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Something about love made a person uncomfortably capable of ignoring the indefensible.
Because either Sycamore would need to remain too stupid to ask the question looming over his head, omnipresent and consuming, or he’d need to ask and find out that he was something so much worse than a fool. That….or he could be just a little stupid and ignore the stains left behind by his pretended inattention….
But that wasn’t much better.
Maybe he could take a stab at a third option. Maybe there was still something that explained everything without anyone being damned or a fool.
Maybe he was…wrong.
Lysandre was odd.
Lysandre had always been odd.
Lysandre believed in gods and eternal punishment, in the end of the world and in the transient nature of humanity. In beauty that faded through grasping fingers and in evil that was everlasting in its power. Kalos viewed religion in the same ways that it viewed philosophy and politics. They were a thing to put to the test. Put a noose about your neck and speak the chosen words aloud to see if your belief gave you the will to take it back off.
But that was a…dramatic way of looking at it—most people didn’t think about any of those topics, not every day, at least.
Sycamore certainly didn’t think about it much, at least when Lysandre wasn’t there to drag it back into his conscious awareness. As long as you got up every day and tried to leave the people about you better for the air you breathed, it was a good day. A whole life could be lived like that, and even if he’d achieved nothing much, Sycamore would still have considered the next generation a suitable ‘tomorrow’ to help build up.
But every now and then, they’d…talk. He and Lysandre didn’t spend much time together these days, but still, now and then, they’d get together for drinks if Lysandre was in the area and found it in himself to spare a little time for an…old friend. Like everything else in Sycamore’s relations with that man, there had never been much to define where they stood.
You’d think that being in love with someone, having walked the line of evident affection and having stepped onward following despite everything—but like everything else, it was…unspoken.
Sycamore was not a fool, but he was far too good at acting like one. Maybe that was his answer, already made by his inaction, but Sycamore hoped it wasn’t.
In the dark depths of his soul, Sycamore sometimes wondered if any of the bright-eyed kids he mentored, the ones that were sure that the future could be made into something better than the present, would still have that faith when they grew up. Sycamore remembered the visceral response of adults who’d told him that the world wasn’t fair and that he’d better get used to the idea.
Sycamore had thought that the only sane response was to try and make the world fair. Believe in people, no matter what, and give them a chance to understand that while the world might not be perfect, if people could see those imperfections, they might change those for the better.
To know what was…right and…stand—
Faith and love and fairness and right and faithlessness and gods this was wrong he knew it was wrong and yet he couldn’t figure out how to stop the slide and how to step back and see how this had gone so wrong—
Was he wrong?
If he fell for that despair, would he be condemning Lysandre—when people had said that the world wasn’t fair, they’d never mentioned that sometimes the enemy you faced would believe the same as you but just…a little more broken.
The lab was silent and cold despite it being the middle of summer, as the air conditioning system always ran a few degrees lower than was comfortable, even with Sycamore’s many attempts to fix that. The burning white of the fluorescent bulbs, for all their brightness, also only made the evening colder. That light shone against Lysandre’s skin, making it look sallow and throwing dark shadows in the jerky movements between each word his mouth formed.
Perched on the edge of his desk, Sycamore listened to the outpouring, not giving so much as a hum of reply or encouragement. There wasn’t really a need to reply—Sycamore would listen despite himself, and maybe Lysandre knew that because he didn’t leave much room for replies as he threw out his words.
Spat them out.
The world was unfair—
Unjust—
Unchanging—
Same old, same old.
The passion was there, the bits that Sycamore still agreed with, but the rest—Lysandre spoke of projects without specifics, of broad and dark philosophies and the depths of humanity’s soul and how it would be better off ruined than reformed.
Souls always seemed to weigh on him—such weight on all of this.
One day they’d all be dead, and yes, it might not be fair or good, but here and now, they were alive—but that didn’t matter to Lysandre, apparently.
No room for reasonable observation in his ranting.
The day had been warm, and there had been easy conversation with people that had felt at home in their humanity. But this was now the evening, and the cold had seeped into the room along with Lysandre’s eyes, which seemed more and more like ice the older he got.
More and more distant like the gods he believed in.
How did you reach someone that only listened to unspoken voices? Could someone better than Sycamore find a way to reach him anyway, or was this a battle that he was a fool to still be trying to fight—nothing about this mattered when you lived in the real world.
But Lysandre believed this mattered, and sometimes his words dug in deep enough so that Sycamore almost—
…Sycamore wasn’t sure what Lysandre intended to do with this belief of his.
A man might believe the world hopeless and do nothing about it but lay down and despair, but Lysandre had never been passive. It wasn’t uncommon for people to grow more like their parents as they aged. Sometimes people would just…grow worse. There was nothing to tell Sycamore if Lysandre had ever given this more thought than just the philosophical underpinnings.
…To keep being a fool or to ask for an indefensible answer—
There was a pitch up in Lysandre’s tone, and Sycamore almost flinched as another sentence was thrown free like Lysandre was seeking to cut with it despite how there was no one here to argue with—no one here to convince but him.
There was a lull in Lysandre’s words, a pause as he gathered himself or the next few words; it didn’t matter.
Sycamore got onto his feet and stepped forward enough to take hold of one side of Lysandre’s collar. Only the faintest flash of confusion creased Lysandre’s brow before it settled into something narrow and considering. Still, he didn’t push Sycamore back—there was likely going to be a point where Lysandre stopped letting him do this…but maybe as long as he could physically reach him, it wasn’t too late.
And Lysandre did still return to try and convince Sycamore of things, even if he never did more than stand back and paint the world in the darkest shades he could conjure. Maybe that meant that he could also be convinced, if Sycamore found the right thing to say.
Sycamore jerked Lysandre down until he was forced to the same eye level, making a pretence of them being an equal height—too much pressure, too much force in the grip of his hand, but sometimes the only way to get a word in was to try and unbalance Lysandre until he was forced to see eye-to-eye with you.
Lysandre answered that force in kind, and the sudden tight grip on the back of his neck dragged Sycamore up onto his toes. There was no move from Lysandre to step closer, and the fingernails grazing the skin just below Sycamore’s ear were the only point of contact Lysandre gave him. The only sound was the slightest squeak of Sycamore’s shoes shifting on the tiles, looking to keep himself balanced, and Lysandre’s hiss of breath as he glared.
Not good enough—
Breath stuttering, Sycamore grabbed Lysandre’s other wrist and applied pressure to his arm, and even if there was resistance, Sycamore was strong enough to move him. Lysandre looked bigger but lived without much regard for anything but keeping his body alive. Sycamore needed to deal with young and vigorous Pokémon, and if you weren’t strong enough to counter that, you’d get thrown about a lot.
There wasn’t much but bone and skin to Lysandre if you looked past those fancy suits of his.
Sycamore pushed just enough so that Lysandre took a stumbling step back and let go of him, now firmly on the back foot. Lysandre’s eyes were a shade warmer now, but in the same way that a blowtorch might be warm—it wasn’t any easier to hold onto, for all it wasn’t ice anymore.
Burning hot or cold, neither was safe to touch but sometimes plunging your hand into the heart of it was the only option left.
…To get closer or step away.
Ha.
Sycamore knew the answer to this one.
Let it burn him as it would.
“—You’re not the centre of the world,” Sycamore said. “There are other people in it, and sometimes their opinions might even be worth listening to.”
A flicker of movement about Lysandre’s eyes and mouth shifted it from one state to another and then back to still as the gust of unidentifiable emotion passed. “You might have stated such an argument without so many…dramatics, Sycamore.”
Pulling a smile into place like he’d pull a window blind down over a dark night, Sycamore tightened his grip on Lysandre’s wrist. “Would you have listened to me if I had?”
Lysandre didn’t answer as he put tension on Sycamore’s grip on his arm, and after a moment of giving in to the urge to hang on, Sycamore let go. Lysandre rubbed at his wrist in an absent movement that did more to tell Sycamore that he’d used too much pressure than any complaint would have.
But how else could you reach someone so determined to not listen?
“—Lysandre, do you—” Sycamore stared at the question on the tip of his tongue and grabbed at the words to drag them back and crush the still-wet clay into another shape. But couldn’t find the words he needed—he needed to fight to get his foothold in this conversation back, but it had slid out from under him.
“Did you at least have a point to make?” Lysandre asked.
“…I—sorry.” Sycamore tried to smile and gave a loose shrug. “Lost my train of thought there.”
“…Why are you always so dramatic.”
What was there to say to that? It was true, and yet also, it was rich to hear that from Lysandre.
Sycamore laughed and thought he did a reasonable job of making it sound genuine. “Someone has to balance out you and your melancholic tendencies. Might as well be me and my over-dramatic ones!”
Lysandre was watching him, still oddly present in this conversation, at least for now, as he asked, “Are you…well, Sycamore? You seem…”
“—Are you?” Sycamore said, grabbing at the opening he’d not seen coming and hadn’t been ready to take. “You’ve…recently you’ve been, and I—”
“There is nothing to concern yourself with.”
“If you ever—I’ll drop everything to help if you ever need—”
“Nothing is wrong—”
“—Yes, but if you really think—”
“—stop rambling and speak directly—what point are you trying to make?” There was a jerk of movement, and Lysandre’s fingers burned where they’d grabbed Sycamore’s wrist, but despite the sear, it felt like a thousand miles stood between those fingertips and his skin.
Sycamore opened and closed his mouth but found that he had nothing to give. All he could see if Lysandre’s eyes were a frozen wasteland of nothing—or was it a burning coal that he could see glowing blue? Too far away to affect, and it seemed that even burning yourself on it wasn’t enough to impact it; wasteland or coal.
“—Sorry. Just…rambling, like you said. You know how I get. Don’t mind me.”
The rest of Lysandre’s reply didn’t matter.
He’d asked the wrong question, so it wouldn’t have made a difference, even if Lysandre had given anything but a non-answer in response. This was all just another shade of grey to rub off onto his soul as he pretended to be a fool.
Was it those layers of grey that made the red flags seem less vivid?
Maybe a little longer would show him there was another answer, and he’d just been too close to see it.
…Or was the third option just being too much of a coward to ever ask.