Chapter 34: Interlude for Rook
He caught flashes of vision as he lay on the ground, but at first, Rook though they were the beginnings of death. He knew he would die soon… but he didn't; he just slept.
He woke with a distant explosion and already knew that the Iris had died. Rook moaned and tried to go back to sleep, but he was surrounded by cold. All around him, there was nothing but dripping, hard blocks. Rook could feel frigid water stinging against hands and face.
Face. His face was covered in metal, so how could it feel anything?
Rook's eye snapped opened and he rolled over, pushing himself up on his hands. He realized that he was lying on Salamance's back. The poor Pokemon had broken his fall… and it had broken in the process. He didn't have to check it to know that it was dead. Out of habit, Rook also checked the mechanical gauntlets on both arms. His FSPA (Illuminator, he called it) was ruined; if only he had used it in that last battle with those blasted children, he would have won, but he had saved it out of foresight. He had wanted the glory of being the one supercharging Lugia for the final attack on Viridian. Glory had been his downfall.
But he had lived! For the moment, that was the important thing.
Rook checked his other wrist and found that the pads giving him control of the legendary birds had been smashed as well. Ah, well. There was life. There was possibility. He could survive.
All around him was ice. Chunks of the giant lens that had filled the Iris's center littered the earth, but they were melting in the sun that had manifested overhead. Rook knew he was in a forest, to the west of Viridian. He needed to get away from the latter, so going west was his best option. He could hide out in Johto, gather his resources, and hunt down the Hermes to free his men.
Then he would find those damn children, both of them, and make sure that they never took another breath of air. They weren't worthy to live on the earth…
The earth. Rook knew in his heart that that had been what had saved him. Mother Earth had spared his life because he had defended her when no one else would. She had saved him so that he could hunt down those that did her wrong… Ian Cartright and Casey Rhyne. Rook smiled with self-satisfaction as he worked his way out of the field of broken ice…
As he moved, he caught sight of his reflection on a piece of ice that stood like full length mirror in the ground. His mask was indeed gone, revealing the face beneath. That horrible, ruined face. Rook hated that face… but it was time to end his days behind the mask.
He reached to his chest and ripped off his trenchcoat as well as the shirt underneath and stood, staring at his scarred body's reflection in the ice. It was covered in red marks and boils, blisters from a fateful day long ago that still hand healed. Rook's right eye was swollen shut, and the lips had been burned away from his mouth, leaving him in a constant smear. The scars crossed Rook's chest like a red bandolier, and his face was divided in to by the ugly marks.
If he could have, Rook would have tried to tare the scars away, but they weren't half as bad as the memories the brought back.
In a fit of sudden rage, he kicked the chunk of ice, cracking but not breaking it. That only angered him more –his fragmented reflection was worse than his normal one. So he kicked again, this time reducing it to a jagged stub in the ground.
Rook turned, satisfied, and walked away into the woods.
He went for days, stopping only to sleep in the odd piles of leaves. There wasn't any food to be had in the forest… it was a wild wood. Perhaps it was because of it that Johto and Kanto had never been united as one nation, despite the fact that they were on the same continent.
Rook lost count of the days… there was little distinguishing them from night to someone as exhausted and hazed as him. He could have been walking for one hundred years, but he didn't know for sure. Regardless of exactly how long it was, it was a good while before he found the house. Not an empty house, like he had hoped but… it would do.
Rook realized as he saw the dwelling how rural it was. These are good people, he thought madly, people like me. People of the earth. He also realized that with a destination in sight, he no longer had the determination to keep himself going.
His strength rolled off him like the numerous pounds of weight that had in the recent… time, and he crashed to the mossy ground. Sleep consumed him, deeper and more fulfilling than any he had ever experienced.
(-o-)
Rook awoke to voices.
"But momma," someone was saying, either a girl or a very young boy. Rook suspected the latter. "He's so ugly. Why does he have to stay here? Why can't papa just take him into town."
"Now, Peter," said an older, female voice. So the first speaker had been a boy… "We must care for those less fortunate than us. This poor man has been through a lot. You can tell just by looking at him. If anyone in the world needs our help, it's him."
There was a sigh from somewhere else, and Rook was vaguely aware of people moving around him. With a pain like pulling out a bullet, Rook opened his eye. Above him was a rough wooden ceiling that seemed to slant upward from his feet. He got a second of good focus on it before his vision lapsed out again and he closed his eyes again. Rook rolled onto his side and tried again.
This time, he had a little more success. He took in a plain, square room, with a table at its center. There was an old woman sitting at the table, preparing some sort of food in a large, carved wooden bowl. There was a rustling noise form somewhere above Rook's head, on the other side of the Room.
"Mom," a third voice, also definitely female, said. "He's awake."
"Oh my," said the woman at the table getting up quickly and rushing to Rook's bedside. No sooner had she gotten there then did Rook lapse back into an unconscious sleep.
(-o-)
That evening, Rook found himself well enough to sit up and eat dinner with the family that had taken him in. Their Pokemon, a calm-eyed Heracross and a more attentive Bayleef, sat by the door eating from their own bowls.
Rook sat at one end of the table, with the mother and daughter to his left, and the son to his right. The father sat across from him.
Rook's fork eased into the meat that lay before him… some sort of bird or fish, he wasn't sure, but it tasted excellent. With his free left hand, Rook reached up to move his mask so that he could feed himself, before remembering that his mask was long gone. He sighed, attempted a smile, failed, and just put the food in his ruined mouth.
The whole family was staring at him intently. A few times, the little boy opened his mouth, as if to ask some questions, but his mother always hushed him in advance.
"You," said Rook after he had eaten his fill, "are precisely my kind of people: you live completely off the land, at one with nature. If everyone in the world was like you, we would have a much better planet."
"We're proud of our little life here," said the mother of the family.
"As well you should be," Rook replied with a chuckle.
"Sir, why is your face like that?" the son asked before his mother could object.
Rook paused, knife and fork in hand, then set down the utensils and looked at the boy with his single amber eye.
"Well… that, my lad, is a long and complicated story. The short version is that I was betrayed. A man I called my friend turned on me and did this to me. That man died, and now his brother, who believes I murdered I once-friend, is trying to kill me for revenge. He almost succeeded, but I escaped… sadly, my most-loved Pokemon died in the process."
"I'm sorry," said the boy in regards to his Pokemon. "I don't what I'd do if Percy died on me."
"Percy?"
"My Herracross."
"Ah," said Rook, looking over at the eating Pokemon. "A fine specimen. You should be glad to have him."
The boy beamed and turned back to his food.
"Now," Rook continued, turning the man sitting opposite him. "Would you be so kind as to tell me where the nearest city is? I have much work to do in a short amount of time."
"New Bark Town is about fifty miles to the south, but there's no hurry for you to leave!" the man said, stroking his thick beard. His daughter seemed to think otherwise… but Rook accepted the invitation nonetheless.
For the next week, he lived with the family, helping them as best he could. He worked in the muggy heat of the forest, chopping wood, planting crops in the nearby field, entertaining the young boy… he left, almost sadly, heading south with a pack full food his new family had prepared for him. And hanging from his belt, unbeknownst to the young boy, was a new, occupied pokeball.