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"Tioga?"
This was said through clenched teeth, as Volo's hands were full and he was biting down on the corner of an envelope — likely the receipt from last month's upkeep of the zen garden, which was done by one person and one person only, someone they trusted to keep his mouth shut about the fact that neither of his clients seemed to age and that one of them disappeared into the shadows if you weren't looking at them full-on. He maneuvered through the doorway with some degree of difficulty, growing increasingly concerned when he didn't hear a response. Not like the text he'd gotten had been particularly desperate, and Tioga was more than capable of taking care of themselves, but they usually at least gave him a hint about what they wanted him to come home early for.
Somehow he managed to transfer the grocery bags he'd brought home onto the counter, and he withdrew the envelope from his mouth, checking that the return address was indeed the address of the gardener's before tossing it onto the counter as well. A little nervously, he asked, louder, "T? Hey, are you okay? What was that message about?"
From the back of the house — their bedroom — came what others might call a sinister laugh but that warmed Volo's heart every time he heard it. Because of Tioga's nature, the sound seemed to come from every shadow, every dark space, every forgotten corner in a quiet legion of voices... but Volo had a hard time thinking of being surrounded by the sound of his soulmate's laughter, however insidious others might find it, as anything but comforting.
"Ehehe... welcome home, darling. Come see me in the bedroom, would you?~"
Oh. So it was the sort of come-home-early request he was used to. They'd just been a little more coy about it this time. Well, the groceries could wait. He felt a smile curve up the side of his face and shouldered off his jacket, hanging it up and heading down the hallway to their shared bedroom. He was already pulling his shirt up and over his head as he walked into the room, and had just started to say "We can only go twenty minutes at the most, since I got mil—"
He froze, arms over his head, shirt draped between them like an unusual hammock. His silver eyes were very wide as he said, "What. Is. That."
Tioga was sitting in their bed, which he'd been expecting. They had their ribbons out, which he'd also been expecting, as they usually came into play one way or another during their sessions. What he was not at all expecting was that they were using these ribbons to lovingly caress an egg that was resting in their lap — an egg nearly the size of a small child. It was mostly gray, with black bands around, and tiny red dots inside those black bands. It was not at all difficult to determine whose egg it was he was looking at.
Tioga's arms were circling it, and they had one cheek pressed to the rounded-off top of it. They looked positively enraptured. "Oh, come on, darling. Don't tell me you don't know what it is."
"Did. Did you." Volo swallowed past what felt like a mile-long cliff in his throat. "Did you, uhm."
Tioga cracked one eye open to regard him. "Mm?"
Volo's arms were still above his head. Very slowly, he brought them down so that he could tent his hands over his face. Only his eyes were visible. "Oh my god," he said into them. "Don't make me say it."
"Say what, darling?" asked Tioga, already back to rubbing at the egg affectionately.
Jesus fucking Christ.
He said, "Did that. Come. From you?"
Tioga opened both eyes then. They fixed him long and hard with a look that quite literally could have meant anything. He had no idea whether it was a rebuke or a confirmation, and they didn't seem to be forthcoming with the information. It was nearly as maddening as when he hadn't yet known if they were a fragment of Arceus and had dodged the question every time it was asked. Maybe even more maddening — because, this time, they had to have known the answer, and yet they weren't going to tell it to him.
He brought his hands down and let his shirt slip to the floor. Taking a shaky, deep breath, he made his way over to the bed, where one of Tioga's ribbons detached from the egg and wrapped around his left wrist, gently tugging at it, pulling him along a path he'd already been planning on, climbing onto the bed and sitting cross-legged beside the egg. His blood was pounding in his ears; he had never been this unsure of himself.
He said, "Can... Can I touch it?"
Tioga scoffed. "Of course you can touch it. It came from you, too, after all."
Volo couldn't stop himself from staring at them, though he was certain it was rude. It wasn't... It wasn't that he didn't want a child with Tioga. They'd talked about it before. He just hadn't known... He'd thought that, somehow... He just... Well, he didn't know what he'd been expecting, but it hadn't been this.
He gently touched the fingers of the hand being held by Tioga's ribbon to the egg. It was much warmer than he'd thought, and though at first he was sure he was feeling his own pulse underneath his fingers, he realized as he kept them there that there were two pulses — both his own, because he was feeling his heart hammering against every inch of his skin, and the pulse — or whatever it was called, when it was from a creature in an egg — of the being underneath the eggshell.
"Ah — there it is," Tioga purred, lifting their head from the egg and pressing a kiss just below his left eye. "There's the look I was waiting for. How does it feel to be a dad, darling?"
"A... A dad," Volo repeated, swallowing again.
"Mhm."
"Is it... Uhm, is it going to be..." God, if only everyone back in Hisui could see him now. They'd never guess that someone with such a silver tongue could be stricken so speechless. Then again, they'd probably never guess he could father whatever was inside that egg, either. "Is it going to be, uhm. Like you? Uh, I mean..."
He trailed off. He simply could not make the words work. He looked helplessly at Tioga.
Mercifully, Tioga saved him. "You mean, is it going to be a Giratina?"
He nodded. Or, he thought he did. He was fairly certain he might be having the strangest dream of all time.
"Dunno," said Tioga, pressing their face into the rounded-off top again. He could see their smile peek out from the sides. "I don't think so, though. Usually that only happens with the mother. And I'm not even a girl. So... anyone's guess, really."
That Tioga was flying almost as blind as he was was not reassuring. They were the Pokemon. They were supposed to know at least a little of this. When he'd learned of their true nature he'd been ecstatic for a multitude of reasons, but one of the strongest among them was that Tioga could answer all of the burning questions in his mind about Pokemon. One of those questions had been where Pokemon eggs came from, as no one had ever seen a Pokemon lay one. And from there, his curiosity had unspooled into a thousand different other questions — did Pokemon have different gestation periods; did they inherently know an egg was theirs, even if Pokemon didn't lay eggs; how did the mammalian Pokemon without egg teeth manage to get out of their eggs in the first place. He had figured he would ask these things of Tioga eventually, but now he was fairly certain they had no idea at all.
"So." He swallowed a third time. Probably more than that, actually. He wasn't sure if he was breathing correctly. Was he breathing at all? Wouldn't it be the most embarrassing thing on earth if he passed out here, in front of what was apparently his newly conceived (was it newly conceived? did Pokemon eggs spend time somewhere else before being delivered to their parents? god, there was so much he didn't know about any of this) child. "If it's from you... and from me..."
Tioga made a pleased sound. "Something we made together."
"Then... it might end up being half-human... and half-Pokemon."
"Mm. Maybe. But, darling... you're thinking too much." All at once, Tioga flopped back into the bed so that they were lying there with one arm wrapped around the egg, which was held to their chest, and the other reaching out towards Volo, fingers grabbing for him. "C'mon. I'm exhausted."
From laying that fucking thing?! Volo wanted to ask, except, like, there was literally no physical way Tioga could have laid it, unless they'd shifted into their Giratina form. He made a mental note to check the garden to see if any of the plants had gotten squashed trying to accommodate Tioga's immense Pokemon size. He said, "Okay. Hold on. I have to put the groceries away first."
As he left the room, staring straight ahead, still near-paralyzed with shock, he heard Tioga groan behind him and say, "Hurry baaack. Dia and Paru will make all kinds of jokes about me being a single parent."
Volo stood helplessly in the middle of two aisles in Babies 'R Us — one advertising inventory for human babies, and one advertising inventory for several different types of Pokemon ones. He was looking back and forth between them and feeling very, very out of his league. (This had been the case for a few months, and though he'd hoped that anything at all that was happening would make sense at some point, he had been sorely mistaken. Tioga had tried to make it as easy on him as possible, but it was kind of difficult to truly accept the fact that you were entering parenthood through means you were nearly certain no human had ever had to go through before. Also, the giant fucking egg thing. That was still kind of weird.)
Mercifully — or horrifyingly, he wasn't yet sure which — a sales associate noticed his distress and approached him, her purple hair swept up beneath a dark blue ballcap that advertised her as an employee of the store. Distantly, he found himself a little jealous of sales associates nowadays; though Tioga never missed a chance to tell him how much they admired the shoulder and upper arm muscles he'd developed as part of the Ginkgo Guild, he couldn't say that he held any great affection for the fact they'd had to carry around their inventory. It was much easier now, with everything in one spot and the customers coming to you instead. If this had been any other situation, he might have chuckled and told her, fairly cryptically, that she didn't know how lucky she had it as a sales associate in modern-day Sinnoh rather than a traveling merchant in Hisui.
But instead, he just stood there, mostly speechless, not sure how to even begin phrasing his request.
"Hi, there," she told him, saving him from having to find wherever the smooth-talking Volo had disappeared to. She was grinning, but he could see a note of concern behind her eyes. For good reason, he was sure. "My name's Himiko! You look kinda lost. Is there anything I can help you find?"
"My wife," he croaked out. "They're, uhm. Having a baby."
Which was simplifying it, but whatever.
Too late, he realized his mistake. Of fucking course his wife was having a baby. He wasn't some weirdo pervert standing here in the middle of Babies 'R Us getting his rocks off. But Himiko didn't judge him for it. She just said, "Oh, alright! So, you're going to want to come over here with me—"
She started leading him to the aisle with the things for human babies.
"Wait—" Volo said before he could stop himself, and then immediately regretted it. Himiko turned around, and Volo, unsure what else to do, brought one hand up to cover his face, as if by doing so he could disappear into the shadows. God, he'd give anything for that ability right now.
Himiko tilted her head quizzically. Then she said, "...oh."
They stood there in silence for a long minute.
"It's not— It's not that— They look like a human," he went on, hoping desperately he didn't sound as completely fucking stupid as he was sure he did. "They have human intelligence. I... There are people who would try and come after us if I said it, so I can't tell you what they are, but..."
He swallowed hard.
"They're a god," he finished lamely.
"Oh," said Himiko.
Volo made a sound that could have meant anything.
"Well," said Himiko, taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. "Congrats, I guess. So, uhm... They're a Pokemon, then. Which means, uhm... an egg?"
Volo nodded in exasperation. It felt so good to finally share this disorienting reality with someone else.
"And they..." Himiko coughed in the polite way of someone who was feeling the same emotions as Volo, but was relieved not to be in his personal position. "And they don't know... if it's going to be a human or a Pokemon. Is what you're saying."
"Or, uh. Some combination. Of the two."
"Wow." Himiko whistled, her hands on her hips. "I see your dilemma."
"Thank God someone does," said Volo.
"Do you know anything about it?"
Yes. He did. He felt his face color a little as he crossed one arm to rub at the bicep of the other and said, "We know it's going to be a girl."
A daughter. He could still hardly believe it. His heart ached a little for Tuli, Mani, and Ginter. He would have loved to tell them. He dreamed often about rushing into wherever they were camped that night, his eyes wide, his smile untamable, breathlessly telling them the good news, that he and Tioga were going to have a daughter. Often those dreams went on to detail their journeys afterward, with the little human-Giratina hybrid sitting in the wagon with him, her tiny hand holding his, silvery-orange eyes wide as Mani told her a ghost story which, as a partial-Ghost-type partial-Pokemon she would of course adore. The way customers at whatever town they landed in next would coo over her and buy from her daddy just to make her smile.
Though it had been hundreds of years since his time in Hisui, his dreams could never entirely leave it behind.
"Oh, wow," said Himiko, pulling him out of this reverie. She was back to smiling enthusiastically at him, which he hoped meant she had decided not to judge him for having sex with a Pokemon after all. Which, like — they were human, for all intents and purposes — they were human-shaped, and sapient, and he didn't feel bad in the least about what he'd done with them, but he knew that there were people who would hear that you had had sex with a Pokemon and not wait for the explanation. They'd already have made up their mind about you.
Then again, he thought, it wasn't like he was any stranger to people despising him after learning about the kind of person he was.
Himiko was saying something; he'd tuned out. He tuned back in to hear her going off about parenthood, about how usually dads who accompanied their wives here looked like they were bored to tears and counting down the minutes until they could be back at home and watching television or going out with their fellow guy friends, but that Volo was completely different. "I've never seen that look in your eyes on anyone else," she was saying. "I think I heard that dads have it when they're in the delivery room and they hold their kid for the first time, but it's not like I would know. All I know is that I'm always helping the wives or the girlfriends or whatever find things for their baby, and the dad looks like me and the mom are, like, personally teaming up to ruin his life. It's the actual worst. So it's really nice to see someone who cares this much about their kid. And it isn't even gonna be a fully-human kid. Huh. Go figure."
In the end, they decided on something that looked like a bed for small canine Pokemon, like Rockruff or Growlithe. It was the only thing he and Himiko could say the new baby might use whether it turned out to be a human or a Pokemon or something in between. Himiko shrugged apologetically at him as she rang him up and said, "Listen, I can help you out a lot more when you actually know what it is. So once your wife has the baby, you come see me. I work Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Usually the night shift." She was pressing way too many buttons on the point-of-sale system than seemed necessary. "Oh, and if you can, bring your wife and the baby with you. I'd love to see whatever comes from a human and a god Pokemon p—"
She caught herself.
"—making... a child," she said instead.
Volo was not a Karen, so he was a little bit delighted by the fact that Himiko had definitely just been about to say porking.
As he left the store, plastic bag in hand, he breathed in deep and exhaled even deeper. It had been kind of a bust, and he wasn't altogether thrilled about bringing home such a purchase to Tioga, but Himiko was right. There wasn't much they could do until they knew what the child was going to be. He took a second to center himself, and then he began walking across the parking lot towards his car.
It was difficult to separate Tioga from the shadows in broad daylight. It was nearly impossible to do it under the cover of night. That was why Volo, approaching his car, tripped over something he hadn't seen, and was saved an embarrassing face-plant into the concrete by a long, flat black ribbon with a red tip tying itself around his midsection and yanking him the other way so that he was standing again. He had to search for a moment, eyes wide and heart racing, but after a second Tioga coalesced into being before his eyes, sitting against the back bumper of the car. They must have been there for a while, but it took some real effort to pick out what was Tioga and what were the shadows coming off of his car from the streetlight.
"Tioga," he said, surprised — and elated, of course, because he couldn't see Tioga and not be elated, especially when he hadn't been expecting them. "What's going on?"
They were cradling the egg in their arms. They'd been doing that for so long that he couldn't really remember what they looked like when they weren't cradling the egg in their arms. They blinked up at him, but they didn't say anything.
The egg shook a little in their grasp.
"Oh," Volo said, and then, "Oh. Oh my god. Is it happening?"
They nodded.
He sat down across from them, his heartbeat jackhammering away. He said, "Is there anything I should be doing?"
"Just being with me," Tioga said softly.
Eggs took a pretty long time to hatch. Much longer than Volo had been expecting, anyhow. They had been sitting there in the parking lot for maybe two hours when they caught the first glimpse of their child through the hole they'd poked into the egg, and then another full hour before the little thing poked her head out.
Her human head. Mostly. Except for the tiny yellow horns on either side of it that blended neatly into her hair.
The hair was, honestly, one of the most surprising things about her birth. Volo had been under the impression people had none, or barely any, when they were born. As the little creature clawed at the hole in the egg, he could see that she had very long hair — the color was Volo's, while the length was Tioga's. She blinked up at him with Volo-silver eyes, and she grinned with her tiny Tioga fangs, and her little claws reached up for him.
She was like a very small toddler. As he helped her out of the egg and held her to him, he supposed he should have guessed she wouldn't be an infant, at least not if she was expected to make her way out of that egg herself. He was overjoyed to see that a Giratina tail began at the culmination of her human spine, maybe a foot long, and thrashed around in joy. He couldn't say he was any less enchanted with the fact that she had thrown her little arms around his neck and was in the process of crushing the air right out of him. He was fairly certain this sort of thing wasn't a worry to normal human parents, since human babies' arms were about as efficient as wet spaghetti, but he'd take the discomfort, because, like, oh my god. This was his and Tioga's daughter.
Tioga had abandoned the egg. Their legs were drawn up to their chest, and they were hiding their face behind their knees, but Volo could see the wide grin they were trying to pass under the radar. Their eyes were brighter than he could ever remember them being, besides maybe that time at the Temple of Sinnoh when he had accepted them as his new god. He could tell they were so overwhelmed with happiness that they had no idea how to handle it.
"What are we going to name her?" they asked him gently.
Volo had thought about this before, and thank god he had, because he didn't trust himself to come up with any original thoughts right now. All he could think about was the squealing little human-Giratina hybrid in his arms, and how enthusiastically she was holding him close, as if she, like Tioga, had just been told he had promised his devotion to her. Because, of course, that was what had happened. If anyone so much as insinuated they wanted to hurt her, he would have ripped this entire world apart to make sure it couldn't come to pass. He would have taken bullets for her; he would have taken claws. He swallowed down all of his stupid, chaotic emotions and said, working to keep the tremble out of his voice, "Cynthia."
"Oh, yeah?" Tioga said, not unkindly.
"Mhm. For Kosta — my mother — and Ianthe — my other mother — and for you, Tioga. K-inth-ia. The three most important people in my life." He palmed the back of his daughter's head, sank his fingers into her wet hair. "Four, now."
They sat there for a very long time. At one point, Tioga moved over to sit beside him and rest their head on his shoulder; Cynthia finally released her death grip on his neck and transferred herself to Tioga, her eyes bright and wanting. Her tail curled around one of Tioga's ribbons. Tioga tried to hide their gasp of elation, but did a poor job of it — apparently this was something akin to a hug among Giratina.
It must have been a big day for little Cynthia, even though she'd only really been alive for a few hours, because soon after, she fell asleep in Tioga's arms, her tail curling itself up and resting on her chest as she sucked on her thumb. Her little fangs punctured the human skin, but it didn't seem to bother her, as she went right on sleeping anyhow, her hair drying into curls against her face. She was cherubic. Volo could not believe he had (somehow?) been involved in the creation of this beautiful little creature.
He pushed himself up, wiped away the tears that had gathered in his eyes and were desperately trying to fall. He sniffed loudly, which kind of gave away he was trying not to cry regardless.
"You wanna go home?" Tioga asked, looking up at him.
"Not yet," said Volo. "I have to go see my friend Himiko."