A/N: Just a short little Shadows of Almia / Pokemon Uranium one-shot while I work on my longer Uranium stories... Kellyn just breaks my heart so badly... :'(
Contains end-game spoilers for Shadows of Almia; no spoilers for Pokemon Uranium, as the story of Kellyn losing his wife is pretty much the first thing you experience in the game.
Keep smiling.
Ever since the day he graduated, he never forgot that advice (how could he forget, after all – he tended to remember just about everything). I work for the smiles of Pokemon and people... the words he carved into the Pledge Stone at the Academy, embedded as permanently in his memory as they are in the stone.
Keep smiling.
He did, for many years. Even after Operation Brighton, even after nights upon nights of countless nightmares of being swallowed into the void by Darkrai, of those shadows reaching into his soul and dredging up his worst fears and his darkest memories... he still managed, day after day, to keep smiling. Some days were harder than others; some days he had to force himself to pretend everything was fine, even when nothing felt fine any more.
Keep smiling.
He moved to a new region, but even then things didn't change. Almost every night, the horrible nightmares... trying to push onward through the memories and the Missions and the effort of trying to manage a new Ranger Base – one that needed insane amounts of restructuring to bring it to any semblance of regulation...
And then he met her.
Suddenly, he didn't have to remind himself to keep smiling. It just... happened. Even on the darkest days, as long as she was there, then none of the memories of the past or the stress in the present mattered. As long as she was there, everything was fine, even if it didn't seem like it at times. As long as she was there, he had a reason to smile.
Until, one day... she wasn't.
Keep smiling.
Suddenly, those words he'd lived by all his life meant nothing. Instead of a mantra to live by, they became a mocking taunt echoing around his head.
Keep smiling...
Keep smiling...
Keep smiling...
He tried... but he just couldn't anymore.