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“Giratina—” Volo begins, and Rei squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for the fall. —Strike him down. That’s how it’s supposed to go. That’s how it went last time. As if he could ever, ever forget.
“Take him away!”
—Huh?
Rei’s eyes snap open, registering only the dark, indistinct mass of the half-emerged Giratina wrapping around him. Warm tendrils around his waist, the pressure of the dragon’s hard carapace, and then he’s dropped unceremoniously onto Distortion World ground, a bizarre sort of stone with a surprisingly gentle, spongy texture.
Volo stands above, on a rock that floats unnaturally in the empty space, leering down at him.
“You’re going to tell me all you know, and how you know it,” Volo spits, his expression dark.
“I… I don’t—”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Volo interrupts, Rei’s confusion only riling him. He vaults off the rock, landing with a pronounced thud in front of Rei, looming. “You may have all those commoners fooled, but I’ve been paying attention, Rei—you know things you shouldn’t. Things nobody should have any means of knowing. You have a gift, and you will tell me from whence it comes.”
Rei shrinks back, buckling under Volo’s pressure. “O-okay,” he timidly says, raising his empty hands as sign of his surrender, “but it’s not that big of a deal, really…”
Deep breath. “I’ve done all this before,” Rei says, gathering his courage to look Volo in the eye. “I don’t know why, but after… after the first time I battled you, I woke up on my first day here again. Everything happened the exact same way. Everyone acted the same. You, the Team, the villagers… the Nobles. The Pokemon.”
Volo holds his gaze, steady, ruminating. “And yet you changed nothing?”
Rei breaks the stare, eyes sinking to the ground with a self-deprecating, halfhearted chuckle. “How could I, Volo?” He says, raw with helplessness. “I was never the one in charge of my own destiny. This way, at least… I got to see you again. To be friends with you again, like everything was fine.”
Volo’s breath catches.
“You’re a fool,” he growls, now looking away, hair blocking him off from Rei like a shield. “To have played into my hands not once, but twice.”
“Yeah,” Rei sighs, slumping. It feels like most of the tension has leached out of the situation, now, so if he asks Volo to take him back he’ll probably—
“But,” Volo hisses, snapping back to attention and grabbing Rei by the shoulders, “you won’t slip away from me this time, Rei.” A nervous glance at his face reveals that fervor returned, that mania. “You’re in my domain now,” he continues breathlessly, words falling quick and spirited from his lips, “subject to my rules. And we have all the time in the world—for me to get those Plates from you.” It’s a threat, surface-level, plain and simple, and yet…
It pings as seductive on Rei’s radar, and he reddens.
“V-Volo, um,” Rei finds himself stammering out before Volo flinches away of his own accord.
“What is wrong with you?” He scoffs, incredulous. Rei’s flush deepens.
“E-excuse me for—” Oh, god, is he going to say it? He can’t just not say it, now that he’s started the sentence like this. “—f-falling for you!”
The admission lingers in the stagnant air, both of them frozen in its wake. And it’s hard to be sure, with the odd way light falls in here, but Rei thinks maybe Volo’s blushing a little too, now.
“… Well,” Volo says awkwardly, breaking the tension, “be that as it may, you are at my mercy here. Only Giratina may enter and exit the Distortion World at will.”
Rei’s injured pride wells up with stubbornness. “Do your worst,” he huffs, crossing his arms. “I’ve been on long surveys like you wouldn’t believe. I can handle your Distortion World.”
“My worst?” Volo balks. “You—you don’t know what you’re asking for, boy.” He double-takes, checking for Giratina’s presence in the space behind him.
“I think I do,” Rei says, obstinate. He moves forward, stepping firm into the space between them, putting as much raw intimidation as he can behind his small stature. “I think you’re playing tough. I think you’re just as lost here as I am, and I’ll tell you something I know—I won that battle we had, and the last time we had it, I won against Giratina too, when your back was against the wall just like this. And I think I can do it again if you wanna try your luck.”
Volo grits his teeth, meeting Rei’s fiery stare with consternation. “Fine,” he spits, shoving Rei away and turning to flee. “Giratina!” He jumps into empty space, the open air, simply trusting that his dragon will appear beneath him before he falls—and it does.
“And don’t call me boy!” Rei shouts after him. Fuck, he should’ve led with that.
Volo and Giratina quickly disappear behind one of the many rock formations cutting erratically across the sky, and Rei releases his bravado with a heavy sigh, flopping to the ground and rummaging in his satchel. He sends out his team—two still conscious, four lazily fainted—and starts working on getting some Revives and Potions into their systems.
It’s a nice, normal routine to be taking in this bizarre place, not unlike recovering from investigating a spacetime distortion, but it doesn’t take long to complete, and that leads to a new problem: there’s nothing to do here. Volo’s the only other human in the entire dimension, and he ditched Rei to go do god-knows-what—sulk, probably. And if there were Pokemon to be found in the wild here, Rei would’ve seen at least a trace of them somewhere by now. The water holds no fish, the trees bear no fruit. He wanders around watching the landscape shift and rearrange itself for a while, trying to crack the pattern, but it loses appeal quickly.
Eventually, he settles on something: those trees don’t grow outside the Distortion World, so he’s going to climb one. He hasn’t climbed a tree by himself in a while, mostly just been carried up them by Sneasler when she’s feeling arbitrary, so it’ll be a fun workout too.
Rei reaches about halfway up his first pick before Giratina soars over, Volo astride its back. “What do you think you’re doing?” He says, prim and condescending.
“Climbing,” Rei grunts, reaching for another branch undeterred. “You didn’t leave me anything to do in here. I’m bored.”
“You’re aware such expenditure will only hasten your need for food and sleep?” Exasperated.
“I’ve got food in my satchel,” Rei huffs, turning up his nose at Volo as he seats himself on the broad leaf of the higher branch he’s reached. “And you didn’t knock out all of my Pokemon, so I’ve got someone to stand guard when I sleep.”
“If you think you’re going to win a battle of attrition here, then—”
“I do, actually,” Rei interrupts. “It’s not really about how long I can hold out, numerically speaking; it’s more about how long you can, mentally. I just don’t think you’re as stubborn as I am, Volo.”
Volo’s face lights up red with frustration. “You,” he barks, “don’t know anything about how long I’ve worked—how dutifully I’ve strived to meet the Creator God, to put every pawn in place—”
“Mm-hmm,” Rei hums sarcastically, kicking his legs up to rest on his branch. Graciously, magnanimously, he decides not to poke at Volo’s assertions about the setup work of his evil plan. (He might as well have not had a plan before Rei came along, with all the progress he made on it by himself.)
Volo’s been approaching him as the exchange goes on, walking down Giratina’s neck towards its face in an effort to spit his words more forcefully. Now, it seems, he’s pushed his luck in that department too far; Giratina makes a displeased noise and shakes its head slightly, throwing Volo off balance.
“Get down from there,” he commands, even as he steps gingerly back on his otherworldly steed to avoid its ire.
“Sure,” Rei chirps, sliding off the tree to the side, into the open air.
“Rei?!” Volo shouts, sheer instinct driving him to baffled concern.
The fall is strange—like falling through fluid, almost. Rei impacts against the ground easily in a few moments, not even feeling staggered by the jump.
“Oh, yeah,” Rei says casually, turning back to face Volo, “I kinda have this thing for taking long falls. Seeing how bad it can get before something breaks, y’know?”
“What was your plan if you’d injured yourself?” Volo berates him, incredulous. “You’d find no nursemaid in me, I assure you of that!”
“Oh, I know,” Rei says lazily, “but I saw you jump off into the air earlier. It looked a little different, and this place is all about breaking rules of common sense. And I was right, wasn’t I?”
“You—” Volo seems to falter. “… You aren’t taking this seriously.”
“Uh, yeah?” Rei snorts. “Why should I?”
It’s like he can see the mustering of willpower up through Volo’s body. His fists clench, his spine straightens. “I could keep you here for as long as I like!” Exasperation puts a cute waver in his voice. “Your very life is subject to my whims! That doesn’t frighten you?!”
Rei stretches his arms above his head, yawning lackadaisically. “If you’re so in control of the situation and I’m so at your mercy and all, then why haven’t you done anything but lecture me?” He taps the center of his chest, locking eyes with Volo. “One of Giratina’s claws, right through here. Think you could do it? You haven’t even tried.”
He can see Volo’s jaw straining from here, even in this world’s murky distorted light. “Heel,” Volo spits, and Giratina makes another discontented noise but drifts obediently closer to the rock Rei’s standing on, allowing Volo dismount. “I,” he enunciates firmly with each step, “am not about to let some lowborn, ignorant—”
“You left your murder weapon back there,” Rei interrupts, pointing to Giratina’s shadow behind Volo disappearing into the sky.
“Wha—”
Oh, he can’t hold it in. Rei snickers wickedly at Volo’s misfortune. “Guess it got tired of all your slave-driving in here, huh? Now you’re just as trapped as me.”
“You!” Volo grabs Rei by the scarf, tugging him closer, cheeks flushed bright with fury. Their foreheads knock, another amused huff escaping Rei at the impact. “You impudent little—”
He seizes the opportunity. Really, it’s Volo’s fault for sticking his face so close all of a sudden. Rei plunges his hand into the stiff-sticky cone of Volo’s gelled-up hair, clenches his fist hard enough to pull from the roots, and seals Volo’s yapping mouth with his own.
It’s not good, strictly speaking, but Rei’s so high on the mere concept of kissing Volo that it never really had to be. An angry kiss, full of clashing teeth and choked-off indignance. Eventually, Volo finds himself enough to clench his mouth shut and push instead of pull.
… And he falls to the ground in a tangle with Rei, who’s kept his grip firm on Volo’s hair even as he stumbles back.
“Enough,” Volo growls, pushing himself half upright.
(Only halfway, still trapped by Rei’s iron grip. He didn’t do all that surveying and exploring to no gain, after all.)
One hand snaps to Rei’s extended wrist, a glower set on Volo’s face. “Release me.”
The pressure is enough to cut off his circulation. It barely hurts—Rei’s taken attacks worse than this before even leaving the Fieldlands.
“What are you going to do about it?” Rei taunts him lazily, pulling Volo’s hair harder to form his neck into a beautiful backward arc.
The grip on Rei’s arm tightens—bruising, now. Still nothing much to worry about.
“I—said—” It comes out strained, strangled. Volo’s nails, kept sensibly short, dig into Rei’s sleeve, seeking blood with their meager edges. He’s fighting, and he’s embarrassed enough that he’s fighting hard, but Rei still somehow gets the sense he’s being underestimated, held back against.
Unceremoniously, Rei lets Volo’s hair go. He flies forward, compensating for a force that’s no longer there, and when he comes up it’s with his hands at Rei’s neck and fury writ across his face.
(He’s not choking, though. Volo’s grip conspicuously contains itself to Rei’s scarf.)
“You—” he’s out of breath, and maybe out of words beyond that. “You, you, you—interloper! I—I ought to…!”
Rei slips his jaw into his scarf, gives one of Volo’s clenched fists a gentle peck through the fabric. His eye blows wide.
“What—is—wrong—with—you?!” Volo shakes Rei in time with his words, manic in his desperation. Rei laughs lightly as he’s jostled, limp and content.
“Couple things,” he says amiably. “First one, y’know, I’ll say it again—I love you, asshole.”
So faint he could be imagining it—Volo’s grip on him trembles, just slightly.
“Second thing—I’m just not buying the whole evil mastermind act. You like me too much to do anything really bad to me.”
“You—” he falters. Rei can almost see the thoughts racing behind his eye. “You doubt my pride as the heir of the Sinnoh?” Pompously, arrogantly, seething. Back on his high horse.
“You know that’s not what I said.”
Volo grits his teeth.
“It was really something,” Rei continues, casual as he looks away to spare Volo the burden of eye contact, “going back through my life here these past months. I paid so much attention to you—kept looking for anything I’d missed, anything out of place. There wasn’t one thing the whole time. You’re a perfect gentleman when I’m new here, and when I’m an exile, and when we’re on the hunt for Plates. Kinda leads you to a certain conclusion, doesn’t it?”
Volo huffs.
“… Fine, I’ll say it, then. All that was real, wasn’t it?”
“Who can say?” Volo mutters, dropping Rei to the ground and turning away.
“I mean, you can be both,” Rei offers, not quite catching himself in time to avoid a bump on the head. “The proud heir of the Sinnoh can also be a nice guy who was my friend for real.”
“And what of the man who would remake the world?” Bitterly. “The man who would—who will—stop at nothing to see his ambition fulfilled?” One hand traces over the band to Rei’s satchel as he extricates himself from the pile they’ve formed.
“Volo, you stopped at a whole bunch of things, that’s my point.”
He sits, facing away, and sighs. “Has no one ever told you you’re too persistent for your own good?”
“Oh, tons,” Rei chirps as he crawls over to sit beside Volo. “How else do you think a Pokedex even gets made?”
They sit in silence, for a while, breathing stagnant air as rock formations idly drift across the sky in front of them.
“… I thought I’d steeled myself,” Volo begins, quietly. “I thought, in the pursuit of Arceus, I could do anything, no matter the price. I…” He chuckles dryly. “I’m a fool. Of course I can’t kill you. It was all I could do to set my Pokemon against you.”
Rei leans to the side, resting his head on Volo’s shoulder. “Because you…?” It’s a pushy move, but Rei’s been pushing his luck all night (or day, or whatever time it is in here by now).
Volo groans, pushing Rei away by the head. “Because I like you,” he says sardonically, annoyed.
Rei ducks the move and falls fully over into Volo’s lap. Volo scoffs and makes to be rid of him, freezing when Rei locks him with a piercing gaze and asks, “How much do you like me?”
“… You,” he says unsteadily, “you’re acting like a child.”
“Nah,” Rei hums, eyes sinking closed, “I think it’s important. I’ve laid all my cards on the table here, Volo; I’m goddamn head-over-heels for you. What about you?”
Silence.
Well, that’s about what Rei was expecting. He lets the pause stretch out for a bit, just in case Volo really is gathering his nerves instead of stonewalling him, and when no response comes, he moves on.
Rei turns over onto his side, wrapping his arms around Volo’s waist. “If you want some help with your answer, I could do you a little Nimbasa favor first?” He peeks up at Volo with a sly smile tucked into the fabric of his shirt.
“A what?” Volo says, incredulous even as he reddens slightly. Looks like he gets the point, even if he doesn’t already know the metaphor exactly.
“Means I’ll suck your dick.”
“Absolutely not!” Volo flinches as if struck, shoving Rei away onto the rock as he snorts and cackles.
“’Kay,” Rei acquiesces between giggles as he pushes himself upright, “we’ll shelve that then. I still wanna hear your answer to the other one, though.”
Volo levels a suspicious look at him. “That’s it?” He asks warily. “You’re giving up with only that?”
“Uh, yeah?” He’s still half laughing, but now it’s turned to disbelief. “I’m not gonna bug you for sex, Volo, I’m not a creep. The innocuous stuff, though, I’ll badger you about all that ‘til you lose your fucking mind.”
More silence. But there’s a particular kind of awkwardness blanketing it, a feeling that maybe—
“… Unless you want me to bug you about that stuff too?”
Volo rears back, scandalized. “Why would I ever—”
“’Cuz then it’s not your problem, is it?” Rei splays out across the stone, languid. “If I just wore you down enough, twisted your arm enough, then you get to have all the experience and none of the guilt of initiating it. It’s all Rei’s fault, that insistent little scoundrel.”
Volo turns away fully, makes to get to his feet. Rei’s arm snaps out to grab him by the wrist.
“Answer first,” he says, voice gentle but grip just firm enough to hurt.
“I don’t want anything from you but the Plates,” Volo intones, unsteady. Shaken. Rei lets him go.
Volo stands, and Rei’s halfway to following him when Volo turns to face him again with a stony expression. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking this was anything more than a relationship of convenience,” he coldly says. “You have something I need. That’s all that it is.”
Rei snorts. “Come on, you’re a better liar than that.”
Volo turns away again, fists clenched, but he’s slow to leave.
“… Or are you?” Rei ponders. Poking the tiger. “Are you actually a really bad liar and you’ve just been getting lucky this whole time?”
“Enough!” Volo snaps. “I’ll tolerate no more insults from you. I’m going to find Giratina.”
“Oh, okay,” Rei says lightly, jogging after Volo as he storms away.
“That wasn’t an invitation!”
“How’re you gonna stop me?” Rei needles him. “Those Pokemon that I knocked out recovered yet?”
Volo takes a breath, a hissing, tense inhale. He sighs. “Persistent,” he grumbles.
“You know it!” Rei bumps against Volo amiably as he falls into step with the man’s tall pace. Their hands brush, barely touching, innocuous and unremarkable, but Rei’s got this chance and maybe never another one ever again, so instead of letting the contact pass peacefully he reaches out and grabs. Volo flinches away, stopping to turn and give him a look. “Stop that!” He hisses, exasperated.
“Nah,” replies Rei, unbothered as he meets Volo’s heavy glare. Something snaps—the last thread of Volo’s patience, maybe. In an instant, he’s fuming.
“It’s beyond me why you keep pursuing me so!” Volo shouts, making wide, frantic gestures. “What is it you find so enticing about me?! I tried to kill you! I’m still trying to kill you!”
“Come on, do you want me to say it again?” Rei says lazily, turning away to keep following the meandering path the pair had cut through the Distortion World. “The answer’s not gonna change, you kn—”
Volo’s arms snap to Rei’s shoulders, grip desperate and tight. When Rei meets Volo’s eye, the look in it is dark. “No. Explain.”
Fluster rises to Rei’s cheeks. Volo’s a little too hot like this, when he loses himself in the abyss of his ambition. And this time it’s not Arceus; it’s about Rei. The change of color doesn’t faze him this time either, Volo’s grip holding steady as he glowers down at Rei.
“I…” He doesn’t have an answer ready. Rei digs through his mind, down through layers of humor and denial for something genuine. He swallows.
“… I guess I just believe in you,” Rei admits, quiet, gaze darting away. It feels heavy on his lips, a truth the enormity of which could change their relationship’s whole paradigm.
Volo scoffs at him. His face distorts in contempt as he spits, “You really expect me to believe that?”
The wound again wells up with stubbornness, bidding Rei bare his fangs. “Yeah, I do!” Rei shouts, shoving Volo away firmly. Volo stumbles back, releases his hold, off-balance. “I do all this—a-all this bullshit because I think you can be better than this! I’ve been throwing around love confessions like candy, but have you even thought about what that actually means? You—you wanna ham up how you tried to kill me, well, I love the you that tried to kill me! Get it through your skull—I’m not giving up on you!”
Rei stops to catch his breath, to clear his head. Volo’s giving him a strange, dazed look; he’s landed tangled in one of the Distortion World’s strange trees, the plant mussing his hair even worse than Rei’d left it earlier.
“… I’m not gonna apologize for chewing you out,” Rei mumbles, extending a hand to help Volo up, “but pushing you like that… probably wasn’t necessary. Sorry.”
“No, no, it’s alright…” Volo tells him airily, accepting the help with a dainty touch—completely uncharacteristic. Rei levels a skeptical stare at him. “Did you hit your head or something, Volo?”
A sly smile creeps across his face. “No, it’s merely as you said: I hadn’t thought it through! Hahahah, what a wondrous thing, to be loved!”
Rei’s suspicion deepens, unhidden. “What are you—mmph!”
In one jubilant motion, Volo wraps Rei in his arms and kisses him sweetly. Rei freezes, torn between the impulse to go along unquestioningly and the need to know what Volo’s angle is in doing this, since there’s no way he fell in love with Rei in the span of the past two minutes or anything like that—
(Isn’t there? A wishful thought in the back of Rei’s head crows. Isn’t there, can’t there be?)
Gently, reluctantly, Rei pushes Volo away, pulls himself free of his lips. “Volo,” he says lowly, “what’s this about?”
“Would you help me, Rei?” Volo levels the question at him with an expectant look, apparently not intending to answer.
Rei plays along. “… Help you with what?” He warily asks.
Volo shakes his head, beaming. “Anything and everything, Rei! Think of what we could do together!”
“Volo, where’s this coming from—”
Volo meets Rei’s gaze with a dazzling look, a look like the Volo who hadn’t just betrayed Rei would give, and—
“Think of the world we could make together!”
Rei flinches away. It feels like he’s been smacked in the chest with an Ice Punch. Volo’s still smiling at him, still looking so bright and hopeful, but maybe there’s an edge in there that Rei wasn’t noticing before.
“I-I’m not going to do that,” he weakly says.
“Oh?” Earnestly curious, not even disappointed. “Why not?”
Rei feels like he’s drowning. (Rei who’d know something about drowning—Wyrdeer had sternly fished him out of rivers more than once before he had Basculegion to rely on.)
“I,” breath of air, break the surface, “I can’t. I don’t want to.”
Volo steps closer, looming. “Surely,” he murmurs, “there are things in this world that even you would wish to change?” His fingers trace Rei’s jaw. (The undertow pulling at his legs.)
“I’m not,” Rei struggles, “I-I can’t—”
“We can make it better, Rei,” whispering like a siren into his ear, “you and I—we can create true perfection. Earthly paradise. Imagine it…”
And in spite of himself, in spite of the deep, foundational knowledge that making a new world requires destroying this one, Rei does imagine it. He doesn’t care about what the world will be like, doesn’t care how important he might get to be: he cares about Volo. And if he does this, if he lets himself be swept away in the tide of Volo’s ideal, he and Volo alone will be apart from all humanity—there’d be no escaping for either of them. Doomed to an eternity together, whether they like it or not. Rei shudders.
Volo takes it as encouragement. “Do you see it, Rei?” He asks breathlessly, his loose grip on Rei’s body tightening. “See how beautiful it is?”
“Volo,” Rei chokes out, “I-I need to know. How do you… feel about me?”
And he’s expecting more of the honey-sweet manipulation Volo’s been feeding him here, but instead Volo jolts as though shocked. When he speaks, a nervous edge tints his words. “That shouldn’t have any bearing on this—”
The spell is as good as broken, with that. Rei sighs, pushes Volo a polite distance away. “Thanks for not lying to me, I guess,” he says tiredly. “Let’s go get Giratina.”
“Wait,” Volo says. From the look on his face, even he’s not sure why he said it, or where he’s going next.
Rei waits. Tries to reel in his visible expression of exhaustion, as a mercy.
“Rei… I…” He’s struggling. Foolish hope springs to life in the back of Rei’s mind.
“… I have never felt for anyone the way I feel about you,” Volo concludes. “It… defies description. I cannot put it to words.”
The single ember of foolish hope flares into a bonfire, an overwhelming blaze. “I-in a romantic way?” Rei finds himself blurting out, insensitive as he knows it is. Part of him would love to let Volo have his ambiguity, to let the both of them live in uncertain space between lovers and friends, but what’s at stake is everything Rei could possibly want right now, and he can’t afford to fumble that ball.
“I…” Volo turns away, hides his face behind his bangs. “… I suppose.”
“Oh,” Rei breathes as the feelings rush in. He could scream, he could cry, he could jump for joy, he could—what he does is grab Volo in a hug and bury his face in the man’s shirt. “Oh, o-ohhhh,” he croaks (looks like “cry” is leading the running), “th-thank you…”
“You shouldn’t—…” Volo’s arms shift awkwardly in the air above Rei. “… You would thank me, after all I’ve done?”
“You really don’t get this ‘unconditional’ thing, do you?” Rei rasps merrily. “I’ve confessed to you like ten times in here, stupid. Take a hint.”
“U-unconditional?” The word catches awkwardly in Volo’s throat, voice cracking on it.
“Well, yeah,” Rei laughs, nuzzling into Volo’s chest. “If you couldn’t shake it loose from me with all this, what the hell else is left? I love you forever, asshole.”
“I,” Volo says unsteadily, “I couldn’t possibly deserve—”
Rei pulls his head back and butts it into Volo’s diaphragm. “I don’t care if you deserve it,” he huffs, “it’s what you’re getting.”
“I… understand,” Volo relents, his arms descending from their awkward hover onto Rei’s shoulders. It’s not much of a hug, but it’s a start.
They stay like that, for a while, embracing softly in the empty world. Once Rei decides he’s had… a fraction of enough, but for the rest he can really hit Volo up later, he pulls away and huffs optimistically, “I don’t know about you, but I think we might have some better luck finding Giratina now.”
Volo clicks his tongue disbelievingly. “You think that thing cares about our relationship?”
“I mean, probably?” Rei grabs a tug point on Volo’s sleeve and turns, intending to walk away. “If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”
Rei’s tug point tugs back, and he turns to find Volo on bended knee. “Rei,” he says somberly, holding out… the Plate he was supposed to give Rei at the Temple, god damn it, “you should take this.”
Rei steps back, nervous. “Can we, um,” fuck, he really doesn’t want to do this after they’d just gotten on decent terms, “nnnnnot do this right now?”
“Why?” Volo asks, eye narrowing in suspicion. “Are you—” The sentence drops sharply as recognition sparks through Volo’s expression like a Thunderbolt. “You know something,” he says darkly, rising from his kneel to loom over Rei. “You’ve seen what happens when the Plates unite.” Ugh, shit.
“Maybe I have,” Rei says warily, waveringly. “And maybe I think it’s not a good idea to do it when you just stopped trying to kill me?” Further back, until his heels hit empty air.
Volo closes the distance angrily while Rei’s trying not to look at him. “You’re going to show me what happens,” he commands, grabbing hold of Rei by the scarf. “I’ve strived for too long not to see for myself—”
“You won’t like it,” Rei says miserably. “It’ll be me and not you. It won’t satisfy you.”
Volo hesitates. He steps back.
“Get back from there,” he says lowly, quietly, with a gentle tug on Rei’s scarf. Rei steps forward into the space between them, and Volo moves his grip to Rei’s hand, sliding the Plate into his palm. When Rei looks up at his face, the look set upon it is grave.
“Take it.” It’s not a request anymore, it’s an order.
“Fine,” Rei relents with a huff, stowing the Plate in his satchel to comingle with its fellows.
Light cuts through the gloom of the Distortion World, pure-white and radiant, to fall on Rei’s Celestica Flute. It wells up and overflows, dazzling, blinding. When it subsides, the object in Rei’s hands has changed shape, and he sighs wearily.
“The Azure Flute,” Volo breathes, hands stretching over hesitatingly. Trembling.
“Yeah,” Rei says thinly. The Flute rests cold in his hands like a corpse, both murderer and victim of his relationship with Volo. When he moves to put it away, Volo catches his wrist.
“Give that to me,” he whispers, quiet but charged with passion. Rei pulls away, but Volo’s grip remains strong. “Rei, give me the Flute.”
“No,” Rei says firmly. (Petulantly. He’s sick of losing to this thing.) “Volo, stop.”
“You don’t want it,” Volo says robotically, as though in a trance. “Give it to me.” His grip tightens. He reaches his other hand towards Rei, towards his prize.
“I’ll break it.”
Volo freezes.
“… You wouldn’t,” he says, but he’s unsure. Rei’s thrown him.
“And why wouldn’t I?” Rei counters, nails digging into the clay.
“You,” he’s reaching, grasping at nothing, “you, you need it! To deliver you back to your home—don’t you want to go home, Rei?”
“You think I really have any other home anymore?” It spills bitterly from his mouth, a congealed statement of pain and loss.
Volo jolts. His hand on Rei’s arm trembles. “You don’t want to go back?” He asks quietly, gently. Leaning in close. “To the place you belong?”
Rei meets his gaze and feels stung by the sincere, longing look in Volo’s eye. He turns his head away. “People can belong to more than one place.”
“You really think so…?” Like he’s afraid of the answer.
“It’s not something I’m happy about,” Rei sighs, tugging the Azure Flute again away from Volo. This time, his fingers uncurl listlessly, floating uncertain around Rei’s wrists. “… Listen, Volo. There’s been… good things and bad things, about living here. But you were always, always one of the good things. Even after all this, after I went back. I spent all that time second-guessing you, but you were still one of the good things.”
“Rei…” Volo’s hands clasp at Rei’s and pull, guiding his gaze up to that silver eye, full of tenderness. “I believe I understand now. I… am honored to have made this place one where you belong.” He punctuates with a gentle kiss to Rei’s knuckles, and really, if this whole experience hadn’t been so miserable Rei’d be exploding right now for sure. Even in his exhaustion, his cheeks light up stoplight red.
“You’d better save some of those moves for when we get out of here,” Rei grumbles as he turns back to the path they’d been following, the nearest concept of “forward” they have in this messed-up space.
“Bishaaaan.”
Giratina floats there, having snuck up on the pair while they were busy antagonizing each other and giving heartfelt confessions.
“Hey!” “Giratina!” Volo’s exclamation comes out significantly more pissed, but that’s probably to be expected. Giratina extends some of its tendrils to the ground in front of Volo’s feet, a makeshift bridge, and lowers its head.
“No, no, none of that,” Volo says curtly. “Let us out of here. Back to the Temple, Giratina.”
“Shaaan?”
“Yes, both of us. Now.”
“Volo, be nice,” Rei whispers, barely restraining the urge to jab with his elbow for emphasis.
“Why should I?” Volo scoffs. “It’s a Pokemon.”
“It’s a Pokemon that’s your friend,” Rei retorts, “and one that we’re relying on to get out of here!”
There’s another protest in Volo’s expression, but at Rei’s second point he swallows it and simply turns his gaze back to Giratina—who has finished constructing a nice little portal for the humans to use. “Come, Rei,” he says, grabbing at Rei’s wrist loosely. Rei dodges it.
“Thank you, Giratina,” he says pointedly before following Volo through the portal.
On the other side, back at the Temple of Sinnoh with the barest cresting of daylight visible over the horizon, Volo levels him with a stern look. “I shouldn’t need to tell you, Rei,” he says haughtily, “that how I handle my Pokemon is none of your concern.”
“Sorry, did you fill 300 pages of Pokedex, Volo?” Rei bites back. (That’s embellishing it, but only a little.) “I know what makes Pokemon happy, and it’s not being treated like tools.”
Volo gives him a look, an indignant, scandalized sort of expression that says he’s not done talking about this by far, but—he bites his tongue and turns away, instead.
“… You may be right,” he mutters. “The Pokemon you wield have bested mine, after all.”
Rei grabs for Volo’s hand, holding it gently, a point of contact to transfer his sincerity. Maybe this time, with this chance, he can get through to Volo for real. “It’s not about wielding or using, you know?” He softly says. “These creatures look up to you; they depend on you. You’re their whole world for as long as they stay with you.” He squeezes, still soft. “I know your Pokemon already love you, Volo. I think… you should try to love them back.”
Volo’s grip tightens, his unoccupied hand curling into a fist, but he keeps his face turned away. “Giratina has no such needs of me. It is the dark god of the forbidden world. You would have me treat this creature… with love?”
“I would,” Rei says earnestly. “Giratina follows you because it sees something it likes in you. Even god Pokemon have feelings like you and me.”
Volo doesn’t reply.
That’s fine. Rei bears the weight of the awkward atmosphere steadfastly, shuffling closer to Volo in the fierce Highlands wind. “Hey, Volo? Let’s go home, okay?”
“… Home?” Volo looks back to him, surprised. “… To Jubilife Village? With you?”
“Well, we can stop somewhere if you wanna get changed first,” Rei tells him warmly, (with only a hint of a snicker as he addresses Volo’s outfit) “but I’d really like for you to come home with me. It’s… okay with you, right?”
Volo’s eye closes, pensive in thought. “After you defeated my Pokemon,” he says slowly, deliberately, “I had thought I would be coming down from this peak a scorned man, nothing left to his name. But you’ve turned the tables on that, haven’t you?” The eye peeks open, an expression of fond exasperation held within.
“Sure did!” Rei locks arms with Volo and steps forward pointedly, starting their journey down the mountain together in earnest. “And I promise, if I wake up on my first day here again tomorrow, I’ll do it again.”