Dedicated to MasteringAMuggleLife. My first story, enjoy :)
It's been a week.
"How are you feeling?"
No answer. Her eyes kept open, unmoving, staring at nothing. Her slender body curled into a ball, hands clutching her knees, pulling herself closer as if she was trying to make herself smaller and smaller until she was nothing. Her red hair falls limp and lifeless against her shoulder blades, sticking to her face with sweat. Tear stained cheeks, bloodshot eyes, claw marks decorating her skin. "Misty, please." She turned her head ever so slightly to meet the gaze of the young researcher, blue meeting blue, she turns away.
He stands by her for another few days, attempting to coax her out of her fetal position. He presses a damp wash cloth to her face, makes sure she eats, talks to her, and just tries to keep her alive mostly. Others have too. Brock, May, Delia...but they all left eventually, they all needed to grieve too. Misty doesn't talk much, unless needed to. "Why does everyone have to leave?" She asks him in a sad broken voice. He wonders how she expects him to know.
Two weeks have gone by when he gives up on trying to make the commute between Cerulean and Pallet and decides to just stay at her house. His tall frame stands awkwardly in the doorway of her living room as he stares at her unmoving body lying on the couch. His hand knocks on the wooden door frame and he lets out a cough to get her attention. She sighs. "Why are you here?" She says it like he hasn't been visiting her for the past two weeks, like he hasn't been trying to keep her from falling apart.
"Because someone has to."
"But why you?"
She spends most of her time, at the beach. Her feet sinking into the wet sand, and the salty ocean air blowing against her face like a whip. She falls to her knees with a frustrated scream, clawing at the sand, and cursing at the sky. She's screaming and bawling, and kicking and thrashing, as if the ocean is the one to blame for Ash's death. She takes off her clothes and dives into the water, letting the essence soak into her pores-filling her cracks. She submerges herself under as if it can rid herself from all the hurt. Finally when her lungs start to burst she emerges from the waters icy grasp. And she screams and screams and screams until her throat burns and the salty ocean air chokes her. Gary picks her up and carries her away as she pounds against his back, yelling and cursing at the world. Dark clouds fill the horizon and crackles of thunder boom across the sky, the sound filling the place of its lost pokemon. Her fists crack against his broad back, in a steady rhythm. Why. Why. Why. Why.
It takes her another week to stop screaming. He sleeps in the guest room of her house, and sometimes he hears her wake up in the middle of the night sobbing. Ash would have held her and rubbed circles into the small of her back (But he's not Ash). Instead he stares at the ceiling until the bumps on the wall burn into the back of his mind and his vision blurs. One night he feels her crawl into bed with him, her icy feet pressing against his legs. "Misty? What are you doing?" He turns to face her.
"What do you think? My husband is dead, and I don't want to be alone. It doesn't mean anything." He tries to believe her. Tries to believe that her body huddled against him means nothing, that she's only doing this because she is sad and broken and lonely. That he isn't stabbing Ash in the back. They sleep like this every night from there on out.
She doesn't visit anyone else, even though Brock calls her from time to time, and Delia has invited her many times over to her house.
"Everything reminds me of him, Gary. He's in the walls, he's in the air, the bed, their eyes, and I just, I just can't." She sounds defeated as she says this and he understands. And maybe they're both waiting for a day when Ash will show up out of the blue, at their door step, back into their world. He's just training. He's coming back. He's just late. But his boxes and belongings sit in the door way untouched, and his ashes sit on the shelf of the fireplace. Sometimes he sees her looking at them, as if his ghost is there, staring right back at her.
They take the trek up to Mount Silver together. It's cold and icy and dangerous but she climbs it with ease. Maybe because she's more cold, and more dangerous. At the top she holds his ashes out ready to spread them. But she stops. And he waits, and waits and waits.
She snaps.
She throws the jar as far as it can go, its contents crashing and spilling against the jagged rocks. Tears stream down the side of her face. "I can't do this without him. I can't!" she yells. Her fists flying at him, punching him. "Why'd he have to go? It's not fair!" He takes her fists in his hands, and yells back. His glare of equal intensity to her own challenges her back. Angry snow flurries dance around them the snow blowing against their faces like harsh sandpaper. Now it's his turn to snap.
"If I could bring him back I would! If I could go back and stop him from going on that journey, I swear to Arceus I would! But I can't. No one can. The past is in the past. So get it through your thick skull that he's gone! He's fucking dead! Got it!?" He feels the white hotness of her slap, as harsh as the snow.
"I hate you." He knows. He knows. He knows. Because she hates him and loves Ash. Not loved-loves.
Four months have passed.
He feels her slide up against him in bed and her arms wrap around his neck. "Misty?" She silences him with a kiss. And another, and another. Soon they are both attacking each other with their lips, as if all of the tensions and heartbreak have finally spilled out. She claws at him desperately and feverishly her hands leaving trails of red along his body as the blood blush rises to his skin. The two of them are like two feral pokemon relying on nothing at this point but instinct. But, the more rational part of his brain, the human one, cries out. This is wrong. She is hurt and scared and not thinking straight. Because to her, his lips are just lips and his body is just another body and none of this matters except the fact that she wants to feel warm again because she is so cold, always so cold. She is a trapped and lonely soul living in the world we call Earth while her other half is waiting for her on the other side-waiting and cursing at the two of them.
Gary can hear him screaming.
She doesn't speak to him for three days after that. On the fourth day she comes up to him and tells him she's sorry. "I didn't...I shouldn't have...what I'm trying to say is..."
"I know." He does, really he does. But it doesn't change the fact that he feels dirty, so very dirty. He decides to go back to his home after that, it's for the best really. Part of his heart pangs with a feeling of desperation (regret). Maybe he is sad he's leaving her. They go about their normal routines after that, he works at the lab while she manages her gym. And in the night, when they close their eyes to go to bed, they'll try not to notice the empty feeling of the missing body besides them. And they'll try to remember a time when they actually felt warm.
Sometimes he waits by the phone waiting for her call. He doesn't know why he even bothers though. Because what could she ever offer him? And yet, some part of him yearns for her presence-for her touch. Because maybe all he's ever wanted was somebody to love, and maybe he's tired of being alone. All his life he's been cast away in the shadows, in somebody else's limelight. And when his mind is feeling so very un-altruistic he'll blame Ash for it. He'll blame Ash for taking away everything he's ever wanted. Ash is to blame for a lot of things. Like the fact that his idiotic hero complex got him into this mess, and that because of him there's a broken girl who's world has been crushed, the weight of it sagging her spirits and body down. And she's falling and falling and falling and Gary doesn't know if he will be able to catch her. But someone has to, because Ash is gone. And he hates him for it.
Six months after the date of Ash's death, she shows up at his door steps. His heart skips a beat when he sees her. "I know," she says almost pleadingly "you have every right to turn me away. You have every right to kick me out right now. But I don't think I can do this alone. Everything just feels so wrong, but with you it feels a little less so. Nothing's okay anymore." Everything about her shakes, her voice, her hands, and her body. He holds her chin up, their eyes locking.
"You're right. Nothing's okay. It isn't fair that he was taken away from you, it isn't fair that it had to happen to you. No one should have to experience loss. Trust me I know," he says this almost breathlessly, "and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar." She sniffs, tears breaking through the surface. "But we can't go on through life holding on to the things that will weigh us down. You have to believe that whatever you do, whatever decision you end up making you won't regret it. The best thing to do is to keep moving, and stay awake. And I really want to see you awake again." He wipes a tear away from her eye.
"I'm a mess you know. I'm such a mess."
"We both are."
"Why would you ever put up with me? After everything I've put you through?" His arms wrap around her slender frame, protecting her from her demons. And he murmurs words of endearment into her hair while rubbing circles into the small of her back. And maybe this isn't right. Maybe they weren't meant to find each other. But when everything in the world goes wrong, nothing ever seems right.
"Because I love you." And maybe if she wasn't so broken, she'd say it back to him.