[attr="class","body"]

the static charge is thick in the air. the shadows cast by the lightning flicker wildly, giving the whole world the impression of a living ink sketch. it feels fitting that the meeting transpires under a palette of colors, strange and eerie and otherwordly.[break][break]

"why am i here," she repeats slowly, words dragging through her teeth like sandpaper. it should have been a rhetorical question, but in the space between seconds, absinthe forgets entirely what answer she sought to provoke. her cheeks, steeled over with severe and throbbing burns, tighten with a grimace.[break][break]

"you are a fucking nuisance," she spits instead, each word heavy and burdened with frustration. the words taste bitter in her mouth. it suddenly becomes clear that they reveal far too much. revealing ire is equivalent to revealing weakness, after all.[break][break]

absinthe digs her heels into the dirt. her devil slides in on cue, cloaked in the night and her frustration, steps measured, unafraid of the man, dog, and lightning on the horizon. they come to a stop, just inches away from her.[break][break]

but regardless of her front, she is very afraid.[break][break]

so, absinthe does not play around. "it doesn't matter why i'm here," she declares stiffly, one hand outstretched, palm upwards. "only that i want to kill you."[break][break]

without warning, a command is issued. malice wreathes the fezandipiti's wingtips in poison, and then draws it towards the manectric and its rider, seeking purchase on either form with an unexpected CROSS POISON.

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

absinthe feels raw. her entire life, she's been the type to flee—from commitment, intimacy, understanding, responsibilities. maybe if she stays locked into this moment for too long, she'll vanish into smoke, float away on a breeze she can't feel.[break][break]

now that absinthe thinks about it, this isn't even a side of herself she knows. certainly she's never shown such vulnerability to many, not since...
well. not since cole. and it's a startling realization that even then, there's some things she hadn't opened up about. how did she say it? the universe rewards honesty?[break][break]

absinthe gazes down at their intertwined hands. grigori's fingers curl around her hand in an age-worn grip. they hold the weight of the world, but there's a gentleness to his palms that she didn't know could exist within a person touched by death.[break][break]

absinthe is hesitant to consider owing anyone anything. debts hold power—that is a lesson she learned firsthand. but she looks at grigori, and she believes him when he says she owes him nothing. that perhaps, to repay her debt, all she must do is listen. something about the sincerity that shines through his gaze convinces her of that.[break][break]

he asks her a difficult question. even as her chest throbs with the anxiety of the future—a concept far more daunting than present guilt—she hears herself responding with: "i wish to be human again."[break][break]

what that means, she doesn't know. absinthe doesn't know how much of her humanity she lost, only that it slipped away somewhere in the night, between fits of tortured laughter and poisoned wine. could that wish be possible? can she still rediscover her past self—or discover a new self—in spite of everything?

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

absinthe lifts her head from behind shaking fingers, murky jade irises boring into grigori's own despite her raging emotions. his logic is flawed, twisted—loving blindly. humans aren't like that.[break][break]

are humans even made to love like that? isn't it just hormones and manipulation in high heels? isn't it just an anchor, a leash wrapped around her neck?[break][break]

grigori believes she could be fixed, reconstructed—but she could never be molded again. once clay has been shaped, fired, glazed, there is no reshaping it. one could break and mend it with gold, but the fractures would always stand defiant. artful, but glaringly obvious.[break][break]

absinthe wants to snap at him. she wants to argue, tear him apart with silver-tongued retorts and cruel metaphors, paint him naïve and idealistic in an instant with an acidic tone. a wave crashes over her heart, threatening to swallow it whole in its crushing undertow—it's nice, too nice to think she could be whole. that there's something, anything, redeemable inside of her anymore.[break][break]

but then the absurdity fades, leaving a heaviness in its wake.[break][break]

and then, suddenly, quietly, she whispers, "isn't love supposed to feel good? it feels like dying."[break][break]

absinthe squeezes her eyes shut and exhales loudly, raggedly through her gas mask, opening her eyes back up only to glare heatedly at grigori, fingers digging crescent shapes into her cheeks like burning brands. she doesn't cry anymore—emotions are raw energy that have nowhere to release. his hands remain cupped around her own, trapping a firefly that thrashes hopelessly against his palm.[break][break]

instead, she leans against the dumpster. her hand slips into his.[break][break]

"what do i owe you? for the clothes."

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

absinthe, drunk but highly perceptive, watches cecilia slip in from the doorway. her attention snaps onto her with laser precision. her eyes follow cecilia as she moves towards the bar, calculated, watching with paranoia burning bright within her as the woman sits gracefully in front of her. absinthe has no reason to trust her, and every reason to suspect her, but cecilia seems like the only option left alive that she's offered right now.[break][break]

her guard goes up as cecilia addresses her, shoulders squaring. she resents the implication that she needs another drink. still, she does not deny needing help—desperate, pitiable creature she is.[break][break]

"we'll see," she spits venomously back, hackles raised despite herself. she uses anger to hide fear. and oh, there's so much fear.[break][break]

cecilia wants to know everything—every terrible thing that leads to a bloody corpse rotting in a dumpster. the image flashes before her eyes, stomach turning.[break][break]

the problem was, she could barely remember any of it. the memory of william thrashing and flailing as she held him down... it faded in her mind as easily as wisps of smoke. guilt and shame churn, mixing poorly with the whiskey.[break][break]

so instead, her thoughts spiral back to the doctor's lifelessness. had she done that? probably. a shaking hand raises to push bangs out of her eyes, revealing a flash of metal hidden beneath her jacket sleeve—one of many gifts she bears from her dear, departed husband. something heavy turns over in her gut.[break][break]

it's a damning admission, and one she should maybe make before she starts vomiting up her sins to a stranger offering salvation. the snake pit suddenly seems unbearably close, stuffy.[break][break]

"yes, i killed him," her voice cracks embarrassingly, pathetically. "i didn't think i would, but i did."[break][break]

she pauses, takes another swig from her tumbler, and with a wipe of her sleeve over her mouth, she continues.[break][break]

"he was an old coworker when i was still in pharmacology. we had an affair. he wanted to see me, so i met him. i don't know why i killed him. i just did."

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

sharp needles of rain batter against absinthe's exposed skin, filtering through the spaces between the plates of black armor coating her body in rivulets of oil-like water that snake down into her boots. the landscape before her is painted in broad strokes of grey and blue, punctuated by the lightning that tears through the heavens like jagged glass. the thunder crashes against her eardrums with a skull-rattling reverberation, somehow resonant in tandem with the frantic beating of the organ beneath her ribs. atop a bluff, she watches the storm roll towards her, and her breath catches somewhere beneath the wretched cage of her chest.[break][break]

it's beautiful, awe-inspiring. electrifying.[break][break]

which is exactly why she can't afford to slack here. she needs to keep moving. she pulls out a sheet of paper, scans the topography with experienced eyes, marks a few coordinates as checkpoints and reference points. she looks up in time to see a bolt of lightning fork through the sky, and it's in that moment, illuminated by its unnatural, ethereal glow, that she sees her.[break][break]

yuina higashi.[break][break]

eyes alight with a flame that refuses to extinguish despite the torrent pouring from the sky, absinthe cannot keep the recognition from flickering across her face - but it's not recognition borne of pleasure. rather, it's a bitter acknowledgment of a past that she cannot seem to escape, and a fear of what will result from the woman's knowledge of information that absinthe has rendered close to her chest.[break][break]

perhaps, many moons ago, absinthe would have blanched at moving to violence just to prevent a secret ago. these days, however, absinthe finds herself gripped by senseless selfishness.[break][break]

yuina must die.[break][break]

without warning, absinthe releases a shard from her pocket and shatters it, and the echo of the devil in all of its wretched glory appears before her, preening his feathers with detached derision.[break][break]

then, at a whispered command, the toxic bird lifts its head and gathers bright, spectral energy before its beak. a beat passes, thunder peals, and a MOONBLAST, bright and lofty, races towards yuina and her samurott.

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

luck has never seemed to shine on her in situations like these. in one hand, it's quite tragic, how she needs luck to just get by, and now there's none left. but the luck she depends on favors the people who deserve its rewards, and in her estimation, she deserves absolutely none.[break][break]

instead, she finds herself walking head-on into danger she cannot shake with a word or a dodge, hidden from view under the curtain of pitch-black skies. nothing around her will help. the moon, encased in clouds of a storm, seems only to highlight the imminent end awaiting her on this path.[break][break]

even now, it never crosses her mind that there is somewhere she should have gone. instead, the stubborn, tireless shadow and her silent pokemon continue their trek. every inch of her body wants this walk to reach its conclusion. every inch of her brain does not, petrified of the consequences to follow the satisfaction of this wish.[break][break]

but the looming storm fills the air with anticipation anyway and makes the decision for her. just before lighting strikes from the sky for the first time and just after the soft sound of static grows loud enough to be recognizable over the noise of rain pounding into earth, she sees a flash of luminescence through her gas mask. her head snaps upwards instinctively to better look at the source of light, seeing the colors change and warp like the tail of some celestial dragon glowing purple, blue, pink—[break][break]

but before her mind can wander any further down that thought, a bolt of lightning strikes the road right between her and her devil. steam rises with a hiss from where the bolt struck.[break][break]

fear comes naturally to her. it is etched into her very bones, born from the agonizing and relentless crucible that her life has become. her fear creates an awful quiver that shakes through absinthe's insides, threatening to spill out into her words. without thinking, a hand lifts up to one half of her face, still pink with heat from the severe burns sustained the last time she saw this man. this time, however, he holds much stronger company. this time, absinthe does too.[break][break]

she fights with every ounce of her being to keep her voice steady, though venom is clear in her tone. "josh devlin. how fortuitous for us to meet again. do you remember humiliating me, or is that common in your line of work?"

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

he is here now, and he wants the truth.[break][break]

a part of absinthe wants to respond, steeped in hatred, excusing herself, claiming that she told him everything, but she knows that it's foolish to imagine he will fully believe her that way. he sees her, truly sees her, and recognizes oblivion in her eyes.[break][break]

the truth is messy and dark. when the good doctor knew absinthe, she was abby. she had bright dreams and a hope for the future. she was incredibly talented, and that was more than enough to make up for her torrid home life, her reckless drinking, her lackadaisical morals. and while absinthe likes to look back into that time, to imagine that she was better as abby, to imagine that abby was a good person, the fact is that abby was just as much of a person as absinthe is now—flawed and broken.[break][break]

when she speaks, her voice loses all sense of cadence and rhythm. she is numb and voided. "we had an affair."[break][break]

she closes her eyes and leans her head back into the cool metal of the dumpster.[break][break]

"when my husband was at his worst, william was kind to me," she admits, hands balled into fists near her thighs. "it was wrong. he had a wife and three children. i met and knew all of them. i took care of his daughter on one occasion."[break][break]

her voice cracks.[break][break]

"i ruined that family. i destroyed them. and i have no idea why william came back to me. his wife and children forgave him, but he still came back. and now he's dead. i ruined them again."[break][break]

a sob wrenches itself from absinthe's throat, a dove slicked in oil and blood. tears, unbidden, carve a meandering stream down her face, and she clutches her face as tightly as she can in her blood-crusted, dirty hands.[break][break]

"i'm no good at loving or being loved. i think all i'll ever be is broken."

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

the snake pit is quiet tonight.[break][break]

these days, absinthe lives a troubled half-life between petalburg and her bar in slateport. though the work she does in rocket's newest acquisition is integral to their foothold in the region, her heart, traitorous as it is, remains tethered to the snake pit. it is her home. it is her lifeblood.[break][break]

perhaps, then, that is the reason her knuckles blanch as she tightens her grip around her glass tumbler filled to the brim with whiskey. the air is charged but silent, save for the occasional glubbing of gasoline bubbles through ventilation pipes lining the walls. her finger taps a quick succession of morse code against the glass; SOS. SOS. SOS.[break][break]

in the back of the bar lies her lab. on the linoleum tile flooring lies a plastic bag. inside the bag lies a collection of clothes stained scarlet, crusted over from the sheer amount of blood that saturated them. the blood once belonged inside the body of a man absinthe was going to change the world with. his body now belongs inside of a dumpster.[break][break]

she is a murderer, and there is no getting around that. blood has stained her hands for years now. though she hardly regrets the act, she does regret the consequences. police have been on her doorstep day in and day out, and absinthe is getting restless.[break][break]

she downs another swig. the warmth of the alcohol spreads through her chest and tries to ease her nerves, but it feels shallow and inadequate. soon, even the effects of the drink can do nothing to calm her terror. she wonders how many years of drinking it took to kill her liver.[break][break]

there is a way out of this. she need only meet the woman of the hour.

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

the world is cold and dark. life is cruel. bad things happen to good people, and bad people are left to continue sending humanity into the gutter. howard is cold, warped immutably by forces beyond his ken. she hardly recognizes the man he is now from the man who had walked into her bar all those moons ago.[break][break]

she hates herself, too. she also hates him. in any other world, absinthe would have never given him the time of day. if she were in his shoes, she would have tried to kill herself already.[break][break]

but in this world, she feels warm. even though he is cold, she feels warm.[break][break]

absinthe's arms wrap around howard, hesitant, trembling just slightly. she's rusty, unused to the touch of another living being, and the motions are slow and jerky, lacking practice. she leans into the hug, though, burrowing her face in the fabric of his shirt, holding him tightly enough to make up for any discomfort either of them might have. this is weird. this is wrong. she doesn't like it.[break][break]

but she feels warm.[break][break]

and this warmth, bright and fuzzy and lingering in the bleeding, tattered pieces of her heart, feels all the more sinful knowing that the crane stands behind her, leering, watching. absinthe, the person she is now in this moment, would match howard's dedication. she would say that she would never turn her back on him, that she would never betray him, that she would forever owe him her existence for standing behind her when her actions only serve to breed contempt.[break][break]

but the future is a beast with gnashing teeth and claws and hatred. in those distant catacombs, lingering mere feet ahead of her, absinthe will be faced with a choice. one side will serve as a host to every person absinthe has grown to care about: howard, evelyn, himiko. the other side will serve power to her on a silver platter: the power to make the world weep for what it did to her, for what it did to the demon that was her husband.[break][break]

every single time, without fail, absinthe would choose the power.[break][break]

so her next words, soft and warm as they are, echo hollow in the empty cavity of her chest. "i promise."[break][break]

her arms squeeze tighter and her eyes close.[break][break]

"thank you."

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

absinthe despises that shrug—casual, dismissive, and dripping with disregard. it is like watching an apple bob in saltwater: though it floats atop the surface, it is impossible to mistake that the two substances would prefer each other absent.[break][break]

perhaps it is better like this.[break][break]

if there is one thing that absinthe knows, it is pain. pain heals, pain teaches, pain bonds. they both know the concept intimately.[break][break]

but the other side of the coin is revealed; june appears unconvinced of the curse-like nature of their gifts, even as she concedes its presence. even with a devil at her heel, she would seek freedom within it. seek joy. seek love.[break][break]

absinthe wonders, briefly, how much easier this strange predicament would be if june was her ally. her friend, perhaps. but it is impossible to reconcile friendship with jealousy, with suspicion, with disdain.[break][break]

her eye catches a stray raincloud outside of her window, dragging its feet, fat with raindrops, across the sky. when it releases them, it does so without concern for where they land—for whom they nourish or drown.[break][break]

since four years ago, absinthe has refrained from taking anybody for their word. a word is so easily crossed, a promise so easily waylaid. the only promise that can be promised is a threat, clear and ringing. the chemist gives a jerky nod, her indication that she has her own idea to bind them to each other.[break][break]

"i don't trust promises," she says, as if impatient to be rid of this interaction—as if, truly, the quicker it is finished, the sooner she can resume her quest for oblivion. as if she can hold her breath and wait for something better. "how about this?"[break][break]

she lifts her head. her eyes burn like coals.[break][break]

"if i ever catch even the slightest hint that you have told anyone else about my little secret, then i will not hesitate to the tell the entire world about yours. i expect you to do the same. agreed?"

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

life leaves little room for mistakes. it holds so much, but mistakes as big as the ones absinthe is prone to making tend to swallow up all the good. she made a mistake when she was a kid. she made another four years ago. she made another just a week ago. by now, there's no more good left. absinthe's life consists only of mistakes and their progeny now.[break][break]

she walks, languid and hoping, under the shroud of nightfall. to anyone who asks, absinthe would claim that she prefers her life dark and ruined and terrible, slain by her own two hands. she would say that the suffering makes her stronger, reinforces her skin. anyone who looks twice would know this to be fault. absinthe, for all her posturing, reaches desperately for the light, seeking a world where she can be happy. her demons, numerous and plenty, seek to render this impossible at every turn. who would bother to save a woman who revels in the sorrow, after all?[break][break]

nobody. to the outside world, once more, she claims she likes this facet of her torrid existence.[break][break]

once more, it is a falsehood.[break][break]

perhaps, then, that is why the echo of the devil walks alongside her, drawing in poachable nocturnal pokemon with a wry twist of its beak and a shift of its beautiful plumage. absinthe has determined the bird to be a worthy secret to keep, and yet her mind ticks along, drawing the bird out into the open for little reason other than hatred of life and its wretched circumstances. they step in tandem, eyes glinting in the night, seeking their next prey.[break][break]

then, soon enough, they find it.

[attr="class","credit"]

[attr="class","body"]

days from now, in the long distant future for a woman remiss to think past tommorrow, absinthe will be here, leading (or being dragged behind) a group of women filled with lovers, friends, and strangers.[break][break]

and 'here' fizzles and cracks with latent electricity, erecting tall sign-posts painted with warnings. wires strew across the floor, itself constructed of wiring, like squirming, voltaic innards possessed by the ghost of the past. the horizon lays bare, so clear of obstruction that absinthe sees the curve of the planet itself, dipping down into the lowest recesses of her peripheral vision. dark clouds hug the sky and spew lightning from their gaping maws at odd intervals. absinthe watches, mystified, still and silent on a clutch of steel boxes.[break][break]

she struggles to think of terrain as alien as this. never has she ever laid eyes upon a land forged from electricity itself.[break][break]

but time does not wait for dead women to come to terms with their tasks. days from now, she will be here again, and she will not be alone. Evelyn Vespera will be there, with her, and the very thought makes absinthe shudder. she could never forgive herself if she let anything happen to her.[break][break]

the terrain must be mapped. the world must be catalogued. alone, just as she prefers, absinthe will do it.[break][break]

gathering her wits about her, absinthe steps down from the steel boxes and begins the ruinous process.

[attr="class","credit"]