Chapter Text
“Is that really her? She looks so…empty. Never thought I’d see that face again.”
“She helped me find a friend and companion to pickle vegetables with; I thought something was fishy when she just up and vanished. Kamado won’t even admit what he did to her; I bet she was forced to run for her life, and poor Rei got locked up and interrogated as an accomplice.”
“I don’t know, what if she’s been replaced by a Zoroark and this is all a trick? She doesn’t even speak or leave her house anymore; that’s a changeling if I’ve ever seen one. Scared of being caught.”
“Shut up! Do you want Ingo to yell at you again?”
“I’m just saying, it’s suspicious.”
“And I’m just saying you’re stupid and your half-baked theories are just paranoid gossip. My uncle came back from the war, and between the soul-scars and getting his throat sliced open he barely talks. Gets by with writing and notecards, mostly, and got real excited about a deaf veteran who wanted to make some kind of hand-language.”
“…ah, shit. It’s probably soul-scars, isn’t it. Rei spent so much time studying pokemon with Laventon, and the way he and that sky-faller talk, you’d think they were brother and sister. He’d be the first to notice if his best friend was replaced, especially by a pokemon he knows all about.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I just… she was blunt and kind of incomprehensible, don’t get me wrong. But she was the kind of person to give others the benefit of the doubt. So maybe I’d rather be like that than a fearful wreck like Kamado.”
“That doesn’t explain where she got the soul-scars, though… this is the kid who tamed the Alpha rapidash of the field lands!”
“She’s eighteen, but go on.”
“Eighteen? She’s tiny though; I thought she was just a precocious thirteen year old this whole time— anyways. She’s not scared of Pokémon, she staged a coup against Commander Cyllene on a whim, she can survive on her own and tame the wilds like it’s nothing, she got kidnapped and poisoned and came back with nothing but a scowl and blood between her teeth. The girl’s fearless— so what exactly could have scared her so bad that she’s got soul-scars and won’t even talk to anyone?”
“…I don’t know. Keep your voice down; here she comes.”
Sabi was falling, her body terrifyingly stiff and her vision going dark, and then she wasn’t.
She drifted along the paths of fate aimlessly for a little while, and then she was in a strange place with dirty floors and flickering lights, and there was a dark-haired girl with a knife clutched in her hand. Blood seeped slowly from a wound on her head, but her eyes were wide and alert. Not even the flareon on her lap, kneading biscuits into her thighs, could distract her, and Sabi had a feeling in her gut— call it a premonition— that something important was about to happen.
(It was always important to someone, somewhere, even if she didn’t understand it.)
Then a man’s voice, talking to someone. “...think she might be connected to the Plasma incident,” he said. “I’ve got her warning up in the break room right now with my flareon, but she’s in pretty bad shape. I think she hit her head on the concrete; she was passed out outside when I found her.”
“Who are you?” Sabi muttered to the stranger. “Why now?”
“Uh, sure. Long black hair, can’t be much older than thirteen, very thin,” the man muttered listlessly, walking into view. That’s when the girl saw him and flicked open her knife, shoving the pokemon from her lap with an almost pained cry. “Shit— what are you doing?”
The girl bared her teeth in a familiar threat and raised the knife to her braid— it only looked black because it was wet, Sabi realized. Normally it was dark grey, and those colorless eyes were the same, even though her cheeks were hollow and her forehead was dripping blood as she desperately tried to hack her own hair off before the man could stop her.
“I have to get it off!” she cried out, jabbing an elbow into his stomach when he tried to pry the knife away from her white-knuckled fingers, tearing through the strands in a fervor. “I have to get it off! I don’t want it! Don’t touch me!”
There was very little Sabi could do to change fate. She saw a lot of depressing things. But this time, it meant something, and for the first time she looked at her own hair and wondered why she kept it so long.
And then she was back in her body, waiting for her limbs to get the message.
“...just a couple minutes. This is a normal amount of time— Um. Ingo, is he trying to eat me.”
“No, my Lord is simply trying to get your attention. If he was trying to eat you, he would have succeeded already.”
“Well, I’m not that good at reading bird pokemon— stop snickering, Elle, you weren’t any better with Lady Sneasler! ”
“S—ngh. Hhn— ss— Snea-mom.”
“Damn right she is. If I ever see Melli again, I’m running him over.”
“Last I was aware, the former Warden Melli was replaced with a man around my age, by the name of Orro. He’s an easygoing fellow, and told me that Melli and Adaman are working out their differences, whatever that means. It’s quite possible that your leg will be healed and you’ll no longer need that wheelchair by the time you next see him, if ever.”
“I can confirm; It’s already healing up nicely. I may have to steal you as my assistant if only to see those crutches of yours! I’d give it until springtime before the bone itself is healed and we can get you started on physical therapy, and you likely won't need the chair anymore.”
“I know what I said. I’m running him over,” Rei insisted. “Oh shit— hi Sabi. You doing okay after that?”
“Why’d you cut your hair?” Sabi muttered, pushing herself up to a sitting position. She’d been laid out on her side, head cushioned by a big fur-lined blanket, and there was a man she didn’t recognize with violet eyes and a shinx kitten swaddled at his chest. “Who are you?”
“My name is Alec,” the man said in a gentle voice. “I heard you started having something like a seizure just outside the doors, so your friends brought you inside, and made sure you were all right. Unfortunately, the growlithe got too agitated and had to be put in their balls.”
“A-gi-ta-ted,” Sabi repeated slowly, wiping off her face. Bleagh, puppy slime. Then she turned to the subject of her vision, who was making something out of yarn with an expression of intense concentration. “Hey! Ellllle, don’t ignore me! Why'd you cut your hair?”
“She’s currently suffering a trauma-induced muteness; please don’t mistake this for scorn,” Alec tried to explain. Sabi ignored him in favor of giving Ingo her best pleading eyes.
“Do the hand language thing, the slow one.” Sabi insisted. "It's important, promise."
Slowly, hesitantly, Elle complied. Alec took Sabi’s temperature, fussed over her damp hair and got her a fresh towel. Hand sign after hand sign, a language Sabi couldn’t read, and the impatience was driving her crazy.
“She says…. ‘I was tired of people calling me pretty and touching my hair like they owned me. I am no one’s…property,’” Ingo translated haltingly, with an expression of deep concern. “‘I cut it off so no one could own me ever again.’”
Rei stared at her with an expression of increasing horror. “I thought you said it was easier to take care of that way?”
“Th-that too,” Elle stammered, her voice weak and hesitant.
“I think I saw it— there was a small girl in a hoodie, with a knife…” Sabi scrunched up her face, trying to remember. “You cut off your hair with a knife. It was wet and you were scared, and your head was bleeding. You were crying, and there was a man talking into his bracelet and he pulled the knife from your hands, and you bit him.”
Elle winced, but nodded. “Y-eahh.”
“How many people have you—” Ingo began to ask, and then stopped, deciding he didn’t want the answer to that question.
“I can see how things are connected. Important moments. I don’t know how many people you bit but I know it was important when you cut your hair, that was a moment that changed your fate somehow, and I’m trying to find out where your fate leads from here,” Sabi said, screwing up her face in concentration. Trying to remember, trying to pull together the pieces and fragments of visions to make a coherent picture. Sinnoh. Adaman. Volo. Threads and knots, time and space, a tapestry. A tapestry that was unraveling, here and now, or very close to it. It had always been unraveling. Sabi’s world. And once the sky-fallers left, it would only unravel faster.
“Oh,” Sabi realized. “This is where it all ends.”