DARK BLUE
This story is dedicated to Kayasuri-n.
"Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime."
—Maximilien Robespierre.
If they told you how they met—and they have told no one this, because they are each other's secret—they would tell you different stories. She would claim that she found him on the brink of starvation, his fur matted and crawling with lice, his eyes yellowed from disease. She would claim she nursed him back to health, her kitty, her Whitey, and that she'd hidden him from her parents as best she could. That was her story.
He would claim that he saved her from a group of teenage boys, drunken boys who'd thought "playing" with a psychic was a good idea. She'd only been able to move pencils and make sparks at the time, and even if she'd been capable of more, she hadn't been willing to do harm to the boys bruising her arms. Her parents had told her horror stories about retaliation, telling her to ignore the bullies, to shout for help, to go to the adults instead of striking back. "Carrie was killed," they reminded her. But Mewtwo hadn't had any qualms about taking a leaf out of Carrie's book and slicing the largest boy's arm off. Or whatever it was that Carrie had done. That was his story.
The truth was a mix of the two: the girl had been driven into an alleyway, the alleyway where the escaped clone had been sleeping under a pile of newspapers and other refuse. He'd known another human girl once and, remembering her, had saved this one the only way he'd known how.
Afterwards, she hadn't been scared of him. She should have been, but she wasn't. Instead she'd crouched over him, grabbed him beneath the arms, and dragged him home, singing along the way. It didn't matter to her that her sundress was stained red. That was how their story went.
In the years to come, she'd realize that she wanted to save not only him, but everyone else that she could. Her parents had been wrong, she knew. Sometimes force could accomplish things that talking things out couldn't. So she ignored the wishes of her clan. She rejected the status of a noblewoman, of the Vance heir, of an Indigo League leader. She took up a gun and a badge and never looked back.
He'd made a similar choice. He wanted to protect people—more specifically, he wanted to protect her—but he knew she'd resent him if he hovered over her. He stayed close to her even so; he was the pale shadow sliding through their home, watchful and determined to make sure that she wasn't disturbed. Here she wasn't "Officer Vance" but merely "'Rina," and guarding the latter was second nature to him.
While she was awake, they spoke silently to each other, exchanging thoughts and gestures, but little in the way of touch—not then. While she slept, he drifted from their apartment and onto the streets. He rounded up curs and put down rabid dogs, mostly for her sake, but in part for others too. Her laws couldn't help everyone, he knew. Some of them could only be saved by his. He supposed there had to be some perks to not being human. Though sometimes he wished...
But what did his wish matter? They'd known each other for over a decade, growing and learning together, honing their skills and hearts on one another. Even so, there were lines they didn't cross, lines drawn when his dreams had become feverish and her blood had stained her sheets. They named the elephant in the room Attraction and then prayed it died from neglect. They'd been together for over half of their lives, but togetherness couldn't be between them—not then.
When she was new to the force and still faking the steely exterior she would eventually possess, a man named Lucian was her mentor. He was ten years her senior and a psychic too, though he was less powerful than her. He wore contact lenses that he bitched about anytime he had paperwork in front of him (he would slip books under his desk and read them instead half the time), and he was probably too pretty to be a cop. She was too, but at least she could use it to her advantage. Lucian might well fuck himself over with it. Thugs drooled at the pretty girls and shot the pretty boys. But Lucian managed to make it work, and he taught her more about what it meant to be a cop than the Academy had. And she found herself liking him. A lot.
It was probably inevitable what happened soon after. They worked together for long, stressful hours, usually under the threat of mortal danger. They clicked in so many ways: they were both bookish and psychic and attractive and—well, fraternization wasn't allowed, but the allure of the forbidden was probably what clinched it. After one bust went sideways, they'd taken shots of hard liquor and tumbled into bed. They'd talked afterwards in short, clipped sentences:
"Well that wasn't bad."
"For our first time?"
"Mine, actually."
"...Well shit. You should've said something, Sab."
"My mouth was busy with the kissing part."
"Right. Right."
When she came home the morning after, smelling of alcohol and and sweat and Lucian, Mewtwo didn't say anything. He handed her a bottle of water and some aspirin and that was it. But he closed off his aura to her, which was their equivalent of a cold shoulder. She didn't know whether to be pissed that he was ruining this good thing that had happened to her or feel like shit for upsetting him. She decided on anger because it was easier, less tangled and less painful. But even so, she hesitated when Lucian invited her to his place for drinks later. It was only for a second, but she hesitated.
She might have realized it then. But she believed she was falling for Lucian and her relationship with Mewtwo was...complicated. Too complicated.
Over time, Mewtwo got used to it. He never liked it, but he got used to it. At the very least, Sabrina never brought Lucian home (though Lucian asked her to, because he wanted to meet this roommate of hers), which Mewtwo was thankful for. Yet his stomach churned whenever she came home in the morning, smelling of sour things like vodka and another person's sweat. But what could he possibly do about it? Nothing. Nothing bloodless, anyway, and Lucian was good to her. He was a good man, even with that pesky being-in-love-with-his-student thing.
Mewtwo hated him for that.
And maybe something—some god—heard Mewtwo's thoughts, because Lucian died soon afterwards. He'd tried to take down one of the Lords of the League: one Giovanni Corvi, the Gatekeeper to the Plateau and the suspected Boss of Team Rocket. If that latter identity was confirmed, he could be put away for pokèmon trafficking, corporate theft, unauthorized gambling rings, and other gang—related activities. Lucian had tried to expose him, getting so far as sending in circumstantial evidence...but then he'd been found in the Gambling Corner, a bullet lodged in the base of his skull, and that had been the end of that.
Mewtwo regretted his hatred then—as much as he'd dreamed about it, the man hadn't deserved an execution—but he felt worse for Sabrina. It took her months to crawl out of the pit that Lucian's death threw her into. And when she did, she was no longer faking being made of steel. She was steel, determinedly honing herself into the point of the sword that would cut Giovanni down. She would have her chance sometime later, when the higher-ups decided that her skills—her self-discipline chief among them—outweighed the risks of her emotional investment in the case. It was a heatedly debated choice, a controversial move (they'd lost one psychic; could they afford to lose another?), but in the end, they gave the order to send her undercover.
The night before, she packed her bags and stood in front of Mewtwo, her Whitey, or Yuè to those who asked. He already knew what she was planning, but he had to know what it would entail.
"It's going to be awhile before I come back," she told him. "Months, maybe even a year or more. I can't make contact with anyone on the outside while I'm there. Not my family, not my friends, not even you. You got that? No visits, Mewtwo."
"What about long-distance calls?" He did not mean over the phone.
"If he has any psychics in his group—which he might—they could sense the telepathic line. Until I know for sure, we shouldn't risk it. No calls." There was a pause, heavy and full of what wasn't being said. "Can you get by without me?"
"Yes. I will not like, but I can."
"Good. If you need anything, let my parents know. They're discreet."
"I know." There was another awkward pause. "When will you leave?"
"At four, probably. While it's still dark."
"I see…."
And then Mewtwo tried to cross the line they'd had between them since they were thirteen. He reached out, pressing a paw to her cheek, feeling her shiver, meeting her eyes as she looked up at him. There was a horrible sort of pain and resolve in their red depths. He wanted to make it better...and he wanted to have at least one night with her, in case they didn't get another. But she shook her head, stepping back and away from him. She couldn't start something with him and then vanish. That wasn't fair to either of them. But if she came back...maybe then they could see where that would lead.
"If you don't come back, I will follow you to wherever you might be. Let the Gatekeeper try to stop me."
"That's sweet, Whitey. I'll keep that in mind."
"I mean it, 'Rina. Wherever you might be."
"…I know."
They didn't sleep that night. They didn't say goodbye. And he didn't watch her leave.
She moved into a one-bedroom apartment in the northern district of Viridian City. She dragged in most of her furniture from the street, glowered at the lousy shower (it had low water pressure and even less warm water), and bought the most basic food staples with the account the department had set up for her. She took to wearing earplugs at night, mostly to muffle the loud music and the shouting matches of her neighbors, and cleaned her clothes by hand, eyeing them carefully as they dried on the line outside (she'd dragged her clothes back in once to find some of her panties missing). She applied to housecleaning jobs for a while, making friends with some of the locals as she did. She continued to live like that for a couple months, establishing herself in the area, never alluding to her past except in the vaguest of ways. She never mentioned her roommate and only let herself think about him in the privacy of her home, at night when the darkness hid her face.
Eventually, when she'd learned all she could about scrubbing and had widened her social network to a decent breadth, she began making inquiries into higher areas of employment. Some thought she was mad to want to work in the Maniero dello Pinero, but she was determined, and eventually the head maid sighed and hired her. She dug out her nicer clothes the next day and began working in Giovanni's expansive home. It took weeks before she was allowed into Giovanni's personal wing, and by the time she was, she'd already made mental maps of the manor. She purposefully befriended the servants' children, wanting to learn the secret spots that only they seemed able to find, and she spent many of her hours off with the adults. She situated herself into the manor, and it was sometime in the third month that she glimpsed Giovanni.
It was only a glimpse, but that glimpse was enough to make her thirst for justice burn in her throat. Yet she remained nothing but pleasant as she worked. She could have drawn his attention using a variety of means—her psychic powers would have undoubtedly captured his interest—but those powers were an advantage she was reluctantly to reveal. So she used the skill only Mewtwo and her parents knew she possessed: her singing voice. As she cleaned his chambers, she sung to herself—and sure enough, the sound made the Gatekeeper emerge from his office with a glass of brandy, his head tilted in puzzlement, his eyes gleaming with pleasure.
There would be no turning back now.
"I'm not used to being serenaded to as I work," he told her, fingering the glass. "You have an exquisite voice, my dear."
He wasn't the type to be interested in docile women. She'd learned that much from the other servants. "I wasn't serenading you, sir."
He lifted a heavy brow. "Then who were you singing to?"
She looked at the persian sprawled out near his office door. "Your cat. He's been lulled to sleep, hasn't he?"
"So he has." He grinned and took a sip of brandy. "Tell me, how long have you worked here? I haven't seen you before."
"About three months now, mostly in the other wings."
"I see." He tipped back the rest of his drink and turned away from her. "Well, tomorrow you will come straight here. You are going to be assigned exclusively to this wing. Do you mind?"
The question was rhetorical. Even if she'd wanted to, she couldn't have refused. Fortunately, she had no desire to resist his desire, so she shook her head and said, "Not at all, sir."
"Good. I will see you tomorrow, then."
That was how it went for a while. She cleaned and he listened to her sing, sometimes from the same room and sometimes from his office. Eventually he invited her into his study, pouring her a glass of brandy and asking her questions. Having slammed down harder stuff with Lucian, she had to feign being buzzed as the drinks went on. She responded to his inquiries with pre-prepared answers, giving him a sob story as the hours slipped by: her parents were dead, her boyfriend had been a deadbeat, and eventually she'd left the gambling pits of Celadon for the quiet city of Viridian. She'd cleaned up her life, taking academic courses online and learning skills from several odd jobs. It was mundane and common, that story, but she knew Giovanni would do his best to dissect it and make sure everything in it matched up. In the following weeks, she heard from her contacts in Celadon, who said some scary man was snooping around and should they be worried about him?
She brought their concerns up to him, asking him why he was taking such an interest in her past. "Just making sure you're legitimate, my dear. Nothing more."
Apparently her backstory passed, because one day she was invited into his private rooms. She quickly learned that what other maids said about him was true: "Those who work under the boss, get under the boss." She made an attempt at being coy and hard to get, and then left him with scratches and bite marks, which he seemed to like. It was only when she was home that she allowed herself to go into dry heaves, but she settled her stomach with the thought that this would be a leap forward in her objective. People often let things slip to those they slept with. She would just have to be patient, grin and bear it, and she would gain access to what she needed.
Unfortunately, Giovanni proved surprisingly resistant to giving her information about himself. Weeks passed and then months, and she learned very little about him—except for his tastes as far as sex was concerned. Lucian, she noted to herself, had always been gentle with her. In distinct contrast, Giovanni was something of a sadist, calling her "my dear" even as he bound her up, toyed with her, and left her feeling sore and filthy afterwards. She spent hours afterwards staring up at the ceiling as the Gatekeeper slept, wondering if it wouldn't be simpler to just knife him in his sleep. But that wasn't what she was here for: she was after the information that would put him away. She was a cop, not his jury or judge.
So it went on—and the longer it went on, the more she felt like she was losing herself in her role. When was the last time she'd worn her badge or her gun? When was the last time she'd made a breakthrough on a case and brought a suspect in? When was the last time she'd used her psychic powers or seen her family?
When was the last time she'd spoken with Mewtwo?
Sometimes she ached for him. She wondered how he was. She hoped he was doing alright and that he wasn't crumbling (like she feared she was).
She persisted though, like she always did. Giovanni began to open up about himself and his life, mentioning family members who were asking for attention, or coworkers that were making unspecified breakthroughs. Nothing she heard gave him away, but it was only a matter of time.
He also tended to talk to her when they were in bed together, sometimes giving her orders and sometimes asking her questions. Again, she referred back to her story (which, in some of her dreams and in some of her waking moments, she was starting to believe was true), knowing one misstep would mean the end for her, just like it had for Lucian.
Then, at some point around her birthday (for the first time, she would be celebrating it alone, since "Katrina" celebrated hers in April), he pinched her nipple and asked, "Who do you think about when you're with me?
She could honestly say she thought of no one but him. She could never confuse him with Lucian or with what she imagined Mewtwo would be like. Yet when she told Giovanni she only thought of him, something must have slipped, because he made a dissatisfied noise and said, "No, there is someone. Someone special. What's his name?"
"I'm telling you, there's no one."
"I don't believe you." He pinched her harder, making her gasp. "I'll get his name out of you somehow."
And he certainly did his best to get that name. Yet at much as he pleasured and tormented her, as close as she came to crying out Mewtwo's name as her body shook, she always bit her tongue to keep the word inside her mouth. Sabrina refused to let herself betray him, steadfastly keeping the thought of him locked away. She wouldn't let this side of her life mix with the one she shared with him. Mewtwo was strong, but this wasn't an opponent he could face. She'd keep him untouched. She'd keep him safe.
But her resistance under duress made Giovanni suspicious. Strong-willed as she was, that core of steel was not typically present in most people, and it wasn't justified by her cover story. The conflict came to a head one night when he exchanged his flechettes for a gun, pressing it between her breasts and asking her "one last time": was she sure there wasn't another man she cared for? Was she even who she said she was? Might she be more than some nameless nobody? Could she be a cop? He only asked because there'd been one snooping around a few years ago, and his mother had been brought down by an undercover agent years earlier. Was she truly Katrina the cleaning woman, with a voice as pure and as fragile as glass?
She'd never been in more danger than in that moment, and she felt genuine fear curdling her blood as she stared up at him. She could always rip the gun from his hand (and his hand from his arm, for that matter) with her telekinesis, or, if worse came to worst, she could deflect the bullet or squash his brain inside his skull. She could.
But then her cover would be blown, and she would only be killing him, not bringing him to justice.
So she made a last-ditch effort to keep her cover. She trembled, asked panicked questions, and began to sob: "There's no one else, there's no one else, I swear!" And when he began to squeeze the trigger, she did something she wasn't entirely unused to doing in that room.
She wet his bed. In her terror, it was easier than it should have been.
In response, he laughed and took the gun away. "Alright, Kat. I believe you. Why don't you go wash up? I'll have someone change the linens while you're in there."
She heard him chuckling even after she stumbled, naked and smelling of urine, from his bed and into the adjacent bathroom. She vomited into the toilet afterwards. She remained shaky as she entered the spray of hot water, but as she calmed herself, she mused that even though she hadn't gotten him yet, she'd certainly hooked him. This was a turning point. Things could only get better from here.
In a sense, she was right. He began inviting her to his business meetings, introducing her to his associates and eventually to his friends. She learned their names and their faces, exchanged banter with them and brushed off their advances. The one benefit to being with Giovanni was that he didn't share his does with other hounds, and his friends needed to only be reminded of that to back off. All in all, this stage went more smoothly than the one before it had.
There were some minor hitches, though. At one point, one of her contacts found their way into a party and suggested she might have "flipped," which she supposed she could understand her superiors worrying about. Still, it pissed her off, and it was a near case of security kicking him out and shooting him in the back. She only just managed to convince them to let him walk away, and hoped that would be message enough to her superiors.
She began to gather evidence, meeting with her contacts whenever Giovanni was away on business trips, sharing what information she dared (and never information she'd been told about in private—only what she'd overheard in the meetings). This led to raids which put the Elite and Giovanni on edge, and set off a purge in the Team Rocket ranks. Sabrina witnessed a number of "rats" and "moles" being executed, and always harbored a fear that someday she would be discovered. Yet that didn't happen for a while, not until her superiors decided they had enough evidence—enough to convince any jury, anyway—about who the Gatekeeper truly was.
She was with him and his associates when the sting happened. They armed up when they heard the shooting on the lower level, and soon discovered that psychics were blocking them from teleporting away with a massive barrier. No one would escape this raid. Yet Giovanni was determined to not give up without a fight. When they rearranged the furniture to help barricade the door and give them some cover, she remained at his side, not trembling, now used to being a witness of terrible things. In some display of honor—for he had a code, of sorts—he insisted that she stay behind him. She had no problem with that: she could see everything from here and shoot him in the back if she needed to. To hell with honor; her survival tookpriority.
The gunfight that followed the worst she'd ever seen. Bodies tumbled down and blood and brains were splattered on the walls. Shrieks of pain and fire-filled roars and gunshots rang in her ears. When Giovanni aimed at the man on point, who was busy exchanging bullets with a member of the Elite, she finally tipped her hand. For the first time in over a year, she unleashed her psychic powers, a visceral thrill going through her as the blue energy surged. Bullets halted and fell from midair, guns were ripped from Rocket hands, and pokémon were dragged into unconsciousness. Too late, Giovanni realized the truth. He spun, upholstering his other pistol and aiming at her.
"You!"
For the first time, she let the facade drop, glaring at him and weaving psychic energy around herself. "Yes. Me."
He fired. The energy crystallized into a shield and deflected the bullet. As it buried itself into his thigh, he snarled and fell on one knee in front of her. He glared at her and vowed he would kill her himself someday, slowly and intimately.
She looked down at him and said nothing. Instead, as Giovanni and the Elite were arrested and taken away, she turned to the officer in charge and asked, "May I go home?"
He stared at her for a moment, hesitated, and then nodded. "Go ahead. You'll have to come in later for debriefing, but for now, take a break. We'll call you when we need you."
A weight lifted off her shoulders, even as the exhaustion of the last eighteen months swept over her. "Thank you," she murmured, and then summoned up what remaining energy she had and teleported away.
She reappeared in her bedroom, which was quiet and strangely free of dust. It felt oddly unreal to be there, and her mind was in a haze as she stripped off her clothes and went to take a shower. She scrubbed herself until her skin was raw and then returned to her room, slipping under the covers and closing her eyes. She prayed for sleep. It refused to come.
At some point between waking and dreaming, she heard his voice in her mind, the sound of her name saturated with emotion, the chief ones among them being wonder and disbelief. "Sabrina?"
She said nothing, but she did turn around, needing to look at him, to drink his nearness in. He came to her, sitting down on the edge of her bed and reaching out a paw to her. She welcomed the touch to her cheek, to her wet hair, and let him embrace her, naked and tired and in pain though she was. At some point, she embraced him back, burying her face into his neck and whispering for him to stay.
As if he could do anything but stay after eighteen months without her.
The following year was a different sort of hell. The court cases, which all dragged on for months, took up most of her time, taking her away from the smaller cases her superiors were easing her back into. She was forced to go to therapy sessions, which, she had to admit, were making things a bit easier to handle. She couldn't tell her family or Mewtwo what had happened to her, and she certainly wasn't going to tell her co-workers either. What they learned in court was enough to make them look at her with a mixture of pity and awe. That she was promoted surprised no one, and when Giovanni was put away into the lowest level of the Underground Dungeon—a high-profile facility where not even sunlight was allowed to visit—she was awarded a medal.
She let her parents hold onto it. She wanted no reminders of her time with that man.
The dispersed remains of Team Rocket were troublesome, but after Giovanni, they were nothing she couldn't handle. The fact that her loved ones were all psychics helped to keep her from becoming a paranoid mess. Yet emotionally…even with her trips to the therapist, something was wrong. Before she'd left, she'd been on the brink of beginning a relationship with Mewtwo. But now she couldn't bear the thought of doing so. It wasn't that she didn't want him and certainly not because she didn't love him. But she couldn't bear the thought of being with him right after Giovanni. She hadn't healed enough for that.
Fortunately, one of the higher-ups seemed to understand. Clair of the Dragon Clan, one of the League leaders, invited her to coffee, which ultimately became an invitation back to her place. Sabrina hesitated only a moment before going with her. Once there, they sat on the couch (blue like Clair's hair) and Clair poured her a stronger drink. Sabrina thanked her, using her title, which Clair insisted she drop right then and there.
"You're supposed to relax here, sweet. Drink and have a good time. Don't keep holding yourself so stiffly. You're not going to fall apart if you let yourself go a little."
Sabrina hadn't realized she was holding herself so rigidly, but as Clair told her to turn around and as she began kneading into her shoulders, she found the dragon tamer was right. She wasn't at ease in the slightest—she hadn't been since before she'd left for the operation. Clair spoke to her then, trying to put Sabrina's mind at ease. It didn't help much, but the psychic appreciated it nonetheless.
At some point, when Sabrina's shirt was off and she was on her belly, with calloused fingers digging into the muscles underneath her shoulder blades and tracing her spine, Clair said, "You did good, you know."
"So I keep hearing." She was tired of being praised. She didn't feel good. She felt vindicated where Lucian was concerned ("I got him for you, Luce."), but otherwise, she felt wrong. She felt as if no matter what she did, she'd been infected with something and she couldn't tear open the wounds and let them weep.
Clair went on as if she hadn't spoken. "But what they don't get is what you had to sacrifice to do it. Living in that kind of corruption, breathing it in, letting it inside you, all while struggling not to be overwhelmed by it...it takes something from you. It's not innocence, but it's something close to it that you won't get back." Her hands moved lower, into the small of Sabrina's back, easing an ache the psychic hadn't even realized was there. "That's how it was for me, at least. And it took me a long time before I could move past it."
Sabrina turned over to look at Clair, not caring that she was exposing herself. She'd gotten over that shyness months ago. As she looked at her superior, the dots connected. "You took down his mother, didn't you?"
Clair nodded. "Years ago." Her hands pressed against Sabrina's stomach, tracing under her ribs. "But when the sting happened, I shot her in self-defense." Her eyes glazed over as she remembered the fight. "Her son used that loss to drive himself on. He expanded Team Rocket beyond the gambling rings. And then you came along and stopped him. I doubt Team Rocket will recover this time." She appeared satisfied with the thought.
"And is that why you brought me here? To discuss—"
"No. Not really." Clair reached out, touching the psychic's cheek. "We both achieved something by paying a huge price. I thought that maybe..." But then she seemed to second guess herself, because she asked, "Was there something he didn't take from you? Something you kept safe?"
Sabrina nodded. "The name of my...of the man who lives with me." To call him her roommate or best friend seemed inadequate. But he was not her lover, either, so she didn't know what to call him.
Clair seemed to understand. She nodded and said, "For me, it was the name of my cousin. The thought of him was my safe place—a place she never found her way into. No matter how she treated me, he stayed safe." Fingers brushed through Sabrina's hair then. "Can I let you in on a secret? I think some part of me loved her."
And as much as she despised Giovanni, Sabrina found herself confessing, "I understand that."
"That's why I brought you here. I want to help you move past that."
And there was something desperate in Sabrina then, something that reared up and ached to be soothed. "How? How can you—"
Clair quieted her with a kiss. She was gentle at first, her calloused, burn-scarred hands sweeping over the psychic, rubbing away knots and stroking at places that only another woman might realize would feel so good. It was further into it, when Sabrina was naked and slick, that the older woman shifted tactics. She brought out silk ties and a deer-hide crop, using lighter bondage and hints of pain to help coax Sabrina over the edge. She took nothing for herself that time—that would come later. For now she simply gave Sabrina pleasure, understanding that pure gentleness wasn't enough for the younger woman anymore. Sabrina needed an edge now, and Clair, it seemed, was trying to show her that that didn't have to be a bad thing. Such cravings were acceptable and, in some partnerships, didn't have to be degrading.
Sabrina distantly realized that Clair might be using her to help heal herself, or might even be taking advantage of her. Yet she found the relationship that followed—a brief one, lasting only a few months—helped heal her in a way that therapy hadn't managed. She came to accept herself as a sexual, and more importantly whole person again. By the time she and Clair agreed to go their separate ways (it was a fond farewell, with no hearts broken), she was stable enough to move past the memory of Giovanni and embrace her life again.
She began to visit her parents more, laughing with them at the mischief her cousins made. She began to be more at ease with her co-workers, sharing meals and cursing with them when the all-nighters came. And at home with Mewtwo, she began to sing again: peaceful songs, light-hearted songs, and songs of love. They were not songs of loss and sorrow anymore.
It was Christmas, with a clean blanket of snow on the ground, when Mewtwo revealed what he'd been doing while she'd been gone.
She came downstairs on Christmas morning, blurry-eyed and still in her pajamas (there were white kittens on it—a gift from him from a while back), giving him a telepathic greeting before going to the kitchen to make coffee. Then she did a double-take. There wasn't the bipedal cat-monster she'd grown so used to seeing after twenty years. In her living room was a human man, pale-skinned with a mane of white hair, his eyes almond-shaped and a vibrant, violet hue. He was taller than her by several inches and wiry in build, and he was wearing a loose shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of slippers. He was also wearing a smug, if slightly nervous smile.
"What—Mewtwo, how—"
"My ancestors had many skills. Shapeshifting was one of them."
Long before she'd left, he'd heard tales of the creatures he'd been descended from, the pink and blue felines that had spawned all other pokémon. To some cultures, they'd been the bringers of good fortune; to others, the harbingers of tragedy. To some cultures, they'd been seen as wicked tricksters and to others as guardian spirits. He'd heard tales of their doings, of how they'd helped heroes in some legends, or brought about natural disasters when they'd been crossed. Yet the tales he'd treasured the most were the tales of how the mew had fallen: they'd taken to shapeshifting and to taking human lovers. Their children has possessed their parents' psychic gifts. Hearing those tales, he'd ached to follow in their footsteps...and in the eighteen months she'd been away, he'd succeeded in doing just that.
All so that when she came back, he could hold her with human arms, touch her with human hands, and kiss her with human lips. He wanted to walk out in the open with her, having no reason to hide or feel ashamed. And he wanted to be able to promise her a future with courtship and marriage and children and anything else they both might want.
He could do many things in his true form. But as a human, he could love her in the way they both deserved.
"I have been waiting to show you this for months." He took a step towards her, grinning at her shocked expression as he spoke out loud. "I decided to wait until I could speak as well, though. What do you think, 'Rina?"
"I think…." He could see that her surprise was making her brain short-circuit. "I think it's different. Very different."
"Unpleasantly so?" He stroked her cheekbone then, skin on skin.
She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. "I wouldn't say that. It just might take some getting used to." She looked up at him again. His eyes were the same as they'd always been. "Why did you do this? You know I don't care about what you are."
He smiled again. "I know. But there are things I cannot do in my true form." He cupped her chin and traced his thumb over her lips. "Like this."
He kissed her then, and there was the sense of things finally falling into place, because they'd both wanted this since they were thirteen and hormonal and already in some adolescent form of love. The years afterwards had only deepened the desire, and as the kiss grew more heated, their hands grasping at each other and their moans rising between them, their breaths nearly became sobs. Finally. They stumbled to the couch, ignoring the presents beneath the tree. Finally. They unwrapped each other frantically, fingers tracing scars and tender spots, sable and white hair intertwining. Finally.
It was his first time, she realized as she dragged him onto the cushions, decades-softened leather pressing up against her backside. His gaze was hungry, his mouth hot, his hands fumbling as they explored the panes of her skin, his whole body primed and eager for her. She grinned as she bit at his chest, hooked her ankle around his leg, and placed a hand between his legs and stroked him until his knees buckled. She drew him down against her, guiding his caresses, murmuring just where and how she liked being touched.
He guessed some of the other details: that she liked the feel of teeth at her throat and nails raking over her hips. He moved down her, nipped at her inner thigh, and licked into her until she felt soterribly close. She must have said something, or maybe it was because he couldn't wait anymore, but he heaved himself over her (she admired, for an instant, the taut muscles of his arms and chest) and tried to clumsily slide inside of her.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, pressing him against her. She kissed him on the lips as he made a frustrated sound. She reached down and guided him, and when he slid in, they fit together so well that she couldn't help but moan in appreciation. Then they just moved, his hands bruising her hips, her nails slicing open his shoulders and back, each of them snarling and groaning at the pleasure and sheer satisfaction of it. Close as she was, she came first, her spine arching, her ears ringing, her skin glistening with sweat and psychic sparks which might have burned him. She hadn't quite expected that—she was used to being shoved over the edge, not coaxed, and her powers hadn't gone out of her control before. Perhaps that was the difference between acting wild and letting go?
High as she was on her release, she still moved herself just so, angling him slightly differently and watching him as he went over the edge after her. She watched the way his muscles coiled and listened to his gasp. She felt his full weigh settle on her and felt, psychically, the explosion of his pleasure. He didn't move for several seconds afterwards, content to stay in that position, half on the couch and half off it, perfectly at ease with staying in the afterglow with her.
She found she didn't mind: she liked feeling his breath rolling over her collarbone, and his fingers trailing up her sides, and of him still lodged inside of her. She felt complete in that moment, because while she was a whole person on her own, but there was something about this that made her feel like so more than that.
"I love you," he whispered against her neck, his voice sounding more tender and peaceful than she'd ever heard it before.
She stroked his cheek and kissed his forehead. "Right back at you."
He grinned into her skin. "So what comes next for us?"
"Right now?" She sensed an affirmative. "The presents. And then we're moving this to my bed. It's bigger." She had the king. He had the queen.
"I like that plan," he said with a grin.
She laughed. Within ten minutes they were done with the presents and eagerly moving back to her bedroom, stealing kisses between smiles, with both of them contemplating just what to do next and how to do it. They spent much of the day that way, stopping only to eat. When they finally did go to sleep, with swollen lips and forming bruises and sweet tastes in their mouths, it was well into the early hours of the morning, and there was no chance in hell she wasn't going to be a zombie at work the next day. Albeit a well-laid zombie. The thought nearly made her giggle, as happy and sleep-deprived as she was.
She did, ultimately, wake up to her alarm with a shout. When the machine exploded, Mewtwo jerked awake behind her. He wrapped himself around her and raised a psychic shield. When he saw what had actually happened, he snorted and squeezed her to him, muttering something about not letting her go.
"Someone needs to pay the bills around here," she reminded him.
"Someone has been. And someone else can afford to take the day off from work, just this once."
Between what he was doing with his hands and her desire to sleep until noon, she caved. She called though, like a good employee, and told her boss she couldn't come in today.
Her boss snorted over the phone. "And why might that be?"
She tried to squirm away from Mewtwo, who was doing his best to make her burn three calories. "I…it's…would you stop that? Sorry, sir, not you. I'm taking a personal day to—"
"Take a week."
She blinked. "What?"
"I said take a week. We survived without you before. We can do it again. You just…enjoy yourself, okay? You've earned it."
"Er, alright. Thanks."
She hung up and got the distinct impression that her boss knew exactly what was going on and was laughing at her. Ah well. Let him tease her if he wanted. She was happy and so was the one beside her. Turning over, she cut off whatever Mewtwo was going to say with a kiss, feeling his fingers in her hair and his heart pounding against her ribs. And as the sun rose and burned away the dark blue sky, they reveled in the certainty that they would want for nothing anymore.
Everything they wanted was at their fingertips.
Sometime later, if they told you how they met—and they've told few people this, because they are jealous of their secrets—they would tell you different stories. But if they told you how they fell in love, their stories would be the same.