100% my favourite after image dialogue and it's got so much potential angst buzzing about in my head.
whitetigerpoint's dynamic between Kylokos and Valencia already got me shipping them. Now we can pull it back past the Reset, and even tie into Valencia's DF ship with Symone.
imagine the three of them living together in Soluna. Val working at the museum, Kylokos as a researcher at GEARS, and Symone in the SDF. It doesn't matter what brought them together but they were happy. Oh, they'll fight, get on each other's nerves, but never anything that can't be taken back.
But as the war carried on cracks began to emerge. Symone's experiences, nurturing a deep and justified hatred of the Shadowscythe. She'd seen what they and their virus had done to her comrades and to civilians. Kylokos' research would lead her in a different direction. She'd seen their ability to change, to become something more than the Master's puppets. She began dreaming of a post war peace with the freed Shadowscythe. This led to increasingly tense arguments.
Valencia often sat in the middle, mediating the two. She understood that you can't write an entire civilization off as ontologically evil, but also that as the war currently stood, mutual peace was very unlikely and few would accept it.
Shortly before the Carcossa departed, it reached a breaking point, an ultimatum. Valencia sided with Symone. Kylokos burnt every bridge she could and left aboard the Carcossa, where she remained until the EDoT's death and the Great Fusion.
However in the Fusion, Symone remained between the pages. Since that final argument, the three of them have never once been fully reunited.