| [It ends the same way it begins. Or perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that it begins the same way it ended. But — the way that Akari once woke on the shores of an unfamiliar land to someone peering down at her in concerned curiosity — that's the way that she finds Volo now, camping beneath the stars near the Verity Lakefront. Maybe he thought he'd be able to avoid her by staying close enough that she wouldn't think to find him there; indeed, her first impulse had been to scour all the farthest corners of Hisui, and not that he'd be just a stone's throw away. But. She followed her heart. Found somewhere serene. Thought he might like the peace and quiet — thought his Pokémon would want that, too.
She's been looking for him ever since their battle at the peak of Mount Coronet. Why? Rei had asked, confused and wrinkling his nose in the way that he does when he thinks, plainly, that she's being stupid. It's not like he wants to see you. Rei's like that sometimes, always saying the bluntest possible thing. She doesn't hold it against him. Sometimes, the bluntest possible thing is what she needs to hear.
But even so. She wanted to see him again. Even though he tried to kill her; even though he tried to take the world by force. Maybe she's naïve. It's not like she doesn't understand that those were his real feelings, in the Temple of Sinnoh; it's not like she doesn't know that he meant it, that he really did manipulate her the whole time, that she really was just a pawn in a grander scheme of his that she didn't even understand. She knows all of this, but even so — the way that he looked when he smiled at her, and the way that he'd babble on about ancient ruins and history and the secrets of the old myths...
It ends the same way it begins, and when she steps, almost soundlessly, towards his camp and peers down at where he's lying in the grass, she says the same thing he once said to her, when she'd been thrown out and down on her luck.]
Found you at last, Volo.
[She'd thought of him as her savior, then.]
I've been looking all over for you, you know. |
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