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Whitwo liked the stars.
She liked the constellations and the stories that came with them, she liked the way the shapes that watched a baby's first cry could predict who they would become, she liked the way dead stars still shined, even when young stars had yet to reach her. Even when no one else stayed at her side, the stars were always there for her, even when she was scared, even when she was missing her king, and even when there were too many rescued Pokemon to keep them all alive and safe. Even when she was scared of her classmates, and shivering from the ice that had been put over her beloved region, and far away from her mother and her king and everyone she had ever known, the stars were there for her. Looking up at that sky, she had always known that there was her little Gothorita to lead her wherever she may need, no mater what.
Maybe that's why the ceiling above her head and the lightly rumbling floor below her feet made her so nervous. She couldn't see her stars, even among fellow Plazma members, there wasn't even a single beloved constellation to lead her along. She hugged Foongy to her chest, head on her knees. Even the tiny room she was trapped in felt so large compared to her shivering body and knocking knees. She was a tiny as a single pinprick of light, her and Foongy just two little stars, all alone together in an empty night. Her constellation had shattered and left her with only a single Pokemon to keep her safe.
Did that make her a hypocrite?
Before she could think on it very long, however, there was a scuffle in the hallway outside of the room, and Foongy and Whitwo looked up with a jolt at the sound of it. She heard a familiar voice, Unovan Galarian, sounds like feet kicking against the walls and possibly the shins of a young kid. Blake? She wondered, he was here? She and Fongy shivered in something between anticipation and terror as they waited. It sounded violent. Scary. Out of nowhere. Foongy puffed up, prepared to fight off whoever was outside of their little cell. Whitwo felt his spores tickle her nose, and she prepared to hold her breath to prevent herself from being hit just as hard.
The door shoved open, and Blake crashed to the floor beside her as the door crashed shut again behind him. It was so sudden that Foongy deflated in surprise without even releasing his prepared attack. Whitwo pressed against the wall, watching as her classmate rubbed his head and pushed himself onto his knees. He looked like he'd gotten beat up, but hadn't yet developed the bruises to prove it for sure.
"Blake!" she yelped, feeling something in her chest fluttering. She had no idea how he had gotten here with her, but she couldn't lie and say she wasn't happy to see him, even if he was a little beat up. "How did you-?"
He interrupted her, eyes wide and full of stars when he spotted her, "Whitwo! You're okay!"
"Yes," she breathed, "I'm okay- I, what are you-?"
Her head spun and she wondered if it was Foongy's fault. He'd gotten quite a few spores stuck deep in her brain at that point, for sure. They were both scared and cut off from their sky and their stars. But there, wishing she could melt into him as he crawled a little closer to see if she was okay, she had found something close to the familiar glow of her beloved constellations. His eyes, despite or perhaps because of the tiny tears in the corners of them, sparkled like stars, or like some old actor on some old TV show. She stared, taking in bight pinpricks of stars that should have brought with them the sounds of birds twittering and flutes trilling, despite resting in pools of red so deep it might have been a cut straight into her heart.
She melted into those stars, slightly dizzy as they spoke. Their conversation was short, hurried, panicked even, but it was soft all the same. As she let those stars lead her, she wondered why she had never noticed them before. Foongy slid from her shoulder and onto the floor, and Whitwo looked down, worried, at her angry friend. She looked back up at Blake, trying to see what Foongy had, and suddenly his eyes dropped their sparkle, and Whitwo's mouth fell open in shock as the stars flashed for a final time.
In her mind, she could almost see his constellation, Bouffalant, laughing at her. It was charging, running her over in waves upon waves of starlit tricks. Their hooves clicked around her trembling wrists, and before she knew it she was locked to him. She stared at the chain, not really seeing it, not really feeling it.
It glinted in a mocking imitation of the stars that she had lost.
"I got you," Blake murmured, and his voice was different somehow, like he'd dropped an accent, or perhaps an act. This was him, the real him, but he was not someone she'd ever wanted him to be. She wanted to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth. There were simply too many questions to scream, and he wouldn't answer. She doubted he would even listen, even if she could get the words out.
Why was he doing this? Why couldn't she fight back? Why wasn't Foongy fighting back? Who had put him in here? Had anyone really put him in there? Who was he really? And, almost lost, but not quite, among the sea of questions, was the loudest of them all: When had she fallen for him?
She searched her eyes for traces of those stars that she had always seen but never really noticed. Now that they were gone, it was obvious that they had never been from tears, or from love. Dewott Kid was an actor through and through, and as he yanked her to her feet by her newly bound wrist, she knew that he had never been anything else. She felt so stupid, and somehow, it was as if the stars themselves had betrayed her.