Ai no ondo de

At Love's Temperature

Part Three- Blood Stained (Pink Frilly Socks)

By Ainorei

          I pick up the gun. The metal is freezing cold but I don't really notice, it's about the same temperature as the rest of the flat because we can't afford heating. We. What will she think? I suppose all I've done is cause her trouble, it's better like this. Life is pointless anyway, why don't they just tell us that life sucks instead of building up our hopes and dreams and then watching them fail. They all watched mine fail. I search for two bullets that I've hid in my draw, I don't really need two, but I can see myself being so uncoordinated that I'd stuff this up. Better safe than sorry. Found them, now to put them in the gun –refer to section 3A. Jeez this is complicated, how do you open it? OUCH! Shit, I cut myself, how the hell did I manage to do that? I don't like pain, if I did I'd probably use a knife to end it all, at least knives don't need instruction manuals. There we go, now I can be found dead with a 'how to use a gun' booklet, a bullet in my head, and a pink frilly sock wrapped around my index finger. Joyful.

"Ash, are you there?"

Bugger. She's home.

"Ash…Ash!! What are you doing?"

"Nothing…" I put the two bullets into the gun as she enters the room.

"Bull. Give that to me." She steps slowly towards me, I wish she didn't have to see this.

"Misty, this is none of your business. Go away." I lift the gun to my head, pulling back the top trigger thingy.

"Oh haaa ha, very funny. Drop it."

"Please. I want you to go."

"Ash? Come on. It's ok."

"I've had enough Misty, it's best for the both of us."

"What? Talk to me. Put it down. We can work this out…" Her voice is getting shaky, I'm sorry Misty.

"No, it's not about us. There's a note for you on the bed, it explains everything. Read it in about 5.."

"Ash, you wouldn't. We can talk about it."

"…4…"

"Please, don't. Just calm down."

"…3…"

"Ash, you don't want to do this. Ash, just listen to me."

"…2…" Tears start to well in her eyes so I turn my back to her, no use postponing this any longer.

"No. No! I'm begging you!"

I whisper, 'one', and hear Misty scream my name, but before I can pull the trigger she jumps on top of me, I fall flat on my face, and the gun flies forward and hits the wall. Why on earth did she do that? Everything was going just fine until she came home. Now I'm laying here with a 'how to use a gun' booklet, a pink frilly sock wrapped around my index finger, and with a red headed girl on top of me!! I don't mind the latter too much. I sense her breathe out and start to relax, it's all over now. I feel the warmth of her body seeping into me, and now that I think about it, we haven't been this close in a long time, but before my hormones kick in and the incident becomes even more embarrassing, I start to turn on my side to get up. As I sit up, I can see her teary eyes looking at me, puzzled, trying to figure out what I was thinking.

All I can manage to say is, "Hi."

"How could you?" She stands up and sits on my bed, "How could you be so selfish?"

She's starting to cry, I reach my hand up to wipe away her tears, but she pushes it away, I decide it's best I don't move, and stay seated on the hard cement floor.

"How could you be so selfish as to throw away everything because you're in a bad mood. Huh? What about Pikachu? Did you think about him? Did you think about me? Did you? I hope you didn't, because that means you would have decided to go ahead with it anyway. Well? Go on. Explain yourself."

"I didn't mean to upset you."

"What did you think would happen?! I refuse to believe that you're so stupid as to think that I'd just wander on in here, see you sprawled out dead on the floor, and think to myself 'Oh well, shit happens'. Well shit does happen, why can't you just accept that some things just don't go your way. Huh?" Before I can speak she stands up and walks over to where the gun lay on the floor. I can't help but wonder if she's angry enough to shoot me, not that it would work anyway, it probably needs batteries or something. She picks it up, and drops it again almost immediately, I can see from where I'm sitting that her hand is bright red.

"What is it?" I quickly stand up and rush to her side.

"It's hot, boiling hot." I bend down and touch the gun, but it doesn't feel like it is, or has been, hot enough to burn someone. In fact it's as cold as ice.

"That's weird," I reply, glad that something has dragged her attention away from blasting me, "I think we've got some burn cream somewhere in the kitchen, I'll go look."

She follows me into the kitchen and sits on the shelf, while I'm searching through every cupboard to find something to stop her fingers from blistering. I find a small tube of BurnHP, a human equivalent to a popular Pokémon brand, in a cardboard box on top of the fridge.

"Why did you use my Tentacruel letter writing set?" Misty asked me as I turned to see her holding the envelope I had left for her on my bed.

"Only paper I could find."

"And my multicoloured Starmie pencil?"

"Sorry about that."

She sniffs the envelope, "AND my favourite perfume?"

"Well, I wasn't sure what time you'd be home. It was in case I got a bit smelly after being dead for a few hours."

"You'd need more than my perfume."

"Yeh…well…you're not gonna read it are you?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Depends." She slipped it into the pocket of her jeans, but winced with pain as she pulled her hand back out. It's bright red. I take her hand into mine and start applying the cream. Her skin seems so fragile, she's like a china doll, with cerulean blue eyes and baby pink lips. And I almost broke her.

"I'll be ok now."

"You sure."

"Yeh."

I put the lid back on the tube and place it in the cardboard box on top of the fridge.

"Ash."

"Yeh."

"Would you really have killed yourself?"

"I suppose."

"I don't understand. Why?"

"Because nothing seems worth it any more. You do, of course, but I'm just dragging you down. I can't do anything except battle, and that's no use to me now."

"Yes it is…"

"No it's not. After what happened to Pikachu.."

"What happened to Pikachu wasn't your fault."

"Everything's my fault. The way we are is my fault. This crappy flat, having no money, no fun, no life...it's all my fault. And you deserve better Misty, and I'm sorry."

"That doesn't mean you have to cark it. I'm sure if we thought about it, I don't know, maybe, maybe you could go back to battling again. I could join you, we can live on the road like we used to." She's standing in front of me now, eyes full of excitement, pleading with me like a little girl who wants an ice-cream. Maybe she's right, what's past has passed, a long time ago.

"Is that what you want?"

"It's what we both want. It'll be fun, and what have we got to lose anyway."

I look around the gutted flat, there's nothing but an old torn up lounge, mouldy spaces on the wall where the last inhabitant's furniture used to be, a couple of wooden stools, and a black and white TV. Everything's been found or borrowed, at least on the road we take what we need, and majority of it belongs to us.

"What the hell. Let's do it!"

"That's my Pokémon master!" Misty says victoriously, as she wraps her arms around me, "everything's gonna be ok now."

After a few seconds I pull back, and stare into her eyes, smiling.

"You're bleeding!" I look down at my finger, and sure enough the sock has fallen off and there is a thin stream of blood running down my hand.

"It's nothing, c'mon, lets go get our Pokémon."  I put on a bandaid and we walk hand in hand out the front door.

*** I was notified by Winged Racoon about the lovely thing my computer had done. The 'J's are meant to be smiley faces, but when I turned it into a htm it didn't show up. Sorry to all those that were confused, guess you could imagine it as a'pi' sounding like a j.***