her come in is met with a motherfucker and despite herself, freya smiles. she raises a hand to her lips, covering the chuckle as tsubaki enters the room with a politeness so forced that it comes out unwittingly coarse. it doesn't bother her in the slightest. she waves her hand. 

"freya's fine." though, should she expect some sort of formality from someone meant to be an intern? especially around ever grande? she's only ever known FERNANDO SILPH 's attendants to call him - 

"freya's definitely fine."

she shuffles some papers in front of her and brings tsubaki's resume out in front of her. a slight nod to the door. 

"close it please. you don't have to be too formal with me. i'd rather you be yourself, in fact. anyone with sense could do what i'm planning to ask of this job so we don't need to discuss your qualifications, as exemplary as they are. i want to discuss you."

a hand postures to the brown leather chair. "sit?" 

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

she's not sure if it feels right, really. but the moment has passed and tsubaki sits. freya, quite suddenly, finds herself out of her depth. the girl across from her is older than delta, yes, but not by much, and anxiety gnaws at her stomach thinking about what kind of path this will set her on. 

but she's strong-willed, brazen. if freya turns her down, she'll find someone else. someone less empathetic. like matias. or fernando. 

"you were there, then, when the revolts started," she says. when Eva Morales struck the first blow in the name of the resistance. so that's where her spine comes from. 

she'll need a better grasp of what she thinks about rocket. 

"i hear you've become something of a legend among the extraction teams. you've brought back the most supplies out of any of our miners." she tilts her head. "why?"

pale eyes swim with curiosity, but underneath their surface is a pitying suspicion. will she be honest and tell her she feels alive down there? that she feels outside of herself, more than herself. 

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

she knows thrall. she knows the draw of the otherworldly. all those dreams she's ever chased were never dreams at all - they were nightmares, masquerading in a fog of harmless pink. and what tsubaki describes puts her on edge, makes her tense. 

"you think you do, but you don't," she says flatly. "if the ultra deep sea is having this severe an effect on you, you'll need time off from the extraction sites. i need my aid's focus to be in this world. the one we're all attempting to save."

her fingertips dimple her temples. she sighs.

"tell me about your relationship with navidson. it's the first formal letter i've ever gotten from him. must have meant a lot to him, to send it to me."

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

her demeanor changes. at first, freya thinks she's going to argue, spine ramrod and mouth terse. but then she blinks it away, digesting the councilwoman's words, and freya's own gaze softens. for a moment, at least. 

she listens intently, nodding here and there. and when tsubaki is finished, she laces her fingers back together and props her chin atop them, looking her over briefly before her gaze flits up, to the painting of sootopolis' main cove. 

"it's not fair to you, the horrors you've had to witness. no one deserves to have their childhood stripped of them. but you're right. you don't strike me as the type of person who could be happy living in ignorance."

her expression is pained, almost sheepish. clear in the curl of her lips and the crease of her brows is the acceptance that tsubaki is more like her than she realized.

at the mention of rocket, she sighs. 

"vengeance is a poison. it may fuel you. give you venom in your teeth, an edge in combat, and maybe you'll get a lucky strike, but it will always rot you, tsubaki. slowly enough you may not even notice, not until your life's gotten away from you."

she takes a few papers from her desk and crumples them up, shifting in her chair so she can drop them in the wastebasket beside her. parts of a resume are visible amidst the trashed papers, letters not matching tsubaki's own. 

the lingering paper on her desk is tucked into a folder and then shoved in her top drawer. she stands. 

"walk with me. and tell me what you'd like to run towards."

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

justice. 

a word so sweet on the tongue, ripe with vindication and the golden-glow light of self-service. what was once a coveted treat to the councilwoman is now a sickly, cloying taste. it makes her press her tongue against the back of her teeth. 

"hmm," she muses, uncomfortable as the vision of her past self echoes the anger and frustration around tsubaki's words. 

too dangerous, she thinks, gently, to have one so close to her who could uncover her secret. but that's wiped away by the curse of her own pride. 

"so black and white," she says thoughtfully. tsubaki is led through the clean interior of ever grande's office hallways, sterile despite the warm lighting recently installed to 'boost moods.' she takes them away from the stuffy offices and out to the courtyard. 

"what do you think of the amnesty program, tsubaki?" she asks. 

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

amnesty?

"it's a program rocket defects can use to assimilate back into society and pay back their crimes against hoenn and its citizens, with the understanding that many of them need just that - amnesty - to give them a second chance at it all."

a second chance at life. a second chance at making things right.

she's quiet as tsubaki talks, listening and not yet knowing her well enough to read between the lines. to know the depths of her own self-loathing. if she cared, she may have strung together the pieces, wondered why this girl throws herself again and again off the precipice and into the arms of the otherworldly. 

"they'll make bad decisions," she says. "decisions that don't feel like decisions at all."

she clears her throat. "ollie morales heads the program now, but i'll be working with him on it in the coming weeks. i'll set you up tonight with a login to the league's internal scheduling software. next week, we can go over some basic administrative duties you'll be handling."

the courtyard's greenery has put them both at ease so she continues their walk under the dappled shade of trees. a couple of grass and water-type pokemon nap in the sun. 

"does that sound alright with you?"

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉