AN: When I was writing this, one of the things I figured is that there ends up being a lot of water under the bridge over the span of twenty years. One of the more important discoveries I learned as a young adult was that everyone acquires baggage, trauma - call it what you will - of some sort or another, and that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to handling it. Sometimes you just don't. I guess it's natural that I've moved on from being all about coming-of-age stories to being more into stories about having come of age and looking back, wondering what you could have done differently. Not yet old, but no longer young, and not as stupid as you wish you were.
At the safest maximum speed, it was an eight-hour flight on Charizard from Sinnoh to Pallet Town. Ash hated driving his Pokemon that hard for that long, but time was a factor. Once he was home, he'd give Charizard a few days' rest at the Oak lab.
For now, though, it was just him, the sky, and his annoying little thoughts. Back when he was a kid, he'd never needed to distract himself from them the way he did now. Then again, he didn't remember being the brightest kid. Or the most introspective. Or even nice. At least he'd been determined.
Foremost on his mind were the events of seven years ago: the Sevii Islands disaster and the terrible months that followed. He'd spent a very long time wondering how much more he could have maybe done. He'd wept bitter tears for what seemed like forever, thinking back to Shamouti, Alto Mare, Larousse, Nebel, and all the times it had been enough. No-one had ever given him a good enough answer to "how could this happen?" And he'd never found one himself. The best he could do was go on with life and do things other than keep thinking about it.
Not everyone had agreed with his decision to do that. There are ends that come about from the struggle to continue. But…battling still felt good. Training. Triumph. Defeat. Pokemon. That was what he knew. So that is what he did. And for a while, it felt like he'd healed himself. But he arrived one day at the horrible realization that he'd just been distracting himself.
And not just from his thoughts, but from his people. A story he liked to tell himself was that folks had always been going in and out of his life. Gary, Brock, May, Dawn, Iris. Serena. Misty. Since then, though…he was at too much of a deficit to keep believing that story.
From a distance, he glimpsed the flashing lights of Goldenrod through the clouds and knew he was getting close. It was almost eight, and his cheeks had long gone numb from the wind and cold air.
Charizard looked back at him for a moment - he was getting tired. Ash considered stopping. He was in no hurry to be cruel to one of his oldest friends. A few of his favorite hotels were in Goldenrod. But as he reached down Charizard's neck to tell him to descend, the Pokemon growled with indignation, and sped up.
I want it to be over already, too.
They continued on for a few more long hours as Ash tortured himself with his memories. Who was he about to see in Vermillion City? There were at least a half-dozen faces he could think of that he had no interest in confronting. Iris sometimes liked to joke to Ash that it wasn't failure that scared him - he'd failed too many times for it to hold any mystery. No, it was people, and their many mysteries that scared him. Then she'd call him a kid. He was older than her.
It's not that Ash made enemies. Far from it: he, Gary, and Paul had been groomsmen together at more than one wedding, and they'd spent the receptions laughing about old battles. He even knew that Team Rocket were frequent guests at his tournaments - although he wasn't sure they knew that he knew.
But you don't live a life without doing a few terrible things to the people you love. The most you can do really afterwards is apologize and be better. Ash was great at the first one. He was okay at the second one.
After what felt like a lifetime, Ash finally spied the windmill: he'd arrived. Exhausted, Charizard began a hard descent towards the Oak Corral, and for a moment Ash was worried they'd crash into the side of a hill.
But no. The fire lizard beat his wings to slow them both down as they approached terra firma. A minute later, Ash was spread-eagle on the ground and doing his breath exercises. Beside him, Pikachu sprawled out, clutching little clumps of grass like a child he'd thought dead. Ash might have drifted off: an entire eight hours of thin air had him loopy and drained. But before he could, Ash heard footsteps.
"You can't do that here, Ashy Boy."
Ash opened one eye. Standing above him was his oldest friend: Umbreon at his side and that contemptible grin still plastered to his face.
"It's been a long flight, Professor Oak," said Ash, not bothering to speak loud or clear enough to be heard. "And I'm old and tired. You wouldn't wake a tired old man, would you, Gary?"
"I'm six months older than you," Gary sighed. He dug a pair of glasses out from his lab coat and unfolded them onto his face. "And your tired old ass is going to get trampled by that herd of Tauros when I let them out in a few hours. Aren't they yours?"
"Just help me up, please."
Coffee for Ash, a fresh bottle of ketchup for Pikachu, and the spoils of the pasture for Charizard. Gary stood up, letting Ash sprawl out on the couch and do the dangerous work of trying to drink hot coffee whilst prone. Somehow, he managed, hanging his head off the couch every time he took a sip before putting the mug back on the table.
"Do I need to tell Gramps and Delia you're here?" Gary asked. It was clear that the junior Professor Oak had still been awake upon Ash's arrival - the coffee table was a mess of research documents, pens, doodles, and half-empty mug. Pikachu and Umbreon curled up together on the ottoman, neither one of them feeling too obliged to stay up for any longer.
"No. No, I was planning on surprising Mom tomorrow morning," said Ash, eyes half-closed. "This was kind of a spur of the moment thing."
Gary took a sip of his coffee. It had been almost a year since the two of them last saw one another - at the elder Oak's 70th birthday/retirement party that February. They'd gotten drunk and had a battle outside in the cold: Electivire vs. Heracross. The results had been inconclusive, as halfway through the battle, they both realized how cold it was and how sloshed they truly were. Heracross had needed to go take his frustration out on a tree afterwards.
"I tend to assume that about your plans by default," said Gary. "What I'm asking is what's up. You look like hell, and not just because you flew here nonstop from Sinnoh."
"Some stuff, okay?" If Gary didn't know about the invitations, then Ash wanted to keep it that way. "I'm heading out soon, and I don't know the next time I'm going to be back."
"So I do need to tell Gramps and Delia," Gary said, nodding to himself. He pulled out his Rotom phone. "She's not going to–hey!"
"Gimme that!" Ash had lunged at Gary for his phone, shoving half the couch cushions off in a mad dash to stop his old rival from dialing. Within seconds, Ash was on him like a linebacker.
Gary had two disadvantages: surprise and size. He wasn't expecting Ash to have enough energy to jump him like this, and the short, messy-haired kid he'd grown up next to was now built like a baseball player.
He did have one advantage, though, one that Ash hadn't thought of.
"Umbreon!"
Faster than Ash could account for, the moonlight Pokemon had come up from behind and knocked him clear across the room. For a good couple seconds, he could not remember who or where he was. As his vision came back into focus, he saw Pikachu - awake and exasperated - coming to check on him.
"What, you're not even going to try and defend me?"
"Chu. Pi-pika."
"No, he started it. I don't have to sit here and take this." From his position upside down on the floor, Ash pointed at Gary. "Don't call either of them. I–I don't know what to tell them yet."
"What's even to say?!" shouted Gary. "What did you do? Please don't tell me you and M–"
"It's not that," Ash cut in, knowing where that sentence was going. "I don't know what it is. Something's changed in me. I think it happened a long time ago."
Gary pinched the bridge of his nose to stem the oncoming headache. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece: half-past midnight. Then he looked down at his coffee and wondered if he'd perhaps made the wrong choice in a beverage for the kind of night he was about to have.
"The last time you came to me like this, you were about to take three years off from competitive battling," said Gary, eyes narrow.
"I'm not in crisis," said Ash. "But this is usually the place my head is at when I'm about to make a huge-ass mistake. Or have just made one."
"And it's not the–"
"It's not the latter, no."
Gary tried to decide if he should either keep asking questions or just keep feeding Ash coffee and let the answers come on their own. The man barely had a filter to begin with - this much had not changed since they were kids.
Ash picked himself up and went for his mug. He'd discovered caffeine at twelve and had drank enough of it since then to float an aircraft carrier. For his part, Ash had no idea what he wanted to say, or even what exactly was wrong - usually the words found him, not the other way around.
"I think I know what might help," said Gary after a minute's silence. "There's really only one thing that always does."
Ash felt the hairs on the back of his neck go stiff with pavlovian excitement.
"A battle?"
"One on one. It's past midnight, after all," Gary said, raising a stern finger in the air. "And I don't want to wake the neighborhood. We can use the field downstairs."
Years ago, the elder Oak, Gary, Ash, and Brock had discovered a sizable natural cavern beneath the grounds of the Oak Corral - the running theory was that it had been carved by Digletts many years prior and abandoned.
The four of them had spent an entire summer getting the place cleared out to a point where it could be used as a regulation Pokemon field, installing air exchanges they'd bought from Byron in Sinnoh, connecting the cavern to the lab's power grid, and digging an access tunnel that ran all the way back to the lab.
Since then, the field had only seen about a dozen uses or so - most of them friendly matches between Gary and Ash, and usually for the sole purpose of blowing off some steam. Tonight was no exception.
After getting the lights on, the two of them took their places on either side of the field. Gary had elected to use Blastoise this time, and had told Ash as much. Ash had elected to keep his selection to himself, citing that it would be a surprise.
"I don't know why you're being such a poor sport for an inconsequential battle," Gary shouted from across the cavern. "Maybe you just need Blastoise to remind you of your manners. Go!"
Gary flung the scratched-up old Pokeball into the air, watching with a proud grin as the enormous turtle hit the ground. His oldest Pokemon and still his strongest, Blastoise grinned with anticipation as he saw who their opponent would be. It had been far too long since last time for the old turtle's liking.
"Don't tell me you don't like a surprise every now and then, Gary," Ash shouted back. He grabbed a Pokeball from his belt, one that he'd been itching to throw for weeks. "Or have you been stuck in your lab for so long that you don't even remember how much fun they can be?"
"Bap bap bap bap bap," said Gary, making both of his hands 'talk' along with him. "Back that up, Ashy Boy!"
"My pleasure! Crawdaunt!" Ash wound up, and launched a four-seamer that could have put a hole through a catcher's mitt.
The rogue crab took the field with an icy stare in Blastoise's direction. The two of them remembered one another - in previous years they'd been frequent acquaintances at the Oak Corral. Crawdaunt, as a Corphish, had envied Blastoise' power then. They'd never fought in the intervening years. As far as Crawdaunt was concerned, this was a problematic state of affairs with one clear solution: victory.
Without much on the line, both Pokemon were free to engage in the oldest form of cathartic self-expression: absolutely clobbering one another.
Crawdaunt came out the gate swinging, Crabhammering away at Blastoise until the latter was able to blast it across the field with a well-placed Hydro Pump. On Ash's orders, Crawdaunt performed a Swords Dance as Blastoise closed the distance.
Now fully warmed up, Blastoise began a Rapid Spin assault - his signature. But Ash remembered this strategy from a long way back - and he'd since come up with plenty of countermeasures.
"Endure! I need you to Endure!"
With a quick nod, Crawdaunt opened himself up to Blastoise's Rapid Spin, taking it full on in the chest. But the time he'd had to get ready for it proved worth it: Blastoise had failed to knock him down - he'd only pushed him back.
Winded, Blastoise emerged from his shell and looked back to Gary for orders.
"Focus Punch - end this now!"
Blastoise gave a nod and inhaled, putting all of his energy into a single attack to finish the fight - except that's not what happened.
Instead, his fist caught in Crawdaunt's outstretched right claw - it was still enough power to cripple the rogue crab's entire arm from the force of the blow. But Crawdaunt clamped down with the strength he had left on that side, and the pain was so distracting that Blastoise didn't notice the left claw coming until it was too late to Withdraw.
"Guillotine."
The fight was over. A humbled Gary withdrew the unconscious Blastoise to his Pokeball and smacked his lips in restrained disappointment.
"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," said Gary, licking his wounds. "If you weren't good at this yet, I'd have questions about what you've been doing this whole time."
"I've been kicking ass is what," Ash said, adjusting his hat and enjoying the adrenaline rush. "You're right, this helped. Still doesn't fix anything, but it helped."
Gary was about to field a retort of some kind when he noticed something, and Ash noticed him noticing. A curious sense of dread crept up his vertebrae. It felt familiar.
"Well, that about tracks," came a voice from the cavern entrance. "You're way better at breaking things."
Oh. Oh no. Oh no no no no no.
Ash hadn't heard that voice in several years. He'd resolved that by the time he did hear it again, he'd be ready. And the dawning horror that now greeted him with this new day meant only one thing: he was lightyears away from 'ready.'
Okay, options. He looked around - Gary at the far end of the cavern. Friend? Yes. Responsible for this? Probably. Help? No. Next idea.
Had they built an escape route when they dug this place out? He knew they hadn't, but he looked for one anyway. Were there any ground types on his current team? Ash went through them in his head - Charizard, Crawdaunt, Gliscor, Lucario–wait! Gliscor! Yes!
Ash was halfway to his Pokeball when the part of him that was an adult finally arrived. He played out the next ten minutes in his head: after digging his way out of there, what was he going to do? Run? He was exhausted. Fly? Charizard was exhausted. And even if he did manage to get away, there were two people who could now corroborate a story to his mother of how he'd literally run away from his problems.
Cool. Super cool. The best, even. Maybe when he died, he'd go to an afterlife where he could in fact fix everything with Pokemon battles. Unfortunately, he was still alive.
Slowly and at great expense of his remaining wherewithal, Ash turned his head towards the voice, making one last sucker's prayer that it belonged to anyone else.
But nobody did respond. Partially silhouetted by the light from the entrance tunnel, she stood there: everything that Ash feared and did not understand.
Well. He had to say something. A pressure built up in Ash's chest as he leveled his pointer finger at Misty.
"No, you!"
Yeah, he thought. Got 'em.