closet in the far wall, and a tiny desk, chair, and laptop.

She arranged her pillows with care, stacking them in an off-center fashion, like two mountain peaks, one taller than the other.

Once his shoes were off, her eyes went immediately to his injured ankle. “How long has that been wrapped?” she asked, one hand on his far shoulder and guiding him around and back against the smaller mountain. He was so small in her bed.

It was a big bed.

“Is it a sprain or a break or a-- a wound? A puncture?” she continued, grilling him on his physical hurts, because those she could fix. The mental ones, the emtional ones… they’d tackle those in time. Her tone was sharp but not unkind, direct in its assurance, its presence. That’s what he needed right now, she decided, was presence.

Also, presents. She cranked the dial on her box fan for white noise and ducked across the hall, fake vinyl flooring creaking under her steps. With a backhand, no-look toss, she threw the pile of bandages and her first aid kit onto the bedroom floor, before heading into the kitchen. In lieu of a bowl she just grabbed the bag of popcorn, cool to the touch now, and a bottle out of the cabinet over the fridge where she kept her liquor. It was strawberry flavored rum-- she’d honestly just closed her hand over the first neck she felt-- and left the cabinet door open for easier access.

Arms full of spoils she headed back into the bedroom, tossing the bottle and popcorn bag on the bed next to Isaac, before crawling onto the bed next to him, where she paused for a moment, brow furrowed. Then, having apparently made a decision, she grabbed two extra pillows and slid one hand around his injured calf, lifting it up to prop the supports under so it was raised.

"Is that your only injury?"

This all happened in a burst of activity over several seconds-- maybe a minute. Once she was satisfied that Isaac was sufficiently ensconced in comfort, she herself settled onto the taller heap of pillows, sliding one arm under Isaac’s neck and across his shoulders, and tugged him in to rest against her body, head perilously close to her breasts. But that didn’t matter, now-- they just happened to be soft and also where her heart was.

“I’m sorry,” she said, eventually.

⚰︎ emotional! damage!

Isaac Merlo

She was a creature of physical affection and touch, for all she tried to convince herself otherwise. So she snaked the arm she had underneath him around until their forearms intertwined, fingers splayed on the inside of his wrist.

“Did you clean it at all?” she asked, quiet, chin against the top of his hair; she was looking down his body at the injured joint. They’d have to deal with it-- properly deal with it-- soon, so it didn’t get infected. But that was going to hurt, and Isaac had enough hurt to deal with, right now.

She wanted, desperately, to know what happened. What really happened. Not just Isaac’s admission of guilt. She had no doubts there were other factors at play, here. More than just dead bodies and their families. Those were Isaac’s truths to tell, though, and, with time, they’d become clearer. Less fresh. More open to retrospection.

He turned down the booze and she was a little surprised-- but then she remembered that not everyone ran like a child into the arms of their alcoholic mother to dull their anxieties and fears like she did. Without thinking, she pressed a soft kiss-- more of a touch, really, a brush of her lips-- against the skin of his temple. “That’s fine. It’s there if you want it.”

He said he’d be okay. But probably, she mentally amended, not anytime soon.

“Believe it when I see it.”

He was still so young and fresh and new to-- to this hardcore shit. His life hadn’t been nice or easy, no, but murder? A body count? Hell, she didn’t even have one of those, directly. Especially not in quite such a vivid, sharp fashion.

“That you had to go through that,” she said, after some time. She wanted to press more but imagined it’d be like alcohol in a cut. What were you doing? What job were you on? Who was there? Who did this to you? “It’s never easy. When things go wrong.”

It sounds like they got what was coming to them, she wanted to say. But she didn’t know if the image Isaac had of her in his head could withstand that moral blow, quite yet.

⚰︎ emotional! damage!

Isaac Merlo

She listened to him attest to how well he’d cared for his wound and hummed a noncommittal note. As long as some steps of care had been taken, it could wait, at least a little longer. Still pressing, but less than. “I can take a look at it. In a bit.”

Prioritize. His safety first. The physical wounds later.

“Probably not,” she agreed, aiming for a bit of humor, while also not lying to him. There was no sense in building him a false wall, a security blanket improperly woven and full of holes. “But no one should expect you to be. Least of all yourself.”

She thought of Elisabeth Fiorelli and how big and dark the world had seemed when her mentor and friend had finally clued her into the secret facets of her business. Cyg had taken it, rolled with it-- but she was weird like that. Flexible. Soft and forgiving, at least where faults were concerned; she’d always had enough light to sustain herself, no matter the strength of the shadow. It was sometimes grainy, and not so good at illuminating, but it was light all the same.

She never put much stock into anything, either-- especially people, and that had saved her time and again.

Now she had Elisa, who she was literally willing to help murder people with. And for.

And Isaac. She had Isaac.

She felt their fingers weft together and she squeezed. This was no place for ephemerality. This was her house, her house of strength and stubbornness. He wasn’t going to get gentleness or half-measures out of her. There were only both feet or none.

Their eyes met and she smiled, sharing her light, dim and grimy though it may seem. “You. Stop apologizing. I was already awake.” Which was still his fault, by proxy. But nothing she’d have blamed him for. “You’re welcome to be here as long as you need.”

He looked away and she snorted a huff of laughter. “I’ve stopped counting, honestly. Just put it on your tab.”

She’d almost kissed him, then, but he was still so raw. Too vulnerable. It would’ve been an imposition-- on him, not on her. Not his fault he's the person she's meshed the easiest with in all her years.

“I can make you real food, if you’re hungry,” she offered, instead. “Or we could… watch a dumb movie, or you could sleep, if you can. I’ll stay up.”

⚰︎ emotional! damage!

Isaac Merlo