Chapter Twenty: Not Really

"I didn't think you would come." Lillian raised an eyebrow as she watched the boy approach her, an uncanny smirk dancing over her face as she took a drink from the bottle in her hand. "Didn't peg you for that sort of person."

Her smile only widened as Avis glanced off to the side, a scowl plastered on his face and a slight flush forming on his cheeks as he grunted.

"Don't get me wrong," the older boy muttered, staring at the ground in distaste. "I'm here not because I believe in your cause. I'm just sick of having to act like Aiden all day. Get your facts straight before talking to me."

She let out a low chuckle at that. "I've seen your eyes," she commented. "You do sort of believe in it, don't you? Stop acting like a bitter asshole to yourself—trust me, it reflects in your behaviour. You're being pretty damn mean to others too."

"You talk too much," the knight uttered back, blue eyes cross as he glanced back at her. "If you want to do this, then get it over and done with before something happens."

Sighing, Lillian ran a hand through her hair, stopping midway when she realised that it was—to her chagrin—in a ponytail, and she shook the action off. "I told you that I'll be more careful," she protested, but the bandage peeking out from under her bangs told a different story. "If anything remotely suspicious happens, we'll leave."

Avis rolled his eyes at that, jamming his hands into his pockets and cocking his head at her. "Whatever," he sighed. "Let's go, then. It's not my fault if you die out there."

"Stop being negative," she huffed in response. "You would be happier if you stopped pitying yourself and decided to do something about it."

When she heard no response, she turned to continue with a knowing smile on her lips.

§

"It should be around here," Aiden supplied. "I'm not too sure of the exact location, but we're going in the correct direction."

The girl followed the spirit, unsure of his forwardness, and sighed in relief when she saw a cave in the distance. She hadn't been able to find Avis or Lillian that morning—and that was why she'd been trudging in the barren, long-abandoned fields for the past two hours.

She hadn't planned on going, because why should she go and help someone she didn't quite know?—but she'd seen the desperation on Aiden's face, and even though it had been the first time that the two had talked properly, she found herself helping him instead of helping out in her father's herb shop.

"Sorry for making you do this," he apologised, turning back and shooting her a sheepish smile. "I don't know how I could pay you in return."

"It's fine," she muttered; though it wasn't, in all honesty, and she knew that thought was selfish. Her fingers curled around the cloth bag on her shoulder. "It must be important, right? I'm just going to assume that it's for a good reason. Besides, you're far better at asking than Fabio."

He chuckled at that. "Fabio, huh?" he contemplated, locking his own fingers together and tilting his head to glance at the morning's dim sky. "So he did come back. The two of us didn't talk, but that's nice to know."

Yan scowled in response, eyes drawing into something like an unimpressed squint as he spoke. "Nice to know?" she questioned, huffing just the slightest bit and focusing on Terminus Cave once again. "He's still the most annoying person I know."

Aiden gave a small laugh in response, the ghost turning away to hide an amused expression, but his eyes were sad as he turned to look back to look at her. "Fine," he agreed. "Still, you did use to know him, so..."

"I guess so," she sighed. "It's just that he used to be so much more tolerant when he was younger. I knew he couldn't be trusted, but he's gotten even worse since I last saw him."

She huffed a little when she received no response, but it was after a few moments that she realised why he'd chosen to keep quiet. The two figures she'd been looking for were approaching her, and though she was just an estimated hundred metres away, they seemed too wrapped in thought, so—

"I managed to find you two."

Her voice was stricter than she would have liked it to be. She didn't have anything against the two of them, not really, but she was tired and she would rather do something else than chase after two people whom she could just leave alone.

But she had to remember that the person who wore Aiden's face wasn't him. He was the so-called brother whom she used to converse with every day and shoot teasing jokes about his endearing coldness over the counter.

She was more than bitter when she recalled that all that had been taken from her.

Aiden—the one that pretended to be him, anyway—looked up in surprise when he saw her small frame looking up at him. "Yan? What are you doing here in the first place?"

"I tried to find you this morning, but you weren't there." Yan spoke as if the short statement answered his question. "I told you that I wanted to tell you and Lillian something. Whatever you do, don't go to the Terminus Cave. Something bad'll happen."

The two of them shared a contemplative gaze, and the black-haired girl looked up with a frown.

"We've already gone," she muttered. "We visited there two days ago due to a lead in that direction. We're still alive and fine, so I think you're worrying too much, Yan."

Another bout of silence passed before Avis spoke up, the soft tone he spoke in far too sweet for her ears and having the smoothness of nails on sandpaper; and the awkward smile on his face was far more false and toxic than her naive self would have remembered.

"You got injured, remember?" He fingered the fabric of his cloak with a nervous expression. "I've already said it was a bad idea. Maybe we should listen to Yan this time—"

"I told you that it was an accident," Lillian argued. "Nothing like that will happen if we're more careful."

The pink-haired girl scowled at that, looking at the bandage peeking out from Lillian's choppy bangs and shaking her head in disbelief—because how ignorant could the older teenager get? "Don't you remember what happened when you didn't listen to me the first time?"

Both of them froze at that. She would have managed a laugh if the situation wasn't so serious, but it was a matter of determination right then and she tried to master the hardest look she could in her grey eyes. This was an argument she had to win.

A shuddering sigh of relief sounded at the back of her throat when Avis glanced at his partner with a firm expression. "Just stay back for a few days," he uttered. "I don't think anything bad will happen if you do that."

The duo glared at each other for a few moments, as if having some sort of mental conflict that didn't need to be voiced out, and it felt like an eternity before Lillian stepped back to concede defeat.

"Fine," she replied, the discontent in her voice obvious, but the other three people around her seemed just as relieved as her. "I'll try something else."

"What do you have in mind?" Her blood wanted to boil every time Avis spoke, and Aiden raised a hand the slightest bit, as if wanting to stop her from saying anything too biting. "Do you have another plan or something?"

A small smile crossed the girl's face. "Two, actually." The confidence on her face was absolute. "The logical one would be to wait for Faust to return with the information we need, since I did tell him to investigate the Hoenn base."

Avis glanced at her, his expression teetering between the concern that Aiden would show and his usual indifferent expression. "But?"

"He told me that he'd need two days to get back to me," She frowned as she spoke. "He's a mercenary with a record of never finishing a mission late, so I'm a little concerned—it's been a bit more than three days since he's contacted me."

"Concerned about him or your goal?" Avis' voice was more bitter than it was supposed to be, but Yan liked it more—and she then realised that it was because the older boy was somehow close to the idiotic mercenary. "I mean, you seem to be able to dispense of people pretty easily."

Lillian turned to him with a dark expression, golden eyes missing their usual levity as her hand curled around a stone Pokeball. "So I do," she agreed, but a tense tone in her voice contradicted her words. "I suggest that you don't get me wrong, though. I despise death."

"Should we get back to the topic at hand?" Yan's voice was tentative as she glanced at the two of them. "I wouldn't put it past Fabio to have taken on another job."

The older girl huffed at that. "He's unlikely to find another one that pays more."

They fell into silence at that. None of them seemed to have anything to offer; the pink-haired girl lowered her head in a mixture of grief and disappointment, and Avis just glanced at his partner with narrowed eyes.

"As I was saying, Faust hasn't returned." Lillian's eyes glinted, smooth voice gliding over the mercenary's alias as if she couldn't care less about their acquaintance. "The carrier Pidgey that I've sent hasn't returned either, so it's safe to assume that something's happened."

Avis raised an eyebrow at that, forcing his initial expression to soften as he continued talking in Aiden's voice. "Didn't you have another plan?" he suggested. "If Fabio doesn't come back, then you'll want to proceed with that, right?"

She sighed. "Yes," she conceded, "but it's very risky. I don't want to touch it unless it's absolutely necessary."

"That sounds...reasonable," Avis commented, and he shot Yan yet another small smile. "So, this issue's settled. We won't be going to Terminus Cave for a few days, so I guess we should start heading back now."

"Actually, Aiden," she responded, almost tripping over the syllabuses of his new name, "I'd like to talk to you in private for a moment. Is that alright with you?"

His eyes widened a little at that—it was clear that he hadn't been expecting that, but he dipped his head in a nod and motioned to Lillian to head off first. The black-haired girl frowned at his action, pausing for the slightest moment, but her expression melted into something like understanding as she turned to walk away.

His voice was—she was sure the emotion in it was forced, though—confused when he next spoke, but she didn't dare miss the layer of underlying fear in his words. "What do you need, Yan?"

She lowered her voice as she replied. It was a subconscious act, and neither of them seemed to mind, so she continued. "Look, Aiden. I know you're Avis, so drop the act. It's pretty saddening to see you try and act like your brother."

Neither of them spoke after that. Avis stared at her as if she was an alien, and she tried her best to stand her ground and not notice his shell-shocked expression.

The older boy broke the silence with a forced chuckle, regarding her petulant expression with blue eyes that seemed to hide a wealth of unreadable emotions.

"I don't know what you're talking about." His voice was unnervingly light as he responded, and it made Yan shift to the side in discomfort as she averted her gaze. "Didn't you know, Yan? My brother was dead a week ago."

And just as his feet had been poised seconds after she'd made her accusation, the boy soon disappeared down the path.

§

It feels good to be home.

That was Aiden's first thought as he slipped through their family's wooden door, eyes flitting over the duskiness that draped over every corner of his former house.

The first thing he did was check up on his parents, hiding a smile as he saw the two of them at peace and asleep, but the expression was replaced by a frown soon enough. He had to remember that they were the cause of his brother's suffering, after all.

He didn't hate his parents—he was too filial for that—but he couldn't let them go blame-free either.

Leaving that thought alone, he stepped through the frame and headed for the stairs, biting his lip as he approached the looming prescence of his old room. He almost chickened out there, stopping to decide whether to turn back or not, but he fought against the temptation and walked through the door.

As soon as he saw his brother's turned back, his tense figure the only clue he needed to know that he wasn't quite asleep yet, he knew it was a bad idea.

"Sorry," he muttered—though he knew it went unheard—and he turned back, going out the way he had entered and he was out of the suffocating house before he was aware of what he was doing.

Avis had looked pained the entire day. He didn't need another sullen reminder that it was his fault.

(If he'd been able to see Lacia then, up in Heaven and watching all his movements through a slab of rock, he would have frowned at the ghost of a smile that crossed her face.)

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Aaa sorry for the drop in quality (??) I'm sick but I felt the need to update so here I am cx it's not a very exciting chapter but ye it's a chapter nonetheless

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