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“Shut up!” she barks back at THEO BECKETT, teeth bright in the snarl on her face. “This is all your fault!” She shouldn’t even be here. She should be at home. Safe, away from Rocket affairs. And she’s not. She’s still in the thick of it, battered down by the weight of anger and grudging feelings that slip like a heavier fog over her already susceptible mind.[break][break]

Her mightyena snaps her teeth again, a concentrated and poisonous TERA BLAST of shimmering, violet light aims itself at the moltres.[break][break]

Any residual temper Blue feels isn’t meant to be directed at the older woman in their company. All of her anger and hurt is meant for the underboss. Still, the lash of it slips out as she fixes a glare at MARILYN HASEGAWA as she’s promptly scolded. “I didn’t ask for or expect shit,” she hisses as she thrusts the cleansing tag out again, “so don’t patronize me.” Somehow she manages to bite off the you old hag bit that wants to roll off her tongue as well.[break][break]

Bonnie yelps as the pour of flame licks at her crystallized pelt, but the buffer helps to keep her from being burned. Useless, Blue can only watch as the remnants of the tag lift up on the billows of acrid wind and drift toward the raging bird.
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A baleful, red-eyed stare cuts back to Theo.[break][break]

“None of the spirits familiar with me would be pleasant, so I’m afraid I cannot relate.”[break][break]

The dour, derisive scoff crawls up her throat before she can catch it, grumbled words following– “Figures. Big fucking surprise there.” Dry and sarcastic and not at all deferential to his rank. If it’s rude or crass to curse in front of the elderly, Blue doesn’t quite care about that, either. GRUDGING resentment continues to fester under the surface, loosening the tongue behind a normally clamped tight jaw.[break][break]

The chipper interlude of the older woman only earns her another bizarre look from Blue. “I literally can’t see for shit out here. How exactly does that qualify as beautiful?” She definitely doesn’t smile for MARILYN HASEGAWA, but Blue isn’t exactly the most smiley of people, so it’s nothing personal. The closest the woman gets is the underling’s lips pressed in a thin line, the awkward lift of the corners of her mouth making her expression more of a pained grimace.[break][break]

She’s more concerned about ghosts that exist in her day to day, dogging her like dark shadows than the actual supernatural. Like Theo does now, in forcing her to follow. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t at all superstitious. Growing up in Johto has left her with a decently healthy dose of a wariness of what can’t be seen as much as what is directly in front of her.[break][break]

Though the moltres that manifests itself is pretty much right there. Talk about a two-for-one special.[break][break]

Her mightyena, lurking in the mist behind them, springs forward and Blue activates the tera orb that had been in her pocket so that Bonnie is encased with the crystallization of poison tera-typing. As she lunges forward with POISON FANGS to snap at the vestigial bird, Blue’s head snaps toward Marilyn.[break][break]

“Hang on.” She swings her bag around, and shoves her hand in the front pouch until her fingers close around the slip. She holds it out for the woman to take. “I just…can’t find my lighter.” Because you burn it, right? Was that right? Maybe she isn’t as superstitious as she thinks, even if she’s been carrying the talisman around for who knows how long.
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She looks at him, gaze sharpening, and she feels something inside of her break.[break][break]

Grief is there, but the anger takes over first, and now she doesn’t care to reason with him anymore.[break][break]

“You’re going to blackmail me, Beck? Me?”[break][break]

Blue’s lips peel back in that old, familiar snarl. The one she hasn’t worn for what feels like years now. Hands balling into white-knuckled fists.[break][break]

“Don’t you dare say his name again.” A reasonable part of her knows that Shinra Moro is not the sort to go down so easily. An officer of Kanto, sharp and canny, and diligent. He can hold his own just fine, but she is a cagey, territorial beast. This is hers.[break][break]

Perhaps when she was working under him, she deferred to him. Didn’t raise a hand or word against him because he was her superior. But time erased that, and the bond she thought mattered.[break][break]

Now, though, she’s unafraid of repercussions from what she does. The fear that has kept her locked in place across the room undoes itself and she’s across the room instantly.[break][break]

“You’re fucking selfish, Theo. This isn’t right, and you know it.” She shoves at him as her voice rises from something quiet and afraid to furious–a red haze that she wants to let filter over her sight and might.[break][break]

“Who are you?”

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THEO BECKETT //

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“What do you mean, at our beck and call? Theo, I can barely remember most of what happened.” She frowns. All of it, fading like a dream. All that has remained is the feeling. The feeling of being accepted, their bond, not needing Rocket to thrive.[break][break]

What made him backtrack like this?

“You don’t know that,” she shakes her head stubbornly. “I won’t go back, I can’t. It was killing me.” Maybe not in body, but deep in her spirit. Stamping it out until she was a husk, all that fire dying out the more she acted as a violent hand.[break][break]

She remembers the night he told her that it was peace he sought. Violence as a means to an end. At the time, she’d thought it was interesting. Maybe possible. A mean dog that could use the idea to justify the way she weaponized her own hurt to cause harm.[break][break]

And then Galar happened.[break][break]

And now she can’t go back.



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THEO BECKETT //

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Her eyes narrow as he speaks, more disbelief rising like a tide inside of her that turns her stomach over in discomfort. She doesn’t know what it is, but this doesn’t feel right. Something isn’t right. She knows him. He tries to reason with her, but it’s a pill that Blue refuses to swallow.[break][break]
A dream she doesn’t have any faith to buy into.[break][break]
“You know it won’t change. You knew that before. What suddenly makes such a difference?” she skirts along the opposite wall she backed up against. Fear refuses to let her turn her back toward him or inch closer.[break][break]
It’s an enforced distance that hurts, sharp like a knife.[break][break]
“Then why won’t you let me help you leave?”[break][break]


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THEO BECKETT //

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She stares at him in disbelief.[break][break]

“Do you even hear yourself right now, Theo? Things will be different? Like hell.” Blue shakes her head, a hand passing through the strands of her hair in agitation.[break][break]

Since when does he actually buy that crock? Since when has he wanted to stay? “What happened? Why didn’t you go?” The questions have more bite than she thinks that they would.[break][break]

Anger rises under the grief she feels. The loss. It fits on her shoulders like a familiar old sweater that had been misplaced. Because she has only ever been good at snapping her teeth.[break][break]

“I can’t go back, I can’t.” Her fingers flex, curling into a fist and uncurling. Her voice climbs pitifully, like a child’s. “Why are you doing this to me?”



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THEO BECKETT //

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A sullen look is all that Blue casts Theo as he looks back at them. She doesn’t want to be here, pulled back into business she’d rather avoid. She doesn’t want to be here, in a place where the mist around them clouds the way they should go. Dense and impenetrable and cloying. It makes the hair on her arms stand on end. Even her mightyena, normally calm and steady, seems on edge. Cagier the more aimless they grow in the fog.[break][break]

She doesn’t respond to him, mouth screwed stubbornly shut.[break][break]

The balefulness of her red-eyed stare turns on the old crone accompanying them. Though anything resentful in her expression fades in favor of looking at MARILYN HASEGAWA as if she’s grown two heads. “You’ve got some weird ideas of what’s delightful,” she grumbles as she hikes her bag higher on her shoulder. “Where are we even going?” One would think she has all of the attitude of a sulky teenager being dragged on a family vacation.

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“What?” She spits the word out, it flies off of her tongue with a sudden fury she didn’t know herself capable of possessing with him.[break][break]

“Why would you say that?” Another question as she takes a wary step back. But her chin draws up. Her eyes narrow to slivers of dark red. The shade of drawn blood.[break][break]

“The fuck, Theo?” She can’t go back, she can’t. She barely feels free right now, hiding like a scared dog the way she is. But for once she’s not tethered.[break][break]

It’s a terrifying thing she’s had to grapple with. But it’s hers.[break][break]

And he knows how difficult it was for her to reconcile. Twenty foggy years and a lot has faded from her memory. But not the feeling of what she had to wrestle with. And not how he was there.[break][break]

“You know I can’t,” that watery sound clogs her throat again, and she hates it. Hates how it makes her sound. Feeble and scared and pathetic. “And still you want me to just walk back into that cage?”

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THEO BECKETT //

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He barely bats an eye at the spatter of orange juice. The carton thunks to the ground, spilling out the remnants until the space smells of citrus. Acidic. Blue doesn’t move, doesn’t relax around him the way she’d once learned to, and then come to appreciate.[break][break]

To punish me.[break][break]

It’s the first thought to rush through her mind. Because it is what she knows. A life spent in subservience to different groups, different bosses. But repercussion has always been the same. She’s stepped out of line and this is the payment, right? She hates herself for thinking Theo would raise a hand to her.[break][break]

“I—“[break][break]

But he’s here, and he hasn’t fucked off to some other region like he’d wanted them both to do. Which isn’t as relieving as it should be in seeing him. Because that would mean—[break][break]

“No,” her voice is low and watery. Hurt. God, she still hurt. “I’m ask the questions. Why are you here, Theo?”
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THEO BECKETT //

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It's obviously not work that prevents Blue from hanging out with Callie all that often lately. But it is convenient and easy to let that be the excuse for her sparseness. Because Callie doesn't need to know that she left Fortree PD months ago to work more closely under THEO BECKETT.[break][break]
That her world shifted and changed entirely because of that stupid, rusty sword earlier that summer.[break][break]
That she left. That she's hiding.[break][break]
From Rocket. From Theo. From the consequences of her violence, and the consequences of her abandonment. From the world itself.[break][break]
It's a bad idea, but she can't bring herself to say no to Callie this time. Guilt writhes in her stomach like an angry seviper, but she lets her old, dear friend drag her out on a rare alignment of their schedules.[break][break]
There's no Shinra Moro to hide behind. And her mask of normalcy has always been a bit shit, but she dons it anyway, along with the fluffy poochyena ears and tail over black skinny jeans a dark grey tank top that hides under her black leather jacket.[break][break]
Too much. It's loud and crowded and overwhelming. There's too many eyes at this party. None of them are watching her, but all of them are watching her.[break][break]
But she's there for Callie. And she plays her part.[break][break]
A low laugh bubbles in her throat. "That's some next level parasocial shit." The rim of her plastic beer cup hides the tentative, upward curve of her mouth. She's not drunk enough. She should be more drunk.

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She blinked up at him, the bright scarlet of her gaze somewhat bright in the obvious confusion she betrayed. “You do?” He accepted it with so little question. It was almost a little distressing–she wouldn’t believe her. She knew how insane she sounded. She’d never known Shinra to be someone who accepted facts or stories alike without careful evaluation. To practically tedious degree. So was this just a fluke? Or did he believe what she said, because it was her? His voice wasn’t clear and definitive, but he said it regardless.[break][break]
Maybe not because it was her. Maybe just for her.[break][break]
That was something that might’ve made her angry. Before. Twenty years ago. But right now? The burden of being believed and not rebuffed or pushed away made her shoulders sag. The sobs that had choked her throat before had subsided, but she could’ve cried in relief all over again. She didn’t, but her eyes were still watery and burned at the rim as she looked up at him.[break][break]
Yeah, it’s me. Her heart ached. It ached with something so stupidly tender, she couldn’t believe it was her heart that was feeling it. “I missed you,” she repeated dumbly.[break][break]
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do, or how you can help,” a humorless laugh broke apart her words. “I’ve never done this before.” The last–far less major–group she’d been a part of had been busted up. She’d simply fallen through the cracks. A nameless girl forced to fight for the locked up big boss. They’d pinned who they wanted–she didn’t matter. A nobody.[break][break]
She was still a nobody within Rocket. But also not.[break][break]
“My…” How did she put words to someone like THEO BECKETT? Once her boss, turned steadfast companion over the span of half a life. Someone dear. She swallowed down the thick, uncomfortable feeling in her throat. The sting of their argument still fresh. “My…friend. He said that we would have to leave,” her voice sharpened as she spoke, fingers curling tighter in Shinra’s shirt.
“That if we wanted any chance of really getting out, we’d have to go. But I can’t. I don’t want to lose you again.” Her face flared with embarrassed, sheepish color in spite of everything she’d already said. In spite of the way they’d already looked at each other and how she’d shamelessly hung onto him.[break][break]
Expressing affection, an eternally clumsy thing for the likes of her.[break][break]
“We argued about it. He told me to leave.” And she’d gone without looking back. Blue stepped back and rubbed her nose, the motion petulant like a disgruntled child. “Sorry, ‘m getting you all wet.” And then in the next breath, smaller and far more embarrassed– “Can I..stay here tonight?” She didn’t know how to face the old familiarity of alone yet.

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Shinra Moro // m: post-goodbye galar

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