AN: Sorry it's been a bit. Took a break for the holidays, and work got busy the second I got back. I've had this brain worm floating around in my head of late: it's James saying "That's a good point you make, Twerp - but unfortunately, I've already drawn you saying it as a soyjack."

Anyway, my partner read what I've written so far and wants me to make it smutty. I gave her a hard maybe. I'm not particularly inclined towards it, but if this takes off and I get an inbox full of demands, then sure. Until then, this can be my little "Pokemon Fun Home" pet project that plays out the way it plays out. Thank you as always for reading!

"'No you?' That's it? That's all I get after years?"

He'd seen her angrier - he'd even seen her angrier at him. In fact the angriest he'd ever seen her had been at him. But like she said, he'd not seen her in years. It did seem appropriate to him that their first interaction after so long would go like this.

She couldn't have looked more beautiful. Of course. And here he was, having found his first gray hairs a few months ago, and still not out to anyone about all of the tape he had to wear on his shoulder these days.

Quietly, Ash figured Misty was lucky it was his pointer finger he greeted her with and not another one. But he kept that one to himself. Where was his thanks for that? Not here - he could tell you that much.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Ash pouted, making a bitter little fist. "You come out the gate with your tight five all ready to go and I'm supposed to have all this grace? You're out of your mind."

Across the cavern, Gary made a face at himself. He'd heard stories about these two from Brock during the time the two of them had spent researching Blisseys. The way Brock told it, Ash and Misty had been in love (or something like it) the entire time he'd known them. They'd just had a uniquely juvenile - and almost certainly unhealthy - way of expressing it that he'd hoped they might grow out of one day.

Not today, apparently.

"Grace is the least you could do," said Misty. "I don't remember getting even so much as a half-assed apology text out of you! Do you have any idea how furious everyone still is?"

She gesticulated wildly, her long winter coat flapping about with every word. It reminded Gary of his limited experience attending Kabuki theater.

"Yeah, I'm crystal on that, thank you," Ash said, his voice twinged with a bitter rasp. "It's why I told Gary not to call anyone!"

Gary felt the place get noticeably colder as Ash turned his attention to him. Sheepish, he dug his hand into his jacket pocket and started fiddling with his phone.

"I, uh, I called her when I saw you touch down. Before you told me not to call anyone."

Ash took a second to figure out if he believed this. Ultimately, it didn't matter.

"You called her."

"Eyes back on me," said Misty, and waited for Ash to obey (he did) before she continued. "Gary had standing orders to let me know the next time you came to town. So did your mom."

It was a goddamn conspiracy. Ash wondered how far up it perhaps went. He turned a suspicious eye to Pikachu, who looked overjoyed to see Misty again. No, he finally decided. He doesn't know how to use a phone.

"Okay, psychotic phone trees aside," he began, "I don't know what you're hoping to accomplish right now. Unless you just wanted to yell at me."

Oh no.

"I wanted to talk to you," she said, eyes glistening with what may have been tears. "I've wanted to talk to you for years."

Ash took a deep breath and remembered that they were both adults. Or at least something resembling adults. He looked down at Pikachu, who nodded his agreement with Misty. With emotions running high, his instinct was to take this as a sign that his dearest friend had taken her side. But maybe it was in fact just the surest indication he could imagine that he needed to finally have this conversation.

"Gary," said Ash. Once he knew his old rival was looking, he jammed his thumb backwards: the universal 'get the hell out of here.'

Incredulous, Gary made a show of looking around for any other exit besides the one. Misty sighed, exhausted, and removed herself from his path with a sarcastic flourish of her hands.

Gary made towards the access tunnel, running his fingers down his cheeks.

"I'm going to bed," he said. "If by some miracle you hash things out, it still won't be a good enough reason to wake me up, so don't."

The ground is always a way more comfortable place to sit when the conversation turns serious. Ash didn't make those rules, but he understood them as well as anyone else. He probably preferred the ground most of the time - all of the time spent in a sleeping bag under the stars had likely done that to him.

He'd spent a very long time lying just a few short feet away from her in those days. Back then, he'd been too dumb and too prepubescent to care. But when he was fourteen, it hit him hard. Misty had been absent from his life for a little while, but she and almost everyone else he knew had pulled together to see Max through his treatments and give him all the moral support they could.

To most, those couple of months ended up becoming a blip on the radar: Max went into remission and was still there, May made sure everyone knew how appreciated they were for coming to his treatments, and life moved on.

To Ash, that was the spring he'd spent finally noticing Misty. She'd noticed him right back, and they spent that summer alternating between training for that years' Indigo Conference and spending countless hours making out. They'd commuted to and from Cerulean Cape a dozen times on Charizard's back, grossing the poor Pokemon out with their carrying on and permanently chaining the beach north of Misty's Gym to their shared answer to the question "What's the hottest moment you've ever spent with your clothes still on?" If he could pick a time in his life he missed the most, those couple of months ranked way up there for him.

Plenty of living happened in between then and now, but for the vast majority of that time, she'd been a presence in his life in some capacity or another. There were years when they were just friends. There were years when they were far more than that. There were even years when they'd been with other people - but May, Dawn, and Tracey all individually understood that Ash and Misty were one another's destiny. Whatever happened, whenever it happened, the understanding and assumption had always been that they would spend the years ahead being to one another whatever they needed to be.

And, well, you know what they say about assumptions sometimes: they make you look like an idiot.

"It felt like you both wanted me gone," Ash said, sitting down and looking up at the cavern ceiling. "And who could blame you? It was my fault. "

"I can't speak for Serena," Misty said, cross-legged a few feet away with her eyes fixed on him. "But just because I was angry with you doesn't mean I wanted you gone."

"So what did you want?"

"I wanted you to do better," she said, pointing at him. In the years since he'd seen her, she'd started wearing her hair shorter, and without the water stone decoration he'd gotten for her birthday years ago. "Because I knew you could. But you didn't want to do better. You wanted easier."

Ash clenched his teeth. All of this he'd already come to. All of it, he'd told himself. But hearing it out of her mouth just this once was somehow so much worse than years of it echoing in his mind.

"I-I didn't know what I was doing," he said. His shoulder pained him. "There was no roadmap. I couldn't ask anyone who knew, because no-one did. But…training, I knew. The journey, I knew. Learning about new Pokemon. Battling. I knew that. It made sense. You…you didn't. Neither did Serena."

"Ash, I've never seen you shy away from doing something just because it didn't make sense," Misty said with a sad smile. "Remember Primeape?"

"I'm about to do something else that doesn't make any sense," said Ash, reaching for the envelope in his pocket and no longer available to continue with this particular line of inquiry. "I need to go back to Sevii."

If it was cold in the cavern before, it took them until now to notice. Even in their winter coats, it felt as though all the warmth in both their bodies had betrayed them. Misty crossed her arms and looked down at a rock as Ash zipped himself up to his neck.

"Why."

She didn't phrase it as a question.

"Someone we know might be in trouble," he said. "Or else I'd have gone right on thinking about anything else but that place. It's, uh, it's Laurelai."

"So what are you doing here?"

"I guess Cynthia is gathering folks up to circle the wagons in Vermillion City in a couple days," Ash explained. "I don't think I'm going to go. My plan - it wasn't much of a plan - but my plan was to have a talk with Mom tomorrow morning and head south after breakfast."

"You all got one of these, too, I imagine," Misty said, pulling a familiar-looking envelope from her pocket. She turned to leave and beckoned him to follow. "Call Brock. I'm coming with you and so is he. It was the three of us that week. It'll be the three of us again this time. He'll understand."

Ash pulled out his Rotom Phone in reflexive obedience as Pikachu hopped back up on his shoulder. He and Brock had seen each other a couple weeks ago - the former gym leader was now a surgeon at a Pokemon hospital outside of Pewter City, and they'd had lunch before Ash had left for Sinnoh. He sent Brock a quick series of texts: "pallet town. asap. mistys here. its serious."

"He'll be here," said Ash. "Where are we going?"

Misty looked at him like his head was upside down and his clothes were inside out before gesturing towards herself and making a show of raising her eyebrows.

"The water. C'mon, keep up."

Every summer he was able to, Ash would spend at least a day or two at the cove south of town. It wasn't too long a trek for all of his Pokemon he kept at the Oak Lab, so he would bring all of them with him for a beach and barbecue day and let them enjoy the sands while he went fishing. On plenty of occasions, Misty had come with.

It was winter, now, though, and the wind blowing in from the ocean cut through Ash's bones like a Zangoose with a grudge. Some years back, the two of them and Brock had arrived back in Pallet Town from the Sevii Islands - and what had happened there - on the backs of their Pokemon, and collapsed on the sand in exhaustion and despair. It had been winter then, too, and while it never got too cold in southern Kanto, they'd felt it that night. Weeks went by before they felt warm again.

Ash looked out at the dark horizon. During the day, and with the assistance of binoculars, he could see Cinnabar Island from this cove. Tonight, though, it was overcast, and no moonlight shone through the clouds. All he and Misty had was the light pollution from nearby Viridian City to illuminate the dreary night.

"What do you know?"

"Just what Volkner told me, plus these invitations," Ash said, flexing his fingers to keep the circulation going. Pikachu had crawled inside his coat a ways back, rebuking as always Ash's offer of the Pokeball.

Misty wiggled her nose in thoughtful discontent. There'd been so many dozens of world-threatening near-misses they'd both now seen firsthand. He wondered if she smelled one on the notes they'd received. He wondered if he did.

"Signed R for Team Rocket?"

"I'd thought about it, but this isn't loud enough to be one of theirs," said Ash, kicking at the cold sand. "I'm actually pretty sure those two own a restaurant now. Could be a scheme, I guess. But they've been at it for years now. I actually ate there once about a year ago. First and only cheeseburger I've had that was cooked by a Wobuffet. Good, though; don't get me wrong."

"Focus please," Misty said. "So, what, are we walking into this completely blind?"

"It wouldn't be the first time," Ash said. He tossed Samurott's Pokeball up and down in his hand, wondering if Misty would be game to head out as soon as Brock arrived - no more waiting around and dreading.

"No, it wouldn't," she conceded, "But on none of those occasions did it ever go well, did it?"

This was not incorrect, but it did feel like somewhat of an oversimplification. Things never went well at first. Ash understood the limits of his own ability to think ahead, but he felt like his ability to think on his feet often went underestimated. But whenever he'd say as much out loud, he'd get all sorts of guff about 'winging it.' No-one even bothered to check the scorecard - it was full of disasters he'd managed to turn into victories.

"You're not being fair," said Ash, in measured protest. "Someone's in trouble and we can help. That's all I need to know."

It was dark, but Ash was pretty sure he saw Misty smile at him in the faint evening light. He quivered. That she still lived in his heart was something he didn't bother lying about to himself. Ash was never a great liar, anyway. He'd have never believed it.

"Ash, why did you come back to Pallet town?"

He was getting a little tired of people asking him what he was doing here, and not just because he didn't have a great answer. This was his home, dammit. Did he need an answer?

"Maybe I needed something familiar," he said, guessing. And perhaps obfuscating. "I mean, if I did, then here she is. I did the math once: I've actually spent more time in my life with you than any other person. Brock came second. My poor mother had to settle for the bronze."

"You're not here for me," said Misty, sauntering towards him. "I think I saw you trying to figure out if you could run from me."

"I totally could, and what are you doing?" he asked nervously. She'd stopped just short of him, and was looking him over like she was deciding whether or not she'd buy him.

"Just trying to figure something out," Misty said, and with every word he could feel her breath on his face. She was wearing a honey-scented lip balm, and had a tiny scratch on her right eyebrow that had mostly healed over. "Don't worry about it."

"Pikapi."

Ash looked down inside his coat at his yellow friend: his now raging heartbeat had woken Pikachu up, and the mouse now squinted at him with groggy irritation. Ash was not sympathetic to this right now.

"So go find someone else's coat if it's so loud."

"Chu! Pikachu!"

Instead of continuing to argue, Ash zipped up his coat as Pikachu continued to complain, muffling the yellow Pokemon's carrying on.

"He's going to shock you."

"I know, but it's a symbolic vict–"

He didn't even get through his sentence before the lightning ripped through him. Twenty years later, it hurt just as badly as it always had. These shocks, however, had the infrequent side-effect of helping him think. Right now proved to be one of those times.

Not that Misty was immediately aware. She looked at him with a pity-twinged 'toldya so' kind of wince as he unzipped his coat.

"Was it worth it?"

"What if it's one of us?" asked Ash. "What if the reason they knew what was going on in our heads is because it's someone we knew? Someone who was there?"

Misty was silent for a while, and Ash could tell she was going through the list of trainers whom they knew assisted in the rescue effort. He did the same, but after a moment's contemplation, he concluded that no-one fit the bill.

"I'm stumped," said Misty, burying her hands in her pockets. "Roxanne? Richie? I'm grasping at straws here, right?"

"Yeah, probably," Ash said, pursing his lips in frustration. "Nothing else makes sense, though."

Ash checked his phone - no word from Brock. This didn't sit well with him: Brock always texted back, even when it was late, and even when it wasn't important. It'd been nearly an hour, now. He called, then he called again. Silence, both times.

"Still nothing?"

"Something's wrong," said Ash. "I just don't know how wrong."

"Doesn't feel like a coincidence," Misty concluded. "Call it gut instinct."

The two of them looked north, towards Pewter City, then at the horizon south, where the Sevii Islands used to be. Wordlessly, Ash checked his belt - he'd switched out his team on the way out to the cove: Charizard, Samurott, Lucario, Decidueye, Raichu, and Dragonite - and of course Pikachu, his now-noncombatant.

Was it a 'team for the ages?' Ash didn't know. He'd spent years reading sportswriters ranking his lineups one through ten. Number One was always different. All he knew was how much he trusted each one of his six friends - almost all of whom had been with him for years and years, now. And Raichu, though young, had proved herself over and over. Yeah. Yeah, this team could get it done.

Misty pulled her blue coat open to check on her own team. Ash had no idea who she'd brought besides probably Corsola and Starmie, but he trusted her prowess more than most other trainers he knew. If she had his back, then there was nothing he feared.

"Samurott!"

The sea lion sprang out of his ball, eyes already on the water and knowing full well what the task would be. He turned his head back at Ash with an audacious grin. It'd been a while since their last act of daring-do. Ash gave him a pat before mounting up on the beast's back. He glanced over at Misty, who'd called upon Gyarados.

No idea, no plan, no Brock, and no backup. Just like old times. Ash smiled nervously at Misty as Samurott stepped into the water.

"It's you and me."