There isn’t much in the world Nixie fears. She takes to Pokémon battling and catching like a Ducklett to water, unafraid of wild Pokémon or the chance of losing. She runs straight into fighting Team Galactic without hesitation, carving her way through teams of grunt Pokémon, and doesn’t think twice about doing the same when Team Flare crossed her path.
But, in that moment between Lysandre’s declaration of his intent to force immortality upon her and the firing of the ultimate weapon, she feels fear. Mind numbing, leg locking fear.
She doesn’t want immortality. She doesn’t want to live forever, to see everyone else grow old and weak and turn to dust. She wants to live, to battle, to die, and she wants to do it on her own terms. She doesn’t want to live forever.
So she does what she does best, kicks her brain into gear, and runs. There isn’t enough power in the ultimate weapon for it to fire successfully and she has no intention of being in there when it fails.
Her legs are shaking, unable to hold her body upright, and she lets them give way, collapsing to her knees in front of the crater where the ultimate weapon just was.
She can still see that light, burned into her eyelids and imprinted on her memories, that almost took away her mortality.
It’s a silly thing to fear, now that it’s gone forever, and yet… and yet she fears the light.
Nixie gulps down air, curls her hands into fists, and looks down, away from the crater. She doesn’t like what she sees when she looks down either.
It’s the scar, the scar she got in Glittering Cave just before encountering Team Flare, the scar shaped like an X.
Her eyes squeeze shut to prevent her from looking at it, but she finds herself facing Xerneas again. The Pokémon shaped like the letter X. The Pokémon who, although it surely wanted no part in Team Flare’s scheme, almost brought about her end without even killing her.
She can’t find it in herself to fear Xerneas, not when she knows it was a victim of Team Flare.
That doesn’t change the fact she finds herself disliking it, and by association, the letter X.
"What a change that must have been...going from the Light to this."
"From the Light, to this?" Cheeky, this gesture, as she taps a fingertip against one of the ridged horns with an accompanying grin, and perk of a brow. But the humor evaporates as quickly as it appeared - her arm dropping to lie alongside the other, where they rest on the table before her.
The rustle of leather has the potential to go unheard, though the scent of as much, accompanied by the sticky-sweet, lingering scent of bloodthistle is not easily missed. Nor is the faint purse of lips as humor slips away, "It wasn't easy. I didn't want it. And I'm lucky it's only as bad as it is. But...I can't have the Light back, and I'm a bit stuck. So, I make it work." An unfocused gaze heavy with fel seems to alight, now, on the one who inquired in the first place, "Rarely am I met with curiosity..." More a question, than a statement, this - and that fleeting moment of detached focus is a thing forgotten.
Anyone else have an artist whose art they love so much that it starts pissing them off? You legit get so envious of their art it that starts to a little bit frustrating? Like, you love them and their art style, etc. But you lowkey want to steal their talent</3.
