(A/N: ...Nope, still late. Clearly I shouldn't make promises. Although this time it's not entirely my fault, as real life also got in the way.
The lyrics quotes towards the end are from "Hand of Sorrow" by Within Temptation. Also: I'm sorry.)

RETURNING HOME

CHAPTER 9

Her breath caught halfway out of her lungs, Misty stares at the gun in Abbie's hands. For a bright, cold moment time is frozen, stretched taut in the few meters between them, and her fingers tighten shakily around Ash's elbow—she's not sure if to try and pull him back or to keep him from doing anything or both. Her heart goes thumping in the echoing silence.

The woman takes a step forward. "Don't move," she says again. Light shines dimly through the open door behind her back, leaving her face in shadow. Somewhere at her left Brock takes a sharp breath.

"Wait, we can—we can explain. Your friend attacked us. We had to defend ourselves."

Abbie makes a scoffing noise. "That dumbass," she curses. The barrel of her gun glints silver in the almost-dark. "I should have known he'd only ruin my plans."

Plans. At once Misty clutches the pokéball Brock handed back to her before running for the door, cold sweat lining her palm. Abbie steps another step closer.

"I'm sorry things had to get this ugly," she continues. "I'd have rather avoided it. I was going to let you two leave so you wouldn't have to get hurt, but that moron just couldn't have some patience. No use trying to reason with him. He'd shoot me rather than wait a couple more days." Another step. She clicks her tongue. "Shouldn't have expected anything else from some gorilla with more muscle than brain, in hindsight."

A tremble stirs deep down in Misty's gut. She shakes her head and the words leave her lips like spit: "We thought we could trust you."

The woman shrugs. "If it makes you feel any better, you're not the only ones who did. My mother thought the same. The old woman's smart in a lot of ways, but unfortunately for her she can be quite blind when it comes to her family. And honestly, if this had been something smaller I'd probably have done what she asked. But the boss's own runaway son? The reward I'll get when I hand him back to him probably outweighs anything I'd ever gain out of all her scheming."

Misty swallows. Her throat's cotton dry. Fear and fury twist her insides and cleave her tongue to the roof of her mouth: careful, she turns the pokéball in her hand until her thumb finds the release button. She failed to do anything with it once. But now it's dark enough that maybe she hasn't seen it, won't see it until it's too late. Her fingers curl tighter around it, twinging. Ash is standing between her and the gun.

(I'm sure the big boss won't mind getting him back with a couple holes, the man's voice sneers at the back of her mind.)

Abbie takes another step and Pikachu jumps in front of Ash, flaring bright crackling yellow, a low "chuuu" rising out of his throat like a growl—and it's barely a second, maybe even less, but for that long the woman's glance runs to him and it's enough, has to be. She takes the chance.

"Gyarados!"

The darkness flashes violently red as the pokémon takes shape. Even bowing down its head touches the ceiling. It snarls, roars; its back arches, blue scales glinting in the faint dusty light. Abbie quickly aims her gun at it, startled, then surprise leaves her stance and her lips stretch into a grin.

"Well ain't that a nice pokémon you got there. It would be a shame if it were to get hurt. Or worse."

"Let us go," Misty says. Her voice shakes, matching the wild thrumming of her pulse. She looks straight at Abbie and tries to keep it firm. "Let us walk out of that door and maybe I won't hurt you."

The woman exhales a brief throaty laugh. "You want no one to get hurt? Call your pokémon back," she nods her head towards Ash "and then step away from him."

"Gyarados," Misty whispers. She doesn't even have to give a command—the pokémon understands the gravity of the situation on its own and the burning glare of a hyper beam blazes up between its jaws, ready. Abbie's finger flexes on the trigger in the yellowish glow.

"Call. Your pokémon. Back," she says again, every syllable sharp in her mouth. A last warning. Misty shakes her head.

"Not unless you let us leave."

"Do what she said."

She blinks and turns towards Ash. He's staring at the floor still, his arm stiff in her grasp, his hand balled into a fist so tight she can see the tendons popping out like ropes, the knuckles white under the blood. She shakes her head again.

"No chance."

"Call Gyarados back," he insists. "Now. Before it's too late."

Misty grits her teeth. Then turns back at once: "Gyarados, now—"

Abbie is quicker. The shots are deafening in the empty basement, one after the other, earsplitting and terrible. She can almost feel them cut through her, a sudden gaping void, and maybe she screams and maybe Brock has to grab her by the arm and hold her back. Gyarados recoils, staggers—lets out a furious, bellowing wounded cry. Abbie fires again. Gunsmoke hits Misty's nostrils like a slap.

But it doesn't end there: Gyarados heaves its body back into the air and its mouth's aglow, fanged and wide, and in a final desperate growl a beam of scorching yellow light erupts from it and and crashes into Abbie. The woman's thrown from her feet and sent flying; her head slams against the door with a dull thud. The gun goes clattering somewhere. Gyarados stands upright for a moment still—then crashes down as well. The impact rattles the ground under Misty's feet.

"Gyarados!"

She pulls her arm from Brock's grasp and runs to it, her breath stuck at the bottom of her chest. Her pokémon is lying sprawled across the floor, its mouth agape still, the light scales of its belly glimmering white. Its side heaves under her palms when she touches it and there's blood, sticky and warm, trickling down like a thick gelatin. "Gyarados," she says again and there's no answer, only the cavernous, jittery sound of its breath.

Footsteps. Brock's hand closes around her shoulder, squeezes. "Come on, call it back in its pokéball," he urges her. "We need to go. We need to get out of here. We'll get it to a pokémon center, there's got to be one around here."

Misty presses her lips together, swallows; nods. Her throat's caught on a lump. "Return," she squeezes out, touching the release button of Gyarados' pokéball again, and her voice is all wrong, shaky like it hitched somewhere along the way. The pokémon disappears in another red flash. Beyond it Abbie is still lying against the door, wilted like a puppet with its strings cut.

Brock slams his hand on the panel on the wall again until he finally manages to open the door. Night air slips in, cold and sharp, sour smelling. She tucks the pokéball in her pocket and turns: Ash is still standing where she left him, hands curled into shaky fists at his sides. But when she closes hers around his arm and tries to pull him with her he doesn't move.

(His muscles stiffen under her touch instead like days ago, like when she had only just let him into her living room, like— )

She turns again, blinking. "Come on. We're leaving."

"I can't come with you," he says. He's still not looking at her. Misty shakes her head.

"Don't be stupid."

"They're looking for me. You're in danger as long as I'm with you. Don't you see it yet?"

His words shake as well. She's got no time for patience right now, though, not while for all she knows Gyarados might be dying, so she digs her fingers into his arm and jerks it harder. "Well you're twice as stupid if you think I'll let you go anywhere alone after all this," she snaps. "And if I have to hit you on the head and drag your unconscious body all the way to the pokémon center I will, so quit that and come with me now!"

"Ash, come on," Brock intervenes. "We'll come up with another plan. But right now we need to get out of here and get Gyarados help. Fast."

He reluctantly lets her pull him outside after Pikachu also tugs and pushes at his legs. The sky above their heads is an inky black, flat and dull. It's cold. Misty's breath fogs into clouds of thin smoke. She keeps her hand around Ash's wrist as their steps echo between the silent buildings and her heart beats louder, louder, louder.

—-

They find the red sign of a pokémon center after what feels like hours of aimless wandering, although it's probably not. Brock taps her shoulder and points at it: "That way," he says, and she finally lets go of Ash's arm and breaks into a run. Her feet splash into a puddle along the sidewalk. The lights of the pokémon center turn it into a mirror, red and blue-white. Don't be too late she thinks, slamming her palms against the glass door to open it. Please don't be too late.

Inside she blinks in the sudden light and after a moment of disorientation runs for the counter. The nurse Joy sitting behind it gives her a kind and somewhat puzzled look: "Can I help—?"

"Yes," Misty cuts her off. She fishes the pokéball out of her pocket and lays it in front of her. Behind her the door opens and closes again. "My pokémon. My Gyarados. Someone hurt it. She—"

Her voice's still not coming out right, too urgent and shaky, the syllables piling on one another. "Alright," the nurse tries to calm her. "We'll take care of your Gyarados, don't worry. Can you tell me what happened?"

Misty forces herself to take a breath. "Someone shot it."

Nurse Joy's face scrunches into a frown. "...Alright," she says again after a second. She nods her head towards the two Chansey at her left, who rush her pokéball towards the other room. "We'll take care of it. That sounds like something you should also file a police report for though. I can contact officer Jenny for you."

"There's no need for that," Brock's voice comes to her aid. His hand closes on her shoulder again. "We—don't want to press charges or anything. It was an accident."

The ripples creasing the nurse's forehead deepen slightly as her eyes run to him, and Misty wonders if she can tell he's lying. Wonders suddenly, like a cold dagger sinking into her stomach, if she might be one of Giovanni's countless spies as well. But the woman nods after a moment and steps away from the counter. "Alright then. We'll do everything we can," she promises her, before hurrying after the Chansey. The soft patter of her shoes follows after her; then the door closes with a hissing noise and there's silence.

Misty swallows, trying to force down the lump in her throat. Her eyes sting. Brock gives her shoulder another squeeze. "Gyarados will be fine. I'm sure," he says. Instead of answering she bites her lip and turns around.

Ash is standing by the door, his eyes glued to the empty street outside. In the bright neon light she can see that there's a bruise on his face, spread purple across his jaw, and she shudders as the scene from before rushes back to her mind. She takes a half-step towards him, stops. Swallows again. Brock lingers on his feet for a moment, then leans over the counter and grabs the keys to one of the rooms from the rack on the wall.

"I think it's best if—we get somewhere a little less in sight," he says. Misty shakes her head.

"I have to stay here. I need to wait for Gyarados. You—"

keep him safe she wants to say, but she doesn't, because she's not sure if he can hear her from across the room. Brock looks at her and nods after a second, as though he understood anyway. "Be careful though," he tells her, the lines of his face tense and sharp.

She watches him walk up to Ash and, after quite a lot of convincing, manage to get him to follow him towards the hallway. Alone, finally, she stands by the counter for a bit still, not knowing what to do with herself. Her hand runs to the spot under her ribs where Ash's elbow slammed when she held him back: it hurts a little. The sliding door to the emergency room is still closed. The red light on top of it has flashed on.

In the end she walks to one of the couches and sits down. She pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her hands tight around her ankles, waiting.

—-

Blood rolls down the drain in ugly rusty stripes. It almost has a deja-vu quality—he's had to scrape caked blood off his hands more times than he cares to count. What's different this once is that Brock is leaning against the doorframe, pretending that he's not eyeing him, and Pikachu is staring up at him from the floor and his glance is like a prickle on the back of his neck.

He still hasn't fount the courage to look either of them in the eye. Nor Misty.

He turns the water off and lingers in front of the sink for as long as he can before the seconds start to feel like sand piling into heaps, then turns. Brock is still there. "Are you okay?" he asks him. Ash shrugs and says nothing. Brock looks at him for a couple moments—he can feel his glance even without taking his off the floor—then takes a breath and lets it out slowly.

"...I'll be back in a minute. Wait there," he says.

He disappears before Ash can retort. Not that he'd have anything to say anyway. He kicks the floor a bit, then walks out of the bathroom and back into the room. There he stands idly in the middle of the floor for a handful of seconds, still carefully avoiding meeting Pikachu's eyes. He walks up to one of the beds then and lets himself fall sitting on the mattress; curls up in a ball around his knees. Pulls them closer when Pikachu tries to squeeze in on his lap.

Stupid, he thinks, digging his fingers into the fabric of his pants. How could he think—how could he let himself—

Brock is back after a couple minutes. He hands him an ice pack: "Here," he says. "For your face," he adds when Ash just stares at it. "You've got a bruise the size of a softball there."

"Thanks," he sighs. Pressing the ice to his face sends silvery needles sparkling along his jawbone. Brock watches him.

"Are you okay?" he asks again. "Aside from that?"

Ash shrugs one more time. He looks at the floor, his eyes fixed on the spot where the wooden boards meet in a T shape. "I can't—I can't stay here, Brock."

"You can. And you're going to," Brock retorts. "We won't be staying for long. Only until Gyarados recovers, then we'll figure out something else. But we can't let you go alone, Ash. We're still going to help you."

He shakes his head. "What if—Gyarados doesn't make it?" he wants to know. He takes the ice pack off his face, wringing it in frustration. "What if they find me and this time instead of Gyarados it's you, or Misty, or Pikachu?"

"And what if we let you go and it's you?"

"Doesn't matter."

"It does." Brock walks to the bed and sits down, and Ash crumples tighter around his knees even if he didn't try to come closer or touch him. "We're still your friends, Ash. And we knew we were getting into something dangerous from the start. What happened tonight changes nothing. If anything it gave us a small taste of what I imagine you had to live through for the past year, but that's one more reason not to leave you alone. We'll figure out something else. We just need to think about it."

"There isn't anything else you can do." He shakes his head again, still staring at the floor. "This was the only plan we had and all it's done it put you guys in danger."

Brock seems to find nothing to remark this time. He can feel his eyes still, and instinctively hides his hands, as if he could still somehow see the blood on them. Brock lets out a sigh.

"We'll figure it out," he insists. "There has to be some other way."

Ash presses his lips into a thin line and doesn't retort. "You should go back with Misty," he says instead. "She shouldn't be alone. Giovanni—he knows you've been helping me all along."

He doesn't add anything else, doesn't tell him what Giovanni's men could do to her, to them, for merely being close to him; but he doesn't need to. There's a silence, lingering and thoughtful, then another small sigh.

"You're not going to do anything stupid if I leave you here, right?" Brock asks. "By which I mean you're not going to try and run off or something like that."

"I'm not."

"Are you going to be okay?"

He gives another slight shrug. "I'm fine. And I can defend myself if I need to."

"Yeah, I—saw that." There's a flicker of hesitation in Brock's voice, and although it's not quite the disgust he was expecting it still makes him want to disappear. The tendons in his hands twitch, quivering. "Fine. Keep an eye on him, Pikachu, alright?"

"Pika," the pokémon nods. Brock lets another moment pass; then stands. Ash listens to him walk away, still not looking up. On the door he pauses again: "I mean it. Don't do anything stupid."

He shakes his head. Silence; then the door slides closed with a slight creak.

He hides his face against his knees. Stupid, he thinks again. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

—-

(You belong here now.)

—-

Misty looks up when she hears the footsteps. She sniffles a bit, wiping the back of one hand over her eyes. She hasn't been crying, not really, but they feel hot and watery all the same. The light above the door is still on.

"Anything new?" Brock asks. She shakes her head.

"Uh-uh." The couch cushion sinks a little as Brock sits next to her and she sniffles again. "How's Ash?"

"I'm not sure," he sighs. He purses his lips, thinking about it for a second. "I think he feels responsible for all this. He told me I should stay with you, in case—you know. He's afraid something's gonna happen to us."

"Think he should be alone?"

"He's only a couple rooms from here. And there's Pikachu with him."

Misty leans her chin against her hands. "What are we going to do, Brock?"

He doesn't have an answer, it seems. "I don't know," he finally admits after a long moment. "We need to figure out something else. There has to be something we can do."

"Like what?"

Hopelessness feels like a pit growing in her middle. The edges keep crumbling, brittle like clay, and the rubble rolls down the walls and disappears into the black without a sound, never hitting the bottom. She thinks of what Ash told her in the woods, about the guy who tried to betray the team; about what happened to him. To his family. "I don't know," Brock sighs again. "Maybe there's something we haven't thought of yet. Jessie left me a number I could call her at in case we needed something. Maybe we could talk with them again and see if they can give us anything else."

"We can't let that piece of shit get to him."

"We won't. We'll find something."

She doesn't retort. Her eyes fall back on the door across from them, still closed. She folds. She imagines machines beeping on the other side and her teeth sink into her lip, hard enough to hurt. "It's not Ash's fault this happened. It's mine."

"Don't say that."

"But it's true." She knots her hands around her ankles again, her fingers pressing white marks into her skin. "Ash kept warning me that these people are capable of anything. And I believed him, I did, but I thought I could still—I thought—if all else failed I could still defend him myself. And now maybe Gyarados is going to die."

Her voice cracks. Brock is silent for a second; then leans over and strokes her arm a bit as if trying to warm her up. "Gyarados is tough," he says. "Just like its trainer. It'll be okay."

"You don't know that."

She stiffens, remembering similar words from over a year ago: they'll find him, he'll be fine. He gets it, maybe, because his hand stops and again for a moment he finds nothing to say. "Let's wait," he just tells her in the end. "Okay?"

They wait. The nigh stretches on and on in a familiar, sickening sort of vigil, and her eyes start feeling full of sand after a few turns of the clock. She forces them open anyway. Brock gets them coffees from the vending machine in the corner and she holds hers in her hands until it goes cold, watching as the steam rises into the air. Outside the sky goes from black to gray to a foggy pink. A light turns on somewhere down the street; then another and another. Somewhere a car starts.

It's past five a.m. when the light above the door to the emergency room turns off. In the pause that follows Misty holds her breath, her stomach crumpled to a hard knot.

The door slides open.

—-

The room has gone from dark to the hazy gray of almost-dawn when there's footsteps in the hallway again. Ash draws in a sharp breath and hugs his knees closer. It takes him a couple seconds to unglue his eyes from the window he's spent a good deal of the night staring at, his muscles tense to the point of shaking, all of his five senses ready and alert.

(The same thought nagging insistently at the back of his mind: open it, jump over the sill and run, do it do it DO IT. But Pikachu's eyes never left him for a moment, and although he kept avoiding them he's sure he'd guessed what he was thinking about.)

The footsteps stop by the door. There's silence for a brief moment; then the creak of the door opening again. He glances at it, still barely lifting his eyes from the floor: Misty's shoes stand in the narrow slice of hallway he can see through the crack. She lingers there for a second and then walks in, pushing the door closed behind her back. The lock gives a soft click.

She takes a breath and lets it out in a tired-sounding sigh. "Hey," she says. "You're all in one piece, right?"

He doesn't answer. He thinks of the horrible gasping sound he heard when his elbow crashed into her and her scream when Abbie fired at Gyarados and all he can muster is a shrug, his fingers sunk into the fabric of his pants still. She sighs again and walks closer, stopping by the bed.

"I'm not mad," she tells him. Ash bites the inside of his cheek. Right where it already feels swollen and raw, where it already hurts.

"You should be."

She sits. The mattress wobbles; out of the corner of his eyes he sees her lace her fingers around her knees. "Nurse Joy said Gyarados is going to be okay. She said Gyarados have a very thick skin. The bullets managed to cut through it anyway, but they were slowed down enough that they didn't do much damage." She pauses there, like she's trying to collect her thoughts. "She's going to monitor it for the next twenty-four hours just to make sure everything is fine. Then it should be ready to leave."

He still says nothing. Misty looks at him, then moves closer and tries to lay a hand on his face to turn it towards her. "Let me see that."

He flinches away from her touch. Her fingers linger in the air for a moment and in that pause he can feel the ripple of her hurt, even without looking at her. Stupid, he thinks again. So stupid to let her in, to think that maybe he could have a glimmer of her and Brock's and Pikachu's normalcy for himself again.

She lowers the hand in her lap. "Are you okay?"

"I hit you."

That's hardly even scratching the surface of everything he's done to her in the past few hours. Misty shrugs a little. "I'm fine," she assures him. "You didn't hurt me that bad. I'll live."

Ash presses his lips together and again doesn't reply. He hears another small sigh.

"Can you look at me?"

He does—for a moment, barely, enough to see the worried crease of her mouth, still not enough to see her eyes. He lowers his on the blanket immediately after and pulls his knees closer still. Misty breathes in slowly.

"It's not your fault any of this happened, Ash," she says. "You even warned me to call Gyarados back and I didn't listen, so—well, that's... probably on me more than it's on you." Her voice falters slightly. She picks it up again after a beat, though, and goes on. "And Gyarados will be fine. I'm fine. Brock and Pikachu are fine, and you're fine, unless you're hiding some fatal wound somewhere, so... nothing irreparable happened. Yeah, we're kinda back to square one with our plan, but we'll find something else."

"We won't."

"Maybe we just—need to think harder. Brock's right, there's got to be something. We're not going to give up."

"You should." He spits it out almost, sharp. "You should just go back home and let me leave. I can't stay with you."

"Now you're being stupid all over again."

"You've already gotten yourselves in danger once and it was all for nothing. And it's just gonna happen again, until he gets what he wants. It's all pointless, you—you can't fight him. No one can."

She's not as quick to retort this time, and Ash's nails claw at the skin of his arm. Pull. The words tumble out of him like scattered pebbles: "I can't—I can't get away from him. I never have. Even when I thought I did, even when—I thought I managed to run away. He just—let me."

He sinks his nails into his arm harder, leaving red angry marks. Misty leans closer and takes his hand away. "You got away," she tells him. "He's not here right now."

He does turn to look at her finally, forgetting that he was avoiding her eyes until it's too late. "Even the people we were supposed to trust were actually on his side," he snaps. "Maybe he's watching us even right now, what do you know, maybe he owns this whole place and he's got hidden cameras somewhere or—or that nurse Joy is one of his agents. He's never stopped controlling me. I can't get away."

She looks back at him. There's no disgust on her face, not in her eyes nor in the curve of her mouth or in the frown furrowing her brow a little, not even when he keeps staring at them—at every smallest worried crease—and tries to will it into existence, wondering how it's possible, how she can still look at him in the same way after what she saw him do. There is exhaustion, though: her eyes are bloodshot like she's cried or tried not to and the hollows under them have turned from shadows to purple brush strokes. She shakes her head a little and pushes a strand of hair away from her forehead.

"But he's not here," she insists. "You ran away. He's not controlling you. He had a whole year to try and brainwash you and he failed. You still managed to break free and reach for help."

"Yeah, and all it's done is nearly get you guys killed." He turns away again. On the floor the sun's starting to draw pale rectangles through the window blinds. He knew this would happen all along, didn't he? He knew it before he knocked on Misty's door and he did it anyway. "He was right. I'm no different than him."

Misty stares at him, then grabs the pillow from the bed and tosses it half-heartedly in his direction. It smacks against his side and flops back on the mattress, missing Pikachu by an inch. "Stop," she says. Her voice shakes slightly at the foundations, like she's angry or hurting or both. "Stop saying that. I don't want to hear it again. You're not like him. You're at far as it gets from that piece of shit."

Ash clenches his jaw. "How can you still say that? You saw—you saw what—"

"What? What did I see?"

"What I did to that guy. What I can do."

He has to squeeze it out almost. There's silence for a moment, the same hesitating pause he heard in Brock's voice earlier, and his stomach twists and crumples into a fist. "I saw you beat the crap out of someone who wanted to hurt us and bring you back to the psycho who tortured you for a year. I'd have been pissed too," she sighs then. Her hands tighten a little around her knees. "I am. But not at you, Ash."

He says nothing. Misty picks her gaze from the floor where it'd wandered and turns to look at him again: "But I will get pissed if I hear you say that again. So stop. You're nothing like him."

He wishes he could believe her. He does; more desperately now than ever. But his mind is all a tangle of shame and guilt, wound tight, and her words bounce back against it this time without cutting through. He swallows and gathers his knees to his chest again. His hands are bruised at the knuckles, his skin split open across two of them on the right one.

"He's my father," he whispers. The word's all sharp edges and thorns in his mouth. He never called him that; he was always just Giovanni in his head or sir when he answered his orders, the only minuscule act of rebellion he could afford. He's not even sure he minded. Misty shakes her head.

"So what? It doesn't mean anything. You're not him."

He sure did a fine job evening out their differences as much as he could, though. Again Ash's eyes run to the window: again he imagines opening it, swinging his legs to the other side, running off into the still-silent city. Maybe it's not too late. Maybe he can still do one right thing, fix the some of the wrong he's done to them. Maybe there's still a chance to prove that he's not like him after all.

Misty looks at him, seemingly expecting a reply. After a handful of moments she sighs. She picks up the pillow she threw at him and smooths it on her lap. "What happened tonight doesn't change anything, Ash," she says.

But it did.

—-

"So what do we do now?"

She asks it to Brock almost like pleading, almost like she actually expects him to have an answer. Her eyes feel heavy. He takes his off the slits in the blind and the street and purses his lips. He sighs: "I don't know. I have the number Jessie gave me. I can call her, maybe they know something else that could help us."

"We can't trust anyone else," Ash says. He didn't even look at the food Brock got them from the pokémon center's cafeteria. The bruise on his face is a deep purple shadow even with the blinds shut and the lights turned off, spread like an inksmear from his jaw to the edge of his cheekbone.

Brock turns back to the window and leans his forehead against it, thinking. He looks even more tired than she feels, which is saying something. "Mrs. R really did mean to help us, it seems."

"Doesn't matter. She still put us in the hands of someone we couldn't trust."

"Also I don't know if she'd still want to help us now," she sighs. She remembers the sound Abbie's head made smacking against the door, that dull hollow clunk: she had it coming, for sure, but she shudders all the same thinking about it. Brock purses his lips again.

"Maybe she's still worth a shot, though. She was sincere. And what happened wasn't—it wasn't out fault, we did what we had to."

"It doesn't matter," Ash insists. He clenches his fists, staring at the floor. "We can't trust any more people. If it goes like this again next time we're not gonna be as lucky."

He pulls his knees closer and leans his chin on top of them. His cheek works like he's chewing at it. Misty shakes her head a little, looking at him.

"Then what do you suggest? If you've got some other idea now's a good time as any to mention it." She sees him part his lips and stops him: "And if you say we should let you hide or something I will—" she looks around—seizes the crumpled wrap of one of the sandwiches she and Brock ate from one corner of the bed. "—throw this in your face. And I won't miss."

It's desperation talking more than anger. She guessed right though, it seems, because he doesn't say anything. She sighs one more time.

"We need someone's help. There isn't—there isn't much the three of us can do alone."

"It doesn't have to be the three of us."

"Don't start again."

Brock lets go of the slats in the blind and looks back at them. "We need to find a safer place first of all. We can't stay here. As soon as Gyarados is released tomorrow morning we're leaving."

"To go where?"

The pit of hopelessness in her gut gapes open again when his glance drops to the floor. "Maybe we could—I don't know. Get somewhere very far from here. As far as possible."

"It's no use. He'd find me anyway," Ash grumbles. His breath hitches slightly. "I'm a thing he wants. He doesn't let anything step in his way. For as long as he's alive and free there's no place in the world where I'll be safe from him. And you guys either, if you keep helping me."

Brock raises a hand to his head and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers, like to try and contain a headache, and for a long, long moment keeps them like that. "We'll find something," he insists then. "We'll talk to the trio again. There's got to be something."

She tries to believe him. She looks at the bruise on Ash's face, at the scars on his arms; thinks of the ones she can't see, the horrible ones on his back. She tries desperately to believe him.

—-

please forgive me for the sorrow, for leaving you in fear

for the dreams we had to silence

that's all they'll ever be

(You don't belong out there anymore, Giovanni told him once. He remembers the way his lips curled into a grin as he did, and he shivers now remembering it. Remembering the amused glint in his eyes. You wouldn't fit, not like you are now. And they don't need you anyway. They've all gotten over your death by now. Your mother, your friends, all of them. They've gone on with their lives and forgotten about you. There's no place for you anymore.

He leaned back into his armchair, his bejeweled fingers stroking the fur on Persian's head: you belong here now. We're family after all.)

—-

Brock catches some sleep in the few hours before sunset. "So I can stay up tonight," he says. He runs a hand through the scruffed hair at the back of his head and lets out a sigh, and Ash remembers that he's likely spent two sleepless nights in a row already and feels a weight in his chest. "Someone should probably stay on watch. Just to be safe."

"I can do it," Misty offers. But he shakes his head and stretches his lips into a smile.

"You had a rough night last night already. Sleep. I'll be fine, I just need to crash for a little bit."

Come the night he's up again and he gathers his pokéballs in his backpack and throws it over one shoulder. "I'll be right outside," he says. "I saw there's a sitting area almost right across from this room, I should be able to keep an eye on the whole hallway pretty easily from there. I'll pretend to be reading or something. I'll wake you guys up the moment I see or hear anything strange."

After he's gone Ash lies awake in the dark, his arms wrapped around his knees, and listens to the rustling of blankets as Misty keeps tossing and turning in the bunk bed above his. It's a while before she falls asleep, and when she finally does her breath grows shallow and too fast again after not long. I have nightmares too sometimes, he remembers her saying. He waits, staring at the wall. Her breath quiets down after a bit: she doesn't wake up.

Pikachu takes longer to fall asleep. For the better part of the night he sits on his pillow, watching him still. Eventually weariness gets the best of him too, though, and his eyes slowly slide closed, his breath turning into the soft purring noise it makes sometimes when he's sleeping soundly. Ash waits for a while still, his throat so tight he can hardly breathe himself.

In the end he pushes the blanket aside and slips out of bed as quietly as he can. The floorboards give a slight creak under his foot and he freezes, listening: silence. Slower still, he picks up his shoes by the laces and takes a couple steps. Then a couple more. Halfway through the room he stops and turns around, his throat squeezed shut, his heart a crumpled weight in his chest. For a moment he just stands there.

Pikachu is curled up in a ball under a corner of his blanket. In the other bed Misty's sleeping with her face twisted in a frown, her hand grasping the sheet. Moonlight glints softly on the pillow and on her hair, spread in an orange mess around her head.

I'm sorry, he thinks. He wishes he could tell her. Tell them.

He swallows and turns around. He reaches the window and fumbles with the latch a little. It clicks; behind him Misty stirs in her sleep. Ash holds his breath. But she turns to the other side with a snuffing sound and still doesn't wake up, and the window swings free a bit, cold air seeping in.

Ash digs his nails into his palm. There isn't really an alternative, is there?

He opens the window and slips his shoes on. Feeling his heart heavy, heavy, heavy, he throws his legs over the sill and lets himself down on the other side.

The cold bites the skin of his arms. He balls up his fists.

He runs.