AN: Happy New Year!

Song: 'Afire Love' by Ed Sheeran

They let the Shadow Triad go.

Actually, it was more like Dawn let them go because she didn't care about them once her business was over, and Hilbert didn't really have it in him to hold them. He had just recovered from healing his shaken insides after vomiting up blood. He couldn't deal with them right now.

A part of him also could not help but pity the souls condemned to a terrible, terrible fate. Anything he could do to them paled in comparison to what Dawn had promised.

Dawn remained glaring at the door for a few more seconds after the ninjas disappeared from sight before both she and the Froslass relaxed.

"They're gone now," she said.

And she was telling the truth. Hilbert swallowed, and sat down on the sofa. Like the days before, they were still next to each other, but the small stretch of upholstered distance seemed so far apart now.

Dawn slumped against the sofa. "Any questions you want to ask me?" she said.

There were a lot of questions he wanted to ask, some to which he had picked up the answer from, to some he wasn't sure he could ask.

In the end there was one question that he prioritized over all others.

"Are you alright?"

She turned her head so that it was still resting on the sofa, but now both eyes could make contact with his. It reminded him of the first day, when she had put her head against the table's surface after cleaning the entire villa.

Dawn smiled. it was real, it was sad, it was twisted and it wasn't happy, but it looked like a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. "Not now," she said. "I'm still mourning and tired. But I'll recover, I suppose. I'm fairly strong."

Hilbert laughed, thinking of her in battle and her condemning the Shadow Triad to a fate worse than death. A Champion, an Avatar. His thoughts slowed and soured. "Yeah, I noticed."

She noticed the change, and stifled a yawn, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand

"After I won my seventh badge," she began, voice lilting like she was telling him a bedtime story. "There was a crisis on Mount Coronet, where someone called Cyrus wanted to create a new world for himself by harnessing the power of the gods."

He slowly leaned back into the sofa, feeling like this was a story he needed to hear.

"He summoned the two dragons, Dialga and Palkia, and the lake guardians of Spirit tried to stop them, but they could only balance one of the duo, not both." Dawn pressed her lips together. "It felt like the world was going to end in that moment, on the top of that mountain."

Hilbert tried to imagine it, a younger Dawn standing on the top of a frozen mountain, still a queen, still standing strong, but nonetheless afraid as she faced a man who had managed to harness not one but two powerful gods with no one but her Pokémon at her side, and that being enough to keep her standing.

"And then Giratina came," Dawn whispered. "The rippling instability in time and space as the gods were forced into creating a world before the needed time called the Renegade, who acted to set things correctly. Those in the vicinity – Cyrus, Cynthia, me – were dragged into a different world reflecting this one."

Dawn trailed off and a light crease appeared between her brows, like she was trying to figure out her words.

"Giratina," she said at last, and Hilbert knew that she wouldn't tell him about the details of the reflected world. Not yet, possibly not ever. "Needed an Avatar to set things right, and to enter our world safely. The Renegade had been punished enough, but the laws of the mortal realm had changed, and gods needed to have mortal avatars now. I was offered the choice, and I took it."

I was offered the choice, and I took it.

All this time Hilbert had always seen it as him being the chosen one, cheesy as it sounded, and not really having a choice but to go along with what had been decided. Dawn clearly saw it differently.

Dawn reached out and took Hilbert's hand in a strong grip. "A lot of the child kings are Avatars," she told him. "Me. Ethan Gold of Johto. Red Ketchum of Kanto. May Maple of Hoenn. You. N Harmonia."

Child kings. "Were they-" his voice broke. "Did they-"

Dawn seemed to know what he wanted to ask, but not unkindly, she did not answer, and waited.

The lump in his throat nearly choked him, but Hilbert got the words out. "Have any of them – any of us – become Champions before becoming Avatars?"

Which came first, the bird or the egg?