At the center of it all, Caroline felt that she lacked purpose. She never lacked drive, tenacious in the pursuit of whatever she set her mind to, even in the case of futility, but she lacked a purpose to drive her. It was different when she was challenging the league, her purpose being defined by the many badges from the regions around Napaj, the invitations to join the Olympic sport of league battling, even the internship she partook in to take over the Castelia City gym when its old leader inevitably retired. Ending up pregnant and with a child to raise, she handed the keys to her brother Burgh, a talented trainer with as much drive as her, with a love for pokemon that permeated every facet of his life, like his sister before him. Norman had been her rival, close behind but never surpassing her. She couldn't say he wasn't qualified to run the Petalburg Gym; to insinuate that would be to insinuate that she was inadequate to run the Castelia City Gym.
Norman's Gym was there, allowing her to live an unrealized future vicariously through him. She was a valued employee of the league, pushing papers and running numbers to keep the officials happy and off her husband's back, but the gym wholly belonged to him. He was the one in every poster in every Petalburg window, the one who small children idolized and desired to be, the one who was expected to rise through the ranks and become champion. Sometimes, she feels bitter. Never at him, but at herself.
She was the one who told him to continue on after she became pregnant, challenging the leagues around Napaj, in spite of the effect she knew it would have on their family dynamic. It was a mutual decision, made for his benefit, because she knew he would resent their children if they held him back from his dream, especially when it was so tangible, like he could grasp Briney's old gym within his strong, sturdy fingers. But when she looks at the way her son idolizes the man who has barely been around for half of his childhood, the way her daughter strives for approval from a man who has no idea how to relate to the children that he didn't help raise, her heart breaks, and with every missed Grand Festival she feels the cracks deepen and threaten to overtake her. She doesn't know how to apologize to her children for putting them in this position.
She loves Norman, with every fiber of her being. In spite of his absence, he hasn't been an awful husband. There is no other human being on earth who gets her more, barring her father and brother. But try as she'd like, Caroline cannot deny that he's treated her children poorly during the most formative parts of their childhood. Never abusive like their parents before them, but neglectful. He admits this, and has been trying to work on it, but is that even enough? Is his effort in trying to be there for them now enough to make up for the lack of care he showed to them when they were younger children?
Put in his shoes, would she make the same decision?
She buries down these feelings and doubts, filling her time with being a homemaker and running the gym behind-the-scenes, but with every towel folded, every repeated song on the radio she plays in the background, she feels the walls she's put up to protect herself start to buckle, thin as the paper taffeta that makes up the curtains lining the windows of the empty living room.
She could leave. The thought of breaking this monotonous cycle of a purposeless-driven life is ever present in the back of her mind. She would break Norman, break the hearts of her children, and break herself in the process, but she'd be free, and that is the most enticing thought of it all. Halfway out the door, a partially packed suitcase lies tucked in the forgotten closet under the stairs, a thin layer of dust coating the thick plastic outer shell. An escape route that only she knows about. The thought is comforting.
At the center of it all, what keeps her here, stuck in the vicious cycle of monotony, battered in the waves of anxious thoughts about how she's wasting her life away, is her children. The tenacity she exhibited as a child was still lurking underneath the surface, this time put to use to provide them a place of stability. Grand Festivals may be lost, league competitions over as soon as they started, but she vows to provide them a place of stillness, of steadiness, of unchanging and unconditional love in a world that seems so very cold. By setting an example for them, she hopes they'll continue onwards, being a light and a place of warmth for others, melting the frost that permeates the world around them. May and Max are good kids with big hearts, with a desire to change the world not unlike her own all those years ago.
Caroline may lack purpose in her career, battered down by the repetition of running a gym that is not her own and maintaining a house that feels far too empty far too often, but she has found another in the most important of places.
Author's Note
In 2020, The Oh Hellos released their titular track for the third EP in their Anemoi series. This song, titled Boreas, ripped my little heart out and stomped on it with spiked-soled boots, like in that one scene in the Spongebob movie.
This song could work for all the moms, of course, but I think it fits Caroline in a particularly nice way, especially with the ending lyric: "In the end, all I hope for is to be a bit of warmth for you when there's not a lot of warmth left to go around." This feels like something she'd desire to be for her kids. Also, there was so much potential with her background that was wasted (granted, Pokemon is a kids show and constantly steered towards the never ending train of Ash's adventures, but I digress). I've explored this before in some of my past works, but I wanted to dig deeper.
Anyway, I've got some oneshots coming down the pipeline that I think you'll enjoy. I'm also in the process of working on my first multi-chaptered work, which will come out soon. Thanks for reading!