Chapter Zero: And Until Then

"Are you going to tell me what's going on or are you just going to keep dragging me?"

Honestly, she'd thought that Avis had just gone for a walk, but Yan had showed up out of nowhere, spat "Avis is going to die" at her and forced her to accompany her to the castle.

Sure, she'd gotten worried when he'd disappeared for a day, but he could have had things to do. He knew how to take care of himself.

"You knew who he was the entire time." A choked sob escaped her throat as she continued to run. "I thought you would have figured everything out—or, well, that he would have told you. I didn't know that you didn't know."

Lillian let out a sigh between gritted teeth. "So are you going to tell me?"

"The short version is that Avis is going to die in order for Aiden to be reincarnated." Yan took a moment to take a short breath as she ran. "I don't know how all of that works, but it's something like using his body as a vessel."

"What?" She'd always prided herself on being unflappable, but the information took a moment to register in her head. "You're oddly calm about this."

The girl kept her gaze on the path ahead of them. "I knew before you," she admitted. "Aiden told me about what was going on, and I've already said goodbye to him. There's nothing more i can do."

Her voice cracked at that, and Lillian set aside her shock for a moment to feel pity for the girl. She didn't know much about her relationship with Avis—there were a lot of things she didn't know about, in fact—but losing one's childhood friend after losing everything else had to be traumatising.

"Anyway, Aiden will explain later." Yan shook her head at that statement. "Just focus on getting there before he dies."

The last word hadn't sunk in just yet. There was still a thin sheet of adrenaline that was letting her run, and she wasn't sure how long it would be before it broke and it started to occur to her that everything was actually real.

He's dying.

She had no idea how getting to the castle would help Avis in any way, but she followed the younger girl anyway.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, the image of the boy crying nagged at her, and it saddened her that she knew the reason why now.

She hadn't said anything, but something in her had felt sad for him. There hadn't been any tearful outbursts or shouting like the last times they had argued—the tears falling down his cheeks had been silent at that time.

Now, she wasn't sure if she would ever get to see him cry again.

§

The Espeon that tried to keep them out were little more than a minor annoyance.

Her first instinct was to knock them out with Beautifly before they could do anything funny, but something in Yan had softened and she'd sent out her Butterfree within a matter of moments.

A whispered command of Sleep Powder was all it took for the Pokemon to let them through. Yan shot her a hard glance, as if silently berating her for her actions—and she remembered that not everything had to be solved through violence.

Though, if one thought hard enough, a lot of problems could be solved by violence.

She pushed the idea aside and focused on where they were heading. Although logic told her that there was no use in trying to rush; if what Yan told her was right, then Avis would be dead by then. There was no use running.

Lillian's head was cold, but her heart was hot, and right now, she didn't know which was tipping the scales.

"This way." It was unusual for Yan to be the calmer one out of the two of them. The girl's visible eye shone with tears in the dimness of the castle. "I asked a ghost for directions."

Neither of them dared to speak as they broke into the building's throne room.

Inside, the room pulsed with energy as a body was lowered to the ground, and the flare of the two Legendaries' power started to die down.

No, her heart thought, because in the end, her head had won the minute-long scuffle. Avis was dead.

Dull blue eyes—ones that were void of any life at all—glanced at her sleepily for half a moment before closing, and the instant had been so brief that she could have been dreaming it instead.

"Aiden's being brought back, right?" Although it was phrased as more of a statement than a question, she didn't mean any malice in her words. "Are you alright with that? I mean, you did grow closer to him in the past month, so..."

"I can't compare my relationships with the both of them," Yan sighed back. "It's complicated. I care about both of them in very different ways."

She didn't probe past that.

They hadn't realised that a few minutes had passed until Lillian's eyes caught a flash of movement—and this time, the irrational sense of hope lasted for a second longer. The boy was sitting up now, with a different look in his eyes than she was used to, and she realised that it was all back to usual now.

Those were Aiden's eyes. Those were the eyes she had been used to two months ago. It was funny how much that had changed.

"Are you feeling alright?" Xerneas asked, her cyan eyes peering at him with a certain concerned look. "Are you able to adjust having a physical body all of a sudden? Are you able to function with little to no disturbance in your physical functions?"

"Does everything look alright to you?" Aiden snapped back in return, and tears welled up in his eyes. "He's gone!"

There was a tense pause, and she could hear Yan stifle a choked noise beside her.

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I just can't deal with everything that's happening. Why did he have to die because of me?"

"Life does not always go the way you want it to, young Aiden." Yveltal's voice was thoughtful as he considered his words. "I'm sure you know that. It is not because you were more important; it was simply the circumstances. I'm truly sorry."

Lillian knew that he believed Yveltal. Aiden had never thought for a moment that he was better than Avis.

"Avis has had as much closure as he could, despite the hiccups along the way." The Legendary stared at him. "He was a very kind boy at heart, and we're very proud of him. He also wrote a letter to all those dear to him, and I think you should read it after everything is over."

"I believe you have something you need to do first, however." Xerneas stepped forward, and the multicoloured vibrance in her horns was far too bright for her businesslike tone. "You could start by visiting Zygarde. You could continue by explaining things to the two girls who have snuck here."

Lillian tensed up despite the situation—so they'd been noticed after all.

Aiden turned to see the two of them by the doorway, a crumpled piece of paper gripped tightly in his hand, and his face fell as he registered just how much they'd had seen.

"I know some things," she assured, watching Yan retreat behind her from the corner of her eye. "You can explain them later. Don't you have to go to the cave?"

He tried and failed to hide his—Avis'—shaking hands. "Can I?"

"Do you even need to ask permission?" she muttered. Her mind drew a blank, and she tried to focus on how they'd worked before. "You're going there no matter what. Did you think your brother died so that you could back out of this?"

That made him flinch. Lillian knew, she knew she'd been too harsh, but she'd been desperate to get him to listen.

"...alright."

§

She stood with Yan at the mouth of the Terminus Cave, fiddling with her fingers as she listened to the sound of Aiden's voice.

Kyurem had left, and thank Arceus, because she didn't like the Legendary one bit. He was triggered far too easily, and far too over-protective of Zygarde for her liking. If he was a human and didn't have his powers, he would have been dead.

"It's fine." As soft and whispery as his voice seemed to be, there was still an element of harshness that went almost undetected, and it made her sad. "I'm not going to die like all of your other friends. I'm going to break the chain."

"So what your brother said was true," Zygarde uttered. "He did bring you back."

Aiden's gaze lingered on the floor for a moment longer than he needed to. "My brother isn't one to go back on his word." Another pause. "It was at a great price, though."

Zygarde motioned for his friend to step closer, still unconvinced that the boy standing before him was real—and Aiden complied, resting a trembling palm on the beast's cold skin and leaning into the creature with a sharp breath.

"So it is you," the Pokemon murmured, but the boy didn't look happy at that fact at all. "I apologise for all the trouble. I was just out of my mind then—my last friend had died, and I still hadn't gotten over it."

The knight blinked. "It's fine, I think." He tried to keep his tone as collected as he could, but it was falling apart—they were falling apart. "Yveltal told me about your deal. You promised to stop as long as he brought me back, didn't you?"

"But this world is cruel," Zygarde argued. "It needs to be taught a lesson."

"Are you taking after Lacia now?" Aiden struggled to hide the disgust at the woman's name. "All you've been doing is hurting innocent people like my brother."

The two of them seemed to have a staring contest of the next minute, and Aiden's watery gaze met the Pokemon's hexagonal ones.

"You made a deal," the boy argued. "You're a Legendary. Do this for me—do this for my brother."

She hadn't heard him speak that way before. Usually he was more submissive—usually he wouldn't argue with someone unless it was of paramount importance, but she supposed that this was a case that was important enough.

Yan wasn't as surprised as his commanding tone. She figured that the younger girl had to have seen the guy with his defences down before.

"Please," Aiden whispered, dropping his head in a small box as his tone wavered. "Please don't make this all for nothing. If you're my friend, then—"

Zygarde cut him off and reared his head, and for a moment, Lillian thought that they'd angered him. She could see Yan tense next to her, and her clammy hand found its way to the older girl's grip for a sense of comfort.

Lillian didn't have the heart to push her away.

"That is enough." Zygarde's eyes gleamed at the boy's plea. "I cannot stand to see a friend in so much sadness because of me. I haven't been quite myself ever since Lacia passed away, but I will try to stop myself. I can't promise anything, but I can try to manage my impulses."

"Alright," Aiden breathed out. "That's enough. That's enough for now."

The two of them stared at a while more, conversing in low tones that she couldn't quite make out, and Zygarde finally gave a nod, rubbing his head against Aiden's cheek as he stroked the top of his head with a ginger touch.

"Hurry along now," the Pokemon muttered. "Girl, I can see the look in your eyes. You'd much rather be someplace else, right?"

It irritated her that the beast was right. She would rather be anywhere but Terminus Cave.

"That's correct." She let out a breath. "You're a Legendary. You won't go back on what you said, right?"

"As far as I know, yes," Zygarde said, and that was all they needed right now.

§

They held it together for long enough to make it to the small cemetery where Aiden's body had been buried.

It felt wrong with just the three of them there. As far as she had remembered, it had always been Yan and Avis, or Aiden and Avis, or, hell, she and Avis. Sure, she and Aiden had worked together before, and Yan and Aiden had spent more time together in the past month, but the way the three of them were there without the other boy was just—

—strange.

All three of them were huddled around the grave, keeping their eyes on the stone slab that held the wrong name, and none of them dared to voice their thoughts. They kept silent, trying to come to terms with what had just happened, and Lillian was the one to break the silence.

"So," she started, keeping her gaze on the floor. She was dangerously close to tears, and it was strange, because she couldn't remember the last time she'd cried. "What now?"

Aiden blinked, and his voice was almost stolen away by the breeze that passed through. "We wait, I guess."

And just like that—Lillian didn't know how it happened; Lillian didn't know why it happened—everything they'd tried to contain fell apart.

Yan was the first one to cry.

She clung to the boy next to her as she sobbed; sobbed as if her life was being stolen away, and the tears came in a furious stream, hot and angry and devastated all at once.

"Why?" she asked in between gasped breaths. Her grey eye tried to blink away the tears that clouded her vision, but they just kept coming and there was nothing she could do about it. "Why did he have to die?"

Right. The two of them had known each other for a long time. It was no wonder why she was so affected.

"I don't know either," she admitted. Somewhere behind the mess that they'd gotten themselves into, there was an explanation that Aiden owed, but they would get to that later. "I know it's not fair, but what's done has been done."

"I'm sorry," Aiden whispered, and the heartbroken tone in his voice was more than enough to express it. "It's all my fault. If I haven't gotten myself killed, then—"

Her golden eyes narrowed. "Now's not the time for blame." She was tired. All of them were. "He may have been an asshole, but he wasn't an idiot. He knew what he was doing. He's not some kind of saint either."

She didn't want to be the adult in this situation, but someone had to step up and do it. The crying boy and girl wasn't in any position to, after all.

"Besides," she continued—she had to do anything to fill the tense silence in the air—"I think it's better this way. If you hadn't died, he would have been living an unhappy life, wouldn't he? I think he thought that this was the less painful way."

The words burned at the tip of her tongue like acid. Her own beliefs—death is the worst thing, there's no second chance after you die—whirled around her head like it was mocking her.

In the end, she'd sort of understood why Avis had chosen to die, and knowing that she did killed her a little bit too.

The silence between them was unbearable. It was like an uneasy chill that pricked at the back of her neck, but she had said enough. She had to wait for someone else to speak.

"...come here," Yan said, and before she could even question why, the taller girl had enveloped her in a hug. "You're hurt too, aren't you?"

She asked that through her tears, and Lillian stifled a small noise, but her plan to hold it all together, hold the group together fell straight through her mind when Aiden stepped forward to join the embrace.

Shit, she thought, because now the tears were falling from her eyes and she didn't know how to deal with such a foreign emotion.

"It's fine," Aiden mumbled. "You can cry too. You deserve to cry more than any of us."

"I—" Was the blurry vision also part of how crying felt like? She didn't dare to voice that thought. "I thought he was getting better. I thought he wanted to live on and make more memories with the rest of us, but—"

Yan buried her face in her shoulder. "It's alright. We'll make those memories for him when we're better."

Better. It was a word that seemed so far away.

"We will," she confirmed, pushing the thought away and trying to focus on the people in front of her.

Someday, they would be alright, and then, they could fulfill all the things Avis couldn't.

It was a promise.

§

Behind their backs, the sun had started to set.

§

ill post an actual AN here when I'm on wifi ahaha :") my laptop was at 1% and I had to finish this on my phone

only the epilogue left!!