hello :3 i talked to you once before when you posted one of your Llysandre AU comics on reddit and i asked if i could write about the Thoughts That Plagued Me (tm) (you said yes and so ive been trying to cook lol) and so i was wondering about a couple things. you don't gotta answer all this obviously but scrolling through the llysandre au tag is a bit exhausting haha (especially since i have to try and lock tf in on my college work). but anyways, some questions! kinda long super sorry about that ;w;
first, does he go by L or Lysandre more? i've looked at many of your posts because i love your thoughts on this silly guy (and i love the silly guy himself lmao) but i can't really tell which to use. i may just be kinda dumb but idk lol is it literally just "LLysandre" lmao
second, i know that in the one comic you made (the one i saw on reddit and first asked to write/publish things about this AU) MC gives LLysandre Zygarde, but i was wondering how he'd feel about that exactly. he clearly struggles with self worth, so does he feel unworthy to be by its side? does it bother him that Zygarde isn't with its chosen Trainer? additionally, he has a full team of pokémon in legends Z-A. who would he "shelve" in order for Zygarde to accompany him? does he even keep Zygarde in a poké ball at all? how does Zygarde feel about our sad man? does it care about him? does it hope he cares about it? many questions related to Zygarde tbh
what about his relationships? as in with humans. he clearly struggles to be around people (due to the self hatred among other things), so how would that affect trying to reconnect with people? would he even try at all? would Zygarde try to "force" him to reconnect? after looking at some of the comics where our favorite support doggo is featured, i have a feeling it would sort of run off and "drag" LLysandre into meeting people again. for example, if Sycamore were to return to Lumiose, i feel like LLysandre would hear about it somehow and just refuse to try to talk to him again out of guilt. then Zygarde would drag its Trainer to the research lab and the two would be forced to talk. i could see that going one of two ways tbh (really really well or absolutely catastrophically. there is no in between.)
finally, to wrap up this already too long ask, what do other people think about LLysandre? not the main cast of Z-A, just like.. your average person on the street. if they saw him (and maybe Zygarde) walking around, what would they do? run away? freeze up? stare? ignore him/them completely? do they even know who he is, since he looks rather different? in the highly unlikely scenario that he goes somewhere, say a cafe/soup kitchen for food, how do people there treat him? are they stiff but polite? outwardly rude/angry? many thoughts about this.
i apologize again for the really long ask but The Thoughts continue to plague me. i hope this gives you a chance to ramble though. i hope this doesn't sound parasocial, but you seem to like rambling about your passions, and L/Lysandre/LLysandre is clearly one of them. you kinda remind me of that one marge simpson meme "i just think they're neat" when it comes to blorbos (felt tbh). anyways, sorry for talking at you so much lol i hope you have a wonderful day :]]]
HIIII THIS ASK IS SO FUN AND IM SO HEARTENED THAT YOU'RE INSPIRED BY MY COMICS... Wahhh. this also got overlong lol
Also don't worry lmao, I'm sorry my tagging system is all over the place, as is my writing (Generally assume no one is really reading the rambles.) the mature labelling has not helped search (Though I think I've tagged everything under LLysandre au)😭 The Au is called LLysandre just because it's easy lol, but the guy himself refers to himself as Lysandre.
As for his feelings, yes, he feels really unworthy, especially post Ange. There's just so much to make up for, and he doesn't know how taking the dog away from MC would be a good thing. But at the same time, he yearns for the very simple comfort of the dog who is very clearly on his side and Is Correct (TM). Probably the clearest moral compass he can follow for longer until he's better able to himself.
His Pokemon team is actually different to L. I was thinking a point of difference might be that he still struggles to make new Pokemon bonds, unlike L, and only has Pyroar, Gyrados and Zygarde. I've only ever mentioned this in passing in a ramble, but I like the idea since he really is in a worse spot mentally than L. That isn't to say he didn't have any good interactions with the mons around Lumiose, but accepting them into the team is... hard. Maybe he can have a new single Trubbish since they're so eager to befriend...
Zygarde probably roams freely, out of its Pokeball as usual. And I think its feelings about Lysandre were originally a little hostile, especially when he lashes out with "I could do it all again/the world will turn into ruin" spiel... but it's empty threats, mostly to push people away. Eventually I think the two of them would be friends, and care about each other. Lysandre might be a bit... snippier than canon, but you can bet that he'd give Zygarde the only morsel of food he has or his jacket to stay warm.
Lysandre is absolutely avoiding people like the plague, out of fear of recognition and reconnection. He doesn't think he can be trusted with anything, that he might squander things again. Any interactions would likely be from Zygarde dragging him to it, and hoping the other party can afford to give Lysandre a chance again. If not that, then it's with new people like team MZ.
As for what people think of him... I think the immediate one might be avoidance since he's well. Homeless and haggard looking. L seems to still walk around with his hood off, I don't think Lysandre would at all. In the off chance he's recognised though, it's probably mutual fear, with Lysandre fleeing before anything happens. Avoidance at all costs I guess.
Anyway yeah, you're right, I love yapping about him lmao. He sparks so many fun ideas to draw and make things of!!!! Also, for whatever you write, you can do whatever haha! These are just some of my ideas for what a Lysandre as L/with his memories would be like, you are more than welcome to do something different (or similar) with the idea hehe.
Soooo I had this long fic for LLysandre written, but I don't think I like it to continue. So here's whatever I've written. It's incomplete, so it's bound to be lacklustre in ending, but the snippet structure should be ok.
Summary: Lysandre hadn’t meant to take a fatal blow of Pyroar’s Hyper Beam, spine snapping upon collision with Hotel Z’s wall. Regardless of how broken his mind was, letting Ansha bear witness to such gore was regrettable.
OR
Lysandre, with his memories in-tact and trapped in the hospital, confronts the people he had in his life five years ago, and a past not quite buried.
CW: Lysandre’s severe mental health issues, depression, suicide ideation, doomerist thinking/catastrophising, violence, injury, self harm. Gen/no ships.
Lysandre hadn’t meant to take a fatal blow of Pyroar’s Hyper Beam, spine snapping upon collision with Hotel Z’s wall. Regardless of how broken his mind was, letting Ansha bear witness to such gore was regrettable. Even his Hyperspace doppelganger, bright red and glowing, out of place in the hotel lobby, had seemed affected by her shrill cry of terror. Lysandre thought bitterly: Drawing the line at exposing children to pure violence and not, well, killing everyone with the Ultimate Weapon— his mind really had been a mess of contradictions, ugly and evil and something to be smited.
Not that he had shown much restraint against Calem and Serena back then, the battle vivid in his memories despite the haze of anger and desperation.
The recollection makes Lysandre shudder with disgust, the resulting flare of pain in his torso a fitting punishment.
He was still the thing to be destroyed. As he felt himself bleed out onto the carpet AZ had likely once liked, his thoughts veered towards the grim and morbid, as they regularly did.
Lysandre mourned that this injury could not actually kill him.
The apron he had donned to help the children with doughnut-making lay soiled in a puddle of blood. The destruction of some of the antique furniture was something tragic. Conveniently, the red apparition and its Pyroar had disappeared. Satisfied, with returning to the body and mind that had conjured it.
Ansha’s little hands seemed even littler, cradling his gloved ones, begging in tears for Mr Lysandre to stay awake for help. Why Diantha’s beautiful, innocent, and good child thought anything of him, he had no idea. She cared, for some reason, as did the rest of the children that lived in this hotel. It was a torture Lysandre knows he must now suffer but wishes, shamefully, always shamefully— that he didn’t.
Under her tearful gaze, he felt like he was betraying her, eroding at whatever character growth he had shakily gained in five years by Zygarde’s side and from saving Lumiose from Ange. It seemed he was doomed to always fall short for those around him.
“Are you alright?” He slurs, willing his tongue to be less pathetic. His heart eases a little when Ansha nods. “I’ll be fine, little one. I-”
His mind stutters, attempting to craft an explanation of having been undead for several days beneath rubble, close to consciousness but not quite, encased in white hot agony until Zygarde pulled him out. His immortal, undying body had pieced itself together over a week, and his mind in a month or so, sped up by Zygarde’s powers. It was conclusive evidence that regardless of the grievousness of his injury, he would make a full recovery eventually.
That, and five years of struggling with his desire to be buried in the earth, meant Lysandre had plenty of reason to believe he would survive something as paltry as this.
He has enough sense to realise his thoughts were too fucked up to ever be child-friendly, so he instructs Ansha to dial for Corbeau instead, his reassurances stiff and awkward as he has always been around children.
Vision darkening, he wonders if this means he’ll be forced to see Diantha now, and whether she would kill him again for putting her daughter through this. He crushes the thought that, maybe, she might have mourned him five years ago, and would’ve liked to hear from him sooner. If she visited, then Sycamore was bound to eventually also.
I am not ready— Was his last thought before darkness swallowed him.
—-
Lysandre dreamed. Half a decade ago, his dreams had been sparse, insomnia and work getting the better of him. When he did manage to sleep however, the dreams were usually amalgamations of the terrible news he found himself unable to tear his gaze from. Sometimes, born from his company’s own charity efforts blowing up in his face.
As such, his dreams were more like highlight reels of the evil reality he sought to vanquish.
Of natural disasters in another region, growing in their frequency and destruction. Of societal ills such as corruption, whose effects cascaded down onto the populace through budget cuts for healthcare and education. Of people clinging to their fascist, hateful ideologies, blind to how ugly they themselves were, playing into the hands of the powerful elite.
Initially, there were individual villains. This suggested the possibility of defeating them and winning. But as time went on, they became groups, and then generalisations. Soon, Lysandre was equal in his misanthropy. He himself, was not immune to this, dehumanised to a mere instrument for the sacred rebirth of the world, enlightened of humanity’s folly and thus burdened by his purpose.
Destroying the world was his solemn duty to it.
And yet.
He dreamed, amidst the filth that filled his mind, his friends offering some kind of salvation from it. The ghosts of Diantha and Sycamore would repeat the things they had told him in person, with concern that could never penetrate past his carefully erected mask. In the safety of a dream, he wanted to believe— had believed once— that the future was not lost and not without hope.
Their extended hands tempted him to crumble, to blurt out how he couldn’t stop thinking about catastrophes in every step he took.
How he memorised statistics and forecasts for how climate catastrophe was becoming inevitable. How he knew current reforestation and conservation efforts wouldn’t halt the march into catastrophe because of greed and stupid short-term visions.
How he couldn’t get the image of a boy he had met out of his mind, back when he did more on-the-ground aid, wanting to dirty his hands whilst making a difference. How he could still smell the boy, lying dead in a puddle of his own blood, because his drunk father had beaten him for his share of food aid. How none of it had mattered, because the food container had spilled onto the dirt road and Ratata had come to pick at it in hordes, skirting past the cold body. How he couldn’t think, amidst their chittering and scrambling for more once they had finished, asking for more than their share.
He wanted to tell them, or anyone who might listen, that he knew, rationally, that it was not anyone’s singular fault. How alcohol addictions were brought about from money problems and troubled pasts. How impoverished towns could be traced back to a history of colonisation and extraction. How Ratata were only pests in cities because they were introduced by colonisers. How his privilege meant a responsibility to give and aid, with no string of expectation besides his best wishes.
How he scrutinised his every action as a person and as a CEO, what tax breaks he had received and how they made him feel ill. How he couldn’t stand the press praising and criticising him for his company’s feats and charitable acts in equal fervour. How every act of good, felt pointless when something worse always loomed in the horizon, waiting to erase his efforts.
How, over time, the imperfections of the world (and himself) eroded away his faith in humanity, and replaced it with a belief that all of humanity (and himself) was rotten to the core.
He had wanted to tell them about his strange thoughts about killing himself in a myriad of morbid ways. How he thought he should purge all his wealth and material belongings and become fertiliser.
How peaceful that sounded.
How even giving everything of himself would never be enough.
How he was going to kill everyone and how oh god I am going to kill everyone— I am going to kill myself— I must—
Then the ghosts would warp and wear his face, and repeat those hopeful words back at him.
You have the potential to change the world— and Lysandre’s vision would grow red, his dream-self seizing the apparition by his collar to tear into his own face, the flash of catastrophes and disasters making his eyes wide and wild. Instead of ranting about the pain of giving and giving and seeing no end, no meaning in any of it, his teeth would sink into his body double. Tearing, devouring, filling the emptiness he felt.
Despite the perspective difference, his own body felt aflame with pain, and his own heart would hurt.
The fight would end with him as the lone victor, standing firm and covered in his own blood, the spiralling thoughts silenced. His rage would simmer down into something cold and dead. Resolute, in his plans for a diseased, disgusting, ugly world.
These days however, Lysandre’s dreams focused on the moments before his “death”, the first of many. A second battle phase, one that mirrored the levels of battling he had subjected Sycamore’s pupils to. Why he ever presented them with maze-like puzzles, numerous battles, even buttons of choice, he didn’t really know.
(Maybe, even at the height of his madness and catastrophising, he had wished for some kind of salvation.)
The ghost of himself would reveal that it wasn’t truly dead, causing an uncomfortable churning in his gut. Like he knew he had done a terrible, evil deed, and become the ugliness he so despised. This discomfort would crawl through his dream-flesh and render him kneeling before Calem and Serena, as well as Xerneas and Yveltal.
Beneath the gaze of two legendary Pokemon and two children, Lysandre would tremble from fear and anticipation, awaiting the cleanse of Moon Blast and Oblivion Wing. The agony would have been sweet, with how he deserved it. Combined with the light of the Ultimate Weapon, Lysandre would suffer mindlessly and be nothing.
In the hospital bed, Lysandre awoke to the agony of another day.
—
Just like five years ago, the first living thing he registers upon consciousness is Zygarde. This time, he doesn’t scream and rage at it for rescuing him from his self-inflicted purgatory. Nor is there any excruciating pain, besides more dull aches than usual that painkillers could not completely erase.
Instead, he scratches Zygarde’s 10% form behind the ears. His lips twitch upwards briefly from how its right hind leg thumped on the bed with glee, the legendary Pokemon letting out a yawn before resettling by his side to nap. Smaller Zygarde cells linger all over him, checking and guarding him.
Lysandre wishes he could be fixed at such a cellular level. Picked apart and remade into someone better.
With nothing but the silence of his hospital room, and no inclination to call the nurse, Lysandre’s mind drifts.
Perhaps, if he had no memories of his past life, beyond the important ones of how he fucked up and how fucked up Lysandre was, he could have been a more useful penitent for Zygarde. Potentially, with how long he lived, he could become someone actually good, working everyday to make the world truly beautiful.
Lysandre mused, whilst wishing his painkillers didn’t actually work, if this version of him could be an almost-hero. With a name even.
“L. Hah.” Lysandre laughed to himself, before turning his face into the pillow and shutting his eyes to will the prickle of tears away. Jealous of a version of himself that didn’t even exist. How pathetic.
A Zygarde cell wiggles its way to his cheek, cool against his warm skin. Kind, to balance out how violent and dark his mind was to himself. The Pokemon’s endless patience and faith that he might be someone worth saving made the cavity where Lysandre’s heart should be, ache. He had long since crushed the organ himself. For someone to guide his hand into cradling the pieces like it could be reassembled to fullness someday threatened to make him sob, humbled by such care where punishment was deserved.
Live. That had been Zygarde’s only expectation of him, trusting he would atone with time and healing. Lysandre hoped he wouldn’t fail as he always had.
—
“Holy shit, old man.”
“I am technically only fourty.” Lysandre mutters, glaring at the soup he did not feel like eating, but had to because ‘his Pyroar would be sad if he didn't’. Those had been Ansha’s wise words to him, the child quick to befriend the only Hotel Z staff and co-baker.
(He hasn’t told her that he had once held her in his arms, or that he was friends with his mother, and that neither fact had been enough to stop his doom spiral into killing everything. He deserved ten blasts from the Ultimate Weapon for his sins.)
Corbeau snorts, dragging a chair to sit by his bedside. It was thanks to Corbeau that he could be admitted to a comfortable room for treatment, away from to many eyes.
“That's almost as many stitches you needed two days ago.”
Lysandre would have shrugged if he could, the pain in his torso and back making it difficult. Not that he should, lest he wanted Corbeau's wrath. The appropriate reaction would have been to wince.
“You gave Ansha quite the scare.” Lysandre did wince at that. Corbeau took off his glasses for a clean, shutting his eyes as though to compose himself whilst revealing his own heart. “Team MZ and myself included.”
Lysandre stirred his soup, unable to face him.
Your Pyroar would be sad, Mr Lysandre.
He took another mouthful. He willed his brain to consider its taste, to enjoy its saltiness and warmth. He couldn’t. He tried again out of obligation.
“It was… to keep her safe. My doppelganger had meant to harm me, and had not seen her in the way.” Lysandre admits eventually, having already hashed out some difficult conversations with his once benefactee and made some progress into rebuilding something more mutual, a friendship of equal standing.
Harmony had arranged it, managing to rope the elusive, undead man into staying and working at Hotel Z. Somehow, the younger man still thought something of him, wanting to repay him for his help. Corbeau had believed that Lysandre had been genuinely good to him, once, and could be good once more. Lysandre had felt unworthy of a second chance, unwilling to think of himself as anything but a mistake, but the young man had insisted. With an entire syndicate behind his back, Corbeau had laid down the issue of being a wanted criminal, and how he could roll back their existing protections. Lysandre had acquiesced to Rust Syndicate’s meddling with his wellbeing with the shaky reasoning that he needed to be a free man to atone by Zygarde’s side.
(Lysandre had felt ashamed, to be the man Corbeau had once looked up to and be revealed to be so pathetic, so fallible to doom. To be met with kindness simply because he needed it, left Lysandre feeling uncomfortably touched.)
“Thanks to Team MZ’s efforts, we have reason to believe that Hyperspace Lumiose is some sort of reflection of people and Pokemon’s memories and dreams.” Corbeau explains. “That a Hyperspace version of you would exist is not a surprise. The people of Kalos have all sorts of opinions on you.”
Lysandre, though much taller than the other man, felt small under his gaze.
“For it to… slip through a portal into Lumiose and seek you out to hurt you though…when so few know of your presence…” At this, Corbeau paused, expression darkening. “We can make a guess then, that the hyperaggressive Hyperspace double is some manifestation of your psyche.”
Lysandre sagged in his bed like a child whose hand had been caught in a cookie jar. Only, the cookie jar was filled with the variety of ways his twisted mind wanted to self-flagellate. It was exhausting. It was even worse that it was an open secret.
A month or so ago, he would have told Corbeau that his concern was unnecessary. That Lysandre deserved every ire and punishment sent his way. Now, he knew a little better than to squander the care given by others. Still, one could not will oneself to be better.
Atonement for the unforgivable was simple, all he had to do was live 3000 years and slave away at actually helping people and Pokemon. Being accountable emotionally however, meant existing in that mutual bond of giving and taking. Receiving care, and being gracious about still being a part of the web of human connection.
A blank slate would have been easier.
“I- I didn't know that. It wasn't… a conscious decision.” Lysandre says lamely.
“Good that you know better than to self-harm, then." Corbeau hisses, only to sigh, regretting the words immediately. "Arceus, I don't mean to sound like a dick. Just.”
“Just." Lysandre repeats, staring at the plastic bowl of cooling mushroom soup, an intrusive thought that his cutlery wouldn’t decompose even within his abnormal lifetime, breaking into microplastics that would choke sea life and cause cancers in the meanwhile, made its unwelcome presence known in his mind. He tries again to focus on tasting the soup, instead.
"We'll help you, old man.” Corbeau says, resolute. Lysandre thought of sad Pyroars and wondered, why someone as ugly as he would ever be subject to their care. He had tried to kill this world, whatever good in his past didn't outweigh his unforgivable crimes. Professor Sycamore's words from years back rang in his ear, something about all people having potential to change and to do better.
His heart hurt. But it didn't feel awful.
"Thank you, Corbeau.”
He finished his soup.
—-
“Uncle L!!!" Is the only warning Lysandre gets before a small bundle clambers onto his bed to hug his still healing torso. His wound twinged, and the contact was foreign, but Lysandre permitted it, letting out a soft ‘oof’ before lifting a hand to awkwardly pat the girl's back.
“Uncle? And it's Lysandre, not L, little one.”
“I've never heard her call you that either."
Lysandre flinches upon hearing the second voice, scrambling to sit up with Ansha in his grasp. The brunette stands by his bedside, beautiful as usual, but for some light under eye wrinkles. The Champion of Kalos looked tired, but well.
"Diantha.” Lysandre breathes, heart beating harshly against his ribs.
Soooo I had this long fic for LLysandre written, but I don't think I like it to continue. So here's whatever I've written. It's incomplete, so it's bound to be lacklustre in ending, but the snippet structure should be ok.
Summary: Lysandre hadn’t meant to take a fatal blow of Pyroar’s Hyper Beam, spine snapping upon collision with Hotel Z’s wall. Regardless of how broken his mind was, letting Ansha bear witness to such gore was regrettable.
OR
Lysandre, with his memories in-tact and trapped in the hospital, confronts the people he had in his life five years ago, and a past not quite buried.
CW: Lysandre’s severe mental health issues, depression, suicide ideation, doomerist thinking/catastrophising, violence, injury, self harm. Gen/no ships.
Lysandre hadn’t meant to take a fatal blow of Pyroar’s Hyper Beam, spine snapping upon collision with Hotel Z’s wall. Regardless of how broken his mind was, letting Ansha bear witness to such gore was regrettable. Even his Hyperspace doppelganger, bright red and glowing, out of place in the hotel lobby, had seemed affected by her shrill cry of terror. Lysandre thought bitterly: Drawing the line at exposing children to pure violence and not, well, killing everyone with the Ultimate Weapon— his mind really had been a mess of contradictions, ugly and evil and something to be smited.
Not that he had shown much restraint against Calem and Serena back then, the battle vivid in his memories despite the haze of anger and desperation.
The recollection makes Lysandre shudder with disgust, the resulting flare of pain in his torso a fitting punishment.
He was still the thing to be destroyed. As he felt himself bleed out onto the carpet AZ had likely once liked, his thoughts veered towards the grim and morbid, as they regularly did.
Lysandre mourned that this injury could not actually kill him.
The apron he had donned to help the children with doughnut-making lay soiled in a puddle of blood. The destruction of some of the antique furniture was something tragic. Conveniently, the red apparition and its Pyroar had disappeared. Satisfied, with returning to the body and mind that had conjured it.
Ansha’s little hands seemed even littler, cradling his gloved ones, begging in tears for Mr Lysandre to stay awake for help. Why Diantha’s beautiful, innocent, and good child thought anything of him, he had no idea. She cared, for some reason, as did the rest of the children that lived in this hotel. It was a torture Lysandre knows he must now suffer but wishes, shamefully, always shamefully— that he didn’t.
Under her tearful gaze, he felt like he was betraying her, eroding at whatever character growth he had shakily gained in five years by Zygarde’s side and from saving Lumiose from Ange. It seemed he was doomed to always fall short for those around him.
“Are you alright?” He slurs, willing his tongue to be less pathetic. His heart eases a little when Ansha nods. “I’ll be fine, little one. I-”
His mind stutters, attempting to craft an explanation of having been undead for several days beneath rubble, close to consciousness but not quite, encased in white hot agony until Zygarde pulled him out. His immortal, undying body had pieced itself together over a week, and his mind in a month or so, sped up by Zygarde’s powers. It was conclusive evidence that regardless of the grievousness of his injury, he would make a full recovery eventually.
That, and five years of struggling with his desire to be buried in the earth, meant Lysandre had plenty of reason to believe he would survive something as paltry as this.
He has enough sense to realise his thoughts were too fucked up to ever be child-friendly, so he instructs Ansha to dial for Corbeau instead, his reassurances stiff and awkward as he has always been around children.
Vision darkening, he wonders if this means he’ll be forced to see Diantha now, and whether she would kill him again for putting her daughter through this. He crushes the thought that, maybe, she might have mourned him five years ago, and would’ve liked to hear from him sooner. If she visited, then Sycamore was bound to eventually also.
I am not ready— Was his last thought before darkness swallowed him.
—-
Lysandre dreamed. Half a decade ago, his dreams had been sparse, insomnia and work getting the better of him. When he did manage to sleep however, the dreams were usually amalgamations of the terrible news he found himself unable to tear his gaze from. Sometimes, born from his company’s own charity efforts blowing up in his face.
As such, his dreams were more like highlight reels of the evil reality he sought to vanquish.
Of natural disasters in another region, growing in their frequency and destruction. Of societal ills such as corruption, whose effects cascaded down onto the populace through budget cuts for healthcare and education. Of people clinging to their fascist, hateful ideologies, blind to how ugly they themselves were, playing into the hands of the powerful elite.
Initially, there were individual villains. This suggested the possibility of defeating them and winning. But as time went on, they became groups, and then generalisations. Soon, Lysandre was equal in his misanthropy. He himself, was not immune to this, dehumanised to a mere instrument for the sacred rebirth of the world, enlightened of humanity’s folly and thus burdened by his purpose.
Destroying the world was his solemn duty to it.
And yet.
He dreamed, amidst the filth that filled his mind, his friends offering some kind of salvation from it. The ghosts of Diantha and Sycamore would repeat the things they had told him in person, with concern that could never penetrate past his carefully erected mask. In the safety of a dream, he wanted to believe— had believed once— that the future was not lost and not without hope.
Their extended hands tempted him to crumble, to blurt out how he couldn’t stop thinking about catastrophes in every step he took.
How he memorised statistics and forecasts for how climate catastrophe was becoming inevitable. How he knew current reforestation and conservation efforts wouldn’t halt the march into catastrophe because of greed and stupid short-term visions.
How he couldn’t get the image of a boy he had met out of his mind, back when he did more on-the-ground aid, wanting to dirty his hands whilst making a difference. How he could still smell the boy, lying dead in a puddle of his own blood, because his drunk father had beaten him for his share of food aid. How none of it had mattered, because the food container had spilled onto the dirt road and Ratata had come to pick at it in hordes, skirting past the cold body. How he couldn’t think, amidst their chittering and scrambling for more once they had finished, asking for more than their share.
He wanted to tell them, or anyone who might listen, that he knew, rationally, that it was not anyone’s singular fault. How alcohol addictions were brought about from money problems and troubled pasts. How impoverished towns could be traced back to a history of colonisation and extraction. How Ratata were only pests in cities because they were introduced by colonisers. How his privilege meant a responsibility to give and aid, with no string of expectation besides his best wishes.
How he scrutinised his every action as a person and as a CEO, what tax breaks he had received and how they made him feel ill. How he couldn’t stand the press praising and criticising him for his company’s feats and charitable acts in equal fervour. How every act of good, felt pointless when something worse always loomed in the horizon, waiting to erase his efforts.
How, over time, the imperfections of the world (and himself) eroded away his faith in humanity, and replaced it with a belief that all of humanity (and himself) was rotten to the core.
He had wanted to tell them about his strange thoughts about killing himself in a myriad of morbid ways. How he thought he should purge all his wealth and material belongings and become fertiliser.
How peaceful that sounded.
How even giving everything of himself would never be enough.
How he was going to kill everyone and how oh god I am going to kill everyone— I am going to kill myself— I must—
Then the ghosts would warp and wear his face, and repeat those hopeful words back at him.
You have the potential to change the world— and Lysandre’s vision would grow red, his dream-self seizing the apparition by his collar to tear into his own face, the flash of catastrophes and disasters making his eyes wide and wild. Instead of ranting about the pain of giving and giving and seeing no end, no meaning in any of it, his teeth would sink into his body double. Tearing, devouring, filling the emptiness he felt.
Despite the perspective difference, his own body felt aflame with pain, and his own heart would hurt.
The fight would end with him as the lone victor, standing firm and covered in his own blood, the spiralling thoughts silenced. His rage would simmer down into something cold and dead. Resolute, in his plans for a diseased, disgusting, ugly world.
These days however, Lysandre’s dreams focused on the moments before his “death”, the first of many. A second battle phase, one that mirrored the levels of battling he had subjected Sycamore’s pupils to. Why he ever presented them with maze-like puzzles, numerous battles, even buttons of choice, he didn’t really know.
(Maybe, even at the height of his madness and catastrophising, he had wished for some kind of salvation.)
The ghost of himself would reveal that it wasn’t truly dead, causing an uncomfortable churning in his gut. Like he knew he had done a terrible, evil deed, and become the ugliness he so despised. This discomfort would crawl through his dream-flesh and render him kneeling before Calem and Serena, as well as Xerneas and Yveltal.
Beneath the gaze of two legendary Pokemon and two children, Lysandre would tremble from fear and anticipation, awaiting the cleanse of Moon Blast and Oblivion Wing. The agony would have been sweet, with how he deserved it. Combined with the light of the Ultimate Weapon, Lysandre would suffer mindlessly and be nothing.
In the hospital bed, Lysandre awoke to the agony of another day.
—
Just like five years ago, the first living thing he registers upon consciousness is Zygarde. This time, he doesn’t scream and rage at it for rescuing him from his self-inflicted purgatory. Nor is there any excruciating pain, besides more dull aches than usual that painkillers could not completely erase.
Instead, he scratches Zygarde’s 10% form behind the ears. His lips twitch upwards briefly from how its right hind leg thumped on the bed with glee, the legendary Pokemon letting out a yawn before resettling by his side to nap. Smaller Zygarde cells linger all over him, checking and guarding him.
Lysandre wishes he could be fixed at such a cellular level. Picked apart and remade into someone better.
With nothing but the silence of his hospital room, and no inclination to call the nurse, Lysandre’s mind drifts.
Perhaps, if he had no memories of his past life, beyond the important ones of how he fucked up and how fucked up Lysandre was, he could have been a more useful penitent for Zygarde. Potentially, with how long he lived, he could become someone actually good, working everyday to make the world truly beautiful.
Lysandre mused, whilst wishing his painkillers didn’t actually work, if this version of him could be an almost-hero. With a name even.
“L. Hah.” Lysandre laughed to himself, before turning his face into the pillow and shutting his eyes to will the prickle of tears away. Jealous of a version of himself that didn’t even exist. How pathetic.
A Zygarde cell wiggles its way to his cheek, cool against his warm skin. Kind, to balance out how violent and dark his mind was to himself. The Pokemon’s endless patience and faith that he might be someone worth saving made the cavity where Lysandre’s heart should be, ache. He had long since crushed the organ himself. For someone to guide his hand into cradling the pieces like it could be reassembled to fullness someday threatened to make him sob, humbled by such care where punishment was deserved.
Live. That had been Zygarde’s only expectation of him, trusting he would atone with time and healing. Lysandre hoped he wouldn’t fail as he always had.
—
“Holy shit, old man.”
“I am technically only fourty.” Lysandre mutters, glaring at the soup he did not feel like eating, but had to because ‘his Pyroar would be sad if he didn't’. Those had been Ansha’s wise words to him, the child quick to befriend the only Hotel Z staff and co-baker.
(He hasn’t told her that he had once held her in his arms, or that he was friends with his mother, and that neither fact had been enough to stop his doom spiral into killing everything. He deserved ten blasts from the Ultimate Weapon for his sins.)
Corbeau snorts, dragging a chair to sit by his bedside. It was thanks to Corbeau that he could be admitted to a comfortable room for treatment, away from to many eyes.
“That's almost as many stitches you needed two days ago.”
Lysandre would have shrugged if he could, the pain in his torso and back making it difficult. Not that he should, lest he wanted Corbeau's wrath. The appropriate reaction would have been to wince.
“You gave Ansha quite the scare.” Lysandre did wince at that. Corbeau took off his glasses for a clean, shutting his eyes as though to compose himself whilst revealing his own heart. “Team MZ and myself included.”
Lysandre stirred his soup, unable to face him.
Your Pyroar would be sad, Mr Lysandre.
He took another mouthful. He willed his brain to consider its taste, to enjoy its saltiness and warmth. He couldn’t. He tried again out of obligation.
“It was… to keep her safe. My doppelganger had meant to harm me, and had not seen her in the way.” Lysandre admits eventually, having already hashed out some difficult conversations with his once benefactee and made some progress into rebuilding something more mutual, a friendship of equal standing.
Harmony had arranged it, managing to rope the elusive, undead man into staying and working at Hotel Z. Somehow, the younger man still thought something of him, wanting to repay him for his help. Corbeau had believed that Lysandre had been genuinely good to him, once, and could be good once more. Lysandre had felt unworthy of a second chance, unwilling to think of himself as anything but a mistake, but the young man had insisted. With an entire syndicate behind his back, Corbeau had laid down the issue of being a wanted criminal, and how he could roll back their existing protections. Lysandre had acquiesced to Rust Syndicate’s meddling with his wellbeing with the shaky reasoning that he needed to be a free man to atone by Zygarde’s side.
(Lysandre had felt ashamed, to be the man Corbeau had once looked up to and be revealed to be so pathetic, so fallible to doom. To be met with kindness simply because he needed it, left Lysandre feeling uncomfortably touched.)
“Thanks to Team MZ’s efforts, we have reason to believe that Hyperspace Lumiose is some sort of reflection of people and Pokemon’s memories and dreams.” Corbeau explains. “That a Hyperspace version of you would exist is not a surprise. The people of Kalos have all sorts of opinions on you.”
Lysandre, though much taller than the other man, felt small under his gaze.
“For it to… slip through a portal into Lumiose and seek you out to hurt you though…when so few know of your presence…” At this, Corbeau paused, expression darkening. “We can make a guess then, that the hyperaggressive Hyperspace double is some manifestation of your psyche.”
Lysandre sagged in his bed like a child whose hand had been caught in a cookie jar. Only, the cookie jar was filled with the variety of ways his twisted mind wanted to self-flagellate. It was exhausting. It was even worse that it was an open secret.
A month or so ago, he would have told Corbeau that his concern was unnecessary. That Lysandre deserved every ire and punishment sent his way. Now, he knew a little better than to squander the care given by others. Still, one could not will oneself to be better.
Atonement for the unforgivable was simple, all he had to do was live 3000 years and slave away at actually helping people and Pokemon. Being accountable emotionally however, meant existing in that mutual bond of giving and taking. Receiving care, and being gracious about still being a part of the web of human connection.
A blank slate would have been easier.
“I- I didn't know that. It wasn't… a conscious decision.” Lysandre says lamely.
“Good that you know better than to self-harm, then." Corbeau hisses, only to sigh, regretting the words immediately. "Arceus, I don't mean to sound like a dick. Just.”
“Just." Lysandre repeats, staring at the plastic bowl of cooling mushroom soup, an intrusive thought that his cutlery wouldn’t decompose even within his abnormal lifetime, breaking into microplastics that would choke sea life and cause cancers in the meanwhile, made its unwelcome presence known in his mind. He tries again to focus on tasting the soup, instead.
"We'll help you, old man.” Corbeau says, resolute. Lysandre thought of sad Pyroars and wondered, why someone as ugly as he would ever be subject to their care. He had tried to kill this world, whatever good in his past didn't outweigh his unforgivable crimes. Professor Sycamore's words from years back rang in his ear, something about all people having potential to change and to do better.
His heart hurt. But it didn't feel awful.
"Thank you, Corbeau.”
He finished his soup.
—-
“Uncle L!!!" Is the only warning Lysandre gets before a small bundle clambers onto his bed to hug his still healing torso. His wound twinged, and the contact was foreign, but Lysandre permitted it, letting out a soft ‘oof’ before lifting a hand to awkwardly pat the girl's back.
“Uncle? And it's Lysandre, not L, little one.”
“I've never heard her call you that either."
Lysandre flinches upon hearing the second voice, scrambling to sit up with Ansha in his grasp. The brunette stands by his bedside, beautiful as usual, but for some light under eye wrinkles. The Champion of Kalos looked tired, but well.
"Diantha.” Lysandre breathes, heart beating harshly against his ribs.
more Llysandre with AZ... he is not in a mentally good place lol. What being buried alive and undying for a few months does to someone I guess. mostly wanted to warm up drawing some other pages of my oc comic, went a little overboard
In a meh art mood overall, but I keep entertaining the thought of Ansha getting Uncle Lysandre lol. It's sweet with L, but something about Llysandre AU and him shouldering all those memories of having seen her a few times when she was a baby and then being in her presence are so fun lol. His friend's cute baby wasn't enough to stop him from doom spiralling, but maybe the second chance will be different.
LLysandre scribble since I'm back at my computer! :D Everyone else is so glad L is not Lysandre/a new man but here I am making him stay alive and miserable lol.
I adore this au because the thought of Lysandre with all his memories in ZA is fascinating... Here, I was entertaining the thought that he just. Chills out whilst recovering physically and mentally (ish) from being buried alive under rubble.
