Endgame
Chapter Five - In Which The Joker Plays The Fool
They're bored and Misty is out of things to ask about, so through a series of events that Gary will never speak of, he ends up painting her nails instead.
Apparently Professor Oak doesn't keep a regular supply of nail polish at the lab, shockingly enough, something she laughs at when he tells her, so Brock is requested to bring one of his little sister's instead. Misty's favourite colour has always been any shade of blue, but Cindy Slate doesn't have blue, so Brock arrives with the closest thing to it: Green.
The name of the shade says 'leaf green'. Gary wonders just how much the universe must hate him.
He takes the bottle without looking at it and prays to whatever Pokegod is listening that she doesn't see the way it almost burns him. Gingerly, he unscrews the lid and does his best to ignore the way that colour mocks him with every stroke. It compliments her eyes, he admits, but it doesn't feel right having her look up at him from Misty. It's just another reminder of things he cannot have and girls he cannot touch, whether they be three feet away or somewhere isolated on the peak of a mountain.
"Those diaries," Gary finds himself saying, "How much of your life do they talk about?"
He takes note of the way she hesitates. She hadn't told anyone- other than Ash apparently -about the diaries, so he'd been pretty sure of the fact that she wanted them to remain hidden. Now that Ash was back it wasn't worth keeping them a secret anymore. Brock and himself couldn't take them away or tell her what was written was false, but she still appeared to not be entirely happy with the revelation that they knew about them.
Misty answered the question anyway.
"Everything. I wrote down everything from the moment I ran away until my sister's forced me back," she tells him, the slight hardness in the way she says the last part sounding eerily familiar to how old Misty would have said it.
That meant they were filled with adventures and Brock Slate and Ash Ketchum.
"Ah," Gary replies, unable to say any more. That meant she purposely kept them hidden. Misty was a smart girl, Gary had to give her that.
"I'm content with the way things are because it doesn't feel like anything is missing, but when I read about Ash I kind of wish I could," Misty confides. "I think the girl who wrote those tales would really like to speak to him."
Gary grips the bottle tighter, and it almost feels like he's looking to Leaf for comfort which feels just as wrong as this conversation, but his options are limited. He really, really doesn't want to talk about Ash Ketchum. It's nice having time with her, but it's so much harder when every other person that he just wants to forget for even one moment manages to claw their way back in.
The cycle of LeafMistyAshLeafMistyAshLeafMistyAshLeafMistyAsh swirls on and on through his head and he just can't stop the emotions and memories that came with the names.
In a momentary lapse of weakness, he envies her ability to not know.
But then he snaps back to reality and spits out the first thing that comes to his mind. "What do you think she would say?"
Misty pauses, biting her lip in thought and Gary has to force his eyes back down to her nails because one simple action should not be that tempting, should not put so many unwelcome thoughts in his head.
"I think she'd want to scream at him. I think she'd want to say so many things, things like how he promised we would always be best friends then but never came back. That she spent so many years waiting and wondering. How many sleepless nights she spent crying, wishing he'd at least give her one phone call," she pauses, taking a few breaths, "but most of all... I think she'd tell him that she misses him. She misses him a lot."
When Gary looks up again, she is crying. Not the bawl-like-a-baby kind of crying, but the silent one. There are tears and there is a newfound sadness in her eyes, but there is no sobbing. She does not shake or tremble. It is not the kind of crying that craves comfort or requires condolences. It's the kind that is self-induced, one that only she can make go away, and so Gary forces himself not to touch her out of fear of never being able to let go.
"You know," Misty says quietly as the tears slowly fall, "I wrote about you, too."
He freezes. She wrote about him? What in the name of Mew could she have possibly-
"I wrote that you were an arrogant jerk that treated Ash like dirt. You always insulted him. You insulted me, too. Your nickname for me was 'Red'," Misty tells him.
She blinks and another tear rolls down her throat constricts and his mouth feels too dry. Gary wishes more than ever that he could go back in time and kick his twelve-year old self for being such an asshole.
"I'm sorry," he manages to choke out. She looks at him. Really looks at him, and Gary feels the most defenceless he's ever felt in his entire life. Her eyes, those endless depths of cerulean, almost look as though they're trying to solve something. Solve him. It is the most uncomfortable Gary Oak has ever been. After what feels like centuries she finally stops searching.
"You're different," Misty says at last. "I didn't want to believe it, because the Gary I know isn't like that. The diaries have yet to lie but... You're different. You aren't the boy in the books and neither is Ash."
"I guess you're not the only one who has changed," Gary replies, his expression hard. Ash hasn't changed at all.
Time is a fickle thing.
They sit in silence, with him starting on her other hand while she watches him. She doesn't look at her nails, and he's slightly grateful because he's always been terrible at anything art-related. Nail painting was hardly a form of drawing, but it still involves practicality and a steadiness that he has never possessed. It doesn't help that the shade of leaf green continues to scorn him.
He doesn't know why, but he finds himself talking, "You know... There used to be this girl," Gary says, and he is horrified because he hasn't spoken about her in years but the words just keep flowing out, "her name was Leaf. She grew up with Ash and I here in Pallet Town, and left on her Pokemon journey the same day we began ours."
Like he did with her, Misty remains silent as he talks.
"Leaf is the kind of girl who never spoke much, but she did with me. We had a... mutual understanding, I suppose you could call it. There was always something haunting her. She grew up too quickly; life wasn't fair to her," Gary tells her, surprised at how easy it all comes out.
Before Gary's mother's death there was Leaf's father's death. Before Gary's father's abandonment there was his infidelity, and before Leaf's childhood was shattered there were two broken families that tore each other apart in but a single moment of weakness.
Leaf found out far before he did. She was only a child, but it wasn't until he reached his much less impressionable adolescent years that she told him. She never blamed him for the way her life turned out, not even once, though on some level he's always held himself accountable enough for the both of them. Always blamed himself for her rejection of humanity.
"She's beautiful. There's something about her that just draws you in. Maybe it's the thrill of the unknown. Maybe it's her eyes; they're the deepest emerald green I've ever seen, and when she looks at you, it feels like she can see right through to your soul," Gary describes.
Tauntingly beautiful, tragically intangible.
He's almost lost in thoughts and memories until Misty finally speaks up, "Do you love her?" she asks carefully.
He glances down at the bottle of nail polish. The bottle of leaf green nail polish and somehow it doesn't seem so menacing. He turns it in his hand once, twice, three times, before looking back up at her.
"No. Maybe once, I'm not sure. Definitely not anymore," Gary answers honestly. "I might have. Guess I'll never really know."
Misty nods slowly. "Where is she now?"
Gary can't help but laugh. Oh, he knew where she was alright. Leaf was in the same place she'd been for the last five years. The same mountain she'd climbed when they were fifteen, been on when Misty first had the accident, and remained for the last two years she'd stayed at the lab.
"She was meant to participate in the Indigo League with us but she never showed up. As far as I know Ash never came across her during his journey, and the next time I saw her was at fifteen through sheer dumb luck. It was also the last time I saw her," Gary replies. It isn't an answer, but he feels like it isn't his place to go further into Leaf's life than he already has.
Misty gives him a sympathetic smile and reaches out a comforting hand- and in a way it was like Leaf was there too, because it was her shade that Misty had etched onto her nails -to place against his knee. It isn't much, but to Gary it means the world. When he looks at her tear-stained cheeks and eyes still pooling with unshed tears, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't completely destroy him when all of this was over.
Tauntingly intangible, tragically beautiful.
"I was right," Misty says softly, "you definitely aren't the boy I wrote about back then."
"He was me, though. I'm still the same person, just older," Gary whispers back, and the words taste sour on his tongue.
He really wants to say that the past cannot just be erased, but that would be both ironic and untrue. For her, it had been erased.
"I don't think that boy would have put up with me for two years while I hopelessly tried to live a secondhand life," Misty says softly. "I highly doubt he would have painted my nails, either. I still haven't thanked you for that."
"Don't," Gary immediately says.
Really. You shouldn't.
"Do you ever get scared, Gary?" Misty asks him as he helps her pack for the trip Brock and Ash are taking her on.
He raises an eyebrow. Scared? The demons of his past and within his mind are the only things that have terrified him for years. Nothing that belongs in the real world could possibly compare to them.
Misty goes on when he doesn't reply, "Not having memories used to scare me. Now, I'm scared to get them back. It's been hard enough adjusting to this life; I don't want to have to fight between two of me."
Gary doesn't have the heart to tell her that she'll never have to.
"Come on," she prods, nudging him with a paper cup. "There has to be something that scares you."
She was right. He is a Pokemon Professor in training. He's seen a lot of things regular people, even regular trainers, would be sick to the stomach over. Despite all the hyped-up glory of a Professor, the job itself was far less glamorous than advertised. Studying pokemon is not always a joyous affair. There are several good times, yes, but Professor's study all pokemon, and that includes the sick and dying ones too.
And then a thought hits him.
"You scare me," Gary tells her truthfully, his expression remaining stoic when she laughs.
"I thought Ash and Brock were the only two I ever threatened," Misty jokes.
"They were," Gary replies with a light chuckle. "But you scare me too, because I tell you things that I can't even tell myself."
There is that awful moment when you realise that you're falling in love. That should be a joyful one, but for Gary it is only followed but the crushing realisation that an already messy situation is going to get far more dangerous. He's competing for something that not only is the opposite of his to try for, but also for something that has been off the table since they were twelve.
Ash still hasn't returned her heart from the last time he took it.