"Get too far with your visions and afterthoughts
Play your part and then you leave all the rest to us"
"Visions and Afterthoughts" from Visions and Afterthoughts by Red Vox
[Consider instead making it "As Long as I Can Dream"]
The night burned on the mountain's peak while a totodile tore a path up it. Codi had come for answers, but not to questions. She wanted Max to answer for this. She wanted Ithos to answer for this. Mew had explained what they did, where they went, and why, but those weren't the questions Codi had. Codi wanted to know how.
Specifically, how fucking dare they.
Revelation Mountain was no easy trek, but Codi didn't want an easy trek. She needed to keep her paws busy to keep her claws digging through her scales in rage. She wrapped her head around the situation again, again, again and again, but it never added up. She couldn't understand how that bitch of a pikachu could leave her family behind.
Codi knew what it was like to lose her Mom. She'd taken too much joy out of killing the one who'd taken hers away, and that was even after she'd saved Mom.
Max had been the one to give her the chance.
Codi wasn't sure what creature her claws opened the throat of. For a moment, though, she imagined it was Max's. The first time they'd met, Max had given her the chance. Thinking back, it was hard not to feel like she made the wrong decision. At least then, she wouldn't have had kids to leave behind.
It took a while for Codi to realize that she'd made it out of the Dungon's limits. She'd been too furious to see that the collapsing landscape had expanded to a lush, gorgeous night.
The peak was beautiful. The spring had an unearthly glow that could never have shown up in daylight. Just looking at it, Codi could feel it. If she gave a single solitary shit about the view right now, it would've taken her breath away. Thing is, she didn't, so her breath stayed right where she needed it. She didn't want a view. She wanted answers. She expected nothing.
That wasn't what she got. In two heaps near the pond sat the scarfs she'd seen millions of times before. Even in the dim moon's light, she could see their pattern of purple and pink.
Max had really left everything behind, then. Codi had only seen her take that scarf off for her wedding. Even that had taken an entire hour of Max telling herself it'd be okay as she took step by (assisted) step further away from the scarf until she could distract herself with the typical stress of a wedding.
Max had even left her bag. Her crutch was off next to the pond. At least she didn't have to worry about her bad leg anymore. She'd get a whole new body.
The only belonging Codi couldn't see was that weird bracelet she always wore. Maybe she'd taken it as a souvenir. Codi didn't know if she cared. Even then, though, if Max was going to take a bracelet, she wouldn't have taken that one.
"Why?" Codi asked. She shook her head, tears streaming down her eyes, and walked over to Max's scarf. Best friends. They were best friends. The only person closer to Max was her husband. As indignant as Codi was that Max would leave her kids behind, it wasn't the deepest cut she'd left. The deepest was simply that she'd left Codi without even saying goodbye.
As Codi lifted the scarf, a circle of teal and blue fell from it. Max hadn't taken a souvenir, after all. She hadn't taken anything. She just left.
"Who gets to explain this to your kids?" Codi growled. She tossed the scarf aside and grabbed the bracelet instead. Squeezing that one gave her the kinda feedback she needed right now. It hurt a bit, but not too much as she squeezed its uneven rocks into her palm.
"What do you care?" She wrapped the bracelet around that paw so her other could tap at its 'beads' while she squeezed it through her scales. "You don't. That's what matters, isn't it?" Her tears streamed down her cheeks without any sobs to accompany them. She was too mad for anything more than tears while she shouted out her grief.
It hurt. It all hurt too much. It wasn't even a wound. Max hadn't hurt her. She hadn't attacked her, hadn't hurt her with any slight. She just left. Didn't take anything but the fur on her back.
Codi's other paw had begun squeezing the bracelet as well. For as long as it had stayed on Max's wrist, it felt flimsy. The stones were probably going to leave permanent indents in her scales, but the string itself barely felt like enough to hold it together. How fitting.
"What happened to not wanting to save the world?" Codi hissed. She shook her head. Maybe it was just another lie. The stones of the bracelet sat happy in a row, an amalgamation of pebbles without a single shape in common. They didn't have a unifying size, structure, or anything. "Stronger together?" Codi scoffed through her tears. "Look how strong you held on."
It barely took more than a tug, and the string snapped.
Now, Codi was mostly venting in the moment. She didn't really attribute any special meaning to that bracelet. Snapping it was mostly just to spite a friend who'd hurt her. It could insult the memory like how the final separation had tainted their relationship as a whole. It made sense in Codi's head as she did it.
Apparently, however, this bracelet was quite valuable. When she snapped it, the entire world shrieked in pain and ripped her off that mountain, tumbling through an endless abyss of time. She left behind even less than Max had. Barely a pop rang at the mountain's peak.
Codi screamed in wide-mouthed horror (and what a wide mouth it was, being a totodile) as she fell through what she could never comprehend, spinning around in directions she didn't know existed. The entire fabric of reality around her broke and warped around her to the point that she could never claim to see it again.
Then, Codi was sitting in a peaceful cave of beautiful, blue crystals. Without any windows to the outside, the only light came from the crystals themselves and some teal light behind her. Turning around, she saw a teal and blue gear. It was the same colors as the bracelet.
This was, to put it succinctly, odd.
To put it less succinctly, Codi had her entire world flipped, turned upside down, flipped again, tossed into a pan that was immediately smashed over her head before scooping her up off the ground to blend into a nice little paste to then add to the pan that was whatever idea she'd ever had of what reality could be before beating the whole thing into a batter that was immediately baked into a cake.
A burnt cake.
After about three seconds to adjust to the new situation, Codi heard paws frantically running through the cave. She couldn't hear where they were coming from, the sound bouncing endlessly off the walls with no clear origin. She hopped up to her hindpaws and readied for whatever was coming.
"Oh, did you have to almost die so late at night?" a somewhat familiar voice grumbled. This time, Codi could hear its origin. She jumped around to see the grovyle who officiated Ithos and Max's wedding dash out from the cave behind her. "Okay, Max what-" Grovyle stopped in place, narrowing his eyes. "You know. I don't remember giving an emergency exit to you."
Grovyle crossed his arms and leaned against the cave he'd come out of, leering down at Codi. "So, tell me," he hummed, putting on a light expression for a second before glaring down at her. He had a paw behind him primed to attack. "What exactly are you doing with one?"
Codi blinked. Okay. So, Grovyle was upset with her. Grovyle was very upset with her. She'd just snapped a stupid fucking bracelet that her friend left behind in grief. That teleported her through who knew where into a random wherever. The first person she saw after this, the man who officiated the wedding of the friend she was grieving, was mad at her for having something called an emergency exit.
She knew just what to do.
Staying silent, staying calm, Codi passively looked up into Grovyle's eyes for a moment before very slowly raising her paw in the air. Grovyle's glare faltered. He stared at her paw a few times, then asked, "Yes?"
"Hi," Codi said. She nodded in thanks for being called on and lowered her paw, brushing scales off on the way down. "What the fuck?"
Grovyle stared down at Codi.
Codi stared up at Grovyle.
Grovyle continued to stare down at Codi.
Codi continued to stare up at Grovyle.
"You have no idea what happened, do you?" Grovyle asked.
"Nope," Codi said.
"Ah," Grovyle said. "Well." He took in a deep breath and grumbled as it came out. He slapped his paw to his face and dragged it down. "I suppose let's start from the beginning, then." He forced a smile and gave a slight bow. "Hello, I'm Grovyle."
"Yeah, Max's friend," Codi said.
Grovyle twitched at that, but said, "Yes."
"Yeah, it's me, Codi," Codi said. They'd only met once, though, so she didn't blame him not recognizing her. After all, it'd been how many months?
"Great, now," Grovyle grumbled. It had been two sentences, and he was already losing patience with her. "Would you tell me why you broke Max's bracelet so I can figure out how much work I've to do in the next few hours?"
Codi grit her teeth. "Well, Max wasn't using it," she growled. Without anything else to hold, she squeezed her claws into her paw. Max had told her to stop that, but Max wasn't around anymore. "That bitch." She struggled to find the words. Her breath was already ragged with rage. "She left." Her head shook from anger. "Not a word. Not a goodbye. Just gone."
"Really? Odd," Grovyle hummed. "She was supposed to let me know before that happened." After a moment's thought, he nodded and snapped. "Ah, well if she's left Ithos, perhaps he's still grieving."
Codi wanted to strangle him to death. She'd lost both of her friends, and he was acting like he knew it would happen. The know-it-all bastard. But it was worse than that. "She was supposed to let you know?" Codi hissed. Grovyle tilted his head back as he looked down at her. "You planned this?"
"Depends, dear," Grovyle said. "What exactly do you think I planned?"
"WHAT ELSE?!" Codi barked. She took a furious step forward, but Grovyle didn't flinch in the slightest. If he thought his typing would stop her, she'd show him how wrong he was. "You planned for her to abandon her kids?"
"Dear Dialga, no," Grovyle said. He casually shook his head as he waved away Codi's mind-melting rage. "No, I'm just supposed to hold onto them for a bit." It was getting hard to stay confused in the face of all this confusing bullshit. She had no idea what was going on.
Actually, no. She knew exactly what was going on. She was talking to the son of a bitch who facilitated all this. She didn't need to know more. Grovyle didn't, either, since she could tell he was still ready to fight.
Why not give him what he wanted?
Codi just needed to move especially aggressively towards him before he whipped a vine out from behind him. Codi saw red the instant the attack came out, remembering the hundreds of thousands that had whipped her in training. She spun halfway out of its way to grab a hold of it before Grovyle could wrap it around her and yanked it towards herself.
The force knocked him off balance before he let go of it. He stomped his right hindpaw down to get his balance back while the leaves along his arms buzzed with his next attack. Codi wouldn't let him get that far.
She pelted him in the face with spritzes of water while she spun the vine around once before flinging it out and around his right ankle. One yank brought him the rest of the way off balance and gave her the opportunity she was looking for. As he fell, she leapt to the side, threading the vine around his arms once.
After he hit the ground, she hopped on his back, took the last of the vine's length and hooked it around Grovyle's neck. "Here's what's going to happen," Codi hissed, yanking his head up so she could glare into his eyes. "You're going to give me my friend back, and I'm going to kick her ass until she decides to come back and mother the children she abandoned."
"Oh, well," Grovyle wheezed, the vine cutting off some of his breathing. "When you put it that way, there's really only one thing I can say." Grovyle smirked, shadows growing around them.
"Meet my husband."
A ghastly purple glow consumed the vine in its entirety. Codi flinched back, but too late. It slithered around her paws and yanked her into the air. As it unwrapped around Grovyle, it wrapped around Codi instead. It bound and snapped her wrists together, tightening the knot using a wrap around her muzzle as a pulley before looping back down around the initial wrap binding her wrists.
An eye of blazing red appeared above Codi first. It glared down at her with damning rage as a bone-white hand appeared around her neck and hoisted her less than halfway up to the eye's level. A jagged mouth split its way through the air in front of her in a sick smile as a stomach formed around it.
"If you'd wanted your existence erased, why go to all this trouble?" Dusknoir hissed. Its massive belly of a mouth grinned. "You needed only ask."
"Dusky, down! Down boy!" Grovyle barked, snapping his claws. While Codi shook from finally understanding how it felt to fear being eaten, Dusknoir's eye of pure rage dimmed to slight disappointment. "She's just lost a friend. Emotions are high, all that."
"As you wish," Dusknoir growled. He lowered the vine holding Codi up to set her gently on the ground.
"All right, look," Grovyle said. He rubbed at the spots Codi had marred with his own vine as he walked up, nodding while seeming genuinely a bit impressed. "I truly am sorry for your loss, but I haven't the time to unwind time and put it in your favor." As he walked by, he lovingly pat Dusknoir's side while grimacing. "I've got an Ithos to go find." His eyes lit up as he saw Codi.
"Right, of course," Grovyle said. He smiled and bent down to slash the vine off her muzzle. Codi instantly snapped at the leaf he'd done it with, so Grovyle tutted at her while Dusknoir towered over the both of them. "Now, mind telling me where Ithos is? Perhaps even why he sent you instead?"
"He's gone!" Codi barked. It was a miracle these two assholes had made her so angry, because that meant she didn't have to worry about crying remembering the loss. "He went with Max to stop Dark Matter again."
"He went with who?" Grovyle asked. His smirk immediately evaporated.
"MAX!" Codi shouted. Grovyle's eyes started to blank in horror.
"To stop Dark Matter, you said?" Grovyle asked. He was already looking away, ignoring Codi when she started to nod. "Max went with Ithos." He stood up for a second, then instantly shot back down to ask for sure, "Max went with Ithos?"
"YES!" Codi screamed. She really hated this guy already.
"Ah, I see," Grovyle said. "Well." He stood up, brushed off his scales, and took in a deep breath. "All right. Max went with Ithos." He nodded while the same sentence processed for the tenth time in his head. Even Dusknoir was starting to give him a worried look, now. "Well, that's fine, isn't it?"
He started pacing back and forth, claws tapping his head in a panicked rhythm. "After all, Max is supposed to be there, isn't she? That's how she got there in the first place, after all." He nodded, whatever he was saying making sense to him and him alone when he suddenly stopped in place. "That's how she got there in the first place."
He pointed a claw to the middle in front of him and said, "Brought to there, lives through Ithos' successful run," he started dragging it to the right, "until a little bit after." He pointed to a particular point there, then carried his claw off to the far left in one long arc.
"Goes back to the first go around," he hummed as he dragged the claw along the line to the first point he'd stabbed at. "Which brings her back. To."
All of a sudden, he threw his paws together in a clap that ripped through the cave, echoing off every wall around them to hurt Codi's ears again. "Ah, so that's it!" he declared. Nodding to himself, he smiled down at Codi. "Do you know what we've got here?"
Codi nodded. She'd paid very close attention, so she was ready to give him exactly the answer he wanted. "No," she said.
"A mess," Grovyle explained. "A bloody FUCKING mess is what we have." His voice echoed off the wall as he threw a paw to his face. "That wretched little rat, I swear, if I'd known you'd tie your timeline up in a knot like that." He shook his head and waved behind him to beckon Dusknoir to follow as he stormed out of the cave. "Great. Great! And who, honey, who gets to clean up everyone's messes for them?"
"You do," Dusknoir sighed. He chuckled as he pat Grovyle's head with a hand four times the size. The two traipsed right out of the cave. Codi could hear their (well, Grovyle's) steps echoing away as they walked.
"Um," Codi mumbled. She wasn't sure if she should've been insulted for being ignored, or relieved that Dusknoir wasn't there to kill her. Neither lasted very long, though, because after hearing them fade out for a few seconds, she heard Grovyle's step coming back before he stuck his neck around the corner.
"Well?" Grovyle asked. "Are you coming, or did you want to just sit there?"
"Now you know what a mess you're in
Now you know where the rest begins"
When Codi broke that bracelet, she'd started to consider hating Max for leaving.
It was no longer a consideration.
Now, Codi did hate Max for leaving that bracelet behind so it could suck her into the most frustrating and confusing hour since she'd met the rat. Because being human wasn't enough complication to her life, no. On top of that, she had to be the worst kind of human: a time traveling human. When Max mentioned doing this before, everyone assumed she'd done it in the past. Instead, it was in her past.
Someone should really have designed a more robust set of tenses to deal with all this nonsense.
"Here, you're probably thirsty," Celebi said. She smiled as she gave Codi a warm cup of tea. "Have some tea." Codi nodded, still reeling from meeting her second legendary in the one day.
"Thanks," Codi said. She glanced down at the tea, but it was still steaming, so she set it aside. Celebi frowned a bit at that, so Codi quickly brought the tea back up to taste it. It tasted like hot. "It's great." She smiled up with a scalding tongue. Celebi smiled down and relaxed, reclining in the air as she turned to face the others.
They were supposed to be having ideas. They were finally, now, past explaining the main situation. Codi still didn't get it, but she went along with it.
"So, uh," Codi whispered to Celebi. The conversation was still in a lull, so she might as well ask. "What did you call Dusknoir, again?"
"My husband, why?" Celebi answered a bit more loudly than Codi wanted.
"Right, well, so," Codi mumbled. Was this her place? She barely knew these people, but she couldn't help glancing across the room. Grovyle reclined lavishly in Dusknoir's arms while the specter dutifully tended to him with rather a rather intimate massaging across his torso. "Uh." Pointing out that they both called Dusknoir their husband felt redundant at that point.
Grovyle caught her confused stare. "Oh, come now, Codi," he chided. "Don't tell me you're still living in the past." Codi didn't know how to respond to that, so she didn't. "Well, I suppose you're, what, few hundred years out of time?"
Codi blinked. Of course she was. Of course that bracelet didn't just teleport her. It brought her to the future. Whatever. She could adapt to the times.
"So, what, all three of you are married?" Codi asked.
"Sweat of a Salazzle, no," Grovyle said. He cringed away at the very thought while Celebi rolled her eyes. "Sorry to disappoint, but when it comes to the ladies," he shrugged with a grin, "I do." He was even more flamboyant than Ash.
"Disappoint?" Codi chuckled. At least he was confident in himself.
They were both married to the same man, but not married to each other. It wasn't much more complicated than marriage was. Codi had failed to see the point of it at first, anyway, so at this point, she had no idea why anyone would bother. Of course, Max barely seemed to see the point of it, either, and she was the one who explained it to Codi in the first place. Maybe she'd gotten a biased telling.
More importantly, however, was that this didn't even kind of matter a little bit.
"Wait, so what are we going to do about this?" Codi asked. She glanced around the room for anyone to take the lead, but no one did. Everyone was looking at everyone else to see if anyone had come up with an idea.
Grovyle rubbed his eyes in frustration and hopped off his hubby to stand and stretch. "Well, if nobody has an idea," he said. "We could always just ask her?"
"Ask her?" Codi asked.
"Sure," Grovyle said. He bent to one side to stretch one leg and compress the other, doing the same to the opposite side after a few seconds. "Can never go wrong with just doing what's already been done." He looked over to Celebi with a mischievous glint in his eye that seemed to grow three sizes when he saw her glaring at him.
"Oh, fantastic!" he cheered. He grinned at her and tilted his head to dodge an orb of psychic coming for the back of his head. "Darling, you must tell me, how does it feel for me to be right, yet again?"
"Careful," Celebi hissed. She started to darkly smile. "I can always undo your entire timeline." Grovyle pouted a moment before flopping back into Dusknoir's protective arms. He looked innocently up at their shared husband, but Dusknoir forced him to stand on his own.
Codi didn't get it. This was an ongoing thing between them, not her. She felt basically no connection to anything they were saying. She really didn't care about time, either. She wasn't here for interdimensional timeline bullshit. She was here to kill her friend for dying and leaving her behind. That was what she wanted.
"Well, no time to waste," Grovyle said. He clapped his paws together and hopped up. "Keep the bed warm for me, Dusky." He tugged Dusknoir down to plant a kiss on the part of the helmet under his eye, then came over to Codi. "Come along, young lady."
When Grovyle reached down to yank her up to her hindpaws, Codi glared him down for even thinking of trying. He froze, realized he'd quite like keeping that paw, then pulled it back the exact same path it had taken down. Codi easily got up on her own and waved her paw forward to get him to lead the way to… wait, what was happening?
"Here, take this," Celebi said. She swooped down and wrapped another bracelet with a bunch of teal and blue stones on it. "It's an emergency exit if you need to get out quick, and it'll also keep you stable if the tremors start getting too much."
"Stable?" Codi asked.
"Oh, don't worry about that," Grovyle said, waving the worry away with a paw. "It's not your past, not your problem."
"It is Max's, though," Celebi growled. She floated up and shoved two more bracelets into his chest with a glare. "This entire situation has been unstable for a while. The tensions are tight enough that resolutions might snap into place." Grovyle flinched at that, and Celebi's expression softened. "And stop acting like you don't care what happens to her."
"I won't," Grovyle said. He grit his teeth to smile, and Codi could tell the answer's ambiguity was intentional. He stuffed one into the bag around his shoulder and unwound the other to wrap around his neck. "More of a necklace man, myself."
"Ok," Codi said. "So, where are we going?"
Celebi rolled her eyes and floated back. She put her paws together and closed her eyes while a low hum filled the room around them. When her eyes opened, they were glowing.
"To see Max," Grovyle said. He smirked down at Codi and held up three claws. Two. One.
The room disappeared, a sparse little woods taking its place with no fanfare at all. Codi was expecting at least a pop, but maybe they'd left that behind. The grass of the place looked barely green and had a healthy dose of sand every few inches. The woods too, were pretty easy to look through, no trees remotely dense enough to hide or get lost in.
"Well, she shouldn't be far," Grovyle said. He looked up to think to himself, then jabbed a paw to his left. He thought about it another second before shrugging and heading off. Codi ran up behind him and he threw his paws up with a smile.
"Finally! Someone who knows to stick together," Grovyle sighed in joy. He put a paw to his chest and bowed in thanks.
"Sure" Codi growled.
"Oh, come now," Grovyle said. He pursed his lip up in thought as he looked down at her before shaking his head and looking around them. "If we're to work together, we simply must be on better terms than this."
Codi wanted to snap at him that she in no way even wanted to help him, but she held her tongue. She'd gotten sucked into this all from the beginning. She'd just been trying to grieve her friend and figure out what the hell to do about three suddenly orphaned children. Now, she was ripped out of her time to, somehow, see Max.
Grovyle let his little complaint about her attitude go and went back to leading them out of the woods and onto a small dirt path. This left Codi with nothing to entertain her but her thoughts. Her friend hadn't been gone for a day to her, and she was going to see Max again?
Codi squeezed her paw into a fist. Max really went to all of this effort just to leave her? Her kids?! She'd abandoned everyone to go and live a fresh new life with fresh new people.
A hole dug its way out of Codi's chest and left her with nothing. She'd thought losing her friend was the worst thing, but she could've gotten over that. Probably not healthily, but she didn't need to be healthy to get over things. The fact that Max happily kept living her own, new life after made Codi wonder if she'd even be able to stop herself from kicking her ass or worse.
Codi loved her. As a friend, but she'd loved her just the same. Was Ithos really that much more important to her? More important than her kids? It was like love meant nothing to Max, and relationships even less.
In their time together, Max had hated nothing more than her fate to save the world. Why, in the name of Lugia, Mother of the Sea and Ho-oh, Father of the Sky, then, would she abandon everything—everyone—just to do it all over again?
Codi must've just been that disposable to her.
Grovyle stopped all at once. He held one paw up and tilted his head to listen. He motioned her to stay put against the tree on her left, so she sat behind it. Grovyle nodded and snuck off, leaving Codi to wait.
It was almost time. He was going to bring Max. Codi clenched her fist so tight she could feel the familiar, scarred scales parting for her claws. She didn't have to wait long before she heard far off conversations, someone calling to someone else, and a voice that, while just a bit gruffer, she instantly recognized as Max's. She was here. She was really here. She was coming over.
Well, she'd climbed that mountain for answers.
Time to get them.
She could hear Max's voice getting closer, but she couldn't make out the words. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears from anger. Max sounded older, but Codi wasn't sure by how much. It didn't matter. Max'd gone on to live the life she really wanted, happily leaving them behind, that was what mattered. Not her voice.
It was time. Codi was going to get to see the Max that moved happily on with her life without them. Taking a breath, she stepped out from behind the tree.
It was certainly Max. She was still just a ways away, so the finer details were harder to make out. Both legs were perfectly fine. A sickening little addition had to be the pink and purple scarf. It looked just like the Harmony Scarf, but reversed. She'd even gotten herself a new Harmony Scarf, with a neat little purple earring on the tip—what the hell happened to the tip of her ear?
It looked torn off, weirdly matching the fucked up end of her tail. Was. Was that a bite mark? Codi knew that she'd been trans before, but she'd assumed that meant she was trans as a human. Evidently, her transition started as a pikachu. Why would Ithos…?
When their eyes met, Max gave a slightly curious flick of her ear before glancing back and shrugging. She didn't even seem to care. Codi had no idea how long it had been since this Max had seen her, and she didn't even seem to care. Then again, of course she wouldn't. Why would she? She had a whole new life to move on with all new friends to get tired of and abandon.
Max continued to walk right up to her without a second thought. "Hey, Cori," she said—oh. "I miss this look, sometimes." Right, the old friend. She must've thought—Max hopped up to plant a kiss on Codi's lips.
"YOU'RE MARRIED," Codi screeched, smacking Max across the face. This—what the fuck?! This bitch abandoned everyone she knew for a husband she was cheating on?
Max hadn't moved from where the slap had left her. She froze in place while glancing up in thought. A far cry from the rat that scurried away squeaking the first time Codi had slapped her across the face. "Okay," Max said. She glared up at Grovyle, then took a step back to take a breath. "Look, I don't know what he told you-"
"Told me?!" Codi barked. Even now, Max barely looked phased. Not even the slap bothered her for more than the instant it lasted. Codi could feel her cheeks burning as tears started welling up in her eyes. Her 'best friend' really cared that little about her. "I was there!"
"Y-you were what?" Max asked. Her eyes stayed unchanged, but her voice barely came out in a whisper. She froze for a moment before looking at Codi again. This time, she was giving it thought. She looked her over with wide eyes terrified to believe what they saw. "You." She looked into Codi's eyes, looking for something, but she didn't seem to know exactly what. "You're not Cori?"
"No?" Codi said. That question sounded even more fragile. The uncaring bitch that left them all behind broke down into shivers while she looked at Codi again.
Max reached out a paw to confirm, touching Codi's shoulder with the gentlest tickle of a touch. "I'm… Codi?" she asked. The bitch had tears in her eyes as she looked up, miserably hopeful. A yes would hurt her to hear as much as a no, but it wasn't stopping her hoping.
While Codi was distracted by the change, Max's ears popped up in realization. She tilted to one side to look at Codi's back, then threw her arms around her. "It's you," she whimpered. She squeezed Codi tighter. "It's really you."
Codi wanted to hold onto her anger. She'd wanted to beat the hell out of this bitch for abandoning her. Now, the friend she thought she'd lost was wrapped around her with tears streaming down her cheeks. Codi raised her arm to pat Max's back. "Y-yeah," she said. "It's me."
Max hadn't moved on, after all.
"Wait, but," Max said. She struggled to let go for a moment. She only managed when Codi gave her a pat on the back. Max took a deep, stabilizing breath that barely did anything for her and looked up at Grovyle. "Why?"
"That's what we're here to discuss, little lady," Grovyle said. He quickly dropped down and held a paw out to grab her arm, the bracelet in the other.
"No," Max said, yanking her arm back. "I'm not-" she glanced at Codi with broken eyes, "-leaving again."
Codi clenched her fist tighter. It was exactly what she'd thought, after all. "Once was enough?" she whispered. Max flinched at her words, then turned to see the rage burning in Codi's eyes. "You'll say goodbye to me—your kids—but now?"
"What?" Max asked. Her heartbreak morphed into blind rage. "You know I didn't have a choice!"
"Hold it, hold it, you two!" Grovyle said. He threw himself between the two of them, a firm paw on either just in case. He looked to Max first. "To her, you did." Max tilted her head. Grovyle took a deep breath, then shook his head with a frustrated grumble. "Like I said, a mess." He shook his head again and turned to her, letting Codi go to go for Max's arm again. Max flinched, but acquiesced.
"You went with Ithos," Grovyle said. Max went still. "Something's gone quite wrong." He finished tying her bracelet and got up.
Max turned her arm around in front of her to look the bracelet over, then glanced up at Codi. "No wonder you're so pissed," she said. Her voice shook with a thick cocktail of emotions Codi couldn't hope to read. "I hated him, too."
Even though Max understood, the hurt stayed in her eyes. She tried to smile up at Codi, but it wouldn't come out. She kept looking down at the bracelet with tense glances. "There's no way in hell I would choose to leave my kids," Max said, a healthy bite in her words directed at Codi.
"That," Grovyle hummed, "is the worst thing I could've heard." Max narrowed her eyes up at him, but he wasn't paying attention to either. He was too busy rubbing his eyes. "We were here to ask how you got out of this mess." He shook his head and crossed his arms as he looked down at her. "Not a very useful strategy if you didn't."
"Go too far with your visions and afterthoughts
Play your part and then you leave all the rest to us"
Codi could feel how hard Max was trying not to glare at her. The past half-hour had been Max finding out that her very place in time was at risk of terminating from existence, yet all of that, she took in stride. What bothered her, then, was what Codi said to her.
"I'm sorry, all right?" Codi grumbled. She tried to get some kind of comfortable in this shitty cave of crystals, but the assholes didn't give this room so much as a beanbag chair.
"I know," Max said. She gave a weak smile staring off at nothing. She glanced at Codi and couldn't stop her lips pulling into a snarl, but she threw a paw to her eyes the instant she noticed. "It's not your fault," she hissed to herself. Evidently, she was supposed to leave anyway. The difference was her choice in the matter. At least this Max said goodbye to her kids before abandoning them.
Codi caught herself glaring at Max, too. Max saw and shrugged. Codi took a deep, pained breath and got up. Maybe some movement would get the stink of this all out of her head. Yet, as she stood, she couldn't help a glance at Max's right leg. It was fine, now.
"He erased everything," Max said. Codi glanced up with a raised brow. "Ithos." Max looked over to see Codi barely react. She'd already figured that's who Max was talking about. "He didn't just leave me." Max turned to face straight ahead, claws tracing along the teal and blue stones on her wrist. "He forgot me. Our kids. Everyone."
Now, more than ever, Codi could see how wrong she'd been earlier. Max still hadn't moved on. She only seemed to be able to speak through numbing the pain by squeezing the bracelet into her wrist. Codi remembered doing the same.
"He said he'd come back, but why would he?" Max said, shaking her head. "But, he made the promise, and I believed it." Venom cut through her words while a snarl pulled her lip back. "I went back and told our kids that Daddy just had to go for a bit. That he'd be back." She started pulling on the bracelet before jerking her paw away to keep from breaking it.
"I knew it was a lie, but what was I supposed to do?" Tears were falling, but her voice was unaffected. It sounded completely empty. "I wasn't even supposed to be there."
"Why?" Codi asked. "You mean, like, because you were a human?"
Max raised a brow at her before looking up in thought, then nodding her head. "No, I guess I didn't tell you until after," she said. "I had a life before then. That was my second time around." She sheepishly looked over to see if Codi followed, clearly trying to think this through herself. "The second time that Ithos went to was my first time."
Codi gave it some thought to try and untangle the web for a minute. It was… weird, but not too confusing. "So, you were from the future," Codi said. Max nodded. It was getting harder and harder to know what to think. "Well, you must've had a reason to leave the future, right?"
"Fara," Max said. Codi blinked. Did Dark Matter really have that kind of power? "She got to Jirachi and wished me to the past. It took me there a few years after we… took care of Fara's successor." She tilted her head before shrugging.
Codi's heart ripped her in two. She wanted to believe her friend would never hurt her like this, but all this was too convenient. It all left Max perfectly innocent of wrongdoing, a victim of fate torn apart by forces outside her control. Whether they were lies to comfort herself, or the true details lost to time, it all felt too sterile.
"You don't believe me," Max said. Codi flinched, but Max smiled. It almost looked like a chuckle. "I don't blame you."
"I don't know what to believe, Max," Codi sighed. She brought her paw to the bracelet. It was entirely different yet similar to the one that sucked her into all of this. The more she thought about it, though, she couldn't lie to herself. She'd known Max. She'd been there when Max was having daily panic attacks about becoming a mother. After forcing herself through that, it was hard to believe she'd just leave.
Yet, she had.
"What happened?" Codi asked. Max perked up a bit, like she'd forgotten someone else was in the room with her. "I mean, the second time around. Why don't we just ask Ithos?"
"Because he doesn't remember," Max said. Right, that. Sweet Mother of the Sea, this was so convoluted. "It's not like I can tell him."
"Well, why not?" Codi asked. "Max, you might be the only one who can fix this. He loves you! You're probably-"
"This one doesn't!" Max hissed. Her eyes had started to water again while she glared at Codi. Her face shook as she ground her teeth against each other, trying to hold back a snarl. Closing her eyes, she took in a deep, deep breath. The inhale alone nearly took half a minute. It was impressive lung capacity for a land mammal. When she was done, she looked at Codi again, the shadow of a glare still there.
"I take it I never told you how I got Dungeon Sickness, then?" Max asked. Codi shook her head. Max winced. She wasn't looking forward to this. "Because, my first time," which was the second time this happened because time traveling humans were the worst kinds of humans, "I left Ithos. I tried to forget him."
"You two suck at marriage," Codi mumbled before she could think better of it.
After a second of conflict, Max threw herself forward, clutching her stomach to laugh. Some nonsense chirps came out before Max cleared her throat and tried again. "Codi, look at me," she said. As she looked over to smirk, she flashed her tail. "We didn't get married, this time."
"Oh," Codi mumbled. She winced and looked away. This was probably a sore point. "Sorry. I thought he was better than that."
"What?" Max asked. Her ears shot up and she chuckled again. "Oh, no. It's not like that." She shook her head, though there was still some sheepish uncertainty in her expression. "He didn't know." She ran her paw down the gnarled end of her tail. At least it had healed. "Neither did I." She shook her head. "Not until he was gone."
Codi wanted to bash her head against a wall. "I thought you left, this time," she grumbled.
"Oh, right, hold on," Max said. She shook her head with another chuckle, this one coming with a wince. "So, well. When I left, tried to forget everything, it didn't work." She shrugged and nodded. "Obviously."
"Sure," Codi said, nodding along. Might as well listen to the end of a convoluted tale. At this point, it was easier to believe Max was telling the truth because what sane person would come up with a story this convoluted and confusing on purpose.
"So, y'know, eventually I started remembering things," Max said. "Despite everything, I decide maybe there's still a chance to make amends." She tried to smile, but it clearly still hurt. "I tried to send a letter, but he was gone."
"Did you piss off one legendary, or all of them?" Codi asked. This luck. Couldn't be worse.
"Well," Max said, starting to chuckle. "One, I guess." She smirked over at Codi. "Ithos." Codi blinked. Did Max think charmander were legendaries? She. She hatched one. "Turns out, Ithos Charmander was really Ithos Mew, Mother of Creation." Codi blinked. Sure. Why not? "I'm pretty sure that's why he left this time, too."
"Why?" Codi asked. She was mostly just playing along at this point. She'd accept any answer.
"Dysphoria," Max said, giving about the only answer Codi didn't know if she could believe. "Well, I think so, at least." She looked up in thought, then shrugged. "It's been a while, but… when we talked on Revelation Mountain." Even just mentioning it, her voice started breaking. She rushed through. "He hates that he's a mew. He feels more comfortable as a charmander."
"Right," Codi said. Dysphoria. Codi knew the feeling well. Max probably would, too. Except unlike their gender dysphoria, Ithos had species dysphoria.
While Codi tried to wrap her head around this, Max was squeezing the teal and blue stones again. She started to snarl again before sucking in a deep breath and looking back to Codi. "So," she said with a smirk. "Make sense?"
"Nope," Codi said. She wanted to chuckle, but she still wasn't there. "Well, okay. If Ithos was gone, who did you have to come back to?"
Max stared at Codi for an uncomfortable amount of time before shaking her head. "Well, I moved on," Max said, quickly adding, "the first time." Her mouth twisted down, and her paw went to a different bracelet on the same wrist as the new one. "It happened while I was getting better from Dungeon Sickness, figuring out, y'know." She nodded to the bite-mark in her tail. Codi couldn't help staring at it for too long.
Max caught her staring and nodded. "Yeah, it's what it looks like," she said. "I bit it off." Looking away, sparks bounced down her cheeks. Codi smiled despite herself. It was always cute how Max never stopped doing that. "Actually, I was still healing from that when I got sent back.
"It's a bit funny looking back, to be honest," Max said. "I'd just started transition. Then, suddenly, well." She glanced back at Codi before quickly glancing away again, sparks once again bouncing down her cheeks. "Being like that."
"Then why did you go back?" Codi asked.
Max shrugged, mumbling, "I guess because I pissed off a legendary." She pulled on the teal bracelet for a second and considered it. After some thought, she glanced up at Codi and looked away.
"I didn't want to go," she said. With a deep sigh, her eyes got even more distant. "I knew I had friends to come back to. Less obligations." She glared down at her right leg. "A good leg." She shook her head. "I just didn't care anymore. Despite it all, I found a place I wanted to hold onto, then." She put one fist up and flashed her paw open. "Gone." Her voice broke, but the tears had dried up long ago.
It was a ridiculous story, but Codi knew Max well enough to tell she wasn't lying. Every slightest mention of her past broke Max's voice when it came in subtle and obvious ways. Not to mention this was far too bizarre a tale to come up with as a lie.
"I've left lives behind before," Max said. "I never wanted to leave that one." Her paw clenched into a shaking fist. "I just wake up one day, and it's back to my old life." She held her paw out and squeezed it, like she was testing the strength. "It felt like I killed the mom I was just to live on as…," she mumbled, staring down at herself, "whoever I am now."
What a pain in the ass. Codi didn't even get to hate her. She wanted to still feel all that anger from before, but she couldn't. Why did she have to care about her friend?
Instead of hating her, Codi found herself shuffling over to place a paw on Max's shoulder. Max looked at the paw with tempered hope, then looked up at Codi. Despite her own misgivings, Codi smiled down at her. It had only been an afternoon since she'd seen Max, and even that felt like a lifetime.
"I missed you," Codi said. She sat down next to Max and put her arms around her. Max didn't hesitate to throw herself into an embrace.
"P-pi ka chu, pii," Max squeaked. Codi hid her chuckle. Max still sounded the same.