Notes: I have no idea what is happening here, I was supposed to be done with this fandom, but then I decided to re-watch all of the anime and now look at me, sobbing over these two like nothing happened. Which means I'm back in the game, I guess.
Notes 2: Feedback would be much appreciated.
At sixteen Ash is still so young and his smile wider than recommendable. At seventeen Misty is still taller than him and too proud to be good at getting what she wants.
"Misty," he says, standing as tall as the midday sun—the entrance of a proper champion. "I've come to get you."
Misty stares at him from the other end of the hall. She had been stacking away a couple of stray life rings before closing the gym for lunch. "I don't think so, Ash," she answers, not unkindly. "I haven't heard from you in months. You have to try a little harder than that."
Ash's grin falters, and next to him Pikachu shakes her head. "But isn't this what you always wanted? A sudden romantic adventure? Like the movies you showed me?"
Misty almost smiles. "I'm surprised you remember those," she says, picks up the last of the rings and puts it to the others. "I'm not a little girl anymore though. I don't want to be swept off my feet, especially not by a guy who thinks I would wait for him for five years."
"Oh," is his elaborate response, and she would laugh at his lack of eloquence if it wasn't so disappointingly expected.
Some weeks later, at a Pokémon League reunion gala.
"Do you want to come with me tomorrow?"
Misty sighs into her champagne and tries not to resent him for his persistence. "Not really, no," she replies, voice even with responsibility. As an afterthought, "Thanks."
He leaves without another word, and a melodramatic part of her wonders if she's broken his poor, selfish heart of gold for good this time.
It's not that she particularly enjoys rejecting him over and over, no matter how many times Daisy insists that she's really just a frigid bitch who lives to ruin cute boys' lives. It's Ash's own fault, really. The fact that he thinks he can just win her over by stealing her away after years of little to no effort of communication alone should be enough to illustrate that.
Anyway, she doesn't want him. She's not that easy.
The irony about Cerulean City, Misty often thinks, is that the sea is so far away while Pallet Town is so close to it, it's almost sacrilegiously stupid that it doesn't possess its own harbor.
Water gives Misty the pleasant illusion to be far, far off from reality in her own parallel universe without pain or gravity, which is deceitful above all else because the sole imagination of a zero-g world without hurt or regret can crush you when there are people like Ash, who is more solid and real than anyone should have any right to be.
Except he is, and maybe that's what makes him so special, the Chosen One. Maybe that's why she feels so ordinary for being drawn to him regardless.
If there was some kind of justice in this world—not even the poetic kind—, Ash would realize that he doesn't want her nearly as much as he needs her, which is always a bad onset for heroes like him and their love interests to begin their budding romance subplot. However, there is no justice, no divine tribunal to judge over them both and show them how to be better at being a good person.
At sixteen Ash is still so young, so juvenile, fixated on something that is too true to be good. At sixteen Misty is still taller than him and too proud (scared) to be good at getting what she wants.