Notes: I might delete this and do a complete rewrite, but we'll see. And although I absolutely adore the manga, this story follows the game-verse and speculates (ambiguously, mind you) on Gold's possible relation or interconnection with Red. Blue (male), Silver, and Crystal are also mentioned; some more briefly than others. Keeping in mind that this is the game-verse, their roles may not reflect their characters in the Pokemon Special/Adventures manga.
General disclaimers apply.
It starts when he's a mere child.
His mother notices his timeline has always been slightly skewed whenever it regarded his childhood, but she thinks, whose isn't?
There is little energy left in children (after their entire day is comprised of running around outside under the world's endless sky, scrapping knobby knees on gray, warm pavement in the muggy afternoon and counting the inky night's infinite stars) to understand the dynamics of time. Days and nights are only distinguished by the lack of light, and weeks are torn apart from weekends with consecutive five hours of school that tend to fly by if you look out the classroom's windows long enough.
So when his thoughts fade to battles between monsters he hadn't seen until he started his journey years later, he assumes his vivid, wild and, let's not forget, childish dreams had bled into his memories and misconstrued what he remembers and what he does not.
But he's never quite too sure.
The feeling continues.
It never lingers long though, because summer isn't as eternal or wondrous anymore. Instead, his daydreams he wasted away in school with become reality, and he can't stop to think something feels a bit… off. Because, once again, he doesn't have enough time to.
And suddenly those far off battles that flitter in his the back of his mind claw themselves into his perceiving world, and he's too busy with training, training, training and watching these monsters called pokémon grow and evolve with him.
There's constant grass stains on his shorts that would reduce his mother to frustrated tears, his skin is either tan or constantly peeling from standing in sunlight all day (he ran out of the sun screen his mom packed for him three weeks into his new adventure), and he's never guaranteed food to eat or a roof to sleep under; his pokémon always offering to share their rather inedible –– to humans, at least –– food with him or providing him warmth with their bodies huddled close to his on those extra chilly nights.
He's changing, but he's not certain if he likes it.
Maybe, he muses silently, because he feels so strange.
He can never quite pinpoint why it feels peculiar to him, battling and growing with his pokémon. Because he's known, since he was a walking and talking infant with a brain developed enough to form his own thoughts and feelings, that he was going leave his home and his family behind one day and travel the world. It was his only ambition, his only dream, and he didn't know why, but it brought this sense of drifting comfort to him. Like he couldn't quite grab it, but at least he knew it was there.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" his mother would ask whenever he phoned her, sending a jarring spark down his body.
"Yes," he always answers without missing a beat. He wants to sound irritated at what should be his mother's consuming worry and loneliness, but he knows, just as well as she does, she isn't really asking him this because she misses her son. He's not quite sure why she never stops dropping this question by, but he knows it's for reasons that are out of his reach of understanding.
Besides, mother always knows best.
"I love you," she says with an almost disappointed edge to her tired voice. She sounds so far away now.
He hangs up without responding back.
"I hate you," seethes his rival one day.
And, he thinks, Silver should.
After all, his pokémon always come out victorious and every battle always ensures him dinner and shelter for that particular night and seals Silver with the following fate of nursing his beaten pokémon and an empty stomach.
But as Silver stands over his injured Feraligatr, this loathing fuels from somewhere else that far exceeds lack of food and annoyance of wasting hours waiting around as his pokémon are patched up and slowly brought back to optimal health. No, this hate dips into dark waters that begin to pool beneath his rival's feet.
"Every time, every battle," hisses his opponent, "you always win, no matter what. Even if my pokémon are stronger than yours. It never makes any goddamn sense." And without another word, Silver roughly pushes past him, allowing him to stand in the wake of another victory.
He doesn't wait around for it to settle in.
He recalls the incident to himself one day at a Poké Center while he awaits his pokémon's recovery and a girl with navy blue hair glances over her shoulder to look at him. She's seen him around before. She was late, as usual, to Professor Elm's that day, and was given the leftover pokeball left untouched by him and disregarded by Silver.
He never notices her all that much, besides recognizing her rather unremarkable face in the crowded Poké Centers or seeing her either leave a gym he's about to march into or waiting outside of one he's already brought to its knees.
But now, he can sense, she's staring and trying to collect the bits and pieces of the story he's muttering to himself and to his healed, but admittedly uninterested, Typhlosion whose eyes are beginning to wander. He's not surprised, seeing as his Typhlosion has always been the type to aggressively attack first and ask pensive questions never, and found his critical analysis of the entire occurrence trivial and not the least bit thrilling.
"Maybe," a quiet voice cuts through his thoughts and the girl with blue hair is cautiously standing a few feet away, "rather than hating how you always win, he just hates the way you battle. I've watched you before. There's something…" she flushes slightly and decides to shake her words about until she finally continues, "I mean, the way you battle… It looks… it looks like you're a natural, expect more than that. Almost like… like you've been doing this for years."
Her cheeks pale more when he doesn't give her an answer and eventually she leaves, leaving him and his Typhlosion to eat their dinner together.
He almost forgets that itching feeling.
Almost.
When he enters this entirely new region he's around fifteen now, slowly encroaching upon the end of his teen years and left his child ones far back a while ago. He keeps his backpack tugged tightly to his body, his pokémon leveled up, and his phonecalls with Professor Elm and his mother to a minimum.
Silver's appearances become less and less, almost like his rival has finally let the festering hate consume him and his motives whole, and gradually gave up. And that girl with blue hair never pops up anymore, perhaps too ashamed of their first and last encounter to continue parroting his footsteps or push herself ahead to create ones for him to step in instead.
This entire fresh new world is his to conquer without his past dragging along with him.
He's suddenly a nobody all over again.
So why when he brings another gym to its knees does he get these stares?
It isn't an astounded stare, or stare of intimidation or horror. It's something that he can't pinpoint, almost like his mother's constant question of his desire to continue on with his journey that's filled with underlying meanings he still can't decipher.
It's Blue's gaze that troubles him the most.
Blue is unlike the rest of the other gym leaders, both in age and stance. Blue is the youngest of the entire league of gyms, yet he's the one of the last, not to mention strongest, for trainers to engage in battle with. And when Blue looks at this boy, probably four to five years younger, that has just floored him and his team of pokémon, the gym leader doesn't look at him with the same stare the rest of the superiors do.
In fact, Blue doesn't quite meet this victor's eyes, and gives him the earth badge with an unfocused gaze.
When the young boy leaves he swears he can hear Blue mutter something, but he doesn't look back, he never does, and doesn't pry his mind to wonder if it was just a trick of his mind, like how certain lighting can swerve a pleasant smile to a corrupt grimace.
Wel––e h––me.
It takes a few more years to pass for him to defeat this region's gyms and Pokémon League.
His glory haunts every corner of the world, and he's bombarded with congratulations from previous trainers he's fought, and ones he's never seen before. Ever so often, however, he hears whispers of him coming in second best in the world of elite Pokémon trainers. It doesn't irritate him, only peaks his curiosity like a spark catching a flame against oxygen.
"There's this trainer, Red. He beat the Pokémon League and destroyed Team Rocket before you even picked up a pokeball. You want a challenge? Go after him and we'll see who wins."
He's on top of Mt. Silver, with the wind and snow raging against his struggling form. He can barely see what's in front of him and he'll check his belt frequently just to make sure his pokeballs hadn't blown away in the storm.
Then, he sees him.
As red and gold gazes clash into one another, he starts to understand. His distorted childhood, his mother's indifference to his travels, the frustration from Silver and curiosity of Crystal, and the rising difficulty of every gym battle in Kanto, almost as if–– as if, they've seen his motions, they've studied his strategies before, as if ––
The panic overwhelms him, surges through his numbed body, and he feels like he's falling off this glazed-over summit.
"I heard you beat him," breathes Crystal, "Red, I mean. I heard you beat him."
He doesn't answer, not quite perturbed that he hasn't spoken to this girl for years and she somehow gotten a hold of his number within an hour of his victory as he should be. Instead, he instinctively ends the call with the wind howling violently against his back.
––
"Hello! Good morning! This is Margret from Johto's most read and highly praised newspaper, The Poké Times! I was wondering if you, perhaps, had some time to sit down and answer some q––"
––
"When you have the chance, could you please stop by my lab and show me your pokedex? I'd like to record your current pokémons' stats and run some diagnostics on the pokedex itself."
––
"Are you coming home now?" asks his mother in a quiet and flat voice.
This is the question he finally answers.
"Yes."
When he returns home his mother doesn't quite look him in the eye and, at times, he'll catch Professor Elm giving him complex stares he can't even begin to understand nor desire to. He just assumes Professor Elm is struggling to fully accept that this boy, the boy he gave a pokemon to all those years back, is now the resounding champion of two regions. His mother, he thinks, is just trying hard to respect this grown boy as her son that left his home nearly a decade ago.
He's changed, after all. Almost an adult at the age of seventeen, who's taller, tanner, with an experienced face and eyes that aren't wide with wonder anymore, like they were when he initially left this once quiet town.
They've darkened slightly.
He accounts it as exhaustion and a dire result of pushing himself against the harsh weather conditions of Mt. Silver.
But then… then…
Sometimes, when he brushes his teeth late at night before he slips into his bed or when he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the darkness of his room, he swears his eyes flash to red.
His mother stops looking at him entirely one day.
"Where is he?!" Blue barks at him, traveling across his world to this one, landing at the doorstep of a house located in New Bark Town.
"Who?"
"You know who!" When there's a pause of silence Blue pries forth. "Red, Red! You're the last one who saw him! Where the hell is he?"
"I… I don't know."
Blue never pays a second visit after that, suddenly stiffening mid conversation with his hands around the young boy's collar when their eyes met. The gym leader's pupils dilate and suddenly leaves without any further explanation or an angry extension of his accusation.
His mother still can't meet his eyes.
Later that night, he hears her crying her bedroom during the dark hours of the night.
Her head hangs low one foggy morning.
There's immense humidity in the air and even in the confinements of her own home feel heavy and damp. She feels weighted down, unsettled, distraught.
She looks at his unoccupied bed, neatly made like he hadn't been sleeping on it for months upon his return. There's no note, no clues left behind to investigate, just an empty bed and a missing son.
When she looks out the window, with her house phone dangling by its cord between her fingers, she swears she sees what appears to be a few snowflakes float by in this thick fog.
"Hello? Hello? Ma'am?"
She brings the receiver end close to her lips and whispers, "yes?"
"You were going to file a missing person's report?"
There's a cake set on his dresser. 'Happy Birthday' is written in neat frosting and the eighteen candles are melting fast.
"No." She replies simply, watching red wax begin to drip everywhere, and before the operator can question why, she says, "He's home now."