a sign of the times [Nikolai]

[sabrina]

Erika's put tea on in the little make shift kitchen and Sabrina is leaving. There's a precedent for this. It involves a note and a clever disguise, and promises to return when she's caught just as she crosses the threshold. This time, however, she doesn't follow the precedent. There's no need for notes or drawn out goodbyes. They both know that she can't stay here forever. No...she could, it would be easy to adjust to this life, for all it's sweet simplicity, to revel in the feel of being accepted, of tea being the worst thing that she has to stomach, and the sound of Erika's laughter -bell sweet - brightening her days. But no, she made a decision and, this time, she isn't backing down.

This time, they'll be no more hiding. No more games of cat and mouse. No more endangering Erika, who has taught her more about friendship and kindness in a handful of months than most would have thought possible in a lifetime, and given Sabrina more than her fair share of both. Erika, who will probably bleed herself dry for her friends, exerting every last bit of energy she has to keep them safe before this war is ended. She owes this to Erika as well, however misguided she might be.

They never speak of her alliance – Lux - because there's nothing to say. Erika does what she does to keep her friends safe. It is a necessary evil, and Sabrina herself has reaped it's benefits on more than one occasion. She owes her life to Erika. Her scorn, that she saves for other...like him...

Let's go.

The world dips and spins, pulling her in half a hundred directions. Focus. Focus. She feels paper thin, drawn far past her own limits -an all too familiar feeling these days – and then, all at once, she is whole, her feet planted firmly on solid ground, Warley at her side. "Thank you, my friend.” Though her words are full of affection, her face is tight, her eyes hard as they take in all that there is to see. Vermillion City...you've changed.” And not for the better.

”They know you're here. They'll come for you if you linger.” Warley's warning ought to be the catalyst to turn, to run. Sabrina holds her ground.

”Let them come.” Instilled with purpose, Sabrina makes her way to the city's gym, standing like a beacon in the midst of a fortress. Here I am it it says. Here is the prize. Here is the problem.

Her mind enters the structure long before her body, probing carefully, searching for her target. Nikolai. The net she casts is a loose one, and full of holes, meant not to snare, but simply to find, to tell. I know you're here, Nikolai. Drained as she is from the week's other trials, it takes a moment to pinpoint his location, and it pains her to know that the brush of his mind still holds some familiarity. I knew him once, but no more she tells herself. Yet even so, she falls back on old courtesies, enters by the front door when she might otherwise teleport – shock value has it's appeal, but Nikolai was never keen on the way she tended to appear out of nowhere, 'like some foul apparition.'

It hits her all at once as she steps inside. Nostalgia, it's hardly what she's expecting with the harbor filled to the brim, as it is, with warships - the prized fleet of glorious Lux – and troops garrisoned in the city. She expects everything to have changed, not just the harbor and the surrounding area, but the gym as well, and the man who has made it his home... Surely he's changed as well. Nikolai. But the gym itself remains largely unchanged since the last time she set foot within it, a few cosmetic difference that hardly mean anything at all. If only she were the same. If only nothing had changed. If only... Wishful thinking.

Each step is harder than the last. It feels like a funeral dirge is playing somewhere, commemorating the death of all that she used to know, and she doesn't truly wish to reach the back of the gym where he sits in waiting. Out with the old, in with the new. And what of this new Nikolai? What of his purpose. Serving Lux. Training Lux soldiers. It's a task that suits him. He, no doubt, makes a good show of it.

It has to stop.

Out with the old, in with the new. The whispers have begun, spreading across the gym like wild fire. It would seem that some of the trainers recognize or remember. Sabrina pays them no mind. She's not here for them. Even so, one of them steps forward, offering challenger in a shaky voice. She regard him with hard eyes and a blank expression. She remembers this one. It does not show. “I-If you want to face the Lieutenant, you'll have to get through me first.”

”Silence. I'm not here for your games.” For half a heartbeat, Sabrina's eyes seem to glow with an unearthly light, and then she finds his form before her, his mind ripe for assault. This, too, is a necessary evil. She reaches for him, surges forward against him with all that she is, and the man is hurtling backward through the air. Sabrina turns from him the moment he is airborne. She does not stop to watch him fall, though she hears it plain enough, the telltale thud of flesh and bone meeting something solid, and the sickening snap that follows when he hits the floor elbow first.

Out with the old, in with the new. Let her be a force to be reckoned with.

”Nikolai.” Her tone is bland when she finally reaches him, uninterested, a lie that her eyes betray for all their intensity. It makes for an unsettling study in contradiction. It always has. She's never been quite right. Always a little too tightly wound, too controlled, too quiet, but never the friendly sort of quit that Erika fell into. Focus and discipline demand sacrifice. Sabrina had chosen her already lacking social life, pretended that all she wanted in the world was to be alone, unbothered...but a few individuals had slipped through the barrier that she had erected around her heart, had called themselves friends even when she had refused to acknowledge them as such.

Nikolai had been one of them. Despite all the griping he'd done about her abilities - unnatural, he'd called them-...Nikolai had been one of them.

”You're looking well.” And he is. She hates him for it. Hates the way he is square shouldered and clean shaven, well rested even. Hates the way that he can stand there tall, and proud, and direct when she has been forced to cast fearful eyes at shadows. It's clear that life under the Lux regime has been treating him well. Sabrina wishes that she could say the same. Instead, it has deepened the circles beneath her eyes and thinned her out, making her look worn and haggard beyond her years, a ghost of her former self.

[Nikolai]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style,width: 450px; padding: 10px;,bTable] [cs=2] nikolai Clouds of sulfur in the air / Bombs are falling everywhere

[atrb=vAlign,top] WORDS

[atrb=vAlign,top] It had been a slow morning at the Vermillion Gym, even by recent standards. Though the stream of challengers had dwindled steadily over the past five years of the Lux regime, Nikolai was still used to having some wet-behind-the-ears trainer challenge him to a battle before lunch. His apprentices had turned off the traps in the Gym for the morning and used the large stadium in the middle to practice spar while the ex-lieutenant watched lazily, commenting when he noticed a blatant blunder but only half alert. With the ceasefire in Johto, Vermillion had quieted significantly over the past few months. True, they were still expanding much faster than they could sustain, but these days the docks were more often full of sailors smoking and gambling, not loading the huge warships that took port in the harbor like quiet, sleeping beasts. Nikolai had thought it would make his life easier, only to be sorely disappointed. Bored soldiers meant trouble for the City Admin; on a table by his chair lay a stack of complaints against sailors, usually for breaking noise ordinances or wandering the streets piss drunk, but a few more concerning cases - thievery, property damage, harassment... If Nikolai had his way, he would throw all of the offenders out of his city for disrespecting their duty to the navy. Unfortunately, however, if he did that there would be no one left to man the boats... Gaia, who had been sparring with some of the other Pokemon earlier that morning, seemed to sense her partner's unease. The Raichu lithely climbed up behind Nikolai's chair, snuggling into his neck and resting her paws on one shoulder while her long, whipcord tail hung over his other. The Vermillion Gym Leader reached up to scratch the Raichu behind her ears, smiling despite the mountain of work that lay ahead of him. All thoughts of his work were banished from his mind when he saw her step through the door. He squinted across his gym's floor, certain that his eyes must be failing him. A hushed silence had fallen across the room as the young trainers all stopped to stare at the newcomer, perhaps feeling the not physical yet palpable chill that settled over the gym like a shroud. Nikolai stood but did not move, knowing without a doubt that it was her yet simultaneously certain that he must be dreaming. In a daze, he watched one of his trainers approach. He should say something, stop him-- crunch. All doubts that she was some kind of illusion or ghost vanished. Sabrina Lacroix was living, in the flesh, and in his gym, and had just broken one of his trainer's arm. His eyes flicked to the boy, whose sniffles and whimpering were beginning to rise into a wail. The horrible sound of a child in pain seemed to kick the veteran into action. "Jackson, Taylor, take Edmund to the doctor." During his army days, Private Surge had learned with the rest of his unit how to make a simple splint for fractures like these, but under Lux rule it was not as if anyone required these skills of him - a highly educated Lux doctor had been stationed down the road and would set the bone in place precisely and without charge. "The rest of you... get out." his voice was controlled and measured, yet it boomed effortlessly throughout the gym. "But sir--" "NOW!" he roared, startling them into action. They quickly poured out the front doors, casting looks behind them at the raven-haired woman and whispering amongst themselves. The rumor would be spread through the city before sundown at this rate. Nikolai ran his hand through his flaxen hair, a habit he often slipped into when he was trying to think or, as it were, when he felt stressed. His thoughts were interrupted by his trio of Magneton, sensing trouble. They circled down from the corners of the ceiling where they had been conducting surveillance, spinning in a circle around the psychic and prepared to stop her from reaching their gym leader. Nikolai called them off with a firm shake of his head, and they dispersed in the emotionally-charged air, waiting for a sign of trouble. Gaia, whose ears had perked at the sight of an old friend, had the good sense to stay with her trainer - though the scent of Sabrina was a familiar comfort, the hostile energy she sensed made the fur on the back of her neck bristle, tail lashing nervously. Nikolai. The first person to use that name in months. The voice betrayed no emotion, but he feels himself want to flinch from the sound. A cold fury is much more dangerous that a hot one, after all; it leaves you your mind and your good senses, yet still wreaks the same havoc with your emotions. You're looking well. It was an insult, not an attempt at being conversational. Nikolai desperately wished he could say the same of her, but... Though Sabrina had always been a rather petite woman, there was something about her now that seemed sickly. She looked... tired. The sort of tiredness that came from feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders, seeping deeper into your skin than anything that could be felt from physical exhaustion. Something had aged her. She was not the same woman he had known, one of the few to look past his imposing appearances and cool demeanor and recognize... something else. There was no such recognition now; her eyes were flinty and cold. Though her words were as measured and even as ever, Nikolai knew that this was the closest he had ever seen her to losing her cool. "You shouldn't have come here." he growled coldly, looking at nothing - anything but her furious face - and ignoring her previous words. The silence brewed between them, and Nikolai felt the words he left unspoken burning a hole in his chest, until he could bear it no longer. He finally looked at her, taking in the shape of her face, the bags underneath her eyes, the aggression in her stance, her familiar raven hair and piercing, intelligent eyes. The harshness in his words melted away, and for once it seemed that the lieutenant's voice had taken on an almost-reverent hush. "Arceus, Sabrina, I thought you were dead." he felt his throat tighten. I thought Lux had eliminated you, taken you out of the picture so that other horrible woman could rule Saffron. I thought they would never tell me, to hide the ugly truth from me, to never give me a reason to hate them or shake my loyalty. I thought I would never see you again. His hand reaches up from his side as if to touch her face, to banish any doubt from his mind that what he is not seeing is some horrible trick or apparition, but the desire goes unfulfilled and his hand falls back down to his side. "...How?" It's a question that he thinks he wants to hear the answer to. But he doesn't. He doesn't care. There is only one thing that matters. She's alive.

TEMPLATE BY SAMARECARM OF OTE + BTN

[sabrina]

One gasp. She had been damned by one lousy gasp. The official cause of death, as she heard it through one of Erika's Lux contacts some time later, was heart failure. It wasn't...inaccurate. There was no mention of a raven haired woman with the glowing eyes and a chilly demeanor, of the way she reached out toward the man and brought her fingers together ever so slowly, as though she meant to crush the very air itself. And so she had. The man had clutched at his chest, and gasped – not enough air, not enough – and died.

His panic had been music to her ears. Not enough air. Someone. Please! Not enough..! She had smiled then, a wicked, edged thing that had the others backing up as their companion fell forward, as he died at their feet like a dog. She hadn't been herself then, she'd been lost to the maelstrom as it buzzed through her veins, screaming for release. Even now, she couldn't recall the whole of what had happened, only pieces that woke her in the night and left her sweating and acutely aware of just how much her temporary loss of control had cost her. Two others had been injured, she had stepped over them, advancing upon their comrades, laughing as they fled – a hollow, pitiless sound.

The unofficial report mentioned the whole of it, allowed her to fill in the gaps. Dangerous it said, unnatural. Approach with caution. She'd laughed and dismissed it out of hand when she'd seen it – ridiculous Lux propaganda - then turned before Erika had seen the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. Dangerous...Unnatural...Approach with caution. Those words haunted her. They were an open wound too deep to benefit from a quick bit of patching over, and so she tried to stitch it closed by redoubling her focus, her control, by continually testing her limits and promising herself that it would never happen again. But some wounds never heal, not completely.

“Arceus, Sabrina, I thought you were dead.”

Dangerous. Unnatural. Approach with caution. Eliminate the threat. ”Oh? Is that the line they fed you, that I was gone, that the threat had been eliminated?” Her voice is a chilly as the look that accompanies it.

It's almost amusing in retrospect...almost. She hadn't been much of a threat in the beginning. She had tried to be agreeable at first, allowing the first wave of refugees into the city, and the second. She'd tried to make the best of what they'd forced upon her with what she had, but then they'd kept coming...waves upon waves of them, looking for a safe haven, a place to start over, a place to hide, there wasn't enough – food, housing, room, anything. She'd tried until the slums began to grow, until they reached out and swallowed up a good third of her beloved city, then half. She'd tried to keep herself in check when they informed her that there would be no end to it. A necessarily evil they called it – the riffraff had to go somewhere. And then she'd stopped trying. Locked in a cold fury, reason had deserted her and the result had been...disturbing, problematic, but perhaps not wrong.

Nikolai reaches toward her, his fingers mere inches from her cheek before he thinks better of it and lets his hand fall to his side. Dangerous. Unnatural. Approach with caution. Sabrina winces. ”Don't.” Her voice is soft, and there's an undercurrent of something that isn't quite panic, but certainly isn't her usual calm. “You have no right. Not anymore.” That's what she ought to say. She ought to wield her words like some grand weapon, ought to fend him off, to distract him from her moment of weakness, from how much she wants to complete that connection, to feel something other than self-loathing. She wants to hate him for it, for everything. She doesn't. ”Don't,” she repeats in the same hushed tone.

”How?” How, indeed? How easy it would be to confirm the report that he has no doubt already read, to tell him of the monster that she has become, to confirm the fears that have always been there, lingering in the back of his mind, worrying at it – a gaze diverted, an argument grounded, hesitation as he reaches out to...'Enough!' At times like this, times when it matters, Sabrina is her own worst enemy.

This has to stop. This weakness has to be set aside, this fondness for days long past and the man who occupied them shut away. She hadn't lied earlier when she said that he looked well. He did. He was in peak physical condition and ever at the ready, a soldier on permanent alert, just the way she remembered him, and she wanted to reach out, to press her palm against his chest and prove that it wasn't an just illusion, to prove that he had suffered in some unseen way these past few years, to prove that he wasn't enjoying this. Maybe she could hate him for that.

[Nikolai]

”Oh? Is that the line they fed you, that I was gone, that the threat had been eliminated?”

Nikolai was used to Sabrina not being forthright with her words. In fact, most people were less straightforward than he was; he had shed the societal habits of masking his intentions or dressing up his words with social graces, and the gym leader knew spoke as spartanly as the conditions he had lived in during his time in the military. This time, however, his old friend's words were not guarded or hidden. Oh, her voice is controlled and even as it always is - but cold. A few times in his life, before all this, Nikolai had had the privilege of watching his fellow gym leader grow annoyed at others, and at the time he had secretly hoped that he would never find himself at the receiving end of her barbed tongue. Today, all hope was lost.

The initial shock had faded from his eyes, beginning to become flinty and hard again with just a dash of wariness.
She had asked him a question, and it was almost compulsory for the military veteran to give her an answer. Even if she had still not explained herself. Even if it should be he asking the questions.

"They told me nothing, Sabrina." he responded sharply, "Neither, apparently, did you."

No, no, no! This was all wrong. He didn't like the way his words came out clipped and detached, the way he pushed back his elation at seeing her and instinctively responded to her hostility by rising his own hackles. He didn't want to be angry; he wanted to be happy. Unfortunately, the Lightning Unovian found himself harboring both.

An emotional cocktail was coursing through his veins, making his body feel as tingly and alert as it felt when he were on the battlefield, simultaneously making him feel like he were experiencing some sort of hyper-reality yet finding the whole encounter altogether rather dream-like. Perhaps the shock hadn't quite worn off - if their conversation thus far were any indication, he'd be scratching his head for the next week trying to relive their "reunion," over-analyzing and brooding as he so often did when left to his own devices. He had a lot of time to brew, lately. Wasn't good for him; made him feel old.

He was good at keeping emotions off his face, but was absolutely hopeless at keeping his heart off his sleeve. Though his expression didn't change, the disappointment manifested itself in other ways - the way his shoulders rolled forward a bit and broke his normally immaculate posture or the way he reached up to scratch behind Gaia's ears, as if looking for some familiar comfort. Perhaps it was the way she had flinched away from his hand - a gesture he would not have been able to complete even if she hadn't turned away - that softened his voice for his next words.

"I just... wish you had told me, Sabs. All those years... and then not a word..."

He's fishing for some recognition on her fuming face of the good ol' days, trying to replace this new Sabrina with the friend he knew so well. To him, it's only a prod at the past; he hasn't even begun to consider the implications of what it will mean when the word gets out that the Saffron City Gym Leader, a Nox rogue, was in the gym of a man who proactively trained and housed the Lux sailors that took shelter in his port city.

[sabrina]

"They told me nothing, Sabrina. Neither, apparently, did you."

It isn't the sharpness of his words that gets to her, but what it implies: hurt. He thought himself a trusted friend -he had been - but she'd lost too much too quickly, and all thoughts of friendship (and Surge) had been abandoned with her city. Sabrina wonders if she can heal this particular wound, wonders how much damage has been done by her carelessness, her lack of faith...and how much damage has yet to be done.

Why can't he be the man she wants him to be, the man he has to be if she's going to make it through this with her sanity intact? Sabrina wants to hate him for forsaking her, but he hasn't. She wants to hate him for enjoying this, but his expression suggests that he's doing nothing of the sort. Neither of them are enjoying this. A meeting between old friends out to be a joyous occasion filled with laughter and stories of days long since past shared over dinner or a drink - but not this one, this one can't be anything but poignant silences and uncertainty. The battle lines have been drawn - Lux and Nox, opposing methodology, opposing ideals. Sabrina knows that she can't turn back now, not if she's to reclaim her city, but when she looks at Nikolai, when she reaches out with her mind and senses his confusion, his pain, she finds herself wishing that there were some other way.

There isn't. 

"Times have changed, Nikolai, but I imagine you know that better than most.." You have an armada outside your door, their armada. Perhaps she can hate him for that, if nothing else, let the tide build inside of her until it becomes a white hot rage, unleash it upon him until he bows before its might and...

"I just... wish you had told me, Sabs. All those years... and then not a word..." She recoils at his words, at the nickname that brings back a flood of memories - sitting on the edge of a dock discussing the coming storm, helping Erika arrange flowers (though neither of them had proven to have a knack for it), pushing one another to excel. He has no right!

...he has every right, and they both know it.

"We've all had to adapt. I did what was necessary in order to survive...You would hve done the same." Wouldn't you? Her voice wavers at the end, growing soft, and it hangs there between them, the unspoken question: wouldn't you? It's a rare thing, to see her so unsure. 

[Nikolai]

"Times have changed, Nikolai, but I imagine you know that better than most.."

He did. He knew that suddenly his day to day responsibilities were not only testing young trainer's skills. It involved coordinating the training, housing, and scheduling of hundreds of soldiers who only grew rowdier and more troublesome with each passing day spent stuck on land. It involved working with city planners and security consultants and trying to have informed opinions about his city on topics that had never even come close to crossing his mind. It involved playing the maddening game of who-did-what when a civilian and soldier got into a conflict. It meant keeping his head down and following the rules - not that he had ever been bad at that - because suddenly his actions could help and hurt people other than himself. It meant that already, by her being here, he was already anticipating a long tirade of passive-agressive questions and paperwork. Always paperwork.

Times have changed, she said.
The "We've changed." was left implied.

So why had she shown up? Just to stir the pot, to bring up a slew of good memories with a firm reminder of why it couldn't be that way anymore? It wasn't like he could invite her to the pub on the waterfront and buy a round or three of beers. He was decidedly uncomfortable with the whole situation - though, if it was any comfort, she was too. Even her nickname had rolled off his tongue and tasted strange, unused for so long. The way she had flinched away when she heard it hadn't helped, as if he had slapped her.

"We've all had to adapt. I did what was necessary in order to survive...You would hve done the same."

"Is that what you call it, your little disappearing act? Playing renegade?" He responds almost instantly, voice rising ever so slightly and incredulity thick on his words. "You call that adapting to survive? What are you thinking? You're going to get yourself killed!"

He was hurt, but he didn't want to be. And worried for her, too. He didn't want to be feeling anything, let alone the maelstorm of conflicting emotions. He had choked down the sadness and concern, but in the process let give rise to bitter - hurt - anger. It would have been nice to pretend that the line that divided them now wasn't polarizing, but it was. The moment the words were out of his mouth, however, he regretted them immediately. For a moment, Nikolai thought he might have seen Sabrina with her guard down and even a hint of uncertainty creeping into her voice. Nikolai didn't like uncertainty; he didn't like vulnerability. But those things he most certainly didn't expect from Sabrina. She had surprised him, caught him off guard, but now his mind was trying to instinctively throw the walls up, shut down the emotional barrage. His words had come out before he had a chance to stop them - he was an animal that felt forced in a corner and only snapped when a hand of peace was offered to him.

He felt like shit for it, but he wouldn't apologize.