(Weeks Later)
The Growlithe pen needed a second latch, and Dana had already decided that before anyone asked her opinion. She marked it on the clipboard without looking up, initialed the change order, and handed it back to the junior caretaker still waiting for permission she'd stopped needing to give out loud weeks ago.
The Absol paced the fence line beside her, unbothered, the notch in its ear catching the early light.
"Anything else?" Dana asked.
The caretaker shook his head and jogged off toward the supply shed.
She checked the feeding log against the sun, already past due for the morning rounds, and moved on without breaking stride.
Orion got back to Pokemon Home a few hours later, the walk from the branch's transport point to the shop's front door longer than it used to feel. He let himself into the lobby and didn't reach for the tablet on the counter, didn't check the messages waiting on it, just stood there for a second with his coat still on.
Nothing was on fire. Nobody needed him yet.
He sat down in the nearest chair and let his shoulders drop for what felt like the first time in a long while.
Latias found him like that, one leg draped over the armrest, staring at nothing in particular.
"You look like a man who forgot he's allowed to sit still," she said.
"I'm remembering now."
She dropped into the chair across from him, human illusion settling as easily as it always did, and didn't ask him about the branch, didn't ask about paperwork or projections or anything that would have made this a work conversation instead of just two people in a room. They talked about nothing important. The Oran harvest. A caretaker who kept losing arguments with a stubborn Bidoof. Orion laughed at something that wasn't even that funny, and it felt good anyway.
Dana walked in partway through, still in her field jacket, the Absol trailing a step behind her the way it always did. She hovered near the doorway instead of sitting, arms crossed loosely, watching the room before deciding it was safe to be part of it.
"You're allowed to sit down," Latias said. "This isn't an inspection."
Dana's mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
"Old habit."
She sat anyway, on the edge of the couch, the Absol curling against her ankle. Something in her posture eased a little once she did, small enough that Orion almost missed it. Almost.
A crash sounded from the back hallway, followed by the unmistakable scrabble of small feet on tile.
Pikachu shot into the lobby with a half-eaten Poffin clamped in his mouth, ears flat, cheeks sparking with the kind of static that meant he'd been running from something. Behind him, a very unimpressed Snubbull skidded around the corner and stopped dead, glaring at the empty spot where the rest of the Poffin used to be.
Orion put his face in his hands.
"He's been doing this all week," Latias said. "The Snubbull makes them, Pikachu steals one, everyone pretends to be surprised."
Pikachu climbed onto the arm of Orion's chair, chewing with the confidence of someone who had never once faced consequences in his life.
Valeria came in not long after, quieter than usual, a stack of notes tucked under one arm that she set down without looking at. She dropped into the space beside Dana instead of pulling up her own chair, folding herself smaller than the room needed her to be.
"Long day?" Orion asked.
"Long few weeks."
She didn't say more than that, and nobody pushed. Latias reached over and refilled a mug that didn't need refilling, just to have something to hand her, and Valeria took it without comment, the small gesture doing more than a question would have.
By the time the food came out, the whole group had drifted into one loose cluster around the low table, plates passed hand to hand, nobody keeping track of whose was whose. The conversation stayed easy and unhurried, the kind that didn't need a topic to keep going. Pikachu had migrated to Dana's lap at some point, and she let him stay there, one hand resting absently on his back while she ate with the other.
"Reminder," Marcus said, poking his head in long enough to drop a folder on the table, "opening's on the fifteenth. Public tours start that morning."
"That soon?" Dana asked.
"That soon."
He was gone again before anyone could ask him to stay, the door swinging shut behind him. Nobody reacted like it was news that mattered. It sat there on the table with the rest of the folders, one more date on a calendar full of them.
Dana turned the Poffin crumbs over on her plate, thinking out loud more than asking anyone directly.
"Whose idea was the sanctuary wing originally? I keep hearing his name and nobody actually tells me anything about him."
The table went quiet in a way that wasn't uncomfortable exactly, just honest.
Latias looked at Orion. Orion looked at Valeria. Valeria looked at her plate.
"That's a longer conversation," Orion said.
"That's not an answer."
"No," he admitted. "It isn't."
Nobody filled the silence after that. It wasn't the kind of gap anyone could close with a quick summary, because none of them actually had one. Dana let it go, not out of disinterest, just the read of someone who knew when a door wasn't opening tonight.
The evening wound down slow, plates emptying, conversation thinning into comfortable quiet. Latias gathered the last of the mugs. Valeria fell asleep sitting upright, notes still untouched beside her. Dana carried Pikachu back to his usual spot on the windowsill without being asked, the Absol already curled beneath it.
On the shelf above them, tucked between a row of old field guides, the berry from Latveria sat exactly where it had been left weeks ago, still caught in its slow shimmer of preserved light, still untouched.
Nobody looked at it.
Celebi drifted in sometime after the lamps dimmed, settling near the windowsill without a sound, wings folded close. She didn't do anything. She didn't need to.
Orion sat there a while longer, watching the room breathe in a way it hadn't in weeks, and let himself believe, just for tonight, that nothing else needed solving before morning.
***
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