YOOOOO IT'S THE TRAINER BALL LET'S GOOOOOOOO

Yeah sorry it's been a minute (March to August rip) but I really wanted to get this right. Turned out I just had to break it down into smaller scenes in order to lessen the pressure of writing a chapter I'd been thinking about since before I started publishing Chance.

Also I've been working on the Chance pod a lot, and it's been going well! We're at chapter 51 as of tomorrow. It's been a really great experience and a lot of the people who make cameos in this chapter(!) are also voice actors for it. The corresponding Insta is also popping (a lot of it is highkey just me illustrating Chance scenes in pixel art). You can follow it at "chanceoutloud"

Anyways enjoy this chapter that's almost triple the length of a normal Chance chapter hot damn

Dawn and I took the stairs down into the lobby, where Thomas was waiting. As accustomed as I was to seeing him dressed formally, there was still a little flutter in my stomach as I approached.

He noticed me and gave a startled double take. "Oh! Hey!"

I looked at him warily. "What?"

Thomas hesitated, then shrugged. "Nothing. You look lovely," he said, and I couldn't tell if he was talking to just me or to both of us.

"Thanks," I said, hoping I wasn't turning red. "You look good too."

"Thanks. Ready to go?"

"Yeah," I said, relieved.

The three of us exited the lobby and walked towards the lakeside pavilion, dropping off our pokemon at the daycare on the way.

We'd worked out an emergency plan – Def, Coeur, Prom, and Trust would all have communication lines open, just in case. If Def could no longer sense me or the aura users caught wind of something amiss, Def would teleport them in one at a time, or at least get as close as possible if there was a psychic block. If a lot of Galactic members showed up, they'd tell as many pokemon as they could before heading over. They'd already talked to Dawn's pokemon and would let Thomas's and Lucas's teams know the plan when they could.

I watched them run off and join the hundreds of other pokemon roaming the gymnasium. "Don't destroy the daycare," I said as we left.

"THAT'S the only requirement? Oh, we're gonna have some fun," I heard Coeur say.

I checked my poketch on the way out – Looker's latest hourly update just read, Still clear.

"Are you cold?" Thomas asked.

I realized I was shivering (I didn't know if it was from the cold or nerves). "A little."

He draped his jacket over my shoulders. "Sorry," I said. "I should have brought a warmer coat."

Thomas shrugged. "It's okay. We'll be inside soon enough."

As we continued toward the lake, we came across more and more trainers on their way in. I waved to Zeke Ren. "Congratulations," I called to them.

"Thanks," they said, waving back. They were wearing a suit that looked faintly teal in the dark spot between streetlamps. On the back of the blazer was an embroidered rayquaza amidst cherry blossoms. It was the single coolest jacket I'd ever seen.

Music drifted over from the lakeside. The pavilion emerged from the trees in front of us, towering like an ancient temple lit up in gold. Trainers stood in a queue that wound down the steps and around the side of the building. Lucas was waiting underneath a tree.

The past five months, I'd retained this exact image of him, wearing a black tie and vest over a white shirt, jacket slung over his shoulder, in association with the warmth and joy of that night – this night – five months ago. But seeing him now, the exact picture of the happiest I'd ever been, was complete annihilation. He was the death of me; a hand reaching up to caress my heart, holding it as it was gently impaled to the handle of a knife.

Dawn, who was apparently not malfunctioning, ran up to him. Her skirt swished behind her, a blue so pale it was nearly white. He smiled, eyes sparkling. I cursed at myself mentally, for… I don't know, being inadequate somehow. Until this moment I'd thought myself pretty for once.

Thomas nudged his arm against mine. "You good?" he said softly.

I hesitated, but nodded untruthfully.

The four of us found the end of the line. At six, the line began to move. We followed it around the pavilion and up the steps.

Three and a half hours til the slowdance, which I remembered being around half an hour before the end of the ball.

I flipped nervously between the apps on my pokedex. Still clear, Looker's message still said. Good luck, Lyn. See you soon, said an older message from him on another app.

"All clear?" Thomas asked, noticing me on my poketch.

I nodded. "So far, yeah."

We reached the front of the line and checked in with the tournament organizers' list of names and faces. None of us had a plus one, which meant we quickly breezed through into the entry hall of the pavilion.

I spotted a short line of people leading to a closet. "I'll check your jacket in," I said to Thomas.

"I can do that–"

"No, I'm the one who wore it anyway," I said, walking away before he could say anything more. Haha, I win.

Lucas was also getting in line for the coat check. I hesitated enough that three people got in line between us. I had no idea if I'd meant to let that happen.

The guy in front of me shrugged off his jacket, revealing white suspenders patterned with oshawotts. "Your suspenders are so cool," I blurted out.

He turned, and I recognized him as Omar Knight, whom I'd battled before in a tournament. He'd lined his eyes with blue. "Thanks! I love your dress," he said.

I beamed. "Thanks! How's the tournament been for you?"

"It was okay. I got to round four. It's not the semifinals, but we can't all win all the time," he said. "Congrats, by the way."

It took me a sec. "Oh, thanks! Sorry, I forgot I did that for a second."

Omar laughed. "What? How?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. Didn't expect to get so far?" I'd also been pretty preoccupied by, you know, the Big Bad Evil Guy showing up to watch, and all the stress that had brought on us since.

Omar and I talked more about the tournament and eventually checked in our coats. "Do you wanna go dance?" he asked. "Or do you need to find your friends?"

I looked back at where my friends had been – Dawn and Thomas were gone, and I'd seen Lucas head towards the ballroom. "Let's go dance," I said.

We walked through the rest of the entry hall and entered the ballroom. In here, the lights were much dimmer that in the entrance hall – bulbs hung from the ceiling like dangling stars, accompanied by string lights draped over the second-story bannister. The second floor in question circled the edges of the room like one extended balcony, with stairways leading up along the walls. A massive dance floor dominated the center of the room, headed by a concave musicians' booth with what seemed like a small orchestra. I knew from last time that while the orchestral music made the ball seem classier, they often ventured into covers of pop music for audience appeal.

I couldn't spot Thomas or Dawn or Lucas from where we were, but Omar brought me to some of his friends and we started dancing together. It turns out dancing – if you don't know how to do it – is significantly easier when you're around strangers, so most of the dancing I did that night was in the first half hour or so. I kept looking around to make sure Lucas couldn't see how embarrassing I probably looked, but I never saw him.

Two and a half hours to go til the slowdance.

At some point, Omar and I left the group to find the refreshments booth, where I ran into Thomas. "Hey," he said over the din, "sorry I left, I–"

I couldn't hear what he said over the crowd, but it didn't matter. "That's okay," I said. "I've been dancing with Omar Knight."

Thomas smiled and took two drinks with him as he left. I turned back around, but Omar was gone.

I checked my poketch. Still clear, read a new text from Looker.

I wandered for a bit, lingering with trainers on the outer edges of the room. A lot of them had congratulations for how far I'd gotten in the tournament. Matthew Tian asked if my togekiss was doing all right. I confirmed that she was as healthy and incorrigible as ever.

I passed by Ashley, who was following her friends through the crowd. "Nice suit," I said.

She grinned. "Thanks, I figured I should flex my bi sometimes, even if it scares off some of the straight boys."

"Huh?"

She stopped walking and pinched the lapel of her navy blue blazer. "The suit? Sort of a queer thing. Subversion of femininity, I think, but mostly a lot of us just feel good in it."

Ashley turned to catch up to her friends. Was that… so, wait, did that mean, if I'd coveted suits and other masculine formalwear all my life… Did that mean anything about my sexuality?

I remembered Zeke Ren's rayquaza jacket. Arceus, did it mean anything about my gender? I hadn't even thought to consider that. But these were just external things and gender and sexuality were internal, right? My head spun.

Still clear, read Looker's text.

I checked in with Def. "Nothing bad has happened," he said. "We have been informing l'autre pokemon of la potentialité d'attaque. I have not sensed trouble."

"Oh… You, uh, weren't supposed to do that unless Galactic actually showed up."

"Ohhh zut."

"It's okay, don't worry about it."

On the side of the ballroom opposite the front entrance stood a series of doors leading to a balcony out back. It was a wide stone area a little smaller than a courtyard, overlooking the forest below and the lake a little farther off. A few trainers stood outside in the cold – mostly those with suit jackets, including Michelle Wolfe.

"Are suits really a gay thing?" I asked her after we'd talked for a bit.

"One hundred percent," she said immediately.

The next time I was inside the ballroom, I spotted Lucas. We made eye contact briefly before he looked away and disappeared into the entrance hall.

I meandered in his direction. I'm just exploring, I thought. The foyer didn't look any different than before – maybe a little emptier – but Lucas was nowhere in sight.

I checked my poketch again. Two hours til the slowdance. Still clear. Coeur also confirmed that things were going well at the daycare, and that they had not yet burned it down, despite Faith's best efforts.

Thomas emerged from a side corridor that seemed to lead to the restrooms. "Hey," he said. "How's the ball going?"

"Going well. I'm exploring."

"Have you been upstairs yet?"

It turned out Thomas was interested in going up, so we climbed the nearest staircase. I spotted Dawn talking to Emily Wu on the way up. Dawn and I waved at each other.

The upper floor was mostly comprised of seating for non-dancers, with an additional stand for refreshments. Thomas and I obtained drinks and wandered the second floor. One corner contained comfy-looking armchairs around a coffee table, with several potted plants and an elegant grandfather clock by the wall.

Thomas asked, "Does your poketch keep up with time irregularities?"

I thought about it. "The clock function syncs remotely, but I assume the stopwatch would follow me in time. Why do you ask?"

He shrugged. "Just wondering. I guess it doesn't matter if you're not stressed about it anymore, though."

"Oh." I paused. "I, um… I think I still need to find an anchor."

"Oh?"

I leaned against the railing. "Yeah. I thought about it some more. I think it's probably good that I'm less stressed, because then I can deal with it better, but I should still have a way to try and stop it."

Because if Prom was going to face poison, I wanted to be there for him. If Jirra caught Trust off guard, I wanted to be able to pull Trust away in time. If Hope fell from the sky, I wanted to catch her before she hit the ground.

For the most part, they would be fine on their own. Crises were few and far between. So again, I didn't need to worry too much. But there was always that "what if?" that kept coming true.

I guess it was a matter of balance between the two.

"You've been doing really well battling with time jumps, at least," said Thomas.

"Thanks – I mean, a lot of the last few battles didn't have any skips, but."

"Oh, which ones?"

I scanned my memory. "The two in the main arena," I said.

"Was something different about those?"

I frowned. "I mean, there were more people… and I was more nervous… but usually that makes the time skipping worse."

"But all the other battles had skips? What about outside of battles? Have you skipped tonight?"

"I haven't since before the ball, but I've been skipping around outside of battles, yeah. Not much at the festival, for some reason, but in, like, the Pokemon Center, or on the arena concourse."

"Hm." Thomas was deep in thought. "Is there some kind of pattern? A common factor?"

Was there? The last two battles, the festival, the ball?

They'd been at different times of day and locations. Loads of people at all of them, but then again, I'd skipped time in a crowd before. I guess I'd been feeling better? But I'd also stayed anchored in the battle with Lucas, when I'd really not been doing well. I'd needed to mentally stabilize myself with–

Wait.

"The main arena's the only one with battle music," I realized. "And obviously there's music here, and the festival has a background soundtrack, and the only other battle I didn't skip time for was against Lucas, when I had earbuds in."

"You think that's it?"

"It does make sense," I said. "Music happens in time. It depends on it. So if I'm listening to music, consciously or not… I'm tethered to something moving constantly through time."

"That's it, then," Thomas said, a grin spreading across his face. "You've found your anchor!"

"Yeah," I said, feeling a massive weight lift from my shoulders. "I guess anchor's a bad analogy for music's relationship to time, though."

"Sail?" Thomas suggested. "Oars? Propellor?"

"Something like that," I laughed.

My poketch buzzed and I checked it again. This time, it said:

Balcony.

"I'll be right back," I told Thomas.

I descended the stairs and moved through the ballroom to the doors leading out back. Lucas and I passed by one another, but he didn't see me. Outside, snow was beginning to fall, illuminated in a sphere of lamplight. It had gotten chillier, although for me it was still manageable. No one else had remained outside, and with the clamor of the ball enclosed 10 feet away, it felt even more poignantly lonely.

"Up here."

I looked up and found Looker standing on a much smaller stone balcony above the one I was on. A natu appeared on the ledge next to me, and I put out my hand to let her teleport me up.

"Hey Lyn," Looker said when I arrived. He was still wearing plainclothes, but now with his trenchcoat on over it.

"Hey, what's up?"

"I checked the lakes in the afternoon," he began. "No signs of Galactic setting anything up, but I'll be staying in the vicinity. I asked Cynthia and Candice to keep watch over the other lakes."

"Nice, okay." Candice was new. Good, though.

"Here's why I wanted to talk to you, though," he said, pulling a folder out of his coat. "I said before that I looked into all of the admins, by which I meant Cyrus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn."

I nodded.

"I missed one."

I blinked. "What– you mean Charon? Is he an admin?"

"I also thought he was merely admin-adjacent, given his not being named after a planet… but as it turns out, that might have been the point," Looker said, handing me the folder. "Glad I'm not the only one who forgot about him, though," he joked.

I opened it and took a look at the photograph paperclipped to the front. A young man. The hairline was lower and the glasses more practical, but even though I'd only met Charon a handful of times, I could see the similarities.

The top of the file read "Agent Archon."

"Archon was his code name in the IP, forty years ago," said Looker. "He was only with us for a few years; according to the report, he left because he thought our scientific pursuits were beneath his talents."

I made a face. "Pretentious bastard. What was he, 18 years old?"

"23 when he left. The code name reveals a fair bit of pretense as well. 'Archon' is from a strand of Unovan theology, referring to malevolent angels who are responsible for trapping ethereal souls in the material world."

"Arceus, I thought he couldn't get any more arrogant."

"This was back when agents could pick their own code names, too."

"You didn't pick Looker?"

"Mew, no. I never would have picked Looker," he said disdainfully.

"What's wrong with searching?"

He shook his head. "If only that was the meaning."

"What is it then?"

Looker seemed uncomfortable. "Well… this was a number of years back…" He cleared his throat. "We're getting off track. Charon's prior involvement in the IP explains how Mars was able to navigate the HQ so easily."

"Her porygon-Z…?"

"Charon had a porygon while he was in the IP. They were doing research into artificial pokemon at the time – porygons, voltorbs, et cetera. That porygon would have been inside the HQ, and would have imprinted the location then."

I nodded slowly. Things were falling into place. But… "This still doesn't explain how they anticipated us in Sunyshore… Unless Charon has IP access still?"

Looker shook his head. "Retirees don't retain access to IP databases. I have stopped uploading plans and information, in case he's working with someone on the inside. For the most part, though, this just means we should be paying closer attention to Charon."

"Sounds good." I handed the file back to Looker.

He closed it. "That's all for now. How's the dance?"

"Going well enough. I just figured out an anchor."

I'd caught him off guard. "You– really? What is it?"

I explained to Looker what Thomas and I had realized.

"Lyn, that's incredible!" He thought about it some more. "So as long as you can hear music, no matter how distant or subconscious, you won't experience time jumps?"

"That seems to be the case, yeah."

Looker nodded thoughtfully. "Hm… Okay, so if we can maximize the amount of time you spend listening to music… that's going to involve…"

He trailed off, calculating something in his head. The wintry chill seemed happier now, the silence warmer.

"I might, um… I might try to dance with Lucas tonight," I said quietly.

Looker nodded, but there was sadness in his eyes. "Okay. Good luck."

"I thought you didn't believe in luck?" I teased him nervously.

"I'm believing in it more these days," he replied. "Skill won't help you dance with Lucas."

After he left, I slipped back into the pavilion through a door on the balcony. It led me to the relatively unoccupied second floor. I followed the stairs back down to the main hall.

I ran into Dawn on the edge of the ballroom, near the refreshments. "Did you just come downstairs?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Okay," she said, confused. "I just thought I saw you exit to the back patio."

Oh, oops. "Looker showed up," I said. "He was on the second floor balcony, so I teleported up."

"Oh, okay."

I got a strong sense that Dawn had something on her mind.

"What's up?" I prompted her.

Dawn, who hadn't really been making eye contact with me throughout this exchange, now did so. I found a mix of confusion and concern and maybe some hurt in her expression.

"I know something's up."

"What do you mean?" I asked, my mind running through all the million things she could be talking about.

"You know. Things just don't line up," she said. "We all met Looker at about the same time, but he contacts you way more often than me or Lucas. And you know Galactic so much better – I'd never even heard of Cyrus, much less seen him, but you picked him out in a crowd. And then in Sunyshore… I don't even know what happened, but suddenly you knew what was inside the warehouse and Thomas was just, like, fine with it? What's going on? What am I missing?"

I was at a loss for words. But honestly, this was a long time coming. The effects of time travel, both the initial slip-ups and the current irregularities, had been showing themselves for as long as Dawn had known me as a trainer. This was the cumulation of four months of discrepancies and keeping her out of the loop.

"You're right," I finally said. "There's… there is something we've been keeping from you."

Dawn nodded, the sadness more evident in her expression now. I felt a flash of what it must feel like to be a part of something – a friendship, an attempt to save the world – but to be kept on the outside all the same.

"I… I want to tell you, I do," I said. "But we've been keeping it from you for your own safety – if Galactic figured out you knew…"

She nodded again, halfheartedly. "But Thomas knows?"

"But Thomas knows," I confirmed.

We stood in the kind of silence that is carved by awkwardness into a room of music and chatter. Dawn smiled politely and left before I could make up my mind whether to tell her or not.

I found Thomas. "Everything okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, Looker just had updates. They're watching the lakes."

"They?"

"Candice, Cynthia, Looker."

"Candice?"

"The Snowpoint gym leader… Oh, he's finally starting to involve more of the Pokemon League in things."

"Oh! Good."

"I'll say."

The orchestra began playing a song that any kid who'd grown up in Sinnoh knew how to dance to. "Ooh, come on, dance time," I said, pulling Thomas by the wrist.

"I can't dance."

"You can dance to this."

We stayed on the edge of the dance floor, where I showed him the steps, and he sort of caught on, mixing up his feet only occasionally. I hadn't taught anyone this dance before – not enough young cousins – but teaching my friend from Johto felt right, like a rite of passage for both him and me.

"See? That wasn't so bad," I said when it was over.

His forehead was sweaty. "I'm gonna get water," he said, seeming exhausted. "Want any?"

"Yeah, thanks."

I smiled as I watched him leave. He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves as he walked, warm and winded completely from the only dancing he'd done all night. There's something very endearing about someone demonstrating exactly who they are with a level of unconscious precision only they can manage.

"Hey."

I turned; it was Omar Knight, looking concerned.

"My gardevoir said your pokemon told them we might get attacked? What's going on?"

"I – we're, um, we, we're not getting attacked, exactly," I stammered. "We're just, we need them to be ready in case something happens."

"Is there a threat?"

"Kind of."

"Then the trainers need to be ready, too," said Omar. "Not just the pokemon."

I was sweating. "Uh… well, it's looking like nothing will happen, probably, so it's fine."

"Is there a bigger threat?" he said seriously. "Evelyn, if there's something out there, we're in a room full of the people who can best deal with it."

I glanced at Thomas, who was standing by the refreshments booth with two glasses of water. He frowned, asking me a question silently.

I smiled at Omar. "We're okay right now," I said. "If it comes down to it… I'll, uh, call you."

"Okay," he said warily. "Can I add your number to my poketch?"

"Yeah."

I gave him my contact and rejoined Thomas. "What was that?" he asked.

"Nothing, he just… His pokemon told him what our pokemon are telling them." I should've known other trainers might have telepathic pokemon, too.

"Is that okay?"

"I don't know. The trainers weren't supposed to find out."

My poketch said it was a little past 8:30 pm. An hour til the slowdance.

Still clear.

"Marcassin is kinda on edge," Coeur let me know when I checked in with her. "None of us have sensed anything, though – Def hasn't seen anything psychic, I haven't seen anything aura. We've got a probopass tracking long-range magnetic fields, and she hasn't seen anything besides the occasional magnezone wandering around in the daycare."

"But something's up?"

"All I know is the disaster pokemon senses disaster."

I spent some more time talking to the non-dancing trainers. Renée, Sean, Etana Bing. I kept watching my poketch and the clocks around the room. 8:45. Then 50 past. As 9 o'clock approached – an hour til the end of the dance, something like 30 minutes til the slow song – I looked for Lucas. He wasn't dancing either; he was talking to other trainers, or standing with them, anyways. He wasn't talking much, of course. This I still knew about him.

I felt nauseous with anticipation, checking my poketch obsessively for the time and Looker's messages. 9:12. Still clear. 9:15. 9:16.

I hopped between groups of trainers, sometimes in the same group as him, sometimes just nearby. Dawn and Thomas were nearby too, sometimes. My head whirred with social and spatial calculations, trying to adjust trajectories so that Lucas and I could dance. How to be near enough at the right time, nearer than Dawn? How to ask him to dance without hurting a fresh, budding friendship?

At some point, I wound up right next to Lucas in a group of trainers. He ducked out immediately. Arceus.

What's it gonna take to get over him? I wondered, staying rooted in my spot so that he wouldn't think I was following him. He already ignores me, and I feel like shit whenever he does. It's like he'd have to be secretly with Galactic for me to stop having feelings for him.

I stewed in that for a moment.

…he could be in Galactic, I thought. He's good at maps – if Charon provided a map, Lucas would be able to navigate the IP HQ easily, even without having been there before. And it would explain why he avoids me. It's like Dawn said: I'm way more involved with Looker than they are, so if he was involved with Galactic, he'd want to minimize his interactions with me… and he wasn't there for the orb heist, but he knew when and where we were going…

I frowned. Arceus, I thought. Is… could he really… is Lucas really…?

But they killed him! protested the side of me that loved him still.

He doesn't know that, said a more reasonable side of me. This is the timeline where that never happened.

They kidnapped him!

Maybe it was staged.

They beat him up and drugged him unconscious!

Maybe something's happened since then.

Lucas would never, said the part of me that loved him.

You sure? said a part that was worried but rational. Do you even know him well enough to say that?

I know him on an instinctive level, I argued. I know generally what he wouldn't do.

But at Galactic's Veilstone HQ… He'd come back when he didn't need to. He came back and rejoined the battle, as if… as if he meant to stay.

He came back for me, said the part of me that wanted to cry. He came back to get me a way out.

You almost didn't make it out because he wouldn't leave again after that.

I found Lucas in the crowd, part of a conversation with a few other people. His expression was so open when he wasn't with me.

And then the music slowed.

People began to partner off or move to the side. I looked around and saw Dawn on the far end of the dance floor, scanning.

I felt the room dilate; for a moment I worried Palkia had decided to hate me too, but then I felt my legs moving. Toward Lucas.

I need to do this, I thought distantly. If not, I'll regret it. If Lucas really is… if he turns out to… then this is my last chance. Dawn will be okay. She can take the next slowdance.

(There was only one slow song last time, but maybe things would change.)

And then he was in front of me, this boy with soft dark hair and beautiful amber eyes and a smile that lit my heart in gold, and maybe I had lost my mind but the clarity in me felt like I had finally found it.

"Lucas."

"Yeah?"

The expression on his face was still light and open, and my heart swelled with hope.

I held out one hand, just like last time. "May I have this dance?"

His face didn't close off, but a shard of what might have been pity fell into his eyes, and that might have been worse.

"I already promised Dawn I'd dance with her," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, no, it's okay," I said, retracting my hand fast and speaking faster. "Have fun."

He nodded.

I turned to leave, but not before saying, "She's over there," pointing to where Dawn was standing.

"Thanks." He smiled with an innocent light that shattered what was left of my heart.

I walked in the opposite direction, my legs propelling me away from the boy I could not for the fucking life of me get over.

Stupid, I thought. Stupid, to think a boy who barely talks to you would want to dance. Stupid to put yourself out there when it could only end poorly. Absolute fucking dumbassery, to look forward to tonight for the sole reason of Lucas Tristan and the slowdance that happened once and cannot ever again.

I wove between couples – I saw Tim Raines dancing with a tall blonde lady, Sean Obi with a girl with dark wavy hair, Michelle Wolfe with Kaitlyn Cabot. Ashley de Leon and Kyle Nguyen were laughing and stepping on each other's toes. There were trainers dating and married, trainers wearing the shy smiles of a first dance, trainers whose risks had paid off. There was love and joy in the air and I was suffocating in it. I wanted out.

I reached the doors to the back patio and pushed through. Outside, snow was still falling, dusting the stone floor and the lamps and the short stone walls. No one was out here – it was too cold, probably, but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel anything right now.

I walked to the edge and looked out over the lake. The snow only obscured it a little; I could still see the trees and the shore where I met Azelf and the island where Lucas died.

There was a wave of sound as the doors to the ballroom suddenly opened. I didn't turn around.

"Is everything okay? I saw you run out here."

I stared into the forest. "I asked Lucas to dance."

"Ohhh. Oh no. I'm sorry."

I shrugged.

Snow tumbled around us, flecking my skin with ice. I was starting to feel the cold again, and with it came all the other things I'd put off feeling. Tears started to well up in my eyes.

"Here," he said abruptly. I heard him walk closer. "Dance with me."

I looked up, blinking tears away. "What?"

He held out a hand. "Come on."

I looked at the hand he was offering me. I knew what he was doing – distracting me, trying to save me from myself. Just another iteration of the same thing he did constantly.

I took his hand.

He pulled me to the center of the balcony and placed a hand gently on my waist. I hesitated, then put my left hand on his shoulder. Our free hands clasped in the ballroom dancing posture you see in fairy tale picture books, rather than the hands-on-shoulders-hands-on-waist stance of high schoolers. My heartbeat calmed.

We found the music and stepped, stepped, swaying in time. I felt anchored in a way that had nothing to do with time. This was nothing like the flutters I associated with Lucas, or the panic I felt around Megan. It was… peaceful.

I stared at his shoulder for most of the dance, but remembered to look up as the music wound down. Thomas's eyes met mine. His eyes were lovely – the curve of his eyelids framed them gently, the chestnut-brown of his irises as warm as the microcosm we'd formed within the snowy lakeside air. Our gaze held, despite the thread of startled confusion running through it.

I let go of his hand and took a step back. I curtsied, half-jokingly. "Thank you for the dance."

He gave me a mock bow in return. "Anytime."

The dance wound down from there. I wasn't quite ready to go back inside, so Thomas and I stayed out on the balcony for another two songs, scooping snow off the balustrade and throwing it at each other. We reentered the building shivering and soaked with melted snow.

There were a few songs left. I tried to dance but was exhausted suddenly, so I sort of just hung around Thomas as he chatted with Tejal for a bit.

And then it was over. I said goodbye to a few people as Thomas retrieved his jacket from the coat check. Quite a few people, actually; we exchanged contact info like kids at the end of summer camp. I'd never had so many people in my poketch. And then the coat check was backlogged, so I got even more contacts from the trainers in line.

I checked in with Dawn. She was beaming, cheeks rosy. "I danced with him," she said softly, and my heart only hurt a little with her standing between it and the source of its pain. "He said you helped him find me. Thank you."

I averted my eyes so she wouldn't realize they did not match the smile on my lips. "Of course. I'm glad you had a good time."

Thomas and I picked up our pokemon and returned to the Center, walking over a thin layer of snow. I wore his jacket the whole way, and was starting to let myself feel what I felt about it. We fell asleep almost immediately, our tired pokemon strewn about the room.

Looker's final message on my poketch read, All clear.