- 2 -

Downhearted

Candice woke up on Valentine's Day with a love song blaring in her ears and a memory of the night before that was hazy at best. She didn't remember setting her alarm to go off so early. She didn't even remember going to bed. Apparently, that Water Pulse had hit her a lot harder than she'd thought.

But she remembered the valentines. She almost wished she didn't. What had she been thinking?

Roark was going to freak. Gardenia was going to freak at her for being so hard on Roark. Fantina had no sense of humor when it came to jokes about her age. Wake would either love or hate what she'd done with his theme song, but it was kind of embarrassing no matter what. Poor Maylene wasn't going to have any fun now that she'd be stressing over Aaron all day. Byron would not be amused, and he definitely wasn't going to help her play matchmaker. And Volkner…

Oh, Arceus. She didn't even want to think about that.

She couldn't let those valentines get out. So she ran to the gym as fast as she could. Never mind that she was still wearing her Vanillite pajamas. Never mind that the gym was closed and she'd insisted herself that nobody (absolutely nobody) set foot in it. This was an emergency.

But they were already gone. Delibird had always been very reliable. She'd never had a reason to complain about it until now.

By the end of the day, Candice had received a number of very interesting phone calls. Almost every Gym Leader around had had a few things to say to her, and some had been nicer than others. Take Fantina, for example. Who'd have thought such a seemingly elegant lady would know so many foreign curse words?

Thankfully, that had been the worst of it. At least Wake could take a joke, even if the song hadn't gone over so well. (They weren't waves of love, he'd insisted. They were unstoppable waves of awesome. Whatever that meant.)

Anyway, Maylene sure wasn't complaining. She'd gone through three and a half boxes of valentine cards agonizing over what to say to Aaron when her Lucario had decided enough was enough and literally dragged her to the Pokémon League building. Luckily, it turned out Lucario knew best—Aaron had been downright psyched to see her.

There was still no word on whether or not Byron had a wife, but he'd been very confused as to why Candice was so determined to meddle in his son's affairs. To which she'd replied that if Roark hadn't acted on his not-so-secret crush by now, then maybe some not-so-subtle nudging from his dear old dad would do the trick. To her surprise, Byron had actually seemed to agree with this.

But the real surprise was that Byron hadn't needed to do a thing. Roark had taken her advice without question, and he and Gardenia were now having a Valentine's Day picnic in—of all places—the Oreburgh Mines. Which was just about the least romantic picnic spot she could imagine, but oh well. She couldn't help the guy with everything.

The only person she hadn't heard from was Volkner. And all she could think about was why.

There was no forgetting about something like that. Nobody else had wasted any time in telling her exactly what they thought of her little valentine surprise, that was for sure.

Well, maybe Volkner just never bothered to read his mail. Maybe he thought valentines were stupid—knowing him, that wouldn't be a huge shocker—and threw them in the trash straight away.

Maybe he'd gotten so many valentines from random female admirers that hers was lost at the bottom at the pile. Or some jealous trainer girl at his gym had found it first and decided to hide it. Or burn it. Or toss it in the sea.

Maybe he'd laughed at it for hours, and then he'd called up Flint and read it over the phone so Flint could have a good laugh, too. Or maybe he was out with Flint, and the two of them had been carrying on some kind of secret relationship all this time and no one had ever noticed because all that best friend business was such a great cover-up.

Maybe his Luxray had eaten it.

Maybe he'd run off to Johto with that Gym Leader slash Coordinator slash whatever. She and Volkner had always gotten along just a little too well.

Or maybe she hadn't written Volkner's name very legibly in her Water Pulse-induced insanity and the valentine had actually gone to Johto, where that Falkner guy was now extremely confused as to why some girl he'd met once at a Gym Leader Conference ages ago was suddenly asking him for a date.

Maybe Volkner felt the same way she did. Maybe he'd been daydreaming on the job, too, and now he was just dying to call her and tell her all about how her valentine had made his day and of course he'd love to go out, but, as luck would have it, he'd been hit by a Thunder Wave and he was too paralyzed to pick up the phone. And maybe this whole thing was starting to drive her crazy, because that was about as likely as Volkner passing up a battle with Lucas to hang out with the Ribbon Syndicate.

Maybe he was just ignoring her.

That had to be the reason why. As much as she hated to admit it.

What had she expected him to do, anyway? Send back an embarrassing valentine of his own? Make a dramatic declaration of love on national television? Show up at her house with flowers and chocolates and a jewel-encrusted locket with their gym badge designs engraved inside?

This wasn't exactly the world's biggest romantic she was dealing with here. It was Volkner, who turned down dates left and right to mess around with machinery. He probably didn't even like Valentine's Day.

He probably didn't even like her. Not in the way she wanted him to.

Her trainers would never let her live it down in a million years if they found out, but Candice had spent the better part of the day at the gym. So what if nobody (absolutely nobody) was supposed to set foot in it? She wasn't the leader there for nothing.

She'd gone home that morning and changed out of her Vanillite pajamas, just in case. After all, it would kind of ruin things to be dressed for a slumber party if a miracle happened and Volkner showed up. She'd been relatively optimistic in putting on a short blue skirt and an ultra-soft sweater that practically screamed "Hug me." It was pretty, but not too dressy for the Battle Frontier. But now that Valentine's Day was coming to an end and all she'd done was rearrange the snowball puzzle five or six times, it just felt like a waste of a perfectly cute outfit.

Needless to say, the gym was not where she wanted to be. But what else did she have to do tonight? She didn't feel like popping in a romantic comedy or curling up with a love story anymore. Now that she'd messed things up so badly for herself, the idea of watching a fairytale romance unfold wasn't fun. It was heartbreaking.

And she couldn't have a girls' night with Maylene and Gardenia now that they were off having their own happy Valentine's Days with the guys of their dreams—partly thanks to her, of course. It really wasn't fair. Why did she have to be so good at running everyone's love lives but her own?

Not that she wasn't really, truly happy for her two best friends. She was just really, truly sad for herself at the same time.

Candice was knee-deep in snowballs when a loud knock startled her from her thoughts. She hadn't been expecting any challengers. Especially since she'd hung a giant "Closed for Valentine's Day" sign on the door.

"Gym's closed," she mumbled, not even bothering to turn around. Couldn't this person read? If they wanted a badge, they'd come on the wrong day.

"I'm not here for a battle."

Volkner was standing in the doorway. And she couldn't help but notice, with a pang of nervousness, that he wasn't carrying flowers. Or chocolates. Or anything else that might indicate he was there to do anything other than ask her what the heck that valentine was all about.

There was no telling what he was thinking.

"That was some card you sent me this morning."