Chapter Text
It rains again.
It rains, and Mossdeep drinks in the sky. For three days and three nights it rains, the sound a constant etching on the windowpane. Each sprout seems to reach up and embrace it, tiny hands stretching ever upward, every weathered tree sinking its roots deeper into the shoreline. The tide swells and leaps in an endless dance. The shores recede. Blankets of rain disappear into the water. It is as if a thousand needles fall—the sea becomes a tapestry of ripples.
Steven opens the door and breathes in the scent, low and earthy. This is the rain that nourishes life, as it should, not the piercing rain of the past. Life, not destruction. Life, not despair. He tries to remember this, to hold it tight as well as he can.
The rain pours down. He walks.
Since he first saw the city with his own eyes, Mossdeep has been split in two. There are the houses, the Gym, the Space Center, the things built out of cement and wood and steel, where people live their everyday lives. Then there is the forest: taking up the west half of the island, a tangle of draping leaves and sprawling roots and muddy swamps—wilderness that closes, crescent-like, around one sun-lit stretch at the island’s west border where he makes his residence.
He approaches the forest now. Once he is swallowed by the canopy, the sound of rain dims. If he closes his eyes, it sounds almost like laughter coming from another room. Water filters through broad fronds and trickles along knotted trunks to reach the earth, burrowing deeper into soft soil. Mangroves and cedars, glazed with light in the soft morning. He sweeps his gaze over them, looking for a familiar flash of metal. Nothing.
Distantly, he fears it may not be so familiar anymore. How much separation can undo years of closeness? Eroding it away as shorelines into the ocean? He stops at the base of a century oak, reaches out and traces its trunk; lines snaking like veins, dark gashes and circular imprints carved across its surface. His hand comes away damp.
Nudging aside vines, he ventures deeper. He nears the heart of the forest, now—branches shy away, roots retreat into the earth. In the center of a clearing there is a small swamp. A mangrove extends a ropy limb out over the water, the perfect height for a boy to grab and swing over to the other side. He takes it in his hand, feeling rough fibers against his palm, feeling the rain fall. Again he almost hears laughter.
And all at once, he knows.
The breath stutters in his chest. His shoes are soaked through with mud. He is scared to turn around.
A mechanical rumble rises from behind him, low and resonant, as if it were one with the earth itself—volume swelling until it thrumms through his nerves, his very bones. Despite everything, it is so familiar that it makes him want to sob. And no, he is not the same man, he is not and can never be again, but some things refuse to change after all. Perhaps he will always be loved. And perhaps he will feel whole once more.
He turns.
Metagross stands, dented and weathered, mud covering its claws, scratches running wild over its frame. It has rust clinging to its joints, dull patches of copper scraping and scratching against itself, making its movements stiff. The metal cross on its face is heavily dented, one eye caved in, half-squinting up at him. And still, its gaze is no less determined, carrying the same quiet resolve Steven has known nearly all his life. And still, and still, it roams the woods in the rain, spending day after day with the mud and moss looking for a Trainer who has—by all measure—abandoned it in every way, who has let it become irreparably damaged and hurt and alone. Because it still does not want to train under anyone else, even for a moment. Because it looks for him.
He falls to the ground on his knees, surrenders to the mud and the rain. Forgive me, he might be thinking. I have failed you. Forgive me.
Another rumble, this time with overtones arching high and resolute. He looks up, meeting its eyes. Throughout the years, he has grown adept at distinguishing Metagross’ meaning, in reading its robotic cries like a second language. Now, with every pulsing beat, it says I forgive you. Or perhaps it simply says love.
He lets himself lean forward, touching his forehead to cold metal, feeling its eyes close in response. A low, rich tone joins the mix: There is nothing to forgive.
He tries to speak. He opens his mouth, and nothing comes. Swallows; tries again. “Thank you,” he says, the sound of his own voice scratchy with disuse, foreign to himself. Straightening up, he unclasps the ball from his belt and holds it outward. His hands are shaking.
Metagross bows its head forward, and disappears in a flash of light.
Silence.
For a moment, all he hears is rain. An insistent pitter-patter on the broad leaves above, falling into the swamp, slipping between fronds to land on his frame. He thinks the same rain must be dancing upon the roof of his quiet cottage, trickling off of the Space Center’s spires, cascading down the cracked outer dome of Sootopolis, down to the sea below—drumming on the paths of Fortree, diving into the lakes near Fallabor, shining on the bells of Slateport. In Rustboro, his father stands up from his desk to watch the rain trace across the windowpane. In Verdanturf, his mother tends to her garden.
Something breaks.
He cries. He cries, all at once, and the surge of emotion threatens to break him in two. He cannot be crying, not already, when he still has so much to do—he needs to assemble the members of his team, one by one; he needs to travel the length of Hoenn and speak with people who worry about him and tell them he is doing better; he needs to take in the land and seas and skies and ask himself if it is really worth living for after all. But he is crying, he is, and it feels like this: he has been sleeping for so long, and now he is awake. He has been trapped, and now he breathes freely again. He has been shrouded under some impenetrable veil, thick as the clouds in a thunderstorm, and now he can finally, finally see the light pierce through.
He gasps for breath. He should be dead. He should be dead, but he is not. He should be dead but he is not. And, and—here he is: rain-touched, smeared with mud, something half-human just emerging out of clay—and he is alive, he is alive.