(Route) [003.5]: The fateful meeting. [action for Kay Faraday]
[It has to be, what, three, four in the morning now? Maybe even five, who knows. He's been up for almost a whole entire day and could collapse any second, but he doesn't feel even the slightest bit tired right now. Even if he did feel tired, he wouldn't care.
Right now, there are more important things than sleep. Like standing outside of the Pokemon ( Read more... )
But this is the most silent she's ever been. It took a good ten minutes to get Flapper to stay behind, even longer to coax her Murkrow off her shoulder. The two Byrnes would meet soon enough, but she needed to do this - mainly - on her own. Oliver the Absol is the exception, because he was Badd's.
So soon enough, there's a figure slowly making her way along (ironic, because she'd been in such a hurry before).
... And he's there. He's right there, and Kay stops in her tracks. What does she do? What does she say? Seeing and hearing him was one thing, but being so close to her father...
... It's agonizing and wonderful all at once.
Give her a minute, she'll take a few more steps, fighting to look composed. ]
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...If his heart wasn't pounding before, it sure as hell is pounding now. Kick it up another notch and it might explode from how hard it's working. He swallows hard and fights to keep a straight face, but if one were to pay close attention to him it'd be obvious that he's faltering. It's her. It's really her. In the past week and a half he has been thinking about what this place really is, coming up with all kinds of crazy theories...maybe this really is another planet, maybe he's been on drugs and this is his delusional fantasy world...hell, maybe he had a stroke and is lying comatose in a hospital bed somewhere, and this is all just one screwed-up dream he's been having all this time. ( ... )
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And--after about a minute of fighting himself--miraculously, he finds something to say. Something very little, but better than nothing. He speaks, but in a voice that's obviously wavering and nothing at all like the strong man his daughter must remember from her youth:]
...Kay?
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Every last bit of confidence and bravado and cheer is peeling away, and it's only when Byrne speaks that she moves. It's an involuntary jump, one that has the Absol studying her with some concern. But she's reminded that she's not the only one impacted now. Her father, stalwart Byrne, was just as uncertain. It's ultimately her name, though, that spurs her. ]
D...
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[ no 17-year-old girl should sound so desperate, so hopeful and pained all at once, but Kay disregards what should and shouldn't be and run-stumbles the rest of the way until she collides with something solid.
Her father.
And she can't get any other words out, because it's him, exactly as she remembered him and even more believable now after seven years. Kay just grips him tightly, burying her face in his shoulder and shaking with the effort of keeping the truth bottled in.
Right now, all she can do is hold onto him. ]
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But falling backwards is the least of his worries right now.
Gently - much more gently than she had done to him - he wraps his arms around her and holds her close to him, head resting against hers. She's shaking in his arms, he can feel it, and it hurts him, seeing her like this. She might notice her father's hands are trembling, revealing his inner weakness. He's shaking a little too, despite the fact that he's trying so hard to stay strong for her.
It's her pain; it's shattering his heart. He can't stand to see others hurting, but when it's his daughter who's hurting...oh, if only he could just take all of her sadness away right now!
Byrne swallows hard, and though his head is filled with questions and worry and fear and uncertainty and everything, his paternal ( ... )
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Daddy's here.The last time those very words had been said to her and those hands had held her, she had been so little, so wide-eyed and convinced that as long as her father was there, nothing bad could ever ever happen to anyone. Because he was a hero, and that was what heroes did ( ... )
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As much as it's hurting him to see her cry, Byrne is patient and lets her cry for as long as she needs to. He keeps holding her close, whispers that it'll be okay, to let it all out now, she'll be okay, everything will be okay, he's here now, he's here...
But what she says after she's finished crying silences him immediately. She didn't cry in front of any strangers. When? Here? No, he has a feeling it isn't here, it isn't about his arrival. And then he's thinking about how she reacted the first time she saw him over the PokeGear and how she's reacting now. Maybe he doesn't know how this is physically possible - maybe he stopped caring a week and a half ago, when mutant rat things nearly ate him and his Vulpix and everything stopped making sense. But he knows his daughter, even if she's grown quite a bit. She's not the depressed type, she'd never react like this if everything was fine back at home. She would've been thrilled to see her father ( ... )
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But this has caught her off-guard, and it's that joy mingled with shock and sorrow that has her at a loss.
He deserves to know. Kay has always been - as someone else put it - laughably honest, but this isn't a laughing matter. There's no secret she could possibly keep from Byrne, and upon hearing his question, she reluctantly loosens her grip on him and looks up.
And simply... slowly... nods. ]
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He won't lie, her confirming his heavy suspicion hurts him, even though her answer was plainly obvious from the start. What else could he think? Try as he might, he cannot remember what happened when he blacked out that last day before showing up here. The images he gets are foggy at best - something about being in a room with Calisto and that damn Mack Rell, and then...nothing. Given the circumstances he was in, it's entirely possible something terrible happened in that room, and that's why his memories of that day abruptly end there. Forget the who or the how, it's the only theory he can come up with that makes sense.
But theories are just theories until someone verifies them as facts.
Before he speaks again he stares at his daughter for a moment, hesitating. This has to be painful for her, he knows, and going into detail will only make it worse. Or will talking it through make it better? He's unsure what to do, and fearful of causing more pain. It's not what she deserves.]Kay, I ( ... )
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But she'll never be able to keep secrets, not from Byrne, so she gives her muffler a light tug and speaks carefully. It's going to hurt him, what he'll learn, but she'd rather he know it now and have the time to adjust than having to constantly skirt around the issue. He'd worry the whole time, anyway. ]
You... were stabbed. By someone you trusted.
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He was stabbed. Stabbed by someone he trusted. Who? Who the hell would do something like that? When, how? The only people he was near in that room were Calisto and Rell, and Byrne would label Rell as the murderer any day. He trusted Rell as far as he could throw him, but there was absolutely no reason for Calisto to kill him. She was his trusted ally - he'd trust her with his life, and he was sure she was the same, given their partnership as part of the Yatagarasu. But regardless, there was no knife in that room, he was sure of it. Unless that bastard snuck one into the courthouse somehow - and how he would've done it was beyond all explanation - there was no knife on the scene.
He's assuming, of course, that these last memories of being in that room are his absolute last memories...Now that he thought of it, he'd...met someone named Sissel who claimed to have died and became a ghost before showing up here alive and well. Could it be ( ... )
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And she blinks furiously against the renewed sting of tears. She herself hadn't known just how deep the betrayal ran until a day or so before she'd first found herself in Johto. She hadn't known, and now she has to tell her own father exactly what happened.
It's a bizarre situation, but more than that, it aches. But she can't turn back now. Her voice is surprisingly steady now. ]
... Ms. Yew. She was working for the ring that you wanted to shut down.
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[His eyes grow wider. Calisto killed him?! What--how--why? She was part of the Yatagarasu! Her sister was murdered by Coachen and she wanted revenge against the ring...she'd never work for the people who took her sister's life away! That was just absurd... No, it couldn't be true, he refused to believe it! Not her, she would never...why would she ever...?!
......But why would Kay lie about something like this?
Byrne's face turns twenty shades whiter as he tries to recall his last memory once again, and he realizes something dreadful in the process of remembering. He'd been assuming 'Rell must've done it' because he hadn't had his eye on that thug before everything went black. Perfect opportunity for backstabbing, right? But now he realizes something he should've been wondering about since the start...
Calisto had moved towards him before everything went black. Not just casually walking towards him, no, she'd whipped around real fast and came right for him...but he hadn't seen anything in her hand, he'd never guessed ( ... )
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But Kay says nothing, bright green eyes locked on her father's unwaveringly-- even as much as she doesn't want to look at him just then. In the end, he'd deserved to know. ]
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...
He'd...always felt so sorry for Calisto. That day her sister's killer had been declared innocent in court, when she let out that wail... And when he and Badd tried to apologize to her, and she'd slapped Badd and screamed that she never wanted to see either of them again for what they did... It hurt Byrne, and it hurt so much more that he couldn't get that bastard a guilty verdict like he deserved. Calisto was the reason Byrne decided that the law was nothing more than a wall, blocking the path to justice. She was the catalyst behind the idea of 'Yatagarasu'. She... She may have been aloof and she may have mocked him and Badd every chance she got, but he had always thought she was just insecure. She laughed because she didn't know what else to do. It was a way to cope. And in some sick way, he sometimes felt like he deserved the taunting.
He never doubted her.
He thought she wanted ( ... )
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