A/N: This is one of the darker things I've written. It was just a little theory I have, so I wrote this a while back. My stories are usually fluffy and upbeat, so I guess this one's different...The actual written structure of it is weird, but I kinda wanted to post it. So here it is!
It's like a theory on what if the manga characters became like the game characters? I think?
Anyways, rant over! Read on!
-Silvia
Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon or anything else.
How We Changed
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Little boys, little girls—little soldiers at play. Did you think, that after all these wars, you could just get away?
...
They weren't invincible.
It was so stupid—so incredibly stupid—for Red to think that maybe they would make it out unscathed. He knew about the nightmares. He had them himself. He knew about the fears and tears.
He also knew that he and the rest of the dexholders were stronger for everything they'd gone through. They had been through hell and back, through wars, and they could still smile. They could still love, and he knew that too well.
But when they laid down their swords, they weren't okay. They could still be hurt and their hearts could still be pierced.
Blue. Screaming. Crying. Running out the door. Telling Red to call her "Leaf"; the name she'd lost when she was kidnapped by the Masked Man.
Green. Haunted by his fights with Blue. Crueler than ever before, receding into his gym, hardly speaking to any of the other dexholders.
Crystal. Gone, gone far where no one could ever catch her. Always moving, always working, it seemed. Hiding from the people who could make her heart grow and glow, or tear it to pieces.
Gold. Sharp and arrogant. Stung by Crystal's abandonment, her last words to him. Determined to win. Desperate behind his flaming, raging front.
Silver. Desolate. Alone. Distant from the girl he'd called a sister, the one he'd called a friend. Brawling Gold whenever they crossed paths. Silently slinking through his travels, on his own.
Ruby. Hardened, haughty, unbalanced. Bitter. Wanting to apologize to Sapphire, but arguing more every time he saw her.
Sapphire. With boiled blood and brutish blades of fights. Boxed away were her once-fond feelings, carefully hidden was her heart. Secretly longing for a love that was drowned in hate.
Emerald. Ran away when things started to break apart. No one had heard from him.
Wally. Overtaken by his disease and buried six feet beneath the ground. Forgotten. Or, rather, chosen not to think about.
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum. Sinnoh dexholders. They'd had their time to be heroes. They'd had their time to be friends. But they'd drifted, their nightmares marring their minds.
Black. Disappeared. White. Heartbroken.
Cheren and Bianca. Living. Comfortable, miserable. Far from White, far from the other dexholders and the way things were.
Yellow.
No. He couldn't bear it.
There had been no shield when the aftermath had come, because nobody expected it. No warning when the friendship, or even the love, they'd grown together had twisted into pain. Because they really thought that the worst was over. That any future dexholders could take care of the rest. That they could travel and be together, and do all the things they had wanted to before. But what they had seen and done was dark in their hearts. What had happened to all of them, and what they had done to each other, could not be forgotten.
Yellow.
No.
Green and Blue spiraled apart, and no one had expected it. They had been dating for more than a year—in absolute, complete, total, true love, as Blue described to Red many times—when the fighting started. They were both changing. Blue walked out. Green let her. They didn't speak.
It was still a slight surprise when Crystal battled demons, because she was Crystal and that didn't happen to her. Something happened between her and Gold. It must have. They weren't together, but everyone knew they wanted to be, until she left to travel the world and do research and leave everyone behind.
Then there was the issue of Lyra. She looked rather similar to Crystal, but only in the way she dressed and that she did her hair in two ponytails. Otherwise, they hardly looked alike, and acted completely different. She was a trainer, and befriended Gold and Silver (separately; they couldn't see each other with out battling and or bringing up the heart-wrenching subject of Crystal, gone, gone away.) Red wondered if somewhere out there, Crystal knew about Lyra. If she was upset. If she even cared.
Similarly, he wondered where Emerald was, and how the small boy was doing. No one knew, but they were all pretty certain he was alright. He was Emerald, after all. He'd left when things had started getting bad with Sapphire and Ruby.
It was after Wally had died. The harsh reality of it made both Sapphire and Ruby want to close themselves off. If they didn't get close to anyone, they couldn't be hurt when those people were gone. It was a lesson they had learned well from their seniors. But the two of them needed love, and needed each other. And yet they pushed each other away, angry and confused and hurt and alone and so very volcanic.
The Sinnoh trio's disaster seemed mild, but probably wounded them just as much. They were the closest of friends, until the fear took hold and they drifted. They probably longed to see one another, to be three parts of a working machine again, but none knew how to tell the others that.
Unova became a mess. Black disappearing in a way that was different and dangerous and possibly deathly, unlike the others' running away. White was lost without him. Cheren and Belle were isolated from it all.
That was how it had happened.
Mostly.
But before each of them crumbled in turn, before splitting and arguments, before Crystal leaving and even before Green and Blue's fights, there was death.
The very first death, the very first thing that sent them tumbling like dominos. The very first shock of cold rain after the warm, sunny days they'd felt.
No, no, no.
It was always on his mind.
For just a bit less a year, he had been so, so happy. His heart full of love, his eyes seeing the smiling faces of his friends, his mind far from the terrors he had been faced with before.
But dark death had slammed a freezing fist down, shattering it all.
The day was so normal that he hardly remembered anything about it before he got a call. He needed to come. They had found a body.
No.
He wouldn't believe it. He wouldn't dare. But when he got there, when he saw her, bloody, broken, it was so real. She so suddenly taken from her life that her eyes were still open and wide and without that beautiful light that had been present mere hours before. Shocked that she died, shocked that she wasn't invincible—because she had faced so much worse and lived.
He had woken that morning with her wrapped in his arms. He had planned to see her later, to eat dinner or walk or do something normal and happy. They had been together for almost as long as Green and Blue. But she was gone, gone, gone.
No.
Yellow. Dead.
Lying in a pool of her own dark blood, which stained her golden hair. Amber eyes wide and blank. An empty shell of someone once so incredible, so beautiful inside and out.
Red. Shouting. Crying. Holding her tightly until Green and Blue appeared at the scene and pulled him away. Clutching her hand until Blue closed her eyes and sobbed, "Let her be, Red. Let her rest."
But he hadn't held her tight enough before. He hadn't kissed her enough. He hadn't told her just how much she meant to him, because words couldn't describe it.
"I can't let her go!" he'd yelled, and Blue flinched. "I love her!"
Those were the last words he'd said.
The funeral. The black clothes, the tearful eyes, the pitying remarks. The gloomy faces of his friends, on the dark day that they had buried the brightest girl they knew. It shouldn't have been that way.
And then the mountain. He left without telling anyone. He reached its peak and he stood there, and he stayed there.
It felt childish, at first. Hiding away when he was upset. Wanting someone to find him and pat him on the head and tell him he should come down. Well, Green came—and told him how Blue ("Leaf") left him. Red decided to stay on the mountain on his own. Training, thinking, waiting. Never alone; he had his Pokemon—who at first were worried but then became content with their new home—and his visitors.
Green came. Gold came. Heck, even that Lyra girl came. She was the one always spreading rumours about the mysterious, unbeatable champion on Mount Silver. He never spoke a word, and after a while, began to wonder if he even could anymore.
Every dexholder that bothered to climb to the summit would battle him, lose, then talk to the silent, emotionless wall that he had become. It was how he found out about all of the dexholders and their disasters.
Silver came. Ruby came. Sapphire came. The Sinnoh trio came all together, then later separately. White traveled all the way to Kanto, just to climb and talk one of the very first dexholders. She didn't fight him. She just talked to him (or at him.)
Wally had never been able to come. Emerald had once or twice, but never again after he ran away.
Blue came only in name. ("Blue wishes you would come down," Silver said every time he appeared on the mountain. But it was more for the tradition; Silver had stopped seeing Blue as well. He didn't want to go out to the Sevii Islands and meet her parents. It would hurt him too much seeing his sister so happy without him, to hear people call her "Leaf". Silver really said it because he wanted Red to leave the mountain.)
Gold never asked him to leave Mount Silver. It seemed Gold understood, on some level. But he still hiked up there and battled and chatted, trying to hide just how much pain he was in. Visiting Red became something of a tradition to a lot of the dexholders. Something of a strange holiday, like he was some relative who lived out in the middle of no where, who they wanted to see more but it was too much trouble to. In a way, it was that. He got other challengers too, but he never tired of seeing the faces of some of his friends again, even if the news they brought was dismal. Even if he just couldn't come down, because things were too shattered that he'd cut himself on it all. And because he had lost the love of his life and couldn't bear to be reminded of what could have been. On the mountain, he wasn't all that sad. High up, he felt closer to her. The painful memories were distant and not so heartbreaking. Her voice was in the wind, her heart was with his.
And last Christmas Eve, as he was preparing his little holiday rituals with his Pokemon, he was surprised to see a figure through the fog in the distance. A challenger had never come on Christmas before. A voice called out, "Senior Red!"—a girl's voice. And, judging by the title, one of the dexholders. It couldn't be Sapphire, who always came with guns blazing and lots of loud proclamations. Platinum's voice wasn't that girly and frantic-sounding. But it wasn't Lyra or White's voices, he didn't think. And as she got closer, he realised just who had finally come.
It was Crystal.
She hugged him on sight, and was trying to act strong, but broke down into tears within minutes. He brought her inside the mountain, where he was staying and they were sheltered from the wind and snow. She told him, then, what she had been doing for the past year or two. All the places she had gone, all the things she had seen, and all the regrets she dragged behind her. He couldn't believe so much time had passed. When he was still silent, she said, "So it's true. You really don't speak anymore." She paused. "I'm…I'm sorry. About what happened to her."
Everyone was sorry, but somehow it meant just a little more from a girl who had heartlessly disappeared. What everyone failed to consider was that her heart was broken too. As he had suspected, she knew about Lyra. She knew mostly everything about what happened (someone must have told her, but it obviously wasn't Gold or Silver.) And she poured her lamenting out to him. It ended up, as most conversations with him did, feeling like a one-sided conversation he just happened to be there for. But for Crystal, he nodded, and maybe his blank eyes conveyed something for once. Maybe because he had just an ounce of hope for her.
Because by the end of their "chat", she was saying, "Maybe I should just go back. Maybe I should just apologise. Admit I was wrong and finally tell Gold and Silver just how much I need them."
He nodded. She bid him a Merry Christmas, and left with tears in her eyes. She left in the direction of Johto.
It was then that he wondered if maybe things could change again, for the better. If Crystal worked things out with her friends, if she told Gold that she was wrong and had missed him and had loved him for so long, then maybe others could follow her example. Silver could open himself up, to his old friends, and to new people like Lyra. Green could accept his catastrophes and move on. Blue could realise the friendships she had thrown away, and reclaim them. Ruby and Sapphire could admit they were both idiots and be happy together. They could all bring Emerald home. The Sinnoh trio could reconnect. They could search for Black. White could have closure.
Red had always imagined a future just as dark as what had happened. He imagined finally speaking, telling a young trainer or someone just what had happened, saying, "That's how we changed." But maybe that young trainer could be the child of a dexholder. Maybe if everyone else fixed themselves, he could come down from the mountain.
(But that child could never be his. He had found his one true love, and she had been stolen from him, and he wouldn't love anyone else the same way. Someday, he could be with her again; he just had to wait.)
Maybe his friends would fix themselves. Maybe he would leave the mountain. But he didn't know what the future held, just as he hadn't ever before. He'd never known what would happen to him in the battles he fought as a dexholder, nor the tragedies that had occurred after. He would just have to wait and see if his friends' broken hearts could be patched up again.
His heart, though, was frozen. One day, when he met Yellow again, that ice would melt. He would speak. He would be with her.
Until then, he couldn't know what would happen. Until then, he would wait on his mountain.
That's how we changed.
...
Little boys, little girls—little soldiers at play. You can patch your broken hearts again, but you'll never be the same.
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