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Time spools out in heavy threads, stretching out into infinity. Volo would’ve had clever words to describe it, but he’s been gone for… years, now. Not even his name had survived into the modern era. Akari sighs, pulling her coat tighter around her frame against the chill of Snowpoint City. How terrible it is, how lonely it is, to bear the burden of immortality. Still, she tries her best not to complain. She had been chosen by Arceus for a reason, even if the reason itself still eluded her even after all this time. If it was by the Almighty One’s design, then…
She walks along brightly lit paths, watching the snow fall with bittersweet longing. Volo had hated the cold. He’d hated everything about it, from the way it slunk past his fur-lined coat to the way it caused ice to form on the brim of his hat if he was unlucky enough to get caught in a downpour during the winter months. She remembers the way he’d screech and curse at her whenever she poured snow down his back, snarling and muttering furiously before doing the same to her in return. Sometimes it turned into a snowball fight. Other times it just turned into an outright fight, Volo trying to bury her alive while she laughed and tried to escape his furious grip. Nowadays, there’s no one for her to play so frivolously with. There’s no one who knows her at all.
She misses him.
Of course, she misses a lot of people. So many people in Hisui had wormed their way into her heart, leaving her aching and cold in their absence. She misses Rei and his insatiable appetite and his mischievous Pikachu; she misses Professor Laventon and his thick Galarian accent and how every new discovery made him light up with child-like wonder; she misses Adaman and Irida and their endless squabbling over beliefs and priorities and how they would always put aside their differences to do what was right; but she misses Volo most of all, the man who tore her apart and was torn apart in return, the two of them rebuilding each other over tense campfires and uncomfortably shared meals that morphed into something softer, kinder, better. He held her heart in his deceptive hands and she let him, even knowing he could destroy her once more if only he wished it. But then again, she held his heart in return. Even now she carries it with her, an ache within her chest she’d never want to be free of.
Akari lets her feet carry her outside of the city, leaving the bright lights and warm buildings behind. Even though she’s certain she came from an era similar to this one, she’s never felt quite at home anywhere but in the remains of Hisui’s sprawling landscape. Her breath puffs out in small white clouds as she walks through the blizzard, familiar enough with the biting cold of the Alabaster Icelands to shrug off the miserable chill. Honestly, modern Sinnohans didn’t realise how mild the weather was nowadays. No matter how many storms swept through the northern part of the region during winter, the cold never came close to reaching the temperatures of a sunny day in the Pearl Settlement. She still doesn’t understand how Irida could waltz around in naught but a crop top and shorts.
Lake Acuity stretches out before her, placid and still. Uxie still slumbers within the cavern in the centre of the lake, its presence settling along her skin as a faint prickle. Akari sighs as she settles herself at the edge of the lake to set up camp. There’s a certain comfort in sleeping near the lakes. The air is still wild and clean, the water still pure, the area protected from human poison by the lake deities. It’s all she has left of the land she grew up in — or at least, the land she remembers spending her youth in. Her memories from before Hisui still elude her, but… well, how could she miss something she can’t recall? So she claims Hisui as her homeland because it’s all she’s ever known, the place filled with the people who loved her and were loved by her in return.
Pokémon cries fill the air as the sun begins to dip towards the horizon, painting the snow in orange hues. Akari removes her battered cap and runs her hand through her hair, trying to tousle some volume back into it after being flattened all day. Her cap is faded and old but she can still see it as it once was, a vibrant yellow and blue she once tracked across fields and valleys, a precious name ready to fall from her lips as soon as she saw his silhouette in the distance. She misses him. Gods she misses him and his quick wit and sharp tongue. Even though he’s been gone for nearly a century, she still finds herself doing a double-take every time she catches a swirl of blond hair from the corner of her eye. He’d laugh at her for still being so obsessed with him even all these years later, but she can’t help it.
Volo was the only person who had ever understood her, truly understood her, even if their relationship had been… tumultuous at first. They had snapped at each other like territorial Garchomps after his betrayal, gnashing teeth and tearing hands and a fury Akari thought would never settle into something soft and sweet. His anger at being thwarted and her pain at being betrayed… sometimes she thinks it’s a miracle they ever managed to fall in love despite it all. But they had, complimenting each other in a way she misses more and more as the years drag on, the space beside her aching in his absence.
Footsteps shake her from her memories. She quickly douses her fire and packs her things, already planning to retreat. Though she loves camping beside the lakes, there’s nothing she hates more than camping with other people around. She can always find somewhere else to sleep. But as she breaks down her camp, a voice stops her entirely. “Found you at last, Miss Akari!” calls an impossible voice. “I’ve been looking for you all over, you know!” It’s impossible. It’s impossible. She saw him die, clutched his blood-soaked hand in her own as he took his last breaths, wept over him as the life faded from his eyes. She had buried him, dug his grave with her own two hands as a storm pelted the Coastlands, rain mixing with the tears she just couldn’t stop. It can’t be him. It can’t be. But Akari spins around with wide, hurting eyes and —
Volo smiles at her, just as soft and warm as he was all those years ago. “I’ve missed you, my Akari,” he says softly, boots crunching in the snow as he comes to stand before her. He’s younger than she remembers, lacking the sharp angles and lines that she had come to know so intimately, but it’s him. No one else spoke with that specific accent, one that had been lost to time as Hisui faded into memory. No one else would know the words he spoke to her, ones that had been shouted across a field as the heavens cracked and bled. He kneels in the snow before her with a mischievous grin, one she’s missed so terribly. “Have you been waiting for me all this time?” he asks with a teasing lilt to his voice. “I must say, I’m rather touched by your regard! And — goodness, is that my old hat? Did you truly hang on to that awful thing this whole time?”
“Volo?” she whispers, feeling like she’s 16 and lost and scrambling for an anchor in a world that no longer makes sense. “Is that — is it really you?” He nods, and it’s like a dam breaking. She sobs and throws himself into his arms, clinging to him like the lost child she once was. “How are you here? ” she asks, voice shaky and wet. “I — you died, you died and left me all alone and I — it’s been — how are you —?”
Dry lips press against the top of her head as he pulls her against his chest. “I did, and I’m sorry I left you alone all this time,” he says softly, letting her crawl between his legs to curl up in his embrace. “Reincarnation is… strange. I never really believed in it, to be quite honest. But perhaps…” He sighs, loud and irritated and so, so familiar. “Perhaps Arceus has some mercy within its heart, to allow me to walk the earth and find you again. I guess.”
Akari laughs wetly, knowing her tears are soaking into Volo’s clothes but she doesn’t care. He can complain all he wants about it later, when the shock has worn off and she’s certain he won’t vanish the instant she lets go. For now, she sobs into the arms of a man she thought she’d never see again, overcome by the strength of her emotions, a hundred years of grief and longing spilling out like an unstoppable flood. “I missed you, Volo,” she says, tightening her hold. “I missed you.”