Pokémon Lapis
Chapter 4: Small Town
(Gina Ikeda)
Gina spent much of the walk from the outskirts of Route 1 into Pallet Town trying to pinpoint the curling sensation of dread in her stomach and attempting to liken it to anything she had previously felt in her life. She supposed obsessing over her growing fear was a bad idea, but it was also a distracting side-job for her brain, and it made her feel bizarrely less like combusting from nerves as they walked. The feeling went beyond nervousness, or dread, but wasn't quite full-blown running-for-her-life terror, which she was unfortunately more than versed in by now. It's like that feeling you get when you miss a step, or you tip your chair back too far,she realized, snapping her fingers to herself. Except it was persistent, and without the stair or the chair as a trigger.
Defining the sort of feeling she had did not in any way decrease the feeling itself. Gina sort of wanted to puke, and run back to Edith's, and steel herself for battle and charge right ahead all at the same time.
Amaris was either deliberately giving her space or was locked in his own inward brooding over the explosion of wild questions they were going to get when they turned up in Pallet again. Gina had been unable to figure out what would be better or worse—calling her mom to let her know to expect them, or just popping up on her doorstep. Either way she figured it wouldn't really save herself from any more of the agony of waiting, but after they were nearing the border of the wall Gina decided she really didn't want to give her mom a heart attack.
Her mother's number had been blocked on her phone since the day they had fled Pallet. Gina's stomach lurched as she thought of it. It had been more than enough time for her mother to assume Gina was dead. Thinking about this was making her feel queasy again and all at once Gina stopped walking as if the walls surrounding Pallet were an electrical fence instead.
Amaris slowed to a halt and glanced back at her over his shoulder. He didn't really need to ask. "I know," he grumbled. "This is going to be horrendous, but it won't get any less so the more we put it off."
It was the truth, though not very comforting, and Gina couldn't help feeling like he and she were completely conspicuous already, as if every eye in town was trained on them from the rows of windows near the first neighborhood block visible from the entrance. She'd felt this way once or twice, the few days she had actually skipped a class to go wander out near the wooded areas to the southeast of Route 1. It felt like everyone was watching her during times when she knew she was going to be in trouble soon.
"Yeah," Gina said, fumbling with her Dex and taking an inordinately long time to navigate through the menus with her numb, clumsy hands. "Just, gonna call her. Don't want someone else to spot us and call her first."
Amaris' face actually wore a subdued cringe of sympathy as Gina lifted her Dex to her head, listening with her heart thudding in her ears as it rang twice. He turned away to give her privacy and walked a little ways off, though he didn't stray too far, for which she was grateful.
"Gina?" her mother demanded, her voice half a shout and half a sob when she picked up the other line, and Gina dissolved at once, her tentative grasp on her composure gone.
"I'm okay," she blurted out at once, her voice already degenerating as she listened to her mother trying to catch her breath over the shock and emotion. "I'm okay, Amaris and I are in Pallet, can we—can we come—?"
"Where are you, are you at the entrance? Are you there?" her mom asked, choking back full sobs now, and Gina buried her face in her long-sleeved shirt cuff and curled forward slightly around the huge hole of guilt that was eroding inside her. "Stay, just stay, I'll meet you there, oh honey. Just one minute."
Her mom had no cell phone, just the home phone with the video option, so she had to hang up to meet them at the entrance of town. Gina put her Dex down, her hands trembling, and Amaris shifted a little closer to her. She couldn't bring herself to look him in the face while she was in such a state.
"She will be 95% overjoyed and perhaps 5% pissed off," Amaris murmured to her, his voice a lower and more gentle version of the teasing tone he normally used with her. "Try not to worry. The worst part is over. You've made the first contact."
"Just feel like throwing up, a lot," Gina murmured back to him, stuffing her Dex in her jacket pocket and hunching her shoulders, sniffling miserably. "And those are really, really generous numbers you gave me. I'm gonna say more like 60-40."
Amaris chuckled very softly at that, and after a protracted pause, rested his hand briefly on her shoulder. It was weird for him, but not an unwelcome gesture, and Gina smiled slightly, still not really meeting his eyes but at least facing towards him for a second to let him know she appreciated it. Then the hand retracted and they were left in silence as they waited for her mother to hurricane her way through town.
When Gina saw her mother running around the corner of the group of homes that would lead eventually to Gina's own house, another sob tore free from her throat and she jogged to meet her partway. The guilt was like a chemical burn in her throat and lungs, and seeing how pale and stunned her mom looked, how unkempt her hair was and how she'd lost a little weight just about floored her. Gina's mother crushed her in a painful hug and Gina hugged her back, mumbling things that weren't meant to be understood as her mother shook around the sheer shock of seeing her again. Can I do this to her again? Gina asked herself, honestly, from where she was buried against her mom's shoulder. Can I really tell her I'm okay and lie to her face? She could fully appreciate now why Victoria had been so reserved about this visit, and so blunt when she attested that it wasn't a good idea. Gina never, ever wanted to leave now that she was here.
Amaris had been keeping his distance but Gina's mother snapped her fingers loud over Gina's head and she jumped from the sudden sound. "Get your butt over here," she demanded, and Gina tried to crane to see Amaris' reaction to this. He looked resigned, like he was going to get walloped on the head for having had part in Gina disappearing for so many months, but Gina knew better than that. He was going to get hugged, possibly to death.
Gina was in a perpetual haze, part relief that, as Amaris had said, the worst was over and part sheer emotional exhaustion. They didn't talk much on the walk back to Gina's house, though she remained latched to her mother's side under her arm like a baby bird. Amaris picked up the back of their pack, looking red and flustered from the hug-attack he'd gotten, and while there were some neighbors outside who gave the three of them openly curious, worried looks, no one interfered. The women who hung around the community center pretty much had Pallet's market cornered on "nosy and intrusive" and the rest of the town tended to stay out of matters that didn't concern them.
The second they were inside Gina's achingly familiar living room, the door shut and—Gina frowned—actually locked, behind them her mother turned on them with the beginnings of genuine rage starting up in her normally kind brown eyes.
Gina fell all over her words trying to offer up the information her mother deserved and would no doubt be demanding in a second. "We got—we got wrapped up, in some stuff," Gina said, and just like that her mother's anger made the snap-change into fear again. "Not, not drugs or, crime or anything but, we thought we could handle it. On our own and. It's over."
Gina was shocked the two words didn't drop out of her mouth like the treacherous, slimy snakes they were. Such a bold-faced lie, and Gina realized one thing with a surge of regret—she was getting better at this, lying when she had to.
Gina's mother didn't say a word for a protracted, deafening period of silence. Gina just stared at her, not even able to begin predicting her next words, and when her mother swallowed hard, frowned, opened her mouth and stopped, Amaris spoke up beside her.
"This was mostly my doing," he said quietly, and Gina shot him a wide-eyed look before she could think better of it and fall back on her "poker face" mantra. Amaris was looking straight ahead, his expression subdued and, under the calm, somehow repentant in a way she never saw on him. "After my uncle passed I became… very interested in finding out what really happened." Gina tried to swallow the lump in her throat and decided that staring at the ground and looking ashamed toed the line between a lie and the truth just enough that she could get away with it and not draw attention to herself. "I started cooking up theories and when Gina came across me in Viridian that day she and her friends decided to try to help me."
Gina's mother was probably staring at Amaris like she couldn't quite believe he was real, but Gina couldn't confirm that. She was still staring at the rug. Why is he doing this? she wondered desperately, deeply uncomfortable with winging it this way. Her grand plan had been to apologize profusely, prostrate herself on the floor and avoid answering as many questions as possible, but now this was a game-changer. Gina opted for pervasive silence as her safest bet.
When her mother did speak, her voice was thick with emotion. "I can understand why you would want to search for a reason. There are things I wanted a solid, good reason for in my life, too." Gina finally looked up, feeling the prickling in her throat kick back into full gear at the unshed tears in her mother's eyes. "That's nothing to be ashamed about. But, I'm glad it's over now. It's better to just… accept some things, the best you can, and look forward."
It was the sort of thing Amaris would normally scoff at and roll his eyes at, but instead he just looked at the floor and nodded mutely. Gina's mother locked eyes with her again, her brow furrowed, and asked one final question. "I know you already said it was fine, but just… no one got hurt?" she asked, biting her chapped lips.
Gina shook her head vehemently. "Nobody," she said, which was a lie, but none of their physical injuries had been lasting, at least. Her mother let out a shaky sigh, mopped her eyes with the backs of her hands, and murmured, "I'm feeding you now." Then she retreated into the kitchen, sniffling heavily and wiping her hands on the backs of her pants.
Gina cast Amaris a searching look, but he refused to meet her eyes, instead moving off to take a heavy seat on their threadbare sofa. Gina paused, debating going over and either hush-conversing with him about whether or not this was going to be their MO for everyone in Pallet or going over to her mom in the kitchen.
Amaris spoke up before she decided. "I'd like to go to the labs," he muttered, getting up and heaving a heavy, slow sigh. It was just instinct for Gina to assume he meant he wanted to go alone, so when he glanced up at her, his face tired, and asked, "you coming?" her eyebrows rose into her growing-out bangs.
Gina cleared her throat and called into the kitchen, "Hey mom?"
"What?" her mother called back immediately, appearing at once in the doorway, wiping her hands on her shirt hem. The clear anxiety on her face wiggled its way into Gina's stomach and festered there.
"We're just going to go visit the labs," Gina explained hastily. "Sort of… have a lot of rounds of apologies to make."
Her mother seemed to relax, thank goodness. "No, totally. Go on, food'll still be here when you get back." She paused, though, biting her lip and furrowing her brow. "Just… be prepared for a real game of 20 Questions when you get there."
Gina chuckled softly, but the anxiety that had been absent for the last half hour or so rekindled itself as she replied. "More like 200 Questions. See you… later," Gina said, changing her original response of "soon" since she was pretty sure this would not be a short trip.
On the way there Gina felt oddly in sync with everything Amaris did. When he looked to the sign pointing the way to the community center she knew he was remembering their deeply unpleasant encounter with the gaggle of elderly women who had descended on him en masse to ask insensitive and intrusive questions about his uncle. When he turned his head to the primary school building that they passed by on their way to the labs neighborhood, Gina caught herself doing the same, struck by a nostalgic need to gaze at the place where they had been children. With each step his face grew blanker and blanker and Gina knew it was because his nerves were reaching a breaking point. She also knew not to bring it up.
Apparently Gina's mother had phoned ahead to let Alana know they were coming. Alana was visible, an outline in a white labcoat against the front of the doors the second Gina and Amaris rounded the corner past the building that had previously blocked the labs from sight. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest and her foot was flat against the door she was leaning on, the bottom of her sneaker grinding with rubbery squeaks against the metal. She froze when she saw them and they froze when they saw her.
It was a while before Alana decided to be the one to bridge the rest of the gap between them. She looked pissed, scared, apprehensive and relieved all at once and Gina bit her lip and cast Amaris a quick, sidelong glance before Alana reached them. She couldn't be sure, but she thought he looked a little pale under his remaining freckles.
"You're back," Alana said, her voice stiff and cold as she cast a look between the two of them. "What the hell?"
Gina let Amaris take point on this one, falling into step behind him and Alana as they talked, mostly trading harsh, quick words as they made their ways into the labs. There were two researchers present today, both of whom looked like they very badly wanted to follow the trio into what Gina realized was going to be a private conversation. She kept making unintentional, awkward eye contact with each of them in turn while Amaris offered Alana a brief, rather insincere sounding apology. Gina cringed. If only he could sob on command.
Alana shut the door to—Gina grimaced—Lab 4 behind them and turned to face the two Initiates, her face set and stern. Gina was noticing the oddest details today—the small rectangular window that one of the researchers had thrust a chair leg through had been properly replaced sometime while they had been gone. It only served to remind her even more strongly of just how much time had gone by.
"I am…" Alana began, pausing to let a sigh out through her teeth, "really… really happy you're okay. You're saying this is done. But you need to tell me what 'this' even was. To begin with." It seemed like Alana wasn't done talking yet, so Gina and Amaris waited her out. "I mean—where on earth did you even get that stuff? That's what's been driving me crazy."
"Digging through the Saffron City dumps," Amaris reported, delivering the story without a single visible tell that he was lying. "Don't ask me how, because I truly couldn't even pinpoint it now, but I had become convinced that what I found there was connected to my uncle's death."
Gina cringed, unable to hide it. She'd never get used to how he delivered these stories. Not a blink, not a budge. Alana's mouth fell open and Gina watched her more human reaction instead. Before she could cut in, though, Amaris continued.
"Towards the end my… 'detective work'... got very shoddy. Delusional correlations that didn't exist, 'clues' I always thought had such great significance." He sighed and pressed his knuckles into the bridge of his nose, the first time he'd broken eye contact with Alana since he started talking. "To answer your original question. No, I don't know where it came from before that dump. And as I mentioned to you in the hall, it's all been destroyed."
Alana was quiet, her brown eyes alive with worry, and Gina could practically read the unasked questions in them. Is he still having these delusions? How far did this go? Were there other symptoms? Was it grief or something deeper wrong with him?
Gina stepped into the talk, speaking up for the first time. "I sort of enabled him… a lot," she said, deflating slightly on the last words. It wasn't a stretch—she had enabled him to get involved in all of this, and it was undeniable that he'd been in danger so often because he had been introduced to this lifestyle through her. Gina called on that sense of personal accountability to get her through this lie. "He was just starting to think it was nothing when I suggested coupling a journey home to visit mom with working in the labs." That part was a flat-out lie, but now Gina wasn't looking Alana in the eye anymore, and that made it easier. "Sorta been a bad influence," she mumbled.
The look of worry on Alana's face melted in light of Gina's last words. "Oh, Gina…" she sighed, sounding sad and tired. "Hardly." Not sure what to say to that or how to take the beyond touching vote of confidence, Gina remained uncomfortably silent as Alana gave her a weary, but sweet smile, eyes shifting from her to Amaris and back again. "Just… no more, alright?"
All Gina could do was nod. Beside her, Amaris did the same, and as Alana's smile grew and she tilted her head to get them to follow her out of Lab 4, Gina was struck down to her bones with the deepest, strongest kind of love she could imagine.
The people of Pallet were so kind, so loving. They took people back with open arms, questions asked, of course, but nothing held above their heads. It was what was expected from a small town with a small population like this, and Gina was nearly bowled over with a powerful urge to never, ever leave home again.
Alana paused once they were at a crossroads in the winding corridors and let out a small, soft sigh. "Well. I've been… busy. Got something to show you. If you're interested."
"'Course," Gina blurted at once, not letting Amaris get a word in edgewise. Alana smiled a crinkle-eyed smile at them and cast Amaris a playful look as she lead the way once more, snaking the familiar paths and leading them, Gina knew, to an offshoot of Professor Drake's old area. She cast a furtive look Amaris' way, but no pain or discomfort showed on his face. He looked more tired than anything else—a feeling she could relate to very strongly.
The lab assistants were nowhere to be found, for which Gina was grateful. She hoped that the bulk of the questioning would be done, and that Alana and her mother would ripple out the information that the rest of Pallet would want to know, serving as their spokespeople and relaying their story for them. It felt selfish to wish it, but Gina did so anyway, and vehemently. She was genuinely sure that her nerves wouldn't be able to handle another talk like this, let alone a dozen more. As they walked, Alana and Amaris hashing out the last few details of what he'd been doing for the past multiple months, faces flashed through Gina's mind—her neighbors, the Waldens, her classmates who had stayed home rather than go on Master journeys, even those who were home already from those journeys, past teachers, Pallet's single librarian… it made her reel to realize just how many people would want to know what had happened—how many people they affected on a day-to-day basis without even realizing it.
Alana let them in through the single door to the room she wanted to show them, and a chain reaction went off in Gina's head. One door instead of two—whatever Alana was going to show them wasn't chemical. It reminded her of Silph, and Saffron—and just like that, a puncture of dread and guilt appeared in her relief. She tried to shove it aside as Alana wheeled a cart out, upon which was a truly bizarre looking gadget.
It was boxy and chunky with two screens set into it, side-by-side, and a series of unlabelled switches and buttons below those. From the left and right side of the device were a series of colorful, long wires that were looped neatly and tied in bundles, each ending with multiple sets of small plastic discs—Gina's brain whirred for a moment before it supplied the word—electrodes. The sort that were attached to a body for EKGs.
Amaris was frowning at the machine like it was a question on a quiz that he was sure he knew the answer to, and Alana smiled at him mysteriously while he puzzled for a few seconds before chuckling and speaking up. "Don't break yourself, there," she said, teasingly. "I know it looks a lot different than the original blueprints, but this is the GIZMO."
This meant nothing to Gina, but apparently it meant something to Amaris. The look of unmasked shock on his face was one Gina scarcely ever got to see, and as he recovered enough to step forward and stoop to peer at its components, Gina found herself watching him more than she was studying the contraption. Very lost, but not wanting to interrupt, Gina didn't have to wait for long for the explanation. Alana glanced up her way, grinning in full now. "The GIZMO is a pet project of Professor Drake's. Name courtesy of Amaris."
"I was four," Amaris responded as if on autopilot. "I didn't understand the concept of acronyms. Alana," he cut in to his own explanation, standing straight now and giving her a very serious look that Gina didn't altogether understand. "Are you telling me this is… actually a functional prototype?"
Alana's poker face was, possibly, even worse than Gina's. She nodded and rushed around the side of the cart to power the device up, and Gina edged over so she could watch from a better angle.
The machine whirred and hummed, a coughing, groaning sound coming from it, and Gina glanced nervously at Amaris and Alana to gauge their levels of concern. They didn't seem worried that it would explode, so she relaxed marginally while the device booted up. "It's safe, I assure you," Alana said, mostly to Amaris, and Gina shifted again so she could see their faces to better lip-read over the surprisingly noisy machine. "Bring someone out, I'll show you how it works. Gina, you too—pick one of your Pokémon and let him or her out."
Still thoroughly lost, Gina blinked at the pair of them as Amaris selected a Pokéball from his belt and released Blastoise. The lab suddenly felt a great deal more cramped, and as Alana exclaimed over the growth spurt Wartortle had undergone since she'd seen him last, Gina tried to decide who to bring out for this as-of-yet undisclosed experiment. Though she knew it would be wiser to go with a smaller team mate, she couldn't help herself—every time she saw Blastoise, Gina's mind immediately went to Charizard, and an undeniable part of her also wanted to show him off to Alana, too.
Alana's smile, if possible, grew even brighter when she saw the massive shape of Charizard's form solidify before her. Both the starters seemed to understand how strange it was to be back in Pallet after what they had last experienced here, but they took their cues from Gina and Amaris and remained calm, though curiously wary.
Alana approached Charizard and put her hand out to him, palm flat, the way Gina recognized from countless trainer manuals, and Charizard quirked a strange look her way before rolling his teal eyes and bumping her offered hand with his nose, as if judging her for her over-careful approach.
Gina grinned at the display, but glanced over to Amaris and Alana questioningly. "Alright, so—the GIZMO? Still not really sure what that does."
Amaris was the one who spoke up. "If Alana was, indeed, successful—the GIZMO is a prototype Pokémon communication device."
"Very prototype," Alana added, but Gina's eyes had already gone wide at the implications of those last three words.
"No way," she said, hovering near the device, desperate to see it in action now. "You mean like—you mean like, translating their language so we can understand it?"
"Yes," Alana said, clearly pleased as punch over Gina's reaction. Gina wasn't done with her slew of questions by any stretch, though.
"This is what Professor Drake's life's work was all leading up to," she continued, unable to stop the stream-of-consciousness string of realizations now. Alana seemed to be feeding off her energy—she was already fitting Blastoise with the electrodes and a healthy helping of gooey gel from a tube. Blastoise dealt with the application well enough, though Charizard was eying Alana with clear hesitation now.
"Yes," Amaris answered, his voice bordering somewhere between somber and pleased. Gina glanced to him for a second and caught the look on his face softening, something vulnerable and moved called forth from deep within at a piece of his uncle brought into realization before him. Gina sucked in a slow, deep breath through her nose and battled tooth-and-nail to keep her emotions from getting the best of her.
As predicted, Charizard was much less agreeable when it came to getting a gelatinous substance smeared on his head. He twitched and fidgeted away from Alana for the first few seconds, but Gina came over to him and held his face still for the application. He was more than strong enough to rip himself free from her grasp, but it was a symbolic gesture more than anything, and he grudgingly let her hold him still, but levelled glares at the pair of them until the electrodes were firmly in place.
"Okay," Alana said, running back to the machine and beginning to key up some commands. "Like I said. This is extremely new technology, tons of bugs to work out—it's totally safe though!" she promised, whipping around to face Gina, who had just opened her mouth to worriedly ask that very question. "It's just, the results might not be as clear as we… well. You'll see." Alana flipped the last switch and a brief little pop of static emitted from the left speaker along with a shrill whine of feedback from the right. Blastoise and Charizard grimaced, and a garbled series of noises came from the speakers. Gina couldn't make out anything that sounded even remotely like English, but Alana spoke up to explain. "It's calibrating, give it a—"
Then, from speaker 2, which Gina quickly traced with her eyes to see was hooked up with wires to Charizard's head, crackled and emitted two robotic words. "Why head."
Gina's mouth fell open. She could see Amaris unfolding his arms and standing straighter, lurching forward beside her to stare at Charizard, and now her starter seemed to realize that he was receiving undue amounts of attention. He stared at them, narrowed his eyes, and then another flat, buzzing word sounded from the speaker: "Why."
"Alana," Gina hissed, her hands leaping up to clasp over the lower half of her face. "This is amazing." Gina could barely make herself do it, so enraptured was she at staring her starter in the face while his thoughts were made clear to her in plain language for the first time ever, but somehow she managed to tear her eyes over to Alana. The intern was beaming broadly, flushed pink at the praise, but now Blastoise was speaking up from the second speaker.
"Is anger wet. Is not. Big, large. What."
Gina snorted painfully and clapped her hands, which she had only just lowered, back over her mouth again. Alana groaned. "Oh god, see, this is what I meant, it stops making sense really fast—"
Charizard was speaking again. "Laugh why." Gina knew she was a goner. It wasn't even that inherently funny, but the combination of nerves, keyed-up emotion, adrenaline, and utter relief combined and created a chemical reaction inside her that had her doubled up and gasping between fits of silent, painful giggles.
Charizard sighed, and Blastoise's speaker asked, "Pain laugh?" Charizard replied with "Stupid laugh pain. GEE-NAH pain laugh. Why."
"Christ," Amaris mumbled, for Gina's name had come out in a completely different pitch for some reason, much louder than the other words and about an octave higher. Gina hit the ground, clutching her stomach now and howling, and Alana lost it and dissolved into groans and laughter too. Gina could hear her insisting, "Work in progress! Work in progress!" Over the increasingly degenerating conversation Charizard and Blastoise were having.
"Do not why. Why."
"Is thing is head. Why is. Do not."
"Bungalow."
That one finally got Amaris, and his huff of startled, bewildered laughter set Alana off again. Gina could do nothing more than mouth the word "bungalow" to herself, eyes streaming now. Alana moved forward, somehow, doubled over from laughter, and flicked some switches—just in time, too, because the last thing they heard was the robotic voice saying something like, "AGGHGKGHK" and a sharp, louder shrill of feedback before the humming machine turned off.
"I'm sorry," Alana insisted from between breathless bouts of laughter. "Bungalow, what is that even… I don't know where that would have even come from, the mistranslation—"
Gina waved helplessly at her, the word "bungalow" forever tainted in her mind now. Years from now she pictured herself having a perfectly innocent conversation and then dissolving into howling, crying laughter fits the second that word made any appearance in any sentence. Even Amaris was stifling laughter, though badly.
"Yes… I would have to agree with your assessment. This is, how did you put it? Very prototype."
"You hush," Alana said, pointing a finger at Amaris, though she was still beaming and cast Gina frequent apologetic glances as the girl struggled to get to her feet and catch her breath.
The atmosphere of lighthearted humor lingered for an amount of time that Gina considered a gift. Charizard and Blastoise were bewildered, Blastoise a little less so, and the looks Gina's starter kept shooting her only made her crack up harder. For a time they lapsed into small talk, catching up, discussing the other new projects Alana had taken on, and asking questions about the GIZMO and its future.
When Alana turned to Amaris, though, and bit her lip, her kind brown eyes taking on a more worried look, Gina's heart sank. She knew whatever was coming next wasn't going to be happy news. "Amaris…" Alana began, and Amaris snapped his gaze over to her, suddenly on edge. Alana barrelled on. "I don't want to scare you away again, but… the GIZMO isn't all that's left here of your uncle." Gina's frown grew, but Amaris didn't look surprised at all. Alana cleared her throat and murmured, "There's still—"
"I know," Amaris cut in, lifting a hand, though not in a rude way. He looked slightly deflated, but also calm. "I'll do it tonight."
Gina didn't ask. She didn't ask while Alana tried to smoothly change the subject back to lighter topics, or later when they were back with Gina's mom, eating the truly astounding amount of food she had managed to produce from a house that was only ever equipped to feed one woman at any given time. She refrained from asking until later, after they had helped her mother clear away the dishes and she'd fussed and insisted on going up ahead of them to set up Gina's old bedroom and the guestroom so they were fit to be inhabited.
"So," Gina asked, reclining in the most beaten-up of the armchairs, picking her words carefully. "You're gonna go back to the labs to do… something, later?"
She was expecting a curt reply, a complete dodge of the question or a blunt request for her to mind her own business. Instead Amaris paused, averting his eyes and lowering his glass of water to dangle it from his hand while he slouched in the less-beaten up armchair.
"Personal effects. Stuff of my uncle's that Alana wants me to go through. Your standard keep-toss-donate whatnot."
"Oh," Gina said, feeling embarrassed heat rise in her ears. She wasn't even strictly sure why. It was so deeply personal, and suddenly she wished she hadn't asked. "Got it," she finished, lamely.
"You should come," Amaris said simply, draining the last of his water. "Might be some books of his you're interested in."
Though she didn't want to hesitate, Gina did—it was standard for trying to figure out what Amaris meant below the surface. In some bizarre way it almost seemed like he was asking for company, and while Gina would have written that off as impossible years ago, now it just could be true. The bottom line was, motivations aside, he wouldn't have offered if it wasn't okay for her to come along, so she simply nodded and gave him a quick smile.
Gina had known that Amaris and Professor Drake had lived in an annex that joined the labs, but she'd never seen it herself. There'd been no reason for the Drakes to invite her over in the past, and no reason for her to ask. If anything, Gina was surprised at how small and normal it looked. She'd somehow imagined the Drakes living in an austere, steel-and-glass apartment of sheer efficiency and mechanical wonder. This place was homey, lived-in, and a great deal smaller than the house she shared with her mother.
Amaris was an enigma, not giving her any outward cues to go off to determine his inner state. He at least wasn't on the verge of snapping, like he'd been when the community center women rounded on him with invasive questions about his uncle all those long months ago. He wasn't at ease, though, that much she could tell. He seemed determine to power through this task, if anything.
There were boxes in the center of the living area, stacked, and judging by the dust layer they hadn't been disturbed in quite some time. Amaris beelined straight to the top one, hefted it off with a huff, and relocated himself to an equally-dusty couch to have a seat and peel back the flaps. Not sure if she was allowed to start hovering over his shoulder and snooping, Gina took instead to taking in more of her surroundings.
The roof was a mirror of the floor with long, unbroken planks of lightly-speckled wood paneling. Most of the chairs matched their couch, upholstered in dark brown leather and sporting a blocky feel. The place still bore the marks of the break-in that had damaged parts of the labs as well, but Gina could see that repair work had been done. There were still spots of water damage on the floor and walls where something had clearly gone wrong in the bathroom, probably a busted pipe. A section of the wall, though, had been replaced and plastered over, and looked about halfway through its final coat of paint. There were still newspapers taped to the floor to catch stray specks flung from brushes.
Amaris huffed out an amused sound and Gina glanced back to him. He held up a dilapidated, time-worn contraption that had certainly seen better days. Gina drew closer to peer at it, and recognition flashed across her face when her eyes caught on a distinctive series of levers and latches.
"Is this—it is! This is your winning entry to our senior year science fair, isn't it?"
Amaris snorted at her. "You sound so eager to see it now. You were singing a different tune when it was first created."
"Well, yeah, but that's because you were such a dick about it. Don't even pretend like you weren't," she warned him, pointing at him as a slow-growing smirk began to form on his face. "Why's it in your uncle's things? Wouldn't this have been, I dunno, in your room? On your impressive wall of trophies?"
Amaris let out a true laugh at that. "'Impressive wall of trophies?' I'm flattered you think so highly of my academic record. But, no. I had every intention of throwing it out once it'd served its purpose. I suppose uncle held onto it."
It was touching, and also exactly like Professor Drake to do, so when Amaris moved it off to the pile he had evidently designated for throwaways, Gina jumped forward to snatch it back up. "Nope," she said, looking around and finally settling for the coffee table as her personal "keep" pile.
"Pardon me?" Amaris said, pulling back slightly to give her a puzzled look from the corner of his eye.
"This thing is a legacy. If you don't have a shelf of trophies, I'll put this on my nonexistent trophy shelf. I can start a collection of all my friends' winnings."
Amaris frowned at her for a second, opening his mouth to ask something, but then changing his mind. He moved something else to the throwaway pile on the floor, and once Gina saw what it was she snagged that up, too.
"You can't really be throwing away a vintage Gameboy. Wait, once again—why is this in your uncle's stuff? Wouldn't this have been yours?"
"Uh—yeah, on paper, it was mine, but he was the one who always played with it… look, Gina." He shook his head after delivering the first part of his answer in a rushed, perfunctory way. "You can't keep all of my uncle's things in your house."
"Watch me. We've got a spare room and I've got my room, too."
"I've seen your room, you have zero space for any additional clutter."
"Too bad." She stuck her tongue out at him and Amaris rolled his eyes, but went back to the contents of the box.
They spent the time like that, Amaris sometimes stopping to explain some gadget or other, sometimes wordlessly placing folded ties or ceramic mugs into the "keep" pile. Whenever something was set to be donated Gina found herself glancing over it, flipping switches or turning pages, half-tempted to keep it for herself, too. It wasn't logical to snag so many objects that she'd hardly ever get time to see, though—they'd go from collecting dust here to collecting dust in Gina's room instead. Still, she envied the person who stopped by Pallet's library and found the professor's full collection of Pokémon Encyclopedias waiting for them on the shelf.
Gina didn't adopt everything, but refused to let certain things go. A framed photo of a deeply-snarky, vindictive Amaris smiling sarcastically with a mouthful of new braces was a point of playful contention between them, Gina flat-out forbidding him from throwing it away and attempting to play keep-away with it for a while. It wasn't long before she remembered she was at an extreme disadvantage in the height department when it came to that. Exhausted, dirty and dusty, they had reached the bottom of the final box a full two hours later, and all Gina could think about now was getting home and straight into a shower. She'd elbow Amaris square in the jaw if he tried to sneak in there before her.
"So you know Nidoranarchy?" Amaris groaned, leaning over and stretching his back by grasping at his knees. "Uncle's punk-rock band."
Gina snorted by way of affirmation.
"Did I ever tell you I found a Nidoranarchy flash drive in here, the first time I was trying to go through these boxes?"
The answer was an obvious "no"—Amaris rarely told her anything personal, but Gina perked up at this news. "Oh god. How terrible is it?"
"I don't know, yet," he admitted, flopping back down on the couch and tossing a few old pamphlets in the throwaway pile, pausing over a pair of cufflinks. "I haven't watched it."
Her knee-jerk reaction was to demand why he hadn't—it was surely a comedic gold mine. But it made sense a second later, and she bit down on her question. "When do you think you'll finally check it out?" she asked, hoping she didn't sound pushy. It was time for her to allocate one of the empty boxes for her to put her (considerable) loot in, and Gina stood up to do just that.
Amaris was quiet for a time, putting the cufflinks in the "keep" pile and dumping what looked like a debri field of old pen caps and paper clips onto the top of the throwaway pile. That finished up the last box, and he was already nearly through flattening out the rest of the empty ones before he answered. "Soon, I expect. Would you want to make fun of uncle's mohawk with me when I do?"
Of course I do, Gina thought, giving Amaris a wide, touched smile in her mind, knowing that if she said that or looked at him that way in real life he'd recoil and tease. Instead she lifted her eyebrows at him, grinning, and said, "Do you really think he had a mohawk? You should try that look out next time we're undercover."
