If I owned Pokemon, I would invent a cute polar bear Pokemon named Oru.
Tell me if you think the story's going too slowly. I'll pick up the pace.
"Ash is...getting better," a voice remarks behind him. It is soft, hesitant, restrained by a light tremor that tastes like sour peaches.
He stares out at the failing sunlight, his knuckes turning white against the porch railing. He can hear laughter fading away as a mother calls her children home. He can hear laughter from within the house, as Ash and Brock wash the dishes. But right here, caught in the middle of two worlds, there is only silence.
"You can stop being civil to me. I won't tell him."
She stiffens behind him, he can tell, because he hears the sharp intake of breath, anticipates the narrowing of her magnificent blue eyes. It reminds him of unwanted moments. "I had hoped you wouldn't. Ash deserves..." she pauses. "A fresh start."
He can't help but laugh at her. "How convenient. I doubt Leal would agree."
She is silent. There really isn't anything that she can say.
"Guys, come in!" Ash calls to them. "Brock's made banana split topped with melted choclate fudge!"
Gary turns to look at her, and there is a look on her face. Unmistakeable. Pleasure, delight, and a wistful nostalgia that makes him sadder than it should. For Ash, for Misty, for himself, he isn't sure. But it makes him sad all the same.
Wishing for the past always has.
"Have you noticed the difference about him?"Misty asked. She's fiddling with her hair, the ends of the sun-kissed strands brushing her neck. "It's the way he smiles."
He watches her absently. The echo of a want, to touch her hair the way she is touching it, occurs to him like an idle thought. Once thought, it goes, unmissed.
"Well?" she repeats, a tad impatiently.
He starts to agree with her, because that is what he had observed as well. But, a thread of unconsciousness tugs the unformed words back. "No," he says instead. "That isn't the difference. Not really, anyway."
"Guys!" Ash's voice bounds towards them from the kitchen. "If you don't come now, I'm gonna finish it all."
"Shut up and save some for us," Misty calls back. Gary wonders if she has realised that her tone is different now. The casual camaraderie that she had lost with Ash, has returned.
"I guess you don't know him as well as you claimed, then," she says to him. There is a hint of a smirk at the corner of her mouth.
His smirk is a lot more visible, and she scowls at him. "And you," he mocks."Don't know him at all."
He leaves her, puzzled and enraged on the darkening porch, and heads inside.
Ash looks up, says something to him that he doesn't remember, in a cheerful voice that he does. It is exactly like the voice of a boy he had known four years ago.
Except that it hasn't changed at all.
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