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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.
In Lysandre's mind, there had always been something glorious about fire.
It was a powerful symbol of strength and passion: the flames in a fireplace at home or the flames that destroyed an entire forest in minutes. The flames of conviction in people's hearts, of anger, of love even. It could bring both destruction and comfort: the rage of a thousand blazes and the warmth of a campfire. It was one of these things that could so perfectly sum up how the world was never as simple as it seemed.
Yet in this brand-new world he had created, whenever he thought of fire, he could no longer hold on to all of his poetics, and only thought of two things: the smell of burning bodies, and the dreams.
There was a lot he could have said about the dreams, perhaps, if he'd allowed himself to. For now, the less he thought of them, the better. In some, he'd stand and watch helplessly as Sycamore burned down like a tree or perhaps a criminal tied to the stake. He would scream and yell, in pain at first and then in anger, profanities leveled against Lysandre as if he was the one responsible. In others, a random assortment of people would burn, some he knew, like Diantha, rolling on the floor in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames, or Malva, her cries of absolute terror always waking him up in a cold sweat. Sometimes they were strangers, silently staring at him as the fire consumed their flesh, pointing at him with leery eyes.
Regardless of which dreams they were, he was having them every night, these deranged nightmares of roaring infernos and misery, and every time he woke up he would see Sycamore staring at him.
On the rare occasions where he'd sleep in a bed, he would wake up to Sycamore lying next to him, staring, a small smile on his face.
"Nice dreams, darling?" he'd say, and in that moment there'd be no malice in his voice or in his eyes, nothing but the sort of quiet tenderness that Lysandre imagined you'd reserve for someone you loved. Then he'd sneer, exposing his teeth in something akin to a snarl, "Too good for you, no doubt."
Still, he always let Sycamore touch his face, take his hand, trying his best to ignore the terrible things he was saying – that he was dead, that it was his fault, that he hated him – and he always felt pathetic afterward, comforted by the touch of a ghost he made up in his mind.
A ghost who hated him just like he hated himself.
*
In their travels through the region to clean everything up, they'd gathered two key-stones from the corpses in the Tower of Mastery, which Lysandre knew were the gym leader Korrina and her grandfather. There was no way they could get to the one Diantha wore because the Elite Four was no longer accessible, flooded and broken beyond repair. Sometimes he thought about her corpse floating around, bloated and disgusting. Drasna and Siebold, too. Wikstrom had to have sunk to the bottom with that heavy armor he wore.
He felt haunted by them all, all of the dead he'd reaped for the greater good, though none of them haunted him quite as well as his own personal ghost.
"Why do you need all these stones, anyway?" Sycamore said, his hands on Lysandre's waist. He could feel him talk, too close to his face.
The words his brain conjured – "they remind me of you" – died on his lips before he could bring himself to say them. It was pointless, anyway; surely the ghost he'd made up already knew the answer. The truth, of course, was that he didn't need these stones, because there weren't any more pokémons to mega-evolve.
"Why would you need stones to remember me by?" The irony was dripping from Sycamore's every word and yet he still managed to sound vexed. "I'm right there."
That was part of the problem, actually.
He was in his office, looking at his ring next to the other two stones, standing because sitting meant maybe falling asleep. Sycamore pressed his body close against his as if he wanted them to fuse together.
"You buried me, right? Did that feel nice?" Lysandre had taken off his jacket and he was regretting it because he could feel Sycamore's hands trailing on his chest, and he could feel him breathing next to his ear, and he felt sick. "You planted me in the ground. Do you think a tree will grow there?"
He laughed and he was too close.
"Please stop," Lysandre said, his voice strained. He couldn't move, couldn't break away even as his body was screaming at him to do so, and he didn't know whether he was going to vomit or pass out, or both.
"Don't worry," Sycamore whispered, but he could feel him letting go, "it's not necrophilia if you're not actually doing it with a corpse."
The insinuation left him feeling cold and shameful. Perhaps he did get a kind of twisted satisfaction out of Sycamore's closeness – waking up alongside him in the morning, feeling their bodies so close together, his unnatural warmth against Lysandre's back even as he knew him to be a walking cadaver or at least the memory of one. He found no satisfaction in this acknowledgment of their relationship.
Instead, in what had to be the second strangest thing to happen to him in the new world, he found satisfaction in his relationships with those who were still alive and had come to depend on him. He was constantly surrounded by all manners of people who needed his presence. As there weren't many people left, the survivors – the victors, he would correct himself – could only count on themselves for human contact. The only escape Lysandre could find was locking himself in his office, where no one tried to disturb him, but where he was on his own against Sycamore.
When, as he was sharing coffee with Malva, she suddenly broke into tears, talking about how she kept seeing Diantha's crushed corpse in her dreams, he couldn't figure out what to do. A month prior, she would have never let herself go in front of him.
Xerosic himself sometimes seemed struck by a sudden wave of pain, his voice cracking slightly as he told Lysandre he was going to run some tests on them all to make sure there were no side effects left by the machine.
Yet somehow they were carrying on. Bryony especially seemed to draw strength from the grief she felt for Celosia, fueling her disarmingly off-key optimism – she'd hold Aliana close when she could sense her wavering, put her hand on Mable's shoulder after catching her slip away, or quietly uplift a younger recruit who couldn't cope with the current state of their world. Lysandre sometimes thought she was holding up better than he was.
Across the table he was sitting at, Malva covered her face with her hands in a poor attempt to conceal her sobs. He cleared his throat.
"Are you going to be alright?" He didn't like how tense he sounded.
Malva sighed. "I think so," she said but it didn't seem like she really believed it. "I don't know how you can act so– casual, about all this."
Behind him, Sycamore started laughing so loud Lysandre couldn't help but start. Malva sniffled, unaware, her eyes closed behind her hands.
"I suppose it's to be expected," she went on. She seemed embarrassed to have admitted that she thought Lysandre was enduring better than the rest of them. He had never seen her embarrassed before, except maybe when they were children; she seemed like the kind of woman who didn't know what embarrassment was.
"Well, yes. I'm your leader, of course I'm supposed to be unaffected," Lysandre said. It was meant to be a joke, kind of, but he thought maybe he sounded too bitter for it to really work.
"You're doing a great job," Malva replied, and she was smiling – a little, not much, her eyes still wet behind her glasses.
He wasn't, of course, but there was no point in saying that except to upset her further. Instead, he smiled back at her, doing his best to ignore the hand Sycamore was tenderly running through his hair.
"You smell so good," Sycamore said, and Lysandre wasn't listening, he wasn't even paying attention to him, "like smoke. You smell like smoke."
He probably did. There was smoke everywhere now that everyone was dead.
*
When Xerosic finally called a meeting regarding the potential effects the machine had had on everyone, he looked sickly, his face so pale it was a miracle he was still alive, let alone standing straight. They sat in silence in one of the computer rooms of the laboratory, one of the larger ones so they could all fit together. Xerosic had taken out one of the whiteboards, not to write anything on it but seemingly merely to soothe himself, perhaps convince himself that this was just one of his routine reports about the machine and the current state of their mission. His hands, clasped tightly together, were trembling slightly.
Lysandre was sitting at the front, next to Bryony. As Xerosic seemed about to speak, she reached out to take his hand, and Lysandre let her, though he wasn't sure why.
"I've run some tests on Aliana," Xerosic began, touching his goggles with his right hand.
Lysandre leaned forward in his chair. Bryony was tracing circles on his palm with her thumb, an intimate gesture that actually made him feel more relaxed.
"I have reasons to believe the ultimate weapon affected us in ways we weren't expecting." Xerosic seemed unable to stop fidgeting with his goggles, betraying his nervousness. "It appears that those of us who were close to the machine when it went off became immortal."
A Flare admin somewhere behind Lysandre snorted. "The machine that killed everyone made some of us immortal? Didn't think I could still be surprised after all this shit."
"Language," Lysandre scolded. Bryony was holding his hand too tightly now, but he didn't want to say anything.
"I'm going to have to test everyone," Xerosic continued. "Some of us... were likely unaffected, but I'd like to check just in case."
Though he was pointedly avoiding saying it, everyone in the room could see what he meant. From where she was sitting, Malva let out a short sound between a gasp and a cry. This seemed to be the signal everyone was waiting for, as suddenly the room was full of people talking, some yelling to try and be heard. Bryony let go of Lysandre's hand and he stood up too fast, almost toppling both of their chairs over.
"Calm down, all of you!" he roared, his voice filling the entire room.
If there was one feeling Lysandre despised showing off so brazenly it was anger. Anger was only useful if it was a fuel you kept close to your own heart, never to let others witness it. As such, his recruits rarely saw him angry; once or twice he'd manhandled Xerosic when he was getting too carried away, and there had been a few occasions where his employees had been particularly baffling when working undercover at the café. None of those had come close to this flash of rage, though, and so the effect was immediate: all the heads turned in his direction as silence fell over the room. Malva's gaze seemed to be going right through him.
"You will all go to Xerosic for testing tomorrow. Screaming isn't going to change anything." It seemed like he should have said something else, words of encouragement maybe, but his throat was sore and he couldn't find the right ones.
When he tried to look at Bryony for reassurance his eyes instead fell on Sycamore, suddenly there right next to him, vibrating with something akin to triumph. Someone in the room had started crying, loud heart-wrenching sobs, and before he could stop himself Lysandre was walking away, leaving the room, running off like a coward afraid of his own shadow.
By the time he'd reached the elevator, he realized Bryony had followed him. She put her hand on his arm and he thought about boundaries, and how it had taken destroying the world for him to let someone get so close.
"Are you alright?" Bryony asked, and Lysandre wondered why people always asked other people how they were feeling even when the answer was obvious.
"Are you?" he asked back like a child.
There were circles under her eyes, as dark as the ones he doubtlessly sported himself. Still, she smiled, a little apologetically.
"Come on," she said.
They rode the elevator to his office in silence. Sycamore stood behind his back, behaving exactly like the shadow Lysandre had invoked in his mind. Bryony, meanwhile, was observing him as if she expected him to collapse at any moment.
When they stepped inside she immediately caught Lysandre in a tight embrace. He didn't find it in himself to fight her. She was holding him, really, and he had no idea how, considering the top of her head barely reached his collarbone and he was confident that he was pretty heavy – but she was holding him, and it felt nice. It felt nice to be held, to hold someone, to let someone else know how he felt, it felt nice to form bonds.
His time spent with Sycamore – the real one, of course – always felt nice, but there was no way he would have let him touch him like that. There was no way he would have let anyone touch him at all.
"You're so tense," Bryony said against the fur of his jacket. She had a habit of talking with her mouth against fabric.
They stayed like this for a long time. Bryony's hair smelled like smoke.
When Lysandre shifted to break away from her, she let him. He felt her eyes on him, questioning. He couldn't pierce into her mind, yet he could imagine what she was thinking about: how he was always standoffish, unwilling to open up about how he was feeling, constantly treading a tightrope between being too unavailable and being too forthcoming. That was what being in charge of something like this entailed, and he trusted her to know that, but it didn't change anything about their current situation. She'd seen him play his act in public, on television, in front of sponsors, to gather support, to gather money. She'd never had to see him like this until now, to peek at the angles he'd usually keep hidden away.
He gestured for them to sit at his desk. Bryony was still looking at him thoughtfully.
"I was wondering..." she said, her voice very low as if she was hoping Lysandre wouldn't hear. He let her continue, peering at her face, and the faint blush that was starting to appear there. "Why... um... why didn't you try to..."
"Is this about Professor Sycamore and me?" He was going to let her say it but he couldn't stand how red her face was, or how he suddenly felt the weight of Sycamore's hands on his shoulders.
"I–I mean, I thought... I thought he liked you a lot," she stammered.
It was taking a lot of his willpower to keep his facial expressions in check. "You thought he 'liked' me... why?"
Bryony laughed nervously.
"Everyone knows he was always talking about you as if you were the best thing to have ever happened to Kalos," she said very fast. "I've seen you together at the café... a few times..."
"Well, I'm sure Augustine Sycamore's interest in me was purely academic," Lysandre said, trying his best to sound as neutral as possible, even as he felt Sycamore's fingers against his jaw.
"I'm sure a lot of people would have liked him to be as 'academic' with them as he was with you, then," Bryony retorted. She was smiling but her face had gotten three times redder than it already was.
Lysandre opened his mouth to say something but closed it instead. Sycamore was giggling against his back, and he felt like his entire body was shaking because of it.
"I–I'm sorry," Bryony said upon seeing that he wasn't reacting. "This is an inappropriate time to joke around. I apologize."
"It's fine," Lysandre finally said, looking at her tie. "I never thought about it like that before. I suppose he was very enthusiastic about me."
For a second, Bryony looked like she was on the verge of saying something, her mouth open just a little bit, but then she changed her mind, frowning. Her pained expression made Lysandre worry that he'd perhaps upset her. Wordlessly, he offered his hand, palm up, back pressed against the desk, and she took it. Her hand was warm and somewhat clammy. It occurred suddenly to Lysandre that she used to wear gloves and that he couldn't recall when she'd stopped.
"I think Mable might be jealous of us," Bryony let out. Her own words seemed to surprise her.
Lysandre frowned. "Why?"
"She thought, uh... she thought she would be the one you'd go to once we won, I think."
He had never really thought about this before. Surely Mable was as good a scientist and Team Flare member as Bryony was, but there was no way he could have talked to her about the way he felt. Bryony understood.
The words she'd chosen struck him as odd. The one he'd go to – for what? He'd never planned to hold this grief in his heart, this all-encompassing anxiety that only seemed to grow more and more each day. He'd especially never planned to be haunted by another man. Then, he thought, his eyes fixed on their joined hands, what need would he have of Mable?
An uncomfortable sort of numbness settled upon him when he realized the obvious answer.
"So she thought I'd need, what? A bride?" He was gritting his teeth. It made him sound as if he was in pain, and maybe he was.
A dark flush quickly spread on Bryony's face. "She– she likes you a lot," she stuttered with some difficulty. "I don't think she meant–"
"Despite what the rumors might have you believe, I did not choose to surround myself with women of science out of some sort of... desire..." He couldn't bring himself to say it.
"I know," Bryony said hastily, a hint of panic in her voice. Her hand was holding his a bit tighter than it was before. "I would never..." She stopped herself, visibly struggling to find the words. "I'd never think so lowly of you. A–and I don't think Mable would either."
Truth be told, Lysandre thought somewhat meanly, she had no idea what Mable thought of him. Perhaps they discussed him in private, gossiping between themselves, but if Mable carried these kinds of thoughts within herself, she might not have been willing to vocalize them. He trusted Mable: she was the oldest of the girls, as brilliant as Xerosic when she wanted to be, and she usually wanted to be. He'd never so much as caught a hint of a hint that she could have held this kind of interest in him.
Then again, it appeared his track record when it came to recognizing people's attraction to him was abysmal, if Bryony was to be believed. She was looking at him cautiously now as if expecting to be scolded further.
Standing behind Lysandre's chair, Sycamore embraced him, holding him very close, and began whispering something against his hair he couldn't make out. He would have asked him what he was saying, but Bryony was there, and he wasn't going to talk to his imaginary friend in front of someone, even her.
He pressed her hand slightly in an attempt to clear the air.
"Let's talk about something else," he said.
Relief washed over Bryony's expression. She smiled at him, tentatively at first and then, when he smiled back, more frankly. There was still a touch of something in her eyes he couldn't quite place, a hesitation that he could only guess the source of. He was about to ask if there was something wrong when Bryony finally spoke up. They were still holding hands.
"Do you believe in life after death?"
I believe in grief-induced hallucinations, Lysandre thought, but it was harsh, and he realized he didn't want to be harsh anymore, especially not to her. Sycamore was still there, holding him, talking about trees and holes and death.
"I don't know," Lysandre said. "I suppose I don't."
Bryony put her other hand on top of Lysandre's.
"It's like I said last time: knowing that the dead are still around us, watching over us to make sure we're safe..." She looked down, pensive. "Although I can't imagine how much Celosia would worry about me, sometimes it helps to think that she's still there, looking out for me..."
When she looked back up at him she was smiling, her whole face beaming this time, but Lysandre felt too tense to reciprocate, thinking about the weight of a dead man against him.
"I suppose that would be a comforting thought," he said slowly, unable to reveal that he had been seeing Sycamore ever since he'd buried him in the ground weeks prior. In a way, he was already looking out for him.
It wasn't a very comforting way.
"Don't say that," Sycamore whispered in his ear.
Bryony let go of his hand. "Would you like to pray?"
Lysandre looked at her as if he couldn't understand what she'd just said. She lowered her gaze once more.
"I used to do it with my mother when I was little. It's very calming."
He thought about all of the dead pokémons, their corpses scattered around the region. What of the legendaries? He knew, with not much room for uncertainty, that the legendary beasts had succumbed to release the blast; not to mention the collapse of the underground headquarters. Wouldn't praying to the others – if they were still there – be considered an insult?
His hands were trembling a little.
"I don't think I've ever done this before," he admitted.
Bryony smiled, softly, the corners of her mouth curling up just a little. "That's alright. I can show you... if you want to try, I mean." Her voice was steady, contradicting the hesitation in her choice of words.
Lysandre nodded.
"Sure."
She stood up and took his hand to guide him to the free space behind his desk. There, she knelt and gestured for him to do the same thing.
"We can pray to Arceus. I think They will listen." Lysandre wasn't so sure about that, but there was no harm in trying. Bryony took his hands in hers.
"You need to join them together, and close your eyes, and think about... something good." She paused, avoiding his eyes. "I talk about her in my head sometimes. To her, too, if she can hear..."
Lysandre watched uncertainly as she closed her eyes. As soon as she did, her face relaxed fully, her respiration steadying until she was calmly breathing in and out, in and out. He wondered if perhaps praying was akin to meditation. He'd never been very successful at meditating, his brain too full of thoughts, his ability to listen to the silence too low. It felt lonely – but this time he wasn't alone. He closed his eyes and attempted to imitate Bryony's slow breathing.
He could feel Sycamore running his hands against his back, methodically, as if he was searching for something there. It sent pangs of electricity throughout Lysandre's body, ruining his already thin concentration. He kept his eyes tightly shut and thought about standing before Arceus and having to answer for his crimes.
It wasn't these kinds of beliefs Bryony had spoken about, but Lysandre knew of sects that regarded the legendary pokémons as higher beings who could grant forgiveness or divine punishment. Bryony only prayed for a sense of comfort, a figure she could turn to to ease her worries. Even as he knelt with her to pray, Lysandre found that he gave credence to neither of these doctrines. The legendary beasts were beasts, pokémons among pokémons, whether they held higher powers or not. They could do nothing to ease his mind or to chastise him. They might as well have been dead all along.
If the legendary beasts could have stopped this, surely they would have long ago. Surely his ancestor wouldn't have stood a chance before them, wouldn't have been able to build his death machine. Yet they were here now, standing in his office, holding hands while so many had died for his grand design.
He felt Sycamore's hand rest in-between his shoulder blades, pressing, holding the tension there. He focused instead on Bryony's breathing, on her presence, on clearing out the images of despair in his mind. His eyes were shut so tight he could see patterns and lights dancing behind his eyelids.
After some time – it could have been a minute or an hour later – he found himself somehow relaxing, his respiration following the gentle rhythm of Bryony's at last, the tension in his muscles disappearing. He couldn't even feel Sycamore's haunting shadow anymore.
Perhaps there was something to meditation after all.
*
Once Xerosic had taken samples from everybody, the pressure in the air seemed to tighten a little more each day. Even as they tried to ignore it, the world around them was getting smaller and smaller. Now that they'd gotten rid of all the corpses – or at least, the large majority of them – they could fully realize that they were the only ones left.
Some of the lower recruits had taken a habit of fighting among themselves as if they were trying to determine which ones were immortal by how many of the others they could defeat. With the pokémons all gone, all that was left was fighting with bare fists and teeth and nails, and sometimes, when he was walking down the streets of Lumiose, Lysandre would run into a group of them in a circle, cheering and whistling at the two who were fighting in the middle. Malva had told him to let them do it, that it was natural for them to want to release their frustration and fear through violence, but he hated it. He hated it because to him it was a reminder that he had fixed nothing in this world after all. He hated it because whenever it happened he could feel Sycamore holding his chest very tightly as if he was trying to suffocate him.
Sycamore would tell him that it was good, that it would help find those who were the most worthy of staying and rebuilding the world, and maybe weeks prior he would have agreed – but weeks prior the world was still intact, and he had never walked on people fighting viciously with their bare hands in front of an audience.
Maybe, he thought to himself on the worst days, when Bryony was too taken with the recruits and Sycamore was constantly at his heels begging and crying for his attention, he should have killed everyone in the end, Team Flare included.
That thought was at the forefront of his mind when Malva's results came out negative.
So did the results of the large majority of the lower recruits, as they had been farther away from the machine at the time it went off. There was no more reason to rejoice about immortality than to rejoice about mortality, and Lysandre felt tired, tired of all the things he had done, tired of all the things he had left to do now that he was to live forever to take care of what was left.
At least he still had Bryony.
She was asking him to pray with her every day now. He still didn't know whether she was trying to help him deal with things or if she just felt better doing it with someone. In any case, he didn't mind. Praying wasn't something he would have ever thought to do on his own, and to be fair, he didn't put much faith into it, but kneeling against Bryony in silence and trying his best to empty his thoughts felt nice.
Almost peaceful.
In these moments, sometimes even the feeling of Sycamore's body felt like a blessing: of course it was a lie, a fake ghost created by his mind, but it was still him, and when he said the words, even to taunt him, it was still his voice.
"What would you tell him if he could see us now?" Bryony asked him one day once they were done.
There were many ways to answer this question, but Lysandre could only think of one thing. "Sorry."
Bryony's expression twitched with something akin to pain even as she tried to smile.
"Even now... I still can't believe that I've... that we've lost Celosia forever. I'm expecting her to show up at any moment..."
She looked down at her feet, her face obscured by her bangs.
"Living forever is going to be lonely without her..."
Lysandre put his hand on her arm.
*
They had started rebuilding properly now – cleaning up the rubble, washing away the blood, picking newly empty buildings to live in. It was going to take a very long time; thankfully, some of them had all the time in the world.
This development had a major if predictable disadvantage: they were now divided between those who were going to live forever and those who were not. Malva had agreed to take care of those unfortunate – or fortunate, sometimes it was hard to say – to still be mortal, and keep them in check. Once she'd moved past the shock, she'd taken her status with as much grace as anyone could have. Sometimes Lysandre noticed her staring in his direction, lost in thought.
The inherent division worried him because it wreaked havoc upon his original plans, that of creating a smaller nation made of chosen people who could be united toward a common goal. He'd wanted them all to be equal in all the ways they could be, and still the universe had found a way to ruin even that. It left him feeling bitter, confronted with the fact that this had always been foolish. He'd spent so much time berating the stupidity of those who surrounded him that it had blinded him to his own shortcomings.
"They've always been mortal, I don't know what they're complaining about," Aliana hissed one afternoon. They were sitting in one of the tall Lumiose buildings, waiting for Xerosic and Mable to check which computers were still functional. Malva had taken the grunts with her to clean up the remains of the Prism Tower.
"Don't be cruel," Lysandre said. The words felt hollow but he still thought they needed to be said. "It is a privilege we have that they do not. I understand their anger."
"A privilege?"
He turned to look at Mable. She had left Xerosic in charge of the last room. She sounded exhausted, her voice strained even though they'd barely spoken. Her visor was still on her face but he could see her mouth was twisted in a snarl. "We can't die, and the whole world is a mess. I don't see how being able to stay here forever is a privilege."
Aliana's mouth curved into a tense line when she too turned to look at her. She stayed silent, chewing on her bottom lip.
"It gives us time to fix things," Lysandre said, unfazed by her wrath.
"There's nothing to fix anymore!" It sounded like Mable had been keeping all of this inside of her for weeks and it was just now getting out, like a sludge stuck to the back of her throat that she could finally cough up. "Everyone except us is gone, and it's all our fault! It's all your fault!"
Her voice rose as she spoke until she was screaming almost, a painful wail that pierced through the air like a knife aimed for his heart. Lysandre found himself unable to answer; Sycamore was holding his chest so tightly that, had he been real, he would have probably broken his ribcage. Instead, Bryony put a hand on his arm to stand up.
"No one forced you to join the cause," she said firmly, facing her friend and colleague head-on. "You knew what would happen. We had to make sacrifices to build a better world."
"What's better about this world?" Mable choked out. In one swift gesture, she ripped off her visor from her face and threw it on the ground near Lysandre's feet. "Everything is in ruins! We're all fighting like beasts in the streets! You, of all people, should agree with me! Celosia died because of us! Because of him!"
Her expression was like nothing Lysandre had ever seen before, almost like the face of a hurt pokémon both fighting for their life and begging for mercy. His lack of reaction seemed to infuriate her even more. Now that he could see her eyes he could only read anger and despair in them, and he found himself unable to look away until she threw herself toward him with a sound almost like a roar and her fist went off to meet with his face. Though he had plenty of time to block or even dodge her, he stayed exactly where he was and just let her punch him as hard as she could.
Very hard, actually.
When Xerosic came back, Mable had stormed off and Bryony was holding Lysandre's face in her hands. He was bleeding – his upper lip and nose – but that was fine. Aliana shifted uncomfortably next to him, wrangling her hands together.
"I'm sorry, this is all my fault," she said, her voice reduced to a fraction of a whisper. Even though he couldn't see her eyes she seemed on the verge of tears.
"Actually, it's mine," Lysandre replied very slowly.
No one else had anything to say after that.
He let Bryony take him outside and guide him back to the café without a word. Maybe she was talking, he wasn't sure; everything he could hear was covered by the sound of Sycamore's voice very close to his ear, telling him how awful he was and how Mable was right and everything was his fault.
It was.
Bryony maneuvered him into one of the chairs before rummaging behind the counter to find the first aid kit they kept there for minor injuries. She didn't say a word to him even as she began to mend his wounds.
"I'm fine," Lysandre said softly to break the silence. He didn't like her touching him, not when Sycamore's hands were already on his neck.
"Why didn't you dodge it?" She sounded pained, which was strange. "She wasn't even that fast. Did you want her to punch you?"
"Yes." There was no point in lying.
"This isn't funny, Lysandre. This is serious."
There was something so unnatural to her saying his name like this that he felt an uncomfortable weight settle in his stomach. It hurt more than his wounds did.
"If you act like this, things are going to get worse."
He blinked away some of the blurriness suddenly plaguing his vision. "I know."
She leaned forward to hold him in her arms. Her shoulders were shaking, and it took him longer than it should have to register that she was crying.
"We'll work through this, right? You said we'll work through this." She was sobbing so loud, he could barely understand what she was saying. "I trust you."
"Of course," he said, as he had before, but he didn't know if he believed it anymore – no, he knew he didn't believe it, but he didn't know if he could still pretend that he did. He was bleeding on Bryony's clothes, and she wouldn't stop crying, and crying, and Sycamore was crying too, or maybe mock-crying, he couldn't tell at this point, pulling at his hair as if he was trying to rip it off, even though he couldn't, because he wasn't real.
He pushed her away gently to take her hands in his, looking up at her face, cheeks red and wet with tears.
"Let's pray," he said.
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
In Lysandre's mind, there had always been something glorious about fire.
It was a powerful symbol of strength and passion: the flames in a fireplace at home or the flames that destroyed an entire forest in minutes. The flames of conviction in people's hearts, of anger, of love even. It could bring both destruction and comfort: the rage of a thousand blazes and the warmth of a campfire. It was one of these things that could so perfectly sum up how the world was never as simple as it seemed.
Yet in this brand-new world he had created, whenever he thought of fire, he could no longer hold on to all of his poetics, and only thought of two things: the smell of burning bodies, and the dreams.
There was a lot he could have said about the dreams, perhaps, if he'd allowed himself to. For now, the less he thought of them, the better. In some, he'd stand and watch helplessly as Sycamore burned down like a tree or perhaps a criminal tied to the stake. He would scream and yell, in pain at first and then in anger, profanities leveled against Lysandre as if he was the one responsible. In others, a random assortment of people would burn, some he knew, like Diantha, rolling on the floor in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames, or Malva, her cries of absolute terror always waking him up in a cold sweat. Sometimes they were strangers, silently staring at him as the fire consumed their flesh, pointing at him with leery eyes.
Regardless of which dreams they were, he was having them every night, these deranged nightmares of roaring infernos and misery, and every time he woke up he would see Sycamore staring at him.
On the rare occasions where he'd sleep in a bed, he would wake up to Sycamore lying next to him, staring, a small smile on his face.
"Nice dreams, darling?" he'd say, and in that moment there'd be no malice in his voice or in his eyes, nothing but the sort of quiet tenderness that Lysandre imagined you'd reserve for someone you loved. Then he'd sneer, exposing his teeth in something akin to a snarl, "Too good for you, no doubt."
Still, he always let Sycamore touch his face, take his hand, trying his best to ignore the terrible things he was saying – that he was dead, that it was his fault, that he hated him – and he always felt pathetic afterward, comforted by the touch of a ghost he made up in his mind.
A ghost who hated him just like he hated himself.
*
In their travels through the region to clean everything up, they'd gathered two key-stones from the corpses in the Tower of Mastery, which Lysandre knew were the gym leader Korrina and her grandfather. There was no way they could get to the one Diantha wore because the Elite Four was no longer accessible, flooded and broken beyond repair. Sometimes he thought about her corpse floating around, bloated and disgusting. Drasna and Siebold, too. Wikstrom had to have sunk to the bottom with that heavy armor he wore.
He felt haunted by them all, all of the dead he'd reaped for the greater good, though none of them haunted him quite as well as his own personal ghost.
"Why do you need all these stones, anyway?" Sycamore said, his hands on Lysandre's waist. He could feel him talk, too close to his face.
The words his brain conjured – "they remind me of you" – died on his lips before he could bring himself to say them. It was pointless, anyway; surely the ghost he'd made up already knew the answer. The truth, of course, was that he didn't need these stones, because there weren't any more pokémons to mega-evolve.
"Why would you need stones to remember me by?" The irony was dripping from Sycamore's every word and yet he still managed to sound vexed. "I'm right there."
That was part of the problem, actually.
He was in his office, looking at his ring next to the other two stones, standing because sitting meant maybe falling asleep. Sycamore pressed his body close against his as if he wanted them to fuse together.
"You buried me, right? Did that feel nice?" Lysandre had taken off his jacket and he was regretting it because he could feel Sycamore's hands trailing on his chest, and he could feel him breathing next to his ear, and he felt sick. "You planted me in the ground. Do you think a tree will grow there?"
He laughed and he was too close.
"Please stop," Lysandre said, his voice strained. He couldn't move, couldn't break away even as his body was screaming at him to do so, and he didn't know whether he was going to vomit or pass out, or both.
"Don't worry," Sycamore whispered, but he could feel him letting go, "it's not necrophilia if you're not actually doing it with a corpse."
The insinuation left him feeling cold and shameful. Perhaps he did get a kind of twisted satisfaction out of Sycamore's closeness – waking up alongside him in the morning, feeling their bodies so close together, his unnatural warmth against Lysandre's back even as he knew him to be a walking cadaver or at least the memory of one. He found no satisfaction in this acknowledgment of their relationship.
Instead, in what had to be the second strangest thing to happen to him in the new world, he found satisfaction in his relationships with those who were still alive and had come to depend on him. He was constantly surrounded by all manners of people who needed his presence. As there weren't many people left, the survivors – the victors, he would correct himself – could only count on themselves for human contact. The only escape Lysandre could find was locking himself in his office, where no one tried to disturb him, but where he was on his own against Sycamore.
When, as he was sharing coffee with Malva, she suddenly broke into tears, talking about how she kept seeing Diantha's crushed corpse in her dreams, he couldn't figure out what to do. A month prior, she would have never let herself go in front of him.
Xerosic himself sometimes seemed struck by a sudden wave of pain, his voice cracking slightly as he told Lysandre he was going to run some tests on them all to make sure there were no side effects left by the machine.
Yet somehow they were carrying on. Bryony especially seemed to draw strength from the grief she felt for Celosia, fueling her disarmingly off-key optimism – she'd hold Aliana close when she could sense her wavering, put her hand on Mable's shoulder after catching her slip away, or quietly uplift a younger recruit who couldn't cope with the current state of their world. Lysandre sometimes thought she was holding up better than he was.
Across the table he was sitting at, Malva covered her face with her hands in a poor attempt to conceal her sobs. He cleared his throat.
"Are you going to be alright?" He didn't like how tense he sounded.
Malva sighed. "I think so," she said but it didn't seem like she really believed it. "I don't know how you can act so– casual, about all this."
Behind him, Sycamore started laughing so loud Lysandre couldn't help but start. Malva sniffled, unaware, her eyes closed behind her hands.
"I suppose it's to be expected," she went on. She seemed embarrassed to have admitted that she thought Lysandre was enduring better than the rest of them. He had never seen her embarrassed before, except maybe when they were children; she seemed like the kind of woman who didn't know what embarrassment was.
"Well, yes. I'm your leader, of course I'm supposed to be unaffected," Lysandre said. It was meant to be a joke, kind of, but he thought maybe he sounded too bitter for it to really work.
"You're doing a great job," Malva replied, and she was smiling – a little, not much, her eyes still wet behind her glasses.
He wasn't, of course, but there was no point in saying that except to upset her further. Instead, he smiled back at her, doing his best to ignore the hand Sycamore was tenderly running through his hair.
"You smell so good," Sycamore said, and Lysandre wasn't listening, he wasn't even paying attention to him, "like smoke. You smell like smoke."
He probably did. There was smoke everywhere now that everyone was dead.
*
When Xerosic finally called a meeting regarding the potential effects the machine had had on everyone, he looked sickly, his face so pale it was a miracle he was still alive, let alone standing straight. They sat in silence in one of the computer rooms of the laboratory, one of the larger ones so they could all fit together. Xerosic had taken out one of the whiteboards, not to write anything on it but seemingly merely to soothe himself, perhaps convince himself that this was just one of his routine reports about the machine and the current state of their mission. His hands, clasped tightly together, were trembling slightly.
Lysandre was sitting at the front, next to Bryony. As Xerosic seemed about to speak, she reached out to take his hand, and Lysandre let her, though he wasn't sure why.
"I've run some tests on Aliana," Xerosic began, touching his goggles with his right hand.
Lysandre leaned forward in his chair. Bryony was tracing circles on his palm with her thumb, an intimate gesture that actually made him feel more relaxed.
"I have reasons to believe the ultimate weapon affected us in ways we weren't expecting." Xerosic seemed unable to stop fidgeting with his goggles, betraying his nervousness. "It appears that those of us who were close to the machine when it went off became immortal."
A Flare admin somewhere behind Lysandre snorted. "The machine that killed everyone made some of us immortal? Didn't think I could still be surprised after all this shit."
"Language," Lysandre scolded. Bryony was holding his hand too tightly now, but he didn't want to say anything.
"I'm going to have to test everyone," Xerosic continued. "Some of us... were likely unaffected, but I'd like to check just in case."
Though he was pointedly avoiding saying it, everyone in the room could see what he meant. From where she was sitting, Malva let out a short sound between a gasp and a cry. This seemed to be the signal everyone was waiting for, as suddenly the room was full of people talking, some yelling to try and be heard. Bryony let go of Lysandre's hand and he stood up too fast, almost toppling both of their chairs over.
"Calm down, all of you!" he roared, his voice filling the entire room.
If there was one feeling Lysandre despised showing off so brazenly it was anger. Anger was only useful if it was a fuel you kept close to your own heart, never to let others witness it. As such, his recruits rarely saw him angry; once or twice he'd manhandled Xerosic when he was getting too carried away, and there had been a few occasions where his employees had been particularly baffling when working undercover at the café. None of those had come close to this flash of rage, though, and so the effect was immediate: all the heads turned in his direction as silence fell over the room. Malva's gaze seemed to be going right through him.
"You will all go to Xerosic for testing tomorrow. Screaming isn't going to change anything." It seemed like he should have said something else, words of encouragement maybe, but his throat was sore and he couldn't find the right ones.
When he tried to look at Bryony for reassurance his eyes instead fell on Sycamore, suddenly there right next to him, vibrating with something akin to triumph. Someone in the room had started crying, loud heart-wrenching sobs, and before he could stop himself Lysandre was walking away, leaving the room, running off like a coward afraid of his own shadow.
By the time he'd reached the elevator, he realized Bryony had followed him. She put her hand on his arm and he thought about boundaries, and how it had taken destroying the world for him to let someone get so close.
"Are you alright?" Bryony asked, and Lysandre wondered why people always asked other people how they were feeling even when the answer was obvious.
"Are you?" he asked back like a child.
There were circles under her eyes, as dark as the ones he doubtlessly sported himself. Still, she smiled, a little apologetically.
"Come on," she said.
They rode the elevator to his office in silence. Sycamore stood behind his back, behaving exactly like the shadow Lysandre had invoked in his mind. Bryony, meanwhile, was observing him as if she expected him to collapse at any moment.
When they stepped inside she immediately caught Lysandre in a tight embrace. He didn't find it in himself to fight her. She was holding him, really, and he had no idea how, considering the top of her head barely reached his collarbone and he was confident that he was pretty heavy – but she was holding him, and it felt nice. It felt nice to be held, to hold someone, to let someone else know how he felt, it felt nice to form bonds.
His time spent with Sycamore – the real one, of course – always felt nice, but there was no way he would have let him touch him like that. There was no way he would have let anyone touch him at all.
"You're so tense," Bryony said against the fur of his jacket. She had a habit of talking with her mouth against fabric.
They stayed like this for a long time. Bryony's hair smelled like smoke.
When Lysandre shifted to break away from her, she let him. He felt her eyes on him, questioning. He couldn't pierce into her mind, yet he could imagine what she was thinking about: how he was always standoffish, unwilling to open up about how he was feeling, constantly treading a tightrope between being too unavailable and being too forthcoming. That was what being in charge of something like this entailed, and he trusted her to know that, but it didn't change anything about their current situation. She'd seen him play his act in public, on television, in front of sponsors, to gather support, to gather money. She'd never had to see him like this until now, to peek at the angles he'd usually keep hidden away.
He gestured for them to sit at his desk. Bryony was still looking at him thoughtfully.
"I was wondering..." she said, her voice very low as if she was hoping Lysandre wouldn't hear. He let her continue, peering at her face, and the faint blush that was starting to appear there. "Why... um... why didn't you try to..."
"Is this about Professor Sycamore and me?" He was going to let her say it but he couldn't stand how red her face was, or how he suddenly felt the weight of Sycamore's hands on his shoulders.
"I–I mean, I thought... I thought he liked you a lot," she stammered.
It was taking a lot of his willpower to keep his facial expressions in check. "You thought he 'liked' me... why?"
Bryony laughed nervously.
"Everyone knows he was always talking about you as if you were the best thing to have ever happened to Kalos," she said very fast. "I've seen you together at the café... a few times..."
"Well, I'm sure Augustine Sycamore's interest in me was purely academic," Lysandre said, trying his best to sound as neutral as possible, even as he felt Sycamore's fingers against his jaw.
"I'm sure a lot of people would have liked him to be as 'academic' with them as he was with you, then," Bryony retorted. She was smiling but her face had gotten three times redder than it already was.
Lysandre opened his mouth to say something but closed it instead. Sycamore was giggling against his back, and he felt like his entire body was shaking because of it.
"I–I'm sorry," Bryony said upon seeing that he wasn't reacting. "This is an inappropriate time to joke around. I apologize."
"It's fine," Lysandre finally said, looking at her tie. "I never thought about it like that before. I suppose he was very enthusiastic about me."
For a second, Bryony looked like she was on the verge of saying something, her mouth open just a little bit, but then she changed her mind, frowning. Her pained expression made Lysandre worry that he'd perhaps upset her. Wordlessly, he offered his hand, palm up, back pressed against the desk, and she took it. Her hand was warm and somewhat clammy. It occurred suddenly to Lysandre that she used to wear gloves and that he couldn't recall when she'd stopped.
"I think Mable might be jealous of us," Bryony let out. Her own words seemed to surprise her.
Lysandre frowned. "Why?"
"She thought, uh... she thought she would be the one you'd go to once we won, I think."
He had never really thought about this before. Surely Mable was as good a scientist and Team Flare member as Bryony was, but there was no way he could have talked to her about the way he felt. Bryony understood.
The words she'd chosen struck him as odd. The one he'd go to – for what? He'd never planned to hold this grief in his heart, this all-encompassing anxiety that only seemed to grow more and more each day. He'd especially never planned to be haunted by another man. Then, he thought, his eyes fixed on their joined hands, what need would he have of Mable?
An uncomfortable sort of numbness settled upon him when he realized the obvious answer.
"So she thought I'd need, what? A bride?" He was gritting his teeth. It made him sound as if he was in pain, and maybe he was.
A dark flush quickly spread on Bryony's face. "She– she likes you a lot," she stuttered with some difficulty. "I don't think she meant–"
"Despite what the rumors might have you believe, I did not choose to surround myself with women of science out of some sort of... desire..." He couldn't bring himself to say it.
"I know," Bryony said hastily, a hint of panic in her voice. Her hand was holding his a bit tighter than it was before. "I would never..." She stopped herself, visibly struggling to find the words. "I'd never think so lowly of you. A–and I don't think Mable would either."
Truth be told, Lysandre thought somewhat meanly, she had no idea what Mable thought of him. Perhaps they discussed him in private, gossiping between themselves, but if Mable carried these kinds of thoughts within herself, she might not have been willing to vocalize them. He trusted Mable: she was the oldest of the girls, as brilliant as Xerosic when she wanted to be, and she usually wanted to be. He'd never so much as caught a hint of a hint that she could have held this kind of interest in him.
Then again, it appeared his track record when it came to recognizing people's attraction to him was abysmal, if Bryony was to be believed. She was looking at him cautiously now as if expecting to be scolded further.
Standing behind Lysandre's chair, Sycamore embraced him, holding him very close, and began whispering something against his hair he couldn't make out. He would have asked him what he was saying, but Bryony was there, and he wasn't going to talk to his imaginary friend in front of someone, even her.
He pressed her hand slightly in an attempt to clear the air.
"Let's talk about something else," he said.
Relief washed over Bryony's expression. She smiled at him, tentatively at first and then, when he smiled back, more frankly. There was still a touch of something in her eyes he couldn't quite place, a hesitation that he could only guess the source of. He was about to ask if there was something wrong when Bryony finally spoke up. They were still holding hands.
"Do you believe in life after death?"
I believe in grief-induced hallucinations, Lysandre thought, but it was harsh, and he realized he didn't want to be harsh anymore, especially not to her. Sycamore was still there, holding him, talking about trees and holes and death.
"I don't know," Lysandre said. "I suppose I don't."
Bryony put her other hand on top of Lysandre's.
"It's like I said last time: knowing that the dead are still around us, watching over us to make sure we're safe..." She looked down, pensive. "Although I can't imagine how much Celosia would worry about me, sometimes it helps to think that she's still there, looking out for me..."
When she looked back up at him she was smiling, her whole face beaming this time, but Lysandre felt too tense to reciprocate, thinking about the weight of a dead man against him.
"I suppose that would be a comforting thought," he said slowly, unable to reveal that he had been seeing Sycamore ever since he'd buried him in the ground weeks prior. In a way, he was already looking out for him.
It wasn't a very comforting way.
"Don't say that," Sycamore whispered in his ear.
Bryony let go of his hand. "Would you like to pray?"
Lysandre looked at her as if he couldn't understand what she'd just said. She lowered her gaze once more.
"I used to do it with my mother when I was little. It's very calming."
He thought about all of the dead pokémons, their corpses scattered around the region. What of the legendaries? He knew, with not much room for uncertainty, that the legendary beasts had succumbed to release the blast; not to mention the collapse of the underground headquarters. Wouldn't praying to the others – if they were still there – be considered an insult?
His hands were trembling a little.
"I don't think I've ever done this before," he admitted.
Bryony smiled, softly, the corners of her mouth curling up just a little. "That's alright. I can show you... if you want to try, I mean." Her voice was steady, contradicting the hesitation in her choice of words.
Lysandre nodded.
"Sure."
She stood up and took his hand to guide him to the free space behind his desk. There, she knelt and gestured for him to do the same thing.
"We can pray to Arceus. I think They will listen." Lysandre wasn't so sure about that, but there was no harm in trying. Bryony took his hands in hers.
"You need to join them together, and close your eyes, and think about... something good." She paused, avoiding his eyes. "I talk about her in my head sometimes. To her, too, if she can hear..."
Lysandre watched uncertainly as she closed her eyes. As soon as she did, her face relaxed fully, her respiration steadying until she was calmly breathing in and out, in and out. He wondered if perhaps praying was akin to meditation. He'd never been very successful at meditating, his brain too full of thoughts, his ability to listen to the silence too low. It felt lonely – but this time he wasn't alone. He closed his eyes and attempted to imitate Bryony's slow breathing.
He could feel Sycamore running his hands against his back, methodically, as if he was searching for something there. It sent pangs of electricity throughout Lysandre's body, ruining his already thin concentration. He kept his eyes tightly shut and thought about standing before Arceus and having to answer for his crimes.
It wasn't these kinds of beliefs Bryony had spoken about, but Lysandre knew of sects that regarded the legendary pokémons as higher beings who could grant forgiveness or divine punishment. Bryony only prayed for a sense of comfort, a figure she could turn to to ease her worries. Even as he knelt with her to pray, Lysandre found that he gave credence to neither of these doctrines. The legendary beasts were beasts, pokémons among pokémons, whether they held higher powers or not. They could do nothing to ease his mind or to chastise him. They might as well have been dead all along.
If the legendary beasts could have stopped this, surely they would have long ago. Surely his ancestor wouldn't have stood a chance before them, wouldn't have been able to build his death machine. Yet they were here now, standing in his office, holding hands while so many had died for his grand design.
He felt Sycamore's hand rest in-between his shoulder blades, pressing, holding the tension there. He focused instead on Bryony's breathing, on her presence, on clearing out the images of despair in his mind. His eyes were shut so tight he could see patterns and lights dancing behind his eyelids.
After some time – it could have been a minute or an hour later – he found himself somehow relaxing, his respiration following the gentle rhythm of Bryony's at last, the tension in his muscles disappearing. He couldn't even feel Sycamore's haunting shadow anymore.
Perhaps there was something to meditation after all.
*
Once Xerosic had taken samples from everybody, the pressure in the air seemed to tighten a little more each day. Even as they tried to ignore it, the world around them was getting smaller and smaller. Now that they'd gotten rid of all the corpses – or at least, the large majority of them – they could fully realize that they were the only ones left.
Some of the lower recruits had taken a habit of fighting among themselves as if they were trying to determine which ones were immortal by how many of the others they could defeat. With the pokémons all gone, all that was left was fighting with bare fists and teeth and nails, and sometimes, when he was walking down the streets of Lumiose, Lysandre would run into a group of them in a circle, cheering and whistling at the two who were fighting in the middle. Malva had told him to let them do it, that it was natural for them to want to release their frustration and fear through violence, but he hated it. He hated it because to him it was a reminder that he had fixed nothing in this world after all. He hated it because whenever it happened he could feel Sycamore holding his chest very tightly as if he was trying to suffocate him.
Sycamore would tell him that it was good, that it would help find those who were the most worthy of staying and rebuilding the world, and maybe weeks prior he would have agreed – but weeks prior the world was still intact, and he had never walked on people fighting viciously with their bare hands in front of an audience.
Maybe, he thought to himself on the worst days, when Bryony was too taken with the recruits and Sycamore was constantly at his heels begging and crying for his attention, he should have killed everyone in the end, Team Flare included.
That thought was at the forefront of his mind when Malva's results came out negative.
So did the results of the large majority of the lower recruits, as they had been farther away from the machine at the time it went off. There was no more reason to rejoice about immortality than to rejoice about mortality, and Lysandre felt tired, tired of all the things he had done, tired of all the things he had left to do now that he was to live forever to take care of what was left.
At least he still had Bryony.
She was asking him to pray with her every day now. He still didn't know whether she was trying to help him deal with things or if she just felt better doing it with someone. In any case, he didn't mind. Praying wasn't something he would have ever thought to do on his own, and to be fair, he didn't put much faith into it, but kneeling against Bryony in silence and trying his best to empty his thoughts felt nice.
Almost peaceful.
In these moments, sometimes even the feeling of Sycamore's body felt like a blessing: of course it was a lie, a fake ghost created by his mind, but it was still him, and when he said the words, even to taunt him, it was still his voice.
"What would you tell him if he could see us now?" Bryony asked him one day once they were done.
There were many ways to answer this question, but Lysandre could only think of one thing. "Sorry."
Bryony's expression twitched with something akin to pain even as she tried to smile.
"Even now... I still can't believe that I've... that we've lost Celosia forever. I'm expecting her to show up at any moment..."
She looked down at her feet, her face obscured by her bangs.
"Living forever is going to be lonely without her..."
Lysandre put his hand on her arm.
*
They had started rebuilding properly now – cleaning up the rubble, washing away the blood, picking newly empty buildings to live in. It was going to take a very long time; thankfully, some of them had all the time in the world.
This development had a major if predictable disadvantage: they were now divided between those who were going to live forever and those who were not. Malva had agreed to take care of those unfortunate – or fortunate, sometimes it was hard to say – to still be mortal, and keep them in check. Once she'd moved past the shock, she'd taken her status with as much grace as anyone could have. Sometimes Lysandre noticed her staring in his direction, lost in thought.
The inherent division worried him because it wreaked havoc upon his original plans, that of creating a smaller nation made of chosen people who could be united toward a common goal. He'd wanted them all to be equal in all the ways they could be, and still the universe had found a way to ruin even that. It left him feeling bitter, confronted with the fact that this had always been foolish. He'd spent so much time berating the stupidity of those who surrounded him that it had blinded him to his own shortcomings.
"They've always been mortal, I don't know what they're complaining about," Aliana hissed one afternoon. They were sitting in one of the tall Lumiose buildings, waiting for Xerosic and Mable to check which computers were still functional. Malva had taken the grunts with her to clean up the remains of the Prism Tower.
"Don't be cruel," Lysandre said. The words felt hollow but he still thought they needed to be said. "It is a privilege we have that they do not. I understand their anger."
"A privilege?"
He turned to look at Mable. She had left Xerosic in charge of the last room. She sounded exhausted, her voice strained even though they'd barely spoken. Her visor was still on her face but he could see her mouth was twisted in a snarl. "We can't die, and the whole world is a mess. I don't see how being able to stay here forever is a privilege."
Aliana's mouth curved into a tense line when she too turned to look at her. She stayed silent, chewing on her bottom lip.
"It gives us time to fix things," Lysandre said, unfazed by her wrath.
"There's nothing to fix anymore!" It sounded like Mable had been keeping all of this inside of her for weeks and it was just now getting out, like a sludge stuck to the back of her throat that she could finally cough up. "Everyone except us is gone, and it's all our fault! It's all your fault!"
Her voice rose as she spoke until she was screaming almost, a painful wail that pierced through the air like a knife aimed for his heart. Lysandre found himself unable to answer; Sycamore was holding his chest so tightly that, had he been real, he would have probably broken his ribcage. Instead, Bryony put a hand on his arm to stand up.
"No one forced you to join the cause," she said firmly, facing her friend and colleague head-on. "You knew what would happen. We had to make sacrifices to build a better world."
"What's better about this world?" Mable choked out. In one swift gesture, she ripped off her visor from her face and threw it on the ground near Lysandre's feet. "Everything is in ruins! We're all fighting like beasts in the streets! You, of all people, should agree with me! Celosia died because of us! Because of him!"
Her expression was like nothing Lysandre had ever seen before, almost like the face of a hurt pokémon both fighting for their life and begging for mercy. His lack of reaction seemed to infuriate her even more. Now that he could see her eyes he could only read anger and despair in them, and he found himself unable to look away until she threw herself toward him with a sound almost like a roar and her fist went off to meet with his face. Though he had plenty of time to block or even dodge her, he stayed exactly where he was and just let her punch him as hard as she could.
Very hard, actually.
When Xerosic came back, Mable had stormed off and Bryony was holding Lysandre's face in her hands. He was bleeding – his upper lip and nose – but that was fine. Aliana shifted uncomfortably next to him, wrangling her hands together.
"I'm sorry, this is all my fault," she said, her voice reduced to a fraction of a whisper. Even though he couldn't see her eyes she seemed on the verge of tears.
"Actually, it's mine," Lysandre replied very slowly.
No one else had anything to say after that.
He let Bryony take him outside and guide him back to the café without a word. Maybe she was talking, he wasn't sure; everything he could hear was covered by the sound of Sycamore's voice very close to his ear, telling him how awful he was and how Mable was right and everything was his fault.
It was.
Bryony maneuvered him into one of the chairs before rummaging behind the counter to find the first aid kit they kept there for minor injuries. She didn't say a word to him even as she began to mend his wounds.
"I'm fine," Lysandre said softly to break the silence. He didn't like her touching him, not when Sycamore's hands were already on his neck.
"Why didn't you dodge it?" She sounded pained, which was strange. "She wasn't even that fast. Did you want her to punch you?"
"Yes." There was no point in lying.
"This isn't funny, Lysandre. This is serious."
There was something so unnatural to her saying his name like this that he felt an uncomfortable weight settle in his stomach. It hurt more than his wounds did.
"If you act like this, things are going to get worse."
He blinked away some of the blurriness suddenly plaguing his vision. "I know."
She leaned forward to hold him in her arms. Her shoulders were shaking, and it took him longer than it should have to register that she was crying.
"We'll work through this, right? You said we'll work through this." She was sobbing so loud, he could barely understand what she was saying. "I trust you."
"Of course," he said, as he had before, but he didn't know if he believed it anymore – no, he knew he didn't believe it, but he didn't know if he could still pretend that he did. He was bleeding on Bryony's clothes, and she wouldn't stop crying, and crying, and Sycamore was crying too, or maybe mock-crying, he couldn't tell at this point, pulling at his hair as if he was trying to rip it off, even though he couldn't, because he wasn't real.
He pushed her away gently to take her hands in his, looking up at her face, cheeks red and wet with tears.
"Let's pray," he said.