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Tears continue to track down her face. Sticky and warm like a child’s sobs, until strands of hair stick to her skin and her eyes burn. The shake of her shoulders begins to still, though, when he speaks again and she manages to stifle the hitched sound in her throat as she blinks up at him with confused, watery eyes.[break][break]

Her brows pinch together and she rubs at her eyes with the back of her now-bandaged up hand. “I’m not? That doesn’t make any sense.” For as disorganized and scattered as Blue seems, the structures and boundaries in place in her life make everything make sense.[break][break]

If she is something undefined to him, what does that mean? What does that make her?[break][break]

Hope is a foolish thing. Fleeting and fickle. She had only begun to feel in her life, their real lives when they were pulled away and thrust into this world instead. Still, it feels bad to let him down. The idea of disappointing Theo makes her chest ache and her throat tighten again.[break][break]

So she nods.[break][break]

“Okay.” Together is a foreign concept to her, but she latches onto then. If only for his sake.


[break][break]

---

[break][break]

THEO BECKETT // throughout the time skip // rusted sword

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There’s a moment of quiet before he speaks, a moment to let calm settle in. They’ve just been ripped away from something bigger than both of them. Impossibly big. So his words don’t land, they can’t be met.[break][break]

He didn’t let her frown, why would she let him?[break][break]

Her frown deepens, confusion flaring in the red of her eyes as she looks up at him. There is something here beyond him for her. Not in Rocket, though.[break][break]

So… Defection? Is that what he’s suggesting? The underboss?[break][break]

Reservation flares like a warning, but she humors him for a moment. “Leave to where?”

[break][break]

---

[break][break]

THEO BECKETT // post-gg

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“Why, though? Why do you want to do that? I’m just.. your subordinate. No one special.”[break][break]

The hand that closes around hers is unlike the procedural touch of his tending to her injuries. It’s personal and direct and daunting.[break][break]

The urge to yank her hand back rises to the surface, the flinch of it flickering across her expression before the fraying tether of her resolve finally snaps.[break][break]

As she stares down at their hands, the angry tears brimming on her lashes finally break through in an embarrassing watery sob. Her face stings, her knuckles ache. But she can’t stop the tears that continue to well up and spill over.[break][break]

She doesn’t know they’ll be okay, but somehow Theo does. And that’s all she can count on for now. Though she’s too ashamed now to look up at him and agree with confidence at the moment.[break][break]

All of the fury pressurized until it cracked and boiled over.

[break][break]

---

[break][break]

THEO BECKETT // throughout the time skip // rusted sword

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She feels the weight of those twenty years bearing down on her shoulders. They sink heavy despite the fact that she’s young again.[break][break]

The memory of it all is sharp. The bad and all of the good. Good that was only possible because of Theo.[break][break]

Contact has never been a comfortable thing for her. The trust to allow is rare and fleeting. But he’s one of the few.[break][break]

So it doesn’t make her skin crawl with unease to let her arms slide around his middle in a hug. The steady thump of his heart in his chest against her ear is a reminder that this is real.[break][break]

They are in Hoenn, not Galar.[break][break]

This is a moment weighted in the what could’ve been that was allowed to play out for far longer than it should have.[break][break]

It’s his words that rattle through her and she leans back to look up at him with a frown. “That’s not true. Do you want to drown?” She asks the same question that has lingered with her for twenty years, the first shaft of light to break through the dark of her worst. Her lowest.

[break][break]

---

[break][break]

THEO BECKETT // post-gg

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Something sinks in her chest that she doesn’t know how to interpret. A weight that comes with understanding despite the fact that she would like to argue and reason with him.[break][break]

Blue chews her lip before letting out a slow breath.[break][break]

She’s not going to criticize him in the same way. Obviously, they both know that it had been a futile thing for her. Though in time, she’d at least come to accept the years as they rolled by.[break][break]

His words wake a new sort of fear in her, though. One she doesn’t know what to make of–the prospect of what might happen should she lose him to this.[break][break]

“Well…maybe if–” Something in her voice wobbles and the suggestion of giving it time falters on the tip of her tongue.[break][break]

“You’re still–” my best friend. Waking up from a dream won’t change that. But it won’t be the same, either. Will it?[break][break]

“What do you want?”

[break][break]

---

[break][break]

THEO BECKETT // post-gg

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“What do you mean?” It’s a question borne of cluelessness. She isn’t adept to this, even after decades of companionship. She’s never been the one with the right thing to say.[break][break]

But it’s obvious, isn’t it? This isn’t what Theo wanted. There’s something defeated in the way he looks around his home.[break][break]

Or what used to be his home. Now she figures it must just feel like the hollow shell of a house.[break][break]

It’s starkly different to the space they’d occupied in Motostoke. Minimal and bare. If she returns to her own apartment here, she figures it’ll feel similar—save for the pair of poochyena waiting for her, who she’s sorely missed all this time.[break][break]

But the difference is that Blue is still glad to be back.[break][break]

She steps forward to stand beside him, peering up with obvious concern written across a face twenty years younger again.[break][break]

It pains her to see him at a loss. She feels it deep in the marrow of her bones. “I think…it’s okay to grieve, y’know?” A thing she never thought she’d hear herself say.

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---

[break][break]

THEO BECKETT // post-gg

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[attr="class","star2"] She hadn’t given herself much time to process it all.[break][break]

In all actuality, from the moment she’d stepped away from the ruins out on Route 120, she’d wanted to bolt for Slateport. Everything still felt as fresh as it had the day prior. Maybe she needed to sit with it longer–really let the last twenty years that hadn’t actually happened be processed.[break][break]

But they had happened. There was irrefutable proof. The eyepatch she’d woken up in that she no longer needed. The look on Theo’s face at having been torn away from the peace he’d settled into.[break][break]

And no amount of waiting was really going to reverse it. Once that sunk in, everything she’d held for the last two decades crashed through her like a thunderclap, and she needed to go. There was one face she needed to see.[break][break]

To make sure time hadn’t passed here the same way it had there.[break][break]

To make sure she hadn’t been forgotten.[break][break]

Of course she’d been told that time hadn’t moved in the same way here. That all of it had more or less stood still as Hoenn waited for their collective return. But Blue needed to see it for herself. Twenty years without was still a long time to endure. To miss someone.[break][break]

Rain soaked her hair and clothes as she darted through the narrow Slateport streets, but she was careless to the chill of it. To the wetness clinging to her clothes and skin as she nearly slipped up the stairs to the apartment that remained sharp in her memory.[break][break]

Maybe she could have called. Texted. That hadn’t felt like enough. A voice on the end of the line or letters on a cracked phone screen paled in comparison to something tangible and real. The careful way he’d smiled at her, so clear and vivid in her mind that she’d had no choice but to hold onto it for as long as she could with a white-knuckled grip.[break][break]

Her fist thumped against his door. Rough and loud without the courtesy of using the doorbell. Blue stepped back. Only enough to launch herself forward the minute Shinra opened the door. She hadn’t realized that there was a raw ache in her throat until it choked at her voice. As that cracked sob of relief clawed its way up her throat.

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---

[break][break]

Shinra Moro // m: post-goodbye galar

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[attr="class","star2"] It was a tentative sort of dance, allowing instinct to take over as she grew more accustomed to the feel and sensation of it all. Her nerves all on fire, but in a way that wasn’t blood mad or fear driven. Coaxed out of her hesitancy, Blue followed his lead and tilted into what he offered. Airless sound passing between them as fingers threaded through her hair.[break][break]

But somehow, that was nothing compared to the smile Shinra offered her in the wake of it all. Unlike anything she’d seen in his expression before.[break][break]

Her heart fluttered– stupidly it fluttered like a swarm of butterfree had erupted there in her chest cavity. Dozens of tiny, velvety wings taking the place of that beating organ. “Woah.” It was a tiny, awestruck word. Should affect her so much, just to see him smile at her that way? It made no sense, this had never been the sort of thing that had belonged to her. She’d never trusted herself to hold something so carefully and not crush it to bits in her hands.[break][break]

Was she really allowed to have this?[break][break]

A small smile mirrored Shinra’s as he reassured her uncertainties. “Fair,” she managed to rasp, “that’d be humiliating. So I’ll gladly accept the fact that there’s something you’re not a pro at.” A laugh bubbled up her throat. It felt like the sort of moment where she would then pull herself away. Make herself separate and isolated again. Blue made no move to do so, though.[break][break]

She remained rooted right there, fixed in the tug of his gravitational pull. Glancing back, she half-expected to find Bonnie watching her with disapproving eyes. But the poochyena paid her no mind–too busy tussling with the snowy white vulpix and tugging at the plume of his multiple tails.[break][break]

Then carefully, she let her hands slide down so that her arms could circle his midsection. Head turning, her head rested against his chest. Wondering if his heartbeat would sound the same as hers right then. “Yeah, just a little bit.” Her voice came out smaller than anticipated, but her smile didn’t fall. “That’s okay. With you anyway, I guess.”


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---

[break][break]

Shinra Moro // m: bond bridge

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[attr="class","star2"]The high of their victory is short lived. One moment, she’s turning to look at THEO BECKETT with triumph in her wild grin. It’s almost reminiscent of her younger self, fresh off the adrenaline of a successful go in the ring. There’s fresh aches that’ll hurt worse tomorrow, the sting of blood from a cut lip. But she grins anyway, mouth opening to make some snarky remark about he didn’t do half bad for an old man.[break][break]

Then the world goes to pieces. Her mind must not be able to handle the shift, because it’s a whir of blurred color, and then total darkness.[break][break]

She rolls up to her knees as her hands find Theo’s forearms when he slogs through dirt and mud to reappear at her side.[break][break]

Hazily, she blinks as she tries to process what he’s saying. Her head is fuzzy with ringing static. The sort of dull throb she knows will last for days in some sort of post-combat hangover. “Theo?” Her face screws up as her vision refocuses, and then it registers that something is blocking her vision. Her..?[break][break]

A hand lifts away to travel up her face, and the intricately designed eyepatch comes away in her fingers. The eye that had been blinded her first years in Galar stares down at it just as clearly as the other. Then her vision snaps back up to Theo. Hoenn.[break][break]

“We’re—?” Her head rotates from side to side on a swivel. Around them, scattered across the route and the ruins are others coming to in various states of confusion and disarray. It’s still all so vivid for her, though. And when her stare meets that of her closest companion’s, she knows it’s the same for him.[break][break]

Something squeezes in her heart so suddenly, though. Urging her to get to Slateport. She shuffles it to the side for a moment, though.[break][break]

For him.[break][break]

The smile that had been dawning across her face at being returned to the right place in time fades as she watched him. His voice doesn’t sound right just then. Younger again, yes. But a note of discord that she can’t ignore. Can’t leave alone. Staggering to her feet, her stomach heaves from the disoriented feeling that persists. Blue swallows it down. “Okay, yeah. Of course. Let’s get you home, yeah?”[break][break]

It’s the sort of soothing cadence Blue would’ve never thought herself capable of. But she owes it to Theo, for all of the times in the last twenty years that he’s scraped her off some floor and brought her home. She won’t forget her loyalty so easily.[break][break]

She refuses to.[break][break]

---

[break][break]
THEO BECKETT [break]
tldr;[break]
+ it’s owie hours now [break]
+ has a now useless eyepatch, it’s fancy I guess?

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