A story about Hilda/Touko and Cilan/Dent for a prompt request. Hopefully the characters aren't too off since I normally deal in the animeverse.
(THINGS TO NOTE: This takes place between BW and BW2, while Hilda's traveling around alone looking for N. In this span of time, she's more or less lost contact with just about everybody she met in the first game, though she still checks in with her family. Her traveling companions/rivals are also having gone their separate ways, so everybody is doing their own thing and just doesn't have time to chat anymore, but it's not like it's on purpose, they just have grown apart. Also, I never think about the convention of each game where the player becomes Champion at the end as actually being a real canon thing since it's just the Pokemon franchise's version of "you've won the game." Therefore, Hilda is not the Champion, Alder is. Or maybe Iris is by now. Just to clarify some of the interactions. There is also a conversation from the Memory Link in BW2 referenced so if you haven't seen this you can read 'A Triple Team' on any major Pokemon site's Memory Link articles.)
Wellspring Cave had been a refreshing stop in the summer heat, and though she would have loved to camp out in there for a while, Hilda was running low on Pokemon food and so forced herself back out into the oppressive heat. There was hardly even a Pokemon to be seen in the tall grass, it was too warm even for them. She trudged past the daycare center, feeling like she was going to melt, but pressed on instead, arriving shortly into Striaton City.
It had been so long—over a year— since she had been through there, but the town didn't seem to have changed much. Most of the sidewalk cafes and streetside markets she had remembered were empty, undoubtedly because nobody in their right mind would be out in this heat. Hilda didn't have any trouble finding the Pokemon Center, practically collapsing through the doors into the cool interior, her ponytail wilting into her face. She left two of her Pokemon with the nurse to be healed and refreshed, finally letting her partner, a Samurott named Wotters, out of his Pokeball. She preferred his company most of the time, but on account of the heat she had left him in his ball with the others. She restocked on some of each of her companion's favorite Pokemon food while she waited, tossing a treat to Wotters who cried happily. Speaking of treats, she could do with a little food herself.
"Miss?" The nurse called her up. "Thank you for waiting. Here are your Pokemon, good as new!"
"Thanks. Oh, um, do you know if there's a place open to eat around here?"
"Striaton Cafe is an indoor restaurant, the nicest in the city. If anybody is open today, that would be the place!"
"Oh that's right! How could I have forgotten!" "It's the next large building, right down the road." The nurse smiled.
"I hope they'll let me eat if I'm not challenging the gym," Hilda said as she dashed out of the center, Wotters crying happily along, leaving a confused nurse, "…Gym?"
"Hey guys!" Hilda came through the double doors, expecting a line of challengers she could mingle with (and possible ask about N), as she had recalled from before. Instead, she found a fairly quiet cafe, only two of the many tables were occupied. One or two of the customers looked up from their meals. There had been considerable remodeling, the space was now far more open with many more tables, making the small number of customers seem even smaller. Hilda stood there awkwardly for several more minutes until someone came out from one of the doors in the back, completely obscured by the pile of trays and glasses in his hands, save for a little green tuft of hair.
"Pardon me, uh, I'll be right with you as soon as, um, I can!" A voice came from behind the dishes. "No problem," Hilda said.
Shortly after he had unloaded the first table's food, she recognized him as Cilan, the very first Gym Leader she had ever challenged. She remembered all of her gym battles vividly, of course, but Cilan's in particular stood out in her mind as one of her favorite memories. That day had been nothing but butterflies. What would a gym battle be like? What happened if she lost? Would her training be enough? She had gone into that gym feeling all kinds of emotions, but left feeling more excited and sure that this was what she wanted to do than ever. The gym was nothing at all like she had expected. For one thing, who had ever heard of three Gym Leaders in one gym? Not only that, but she would have to face the triplet with the Pokemon that had a type advantage over hers, which ended up being Cilan. Cilan was… definitely nothing like she expected either. He and his brothers couldn't have been more than two years her senior, and while Chili and Cress both seemed to have their own attitudes that she might have thought befit Gym Leaders, Cilan was…
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss. Please, um, right this way." He bowed slightly, motioning her toward a small table. Once she was seated, he began reading off the day's menu, "For our soup, we have prepared a bisque of Pumkin Berry and…"
'He looks different somehow… more mature? Well it has been a year. But he sounds…'
"Miss?" Hilda realized she had been staring and blushed, covering her mouth. "I'm sorry I was just— I didn't mean to, I was just thinking about—" she looked around, "You seem a little, um, short staffed today?"
"Er, you noticed, huh? My apologies again for the inconvenience. My brothers um, they sort of left me with a double-shift and the front of the house had the flu… It's no big deal, really." He smiled. "Have you decided on your order yet?" 'He doesn't remember me. Well, I guess that makes sense. He sees a lot of trainers.'
"I'll have the 2 course, please."
"Very well. That'll be right—" "Wait a minute, if your brothers left you alone today, then what happens to challengers who didn't choose Oshawott? Do they have to come back?"
Cilan blinked.
"Oh- I'm sorry Miss um…. It seems you may have er, gotten some misinformation. You see… Striaton City no longer has a Pokemon gym. I'm terribly sorry, but this is only a restaurant now."
"There's no more Striaton Gym?!"
"I'm… I'm afraid not, Miss. If you like, I can help you make arrangements to challenge the new Aspertia Gym, though unfortunately it's several—"
"I'm not here for a gym battle. I've already got my Trio Badge. Heck, I've already got EVERY badge. Well, apparently not every badge if there's a new gym… But, point being, why isn't there any Striaton Gym now?"
"Miss, please do not um… could you please not raise your voice so loud?"
Hilda looked around, realizing she had an audience. She slouched into her chair so low she practically melded with it, dying of embarrassment. "I didn't realize I was getting so enthused about our conversation just now. S-sorry, everybody…"
Cilan quietly offered to speak with her after her meal, presumably after the other patrons had left. She nodded, hiding behind her hands.
The soup and main dish were two of the best things she could ever remember eating, though she still avoided eye contact with anybody in the restaurant from embarrassment, making it hard to fully enjoy until they had gone. After she had finished, Cilan brought a complimentary parfait for her, hesitantly sitting in the empty chair at her table once he had made certain they were alone.
"I am sorry about earlier, I did not mean to um—"
"It's fine. I didn't realize I was being so loud," she stirred her spoon around in the bottom of the glass. "It's just, the Striaton Gym meant so much to me and all my friends, to our memories— from when we were first time challengers. Why would they close it?"
Cilan avoided her eyes, his hand drifting behind his neck, as she had remembered when he first introduced himself. "It's not that we had to close it, but…. We er… Chili, Cress and I… retired. From being Gym Leaders."
"What? But you couldn't have been doing it for more than a year, right? You'd just started."
"That's… kind of the point. It…" he concentrated, trying to find the right words as he face grew more solemn. "It was because of our inexperience."
"Well that doesn't make any sense at all! Wouldn't you gain more experience by being a Gym Leader and doing your job over retiring and doing nothing?"
"Not… the way we were running things," he explained, telling her a bit about the conversation he and his brothers had after their run in with the Shadow Triad. "Besides. It's… not as though we're doing exactly nothing now. We still um… well, we hold double battles in the restaurant sometimes, and we train in our off hours. We all are determined to become trainers that are worthy of the title of Gym Leader."
"But you already were." She stated simply.
"All three of us together as one, perhaps. Even then, we still were such an… er, easy win… most of the time." He blushed. "The kind of trainers we want to be… the kind of experienced leaders that challengers deserve… we're um… we're just not there yet. So we closed the gym and left the opportunity to someone who can give beginning trainers… a better start."
"Not that it's any of my business, since we're not very well acquainted, and not that there's anything you can do about it now, but you are completely and totally W-R-O-N-G. You're so wrong in fact, that I can't believe nobody slapped some sense into you and your brothers before you made the mistake of closing Striaton Gym."
"Er….."
"Sorry, that was rude. But listen to yourself! You're acting as though you somehow did trainers a disservice by sharing the title between the three of you, but did you ever stop to think that's exactly what made your gym so unique? Having to face your partner's weakness in battle is a very important lesson. Not only that, but you think you somehow weren't worthy because of your inexperience and the ease with which most trainers could win against you, yet you yourself admit that there needs to be a Gym Leader that handles 'beginning trainers'. Well what better than the 'beginning' Gym Leaders who were just learning themselves?"
"I um…. Well I guess we didn't…."
"Experience isn't the only thing. Strength isn't the only thing. Winning isn't the only thing. What matters is the experience itself, between you and your Pokemon. Going slow and steady is OK!"
"I…. That's true."
"You were the one who told me that."
"Me?" He stared into her face for the first time, and it clicked. "I do recognize you! It's Hilda, from Nuvema Town? That's right… I thought you looked sort of familiar… I mean, now you're er, more mature of course, but it looks nice on you… I mean!"
She waved her hand in dismissal, smiling.
"You were the first Gym Leader I ever faced as a new trainer. And you weren't at all what I was expecting."
"See? I—"
"Don't you know it's rude to interrupt a person's meaningful speech? Come on, I'm saying something really important here," she grinned.
"Er… s-sorry….?"
"AS I WAS SAYING, you weren't at all what I was expecting a Gym Leader would be, but I'm glad, because you turned out to be exactly the kind of Gym Leader I needed to learn from in that first challenge."
"I… was?"
"You didn't sweep through my team and lecture me on what I did wrong after the fact. You didn't gloat and make me feel uncomfortable for not knowing things, or pretend that you were above me and ignore your own mistakes. In fact, when you had Pansage used Lick on my Scragsy, you admitted that it was a mistake because it wouldn't be very effective. You were kind, and gave good advice even after the battle. You just— set my journey off on the right foot, you know? I mean, you may not have been the most conventional Gym Leader, but you sure helped convince me that I made the right choice to go on a journey. In fact, that's what my friends said too after we left here. So I just think it's a shame that other new Unovan trainers won't get to have that same experience." She looked away for a moment, "That's all."
The blush in Cilan's face cleared before she could notice. He was never very good at receiving compliments. "I… never knew. Nobody had… ever taken the time to um… tell me anything like this. We all just thought-" He looked at her and smiled. "So thank you. And… It doesn't mean that we're permanently retired, um… I mean…. Now that I know we were on the right track, maybe sooner than later you'll see our gym open again. Maybe."
"That would be nice, if that's what you want."
"It is. But in the mean time… I still want to continue training with my brothers and get in touch with my… um.. skills. Besides, I wouldn't worry too much about the beginning trainers. They have the new Aspertia Gym… and um, I'm sure the leader there is dedicated to helping ease them into Pokemon battles too. His name rings a bell but I'm not quite sure if we've met… I think it was 'Cheren'?"
'WHAAAAT?! HE'S THE NEW GYM LEADER?' "Those trainers are in for it." Hilda muttered aloud.
"Huh?"
"Nothing."
Wotters snorted at her from beside the table where he had been snoozing. "Oh, I recognize you too! Uh, this must be your Oshawott that I battled, right?"
"This is Wotters. He's been with me in every gym challenge since."
"Hey uh, Wotters? You like Oranberries?"
"Careful, if you feed him he'll never leave you alone!" Hilda giggled as Cilan reached into his apron pocket and offered the Samurott a berry from his palm, which he happily inhaled, and nudged at Cilan with his snout as if asking for another.
"So uh… what brings you to back to Striaton… if I may ask? I mean, you aren't here for a gym badge even if I had one to give?"
"It's a long story. Got a while?"
"I've got plenty of berries for Wotters if you care to stay," they both chuckled.
"In that case!" Hilda made herself more comfortable in her seat as she settled in to tell the tale, "Have you ever heard of a trainer named N?…"