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“You were trying to calm me down, weren’t you, when you asked to battle at the Tower? Trying to make sure I was ready, and confident.” Harmony bites a fruit-jam cookie shaped like a Budew. She licks the edge of her lip, considering, and then passes the other half of the cookie to Urbain for his opinion. They’re rating these, as a sort of game. A little way off from the cafe seating area, a couple of their Pokémon are wrestling with a sparkly toy disco ball from Paldea. A wild Pansage creeps down from a streetlight, inching over to play, too. “You said it was to decide who should work with Mega Floette and who should stay on the ground, but you always knew what you’d end up begging for.”
“Begging? Me?”
“Begging, absolutely.”
“Heheh. I mean… we’d all be toast if Zygarde’s chosen person didn’t show up at the perfect moment, right? I like to think I could’ve done something to help from the ground, but if one of us had to get taken out of commission, it couldn’t be you. And if someone had to have a shot at escaping Lumiose with the rest of Team MZ, too —”
“Oh, I hate that.” But of course he was thinking along those lines, trying to lead his team out of things alive. Of course he knew it would turn into a disheartening argument if he started talking about possible death at the foot of the Tower, bathed in sickly swelling overcharged light. He would’ve scared everyone. And then, when the city cracked apart around them, streets exploding to make way for monstrous roots, that death could’ve seemed so much closer.
“Anyway, battling with me might’ve felt normal, at least. Did it help?”
Harmony writes a “five” on the napkin between them, assessing the cookie, and Urbain writes an “eight.” He almost never rates anything below a six. He wipes sticky cookie-jam fingers on his sweatpants and then looks embarrassed. He’s confessed that he’s been trying to come across more mature, lately, since he started working at his grandmother’s company. But that might not be the whole story, really. The first time Urbain and Harmony went on an official date, he asked Naveen to dress him up, so long as it could include his mother’s jacket, somehow. Naveen made it work; a tie was involved. Urbain won’t dress up to appease the Elites, but he will try acting formal out in public to make Harmony feel special.
“It helped,” Harmony says. “I almost forgot where we were, for a second.”
“Thought so,” Urbain grins. “It helped me, too.” He selects the next cookie: a spicy-cinnamon Pumpkaboo. He likes this one better, Harmony can tell. He’s going to rate it a ten. He might even cheat the system again and try rating it higher.
Honestly, Harmony isn’t sure if she should say this next part, but it’s burning her tongue.
“You know, if we did have to escape Lumiose City without you and Floette, back then, I would’ve come racing right back with more help.” Harmony accepts the other piece of the cookie, tastes it carefully. Imagines prying Urbain out of a fallen-Tower web, all twisted roots and energy-charged metal. She pictures shaking him, checking his pulse on a bruised, limp wrist, like a plant left in a dirty vase way too long; she imagines finding him clinging to that throne if the Tower fell, the way he grabbed her shoulder on the “sudden drop” ride at a visiting Unovan carnival. A strangled yelp, with no one but already-struggling Floette to hear him. “You wouldn’t have been alone for long. I bet I could’ve gotten Gym Leaders to rally in a reasonable time. A bunch of new champions have legendary Pokémon on their teams, too… like, have you seen Eternatus, from Galar?”
“I know. You and Zygarde had my back.” Urbain writes a “ten” on their scoresheet and Harmony adds a “seven.” “We would’ve been fine.”
“Which is why you had to beg to climb the Tower. Even after losing.” Harmony has to sound flippant, now, or she’ll start thinking about what she could’ve possibly done if she didn’t find Urbain’s pulse after dragging him into her arms. If his eyes didn’t flutter open, pained but vindicated, like he’d honestly expected to see her. If, maybe, this could’ve been how he ended, and Floette’s three-thousand-plus years alive, too. Nobody dare attempt resurrection again, not for either of them.
Urbain can probably see that train of thought on her face, because he chooses another cookie, breaking the rhythm of the game. It’s the first thing his hands brush; he doesn’t even look at it before raising it to her lips.
“Which is why I had to… yes.”
Harmony bites the cookie, avoiding Urbain’s fingertips. It’s lemony sweet, like morning over the wild moss growing across that fallen Tower.