Mild het warning, but it's quickly followed by mild slash. Greenflower deserves yet another bouquet for her great beta work in this chapter. Hope you guys enjoy it.

In Ruins
Chapter 23

By the time that Satoshi arrived at the front of Takeshi and Kasumi's home, he could tell that the crusty layer of snow and slush built up over his sandals and snowshoes had solidified into a flaky, icy mass. He couldn't feel the ice on his toes, but he couldn't feel his toes, either. That was probably an early sign of the frostbite in itself.

The light coming from inside the house, therefore, drew him like a beacon. He trudged forward through the pristine lay of not yet indented snow, dodging the deeper banks adeptly - it was a skill surprisingly easy to acquire when the consequence was to have wet clothes for the rest of the day - and made his way to the door.

Satoshi had never had to ask permission to come into anyone's house since arriving at Alph, and suddenly he was faced with etiquette that he had never really learned in the first place. He knocked on the icy doorframe three times in quick succession, and hoped that it would be enough to get Kasumi and Takeshi's attention.

He stepped back on the door step, blowing hot air onto his now reddened knuckles as he waited.

When no one came, Satoshi furrowed his brow in confusion. Around the door hanging, light - and with it, warmth - escaped from edges into the gray and empty afternoon. Kasumi or Takeshi, or both of them even, had to be inside, but they weren't answering.

Maybe, he speculated, people in Alph didn't knock on doors?

"Hello?" he called out. "Is anyone home? It's me, Satoshi!"

Some time passed, but the curtain over the door remained unmoved.

Satoshi looked up at the sky. It was late afternoon, and the sun would be setting soon, and he had to admit that he didn't know what to do.

About almost everything.

It had been an unwelcome realization only a few hours earlier, while he'd been laying on the mat by the fire. He'd woken up confused from the concussion, with memory-captures of the morning floating across his mind like the fragments of clouds, changing shape and intangible but heavy with mass. Of them, only a few were very clear: first, that he'd broken the piece of pottery that he and Shigeru had made together. Second, that the earthquake had happened while he was holding the plate too closely. And third, he remembered the sudden recognition that it had been all too similar to that time when he'd been back at the Site on the edge of the desert, in what used to be his world, holding an envelope filled with symbol pieces. Then, and this morning, both times he'd felt something tugging deep inside of him - and an earthquake had thrown him off of center.

It wasn't enough to be a pattern, not really. But Satoshi had a gut feeling, and his stomach was probably the only thing that had never failed him.

Laying on that mat, Satoshi had been plagued with questions he'd been avoiding. What if, that time when they'd been talking in the Bathhouse, Shigeru had been right? What if the world was under their control? What if it was under his control? Did that mean it was really an illusion? And if it was, how was Satoshi supposed to get himself and Shigeru free?

This time he pounded his fist hard enough to break off some of the ice from the door.

"Kasumi, Takeshi, hello," he tried, desperation creeping into his voice as he called out again. "Hello-o-o!"

They had to come to the door. He needed to be told that he was wrong about his doubting, more than anything. When he had told Foster to go away - and it had worked - and the time he had yelled because of the earthquake - and it had stopped - it needed to be a coincidence. And it probably had been. After all, if things stopped because of him, then how did he know that things weren't starting because of him, too?

What if it was like Shigeru had suggested, so long ago, that maybe it was his fault that they were in Alph in the first place?

But the thought still seemed impossible. After all, it wouldn't explain why things were happening that he didn't like to have happening: that snow had been falling for a week, that Tano had vanished, that they hadn't been getting fed. The last one was especially true because Satoshi would really like to have warm, lavish meals three times a day again.

The thought of food struck Satoshi with a related one: what if Kasumi and Takeshi were in the middle of a meal? After all, he could relate to being too busy eating to bother with anything else. He and Shigeru had gotten lost in conversation at Tano's more times than he could count.

Satoshi walked around the outer wall to the little window. The fire's glow was brighter, and closer, too. As Satoshi reached for the curtain, he could see his arm being steadily enveloped by yellow light. He took the fabric in his hand, and grasping the heavy weave, he pulled it back and leaned into the open space it had left. He opened his mouth, the words ready in his throat - but when his eyes blinked back the light, and he saw the interior of the house, his announcement was choked back by a force stronger than his will.

Kasumi and Takeshi were there, just as he had guessed. They sat facing each other closely, their heads bent together low. It seemed as if they were speaking in quiet voices, but they weren't; Takeshi's mouth was moving, his lips biting at the air as if mimicking words - but only in-between pressing kisses against Kasumi's face. Her mouth was open, but only in the shape of a soundless little 'o'.

Satoshi's face was the same.

He struggled to think, to breathe, to do something as he watched one of Kasumi's hands lifting up and being taken in Takeshi's, but he was frozen as Kasumi's other hand snaked its way around her husband's neck, drawing him even closer to herself. Only as Takeshi bent Kasumi slowly backward onto the mat, arching over her gigantic stomach, kissing her, could Satoshi finally break away, dropping the curtain back into place and spinning around. He was overwhelmed with the sudden difference, staring out toward the streets and buildings of a snowy city, free of people whose bodies were too close together, drenched in the light cast by fires. He could hear his breath coming out unevenly, and he could see its shallow puffs against the sky. He felt as if he had run a mile, but he had only been staring in a window.

In the window which, he remembered, was still right next to it, and if he were to look again, he knew that he would see that Kasumi and Takeshi were still together, still doing all those things, still -

Satoshi sunk his head into his hands. He felt inexplicably raw and tense, and it was horrible. He didn't even want to think about what Kasumi and Takeshi had been doing; what they were probably still doing. It was bad enough that he had caught his friends in the middle of kissing like that, but even worse because he hated thinking about kissing anyone, or doing anything with anyone. Every time he'd ever kissed, it had just been boring, or bad.

Except that one time.

And even then, he reflected dismally, it had only been horrible as long as he had been thinkingof Hikari. Maybe that was the problem, though? Maybe it wasn't so bad because he'd thought of someone else?

But he'd thought of Shigeru, and surely that wasn't the reason because - Because being with Shigeru, that would be -

Panicked, Satoshi tried to stop himself, and to push the thought out of his mind, but it was too late. It had already rooted and all he could do was let the image wash over him. He was on his back, looking up at Shigeru, at the sloping tufts of his auburn hair as they laid against his neck, and the old yin-yang necklace of his, first dangling mid-air and then laying down on its side against the flat plane of Satoshi's chest. Shigeru had the faintest hint of a smirk as he looked at Satoshi, his eyes searing like they held the fires of a kiln, as he, too, slowly lowered down on top of Satoshi, hands working their way up Satoshi's shirt, the fabric giving way to skin, his head bending down and -

Satoshi was running.

He didn't even know that he'd backed away until he felt the snow flying up around his feet and saw the buildings blurring past, and he wasn't even cold because he felt as if his entire body had been dipped into a fire. All he knew is that he had to get away, and it didn't matter where he was going as long as he was going, and he didn't care as long as he didn't have to think; he couldn't think, because obviously his concussion had been worse than he'd thought, to make him think such crazy things, to have - to have hallucinations. Maybe, maybe that was it; the entire day had been a hallucination, from the moment he'd hit his head on the kiln.

Satoshi clung to the thought desperately, letting it guide him as he ran.

Maybe he hadn't stopped the earthquake, he'd just thought that he had? Maybe it was all just a big mistake, and as soon as he got back to Haruka's, he would find Shigeru waiting for him. And Shigeru would immediately know what was wrong, and make him sleep on the mat and he would wake up in the morning with nothing being wrong anymore. He wouldn't want Shigeru to be touching him, or kissing him, and he wouldn't be worried that the Unown were listening to him, and that he was the one who had brought them to Alph because he'd wanted it. He wouldn't, because everything would be the same, and safe, and he and Shigeru could keep on living in Alph as long as they wanted - he just had to get back to Shigeru.

He just had to get back, and everything would be okay.

It just had to.

Haruka met Shigeru's eyes, her expression placid. From the graceful way her feet overlapped to the gentle clasp of her hands in her lap, she was a picture of unruffled calm. It was a complete contradiction to what Shigeru had been expecting, given the statement he'd just left her with.

"What do you want to know about the legend?" she asked him evenly.

Shigeru's reply was instantaneous.

"Everything," he told her. Leaning forward, he elaborated, "I want you to tell me what the legend is, and I want to know how Satoshi and I can get home."

Haruka combed back some of her hair behind her ear. "I understand," she said, her face almost apologetic as she continued. "But I can't tell you what the legend is."

"You can't," Shigeru repeated dully.

Haruka shook her head. "No."

Shigeru felt his hands turning to fists at his side, but he refused to give in to the tension that had built up for what now seemed to have been days, even weeks - and yell. Instead, he took in a deep, steadying breath and looked away, to the far wall with its inoffensive and imperturbable blankness.

"Haruka," he said, the words coming out slowly, "You just told me in front of Masato that you would explain what was going on. Why did you even come if you weren't going to explain yourself?"

In the corner of his eye, he could see Haruka's arms reaching out on the ground in front of herself as if they were trying to find their place. They settled on the basic tea set.

"Originally, I came here looking for Masato," she answered. " I wasn't sure that I would find either you or Satoshi here."

"That doesn't answer my question," said Shigeru, barely able to contain himself as she began to heat a pan filled with herbs and water over the open flame. As if making tea was the most important thing she should be doing, instead of revealing her secrets. "Can't you just get to the point?"

"Give me a chance to explain fully and I will answer your question in the course," Haruka returned, her otherwise flattened voice still sharp at the edge, much like the blade of a knife. "Or did you not ask for me to explain myself?"

Shigeru crossed his arms, seeing no course but concession. "Fine, then," he said. "Explain."

Haruka, if he wasn't mistaken, rolled her eyes briefly before continuing.

"The Chief sent Masato here to ask you and Satoshi about the matter of Tano's disappearance. I was in the Temple this morning for more or less the same reason. Shigeru, the Chief is very concerned about the missing people in connection to you and Satoshi."

Shigeru was startled from his pout. "Did you say missing people?" he asked, "Not 'person'?"

Haruka gave him a look that showed she was clearly both curious and unimpressed by his ignorance. "Yes," she answered. "First Hikari went absent, and now Tano has disappeared as well."

Uncertain of how to follow the comment, Shigeru quietly tried to process the news, and found himself rubbing at his temples in an old, familiar gesture from his stint as a researcher during a life that now felt far away.

"Hikari has been missing for a week?" he asked Haruka finally.

"Yes," she confirmed.

Shigeru felt himself nodding. "I see. That lines up with the time frame in which Satoshi and I thought that you and Masato had disappeared. I'm not sure how that's significant, or even if it matters at all." He opened his eyes to the fire pit. "Masato was refusing to feed us, but he was around, I guess. What about you? Where were you?" he wondered.

"I was in the Temple, as I said."

"For a week?" Shigeru asked in disbelief. He looked up at Haruka, this time appraisingly, seeking out evidence of priestly duties. Sure enough, the bags under her eyes and the paleness of her skin seemed to bely a lack of sleep and sunshine that could be related to a week spent in a temple. It could also be, he thought with a bit of guilt, a result of heartbreak.

Uncomfortable with the frank stare, Haruka shifted in her seat and answered. "Not for the whole week," she said, her voice wavering at first. "But every morning and afternoon during the fitting time, before and after the moon reaches a certain point in the sky."

Shigeru was struck with another discordant thought. "Wait," he said. "When you took us with you, you said that priestesses were only allowed to enter the Temple once a month. What happened to that?"

"As priestess, it is my first and most important duty to liaison between the protectors and the people of Alph. When it was evident that Hikari was nowhere to be found, it was my responsibility to speak with the protectors, and find out that had happened."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"I'm not sure," said Haruka, honestly. "The tradition has always been for the priestess to only enter once a month, but I'm not sure… if there's a reason for it. After a week without hearing any response, I was starting to think that there was only one time a month when the Protectors would listen. But that changed this morning."

"They answered," Shigeru guessed.

"Yes." Here, Hikari passed Shigeru a finished cup of tea. It was still too hot for him to drink, so he held it tensely in his hands.

"And the response?" Shigeru prodded Haruka. "I'm right in assuming that since you came here to talk with Masato before you told the Chief, it's a fairly important one."

"Yes," said Haruka. This time she punctuated her tightlippedness with a sip of tea.

"Come on," Shigeru whined, not bothering to hide his exasperation. "Would it really be too much to ask for you to tell me exactly what you were going to tell Masato? Or better yet, to tell me when Satoshi comes back?"

"When Satoshi comes back… Where's Satoshi?" asked Haruka suddenly, as if she had just noticed his absence.

"He's visiting Kasumi and Takeshi's," said Shigeru, waving it off with his hand. "He'll be back soon enough. It's not like he's staying and chatting; he's just picking up dinner."

"Ah," said Haruka. She replaced her emptied tea cup to its place with the other tools beside the fire. "I have to leave soon," she said. "I have to go."

"What? You just got here!" Shigeru reeled. "We're in the middle of talking, and it's important!"

"I have to go see the Chief," said Haruka, pressing down the folds of her long skirt as if preparing to stand.

Shigeru held out a hand to stop her. "Wait a second. There's at least one thing that I still want to ask."

Haruka cocked her head slightly, and her hair pieces flashed in the firelight. "Yes?" she asked.

"I want to know why Masato mentioned your feelings," he dropped his voice awkwardly as he said, "about me… when we were talking about the legend, a few minutes ago."

Haruka's cheeks colored abruptly.

"That's not a question," she pointed out. "I don't know how to answer it."

"What do your feelings have to do with the legend?"

"Oh." Haruka looked down, avoiding Shigeru's eye contact as if to minimize her embarrassment. "Nothing… apparently."

Shigeru's eyebrows shot up as the words settled down in the bed of his brain. Apparently, apparently! He rapidly worked through the ramifications of the word. It implied an assumption, the potential for there being a connection. It hardly mattered whether Haruka was right or wrong that her feelings mattered; what mattered more is that she thought that they could in the first place. He found himself asking, "Did you think they would have something to do with the legend?"

"I thought they might," she admitted, confirming his theory. "But I was wrong."

Shigeru could feel the breakthrough inches away, dangling in front of him like a morsel. He was going to know the legend, and it was going to be today - if only Haruka gave him just the littlest bit more. "I need you to be more specific," he pleaded. All hints of his earlier exasperation was gone, replaced by fierce and desperate wanting. "Please, Haruka, tell me-"

"I can't, Shigeru," Haruka maintained. "I can't tell you what the legend is."

"Then tell me a good reason why not!" Shigeru demanded. "Is it a rule? Can only one specific person tell me?"

"It's not a rule. I'd tell you if I could. It's just - the story cannot be told."

"Why not?" Shigeru whined.

"Because the story that is said of both of you is not a story said with words."

Shigeru stared at Haruka, mystified. "What?" he asked. "How do you tell a story without words? That's what a story is."

"Oh, no." Haruka shook her head. "You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not about telling. That would be the same as describing something dead."

Shigeru struggled to understand. "So the legend is alive?" he posited.

"You're alive," Haruka said pointedly. "And the legend is something that is lived, and felt, and experienced. It is acted."

"Then how do you know what it is if you've never seen it lived before?" asked Shigeru.

Haruka's eyes lit up. "Oh, because I have, in a way. Because if it's been acted, it can be re-enacted. I've seen it," she said, her voice clear. "At every lunar festival since I was a little girl, staring up into the sky, I watched the legend being performed before my eyes. And Shigeru, you've seen it too."

"I have?" Shigeru felt his eyes flicking across the room, as if his body had disconnected from his brain and was trying to grab onto something that could make sense. He felt nearly dizzy in the scramble. He'd seen the legend, and… missed it? Was it possible that he already knew? "Haruka, I don't have a clue what you're talking about," he heard himself saying over the rushing sound in his ears. Is this a riddle? Are you talking about shooting stars? Patterns of the weather? The full moon, maybe? That has nothing to do with lo- I mean, feelings, so that wouldn't have anything to do with the legend, so why-"

"Close your eyes, Shigeru," demanded Haruka. "And stop thinking."

"But I-"

"Close them," Haruka said, her forceful tone the same as the one she'd used earlier with Masato. His face set in a deep frown, Shigeru obeyed, clenching his eyes tightly shut. He could hear Haruka rifling through a bag of something.

"What now?"

"Be patient. You'll see, soon."

He certainly hoped so, because all he could see were splattered patterns of color on the backs of his eyelids.

"Haruka-a-a," he whined.

"Be quiet," She told him, her melodic voice creeping across the room like a soft linen in the wind.

Shigeru thought he could smell some sort of herbs floating in the air. Had she poured it on the fire?

"I want you to remember," she said. "And to feel. How do you feel now?"

"Cold? Confused?"

"Yes, true. But you've felt other things since you've come here." Her voice drifted in and out of his ear, and he found himself answering, "All sorts of things. More than I've felt for a long time."

"And when you first came to Alph, on the second evening? Do you remember that?"

"Yeah." Shigeru grabbed on to the memories easily. "There was a meeting with the chief in a circle by the beach. We convened there, and discussed the Protectors, and then we were taken back to Alph on the back of a giant bird Pokemon. Satoshi and I rode a Staraptor-"

"You're listing, not feeling," she interrupted. "How did you feel then?"

"Okay. Fine." Shigeru concentrated. He could make out the events, the timing and structure and the layout of the plaza, and the way that everyone was squeezed together. But there were other things, like the spicy smells of foods and the taste of wine. He had drunk a lot of wine that evening; he had drunk enough to forget to be upset, to stop being sad, to stop worrying. To be able to sit still in the light of torches and lanterns; to dance with Satoshi around a fire. To move. To be able to move again, without his leg bothering him, without being tortured by the vestiges of Foster's attack on him. To be. To be.

"I remember it was the first time I'd been happy. In years, I hadn't been that happy," he said to Haruka, absently.

Shigeru began to open his eyes, but she reprimanded him immediately, "Keep your eyes closed!"

He obeyed.

"Did you see anything?" her voice asked. "Do you see anything?"

"Yes," he strained. "There were so many bright lights around us. Swirling."

"In the sky, yes," Haruka encouraged him, "What do you remember about the lights in the sky?"

Shigeru felt his hands reaching out in front of himself, as if led by a force outside of his control. "I see two people falling from the sky, and-" he grasped the air, "- at the end, reaching out to each other."

"Yes," said Haruka. "Who are those people?"

"I couldn't see their faces, I don't know-"

"Who are those people?" she repeated, "Look at them, Shigeru, and tell me-"

Shigeru snapped out of the trance and opened his eyes. The smell of smoke was overpowering now, and he pushed his body out of the pillar and took in deep gulps of clean air. Clearing his mind.

"Why did you do that?" Haruka complained, pouring water on the fire. The steam hissed out, and with it, Shigeru felt the last of his control breaking as easily as a twig.

"I don't know what you want from me!" he shouted. "What do you want me to say? I was watching their performance, and it was great, but I had other things I was worrying about, like Satoshi and I, and what we were doing there, and how we'd gotten there, because it was if we had just come out the sky and landed on this stupid island with no idea how we were going to survive, and how was I going to survive living with him for any length of time after being out of touch, and I wanted to reach out but I didn't know how, I didn't think I could, until my leg healed and everything changed and I was dancing and-"

"You're seeing it," said Haruka in wonder.

Shigeru stared back at her with equal incomprehension. "I don't see anything," he exclaimed. "That's what I'm trying to say."

"Then don't listen to what you're trying to say. Listen to what you're saying."

"I'm saying that it was a really good party and I drank too much-"

"No, your words." Haruka reminded him. "Your story. You said that two people fell from the sky, and reached out, and then they started dancing."

"I didn't forget," scowled Shigeru. "What does this have to do with the legend?"

"It IS the legend."

Shigeru froze in place, and thought, and substance.

His brain reeled, and so did his body.

"What?" he asked, not expecting an answer. He sat back and tried to steady himself as he tried to make sense of two separate strands that suddenly were being wound together. "That performance. It was the legend, and the legend is - it's - living, so it's what's happening right now. So that means Satoshi and I are the same as they were, losing control, falling through the sky- We're living in Alph, out of control, no; we came here that way..."

He turned to Haruka for confirmation. She looked pleased, and the relief of being right shot through Shigeru so sharply that it overrode his frustration with her. "So what do I have to do to work out the final requirements of the legend?" he asked.

"Look at your hands, Shigeru."

He did. They were still in front of him, in a pantomime.

"It's like you said, Shigeru. Reaching."

Shigeru spent a moment considering it, then shook his head, the good humor leaving him just as soon as it had gripped him. He drew back, and put his hands securely in his lap.

"That can't be right," he said. "Some of it, I admit, makes sense. But it doesn't explain why Masato talked about your feelings… about you falling in love with me."

"Yes it does," Haruka replied. "Don't you remember what happens after they reach out to each other?"

Shigeru squinted his eyes, hoping the memory would come to him as freely as it had during the meditative session - if that's what it had been - earlier. "Vaguely," he said. "But not really."

"Let me help you," said Haruka. "You said the sky was bright. What fire was in the sky, Shigeru?"

"Lanterns." Shigeru ticked that off easily. The second came as a surprise. "And torches."

"Yes. The two people on the bird pokemon dropped them into a bonfire together, and then the fire burst outward, heating everything."

Haruka looked at him pointedly, but the supplication was useless. "I'm a scientist, Haruka, not some, some philosopher or English teacher. I'm not good with symbolism, so-"

"I think you know exactly what throwing the torches in the fire means," Haruka said quietly.

"Well I'm obviously misinterpreting it."

"Are you?" Haruka questioned. "What do you think it is?"

"Fine. It sounds to me like the two riders-" Shigeru gesticulated broadly to the ceiling as if it were the sky or some other canvas on which he could paint, "were together, coming from a place that wasn't here. In other words, like they were coming from outside of Alph. And at first they are involved with each other but not connected. And then they connect. And then they-" He feels his voice catching as he grew nervous. "Well, then, they fall in love. Or, or, hate. Or are consumed by some other appropriately strong emotion."

"So far, your interpretation sounds the same as mine," said Haruka. "Except for the last part. I don't see why two people would reach out to each other and connect in hatred."

"You've also lived in a tropical idyll all over your life," muttered Shigeru under his breath. Haruka looked at him sharply.

"I don't see why you're attracted to Satoshi," Haruka said, her voice taut. "But it fits the actions and the imagery of the legend perfectly; that the two people who fell together would fall in love together."

"And that's exactly where that interpretation falls apart." Shigeru adjusted himself on his cushion, leaning forward closer to the fire and Haruka. "If we took this apart piece by piece and analyzed it, I already... fell from the sky, with Satoshi. And we've connected. We've reached out, and become friends again or whatever, but that didn't cause the legend to get fixed, and it didn't cause the Protectors to bring us home. The only thing left to do, according to your theory, is to fall in love with each other."

"Yes, and...?"

"It's impossible."

"That's where you're wrong." Haruka was close enough to touch Shigeru. To his surprise, she did; and took his hand in her own. "Shigeru," she said, with a quiet, but firm, determination, "It's not impossible. It's destined in the very words of the legend. It has to happen."

"You're just saying that because you think I'm attractive," Shigeru said wryly. "But I don't think-"

A muffled noise outside stopped him mid-sentence. He dropped Haruka's hand and whipped around, just long enough to catch the shape of a person outside the door, and the door hanging swaying back into place inside an empty frame.

"Was that-" Haruka began.

"Satoshi!"

Shigeru was on his feet in an instant, running across the room. He shoved aside the curtain and stared out into the street, blinking away the brightness just long enough to see Satoshi tearing off through the snow away from the house.