Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

It's dark out. I'm walking through the snow alone, skirting the boundaries of an unfamiliar forest. It almost resembles the forests around the Lake of Rage, but even then, the trees are far too thin and unvaried, all of them spindly and leafless with not a speck of green in sight.

If I traced the branches, I'm sure I'd be able to find a pattern between them. They all look like the same tree and it gives the illusion that I've been wandering the same stretch of forest over and over.

Crunch.

My foot falls, cold even with in its boot, and then I stop. Turning, I see a strand of solitary bootmarks behind me, but when I turn back to the path before me, I see that there are more markings stretching out in a thin line almost identical to the one I just left.

My breath leaves a moontouched trail of cold smoke as I exhale, burying myself further into my clothes. The cold is beginning to wear on me and I'm tired of playing games tonight.

Snap.

In the distance, a branch falls from a tree. Snow flies up around it, unexpectedly powdery, and a hulking shadow of a man climbs over it.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

One by one, branch by branch falls and the man walks through them now as if they aren't even there. As he draws closer, I notice his pale face and hair. His face is gaunt but his body is massive and swelling with muscle, giving him a strangely sage-like appearance. His red cap shines in the moonlight and he stops right before me, the first flakes of a snowstorm falling and settling on his bright white hair.

"No." he says, his voice shaking my ribcage. "No, not this place. Not yet."

He moves through me and I feel my heart freeze. Am I a ghost? Is he?

Terrified, I follow him as he lumbers along through the snow, branches rustling and occasionally cracking as if some greater force is trying desperately to stop his approach.

"I've done as you commanded!" he calls to the heavens, still walking. "I'm here. What more do you want from me?"

Just feet from him, standing at the edge of a frozen lake, is Suicune. It perhaps looks slightly younger,
"This is a strange place to have come for mercy." Suicune grumbles. "You know what you have done can never truly be repaired, correct? By triggering that weapon, you have perhaps caused irreversible damage to this world. Of all things, you blame your bloodlust on the death of a loved one, and now that you have learned that you can not free her yourself, you want us to return her from the grave! Have you no idea how dangerous the things you are tampering with can be? Do you not realize that the very fabric of the universe lies in the balance here?"

"There are worlds where she lives."

"There are worlds where you don't survive this encounter tonight." Suicune turns to notice me and its eyes grow cold. It bares large, canine teeth, and says sharply, "I am afraid we are not alone tonight."

***

Fire.
A blast of pure energy so powerful that it could light up every city in the world for the next one hundred years.

One is mundane.

The other, unimaginable.

Both are terrible ways to die.

Celebi, for all of her experience in jumping worlds, always ended up proxy to both.

***

I wake up in the middle of the night clutching my pillow. Staring over towards the cabin clock, I realize that it's still just past midnight, meaning my nightmares may be getting more painful, but they're also getting faster. How incredibly convenient.

I throw myself back against the pillow, but it's still as lumpy as it was when I fell asleep and the sheets are incredibly starchy. Add this to how completely not tired I am and you have several reasons why instead of going to sleep, I once again try to book it outside to look at the stars and figure out what Celebi is trying to tell me tonight, this time careful to count every Pokemon on the way out. Pisces is in her Pokeball, so one, then two, three... four.

My eyes burn with hot liquid as I open the door. I take a shuddering breath in and out, as I usually do the night after, and try not to cry for the benefit of the team.

"Hey." I look around, shocked, and then Reginae gets to his feet. He lumbers towards the door, narrowly avoiding Fang's ear, and then stares me directly in the eyes. "Nightmares again?"

I nod.

"Not fun. Funny you caught me here, I was just heading out myself." He brushes past me and out the door, moving slowly across the Blackthorn landscape. The night air is clear and fresh on my lungs and it makes my tears grow cold around my cheeks, as if my flesh itself is freezing up along with it. Somehow, in the last few days, the weather has gone from almost bearable to freezing, but I can barely feel it tonight.

The wind whistles around us and does nothing to my numb skin. My calloused feet crunch frost beneath them as if stepping on bubble wrap. Eventually, Reginae finds a place by a familiar tree, where we've scattered some of his own petals and a stick, and he sits down. I situate myself between him and the crook of the tree trunk, where it bends just slightly. It's rough against my back but right now, I can't think of anywhere more comfortable.

"Do you remember... do you remember when we buried her?" asks Reginae, staring out at the stick. It's Ten's, or rather, it was. Now it belongs to the dead.
"I was barely conscious." I admitted. After the gym battle, I hardly remember a thing but starchy sheets and a half-lit fire crackling with erratic embers. I remember someone trying to put something on and me whimpering, begging for it to stop. "I kind of lost it." I admit, clutching my arm. "If I hadn't been in there... you guys could've won the gym battle without casualties. Rose and I fell together."

Reginae ignores me. "When we got back to the room together, Fang told me that the room had never been so empty. He sounded so young when he said it and I felt so old."

I say nothing. The wind washes over us both and the stick moves a bit in the dirt. I imagine Rose's body beneath it, doll-like, the wound hardly patched and her bleeding still into the earth. "It always feels a little bit too empty." I whisper. "Something isn't there anymore."

"I was dreaming about you." Reginae continues over me. "I couldn't sleep again when I woke up because all I could feel was guilt. It wasn't even a nightmare. I was having a great dream but you seemed so off and then I remembered in the back of my mind that Rose was dead. She came in almost last minute and it clicked that we were about to have the worst conversation of my life again."

"What night was it?"

"Olivine. You were having your dinner and the whole team was talking about Pisces and eating together. Eventually, they all moved away and there she stood, perfect under the stars, watching the sky. She sat down slowly and it was the first time I saw her smile since she evolved. It was like watching someone completely different."
"What happened?"

"I asked her what she was looking at. She said, 'A lot of Pokemon myth describes the stars as being the spirits of the dead. I was just wondering if Clay and Luna are up there.'" He can't mimic her voice but there's a softness he uses when trying to replicate her speech that makes it instantly recognizable.

"'I don't think so.' I told her, and she said, 'Me neither. We're lightyears away from even feeling the heat of a star, but the pain we feel now is visceral. It's here.' She pointed to her heart, and continued, 'I think there's some truth to the notion, though. Think of us as tiny universes and our minds as the sky. During the day, we might not see the stars, but at nighttime... they always come back, like bright holes punched into our psyche. For me, anyways.' She finally turned to me and asked, 'What do you think Ashley's sky is like?' I had no idea, so I just shook my head. I was still a bit curious, so I managed to say, 'Do you think we're going to end up there?' She shook her head. 'No, because I'm never going to let that happen to you. I'm going to fix all of this. I promise."

I stifle a sob. All that time, all of those lectures and all that prodding- all of it.

"I loved her, Ashley. I loved her so much that I thought we were going to make it."

The wind bares down on us in all its fierceness and my limbs are numb before we finally get the strength to leave.