2.4.3. Reyes, Part III
Reyes made a face into the cracked hand mirror, touching the purple marks beneath his eyes. He was losing sleep again to the damn nightmares. He didn't know why they disappeared and reappeared, nor did he know why they persisted for uneven amounts of time, but he did know that he had to hide the evidence before she noticed. Easier said than done, as she noticed the smallest things. He dropped the mirror onto the sand before backing out of his little shelter.
"Reyes, what are you doing?" Lilly called.
"Just…wondering." He turned towards the ocean and saw her almost pacing within the water, Sunny still asleep on her shell. He smiled at the sight, finally feeling his mind ease. He trotted down the wet sand to her.
"You haven't been sleeping again," she said almost immediately, frowning at him.
"You don't miss a thing, do you?"
"Of course not. Tell me about it."
"Nightmares… They were different, but I kept seeing Brendan's face…his last face…" He choked a little and Lilly lowered her head to the crook of his neck. "I'm sorry, bad stuff doesn't belong here."
"I don't want you to be sad though, so talk."
"No, no, I'm fine, really…" She raised her head to narrow her eyes at him. He traced his fingers over his heart. "Swear." Luckily she didn't have enough time to protest, because Sunny stirred.
"Mornin'?" She yawned and rubbed her eyes. "Hi, Momma, Daddy."
"Hey, Sunshine." Reyes put his hands under her flippers to lift her up. She was just about two feet tall, but then again she had yet to hit a growth spurt. "Sleeping late?"
"Mm." She yawned again. "I'm hungry, can I get fish?"
"Berries, Sunshine, Berries." She pouted, flapping her flippers in frustration.
"No! Fish!"
"It's just fish, Reyes. You and your vegan thing," Lilly said, wrinkling her nose but still smiling. "It's the natural order of things."
"Doesn't mean I like it. What's wrong with my Berries?"
"Nasty!"
"You know how she is when she gets like this," Lilly said. "I'll get some fish, alright?"
"Fine," he grumbled, setting her down on the sand. She cheered triumphantly, practically flopping around on the sand. He kept her away from the water, knowing that he couldn't catch up to her if she started swimming, and entertained her with his seed pods. He removed two and made them blossom into large sunflowers, which she made him tie to one of the knobs on her shell.
"Daddy, you look tired," Sunny said as he used his mirror to play sunlight across the sand.
"No, I don't."
"Nah! Can't fool me! I'm a jeeneeus! Momma says so!"
"She's one to talk." He tossed the mirror over his shoulder with a snort.
"Why?"
"It's…well…I've been having bad dreams. A lot of them."
"Ask Momma!" Sunny rested her flippers on his leg. "She always makes the bad dreams go away!"
"Not these dreams, trust me." She frowned at the sadness in his voice.
"You wanna hug?"
"I don't…" She tried to anyway, her flippers not quite able to bend around his body. He caved and hugged her to his chest. "Thanks, Sunshine." He looked up and saw Lilly returning, two fish on her shell. He released Sunny to chase after her as he heard his PokéNav ring. "I'm sorry," he told Lilly as she passed the fish onto Sunny.
"It's okay, I'm used to it," Lilly smiled. "Go help save the world again."
"Never the world, sweetheart. That's just wishful thinking." He went back to his little shelter to open his rucksack and answer his PokéNav.
"I know I'm not interrupting, so I won't apologize for it," she said immediately.
"You kind of are interrupting, but enough banter." Azalea laughed on the other end.
"There's a disturbance that's suspiciously rebel-ish in Dewford, and you're the next revolutionary that's overseas."
"Well, about fifty miles from Dewford overseas, but why nitpick, right? And why not Kim and Leroy? They're overzealous when it comes to fighting."
"Those two are fighting in Sinnoh right now. You won't be spending too much time away from her. For you, this should be a piece of cake."
"Even a little bit of time away from either of them is too much for me." He glanced up when he heard Lilly coo appreciatively, Sunny giggling as well, and he pulled a face. "And thanks for making me admit that. I'll never hear the end of it now." Azalea started laughing.
"You're so cute in love, Reyes. But I digress. Can you get there with your boat?"
"It would probably be stretching, but yes, I suppose."
"Then we're good to go. Also, Tex says beep-beep-beep-hi." Reyes just hung up before he busted a vein at Tex's name. He went to Lilly and put his arms around her neck. She hummed against his cheek in disappointment.
"Really, it won't be long."
"Be safe. Sunny, Daddy's going away for a little bit."
"What?" Sunny exclaimed through a mouthful of Magikarp. "Daddy's always going away…"
"Saving the world isn't easy to do." He crouched down to get eye level with her. "I'll be back before sunrise, promise."
"Okay. Don't sleep late, and if you see strange Pokémon then come straight back!"
"Ha… Promise." He hugged her for a long while, relishing the feel of her heart against his chest. The first time he felt it—or more specifically, the first time he ever held Sunny—he was scared with thoughts of another life in his hands, but slowly he became used to it. He released her to the sand and she instantly clung to Lilly's flipper, which was the same size as her little body. Lilly smiled at him as he went to the pier and untied his boat.
"Remember how, three years ago, I promised that we would someday live this life?" he called to her. "I'm making another promise: I will be able to stay with you and Sunny, and we can sit and enjoy sunsets and night swimming and everything else you want!"
"And have five more kids," she called back. It had been a long time since she could make Reyes flush in embarrassment, but her power was just as strong as ever.
"We'll talk about that later!"
Reyes wasn't in the best condition when Lilly found him. Hell, he was scarred for life, to put it lightly. He very nearly sleepwalked his way to Lilycove just to get as far from Fortree and its nightmares as possible, and even then he still didn't feel far enough. She had been on her way back to Pacifidlog when she spotted him, and they spent the rest of the night just sitting there since Reyes couldn't bring himself to move any farther. Then, as dawn broke across the sky, she coerced him onto her shell and took him to Pacifidlog, where she had been staying since the rebels had taken up residence in Sootopolis City. Her friends were there too, Marla and Wilma and Emmi, and they took care of him for a few weeks as he tried to wrap his mind around what had happened.
Lilly was way, way nicer than he deserved, and he thanked Arceus every day that he could have her. She was patient through his worst days, days when he would retreat to the docks and curl up and refuse to be moved and days when he was shouting through series of nightmares. He had seen too much, seen his friends get gutted and ripped apart and burned and frozen and electrocuted, but Brendan was like the whisper that started the avalanche, and suddenly it was too much for him to take.
After that event, Reyes started searching for Alakazam, and instead, Alakazam found him, being psychic and all, and accepted Reyes' request to join his group, the group which had officially become the revolutionaries. He spent a lot of time going in and out of Pacifidlog after that, visiting several cities in Hoenn and trying to push back the rebels. The revolutionaries didn't succeed, obviously, but the rebels weren't overthrowing any more cities, which gave the humans enough places to sit and catch their breath. The constant stream of work kept him busy, and with his mind occupied, his life didn't have as much of a chance to bother him. He could never simply sweep things under the rug, not in ten years and not in ten thousand, but he managed to work through his issues to a socially-functional level.
She laid her Egg four weeks after that, and Reyes quickly learned the feeling of a panic attack. There were no problems as her Egg hatched, and the two of them became three. It wasn't like having Brendan back, not by a long shot, but there was sunshine in his life again.
He saw the disturbance in Dewford before he docked there. It was a bunch of batty rebels, coincidentally in the Zubat family, led by a belligerent Slaking that made short work of Crasher Wake's Pokémon. The species was slow and lazy—well, except for Vigoroth—but when they were motivated enough to move, they could tear down with their high reserves of strength. Reyes secured his boat, then he hit the shore running. The Slaking was a snore away from taking down somebody's house with his fists before Reyes tangled his wrists with vines, binding them to the sand. He gave an angry grunt as his eyes set on Reyes coming up on the beach.
"Revolushinary?" he slurred, saying it like any words further than "Lemme sleep" were an effort to get past his lips.
"Who else?" Reyes bound the Slaking's other wrist as well, tying it down against a light post. He tightened the vines to ensure that he couldn't break through even on one of his better days and began to dial the police's number on his PokéNav. The nearest Jenny was in Petalburg, which meant that she could take a boat to Dewford. He himself liked using Mr. Briney's boat—he was a nice old fellow, and his Pelipper alongside her baby Peeko were nice company.
Suddenly his PokéNav went flying from his hands into the water and he was flat on his back with a purple rat sucking the chlorophyll from his shoulder. He swatted the Zubat away only to get three more in its place, and they were covering a lot of ground considering their size. He didn't have any leaves to work with since they were on an island of majority sand and rocks, and he could only produce vines from bare skin, which he was very much lacking with three Bat Pokémon getting their fill of him. He had to wonder how they didn't get sick—blood was a lot different from chlorophyll after all—but then another thought occurred to him: for photosensitive Zubat to be in direct sunlight, they had to have been domestically trained, but surely not by that torpid Slaking. He bent his head backwards to look at the water, and he put all his energy into dragging it forward. A small bit of it hit the sand about three inches further than the rest. He continued pulling it mentally, his brain hurting from the effort, and eventually the water was touching his skin. With one final groan he swept the Zubat away with it, dragging them under so that their wings were held down by the water's weight and letting them be swept out to sea.
"Nice trick," a Crobat said, the only Crobat in the bunch. It stood out from the pair of Golbat and the other handful of pesky Zubat. "You're a Grass-type though."
"It's called Hidden Power." Though it has drained me, he thought, listing to one side.
"I haven't had my fill yet, so don't keel over."
"It will take a lot more than you all to send me to Hell." Reyes moved to tangle the Crobat in his vines, but it was a lot faster than him, especially when he was so exhausted, and considering the real fight hadn't even started yet, he was damned. He wanted to call Azalea but his PokéNav was probably confusing the hell out of some bottom-feeder Pokémon now, and her telepathy was nowhere near strong enough to reach him all the way across Hoenn. On that note, Alakazam's telepathy probably wasn't that strong either…probably. Just in case, he made sure his thoughts were extra frantic, even if he kept his poker face while the Crobat darted around him, fangs leaving little pinpricks in Reyes' skin as it nipped him repeatedly.
Reyes focused the sunlight down into his body, then he redirected it at the Crobat. The issue was it moved much too quickly for him to catch and much too wildly for him to guess with. He brought the sunlight down and fried the foundation of the light post holding the Slaking in place, then he clutched the severed vines and pulled as hard as he could. He probably permanently damaged his arms with the weight and force, but he slammed the tower down away from any houses to fill the air with sand. The bats panicked, blinded, and started shrieking to detect his location. He jumped from the ground and braced himself against the wall of a rocky ledge before propelling himself forward onto a house's tiled roof, then he pushed off again to grab onto the disoriented Crobat, binding its wings together with his vines. He hit the wall of the Pokémon Gym hard enough to crack it, then he strung his vines around the Gym logo before jumping forward again with the vines trailing behind him. He managed to catch the frantic Zubat within the net, but the Golbat and Slaking were still free. The Slaking roared as the air cleared.
"Guraaah, damn revolutionary!" He brought his fist down on the Gym to smash it to bits, then swung his other hand in the same move to swat Reyes from the air like a bug, smashing him into the ocean hard enough to leave bruises. The good part was the Slaking hurt his subordinate; the bad part was he hurt all parts of Reyes. He hauled himself back to the shore, opening his seed pods to the sunlight. Still, it wouldn't work fast enough when he had to keep moving. He rolled out of the way as the Slaking roared past, then Reyes sliced down in between the Slaking's shoulder blades. Crimson blood spurted over his skin, staining it a nasty shade of pinkish-purple as the Slaking started running, swatting down his cohorts in his frenzy. He started to stray closer to the homes and Reyes, thinking on his feet, dug his right blade in deeper, paralyzing the Slaking's right arm.
"Stop and back away from the people. Do that or you might leave with one less arm than you came with." Of course, he was bluffing. Even at full power, his leaf blades couldn't cut through solid bone and thick muscle like that. He realized the Slaking had stopped moving and chalked it up to blood loss, sliding from his back to the sand. He started rifling through his rucksack for a cellphone—there was a good chance he'd over-packed, he was that meticulous at times—but found he was really stuck. The Dewford dwellers were still shell-shocked from the attack despite its minor scale. He did hear from Crasher Wake's Pokémon somebody had already called the authorities, however, and that they were well on their way. He focused on tying up the Slaking when he noticed that the Crobat's goonies were gone from his vines. A few Zubat on their own weren't too much trouble, maybe a few dead Mareep or something similar would mark their presence, but those guys seemed a little smarter than the usual brainless followers.
He felt the Slaking stir beneath him a second before he gave a huge roar and rose to his feet, throwing Reyes back against the rocky cliffs hard enough to smash his seed pods and snap his tail clean off. He fell on his face in the hot sand, his mind and vision blurring.
"What'd you say before? Ya had to be at Mossdeep or somewhere? Well, doesn't matter if I don't remember, Batty does, fa sure." Reyes could barely understand him through the blood rushing in his ears, but he understood the implications well enough: he had, as he expected, put his family in danger. And it was his fault. His fault. He was losing the people important to him yet again because of his carelessness, his stupidity, his fault…
Reyes was startled awake by something licking his face. He opened his eyes and saw a police Manectric standing beside an Officer Jenny. Dewford was full of police and Nurse Joys and repair Pokémon and—
"Pacifidlog!" he shouted when he finally recovered his wits, pushing Jenny and her Pokémon away to stand up. The action made him see stars from how fragile his body was to begin with. "I have—to get—to Pacifidlog!"
"Relax! You're too injured for this," the Manectric said, sparking defensively. Reyes could've cared less if he was deep fried.
"I have to get to Pacifidlog…" He looked at the sky and saw the sun was setting whereas it was early noon before—he had lost too much time already. He went past them, moving fast despite the bad limp he had in one of his legs, and found his boat was still there, albeit crowded by several police boats. He also could've cared less that he scratched all of them on the way out, as his mind was focused on one thing, as hard as that was with the pain warring for priority.
The ride back to Pacifidlog felt twice as long, and that sense of time stretching to ridiculous proportions was so much like that day three years ago that he almost had a breakdown in the middle of the ocean, but he pushed forward. He finally saw Pacifidlog miles before he reached it, and he was probably ruining the boat's engine gunning it so hard. He reached the end of the beach and hopped onto the sand before the boat even stopped, not caring to dock it properly. He moved as quickly as he could and reached the telltale marks of the part of the shore that they called home. He slowed, then he stopped.
"God, Lilly…"
His shelter had been tugged apart, the meager belongings he kept inside tossed all over the beach. Maybe it was Arceus, but he found his hand mirror first. He picked it up and saw his despair looking just as severe as it felt. He moved farther and found more: Sunny's first shed skin, old wishbones, a knob from Lilly's shell, sunflowers… He felt something under his foot and realized that it was buried within the sand. He bent over to dust it clean and—
Reyes bolted from his spot, his head spinning and his stomach clenching. He threw up somewhere, then he threw up again out of sheer panic. Sunny, was all he could think.
…If Sunny's…there…then where's Lilly…?
—Do I even want to know?
He slumped down on the sand but no tears would fall. It seemed like he had finally run out. He crouched there for a long while, refusing to blank out again, refusing to crack. He still had a job to do, and even if he had to duct tape his soul together to do it, then he would. People and Pokémon counted on him to "save the world…" Lilly and Sunny counted on him… Azalea and Kim and Leroy and Eoin counted on him… Sunny and Brendan were counting on him…
He found his PokéNav—well, a spare—buried a few feet away. He cleaned the sand from it enough for it to work, and he dialed the number. "BZZT BZZT—SECRET—beep—CODE PLEZZZ?"
"Tex… Tex it's me…"
"REYES-REYES? WHY DO YOU SOUND-ND SO—"
"It doesn't matter, just bring a bag to this location… A little one." Tex was quiet as it processed that. It didn't understand emotions like sadness or despair, but it could understand pain to a certain degree.
"YEAH—bzzt autocorrect 'YES'—YES, I WILL-ILL DO IT. DO—emphasize 'YOU'—YOU NEED ANYTHING?"
"I…" He lost his train of thought as he stared at the ocean. I've never seen the ocean before, Brendan said a long time ago. Is it scary because it's big, or is it big because of all the Pokémon inside? Cuz I mean, if it's another world full of friends, I don't mind it that much.
"HN?"
"Time, Tex, just time." He hung up and let the PokéNav hit the sand with a heavy breath, and Reyes sat back to watch the sun set. "A lot of time." That happened just one year before his life was uprooted by a ridiculous kid named Dominic.