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At the Garden

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"So that's why you're still alive. Do you understand the situation?

(Yes. The reason that I still move forward is still there. Even if I am incapable of understanding tomorrow, the key to yesterday is carved into my eye.)

"There's only so much that you can do, moving forward. You will look backwards and decide what needs to be done about tomorrow, but you will not experience tomorrow or the present. You will exist solely in yesterday, as a memory of what had been before.

It does not matter where you are. It does not matter where you go. You have already died, _______. We're simply waiting for the world to catch up. Know this, though. Even though you've died, you will persist. Use that human spirit to fuel your broken body, hm?"

Joints creak as I stand. This sensation is familiar. I try to blink the sand from my eye, but it doesn't change the fact that _____ is right. There's nothing left but drive and a memory. My mind is ash. My memories are ash. Yet I remember eons.

I remember what it was like to see.

For that reason, I step forward.

---

The dream is an empty desert. Nothing but sand fills the stage. Far in the distance, there are a few rocks jutting out of the dunes at odd angles. There's a trail of footsteps that lead towards them, miles out. Heat causes the air to shimmer, though whether that's due to the efficiency of the dream of due to the fragile nature of the dream is a mystery.

Functionally, it doesn't matter.

Howard Slayte is on his knees. He groans.

"Fuck." He staggers to his feet, eye bloodshot. He's covered in a cloak meant to protect its wearer of the sun. Should ameena abadi or june sleigh look down, they'll be wearing similar attire. "I finished this. I finished this."

To Ameena Abadi, it's similar to the pile of dreams forced into her mind when asking about what happened in Galar's epilogue.

"June." Howard Slayte turns towards her. "Stop thinking. Please. This shouldn't be possible. Nobody is meant to see this."

Tapu Lele did not register in her mind. Ameena did not register in her mind. Only when the scene changed, and the entire world shifted into a barren wasteland, did June finally snap out of the stupor. Even if the revelation still danced in her mind, it was no longer the dominant voice.

Instead, it was joined by one of confusion. Why was she dressed in this attire, vaguely pressed against her skin and unable to entirely block the crippling heat? Why did Howard bring them here? What was going on?

“... I…”

Can’t.

Not once had she ever calmed her mind fully. It was only with the crippling distractions presented in life, whether through music or the singing of thirteen Fletchlings, that let her pretend she shut her mind off. The only reprieve from herself. But here, there was nothing.

And thus, she thought. “W-was…”

Hidden love made even mere conversation dangerous. Deadly. It charged the very air, more than the heat ever could. More than she ever could. His one eye met two mismatched ones.

“W-where are we? Are we still in the dream?”

It had long since been a dream. Now, they stood in hell. A nightmare. “What happened here?”

---

howard slayte ameena abadi

Her eyes distracted him for a moment, just long enough to abate the mounting pressure of this dream. When had they changed? Why hadn't he noticed before? Then again, his memory in regards to people was always secondary to his knowledge of humanity.

He didn't believe in love at first sight. It was illogical. First impressions weren't that powerful.

"If you equate the unconscious to a 'dream', then we're dreaming, yes. It's more apt to call this my memory." He broke eye contact to observe the imprints in the sand. He rubbed a few grains between his fingers. He recognized the particles and the way the sand clumped together. Hoennian dunes. "It's my dream."

Now more than ever, the different definitions attached to the word 'dream' amused the admin more than ever. He dug into a pocket on his cloak, and found a student ID for Rustboro University nestled away. His name was printed in hard plastic, and two eyes stared back at him.

He stared at his younger self for several moments, before tearing his gaze away to look at June.

"From when I lost my eye." Howling wind filled his ears. "Come on."

He started trudging forward. Quickly, as if trying to outrun his fears.

"Let's get this over with."

---

june sleigh ameena abadi

If only Howard knew that his fears were always faster. Or, at the very least, on pace with him. June made sure to stick close behind. As close as she could be without feeling weird. An almost impossible task, as she trotted along like a lost Yamper. Her hands clutched against the cloak.

But she hadn’t seen a single ‘copy’ of herself so far. No blue alternative versions of herself with some witty insight or clever application. Nothing. It was just her, Ameena, and him. There was no reprieve to the seemingly endless sand. Nor the heap of emotions that followed her closely, and would always outrun her.

“Where are we going?” She asked weakly. The sand was all too eager to pull at her feet, and she had to work twice as hard to keep up. “Was it a– a digsite?”

“Are we going underground again?”

Despite it being his memory, they flickered back to the ruins. The rocks. The tomb. But only for the briefest of moments. Her peaks were not enough to override the constant dread that must’ve been in his body.

---

howard slayte ameena abadi

Several tons of rock and stone crashed down in his ears. What an orchestra it made in is mind's eye.

"Seven years ago, I went on a trip with two postgrads to go on a dig. Found some ruins. It was my first actual excavation." The admin's lips twitched upwards in amusement, though the action was mostly hidden by a cloak and the fact that he was leading the charge. "See, I thought it'd be like the movies, y'know? The daring adventurer breaks into the tomb to find gold and treasure?"

That was how his passion had manifested, originally. A simple childish obsession that had grown into something that Howard had been willing to shape his entire life around. In that sense, his dream had crept up on him. Underground, anything was possible.

Underground... right.

"Yeah." Howard stopped taking long, wide steps in the sand to turn towards her. "It won't be easy. You won't enjoy it. I won't enjoy it. Frankly, it's gonna fucking suck. But."

But.

"You can do it."

---

june sleigh

Something echoed in the recesses of her mind. Less a memory and more a relic, a novelty kept around for no discernible reason.

“I’m not letting go, June. Not now, not ever.”

“I… I…”

Can’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Won’t. But no words escaped past her lips. Instead, she only looked away. Underground was bad. It held disasters. Matchsticks didn’t like cramped spaces, and neither did she. But…

It was the least she could do. Maybe. Hopefully. They’d see. Not like she had a choice– they had to see this through, right? It was not a choice for either of them. Some things just had to be seen through. Regardless of consequences.

Basically the last 2 and a half years of her life.

And soon, the spot was in sight. What she assumed was the spot. She sucked up suddenly, sharply. One step back. Not again. Never again.

But paradoxes were just that. Nonsensical. She’d follow along anyway.

---

howard slayte ameena abadi

June Sleigh would follow the path set for her. Gabriel Sleigh would bleed out on the pavement alone. They would follow that march for eternity. Past and future, dream and waking, those were the paths father and daughter would march on. Just as Howard and June would march on.

Ameena trailed behind, like a silent specter. A woman observing the dreams of the damned watching in the distance from an umbral cloak.

The excavation pit is wide and sloping, a vast rectangular pit that scraped away sand to give way to sandstone. Ladders and carved stairways that led into the depths of the earth beckoned for the admin and his party. It was a cumbersome pit, dug by a small team of Pokémon and underfunded students.

Scraps of an old list caught against June's shoe, before disappearing into the sand.

"We worked hard on this." Howard looked around, his eye falling on a tent with an old fire pit and coffee pitcher. Three chipped mugs sat unused, with a faint and peeling Aerodactyl on one of them. "Shit, this took days."

He picked up the mug.

"What's the hardest thing you've ever worked on, June?"

---

june sleigh ameena abadi

“Setting up my shitty business,” she murmered. A normal person would’ve done so in a day. Maybe two days tops. Online things weren’t hard, and she only needed to apply for various business and safety permits.

“Grigori had to drag me by my teeth and do it all for me– still took a couple of months,” she said apathetically. The auto-mechanical degree had been easier. The holiday slogs that drove her to the brink of death were nothing.

In the face of such a deep and dark pit, it’d been nothing for her to do some forms. “I just couldn’t… muster up the will to do anything.”

She purposefully kept the thought repressed. Of that dark room, and the barren walls and impossibly long days and restless nights, where even Matchstick’s warmth was barely noticeable. Let Howard show his darkest days, and let hers fade into obscurity.

“How… how much further?” She took a few tentative steps toward the archeologist. Away from the comforting light. Further into indescribable hell. “And why here? What’s down here that’s so important?”

---

howard slayte ameena abadi

"Grigori brings out the best in people. When I first joined up with him, he scared me, but he was interesting. The way he spoke..." Howard chuckled and cocked his head as he mused on the enigma known as Grigori Sokolov. "...it was so formal."

Language. The way words were conveyed. It was what separated mankind from beasts, and Howard had spent much of his life attempting to understand every method of communication that every subsection of humanity had taught themselves.

Yet in all the scripts he had read, nothing had caused him to double back like Grigori. Compared to Montgomery, a snarling dog, Grigori Sokolov had an eloquence not suited for Team Rocket.

"He's a knight." Howard admitted. That was what he had told Calyrex, after all. Howard disappointed him. He could tell. His gaze when the admin had kicked him into some bar was proof of that. Perhaps that was what Grigori deserved, after what he did. "Nevermind."

Perhaps this was what Howard deserved.

"Nothing that can hurt you." The admin told her. He tapped his eyepatch. "And everything that can hurt me."

He paused again, then spoke again. Tentatively. Softly. Curiously.

"I can't imagine you giving up on anything or lacking a muse."

---

june sleigh ameena abadi

Grigori was an enigma. Almost as paradoxical as herself, in honesty. The way he acted never betrayed his true position in Team Rocket. His nature as a human being. She’d only heard whispers, and off-handed comments from nearby grunts as she trudged to wherever Howard sent her next.

He was a good man– but brutal. It was almost impossible to see, but… it hadn’t been as much of a surprise as she thought it’d be. At least his shitty construction work kept him content. Somehow.

“I don’t know what he is,” she responded. “but he’s there for me. He and Dad must’ve been good friends all that time ago…”

If only she knew.

“It’s pretty easy, when your entire world gets upended,” June walked past Howard. This campsite was likely not where they needed to be, for this nightmare. The calm before the storm, the way he clung to it like she had her well of apathy. “There are worse fates than death.”

Like being the one left behind to pick up the pieces of the mistakes.

The island. The damn island. The beach flickered back into the memory scape—Matchstick’s crumpled body. Mt. Pyre, with two figures of light hair, in each other's faces. Intense heat, dizzying electricity, a crimson king, and a violet machine gave her incredible powers.

But they returned to Howard’s archeological pit. The one piece of history he’d want to remain buried in the world. It went against his entire philosophy, the point of his existence. The past was to be preserved, and unearthed, not left to rot in the dust. Pain was one thing, but the fear of it was another thing entirely. Almost worse than the actual event.

“You’d know.” In his way, he knew exactly how it worked. That’s why she led the charge this time, despite every single neuron screaming to run away and never look back. Investigation of someone else's problems was easier than your own.

“Lot of things I couldn’t imagine you doing before either.”

---

howard slayte ameena abadi

It kept him content because for the first time in Grigori Sokolov's life, he was building instead of breaking.

Concrete must've felt as soft as silk when one's hands were as stained as his. It was a revelation Howard was beginning to come to as he sat in his office and rebuilt the city he had failed to save. Petalburg was replaceable. The people were not. Thus slivers of soul were shaved away to bring warmth to cold hands that had lost their homes.

In that sense, Howard and Grigori were the same. He wondered if that was why the older grunt looked at him and silently hated the man he was becoming.

Not that he blamed Grigori. Howard hated it too.

"Yeah, there are." Death was one thing. Being forgotten was another. Being chained, as well. "Going through life sober, for one thing. Human beings need something to anchor them. Booze. Love. Freedom. Ideals. Truth. Passion. Dreams."

Howard spoke of the last one with noticeable pride.

"Everyone spends their whole life drunk on something." His, more than ever, was his war with Eternatus and his perpetually evolving relationship with desk work. As the world flickered for a moment due to June's powers, he wondered what she was drunk on. Freedom?

Maybe.

Howard frowned at her final statement as the pit swallowed them.

"Such as?"

---

june sleigh ameena abadi

June was drunk on debt. It swallowed her whole and held her in its crippling cell. A most selfish struggle, yet it was not by her hand that made it so. So much so, that it was hard to remember what she was like beforehand.

But did it matter at this point?

“Everything, Howard. Just… everything,” she trailed off. There were many places to start, yet no end in sight. Much like their journey through the depths of this hell, they went on and on and on. And much like the anxiety in her heart, she wished it would just end already. So she could breathe.

“Hiding stuff from me.” Step.

“Being in Team Rocket.” Step.

"Trying to run away the first time." Step.

“Killing yourself on the guilt of it all.” Step.

“Not running away again.” Step.

“Running away from history.” Step.

“Drinking yourself into a coma.” Step.

“Being in…” Step.

“In…” CREAK!

“In l–”

The last rung gave out. June didn’t have time to react, and her hands slipped. Darkness swallowed her whole– but not for long. Thankfully. Her ass hit the ground a second later, and pain shot through her entire system. All the air in her lungs was driven away, and she was left scrambling to suck it all in.

“Ah…” She sucked in deeply. Hurriedly. Arceus, this sucked. But she knew better than to cut through the darkness this time. Dimensions of the surrounding space could be infinitely large, or infinitesimally microscopic. A box best left unopened, previous experience told her.

The cave. The tomb. She shut her eyes tight and let Howard have the reigns to the dreamscape again. Not again. Never again.

“How much... further, Howard? I– I can’t…”

---

howard slayte ameena abadi