There's grass under his cheek. It scratches at him, the way his pillow only did when his mom used that one detergent he was allergic to. Ness grumbles, turns his head away. He doesn't feel like waking up just yet, not when his limbs are so pleasantly loose, when he feels sun-dappled and warm, but he comes to himself slowly, the sun in his eyes as soon as he's blinked the last vestiges of sleep away.
The sun is beaming down on him, not slanting through the blinds of his window to caress his face, and Ness thinks I fell asleep in my bed with a distance he only ever feels in dreams or at least in the proper, sleeping ones. Dreams can be real sometimes too, realer than anything. He learned that in Magicant, but really, Ness isn't thinking of Magicant just then – all he can think of is how the grass still itches, so he makes a face and rises from where he lies sprawled in sleep.
He stands, the sky stretching for miles above him, a perfect, pure blue without so much as a cloud in sight. The wind stirs the blades of grass, flutters them gently. Raising a hand to his head is instinct and when it meets the brim of his cap he isn't surprised, just like he isn't surprised to be standing on this hilltop. The meteorite and the scarring it had burnt into the earth is gone but Ness would recognize this place anywhere. It's where everything changed. For better or worse, this is where his journey began.
And it's as soon as that thought flashes through his mind that he sees him. Sunlight catches in his hair, turns it burnished gold, and he's not smiling but he never really smiled, did he? His mouth was always quicker to curl into a smirk or turn downwards in a frown. He never smiled for the joy of it like Ness did, probably because there was so little happiness in his life in comparison.
Thoughts like that used to make Ness' heart clench. Still does. He thinks that it probably always will, that something in his chest will always seize and scar whenever he thinks about the other boy. But Pokey is here, right in front of him, and it's impossible for him to be anything but happy then. Not when the blue-gray tinge to his skin is gone, the spider mecha that haunted his dreams nowhere to be seen. He looks like himself again, like the boy Ness lived next door to and played with every day for years, and Ness can't speak past the lump in his throat.
"Yo, pig's butt," Pokey says, because there's one thing Pokey Minch never suffered from it was a lack of words. "What's with that dumb look on your face? Oh, that's right, I forgot. It's impossible for a pig's butt to look any other way." He chortles, a wide smirk splitting his face.
It's always been like this with them. Pokey doesn't know how to communicate without insults or bluster and it's as easy as breathing for Ness to fall back into old habits, to slip into old patterns of behavior. Pokey's insults roll off him like water because the words don't matter, they've never mattered, what matters is that he's Ness and Pokey's Pokey and they're finally together.
Pokey stiffens when Ness strides forward, fists clenched at his sides, tensed like he's waiting for a blow. His body is drawn as tight as a bowstring when Ness pulls him into his arms and he's barely wrapped them around the other boy before Pokey shoves him away, hissing, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Pokey pushing him away isn't exactly new but it still hurts, though not as much as the look on Pokey's face before he stumbles back, as if Ness had gone and punched him. He smiles anyway, eyes water bright. His voice is tear clogged. "Hugging you."
"And why would you go and do a stupid thing like that?"
Honesty, his mom was always fond of telling him, is its own brand of courage.
Ness never understood just what that meant. He would gentle his scoff with a grin and say things like: So, wait, if I tell you I was the one who spilled soda all over your romance novel, not Tracy, that's true courage?
Of a sort, she'd say sagely, and then try to swat him with said novel while Ness laughed and ducked out of reach.
But Ness gets it now. Because he's done his fair share of heroic things but this? This feels like the bravest thing he's ever done.
"Because I'm happy you're here," he says, unhesitating, because true courage is being honest about the things that really matter. "Because you're my best friend and I miss you."
Pokey starts laughing his head off, an ugly sound that cuts deeper than any blade and takes Ness back to that final battle with Giygas, to Pokey laughing that same twisted laugh while taunting Ness and his friends about their imminent demise.
"Oh man. I always knew you were an idiot, pig's butt, but this has gotta be a level of stupidity I have never seen." Smirking, Pokey takes on a sing song voice, "'Because you're my best friend and I miss you.' God, you're pathetic. Have you really not caught on by now, Ness? I hate you. I've always hated you. What's it gonna take, huh, to get it through your dumb little head? Do I have to hurt you and your friends some more?"
The reminder makes Ness flinch but he just presses his lips together. And maybe Pokey is right, maybe he is an idiot, but Ness doesn't care. He doesn't owe anyone unconditional love and acceptance but Pokey has his anyway. Giving up is not in his vocabulary. That's just how he is; he doesn't know how to be any other way.
"I never gave up on you." His voice sounds ragged to his own ears. "Even at the end I still believed in you, that I'd save you and we'd go home together and things would go back to being the way they'd always been."
The words sound more foolish out loud than they did in his head but he means them, god, does he mean them. The stories all start once upon a time and end at happily ever after and never talk about how hollow victory feels when you find yourself racing next door to share something with your best friend, only for your heart to break when you remember he's not there anymore, will never be there again.
Pokey just stares at him, eyes hard as flint, before shaking his head almost wonderingly.
"You really are an idiot."
He stalks closer and thought his skin isn't blue-gray and his incisors aren't pointy his expression is so much like the one he wore at the end of everything that it's hard for Ness not to shiver.
"Do you know what I've always hated about you, Ness? You get everything. Get the nice, shiny life and the great, shining destiny. Everyone's friend, everyone's hero. And what do I get? Zip, diddly, squat." He grins suddenly, baring all his teeth. "But not anymore. I've got power now, like nothing your little pea brain could dream. So here's a newsflash for you, pig's butt: I. Don't. Want. To. Be. Saved."
Stop, he wants to beg. Stop.
"This isn't you," Ness says brokenly, hoping that saying it would make it true. "I've seen this dozens of times now, okay, Pokey, none of this is you. It's all Giygas."
"I betcha been telling yourself that this whole time. Poor Pokey," Pokey sing-songs again, "caught in evil Giygas' clutches." He barks out another laugh. "Tell me, Ness: do you see Giygas around anywhere?"
Ness closes his eyes against the truth. Tears prick at them. His heart is pulsing in his ears and he can feel Pokey's breath fanning his face. It's as sour as ever and he suddenly wants to laugh at the absurdity of it, because of all the things that have changed that would be the only one to remain the same.
"Do you hate me, Ness?"
He sounds like he doesn't care one way or the other. There is no remorse in Pokey's voice, no regret. Ness takes in a breath and exhales it slowly. The knot in his chest hasn't come undone. He's starting to realize it never will.
For anyone else maybe, that would be it, the deciding factor, the final puzzle piece sliding into place. But he's not anyone else. He's Ness. And his answer has always been the same.
"No, Pokey," he says finally. "I really don't."
He opens his eyes to the sun streaming through his window, the dream already slipping away from his mind's grasp.
It isn't until later that he discovers the yoyo he keeps on his bedside table is gone.