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[attr="class","thadmain"]Being passed over for active duty at the three combat sites had really done a number on her. Though each conflict had taken less than 24 hours, she spent the majority of the week or so leading up to them working: she rampaged through the final elements of Isaac’s motorcycle to finally finish the thing, and she hung up a heavy bag in her rented garage bay. Whenever she got tired of ratcheting or welding she would experiment in some combination of punching-crying until she used up all of her catharsis and the cycle would repeat.

This was, of course, minus the time she spent with Isaac Merlo and Elisabeth Fiorelli . But they had their own business to attend to: training, mission briefings, and their own work. And as much as Cyg liked to pretend she could she really couldn’t hold their hand through everything.

She was kind of a mess. She hadn’t slept. She was too nervous.

The day in question she kept the radio she’d jerry-rigged tuned to the Mt. Pyre Rocket comms and sat by it until something knocked them down. After which she’d gone on a rampage through her garage, a monster of nervous energy and rage, building things that didn’t need to be built just for the sake of spitting fire from her welding torch.

She’d finished a super neat old-fashioned blacksmith’s anvil when her phone went off. Her torch was chucked so hard it hit the ground and dented in a spray of sparks.

She squinted at the message, quite sure she was having a stroke. Hallucinating. The welding had finally fucked with her heart and not enough oxygen was reaching her brain. Something. Anything.

Her garage companions, Stirling and Aradia, approached to peer over her shoulder.

She read the message back to herself, mouthing the words. Ever so slowly, her mouth ratcheted up into a slightly unhinged smile. She smacked one hand to her eye and dragged it down her face hard enough for her skin to squeak as a horrible wheeze of a chuckle escaped her.

“He’s alive,” she said, and this was more of a sob; her eyes were watering and she swayed back into her Golisopod, who caught her and held her at a 30-degree angle until she could feel her knees again. “He’s alive.”

Okay, enough swooning. She ran to her workbench and grabbed Devie’s Pokeball, slamming the lift button on the garage door hard enough for something inside it to crack. Whatever, she’ll fix it later; she was up and on her Pidgeot and speed-cruising levels faster than you can say ZING-ZAP.

Like most buildings in the Hoenn region (and assumably the Pokemon world) the hospital had a landing space specifically for Flying trainers. The Hospital Stank slapped her in the face as she all but sprinted through the doors to the orderly, who gave her instructions to the emergency floor, where she was prepared to legitimately murder people to find out where Isaac was-- but she was, thankfully, listed as his emergency contact and the nurse pointed her down the hall to his room.

Half the lights were off and the ambient glow from the window cascaded across the white tile floor. The smell of motor oil and metal emanating from her skin clashed with the sacrosanct sterility and scent of cotton gowns. She placed one hand on the doorframe to steady herself, not realizing she was shaking until that moment. Her hair was drawn back in a messy bun and she was wearing her stupid blue GMH jumpsuit and a black tanktop, disturbingly dark against the glow of white and lavender scrubs.

Like in a dream, she crossed the floor, eyes zeroing in on his face. His face.

Half his skull was bandaged.

Who only has one eye?

A reflection of the deranged chuckle in the garage escaped her and she was fighting down a grin and crying in equal measures, a horrible reaction, she assumed. She reached out to grip his hand to ground herself.

Her brain was a mess of emotions: she was elated he was alive, most of all, which was warring with her propriety at his very drastic loss.

“I t-told you you’d shoot your eye out, Ralphie,” she half-cried, half-giggled.

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