[Pokémon X&Y] So Long as We Can Say - Chapter 7: eclipse

[javert]

Title: 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.

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

---

The sound of beeping woke him up.

For a minute that might as well have been a century, Lysandre found himself unable to conceptualize the fact that he was alive, the confusion oddly familiar. He'd spent so long thinking this plan would end in his death that he could barely fathom that it hadn't. Yet when he looked over to his left, the mundane sight of the machine he was connected to cemented the fact that he was not lying in some kind of sacred, otherworldly place, but in what he could only guess was a hospital room.

At his bedside, near where the machine was, somebody had left a vase with flowers. Some of them were fancy, roses and irises from a flower shop, and some were poppies and dandelions gathered directly from the soil. The sight of them hit him like a punch directly to his gut, alongside a stream of anguished questions running through his head.

Where was he? Why was he alive? Should he be alive? Was this another form of punishment for his crimes? Who brought him here, and why? How long had it been since the incident?

Did he know?

There was a mask on his face that he knew was to help with breathing. He resisted the urge to rip it off.

He remembered, through the hazy panic that was beginning to cloud his mind, that hospital rooms typically included a way for patients to call nurses in case of emergencies. Surely this was one.

When his stumbling hands finally managed to grab onto something that was probably a button to press, he found that the gestures were coming to him with a difficulty that was almost frighteningly foreign. The button thankfully provided him with a short clicking sound when pressed, assuring him that it had worked. A red light appeared on the plastic board protruding at the side of the bed, further assuring him that he was successful in his efforts.

If "efforts" could ever describe "remembering how to use a button."

When the door to the room opened, shedding some light to the rest of it, Lysandre felt his stomach sink. Standing at the entrance as if unsure of how to proceed, staring at him like he'd just seen a ghost, was Augustine Sycamore.

Lysandre blinked once, then twice, then another time just to be sure, but the apparition before him refused to disappear. Augustine's face was a resigned mask of exhaustion and yet, simmering at the surface, Lysandre thought he could see something he didn't think he deserved.

Relief.

"You're awake," Augustine said, his voice shaking around the words like a tree caught in a blizzard. Then, as if the simple fact of acknowledging it was too much, his face contorted into a painful grimace, betraying the emotions he seemed to be trying so hard to keep at bay.

There were many things that Lysandre felt he needed to say – yet when he opened his mouth no words came out.

Lysandre watched the other man approach him with caution as if he was a wild pokémon Augustine had found injured by the side of a road and wanted to inspect while making sure not to disturb.

"Hey," Augustine spoke again, sounding slightly more in control of himself, though not by much. "Can you hear me? Are you alright?"

This was his cue to say something, surely. He opened his mouth to do so. All that came out was a sharp exhale. He cleared his throat, and tried again.

"Hello," Lysandre said. The word hurt his throat; his voice sounded so very unlike himself that for a confused second he found himself unable to add another. "Where am I?" he asked when he finally felt that he could.

Some of the worry in Augustine's eyes seemed to melt away upon hearing him speak. "You're in the back of a pokémon center, the one near the lab. They've been letting us use it to keep you until you woke up."

"Until... I woke up," Lysandre said, so slow and hoarse. "How long has it been?"

"I don't know if I should tell you that just yet," Augustine said. "I don't want to unsettle you."

Before Lysandre could protest, Augustine leaned down to carefully remove the mask connected to his face. The gesture, gentle, and the proximity, sent Lysandre's body into a frenzy. The beeping coming from the machine suddenly picked up, accelerating loudly to match the rhythm of his panicked heart. Augustine pulled away.

"Sorry," he said, and wasn't that the last thing Lysandre wanted to hear come out of his mouth at that exact moment.

"No, it's," Lysandre started, interrupted immediately by a coughing fit that left him unable to breathe. Augustine held on to him as he wheezed and hacked until his head began to spin.

"I'll send somebody to check up on you soon," Augustine said softly. Alarmingly, Lysandre thought he sounded as if he was holding back tears. "We can talk later, alright?"

Again Lysandre wanted to protest, but his body felt heavy and his mouth couldn't properly form the words. He felt himself relax into the other man's grasp as Augustine held him carefully, like a child. He wanted to ask more about how long it had been. Most importantly, he wanted to apologize, hazily, knowing fully well that he didn't deserve to be forgiven, no matter how Augustine looked at him or how it felt to be touched by him after all these months of getting himself used to the thought that they'd never be close again.

The thought that Lysandre would be dead.

"Alright," Augustine repeated as he let go of him.

The rest of their encounter only left Lysandre with a nebulous, almost dream-like memory; he couldn't hear what Augustine was saying before he exited the room, the inside of his head resonating with each beep from the machine at this side. At some point, he thought he caught a glimpse of another person standing in a corner, but there was no one there. The familiarity of it filled him with a cold sense of dread.

Sleep did not come to him for a long time. He spent it staring at the vase on his bedside table, counting the petals on each of the flowers. He clenched and unclenched his fists over and over, trying to remember the feeling of his own body.

He didn't dream.


*


He was woken up next by the quiet, sheepish voice of a nurse. It felt like he had slept only for a few minutes, but when he looked over someone had opened the blinds and let soft, afternoon light into the room. The sky was pale grey and devoid of clouds. Lysandre blinked in an attempt to focus on whatever she was talking about.

"Your heart rate seems stable," she said, speaking so softly he could barely hear her. "Professor Sycamore said not to take off your IVs for now. He'll take care of getting you to eat..."

"Excuse me," Lysandre cut her off. He straightened his back, sitting up in his hospital bed. "Can you tell me how long I've been here?"

The nurse pressed her lips together, looking away, toward the flowers. "I think you should ask that question to the professor... He should be here soon..."

"Right," Lysandre sighed.

He wanted to get up, walk around, see if he could shake off that nauseating feeling of being stuck in-between reality and dream. The nurse very succinctly explained that it was too early for that, that he should stay in bed for a few days more. She seemed nervous, scared almost, whenever he spoke: sneaking frightful glances at his face, and then at the door, cutting herself off whenever he so much as seemed on the verge of speaking, keeping a careful distance away from him even though he was stuck in bed. It was only once she was gone that Lysandre realized that she was afraid of the man who, by all appearances, had tried to kill her, alongside most of the region.

Of course, he hadn't, not really – but he had, also, in another life. In another life, she was dead, a corpse buried in a hole in the ground or burnt up in a pile, her ashes scattering through the wind like so many grey snowflakes. He was thinking about that, deeply absorbed in morose considerations while he checked every inch of his body to make sure it still worked – as she'd recommended – when there was a knock on the door.

"Looking good," Augustine said, walking in with a put-on smile.

This man, unlike the nurse, was not afraid of him. Instead, he seemed to carry with him a heavy sadness that didn't fit him at all. It was Lysandre's fault: it was Lysandre who had broken this man. That thought disgusted him even more than the shaky, uncertain voice of the nurse.

"Why," Lysandre said before he could stop himself.

Augustine frowned, his smile vanishing into a downward line. "What was that?"

Lysandre thought about what he'd meant to say. Why am I alive?, the obvious choice, was too cruel and selfish, even for him. Why are you here? seemed unfair and confusing. The real question, that he dared not ask, Why do you still care about me? simply couldn't leave his mouth.

"Why aren't you afraid of me?"

From the look on Augustine's face, he could tell that this wasn't what he was expecting. He looked exhausted, still; Lysandre thought that, despite his efforts, he'd made him carry part of that burden. Even if they'd never gotten closer than they had, everybody knew that Augustine Sycamore and he were involved, in some ways or others. Them being friends or colleagues or lovers was irrelevant.

He wondered how many questions Augustine had had to answer, if Diantha had felt betrayed that he'd been close to that kind of person, what the children had told him when it came to all of this.

All of this, and more, he could see reflected in the pale blue eyes of the professor.

"I'm glad you're alive," Augustine said as if that was an answer – and Lysandre thought that maybe it was.

"I'm sorry," Lysandre mumbled through half-closed lips. Saying the words felt both like ripping a part of himself and shouting into the void.

The corners of Augustine's mouth curled up ever-so-slightly. "I don't know if that's enough, but I suppose it'll do for now."

They spent the rest of the afternoon carefully taking note of the state of Lysandre's body. He could move all of his limbs, though his shoulders and back were painful without medication, and didn't feel as faint as he did the day before. The feeling of Augustine's hand around his even as he simply made sure that his fingers were functional sent ripples of bittersweet warmth directly to his heart.

Only when Augustine was about to leave, promising to let him eat like a normal person again the next day, did Lysandre remember that he still hadn't answered his initial question.

"Can you tell me now? How long it's been."

Augustine bit his lip. Lysandre looked away.

"It's been two months." He said it almost in a sigh.

"Oh," Lysandre said. "That's fine."

"Is it?" Augustine asked immediately, but then he took a deep breath and cleared his throat. "Take some rest, will you?"

The tension in the air, awkwardly hanging between them once more when it had dissipated before, prevented Lysandre from enabling the part of him that wanted to deadpan about having gotten enough rest. He nodded. Augustine nodded back.


*


Eating with the help of someone else proved to be particularly humiliating. His grip was only starting to grow strong enough to hold on to things, and so it was Augustine who picked up his food for him. They managed to find a rhythm eventually, one that didn't involve spilling soup everywhere and making Lysandre gag from swallowing too much at once.

Divorced from its context, they might have found the situation almost domestic; but instead, all Lysandre could think about was that he had been unconscious for two months and that sometimes his head hurt so much he could barely remember where he was.

In a brief moment of clarity, he turned toward Augustine as he was putting away the food tray, to ask something he'd only just remembered the importance of.

"Were there other," the word caught in his throat, "casualties?"

Augustine seemed confused for a second, his brow furrowed, until he suddenly understood what he was talking about. "Oh, no. Everyone else left in time. I think maybe some of your... employees who were at the bottom when it started to collapse were injured superficially."

Closing his eyes, Lysandre breathed out slowly. "That's good." He opened them up again, alarmed, to ask, "What about my pokémons?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Augustine said, his tone teasing but his words leaving Lysandre feeling like he'd been wounded. "They're fine. We retrieved them alongside you. They're at the lab right now."

Lysandre nodded and closed his eyes again. It was hard to believe that he would still feel so exhausted after having seemingly slept for weeks on end, yet in three days he still felt on edge, restless, unable to calm himself down whenever he was awake.

"We're going to have to have this conversation at some point, you know," Augustine said suddenly. Lysandre didn't open his eyes.

He heard Augustine breathe in as if he was about to add something else, but nothing came. When Lysandre opened his eyes, unable to tell whether he'd dozed off or not, the tray was gone and he was alone in the room once more.


*


A week had passed, filled with slow attempts at walking, conversations about how Augustine's research had gone and new flowers to put in the vase at his bedside, when the topic was brought up again.

Lysandre was sitting on the side of the bed, carefully, his feet firmly planted on the ground. He was thankful that his body had been in great shape prior to everything; his recovery, the nurse had said, was going surprisingly well considering the circumstances. The only worry they'd had, several days where he couldn't tell for sure whether or not he could feel his left foot, was slowly getting better – or at least, the nurse thought so. Some nights, when he was trying to fall asleep, he'd sometimes wonder if this meant that he was still immortal as he'd speculated in his other life – but he never let himself linger on that thought for too long. He was alive and that was all that mattered.

He still didn't know how he felt about that. He didn't dare express any sort of regrets about being alive in Augustine's presence, and the nurse – he didn't even know her name – was too terrified of him to have any conversations outside of discussing his current state. Not that he would have discussed anything having to do with his disappointment regarding his failure to bring the last part of his plan to fruition with her.

From where he was standing, near the window, contemplating the grey skies, Augustine spoke, his head turned away from Lysandre.

"So then, tell me. What was the point of all this?"

"What?" Lysandre croaked. His voice still sounded foreign to him most of the time.

"You know what I'm talking about." Augustine sighed, but he still did not turn to look at him. "Don't make this harder than it already is."

Somehow, Lysandre didn't know what to say to that.

The barely contained way Augustine spoke whenever they so much as breached the subject hinted at an anger, bubbling at the surface, that Lysandre wasn't sure he could handle. He was a coward, after all; if he'd said that the whole point of dying at the end of it all wasn't to avoid this conversation, he'd have been lying through his teeth.

"It's a long story," Lysandre said when he felt he couldn't stay silent any further.

"Oh, really, is that so," Augustine replied slowly, enunciating every syllable, his shoulders shaking as if he was laughing, though Lysandre knew he wasn't.

"We've talked about this before, about the state of this world and how to fix it," Lysandre said, each word like another lie he was spouting to get himself out of this situation. "You knew... my convictions."

The sudden sound of Augustine's fist hitting the windowsill took Lysandre by surprise, making his heart jump uncomfortably in his chest.

"That's what you call fixing? All the dramatics, destroying the world, scarring children for life, letting me pick up the pieces... That's fixing?"

He still wasn't looking at him. Oddly, that was what made Lysandre feel worse, above anything else.

"It wasn't supposed to go this way," Lysandre said and immediately regretted it.

"Of course not," the professor sighed. "You're alive and the world is the same. Isn't that the funniest thing?"

"I don't expect you to understand," Lysandre said and wished he could force himself to stop.

Finally, Augustine whipped around to glare at him. He wore an expression that Lysandre had never seen on his face, whether directed at him or anyone else. Contemplating the tension in Augustine's body, his clenched jaw, his teeth barely visible in-between parted lips, his brow furrowed so hard his eyes had narrowed into two lines, Lysandre wondered if this was always going to be his punishment. He'd been foolish to think Dialga would let him die in peace, having saved the world from himself.

"Do you have any idea," Augustine started, already out of breath, and with each word Lysandre grew more worried that he might truly start crying, "can you even imagine, how many people I had to talk to, to convince to send a search and rescue unit, to get you out of that horrible hole you created, while all the locals glared at me for daring to even care about the man who'd wreaked havoc on their city, who'd broken into their sacred places, all to try and kill them–" He took a deep breath, his eyes watering, and went on, staring daggers directly into Lysandre, "How many days I spent in this room thinking you'd finally die, and that I'd never get any answers, and that I'd never ever know what to tell the children when they ask why you did the things you did– do you think you can spare a moment to think about that instead of thinking about yourself?"

Along the way, his voice had gotten louder until he was almost yelling every word, spitting them out at the other man as if they were a kind of disease he had to get out of his system. Lysandre worried that the nurse might hear them and walk in, giving her more reasons to be afraid of him. He opened his mouth to reply, though he wasn't sure what he wanted to say, but Augustine went on, cutting him off before he could even utter a single word.

"You'd been acting so differently for months... When I received your call, I thought that was it. The explanation. All this time, you were playing me, preying on my inability to see you for who you really are..."

"No!" Lysandre said, louder than he'd meant to. He tried not to meet Augustine's gaze. "You weren't... this was never part of any plan. I didn't mean to use you," he pleaded.

"I don't know if I believe that," Augustine said. The anger appeared to have left him, leaving only sadness and disappointment behind. "You're the one who suggested I start mentoring children..."

Because I knew they would go and stop me, as they did, Lysandre wanted to shout, but he knew he couldn't. There was no explanation he could give that wouldn't make him sound like a madman.

"I thought you trusted me," Augustine said. He shook his head and added, "I thought I could trust you."

"You weren't meant to get caught in this mess," Lysandre said bitterly. "That's on me. I couldn't– I tried to stay away."

"Oh, but my allure was too much, is that it," Augustine choked out with something that resembled an incredulous laugh. "I can't believe you. Is that really all you have to say for yourself?"

Giving up and meeting Augustine's eyes once more, Lysandre tried to think of an answer. He was interrupted by a timid knock on the door.

"Come in," Augustine said without breaking eye contact.

The nurse walked in, her face red, acutely aware that they were in the middle of something. She brought her hands together and bowed awkwardly.

"I, um, heard some noises, I thought maybe something was wrong..."

Lysandre wondered idly how long she'd been standing at the door, willing herself to be brave and walk in.

"It's fine, I was just about to leave," Augustine said, turning to smile at her. This only served to turn her face even redder.

"Oh," she said, glancing at Lysandre and then back at Augustine.

It felt cruel to leave her like this, so Lysandre did his best to smile as well.

"I apologize for worrying you," he said in a voice that he hoped was hitting the right tone for reassurance.

Her eyes grew huge upon hearing him speak. Was she really that afraid of him? He supposed he couldn't blame her. She wrung her hands nervously, her face still turned toward Augustine as if to seek some kind of solace from his presence.

"Come on Noémie, let's go," Augustine said when it became obvious she was too mortified to move or speak or do anything else. He took her by the shoulder gently to entice her toward the door. "Let the man rest."

Lysandre wanted to stop him and ask if he could hope for a visit tomorrow, or if that was too much after the conversation they'd just had, but with the nurse – Noémie, it seemed – there, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead, he slowly moved back into the bed, covering himself with the two blankets. The professor had brought him one a few days ago, worried he'd catch a cold, even though the room's temperature was perfectly acceptable.

He wondered whether he'd passed the threshold for amiability such that he wouldn't get these kinds of gestures anymore. It had only been two weeks.

Well, he thought as he watched Augustine leave with Noémie without so much as sparing him a glance, it had been two weeks for himself, but it had been over two months for others. He'd had some time to reflect on what Augustine had been through while he was gone – asleep – but hearing him confirm it made the guilt he felt that much more palpable.

Even feeling guilty filled him with a new brand of guilt in itself. It felt selfish, as if he was making himself the victim of his own crimes in the end. The way he was feeling made sense, it was justified; he deserved it. How he felt about that didn't matter.

Staring at the ceiling, he thought about Bryony, wherever she was. Maybe she resented him, also. If she did, that was surely for the best; giving her any motivation to never see him again was a good thing, after all. The girls and the rest of the recruits were fine, or so Augustine had told him in so many words. The people of the region were too busy being mad at him, the brain of the whole operation, to worry about his subordinates, who most of them seemed to assume had just been following orders. There was an exception, of course, but they didn't talk about that.

He was glad for that, at least. His hope that they would never see each other again was bittersweet but better than lingering on a past that never existed. The news about AZ, too, that Augustine had shared with an enthusiasm that was disarmingly endearing, were a balm on his more morbid thoughts.

As long as he'd fixed everything, he supposed he could endure Augustine Sycamore's wrath. He could endure the hurt in his eyes and the pain in his voice and the way that sometimes, when their skins touched, he recoiled slightly as if he'd been burnt.

That seemed fair enough.


*


The next day, when she came in the early morning to open the blinds – Lysandre couldn't remember when they'd been closed, exactly – Noémie was acting noticeably different. She was still reserved, and didn't meet his eyes, but when he asked her if the professor was going to visit today, her voice didn't waver as she gave her reply.

"Of course," she said, and that was that.

Indeed Augustine did, a couple of hours later, looking exhausted beyond belief, his hair forming all sorts of strands that Lysandre had never seen before. He walked up to the bed and then, before either of them had uttered a word, sat on top of it – or rather let himself fall onto the pile of blankets, nearly crushing Lysandre's left leg in the process.

"Are you alright?" Lysandre asked.

Augustine covered his eyes with his hands and sighed.

"I meant what I said yesterday, you know," he said quietly.

"I know," Lysandre said. He didn't know what else to say.

They sat together in silence, Lysandre watching Augustine as he hunched over little by little, curling into himself as if to shield his body from something, though Lysandre wasn't sure he wanted to know what.

"I'm tired," Augustine sighed. He ran his hands down his face slowly, pulling at the skin there. "I thought things would make sense once you'd woken up... I don't know why I thought that," he chuckled. He was looking at the flowers.

Lysandre fought back the urge to utter more meaningless words, apologies that could only hurt them both if he kept giving them away to appease him.

"I don't even think there's anything you could say that would make this make sense at this point," Augustine went on, emboldened by his silence. "When you were... when we had that time, with the dinner and the date... do you remember?"

He turned toward the other man as if to plead. He was not crying – he still hadn't cried, at least not where Lysandre could see him – but his eyes were almost glazed over.

"I remember," Lysandre said, because it was true, and it was what Augustine expected him to say.

Augustine grimaced, his eyes narrowing sharply as if he'd been hit. "I thought you'd finally understood that the world could only be saved through unity and not through destruction."

He did understand, of course – and it felt especially painful that all this time, Augustine had somehow known that part of that realization had come from him, from the him of this time and the him of that time, the gentle scholar full of hopes and dreams and the vengeful ghost who taught Lysandre what it truly meant to regret. What it truly meant to be wrong.

"I do understand," Lysandre said, because it was true, as well, but it was not what Augustine wanted to hear, of course.

"No you don't," Augustine spat out, the anger slowly climbing back up his face. He turned away from him once more, staring at the door like he wanted to escape. "If you did you wouldn't have done these things."

There was nothing Lysandre could say to that; no way he could deny the things he had indeed done, even if they were a lesser evil compared to things he had done sometime else.

"I want you to understand," Augustine added, and Lysandre silently marveled at the fact that there were no bounds to his optimistic nature. "I think you could understand. I thought... maybe I was wrong."

He sighed and then stood up, shaking away the whole exchange almost as if it hadn't happened – or trying to.

"Let's get you walking."

Lysandre let himself be dragged out of the bed, holding on to Augustine's side to try and steady his feet and legs. The sensation of being up and standing still felt awkward and alien, but he was steadily getting used to it again. The first time they'd tried, he'd almost fallen over, secured at the last minute by Augustine's firm grasp on his waist. He didn't even know the man was strong enough to handle that, though he figured afterward that his work with pokémons who were sometimes double his size probably contributed to it.

They walked together for a few minutes: slow steps, one after the other, a mechanical rhythm that Lysandre's body still remembered even after so many days and nights spent lying on a bed. Augustine held on to his arms as Lysandre held on to his shoulders, afraid that he could crush him.

"Stop holding back," Augustine scolded him. Maybe he hadn't let go of as much of his anger as they thought. "I've asked somebody to come see you twice a week to work on your body. I think this'll be easier with a stranger."

"Will you still come?"

Augustine's eyes moved away from their feet to stare into his eyes. There was definitely still some anger there. "I don't know. Do you want me to?"

"Your company is always appreciated," Lysandre said cautiously.

They stopped walking as they reached the proximity of the door, and began doing the same thing in reverse. Augustine chuckled.

"Noémie thought I was going to kill you," he said, like it was a funny joke.

"I'm surprised she wasn't on board with that."

Augustine rolled his eyes. For a second, Lysandre felt almost as if everything was fine and nothing had happened, and they were just exchanging some casual banter about something or other.

"She's scared, not murderous," Augustine said pointedly. Then he added, with a slight crook to one of his eyebrows, "Though maybe you don't know what the difference is."

Lysandre smiled despite himself. They reached the bedside table and switched back to walking toward the door. Augustine's grip on the side of his arms was beginning to hurt.

"What do you think I'm afraid of?"

"Failure," Augustine said, and because his rhythm had shifted slightly they suddenly moved a lot closer to each other without meaning to. Neither broke eye contact. "Insignificance. Yours, I mean."

"Hmm," Lysandre replied, for lack of a denial.

When they reached the door, Augustine stopped. His face was so close to Lysandre's he could barely feel him breath against his lips. The familiarity of that tension between them made him feel a myriad of conflicting things; mostly, a mixture of regret and desperation. Things were never going to be the same, no matter how badly either of them tried. Lysandre wasn't sure he should want to try, but he did, and there was nothing to be done about that, either.

Whether Augustine wanted to try was up in the air, as was everything else that was left of their relationship. As for whether he should...

"I want you to be honest with me," Augustine said, speaking so low now that they were up against each other like this. "What were you going to do? Once you were successful?"

"I was going to make the world a better place," Lysandre said. His heart rate had sped up uncomfortably, to the point that he almost missed being tied to a machine that could bring some of that discomfort into the physical world. "Didn't you hear?"

Augustine grimaced but did not pull away. "What do you have to lose from telling me the truth about this, exactly?"

"The truth is unbelievable and pointless to recount," Lysandre replied. He thought about the other Bryony, prodding him into telling her what was actually up with him, and the calm, quiet way she'd accepted what he'd told her because surely anything was better than the way things already were.

"Okay," Augustine gave in, his voice flat. "I'll walk you to the bed."

They advanced toward it in silence, their rhythm corrected so that they would no longer stand too close to one another. Lysandre sat on the side of the bed.

Augustine walked up to the vase and picked one of the poppies. It had started to wither. Lysandre watched him and thought that, while the professor had brought him more beautiful store-bought flowers over the days he'd spent awake, the simple ones had never been replaced.

"The children want to see you," Augustine said, speaking toward the poppy rather than toward Lysandre. "They know you're awake."

"The children," Lysandre repeated slowly.

"Don't ask me why," Augustine scoffed. "They're worried about you. I keep putting it off, but they're getting antsy."

"Is that why you're so desperate for me to give you answers?"

Perhaps that question was cruel in its own way. Augustine chuckled and picked another of the waned poppies.

"Let's go with that."

With nothing more to add, Lysandre watched him carefully take out more of the dying flowers and then carelessly bury them in the pockets of his lab coat. He'd been wearing it to these visits less often. Lysandre had begun to theorize that the lab coat served as a sort of shield on days when Augustine wasn't confident enough in his ability to stay together in front of him.

"I talked to the giant, you know," Augustine said suddenly, his back still turned. "AZ."

"What did he say?"

"That I should be gentle with you for you were a fool as only fools would make use of his horrible machine." Augustine's head twisted slightly to sneak him a glance. "Those were his exact words."

Lysandre smiled, just a bit. "I don't think you should be gentle with me."

"Yeah."

At that, Augustine walked toward the window. Lysandre felt a wave of warmth wash over him as he looked at him, at the way the light from the winter afternoon illuminated the tired yet still beautiful lines of his face. His hair was still the mess it had been when he'd first entered the room, serving only to highlight the pathetic aura of his whole being. He was weary and drained and on edge and that was Lysandre's fault. It had always been Lysandre's fault.

"You don't have to come if you don't want to," Lysandre said, breaking the silence between them.

"Shut up," Augustine replied. He pressed his hands flat against the windowsill to steady himself and sighed. "I'll see you tomorrow."

He left without sparing Lysandre another glance.

When Noémie came to serve him food and close the blinds, not much long after, she was obviously itching to say something, but unable to allow herself to do it. Lysandre ate sparingly, watching her hesitate until she was about to leave, and then he called out to her.

"What's on your mind?"

She shook as if his very voice had hurt her, and looked down at the space in-between the tray she was holding and her waist, at her feet. "Please be kinder to the professor," she pleaded, her voice so soft and quiet he could barely hear her.

"Sorry," Lysandre said. He thought he could say it to her, at least, if not to him.

Her face scrunched up, reminding him strongly of a small pokémon about to launch a powerful attack, like a dedenne charging up a deadly thunderbolt.

"He's working very hard," she added. He thought he could see tears in her eyes. "Maybe that doesn't matter to you, but..."

"Please don't assume you know what matters to me."

He found a sense of cruel satisfaction in the way she half-recoiled from the icy cold tone of his voice and the harshness of his words. He regretted it almost immediately, but by then it was too late, and she had indeed started to cry, big dollops running down her face while she kept it down and said nothing. She left the room in a hurry, slamming the door behind her. It was a testament to her abilities that she didn't drop the tray or any of the cutlery sitting on it in the process.

Lysandre stared at the ceiling for a long time.


*


By the time Augustine showed up the next morning, Lysandre had elected to tell him some form of the truth.

The night before, he'd been haunted by vivid recollections of the plain on fire. At the center of it all, his face lit red and hot by the flames, Augustine had stood, wearing a red coat. The sight had mesmerized him so much so that when he woke up he could think of nothing else. He barely registered Noémie's presence when she walked in to open the blinds, ignoring him entirely.

Even if he refused to believe it, Augustine deserved the truth. He deserved to know the whole story. The children deserved to know, too, that they'd been the unwilling participants of a staged act all this time. It was only fair to them.

The thought of recounting all of this strange history to another person filled Lysandre with an odd kind of peace. Maybe once he could get it out of his system he could start feeling like himself again, start taking steps to make the world better and work toward fixing his mistakes – or his successes.

"Noémie told me to be nicer to you," Lysandre said, in lieu of a greeting. Augustine looked at him the way you'd look at a child who was misbehaving.

"I don't know why you feel the need to terrorize her," he said. His voice was cautious, guarded. He was wearing his lab coat.

Lysandre smiled at him. "I think she's right, actually."

Augustine watched him for a minute, awaiting some kind of elaboration. When nothing came, he dragged the chair that Noémie had left near the window at some point and sat on it, right next to the bed.

The physical distance helped Lysandre gather his thoughts.

"I want to share a story with you, but you have to promise not to interrupt," he said. Augustine nodded quickly.

He'd had some time to think about how best to talk about this, but at that moment, looking into Augustine's eyes as he prepared himself for whatever Lysandre was about to say, it felt like no time could have ever been enough. How much information needed to be shared? What could he avoid admitting?

In the end, a summarized version of the events, minus one detail, seemed like the best way to start.

The apparent calmness on Augustine's face at first helped Lysandre to focus and speak and not get distracted by the worst things he was confessing – though of course he avoided admitting the worst of them all. Then, as he went on, and still Augustine was barely emoting, his eyebrows hardly furrowed, switching positions only once to join his hands together in front of his mouth in a gesture that could have been born out of anxiety or simply a desire to absorb the story better, Lysandre began to worry that his words were coming out as lies or fabrications, perhaps even as sick fantasies from his disturbed mind. He had slept for two months, after all.

Only when the story came to its close, with talks of Dialga and second chances, did Augustine close his eyes and sigh deeply.

"I don't expect you to believe me," Lysandre said in closing. He felt both tired to the bones and free from the burden of a long carried curse.

"It's a good story," Augustine said, his eyes still closed, his hands still half-way covering his mouth. "It sounds like you... and it explains why you changed so much in so little time. It's nonsense, though."

"I know the later parts are..." Lysandre started, but Augustine brought one of his hands up, interrupting him.

"I don't mean the 'legendary offering you a chance to try again' parts, or even the whole time travel business. I mean that your thought process once you 'came back' is nonsensical. Why didn't you just stop everything?"

Lysandre frowned. "It was too late. Everything was already in motion... if I told my recruits to stop and left things as they were, surely one of them would have started it back up as soon as I was gone."

Tapping one of his fingers against the side of his face, Augustine hummed. "Couldn't you sabotage the machine?"

"I thought so, too, but then why wouldn't AZ have done so? It made sense to me at the time that the only way to destroy the machine was to bring it back up and then have it fire against itself."

"What if your grand expectations for the children fell flat? They're barely teenagers."

"I knew you would pick pupils worthy of both of us," Lysandre said confidently.

His sincerity seemed to take Augustine aback. "You really do, huh," he mumbled.

"Plus, you had those assistants..."

"Dexio and Sina, right." Augustine nodded. Something like a smile was beginning to appear at the corners of his mouth. "This is nuts."

"I don't expect this to change your opinion of me, after all, I still strived to do these things no matter what. I just wanted you to know the truth."

"Well, I don't know if I believe it, but I'm sure it'll make for an interesting autobiography."

Somehow, Augustine seemed calmer from having heard Lysandre's tale. His amused expression, evaporating some of the fatigue that had plagued his traits since Lysandre had awoken, made Lysandre feel better as well.

"Thank you for telling me about all this, whether it's true or not," Augustine said. He ran his hands through his hair and took a deep breath. "Let's walk for a bit."

They walked to the door and back until Lysandre got lost in the rhythm and in observing the way Augustine's eyelashes looked whenever he blinked. They didn't talk. The professor seemed so deep in thought that Lysandre didn't dare to open his mouth. When Noémie walked in with the dinner tray, she found them holding each other near the window. Augustine had stopped walking at some point, and just stayed there, his hands firmly pressed around Lysandre's upper arms, watching the night fall over the city. He looked half asleep.

Lysandre took a glance at her and then back at him. She cleared her throat.

"Professor, I thought I didn't see you leave," she said. She left the tray on the bed.

Looking at the meager meal – that he knew to be prepared by the other nurses – Lysandre missed his own cooking for once in his life. His stomach made an unpleasant sound, taking Augustine out of his reverie.

"Sorry, I lost track of time," he said, and then laughed. "I'll let you eat."

"Are you alright?" Noémie asked once he'd extracted himself out of Lysandre's no less firm grasp. Her face was only slightly red, but she seemed strangely upset, like she'd intruded on some kind of obscene display.

"I'm fine," Augustine said with a kind smile, taking her by the shoulder with his usual familiarity. She grew two shades redder. "We were... discussing some important matters. As you can imagine."

From the look in her eyes when Lysandre glanced at her, she seemed to be imagining all kinds of things, none of which she enjoyed very much. She was on the verge of saying something when Augustine shook her a little from where he was holding her.

"Let's go," he said.

She glared at Lysandre on the way out. She glared at him again when she came back for the blinds and the empty tray. He smiled at her in a way he hoped was friendly, while knowing full well she'd only take it as further provocation.


*


The man Augustine had recruited to help with Lysandre's physical recovery was much taller and wider than he was used to. He was professional enough, although his enthusiasm was sometimes off-putting. When Augustine visited after their first session together and found Lysandre buried under the covers, he had to visibly stifle a laugh behind his hand.

"Out of practice with exercising?" he asked, sitting on the bed. He wasn't wearing his lab coat, which made Lysandre feel an unwelcome amount of optimism.

"I did spend two months sleeping," Lysandre said with a smile.

"That must have been pretty traumatizing for somebody who used to never take the time to sleep, huh," Augustine teased.

Lysandre's eyebrows went up in disbelief. "I suppose that is rich coming from the workaholic."

"Come on," the professor protested, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear.

He looked so much more content and well put together, suddenly, that Lysandre wondered whether he'd actually believed his tale of a previous life. If they could bring solace to someone, it might as well have been Augustine Sycamore.

They spent a quiet, almost playful afternoon, even when Augustine started asking him questions about what he'd taken to calling "The Previous Time" – questions about how he'd dealt with the new state of the world, why he'd changed his mind, who he'd bonded with. Lysandre didn't want to admit to the most important reason, leading his friend to grow suspicious.

"I still don't get what made the previous you go back on his convictions," Augustine said when he'd gotten back from fetching his food. He watched Lysandre swallow some soup and added, "I mean, of course, the state of the world..."

"...was very different from my expectations, yes," Lysandre completed his sentence, before taking another spoonful.

"But surely you knew the world would be like this once the machine had gone off," Augustine insisted. "There must have been some kind of catalyst."

The spoon clinked against the tray when Lysandre put it down.

"One of my scientists had died," he said, hoping that would be enough to end that train of thought.

Of course, Augustine immediately looked devastated. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine. She was dating one of the others... It was very rough to watch."

It wasn't really a lie. Bryony's grief had played a major role in most of his decisions, especially once he'd realized he could make her happy again by erasing all of their mistakes. He just couldn't bring himself to admit to the other reason.

"I see," Augustine said.

Alarmingly, that only seemed to leave him even more thoughtful.

He didn't bring it up again in the time Lysandre took to finish his meal. As soon as he came back from giving the tray back to the nurses, however, he sat next to Lysandre on the bed and crossed his arms in what was surely meant to be an authoritative stance.

"So," he said. They'd just finished discussing whether or not the key-stone in Lysandre's ring was salvageable after surviving the blast, and so it took Lysandre aback when instead of bringing that topic back up, he asked, "Did you bury me personally?"

Lysandre opened his mouth and forgot to close it.

He'd thought a lot about the other Sycamore's words, back then, asking about the tree that would grow in Couriway Town, bursting out of his makeshift grave. The time he'd spent digging it still felt like the start of the slow dawning of his foolishness – but he couldn't talk about that. He could talk about everything but that.

Augustine seemed to be able to tell that he'd hit a particularly sensitive nerve. He frowned but did not walk his question back. Instead, he put his hand on Lysandre's arm, gently. The gesture only served to make Lysandre feel worse.

"Yes," Lysandre said when he realized his mouth had been open for several minutes without him uttering a single word.

A smile slowly formed on Augustine's lips. He looked oddly smug, almost.

"I see," he said, again. It was beginning to aggravate Lysandre.

"Doesn't that bother you? I killed you, back then," Lysandre said against his better judgement. Something about the way Augustine was taking all of this both amazed him and annoyed him.

"Seems like it bothers you a lot," Augustine retorted, sly. He was still smiling.

Perhaps they'd truly gotten a lot closer than Lysandre could have ever expected, in these months of his new life and now these days of carefully weighted intimacy. Augustine was able to read him so easily now that it was a wonder he could have even hid his plans from him for so long. It occurred to Lysandre that maybe he hadn't been as good at it as he'd thought, which might explain some of the guilt that still burdened the professor whenever they discussed these events. Perhaps he thought some of what had happened was his fault: his unwillingness to interfere, his feelings getting in the way...

Nevertheless, Lysandre didn't want to admit it. He couldn't say it. The words – "your death made me realize why I wanted to save this world" – felt too selfish, too much like an admission of a culpability that ran deeper through him than anything else. Letting Augustine see the full extent of his cowardice would hurt him more than whatever punishment they'd dole out for him once he'd gone back to the outside world.

"I'll bring the children tomorrow," Augustine said, breaking the silence. His shoulder brushed against Lysandre's when he leaned back, uncrossing his arms. "If that's okay with you, of course."

"Of course," Lysandre repeated, suddenly hyper-aware of their closeness. "I don't know what to say to them."

"Please don't say you're sorry," Augustine said with a crooked smile. "They might cry."

The thought of five children all together in the same small hospital room crying because of him triggered the beginning of a headache somewhere to the left of Lysandre's cranium.

"Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that."


*


Shauna started to cry as soon as she walked past the threshold of the room's entrance. The very sight of him proved too much for her, it seemed, her green eyes instantly filling up with tears.

Immediately, Serena grabbed her by the hand and pulled her in a hug. The look she gave Lysandre wasn't, as he'd expected, accusatory, only sad. Next to her, Calem stood very straight. Without his hat and his glasses, he appeared much smaller, and much younger as well. He wasn't looking at him, instead staring at the foot of the bed as if it held some kind of arcane answers. Standing next to the door like a vigil, Tierno was looking at Trevor – who stayed close to Augustine, following him like a growlithe following their owner – with a frown that betrayed his worry.

These were the children he had unwillingly tricked into achieving his design. Not the grander one, the one that involved so much death, but the simpler one that culminated in his own defeat. They were, in some ways, nothing more than more recruits, working against him instead of with him; except unlike the grunts doing his dirty work, they hadn't even known they were doing it.

None of them could bring themselves to speak, not even Augustine, who was eyeing Shauna and Serena anxiously and seemingly contemplating whether this was a good idea. The only sound in the room for several minutes was her poorly contained sobs, muffled by Serena's shoulder, and Serena's whispers of comfort.

It was Tierno who finally broke the silence, his eyes not leaving Trevor.

"S'good to see you healthy, sir."

The words, said through his teeth, with some difficulty, left a deep cut on Lysandre's heart. From where he was standing next to the bed, he walked toward Shauna in three wide steps. She detached herself from Serena just enough to look at him, her eyes still wet.

"Monsieur Lysandre," she said, before starting to cry once more. "We were so worried about you!"

She was already crying, so surely things couldn't get worse on that front.

"I'm sorry for worrying you."

Serena held Shauna a little tighter. "If you'd listened to us back then," she said, "things wouldn't have gotten this far."

She still didn't sound inculpatory, but the way she was looking at her friend was enough.

"I know," Lysandre said. Surely, there were more things to say, yet just like when he'd reunited with Augustine he found himself unable to say them.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to gather some strength in Augustine's serious expression. Behind him, Trevor was observing Lysandre with a sort of holy terror, as if he was some ancient legendary pokémon raised back from the dead.

"You are all very brilliant children," Lysandre said, looking back toward Serena and Calem, who seemed on the verge of tears as well. "I know... this must have been difficult for you. Carrying so much on your shoulders. None of this was your fault..."

"Do you believe what you're saying?" Serena said, interrupting him. The artificial light of the room cast dark circles under her eyes.

"Of course, because it's the truth," Lysandre went on. "Children shouldn't be held accountable for the mistakes made by adults. Even if things had gone awry..."

Shauna choked on a sob. "Please don't say that," she cried out.

Breaking her facade of calmness, Serena glared at him bluntly, her brow furrowed in a way that reminded Lysandre painfully of himself. Calem muffled a sniffle behind his sleeve.

"How do we know you won't do it again?" Serena asked, her voice tense. She'd apparently assigned herself as the one who was going to get answers from him.

"This was always a fool's errand," Lysandre said. Augustine's hand felt heavy against his back. "I destroyed the machine, and you rescued the legendary beast..."

"I don't mean the practicalities!" Serena's voice had raised to a higher pitch. Shauna looked at her with worry but did not break away from her. "I mean you. You decided to do this. We need you to understand," she pleaded quietly, deflating suddenly as her friend's arms tightened around her.

I want you to understand, Augustine had said, days ago, fighting back tears of anger. His phrasing had been different, but perhaps this was more honest: they all needed him to see that he'd already changed. He didn't know how to do that.

Caught up in the mechanical act of bringing his plans to fruition while making sure they would fail, he didn't have to think about much else – except Augustine's advances, of course. Now, he was confronted with the humanity he'd run away from in all other situations, only allowing himself to be kind when around people who wouldn't care much for it, like Xerosic who always took it with some perplexity, or Malva who still hadn't returned any of his calls since he'd woken up.

Seeing as he wasn't replying, or even moving, Shauna carefully let go of Serena and walked toward Lysandre in slow steps that reminded him of when he'd just woken up and Augustine had approached him for the first time.

"Monsieur Lysandre," she said, again, looking down as if afraid to face him outright. She held out her hand and he took it. "Please rely on us a little. We want you to get better."

Somehow, Lysandre's vision became blurry.

"Alright," he said with some difficulty. Augustine's hand climbed back up his shoulder and squeezed it, hard.

"Let's all work together," he said. Lysandre could only stare at his own hand, impossibly huge around Shauna's.

Serena's face relaxed so slightly that it was barely noticeable, but it had an immediate effect on Calem, smiling at her encouragingly.

"I think we can do that," he said. She nodded, once, and then walked up to Shauna to take her other hand.

"If you agree to trust us," Serena said, looking up at Lysandre with the same severe expression.

He knew from Augustine that she'd taken all of this to heart, so much that it'd melted away her unwillingness to make friends and grow closer to the other children. She was still restrained, like he was, yet she'd opened up to the world in the way he'd refused to do for so long. He wanted her, above all, to keep believing in this world, to never stray away from that path as he had. He wanted her to take her losses and see them not as proof that the world was rotten, but only as obstacles to overcome while working toward her goals.

"Of course," he said. He touched the wet edges of his eyes with his free hand, wiping the tears he could feel there.

Slowly, as the afternoon went by and they discussed what they all had been up to and how Kalos had been holding up without him, the children all gathered around him, even Trevor, who still stood close to Augustine, and Tierno, who still kept an eye on Trevor. Before they left, Shauna revealed that they'd brought Lysandre's mienshao along with them, and he held his pokémon against him as he cried out in happiness from being reunited with his owner.

Augustine's hand never left him, on his shoulder or his arm or even, at some point when the children were too busy sharing enthusiastic stories about their time spent training in wielding mega-evolution, on Lysandre's hand, freed from Shauna's grasp once she'd decided he really wasn't going to change his mind and go back to his old ways. If the children noticed, they didn't mention it – though Shauna did sneak him some inquiring glances when, in the middle of a heated retelling of an encounter between his garchomp and Serena's chesnaught, Augustine grabbed him by the shoulders, too taken by his own story. Lysandre raised his eyebrows and looked away. Her cheerful laugh, half-muffled against Serena's shoulder – to Serena's great confusion – put a satisfied smile on his face.

When they finally left, ushered away by Augustine after Lysandre had spent several minutes convincing his mienshao that he had to go back to the lab, she dragged her feet until she reached the door and then, at the last second, rushed back toward him to catch him in a hug. Only his weight and stature prevented both of them from toppling over.

"Thank you," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Unsure on how else to proceed, he wrapped his arms around her. "I should be the one saying these words."

"I'm just glad you can say anything at all," she cried out. He was suddenly reminded of Bryony, holding on to him as she cried and begged him to stop keeping everything to himself.

"Come on," he said.

She took a deep breath and, as Augustine began walking back toward them to check if everything was fine, broke away from Lysandre. He watched her leave with the others, waving back when she did. Serena gave him a curt nod before following Shauna out of the room.

When Augustine returned from seeing them off, Lysandre was sitting on the bed, his face buried in his hands. He barely shifted once he heard the other man sit next to him.

"You alright?" Augustine asked.

The gentle, caring tone of his voice shattered what was left of Lysandre's composure.

"It was you," he said, his voice cracking. His body remained unmoving, even as he felt his friend lean toward him further. "Your... death made me realize why I needed to fix the mess I'd created."

"I know," he heard Augustine say. The meaning of the words hit him with a slight delay. He looked up, trying to meet the eyes of the other man.

Of course he knew. Lysandre could tell now that he was obvious, that he'd left behind all pretenses of keeping his thoughts and intentions hidden. Yet, at that moment, he felt a kind of cold helplessness knowing that Augustine had suspected his greatest weakness all along.

Augustine looked down, at where Lysandre had tucked his hands away from his face, between his legs. "I just can't understand why you didn't tell me. We could have fixed this together."

"I already told you," Lysandre protested, but his mouth fell shut when Augustine finally looked him in the eyes.

"You think you get it now, but you don't," he said, the even cadence of his voice a stark contrast from the storm brewing in his eyes. "You're still desperately clinging on to doing things yourself. Destroying the world, saving it... you still think it's something you need to do on your own."

He was right, but this wasn't what made Lysandre so tempted to look away. It was the lack of anger in his voice, even in his resolute gaze. There was only sorrow, and disappointment.

"I'm sorry." He let the words fall out, stunned out of his usual unwillingness to apologize pointlessly. Augustine's smile was still tinted with some sadness.

"I believe you," he said. "Whether your stories are true or not, that doesn't matter to me. What matters is the man you are right now, the man who drove himself to ruin because he changed his mind."

He paused, his eyelids twitching slightly as if it was his turn to fight the urge to break eye contact.

"That's the man I fell in love with."

Lysandre frowned. A warm and intricate feeling was setting in the pit of his stomach. He found himself unable to respond, too afraid that words would shatter it. Augustine's smile was growing fonder and fonder for every second they spent in this silence.

"You look surprised," the professor said finally, when it became clear that Lysandre wasn't going to speak. "Did you think I was going out with you because I was too polite to say no?"

"That was then," Lysandre croaked. He looked away, finally. "This is now."

"You really don't get it," Augustine said. He didn't seem as upset about it this time, though his smile had faded ever-so-slightly. "I'll let you think about it. We can talk more tomorrow."

He moved to stand up and walk out, but Lysandre caught his arm before he could go any farther than the side of the bed. The sky outside the windows had begun to darken already, the afternoon spent away reuniting with the children and learning about how they'd thrived while he was gone. Lysandre didn't want Augustine to leave.

That realization, nested painfully in the complicated feeling in his gut, left him stuck in a daze, looking back at Augustine's tender expression with his mouth half-open, unsure of what he meant to say.

"Me too," was all he could manage, immediately letting go of Augustine's arm and turning away from him.

When he looked back a few seconds later, not knowing how else to calm his nerves, Augustine's smile was the blinding glare of a far-away lighthouse he was swimming toward.

"I know," he said, again.

"Right." Was Lysandre's voice shaking? That never happened. "Off you go then."

"Come here," Augustine said instead.

He took hold of Lysandre's hands and gestured at him to stand alongside him. Once he'd clumsily complied, Augustine took hold of his waist in a tight, almost uncomfortable embrace.

"If you'd died, I never would have forgiven myself, either," he mumbled against the fabric of Lysandre's overworn shirt.

Lysandre wrapped his arms around him slowly. "Then I'm glad to be alive."

"Are you?" Augustine asked. His voice was a strangled sound, barely audible. It reminded Lysandre of the fact that he still hadn't seen him cry.

"Of course," Lysandre said, and the sincerity in his reply struck even him. He did mean it, now, in Augustine Sycamore's arms, in the aftermath of an afternoon spent with children he thought he'd never see again, in the knowledge that he'd be able to meet his pokémons again as well.

His mienshao had seemed so small, tucked against him, his body trembling from the weight of how worried he'd been about his trainer. Augustine seemed small now, shivering even in the warmth of the room and of their embrace.

"Good." Augustine sighed.

After the sight of his corpse, it had been the responsibility Lysandre held toward the others – Bryony, of course, and Malva, and Xerosic, and all those clueless youths who'd paid off what they thought was an admission to their self-made paradise – that had cemented that he had to fix things. He'd replaced one duty with another, somehow, as he had long ago, when he'd given up on patronages and held-out hands, when he'd thought all of the things he'd done had been pointless, so much time wasted trying to make the world a better place one person at a time.

Now it didn't seem as much of a waste. If one person he'd helped toward a better path could help another, and that person could help another, that was already the start of something. It wasn't as grand as rebuilding the world, and it might not allow his name to be written down in the history books, but it was something.

That was what Augustine believed. Working together to build another world and inspiring others to do the same. There's another way to do this, he'd say, always, at the back of Lysandre's head, even before all of this. You gave up too soon. You surrendered to despair because you decided it wasn't efficient enough.

Perhaps it wasn't – but he knew now that the alternative was worse.

They stood in silence, holding each other, for so long that when Noémie knocked timidly on the door, Lysandre found that he'd almost dozed off, his face buried in Augustine's messy hair.

"Come in," Augustine said sleepily. He did not break away.

It was her second time walking in on them standing together like this, but she still wore a frown on her face as she took the scene in. She walked up to the bed slowly, her knuckles white from how hard she was holding on to the tray she was carrying.

As she walked back toward the door, she hesitated, looking back toward Augustine who still kept his head tucked in between Lysandre's jaw and his shoulder.

"Professor," she said quietly, and then, her voice growing bolder, "Professor. It's past the time you usually leave..."

It occured to Lysandre that she'd waited as long as she could before finally caving in and bringing him dinner. He didn't feel very hungry.

"Yeah." Augustine sighed but did not move. "I guess you're right."

Noémie turned back toward the door, her shoulders sagging as if she was giving up.

"Next week, let's go to the lab," Lysandre said. "I want to feel the sun."

"The sun? It's winter," Augustine replied in a chuckle. "Sure, let's do that."

Slowly, as if that very action caused him pain, he extricated himself from Lysandre's heavy embrace and stretched his arms out high above his head in an exaggerated gesture. He yawned. Noémie made a sound that Lysandre thought was a sniffle but could have been a laugh muffled behind a hand.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then," Augustine said brightly, turning to smile at him.

Lysandre smiled back. He did not turn away until the door closed behind them.

He ate his meal so slowly that it was cold by the time he was done. The street outside the windows was fully dark by then, barely illuminated by the streetlamps. Somehow, Lysandre couldn't help but feel an uncharacteristic yearning for dirty pavements and noisy, polluting cars. It left him feeling lighter, thinking about walking through the streets with Augustine again, stumbling on the paved roads because he couldn't do it quite right yet.

When Noémie came back to take the tray, she looked lighter too, almost happy.

"Thank you," she said, inexplicably, before walking out, leaving Lysandre unable to formulate an answer – or a question.

Thinking about it later, as he tried in vain to sleep off the nerves he'd accumulated throughout such an emotionally overwrought day, he marveled at how she'd seemed to care less and less about him as the attempted harbinger of her demise, and more and more about him as the source of Augustine's unhappiness. Her initial fear of him had quickly turned into something closer to wariness, perhaps even anger, when she'd realized that he was no longer a threat – to her, at least.

The dynamics of human relationships still left him perplexed, even now. If he'd admitted it to someone else, he was sure they wouldn't believe him; how could you trick people so convincingly without understanding these things? Yet, understanding how the human mind could work was proving to be so different from understanding the complexities of the human heart.

Perhaps, he thought dizzily, his agitated brain finally giving itself up to slumber, he could discuss it with Augustine tomorrow.


*


There was sun in winter, still. It didn't feel as warm as Lysandre needed, but it was there, and that was enough. Augustine brought him a coat that he knew was from his own apartment, emptied out in the months he'd been asleep. Knowing that his friend held on to his belongings filled him with a feeling he couldn't quite put his finger on. It was comforting, but also daunting – he knew Augustine wouldn't be the type to look through his things, and yet...

He didn't spare much more time to think about that now, because Augustine's hand was on his arm and he was encouraging him to keep walking by his side.

"Do you need me to take you by the hand?" Augustine asked, teasing, as Lysandre's foot barely avoided catching on the cobblestone.

"I think I'll be fine," Lysandre replied, hiding his worry behind his overly serious tone.

"I'll still hold your arm just in case."

They walked slowly toward the lab, and as they passed people Lysandre found himself curling forward as if attempting to shrink into himself. Nobody paid him any mind, his silhouette so different under the coat, his hair not as well-kempt as it used to be. Still, he was instinctively bending over, desperate to make himself smaller, something he hadn't done since he was a child growing too tall among his peers.

Augustine didn't say anything about it, even once they'd reached the steps leading to his laboratory, but the way he was frowning slightly, and the intensity with which he was grabbing on to Lysandre's arm, made it obvious that he had noticed.

"People know you're with me, you know," he said once they were inside. The secretary stared at Lysandre from behind the counter, her eyes wide. She looked away when he politely nodded in her direction. "They're not going to bother you," Augustine went on, undeterred.

"I take it you're my handler," Lysandre said. It came out sharper than he'd intended, but Augustine chuckled.

"Yeah, something like that."

The scientists didn't react when they left the elevator to enter Augustine's office; one of them glanced at Lysandre for a second too long, then snapped back to the machine they were looking over. Focused only on Augustine's guiding presence, Lysandre stopped short of walking past the partition that separated the room in two, suddenly struck by the memory–

He held on to the wood, his fist clenched so strongly that he was afraid he might break it. Augustine turned toward him, the edges of his silhouette illuminated by the winter light coming from the large window behind his desk. The sight of him, alive in this very place, activated a kind of madness in Lysandre's brain that made him feel further ill.

"Lysandre," Augustine said. He was frowning, his forehead creasing once again, and Lysandre thought that he was aging him prematurely. "What's wrong? Is it your legs?"

In his current state, Lysandre couldn't recall whether or not he'd told Augustine where he'd found his body. He thought he hadn't; he'd made sure to omit as many things about him as he could have. He shook his head.

"It's fine," he said, the words coming easier than he expected. He straightened his back, but his heart was still beating hard enough in his chest for it to hurt. Alarmingly, he thought he might start to cry. "Can we... I want to walk in the garden."

"Oh." For a second, Augustine looked taken aback; Lysandre knew he'd wanted to show him some of the data he kept in his personal computer so they could talk about all the research Lysandre had missed out on. He regained his composure fast, smiling encouragingly at him. "Okay. I think Juliette will be excited to see you."

Indeed, once they rode the elevator down and walked into the garden, the towering garchomp was happy to see Lysandre, immediately going for a taste of his hair. He shooed her away, glaring at Augustine who couldn't contain his laughter, but the encounter actually served to soothe the erratic rhythm of his heartbeat.

The winter air was cold, their breaths coming out in white puffs of smoke, but Lysandre's heart was warm, looking at Augustine as he scratched his garchomp under her neck, her tail swinging happily to the dismay of a couple of fletchlings who were passing by. They flew off, chirping loudly to express their annoyance. Lysandre watched them settle on some nearby branches, pecking at each other affectionately.

He heard another sound of flapping wings and turned away just in time for his honchkrow to collide directly into his chest. He held on to him as he cawed: hoarse, guttural sounds that seemed to come from deep within.

"I'm here," Lysandre said softly, brushing his nose against the pokémon's hat. "I'm not going to leave you again."

The honchkrow clicked his beak, as if to express his skepticism. Augustine approached them, Juliette close on his heels.

"I think your pyroar is napping," he said. He put his hand on Lysandre's shoulder, for no other reason than the fact that he could. "We could go see him after that."

Lysandre nodded. His honchkrow shook and shook until he let him go, and then he firmly settled himself on the shoulder Augustine's hand wasn't occupying.

They strolled through the garden, slowly, the three of them – four counting the garchomp, although she kept getting distracted by the other pokémons, shuffling away to poke at a diglett or bump noses with a trevenant. At some point, she brushed too close to Lysandre's honchkrow, making him fly off in a huff. Augustine hurried after him, admonishing Juliette who didn't seem to feel much remorse, judging by how her tail was hitting the ground.

That was when Lysandre saw her.

Her outline slowly emerged from behind a tree. White and blue, her eyes large and bright. She was holding a flower taller than herself, its red and black shape oddly reminiscent of a worn-down umbrella, as if she'd been sheltering from a storm.

She turned to look at him, her mouth opening slightly in what he surmised was surprise. He stared back, his body stiff, his feet glued to the ground.

Floette's eyes narrowed slightly when she smiled.

When Augustine came back, the honchkrow perched on his head as if his hair was a nest, she was gone, leaving Lysandre with a soothing feeling of emptiness.

"You alright?" Augustine asked, perhaps struck by the serenity on his friend's face. "I thought you'd followed, but evidently not..."

Slowly, cautiously, Lysandre moved to take hold of Augustine's hand. It was cold, but that did nothing to taper off the fire blooming inside him. It was still a kind of madness, he thought, but maybe it was the kind of madness he needed. Perhaps, once he could surrender himself to that feeling completely, things would become clearer, and easier.

Then maybe he would get a glimpse of whatever the solution was to the puzzle of other people's feelings and the way they affected their views of the world.

Augustine smiled and gripped Lysandre's hand a little harder. The honchkrow clicked his beak and ruffled his feathers.

"Let's go," Augustine said. "I think Juliette's going on a rampage at the pond."

When they passed near the water, only disturbed by a few poliwags floating lazily, Lysandre watched their reflection on the surface. Distorted and discolored, it awoke in him the lingering memories of when he'd held hands with another Augustine Sycamore, decades and centuries and millennia ago. Yet, instead of filling him with dread or anxiety, it only highlighted all that he'd left behind.

Now, walking hand in hand together, both of them alive and real, they could work toward making things work in a world where no sacrifices had been made in vain.

He squeezed Augustine's hand gently, just to make sure, one last time, that this was not an overly long dream. Augustine glanced at him, one eyebrow raised. His honchkrow shook his head. That pokémon still hadn't learned the art of patience, it seemed.

"Do you need to stop?" Augustine asked.

"No," Lysandre replied, smiling. "Quite the opposite actually."

They held on to each other a little tighter and walked until they ran into Juliette, fighting off a frogadier who'd attached themself to her leg, and then they walked some more.

There was a fresh, icy smell in the air, carried by the weather. Lysandre breathed it in, leisurely, in short bursts. This, he thought, unfazed as Augustine stepped in mud and swore loudly, causing his honchkrow to cackle, is what it's like to succeed.

If there was a kind of victory he could take comfort in, it was that one.