He enjoys her presence immensely.
She might, too, because although he's not too sure on humans and their behaviour, he knows that humans smile when they're happy or content or amused, and she's always smiling around him.
So . . . she's happy, right? Around him?
The thought makes him feel warm, and what can only be described as 'fuzzy' inside.
. . .
Idealistically – and he does so love the ideals that give life the pleasant touches, the silver linings – that would be that. He would be with her, she with him, and there wouldn't be a problem. A dream like world, a fantasy come true, a happily ever after for everyone and all.
Realistically, it isn't that simple. There's a girl with blond hair and a bubbly personality, and a boy with black hair and a bored look on his face, and they too make her smile.
He's not as bothered by the girl, who has clearly established herself as the sister figure in all of this, but the boy, who won't make himself clear, who stays in the uncertain areas of the gray, is a threat.
Idealistically, threats don't exist.
Realistically, they do.
And he must face them.
. . .
Tell me a story, he asks of her.
What kind? She asks, lying casually on the grassy ground with her serperior curling up next to her. With the way her pokémon act around her, he almost believes that it's possible for humans and pokémon to coexist peacefully.
Almost. Hilda is not the entire world, and he doesn't have his head that far deep in ideals to think, to hope that it is so.
A happy one, he pleads. One where there's love that comes true.
And she obliges, spinning a tale with clumsy words and the sound 'umm' inserted in every five words or so, about a trapped princess and a knight who saved her from evil.
She's not a good storyteller. She forgets details and stutters.
But he likes the roughness of it all.
. . .
Slap!
You're intoxicated by her, boy.
He hangs his head as the words his father spat angrily spins and echoes in the room where only the two of them stand, and knows it to be true.
Then his father's hands, showing signs of age but strong as a healthy young man's grabs onto his collar and his face is right in front of his, and the man who is his father hisses, Remember your dreams.
She'll shatter them all.
. . .
In his opinion, she looks more shattered when he tells her the truth – so much that she doesn't say anything to him and leaves at the end of that revealing Ferris wheel trip.
He feels a little shattered as well, and heavy in his heart. He tries not to compare it to the feeling of losing his friends, even if they're oh-so-similar.
. . .
He still talks of his ideals. Faces her in a few battles – loses too. His friends look at him, and try to encourage him, but he has a hard time doing so. He thought everything was so black and white, right and wrong, definite, but it all feels so gray to him.
The dragon of ideals awakens, and the first words the great black dragon speaks after such a long period of confinement are You once dreamed.
I still do, he replies, feeling a bit awestruck as he talks back to a powerful deity embodying the spirit of the ideals, the second brother in the myths, a god in his own right.
He snorts, and lighting flickers. Not the same dream from your beginning, human boy.
And the look he gives to the heroine standing, gawking says more than a thousand words ever will.
. . .
When Zekrom fell to the ground with one last roar and sparks of lightning, and Reshiram stood strong and victorious and crowned in dancing flames, he began to understand.
When she turned to look at him after she defeated his father, he smiled. She smiled back, hesitantly, but before she could say anything, he talked. He spoke of everything and nothing at once, the words pouring through his mouth like a waterfall would. A waterfall that would drown out every sound, create a protective barrier.
And then he healed Zekrom and left, before that smile of enlightenment could turn into tears of sorrow.
She didn't follow. She could have - she had a great dragon of her own - but she didn't.
And realistically, that was the end of that story.
. . .
Both idealistically and realistically, a new tale started to spin.
I heard a rumour, Looker told him.
There are lots of rumours in this world, he said simply, not questioning just how this man had found him in his hiding spot such a long distance away.
She's looking for you, boy. She heard you were in a different region with that big black dragon of yours.
The girl who had intoxicated him, as his father said. And one who would clash with his beliefs even after he changed, even after he thought he'd be better than that. He ran again. This time towards home, because no one would really suspect him to be back in Unova. He ran, and hid, and then met a girl who was so much like her – but not her, no one was her – and ran into his father who was still a twisted man and then-
-then-
Zekrom left him with one last knowing look, telling him through that one last knowing look, Find the truth.
He asked around about her for the first time in two years, deciding to follow the advice of the ancient dragon and his basic instincts. No one knew, except that –
-that-
She was out, looking for him.
How very idealistic.
. . .
Rosa told me about you and your quest.
Cheren was his name, the boy he had thought to be a threat but then forgotten about. Hello.
Hello.
After a pause, he continued. There's this one place where the signal from her communication device keeps coming from-
He got the address from the gym leader and flew there. A forest. Peaceful. Quiet. Calm. It was almost a garden, the way it was so . . . so tame.
A hand tapped his shoulder and he spun around.
She grinned at him with a dust-streaked face. You found me, she said so casually, like it was just a game of hide and seek they'd been playing in the garden.
Where have you been? He had to ask that, even if he didn't quite have the right to ask that question.
The truth, the white dragon Zekrom had ordered him to find, snorted and flew into the sky, leaving them alone.
Oh, just hiding, she said carelessly in the exact voice she used two years ago, when she was a cheerful trainer who loved the world for all its impurities and flaws. Missed you.
And then she sprang on him like a wild pokémon would, trapping him down with a laugh that he joined in on.
Really, it was all like a dream.
. . .
And if this is intoxication, then let me be poisoned beyond saving.