Hey everyone, I'm back. Yes, it's been a long, long time since I uploaded anything, more than two months, but I have been busy. College does that to a person, ya know? I haven't had all that much time for writing, and I'm working on multiple stories at once. I just can't seem to sit down and finish one without ideas for the other few coming into my head... Anyways, I ramble. This is my entry for the first round of another fan fic contest going on on Pokegym, and I've had some positive feedback there already (like it winning the round), so why don't you leave me a review and add to the feedback? Please do, but above all else, enjoy!
Plagued
The harsh wind bit at his exposed skin, cold as his heart. Why had he let his fear get in the way? The snow had piled up around him, threatening to rise over his knees, but he did not care. He had come here to this Arceus-forsaken mountain with the hope that throwing himself into near-constant battle with its territorial wild Pokémon would take his mind off of her; that or it would kill him. Disappointingly, neither had happened so far. She still entered his every thought, ghostly images of her lurked in every shadow; her laughter was an eternal burden on his heart. And then there was the other question...
He knew that he had loved her then, and that fire had not quite been snuffed yet. His heart had started fluttering at the sight of her just after that fateful encounter with Celebi, when her true gender had finally been revealed to him. Other people had told him that it was silly- stupid, even- to say that he was in love with a twelve-year-old girl when he was only fourteen himself, but he had ignored them. Their opinions meant nothing to him; he knew what he felt better than they did.
Every moment spent in her presence from then on had brought a smile to his face and delight into his heart. She had been the light in his otherwise gray and routine life, and he had told her as such; the words had made her hide her face and blush. The color faded from his world when she was not with him, only to flare back into existence all the more vibrant when he got to spend time with her again. Together they had kept this a secret from everyone else for years, not wanting their fragile love to be shattered by the harsh truth of reality, subconsciously realizing that it would be if exposed.
I shielded her from everything. Is that partly why she left? Because I was so over-protective, then I didn't do it?
With great care, the fact that they were together was kept in silence, although their attraction for each other shone through to the world; that was an impossible secret to keep. Waves of calamity in the form of power-hungry villains had tried to sweep them into oblivion, mercilessly breaking on them both, threatening to drag them into the void. But they had always overcome their obstacles, sometimes with the help of others. Others who understood what they had together. The same others who did not understand why he let her go. He was still wondering that himself.
How could I have been so stupid?
Their late teen years had been paradise- peaceful and pure, utter bliss with a twist of ecstasy. Then there had been their early twenties. She had been leaving hints that she wanted to be more than what they were. He had, like a fool, shushed her every time, saying that they had all the time in the world. Hindsight allowed him to see that while he had had all the time in the world, she had not. He had acted content, but the reality had been that the thought of progressing paralyzed him. He, the champion of the Pokémon League, the conqueror of Team Rocket, the "fearless battler", had become petrified as the stone he had once been when confronted with four little words.
Why did he torture himself like this, standing in the freezing cold, remembering the story he so desperately wanted to forget? Was there still some false hope that she would come back to him, despite everything? Or was he punishing himself for what he had failed to do?
Tears gushed freely from his eyes as he reached the next memory, as they always did at the recollection; he could always wipe them away later, if he felt like it.
She had not been at any of her usual haunts that day, and no one he asked had seen her. That had been a little strange, but not overly much so. It was when he had returned home that he realized that she was gone. The Pokédex he had given her, his old one, was sitting on the doorstep, a note sticking out from the case. Tears he had shed had almost rendered the note illegible, but not before he had read what he needed.
"Waited too long. With someone else. Stay away for a while." Cursed words that I will never forget.
There had been no anger at this mysterious stranger who had taken his girlfriend- his entire life- away. He had no one to blame but himself for the hole that had formed in his chest, wrenching his heart in two. Nothing was as painful as the sheer agony he had faced then, no amount of physical pain ever could be. Tempting as it had been to find her and try to win her back, he had decided against it. He would have done anything for her, anything except for proposing, and rather she see him as a coward and a fool than an obsessed ex.
He had spent one last sleepless night at home, and then taken to wandering. Walking, flying, riding, it was all the same. He just wanted to escape her; he just wanted to be alone with the excruciating pain that stabbed through him. His Pokémon had tried to help him, to comfort him, but they could not fathom why he could not just find another girl. Intelligent as they were, Pokémon could only understand part of his loss. They could grow attached to a particular mate, but anything could happen in their world. Whether by trading or natural predators, Pokémon had the ability to accept loss ingrained into their very being. But he was not a Pokémon, even though he had wished he was at the time. Not that they had not helped, but solitude was all he had wanted, all he still wanted.
Solitude… Is that really what I wanted? What I want now doesn't matter; I can't ever have what I want again. But would it have been different if I had sought others?
And then had come the rather inevitable wedding a couple years later: the final bullet in his heart. Proof that he would never get back together with her, extinguishing his faint hope like a smoldering coal dropped into an ocean of tears. He had taken to hiding as soon as he found out, not wanting to be invited. But, despite that, he had half hoped that she would try to find him to invite him anyway. He never found out if she did invite him, he gave little chance for an invitation to find him. That did not stop him from knowing the exact time of the wedding, however, and the approximate time of when he would die inside. Again.
The wedding had been, of course, in Viridian City, and he could not help passing through on his way to the place he would call home for the next ten years: Mt. Silver. He had even caught a glimpse of her-though she did not see him- dressed in white and looking like the angel she had been to him. He had stood there for a moment, half wanting to call out to her one last time. Then a trainer had recognized him, even in his unkempt and self-starved state. A hasty exit had been pivotal, then. He had not wanted to ruin the happiest day of her life, even if it was not him sharing it with her. Then he had moved on- but he never really moved on. He had run to Mt. Silver, but his heart still remained in the quagmire of lost love called Viridian City.
He thought that hole which had opened up inside of him a long time ago had been filled by the wandering and battling, but that was not so. The sight of her had re-opened it, bottomless as ever, and brought bile to his throat. Nothing he had done could fill the hole; nothing he could ever do would fill it. It would be there for eternity, serving as a reminder as to what he had lost, fresh and raw as when it had first appeared. Food had been like sludge and water like acid to his mouth. Necessity had forced him to eat, even though he had not wanted to. His eyes had held oceans of tears, now cried down to mere puddles.
Here his memory faded. Years of barely surviving- mostly starving- on the mountainside had blurred together, ignoring the boundaries of time. And finally, back to the one, final question that plagued his every thought, just as much as she did.
Why not step off? What else is there for you now, other than ghosts and sorrow?
He looked down into the abyss, white and seemingly bottomless. It would be so easy to release his Pokémon, then take the plunge. Why not? He could not think of a reason to keep going on. He wallowed in his pit of misery every waking moment, beyond even hating himself for it, beyond caring about anything other than his Pokémon not starving.
Taking Pika's Poké Ball in his hand, Red prepared to toss it over his shoulder and drop his other Poké Balls to the ground with the other hand. Pika could release the other five once he was gone.
"Red! I've finally found you!"
For a second, his spirits soared, but then they plummeted again. The voice was a young boy's: not anyone he knew or had known before he had started hiding. It was of no matter to him, then. The kid had to be tough, to have made it up to this point. Witnessing this probably would not shake him too badly for too long. But how could he be sure of that?
I'm already messed up, but can I really make someone else witness something that will haunt him forever?
"Red!" the boy called again. "I challenge you to a Pokémon battle!"
Haven't heard that one in a while... I win, it's over. I lose, I live.
Without turning around, Red expertly tossed Pika's Poke Ball over his shoulder, giving the faintest shadow of a smile when he heard Pika's battle cry retaliate to the fearsome roar of an Aggron. The deciding battle had begun.
