Whooo~
Now Red has a chapter too! He totally deserves his own chapter! Here's some (sorta kinda very) insecure!Red for you all! There's also a mention of the Green's dead Raticate Pasta. I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. *hides under nearest table*

Please excuse my terrible writing. I'm not going to lie, this chappie here felt kind of forced and had to be revised many times.
Also, reviews would still be very much appreciated. If you guys want, I might even write another chapter for Green, even though this fic is theoretically completed now. (Depending on my mood and my muse I might do that even if you don't want me to.)

Red was lonely.

Sometimes it was bearable. He had his Pokémon by his side, after all. They would always be there to keep him company and take care of him. Other times, though, he felt so alone that it physically hurt. On those nightmare-filled nights, he would curl up somewhere in the back of his cave and silently cry.

Green visited regularly. Whenever he was there, Red would feel slightly better. He would make sure that Red still had enough supplies and bring new ones if he hadn't. The young champion was sure he would long be dead without him, and he was very grateful.

He never quite understood it, though. Every time the other trainer came by, Red asked himself why. It didn't make any sense to him at all, because Red had chosen this fate for himself and Green had every reason to stay away from him.

Red had tried asking Green directly once, but hadn't received an answer that satisfied him. The gym leader only said that he refused to let his best friend starve or freeze to death. Lies, the champion thought, all lies, because the other trainer wasn't his best friend anymore and he refused to believe that he'd ever want him back. Green knew exactly what had driven the black-haired boy up here in the first place and those words were the cruellest joke Red could think of.

How could it be true? After all the people he had hurt, living the life others planned out for him? He had never wanted to be a trainer, never wanted to be a champion. He had never wanted to face his brother and best friend in battle and destroy all their hopes and dreams.

But he did it anyway. Everyone expected him to, after all. It had to be done, had it not? Red sometimes spent whole weeks trying to come up with an answer that didn't leave him consumed by guilt, but the only thing he could think of was how easy it was to blame others for what he did, and that, in the end, it was all his fault. He could have, no, should have said no where he hadn't, and should have refused to blindly do everything he was told.

But Red was weak. He was too weak to say no, too afraid of disappointing anyone. He wasn't strong enough to think for himself and accepted everything people wanted him to become as his own personal goal, even if it was the exact opposite of what he really wanted. They had all shaped him into what he was now, and he had let it happen.

They took away his brother and he had let them.

Fire…

Fire was different from Red. He was strong. He followed his own ideals and didn't take orders from anyone. Red greatly admired him for it and used to often go to him for advice. The two brothers had always been very close and he considered Fire one of the select few he could actually talk to.

But all that was over now. Fire was gone. After Red had beaten the league, he had searched all of Kanto for his twin brother, but couldn't find him anywhere. Fire had already left. And Red knew why. He had already known long before his brother disappeared, because even strong people are destined to break someday, and Fire had endured for far too long. Red didn't do anything to stop it.

Even though he rejected the title, the whole region celebrated him as the youngest trainer to ever have entered the hall of fame. He didn't feel like anyone worth celebrating at all. Not only had he driven his own brother away from home, but his best friend and rival hated him. Former best friend, he corrected himself, bitter.

There was no way they could still be friends now, after all. Not after everything Red had stolen from Green.

He had taken his title, and with it everything he had worked so hard for. Nobody talked about the guy who couldn't keep the title of champion for a mere ten minutes, even though he had acquired it before Red.

He had taken away his grandfather's love and respect. "Why can't you be more like Red?" the professor would say. Green never replied, but Red could see how much those words affected him because he would always clench his fists and look away to the side.

He had even killed one of his Pokémon, a Raticate, once, and even though everyone, including Green himself, insisted that it was an accident, Red firmly believed that it was solely his fault.

Green and Fire were best friends. Red took that from him, too.

He ran into his mother during the celebrations. She was happy and proud and praised him for how much he had accomplished, seemingly completely unaware that one of her sons had run off to Arceus-knows-where and was now missing. Red excused himself and took off running. He didn't know where to, only that he somehow needed to get far away. Away from all the people he didn't know, away from everyone he did know, away from all his problems and unanswered questions…just far, far away.

He wanted to distance himself from everything for a while, calmly think things over, and then return home. That was how he found his way onto Silver Summit. Nobody disturbed him at the peak of Kanto's most dangerous mountain, so he had a lot of time to think. He thought about everything that had happened to him in the past, and what he planned to do in the future. He wasn't sure.

Not too long after he hid away on Mt. Silver, Green found him. He approached him, irritated, and asked if Red was planning on coming home anytime soon. For a moment the champion thought that things could go back to the way they were before he had started his journey. He could picture their little group of friends, all together and smiling, and was almost about to say yes and go back to Pallet, with Green, but then he saw the bitterness in his former rival's eyes and he remembered that the past couldn't be undone, and that his brother probably wasn't going to come back.

He stayed silent and Green stormed off again. The champion watched him as he descended down the mountain. He looked angry and Red felt another pang of guilt. This was his fault. It was the reason why he was here, why he had to remain here. Green would be much better off at home, without him, and he would stay here. He was too weak to confront his problems directly. He had to stay, because they couldn't reach him here.

But Green came back. He came by every two weeks, carrying new supplies and making sure Red was still alive and healthy. And Red was surprised and didn't understand, but he was still grateful.

Just like a friend, he thought to himself every time the gym leader tried to convince him to leave the mountain. But it wasn't, because he was Red and this was Green, and Red had been responsible for too much of Green's pain in the past. Even if, through some sort of miracle, Green were to ever forgive him, Red wasn't sure if he'd be able to forgive himself.

"So, you coming?"

Red looked up at the source of the voice that had interrupted his thoughts. It was Green, chocolate-blonde hair and all, grinning at him like he was the happiest man in the world. It was his signature grin, the one Red remembered from back when they were still children, even though it had lost a lot of its original radiance over the years.

The two boys just stared at each other for a few minutes, neither one of them saying a word, before Green just sighed. He turned around and began his journey back to Viridian, leaving Red behind. Even though he felt lonely, seeing his old rival leave like that every time, he never followed. Because, no matter how real he wanted it to be, after all that had happened, their friendship wasn't anything more than an illusion he hopelessly clung to.

Red couldn't risk destroying more than he already had. If that meant he had to be lonely, it was what he deserved. He chose this for himself, after all.

Or maybe he was just a coward, scared of facing the people he knew were waiting for him at home, now that he had nobody to hide behind.