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"Give... give me the Plates, Rei."
He's not kidding, but you can see in Volo's eye that his heart isn't in this. He looks on the brink of tears as he commands you, standing in this outfit you've never seen him wear before.
"You don't want that, Volo," you say carefully.
"Now," he orders. You feel the words pull at your limbs, the power Volo has as your summoner guiding your soul in a way you've long grown accustomed to. And acclimation to the sensation means you can resist it.
"No," you tell him. Your hands, eager to follow his command, drift to your satchel's clasp behind your back. That's fine.
He gathers his convictions, a cold look breaking through his conflicted half-cry. "I made you, Rei, and I may unmake you just as well," he says, looming.
You don't believe it for a second.
"You don't want that," you repeat. A grimace spreads across Volo's face, shattering his façade.
"I have no need of this version of you," he says, steadfast through the cracking of his voice. "This... this rotting corpse. It's unsightly."
Okay, that hurts a little.
"What, you'll just make a different me?" you retort. "Who's to say you won't get tired of him, too?"
"I will make as many of you as I must until you are right," he says, and okay, that one hurts more. Volo, conflicted as he is about all this, is still trying to hurt you.
"What makes you think you're ever going to get it right?" Bitter, defiant. Volo winces, meeting your eyes on the upswing with a darkly set look of despair.
"I have no choice, Rei," he laments, stalking closer to you. "You and I both know that you, as you are, shall expire soon."
You unstrap your satchel, holding it out to the side. Volo halts, eyes glued to it.
"I'm going to throw this down the mountainside," you tell him. Volo's eye widens in panic.
"Don't you dare," he huffs, rushing to you faster. "Rei, I command you—you shall not throw that satchel."
"Oh, you command me, huh?" Your arms feel stiff, frozen in place. It's hard, but it's not unworkable. You take a step to the side, towards the sheer drop-off at the edge of the Temple.
"Rei!" Volo reaches you, grabbing you by the shoulders. "Stay—stay right there. Stay still."
That one might be a little harder to work with. Your feet feel leaden, your knees entrapped in ice. Volo grabs at your satchel, tries to pull it from your hand—but you can't move. You're only following orders.
Volo huffs. "Hand it over, Rei."
There's a moment, a second of freedom between your arm unlocking from its freeze to locking on course to Volo's newest order. You huck your satchel to the side with all your might, and it flies true down the side of the mountain. You don't even hear it hit the ground.
Volo panics, thrown himself over a different edge by the action. "You," he babbles, gripping you tightly, wide-eyed with a look of terrified despair, "you, y-you—"
"Now nobody gets what they want," you tell him quietly, somberly. "Sorry."
Volo releases you, whirling to the side, curling in on himself to pluck a Poke Ball off his belt.
Oh, yeah. He probably wanted to have a Pokemon battle, didn't he? And you just threw your whole team down the mountainside with the rest of your stuff.
Volo's Garchomp enters the scene. You push down the urge to greet him, to wave politely to this Pokemon you've become so familiar with. "Retrieve Rei's satchel for us," Volo orders him hoarsely, fiercely. "It's down there, somewhere. Find it." Pointing down the side of the mountain, trembling slightly. Garchomp growls with confusion, looking between the two of you, but nods his head and takes off a moment later.
… There's nothing to do, really, in the interim, but stare at each other some more. Volo tries, steadfastly, to pull a haughty look. He lands somewhere in the realm of looking like he's about to be sick. "You see," he says unevenly, wavering, "you've changed nothing. I'll have my way soon enough, Rei."
"You really think it'll be that easy?" Fighting spirit continues to burn within you. Maybe that's just the kind of person you are, the man you've always been, rising to the surface in your time of need.
Volo's shaken by it. He gathers himself, clenching his fists, straightening. "It doesn't matter if it's easy or isn't. I—I will make you right, Rei, some way or another."
It hurts, again. Why does that hurt? You're being weighed against your living self—the man who is you, but not you. The specter representing your past. You've been with Volo for months by now, equivalent to your whole life since you first woke up. You've enjoyed it. No memories ever returned, beyond the vague inklings in the back of your head reminding you that you used to be something else. But it's not enough for him. You're not enough, like this. You're a disappointment, a substitute, a time-wasting distraction until Volo can find his way back to the man you're merely a husk of.
"What if," you say lowly, trepidatious, "I don't want to be right?"
"... What...?" The word barely even makes it out of him as a whisper. The despair in his expression digs deeper, a look of agonized pain. "You... don't...?"
It'd been almost pure impulse to say it out loud. You're not sure you have it in you to back it up.
"I..." You can't keep looking at him. Your gaze falls somberly down to the tile. "I want to be... enough for you. I don't want you to keep chasing what I used to be. I'm... right here, you know?"
"Rei, you're falling apart!" He says it desperately, tears now visibly wetting his eye, as he grabs at you, shaking. "I—I won't brook losing you again, not ever again! I must—I must make you right, or else you'll—"
Garchomp soars back into the scene, right then, rising over the side of the cliff and announcing himself with a growl. He turns to you, satchel hanging from his mouth by the strap.
"No!" Volo interjects as you reach out to take it. "To me, Garchomp. Return it to me."
Garchomp looks between you, clearly confused. He settles on Volo after a few sweeps back and forth, and growls again in a way that lilts up into a question.
"N-never mind it!" he huffs. "Just hand it over!" He's being a little too forceful; Garchomp recoils, looking back to you. You smile at him—tiredly, because the stress and exhaustion of this situation have sunk into you too deeply to even pretend like you're fine right now, even to soothe a Pokemon—and hold out your hand.
With a nervous chitter, Garchomp leans over to you, depositing the satchel into your hand. You're midway into the motion of tying it back on when Volo speaks up.
"This changes nothing," he darkly says. "Rei, I command you. Give me your satchel."
Again, the spell of his authority pulling at you, guiding your soul.
... If you were too tired to fake it for Garchomp, maybe you're too tired to fight Volo anymore, either. You know, somewhere deep down, that he's right to worry about you "expiring." Things like you aren't meant to exist in this world; it's rejecting you, the laws of life itself grinding you away to something once again properly dead. You don't have long, and it'll break Volo's heart to lose you. He's doing this because he loves you... right? Even if he'd been harsh about it, too wrapped up in his pride to just ask or explain.
Your legs move you forward. Your hands hold out your satchel in front of you. Volo's gaze is locked down on it, the trusty and worn bag that amounts to his prize of the evening. You look at him anyway, hoping that maybe you'll catch his eye. I'm tired, you try to say with your eyes. I don't want to do this. Saying it out loud feels impossible, a superhuman undertaking you can't rise to the challenge of right now.
Close enough to make contact, now. Volo's hands stop short, though, trembling in their grabbing shape. He looks up.
"R-Rei..." It's good that you've shaken him. Heartening, just a little.
Volo grasps your shoulders again. His distraught expression hardens into something serious and determined. "I will save you," he firmly says. "Above all else, Rei—I will not lose you."
"If you just wanted to save me," you mumble halfheartedly, "why'd it have to be like this?" There's too much to say, and you can't muster enough energy. Maybe it's the end right now, actually; maybe you're fading faster than you'd thought, faster than either of you had feared. Maybe you'll finish saying your piece, hand over your satchel, and collapse into a lifeless lump at Volo's feet, and he'll have gone back on his word again, lost you again despite everything he's resorted to in order to not.
Volo doesn't answer the question. With a shaky huff, he casts his gaze back downward, takes his prize gently from your hands. From somewhere in the folds of his clothes, wherever he'd stashed it after revealing its existence to you earlier, he produces an object—the last Plate, the final piece of the puzzle.
A strange light begins to shine, radiating from twin points within your satchel and from the final Plate held in Volo's hand. It swells, intensifies, magnifies until it is blinding, until you can't help but look away, moved by some errant shred of self-preservation. When the light fades, a new object rests on Volo's palm.
"The... The Azure Flute..."
It's here. It's here. It's here.
The first step on the final path, the beginning of the end. The instrument to call Arceus. Volo’s skin tingles, blood rushing with thrill. Now, now, right now—he has to try it. He knows the notes, as any good Celestican should. Any dutiful heir of Sinnoh. Breathless, Volo steps forward, plays the song. It's a struggle to direct his air properly in such a fit of excitement, but somehow, the notes come out clear and strong. Is that the Flute's mercy? Is it designed to show lenience, somehow, to inexperienced or hesitant players? Any proper seeker of Arceus should know well what they must do before arriving at this step but, well, Rei wouldn't have known, would he? If he'd crossed this threshold himself instead of being forced to yield to Volo. Volo could've taught the young hero himself—should've, probably, if things were just different enough, just that much better than they are—but the air is shimmering, now, shining with the glow of accumulating energy. Divine power. Volo's breath fully catches, shudders wracking him. It's coming. It's coming to him.
It manifests before him, the godly staircase, the clear glass path up to the Hall of Origin. Volo looks eagerly back to Rei—of course he should take him along, of course, he can pity his lover to an audience with the God who's been leading him around by the nose all this time—
Volo's blood runs cold. Where Rei had been standing, just fine, just moments before—he's collapsed to the ground in a heap. "Rei?!" It spills from his mouth as he tears away from the staircase to the realm of the Creator—unthinkable, under normal circumstances, to the person he normally is, but this is that important to him—and falls to his knees before the crumpled pile of his lover. "Rei, are you—what is—a-answer me!"
Can commands work when Rei can't hear him? They'd never managed to penetrate the barrier of consciousness in their many rounds of experiments, never pushed it too far beyond an initial feeling-out of the bounds of Rei's senses, Volo deeming it too worthwhile that Rei could still experience the reprieve of sleep to try moving beyond its limits carelessly. Volo reaches his hands out, shaking Rei in effort to rouse him, a motion that starts gentle and grows more frantic and jerky by the second.
What would it look like, for Rei to have expired? Volo realizes he doesn't know. He's seen his lover's corpse—Rei, torn open, on the cliffs of the Highlands, blood sprayed gruesomely around him. He's seen the creation he made of him, after that, the hollow puppet of Rei he tided himself over with in steadfast pursuit of the power of God. Seen him in sleep and wake, in recreation and repose. There's no essential living element to any of it, since he'd been brought back. This Rei doesn't breathe; his heart doesn't beat. Whatever force animates him is something other, something mysterious and external that Volo doesn't know or understand, something that he certainly can't track the presence of as being still within him or having left.
Wait—
"Giratina!" Giratina will know. Giratina will have some sort of opinion, or some sort of solution. He was always meant to call God's most unloved child to his side before truly confronting it, anyway. He'd just gotten a little too carried away to remember before now.
Giratina's head has barely emerged from the void—they look to the staircase up to Arceus, then to Volo holding Rei, then back to the stairs—before Volo seizes upon the opportunity. "Giratina!" he repeats, desperate, voice cracking. "Is Rei—is he—can you—"
"No longer," Giratina's soul-voice echoes inside his head. "A soul may only be bound once."
... That's it, then. He’s gone. He's gone again. Pain blooms in the pit of Volo's chest, his very heart threatening to split in two. He can't breathe. He's beset by tears in moments.
Before he can fall too deeply into despair, the now-fully-emerged Giratina places a claw on his head. "We must depart," they say, looking to the sky.
... Arceus.
Volo looks down at Rei, at his remains, navy fabric still gripped in his hands.
Arceus... can do something about this. Volo gathers his composure, swallowing down his misery, choking back his tears. When he rises back to his feet, he holds Rei in his arms.
... Small as ever. Frightfully light. Hardly a burden at all. Giratina gives him a look, for a moment, something Volo parses as being between skeptical and annoyed. It's hard to read a Pokemon's face, though, especially a Legendary Pokemon. Sometimes Giratina will convey their emotions directly, wordlessly sending the feeling of their mood to Volo through telepathy; they don't bother this time, quickly turning back to the staircase once again.
The message is received. Volo's ready now. He strides up the staircase nobly, with Rei—what's left of Rei, the corpse of Rei's corpse—clutched close to his chest.
It's a long climb, the monotony of it stretching out into an eternity. It embitters Volo quickly, and soon after he feels inklings of Giratina's rage creeping into his chest. Of course, of course, Creator God, Allmaker, Deified Pokemon, so far above it all, lording above the rest of them, eternally. Typical, expected, and thoroughly irksome.
The weight of Rei's body in his arms reminds Volo of his priorities, as his grip begins to slip. Arceus hadn't saved him, back in the Highlands. It'd left that ordeal to Volo himself, to Volo aided by Giratina, let its champion fall directly into the hands of the enemy. There's no question that the restoration of one life must be within Arceus's abilities; the real question is of what it will take to bring out that power, to force it into Volo's hands to be directed as he likes. Such a callous God certainly won't fold when merely asked, not even to revive the boy it'd hand-blessed and brought to this world personally.
They reach the top of the stairs. The air is thin here, hard to breathe, a nighttime tapestry of stars stretching beautifully above—the sun hadn't set yet, back on the peak. Is Arceus's realm above the sky itself? "Don't get distracted," Giratina chides, just barely undercutting the exact same thought that Volo was about to level at himself. He clicks his tongue. There's no time for it to devolve into a proper, spat, though, as Giratina's chastisement comes at exactly the right time; Arceus, who'd been rested at the far end of the Hall of Origin when they arrived, approaches the pair, the scion and the scorned god.
"Thou hast done well to reach this place," it intones. Its voice is loud, harsher than Giratina's, leaving Volo’s head almost ringing in the wake of it.
"I won't suffer any pleasantries," Volo spits, stepping aggressively forward. "We're here to best you."
(He should put Rei down somewhere, unable to leverage the full strength of his Pokemon with his hands full of corpse. The Hall of Origin is empty, though, a flat plane with no nooks or corners or even walls to speak of. There's no safe place here; it's barely a place at all.)
Arceus quirks its head. "To best? Not to beseech?" Its gaze settles pointedly on Rei, and Volo hugs him closer protectively.
"Yes, to best," he repeats, feeling Giratina's indignity swell in time as they rise into the air beside him. "I'll take none of your pity, Allmaker. You'll acknowledge me—acknowledge us—and you will bend the knee when we best you. You won't be beseeched, you'll be commanded."
Arceus doesn't smile, exactly, its physical expression as stony and cold as ever, but somehow its mirth creeps outward, radiating across the Hall in an aura. "Don't you dare laugh at us!" Volo snaps, enraged.
"Thou hast come with a request." Not a question. It's taunting them. Volo turns on his heel, storming back towards the staircase—if he puts Rei down on the slope of the stairs, maybe that will be far enough from the site of battle that he won't be at risk of taking stray attacks. Maybe the slope of the staircase can be used to anchor him, prop him up properly and safely so that he isn't left posed like a mangled mess while he awaits his return.
"Thy wish may be granted." Volo freezes.
"It lies," Giratina snarls, brandishing their claws. Volo stays rooted to the spot.
“... For what price?”
"Volo!"
Giratina can be dealt with. Giratina's objections can be smoothed over, surely. They know well how important Rei is. They'd been the one to suggest, when Volo had been devastated by his first death, the idea of resurrection, giving Volo a crash course on life-giving in the Distortion World's time-dilated between-space, prolonging the precious minutes they had before the lifeblood was too gone from Rei's body to bring back.
Arceus's mirth intensifies, the aura bearing down, the sensation of its joy grating in the same way its voice rings when it speaks. Volo tenses, gritting his teeth.
"Return my champion to me," it says. "Give him up so that he may be healed."
Volo's grip on Rei grows crushingly tight. He doesn't, shouldn't, hasn't had to worry about injuring Rei's body, all this time—anything that made it worse was trivial, at least until it all added up to the point of his total dissolution. Instinctively, he still restrains himself, flexing his straining fingers with care.
"Never," he growls. "You'll never have him back. He belongs to me." It's a callous statement; cruel, egotistical, and worst of all, he can't stop it from coming out petulantly, like a scolded child's furious pout. If Rei were awake—if Rei were alive—to hear it, it might break his poor heart.
But he isn't, so Volo pulls no punches. Arceus will never touch his lover again, not at anything besides Volo's behest.
And Arceus keeps smiling, keeps radiating its smug, grating, overbearing, sour-yellow amusement. What is it onto? What does it have over him? Why is the Deified Pokemon, the Creator God Volo's been chasing for so long, simply standing here blithely gloating over him? It doesn't make sense. He's too enraged to allow himself much puzzling on it, though.
Arceus bows its head, and Volo tenses, preparing for an attack, a new move, some change of state—none of it comes. It turns to the side, peeking at him with one eye, almost playful, and says, still in that aggravatingly entertained tone, "Thou wilt not challenge that which holds the key to thy heart, child of man that thou art."
Oh, that's it. "Giratina!" Volo shouts, gesturing with his slightly freer arm around his pile of Rei. They're in perfect sync; when Volo looks over to the dragon out of the corner of his eye, they seem to have already begun the attack before he'd even commanded it. It's not enough, though. Arceus deftly dodges the blow, a motion that seems wholly effortless. Volo grits his teeth.
"You think I won't lay you low, Creator God?! You think that I haven't resolved myself to this?! None else on this Earth would dare—but I will!" Giratina again follows the dialogue brilliantly, lashing out with their tail. In a different world, a world where Arceus was merely a Pokemon with the limits of a beast, it would have landed. It isn't, though. It's God.
"O Volo," it says, settled across the Hall, its gaze seeming to pierce clean through Volo's body into his very soul. "Child of Sinnoh. Thou art not beyond my reach." Completely incorrigibly, Volo shivers as it addresses him, the voice of God forming his name giving him an unavoidable physical reaction.
"Control yourself," Giratina spits from their position to the side, spiteful and disgusted.
"Hold," Volo says, unsteady. "Hold a moment, both of you."
... Incredibly impetuous of him to command not only the scorned god who lowers themself to the position of his partner, but as well the true God, the creator of this world. At the audacity of it, Arceus is sent into another silent fit of sickly-yellow laughter, while Giratina hisses sourly, their anger and spite creeping coldly up the back of Volo's spine.
"Listen!" he huffs. He'll deal with Giratina first; he at least knows them better than this slippery Creator God before him, trying to talk him in circles. "This isn't what we expected to be greeted with, is it?! It's seen us plotting all along! There's some manner of—of trap laid here, and we must—"
"It matters not!" Giratina roars, lashing out with another attack aimed at Arceus. This time, Arceus doesn't move, doesn't make any effort to dodge away from the clear line of damage; instead, the rushing force of Giratina's shadow simply stops dead, fading away from sight, for no apparent reason at all. "Stop this!" they howl, voice cracking with despair. "Acknowledge me!"
Arceus turns its head towards Giratina, again bowing it. "Child of mine," it cordially says, "thou hast done well in both duty and heart."
What the hell?
Giratina recoils, and the twist of their emotions is clear in the air. From incandescent rage to deep, thick confusion, some distant tinge of sentiment, some manner of longing—that they hide away just as quick as Volo manages to catch it. It's fair enough; if Volo had a similar tendency to leak his emotional state, he'd be just as guarded with the real ones as that.
"Ye two, be calmed," Arceus says, and infuriatingly, the statement itself seems to carry compelling power—though he tries to hold onto his anger, to rile himself, Volo can feel his ire slip away at Arceus's will. "Not one of this world's children hath ever left my sight. All that hath happened is by design."
Volo, through the blanket of Arceus's calming compulsion, struggles out another surge of rage. "How dare you!" he spits, lurching forward. "This design of yours is senseless! It's bursting with cruelty and rot!" He's gripping Rei too tight again. Volo takes a breath, still glaring up at his God. "You let him die? You brought Rei here, only to allow him to be killed? If it truly all is by design, then—"
Arceus again bows its head, and this time, all of the warmth leaches out of the space in the motion. "The threads of this world's fate are onerous," it somberly says, a true lament, tantamount to an apology. "Causality twists and turns. I can offer only that thou hast at least arrived where it was meant to lead."
He can't say anything. No words come. For what might be the first time in his life, Volo is truly speechless.
"... Creator," Giratina speaks up from their position to the side, grave. "Though you play with the lives of mortals aplenty, what of I? Your child, as you yourself acknowledged me—was I as well a pawn for you, a mere pin to guide this thread of fate?"
"All in its place," Arceus laments, weary. The temperature dips even further, cold beginning to bite at Volo's exposed skin. "Thy place, as well, is in between, my child."
"I don't accept it," Giratina insists stubbornly, but underneath, in the telepathic projection of their emotions, they're already cracking. "To be banished from even the touch of light for so long, merely because one is suited for it..." But they love the Distortion World. They don't know how to tolerate true reality, suffocating in a space ruled by space and time, the domains of their siblings. The implication, lingering unspoken in the air, is that any "banishment" of Giratina that they'd spent thousands of years stewing over all amounted to... a misunderstanding. A mere miscommunication between gods.
... It doesn't matter. If Giratina's satisfied with this, then all the better for them. Volo still has something he wants. He takes a step forward, towards Arceus still bowed somberly in the center of the Hall. It rises to greet him, the residual chill of its sadness in the air stabilizing back to normalcy. "Arceus," he says, "you'll heal him." He tries to speak it true, invoke it as unmistakably an order, a command, but his voice cracks.
"Thou must give him over for him to be healed, child of Sinnoh."
He wavers. The fact of it makes him want to be sick. "No," Volo says, stubbornly. He hugs Rei close, Rei's lifeless body, Rei's beaten-up corpse on the brink of total dissolution into a mess of meaningless parts. "Y-you can't. He doesn't belong to you. He won't, e-ever again."
"O Volo. Young one."
Closer, clutching the mess of fabric and cold flesh that was once Volo's lover desperately against his chest. "No!" his voice is trembling. "You—you'll p-pry him from my cold hands, else you'll compel me by force! Th-those alone are what it will take to separate me from my Rei!"
Arceus closes its eyes. It bows its head again, not in apology, not in sorrow, but—
"Dost thou speak for his heart, or thine own?"
"I know full well that I'm being selfish!" Volo shouts, addressing the implication beneath rather than directly face the question asked of him. "You—you—you are the one who made this mistake! It's your fault, Allmaker, your precious creation, your design, is what slew him dead, I was blameless, I had no part in it at all, I saved him, after you—after you, so callously—"
Wordlessly, Arceus opens its eyes. It shakes Volo down to his core.
"Fix it!" he howls, choking back tears. "I did nothing wrong! You're to blame for this! Why should I—why should I have to fold to your demands, when it's you who—"
The newest interruption of the scene is unexpected in a different way; Giratina has snuck up behind Volo, navigated the outer edge of the space while his attention was locked firmly on Arceus in the middle. Two of their tendrils snake over his shoulders, not grabbing or pulling but merely resting, like—like they're offering comfort.
"We have been outplayed, my ally," they say flatly. "You cannot leave this place victorious."
"I won't!" Volo spits, thrashing out of Giratina's gentle grip. "I shan't! I c-could never! To bend the knee to this—this farce of a creator—this failure wh-who allowed—"
Giratina growls, a grumble of clear annoyance. Their tendrils reach over him again, this time targeted to Rei, aiming to pull him out of Volo's grip. "I tire of this scalding place," they hiss. "If you refuse to make your bargain, I shall make it in your stead, if only so that we may leave."
"You wouldn't dare!" Volo huffs as he pulls away, curling around Rei's remains, shielding the corpse with his body.
"Be at peace," Arceus speaks up, another command invoking its power as the Creator God. Volo finds himself mostly unaffected, but it's clear in the way that Giratina's tendrils leave him that they didn't make that motion of their own will. "Child of mine, thou may not force thy companion. An answer such as this must be arrived at oneself, straight and true."
Giratina relents, releasing a low chitter of irritation. They turn to Volo, expectantly, their impatience weighing heavy on his shoulders. "I've said all that I must to my Creator. Have you?"
... He knows what they mean. Although there are myriad topics they could possibly be referencing, only one jumps immediately to mind.
"... Why..." Volo starts, low and quiet, "why did you... allow the Celestica to fall? Were we not your chosen people? The clan with your personal blessing—and still you allowed..." He meets Arceus's gaze with a grave look. "Why did you do that to them? To me?"
"All in time and place," Arceus somberly replies, its mournful sadness chilling the air again. Is it really... sorry? Regretful, of this? Then why, for what reason could it have possibly allowed— "Child of Sinnoh, thou dost not see the threads as I do. Only greater calamity awaited the Celestica, had they persisted beyond their time."
"But you—you're Arceus!" Volo splutters. "N-nothing in this world is beyond your doing—surely—surely, you could've saved them, saved us, there must have been some way, if only you'd—"
Arceus lowers its head. "I give my apology, child of Sinnoh. I hast failed thee."
It's too much. It's far too much. This isn't how this was supposed to go—Volo's long-sought victory, the acknowledgement of God itself, ripping the myth he worshiped down from the heavens and bending it to his will, by force, overcoming it—what's happening here is a far sight from it. Trembling, Volo falls to his knees.
"What... wh-what good is an apology?" Volo whispers, voice cracking, shunted again to the brink of tears. (It's everything, really. It's heart-healing, soul-repairing, maybe the thing he'd needed to hear the very most. Such an admission will never leave his lips, though—not for a thousand more personal apologies from Arceus itself for his suffering.) "Do something about it. B-bring them back. I know that you're capable."
"The whims of one son of man may not move the laws of this world," Arceus says, mournful. "The structure stays in place as it was crafted, and bending it so is unwise. Even the maker of all may not be so reckless with its power, woeful child of Sinnoh."
Fuck, he can't hold it back anymore. Volo grits his teeth as tears begin to overflow, slinking hot and miserable down his cheeks. "What was this for?" he croaks miserably. "You—I—all of this—Rei—"
"O Volo," Arceus says, humble, comforting, the audacity of this Creator God to try playing at friends with him when so much of this is its fault, "first of my children to reach these heavens unaided. Thou wert destined from the start to arrive here."
"Why?" It doesn't make sense. It's too abstract, too convoluted, too cruel. Even the implicit validation in that sentiment, the idea that Volo had been truly fated to someday reach Arceus, falls flat in how little logic it all has. Maybe the God of this world really is beyond comprehension.
"O Volo," it repeats, "last of the Celestica, woeful heir of Sinnoh. Thy role in this world is writ equally large as my champion, whom thou hold so dear. No other path could have been taken."
"S-stop it," he sobs. "Stop trying to—to comfort me. You've failed, a-and you can only fail again." What does it mean to be within Arceus's view, anymore? What use is it to be seen and acknowledged by his God, when it changes nothing? Volo slumps, Rei's body sliding down the length of his limpening arms. He lets it happen.
"... Take him back, if you must," he mutters, barely more than a whisper. "But I ask that you tell me... will he remember? If you heal him?"
"The mind of my champion is his own domain," Arceus plainly says, incorrigibly mysterious. In fairness, Volo can't quite be sure which Rei he wants to be present, in the life that awakes from Arceus's healing. Of course he wants the real Rei back so dearly, the original life belonging to his body, the man he's spent these months fervently chasing. But... when he thinks about the undead Rei, that monstrosity of a creation he'd blasphemed into being, had spent these same months in idyllic partnership with even as his body rotted and fell to pieces... he doesn't want to part with him on such a note. It wouldn't be right, to leave the undead Rei with the final sight of Volo turning away from him to chase Arceus. Pale imitation as he was, he... deserves better. Even as a mere shadow of the man Volo truly loves.
... Somehow, as that thought passes over him, it feels like something shifts. Arceus has already taken to gathering its power, holy light coalescing into a brilliant shape over the Hero of Hisui's ragged remains. It's something Volo should be clamoring for every detail of, overjoyed to be present to see, but thoughts of his lover leave him too listless to even indulge that core tenet of his driving curiosity, his hunger for knowledge of the divine. But as he sulks, the energy... rediverts, somehow? Could it be responding to him, to his contemplation?—That's foolish, and he doesn't want the Allmaker in his head snooping around in the first place, certainly. But if he's to be rewarded, if some mercy is to be granted to him at the very end of this whole accursed endeavor—
The light overflows, blinding, filling the air and forcing eyes away, just as it had with the Azure Flute. Behind the glare, when Volo opens his eyes, is Rei. Alive, intact, perfectly as he should be.
—God, and Volo's such a mess, collapsed here red-eyed and sticky on the floor of the Hall. It's no state to greet the man of the hour in.
"Volo!" Surprise, astonishment. A pause. "... Volo?!" Ire rising. "... Volooo!" Oh, yes, he's angry now. It's what Volo deserves. He's barely caught his breath, held instinctively in the glow of God-power, by the time his resurrected lover has closed the distance.
You wake up.
You are right, this time, you know somehow. You've been made proper, made correct, made alive. Somehow, though, by some whim of—of Arceus, you suddenly understand—"you" are still here. There is, by your side, the version of you who had been telling you secrets, all this time. The Rei who lived, who came first, who was a person rather than a thing. But there remains you.
It's strange. Your body, more in the control of your predecessor than yourself right now, is busy chastising Volo. He's been a fool, you tell him, selfish and reckless and an all-around bastard, and how dare he do that to you—to you, the replication, the numb and clumsy spirit, the fake. The person you were made in imitation of, he's defending you.
It's not exactly being separate, but nor is it being the same. You know him and he knows you, just as you both are each other, even as you remain different. It's... you could cry, really. Your body is already well on the way there, surging emotions whirling about like a storm in this momentous reunion with Volo.
Your lips meet. The person named Rei kisses his lover, Volo. "I love you," you say. "Don't do that again."