[Yandere Meowscarada x Reader] I'll Make Them All Disappear!

59 | Ruined Illusion

Invidia sits perched at the peak of a canyon, the sky above her — rather, the head of the dome — a starless black. Swallowed by the sea, the Terarium's walls look devoid of life, the boundless waters letting no light in. No life. Invidia cranes her neck as a Fletchinder flies past. Urges to pierce the small bird's chest with a beam of grass magic fill her, but the urges aren't her own. By whatever force of miracle, Theia persists on clinging to her body — if it can be called hers, anyway. Invidia is the one in full control. She fights the temptation.

"Florian, you're still down there, aren't you?" Invidia talks to herself. Nothing calls back. "My sweet boy. Just wait for me. Wait, and I'll bring you back." She knows Florian can't hear her. Florian is long gone. It's been that way for a number of years Invidia's forgotten the count of — she stopped counting altogether. As a means of killing time, she tries doing the math. If Theia was handed off to that other trainer when he was nine years old, and he's eighteen now, that makes Theia nine, at the very least. Nine in cat years or... whatever-the-hell-she-is years? There's no way to tell. But it can't be as simple as that.

Although the memories are blurry, Invidia remembers drowning in a long slumber shortly after she felt herself die and become fused with the crystal Meowscarada. So long, in fact, she felt she'd aged at least ten years, maybe less. Can something like Theia even have an age? What if she's ageless? What if she's already elderly and just keeps up with her fur routine enough to keep from turning gray?

Stop. Stop thinking about it, Invidia reminds herself. Stop thinking about the other Meowscarada, the other "Pokémon." She tilts her head up at the sky and sits cross-legged on her small platform of respite where she can breathe, and think, and feel her heartbeat, and be alive. Being alive is such a nice feeling, she's thinking. She's been dead so long, she forgot what life tasted like. She forgot the feeling of wind sinking into her fur, blood pulsing through her veins, light filtering into her eyes, the hushed thump, thump, thumps of her heart. She holds her paw close to her chest, feeling over her breasts, bigger than she remembers, and pauses there for a moment.

Holding her palm against her skin makes her want someone else's hand on her... Florian's. The times he would stroke her belly as they embraced one another in bed, she always looked stoic back then. A little apprehensive that Florian's warm human touch might suddenly vanish or go cold; too cold to feel beneath her fur. She's always been the paranoid type, though she never voiced it, always waking up scared, taking anywhere from ten to twenty minutes counting Florian's breaths as he slept to make sure he was still alive. Secretly checking the contents of his meals before he ate, not all the time, but whenever he stepped out of his comfort zone and tried new dishes from out, she had to have the first taste. If it tasted bad, Florian wasn't getting it. If the cook dropped a single strand of hair in the food, Florian wasn't getting it. If there was poison in it (there never was), Florian most definitely wasn't getting it.

Her paranoia had gotten so bad to the point Florian was practically fighting for his food before every meal. Either that or taking the sneaky approach, which meant locking himself in the bedroom and setting his takeout on top of the dresser. The plan worked, for a day, and then magically Invidia learned to recognize the sound of his food containers cracking open. She would proceed to bust down the door behind which he hid, steal his food, have the first bite, and after checking, Florian was allowed to indulge.

She wasn't a brute. She'd fix the door each time shortly after she broke it down.

Without Florian, there's no one to protect. There's no purpose other than spiting the creature who stole her body all those years ago. There's no drive... she's already been through this once before. Invidia looks down on the plains stretching far below the canyons, and each region divided beyond them. A savanna, arctic, the beaches. She's walked those trails before. It was one of the last things she and Florian did before taking to the leagues in Paldea and dethroning the regional champion. Blueberry Academy, a place she's already been, and where much of her envy grew more restless than before. The first time she stepped foot into this academy alongside Florian, she was met with eyes full of ambition, young ones all around, not much older than Florian, but certainly more daring than she could ever wish to be.