A/N: Couple things.
- This is a story about Ash Ketchum, who is a 100% real canon fuckening trans boy.
- Because of the narrative style of this fanfiction (ie, scenes taking place before he's even born) he's referred to with she/her pronouns for a little under half the story. These pronouns are incorrect, meant to convey not who he is but how people perceive him, and regardless of how you might interpret the narrative, he was a boy from the start.
- I'm usually not fond of the cliche of someone's name being a differently "gendered" version of their deadname. However, I really wanted to play around with Movie Four Shenanigans (tm) for this story. I implore you to be more creative than I when writing a trans character.
- It hasn't come up and who knows if it ever will in other works of mine, but this is the Ash I write into all my fics. Even if you don't like this fic, he's trans in all my fics & there's nothing you can do about it.
- That same Ash is autistic (which I wrote a little of, here) & aroace! That's about it! Thanks for reading, if you do.
There's an older woman with jet black hair on their tails as they bolt out the doors of the Flower Garden Troupe's building. She's shouting something about joining forces, and how they'll be an asset, and at this point it's hard to hear over the trio's pounding footsteps and ragged breaths. The three of them know they're going to outrun her eventually, so they pick up their pace and try to keep to it.
Ash looks to Iris, then to Cilan, his knuckles white on the fabric of his dress as he carries it, his feet darting forward nervously.
Their lack of grace worries him.
It's been awhile for him, true, but they're an absolute trainwreck in comparison. It's not too far-fetched that Cilan's never worn frills before—though Ash also wouldn't be surprised if he has. Iris doesn't strike him as the type at all. He hopes his friends won't trip, won't fall on their faces, botch the escape, and end up in harm's way. For a moment, he considers telling them.
He realizes, a bit darkly, that he's the only one who knows how to run in a dress.
Delia Ketchum is nineteen.
If you were to ask her about it, she wouldn't be able to tell you if she felt younger or so, so much older.
Pallet House is dark, and nearly empty. There's a single, weak fluorescent light casting Samuel's face aglow, his features outlined against the murkiness around them.
Her mother is sick. The father of her child talks about Gym Badges, and Leagues, and things a father with a baby on the way shouldn't be talking about. Delia's eyes haven't left the walls of the inn all week. She realizes this place will be her tomb. Aspirations running frantic in her head, she sees herself in her mind's eye, at the Indigo League with trophy in hand and crowds cheering. One by one, spectators blow away on the wind as it whips around her, the deafening stadium's chorus silenced. The trophy shatters, the stadium catches fire. In its remnants, she sees a light, and it's so warm, so intoxicating, she knows she has to protect it with her life.
Standing there in the burning world, she can't bring herself to cry. She's several months along, unprepared, unsure. Whenever the flowers of doubt begin to bloom in her heart, she thinks of her baby's face. That everlasting light, soft and bountiful and without end, puts those worries to bed. Between the promise of that first meeting and home-cooked meals with Oak, she knows that despite everything, there is a future for her somewhere in the arms of those she loves.
"I don't know what to name them," She tells Samuel one night. "I can't even enjoy the creative part of motherhood."
He swallows his chazuke, his eyes closed in thought, as if trying to remember something long forgotten. Delia tilts her head curiously when he finally speaks.
"Ash."
"Ash?" She whispers, and in her soul's window, the remnants of the burning world begin to awaken slowly.
Oak nods. Almost too confidently. As if he were answering a simple math equation.
"It's a little rough sounding…"
"A tenacious name for a tenacious boy."
"I've no idea if I'll have a son!" She laughs. "Or if I could handle one…"
"Delia, love," Samuel smiles, and the blackness around them seems so much brighter. "I'm confident the world as we know it would end before you came across something you couldn't handle."
She punches his arm across the table, nearly doubled over in laughter before she even makes it there. He almost spills tea on his lab coat. Oak is hit with a pang of sorrow and the realization that she's never looked younger than she does at that moment. The air around them carries with it a miasma of foreboding, but their smiles stay, unpainted.
"It's clear as day to me," He tells her. "And Ash will see it, too."
"Don't get used to calling him that!" Delia grins. "Tell you what… if you're right, and I have a son, I'll give you dinner on the house."
"Well, I'm not one to look gift curry in the mouth."
She laughs. She keeps laughing the third time he mentions her son, and the fourth.
She laughs the hardest months later, when she's holding her newborn daughter in her arms. Samuel is unchanged, graceful in his defeat, waving her off—
"The world works in awfully mysterious ways," He finally says.
"The name grew on me, though," Delia beams, brushing her hands against coarse black tufts of hair. "How about Ashley?"
Oak smiles, and shrugs, and tells her it'll do just fine.
Delia convinces herself, five years along, that Samuel made so little fuss over being wrong because he somehow knew, in all his cosmic wisdom, that Ashley would do the opposite.
Barely old enough to read, she's made of fire and sunlight. When she talks, she talks about pokémon, and the words tumble from her mouth a mile a minute, her hands caught in a dance back and forth, up and down, too full of joy to contain themselves. Her eyes are always darting, never enough time in a day to take the scope of the universe around her in. Ashley's nothing but pranks, and giggles, and love. So much love. Dirt on her face, scrapes on her knees, tears in her clothes from climbing the trees to sit with the pidgey as they twitter about. Delia doesn't feel like she has a daughter, she feels like she has an experience.
She catches Ashley with scissors and choppy hair one day and wonders why she doesn't just ask for her hair to be shorter, wonders if she's been an okay mother, made it known that it's an okay thing to want, to need . Her kid's face is tearstained and apologetic and it breaks her heart to see that light dim even momentarily. She simply wraps her arms around Ashley and tells her not to be sorry, to let mama cut her hair if she doesn't like it long.
Ashley spends the next few days running her hands across the back of her freshly shaven head. Over and over, almost rhythmically so, as if she's addicted to the feeling, her smile radiating sunbeams.
"Bacon and pancakes for my little princess," Delia says one morning over breakfast as she kisses Ashley on the forehead, and immediately she's hearing the protests—
"I don't wanna be a princess, mama!" She whines.
"Well then!" Her mother responds. "What do you want to be? A Prince?"
Ashley bats at the sides of her face like a meowth with a ball of yarn, deep in thought.
"Prince is better, but you never see them DO anything in those stories," She says. "I wanna save the day! I wanna be a knight!"
"Then you'll need a proper ceremony," Delia grins, lowering the spatula onto her shoulder. "Valiant hero, Sir Ashley."
The knight grins wide, her award-winning laughter bubbling up through the gaps in her teeth and filling the room to the brim.
Orange bleeds across the sky and casts Ashley and Gary in the glow of twilight. Gary's kicking up woodchips as he lazily swings, a rhythmic creaking followed by the impact of rubber soles on dirt. He considers for a moment if he should tell her to go home before curfew hits, but he can tell something's troubling her because she's not being nearly as annoying as usual.
"Hey, loser," He drags his feet into the ground, bringing the swing to a halt. "Are you gonna spit it out or are you gonna keep staring at your shoes until the sun comes back up?"
She swallows before she says anything, and when her voice comes out, the fire in her rival fizzles.
"Gary, can you promise not to be mean to me just this once?"
He crosses his arms. "Fine. But only because it's no fun to pick on you when you're like this. What's the matter with you?"
"I don't know how to say it," She mutters, softly. "I feel… wrong on the outside."
Gary doesn't say anything, this time. Her tone stops him dead in his tracks. He keeps quiet, intent to listen.
"Everyone says I'm a girl," Ashley says. "But I'm not a girl. And I don't think it's fair that they get to decide. I think I should get to decide."
"Is that why you chopped all your hair off?"
"It felt bad, having so much hair…" She frowns. "And then, when I cut it off, sometimes people I didn't know would say to my mama 'Oh, what a cute little boy!' and I would just feel so happy inside."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah! Like, what if you woke up tomorrow, and everyone was calling you a girl all the time. Do you think you'd be sad and angry? Do you think… you'd wonder why they thought that?"
"I guess I would. But I can't really say, huh?"
"You must think I'm so weird."
Gary's expression softens. "Of course I think you're weird. You're the weirdest kid I know. But not because of this."
"Really?"
He seems lost in thought for just a moment before he speaks again.
"Did I ever tell you about my auntie?"
"Gary, the only thing you tell me about your family is that they have a lot of money."
"Okay, well," He starts. "When my auntie was born, they said she was a boy, and everyone always called her a boy, and it made her really sick."
Ashley tightens her grip on the metal of the swing handles, peering into him.
"So she got some medicine to help other people understand she was a girl better. And now she's really happy and doesn't feel all twisted up inside anymore. So I don't think you're weird for that, you just sound like a boy version of my auntie, and she's just like all my other aunties to me."
There are stars in her eyes. Gary can see them exploding into supernovas. It's a while before she speaks again, weight hanging off her words like heavy sandbags.
"Gary… if I was a boy, would you still feel the same way about me?"
"Would I still think you're loud and annoying?" He raises an eyebrow. "Of course."
She grins. The fear and worry on her face melts away with the sunset. Gary hops off his swing, strides over to her, and holds out his fist.
Ashley bumps hers into his, the warmth in their silhouettes disgracing the picturesque sky around them.
Delia turns around from her cleaning when she hears a voice behind her, duster still in hand. Ashley's face is all puffed up, her fists balled, an attempt to make herself look bigger in the face of her fears. Her mother knows it all too well, places the duster on the mantle, and sits down on the couch, motioning for her to come sit beside her. She does.
"Remember all those times you told me you'd love me forever?"
Delia is caught of guard, her heart nearly breaking at what she knows follows that sentence. The tone is far too much for someone so young to know.
"Of course, darling. I meant every word."
"You promise, mama? No matter what, you promise you'll always be my mama?"
"Yes, honey," She assures. "I promise."
Ashley takes a breath, lets it out sharply. Her shoulders tense up. She swallows hard. Thinking about Gary's auntie, thinking about her mom cutting her hair, knighting her. Thinking about the prospect, same as it's always been—just them, against the world. Heart ablaze, she speaks.
"I'm tired of everyone saying I'm a girl," The words sound so much weaker than Ashley envisioned them to. "I'm a boy, mama. I know I'm a boy. I think I get to decide if I'm a boy or if I'm a girl. I only get one life, why do I have to spend it listening to everyone else?"
There's tears tightening Delia's throat, and she forces them back down into a part of her, locked away. Too much empathy in her heart has never been a flaw, but there is a time when a mother needs to be strong to inspire strength in others. Her son is desperately searching her expression for something, anything, and though she never felt like she'd be the best mother in the world, all she knows now is that he needs her arms around him like he needs air to breathe.
They stay there like that, for a moment, and she feels him drift away to some other place in her embrace. He cries, and he's so sick of crying, so eager to stop. What did he think? That some wicked part of his mom was going to cast him away and refuse to hear his heart? His tears fall onto her blouse and he feels so guilty for ever imagining her cruel when she's always been his biggest fan. It's only a moment before she separates from him, her hands on his shoulders, her gaze full of fire. Ashley wipes his tears—eyes downcast, at first—and tilts his head, giving her a cursory glance.
"You have to be brave," Delia says to him. "There are always going to be unkind people who will tell you that you are wrong. You have to stand tall and tell them you are perfect the way you are. Do you understand?"
"I know, mama," He says, nodding intently. "I'm not scared. And one day I'll have my very own pokémon, and if anyone tries to be mean to me, I can blast them away in a battle!"
Good heavens, this child. Delia thinks, her own tears threatening to be exhumed again while she watches his evaporate against the fire of his spirit. Nothing has changed. She's never known a soul as vibrant as his.
"I don't want to be Ashley, though," He tells her. "That's a girly name."
"You're absolutely right. What do you want to be called?"
His brows furrow in concentration, tongue sticking straight out. He stays like that for a second, realizing how unprepared he came into the thought.
"Aw, I don't know!" He says, tussling his hair on either side. "You're the mom! What would you name me if you knew I was a boy from the start?"
She smiles. Puzzle pieces start to lay finely together in her mind, and she remembers Samuel's words about how vastly incomprehensible the universe around them is. Her hand rests atop her son's head, smoothing out the mess he's made of his hair, and she hopes the serenity in her tone can give him solace from how frightening and mysterious and huge the world truly is.
"Just Ash," She tells him.
"Just Ash?" He says, eyes wide.
"A tenacious name for a tenacious boy."
"I don't know that word," He mentions. "What's it mean?"
"Someone who never gives in, no matter what bad people say to them," She tells him. "Are you okay with that name? It's not too different from your last one."
"Yeah, I like it!" He smiles, and god, Delia would rather die than ever see that smile fade. "Thank you for being my best friend. I love you, mama."
"I love you too, Ash."
She makes Samuel the best curry he's ever tasted in his life that night. Serves it to him wordlessly, save for a singsongy "On the house!"
He laughs and laughs and laughs into the night. His voice carries not only wisdom but utter bemusement at the things he somehow knows, and Delia can't help but wonder what kind of life it is that he's lead all these years.
Ash is on his back, teeth clenched, fingernails dug into soggy dirt and grass, eyes full of tears. He's not scared, he's not sad, he's angry. Angry that he can't fight, angry that his hands shake, angry that he's still a crybaby, angry that the shadows closing in on him can't even call him by name. They keep laughing, insulting a girl he doesn't know. He wants to protect her, but he never was able to reach her in the end. He's unsure if she ever really existed to begin with.
One of them advances, and he closes his eyes. There's no one for miles. The chill of the air bleeds into him. In his head, he counts days. One-thousand-one-hundred-seventy-seven days until April first. One-thousand-one-hundred-seventy-seven days until he meets his partner. One-thousand-one-hundred-seventy-seven days before he leaves these hilltops for a home less terrifying. Only a little over 3 years now. Nineteen months, twice.
He hears the impact. Fist hitting face. Cringing, he feels nothing.
Ash opens his eyes. Gary's back is to him, and several of his attackers shuffle backwards. He can see the mark on the third one's face, and it sends a chill down his spine. He suddenly realizes the way Gary teases him is nothing compared to what he's capable of when he's actually livid.
One of them chokes out Gary's name, fear strangling his words.
"Then you know of me," He responds. "So you're not as stupid as you look. You can remember names just fine, yeah?"
"Y… yeah…"
"Then remember mine. Gary Oak—" He steps forward, harshly, fists drawn. "—and remember his . Ash Ketchum."
The tears in Ash's eyes change from angry to something unidentifiable. He chokes a sob back, overwhelmed.
"Ash is mine," Gary growls. "And if I ever catch you laying a hand on him again, you better pray to every god you know that my dad doesn't catch word of it."
They're silent, nodding, trembling with fear. The one on the ground tumbles to his feet. Gary doesn't take his eyes off any of them, his tone commanding and flat and belonging to someone who is definitely the mayor's son.
"Get lost."
They bolt from the scene like bats out of hell, and Gary waits a moment before turning around and offering Ash his hand. He pulls the shorter boy to his feet.
"I don't need someone like you to protect me!" Ash spits out, his voice not quite angry and not quite at ease, fading lines stained below his eyes.
"Yeah, you sure won't now." Gary practically snorts.
Ash's face is tinged scarlet as he bites the inside of his cheek.
"You got caught off guard. It happens. I was just lettin' 'em know who's boss," Gary says, sounding patronizingly altruistic. "No one's allowed to wail on you but me. I don't feel like sharing."
"You say that like you share anything to begin with." Ash pouts, arms crossed.
"Anyways! I'm going home. There's only so much of your ugly mug I can handle in a day."
"See you!" He shouts when Gary starts walking, much louder than he probably needs to. "Wouldn't wanna be you, jerk!"
"Keep telling yourself that, Ashy-boy!"
Gary sees the way the condescending nickname lights up Ash's face before he turns back around, and he shakes his head at the spectacle. The boy with the wild black hair is always full of surprises.
He decides to keep that one around for a while.
They're on the outskirts of Celadon and Ash feels indescribably small, his best friend somewhere without him, his companions where he should be, and three people he doesn't trust for a single second throwing clothes he really doesn't want to wear in his general direction.
"None of these are good enough!" Jessie roars. "If we have to turn a twerp into a princess, we're going to need a far better dress to distract from that face!"
Ash rolls his eyes. Jessie throws a dress at him. It looks far too long, not made for someone like him, and the fabric crawls under his skin and makes his fingertips itch maddeningly. It repulses him in more ways than one, and he wants to throw it far away as if it were on fire—but Jessie motions for him to try it on with an impatient eyebrow raised. He sighs, turns around, and lifts his shirt over his head. Time passes agonizingly slow.
Please don't say anything. Please don't say anything. Please don't—
"Oh no. Oh hell no."
Jessie's voice is dripping venom and Ash realizes he is paralyzed with fear. He wills his limbs to move, his head to turn. They betray him instantly.
She's striding over to him, her footsteps so heavy and domineering they almost echo on the grass, but when she places a gloved hand on his bare shoulder it's surprisingly gentle. She turns him around, slowly, and surveys the bandages around his torso. When she speaks, her voice is maternal, completely flabbergasted at what she's witnessing. Ash braces for the worst.
"You can't be binding this way! Do you have any idea what bandages can do to you if left on like that? Does your mother know?! Did she let you get away with this?!"
He yanks his shoulder away from her angrily, his response instant, rehearsed. "So what if I'm not like any boy you've ever seen?!"
Her eyes widen. She looks confused, for moment.
"You don't get to tell me who I am! And my mom would kick your ass if she knew you were trying to!" His voice shakes. A thousand times he's had this conversation, and it never gets easier. "I'm perfect the way I am! And if you don't think so, I've got a whole team of pokémon who would disagree, and—"
"God, twerp, I didn't ask for your coming out story," She cuts him off. "I asked if your mom knows you're binding with bandages, and if so where she lives so I can give her a stern talking to from a pissed-off med school dropout."
Ash eyes are saucers. Jessie talks about his differences with a normality he's never heard in anyone else's voice, a normality he never knew existed outside his daydreams. The anger and fear and fight vanishes somewhere deep inside him, flutters out like a candle being blown away.
"N...no. She doesn't know. I didn't start until I left. Everything is—changing—and I'm—I'm scared, what if my friends find out and they don't take me seriously, and—"
"Hold up," James announces, from the other side of the clearing. "Detour."
And suddenly he's on Ash with a thick line of plastic, taking down numbers, clicking his tongue. He vanishes into the balloon while Jessie is scolding Ash, telling him I know you probably don't have anyone to tell you these things so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but you can't be putting your body in danger like that, yadda yadda, reckless child…
James is back on his feet shockingly quick, handing Ash something made of a material he's sure he's never seen before. The stitches on it are fine as can be, and his eyes dart back and forth between the garment and his usual enemies.
"Try it on," James says, and Ash hesitantly nods and turns back around, ducked into the underbrush.
He breathes. He breathes deep. It amazes him how easy it is, how much he's missed the feeling of air so freely in his lungs. He turns around, suddenly hit with something sentimental.
"Why… are you being so nice to me?"
"This doesn't change anything," Jessie huffs. "But there's a time and a place."
James is holding his rose, now, his eyes someplace else. "We have our share of secrets, too."
There's a bit of silence before Jessie stands back up, brushing grass off her skirt.
"We're going to the department store. If we're going to stick you in a dress, it had better be a good one."
At the gym's door, they call him Ashley, and it feels like he's being choked, but he tries to tell himself they couldn't have known. He becomes that girl he doesn't know, just this once for the sake of his dreams. Choking or not, there is air in his lungs. He focuses on it. He breathes. He breathes.
He breathes.
"Although the guardian of the sea shall return to quell the fighting, alone its song shall fail… thus, the Earth shall turn to ash."
Ash's head is downturned, the rim of his hat gripped in his shaking hands, his voice quivering with the weight of the world. He can't stop the tears from coming, can't stop his shoulders from heaving, even with all of his friends' eyes burning into him. The fate of the universe isn't what carried sobs to his throat, and he doesn't know how to tell anyone around him why he's crying and why he can't stop no matter how much he wants to.
"You have to do this, Ash," Misty whispers, voice softer than he's ever heard. "I know you're strong enough."
He steadies his words, and inquires—
"Melody?"
"Yeah, Ash?"
"Those legends were written long ago, right?" He says, smile wobbling. "By… by something magical, and all-knowing, who knew I'd come some day?"
"That's what I've come to know, yes…"
"And it really said 'Ash'?" He brightens. "There's no way it could've said anything else?"
"Are you trying to find a loophole in this, Ash?!" Misty immediately reverts back to her usual self. "Come on! You've got this, so quit worrying!"
Melody steps forward. "I've been hearing the legend since before I could speak. It's definitely you, Ash. Your name is clear as day."
He wipes his tears and slowly turns his hat backwards, heart aglow and permeating the frost around them. There were always doubts, before. Always a nagging feeling holding him back. The prophetic words repeat in his head as if they're the kindest song he's ever heard.
From his feet, he hears it—a soft 'pikapi? '
His best friend's eyes are shining up at him, the only eyes that know.
'I'm perfect the way I am.' How many times has Ash spat those words at those who would dare defy them?
It hits him, suddenly.
He finally believes them.
There's an older woman with jet black hair on their tails as they bolt out the doors of the Flower Garden Troupe's building.
Ash picks up the sides of his gown and moves forward.
A/N: Ultimately this is a gift for my friend Mason, who's the actual real life canon Ash Ketchum to my Jessie & has kept me smiling more often than not these last few months. I love you to bits, twerp.
While I'm not cis, I'm also only transmasc like once a fucking month. Thus, I cannot thank my transmasc friends enough for reading over this fic for me & making sure it wasn't problematic or a poor representation. Jax, Daffs, Toby, and tumblr user inthe-storms-eye—thank you /so much/ for all your feedback and for taking time out of your schedules to help me tell this story about a character I love more than anything.
Lastly?
Happy 10th birthday, Ash. I look forward to watching your adventures through many more to come.