Chapter 54: Truth Unfolds - II

"Am I...adopted?"

Ethan's whole body shivered as he measured the weight of those words. It took him a while, but he finally controlled his raging emotions, and these changes were noticed by Aeron, who could feel them with his Aura Powers.

Taking a deep breath to gather his courage, Ethan looked at the fifteen-year-old boy before him, his eyes glowing purple while boulders that even some Pokémon would find hard to lift were floating in the air behind him.

Oh, how much that little child he found in the cave had grown. How much he had changed, and the images of the little boy's childhood flashed in his mind until they overlapped with the fifteen-year-old in front of him. He made sure never to let the truth come out...Arceus had decided otherwise. But maybe the boy deserved to know the truth, and perhaps it was for the better.

Ethan took another deep breath and nodded. "Yes." He said. "You are...adopted."

His words were shaky, and his mind was unstable despite trying to stay calm. "Sophia and I were orphans from the same orphanage. We fell in love and knew we would spend our whole lives together. It was by sheer luck that we came across two eggs, our starters and thus, we decided to go on our journey together."

He paused to look at Aeron, who was looking at him indifferently, and his heart ached. However, for now, he decided to continue...

"We were not practically strong, but we enjoyed every day we spent together and decided to marry each other one day." A smile crept on his weak face. "She was and is still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." He was in love with her wife...a deep love transcending any description of love written in any book. "We were happy, content with what we had and achieved in our lives...except one thing." His voice shook as he once again thought about something he had not for the past fifteen years. "Due to some accidents, Sophia could never give birth to a child, which devastated us. We explored the whole of Kanto looking for a cure, but no one could help us, and then we finally gave up."

He sighed as those bad memories that were suppressed deep in his mind resurfaced.

"We accepted the reality of our situation, but it was not easy to get over it until..." Ethan looked at Aeron with a fond smile filled with fatherly love and care. "...until one day, we found a baby deep inside the Cerulean Caves. He was so...little, so cute, so...precious." He walked towards Aeron and raised both his hands towards his face. His eyes filled with tears as he explained the beginning of everything. "Can we raise this child? Is this something Arceus has given us? Would we deprive him of the love of his birth parents if we did so? We questioned ourselves."

He held Aeron's face as tears brimmed down his eyes. No father wanted to cry before their child, but Ethan could not control himself. He looked into those cold, bright eyes, and even though all he got in return was calm indifference, he returned it with the soft gaze of a proud father.

"We decided to raise you...as our own. Maybe we thought the truth would never come out, or maybe we were so lost in our fantasy of being parents that...we forgot...you were not our blood." He looked at the Psychic Waves radiating from the fifteen-year-old boy. Even a Psychic Pokémon would fail to create such a scene, yet a human, who was not even an adult, was doing so. "The truth finally came out." His hands dropped down lifelessly, and his eyes lost all colour. His knees gave in as he dropped to the ground, and tears would not stop brimming from his eyes.

"...W...h...y...?"

"...Why?..."

"Why?"

"Why couldn't I be your father?"

"Why would Arceus do this to Me? To us?"

"I raised you as a father..." He looked up with a grief-torn face into the purple orbs of the boy before him. "...so, why can't I be your father? Why?"

Ethan punched the ground as his eyes wept in grief at the reality he had ignored; his knuckles were soon covered in blood.

"Why?"

He asked Arceus again and tried to punch down with strength greater than before when purple-coloured energy wrapped around his arm and stopped him. He raised his head to look at the fifteen-year-old boy before him whose eyes, too, had tears. The boulders floating in the air dropped down, raising a dust cloud which was soon blown away by a wave of blackish-purple Aura that contained Draconic might within.

"You..." Aeron kneeled and took Ethan's face in his hands. "You don't need to be my father..." His words made the middle-aged man tremble, but the words that followed shook his eyes. "...when you ARE my father."

With the smile of a son who was looking at a great father, Aeron hugged his old man. It did not matter if he was adopted or not...Ethan was his father, and Sophia was his mother. They both had raised him with all the love and care in the world. The duo made sure Aeron never felt the lack of anything in his life and supported him through thick and thin.

The father and son stayed in each other's embrace for a long while until, finally, Ethan's emotions calmed down, and the Duskborn gave his father a soft smile.

Did it matter if he shared blood with them? To Aeron, it did not. However, he still held curiosity about who his birth parents were...why would they leave him alone?

Keeping those thoughts for later, Aeron decided to support his father first. He helped his father stand up before the older man spoke first.

"So uncool, right?" Ethan said with an embarrassed smile while wiping away some tears he had in his eyes.

"No one will know...if you pay the right price to keep my mouth shut." Aeron chuckled at the face his father made. However, he would never let this moment be known to those not here. Then, he asked something of importance. "Should we keep it a secret from mother?"

"No." Ethan shook his head. "Either will tell her now, or when she finds out we kept a secret from her..."

Both of them shivered at the thought of an angry Sophia, but they also knew it was for the better. All hell was about to get lost in their house once they told her about Aeron finding out the truth, but soon this 'secret' was gotten rid of from their family, the happier they will be in future.

"Don't worry." Aeron readily agreed before they decided it was time to return, or the women in the house would start getting worried. They quickly grabbed Sophia's requested vegetables and walked back towards the house.

"Ready?" Ethan asked as they entered the house, but Aeron shook his head.

"Let's do it after dinner."

So it happened. Sophia discovered the truth, and just as Aeron expected, his mother was devastated. And how could she not be? Her whole life was turned upside down, and she cried while blaming herself for everything. She blamed herself for raising Aeron surrounded by a big lie.

It took hours of convincing from Aeron and Ethan before she finally calmed down. But even then, she asked Aeron to hold her hand, or she feared he would leave her because she was not his birth mother.

Despite his Psychic Powers, a teardrop appeared in the corner of Aeron's eyes as he saw the fear in his mother's eyes. She was afraid...to lose him forever. In the end, Aeron sat by his mother's side, holding her hand, caressing her head, assuring her that he wouldn't leave her and would always be her son until Sophia finally fell asleep.

"She will get better," Aeron said to Ethan, who was standing right behind him. "Her Psychic Waves have calmed down, and I used my Aura to help her calm down."

"Go." Ethan patted his shoulder. "Nessa and Misty are waiting for you as well."

The Duskborn sighed as he thought about the girls. He did not want to do this in front of them, but Ethan said that it was better like this...they are family, the older man said.

"Also." Before Aeron could leave, Ethan took two things out of his pocket. "These were there when we found you."

The Duskborn grabbed a silver ring with a purple gem that had a draconic slit in it and a small...Pokeball?

"I thought it was a Pokeball, but it never seemed to work," Ethan told him about different methods he tried. "And now that you are...Ariadosman, maybe you can use this weird-looking Pokeball?"

"It's Psychic and Aura," The black-haired boy clicked his tongue at his dad's bad joke. "And I am not Ariadosman."

"That's exactly what an Ariadosman would say to hide his identity."

Shaking his head, Aeron walked out of his parent's bedroom and looked at the two girls waiting for him. Their eyes were red; they had cried as well.

"How about a walk?" He wanted some fresh air...for some reason, he was suffocated.

He walked away without saying a word, and they followed him. Silently, they kept walking side by side until Aeron stopped and sat down before looking at the full moon. The girls followed after him.

"I am sad." He said to the girls, but his voice was calm. "I want to cry." There were no tears in his eyes. "I want answers." He had none.

Nessa and Misty wordlessly locked their fingers with Aeron's. They leaned closer to him and placed their heads on his shoulders.

"Can we stay like this for a bit?"

"As long as you want."