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teamflareTitle: So Long as We Can Say
Fandom: Pokémon X&Y
Pairing: Professor Augustine Sycamore/Lysandre
Rating: T
Summary: In the aftermath of victory, Lysandre discovers that triumph without peril indeed brings no glory. In more ways than one.
Notes: This is the fic, the one I started early on in the fandom, abandoned a year later, and then finished EIGHT YEARS after posting the first chapter. It's also the starting point for a whole series. Warning for Major Character Death (although it doesn't last) and heavy angst, especially in the early chapters. This is a story about Lysandre succeeding in his plans and then having a really bad time about it. Title is from Shakespeare's King Lear.
AO3 Link: Here.
Victory smelled like smoke, and something else, metallic and sweet, clinging to the back of his throat. Blood, his brain helpfully provided, though he had no desire to let himself linger on the thought. Somewhere through the dark billowing clouds, he could hear Xerosic make his way toward him, coughing and wheezing.
Lysandre couldn't take his eyes off the remains of the weapon. It had collapsed onto itself, leaving behind a mess of exposed wires and sizzling metal. Most of the liquid that'd spilled out was black; some he could tell had mixed in with something else. He couldn't see the corpses, buried in what was left of the inside. He didn't have to. The beasts had surely been killed in the process. He thought maybe he should have cared about that more than he did, but he didn't need them anymore. They'd served their purpose.
He'd served his as well. That was what mattered. He could hear his heartbeat, louder and louder in his ears, a maddening rhythm, louder even than the rumbling sounds of the whole place breaking apart. A rock the size of his palm fell against his shoulder. He didn't even flinch.
Surely that was how it felt to succeed. He clenched his fist, hard.
Xerosic's silhouette slowly detached itself from the fumes. He was holding his arm in front of his face in a futile attempt to breathe in as little of it as possible.
"The whole place is collapsing," he called out, his voice muffled. Lysandre's eyes flickered in his direction: he was frowning, his goggles dark and fogged up. His willingness to stay by his side even as things went off course was commendable. "Can't say I didn't expect that."
They had never discussed this happening, though Lysandre thought perhaps he hadn't given him the occasion. A terrible sound broke through the smoke, soon followed by one of the largest pipes crashing onto the floor between them. Xerosic startled, gripping his own shoulder.
"We need to regroup," Lysandre finally managed to say. "Gather everyone who's still alive."
Xerosic's shoulders rose briefly, his frown deepening as if he had something to say to that. Instead, he gave a short nod and took off toward the door, narrowly avoiding more falling rubble.
Lysandre turned back toward the remnants of the machine. He wanted to imprint this memory into his mind forever: the first step toward his beautiful world. He found himself feeling no bitterness toward the sacrifices that had already been made to achieve it. Somewhere, he knew, the legendaries were grateful to have done their part to make this world better.
He took a deep breath, unbothered by the stench settling in his lungs. The weight of his own victory seemed almost too much to bear. He could still feel his heart pulsing painfully in his temples. Another pipe fell off the machine, scraping against the wall to produce a cacophony that Lysandre thought could serve as a requiem to the old world. He held the edge of his visor in his hand and took it off slowly.
The smoke in his eyes made them water. He rubbed the tears away quickly. There was no time to waste now. He'd triumphed, and now it was time for him to lead his people toward even greater heights. Help his fellow chosen ones build this new, better world.
When he finally moved to walk out, he thought he caught a glimpse of someone standing next to him, a flicker of a human shape – but when he looked back there was no one.
Climbing back up toward the main room, he contemplated what would come next. There was so much to do, and they would have to do it alone: both humans and pokémons were gone. This had always been the most nebulous part of his plans; it wasn't that he didn't think he could pull it off, of course not, that would have been absurd, but there had always been a small voice at the back of his head that would remind him that this was a monumental task, even for him. Cleaning up the world, and then reshaping it almost from scratch.
He'd had a lot to say before all of this, lots of speeches about how everything would turn out once they'd won, lots of carefully chosen words for his not-so-carefully chosen ones, making their eyes glitter with anticipation. Now, even as he reached the last steps, he found the words harder to pick. He could still smell the smoke clinging to him, feel the building shake and crumble under his feet.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he still hadn't figured out what he was going to tell them. Most of the recruits he could see and the admins standing beside them seemed to be doing fine, though some sported superficial injuries. All of his scientists stood at the front, except Celosia.
Her eyes still hidden behind her green visor, Bryony was crying. She held on to Mable's arm with a grip so tight that the other girl couldn't completely hide a painful grimace, her face turned away from her.
Lysandre had never seen her cry. He hadn't seen her much, now that he really thought about it – sure she stood with the other scientists during their meetings, and when he'd first met her they'd had what he presumed you could call a friendly rapport, but he just didn't mingle with his employees that much if he could avoid it.
Xerosic walked up to stand beside her as well, his goggles still covered in soot. "Celosia is missing," he said like he would have announced that one of their computers had malfunctioned. "Bryony thinks she was crushed when the ceiling collapsed in the room they were in together."
"That is unfortunate," Lysandre said, unable to stop staring at her and the tears and snot dribbling on her lips from behind the visor.
She shook and shook and shook, bending over slightly as if she was going to be sick. Mable put her hand on where she was still gripping her arm. Behind her, Aliana was staring at the ground, the red glow of her own visor casting strange lights on her face.
"I c–can't... I can't... I can't believe she's dead!" Bryony cried out in his direction.
"A lot of people are dead," Lysandre said.
*
They dug up Celosia's body because Bryony wanted – needed – to see it. Lysandre was reluctant for a long time, citing the danger and knowing fully well that she wouldn't like what she would see, but she kept insisting, and they needed to go back in the ruins to look for possible survivors anyway. The other recruits had taken to avoiding her, and Xerosic did suggest that perhaps it would improve morale if she stopped acting so erratically.
She regretted it as soon as she saw it, her face red then pale then taking on an off-color tone between blue and green. No one could blame her: Celosia's head and half of her body had been crushed, her chest caved in, her visor cutting through what was left of her forehead. She looked nothing like a human being.
Still, Bryony stopped crying so much after that.
*
Lumiose City was in ruins.
The Prism Tower had collapsed, destroying entire streets on the way down. The plaza looked oddly smaller without it, soulless now that its main attraction had been destroyed. Instead, it, and the rest of the city with it, was now filled with a more macabre kind of decoration: corpses. They were everywhere. On the streets, in the houses, some crushed under what was left of the destroyed buildings, some just lying on the floor, seemingly unharmed, but cold and unmoving. Families out on a stroll, salarymen on the way to their jobs, trainers hanging out with their companions, children on break playing with their friends... Dead. Humans, pokémons. Dead.
Lysandre barely reacted when one of the younger recruits fainted on the spot, overwhelmed by the presence of all the bodies. They hadn't looked outside while they were in the cars, driving to the capital. He had.
They had so much work to do.
"We'll have to gather them all together," he said, his gaze focused on the crumpled-up body of a stray litleo, lying at the foot of one of the trees.
"And then what?" someone asked behind him, their voice faint and trembling.
"We could burn them," Lysandre heard Aliana reply. Her tone was somewhat unsure but she'd said it loud enough to be heard by all.
There was a rustle in the crowd, though none of the lower recruits seemed to be able to bring themselves to protest.
"It's not a bad suggestion," Lysandre said with a short nod.
The silence around them stretched further. In the absence of all the usual signs of life – cars in the streets, passersby, bird pokémons, the melody of the city – it felt unnervingly loud. Lysandre bent over and picked up a pokéball that someone had dropped, presumably upon dying. It was light and empty.
"I didn't join this to burn corpses," a grunt said in a high-pitched voice. "That's disgusting."
"You would rather live in a town covered in rotten cadavers, then," Lysandre said softly, crushing a pair of glasses under his shoe.
"W–Well, no, but..."
"There's no 'but'," Xerosic barked at them. "Do what your boss said."
They moved slowly, dragging their feet through the thin layer of dust and ashes covering the asphalt. Lysandre watched one of the girls carefully pick up the litleo's body, her lips quivering, and then turned away.
No one tried to follow him when they saw where he was going, except Bryony, her motion cut short by Xerosic. In his peripheral vision, Lysandre watched him grip her arm firmly, without a word, his face stern and still dirtied up by smoke and ashes. She was looking toward Lysandre when she nodded.
It was a miracle that Augustine Sycamore's laboratory still stood where so many of the nearby buildings had caved in, their front walls fallen inward. The windows were all broken, and the door gave in as soon as Lysandre took hold of the handle. He could barely see anything inside the hall, noticing the flopped-over silhouette of the woman who used to stand at the counter only once he'd moved close enough to touch it. Her forehead rested against it, her body slack as if she'd just fallen asleep.
He didn't even know her name. He wondered why that suddenly mattered to him.
The elevator took so long to respond that he began to suspect it had actually broken down, but when he turned away the doors opened with a frightening creak. It seemed reckless, and pointless on top of that, to try his luck with something that could have buried him alive, yet he did anyway, stepping in before he could stop himself.
There was something mechanical to his motions. He felt somewhat like he was acting in spite of himself, as if he was being pushed forward by some kind of providential force – until the doors opened to the third floor and he was brought back to his own body.
Sycamore's assistant was lying right in front of the elevator. Had she been about to use it before the weapon hit? He would never know the answer to that question. He stepped over her corpse.
The room was a mess, but it always had been. There were other corpses, other assistants, a complicated piece of machinery that had fallen over, spilling metal parts everywhere. In the middle, separating one area from the rest, the partition that Sycamore had always been partial to still remained, straight as ever.
He walked to the other side.
The cold air, that Lysandre hadn't paid much attention to before, slipped through the cracks of the large, broken window until it slapped him in the face. He blinked it away.
Unsurprisingly, Sycamore had been sitting at his desk when it happened. He was hunched over, his face merely centimeters away from the wooden surface, his computers still turned on in front of him.
He was dead, of course.
Lysandre knew that he was going to be dead – but knowing he was dead and seeing his corpse were two very different things, and now he thought maybe he could understand why Bryony had wanted to see Celosia so badly.
He'd spent a lot of time with Augustine Sycamore. Quiet meetings, friendly dinners, afternoons spent looking over notes and studies, teaching each other. As his plans had grown grander and the day of reckoning closer, he'd had less and less time to spare, but he'd still shown up at the lab once or twice. They'd sometimes joked about it being such an unlikely friendship – their different upbringing and social status, Sycamore's untidiness where Lysandre liked things to always be in order, Sycamore's openness with other people where Lysandre remained as closed-off as he could afford – though they knew it wasn't. They were kindred spirits in a way that Lysandre hadn't experienced with many others. With anyone else, really.
Now Sycamore was dead.
He'd always planned for him to be dead – maybe "planned" wasn't the proper word. He'd never attempted to craft a scenario where Sycamore would survive. It seemed futile. Their views were too different and revealing anything to the professor would have been too dangerous. Shamefully, he also found himself reluctant to make him a potential enemy. Even as Sycamore took most of their arguments in stride, never really pushing further than up to where he could see his friend was willing to bend, Lysandre couldn't bear the thought of their friendship falling apart. It brought him a placid sense of familiarity that he felt he needed to stay grounded.
As he approached the body – and he already hated thinking of it that way – carelessly stepping on top of clutter that would never be cleaned up, he thought that he'd been unreasonably selfish. His own body felt cold, though not as cold as Sycamore's face proved to be under his shaky fingers.
He'd never touched Sycamore's face before. He'd never stood so close to him, leaning in to look at him more carefully. Sycamore had always been warm and inviting, friendly and enthusiastic. He'd brush his arm against Lysandre's accidentally, too taken by something they were discussing, and then move back, cautious of Lysandre's boundaries.
Lysandre didn't touch people much, unless it was to make a point, like grabbing Xerosic by the shoulder when he was too caught up in fruitless work. Now he was touching Sycamore's face, and his hair, with an urgency that should have disturbed him. He wasn't himself.
He put his hands under Sycamore's stiff arms and moved him away from the chair he was sitting on. He was heavy, dead weight for a dead man, but he lifted him to carry him.
The spot right between Lysandre's eyes was pulsing painfully to the rhythm of the ringing in his ears. His heartbeat was picking up, but it wasn't the triumphant drumming he'd experienced when he was staring at the carcass of the machine. It was a death march, not to the old decrepit world, but to one single man. He took the elevator with him – it – him, looking at his peaceful expression. The relaxed eyebrows he'd seen furrow so often when focusing on a particularly confusing task, or being asked to sort through his mess by his sheepish assistants. Under them, his eyes were closed. Further down, his mouth – Lysandre looked away.
When he stepped out of the lab, Sycamore's body pressed against his chest, he saw that most of the Team Flare members had dispersed following his instructions, and felt a welcome sense of relief that they were cooperating. He could at least cling to that kind of order even as he felt himself begin to break apart.
Upon spotting him Xerosic hurried in his direction. The scientist glanced at the body but said nothing, his disapproval plainly written in the way his mouth twitched and then spread into a downward line.
"I have to drive to Couriway Town," Lysandre said before the other man could protest.
"Boss, I don't– I don't think," Xerosic started, grinding his teeth. He took a short breath and tried again, more firmly, "You can't put a corpse in the car."
Directly calling him out seemed to take a lot out of Xerosic, but the weight in Lysandre's arms prevented him from feeling pity.
"Yes, I can," he retorted. His cold but steady voice didn't betray the turmoil that was brewing in his heart and in his brain. "I paid for these cars. I'll put ten corpses in them if I want to."
Before Xerosic could come up with a reply, he walked past him, toward the cars they'd left moments ago – he couldn't tell how much time he'd spent in the lab. He couldn't bring himself to care.
He felt someone's hand on his arm, not taking a hold of it but simply touching, hovering almost. When he turned to look he saw it was Bryony. She had taken off her visor, and she was crying.
"I'm sorry," she said, and suddenly Lysandre felt like he was going to cry too, so he nodded without saying a word and kept walking. He felt her eyes on him long after he'd reached the car.
*
There was a corpse on the road that led to Couriway Town. He knew because he hit it – her – him – he didn't know, didn't look – with the car.
He tried not to think about it while he parked and took hold of Sycamore – Sycamore's body – once again. The sun was still high in the sky, its light reflected in the waterfalls. It was a nice autumn day, far away from the grim state of the capital, its peacefulness only broken by the sight of a few cadavers lying here and there. Part of the train bridge had begun to collapse, but not enough yet to damage the pokémon center that stood below it. Lysandre held on to the body and listened to the quiet sounds of the running water.
This was Sycamore's hometown, he knew, had learned through their conversations about their respective lives, tales of being young and running through the shallow water fully clothed, of watching the trains go by and daydreaming about the future. Sycamore always looked fond when he recalled his youth in Couriway Town. This was his hometown, and so it made sense for it to be his resting place – those were the frantic thoughts running through Lysandre's mind.
He laid Sycamore down on one of the benches and proceeded to look for some tool to break through the soil. He walked into a house full of dead people, then another, then another again, until he found a shovel he could use. It occurred to him as he held it in his hand that doing things without his pokémons felt foreign, unnatural. Humans still used tools, of course, but they did so alongside their companions, digging side by side. Now he no longer had anyone who could do this with him.
His pokémons were dead too.
They'd killed everyone in the end, and that was what he wanted, and surely it still was. His hands didn't shake twice around the handle of the rusty shovel.
He dug and dug and dug and then when he was almost done he realized that there was no way he could bury Sycamore like this, without putting him inside something, covering his body so that he wouldn't be lying in the dirt. He went back into the houses, first with the intent to find some blankets or other coverings, only to instead let himself be overcome by a sudden wave of rage and ripping curtains from a window. They were blue, with intricate embroidery of white and gold. Nobody was left to enjoy them anymore.
Sycamore's body had not moved when he walked back to wrap him up. He let go of the shovel and heard it hit the bench with an ugly, terrible sound. It resonated through the silence, too loud against the quietness of the water. If Sycamore had simply been asleep he would have woken up for sure.
Lysandre spent a long time covering Sycamore's body with the curtains. It felt impossible at first, to manipulate it as if it were an object, a puppet or a doll that he could move as he wished. It felt wrong in a way that nothing else had felt, except maybe finding the body in the first place. Wrapping up the face, Lysandre found himself lingering, brushing his fingertips against the cold skin, staring into the closed eyes as if they held unspeakable answers. He spent even longer burying the body properly, lowering it into the ground, watching it disappear under layers and layers of wet dirt.
It was odd, he thought afterward, once the hole was filled and the deed was done, how he suddenly realized how much he cared about Sycamore, now that he was dead and in the ground.
Sycamore had been many things – a colleague, a friend, a brilliant man, a workaholic dedicated to his passions, someone he could think of as an equal in a world that he saw himself grow more and more jaded against – but now he was simply reduced to this restful body, never to be anything else again.
This was a funeral, he realized, lowering himself down until he was almost kneeling at the foot of the grave. He'd never been to a funeral before. He'd only missed one.
"You don't have to come," his father had said, back then, his voice strained on the other side of the phone. "You have to keep at it. Your mother doesn't need you here."
She didn't, but he did – he needed to see her one last time, and he needed his family around him, though he'd convinced himself that he didn't. It was easier that way, to think that the body in the ground didn't need him there to celebrate the soul gone through the skies. Who were funerals for?
Now, staring at the newly filled hole in the ground, he thought he knew the answer his father had taken from him.
As he pulled himself back up, slowly to accommodate the soreness of his legs and the soreness of his heart, he caught it again, the unmistakable silhouette of another human being out of the corner of his eye. Dismissing it once more because he was growing tired and his vision blurry, he paid it no mind, until he heard a voice behind him.
"Well then, good job!"
There was no mistaking it, but it was impossible – and yet Lysandre turned around and there was Professor Augustine Sycamore, standing on his own grave.
Lysandre blinked, slowly, trying to make sense of the nonsensical.
"You're dead," he said uselessly, because this was obviously not happening, and he was obviously imagining things out of grief.
"A lot of people are dead," Sycamore said.
*
When he arrived back to Lumiose, avoiding the questioning gazes of his recruits, Lysandre called a meeting because it seemed like something they were supposed to do. As he'd instructed Xerosic earlier – somehow it felt as if months had passed already – they needed to regroup, constantly, to make sure they were working together. The café seemed like the best place to start: easy to access, with seating already provided, free from the scent of death and ash, familiar to all of them. The café itself, he thought, held no memories that might unsettle them – and he could tell that they were unsettled. He caught the lower recruits constantly glancing at the others, nervous looks hidden behind their sunglasses, as if they expected something bad – something worse – to happen.
Something worse was happening indeed, but only to him, it seemed. The others' eyes never fell on sights that weren't there, their wariness reserved solely for their fellow living beings. He was the only one followed by another shadow, its surreal quality belied by the very real sounds of its shoes hitting the floor.
This was agony, a meticulously crafted nightmare, a punishment of the highest order, and he deserved it, but it was agony and Sycamore knew it – well, no, Sycamore didn't know anything, because he wasn't real. The Sycamore he had buried was real. The Sycamore that was standing in his café wasn't.
The café – he'd felt at odds as soon as they'd stepped inside, the sight too mundane suddenly, the red walls and expensive counters. Sycamore used to visit him there sometimes. They both liked good food and good company. He'd never suspected the secrets hidden underneath his feet, the conspiracies, the grandiose schemes. They'd had passionate conversations above well-crafted cups of coffee, meetings that stretched for longer than was probably necessary. Now Lysandre found himself again partaking in a meeting of a different kind.
On the other side of the table he was sitting at, Xerosic and the others were staring at him, their faces pale with anxiety, but he couldn't focus on anything with Sycamore standing right behind them, his arms crossed, his back against the wall.
"Apologies," Lysandre mumbled, running a hand over his face. "What were you saying? I haven't slept."
"I said," Xerosic very carefully articulated, and he himself sounded very tired, "that I'm confident we've cleaned up Lumiose. We just need to burn the bodies now."
Lysandre nodded, trying to ignore the big grin slowly spreading on Sycamore's face.
"Niiiice work," he purred in a tone he'd never used with him when he was alive, somewhere between sarcastic and admirative. "Have you dealt with corpses before? You're handling this like a pro, Lys."
He blinked and Sycamore was gone from where he was, and instead he could feel – he could feel it, but it wasn't real – hands on his shoulders, arms around his neck. A shiver went down his spine, making his heart race.
"Are you alright?" It was strange to hear concern in Xerosic's voice. "You look sick."
"This has been hard on all of us," a Flare admin sitting next to Xerosic said. Lysandre wasn't sure he deserved the comforting tone of his voice, either. He didn't even know his name. He barely knew any of them, he realized as he felt Sycamore's fingers brush the back of his hand. He straightened himself up and slammed his hands on the table as if he'd been burnt. Xerosic flinched.
"I'm fine," Lysandre said.
Sycamore laughed in his hair.
"I'll be in my office if you need me," he added as he stood up to leave.
"We haven't even decided what we're going to do next!" Mable protested. He hadn't heard her talk much since they'd fired the weapon. She was still wearing her visor, so he couldn't see her eyes. Aliana was sitting next to her, slouched over slightly, her hands settled together on her knees. She didn't move to look at him or her.
"I'll be in my office," Lysandre repeated, louder. "You need to rest, and I do too, so do me all a favor and allow yourselves to calm down a little."
He could hear Sycamore's footsteps behind him as he walked up to the elevator, and a few whispers too. He couldn't be sure who they came from.
As soon as he stepped into the office he realized that this was a bad idea. The room felt small and bleak, a prison where he was all alone against Sycamore. Nonetheless, he dragged himself toward the chair and sat, letting himself feel overwhelmed by the weight of everything that had happened, piled up on top of him like dirt in a shallow grave.
Sycamore coiled around him, pressing against his back even as he sat on a chair, cold hands on his, gentle touches they'd never exchanged. The apparition whispered intelligible things into his ear, and Lysandre could feel his breath there, all the way through his whole body. There was something almost soothing about it, underneath the terror of being haunted by the dead, and soon enough Lysandre let himself drift away, surrendering to his fatigue.
He was woken up by the sound of his holo-caster ringing. He picked it up with shaky hands, his eyes darting around the room, but his grim companion had evaporated.
Upon launching the device, the unmistakable silhouette of Malva flickered out. She was fine and glad to be alive, though the haggard look in her eyes, even through her glasses, seemed to contradict her words. She had been with her colleagues of the Elite Four when the weapon had hit and had lost consciousness briefly. She informed him grimly that Diantha was dead, crushed under parts of the ceiling. Like Celosia, Lysandre thought.
Siebold's room had malfunctioned due to the shock and Malva was lucky to have woken up in time before it got worse. She would have drowned, and her joining Team Flare and surviving the blast thanks to the technology she had been gifted would have been all for nothing.
"It's for nothing no matter what," Sycamore said behind his back, too close suddenly, right there. Lysandre turned off his holo-caster.
"I'm not in the mood to talk to the dead." His voice sounded foreign to himself.
"Oh, so now you're too good for me, is that it?" He was only pretending to be hurt – and he wasn't even real – but Lysandre still couldn't look at him. "Little rich genius boy, you're alive and I'm not, so we can't stay together anymore? Do you want me to leave? Is that it?"
"No," Lysandre admitted.
Despite everything, a made-up Sycamore was better than a dead one.
*
As he'd predicted, rebuilding the world quickly proved to be a lot of work without the help of pokémons. At least Xerosic and Malva could take care of things for him – with him. They had left Lumiose now because there was really no point in staying while the smell of burnt bodies was omnipresent in the air.
Except for Bryony. Bryony had offered to stay, because someone had to make sure the fire wouldn't spread, and she was fine with the smell – or so she said. Lysandre could only wish to be as brave as she was.
They could still smell it from Camphrier Town, and there were more bodies there, more and more dead people, dead pokémons, everywhere. Lysandre was starting to develop a constant headache, pulsating from one side of his cranium to the other endlessly.
"This is never going to end," Malva sighed. "Maybe we should just bury them en masse. Otherwise, the entire region is going to smell like burnt meat."
She'd driven to the capital the day before, seemingly exhausted but unwilling to vocalize it. Lysandre had never seen her frown this much, which told him all that he needed to know.
"I suppose we don't really have a choice," Lysandre said. Sycamore's cold hands were on the back of his neck.
"Maybe you should have kept some of your pokémons to help you," he murmured.
Lysandre missed his pyroar, but he didn't want to think about that. There were a lot of things he missed.
*
They drove to Santalune Forest in silence to dig a hole there.
*
He couldn't stay, couldn't stand the sight of this giant hole, this giant grave, and no one tried to stop him, not even Malva. His holo-caster rang and it was Bryony.
"The fire's dying down," she said, her face unreadable. She had stopped wearing her visor for a while now. "All that's left is ashes, it seems. Could you come? I'd appreciate it."
When he reached the car he saw that Sycamore was waiting for him, sitting in the passenger seat.
"She's cute!" he exclaimed as Lysandre settled in to start up the engine, sounding exactly like the real Sycamore for once, in the delighted tone he'd reserved for only the greatest of news. "I'm sad that you never introduced me to all your cute Flare girls. Too bad her girlfriend's dead, right?"
Too bad everyone's dead, Lysandre thought. Too bad. Too bad.
He drove too fast through the trees. He had always taken Santalune Forest to be a peaceful sight, a natural refuge that reminded him of some of his fondest childhood misadventures. Now all he could think about was the hole, like a giant mouth they were feeding with the dead. Overtaken by the imagery, he narrowly avoided crashing into a bush when Sycamore leaned toward him to whisper something about guilt and death.
Bryony was waiting for him near the entrance to the city. The smell was still as strong as ever, even now that he could see that the fire was almost dead. The smoke had begun to dissipate, dark clouds vanishing into the white ones above. Beneath it all, she was crying, but her face wasn't moving, which was a puzzling sight.
She ran to him and he held her because he didn't know what else to do. She was sobbing against his shoulder and it was probably staining his jacket. He had no idea how he was supposed to act in this situation, so he sort of awkwardly patted her on the back. In his periphery he caught a glimpse of Sycamore looking at him, giving him a thumbs up and an encouraging smile.
"Score," he could read on his lips. He wasn't making a sound for once.
"I'm sorry," Bryony mumbled against the fabric. "I shouldn't be crying, but... it's so... I didn't think... I didn't think it would be this way..."
"I can't say I blame you," Lysandre said.
It sounded bitter now that he'd said it. He didn't doubt himself, not really – at least as long as Sycamore wasn't in view he could try to convince himself of that fact. He closed his eyes. She was clinging to him and she wouldn't let go. He had never hugged anyone like this before, except maybe his mother back when he was a child.
It was strange. A bit warm. A bit too intimate, maybe.
"We should go back to the café," he said in an attempt to get her to release him. "I can't stand this smell."
She sniffled, the sound strangely loud even though her face was still pressed against him. "Yeah," she started, her voice strangled, "it feels like it's stuck to my lungs. It reminds me of her."
He didn't ask who she meant.
"Do you think..." She rested her forehead on his shoulder and sighed. She felt small in his grasp, much smaller than he'd ever perceived her as. "The spirits of the dead... they remain all around us?"
Lysandre opened his eyes only to be met with Sycamore's heavy gaze, so close to them he might as well have been joined in their embrace. They stared at each other, rendering Lysandre unable to speak.
"I thought this belief would bring me comfort," Bryony choked out, oblivious to his turmoil, "but I don't think I'd want her to see me like this... to see us like this."
His eyes tainted red as if a fire had sprung inside them, Sycamore's mouth warped into an ugly smile. Lysandre fought off the urge to wrench Bryony away from him lest she heard the cacophonic rhythm of his heartbeat, so erratic it might as well have been a pidgey desperately pecking at the bars of their cage.
Instead, he took a deep breath and, willing himself to ignore the apparition at least for her sake, gently gestured to take her by the hand, something else he hadn't done since he was a child. Her hand was warm and smaller than his. Not fragile – she was not fragile – but soft. She smiled at him then, timidly, and somehow that seemed to chase Sycamore away.
When he approached again, walking steadily at Lysandre's side as he led her to the café, it was to slowly take hold of Lysandre's other hand. A shiver went up his spine, but Bryony didn't notice, too busy staring at her feet and the ashes in the streets.
In a moment of madness, Lysandre thought that now he was holding the hands of a ghost and a widow. He found it soothing, all things considered.
Once she'd reluctantly broken away from him – from them – to sit at one of the tables in the café, Lysandre busied himself with brewing some fresh cups at the counter. The building had shaken but outside of some utensils he'd picked up from the ground the damage had been minimal. When they'd sat there for the meeting, before he'd let his distress get the best of him, he'd found the fact that this very place had been spared quite ironic indeed.
He stopped himself short of brewing a third cup for someone who wasn't there.
Bryony stared into the cup he served her but didn't move to drink it. She bit her lip, her green bangs framing her face like the curtains he'd wrapped Sycamore in.
"So..." she said, her voice unsure.
"Yes?"
"Were you and Professor Sycamore... um... I mean... we all saw you carry him." Her eyes twitched, her gaze moving to her hands neatly joined together in front of her cup. The steam rising from it was sticking to her forehead, making her sweat even in the cool room.
Sycamore waved from behind her, which made no sense because she was sitting against the wall and he was in the wall, and it just served to remind him that he was dead and this was all in his head.
Not that it being in his head made it matter any less.
"I wouldn't say that," he replied.
Immediately he thought he had been too curt, he had been too obvious – about what? He couldn't say. Sycamore's smile was warping again, wriggling almost, as if he was fighting back the urge to laugh.
"Oh, I'm sorry... I just thought..." She bit her lip again, harder this time.
"We never really... 'hooked up', if that is what you meant."
He felt stiff. Belatedly he realized that he hadn't touched his own coffee either. He brushed the cup lightly with the tip of his fingers. Too hot.
"But you did... um..." She was blushing a little bit, from the hot coffee or from something else, and he couldn't help but wonder why she wanted to know about this. Perhaps she wanted to know if he felt like she did now that both Sycamore and Celosia were dead. If they had something in common.
Perhaps they did, but was that such a good thing? He and Sycamore had a lot in common and what good had it brought?
Bryony was looking at him now, awaiting an answer. He could almost see himself reflected in her green eyes. A pathetic silhouette of a man.
"I don't know," he said.
He realized it was a lie upon saying it. He looked up toward Sycamore in the wall, staring at him with dark eyes.
"I'm dead," Sycamore said. "You killed me."
Sitting under him, her eyes growing wider and wider, Bryony's expression took on a hint of pity. The thought that one could feel pity for him, when he'd felt so triumphant before, cracked through the veneer of his composure.
"I'm sorry for what happened to Celosia," he said, the words rushing out so haphazardly that it was a miracle he could form proper sentences. "She was... she didn't deserve this. None of us deserve this."
Her eyes wet with tears, Bryony attempted to smile. Slowly, as if afraid to scare him off, she moved her hand and let it rest on his.
"Thank you," she said. Her voice remained steady.
It was strange to share a moment, strange, to be with her, when he barely knew her, and she barely knew him. There were so many reasons he'd given himself to keep his distance from others: his career, his ambitions, his lack of interest in the mundanity of life. He was too busy, he was too focused, he didn't have time to spare. Sometimes, before he'd become who he was now, the glorious leader, the visionary, he'd let himself enjoy a few friendships, a few niceties, perhaps even a few dates. Then he'd only afforded himself time to plot and time to work – unless of course he was spending time with Augustine Sycamore.
"I love you," Sycamore said suddenly, somewhere around his neck, standing by his side once more – but it wasn't really him. It was just some messed-up version his mind had created to torture himself.
Still, the words.
As if she could sense what was happening, Bryony squeezed his hand ever-so-slightly.
"We'll work through this," she said, her gentle voice covering Sycamore's even as he kept on repeating the same thing over and over – and shouldn't Lysandre have been the one saying this? Could he really afford to crumble so easily?
He willed himself to snap out of it. He was in charge of all that had transpired, after all. If anything needed to be fixed, he had to be the one doing it – or at least leading the way. He nodded.
"Of course," he said, firmly, to make all three of them believe it.
*
They dug a lot of holes.
A lot of people were dead.
Fandom: Pokémon X&Y
Pairing: Professor Augustine Sycamore/Lysandre
Rating: T
Summary: In the aftermath of victory, Lysandre discovers that triumph without peril indeed brings no glory. In more ways than one.
Notes: This is the fic, the one I started early on in the fandom, abandoned a year later, and then finished EIGHT YEARS after posting the first chapter. It's also the starting point for a whole series. Warning for Major Character Death (although it doesn't last) and heavy angst, especially in the early chapters. This is a story about Lysandre succeeding in his plans and then having a really bad time about it. Title is from Shakespeare's King Lear.
AO3 Link: Here.
SERIES NAVIGATION
So Long as We Can Say (starting point)
The Pangs of Disprized Love / And With Your Hands Your Hearts / Wisely and Slow (main story)
That Give Delight and Hurt (Not) / Daggers in Men's Smiles (explicit spin-offs)
CHAPTERS NAVIGATION
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Epilogue
Victory smelled like smoke, and something else, metallic and sweet, clinging to the back of his throat. Blood, his brain helpfully provided, though he had no desire to let himself linger on the thought. Somewhere through the dark billowing clouds, he could hear Xerosic make his way toward him, coughing and wheezing.
Lysandre couldn't take his eyes off the remains of the weapon. It had collapsed onto itself, leaving behind a mess of exposed wires and sizzling metal. Most of the liquid that'd spilled out was black; some he could tell had mixed in with something else. He couldn't see the corpses, buried in what was left of the inside. He didn't have to. The beasts had surely been killed in the process. He thought maybe he should have cared about that more than he did, but he didn't need them anymore. They'd served their purpose.
He'd served his as well. That was what mattered. He could hear his heartbeat, louder and louder in his ears, a maddening rhythm, louder even than the rumbling sounds of the whole place breaking apart. A rock the size of his palm fell against his shoulder. He didn't even flinch.
Surely that was how it felt to succeed. He clenched his fist, hard.
Xerosic's silhouette slowly detached itself from the fumes. He was holding his arm in front of his face in a futile attempt to breathe in as little of it as possible.
"The whole place is collapsing," he called out, his voice muffled. Lysandre's eyes flickered in his direction: he was frowning, his goggles dark and fogged up. His willingness to stay by his side even as things went off course was commendable. "Can't say I didn't expect that."
They had never discussed this happening, though Lysandre thought perhaps he hadn't given him the occasion. A terrible sound broke through the smoke, soon followed by one of the largest pipes crashing onto the floor between them. Xerosic startled, gripping his own shoulder.
"We need to regroup," Lysandre finally managed to say. "Gather everyone who's still alive."
Xerosic's shoulders rose briefly, his frown deepening as if he had something to say to that. Instead, he gave a short nod and took off toward the door, narrowly avoiding more falling rubble.
Lysandre turned back toward the remnants of the machine. He wanted to imprint this memory into his mind forever: the first step toward his beautiful world. He found himself feeling no bitterness toward the sacrifices that had already been made to achieve it. Somewhere, he knew, the legendaries were grateful to have done their part to make this world better.
He took a deep breath, unbothered by the stench settling in his lungs. The weight of his own victory seemed almost too much to bear. He could still feel his heart pulsing painfully in his temples. Another pipe fell off the machine, scraping against the wall to produce a cacophony that Lysandre thought could serve as a requiem to the old world. He held the edge of his visor in his hand and took it off slowly.
The smoke in his eyes made them water. He rubbed the tears away quickly. There was no time to waste now. He'd triumphed, and now it was time for him to lead his people toward even greater heights. Help his fellow chosen ones build this new, better world.
When he finally moved to walk out, he thought he caught a glimpse of someone standing next to him, a flicker of a human shape – but when he looked back there was no one.
Climbing back up toward the main room, he contemplated what would come next. There was so much to do, and they would have to do it alone: both humans and pokémons were gone. This had always been the most nebulous part of his plans; it wasn't that he didn't think he could pull it off, of course not, that would have been absurd, but there had always been a small voice at the back of his head that would remind him that this was a monumental task, even for him. Cleaning up the world, and then reshaping it almost from scratch.
He'd had a lot to say before all of this, lots of speeches about how everything would turn out once they'd won, lots of carefully chosen words for his not-so-carefully chosen ones, making their eyes glitter with anticipation. Now, even as he reached the last steps, he found the words harder to pick. He could still smell the smoke clinging to him, feel the building shake and crumble under his feet.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he still hadn't figured out what he was going to tell them. Most of the recruits he could see and the admins standing beside them seemed to be doing fine, though some sported superficial injuries. All of his scientists stood at the front, except Celosia.
Her eyes still hidden behind her green visor, Bryony was crying. She held on to Mable's arm with a grip so tight that the other girl couldn't completely hide a painful grimace, her face turned away from her.
Lysandre had never seen her cry. He hadn't seen her much, now that he really thought about it – sure she stood with the other scientists during their meetings, and when he'd first met her they'd had what he presumed you could call a friendly rapport, but he just didn't mingle with his employees that much if he could avoid it.
Xerosic walked up to stand beside her as well, his goggles still covered in soot. "Celosia is missing," he said like he would have announced that one of their computers had malfunctioned. "Bryony thinks she was crushed when the ceiling collapsed in the room they were in together."
"That is unfortunate," Lysandre said, unable to stop staring at her and the tears and snot dribbling on her lips from behind the visor.
She shook and shook and shook, bending over slightly as if she was going to be sick. Mable put her hand on where she was still gripping her arm. Behind her, Aliana was staring at the ground, the red glow of her own visor casting strange lights on her face.
"I c–can't... I can't... I can't believe she's dead!" Bryony cried out in his direction.
"A lot of people are dead," Lysandre said.
*
They dug up Celosia's body because Bryony wanted – needed – to see it. Lysandre was reluctant for a long time, citing the danger and knowing fully well that she wouldn't like what she would see, but she kept insisting, and they needed to go back in the ruins to look for possible survivors anyway. The other recruits had taken to avoiding her, and Xerosic did suggest that perhaps it would improve morale if she stopped acting so erratically.
She regretted it as soon as she saw it, her face red then pale then taking on an off-color tone between blue and green. No one could blame her: Celosia's head and half of her body had been crushed, her chest caved in, her visor cutting through what was left of her forehead. She looked nothing like a human being.
Still, Bryony stopped crying so much after that.
*
Lumiose City was in ruins.
The Prism Tower had collapsed, destroying entire streets on the way down. The plaza looked oddly smaller without it, soulless now that its main attraction had been destroyed. Instead, it, and the rest of the city with it, was now filled with a more macabre kind of decoration: corpses. They were everywhere. On the streets, in the houses, some crushed under what was left of the destroyed buildings, some just lying on the floor, seemingly unharmed, but cold and unmoving. Families out on a stroll, salarymen on the way to their jobs, trainers hanging out with their companions, children on break playing with their friends... Dead. Humans, pokémons. Dead.
Lysandre barely reacted when one of the younger recruits fainted on the spot, overwhelmed by the presence of all the bodies. They hadn't looked outside while they were in the cars, driving to the capital. He had.
They had so much work to do.
"We'll have to gather them all together," he said, his gaze focused on the crumpled-up body of a stray litleo, lying at the foot of one of the trees.
"And then what?" someone asked behind him, their voice faint and trembling.
"We could burn them," Lysandre heard Aliana reply. Her tone was somewhat unsure but she'd said it loud enough to be heard by all.
There was a rustle in the crowd, though none of the lower recruits seemed to be able to bring themselves to protest.
"It's not a bad suggestion," Lysandre said with a short nod.
The silence around them stretched further. In the absence of all the usual signs of life – cars in the streets, passersby, bird pokémons, the melody of the city – it felt unnervingly loud. Lysandre bent over and picked up a pokéball that someone had dropped, presumably upon dying. It was light and empty.
"I didn't join this to burn corpses," a grunt said in a high-pitched voice. "That's disgusting."
"You would rather live in a town covered in rotten cadavers, then," Lysandre said softly, crushing a pair of glasses under his shoe.
"W–Well, no, but..."
"There's no 'but'," Xerosic barked at them. "Do what your boss said."
They moved slowly, dragging their feet through the thin layer of dust and ashes covering the asphalt. Lysandre watched one of the girls carefully pick up the litleo's body, her lips quivering, and then turned away.
No one tried to follow him when they saw where he was going, except Bryony, her motion cut short by Xerosic. In his peripheral vision, Lysandre watched him grip her arm firmly, without a word, his face stern and still dirtied up by smoke and ashes. She was looking toward Lysandre when she nodded.
It was a miracle that Augustine Sycamore's laboratory still stood where so many of the nearby buildings had caved in, their front walls fallen inward. The windows were all broken, and the door gave in as soon as Lysandre took hold of the handle. He could barely see anything inside the hall, noticing the flopped-over silhouette of the woman who used to stand at the counter only once he'd moved close enough to touch it. Her forehead rested against it, her body slack as if she'd just fallen asleep.
He didn't even know her name. He wondered why that suddenly mattered to him.
The elevator took so long to respond that he began to suspect it had actually broken down, but when he turned away the doors opened with a frightening creak. It seemed reckless, and pointless on top of that, to try his luck with something that could have buried him alive, yet he did anyway, stepping in before he could stop himself.
There was something mechanical to his motions. He felt somewhat like he was acting in spite of himself, as if he was being pushed forward by some kind of providential force – until the doors opened to the third floor and he was brought back to his own body.
Sycamore's assistant was lying right in front of the elevator. Had she been about to use it before the weapon hit? He would never know the answer to that question. He stepped over her corpse.
The room was a mess, but it always had been. There were other corpses, other assistants, a complicated piece of machinery that had fallen over, spilling metal parts everywhere. In the middle, separating one area from the rest, the partition that Sycamore had always been partial to still remained, straight as ever.
He walked to the other side.
The cold air, that Lysandre hadn't paid much attention to before, slipped through the cracks of the large, broken window until it slapped him in the face. He blinked it away.
Unsurprisingly, Sycamore had been sitting at his desk when it happened. He was hunched over, his face merely centimeters away from the wooden surface, his computers still turned on in front of him.
He was dead, of course.
Lysandre knew that he was going to be dead – but knowing he was dead and seeing his corpse were two very different things, and now he thought maybe he could understand why Bryony had wanted to see Celosia so badly.
He'd spent a lot of time with Augustine Sycamore. Quiet meetings, friendly dinners, afternoons spent looking over notes and studies, teaching each other. As his plans had grown grander and the day of reckoning closer, he'd had less and less time to spare, but he'd still shown up at the lab once or twice. They'd sometimes joked about it being such an unlikely friendship – their different upbringing and social status, Sycamore's untidiness where Lysandre liked things to always be in order, Sycamore's openness with other people where Lysandre remained as closed-off as he could afford – though they knew it wasn't. They were kindred spirits in a way that Lysandre hadn't experienced with many others. With anyone else, really.
Now Sycamore was dead.
He'd always planned for him to be dead – maybe "planned" wasn't the proper word. He'd never attempted to craft a scenario where Sycamore would survive. It seemed futile. Their views were too different and revealing anything to the professor would have been too dangerous. Shamefully, he also found himself reluctant to make him a potential enemy. Even as Sycamore took most of their arguments in stride, never really pushing further than up to where he could see his friend was willing to bend, Lysandre couldn't bear the thought of their friendship falling apart. It brought him a placid sense of familiarity that he felt he needed to stay grounded.
As he approached the body – and he already hated thinking of it that way – carelessly stepping on top of clutter that would never be cleaned up, he thought that he'd been unreasonably selfish. His own body felt cold, though not as cold as Sycamore's face proved to be under his shaky fingers.
He'd never touched Sycamore's face before. He'd never stood so close to him, leaning in to look at him more carefully. Sycamore had always been warm and inviting, friendly and enthusiastic. He'd brush his arm against Lysandre's accidentally, too taken by something they were discussing, and then move back, cautious of Lysandre's boundaries.
Lysandre didn't touch people much, unless it was to make a point, like grabbing Xerosic by the shoulder when he was too caught up in fruitless work. Now he was touching Sycamore's face, and his hair, with an urgency that should have disturbed him. He wasn't himself.
He put his hands under Sycamore's stiff arms and moved him away from the chair he was sitting on. He was heavy, dead weight for a dead man, but he lifted him to carry him.
The spot right between Lysandre's eyes was pulsing painfully to the rhythm of the ringing in his ears. His heartbeat was picking up, but it wasn't the triumphant drumming he'd experienced when he was staring at the carcass of the machine. It was a death march, not to the old decrepit world, but to one single man. He took the elevator with him – it – him, looking at his peaceful expression. The relaxed eyebrows he'd seen furrow so often when focusing on a particularly confusing task, or being asked to sort through his mess by his sheepish assistants. Under them, his eyes were closed. Further down, his mouth – Lysandre looked away.
When he stepped out of the lab, Sycamore's body pressed against his chest, he saw that most of the Team Flare members had dispersed following his instructions, and felt a welcome sense of relief that they were cooperating. He could at least cling to that kind of order even as he felt himself begin to break apart.
Upon spotting him Xerosic hurried in his direction. The scientist glanced at the body but said nothing, his disapproval plainly written in the way his mouth twitched and then spread into a downward line.
"I have to drive to Couriway Town," Lysandre said before the other man could protest.
"Boss, I don't– I don't think," Xerosic started, grinding his teeth. He took a short breath and tried again, more firmly, "You can't put a corpse in the car."
Directly calling him out seemed to take a lot out of Xerosic, but the weight in Lysandre's arms prevented him from feeling pity.
"Yes, I can," he retorted. His cold but steady voice didn't betray the turmoil that was brewing in his heart and in his brain. "I paid for these cars. I'll put ten corpses in them if I want to."
Before Xerosic could come up with a reply, he walked past him, toward the cars they'd left moments ago – he couldn't tell how much time he'd spent in the lab. He couldn't bring himself to care.
He felt someone's hand on his arm, not taking a hold of it but simply touching, hovering almost. When he turned to look he saw it was Bryony. She had taken off her visor, and she was crying.
"I'm sorry," she said, and suddenly Lysandre felt like he was going to cry too, so he nodded without saying a word and kept walking. He felt her eyes on him long after he'd reached the car.
*
There was a corpse on the road that led to Couriway Town. He knew because he hit it – her – him – he didn't know, didn't look – with the car.
He tried not to think about it while he parked and took hold of Sycamore – Sycamore's body – once again. The sun was still high in the sky, its light reflected in the waterfalls. It was a nice autumn day, far away from the grim state of the capital, its peacefulness only broken by the sight of a few cadavers lying here and there. Part of the train bridge had begun to collapse, but not enough yet to damage the pokémon center that stood below it. Lysandre held on to the body and listened to the quiet sounds of the running water.
This was Sycamore's hometown, he knew, had learned through their conversations about their respective lives, tales of being young and running through the shallow water fully clothed, of watching the trains go by and daydreaming about the future. Sycamore always looked fond when he recalled his youth in Couriway Town. This was his hometown, and so it made sense for it to be his resting place – those were the frantic thoughts running through Lysandre's mind.
He laid Sycamore down on one of the benches and proceeded to look for some tool to break through the soil. He walked into a house full of dead people, then another, then another again, until he found a shovel he could use. It occurred to him as he held it in his hand that doing things without his pokémons felt foreign, unnatural. Humans still used tools, of course, but they did so alongside their companions, digging side by side. Now he no longer had anyone who could do this with him.
His pokémons were dead too.
They'd killed everyone in the end, and that was what he wanted, and surely it still was. His hands didn't shake twice around the handle of the rusty shovel.
He dug and dug and dug and then when he was almost done he realized that there was no way he could bury Sycamore like this, without putting him inside something, covering his body so that he wouldn't be lying in the dirt. He went back into the houses, first with the intent to find some blankets or other coverings, only to instead let himself be overcome by a sudden wave of rage and ripping curtains from a window. They were blue, with intricate embroidery of white and gold. Nobody was left to enjoy them anymore.
Sycamore's body had not moved when he walked back to wrap him up. He let go of the shovel and heard it hit the bench with an ugly, terrible sound. It resonated through the silence, too loud against the quietness of the water. If Sycamore had simply been asleep he would have woken up for sure.
Lysandre spent a long time covering Sycamore's body with the curtains. It felt impossible at first, to manipulate it as if it were an object, a puppet or a doll that he could move as he wished. It felt wrong in a way that nothing else had felt, except maybe finding the body in the first place. Wrapping up the face, Lysandre found himself lingering, brushing his fingertips against the cold skin, staring into the closed eyes as if they held unspeakable answers. He spent even longer burying the body properly, lowering it into the ground, watching it disappear under layers and layers of wet dirt.
It was odd, he thought afterward, once the hole was filled and the deed was done, how he suddenly realized how much he cared about Sycamore, now that he was dead and in the ground.
Sycamore had been many things – a colleague, a friend, a brilliant man, a workaholic dedicated to his passions, someone he could think of as an equal in a world that he saw himself grow more and more jaded against – but now he was simply reduced to this restful body, never to be anything else again.
This was a funeral, he realized, lowering himself down until he was almost kneeling at the foot of the grave. He'd never been to a funeral before. He'd only missed one.
"You don't have to come," his father had said, back then, his voice strained on the other side of the phone. "You have to keep at it. Your mother doesn't need you here."
She didn't, but he did – he needed to see her one last time, and he needed his family around him, though he'd convinced himself that he didn't. It was easier that way, to think that the body in the ground didn't need him there to celebrate the soul gone through the skies. Who were funerals for?
Now, staring at the newly filled hole in the ground, he thought he knew the answer his father had taken from him.
As he pulled himself back up, slowly to accommodate the soreness of his legs and the soreness of his heart, he caught it again, the unmistakable silhouette of another human being out of the corner of his eye. Dismissing it once more because he was growing tired and his vision blurry, he paid it no mind, until he heard a voice behind him.
"Well then, good job!"
There was no mistaking it, but it was impossible – and yet Lysandre turned around and there was Professor Augustine Sycamore, standing on his own grave.
Lysandre blinked, slowly, trying to make sense of the nonsensical.
"You're dead," he said uselessly, because this was obviously not happening, and he was obviously imagining things out of grief.
"A lot of people are dead," Sycamore said.
*
When he arrived back to Lumiose, avoiding the questioning gazes of his recruits, Lysandre called a meeting because it seemed like something they were supposed to do. As he'd instructed Xerosic earlier – somehow it felt as if months had passed already – they needed to regroup, constantly, to make sure they were working together. The café seemed like the best place to start: easy to access, with seating already provided, free from the scent of death and ash, familiar to all of them. The café itself, he thought, held no memories that might unsettle them – and he could tell that they were unsettled. He caught the lower recruits constantly glancing at the others, nervous looks hidden behind their sunglasses, as if they expected something bad – something worse – to happen.
Something worse was happening indeed, but only to him, it seemed. The others' eyes never fell on sights that weren't there, their wariness reserved solely for their fellow living beings. He was the only one followed by another shadow, its surreal quality belied by the very real sounds of its shoes hitting the floor.
This was agony, a meticulously crafted nightmare, a punishment of the highest order, and he deserved it, but it was agony and Sycamore knew it – well, no, Sycamore didn't know anything, because he wasn't real. The Sycamore he had buried was real. The Sycamore that was standing in his café wasn't.
The café – he'd felt at odds as soon as they'd stepped inside, the sight too mundane suddenly, the red walls and expensive counters. Sycamore used to visit him there sometimes. They both liked good food and good company. He'd never suspected the secrets hidden underneath his feet, the conspiracies, the grandiose schemes. They'd had passionate conversations above well-crafted cups of coffee, meetings that stretched for longer than was probably necessary. Now Lysandre found himself again partaking in a meeting of a different kind.
On the other side of the table he was sitting at, Xerosic and the others were staring at him, their faces pale with anxiety, but he couldn't focus on anything with Sycamore standing right behind them, his arms crossed, his back against the wall.
"Apologies," Lysandre mumbled, running a hand over his face. "What were you saying? I haven't slept."
"I said," Xerosic very carefully articulated, and he himself sounded very tired, "that I'm confident we've cleaned up Lumiose. We just need to burn the bodies now."
Lysandre nodded, trying to ignore the big grin slowly spreading on Sycamore's face.
"Niiiice work," he purred in a tone he'd never used with him when he was alive, somewhere between sarcastic and admirative. "Have you dealt with corpses before? You're handling this like a pro, Lys."
He blinked and Sycamore was gone from where he was, and instead he could feel – he could feel it, but it wasn't real – hands on his shoulders, arms around his neck. A shiver went down his spine, making his heart race.
"Are you alright?" It was strange to hear concern in Xerosic's voice. "You look sick."
"This has been hard on all of us," a Flare admin sitting next to Xerosic said. Lysandre wasn't sure he deserved the comforting tone of his voice, either. He didn't even know his name. He barely knew any of them, he realized as he felt Sycamore's fingers brush the back of his hand. He straightened himself up and slammed his hands on the table as if he'd been burnt. Xerosic flinched.
"I'm fine," Lysandre said.
Sycamore laughed in his hair.
"I'll be in my office if you need me," he added as he stood up to leave.
"We haven't even decided what we're going to do next!" Mable protested. He hadn't heard her talk much since they'd fired the weapon. She was still wearing her visor, so he couldn't see her eyes. Aliana was sitting next to her, slouched over slightly, her hands settled together on her knees. She didn't move to look at him or her.
"I'll be in my office," Lysandre repeated, louder. "You need to rest, and I do too, so do me all a favor and allow yourselves to calm down a little."
He could hear Sycamore's footsteps behind him as he walked up to the elevator, and a few whispers too. He couldn't be sure who they came from.
As soon as he stepped into the office he realized that this was a bad idea. The room felt small and bleak, a prison where he was all alone against Sycamore. Nonetheless, he dragged himself toward the chair and sat, letting himself feel overwhelmed by the weight of everything that had happened, piled up on top of him like dirt in a shallow grave.
Sycamore coiled around him, pressing against his back even as he sat on a chair, cold hands on his, gentle touches they'd never exchanged. The apparition whispered intelligible things into his ear, and Lysandre could feel his breath there, all the way through his whole body. There was something almost soothing about it, underneath the terror of being haunted by the dead, and soon enough Lysandre let himself drift away, surrendering to his fatigue.
He was woken up by the sound of his holo-caster ringing. He picked it up with shaky hands, his eyes darting around the room, but his grim companion had evaporated.
Upon launching the device, the unmistakable silhouette of Malva flickered out. She was fine and glad to be alive, though the haggard look in her eyes, even through her glasses, seemed to contradict her words. She had been with her colleagues of the Elite Four when the weapon had hit and had lost consciousness briefly. She informed him grimly that Diantha was dead, crushed under parts of the ceiling. Like Celosia, Lysandre thought.
Siebold's room had malfunctioned due to the shock and Malva was lucky to have woken up in time before it got worse. She would have drowned, and her joining Team Flare and surviving the blast thanks to the technology she had been gifted would have been all for nothing.
"It's for nothing no matter what," Sycamore said behind his back, too close suddenly, right there. Lysandre turned off his holo-caster.
"I'm not in the mood to talk to the dead." His voice sounded foreign to himself.
"Oh, so now you're too good for me, is that it?" He was only pretending to be hurt – and he wasn't even real – but Lysandre still couldn't look at him. "Little rich genius boy, you're alive and I'm not, so we can't stay together anymore? Do you want me to leave? Is that it?"
"No," Lysandre admitted.
Despite everything, a made-up Sycamore was better than a dead one.
*
As he'd predicted, rebuilding the world quickly proved to be a lot of work without the help of pokémons. At least Xerosic and Malva could take care of things for him – with him. They had left Lumiose now because there was really no point in staying while the smell of burnt bodies was omnipresent in the air.
Except for Bryony. Bryony had offered to stay, because someone had to make sure the fire wouldn't spread, and she was fine with the smell – or so she said. Lysandre could only wish to be as brave as she was.
They could still smell it from Camphrier Town, and there were more bodies there, more and more dead people, dead pokémons, everywhere. Lysandre was starting to develop a constant headache, pulsating from one side of his cranium to the other endlessly.
"This is never going to end," Malva sighed. "Maybe we should just bury them en masse. Otherwise, the entire region is going to smell like burnt meat."
She'd driven to the capital the day before, seemingly exhausted but unwilling to vocalize it. Lysandre had never seen her frown this much, which told him all that he needed to know.
"I suppose we don't really have a choice," Lysandre said. Sycamore's cold hands were on the back of his neck.
"Maybe you should have kept some of your pokémons to help you," he murmured.
Lysandre missed his pyroar, but he didn't want to think about that. There were a lot of things he missed.
*
They drove to Santalune Forest in silence to dig a hole there.
*
He couldn't stay, couldn't stand the sight of this giant hole, this giant grave, and no one tried to stop him, not even Malva. His holo-caster rang and it was Bryony.
"The fire's dying down," she said, her face unreadable. She had stopped wearing her visor for a while now. "All that's left is ashes, it seems. Could you come? I'd appreciate it."
When he reached the car he saw that Sycamore was waiting for him, sitting in the passenger seat.
"She's cute!" he exclaimed as Lysandre settled in to start up the engine, sounding exactly like the real Sycamore for once, in the delighted tone he'd reserved for only the greatest of news. "I'm sad that you never introduced me to all your cute Flare girls. Too bad her girlfriend's dead, right?"
Too bad everyone's dead, Lysandre thought. Too bad. Too bad.
He drove too fast through the trees. He had always taken Santalune Forest to be a peaceful sight, a natural refuge that reminded him of some of his fondest childhood misadventures. Now all he could think about was the hole, like a giant mouth they were feeding with the dead. Overtaken by the imagery, he narrowly avoided crashing into a bush when Sycamore leaned toward him to whisper something about guilt and death.
Bryony was waiting for him near the entrance to the city. The smell was still as strong as ever, even now that he could see that the fire was almost dead. The smoke had begun to dissipate, dark clouds vanishing into the white ones above. Beneath it all, she was crying, but her face wasn't moving, which was a puzzling sight.
She ran to him and he held her because he didn't know what else to do. She was sobbing against his shoulder and it was probably staining his jacket. He had no idea how he was supposed to act in this situation, so he sort of awkwardly patted her on the back. In his periphery he caught a glimpse of Sycamore looking at him, giving him a thumbs up and an encouraging smile.
"Score," he could read on his lips. He wasn't making a sound for once.
"I'm sorry," Bryony mumbled against the fabric. "I shouldn't be crying, but... it's so... I didn't think... I didn't think it would be this way..."
"I can't say I blame you," Lysandre said.
It sounded bitter now that he'd said it. He didn't doubt himself, not really – at least as long as Sycamore wasn't in view he could try to convince himself of that fact. He closed his eyes. She was clinging to him and she wouldn't let go. He had never hugged anyone like this before, except maybe his mother back when he was a child.
It was strange. A bit warm. A bit too intimate, maybe.
"We should go back to the café," he said in an attempt to get her to release him. "I can't stand this smell."
She sniffled, the sound strangely loud even though her face was still pressed against him. "Yeah," she started, her voice strangled, "it feels like it's stuck to my lungs. It reminds me of her."
He didn't ask who she meant.
"Do you think..." She rested her forehead on his shoulder and sighed. She felt small in his grasp, much smaller than he'd ever perceived her as. "The spirits of the dead... they remain all around us?"
Lysandre opened his eyes only to be met with Sycamore's heavy gaze, so close to them he might as well have been joined in their embrace. They stared at each other, rendering Lysandre unable to speak.
"I thought this belief would bring me comfort," Bryony choked out, oblivious to his turmoil, "but I don't think I'd want her to see me like this... to see us like this."
His eyes tainted red as if a fire had sprung inside them, Sycamore's mouth warped into an ugly smile. Lysandre fought off the urge to wrench Bryony away from him lest she heard the cacophonic rhythm of his heartbeat, so erratic it might as well have been a pidgey desperately pecking at the bars of their cage.
Instead, he took a deep breath and, willing himself to ignore the apparition at least for her sake, gently gestured to take her by the hand, something else he hadn't done since he was a child. Her hand was warm and smaller than his. Not fragile – she was not fragile – but soft. She smiled at him then, timidly, and somehow that seemed to chase Sycamore away.
When he approached again, walking steadily at Lysandre's side as he led her to the café, it was to slowly take hold of Lysandre's other hand. A shiver went up his spine, but Bryony didn't notice, too busy staring at her feet and the ashes in the streets.
In a moment of madness, Lysandre thought that now he was holding the hands of a ghost and a widow. He found it soothing, all things considered.
Once she'd reluctantly broken away from him – from them – to sit at one of the tables in the café, Lysandre busied himself with brewing some fresh cups at the counter. The building had shaken but outside of some utensils he'd picked up from the ground the damage had been minimal. When they'd sat there for the meeting, before he'd let his distress get the best of him, he'd found the fact that this very place had been spared quite ironic indeed.
He stopped himself short of brewing a third cup for someone who wasn't there.
Bryony stared into the cup he served her but didn't move to drink it. She bit her lip, her green bangs framing her face like the curtains he'd wrapped Sycamore in.
"So..." she said, her voice unsure.
"Yes?"
"Were you and Professor Sycamore... um... I mean... we all saw you carry him." Her eyes twitched, her gaze moving to her hands neatly joined together in front of her cup. The steam rising from it was sticking to her forehead, making her sweat even in the cool room.
Sycamore waved from behind her, which made no sense because she was sitting against the wall and he was in the wall, and it just served to remind him that he was dead and this was all in his head.
Not that it being in his head made it matter any less.
"I wouldn't say that," he replied.
Immediately he thought he had been too curt, he had been too obvious – about what? He couldn't say. Sycamore's smile was warping again, wriggling almost, as if he was fighting back the urge to laugh.
"Oh, I'm sorry... I just thought..." She bit her lip again, harder this time.
"We never really... 'hooked up', if that is what you meant."
He felt stiff. Belatedly he realized that he hadn't touched his own coffee either. He brushed the cup lightly with the tip of his fingers. Too hot.
"But you did... um..." She was blushing a little bit, from the hot coffee or from something else, and he couldn't help but wonder why she wanted to know about this. Perhaps she wanted to know if he felt like she did now that both Sycamore and Celosia were dead. If they had something in common.
Perhaps they did, but was that such a good thing? He and Sycamore had a lot in common and what good had it brought?
Bryony was looking at him now, awaiting an answer. He could almost see himself reflected in her green eyes. A pathetic silhouette of a man.
"I don't know," he said.
He realized it was a lie upon saying it. He looked up toward Sycamore in the wall, staring at him with dark eyes.
"I'm dead," Sycamore said. "You killed me."
Sitting under him, her eyes growing wider and wider, Bryony's expression took on a hint of pity. The thought that one could feel pity for him, when he'd felt so triumphant before, cracked through the veneer of his composure.
"I'm sorry for what happened to Celosia," he said, the words rushing out so haphazardly that it was a miracle he could form proper sentences. "She was... she didn't deserve this. None of us deserve this."
Her eyes wet with tears, Bryony attempted to smile. Slowly, as if afraid to scare him off, she moved her hand and let it rest on his.
"Thank you," she said. Her voice remained steady.
It was strange to share a moment, strange, to be with her, when he barely knew her, and she barely knew him. There were so many reasons he'd given himself to keep his distance from others: his career, his ambitions, his lack of interest in the mundanity of life. He was too busy, he was too focused, he didn't have time to spare. Sometimes, before he'd become who he was now, the glorious leader, the visionary, he'd let himself enjoy a few friendships, a few niceties, perhaps even a few dates. Then he'd only afforded himself time to plot and time to work – unless of course he was spending time with Augustine Sycamore.
"I love you," Sycamore said suddenly, somewhere around his neck, standing by his side once more – but it wasn't really him. It was just some messed-up version his mind had created to torture himself.
Still, the words.
As if she could sense what was happening, Bryony squeezed his hand ever-so-slightly.
"We'll work through this," she said, her gentle voice covering Sycamore's even as he kept on repeating the same thing over and over – and shouldn't Lysandre have been the one saying this? Could he really afford to crumble so easily?
He willed himself to snap out of it. He was in charge of all that had transpired, after all. If anything needed to be fixed, he had to be the one doing it – or at least leading the way. He nodded.
"Of course," he said, firmly, to make all three of them believe it.
*
They dug a lot of holes.
A lot of people were dead.