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Sometimes, Volo would get this..itch, in the back of neck, and a headache in between his eyes.
And then everything would go black, most of the time, the scared faces of the people around him greeted him when he came back to consciousness.
-
The first time it happened, Rei and Volo were laying side by side in Rei’s home in Jubilife village.
Merely a futon apart, Rei blew out the candle, wishing Volo a good night. And then Volo was grumbling, squirming in place and holding his head, the next thing he knew, Volo was hovering over him, crushing him downwards with his hands around his neck, squeezing hard enough to cut the air off.
Rei choked, clasping Volo’s hands. Volo had this..wild look in his eye, grinning down at him the same way he did when he was standing side by side with Giratina.
“It’s all your fault…if I just..” And he put more of his weight into it, eyes widening manically, his smile breaking into a mimicry of a grin, horrifying with the way it showed too many teeth.
“V-Vo..lo.” He reached up to touch Volo’s face, and it was as if he snapped out of a dream. Volo tore away, disoriented.
“What was I just..?” Rei wasn’t listening, turning back over to gasp for air. He hiccoughed, grabbing at his own throat much like Volo did, rubbing at the skin where it had been squeezed painfully.
“Rei? What’s wrong, are you sick?”
Volo inched over, concern written all over his face, lifting Rei’s head up, he gasped.
“Rei…who..?!” Ugly, purpling hand prints circled around Rei’s neck like a gruesome necklace.
Rei shook his head, lying on the spot. “A night ago a golduck almost got me.” He smiled helplessly, “Sorry, I didn’t want to worry you, but..” And it was easy to believe that lie, considering Rei always wears his mask, and almost never speaks, it aligned perfectly with his behavior in the past day.
Volo didn’t ask why they only just appeared when they’d been in candlelight without his mask on, maybe it was a part of his brain blocking out that reasoning to protect him.
Volo had carried him to the corps anyway, and had him assessed. One of the nurses passingly commented that it must have been some golduck, to squeeze him so hard when their hands were mostly made of thin fin flesh, to which he panicked and said it had been an alpha.
So now the corps is currently on the lookout for an Alpha golduck who doesn’t even exist at the moment.
-
Sometimes Rei would look at Volo for longer than necessary, sometimes they’d just be walking side by side in the wilds, or they’d be camping, or Rei would do it from afar, while Volo was trying to sell his wares to passing travelers.
Rei was able to catch the next time it happened.
It was late at night, they’d stopped at the diamond settlement for the night, cozy in Adaman’s tent.
Adaman was doing his nightly ritual over at the lake, meanwhile Volo was getting ready for bed.
Suddenly he grunted, holding the front of his head, glaring at the floor with that same crazed look.
Rei quietly approached, carefully defending his neck. “Volo?” Volo’s head cracked with the force of his head turn, Rei gulped.
He suddenly forced a smile, “My favorite customer..would you like to hear about Arceus? I have some really good stories.”
Rei nodded, and Volo started his retelling of the same story he recited millions of times before the temple incident.
He grabbed Volo’s hands away from his own face, where the nails were starting to draw blood, and sat them both down, paying rapt attention to both appease Volo and make sure he didn’t make any sudden movements.
The crazed episode passed ten minutes later, as he repeated the same story over, and over, and over again. Each time, taking a pause at the end, his eyes would refocus, and he’d ask Rei the same question all over again.
When Volo had blinked awake, Rei told him the little white lie that his easily startled Rowlet had attacked Volo’s face and knocked him unconscious when he fell. When Volo asked him where the Rowlet was now, he’d simply said he’d sent it back to the ranch so he could focus on Volo better.
The fond smile he received in turn made the squirming monster of guilt in his chest grow larger.
-
The third incident happened along the road. Unlike the last two times, when it happened at night, it was broad daylight.
Volo had stopped, making Rei bump into him, swiftly turned, Rei the center of his attention, just like the last two times.
“Why, who might you be?” Rei felt his breath try to leave him in his shock. He played along anyway. “I’m Rei, I fell from the sky.”
Volo smiled his Zorua-like smile that Rei now knew was fake. “Well! That’s so interesting! Do you know why?” Rei had walked him through, explaining very carefully how the whole thing went down as he subtly walked him towards the nearest camp.
“That’s fascinating, you know, there’s this old legend..”
And so Rei withstood through two hours of repetitive questions and stories. Volo only tried to get aggressive with him three times, lunging for him out of nowhere, thankfully he was able to dodge and ask some obscure question about a detail of the story, and Volo was suitably distracted.
When Volo finally woke up, he’d gone on as if nothing happened, except for asking how close they were to a camp for the night.
-
He looked at Cogita from across her tea table. “I need your help.”
He explained, in great detail, the entirety of what had happened.
Cogita closed her eyes in thought, a hand to her chin. “It sounds a lot like what would occasionally happen to his ancestors as well. A sudden burst of forgetful madness would occur, they could hurt people, or revert to memories that had already happened.”
She shook her head, “They believed it had to do with handling volatile spiritual entities for an increased amount of time.”
Rei thought back to Volo’s spiritomb, which he’d confessed had been inherited.
“Then-” She nodded, “Yes, his spiritomb has unknowingly, or maybe not, inflicted the same madness unto Volo.”
She glanced to the side, “He might have known, which is why he could’ve had a Togepi as his partner in the first place. I never knew why he chose such an uncharacteristic pokemon, but it seems, it’s finally come to light, as fairy types can often combat the effects of prolonged exposure to ghost types.”
Rei pressed his lips together, he knew well the side effects of having a ghost type. His own Froslass would make him cry uncontrollably when around her for too long, he once almost buried a pearl clan member in the snow in a sudden bout of grief induced rage, though he’d never had a reason to be sad or angry.
“Is there any way to cure it..other than the obvious.” He really didn’t want to be the one to tell Volo to ditch his beloved spiritomb.
She tilted her hand, “Yes. I understand you have a Typhlosion, yes?” At his confirmation, she sipped her teacup. “Good, then you surely know the lore around them. The effects of their spirit guidance should be enough to stop the malice that comes off of spiritomb.
He would try it, hopefully, against all else, it would work.
-
He kept Rude out constantly. He mostly lazed every chance given, but his prescence was notably making things better.
When they went a full three months without an episode, he decided to sit his friend down and talk, and tell him all he knew.
There were tears, shouting, and accusations. Volo, at his heart, was a weary soul, he always felt himself alone, and Rei keeping something so detrimental to both his own health and Rei’s made him feel betrayed.
Rei had hugged him through his sob-filled yelling, arms around his middle, taking the soft landed blows on his back without complaint.
Then they simply stood there, one holding the other, gently swaying inside the room where it had all started, the candle half burned, and Rude sitting by the pit, his fire gently glowling, he laid with one eye open on Volo.
In the end, he agreed to watch his use with spiritomb, confessing he thought that having Togepi would have combated the old stories.
They slept that night with Rude in the middle of their futons, not because Rei didn’t trust him, but because Rude was much larger, fluffier, and warmer then Rei ever could be, and right now Volo needed something bigger than himself to make him feel like he wasn’t lonely.