The Peacemaker
She / Her
32
January 25
Pallet Town, Kanto
Heterosexual...?
Veterinarian
Head Prof / Major
My legacy is in the lives I save
TAG WITH @dreva
Eva Morales
HEARTS ON FIRE [FW2]
POSTED ON Feb 1, 2024 6:32:12 GMT
PART II: HOPE
Rebellions are built on hope.
It felt like a dream. Was it a dream?
What was real? The blood on her cheek she washed away gently with the washcloth, or the fading memories of a life in Hoenn? It felt crazy to consider either option.
He was real. This had to be real.
“Are you ready?” she glanced over her shoulder to see Matias dressed in street clothes, freshly showered, and impatiently waiting. They burned their uniforms. Things had quickly escalated for people like them. Kanto was a dangerous and hostile place.
She stayed because she wasn’t alone. It’d been two weeks and they had found others that still shared their ideals and hatred for Rocket. It was a pitiful rebellion but all it would take is a little gasoline to set fire, “Yeah, right behind you,” she offered a small smile in assurance but didn’t move.
“Tch,” she could feel his eyes roll away from her as he paced the room like a restless ghost.
“Just go without me, I’m right behind you,” she couldn’t stand to hear the rhythmic beat of his boots on the small safehouse’s creaky floor. That comment stopped him in his tracks, another ”Tch,” dismissed the idea. He wouldn’t let her go alone, not when the streets crawled with spies and henchmen with their faces burned into their memories. They scoured the streets for them: Kanto’s ‘Most Wanted’.
“Alright, alright, let’s go,” she tucked her dyed brown hair into the hat and they slipped out of the apartment and down to the pub on the outskirts of Vermillion City.
“This is getting more dangerous,” Ivan grunted, clearly restless with the idea of their gathering. It didn’t help that they had been at this for hours already. There were about a dozen of them in total, idealists who refused to accept Rocket’s recently proclaimed hold of their home region. Their little group was a mix of civilians and soldiers, some more radical than others.
“There isn’t enough of us, how can this reclaim all of that,” they motioned vaguely, and frustratingly, at the region as a whole drawn out on a map on the table. Strategic pieces were scattered over the map like a chess table with Matias hunched over it all playing General. He’d had enough of Ivan’s cynicism, and it showed in the whites that blanched his knuckles and cold glare that rose from the map to look across the table at him.
“It’s not a numbers game,” Eva quickly injected before the tension in the room snapped like a guitar string. She rose from her seat in the corner to stand between them, “We just need the right pieces. A pawn can take down a king,” she reminded him, “ . . . With the right sacrifices.” Her fingers traced over the Seafoam Islands, moving along the map to Mt. Ember. She stayed because she wasn’t alone, but perhaps being alone was her fate. Especially if it meant Kanto’s freedom.
Matias knew that look. The one she got before she did something incredibly stupid, “Eva, a word.”
“You can’t go chasing fairytales, Eva. Don’t be stupid,” it wasn’t like him to be so blunt, not with her. The weight forced on their shoulders made them both unpredictable, “We need you here,” what he really meant was ‘I need you here’. He’d never admit it, of course. Neither of them would, not even now while they stared death down, waiting for it to strike. It was easier to pretend they were nothing so when they inevitably lost one another, it would be easier. At least, that’s what she told herself.
“What we need is something for the people to believe in. A symbol. Hope. Without it they’ll never be inspired to fight back. They’re not all like us,” she would hold her ground on this, a mountain he couldn’t move. Which, naturally, frustrated him. Even as he stared her down, looming over her with an equal stubbornness, “They need you here, not me. Keep this alive until I get back.”
“If you come back.”
“I’ll come back, I promise.”
She wrapped her arms around him, embracing him in the shadows of the pub’s hidden hallway. He returned the gesture, breathing into her hair.
“You better.”
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