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There’s a knock on her door.
No one ever knocks on her door.
Cogita is at her nightstand when she hears the rapping sound of knuckles pounding furiously at her door. Her Spiritomb wisp lamp is allowing her to write more verses of history into scripts she will pour all over Sinnoh in the hopes of letting history be remembered. She is one of the last of her people, after all, and the only thing left for her to do is cast her memories into the vastness of time and space.
Still, she never gets visitors at this hour. While she may be visited by a stray Pokemon or perhaps even a certain young man with the temperament of a self-centered Bidoof, everyone with any shred of respect knows not to bother her at midnight.
Resigning herself to a sigh, she pushes herself to a stand. From her bedside, Umbreon bristles, agitated by the sudden noise. The creature does not look as alarmed as she feels, and she takes some comfort in that. If the Pokemon felt something was a danger to her life, she’d have no doubt the black feline would be scratching anxiously at her door in an attempt to bite the throat of whoever sought her ill.
As she pauses in front of the door, she realizes only now that she hears the sound of rain outside. When she opens it, she finds herself surprised to see Volo standing in front of her, the scoundrel of a man looking at her with eyes made of fatigued desperation.
In his arms, clutched tightly to his chest, is a girl Cogita recognizes quite well. It is hard not to remember her, as she is the second visitor to her sacred home in her lifetime. The lost one, she knows her as, Akari of the Jubilife Settlement.
“Volo,” Cogita’s voice is sharp as she looks at the man. She remembers all too well the grief this man has put Akari through, and so naturally she can’t help but doubt the man’s intentions in bringing the woman here. “What have you done to this poor child?”
He pushes his way in without a teasing word to follow. He brushes past her, doing so in such a way that Cogita might have called him out for his insolence if it wasn’t so peculiar of him. She’s known this man since he was a youngling. He’s always treated her with reverence before, even if that reverence was born from a need to use and not a need to listen. So for him to drop the pleasantries suddenly…not to mention the way he'd shoved past her to get in...was whatever happened to Akari something serious?
Volo drapes Akari against her bed, once again adding to his list of infractions as Cogita comes to the woman’s side. She looks at the young lady who is drenched in as much rain water as Volo is. Then she removes a glove to feel Akari’s head.
It is warm to the touch. Hot, even. And judging from the way Akari pants even in a state of apparent unconsciousness, she can guess the reason for Volo’s sudden manifestation.
“She has a fever,” Cogita states softly. “Is that why you brought her to me?”
Volo doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t even seem to hear her. His expression is shadowed, long hair draped about his face like a shameful curtain.
How odd, Cogita thinks. She’s heard the story from Akari on how the man confronted her at the mountain peak of the Coronet Highlands. He’d betrayed her for his own selfish interests in “remaking the world”. The aftermath of that little spat had sent Akari running into her abode. The young woman had cried, broken by the betrayal of a man she thought she knew. And while Cogita had always known Volo was a two-faced scoundrel, she’d never thought he’d gone so far in his madness for Arceus as to threaten Akari’s life.
“I thought you hated her.”
Those words seem to shake Volo from his stupor. He looks up at her, eyes glazed. He’s panting heavily himself - perhaps from exertion, perhaps from the strain of the cold doubtlessly seeping into his clothes - and only gives her the slightest look of understanding.
“She’s sick,” he mumbles. “I don’t have any medicine on me. You have to help her. Please.”
Her hand waves in front of her lips in exasperation. She looks to Umbreon, who has taken to sniffing Akari’s form. Volo is giving the feline a look that suggests his annoyance, but he seems too weak to do anything to the creature.
Instead, he cradles Akari’s hand in his own and presses it to his forehead.
Cogita can’t help but pity the man as she observes him. She’s always known him to be eerily calm despite the circumstances life had thrown at him. He’d not shed a tear at his parent’s deaths when she’d found him abandoned in the forest, clinging to their corpses in a stubborn but knowing way. He’d not grieved for the loss of his first Pokemon, a friendly Eevee whose tiny size made it the easy pickings of a hungry Ursaring.
Perhaps that explained Volo's cultish obsession with godhood. What else could explain his fascination with the unknown except for his hopes that obtaining Arceus would allow him to rewrite the tragedies he suffered through? Cogita had barely managed to catch wind of his grand plans herself, especially when he never alluded to it outside of denying the tragedies of his life, but his constant obsession with the enigmatic had been more than enough to clue her in on his true intentions.
Now, as she watches the man who has spent his whole life waiting to throw everything away for a chance at a redone world of happiness, she realizes that reality must have hit him hard. His lofty ambitions have been bested by the young woman in front of them. He has no chance at a redone world, especially not when Arceus itself has denied him any hope. The plates and flute have vanished. And, with them, the stair steps that lead to heaven.
So as Volo sits here before Cogita, the woman realizes that the man must've come to terms with the world he lives in. For his posture looks akin to a man praying for the recovery of a loved one, in grief and ready to mourn a loss at any second now.
“...I will gather up my herbs to make some medicine.” She tells Volo. “Until then, Umbreon will look after her.”
She says that last line as a warning. If Volo recognizes that fact, he doesn’t react. His head is still dipped down, golden hair shielding his expression from view. Cogita sighs, but keeps true to her word, escaping from the safety of her house and into the garden where she keeps all her herbs.
Flowers and grasses of different shapes and sizes - all cultivated lovingly by her patient hands - greet her gaze. She moves instinctually among the fields, finding the plants she needs to counteract the effects of fever. She picks them with one hand and puts them in another, gathering a bundle of herbs that she takes back to her retreat.
There, she finds a mortar and pestle that has been her saving grace in this place. As the last of her lineage, she’s had to try many times to replicate the recipes that produce the medicines she needs. And while she suspects Volo’s sold off such information to the guild he runs alongside, she’s glad that at least some knowledge from the Celestica people will remain intact.
Crushing the herbs in the mortar, she smashes them down into a fine powder through the pounding and grinding of her pestle. As she does so, she hears the rustling of clothes from behind her. It doesn’t take her long to realize that Volo is hovering over her as his shadow beckons her gaze.
He appears like a lost puppy, slumped in form and bearing an expression that suggests he’s going to start whimpering any second. There’s a tight nervousness to his body, fidgeting to his hands. The sight is nostalgic: he used to get this way with her whenever he was anxious to learn something new. As a young boy formerly in her care, he’d always respected her enough to give her the space. But, at times when his curiosity had grown too large to bear, he’d give her a pleading look to join in on the fun. That look he had shown her then was the same one she was looking at now: a pitiful display of wanting to help in any way possible.
“Take this powder,” she says to Volo, holding out the mortar full of bright green dust, “and put it in a glass of water. Let her drink it all. But slowly.”
Volo’s hands hesitantly reach for the mortar. His fingers touch it. Then he yanks them back, flinching.
Cogita gives a sigh, a hand tapping her chin in exasperation. “What are you waiting for? Do you want to keep Akari suffering from her fever?”
That does the trick. Volo grabs at the mortar without hesitation, moving with precision to where she keeps a glass and a container of collected rainwater. He pours the water, adding the powder after, and then holds it in a shaky hand.
“You’re going to spill it all over,” Cogita fusses, grabbing the glass and prying it gently from Volo’s hands. The man gives her a helpless look as he follows her to Akari’s side.
She’s surprised by his lack of jibes, not to mention his utter silence. Usually by now he would be boasting about some inane thing. The fact that he hasn’t worries her a bit.
Still, she has more important things to pay attention to at the moment.
Easing Akari up, she places the glass to Akari’s lips. The green-colored drink slips inside her mouth at a slow and easy rate, so much so that it’s enough to trigger the swallowing of the throat.
Once she’s ascertained that Akari has taken all of the medicine without choking, Cogita leans Akari back against the bed. Her breathing seems to ease almost instantly, but Cogita knows for a fact it might take a while for the medicine to properly cure her. Time, after all, is the most valuable tonic in relieving one’s sickness.
“Now,” she says, letting the glass slip onto a nearby table. “Tell me, Volo. Why are you so desperate to help this young woman? Last I knew, this child was crying on my chest about your betrayal of her trust. I can’t see why I should let you stay here any longer, not unless you give me a good reason for this.”
Volo’s face is stricken with an instant rush of something that Cogita suspects (and hopes) is guilt. The man’s head turns away, one arm reaching up to rub at the other in anxious tugs at his skin.
“I couldn’t leave her alone like that,” Volo says, softly. “I found her in the woods with all her Pokemon fainted.”
“And you couldn’t just leave her to the Survey Corps to find? You know there's no reward for you in rescuing her yourself."
“They wouldn’t have acted fast enough,” Volo growls, a sudden spike of sharpness to his voice. “She was running a fever. A bad one. She didn’t even recognize me when I got to her.”
“So you came to me for help? Even knowing I could turn you away for your insolence?”
“You wouldn’t turn her away though.”
Cogita pauses, blinking. “...Well, you’re not wrong about that.”
The woman sighs, hands placed in front of her. She has half a mind to toss him out of her abode. After all, how would Akari feel if she saw the man who tormented her beside her when she awoke? She was sure the young lady wouldn't like that.
She opens her mouth to say as such, when Volo stares at her.
His eyes look dead. Soulless. It’s as if Azelf itself has robbed him of his willpower to continue on. How he made it here in that shape, with panic formerly on his face and desperation embedded into his being, she’s not sure. The him that sits in front of her now looks like a shell of the him who’d barged past her moments earlier.
“Do you care about her?” Cogita asks him. Her tone is low enough to be somewhere between the veil of scolding and anger. “Or do you want to use her again in the hopes she’ll get you to Arceus?”
“I don’t know.” He says. And it must be the truth, because the Volo she knows would have waved off such musings with an immediate change in subject. “I don’t know what I want.”
With that, he falls upon one of the chairs that resides in her room, covering his face with his hands. There are no more words that come from his mouth, just as there is no more to say between them.
The woman stands there, looking over Akari’s form. The girl’s mouth parts and then closes, no doubt breathing in the air of her abode. Umbreon has curled alongside the girl, aiding her in warmth. The sight makes Cogita’s lips tighten into a small smile.
“She’ll be fine,” the woman says. “She just needs some rest.”
And the look that Volo gives her, helpless yet flush with relief, is enough to tell Cogita all she needs to know.
~~~
When Akari awakens, she does so with a thirst that is great.
Something bitter bites at the back of her tongue, acrid and funny-tasting, like the grass she once ate to relieve her stomach of its hunger (not her best moment, she knows). It’s a strange and almost unsettling sensation, and the burning desire for water does nothing to mitigate her discomfort.
Luckily, there’s a glass of water just within reach. She grabs it, quick to clasp her lips around its rim as she guzzles the drink with the gusto of a Finneon out of water.
Instantly, relief comes to her throat. She breathes a sigh, a hand reaching for her neck, rubbing it, and then placing the glass aside. Her movements feel stiff, but not enough for her to think about. Instead, she’s more curious about the sight of the abode she’s been placed in.
It looks like Cogita’s house, and perhaps even may be, judging from the herbs strung up on the beams of the roof. She’d been wandering around the mirelands of the Diamond Clan settlement, intent on following up on Adaman’s report of a shiny Combee, when her team at the moment had been beaten up by an angry Vespiquen and she’d been forced to run for cover.
After that, she’d been stuck in a bad rainstorm, her flute too quiet to summon the Pokemon that heeded her call and in no shape to move past the numerous Pokemon territory that separated her and safety. So she’d planned to wait the rain out, at least long enough that her flute could dry to once again produce its Pokemon-calling notes. But then she remembers growing cold, so cold, and the ground had been so warm and then…
And then she’d heard a voice, felt hands cup her forehead, heard the hissing and cursing of a voice that in her delirium she could have sworn was familiar. When she had felt the warmth of that person, she had definitely curled close to them, eager to partake in the comfort of their presence.
“Akari…” The person had said. “Are you alright?”
“I’m cold.” Was all she had told the person, who at the time she guessed was a Security Corps member who’d been sent out to bring her home. “I want to go back home. Please, take me back.”
The person had inhaled sharply at that. Was it so surprising to ask such a question? Or perhaps she’d been so delirious that it was cause for concern? Back then, she hadn’t thought much about it, but perhaps she’d caught her savior off-guard with such a blunt request.
Still, if she is indeed in Cogita’s abode and not that of the other settlements, then perhaps it was Cogita who had rescued her. The woman was not a fan of talking, but she had always lent Akari an ear whenever it was needed. She considered Cogita the closest she had to an aunt in this life, and she loved the woman dearly for it.
“I’ll have to thank her,” she says. “I wonder if she’d like some flowers?”
As she says that, she feels something shift on her bed. Akari pauses, so engrossed in her thoughts of the roof of the room that constrains her that she hasn’t bothered to check in her peripheral surroundings. She tilts her head in the direction of the movement, expecting to see Cogita waiting expectantly for her in that quiet, aloof way of hers, before the sight Akari sees instead has her freezing in place.
Volo, the very man whose smiles and helpful doings had led her into the misguided belief that they were friends, is sitting beside her. The upper half of his body is slung across her bedside, the top of his head - which is curled towards his chest - brushing against the side of her left leg. His hair has been let loose from its normal tidy bun, cast out upon the sheets like spiraling threads of gold. His arms are draped across the bed, one beneath his head and the other in a triangular shape with his fist resting under his right cheek.
The sight alarms her as much as it confuses her. She stares at the man who is draped upon her bedside, taking careful note of the way his eyes are closed and his chest rises and falls in tandem with his slumber. There are wrinkles under his eyes, as well as a tint of something that is glistening.
Had he been crying? The thought makes her frown. The Volo she knows would have done anything but cry. He’d been boisterous and uplifting, carefree and apathetic, but never unguarded and as forlorn as he appears now.
It’s been months, but Akari still remembers his betrayal at the top of what is now dubbed Spear Pillar. His eyes had been wide with rage, his mouth spewing promises of a life without her. The man had claimed to want to start everything from scratch, to erase every single thing that exists as it does now in order to rewrite the universe into something happier. And while perhaps she can understand the sentiment behind his reasoning - this world is a cruel place, after all - she can’t find it in her heart to understand his desire to destroy everything that they've both ever known.
“I take it you have questions?”
She nearly shoots herself into the roof as Cogita’s voice enters her ears. She sees the woman standing in the entrance of her home, smiling politely, and watches as the woman comes to take a seat on the other side of Volo.
Akari looks at the man. Her sudden jump doesn’t seem to have awakened him. For, he still sleeps peacefully, the only sign of disturbance being the way he curls in upon himself slightly, like a child pulling away from the light of the morning sun.
“He brought you here,” Cogita says, softly, as if reading the girl’s mind. “I was surprised myself. I never thought I’d see the day that child would plead with me to save someone from a fever. Much less the same woman he’d scorned in his selfish quest for godhood.”
She nods, quiet in the gesture. It feels like she can’t say anything. Cogita must understand that, because the woman reaches out a hand to gently wrap around her shoulder.
“But,” she says, “I’ve never seen him look so panicked either. I don’t think he knows it himself, but I believe he cares a great deal about you.”
“If he did,” Akari mumbles, “then he wouldn’t have told me he was willing to erase my existence for his new world.”
The woman tilts her head. “Lost one, that man is many things. A scoundrel, a cheat, a traitor, and a lazy excuse of a worker. But he’s also a liar to himself.” The woman huffs, a hand underneath her chin. “I would doubt it myself, but I saw him when he came. That man must care about you. Else, why would he have wasted the energy to bring you here when he could have just as easily left you to die?”
Akari can’t argue against that. So she looks at the man. He’s still wearing the uniform of the guild, which is odd because she’s almost certain Ginter has cast him out for straight up abandonment of his duties. His backpack and hat are gone now, however. She’s not sure why, but that fact alone makes her a little sad.
“I have your stuff in your bag.” Cogita says, gesturing to the item in question on the nightstand with the glass. “If you don’t feel comfortable here, feel free to leave. Volo isn’t a light sleeper. He’s not likely to wake up, especially not since he’s only had three hours of sleep since he brought you here.”
“Three hours?”
Cogita smiles. “Like I said, that man’s a liar. He was by your side this entire time, constantly fussing over you. I’d have thought he was attached to you like a parasite, especially given how little he’s eaten since he’s come here.”
Akari looks at the man. Blinks at his sleeping form. Slips out from under the covers of Cogita’s bed, easing out onto the floorboards with a wobbliness that is only stopped by Cogita’s hand on her back.
The woman doesn’t say anything, merely watches as Akari gathers up her stuff. Her clothes still feel damp, but it’s not enough to bother her into changing. She’s not sure she even has spare clothes to change out of. She probably left them behind at the spare tent Adaman had provided her the night prior to her adventures. Which is a bit of a bummer, but something she’ll have to put up with until she gets back.
Umbreon greets her at the entrance, waking up from its dozing state on the floor to wag its tail at her. She pets the creature, never a stranger to its presence, and then turns to Cogita.
The woman’s gaze is guarded as usual, but it’s also soft in that strange, almost doting way of hers. Akari puts her bag on the ground, digging into her belongings for something of value. Her hands wrap around an item, careful to pick it up, and with steps marred by only the slightest hint of hesitation she places the item in Cogita’s hands.
“For him,” she says, before returning to her bag, grabbing it, slinging it upon her back and then opening the door to the outside world. “I’m sorry for the trouble I caused you.”
“Not at all, lost one.”
Cogita’s voice is pleasant as Akari shuts the door behind her.
Once certain that she’s out in the open, she shuts her eyes tight for a long second, squeezing them to the point her eyelids might burst, before she dashes forward, something burning in her eyes as she escapes into the wilderness beyond.
~~~
When Volo opens his eyes, Akari is gone.
She has abandoned her resting place, disappeared from it like a specter. Her body no longer rests underneath the plush sheets of Cogita’s bed, instead departed like a ghost from its vessel.
The panic must show on his face, for he hears the familiar click of a tongue and looks up to see Cogita staring down at him from the opposite side of the bed.
“She…left…?” The words tumble out of his mouth with such shame, that he might as well have more luck catching a horde of Zoroark than to speak. “No, of course she did. I can’t blame her. Wouldn’t want to be around me either right now.”
The void that has been in his heart since his parents died and abandoned him to the woods is yawning widely. He tries to ignore its presence as he always does, but he doesn’t have the willpower to do so. What’s the point? He’s as defeated as a kicked Magikarp, left to simmer in his own self-doubt and depression after the chain of events that’d led him to his own demise.
Still, that doesn’t mean he has to feel hurt about it. It’s only within Akari’s rights to flee from him. What good had he ever done for her? His betrayal had sown much harm into her, if Cogita’s words were to be held true (which they were: unlike him, she never lied), and it was only rational of her to flee before he could be made aware of her awakening.
“I told her that you rescued her,” Cogita says. “The rest came after.”
He suspects the vague way she addresses him is meant to make a point. He pulls himself up from his resting place, rubbing at his eyes until he clears away the crust of tears that have long since dried up.
Cogita takes a seat on her bed, leaning in such a way that she’s half facing him, half not. She holds out a hand, offering him something that is deep blue in appearance.
An Oran Berry.
The man’s gaze flicks to hers, eyebrows furrowing so obviously as to give away his bafflement. Cogita’s lips turn upwards in a secretive way, and as she moves the berry up and down in a beckoning gesture, he takes the offering into his hands, observing it carefully.
“She left that for you.” Cogita says. “A parting present.”
Volo’s breath catches in his throat. Despite himself, his eyes burn and his lips tremble. Tears cascade down his face and he’s not quick enough to stop them. His shoulders shake and, with a bite that’s as grateful as it is desperate, he eats into the Oran Berry.
It tastes far sweeter than it should, but Volo eats it anyway. The taste is exquisite. Reassuring. He weeps over its flavor, telling himself he’s crying for this morsel of food and not because of the feelings that are constricting his chest into a mess of grief and mourning.
Maybe this isn’t the end like he thought.
Maybe this is a new beginning.