Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was on the bright and beautiful world of Celestica, with its buttery skies and clouds so full and tumescent that one might think they were made of spun sugar, its climate so temperate that those on another world might say it defied explanation, that the story began. More specifically, it began on the island city of Anastasi, a shining jewel off the coast of Timoria, with its glittering blue seas and wildlife so plentiful and lush it was nearly a biodome all on its own. On this breathtaking island was located an even more breathtaking temple, made of marble and limestone and a mysterious black substance that ran between the cracks of that stone, and which had the fascinating quality of causing anyone who crossed the threshold of that temple, and passed over that black substance, calm and at ease, as if all of their worries and anxieties had simply vanished, and would take a very long time to return even once they left the vicinity of the temple.

Upon entering this Anastasi temple, you would be greeted by the priestess on duty that day, who might be female, or might be male, or might be something else altogether, but was always called a priestess. Those who had long hair would have it swept up and pinned back, with gold ornaments all throughout, studded with green jewels in the middle, and at the back of their heads would rest a larger ornament, similarly gold, that resembled an X, with a circle on the outer edges, missing its top and bottom. This symbol was everywhere in the temple and seemed to be the iconography that represented whatever deity was being worshiped here. The priestesses were consistently garbed in whiter-than-white knee-length tiered dresses, with long sleeves that fit close to the skin and snaked up along their arms until they reached the wrists, at which point golden threads seemed to appear out of nothing and form a lace fretwork that covered the backs of their hands and rose halfway up their fingers. This same pattern was repeated on their legs, blooming out of thin air and continuing down, over the knee, past the ankle, and forming a pattern over the tops of their bare feet. Every priestess was dressed like this, and every one of them looked simply divine — a visitor to the Anastasi temple would have a hard time tearing their eyes away.

Next, the priestess on door duty would greet you with a warm smile, and that smile would make you feel like you had always had a home here, as if you could have shown up at any time and they would have welcomed you, as if it was ridiculous for you not to have come earlier. But of course it was okay, because you were here now, and thank the Lord for that — the Lord who, by the way, existed quite close to you, now, and whose love and compassion was evident both in the lustrous eyes and voices of his followers and in the very air around you. As the priestess on door duty led you in, you would be approached by others going about the temple doing their daily duties, all of who would welcome you and shake your hand and hug you tight — if that was something you were alright with, because they always made sure to ask — and would leave you feeling as if you had been born and raised here, and were returning here after a long journey away, coming back to a family that had missed you terribly and were overjoyed that you had come back.

You would be asked if you had eaten — if you hadn’t, food would be provided to you, and it would be the most exquisite food you had ever tasted in your life, no matter what it was, though the temple maidens seemed to favor a pure white fruit with golden insides that tasted like the concept of belonging. If you hadn’t already been crying by this point, you would probably start now, after eating this fruit that only grew here, on the island of Anastasi, and only because it was a fruit that could not grow outside of the immediate influence of the ultimate compassion, which soaked the air all around you. The temple maidens would see the tears slipping down your face and hold you close, murmuring comforting words into your ear, reassuring you that it was alright to feel things, that this was a safe space and you could let everything you were feeling out, because it was all going to be healed here.

As you continued on, past that first chamber, with its high, vaulted ceilings and glass windows that reached what seemed ten stories up, and that crystal-clear pool, with its white crocus flowers floating on the surface of the water, in the center, and the almond trees in each corner of the first chamber with their vibrant white blossoms, you would see that the back of the chamber opened up into a rectangular garden that brought to mind those in fairy stories, so wondrous that surely it could not have been cultivated by humans. Through this garden wound a path of that same stone, and the black substance running through its cracks, and the trees that the white-skinned fruit grew on rose tall enough to cast the garden in a lovely dappled shade, through which one could enjoy both light and shadow. More crystalline pools were placed around this garden, each the perfect temperature no matter the weather, though, of course, the weather was always beautiful on Anastasi, and on Celestica as a whole. The grass beneath your feet as you walked would be so springy and soft that you would be convinced you could lie down on it and fall asleep in mere seconds — and indeed, some of the priestesses and other members of the temple might be spotted doing just that, lulled into pleasant dreams just as wonderful as the reality they lived in.

The temple was enormous, of course, and you would not be able to see all of it in one day. But the priestesses would urge you along, because you had to at least see him, if nothing else, because if you didn’t see him then you would leave without having seen the ultimate source of compassion, and they couldn’t let that happen, no matter what. So they would lead you past the garden, and they would open glass doors to an outside court, which was much of the same as the garden and the first chamber, aside from the duties performed in it, and they would hurry you through this long outer courtyard and up a flurry of stone steps with ramps on either side, and then you all would arrive in front of a wooden door tall enough that the handle to open it — another representation of that X with the arches through each side — was at chest level. The chamber it was set into was easily the tallest one in the temple, and when the doors swung open you would see from the inside that there were many rooms in this tower, not just the entry chamber, but the entry chamber was all you needed to see.

There was no stone floor in this chamber. The entire thing was covered in white grass, with those beautiful gray-barked, white-leaved almond trees dotted everywhere, and yet another pool, just like the one in the first garden, though this one was the size of the entire garden. It still floated with those lovely crocus flowers, though, and the way the sun filtered in through the glass windows in the back of the chamber lit the water so that tiny crystals seemed to be shimmering off the surface of it — or maybe they really were.

In this most beautiful part of the temple, you would see a person with his back against one of the almond trees. Looking upon him would take your breath away, for a moment, while you tried to comprehend what you had experienced from even a second of laying your eyes on him. The temple maidens were right — he was the epitome of compassion, and seeing him would have you forgetting anything bad had ever happened to you in your life, or that it had happened to someone else entirely, because you were here, now, and you could not remember a time that you weren’t surrounded by this all-encompassing love and compassion. He would turn his eyes upon you, and he would smile the softest smile you had ever seen in your life, so beautiful that it made all the smiles you had ever experienced before seem completely insincere and maybe even downright threatening in comparison, and he would glance down at the person whose head was in his lap, who he had been running his long fingers through the dark hair of, and he would say, “There’s someone new here.” And it would sound like it was the first time anyone new had ever come here, even though you knew it couldn’t possibly have been, but you would feel unique and special and loved intensely anyways.

And the person resting their head in his lap, draped also in all white, would yawn and murmur, “Of course there is, Lord. Who wouldn’t want to come witness your love for themselves?”

And he would chuckle softly, and he would place one gentle hand on the side of their head, and he would say— “Remember, Tioga — it’s not ‘Lord.’ Not to you. My name is Volo.”

Tioga pulled the brush through their hair with only a partial rate of success. It wasn’t tangled, but there was just so much of it that shoving it all the way through would require a second party. Normally, Tioga would allow another of the temple maidens to help them, but they always tried for an end result of straightened white-person hair, and Tioga was not a white person, nor were they fond of how their hair looked when it was brushed out to that point. The massive waves that spilled over their shoulders were theirs, and like hell were they going to let anyone take that away from them, even if the area around their chair had become a graveyard for an alarming amount of white-shell combs.

“I don’t know why you try so hard,” said Annaliese, one of the aforementioned temple maidens — although, graciously, not one that had tried to brush out Tioga’s hair before. She was bent at the waist behind Tioga’s chair, her face placed next to Tioga’s face, as if she was a makeup artist trying to gauge the quality of her work. Often, Tioga would let Annaliese do their makeup, but today, their fingers itched to do something on their own; Annaliese had regarded them with a pout that was short-lived when one of the male temple maidens told her she was permitted to do his instead. “It’s not like he ever wants anyone that way except for you.”

Someone unfamiliar with the history of Anastasi and the larger world surrounding it might read such a quote as bitter, but if they were there to hear it, they would quickly be proven wrong — Annaliese could not have been less upset with Tioga.

“It’s true,” Kali said from a few chairs down. She had one leg crossed over the other and her chin resting in her hand with her elbow propped up on the back of her chair. A coy smile played over her lips as she leveled an eyeliner pencil at Tioga. “You’re his…” And here, she drew out the word in a sing-song, “...fa-a-a-avorite.”

Tioga said, “Stop,” and looked away — they had to press their lips together to stifle the smile that crossed their face unbidden. It fooled absolutely no one. Annaliese squealed with delight; Kali’s smug smirk could be felt from halfway across the room. The other maidens erupted into a cacophony of conversation. Part of it consisted of questions aimed at Tioga, but most of it was just the excitement of seventeen temple maidens that had no way to be released but through pleasured squealing.

“He’s so sweet—”

“—have you seen how the Togekiss in the garden always flock to him—”

“—you just can’t help but feel comforted when you’re around h—”

“—and it helps that he’s absolutely beautiful—”

It continued this way for quite some time. A younger priestess by the name of Matthias asked from a chair opposite Tioga, “What’s he like? In private?”

“The same,” said Tioga, returning to pulling the brush through their hair. They studied their face in the mirror very closely in the way of someone who was expending an unusual amount of focus because they didn’t know what they would do with their face otherwise.

Annaliese raised an eyebrow in the mirror behind them. “The same? So when he takes you he, what, just stands in a room with you and blinks those beautiful eyes at you and tells you that you’re doing a wonderful job and that he couldn’t be more proud of you? Wait — actually, that sounds amazing.” Annaliese sighed wistfully. Her gaze was a thousand miles away. “You’re so lucky, if that’s what happens.”

“What the — no, that’s not what happens.”

Which was the wrong thing to say, apparently, because now every single temple maiden had fallen silent and was now leaning forward towards them, hanging on to their every word. All of them wanted to know what happened behind closed doors with the deity they had devoted their entire lives to worshiping.

Tioga heaved a sigh and put the brush down. Their hair looked about as good as it was going to get. Inky-black waves and curls and ringlets spilled over their shoulders and down their back in that way that they liked catching glimpses of in reflective surfaces that they passed by. They looked like a shadow given form, they thought, crafted from the dark side of the moon. The contrast with their white priestess attire was striking — even more so because they wore a different outfit from all of the other priestesses: this crop top of a cowl-neck hoodie that put their midriff — and the dark red tattoo (the meaning of which they didn’t remember, if they were going to be honest; they barely remembered getting the tattoo in the first place) stamped across their chest — on display, at least until the long white gossamer skirt wrapped around their waist, with a tantalizing slit up one thigh. They thought they probably would have looked good in the other outfit, too, but this one was undeniably them. No one would have looked as at home in it as they did.

They debated how much they should tell the other priestesses. Clearly, any detail would send them into near-hysterics. But the time they enjoyed with their god was private — their own moments, carved out from the rest of Tioga’s life and set aside where only the two of them could witness them. So what to tell these temple maidens, who were also, if they were being honest with themselves, their friends, who they wanted to give at least a little bit of vicarious joy?

“You’ve seen us,” they said carefully, “at the inner pool. Right?”

They were, of course, referring to the long hours the two of them would spend together sitting there in the grass, his fingers playing with their hair, their head in his lap, curled up beside him, his reassuring presence all around them. The light breeze lifting strands of both of their hair despite no open windows being present in the atrium. The way they were so happy during these moments that they could have purred — and were surprised they had not figured out a way to do so. The way that he smiled, too, just because he was able to spend time with them, and that was the proudest achievement of them all, for Tioga.

Kali said, “Of course. And at the outer pool, in the garden, and in the courtyard, and in the—”

“O- kay,” interrupted Tioga, rolling their eyes. “Please, Kali, we’re people, not a freaking voyeur’s dream come true.”

Kali snorted. “Okay, sorry, keep going.”

“So,” Tioga continued, “it’s like that. A lot of that. Uhm. Except we get closer. Than that.”

This was all they were really willing to say. Their mouth snapped shut, and they stared into the corner of the room, where the thirty-four eyes that were currently on them were invisible to them, though they felt their piercing gaze anyway.

Annaliese finally broke the silence, and thank God for that. “Ohhhh my goodness,” she said, bringing her hands up to her mouth. “I know you don’t want to give any details, but, like … that just means my imagination is filling in the details itself. Oh, Tioga, it must be so wonderful.”

“It kicks ass, I’ll admit,” said Tioga.

The question on everyone’s mind was obvious, but no one wanted to blaspheme by discussing it. Instead, they erupted into that smattering of conversation again, everyone talking over each other to the point Tioga couldn’t pick out a single sentence. They took advantage of the distraction to lean forward into the mirror and finish up the last of their mascara, which they didn’t really need, but it felt good to be doing something with their hands, at least.

A knock came at the door.

Instantly, the room fell silent. There was only one person who would be knocking, and only one person whose very presence could make you feel like all of the negative feelings you ever had about yourself or about others had vanished or, even more than that, never existed in the first place.

Tioga swallowed hard and threw the mascara brush into the vanity drawer. They ran their hands through their hair one more time and then swiveled their chair to face the door.

“May I come in?” asked the person on the other side.

He always asked that. Of course he could come in — none of the priestesses would be the least bit offended if he barged his way in without asking. But he never did. He always asked first.

“Yes, Lord,” said Annaliese, the first to get her voice back. “Please come in.”

The door opened, and there he was.

It felt unfair, that he could be standing in such an ordinary doorway to an ordinary dressing room looking like he did, with that breathtaking golden hair that fell over his shoulders and down his back, almost longer than Tioga’s. That he could stand there with that golden ornament in his hair, the same as all of theirs but somehow so much brighter, the jewels so much more reflective. That he could stand there with those golden eyes and that warm smile that quelled all of your anxieties and had you floundering to remember what the meaning of anxiety even was. No being this perfect, this exalted, should be standing in the doorway to a dressing room.

But here he was. And he looked at all of them, each person individually, making sure to stop on each pair of eyes and give a sincere smile, and said, “You all are so beautiful. All the time. With or without your makeup, or any of the outfits I provide to you to wear in the temple. You know that, right? I am so deeply enamored with each and every one of you.”

He said this sort of thing often. He could never enter or leave a room without making sure the people in it knew their worth.

“Lord,” said Kali, which one would have thought would be a strange word to come from her normally-abrasive lips, but once she said it, the devotion and praise in her voice made it seem right at home there, “to what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Oh, just visiting,” he said. His eyes traveled over to rest on Tioga. “And … I’ve come to steal away the High Priestess, if that’s alright with them.”

Just like every single time this happened, Tioga’s chest fluttered as if feathers were beating against the inside. They rose from their chair and smoothed down their skirt. “It’s alright with me,” they said, because obviously.

“And,” he said, “if it’s alright with all of you?”

He always asked this, too. Of course there wasn’t a single person that would say no, but he gave them the chance, anyway. All of them knew he wouldn’t mind if they voiced a negative — he was not a god with brainwashed followers. Anyone was free to disagree with him at any time. But then — why would you?

The other temple maidens answered in the affirmative. Annaliese elbowed Tioga gently and gave them a wink.

Tioga rolled their eyes, but smiled this time, and crossed the room to be at his side. Their whole body tingled with nerves, even though this was far from the first time this had happened. Every time felt like it was the first time; they thought they might be falling more in love with him every single day. When he took their hand and intertwined his fingers with theirs, they thought that if they opened their mouth, all that might come out would be a squeak. Their face was hot — their ears were hot — they stared at the floor as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“Thank you,” he said, and then, “Please make sure to eat, if you haven’t. My dear priestesses. I love you all so much.”

And then he was tugging gently at Tioga’s hand, and the door was closing behind them to a chorus of goodbyes, and they waved weakly, feeling very dizzy, as per the usual.

Once the door had shut, he did away with the casual hand-holding and brought his arms around their waist. His back to the wall, he gazed into their eyes with his own half-lidded molten gold ones and gave them the lazy smile that drove them crazy with desire. “Hey, you,” he said softly.

Tioga was about to say At least wait until we’re in the bedroom, weirdo, but they were. It had happened without them knowing it, as it usually did. Without any folderol they had appeared in his bedroom, with the canopy bed so large there wasn’t a name for the size, and the lamps just above it, casting it in a soft light, and the dresser with items they couldn’t even begin to guess at the purpose of lining the top, and the side table beside the window that overlooked the sparkling sea, and it was such a goddamn huge bedroom it had a sofa, and a chaise, and an ottoman, and a fireplace on the wall opposite the bed, though that was mostly for display due to Celestica’s perpetually warm climate, and the bar off to the side just in case (and that just in case had happened, on several occasions; there was something very precious and endearing about their god with a warm pink face, hooking one arm around them and peppering kisses all over them, falling into bed with them and nuzzling himself into their chest with an unabashed and goofy smile, humming with pleasure when they cupped their hands around the back of his head and pressed him farther into it), and about a million other things that Tioga hadn’t even begun to be able to ask about yet. Priestess quarters were luxurious, but they were nothing compared to this.

They smiled, despite themselves, and said, “Hi, Volo. I missed you.”

Which was ridiculous, because everyone saw him nearly every day, but still.

He was delighted to hear this. His eyes danced. “You did, did you? Would you believe me if I told you that I missed you more?”

“Absolutely not. I’d tell you you had to prove it to me.”

Tioga had no idea where this Tioga-who-was-good-with-flirting came from. Volo consistently had them weak in the knees, but somehow when they were alone with him the words tumbled from their lips as if they’d been doing this waltz for eternity.

Volo, at least, seemed a fan of it. He drew closer so that their faces were only the barest of an inch apart, and said, “How can I prove it to you, my dear?”

“I think you know,” they whispered, and he kissed them.

Tioga would have understood if it had been hungry with desire. There was a fraction of that kiss that spoke of his need to be closer to them, and his longing for physical intimacy. 

But mainly, it was something different. It was soft, and sweet, and kind — it was all of the things that everyone knew Volo to be, except that he was distilling those traits into this kiss he gave Tioga, as if they were the only one who was allowed the purest form of them. They did not operate under the assumption that they were simply the most well-liked of a litany of concubines; it was impossible not to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he loved them. And not in the way of his temple maidens — he loved them too, of course, but it couldn’t hold a candle to the way he loved Tioga. He loved them differently, like he couldn’t bear it if they disappeared. Temple maidens came and went; new ones joined all the time, and others took sabbaticals to travel or to visit family or any other number of things. But it was obvious to everyone that if Tioga left, it would send Volo into a depression that would darken the sky with thunderstorms.

Things moved somewhat quickly after that. Volo brought his arms lower — around the backs of their thighs — and hoisted them up so that they were sitting against the wall. They had already been nearly taller than he was, but this position made it so that he had to crane his lovely pale neck upwards to kiss them. Their hair fell around his face in those dark waves; he made a contented sound and smiled into their kiss.

This had been what they hadn’t wanted to tell the other priestesses about. To enjoy this privilege with the god of this world was exceedingly rare; Volo had told them that they were the only one he did these sorts of things with, and they were inclined to believe it. He had never lied before — why would he start now? He had even volunteered the information; they hadn’t asked him for it, so it wasn’t as if he was covering his tracks. And it wasn’t out of obligation, either. You could not fake the sort of affection he treated them with, nor could you manufacture the way that his heart tripped into double-time in his chest when he was around them, the same way theirs did with him. Everything about his actions regarding them rang truer than anything.

But they had to confess — they still didn’t understand why it was them.

After a moment, he lifted them off the wall and carried them to his bed, where he gently laid them out, sliding warm fingers up their thighs, pushing their skirt up against their waist. He thumbed their hips as he continued to kiss them, and they drew their legs up, already anticipating where this was headed. It was really something else to be allowed to have sex with the deity you worshiped — you kept expecting to burst into flames at the heresy, but he was the one who initiated it in the first place, so if anyone would burst into flames, wouldn’t it be him? But then surely an action that brought the both of you so much pleasure wouldn’t be something either of you could be punished for. Tioga had run this gauntlet of questions over and over in their head many times as they lay there in the dark of the priestesses’ quarters, staring up at the ceiling and trying to decide if it was a test to prove their piety.

And if it had been, they absolutely would have failed. Sex with Volo was unreal. Unreal wasn’t even close to a good word for it, but it was the only one that they could dredge up, because being able to feel the way Volo made them feel during their time together should not have been possible. That was another reason they couldn’t tell the other temple maidens about what Volo was like in private — they simply didn’t have the words to do so. You couldn’t encapsulate this experience in something as primitive as spoken language. You couldn’t even try.

Tioga lay there in the after-throes of that ecstasy, wrapped up in Volo’s arms, his lips pressed against the top of their head, and said, “Lord—”

“Ah, ah,” he chastised them in a voice so quiet it was meant just for the two of them. “Remember, I don’t like it when you call me that, Tioga.”

They were the only person he asked not to call him Lord, and the reasoning for this insistence on his name, or, rather, anything at all besides the word “Lord”, continued to elude them. But they went along with it, because they would rather tear out their own eyes than disappoint him.

“Volo,” they amended, and he hummed a pleased sound that reverberated through them. “I … feel really stupid for asking this, but … I … I don’t remember my life before this. Before Anastasi. Have I … have I really been here that long?”

It was something of a shame for them. How could they not remember their life before? They couldn’t even remember the day they’d strode up to the temple and become initiated — they couldn’t remember the mikveh — they couldn’t remember being new here, at all. It felt like they had just been dropped in media res into this new life. Certainly it couldn’t have been that long. They didn’t look any older than thirty, if that. Had they arrived when they were a child? Had they been dropped off at the doorstep by a parent who couldn’t take care of them? All of these questions circled their mind like ravenous vultures, and they couldn’t keep themselves from thinking themselves dizzy.

Volo moved closer to them so that he was pressing up close against their side, as if he couldn’t bear not to be touching them every way he could at all times. He said, his lips barely parting for the words to leave them, “You were young when you came to me. Not too young — maybe ten years ago. But many of my priestesses say that their time in the temple feels like a sort of time dilation. Like the time they spend here is maybe seven times as long as time should be. So you might not remember, because to you, it’s felt like … seventy years. Of course,” he was quick to amend, “I don’t know if that’s actually true. It’s just something I happened to overhear.”

One of Tioga’s hands thumbed the pale skin of Volo’s arm, locked around their torso. They said, “And did I have … a family?”

“Two siblings,” said Volo. “They live on the mainland. In Asylo. I made sure, when I accepted you into the temple, that they would be taken care of. They want for nothing, and they receive regular updates on how you’re doing. They didn’t want to interrupt your worship, but they told me to tell you, when it wouldn’t distract you, that they love you very much. And that they miss you, but that they know you’re doing something important. That they’ll be there to welcome you home when you’re finished.”

When I’m finished, thought Tioga, half in shock at even the suggestion. They didn’t know how to be finished worshiping Volo. They didn’t know how to be finished living here in this beautiful temple with its paradisiacal gardens and the other priestesses that they by now considered their family — even more so, it seemed, than their actual one,  who they had entirely forgotten. They asked, “I … Volo, forgive me, because this has to seem inhuman of me, but … I don’t remember their names.”

There was no judgment at all in his voice as he answered, “It’s alright. Once you’re here — once you’ve experienced the ultimate joy in living — it’s difficult to remember things outside. Their names are … Erie and Somerset.”

Erie. Somerset. Try as they might, they could not pull up even the slightest image of their siblings. They hoped desperately that the two of them wouldn’t ever visit; they’d feel so embarrassed not being able to identify them. “And my parents?” they asked, already distressed at the thought of not being able to remember even the people who had birthed them.

Here, Volo did something very strange — he stiffened. The thumb of his left hand, which had been idly rubbing back and forth soothingly at their shoulder blade, stopped, and every muscle in his body seemed to be tensed up.

“Volo?” they asked.

He was quiet. Then: “You have one parent. A father.”

He said this in a voice Tioga had never quite heard from Volo and, indeed, one they hadn’t thought him capable of. It was a deep-seated hatred that boiled just beneath the surface of his skin. For a being known for his unending love and compassion, who might as well be those things personified, it was a very alarming thing to witness.

“I’m sorry,” Volo said, immediately afterwards; he must have realized this, too. “Tioga, I’m sorry. Your … your father is not a good person.”

“I don’t understand,” said Tioga. How could you — just not be a good person ? The notion was as ridiculous to them as if someone had told them — as if someone had told them — they couldn’t even think of an analogy, that was how ridiculous it was. And their father was one of those people? They were suddenly assaulted by the fear that they might become one of those people, too, if it was apparently possible.

They voiced this concern to Volo, who emphatically shook his head. “No, Tioga — no. You don’t need to worry about that. You’re nothing like your father. I can see into peoples’ hearts, you know that, right?” At their affirmative response, he continued, “I can see into your heart, Tioga, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that you could never be anything like your father. But, that being said … I hate to say it, because I hate using my power this way … I am doing everything in my ability to keep you and your father from ever meeting again.”

“Thank you,” they told him. They meant it. They knew they should have cared that he wasn’t even giving them the chance, but … how were you supposed to get angry at someone who was only trying to protect you? And if someone was a terrible person, in this world that was so saturated with goodness and light … maybe it was for the best that Tioga was kept away. They turned to look at him, to stare up into those sunset-gold eyes. “Volo, I’ve never asked … do you have parents?”

It seemed ludicrous to ask if a god had parents. Just like Tioga couldn’t remember a time before being here at the temple, they assumed Volo had just appeared one day, or maybe he had always existed, born not by parents but out of the world’s need for him. So they were surprised to see the corners of his mouth quirk up in a smile as he nodded. “I do. Kosta and Ianthe. My mothers.”

His mothers. Tioga wondered what kinds of people would raise someone like Volo … if they had raised him at all. Quite possibly he had come into being at this age, looking precisely like this, created merely out of a desire of Kosta and Ianthe’s to have a child. That was how it worked in the old stories, anyway (— what old stories—) so they shouldn’t have been alarmed to learn it had happened with him, too. They made a mental note to ask him about his upbringing sometime. They so badly wanted to know what Volo had been like, if he was ever a child, or even, barring that, what he had been like when he had first been created. They longed to hear stories of his naivete, of how he’d learned things about the world around him, and how he had set out on this path that had culminated with him here at the temple of Anastasi.

“I think,” said Volo, following their thought process to its predictable conclusion, “that they would like you very much, Tioga.”

Pleasure warmed their insides. The rays of the afternoon sun stretched through the window and splayed across the two of them, casting them in a light that was ultimately dwarfed by the light shining in Volo’s eyes. Unable to hold themselves back from it any longer, Tioga circled their arms around Volo’s waist and nosed into his abdomen. 

He laughed softly and drew the blanket over them. “Go to sleep, my heart. I love you.”

Those words from a god, and just for them — Tioga saw stars every time. With all the conviction in their heart, they responded, “I love you, too,” and fell peacefully asleep to the sound of his heartbeat and the comfort of his presence all around them.

The glittering sea outside was so bright that it left imprints on Tioga’s sight when they looked away, so they didn’t look away. They stared out the window, their chin in their hand, their back fitting comfortably into the curves of the chair they were sitting in, and they watched the sun move ever so slightly across the sky, and they tried to remember the last time the weather had been any different than these constant perfect days. They remembered the feeling of rain on their skin — the way rain could be soft, like tiny patters against you, or hard, like maneuvering through a hostile atmosphere, feeling every drop like a miniature bullet.

The problem was that they couldn’t remember the last time it had rained. Ever.

So how did they know what it felt like?

The courtyard stretched out below them, and they dropped their eyes to it. Like every day, it was dotted with people and Pokemon either working on its upkeep — entirely of their own volition, because Volo had made it very clear that he did not expect them to be his slaves, or even his servants, which made sense when you were an entity that could create anything you could ever desire out of nothing — or basking in the sunlight, some with their Pokemon, some without. A group of children were shrieking with laughter while chasing each other in a friendly game of tag; despite themselves, Tioga felt the corners of their mouth quirk up in a smile. Even with their misgivings about the fact that they couldn’t remember why they remembered some very strange things, this world really was something. Sunlight was its backdrop; laughter was its soundtrack. It was perfect.

A pair of alabaster arms came into view around their shoulders, and Tioga could feel their god pressing his cheek to theirs. He said softly, “It’s another day in paradise, isn’t it?”

It was. Not quite because of the world around them — they’d gotten used to its inability to be anything less than faultless. Instead, it was because they had woken up wrapped in Volo’s arms, in Volo’s bed, in Volo’s room, knowing without a doubt that he loved them immensely. That was what made it paradisiacal.

He had set something down before he had brought his arms around them; Tioga looked at it now. On the small table in front of them, which the two of them often ate breakfast at when Tioga spent the night, was a bowl that had been made lovingly by hand by someone probably out in that courtyard right now, and in the bowl was a not-insignificant amount of pomegranate seeds.

“I heard,” said Volo, still in those low, dulcet tones, “that love is when you spend twenty minutes de-seeding a pomegranate, and it’s not even for you.”

Tioga stared at the seeds. “You spent twenty minutes de-seeding this?”

“Yes.” Volo turned his head and kissed their temple. “For you, my love.”

“You know you can just cut it in half and do the straining thing?”

Volo was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, “I’ll have to try that next time.”

Tioga turned to look at him now, and was aghast — though not surprised — to see his embarrassed expression. He wasn’t looking at them, choosing instead to look off to the side at nothing in particular. The tips of his ears were a scarlet not unlike the color of the seeds in the bowl.

They readjusted themselves in the chair so they could take his face in their hands gently and guide it back to them. “I’m sorry,” they said hurriedly. “I wasn’t trying to — I just wanted to let you know there was an easier way to do it. I’m sorry. I’m honored, I promise. Every single thing you do for me has me questioning why on earth you would go to the trouble. I guess — I’m just confused, is all. I’m sorry. It was so sweet of you to do this.” They stopped themselves from saying I’m sorry again just before they said it. Three times in fifteen seconds was probably going overboard as it was.

Volo was blinking at them from between their hands. He said, “Why are you confused? I do it because I love you.”

“Yes, but…” And this was probably paranoia, because he had given them a very simple answer, and they refused to accept it, or maybe it was self-loathing, which was a very strange feeling to be aware of having, for some reason. “…you don’t go into the priestesses’ quarters and de-seed pomegranates for them. You don’t steal them away and take them to the most private sanctum on this island. You don’t spend hours at a time at the inner pool with their heads in your lap, and you playing with their hair, and looking like you could do it for another week straight without so much as stretching your legs.”

“Do you want me to?” Volo asked, still bewildered.

“No, it’s just—” They released his face, and cast their eyes to the floor. “—I don’t get it. Why it’s me.”

He dropped to his knees beside them and took one of their hands between both of his. His touch was as light as the insubstantial clouds floating in that perfect blue sky out the window. His face went from baffled to gentle, and those gold eyes shone like the sunlight sparkling off the sea. “Tioga,” he said, “a long time ago — so long that you certainly won’t remember it — you told me that we had the same heart. It was what drew you to me, and I to you. We are kindred spirits — more so than any of the other priestesses here. I love you for many reasons, but chief among them was that very first meeting of ours, when I realized I had been looking for you all my life without knowing it. You were right: we have the same heart. And that was why I fell in love with you, at the beginning.” He raised their hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “I’ve found many more reasons along the way, but that was what started it all. Does that answer your question?”

Something about this new understanding unlocked something inside of them. It was an absurd feeling — the metaphorical door unlocked, but they couldn’t seem to see inside of it. It was a black void, or rather, the void was in front of it, walling off whatever had been behind the door originally. Try as they might, they could not find the strength to tear it away.

But, independent of whatever it was inside them that Volo had brought to their attention, however unintentionally, they truly did love him. So they lifted their hand, bringing his up along with it, and pressed their own kiss to his knuckles. Sunlight beamed out of his face; a person should not be allowed to look this overjoyed.

“Yes,” they said, “it does. Thank you, my heart.”

There was something going on, and Tioga was going to get to the bottom of it.

They had left Volo’s room later that day filled to the brim with love and joy. This was not surprising — spending time with Volo in any capacity was bound to do that. But as the hours went on, and the day passed outside of the vicinity of the person they loved more than anything in this world, they found themselves traveling back to that door, with its inky black void and the secret that was hidden so carefully behind it.

They lay in the priestesses’ quarters that night, staring up at the ceiling, puzzling it over and over in their head. They had been told they had seemed distracted today; it was because they were trying so very desperately to tear away that black cloth and find out what it was obscuring. It was difficult, because the door, and also the void, and also the version of themselves that was trying to remove the void and failing miserably weren’t real, but Tioga felt that if they just tried a little harder — if they reached back into the recesses of their mind and dug as hard as they could, they could uncover the truth.

Hours passed of this. Long enough that all of the other maidens had long since fallen asleep, and Tioga was left glaring at the ceiling like it had personally offended them. They lay there for another hour, and then, buzzing with frustration and the energy that brought with it, they kicked off the covers and slipped out into the night.

Anastasi, and the world surrounding it, had always been a heaven of sunlight. But Tioga had always felt just a little more comfortable at night. The long shadows that stretched across the courtyard and played against the walls felt right, somehow. They would even have banished the moon from the sky if it wasn’t the source of the shadows that soothed them so. They walked aimlessly, letting their legs take them wherever they wished; at this time of night, they were the only one wandering the halls, but certainly they wouldn’t be disciplined for doing so. Discipline was nearly unheard of on Anastasi, and to discipline the High Priestess was the stuff of myth. A concerned temple maiden might suggest gently that they go back to bed — but that was if there were any out and about, and, as previously established, Tioga was alone in their just-before-dawn excursion.

They were so deep in thought and memory that they were shocked to find themselves at Volo’s door. It was not a room that was easy to get to — many times the priestesses swore it changed location daily, if not hourly, like the floor it was on was an unintentional kind of labyrinth — so Tioga was understandably unsure of what to do. They wanted to go in, to ask Volo all the questions that had been on a loop in their mind for the past day, but it was likely he was asleep and they hated to bother him. Surely, he wouldn’t mind, but still…

Before they could change their mind, they pushed at that ornate door, with its golden trim, and it fell open.

Volo wasn’t there.

His bed looked like it had been slept in, at least a little, or otherwise lived in. The room was entirely empty — it wasn’t somewhere with a lot of hiding spaces, and it was unlikely Volo would be doing something as juvenile as hiding from them, anyway. Tioga was about to close the door again, call it a night, and attempt to shut off the feedback loop in their head … when they spotted something sparkling on the canopy bed.

Volo’s necklace.

He never took it off. It was a silver teardrop-shaped thing, and Tioga had often seen him playing with it idly, or running his fingers across it as he pondered something he was asked, or otherwise fidgeting with it. At first they thought he might have been in the shower, but as they strained their ears they couldn’t hear the water running — and, besides, he’d taken showers with them in the room. He didn’t take it off when he took showers, either. It was highly unlikely that he’d start now.

They padded into the room. It was nerve-wracking without Volo in sight. They felt like by trespassing they were doing something wrong, even though surely if he appeared before them now he’d just want to know what was keeping them up, and ask if they’d like to come to bed with him, and hold them tightly until they drifted off to sleep with not a worry in their head. Still, it had them jumping at perceived sounds that likely didn’t exist anywhere except their imagination.

Swallowing hard, they climbed onto the bed and knelt over Volo’s necklace. What could possibly have happened to make him take it off? They reached out for it. If he was—

They were no longer in Volo’s bedroom.

Instead, they stood in a world that was no world at all. Below them shone a strange disc of concentric circles arranged in a pattern that was oddly familiar to them, though they were positive they had never seen it before in their life. The sky was no sky — it was an inky bluish-black, completely devoid of stars, or a moon, or even the shadows of clouds moving across it. The only thing in this vast, dark, empty space was what had to be some sort of Pokemon — a white, deer-like creature, with a head that swept back into a wavy point and two golden arches around its midsection. It had been tied down with some sort of white, glowing rope that seemingly attached to nothing; the ends trailed listlessly onto the disc, but no matter how much the creature struggled, it could not stand up. The rope was holding tight.

Tioga was very uncomfortable, because they knew where they had seen those golden arches before. It was the symbol that every priestess except for themselves wore in their hair as part of their uniform. They remembered how they had been so very confused when Volo had forbidden them from wearing it. He never had given them a reason; he had just told them that as the High Priestess he would rather have them wear an entirely different outfit, and they had gone along with it, never questioning how little sense that made.

They said, “What…”

The void covering that door in their mind was now so flimsy as to be nearly nonexistent.

The being in front of them stared at them with an expression they could not parse, made even more difficult to understand by the fact that it did not have a mouth. Yet there was some inner part of their workings that knew that once they had been able to understand the expressions this creature made. Which was unconscionable. They had never seen it before in their life.

Had they?

SO CLOSE THE FLAT CIRCLES OF TIME AND SPACE, said the being before them.

There was no feeling within them. They were completely numb. Their mind had stopped turning; they now simply stood there staring at the creature as if by doing so the answers would resolve themselves into being. For the most part, the creature did the same — except that, unlike them, it seemed to have all the answers, and wish that it did not.

From behind them came a horrified “Tioga.”

They spun around. Their god stood before them in all of his radiant glory, the only true source of light in this nightmare dimension. Yet even some of that had been taken away from him. His normally healthy saffron hair had paled a few shades so that it looked sickly, a washed-out facsimile of what they were used to, hanging in limp and lifeless curtains over his shoulders and down his chest and back. His skin had undergone the same treatment — instead of its lovely cream color it had been reduced to an unhealthy pale that was quite honestly painful to look at. The normally confident way in which he carried himself had disappeared, replaced by what Tioga could only describe as uncertain and scared, two words they never would have attributed to the deity that so easily fit into the idyllic life they lived every day on Anastasi as if he had been specifically created to do so.

And everywhere on him — everywhere — there were wounds.

Most of them were long, angry slashes, opening up that sickly skin and letting the golden ichor inside ooze out. This blood-stuff could be found dried along every one of the innumerable cuts that marred his body. Underneath and overtop and overlapping those gashes were bruises of every color a bruise could be, some fresh, others hours old, all of them spotting him like some kind of awful patchwork. There was not a spot on him that was unmarked by some kind of injury. If a human person had sustained the wounds that Volo now did, they would have passed from this mortal coil long ago. He barely even looked like a person, let alone a god.

“Volo,” they choked out. They could not stand to see him like this.

“Tioga,” he said, and had to take a second — the force of his emotions were that strong. He looked like he would rather the whole world have come to an end than to have them standing here in what was obviously what was truly his most private of sanctums. He tried again, “Tioga, why are you here?”

They wanted so badly to go to him and hold him tightly, to will healing into him so that some of these terrible injuries might disappear. But they did not have that ability, and they were as confused as it was possible for a person to be. They did not trust their legs. They were sure that as soon as they took a step, their nerves would fail them and they would collapse to the floor. “I just wanted to ask you something,” they said, their voice trembling, “so I … went to your room and … you weren’t there … but your necklace was, so I…”

This was all the explanation Volo needed. He swore under his breath and pressed a hand to his face. They had never seen him so distraught.

“V-Volo … who hurt you like that? Was it…” They looked back over their shoulder — the strange creature was still there, still fixing them with those cool, detached eyes. “Was it—”

“Arceus? Of course not,” said Volo. He made a sound that might technically be called “laughing” but was far too bitter to share any qualities with such an action. “It’s powerless. It can’t do a thing to me.”

Arceus.

A huge section of that void ripped away, and Tioga’s heart fell to the center of the planet.

“Arceus,” they repeated, as if in a trance. “My…”

Volo watched them. He looked like any word from Tioga, no matter how innocuous, might break him.

“My father,” they finished.

Volo dropped his hand from his face. He closed his eyes and exhaled shakily through his nose. This, and the sudden feeling of surety, was how Tioga knew that they had been correct.

And from there, it all fell into place.

He became nothing more than a smear of colors in front of them as their eyes filled with tears. They whispered, “You lobotomized me.”

“Tioga—”

“You scooped out everything that made me who I was. You — you put my barest essence into this — this shell — this human shape —”

“You said you wanted to be human,” Volo countered dangerously.

Tioga was bristling with rage. “You didn’t even fucking ask me.”

“You would have said no!” Volo cried, “If I had told you what I was planning, if I had told you I was going to go through with making a new world where no one had to suffer, you would have told me you didn’t care about that anymore—”

“And who suffers for everyone now, Volo?!” Tioga really was crying now; so many emotions had built up inside of them that they could not help but release them one way or another. They could no longer see his injuries through their tears, but they knew they were there regardless, which was worse, somehow, to see this smear of golden light and know that, if resolved into visibility, horrors upon horrors would abound. “You wanted to end suffering — so you took it onto yourself? Why on earth would I want that? ”

“You weren’t supposed to know. You were never supposed to find out.”

“And you still dare to say you love me,” Tioga muttered.

This was the breaking point for Volo. Though Tioga could not see it, they knew him better than they knew anyone else in this world, and they could hear the heartbreak like an audible thing inside his chest. He lurched forward, throwing his arms around them desperately, his fingers digging into their skin so tightly it was painful, as if letting up even fractionally would have them slipping through his fingers to somewhere he could not follow. “P-Please don’t say that,” he begged them. “Please. Don’t ever say I don’t love you, Tioga. There could not be a more hateful or untrue lie in this universe. I did this because I thought it would fix things. I thought you could live happily — I thought no one ever had to go through painful or heartbreaking things again — I thought that this world could be a new start for us. For everyone. Rend me in two, Tioga; destroy me with your words, or your claws, or anything you see fit — but don’t say I don’t love you. I love you so much that I knew this might happen and I did it anyway. Because I wanted you to have a life where everyone was happy.”

“I’m not happy,” Tioga sobbed into his hair.

He removed himself from them, suddenly, and prostrated himself before them in the manner of the Sinnoh people, palms flat on the floor, forehead pressed to the ground. “Then tell me what I can do to make it right. Anything within my power, I’ll do. I will reshape this universe again with my own hands to any specification you give me if it will see you forgiving me. I can reverse our roles — I will spend eternity at your feet serving you if such a thing will have you finding it in your heart to absolve me for how foolishly I’ve acted. Anything you ask of me, Lord Giratina. I am, as I have always been and always will be, the most loyal and devoted of your retainers, and I will promise to you anything if it makes up for what I’ve done to you.”

It was painful, seeing how passionate he was about this. He trembled with the force of it; his forehead rested nearly on top of their feet. He truly would have done anything they asked if they so much as insinuated they desired it. Having that sort of power over someone felt, quite frankly, like total and absolute shit. Though Tioga remembered being thrilled that day, such a very long time ago now, it seemed, that Volo had come to them at the Temple of Sinnoh after they had rescued him from their father and pledged himself to be their disciple, they had never wanted him to disregard everything in this world in favor of them. They had loved him so because he was unwilling to move in his convictions. They had loved that so very much about him. They didn’t want a brainwashed follower whose only interest was in carrying out their will. They wanted someone who had a dream in their heart and the ambition to match. Volo had fit that description perfectly.

And now he was here, before them, ready to tear the universe apart if it meant they would no longer be angry with him.

“Give me my powers back,” they said evenly.

Volo stiffened. They could see how desperate he was for that not to be the lone stipulation.

“Give me back” — they swallowed hard — “what makes me Giratina. Now.”

After a long few seconds, Volo pushed himself up so that he was sitting before them, blinking those golden eyes up at them, shining with tears. “Tioga,” he begged, “don’t make me do this. Please.”

“Now, Volo.”

Volo hovered tremorous fingers just above his heart. From his body, as if phasing into existence, appeared a pulsating black sphere about the size of a PokeBall. The inside of it stormed with black and purple fog — Tioga knew instantly that this was the essence of their being as Giratina, and they wondered how on earth they had ever wanted to entirely get rid of it. It was them. It was home. It was because they were this being that everything that had happened to them had happened. It was because they were this being that they had been able to meet Volo in the first place. It was because they were this being that they were not just Giratina, but Tioga.

The sphere floated an inch above Volo’s cupped palm. He offered it to them; he was looking off to the side, his eyes cast to the ground, ashamed.

Tioga reached out for it. In less than a fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond, it disappeared from sight, and they felt it nestling inside their own chest. Instantaneously, they once again felt like a whole person — as if they had been living merely as an outline of a person, and were now entirely complete. If they had not already been crying the sheer relief of it would have brought tears to their eyes.

From across the unusual dimension the two of them now inhabited, Arceus said, with a certain amount of smugness, NOT EVEN MY WAYWARD, MISBEHAVING CHILD WILL HAVE YOU, IT SEEMS—

Tioga whirled around and came down on Arceus like God’s own wrath.

YOU, they said hatefully, WILL BE SILENT.

Obsidian chains rose from the flat disc they were standing on and threw themselves over and around Arceus, slamming it to the floor so violently that it actually cried out in pain. Its legs twisted unnaturally under it. Apparently satisfied, Tioga turned back to Volo as if they hadn’t just attacked and subdued their father.

“My darling,” they said softly.

Volo had circled his arms around their legs and pressed his forehead against their knees. He looked for all the world like a terrified child. The tears from his eyes made tiny wet spots on their skin, and their heart broke. They could not stop themselves from reaching down and taking his head between their hands, running their thumbs over his hair soothingly. If it was within the realm of possibility, they would have taken him away to a place where they could spend the rest of eternity comforting him. He was so very fragile, and if they could remove him from anything that could ever harm him, they would.

“I just wanted everyone to be happy,” Volo explained miserably. “I wanted to make it so that nobody had to suffer ever again. You understand, don’t you, Tioga? That was all I ever wanted to do.”

“Of course I understand.” This was a lie. Tioga cared for one human in this entire universe and one human only — the saffron-haired god kneeling at their feet, clutching them to him as if letting his grip relax even a little bit would send them off somewhere that he could never hope to follow. They’d gladly damn the world to hell if it meant that their Volo would be kept safe and happy for the rest of time. “But Volo,” they said, and sank to their knees as well, forcing Volo to release them. They took his face in their hands, skirting over the fine lines of his jaw, tilting his head up so that his tear-stained eyes gazed reverently up at them. This time they smoothed their thumbs over the myriad of fine cuts criss-crossing his face, watching as he flinched ever so slightly under them, their heart lurching each time he did. A splotchy purple-yellow bruise across his cheekbone was soft to the touch, and they had to bite their lip with a fang to keep from bursting into tears again. “But Volo,” they said again, “everyone would be just as upset if they knew that you had taken on their pain and suffering.”

“They wouldn’t care,” Volo argued, shaking his head. “They only care now because I made myself their god. Because it was the only way to keep them all safe from the truth.”

Tioga shook their head in argument. “My sweet boy,” they said, voice cracking, “don’t you know how much everyone loves you?”

Sleep was hard to come by in those early hours of the morning. It was a very unusual sensation to be in Volo’s bed without him there in it as well. Tioga could not get comfortable no matter how hard they tried — this was a bed that was so very often meant for two, and Tioga sleeping there alone felt sacreligious. They attempted to calm themselves by placing their fingers against the teardrop necklace that they had looped around their neck, hoping that it would bring them some comfort.

From inside the necklace came Volo’s voice, wispy and insubstantial, but not so wispy and insubstantial as to be able to be mistaken for imaginary: “My heart … you’re lonely, aren’t you? Please…”

They brought the thick covers up around their neck, trying to simulate the feeling of being held, or at least tricking their mind into thinking there was someone on the other side of those covers. They responded, “I am. But I can’t. Not until you really, truly believe what I’m telling you.”

“Tioga…” But it was a plea free of any actual pleading. He had resigned himself to being trapped — albeit in a different area of that pocket dimension than Arceus resided in, because Tioga would never keep him somewhere he might be in danger, or even discomfort — until they, with their rediscovered powers over antimatter and dimensional travel, allowed him out. Surely, he could attempt to escape himself, and he might even succeed — but doing so would not be without consequences. Tioga would likely fight back, and he would rather not deepen the rift between them anymore. Already he was sick with anxiety from upsetting them in the first place. If he continued to fight them, he feared he might really die of a broken heart. “Tioga,” he said again, “I would do anything to be able to kiss your fingertips. I can feel them on my necklace. You know that, right? If I was there with you, I’d raise them up and I’d press the softest kisses I could to them. If I could fall asleep with your fingertips resting against my lips, I think I would be able to die a happy man.”

Tioga had squeezed their eyes shut. Damn. He really didn’t make it easy, did he?

Because of course they wanted so badly to release him. They would have done nearly anything to have him here in bed beside them, to feel the warmth of his body and the beating of his heart and the humanity of him, those thin alabaster arms wrapped around them, that long golden hair falling every which way, snaking over the dip of their side and curling in between the two of them, tickling Tioga’s nose, causing them to grin at him across the infinitesimal distance between them, closing that distance with a kiss as they tightened their hold on each other’s hands. They were dizzy with the fantasy of it. At any moment they could have chosen to make it a reality, because surely if they released Volo now he would be filled with such gratitude that any animosity he held against them — and to be honest, it was unlikely he held any animosity towards them at all, even after this — would be entirely forgotten. They could fall asleep in his arms and wake up to the perfect sunlight sparkling off the perfect sea and shining in through the perfect window.

Tears were once again gathering in the corners of their eyes. They shoved the duvet into the creases of their eyes to get rid of them.

“Tioga, are you crying?” Volo asked sharply. And then, heavy with guilt, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you…”

“Mmph,” Tioga said, which was the sound of them trying not to actually cry, like, the real tears, the big, fat ones, as their tail curled between their legs and traced itself along their face in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at comforting themselves. In the end, they resigned themselves to falling asleep as the dim light of the bedroom made itself into smears through the thick tears that were slipping down their face.

The sun beamed pleasantly through the window the next morning and warmed their tired, tender eyes.

They’d cried themselves to sleep. They groaned as they opened their eyes to blearily take in the room around them. Leave it to Volo to make them into a freaking highschool emo self-insert fanfiction story. But of course they weren’t actually blaming him for it. You couldn’t blame someone for being so unbelievably lovely that you fell in love with them.

The covers were disorganized and tossed all over the bed. It looked like they had kicked them around all night in their sleep. They were fairly certain that it could be counted as a test of stamina just to untangle themselves from them, so they didn’t. Instead they pushed themselves up so they were sitting against the headboard and rubbed at their eyes with their tail. God, they’d missed their tail. They didn’t often let it out in their humanoid form, but now that they knew Volo had taken away what made them Giratina for a while they were fiercely clinging to it so no one could take it away again — not because of any great love of being Giratina, as Volo certainly knew by now, but because being Giratina meant that they had the power to protect the things they loved.

Or, rather, the one thing they loved.

They brushed their fingers over the necklace, which pressed flat against their clavicle. “…Volo?”

They could feel him startle awake in the way of someone who had not been sleeping even a little bit well. They couldn’t see him, obviously, but in that same insubstantial voice, he said, “Tioga? Tioga, are you alright?”

They brought one of his thick pillows to their chest and hugged it to themselves. It was still nearly as comfortable as it was when they were sleeping on it, but the lack of Volo’s presence was dimming everything a few magnitudes. Even the blue sky outside felt desaturated, as if Volo had been the true sun and now that he was in a different dimension the world didn’t see fit to keep up its breathtaking beauty.

“No,” they answered, squeezing their eyes shut and trying not to start crying again. They could hear the wavering of their voice. “I’m not alright, ‘cause I cried myself to sleep thinking about how stupid you are for doing all of this.”

Before he could respond, they added, “And how big your heart is for it, and how much I don’t deserve you.”

They’d had this conversation, or variants of it, a thousand times. Neither of them believed they deserved the other, and neither of them ever would. They were constantly locked in an argument of who was less worthy, always hedging their bets on themselves and being blown away when the other would insist that it wasn’t true. Volo couldn’t believe that his human self, boasting nothing of note, having been rejected by Arceus, was even close to meriting Tioga’s attention; Tioga was in shock that Volo, with his endless compassion and love, and the incredible whirlwind of convictions and emotions that shone through every action he performed, saw something like them, a monster wearing human skin, banished to another dimension so that no one would have to have the misfortune of being in their presence, as deserving of gaining not only the favor and the love but the complete devotion of a boy as remarkable as Volo.

So while they still believed that neither of them was worthy of the other, they had stopped verbalizing it quite as often, because it was very clear that no one was going to come out the winner.

Still, Volo skirted the edges of verbalizing it, because of course he did. “You are my heart,” he told them. “If you find it desirable, it’s only because it’s a reflection of you.”

“You’re the worst acolyte ever,” Tioga said miserably into the pillow, “because you’re the fucking best acolyte ever. And I love you so much, and it kills me to see you hurt, even if it’s what you wanted.”

Because it wasn’t at all what they wanted. And sue them for being selfish, but they were going to have to be on this one. All they could see behind their closed eyelids was Volo’s face, mottled with bruises and cuts, his hair limp and lifeless, his disposition languid, the pain and suffering in his eyes that felt chasms deep. The way his enervated self had pressed up against their knees and looped his arms around their legs as if they were his last lifeline. They slipped their tail behind the pillow and bit into it, desperate to keep the sob that wanted to come out from escaping.

After a second of hesitation, Volo said softly, “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you about it. It wasn’t fair, that I didn’t, even if I was afraid of what you would say.”

Tioga said nothing. They were still trying very hard not to audibly cry. They were failing at doing it inaudibly — the pillow was already becoming wet again with their tears.

“Tioga,” Volo continued, still in that same soft voice, “will you let me out? I can feel your misery … I won’t take it away, if you don’t want me to, but, please — let me comfort you. Let me hold you. I can’t bear to see you like this, Tioga.”

They took shuddering breaths as they thought it over. They were so very desperate to have him beside them again, to curl up in his arms and let him be there for them the way they had consistently been there for him in his time of need or after experiencing something particularly upsetting. But they knew the effect he had on them. They knew that the second they allowed him to do something like that, they would fall headfirst into the feeling, and the entire point of all of this would be forgotten if only they could stay in this paradisiacal world with the person they loved more than anything, free from Arceus’s torment and the legions of people who wanted them dead or otherwise.

A plan began to form in their mind.

They said, “I’ll let you out.”

Volo must have hardly been able to believe it, because he was silent — and then he said, his words all tripping over each other, “Thank you, Tioga, thank you. I promise I’ll do everything in my power to make up for my—”

“But you have to trust me,” they went on, and they could hear the way Volo’s voice dropped off, confused. “I mean it, Volo. You have to swear to me you won’t use your powers, even when you realize what it is I’m doing. Do you swear?”

Positive that Tioga was planning something he wouldn’t like, but unable to figure out what it could possibly be, Volo was forced to concede. “Will it be penance for the injustice I inflicted on you?”

Penance. Tioga hated that word, because Volo had never done anything in his life that truly required penance. Even when he had threatened Akari at the Temple of Sinnoh, it had been for the greater good. He had been so harsh with her because he had wanted so very badly to create this new world where neither she nor anyone else would ever have to suffer again. Idly, Tioga wondered where Akari was in this new world. Likely somewhere far away from here, where she could live her own trouble-free life in blissful ignorance.

But Volo was never going to stop believing that he needed to redeem himself for one reason or another, so Tioga exhaled shakily and said, “Yes.”

“Then I’ll do it.” He didn’t even hesitate. “I’ll do it, Tioga. Just let me be there for you.”

Tioga removed the pillow from their chest. After they had made sure everything was set to go outside of Volo’s room — which didn’t require getting up from the bed anymore, now that they had retaken their powers as a deity — they hovered their fingers over Volo’s necklace and drew on his soul.

He reappeared beside them, looking very surprised; most likely, the way he traveled into that pocket dimension and the way Tioga had taken him out of it were entirely different. But this shock lasted for only a moment. A second later, he had taken their face in his hands and kissed them, long and sweet, and then several little ones as he kissed the tears off of their face, all the way up to the ridges of their eyes. Touched and sentimental, they took gentle hold of his wrists.

“Do you trust me?” Tioga asked again, their eyes shining with emotion.

He nodded. “Of course, my heart. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” they made sure to say, and then, flicking their eyes up to the door, they said, “Okay, come in.”

Volo turned and watched in horror as the door opened to reveal his priestesses.

They crowded into the room, all goggle-eyed, all crouching around and on the bed, all looking like they had just been given awful news that they didn’t know how to react to. This was what Volo had been trying to avoid; this was what had broken his heart every time he thought of it, that they would eventually find out what he had been doing. His heart was at the center of the earth — he turned away, trying to hide his face in the long sheets of his hair so that they would not be able to see his agony at them knowing the truth. Because certainly that was what had happened. Tioga had somehow implanted this knowledge into their minds, and now— now—

He couldn’t face them. And yet, he couldn’t hide the wounds that crept up his arms and legs and splotched his hands and feet.

And there was nowhere to run.

He had promised Tioga he wasn’t going to take advantage of his god abilities, but he was a razor’s edge from doing so anyway. The only reason that he didn’t was because, although he loved his priestesses very, very much, he was always going to love Tioga more.

“Don’t look at me,” he begged them, bringing his arms up to hug himself, as if that would avert their eyes from all of the injuries marring the perfect, beautiful body they were so used to.

“Lord…”

Volo reflexively looked up at the sound of one of his priestesses' voices. Just as suddenly he was tempted to hide his face again, knowing that his cuts and bruises were more than visible, but Annaliese held his eyes. She wasn’t angry; she wasn’t upset. Not for the reasons he had figured she might be, anyway. Her eyes sparkled with the same emotion that Tioga’s had just a minute ago — concern? Distress? Worry? She looked like she was unsettled in her own skin, like she wanted to reach out and take Volo into her arms but was restraining herself from doing so.

“Lord,” she said again, her voice breaking at the same time as two hot tears slipped down her face and into the mattress below, “why on earth would you do this to yourself?”

There was a murmur of assent from the other priestesses. None of them needed to chime in with their own opinion — it seemed they all shared Annaliese’s. And Tioga’s.

His own voice perilously thin, Volo said, “Because I didn’t want any of you to suffer anymore—”

“But Lord,” interrupted Kali, who was standing by the foot of the bed, her knuckles white on the wood she was gripping, “look at yourself — we are suffering! None of us want this for you … you’ve been so kind to us, and all this time you were hiding the pain that should have been ours to take — it’s not fair, that you’re taking it onto yourself! It’s not fair…”

Kali, who was normally so strong and spirited, was in so much misery that she had lost her voice halfway through and had to turn around and press her fingers over her mouth so she didn’t burst into uncontrollable crying. Even so, her shoulders were shaking visibly.

“You look terrible,” Matthias agreed sadly, showcasing his incredible gift of subtlety.

“No one was ever supposed to find out,” Volo said miserably, knowing this argument held no water now that he had already used it once. “You were all supposed to live forever without being hurt. I know what pain and heartbreak are like — I’ve experienced them my entire life — I was supposed to be the one who could handle it for everyone else. I’ve already been through so much.” He gave a bitter laugh. “What’s the rest of humanity’s suffering? It’s just more of what I’m used to.” He grasped at the sheets below him with those beautiful long fingers.

Annaliese said, quietly, “But Lord … none of us would have ever said yes to it.”

This was not something Volo had ever spent time thinking about. Of course he hadn’t. Why would he? He hadn’t needed permission from them to take on their heartbreak. He had assumed that, if they’d found out about it, everyone would have been grateful. But he hadn’t wanted them to worship him because of that. He hadn’t wanted them to worship him at all, really. He’d just wanted to live forever in this place that was paradise for everyone except him.

“Y-You wouldn’t?” he asked, a little stunned.

Various responses in the negative came from his priestesses. He looked around at all of them, seeing the same truth in the eyes of every temple maiden.

Annaliese continued, “Absolutely not! In fact, if you had tried to do it anyway, we would have fought it! None of us want to see you hurt, Lord … not even if it means that we get to spend our lives in utopia. How could you ever have thought that, for even a second?”

Volo looked at Tioga, who was regarding him with about five percent boastfulness and ninety-five percent the purest, strongest love a person could imagine. Unbidden, tears once again leapt to his eyes — Tioga’s tail came up to delicately catch the drops as they fell.

“Not to be that bitch,” Tioga murmured, “but I told you so.” They bent their index finger and used the first joint to gently chuck Volo’s chin. 

The congregation in his bedroom was silent for a long few moments, during which Volo’s shoulders shook the same as Kali’s had, and all of his priestesses regarded him with veneration. Once it looked like he had settled himself down enough to hold a conversation, Tioga lifted his chin with their tail so that he was forced to blink up at them, those golden jewels of his eyes sparkling with saline.

They told him, “I think you should introduce yourself to your priestesses.”

Volo swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, flinching when he accidentally smeared some of the salt water he’d been crying into one of his cuts. But he shook it off and readjusted himself so that he was facing the people whose only desire as long as they could remember was to be in his presence. People who, even after hearing the awful truth of this world, had stayed by his side. People who had looked at him as a person , knowing he had lied to them since the conception of this universe, and rather than dismissing him or becoming angry with him had doubled down on their love for him, had made sure he knew that their affection for him wasn’t out of any obligation of being products of his power, but that they would have chosen to do this regardless.

He lifted his sleeve to his eyes to pat at them again and said, in a very mousy voice, not anything like the confidence he had radiated before all of this had come to pass: “Hello, everyone. I’m Volo of the Ginkgo Guild, the go-to choice for all your mercantile needs here in Hisui!” He said this with a practiced flourish, and then gave a wistful, bitter laugh. “Or, at least, that’s who I was before any of this. But even then, I wasn’t really part of the Ginkgo Guild, not truly.”

But this didn’t seem to matter to his priestesses. Suddenly, they were all speaking over each other, asking what the Ginkgo Guild was like, what his experience with it had been, why he didn’t consider himself part of it. Volo was left blinking at his priestesses in shock; he could not ever have imagined that someone would show genuine interest in him, regardless of whether that interest was being targeted at his false life as part of the Ginkgo Guild or his real one as a researcher of myths. As soon as he answered one question, another would be asked, and he resembled a Starly the way he was looking around from one priestess to another to answer them.

And then, when he told them about his true life, the one he had hidden from Akari and everyone else except Cogita until it was time to reveal himself, they were even more fascinated. His heart rose up into his throat as he relayed his findings, as he told them of the legends and myths he had come across in his travels. This was what he had so desperately wanted from everyone back in Hisui — he had wished fervently that at least one person would have looked at him with approbation as he unraveled his special interest to them, instead of being regarded as someone who put a lot of research into things that had very little meaning.

Hours must have passed — the sun traveled across the sky and fell in through the window in differently positioned sunbeams — but his temple maidens were enraptured by this god they were just now truly getting to know. When he finally reached the point in his life where Everything Had Changed, he once more looked back at Tioga — they were looking at him with a soft smile like rose petals, with the warmth and the love and the affection pooling underneath their eyes. This was their happiness. It was so contradictory to how they’d looked in the other dimension that one could scarcely look at them now and imagine that such an unhappy expression had ever lived on their face before.

“And then,” Volo told his priestesses, still gazing at the being that held his whole heart, “I met Giratina. Tioga.”

Tioga’s first experiences with Volo had not been ones that were altogether satisfying for either of them, and so as Volo related the story of the two of them traveling together and the way Tioga would, strangely, avoid his question time and time again — Are you, or are you not, a fragment of Arceus?! — they shifted their eyes away, even though it meant they broke contact with Volo’s.

But he spent precious little time on that part of their history. He quickly moved towards Spear Pillar — towards the Temple of Sinnoh, and how he had been nearly killed by Arceus before Tioga had risked everything to come and save him. He told them of the way that Tioga had lifted him up on the back of their hand, and how he had pledged himself to them then and forevermore. How he had been terrified, at first, when Tioga had let him down, figuring that he had been entirely too much, that his passion was an embarrassment to the beings he revered, and then learned just as suddenly that the strength of his convictions was the entire reason Tioga loved him in the first place. How, from then on, they had been completely inseparable; how even now his heart swelled with love for them even more every day.

“So you see,” he finished, “that’s why Tioga is the High Priestess. It’s why they’re the one I always come to retrieve.”

Tioga had at some point rested their head on his shoulder, and they were now looking up at him through dark eyelashes. He looped one arm around them and squeezed their shoulder with one hand, consistently amazed to be able to hold this colossal dragon god in his arms whenever he wanted.

“You know we can’t stay here forever,” they said.

He was still. The soft smile that had been playing on his face as he gazed down at the god he held fell immediately.

“Why not?” he asked, knowing it was true even as he said it.

“It’s not right.” Tioga’s hands found the one of his that wasn’t resting on their shoulder and cupped it in their own. They lifted it to their mouth, pressed their lips to its knuckles, then to the second joints, the first joints, and finally his fingertips. Of course it was right, his whole being wanted to scream. How could something that felt this lovely not be right? How could staying here with the person he loved more than anything in the entire world, and who loved him back in equal measure, with their lifelong adversary trapped in a dimension it could surely never find its way out of, and wouldn’t have any power to hurt them besides, be wrong?

But Tioga continued on: “I love you more than I ever thought it was possible to love anything, And having time here — away from everything, in this place that’s so perfect … this place where I can wake up next to you every single day and know you’re safe … this place where people give you the love you deserve … it’s been paradise, Volo.”

“Great!” said Volo, whose very nature was seeing absolutely nothing wrong with this arrangement. “Then we’ll stay.”

“But we can’t,” Tioga said in that husky, comforting voice of theirs. “You know that. This place is made up — it’s not real.”

“The people in it are real,” Volo argued weakly. He so badly wanted to find some excuse that would be enough for Tioga to accept a new life in this world. But he’d seen the relief in their eyes when he’d passed them the sphere containing their powers. (It had felt so warm and gentle next to his own. He’d been devastated to see it go.) They were invested in that cruel, awful world from which the two of them had come, even though there was little redeeming about it.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Tioga, shutting their eyes and pressing another kiss to his fingertips; this time, their lips stayed pressed against them. “I want them to find you and love you for themselves. Otherwise, you’ll always be wondering if it’s just because you’re a god now. And — Dia and Paru…”

“You want to see them,” Volo reasoned. “As themselves, you want to see them.” Tioga probably already knew that they’d had their memories wiped as well, but Dialga and Palkia had never been what Volo would call excellent caretakers of their sibling.

“And that world…” Tioga said. “…we gave up on it, Volo. I’d do anything for you, you know I would, but—”

This was the dark and stormy self he’d seen inside that sphere that held their essence. That hatred that bound him to them, that inability to accept the way things were, that conviction to make things right. He was crestfallen, because even now he felt the stirrings of it within him and knew that in the end he wouldn’t be able to deny what Tioga was saying.

“You can’t forgive anyone for what’s happened to you,” Volo said quietly.

Tioga shook their head — just a bit, at first, and then fervently. All this time, he’d been focused only on the parts of himself that he could see in Tioga. As a human in service to a god far more powerful than he, it had seldom occurred to him to consider the opposite.

He pressed them close and slipped his other arm around them, turning so that they were mostly buried in his chest, nuzzling at his collarbone.

“I just want to be happy together,” they sniffed, “in the world we came from. I want to look at the terrible things that world has done to us and show it that we can find happiness with each other. And Volo … I’m really tired of running.”

i’m tired of running too

Somewhere along the way, the priestesses had disappeared from the room. He wondered if any of them had ever been there in the first place — but the residual love he felt permeating the space around them proved they had. He promised silently to them that he would find them in the world he and Tioga had left, even armed only with their names and their appearances. They deserved that, at least, and far more besides, even if he would no longer be able to give it to them. Sighing, he said to Tioga, “This is a very difficult decision for me to make, my heart.”

“I know,” they said miserably.

“I just want you safe.”

“I know.” They swiped at their eyes with the back of their hand, which came away wet. “I’m ruining everything, just like always.”

“No — No, of course not,” he was quick to correct them. “Tioga, you can’t think that. It would be far worse of me to force you to stay here, in a place where you aren’t happy. It’s killing you, to be here. I just want to make sure that this is really what you want. That it’s the right decision.”

Tioga scoffed bitterly. “Oh, I know it is. Because it sucks shit, and I hate myself for it, and also it’s hurting other people that I care about, so it can only be something I really want.”

Volo guided them with his hands so that they were sitting up once again, beside him on the bed, their claws hooking so tightly into the sheets that despite being obsidian black they were going pale with the effort. Their tail thrashed around argumentatively, as if in silent debate with the mind controlling it. They wouldn’t look at him — their eyes were fixed on a far-off corner of the room, unable to meet his. They were trying very hard not to burst into tears again, but he could see the self-hatred printed all over their face, which was an expression he saw on Tioga so often that it seemed to be at home there. He had wanted to take that away from them for good … but they were right. This wasn’t the way, this manufactured happiness. This running from their problems. Like this, Tioga would spend their days hating themselves even more enthusiastically for taking what they must have labeled as the easy way out. There was no true happiness here for them.

“It would hurt me much more to know that you were living in misery.” He palmed their chin, ran his thumb along their jaw, and smiled wistfully. “We must be such a sorry sight.”

And then, before he could change his mind, they sank into a sea of gold.

Volo’s fingers rested on the shining sphere he had withdrawn from himself. Like Tioga’s, it stormed with conviction and passion. It was warm to the touch. Arceus’s power. He was going to miss it something fierce.

But he wasn’t going to give it to Arceus. Hell, no. Not when he had finally managed to wrest it from the so-called god who didn’t deserve it.

But that begged the question:

Who to entrust with it?

Tioga slept peacefully in his arms. They would not wake until he had transported them to their home, to that terribly messed-up and unfair world he had sought to destroy. Whatever his decision, it was his and his alone.

Not Tioga. He loved them immensely, but giving them Arceus’s power, though fitting, and with a certain element of poetic justice, would likely have unintended and upsetting consequences. He didn’t want to put them in danger — whether that danger was from an outside source, or from themselves.

Not Akari. Obviously not. She was probably a good kid, at the end of everything, but she was just that — a child. While she in some way deserved at least a fraction of the power, enough to get home if nothing else (and wasn’t that the real fucking cosmic joke, that it was Arceus who had taken her from her family and everything she had ever known, and not Volo, who had been regarded with suspicious eyes ever since his true intentions were revealed), giving her Arceus’s power in its whole was irresponsible. He broke off a tiny piece of it, pictured her in his mind, and sent it her way. She’d been meeting with Cyllene; he watched as her eyes fluttered closed, heavy with sleep, and he watched Cyllene jump to her feet when she realized something was wrong, and he watched as Akari turned into golden particles that disappeared from time just as Cyllene’s fingers reached her shoulders to try and shake her awake. Those particles flew by him, here, in this nothingness, for a split second — and then reformed in the time she must have been from, sound asleep in her bed.

Not Cogita, he thought. She was already burdened enough with Arceus’s mission for her and only her. Receiving its power and therefore its immortality and godhood would do nothing for someone who wanted so precisely to finally disappear into oblivion’s embrace.

Not any of the Diamond or Pearl clans. Not the Galaxy Team. No one in Jubilife Village could handle this power, or even comprehend it. There were no Celestica left — he and Cogita were the only ones. Would he have to reabsorb this power and be cursed with walking the earth with it, knowing that he at any time, following any impulse, could remake the world once more, and this time keep it from being found out?

No. He would never forgive himself.

But who—

A voice cut through the light.

It was thick with tears and apprehension. This person was reaching out for what Volo held in his hand; it was their last salvation.

“Please. I need it to save them.”

The voice was hauntingly familiar. Volo worried at his bottom lip. The sphere was tantalizing in his palm; now that the time had come to give it up, he sort of wished he could stay here in this golden void forever.

“Please, I’m begging you. If this doesn’t work… If this doesn’t work, then…”

The voice cut off, too overcome to continue any longer. Volo could see it now, above him — there was something reaching through time and space and existence. A hand, red and raw, attached to an arm covered in the same cuts and gashes and slits and wounds as he himself. Around the wrist was a horribly mottled bruise, like something had been clamped there for a very long time. And above that arm, there was a face — it was tear-streaked and hollow, the eyes ringed by dark circles, the blond hair limp and lifeless just like his own. Everything about the owner of that voice screamed conviction; he had put everything he had into this final, desperate plea.

Volo smiled. He tossed the sphere into the air and watched as the other person nearly tumbled through the portal linking their two worlds for just this nanosecond in his attempt to catch it, and he saw the relief come crashing down on the other’s face. This truly had been their very last hope. He cradled the sphere as if it was the planet itself, or the sun, or the universe — with so much care it broke Volo’s heart to see it.

“How do I—”

“You’ll know how,” said Volo softly. “You’ve always known how.”

“Right.” The other boy seemed to actually take him in now, and his eyes, while fiery before, sparked again with tinder when he saw who it was that Volo was holding. “Is that…”

“Take care of them, Volo,” he said, and then he was falling away from himself, and he didn’t even have time to wonder how he could have ended up hurt so badly again before he and Tioga were plummeting from a crack in the sky and crashing into the ground.

Volo groaned as he came to. Had the sun always been this bright? It couldn’t have always been this bright.

“How much did we drink last night?” he asked, twisting himself to see Tioga. When he wasn’t waking up in their arms, it was usually because they were making breakfast, or spending time with the Pokemon. Today it seemed to be a mixture of both, with his Togekiss, Asmodiel, doing loop-de-loops through the air every time Tioga flipped an egg. (They were flipping them far too often for them to end up edible at the end of this crusade, but at least they’d moved on from teasing Asmodiel by telling her that she was going to end up as a breakfast menu item the following day.) Zev — his Arcanine — was bounding back with a stick Tioga had launched as far as possible, which, with Tioga’s enhanced strength, was often a kilometer or more away. Sometimes Zev could be gone for minutes at a time chasing a stick down, and frequently only found it because he scented Tioga on it. The rest of the Pokemon were still asleep, except for his Spiritomb, Augustine, who seemed to be considering waking up and then changing his mind about it every few minutes.

Tioga’s tail thumped against the ground, visibly pleased that their love had joined them in the conscious world. They said, “We didn’t get white girl wasted last night, believe it or not.” From context, Volo assumed white girl wasted meant surprisingly intoxicated off of low-potency alcohol. “I don’t even think we drank. ‘cause if we did, like, where are the bottles? Believe me — I don’t litter. The last thing I want is Shaymin on my ass. That fucker’s small, but it’s kind of like Copperajah and Flabebe, you know?”

Volo blinked at them uncertainly.

Groaning, Tioga smashed an egg in half with their spatula, which had Volo mentally planning out another breakfast, because surely Tioga hadn’t gone into this one with the end goal of it actually being digestible. “You know. Like big things being afraid of small things.”

“That’s true,” said Volo, stretching his arms above his head. He grinned when he saw Tioga catch sight of the midriff that was exposed when he did so and held his stretch for a few seconds longer than necessary to allow them to indulge themselves. “You’re quite a prodigious dragon.”

“Yeah. I mean, there have even been times when you scared me. Just for a second,” they said quickly, “and only because little things move so fast. But, er, well, sometimes it’s nice—”

They were flushing. They tipped their head forward to hide it in the waves of their hair. Volo, enamored, hid his amused smile behind his fist.

“I suppose we’d better get ready for the day, then,” he said, getting to his feet and grabbing his notebook, which was filled to bursting with the records of the myths Tioga had been telling him about ever since they had come back into themselves at the Temple of Sinnoh. How vast this world was. How filled with ancient secrets. He could hardly wait to uncover them all. He no longer cared quite so much about Arceus and usurping its power; if he could live every day like this, with Giratina and the rest of his Pokemon by his side, traveling far and wide to witness history both already made and in the process of being made, he would never want for anything ever again.