Fuck it, I'm uploading on a Tuesday. This is what happens when you finish your edits late on Sunday and forget to get it out Monday.

(lmao I saw snow this weekend and it was great)

(it's May rn)

Ah also for reference, a "Kanto accent" is really just a British accent. tfw this chapter was written before Galar existed lmaooooo

There's a bit of Lucas backstory in this. If you want a refresher, the last time I did something like this was Chapter 4 (Caves).

Ok. Carry on.

Of course I told Looker first.

"You met who?"

"Azelf."

There was a splutter on the other end of the line. The call disconnected, and in a minute or so Looker was running in my direction from the lake resort's pokemon center.

"What?" he said.

I told him what happened at the lake. Quasar had probably attacked Mars first, out of territorialism. As shitty as Team Galactic was, they didn't normally attack pokemon out of nowhere. We stumbled upon them and a battle ensued but in the end my staravia was dead. And Liana was found, but mostly lost. And then I ran and Azelf appeared.

"Why?" Looker asked, taken aback.

"I think… I think because I needed willpower? I'm frankly not sure."

"Hmm," he mused. "I see."

Looker stood there for a bit, frowning at the ground, his thumb on his chin. He suddenly pulled out a pokeball and released a natu.

"Bye," he said, disappearing.

I blinked. That was… very odd.

I sat cross-legged on a low stone wall overlooking the lake. Night had fallen. I'd told Thomas I needed some time alone.

It was a blue night. I'd found the part of the resort that was sheltered from all the lights, so I had a good view of the lake. The clouds had gone away in the evening, and the night and the lake and the forest were a shade deeper than cobalt. There was only a sliver of moon tonight.

I was sitting there trying to absorb the peace of the lake, trying to let it wash the heavy, sticky feelings from my chest. They wouldn't go away. Azelf had lifted me up and showed me that I could go on, but emotions were not his domain, and he could do nothing about the ones whirling inside me.

There was a name that kept circling its way around my head.

"Prrri?"

I jumped; Hope was out of her pokeball. "Oh. Hey, Hope."

She looked concerned. "Prrrrri?"

"Oh, don't worry, it's fine, I, um, I'll be fine–"

Hope tried to hug my knee with her stubby arms. Something in me melted.

"I… aah. It's all right."

"Prri?"

"Yeah. I'm just thinking about Liana is all."

"Prrrri?"

I sighed. "I've been missing her a lot… I knew I wasn't getting Bree and Owen back once Dawn caught them, and I'm lucky to have found Courage, but Liana I've been trying to find since day one, and now that Mars has her, and Quasar is…"

"Togeprrri?"

"It's all right," I said again, even though saying it out loud had made it real and the fact that Quasar was gone and Liana was worse than gone was real and–

"I miss my team," I said, my voice suddenly too tight. I couldn't see; I blinked and the blurriness in my eyes slid down my cheeks.

"Prrrri!" Hope said defiantly. She tapped two pokeballs on my belt, and then hopped across my lap to open the others. Five pokemon materialized in front of me.

I exhaled. "I know, I just miss my old team…"

"Pri!" She pointed at them – I think she did, anyways. It's hard to tell with arms so small. I looked tiredly at my team.

An eevee. A kirlia, a haunter, a buizel and monferno. And a togepi.

Coeur kept me going in the month after Lucas's death. Prom couldn't rest until he could escape his pokeball to defend us at any time. Faith chose me when she could've moved on with her dad. Def periodically checked in on my state of mind with his communication skills; Trust didn't need special skills to always be there for me.

Hope just wanted everyone to be happy – including me, though I'd done a good job of avoiding that.

I've been… such a fool. I've been projecting my memories onto them. Courage I assumed I already knew, so I haven't spent time with her. Promise I assumed would fight like my old water type. I didn't even try to know Trust until I knew I wasn't getting Bree. All this time they've been my team, but not my old team, and it wasn't enough.

I hate to give in… but they're suffering for it. My present team is here, and they're all such lovely souls, and I've neglected them for too long.

It's time to move on.

I picked Hope up and hugged her. "I'm sorry. I've been a fool," I said to her. "Thank you."

I finally saw. I could be happy with this team.

Also, Hope – I assumed she was an innocent child with no ulterior motives? But something* tells me she had an agenda, and that it had just made progress.

(*the fact that she then evolved)

We went down to the lakeshore so she could try out her wings. Hope flew, and we ran, and Promise shot water at her, and she and Faith giggled like maniacs, and I felt back in the game, and we didn't come back til midnight.

Thomas was asleep by the time I got back, but we went and got brunch the next morning. As it was a Wednesday, it wasn't especially busy.

"So," I said. "Oliver."

"Ah. Yep. Guess you know about him now."

"I should say so. He saved me back there."

"True. By the way, there's a proper way to say Oliver's name."

"Excuse me?"

"Oh-li-vuh," he said.

"Oll-luh-vuh," I said.

"Oh-li-vuh," he repeated.

"Oll-i-vuh?" I tried again.

"That's pretty close." He nodded seriously. I nodded seriously with him.

A few seconds later, we both burst into giggles that wouldn't go away for a full ten minutes.

"That's how you say his name," he said, taking his glasses off to wipe his eyes.

"I can't…" I was still laughing. "I can't believe…"

"That he's a wooper?"

"His name has a Kanto accent?"

There were more giggles involved.

"And that he's a wooper," I added when I could. "I've never seen a wooper fight like that, though. Does he have lightning rod? As a ground type?"

"No, he doesn't. He's just good at blocking electricity."

"Yeah, damn good at it. Wait, what do woopers normally have as an ability?"

"I don't know about normally, but Oliver's got–"

"You just said…" He'd used his normal Johto accent on Oliver's name?

"Oh, I usually just call him Oliver."

"Where'd his name come from?"

Thomas opened his mouth and closed it. "I…"

I realized what he'd done. "You didn't."

"Didn't what?"

"Did April name them?"

"No! …well, the accent is… kind of… we were talking about it… It was a joke that kinda stuck. Half stuck."

I shook my head. "Have you talked to her since breaking up?"

"Not really?"

"How long's it been?"

"Since?"

"Since you broke up?"

"Two months and ten days," Thomas said. He was looking at me funny. Waiting to see what I'd say, I think.

"Okay," I said.

"That's it? Okay?"

"What do you want me to say? Should I state the unfair obvious?"

"What?"

"The unfair obvious."

"Meaning?"

"That if you know the days exactly then you're still hung up on it, and it's been quite a while, if you haven't spoken to her since, which is unfair because love problems are a lot easier to solve in third person point of view."

Thomas leaned back. "Okay. I wasn't sure you'd understand."

"Nah, I get it. I remember how it was after Lucas was killed. And there wasn't even a chance with him."

He grimaced. "Mew, that's even worse, though."

"Hard to say. An unfulfilled chance versus no chance at all, and no point in trying."

Food arrived. I started adding sugar to my coffee, which I was once again trying to enjoy. "No point in trying…" Thomas mused. "Why does something tell me you tried anyways?"

I waved a teaspoon in the air. "We're here. Lucas is alive."

"Oh, whoa, that's true."

"Indeed." I sipped coffee sagely and tried not to spit it out. "Tricia said he's in Twinleaf, getting data at Lake Verity."

"You three split up the lakes, right?"

"Y–"

I froze with a pack of coffee creamer above the mug. I sloshed it in and said quickly, "I'll be right back."

"Where are you…?"

"I gotta call Lucas."

Here's the thing. There's three of us, three lakes, and three lake guardians. If one of the guardians appeared… what about the others?

I messaged both of them through my poketch. As I expected, Dawn hadn't yet gotten to Acuity. Lucas was willing to call via audio, over the poketch.

I dialed him. The line sounded like it picked up, but no voice came through. "Hello?" I said tentatively.

"Hey." Lucas. Oh, okay. Guess he wasn't used to poketch calls.

"Hey! You did the research at Verity already, right?"

"Yeah."

"Did… Did you see anything there? Anything out of the ordinary?"

"No."

He answered so quickly. "…you sure?" I asked again.

"Yeah."

I was going to say something else, but honestly, if he was lying, there was no way to make him tell the truth about this.

"Okay."

He didn't say anything. Here I was talking to him, with nothing to say – come on Evelyn, there's gotta be something…

"Lucas?" I said.

"Hm?"

I breathed. "Why are you mad at me?"

There was a moment of silence on the other end. "I'm not mad at you," Lucas said.

"You're not?"

"No." It's hard to be sure over a poketch, but I think his voice was gentler than before.

"Okay," I said. "Um… see you later."

"Bye," he said.

I hung up the call. Should I have talked more? No, didn't want to push it.

I went back to the café.

I was up late that night just thinking about him. Not even dreaming. Just thinking.

I actually became friends with him in late March. It was the tenth rainy day in a row and the PE teachers caved and brought us all inside and told us to pair up with someone in another class and do icebreakers. I paired off with a girl named Mei; Lucas was with Jack, someone Dawn knew.

It was random and there was no way it should have happened. But at that point in time I'd finally started seeing him around school, even though I didn't actually know him. There was zero probability of Lucas coming up to me as the pairs spread out around the gym and saying,

"I know you, but I don't know you."

I wasn't sure how to respond. Did he need a partner?

"I'm with Mei…" I said.

"I know," he said, "but I know you, and I don't know you."

It clicked. "Right?" I said. That was an exact description of how I saw him. Lucas seemed really nice, and frankly he was quite cute, but I'd never spoken to him apart from the one time on New Years'. I knew him as the boy who listened when it shouldn't have mattered, whose eyes held yours when you spoke to him, and the boy I was this close to crushing on.

I definitely saw it coming. We became friends, and I felt at ease around him, and we played this childish game of tag between classes with Lucas's friend Jonathan and Megan and Tricia that had a no tagbacks rule, and then we both became trainers and we learned to travel and train and battle together, and we danced at the Trainer Ball and my heart was so full and we were friends.

He was kind. He was quiet most of the time, and could be very serious, but he became animated around people he knew well. He and Jonathan pranked each other all the time; I remember once Lucas stole Jonathan's pen and tucked it behind his ear, and Jonathan pulled apart both his backpack and Lucas's trying to find it, me and Lucas holding back laughter the whole time. Funny little stupid things that were amplified by the fact that I liked him.

And he listened. He listened at the party, when it was too loud and what I said wasn't important. He listened whenever I had a whispered side comment in class. When I spoke too fast, my parents and most of the people I knew made a big deal of it. Sometimes even Megan and Tricia poked fun at it. I remember one time in chemistry, Megan told me I talked too fast – never heard that before – and I refused to talk to her for the rest of the day. You know the saying – those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. I let Megan and Tricia get away with it, because they didn't really mind, but… still.

Lucas Tristan, who I knew but didn't know, would tilt his head forward and lift his eyebrows almost imperceptibly, his expression open to ask what I said without making a big deal of it. Gently. Kindly.

This was just how he was.

Oh, there was one time – I smiled a bit, now – when we were packing up at the end of class, and I said something, and he said "What?"

I started to repeat my words–

"WAAT?"

I froze. His eyebrows were raised playfully. I didn't know what to do, but then his face softened and he said "What?" normally, like I knew he would. Like he always did.

I sighed and rolled over. I was finally getting sleepy.

Kind like he always was. After all that happened, he was still Lucas.

And we'll be okay, I thought, drifting off.

CHEMISTRY PSA: Induction in an acid/base problem pulls the electrons closer, not the entire hydrogen atom. More induction means the molecule is more acidic.

This has been a PSA to prevent you from fucking up in front of the cute guy in your CS class, yw

(he was rly nice tho he was like oh you're probably ok tho)

(ahhh)