chromium glitters under her fingertips. no matter how hard she presses, no dust or oils leave a mark upon the window panes. the first had afforded her a look at a swing, dirt-stained cheeks on a girl no older than nine, staring with all the self-righteous fury in the world at a snot-nosed kid before her. 

the next, found shaking and stumbling away from it, that same swing, that same girl, her forehead pressed to another, two syllables she couldn't hear but could read off the same said so adoringly she'd had to run. 

run and run and run. 

to see another her, happy in the arms of a woman who made her kinder, gentler - lovable. 

you don't remember the dreams that came before, but you feel the eons you've lived within them, and she knows, as her shoes slap against the pavement, that she has been running towards something all this time. 

she halts, hand stretched up against the side of a building, her name fallen from an old enemy's lips. none of those ties will matter soon. 

"fiorelli," she says, clipped as she catches her breath. "i don't have time for you." a pause, a glance at the long bay window beside them. no, she thinks as she takes in the expanse of water, the island of her self-isolation, but i'm getting close. 

"have you seen my memories? the ones i'm going to make?"

Elisabeth Fiorelli
FREYA DELULU HOURS

☉

Looking at this woman unnerves her. Women like them, who have seen all that they have seen, cannot help but recognize one another as mirrors.[break][break]

She can see the cracks in this looking glass all too well. They unsettle her, warping her self-image and inviting unasked-for doubt.[break][break]

Why would she choose to look into that well any deeper?[break][break]

"Your memories are nothing to me. And you are nothing to me."[break][break]

A quiet thread of alarm, nonetheless, winds its way about her heart like a thin wire: tightening at the strangeness of this councilwoman's demeanor. There's a wrongness to her, she thinks, just as she thought of Velmos a mere hour or so ago.[break][break]

Her eyes close, shutting out that unwanted thought. Pink mist plumes in the darkness of her mind before she opens them again. Impossibly, the world seems even more unclear than before.[break][break]

"If I'm wasting your time, then leave. I have no desire to keep you."

[attr="class","ooc"] freya morningstar

Prismatic Penitentiary: Ugly Ward

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"we're all something to someone," she says petulantly, the frenzied wandering of her gaze lapsing only so she can dart clouded golds back to the woman who stands in her way. 

"i saw me in you," she adds all too suddenly and it's though all the muscles that had been bunching, ready to bolt and make down the next rabbithole, have stilled. she moves with purpose now - not away, but towards elisa, head cocked. 

are there memories in your eyes?

"that's why i did it, you know. stopped you," she whispers, leaning closer, eyes wide and searching.

Elisabeth Fiorelli

☉

The alarm screams louder with each step the councilwoman takes towards her.[break][break]

She hates this about dreams, the way each movement feels like dragging her limbs through tar. She's forever drowning, moving with a sluggishness that leaves her vulnerable to whatever nightmare wants to claim her.[break][break]

The paleness of freya morningstar's tresses glisten like a nest of snow-white snakes, threatening to suffocate her upon the approach.[break][break]

"You don't even know me," she hisses back. At least her tongue is unburdened and unladen; at least her words are her own. In some dreams, even her screams die out in the oppressive silence. "And you didn't stop me."[break][break]

Within this liminal space, the individual threads of that story unravel and reweave themselves; she didn't want to kill FERNANDO SILPH, and so she didn't fail. Those desires hadn't been her own, but another's.[break][break]

The fog had lifted, but she pretends not to remember why.[break][break]

She pretends, because she believes what she wants to believe.

[attr="class","ooc"] freya morningstar

Prismatic Penitentiary: Ugly Ward

[attr="class","pkmn"]

is this not the woman who starved herself for the sake of the man who ties them together? is this not the woman who was manacled, shackled, made to play doll for the likes of his patron? the truth is a haunting and terrifying thing and it has no place here - this is a dream; not a nightmare. 

"they say the eyes are the window to the soul."

she can step forward with ease, no tethers, because she is no longer chained. that bulbous gift nestled on her neck is a promise. is a gift. and in the reflection of those verdant green pools are her answers. 

"i know you," she insists. "because i finally, finally know myself, and we are so resplendent." 

Elisabeth Fiorelli

☉

Except she doesn't want to remember the slobbering greed of her patron that October day. Another woman who looked like Elisabeth Fiorelli had been there, seen those things, and suffered those evils.[break][break]

She swallows, wishing her body would obey her as freya morningstar nears, so close the other woman's breath warms her skin.[break][break]

This is a dream, and you cannot hurt me, her green eyes insist, wide-eyed with a terror she can't explain. When I awaken, you will be far away, and I will be somewhere you can't reach me.[break][break]

In Sootopolis, perhaps. In her dim, empty little apartment, where nothing and no one cares about her.[break][break]

(Or in a secluded garden no one knows, no one but her and BARNABY FINCH. Is that dream worth dreaming? Is that future within her grasp, in this place where so much seems possible?)[break][break]

Those golden eyes fill Elisabeth's vision, and all comprehensible thought dissipates like smoke from her mind.[break][break]

"I see nothing at all in your eyes."[break][break]

She refuses to blink. She refuses to give herself relief from this woman's scrutiny, to surrender.[break][break]

"They're empty, like mine."

[attr="class","ooc"] freya morningstar

Prismatic Penitentiary: Ugly Ward

[attr="class","pkmn"]

this is a dream and everything can hurt them because that's the thing about hoenn, isn't it? dreams aren't just silly little dreams. and neither are the nightmares. they squirm themselves from under blinking eyelids, fall from caruncle crusts and scuttle into the living darkness, manifesting while their prey grows ever-tired. 

"you're wrong," she says and she means it piteously, but there is a keening desperation to her voice. clarity returns, little by little, and she reaches a hand up as though to cup elisabeth's cheek, but her hand twists, palm coming down hard on the glass panes of the storefront beside them. 

eva's smiling face and a lifetime of promise shatters beside her. she snarls. 

"i have not, and will not be unmade. not again." she sharpens, looks at elisa with eyes unclouded.

"i'll forget out there. i'll forget what all of this means when the nightmare ends, but if you hurt him, if you make this worse for us, i will find you here. and i will make sure you never wake up."

Elisabeth Fiorelli

☉

Ah, but they're both two spools of unraveling thread, aren't they? Each of them are fraying at the seams. What's left of them to unmake?[break][break]

"The nightmare doesn't end," Elisabeth hears herself say. "Not here, and not out there. We both know better."[break][break]

Or perhaps she's the nightmare, and has always been the nightmare. How many women have threatened her the way that freya morningstar threatens her now?[break][break]

What power do they believe she's still capable of wielding, pitiful as she is? An incredulous laugh bubbles out of her despite herself, scornful and disbelieving.[break][break]

"What do you imagine me doing to him? To anyone?"[break][break]

To be feared lightens her, somehow. It means some of her power has yet to flee her.[break][break]

"Surviving is exhausting enough."

[attr="class","ooc"] freya morningstar

Prismatic Penitentiary: Ugly Ward

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"i pity you, you know," she says. elisabeth is a different being of self-destruction. where freya had gone to immolate herself in the fires of a dying battlefield, elisa had resigned herself to every bitter misery that could blacken and rot her heart. 

"i don't think it will happen in some grand, extravagant plan. they'll push you to the brink, past exhaustion, and if they offer you the opportunity - him or yourself, you'll take it. because you will do anything to survive."

teeth bared, eyes white, do i not know you, elisabeth? her macabre grin falls flat and a flicker of irritation crosses her features. 

"and i will do the same; that is why, when this accursed dream ends, we will work together to get out of this place."

Elisabeth Fiorelli

☉

"I didn't ask for your pity. And I should have never spared you mine."[break][break]

Yet if she hadn't -- if that fateful day with freya morningstar in her Sootopolis apartment had never come to pass -- what then?[break][break]

In that world, where she never learns the tale of the pink ladies, does she confront the false FERNANDO SILPH for his sins? Is there a reality where she doesn't learn of Tapu Fini's existence, dredged up from the coast by moonlit magic and ghosts?[break][break]

If that Beautifly Effect's wings cease beating, does the man in her cell transform into someone else entirely?[break][break]

"He would do the same. If it were me or him, he would sacrifice me every time." Her chin juts out proudly, unwilling to be cowed before this other woman's will. Freya would see her bowing and scraping on her knees to survive, but not here. Not now. "I won't apologize for valuing my life higher than his."[break][break]

Bared fangs mean nothing to her. Their true enemy exists outside these walls.[break][break]

"I have no desire to perish here, lost to an endless cycle of suffering and despair."[break][break]

The councilwoman understands it as well as she does. They are all one another has in this hellscape.[break][break]

"But I will do nothing to risk myself for your sake," including that of the man freya morningstar cares so much to protect, "not unless you risk yourself along with me."

[attr="class","ooc"] freya morningstar

Prismatic Penitentiary: Ugly Ward

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"of course you didn't ask for it," she says, blinking. just as she never wanted elisabeth's. just as neither of them have ever asked for any of this madness they've been forced to reckon with. she does not know the misled pathways of their kinship, that elisabeth was never put under the thumb and made to suffer like she. 

if she knew, she would not have hesitated.

asking her to stand at her side now is another futile attempt at justice, making reparations for a man who's wronged her and would wrong her again in a heartbeat. he'd sacrifice her too, if it meant his own escape. 

"we might not have a choice," she says and the fog rolls back in. 

it's time to wake up.

it's time to forget.

say ahhhh.

Elisabeth Fiorelli

☉