Chapter Text
Shadows do not make mistakes.
To be a Shadow is to blend seamlessly with the surroundings. To move through the air smooth as light itself. To never place a foot wrong, always to follow a silent rhythm. To spin through space light as a dancer. Shadows do not make mistakes.
And yet this one did.
The castle is falling. Crumbling into pieces and taking with it all that remains of Team Plasma. Sinking into the earth, mud and rockfall and somewhere in the depths, Ghetsis. Ghetsis, ruler and father and god. Ghetsis, somewhere, dying.
It happens on the stairs. Each floor cleared, empty. Shadow is flying downwards, feet hardly touching the steps. Earth shaking, walls trembling. It’s the ceiling that finally lets go.
Punch – of rock, directly to the back, and she stumbles. Another to the back of the head – her vision whites out. Landing heavily on her palms, skidding. Knee striking the marble stairs with a heavy crack –
And now more and more debris piling downwards from above. The higher floors are dissolving, crumbling into dust. Shadow looks up and sees the ceiling tiles descending and it crosses her mind that she is going to die.
Stupid, she thinks.
‘Leavanny!’ someone screams. ‘Protect!’
Blur of green – somehow that’s what makes her flinch – and then the entirety of the second floor is upon them, cacophony of dust and tiles and boulders and, and –
And then, just as quickly, it stops. The earth settles, the dust starts to fall. The echoes die away to silence. Shadow is in a small circle of clear floor, beneath the shimmering shield of the stranger’s Leavanny.
My Pawniard should have done that, she thinks. Lazy bastard.
The pain starts to creep in. An ache in her back, blood trickling through her hair, an ominous throb coming from her knee. Scraped palms. She’s been lucky. More lucky than she has any right to be. That ceiling collapse should have caved her skull in.
The Leavanny drops its shield. It turns and gives her a nod.
‘Are you okay?’ a stranger’s voice calls. ‘Oh my Arceus, I thought it was all over for you.’
Not a Grunt. She turns, winces at the shocks of pain the motion sends through her body. A skinny beanpole of a man is standing a few feet away, looking at her with obvious concern. Striped trousers and a red scarf and a burst of wavy auburn hair. It’s the butterfly belt buckle that finally makes the name click in her mind. Burgh. Castelia City’s Gym Leader.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ says Shadow, wondering what he’s trying to get at.
‘You’re hurt!’
Does he think she hasn’t noticed? She ignores him and tries to assess the damage. Her back will bruise. Her head will bleed, but ultimately she thinks it was a glancing blow. It’s her knee she’s worried about. She can’t glide out of here light as a falling feather with her kneecap in two pieces.
Her siblings are searching for Ghetsis. They will have to manage on their own – she cannot serve him if she is dead. If she can just escape the castle –
From somewhere above, another low rumble sounds. This hallway will come down soon.
Shadow tries to stand. Pain shoots through her leg. Her vision goes black, and she tastes bile in the back of her throat. Vomiting will not help her worries.
Hands grab her arm on one side, leaves brush it on the other –
‘Do not touch me,’ she snarls. Burgh and the Leavanny withdraw as one, but they don’t go as far as she would like.
‘You need help,’ Burgh says, still hovering around her, arms outstretched. ‘You can’t walk – look, you have all your weight on your good leg.’
‘Of course I need help,’ she says. ‘Why would you help me?’
He stares at her as if she’s the one asking stupid questions. ‘Because otherwise you’ll die?’
‘Yes. Astutely observed.’
Another sound from overhead. Burgh looks up, the colour draining from his face. His next words come out in a long burst, without taking a breath. ‘And if you die down here I’ll have that on my consciousness forever because I was here and I didn’t help you but if you don’t agree right now I might just leave you because I would rather be guilty than dead.’
And when push comes to shove, Shadow would rather be guilty than dead, too.
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘One of you on each side.’
She doesn’t like strangers in her space. Has to suppress a shudder as Burgh and the Leavanny move in. Better this than dead, she thinks. Anything better than dead.
They make surprisingly quick progress towards the end of the hallway. She focuses her efforts on breathing through her nose. She can’t throw up. If she throws up it will be in her mask, and then she might legitimately choke to death on her own spit.
And then – thank whatever gods there are. She feels the shadows change at the end of the hallway, presence where there was none. Her siblings appear in the archway ahead of them. Silent and graceful, the way she should have been.
‘What is this?’ says the Shadow on the right.
‘He saved my life,’ says Shadow, and she watches the revulsion cross her siblings’ faces.
‘Um, you’re welcome,’ says Burgh, clearly offended.
‘We will take it from here,’ says the Shadow on the left. ‘Continue down this hallway for one hundred paces, and you will be free of the castle.’
Shadow pushes herself free of the strangers. Her siblings take her weight instead, and there’s some small measure of comfort in that. Burgh hesitates for a moment, as if he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. He takes off running instead. Without looking back.
But why should he look back? Only Shadow and her siblings understand the burden he has casually laid across her shoulders. The weight of the debt she now owes him.
*
It’s much later when they finally talk about it. Days after the Pokémon League stops crawling with Looker’s cronies, and yet not soon enough for her leg to have healed.
The sun is setting over Victory Road. They are together at the top of the cliffs, her siblings standing while she sits on a rock.
When they are alone, they are not each Shadow. When they are alone, they use their secret names.
‘Aurora,’ Lux says.
She sighs. ‘I know.’
‘I don’t think you do,’ says Celeste. ‘What are you going to do now? How can you serve two life debts at once?’
‘Ghetsis has ordered us not to look for him.’
‘But not to disobey him!’ Celeste is bristling. ‘Just because he’s gone, you would betray him? Our ideals should hold strong –’
‘Be silent,’ said Lux, and they were. He was the elder by one year, and had lead them always.
Lux looked to the west, and seemed to watch the sun setting for a long time. The sky was dark over Victory Road when he said, ‘You must leave us.’
A heavy stone seemed to drop into Aurora’s stomach. ‘No. You cannot banish me –’
‘I’m not banishing you,’ he says, his voice gentle. ‘But our loyalties are not conflicted, the way yours are.’
‘My loyalty is to Ghetsis. It will be always.’
‘But you owe a life debt to the Castelia City Gym Leader. Until it is repaid, you will stand in conflicting shadows. Suppose Ghetsis ordered you one day to act against Burgh? To steal his Pokémon? To kill him, even?’
She says quietly, ‘I could not.’
‘No. You could not.’ Lux nods to the south. ‘Until Ghetsis has need of us again, you must find a way to repay your debt. Once your life is your own again, you may return to us.’
Aurora says nothing. She had never been away from her siblings for so long. And if it proved impossible to repay Burgh at once, if Ghetsis never called them back to his side… she might be gone for months. Years.
‘And if I cannot?’ she said.
‘If you cannot, you cannot,’ said Lux. ‘We will hope that you can.’
An empty answer, and they all knew it. If it came to that, they might have to kill her.
‘I will go,’ Aurora said, and started to push herself to her feet.
‘Not yet,’ Celeste said, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘Let your body heal entirely first. You will be of no use to anyone if you are not well.’
Really, she should not take such an offer, not show such weakness. But her siblings have always been different than anyone else.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But in a month’s time, I will go.’
She would save Burgh’s life, and ensure her debt was repaid. Whether or not it killed them both.