Warnings: Keta is his own warning, pstd and depression, Ho-oh and post possession effects, water burns, Joy are now a species and a thing.
Chapter Twenty-Six - The Abandoned Girl
This wasn't what Sheridan was supposed to be.
Aelita felt it deeply, seared into her skin, just like the sadness that was always heavy on her mind when she looked at their sensei. She had no memories of her formative years, just a blue sort of sensation that ran in her arms and legs and made her want to cling, cling, cling to the man who called herself her father. Just a niggling guilt when looking at the eldest, the closest thing to a mother she'd ever known.
Aelita knew it from the way the tourists came for an experience and left just as quickly, the way the longest tenants in the home were simply too old to move, or too stubborn to think to go or too comfortable in the natural atmosphere maintained, no matter how upsetting its head might be.
As she walked out of the elder's house, and thus her own, she waved good morning to a few passerby, the aroma girls who tended to the greenery around, and two sparring men at the edge of the river. She was long used to telling them not to fall and them waving her off before one would splash in to the river. It had been scary at first, then funny and now it was just…
She didn't know what it was. Dull? Tired? Old? Something she'd seen so many times before at any rate, and she was tired of seeing it. Her village had gone stale and she had no idea what to do with it.
This was sensei's job. And he, she thought sourly, was not doing it. Instead he stayed alone in his house, sometimes puttering about, sometimes locking himself in his room. It took forever to convince him to fight a gym challenger, heck most people skipped and came back to him.
Aelita didn't understand it. It felt like cowardice and not… not the sensei she knew. Or maybe she thought wrong.
Ugh it was just… so frustrating!
And eldest, the closest she'd ever had to a grandmother, was sympathetic towards him.
"Every day is a challenge for him to overcome, Aelita," she was saying as they walked. Aelita was heading towards Amethyst Cave to hopefully get some morning training done in peace avoid the buzz in the trees of failure, failure, failure. "You must be patient with him, this is a fight he has chosen to do alone."
"Sheridan is supposed to be a community!" She exploded, a bit more quietly than usual. She didn't want to startle the few children outside in the early morning or the pokemon that were still settling in after a night of roaming the streets. It was one of Sheridan's best selling points after all, or, if she was being frank, one of Aevium's selling points. Few cities let wild pokemon simply enjoy the space with them after all. Few regions welcomed it in their cities as a legal, environmental gesture and she loved that about her village. "We're supposed to solve problems as one. We are our strongest as one! We can help him!"
"Not if he is not ready to be helped, Aelita," the elder croaked in the face of her irritation. "Not when we are wandering in the darkness as much as he is. We will only make it worse. Give him time, Aelita, he will open up again someday. He has little choice in the matter. You must be patient."
"Eldest I hate being patient!" Her lips turned into a pout, demanding an immediate response, but she still knew that her elder had won… again. Her shoulders slumped.
"It is one of your best and worst qualities, my dear," the woman demurred, waving her red cane. Then her eyes cast towards the southern entrance to the village, silver eyebrows going up. "Oh, he's returned from his retreat, I see."
Aelita turned her head, heart thudding in her chest again. Her day, for good or bad, never really seemed to start until she saw him alive and well, even if that well was coupled with heavy dark bags under his eyes and a near-permanent frown. It filled her with a sense of relief, sad relief, but relief none the less.
Sure enough, right then Keta-sensei stepped out of the cave. Then he turned around to look behind him. "It's bright," he said with as much inflection as the ripples in the water. "Mind your step."
"Aye," agreed a soft voice centimeters away. "I'm not needing a minder."
"Your tongue needs one," he said and stepped a little closer to the two of them, presumably to give the other person space, which stung, because that was more consideration than Aelita had gotten from him in years.
Then out stepped a little girl. Well, littler than Aelita, who was going on seventeen. This girl looked nine, maybe ten, with pink hair that was precisely the color of the nurse who went home to a sweet woman down the road every day, who was the village accountant. She couldn't possibly be journeying through Aevium at the age of ten that had to be illegal this wasn't Kanto. She smelled like berries and pine and the leftovers of a fire even from here and her eyes met Aelita's as she lifted her head to look around-
And they were a distinct red that seared into her skull like a beating of blood to her brain. Something in her said finally. Her body, suddenly tensed, eased like a warm bath.
The girl just looked at her. Then she looked at Keta-sensei. Then she looked at the greenery around them and said in that soft, bland voice. "Nice place you've got here."
"It's seen better days," Keta said before Aelita could puff up with pride.
The girl glanced at him, and then clicked her tongue. "Thanks for the guide. I'll look for that stone later. I need a shower."
Aelita watched the man's face contort with something that may have been a smile. "Of course," he said with familiar disinterest. "Welcome to Sheridan."
"Cheers." The girl looked at Aelita again and that shudder didn't return. "Hey there." She bobbed her head. "Name's Aya. What's yours?"
"Aelita." She didn't know why her throat was dry, like the water in the air was evaporating all around them.
"Cool to meet you." She bowed from her waist and then rose. "Sorry, I really do smell like hell."
You don't. "No, uh, sure." Aelita stepped to the side and the girl passed. And then, from her hood, popped an eevee's head and a pikachu's snout. The eevee yawned and the pikachu waved a paw at her.
When Aelita looked again, Keta was also gone and the eldest had a strange, knowing smile on her face.
"Eldest," she began, cautiously.
The old woman smiled at her. "I see you have a new friend."
Aelita made a face. "She said hi to me!"
"Exactly!" The woman waved her cane once more. "Go make a friend. Arceus knows you need a few."
Aelita scowled. That wasn't untrue.
Five minutes after getting in the shower, Aya bolted out of it. She rolled onto the bed, startling her pokemon off the sheets at the weight of her shivering shuddering form crashing into it. Water dripped into the sheets, thankfully not on the thick pokemon center quilt. A stream of unintelligible curse words spewed from her mouth as she shivered.
"I forgot how much cold water hurts," she whined, shaking her head and then hissing at the resulting droplets from her hair. "Shit shit shit shit shit-" She buried her face in her pillow and shuddered again. She could feel her pokemon's eyes on her and more importantly the single pokeball was wailing so loud anyone with a psychic pulse could hear it and not for the last time in her life, the familiar feeling of claws created from water ripping into her skin anywhere from her face to her eyes to her stomach to her chest to her feet. And it kept raking and raking, deeper and deeper and it was so god damn cold.
Eventually, a soft heat blew over her backside. Aya lifted her teary face to see Trinity standing over the bed blowing a low flame over her spine.
"Thuh-hank yuh-you," she stuttered out, shivering for the next few minutes. The pain did not recede however but the lack of cold made her visibly aware that the shower was still on. Cheshire chattered softly and with a few squeaks that went quiet.
Aya sniffled. "Thanks, Cheshire."
He squeaked and settled at her right. The shivering slowly died down and soon so did her tears. And still her pokemon were silent. She looked up and all of them, all of them including Eevee the Headache and Ai the perpetually happy flower budew, were staring at her like she'd grown six heads and started spewing dragon fire.
Pich looked like he was going to puke up a berry.
Guilt filled her stomach like a bad apple. She hadn't told them. Of course she hadn't really, she hadn't expected it to be important, in retrospect. Well no, she just didn't want to talk about it, what she had done, what had happened to her wasn't something to be proud of. Or to flaunt around. Not that she legally could, but she still should have told them.
"It's not as bad as it looks," she tried. Then Aya stopped and mentally kicked herself. No, you did not lie to your pokemon. You could lie to every human on Earth, every enemy, but you could not lie to your pokemon. They'd lose faith in you in an instant. "No, it is, it really is. They're just not actually bleeding anymore but they hurt when I get wet for too long, and faster in cold water. I… We haven't figured out a way to mitigate it. So it's screaming hot, super fast showers, but that's hard in the afternoon and, and I really wanted to get it over with."
Her pokemon just continued to stare at her.
Aya shifted. "You want to know what happened."
It was Isaiah who waddled over first, nervously, and leaped to rest his head on her lap. "Bwark," he said sincerely, nuzzling her cheek. A promise of I won't ever hurt you like that lingered in his face.
Her eyes filled with tears again. She did not deserve them. She absolutely did not deserve them, or anyone. But she had them, damn it, and she wanted to keep them even if it was selfish. She wanted to keep them. And that meant being honest, at least a little.
"I… I was bounced everywhere for a while, like someone's toy on shipment for a present." Okay, start there, start with the stuff she didn't remember very well, the parts where people left - with vague imprints of light green, a man's eyes filling with their first love and hope and something else, guilt maybe, it was too vague, with her mother's eyes full of tears when she begged her two dads, the only dads she'd ever known, to keep her safe, her uncle's small scared arms around her like she was the one breaking - start with the stuff that was because of other people and politics. "So when I stayed in Ecruteak, I was, I was super fucking lonely. Kids are like that. But it's an old place, most of the people there are at least a hundred years old and up and the classes there were small, most people moved out or places had dead people. So when I got friends, because I'm, I'm uh, Joy, or uh…"
She bit her lip, trying to remember the ancient words and sighed it out in the familiar lilting promise that was 'who are elated by life' in very, very bastardized ancient unown or Joys, but the old tongue made more sense, and there were ninety-seven words for it depending on the language anyway. Whatever.
"Because I'm a Joy, which if you didn't know, is a very, very streamlined unspecified pokemon. No pokedex entry or anything because no one has the guts to take the scientific implications to their extent without getting murdered except Johto explicitly confirms it in their training manuals. It's also um, humanoid a bit. But… but, part of being Joy means I'm genetically disposed to uhm… cling. A metric fuckton."
Pich chattered at this and Aya smiled.
"Yeah, I love a lot. It's a natural uh… thing, but basically I'm really, really fucking bad at boundaries and I have too many people who enable me and Johto fucked that up too. But I have -had- have some wonderful friends who love it about me. And I fucking killed them."
The GS ball screeched in her bag and she snapped her head up. "Shut the fuck up, Rai, just because it was a mercy kill and you came back doesn't mean I did not fucking kill you and you all didn't try to fucking eat me don't be sitting there and acting like that doesn't matter! It fucking does! It still hurt, you ass!"
The ball let out another screech and Sadie snapped her teeth at it. The ball started to shake and Cheshire squawked loudly at it, leading to an argument of screeching and barking and squawking.
"No!" Aya said with the firmness of someone who'd raised a gastly and a litwick. Every one of them went quiet. "No, I get to have my unhealthy opinions and deal with them on my own time. That's why I have a therapist. You don't get to force me to feel better. I don't feel better! This shit sucks! And until you guys can stay outside for more than like: a day, it's going to keep being shit!"
The ball fell still and guilt hunched her shoulders. "I'm sorry," she said after a moment, and she was. Not enough to feel wrong but she was sorry. She didn't like yelling at them. They were her friends and fucked up and stupid but they didn't deserve to be yelled at.
She swallowed and continued because the bandaid was off. "Everyone in Ecruteak, well, almost, got murdered by some stupid kid stealing his brother's recently caught, grieving steelix who was almost forty years old and fucking scared to shit and my friends got fucking squashed like caterpie except for Iris because she was next to me and Mitsuki because Mitsuki is even more fucked up than I am and no one noticed her. And that was when Ho-oh showed up and asked me to-"
Aya stopped, mouth working, tongue clicking, desperate horrible squawks leaving her mouth as she struggled to even twitch a finger and her whole body felt like it was burning like a candle wick.
And then, not her voice, definitely not her voice, but theirs, theirs burning under her skin begging her to roast and eat and tear, said with her mouth in distinctly birdlike sounds.
"I asked her to die for me and for them and she did. She was just too stupid to let it stick."
Eevee let out a sudden snarl. Aya felt her eyelids open and close, her lips turn up into a smile. It was an expression she didn't know how that a bird could make with a beak, but they performed with aplomb. And it hurt her cheeks, ripped the sinew and muscle. And it didn't matter really because she healed quickly but it still hurt for shit.
"Just so you know what it is you're traveling with," they continued, through her and she screamed so loud in her head the bird winced because fuck him, fuck him, fuck them because this was her body. He was just stuck there. She was herself. "Of course you are," they said. "But I'm here too, little Astra, until you grow the rest of that spine of yours and do something about it."
Aya tried to wiggle, but instead of cold now, her body was starting to steam. And it was just as stuck either way.
Then the very clear sensation of present pain slumped her limbs like jelly. Aya slowly lifted her head to see eevee, her batshit eevee with a wagging tail and nearly purple eyes staring at her with pride and her hand firmly clasped in his mouth.
"Vui," he said, dropping it.
She made herself reach out and hug him through the pain. "I love you guys so much."
And, Aya realized as they huddled around her in their confused, misshapen way, she was sure that she wasn't even lying to herself. She would kill for them and die for them and all sorts of things. Because even if they would change along the way, they were hers, and she, she was theirs. And she'd believe in them to the end.
And they would get her to her goal. There was no doubt.
Keta could never be called an impatient man. He really couldn't be called much of anything in the present, aside from plenty of derogatory things. Things he wished people would just say, when he felt much of anything. It would be nice if they were simply going to validate the thoughts in his head and let it be real and not just his head and the world around him making him think it was. Intrusive thoughts and all of that
Still, he was the gym leader, the head of this village, and he was sitting at the pokemon center waiting room, looking at another self-help book he'd ordered and reading the same page for the seventh time.
He wasn't sure why he was in a hurry to be frank. This kid wasn't going to succeed. She wasn't even a kid, she was, at best, a disguised something or other. The grotto wouldn't accept her. It hadn't accepted anyone else he'd sent through that wasn't him since they'd closed it.
"Your kind isn't capable of roasting books with their eyes, as far as I'm aware." The nurse didn't look up from her notes, glasses over her eyes and sounding about as interested as he felt.
"Indeed," he agreed.
"She'll pass your little test, you don't have to stalk her." The woman turned a page. "Unless that's something else you need to tell your daughter about. You sure seemed monogamous to me."
"Aries," he said curtly. "Have a care, would you?"
"No."
The Joy looked up at him now, one crimson red and one streaked a pale green. "You have to care for yourself before I can put my burden of care onto you. You must build your bridges. All I can tell you is Ayame will be fine. Maybe the world is fucked, but she will make it right.'
Keta raised an eyebrow. "And you are certain?"
"Joy have ears," Aries said, wiping a spot on the counter with a rag. "We have eyes. And noses. We know things. And we know when you make mistakes Kenneth of the dying Rota. And you have many to make up for."
Keta rose from his chair in a gangly mass. "And I never will."
Taking the hint, he left. Aries watched him go and tittered, "You tend not to." She turned another page in her book. Humans, she thought with more than a little irritation. Fucking useless pokemon indeed. If they could learn a proper toxic and bite they could get somewhere. But no they had to suck at damn near everything, including using their well developed brains.
A few minutes later, the green joy left her room, eyes rimmed red, a sparkling aura of rainbows muted from where it'd been blinding when she'd walked in, and an eevee and pikachu sharing her shoulders. The pikachu rubbed their cheeks together, which from a pichu would be dangerous, but now was only cute.
But then, she looked at Aries herself. She nodded once and left the building.
Aries laughed and scared the little boy calling his mom on the video phone. Then she went back to her book. Like called to like, and children of the earth called the sky they could never reach.
This is the place it ends," Aries told herself. This is the place where we fall or fly."
She began to write her notice of resignation. If they were all going to die, she was going to die in the arms of her wife gods be damned.
A/N: Whew! Okay!
Why am I warning for Keta? Because while I feel sorry for Keta, he really, really fucked up Aelita, and both of these things are not mutually exclusive. Yes I've played Where Love Lies, and that is the main reason this arc is bringing in certain details, such as the Rota. Yes those Rota. I can be anime trash if I want to. I will be exploring more of the interactions between Aelita and Keta and thus Keta and Aya and Aelita because well, again, Keta is his own emotional abuse warning.
Joy - Due to a metric hellscape of unshared notes, fic ideas/fic and plotline, my friend Onix and I have developed the Joys! There's a lot of lore to these but simply put, 99.9% of people with pink hair are considered Joy. Aya's Uncle is also a Joy. Her mom is a Joy. Her cousin Oliver is a Joy. You have not met him yet. You will. For the purposes of reading at this point, consider the 'Every ten years there's a Viridian child blessed by the forest" bit in PokeSpe as Joy ancestors of that turned up to eleven. More details to come in worldbuilding.
Ho-oh possession - I'm rewriting the fic about this for further details but the tldr is up there and in ch 22 of this fic and the reason I covered it again is because of 1, the child murder and child soldier stuff, 2, Aya's perspective on it is very important for the next couple of arcs. Please remember what she says here.
Anyway, I'm off to go write ghost Keta and more OCs. Bye!
