Chapter 4: Two Frozen Hearts
Feyera was trapped in the twilight of his mind. The substantial blackness blotted out all light and color. Nothing could be seen. Nothing could be perceived. There was only darkness. A thick hazy shade coated everything he once knew. The shadowy world was completely devoid and untouchable by sight.
But there was suddenly noise. A distant and faint ringing coming from within. Originating from the left of his head, the dull drone grew steadily louder. He lay completely inert wondering that the strange noise was. For what seemed like hours, he waited in absolute obscurity.
It was more than a steady buzz now. The anomaly was persistent and unwavering. There was still nothing to see however. The cloak of darkness veiled the external world for Edge Feyera.
Anxiety took hold. The ringing was nearly unbearable. What was it? It continued to crescendo as the pitch rose higher and higher endlessly. He hoped that it would go beyond his hearing threshold, however with each new pitch his keen ears seemed to become more adept at hearing its awful tone.
Time passed, and there was no escaping the overpowering sensation. It felt as if he had left headphones in his ears and was listening to some type of flat note rising in volume. The noise from within became louder and more pronounced. Its physical manifestation was not observable because the inhibiting darkness. However, even if there was light in this alien world, it would not solve the mystery of noise originating from inside of his head. What would there have been to see in the external world? Everything was within him. It was as Sanaria had said, he was enveloped in experience.
The relentless homogeneous sound had developed into a being of itself as it maintained and sustained its authority over the young man. There was no use in clasping his hands on his ears. The piercing sound came forth from a primordial part of him, buried deep within him. He was well past the point of mere concern. Soon, he felt as if the ringing would take hold of him and crush him beneath its seemingly endlessly sustained blare. It was like traveling through a pitch-black tunnel. Nothing could be seen, and yet everything could be felt and heard.
Then a frantic tug of consciousness. He felt an extreme rush of energy or perhaps an adrenaline kick. The energy surged through him as the ringing going through his head stalled multiple times. Its dissipation was sporadic yet welcome for the young man. Relief had been beyond his reach for long enough.
The darkness quickly retreated from the center of vision. A single blotch of pinpoint white in the center of his field rapidly expanded like a newborn star. Accompanying its frantic growth were a myriad of colors. This multitude of colors all originated from the center, and they warped to define their new places in his sight. Dark magenta swirled into tomato reds, turquoise spiraled into bright pink, as the blackness melded and morphed into light corn silk hues. Once the shades lightened enough to see, Edge let out a gasp as he realized where he was. "HUH!" Everything had changed.
"Chris! Chris!"
"Nuh…uhh…ow *chough* oh God…*cough cough*." The man felt ill, as if he had just been tossed into a centrifugal force spun paint can filled with innumerable colors.
"You're going to be alright, try not to move," the Gardevoir's voice insisted.
"Sana…? Is that you?" Edge's voice trailed off as he saw her blend into his view, her image distorting once or twice before fully ridding itself of any apparition-like qualities. He saw her pure cherry eyes first and then her beige face as warm and crisp as toasted meringue.
"Yes it's me; you're going to be okay. Don't panic," she said rather uncannily, possessing a hint of fright in her own voice.
"What happened?" he asked, trying to observe his environment. His narrow neck could hardly even move. Her face came in and out of focus once again. He felt his eyes straining to calibrate the images. Like stage spotlights, they darted around the setting. Eventually, by locking on to the Gardevoir's eyes, Edge was able to determine that he had been lying down on his side next to her. They were on the ground close to one another after whatever had happened between the two of them.
She too seemed to be in a state of disarray judging by her expression. Perhaps she was worried about his well-being. Speaking of well-being, now that the darkness was gone and the ringing subsided, the background world took on an unfamiliar form to the young trainer. Colors were all bunched up and miss-matched. The grass beneath him appeared dark pale turquoise, and the sky above seemed to be a hazy orange, almost a deep golden. It couldn't be right. Something was terribly wrong. He saw Sana squirm slightly on the ground nearby him.
"We fell," she sighed as the tense muscles around her mouth relaxed. She gave up on moving for now.
"What?" That was obvious; he was on the ground next to her after all. Why had she just been laying near him? Was she stuck like he was?
It was an earthquake! he exclaimed telepathically. What about the earthquake though? Chrono Island did not sit on a fault line and there was never any evident volcanic activity. None of the Sevii Isles did.
The Gardevoir mumbled something incomprehensible.
"It was an earthquake," Feyera repeated, this time having his telepathy meld with his voice once more. "That doesn't make sense though Sana. And of course I know we fell, that's why we're both flat on the ground!"
She shook her head, and her tired eyes revealed seeping anxiety, "No I mean we fell into a feedback fall."
"W—What is that?" he asked her. Distraught beyond measure, Feyera didn't know the half of whatever "feedback" meant. Was it more nonsense involving the Gardevoir shard embedded in his chest? Or could it have been something he had done to her unknowingly while they hugged? He had an idea, but his ideas of how things worked and how they actually worked were shifting a great deal recently. Almost everything was spiraling out of his control. His mind wasn't always able to even keep up with it. Things were always changing, never staying constant for long. The variables were always new and more diverse. His mind was able to entrench itself with self-sustained emotion to generate wicked power, but such a thing had not happened for quite some time.
"It's…" she sighed again, trying desperately hard to pick herself up off the ground. "It's when…Chris?" she asked worriedly as she fell back to the earth. As she fell on her back, Edge could not help but feel bad for her. It was a mixture of compassion, seeing her rise slightly only to fall, getting gray dust on her overwrought face. Feyera felt the quickness of pity overcome him.
He wondered what had made her stop the explanation. Trying to push off the ground, his shaking hands gave out from underneath him and he planted right back down on his face. "Ow," he muttered following a similar path of failure. "What?" he barked in irritation.
"You're upset. I am too. But we can't stay like this; we both know hearts can change."
To be honest, he was rather embarrassed by the situation. If anyone had come to this godforsaken island they would probably have a grand old time watching the two of them struggle. They were like desperate children fighting off physical burdens that were simply unmanageable. Just one of them would have been a sad sight, but both of them in this weakened state was as pathetic as it was comical in some sadistic way. Edge laughed, trying to steady himself, but once again failing to do so. More dirt covered his face. He felt it mix with the perspiration gathering on the rims of his portrait. Being trapped stung. But more so, he was not trapped alone—as he had grown accustomed to—but with her. Once again he laughed, this time incorporating a cough into his expressed amusement. "Ha *cough* haha!"
She acknowledged his frustration taking the path of humorous humiliation, "Listen. You can't be laughing about this. I don't want to make this harder than it has to be, but you need to be more careful, Chris."
"Are you kidding me?" he shouted. Did she just assume it was him? He didn't want this! He didn't cause this on purpose. "I didn't do any of," he paused to look at her. She was in such a peaceful pose despite the turmoil felt all too recently. Was she immune to it? Seemed unlikely. Maybe she was merely resting and trying to recover. Nevertheless, she seemed to be more at peace than he was. She should be concerned with getting them out of this situation, not scolding him for some unpredictable natural disaster. It didn't make sense, there was no reason for this to have occurred. The wind blew her long green bangs into her eyes and she squinted in response. He had to explain to her that he was not involved. He did not want to have been involved in it. Feyera took a deep breath and rested his hand on the ground near Sana's hip. He thought about touching her, and while there was a desire, he needed to make sure the two of them were on the same page. They had to be on the same page about a lot of things in order for this—for anything—to work properly. Sublimely mellowed out, he went on, "Sanaria, I've done a fair share of destructive things, but I assure you I did not do…"
"I'm not talking about the earthquake, Chris," Sana said, stirring slightly. "Keep your massive ego in check or it might just float away."
Feyera blushed. "Oh that's what I thought you were trying to say," he histrionically said. Could he have caused it though? He wondered. He wondered about a lot of things in this bizarre world. Indeed, stranger things had occurred in the past. Maybe he was that powerful. She might have not wanted to give him credit. Could the Reilken Mercurius have made him this powerful? Sephiteos? Being "close" to Sanaria? With too many variables, he decided to focus only on what it was he knew; but even then, he was still in a deficit. "Huff…huff…psyonics?" Edge finally asked, still short of breath.
"Psy—onics?" she asked in confusion.
"Yes, psyonics. People Psychics. Ya know, like Sabrina of Saffron?"
"I don't know her…or any other people like that—like you."
"Well it isn't normal, but it happens. I'm not the only one," he felt as if he needed to inform her of the latter. He didn't want to be alone, he was convinced to portray to her that his powers did derive at some point from a human origin, even if it meant deluding himself. Whether he employed deception or not, Feyera had no idea how much sway over the material world psyonics had or could have. Human psyonics tended to be rare and highly controlled. The people he knew of with natural psyonics could be counted on his fingers.
"There are others like you? Since when?" she asked in confusion.
"There were others Sana, before the purges…" his tone adopting a slightly less rhythmic pace. "Back in the day, to possess any supernatural power whatsoever warranted burning at the stake or worse. Intolerance for people with 'gifted minds' ran ranpid amid human generations predating the Great War, culminating in the period of time between the Terminal War and the most recent Industrial Revolution."
"What do you mean? I don't understand."
Feyera sighed, "The Darkened Ages were already filled with a lack of order, due to a lack of government, social structure, and even laws. You can imagine, with all that chaos present, people feared things that were extraordinary. In many ways, ganging up on a particular group was a way for them to release their own frustrations. Persecution, dehumanization, and even slavery were not out of the question for anyone expressing even the slightest form of elevated manipulation of the physical world." He felt ill just thinking about it.
"What?" she asked in disbelief. "You would do that to your own species?"
"That's the world we live in Sana. We have weapons, we fight, we have wars. Besides, you fight with other species of Pokemon don't you?"
"Of course, because they attacked us veh Feyera! It's about taking back what was ours. And what's worse than that is, we never used to fight amongst ourselves before the Dark types overran our home territory. And now look at us…nomads and gypsies. We can't even live in a stabilized society. It has to be militant, socialized. We…" she looked him dead in his eyes as if she were trying to get him to recall something he'd missed out on, "…the stress made us fight amongst our own species. We forgot how to truly live, that's why we left, remember?"
"So not just Pokemon in general, but Gardevoir?" he asked wondering if conflict was strictly unique to humans.
"You don't remember anything?"
"No, I don't have Sephiteos' memories, remember? I told you that already!" he lied.
"Fine then, but tell me more about your human history; why were they bad—the people with psyonics?" Sanaria asked with great interest. There was not much else to do, but explain since he was too weak.
"They weren't ever 'bad', heck they were hardly useful for things other than cheap magic tricks and spooking overly religious people. However, as time went on and irrational fear grew, to be associated with such a person became even worse than being in possession of such psyonics," he solemnly spoke. For instance, Chris remembered learning in history classes about people who tried to hide those with psyonic abilities in their basements in order to protect them. "Yeah, people with them were outlawed along with their protectors." How he despised the way people behaved.
"Really?" she said.
While in hindsight this concealment was an act of preserving dignity, the overly zealous people at the time did not see it in those terms. "People at the time were ultimately very scared, and with good reason following the cataclysmic Terminal War. They saw the existence of 'Psychic people' as a crime against humankind, a consequence of malevolent devil worshiping."
"Devil worshiping?"
"A few religious sects even deemed those who attempted to guard these people as heretics and anyone caught protecting a 'psyonic' would be executed on the spot, usually along with the rest of their family, citizens or not without a trial."
She seemed to be appalled, perhaps because she was considering what this meant for Feyera and herself by extension. "You cannot be serious?"
He sighed, straightening his back. "At first, it was just mere inconvenience. Being out in public and displaying any form of the so-called 'black magic' meant swift death. Of course, you would make the argument that this could be averted by simply not using any Psychic power."
"That's impossible," Sana said in disbelief.
Edge knew how difficult that was to do. In a way, it would be like severing your arm or gouging your eyes. Even the weak forms of psyonics expressed themselves through observable physical traits. "I never knew how difficult it must have been for them until now."
"Well you learn fast." She stroked her forearm in nervousness. "What happened to them? Where did they go?"
"Sana, it was impossible to hide indefinitely. For these reasons, many people possessing psyonics simply retreated underground during the purges. The oppressive crusade of struggling political powers and religious cults however turned to using Pokemon to sniff these so called 'abominations' out in a series of cleansings known as the 'Great Purges'."
Sanaria looked down at his chest as she asked, "What was so 'great' about them? Why do you call wars and evil 'great', veh Feyera?"
He bowed his head too as the off-color grass stroked his chin. She reminded him of an ignorant child when she asked questions like this. Wasn't her society facing the same types of indecencies? Nevertheless, her concern did make sense. Feyera could sympathize with her distress. He too had faced it at a younger age. When he was younger and undergoing a maturation of sorts during late adolescence he had similar questions concerning humanity. Why were things they way that they were? Why was he the way that he was? Surprisingly, those same questions became even more pronounced from being imparted with fragments of Sephiteos. Or perhaps it was just from being with an overly philosophical Gardevoir. Maybe he had tried to bury those existential questions too soon. They were rapidly resurfacing along with his emotions. He laminated being unable to control either of their fused properties as they broke out of him.
"Sana, I don't know why we call them that," he said honestly. Why everything awful was referred to as "great" went beyond Feyera's logic, and troubled him to a certain extent. "It was a very dark time in history, but then again so was the rest of history bookended by the Terminal War. Maybe it was a way of referring to a significant moment in time."
"Significant?"
"Yeah. Defining it."
"Defining something bad as 'great'?" she said in confusion.
"Sana, it doesn't make sense to me either. That's how history sees it though. At least it isn't that way any longer." Fortunately, Feyera was born into a time period that at least recognized psyonics. Following Silph Co.'s formulation of the first psyonic-dampeners—and latter on psyonic-inhibitors through Pokeball technology—the fear of people possessing psyonics diminished greatly. Even still, most Pokemon could easily subdue any human possessing psyonic abilities. The law of the land had changed. Firearms were a much bigger threat to both people and Pokemon. Their invention alone caused the DBC to be created in order to protect Pokemon. Edge knew Silph was responsible for everything. The human world was their world and vice versa.
"Recent legalization by Silph made human psyonics more acceptable so long as they are strictly controlled. Overall, it's still a sensitive topic due to the inhumanity. All too often the concept of psyonics is enough to trigger excessive bureaucratic intervention—at least in the New Kanto Republic. I can't say much about other nations, but I know that I—as a man with psyonics—am safe in the borders of Kanto and her colonies.
"You're safe?"
"Yeah, I guess so. The persecution did help in that regard making everyone much more politically correct. Hell, I'm a rare minority now."
"You're rarer than they think though."
"That's just the thing though Sana—they don't know. They don't know anything."
"You never told anyone?"
"Well—" Feyera thought about Fredrick, "—it was mandated that all who acquired the rare gift required to go through a series of thorough documentation and minor surveillance to be allowed to live amid society." Feyera wondered if eventually he'd be forced to undergo a similar consecution. Was him running around the country illegal in the eyes of his government? He knew that some of the interactions he had with Sanaria were already pushing past those legal boundaries. Feyera gestured with his eyes at her own, and she sighed. Maybe she knew what he meant, or maybe she didn't. At least he had Fredrick as an ally to play as his avatar to the corporate supergiant. The IPF worked as Silph's personal executor branch. Surely, Mister Fredrick Irving could put in a good word for Feyera. Fredrick had even been willing to let him go rather than report him to the authorities. And why not? After all, he had secretly saved Lavender Town from Haunter. Being alone would be awful, and Edge was more afraid of what the organization would do to him if they found out just how dynamic and effectual his particular psyonics were. He told himself that it wouldn't be nearly as bad as whatever atrocious concatenations Cipher would perform on him if captured. Rallsen's warning paralleled Fredrick's own caution when dealing with the Orre-based scientific syndicate.
"Oh, but you wouldn't want to do that right? You want to be free."
"Exactly. Plus my psyonics don't really fit the mold of most human psyonics. I might be able to get by with grace—due to topic of persecution being so extreme."
"Why bother?" she hummed.
"I don't know. It would be the right thing to do I guess. 'Gotta cross every t, dot every i' ya know?"
"Heh, I don't," she responded truthfully at his expression.
"Right…Of course you wouldn't."
"But that's okay right?"
"I guess so."
Sana forced a smile, "Can you keep telling me the story veh Feyera?"
"Fine. Now, ever since the Great Purges the number of reported people possessing psyonics had shrunken significantly. Even still, there was not very much to control, quantitatively or qualitatively. Bending a spoon, moving a small object with your mind, brief mind reading based on similar psyches, that's usually the only things you heard about when reading the daily news about human psyonics," Feyera said with difficulty, he never meant to become caught up in the supernatural. His only work was to study Pokemon with Psychic powers, not become involved in human psyonics. After all, psyonics in humans were nothing in comparison to a Pokemon's power. Especially higher evolutions.
She chuckled, "That's what your people were afraid of?"
"Um yeah…afraid of. That's correct," he muttered, still thinking about how he fit into the schematic. Pokemon derived Psychic power might have had fewer boundaries. Edge already knew that it did because of his own experiences. Feyera was rather insecure about being related to a Pokemon, and even more upset about deriving Psychic power from one, so when referring to his powers, he always insisted on the terminology used to define strictly human Psychic powers: psyonics. "People were afraid of psyonics before they learned how to control them. It was similar to our ancestor's reaction to Pokemon in the first place."
"I thought you said your ancestors destroyed themselves in a big fight?"
"Ha ha…yeah you're right," he laughed. Her way of describing a distant apocalyptic war was incredibly childlike. "Yes. 'A big fight'. But after the Terminal War, we didn't really have anything to use for power and security besides Pokemon partners. Of course, without Pokeball tech, this was difficult."
"So if you cannot control things, they scare you?" she asked abrasively.
"Well—" Edge looked to his left and right taking in the strange environment, "—yeah. What do you think?"
"No, it does not need to be like that," Sana murmured through closed lips.
Edge questioned if human psyonics would even be able to do the things that he could if they were amplified enough. Probably not. The way Chief Ein had giddily responded to seeing the video footage of his malevolent creation over the Golden Bridge back in Luxaira made him feel as if the answer was obvious. His particular powers had no business belonging to a human. But what consoled him and made him feel more mortal were the traumatic side effects. Surely, it was unnatural to enter the stage of "emotional meltdown" after exerting enough of the psyonic power. In his mind, that little detail made him more human than Pokemon. Gardevoir could probably use psyonic power with impunity, whereas he could not. Feyera wondered when the last time he had a meltdown. Vermilion? Lavender? It didn't matter, he was long overdue. "Was what happened because of a melt-down?" he asked.
"No, of course not."
"Phew, I guess that's a relief. I still feel like I do after overexerting my psyonics though. And Sana, I thought I was strong enough to change the world with my powers? Don't you remember me telling you about what happened to the Golden Bridge?"
Sanaria rocked her head back and forth, visibly twinging in mild discomfort, "Of course I remember; I even FELT it to a degree, Chris! Seph was strong for a Gardevoir but he was not a god. Don't get in over your head just because you've gotten a new lease on life, veh Feyera. You're more mortal because of your unawareness alone. You're being foolish. Thinking foolishly. Feeling invincible because of your new lease."
"New lease?" he asked, as his gaze darkened.
"Yes Chris, it made you a better—person."
What was his life before Semblance, just a flash in the pan? Everything he was, everything he had built, had been deconstructed in a matter of moments together with her. She made it seem like he wasn't important prior to the aftereffects of assimilating Sephiteos. "That isn't true. I'm the same. Not better. Not worse. I'm the very same, Sanaria."
She repositioned her face so that she looked directly at him. He was less than half an arm's distance away from her scarlet eyes. "I'm not going to argue with you, veh Feyera."
Sanaria moved her arm slowly towards the trench of space in between them. The way it crawled snakelike along made it appear as if it were pressed down against the ground. Edge noticed it too. He felt it. The unseen weight surrounded him. The distorted colors enclosed him.
Stress building and the foreign color scheme made him feel strange. The sensation reminded him of what it felt like when he was underwater and unable to swim. The last time he felt this way was when Des saved him from the S. S. Anne tragedy. "Why is everything so heavy? The colors…why are they off?" he asked the Gardevoir.
Her arm had just gotten up to eye level and Feyera noticed her muscles clench as she tried to use it as leverage to push up. She did so unsuccessfully as the terrible pressure brought her body down again against smooth earth. Purring softly, she seemed surprised to hear him say such thing, "Y—You can see it too? You can feel it?"
"Somewhat," he acknowledge more carefully now. "I mean no. Just colors are askew; it must be the Progenitor virus."
Sana made a sour face, "Remember what I told you about emotions? You can see them, just like me. Gardevoir can see them. It's part of the…experience."
"But you don't have my experiences. You just can't. You don't have a virus in your eyes, how do you know? You can't possibly see what I'm seeing," Edge responded, knee-deep in his denial. Did Progenitor have any other side effects? Would it further corrupt his life?
"Humph, a virus? Do you want me to describe it to you?
"Do it," he ordered.
"Fine. I see shades of teal in the grass, cadet blue almost. The sky is a caramel chocolate color, reminiscent of rich goldenrod, and you veh Feyera…you're you," she solemnly spoke. "You have your cozy black coat on, with that pale seashell shirt underneath. The closer I get to looking at your…Seph's horn, the more the colors make sense. If I look away, then they are off."
Edge could not help but shudder at her explanation. It was exactly what he saw. Instead of seeing himself though, he saw her in unadulterated color. From her mint green hair to her pale beige complexion stretching from ear to ear, everything visual was right about her. Even her short gown had the familiar pure snowy color to match the consistency. And her Gardevoir horn was perfectly matched in shape, color, and texture to his own. "Why is it that way? For you I mean," he hastily corrected.
Glancing back at his eyes, she said, "Because you opened a loop."
Immediately feeling blamed, he angrily retorted, "I did no such thing!" True, Edge's psyonic powers could create a brief gravitational well, but he hadn't needed to tap into that type of vicious power since the confrontation with Haunter. Furthermore, he didn't feel the usual way that he did when he exerted psyonics. Come to think of it, he hadn't felt that old familiar tug of influential power since Lavender Town. Everything had become considerably streamlined and natural, much to his introspective displeasure.
"I'm not scolding you, nor am I trying to praise you," she moaned uncomfortably. "What you did happened because you didn't know any better. You did it out of ignorance. I can forgive a little ignorance from you."
"Ignorance? Oh yeah right! I forgot to read the damn instruction manual, Sana," Edge said fuming. "I never signed up for any of this, remember? I'm not going to waste time trying to figure it out, you need to stop treating me like I'm part of your…your…Gardevoir…whatever you call it!" He could not bring himself to call it a culture, and it sure was not a lifestyle since that would imply attachment. An attachment he vehemently opposed regardless of the doors it opened.
She fought back a smile. "I think when you do that it makes you seem more like a Gardevoir. I like it. You're so emotionally appetizing."
"Am not! I'm a person, you're not! We're fundamentally different," he belted.
"Aw are we?" she brought her hand to her hair beneath her hair, stroking it. She didn't even need to look at their chests to imply what she meant, a simple gaze said everything.
"Yes. You're always manipulative! I hate it; your whimsical approach to everything sickens me. You don't seem to really understand what I'm going through! You can't Sana; you have your limits! You just don't know!" he frantically said.
Mildly feeding off his frustration, she replied, "Veh Feyera, at least I know my limits enough to not get us bound like you have!"
Feyera's eyes opened wider at her accusations lacking concrete definitions. "BOUND? What? What on earth are you talking about? I did not cause any of this!"
"Hopeless…" she remarked at his frenzied response.
"Hell, out with it, Sana!" he demanded. "What did I do? What warrants such a stupid after effect? Whatever it was, I sure as hell didn't mean it, and you're gonna fix it!" Feyera was more concerned than he cared to admit about it effecting Sanaria in addition to himself. He didn't mean to drag her in. Edge fervently fought the compassion possessing him, "Tell me!"
She remained silent despite his instigation.
The feeling of being out of control weighed equally as much as the invisible force oppressing him, while he stared into her stoic cherry eyes. He primed a barrage of rebuke, "Outright tell me, why don'tcha? Did I do something that makes the evil emotional Gardevoir spirits come after us? Or is it the emotional Gardevoir fairies this time? Oh no, it might even be the emotional Gardevoirian deity herself!"
She gave him a look of firm disapproval, "Keep on giving me that attitude and there won't be an explanation. There's a nice way to talk to me as your…a fellow Gardevoir. There's an even nicer way to talk to someone who's helping you out. Where are your manners, or have you also lost that human aspect?"
"Helping me?" he said with a look of astonishment on his face.
Sana nodded and squinted her eyes partially closed, ready to take his verbal retribution.
"HELPING ME?" he repeated in fury. "Don't frickin' give me that Tauros shit, you are in it because you need this," Edge gazed at his chest where Seph's shard spilt out between his lungs. The fiery glossy material—feeling like purely wired finely pressed metal leaf—jutted out of his shirt making for a display of his own duality. But was it even any more of a duality? He couldn't be sure. The division, it just was not there as much. Or rather than seeing difference, he felt similarity. Everything was slowly becoming less dualistic as time further tugged on the strings of his mediocre life. It wasn't fair. Feyera didn't want to lose himself, he refused to be erased.
Sana could not look away and continued to remain silent.
In a fit of torment Edge yelled, "You don't care what I am. It's never enough for you! You want to make me into what you need me to be and it's wrong!"
She blushed ever so slightly, much to his satisfaction. "That isn't true. That's not true. You're fantasizing now."
"Am I?" he asked, wishing he could force her to touch the thin red horn upon his chest. He wished he could prove to her own impure desires. This garnet metal was all she cared about. Sure, he would be in denial about it, after all it was his body. But what about her? What gave her the right to deny how her behavior presented her devilish possessiveness? Frowning, Edge shook his head, and his dangling amber bangs shook with him, mimicking his downtrodden expression. "Come on now Sanaria thas Ashiel, you know all this is as much your fault as it is mine!"
"You're dead wrong, Chris Feyera. Don't you dare talk to me like that! This is your burden. By grace alone I'm here for you—you ungrateful—ungrateful life form," Sana stammered. Edge saw her heart rise up and down faster, and his grin widened.
"Ouch that hurts," Feyera said sardonically, "That really hurts. 'Life form', what cruel terminology. You're really wicked in your choice of insults, Garde." He hoped his degrading nickname would sting her. Although it wasn't really degrading as much as it was corruption. Much like she had corrupted his surname into veh Feyera. He wanted to adulterate what she defined as herself much like his own self-perception had been contaminated.
She closed her eyes in anger, "I'm not going to give you the satisfaction, Chris."
"Satisfaction?" he asked. "SATISFACTION? Amuse me, Sanaria. Please. What is satisfying to me? Do you even know? No; all you care about is your OWN damn satisfaction. Guess what though? My satisfaction isn't your satisfaction. It never will be, you're not going to make it that way. Keep trying to and you'll find out just how callous I can be. I haven't forgotten how to be myself. I haven't forgotten how to close off feelings. I'm a cold human first and foremost. A man married to reason alone! Use your stupid psyonics and read my lips Sana: 'I—DON'T—CARE'!"
"SHUT THE HELL UP, VEH FEYERA!" she shrieked as her voice soared in pitch.
Feyera immediately backed off, and tried to inch back on his shoulder slightly. Her frustration melded into his own, and he felt significant resistance opposing the lid of his temper. He desperately fought to control it. Biting his lower lip, he nudged back to where he was before yelling, and bent down to stare at the off-color grass. Being close to her seemed contradictory, but he could not seem to help it. His mind didn't know what else to do. She knew about all of this, he was a foreigner in almost every sense of the word. Fortunately, she did not seem opposed to his physical proximity. Feyera's eyes proceeded to follow her figure, and eventually returned to her stare. Noticing this, she quickly shut her large eyes.
Here they were stuck in the least desirable of conditions. They didn't even really understand each other. They couldn't. Torn from different worlds, they were grafted together by fate or something worse. It was just that exactly, they were stuck. Utterly helpless with themselves and one another. Thrown together by guilt with an uncertain future, the variables defining everything they stood for seemed to multiply like bacteria in a petri dish.
"Well fine! If you don't want to tell me, we'll just sit here like the selfish people we are!" he blew out. But he couldn't turn his back to her. Edge didn't have the energy; everything had been sapped. He looked back down at the soil between them as the division grew.
"Te he," Feyera heard her laugh. It was faint and sweet, but absurdly inappropriate in his eyes. Especially after their falling out so recent that it still stung. It made him mad. He didn't even understand what was going on, what was she withholding from him?
"There isn't anything funny," he said to the ground.
Her weak laugh continued uninterrupted, "Heh…hah hah, you called me a 'person', veh Feyera. I thought you said I wasn't a person though. And you even called my Psychic abilities 'psyonics'. Th—that's what people call them."
He straightened his back, feeling the tight pull of wound up muscles along his spine. What were they clenched up from? Emotions? Were his emotions affecting his body once again? Edge gave her a hazy look, "You know what I meant Sana."
"Don't worry, I do. You always mean what you say; tee hee, you just don't always mean to say it out loud. That was very sweet of you," she said rolling her heavy lidded eyes. "This entire situation is getting us both down, wouldn't you say?"
Edge forced a brow raise, "No? Ya think?" he mustered sarcastically. He then peered long and hard past the inches of grass into her eyes with contempt.
She forcefully blew out of her nose and crossed her lanky arms around her chest. She knew how emotions worked, one always fed into another. "Chris, you'll want to at least try and be cordial. We won't be going anywhere fast otherwise."
"Oh really now?" he asked in disbelief.
She exhaled forcefully, "This reminds me of a nursery rhyme I heard as a Ralts, 'Round and round and round and round we go, when we stop only heaven can know.' That's us right now," Sana said to him. "To answer your question; yes, you're impeding us. Let's move on."
He didn't want to be going anywhere, especially not with Sana in this newfound reprimanding mode she'd entered. However, being drained and trapped here was not much better. Having his hands tied made him question what she meant. "I'm impeding us?" he asked defensively.
"More than you'd think," she said straight-faced. "Or realize. Or care to admit. Humph."
He didn't like her manifesting attitude of admonishment. It made him feel like she was treating him as a child. Edge was pretty sure that he was older than her, even though he had been unsure of exactly how Gardevoir years and aging worked. He told himself that it was probably very similar to humans. "Well that's great. Just great," Edge said rolling his eyes. Even the tropical trees were not the right shade. He couldn't seem to remember what kind of green they normally looked like since it was all contaminated with rouge emotion. Pestered, he looked back at Sana and saw that her body was the only easily recognizable, and more importantly proper, colors in this bizarre environment. Why her? What made her special? he thought to himself.
Sana knew exactly what to respond with, "You know…for someone who doesn't like to acknowledge his emotions, or acknowledge that he even has emotions, you certainly have a way with letting others know exactly how you feel."
"I'm stating the facts Sana. This whole state of affairs has me…" Edge started to say, holding off near the end and wishing he could real in the last word. He didn't want to be a part of the process. He wanted to isolate himself, but every avenue he had left had him admitting to being angry or frustrated, thus implying an emotional—personal—connection. In disgust, he threw his gaze back barking, "Argh!" Feyera was so obstructed. Puckering his lips, he pretended to blow steam out of his small curved nose.
"If you calm down, I'll tell you. Your behavior needs some work. You're acting exactly like a immature young adult; it's getting to be a little eerie actually," the Gardevoir said bowing her head. "In hindsight, I shouldn't have reprimanded you, that didn't turn out well for either of us because you happen to be overly sensitive."
But sensitive was the last thing he wanted to be called by Sana, second only to "veh Feyera". What did "veh Feyera" even mean anyway? Some endearment phrase used in Gardevoir language? A corruption of his surname? Or maybe it was just her being nostalgic of Sephiteos. She always seemed to look at his shard when she said it. Feyera thought she might have been crazy enough to name it. The idea made him sick; after all, it was fastened to his body, consigned even. Edge raised his hand in anger as if to try and cover the Gardevoir detail, "I am not overly sensitive!"
"See?" Sana pointed an incriminating finger at him, "Just like that! So much like a little Kirlia who hasn't gotten her way."
"Take that back!" he demanded. "I'm not a part of your sick little world; I'll never be a part of your sick little world!"
"You invaded this sick little world Chris! It's your world now. It's just as much your world as it is mine."
The trainer clenched a fist, "I won't let you try and control my life."
Sana coiled her arm about her cheek slowly, "Stop being sensitive, I'm just giving you my opinion. You should be thankful, I'm telling you what to do based on things I know. Quit being so lousy at taking advice veh…"
"No! What gives you the right? Oh! I nearly forgot, because you are the expert on how I work, right? Am I right?" Edge wanted to stop, but his frustration had him on a roll, "You know eeeevvverrryyyything, don't you Sanaria?"
"No, I…"
He looked at the Gardevoir's body and let his eyes travel to his own aspects that paralleled hers. Seeing the mirroring horns gave him all the fuel necessary to irately release pent up anxiety. "You know about this and by your skewed thought process, that means you know everything about what goes on up here in my headspace. You know so much, that you can't even contain yourself. Why, you're even spilling over into me!"
"I know more than you do about Gardevoir, I AM one after all," she quipped back.
Feyera wasn't quite sure how to take that one. How did she see him then? As a person right? That was good if she honestly meant that. He prayed that she saw him as a human deep down. It would bring him peace of mind he thought. He sincerely wanted her to have meant that more than anything else she said. "Yes. Yes, you are."
"You should know how to recognize one by now," she placidly spoke. "You know what it is like to feel things like one. You have enough 'data' based on what happened between us."
The thought of what they shared made his eyes dilate uncontrollably with excitement. Sana smiled at his own emotion-driven helplessness when confronting their relatively newfound relationship. Was it even a relationship? It was subtle enough, and its human qualities were certainly not going beyond shallow affection. At least not yet. Feyera wondered if he even had the power to back away from her allure. He wanted to know that he could.
Sana knew exactly how to make it seem as if he were being irrational. He hated how she managed to diffuse the pent up anger, the belligerence he longed to discharge, and replace it with emotional vacillation. This newfound animosity boiled in his veins confiding about his chest like a stoked fire. He was now feeling reckless beyond words. And without physical power he could only lay in helplessness with Sana. He was trapped in too many ways, the feelings inside him craved to be set free. He tried to command his world once more, first with his tongue. "I know what a Gardevoir is…a Gardevoir is a Pokemon."
"Really?" she mocked. "I thought you'd never figure it out. Good job Mister veh Feyera. I'm so proud of you, what a grown up! Accepting it though, that's asking for way too much of you!"
Edge bit his tongue. He almost liked being difficult with Sana. It made everything seem realer. Enriched even. Was he losing his mind?
Sana beamed at his hair, looking up past his haloed eyes. "It doesn't simply end with me though, mind you. Oh no, it penetrates so much deeper than that! It's much more personal, wouldn't you say?"
Edge felt a sudden urge to jab at her belief system as a Gardevoir, and impulsively went with it, "You're the Gardevoir. And because you are a Gardevoir, you understand yourself. Or you are deluded into thinking that you do!"
"Oh? Enrich me with your knowledge dearest veh Feyera."
"Humph! Fine, I'll tell you the truth! You see, Sana, you think it's emotion, but it's merely states of mind your brain happens to put you in. Electricity, cells, chemistry, that's how these things work in the brain. For God's sake, it's all just neurons firing about! That's all you are. Functions! Plugged together input and output tables! You're nothing but brain tissue sitting in the vat that you call your body. Nothing more, Sana! Nothing more!"
"Eugh!" she uttered in disgust. Shell-shocked by his untamed aggression she replied, "Well, you're no different then. By claiming we're all just working a certain way that happens to be based upon your stupid HUMAN schematic of the mind being just a lump of objects," Sana caught her breath, "you fail to allow for a difference between humans and Gardevoir. We'd be just the same that way! So nice job Doctor Feyera, I'm glad you want Gardevoir to be sooooo much like you."
His gaze dampened and he felt his chest shard pulsating. Like it or not, he was indeed drawing comparisons. Maybe not even on purpose. Could he be subconsciously trying to conquer Gardevoir ideals? Embrace them into his own? Would that even make sense for him to try and do? "I—sh," he stopped mid swear as she adjusted her body, basking in temporary verbal triumph.
Her eyes fluttered melodically while she made another effort to push off the ground. Needless to say she was unsuccessful, the distorted grass once again brushed against her soft ear cartilage. She grit her teeth in antipathy. Her short dress fluttered as she kicked one of her feet out straight and touched his ankle with it. Sana smiled harder, turning a once affectionate grin into one of infliction, "Or maybe, veh Feyera, maybe…haha, just maybe, it is that you want to be like a Gardevoir through some vile roundabout way. Isn't that what you are looking for? A sense of wholesomeness?"
Feyera shook his head, "No."
"Our life, our perceptions, you don't understand them, and you're afraid." Her eyes adopted a soft crimson glow, "Aren't you? You are. I know you are."
Edge's eyes appeared dazed. "It is this way for all sentient life," he darkly replied to her, not addressing fear.
"But you only know one example, Chris," Sana growled, her eyes now shielded by the aura of red. "It's yourself. Not a very big sample size, am I right? Hah…You, veh Feyera, you're the only sentient life with a human body and Gardevoir attributes…Gardevoir attributes longing to be freed."
A twitch of trepidation overcame him. "No…this is temporary," he said beckoning downwards at the Gardevoir shard. Sephiteos' Gardevoir shard. How Feyera hated it being irremovable. How he abhorred the very idea of it suckling onto his once pure body, burrowing into his depths of his core, far too deep to dig out, far too melded with his very flesh to chisel away, far too him to break free of. Its rancid sensations coursed through his body in wicked permanence.
He remembered being told about how the shard was permanent—over and over along his arduous recovery. Every time he would forget and beg for answers as to why he was scarred amid delirious confusion, his aunt—Bethany Hale—had to perpetually remind him of who he was, and what happened after the Sanctum Robbery for a couple of months. Ceaselessly, she told him that the doctors believed it was Electrode shrapnel imbedded near his major arteries and anchored into his heart's perimeter. How wrong they were! They didn't know it was him; they couldn't have known it was a Gardevoir horn. Who would make the connection between the Electrode in the Pokemon Sanctum and Delta-two? Did Cipher even know? Rallsen and the Rockets? Fredrick? Whoever knew would shape the way he handled the rest of his journey to undo it. Whoever figured it out could change his outcome.
Seeing his eyes shift back and forth rhythmically in thought, Sana questioned his assurance with a simple, "Temporary…?"
"Yes. Temporary, Sana. Just a phase. A mistake. Not permanent, not lasting. Only a brief inconvenience. I'll get help on how to fix everything," he said in rapid-fire succession. But who would he even ask for help, the doctors that told him that Seph's shard was Electrode shrapnel? Even those doctors were in the dark. No one knew. It was too unrealistic, too crazy, too far in the outer limits of possibility. Physicians would laugh at it. Their confusion probably led them to shrug and release him rather than further investigate. It was much easier to dismiss as a piece of debris after all since they never truly 'felt what it was like' from their objective positions. No one would believe what it actually was. Especially not an educated person.
But then again he knew. Chris Feyera, renowned amid his peers at the Pokemon University by being selected to join the Evercrest internship for his dissertation "Concerning the Paranormal", honored academic, and scientist at heart, was forced to come to terms with a situation that made zero sense and at the same time explained everything flawlessly. This thought led to more as he continued to stare blankly at Sana while she sucked in her lower lip. Who could he tell? Would they be as willing to believe him as he was? After all, anyone Edge spoke to wouldn't have a shard of their own to relate to. Fredrick Irving came to mind as the first person he would trust with the information. The man was like a father to him. Chris didn't have the best recipe for paternal relations, but he knew how he felt about Fredrick saving him. Fredrick could probably tell the scientists and doctors at Silph Co. He had connections through the IPF after all. If the doctors didn't believe Edge, then surly a good word from Fredrick would testify.
And then it hit him like a ton of Golem-Grade bricks: maybe the doctors did know. Although it seemed impossible, this thought paralyzed him even further. Maybe they did not want to tell him. Maybe they refused to tell him. How would they even tell him? After all, it didn't make sense. What would they have said? How could they impart this knowledge onto him? The nature of this curse was to have everything felt subjectively rather than perceived through observation. He never belonged in a world like this one. In fact, he was the last person to belong in this world. A poet or a novelist would find his current position much more attractive. He was far to entrenched in reason, dogmatic methodology, and lust for universal truth. What a mess, he thought to himself, projecting it unknowingly to the only one capable of receiving.
"You've grown so attached to it though, you know? And it's grown so attached to—" She stopped herself halfway from touching his heart.
Feyera felt awful hearing the seemingly obsessive Gardevoir fight fondling possessiveness. Her struggle to hold back was easily discernible. He bowed his head and rocked his ankle so that her foot fell off. "Because I did not know better, if I had only known what kind of sordid—things I did to have this happen to me, I would have never been in any shape to use it."
Sana gave a half grin, filled with indeterminately charged feelings. "You gotta realize you're gonna mess up. One way or another, we all fall down to learn the more important lesson of managing how to get back up. You messed up. That goes without saying. You need to improve. That's life at its finest."
"Yeah, well, you're one to talk," Edge retorted.
She raised an eye, "Oh?"
"You messed up my memories, my life Sanaria."
"It was a necessary action. We went over this already. You had little chance of surviving the way my wish manifested."
"Mercurius…Reilken Mercurius," Feyera muttered, looking down at his wrist's ebony and dark emerald armlet.
Sanaria didn't act like she even cared, she had gotten her "wish" and "wish" meant the partial preservation of Sephiteos. Edge believed it was the only part of him that seemed to matter to her frivolous heart. His core meant more than his identity. Little did he know—but to her as a Gardevoir—they were synonymous. "As I was saying, I had to help you before you died from pain. I took some of it upon myself. Gardevoir can do that you know? You should be thankful."
"The only thankful one here is you."
"You've lived long enough to have it be melded into how you define yourself. Even to the point of letting me reach out to you through your…he he…silly lust-ridden dreams."
"Dammit," Edge swore under his breath. Everything was Sanaria's fault. "Why didn't you just kill me?" But Edge knew why, she still wanted to keep a specific part of him intact.
She continued to stare at him, her cream completion growing steadily redder. She blinked and closed her eyes while gritting her teeth. "I wasn't able to. I tried to…but I realized that I had saved Sephiteos through an unconventional method," she gravely said.
"Unconventional. That's all you think I am. That's all you think we are," he said to her surprise.
"W—we?" She wasn't used to him outright admitting that they had a connection of sorts. She figured that he was referring to their long distant telepathy. Would Edge even admit to feelings of genuine desire?
Edge recoiled in his expression, unsure of what thoughts he'd planted in her overly enthusiastic mind. "Why can't everything be normal?" he asked.
She tapped on the ground between them with her delicate hand. Languidly she replied, "It would have been normal if Sephiteos was never captured by the men in the white coats. It would have been normal if you hadn't experimented on my mate. It would have been normal if you hadn't impaled him."
Feyera seriously doubted this. Sephiteos had "Instanced" onto him guilt, and Chris had injected Progenitor into the Gardevoir's eyes. Neither of them would be normal following the cold events of Evercrest. "I didn't—I wasn't the only one there. There were other scientists, why should I have to bear their sins?"
"What are you even trying to say? You're some kind of messiah taking on their misdeeds?" she eloquently asked, fighting off the urge to confront his rationalization with indignation. "Pah! You're more twisted than I thought."
"How is that twisted?" he asked. "I don't see any other Cipher scientists trapped in their experiment's bodies!"
"I'd be thankful you even have a body," she said to him keenly observing his face. He was human enough, just with a few attributes that made him seem off. Shallower chin, softer features, flocculent matte texturized hair, eyes that mimicked a Gardevoir crimson aura's when he employed his powers, light burlywood beige complexion. It was all there in small quantities. She wondered how he really saw himself deep strained herself to imagine him with three minute clippings rimming the edge of his ear's cartilage. If only there was a way to force it out. Just like Progenitor. Just like all other facets distinctively Sephiteos.
"What good is it?" he asked her, referring to his body.
"If it wasn't you, then it would have been someone else," she said referring to his situation instead. "This was meant to be since it happened. You paved the way for it to happen."
He gasped as his mind came to terms with a simplistic truth that echoed the final words of Sana's mate two years ago on this island's cliff: had he not joined Evercrest everything would have been normal. It was his fault for being involved in the first place. Chris Feyera's fault. His fault. There was no Edge without Chris Feyera. For once, he questioned just how closely he wanted to associate with his origins. "I—this is my fault. I did this. How can I change what I've done?"
"Listen. You'll be fine," Sana said. "You cannot change anything done in the past. Only the future remains in your arms."
The young man did not misunderstand her tone's gravity; it was exactly what he wanted to hear, but simultaneously the antithesis of his current situation. "Sure, I'll be fine," he sneered. She wanted him to accept this predicament; she had made that much very clear to him. What else did she want? Him to deny his humanity? Be denied by humanity? The emotional floodgates opened wide. It made Edge feel as though she enjoyed seeing him trapped in his vindictive circumstance. It gave her more control over his life.
And he was very much trapped. He'd be a dead man multiple times were it not for ridiculous grace. Such grace did not go unnamed either, it made its presence very self assertive through bizarre qualities. Everything out of the ordinary was given to him by Seph. The psyonics, the Progenitor virus, even the sensations conferred upon him when his horn brushed against Sana's. It was him to a certain extent. Or at least a part of him. Every last bit of it—Seph—was assimilated seamlessly. There were fewer and fewer things separating Chris' own experiences from those his Gardevoir heart shard bestowed upon him. And it continued to command his physical attributes the more he relished in its swaying influence. The maddening sickness brought upon by it, the way it cultivated him like an animal, it was all a filthy disease. An uncontrollable disease breaking Chris apart, bit by bit, bone by bone.
At least he had a chance to undo it with the Reilken Mercurius in his possession once more. But something was very off about the entire situation. From the mysteriously rushed delivery of the artifact to the way that it clutched his skin, something didn't quite add up. Moreover, it actually looked different than the way Feyera remembered it during the dream memory. Maybe it changed forms when he impaled Sana's mate. It was a "Philosopher's Stone" after all. He didn't even know if he could trust the dream memory awoken in him by a scheming Gardevoir. She could easily pull strings, make herself seem like she was someone she was not. Like pretending to be Lorelei for instance. Who was to say that she did not infiltrate all of his oppressed dream memories? His eyes honed in on the Gardevoir's slow exhale as he thought further about the conditions of the dreams.
A small revelation made him shudder. There was always a girl in them resembling Lorelei. He caught his breath. Sana's eyes opened wide with a start, hearing his shortness of breath. "Chris! Are you okay?"
He hated how quickly she responded to his seemingly blind action of anxiety, she was too well linked to him. Barriers once paving his consciousness were being steadily replaced with beacons of urgent feedback relays. Edge took in a breath, trying to make it seem nonchalant. "Yeah…fine."
"What's the matter? You look like you just saw a ghost."
Maybe he had. Progenitor made him capable of that. It used to seem interesting or enticing even, but it too fell into the same category as his psyonics because of consequences. The idiom, although accurately depicting his shock, hit home since he could actually 'see' Ghost Pokemon via acute temperature variations. "It's nothing."
"You can tell me if you want to."
"I said it's nothing Sana. Stop prying!"
"I wasn't prying, veh Fey…Chris," she said apprehensively and with a subtle lull. "I can't read your mind, just your heart."
Edge thought about how ridiculous she sounded. Of course she could read his mind. His emotions—or as she insisted his heart—were a part of his mind. "Semantics," Feyera coldly responded.
"No semantics, just how Gardevoir see things. If you don't trust me then you'll find out on your own in due time. Y—You're bound to learn sooner or later how things work."
"There's nothing to find out. I'm putting the brakes on all of this. Whether you want to help or not is up to you."
"That choice has been made already," she insisted.
"Then be more supportive please."
"What is it exactly that I should be supporting?"
Feyera thought about his. To tell her that he was trying to rid himself of Seph's attributes meant he—Chris Feyera—was also trying to kill her mate off once and for all. He wondered how to word it. "Separation."
"Of us?"
"Hardly; rather, it would be a permanent separation of Seph and Chris," he said feeling weird referring to himself in the third person.
"You think you can do that?" she asked in wonder.
Feyera had no idea. "Of course I can. I have this after all," he motioned to the gift given to him by Fredrick. "This is the key to my—err—our salvation."
"It looks like a bracelet, veh Feyera. I don't sense anything special about it."
"But it's the thing that caused all of this!"
"I still think I wished it. You can't undo a wish."
"Whatever, you'll find out soon enough. Fredrick gave this to me, and I think he's trying to indirectly help me. He must know about my past. He must have figured it all out; he's a smart man, Sana."
"Okay…he's a smart man. So were you once upon a time."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Te heh." She laughed again, "It's nothing, you're just very trusting, and I think it's cute. Not often do I see that behavior coming from you."
But he did trust Fredrick. Fredrick wanted to help him after all. Fredrick saved him and didn't want to take advantage of all his psyonic powers. He wasn't the most personable of guys, but neither was Edge's father. Deep down, Feyera longed for the International Police Agent to establish a paternal relation with him, in lieu of his father's absence. Where did he go though? Why did he give the artifact to Edge? Despite being somewhat skeptical, he forced himself to place trust in the man who saved his life from Archer Tevis of the Rockets. "I trust him," Feyera adamantly said.
She glanced down at the small black bracelet he wore, "Maybe you want to feel like you belong? Tell you what; I'll let you belong, veh Feyera. I'm letting you belong, right? Haven't I told you? Haven't I SHOWN you that I accept what you are?" Sanaria's glance traveled up his arm to his ribcage and back at that shard. Peering practically manically at it, she sighed while blowing some of her green hair out from the corner of her lips.
Edge thought about it. He wasn't accepted by her, his body was. The only thing she accepted about him was that stupid shard embedded in his chest. Had that not been there, Feyera would have been a dead man for killing Sephiteos. Could she be that selfish? Edge had no idea, Gardevoir were strange creatures. She waited nearly two years to reveal herself to him for some reason. Why? If she wanted to have Seph's shard back, she could have kept his body here on the island. The thought of it made him shiver with the uncertainty of her true motivators. What did she really want?
The glossy metal still shined scarlet in his sight's warped color pallet, somehow complimenting the atomic blue grass and deep yellow gold sky. Did this thing—this awful thing—make her lust for him just like he had lusted in the past? Was it the same as looking at an attractive woman? Studying her curved features until you became lost in the prospect of being one with her. Was that it? Feyera dared not recollect exactly what lust entailed for him and where it had led him, but his thoughts curiously prodded at what Sana's lust may have been like. He briefly entertained the thought of breaching her emotional substratum to see what she felt. What lust felt like for her, a Gardevoir. He was beyond curious.
Maybe she tried to keep him for herself and Timothy Rallsen along with the rest of the Rockets took him away from her? The thought of Sana's possessiveness fascinated him more than he'd care to admit. Was she trying to covet him for herself now? Was this plan B? Was he plan B? The questions ate at his frozen body.
"I didn't mean it like that," he finally said after taking in a deep inhale and smelling the nearby angel-wing begonias. Had they too lost their color? He turned to see only to find that their pinkish magenta had turned to sea blue.
Sana tried to follow his gaze, but could not turn around and see past herself. Therefore, she stopped and proposed, "If you promise to stop saying 'I didn't mean it like that', then I'll tell you what you did."
Feyera shrugged and rolled on his shoulder as his arm twisted beneath him. "Fine."
"Promise?" she insisted.
"I'll try to. I sincerely will," he said.
"Okay," she arched her back and winked at him. "You better not forget."
"Will you just tell me already? The anticipation is killing me."
She smiled like a mother would smile at her child when explaining something, "Feedback falls occur when a particular emotion felt by a Gardevoir feeds into the same emotion of another. It is an exponential effect, behaving a lot like peristalsis. One contraction leads to another stronger one, and it goes back and forth further gaining in intensity. Eventually the mind gives out from the ecstatic resonating."
"Ecstatic resonating?" Feyera raised a brow.
"Self-sustained unified emotion."
"Like an emotional meltdown then?" the man asked, already knowing far too much about them.
"I guess…heh if that's the only thing you can compare it to then you have a really shallow perception."
"My perception isn't that shallow."
"For a Gardevoir it is," she tried to console him.
"I—"
"But you see, it's more like a shared experience. It can be anything really, and that's the danger of it. It goes back and forth perpetually and once it begins, there's nothing able to stop it." Sanaria raised her hand and waved it like a rain shower wiper blade to demonstrate. "Back and forth, and back and forth." Eventually her hand moved too fast and she had to put it down to rest, although she made an effort to place it closer to Feyera's body.
"So it's like ping-pong?" Feyera asked feeling rather stumped.
"Ping? Pong?" she softly uttered aloud before laughing nearly uncontrollably. "Hehehe! What on earth is that silly name, veh Feyera?"
Edge forced a smile. He liked it when she learned new words. It was cute. Playful. Even he would admit that. "It's a game. You bounce a small ball back and forth on a table using paddles. The longer you play, the faster the game picks up since the ball moves quicker."
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Does anyone get hurt?"
Edge laughed, "Ha, not unless you get hit with the ball."
Sana looked upset by this.
"I was kidding, the ball is soft. Besides, you don't try to hit the other person. That's not the point."
"Then why do you hehe 'Ping! Pong!'?"
"I don't know. I'm not good at games. I guess it's fun for some people since it takes your mind off real life," Edge thought of reality sometimes being a discomfort of life.
"That sounds really fun though…'Ping! Pong!'" the Gardevoir said. Her gleeful vocalization of "Ping" and "Pong" made Edge feel like he just had to laugh. He couldn't resist. "You don't play 'Ping! Pong!' by yourself right?" she asked him.
"Hah. No, you play with another person. How else would the ball come back to you?"
"Well you could use a wall to play 'Ping! Pong!' and then it would bounce off that."
"Clever, but the point is to be with another person."
"Will you play 'Ping! Pong!' with me?" she said smiling.
"Ha ha…maybe one day. I don't know," Edge said with a grin to match hers. "I promise you it isn't painful like this feedback fall stuff."
"That's good to hear. I don't want to be hurt."
Her behavior was strange. She went from extreme to extreme. One minute she was chastising him for being a bad Gardevoir and the next minute she wanted to play a new game with him. She even made the silly game sound more interesting than it was. The name probably enticed her, just like 'trains'. The most bizarre thing was to hear her actually vocalize the words. It made Sana seem more human to him.
His expression turned serious. "How do I not get us trapped in a feedback fall? Is it permanent?"
"Well it already happened, so there isn't any real way to undo it."
"So we're stuck like this?" Edge asked in disarray. They would be dead for sure if they couldn't move.
"Time usually helps us recover from the physical weakness."
"Well that's a relief. What can we do to get out of it? Just wait around?"
"Just not straining your emotions will do wonders," she suggested. "That's what got us into this. You fed off and back into my fear from the earthquake."
He lay there, his gaze fastened on her own, too weak to budge a muscle. The last time Edge had felt this way had been north of Cerulean City. And that time he didn't have any idea what Gardevoir could do. Now at least he had a clue, and still he was blundering about putting himself and others in danger. It made him sick. He looked down at his body, "Always a consequence. Always another damn consequence…" he felt his eyes grow misty. The approach of tears made him struggle to conceal them all the more. Failing to do so, or being merely unable to, made him sob.
"Hey. It wasn't your fault. You didn't know better right? I could have done the same thing to you," Sana said, pawing her hand up to his forearm, eager to see his display of emotion.
He struggled for a few moments, trying to fight back the urge but eventually it made itself present in mist-filled eyes reaching their capacity. "Sana, *sniff* n—no. It's not what I did."
"What do you mean?" she endearingly asked.
"You said you could have done the same thing to me right? Pulled me into a feedback fall right?"
"Right, but I know better; things like that are not meant to be shared without a moderate amount of experience. Plus it has to be between two Gardevoir that are—"
"No! You aren't listening to what I'm trying to say. Yes, I'm stuck here on the ground, and you are too. But it isn't about just being stuck here in this moment. It's about me and how I came to be here. It is about losing one's self to circumstance, and how it is no one's fault but time's. Sana, you can't blame the sell out who breaks with it."
"Veh Feyera, you don't have to say such things. I was mad at you but I forgive you."
"Don't you listen? It isn't about forgiveness anymore. It is about being confined and because of that confinement being ultimately overshadowed by meaningless things! *sniff*" Feyera could not contain the anguish any longer. He'd been weddings and funerals but never wept as much as he did now. Even after the passing of his mother, he had never fully come to terms with death. Oddly enough, this seemed somehow worse than death. As he sobbed softly, he felt Sana place her arm over his shoulder, palming his hair. The thought of her seeing him like this broke him down further. His eyesight became too clouded to see out of and he felt completely vulnerable.
"Meaningless…things?" she asked gently. He heard her try and lift herself up with a small grunt and moan. "Ow."
"What caused us to fight Sana?" Feyera said sniveling.
"You got emotional. That takes some getting used to," she said while trying to lean on her outstretched arms in front of him. "You never used to be emotional and now you are, Chris."
"I don't want—I'm emotional?" he said without making much sense. His thoughts were all jumbled up.
"Think about it, that makes two of us with emotions."
He shook his head and fought back more of the awful warm tears. "They are meaningless. It was meaningless. It's all meaningless in the end."
"What's meaningless?" her cloudy form asked him.
"If we had no emotions, we wouldn't have fought. That's why they *sniff*—emotions—are meaningless."
She suddenly fell down upon him and braced tightly. Feyera, not expecting to need to fully support her, stiffened his posture instinctually. "Don't say that. It isn't true," she said forcing herself to lay against him. Her lanky arms locked around his frail figure.
"Sana," he said, his face against her soft cheek, "look at me. I'm a broken man. There's nothing left to be proud of, I'm helpless here and it's all because of stupid emotion I can't control."
She pawed at the back of his hair, "It is better to lose your pride with someone you care about rather than to lose that someone you care about with your useless pride. Remember that."
"You don't understand though. You're not helpless like I am."
"I understand your frustration. And I've been helpless too. It's okay, but you have to be able to move on. At least you aren't alone."
He thought about just how alone he was. No one in the world was like him. He was unique to the point of everything familiar becoming alien. "I'm alone with myself."
She tightened her hold on him, bringing herself closer. "You're not alone. You have me."
He stopped his soft crying as she pecked his cheek. The freshly shed tears moistened her lips. Edge felt himself yield to her. Feyera hugged her and tried not to further disrupt whatever was happening between them by holding off on sniffling. She softly rolled her head to the side and pressed her smooth pale floral face against his. He thought he may have had an inclination to kiss her back, but willfully suppressed the desire.
She continued to keep him in her embrace, despite his subtle movements. His back was starting to hurt, along with his horn. The sensation of pressure and distorted colors had faded, and Sanaria's warm Gardevoir body had replaced them. Edge tried to bring comfort to his back by turning slightly, twisting his spine. She would not relinquish him however, clasping tighter onto his clothing, even to the point of clawing. Bemused, but not angry, he rolled onto his side with her against him still. Her head moved off his cheek, and she looked up into his eyes with enchanting eyes of her own. With their bodies against one another, Feyera laughed softly as she wove her legs through his.
She bent her head down. At first, it seemed as though she longed to look at his shard, but she surprised him by instead using her fine spring green hair to dry his face. Feeling its softness made him take in a deep inhalation to smell it. Imbedding his gently curved nose in her thick hair, he smelt fresh, brisk, green, floral and sweet. It reminded him of the pretty amethyst cattleya orchids that grew in the area. And her beauty was as marvelous as the flower's.
He patted her back, gently groping her gown. She softly let out a hum, as Edge brushed his fingers along her less tense muscles. As he lowered his hands along her spine, she softly shook her head when his fingertips graced the part of her he did not share in common—her Gardevoir shard's posterior. While much less pronounced than the piece between her tiny breasts, it was still a similar substance, and very smooth to the touch. In an unprecedented lull, Edge watched as she pulled her head back fully. He still held on tightly to her lower back. She put both her arms on his shoulders and stretched backwards. After arching back, exposing her figure, she rushed back towards him.
Pressing her forehead aside his own, she nodded softly. Their hair, damp from the heat of the tropics, intertwined slightly. Feeling lightheaded, Feyera steadily stroked her back. She continued to stare at him with glossy cherry eyes. Those eyes longed for more from him.
"Whatever you're a part of, I'll be a part of too." Sana insisted.
"Okay," he softly said bringing his lips to hers. They impulsively locked in a kiss, though it was evanescent in every sense of the world. For when they parted, both Feyera and Sana longed for more from each other.
In earnest, Feyera kissed her again, pressing his mouth to hers. She seemed reluctant at first, even incapable. Perhaps she was trying to fight her own feelings. His lips rand against hers, growing slightly damp. Eventually, she reciprocated, although reserved. Her movements mirrored his. Edge thought about how quickly sorrow turned to pleasure.
He broke their kiss and kept his mouth close to her as the single link of watery substance connecting their lips broke. "Sana?" he asked.
"Mmhmm?" she asked gently.
"What were you going to ask me before the earthquake?"
She beamed, "Oh that—" she pecked him on the cheek "—I think you already answered that for me."