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There's a trial. Of course there is.
Leon forgets about it - or maybe he deliberately ignores it - until it sneaks up on him unexpectedly one day.
He’s busy, is the thing - busy running the League, busy making amends to everyone that Rose blacklisted or scapegoated, busy helping Champion Gloria navigate through the media attention and the excruciatingly long work hours.
Before he knows it he’s standing in the middle of Wyndon, the smiling face of former Chairman Rose gazing down benignly at him from all four of the big news screens. He looks the same as he ever did for a public appearance - calm, genial and impeccably put together in a suit and tie.
Leon’s gut churns and he turns away.
–
He can hardly avoid it though, in practice. It’s all over the papers and the TV and the new Rotom phone he bought a couple of months ago. His colleagues murmur about it, and journalists approach him for his opinions, and his mum reaches out to ask how he’s doing.
(That last one at least isn’t so bad. Chatting to his mum over the phone still feels novel enough that not even difficult questions will put him off.)
By the end of the first week he’s already thoroughly sick of it all. Still though, he finds himself sitting alone in his flat one night, reluctantly watching trial recaps and analysis; the shareholders at Macro Cosmos have a very obvious interest in the outcome and - being Chairman now - that unfortunately means Leon can’t just rely on hearsay and gossip.
Rose has a very impressive looking lawyer who Leon recognises vaguely. The two of them seem familiar in a way that makes him wonder just how much lawyering Rose has needed over the years - and just how many people he might have litigated into the ground. The camera catches them laughing together sometimes in the moments between sessions, and it jogs a memory in Leon that he can’t quite place.
It’s a familiar sensation these days, that feeling of not quite remembering something. Leon’s done a lot of thinking, since the day he woke up in hospital to a Galar shaken by Rose’s mania. At the time, he wondered how he’d never seen it before - never noticed, in thirteen years of seeing Rose every single day, that the man craved power and recognition far more than he cared for the region he professed to love.
When he looks back on his memories of Rose, Leon feels frozen in time, like he’s waiting for something to happen before he can move forward. Or like there are words that he wants to say sitting right on the tip of his tongue, but when he tries to get them out, they vanish.
So he thinks about his own part in it instead. As Chairman, Leon has made it a point to meet with the kinds of people he’s never been allowed to meet before - including many of the ones Rose had blacklisted or strategically removed. He’s been making what amends he can to them out of his own personal fortune, which is big enough that even that barely seems to make a dent in it. Some of them seem grateful for it, though Leon isn’t really sure it makes up for him failing to recognise the extent of Rose’s villainy, before now.
Through it all his brain keeps ticking over about the words he can’t figure out how to say.
–
“Turn that off, will you Milo?” groans Nessa. “I’m fed up of looking at his smarmy face.”
They’re holed up in one of the green rooms at Wyndon Stadium for the new year inter-gym friendly - a low-stakes tournament fought by gym trainers during the League’s off-season. It’s designed as an opportunity for the trainers to gain practical experience, and for audiences to get to know up-and-coming names in Galar’s battle circuit. Leon doesn’t strictly need to stay around after giving the opening address, but supporting young trainers has always been one of the best parts of his job.
He finds himself lingering with the gym leaders once the third set of battles is over, wandering inside with them for the lunch break. There’s a large TV screen mounted on one wall of the green room, and Milo has just switched it over to the Rose trial.
“I won’t keep it on long,” he says, distractedly. “I just haven’t seen the news yet today. I want to know what’s gone on.”
“Same as every day, prob’ly,” mutters Marnie. “He’s charmin’ the jury, that’s what.”
“How, though?” wonders Bea. “We all saw what happened at the Championship Cup last year. How can anyone believe anything he says after that?”
“They keep emphasisin’ his intentions, instead of what he actually did,” Marnie responds, glowering. “That lawyer o’ his is makin’ out that the whole Eternatus thing was just Rose tryin’ his best to solve a real problem.”
Bea frowns. “But it wasn’t even going to be a problem for another thousand years, I thought?”
“Exactly,” Nessa exclaims, huffing in exasperation. “But his supporters are fucking eating it up. They actually believe this shit.”
“People will always believe their own biases,” says Kabu grimly, sitting stoically on an exercise mat while a baby Sizzlipede winds its way around his shoulders like a scarf. “He won lots of them over with his rhetoric years ago, and he can cash that in now.”
“Well,” murmurs Milo, eyes still glued to the screen, “it seems to be working.”
“Hardly a fuckin’ surprise,” Piers drawls. He’s not really supposed to be in here, but no one had kicked him out when he’d draped himself on a sofa next to Marnie and started flipping through a magazine. “Rose always was a slippery fuck.”
There are a few hums of agreement from around the room and Leon finds himself stuck on them all of a sudden. He loses track of the conversation as it continues, too busy wondering about the sense of quiet understanding that seems to permeate the group. Have the gym leaders always shared this wary distrust for Rose, or is that only since everything that happened last year?
An uncomfortable, nervous sort of feeling starts pooling in his stomach.
“Alright, Lee?”
Leon looks up from the phone in his hand - which he’s been staring at very deliberately ever since the trial coverage was switched on, pretending to write an email - to find Raihan standing close by, looking at him inquisitively as the conversation continues around them.
“Fine, yeah,” he answers quietly. “Why’d you ask?”
Raihan opens his mouth, but Bea cuts over them before he gets the chance to say anything.
“What do you think, Leon?”
Leon draws his eyes away from Raihan to find the whole room looking at him. “What?”
“You’re more in-the-know than we are,” insists Bea. “Do you think Rose actually stands a chance of winning?”
“...I’m barely in the know,” he says stiffly, wishing Bea didn’t think quite so highly of his opinions. She's always had an embarrassingly serious respect for him. “But I think there’s too much proof against him for him to win.”
Piers snorts. “Doubt it, O-Champ. There’s always been proof. It’s never stopped him before.”
Leon frowns. “Things are different now though. I’ve been meeting with a lot of the people he wronged. All it takes is one of them to come forward and give evidence.”
“Good luck with that,” mutters Piers.
–
Three weeks into the trial Oleana is called to testify. Leon turns up to watch, sitting in the public gallery and trying to ignore the way some of the faces in the room keep flicking to him for his reaction.
He never did like Oleana - which is probably fair enough, because she never seemed to like Leon much either. But she was in Rose’s orbit just as much as he ever was; taken in even younger, in fact, and moulded into the perfect, calculating, obedient assistant.
She’d helped stop him at the very end though. Even if Hop and Gloria said she’d done it for Rose’s sake.
The crucial thing now is that she has a head for details, in a way that Leon never has - beyond battle related stuff, obviously. If anyone can remember all the tiny little scraps of information that they need to pin Rose down, it’s her.
Oleana takes the witness stand, and the defence lawyer asks what it was like to work with Chairman Rose. Almost immediately she launches into a precise and thorough description of a rather kindly old figure, who took her in after her parents died and gave her a new purpose.
She speaks about the fulfillment she found from working with him for two decades, putting strong emphasis on the visits she took with him to children’s hospitals and the vast amounts of money he donated to charitable causes. She also details the many, many job contracts she drew up over the years - all the people Rose employed through Macro Cosmos and the interest he took in their wellbeing and personal development. She ends on his passion for Galar, and how all he ever wanted to do was help the region flourish.
Rose smiles at her in a proud, fatherly manner throughout the whole thing.
Leon leaves halfway through, and only just manages to make it to the bathroom before he throws up.
–
“The bastard’s obviously gonna get away with it,” says Piers in disgust, later that day.
Leon had fled the courthouse as soon as he managed to stop throwing up, released Charizard from her ball and flown straight to the Wild Area. By the time he’d exhausted himself and his team in raid den after raid den, losing count of how many battles they fought, the gates of Hammerlocke were straight ahead and Raihan’s house was the closest place to go. He only got lost once on the way, with Charizard’s help.
Raihan seemed happy enough to see him, but it was only Leon’s desire not to cause a scene that stopped him from running straight back out the door when he spotted Piers on the sofa and a trial recap on the telly.
He’s gazing at the TV screen now with a curious sort of detachment, toying idly with the bottle of beer Piers handed him. Leon doesn’t actually drink if he can help it - hasn’t since he was fourteen and Rose spent an evening introducing him to his vintage wine collection - but no one else knows that. He wonders if he should at least open the bottle to make it look like he’s drinking it.
“Someone needs to do something,” Leon finds himself saying slowly, because Piers is right - the bastard is going to get away with it if the trial carries on like it has been.
Piers scoffs. “That’s rich.”
Leon blinks over at him in surprise.
“What d’you think some of us have spent the past decade doin’? No one fuckin’ believes us. It’s people like you who haven’t done shit about it.”
“Piers,” says Raihan, warningly. “Don’t be a dick.”
Piers just shrugs dismissively. “Well, what else am I s’posed to think? Oleana’s been runnin’ her mouth to anyone who’ll listen, makin’ him out to be this kindly old uncle when he’s actually a fuckin’ Sandaconda.”
“Oi,” objects Raihan again, giving Piers a small shove as his Sandaconda slithers its way over to them, glaring at Piers and extending its head to Raihan for sympathy scritches. Piers rolls his eyes.
“He’s a fuckin’ poisonous viper, y’know what I mean.”
“Sanda’s a ground type ,” mutters Raihan.
“Not everyone’s the same as Oleana,” interrupts Leon, still staring at Piers. “Rose mistreated so many people… One of them must be willing to give evidence.”
“Oh fuckin’ keep up, Leon,” scowls Piers. “He’s been Chairman for nearly thirty years. He still holds all the power.”
“He’s on trial,” Leon points out.
“Yeah, and people are still scared of him. Why d’you think none of them have testified?”
Leon has been wondering about that actually. Over the past six months, he’s met dozens of people who seemed willing to curse Rose’s name into the dirt but none of them have taken the witness stand - other than a few Spikemuth residents.
“What about you?” he asks suddenly, frowning at Piers. “You never struck me as scared of him. And you have more cause than anyone to speak against him.”
Piers stares at him for a moment, then bursts out laughing. “Oh yeah, ‘cause that’ll go down well: ‘Notorious weirdo goth from notorious weirdo town takes the stand against respected businessman who ran the country and controlled the media for nearly three decades.’ I’ll remind you that he spent the last one of those blacklistin’ me into oblivion, shit-talkin’ me to the media and and payin’ off anyone who had anything good to say about me.”
He raises an eyebrow at Leon in exasperation. “Get a fuckin’ clue, Champ. That dickhead lawyer of his would fuckin’ eviscerate me.”
“I mean,” offers Raihan into the heavy silence that follows, one hand still scratching Sandaconda’s chin. “In fairness, I think people might believe you someday, as long as someone else spoke up first. Someone who hadn’t, you know, had their character systematically destroyed over the course of ten years.”
“Fat chance of that,” Piers snorts. “They’re all too scared or in his fuckin’ pocket.”
Leon stares down at the bottle in his hands, and wonders which of those statements applies to him.
–
He wonders about it a lot over the next two weeks. About how Rose never had to physically wield his own power for it to be felt. About how speaking up is hard when you’re worried about judgement or repercussions. And about how sometimes it’s just your own word against that of a very, very powerful man.
He’s never really let himself linger on that before.
It's just that it's difficult to make someone into an outright villain in your head when you can still remember all the times they were kind to you, isn’t it?
Sometimes Leon thinks back on his years with Rose and it feels as though he can barely hold on to the shape of it all. It morphs and twists, even as he tries to grasp it between his fingertips, turning itself inside-out and outside-in again until he’s spinning himself in circles.
One minute he’ll be thinking about being showered with compliments after a championship battle when he was twelve - about Rose clapping a hand on his shoulder warmly and making Leon feel like the most amazing person in the whole world. The next minute he’ll be flashing back to the press conference afterwards - to feeling shaky and overwhelmed and short of breath. He’ll remember that same voice, the one that had been so kind before, impatiently telling him to calm down, for heaven’s sake, Leon, and get on with it.
He wonders what Galar would make of it, if he told them about it - if they’d make anything of it, when Leon barely knows what to make of it himself.
–
“They’ve called me as a witness,” he tells Sonia resignedly over lunch in Wedgehurst. His assistant has been moving meetings around without him realising, consolidating all the openings in his schedule until he had enough time to visit home for a few days. It’s nice of her, provided he ignores the prickle of unease he felt when she sprang it on him; he’d have liked to know before she did it, that’s all.
It’s good to be back though. Everything feels less overstimulating, out in the countryside; there’s open space around him again, and none of the constant, grinding noise you find in a city, just the soothing sounds of Rookidees chirping happily in the trees and Wooloo bleating in the fields. The pace of life here is so much slower than in Wyndon. It’s a relief, honestly.
He’s spent an easy morning hanging out with Sonia, catching up a bit and helping her move furniture around in the lab before offering to treat her to lunch. But conversation inevitably turned to the trial, as it always seems to these days, and now Leon finds himself picking at his food.
“Well that’s good,” Sonia replies through a mouthful of curry. She never did eat particularly gracefully - Leon had always reluctantly found it endearing, knowing that her brain was moving faster than she could chew. “Your reputation is kind of untouchable at this point, so they can hardly come after you for your character. Every other witness for the prosecution has been way too easily discredited.”
“No, it wasn’t-” Leon breaks off, glances around at the partially-full restaurant and lowers his voice. “It was Rose’s defence lawyers who called me. They want me to be a character witness.”
Sonia actually does stop chewing this time. “What?”
Leon shrugs. “Yeah. I guess they think I’ll pull an Oleana and talk about how great he is.”
“Okay,” Sonia says slowly. “And… will you?”
Leon looks up at her incredulously. What the hell?
“Okay, okay,” says Sonia hastily, raising her hands in placation. “I can see you’re not going to. I’m sorry I asked.”
A long pause follows that, Leon barely able to stop himself from staring at her, even when Sonia starts fidgeting awkwardly. “You really think I would defend him? After everything he’s done?”
“I don’t know, Leon,” Sonia sighs. “I don’t mean to imply that you think he’s in the right, or… Look, I know you’ve been dealing with the aftermath of all the things he did. You probably know a lot more than I do about all the people he hurt.”
She sighs again, setting her fork down next to her plate and fixing him with a piercing look. “It’s just that you’ve always been close to him, alright? And you always spoke about him with a lot of respect. You seemed to really take to him, once you became Champion.”
“...Did I?”
“I mean, yeah, considering that I barely saw you after that. I’ve seen you once, maybe twice a year since we were about thirteen. It always felt a bit like I got ditched for something more exciting.”
Leon’s brain comes to a very gradual halt. Wait, what?
“You never told me that,” he says, stunned.
Sonia rolls her eyes. “How was I supposed to? You didn’t even have a personal phone until last year. It’s not like we used to go for lunch very often, even that year when I lived in Wyndon.”
“I didn’t ditch you,” says Leon, still in shock. “I never wanted you to feel like that. I missed you all the time.”
Sonia stares at her plate. “Well, it’s hard to hear that. Because it didn’t feel like it.”
Leon hunches in on himself as he tries to make sense of it, guilt and confusion weighing down on him; Sonia is obviously upset, but he just doesn’t understand why she would feel that way. How can she think he ditched her when he’s spent years wishing he could see her? When he’s always so happy to see her?
“Remember when we were fourteen,” Sonia says quietly, “and we decided we wanted to go to Alola with my grandmother? You, me, Raihan and Nessa.”
His blood runs cold.
“You seemed so excited about it. All you could talk about was how you’d never left Galar before and how you couldn’t wait to see all the Alolan Pokemon. So when you turned up at my door with Rose the night before the flight, I felt so sorry for you. You seemed so gutted that he’d changed your schedule. And I was so angry at him, because I hadn’t seen you properly in ages.”
Leon can feel his foot tapping quickly against the floor, beneath their table.
“And then we’re three days in and I’m relaxing on a beach with Nessa when she shows me a news article, and it’s you swanning off with Rose for a holiday to his private island. That’s what you were doing, instead of the holiday we all planned together.”
She breathes out tremulously, still frowning at her plate. “It’s just hard to believe you missed me all that much when I’ve spent years seeing pictures of you off having fun with other people.”
A strangled laugh bubbles its way out through Leon’s throat. “I wasn’t.”
Sonia glares at him. “You were in the papers all the time, Leon, you obviously were.”
“I wasn’t having fun.”
Sonia blinks at him, and he thinks she says something else but he can’t hear it over the sudden rushing in his ears. His hands are shaking around his knife and fork, and his breath is coming more quickly than it should.
Shit. It’s been ages since something like this happened.
Leon glances around, and there’s a waiter looking at him from the other side of the room.
Get ahold of yourself, Leon. I don’t want you embarrassing me tonight.
“Lee?” Sonia’s voice cuts through the memory in his head, and Leon jumps.
“Yeah?” he manages. His breath is still coming way too fast.
“Are you… okay?” Sonia asks slowly. “You seem-”
“I have to go,” Leon interrupts, standing abruptly and accidentally knocking his chair to the floor in the process. He tries to ignore the way the room around them suddenly dips into silence. “I have a- a meeting. League stuff.”
“What?” Sonia stands too, reaching out for him. “But you only got here yesterday. I thought you were-”
He doesn’t hear the rest. It’s lost to the roar of Charizard emerging from her ball, Leon climbing hurriedly onto her back and the two of them shooting off into the distance.
–
He transfers her the money for lunch and orders flowers to be delivered to the lab, but doesn’t answer her calls. He has no idea what he would say.
His friends have their own lives, that’s what Rose always told him. Even if Leon had been given more free time in his schedule, there was no guarantee Sonia would have been able to see him. Especially not after she became best friends with Nessa. You have to move on, Leon, just like Sonia doing.
Leon could kick himself for believing that now.
Sonia’s been hurting all this time. And if Sonia’s been hurting, maybe his other friends have been hurting too.
But, a very small, childish part of Leon whispers. But what about me?
In the six months that he’s been Chairman, Leon has always made a point to ask after Gloria’s mum; she calls Gloria once a week, and even makes a monthly journey up to Wyndon to visit her daughter. Leon actually has a suite permanently on hold for her at the Rose of the Rhondelands so she can come whenever she wants, without having to worry too much about the logistics.
He’s also never once tried to stop Gloria from seeing Hop or Marnie at weekends.
Such things would have been considered an unnecessary luxury when he was Champion, and for that reason Leon’s never precisely understood why he’s so keen to allow them now. He just knows that Gloria is fifteen, and she has friends and family she wants to see.
Leon had been ten.
He’d been ten.
And Rose had-
Should he mention it, when he gives his character witness in court next week? Should he testify that he’s starting to wonder if it was deliberate; if Rose deliberately separated a ten year old from all the people he loved and cared for?
And would it even be right to, when Leon went along with it without question all this time?
Maybe it wouldn’t be right, but at least it might be something. Something to make Rose look bad that isn’t-
The other thing.
The thing that was finally shaken loose over lunch in Wedgehurst. He hadn’t forgotten it, exactly; more like it’s been pushed to the back of his mind, blurry and just out of frame, until Sonia’s words brought it suddenly into sharp focus.
It only ever happened once or twice, in the privacy of Rose’s holiday home. A lot of wine was involved the first time, and by the end of the night Leon hadn’t had the coordination to put up much resistance. Maybe that’s part of the reason he doesn’t like to look at it. He’s a pretty strong guy - always has been, even at fourteen. The idea that he couldn’t resist seems a bit ridiculous, even to himself. Unbelievable, even.
He’s sure Oleana had seen the bruises on his neck the next morning. They’d been visible for four days afterwards, though it hardly matters when you’re in a secluded place and you have nothing to take photographs with. She hadn’t acknowledged it then, and he doubts she’ll acknowledge it now.
Which means he has no proof. If Leon were to bring it up, it would just be his word against Rose.
–
Raihan shows up at Leon's office out of the blue a week after the incident with Sonia, carrying an armful of takeaway boxes and playfully pointing out that there are just too many noodles for one person to eat, and how terrible it would be if any had to go to waste. Leon usually works through lunch, often just grabbing a sandwich and a protein shake on the go, but he caves easily. It’s true that he doesn’t like to see things go to waste; Raihan has never hesitated to exploit that fact.
In any case though, Leon’s spent most of the past week feeling jittery and unable to sleep, too busy trying to sort through the confusing mess of his own memories and wondering how he can make things up to all the people he unknowingly abandoned over the years.
Lunch with Raihan seems like a place to start. And the noodles he brought are good.
“So what’s up with you and Sonia?”
Leon looks up at him, chopsticks raised halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“She said you seemed off the other day and now you won’t answer her calls. Did you have a fight?”
“No,” Leon says immediately. “Of course we didn’t have a fight.”
Raihan hums consideringly. “I can believe that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you argue with anyone.”
There’s a reason for that. It had been explained carefully and repeatedly to Leon at a very young age just how important it was for him to come across as friendly and likeable at all times.
“So what did happen, then?” Raihan presses.
Leon fiddles with his chopsticks hesitantly, trying to figure out how to answer.
“Were you…?” he trails off, licking his lips uncertainly.
“Was I?” Raihan raises his eyebrows, watching Leon expectantly over his noodles.
“Were you ever… upset that I didn’t spend much time with you? When we were growing up?”
Raihan frowns at him. “What?”
Leon taps his foot uneasily. “Sonia said it felt like I ditched her. When I became Champion.”
“Ah,” says Raihan, pausing to take that in. “That makes sense, I guess.”
So Leon was right then - Raihan feels it too. All of his friends have spent years believing he abandoned them and somehow Leon utterly failed to notice it.
He’s such an idiot.
But then Raihan shrugs easily.
“No, I never felt like that, though.” He drums his chopsticks against his takeout container and chews thoughtfully. “I mean, you were already Champion when I met you. I kind of just assumed you were really busy all the time.”
Leon swallows. “I was.”
“You always made time to battle me, though.”
That’s true, at least. Though he probably wouldn’t have been able to if Rose hadn’t wanted to encourage the media attention that came along with their very marketable rivalry.
“Honestly, I was just grateful whenever I did get to see you. You’re a good mate.”
“...Am I?”
“Yeah. Don’t you believe me?”
Leon takes a deep breath, staring at the takeaway boxes in front of him. “I’m not sure the Champion gets to have good mates. Or maybe they do. Gloria does. But I…”
It’s frustrating, to have spent a whole week turning the same thing over and over in his mind and being no closer to untangling it. He’s so confused, is the thing.
“Lee?”
Leon looks up to find Raihan frowning at him with concern.
Ah, shit. He’d been drifting off into his head again, hadn’t he? Leon’s been doing that all week.
He shakes himself, slapping his cheeks a little to try and get himself focused, like he would before battling. “D’you think it would make a difference? If I talk about it at the trial tomorrow?”
“...About whether we’re good mates or not?”
“About never seeing you. Or any of my other friends. Or my family.”
There’s a very, very long silence. “D’you think it’s relevant to the trial, then?”
Leon’s foot taps more quickly against the floor. “I mean, maybe? My schedule never left me much free time…”
“And Rose controlled your schedule,” Raihan says slowly. Leon can see the gears turning in his head, and a feeling of dread inexplicably pools in his stomach. He very suddenly needs the conversation to be over.
“Hey, did you see Bede’s exhibition match with Marnie yesterday?” he asks quickly.
Raihan stares at him. “Err, no? A clutch of dragons hatched in the breeding area and I missed it.”
Leon launches into a highly detailed recap of the whole battle, interspersed with commentary about how Bede seems to be mellowing out into a surprisingly competent gym leader. Battles are the most common conversational thread between the two of them, so it’s familiar ground. Raihan goes along with it without question, even if he seems a bit bewildered by the abrupt change of subject.
It isn’t until Leon’s next meeting is about to start and Raihan is standing to leave that he cuts Leon off.
“Yes,” he says with finality, as he stands in the open door and meets Leon’s gaze square on.
Leon quirks a brow at him in bemusement. “Yes what?”
“Yes, you should talk about never seeing your friends or family.”
Leon jolts in surprise, even as Raihan continues. “I think it could help change the way people see Rose. But even if you don’t do it at the trial tomorrow, you should do it at some other point. It honestly just sounds like the kind of thing that should be talked about, mate.”
He leaves then, with a small smile and a quick squeeze to Leon’s arm, and Leon is left staring at the closed door for a long time.
–
“There’s no need to look so nervous, Chairman Leon. You’re not facing down Eternatus a second time. Just me.”
There are a few titters from the public viewing gallery at that. Leon tries to ignore the restless, jittery feeling in his legs and smiles politely.
Meanwhile Rose’s lawyer beams back at him from the middle of the courtroom, a facsimile of patience and understanding. “Now, I’d like to ask you about your relationship with Mr. Rose. Could you tell me when you first met him?”
“When I was nine years old. He endorsed me for the gym challenge.”
“And as we all know, you won that challenge, and every challenge since then, excluding last year’s. He also endorsed a number of the challengers who won in the years leading up to that. He certainly seems to have a flair for picking out talented trainers!”
Leon has to make a conscious effort not to grimace. “I suppose.”
“How old are you now, Leon?”
“Twenty-four.”
“So that’s fifteen years you’ve known him?”
“Yes.”
“And how often did you see him during that time?”
“Almost every day, once I became Champion.”
“And in what capacity did you see him?”
“Work, mostly - pretty much everything I did was work. We would usually attend a morning meeting together, and go through my schedule for the day. The rest would depend on what specifically was on my schedule."
The lawyer nods, and leans in as if they’re sharing a secret, though when he speaks it’s loud enough for the whole room to hear. “I’ve heard rumours he used to bring your favourite pastries along to those morning meetings. Is that right?”
Leon blinks, but nods. “Sometimes.”
“And he used to cancel some of the other meetings on your schedule, if you felt like you and your Pokemon needed extra time for training?”
“...Occasionally, yes.”
“So he looked out for you, then?” says the lawyer, gesturing towards Rose with another smile. “Perhaps even acted a bit like a father figure towards you, in the absence of your own?”
Leon unconsciously follows his gesture, eyes falling on Rose for a brief moment. He’s smiling proudly, as if Leon is a particularly well behaved Yamper.
Leon swallows. “I think he wanted to be. But I have a father already, so I’m not sure why he felt the need to do that.”
“Well, it sounds to me as though he was giving much needed support to a child navigating a difficult and demanding public role. You were the youngest challenger to ever become Champion. It must have been helpful to have someone with experience guide you through it.”
“In some ways,” Leon agrees, before gathering himself a bit. “But I think… I think it might have been more helpful if he’d allowed my actual parents to support me. By the time I was twelve he cut my visits home down to one every six months. And he didn’t let me have a phone, so I couldn’t call them either.”
There are murmurs from the public gallery at that. Leon keeps his eyes fixed firmly on Rose’s lawyer, who seems to be uncharacteristically thrown. He clearly hadn’t been expecting Leon to say anything of the sort. Good , he thinks shakily.
“Alright,” the lawyer recovers quickly. “So, perhaps Mr. Rose was a bit of a tough taskmaster, then - the most productive people often are. But he was a generous one too, wouldn’t you say? We’ve already heard that he allowed you to train with your team whenever you wanted. I believe he also kept the press from approaching you during those training periods. Is that correct?”
“Yes, but-”
“And it’s also true that he bought you the penthouse you own in Wyndon, isn’t it? Out of his own pocket?”
Leon burns with shame. “Yes.”
“And I believe you’re one of the few people to have been invited to visit the Isle of Whaye, which is owned by Mr Rose? That’s quite the honour.”
Leon’s breath stutters as he inhales a little too sharply. He hadn’t been expecting them to ask about any of this, especially not the trips to-
“I hear it’s incredibly beautiful. And it must have been an ideal retreat for you in particular; no paparazzi or over-eager fans to disturb you while you relax, after all. Nothing to get in the way of enjoying yourself, or blowing off steam.”
His hands are full on shaking. He clasps them together quickly but it does nothing to stop them.
“He must have been keen to look out for your wellbeing, if he allowed you to take holidays there.”
“Sure,” Leon hears himself say, as if from a distance, “if by ‘looking out for me’ you mean plying me with alcohol and forcing me onto my knees for him.”
The room goes completely silent, and Leon belatedly registers what just came out of his mouth.
Oh, fuck.
He stares at his hands in rapidly mounting horror and panic. The weight of every pair of eyes in the room presses down on him, heavy and knowing.
Except it’s not just the room, he suddenly realises - this trial is televised, isn’t it?
The whole of Galar heard him say it.
“Do you have any proof for that allegation?” asks the lawyer into the silence. He doesn’t sound like he’s smiling anymore.
Leon can’t get his mouth to work properly. His hands are still shaking - worse than they were a moment ago, shit - and his heart is pounding so rapidly he can barely find the time to draw breath. He can’t afford to lose control like this, not now. Not when all of Galar is watching.
Not when Rose is watching.
“Chairman Leon?” The judge’s voice comes to him from somewhere to his right. Leon jerkily looks over to find the elderly man peering at him with concern. “Are you alright?”
Humiliation coils deep in his gut, but Leon manages to nod and gasp out, “I’m fine.”
When he hurriedly turns back to face the lawyer, Leon accidentally catches sight of Rose again. He’s frowning now, like he used to when Leon had disappointed him. As they make eye contact, Rose shakes his head minutely.
All of a sudden Leon is furious.
“I don’t have any proof,” he says, and he can hear the shake in his own voice, the catch in his breath. “There aren’t any witnesses on a private island. I think that’s why he only ever did it while we were there. But I remember it. It happened.”
Rose’s lawyer scoffs. “Your honour, this is slander. My client-”
“Be quiet, Mr. Wilkins.” The judge turns to Leon again. “How many times did this happen, Chairman Leon?”
“Three.”
“And how old were you, at the time?”
“Fourteen. And fifteen.”
There’s a gasp from the gallery. He looks up and realises Sonia is up there, her hand clapped to her mouth and her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“And to be absolutely clear, you are alleging that Mr. Rose gave you alcohol while you were underage, and forced you… forced you to perform sexual acts on him?”
Leon’s heartbeat hits a crescendo. He screws his eyes shut. “Yes.”
–
He doesn’t remember much of what happens after that.
They said you had a panic attack, Sonia tells him hesitantly, afterwards.
The court was quickly adjourned, and the judge had taken immediate measures to get everyone out and stop the cameras filming, while a first aider rushed over to help. Very decent of him to do that, Leon supposes, but it doesn’t change the fact that all of Galar had already witnessed his humiliating meltdown.
Sonia also tells him that she’s sorry; that she never would’ve accused him of ditching her if only she’d known. She cries into his shoulder and says she wishes she’d found a way to keep in touch more.
A lot of people tell him stuff like that over the next few days. He gets really fed up of hearing the word sorry .
His mum starts calling him every day and asking him to come home. She doesn’t cry, not while she’s speaking to him, but there’s a waver in her voice sometimes that makes Leon certain he couldn’t handle being with his family in Postwick right now - no matter how much he’s wanted to be back there over the years.
(He has no idea how he’s supposed to face Hop. How’s Leon ever supposed to measure up against his brother’s expectations now that all this has come out?)
So he carries on, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He goes into work every morning and ignores his own face on the papers and the news channels. He ignores the phone calls from some of the sleazier tabloids asking for ‘the exclusive’, just as he ignores all the water-cooler conversations that become hushed whenever he passes by.
It’s excruciating though. He finds himself rushing into his office a few times a day, trying to get a handle on his breathing - something he hasn’t needed to do since he was fourteen.
His assistant tentatively suggests that maybe he might want to take a few days off. Later on, the Board insists on it, after Hop arrives with Gloria for a meeting and Leon has his second full-blown panic attack in the space of a week.
And then he’s back at his flat - the big, empty penthouse that Rose bought for him - with nothing to do but sit with his own thoughts.
It’s as if speaking at the trial has unlocked something; those unknown words on the tip of his tongue spilling over as more and more memories come back to him, of times he was corrected or chastised or belittled for something he said. Of having his posture corrected when he sagged under the weight of his own cape, and being taught to throw Pokéballs with his right hand instead of his left.
And yet somehow, there are also memories of times that he felt cared for, like the one of Rose teaching him to shave. Leon remembers cutting himself badly on the razor, and Rose gently cleaning up his chin before pressing a plaster to the cut. It’s okay, he said to Leon with a warm smile, everyone does that the first time.
Leon doesn’t get any sleep that night. He sits with Charizard instead, holding on to her like he hasn’t since she was just a Charmander and he was a scared child, about to head out into the Wild Area for the first time. She nuzzles anxiously into his hair, and whines softly at him when he starts to cry, like she wants him to feel better but doesn’t know how to help.
Leon doesn’t know either.
The next morning he gets a text from Raihan that says, hey, wanna stay at mine this weekend? We can eat greasy takeaway pizza and watch the Kalosian quarter-finals
Then another, I promise to avoid any and all difficult topics if you just wanna do something normal
And a final, no pressure though, mate
They do end up eating greasy takeaway pizza, and they do end up watching the Kalosian League. Not only does Raihan not offer Leon beer this time around, but he actively seems to have removed all the alcohol from his house. They drink Poké-cola together instead, and neither of them brings up why.
–
“They want me to write an impact statement,” Leon says quietly, just audible over the sounds of another League championship - Tandor, this time - on Raihan’s telly. He’s been spending more of his weekends at Raihan’s, which is a novel experience in more ways than one - largely because Leon hasn’t actually had any weekends since he was twelve years old.
“An impact statement?” Raihan asks, not taking his eyes off the screen.
Leon fiddles with his cap, sitting idle atop his legs rather than perched on his head for once. “About the impact Rose had. On me.”
The tone of the trial has changed in the weeks since Leon first gave evidence. If his own testimony had brought a public outcry, it only worsened when someone else - the first trainer Rose ever sponsored - made a statement alleging that Rose abused him as a child. A second person followed, and then Bede came forward, and from there the count kept climbing, until it currently stands at eleven people.
And others have come forward too; not just those with similar stories, but people willing to talk about the shady business stuff - the blackmail and the scapegoating and the pay-offs. It’s harder to write them off now that the testimony against Rose’s character is starting to mount up - even the ones who perform badly on the witness stand.
Piers is due to testify in two weeks’ time.
And Leon? Well, he hasn’t been ignoring it, exactly. Ignoring it would be impossible, considering he still can’t sleep through a full night, and his hands shake if he stays still for too long.
But he’s not been talking about it either.
His mum keeps trying to get him to talk - and Hop and Sonia too - but Leon finds his brain stuttering to a halt every time they prompt him. He doesn’t know how to have those kinds of conversations; the one with Sonia had ended really badly. He’s lost vast chunks of time staring at the walls of his flat once the phone calls are over, feeling like he doesn’t know how to be a person.
Raihan’s the only one who hasn’t pressed him about it. He invites Leon to watch foreign Pokemon Leagues and terrible movies with him instead, and sends cute pictures of his new clutch of baby dragons while Leon is at work. He’s become this steady and unwavering presence in Leon’s life, making space for him to just exist for a while without needing to think about all the difficult stuff.
Somehow, it makes him feel like Raihan might be the only person he can talk to.
The volume on the TV gets turned down, and Raihan refocuses his attention squarely on Leon. “Okay. And… do you want to do that?”
Leon shrugs. “It makes sense, I guess. The lawyer who spoke to me said that an impact statement from me and the others who… Well, she says it could make a difference to the trial.”
“But do you want to?”
“I-” Leon stops, looking Raihan in the eyes and feeling the weight of his own uncertainty suddenly pressing down on him. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I would even begin to write something like that. I don’t think I even understand everything he-”
He breaks off, screwing his eyes shut and trying to keep his breathing steady. This is exactly the same problem he always has whenever anyone tries to talk to him about it. Leon hates it. He’s so fed up of breaking down in front of other people; they look at him with pity afterwards and speak to him in childish tones and it’s excruciating .
Out of nowhere, a hand gently curls around one of Leon’s, jolting him from his panic. He blinks his eyes open in surprise.
Raihan just smiles a small, patient smile and squeezes Leon’s hand.
“I-I keep second guessing all the things he used to do,” Leon blurts, stuttering a little. “Because he was… he was kind to me when I was sad. He used to take me for ice cream whenever I missed my parents a lot. Or he would turn up to meetings in these ridiculous Cufant themed shorts sometimes, just to make me laugh.”
He stops again, swallowing as Raihan nods encouragingly, no trace of judgement or pity on his face.
“I don’t know how to make sense of it anymore,” Leon continues haltingly. “Because I’ve remembered now that he was the one who wouldn’t let me go back home in the first place.”
“And-” he gasps for breath, the words suddenly tumbling from his mouth like stones down a hillside. “And I can also remember being fourteen and being- being pinned against a wall. And afterwards he said that no one would believe me if I told them. And I believed him, because who else did I have by then? Who could I tell?”
“Fuck,” whispers Raihan.
“Yeah,” agrees Leon, pressing his forehead against his free hand and pulling at his hair a little in anguish. “It’s so fucked, isn’t it? I’m so, so fucked up.”
“No,” Raihan says firmly, capturing Leon’s fingers and tugging them lightly away from his hair. “Lee, no, don't say that. He’s the fucked up one, not you.”
Leon shakes his head, a bit frantic. “Then why do I still think he was kind, when I can remember all the other stuff he did to me?”
“Brains are a bit weird like that,” says Raihan, and he’s gripping both of Leon’s hands very tightly now. “Sometimes forgetting the bad stuff and remembering the good bits is the only way we can cope.”
“It’s so confusing,” Leon moans, screwing his eyes shut again and swaying in place. “I don’t want to feel like this. How do I stop feeling like this?”
“I think,” begins Raihan, carefully letting go of Leon’s hands and pulling him forward. Leon lets himself fall, leaning heavily against Raihan as long arms wrap around him in a hug. “I think we find you some help.”
–
He doesn’t write the impact statement.
He does find a therapist, though, with Raihan’s help.
He’s seen her five times already, and he thinks he’s starting to get the hang of talking about his time with Rose, though honestly it feels like he’s barely scratched the surface. She smiles kindly at him when he says that, and tells him that it can take a long time to unlearn years of conditioning.
Focusing any of the confusing stuff feels like a lot at first, so she helps him find ways to recognise when he's starting to feel overwhelmed and how to communicate about it with his friends and family instead. He practices saying, I’m having a panic attack and I need some space to myself for a while and I appreciate that you’re looking out for me, mum, but I can’t talk about that right now.
After that, they talk about small, practical changes he can make to his life in the present day: making regular pockets of time for his friends and family, setting limits on how many hours he works each day, figuring out what his hobbies are, that sort of thing. Small changes, but good changes - changes that Leon hadn’t even realised he was allowed to make.
Weekends with Raihan in Hammerlocke become a standing fortnightly arrangement. Sometimes they wander through the winding, cobbled streets of the city and take selfies at all of Raihan’s favourite spots, or other times they just stay home watching foreign league tournaments and talking late into the night. Leon alternates those weekends with trips back to Postwick, where he spends his time cooking elaborate curries with his mum and nani, or trading Pokemon cards with Hop.
Two days after Piers testifies, he turns up unexpectedly at Leon’s flat late in the evening and spends six hours introducing Leon to bands he’s never heard of, teaching him about the history of punk, and painting their fingernails. Leon practically sleeps his way through his first two morning meetings afterwards. He feels pretty guilty about that, because he knows it’s horrible manners, but that doesn’t stop a huge grin from working its way onto his face when Piers sends him a playlist of all the songs Leon liked best.
Later that night, Leon looks at his incredibly small, handwritten list of potential hobbies and tentatively adds ‘music’. He stares at it for another few moments before decisively adding ‘nail art’ as well.
And then, not long before the trial is due to end, Leon runs into one of Rose’s accusers at a Macro Cosmos warehouse just outside of Wyndon. He’s twelve years older than Leon, but he’s been working for the Company since he was sixteen. He stops Leon with a hesitant tap on his shoulder and thanks him for speaking out - says he never would have dared to come forward if he hadn’t watched Leon do it first.
He also says that he’s been talking to some of the other people who came forward - that they’ve started an informal support group of sorts. He tells Leon to look up his phone number in the Macro Cosmos records if he ever wants to come along to it.
Leon makes it right through until his therapy appointment in the evening before he breaks down about it.
–
“Well, this pizza is a bit shit,” says Raihan with a frown. Either side of him around his kitchen table, Leon and Sonia both nod. They’ve ordered in from a new place Raihan wanted to try, but the dough is too chewy - and not in the good way - and it sticks uncomfortably in Leon’s mouth.
It kind of sums up how he’s feeling though.
He hasn’t seen Sonia since that day at Rose’s trial. Last time they spoke was over the phone, before Leon started seeing a therapist. She’d cried at him a fair bit, and told him she wished he would just talk to her. Leon hadn’t known how to deal with her emotions or her probing questions, and he’d eventually found himself hissing Sonia, shut up! before hanging up in horror and hyperventilating on the floor of his bathroom.
But she’s in Hammerlocke for research this weekend, and Raihan has invited her over for dinner.
You can stay upstairs while she’s here if you like, he said kindly, as he explained it all to Leon a few days beforehand. You’re not obligated to see anyone, even if they want to see you.
Leon had shaken his head. No, I… I want to see her.
He still does, even if he’s currently feeling a bit shaky about it. But he’s got his coping techniques for that, and he had an extra appointment with his therapist yesterday morning. He can push through it.
“I’m sorry,” Sonia blurts abruptly, interrupting their quiet chewing and making Leon jump. “I’ve been pushing you to talk about things and you weren’t ready to. Raihan explained why it was a shitty thing to do.”
Leon looks over at Raihan, who shrugs back at him before frowning at Sonia. “I didn’t call you shitty. I said you might be better off talking to a different friend about how you feel, rather than the guy who clearly has his own stuff to deal with.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Sonia replies, abashed, before looking at Leon again. “It was selfish of me to put that on you. I was thinking about how upset I felt, and I just wanted to make things better as fast as I could. I wasn’t thinking about how it might make you feel by forcing you to talk about it.”
Leon thinks back to the conversation he had with his therapist about it. She said that he has every right to enforce boundaries with Sonia, especially if she pushes him to a point that he feels overwhelmed or uncomfortable. But they’d also talked about why Sonia had been pushing him so much in the first place - about how she’s clearly spent a very long time feeling forgotten, only to have her understanding of that time suddenly changed when Leon testified against Rose.
Leon knows first hand how hard it is to unexpectedly find yourself second-guessing your entire adolescence. He can hardly blame Sonia for struggling with it.
“Thank you,” he says slowly, falling back on rehearsed language. “I appreciate you saying that. I think you have a right to feel upset about it, though. You’ve spent years feeling abandoned.”
“But you didn’t actually abandon me,” Sonia puts in hastily. “I know that wasn’t your fault, please don’t think I blame you for that. I don’t blame you for anything Rose did to you.”
“He did it to both of us,” Leon says quietly. “He hurt you as well.”
Sonia’s mouth opens, but she doesn’t say anything in response to that. Leon ends up frowning down at his terrible pizza and thinking about what he really wants to tell her.
“I was rude to you over the phone,” he begins tentatively. “I’m sorry. I’m not very good at talking about it yet. I’m not sure I ever will be. And I- I don’t really want to go into the details right now. But-”
He feels Raihan shift towards him in his seat. It’s such a little gesture - subtle, but just noticeable enough to let Leon know that he can reach out if needed. He finds himself taking strength from it.
“But Rose deliberately isolated me from everyone in my life,” Leon continues. “He made you all believe it was what I wanted, and he made me believe none of you wanted to be close to me. He set us against each other. My… my therapist says it’s actually a really common manipulative tactic.”
“I shouldn’t have fallen for it,” says Sonia immediately. “He was so obviously a liar.”
Leon shakes his head forcefully. “No, he wasn’t. That’s the whole point. He was very, very believable. And we were-”
He cuts himself off, reaching over to grasp Raihan’s hand underneath the table while he tries to keep his breathing steady. Raihan taps a little rhythm against the back of Leon’s hand with two of his fingers - something they’ve found can help ground him when he’s trying to fend off a panic attack.
“We were children, Sonia. And he was an adult and he took advantage of that fact. He took advantage of us. And that’s on him, not me or you.”
It’s a point his therapist has come back to a number of times, and Leon’s honestly been struggling with it. Rose did a lot of things that Leon never objected to or told anyone about. It’s been difficult to accept that he isn’t personally responsible for those things, because he feels like he just let them happen.
But now, faced with Sonia - who has never done anything wrong except express her feelings poorly, who through everything must have simply been wondering why her best friend was suddenly gone - now he finds he can feel the truth of it right down to his core.
It’s liberating.
It’s also a bit frightening.
“I miss you,” he says softly. “I’ve missed you for years. And I don’t want what he did to us to define our friendship anymore.”
“I don’t want that either,” Sonia whispers, her eyes red and wet.
Leon swallows around a lump in his throat and feels his own eyes welling up. “How about we just try being friends again? I want to know you. Properly.”
Sonia nods, tears rolling down her cheeks freely now. “I’d really, really like that.”
Without prompting, Raihan hands them a tissue each and Leon wipes hastily at his face. He’s cried a lot over the past month, and he’s come to loathe the feeling of his hair getting stuck to his cheeks.
“Did you have those on standby or something?” Sonia asks with a sniffle, dabbing at her eyes and fussing over her makeup.
“Yep,” says Raihan, looking smug. “Can’t have you both crying into your shit pizza. It’d probably taste even worse.”
The quip catches Leon off-guard and, unexpectedly, he bursts out laughing.
–
Rose is found guilty. The judge gives him a life sentence.
Leon doesn't attend the final hearing in person; he watches from Raihan’s sofa instead with a group of friends scattered on chairs and beanbags around him. They all cheer when it’s announced - Nessa whoops, and Milo punches the air, and Piers mutters about fuckin’ time . Leon’s the only one who remains completely silent, save for a tremulous intake of breath when Raihan reaches over to squeeze his hand.
The camera cuts to Rose’s face as the verdict is delivered, and Leon searches and searches for a sign, any sign of regret. He doesn’t see it.
Raihan taps his forefinger against the back of Leon’s. “You okay, Lee?”
Leon glances around. Raihan was quiet enough that he hasn’t drawn anyone else’s attention, though he thinks Sonia might be trying to watch them surreptitiously.
He looks back at Raihan and squeezes their fingers together, shrugging. He’s not very good at understanding how he’s feeling, especially not while he’s in the middle of it - it’s one of the things he’s been working on with his therapist.
Raihan smiles his patient little smile; he’s become very practiced at giving Leon the time and space to work things through. “That’s okay. Take your time, mate. We’ll still be here.”
They will, Leon knows.
He’s spent a long time thinking about it now - about everything Rose ever told him about how people only stay when they want something, and why Leon had to let them go. About all the nights alone in his flat feeling lonely and isolated and like his life wasn’t his own anymore. About the pressure to be perfect so they could convince people he was likeable.
It’s all bullshit, obviously.
He feels angry that he ever believed it. Sometimes Leon will accidentally cook something he’d forgotten Sonia doesn’t like, or he’ll learn that Hop’s favourite colour is purple, and he’ll be incandescent with rage all of a sudden. He’s just missed out on so many years with the people he cares about.
But it’s hard to feel like that right now.
Because right now his hand is clasped tightly in Raihan’s, and that means support and friendship and all the things that Leon can take strength from. (There’s also this little kernel of warmth that starts fizzing excitedly in his stomach whenever Raihan brushes his thumb back and forth along Leon’s knuckles. Leon hasn’t been able to put a name to it yet but he thinks it must be something good.)
And it’s hard to feel angry when Sonia is here too, curled up in an armchair to his right. They’ve been texting back and forth most evenings, and even when the conversation feels stilted they can just send photos of whatever they’ve painted on their nails that day. There’s Piers as well, sprawled out on the floor and leaning nonchalantly against the sofa between Leon and Raihan’s legs. He’s one of the few people who doesn’t walk on eggshells around Leon, or treat him differently.
And then there’s Hop, who sent Leon a selfie of him and Gloria with a giant Wailord on the Isle of Armor earlier. Wailord misses you, bro said the caption, and so do I! Come visit us please? Because he still looks up to his older brother, even though Leon’s life isn’t everything that Hop once believed it to be.
There are so many of them: his friends and his brother and his mum and his nani. And they always seem to make time for him, despite everything Rose made him believe over the years.
Yeah, Leon thinks with conviction. They’ll be here.