category: Pokémon
world: anime
disclaimer: I don't own it.
notes: All the dialogue is word for word from the episode Buizel Your Way Out of This. My challenge for myself for this story was to see if I could take the skeleton of the limiting dialogue that the producers provided and turn it into a respectable Pokeship. How did I do?
"I've never seen a lure like that." Dawn squints a bit at the bright bobble hanging from Ash's fishing line.
He pulls up the string to dangle the lure between them. "This?" The line sways in the damp breeze. "Cool, huh?" He bounces the plastic figurine in his palm, feeling the blunt points of mini-Misty's shoes. "I got this from Misty a long time ago!"
Dawn scrunches her face in an effort to remember. "Misty?"
There is a brief pause where breath catches in Ash's throat. How is it possible that any traveling companion of his not know Misty, who preceded all of them for more than two years?
Brock covers quickly for them both. "She's a friend of ours who's now the Cerulean gym leader."
Ash finds himself chuckling inside, debating whether or not Dawn recalls on which distant continent Cerulean City is located, but she makes no acknowledgement of geography. He stops laughing; it isn't funny anymore.
"Oh." Just as abruptly as the initial question was asked, the topic at hand is brushed away in the face of personal interest. "Let me give that thing a try!"
Ash feels a sharp pang of sudden anger attack his stomach. Who is this girl, with the big eyes and impractical pink boots, to ask about Misty in such a careless, offhand way?
"No way, Dawn!" His fist closes around the lure just as she reaches out a grabby hand to snatch it away.
Her fingernails (the silly, sparkly things) dig a set of three uniform lines across the back of his knuckles, and he draws his hand flush to his body protectively. In a split second, although he knows he shouldn't, Ash Ketchum remembers red suspenders and a fiery tongue and how she would never coax blood out of his skin at a mere graze.
"Come on, why not?" Dawn meets his glare with dancing eyes and a wrinkle between her eyebrows, and he understands instantly that she is not to blame.
"Because I said so," he answers, and the steel has disappeared from his voice. How did he expect Dawn, who has barely seen any of her own region and only met a handful of people, to know an dear, old friend of his? She doesn't know Misty, because he's never told her about her. Guilt replaces the dying ashes of resentment and he re-attaches Misty's special lure to his fishing line.
One day, he'll tell this naïve girl, who packs cheerleading outfits for a long journey and wears a skirt in the woods, about his first traveling partner and oldest friend who ran a gym and hated bugs.
For now, he flicks his rod and returns to Buizel-hunting. Behind him, he hears the commotion of a reunion, and tries to block out the noise. The next Pokémon Center they hit, he thinks he will call Misty.
notes: How did I tackle this shipping (my favorite)? I tried to be subtle, and I think it turned out to the point that this might be 'friendship' – [shudder].
