A/N: So I really don't write much, but man do I love character analysis, and man do I feel like people don't talk about James' shit enough. The boy is a neurodivergent wreck and I intend to bring that to light. This fic is basically just snapshots of moments throughout the anime that I read too much into-everything PG in this fic is taken straight outta the anime with dub dialogue in tact. The only slight modification is that I personally believe James went back home in between splitting off with Jess at the bike gang and running away again to join TR, so there's some references to that, too. Forgive how piss poor I am at writing sex. Oh, and obviously major tw for sexual assault and abuse. In no way to I want to paint that shit in a positive light-just want to tell it how it is. Make sure you're in a good place before you read. Get a hot drink. Do some breathin'. Thanks!

The boy in the photo is not me.

His eyes are so much brighter, his smile untainted, and kind. He knows not real hurt, real pain. He's yet to feel the suffocation of what his life will soon become. A weight that leaves you hunched over and cradling your sides in a sick attempt to keep yourself together, to keep your guts from falling out your mouth, to keep your head from splitting open and painting the wall with dark grotesques.

The boy in the photo does not know yet what it is to jolt awake under the stars gasping, crying, thrashing. The boy in the photo does not know that time travel exists, but only in a backwards spiral.

"This kid looks a lot like you." She muses, the sentence lilting off her blood red lips.

The boy in the photo is not me.

My heart and head work as an oxymoron.

Sometimes, I remember it all. Every painstaking detail. The color of her dress, the fabric and seams sewn perfectly, not a stitch out of place. Her voice, the sound of impending hell, the sound of anxiety. Doppling in and out of my ears, knowing that with each step closer she takes, I am one second closer to pain. A voice like the siren on an ambulance, or a firetruck, or an evacuation notice. It doesn't matter how far away it is or how many times you've heard it spread across a lifetime-somewhere, some horrible disaster has happened. Something or someone has been destroyed by a wicked force.

The driveway of my childhood home blurs together and the colours turn to running paint as the world around me disappears. My friends are talking. All I hear is syllables. Out of the corner of my eye I see the garden that painted grass stains on the knees of that stranger in the photograph. Everything spins again, and I'm not walking anymore. I am stagnant. I am frozen. My lungs scream, my muscles spasm, my voice catches. I am the boy in the photo, now, collapsing jerkily into the perfectly cropped lawn, tears streaming down my face and leaving sick trails over the powder covering my whole body.

Time jerks forward. We are older now, she and I. She reaches a perfectly manicured hand out and roughly flips me over onto my back, dusting the spores off my face as she caresses it. All I can do is shut my eyes, my lids vice grips. Her skin is too soft, her touch too gentle, it betrays the person she is underneath, and I feel sick. I feel so sick. Her lips are cold against my own, against my face, my neck, my body. Hands trail across my chest and downward, and my eyes are shut so tight I'm seeing stars. As much as they can while I lay there paralyzed, my shoulders heave.

"Hush up now, James," She sings to me. "It's not polite to cry when a lady's so generously offerin' herself to you like this."

I choke harder, and when I open my eyes, I can't see her face. That's the oxymoron, you see. Everything else is painfully vivid and sweltering, but even trapped in the snakepit of my memories, her face is not there. Her voice is there, her presence, her hands, her hands, her-

"You're not lovin' me proper," I can't move. I can't breathe. I can't speak.

"...let me show you the correct way."

Time travel exists. I inhale. I come back. My friends are talking. All I hear is syllables.

I fade in and out of reality like a ghost haunting the home I grew up in.

I'm floating above my body and everything I touch turns to static. There's calloused hands gripping my arms and pawpads tapping at my legs, and I wonder if I will ever set foot in this house without shackles of some kind anchoring me to its hallowed halls. The syllables continue and my ears are a camera with broken focus. Blurring, sharpening, blurring-

"...and here she is…"

Blurring.

"...be your devoted and loving wife…"

Blurring.

"...educate you in your duties as a gentleman of property."

Sharp.

Cold blue eyes peer into me and I've been shot, I'm bleeding out, everything is screaming and fuzzy static, my ears are ringing. I wail. I wail like a pokémon stranded in the woods that knows its about to die. My heart is falling out of my throat. I didn't want to remember. I didn't want to remember.

The blessing of forgetting that face, even when so much else carved itself into me. It leaves me. It leaves me and fear and despair take its place.

I want to turn, instinctively, I want to cling to Jessie and know that her arms will cradle and protect me from all the bad in the world. My hands tremble. My neck stays locked. Underneath everything, I am a coward. I can't bring myself to look at her.

Did some part of me know? I agonize. Did some part of me remember her face? Is that why? Is that why I hovered around the angry girl with with flaming pigtails like a broken satellite? Do I really hate myself so much?

I breathe in, and the oddish is nowhere to be found, but I feel its spores in the air, swimming around me, obscuring all, paralyzing and choking me from the inside out.

Is no part of what I love safe from Her?

Jessebelle laughs, her pursed lips weapons and her eyes a frigid, dark sea.

Is no part of me safe?

Fire paints the sky around me and I pull my best friend into freedom. There's music in her voice when she says my name and oh god , her laugh. Her laugh grows flowers in my heart. My gaze falters, my cheeks burn, where have I been all day? Where was I? And why am I here, now?

Eye contact eludes me. It always has. Just another thing my parents told me was wrong with me-his hands move too much when he's excited, his eyes never stay on yours, he's far too quiet, have you seen how obsessed he is with those metal bits of garbage?!-but I start, and then I can't stop looking at her. My eyes are unmoving.

Jessie laughs again, her cherry lips a sanctuary and her eyes a vast, open sky.

They could pass for twins to a stranger. I am not a stranger. I am standing next to a beautiful girl, and I feel like I've done something so wicked by thinking about her even in the same hypothetical as the one who has hurt me to the point of shattering. The orange sky casts a glow around Jessie that renders her ethereal, her hair a comet trail behind her. The world is beautiful, the open road stretching out before us is beautiful, she is beautiful. She looks only at me.

It hits me all at once that I never want this moment to pass. It hits me all at once that I am in love with her.

I am not the boy in the photo. My memories may shackle me, but I am still free.

My gloves are dampening from wringing out the washcloth, and I probably should've taken them off, but my right mind has packed its bags and my hands move on their own, now. I lay it on Jessie's temple and worry surges through me. She coughs harshly and I can feel the heat radiating off of her-I've never seen her so weak.

She stirs, and Meowth and I tense forward in anticipation. Her gaze is half-lidded and bleary-eyed, dazed beyond all belief. I watch her struggle to move, and when she cannot I see a helplessness I've never witnessed from her bubble up into her expression. If I didn't know her better, I'd think she was about to break down.

"Careful!" I jolt, a little louder than I mean to say. I quiet myself. "You're still paralyzed right now, Jess."

"P… pa… ra… ?" Her voice is so hoarse it's nearly a whisper.

"Ya fell face-foist into a vileplume," Our companion explains. "It blasted ya with a stun spore-point blank!"

She grits her teeth, but her eyes aren't nearly as resolved as I'm used to seeing them. I reach out and brush a stray lock of hair away from her brow.

"You've got a fever. It's pretty bad."

Jessie shuts her eyes and sighs, resigned.

The day drags on, and the two of us care for her the whole time, fulfilling every request she manages to communicate to us. I don't know what she's saying when I lose myself again. I just know I'm looking at her matted hair and weak eyes and shaking hands, and the world starts to melt away. Jessie disappears with it, like flower petals blowing off in the wind-and in her place is that boy from the photograph. His green eyes are just as weak, his cheeks just as flushed. He sits up, sipping ravenously at his tea as if he's never drank a thing in his life. More tears spill from the corners of his eyes. His tongue is burning, but he's smiling through it when he sets the empty mug down on his bedside table.

Time travel.

Reality slams into me like a giga impact. The boy is gone. Jessie is where he once was. The lavish mansion's walls phase into a weathered cabin's, and the scent of starch and herb exits the air. My words tumble out of me.

"I… just remembered!" Both of them turn to me. "As a tiny tot, I breathed some stun spore, and my dear old grand-papa made me a potion out of boiled Salveyo Weed that he got from the bottom of the lake on his estate."

Jessie's eyes burn with annoyance, and guilt completely wrecks me before she can even speak. I let her suffer all day at the hands of something I should've known like the back of my hand.

"Why couldn't you have taken your little trip down memory lane sooner?!"

I realize it feels more like a contrivance someone planted into my head than a memory, really. It was never there, before.

I stay quiet. I cannot answer her.

I used to love grass types, but somewhere along the way, I start getting chills around them.

When I steel myself and throw the ball at the weepinbell staring me down, I do it because I can hear Jessie's voice in the back of my mind telling me I need to toughen up. Stop crying so much, stop whining so much, stop spacing so much. She's right-she's always right. I promised her long ago I would never let her down, and I am so much stronger than the memories that insist on plaguing me. I am so much stronger than lashings on my back and spores on my face and in my lungs and under my skin, under my skin, under my-

Breathe.

Inhale.

Exhale.

You are not there. You are here.

My pokémon relaxes in my gloved hands and with what little its gaping mouth can muster, it smiles at me, enamoured.

Then, with breakneck speed, it lunges forward and I shriek helplessly despite my best efforts to be strong. My whole body trembles. I wait. I wait for the paralysis, I wait for the caged feeling, I wait for Her to waltz out of my memories and back to the forefront of my reality, I-

I open my eyes. Endorphins run from my scalp down to my toes. It feels like a sunshower.

Weepinbell chews gently at my head, a toothless massage to soothe the pain that stretches so deeply across every bit of me. Tenderly, I pull it off, my hair sticking up in all directions.

Its eyes are beady, but not blank. They're warm with love, and I see a kindred spirit within them.

Some day, I will be ok.

If I keep my back turned, I won't have to face it. I'm being literal, but what about that isn't metaphorical for who I am at my core?

The whip cracks, and I feel my grip on the present slipping. I want to run. I want to run. I can't be here, I can't be around this. Jessie's voice is domineering, and it rings out over the sound of the pokémon in the forest, over the rushing water, on the wind, past the stars, in my ear-

"Not acceptable!"

I feel as though I am trapped in a photograph that is slowly being set on fire. The edges of it are burning and I am in the middle. It closes in on me. Flames lick my feet. Everything is going from embers to ashes, I stare harder at the river-

CRACK

"Not at all! Pay attention! I need to put on a flashier and more elegant performance to become Queen, isn't that right?!"

Meowth's response is tired, and weak, and when I quietly peer over my shoulder in sympathy, he singles me out.

"Pal… you gotta help…"

I swallow hard, my face turned downward toward him and unmoving. I can't bear to look up at her. Not when she's holding that torture device. What if it's not her I see? What if it's not the face of the woman I love? I never want to look at Jessie and see anyone other than Jessie. She doesn't deserve that. There's sobs stuck in my throat, and for once in my pathetic life, I force them back down.

My voice comes out low and shaking ever so slightly, from a darkened place in the recesses of my soul that I cannot identify. "Leave me out of this."

Turning around, I exhale deeply and focus my spinning mind on the running water in front of me. The lotad in the distance, floating along the current. My hands grip my fishing rod, then loosen. Grip, loosen. I fidget, feeling the terror that was scratching at my insides start to subside. The water trickles onward. I count the sparkles the sun paints on its surface. The feeling of the grass beneath me. The mist that lifts off the river and brushes my hands, the-

"Now get up, pronto!"

CRACK

-basement walls, the chains on the doors, the shackles, the machines. The echo of her laughter bouncing off the inside of the room like a phantom toying with me, a sound that penetrated everything I was. Blood pooling around me, my back raw with the scars of a failed heir, of a son who should've been more, of a defiled and dirtied blemish on the face of every generation that ever set foot in that house. Spores dusted on the walls, my clothes, whatever heart was left inside of me. Her hand on my collar, pushing me against the wall, her tongue in my mouth and her teeth on my neck and her hands wandering and her singsongy voice telling me I'd never be a good enough lover if she had to keep turning me into a ragdoll to take me into her bed. Her, raising her whip again, cracking it on the floor next to me, demanding that I get up and look her in the eyes and love her like a lady should be loved-

"Yes!" I wail at her, my back straightened, my form better, more proper-

As soon as the word is choked out of me, I hear the river again.

I can't tell Jessie. She can't know that my body has been tainted. She's never wanted anything less than perfect from anyone. She can't know I'm sullied in a way that no amount of washing will ever get rid of.

Some day, I will be okay.

The stars look like a painted canvas above us, and when she kisses me, I am Adam being touched by God.

Jessie's rough hands are tracing the most uncharacteristically gentle lines through my mussed hair, and her lips are softer and sweeter than anything I've ever known. I feel like there is champagne bubbling in my stomach, warming every part of me, and whenever we break the embrace and I look into her eyes, I'm reminded that I'm home.

My hands glide up the small of her back and I rub tiny circles under her tank with my thumb. She smiles into the kiss and brings her arm down around my neck, fingertips ghosting my hairline. Her lips leave mine, and she slowly looks up at me with half-lidded eyes, expectantly. For all her confidence-for the absolutely domineering spirit she is-Jessie is a romantic at heart, far more sheepish in love than she would ever like to admit.

The voice that comes out of me is just as sheepish, a little bit husky, a little bit wanting.

"Jessica," I whisper. "do you… want to…?"

Her nervous smile turns into a playful grin, and her answer to me comes in the form of a weathered manicure tangling my hair and a beautiful woman kissing me much hotter and heavier than she ever has before. A teetering grip awkwardly pulls her uniform over her head, then her tank, and before I unhook her bra she flat-out laughs and pulls my tops off about ten times as quickly as I did hers. We're smiles and giggles and skin on skin, warm and basking in each other and hopelessly infatuated.

I move my kisses from her lips, to her neck, to her breasts, taking one in my mouth, and when she throws her head back and whimpers quietly in ecstasy I forget my own name. Thankfully, that's the next thing out of her as I work my tongue across her. She repeats it like a mantra, she moans it like it's going out of style.

Her skirt slides off and the satin and lace beneath it soon follows. On her back, with the stars shining in her eyes, and her hair a magenta pool around her, she glows like she's celestial. I tenderly wrap one of the stray blankets around her and trail more kisses down her navel, swimming drunkenly in her small wanton moans as they wash away every regret I carry alongside me. My tongue presses into her, and the cry it elicits fills me with a confidence I so rarely get to grasp. In between teasing her, I inquire.

"Bet you never thought we'd wind up here, huh Jess?"

Azure eyes slowly flutter open, her mischievous smile glued to her face.

"I had an inkling, but I- oh god, yes, James… -had to make sure you were worthy."

"Mm," I hum, raising my head slowly. "I'm still not."

She laughs. My heart pounds.

"But you know- a-ah~ " She whispers. "...maybe I should reward you for how… nn … chivalrous you're being…"

"Oh?"

Jessie moves her hand from my hair down to my cheek, her skin cool against mine. Like an ekans creeping up on its prey, she slowly pulls herself inward, and me upward, and rolls me gracefully onto my back. Her breath hot on my neck, her eyes sizing me up and never leaving me, she cups my face and whispers into my ear-

"Let me show you how it's really done."

The world shudders and breaks away. My blood runs cold.

I'm paralyzed.

Her hands wander. I'm paralyzed.

She tears at my belt buckle. I'm paralyzed.

My eyes are glued shut. I'm paralyzed.

I open them. It's Her. It's Her. It's Her. She's here, she's found me, Her hands are defiling me again, Her spirit is polluting me, in the darkness I can see Her eyes hungrily taking me in.

Where is Jessie, where is Jessie, where is Jessie, where-

"James?"

Paralyzed. Paralyzed. Paralyzed.

"James!"

My teeth grit together so hard I feel them splintering into nothing, if I shut my eyes, maybe she'll go away, if I play dead, maybe she'll unhand me, if I just-

"James, wake up! Snap out of it!"

Jessebelle's wraith creeps back into the darkness, vanishing in a cloud of blackened smoke. The light of the waning moon blinds me. Tears roll down my neck and festoon me in goosebumps. The cradle of trees spins nauseatingly around me. In my peripheral, Jessie wraps the blanket around her shoulders and nervously surveys me.

"James," she says, clearly, levelheaded. "Do you want to stop?"

Stop? Stop. Stop…

My voice doesn't come easily to me.

"...I'm allowed to stop?"

I catch her eyes in that moment, and she looks as if her heart is broken. I agonize. I've gone and done it now, the failure I am, the coward I am. No, you idiot, of course you're not allowed to stop! What you want means nothing! This is about being good enough, not your hurt feelings! My thoughts skid to halt when I realize I recognize what's really in her eyes. I've seen that look only once or twice before-it's the look she gets when she knows someone's pain on a deeply personal level. It always starts out looking like she's been knocked backwards in a moment of weakness, but only a moment.

The hurt in her gaze turns to a blazing fire.

"Who did it," she spits venom. "Who brainwashed you?"

The answer doesn't come. I bury my head in my hands and weep. I get the feeling she knows the answer. I don't want to speak.

"Come here, you…" She whispers, and drapes the blanket over both of our shoulders, her arms wrapping around me and sheltering me in their strength. I don't speak. I just sob. Jessie strokes my hair, leans my head on her shoulder, and talks in a voice I've never heard before. When people hurt her friends, she is claws sharpened and teeth bared and foaming at the mouth. Right now, though, she is maternal, and forgiving, and alleviating, and it hurts me to hear the twinge of guilt under it all.

"You're here now, you're here."

The cracks that map across my aching frame begin to fill with warm nectar.

"You won't feel this way forever. Some day, it'll be easier to breathe."

I get the feeling that she isn't just speaking to me. I don't like how the thought sits with me. No one should ever know the things I've known. I deserve them, yes. But not her.

"Some day…"

She exhales, and the glow of moonlight illuminates only the outline of her. She smiles upwards, her spirit extending its reach to the stars above.

"...some day, you will be okay."

Her voice quivers. I love her. I want to break into her past and cuss out every person who ever hurt her. It's only then that I realize that she would do the same for me.

Some day, I will be okay.