…EPILOGUE….

Two years later

~Kyouhei~

August twenty ninth—that was the day, though I didn't even know it at the time, that everything had happened. Two years ago on a this very day Team Plasma had been annihilated, I had almost been killed, and my brother's lover had been killed in a promising attempt to save me.

As the story goes—and I had been telling myself this story every day for two years now—everything happened for a reason. Rosa had been kidnapped for a short while after falling from a great height in the Plasma ship she tried to raid on her own. She had been fine for the most part, even though the fall made her black out for a while, and her spirit had lasted through the hell she had to pay when she woke up. Her beloved Arcanine had a broken hip bone, broken front paws, and a twisted jaw from hitting it on a railing. He had suffered much more than she intended for him to, but the extent of her misery only went as far as seeing his poor crooked face every day. Arcanine was well now, after surgeries to replace his hip and repair his paws, however his jaw had never quite set back to normal, so when you looked at him from one side he looked normal, and from the other side he looked like he was grinning a wicked grin, and he was curling his lip as if to mock you.

It was actually a quite intimidating battle scar if I would say so myself—it frightened a lot of enemies Rosa faced nowadays, giving her an advantage. Arcanine still loved to battle, and he still had an act for it even after having not battled for so long after being injured. He and Rosa went on their way after a year of taking off, and celebrated their one year-no-tragedy-anniversary by challenging the pokemon league. That was exactly one year ago on today.

Well Rosa lost to Iris, the champion after Alder retired and went to live in Johto with his grandson, Lance, a living legend in dragon taming.

Rosa's spirit was never broken though, not by this or by any other catastrophe thrown her way. She trained hard through the winter and went back the next spring for another challenge. This time she succeeded in defeating Iris (it was a close battle though), and the whole region recognized her as a champion trainer.

She got the dream come true she always wanted, however not a moment too soon because as soon as she got her title she fell in love at the poke'star studios, deciding that acting was just as exciting as training. Hyuu wasn't so sure that this part of her life would last, he said Rosa was too "down to earth" to be an actress, and that she shouldn't lead people on who wanted to see the champ on the big screen.

I wasn't sure if Hyuu was right about Rosa, but I was hoping that she wouldn't come home smelling like perfume and girls dressing rooms all the time, so I guess I agreed with him.

Speaking of Hyuu and I, we were currently living in Aspertia city together, in a rather large apartment that was a close enough to my older brother and Hyuu's little sister for both of us. Rosa liked to think she lived with us here, but in reality she was still clinging to her home just a few streets down, and she hadn't attempted to move any of her stuff over, even though we (halfheartedly) invited her to.

So much had changed in the last two years, just like the first two years that the region spent hiding from Team Plasma, and the later summer that was spent bracing the cold from them and their power in the legendary Kyurem. The biggest difference was that no one was living in fear now.

Oh and did I mention that it was actually Cheren that was the hero of Unova now? At least, that's what the media wanted to portray.

That day in the cave that Ghetsis attacked me in, Cheren had ordered his strongest pokemon, Stoutland, to attack Ghetsis. At this point N was dead, I had passed out, and my brother Touya was so far gone he couldn't even move.

Apparently Stoutland had mauled Ghetsis to death with no mercy while Cheren tried to control the very hysterical Touya, pulling him to the ground and holding him there until Kyurem realized his master was gone and fled.

My brother never actually got to see N's body one last time before it was incinerated—Cheren wouldn't allow it, however the ashes remained in my brother's house safely tucked away under his bed, or in his closet, or wherever he put it.

Touko, who suffered for so long over her own lover's death, decided that for Touya's sake she was going to step out of her comfort zone and write N's story for him. I didn't know Touko all that well until after the battle went down, but apparently she was a brilliant author, and within a year she was published with the story out in everyone's hands.

Touko shed light on N and all the wrong that had been done to him. From the brutal childhood he experienced to the day he died, Touko told it all. She sold copies world-wide to people who had heard stories about Team Plasma and all they had done, and the ironic part was that the book may or may not be made into a movie one day. This made Rosa swear up and down that she would play Touko in the movie if it ever actually happened—which made no sense to me because she could potentially play herself, but apparently it had to do with "living through" Touko, and making up for that mistake that got Tate killed. Rosa still weighed that on her shoulders, till this day. But anyways, a movie was still muddy water—Hyuu and I saw no future in that.

Aside from writing the novel about N's life, Touko also managed to help ease the pain of my brother in writing this book. After all that happened Touya actually found comfort in TALKING about N, rather than banishing him from his heart forever. I envied that about my brother—the ability to see the good in a situation that was so bad. Even I hadn't been able to mention N's name for months without tearing up.

I thought my brother was going to hate me for a long time after what N did for me… I thought Touya would blame me for N's death, but my brother showed more courage yet again by putting that factor aside and allowing me to be closer to him than ever. He still broke down, he was still mourning, but he never once blamed anyone for what happened (accept for maybe himself, though I couldn't figure out why). Touya was the strongest person that I had ever known, hands down. His heart was indestructible despite the scars that were embedded it.

The only person that I thought could ever compare to my brother was Cheren, who was really the reason behind Touya's sanity during the worst of the months. Cheren had been there, a crutch for Touya when he needed him most, and I watched what I had believed to be only a friendship turn into something much more in the last two years.

Cheren always loved my brother—long before Touya had even met N, and he timelessly set aside his emotions hoping, praying that in the end Touya would just be happy. Cheren didn't even want a little love in return for all the things he had done for my brother. He just had the integrity and the dignity to never give up on his friend—the man he loved.

Two years later now my brother was starting to accept that N wasn't coming back, and that Cheren was the one he was meant to be with. Now, this didn't mean that Touya didn't love N—he would always love N more than Cheren—but this meant that Touya was willing to move on and let his life be normal. That was a gift—a gift that only Cheren had been able to give him. With a little luck, a lot of patience, and a heart of gold that man had brought back the brother I once knew from a very, very dark place.

I wanted to thank Cheren I think… but I never found the right moment exactly, and by any means I got the impression that he knew I appreciated him anyways.

I appreciated Cheren almost—if not as much- as I appreciated my own savior.

Hyuu, who had been through hell and back again with me. Who had proven much too good for me over and over and still refused to believe that HE deserved someone like ME. Hyuu was my rock, my best friend, my lover.

And on this two year anniversary from everything that had happened, Hyuu surprised me with a gift that I realized I had been waiting on since the moment I got to Unova so long ago.

Plane tickets to Mintonga.

"Kyou." Hyuu's voice mumbled in my ear, and a kiss was planted on my neck as we walked a path I found familiar even though I was blindfolded at the moment.

He insisted that it be a surprise when I got here, so he blindfolded me all the way through the airport on the mainland, and then on the ferryboat over to Mintonga. Hyuu probably wasn't thinking that the smell of this island alone was enough to bring back all the memories of my childhood, but I kept my snarky mouth shut and let him have his moment. He was being nice anyways.

"Can I look now?" I was shaking—my hands just a little numb with anticipation. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my back, and the softest sand between my toes and… and the smell of the ocean so salty and yet so sweet.

"Couple more steps." Hyuu insisted,

"War!" I heard Kukui complain—she was blindfolded as well, being lead by Alec who only mimicked the way Hyuu murmured in my ear to her.

I shivered as I felt warm ocean water lap at my feet, rolling up the height of my foot and swallowing my ankle. If I didn't have the slightest bit of self control I would have lost it right then and there and thrown off my blindfold and ran out to the ocean that was my first love. I could damn near feel the freckles forming on the back of my neck as I waited.

"Ok. Go ahead." Hyuu stepped away from me, and my arms flew to my face, throwing the blindfold off and gazing around.

It was nothing like I remembered it.

I was shocked first, seeing the tiny inlet that I used to consider MY beach, and the sand that I used to think was so white it made me look polar opposite in comparison. I was shocked when I saw a familiar palm tree stretched out over the water, where I used to dive from and get scrapes and cuts occasionally on its chalky bark. My heart was racing, my mind whirling, and my eyes wide.

I whirled around, trying to deny that this was indeed the place I came from. My stomach flipped as I looked up the shore at the path I walked every single day of my life when I lived here. It was the same. All exactly one hundred percent the same… and yet…

It was all so small.

"Wh—Kyouhei isn't this the place?" Hyuu asked worried, and I felt tears of confusion and wonder and happiness swimming in my eyes.

I wasn't upset that this place looked different, I was simply baffled. I knew that nothing physically had changed here, and I put the pieces together that this was just me.

"I—I'm great." I blinked, rubbing my eyes as Kukui and Alec darted into the warm water and disappeared together beneath the waves. She was probably going to show him her home down there.

"Then why do you look sad?"

"I—I'm not… It's just… It all looks so small."

Hyuu grabbed me by the shoulders tightly and pulled me into a hug. "Oh Kyouhei…"

I breathed in that salty air I had been dreaming about for years now.

"You've grown." He pushed back a piece of my messy hair and looked me in the eyes. His deep cherry pink irises were aflame in the late evening—almost sunset—sun.

I nodded. "Yeah… I know…I—I don't feel like I belong here, but I don't feel bad either."

"Don't belong here?" He scoffed at me. "You're a beach babe. How could you not belong here?"

I looked out into the ocean—so wide and so brilliant and wondered what those waves even meant to me now compared to what they had meant before. At one point when I looked out at those waves I saw danger, and I saw a world that could never be as perfect as the one I was living in. Now it seemed I was a world that had so much more to offer than this tiny island did. Was this how Touya felt when he stared out at the ocean before moving to Unova in the first place? I had to imagine that this was it… a feeling of not being satisfied.

It was beautiful of course, but it wasn't the home I had come to know. No matter how much it meant to me there were bigger and better places I needed to be. I realized that now. This island was just too small for me—for the person I had become.

"The waves didn't change…" I whispered, thinking aloud as Hyuu held me against his chest in the ankle-deep water. "The sand didn't chance, or the palm trees… or anything. It's like they're stuck in time… They're forever."

Hyuu caught my chin with his thumb and his finger and tilted my face up until I was watching him, carefully, waiting for him to lean down and kiss me.

"We could be forever…" he suggested with a shy smile.

I shook my head. "No, Hyuu…" and leaned up to peck him on the lips.

"We are forever…"