A/N: I've wanted to do this chapter practically from the start, but after writing last chapter I realized that I want to make this a kind of continuation from that one.


Kukui yawned and got to his feet. He grabbed the stack of old notebooks he had been looking over and returned them to his bookcase. He usually tried to keep his things at least somewhat organized, but he was far too tired to follow his system. He just shoved the notebooks where it looked like they would fit. He would put them where they belonged tomorrow...probably.

Kukui rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and grabbed another set of notebooks. It didn't matter how tired he was, he still had a lot of work to do. His latest theory on pokémon attacks was long overdue and his peers were starting to bother him about it. And he still had a lesson to teach tomorrow, and he wasn't at all prepared for it.

Kukui flipped open one of his notebooks and quickly glanced over what he had written in it. His handwriting wasn't very good at the best of times, and he must have written these notes when he had been tired or in a rush, because the scrawl was barely legible. He really needed to be more careful about his note taking in the future.

Kukui sighed and closed the notebook. He would look it over again when he wasn't so exhausted. At the moment, he was running on no sleep. Because of the whole mess with Litten, he hadn't gotten any sleep the night before, and now he was paying for it. He was barely functioning, but he couldn't sleep yet. He needed to come up with a lesson plan for tomorrow, at the very least.

First though, he needed some tea or coffee, because he was falling asleep on his feet.

Kukui put the difficult to read notebook back on the bookshelf and took the rest he had grabbed with him to the kitchen. Kukui could barely keep his eyes open as he went, stumbling towards the kitchen. He paused in his steps when he saw the light on ahead of him. He may be tired, but he was fairly certain he had turned the light off before he had gone down to his study.

"Is someone in there?" Kukui called out tiredly.

"Professor?" At the sound of Ash's voice Kukui suddenly felt wide awake. What was that boy still doing awake?

"Ash?" Kukui entered the kitchen and saw his student sitting at the table, looking even more exhausted than he had been a few hours ago when he had gone to bed. "What are you still doing up?"

"I couldn't sleep." Ash said. He sounded as tired as Kukui felt, so he thought it was safe to guess that this wasn't just Ash being a stubborn kid who didn't want to sleep. Kukui eyed Ash for a moment. He was sure that if Ash hadn't been able to sleep in the first place, he would have been aware of it before. Kukui suspected that it was more likely that Ash had been woken up by something, probably a nightmare, and either couldn't or didn't want to go back to sleep.

Kukui didn't really know what to do when kids had a nightmare, as he had never had to deal with it before, but he'd had some experience with not being able to sleep for one reason or another. Maybe the same strategy would work for Ash. Kukui put his notebooks down on the table and went to put some milk on the stove. He had considered making some tea, but that took more effort, and Kukui had never been all that fond of tea anyways. If he didn't like it, he didn't know how much a kid would.

"Is there a reason why you couldn't sleep?" Kukui asked as he got out the honey. "Mind too full?"

"Yeah." Ash drew his feet up onto the couch and sat cross-legged on it. The boy fell silent, but over the years Kukui had gotten really good at telling when a kid had something that they wanted to say. He waited.

Ash was silent for a fair amount of time. By the time Ash seemed to work up the nerve to say what was on his mind, the milk had already heated up. "...Hey, Professor, do you...do you ever worry about what happens after we die?"

Kukui flinched as he poured the hot milk into some mugs, accidentally splashing some milk on his hand. Kukui hissed and drew his hand back. It was only a mild distraction from his panic at Ash's question. How was he supposed to answer that? He wasn't ready for this.

"Well…" Kukui sighed and put some honey in the mugs, which he then brought to the table. Kukui put a mug in front of Ash, and then sat down next to him. "To be honest, nobody really knows what happens to us when we die."

"I know." Ash said, which may have startled Kukui more than the initial question had. "I mean, do you worry about what happens to our pokémon when we're gone?"

"...No, I can't say that I have." Kukui stared at Ash in shock. "Why? Is it something that you're worried about?"

"Sometimes." Ash admitted quietly as he took a cautious sip of the hot milk. "Not a lot, but sometimes things happen, and...and I worry."

Kukui desperately wanted to ask Ash what kind of things he was talking about, but he didn't dare. He knew that Ash had gone through a lot while on his journey, more things than anybody, especially a child, should have to go through. Kukui didn't know what kind of things would make a boy like Ash consider what would happen to those he cared about after he died, and he didn't think he wanted to know.

Kukui took a drink of his own milk to hide how uncomfortable he was with this conversation. Ash was just a kid, and yet he was thinking about death in a way that most adults couldn't, and that scared Kukui more than he could even explain. Still, despite how uncomfortable and nervous this topic made Kukui, Ash was clearly scared, and as his teacher it was Kukui's responsibility to do what he could to calm his fears.

"...You know, you don't have anything to worry about." Kukui put his mug down when he was sure that he could keep his expression calm and collected. Kids could get terrified if they knew that an adult they looked up to was scared, and Kukui didn't want to do that to Ash. "If...if something does happen to you, I for one would be more than happy to look after your pokémon the way you looked after Litten, and I'm sure I'm not the only one." Ash had befriended so many people, even just in Alola, and Kukui knew for a fact that every single one of them would be willing to help his pokémon should something happen.

Kukui just desperately hoped that it wouldn't come to that.

"Yeah, I know." Ash smiled slightly and drank some more of his warm milk. "I just worry sometimes, you know?"

"I know." Kukui nodded in understanding. He knew all too well that fears and concerns couldn't always just be reasoned away. It was especially hard to be reasonable about a fear if it was fresh from a nightmare, as he suspected was the case. Kukui didn't know how to calm Ash's concerns in the long run, he had never even met anybody who worried about this, but he had an idea about how to help Ash sleep. It wasn't ideal, but it would have to be good enough for the night.

"Come here." Kukui scooted closer to Ash and put an arm over the boy's shoulder to draw him even closer.

"Professor?" Ash looked at Kukui in confusion. "What are you doing?"

I know you've got a lot on your mind, but you need to get some sleep. You've got school in the morning." With his free hand Kukui grabbed his closest notebook and opened it up. "Reading these journals always puts me to sleep, so I thought it would work for you."

"Oh," Ash nodded and relaxed. Kukui was glad that he didn't ask any more questions about why he had drawn him close. The truth was, that wasn't for Ash's benefit, it was more for Kukui's. All of this talking about Ash's death had him paranoid for the safety of his student, and with how exhausted Kukui felt he didn't think that concern was going to leave him alone that night. At least this way, he had Ash right by his side, so if Kukui woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare of his own, he wouldn't have to go all the way upstairs to make sure his ward was okay.

Kukui yawned and began reading from his notes, glad that these ones were actually legible. "Tackling and the move 'tackle': The differences between them, and why they matter." Kukui couldn't believe he had actually written this stuff. Yeah, in theory and practice it was really interesting, but in writing, it was already putting him to sleep. "I have studied a lot about the attack patterns of pokémon. One thing that I have noticed is that many pokémon who are unable to use the move 'tackle' have been known to use the attack anyways. I set out to figure out why, and my research has yielded some unexpected results-"


A/N: Kinda a silly way to end the chapter, but I like it. I knew from the start that I wanted Kukui to read his notes to Ash to make him sleepy, and I knew that Kukui was a professor that specialized in attacks. For some reason, I like the thought of Kukui studying the move tackle. It just seems so silly, and yet right up his alley.

Also, this little arc isn't over yet. The next chapter (probably) won't be as much about death as these last two have, but it's another chapter that I've been wanting to write from the start.