Author's Note: A contest entry written for calling superman's contest in October 2011, though a tad late. It won second prize.
This was a unique experience for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, this was my first time writing a female-only pairing. Ironic, but let's not go into that. Second, romance was not the turning point of the story. Shocker. And finally, I've never written either of these two before.
Enjoy.
…
…
Chernobyl
…
…
The Ferris wheel doesn't always spin. A gust of wind might push it, and when the wind is gone, so is its motion. It always makes a squealing sound as it grinds to a halt, stopped by its own rusty mechanisms.
Elesa knows this because she can see and hear it from her glass box, formerly called the Nimbasa City Gym.
The city is like darkness around her, existing in swirling planes of dying embers. It glows in the sunset, turning the once-blue sky a deep, charred red. The wind creates small swirling patterns in the smoke, like artwork, like death.
And the Ferris wheel. Still it spins.
…
…
People look strange with their faces melted off, Elesa decides.
It is her first time outside since the incident, and she shows no emotion as she examines the aftermath. She had hoped to find someone, anyone, alive.
She doesn't have to examine anyone too closely to know that there is not.
The sunrise comes more slowly now. The sky is always dark grey, and the clouds don't move, even when a slight breeze does stir the leaves. It is springtime, but the leaves on the trees go from green to yellow to brown… to black.
She wonders if this empty city, Nimbasa once, is how the world is supposed to be. Empty and wandering and just the slightest bit eerie. Just the slightest bit, as she paces down the road and knows that something is following her.
But when she turns around, it's just the faceless people again.
…
…
The black rain falls for three days and nights.
It is poison, she knows. Within those droplets remains enough radiation to harm her even more, possibly kill her.
But she misses her spotlight; she misses the feeling of standing in front of tens of hundreds of thousands of people and being the center of the world. Without them, she is a different person. She's just Elesa, nothing else.
She dances in the poison rain. The next day, she wakes up coughing.
…
…
The Ferris wheel hasn't moved in almost a week. Elesa easily picks up on the reluctant whine as something passes low enough to disturb the air.
It's a plane. A familiar plane, one that she also knows very well.
And, she is torn. Because attracting the pilot's attention would mean rescue, but probably death for the pilot. That is assuming that she isn't already going to die, that they both aren't already dead from radiation.
In the end, it doesn't matter. Skyla has always known where she will be in times like these.
"I miss the people," she admits after a week of being alone. "I miss my Pokemon more, though. A lot more."
Her Pokemon ran off when the first blast resounded. They were probably alive somewhere. Alive or eaten.
"Understandable," Skyla says, stroking her soft blonde hair. The fingers felt so alive on her skull. "You were always different whenever you battled."
"More alive?"
"More yourself."
Elesa knows this. She modeled because she loved to show off, and because people loved for her to show off. She battled because she couldn't imagine a life without battling.
Pity she has neither now.
"Are you going to take me away?" Elesa asks, resting her head on Skyla's lap and closing her eyes. "Not that it will make a difference."
Skyla thinks for a minute, her kind blue eyes clouding over. She knows. She's probably been thinking about it for a week.
Finally, she says, "No. At this point, it's too late for me too."
…
…
A week later, she runs out of food.
Elesa thinks of herself as alone, even though Skyla is there. Skyla isn't real, after all. She is a figment of Elesa's imagination, and this will all go away so very soon.
She has started to notice tufts of her hair (her beautiful hair) littering the Gym floor. She dances there frequently these days, spending hours spinning aimlessly and showing off. If Skyla is imaginary, then so are the hundreds of thousands of people that visit her to see her model. All fake.
All the more reason to be completely real.
She wonders when the radiation will go away. The clouds have gone away mostly, but the sky is still orange and dark. Imaginary Skyla says that it's still too dangerous to go outside, but what does she know? She's beginning to show those patches of raw flesh, signs of radiation poisoning.
Elesa is too. She doesn't like to think of it, though, and so whenever she looks in the mirror, all she sees is flawlessness.
…
…
She feels like a ghost now, like her body is evaporating by the minute.
Her vision of Skyla (because she can't be real, not a chance) is weeping too; is that really her skin on the floor? It litters the landscape and creates small mountains on the streets, almost like snow. If this is the case, then Skyla has lost a lot of skin. Elesa certainly has.
Or maybe it's just dust from the clouds overhead. Maybe she's imagining things again.
Maybe it's all a dream, and she will wake up the next morning and go back to her Gym and fight that up-and-coming trainer that's all over the news.
She never does.