(Note: although I don't mind questions in reviews, if you actually want an answer, it'd be best to email me or complain in my livejournal.)

Late Childhood

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She didn't have to go there.

The child was more than twice the age when she'd first found the pokemon. She now looked about eight or nine years old, although she could pass herself as older if she tried, changing her posture, her bearing, enough to offset the physical.

She understood more as well, was starting to have enough knowledge to fit all of the world into a single concept. She had an idea of how things worked. Understood people, shops, trainers. And although it did not occur to her in relation to herself, she knew the legal age of a trainer. She did not think of leaving because she thought of it in terms of what people would think her age was, rather than the age she was, and because the situation here was not intolerable.

Here was a better place than it had been. She had food. She was bigger, big enough not to have to worry so much about others. She looked old enough to buy things, barely, and she understood money. She had no reason to leave.

She was still not safe, she knew, and so she was still wary. There were more of them than there were of her. Too many adults.

One such adult was following her. He had seen her while the pokemon were fighting. She had noticed him but couldn't hide, not with the other child watching withnarrow blue eyes.

When the fight was over, she had started to leave. The air tasted heavy and electric, a certain sign of rain. She wanted to find somewhere to wait it out.

The man followed.

When they tried to hurt her, they didn't wait. This alone made her wait as well. There had been no change in expression, no lunge and clawing fingers. She didn't know what he wanted, so she thought that he might not have really seen her. If that was true he wouldn't keep following her once she lost him. It was easier to leave and hide, so she tried to do that.

The child headed into an alley and flattened up against the back wall, the shadows falling over her like a thick curtain. The man followed, walking in even thought he could see it was empty.

That was something they did when they would hurt her. When they would hurt her they wouldn't stop.

He kept going for a moment but stopped just before the wall, before he would have touched her. She was tense, prepared for attack. He couldn't see her, she knew that, could see it herself in his eyes, but he stayed, staring into the darkness.

She waited, holding perfectly still, her breath silent, but he didn't leave. Wouldn't. He was going to stay. She stared, working it out. He had seen her turn in, was certain she couldn't have gotten out, believed in the walls more than he believed in his eyes.

Trapped. Did she wait? It was going to rain. Dart by him – no, she could feel him grab her as she tried, around her side, tangling her arms so she couldn't move properly.

He wouldn't leave. People who wouldn't stop when they couldn't see her would hurt her.

She reached out, and she could see his eyes focusing, could see in his eyes a white arm reaching from blackness, and she sunk her fingers into his throat.

Rain was coming. Hard rain. She licked at her hand. No time to wash it off. It didn't taste much different than what she ate normally, laced with contamination.

She didn't really like to get wet. She was still thin, wiry, and when she was wet it was hard to stay warm.

She didn't have to go there, but it was close, and she had spent too much time trying to avoid the adult.

So she headed to the house. Home was a word she found arbitrary. All places she went to were equal to her in feeling. The other places were other places. But she could use the word, understand its definition, even if she found the criteria meaningless.

So she went home. The other places, which did not have a special word to describe them, either did not keep out the water or were else too far away to get to before the storm.

The man who might have thought himself her father wasn't there. She knew that before she opened the door. She heard the normal murmuring of noise, the perpetual settling of the place. She opened the thin door, tasting dust and rotten powdering wood and alcohol and sourness in the air, chokingly thick as always. She couldn't remember the first time she'd smelled it.

She headed toward the cabinet room, the name of which she knew but didn't think of, releasing the pokemon by habit. She kept them out often. Safer that way. She intended to feed them part of what she found.

She climbed onto the counter, by the sink, kneeling on the hard surface. She was still too small to reach the upper cabinets from the ground. She started to look through them but didn't find much.

Rain drummed on the rooftop. A flash lit up the room brightly, and she clapped her hands over her ears as quickly as she could, the rumble that came after painful even with her attempt to muffle it. Another flash she saw from behind closed eyes. Another thunderclap. Another. Another.

The sound of a door slamming, heard like an echo after the thunder. The child's eyes opened and she started to get down as another flash of lightning, very close, burned into her sight, half-blinding, so that she lost her balance as she landed and fell. And then there was the man.

His expression changed when he saw them, broke into many things.

He didn't look at her like that. But this time he was looking at them. And she knew he hated things like them, could see the hatred and the anger and something else too, several somethings maybe.

He'd already seen the two pokemon. There was no point in trying to recall them, running off. He'd know she had them. He remembered her from one time to another, although she didn't know why.

She scrambled upright as he threw a chair at the sneasel, knocking her down. The houndour snarled, jumped forward, glowing and growing in size and the man backed away, a strange expression on his face, the color of his skin odd. The child didn't hesitate. She grabbed the sneasel. The hound following at her heels, she ran into the dark rain. Behind her the man yelled, but she ignored the words and kept going.

She hid elsewhere. The sky cleared, and she stared upward, into obsidian flecked with shards of ice. She waited, pressed up against her houndoom for warmth. Her clothing dried. Her sneasel woke, ate, the minor bruises fading swiftly.

The next day, she returned. Her hand reached out toward the door, but she could smell what was inside. And she turned and walked out of the city without looking back.