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“The Lumiose Pokémon Lab is announcing the appointment of an interim director, whilst our dearly beloved Professor turns his sights to research overseas,” the TV announcer says, brushing a lock of deep pink hair out of her eyes. There is a taunting, sardonic edge to her voice that makes L’s hands tremble.
He leaves the half-finished coffee (sour and faintly scorched, quite unpleasant) on the table, and slips away without paying. It isn’t often that he has the time to sit at a café, and regrets the loss of the warmth of the drink, if not the taste. Typically, Zygarde calls him away, and will not tolerate his lethargy when there is work to be done. He could have stayed there, today, and the knowledge clings bitterly to the back of his throat. But he could not have stayed there.
Midday’s sunlight catches on car mirrors and apartment windows and the ring on his left hand. He moved it from his fourth to his third finger a long time ago, but cannot bring himself to pawn it.
He knows full well the man who bears the matching band. Augustine—how to forget Augustine? It would be easier if he did. L’s haggard reflection sneers at him in a darkened shop window. The stitches on his jacket are thin and faling apart, one sleeve all but disconnected at the shoulder, and the fur is matted with dirt. It reeks of river-water and rotting vegetable peel, the shoulders have lost their structure and still manage to hang loose off his shrivelled frame.
A woman walks past him out from the store—a boutique of some sort, he realises—and scrunches her face up in disgust. She catches his eye and jumps slightly in surprise, raising a dainty white-gloved hand to her glossy pink lips, and pastes on a beneficient, charitable smile for only a second, before turning away. It aches, and he wishes that she had walked past without looking his way, let him believe he was invisible.
He cannot help but impose Augustine’s ghost on her retreating form in her passing glance and in her dismissal. He sees him everywhere, in every act of pity and of disgust, and the thought makes him turn abruptly from the window, and start walking. Anywhere—away, as though physical distance could separate him from the thought, which has wrapped itself around the base of his throat with thorny determination.
Is it not enough that he almost discarded Augustine’s life for a mad delusion; must he too stain Augustine’s compassion? It is not fear of rejection which drove Lysandre to avoid every plaza, café, and street in which Augustine and he once frequented together.
It is a weakness that he imagines himself getting lost, and ending up in front of the Lumiose Pokémon Lab. Imagines himself losing track of time, and hearing the church bells toll two past noon. Imagines Augustine fastening a scarf around his neck as he steps out to get lunch, catching sight of him and chasing him when he runs and refusing to let him go, and imagines their apartment above the lab, where Augustine would drag him with an iron-tight grip on his wrist, a warm shower and a clean change of clothes.
Someone bumps into him, shattering his reverie, and he hears a bell toll once, and twice, and cease.
L startles, suddenly nauseous, staring up at the lab. He did not mean to come here. He should not be here. Augustine will walk through the doors of the lab and will see him and he doesn’t deserve that. There is still work to be done, and Lysandre does not have the time to see him. Augustine was almost fired simply for the association with Lysandre, has been forced out of the country and subjected to suspicion and interrogation for Lysandre’s crimes, and has been too good to condemn Lysandre despite every betrayal and in media interviews he still wears his wedding ring—
Oh. L’s hands are trembling again. He thrusts them into his pockets. He has always been prone to daydreams, and lost sight of the truth in the process, but it is simple: Augustine is not here. If anyone walks out of the Lab today it will be the interim director announced just this morning. Augustine is overseas, safe where Lysandre cannot hurt him.
It is for the best that Augustine is gone.
He hears Zygarde bark at him, demanding his attention, a new command; L obeys.