"Sun... what are you going to do... now that you... you know?" Sun started to stamp on the remaining shards left by Nihilego's insidious outreach while Lusamine did the same, driving her heel into the glassy snakes, spilling their black lifeblood. She made the motion extra violent, applying and using all of the fear and anger building at the concept of losing him now that he knew everything she'd done. She couldn't hurt him - Arceus, no, she couldn't stop him if he decided to leave or tell someone the truth - she had to convince him, wheedle him with promises of whatever he wanted, just to get him to stay. She would do anything for his forgiveness, to assure she didn't lose her adopted son. The shirt on the floor lay crumpled until Sun scooped it up and put it back on. Beside the shirt lay Nebby, exhausted, shivering - Sun crouched and wrapped Nebby in his arms, cradling it back and forth.
"I don't know." He was speaking down to Nebby, which used both its gaseous limbs to clutch at Sun's bleeding wrist, groaning.
"What happened?" Lusamine was keeping a respectable distance from Sun, trying to give him plenty of space to think and comprehend whatever had happened. She didn't want him to panic and run away, she had to cling to him now, make sure he stayed by her side. That meant playing it slowly until she could swoop in and make some sort of pact, anything, whatever it took.
"Lillie... she's been infected... she'd been infected. For a while. Probably." They'd stamped out each remaining shard except one. "Keep one," Sun said, sticking his hand out to prevent Lusamine from killing it.
Lusamine frowned. "Why?" Sun and herself should know above all else that even a single piece of Nihilego's biology could have extreme, depraved, horrifying consequences.
"Might need it." Sun bent over the last one - no larger than four inches long - and trapped it under the same glass Lillie once used to hold her pet Nihilego piece in place.
They watched it writhe with disgust, wondering just how they had become so enamored with the insidious and evil Ultra Beast.
"Sun," Lusamine interrupted, still trying to understand what had occurred under her roof in the last ten minutes. "I need you to talk to me for a moment. What exactly happened? Exactly?" Start off the conversation simply. Ask for information he'd want to divulge. Inwardly Lusamine was in a meltdown, desperate to make every correct move.
"I left your room to get you water and Lillie was outside with a knife. I followed her commands to here where she made me strip and raped me. In that time it became clear to me that she was infected." Sun's voice was flat. Lusamine was used to this, but the choice of his words and the lack of 'ums' and 'uhs' told her that something was a little different about him. How plainly he was speaking, especially given the content of his words and the no doubt traumatic experience of Nihilego nearly taking him too.
Lusamine briefly saw a flash of a gut wrenching vision where both Lillie and Sun had been taken away from her, and was only stirred back to reality by Sun's words. "She was going to take us both to Ultra Space, I think. She wasn't coherent."
"Oh... oh Arceus, Sun..." Lusamine recalled Sun's robotic inflection from time to time when he'd been working or explaining something. It was his coping mechanism. Maybe now that he knew the truth, and had seen Lillie be taken, he was stuck in this mode temporarily.
"Yeah." He spoke the single word with an unusually deep register. Lusamine again recognised something was off. He had almost never used the word 'yeah' around her. It was always the polite 'yes,' never 'yeah.' "She was infected. But you were smitten with me, and I was... I wanted to be with you." He finally looked straight at her, and the hurt on his face made Lusamine's heart sink.
"Neither of us were watching her... and she was acting strangely..." Lusamine's eyes glazed over as she replied. "Sun, this is my fault. I should've noticed something. I should've... done something. I could've done something." She gradually went to touch his shoulder and Sun pulled away. Her gaze found focus on him again. "Sun, don't be scared of me. I'm never, ever going to-"
"You already hurt me." Sun was scowling, but he looked like he was having difficulty maintaining it. Lusamine took a guess. He had remembered everything, but the procedure that had made him love her was still in full effect. "I won't let you come anywhere near me. I don't want you to touch me." His tone was still flat, impersonal, robotic.
"Sun," she offered, speaking softly, slowly, wanting to test her theory. If she could creep back into his brain, get a little leverage over it-
Sun picked up the knife quickly so that Lusamine could not stop him. He didn't point it, didn't threaten her, just held it, almost loosely. He was weak.
"I won't let you."
Lusamine showed no mind to the blade, given how Sun was holding it. There was no wariness of the weapon itself, only of what he might say or do if he wouldn't obey her anymore. "Sun, put it down." Her words were not an order. They were a calm request.
"You can't control me anymore. It's over."
"Sun," she said, disinterested in tone, remaining steady even though he'd just confirmed to her that he at least thought she couldn't enforce her will over him. "Put it down." She brushed her hair to the right nonchalantly and Sun mirrored her, the action learned from all his time emulating her. "See?" She held out her hand to him. "Things won't change, will they?"
Sun remained defiant. "I'll hurt you."
"Try." Lusamine challenged. "Go ahead and try." She collapsed into the void of her own self-hatred - there was still a way to use him and give him what he wanted at the same time. She moved to be within a pace or two of her adopted son. "Stab me. I deserve it. I'm a piece of shit." Her words were full of contempt and vitriol, pointed at herself. "Stab me, Sun." If he killed her now she wouldn't have to face the harsh reality that Lillie was gone, and maybe Sun would find peace after she had died.
"I will. I will." His eyes were wide, he was breathing in, out, in, out, the rise and fall of his chest rapid and stressed. His throat stuck fast.
"Do it. Do it. You can't. Come on, Sun. Every little thing I did to you. Every tiny little thing I did. When I- how about when I made you- how about what you did to me? Licking my face," she ran her fingers down her face, tapping her digits to simulate water. "Licking my neck?" She'd gotten even closer to him. Her words, while spoken like threats, were merely taunts. She went to grab him by the throat and hiss more vicious reminders into his face and barely held herself back.
Sun wasn't scared. He was not afraid. His mother captor wouldn't hurt him. He dropped the weapon. "You're right. I can't do it. I couldn't then, and I can't now."
Lusamine twitched. "I wanted you to kill me. If anyone has the right to do it, it's you." She turned away from him, ashamedly shaking her head, her hair shifting back and forth. With her face hidden from him, she let herself briefly express the pain of such self-hate, gritting her teeth and screwing her eyes shut.
"I know you wanted me to." He looked blank. "I'm not going to."
"Why not? Sun, you... you want this." She faced him again, her expression neutral once more.
"I wish I could. I can't. I'm not a murderer." He collapsed from the stress, sitting down. He pressed the palm of his hand into his eye painfully and sniffled, before meeting her eyes again with a despondent expression, plaintively sad. "I want to go home." The emotion was present in him now, the robotic facade broken. Lusamine wanted to remind him he had killed Gladion, so his statement was far from the truth, but his words stirred a distant memory.
'Let me go home. I don't want to be your experiment. I want to go home.'
That was months ago now. Lusamine lost all her misplaced anger and knelt in front of him, watching him cry desperately, emptying all his fear and sadness and hate and weakness and expressing his disgust of everything he had become and had been for her. "Sun, honey... there's... there's nothing for you to go back to." She wanted to hug him. She wanted to reassure him so much but there was no way he'd let her - it was her fault, her problem, her design-
Sun cried louder. "Why couldn't you- leave me- alone? Why didn't you- you-" he screamed suddenly, burying his head into his knees. "Why did you do it to me? You hurt us all! You-" he broke down further.
"S-Sun..." Lusamine stayed kneeling, shifting closer. "Sun, honey, you... you can stay with me. I'll look after you here. I promise, I swear to Arceus-"
"EVERY PROMISE!" Sun screamed, leaping to his feet and lecturing down to her with a pointed finger, jabbing, spitting, hissing like she might. "EVERY TIME YOU SAID THAT WORD, THAT-"
'I won't let them hurt you. Promise.'
"-STUPID-"
'I'll only be a minute. I promise.'
"-EVERY-"
'And I promise, Sun, I promise I'll never hurt you.'
"-SINGLE-"
'Mommy, you'll make me well again... right?'
'Yes, Sun. I will. I will. I promise.'
"-TIME, IT MEANT NOTHING, IT DIDN'T MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU!"
"Sun, I'm- I can fix this, I can fix this, I can-"
"YOU CAN'T FIX A THING!" He stomped his left foot angrily, Lusamine flinching, still kneeling in front of him. He swept his hair to the right angrily, folded his hands into fists and raised them in front of his face, making a 'guh' of anger before swiping his arms back down. The motion threw a few droplets of his blood onto her dress.
It was an exact replica of the motion Lusamine had made when she exploded at him after he scuppered her plans to cross the dimensions and find Nihilego. After she was done kicking and scything and beating him, she had done the same thing, raised her arms, swept them down and then reached down to seize him and throw him into the pit. They both considered the similarity in their actions at the same time. Sun exhaled a shaking breath, then accepted what he now was, how alike she had made them both, and breathed in.
"HOW COULD YOU BE SO AWFUL!?" Sun screamed.
Lusamine stared.
"I'm sorry."
"That doesn't mean a thing either." Sun dismissed quickly.
Lusamine tried to think of an argument, but finally folded, and decided to give him the choice at last. "You can go if you want. Or you can stay."
Sun breathed. "You're not going to stop me from leaving?" He didn't believe her - and why should he? Letting him go put her painstakingly crafted image at severe risk, as well as her career and her freedom. Everything she'd built. He could choose to end it.
"...No. You deserve the choice."
"What if I tell someone about what you did?"
The nightmare again. 'Mother, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told them. It was... it was him. He told me to. He's a bad boy, mother.' Lusamine blanched at his words.
"If that is... what you choose to do, then I have no right to stop you," she muttered, unable to look him in the eyes. "But Sun, you know that wasn't all me. You know that Nihilego had-"
"But how far did it go?" Sun gestured, his voice cracking. "How- how- I won't let you pass off all you did onto it. It's evil. It made us both do... things. But- it wasn't all Nihilego, either, was it?"
"I don't know how much of it was me and how much was it," Lusamine admitted. "I'm done making excuses, Sun. If you're going to see me behind bars, then do it." As she spoke, she held out her wrists as if he was the officer who was going to slap the cuffs on her. "I'm done lying. I'm done with all of it."
The drip of Sun's blood punctuated the scene like an ellipsis. His wrist stung in the way that nettles did when run over a soft cloth - the pain stuck and twisted, catching on fibers, but it was short lived, in bursts. Snapping and twisting pains in his veins.
"I have to help Lillie." Sun blurted and went to move past her and out into the corridor, stepping through pools of venom and spots of sweat, past the patches of Lillie's vomit. Lusamine got up and rushed after him, stopping him in the doorway, taking his shoulders. Blood soaked gradually into her hand as she did, but Sun wasn't about to pass out - they needed to resolve the tension between them first before Sun would let her bandage him up.
"Let me help you." She could feel Sun's skin crawling under her touch and regretted choosing to touch him so soon after he'd remembered. "Honey, you're going to tear yourself apart if you do this alone."
"I get it," Sun said, the words spoken with a tone colder than Lusamine had ever heard from him. "You want me to just... forgive you because you're going to start acting like I really matter. Like you really care." She could hear her son in his voice too. It wasn't like the original Sun had replaced him, this was a combination of both, and her son was hurt at the idea that he was manufactured for her pleasure. That piece of herself, that love he had, was still in him but had now turned to resentment.
"Sun, honey, I always cared." She told the truth as she knew it. She thought it was the truth. That made it the truth, right?
"Liar." The condemnation rang all the more because she was being told this by her son. "You cared after a point, only because you finally started to feel guilty. You cared because if this ever happened - if I ever remembered - you wanted me to shut up and be a good boy for you, because you realised that if you lost me it'd destroy you. You only ever thought of yourself."
"Sun, that's not true," Lusamine denied, even though his words cut to the bone and stuck embedded in the marrow. "I... at first it was all about me. I just... Sun, after a while I came around," she pleaded.
"You 'came around?' You mean you realised that you're a terrible, terrible-"
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP, SUN! YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ME! YOU DON'T KNOW-" Lusamine trailed away, pointing at him aggressively, leaning toward him, eyes sharp as the knife that lay a metre to Sun's right. "Sun, you... I'm sorry." Her expression softened as the drip, drip, drip of blood running down from his wrist and onto the ground caught her attention again. "Let's... let's get that seen to."
"I can do it myself," Sun said, with a complete lack of conviction. He sounded like all he wanted was for her to be gone, and that was completely understandable of him - but he also sounded like he didn't want to say it. The hint of what could possibly be reluctance to completely reject Lusamine bolstered her confidence in being able to sway him to remain by her side.
"Sun, honey, let me-"
"Don't-" Sun choked, pointing at her accusingly, close to tears, "Don't try to speak to me like I'm your son! I don't want you to be anywhere near me! I don't want you to-" he started to cry in earnest, hand against the door frame to support himself. "Y- you hurt my head... you made me- made me your pet, your- I don't want anything to do with you! I don't want to ever see you again!"
Lusamine watched him, close to breaking down herself. "Sun... I'm so... I... Sun..." she stuttered. "Please don't leave me..." Lusamine held out a hand to him. "Please. I swear, I'll look after you. I'll- I'll give you everything you ever wanted if you just-"
"I don't want-"
"S- SUN- I'll do whatever it takes, just-"
"I'm not saying no to all the desperate, pathetic bribes, I'm saying no to you!" Lusamine finally saw clear what he meant. "I want nothing to do with you! You took everything away from me!" He took a trembling breath, now looking pale and afraid. "Please- don't come any clo-"
Lusamine lurched forward and grabbed him in a tight hug, Sun squirming and screaming as he struggled and twisted. "Shh, baby, shh, mommy's here, mommy's got you-"
"-LET GO OF ME! NO! NO, LET-"
"-Sun, my sweet, calm down-" she was rambling into his ear in a breathy, soft voice, trying to exert her power over him again.
"-I WON'T LET YOU-"
"-shh, shh, I've got you-"
"-Don't hurt me, I don't- let me go home, please, please-" She heard the begging, the horror in his voice and held him even tighter, forcing her will deeper into him to try and get past his barriers.
"-it's fine, you're safe, you're-"
Her closeness was beginning to warm up the routine that had been hard wired into him, the feeling of belonging in her arms starting to spread through him much to his dismay. "No, no, no- let go, let me- let me... let... mmm..."
"Sun, you're going to be so safe with me. I'll look after you. I'll never let anyone hurt you ever again. You belong with me."
"Let me... let me..." His hand had grasped her forearm earlier, trying to pry her off him, but now in an instant his attempts to push her away became a tight grip, holding her close. He made a semi-growl, semi-moan at this happening, informing Lusamine that the gesture was almost certainly unintentional.
"Shh..." she breathed into his ear, feeling him melt away in her arms. He was losing. She was winning.
"Hgh- let... unh... let... don't... un- unnnh... don't... let... go..." He was hugging her back now.
Lusamine, knowing that she had hijacked Sun again, released him. She hadn't wanted to force her influence onto him, but it was the only way to make him calm down. She touched his face and he smiled at her. "Feeling better now?"
His smile didn't falter. "I still know."
There was no way to cover up for herself anymore. Doing what she'd just done had likely made him trust her even less, but right now he was weak, his defences infiltrated and disabled by the love he couldn't help but hold toward her.
"But you don't mind?"
"Not at all," Aether Sun replied, Sun struggling to stop the reprehensible words escaping his mouth, fighting to regain control. His memories were still there, he just had to get over all the gross love that pulsated like a cancer in his body. While he struggled, that love made him keep talking. "You did it because you love me. And I don't care, mother. I just want to be with you now."
Lusamine shook her head, now seeing that erasing this much of his will was hurting him in a different way. She didn't want him to hurt no matter what. She'd take a bullet for him at this point, would step in the way of anything threatening him, but the biggest threat to Sun was Lusamine herself. Sun pushed against her and purred yet again and Lusamine chose to briefly forget that this was torture to the real Sun and patted him on the head genially. "Sun, please... please stay with me."
"Of course, mother." It wasn't both of the personalities coming to an agreement, it was Lusamine's presence empowering one over the other. "Always." Sun stayed close to her, refusing to back away or let go.
Lusamine sensed a strange aura from her son. "Is something wrong?"
"I won't let go. I won't let him- won't let him stop me again." Sun shivered and Lusamine touched his nose softly, as if saying goodbye. Sun sniffled, stunned as he had been the first time she had done it. In her heart she believed this may be the last time she spoke to her adopted, perfect son before Sun began to win the war over their vessel.
"Baby, he's right. I was wrong. I was-"
"-No, you- you have to be right," Sun cut her off, hugging her tighter, "You have to be right, you're always- always-" He backed up a little and took her waist in his hands, running them down to her hips, staring at her. "M- mother, he can't be... be right... I'm your... your perfect..."
"Oh, Sun..." she muttered, blinking and seeing the Sun she had made for an instant before her vision corrected. "Son, I'm... I'm - I was always wrong. I don't think I was ever right."
Sun twitched, shivered, and his hands fell off of her. "At least you can admit that." He glared at her, suppressing the ecstasy that came with seeing her, being so close, wrapped in her energy. "I have to stay."
"W- what?" He'd regained control of himself impossibly fast. That was that. She couldn't maintain a hold over him. His betrayal was inevitable.
"I'm going to save Lillie." Sun kept his eyes on the ceiling just past Lusamine's shoulder, avoiding viewing her directly. "She doesn't deserve to be that thing's toy."
"Please let me help you. She's my daughter. I won't let that monster have her."
Sun thought for a moment. "You can help. But when we get Lillie back, I'm leaving. And I never want to see either of you ever again."
Lusamine's eyes slid downward to the ground, and focused on the tips of her heels. "Okay."
The clock was ticking itself into Sun's conscience. Every second was another cluster of moments after which his sister his friend could be gone forever.
He didn't want Lillie to die. He'd been manipulated and driven to insanity by Nihilego, but in a twisted sense his love for Lusamine had saved him. It had been strong enough to overpower most of Nihilego's projected desire to feed himself to it, which Lillie had unintentionally done to herself. There might still be time to save her, though. Only if he could come up with something fast. He'd only been sat with the blank pages in front of him for four minutes and thirty two seconds, but it felt like four thousand, three hundred and twenty years, and his paradoxical concern over how much time he was wasting having concern over the time he'd wasted was mounting fast.
Sun sighed and planted his head into his hands, elbows on the desk. His concepts had reached the point of rescue easily, forgiving Nebby's death upon opening the portal - it was the point of exit that was the issue. He'd even developed a theory on how to triangulate Lillie's rough location, a hardback book on the study of Ultra Space sitting on his desk with one of the corners twisted where it had been thrown at something.
He'd yet to write it all down, and as he took a moment to collect and organize his thoughts he heard the door click. "Sun?"
"I told you, I don't want you to come in," Sun warned, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up while his love for Lusamine strained at the mental leash Sun had finally wrestled onto it. The physical collar Sun had once wore had been kicked under his bed to be forgotten, and he'd recognized the blue and white striped shirt as his, putting that on instead of the white shirt that faded to gold. Underneath the shirt on his shoulder lay a beige patch of skin, having been healed with restorative gel, another on his exposed wrist. It'd acclimate to his usual skin colour soon enough. "Please, I don't want to-"
"Okay, Sun, I'll stay outside." Even her voice made him quiver with either excitement or fear. "I just wanted to ask you if I can get you anything else." Lusamine stood just barely outside, the very points of her heels barely inside Sun's room, not quite true to her word, typical of her. Always pushing her luck.
Sun made a mumbling noise, distressed by her presence so close to him - he put down the pencil and began to rock back and forth on his chair, arms folded tight and held close to his chest, eyes focused on his knees. Lusamine recognized the awkward body language and what it meant.
"Um. N- no. No. I'm fine. I'm fine." His voice trembled in a way she was familiar with, but the context of where it was made it set off the guilt she fought to keep packaged and buried in her gut.
"Sorry, Sun." She made to leave, cursing herself. There was no way that Sun would ever want to stay with her after this, and nothing she did now would change that, if it didn't just make it worse.
"T-Tapu Cocoa," Sun said quickly, and he bowed his head, trying to hide from the request. "I remembered I really liked it."
Lusamine nodded, even though Sun was purposefully disregarding her. "Sure, Sun." She closed the door as she left.
Sun exhaled, the stress ceasing like a tap turned off. He mumbled a non sequitur, trying to make himself comfortable again. He'd taken the piece of Nihilego with him, keeping it trapped - and it was staring. 'Come and join her, Sun.'
"I know how to kill you," Sun threatened. He was bluffing... and then, after a short moment, he figured out a way. An obvious way. An easy way. "I know." He stood and chased after Lusamine. "Wait- wait-" he stopped the moment that he felt that low, humming buzz of electricity that came with her closeness. "The- the Type: Nulls, where are they now?"
"Down in the labs-"
Sun pointed downward. "How far did you follow the plans I made? Are they done, are they-" he was coming together with something that made this ridiculous plan actually possible now. "Are they ready?"
"I- I think-" Lusamine clicked with his plan. "Beast Killers. Sun- you-"
"We need them. Now." He marched closer, quelling his fear of her. "They're the only way to-"
Lusamine was nodding along. "And without the restraints..."
"Let me see them," Sun demanded.
"Yes, Sun." Lusamine outstretched her hand for him to take. She waited expectantly, and Sun's world felt like it hit a fifteen degree angle. Everything was sliding towards her. "Come on, let's go, quick."
Sun didn't know if she was aware of what she was doing to him as there was a rush to his head, the sensation he couldn't describe growing more powerful. He found a lump in his throat and swallowed it down, trying to tell her to stop. "I- we don't need to-"
"Don't need to what?" She moved her hand a little, inviting him to hold it by folding her fingers inward. "We need to hurry, Sun." The split black and white dress seemed to bleed out into the corridor, making the vertigo Sun was feeling grow and grow, and he slid toward her. There was no way to stop his descent as it hit sixty degrees, seventy, eighty... verticality rising and rising, nothing to cling to, descending into a vortex of monochrome.
Then he was holding her hand. "I don't-" he stuttered. She was pulling him along, and rushing down the stairs, step by step by step, click click clicking, each one shaking Sun enough to set him back into his correct mindset. "W- Wait-"
"What is it?"
Sun snatched his hand back away from her, fast as a riptide shattering rock on the jagged Poni coast. "I don't want to-"
Lusamine's mouth fell open in shock. "Oh- oh, Sun, I'm sorry, I didn't-" she seemed honest to him, and that was enough for him to believe it had been unintentional.
"Whatever," he muttered and resumed walking, digging his hands into his pockets and pushing his nails into his thighs to focus on the pain above all else, the misshapen semicircles that he was digging through the material visible in his mind's eye. It held him together.
"S- sorry, I didn't mean-"
"It's fine. Whatever." It hurt. It kept him pointed, focused. He glanced down at his legs, wearing the same black and white pattern as his mother his captor Lusamine. He thought of her walking behind him, and dug too hard into his legs, splitting the skin and making it bleed. "Let's hurry."
The long white path stretched ahead, and Alola's sun was relentlessly cheerful above. Since the storm that had been battering the Paradise upon Sun's transformation, the weather had been perfectly pleasant. It didn't care. It didn't know.
"What's down on the bottom floors?" Sun asked Lusamine, hoping his voice would be loud enough for her to hear without having to look over his shoulder at her. "Besides all your experiments and frozen-"
"They'll be let free," Lusamine called after him. "I'm done with it all, I told you-"
"Well, I'm glad I inspired you to turn over a new leaf," Sun whispered bitterly, ignoring the rest of the sentence that Lusamine was speaking. He raised his voice back to speaking level. "But what else is down there?"
"Labs... some ethical, some not." Lusamine thought about the task of dismantling the corrupt elements of the Foundation and put it off immediately. First Faba would have to go - and he knew the truth about Sun... she'd pay him off. Give him a good deal. The rest of the corrupt Foundation could follow, in their jumpsuits and face masks shaped to look like the Unova Defense Force's combat helmets. "I'll see to decommissioning them."
They reached the main complex and Sun paused. "What do we do?"
"What do you mean?" Lusamine had stopped just behind him, knowing that he didn't want to look at her.
"You're going to take me to the labs, right? And we'll... we'll be together... what about the people in there and the Foundation members, what if they- they see us, they, they-" A hand fell onto his shoulder, quieting his breathless rambling.
"Sun," Lusamine placated. "Don't worry about it. They're all very busy." Secretly she had always worried about Sun being recognised, ever since he had lost his resemblance to her more than ever. She'd kept him confined to the mansion since he'd reverted to try and reduce the chance of the facade being torn apart. She had no idea if anyone would try to stop her, and hoped blind luck would be on her side. "Hold my hand," she said to him, hoping to keep him calm, and to qualm her own unease.
"That won't help," Sun replied. "They're going to think-"
"-okay, okay, I'm sorry, it was just a suggestion." Lusamine could see the illogical nature of the action in retrospect. The relationship between them was terribly awkward and abstract, neither quite knowing what to make of the other. Mother, son, captor, victim, loved, hated, friend, enemy. "Just... Sun, if you need- if you want to go back, just tell me. I'll take you back-"
"Home?"
Silence. Waves lapping. Cries of sea Pokémon. Endless expanse of blue above. Burning Alolan sunlight. Lusamine's hand moved off his shoulder. "Once we have Lillie back, we'll talk about that."
"You said you'll let me go," Sun reminded her.
"We'll talk about it."
"You said-" Lusamine walked past him, into the Foundation building. Sun followed. "You said-"
"Sun, please, right now we need to focus on-"
"I'm not going to help if you won't let me leave."
"I told you we'll talk about it. When the time comes."
Sun dropped the subject, but remained uneasy. It had been too long. Everything had passed Lusamine in a blur of black venom and red blood, moment by moment indistinguishable from the next, collapsing into a nonsensical mess of violence and horror that she felt she was the sole witness of... even though the boy beside her had seen it all too, that he was a victim to it all. Lusamine wanted to reassure him and tell him that once they'd got Lillie back everything would be just fine. A desire to force him to hold her hand to show that she appreciated him caught light from the spark of the thought that he had been through everything too. Of course he had. He'd been through worse. She tortured herself, thinking 'woe is me,' and here he was with a far worse strain and in a significantly worse situation. He was still her prisoner. He was still her property.
As they stepped on the elevator down to the labs again, Sun stiffened, trying to look official. Lusamine had drawn enough attention simply crossing the lobby to make Sun apprehensive of all the eyes on them. He felt Lusamine tap his wrist in response to his formal stance and glanced at her - the love response programmed into him stunned him momentarily and made him forget where he was and what he was doing.
"Mother," he began, and his memory clicked again before he could continue. "Um- I-"
Lusamine had smiled at his slip of the tongue and it made him shiver with fear. "You don't need to stand so stiffly, Sun. Just relax." The elevator began its descent into the catacombs below the Foundation, and as it did both Sun and Lusamine considered Sun's current mental state.
They reached the same lab where Sun had first been introduced to the Type: Null specimens (for the second time, now he had remembered everything), Lab A3. Now the three specimens were no longer confined to the tubes of pink fluid, they were instead inside three Poké Balls, unmarked, plain, unsuspecting.
There were tables that had been set up in the lab with a scattering of technological and biological apparatus over the surface. Sun paced over to it while Lusamine hung back. "I'm... I'm starting to think I didn't do it right. It can break. The system."
"Sun, you did great. I'm sure it'll work for what we need it for."
"Hmm." He was afraid to release the Type: Nulls, now that they had been upgraded according to how he wanted them. His hand hovered over the table where the tools lay, floating above each item in turn: postponing the moment.
"Sun. Lillie needs us."
Sun nodded slowly and took the three Poké Balls, releasing the upgraded Nulls one by one. They had their restraint helmets removed, their cruel, proud visage on full display now - they looked lupine, strong, like Lucario, like Arcanine - they tossed silver manes and their voices no longer echoed into the heavy metal masks, now clear as day.
Their crests were larger and rotated calmly through dim colours as the new RKS system power-cycled through every programmed Type. Metallic snouts huffed and puffed with a hint of newfound bravado that Sun was happy to see. They wore a mass of lightweight cabling and armor to help regulate the RKS System energies as best as possible, and the three looked far more comfortable than they had before Sun had seen to upgrading their designs. It accentuated their silhouettes, serving to make them look even larger, the seven feet of muscle and steel encircled in glowing wires.
"H- hey there," Sun greeted the three of them. Two stood, heads tilted in confusion. Not a single specimen cared for Lusamine, bristling at her, but the boy... they vaguely recognized. He looked different now. Sun had lost his Aether form, meaning the one he had adopted and the additional clone no longer recalled him. However, Gladion's did.
The shirt. The skin. The eyes.
It was sizing him up, and Sun knew why. He'd always beaten Gladion in battle, and even when they had all three, Gladion's had been the coldest toward him. Sun knew the question its eyes asked him. "He's... he's gone, Null."
The look in its eyes was so earth-shattering to Sun that he gasped. Null folded on its forelegs and let out a low, crooning moan, a pained 'oooh' that Sun recognised as similar to the ones it had spoken with an over-sized iron mask on its face. It leaned forward and curled up, the other two pawing at it curiously.
Sun sat in front of it. "It'll be okay. I'm here." It huffed at him, raising a clawed foreleg to swipe him away like a fly. "I know you don't want me. You want Gladion. But he's gone. And we won't do anything that he wouldn't." Null huffed again, irritably. "You know Lillie?" It now registered its interest at Gladion's sister's name, eyeing him. Sun's Null at last recognised him through the change in skin tone and eye colour and made a noise like a whine, pacing to his side. "She's gone too, but we can still save her. Only you and the others can, but we need all three of you. It's what Gladion would want."
Gladion's Null remained passive. Lusamine remained quiet, watching Sun. He had a way with them.
"Gladion always... said to me, that you were his... silver ally. You were his closest partner. And me and Gladion were good friends." Sun noticed that Null had peeked up on the term 'silver ally.' He stroked its mane, silver like Gladion had named it for. "He... when he didn't call you Null, he called you that, right? Silvally. He told me, after I beat him on Ula'ula island. You preferred that. He gave you a real name. Not that..." Sun was thinking. He trailed off.
'When she called me 'son' I preferred that. She let me into her family. She...' the poisonous thoughts bubbled and popped in his head. 'I want to be with her,' he thought as one dangerously large bubble burst and coated part of his brain in nothing but bad ideas. Sun refused to think of those thoughts as anything but misplaced pity for the woman. He was fooling himself. 'I want to be a pet. I want to be a good boy-' he shook his head, blocking out the terrible, wrong thoughts. He couldn't stay with her, he had to run far away and never look back.
"Gladion might not be here anymore, but- you can still help him. He wanted to protect his family, his sister." He patted Null's muzzle softly, and it was now watching him intently. "What do you say, Silvally?"
Silvally stood, raising back to all fours and tossing its mane with a noble look about it. Lusamine smiled, glad that Sun both wasn't hurt and had found such success in communicating with the Beast Killers.
Sun's Silvally let out a cry of joy at Gladion's Silvally's newfound vigor. The third, which had belonged to both, paced to be beside the other two - and they all pounced on Sun.
Lusamine gasped and went to rush in, but stopped dead when she saw that they were merely licking him. "H-hey- knock it off," Sun laughed, trying to push one away at a time. "S-stop it, we've got serious work to do," he tried to sound serious himself and failed. "Come on, we have to-"
Lusamine decided she should step in. "Now now, the three of you-"
All three Silvally specimens encircled Sun protectively, glaring at Lusamine. Gladion's growled, the sound metallic and echoing. Sun got up from among them. "Hey, it's okay, she's friendly, she's nice-" Sun realised he was lying to himself subconsciously.
Gladion's Silvally snapped at the air, gnashing its fangs as if to say that Sun was wrong. Its mane, plume and the wires on its outer shell began to glow red as it charged up Fire-type energy. "S-sorry-" Lusamine said, backing away after seeing the change. Sun hugged Silvally's neck and tried to guide it back but it snapped at the air again, now vicious.
"Wait- it wasn't her fault," Sun told it, guessing why it was so agitated. The Silvally hesitated and made a noise at Sun that sounded like a question. "It was my fault," Sun admitted to it. Silvally nudged him, as if rebuffing him, telling him it couldn't have possibly been him. "I'm serious. I'm- I'm sorry, Silvally." It refused to believe him, pushing him about almost lovingly with its head. It could recognise that Sun had shared a bond - however small and antagonistic - with Gladion. "But we need to save Lillie now. Can you-" Sun looked around at the other Silvally present, "-can you all do that for us? And for him?"
The three gave a synthetic howl of pride. Sun smiled.
Sun's room was full of activity. The three Silvally slept in a corner, giving short huffs through their nostril exhausts as they breathed out. Nebby lay on Sun's desk, still shivering from the power drain. Sun would occasionally pet it to ensure it was well, producing little wisps of stardust. Nihilego stared at Sun without seeing from under its glass prison. He could almost feel the malevolent hatred radiating from the sluglike abomination.
Sun himself dashed back and forth, proving things, calculating, recalculating, estimating and improvising. And in the corner of the room, watching him work, was Lusamine. She didn't know how he knew all of this. He was doing all of this for her and her family, after everything she'd done.
"Sun... do you want..."
"I've already got more Tapu Cocoa. I'm glad I remembered I liked it. I really do. It's my favourite." He was rambling to avoid looking at her, keeping his eyes focused on the drawings. On the way back from the labs he'd remembered that he wanted it, and had stood by one of the Paradise's hot drinks machines waiting for Lusamine, who didn't have her purse at the time and had to go to the mansion to fetch it. He had bought five cups of Tapu Cocoa despite her protests and had moved back and forth between the machine and the mansion several times, each time Lusamine thinking that someone would call security on the kid who kept buying cups of Tapu Cocoa in triplicate before heading off to the mansion again, which was most certainly not open to the public. It was his innocence, his childishness that she loved, like a kid with sweets.
"Do you want a... a hug?" Lusamine had been trying to muster the courage to be kind to him out of the... relative goodness of her own heart since they had returned.
Sun now faced her with an almost comically confused expression. He was trying to figure out her motive. When it wasn't revealed to him at a glance, he said, "Why?"
Lusamine didn't know how to answer. She had only asked because of how much stress he was putting himself through. Empty paper cups of Tapu Cocoa surrounded the drawings and notes he'd made, and his hands shook as he held them above a new, blank sheet. She dragged her chair closer. "Because I want to make you feel better."
"You kidnapped me and..." Sun stopped. He'd already made his point. He'd also unintentionally invoked the words the judge in the nightmare had spoken. He drew a straight line on the paper, and flipped it over, dissatisfied.
Lusamine stood and moved her chair closer. "Sun, baby, come to mommy."
The stress that kept Sun on edge broke, as did his resistance to her. He leaned his head against her and she put her arm around him, holding him tight. "It'll be okay. We'll find her." Lusamine found it strange she was trying to cheer him up over the predicament, and concluded it was because he was the one carrying the burden of illustrating and orchestrating his plan. He was the one that was being relied upon.
"Mommy," Sun mumbled. "I know it's not you... I know..." He wasn't going to forget. This was a momentary weakness brought on by Aether Sun, nothing more. He didn't want this. He didn't. He... Arceus, her body fit his perfectly... they'd practiced this so often... but he didn't want this. "Stop it... stop it!"
"Baby, just... just calm down." She kept her hold on him tight. Sun tried to shake free and failed. The earlier takeover of his mind had informed her that it was impossible for him to resist this - once he was in her arms he would inevitably leave them belonging to her once again, provided that the length of the cuddle was sufficient. It was mathematical, clinical. "Baby, let your mother calm you down."
"You're not my-" Sun sobbed. "You can't- you can't..."
"Sun... I'll let you go once you've calmed down." Lusamine was using her power over Sun to relax him. Only for good, or... again, relative good. "Mommy's got you." Sun cried into the crook of her arm as Lusamine rocked him back and forth. "I'm sorry I did this to you, Sun. You... you understand, though, yes?"
"Understand what?" Sun sniffled. "Oh... ug-" he clutched at her, afraid she'd let go, and made a pained noise, of denial, of self-hatred. He knew what had happened but the addiction, the attraction, was still inside him. "Mommy, I love you..." His tone and his expression was more in line with a tortured, emancipated war veteran begging for death than a child admitting their affection for their mother. "I- ugh- I love you..."
"Sun, you don't have to hold it back," Lusamine encouraged. "I'll understand." She felt terrible trying to once again manipulate him, wanted there to be another way, but she had to do it to keep herself safe. If she could get through this now, and use him to get Lillie back, maybe they'd part ways amicably.
Maybe Tepigs could fly.
"Mother..." Sun choked. "You did this to me..."
"I did. But Sun, it's in the past. We can't help it now." She scratched his head in a greatly familiar manner, Sun moaning with denial as her hand moved with gradual poise to cup his cheek. "Who's my perfect boy?" She herself knew she was pushing it too far. She wanted to relive it all for one moment, having that perfect son, having what she wanted, something that just loved her and nothing else, and couldn't stop herself from trying to get it back even if only for a handful of seconds.
Sun trembled. "You're trying to- trying to control- just admit that- admit you don't want me to leave just because you're scared of what might happen if I tell everyone. Admit that you only care because I could... I could destroy your whole life." Sun was stopped as Lusamine embraced him again.
"Honey, I care about you. I do. And you know it." Sun couldn't call her a liar. She could've had him killed when he was infected, but hadn't. And what was worse... "I know you care, too." Only hours prior he'd been nursing her on the bathroom floor - sure it was as wholly Aether Sun, but parts of that gentle, caring, genuine love were still wedged into his personality and proving difficult to shake loose.
"Mommy..." Sun whined. "S- say it again..." He was blushing horribly and every part of him was begging himself to not give in to the love, the love that grew and grew and grew and grew...
"Who's my perfect little boy?" Lusamine asked him.
Sun struggled. He tried, tried so hard to stop it.
"Me."
"Do you love me?" Lusamine threw away all pretence. She had to know if she could keep him or not.
Sun made another strained noise. "Mommy, I- I-" he gagged on the words that he was trying to speak, "I love you." He took her wrist, as she was still caressing his face, and moaned.
"Do you still want to call me that?"
Sun finally was able to meet her eyes again. He was broken, horrified, disappointed in his inability to resist his mental affliction. "Yes."
"Oh, honey, by all means..." She'd won. She could do it. He was not going to escape her, not going to slip through her fingers, and while there was a ton of guilt there was two tonnes of relief and three tonnes of anticipation.
"M-mommy," Sun whimpered and fell into her arms. "Your perfect son loves you so much..." he felt the soothing familiarity of her shape and sighed in blissful contentment. There was a lightness in both his stomach and his head - the former unsettling and the latter heavenly, and both were gradually extending into every inch of his being. "C-can I -" he began and stuttered out into nothingness. Lusamine patted him on the head, comforting him as best she could.
"Now listen, Sun... you have to stay here with me when this is over. You have to stay." As she spoke she softly caressed his face with the back of her hand, exhaling slowly and indulging totally in the moment.
"I have to stay," he repeated, his voice blank. "I have to stay."
"That's right. That's right." She stroked him again.
"Mmm," Sun purred. "I want to stay."
"That's... that's good," she encouraged quietly. "That's very good."
"Hmm..." Sun hummed.
Lusamine closed her eyes and began to cry. "Your mother's got you. She's got you." Sun was smiling as he held her, like Lillie or Gladion might have when they were younger, leaning across his chair and into her shoulder. Sobs were muted, smothered by her desire to not upset him in turn. Something deep and rooted around her soul was pushing agony into her nitrogen blood and through her tempestuous thoughts, telling her that Lillie was likely already dead. That she'd got what she wanted. Lillie gone. Gladion gone.
When she'd created Sun she'd wanted a child who would love her back, and the lack of inhibitions had allowed her to push forward with the plan. She'd picked Sun maybe because she was looking for vengeance on her biological children, maybe because she was impressed with his strength, maybe because she had felt something toward him before even... damn it, she wasn't a maniac like that, she wasn't that-
She'd fucked him.
The rope on her neck tightened painfully and she choked. Sun registered the noise and glanced up, watching her silently crying. "What's wrong? We'll find Lillie. And I- I want to st- I- I-" Sun's eyes narrowed, and he tried to push away from her, growling at her tight hold before exclaiming his woes to her. "Stop taking control of me like that. I don't like it."
Lusamine broke down, wailing loudly and making Sun flinch. The Silvally trio woke up simultaneously and barked at Lusamine, reading her as a threat, and she hastened to relax them. "Gn- no- no- wait-"
"Shhh, shh, it's okay," Sun placated the three in her place. "Let me go." Lusamine similarly obeyed him.
"Sun- Sun- you have to understand, I'm not right, I'm a mess-"
"I know you are. But unfortunately," Sun scowled, "for some reason I still want to help you. Help you get Lillie back. Help you get better so this never happens to anyone else."
"Sun, this will never happen to anyone else-"
"Your word means nothing." Sun's tone was flat as paper, blunt as brick and just as coarse. He cleared his throat awkwardly and gestured. "Right, I think I know how to get to Lillie."
"Sun... thank you."
"You're welcome." The Silvally had paced across the room to Sun and he stroked their manes in turn, the specimens forming a circular queue where they rotated around beside Sun's seat to all be fussed over one after another. They all got a scratch under the chin or a quick ruffle of the mane and rotated out for the next. "I- I'm only good at- at battling," Sun explained quickly. "About getting there, I'm just using what I found in the book." Sun pointed it out, six empty cups of Tapu Cocoa on top of it, and Lusamine recognised it as the same book she had tossed at Faba when the machine to change Sun was under construction.
"And... what does it say?"
Sun frowned. "I can't understand it."
"That's... rare." Lusamine sighed.
"But I saw-" he pushed aside scraps and revealed a page torn from the book.
"That was mine-" she protested, seeing the torn edge. Sun blinked at her. "It's fine though," she added hastily, but damaging books had always annoyed her.
"Anyway, on this page there's a diagram," he pointed at it. "Think about it like this. You stick a-"
"Yes, yes, I can see the diagram," Lusamine interrupted. Sun blinked at her again. "But, please, continue." He lifted up his pencil and folded a piece of paper in half before punching through both halves with a unnecessarily violent stab. Lusamine glanced at him and Sun exhaled gradually and licked his lips. She tried to surreptitiously rub her eyes to check she wasn't seeing things and indeed saw sweat clinging to his forehead. He was under this much stress to hold onto himself with her so near.
"So if one half is our dimension, the other half is Ultra Space. If we create a new portal in Lillie's room, or anywhere near here, it'll connect to roughly the same place as where it pulled her through." Sun paused and wiped his forehead with his sleeve, trying to mask the motion as him swiping his hair to the right. "I guess it'd explain why only Nihilego ever appeared near here. It can't have been just 'cause you wanted it to."
"Sun, I can go if you want me to."
"Huh?"
"I can see the... the pain you're going through. Putting yourself through for me. Sun, I never meant for this to happen. I never-"
Sun was staring. "The sad part is... I believe you."
"You can leave now. I'll go after Lillie, I can-"
"I don't trust anyone else to do it."
"I'm her mother," Lusamine retorted, but she knew it'd be easy for Sun to tell her she wasn't a particularly good one. He didn't pick that angle.
"And I thought you were mine." There was a hint of bitterness, of rejection. A painful reminder to the both of them that things might be different if he had never remembered, and a sense of longing to return to that delusion. Lusamine didn't think that she was deceiving herself, hearing that in his voice, but couldn't be sure.
They listened to the ocean outside. It had been the only constant in the ordeal, the expanse of turquoise, witness to it all, silent spectator, isolating them from the prying eyes of the outside world.
"I- I want to make it right, Sun. I want to look after you. Both." Lusamine placed her hand flat on his desk purposefully. "Even if you don't want to be near me - and I understand - I will make sure you are safe."
"You will never be a parent to me." Sun spoke plainly. Lusamine watched him as he avoided looking at her, still sweating. He was a creature of singular beauty and had to be saved or preserved. "Anyway," he continued, pushing the argument aside without pause, "I was going to try to use Silvally's enhanced senses to track Lillie once we made it through. I also thought we should keep that piece of Nihilego around just so that Silvally can learn to fight and track it too." Lusamine hadn't been listening. She was thinking about freezing him. She'd said that she'd release all of the frozen Pokémon, never said anything about not restarting the collection. She'd had the idea before, deemed it inhumane, but now that he was suffering this much why not keep her precious boy safe for eternity? If he was going to refuse her hospitality, which was an idiotic thing to do, why not force him to understand just how safe he could be?
She could feel it like an illness, like a spider cloaking her mind in corrupt, yet enticing, silk. She had no moral compass to guide her in moments like these - the metaphorical arrow had snapped off and left her directionless, disoriented. In a trance, she removed her hand from the desk and slowly, casually glided it to Sun's cheek.
"You'll... you'll be safe with me. Sun, you'll be safe with me." The trancelike state was visible in her blank stare, her emotionless mask, her flat voice. Sun had to fight himself to prevent falling into a similar state, starting to panic as he felt every layer of protection he had tried to put up collapse - every wall, every tower, every mental castle in his head bombarded apart and crumbling to little pieces.
"Miss Lusamine, please stop... think- think about what we have to- to do..." Sun tried to make her relent, seeing that she most certainly was not intentionally pushing at his mental barriers. "Don't- don't..."
Lusamine shook her head. "Sun, I'm sorry, I didn't-" she sat back in her chair, slouching in defeat. She couldn't even control herself.
"I know." He sighed. "Were you listening?"
"N-no..." Lusamine admitted. "I - you know I have... have... problems..." She was having difficulty speaking to him now. "Sun, do you want a... a safe word? And I'll leave?" Sun, to her surprise, smiled.
"How about... stop it now?" he offered.
"That works," Lusamine replied, with a sad smile of her own, her eyes unusually soft and kindly - Sun was used to seeing them sharp with intent and intellect. "That will definitely work. But... for now, unless you're uncomfortable, explain to me again."
"Mother, I-" Sun flinched. He steadied himself. "I was saying that using Silvally's enhanced senses we may be able to track Lillie down, and failing that, Nihilego, using the shard we kept."
Lusamine nodded along. "Yes. It makes sense." She thought about the pieces of the plan, and came to a sticking point. "But how do we get there, and how do we leave?"
"I... I was hoping you could help with that." Sun put his hand on his shoulder, crossing his arm over his chest. He rocked on his seat nervously. "Miss Lusamine, you made the... the cage for Nebby. There has to be a way to open a portal without hurting it."
Lusamine pinched the bridge of her nose, her next words exasperated but chosen carefully. "We never found a way." The Cosmog was still quaking, and Sun gently lifted it in his arms and cradled it back and forth. Lusamine took another snapshot of Sun in her mind - there were so many vivid images she had saved of him mentally. Here his dark skin was illuminated by the soft yellow of the falling sun outside and was cast in purple from below by the Cosmog's body, blue eyes reflecting the purple and flowing with energy, while his arms held the Pokémon steady and safely. Again she was lost in a trance. "Beautiful... perfect..." she whispered and reached out to touch his face again.
Sun looked up at her with his shining round eyes and his expression was clear. He was scared. Shifting Nebby closer to his chest, he leaned away. "Don't touch me. Don't."
Lusamine wanted desperately for him to just obey her and let her kiss him and show that she loved him, that she'd look after him forevermore. But that need for control was what kept him wary of her. "Sun, just... is it okay to touch you?"
"N-no, I just said that," he reminded her, and Lusamine withdrew her hand, her heart aching. "I- st- stop-" he wanted her to leave but couldn't command her to, couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't just tell her 'no.' "S-so you couldn't find a way to go to Ultra Space without hurting Nebby?"
"No," Lusamine replied simply. "We could not." Sun frowned.
"We have to."
"Sun, there isn't time. We have to sacrifice Nebby for the great-"
"No. No, we don't. There is another way."
"If you can find it, be my guest." Lusamine didn't want to come off as heartless (that was, if his perception of her wasn't already completely fucked) but was thinking about Lillie, undoubtedly already locked in Nihilego's clutches. "We... we need to save your sist- we need to... fuck." She planted her head on the desk ashamedly. "No- no we don't need to - you know what I meant." She spoke straight down to the surface of the desk. Nihilego writhed under the glass beside her head.
"So this wasn't all a trick. You were lying to yourself too." Sun sounded... Lusamine didn't know how he sounded. Strange.
"What does it matter?"
"You're not evil, just insane."
"Now I feel so much better."
"You're welcome." Sun bounced Nebby up and down. "Give me... give me a few hours to see if I can figure it out."
"Whatever," Lusamine slurred. She still hadn't moved. Pounding both of her fists on the desk, she moaned out loud, childishly. "Oh, Sun, what can we do?"
She heard the door close.
"S-Sun?"
The three Silvally started growling at her.
"Sure, you love him, everyone loves him, he's so-" her attitude of defeat had brought her to the point where she was willing to mock everything and anything regardless of her own hypocrisy so long as it made her feel any better.
Their growling increased in volume.
"Fine, I'm leaving, I'm going, I'm going!" She wanted to find something to throw. Hard.