Chapter Text
Arriving in Celestic town in the afternoon meant he couldn't avoid the townspeople, so the man put on his best face, hoping no one would recognise him. He pulled the cap he’s wearing so it shadows his eyes. His hair was hidden by a hood. He almost looked like a Diamond or Pearl clansman from the old Hisuian times.
He wanted to pass as a traveler, but the town wasn’t a tourist haven; so, he was pretending to be one of the town's historical researchers that came and went. He knew it’s a dangerous cover; if Akari was in town, she most likely would pass by the cave, and if she wasn’t, maybe they would. His family.
He hadn't planned to be like this. Having a child had been an accident, all those years ago, and a selfish one at that. At the time, he hadn’t known if immortality would pass to any descendants. The woman never contacted him about the pregnancy; he had learned a few years later, when he decided to visit the shrine he’d built in Cogita’s retreat, and found the town Akari built to honor the Celestica. A teen, maybe 13 or 14, who looked like him, holding the hand of a woman who also resembled him. By his calculations, that woman — his daughter — should be in her thirties. He often wondered if she’d like to meet him. He learned their names, but never tried to know them.
Maybe it was some cosmic irony, but his daughter seemed fascinated by the ruins, by the Celestica history. Maybe she felt some connection. He hoped that was the case, as much as it made avoiding her harder. Knowing the ancient Sinnoh culture would live beyond his time qualmed some uncertainties.
In any case, as he walked through the town, he quickly realised Akari wasn't around; the townspeople were very protective of her, their strange immortal child who took the role of keeper for the sanctuary. He sometimes listens to the younger kids gossiping about her, the rumours going from her being a spirit or fairy of some sort to almost a deity. They're surprisingly close, even if they’ll never realise it.
The shrine’s red cover shone under the stars when the man approached it. It was deep in the night, and he knew one would be there. He remembered how it was to build that shrine, following borrowed instructions from even older regions than Hisui. He remembered the first time he found one of Akari’s “gifts”. She had started this exchange of theirs years prior: they never left written messages, but she left small things there first, and when he took it and replaced it with his own, she seemed to take it as a sign to keep at it.
The man petted his Togekiss, perked on his shoulder, making it fly around freely for a moment. He opened the shrine; supposedly, only the keeper can do so, but he built it, so he should be allowed; at least he thought so. Inside, as he expected, was an old mirror he knew was owned by Cogita long ago, together with three amulets he guessed Akari must’ve got from the shrine keeper of Jubilife Village all those years ago. As a main feature, it was the Legend Plate, with a small piece of paper rolled under it.
He picked the paper and closed the shrine’s doors. It was mostly for her, he had kept repeating along the years. He didn’t need it. He did it for her, so she wouldn’t feel alone in her plight. Most of the time, he’d leave a sign he got the message, dried flowers from distant lands he reached on his quest. She would sometimes leave cuts of articles from whichever professor was studying the region’s ruins now, and maybe a bottle of sake.
This paper was really smaller than her other messages to be a cut out of any study, though, and there were no bottles around, this time. When he unrolled the paper, it contained a dried gracidea on it. That was a first; she never got him flowers. He guessed she never even thought the gifts from him must've had hidden meanings, but now he doubted it, because he knew the meaning of that flower. He read the paper, an unexpected feeling of dread waving through him.
“I’m leaving. Thank you for everything.”
Akari’s writing was neat; he never even thought about it. She wrote it on a nice piece of paper as well, with good-quality ink, and he could see that “everything” was a little less prim, as if she took a while to put it on paper. He passed a finger through the small dots of spilled ink at the end of the message, staring at the paper.
He never thought she’d leave. The only constant in his life besides his own beating heart, the comfort he kept at arms length, but kept it nonetheless. This was their shrine, and she had left it.
For the first time in a hundred years, Volo felt alone.