Her work is never monotonous. Hidden in the paperwork, the writing, the repetitive experiments is the promise of discovery. It’s an addiction, she’s come to realize. It’s one she doesn’t want to break. What had become monotonous is the foreboding emptiness of the void in her chest longing to be filled. Something was stolen. She’s tried to fill it with work, adrenaline, and dreams but none of it could coat the festering wound.

’got a minute?’

A phantom itch rose to tickle the void. She itched her chest absentmindedly, turning her emerald gaze to the familiar vision of freya morningstar. Her lips twitch into a half notched smile as she turns away from her computer screen, “For you, I have all the minutes. Come in.”

---

freya morningstar

it warms her heart and it makes what she's about to do all the more terrifying. but nonetheless, she enters with that same smile. she puts eva's coffee on the corner of her desk and takes a seat for herself, settling in with her elbows tucked on her legs, both palms wrapped on her cup. 

"i was really happy to see you at the party," she says. she's thought about this a lot of ways. all the things she's wanted to say. all the things she couldn't and wouldn't and can't and might not still. 

"i've been avoiding you a bit, since galar and - " she says, hesitates, nibbles her lip - "it's because i missed you."

Eva Morales

☉

The blue light of the screen flickering against her face disappears when the clicks the screen off to give Freya her undivided attention, “Oh, thank you! I was just thinking about coffee,” but when wasn’t she thinking about coffee?

Eva wraps her fingers around it and pulls it close to rest in front of her, breathing in the nutty scent of the dark roast steaming out of the top. She takes a sip while letting her gaze glance up to meet Freya, “It was good seeing you too. It was a nice party,” nothing too crazy happened, for once.

The admission came as a shock that raised her eyebrows over the lid of the cup she gently set back down, “Avoiding me?” She softly repeated. Explained a lot, but didn’t make her feel like sunshine and rainbows. Had she done something wrong?

“If you missed me, why would avoiding me help?”

---

freya morningstar

now here comes the hard part: the truth, and not made plainly, not said simply, because there is no simple way to say it. she has lived several lifetimes over now and only in this life must she continue to deny herself this happiness.

her heart belongs to another, but that does not mean it does not ache. she spent years spent in a body that loved the woman in front of her without question and echoes of that familiarity remain.

"that part's complicated." she stares down in the coffee, through the steam. it leaves a dew on her lips. "do you remember galar, eva? do you remember any of it?"

Eva Morales

☉

Nothing worth having was ever easy. No problem worth solving had a simple solution. Something complicated doesn’t scare her. In fact, it only intrigues her.

She leans forward, a chin placed on a gently curled fist. Freya brings up Galar, which causes her eyebrows to knit into a hard knot across her brow. There it was again: a subtle itch.

“Galar has . . . always been a blur,” more than a blur. It's a thick, muddy mess, opaque and incomprehensibly difficult to sort through. It slips through her fingers like water. Phantom feelings wrestle with reality, but they’re distant enough to brush off her shoulder like a single petal in a gentle breeze.

“Do you remember Galar?”

---

freya morningstar

the telltale sign of the remembering. her fingers tense on the cardboard coffee cup, threatening to pop the lid off, the wait - don't on half-pursed lips. she can't. she can't dictate whether they get to remember. she can't do that again. 

"yes," she says. she crouches out of the chair, ducks a hand underneath it, and scooches closer to eva. when she sits back down, she bumps her knee against the professor's. sets her cup down on the table. 

"i made myself remember. it doesn't want to stay, but i can't forget. but it hurts. the remembering." blood splatters on furiously scribbled pages, head aching for days. "so i don't...i don't want to talk about it directly." 

i don't want to hurt you. 

"that's why. we went through a lot together." a pause. "you got me through it. and i care about you a lot because of that, because of a lot of things, and it's hard not showing you how much i care because then you'd probably think me crazy."

her jaw tightens. her eyes go glassy. and all of it comes out - "but i can't do it anymore. i can't isolate like this anymore. i...fuck, eva. just the other day, i saw my mom? i lived a lifetime in another me. i have a family. i know who i am. 

"and i'm so - i'm so overwhelmed."

Eva Morales

☉

Eva couldn’t imagine the toll of remembering another life. Something vividly lived but erased. To remember would be to cherish a lifetime that essentially never happened, that would never be again. The circumstances would never be the same and fate had already spun a new web.

Eva listened sympathetically, as she always did. Her brows creased in concern, the ridge between them growing deep with Freya’s crescendoing, almost frantic, tone.

Instinctually, her hand shot out towards Freya’s tense grip. There, her fingertips brushed the back of her hand, sliding from her knuckles to her wrist, the softest touch, like the whisper of a memory.

“Sh, sh, shhh, Freya, Freya, it’s ok,” she sang in a soothing voice, her lips peeling apart into a little, hopeful smile, “Whatever it is, I’ll get you through it again. You don’t have to isolate yourself, I’m here - You just have to let me be.”

Eva scooted her own chair closer, leaning across the table. She perched her chin on her other closed fist, “You're not going to scare me away. One thing at a time, yeah?” Small, manageable bites. She invited Freya to slow down, move at a comfortable pace through the overwhelming and vicious tides.

---

freya morningstar

this isn't how she wanted this to go. there are a few ways she didn't want this to go, and this isn't the worst one, but it's up there. (the other, the worst, ended with her lips on eva's, hand over her chest, feeling the beating of her heart.)

the touch is still enough to break her. smarting eyes leak tears, making her cheeks hot and itchy. embarrassment crawls up her neck; eva's smile wards off the spiral, loosens the tightening knot in her chest. 

eva promises her everything and freya's heart beaks. 

"one thing at a time." decidedly, then, not about how she is so beloved. how she loves her, even though she can't love her completely. how there is a timeline where they had every happiness and she was enough. where she texted her ridiculous strings of emojis and laughed freely, always. 

no, it will have to be the next important thing. 

"i've been following some leads. i...eva, i think i'm a draconid." it's the first time she's said it out loud. she withdraws the hand not under eva's and clumsily wipes her cheeks. her brows knit. "no, i know. i - i have a family. a living family - a cousin. Roy Aker. we went to the border together and saw - 

"i saw my mother. and my other self again. the one that saved me from kyurem." a year ago, she'd sat in this very office, still manic from months'-long harrowing journey, blood yearning for the god that had yet to make its pact to the woman so tenderly holding her hand.

Eva Morales

☉

“A . . . Draconid,” she repeated the words in a soft whisper, as if saying them without understanding them. Freya had never really opened up to Eva about her history. She knew the basics and the haunting questions that likely loomed over her as a result. To fed answers after all this time would be, well, overwhelming as Freya had put it.

To be given these answers from ghosts in The Borders well . . . that was unimaginable. Traumatic, even, considering it was her mother and a phantom of herself, “Wow, Freya, that’s, that’s, incredible,” was it incredible, though, or only confusing and emotionally charging as demonstrated by the tears that streaked down her companion’s face.

One thing at a time.

It didn’t have to make sense at this moment. Freya obviously needed support and Eva was there to be her pillar, her foundation, while they unraveled this tangled mess, “You’re ok? You know, after going to The Borders and…” she doesn’t need to finish the sentence, there’s more to unpack there then she’d like to admit. Not only after what Freya saw but The Borders terrified her because she knew it changed people. Well, Matias admitted it changed people but he wasn’t the most reliable source of information, now was he?

Eva reached into her desk drawer with her free hand and produced a few left over, clean napkins for Freya to use to wipe the tears away, “Did this cousin of yours - Roy Aker know you were family? Knew he had a cousin?” Eva worked hard to hide the suspicion in her voice fueled by a masked protectiveness she felt for Freya’s well-being.

---

freya morningstar

hearing herself say it was one thing, but hearing eva say it sends a trill up her spine. she doesn't know what she's expecting. if it were KING WAYLAND, he'd say something smarmy - enough to make her smile, maybe even laugh, and make it not seem so big, so daunting. 

and eva asks if she's okay.

she's doing the right thing and it's horrible, how hard it is. every word, she wants to bite back, swallow it back down and let it fester in that foetid pit inside her. but the mire rises when she sleeps and she can't go on running from the tide forever. 

"he didn't," she says and all the years that hadn't happened between her and roy (but had happened to her all the same) give her voice a defensive edge. 

"my birth mother was a draconid." and again, it feels more real when she says it aloud. "her sister, roy's mother, was there too. she passed when he was young, i think."

she slides her hand away from eva's and hesitates, lifting gold to meet green, remembering the rightness of it all on the pillar. she reaches, slowly, pinching her bang, tucking the lock behind her ear, wonderingly admitting - 

"father winter visited soon after. in another life, had she lived, i was happy. i found you and i was happy."

Eva Morales

☉

When Freya withdrew, Eva did too. She leaned back in her seat, nodding quietly in her contemplation. She’s happy for Ffreya, but wary all the same. Not because she doesn't believe it. If anyone was a Draconid - it was her. She embodied what little Eva knew about the people to the t: fierce, loyal, eerily beautiful, stubborn. She was worried for friend on a more emotional level. Did this create more cracks in her facade or heal those that existed? Father Winter was a tricky beast and Eva didn’t necessarily trust what he showed them whether it was of their own volition or not. Choice was sometimes an illusion.

“Hm, I too was visited by Father Winter,” she said as-a-matter-of-fact, “Though my visit was far from happy,” so she doesn’t expand on it. This conversation is about Freya, after all.

“But what a gift to given: family,” she said it with a sense of awe. Family had always meant so much to her.

“Are you not happy . . . now?” she asked cautiously, brows pinching in curiosity.

---

freya morningstar

oh, if only she could bear to tell this woman the truth of it. how she was not a mere tourist in another life. she was stuffed inside her own bones, stripped of everything that made her her, forced to live and love and at the end, lose, all that she came to love.

the space between them is immeasurable, hair slipping like water from freya's fingers, going back to curl against eva's cheek. filmy memories rise to the surface of the countless other times done this same action, laughing and smiling and a thousand miles closer. 

"no," she says, voice scratchy. 

what a gift to be given. she'd found a family here. KING WAYLAND and delta, and she'd lost them. by her actions, she'd lost them. how is it that every other iteration of her gets this right?

"i made you happy too," she whispers, unbidden, and she does the one thing she promised she wouldn't do. the one thing she feared she would repeat. her multitudes, layers and layers of years, manifest a soul now too big for its cage. shutters flicker over her eyes; a castle backdrop is behind them, documents turned to parchment. the next part - her knees unfolding. her hand sliding to cheek. 

gold eyes bright with heartache and desperation. 

freya does not know how to love halfway. she does not know how to love gently. so when she gives in, she does so with totality, crashing against eva like a wildfire, heartache embers sparking when her lips fold over hers; teeth like flint, fingers taut, pressing, begging her to stay even though she's burning them both.

Eva Morales

☉

To learn Freya wasn’t happy broke her heart more than she expected it to. Eva had always been an empathetic person, more worried about those around her than herself; selfless to her own detriment no matter what alternate reality she lived in. She wanted to comfort Freya, pick apart and untangle the knot that made her life so messy, turn it into a silk ribbon and gentle embrace that would hold it all together while she healed whatever was broken.

That’s more than what’s expected from just a friend, isn’t it? But the desire came as natural as breathing.

Eva shifted forward to hear Freya’s whisper. It kindled a flame of curiosity. What was it like in this other life? What were they like?

Freya eagerly satisfied her curiosity in a rush of unbridled emotions and gave Eva the answers she craved.

First, came the warm touch that extended beyond the bounds of her cheek, rushing over her like flames to pool in her chest. She felt desire and desperation, the release of something built under immense pressure for so long that it threatened to ruin everything in one violent explosion. But she couldn’t bring herself to pull away, something cemented her there, a magnetic pull beyond her control.

It was no surprise what came next. Her mind was leagues behind her body and instinct is what seized control. It guided Eva to her, to Freya. To someone who meant so much: the one who was both her greatest strength and her ultimate undoing.

Her taste was so familiar, something lost to time that she craved more than anything without even knowing it. She drank it in with messy fever, desperately, as if it was the last morsel she’d ever be offered. She devoured it with lips, and tongue, and teeth. Her hand was in her hair, running gently through the alabaster curls so soft and so comforting. What may only have lasted seconds felt like decades, no, a lifetime in the making. And for those few seconds, everything made sense. Hope, peace, happiness, love; everything Eva had been denied.

The tears that welled at the corners of the eyes fell to wet Freya’s cheeks, but it was then her mind caught up. And suddenly, it was all too much. It was instinct that pulled her back too, one that prioritized survival. She recoiled back with a start, eyes wide, lips red from passion, and a knot in her throat that silenced any coherent words that wanted to break through.

The only thing she managed to say was her name, “Freya…”

---

freya morningstar