a/n: originally written sometime in june.

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lionhearts

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we were the children who fought the wars that the adults couldn't

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(i-red)

He was the first, the one who stood defiant in the face of evil and trained and trained and trained until his eyes bled scarlet and his clothes were drenched in the color, his hair blackened to charcoal streaks, his skin turned winter-white.

There are scars that never fade, and he has a big one, a visible one, that stretches diagonally across his stomach; a big gash, twisted into knots, like a massive pair of puckered lips. It's burnt, and angry, and a deeper crimson than Mars, and he keeps it hidden with a black t-shirt and sits on a mountaintop with his team scattered around him in varying states of rumination, because it's not just the trainer that remembers; hell, if anything else, the animals remember best because they fought long and hard and they came out with scars of their own, too. His Charizard has paperthin cuts all along his flank, his Espeon blinks and its gem is cracked, his Venasaur's leaves are wilted, his Blastoise's cannons sometimes hang askew, his Lapras' shell is a patchwork of stones and soil, and the left ear of his companion, his Pikachu, hangs limply from its yellow-furred head.

And then, there are the scars they can't see, hidden away behind the contours of his skull and within the centipede-loops of his brain; wicked things, nasty things, things that would drive others to insanity but which he weathers with a mute stubborness, letting them fester and killing them softly and letting them fester all over again so he can murder his memories repeatedly, without end. There are eyes and a man in suit saying kill him, kill him and frantic nights spent not knowing whether he would live or die, and his mother calling him, asking red, come home, oh god, come home and himself ignoring her phonecalls and trudging into the pits of hell with only his team behind him.

He became the Boy Who Slew A King, and in doing so became a King himself. But he doesn't want it, doesn't want it at all because it's too heavy a mantle to bear (let Lance rule the world from his castle) and so instead he isolates himself from the rest of the planet in a landscape of endless snowfall, where the only thing he sees is the empty white and the only thing that the empty white sees is him.

(ii-ethan)

There's a boy who wears shorts and an orange jacket and a cap and a fake smile. There's a boy who sits under the sun and lets it blind him.

The boy began as a Boy, unassuming, ready, and eager to begin his Grand Adventure. There was a kindly Professor who gave him a starter, a warm, ticklish thing officially known as Cyndaquil but which he took to calling 'Blaze' as an affectionate moniker, the name being derived from its official ability to boost its offensive capabilities when in a Stressful Situation. The boy and his Pokemon traveled through the region, leaving a sweetheart at home, and he fought the Gym Leaders and won his Badges and laughed and grinned and drank sodas in shopping malls, lazing about idly and wondering what to do next.

There's a boy who had to finish what hadn't ever been finished, not really; there's a boy who had to defeat the men and women in the black suits with the red 'R' emblazoned on their shirts, the men and women who were Evil and whom he, of course, had to defeat (finish the damn job) because he was the Hero and where there's a Hero in the story, there is also a Villain. Or, to be specific, four Villains: a man with turqouise hair who sneered and was a cruel, cruel, boasting vainglory, a stooped, lavender-haired man with a penchant for Evil Laughs, a woman decked awash in the color of War (that red) who flicked her fingers and sent serpents flying at his neck, and the Head Honcho, the Main Villain, the Final Boss, that figure who sat on his chair and peered through the window that overlooked cities and ordered Mass Destruction Of All Civilians without even batting an eye. This Main Villain was the newer Evil, and he had features carved out of marble and eyes made of stained glass and he wore a white suit to symbolize Good, but he wasn't good, no, he wasn't good, he was Evil and terrifying and for an infinite amount of time (he doesn't remember how much), the boy was afraid he was going to die.

There's a boy who remembers saltwater and empty caverns, feels the touch of fire on his skin, and rubs his hands absently over those patches of flesh corroded by acid, pitted with scars that stretch deep down and splattered like puddles of muddy water. There's a boy with phantom cuts on his cheeks and fingers, recollections of the night, remembrances of sulfur and chlorine, the sound of his own screaming.

There's a boy who summoned an ocean god, a boy who wanted to be just that: a Boy. But the world wouldn't allow it, nonono, so the boy had to become a Man, and he was much too young to grow old, so now the boy sits in the shade and remembers what he tries so hard to forget and reminisces over a lost childhood.

(iii-may/brendan)

She likes to hold his hand and he likes to hold hers, and she ruffles the top of his ridiculous cap and he chuckles and teases her about her constellations of freckles, thus causing her to blush and punch him in the arm.

They got out better than the rest, they suppose, but that's not true because no one ever escapes. Memory repression is a joke, because memories aren't repressed, they are merely delayed. Nothing that is shoved down will stay down; it all resurfaces like bodies floating up the surface of a bloodstained lake set with swaying hands and grasses, and this is just as true for them as for anyone else.

For them, there was an entire region, and orbs filled with unimaginable, archaic power; remnants of an older age, some theorized, when a Creator placed them deep in the bowels of the earth to serve as remote controls, essentially, like video game consoles you used to manipulate characters on a screen. But these characters were GODS, and they RAMPAGED, and the world was plunging into an APOCALYPSE of its own. There was fire and brimstone, and the seas rose up until they were higher than skyscrapers, and the planet was struggling to decide whether it should burn into ash or drown itself in the murky stretches of the ocean; water and earth, two opposites that clashed and warred with each other. The land, the chthonian Behemoth (Groudon) fought against the sea, the oceanic Leviathan (Kyogre) and oh, there was wailing in the streets and children did cry and the two of them held hands and wept along with them as they walked into the tower, old for millennia, and awakened the great dragon, the celestial Ziz (Rayquaza) and begged, pleaded for it to save them, because they were only children and what could children do in the face of KINGS?

And oh, they fought their way to the tower's precipice, battle-scarred and weary and wanting more than anything for this to end. They fought floating golems borne of archaic magics, imps and hobgoblins encrusted with gems winking maliciously bright, canines and lizards and all manner of creatures, and they were covered in burns and bruises and cuts and scrapes by the time the Ouroboros flew away to Sootopolis and it was just the two of them, struggling to remember (how to breathe) who they were and what they were doing and with only each other for comfort, they found their way back up that winding, twising labyrinth of the brain, that indomitable kingdom of impossible suppression, because nothing is ever repressed, only delayed.

Theirs were scars of the mind, of the psyche; no one ever recovers from meeting a god. But they wore them with all the pride they could muster, and they stepped out into the blinding lights, and they clasped their hands and smiled for the cameras with their pearly white teeth.

(iv-dawn/barry/lucas)

Enter the Golden Trio, comprised of:

A) Dawn-has pretty black hair and flawless skin and a winning smile and eyes caked with liner and rouge to mask the dark circles underneath.

B) Barry-jovial, grinning, flamboyant and energetic. Hyperactive and wears longs sleeves to cover up his arms.

C) Lucas-a scientific mind, rational thinker, and probably the calmest out of the three. Suffers from occasional hallucinations of being stabbed to death by a laughing lady.

These three bore their scars with humility, a kind of faint half-smile and a half-frown mixed together on those countless TV interviews, and they would display them if asked. By then, they had become accustomed to the perpetual games of show-and-tell on the streets, these random actions that were as entertaining as carnival attractions for the onlookers but so much more to them. And not all scars can be seen, mind you, so sometimes, they would have to decline, but they would show if they had to, would even show because they wanted to, because they had to show, had to tell, had to spill out the seas of words bubbling in their throats before they choked on their own spit.

If you looked closely, you would see that Dawn's cheeks were always hollow and that her eyes were always bloodshot, and that Barry's arms were criscrossed with ugly marks the color of coral, and Lucas sometimes jerked back in his chair and pointed at something you (the viewer) could not possibly see, and you could never imagine the things that they had all seen. Not even in your most vivid nightmares can you capture the essence of another's experience; never can you look through another's eyes, because they are them and you are you.

Once upon a time, a girl and her friends set off on a journey. They trekked through Sinnoh's towns and cities, and they went through the usual routine of children who go off on journeys: they fought the Gyms, battled Trainers, and caught Pokemon to fill up the Pokedex and expand their teams. The girl was happy. The two boys were happy. Life was grand, as grand as it could be, and it seemed like everything would culminate in a fairytale ending of some sort or the other.

Once upon a time, the fairytale ending diverged from its set course because there were villains, and these villains had blue hair and controlled vast energy supplies and they were mean, cruel humans, coarse and wicked, vile and wretched, and they were the thorns in what was supposed to be a perfect rose. These villains had a plan, a Big Plan, and that plan was headed by a man with lines already etched in his young face who wanted to destroy the world. The man with the lines in his face reached deep into three lakes, and extracted from them three fairies, and extracted from the fairies a Red Chain by which he would chain the universe and all of reality to his whims.

Once upon a time, a heroine set out to defeat this man, this draconian figure, and her friends followed after her. They climbed to the top of a mountain, their path fraught with difficulty, and there at the summit opened a portal to the Otherworld, a Distorted place of fathomless Chaos, and ruling over this world was a Dragon.

Once upon a time, the girl leapt into the rabbit hole without the help of her friends, who could only watch as the foundations of their universe shook and the pillars bent in the graveyard of the gods and the stars fell out of the sky and suns dimmed in preparation for Armageddon, and the girl, she was so very, very alone.

Once upon a time, the girl almost went insane.

Once upon a time, Alice slew the Jabberwocky

Once upon a time, a boy ran for his life and he couldn't sleep because there were people who were trying to kill him.

Once upon a time, a child with a green scarf lay on a mound of snow, shivering, with blood running down his chest.

Enter the Golden Trio:

A) A girl who still has nightmares of impossible visions and things that she can't even begin to comprehend, things that are beyond the darkness and into something else entirely.

B) A boy who remembers snow and warmth and red trickling down all-too-clearly.

C) A boy who feels that rush, that adrenaline, of knowing that something might just happen to your town, your birthplace, and that you might not be able to stop it in time.

She dreams. He recalls. He sees.

In other words, emotion, willpower, and knowledge, or Mesprit, Azelf, and Uxie, those three little fairies who led them into perdition

and didn't show them the way out.

(v-hilda)

Hers are the most recent, the most vibrant. They are tattoos that stain her skin, and she bites her lip as she runs her fingers over the calloused marks over and over again.

Time won't heal. She's learned this already, it's been drilled into her brain.

On her stomach, just above her navel is a brand marked with fire, drawn with fire, made of metal and heat. It's black, and when she touches it, she can't feel anything there. It's crisp, and it crackles when she touches it. Swirling curliques, black ink, a crest of two intertwining dragons and a shield divided into four pieces.

Above her breasts, a swirling sigil the color of night, and it crackles and pulses with electricity. She feels it hum, sometimes, and when it does, her blood turns to lightning and her eyes to ash and she's inconsolable, rocking back and forth on her bed, curled up in her bedsheets for protection because in those moments, there is no one to turn to; just herself, her scars, and broken-glass memories sticking out of her scalp.

Her scars are prominent. They are there. Sometimes, she rubs circles into her side for hours upon hours. Sometimes, she touches that black mark above her heart and thinks of it as a second one, or maybe a representation of a soul turned into the color of raging, stormy seas by means unknown.

Sometimes, she dreams.

And in those dreams, she remembers the Dragon, calling to her even in its slumber, buzzing in her hands as she cupped it oh-so-gently and drank from the Cup, and filling herself with Power. Yes, in those days, Dragon and Hero were one, and she had a destiny, and now she doesn't know what she has, but it's something flimsier than Fate; like wet cardboard fashioned into a plaque for her to hang up on her wall.

There is a castle, and a boy with green hair and eyes flashing emerald and a crown adorned with gold and blood, and Ferris wheels, ice cream, forbidden kisses, a love that stretched to the ends of the earth and came back with an earth-shaking, resounding crash. Sometimes, she dreams of the boy and his own Dragon (a white-winged, feathered thing that could roar like a lion and make her scream) and wonders about the world, if it was really all numbers as he thought, or maybe something else, something that's indefinable.

There is a man in robes with eyes painted on their surfaces, slick and shimmering, and he had an Eye that could see All, and he had three Ravens with him who were born from the shadows and who would die in the shadows; the Shadow Triad, he called them, and they sent her lovemessages and threatmessages and urged her to play their game. It was a chess game of universal proportions played on a cosmic board, and for a while she thought she was winning, until he checkmated her at the end.

Now, there is the boy, standing by in silence, furs and silks draped around him and over him, lounging on his throne. Watching her. Now, she is bound, chained to the ground like an animal, and there is FIRE, and a searing pain that fills her from the inside, wrenches her guts out, and spits them back in with venom. And now there is the man, the snake man with the snake eyes, who flays her skin and spits on her and calls her worthless names

(and oh, how she burns in this raging inferno)

but the dragon, her Dragon, beckons, and it rises into the air like a great coalescence of storm clouds, all crackling lightning and roaring thunder, and she destroys the infernal castle with its towers and bastions and crushes the cruel dreams of the pretty but cruel-faced boy she once thought she loved.

And now, she has all these marks, these cuts and scrapes from falling debris, that ugly tattoo, and the heart-that-is-not-her-heart to remind her of how she failed, in a sense, how she saved the world but failed to save herself (and the boy who once looked at her with something like love in his eyes).

And she wakes up, and it is just another bad dream, but the scars will remain like watermarks on a badly-taken photograph, obscuring the sand-brown of her flesh with those black swirls, winding over and over again in knots as intricate as the fabric(s) of the universe.

Because the scars stay forever and ever, even after the memories fade. Sometimes the memories stay, too, and there is nothing they can do but trudge on and on up the mountain, pushing that damned boulder up only to have it roll down again, because they are only children and in their society, the children grow up too fast and they only wish they were still young.