[attr="class","skullbody"]
Go back.[break][break]
Galar. An impressionist painting masquerading as a dream masquerading as a memory. Hazy lines knit together in the shape of people, finding solace in each other's love for twenty years that melted into yesterday. Daughters whose faces he could no longer recall, a love whose location he could no longer tell, a sworn brother whose safety he could no longer ensure.[break][break]
Go back.[break][break]
The Championship Assessment. He had conquered six of Hoenn's strongest gyms, proven himself by every concievable metric, seen significant growth as a person. Despite that, his heart was uncertain, not yet forged in the fires of his kingdom. Perhaps he would have passed. He was far too busy fleeing to know, same as it ever was.[break][break]
Go back.[break][break]
The unspeakable act he committed at his master's behest. They said the first kill was always the hardest. The idea of adding a second to his list made him want to vomit. Sometiems, the common wisdom was wrong. Through his bile he found conviction, but at what cost? The life of a man whose end was already written?[break][break]
Go back.[break][break]
The decay of the Fiorelli Floristry, and with it any chance he had of finding a normal life. The grudge seared into his mind by a woman he once considered a friend erupted through his brain, a splitting headache laced with whispers that may or may not have been his own. He was unsure which possibility scared him more.[break][break]
Go back.[break][break]
The Border, where for the second time in Isaac's life he had died. The crushing grip of a Golurk had spelled his end. The love and loyalty of his friends, his team, and his own stubborn ghost ensured that he'd make it back. A part of Isaac wondered if he was truly still alive.[break][break]
Go back.[break][break]
Dewford. He didn't know what he wanted from his life, but he knew he never wanted this. For Rocket to claim the very realm he now stood within had been an unexpected surprise. He wouldn't know. He was too busy doing what he should have back on Mt. Pyre, escorting the lost and the damned to safety while he could.[break][break]
Go back.[break][break]
A brother's coronation, surrounded by the four horsemen of the apocalypse. War. Death. Pestilence. Worst among them all, cowardice. Isaac wished he had said something while he could. What words he did have reached him now, far too late.[break][break]
Go back.[break][break]
A child's body, limp and weak in his arms. Mauville City, a protest in the wake of the incoming meteor. Mauville Gym, where his attempts at preparing a friend only ruined them. It had all been his fault.[break][break]
Go back.[break][break]
The night of the meteor's descent. He expected to hear the labored breaths that haunted his every nightmare. Instead, Kiryu lay before him, serene as a sleeping newborn. Her eyes were closed. Her smile was serene. Even as the side of his face where he once had an eye pulsed with pain, Isaac wanted to stay here forever.[break][break]
Then she spoke.[break][break]
"Go back."[break][break]
A dance with the devil as monsters surrounded him on all sides.[break][break]
A clash with an angel, who despite everything believed he could be good.[break][break]
A runaway experiment, the score between them never settled.[break][break]
A digital world, where Isaac learned his surrender would only bring his demise.[break][break]
A failed intervention, where the Rocket he sought to stop was the first to see his potential and insisted he follow.[break][break]
Five years of exile, his spark left behind on the roadside day after day until there was nothing left.[break][break]
His eighteenth birthday, where no law could hold him back. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose, and yet he still found it preferable to staying a single day longer. A pair of soulful blue eyes stared back at him, knit with worry and yet ready to follow him into the crucible. Once more, they spoke.[break][break]
"Go back, to the beginning."[break][break]
The sacrifice of dream after unfilled dream. What did they matter anymore? He'd never be the one to fill them.[break][break]
Argument after argument, desperate attempts at being noticed giving way to the rage that it would never come.[break][break]
The incident on Mt. Chimney that broke the only person who mattered to him and forever changed everything.[break][break]
The slow, dawning realization that a father's love was conditional at best, especially when he had a replacement lined up.[break][break]
The blissful ignorance before he knew that to be true, back when he had been lucky enough to receive it.[break]
Dark, hazy, before his mind, body, and even soul were formed. The knowledge that the man he refused to call father was, in fact, not. Who had been? If Isaac was being honest, he neither knew nor cared.[break][break]
The Isaac of the past looked down the road he had walked. He looked down the road he would walk. He then turned to those blue eyes that, to this day, he still mourned.
"We're almost there," he said, voice quiet and soft.
"There's just a little more I'm gonna do. But I'm gonna finally make you proud."[break][break]
A tight hug, strong as steel and sturdy as stone, cut his thought off. In that moment, Isaac knew he always had.[break][break]
He wanted so badly to linger on this last memory, maybe for the rest of his life. Yet, as the Xatu turned his gaze away, Isaac found himself settling back into his present. Just a bit further. He was almost there.[break][break]
He wasn't the only one troubled. Priam turned to Isaac, voice filled with shaky conviction. Isaac returned it with a smile born from the same place.
"That's the spirit," he said, trying his best to be the pillar of strength Kiryu had once been.
"What's on your mind?"[break]
[break]