Chapter Eight: The Weight Of A Heart

He wasn't sure how much time had passed ever since he'd been kidnapped; he didn't know how many more days he had until he was dead, and honestly, he couldn't bring himself to care any further.

All he knew was that he needed to get out.

It was risky—downright stupid—to even try and leave the room when Takeo was there. Despite the pounding in his head, he retained enough sanity to at least know that he wouldn't be able to outrun the soldier.

Use your goddamn head, he tried to tell himself through a haze of pain. You're not stupid. You'll figure a way out of this.

Yet, as the cold metal of the handcuffs dug into his hand, he found that situation becoming more and more desolate. Sure, Takeo wasn't in the room now, but he'd mentioned that he'd be returning soon. He had to think of something before then.

Avis wondered why he hadn't thought of planning something before. He chalked it up to the cloud of panic he'd been thrust into when he'd woken up.

"You're being pretty quiet today." The voice interrupted him from his thoughts, and he looked up to see that his enemy had entered the room with his Hypno beside him. "Have you accepted the fact that you're going to be stuck here?"

There was confidence in his tone. He let his face fall into a blank stare, one with all the emotion of drying paint, and tried to study his former captain as best as he could.

Takeo was a confident type of person. He figured that it was that that had led him to become a captain. But he was strangely emotional too; the complete opposite of him, and that led him to be irrational. He'd noticed mood swings too, in the time that he'd been kept in the room.

—shit. If he'd been able to do this from the start, he wouldn't have to go through any of the torture the rat's Hypno had put him through.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" He was pretty sure that the words were hurled at him in a victories sneer. "Afraid that I'll break your other arm? Or do you now know that trying to act more like your brother is the best choice?"

That was it, he realised. He had to use the man's mood swings to his advantage.

"I'm not Aiden," he mumbled, his voice low but harsh enough to make Takeo recoil for a moment. "I may be forced to act like him, but I don't like it."

"Eh?" Takeo's voice was gruff, and he could see that he was getting angry again. He swallowed down a gulp of saliva that had been stuck in his throat at the fear. "And I thought you were getting better. Why are you so damn stubborn?"

He pulled at his restraints and let out a snarl. "And you can shut up. No matter what you say, my brother is dead and he's not coming back—and I am not going to replace him!"

There was a moment of silence, and Avis wondered for a moment if he'd gone overboard. Something in him had snapped when he'd been in there, and he'd long lost the patience to hold in his anger at the wretched man.

"You really piss me off," Takeo growled. "You're going to die either way. Why not make this a little less grievous for the both of us?"

"You want to know why?" he spat. "Because I don't want to be compared to him any more, and I don't think anyone ever bothered to see that."

The man was getting angrier now. Somewhere between the initial panic, he managed to remain calm—because this was normal. If anything, it was just a more painful version of the countless comparisons his parents had made between him and his brother.

"I was trying to be patient with you, Avis." He bit back a reply about how ironic that was. "I thought that it you were just scared of me at first. Didn't you want to be like him too?"

He shot him a dirty look. "I thought that too. It turned out I was wrong."

"I—" His voice had dropped to a whisper, and Takeo looked as if he didn't have any words to say. His hand clenched at the sword at his side. "I'll kill you. I don't care about whatever the Legendaries need you for—I'll kill you."

Avis tried to harness his anxiety as the captain lunged for his throat. If he had one advantage right now, it was the fact that he was composed and Takeo had gone mad.

His body moved on its own. It was just a simple trick, really, one that Aiden had taught him when they were younger. He'd told him to use it as self-defence when the situation called for it.

He ducked so that the sword sliced through the handcuffs instead, and twisted the man's sword so that the flat of the blade slammed into his head. His arm hurt like hell the entire time, but it was no time to be complaining.

"That was a move Aiden did a lot," Takeo hissed. "How the hell did you—"

"Because once upon a time, I wanted to be as perfect as he was," he rasped back. It took all he had to focus on the situation at hand. "That's all there is to it."

He grabbed his sword—though splattered with Heliolisk's dried blood—and made a run for it.

§

"I was just about to enter, you know."

He startled when the first thing he saw was a pair of gold eyes, unnaturally concerned and narrowed in a display of rare worry.

Lillian stared at the door for a long second before sliding a key into the hole in the rusting knob and giving it a hard twist to ensure that it was locked. "Come on," she urged, giving him a firm tap on the shoulder. "We should get out of here."

She ushered him down the corridor once again, leading him through a maze of paths and doors with ease, and it was only when they were out that he remembered to ask about it.

"Your arm is broken," she assessed, cutting him off before he could even say anything. "It looks like it'll be able to heal in time, but it should be quite painful. You'll have to see a doctor about that—but besides that, it doesn't look like you're badly hurt."

"Why are you here?" he asked in defence. His nerves had been rattled by everything that had happened, and it was then that he realised that his voice was cracking. "You were talking about carrying out some plan, right?"

Her gaze drifted to the side, and she touched a finger to her chin in a manner more tentative than her usual self. "Let's just say I used to worked in Hoenn's military," she confessed. "Damien Albus was my father and all. That doesn't matter now, though."

She looked up. "Anyway, Takeo is someone who's known for keeping prisoners-of-war in line," she muttered. Her voice was soft. "What did he do to you?"

He felt like there was a hard ball or something in his throat, and it was all he could do from choking the answer out.

"Role-play," he replied, causing Lillian to shoot him a strange look. "He used his Pokemon to try and make me act like Aiden or something, I guess. He broke my arm when I tried to fight him and escape, so it wasn't from, well, whatever he did."

"Oh." There was a certain succinctness to his companion's voice—and he didn't know if that was understanding or pity he detected in her tone His head was too muddled to make it out.

There was a moment where he let his gaze drift down to the ground, and Lillian did nothing but keep her eyes on him in that short window of time.

"I wish it would stop," he muttered, and the girl blinked at his sudden statement. "Everyone comparing me to Aiden, that is."

"Has it always been this way?" she murmured in response. He could only stay silent at that. "I mean...when you were a kid and all?"

He pressed his eyes close. "Are you trying to take pity on me? Because you seem different." A shuddering sigh threatened to spill from his lips. "To a lesser extent. I never really had any special talents when I was young and Aiden was always better.

"Avis, I—" Lillian was frowning now, and that was rare, because there was a moment where she wasn't so stupidly convinced that her plans where going to work. It was as if she didn't know what to say. "Avis, I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He had the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Everything was screwed up from the start. There was nothing you could have done."

She let out a forced laugh; it was sharp enough to hurt his ears, but none of them brought it out. "Right," she murmured. "But I'm going to be sorry. If I hadn't tried to carry the plan out on my own, none of this would have happened."

When he didn't respond, she ghosted her fingers across his shoulder—on the side that he didn't have a broken collarbone—and pressed her lips together before speaking again. "It's going to be better. I'll make sure of that."

He felt the uncanny urge to laugh, because what the hell did she know?

"No," he shot back, and he wasn't sure if even he was capable of such a cold tone. "It's not going to be better, damn it. I'm going to be d—"

His tone peaked just the slightest bit, but it was enough for Lillian to catch on. He forced himself to stop before he went and revealed the secret that the Legendaries were trying to hide from the world; it was a stupid reason for everything to go to waste.

"It'll—" She caught herself for a moment, unsure of the level of truth in her words. It was almost refreshing to see her fumble for once. "It'll be alright. I think."

Before she could speak any further, he cut her off in a snap that was far to harsh to be necessary. The absurdity of everything made him want to either laugh or cry—she was being nice for once and he was denying it. "No, it won't!"

Lillian blinked as though she'd been punched. He scowled at her, hating her in that moment because she wouldn't know; she couldn't know, and he hated how his words cracked just that tiniest bit, as though he was going to cry again.

"Are you alright?" she ventured, although they both knew it was rhetorical.

"Why does everyone try to compare me to my brother?" he snarled, and he didn't know who he was trying to blame right then. "What do I have to do to make them shut up?"

She withdrew her hand. He was as tensed as a coiled spring, and she didn't want to damage anything more. Avis wished she'd back off and leave him alone; he didn't want an answer right then because he didn't want to face the truth and—

"I'm sorry for dragging you into this." Her golden eyes weren't pitying any further. "I should have proceeded by myself. I would have if I knew it was going to happen."

It was as close of an admission of failure as he'd get.

"But—you know what?" She glared back at him, and he had no idea why she was the angry one now. "It's not OK, fine, but you have to know that you're not the one doing anything wrong here!"

"I think you should quit your job." Her rare outburst had quieted down, but it was enough to catch his attention. "The military one, I mean. And if you want to stop whatever I'm doing, it's fine with me too. I'm serious."

He could only give her a blank-eyed stare. Avis figured she deserved a better reaction.

"I'll think about quitting," he mumbled. "As for the other thing—I think I'll still stay with you for now."

He'd never been more terrified when he realised that Aiden's voice tumbled out on instinct.

§

!!! i actually updated the end of previous chapter a little

woopwoop short new chapter

shippity shoopity i don't actually ship lillian/avis 

!! i think this is the first chapter i wrote without any breaks :0

this was meant to have some avis action in it too but i changed it last minute because lillian deserves to have a chapter to herself ayy

Thank you guys so much for 4.8K reads and 736 votes!! :0 You have no idea how much this means to me <3