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He is panting when he finally gets to the top of Hammerlocke castle, taking the stairs four at a time. The people have been safely evacuated from the city. The giant red beam is gone. Leon won. Of course he did.
So why does his chest grip a little tighter as he gets closer?
He skids to a stop when he sees Leon. There's something off. Long tendrils, almost the same colour as his hair, extend from his back and flutter in the wind. Did he get injured?
Are they… growing? Unfurling wings?
“Lee?” Raihan croaks. He's already reaching for Duraldon's ball.
Leon turns and his eyes glow red.
“NO.”
In the end, Raihan smuggles Leon - no, Eternatus that was what Rose had called the Legendary on the screen, before awakening it - out the back doors of the keep, fumbles for supplies he keeps ins his office, and flies them both into the Wild Area. Flygon takes ten minutes of soothing, a whole bag of treats, and a whispered “Do it for Leon” before she lets Eternatus climb on.
Now that Eternatus is no longer a giant dragon of doom he no longer seems to be keen on bringing on the apocalypse. He's also oddly compliant to Raihan manhandling his - no, Leon’s - body. He wraps a hand around Raihan’s waist the entire ride, and Raihan tries not to think about how Leon now smells of ozone and sickly sweet poison.
There's a secluded mountain cave he and Leon have met up in for years, where they've never been bothered by anyone. Too many sandstorms. Not that it's ever been a problem for them.
It’s only when he sees Leon, Eternatus, stumble off Flygon and wander the cave on unsteady feet does he stop to think about what he’s doing.
He did not think it through. He would not be doing this if he were thinking it through. He just knows he can't let anyone take Leon away from him - he won't let them lock him up, or prod him for experiments, or lynch him, or keep him in a Pokeball.
If he had stopped to consider the ramifications of his actions, he would do the same thing again, he thinks.
He sets up the tent, the weatherproof sleeping bag. Tells Eternatus how to use the heat rock in the event that a blizzard starts. Leaves a bag of granola and fruit and strict instructions to not leave the cave. He’d be back in the morning, he promises.
He thinks about leaving one of his Pokemon behind, but all of them rear back at the sight of Eternatus. Leon’s team is in a hospital in Hammerlocke, brutalised after the battle with Eternatus. He isn't sure how they'd react to their hellspawn-possessed trainer.
Eternatus doesn’t seem to notice at all the commotion he has caused and is watching the campfire blankly. He only looks up when Raihan tells him he is leaving.
“COME BACK,” Eternatus says. Leon's face is blank, but he still manages to look pleading. Something to do with the hunched posture, the way his hands grip the rock he sits on. “YOU WILL COME BACK?"
“I will,” Raihan promises. Raihan can't say no to Leon, even if it isn't Leon anymore.
It’s all over the news by the time he returns to Hammerlocke. Galar's beloved Champion sacrificing himself to save Galar from its monster. There are endless op-eds and thought pieces that all the contributions Leon has made since he was ten. A hasty funeral is held, even without the body. It is the only one because Leon had saved them all in time. Even Rose is alive, despite the number of people who want to put him in the ground. Raihan would be first in line if he could.
Hop doesn't stop crying at the funeral - loud wails at first, then become odd choking noises and hiccups as time goes by. Somehow, that is worse. His friend, the Gym Challenger that had demolished his team just a few days before, Victor, holds his hand throughout. Sonia does not cry, but her eyes are red and her nail polish is chipped. She looks at Raihan a little strangely throughout. He avoids her eye, keeps his gaze on the coffin - glossy white, saint white - and tries not to think of the future.
“HUMAN,” Eternatus says. “WE ARE HUNGRY.”
A dragon needs to hunt. Even if not in a dragon's body.
Raihan wakes up for a week straight to the image of Leon, crouched over the body of an Unfezant, blood and gore caking his chin as he chews on gristle and crunches bone.
"Here." Raihan spoons out the curry into a bowl, which Eternatus takes and sniffs suspiciously. There are strange purple markings snaking up the sides of Leon's cheeks, and bumps that look like horns protruding from his temples, but he still manages to look petulant. It’s the same expression Leon makes when Raihan has to show up at his apartment and force him to down bitter pills and medicine whenever he falls ill.
"If you're in a human body, you can't eat raw meat. You’ll only get sick. Again." Raihan takes care of Leon, even if it isn't Leon anymore.
"THIS IS... CURRY?"
"Yes." Raihan wonders how much access to Leon's memories Eternatus has.
"Is he still conscious? In there?"
Eternatus hums and closes Leon's eyes. It's a strange sound coming from Leon's chest, something simultaneously too-deep and too high-pitched for it be coming from a human throat. When he opens them, it is always a shock to see scarlet instead of gold.
"HE IS ASLEEP NOW. BUT YES, HE IS CONSCIOUS."
"Why won't you leave?"
Eternatus looks at him, cocking Leon's head to the side. For a moment, Raihan can see lost-in-his-head-Leon.
Something in him cracks.
"Why won't you leave?" Raihan grabs Eternatus by Leon's shoulders - already thinner, less muscled after days in the wild and going with little food and less exercise - and shakes him hard. "Just leave us alone! Give Leon back! Give him back!"
Eternatus' expression is almost regretful.
“I CANNOT."
"Why?"
"THE CHAMPION IS... BELOVED. NO ONE WILL SEAL US AWAY AGAIN IF WE ARE LIKE THIS."
Raihan doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't say anything at all. He rocks himself on the floor of the cave and cries and cries - letting loose all the tears he'd been holding back for the last week. He cries for Hop, who will never see his brother again. He cries for Sonia. He cries that he wasn't strong enough, quick enough to get to the power plant before Eternatus happened. He cries that he left Leon alone.
He cries until he can't anymore, then he silently packs up the campfire and stows away the leftovers in tupperware for Leon. He gives mechanical instructions to Eternatus on the fire starters and hopes a blizzard doesn't start in the middle of the night to kill them both. He climbs onto Flygon - who is still skittish around Eternatus and scrambles to get out of the cave as fast as she can.
Eternatus watches him the whole time with unblinking scarlet eyes.
But of course, he can't stay away for long.
"Come on. You need to bathe."
They head down the mountain in silence until they reach a river. Pokemon give them a wide distance.
Eternatus fumbles with his clothing when Raihan gestures for him to take it off. The sweat and dirt and gore have long dried and started to rot in his body. He stinks of rot and poison. Raihan picks up the gore stained clothes and makes a mental note to have Torkoal incinerate them before anyone asks him why he has Leon's bloodstained uniform.
He turns to see Eternatus standing waist-deep in the water, staring blankly at his muddled reflection in the water.
“You’re not going to get clean if you don’t get wet.”
“THIS IS… COLD?”
“Yeah, but tough luck it’s the only water we’ve got.” He thinks about bringing Charizard the next time, wonders how she would act.
“I COULD NOT FEEL COLD, IN SPACE.”
He tucks away that tidbit. He’ll deal with it later.
“Come here,” Raihan says by the edge of the water, and Eternatus follows obediently.
Raihan seats himself on a small cropping of rocks so he can reach Eternatus’ head. Then he ladles water with a small scoop he'd thought to bring along and pouring it over Eternatus’ head until the water sluicing through his hair finally runs clean. He has a cloth with him, which he uses to polish the growing horns on Eternatus’ head.
"YOU... HAVE NOT DONE THIS WITH LEON BEFORE," Eternatus observes.
"Yeah, well, before Leon was capable of bathing himself," Raihan mutters.
Eternatus hums and leans against him. Raihan breathes the smell of ozone deeply as he slowly brushes through Leon’s hair and reminds himself that this is not Leon he is with.
"HE LOVES YOU, YOU KNOW."
Eternatus offers this up casually, as he pulls a T-shirt on. It's one of Raihan's, so of course, it drowns him.
"HE HAS WANTED TO TELL YOU THAT FOR YEARS."
Eternatus looks at him hopeful, a yamper dropping a dead rookidee at its master's feet and expecting praise.
Raihan wants to scream. To cry. He wishes he'd said something earlier. He'd put it off for years - it was always after, after the next Championships, after I've beaten him we'll go out for food and then I'll ask him out. The weight of his regrets almost equals his grief.
"What does it matter now if you're never going to leave?"
Eternatus at least has the grace to not speak after that. Raihan silently thumbs the catch of Flygon’s ball flies off, leaving Eternatus by the river.
"YOU ARE - " Eternatus licks his lips, Leon's lips, a sad parody of Leon's nervous tic. Raihan's stomach flips at the gesture. "YOU ARE OUR MASTER. YOU FEED US AND CLOTHE US AND CARE FOR US. WILL YOU USE US IN BATTLE AS WELL?"
He'd always wanted to do a doubles match with Leon but never had the courage to ask. This feels like a joke, one where the punchline has knocked him straight in the gut and sent him flying through a room.
"No.”
The next time he sees Eternatus, he drops the packs of food to the cave floor and leaves without saying anything.
“MASTER.”
The horns on his head are growing longer, curving away from his head. His beard is completely grown out of shape, out of control.
“MASTER. WILL YOU NOT PLAY WITH US?”
Eternatus is filthy again. Raihan suspects he is doing this on purpose.
“MASTER?”
Maybe he has been approaching this wrong.
Eternatus is a Pokemon still. Scared and tired like the dragons Hammerlocke's conservatory looks after. It might be wearing Leon's skin, but he must treat it like a Pokemon.
And Raihan is a dragon tamer, the best one in Galar.
He sighs. “Come on,” he says, taking the ladle and soap. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Eternatus bounds towards him the same way his Turtanator will when especially pleased.
“Who are you?”
It’s a good as start as any, Raihan thinks, as he combs out the perpetual tangles in Leon’s hair. It is getting rougher, drier with the poor diet and lack of expensive hair products. He makes a note to bring some hair oil with him the next time he comes by.
“IT IS HARD TO EXPLAIN.”
“You said you were in space? Our legends say that you crash onto the earth in a meteorite.”
“THAT IS CORRECT. BUT THE SPACE I WAS IN IS NOT THIS WORLD. WE HAVE OUR OWN LEGENDS IN OUR WORLD, ABOUT TEARS IN THE FABRIC OF THE WORLD THAT WILL LEAD US TO A NEW UNIVERSE. I PASSED THROUGH SUCH A TEAR, BEFORE CRASHING ONTO YOUR PLANET.”
“So why did you try to destroy Galar?”
“WHY DID YOUR LEON TRY TO DESTROY ME?”
Raihan wants to protest. Leon would not have tried to kill it. Leon couldn’t kill anyone. Defeat Eternatus and capture it, that is all.
“We thought that you were going to unleash the Darkest Day again. He was only trying to save Galar.”
“WHEN I CRASHED HERE, YOUR ANCESTORS FOUGHT ME WITH WEAPONS OF METAL AND LIGHT. THEY PUT ME TO SLEEP, AND THEN YOU HUMANS WOKE ME UP AGAIN TO HARVEST MY BODY.”
“That isn’t true!”
“IT IS WHAT THE MAN YOU CALL CHAIRMAN ROSE WANTED TO DO. HE RULES GALAR, DOES HE NOT?”
“He does not - he just “ - owns most of it, is all, Raihan finishes lamely in his own head.
Eternatus is gentle when he speaks. “TELL ME. IS IT HUMAN NATURE NATURE TO DESTROY THE THINGS YOU KNOW, OR THE THINGS THAT YOU DON’T? AND WHICH IS WORSE?”
The question actually sounds genuine.
Raihan doesn’t need philosophy. He just wants Leon alive and healthy and well. He just wants another battle with him, and then another. Raihan could have gone on forever without the knowledge that Leon loved him if only he had Leon.
“MASTER. IF I DID NOT WEAR THIS BODY, WOULD YOU STILL CARE FOR ME?"
Raihan finishes braiding Leon’s hair and does not answer the question. “I’ll be back with food in two days,” he says instead. “Stay out of trouble.”
“Were you asleep, when you were sealed away?”
“NO. I WAS AWAKE. IN A FASHION.”
“What do you mean?”
“I COULD HEAR EVERYTHING GOING ON AROUND ME. WHEN I SLEPT, I DREAMED OF GALAR. I COULD SEE THE BUILDINGS AND HOW THEY WERE TORN DOWN AND BUILT AGAIN. I SAW THE DEATH OF THE KINGS WHO SEALED ME AWAY, AND THE DEATH OF THEIR SONS. I SAW GALAR GROW AND GROW.
There are tears falling from Leon’s eyes, but Eternatus makes no move to wipe them away. Maybe he doesn’t know what to do with them.
“I WANTED TO DREAM OF HOME. BUT I COULD NOT.”
Raihan brings slowpoke tail curry and watches Eternatus wolf it down. Like Leon, Eternatus hates bitter foods, but delights in rich savoury flavours. Raihan wonders if it is a result of inhabiting Leon’s body, and if the Pokemon would have different tastes.
“I would,” Raihan says, non sequiter.
“WOULD WHAT, MASTER?”
“Even if you weren’t in Leon’s body, I would still have cared for you. If you would have let me.” Raihan swallows, even though his throat is as parched as a Stow-on-side market. “You’re a dragon, and it is my duty to care for all the dragons in Galar.”
“I SEE.” Eternatus closes his eyes. Raihan can barely see Leon anymore. “THAT IS GOOD TO KNOW.”
Charizard rears and screeches upon seeing Eternatus. Raihan has never heard her make that sound before - a thin, high-pitched wail that goes on and on and on.
Eternatus reaches out a hand, pleading. “IT’S OKAY, GIRL. IT’S OKAY.” It uses the same words Leon would use, but there is so much wrongness, hearing it from Leon’s mouth in that voice. Charizard knows it too. Eventually, Raihan has to return her to her ball.
Eternatus rocks in a corner, sobbing. Raihan does not return to Hammerlocke that night. He doesn’t let Eternatus’s hand go.
Raihan wakes to a nightmare. It takes a moment to realise that it isn’t his.
Leon is thrashing in his sleep, crying out with broken sounds that fly through the air and stab Raihan as he moves over.
“Wake up,” he says. “Lee - please, wake up.” He shakes Leon hard.
Eternatus opens Leon’s eyes, glowing red. “THANK YOU, MASTER.” His face is blank, despite the panic just a few moments earlier.
Raihan slumps back, trying to breathe again from the shock. “What was that about?”
“ROSE.” Eternatus closes his eyes. “ROSE WILL TAKE US. HE WILL USE US, UNTIL WE ARE SUCKED DRY AND THIS ENTIRE PLANET IS IN RUINS.”
Raihan has nightmares about Rose too. About the Darkest Day, and climbing up to the top of the Power Plant. These days, it’s Rose he sees up there, not Eternatus. Rose, in his expensive suits and mild smile. Hand in pocket as he gently tells Galar how his plans will destroy them all. He can’t see Eternatus going about wrecking Galar in cold rage, not after he’s had to bathe him, and seen him spit out ice cream in shock, and wolf down the rest of it again as he grows used to the taste.
Eternatus shows no fear, but his hands are shaking. The smell of ozone and poison grows stronger.
“Rose is in jail. He’s never going to hurt you again.”
Eternatus opens his eyes. Wide-eyed and somehow nothing like Leon. “DO YOU PROMISE?”
“Yes.”
The kommo-o discovers their cave one day, screeches at the sight of Eternatus, and attacks.
Raihan has Turtanator out immediately to block the way. But before his Pokemon can unleash a single attack, a single tendril snakes towards the kommo-o and pierces through its scales. The kommo-o falls to the ground immediately, writhing.
Raihan whirls around and sees the tendril move back up the back of Leon’s head, disappearing amongst his hair. He’s never seen them whenever he combs Leon’s hair.
“MASTER - YOU TRIED TO PROTECT US.” Eternatus sounds almost dazed.
“Well of course! That kommo-o was - have you been able to do that all this time?”
“WE ASKED IF YOU WANTED TO USE US IN BATTLE.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know - “
“WILL YOU USE US IN YOUR GYM BATTLES? WE WILL BE VERY POWERFUL. WE COULD TAKE ON THE CHAMPIONSHIPS AND EARN YOU THE CROWN, IF YOU SO DESIRE.”
“I can’t use Galar’s former Champion, now presumed dead, in a battle!”
Eternatus cocks his head to the side while Raihan buries his head in his hands. Turtanator makes a terrified croak and tiptoes away from Eternatus until Raihan recalls him to his ball.
“MASTER?”
“Yes?”
“IF I WENT AWAY AND LIVED HERE. DO YOU THINK I MIGHT BE ABLE TO LIVE IN PEACE?”
Raihan notes that he’s using ‘I’ instead of ‘WE’.
“What do you mean?” he asks. Hope clambers up his chest, scrambling, kicking, a morgrem with sharp claws.
“I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO GO HOME. I ONLY WANT TO LIVE THE REST OF MY LIFE IN PEACE. IF I GAVE YOU BACK YOUR LEON, WILL YOU PROMISE TO COME VISIT ME SOMETIMES?”
It… it is what Raihan wanted. He just wants Leon back.
But there is something wrong with this now.
“Eternatus - “
“THAT IS NOT MY NAME.”
“What?”
“THAT IS THE NAME ROSE GAVE ME. WE DID NOT HAVE NAMES, BACK HOME. WE DID NOT NEED THEM.”
“Right.” He hesitates, it seems too forward to say this. Even though he’s seen the Pokemon chew on a raw Unfezant, and has now bathed him too many times to count because he seems incapable of keeping himself clean.
“Ezra. I’ll call you Ezra, if you want.”
“EZRA.” He says the name aloud and seems to taste it on his tongue, then smiles. satisfied at the taste. “I WOULD LIKE THAT VERY MUCH.”
Ezra makes a soft chittering sound. “WILL YOU HOLD ME, MASTER? I MUST TELL YOU A DIFFICULT THING.”
Raihan reaches out to hold the outstretched hand wordlessly. It is Leon, and it is Eternatus - no, Ezra - asking.
“WILL YOU STILL REMAIN MY MASTER, IF I GIVE YOU BACK YOUR LEON?” Ezra looks almost shy. “I WISH TO BATTLE WITH YOUR TEAM. I WOULD LIKE TO GO ON THESE CAMPING TRIPS YOU DO WITH LEON. I - “ He chews his lip, brushes his hair aside. His hand lingers on the horn that protrudes from this head. It is solid black, with red markings that glow like his eyes. “I WISH TO HAVE FRIENDS, IF I AM TO DIE IN THIS WORLD.”
“Die? But when - "
“ANOTHER MILLENIA. PERHAPS TWO. BUT I WISH FIRST TO BE YOUR POKEMON, BEFORE THAT.”
Raihan covers his face with his hand as he laughs. It’s part hysteria, and relief, and sheer joy, but he thinks Ezra can’t tell the difference.
When he can finally stop, he stands.“Sure, Ezra. I’ll be your trainer.”
More chittering sounds.
CATCH ME, the dragon says, without speaking.
Raiha readies the Ultraball in his hand and prepares to throw.
"Lee?"
Leon blinks and opens his eyes for the first time in weeks.