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He should have known better than to take his afternoon drink at the same spring everyday. The secluded spot, hidden on a green plateau of Mount Coronet, was too lovely, its water too crisp, not to visit at least once every twenty-four hours. But that was extremely often for an immortal being and easily noticed by another.
Only after lifting his head and the rippling of its surface growing more intense, did that thought race through Dialga's mind. The ripples turned to waves and the water darkened until the once-mirrored surface became a black portal. Dialga took a few steps back. Despite the disturbance of two dimensional planes meeting at this one singularity, it made no noise; even the splashing of the water disappeared into the aether.
At once, dark, ghostly tendrils shot up from the black hole and sped towards him with such force, he felt the scales along his neck flare up.
Was she angry?
Was she still angry?
He supposed she would be.
Without a second thought, he leapt into the air. He didn't want to find out for sure, especially not on her home turf. Galloping into the air was futile, though. The tendrils homed in on him with expert precision, and in no time, they'd wrapped tightly about his back legs. Flailing and twisting, Dialga pulled in the opposite direction. It was no use. The tendrils now easily, and without much haste, wrapped around his body slowly, gaining more and more strength as they pulled him into the black portal.
“Dialga – !” came Giratina's roar from beyond the black.
It was muffled and the rest of her words weren't permitted past the portal's interface, but –
She didn't sound angry. The desperation in it was clear, despite the way the universe's new order rejected her so completely. Still, he roared back, feigning some frustration. He couldn't make it seem as if he wanted to see her, or would gladly trespass into her reversed domain on the opposite side of Arceus' perfect realm. Yet, his struggling subsided enough to allow Giratina to overpower him, enough for just this meeting a millennia after the fact.
Dragged under, Dialga watched as the beauty of Mount Coronet became distorted before his eyes, as if looking up from beneath the reflective pool's surface. Sunlight shone through the portal, casting faint white light into a dark, empty world.
Giratina's tendrils around Dialga loosened, but did not retract. He craned his neck to see her behind him, approaching slowly, carefully, until she could wrap her snake-like body around him, just like she used to.
Here, where the Earth's gravity was only a memory, Giratina could be her true, original self, elegant and serpentine. Here she could glide along the aether as if still in the vacuum of space above the Earth when things were a lot simpler, where this kind of embrace was more commonplace.
Dialga closed his eyes and, for just a moment, allowed himself to be transported back to that time, if only through his and her memories. They floated in silence for that briefest of moments before reality needed to be checked.
This wasn't allowed. Deities weren't allowed to feel this way and certainly weren't allowed to engage this way anymore. It was cause for chaos, Arceus had decreed. All three of His children had been given their own planes to reside within, but where Dialga and Palkia could visit the mortal realm as they pleased, Giratina could not. She was banished here, to the Reverse World, for her malice and violence, as the story goes.
Dialga, and, whether they liked to admit it, the other deities, knew better. Giratina was misunderstood and never given a chance to explain herself. Her frustrations and troubles had fallen on deaf ears for far too long. The more he thought on it, the more Dialga had grit his teeth over the millennia. Could he have done more for her? Or did Arceus always want to make an example of one of them, His three children of his universe's laws? After all, if one of them could be easily exiled, then all other deities would fall in line nicely, knowing something just as terrible or worse could happen to them.
And they'd all keep their mouths shut.
It didn't seem like Giratina found any fault in Dialga, though. She nuzzled her forehead just under his jaw, their scales scraping against one another at a calming frequency.
“I miss you,” she hummed in a small, delicate voice. She knew damn well that her actions were her own, as was her punishment for them. This defiance of Arceus, again, was also her own. She was strong like that. After all, how much worse could it get than being trapped in the Reverse World and transforming into a six-legged beast should she ever find a back door out of it? Still, he could feel her heart racing, and the desperation for these couple of minutes.
Dialga moved to return her nuzzling, leaning his chin on her head. He still cared for her. The time apart really didn't change anything, though it stung whenever those starlit memories with her surfaced. Offering more of his affection would only make it hurt more, though. He let a pause speak for him. She curled around him tighter.
“I really must go,” he finally said. His deep voice seemed to be absorbed into the shadows all around them, the silence deafening.
She heard him. He knew by the way her body suddenly went slack with disappointment.
“The lord is watching...” he began to remind her. Despite the fact that Arceus was in a deep slumber, He still knew all.
Giratina cut him off. “I know.”
She unwrapped herself and Dialga could feel how much she hated to do so. Reflective pools, crystals, and mirrors – anything reflective gave her a window to the Earth, allowing her to see what had become of the planet they'd all helped to build and protect all those years ago. He didn't need to be psychic to know she'd been peering through those windows for the chance to see him, too, and, maybe returning to the same spring everyday was his subconscious way of allowing this to happen. Now that he was here, now across from her, studying the way she stared after him, he didn't have much to say, much less anything that wouldn't hurt like Hell or anything that wouldn't be damning for the both of them. Being under constant surveillance wouldn't allow him to make his feelings clear in a statement. He hoped she just knew and felt it like he did.
Dialga bowed his head. On the outside, it would look like the dragons had come to some agreement not to fight, but Dialga hoped Giratina knew it better as an act of respect. He did respect her and understood her, and she needed someone on her side. That would be him. Always.
Turning for the portal, Dialga decided he wouldn't look back. He couldn't. If he did, he'd linger too long, or turn back completely for just a few minutes more. This little mistake had to remain a blip on Arceus's radar. It had to.
Emerging from the portal, Dialga breathed in as if coming back up from the pool's dark depths for air and galloped back into the sky. He could feel Giratina's pained expression on him, even as he disappeared into the mountain clouds.
He returned to the reflective pool thereafter like clockwork. He'd take a drink from it and stay for a moment more. He'd hum at the surface, disturbing the water's mirror into rippling stripes of light and dark, beckoning her closer. She'd appear just beyond the surface – he could feel her presence in his chest as soon as she approached. And, at the right vibrating frequency, the thin layer of reality there allowed her words through to him, clear as day.
And that would have to do for now.