Cynthia managed to resolve her issues with the help of Maddi last chapter, but will Sango be able to make things right? Or will she continue to feel miserable about what happened? And what does Flora have planned?
Aquahaze675: I'm glad, I really worked hard to build up their relationship in a good way.
KedharS: Yup. It's a very heartwarming connection.
Rosealine gold: Not sure if that will happen, but there is a trip planned.
Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings
Chapter 439
Sango escorted the blonde girl, Flora, to the baths. She held Aud tightly to her chest, as though the pokemon were some sort of restorative whose mere presence soothed the pain she was feeling in her heart.
Sango wasn't sure what to do. She needed to make things right with Cynthia, but how could she? She had betrayed her friend in one of the worst ways possible, and she wasn't sure if there was ANYTHING she could say that would make this right. Sango was so lost in her own worries that she didn't even notice the blonde woman staring back at her with those big amber eyes of hers, and a smile on her face that seemed to be trying to tell Sango it would all be okay. It was strange. The longer she stared at that smile, the more her tension seemed to just drain out of her.
"Do you have a name, miss?" Flora asked her. "I realized, I introduced myself, but I never took the opportunity to ask your name!"
"Oh! Um, my name is 'Sango', not 'miss'," Sango introduced herself. Flora accepted this with a nod, and then turned to the bathroom door.
"Would you care to join me for a bath, then, Miss Sango?" Flora asked.
"A-A bath?" Sango stuttered, tightening her grip on Aud once more. "I-I can't, I'm working now, and besides, I-"
"Come now, surely your employer won't mind," Flora insisted. She reached a hand up to rest on her cheek, tilting her head to the side and giving Sango a reassuring smile, one that reminded Sango of the smiles her mother used to wear. That thought sent another twinge of pain through her chest. Flora continued, "you look troubled, Miss Sango. And I believe that a soothing bath in a nice, warm hot spring is the perfect salve for your anxious heart. Won't you indulge me? I do so like getting to know people, and you seem like you could use a friend right now."
Sango glanced down at Aud, and shook her head.
"This pokemon, Aud… she's just a baby," Sango explained, looking back into Flora's deep amber eyes. "She isn't able to tolerate high temperatures. And… and she's not mine. She's my friend's responsibility. So I can't just… leave her behind so that I can take a bath to make myself feel better."
Flora smiled a little brighter at that.
"Lovely," she murmured. She reached into the bag slung over her shoulder and withdrew a pokeball, pressing the button on it.
"Audino!" A pokemon with the colors of cream and cherry blossoms emerged from the pokeball, her large ears twitching as she looked up at Sango with big, blue eyes.
"An Audino?" Sango gasped, her eyes widening. They were quite well-known among trainers in Unova, taking the place of Chansey in their pokemon centers.
"Dina, if you would?" Flora smiled, nodding to her Audino.
"Aud!" Dina nodded, closing her eyes. Her body began glowing with a pinkish-white light, a soothing wave of energy rolling down the hallway.
"Vulpix?" Aud gasped, her body glowing.
"That Vulpix is quite well-raised," Flora complimented. "She's almost reached the end of her primary growth period. With Dina's healing abilities, she'll be just fine on her own. Miss Sango, if you don't mind, would you like Dina to take her?"
"Wh-what?" Sango asked, snapping out of the soothing state that Dina's heal pulse had put her in, glancing at Flora in confusion.
Flora gasped.
"O-oh, sorry," Flora said, shaking her head and waving her hands. She tried to dispel the confusion, "I got ahead of myself. It's just that I've always had an eye on being a Pokemon Breeder, and later a Pokemon Nurse, so taking care of pokemon has always been of special interest of mine. But I understand that I'm not really someone you can trust with your friend's baby pokemon, we just met after all."
Sango relaxed her grip on Aud slightly.
"We can all go to the bath together," Flora suggested. "Dina will make sure that your Vulpix will be okay in the water. Is that okay with you? I'd just like to help."
Flora reached out and placed her hand on Sango's shoulder, giving her a reassuring smile that made Sango relax even more.
"…Her name's Aud," Sango said. Flora laughed at the irony in that statement, lowering her hand petting Aud on the head.
"Hello there, Aud," she introduced herself to the pokemon, and then turned to Silver, who was eyeing her from his perch above Sango's shoulder. "And your Castform? Does he have a name?"
"Silver," Sango replied.
"Castform," Silver nodded in agreement.
"Hello, Silver," Flora smiled. She turned her attention back to Sango. "Shall we, Miss Sango?"
Sango felt a little weird being referred to as "miss" and still wasn't sure if this was the right thing to do, but with everything that she was feeling she really did have a need to just let it all out. A bath would calm her nerves, and after, she could go see Cynthia.
Right now, I'm too frazzled, she admitted to herself. She wanted to apologize right away, but the way Cynthia had fled told her that the girl didn't want to be around her right now. And at the moment, Sango was cripplingly afraid of making the situation worse. She needed to find a way to fix things, and right now she couldn't think of anything she could say to make it better.
So even though it was probably better for her to go apologize right now, she didn't have any idea of what she could possibly say.
Sango slipped into the bath, staring enviously at Flora's generous curves. It seemed like every girl she was seeing nowadays had a better figure than hers. If Flora objected to Sango's peeping she didn't say so, leaning back against the lip of the spring and lounging her arms behind her, her creamy skin flushing from the heat. Her Audino, Dina, sat in the water as well, cradling Aud.
"Vulpix…" Aud swatted at the steaming water curiously, Dina's soothing touch keeping her from feeling overheated. Sango smiled a little. It was an adorable sight, to be sure, but that thought itself even stung. Cynthia really should be here to see this… Sango sadly thought. She should have been around to see Aud's first hot springs.
"So what's on your mind, Miss Sango?" Flora asked, interrupting Sango's thoughts. Sango glanced at the older woman, who was looking at her with those sparkling eyes that urged her to just let it all out and come clean.
Sango sighed, sinking down in the water. Silver floated down onto her head, comforting her.
"I… I betrayed my friend," Sango muttered. And she wasn't about to betray her again by telling Flora any of the specifics.
"The redhead?" Flora asked. "You called her Cynthia?"
Sango nodded glumly.
"How did you betray her, if you don't mind me asking?" Flora asked.
"She… she told me something," Sango said. "Something private. And like an idiot, I betrayed her confidence by telling the secret to her sister, who threw it in her face. I made her cry, all because I couldn't help myself."
"I see…" Flora said, nodding. "So tell me, when you hurt your friend, did you feel bad about what you had done?"
"Of course I did!" Sango said. Flora nodded, staring up at the afternoon sun, which was just beginning to set.
"Next question. Did you mean to hurt her?"
"Huh?"
"When you betrayed her confidence, why did you do it?" Flora asked. "Were you trying to hurt her by revealing a private secret? Were you just doing some harmless gossip and didn't think she would find out about it, so it wouldn't be a problem? Or was it something else? Some other reason? Because I don't sense malice from your words, someone who cares so deeply for your pokemon, someone so worried over hurting your friend, I can't imagine you did it on purpose. So why did you tell those secrets of hers, Miss Sango?"
Sango sighed. "It… it wasn't like that. I didn't… I didn't know, I didn't mean to…"
She sunk down into the hot spring, mumbling into the water. She couldn't meet Flora's kind eyes feeling as guilty as she did.
"…But that's just an excuse," she repeated above water. "Even if I didn't mean to, it doesn't mean that I had any right to break her confidence, and it doesn't make things any better."
"It is an excuse," Flora nodded. "Do you know what the word 'excuse' means?"
Sango tilted her head to the side in confusion.
"Sorry, sorry," Flora laughed. "I am not sure. We are in the Hoenn Region, after all. Are you not fully fluent in English?"
"No, no, I am," Sango said. "I'm from the Unova Region."
"Then let me ask again. Do you what the word 'excuse' means?" Flora tried again. "It is a reason or explanation put forward to defend or justify a fault or offense."
Her voice turned even softer, if that was even possible. "You made a mistake. You didn't realize what you were doing. Yes, you hurt someone. And you need to apologize for it. But don't feel like having an 'excuse' is something wrong."
"But I-"
"When you say you 'didn't know' did it just slip out? Or did you have a reason for talking about it?" Flora prodded.
"…Her sister," Sango admitted. "She was worried about Cynthia, and I told her Cynthia's secret in order to make her feel better."
"So you were trying to do a good thing!" Flora said, her expression brightening. "You weren't trying to hurt her, you were trying to help her sister feel better. It just happened to not work out that way, because you didn't realize."
"Yeah, but-"
"I won't say that what you did was right," Flora cut her off. "But let me ask you something, Miss Sango, what do you wish to do now?"
"I want to apologize," Sango said. "But I don't know how. Right now, she doesn't want to talk to me about it. I hurt her, and… I want to give her some space, so…"
No, that's just an excuse.
"No, that's just an excuse," Sango said, shaking her head. "I guess… I'm just scared that she won't forgive me for what I did. Cynthia's such an important friend of mine, and the thought that I might have ruined that friendship, just thinking about it makes me feel…"
"Well THAT isn't okay," Flora said, her bright expression dimming slightly, much to Sango's shame. "You need to put your own feelings aside, and think about your friend. If you're really upset about what you did, after all."
"…I know," Sango said, nodding.
"Well, good then," Flora smiled. "Then you're going to go tell her?"
"As soon as I'm done," Sango agreed.
Flora relaxed, leaning back against the edge.
"I'm glad I could help," Flora said, her voice carrying a distant echo. "You know, when I was younger, I had few friends. But the ones I had… they're like family to me."
She turned back to Sango, her eyes sparkling.
"They're still my precious family. Everything I do, I do for them. So that they can be happy, have a good future. So that they can live their lives without any more pain or worry, I will do whatever I can to take care of them. And they know that, so they trust me to look out for them. And whenever we have a dispute, I always make sure to step in and take care of them then, too. I've been like a big sister since we were all very small. We're only people. We all make mistakes, say things we don't say, but we never let those words lead to us going too far. We know that, first and foremost, we care for each other, so we give each other the benefit of the doubt. And so that's how I know, that we would not have stayed as close as we are, if we did not all wish to be."
The weight of Flora's words was stunning to Sango. She looked at her with determination.
"That is what makes a friendship last. Respecting one another, caring for one another, and most importantly, wanting to remain friends with one another. Not the fights. Not the impassioned moments of standing up for one another. But the desire to continue to be friends. This Cynthia, do you think she still wants to be friends with you, Miss Sango?"
Sango hoped she did. But she couldn't be sure.
No. Those are just your worries talking, she reminded herself. There was no changing what she did. She had hurt her friend. But Cynthia… she didn't think that Cynthia was the kind of girl who would end their friendship over something like that. Not Cynthia, who greeted everyone around her with a big smile and welcomed total strangers into her life without care.
Cynthia would never end a friendship over a mistake like this. Sango believed that she wasn't that sort of girl. So what was she so worried about? Why was she so afraid to apologize? Because she was a cowardly fool, too afraid to confront what she'd done.
Sango jumped up out of the water, startling Silver, who rolled off of her head. Even Flora was caught off guard.
"Thank you for that," Sango said. "This bath helped me out so much."
Actually, the bath didn't do much of anything. Soothing as it was, what had helped her was Flora's words. In fact, right now she was just freezing thanks to the cold wind from the approaching dusk rolling over her soaked, naked body. She shivered.
"I'm glad," Flora beamed up at her.
"I need to go apologize," Sango said, reaching out and taking Aud from Dina's paws, holding her close. Silver floated up out of the water beside her. "She needs to know how sorry I am for letting her secret slip like this."
"Go, then, take care," Flora nodded. Sango exited the bath, leaving Flora in the water with her pokemon. Flora watched her departing figure with a smile, happy that she had been able to help that girl with her struggles. Now if only Guinevere was so easy to get through to, she added with a sigh, shaking her head in frustration.
Sango slipped on her robe and clutched Aud to her chest, running through the hall. She burst into their room, hoping Cynthia would be there, and sighed in disappointment when she saw that she wasn't. Grumbling, she closed the door and turned around, freezing. Cynthia was standing at the end of the hall, her eyes wide and her mouth open in surprise.
"Cynthia…" Sango murmured.
"S-Sango…" Cynthia averted her eyes, her face flushing red.
"Vulpix!" Aud squirmed, struggling out of Sango's grasp and jumping onto the floor, running over to her trainer. She rubbed her head against Cynthia's leg, staring up at her with bright blue eyes. Cynthia could see that Aud was trying to comfort her, the sweet thing.
Cynthia knelt down and scooped Aud up into her arms, cuddling the small pokemon close to her chest. She raised her head and looked at Sango, her eyes red but her expression locked.
Sango took a few tentative steps forward, unable to match Cynthia's sturdy gaze. In a few seconds they were face to face with each other.
"Cynthia… I'm so, so sorry…" Sango said, her eyes tearing up. "I-I didn't mean to… I didn't even think about it, I just…"
Cynthia was trembling. She wanted to tell Sango that it was all okay, that she didn't hold what had happened against her. But she felt that wasn't the right thing to do. Sango… the look in her eyes was so hollow, like she was filled with darkness. It seemed to Cynthia that Sango didn't want to be let off the hook.
"You sister… she was talking to me about you, how concerned she was about your social life in school," Sango admitted. "She was worried, and I wanted to reassure her that you were doing okay, that you didn't have any issues, and were even developing feelings for somebody, even though it hadn't been successful. She was so worried about you I didn't even think about telling her. It just sort of happened. But… but if I had known, I… I wouldn't have said anything."
Sango began sniffling, her eyes tearing up and her shoulders trembling as she began to cry.
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Cynthia! You're my friend, I would never-! I love you, Cynthia, is there anything I can do to make this right?"
Cynthia's lip began trembling. She stepped forward and reached out her arm, pulling Sango into a half-hug.
"I know that you made a mistake," Cynthia reassured her. "You don't need to cry. I forgive you completely, Sango."
"R-Really?" Sango whimpered. "But… but why? After… after what I did-"
"Because we're friends, silly," Cynthia said, stepping back and giving her a beaming smile. "I would never hate one of my best friends over something like this. I mean, yes, you hurt me. You hurt me so badly. But I know that you would never hurt me. You just made a mistake, right? And that's okay. I make mistakes, too. So next time I make one, you can forgive me, okay?"
Cradling Aud in her other arm, Cynthia took Sango's hand in hers, holding it tightly as the girls looked into each other's tear-filled eyes.
Sango grinned and wiped her eyes, nodding.
"Yeah. I will. Thank you, Cynthia. I'm so, so sorry."
Cynthia hugged her friend again, the two shedding sad tears.
It was a little short. But I wanted a chapter where everyone could make up and be happy.