Volo wins; fights God... again... and again...
cw: injuries, blood, swearing, violence
Everything goes precisely to his plan. Almost too well.
With you beaten, he wrests from you the plates and at some silent, heaven-sent prompting, your flute. You watch as he holds the new, strange shape and raises it in a trance, playing an eerie tune.
His hands fall to his sides and he stands atop the dais, facing north, still but for his breathing and even then not unnaturally so.
It's the little twitches in his fingers, knees, and spine that keep you there in the end. They remind you of sun-baked naps in the fieldlands, and watching your pokemon partner writhe in its sleep as though running in place or pouncing in a backstrike attack.
After maybe two minutes, he jolts, gasping raggedly. He stumbles, clutching at the front of his tunic, but just as quickly recovers. He looks around in a daze and spots you.
You haven't moved far, just to the foot of the dais' stairs, arms crossed and leaning on one hip. The wind is cutting, but this uniform has gotten you through worse; his tunic, however, is far flimsier.
"What the hell," he grits out after a beat, "was that thing?"
You blink, scrunching up your face before taking a shot in the dark. "Big white thing, gold ring, surprisingly dainty feet?"
Jaw clenched, he nods. His visible eye, shocked from that state of perfect mania, is shadowed by his glare but – no, that purple smear is actually the beginning of a black eye. How could...
Shaking off the thought, you shrug insolently, exaggerating an expression of disaffect. "That'd be Arceus."
Volo's face twists in a sneer, turning back around and giving the flute another, shakier playing.
He's... under longer this time, and after almost ten minutes of standing, stretching, and huffing annoyance you walk back up the stairs.
He jolts again, stumbling forward this time, and for a split second, you could swear something like steam wafts from his back. When he regains his footing, Volo whirls on you.
"Why," he growls, "am I fighting Arceus?"
Your brows jump. A glance away, then a vague gesture to the rubble and debris around you, "I mean, it kind of tracks."
Volo throws up his hands, turns, and has to draw a long, calming breath before he can steadily play the flute again.
Now, you're curious. And curiosity had seen you fill out pages upon pages of dex notes to be compiled by Professor Laventon later. In comparison, waiting around is no great feat.
Still, you're not about to do it standing.
You fold your legs to sit crisscross on the cold marble and, after another few minutes just watching him twitch and breathe harshly, plant your chin on a fist set against your knee.
Volo rouses again a moment later, not stumbling but panting as he turns. "I can battle it, why can I –"
He stops, looks down to meet your gaze, and, huh, that's a shiner all right.
The sight of your scrutiny has his jaw setting stubbornly again, freehand clenching. You note that his sextet of pokeballs is still at his waist, just above the spot where the metallic jut of gold splits off. The odd accent swings a bit when he once more ignores you.
When he goes under once more, you contemplate reflecting on everything leading up to this, but in all honesty, most of the betrayal and hurt had been worked out of your system in that grueling battle. So, reminded to heal up your team, you instead start puzzling out what's going on here.
The first strange fact is that he needed your flute. Whatever he's doing now, it was meant for you. Was it lucky or unlucky you had been training up a mid-stage evolution on the way up Mt. Coronet? The poor thing hadn't stood a chance against Volo's team, so battling Arceus probably wouldn't have gone great for you, either.
But, as he resurfaces and dives twice in the next half hour, it certainly seemed like something you could... keep trying at. Hell, with Lord Wyrdeer you could have gone to camp, switched out team members and returned in this same span of time twice over.
Volo doesn't seem the type to have many bench picks. Each of his pokemon were either a powerhouse or set-up players, tasked with paralyzing or hypnotizing. It's damn efficient, but you could likely counter it easily now.
He emerges next to immediately bend at the waist, hands on his knees as he struggles to catch his wind.
"Wanna rematch?" you ask, and he barely glances back before snarling wordlessly and diving again. In a mutter, "so-or-ry mister hates-god-so-much he's gotta cosplay about it."
Speaking of, that wack updo seems to be taking some strays, wilting, and now beginning to frazzle at the paler blond tips. That wisp of steam wasn't unique either; the flare of fabric off his left shoulder has been singed something fierce from behind.
Your harried quelling of Lord Arcanine springs to mind; Cyllene had to replace your entire uniform, leaving your first week in the highlands a miserably cold experience. Ol' Ingo had even lent you his tattered jacket.
Your head cocks, and you straighten a little as some pieces fall together. In facing great Palkia, you barely had time to question the sudden appearance of a sack of balms to hurl at it. That first charge was killer.
Volo returns and it's not pretty. A few scattered drops of blood have you looking up sharply just before he gasps awake, immediately grasping his face and throwing his head back.
"Don't move!" he barks at the barest shift of your legs against the stone. Around his now limp bangs, you see him pinching the bridge of his nose, and the drip of blood is stemmed. He doesn't dive again immediately.
"Are you huckin' balms?"
"What?"
"Balms. The li'l sacks of whatever that helped quell the nobles," you say. You pinch the fabric at your ankles to keep from fidgeting further. "I had to use them on Palkia, too, remember?"
Volo's shoulders hunch. In silence, he waits another few minutes before hazarding to relax, and then still stays mum until he dives again.
By now, it's been long enough for the shadows among the rubble to shift and finally peeved enough at his refusal you stand up, dusting yourself off some. You walk over, a little wary now that you know what he's capable of, and walk around to Volo's front.
Definitely a nosebleed. There's still some tacky drying blood on his nostrils, a smear below it where he's cleaned some away. It doesn't look broken, and other than some new singeing and tears in his baffling outfit he looks no worse for wear. You take a step back, just in case, but after a while his face twists in concentration, eyes flicking about behind his lids, and you assume he'll be a while.
Coronet is still frigid, and the sun is starting to tick down toward the horizon. The cloud cover below the peak is thin enough that you make out the edge of the eastern sea carving into the shore in its myriad bites, like a wurmple munching leaf litter.
After crossing your arms, tapping your foot, and finally huffing a sigh, you find where he had haphazardly thrown his uniform and pack on the far stone lip of the dais. The latter is far heavier than he ever treated it, and you're just beginning to help yourself to its contents when he seizes into waking.
"Fuck," he bites out, follow by a spit and a small splat. "Fuck, fuck, fu– what are you doing?"
You turn to find honest bafflement on his face, which you return when you see the state of him. In the mere moments you were turned away, he looks like he’s been dragged down the face of Mt. Coronet.
His tunic is dirtied, threadbare at the hems, the metal pieces at his hips scuffed and dull, and his strappy sandals in shambles. From what you can see, he’s got something like rug-burn on his forearms, and the blood he spat looks to have come from a split lip.
The pecha berry you’ve pilfered from his supplies falls from your mouth, painting the dais with a different shade of red.
“I was– you–,” you stutter out, dropping the pack to bark, “what the hell is happening to you?!”
He glances down, seemingly taking in the changes for the first time. He remains struck dumb as you cross the dais toward him, looking up sharply when you stop within arms’ length. Lip curling, he says lowly, “Going to stop me?”
“I don’t need to,” you say, jaw setting, “I doubt I’d have to see the ‘other guy’ to know you’re losing.”
“I’m not,” he snaps, and how the hell did you manage to forget the way he looms over you, brow shadowed and gaze sharp as a filleting knife. ”I’m adjusting strategies. The more often I battle it the faster I can wea–”
He stops, scowling.
Your patience runs out.
“Oh, by all means,” you laugh, throwing your hands up, “keep your secrets, Volo!”
You can see his molars grinding. “Why are you still here?”
As much as you try, you can’t avoid the deafening pause that gives you. Then, with a jut of your chin to his occupied hand, “To take that back.”
The unspoken, when you fail, has him hackling. His hand swipes out at you as if to lift you by the collar, but you’re fresh-faced in comparison and dart out of reach. What stops him, however, is you palming a pokeball.
Above a bruised smear, his grey eye lingers, and you wonder if – assuming everything is transferring between here and there – his team is weakened; if he’s even able to heal them.
And damn, damn, damn you, you feel a pang in your chest. His pokemon don’t deserve this, whatever this is.
Without responding, his gaze shutters, ignoring that you’re right in front of him to play the flute once again. His knuckles are bloody, and one of his fingers might be sprained or even broken going by the shade of burgundy.
He’s under before you can get another word out.
You bellow something wordless and sharp, and feeling your tension lighten (and seeing he doesn’t react) you decide to seize a rare opportunity.
At the peak of Mt. Coronet, in the ruins of a temple that’s outlived her people, you let loose a railing, cursing tirade that falls just short of therapeutic. It leaves you raw and ragged, and your throat roughened too, and even after half an hour the bastard still isn’t back.
The sun is really dropping now, dipping below the cloud-cover and its warmth and rosy-copper glow with it. Early-bird stars begin to peak out of the darkening sky, and just before you throw his bedroll down to colonize it for your own you find yourself sourly throwing his fur-cuffed coat back over his shoulders. The chattering of his teeth diminishes.
Over the course of another hour, you sit, then lounge, recline, and finally lay back on the bedroll, and start tossing your partner’s pokeball up and catching it. You contemplate letting them join you, for all this about-face might beffudle them, and then allow yourself to actually consider his question.
Why would you stay, after all this? He’s used you day in and day out ever since he sicced you on that Vespiquen like some over-zealous houndour, and now he’s gotten what he wanted.
And yet, especially when his actual success has yet to manifest, some childish part of you thinks he might still come back around.
It was – it was fucking nice, alright? Having an actual companion these last few weeks, rather than crisscrossing the region with nothing but your team and a pokedex. Hiking hither and yon, hearing his rambling accounts of old legends over a campfire, waking up to just see him – every little thing helped distract you from the fact you had a direct line to Arceus and still had to wonder if you were ever going to remember your old life, if you were going to die he–
Volo collapses to his knees.
You’re upright in a heartbeat, eyes like saucers as he casts the flute aside to begin slamming the meat of his fists against the marble.
After a chance to find air, pulling it in like something half-drowned, he lets out a cry to rival your own.
In the moment before he finds the control to speak, you realize his tunic is in tatters, blackened at every edge and pocked by burns as though he’s caught stray pyroclastics while ascending Firespit. His metal adornments are bent and broken at his hips, and the cuffs are warped and dented – likely crushing his wrists. His sandals are unsalvageable.
“Why, you beast?!” he roars, coming out grating as it bounces directly off the marble beneath him. He hammers his fist again, and this time leaves a smear of scarlet behind. “The Celestica live in me, so why – why do you strike me down, again and again?”
You roll off the cushion, palms and knees on cold stone as you venture to approach. You feel like a raw nerve, and he a live wire – any word, any touch and you’ll both catch fire.
And you don’t want to fight him, you realize. Not again. Not any longer.
“I devoted myself to you, worshipped you as highest creator, even as your silence stretched year after year,” he snarls, and his knuckles drill into a seam in the marble pushing more and more blood to the surface and finally breaking skin. He shudders, but doesn’t stop, fading to a weaker moan, “After everything I’ve done…”
“H-hey, it’s– it’s gonna be–” you start, and his head jerks upright.
Around the grey iris and pinpoint pupil, a bloom of crimson creeps into the white of his eye, a stain that takes you a moment to realize is blood within the cornea.
His nose bears a small horizontal split and weeps red, spilling over his lips and staining his teeth when he bears them at you in something hair-raising, something feral.
"You," he snarls, his next words flinging red-tinted spittle, "you outsider, cast down to stop me and couldn't even manage that. Wh-why do you have the blessing of Arceus?!"
"Do you call this a blessing?" you ask, shocked by your own cool tone when it feels like a stone has been chained to your chest. You gesture sharply at him, even as you're still cataloging the bruises, the split skin on the right side of his scalp, "Do you think I would fair any better, even if I succeeded?"
Volo pauses, but sneers still as he reaches beneath the coat to pull that smoky, purple plate from the remains of his gilded belt.
"Rebel beast," he growls, ignoring you once more, "sovereign of Distortion, come – come and aid me in this final stand."
The imperious timbre is lost to the slow dribble of crimson, painting the plate yet inspiring no shaking of the mountain or unearthly arrival.
The twilit sky does not shatter, nor do shadows spill forth; the quiet broken only by the animal keen Volo makes as he slams the plate against the stone. Once, twice, and not a scuff or chip earned. Finally he throws it away as well and buries his tacky-stained hands into his hair, hiding his face.
"Discarded even by the banished, bastard child."
"Hey now," you mutter lightly, "no need to impugn anyone’s honor. Not the time for making new enemies."
Volo rocks back onto his knees, dragging his hands away and tipping his chin. Even as starlight seeks out its silver, his gaze finds the heavens in a grotesque of bitter mourning.
"You… you're a fool," he says, dully. "Of all people, Arceus chose you. It's…"
"Fucking tragic, innit?"
His eye flicks down to find you and even swaddled in sorrow the look is so deeply droll as to set you snickering. It builds to laughter as you tip backward onto your rump, wiping at your dewy eyelashes once you recover. As you do, you see Volo frowning down at himself, fingering the hem of the coat flung over his shoulders.
In a fit of pique, you catch him off guard with a half-earnest kick at his shoulder, spilling him onto his ass as well.
"That's for tricking me," you snip at his scowling affront. "Be glad we both failed in the whole ending-slash-saving the world, you prick."
Volo's fine-boned features contort further as he bristles into another furor, snapping, "I have not failed yet, you little–"
"And I'll stop you again," you sniff, tossing your arms over your knees in a petulant spread. "Or, y'know, God will. Mysterious ways and all that shit."
In the face of unimpeachable insolence, his face drops into little more than a curled lip. Leaning back on the hands he'd flung out to catch himself, his slackening posture is dramatic, even for him. Once again, even with the coat his airy tunic and loose-fit pants set him shuddering with cold.
After a moment, he mutters, "Do you mean to tell me this world, as foul and cruel as it can be, doesn't need to be remade?"
"Well," you say, sing-songing the word as you swivel to get your knees under you again. You shuffle toward him, and begin to hem-and-haw, "I think, if I'm so bold to speak on multiple behalves, that what's being said is… whether or not it needs to be, whether or not it can…"
You trail off, seeing him hang on the answer enough to surge forward. The moment you tuck your arms under his, he spreads them in shock. You worm into his space, angled so you’re at least not in his lap, and his shivering ceases. He stiffens but doesn't pull away, and as his arms cautiously find your shoulders and back, you can hear the note of wetness in his breathing.
"We're saying it shouldn't be," you finally surmise, hiding a grin in his chest as his massive frame turns to cotton in your arms. "And what things should be changed can be done together."
(this will get posted on Ao3 tomorrow, alongside the NSFW post-fic)