she thinks, weirdly enough, oh, i could sleep now. exhaustion rears its ugly head and reminds her just how tired she is, especially since she's still spinning from the teleportation. so she kind of blanks, unsure what to follow up with after her suave display of confidence. 

you get used to it. 

she's gonna have to disagree wholeheartedly on that. parker can barely stand heights. and teleporting is kind of like being up somewhere high, but worse. instead, it's being stuck in an in between place and - oh, gods, if she thinks about it, she's surely going to be sick. 

nomi gapes like a cod at her and her skin prickles. she wonders if she smells. she could have at least splashed water on herself or swiped more deodorant on her pits. granted, she had kind of panicked because of the eyeball, so that seems like a good enough excuse.

"mmmmyep. and you're really workin' in the lab." her gaze slips down her pastel outfit and then she looks away. "nice skirt. is that...you don't have an assistant, do you?"

what the fuck, parker?

Naomi Sato

☉

there aren't many places to sit. the couple of chairs in the room are sterile metal stools and aren't conducive to comfort. it's not like she came in expecting some plush couch to fall asleep on, but man is it weird that some of that nervous tugging in the back of her mind, the shit that's been keeping her awake, is just...gone.

nomi perks up at the question and parker starts backpedaling. 

"i'm no scientist, y'know that. sis says my handwriting even looks like a pidgey havin' a seizure so i can't even transcribe. nah, i gotta stick to punching things for ya."

she gives a playful one-two, her last tap brushing knuckles against nomi's shoulder. then she paces around the room, looking over the various instruments and tools and notebooks. 

"so, y'got coffee or do you only make mad science juice here?"

Naomi Sato

☉

"yeah," parker says and adds, as nonchalantly as possible, "she's in kanto right now keepin' the peace or some shit for rocket." she tries not to think about it much especially after the good doctor Eva Morales's little stint over there in an attempt to start complete anarchy. at least she knows avery's okay. 

she gets texts every other day of various poses shithead's in. (shithead being her galarian meowth.)

nomi fidgets with her skirt and then turns awkwardly. parker is struck with a rather naughty intrusive thought and has to stop her hands from stretching out to yank nomi around the waist and back to her. 

holy fuck, i must be delirious from exhaustion.

the coffee ought to help. she frowns at the lack of cream. she likes her coffee white as the moon and twice as sweet. at least it'll still be drinkable with the sugar, but how did nomi know that?

"i didn't tell you this after we woke up, but i got this thing. i woke up with it." she tugs the metal chain out from under her shirt and fingers the ring. "didn' feel right to take it off. are ya, like, studying things like this?"

Naomi Sato

☉

parker doesn't know how to explain the ring or the gut feelings that come with it. all she knows is that it feels sacrilege to take it off, that she might become less of herself if she were to ever lose it. but it's so frustrating, because whenever she reaches for it, it's like second nature.

she looks at it in the mirror and she feels she is missing something. a hungry, aching something. 

but she can't say any of that, not without sounding crazy. surprise colors her, though, when nomi fingers it and then exclaims that she has a drawing of it in her journal. her brows furrow. the way she says it...doesn't make any sense. 

"you guess you were workin' on? nomes, don't take this the wrong way, but you're crazy 'bout your research. y'wouldn't just...forget it."

she raises a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, wrinkling. there is a pressure there, a last-ditch effort of her fraying mind to keep itself together. there are others who remember more, who damn well remember everything, but parker doesn't do otherworldly. parker doesn't think about her shit. so it's safer, promises the softer parts of her brain, to not remember.

"wedding band, eh? think i got hitched 'an forgot?" she says with a laugh.

"oh hey - that's funny." she points to a crude drawing of tits in the margins of the journal with some god-awful, blotchy handwriting that says infuse me with energy tn, babes?

Naomi Sato

☉

it's an eerie sentence and it sends a shiver down parker's back, but that could also be because nomi sounds small when she says it. scared. and there's fuck-all parker can do about it. it's not like she can punch the uncertainty out of nomi's head. she hooks her fingers around the back of her own neck, arm hanging, feeling small while nomi looks at her for answers parker doesn't have. 

"i wouldn't," parker admits. she knows she's a fucking simp. if someone could actually stomach her for the long game, she'd lock that bitch down as fast as possible (in the most feminist way possible). but she's hard-pressed to believe she fell in love and got married during their nappy time at the ancient tomb. 

"of me?" she squints at the handwriting. the ink is all gathered and blotchy. it looks like a toddler tried to finger-paint. parker goes looking for a pen and paper, and finds both, and writes the same thing down for nomi to see. 

the argument could be made that they have similarities, but this test handwriting is cramped and way more legible than what's in nomi's journal. 

"i mean, i kinda see it? have you talked to anyone else that was there? they come back with these crazy souvenirs too? maybe zacian punked us."

Naomi Sato

☉

nomi examines both handwritings with an intensity parker doesn't quite know what to do with. so she idles, picking at scabs on her knuckles. otherwise, she'd be staring moony-eyed at the scrunched-up frustration on nomi's cute face while she looks at something that vexes her. 

did they all just inhale crazy dream mist? but that doesn't make sense. parker's been around nomi's science shit long enough to know where the dream mist comes from, and there had been no signs of it on the battlefield.

she remembers the cat. the funny-looking deer with the bowl on its head. the anger and then the hollowness. the ground rumbling. 

and flickers of a field littered with black petals. a king almost gone, nearly forgotten. another half to her, a part she's missing now. and this one she chases. she smells hearthfire - cold, crisp snow. blood. sweat. tears. cu - 

huh?

"a few days?" she repeats, hand going to her head. she feels dizzy, all of a sudden, and almost drunkenly plops into an uncomfortable metal stool. 

"'ey, not your fault, cupcake. i like spendin' time with ya. but somethin' fun sounds good." she grimaces and reaches for her mug of coffee. "damn though. this insomnia keeps up and i might have to start takin' narcotics."

Naomi Sato

☉