Welcome to another.
This part will offer some insight into what drove Soothe throughout the main story. The good stuff… and the bad. So, trigger warning because it gets a bit graphic especially with one particularly unpleasant part involving murder.
Let's begin.
Once upon a time, I knew what it was like to truly live.
Soothe laughed loud and free as Rhythm cheered, the sound of Trill's disagreeing squawks being drowned out by the rush of wind in their ears.
They had climbed the tallest mountain they could find. Why? To jump off it of course.
The wind pulled at her fur in a gale of pressure. She had swallowed the sensible fear in her stomach as she peered over the cliff's edge and then took a diving leap.
Rhythm's idea of course. He was so very strong, a beacon of kindness and humility that truly understood the strength he was blessed with.
The kindly wigglytuff never let the notion of his overwhelming power go to his head. Perhaps that's what Armaldo had taught him? Perhaps he was just a good person to his very core. Either way, he never bragged but would not fail to encourage others to try.
If needed, he could always catch you.
So, Soothe took the leap and down he flew with her, he tucked his arms in and became a little more aerodynamic, catching up to Soothe.
"How do we land?" Soothe shouted.
"I didn't think about that," Rhythm admitted.
"You WHAT?"
"CAREFUL!" Trill shouted, catching up to them as well. A talon each dug into their backs as the chatot snatched the two larger pokemon and spread his wings.
He couldn't stop their fall just like that, but he could take control of it and their voices mixed together until Trill was gliding peacefully.
And chewing them both out.
"-and you NEVER listen to Rhythm's hair-brained schemes, why if I had known what on earth you were planning I would have-"
The sun beamed merrily on them and Soothe never stopped smiling. Another fear fought.
I knew who they would become but I was truly learning who they were.
Let me tell you, Rhythm was not a good singer at first.
The first time Rhythm had sung, Soothe thought he'd been bitten by a trapinch and was screaming. That's how bad it was to her sensitive ears.
Trill had shown a stiff upper beak and had bore through it the past few years, Soothe however.
"You are a terrible singer," she said bluntly.
"Aww," Rhythm said, eyes watering a bit.
She grabbed his paw and raised it. "Okay. Try and duplicate what I do, okay? First, take this posture." She stood straight, back firm, he copied her. "Now." She breathed out a firm breath, silently.
He blinked.
"Silent to start with," she explained. She did it again, he repeated.
They did breathing exercises for a few minutes while Trill came fluttering back, wondering why the sound of horror had gone silent.
"Uhh, you haven't killed him have you, Soothe?" he asked, warily ducking his head around a tree. He found them humming together. "Huh?"
"Soothe is teaching me how to sing!" Rhythm beamed. "Silly bird, why didn't you tell me it sounded bad?"
"Bad!? Don't be ridiculous." Trill flapped his wings urgently.
"He's right. Horrific is a better word to describe whatever that had been."
Rhythm giggled as Trill spluttered for words.
"Say, you're a songbird aren't you?" Soothe asked. "I'm sure you can help."
"Yeah! Help me, Trill! I need all the help I can get."
Trill continued balking for a moment before sighing. "Very well. Alright, uh, balancing your breath is an excellent start, but maintaining your tune is the most important. If you're not singing in tune it doesn't matter how good you look, how balanced your breath is, keeping a good coordination between mind and voice is vital, else you may lose your pitch."
The effort would take a lot longer than a couple of lessons but as Soothe and Trill matched harmonies and found themselves putting on the occasional show for Rhythm before coaxing him in to join them, well.
That made for some good extra spending money if they felt like singing for a bar.
I never liked singing in front of people, but it wasn't as scary as I thought if we were singing together.
They were a well-oiled machine honed with years of working together, but there's a reason why it takes guilds to train pokemon for dungeons.
"LOOK OUT!" Soothe cried, hearing rather than seeing another attack coming.
They were fighting their way through a monstrous dungeon. Rhythm had heard of its difficulty, legendary in the eastern reaches of the Grass Continent. Dire Gully, the wretched place was named and the place was a slaughterhouse.
A twisted dungeon with actual floors, a fact that had amused Soothe for about thirty seconds. The 'floors' were large plateaus along the walkable paths, and from there descended rampaging ferals.
Some were so wild they crackled with some putrid purplish energy. Rhythm dealt with those, flashes of something actually resembling concern crashing across his face.
Most dungeons had defensive ferals, this place was a constant barrage of furious creatures seeking to chew on their bones. Soothe's Dazzling Gleam could only do so much to defend herself, Trill or Rhythm had to be by her at all times.
It left her feeling useless. Sure, the other reason why someone was by her always was so she could be healing them, but that was about all she could do. And she couldn't heal forever, already the inner reservoir of 'Power' began to grow worn like a tired muscle.
"Rhythm," she panted. "This is getting too much, I think we need to pull back."
Rhythm was not a pokemon who gave up easily. She could count the number of times he had pulled out of an exploration with a single finger, and that was because a cheap shot had knocked him out and he couldn't argue.
"No!" Rhythm insisted. "Just a little more, this has to give."
"Rhythm," Trill called, circling them urgently. "More are coming! We will give before this horde does!"
"Ah… just give me a moment, I can blast them away!" He took in a deep, powerful, breath. "YOOOOOOM-"
Trill's squawk pulled Soothe's eyes away from his back for just a moment. A moment long enough for a drapion to burst out of the ground near them, pincers primed right for that tiny chink in their armour.
"NO!" Soothe screamed, throwing a paw out. She was soft and weak, she couldn't stop the pincer anymore than she could hold the sky in place. She couldn't even take the hit for him, the attack would strike right through her and Rhythm couldn't turn fast enough, charging too much power for his attack.
And yet, she had to protect him.
A flash of lavender light flashed through her eyes to her paw and somehow, someway, her paw stopped the strike. A translucent barrier had flashed into existence for a fraction of a fraction, right at the point the drapion's pincer hit Rhythm.
Or, rather, hit the barrier. Its attack was deflected and Trill struck the next moment, wrapped in cerulean fire and drove the creature back into the earth.
She grabbed him and they both ducked as Rhythm unleashed his Power. "TAAAAH!"
And finally, the horde broke.
All I ever wanted to do was to help people. Learning Protect just like I had learned Dazzling Gleam, in a moment to save another, felt good. I could do more than be a mobile heal, I could really help!
I never really was much of an alcohol drinker as a human, why alcohol when soft drink tasted better and was cheaper? I didn't mind doing so with friends, though.
"And-And then!" Trill hiccuped, flushed with laughter and drunkenness. He was more than a little unsteady on his feet but he still clutched a flagon of ale in his wing without a problem. "You would not GUESS what happened next!"
"Ooh, can I guess!?" Rhythm asked, bouncing on his feet. He appeared no different whenever he indulged in a bar with them, he was always drunk on life it must not affect him.
"Of course," Trill sniffed, sounding like his usual stuffy self for just a moment. The sight of his frazzled feathers but stuffy attitude struck Soothe into giggles for a moment.
"It was!" Rhythm began to laugh too. "Why are we laughing?"
"I don't know!"
"I'm just that good of a storyteller," Trill determined, ruffling his feathers smartly. Soothe laughed harder, banging the table until he cracked as well.
Where they were, what they were doing, none of them had much of a mind to remember details like that at the moment. They went where their feet led them, helped those who called out regardless of who they were, and did what their hearts told them too.
"Sing!" Soothe said, starting a chant with Rhythm. "Sing! Sing!"
"Sing song, trill song, best song, Chatot's song!" Rhythm started a very good tune and broke into humming an energetic bar song sound.
"But what do I sing about?" Trill asked and so Soothe turned to the other patrons.
"What does he sing about?"
"Food! Beer! Girls! Guys! Sex! Adventure! Dungeons! Getting mugged!"
"That one wins!" Soothe laughed. Trill shot her a look before clearing his throat, Rhythm's hum grew louder and people began to stamp their feet.
"You have to do half the lines," Trill said and Soothe gave him the fingerguns.
She cleared her throat and began, giving him a scary smile. "I took my man on a date~"
Trill gave her a dangerous look before singing along, "We went out for the night~"
"As we hit the end of it~"
"I got into a fight!"
"Damn, well he took my purse~"
"And ran away so fast~"
"I started crying!"
"Uuhhof the stone I passed!"
Trill's panicked fumble caused Soothe to immediately break and Rhythm's humming to crackle into laughter shortly after. Other patrons were laughing too, along with them as Trill tried to hold onto his esteemed look before remembering he was drunk and didn't have it.
"I've lost track of the story," he half-sung.
"I don't know what has happened," Rhythm added onto it.
"He wrote me a letter," Soothe sang.
"Right, my purse was snappin!"
"I think there was a guy involved?"
"That's what I'm thinking."
"I… don't know what to say."
The way Rhythm ended the song got them kicked out laughing their heads off. It rhymed, somewhat, with thinkin'.
Those kinds of moments played in my head when I was alone in Treasure Town. Sometimes I tried to feel it again by drinking… far too much. It was the closest Timber had ever gotten to forcing his way into my house when he got concerned, so I stopped.
It didn't do anything for me anyway.
As a human, I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. As a pokemon, I didn't have medication. Some days I just had no energy to do anything, but also suffered an anxious jittering of needing to do something.
They were always so perceptive of me….
Soothe sat awake at the campfire. Trill and Rhythm had gone to sleep hours ago, sleeping in their little nests they built for themselves.
She had tried lying down with her eyes closed near the fire for hours. She was comfortable in every physical way.
No matter how long she kept her eyes closed, her mind raced. Raced a million miles a minute. She thought about home. Her parents. Her sisters. Her friends. Her pets. No one would ever know what happened to her.
She thought about them. If her sister was able to finish her degree. If her nieces and nephews asked about her. If her parents were okay. If her best friend was, she was the only person he had.
These thoughts would not go away. Even though she knew never to listen to thoughts past 10 PM, and this had to be well past midnight, the thoughts tormented her of a life she almost wondered she ever had.
Maybe she was just insane?
It'd be a lot easier if she was just insane.
"You awake?"
Soothe's eyes fluttered in surprise as she heard something. With how sensitive her ears were, one thing that was always solid in her mind was that if she heard something, she heard it. Her head turned and saw that Trill had poked his head out of his nest of blankets, peering over the coals of the fire.
Where her ears were powerful, his eyesight was his equivalent. He must have noticed something about her.
"Yeah."
Slowly, carefully, he pulled himself out of his sleeping spot and hopped his way over.
"Don't," she said when he was halfway out but he didn't listen, coming over anyway.
He sat, roosting in a warm spot. He examined her a moment and even in the dull light Soothe knew he could see more about her than she ever let people see.
"You seemed… off today," he said softly. Rhythm was a fairly heavy sleeper but clearly, he didn't want to risk waking him up. He tended to react to Trill's voice.
She hated that he could tell. She hated it more because if Trill noticed, Rhythm would have or he would have said something to him. Her mind immediately began to replay events of the day, recontextualising kind moments as possible pity and wondering where she slipped up.
And, of course, he could see her do that. Through the minute twitches in her expression and the deep silence around her. "Do you wish to talk?"
Her mind returned to the present and she shook her head. "I'm fine."
He wavered in place a moment, debating whether it was appropriate to push or appropriate to accept it.
The silence, however, Soothe hated. She hated silence. And that pushed her to end it.
"I don't like burdening people with my issues," she said, more than she had ever really said about her 'off days' before.
"It would never be a burden," Trill said gently. "You listen to me. To us."
It was true. Rhythm wasn't the kind of person to hold onto little things until they become big things, but he didn't always talk about them with Trill. Trill had a harder go at opening up, especially regarding doubts but he was more comfortable raising them with Soothe who could empathise better with those feelings than Rhythm could.
"It's… I just get into my own head and can't pull my way out right away. I'll be better tomorrow."
Or better at hiding it.
Trill, one day he would be the Chief of Intelligence for the Wigglytuff Guild and for all his foibles, he was very much built for the job. It was times like this that would shape that talent of reading people, hearing through the lines of what they say to determine what they mean.
He was still many years younger, however, tired and didn't want to push too hard. In rare moments in the years to come he'd think about moments like this and wish he had pushed harder. "Understood. We'll be here if you need to talk. G'night, Soothe."
She wished she could tell him. Tell him everything. Why she felt the way she did and everything around it. She did not. "Goodnight, Trill."
The fact that he tried. They both did. That meant more to me than saying how I felt out loud would have. I wish I had told them, not to make myself feel better, but so that I was honest.
I still don't like burdening people with my issues.
Pokemon mature young, to many of them two years can seem like an eternity. Team Go-Getters became a group and saved the world in a matter of months. Paradise was not built in a day but it was formed in weeks and word began to spread in months.
We did not save the world in those two years. If you want to be poetic, the experiences we shared in those two years would lay the groundwork for saving the world from Nelia two decades later. It gave me the strength to hang on. They gave me the strength to hang on.
But god do I wish it could have been longer. I'd have taken a lifetime and forever.
"Look at the view!" Soothe gasped as they neared the peak of the nameless mountain.
Rhythm whistled and then gave an echoing shout, it went for miles and miles. "What a place." He beamed.
His smile only grew as he took in the excited lights gleaming in Soothe's eyes. She had been so downcast yesterday, but something new was the ticket to relighting her smile and she grinned competitively. "Race you to the top."
"Wha?" He managed before she was already racing off. "Oh no, wait up!"
Rhythm was faster, of course stronger, and probably smarter. But he did not have the best balance and was not much heavier than Trill, leaving him susceptible to the push of the wind so high up while Soothe hopped like a bunny at the path as it grew sheerer and sheerer.
She genuinely won the race and they both knew it.
"Nice try." She grinned, taking Rhythm's paw as he clambered for the last part.
"Goodness, gracious," Trill huffed. He had flown ahead, waiting for them at the peak. "Racing up a mountain?"
"Racing the last climb," Soothe corrected, she was panting lightly for breath.
Trill fluttered and huffed with no heat. His feathers were a bit out of order due to the wind, no amount of preening had been able to correct them and Rhythm giggled at the sight.
"Wish I had a camera," Soothe sighed, staring out at the vista stretching out beyond them. She sometimes said things without thinking them through. They rarely asked because she had a flash of visceral discomfort freezing her muscles a moment before she tried to play it off. "A hammer would be great to leave a mark here."
"What would we stake?" Rhythm asked.
"Just use his unstoppable strength," Trill sniffed. "Just don't break the mountain itself."
"Oooh, what are we gonna name it?" Rhythm blurted out. Soothe smiled as the topic changed like the wind. Could always appreciate Rhythm for his chaotic mind.
"Hmm, are we the first to get here?"
"Probably not," Soothe said. "But no one else has."
"Hmm… Stroolthym Peak," Rhythm said, rubbing his chin.
"Stroolthym?" Trill asked with a deadpan voice as dry as the desert. "Veto."
"What about Chigglydino Range!"
"Veto," Soothe said, agreeing with Trill's grimace at the name.
"Asparagus Spire!"
"Veto."
"The Mountain of Doom!"
"Veto."
"I've got it! Audotuff Peaks!"
"Veto."
"Is it just me or is Veto Mountain sounding better and better?"
In the end, it wasn't given a name, just a nameless mountain. In honour of the Team With No Name.
There's not much left for me to say. This was how life was like with them. Journeys, excitement, and new experiences every day. I was happy. Truly happy, happy of a kind I hadn't ever felt before.
I was always impressed with how smart Trill was, how clever Ryhthm was, how determined they both were, how kind they were.
I wasn't sure when I stopped comparing them to Guildmaster Wigglytuff and his right-hand mon, Chatot. I was one of the weird ones that always had liked Chatot from the games, even though he was a jerk he was one with a heart of gold. Who protected you at a pivotal moment, showing who he really was.
In a darker game, he probably would have died.
In our story he did.
There are two more moments that come to mind. Neither of them are happy or pleasant. They are, in fact, two of the worst moments of my life.
Trill sat frozen as Rhythm began to battle Soothe on the bloodstained grass that reflected the light of the Time Gear in the blood of the shadowy guardian.
No one held the kind of strength Rhythm did. He was a mon in a world of cardboard. He had to know how to control his strength or else he would break everything around him. It was clear to the eye that Rhythm was barely fighting at all.
He was sobbing too hard for that as he tried to knock Soothe out safely, hold her back, restrain her in some way.
So, he pulled his punches, couldn't stop weeping long enough to Sing, and forced the burning power of the Yoom-TAH down within where it couldn't hurt her.
Not a single strike left more than a fading bruise under Soothe's fur. She was a whirlwind of darkness, crackling with a poisonous, wretched, energy that hurt the eye to behold and the soul to be in the presence of. This was not the Soothe they knew.
There was nothing at all in her eyes now.
Just darkness and flashes of light and metal. Trill took flight and attempted to disarm her with his speed.
Right as he neared, seeking to vanish in an Aerial Ace, he was caught. Rhythm caught him, a shocked squawk managed to escape him before Rhythm's apology touched his ears and then… darkness.
As he set his partner down safely, the momentary distraction left him open and the blade Trill had gone for drove itself into Rhythm's flesh.
Blood spilled as he gave no more than a grunt.
The thing wearing his friend's face pulled it out and drove the blade down again, like it had done to the shadowy guardian, to kill him too. He caught her arm, met her eyes.
"Yoom," Rhythm whispered as something flickered in Soothe's eyes. There was a mote, a spark, the tiniest glint of something in there.
He saw it. And Rhythm, so kind. So gentle. A mon who loved all. Who believed that there was no one that belonged nowhere. He saw that she was still in there.
At point-blank range, his Power would destroy even a Shadow Pokemon as powerful as Soothe. Annihilate them so that nothing could pull itself back together. Had he managed it, it may even have been enough to destroy Nelia. There was nothing Soothe could do to avoid the strike, and there was a glimmer of something that may have been fear. May have been hope. May have been relief.
It didn't look away from Rhythm until he turned his head. "TAH!" The eruption of power shook the entire dungeon, causing the ruins to shatter, becoming buried under rock and soil, burying the body of the guardian and causing the entire place to fall silent.
He still held her paw, both of them in shock as he spared her.
His grip was slacking, he had been stabbed in the stomach and was losing blood. He realised in that instant and would think about it every time she came to her thoughts in the future that had she been truly, utterly, lost. If she had truly been using them all this time. If there truly was no one to save, then he would have died.
Soothe pulled her wrist from him and took a step back. His vision was going foggy. Then, she was running. Running away, leaving her bag behind. She vanished out of the dungeon and Rhythm crawled to her bag, finding the supplies she insisted on carrying in case she herself couldn't heal them and bound his wound, picked up Trill, and left the carefree adventuring life forever.
"K-knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"I..." Timber's voice broke. "I..." he began to cry weakly. On the other side of the door, Soothe frowned slightly.
"Timber?" she asked, cocking her head slightly at the sniffles coming through the hard oak. "What's wrong?"
Timber continued to sniffle before he was able to choke out a few words. "B-Bell. It's Chatot. In Brine Cave he... he..."
"Slower, Timber. Take a deep breath."
She heard a shuddering breath and another sob before he managed to say it. "He died."
It had been almost twenty years since she had spoken to him. On rare occasions, she'd risk wandering through town under the power of a seed or orb and had spotted him but stayed far away.
The funny thing about Shadow Corruption was that it locked you into what you were before in a way….
Soothe blinked upon hearing the news. "I... see. Timber, I am so very sorry. Do..." She paused, something caught in her throat, she almost invited him in. No. "Do you want to talk?"
"I-I-I don't th-think I-"
"I'm here if you just want company." She felt Timber slump against the door. It didn't take him long to start talking on and on about Tri-Chatot. How the fussy old thing was always a her-bother and made her think of how much she was [You Cannot] that he was gone.
Eventually, he fell asleep against her door.
Soothe rested against it, back pressed against the hard oak, likely where Timber's paw was placed.
She was fine. But she still didn't want to get up and do something. Her right cheek felt most curiously wet and she lifted one of her hands to touch it. "Hm." She observed the wetness on her paw as her vision slowly blurred. She felt nothing. There was nothing to feel with. Just an empty hole in her chest.
Her stomach tightened once or twice as her face twitched. Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Brine Cave… the place Chatot proved he wasn't as much of a stupid dick as the game made him out to be. The part that really had her love the character. In such a positive game of course the sacrifice would only be an injury.
She had languished in a filthy cage for years. She should have known this would not be so kin-
Kind? No. She felt nothing. There was nothing. Nothing. Nothing to feel. Nothing to feel! Nothing to feel.
The sniffles had long since ceased and their owner moving on with his life. Time had continued to tick away unaware of its own narrow brush with death. The town was recovering again, the guild was struggling. Struggling so much that Bidoof had been unable to get away for more than a few minutes, barely enough time to drop food off for his friend and rush back.
In that time, the audino who called herself Bell sat alone in her home, dwelling deeply on the past.
An orb lay on the table. It was innocent to look upon yet filled her with a dread of a kind she could not place into words. It was nothing itself, but it served as a vector. A leash around her neck. It was a leash she placed around herself, keep your enemies close after all. But a leash nonetheless.
The demands that trickled from it occasionally never failed to fill her with dread. It was innocuous things. Asking about a certain person, curious if she knew anything about it. She had told the other side many things to maintain her freedom. Things like a manectric that replaced a luxray between stories or a monster in Brine Cave.
She had no idea that even these things would be used to make the world worse. A broken beast invading the Amp Plains, murdering a family and scarring the youngest survivor. Or a visit to a cave by a demon to visit a killer and make him into something that would place the king in check many, many, years later.
And now, a new order. Go to the briny depths. Hope for a new lost soul into the fold. She felt nothing.
Sighing, the lavender audino came to her feet and carefully scanned the outside for any interlopers. When she was confident she could leave unnoticed, she slipped out of her home and avoided the town altogether, a paw clenched around an orb.
It took the better part of a day, and then further botherations with the ferals, but she found her way through Brine Cave without much issue.
It had been one week since two pokémon had died in its depths. One finally put out of its misery. The other, taking its place soon enough.
He was there when she arrived. She wasn't sure what she expected. She supposed if to disappoint the demon, nothing at all would be best. That was the only reason, of course. She wasn't trapped, screaming in the corpse of her own body for so long even she couldn't hear it anymore. She wasn't hoping to spare him from this suffering. This was not suffering. This was release. This was nothing.
Until it wasn't.
"Soothe," Trill said in that same stuffy voice, eyeing his old friend with that same critical eye she had teased so many times.
"Trill," she returned, staring impassively at the chatot. There was nothing she felt. But nothing was a pool that stretched on forever. She felt forever as her heart stopped at the sight of him. There was a coldness in his eyes now. A coldness that never should have been there.
The two damned pokémon stared each other down for what felt like an eternity. As always, Trill broke first. "I wondered if I would see you here."
"Cel told you, then?" she asked, stepping closer. "I heard you went to the future."
"Yes," Trill replied at length. "And Rhythm confirmed it. You. Alive all this time. Where have you been? What have you been doing? Why did you...? Just why?" At the last word, a crack did form in his facade, he hadn't the time she had to perfect the expression of nothing.
"I think you know the answer to that now," she said calmly. He felt it too. The yawning Hunger that drove one to madness.
He shook his head. "Incorrect. You are a Shadow Pokémon, clearly, but how that happened? Were you always?"
Her eyes flickered. There was no positivity to feel. If not nothing then she could at least feel rage, hatred, horror and dread. Did he believe that, she wondered? That all their times together were nothing. How could he think that? After all that they shared. All they talked about. All they had done together.
And then she understood. How could she have done what she did if any of it was true? "Does it matter?"
He stared her down for a long moment. She had matched eyes with the devil herself and did not blink. "...I suppose not," he said. "Yet, even now I do not understand."
Soothe hummed softly and shook her head. "Maybe I would have told a maddened cretin left squawking in the darkness but I won't tell Trill. It's not worth it. Not for what's coming for you."
He took that as a threat. "You will answer me." He raised his wings and a dangerous metallic glint went through them. He had killed Kabutops with that attack.
Soothe raised her head, almost a laugh. "I'm not here to fight you, Trill."
He paused, a frown flickering across his face. Even now, she could still read him so well. She wondered if he could still read her. "Then what are you here for?"
"I was here to put you out of your misery," she said, bluntly, revealing one of her iron spikes. The very same that he had gifted her all those years back. Trill made a motion to go to battle, but she waved him down. "That was to kill the feral beast you hopefully had become. No. Instead, you were strong enough to keep your lucidity. I can't kill a lucid Shadow, She won't let me."
Trill eyed her suspiciously, ready for battle at any point. "I had, perhaps, expected more than just you," he said, slowly and carefully. "Rhythm would have come with you, had you asked. He wants to save you."
"Of course he would." She almost sounded like she was sighing fondly. "He'd want to save you as well," she pointed out. "And that's exactly why it's just me. I'm not letting you go to him."
"I hardly see how you could stop me." Trill bared his wings again, more threateningly. "Between the two of us, I was always the better battler."
"And I murdered a legendary pokémon," Soothe replied, softly. Trill hesitated. "I'm not letting you go to him, because you'll use him. You know you will, you're a smart pokémon. Sooner or later... he'll either destroy himself trying to save you, or you will simply kill him directly when you grow bored or frustrated with him. Or when the Hunger overtakes you. And I know you can feel it already, it never goes away, it just gets harder and harder to ignore. Ferals can only slate it for so long."
Trill was silent.
"And that will happen. There is no compromise. You remember your feelings for him, how he made you feel, but you can't feel them again. Being with him won't bring them back. You've either got death or damnation waiting for you now."
"Rhythm said he may know a way to..."
"And do you really think that'll work?"
Trill was silent again but spoke before she did in time. "You are the same as I am. Why would you care what happens to Rhythm?" He could still read her. She hated that as much as it made her feel-NOTHING.
"We are not the same," Soothe replied, coolly again. She gave an empty smile. "If I was anything like you you'd be dead on the ground again, finally being put to rest like your gravestone says. But instead here we stand, chatting like old times, two mistakes made by this warped game we've fallen into."
Trill's eyes never left her. "Why are you here?" Demanding the answer this time.
"I am here to take you to hell."
"What do you want to do in the future?" Trill asked one sunny day.
Soothe went to answer reflexively but then realised she didn't know what to say. "Um…"
Rhythm giggled at her flummoxed expression, even more so when she composed into a perfect smirk. "Let me ask Saniya, she'll probably make something up that sounds sensible."
Saniya and sensible had several letters in common! That was how it worked, right?
"I don't really know," she sighed once they poked her again. "I obviously haven't been thinking about 'the future' for a while now." That was Soothe's way, slightly-sarcastic references to the horrific trauma she had suffered.
She explained it felt better to own and control it than pretend it never happened.
The Wigglytuff Guild still had its healer. Chimecho was having trouble socialising, abject shame left her hiding in her hideyholes more often than not. Sunflora was making progress with her at least, Team Voyage staying in the guild again for the time being.
The Team With No Name had once lightly talked about running a guild together. Trill the clever, managing the paperwork, Guildmaster Wigglytuff who drew people in and helped them train, and Soothe the healer who would take care of the injuries of their apprentices.
As much as she was, still was, and always would be a part of the three, Soothe felt to her bones that she did not belong in the Wigglytuff Guild. It was not her place. They had transitioned well into the guild life and while Rhythm was more active again and planning many more expeditions than he used to, he was still always going to have the town.
Soothe had languished in a small room for many, many, years. She didn't want to keep doing that. She wanted to be on her feet, travelling the world. Exploration was not really her draw, not without them. She planned to join them for expeditions and told them that. But to stay in town? In the guild?
She wouldn't. And they all knew that. It was just a matter of how long she would stay. Perhaps if she stayed long enough she would heal enough to call the place home, but part of her friends knew that wouldn't be right.
And so….
"Come with us!" Rhythm sang, pulling Soothe up by her paws. Trill glided along with them as they headed from the guild to Spinda's Cafe.
It was her next favourite place. They sold alcohol at night.
The light chatting stopped immediately when they walked in and Soothe spotted him.
She gave Rhythm and Trill a Look and they smiled in total acceptance of what they had done.
"Traitors," she said, but she was smiling. The smile turned a little plastic as she turned to Spire who was pretending like he hadn't noticed them yet, offering her that chance to back off without 'hurting his feelings'.
She sighed and girded herself and stepped in closer. He looked up with a relieved smile as she approached. "Hi," he said.
"Hey," she said, standing at the two-seat table awkwardly. "...saving that seat for someone?"
"It's open."
She sat down, trying not to show the discomfort she felt. She understood what Trill and Rhythm were doing and she appreciated it, but this was someone very difficult for her to look in the eye. At least with Rhythm and Trill, they knew how sorry she was without her needing to say it. They knew her well enough to hear and see all the little things she did.
Spire….
He was a special case of guilt. To her, he was the embodiment of the innocents who got in the path of evil and taken from the world for it. He had no idea what he was truly getting into but was the type of good that even if he had, he wouldn't have backed down.
Perhaps, in a way, she martyred him in her mind. Perhaps he was just a guy in the wrong place and too dumb to back down when it was clear it was over his head. But even if that was the case, he hadn't deserved what he went through.
Soothe had only ever wanted to help people.
She had killed Darkrai, setting him on the self-fulfilling path to evil. What she had told Nelia for scraps of safety had led to the death and suffering of many people. But there was no harm she had done that had been ground into her mind as firmly as Spire.
If only she had….
She shook the thought off as best as she could, feeling it linger on the back of her neck. Spire was talking, a little quickly, a little nervously. Her hearing was impeccable but her focus had left her missing a few key words to the start of this conversation.
"-and they said you'd be here and I thought maybe it'd be nice to talk?"
She blinked, piecing together what he probably said and smiled with a shrug. "Sure." Soothe's confidence was unassailable but she wouldn't be the first to speak, causing Spire to choke on his tongue.
The zangoose mouthed wordless nothing for a moment, scrambling for words. Whatever he had planned just slipped out of his head and he tapped his claws nervously on the table. To both of their surprise, the sound caused a visceral reaction in Soothe.
She didn't say anything, she just flinched. Hard. Recoiling with enough force to scrape the chair across the floor, her ears flattening and her paws almost snapping to them before she caught herself.
Spire, and a few other patrons, stared a moment. For a moment, her eyes were wild. That sound. That damned sound had played for years in the moments between the screams of the beast that had been Spire.
"Sorry," she said, trying to relax her shoulders. "You… startled me."
Sympathy mixed with horror flashed across Spire's face and he looked at his claws for a long, awkward, moment. "...did I?"
"Yes."
"I'm so sorry."
Soothe frowned at him. She was no longer corrupted, she could recognise what she felt now rather than voiding it as nothing. Even so, it blew her mind that he was apologising. "You… did nothing wrong. Tap away, I just wasn't expecting it."
He had crossed his hands on the table firmly and shook his head. His claws were tense, fidgeting against each other but nowhere to go.
The silence was awkward. A kind of sticky, cloying, discomfort so intense it spread from their table and the usual rancour of Spinda's Cafe began to die down. A few people began to find other places to be.
Spinda, of course, would never think anything of them but Soothe felt the need to move. The roof was low in this business, it was causing her body to prickle. "I need to go for a walk." She stood up, disappointment but acceptance crossed his face.
She wavered, her stomach churned but she worked her mouth to speak regardless, "Can you join me?"
He brightened at her wording and stood up. "Um, sure, where do you want to go?"
Anywhere but here, she didn't say. "The beach is nice." Quiet and secluded.
After a moment she cursed herself, to go anywhere alone with her was obviously not what Spire would want. It's why he waited for her in a public place, of course!
Yet, he smiled anyway. "I love the beach, let's go."
She wasn't sure about that but walked with him anyway.
Once they were outside in the fresh air, the words became easier. "I'm sorry," Spire said again.
Soothe sighed, "Please don't be," she said. "You did nothing wrong." Ever. Besides following her when she told him not to.
"I… okay. I just don't want to upset you."
"I'm not too fragile," she said, with a mix of her usual calm drawl to it. He got worried and began to apologise again and she smirked. "I don't want to upset you either."
He realised she was joking and gave a nervous chuckle. "Funny."
"I know."
His smile became a little easier. "Good." They stepped down the path, the trees seemed to envelop them but the space was still quite wide between the track and the trees.
"Why'd you want to talk to me?" Soothe asked, deciding to rip the bandaid off.
He looked at her like a lost puppy for a moment. "I just wanted to talk."
"About…?"
He shrugged. "Just wanted to know how you were going."
"Really? That's it?" She decided to humour him. "Pretty good. Miles better than I used to be."
He smiled. "I can see that, actually."
She rolled her eyes. "Why ask then?"
Spire immediately inserted his foot into his mouth. "I remember when we first met."
Soothe tensed so hard she almost fell over, muscles locking a moment and causing her to stumble. He caught her arm reflexively but that was also the wrong thing to do.
Spire was many things to Soothe. As his words, spoken as gently as he said everything reminded her of the pain of that day his hand closed around her.
An unfamiliar paw and one spiked with deadly talons. In a second she went from calm to being there again on that day, shaking with a roaring Hunger to rip his throat out and fighting every part of herself to spare him.
"NO!" she screamed, tearing his hand from her and knocking him back. She spun and ran for his life, if she ran far enough he wouldn't suffer, he wouldn't, he wouldn't, he wouldn't-
Spire landed on his back with an oof but sprung back up as Soothe tore off. "Audino!" he shouted and raced after her. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
He followed a path of destruction she was causing and feared if she hit the town she might panic worse. He sped up but swiftly found where she had stopped.
It was not a clearing a minute ago, but she had found a place secluded from everywhere and was suffering a meltdown.
Soothe was, without question, one of the strongest pokemon in the world. With Keira and Nelia both gone she was likely in the running for the strongest pokemon that wasn't an outright deity, and above a few of them as well.
Spire was not.
Trees broke like twigs, littering the forest with blasts of soil and leaves, trees crashing against each other, uprooting the earth and tearing rocks free. Others were sliced apart and still crumbling as the audino became like a storm of destruction.
Spire would be utterly helpless if she turned on him and he wasn't foolish enough to believe that she wouldn't in the peak of her meltdown.
He knew he should run and find Wigglytuff or Chatot but the rest of him remained rooted to the ground, perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of sympathetic pain as he watched her breakdown over a few words and a touch.
He only ever wanted to help.
Her attack continued until she finally spotted him. In the grip of the past she lashed out like a killer, her Protect, a move designed to defend twisted into an attack went for him.
He couldn't avoid it, still frozen.
It got within a few inches of him before it vanished into nothing, Soothe's gasp cresting across amid the emptiness left by her destruction.
Her eyes were still foggy, pulling at the past to cloud the present. Spire had made two mistakes but he did not mean to hurt her. Yet again, he spoke without thinking things through.
"One day you'll look back on this and know you survived it," he said softly. "That it's over. One day you'll be okay."
Soothe was blinking. He had said this once before. Perhaps that was the worst thing he could have said, affirming she was in the past and her freedom was a dream.
Then, however, he hugged her and the present asserted itself once more. "I'm so sorry."
The present grappled the past and Spire was like a rock in a storm, something to cling onto to pull herself out….
Years. I held it at bay for years. I could not allow myself to break again.
Soothe walked forwards, placing one foot in front of the other, never looking back the way she had come. Her ears were better at seeing around her than her eyes were anyway.
She was a wandering traveller nowadays. She avoided major towns, anywhere that had a hint of guild action. She offered healing services in her travels, sometimes she encountered people in dungeons and exchanged some spot work for some food or items.
It had worked for years. She never found any sign that Rhy-Wigglytuff was trying to pursue her. She had even managed to hear that a new guild had taken up shop in Treasure Town.
She didn't feel anything about that. Maybe a faint, grim, amusement that for all the world could be bothered, she could have not existed at all and nothing would have changed.
As she was now, such an idea was preferable. Become nothing, affect nothing, hurt nothing. Her sides ached with referred pain, her body trembling on occasion. Feral pokemon did not slate the Hunger. She did not know why, or maybe it just never went away. What few stories she had heard obviously couldn't have any real-life experience to back up the hearsay and rumours.
It ached. Ached in the need to tear something apart, that gnawing emptiness seeking to draw everything into it. Everything that was. Everything that could be. Every day she thought it was the hardest it would ever get and every morning she knew it was going to be worse.
The pangs were so disorientating she missed the turn to Towny Town and headed in the other direction instead. By the time the gravel began to turn black, she realised her mistake.
Blackstone Village.
Absolutely not. The Clefable Guild was there. That'd be the second worst place to go even.
She was only headed in this direction to isolate herself. Get past here, avoid any teams and once she was past Fissure the land was completely lawless. There would be no one she could hurt out there.
Or, perhaps in the darkest needs of her mind, no one that would be missed.
Her mouth dripped with black drool a moment before she swallowed down the pain, feeling her body ache all over again as she denied It. How easily It slipped into her thoughts like they were her own, making excuses for themselves.
Maybe they really were her… no! She wouldn't give in. Never. Never again.
Her disorientation was so bad that she hadn't noticed when another joined the path with her. Perhaps she never could have heard them.
"My word."
Soothe froze. It couldn't be. She could not possibly be that unlucky. She tried to move but her body… no, that wasn't her.
The sound of soft feet on earth danced along her ears as an evil voice crooned. "What do we have here?"
Held in an unbreakable Psychic, Soothe could only watch in stricken horror as the defiler of her mind walked into her view.
Core, for she did not know the name Nelia yet, licked her lips. "Horror upon seeing me. Horror of a most… personal kind. Ah, there's the rage that follows anguish. Most curious. Do you know me, Audino?"
Soothe could not respond but "Core's" grin grew wider. "Seems so. How… interesting." She saw a hand reaching for her again and then everything went black.
When she next awoke, she was in her new home for what would feel like an eternity. Steel bars were melded into reinforced concrete inscribed with strange patterns that sapped Soothe's Power.
There were others. So many others. The sounds of their cries left her shaking and feeling sick, which wasn't helped by the smell. The smell of wretched despair, crippling misery, anguish, and agony.
No matter how much she willed it, not a glint or spark of energy escaped her. It roiled in her gut, churning painfully the more she tried to unleash an attack and break out of this place.
"Careful now." The voice came out of nowhere, it was like in her own head and Soothe screamed, covering her face.
Her tormentor chuckled, coming into view. The howls increased in volume as broken animals cringed away from the monster that placed them here. "Wouldn't want to break something, would you?"
Soothe lunged at the bars when she got close, sticking her arm out to try and strike the demon in an indeedee's body. She had not yet learned that true evil did not need to hide behind the guise of a devil.
Her strike fell short, "Core" did not even need to catch her paw to avoid it. Nor did she stop, she kept on approaching, her hand catching Soothe's wrist on the next.
Soothe pulled with all her force, aiming to stagger her against the bars and maybe disable her power as well. "Core" didn't move an inch. Her paw tore at fur and skin until she ripped a patch off.
"Core" arm regenerated the loss in a few seconds, not even twitching. Soothe threw the fur away in disgust. "LET ME OUT OF HERE!" she screamed.
Her words echoed through the underground jail until the broken animals were repeating pieces of her own statement.
"LET ME!"
"ME ME ME HERE!"
"OUT OF HERE!
"OUT OF ME!"
"HEEEERE!"
The sounds were a cacophony and to Soothe's sensitive ears it was torture. Her head was pounding as voices rattled around her, giving her vertigo and causing her to lose her balance and hit her head on the ground.
Yet, above it all, "Core" tsk'd as if she was a disappointing pet failing to perform a trick for her. "I'll come back later," she said casually as if she had caught Soothe hanging out laundry. "When you're up for a chat."
She didn't come back for four days.
The broken animals didn't scream all the time, but there were so many of them that it was never silent. There was never a moment that something wasn't muttering or screaming broken words and phrases that pounded through Soothe's head.
Shadow Pokemon were immortal, but they still had needs. The corruption would regenerate from damage but that regeneration could be taxed. Even they could eventually die of hunger or thirst, but it would take a very long time.
When "Core" returned with water Soothe hoped it was poisoned.
That it wasn't was a crueller joke than anything.
"Are you ready to talk now?" "Core" asked sweetly.
When Soothe didn't affirm immediately she left again. Another three days.
A week without eating anything she brought food. Soothe ate it, it was only a few dried berries but she ate it anyway.
"Are you ready to talk now?" "Core" asked again.
Soothe tried to grab a horn and slam her head against the cage. "Core" seemed to see it coming and left again.
She did this for months, systemically abandoning her to the broken animals until she began to scream too.
"Are you ready to talk?" "Core" asked yet again.
"Please," Soothe begged. She never begged for anything. She begged now. "Please."
"It seems you're ready." With a click of her digits, there was blessed silence. The din of the animals melted away and Soothe's whole body sagged in relief. A most bitter kind of relief, one that came with submission. "Good behaviour gets rewards. Bad behaviour." She tilted her wrist and the noise began to creep in again, Soothe whimpered, cringing against the back of the cage.
The noise faded again. "Now. Let's begin with your name~"
Soothe travelled with the Team With No Name for two years. Travelled alone for six. Was trapped in a cage for five. And sat in a small hut in Treasure Town for another five until the story began. Eighteen years, sixteen of them lost to hopeless darkness.
The cages were not the cruellest thing Nelia did to her.
There perhaps is no cruellest thing.
But one that sticks out more than most….
Soothe could not track time underground but she could reason a few things out. Around two years into her imprisonment, Nelia let her out.
She did this occasionally. Sometimes she'd take a beast and it wouldn't come back with her. She took a manectric out and returned with a luxray once.
She kept them separated. Neither knew there was another lucid person in that hellscape. She robbed them of even that insignificant comfort of someone to suffer with.
Soothe was treated like an animal and she knew it. She chafed against it. She got used to it in some ways. Used to covering her head and blocking out everything. "Core" didn't subject her to her whole attention, which was the only relief of that place. The indeedee suffered a dispassionate boredom and was busy with paperwork anyway.
Once Soothe cracked and began to tell her fragments of things she knew 'from the future' the pressure let up slightly. This Nelia had long since accepted that victory was inevitable and thus she didn't need to actively work towards her plan. She knew Soothe was not honest with how she knew the things she knew but that was something Soothe had not cracked and revealed to her.
The spirit to fight was something she preferred, and Soothe lasting so long was a wonder to her. So, one day, she let her off her leash.
Soothe ran for it immediately. Without hesitation, doubt, or reluctance. She still did not fear Nelia more than she feared the pain of defiance. She still had that hope which was a wonder to Nelia.
And, as such, The First Fallen allowed her to run. Always in control, forever in control, she came back to the town in a controlled 'panic' and found a spirited traveller to assist her in an urgent matter.
The zangoose with kind eyes listened to her concerns and set out immediately. He had only just entered, few people had seen him and he had spoken to no one. The perfect pawn. The fact that he radiated kindness was all the better, she knew better than most the kind of strength that genuine kindness could inspire.
By the time the zangoose caught up to Soothe outside of the tiny village Rivers Bank, she was in a complete Reverse Mode meltdown, attacking her surroundings indiscriminately. In the peak of agonised Hunger, she attacked him immediately.
This Soothe was haggard and weak from years in a cage. Even empowered by the Reverse Mode Spire was able to hold her at bay.
A battlefield swimming in corrupted energy, a mystery dungeon would form a few years later.
Spire, an inexperienced but still strong young pokemon, wasn't blind. Every attack went wide, every strike missed a mile, and every defence involved putting distance between them.
She was avoiding hitting him even in the grips of madness.
This was not what he had heard Shadow Pokemon did.
"Stop!" Spire called, his voice loud and strong. And, the audino did. She stared at him, a grimace of monstrous starvation hiding a fragile glassy look within her eyes.
"Can you… understand me?" Spire asked.
The creature nodded and slumped, the energy peeled off it until it was just an audino laying on the ground, her body weak. She had run as far and fast as she could. She had heard pokemon travelling by and her body tried to launch at them. Fighting that desire led to her meltdown as the Hunger finally won but had nothing to consume and so just attacked everything.
She still had fought with all she had not to let Her win.
She was laying glassy-eyed but blank on the ground as Spire took a tentative step forwards. His logic said this had to be a trap but his kindness pushed him to take another step. "Hey, can you… hear me still?"
The eyes flicked to him and then back up. Her body was wasted, her ribs showing, her muscles clinging to the bones of her arms and legs. There was not a mark to be seen on her body otherwise, it would show if there was anything.
"A…Audino?"
She blinked. "I know what you're here for," she said with a voice so dead it made him shiver. Like speaking to a corpse that knew it was dead. "Don't do it. Kill me. Please."
His mouth fell open slightly, horrified at the sound. "What? No! No. This… no." He remembered and had seen it for his own eyes. There was only one solution to a Shadow Pokemon. Even if he was to bring her in, to Clefable… they would do it instead.
He blinked rapidly, uncertain how he felt about that. Shadow Pokemon were a rarity but culture permeated the world. People had not been able to write what The Legendary Lucario fought but the scars of the Fallen's attack on the world still remained. People were taught to hate the Shadow Pokemon, to destroy it wherever it came. It showed no mercy and to show it any was to bare your throat to its teeth.
Everything he had been taught told him this was a trick to lower his guard and that he had to give the only mercy he could.
But, that wasn't Spire. He only ever wanted to help people.
"...why?" he asked.
A drop of rain fell. A storm had followed them. Audino still didn't move, perhaps hoping the rain would drown her.
Not listening to every bit of sense there was, Spire picked her up and carried her out of the rain. He didn't see a Shadow Pokemon, he saw a person.
Once they were under the trees, she spoke again. "Why?" she croaked.
"Answer mine first," he said, watching her carefully.
"..."
"..."
Spire would crack first, but he decided to show trust was to invite it. "I don't really know," he said. "Everything I was taught said that you're evil and have to be destroyed for everyone's safety. That you'll lie and trick me by any means possible."
"You're clearly not very smart if you didn't listen," she said. It might have sounded threatening, but it just sounded dry, resigned.
A smile twitched over his face. "Guess not. I rather prefer to think with my heart not my head."
"The heart only does one thing and that's not thinking. Well, I guess you did just say you don't think so that checks out."
His smile widened a little. "You didn't attack me."
"I did, actually."
"When I picked you up, I mean."
She rolled her eyes. "I know what you meant."
"Huh?"
"Sarcasm," she groaned. "No one gets it."
"Is that a Shadow Pokemon thing?"
"Might as well be."
The sound of rain was pleasant. To Soothe it sounded like a distant roar. It was pleasant but then her mind went places.
Her paws twitched on the ground, Spire could see it.
"My name is Spire," he said, offering a paw. She looked up, gobsmacked at him saying that and offering a paw to her.
"...I don't get it," she whispered. "What are you doing? There's only one way this can go, you realise that, don't you?"
His hand didn't lower. "You weren't attacking me. Not even earlier. I could see it." She looked away. "That's not what I was told."
A scoff escaped her. "By who? Mayor Indeedee?"
He blinked at the sheer vitriol carried in that single word. "Um, well about you specifically yeah."
She looked to him through the side of her eye, a piercing glare that left him feeling small and alone. "She's the one who did this to me."
Spire's eyes widened. "What?"
Soothe gestured at herself. "All of it. She's a Shadow Pokemon as well. And she's exactly what you've been told."
"That… what?"
She chuckled humourlessly. "You don't believe me, do you?"
"I do!"
She stopped chuckling.
"I just can't believe I'm hearing that. I've heard Blackstone was… and she's been there for so… and the Clefable Guild…."
Reason reared its head but he ignored reason to spare and talk to her, so he ignored it again.
He stood up. "I have to do something about this!" He turned to her, fire in his eyes. "I'll save you, whatever it takes, don't worry."
She heard white noise. "You will what?"
He made a fist, clenching it in determination. "I'll take you somewhere safe and then stop Indeedee! We'll work out a new way if that doesn't free you! There's always a way. Whatever it takes, whatever it means."
Her expression was disbelief. "You cannot be that stupid," she said.
His determination didn't waver. "I know you don't believe me," he began.
She stood up, strength returning to her legs. Energies were coursing through her veins, strengthening her again. She felt the madness bubbling away again but her mind was not on Spire even as her Hunger was.
It was on "Core".
He reached for her as she stood but she shoved him back. "Walk away, Zangoose. Forget you saw anything. If you go, she'll kill you. But she won't be ready for me."
"For you?" Spire said, shocked. "No! No, it's not worth it. We need to get you somewhere safe, she sent me to take you down."
"She's probably around somewhere," Soothe hissed, looking around, her ears twitching. "She wouldn't want to risk any hiccups. Fucking run. Run while you still can, I'll destroy her or die trying."
That was the wrong thing to say. "You don't have to!" he insisted, trying to catch her arm. Always a touchy-feely person, Soothe shoved him back again. "Oof, sorry I can see you don't want to be touched."
Her expression setting into stone wavered the briefest of seconds before she affirmed herself again. "Run, Spire. Run while you still can. Maybe if you run fast enough you can warn someone, if I can't win I'll at least buy you some time."
"She's nowhere around here," Spire insisted but Soothe wasn't listening, she was walking forwards. "Audino!"
"They called me Victory once," Soothe said without looking back as she stepped into the rain. "Maybe it'll even be true."
"One day you'll look back on this and know you survived it!" Spire called, stepping out to try and pull her back into cover. "That it's over. One day you'll be okay."
A spark of light struck his paw and caused him to recoil. And then she was running. Despite her wasted appearance, she could run very fast.
Nelia was waiting for her.
"I can't believe you came back," she said, voice soaked with genuine amazement. "He literally offered to hide you and you still came back. Do you hate me that much?"
Soothe gave a battle cry and unleashed a wave of burning light at the monster in front of her. "Core" caught it. Not even with a Protect, she simply caught it in her hand, pulling the rage-infused burst of everything Soothe had into her palm, compressing the light until it was sparks crackling before nothing at all.
It was the first time she'd been able to fight back.
She lasted all of ten seconds.
Being unable to fight at all because of magic was less galling than being unable to fight because you were so utterly outmatched that you were no threat at all.
"Oh, my soothing little darling. Victory, really?" "Core" cupped her chin, lifting it to examine her. Soothe was still conscious but only barely.
Her paw clenched and she swung it up at the indeedee's ribs. It connected, she felt a puff of air escape "Core" from the weight of the punch but nothing more.
Her wrist was caught and the whisper that came was a venomous hiss, "Do not touch me."
Soothe screamed as her wrist was broken and was knocked into the mud when Nelia backhanded her. She was lifted out by a crushing Psychic, slowly tightening around her naval and squeezing the air out of her until she couldn't even suck a breath back in.
She didn't want to die but perhaps it'd be peace?
She wouldn't get the chance as something red and white flashed in with a paw beaming with a massive amount of Power.
It connected and sent the indeedee back many meters, painting her fur in mud.
Soothe crashed to the ground, a desperate gasp filling her lungs before she cried, "Spire!? What are you doi-no. Spire RUN!"
"No time," he yelled back, taking a battle stance as Nelia brushed the mark off her fur. "Get up, we gotta go!"
"No, LEAVE!" she screamed, begging him to run, leaping to shield him with her own body. She only ever wanted to help.
"Not without you!" Spire called, catching her before she could leap ahead of him. He only ever wanted to help.
She struggled, shaking her head, begging him, "NO!" Nelia's broad grin was one of nightmares. "SPIRE, RUN!"
The lightest of gestures caught them both in a crushing grip. Soothe was floated over to Nelia as the indeedee grabbed her and forced her to watch as Spire's struggles to move, or even to breathe, grew weaker.
"You know, I can feel what he's feeling?" she crooned softly, revelling in every weak sound escaping both of them. "Every desperate tug to breathe. How his head is beginning to swim. How it's going dark. How, even now, he just wants to save you. Doesn't that feel good? He doesn't even blame you. He only wants to help."
Spire's struggles had ceased. Soothe couldn't cry. She just stared blankly as Nelia sauntered up to the floating body, her hand lighting up in a dark flame.
She released his throat and he took a ragged breath. Just enough to let him scream as she immolated him.
"Can't leave any signs we were here after all," she said, letting what remained sink into the mud.
She dragged Soothe back underground and threw her back into the cage. The next time she visited she came with a guest.
A screaming zangoose too broken to comprehend what hell it was in but in enough pain to scream and scream and scream.
She placed it next to Soothe. "Thought you could use a friend," she said pleasantly and then skipped off.
I was in that cage next to him for over two years.
He was still hugging her.
The memories finally unlatched their hold on her, letting her float away from the past and back to the present. The present where she was warm. Her heart beat freely again. Her skin knew what the feeling of the sun was again. Where she could sit among friends, people who never ever gave up on her.
"Spire," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."
The present where she could cry again. As much as it hurt, feeling it all. Feeling everything so intensely. She had gone for almost twenty years only feeling brushes of real emotion. Even the cold spite-driven hate felt flaccid and weak compared to the rawness of emotion she could fully grasp again.
"Why did you follow me? I told you not to."
It was so much. It was too much. Decades without sun and then thrown into the desert, unable to shield herself from the overpowering heat and neither could she hide from the chilling cold that followed when she was alone at night.
"I promised to help you. And…."
And yet, she wasn't alone.
Spire was still hugging her. "I forgive you," he said as if it was something that could just be said and that was that. It wasn't. It couldn't. Nothing was ever that simple. Even Rhythm, who never let anything change his mind he didn't want to hadn't been that easy, but that was a fierce struggle over decades to hold true to himself.
And yet, maybe, somehow he truly meant it. "...how?"
"I don't blame you," he said, still holding onto her. "You didn't do it. I understand that you blame yourself and I forgive you for that. But I made my choice. I made myself a promise once to always do what I hoped was right. To follow what I hoped was the right thing to do. I went after you because I thought you were going to hurt someone, but when I realised you were the one that was being hurt I knew I had to help you."
She was silent, letting him talk.
"And if I fell back in time to that moment and I had to choose to walk away or do it again, I'd do it again."
She twitched. "...you suffered." The sound of him screaming in the cage next to her had haunted her for years.
He was the one that screamed. "Yeah." His dreams reflected broken parts of the years in the cage.
"I can't ever accept you suffering like that because of me." Not then, not again. She couldn't do it again. "You lost years of your life."
He took a breath, letting out a long sigh. "It's my choice," he said. "I chose to go after you. Both times. I get to choose if I forgive it all. And, well, I'm technically not any older, so…." He had people he knew, friends, family, with years of time lost with them.
He pressed on, banishing the way Soothe was going to think if he let the silence linger. "I want you to think about something, a choice you have too."
She was again quiet, listening.
"Can you forgive yourself?"
"…"
"For choosing to hate her more than you wanted to live?"
"…"
"...Soothe?"
"I don't think I can do that now," she admitted.
He nodded, fur brushing against her. He was still hugging her, and she wasn't pushing him away. "That's okay. I wasn't expecting you to right now. Just… one day, to forgive yourself for what we both did." He wasn't asking her to forgive Nelia, perhaps one day just not yet. "And… if you're okay with it, I'll be here to help that happen."
Her head slowly tilted, brushing against his own. "Are you asking to stick around with me?" She remembered being asked what she wanted to do with the future. Being alone didn't sound appealing.
"Yeah."
"...hah, can't leave a job unfinished can you?"
"You're not a job but I guess that's not too wrong. I promised to help you once, regardless of what that means."
Once upon a time he had promised her he was going to help her. She brushed him off that time, seeing only the pain behind her and rushed right back into its grasp.
Stories were meant to have happy endings though, weren't they?
"Okay, Spire."
This one took me a while. Just the snippet parts got me a bit. The Spire flashback was rough to write, first time I've written that clumsy girl since Soothe killed her. Hope it still carried her 'presence'.
I have intentions for a fourth Soothe Bonus Chapter, but I'm not as sure about how it'll look. Basically meant to show what she was doing in Treasure Town, how she met Timber, and what she was doing during the story. I imagine there won't be a whole lot to actually show but it'll have some more modern-day bits.
We've seen her talking with Saniya, with Rhythm and Trill, and now Spire. But there's still a cat in the bag and they have a most-complex relationship. You know why ;)