Sojaveña Wilds Silver Riverside

[Shiny Phantump]

Gladion found Lillian sat by the edge of the Silver River, staring up at the night sky with he back pointedly facing away from Lorrel's red star. As expected. She'd called him out here. To talk about... something.

"Hey, Lillian. I'm here. Is this..." Important? Their time in this world was ending, at best. At worst, it might be the world itself. Nothing between the two of them could compete on that scale. But it was obviously important to her, at least.

Neither of them would remember this back home either way. This wasn't going to help them get their affairs in order, it wasn't going to help them prepare for the fight against Arthur and Lorrel. But it was late enough at night that it wasn't as if he could say he was busy, the most this meeting would waste was some sleep for them both.

She took one last moment to take in the stars before turning her attention to him.

"Yes. It's important. Back at the Shining Congress, I was talking to those pieces of Gladius, and I..."

She choked on the end of her sentence. What, I realized I was jealous of how much he thought about his sister? Not a chance he'd take that one well. I'm upset that you're more comfortable being apart than I am? No, that one sounded pathetic. I feel like you're surprised I ended up here instead of Hazel. Do you even care that I'm here? That wasn't quite true. He wasn't indifferent, just... evasive. Like he'd moved on over the last four years, while she'd remained stuck in place, frozen in time. Pretending to have changed to avoid looking childish.

"There's a distance between us that isn't there with him. You're... hard to talk wrap my head around. Not even having a read on your emotions gives me a read on why. Even now, talking to you right, I'm nervous. You know that?"

Gladion grimaced, but didn't interrupt. Lillian couldn't see it on his face, she still wasn't looking, but she could tell with her sense.

"We still care about each other, I know I do, and I can tell you do. It's just..."

She trailed off again, and this time Gladion did step in.

"I don't walk around trailing my damage on the floor behind me like spilled entrails." He laughed. Lillian did not. "Yeah. Makes it harder to tell what my damage is. 'Cause I've grown up in ways Gladius failed to. It's unfamiliar. He's probably more like the train wreck of a twin sibling you knew than I am now. If it's any consolation, Laura Weir put in some not inconsiderable work on that front. You might have a chance to back home, if you want to for whatever reason."

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Lillian's eyes dug into him. "Absolutely not. No, you're definitely the continuation of what you were like when we parted." Confusing and uncommunicative. "But he's honest. Like the, uhh, damage on the floor thing, if you wanna be mean about it."

Gladion sat down next to her, but stared down at the river instead of meeting her eyes.

"So," he said, trying to keep his voice from sounding pithy in hopes it might counterbalance what he was about to say, "Is that what you want, or not? I'm getting mixed messages."

"I don't want you to be emotionally damaged. Available, maybe? I've tried to be, but... you know. I just want to be able to talk to you without... us both freezing up."

Gladion furrowed his brow, insofar as he still could. "I'm not freezing up. I just don't have much to say." (But he was nervous too, no matter how cool he tried to play it. He couldn't hide that from her.)

"Really?" Lillian furrowed her brow. "Nothing?"

Gladion shrugged. "Fine. It feels like you want something from me, ever since we first saw each other, and I don't know what it is or how to give it to you. You must know what it is, it's what you called me here to talk about. Not much I can do if you don't spill."

Coming up short of an answer, Lillian winced. How could she expect him to figure out what needed, when she couldn't articulate it herself.

"No, I just..." I feel like you don't care about me despite having proof of the contrary intermittently blasted into my sensory cortex. That's not fair to you. "Can't quite put my finger on it."

That was a half-truth at best. She knew it, she had already put her finger on the deeply misplaced jealousy of a version of herself whose life was undoubtedly much worse off, but didn't have the backbone to give it a voice without finding the root, a more accurate and less fucked up way to express it.

Gladion, too, could tell she was holding back. It was an instinct honed from spending his formative life around her. The false starts, starting conversations and pulling back. Despite her attempts to present herself as a bold new person unlike anything she was before, the shadow her anxiety cast over conversations hadn't changed, and neither had its tells. This was important to her, but he couldn't get her to crack.

“Well, there’s something else we can do. Let it out in the open and give it a fight.”

Lillian narrowed her eyes at him. "A... fight? What? What does that have to do with anything?"

“It’s like, you know, how you feel better after a workout. But like inter-personally. Always works for me. Hell, I'm even tolerating Gladius now.”

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Lillian pulled out her rapier, an awkward process given it was longer than would suit the length of a Kirlia's arm, and flicked it into his cheek without much passion in it.

She narrowed her eyes. “Like that?”

Gladion laughed. In the interest of being sporting, he pushed his Volition towards Fighting-type and threw out a Body Press. One of his stronger moves with a typing to match, but one where her resistances would cancel out the strength gap between them. Unlike her, he at least bothered to put some feeling into it.

“Like this. You don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say. So let’s hash it out in a manner befitting our species. Always worked for me before.”

Gladion used Soul's Volition and became Fighting-type!
Gladion used Protect!
Gladion's Body Press dealt 28 damage to Lillian! It’s not very effective.

As a Kirlia, Lillian didn't have the full range of psychically-symbiotic abilities as a Gardevoir would, but she'd been practicing. Her hidden power had manifested in that area, so it felt important. It was still enough to entwine herself with Gladion's motorics, pooling strength and seeing clean through his evasive maneuvers.

Lillian thrust her rapier into his stupid protect shield with feeling this time, channelling grievances into the blade as ghost energy. She struck again, and a third time until it caved beneath her will.

“What, is this a joke? You think we’re just going to have a little sparring session and then we’ll be normal siblings again? No! We’re strangers to each other now!”

A dull, noxious light crept its way down Lillian’s blade before, with one last flick of her wrist, digging itself into her brother’s hide.

“I don’t understand you at all anymore!”

Lillian used Entwined Soul! +1 Attack for user and target, target cannot evade this turn!
Lillian’s AGILE Shadow Sneak dealt 30 damage to Gladion’s Protect! [Shield-Breaker, Adaptive Element]
Lillian’s Shadow Sneak dealt 40 damage to Gladion’s Protect!
Lillian’s Shadow Sneak dealt 40 damage to Gladion’s Protect! Broken!
Lillian Radiant Focused...
Lillian’s RADIANT Dire Claw dealt 18 damage to Gladion! Poisoned!

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Gladion put on a disaffected voice, like this subject was just boring to him. “Tell me something I don’t already know. Or at least don't say it as if that hasn’t just been the status quo for years before I left.”

But the RKS System sparked again, this time less consciously. He’d tried so hard to communicate what was wrong using inadequate vocabulary and been met with humiliation. His eyes and crest lit up bright red with old self-protective feelings. The shadows which seeped their way into his searing tri-attack further betrayed the effect he’d wanted his steady voice to carry.

“We were kids! You weren’t exactly communicative as a twelve year old, you know that?”

Lillian tried to protect herself from Gladion’s binding light by hacking away at an incoming tendril with her rapier as if it was a machete, to no avail.

“Touché.” The dullness in his voice just a moment ago had already scummed to sarcasm. “That the problem, then? That I didn’t warn you it was coming before I left?”

Gladion Shadow focused…
Mind over Matter: Shrugged off Poison!
Gladion used Soul's Volition and became Fire-type!
Gladion’s STRONG SHADOW Tri-Attack dealt 37 damage to Lillian! Burned!
Gladion used Shining Vigilance! Damage Trapped!

“Oh, sure, yes. The problem was that you didn’t tell me before you left me alone with Mother!”

Lillian noticed that Gladion had totally reneged his layers of barriers in favour of pure offence this exchange. She returned the favour, weaving a soporose spell into her first blow. Her brother staggered back, struggling to pay attention to the conversation and battle at the same time—

“Of course I did. I had to! I got on blockers, I saved Hazel’s life! What, you want me to apologize for that? Fuck off! It’s like you want me to have turned out like Gladius!”

—and choosing the wrong one. She buried a series of rapid blows into his flank, which he failed to even meaningfully attempt to evade, before turning her sword to the stars and channeling her frustrations into it as a wish while she yelled back.

“What, you can’t think of any other solution? You had a plan to escape Mother and the only people you can think of worth helping was the Null?”

She pointed the blade at him. Her wish-spell unleashed itself and pulled Gladion into a nightmare.

Lillian’s Sword Dance! +2 Attack!
Lillian’s Dire Claw dealt 29 damage to Gladion! Drowsy!
Lillian’s AGILE Shadow Sneak dealt 13 damage to Gladion!
Lillian’s Shadow Sneak dealt 17 damage to Gladion!
Lillian’s Shadow Sneak dealt 17 damage to Gladion!
Lillian used Metronome!
Lillian's Nightmare afflicted Gladion!

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Memories of stainless steel walls, of white lace, and a burning desire to be free cut into Gladion’s mind. He was so afraid that she’d come for him, that he’d taste freedom for a day or two and then lose it all over again. Mother— Lusamine may not have even bothered bailing him out of prison. Retribution for leaving her, and a way to dispose of the second child she’d never needed.

Except that, no, that wasn’t what had happened. He shit his eyes tightly and ejected the nightmare from his head. She’d cared so little he’d gotten away. Lillie had been all she wanted.

"You don't think I could've taken you as well, do you? Get real. If I took you, we'd have been hunted to the ends of the earth."

It was an open secret that Lusamine only wanted one heir, it was simpler that way, cleaner. No room for disputes. It’d still worked out with the twins because everyone had always known which one the wanted heir was, and which one was collateral damage.

"She was willing to let me go because she had you. She only wanted one of us. She wanted you. She actually wanted you."

Gladion focused...
Mind over Matter: Broke out of the Nightmare.
Gladion's Body Press dealt 23 damage to Lillian!
Gladion suddenly dropped his guard!

"So I was, what, an acceptable sacrifice to keep her off your back?"

Lillian threw herself into another flurry of quick strikes… but this time Gladion took the blows freely. Shadow pooled beneath him, battering her emotional sense with concentrated resentment.

A horrible feeling washed over her. The details of how her brother’s Umbral move worked weren’t something he’d told her, but raw intuition was enough to tell her it was bad news. She took a step back, then another, then squeezed her eyes shut and raised her blade as if it could protect her.

"What are you doing? Stop that, please! What did I do to deserve this?"

Lillian’s AGILE CRITICAL Shadow Sneak dealt 16 damage to Gladion!
Lillian’s CRITICAL Shadow Sneak dealt 21 damage to Gladion!
Lillian’s CRITICAL Shadow Sneak dealt 21 damage to Gladion!
Lillian called out to Gladion!
It had no effect.

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Her plea went unheard. Gladion was focused purely on what she’d said before it.

"Sacrifice? What sacrifice? She loved you. It was me she hated, she loved you."

His shadow billowing out before concentrating itself into razor threads and surging towards her, piercing her body and heart.

There was no injury, it was a bloodless, incorporeal attack. But she felt it tearing into her aura, burning against her soul.

Lillian let out a scream like broken glass carving gashes into shale and collapsed.

Gladion's Umbral Resentment dealt 112 damage to Lillian! KO!
Gladion focused...

A warm light took Lillian’s body, an attuned reviver seed in her purse diligently serving its purpose. But the glow— the glow grew into something stronger. Lillian felt a fresh surge of power, something greater than before.

Completion.

Gardevoir Lillian Mohn was revived.

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Lillian rose to one knee, then pushed off the ground and leapt into the air. Her rapier twitched, then surged up to her side. Lamellae fluttering in the wind, she did a small twirl at the peak of her jump before stopping, suspended in midair. She reclaimed her rapier, finally the right length for her body, and pointed it down towards Gladion in accusation.

"Loved me? She ignored me!"

With the full power of a Gardevoir’s mind, Lillian dug the mycelium of her psyche into her brother’s thoughts.

In this moment, she loves him, and hates him in equal measure. She doesn't know why he hurt her like that, but she wants him to feel it too. He's jealous that she has something she can only yearn for and wants, and she wants, she needs him to understand that.

"You were the one she thought could succeed her, idiot! That's why she cared when you refused to listen to her! I was a useless, broken child who she ignored and I cannot fathom how you could mistake that for love."

And once again, she turned her rapier to the stars, wishing to them, to light itself for the strength to return her brother’s blow.

The blade began to glow with light. Not starlight, but her own radiance, which ran up her arm and collected around it until its silhouette could be mistaken for that of a broadsword, and then that of a greatsword.

With the force of her mind bearing down on him, holding him still, Gladion wasn’t able to get out of the way as she brought the blade down on his neck with both hands.

Lillian used Entwined Soul! +1 Attack for user and target, target cannot evade!
Lillian Radiant focused...
Lillian used RADIANT Metronome!
Lillian's RADIANT Guillotine dealt 302 damage to Gladion! KO!
Lillian became Dazzled!

New strength from Gladion’s own reviver washed over him, the fight suddenly becoming much more frightening. Even after the move landed, Lillian was still visibly glowing against the night sky. She was going to rupture if she didn’t get her shit under control really fucking soon.

Lillian didn’t look like she cared. She wasn’t afraid of this power. In fact, she looked the furthest from afraid that he’d ever seen.

“Lillie— Lillian, please, we have to stop. That’s too much Radiance. You’re going to explode. Stop.”

Gladion was revived.
Gladion called out to Lillian!

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Lillian raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh.

“Oh, so you want to bow out now that I have the strength to fight back~”

The laughter left as suddenly as it arrived, sublimating into rage in the blink of an eye. Her rapier, still humming with radiance, unleashed that power like a whip twicefold with flicks of Lillian’s wrist.

“No! You started this! You don’t get to call it off now that you’re the one feeling uncomfortable!”

Gladion braced and took the blows. He didn’t think she’d be coming down from this without having to faint, but he couldn’t push her to fight back harder or else she’d just push herself to her breaking point faster. His aura just wasn’t tuned to win a damage race like this, especially if when could float outside the effective range of his body press. It was a no-win situation.

“Fine. I can take it. Just don’t rupture. Promise me.”

“What if I don’t want to do what anyone tells me to this time?”

(But she did listen. She focused. Just for a moment.)

Lillian raised her blade again. She saw Gladion wince, afraid she was going to explode. She was in control! She was finally the one in control, and contrary to his belief, she could handle this power. She could end this battle herself, she just had to sieze the power to do so. A fixed point in space, anchored at the tip of her rapier, began to make eminate a song which sounded as if a music box could weep.

Lillian focused. [Deep Focus, Soothe Bell]
Lillian’s RADIANT Shadow Sneak dealt 15 damage to Gladion!
Lillian’s RADIANT Shadow Sneak dealt 15 damage to Gladion!
Lillian used RADIANT Metronome!
Lillian used RADIANT Perish Song...
Lillian will perish in 2 turns.
Gladion will perish in 2 turns.

Being near the origin of perish song gave Gladion a splitting headache. But, at the same time, he had just been handed a solution to his impossible situation. Now he just had to execute upon it, and he was equipped for that task. He called on some of his own radiance, and the desire to protect Lillian herself from the disaster she was weaving. Gladion's own radiance bound her close to the origin of her perish song as long as he remained nearby.

“I never intended for you to get hurt. I thought you were safe. I wanted you to be safe. Everyone you know or meet loves you, and… and…"

His voice caught in his throat for a moment as he gathered himself.

"I just thought you’d be fine without me.”

Gladion used Shining Vigilance! Damage Trapped!
Gladion focused...
Gladion called out to Lillian!
Gladion used STRONG Protect!

 

[Shiny Phantump]

“That’s stupid! We promised to be there for one another, and you broke it. You were the one person I felt like I could trust!”

Another series of strikes tore through Gladion's Protect, but more importantly gave Lillian offensive momentum. She quickly turned her blade to the stars again, and a circle of iridescent flames curled from the ground and up and into the air around their fight, trapping him there with her. The moonlit shadows of their battle were scoured from the ground by the eerie glow of the fire spin.

“I know what you’re doing, Gladion. You think you can leave me trapped here. Again. And you then you can run away again, and you’ll be fine, and I won’t again. I won’t let you! You can’t do that! You CAN’T do that!”

Lillian gritted her teeth. Concentrate. She had to concentrate. He thought she couldn’t handle all this radiance but she could she could she felt like she could she just had to concentrate and she would be fine. Focus on the little bell. (The song, her brother, the bell. Three things she could hear.) It was getting hard but it wasn’t too hard yet just a little bit longer and it would finally be over.

"You'll stay with me, Brother, in this place. We'll burn up together, fall by each other's sides, like we promised, like we were always meant to."

Lillian’s AGILE RADIANT Shadow Sneak dealt 46 damage to Gladion's Protect!
Lillian’s RADIANT Shadow Sneak dealt 60 damage to Gladion's Protect!
Lillian’s RADIANT Shadow Sneak dealt 60 damage to Gladion's Protect! Broken!
Lillian used RADIANT Metronome!
Lillian's RADIANT Fire Spin dealt 6 damage to Gladion! Damage Trapped!
Lillian focused…

The kinds of old memories that made for good ghost typing were easy for Gladion to reach in this moment. He forced them through his RKS System, sending it sparking again. Because the thing was, he could escape this. He could slip out of the trap in that way only ghosts could move. As long as he just timed it right, Lillian wouldn’t have time to escape the radius and she’d have all the radiance knocked out of her.

“I won’t leave you behind, I promise. I’ll be right here when you wake up. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to go like this, but I promise I’m not going to leave you.”

Gladion used Soul’s Volition and became Ghost-type!
Gladion is to longer Damage Trapped.
Gladion used AGILE Protect!
Gladion is calling out to Lillian!

The unearthly whisperers of the perish song was, impossibly, still audible over the roaring flames.

Lillian’s perish count fell to 1!
Gladion’s perish count fell to 1!

 

[Shiny Phantump]

“NO!” Lillian screamed, voice clearly raw even behind the distortion of radiance. “That’s not what I mean! You know that’s not what I mean! You think you can trap me here and then you want to run away and I’ll get hurt again and you won’t. AGAIN. Stop it!”

Another flurry of blows. Then, her brow knitted in concentration for a moment.

“I won’t LET you do that to me!”

She pointed her rapier to the stars one final time...

There was no answer.

Lillian’s AGILE RADIANT Shadow Sneak dealt 46 damage to Gladion's Protect!
Lillian’s RADIANT Shadow Sneak dealt 60 damage to Gladion's Protect! Broken!
Lillian’s RADIANT Shadow Sneak dealt 15 damage to Gladion!
Lillian focused…
Lillian attempted RADIANT Metronome… but the cost grew too steep.
Lillian failed to use Reflect Type…

His headache was growing to a fever pitch. This was his escape window. There was nothing left she could do to stop him, and the only difference in result would be whether or not he let himself get knocked out for no rational reason at all. But still…

“Please… I don’t want to— Please stay with me this time.”

…It was important to her.

Lillie called out to Gladion!
Gladion hesitated…
Lillie’s perish count fell to 0. KO!
Gladion’s perish count fell to 0. KO!

 

[Shiny Phantump]

[This post's song has no reuploads/extensions and there are big-ass spoilers in the top comments, so I've embedded it as a youtube music link to hide them. You can find the loop option in the bottom right.]

It was peaceful when Lillie woke again. Just the sound of a gentle wind and running water. It was almost possible to forget what had just happened, as if it wasn't real. She could sense Gladion next to her, half-awake with the same headache as her. She gathered the dregs of her strength and sat up.

"Gladion? Uhh, thank you, I guess. For staying."

Gladion groaned, but did not get up.

"That fucking sucked."

Lillie laughed. "Having regrets?"

"Yes. If that’d gone off the rails right before Powehi's final exam, he'd have fucking killed us."

Lillie shivered. While Gladion sometimes said that as a turn of phrase, this time she couldn't tell if he meant it literally. A silence hung in the air for a moment. Gladion still wasn't moving. She had her attention on him, but he'd fallen with his back was to her and didn't seem to have notice. Or maybe he just wasn't up to moving.

"You know, it did work, in its own weird sort of way. I kind of get it. I— I still reserve the right to be unhappy that you left me behind later. But I can understand your thought process a little better, at least?"

"Honestly, I'm still thinking about... Not that it matters anymore, but you're serious about the succession thing? I wouldn't have wanted it anyway, but... It's just weird to think about. That she— you—" Finally, Gladion forced himself up from his side to rest lying prone, letting him properly meet her eyes. "I thought you two were close, is all."

It fell quiet again for a moment. Lillie needed a moment to sit with that thought.

 

[Shiny Phantump]

"I didn't really fight with her like you did, and there was a while where that was enough. We got along better when you were around. Once she started expecting things of me, well... I didn't really fight with her like you, but... we stopped getting along."

"Oh." Maybe one day, back home, his human self would learn what type of abuse stopped getting along was a euphemism for. But it felt too painful to broach so soon after starting to reconcile. In this life, he'd probably never get the chance to ask what had followed in the wake of his departure.

"She did get Gladius to take over." Lillie spoke Gladius' name carefully, as if saying it wrong might break the spell. "Before he ended up here."

"Sucks to be him," Gladion said, voice measured, betraying nothing.

For a moment, Lillie considered joking that she'd forward his sympathies to Gladius. But even though his voice felt, to her, like deadpan irony... wherever his train of thought was, her sense was warning her of a melancholy from him.

"You know, before we found out about him, we knew Betel could only configure people into species that existed on Forlas. I just had to guess how Null could ever have ended up here. So, you know, when I was thinking of people who might've been able to make a Null, and who might've ended up in a world they shouldn't be in..."

He trailed off. Trusting that she would put the emotional payload together, so that he wouldn't have to speak it aloud.

"You thought it was Father?"

"I did."

 

[Shiny Phantump]

They both looked up at the night sky, in a direction unsullied by Lorrel's intrusion. A gesture whose meaning was unspoken but understood. Their father used to tell them old stories of psychopomps and of stars that watched over the people below them at night. Even if he was too much of a man of science to earnestly believe in them, he did share them. He didn't share much from his past, not unless it was something important to him.

"The night sky is so beautiful here," Lillie whispered. "Do you think it'll stay that way here?"

They'd keep building cities and streetlights, and the stars would dull. It felt inevitable. Felt to Gladion like, even without the Coven's anthropocentric understanding of reality putting their thumb on the scale, it was hard to imagine that they weren’t already on a trajectory it was too late to avert.“

Can’t say. Lighting, streetlamps, you know, that's useful. And light pollution… is ultimately just light pollution. Makes it hard to picture a future where they don’t converge on the same problems as us. But maybe it’s just a limitation of imagination on my part, you know. Maybe these things only feel inevitable when you look back in retrospect. Y'know, even if you want to have lights, you can still not have millions of lights all over running all night all the time. Maybe without a concerted faction trying to end-run things that feel inevitable to them, people on Forlas have still got a chance to make better choices than we did.” (Or people like Sparkwright would do the same without needing a Coven to organize around. Or maybe he was just naive and they’d fall into the same traps without any external forces. But it was nice to at least imagine that things might get better after they were gone.)

Lillie pulled her eyes off the stars and thought about that for a moment. It was sad, in a way, to hear Gladion profess hope for this world, but none for theirs back home. But it was still a nicer sentiment than she'd expected, and she didn't want to overlook that.

“Huh. I like that! I half-expected you to say they’d have to stab all the oil barons to death or something.”

“Like I said,” Gladion laughed, “They’ve got a chance to make better choices than we did!”

That earned him a scoff and a punch in the shoulder from Lillie.

“Yeah, yeah, love ya too, Lillian.”

“Oh, uhh… If you want, I think Lillie again would be fine. It just… feels right.”

“Nice. Love you, Lillie.”

“I love you too.”

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