Brendan wonders for the fifth time that week why she sits on his stoop when her house is literally next door.
She doesn't seem to notice when he stops peeking out the windows and opens the front door. Cool air blows outside of the Birch house into the muggy Hoenn environment, but Brendan is somehow feeling chills in the hot weather anyway.
"Alright, alright, Doctor Birch is in," He jokes in a mock-professional voice from the doorway, like the therapists on talk shows, as he gently closes the door and walks outside to her. Maybe he could hide how nervous he always got when she'd come to 'visit' like this. "Can you tell me your name, little lady?"
She doesn't answer. Brendan was hoping she might, but honestly, he wasn't expecting her to.
"Uhh...'kay, nevermind, the Doctor is out, I guess." Okay. Jokes don't work anymore. I guess they ran their course after the last three times. "...okay, seriously, what's wrong? Did someone visit? Are you getting those dreams again?"
Still no answer.
In the eerie quiet that would shock anyone to find coming from someone like May, Brendan remembers all those times traveling with May between gyms, when she'd never stop talking and he'd (only half-seriously) grumble that if he never heard such a loudmouth like her talk again, it'd be too soon. Lately, it was hard to get her to even open her mouth. Brendan wonders if that's his fault, if Jirachi somehow granted his sarcastic wishes.
Imaginary frost grows from her on the steps as the quiet decides to keep itself quiet.
"I'm...we're really worried about you, y'know. It...feels like you think nobody cares."
She hasn't even moved, done anything to acknowledge him talking. Brendan wonders if May had felt this frustrated all those times when he'd been so wrapped up in his Pokenav and research notebooks that he didn't hear a word she said. Brendan wonders if this would count as irony, finally having no one to listen to him after not listening to anyone else.
"You're...you're not alone, May. You never were. I-it probably feels like you are, though, right?"
Nope. Nada. Zip. Not even a correction, an annoyed 'you don't know what I'm thinking'. Brendan wouldn't have minded if she'd gotten angry, as long as she did something, anything to show some kind of emotion, recognition.
Well, whatever happened, she doesn't want to talk about it, he assumes. Just like she hasn't wanted to talk about anything since she dragged herself out of that Arceus-forsaken cave.
"...Right. Okay."
Trying to communicate obviously wasn't working, and he feels, for the first time, upset that the biggest chatterbox on the planet is giving the silent treatment. The hush turns the air frigid, like a bitter wind warning of a winter storm on the horizon.
Brendan decides to at least keep her company for a little while (or at least until either someone came looking for her or his dad invited her in), just like he'd been doing for a long time. She'd only dealt with the Sea Basin beast two, maybe three months ago, but it felt like years for the people around her. He wonders how much of it she actually remembers, if the salt water still stings in her throat and the freshly closed scars still feel open.
I'm just being selfish, aren't I? I'd be shell-shocked like this, too, if I did what you did.
I wish I could take your place.
He takes a seat next to her, and for a second, fears he will slip on the frost gathering around her.
The wood steps are cold, very cold, but from what she's been mumbling since she first woke up in a hospital gown, she probably didn't even notice. She hadn't said a word about what happened to anyone, not yet, except that it was cold, very cold, and that she can't get warm anymore.
"It's...it's okay if you don't, uh, don't want to talk. I get it," he says, voice dropping to a whisper. She still doesn't look at him. "But I'm still here, okay? Even...even if you don't wanna say anything. I'm not gonna leave you behind..." Again. Not again.
Silence.
Brendan gently takes her hand. He feels, for the first time, he can't do anything else to help.
She's limp for a moment, tenses, and relaxes again, but now that he can see whatever part of her face that isn't covered by hair, she looks anything but relaxed. Is...is she so stressed because of him? Or is something else still bothering her? Brendan remembers how he'd always found the idea of mind-reading awful when it was brought up, because who would want to see inside someone else's head when you can use that power to sort your own head out? If asked, he'd still stand by it, but suddenly Brendan is wishing he could read minds, just once. If Jirachi heard his sarcastic wishes, it couldn't possibly miss his serious ones, right?
He's about to pull away, when suddenly his hand is being squeezed and it is very, very cold. A gentle blue gaze, startled and wide with alarm, is taken down its own arm, past its wrist, to two pale hands gripping one dark one as if trying to tug it off. May hasn't touched anyone for days, and he's almost forgotten up until now how cold she really has become. Ice cubes disguised as spindly fingers are practically digging into his skin. He feels, for the first time, that he has no idea what to do.
And then she speaks, and Brendan wishes she hadn't.
"...I can't feel it."
Brendan had always thought of his neighbor as someone whose voice would carry on far past their physical life. He would jokingly imagine being an old man, in his last hours, and hearing a disembodied teenage girl's annoying-as-all-Hell voice taunting him about being an old geezer. When such a voice doesn't come out of her, replaced by a hoarse, shaky whisper, Brendan almost doesn't believe it's really her unintentionally clawing his hand like an Arceus-damned Zangoose feeling around for Sevipers in the dark.
"You can't...what?"
"You heard me!" She's shaking, all of a sudden on the brink of yelling or attacking him or crying, maybe all three if he's lucky. Sickly pale icicles press deeper into him, but it's the last thing on his mind. "I can't...I can't feel it! Your hand, dumbass! I...I-I...I can't...I can't feel anything...my-my fingers, I...s'all numb and-and I..."
Little drops of ice fall onto his arm, chilling him to the bone. Brendan wonders if this is how she is feeling, if this is how she's been feeling, if his wish was somehow granted and she's transferring her grief and agony onto him at this very moment through salty tears.
She is grabbing onto his arms in a desperate attempt to take any warmth from his feverish-in-comparison skin, and she is shaking and everything she'd been silent about for months is falling out in isolated sobs and shaky breaths, and then she is raining little drops of ice onto his nice shirt and she is cold, very cold, and Brendan can't imagine how cold, very cold she must feel if he is shivering just being in contact with her.
Icicles claw into his back and freezing cold downpour falls from stormy eyes, exhausted and squeezed shut and buried in his chest, and as icicles melt into water and freezing downpour slows into snowflakes, Brendan prays that Jirachi will hear one more wish and make the winter storm feel a little warmth.
Brendan realizes, for the first time, that the tropical people of tropical Hoenn will never be a match for the furious winter weather that has named itself May Maple. And Brendan worries, for the first time, he cannot do anything to ease its sorrow.