Chapter Text
After the Temple of Sinnoh, Volo calms down. It takes him a couple decades to wear down the pain of loss into a manageable disappointment, but they say time heals all wounds, and time is something he has an awful lot of. Still, he doesn’t return to Hisui—Sinnoh—for a while. It’s an old wound, an aching scar that he doesn’t feel like picking at.
It’s a few decades into the calendar’s second millennium, and Volo is in Johto. He’s having a simple meal at a restaurant, half-watching the television nattering away in the corner of the room. There’s a new Champion in Sinnoh, it proclaims! Someone’s dethroned Cynthia! That’s interesting enough to start paying attention. Cynthia had grown to have a particular distaste for her uncle Volo in recent years, but he had experience with her strength as a battler, and it really was prodigious.
The camera finds its way to the new Champion, and everything stops in that moment. Volo’s chopsticks slip from his fingers and clatter against his plate. His breathing halts, his heart skips. “Lucas,” the announcer calls him. But that’s Rei.
There’s no mistaking him. Volo’s seen the cycle repeat itself before—Clover to Candice, for instance—and this isn’t that. The boy on the television screen doesn’t just look like Rei, doesn’t just dress like him, his body language is all exactly as Volo remembers. So this is what time he’d been originally from? Volo’s blood rushes with thrill as he imagines heading off Arceus’s champion before he even becomes the chosen one, and—
… Well. He shouldn’t get too ahead of himself. But just seeing Rei has Volo feeling a hundred years younger, in good ways and bad. He stays glued to the television as he finishes his meal, straining his ears for any public venues he might be able to catch Rei at.
“… Our new Champion will be embarking on a regional tour,” the announcer peppily proclaims, “starting with Sunyshore City and continuing on to Pastoria, Hearthome, and…”
A tour! Oh, it couldn’t be any more perfect. Volo pays his bill in a rush and hurries outside to ready his flier. He hasn’t upgraded to the new Poketch yet, so he doesn’t have access to on-demand Flying Taxi service—he has to use his own Pokemon if he wants to travel. Which suits him fine; the update cycle of technology has begun spinning a little too fast for his tastes.
Volo sends out his Togekiss (not the same Togekiss, but one of her descendants) and orders him to beeline for Sunyshore. It’ll be a tiring flight, but no Pokemon of Volo’s would fall short of the mark like that. He’ll see Rei soon, so soon.
Of course, there’s plenty to ponder on the flight over. What if Volo’s missed his mark? What if it’s not Rei—or what if it’s Rei after Hisui? He’d been too ashamed to show his face to Rei after the Temple, and while time had dulled the ache, the fervor in his veins right now wouldn’t take kindly to being rejected. In public, no less.
Well. There are ways to get around a simple rejection. They’d make it a little more complicated, though, so Volo keeps to hoping that things go well.
A few hours of breathless daydreaming later, Volo touches down on Sunyshore city limits. There’s a sizable crowd gathered in the city marketplace, visible clearly from the sky. Rei is here. He has to be.
Volo approaches quickly, sloughs through the crowd, sometimes weaving into existing gaps and other times creating his own forcibly. He’s within striking distance of Rei in minutes.
“Excuse me!” He calls, waving his hand. Rei turns to face him—no spark of recognition, just earnest curiosity. Perfect.
But he can’t be sure until he asks, of course. “Are you Rei?” Volo lets loose the question that’s been itching at his lips. The new Champion hesitates, scrunches up his nose in concentration in a way that’s so excruciatingly familiar, even after all this time. “That’s my middle name,” he says. “How do you know that?”
A giddy laugh bubbles up Volo’s throat, refusing to be kept down. Rei looks a little taken aback, and there’s an interviewer reaching for him from the other side of the crowd, but before their paths part unfulfilled Rei seems to arrive at a conclusion. “Are you, uh, related to Cynthia? You kind of look like—agh!” He yelps as the interviewer’s hand grabs his shoulder. Still just as easy to startle. Volo savors it, a sight he hasn’t been able to take his fill of for hundreds of years.
He’s back on script in just a moment. “Yes, I am!” He says exuberantly, clapping his hand down on the opposite shoulder from the interviewer’s manicured nails. “I’m Cynthia’s uncle Volo! I simply had to take stock of the Champion who dethroned my darling niece—would you meet me at the lighthouse when you’re finished here?”
“F-for a battle?” Rei’s expression looks conflicted, eager yet fearful. It’s beautiful.
“Only if you’d like one!” Volo smiles. The conflict on Rei’s face melts into relief at that, and Volo, confident that ever-earnest Rei will meet his request, ducks back into the crowd and lets him indulge in his new fame.
… Not that Rei had ever been built for fame. It’s adorable how he flounders, both then and now, under the weight of admiration. Star of the Survey Corps or Champion of the Sinnoh League, it’s all the same quiet boy who’d clearly rather go unseen.
Volo takes his time walking to the lighthouse, peering down at the crowd celebrating their new Champion from the raised walkway. And eventually, the Champion sends out one of his Pokemon: a Torterra. A certain Alpha Pokemon from a certain climactic battle comes to mind. The Torterra the crowd is going wild over is no Alpha, but it’s still cute to see Rei’s preferences on display.
Eventually, Volo tears himself away from Rei’s big moment, walking dutifully to the lighthouse and seating himself at a café table near the entrance. There’s nothing much for him to do but wait—the café attached to the tables isn’t open right now, so there are no waitstaff around to bother Volo for drink requests or foist a menu on him—and yet a wait is exactly what Volo needs, as he has yet to form a plan of attack. How should he handle this innocent, unsullied Rei? The ideal move is one that makes things easier on his Hisuian self when Rei is inevitably swept away by Arceus to become a hero—but Rei had arrived to the past somewhat out of sorts, missing key parts of his memory and identity. There’s no guarantee anything Volo did would linger across that gap of time.
… Both for good and for bad. So Volo thinks, for a moment, of being very, very bad. It’s during this aftermath of Volo’s mouth going dry and his pants feeling a little tighter that Rei turns the corner onto the road ahead, hounded still by what appear to be stragglers from his Champion crowd. Volo watches him shoo them off, imagining the platitudes in his head. I’m sorry, but I’m busy. I have a very important appointment. Something like that.
Rei trots over, half-jogging (familiar, so familiar), and Volo takes note as a reporter takes cover behind the lighthouse in the background. “Hi, sorry!” Rei says brightly. “I-I didn’t know there was going to be this much fanfare… Your name was, um…?”
“Volo,” Volo reintroduces himself with a practiced, easy smile. “Please, have a seat.”
Rei flops down into the plastic chair with a heavy sigh, unguarded and boneless for just a moment before he remembers himself. “S-so!” His tone is chipper, but with a nervous edge. “You’re Cynthia’s uncle? We’re kind of friends, and I’ve never heard her mention you…”
“Oh, Cyn doesn’t like me very much these days,” Volo leans in, tone conspiratorial, “but we’re still family, with all that entails.” He pulls back and claps his hands together. “She’s always been quite strong, though! I’m interested in your potential!”
Rei’s eyes dart to his Poke Balls. “Y-you said we didn’t have to battle, right…?”
Volo laughs warmly. “Fearing a little family resemblance, are you?”
“N-no!” Rei blurts out. He seems to think better of it in a moment, leaning back with a nervous chuckle. “Well, maybe a little… Cynthia was just, um, so much. I’m still tired.”
Volo leans close again, choosing now to play the winning card in his hand. “You may not want to say that too loudly,” he whispers. “Someone back there is trying to snag a scoop on you.” Volo gestures to the side of the lighthouse, where the reporter from earlier had hidden.
“Really?” Rei pokes his head up to look; Volo’s sure the reporter had hidden herself well enough that Rei won’t find her by looking from here, but all he needs is to be believed. “… Should we go somewhere else?”
Jackpot. “Why not the lighthouse?” Volo offers, trying his best to rein in the manic grin his instincts spur him to. “We’ll certainly be able to spot anyone who might be accompanying us in there.”
“Oh, yeah!” Rei chirps. “Yeah, let’s go in.”
The lobby of the lighthouse interior is empty, late in the day as it is. Sightseers have largely either gone home or were sated attending the new Champion’s little appearance. When the pair step into the elevator, even the usual attendant is off duty.
… Being in the elevator alone with Rei has an unexpected effect on Volo, though. He looms over Rei as the Champion peruses the buttons, feeling intimately how small of a space they are in, alone, together. The air feels stagnant and heavy, laden with a scent that, realistically, is the sea air reacting to the carpet, but that Volo still hopes is some degree Rei. How were you meant to stop one of these things in motion, again? If he could just get a little closer—if he could just turn that boy around, catch his lips and steal his air and—
… Huh?
These obsessive thought patterns, Volo’d slid back into them like an old glove. But this confined space sparks an alien tenderness, a gentle and lovestruck sort of manner that Volo had assumed bled out of him for good long ago.
The elevator dings Volo partway out of his reverie. He follows Rei dumbly out onto the observation deck. It’s empty up here, too, and it makes Volo’s hands itch to touch.
“Rei,” he starts quietly. Wait, shit, shit! That’s not the right name!
It’s too late to take it back as Rei levels a confused, suspicious look at him. “You called me that earlier… where’d you hear it?”
There’s no good answer here, but Volo slaps on a chagrined smile and tries anyway. “Oh, I must’ve picked it up off your Trainer Card! It’s circulating all around by now—and it just seemed to suit you so much better than Lucas!”
“M-my Trainer Card leaked?! Already?!”
Rei whips out his phone and searches, frantically, for his own name, which Volo catches him typing into the query window out of the corner of his eye. Lucas Rei Kusaki. He groans exasperatedly as the search loads. “They’ve already got me on Wikipedia… damn it, some people really have too much time…”
The phone goes back in his pocket with a sigh. Rei looks up at Volo furtively, shy. “You think it suits me better, huh…?”
“Of course,” Volo tells him warmly, with maybe a bit too much genuine affection suffusing his speech. (His Rei, his Rei, Volo’s Rei.) He pulls back quickly, offering in a brighter tone, “You could always use it as an alias for your non-Champion activities!”
“R-really?” He hesitates. “You think that’d work?”
“Oh, certainly!” Jubilantly slinging an arm around his shoulder. (Closer, closer.) “You’d be surprised how much a change of style can do to hide one’s identity. Even if you’re seen through, you could pass yourself off as a sibling or cousin!”
Rei laughs nervously, still uncertain. “You sure sound like you know what you’re talking about…”
“Now, now,” Volo chides, “if you’re going to accuse me of something, you should at least put your heart into it!”
Another nervous laugh, shrinking away. Volo’s spooking his prey; it’s time to reroute.
“Say, would you happen to be hungry?” It’s a calculated move: Rei’d been through a tough battle and a bustling crowd in quick succession. Success rides on whether he’s uncomfortable enough to lie to Volo.
“Oh, uh, yeah, I guess?”
In for the kill. “Please, allow me to treat you to a meal!” With a beaming, comfortable smile. Harmless, for all Rei should know.
Rei shrinks back further, attempting to retreat into a shell he doesn’t have. It’s cute when he buries his nose in his scarf like that, but this won’t do. He mumbles excuses halfheartedly, “I, um, I should… my mom will want, uh…”
“Oh, would your mother like to join us?” Calling his bluff, in all its weakness.
“N-no!” Rei takes a deep breath. “Let’s, um… not bother her for this. Going to dinner sounds fine.”
They settle into a back-and-forth about which restaurant to go to, chattering as they leave the lighthouse. “How about Dolliv Garden?” Volo suggests.
“The Paldean place?” Rei says with a (restrained) grimace. “Well, maybe… but isn’t that the kind of place people go for dates? Are you sure you wanna be seen with me in there? Me being, uh, a new celebrity and everything.”
Volo laughs, “Isn’t that what I should be asking you? You’re the one with a reputation to harm here. I’m nobody special.”
Rei mulls it over visibly, his gait slowing as the pair move towards Sunyshore’s business district. “… You know,” he concludes, “I think it’s fine. Let’s go to Dolliv Garden.”
All in all, it’s a short wait until the two of them are seated (by request) inconspicuously in a corner booth, browsing menus as they idly snack on bread. Rei’s gone quiet, and Volo sees him sneaking glances at him, a predictably suspicious glint in his eyes but also something calculating. There are gears turning in that boy’s head, and Volo has no choice but to wait helplessly for their result.
He reaches for the bread basket at the same time as Rei—by accident, he thinks, but he can’t tell with Rei looking like that—and their hands brush. And traitorously, incorrigibly, Volo’s heart jumps, like he’s some smitten schoolgirl. He thinks he’s masked himself well, but Rei takes a deep breath, pointedly, and fixes him with an intense stare.
“… You really like me, don’t you?” He asks carefully. “Like… really like me.” It’s that damnable acuity, that same keen eye that’d seen Rei through all that grueling survey work.
Volo puts on his smile, blithe, innocent. “Now, it’s nothing like what you’re insinuating. I would never do anything untoward to—”
“No,” Rei interrupts, dark expression set even darker. “You… know something about me. Don’t you? Something that I don’t know.”
Volo stalls, flummoxed by this harsh cutting-to of his motives. His heart aches under the weight of his unspoken truths, the ancient longing held within his chest threatening to sweep him away in a roiling wave.
“Why do you like me so much, exactly?” Rei presses him further. “I know it’s not the Championship. You’re not that shallow—this isn’t that shallow.”
God, Arceus above, he’s right. Validation of Volo’s obsession stings like a hot knife. He looks away, crumpling under the pressure of Rei’s expectant stare. Has he really gotten that much worse at acting? When everything was first coming together, Volo was sure he’d had him fooled the whole time—
“… I can’t tell you,” he intones gravely. “You wouldn’t be able to make sense of it.”
“Try me.” Rei stands his ground, insistent.
“… Or what?” Volo can’t put enough confidence into the retort for it to land properly. He sounds like a lost kitten, not a man who has the upper hand.
Rei sighs. “Or nothing, I guess,” he admits frankly. “I’m not interested in punishing you, I just wanna know what’s going on here so I can deal with it.”
Volo grits his teeth, nails digging into his palms under the table. Maybe it is time for the truth.
“Something… is going to happen to you,” Volo says, uncertainty and apprehension slowing him. “You’ll be chosen for something great. Something I… have always wanted, my whole life. And you’ll meet me, not as I am, but in my youth. We’ll… be friends.”
He looks cautiously to Rei; a concentrating frown set on his face, but no disapproval.
“So I’m going to travel through time?” He asks. “Like with a Legendary Pokemon?”
With the Legendary Pokemon of Legendary Pokemon. Volo gulps down about half of the soda he’s ordered before answering.
“Yes,” he says roughly, half choked.
Rei ponders it for a bit. He takes another deep breath, fingers grasping his chin.
“… But I’m not just a friend to you, am I?”
“You are everything to me,” Volo says on impulse, before he can stop himself. He’s been too validated by this conversation to stop himself. He buries his face in his hands, and continues, miserably, thinly, “You are the throughline that connects me to my destiny, yet you are the one who stole that very destiny from me. I had resolved to never see you again.”
There’s a touch at his wrist. Rei’s leaning awkwardly out of his seat, across the table, to comfort him. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I don’t know what I did, but it sounds like that was something really important to you.”
It’s like a splash of cold water, a shock to Volo’s system that sobers him from this odd mood instantaneously. “I don’t want your pity,” Volo says stiffly, jerking his arm out of Rei’s loose grip. There’s still pity reflecting in Rei’s eyes when he looks, though, a gentle condescension that stings to see.
“… It wasn’t your fault,” Volo spits bitterly. “You were simply chosen instead of me. It had nothing to do with your intentions.” That old wound feels sore again, retelling the Temple like this. With this, surely Rei—… is still looking at him gently, kindly. It makes Volo feel ugly and raw, makes him feel like lashing out more, forever.
“I came here to trick you,” Volo growls, now fully in character as his worst self. “I came to find you because I thought I could mislead you into giving me what I want. I want to end this world, Rei, and I am here—to steal the means to do so from you, the blessed one.”
“H-huh?” There’s the reaction Volo’d been looking for, the confusion and shock and wariness. Rei takes his unguarded kindness and locks it back behind bars.
“W-wait,” Rei stammers, “I thought you—why do I have the power to end the world? What does that mean?”
“The blessing of Arceus,” Volo hisses, hating the way his pulse quickens as the name falls from his lips. “The favor of the Creator God. Power to save or destroy.”
“A-Arceus?” Baffled in his panic. “Me? How—why—”
“Believe it or don’t,” Volo says coldly, rising from his seat. He rifles through his wallet briefly and throws a stack of cash disdainfully down on the table.
“That should be enough for dinner,” Volo stonily announces. “You won’t be hearing from me again.”
“Volo, wait,” Rei blurts out, a plaintive call that strikes to his very core. Volo halts in place, not daring to look back.
“I don’t… think you’re all that bad…” He’s wavering. He didn’t know where he was going when he started saying this. “… C-can we talk about this a bit more? I think… I mean, if we were friends, there had to have been a reason…”
It’s not enough. This Rei doesn’t know Volo well enough to keep him from leaving.
“Goodbye, Rei.”
It’s the same as back then, Rei flustered and helpless to pull Volo back as he leaves. He shouldn’t have come here, shouldn’t have bothered to humor his worser impulses. Rei doesn’t run after him, doesn’t shout loud enough to break the idle volume of the restaurant chatter.
It’s fine. It’s better this way.
Volo takes off on his Togekiss, from right there on the doorstep of Dolliv Garden, desperate to put distance between himself and his destiny. He steers toward Solaceon Town, hoping for the rural atmosphere to insulate him from hearing any more about this.
(He’d have better luck in Celestic Town, probably, but there he’d have to face Cynthia.)
It’s a short enough flight, and an easy enough task to find lodgings. And when Volo collapses onto the over-starched motel bed, sleep comes blessedly quick.