[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]Isaac is a warm, solid presence at her side, and she tilts her chin and nestles into him. They float there, suspended in that bed smelling of flower petals, in a chilly room of stale air and lavender. The noise from outside as her team sets apart to bring the house back to life seems to fade in and out-- like birdsong, Cyg thinks, when you get so used to hearing it.

“I don’t know,” she whispers, quiet and hoarse, like she doesn’t want to say it. “I don’t… it’s just like not being in Rocket. Staring down the barrel of my own mortality, in a system that will break us before it bends.” She tilts her head to look at him. “I don’t know if we can change it. I don't know if I really want to try, Isaac. I certainly don't want you to throw your life away trying to lead all the rats out of the maze when they don't fucking want to listen.”

His question knocks her still, like all the air has gone out of the room. She goes cold.

“I didn’t… help, necessarily,” she says, after a long bit. “I didn’t think… she’d said she was closing down. Moving. Publicly outing herself, eventually. I thought I was just shifting stock. Maybe she’d sell? It would get bulldozed? I didn’t think she was going to torch the place.” A harsh laugh bursts from her. “If she’d come up to me and said ‘Cygne, I’m going to burn down fucking Petalburg Woods, I’d have tried to change her mind. I didn’t want to lose the Floristry but Elisa had… has moved on.”

She stops as the emotion bubbles to the surface again, tears filling her eyes. When she speaks, her words are once again warped.

“And I followed her… well, because, it’s Elisa. Because she’s my best friend, my mentor. She gave me a chance to become something more than even Rocket did… so she said, take what I’ve taught you, move to Sootopolis. She bought the shop and gave me the funds to start it. Because she saw what I’ve been… what I’m…” her voice breaks. She doesn’t really know what she’s going to say here, so she takes a deep, shaky breath, and tries again.

“I’ve been staring into a pretty noxious, awful fucking void for the last few months. The amount of heinous shit I was planning on doing-- maybe for a good reason, in the end-- was just fucking astronomical. Because Elisa is off on this villain arc, right, and she’s getting her retribution and-- you saw. You saw how she was in Galar. You saw that fucking snail.” There’s an undeniable venom that comes into her words, then. “She said we deserved this. She said we deserved to do what we wanted and not be hindered by-- by the laws of men, essentially. And I wanted that. At least, I thought I did. To hell with the morals, to hell with people, I never cared about them anyway.” And she’s monologing a bit, now, but. “And, to be honest, I still don’t. My moral compass is all sorts of fucked up. I’m still not a good person and I have done some horrible things that would make normal people-- would make you-- absolutely loathe me. But I don’t know if I want that to be my forever. I don’t know if it’s all worth the cost in the end. Especially if-- if what we had in Galar-- is that what I’m trading? For this… this fucked up power grab, this snatch at-- at whatever the fuck I’m trying to do? Power? Fame? What the fuck ever?”

Her voice had been steadily rising in volume until she was almost shouting. The silence afterward was deafening.

“I don’t think it is,” she finished, quiet, lame, “anymore.”

She scrubs a hand down her face and tries to catch her breath.

“And, anyway, she doesn’t need me anymore. I’ve been replaced by Barnaby fucking Finch.” There’s real hate, there, the kind of sinister petulance that comes from watching a dear, dear friend slip through your fingers into the arms of another.

[attr="class","samknoxt"]Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉

[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]Cygne listened to him for a moment, but he got to a point and she rolled over and placed a hand gently over his cheek, eyes blazing with the first sign of life in a long time.

“You are not cleaning up your 'mess'.” She said, like it was a biblical fact, no room for argument. “The amount of 'mess' you have caused would fill a thimble. You are trying to save the world, because you are Isaac and that is what you do.” Her fingers softened, and her gaze did, too. “I’m-- the stuff you have to atone for is so-- I just don’t want you to die, Isaac. And I don’t mean stop breathing. I mean I don’t want you to throw your life away into this endless indentured servitude for wrongs you have the impression you’ve committed. Not to be a fucking nerd about this, but I don’t want you to be Bruce Wayne, endlessly trying to save the world the way you couldn’t save your parents, or what the fuck ever.”

Somehow through all this soul-baring and monologuing their legs had gotten intertangled; one of his arms was thrown over her and one of her arms was snaked under him.

“You didn’t have a choice,” she said, brushing stray locks of blonde behind his ear. “You said it yourself. If you’d have refused Cillian Quinn, he’d have killed you, at minimum, and probably me, too, or at least hurt me badly. The choice to save not only your life but the lives of the people around you at the expense of your sense of morality is not a choice. It’s an illusion of choice.”

She shook her head, just the barest twitch of it, as though to get them back on track. What she was trying to illustrate is she was a horrible person that killed and mutilated people for ‘funsies’, or, at least, for scientific gain. Isaac had been a pawn, a soldier, taking a life to save his own skin. The crimes were not comparable.

“I’m not trying to blame Elisa for everything. It’s not her fault I’ve done what I’ve done. And I’m not trying to… to self-flagellate myself into an early grave. I just have to decide if it’s worth… if it’s worth everything, honestly.”

The mention of Caleb got an eyebrow raise, but little else.

“They had a-- a thing, didn’t they? In Galar?” she gave a halfhearted shrug. “Maybe he’s not in as much danger as you think. He’s a pretty capable guy, Caleb.”

[attr="class","samknoxt"]Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉