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Galbrena wasn't used to making long stops.
She had always been on the hunt, ever since Chimera had come into the picture. Ever since she started her life after what should've been death.
Keeping the ruthless Tacet Discord fed by slaying its kin, in turn making herself stronger, and furthering her goals- to destroy the Dark Tide, and everything that stemmed from it -, which ultimately led to her killing even more Tacet Discords was a cycle she had long since accepted as the nature in which her life would go on until its very end, its true end, and it was a cycle that required her to keep on moving to continue.
At the time that her path had been fully set on finally destroying the Threnodian, Galbrena's thoughts couldn't have been further from the 'after' of it all.
Where she would end up, how she would end up, or if she would be alive at all.
Killing Leviathan was all that mattered.
But if someone had asked her, or if her own thoughts had wandered to the question by chance, she most certaintly wouldn't have thought the answer would be the Black Shores.
Life at the Black Shores was both interestingly new and underwhelmingly familiar.
It hadn't been since her childhood that she had spent so much time around certain people to truly be able to get to know them. Associate names to faces, voices to phrases, memories to friends.
But of course she still was the same Galbrena- The same Angel she had always been. She kept to her own business, but helped with others if asked or necessary, and of course she still went out into the wilderness to hunt Tacet Discords, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. It was familiar, yes. However...
For a time, at the start, she kept forgetting that now she had a place to return to. A room, of her own, to return to. That she no longer needed to sleep underneath trees or against ruin walls after a successful hunt. It was a singularly strange feeling, to have a place that belonged to her, and she to it, after so long that she had already forgotten the first and only one.
She kept to her own business, but people went to her for more than business and gratitude now. They came to her for idle conversation, for a casual chat between assignments, to ask about her day and tell her about theirs, to simply say good morning or goodnight.
They came to her to get to know her. They came to her for her.
And she found herself wanting to know them, too.
Waking up under the same roof two days in a row took a very long while to stop feeling so wrong, but eventually her mornings began to feel familiar with the quiet peace and soothing sound of the waves outside her window.
There were people that she herself said good morning and goodnight to, now, without thinking anything special or unfamiliar of it. People that she shared meals with not out of celebration or formality, but out of pure casual normalcy. People to share coffee or ice cream with on lazy afternoons. People to wave at when walking down a hall. People that wished for her to have a safe journey when she departed, and were happy to see her unharmed when she returned.
Maybe they weren't all friends in the very definition of the word, but they were all part of her home, and so all part of her life.
This new life.
Sometimes, when Galbrena rested her weapons, and Angel got to relax in bed for but a few hours, she wondered if Rover would've invited her to join the Black Shores anyway, had Aalto not said anything that day.
It's not a question that uncertained her about Rover's own character, more so that intrigued her even more to Aalto's.
Galbrena wasn't blind to the fact that he was quite eager for her to join the Black Shores, and since the first time she had seen and heard him open his big mouth his whole demeanor screamed 'shady'. That smile almost always plastered on his face, as if he was always scheming.
She had accepted Rover's invitation to the Black Shores because she trusted her to surround herself with the right people. Trustworthy people.
If the invitation had come from Aalto, at least back then, she would've most probably said no.
However, it took one only about a week living at the Black Shores to realize that Aalto's biggest scheme was convincing everyone that met him that he was, indeed, a calculating, conniving schemer, and not just a huge softie with an unadmitted love for theatrics.
He had the mist already, he only needed the mirrors.
His huge, uncompromising, unloyal network of contacts, built upon hefty prices and dubious clientele? All so that he could better gather the information necessary for the Black Shores.
His shady acting and appearance, as well as semi-mocking, laid-back tone? Well, someone on his field had to be well known by the right people and avoided by the rest.
His 'keeping everything strictly business with everyone.'? All for networking and not real friendships? Yeah, right.
But by far, Aalto's biggest tell was Encore. Rather, the close relationship they had.
To many, it would seem as if they were simple good friends or comrades, a bond formed of continued missions taken and completed together, working well as a team and better as accomplices.
To anyone in the Black Shores that paid attention, and much to Aalto's embarrassment, they were more a pair of siblings brought together by chance.
Well, some people had their different takes. Father and daughter, uncle and niece, brother and sister... Angel didn't really have an answer of her own. To her, they were just a family of two.
Aalto's suspicious persona might be all that there is about him in the streets and whispers of Solaris, but in the Black Shores? It crumbled the second you crossed paths with Encore.
Whenever Encore was eating too much candy? Aalto had to take them from her and talk to her about rotten teeth.
Whenever Encore couldn't sleep? Aalto had to read a bed-time story. (Though Cloudy and Cosmos sometimes had things to say about that.)
Whenever you heard an adult man and a little girl arguing about high-scores? You could bet Aalto and Encore had been playing on that old fossile of a console they had and treated like a treasure.
Galbrena had never had any issues eating whatever was available to survive, and neither did she have trouble finishing the plates that were occasionally served to her. On the Black Shores, however, food wasn't scarce, and after a while she had allowed herself to leave a morsel or two untouched after a meal. Whenever Encore caught her doing it, she would go on about the 'Ghosts of food she didn't finish' crawling out of her tummy and giving her bad dreams. Where had she gotten that from? Everyone knew; Aalto.
Galbrena had felt almost ashamed, once the realization had hit her, of judging the 'Book of Aalto' by its cover. Almost. He did pass some of her reports as his own from time to time.
Well, she guessed she could forgive that nowadays.
As they had first started talking, Aalto had indeed make an effort to be 'all business' with Galbrena, going straight to the point of whatever they were discussing and giving only the minimum of his info-broker thetatrics.
"Hey, you're already part of us, so i don't have to put on acts to convince you!" He had said with his usual smile and a laugh to his tone.
But by this point Galbrena had already met Encore, she was well aware, and needless to say it only took a little over another week and a half for Aalto's mask to crack completely around her. As was the case for almost everyone else, as she came to learn.
A silly man, he was.
They started talking as simply and casually as Galbrena had been doing with the rest of the Black Shores. Exchanging waves, good mornings, goodnights. News of the day, news of their own day and asking for them in return.
It didn't take long from there, really, for them to start exchanging kisses beneath the shadow of a building after checking nobody was looking, or by the shore behind a conveniently gathered cloud of fog.
He had been... strangely hypnotic.
There was something that grabbed her attention about how genuine he was underneath all of the mist he hid behind. How he tried so hard to illuse an apathetic personality yet the mirrors he used for his act often reflected his soft and warm nature.
How he still thought he fooled anyone when he went on 'pet-rescue' missions for little kids while accepting origami and painted marbles as payment? Galbrena had no clue, but it was one of the things she had come to love about him.
She couldn't help but laugh at herself. How Galbrena herself had bought into his act upon first meeting him, only to eventually become the one the least fooled by it.
Well, herself and Encore.
He had been so casual and shady when she called her name beautiful, an answer not meant for him, but then had been so shy about calling her 'Angel' himself, while stuttering 'beautiful' to describe all of her this time.
He commended her skill and prowess when he told Rover about inviting her, offering the Blake Bloom she now carried in her arm as a contract.
Now he spoke the world of her voice and her company, the humour they both enjoyed so much, her unhuman ability to find things Encore had lost while running around, and of course, there were a lot of compliments aimed at her beauty, as well. The only flowers he had offered since were ones meant as gifts.
If you had told Galbrena that flowers and compliments would make her tainted heart skip a beat before the rebirth of the Threnodian, she would've thought the Dark Tide had corrupted your brain.
But here she was, feeling giddy about the 'lovely' directed at her eyes and the same 'gorgeous' meant for the whole of her, no matter how many times she had already heard it in the middle of the night when everyone but two consultants slept.
They decided together that they would keep their relationship as secret as possible. Of course no one in the Black Shores really cared and it wasn't a big deal that two consultants were dating, but voices could travel in weird ways and while Aalto would rather his clients not know about any of his true relationships, Galbrena simply prefered to do without the questions that would inevitably arise.
She was glad for her new home and friends, but she wasn't quite ready or sure how to deal with dating conversations.
But of course, they did have to tell one person. The one person in the Black Shores that actually would very much care if they were dating.
Thankfully, Encore was both pretty happy about it and okay with keeping it a secret as well.
Irrationally, Galbrena had harbored a tiny fraction of worry that perhaps the girl would be upset with the news.
It was true, that her time at the Black Shores hadn't been terribly long, but Galbrena had come to care for Encore a great deal.
The girl was a treasure.
She carried herself joyful and careless where she went, and found great happines in spreading that same joy to as many people as she could around her.
She had a sunbeam for a smile and whenever they talked, Galbrena could briefly glimpse shadows of happier times, and lost possibilities of a 'happier' future.
Encore was such, that it took Galbrena a few days to reconcile with the stories Aalto had confided with her.
How oftentimes, though always accompanied by loyal Cloudy and Cosmos, Encore would still wake up from nightmares. From dreams of her mother. Dreams of fire and an abandoned theater. How seeing her smile was all the more valuable after you had seen her cry. After you knew why she cried.
But even still, when night faded away and she walked along the halls, Encore always wore a content grin, spreading joy while keeping grief locked deep within.
Vastly different, yet eerily similar to Galbrena, in a way.
Aalto didn't think it was healthy for the girl, but after years, he was still lost on what to do other than be there for her and comfort her whenever the grief wouldn't stay imprisoned.
Galbrena wouldn't know what to say, either. She didn't quite remember how dealing with her parents' passing went, but there was something she could do.
It had been some time, but she still remembered how to make dream-catchers. Her own feathers and different materials woven in patterns of her own design. They didn't help with her own sleeping struggles, as she had once hoped, but apparently when others put them above their beds, it would assuredly drive nightmares away.
Galbrena was there to hunt down Tacet Discords even in dreams, it seemed.
"Your feathers carry your frequency." Chimera had explained to her years ago, and how these frequencies 'hunted' nightmare Tacet Discords.
Encore had taken great joy in the gift upon receiving it, even though not sure of what it was, but the girl's affection for the Discord Slayer sky-rocketed after the first few nights without waking up.
She had come running to Galbrena one day, explaining how someone who looked just like her but with differently colored hair and clothes came to save and comfort her in her dreams each night she had a nightmare.
Angel only smiled and listened attentively.
Eventually, people around began to find it a bit strange, how sometimes the pair would be Encore alongside Big Sister Galbrena, instead of Big Brother Aalto.
Or well, Aunt Galbrena. Or even Mama Galbrena.
The first two she didn't mind, but 'Mama'? She didn't know how to feel about that.
Though Encore and the man himself would never say it, Aalto fit very well with the title of 'Papa'. Galbrena had no isseus picturing him in a life vastly different from his current one, had he never gone down the path of an information broker and joined the Black Shores.
Herself, however... A mother wasn't something she was ready to even think about describing herself as, nor did she think she would ever be ready.
In the future? Who knows. Life had already taken a completely different turn than anything she had ever anticipated for herself since joining the Black Shores, but at least for now, Sister and Aunt would work.
In the end, the important part was that Encore was no longer plagued by nightmares, and a night in which Encore didn't cry was a night in which Galbrena thought the world was better.
The Discord Slayer almost felt jealous that her own dream-catcher worked so well on helping Encore have peaceful nights yet had had no effect on herself, despite many attempts. But that was fine, she had Aalto for that now. He couldn't quite quell the struggle of the clashing frequencies inside of her at night, but waking up to a loving embrace in a warm bed was a world of difference to a lonely, cold ground, and no matter how many times she would wake up, if he was there, she could always fall back asleep just as quickly.
After the dream-catcher, she had made a point to look out for more things to gift the pink-haired sunbeam, be it at stores or the wilderness, and in turn, Encore grew ever fonder of her new friend. As did Galbrena.
Even more so after her and Aalto got together, and in turn, her own relationship with Aalto grew stronger. Funny, how these two were so intertwined in the other's lives that this is just how it went with them. You get along with one, you get along with the other, and so on.
That, of course, meant that if Aalto was busy for whatever reason, it no longer fell on Cloudy and Cosmos to read Encore her bedtime stories, but on Galbrena.
"Comes with the title of Big Sibling." A researcher had told her jokingly.
That certainly had required some training, after her first reading night had been met with negative reviews from Cloudy and Cosmos. At least Encore had let her down gently, telling her she had enjoyed the story either way.
Galbrena had thought that, in their relationship, she might be able to learn a thing or two from Aalto. Something like networking, maybe, even if she'd never use it. She never thought that thing she'd learn would be how to make funny voices and strong inflections to fit the characters in bedtime stories.
Those had been quite some interesting evenings. Leisure days at her room, all alone with her boyfriend, doing nothing more than reading children's books, making silly faces and even sillier voices at each other, trying to figure out what would make a child happier.
It had paid off, though. Nowadays her stories were met with dazzling reviews from both pink haired children and woolie plushies.
Before she realized, the fearsome Discord Slayer, feathered demon as tainted as the monsters she hunted, had made a special place in both her mind and heart for the young girl, as she had done for Aalto before, and Rover before him.
She started keeping track of the times at which Aalto prepared the tea he liked so much, and learned how to make it, just so she could make it for him at the right time if she had the chance. A nice gesture she found calming to perform, but that would also earn her another shy, embarrassed reaction from him, which was, unadmittedly, one of the bigger insentives to be romantic with Aalto.
It was fair, too, since he had made a point to bring back many different types of souvenir ice cream from the places he visited.
She started counting the candy that Encore ate so that she could stop her before she ate too many. Aalto had told her she was allowed a little more on the weekends, though she later learned that that was just an excuse so that he wouldn't have to say 'no' to her all the time. Big softie.
She didn't use the 'rotten teeth' story that Aalto did and, truthfully, Galbrena didn't think Encore ever bought that, but she would tell the girl her tummy would caramelize and her blood would turn to sugar.
A little too extreme, for Aalto's taste, but it got the work done and the little girl didn't seem too scared by it.
Encore, in turn, had started to prepare for her her famous Coral Bowl. Not many were a fan of this dish, as Galbrena came to understand, but she was quite happy to have it as dinner each time Encore made it for her. It was actually quite good, after ignoring the poisonous appearance.
She started sleeping on the right side of bed every single night, no matter if it was her or Aalto's bed, and even if she was alone. It was his left hand that he put around her when they cuddled, and her left, human hand that held onto it when they slept that way. Sleeping on the other side now felt odd, as if her body knew there should be someone else there. A very specific someone.
She developed a habit of checking the time every night, always finding the clock pointing at 10pm, whenever she was away on a mission. That was Encore's bedtime, at which time usually either her or Aalto would read her a bedtime story, and if both were present, one would simply hang out by the door while the other read. The days that she couldn't be there, checking the time had become a sort of ritual. She would suddenly just remember Encore, check the time, and lo and behold, 10pm. Her subconscious reminding her that she was missing something important.
Chimera chastized her opening heart, reminding her that if she allowed affection, she allowed fear, and with fear came the cracks from which beings like the Threnodian could gain the upper hand. But Galbrena didn't heed his words. She didn't fear the Dark Tide and its own manipulation of fear. She was confident in her strength and power, and the denizens of the Dark Tide would be foolish to not fear her, instead. She had already slain the very thing once, after all.
Still, Galbrena couldn't deny that there was some truth to the Tacet Discord's warning.
There was no hiding from Chimera that she had come to consider the Black Shores her home. Even thought she had told Augusta that she would go home to Septimont, the truth was that Septimont was no longer such a thing for her.
Important and irreplaceable, yes, and she would indeed visit, but right now she was right where she slept the most comfortable at night.
And in this new home she had found a new family.
It was true what she said to Chimera, she didn't fear the Dark Tide or its tricks, and perhaps she had grown too complacent in her own strength, as well as in the aid of her now many trusted allies, but for the first time since before her frequency had been corrupted, Angel felt like it was alright to have some fear in her heart.
For at this moment, she feared losing all of this, losing them, more than she's ever feared anything before.
Losing Aalto. Losing Encore. Losing their home.
The truth was that it was too late for Chimera's warning, for that intense fear had already taken root in her heart, and it would be now impossible to cut off. It had become a part of her frequency as much as the Tacet Discord himself.
A life in which she would always have Aalto by her side, to love her and cherish her like she once thought she never would be. In which she could spend her afternoons doing something else other than hunt and think about her next step, instead resting on a small couch accustomed to her and Aalto's forms as they wasted the hours with tea and ice cream. In which she would wake up to morning kisses and fall asleep to another heartbeat pressed against her back.
A life in which Encore would always be there the next day, to tell her a new story, only to expect one in return. In which there was always a pink-haired menace trying to play the same old prank on her, and Galbrena would pretend to be surprised just to see the smile of satisfaction on her face.
A life in which despite her unending torment at the hands of corrupted frequencies, just being there for Encore or spending lazy evenings with Aalto was a comfort such that the whispers of the Dark Tide simply wouldn't- couldn't -reach her thoughts.
A life in which Aalto had begun making cover stories for one extra person, just in case. In which Encore had begun making an extra coral bowl each batch. In which another name had been written in a videogame's high-score board.
A life in which a family of two had become a family of three.
Losing that all was a thought Galbrena didn't even want to entertain.
So she would simply have to be prepared.
If the Dark Tide fed on fear, then she would have to answer the same way she always had.
Angel had been born a kind, shy girl, but Galbrena had been reborn to be the demon that fed on hatred. Hatred for the Dark Tide, hatred for the frequencies now roaming inside of her, hatred for fate and its injustices. Sometimes, even hatred for herself.
Hatred had kept her alive since she had welcomed Chimera into her heart, it fueled her flame and consumed all who dared stand in her fiery path. Her gambles and the cycle of hunting and consumption were risky and exhausting, but they had never led her to a road without a clear way forward. Even if they did, she would have simply carve a new one. It's how she had lived after she should have died. How she had made her way to Septimont once more. How she had slayed the very thing that cursed her to this power.
And how she had found herself in the Black Shores.
Meeting Aalto. Meeting Encore.
Finding love for the first time, and family once more.
This time, Galbrena- Angel -wouldn't let her family be swallowed by the Dark Tide, or any other kind of darkness.
She loved them enough to hate whatever would threaten them twice as strongly.
As long she she had something to fear losing, she would have enough hatred to protect it.
As Galbrena slowly and quietly closed Encore's door after the girl had fallen asleep, and started to walk her way to her room with Aalto following behind, the Discord Slayer thought of the recent past, the peaceful present and the distant future.
As she opened her own door she thought of that day, wondered what would be of her life right now if she hadn't accepted to join the Black Shores, and how she could've lived the rest of her life without knowing this happiness.
As she and Aalto both took their clothes off, she thought of the present. The 'Now' that she had earned through her battle and sacrifice, and the love she had found in the arms of a silly man who insisted on wearing sunglasses indoors.
And as she fell asleep in the comforting, familiar embrace of a frame slightly taller than her own, a soft breath in the crook of her neck, she thought of the future. Of the 'after' of it all. Where she would be, how she would be, and with whom she would be.
No matter what Chimera, the babbling, dark whispers of the Dark Tide, or the nightmares that she trusted wouldn't come this night might have to say, all that Angel saw was a future in the Black Shores, and a family of three.