Chapter Text
The next morning, the two women woke to the mid-morning Alolan sun shining through their window and a tiny but persistent knock on their bedroom door, alerting them that their daughter was awake.
“Mommy? Are you awake? I want to make pancakes and call Mama after!”
Selene couldn’t help smiling to herself at the young girl’s words. Pleased with herself for having successfully kept her arrival a secret from Cereza, she sat up in bed and stopped Lillie as she attempted to do so as well. “Let me answer the door and surprise her. She thinks I’m still in the Canyon.” Her eyes twinkled mischievously as she thought about the excitement that her unplanned presence would bring. “Why don’t you stay in bed, and we’ll bring you breakfast in bed! I believe pancakes are on the menu, according to our little chef.”
Lillie loved mornings like this, when she had her little family unit all together and they could relax and enjoy these little moments. She stretched and settled back into the pillows, soaking in the scene and trying to fight off the sleep that was quickly resuming its hold on her. “That sounds perfect, darling. I’ll just…” Her words trailed off as she fell back into slumber, exhausted from the previous night’s activities with her wife.
Selene eased the door open as she spoke. “How about I make pancakes with you, instead, kiddo?”
Upon hearing those words in that familiar voice, Cereza’s face lit up as if it was a festival day. She flew into her mother’s arms and squealed in delight. “Mama!! You’re home!”
“I am, indeed! Did you miss me?”
“Of course!” She leaned in close to her mother’s ear and cupped her hand around her mouth, dropping her voice low. “Mommy missed you, too. I saw her smell one of your shirts. But that’s a secret, okay?”
Selene couldn’t help but laugh at the girl’s antics. “Of course. Our little secret.” She put her daughter down and took her hand as they walked towards the kitchen. “Now, let’s go make some pancakes and take them to Mommy in bed! How does that sound?”
“Yeah! She’d like that!”
They made their way to the kitchen, Cereza chattering away happily the whole time. While she wasn’t a sullen child by any means, having her Mama home after a trip always boosted her mood in a way that nothing else could.
Selene turned on the radio and tuned it into a Johto station she had listened to when growing up. As music filled the kitchen, she picked up her daughter and placed her gently on one of the kitchen counter stools, making sure she was safely seated before moving to get the kitchen ready for cooking.
“What kind of pancakes are we making today, executive chef? We have Pinap, Rawst, Nanab, and Mago berries.”
“Nanab! But can we also have Mago slices on the side, please? They’re so good!”
“You’ve got good taste, kiddo. Do you remember the pancakes song?”
Instead of answering her mother, she burst into her own rendition of the song in question. “Makin’ pancakes, makin’ Nanab pancakes! Take some berries and put ‘em in a pancake! Nanab pancakes, that’s what it’s gonna make! Nanab pancaaaakes!”
“That’s my girl! Now let’s get to makin’ those Nanab pancakes!”
The two worked happily at gathering ingredients, combining them, and cooking up what they felt was their best batch of Nanab pancakes yet. Cereza set the full plates carefully onto the breakfast tray as Selene cut up a few Mago berries into slices. Once everything was assembled, they collected the components and made their way back to the master bedroom. Cereza opened the door for Selene as she walked in with the results of their efforts.
Lillie opened her eyes again as the smell of fresh pancakes wafted up her nose. She sat up, stretched, and smiled sleepily at the pair in front of her. She couldn’t have imagined a more perfect moment as this one, and she felt overwhelmed with emotion.
“We brought you pancakes, Mommy! Did you know Mama was home? She came back early!” The little girl’s excitement was melting both of her parent’s hearts with her cuteness. Selene caught Lillie’s eyes and smiled at her wife, looking at her with all of the love she felt for the woman in front of her. This was exactly the kind of scene she pictured when she proposed to her wife all those years ago. This was why she fought to keep Alola and every other region safe. She took a mental snapshot of the moment and proceeded to get the breakfast plates and trays set up on the bed while Cereza wiggled her way into Lillie’s side and eagerly awaited her breakfast.
“I did know she was home. She helped me say goodnight to you last night, sweetness, but you were deep into dreaming. We didn’t want to wake you.”
“You hafta wake me up for important things! That is your job!” Lillie laughed at the little girl’s indignation and hugged her close as she kissed the top of her head. Cereza wiggled out from under her mother’s arm and went straight to work devouring her stack of Nanab pancakes.
“It’s also a Mommy’s job to make sure you get enough sleep, so you should listen to her, kiddo. She’s a professor, after all.” Selene winked at her wife and shoved a forkful of Nanab pancakes into her mouth.
Their daughter swallowed her food and then exclaimed “Professor Mommy!”
“You two! I’m not a professor yet. I still have to finish training for my qualification exams, and then I’ll have more study after that in order to pick my specialization, followed by another round of rigorous exams and only then will I be able to properly claim that title.”
“You know, that sounds an awful lot like a professor’s explanation for something, doesn’t it?” Selene leaned into their daughter as she spoke, giving her observation a conspiratorial air.
“Mhmm!” The little girl happily agreed with her mother and continued to stab at the pancake pieces on her plate until her fork was full.
“You two are impossible, really.”
“But you wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?”
“Never!” Her sentiment was underlined with her huge smile that spread to the corners of her eyes.
They finished up eating, setting about clearing the trays and stacking them on the trunk that was situated at the foot of the bed. The air in the room was still fragrant with the smell of pancakes, berries, and syrup, and the mid-day sun coming through the windows gave everything an extra glow of warmth.
“Can we go to the beach today?”
“I don’t see why not — the forecast doesn’t call for any Kyogre today.”
“Beach! Beach! Beach!”
“Yeah, beach! Beach! Beach!” Selene echoed Cereza’s outburst and got up from the bed, kissing her daughter on the forehead and giving her wife’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll get our beach stuff together while you get the little kiddo here ready to go, yeah?”
“Sounds good, darling!” She got up from the bed and wrapped her arms around Cereza, picking her up and resting her against her hip. “Now then, which swimsuit are we going to put you in, sweetness?”
“Can I wear the blue one with the rainbows?”
“You sure can!”
Lillie awkwardly opened the door to Cereza’s room with one hand as she continued to hold the little girl with the other. As soon as the task was done, she put her daughter down and let her scamper off to her dresser, where she excitedly rummaged through her bottom drawer.
“Found it!” The little girl held it above her head triumphantly.
“Good job! Will you let Mommy untie the strings for you so you can get it on easier?” Lillie reached for the swimsuit in question, and Cereza begrudgingly handed it to her.
“I guess…how come I can’t put it on by myself? I’m 5, and you said 5 was big.”
“It is big, , but there are still some things that I need to help you with. As you get older and grow up, there will be more and more things that you can do on your own, I promise. But for now, would it be alright if I helped you with this?”
“Okay!” She leaned in and put her hand on her mother’s cheek, pulling her face closer to give her a kiss on the cheek before pulling away and stretching her arms above her head in anticipation of getting into her swimsuit. “Can we invite Uncle Hau to the beach with us?”
“I’m sure he’d love that! Think we could convince him to bring a few malasadas with him?”
Cereza’s face lit up at the mention of malasadas. Her favorite snack being delivered by one of her favorite people was almost too much for the little girl to take, and she wiggled in joy, making her mother’s task of getting her out of her pajamas and into her swimsuit all the more difficult. The wardrobe change was completed eventually, and Selene stuck her head into the room just in time to see the pair finish up and get the excited child into her sundress and sandals.
“Ready to go to the beach?”
“Yeah! Mommy said we could invite Uncle Hau and that he might bring malasadas!”
“She did? Did she also say that she called him to invite him already?”
“Nope!”
“Then let’s let Mommy change into her beach gear, and we’ll call Uncle hau to come to the beach with us and bring snacks, yeah?”
“Mommy doesn’t need help getting into her swimsuit?”
Lillie couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped her mouth at her daughter’s words. “No, sweetness, I’ll be fine. But I appreciate your kind offer to help.” She smiled brightly at the child in front of her and then got up from the crouch she had been in to help get Cereza changed.
The tall, blonde woman got into her light blue, one-piece swimsuit and shorts and joined her wife and daughter in the living room, where she found Cereza perched on her Selene’s shoulders and mimicking Pokémon cries.
“Pew! I’m a Nebby! Pew pew!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah! Pew pew pew!”
Their adorable playing was interrupted by the front door being thrown open.
“Alola! Somebody ordered some malasadas, yeah?”
“Uncle Hau!” Cereza climbed down from Selene and ran over to the long-haired man grinning brightly, clinging to his leg. Hau ruffled her hair a bit and put the bag of baked treats down so that he could pick her up.
“Little cousin! You look ready to ride a Sharpedo! Excited to get out to the beach?”
“Mama, can I ride a Sharpedo today?”
Both of her mothers responded in unison with a resounding “no!” which caused the little girl to frown only for a second, as she looked around and remembered her uncle had brought her sweets, her momentary bad mood fleeing the scene just as soon as it had arrived.
“Didn’t I just call you, cousin? How’d you get here so fast?”
“Easy — I was already coming over with malasadas when you called!”
“You never change, Hau. You’re coming with us to the beach, aren’t you?”
“Yeah! Wouldn’t miss it!”
They gathered up the malasadas and all of the beach supplies, and the happy little group made their way to the waterfront, laughing and telling stories the whole walk there. Moments like this gave Hau a peculiar mix of happiness and sadness — he loved being a part of this family, and he especially loved getting to see Cereza grow up, but sometimes he wished for a family of his own. That thought didn’t always linger long in his head, though, as there were always more malasadas to eat, more battles to have, and more training to do.
Once they arrived at the beach, they staked their claim in a secluded area further away from the nearby shopping district so as to have some sort of privacy. Being the Alolan Champion had its perks, but it also came with a level of fame that complicated normally simple activities. Most of the residents of Melemele Island respected Selene and Lillie’s privacy, and the ones that tended to barge in on their personal lives were children and young trainers who looked up to them, getting so excited that they forgot their manners — but who could really be upset at such innocence?
Thankfully, no one seem interested in coming up to them today, and the two women set up their umbrella and towels in peace with Hau helping them. Cereza was happily munching away on a malasada, wearing more of it on her face and all over her swimsuit than she was possibly actually eating. Her mothers positioned themselves so that they were sitting under the umbrella, blocked from the sun, with a full view of where their daughter would inevitably be running around with Hau.
“Uncle Hau, will you build a sand castle with me?”
“Yeah, little cousin! Just gotta make sure we don’t get any ghosts inside of it!” He held up his arms and wiggled his fingers while making a face, attempting to mimic a Haunter’s scare tactics. Cereza attempted to mirror his movements, the crumbs that polka-dotted her making her look adorable and ridiculous, but not menacing in the least. Selene surreptitiously used her Poké Finder to capture the scene before it ended, making a mental note to get that picture printed and framed later. The ridiculous pair in front of her collapsed into giggles which ended when Hau took Cereza by the hand, and they grabbed the sand castle buckets and shovels, consumed in the hunt for the perfect spot to build their castle.
“Those two can be so ridiculous sometimes. He’s practically a large child, isn’t he?” Selene put the Rotomdex away and settled into her wife’s side as they stretched out on their beach towels.
“He really is, but he also takes care of her and looks out for her in a way that only an adult could. We’re lucky to have him live so close and be in her life as much as he is.”
“We really are — and since he’s playing with her right now, I get some time with you all to myself. Will you tell me a story, love? I promise I won’t fall asleep during it like Cereza does.” She waggled her eyebrows to emphasize her joke.
Lillie playfully swatted at her arm and stuck her tongue out at her wife before bursting into laughter. “Be nice! I don’t think we can fault her for falling asleep at her bedtime. There was a time when we couldn’t even get her to do that — do you remember that time we stayed up for almost three days straight with her?”
“We were practically delirious by the end of it — I forgot what sleep even was. She was an adorable baby, but I don’t miss the bone-deep tiredness that came along with raising an infant.”
“I don’t miss that, either, but I do miss holding her when she was that small and singing to her, or giving her baths in the sink…”
“You want another kid? Cereza is already kind of a lot, and she’s just one kid. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to expand our family at some point, but I like our little trio as it is right now.” She shifted a bit in her position and propped herself up on her elbows, looking into her wife’s eyes and hoping that her gaze was conveying how much she loved the woman in front of her and the daughter they were raising together. “Will you tell the story of that sleepless time? How you got her to sleep is one of my favorite memories of our family so far.”
——————
It had been two days since anyone in the house had slept at all. Selene and Lillie’s infant daughter, Cereza, was doing her best to make her presence known and had filled their house with her echoed wails of anguish. They loved the new addition to their family, and they were endlessly thankful for her, but in this particular moment they would’ve given anything for a few minutes of quiet. The couple was sitting in the hallway with their backs against the door to their daughter’s room, Lillie’s head resting on her wife’s shoulder while Selene had her arm around her. Becoming parents had given both of them dark circles under their eyes and stains on all of their shirts, and they looked about as good as they felt at the moment.
“I don’t think she’s ever going to sleep again.”
“Don’t be dramatic, Selene. She’ll sleep eventually. I think. I mean, she has to run out of energy…right?” Lillie sighed and, as if on cue, Cereza let out an especially piercing cry, causing her mothers to wince simultaneously. “Or not.”
“She seems to think otherwise, love. Do you want to check on her?”
“She’s already been fed and changed, and she isn’t sick. All of the parenting books I read clearly stated that we have to let her learn how to comfort herself, and that we shouldn’t rush in at every cry. It breaks my heart that something is going on with her that’s giving her cause to cry like this, though. I just want to hold her a-a-and—“ Her words broke off in a sob of her own, and Selene held her closer. “I think Cereza is mad at us.”
“I don’t think she’s mad at us. I think she’s got a lot going on in her baby brain, though, and being close to us calms her down enough so that she can sort through it better.”
“If that’s the case, them why have we been up for two days with her, doing everything possible, and she still refuses to sleep for any longer than a handful of minutes at a time?” The strain and fatigue over the past two days gave her words an edge they rarely ever had.
“I don’t know why she’s having such a hard time with it right now. Maybe we should just ignore the books and do what feels right to us. There has to be something we haven’t tried yet that isn’t sitting outside of her and torturing ourselves by listening to her crying.”
“We can’t just ignore the research and effort that went into those books! We’re only 27. We’ve never been parents before.”
“Didn’t we help save the world when we were kids? We didn’t have a manual for that, so why should we have a manual for this?” Selene paused for a second in thought, chewing on her bottom lip as she considered a new option they hadn’t tried — it was so obvious, and she couldn’t believe one of them hadn’t thought of it sooner. “Maybe it’s time she met a Pokémon.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea…”
“Why not? What if she’s crying right now because she’s just itching to get started on her path to being an Ace Trainer?”
“Perhaps you’re right. Did you have any particular Pokémon in mind?”
“Nebby?”
“You want a large Psychic- and Ghost-type Pokémon to be the first one that our daughter meets? Nebby literally eats light. I love Nebby, but that’s a lot for someone who’s only three months old to handle.”
“You’re right…what about Vulpix?”
“Too cold.”
“Meowth?”
“No! They have sharp claws!”
“I grew up with a Meowth, and I turned out just fine!”
“True, but I don’t want Cereza to get hurt. She’s so new in the world, and it’s our job to protect her. There has to be — oh!” She stood up abruptly, smoothed out the loose-fitting white t-shirt she was wearing over her dark blue leggings. “I think I know which one she should meet first,” she stated plainly as she walked down the hall to their home office, leaving Selene to sit and wonder what exactly her wife was planning.
In the office, Lillie was flipping through a Kantoian Pokémon research journal, frowning slightly as she scoured the pages for the particular passage she had in mind. ‘I know it’s in here somewhere…Oak mentioned that one of the Pokémon I used in Kanto was good with children, and I could’ve sworn there was an article about it— here!’ She let out a long yawn in victory, and then she walked over to the shelf they had custom-designed for them to hold the Poké Balls containing their teams. Her eyes scanned over the ones belonging to her, and she landed on a particular ball with a leaf-shaped seal she had purchased from a Sinnohan import shop in Vermillion City.
“Come on out, Bulby!”
The Poké Ball flew open and back into Lillie’s hand, releasing the Bulbasaur she had been given by Professor Oak in Pallet Town. Bulby looked up at her expectantly, and she bent down to scratch under his chin and stroke his side as another yawn snuck out of her mouth.
“Sorry we haven’t been training as much, and I promise that we will soon, but right now I was hoping you could help Selene and I with a problem.” Bulby tilted his head to the side as he listened, nuzzling Lillie’s hand and chortling to himself. “Professor Oak says that Bulbasaurs have a special lullaby that you sing to your babies to calm them down, but he also says that it’s a secret. Can you help us get our daughter to sleep and sing it this one time?” Cereza gave a particularly loud howl to punctuate her mother’s words, causing Bulbasaur to wince.
He shook it off and nuzzled closer into Lillie’s hand. “Bulba!”
“Thank you, Bulby!” She kissed him between his eyes and stood up, holding out her left arm to Bulby as she did so. He wound a vine gently around her arm, seeming to hold her hand, and they walked out of the office and back into the hall. The gesture, though small, represented a great deal of growth for the soon-to-be Professor
While Cereza’s crying may have gotten somewhat quieter overall, and the pauses had started to grow longer, she was still at it, and it hadn’t gotten any easier to listen to for Selene. The Alolan Champion was holding her head in her hands, and her anguish and exhaustion was evident from her posture, her head almost touching her crossed legs with the extreme angle.
“Bulbasaur?”
Selene looked up at the familiar sound and gave a small smile to the stout, blue Pokémon. “Are you our guy?” He nodded once and received a chin scratch in acknowledgement, while the human in front of him directed her next utterance towards her wife. “Help me up?”
Lillie offered her hands to her wife as Bulby dropped his vine and waited patiently at Cereza’s door.
“Ready to give this a try?”
Opening the door to the infant’s room caused her cries to become near-deafening, and Selene practically sprinted to the crib in the middle of the room. Picking up Cereza once she got there, she cradled her baby daughter and kissed her forehead, wiping away some of her tears with her thumbs. The small act caused her crying to die down somewhat, enough that Selene didn’t feel like she was going to lose her hearing while holding her. “Shhh, shhh, we’re here. I know it’s been hard for you the past few days…I don’t know if you know what days are, but you’ve been up for more of them than normal, and I’m sure you’re tired, my sweet little Cereza.” Mother and daughter yawned at the same time, and Lillie couldn’t help swooning a bit at the sight. Her little family was having a rough night, but they were getting through it together.
Bulby’s vines extended out, tapping once on Selene’s leg to remind her of his presence. She kissed Cereza’s forehead once more and smoothed down her wispy but already unruly dark hair, inhaling her sweet baby scent as she did so, before lowering the fussy infant into Bulbasaur’s outstretched vines. “Be extra gentle with her; she’s The tender Grass-type Pokémon swaddled Cereza and proceeded to her up just high enough to comfortably rock her back and forth.
Lillie leaned into her wife’s side and wrapped her arms around her as both of them watched her Bulbasaur interact with their daughter. His singing slowly started to become louder than Cereza’s cries until her crying stopped completely and she started to let out little baby snores, signaling her transition into the land of sleep. They both let out a breath they didn’t realize they were holding, and the wet spot on Selene’s neck told her that her wife was crying happy tears of relief just as she was. Their daughter was finally sleeping.
Bulby looked up at them expectantly, having stilled his vines, and Lillie moved to take Cereza from him and put her in her crib, whispering “I love you, little one” as she backed away from the crib and turned on the baby monitor, heading back to her wife’s side. The little baby stirred upon the environment change, but Bulby simply moved to lie down next to her crib and continued to softly sing.
Selene’s eyes were growing heavier by the second in the now-silent environment, and her words came out in a mumble only decipherable by Lillie. “I think we can leave Bulby in here with her, don’t you, love?”
“I think so, too, and I can’t wait to get into bed. Being a parent is far more intensive than I realized it would be, but the hard work is worth it.”
“Mhmm…bed…”
They walked back to their bedroom in silence that was broken only by continued yawning. As soon as they lie down on their bed, they were asleep without even getting under the covers, and no one in the house got up until the next morning, when the bright Alolan sun woke them up.
——————
“Using Bulby was a stroke of genius — he was so gentle with her, and I really don’t know what else would have calmed her that night. I could listen to you tell stories forever, Lilligant. You have such a wonderful voice.”
“I’m glad you liked my retelling, but what’s gotten into you? You haven’t called me that nickname since we were teenagers!”
“I’m very relaxed right now — I’m on the beach with my gorgeous and wonderful wife, our daughter is happily playing in the sand, and for right now no one is trying to destroy the world. What more could I ask for?”
“Selene…”
“It’s the truth.”
“I love you, too. You’re so much more of a romantic than you let on.” She pulled her wife up to be level with her face for a kiss and kept her close even after their lips parted. They allowed themselves to get lost in each other’s eyes for a moment, both keeping an ear out for any sounds of distress from their daughter and neither expecting the tan man dressed in red and white to cover them in a shadow and interrupt their bliss.
“Lillie?”
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” She responded hesitantly, healthily cautious that a stranger knew her name and had found her on this beach.
“You mean you don’t remember me?”
“She just said she doesn’t.” Selene wasn’t exactly a fan of whoever this person was that was starting to make her wife uneasy.
The mystery man cocked his head in the direction of the voice, then turned back to Lillie as if he expected her to provide some sort of explanation to him. “And who is this?” His question was accompanied by him pointing his thumb at the Murkrow-haired woman.
“Her wife.”
“Got a name? ‘Her Wife’ is kind of a weird one.”
“Selene. Who are you?” She was bristling and in protective mode, not letting her guard down, despite the relaxed atmosphere of the scene before this stranger had shown up.
“Ah. Well, I’m Aarune. And we both know she’s Lillie, so I’d say that about does it for introductions.”
“H-how do you know who I am?” Lillie could feel herself shaking, but before it overcame her, she felt Selene’s arm around her, and she steadied once more. ‘Have I met this man before? He isn’t familiar to me, but somehow he seems to know my name. And why am I shaking? I’m a 32-year-old woman, this is silly.’
Aarune watched the platinum blonde woman in front of him and couldn’t tell if she was studying him or working on some other problem in her head. “Do you really not see the family resemblance? We have some ridiculously strong genes! I can’t believe you don’t see it — and it isn’t even hidden like a Secret Base!”
The man’s jovial nature did nothing to ease any of Selene’s suspicions about him, and she somehow managed to position herself between Aarune and Lillie without ever getting up or removing her arm from around her wife. “Just say who you are and what you’re doing in front of us already.”
“Fine, fine. I’m your uncle, Lillie! Lucy never mentioned me?”
Lillie’s jaw went slack upon the revelation, and her brow furrowed in thought. She had no recollection of ever having family beyond her mother, father, brother, and grandfather, and she couldn’t recall a time any of them had brought up anybody named Aarune, or even an uncle in general, for that matter.
“I have an…uncle?”