Pokémon Obsidian | An Orre Fanfiction

Chapter 34: Hope

There were no Cipher members around Camden's house, because they thought Wilmot was still there, but Ardos was watching at the moment he jogged out. There was nothing unusual about it. He went running, in the same baggy tracksuit and muddy trainers, every day.

He was a little early, but that didn't make Ardos suspicious. If he'd known he was being fooled by another insufferable Mesquite, he might have considered attempting to install heart rate monitors on his enemies, because it was impossible to tell that behind Camden's serene smile, his heart was hammering so fast he felt dizzy. Just like Alfie.

Camden wanted to glance back at Lyric. For all he knew, that would be the last time he saw her. It was too risky. He couldn't seem jumpy.

I asked them to investigate this. I have to find Reira. Even if I die trying.

Salamence took off from behind a bush. Once they were a speck in the grey sky, they were temporarily safe. Camden let his composed mask drop. He was startled by how suddenly tears sprang to his eyes, because he truly worried he would not make it home. Crobat's Poké Ball was in his pocket. He had Lyric's Lopunny and the Key Stone that allowed it to Mega Evolve, too, but if someone came at him with Shadow Pokémon, he knew he couldn't win.

Maybe Ardos wasn't wrong that he wanted to die a hero. Maybe that was self-serving, to make himself feel better, but he also felt an inexplicable obligation to act. That could have been fuelled by his morals, or perhaps a desire to cling to the torch that Jude Mesquite inadvertently passed to Alfie to Michael to Jovi to Zane, not because he ever expected his descendants to act; but because they inherited his hope, whether they knew it or not.

Camden did think of his great-great grandfather. He thought of him knowing his days were numbered as Ardos stalked him; that one day he would never return home from his fieldwork and, indeed, he didn't. He defeated Ardos in battle, only to be killed by the bomb planted in his car as he drove away.

He thought of his grandma, Laila's namesake, who Trip spoke so highly of. His kids felt like they knew her, because her bottomless love and hope was alive and well in her son. Camden thought of her choosing death at the hands of her own mother over joining Cipher. He thought again of Lyric, of her refusing to leave his side not because she had no choice, but because she too was full of hope. He thought of his hero, Alfie, who was hardly a hero to anyone else after he became a delusional Cipher Admin; but of how, to Camden, he was a hero precisely because he was so flawed.

Alfie was no shining example of hope like Laila or Lyric or Jude. Yet Chalcedony agreed with Camden that he was the most inspiring of all, because he could have tumbled to the darkest depths of evil as he drowned in the guilt of what he did, of lamenting the years he wasted; but he chose what Ardos could not. He chose to forgive himself. Leon knew it, too. That was why he forgave him, why they even became friends, after Alfie tried to kill him.

Then Camden thought of himself. He thought of the naive, impressionable 17 year-old boy, blinded by flashes that bounced off his armfuls of golden awards for his performance as Leon in Cipher Admin Alfie.

Everyone warned him. Alfie himself reminded him that night. Chalcedony warned him. He didn't question that glitter so bright was only fool's gold. He knew it was. It didn't make it any less overwhelming in its delirious glory as he gazed up at his own face on billboards, when eventually he no longer took photos with his great-grandpa's Walk of Fame star but his own.

Equally blinding was the artificial light that rudely woke him when he should have been dead. The greatest challenges weren't accepting that Lyric forgave him, or overcoming the temptation of death. Even accepting that all that appeared as priceless gold was indeed fool's gold was only a bump in the long road to forgiving himself.