Edition: Nakama (eleventh set)
- Set #: 1
Character: Brock
- Pairing: Inheritshipping
- Universe: none
Rating: E (Everyone)
- Warnings: none
- i - k - u - z - o -
The water was winter-spring cold, the chill and the impact of slamming into it stunning him still, and the weight of his clothing dragging him down to a death he could not comprehend in that moment. Slow and steady, a retched torment of a freezing burn coursing into his chest, unbeatable. It's what happened when wars lasted into winters, two years and two winters; he thought there would be more for him...
It was the voice of the other-world girl crying his name that he woke up choking to. As it appeared, water burned leaving his lungs as much as it did entering them. She was asking him questions, and he was giving orders--
Hayato gave the not-Takeshi a blank look, watching his hair drip, noting how the girl's hadn't.
"We're on the other side of the lake," not-Takeshi explained, and he felt his head shift not by his own volition. He thought he felt fingers on the back of his head. "Ma-Matis you called him?" The name was strange to him, still, as their names were strange among himself and the peerage. Hayato almost saw how it rolled around in his mouth. "He didn't see us. Left once you didn't come back up."
Pulverized by steel tempered by far stronger arms. "Damn Johto swine! Surrender already! Your country can't stand on miracles much longer!"
"He's going in the same direction your friends took Ash," the girl said, worriedly.
This...this not-Takeshi, who looked like him and sounded like him and smelled like him and felt like him and acted like him...
Why were they so alike? How weren't they the same?
Hayato grit his chattering teeth and clenched his eyes shut in anguish. This was not fair. Why should war break out now and take his friend away, then somehow drop an other-worlder into his lap that was basically him with a strange, unintelligible name? Because now, he couldn't keep either. Takeshi had chosen Matis (without knowing, or seeing, how Hayato had felt); not-Takeshi and his friends had to be sent back.
But once he opened them, he tried to sit up, marginally making it on his own; his clothing stuck to him like friendly ice. Time to stop thinking about this. That Boy was in danger, if Kanto wasn't ignorant to Johto's movements; he had to contact them. "You still have to be taken to the ruins," he said. "Your friend is protected as well as we can provide for, and there's a communications tower not too far from there. Get you there, and hopefully we'll be in time to warn them."
Act cold, act unforgiving, act ungrateful. He was colder than Yanagi's glares, inside and out. Don't give the children one kind thought of this place. Don't give them reason to remember it beyond a dimensional displacement. Not-Takeshi helped him up, and Hayato shrugged him off. The girl wasn't blind to the snub no more than not-Takeshi was. Leave it that way.
Don't make them wish for things they cannot have.
