Gladion,
The ship's closer and closer to Kanto, now! We're due to dock in Vermilion City in four days. I'm excited! Alola seems so much more laid-back than Kanto, I'm sure it will be a whole new experience!
I'm not too fond of the open ocean, but I think Mother likes it. She talked a little bit, today, about how Father used to love the sea. Apparently, he liked to joke about leaving everything behind and starting some farm on deserted islands when work got too tough, he loved it so much. But he loved Pokemon more, I suppose. She was laughing happily when she told that story.
I'll write you more as soon as we arrive! Take care, and I wish you all the best!
-Lillie
They make him acting president of the Aether Foundation.
Logically, he'd known it would happen – his parents' will had dictated that the company passed to their children, as it had for generations, but being eight years old and knowing he'd get the company in a few decades was different from being given the reins six years later.
It's odd. While on the run, Aether Foundation had felt like a last-resort safehouse – if things got really bad, he could return. He would have to deal with his furious mother, but it would be food and shelter and time spent with his sister. Now, his mother and sister are gone and Gladion is fourteen, with no idea how to manage a giant company in a floating island that seems increasingly empty.
Wicke tries her best to help him, to ease him into the administrative work. She clucks about how it wasn't meant to be this way, but, well. Life's funny like that, he supposes, poring over another balance book.
"Does it make sense, now, why we stopped investing in this startup?" she's asking him, patient and gentle.
"Because the company wasn't showing the growth it expected to have, in addition to having some shady deals on the side?" It's painfully boring. Careful, meticulous, detail-oriented Lillie would be better at this, he thinks. He's too impatient and hotheaded to really care.
"Good." She smiles at him kindly, like she used to when he was younger. "You have a good eye for this, Master Gladion. Just like–"
She catches herself, of course. Wicke is careful not to mention his parents around him.
"I'm going to take a break," Gladion announces, too loudly.
Wicke knows better than to follow him.
Dearest Gladion,
We arrived in Vermilion City yesterday! It's amazing! There are so many tall buildings. The people here take a very different approach to living by the sea than we do in Alola. But I think it's good for Mother, we haven't been in Kanto long but the change in scenery is good for her, she's breathing easier. She told me she misses you today.
I met the Gym Leader – can you believe it, actual Kantonian gyms, not trials! – of Vermilion at the Pokemon Center by accident. His Raichu is the Kantonian, non-Psychic type! I was so amazed, but he knew instantly that we were from Alola, he said his friends that went to Alola were also amazed at the Raichu there. I'm sure Hau would be shocked! Send my love to him and Moon, and of course to everyone at the Aether Foundation!
Professor Kukui sent me Mr. Bill's address. Tomorrow, we'll make our way to Cerulean City, and then onwards to his house! Pray everything goes well!
-Lillie
He knows Hau writes to Lillie regularly, if only because he finds a way to insert it in their conversations whenever they meet for battles, then malasada. Lillie sends him pictures of Kanto, of Lusamine with Mt. Moon behind her, of Kantonian versions of Pokemon, of little things to show him, because Gladion doesn't write back, I don't know if he's getting my letters, so you've got to show him this, Hau!
(If Moon is writing to his sister, she makes no mention of it, only inclining her head every so often when Hau mentions something interesting.)
"Why don't you write to her?" Hau asks, simple and curious.
"…I wouldn't know what to say," Gladion says, surprised at his own honesty.
"You're her brother," Hau points out, his eyes wide. "You've gotta be able to tell her something."
But the truth is that Gladion hasn't been her brother for some time, not since he took Null and left her with Lusamine. He remembers the words he'd hastily scrawled on a sheet of motel paper, and they even feel trite in his mouth.
Mother, I apologize most sincerely for the actions I took in taking Null and running away. Yet I cannot regret these actions. They were for the sake of the greater good. So, until we meet again...
"My family isn't exactly great at keeping track of each other," he says instead, snappish. At least Hau gets the hint, changing the topic, but the concerned furrow doesn't quite leave his forehead when he looks at Gladion for the rest of their lunch. Gladion turns his head to avoid looking at it, only to meet Moon's quiet, slate-gray gaze, and he frowns and huffs and looks away again.
She keeps looking at him, almost as if contemplating something.
"I have – I have something to show you," Moon says after Hau runs off to speak with his grandfather. She rarely says something not monosyllabic and hardly ever initiates a conversation, let alone with Gladion, so he listens.
"Do you have a Ride Charizard?" she asks him. There's an undercurrent of urgency in her gaze that he has never associated with her.
"I do," he says. But he hasn't been using it; lately, there hasn't been a lot of places he has to be.
She doesn't say anything else, just brandishes her Ride Pager, looking at him expectantly until he fishes his out of his pocket.
Whatever he thought she was going to show him, it's not – this, not these tiny, otherwise uninhabited little islands off the Akala coastline, where Moon's Pokemon clamber all around. They flock to her when they see her, of course; she has a way with the creatures he has yet to see anyone match, and she pets one or two on the head before turning to him.
Whatever he expected, it's not –
Dear Gladion,
Cerulean City is nice! It's more laid-back than Vermilion, and there are so many water-types! So many Pokemon are different, but also some are the same! I met another woman in a store, a swimming teacher, and she said she was just recently in Alola for a wedding, and she loved it so much she wants to go back! Ah, I love people talking of home so fondly, it makes me miss it more terribly!
Mother brought up Father again today. She misses him terribly, and still mourns him. It's rather wonderful, in a twisted way, that she still loves him after all this time, but I find it hard to sympathize with that. He must have been a great guy, huh?
-Lillie
PS. Hau told me that you are getting my letters! Do write back, Mother and I are waiting to hear word from you!
Lillie doesn't remember much of their father. She had told him as much, when they were younger, and he'd climbed into her bed in order to help her fall asleep after their mother wouldn't tuck her in anymore. What was dad like? she had asked. How were they together?
What was mom like? is what he heard.
Shame had curled itself in its stomach when he'd realized he could hardly remember anything beyond flashes of a warm voice and a kind smile, of large, calloused hands ruffling his head, of sturdy shoulders Gladion would be hoisted on. His father was a smart man, building, always building, and he'd let Gladion sit at his worktable and answer his questions. I'm proud of you, my boy! his father would say, after Gladion would understand something complex, and his mother would laugh, genuine and sweet, and call for snacks to be brought.
But surely, these little things were more than what his small, scared sister had, and so he told her everything, watching as her eyes widen with amazement.
And the man in front of him - he's larger, tanner, and there are crow's feet around the edges of his eyes when he grins and greets Moon, but his eyes are unmistakably Lillie's, aren't they?
Father was building, always building.
"You brought a friend!" the man says, jolly, and it's so painfully familiar and his smile is so friendly when he turns to Gladion that for one, brief, fleeting moment he lets himself hope.
But there's no recognition in the man's eyes when Gladion introduces himself, only friendliness, and it's all Gladion can do to shake his hand when it's offered.
"What are you going to have done today, my girl?" his father – Mohn – the man says to Moon, and she makes a comment about upgrading some island or other, and the man smiles at her and gets right to work.
"You shouldn't have brought me here," Gladion hisses after he leaves.
Moon just looks at him, her face blank. "I thought it would help."
"It didn't," he snaps, and he thinks he sees a flicker of hurt pass over her face before it resettles into her trademark impassive expression. Good, he thinks, vitriolic, because – Moon's never wanted for affection; she's had her mother and her dumb Meowth and the professor and friends every step of the way, and Gladion –
Gladion has a stolen Pokemon and a father who doesn't remember him.
Gladion!
The woman I talked about in my last letter has decided to accompany us through Route 25, to ensure that we'll be safe. Trainers here don't have Ride Pokemon, so they do a lot of walking! I said that there's no need, we have the Aether members with us, but she insisted anyway. Her name is Misty, and she's a friend of a friend of Mr. Bill's. She's very kind. She's a powerful trainer, even used to be a Gym Leader, so I'm glad for her company.
Probably tomorrow, we'll reach Mr. Bill's place!
-Lillie
"Did you know that my father is alive?" he blurts out suddenly, because of all the people at this facility, Wicke is the likeliest to know much and be willing to help.
Wicke stops tending the hibiscus flowers and peers at him through her glasses. She says nothing for a long moment, and Gladion considers dropping the subject before she says, "I had my suspicions."
"What?" He doesn't mean for it to come out as loud as it does, but Wicke has always been unfazed by his outbursts, and for that he's briefly grateful.
She adjusts her glasses and begins talking. "When Nebby opened those Ultra Wormholes, I obtained clearer and more comprehensive data regarding the physics of the portals. I was able to crosscheck that data with the events of nine years ago – Master Mohn's disappearance." She's pulling up data on her tablet, now. "We created a more accurate algorithm to predict locations of Ultra Beast wormholes – and the one nine years ago led to a few uninhabited islands off the coast of Akala." Wicke sits up straighter, zooms in on the map. "I lacked the means to send a team off to these islands when the data pointed me there – I thought that they were so small and remote, it must have been difficult to survive on them. It appears I was wrong in not doing so."
Gladion frowns. "But if you told my mother, if you told Lusamine that there was the slightest hope, then maybe she wouldn't have–" He shudders at the thought of Ultra Space. Lillie's and Moon's faces had told him enough.
Wicke closes her eyes. "Perhaps indeed, if I had figured it out earlier, she would not have been driven to do what she did. And yet if she had not had Nebby open those wormholes, I might not have figured it out." She sighs. "I am truly sorry, Master Gladion, for not doing everything in my power to stop her. But I did not realize that her psychosis had worsened to the state it was. I kept thinking – surely she loved the world, and Pokemon, and the Foundation, and you and Miss Lillie too much to do what she did, but I was wrong again."
They're quiet for a long time. Gladion attempts to remember the sound of his mother's laughter, but finds that he can't, and wonders how someone could love a person so wholly that they'd move heaven and hell to get them back. She'd had to have loved him, right? It wouldn't have made sense otherwise.
"Master Gladion," Wicke starts, uncharacteristically tentative. "Perhaps it is presumptive of me to say so, given past circumstances – but you must know that I and the rest of the Aether Foundation are on your side."
He nods, turns his head upwards, following the wingull soaring overhead with his eyes, and downwards, watches the trainers and employees mill about the Foundation, sees a rockruff bound joyfully into the arms of its trainer, sees a Foundation employee watching a recovering brionne play in the fountains. The breeze is tangy with salt, but warm. Somewhere, he thinks, his father is breathing the same air, laughing heartily, fixing some island up. Somewhere, he realizes, his father is living the life he'd always worked towards – being surrounded by and working with Pokemon who love him.
"If you would like to send a team to the isles – or if you would like to go there yourself, we can certainly arrange it," Wicke offers.
Gladion only cocks his head in affirmation. It's too hollow, but –
Instead, he says with renewed resolve, "Can we revisit that case about the invasive nidoran on Ula'ula Island? I think I have a few ideas."
He thinks he sees something flicker in Wicke's gaze, and her face moves into a smile as her fingers type swiftly on the tablet. "Of course, Master Gladion."
Dearest Gladion,
Mr. Bill says he's thinking of a way to get the last of the toxins out of Mother! I was so happy when he said that, but since he hasn't ever seen a Nihilego before, it might take a bit. I already wrote Wicke asking for the data from the one Moon was able to catch (can you believe it? She helps us even now!). He's asking his scientist friends for input, as well. Misty says he's very smart and he'll probably have it done in no time, but in the meantime, why don't I become a trainer?
That's quite the food for thought, isn't it? What do you think?
-Lillie
"Gladion!"
He turns, instinctive. "Hello, Hau."
The other boy bounds up to him, his trademark grin on his face. "I haven't seen you in ages! Aether Foundation's keeping you busy, huh?"
"…We saw each other two weeks ago, Hau." He's not wrong, however; Gladion's been working nonstop on the files that his mother had neglected, and it's only the tip of the iceberg. But as usual, Hau's already sped past him, already chattering a mile a minute about his latest meetup with Moon, and Gladion is left blinking, trying to keep up.
"That Pokemon Moon got from you is amazing! I couldn't keep up with how it was changing types, and that Punishment attack is something to watch out for, huh?"
"…It came at great cost," Gladion says, because what does Hau know about what the Type:Null had gone through?
"Lillie wrote me a long letter," Hau says, taking it out of his bag, and Gladion's stunned – it's certainly much longer than the last letter he'd received. "She sent pictures of the view from Bill's house! Kanto's really something, huh?"
He nods once, blunt. He doesn't know how to tell Hau that the sunny, dazzling girl his sister is now is a stranger to him – that while he's glad that her hands no longer tremble and her smiles don't seem as fragile, all of that was thanks to Moon and Hau and Lillie herself, and Gladion –
Gladion ran away.
"I think it's great that Miss Lusamine's letting her go on a Trainer journey," says Hau, snapping him out of his train of thought. "I think she always felt out of it when all that stuff was going down here, y'know? She hated having to rely on us to do the fighting." Hau cheerily adds, "This'll really help her grow as a person!"
And that's when it hits him.
Because it's not fair, is it? That Lillie's the one who gets to change, mend fences with their mother, and get her heroic Trainer journey somewhere far away.
Or maybe, in some form of poetic justice, it's just right that Lillie gets to leave and Gladion has to stay.
To his credit, Hau picks up on his silence. "Yo, Gladion – you all right, there?"
Gladion inhales. "I found my father," he admits, sharp and blunt. "Mine and Lillie's. Or – Moon found him, and she showed me."
Hau's face cycles through emotions so quickly it would almost be laughable. "No way. I thought he was – is he – okay?"
"He's fine," Gladion mutters, turning away. "But he – he lost his memory."
"Oh, man." Hau's voice is quiet. "Was it – was it the Ultra Beasts? Miss Lusamine mentioned something about that."
"Yeah." It's almost comforting, admitting everything to Hau, whom he knows will take it in stride, and before he knows it he's just talking, words spilling out like they had been waiting for this opportunity. "Moon said she didn't make the connection until after everything, and I know she meant well, but I didn't – I didn't know what to do. Lillie doesn't remember him, so it's up to me, and I should because she's out there with Mother, but how am I supposed to do that if Father doesn't even remember me?" He's breathing heavily by the end of it, and he chances a glance at Hau to see the other boy looking at him pensively.
"Don't tell anyone I said that," Gladion adds hurriedly, but he knows that Hau is the second-to-last person on Alola willing to buy the tough guy act.
Instead, he asks, "Did you know that Moon's father's dead?" His face is serious. "It's why her mother moved them back to Alola. Not a lot of people know, though. My grandfather told me." He fidgets. "My dad – he's not in the picture. Left for Kanto, because he didn't want to deal with the kahuna responsibilities."
"Sorry," says Gladion, because he's not sure what else he's supposed to say. He imagines old Hala holding a little boy's hand, trying to explain that his father isn't coming back; imagines Moon's mother, packing her husband's last shirt away into a moving box. But Hau looks unimpressed, turning to Gladion with a half-smile on his face.
"Nah, you don't have to be," the other boy says. "It was some time ago! I said that because – because you're not alone, okay? I know you said we're not your friends, but – Moon and I, we care about you a lot, and maybe we don't exactly know what you're going through, but we might have some idea – and even despite that, we're here for you no matter what!"
Gladion thinks of the easy way Moon's primarina meets her eye and follows her every direction, thinks of Hau and his raichu moving almost completely in sync in battle, of his sister's nervous hands around Nebby, of his mother, prattling on about unconditional love, and thinks, maybe, this wouldn't be so bad.
"It's nice to imagine a world where you're like Captain Ilima, with rich parents who make sure you have everything you need, or like Captain Mallow, where your family all works on one business together, so you love each other," Hau continues, picking up on his silence. "But life's not a fairytale sometimes, and – we all gotta work with what we have, you know?" He smiles his trademark grin, and somehow, Gladion finds the edges of his mouth twitching upwards.
He thinks of the fond way Mohn had called Moon my girl. "Yeah, maybe."
Gladion,
Mother and I may not be home for some months. Mr. Bill is already conceptualizing the components of the antidote, but it really will be some time, because we must wait for the toxin samples to get here, and then there will be real lab trials…! Mother and the rest of the Aether Foundation members will stay in Cerulean City while waiting, but she gave me her blessing to start my trainer journey! I'm so happy. I don't remember much, but I think her kindness is returning to her.
And to start my journey, Misty has given me my first Pokemon! It's a Water-type named Squirtle. I love him so much, I just know he'll love it back home! Just you wait, Gladion – when I return, I promise I'll be strong enough to be equals with you and Moon and Hau and everyone!
-Lillie
He tries to be as quiet as possible when the Charizard lets him alight, but there's no being discreet in a world as small as these islands, and Mohn turns his way as soon as his feet touch down on the sand.
"Gladion, was it?" he calls, jovial. "What brings you here?"
"Moon's busy with Champion stuff, she sent me down here to check on her eggs." If Mohn knows he's lying through his teeth, he doesn't show it; instead, he continues to look curiously at him. "I just–" Gladion huffs, at a loss for words, all the sentences he'd carefully practiced leaving him. "Do you think – do you think you can teach me how to plant berries?"
Mohn's face splits into an easy grin. "Of course, my boy! Come on right down."
L –
Sorry I haven't been writing. There's not a lot that's been happening, but I'm sure Hau speaks enough for the both of us. The Foundation is fine, I think; Wicke is helping me ease into it. I'm sure you would take to the work better.
I miss you.
I'll wait for updates on your trainer journey. I'm happy that you're starting it. But just know that as soon as you and mother come home, there's someone I want you to meet.
- G
this work's title is from: "aloha o'e."
i am embarrassingly attached to the kids from sun and moon, but i also feel like the game gave them no closure, so here we are!