She's been here before, and she'll be here again, because it all leads back here in the end, doesn't it? No matter how hard she tries, no matter how hard she swears that she'll be stronger this time and that it'll never happen again, it always seems to work out that someone's dying and it's on her hands.
The colors are all leached out of Volt's temple, black and white and orange rather than blue-gray stone lit by violet, but she'd know it anywhere, often as she revisits it. Just as she would have expected, there's Volt, furious and upset and completely impossible for her to understand, and there's someone lying on the ground below him, like a stringless puppet.
She's frozen in place, the crackling of lightning too sharp and overwhelming for her limbs to obey. She can't approach him, not here with no one to help her understand Volt's pain and no pact to rein in his power. She's alone, and unprepared, and it looks like she's going to get one more person killed, if she hasn't already, and she hangs her head, fists clenched.
But something in her tells her to look, at least, to see just whose life she's ruined now, and--
-- it's Zelos, the orange light pooling beneath him as it bleeds out of him, the sight familiar and deeply alien at the same time, and she can't let this happen, not again, not one more time.
A bolt of lightning flashes past her cheek as she takes a step, and she ducks but keeps moving anyway. Volt's words rattle through her bones, hard enough to make her tremble, but she doesn't stop til she reaches Zelos.
"Let him go," she snaps, and even through the tears streaming down her face her voice is iron. She steps forward once more to stand over him, body interrupting the flow of ether between them--
make it a double
She's been here before, and she'll be here again, because it all leads back here in the end, doesn't it? No matter how hard she tries, no matter how hard she swears that she'll be stronger this time and that it'll never happen again, it always seems to work out that someone's dying and it's on her hands.
The colors are all leached out of Volt's temple, black and white and orange rather than blue-gray stone lit by violet, but she'd know it anywhere, often as she revisits it. Just as she would have expected, there's Volt, furious and upset and completely impossible for her to understand, and there's someone lying on the ground below him, like a stringless puppet.
She's frozen in place, the crackling of lightning too sharp and overwhelming for her limbs to obey. She can't approach him, not here with no one to help her understand Volt's pain and no pact to rein in his power. She's alone, and unprepared, and it looks like she's going to get one more person killed, if she hasn't already, and she hangs her head, fists clenched.
But something in her tells her to look, at least, to see just whose life she's ruined now, and--
-- it's Zelos, the orange light pooling beneath him as it bleeds out of him, the sight familiar and deeply alien at the same time, and she can't let this happen, not again, not one more time.
A bolt of lightning flashes past her cheek as she takes a step, and she ducks but keeps moving anyway. Volt's words rattle through her bones, hard enough to make her tremble, but she doesn't stop til she reaches Zelos.
"Let him go," she snaps, and even through the tears streaming down her face her voice is iron. She steps forward once more to stand over him, body interrupting the flow of ether between them--
And then there's nothing but orange light.