Central Park's edges had gone quiet in the way mornings do after a long day, the trampled grass already recovering, dew still clinging where the crowds hadn't reached yet. Orion moved through the rows of tents checking on the Pokémon that had stayed overnight, and every one of them met him steadier than they had the day before. A Pidgey preened instead of tucking its head away. A Shinx stretched, unbothered, static gone from its fur.
Marcus was already up, Lillipup trotting a slow circuit around his ankles while he refilled a water dish. Orion caught his eye, and Marcus gave him a short nod, looser than yesterday, some weight gone out of his shoulders.
"Slept okay?" Orion asked.
"Better than I expected." Marcus set the dish down. Lillipup buried its face in it immediately.
Orion left him to it and crossed toward the vendor row, where Evelyn was already restocking her berry table and Jax had his sleeves rolled up, setting out chairs for the demonstration area. Neither of them looked up. They didn't need to. Two days in, they'd found their rhythm.
The Shinx boy showed up an hour later, the same berry pinched between two fingers, his Shinx sitting the moment he asked. This time the berry went down clean, no sneeze, no spray of juice across his shoes. He grinned wide enough to show a missing tooth, and the small crowd that had gathered clapped like he'd won something.
Bruce Wayne walked the grounds in a ball cap pulled low and a jacket two sizes plainer than anything with his name on it, the kind of outfit built to be forgotten the second someone looked away. No driver trailing him. No one falling into step a few feet back the way people always did around Bruce Wayne. He'd learned a long time ago that the face on magazine covers couldn't walk through a crowd without stopping it, so he'd left that face at home and brought this one instead, just another man in line for a lemonade.
It worked, mostly. A few heads turned, caught something familiar in his jaw, and turned away again, deciding they'd imagined it.
He got about halfway down the vendor row before a girl no older than six planted herself directly in his path and asked if he wanted to pet her Eevee. He crouched down to her level without hesitation, the disguise doing nothing to soften the care in it, and something in his face, usually locked tight behind boardrooms and camera flashes, came loose while the Eevee sniffed his hand and decided he was allowed to scratch behind its ear.
"What's its name?" he asked.
"Buttons," the girl said, like it was obvious.
"Good name." Bruce scratched behind Buttons's ear again, and for a moment he wasn't Bruce Wayne at all, just a man crouched in the grass, unrecognized and glad of it.
Tony Stark showed up not long after with Sparkplug riding his shoulder, the Larvesta's fur bristling and glowing faintly whenever Tony gestured too big, which was often. Pepper trailed a step behind, arms crossed, watching him show the Pokémon off to anyone who made eye contact for longer than a second.
"He does this now," Pepper said, to no one and everyone. "Full conversations. With the bug."
"He's not a bug, he's fire-type," Tony said, without turning around. "Show her the thing, buddy."
Sparkplug's antennae lit up in a small, proud flare. A kid nearby gasped.
Further down, past the fountain, Doreen sat cross-legged in the grass with Kamala, Valeria, and Franklin, none of them in uniform, none of them scanning the crowd for threats. Doreen had a Squirrel Girl balloon animal, badly made, that Kamala kept trying to steal from her. Valeria had her gauntlet off for once, sitting in her lap instead of on her arm. Franklin lay flat on his back, watching clouds, Ralts curled against his side.
"Feels weird," Franklin said, to the sky. "Just sitting here."
"Enjoy it," Valeria said. "Last time we were all together, we were hiking up a mountain to fight Hydra."
"This is better," Kamala said, finally getting the balloon animal.
The Titans arrived a little past noon, part of the hero-exchange tradition Orion had built into the sponsor agreements without much fanfare, and their unfamiliarity with Pokémon showed immediately. Beast Boy tried to talk to a Bidoof like it might talk back in full sentences. Starfire hovered a few feet off the ground, delighted, while a cluster of Pidgey circled her like she was another bird. Raven kept a respectful distance from everything until a Togepi latched onto her cloak and refused to let go, at which point she stood very still and let it happen.
The afternoon wore on soft and unhurried. Orion found himself near the main stage again, cane planted in the grass, watching all of it settle into something that didn't need managing anymore. Latias appeared beside him, her human disguise steady in the afternoon light, and for a while neither of them said anything.
She was watching Bruce laugh at something the girl with the Eevee said. She was watching Tony argue with his own Pokémon. She was watching the Titans and the veterans and the festival families all moving through the same grass, none of them out of place.
"I didn't think this would work," Latias said finally.
Orion looked over at her.
"Not like this," she said. "I thought we'd get pieces of it. A few trainers who understood. A few who didn't. But this—" She gestured, small, at the whole spread of it. "This is what you kept describing. And I didn't believe it until right now."
"You believed it enough to help build it."
"I believed in you." Latias's eyes stayed on the grounds, not on him. "I wasn't sure the world would meet you halfway."
Orion didn't say anything to that. He let it sit, the way it deserved to.
"It did, though," Latias said, quieter. "Look at it. It actually did."
By evening, the whole grounds had gathered near the main stage without anyone calling for it, drawn the way a crowd gathers when it senses an ending. Marcus stood with Lillipup at his heel. Evelyn and Jax stood together near the front. Doreen, Kamala, Valeria, and Franklin had claimed a patch of grass off to one side. Bruce stood near the back, hands in his pockets. Tony and Pepper stood close, Sparkplug curled around Tony's neck like a scarf. The Titans had wandered in somewhere in the middle, Starfire still hovering slightly off the ground out of habit.
Orion climbed the low stage steps, Latias just behind him.
"Two days ago," he said, and the crowd quieted on its own, "I told you this wasn't about catching Pokémon or winning battles. It was about learning what partnership actually looks like."
He looked out at the grounds, at the flattened grass and the tents already half-packed, at every trainer standing there.
"I think you all just showed me the answer better than I could've said it."
He didn't stretch it longer than that. Marcus wiped at his eyes and pretended it was allergies. Lillipup nosed at his hand.
The first firework went up without warning, a burst of gold over the park, and then another, red spilling into the dark. The whole crowd turned their faces up at once. Latias's hand found Orion's, and neither of them looked away from the sky.
Someone, later no one could say who, called for a photo, and the whole mismatched crowd packed in close for it: heroes and veterans and trainers and Pokémon, Sparkplug's glow lighting up one corner of the shot, Togepi still refusing to let go of Raven's cloak. The shutter caught them all mid-laugh.
The fireworks kept going long after that, but the grounds had already started to feel like something finished, not something ending. Tents were coming down around them, the last two days folding themselves quietly into whatever came next.
***
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