I was hoping I'd be forgiven for getting out of bed but when I dreamt like that the only thing that would help was a glass of water. Something. Anything. I barely felt the water go down my throat as the running sink crashed water into the bin like static to my ears.

Josh, you dumbass, did you really try acting like losing your life and being dropped into an alien body was no big deal? You were three semesters into your degree. You finally started to patch up old wounds with your estranged family. You were a son, a friend, a brother, an uncle… Look at you now. What do you have left?

A gentle knocking on the doorframe drew me from my thoughts. At some point my mind had retreated away from my body and I had left the sink on for who knows how long. I turned it off and saw Falicia, just Falicia, in the doorway.

"Mind if I come in?"

I nodded at the hesitant voice, even though I couldn't meet her eyes with my own after being found like I was. I motioned to the bed as I walked over to it myself, the awkwardness of this new form barely registering as I took a seat on its edge and rested my head in my hands.

I heard the gentle clack of her shoes and felt the air shift with my head crest as she made her way slowly over. "I'm breaking protocol by not having Daisy with me. Do I have your word you won't harm me?"

That drew me from my slump and I looked her in the eyes. At least that was something I still had left - my word. "You have my word, Falicia."

That brought a gentle smile to her face and she took a seat beside me. Given the lack of light in the room, she took to looking directly ahead though I knew for sure her attention was on me. She hitched on her words for a second before her next thought fully came out. "You're very human, you know?"

Oh, I knew... I wanted to see where her thoughts were going though. She pressed on when she knew she had my attention. "You didn't even ask what I meant when I asked for your word. You understand concepts most pokemon never will and I can tell that in what little we've spoken. It's why I'm so hesitant to treat you as your species' name. You're more than that."

The silence after that statement lingered almost long enough for me to break it but Falicia found her courage again and continued. "But that's also why I'm so worried about you. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to be available when you woke. Because if there's one thing I need to do before I leave this room, it's to let you know…"

The tiniest increase in her inhalation caught her words for a second, and she finished by looking at me. "You're not alone."

The dam that was holding my emotions back damaged just a crack. The tears fell freely in the silence of the dark, one after another, as my dreams rushed through my mind. But before I truly descended into the freefall, I felt a hand rest on top of mine and I turned my blurry eyes to Falicia Joy, someone who was much too real to be fictitious.

With a gentle hold, she reinforced her words. "I'm not going to ask what led you to run from your past or why you don't seek to go back. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you're healthy and whole, inside and out. All I want you to do is to ask yourself what you really want and I'll do what I can to help you get there. Okay?"

I didn't trust my voice under the weight of her belief, so it was all I could do to nod and hope she understood how much I appreciated what she was doing for me.

We sat there in the dark for an unknown number of minutes as I began to dare to dream again. It was from within one of my random thoughts that she pulled me out with a question.

"Hungry?"

The sudden change in conversation threw me for a second but it didn't take long to find my answer. I gave a half-hearted grin and hoped I got everything I needed to across with my answer. "Like I haven't eaten in days."

I was by no means fine with my situation yet. Hearing Falicia laugh at my dumb joke made things a little more tolerable though. She stood up off of the bed to get towards the side table and handed me a tissue. In wordless thanks, I wiped up what remained of my previous sorrow and tossed the mess into the wastebasket.