xvii. enharmonic
(end)
※
Telling the story forwards, the way everyone else says it should be told, makes it a sad one. You talk to a lot of people and everything gets worse. You walk across an entire continent only to end up right where you started, and the only option ahead of you is to separate humans from pokémon indiscriminately, because some wrongs cannot be righted, only undone.
It’s much easier to look at things this way instead. Turning things on their head is what Unova does best, after all. Now right is wrong, black is white. Put the effect before the cause and it’s immediately clear that there were a thousand times you could’ve been stopped, helped, before you had no other choice, if anyone had just listened. If you had just known how to ask them to understand.
It’s much easier not to look at any of that. It’s easier instead to let the beginning and the end intertwine. Zahhak told you a story like that once, about a human who met an adamantine dragon and was permitted to see through the web of time, to watch a war in reverse.
It’s reassuring to pretend you’re that human now, and to quietly undo your own tragedy. Told backwards, everyone gets a happy ending. Hilda solemnly walks away from a healing battlefield and returns all of her badges and pokémon, her scowl fading piece by piece as they leave her, until she’s grinning through tears as she claps for a mincinno. Tourmaline is taken from a trainer she hates, returned to two humans she loves, and sleepily rouses herself by the fire. Zahhak stretches himself out, unharmed, from enormous pile of rubble; his scars fade; he smiles toothily. Human children all over the country enthusiastically direct pokémon to fling themselves away from one another. Hundreds of pokémon are pulled away from lives of violence and accompanied by their human friends into the wild to live quiet, peaceful lives among their kind.
And further back still. A clever human scientist unstifles a gasp of surprise after freeing a pokémon from the first pokéball, and deconstructs it with shaking hands so it will never imprison anyone against their will again. Sagaris rears up on her hind legs and swallows a torrent of dragonfire so that it doesn’t burn anyone; in turn, humans plug her gaping wounds with their weapons and remove them once her roars of pain turn triumphant. Stormdancer opens her eyes and inhales as blood bursts from a king’s hands back into her throat. Reshiram and Zekrom reconcile back into the Dragonmother, who draws all of her children close once more.
Every victory, every defeat, every pain—it all gets wound back until everyone is smaller and simpler and less violent, until no one can hurt anyone else ever again. There is nothing more beautiful and terrifying than their innocence.
Perhaps selfishly, you focus on a very small child with green hair who watches with wide eyes as screams to turn cheers, who lays down his burdensome mantle of being the hero and closes his eyes in a peaceful world.
※
The moment before it all ends is serene. And then:
{Hero of Truth. Is this what you want?}
You can’t quite hide your surprise. Both at the words, and at their speaker.
“Zekrom?” you ask slowly.
{I have listened to you, and I have listened to the Hero of Ideals, and I have come to an understanding,} Zekrom rumbles.
You say nothing. Pure truth is a response.
A massive fracture crawls across the room, inevitably toward Reshiram; by the time they touch, you will have split two worlds that will never rejoin again.
{I sensed your presence when you passed by Relic Castle, many moons ago. I slumbered deep inside of the Dark Stone, and yet your conviction for a better world stirred me. But unformed hope for a brighter future is not an ideal; I did not and do not believe you have the capacity to struggle for a dream that you cannot see. And yet, even as we stand here at the end, I sense that you are not fully convinced in your truth, even as Reshiram stands behind you. So I ask you again: is this what you want?}
You aren’t sure if gods have a concept of rhetorical questions. So instead you look Zekrom in the eye before your better judgment holds you back, and in the depths of red you see unfathomable wisdom, pain, and hunger. A black eyelid shutters, granting you a brief moment of respite. “What do you want instead?” you manage.
{What I want no longer matters,} Zekrom says, wearily casting one arm across the cratered battlefield around you. {Hero of Truth, all that matters now is your heart, and if you still can believe enough to extend it.}
The words sit heavily in the room, which you find has grown unnaturally still. In this one, serene moment, everyone else but the dragon before you is frozen in place.
{You seek to reset us. I find that quite unideal, and instead I seek to compromise. I believe neither of us want this ending, although you think your hand is forced. Even I have no faith in wishing on the past. Do you understand what I am saying, Hero of Truth?}
At first you don’t even understand the question, the situation, any of it. What is Zekrom trying to tell you? That your choice here will be irreversible? You know that; you’ve known that all along. That some concepts are never meant to be merged as one; that your beliefs are as incompatible with the current world as fire and water? You’ve known that as well.
But Zekrom, who surely knows far more than you ever will, must know both these things and more. They wouldn’t ask you if there wasn’t a reason, something they need you to understand.
“
Why are you making me do this?”
Unbidden, the memory surfaces. Your father played chess with you when you were younger. You asked him in a very clear voice why he insisted on playing you, because that you thought it was silly and he was always going to win. And the rules were quite foolish. Some pieces could belong on some squares; everything had to be divisible. You’d asked him why black and white had to be cordoned off into their own boxes.
And Ghetsis had coldly answered all of your questions at once: “Because some people don’t have a choice.”
You hated that game, how every piece had only its one set of moves, how kings could go nowhere at all but were somehow the only piece that mattered. But you hated most of all how the board reset like nothing had ever happened, as if a dozen pieces hadn’t fallen for a polarized victory. At first you thought you disliked the game because you kept losing, but you once you tasted victory you hated winning even more, because it never felt like success, not when there was simply an endless string of games ahead.
The answer coalesces along with the image of tiny, trembling hands resetting the pieces across the board, prepared to start it all over. “You’re trying to tell me that I cannot fixate on the past. I cannot return things to the way they used to be and expect better results.”
Zekrom rumbles an agreement. {Reshiram and I are in eternal conflict over which force should be the driving factor in this world. I suspect we always will be. To explore and know the truth, you must look to the past and understand how previous actions have guided you to where you are today. To explore and know your ideals, you must look to the future and understand what steps you must take to walk the path to where you wish to be. But if you desire only to return to the past, if you seek to create a future that was simply what once was … you, like us, will be trapped in a cycle of conflict forever.}
It’s an ugly truth, and an even uglier one to hear from the Dragon of Ideals.
“I know. But Reshiram and I knew of no other way to help. This is all we can do.” You look away. It takes all of your self-control not to burst out then. You
know that, and yet—there’s nothing else you can do. No other way to reverse this situation. Surely even Zekrom can understand that truth: if there was a better path, you would’ve taken it long ago. But it’s more than that. You remember the stories you were told growing up, about the black dragon who had strength beyond compare and yet whose greatest gift was to have faith in others despite everything. “Would you also stand there and let things continue as they are, knowing what you know now? Could you do nothing when there are people who cry out for you?”
Zekrom says quietly, {You remind me of my eldest daughter.}
On reflex, you can’t help but look back at them. “I’m sorry?”
{In times she was like you, with her green voice. In times she was like my Hero of Ideals, with her fighting spirit. But in her best times, she was both. That was who she was always meant to be.}
Your stomach clenches. Stormdancer. Does Zekrom know?
You see something in Zekrom’s eyes twist and seethe, and the truth strikes you with the same sort of certainty with which you’d say the sky is blue. Zekrom knows what happened to Stormdancer and her voice, and what happened in turn to the rest of the Dragonmother’s children.
“I’m sorry.”
Zekrom breaks your gaze. {You are not the one I have chosen, but I respect the goal that you seek. When I was reborn amidst a battlefield and the very first thing my Hero of Ideals did was command me to attack another one in suffering, one who would invoke my daughter’s words in the face of certain death, I understood: even her Ideal world would involve pain for the innocent. Perhaps not for everyone, perhaps only for a few, but pain enough that I hesitated then. Pain enough that I believe I could shelve my conflict now with you and my sibling to break us from this cycle. And, of course, even I understand the other simple truth—if I do not try to intercede here, you will act anyway. I cannot stop you.}
They’re … not wrong.
{This future you envision, where so many people struggled for so long, only for you and my sibling to rip their rewards from their hands—I cannot say it is an ideal one. I hope we both agree there.}
Zekrom waits for you to respond, so you have to try.
There had been a single moment, back when you were idly standing in the Icirrus pokécenter, the TV buzzing gently as background noise, when it had all finally come together for you, months too late. There was a crowd gathered round, watching intently, but you hadn’t noticed them at first. It was late at night and Spur was talking about an interesting thought experiment involving a traveling man and a map, and there was a weird feeling in your chest—Zekrom, you’d realize later. You must’ve sensed the dragon from halfway across Unova.
What made you look up was his voice, tinny but unmistakable. You pushed through the crowd to see him on the screen. Zahhak, beaten and bloody, glared up at this god and invoked those words, the full thing, the parts he hadn’t been able to truly say back in the castle, and it felt in that moment that his words were for simultaneously for you and for all of Unova:
forgive me, dear sibling.
The last time you’d seen him, you’d split the oath between yourselves; he’d taken on the sacrifice and you’d taken on the regret, but in front of Zekrom he’d accepted them both, and when he was done, he passed them on, relinquishing the mantra of martyrs for another. Those words were never meant to be held for long.
Something inside of you had caught fire that night. There was once a childish, hopeful part of you that still hoped for a way that didn’t involve suffering, and that night it burst into a flame.
In those flames you could steel yourself to the harsh reality that you’d seen Zahhak accept. Changing the world would require a piece of yourself in return. Denying that fact only meant that someone else would suffer while you waited. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. In that one moment that drive had taken all of Zahhak, and a little bit of you as well. And from that one moment there was no more avoiding it; it was time to give the rest up to the flames.
There is no change without sacrifice. This is the conviction upon which you called to Reshiram. This is the fire that roared so loudly it stirred a god.
To look Zekrom in the eyes, and to say that you could still
believe, that you could still look to an ideal that you had always sought but had been taken from you, time and time again? Can you agree?
No. You cannot. You tilt your head up. Bitterly, like every human in Unova before you, you choose silence.
{My sibling and I,} says Zekrom when you fail to answer, gesturing with an errant flick of an arm the size of your body towards Reshiram, {were once one being. You have surely heard the stories of how we were embroiled in aiding in a battle of brothers, much like the one you are in now.}
Your brow furrows, but you understand before you have to ask for clarification: the tongue of dragons has no word for
civil war. It is a purely human construct, to pretend that wars could be civil. Zahhak once— “Yes. I know the legends. The conflict was so fierce that you and Reshiram were sundered.” You can’t bring yourself to look Zekrom in the eyes, but you hope the regret carries through in your voice at least. “Humans did that to you. I’m sorry.”
“N,” she says suddenly, voice shaky. “Do you … do you trust us?”
Behind the dragon, one hand outstretched, one tear tracking through the ash smudged across her cheeks—Hilda has been here this entire time. Watching, silent, listening.
Trust her?
It’s such an innocent, impossible question. How could she trust
you? That night you did nothing but watch as Zahhak ripped Amara to shreds. She couldn’t have known that that was the last thing you’d wanted, that half of why you’d tried to hard at Dragonspiral Tower was because you knew what Ghetsis would do when you failed—but you couldn’t ask Hilda to separate you from them. Indirectly or not, you’d known that was the inevitable end to the path he’d set himself on. He was a dragon, after all. A dragon who thought that the only gift he had left was violence. You’d seen the hesitation on her face, even before you summoned Reshiram. For once, she hadn’t wanted to battle you. Was it because she knew it would come to this? Because she, like you, had come to doubt the drive that had gotten her here?
But doubt isn’t reconciliation. Regret isn’t redemption. How could she ask
you to trust her? She couldn’t even understand half of this conversation; hers is a one-sided scream into the void that Zekrom somehow chose to answer. Hilda tried, and she tried very hard, but what does she know? What does anyone else know? How was it so easy for her to call to a dragon whose words she would never understand?
In the frozen moment that follows, you want to tell her so much. Of Stormdancer and the Dragonmother, of a chord the two of them had formed on a starry night in a time long-since dead, of the gift your ancestors stole to get you both here today. But your words die in your throat.
What would she say? What would she choose?
Did she know?
When you don’t respond, Hilda’s the one to break the silence. “You used the word
sunder to describe Reshiram and Zekrom,” she says quietly, almost hesitantly. “Do you know where that word comes from?”
She’s repeating your words back to you.
Draconic. There was fire in your voice when you told her the tragedy of Sagaris not ten minutes earlier, fire that you aren’t even sure came from you. But you can’t hear rage in her. You look hesitantly to Zekrom, who nods, so you shake your head slowly.
“My mother told me a story when I was young.” You can see the tremors racking up her arms, but she keeps her voice steady. “Our Great Mother was born with two hearts. Seeing the strength she was given, she tasked herself to safeguard this world. But while her role was very important, it was very lonely. To walk without equal is a horrible thing
. And so the Great Mother sundered into the Twin Gods.”
You want to spit her retort back at her. You know how the story of Reshiram and Zekrom ends. One became two so that two could be like one. But just because it turned out one way hundreds of years ago doesn’t mean it’ll work out this way now.
“The word
sunder for us is a special one.” Hilda’s voice finally quavers. “It comes from our ancient word for
alone. My mother often reminded me that her language has many words to divide, but only
sunder has that connotation. I always thought the distinction was important. I’ve never tried to explain it before. Do you know why they chose to split in that moment, when before they had endured so much as one? To me it’s only obvious if you know why we chose
sunder. If you know why they chose to stand alone.”
You almost don’t want to answer her. You’ll just prove her right, after all, and you
can’t doubt, not here, not when you’re so close. But you know how this story ends. You know what this ending calls you to do.
The words slip out despite yourself, and the dialect of dragons is heavy on your heart when you say, “So they would always have one who could stand beside them?”
“So they would always have one who could stand beside them,” she repeats solemnly, her smile watery.
Can you imagine it? Zekrom and Reshiram opening their newly-sundered eyes and beholding the other. How did it feel in that moment, doing the hardest thing a person could do? How did it feel to face yourself?
Something tells you it can’t have been entirely unlike what’s happening now.
Nothing would hide the truth that the harsh fire of Reshiram’s truth revealed. Nothing could quench those flames now that you’ve stoked them with yourself. But perhaps within them, you could reforge yourself instead. Hilda must have, somehow, if she could still stand here and believe after everything she’s lost. The invitation is clear, if you could only just
take it. If you could just believe.
“Do you trust Zekrom?” she asks. She hesitates. “Even if … even if you don’t trust me?” She tilts her head up defiantly, the same rigid determination she’s worn into every battle glinting in her eyes. But there’s something else now, too. Desperation. “I don’t fully know what Zekrom’s planning, N. Or if it’ll even be what I want. But I know … I know Zekrom knows we can’t do it without you.”
So they would always have one who could stand beside them.
Maybe it didn’t just refer to Reshiram and Zekrom. Maybe there was a reason pokémon chose to partner with humans, no matter the myriad of ways that that partnership led to pain. Maybe they’d realized that the alternative was just failing alone.
It has to be a trick of the light. But for a moment, you don’t see Hilda standing by Zekrom. There’s another child there with wide, innocent eyes, another black dragon standing by a human, and—
Did Stormdancer trust Human? Did Human trust Stormdancer? Did she care? Did she know?
Did it matter?
The answer to all those questions, surely, was the same as the one you must give now.
And in that last, serene, fragile moment before it all ends, you decide.
You look at that child and exhale. “We can’t be you.” Blink. Hilda’s there again. For a brief moment you wonder if Reshiram saw the same trick of the light; if the power of Zekrom’s ideals showed them two dragons standing as one, the beauty of a future that could’ve been, that could still be. “But we can help you. And we can learn from you.” You look up to the resplendent white dragon at your side, feeling for all the world like a petulant child. “Can’t we?”
Reshiram is still hesitating, still on the verge of fracture. Pure truth is a response, after all.
In a slow voice, Reshiram finally answers. {When Zekrom and I were one, we had an immutable gift. The strength to imagine any ideal and the power to make it true. We could not handle that burden. We split, and each sought Heroes like ourselves, and our quarrel in turn sundered Unova.}
Reshiram’s neck snakes down until their eyes are level with you. {In my millennia of slumber I came to regret my actions in choosing to stand against my sibling, and the damage we wrought upon your world, but I understood as well that my actions could not be undone. You were correct before when saying you were too idealistic to be the Hero of Truth like you knew in legend. You called to me, and I chose you, not because you embody what I am, but because you carry what I lack. What I cast aside all those years ago.}
You follow Reshiram’s gaze over your shoulder, where Hilda stands next to Zekrom.
{And I see now,} Reshiram rumbles, {that I was not unique in my regret.}
Blue blood drips down Zekrom’s throat. {Could we not be in accord once more?}
The two dragons stare levelly at one another.
{We cannot be us again,} Reshiram says after a long silence. {But for this moment, in this very last moment, I believe a temporary alliance could be brokered between us, and we could work together to protect the peoples of this world, as we once did so long ago.}
Both dragons turn once more to look at you, and suddenly you know without doubt what the Heroes of Ideals are asking you to do, what Truth’s response must be. Your heart is suddenly heavy, and full.
Ten thousand years ago, in this very spot, a legend says a human clutched a dragon’s body and cried into the night for help. You can’t say for sure what happened next. But you can believe this: beneath a starry sky, despite everything before or since, the world changed.
You face the shattered battlefield, Hilda, the ancient dragons, and you bow low before invoking the words that will once again change Unova forever:
“Forgive me, dear sibling. This is all I know how to give.”
※
o. new
※
The last notes of a long-forgotten song fade away.
“N!” Footsteps. “Are you okay?!”
“He will live, Hero of Ideals.”
There is a heavy, weighted silence.
“Zekrom?”
“Yes, Hero of Ideals.”
“What … what did you do?”
What follows is incomprehensible, a strangled hiss.
“N?”
“He says: ‘The dragons have given pokémon a Gift, Hilda.’”
“… Reshiram?”
“Reshiram and N reached an accord, just as you and I did, Hero of Ideals. I represent this land as it could be, a Unova that we can aspire for. My sibling stands for the Unova that is, the ugly realities that bind us. In our struggles we have forgotten how we were once one, how we once stood for a world that could be beautiful
because of its flaws, not despite them.”
“We stood for the Unova that is
becoming. My sibling is correct. We both forgot this. Even if we had the power to split these worlds, to return all of you to a universe in which pokémon live on their own and humans are kept far away to make their own disasters—we could not without first giving everyone a fair chance to make things right. Pokémon never had a chance to dictate the terms of their partnership. Humans never had to listen for an answer. That much we understand now. We could not ignore your plea, but nor could we ignore our own. And so it is quite simple. From N we took, and to pokémon everywhere we gave, the gift that we lost so long ago. We gave
Voice.”
A strain of music echoes in the distance.
Another incomprehensible hiss.
“He says: ‘No more can you speak and humans live in blissful ignorance in the gaps between your words. When they speak, you will hear.’”
“But what … what
happened to him?”
“In giving his Voice fully to others, he has lost his own. That is how the world is, and how it has always been.” Pause. “One day we will create a world where it no longer has to be.”
“Is it permanent?”
“Yes. But all four of us knew that before we began.”
Another pause.
“I know.”
“He says this, Hilda: it isn’t your fault that pokémon were betrayed in such a way for you to have your gain, nor is it our place to mete judgment by ripping pokémon and humans apart. This world was made for you, and you did not make it, but for those of us who received so many gifts, the burden is on our shoulders to
make it right. My hero sought to solve the equation that would change the world, but along the way we learned: that equation is an inequality. It cannot and will not be solved by our hand alone, nor will it be solved today. But we must try, and we must do so together. For that future … he says he is more than willing to join those who sacrificed their own gift.”
“And thanks to them our work can truly begin, Hero of Ideals.”
The sound of crumbling stone.
“To you, dear sibling, and to you, Hilda—and to all people—N and I warn this: with the gift of Voice, you and we have allowed humans to hear the words pokémon speak. We cannot make humans listen, nor can we force them to understand. This is merely one step down a long road. There will always be injustices that we will need to fight. We have given one half of a gift. You must teach the other. You must prove that humans meant what they said when they wished to partner peacefully with pokémon, and that it was only because you could not hear them before that you were deaf to their cries. You must welcome them now into a world where they are free to be people. If you plug your ears now, if you harden your hearts to their pain, if you insist that battling and violence are the only way you can understand them, then we will have no choice.”
Wingbeats. The sound of crumbling stone. A roar with no words.
“We say this: if we must roar again, he will not speak to humans, nor will I give his Voice to pokémon. We will bare our fangs, and we will call the storm.”
※
