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Thirty-five.
She shuts her eyes tighter, willing it to be darker.
Thirty-six.
Her lungs are starting to burn, and she can still hear the bubbles escaping her nose.
Thirty-seven.
Plaster and concrete scrape her foot and she’s reminded that she’s not quite weightless, not quite floating, and it’s all wrong and too much as her lungs scream.
Thirty-eight.
Moon bursts out of the water, gasping for air as she opens her eyes. Night has settled over Alola, and the rest of the pool deck at Route 8’s motel is empty and quiet. Her heart beats like a caged animal against her chest, and she pushes her wet hair back and out of her face. For a moment her mind is foggy, and she feels like a feral thing running on adrenaline.
But then the thoughts that keep her up creep back into her mind, and she takes a breath, ready to dive back into the water to drown them once more.
Footsteps click against tile and she turns, readying her excuse as to why she’s using the pool after hours to whatever employee has stumbled upon her.
Gladion stops by a lounge chair, watching her with a furrow in his brows. Moon opens her mouth to ask how he found her, until her eyes travel to the rooms that the pool faces. Both of theirs have windows that overlook the deck, and no doubt she’s made some noise with the water splashing, so at least that mystery is solved.
He’s all business – she thought he might shut it off when he joined the Interpol investigation into capturing Ultra Beasts, but the moments that he does are still few and far between. “What are you doing?”
She doesn’t know how to answer that without letting her own walls down, without stepping over the boundary he so carefully keeps between them by insisting they aren’t friends. She swallows, feeling droplets of water sliding down her cheeks as she mumbles in a raspy voice that barely sounds like her, “Couldn’t sleep.”
“So you’re drowning yourself?”
It’s only half-joking, and she flinches at it. His frown softens from a lecture into simpler concern at the sight.
“Just trying to beat a personal record.”
That much is at least true. She’s fallen into this habit of lying awake and then seeking out some body of water and seeing how long she can stay under the surface. Sometimes it’s a bath, but tonight it’s the pool after an unsuccessful day of trying to stake out a Xurkitree .
Her best is forty-seven seconds, which is still a far-cry from the eternities she’s trying to replicate.
Gladion steps a little closer to the pool, and in the dim outdoor lights she can now make out his bedhead and the stained band tee that he must wear to sleep. “You should be getting some rest. We have another early morning.”
She raises a brow. “You’re the one who hasn’t been getting more than four hours of sleep.”
It’s embarrassingly accurate, shutting him up as he scratches the back of his neck and tries to think of some retort. While he recovers, she lets her body fall back into a float, closing her eyes and concentrating and willing herself to go back to that impossibly cold place with faceless creatures.
The frustration is clear in her brow, and it makes Gladion frown as he takes a seat on the edge of the lounge chair that’s holding the towel she brought with her. He watches for a moment more, letting the sound of water lapping against the edge of the pool fill the silence between them as it becomes heavier.
He knows it’s a little hypocritical of him to be interrogating her when he’s the one who’s so insistent on keeping their relationship as shallow as possible. Just calling her his rival felt like an overstep, like he was claiming something he has yet to prove himself worthy for.
This, though, is something that a friend would do, and is uncharted waters for him.
Part of him still feels like he should leave, but watching her aimlessly float makes him push past it and ask, “What are you really doing?”
She opens her eyes, staring up at the night sky and not seeing anything at all. Her gaze is glazed over, far away and unreadable to him. He’s never seen her look so lost, and he wonders how many nights she’s passed in secret like this.
“You asked me once, what it feels like to be in Ultra Space.” Her voice barely carries across the water, all broken edges and torn-up seams.
He did ask her, nearly a month ago when she first came back. In the chaos of Lusamine’s comatose state, it felt like no one else saw her haunted gaze. But when he noticed how her hands shook (in a way not too different from his) he pulled her aside and asked what it was like, what she had been through. She was avoidant, like a Deerling facing a Mightyena, as her eyes searched for danger. She mumbl ed that she just needed some rest.
She takes another breath, shallow and unsure. “ I t’s weightless, but vibrating and heavy and empty – the closest I can get is underwater .”
He leans forward, and he feels like he’s just on the edge of understanding but there’s still so much she’s hiding. “Why do you want to feel like you’re in Ultra Space again?”
Her throat bobs as she swallows. “I don’t know.”
“That’s Taurus shit.”
It cuts her to her core, not because it hurts but because it’s true. She breaks her float, treading water for a moment as she looks back at him and wilting under his sharp eyes. Try as she might, it’s always been hard to keep secrets from Gladion ; it’s part of the reason why he had to be recruited to help track down UBs in the first place.
With the way he’s looking at her now, she knows he’ll either figure her out or she’ll spill it all herself.
She dives underwater and starts counting.
And he lets out a huff of frustration, but remains sitting, and counts along with her. At around thirty-three, his left hand begins shaking so he grips it tightly with his right, and reassures himself that he can still see bubbles. At forty, his leg starts bouncing and he debates if he should call her name.
At forty-four her head breaks the surface of the water and even in profile he can tell she’s gasping for air.
He frowns at the sight, his stomach churning at the thought of how long she’d been doing this before he saw her from his window. There’s a sour taste in his mouth as he watches the Champion, Alola’s pride and joy, alone in the water with shoulders shaking.
That’s when it clicks for him , when it lines up with his own late nights and quiet, dreaded moments.
“It feels like I’m watching you punish yourself.”
From the way she freezes, he knows he’s struck a nerve.
Water drips down her face, slow and steady over cheeks and lips as she collects her breath. She swallows hard, eyes unfocused and avoiding his gaze. If the night is quiet, she doesn’t know, because she can hear her own blood rush in her ears , hear the air buzz with the things she learned when she went through the looking glass.
“...it feels like I lost something.” She looks up at him, and now he can see that some of the water on her cheeks is coming from her eyes. “And I don’t know what and it’s my fault.”
As much as he might tell himself that she’s this region’s savior, right now she’s just a girl who’s done too much and can’t take it back. He just wishes he saw it sooner, or that he knew what to say in this moment to calm the hurricane in her eyes.
Moon watches him, searching his face for a sneer or a laugh, but only finding someone willing to listen. Weeks ago, she’d have blanched at telling him so much, at letting someone who kept her at a distance so close. Now, she feels something in her break and can’t stop the words from coming out, admitting with shaky breath, “I think some part of me is there, and I can’t get it back. I don’t...it doesn’t feel like I’m in my own body yet. Sometimes it’s like I’m trapped in some in between, and I can see behind-the-scenes of the universe. The things we aren’t meant to see. ”
His lips part, and she runs her hands over her hair, hearing more than feeling the water splash as she brings them back down. Before he can speak, she laughs, weak and flimsy. “Mew, I sound insane.”
“No, you don’t,” he says quickly. She believes him, but looks back down at the water, feeling the borders of her own mind closing her off and pushing him away.
There’s no denying that he’ll never fully get it; she’s gone through space and back, and he’s only read about it in textbooks. If she was confused about the gravitational forces, about the relativity of time, then he could sit her down and draw her a diagram. They could look at the same picture and see the same outcome, and they would both have their logic to fall back on and feel safe.
But things can never be that simple for them.
Gladion stands but stops himself from walking closer. He’s doing that more often – finding ways to close the spaces between them. However, she still won’t look at him and he asks a question he already knows the answer to. “This helps?”
She falters. “I don’t know.”
“Then it might be time to get out of the water .”
Her eyes remain on the water, and she focuses on the feeling of her wet hair clinging to her neck, rather than the weight of his gaze. She knows he’s right, but her body keeps treading water, not ready to admit what she’s doing to herself.
“Moon.” Her name comes out as a plea, and she’s never heard his voice so soft. She looks at him and he sighs, and she can see now that he’s tired, that he’s worried, that he’s every bit as worn down as she feels. “Please. For my sake.”
Slowly , her mind comes back to her and she swims for the stairs. He picks up her towel and meets her halfway, holding it out to her and watching as she wraps it around herself.
“I don’t always feel like I’m in my own body.” When Moon usually thinks of him, he’s all hard edges and commands, but now he’s quiet and contemplative. “But forcing it has never helped.”
He takes a deep breath, feeling some of his resolve slip when she looks up at him. After all, he still feels partially responsible for having sent her after his mom in the first place – why should she believe he can help now when he couldn’t then?
But the look on her face is one he recognizes from the mirror, and he carefully reaches out to her. She leans into the touch, closing her eyes as he hugs her and realizing he’s much warmer than she thought he’d be.
“I know I can’t promise that you’ll feel exactly like before, but I can promise I’m here to help.” He pauses, his chin on her head and his eyes staring out at the ocean stretching out before them. His pulse jumps as he breaks his own rule and earnestly promises, “We’re friends, right?”
She freezes and he panics, but when she looks up it is all gratitude and relief. She buries her head back in his chest, and he can feel her breathing steady and sure. “Thank you, Gladion .”
And they stay in that moment for a small eternity, and it’s far from fixing everything, but Moon thinks that it’s the most human she’s felt in months.