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The ceremony is quiet, small.
Small for the likes of a king, anyway.
Only the elites of Team Plasma are permitted to attend. The seven sages are there, of course; Ghetsis at their forefront with his face an unreadable mask. A good twenty or so hand-picked Plasma grunts are forming a guard of honour to each side of the ivory carpet – they are the most successful among the ranks of the grunts, and them being allowed here today is a reward for their hard work.
It is a very special occasion, after all.
As the heavy doors to the throne room open, a fanfare is played, and everyone looks towards the two who enter.
…
Touya, it should be said, does not find it to be an honour or a reward to be attending. It’s more of a punishment, isn’t it?
A punishment for his failure.
Their decisive battle, their fated encounter, ended with N victorious, and N took his right as the victor, as a king, to decide the fate of the defeated.
He didn’t even look particularly triumphant, Touya thinks. More… hollow. Emotionless. His empty smile a nauseating reflection of their past encounters.
They took Touya’s pokémon, of course. He doesn’t know what happened to them – maybe they were “liberated.” Touya hopes as much, at least. At least they will have their freedom then.
He misses them dearly already.
He can’t tell how long it’s been – it can’t have been very long, right? It was hard to keep track of the time during those last few days – Touya assumes it’s been only days, at least. To him, it also might have been months, but N seemed impatient to get the ceremony underway.
The King of Team Plasma presenting his Prince Consort to his court.
Touya almost laughed out loud. If not laughing, he’d be crying, and he doesn’t want to add that particular humiliation to all the rest.
He thinks he’s going insane in this place. If he isn’t already, he’s going to be.
While N was impatient about the ceremony, he acts so very patient with Touya. He explained it again and again – “Humans and pokémon must be separated for their own good. You’ll understand, I know you will. Just like I did. You’re… you’re good. You’ll see. I’ll show you, when you’re finally by my side.”
Touya remembers the legend of the dragons of Unova then, that they used to be one and that they forsook humanity for pitting them against each other when they were one and the same.
He wonders where Zekrom has gone. The dragon turned back into its stone form upon its defeat – just another creature Touya failed. He failed all of Unova, all of its humans and pokémon. N always used to tell him that he’s the hero destined to oppose him and his world of truth, but Touya isn’t sure whether he ever really believed N on that.
Not that it matters anymore whether he was the destined hero or not.
He failed.
The light in the throne room almost blinds him now after days (or weeks?) in that dark room, that cell N had him kept in until he was “ready.” Barely anyone is speaking – at most, there are whispers and murmurs among the crowd – but it still feels loud, so loud.
He can feel all their eyes on him. His gaze darts around, catches the sorrowful expressions of the two women N calls his sisters and the look of barely masked disdain on Ghetsis’ face that vanishes and makes place for his charismatic, crowd-turning smile as soon as he notices that he’s being watched.
Touya knows for sure that if things went according to Ghetsis’ wishes, he’d be dead now. But this, apparently, was the one thing N refused to budge on.
N.
N must notice Touya tensing because his grip tightens slightly, as if meaning to reassure him. Touya is being carried down the ivory carpet – bridal style, how ironic – since he’s not yet able to walk on his own again after the- the treatment.
Maybe he never was a hero, but he tried to fight like one.
How useless.
Who else is there anymore but N? Touya understands that now.
“Don’t be afraid,” N whispers to him, “They’re here to celebrate us.”
Touya thinks he's always liked the colour of N’s eyes when he talked about the future he envisioned. The thought hurts worse than his useless legs. N is the true king now, his – their – future finally in his grasp.
It’s the only future Touya is going to get.
A silent sentinel, Reshiram is waiting next to the throne. More than the crown on N’s head, a perfect replica of the kind the ancient kings of Unova were said to have worn, this is the sign of his power that all will bend the knee to; just like Ghetsis revealed to Touya what feels like ages ago.
And to the other side of N’s marble throne stands a second, smaller one that N now carefully sets Touya down on. The smile on his face is soft, soft like his movements, like he simply is not capable of causing hurt – like that very concept is foreign to him.
The worst part is that Touya knows the former to not be true, but believes that the latter very much might be.
What did N’s sister say to him when he first ascended the castle? “There is nothing more beautiful and terrifying than innocence.”
It was also her who whispered to him while she was cleaning his wounds that his pokémon are safe, careful not to let the grunts who guarded him hear – the grunts who beat him for daring to ask about them.
As he lifts his tired gaze across the watching crowd and as N places a matching golden circlet upon his brow, Touya thinks only about what he kept telling him, holding him close when his vision was darkening and his thoughts muddled and pain radiating from his legs in that dark, dark room.
It’s for the best. It’s for the best. It’s for the best.
“All hail His Majesty the King of Unova, and his Prince Consort! May their union bring forth a new era of peace for people and pokémon alike!”
The crowd erupts in practised cheers, unable to hear the poison dripping from Ghetsis’ voice. Touya wonders if N can hear it, or if he’s too poisoned as well.
In time, Touya knows he himself will either be poisoned too, or dead.
He endures the following festivities, lets a courtesying servant hand him a goblet of wine that’s dark like blood and lays bitter and heavy on his tongue, lets N feed him little bite-sized cakes with nimble fingers, and looks away from that hollow smile.
A pyrrhic victory, isn’t it?
It’s later when they’ve finally escaped the empty cheers and flattery in the throne room – N, for all that his upbringing meant to make him a worthy monarch, also seems to have little patience for such theatre – that the King truly looks at his Prince Consort; at the defeated, shattered shadow of a hero that he is.
“Touya?” he whispers, soft and brittle in the silence of his bedchambers.
“Touya, look.”
He lifts their intertwined hands, matching rings glinting on their fingers. Touya stares and says nothing.
“Aren’t you happy?”
It sounds too much like a plea, something utterly unfit for a king.
Neither of them are the right actors for their roles.
But play them, they must.
It’s for the best.
“Yes, I am happy. After all, this is what I wished for.”
He would’ve stopped wishing much sooner if he’d known that this was all it would amount to.
…
As it must, every new age first begins with a death.