ashes, ashes // lysandre

[lyra]

How many days have ended this way - at the bottom of a mountain making promises that she isn't even sure she can keep? I'll find you. I'll make you smile again, even if it's only in passing, even if I have to do something really really stupid. I'll make sure you don't forget about me. Her fingers twist their way through a thin chain, twisting and untwisting in a way that has becoming habit over the past few months. Twisting until she can feel the tiny metal links bite into her fingers, and letting go to soothe away the hurt. Only, letting go just makes it worse.

Mt. Silver looms before her like a challenge, treacherous and unforgiving, but she knows it far too well to be daunted. That is her first mistake. All twists and turns and jutting stone, Mt. Silver is a maze, one she used to claim to know well. In truth, she'd struggled to find her way that first time and every time thereafter. Red had once said that she seemed to have a knack for getting lost. Dead ends greeted her at every turn, and every other turn seemed to dump her out by the same stupid rock, which she would kick as hard as she could, and than regret kicking as hard as she could when her toes began to throb.

That rock is before her now, or one of the hundred rocks that look exactly like that rock. Lyra gives it a kick. Her toes throb. She kicks at it again, wondering why she's even bothering. He's not going to be here. He hasn't been here any of the other times she's made the climb. He never calls. The message is clear enough: he's forgotten her, or he doesn't want to see her (that would almost be worst). But Lyra still hopes that she'll bump into him one of these times, maybe literally, turn a corner and crash right into him and fall on her ass. Apologize and smile and laugh and yell at him in the same breath for never stopping by to say hello, for leaving her alone...

That's what she's thinking about when she finds it – the fire. Just one daydream in a long line of daydreams, the sort that keep her going. It does what it's meant to, keeps her turning corner after corner and scampering over fallen rock – moving forward - but it's the fire that gives her hope.

Tucked away in a corner, it is little more than ash and remnants of logs that have long since been swallowed by flame, but Lyra's heart is in her throat. She finds herself running over and crouching beside it, her fingers tracing little patterns in the ashes that scream 'Lyra was here,' or would to anyone who knew her: flowers and hearts, an ursaring claw – just like the one she'd put on string for Red and hung on the wall of his cabin a few years back, and a lopsided pikachu with a little heart above it's right ear. For the first time in forever, the light of hope is alive in her – a tentative thing. Butterfly wings beating back doubt. With each flap, a mantra: Maybe he's back. Maybe he'll see it.

She really ought to know better by now.

word count: 550 | tag: lysandre | other: n/a

[lysandre]

sacrifices are necessary, but we do not need to like them, nor understand them

what is left, for a man who tried to destroy the world and create it anew? like ho-oh, the legendary bird -- the one who had perished in the fire, but had rose amidst the flames and ascended upon the heavens -- he'd tried his best to urge kalos down that path, the world down that path. but that is all that he did -- try. but he'd tried, which is far more than anyone else had done -- that is all he can say, and all he will say, if he is ever asked. but he doesn't think that he will be. that's alright. lysandre tells himself that it's alright. (he doesn't believe himself, but sometimes he does, and that is what keeps him going -- that, and his pokemon, and the remnants of flare that still believe in his cause.) the war, he knows, is not of his own making, but it still proves to him as to why his beautiful, beautiful world is so flawed. people, in and of themselves, are innately forever warring. forever craving violence. it is people that make it so. it is why he, after being beaten by mere children -- so young, yet so knowledgeable, au contraire -- he retreats to the mountains. eventually, he ends up at mount silver. it is the pinnacle of everything that makes a trainer, and to lysandre, a mere example of what all true trainers -- wardens of the earth, of the land, of civilization -- should strive toward. it still doesn't make the war any less present, but here, he can forget. he can see why the infamous trainer red had retreated to the mountain, all those years ago. he can't see why he would leave. lysandre had been on the mountain for only a few days, amid the winding roads and the maze of rock, when he first sees her. she's standing by the abandoned fire he'd first seen when he'd arrived, he can see, tracing lines in the ash that end in whimsical little symbols that he can't identify from the distance. he's not far, is leaning against the rock wall, but he feels as if... he shouldn't disturb her. he knows all about being alone and grieving, after all, and to him what the young woman is doing and grieving are one and the same. still, he shouldn't try and assume what will happen. even as he slowly starts to back away, he finds himself lingering. it has been a long time since he'd last been in human company other than members of team flare. even indirectly, he doesn't want to leave. he ends up staying, instead -- perhaps for far longer than he really should. but he is lysandre, and this is mount silver, and right now he is not the team flare boss or leader (or on particularly bad days, a genocidal maniac) -- and he doesn't move from where he'd leaning against the wall. lyra kyaaa it's so short gomen ;__; also feel free to go wherever with this ehuehue <3

[lyra]

There's ash on her fingers now. It transfers itself to her cheeks when she goes to wipe away the tears that she's only just now become aware of. How long have I been here? The images before her tell the time: The hearts and flowers - five minutes at most, probably less. The urasaring claw – less than that. The Pikachu, ash smeared around and through it where it's been repeatedly smoothed and redrawn – far longer. Twenty minutes maybe? Longer? Who knows.

It's still lopsided, Lyra notes, but that gives it character. Red will like that. If he sees it. No, when he sees it. He'll see it eventually. He has to! That's what she tells herself anyway, and it helps, if only a little.

There's ash on her face, ash on her knees, ash on her skirt, and she looks more than a little bit lost. She stares at her handiwork, the little images scrawled with loving care – desperate images, desperation, and lets herself believe. He'll see it. He will. She imagines the look on his face. A smile, surely, a bit lopsided, just like the Pikachu, as though it's breaking through against his better judgment. A smile just for her.

She brightens, stands, and brushes the ash of her skirt, or tries to. Instead, she ends up smearing it, but it hardly matters. It'll wash out.

It isn't until she turns around that she realizes: she isn't alone.

The first thing that Lyra notices about the man against the wall is that he's taller than her by, well, a lot – taller than him. The second thing that she notices is his hair – red and unruly, it reminds her of fire, the sort that she wishes she'd found in the makeshift fire pit. I've seen him somewhere before she thinks dimly, but she can't recall where, and she isn't even sure it matters. He isn't Red. That's what matters. He isn't Red.

The reminder of who he could have been brings fresh tears to her eyes. Sheer force of will keeps them from falling. “Sorry, I uh...” She's at a loss. “Is this your fire?” She knows that it's not. She doesn't know how she knows, but she knows, and she's really just stalling now, until she can figure out what to say.

And then she's scrubbing at her eyes again, adding another streak of ash and forcing herself to look a bit more lively, a bit less lost. “Wow, I must look like a mess, huh?” Because she knows that there's ash on her face, and her dress, and her knees, and she couldn't care less, but she also knows that she should care. She isn't alone now. It's time to knit herself back together. Time to smile, and she does just that, forces a smile and holds out an ash streaked hand. “I'm Lyra...err...you don't have to shake my hand if you don't want to, I know I'm kinda covered in this stuff.”

lysandre no worries, mine is equally short.