[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]for a moment, she doesn't answer.

planets begin their slow, churning building in faraway galaxies and she can feel the chunks of their planetary cores slowly coming together. they swirl in a similar way to her mind - ever changing, ever evolving, ever decaying.

and looking at him almost seems like looking through him, as if he's translucent and she's seeing the snow beyond his tangible body. her eyes trace the spatial matter of his body, picking apart what elements formed a whole being. could she pluck what she wants? discard what she doesn't?

could she mold him into perfection - free from the shadows of team rocket, of their families?

"i could ask the same of you."

she doesn't, but the possibility is there, settled right next to the plethora of others at her disposal.

and he utters her nickname, a cursed little knife nudged right between her ribs.

does he know how he wounds her? how he's betrayed her?

they were supposed to be good - better than their parents and the choices they made. they were not supposed to lay in the graves their fathers dug for them, but he has embraced the sifted dirt of his shallow resting place and who is she to deny him the final comfort before his end?

foolish.

oh, how she despises that word.

her body tenses and after a moment, translucent pink begins to spread around them. it is no longer the familiar tendrils of mist she's known for so many years. it is divine, gifted from the gods of the universe.

ice erodes beneath her feet - slow in the way venom drips from a snake's fangs. her eyes drop for a moment to watch it, to trace the way it creeps toward jayden and his chien-pao.

"nice pet."

a small, vacant smile takes hold. it doesn't meet her eyes.

"my home is elsewhere now."

silence falls. palkia's tail swishing irritably against ice punctuates the stillness like a hot blade.

and as pink energy paints her holy, she idly waves a hand through the air in a vague gesture. spatial matter rips apart following her fingertips, breaking and mending all at once in little shreds to this reality's cozy fabric. the rips feel like soft knuckles knocking on a spatial door - calling to be let in by the divine to escape the cold.

"would you like to see it?"

the smile widens. it has a little more life to it now.

"before you come undone?"

jayden cross

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]in this shakespearean conflict, with each of them glowering at the other from opposite sides of a manufactured conflict, she isn't quite sure who is in the wrong. is it him for falling prey to the teachings of the fathers? is it her for leaving him to drown in darkness?

and perhaps, in the end, no one is in the wrong for they exist in their own small universe with shades of gray splashed against every wall.

she sees faint pink start to taint that small, fragile universe of theirs and she turns, expectant, to the being she calls her patron.

"of course i know who i am."

her voice is soft, awestruck in some faint girlish way... as if nothing more than a young version of herself greeting a lovely dream.

"i am the alchemist."

not quite illeana reyes, but not quite unlike herself either. at least, not in the way she would realize for the price paid is never an immediate understanding. it's delicate, that toll, as it seeps through fissures in the foundation of her entire being and slowly rots her from the inside out.

she is swathed in a pearlescent pink, then, and she intends to leave him behind in this universe for a new world - a better world.

the dimensional rift swallows them whole a moment later, squeezing the hoenn that they know out of existence and replacing it with something more intricate, gilded and crafted for the gods.

his voice, a soft echo against this dimension's plane, reverberates in her bones.

"this is home."

there's faint touches of her likeness here, as if she's been slowly restructuring the twisting, labyrinthine space into little pieces of herself for safe keeping. they're protected here, untouched by the erosion of time and tucked against corridors of mirrored halls and stretches of bubbles bathed in pink hues.

and yet, there is a disturbance among them. she can feel it - the way her stomach knots itself in dread.

a clock is ticking somewhere, but she can't hear the sound... she can only feel the mechanical pull of the hands circling in like vultures overhead.

her head turns, searching, and palkia has already begun to drift toward taut parts of this dimension. a blink, and they're pulling apart at the seams. another blink, and they're breaking apart entirely.

"wait, that's impossible."

there are spots of decay where the dimension has already ripped itself into small cracks. time slowly ticks by and she feels the spatial particles dying with each shift of the clock's hand. her body moves of its own accord, ready to push past jayden cross to place these tiny, barely visible cracks as a higher priority.

jayden cross

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]she doesn't understand, in shaky terms, the turmoil that plagues him. it's different than hers - unfamiliar, no longer intimate, but still demanding to be heard.

she saw it in his eyes last time, that bitter cold hatred. beneath it, yearning for a life that is no longer theirs.

come home, he had said. then, now, and even into the future, she has heard it whispered like echoes begging and pleading for togetherness.

and she could, realistically, go back to him. she has it in her, you know - that likeness to their fathers. it has not led her to the dark as it has him, but it still exists between ribs in the thoracic cavity, waiting for its rebirth into creation.

in the faint pink glow of spatial matter, this place looks like spear pillar would if from the past - not crumbling into ruin, but whole in its hallowed glory. this new home - her home -, however, is in a state of duress. decay has taken hold like a disgusting, festering rot and she can't see where it began... only where it ends.

time freezes with a sword of ice. palkia snarls.

and the alchemist, with a hand wrapped in pink, pulls the fabric of this dimension to her like a makeshift cloak. she disappears and the icy sword strikes hollow nothingness, embedding itself in a nearby platform of solid stone.

she reappears by jayden's side, a glowing fist announcing her arrival with a quick jab at his torso before her entire body is wretched from the spatial tear of her own creation. it repairs itself slowly after her departure, struggling to stitch back together into a sense of wholeness. that, too, is wrong. it tugs at her awareness, demanding undivided attention.

"stop!"

her voice is a barking decree, ichor trying to clog her throat in its own righteousness. the steady ticking of a clock continues. each sound echoes against her bones and she's certain...

"we do not have the time."

jayden cross

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]how does he not notice? can he not see the state of disarray ripping her home apart?

"look around you."

past the pillars, past the stone...

look beyond and he'll find his answer. her arms sweep toward the fissures, the decay that bubbles out from them.

his ice is ignored for right now, even as it glints different shades of blue and pink. she takes a step closer and the frozen sword in his hand reflects in her eyes.

"my home - and yours, in turn - will cease to exist if we waste time."

mortal emotions and whims... they have no place here. there is work to be done and she will do it, with or without his help.

by a smaller rift, palkia has already begun to slowly weld it back together but the dragon needs its avatar just as she needs it. they must work in tandem, two halves of a whole divinity, or the universe will succumb to its early end.

"we have not survived wars, megalopolans, the drk triad, or a damn meteor for it to come to this."

a hand rises. despite its pink glow, it is stable and without the tremors of anxiety that once plagued her. does he remember the girl she used to be? does he see her now, basked in this light?

and the look in her eyes - red, the same as her patron's - is expectant, awaiting an answer or a hand in hers.

"will you help or will you force our hands?"

jayden cross

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]despite spatial distance - and the archaic ruins of their decaying relationship, of the fathers they have cast aside - his hand still settles into hers as if it had never left after childhood had passed.

and it's cold, chilling down to bone.

she feels the lick of hatred - sudden, in the way a chill overtakes the body in a shiver - skitter its way through her body.

hatred for him, for their fathers, for the circumstances that have led them into this primordial clash, all rise at once and it might drown her, this rush...

her eyes flash like rubies in harsh sunlight - bright, unearthed and left to shine. they meet blue, heat clashing with cold, and she finally shows teeth.

"good."

there is much to be done.

her pink spatial energy slowly subsides from her body, but she still keeps the sensation close. their truce is mild, temporary in this decaying dimension for settling generational scores is no longer the big picture.

and she can see it when she turns, when her eyes take in more of palkia's home.

"seek out any dimensional cracks, please."

there are too many, in hindsight, but perhaps they can seal them all the same. the atmosphere around them shifts after a moment and the spatial expanses of this dimension rearrange themselves. pillars crumble as if never there and new halls take their place. it's still a labyrinth, twisting and coiling in different directions until the senses are left disoriented, but there's a method to the madness...

a new crack reveals itself at the end of a new, mirror lined hall. her eyes snap toward it. the panels, themselves, beckon for attention like lost souls screaming for release in earth's molten core. her body drifts, then, closer to that hallway and her voice returns as a faraway haunt.

"i need to seal them all, or yo won't have a home to return to."

the pressure is crushing on her shoulders, but she tries to stand tall all the same.

jayden cross