A/n: This is my first and only forseeable foray into the world of pokemon fanfiction! I wrote this a long time ago and decided it was about time I just posted it. This isn't really romantic, but I suppose it can read that way if you like. Thanks for taking the time to read and review!
After so many years, does anyone really want to know anymore?
Is anyone still curious? Of course. But they've just learned to accept. They will go as far as wondering, but beyond that there's nothing, no conclusion to be drawn, just as white and blank as the place he's hidden himself away in. There's nothing to know, Green, they all tell him. It's his choice, isn't it?
Well, Green thinks to himself, that's all great and whatever, but Red's stupid choice is affecting other people, too, and they have a right to know why. They have a right to Red, too, don't they?
Well, don't they?
And still, like the hypocrite he never was, Green finds himself chickening out of going up there.
Today, he thinks, rising in the morning. He brushes his teeth too hard, eyes cracked open just barely in the light of the rising sun.
Today, he thinks, mind drifting off in the middle of a battle. It gets worse when the trainer calls out a pikachu or a blastoise, or, absurdly, a snorlax. He expects the trainer's arm to be Red's arm when calling back his pokemon. He expects the trainer's eyes to be shaded beneath a ball cap.
Today, he thinks, flipping the gym sign closed. He could call out Pidgeot right now and get there in time for sunset.
When he crawls into bed he thinks about tomorrow.
A visit to Pallet. It's only when Daisy leaves the morning paper open to a section he never reads (yeah, slick, Sis) that he senses himself edging closer and closer toward something that feels like resolve. He licks his lips, knowing they'll just get chapped again in the dry air - "Daisy?"
"Yes?" She had long since finished with the dishes.
"This newspaper- it's current?" he says, already knowing the answer.
"Yes." He can hear the smile in her voice.
He doesn't know whether to hug her or punch her, so he does neither. He goes to the door and picks up his things. "Okay," he says, then gives her one last look before shutting the front door.
Daisy already knows he's on the back of his pidgeot, their noses pointed northwest.
Pidgeot takes him as far as they can go, which, unexpectedly, is very far. The skies are eerily clear today. He can already feel the cold cutting past his clothes (of which, he will admit, there aren't many - he wasn't planning on coming up here after all). The odd stiffness of ice forming in his nostrils is unfamiliar. Inhale, ice. Exhale, melt.
They must be at least as high as the article said. He calls Pidgeot back to the warm snugness of the pokeball. He walks around the side of the mountain for the spot. Snow crunches beneath his shoes. His toes are already beginning to ache.
And there it is.
It is enormous. The path left by the avalanche is clear. His eyes follow the trail up over the smooth mountainside for more than a hundred metres. The tops of trees just barely peek through the destruction.
What is he supposed to do?
Before he knows it his hand has reached for Arcanine. He observes that his pokemon's fiery orange fur looks ridiculous, but beautiful, in this landscape. He takes mount and they leap downward.
An hour in, and his energy is slowly dwindling. They've only uncovered a few tunnels - most likely hollowed out by escaping donphan - and a dead golbat. Arcanine left to carry the body up to a rocky ledge where they'll give the pokemon a proper burial.
He just about throws in the towel when his hands hit something solid.
Thinking no more than is strictly necessary, he continues to scoop snow out of the way.
The thing is yellow.
Fear settling in at the pit of his stomach, he reaches for it.
Shaking the snow off, he finds that he's gripping a strap of some kind. It's a backpack.
Red's.
The fear has quickly clawed its way up to his throat. He looks down the mountain, eyes wide with what-ifs.
Over his shoulder, he senses that Arcanine has returned. He realizes that he's hugging the backpack to his chest, and beneath it, his chest is thrumming. He turns-
The thrumming halts and then breaks out in doubletime.
Sitting on Arcanine's back is Red.
Charizard starts a fire easily, breathing at an already charred spot on the floor. The fire crackles and snaps for attention, but Green can't help but stare at Red.
He looks older, colder. His arms have become taut, pulled by lean muscle, beneath the same soft t-shirt. His jaw has become stronger and the planes of his cheeks more defined. He really does look older. Green wonders if he's changed that much.
"Here," he says, breaking the silence. He offers the backpack to Red.
Red takes it without breaking eye contact, but without saying anything either.
Green wants to make this moment count, but he doesn't know what that entails. He feels like after so many years, he should already know what to do, but he's left with nothing and he has to look away.
Red's voice makes him jump. "Why did you come?" His voice is surprisingly clear, and his words are faintly tinged with emotion.
Green is stunned. He hadn't realized that up until now, he'd always thought of himself as the one to break the ice. Red was always waiting on the other side of an impasse.
He gives up trying to be magical and just tells Red the plain truth - "I was worried about you."
He can't exactly describe the look that comes over Red's face then, but he'll remember the words Red speaks for the whole rest of his life.
"Thank you."
Red lets him stay the night, being as hospitable as Red is, as hospitable as a cave can be. When he wakes in the morning he does so alone - save for Charizard. The fire is still burning but the sunlight outside indicates that it's nearing noon. So much for his gym duties.
But when that thought hits him he finds himself smiling. So much for his gym duties.
He pulls on his wimpy coat, pats Charizard on the head (Charizard grunts), and wanders out into the sun. He cranes his neck, hoping to spot Red.
Red is on the summit and Pikachu is unleashing one of the most frightening thunders Green has ever seen. Electricity radiates out at a hundred and eighty degrees, mindful of the precious trainer standing coolly behind.
When it comes to Red, Green has come to find himself staring a lot. Red issues silent commands to his pokemon, merely shifting his weight or tensing a muscle. The sun glares onto the white snow and the snow reflects back up at Red, casting him in light from all angles. (How he hasn't tanned is beyond Green's comprehension.) Red's eyes, normally shielded beneath the brim of his cap, find no shadow in that light.
Green is shocked by what he sees there. Red's eyes show complete and total apathy.
Green knows to look across the field and to search for a retaliation against the thunder attack-
But there is none.
Then there's a trainer crossing into his line of vision, walking across the field and handing Red a modest stack of money.
Red sees Green then, and Green sees Red seeing him. Red's eyes soften, as if he knows what Green has witnessed and all he feels about it. The unknown trainer slumps off in defeat.
Then Red kneels down, swings his backpack off of his shoulder, pulls a super potion out, and that's that.
Three days back in Viridian and Green finds himself slipping into old routine.
Rising in the morning, he brushes his teeth too hard.
Off to the gym, where he beats pikachu, blastoise and snorlax.
Returning home, sitting on the couch, not watching tv. He thinks idly about soaring away on Pidgeot.
Daisy visits him and admonishes him. She's a nice distraction, he supposes. But then he thinks about the endless cycle he's been sucked back into - or has he chosen this? - and he wonders to himself what she's really a distraction from. Not his routine - she barely makes a blip. Not not thinking about Red - there are no more papers for her to leave out.
"Green, are you alright?" drops the question one dinnertime.
"Why wouldn't I be?" he asks her petulantly.
She draws her own conclusions and asks another question. "What happened up there?"
Up there. Mount Silver has become its own time and place. It is so magnetic that he can't help but have his thoughts orbit it. Even Daisy cannot help but recognize its pull.
He stabs into his meal. "Nothing," he says, and it's partially true.
Chance leads the gym to run out of potions the next day. He insists on going to the mart and picking up more supplies because there aren't any challengers and his legs feel cramped. His few staff continue on with their card game.
His body appreciates the break from routine, speeding with energy toward the pokemart and crossing the threshold quickly. His wallet feels extra heavy armed with money from his earnings as leader.
"Green! Nice to see you," greets the store owner. He's always been the real chatty type, yammering on about the same products, but he's an honest fellow, so Green puts up with it all.
"If you're here for full restores, we've just been bought out, I'm afraid," the man volunteers. "Guy with a pikachu scooped up the last 20."
Green's heart wreaks havoc inside his ribcage. The store owner seems to pick up on the urgent look in Green's eyes, because he says - "He just headed off in the direction of route 22."
Green leaves the store, wallet still just as heavy as before. He doesn't know why, but he's already doing it - he's running. He wants to catch that yellow backpack. An odd thought flits into his brain: that nothing worth it is easy.
He runs for five minutes until he sees them. Pikachu sees him first, or at least reacts to him first. He jumps off of Red's shoulder and toward Green. Green has to stop and let Pikachu run up his legs and torso to perch on his own shoulder. Red has stopped by then, too.
Green knows why Red chooses to go up to Mount Silver. He can maybe, kind of, understand. But he still feels as if he has a right to Red, somehow. He's not sure if it's the years of rivalry, or something else. They're barely friends. They're definitely not acquiantances. He just knows that they're meant to be part of each other's lives.
"Red."
Red turns. Pikachu twitches his ears.
He blurts, "I miss you." It's the closest feeling he can think of. He knows he sounds like a lovesick girl, but the expression on his face says otherwise.
The skin between Red's eyebrows tightens.
"Visit me. When you come down." He pushes the limits of this. Red takes so little that it feels greedy to ask for anything from him.
Red starts walking again, only it's toward Green. He nods. Then he says, "It doesn't bother you?"
"It bothers me," he says. "But... not seeing you for years bothers me more." Green smiles. His smile is one part bitter, five parts mirth.
Red holds out his arm.
Green's eyes blink a little wider, uncertain of what this means. He nearly starts to imitate Red's posture until Pikachu leaps off of his shoulder and onto Red's arm, finding his preferred perch.
Red gives Green what can only be described as a smirk.
And suddenly Green knows that everything is going to be alright.