Donor shivered trying to claw out of her own mind. She’d been spiraling on an off. Vaguely she could get herself over to one of the Rue’s rooms to get some snuggles and still that nervous habit to groom them. Her own daughter kept reminding her to eat or nap.
It was all she could do to keep together.
One night she looked up at the deep pink coat of her living ancestor. She looked back down, “Did you know?… that he was alive this whole time?”
Donor didn’t know what answer she’d wanted from the most powerful Pokémon but at a hug she squeezed them back to sob, “I-I failed him…”
She felt thier head move and looked up sniffling before looking at what they were looking at and flinched at the room across from hers.
Sage, alone, trapped in that bubble. Awake again and hitting at the sides of it, “I don’t know what to do…”
“Of course you do,” came the reply in a tone not fitting the conversation.
“No! No I don’t!” She snapped in her hurt.
Alpha stared at her. Those eyes saying more to Donor than could ever be said out loud.
She shrank down and gripped that short soft pink fur. Her own long peach colored fur was ragged and a mess, “Alpha… Alpha I spent years… decades… thinking my oldest was dead and just was something the humans kept to study… to keep my younger healthy. I just let them… I just gave up on him. I couldn’t feel anything. Nothing. I wasn’t there for him. Sage knew. Sage knew and I gave no second thought to it…”
“… Our children often know things we will never understand…”
That cut her as deep as the look had. Just tearing her heart to pieces. The ancient alpha mew always hitting the core of it. She trembled and sobbed still.
It was a small moment of her clinging to the only mew that dared visit her openly here…
Her eyes opened and she looked to the hall. Then to Alpha to see if they had the same sense. That instinct. They were only staring at her with those odd eyes.
Donor let go and gently floated through the barrier field and to the hall.
It was the dead of night. She phased through the metal door as she looked at the tank. It… was back. It wasn’t much but it was there.
Her bond. Her psychic bond to her son, that feeling she hadn’t felt after the attempt to take him out of the tank… it had vanished. But it was back… why…
The closer to the tank the clearer it was and she turned. The lights were all dimmed and the screens all off for the night but the indicator lights for equipment were still softly glowing, cameras, sensors, devices, all with tiny bulbs glowing or blinking. Of these lights one was another tank… not liquid filled this time.
She looked back and fourth. No, it wasn’t specifically her bond to him. His link was open because his baby was bonding to him.
She was by its side wide eyed at the teeny thing. Smaller than even Omega had been newborn.
BABY?! Her son had a baby?! It wasn’t possible??? Was that what 9 had been trying to talk to her about? She vaguely remembered just not responding…
Baby! Baby!!! She… she was a grandma!
She watched it through fresh tears. So small. Its little ears were folded and tail and feet curled up on itself.
A smile crept onto her lips, “Hey… good to see you’re well… got your first thoughts huh? What a brave little one you are…” she curled up beside the tank using the foot of a toy sitting there as a pillow.
Alpha floated a blanket over her as the mew drifted off to sleep, setting down an oran berry by her and leaving…
In the morning a human picked her up to let her sleep in her room for the rest of the day.
