/Author's Note: The prompt for this one was a Denny & Popuri oneshot, so here we are. I, um, completely forgot that they actually appear in a game together (Island of Happiness!) and ended up writing something rather tangential about the wistful teenage years of Popuri in Mineral Town. Still, I hope you find this enjoyable! Am I the only one who finds Angsty!Popuri really fun to write? Leave me a review and let me know what you thought! End Author's Note/
Distancing
Popuri has a thing for men who leave.
That was as simple a conclusion as she could come to, even if she knew it only in the depths of her heart. If distance made the heart grow fonder, Popuri's heart had grown to the point of bursting.
It began with her father, of course, as it always does; his departure was seen as the ultimate act of love when he claimed he'd return only when he'd found a cure for her mother's illness. Then, it became the ultimate act of bitterness and betrayal when he never returned. Then there was Kai, her first serious boyfriend, appearing on her doorstep at the beginning of every summer and departing with the southern-bound birds at the end. He couldn't stand Mineral Town when it got colder, he told her, and besides, he had family and friends in the city. Eventually he stopped coming for her, as she knew he would. He never even had to give a reason, either – such was the beauty of distance: he just had to not show up one day, one fateful summer, and that was that.
Closure wasn't something Popuri expected, or even believed in: that was something for the intrepid heroes of her mother's favourite soap operas. It was something that awaited the walking clusters of hormones she read about in cheap romance novels (not that she had ever finished that many, but they were all the same). It wasn't for real. Real life was about promises made and hearts touched before both being broken in equal part. Real life was absent fathers who promised letters that never came. Real life was terminally ill mothers with no chance of recovery. Real life was knowing that you'd only have your overbearing brother to walk you down the aisle on your wedding day – a day that seemed further and further away.
"It's for the best, you know," she had confided in Karen one night, after painfully admitting that Kai was not coming back. She'd undone her heart just enough to let out this tiny confession, her confidante putting down her glass on the bar's countertop and giving Popuri her rapt attention. "I'd get sick of him eventually. Isn't it exhausting being with the same person all the time? Look at you and Rick!" She gave her friend a look that was part incredulity and part sympathy. "Like, no offense – I just wouldn't be able to do that. I get so tired of people."
Stung, but stoic - and a little sloshed - her best friend had replied: "So, love 'em and leave 'em? Is that what you're saying?"
She giggled at the cliché. "I guess so! Love 'em and leave 'em." Popuri repeated, giving her tongue a feel for the words. She liked how they sounded.
She could hardly remember how long ago that conversation was. She stood at Mineral Town's harbor one morning, a thick mist pooling around the rotting wooden posts of the pier. Wrapped in a wool-knit shawl, clasping a bag in her hands, and checking her watch periodically, Popuri thought back to that mantra and spoke it aloud again, like a secret only for the sea to hear: "Love 'em and leave 'em."
Only this time, Popuri would be the one leaving. She'd leave behind Rick and Karen and the stone their lives were set in, and take to the seas. She'd leave her mother, giving her another departure to weigh on her heart. She'd write letters and never send them. She'd leave, because it was all she knew, and she'd never look back.
A briny breeze picked up and freed her pink locks from the scarf wrapped around her head. A boat was pulling in – a fishing trawler made to hold one, maybe two people.
"Miss Popuri?" asked the man operating the boat, "Are you the one Zack contacted me about?"
"That's me," Popuri nodded, feeling her heart skip a beat. The stranger had dark, healthy skin and a bandana barely holding in his chestnut curls, flapping in the wind. For a second she had let her heart believe that it was him, and that he had returned for her…
"The name's Denny. I believe you asked for someone to ferry you? Where can I take you, exactly?"
… But she knew that wasn't how her story was going to end.
"What are my options?"
"Hm… Castanet Island, Oak Tree Town, Flowerbud… I can take you anywhere, really." A grin flashed across his dark features, welcoming her aboard.
"Yes," Popuri made her best attempt at a smile, the smell of salt and seaweed and sleet in her nose, "Anywhere sounds good."