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"How do you do it?" said Ash.
"Hmm?" said Kiawe. "Do what?"
They were on the airplane back from Kanto. Ash had claimed a window seat, because he liked to look out at the world. Kiawe hadn’t objected, because his first time on an airplane — the flight over — he'd found that he really did not like to look out at the world.
"Stay in one place all the time," said Ash.
Kiawe leaned his head back against the seat and tried to figure out what Ash was asking. Then he gave up and said, "I go from Akala to Melemele every day for school."
"Not like that!" said Ash. He waved a hand like swatting a cutiefly away from his face. "That's still the same two islands, you know."
Kiawe blinked. He said, “Yes, I know.”
Pikachu made a noise like laughter from Ash’s lap, where it was laying on top of his seatbelt in a surprising display of stillness. Kiawe still wasn’t sure how the attendants had been convinced to let it on the plane out of its pokeball, especially because the rest of the class hadn’t gotten the same privilege, but he’d seen how Ash tended to look when Pikachu was out of sight. And he’d seen Ash and Professor Kukui be taken aside for a conversation that left Ash rocking back and forth in place after a few minutes of it, in the airport. He thought that might have something to do with it, too.
Ash said, “Don’t you ever want to leave?”
Kiawe glanced to the side. Sophocles had his eyes closed, which meant he was either napping or thinking. Kiawe reached up and switched on the light over Sophocles’s head, just as a precaution, and then turned back to Ash.
“No?” he said, and then more firmly, “No!”
And then he quieted, because Sophocles had twitched at the sound and also he was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be shouting on an airplane.
“I don’t get it,” said Ash, his voice all flat.
Pikachu said “Pikapi, pikachu,” and Ash rolled his eyes.
After a moment of Kiawe not knowing what to say, Ash continued. “You’ve gotta want to see something new, even just sometimes.”
Kiawe looked at Ash, writing passion into the air between them with his gestures, fire in his eyes like lightning, like Wela Volcano. He thought about Ash's restlessness, the way his eyes lit up at the sight of the unfamiliar, his love of thrill and his strangely unsurprised sort of joy at the truly rare.
But Kiawe also thought about the way Wela Volcano's smoke swirled in the air, sometimes, drawing dark patterns on the sky. He thought about hidden glades, and waterfalls like stained glass in motion, and the shape of the coastline as seen from the sky.
"When I want to see something new," he said slowly, parsing his thoughts against the bright of Ash's gaze. "Whenever I want to see something beautiful, I just have to look around Alola."
"I guess..." said Ash, and then he paused, and looked at Kiawe, and then out the window, and then at Pikachu, and then at Kiawe again. Kiawe wondered what he was thinking about — he was so hard to read, sometimes. "I guess that makes sense, sort of? It's true Alola's pretty cool, for sure.” He shrugged with his mouth. “But it's still just a few islands."
"Don’t—!” Kiawe cut off his outburst as Sophocles stirred again, then continued in a quieter tone, with no less bite. “Just some islands! Alola’s not just some islands, Ash! Besides, Alola's got everything I could ever want, I don't need to go anywhere else," he finished, more than a little defensively. "You just haven't seen enough of her wonders to know!"
Ash blinked, once, and then frowned a bit, and then smiled like he’d solved all the world’s problems in one go. "Then show me them!"
Ash was so strange. Kiawe had never liked tourists — they came in with so much self-superiority, like Alola was just an outdated attraction, like her traditions meant nothing, like she had no history. Ash wasn't the best at being sensitive, and Kiawe had resented him for that, at first — why would Tapu Koko show itself to some foreign boy, entrust a Z-Ring to someone with no knowledge, no respect — but Ash cared, so much.
"Maybe I will!" said Kiawe. He glared. "But only if you stop calling Alola just some anything."
"Sorry, sorry! I promise!" said Ash. Pikachu nodded emphatically, pika! Ash gestured. "I didn't mean it like that, promise!"
Of course he didn’t. Ash never meant anything bad, even when he messed things up. He cared too much.
Kiawe sighed.
“Battle when we get off the plane?” said Ash, and Kiawe knew him well enough to recognize a peace offering when he heard one, and also well enough to recognize the subdued tone he took when he really did feel bad for something.
“You’re on,” Kiawe answered reflexively, and Ash grinned at him, sharp and fierce and delighted. It was so hard to stay mad at Ash — he just made you want to match him, instead, match his intensity and his skill and his joyous abandon.
And Kiawe wanted to resent that, he really did, but the thrill of each attempt to meet his pace woke the world around him into a sharp clarity like glass, like taking a steep dive on Charizard, like fire in the sky. Ash was all at once a shock of excitement, a worthy opponent, and a genuinely good friend, and Kiawe couldn’t really imagine life before he’d joined their class, anymore.
It seemed so dull.
“Anyway, even if I wanted to leave,” continued Kiawe, “which I don’t, all the people I care about live in Alola.”
“What, like Mimo?”
“Not just—”
“That’s easy, just take her on a journey with you!” Ash spread his hands out in a gesture, whacking Kiawe in the arm. “Oh, sorry.”
Kiawe didn’t acknowledge the apology, because he was too busy trying to process Ash’s suggestion. “You want me to take my precious, perfect little sister, the light of my life, on a dangerous journey in some distant country, with who-knows-what dangers lurking in the shadows, and RISK her LIFE?” Right. No shouting in the airplane. “I’m not going on a journey anyways . And she’s not even old enough to have pokemon!”
“Sure I do, she’ll be fine!” chirped Ash. “I dunno the problem, Max and Bonnie were her age when I was traveling with them!”
Didn't he get that Mimo could die on a journey like that? She was the perfect little sister, his charge and his responsibility. He couldn't let her get hurt!
His incredulity must have shown on his face, because Ash continued, "Course, Max's old enough now that he started his pokemon journey last year, and him and Kirlia are doing all sorts of cool stuff with Cilan's gym in Unova now, but Bonnie went all round Kalos with me and Serena and her brother Clemont last year! And did all kinds of super awesome stuff like make friends with Squishy!"
Kiawe did not know who Squishy was, but Ash kept going before he could ask.
"Anyways Mimo can be cool like that also, you just gotta let her! It’s like with training pokemon, y’know? They’re not gonna learn anything, or get good at battling or anything, if you don’t let them try." Ash leaned forward, twisting his body around so he was right in Kiawe's face. "Mimo’s not gonna be able to be strong if you don’t let her try.”
Well, Mimo wasn't a pokemon, so technically everything Ash just said was ignorable.
But Kiawe knew he loved fierce, and hard, and fast, and persistent. He knew he loved in a way that wasn't possessive so much as defensive, in a way that had him throwing himself and his words as an unthinking shield around his friends and his family and his islands and his traditions. And he knew Ash was right about pokemon training, like he usually was in some roundabout way or other.
He looked away, but specifically not out the window.
Ash and Pikachu were murmuring something to each other, fingers in fur. Sophocles was still sleeping, probably, which was good because Kiawe kept shouting even though he didn’t mean to. Across the aisle, Lillie had her nose deep in a book while Lana stared blankly at the seat in front of her, paying no attention to Mallow using her shoulder as a pillow. Professor Kukui, seated behind them, was typing something at a clipped pace, shirt half-buttoned against the air conditioner’s chill.
The stewardess passed by. Kiawe ordered tomato juice for himself, just to find out what it tasted like, and soda for when Sophocles woke up. Ash asked for tea, and water for Pikachu.
“It’s good, that you love Mimo,” murmured Ash, catching Kiawe’s eye as Kiawe handed him the teabag and hot water, careful to not spill it. “And that you want to keep her safe. She’s just strong like Wela Volcano too, I think? You just gotta let her be.”
He smiled awkwardly, one side of his mouth going a little higher than the other, and the sincerity there was what finally got a hook in Kiawe and pulled the heart of him into air.
Ash did that to him, sometimes. There was a gloam to him, something soft and transient and nothing like the kinds of light Kiawe loved: nothing like the sun or like the harsh beauty of a volcano’s eruption. It was disquieting. It was upending. It was something Kiawe would never get used to.
He thought, sometimes, that if Ash were a pokemon he would be something mythical and elusive. Something like Mew or the Swords of Justice. Usually at that point in Kiawe’s train of thought, Ash would come screaming into the vicinity chased by an entire swarm of beedrill, or challenge Kiawe to a battle, or start snoring in class, just to prove him wrong. He had a way about him that upended preconceptions.
But maybe he was right, about Mimo. Maybe Kiawe could stand to listen more, to him and to her. Maybe.
“I’m still not leaving Alola,” he said, tucking his heart back into his chest.
Ash looked at him, head tilted to the side, gaze clear. “Wasn’t expecting you to?” His mouth made a confused shape. “I don’t get it, but that’s cause I’ve always gotta be moving on.”
Kiawe made a face at him. “You so were trying to get me to go on a journey.”
“Okay, maybe a little,” admitted Ash. He put a hand on Pikachu’s back. “But you’re so happy, in Alola. You love the trees and the sand and the skies so much. I couldn’t—”
Sophocles made a noise, and blinked a little, and said blearily, still half-asleep, “So you’re gonna leave us, when the year’s up?”
Kiawe glanced sharply over at Sophocles, cursing himself for waking him up after all and cursing Sophocles for asking the question nobody had had the courage to ask, yet.
The thing was. The thing was, Kiawe knew Ash had traveled before, and, in an abstract sense, he knew Ash would go traveling again. But the notion had always seemed so far-off next to the strength of his presence, and Kiawe had never dared to imagine what the class would look like, with him gone. Had never dared to think of it, for fear of wishing it into being. That way, he could pretend Ash would be with them forever.
Ash opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. And then he said, “Yeah, I am.”
Sophocles’s face sank, and Kiawe didn’t know what his own mouth was doing.
“Or maybe not then, but— when things are over. Usually I have the League to mark it, but I guess? Either after the Grand Trials or after the school year’s done.” Ash shrugged. “If you want, you could come with me! But you’ve all got important things to be doing in Alola, so…”
Kiawe swallowed, and stared at the seat in front of him, and didn’t look at Ash. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.” And then, “Here, Sophocles, I got you a soda.”
“Thanks, Kiawe,” said Sophocles, a bit of drowsiness stuck in his voice. “You’re the best…”
The airplane was loud.
Ash whispered, “I’ll miss you guys.”
And— there were different ways to love the world, and they would all chase their own paths. And it was okay, if Kiawe loved Alola full to bursting but all Ash wanted to do was throw his heart out to the winds. It was okay, even if the thought of losing him made Kiawe want to cry.