Whenever it rained, she thought of Wallace. She saw him standing outside, arms raised towards the cloudy sky in a grandiose gesture, eyes closed as he let the rain wash over him. Streams of water would run down his face and if it weren't for the peaceful smile on his face, she would've thought he was crying.
That was why her heart ached whenever it rained. She would close down the gym, giving the excuse that she couldn't fight at full strength with her team of water-sodden birds, but it was really so no one would be around if she cried. The pain was constant, unrelenting, assaulting her in waves if she saw anything related to Wallace.
Unfortunately, there were a lot of things related to Wallace.
She tried her best, really, she did. She threw out all their old photos (not that there had been many; she was camera shy), she destroyed everything he had given her (why she had kept the earrings in the first place, she would never know), she even avoided Lilycove on the off chance that he was competing there. But something she could never rid herself of was the memories. There were so many of them and they triggered at random moments.
In some ways, though, she welcomed the pain. It was her fault. She was the one who broke off the relationship and this was her punishment.
Wallace dealt with things the exact opposite way of Winona. She discarded and tried to forget; he saved and tried to remember.
After a few years, they had managed to rebuild a troubled, tentative friendship. Still, they avoided each other, meeting only when necessary. He avoided these encounters not for his sake, but for hers. He could see the quiet grief in her eyes that appeared whenever she glimpsed him and he didn't want to cause her anymore sorrow.
He didn't know what he'd done to cause that pained expression. It must've been something significant—Winona had never been a petty girl—but she refused to tell him. So in the end, all he could do was keep his distance and hope it helped.
When had things fallen apart? He didn't have a concrete answer. But at some point, Winona became more high-strung, interpreting even the littlest of actions as an insult. Suggesting she not train as hard meant that he thought it was useless. Wanting to protect her meant that he thought she was weak. They started arguing more often and the happy moments gradually faded.
Wallace became a gym leader because he could already see the cracks in their relationship. But his attempt to preserve it didn't work. She just became more and more distant and soon she was out of his reach.
Wallace was always slipping out of her grasp, even if he didn't realize it. She was a little bird, struggling to fly through the storm, while he walked forward effortlessly, strong and proud. She couldn't catch up. She was no match for him.
She felt so small around him, the swallow dwarfed by the vastness of the sea. He was a champion in both Pokémon battling and contests. He had hordes of women trying to get his attention. And she, she was just Winona of Fortree, a girl who could never live up to the standards he set.
Slowly, her insecurity turned her oversensitive and snappy, forming a rift in their bond. The cracks in their relationship widened until even a passing child was able to see them. As the little boy innocently asked her why she looked so unhappy, Winona nearly broke down in tears.
As Wallace shone brighter, her sense of inferiority grew, and she shrank back from him. He would ask her what was wrong, and she would get defensive and start yelling. He would endure her anger for as long as he could, but eventually he would begin shouting back. Then it would repeat. They were caught in a pattern of hatred and tension that only escalated when she was elected supervisor of the Hoenn gym leaders and he became even more protective. After months stuck in the loop, she couldn't handle it anymore and broke up with him.
She spent the next few years pretending to be fine, even though she could barely keep it together. She threw everything she had into running her gym, working herself to the bone so she would be too exhausted to think about Wallace. Life was fine like that, she thought.
Then she met Sapphire and Ruby, and she saw herself in the girl who couldn't be honest with herself. With a painful jolt, she realized that they were entering the same cycle as her and Wallace. It was not a happy ending. They deserved a happy ending.
So she told her. She sat down with her student and revealed their story, being completely truthful for the first time, if only to prevent two more broken hearts. Sapphire listened with remarkable patience and nodded solemnly at the end, flushing bright red and yelling when Winona explained her reasons for telling her.
Sapphire left for the day as the sun was setting. She turned around to wave goodbye and her carefree smile struck Winona as resembling her own, when she was still with Wallace.
The downpour was stronger now. Wallace had excused himself from gym leader duties by claiming a need to practice for an upcoming contest. In reality, he was doing anything but that. The rain was simply nostalgic, that was all.
Winona hated rain. It was awful for her beloved bird Pokémon and she found it depressing. By contrast, Wallace quite enjoyed it. The cold water felt soothing and the damp breezes reminded him of his coastal hometown.
They used to have heated debates about the merits of standing in the rain. Now Wallace found that he couldn't bring himself to go out and get drenched, despite how passionately he had advocated for it before. After all, one of the reasons he liked it so much was because of Winona.
Winona wasn't a very affectionate person, in the sense that she generally showed everyone the same level of care. However, when he walked in the rain, she would always watch him from inside. Anyone else would've been ignored, and she would deem the results to be their fault for ignoring her advice. He was the only one who got that special treatment.
Ironically, the day she broke up with him, it was raining. Her face had been resolute and firm, despite the storm, and he accepted it as graciously as he could. By that point, he had long known it was coming. He'd just hoped he was wrong.
The most obvious shift in their relationship had happened when he declined the championship. He never told Winona the real reason, but she might've figured it out on her own. She was certainly clever enough.
Regardless, their relationship turned strained in the months following his succession to the Sootopolis gym. Winona's eyes became intense, she smiled less often, and she started training with renewed vigor, as if she had something to prove.
Maybe she genuinely thought she did.
Steven had suggested that she felt the need to prove herself worthy of being his girlfriend. It was one thing if he was just a coordinator or a talented battler; it was another thing entirely if he was the best in Hoenn. Wallace was uncertain as to whether or not that was true. Steven was quite sharp, but Winona was the amazing one, always had been, always would be. She was the one who knew exactly what she wanted from life and chased her dreams with unrelenting determination. He paled in comparison.
How long had they known each other? When he counted the years, he was surprised to realize it was almost a decade and a half. They'd met when they were still teenagers, at fourteen years old. He was training under Juan by then, mainly as a coordinator rather than a battler. Her Altaria had been a Swablu and she already aspired to become the Fortree gym leader. So, after all those years, how could she not know what a pathetic man he was?
Steven said it was something like the placebo effect. Everyone else, the ones who didn't know Wallace well enough to see all his flaws, said he was perfect. According to him, that made Winona believe it too.
Wallace was water, fluid, flexible, something that couldn't be held. He slipped through her fingers whenever she got near until she was sick of it and stopped trying.
Winona was a bird, destined to soar freely through the skies. Trying to cage her would've been wrong, so he let her go.