freya would never describe herself as a dainty person, but having this music greet her makes her feel smaller. almost delicate. not fragile, but it makes her still long enough to stop and blink owlishly at melody, stunned into silence until moxie splashes a bit of water her way. 

"i feel...powerful, actually. more sure of myself." she flexes the palm of her hand and the metal scales over her knuckles glitter in the low light. 

Melody Miro

☉

they're all part of her, like he says, but how much can the human mind handle? can it triumph past all of these horrors, lifetimes shoved into a body too young to have experienced those multitudes? envy squirms when her idle anxieties rear their ugly head; his connection to suicune makes what are tumultuous waters to her a placid lake to him. 

"you haven't shown me any reason to think you aren't," she says distractedly, eyes still half-closed, thumb still pressing, as though that can pin down the hodgepodge memories that are folding over themselves at her beckoning. ana's face flits by minutely and that secret grazes her conscious too. 

she owes it to him to tell him. 

she owes it to him to keep it secret. 

the woman he loved is gone. dead.

adolescent dragons fall from the sky at the hands of two dueling gods. ash stains the snow of their beloved circhester. a black amalgamation carves through memories made manifest, loved ones with stolen faces, and she opens her eyes. 

"caleb thinks he's a problem." her mouth twists, nose flaring slightly when she thinks back to the stumbling, inconsolable form of Gwendolyn Conway . "i think he may have attacked one of my volunteers. ranger conway. the gabite i gave her - " jaw clenching, she exhales in frustration - "their teeth are strong enough to bite through metal, isaac, and gishath's jaw was a shattered, bloody mess when she brought him to me."

Isaac Merlo

☉

there is currently water dribbling down her face and she's squinting, so she can only just barely make out the surprise on anna's face before it turns into something more unreadable at the mention of Caleb Harcourt. she considers him more than an acquaintance at this point, but she doesn't know much about his social circle. 

"yeah, i am," she says and it feels so weird saying it aloud. with such confidence. as though she knows herself. as though she has something to be proud of. 

"turns out the portals to the ultra realms aren't so bad when it comes to finding out your own lineage." silence lapses and she doesn't know what else to say. it had been such a revelation for her and she's never one to share with insignificant things, nevermind a matter as personal and important as this. 

"so is that a yes? you'd have to work with the dragons a few times a week while i'm here."

annalise henderson

☉

amusement flits over her face. she's come to expect his long-winded answers, relied on them. maybe that's why she thought to go to him with this. but to her, it's never been about making peace with these other selves. she's learned to leave her past behind her; losing everything in her present over and over again got tiresome after a while. 

"it was easier for a time, wishing i could trade places with the happier versions of me. the alternative was actually putting in the work to make me happy."

she brushes a strand of silver hair from her face. "glimpsing some of those other timelines were gifts. i got to know a family. my family. i learned more about myself than i ever could have here." she simpers. "i learned i'm a surviving descendant of the draconids. in galar? for two decades, i held fast. i didn't give up. there were times i wavered, but i did not run, and i've been terrified i'd make those same mistakes again."

she closes her eyes. "but there are bits and pieces that could help us more, if i could just pin them down. if i could just remember, then maybe it would help me learn more about how to combat jayden cross. those memories i have of him are so murky, but sometimes they're so, so bright in that way dreams are right before you wake up and forget them all.

"what if there's more information hiding inside of me? information on other rocket operatives that could have been there - like, like Zev Harcourt?" she sighs, rubbing a thumb into her temple. 

Isaac Merlo

☉

"my cousin can," she says and quirks a smile, tenderness smoothing out the stress wrinkles ever-present on her face. it still feels so strange, saying my and family. she had a few cousins through her step-mother's side, but they moved shortly after sootopolis was taken over. 

after sophia and theodore died. 

anna echoes her questions aloud and she blinks, goes back to the sink and wets a towel so she can dab at her face. ruddy pink comes away and she thumbs the edges of the fraying cloth, thinking. 

"they were. the morningstars, i mean. at least, i think so. they were close to a family of draconids. my real family? i'm still figuring all that out. anyway, i can teach you? i've been teaching Caleb Harcourt too."

annalise henderson

☉

"i've always known draconic," she says, but language is a funny thing like that. it's as living and breathing as the people it dwells inside. freya's connection to it had always been secondhand through studies from the morningstars, but father winter had gifted her a lifetime of memories, making it part of her.

"but yeah, you could say that." there is a hint in her tone, a look made to king - she has more to tell him, but not here. not in front of delta.

she rests her chin on the top of the girl's head, covers her hands with her own, and shows her how to make the dragon pliant. they knead with their palms a muscle beside its spine and it thrums, shakes out its neck, and curls up, lashes rluttering closed.

"if you like this one, you should see the other ones, del. once i have them tamed, i'll bring them around. they're not as friendly as this guy right now."

KING WAYLAND

☉

the light stone. disappointment colors her features. regret wells up in her belly. if they'd had more firepower. if they'd done more, they could have ensured the light stone remain out of rocket's hands. 

but when she looks for another avenue in the simulation, some glimpse of how it might be returned to its original form, if it's even possible, she's left with the destabilization of the rks system. and more questions than she started with. 

"thank you for your time, ambassador. it was a pleasure," she says, almost distractedly. 

Elise Calcifet

☉

she'd told Eva Morales about it. not all of it, but the bits and pieces that had mattered in the moment. it had seemed so awfully unfair then, that she had been granted some semblance of happiness with a woman that may have meant to be hers. 

"thought they might be interested in you," she says after confirming, but she frowns. "he stuffed me inside...well, me. the me i would've become if my mother hadn't died in labor. but it was like i was in there? like a tourist in my own body."

she scratches her cheek. "that's only half the point." she doesn't know how to put feelings to words, frustrations to coherencies. "the memories from that. from galar. hell, from the first time father winter came around and trapped me in a frozen hellscape for a year. all of it's compounding."

and then she hesitates. "do you get the you now mixed up with the other yous? the memories you shouldn't have? the life you shouldn't have lived?"

Isaac Merlo

☉

"you're right. sans the awful childhood memories." a pause. the mother that was never her mother staring down at her with her cold, distant eyes. 24 karat gold not meant for the grubby fingers of a child, not even a daughter. "kind of."

heights have never bothered her. not even when they're climbing over roiling magma. she's never been afraid of falling in the literal sense. there are pokeballs at her hip, companions she can rely on as much as she can rely on her body to take the next breath. 

"something else. you're the only one who remembers galar like i do." she folds over, propping her elbows on her thighs, lacing her fingers together between her knees. "and okay, i'm going somewhere with this, but before that, did father winter visit you this year too?"

Isaac Merlo

☉

lava bubbles and gurgles thousands of feet below them. the cable car takes its slow crawl up the mountainside and freya sorts through memories that are both hers and not hers. hung suspended in the air alongside them, eclipsing the sky, are phantom images of the skeleton and its foe. 

and then she blinks and they're cloud and smoke. she rubs her temples and she looks across the way at her companion. 

"thanks for coming. i know the setting isn't exactly tranquil, but i was hoping we could revisit your offer."

to help heal her.

Isaac Merlo

☉

the urshifu is big, but it's damn fast, and unless he's in the air, he has little hope of avoiding the bear's attacks. so he doesn't. a hexagonal barrier glitters over his scales, sparing him the brunt of the attack, but allowing him to keep him close. his slit eyes fixate, neck squirming, and the brutal triangular shape of his head lashes out like a blur, fangs seeking flesh. 

he's ripped apart vertebrate by burrowing into flesh, splattered his mistress with viscera let blood fall from the sky like unholy rain. freya's gaze darts to him, but she does not urge him to hold back.

navy can take it, and so can his urshifu. 

"someone asked me once," she starts, bittersweet smile, "what i'd do instead. if we didn't have to fight. and i couldn't think of anything. then, i was still content to let myself immolate on the battlefield for the sake of martyrdom.

"raising a few dragons proper doesn't sound so bad anymore." she bares her teeth. "but first we need to take sootopolis back."

Michael Navidson

☉

so the story unravels. she wants to pick at it, to uncover just how many people knew before this all came out, but that would only lead to more frustrations. and a pockmarked past that could not change the present or their futures. so she lets it rest. 

the grander scheme of it all can't be ignored. distrust with the league, she can understand. she'd been there herself. were it her two years ago, she may have kept it to herself. were she in his position, traveling alone, a child, she would have without a doubt. 

she grabs beakers and trinkets, goes about setting the place ablaze because he already knows what's happened should they fix it. 

"i can forgive that. thank you for telling me." words without bite. "at the end of the day, aqua is a decision. skyler and angelo were free agents for a very long time before they signed on." and now they're gone. like so many others. 

"we don't ask anyone to do anything against their will. we're meant to be the antithesis to rocket." unspoken lay the truth - that they are not always. 

Hideo Kino

Destroy it and the workshop.

☉