"Sorry, lovebirds, but that's the price."
Wes glared at the hotel's receptionist, and Rui purposefully came to his side, ready to intervene if a fight was going to break out. This man was just the latest of a long string of unpleasant people in the most unpleasant place in the Orre region. The Under, a town hidden from the surface and its inhabitants in an old mining complex, was home to thieves, gangsters, and who knew what else. Of course, that made it the perfect base for a criminal organization like Cipher. It also made Rui feel like she stood out like a sore thumb. Compared to the Under's residents, she looked like an easy mark. Her bright red hair and brightly colored outfit, a purple top under a blue jacket with a white skirt and pink boots, seemed designed to attract attention.
Fortunately, her companion was tough enough for the both of them. He was a young man who did not seem too impressive of a physical specimen judging solely from his lean build under an outfit which was black save for his dark blue duster and the strange device connected to his arm. But there was something manic in his eyes and in how Wes carried himself with total confidence that caused even the most belligerent of roughnecks to give him respect.
He was showing some of that power of intimidation now by leaning over the counter that separated him and Rui from the receptionist of the Under Grand Hotel. The other man was older, but his insincere grin still faltered under Wes's glare.
"The price is fine, we'll take the room, thank you," Rui said quickly. Wes maintained his weight on the counter for a moment longer and then handed over the obscene amount of money that the hotel charged for a single night's stay.
After taking the key from the man at the front desk, Rui and Wes escaped into the hotel's hallway. She was scanning the room numbers, black digits on smudged plaques which had once been a shining gold. While his companion did that, Wes remained alert for any potential danger. His head swiveled this way and that at each door as well as in front and behind them in the hallway. Each flicker of the cheap fluorescent lights overhead or cough muddled by a thin door made the young man pick up and direct his fierce brown eyes towards the sound of the noise. It would have been funny to Rui if she had not already seen enough in Orre, and especially during their short time in the Under, to warrant such caution.
Finally, Rui found the room that corresponded with the key they had been given and turned the rust-speckled piece of metal into the protesting lock and led Wes inside. What little charm the Under Grand Hotel had was found solely in that narrow room and only because its marginally cleaner carpeting and partially redone wallpaper were a step up from the dingy condition of the hallway and lobby. Still, the room would do for at least one night of hiding out from Cipher after Wes and Rui's raid on the television station. There was a small bed and a smaller couch which Wes immediately started to move to barricade the already-locked door. Rui tried to forget the bullet holes this uncovered in the wall behind where the couch had been, but her eyes kept returning to them.
Once Wes was satisfied with his work, he stepped back and peeled off the orange and black machine which was affixed to his left arm with visible discomfort. Once he was free of the diabolic accessory, he also shrugged off his long, midnight blue duster and draped it over one of the couch's arms before retrieving his poké balls from out of his satchel. The red-and-white orbs were nearly as nicked and dinged-up as Wes's tan, muscular arms, which was only fitting as both the young man and his tools had gone through a lot to get to where they were. Rui took a seat on the uneven surface of the bed and kicked her feet as she watched her companion release his pokémon out into the confines of the small hotel room.
The pokémon which erupted forth in burst after burst of red light were in even rougher shape than the poké balls which had held them. The battle against the self-styled "Lady" Venus had been a nasty one, especially since it had come so soon after battling another Cipher boss, the organization's brutal enforcer Dakim. Against all odds, Wes had not only taken down the legendary pokémon under Venus and Dakim's control, but he had even "snagged" Suicune and Entei from the criminals. Rui had no doubts that Wes could have been a championship pokémon battles with his skill, but battles in the Orre were rarely so clean as the Pokémon League-sanctioned matches, especially against Cipher.
Wes's pokémon looked like they had been through Hell and back. His quilava was only barely able to flicker the flames on his back in-between shallow intakes of breath and the once-yellow skin of his ampharos was marred by black and blue bruises. His two oldest pokémon, his oldest companions, an umbreon and an espeon, were in similarly bad states. The black-furred umbreon was wracked by a throaty cough and a piece of his purple-furred brother's ear was missing. Rui's heart broke when she looked at them, but it also swelled when she watched Wes kneel next to each of his pokémon in turn and begin tending to their needs.
"Let me help," Rui said and she hopped off of the creaky bed. Wes didn't say anything, but for a moment a smile tugged at his lips before vanishing. Rui removed her jacket and wet some towels in the bathroom and used them to gently bathe each of the pokémon and soothed them with gentle words or songs. She could feel the weight of Wes's brown eyes on her and she let herself smile much more easily than he had. After each of the pokémon had been cleaned, cared for and fed, Wes returned each of the tired pokémon to their weathered poké balls.
That was not all of Wes's pokémon, however. There were still two more poké balls in his bag. A yellow and white ultra ball held the legendary pokémon which Wes had snagged from Venus. Suicune, freshly caught and still in the throes of a rage brought on by the stress of the battle, was not going to be released into the cramped room of the Ultra Grand Hotel without trying kill Wes and Rui. That left the other poké ball spilling out of Wes's bag and onto the couch.
Wes wordlessly picked up the blue and white great ball and turned it over in his hands. This went on for over a minute before Rui said, "You can let him out, Wes. Don't worry about me."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure, Wes. This isn't my first shadow pokémon, remember?"
The steel in her voice may have taken him by surprise. It was hard to tell, but Wes's voice was soft when he said, "I don't want you to get hurt, Rui." When neither of them said anything further, Wes let his thumb fall to the button of the great ball in his hand and released its occupant in a flash of red light.
The pokémon which took shape was a stout creature standing upright on two legs with two hands clenched into fists at its sides. Under a bowl-shaped head of hair parted in the middle, the pokémon had a pair of beady black eyes and a small mouth wrenched into a scowl. Atop its head and at the tip of its stubby tail were a pair of short but sharp spikes. Before the light had faded, the pokémon was already growling from low in its throat.
"Easy, Hitmontop," Wes said sharply, and the pokémon's growl slackened but did not die.
Rui stared intently at the hitmontop. For some reason beyond her knowledge, she had the ability to see whether a pokémon had been modified by Cipher's cruel science into a vicious fighting machine. "Shadow pokémon", they were called, and for Rui the moniker was almost literal as she alone could perceive an aura of violent purple energy around the tormented pokémon. That's what had made her such a valuable partner for Wes in his mission to stop Cipher and free the shadow pokémon from their condition. She was not looking for the sinister signs that this was a shadow pokémon this time, rather she was trying to look past Hitmontop's aura to see the wounds that the pokémon had suffered. During the battle with Venus, Hitmontop had taken a vicious electric attack and the aftereffect was a black scorch on the short pokémon's blue and brown torso.
When she saw the wound, Rui grabbed one of the damp towels off of the floor and started towards Hitmontop. The pokémon and Wes both tensed up, but the red-haired girl paid them no mind. Before Wes had captured Hitmontop, Cipher had been using it to attack Rui's home, Agate Village, and its protector, her grandfather Eagun. This same pokémon had hurt first her grandfather's pikachu and then the old man himself before Wes had intervened, and now Rui was kneeling close enough to the shadow pokémon to feel its breath on the top of her head as she gently dabbed at the wound to get it clean.
When the attack came, it came so suddenly that Rui only registered the blow when her head hit the wall. She looked up and saw Wes returning the renegade pokémon to its poké ball while a voice from the room next door hollered, "Shut up!"
Once his pokémon was safely contained, Wes rushed to Rui's side. She was getting up into a sitting position and holding her head with one hand while the other cupped her shoulder where Hitmontop had struck her. "I'm okay, I'm okay, Wes," she said, but on the edge of her hand, Wes could see discoloration on the bare skin of her shoulder.
Wes helped Rui get to her feet and then to find her way to the bed. He let her sit down and then moved to clean up the towel which Rui had dropped and to inspect the slight dent in the hotel room's cheap wall. He stayed active as best he could, even pacing a few times around the narrow space because when he stopped he simply could not be still. Wes fidgeted with his fingers but he still did not say anything.
"I'm fine!" insisted Rui, but her words were undercut by the way that she continued to hold her head and arm. "Please, Wes, I'm fine."
Out of the corner of his eye, Wes examined Rui and seemed to reach his own conclusions. He said, "I'm sorry, Rui," and then set about preparing them a light meal from the few provisions left over in their supplies. Naturally, he gave Rui a full portion and took for himself only what could be spared. While she ate the dried food on the bed, Wes sat on the floor and ate in silence.
Quiet was not unusual from Wes's end, but Rui frequently took it upon herself to try and get the reticent young man to open up. Only this night she kept to herself as well, and the pair's late dinner passed in silence. When Wes had finished his food, he rose to his feet and went to the bathroom, leaving Rui alone with her thoughts while he got ready for bed.
When Wes came out of the bathroom, his face had been washed and he had taken off his black undershirt to leave himself bare-chested. The dim lights from the ancient overhead light cast shadows across his broad shoulders and tanned chest. They obscured some of the scats which marked Wes's chest as well as his arms, but Rui had already committed them to memory during her months of traveling with him. The first time that she had seen his naked torso, Rui had been frightened and horrified, not at Wes but at whoever had hurt him. Now, she accepted the same sight with a feeling of sadness, still not knowing the story behind any of those faded wounds.
"We shouldn't linger," Wes said. "Wake up early tomorrow and we'll head out to investigate the lab that Venus mentioned."
"Do you think we can stop them from making any more shadow pokémon?" asked Rui.
Wes stopped at the light switch and flashed a smile at his companion which some might have called vicious, but Rui thought was roguish. "Their days are numbered."
He waited for Rui to close the bathroom door behind her and then switched off the light with an audible "pop". When she emerged, Wes was laying on the couch with his legs hanging off of one end and his dark blue jacket making an attempt at serving as a blanket. One of his arms was acting as a pillow while the other draped itself over his eyes, giving Rui license to standing in front of the doorway and to look at him for longer than she would have dared had his eyes been uncovered. Only when he breathed out a low, "Go to bed, Rui," did she wrest herself from the spot.
The bed was cold, and Rui shivered as she pulled back the cover and crawled into it. Even with the lights out the room was not fully dark as light from some of the garish neon signs which provided much of the Under's illumination cast a glow into the room through the gap between the window's moth-eaten curtain and its frame. The light was enough that if she propped her pillow up against the headboard, Rui could see Wes lying on the couch, his chest rising and falling. Besides the idle hum of the Under Grand Hotel's electricity, the wheezing of the Under's many air filters, and the gentle snore of the man in the room next to theirs, there was silence.
At least, that's how it had seemed to Rui at first, but as she continued her muted observation of Wes, Rui realized that she could hear his breathing in time with the rise and fall of his of his chest. She enjoyed the rhythm of her breathing and Wes's syncing up for a few minutes until Wes said again, "Go to bed, Rui."
"Wes," said Rui, and when he pretended not to hear her, she repeated herself more insistently, "Wes."
"What?"
"Are you cold?"
Wes's body stiffened and his face was a mask of stone, then he rolled over to his side to face away from Rui before drawing his jacket tighter around himself.
"Wes, I'm serious," Rui implored him. "I don't know about you, but I'm freezing! You can't be any warmer over there. And that couch looks dreadful!"
A dull grunt was Wes's only response, at least at first. But as if he could feel Rui's blue eyes boring into his back, Wes chanced a glance over his shoulder at her.
As he did so, Rui consciously moved her red hair, let down from its usual style, off of her shoulder to reveal the bruise blooming an ugly flower on her shoulder. She saw Wes's attention fix upon it. His expression was unreadable and as his eyes continued to linger on Rui, she felt herself grow nervous. At the start of her travels with Wes, she would have been completely mortified by how he was looking at her, and at how she was acting. But she had grown tougher since Wes had first rescued her from a pair of Cipher goons in Phenac City, and she met Wes's gaze with a steady imitation.
Finally, slowly, Wes turned his body towards Rui. Now his eyes were locked on her own, and her heart beat faster in her chest. With deliberate care, the young man removed his covering and left the heavy duster on the edge of the couch as he lowered his feet to the carpeted floor. He stopped there, sitting on the couch and looking at Rui, daring her to say something.
But she didn't and he took that as permission, encouragement even, to get to his feet. Once Wes was standing, he paused again, and again Rui maintained her silence, not out of fear, but out of defiance. He met her attitude with his usual stoicism, and took a step towards the bed, then another. Each step charged the room with more and more electricity until Rui was certain that the fine hairs on the back of her neck were standing alert.
Wes crossed to the side of the bed closest to the hotel room's door, and Rui moved over to let him join her in the bed. There was barely enough room on the mattress for both of them, so the two laid shoulder to shoulder. Now Rui was grateful for the cool temperature of the bedsheets. Even in their awkward positions, Rui could feel the warmth of Wes's skin against hers, limited though the contact was.
Their breathing was synced up again, but now it was at a faster pace. Both Rui and Wes looked up at the ceiling, all thought of sleep forgotten for the moment. The air was heavy with tension, and Rui was about to say something to acknowledge it when Wes said, "I'm sorry, Rui."
The apology took her by surprise and Rui addressed her initial, "Why?" to the water-stained ceiling overhead. Then she rolled onto her side and, propped up on her elbow, said, "Hitmontop didn't really hurt me that badly, he just took me by surprise. That's all."
"It's not that." Wes's words were still directed upwards. "I'm sorry for everything that you've been through. Being at Agate Village, meeting your family, your grandfather getting-" He breathed in through his nose and then said, "You deserve better than this, all of this, Rui."
"Deserve better than what? Helping you save pokémon, maybe even the whole region?"
"You know it's more than that." Wes let out a long breath and said, "This isn't a fairy tale, Rui."
Rui laughed at that. "But you're still my knight in shining armor, Wes." He shifted uncomfortably, but there was no room on the bed for him to inch away from the young woman. "Ever since you rescued me. No matter what happens, or what you've done, you'll always be my knight."
He didn't say anything, and avoided looking at her as his breathing and Rui's both began to slow. Seconds passed and then minutes. The weight of the late hour and the events of the day threatened sleep, but Rui held the fatigue off in order to maintain her attention on Wes. When he realized that she would not soon be asleep, Wes took a deep breath and then rolled away from Rui. His weight began to shift, but Rui was able to stay him with the gentle touch of her hand on his upper arm.
"Stay with me, Wes," she said, "please."
It felt as though her hand was on fire at the feel of Wes's skin and muscle, but Rui did not remove it. When Wes did not move, either off of the bed or to make himself comfortable, Rui tugged on him. The result was less Rui bringing Wes closer to herself than her drawing closer to him. She molded her body to his, her chest against his back, and felt her nerves light up as she did so.
"Rui," said Wes breathlessly. He shifted again and she tightened her hold on him.
"Wes," Rui said in turn, and she pulled Wes around to face her. Even though he was certainly strong enough to resist, he did not. Now Rui and Wes were lying face to face on the bed with only the barest amount of space between them. For one, Wes looked unsure, and struggling with what he was going to say. But there were no words on Rui's end. Instead, her mind and her instincts were united towards a single impulsive act, to the point where it wasn't a decision but a law of nature.
Her face drew closer to Wes's own and her lips brushed his, just a tentative pass. When she pulled back, she saw that Wes was looking at her in a new way. Though his expression was guarded, she dared to kiss him again, and this time he responded. Was he returning her affection? Did he share her feelings? Rui didn't know, but she let herself hope.
Though she wanted to stay connected to Wes, Rui broke the kiss first. She wanted to sound confident, but her voice sounded small and nervous to her ears. "If I went too far, if you think that I'm a, well…" She swallowed the lump in her throat and said, "Please stay with me, Wes, just for tonight."
Wes smiled at her, a smile unlike any that Rui had ever seen on his face before. It was a warm smile that softened his fierce eyes. He didn't say anything, but he stayed with her, and for the moment that was the only thing that mattered.