#mfw i found out were getting actual lore

[ghost-inthe-hall]

[sage-nebula]

A L A N • S Y C A M O R E even though you don't have a last name for him because quite honestly the more headcanons the better

mfw you picked up on the hint I was dropping:

Sycamore should be his last name, anyway, if Augustine would just officially adopt the boy already. Plus, “Alan Sycamore” just rolls so perfectly off the tongue, don’t you think? ;)

A —What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?

He was home-schooled by Professor Sycamore, of course, and to be honest Alan was always pretty good at whatever Augustine threw at him (as in, he at least had “good” marks, and there was nothing he seriously struggled with). If he had attended a regular school, he is no doubt one of those that would have been chucked straight into whatever that school’s gifted program was. As it stood, he was home-schooled, so he had none of that pressure, but all of the encouragement and nurturing necessary to learn at his own pace, study what was most interesting to him, ask whatever questions he needed, and never be made to feel stupid if he did need to ask a question or needed help with something. ♥

That said, to actually answer the question: In terms of traditional academics, mathematics was definitely one of Alan’s strong suits, particularly in regards to geometry. As proven in canon (“Aim your Flamethrower at 53 degrees!”), the boy can pick out an exact angle in an instant. He’s good at sciences, too; biological science—and in particular zoology, given where he grew up—is his strongest suit, but he has also studied various other sciences (e.g. earth sciences such as geology and meteorology, physics, chemistry, et cetera) because he finds them interesting, particularly in the ways they can be applied to training, caring for pokémon, and mega evolution research. History, too, is interesting to him (especially history that involves pokémon—he loves reading about different legendary pokémon, the lore surrounding them, and especially finding evidence that it’s true), and he enjoys reading in his spare time. So, again, he really has a good spread across all subjects, even if math and science are his strongest suits, heh.

But that said, that’s traditional academics. In addition to studying zoology for his work at the lab growing up (and I say “studying,” but let’s be honest: So much of it was stuff he simply learned by following Augustine around as his assistant), Alan also studied pokémon and battling techniques in his spare time even as a kid. Part of this is because Augustine’s father (Alan’s grandfather, lbr) had it in his head from pretty much the moment he met Alan that Alan was going to be a Champion someday. Augustine disapproved of this (only because he didn’t want Alan to be pressured into anything, especially when he was as young as five), but Augustine’s father persisted regardless, calling Alan “Champ-in-Making” as an affectionate nickname and getting him books that contained all sorts of knowledge about pokémon, their strengths and weaknesses, known abilities and moves, et cetera. Alan had quite a few of these encyclopedic books growing up (in-print Pokédexes is how they were often marketed), and he absorbed so much information from them without even realizing he was doing it (because he never really planned on being a trainer, officially—he just liked to read the books because he found the information interesting and, when he was little, really liked to look at all the different pictures of pokémon as he read about them) that by the time he did turn ten and get his License he could already give actually good commentary on battles he watched on television and the like. Of course, real world experience is something that can’t be replaced with books, but Alan picked up on the strategies he read about (and, at times, even critiqued them, getting information from different sources and questioning it just like Augustine taught him) to the point where, if learning to be a trainer had been a subject he was formally taught, it absolutely would have been one of his best.

(And yes, his grandpa was ecstatic when Alan won the League. “That’s our boy!” he said. “I always told you all, didn’t I? I told you he would be a Champ someday! I told you!!”

“Yes, dear, we know,” Alan’s grandma said, but she was smiling.)

L — What is their favourite board game?

Gomokunarabe (often times shortened to simply Go)! Augustine taught this game to Alan pretty early on, both because it’s one of Augustine’s favorites and (after he realized how bright Alan is) he figured Alan would enjoy playing it as well. He was right; Augustine and Alan play Go quite frequently, both before Alan leaves on his journey and after he returns. It’s relaxing and fun and Alan pretty much never says “no” to playing it.

A — What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?

Answered!

N — What do they usually eat for breakfast?

Something light. Alan has never been a big breakfast eater (just getting him to want to eat breakfast at all was something of a struggle when Augustine first took him in), because he’s pretty much never hungry in the mornings, and on some mornings even feels a bit nauseous. So his breakfast is always something nice and light, like a croissant (especially a chocolate croissant, which is really his preferred breakfast) and, of course, coffee. Always coffee. Once Augustine allowed him to start drinking it at age ten, he never looked back.

S — How stealthy are they?

Pretty stealthy!

When he was very little, and still living in Isolé Village, Alan became very, very good at making himself as quiet and small as possible. It was very, very easy for him to make the adults angry; he never meant to, he tried to be good for a variety of reasons (more on that in a second), but somehow he always ended up messing something up and making them mad regardless. For this reason, Alan did his best to stay out of the way and stay quiet. He didn’t consciously think, “I need to be stealthy,” and certainly didn’t think, “I need to sneak around,” because if he was accused of being sneaky he would have recognized that the adults were mad about that, and so he would have thought that he was being bad again and he needed to stop. But when you’re in an environment where everything you do is wrong, it seems like, and that you’re likely to get yelled at or punished if you’re being noisy or in the way, you subconsciously learn how to move so that you’re as inconspicuous as possible. Of course, he was still noticed sometimes, but Alan became rather good at staying quiet and slipping by. It’s no doubt how he managed to slip off to the mountains undetected in time for Genesis to take place. (Well, that, and the adults were pretty neglectful of him, but still.)

Once Augustine took him in, he didn’t really have a reason to act like this anymore (aside from one time he did slip off without permission, but … well, there will be a fic for that in due time), but some of the habits stuck regardless (i.e. he still steps lightly, just because that’s how he’s always been). But then he left on his journey, and then he was pulled into Lysandre’s service, and it wasn’t wholly unlike when he grew up in Isolé Village. Lysandre didn’t blow up at him for things—that was never Lysandre’s way of expressing anger—and he didn’t explicitly tell him that he needed to be quiet. But Alan had it ingrained in him in early childhood that he needed to pick up on subtle signs in a person’s behavior, little cues that they weren’t happy with things, and so he noticed when Lysandre was aggravated by Alan clicking his pens. He learned pretty quickly that Lysandre generally didn’t want him to say anything unless he was spoken to first. And though there were times when he pushed for information or otherwise talked back (not in a snarky way, even, but just in general) when he was told something, that usually ended in punishment (i.e. Lysandre using his pyroar to brutalize Lizardon in a “battle”). So he fell back into old habits and learned how to move quickly and quietly to wherever he needed to be. It pretty much stuck after that.

(Of course, upon returning to the lab, Augustine notices these things—notices how Alan hastily stops himself from clicking pens if he catches himself doing it, notices how he has to prod Alan to get his opinion or questions now, since Alan won’t speak up as freely. He notices, and it upsets him, but he doesn’t want to push Alan and so he usually doesn’t say anything about it.)

Y —What is one question they’ve always wanted an answer to?

Haha, oh boy. This one comes with some baggage.

If I was going to sum it up in one question, that question would be, “What is wrong with me?” But the thing is, something different is meant by that depending on the different areas of his life that we’re examining, even though it all comes around to the same thing.

When he was very little (read: pre-unofficial adoption, five and younger), he wondered this in the sense of, “Why don’t I have parents?” and “Why doesn’t anyone like me?” 

Alan was abandoned as an infant in the woods; he was found by the florist of Isolé Village and brought in, raised as an orphan who was passed from home to home. When he was very little, it took him some time to understand that this wasn’t normal; it took him a bit to catch on that he was the only child passed around like this, that all of the other children had parents who loved and took care of them year-round. He didn’t have that. He didn’t have parents. And he didn’t understand why this was; he hoped that he’d make his way back to his parents eventually, but it never happened. He never found his parents, they never found him. As far as he knew, they were just gone, or maybe never even existed (Maurice called him “changeling” sometimes, and so did a couple of the other villagers, and he didn’t know what that meant but thought that it was maybe why he didn’t have parents). And it went a bit deeper than that, too; he didn’t have parents, and he didn’t know why that was, and he didn’t know why his parents wouldn’t come get him (and thought that maybe he had done something wrong), but he also didn’t understand why no one liked him. When he was small, he would see that the other kids would be picked up and carried around, that they would be hugged, that they were … you know, loved by their parents. And Alan, being a small child pretty starved of this attention, was quite envious of this. He would try to reach out to some of the adults, sometimes, but even if it was just to tug on their shirt he’d find his hands swatted away, would be told to “go play” or “go sit down,” and he didn’t really understand why that was. So he tried to be good. He thought, okay, everyone’s always mad at me because I’m bad, but maybe if I’m very, very good they’ll like me, and they’ll be my parents. He always tried to be on his very, very best behavior regardless of who he was staying with, in hopes that they would like him enough to decide to keep him. It never worked, though he always understood when they were angry, and knew that it was because he had been bad, obviously, and he’d always get very upset with himself for this, because he messed up again and so no doubt they’d want to get rid of him again, why couldn’t he just be good?, and so that often led to him wondering “what is wrong with me” in the sense of “why didn’t my parents want me / why don’t they come back for me” and “why does no one here like me / why can’t I make them like me.”

Then Augustine took him in, and honestly, those next seven years were the happiest years Alan ever could have had. Literally, Augustine gave him everything he ever wanted … but it wasn’t official.

See, here’s the deal:

Augustine was pretty much the ideal father in Alan’s eyes. Literally, everything he ever wanted. But, that first night that Alan came home, Alan asked (in a really tentative, halting, roundabout way, because he was scared of asking and messing things up somehow) what he should call Augustine. This was Alan’s way of asking if Augustine was going to be his dad now. And Augustine (for reasons that make sense from his perspective, but that five-year-old Alan had no way of knowing or understanding), said, “Just Professor is fine.” To Alan, this was a pretty solid answer that, no, Augustine didn’t see Alan as his son. Alan was his assistant, and Alan was someone he was going to be nice to, and honestly, that was more than Alan could ever ask for, considering. But he didn’t want to be Alan’s dad. And that was fine! That was … I mean, it hurt, but again, he had been more kind in two days than anyone in Isolé Village had been for the past five years, so Alan was not about to complain.

More to the point, Alan thought, okay. For the past five years (or whenever he first realized things and was able to act on them) he tried really, really hard to get the villagers to like him enough to adopt him, and that didn’t work. Everything he did was wrong. But somehow he had managed to get Augustine to like him, right? Augustine seemed to like him. Augustine brought him home. So in Alan’s mind, the most logical course of action to take next was to apply the same logic: If he was really, really good, then maybe he could be good enough for Augustine to want to adopt him for real. He could graduate from “assistant” to “son” if he was on his best behavior and proved he was good enough. The perfect plan!

So in that sense, the question “what’s wrong with me” (or, perhaps better phrased, “why aren’t I good enough”) was sort of in the back of his mind even then. It sort of died down to a very low hum over time, something he only thought about whenever the fact that Augustine hadn’t adopted him was brought up (such as when someone asked, “Oh, is he your son?” and Augustine laughed and said, “No, no,” because he knew the person was asking if Alan was biologically his son, and meant that, no, Alan was not his biological son, but Alan took it the wrong way and always felt his mood / self-esteem drop because, god, he wants that more than anything, why can’t that be the case?). It was still something he wondered, as he laid awake some nights. He wondered what he could do to be good enough. But, because he was afraid of pressuring or pushing or being a nuisance to Augustine, he never asked. If he had, well … the official adoption would have happened sooner.

THEN (god this is a long answer, I’m sorry lmao) we move on to, well … canon, and everything that goes wrong in canon, and god if that doesn’t drag up a lot of this, because Alan has a guilt / shame complex the size of Prism Tower and thinks that everything awful that happened is his fault. Whether you’re talking about Hari-san’s coma (not his fault) or everything that happened in the Flare crisis (absolutely not his fault, but pointing out that Lysandre manipulated and used him doesn’t matter because, “Even if I didn’t know of the Director’s true goal, I still assisted him toward it”), he blames himself for it and thinks that it’s a direct result of him being a horrible person who made (at least in terms of the Flare crisis) “perhaps irredeemable” mistakes. In Isolé Village, everyone was always angry with him; they called him a little absol, bringing disaster everywhere he goes. And he knows that’s not true about absol, but this all makes him think that maybe it really is true about him. Maybe they were right all along. The Professor was always kind to him, always treated him with love and respect and care, and what did Alan do? Well, he was trying to protect the Professor, but then he ended up assisting toward a mass genocide. And yeah, it was an accident, but wasn’t it always an accident back in the village, too? He never meant to screw things up, but he always did. Maybe he’s the screw-up. Maybe there really is something intrinsically wrong with him, something really irredeemable about him, that no matter what he does or what he tries, someone gets hurt or something gets destroyed, because he really is just as bad as they always said. How does that song go? Ah, yes—

“I always thought I might be bad;now I’m sure that it’s true.‘Cause I think you’re so good,and I’m nothing like you.”

So by this point, the “what is wrong with me” question directly correlates not just to the fact that no one likes him, but that he thinks that he’s constantly leaving destruction in his wake, constantly hurting so many people, and he doesn’t know how to stop it because he never means to do it. “What is wrong with me,” “why am I like this” — at this point, these questions are directly related to his pretty much non-existent self-esteem, and, well, if Augustine doesn’t want to adopt him now … Alan doesn’t blame him. Not in the least bit. 

So, um, yeah. Orphan issues have always been pretty big with him, but they’ve evolved over time. Someone really needs to help him build that self-esteem back up, though. Lysandre pretty much completely destroyed it.

C — Can they swim well?

Well enough. He’s a decent swimmer; he’s not going to join a swim team any time soon, and swimming is really not his favorite activity, but he won’t drown if he needs to swim across a body of water. (He only swims free, though. He doesn’t know any other strokes.)

A — What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?

Answered!

M —What is their favourite dessert?

Dessert in general is pretty much Alan’s favorite meal, and it’s hard for him to pick a favorite. That said, he loves ice cream, and is especially delighted if ice cream is paired with warm cake (or a warm brownie—either-or). He loves chocolate, and especially dark chocolate (not white chocolate so much, though), and he likes coffee flavored things, too. (Like father, like son. ;D) Hazelnut chocolate is also really good, in his book. So yeah, something along those lines will definitely put stars in his eyes, hahaha.

O —What would it take to break them, inside and out?

Kill Lizardon, and especially do so in a way that makes him believe that Lizardon’s death is his fault. 

See, here’s the thing: If any of Alan’s loved ones died, he would of course be stricken with grief. His grief would be palpable; he doesn’t cry easily, but in this case he would probably be crying intermittently for a long while. He would eat less, sleep less (before sleeping a ridiculous amount), the works. In my immortality AU, he was even driven to near suicide after both Augustine and Manon died, though it should be noted that it was not just because they died, but also because he was immortal and that thought, the thought that he was going to have to live forever while everyone around him died, drove him to the point where he just wanted to end it. 

But you’ll remember (perhaps) that he didn’t follow through with suicide in that fic, and he didn’t follow through for one reason, and one reason only:

Lizardon.

Alan will be wracked with grief if his (human) loved ones die, but although it will take him time, he can heal, pick up, and move on. He can and will keep fighting. If he loses his other pokémon, again, that will hurt terribly, but he can keep fighting. Even if Gabby died, he could keep fighting. But if Lizardon died? He can recover from losing his father, he can recover from losing his step- / adopted siblings, he can recover from losing his qp partners if he has any. But Lizardon is different. Lizardon is in a different category altogether. Lizardon is his platonic soulmate. If Lizardon was killed, and especially if Alan was made to believe it was his fault (and honestly, given his guilt complex, that’s not hard to do, particularly if it was during battle), it would break him. It would completely and utterly break him. It’s not only that he couldn’t keep fighting after that (though in all honesty, if there is anything that could extinguish the fire within him, it would be Lizardon’s death), but it’s that he wouldn’t want to. If there is one thing that could honestly drive him to the point where he just didn’t want to live anymore, where he honestly wanted to die, that one thing would be Lizardon’s death (again, especially if Alan felt responsible). To sum it up with an excerpt from a WIP I’ve had in my drafts for about fifty years:

“You have to!” Manon cried, and Hari-san gave her ankle a consoling patas she thumped her fists against her thighs. “You have to let go of this—youhave to! You have to, because if you don’t they’ll never let you go—” 

“Like I’m missing much—”

“—and they’ll kill you! They’ll kill you, Alan, they’re planning tokill you! Lysandre said they’ll have to kill you if you don’t stop trying tofight them, and is that what you want? Do you want to di—?!”

“Yes.”

Although, that does bring up one small caveat.

If Lizardon is killed, and especially if Alan feels responsible, that will break him inside and out. But, if Lizardon is killed and Alan feels that someone else is also responsible, then he’ll want them dead first. In the fic that this excerpt is from, Lysandre wins and most of the people and pokémon in Kalos are killed. Relevant to this answer, Lizardon is killed specifically because Lysandre feels threatened by him (more specifically still, he knew from the start that Alan was not going to be okay with the fact that Augustine died as well, and figured that removing Alan’s teeth by killing his charizard was the best way to deal with that litlte problem … until Alan flipped out and tried to fight him anyway). Alan is devastated, and broken, and it shows. As he tells Manon pretty bluntly, yes, he wants to die. But before he does, he wants Lysandre’s blood coating his hands as Lysandre’s body cools on the ground. He wants Lysandre dead, and he’s willing to fight just long enough to make that happen if given the opportunity (which, handcuffed to a wall in a prison cell, he doesn’t really have the opportunity, but nonetheless). So in a case where Lizardon dies not only because of him, but also because of someone else, it’s more murder-suicide Alan would be after. Or even if he didn’t actively commit suicide himself, he’d call the police and report the murder after. Maybe he would even confess to a few crimes he didn’t commit to increase his chances of execution. Whatever, he doesn’t care. He literally doesn’t care anymore. Lizardon is dead, he died, he was killed, and it’s Alan’s fault even if it was also someone else���s, and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care. Even if he’s not executed, whatever, he just won’t eat. (And he doesn’t, in the fic that excerpt is from, except Team Flare grunts literally force food down his throat on Lysandre’s orders to stop him from starving himself.) Basically, losing Lizardon—having Lizardon killed—would break him to the point where he literally would stop caring about being alive, wouldn’t even want to be alive anymore, and the only thing to get any fight out of him at all would be if he came face-to-face with Lizardon’s killer (provided someone else was directly responsible for his death). At that point, yeah, his hands are going for their throat, but otherwise? He just doesn’t care anymore.

And honestly? It’s not surprising, because just making Lizardon suffer is enough to hurt Alan deeply, especially (once again) if he feels he’s responsible for Lizardon’s suffering. I can’t say which fic it is because of #spoilers, but that’s going to be a pretty big point in one of the fics I’m currently writing. Even making Lizardon suffer hurts him deeply, so it’s honestly no wonder that he spent all of .01 seconds thinking before threw himself out of the plane in TSME 3, shouting Lizardon’s name about three times in the span of sprinting across the ice and throwing the ice chunks off Lizardon’s back. It’s no surprise that having Lizardon killed would break him. Alan can recover from most things, but this? However much Lysandre said, “You can get a new charizard” in that fic I took the excerpt from, there’s no recovering from this. He’s not bouncing back from losing Lizardon, just like Lizardon would not bounce back from losing him. If either one of them was killed before the other, they honestly would be irreparably broken. (Hence why, in the AU where Alan is killed from the Flare arc, Lizardon refuses to move from in front of his grave. He barely eats the food that’s brought to him. He waits there even though he understands what happened because … because that’s his boy, he can’t just leave, he can’t … !)

R — What are their hands like?

He has long fingers, and I actually headcanon that he’d be very good at piano if he ever learned. He’s certainly a very fast typist. His nails are usually short because he doesn’t want to risk accidentally scratching Lizardon too hard when giving him pats or scritches (of course, Lizardon is a dragon with tough scales, but nonetheless), and also because he has a bad habit of squeezing his hands into fists when upset, and longer nails can wreck his palms if he’s not careful. (Thankfully, gloves do help with that.) He does have a couple scars on his hands here or there, either because his nails did cut into his palms a couple times, or because various pokémon have scratched or bitten him over the years. (Some of them are absolutely from Gabby when he first wrangled her in Lumiose and brought her back to the lab—matching puncture scars on the back and palm of his right hand.) His palms tend to be free from callouses due to his gloves, but he definitely has some writing callouses on his fingers from pens, and the pads of his fingers tend to be somewhat tough as well since the gloves don’t protect those.

E — How are they with children?

Well, we’ve seen that in canon, haven’t we? ;) Alan is actually pretty good with children, normally (having learned from the best ♥). He’s patient, he listens to them, he gives good instruction and knows, generally, what to do to look after them. He doesn’t let them walk all over him (or at least he tries to set boundaries, whether or not they’re respected), but he is reasonable with the boundaries that he does set. At the very least, Manon and Bonnie both adore him, so he has to be doing something right, doesn’t he? (Even if Manon doesn’t always appreciate his teasing, and oh, does he tease her. He does it in the most serious way, too, so that she can’t always tell if he’s teasing or if he’s serious, and it drives her nuts … but she loves him anyway. He’s a great big brother, and she wouldn’t trade him for the world.)