(A/N: Through independent testing, I've figured out FFN is bugged and no longer tracks views for my stuff. I don't know if this is site wide, but it does mean I have no idea if anyone is reading this at all. I'm always happy to hear your thoughts, and now especially, if only so I know anyone else is reading this. I won't always have anything to say back, but I always appreciate hearing other people's thoughts. Either way, though, thank you for reading.)
"All the things you thought that you'd never be
Not a sinner not an enemy
All the love that you had kept in your heart
Was just a love that you had torn apart"
—"Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin" from Elephant Stone by Elephant Stone
The sun beamed idyllic warmth down to the frigid day. It softened the cold of November to a comforting chill. Scarce winds came, and when they did, they weren't strong enough to overcome the bright sun. Everywhere around them, the world was comfortably cool. The air between Max and Eleos froze them in place while a weight hung over them.
The chill Max felt wasn't from the weather.
"Your soul no longer calls to me," Eleos said. It looked at her with an empty stare. Maintaining its form took too much energy for it to emote as well. Max stood close enough to hear that it wasn't even bothering to breathe, and yet, it felt so far away.
"What?" Max asked. The precise longings of her soul weren't always at the front of her mind, but she didn't need them present to know it was wrong. She knew how she felt. "Eleos, I still love you." She tried to take a step closer, but Eleos held up a paw to stop her. The ache in her ribs had left just in time for the pain in her heart to take its place.
"Much has happened, so I understand your confusion," Eleos said. It never spoke with much emotion, but each word felt empty in a way she'd scarcely heard before. Every sound it made inverted, as if it was speaking in silence. The sound was familiar, but she couldn't recall it.
"When first you woke, I still felt your soul calling to me," it said. "Even when terror overwhelmed you, I felt it. That pull remained when you woke the next day, as well. Now, though?" It glanced to her tail, and its mouth twisted further than its scales could accommodate. Max didn't need to look to see what it saw; her heart suffocated the objections in her throat. Eleos looked into her eyes again and forced a neutral expression.
"I-I don't understand," Max whimpered. Suddenly, she could feel every inch of her body. She could see every rough edge she hated in mirrors, or when Eleos took his form. The phantom pain of his tail even briefly tortured the gnarled edges of her own with a horrible itch. "You don't like that I'm…."
"Far from it," Eleos said. "But it means that we can no longer continue as we are." The comfort died before it could live.
"Why not?!" Max shouted. She didn't care if her chest didn't like that. The morphine could take care of its complaints. "What about transitioning means I can't love you?" As she asked the question, though, she could already feel an answer. A precise reason came to rip her heart out of her chest. "You can't… love me like this?"
"Max," Eleos whispered. It took a step forward to cup her cheek again. "As I've already said, I am not the one who no longer loves." Again, its lips started to twist further than its scales could with inky darkness oozing from the gaps. It paused a moment to look down and felt its mouth with its other paw. When it pulled its paw back to see the dark purple ooze, it almost seemed to flinch away.
"What?" it hissed. The sight made its expression flatten again and took its attention. It stared blankly at its own paw for a while until its eyes snapped back to Max. "A curiosity for later," it mused, wiping its paw off on its side. Max reached out to feel the fresh wound on its scales, but it jerked back and turned away from her.
"Our arrangement was never to last," Eleos spat with the malice of an accusation. "Your mercy was never born out of love for me." It scanned over her with a glare that cut her as deep as its words. "You bore my burden as punishment for yourself. When my presence brought you pain, you decided it was right. You used me as the righteous retribution of your own sins."
"Eleos, that's not-" Max started to say, but it silenced her with a glare.
"You have forgotten much," Eleos said. "I have not." It kept glaring at her, challenging her to continue.
Max wanted to tell it the truth it had misconstrued, or at least explain herself, but she couldn't. It was right. She couldn't remember as much as it could. It knew a lot more about her than she knew it, or maybe even herself. She wanted to argue that how she used to feel didn't matter as much as how she felt now, but that would only ignore the obvious pain she'd forced it to suffer through.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Eleos' lips almost started to twist again, but it caught itself this time. "Again, you let guilt consume you rather than listen to a word I say," it said. "The only one you have wronged is yourself."
"That's not true!" Max said. "Look at yourself!" She threw a paw to its still oozing scales. "Everything you're saying, this hurt! I can hear it in your voice!" She walked over to rest a paw on its shoulder, but her paw passed right through smoke.
"I am in pain, it's true," Eleos said, looking away from her again. "But please understand, it is the pain of joy." It let silence hang between them.
Max tried to wrap her head around what it meant, but her mind struggled to cooperate. Every word it said rattled against her very core. It was all wrong, all completely wrong, but in a way she couldn't put into words. She could tell it was fundamentally at odds with the truth, but any refutation of a single point left a much larger lie looming over them.
She could feel the lie, but she couldn't see it, couldn't know what it really was, only felt its gravity. It engulfed the cosmos around her, yet remained entirely unobservable.
"Your soul no longer calls to me," Eleos said again. "That day we met, I was to be your demise. Even as your heart denied it, your soul knew my true purpose. It called for me such that I considered my victory certain."
A disquieting silence came over Max as she finally understood. Imagining it no longer loved her was comparatively merciful. This, though, was so much more fitting. After all, every other relationship had strained from that lack of care from herself. A pain she'd never recognized before it was too late, before Oshton slammed the door behind her. After, as well. If this had been one day earlier, she would've had no idea what it was talking about.
It was almost vindicating. Max had wanted so desperately for someone else to see what she felt, this new beat of her heart. This whole time, Eleos had felt the same flaw within her. Now, it was ready to devastate her.
"Eleos, wait," she said. "I know what you're talking about, but that's not what's happening." She raised her paw to feel it again, but it still passively refused her touch. "I still love you."
"Stop," Eleos said, its inverted voice growing stronger. Again, a memory ate at the edges of Max's mind while she tried desperately to remember where she'd heard it before. "Your love for me has taken you as far as it can. Perhaps you believe you can still hold on, but this fantasy will not last."
"You don't know that!" Max shouted.
Eleos glanced her way out of the corner of its eye and said, "I do." Max started to yell another objection but stopped when she saw it resist another twist at the corners of its mouth. "Fate is not mine to control, but I can see its threads clearer than most." It looked at her tail again and couldn't resist its mouth twisting in on itself anymore. "Your happy ending will come, so I must go."
"How do you think I got here?" Max asked. She reached out for it again, and finally felt scales. The touch was enough to bring tears to her eyes. "I just want to love you. I still want to be with you."
"You must not," Eleos growled. A dusting of smoke billowed out of its mouth with every word. "If you want to reach your happy ending, you must let yourself grow beyond your want for me." More and more, the air itself trembled at its voice, as if carrying the sound defied nature, and Max felt the memory right on the edge of her mind.
"I won't," Max whimpered. She felt the warmth beneath its scales start to fade. Without any visual change, its form corrupted into an identical copy of itself. Its mouth twisted enough to rip its scales apart. She didn't let the sight scare her. "I don't need to leave you to be happy." She started to reach her other paw out to it as well. Eleos looked longingly at it for an instant before its eyes shifted darker.
"Enough!" Eleos shouted. It swiped her paws off with one paw and spun around to slam a fist into her chest with several shattering cracks. Her eyes went wide; her vision went white. Even through the morphine, she felt incomprehensible pain. Beyond her consciousness, she finally remembered when she'd heard that reality warping sound of its voice before.
She stood with Ithos in a void. The image survived barely a moment in her mind before pain burned it away. That malice and pain ate into her heart. The sound of a being that didn't belong with the very matter that surrounded it.
"If you refuse to see the truth, I will show it to you," Eleos said. She couldn't see it, but she could feel it standing over her. The sensation somehow survived through her pain. She'd thank her awareness if it wasn't also making her feel the white hot ache in her chest that much more intensely. The morphine acted as another Faustian bargain, suppressing the pain just enough to keep her conscious.
"Do you truly believe I can give you a happy end?" Eleos asked. Max was trying too hard to breathe to even try to answer, but it didn't wait anyway. It made her struggle for breath even harder by hoisting her up by the throat. "Then I shall remind you what an end with me is."
What remained of her breath left. Of all the memories she'd lost, one remained through it all. Dread cut into her heart and ripped out its purpose. With its grip on her throat, she had just enough air to know the fading sensation in her hindpaws wasn't from lack of oxygen. She was too terrified to try and move them, but she didn't have to. They'd stopped swinging in the wind.
Her vision returned just enough to see Eleos' eyes staring into hers. Its expression ripped and contorted into rage that tore beyond the limits of its face. The eviscerated remains of a charmander's face rested on top of the visage of pure rage. Its eyes darkened into black holes. Inky black oozed from its torn remains.
Somehow, the sight sparked another memory. One she'd barely regained before this moment. Or maybe it was because she'd been petrifying then, too. Beyond the grizzled remains of Eleos' charmander form, she saw Ithos' petrified remains.
Behind the reality warping optimism, she'd seen fear in Ithos' eyes for the first time as stone took over his form. It was such a foreign emotion to him that, while more subtle, it seemed to rip Ithos' expression beyond recognition as well. Ithos, that permanent font of joy and hope, faltered for one brief moment, and that had given Max the strength to hold on in the face of their demise.
The stone slowed its crawl up her form. Even if it sucked life from her body, she wouldn't leave her friend—her lover. She'd left too many people behind already. She could never do it again, especially not someone with pain that could rip its own face off.
Max stilled herself before the stone could and let the terror out of her expression. She let what might be her last breath out of her lungs and decided to feel peace instead. The slightest doubt softened the demonic rage in Eleos' face as the stone stopped its spread before it finished covering her neck and shoulders. Max reached her paw up to cup its cheek and smiled. "I love you," she wheezed.
Eleos' paw shook. It pressed harder into her fur, but couldn't squeeze harder. It tried, but couldn't tighten its grip. "You do not!" it screamed. "Love for me!? This is nothing more than hate!" Stone had overtaken the scarf she never felt safe without, yet she still smiled.
Max knew it was wrong. She'd wanted to die long enough to recognize the feeling. As meaning returned warmth to her heart, she knew for a fact that it was love. A glow started to soften her stone scarf back into fabric and swirled around both of them. Warmth returned to her petrified flesh as disbelief took over Eleos' expression. In all honesty, Max didn't remember the precise mechanics of her scarf.
But Eleos did.
Neither of them noticed the claws bursting with violet energy slashing through the air until they cleaved through the arm holding Max up. Max dropped to the ground, the limp limb releasing its hold as it splapped next to her, and watched as Mandy used her other paw to cleave through Eleos' chest and rip it to dust. Max wanted to stop her, but she couldn't even stop herself from falling. When the back of her rib cage slammed into the ground, black covered her vision.
"Is this what you want?
Can this be what you need?
You've lived your life so long
You've lived your life in fear"
The universe begins with mass annihilation. In the instant that nothing becomes everything, is and is not collide and negate. There is an explosion of particles and antiparticles that vaporize each other on contact. In less than a second, these interactions decide the physical laws for the entire lifetime of a universe. Because their nature is to annihilate on contact, one inevitably prevails.
In a perfect world, it would never happen. By every natural law, matter and antimatter should spawn in equal amounts and entirely annihilate each other in the same instant they come into being. Neither should exist. It is unknown how, despite this, universes form.
In this instant, an exception is made. Be it a higher power or inevitability of infinite chance, everything that shouldn't be suddenly is. After this impossible imbalance, the speed of time is decided with the universe's charge. Particles and their antiparticle counterparts are identical in all but charge and time. We can only define one in the language of the other. Of course, that means that what we define as antimatter has no less claim to the title of matter than we do.
Similar to taking the first napkin at a round table, the first to act decides for everyone after.
Just like positive or negative charges, it's a linguistic game used to define the incomprehensible. They are an explosive union that destroys existence. Their connection, their draw, is to become nothing more than the sum of their parts: zero.
If all went as it should, the universe wouldn't be. It is only by denying natural laws that a universe can be born, and the result is total annihilation of an identical existence. Birth is the unnatural destruction of half of what was. A universe must deny one truth to assert another. It goes beyond the laws that governed it in its twenty seconds of infancy to define its own; this definition is death for what is not.
Max was always interested in the universe's beginning. She'd spent most of her life as a pokémon assuming that at least two had to exist for her to live where she did. This impossible imbalance felt like the Hand of God to her. Since the creation of a universe is the creation of time, she hoped that the one she lived in had a much faster pace than her home universe. It let her believe she could return to the home she couldn't remember.
Ironically, she didn't want to leave her life behind. She had accepted the call to adventure (at least, she assumed it was some kind of consensual), but she didn't know if that meant she'd sacrificed her life for a future long after her own. The idea she could live a new life without losing her old comforted her. That is, they did until some televisions and a fucking Gamecube took that comfort away.
The nature of creation is destruction.
Max had spent her life destroying. Somehow, though, she defied the laws of nature and continued. She lived by the grace of luck that defied reality. Eleos' strike to her chest seemed like the most recent example.
"If it hit you one inch to the left, it would've punctured your lung with your own ribs," Neb said. She stood over Max with a look of disbelief that hadn't left since Max woke up. Apparently, she shouldn't be able to be conscious with as much pain as she was in. Losing consciousness worked a bit differently for pokémon. It was a defense mechanism for immediate repair.
Max couldn't will herself to move, but not because of the reality defying pain. For all her bravado while it was happening, that petrification terrified her. It combined her soul with its opposite to leave her empty. Even if the Harmony Scarf had given her meaning back to her, she could never forget the feeling of its absence.
"You're here," Mandy whispered, tapping Max's paw. An involuntary twitch wriggled the hindpaw Max was too terrified to move. Mandy had started doing that on her own after Neb explained Max's phobia. The poor charmander had been running on terror and confusion since she saved Max from what seemed to be the return of the World's Attempted Destroyer.
Mandy looked Max over with wide, uncertain eyes. She'd never say the question aloud, but Max could see it behind her expression. Mandy was trying to gauge if Max could stop Dark Matter again.
"Thank you," Max said. Talking didn't hurt any more than breathing, but she still got a worried glare from Neb. Despite Mandy's touch, Max still felt that emptiness creeping in on the edges of her body. Whatever purpose she'd managed to scrounge together since waking up in the same room she was in now had fled from her heart. She couldn't figure out if she wanted a new meaning this time.
A handkerchief floated over to dab the tears away from her eyes. "Is that from the pain?" Neb asked. Max just stared at her, not even needing to shake her head to answer. Neb looked back with an empathetic smile. "Love is complicated. The best thing is to move on."
"Moving on implies I have anywhere else to go," Max said.
"Love?" Mandy hissed under her breath. She tapped Max's paw again while using her other paw to hold up her own head.
"You do, Max," Neb said. She shook her head, looking over Max's crumpled form. "Even if you can't see it… I'm sorry, but it's not safe for you anymore."
Max stared up at the ceiling, not sure if she cared about her own safety. She couldn't admit that to Neb, at least not out loud, but caring about herself brought her here. It convinced Eleos she'd outgrown loving it. Eleos had never moved past their first meeting, still defining her success in opposition to its own happiness (if it could even feel happiness).
It was Dark Matter, not antimatter, but it didn't mind filling the role.
Max looked up at Mandy, still staring off with despondent eyes. The whole situation was a lot to take in, especially since she'd only found out who Max really was a day ago. As weird as it sounded, Max wondered if she was right to push Mandy away the first time. Charmander didn't have good luck around her.
After blinking a few times, Mandy saw Max looking at her. She tapped Max's paw again and asked, "Need anything?"
Max shook her head and started to turn back up at the ceiling, saying, "Just thinking." Halfway there, though, the muscles in her neck revolted. A sudden cramp twisted the crook of her neck in on itself. "Neck," she whimpered while she still could.
A familiar dread chilled her. The cramp twitched her muscles against her will, locking her in place. She couldn't move it. She couldn't move. She could feel the stone spreading from her neck to her throat. Her lungs were hollow. At least her stone chest couldn't hurt; at least her damned soul would have familiar company.
Mandy pulled her arms to sit her up and sat behind her. She pressed her claws along the muscles to feel where they tensed and jabbed her knuckles in. Her warmth also helped to relax the muscles. "You're okay," Mandy whispered. "You're here."
Max didn't want to feel relief, but she felt it anyway. She'd braced for oblivion, but it hadn't come. She was ready for death, and then she lived. The worst pains of her life came, and yet she continued living. Time continued to pass, pushing the destruction of creation further into the infinite past. Petrifying felt like meeting her antiparticle, but her soul and body still remained after. Time wouldn't stop for her.
She looked down at her open paw. It was hers. It was flesh. She could still move and, whether she wanted to or not, she would. The time was going to pass whether she sat there or moved. If the cramp was any indication, her body had a clear bias.
"Thank you," she said. Mandy leaned forward to give the most gentle hug from behind possible, barely touching her to avoid any added weight to her skeleton. Max still had people around her. It felt wrong to enjoy, wrong to appreciate in the moment, yet she did, and her smile came regardless of her inner turmoil at its presence.
Another presence came, as well. Paws thumped against the ground right outside, coming closer and closer until stopping all at once for a second to precede a sudden thud to the window above. "Hi," Sam said from her perch.
"Sam!" Neb shouted, flinching back. She glanced at Max with concern. "I'm not sure that Max-"
"Hey, Sam!" Max cheered (as best she could). "Come on in!" Her own surprise met Neb's. Max watched Sam drop from the window, then let her gaze drift to the wall. She almost couldn't believe she was smiling, and she could feel an equally as befuddled gaze from Neb.
"Mandy, go tell Sam I need to talk to Max first," Neb said.
"Sure," Mandy said with a simple nod and a thumb's up. She'd stumbled into more information than even she ever wanted to pry for already, so she didn't seem eager to ask Neb for details. As she went for the door, Neb kept her eyes on Max.
"You seem chipper," Neb said. She circled Max halfway to the side opposite the wall. "Stretch if you like, but let's get you something to lean on." Max nodded and started to get up, but Neb was quick on the draw, lightly nipping the nape of Max's neck to drag her backwards. A whimper squeaked itself out of Max as her only protest.
Max leaned gently against the wall when Neb let go. It gave her more relief than she'd expected, enough that she could follow Neb's advice by ever so lightly rolling her shoulders. Wiggling her neck on top of that turned out to take the rest of her energy, leaving her slumped against the wall. Exhausted, but less tense.
"I don't really know, either," Max said. She'd felt Neb staring the whole time, but ignored it while she tried to think it through herself. "It caught me off guard, too."
"Max, I've seen you pretend before," Neb said. She leered a bit at Max, but tempered it with light pets between the chu's ears. It was an accusation, but only because she didn't have a better answer available. "Even you usually do better than that, though." She tried to chuckle with a barely audible exhale. "You sure you don't know where this turnaround came from?"
Max passively nodded even while she started to come up with a half-baked hypothesis. Her mind hadn't moved past that conversation with Eleos yet, not until she had some new way forward. Maybe it still wouldn't if she could find one. As far as what had changed, though, she had one pretty good candidate.
"I feel different, now," she said with a gentle nod to her bandaged tail. Neb had found out about her new prescriptions after scraping her off the ground and preparing to administer them while the mouse lay comatose. "I never cared what happened to me before because… it never felt like me. I never felt attached to it. It never felt like mine."
She reached her paw out to clench it, test the strength. It was still weak, yet felt stronger than it had before. "I kinda just chalked it up to, y'know," she mumbled, "not being born like this." It wasn't just a paw. It was a part of her.
"It's only been a few days," she said, her paw opening again at her command. "But I finally feel like I'm in a body that's mine." Max squeaked in surprise when a cheek suddenly nuzzled into her own. The embarrassed sparks didn't do more than tingle Neb. She wrapped her paws around Neb before she could consider a hug's consequences, but she managed a restrained squeeze. "Thank you."
"I'm happy for you," Neb whispered, then pulled away before Max would have liked (before eternity's end). "But I'm worried for you, too." She watched Max's soft smile slip. A shard of guilt cut its way into Max's chest. "You're not convincing me you're over this so soon."
"Nothing's over yet," Max whimpered. Neb and Mandy seemed to fundamentally misunderstand what really happened between them. "It'll come around." That comforted Max, but it did the opposite for Neb. Beyond a classic example of denial, Neb had already explained the concerns for Max's safety if Eleos did return.
"I don't know," Max said, repeating the same insufficient answer she'd started with. "It's all still fresh." Glancing at her tail, her head shook in a cloud of overwhelming disbelief. The week after her battle with Jake had nearly felt boring with how little happened, and then her entire life tore itself to pieces and reformed in seconds. She was too close to the Bang to know this new universe's laws.
"I should've just let you be happy," Neb grumbled. She gave Max another, quicker nuzzle and pulled away with an exaggerated sigh. "Could you stop giving me so much to worry about."
"I'm trying!" Max shouted back. The sudden outburst came before she could notice, but an ache in her chest didn't let her miss it. Her paw went to clutch her chest, but she had to keep it from applying the slightest bit of pressure. "Sorry," she whimpered.
One half of a familiar pill floated to her mouth. She didn't have the strength to question it until she'd already swallowed it. Neb answered the raised ear and brow with a cup of water.
"Extenuating circumstances," Neb said. "Now, drink before I change my mind and float that pill back out." The cup tipped into Max's mouth and met absolutely no resistance. As it turned out, Max was more thirsty than she realized, and she quickly grabbed the cup to gulp the rest of the cup in earnest. It floated out of her paws before she could get more than two extra mouthfuls. "Slow," Neb admonished.
"Chuuuu," Max whined.
"Are you sure you're ready to see Sam?" Neb asked, ignoring the childish complaint. It managed to wipe the disappointment off Max's expression, too, with the very beginnings of a smile teasing the edges of her lips. "All right, I'll go get-" The door opened.
"Hi," Sam said. She stepped through the door and politely closed it behind, then walked over with barely restrained excitement. Max could practically hear supersonic bounces in every step to shake out the excess energy. When Neb shuffled between them to prevent another tackle, though, Sam rolled her eyes. "C'mon, I'm not gonna do that again."
"Hey," Max said, giving Neb a disarming pat.
Sam walked around Neb to sit while glancing over Max's form with a frown (a look Max wished she wasn't quite so used to). "Sorry," Sam said. Max was raising her paw to wave the concern away when Sam's eyes shot to the bandages on her torn tail. "Oh, are you a girl now?"
Neb looked at Max in a mini panic, but Max was chuckling a bit. "Trying, at least," she said.
"Great, boys suck anyway," Sam said with a sagely nod. She started to roll back up but stopped halfway with a disappointed pout. Instead, she held her head up with her paw, resting her elbow on her bone. "I wish I could hug you."
"I mean, as long as you're gentle," Max started to say, but Neb gave her a soft glare. Sam seemed a lot more mature, but restraint might not be in the cards yet. "Fist bump?" Leaning didn't go far, so she just lifted her paw and waited for Sam to reciprocate. Sam flicked her eyes at Neb with a silent question while she did, and Max nodded with a shrug.
"So, that all you came to say?" Max asked with a smirk. No one would bounce with excitement to see her without another compounding reason.
"Yeah, kinda," Sam said, evaporating Max's smirk. "I'm just waiting for you to tell me something." Did she want to play a game of some sort? "Mom said you wanted to see me?"
"Oh," Max said. Sam didn't know, so Max 'got' to break the news. In hindsight, this was pretty restrained for a Sam that already knew. "Right, yeah. I do, right." She glanced to her left to avoid Sam's stare and saw Neb raising a brow out of the corner of her eye as a result. Neb didn't know, either, though that probably didn't matter.
"What's the big deal?" Sam asked. "Do you need girl lessons or something?"
"Chu!" Max shouted back.
"Sam, please," Neb said. This time, Max didn't mind the intrusion, "She's already taking girl lessons with me," until she did. Max bit back a growl while the other two chuckled at her expense. Kids really did grow up too fast—Sam didn't make fun of her before.
"That's not," Max forced through grit teeth. "What I wanted to ask." Their chuckles faded to a halt while she tried to scrap together enough dignity to return to the relevant topic. She wasn't quite ready, though. She needed to stall a little. "So, your mom said you like… uh, Dungeons?" She hadn't realized Shan had given her very few on-boarding topics for this.
"Yeah, kinda," Sam said. Any chance at clarifying died when Neb held back a chuckle at the painfully awkward exchange.
Max turned to her and grumbled, "Why are you even here?"
"It's fun to watch you squirm," Neb said.
Max let out a sigh, rubbing her eyes with her paws. She already knew what it felt like to be prey thanks to Dungeon Sickness, but Neb taught her how it felt for a predator to play with her. Surprisingly it wasn't really a fun experience, but Neb always seemed to enjoy it.
"Whatever," she mumbled. It usually didn't bother her this much. Maybe the morphine and heinous amounts of pain had something to do with that. Both worked fairly well at making her too tired.
A scaly paw rubbed at her shoulder. "It's all right," Sam said. "Let it out."
The mistaken gesture made Max chuckle. "Thank you," she said, pulling her head out of her paws. Sam towered over her. Max flinched back a bit—wasn't she taller than Sam? "Wh-whoah." She was sitting, but she wasn't sure standing would close the gap. "Did you get bigger?"
Sam rolled her eyes and groaned, "Ugh, not you, too!" She pulled her paw back to start spinning her bone on it with a chuckle. "Everyone says that. I honestly expected better from you." Tossing her bone up, she snatched it out of the air with her other paw to cross her arms and judgmentally shake her head down at Max. "Did you ever consider that you got smaller?"
Max felt her chest convulse when she tried to hold back her laugh and briefly saw white. "No," she wheezed while her ears started to ring. "I hadn't. Good point." She considered pushing her luck with Neb and asking for even more morphine, but she didn't even have the air to ask if she wanted to.
"I guess I'm just that smart," Sam said. "You should let me join your team." The shine of a chuckle remained in her eyes enough that Max could tell she was joking, though the prideful declaration was at least a little genuine. Max could almost feel the hope that Sam was already trying to squash in her own mind. Little did Sam know that Max had the perfect punchline to her joke.
"Y'know what, yeah," Max wheezed as casually as she could; Sam froze in place. "You should join." Sam's eye twitched, making Max's smile spread even wider. Even now, Sam showed impressive levels of restraint for her age (though Max was apparently a terrible judge of proper behavior for her age). Max figured she could go ahead and squash the next defense. "I already cleared it with your mom."
"Max, please," Neb scolded and quickly turned to Sam. "She's still hurting a lot, Sam. She probably doesn't know what she's saying." While Neb shook her head in disbelief, Sam kept her eyes glued to Max's very clearly lucid face. Considering her history, Max couldn't really blame Neb for assuming she was lying.
When Neb turned to scold Max further, though, she saw exactly what Sam had. With just a glance, it was obvious Max was serious. "Max, did Shan really…?" Neb asked. Max didn't need to answer. Already shaking her head, Neb mumbled something about Shan being ridiculous under her breath. Probably the most normal thing Max had heard about this whole thing: disbelief about Sam's assumed maturity.
So, of course, Neb had to follow it up with, "At least wait until she's two."
"You sing in tune, but you're so out of touch
Tell me, what is that you love so much?
Was it the way you shared with all of your soul?
Or the freedom of the love you stole?"
The night took its reign over the sky suddenly, as expected for the Winter months. Max had already been exhausted enough to sleep before it had, so she didn't mind the extra help. She'd not been napping an hour before an unfortunate shift in her sleep sent her careening out of rest and into pain. Neb had left her a night's worth of medicine and water, at least.
Taking it didn't help her get back to sleep. Thanks to the little nap, she had just enough energy to torture herself with her thoughts. That talk with Eleos played in her mind like a slow tap dripping water into her skull, slowly but surely boring through no matter how hard she tried to shake it off.
She'd never expected Eleos to hit her.
Many, many times before, it had declared its life's purpose to be her well-being. The last time it hit her, even, had been for exactly that. It needed to prove she wasn't strong enough, at least not at the time. It wanted to show her limits to her. Neb might have yelled her lungs out over it, but it certainly worked. That spar had been to protect her.
Max couldn't help feeling the same spirit in the earlier blow. Telling her over and over again that she needed to abandon it for her happy ending, maybe that blow had been its attempt to prove it. It needed her to hate it so it could leave because it didn't believe she could live a happy life with it.
It felt too familiar. She wanted to believe she was projecting. Unfortunately, she knew it better than that. If its face hadn't ripped itself off in rage, she might've believed this to be an elaborate trick to show her how the other half lived.
It's face—that was another horrifying detail. Eleos itself seemed surprised by the expression. Emoting always came unnaturally to it. It was a courtesy for others (though it seemed to have some fun with it). When it first ripped its mouth open trying to smile had been a mistake that it worked hard to correct. Its expressions weren't exactly convincing, but they were passable.
That rage had been a lot more than convincing. Just thinking about it sent chills down her spine. The terror was manageable, though, for the same reason that the rest of these thoughts hadn't brought her to tears yet. There was a noticeable void of her emotions for a while that made it hard for her to move on.
It's hard to do when it hadn't left yet.
"I'm waiting," Max told the air. They'd spent enough time apart that she could tell the difference in her emotions. The difference was more subtle than usual, though. Either it was starving itself again or trying to avoid her notice. The latter seemed the most compelling when her despair suddenly spiked before stabilizing again. "Don't worry, your cover was already blown."
The air chilled in a familiar way. A reluctant draft seeped up from the floorboards along with a thin smoke. The wisps swirled in on themselves, drawing an unwilling ooze from between the gaps in the floor beneath that joined with the smoke, spinning into a ball.
Despite the draft it caused, it was utterly silent as it pulled itself out of the Earth. Eleos seemed unwilling to touch any atom in the room or cause any slight sound. Once its physical form stopped seeping from the floor, it remained a ball of darkness surrounded by clouds. Max waited for it to turn into a charmander but realized it had no intention of doing so.
"How long have you known?" Eleos asked.
"Since Sam showed up," Max said. It had barely been a guess at the time, closer to wishful thinking, but she could say it seemed obvious in hindsight. She thought it'd make her feel clever for figuring it out, but noticing things had lost its novelty thanks to her awareness. "Had enough time to think things over?"
A silent bolt of lightning struck the dark sphere from the clouds surrounding it. Fractures cracked and spidered across its surface until suddenly smashing back in on themselves. Max could feel the conflict eating it from within. She didn't recognize the tells of its physical form, but she could feel the pulses of emotion overwhelming it.
"I had left at first,"Eleos said. It felt like a non-sequitur to Max, but she didn't have the energy to ask it to get to the point. "I thought you were simply too delusional to realize what was so obvious to me." Its surface started to fracture again as dark lightning flashed over its form. "It was only on your waking that I realized the full depths of my failure.
"In the depths of your despair, I felt the call of your soul again." Its unwillingness to take form as a charmander made more sense, now. It could barely hold together in its default form. The sheer effort it took for Eleos to be there set the blades of a blender off in Max's stomach.
"Eleos, please," Max begged. She already knew what it thought that meant. "That doesn't mean what you think." The true pain, though, came from knowing it wouldn't listen to her.
"I know," Eleos said, but the fresh pain of their last conversation deafened her to its words.
"No, stop!" Max shouted. "Listen!" It didn't make a sound, but Max hurried too much to notice. "I didn't suddenly become too happy to love you!" She wished she could sit up for emphasis, hoping the pleading stare got the same across. "I still do." Tears started to cloud her vision; in its attentive silence, she felt the same unwillingness to listen from earlier.
Despite the pain, she rolled over to start crawling towards it. She felt weak, out of breath, and, above all else, exhausted. Like the end of their first fight, though, it was more than physical exhaustion. In the depths of her soul, she felt her heart strain as it reached out again. The terror of getting scorned again couldn't hold her back, but it drained even more of the waning energy she had. She reached its core.
She faltered trying to stand, but her tail managed to correct her balance before she fell. Tears fell from her eyes as she reached a paw out to feel its fractured surface. "You're not someone I'm going to outgrow," she said, voice cracking with every word. This close to it, her heartbeat raced; the renewed memory of stone crawling up her form fought her with fear, but she wouldn't let it stop her. "No matter what you do to me, I'm never going to leave you."
Despite already agreeing with her, Eleos let her have the moment. Maybe it saw the same parallel to their first meeting, or maybe it was too hurt itself to correct her. "… yes," it said.
Ready for rebuke, Max flinched at its voice. When the word processed, though, she switched to confusion. "Y-you… what?" she asked.
In its base form, Eleos reciprocated her touch the only way it could, pressing into her paw. "I was a fool," it said. Crackling lightning of dark regret shot through its miasma, not even registering as touching Max when they shot right through her. This close, she could feel the pain it wrestled with like the air before rain.
"I refused to listen," Eleos said. "Each accusation, I realize now, was its own confession." Max's breath faltered a bit trying to stay standing, but she held strong. "In my self-flagellation, I refused to accept that I could be wrong." Max's legs started to shake. "I was too entrenched in my own despair to see your connection to me for what it really was."
Max pushed herself farther than she could handle for its sake. She needed to be there for it, no matter how hard it was to push the necessary oxygen through her blood, but the act took its toll on her. Her tail couldn't correct her balance enough to stop her legs from giving out. In a last ditch effort, she tried to put some of her weight onto Eleos.
An orange, scaled paw formed to wrap around hers. Its heartless form dissolved and dissipated into flesh. Another arm reached out to grab her other arm as she fell, a chest forming for it to pull her against. With masterful expertise, it managed to hold her without putting any strain at all on her rib-cage.
Its charmander head formed to look longingly down at her, dark eyes turning to milky white voids forming deep, haunting indigo irises. "When you loved me despite this, I lashed out to hurt you," it said with a pained glance to the bruise on her fractured rib-cage. "I deluded myself into believing it was a way to show you the truth, to protect you, yet it was so clearly to protect the disdain I hold for myself."
Max reached a paw up to wipe her eyes, then to hold its cheek. The damp of her paw sizzled against the heat of its form. Even with it holding her up, she struggled to stay upright.
"In essence," Eleos said. A dark and pained smile cut across its lips. "I acted not out of love for you, but hatred for myself." Max's stance started to falter again, and so it began to set her down. She couldn't bear to let it go yet, so it went down with her, letting her head rest in the crook of its neck. Its gentle, loving touch revealed it couldn't bear to let go, either. Not yet.
An endless stream of thoughts ran through her mind. She desperately wanted to reply to the laying bear of its heart, but she couldn't. No words were enough. She could only hold it as she started to weep. Already, she could feel the impermanence of this embrace.
"Would that I could ask your forgiveness," Eleos said. Max couldn't see its mouth, but she could feel its ironic smile. "Alas, I am certain you would give it freely." It shook its head in freshly acquired realization at the ridiculousness of the quote. "No, it was never the abundance of your forgiveness, but the absence of my own."
"Sounds familiar," Max whimpered, indifferent to the slip. She couldn't care.
"Indeed," Eleos chuckled, shaking its head. "I always silently dismissed your insistence we shared in any pain." It started to pull away, and Max clutched it tighter. She knew she'd have to let go soon, but she wasn't ready yet. As the smallest mercy it could offer, Eleos relented and let her. "I see now, however, that we are more alike than I ever could have known."
"Eleos, please," Max begged. Deeper than her mind, than any thought, she could feel where it was headed with this. Maybe it was because she'd shared her head with it for so long that she could see this goodbye coming from the moment it had appeared. "Don't leave."
Another sob shook through her. The pain in her chest couldn't compare to the hurt in her heart. Ever since waking up in the hospital, she'd had to contend with the absence of every friend she held dear. The fresh yet ancient connection with Oshton had severed in a single conversation. This stunt had put a fresh barrier of the trust she'd broken between her and Neb. Even Cori and Goon felt more distant than usual.
She couldn't lose Eleos.
"I need you," she wept. Her fractured chest finally hurt enough to temper her sobs, but the flow of tears only grew.
Eleos held her gentle and tight as it lay down with her, feeling the exhaustion take its toll on her. "You are stronger than you know," it whispered, its own voice cracking. Max's ear flicked at the sound. Eleos had never emoted through its voice, not like this. "Please, I beg you. Now that I accept my worth to you as it is, believe me when I say this."
"No." Max could already hear the words before it spoke them.
"You love me, but you do not need me," it said.
"Please," Max said, trying to hold it tighter. The exhaustion and the pain slackened her arms. "Please, don't go."
"I must," Eleos wept. A warm, sulfuric trickle dripping down its face and onto Max's fur silenced her objection before it came. "There is much," its every word crackled with sobs, "I've left to learn, much I've to meditate on, and more that I must accept that you've taught me." It squeezed her ever so slightly tighter; Max felt the tension in its simulated muscles as it fought against its desires not to squish her ribs into her lungs.
"It will not be forever," it said. "I could not bear this parting were it so." Max felt the slightest mending of her broken heart. Eleos shook its head. "I cannot bear it now." It finally released her; Max was too weak to hold on. They stared into each other's eyes, the pained sorrows of goodbye contorting their faces beyond recognition.
"I've no idea where I'll go," Eleos said. With a shake of its head, it managed a chuckle. "Though I've always been partial to a vacation to the tropics, as you know." Max bit her lip, trying not to giggle and sending a pitiful shock into it when she couldn't resist. It only smiled wider.
"I'll miss you," Max whimpered. She struggled against despair to beg for one last kiss. Despite losing the fight, Eleos wordlessly leaned down to plant its lips on hers. Faces contorted in shared hurt, it was their simplest and most passionate kiss. Typical of any best, it ended far, far sooner than she was ready for. "Thank you."
Eleos pulled up with obvious difficulty. Even while both of them accepted it, she could see the deep struggle it went through as it failed to convince itself to take her eyes out of its gaze. For one last delay, it reached down to cup her cheek again.
"There's so much I'll miss about you," Eleos said. Tears continued to stream from its eyes, the few that didn't sizzle away dripping onto Max. "To list this multitude would only serve to diminish the value of its whole." Another sob wracked through Max and she had to fight for consciousness against the pain. "Oh, but the progress you've made already."
Great, just like Neb. If it complimented her any more, she might vomit. As if hearing her wish, though, it went in a slightly different direction.
"I must admit, your many, many despairs are delectable," it said. "Grief, anger, disdain, dysphoria, fear, and anxiety." It laughed despite itself. "A true feast of angst in every moment." Max barely managed to shock it again. It chuckled again, rubbing the offending cheek. "When I return, however, I expect these each to fade. If not entirely, then mostly."
Its form started to fade, but this wasn't because it struggled to hold itself together. Smoke first came from its legs, dissolving them into nothing but a purple miasma and tearing up the rest of its body as it climbed, leaving the paws holding Max with its face until the very last moment.
With one last, pained look into her eyes, it disappeared into smoke, and then into nothing. "Goodbye," echoed after it disappeared completely. The full extent of the exhaustion finally started to set in. Max lost the fight for her consciousness, but not before a whispered goodbye of her own. With that, she fell immediately into slumber.
As she lay, late in the night and deep in rest, its last words played again and again in her mind. She cherished each one deeply, the only connection she'd have to it for so long. One particular word, though, held a unique revelation that she only realized in the deepest depths of slumber.
"Dysphoria," she mumbled in her sleep. Moments later, her eyes shot open.
Eleos identified that exact emotion.
Her lungs suddenly burst with a scream loud and painful enough to knock her out the moment it left her lips: "YOU FUCKING KNEW?!"
"I can hear your words as they pass me by
I can hear your songs as they're sung in time
'To love's to forgive
Love the sinner, hate the sin'
I can hear these words and make them mine"
End of Part Two: Carpé Diem
Keep an eye out for PMD: (Another) First Kiss