Sol stared out from under the bed. By the time she and Eliza had gotten back to the inn where they had rented rooms while staying in Ragsport, Sol was composed enough to walk in on her own. Not that it mattered. The main floor was all but empty and Eevee and Riley were still out on the streets. Looking for her, no doubt.

Eliza had gone to search for them while Espeon fretted and paced outside the closed door of Sol's room. When they had first entered the city, Eliza had insisted that she share a room with Sol, saying someone needed to be there in case a repeat of Skypeak happened while Sol slept.

But now Sol didn't care what Eliza thought. Or anybody else, for that matter. They could all leave her alone. This was her room now, so she had moved Eliza's bag into Espeon's room (she had briefly considered just dumping it in the hall, but she owed her more than that), pushed the beds together and made a nest out of blankets and sheets under the two. Sol found the tight, closed space comforting.

She stayed there for a long while. She could hear Espeon in the hall, pacing back and forth, talking to herself the whole while. Sol couldn't make out the individual words, just a hum of worry and discontent. There was far too much worrying going on these days.

It wasn't going to happen. That was the idea Sol was trying to sell herself. She had a vision like that before, shifting and sliding and fading out, images on top of each other as the the Dimensional Scream tried to show her her own future, something no seer could do with any accuracy. That hadn't come to pass. Sol hadn't stood with Dusknoir atop the ruins of the Hidden Land. She wouldn't kill Ren.

Sol kept reminding herself of this and knew for a fact it was true. She would never kill a member of her team. She felt no doubt about it, but that it had shown up in her vision, even if it never came to pass, the very fact alone that it was a possibility sickened her. In the quiet, right on the edge of her hearing, she could hear a sharp crack followed by a mad laugh. Over and over again.

She pushed herself further under the two beds until her feet hit the wall.

"Sparks!" Espeon suddenly cried out in the hall. Sol heard feet running on wooded floors, the sound of Espeon's excited chatter and a lower, more sullen voice answering in terse sentences.

The room door opened then slammed shut. Sol saw four brown paws hesitate, then stiffly walk over to the bed. Eevee crouched down to look at her, giving Sol a view of his face. She was suprised. Sol had expected worry, fear, sadness, but Eevee had a hard anger about him, in how his body tensed and how he stared at her with something akin to an accusation. Maybe Eliza had told him what Sol said, though she hadn't said a word to Espeon before when she brought Sol here.

"Get out of there."

Sol shrank back further.

"No!" he yelled. Sol flinched. "You don't get to hide! You don't get to run away and leave us behind!" His whole body trembled. "You're always running, leaving the rest of us behind without a thought! But you don't get to do that! You're supposed to be our leader, and you, you..." He was breaking down, anger falling away as he started shaking like a terrified child in the dark.

"Why do you always leave us behind?"

Sol opened her mouth to say that she hadn't, that she was right here, but she couldn't form the words. Tears welled in Eevee's eyes.

"When something bad happens, you don't tell anyone. We could help you if we knew, but you don't let us. Ever." The tears began to fall. "Why don't you trust us? Why are you always running and hiding? You're not alone, but why do you always act like you are?!" He voice rose gradually in volume until he was shouting at her. "Say something! Talk to me! You never talk to me and I want to help but you won't. Let. ME."

Outburst over with, Eevee seemed to collapse into himself. He plunked down on the floor with ears flattened against his head and simply stared at Sol with a hollow emptiness.

"Would you like to come in?" Sol eventually asked. There was a second's pause before Eevee nodded and crawled under the bed beside Sol.

They both stared straight ahead out into the room, lying on their stomachs and avoiding looking at each other.

"It doesn't have to happen," Sol eventually said. "I had a vision like it before, and it didn't happen. It doesn't work right when I'm seeing things about myself."

Eevee glanced over at her from the corner of his eye, then straight ahead once more, remaining silent.

"Good news is, Ren and Jak will be ok. At least until we're all back together." Sol laughed, a strained, forced sound. "Then there'll be a fairly good chance that I'll kill Ren myself. Literally, not figuratively." Sol rested her chin on her crossed arms in front of her. "The whole thing was messed up. I was messed up. It reminds me a bit of Primal Dialga, how he was still him, just... crazy."

Eevee was looking directly at Sol now with wide eyes. Sol just stared at the floor, looking defeated.

"I'm scared."

That was an understatement. Sol was terrified. Not the heart racing, wild, flee or die terror, but a slow, numbing, 'move and they'll get you' fear.

"I'm not."

He said it so softly, so quietly, that Sol almost didn't catch it. She lifted her head to look at him and was surprised she saw no accusations there, no hint of unease, just a sort of earnest innocence. Sol was reminded of that first day on the beach and a near stranger pleading with her to form and exploration team.

"I used to be. All the time. But now... I don't know." He shifted in his spot then settled down. "You're not going to hurt any of us."

"How can you be sure? I saw it. It's a possibility and-"

"I know," Eevee interrupted, "because I won't let you."

Sol's mouth opened, then closed. There was a dead certainty in Eevee's voice. He meant what he said.

"I'm not afraid anymore." He bit his lip, and some of his confidence faltered. "Most of the time. I get worried and-" he cut himself off, shook off what ever it was he was about to say, then refound his conviction. "You're not going to hurt Ren, and if you try, I'll stop you."

"You think it'll be that simple?"

"I'll stop you," Eevee repeated with a note of finality.

Did he really believe that or was he stuck down deep in denial? Would Eevee be able to stop Sol if it came down to it? She'd much prefer it if the question remained unanswered, but she might not have a choice.

"It happens in a really big room made out of this red stone with this throne looking thing. I didn't see what happened before, but you all knew something was up with me, but then Ren was like 'Sol would never', and then I killed him." Sol said this clearly and without hesitation, but she felt like she was withering up and dying on the inside.

"It won't happen. You can trust me."

"I... I can do that." There was a pause, then Sol let out a sudden burst of laughter. Eevee looked at her oddly. "We've come a long way, haven't we?" she said. "Remember our first real exploration, when a Tangela kept kicking rocks at us?"

Eevee smiled, just a little bit, but it was enough to make Sol feel a lot better.

"Or how about our first job as explorers, when I somehow ended up riding that Anorith? That was certainly an experience."

Sol laughed again, thinking back to their early days, then came a sudden realization. Eevee had saved her life that day, when she got pulled into the water and almost drowned. Sol had been well aware of that fact at the time, but it hadn't really stuck with her the way it should have. It was Eevee who snapped her out of whatever stupor Drowzee had put her into and Eevee's quick thinking that saved them at the Passage of Time. Eevee was the only one who remembered Sol after she was gone. When had it ever been the other way around? When had Sol been the one to save to Eevee?

Yet Sol kept Eevee in the dark with just about everything. He was right when he said Sol was always running and hiding, never trusting him. Arguably he was more competent than Sol, but she stomped her feet and made more noise so she got all the attention while he was overlooked.

I really am a horrible person, Sol thought. Me, me, me, everyone else sucks.

Eevee didn't notice any of this going through Sol's head. "Remember that time you had a whole flock of Wingulls chasing you down Craggy Coast?" he said.

"In my defense, they were vicious," Sol laughed but still focused on her own thoughts. She couldn't afford to push these to the side, nor let them pull her into a fresh round of self pity. Remember but don't dwell, she vowed.

They talked for a while about past shenanigans, fails, victories, anything that came to mind until Eevee was laughing so hard tears were leaking from his eyes and Sol was feeling like things could, just maybe, turn out all right. She had survived a fight with the Temporal Legendary himself, what else could the world throw at her?

Riley poked his head through the door at one point, wearily and with eyes scanning the room as if he expected to be ambushed by hidden enemies. Just checking on them, he claimed. Sol offered him a spot under the bed with them. He looked at them as if they had gone insane, then decided that the whole world was falling into an inevitable insanity and there was no point in fighting it. He appeared uneasy and far out of his comfort zone, lying under the bed with an apparent lunatic beside him for no reason, remaining largely quiet and preferring to listen rather than talk. The important part was that he stayed, however, and Sol felt a lot better with a friend on either side of her.

Wait, when had Riley became a friend, never mind a source of comfort? Huh.

"She scared me half to death!" Sol exclaimed, telling yet another story of Team Wanderers. "She was in my bed, watching me sleep, and somehow she acts like it's town Pokemon who are the weird ones. Seeing her take down Loudred the next morning was pretty great, though."

"You... are an odd group of people," Riley said.

...

Sol was awoken by the sound of creaking floorboards. She found this neither worrisome or interesting, so other than a slight shifting in her position she didn't get up or even open her eyes. This continued until her sleeping spot was bathed in light, and after ten seconds of trying her best to ignore it, she cracked her eyelids open.

The soft, blue light was subdued enough that Sol wasn't immediately blinded. Eliza came into focus quickly, hunched down on one knee to peer under the bed with a pool of light cupped in her hand. The Lucario frowned at Sol, not out of distaste but because she couldn't fully understand how what she saw had come about.

"Whaddya want?" Sol mumbled.

"I was looking to speak to Riley."

Sol sighed, then gave Riley a soft kick in the side where he slept at Sol's feet, one of her legs pinned under his stomach.

"Geddup," Sol slurred and closed her eyes.

"What?" Riley said. "Oh-" There was a loud thump as Riley hurriedly tried to get up, whacked into the underside of the bed and fell right back down. Eevee began to stir and Sol hoped he didn't want to get up too. He was a very comfortable pillow. "Theynin, I was- we were-," he sputtered, embarrassed.

"We were sleeping, and some of us are still trying." Sol lazily waved a hand at them. "Go away."

"I believe we should discuss our travel plans."

"We get up, we walk. Problem solved."

"We cannot walk across the Dotted Sea."

"Stupid name for a sea," Sol mumbled. Then her eyes shot open. "Wait, what?"