~Kayne~

I knew about the whole "twenty four hour" thing between Touko and my brother, and I knew Touko well enough to know that she would be perfectly on time when she went home.
I had been with Tate and her after she helped me re-capture my Garchomp, but she didn't know I had been there. She fell asleep for quite some time, and when I came back after dropping Garchomp off at a pokemon center in Kanto Tate was more than willing to have someone to talk to.
I had never seen my brother with such high spirits before, even at the peak of our existence. The look in his eyes and the way he spoke of Touko made me want to feel it. He was in love, no questions asked. We had talked for an hour or so about this, but also about the reasons behind what had happened before.
I wasn't sure if Tate forgave me for bringing Touko back to the Plasma castle to get N, and I never had the balls to ask him directly, but it felt better all the same. We were on speaking terms, which was good. He couldn't stay mad at me anyways, I was his favorite brother. Even if Bobby wasn't much competition.
Speaking of which, we had discussed Bobby for quite some time. And we had come to the recognition that he was dangerous. The whole Team Rocket deal didn't seem to be working out for him. I had gotten the chance to see him when I was in Kanto looking for my Garchomp, and he told me about leaving Rocket for good. I knew that it was never going to work out for him, but when I thought back to the day me and Tate found him locked in a cage, he had seemed so sure.
There was a growing taste of hate towards Bobby for making Tate take care of me so that he could be with Team Rocket, and now he was quitting. It wasn't as if watching out for me was his top priority now either. Bobby never did anything for me; he had always treated me like I was just baggage. And seeing him this last time proved that again.
"Shouldn't you be with Tate?" he had said, mentally able to tell that Tate wasn't even in the same region.
"I died Bobby… I think I can handle myself." I had retorted with scorn.
"Died? Already?" his face was smug. "Neither you are Tate resisted it very long."
I couldn't understand when Bobby had said that… as if he was happy about it, or knowing that he had lasted the longest with his real life gave him some cheap pride. He didn't care about me… he didn't even know me.
I felt like I had grown a lifetime in the short months of fallowing Tate around and helping Touko. I wasn't the younger brother anymore… I knew this, but Bobby just didn't get it. I would only ever be the younger brother to him, and this disturbed me. Didn't he see how much I had changed?
I had told him that I was out in Kanto looking for Garchomp, determined to find him regardless of me being a ghost or not. He had said that my pokemon was a waste of time and that I wouldn't be helping myself.
Oh how I wished he was here now… to see the way my pokemon obeyed me, even more so than before. I HAD caught him, I had done what Tate couldn't, I pulled off something that no one believed I could. He would have to understand me now.
A low rumbling in the sky brought with it the promise of summer rain, but it was very far off, still over the ocean while I stood around the side of Touko's house. I could barely see the gray clouds, so I didn't think much of it.
I wanted to see Touko so I could thank her for helping me. That was why I had gone to hers and Tate's hotel room in the first place when she was asleep. Without her Samorott there was no telling how far Garchomp would have run, or how much more he would have turned to attack me. The only thing that had been working in my favor before Touko helped me was the barbed wire that he had run blindly into.
Don't get me wrong, I would have chased Garchomp to the edge of the earth. He was my pride and joy regardless of being alive or not… and I wasn't about to let the little shit get away that easily.
I curled my hand around the rough and old pokeball hanging from a chain around my neck. "You better not disobey me again." I said softly to the ball. It bounced twice against my chest when I let it fall and looked across the yard to where Touko suddenly appeared.
I watched in surprise as Tate stalled, not releasing her. His arms were around her waist, his face inches from hers. I raised my eyebrows, anticipating the kiss probably as much as Touko was, but knowing my brother better than that. He stalled again, sliding his arms out from around her as she said something. I was too far away to hear what it was, but the disappointment on both their faces told me it wasn't good. What had happened?
Tate pushed his lips against Touko's cheek for a split second before teleporting away to who knows where. I watched, my heart sinking for my brother and apparently for Touko too. She didn't move from her spot at the edge of the yard, but brought her hand up instead to touch the place my brother kissed her. The pain in her eyes was amazing and I had to reconsider ever wanting to be in love with someone.
Sure it seemed nice to have someone to be with and that makes you happy, but the pain looked like too much bear. I doubted I would ever know the reasons behind someone loving someone else just to get hurt in the end. I didn't understand it now, not even while it was right in front of me, walking up the porch with her head down.
"Touko!" I called, stepping out from around the fence. She gasped, the hand on her cheek flying to her chest. The panic in her eyes faded almost as quickly as it had passed, and she glowered when she realized it was me.
"Don't do that to me Kayne!" She said in a hushed voice. "What are you doing here?"
"Well… two reasons. One I want to thank you for helping me re-catch Garchomp. And two… how was last night?"
Her face fell. "You're welcome. But… I don't really want to talk about it now."
"Uh oh." I shook my head and reached out to put my arm around her shoulders. "What happened?"
She looked up at me with her dark blue eyes. They were sad… pained. "Nothing… I had a great time. That's the problem." She pulled away from me and reached for the door knob. "But it's over now."
I blinked in surprise, knowing that talking to her would be pointless now. She obviously didn't want anything to do with me or her emotions right now. My heart flickered. I had nothing against N, but I loved my brother more and I knew that this girl was making him happy. So I knew I had to get to the bottom of this.
Without hesitation I flickered, teleporting away to where I felt Tate would be.

~Tate~

Cursing I punched the nearest wall. There was a faint, unsatisfying thud as it was from the insulated part where no one wanted to hear noises from the other room. This made me even angrier I punched it again, harder. I punched it again; a louder thud. I punched it again, leaving a strip of red against the pale olive color.
"Tate!" Kayne's shocked voice made me whirl. I could feel cold blood drip down my fingers from where I had split my knuckles open.
"Jesus Christ bro, what are you doing?" He walked over to me and examined the chips in the wall. I groaned and slid down to be sitting, head in my hands. My hand throbbed.
"She loves me." I shook my head slowly.
"Isn't that a good thing?" Kayne crossed his arms and looked down at me like I was something pitiful. I could see Gengar and Froslass from the corner of my eye where they were itching to come over. I had let them out just before taking Touko home.
"Sure it's a good thing. It's everything I wanted…" I couldn't comprehend the way I felt though. It was almost like because I knew she really did love me, it hurt more to see her go. And here I was, giving her every opportunity to love N more than me.
"I just saw her now, I wanted to thank her for helping me catch Garchomp; she didn't look all that thrilled to be going home." Kayne sat down across from me and crossed his legs. It may have been a vague attempt at trying to make me feel better, but it didn't work.
"Last night was perfect." I mumbled, remembering how easily she had let herself come to me. I knew she loved me, and I had gotten her to realize it too. It was the fact that she still had to go back to N that made me rage. I knew she wouldn't have just given up on him as soon as she admitted to loving me, but it still stung like a beedrill.
"I woke up this morning and she was deliberately next to me, Kayne… I know you don't know what that feels like, but it's every bit as painful as it is amazing." I couldn't explain it well enough. "It's like you are enjoying the moment so much, but in the back of your mind you know you have to give it up in the end. You have to trade your own happiness for someone else's."
"I don't know how this crap works, Tate. But… isn't that what you are supposed to do for the people you care about?"
I shot him a deathly glare. "I'm not talking about her! I'm talking about the King. Touko is perfectly happy with me, I saw that last night, but now I have to give her up because she has to make him happy. It's not her happiness I'm trading for mine, if it was I wouldn't be upset, but it's his!"
Kayne didn't seem to know what to say. He just scowled. "Since when are you so selfless?"
I snorted, my mind whirling back to the days of saving Kayne's ass, most of the time from himself. "I have always been selfless, you are just now noticing."
He frowned at me and changed the subject. "So what do you plan on doing now? Didn't you say you were going to help her fight team Plasma?"
It was true, the one thing that I had on my side now… the one thing that would make Touko realize that I was always going to be there for her was fighting team Plasma. This wasn't hard for me, considering that I had dreamed about destroying everything that pitiful force had since the day I had been a part of it. I used to stay up late at night, wondering why my hair was fading to white, wondering why my heartbeat was starting to hurt, and planning their downfall.
What was hard about this was the fact that I had always planned out those downfalls with N in my hands. I remembered how much I wanted to see his blood, how much I wanted to ring his neck for what he did to me. N was the king, the boy who never lifted more than a pen in his life. All those papers signed for liberation, all those public announcements, and all the days I had been assigned to protect N.
So you could imagine how hard it was, not for me to help Touko ruin team Plasma, but for me not to ruin N as well.
I nodded to Kayne, almost forgetting his question.
"Can I ask you something…?" he spoke with a maturity I had never noticed before. For the first time I seemed to realize that little Kayne, my younger brother, was now something bigger than that. The childish light in his eyes was gone.
I nodded.
"Alright, don't hit me or anything, but… what do you have against N anyways?" He flinched as he said this.
I just stared at my bloody hand and challenged. "Why don't you have anything against N?"
"I… I guess because it never bothered me as much as before. My life wasn't so great before I joined the Shadow triad anyways."
"So there you go." I choked. "That's why I hate him… He took everything from me."
Kayne just looked at me, his off-white eyes dull with misunderstanding.
I took a deep breath. "Do you remember when you first joined the Triad, and all we ever did was fallow N around?"
He nodded.
"And then you remember having to bring Touko to him? Remember the time in Chargestone cave?"
He nodded again.
"I had just died." I summoned up the memory with effort. "Literally that morning. I begged N to put me out of my misery. I begged him for some time, any time at all to gather myself, but he just…" I clenched my teeth, remembering his exact words.
"You have a job to do now get up!" the king had told me, a moment before kicking me in the side. I remembered digging my fingers into the carpet and clutching at his pant leg. Saliva had been pouring from my mouth like a waterfall because of the pain, my head had throbbed, and my ribs were then bruised. The king didn't care.
"You wonder why I made Bobby the leader of the Shadow triad and not you!" N had demanded, the fury rising in his voice while I dry heaved, trying to get the blood out of my stomach. "This is why! Because you don't what you are told when you are told!"
"He just what?" Kayne brought me out of the memory.
I shook my head and opened my mouth to speak. "He just told me to suck it up and do as I was told."
"And you did It." it wasn't a question, nor a statement. Kayne remembered… how irritated I had been that day in the cave. He understood now.
"I did. And that was the day I decided that hated him more than anything else in the world. More than Ghetsis himself, I vowed that I would get back at him." I interrupted my raging with a dark laugh. Kayne looked at me like I was going crazy.
"We brought Touko to N that day. You remember?"
"Of course."
"Kayne, I didn't even know her name but seeing her beat him in battle… watching her crush his hopes and dreams…"
"You fell in love with her." he assumed.
"At first I just fell in love with what she did… But time after time, seeing her and bringing her to N just to watch her beat him, it was the most rewarding part of being with Team Plasma."
"I remember… that day on the bridge." Kayne mused. "You just teleported away from me and Bobby and appeared right in front of her. We thought you had gone crazy when you grabbed her and teleported her twenty feet to N."
I smiled half-heartedly, remembering that I had been so excited to watch her beat N that I couldn't wait the time it would have taken her to walk that bridge. I just had to get her there as soon as possible. Bobby had been livid that I stepped out of line that day, but I had never quite cared. I was supposed to be leader of the group to begin with, the decision was rightfully mine.
"I couldn't get that battle started soon enough." I said to Kayne, raising my head to look at him. "But I actually didn't LOVE her until she defeated N once and for all… until she gave up her Mienshao in that battle, just to stop him. I had never been so happy to see team Plasma fail. You didn't know it at the time, that we were to fallow the successor, and you didn't know that was why Bobby left."
Kayne's shook his head. "I can't believe I fallowed Bobby… I should have stayed with you from the beginning."
I shrugged. "You were a stupid kid."
"I never realized just how terrible team Plasma was." he mumbled.
There was a moment of silence as we both remember the days of working for the terrible group. Surely Kayne had his own personal hate towards them.
"Well that's settled then!" He suddenly brought his hand up to the pokeball around his neck. He gripped it tightly as if willing Garchomp to give him strength.
"What?"
"I want to help you stop them."
An evil grin slipped across my face and I stared at Kayne, my spirits rising. Of course I wanted very badly to get revenge on N and everything he'd ever done to me, but having Kayne at my side suddenly made resisting easier. It may have been the fact that I knew he understood now, that he wasn't just a little brother anymore. Or it could have been because finally someone shared my hate. Either way I was satisfied.
"I knew there was a reason you were my favorite." I hissed.