a/n: I intend for this to be a threeshot. Updates will come when they will. Hopefully I'll finish this by the time school starts (haha).
I
the first act of violence against the beasts
She's running to her daughter's bedroom the moment she hears Abigail scream. By the fifth night, it's become something of a reflex; mother listens, mother responds. Drops everything, mug of coffee and a paperback, and rushes up the stairs with a sprinter's gait.
Abigail is crying messily, snot running from her nostrils and both cheeks flushed apple-red. The first words out of her mouth are, "I saw a monster, mommy, it was in the corner," and then her voice gurgles and her eyes water and she's crying again. There's a limit to how much she, as a parent, can do to stop Abigail's night terrors; for now, it is enough to hold her child chose and reassure her, in cloud-soft tones, that the monsters aren't real. But children grow up, and mothers cannot always be there to cast away the allegorical darkness when it comes.
So she has to do something else. To teach her daughter how to rationalize, break down the fear into its basic components, and collect them into neat partitions to be managed. To wound the repute of the fearsome boogeymen and walkers of the night, gradually draining them their ability to terrify until they don't scare Abigail anymore. She can't always take away the fear. Abigail has to learn how to do it herself.
"Can you tell me what it looked like?"
A sniffle. "It had big claws. And big teeth and red eyes. It said it was going to... to eat me."
She listens. When Abigail has cried herself dry, she reaches into her shirt pocket and removes a small sphere, about as wide and tall as the length of her pinky finger. The press of a button enlarges it so that it fits snugly in her palm.
"Abigail, do you know what this is?"
The girl nods. "A Pokéball."
"Good. And do you know what a Pokéball does?"
"It turns Beauford into the red light and puts him inside."
"Not always." Abigail's nose scrunches in confusion. "Beauford goes into his Pokéball because he's been captured. It's full, because Beauford is inside it. Do you know what else a Pokéball does?"
"No."
"If I took another Pokéball that wasn't full, that was empty, I could go out into a forest, or an alleyway, or a cave, and I could find a Pokémon. I would use this Pokéball to catch it. That's how Beauford became part of our family, Abigail. Mommy found him one day and decided she liked him, so she took an empty Pokéball," she holds it up again, makes sure Abby is paying full attention, "and caught him with it. That's the other thing they do. They catch things. Do you understand?"
"Uh-huh."
"So the next time the monster comes, Abigail, imagine a Pokéball. Remember that you're smarter than the monster. Remember that you're stronger than the monster. Throw the Pokéball and catch it, lock it away, so that it can never come out and scare you as long as you live. Can you do that for me?"
"I don't know."
"I'm sure you can, baby. Mommy believes in you."