A/N: To kick this off, I'm going to base these chapters off of emotions. Enjoy my interpretation of fear. And expect a lot of contestshipping. This one is less extreme then the others will be.
Fear
Throughout my sheltered childhood, I had many fears. One of those fears was a fear of the dark, or more importantly, what lurked in the dark. Whether it was a power-surge or the lights were being turned out as I was tucked into my bed, I felt certain that the second the lights were turned off, the monsters would come to life, intent of gobbling up little children like myself. All of these were faceless, soundless, and non-existent, but they were always the reason for my parent's increasingly-larger electricity bill.
No matter how many trips I took to my closet and under my bed, I still felt as though this was true. And even when I was told that there was no such thing as monsters, this didn't put my fear to rest. Every time I accidentally dangled a limb over the side of my bed, I snatched it back up, froze, and awaited the growling nightmares that I were sure would awaken at the sight of my flesh.
Of course, I grew out of this belief, considering that I have obviously not been attacked by said monsters.
Looking back at my childhood terror, I see it as a childish waste of energy. However, with a bit more maturity under my belt, I know now that it served as a catalyst to the process of learning true fear. Because back then, I was only beginning to understand what it was like to be truly, sincerely afraid.
"Does it really have to rain now?" I said to no one in particular as the slight drizzle began to come from the overcast sky.
"Blaze," Blaziken said nervously as he tried to shelter himself underneath a nearby tree.
"It seems like it's going to storm, and we're lost. Blaziken, return." The red flash erupted from the Pokéball, bringing Blaziken inside of it and out of the rain.
Does it have to rain now? I repeated in my mind.
After six years of traveling, I was lost in Johto. A simple training trip had gone terribly wrong with one too many wrong turns and no signal on my PokéNav. As the downpour got heavier and my clothes began to cling to my body, I decided to retrace my steps in hope of finding a way out of the enclosure of the woods. I began walking slowly, trudging through the underbrush that covered the abandoned trail.
Thunder boomed, followed by loud clashes of lightning, and I began to quicken my pace. Steadily at first, but when I heard the snapping of branches from various Pokémon, and the calls through the darkness, I began to sprint, not remotely caring where I was going as long as it was out of here. I hadn't noticed it at first, but I realized that my subconscious was reminding me of what I had most feared. I had convinced myself that monsters were chasing me alone through this forest, and I hadn't even thought of the word.
I think I've found the reason I'll be needing therapy in a few years, I thought to myself, trying to make myself smile instead of fear imaginary 'monsters'.
Finally, an old house I had seen earlier came into view. Hoping that it would be an acceptable form of shelter, I slowed slightly and carefully made my way for the house.
That's when I heard a loud crash, followed by what seemed to be a human cry of pain. I froze in my tracks upon hearing the terrifying sound of a Pokémon's angry roar.
You don't have to turn around. It's perfectly fine if you just go inside and get dry, I told myself.
There is no such thing as monsters.
Another cry of pain, followed by another crash and roar. Oh crap.
I started warily towards the source of the sounds, stepping as carefully as I had as a young girl, avoiding getting my feet too close to the shadows under my bed. My heart thudded in my ears and threatened to burst from my chest. I felt terrified of what I couldn't see.
Another roar interrupted my thoughts. This time, however, it was much closer. What in the world could create such a loud roar? Was it a Tyranitar?
Do I smell something burning?
I pulled apart the plants that blocked my view of the scene, my breath catching when I saw what had been concealed behind the trees.
Apparently a powerful smoke screen had recently been launched, because smoke clouded my vision. All I saw was a wounded Pokémon trainer lying on the ground in front of me, frantically glancing around the space and clutching his left shoulder.
Maybe it was the dirt and smoke that kept me from noticing who it was at first, but I still ran over to crouch next to the stranger.
"Are you alright?" I whispered as silently as I could over the roaring and rain.
The victim spun around to face me, eyes wide in fear and pain. Wait, his eyes. They were a bright, reptilian green. "May? What are you doing here?" he asked, losing his signature composure. "You're going to get yourself killed! Go, now, before – "
He was cut off by another large roar. I shook my head in disbelief as I attempted to grasp who it was that stood before me, injured and panicked.
But as I thought about how unlikely it was that he could be here, and that I must be in some sort of nightmare, I caught a glimpse of a scorched shoulder. This would explain why his green eyes were filled with pain.
My rivaling coordinator Andrew "Drew" Hayden was sitting before me in the rain, injured and soaked.
Another roar rattled through the forest. Thinking as quickly as I could, I whipped out a Pokéball. "Let's go Venusaur, use vine whip on a tree to draw… it away from us!" I muttered as quietly as I could. The large green Pokémon erupted, sadly, a bit louder than I had anticipated, causing my breath to catch in my throat once more. My plan to create a diversion, however, went well. The long vines sprung from her back and slapped a tree across the space. The attacker turned towards the direction of the sound and trumped off into that direction.
"Let's go, Drew," I whispered, tugging at his good arm to get him off of the ground. "I saw somewhere to stay a while back." Drew looked into my eyes for a second before rising off the ground. It was intriguing to see him like this, to say the least. He was normally so composed, always sporting a smirk or a straight face, but now he had lost that. He looked confused, shocked, and scared, all of which were extremely out of character for him.
But then he blinked, hiding some of the raw emotion behind a straight face. He nodded slightly, rising from the soaked ground. I returned Venusaur to her Pokéball and began headed back towards the house I had seen, following the path of trampled greenery that had delivered me here.
"I saw an old house somewhere around here," I said, breaking the silence as we broke through the last layer of trees and into the clearing with the cabin. "We should be able to stay there for the night. It looked vacant."
Drew just kept his reptilian eyes trained at the ground and grunted in response. He was being so uncharacteristically quiet that I feared he was more injured than he appeared. The more practical side of my just said that he was embarrassed I had to come and rescue him and had a serious case of wounded pride.
Either way, I just remained quiet as well until we arrived in front of the door the cabin.
Surely enough, it looked abandoned. The door was locked, sadly, but the numbers that had once bared the address were worn and only showing two numbers. The interior shown through the slim windows on the side of the front door also looked dark and abandoned, but as if it hadn't been abandoned any more than two years ago considering it's more modern furnishings. It was odd that someone would leave a perfectly fine home like this, but I decided that it was for the best. Perhaps this was just a vacation home that no one's had the chance to get away to?
I tugged on the door to assure that it was locked. I muttered a slight curse under my breath as I wiggled the handle, as if it would just unlock if I continued doing so. Thankfully, the covered porch in front of the door provided shelter from the rain, but not the howling, bone-chilling winds that swirled around out soaked bodies.
"Um… Do you know how to break into a house?" I asked after a few futile attempts to will the door open. I turned to see Drew in the overgrown garden, on his hand and knees searching for something in a nearby bush.
"I may not, but I do know how to search for a spare key," he replied dryly, walking back over to the door with a rusted bronze key in his hand. He jammed it into the lock, opening the door. "You just had to jump to criminal activity, didn't you May?" I just gave him a half-hearted scowl, a part of me ecstatic that he was his old self once more.
I sighed in relief as I stepped through the doorway. The warm, stale air seemed to envelope me, giving me relief from the howling wind. Drew shut the door behind me, locking it again for good measure.
"Hello? Is anybody home?" I shouted through the seemingly-empty home for good measure. I would hate to walk into a room and have a family sleeping there. I set down the sopping wet backpack I had to upgrade to in order to hold supplies for my lone journey and looked around the small home. Or at least what used to be a home.
"I think it's empty," I said into the silence.
"What made you come to that conclusion?" Drew asked sarcastically, earning himself another scowl.
I wandered throughout the small rooms of the house, eventually finding myself in a bedroom connected to a small bathroom. I walked over to the queen-sized bed and brushed some of the dust off. I then went through the drawers of the dusty dressers, finding the clothes of what seemed to be of a married couple considering there was a set for both a man and a woman. They were also a bit too large for me and seemed as though they would be big on Drew. But, nonetheless, they would more than accommodate us for now.
I grabbed a soft outfit from the woman's dresser and walked back out into the living room, where Drew stood, appearing as though he was on the brink of exhaustion.
"There is a dresser with dry clothes in the bedroom. You should go find something to change into. You'll get sick like that," I spoke softly, my eyes locked on his injured shoulder. "I'll try my best to treat your shoulder once you're dry."
Drew nodded. "Thanks."
I gave a half-hearted smile and walked into the nearby bathroom to get changed. The bathroom was small, like the rest of the house, but it still had all of its accommodations. It felt odd. I had the feeling that no one would just leave a house like this; the towels were still neatly folded on the counter with little bits of dust covering them. With the clothes still in the drawers and the bed still neatly made, I began to wonder why they had just… Left? Had the people who had lived here died in the woods? Or was it the Pokémon that Drew had encountered that have killed them?
They couldn't have just… Left, could they? I asked myself.
But my shivering got the better of me and I was forced to push the thought aside so that I could dry off and try to get warm.
I emerged dryer, warmer, and cleaner.
I roamed out into the living room with my bundle of dirty, soaking wet clothes trying to find something to do with them when I spotted Drew on the couch.
He was dry now, wearing a pair of pants that were a bit too big on him, but only holding his shirt in his hand instead of wearing it. I blinked a bit at this before I realized that it was because of his injured arm – a problem I had almost forgotten about. With his body free of dirt and rain, I could see the injury much more clearly now.
The injury spread across the front of his left shoulder, leaving the skin red and blistering. The skin looked angry and painful.
To say the least, it was a lot worse than I had expected.
"If you're done checking me out, you wouldn't happen to have a bandage, would you?" Drew asked me, cocking an eyebrow.
"I think I have some… I'll go get my bag," I mumbled, walking over to my bag, setting down my wet clothes, and digging out the medicine I carried with me. Without Brock being around to carry a set of medicine, I had learnt that I needed to upgrade my bag so that I could carry things like medicine, food, and even a sleeping bag. It got a bit heavy at times, but it was extremely helpful at times like this.
I let out a sigh of relief when I found a burn heal and a roll of bandages.
I settled down onto the couch with both, feeling queasy as I got a closer look at the angry flesh.
I'm not a doctor! My insides screamed. How could I help him? I can tell that he was already in a lot of pain, but how would I be able to do anything to relieve that pain? Burn heals are always a good way to go, but what if there was something else in my bag that could help him?
My fingers lightly traced the skin around the wound that was lucky enough to escape unscathed. Even though I never came in contact with the wound, Drew still winced slightly at the contact.
He was in pain. I couldn't just sit here and freak out when I could be helping him.
I took a deep breath, and got to work.
"This… Might sting a little, but it should help…" I said softly as I prepared to spray the burn heal onto his shoulder.
Drew just grunted in response, and so I let out a round of the mist. I heard him suck in air, but he relaxed slightly in the time following the round of medicine. The burn also seemed to get a bit better; the skin that had once been a bright crimson calmed to a less intense color.
I sighed in relief and let out two more rounds of the medicine before loosely wrapping his shoulder in a bandage.
"I think that's all I can do for now," I said once I had secured the bandage.
Drew stood, pulling the T-shirt in his hand over his head, covering his toned stomach. Since when did Drew have muscles? When I had first met him, Drew was just a skinny, ten-year-old boy with about as much muscle as a Surskit. But considering how he is now a sixteen-year-old teenager, he has changed quite a bit. His biceps were becoming more prominent, and you could see the muscles of his abdomen now. He's also grown much taller; for a while, Drew and I were about the same height, but it seems as though he surpassed me over night. He was beginning to look much more like a man than an arrogant little boy. However, he was still an arrogant man.
"Thanks, May," he smiled slightly, his body far less tense now that the medicine had eased the pain.
I returned the smile in reply. "We should be getting some rest. It's pretty late now. You can stay in the bedroom, I'll just sleep out here," I said, grabbing a blanket off of the back of the couch and preparing to settle in for the night. I was truly exhausted.
Drew remained still and cocked an eyebrow as if I'd just said the most ignorant thing in the world. "May, you of all people should know. I may be a jerk, but I'm still a gentlemen. I'm not going to let to sleep on that dusty couch," he said with a mocking sense of disappointment in his tone as if he was saying, 'I can't believe you still don't know me after all of these years.' I fought back a scowl at his constant sarcasm.
"I'm perfectly comfortable here, Drew," I replied stubbornly, laying down on the couch for good measure. Sadly, the dust on the scratchy fabric of the couch flew into the air when I had lay down, causing me to spring back up into a sitting position in a fit of coughing.
This, of course, made Drew snort, practically chewing off his own lip in an attempt to hold back his laughter. "Whatever you say," he chuckled.
I waved away the dust in the air to avoid another cough-attack. "Well then, know-it-all, what do you suggest we do?" I exclaimed, putting my hands on my hips in an attempt to save the bit of pride I had left.
Drew turned around and peered into the bedroom. I watched as he scrunched his eyebrows together, as if he was mulling something over in his mind. After a brief session of what seemed to be internal-conflict, he shrugged and turned back to me. "The bed's big enough; I'm sure we can just share. It's late and I doubt either of us would be able to get any rest on the couch." He smiled. "I think you just proved that."
"Oh shut up," I said, rolling my eyes at his last comment. "If it's alright with you… Then I guess we can share." Even though I had known Drew for years, I had never had any intentions of sharing a bed with him. I'm stepping out of my comfort zone, to say the least.
But, nonetheless, we both retreated to the bedroom and made any final preparations for bed. The comforter on the bed did have a bit of dust settled on it, as did most of everything else. I dusted it off, remade the bed, and we both climbed under the blankets, staying as far away from one another as possible.
"Goodnight," I said softly as I felt my eyes getting heavier.
"G'night," he grunted just as my vision began to darken and sleep pulled me into unconsciousness.
I was running through the rain, tripping on every root and branch that littered the wet ground. My heart hammered against my chest and I could feel tears streaming freely down my face as I pulled myself up from the ground every time I tripped.
I was afraid; I had the feeling of being pursued. But I didn't know what was making me so afraid.
I tripped on another root, falling to the ground painfully.
"May! Come on!" a voice shouted from ahead. Drew, my mind recognized his voice. I sighed in slight relief when I saw his familiar form standing anxiously about fifty yards away from me. But that brief glimpse of relaxation was quickly replaced with mind-numbing terror. Why is he waiting for me? He's going to get hurt! My mind was shrieking. I felt more terrified then I ever had in my entire life.
In an attempt to get us both out of danger, I tried to rise from the ground only to be forced back down by a shudder of the earth. With the last shudder, I lost my footing completely and fell to the ground. Hard. I winced in pain as I felt the warm trickle of my own blood on my face.
"May!" Drew exclaimed as he tried to come to my aid.
Stop! Run away! Save yourself! I wanted to shriek, but no words could escape my lips.
CRACK! The deafening sound rang throughout the wooded area.
I heard Drew yelp out in shock when I finally made it to my feet. "Drew! Drew where are you?" I tried to scream, but my voice came out as nothing more than a whisper.
That's when I saw the crack in the earth. It was large, its depths reaching far into the earth.
I quickly approached the edge of the fissure as sheer terror and panic made my blood run cold.
I peered into the opening, assuring my worst fears. Clutching the edge of the crater walls was Drew, his green eyes squeezed shut and his teeth clenched as he tried his best to hold his grip on the edge. The icy hand of fear squeezed my heart painfully.
I threw myself to the ground in front of his fingertips and used both of my hands to grip one of his wrists. I used all of my might to pull upwards on the arm, and he used his other to try to push himself up onto safer land. Please hold on Drew, I prayed hopefully.
The weight on the arm I was holding increased suddenly, causing him to slip through my hands until I barely had a grip on hand. I looked down to see that he had slipped and was now dangling from one arm. The arm that I held in my hand. The arm that was slowly slipping out of my grip.
I tried as hard as I could to pull him up by myself, but his weight was too much for my sweaty palms to keep a hold of.
There was another painful squeeze of fear and time seemed to slow. Minutes felt like years when I felt my grip slide to Drew's fingertips, and my heart stopped beating when I was finally gripping air.
I looked into the fissure to see his green head disappearing into its depths. And I swore the whole time I heard him calling my name.
The cold grip got tighter and tighter until I couldn't breathe anymore. My vision slowly faded along with the pain until I drifted off into what felt like death.
I gasped, my eyes snapping wide open to view the small, stuffy room of the abandoned house. I'm alright, I thought, clutching my chest as if the hand of ice was still tugging at my heart. But where's Drew? I thought frantically as all of the memories of my nightmare rushed back to me.
I felt a warm hand on my shoulder and I turned my head to the side to see reptilian green eyes staring at my through the darkness, almost glowing they were so bright. Bright and alive…
I let out the breath that fear had been trapping inside of me.
"Must've been a pretty bad dream," Drew smirked. I glanced around briefly to see that I had moved right next to him while sleeping, closing the space that had once been between us. I returned my attention to him, almost wanting to comment on the fact that his hair was disheveled with sleep. Almost.
But I didn't feel like playing his childish games right now. I was too busy reveling in the joy of knowing he was perfectly safe. He could've died earlier today, just as he had died in my dream. I hadn't even realized how tense with fear I was because of this until now.
I reached my shaky arms up and looped them around his warm neck, being careful not to touch his wounded shoulder. He didn't even seem to hesitate when his arms wrapped around me, pulling me closer. I rested my head against his chest, listening to the reassuring sound of his steady heartbeat.
The visions of the nightmare began popping back up under my closed eyelids, making me relive the fear of watching someone I cared about die before me.
I felt so afraid that it was painful. I felt as though I couldn't move and I finally experienced the true meaning of paralyzing fear.
Not the insignificant fear of thinking there were monsters lurking, or that darkness was going to swallow me up. I realized that true fear wasn't a figure of your imagination, but was real and completely selfless.
I was terrified of losing someone that I was so close to. I knew that if I had lost someone that I loved I would never be the same again.
I let out a shaky sigh. "Yeah, it was," I mumbled in agreement against his chest, allowing the reassurance of his warmth to finally calm me down.
And with the pain of fear went the images of the nightmare.
A/N: I'd say that was a fair beginning to a set of one-shots? This is mostly a project to improve my writing skills, so I apologize if these begin with… Well, crap.
Yes, I know that a lot of what was mentioned remained unanswered. However, this is like a test-run to an idea that I had for a story. I figured it related to fear and that I should get it down on paper. I also realize that I could make ideas transition more smoothly, but I'll learn more overtime.
Also, please tell me if the characters are terribly OOC. I hope to get better and better at the characters as time progresses, but I could use some friendly suggestions. Emphasis on the friendly.
Meh, I'll have the next chapter up as soon as I have it written! Enjoy, and please, review! And tell me what emotion you would like next!