"i don't," she says flatly, mouth a thin line. as overjoyed as she is to see him - as happy as she will always be to see him - there is a shadow over this meeting. this is not the coming together of age old friends, lost and newly found. this is a battlefield of her choosing. 

this is the realm of her confession. 

"but i became quite acquainted with it several months ago." she pauses. "although perhaps it's more accurate to say a year ago."

her hands are gloved, but that isn't helping much with the cold. her hydreigon fur and feathered jacket helps, but her hands are always cold. it's a miracle she didn't lose any fingers when she was trapped in kyurem's realm.

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

"the truth," she says simply. maybe he'll recognize that she's biding time, working up the nerve to tell him about all the way she's fallen from grace. it will be easy when she begins talking. just like it was with king. 

they walk together across that frozen tundra. when they come upon their first body, she looks up and past it, at the formless lumps that dot the frigid landscape. her teeth ache from the cold and from the straining of her muscles. every nerve is on red alert; cortisol courses steadily through her body. 

"i was trapped in this realm before it was brought here," she starts and then she starts at the beginning.

the day of his funeral. when her body was an alien thing with emotions she couldn't process and so she simply didn't. when she dined with their mutual friend and over fine wine and food, discussed this hellbound region's future. 

the thereafter, her furious, desperate cry for help. his gift. 

nature's madness. 

here is where she falters. here is where her mouth stays, throat cracked from talking and from the stinging chill in the air. her brows furrow. "the memories are still...hazy. i was different. parts of me shut down, even more than before. i only wanted two things: to protect him, and to drink from him." she shivers.

endless days spent in training rooms, every minute of every hour putting her body in service to his needs. save, oddly enough, what he found himself insatiably hunting for at the time. that she could never give him.

her frayed mind, grasping at pink tendrils, hungering for more. and here is where the thin line of her mouth quirks, where she talks about KING WAYLAND beating her head hard enough to, quite literally, knock some sense into her. 

the back and forth. the withdrawals. the realizations. the fragmented mania. the last call to action. her exile in kyurem's realm. 

her other self, artemis, the black-scaled rayquaza's avatar. that they'd been looking for her. and at they, her mouth twists. 

"i found you. but it wasn't you. it was her you." she chuckles. "in another life, we did end up together. and we were happy. they were happy." until her sacrifice; until she pulled the last of the fairy's poison from her veins and he held her as she died in his arms. the last thing she knew was his touch.

like freya should have done for him, in this life.

she does not share her time on the beach with his other self. nor does she share the details of her reuniting with king. she skirts around it, telling him she had nowhere else to go and he took her in, and he protected her, and still protects her now.

"fernando isn't our only enemy." 

with curled fists, she recounts MATIAS SILPH's transgressions. his sins. and her own attempt on his life. and when she is finished, she exhales and searches his face, deathly afraid of what she might find. 

her eyes are glassy, voice cracking as she whispers, "i'm so sorry."

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

her mouth twists in a snarl as she's affronted with apologies and pity. he does not know. he does not know. 

does he not get that it was her fault? she's no one to blame but herself for her pain and her grief. she let him die and she was still too cowardly to face the consequence of her inaction. 

"i went willingly, alex. everything i did, i did so willingly." if she hadn't gone to fernando in the first place, none of this would have happened. then, maybe, she would have been worthy.

"i've nothing to show for any of it. nothing except a home still lost and blood on my hands." her expression is pained. "yet i don't feel...whole...without violence."

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

she laughs a cruel, withered laugh, one that's been sculpted by her tormentor beyond this realm. the frost still scores her cheeks with pinpricks of red. reminders of bodies washed over a frozen shore linger behind every blink. her foot catches on something in her shuffle and it is a body. 

a finger cracks under the toe of her boot and she steps back. it tumbles down the agonized body. she looks away from it, unaffected. 

her answer is an oxymoron - simple in the most complex ways. her soul has always burned with conviction lain by her own hands. 

he'd been there that day when she melted her captor's flesh. when she watched it bubble and smoke and char, heard the bones crack and whistle after the screeching stopped. she has always known violence.

"did i ever tell you how my mother died?" she says. "not sophia. my birth mother.

she blinks. they couldn't afford doctors or hospitals or proper food. her mother was a malnourished waif, clinging to life in hopes of doing right by her daughter, and the man she loved. a man too weak to take care of her.

"childbirth." it's been long enough she doesn't blame herself anymore. it was the morningstars, actually, who turned her attention to the actual culprits. corporate greed, inefficient healthcare, and a region that does not serve for the good of its people.

but still.

"i came into this world fighting. i've always known i'm meant to leave it the same way."

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

"death hasn't changed you," she says wistfully. and it has. in so many ways, it has. but it has not changed his spirit. it has not scarred his soul. bright as it is bathing her in absolution, she can only shy away. she shudders into her hydreigon-feathered cloak. 

"but you're right. and i have found them again - beauty and sacrifice." softer, "love."

she looks down at her hands. "and so i cling tenaciously to this life, like i haven't before. i tell you this because i need you to know i'm still...me when i become that monster. and that i'll still be me when -

"when i kill MATIAS SILPH."

ALEXANDER STONE

☉

here is her white knight, the hand outstretched she'd yearned for after months of torment. a sickening spiral of self-inflicted immolation. how long had she burned and burned and burned?

"yes, it is," she says. she sweeps her arms out around her. "we change our fates every day, alex. hell, illeana reyes  changed yours. she brought you back from the dead. how is what i aim to do any different?"

ALEXANDER STONE

☉