She is quiet, distant, distracted. As if she’s heartbroken all over again. It’s been a fucking day.

She blinks rapidly, lifting her gaze to look up at him with her brows pinched in question as her mind links a face with a name. When she puts the pieces together, she frowns, snorting in distaste, “Yeah, I was. Against my will, I might add.”

Eva was sucked into a portal without consent, “I take it you were too?”

---

MATIAS SILPH

rLtVZqV2
TOTAL: 109

“Hmph,” Well, wasn’t he lucky. She is still wary that even a pleasant experience was rigged for a reason. There certainly had to be an ulterior motive to all of that. She is certain they didn’t do it out of the kindness of their heart.

She’s quiet for a long moment as she contemplates what to share. Only the soft crunch of the boots on the rocky terrain makes the silence less suffocating, “It was Kanto. I stayed. And we won.”

And not a day goes by that she doesn’t regret leaving. . . again. Which was likely the bastard’s plan all along, “It was another life, not this one, so it doesn’t really matter,” that’s what she keeps telling herself for multiple reasons after whispers of her Galarian memory resurfaced, “Nothing but a dream. Or a nightmare, depending on how you look at it.”

---

MATIAS SILPH

CwmA_P1b
TOTAL: 160

For most of her life, Eva has been selfless to her own detriment. She is that way willingly, happily. There is a sense of pride in martyrdom and an ever-growing collection of invisible trophies in an invisible room that awarded her for her suffering. She’s greedy in that way, storing them neatly to later praise herself and pretend she found happiness in the good it did everyone else while she suffered in silence and hid it so well she forgot it herself.

She looks up at him, and she can see a brief shimmer of hope in his eyes that would normally make her smile, “I died, Matias,” she says softly, voice strained with a mix of anger, sorrow, and fear, “I died alone and never got to see the free Kanto,” it’s impossible for her to not wish that is an actual possibility out there in some alternate reality. But that’s not the ending she wants for herself. It’s selfish, and she hates herself for that, but it’s true.

Father Winter’s visit didn’t give her a happy ending, it showed her what her inevitable future is - What it will likely be in Hoenn too.

And it terrifies her.

---

MATIAS SILPH

6A|CISOP
TOTAL: 254

A moment ago she saw the hope and desire for a reality where they won flash across his eyes. Who from Kanto wouldn’t want that? That’s why she feels terrible for not wanting it to be a reality, at least not in the way it happened.

So, to hear Matias dismiss it so quickly surprises her. Her own steps falter for a moment and she looks up at him with a quizzical gaze. She doesn’t believe he’d throw away a victory for a single life.

This is all hypothetical, of course, which is maybe why it’s easy for him to say that. Perhaps he’s being empathetic . . . which is also not like him as of late, especially with her. If faced with the choice in this reality, Eva believes he’d make a different decision.

“That doesn’t sound like you. Are you feeling ok?” She asks sincerely, though she welcomes the empathy. She's felt quite lonely and fragile so she devours it without question.

---

MATIAS SILPH

Lg0IhMS|
TOTAL: 291

His laugh coaxes a small laugh out of her. It feels silly now that she asked, but her curiosity isn’t satiated, just tempered for a bit longer. The underlying sentiment of such a statement didn’t escape the part of her that desperately foraged for any little morsel of affection.

“I guess I didn’t know what to expect but no, not that one,” she’s honest, there’s nothing to lose here that hasn’t already been lost, “I guess I didn’t think you’d trade a victory like that for a single life.”

---

MATIAS SILPH

NOZnbMlc
TOTAL: 336

“Hm,” is all she really has to say to that, because she doesn’t know what else to say. Eva falls half a step behind just so her eyes can linger on him longer than she cares to let them.

At one point in time, in the prime of their relationship, that was the exact answer she expected. Then she would have fought him on it, tooth and nail. Her life was worth no more than anyone else. Since the break up, she’d grown accustomed to being less than. Today, she stays quiet, not pushing back against such a sentiment. In fact, it made her feel a certain type of way, something warm that reminded her she was worth something to someone. It’s almost exactly what she needs to hear.

She hugs her jacket tighter around her as they continue their descent deeper into Area Zero. They're far off the mapped path, so she calls on her Porygon2 to start TRACING the area so she can update the database, "This place is so much bigger than I was expecting. Do you think it's always been here? Or it is the product of a violent shift in Hoenn's geology since the meteor? Like a spreading infection." If anyone is going to sense a change in the earth, it would be Matias and Groudon.

---

MATIAS SILPH

IRmzfKya
TOTAL: 498

“Distortion world?!” she gawks, her eyes growing wide with so many questions swimming through her mind. This is the first she had heard of the Distortion World bleeding into this reality on its own outside of Katherine. She honestly hasn’t thought about it since she studied a Griseous Shard with Katherine Fairburne.

It raises so many more questions in her mind. She has read the reports of Paldea’s Area Zero in preparation for venturing into their own, “I think it’s from another time,” she comments in opposition, though these are all just theories, “And, well, a mess of the new energies mingling with the others,” Terastal Energy and Dynergy mixing with Hoenn’s natural energies - primal and mega. They were finding veins of mega stones beside veins of Tera Crystals. It really is a mess, “Hoenn just keeps getting more and more unstable,” she growls between clenched teeth. It's something dangerous she has no control over. Her brain can’t work fast enough to keep up with it all. The familiar feeling of failure creeps in again. How many times would she have to fail the Hoenn people before she was replaced within someone who could keep up?

A chilling cry of a Paradox Pokemon echoes from somewhere around them as if to emphasize her thoughts. She shivers as a chill runs up her spine.

---

MATIAS SILPH

uIXjW2ct
TOTAL: 597