Ah, I haven't written for these two in a little while. XD Well, in a nutshell, I needed to find a way to get past my concrete-and-steel-enforced writer's block for Requiem, and writing a legendshipping oneshot seemed like the way to do it. Did it help? A little bit, not much. But it was definitely fun to revisit these two characters and their dynamic. I don't feel like I did them much justice, but I tried. Lol.
Takes place right after the Rise of Darkrai movie. Because I figure Cresselia would have SOMEthing to say about it.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer- I don't own Pokemon, nor do I own the lovely song "Anywhere But Here." Those two honors belong to Satoshi Tajiri and Safetysuit.
His wounds still hurt like hell.
Even with both time and his status as a legendary facilitating the healing process, the fact remained that he could feel his entire body stinging fiercely. An abrupt twinge in a newly-healed gash just beneath the crimson ruff about his neck made him wince, albeit in a somewhat-muffled manner, and put a hand against the affected area.
Palkia and Dialga definitely didn't hold back.
Of course, that resurrected the question as to why the two dragons of space and time had been fighting so viciously against one another in the first place.
Although he knew that ordinarily the two's arguments never got that violent, he couldn't quite find it in himself to dwell too much on why exactly they had taken the fight to the town Arceus had assigned him to protect. Consequently, he pushed it aside in favor of exasperation toward himself at feeling he had to do this here, tonight, of all times and places.
Why did I feel I had to see her right after making sure Alamos was all right?
It's not like she'll understand, or anything. She'll be pissed.
His brow furrowed even more, if possible. The mental image of a pink, metallic swan – the source of his pain to come – appeared in his mind's eye, and he fought back a tiny wince at the thought of how she would doubtlessly attack him, cursing his recklessness all the way. While psychic-type moves could not affect dark type Pokemon like himself, the female he had come to know – and respect, much to his chagrin – over his millennia of life had other means of hurting him.
The only possible way he could escape at least her verbal chastisement would be if she noticed he was already covered in half-healed injuries and relented. Aloud, he snorted; he could only hold out hope that he would make it out of this with all his limbs intact.
Still…
A sigh issued out of him into the crisp night air: a rare sound for him, but one that fit his current emotions. The emotions that, really, were why he hovered over the grass on this island now.
At the very least, he owed it to the resident of this place to let her know that the battle at Alamos Town hadn't killed him.
He lifted his head to gaze at the sky above, almost absently taking in the moon. Full, he noted, and thought sardonically that that figured, considering his purpose here tonight.
His gaze roved about the area, taking in the way the moon lit up the sea just beyond; the light breeze that tugged the grass; the lilac scent that permeated the air – in other words, the aesthetics that any other creature, Pokemon or human alike, would have marveled at, but that he all but ignored. This legendary had been to his lunar counterpart's home so often in the past that he was all but immune to its beauty now.
But you do at least notice it, he reminded himself, rolling his eyes at his own self-contradiction.
Some of the longer blades of grass brushed against his dark form as he moved beneath the trees. Only the occasional pan of the moonlight across the white "hair" that billowed out behind him betrayed his presence, but other than that, he was perfectly concealed as a different kind of nighttime shadow.
A nighttime shadow that had forsaken his intangibility to protect Alamos.
His injuries begin to throb all over again as the memories of the past few days or so came rushing back to him: trying and failing to keep that group of kids away from the garden; the fog that had enveloped the town; his coming to realize his attachment to, and desire to protect, the town Arceus had only sent him to for a brief patrol; the pure energy that had engulfed him as Palkia and Dialga's Spatial Rend and Roar of Time both struck him at once; returning to the town to assure its safety after a day or so spent recovering on Newmoon Island…
And his decision to come here tonight, one that had been born of… what, exactly? The reason why the phantom had lighted down here to visit his swan counterpart still eluded him, although the desire to visit her remained strong within him. It vexed him to no end.
Even now, he folded his arms and inclined his head downward as he continued to float through the forest. Barely avoiding a protruding branch before it could slice him, he tilted his chin down just a bit further, so the bottom half of his head vanished beneath his crimson ruff.
"What is the matter with me?" he muttered aloud, almost without knowing he had.
Only when a newfound brightness invaded his periphery did he look up. The forest around him had petered out entirely, replaced by the scant foliage and rocky crags that surrounded the cave before him, allowing the moon to fully reveal itself.
Instantly, the sounds and scents of the seaside cliff magnified in his senses: the salty aroma of the ocean; the gently fluctuating tide sucking at the sandy beach far below; the ever so slight nip to the air.
He cared about none of these things.
His destination – the yawning cavern that lay just before him – caught his eye and held it. If he knew his counterpart, she was probably there, recuperating with a good night's sleep after carrying out her duties of giving good dreams to the people and Pokemon of the world.
A wry smirk twisted his lips. Of course, I don't really make that any easier.
It was part of the reason why she carried such vitriol toward him all the time. And really, it wasn't an unfounded hatred: the other counterparts – save for maybe Groudon and Kyogre, who spent more time arguing than they did much else with one another – of the legendary Pokemon council had set up a system to make each other's jobs easier.
"Just my luck to get stuck with the guy who destroys all my efforts," he could almost hear her say, with a heavy tone of both scorn and annoyance to her voice. "If Arceus could make any other Pokemon my counterpart, then why did he have to make it Darkrai?"
Thinking of her caustic words, Darkrai suddenly felt unease simmer deep within. For the first time, the possibility of a reaction besides her getting angry at him for his recklessness and grievous injuries came into his mind. And he didn't like the feeling that welled up within him at the thought of that other possibility.
She might not get angry, he realized. She might be happy I got this hurt.
Something gave a pang in his chest, and he put one long hand to his chest in an instinctive attempt to stave off the abrupt surge of pain. "Why…?" he heard himself whisper aloud. He swore he could hear desperate curiosity in that one word, but then the wind was sweeping it away in its gentle grasp and he couldn't be sure.
It… hurt, to think that his counterpart might relish his agony.
Immediately, trying to palliate the reality that acknowledging the possibility had lent it, Darkrai began berating himself for his own stupidity. Cresselia might not like me that much, but she knows the world needs balance, he reminded himself. Light and dark, earth and water, dreams and nightmares. That's just the way it works.
"That's just the way it works," he repeated aloud.
Why didn't he feel satisfied at that explanation?
Because it was a load of crap, that was why. For lack of a better term.
Darkrai knew it had something to do with his own emotions; he couldn't just pin it on Cresselia's desire not to have the world unbalanced and leave it at that. He was well aware that his nightmare-giving capabilities were probably the least necessary out of the council's powers – a fact he had noticed long ago and now reflected on with a sort of dry acceptance.
But every coin still needed two sides.
"Darkrai?"
Every muscle in his body tensed up at the sound of the voice he had dreaded hearing all night. Slowly, he turned to face the speaker, already knowing who would be there gazing at him.
"What are you doing here?" Cresselia asked, tilting her metallic head to the side.
Darkrai narrowed his eyes, plastering a look of indifference on his face. He searched her countenance for the feelings he had predicted her to have at seeing him here, and found them in abundance. Annoyance shone in those carmine eyes and made them into nothing more than glittering slits.
And yet… the way her head was tilted gave her curiosity away as well.
Hm.
Any other legendary would probably have teased her about the newfound intrigue that marred her irritation. But this was Darkrai, and Darkrai simply lowered his hand to his side (how long had he kept it over his heart, anyway?) and appraised his counterpart.
"Hello to you too, Cresselia," he greeted.
The swan rolled her eyes, straightening her neck so the look of interest vanished. Darkrai almost smirked at the sight – she was definitely back to normal. As much as he hated the emotional pain that sprang up again within him at considering it, he also relished the thought of how she hadn't changed.
"Since when are you one for pleasantries?" she said.
Darkrai hesitated. She had him there.
Cresselia took his silence as an invitation to continue. "You haven't answered my question," she went on, beginning to circle him. Darkrai followed her with his eyes, noting only vaguely how the moonlight reflecting off her changed from almost blinding to a tiny glimmer with the angle at which it struck her moving form. "Why are you here?"
Her tone grew slightly more acerbic when she saw what Darkrai's eyes were doing. Hastily, the nightmare-giver looked away, feeling oddly as though it took some effort to do so (although he couldn't fathom why it would).
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Cresselia give him an expectant look. The rather impetuous thought she can just deal with me waiting moved across his mind, and he blinked. Normally he didn't think that childishly; any traces of doing so were immediately snuffed out by his pride.
Then again, normally he didn't let Cresselia get this far under his skin.
But that brought his ever-treacherous curiosity back to why he had let her do that in the first place.
She had stopped moving, he noted. Disappointment filled him at that, because now he couldn't use the way the moonlight reflected off her metallic form as an excuse to not look her in the eye.
"Could… could we go inside the cave first?" he heard himself ask, stalling, and damn near lost himself to frustration right there. Had he seriously just stuttered? Out loud?
Cresselia obviously noticed the oddity in his demeanor as well – the hesitation, as well as the look of someone growing to regret their prior tone of voice – but other than a second-long tilt of the head, she did not appear to truly acknowledge it. Just as quickly, the mask of irritation had returned.
"No, Darkrai, we may not go inside," she said through clenched teeth. "Oh, don't look like that. I know you're allergic to being outside and among the rest of the world and all, but you can deal with it." She continued to glower at the apprehensive phantom, even as she moved nearer. "Now you're going to stop avoiding my question and tell me why. You. Are. Here."
By the time she had finished speaking, Darkrai had to float back a ways to restore the comfortable amount of space that had been between them before. For a Pokemon that claimed to hate him so much, she certainly was violating his personal space more than he would assume…
Frankly, he could not understand why she hadn't sensed his injuries by now.
Almost on-cue, as though thinking of his reason for coming to Fullmoon Island at all had summoned it, fiery agony began to surge through one of the more onerous wounds on his side. Before he could stop himself, one of his hands flew to the afflicted area and spread twig-like fingers over it in a vain attempt to stem the pain.
Cresselia narrowed one eye and craned her neck, trying to see the source of his gesture. "What's wrong?"
Crap. Darkrai considered trying to be tough and calling it nothing, but quickly realized that the look on Cresselia's face would warrant no nonsense at this point. Besides, it seemed like the perfect lead-in for him to tell her what had happened to him.
"I got pretty badly hurt a little while ago," he admitted.
"Oh." The swan blinked a couple of times, but didn't take her eyes off him. He thought he caught a creeping movement close to her, but her next words distracted him. "Well, I'm not going to heal you, if that's what you're after," she continued, an edge coming into her voice.
Yet to Darkrai, it sounded rather feigned.
Something suddenly made contact with the hand over his injury. It didn't take Darkrai long to realize that the movement he had faintly seen had been her own hand moving toward his, and what she was trying to do. Startled, he tried to jerk his hand out of her grasp, but her grip was stronger than he'd thought, and in an instant she had tugged the improvised covering away.
Silence descended heavily upon them as Cresselia took in the half-closed gash. As he surveyed her shock, Darkrai realized he was searching for any infinitesimal change in emotion in her, and tried to stem the hope (hope? Something was definitely wrong with him) that had arisen at the thought of what she might feel. What he hoped for, he did not exactly know, but he did know he needed to stop wasting his energy on something so idiotic.
He followed her wide eyes to the swollen, half-patched weal that she had just forced him to reveal. Inwardly, he flinched as he recalled how that particular little mark had come into existence; Palkia's claws definitely hurt more than one would first assume.
"What happened?" Cresselia finally whispered, and the pained tone to her voice was all the more striking due to the hope Darkrai had just discarded.
I guess I was hoping for her to respond like that.
Any triumph he might have felt at having that prayer satisfied, though, was tarnished by the obvious worry in her eyes.
Worry? Darkrai suddenly thought. Cresselia never seemed to care enough about him to expend her mental energy on worrying about him before.
He didn't know whether he liked it or not.
Confused in the face of his conflicting emotions (that wouldn't have even arisen if he hadn't come here tonight, what had possessed him to do this anyway?), the phantom turned his face away from hers. "Arceus sent me to Alamos Town on a patrol a little while ago," he said.
Cresselia simply eyed him, probably trying to see if he was telling the truth or not. At last, though, she pulled her neck back a ways to get a better look. "No wild Pokemon could have done that," she murmured, sounding as though she were thinking aloud without realizing it.
She looked up at him, suspicion brightening the moonlight-fractured glitter of her eyes. "What happened?" she repeated, but this time around those two words carried less terror and more acerbity.
That's more like it.
And yet, even as the wry thought echoed through his mind, the phantom winced, because now came the hard part.
He turned his head away to stare out at the ever-placid sea, whose blinding silvery glow still fluctuated with every tranquil wave. A beautiful view, to those without a purpose here tonight; but to him, a bitter reminder of where he was.
It was why he had wanted to talk to Cresselia in her cave, and not out on one of Fullmoon Island's many cliffs. Somehow, talking about this particular subject out here – in the outside world, a setting that reminded him only too well of where he had gotten this beaten up in the first place – made it feel more real to him.
Anywhere but here would have been better for telling her about this particular incident.
He took a deep breath, looking from the breathtaking ocean back to her. "Dialga and Palkia were fighting," he explained, "and they took it right into Alamos."
And you tried to stop them. Cresselia did not speak but for a tiny gasp – and even that seemed to escape her regardless of her volition – but the assuming statement lay between them nonetheless.
"Darkrai…" the swan breathed, wide carmine eyes locked unflinchingly on his. Darkrai met her gaze fairly levelly, mildly surprised at his own boldness. Considering his earlier reluctance to look at her, this was definitely progress.
For the first time he saw her hand had never left his, still placed over the one she had pushed away from his chest. This realization triggered something deep inside him: a kind of pleasure he had never felt before.
He struggled to place the emotion's name. But before he could, Cresselia tore her hand away from where it had practically twined itself with his, fury replacing the almost-maybe-tenderness in her gaze.
Cyan eyes widened and he drew back slightly in alarm. It seemed the reaction he feared was about to come upon him, and disappointment and fear alike warred within him at her abrupt change. Shamefully, he found the former prevailed.
"What is the matter with you?" she hissed, thrusting her face into his.
Darkrai was almost never at a loss for words. Under nearly every circumstance, he had something to say already laid out in his head, whether it was a sardonic quip or (the extremely rare) reassuring comment. Yet now he couldn't think of what to say, his jaw working like that of a Magikarp out of water.
"What were you thinking, taking on both of them like that?" Darkrai opened his mouth to speak, trying to tell her it wasn't so much his fault as theirs, but she barreled on, heedless of his attempts to stand up for himself.
"You know what they're like when they get into one of their little arguments!" Cresselia spat, glaring at him with a force that rivaled the blistering ability of the currently-sleeping sun. At her words, Darkrai couldn't hold back a tiny snort; if that was one of their "little arguments," then he didn't want to know how violent things got when it turned extreme.
Misinterpreting his derisive noise, Cresselia pressed even closer so her nose now practically touched… well, at least the part of his face where his nose would be. Disarmed, the phantom tried to move back, but a sudden, sharp pang resounded throughout his battered body and effectively immobilized him.
"Don't you dare laugh! Why..." Cresselia hesitated then, actually hesitated, as though taking the time to think about what she said next. Watching her fumble for words, Darkrai felt a little smug; at least now he knew he wasn't the only one.
"Why you felt you had to protect a town you barely spent a week in is beyond me," she finished rather lamely. Almost instantly, though, her angry façade slid back into place. "Even if Arceus assigned you to watch over Alamos, you know what would happen if you got killed!"
"I thought legendaries couldn't die," Darkrai had to interject. He nearly winced as Latios came to mind, but pushed the thought of the dead legendary away to focus on his budding confusion. "Anyway," he went on, eyes narrowing in as much a display of irritation as in response to the acute pain, "you've never shown a sign of giving an honest damn about my welfare before. Why you're doing it now is beyond me."
The last part was spoken in a mocking, high-pitched imitation of Cresselia's own tenor. Clearly, the childish gesture had a powerful effect on her, for the swan drew back a few inches, surprise eclipsing her anger.
With her lack of interruption urging him on, the phantom continued, his voice growing louder and louder until it overtook the sound of the waves crashing below. "In fact, maybe it was just my mistake, but I always kind of assumed you hated me a little bit. What with all your comments about getting 'stuck with me as a counterpart' and all that." Bitterness edged into his voice and gave it a hard, knife-like effect as it cut through the air.
"Darkrai…" Cresselia began in a dangerous tone.
"You know what the funny thing is?" he snarled, flinging his arms down to his side and making her flinch back with the gesture (and maybe it was the lifetime of fear that even the slightest mention of his name always evoked in people and Pokemon alike, but he found himself savoring her trepidation a little). "I came here tonight – right after recovering and going back to make sure Palkia and Dialga hadn't finished the job of completely destroying Alamos – I came here, right after the fact, to tell you what's going on. Because I figure, hey, she's my counterpart, I should tell her she can keep doing her job of negating all the crap I inflict on people's minds; I owe her at least that much for even causing her that much misery in the first place –"
"Darkrai, shut up!" Cresselia barked. Oddly, she succeeded in silencing him; his jaw snapped shut, out of both surprise and vexation at her – and himself, as well. Certainly, he hadn't expected such a catharsis like that to come from him.
"Thank you," Cresselia huffed, but he thought he caught a hint of astonishment flicker across her eyes and briefly make them brighter. Almost as quickly, though, gratification had replaced it.
He frowned, preparing himself to speak, but her words precluded even the percolation of possible retorts in the back of his mind.
"Yes, you're a pain in my ass and a thorn in my side," she growled. "Yes, you're the reason I have to stay up late almost every night fixing what you mess up. But… but that doesn't mean I hate you."
At this point, her voice had become notably subdued, to the point where Darkrai had to strain to hear her. Once he did register what she had said, though, he straightened, ignoring the scream of protest his nerves sent to his wounds at such an abrupt movement. For millennia, he had assumed that her constant complaints about his steady nightmare-giving (about doing his job, for Arceus' sake) served as a neon sign proclaiming her anathema toward him and all he stood for in huge, multicolored letters.
But now…
He shifted uneasily, not knowing what to say. Clenched his fists, unclenched them, clenched them again. The old adage about a single moment having the ability to irrevocably change everything was familiar to him, but he had always dismissed it as a silly, romantic notion.
Until this moment, at least.
Right then and there, the reason why he had experienced that seemingly-strange fervent hope earlier became clear to him, with a sharpness that rivaled his physical pain. He had hoped she would be worried about him; it was why he had come tonight in the first place – he had prayed, strived for her sympathy, for even the smallest pinpoint of the moonlight she represented to fall on and warm the shadow he was.
He also realized that throughout these few seconds of paradigm-shattering epiphany, Cresselia had remained silent as well.
Mentally taking a deep breath, he quietly asked, "Then what does it mean?"
At this, Cresselia blinked a couple of times, thoughtfulness wiping every hint of belligerence from her being. Silence thickly permeated the air between them, to the point that Darkrai seriously considered trying to break the silence. What he would say, he did not know; he couldn't exactly change the subject now, and if he were being perfectly honest with himself – a new thing for him, but everything else tonight was new to him anyway – he wanted to know the answer to his question so badly it almost hurt.
Then Cresselia spoke.
"It means you drive me up the wall, for one thing," she muttered, drawing almost imperceptibly closer. "It means I hate the workload you drop on me every night." Closer. "It means I hate how you seem to blow off everything I say, like even your counterpart's opinion doesn't matter." Closer. "It definitely means you should never get this hurt, even while protecting something." Even closer.
His wounds twinged.
He could only hover stiffly there, unable to breathe, unable to move for fear that even the slightest shift would dislodge his suddenly-overactive heart from its precarious position in his chest.
But that feeling only intensified when Cresselia stretched her neck forward and pressed the top of her head against his shoulder.
"It means," she said softly, "I want to hate you, but I can't."
It was Darkrai's turn to blink, his eyes becoming wide in an extremely rare expression for him. His mind seemed to shut down at that moment, wiping itself blank but for the part that registered how much warmth – both internal and external – he could feel emanating from her.
"Cresselia…" he managed.
She shook her head, crescent-shaped appendages at the side of her head brushing against him with the movement. (He was lucky he had few injuries there, otherwise it would have hurt.) "I don't even know why I'm telling you this," she chuckled, self-deprecation etched into every syllable. "But Arceus knows that if you died, I'd have paperwork for the rest of my life."
That cleared the suffocating fog of confusion from Darkrai's mind. "Well, thanks so much for caring about me," he scoffed, feeling a tiny bit of comfort return at the smoothness with which the remark slipped out.
Cresselia closed her eyes; he could feel her eyelashes move from the angle at which her head was positioned. Her lack of verbal response surprised him (well, more than the whole Cresselia hugging Darkrai thing already had) – given the way her mood had swung from tenderness to anger so readily tonight, he had expected her to jolt up and glare at him.
(He was a little glad she chose to maintain their contact.)
"Haven't you heard a word I've said to you?" she whispered, her voice nearly blending into the sound of the waves with how similar they sounded. "I'd kind of be a wreck if you died, in case you haven't noticed."
Because you need a verbal punching bag? Darkrai left the sardonic comment unspoken, though. Even he knew that would ruin the moment.
Still, beyond that he had no backup response.
So he remained there, not knowing what to say or do. This went far beyond the range of emotions he had expected from her at this little piece of news; he had anticipated anger or triumph, and all the negative feelings in between.
And yet –
The breath caught in his throat (he would almost have registered the clichéd nature of that reaction, had the realization that had prompted it not been so startling), and he forgot every ounce of remaining pain in his body at that moment.
Because in the end, hadn't he wanted this? To get a reaction out of her?
For her to show that she did, in fact, care about him?
Mild dismay flickered weakly within him at the fact that this new revelation didn't disgust him as much as it should. An instant later, though, it receded back into the depths of his mind and did appear again.
Cresselia started when surprisingly gentle fingers settled against the back of her neck. She made as if to move back, but Darkrai's other hand came up to her cheek and held her fast before she could recoil. He felt her stiffen briefly beneath his grip, before apparently deciding she had let herself bare this much of her feelings to him already and calming down.
Staring down at her, the phantom felt a little smug at having reduced her to silence at last. However, when she let out a sigh that swept against his chest, warmth rushed to his cheeks and he had to look away. Fleetingly, exasperatedly, he thought, I'm acting like a teenage human more than a deity.
Aloud, though, he only said one word, speaking softly so as not to break the calm that had swathed itself around them.
"Sorry."
He could not see her expression from here, but he knew a startled expression would be spreading across her face right now. Darkrai, apologizing? he could almost hear her think.
At the same time, he knew she would be the only one he would ever let witness that.
"If I'd known getting this hurt would scare you this much," he went on, "I wouldn't have done it. I would have protected Alamos, because it was on Arceus' orders… but never to the extent of almost giving up my life."
Cresselia said nothing.
Hesitantly, not sure whether she was listening (it was an idiotic notion, because she had listened to everything else he had told her, but her being so close was clouding his ability to think rationally), Darkrai sighed and hung his head as best he could in their current position. This way, his chin brushed against the top of her head, a fact that he was painfully aware of.
He thought about filling the silence – saying everything that was plaguing him; laying it all out in the open in much the same way she had. I had to stay and protect Alamos. They needed me. I needed a sign that you cared about me at least as a counterpart. I felt like telling you about this inside your cave would make this a little less real, somehow, and a little more tolerable.
But then she took up the duty that he could not bring himself to.
"It's okay," she whispered.
And suddenly, it didn't matter that he felt warm and content and nervous and uncomfortable all at once at the sensation of her breath on his skin. It didn't matter that he had once hated the impulse to come to her and talk to her and hold her. It didn't matter that his lacerations were starting to burn again. It didn't matter that his original plan to say this anywhere but here – out on the cliffs, not in the privacy of her cave – had gone straight to hell.
Because in the end, everything had gone better than he had envisioned.
And he found himself thinking, well – since she said it was okay, I could stay here a little longer.
Pfft, fail title justification. D: T-the lyrics for the song fit the fic, at any rate...?
But yeah, some reviews would be great! (I need to get another oneshot done soon... 29 is such an ugly number xD;)