Day Eight: Misty and…?

In one of the dorms in the back of the pokémon center, Misty lay stretched on her bed. Her hands were behind her head, and her aquamarine eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Although they were red and puffy, she finished crying a long time ago. She was now completely in the stage where she was more inclined to hate absolutely everyone: herself, the boy who was far too oblivious to notice her affections, and most importantly, whoever tried to bother her in that state.

Luckily for her, the door burst open at that particular moment, and a blue-haired girl rushed in and threw herself on the empty bed across the room.

Crap, Misty thought.

Turning her head, she glared daggers at the other girl. The newcomer didn't seem to notice, however, because she was far too busy bawling into the pillow of the other bed. Sighing, Misty rubbed her eyes and sat up.

"May I help you?" she asked.

The girl looked up and over her shoulder. Sniffling, she tried to rub tears away from her blue eyes.

"W-who are y-y-you?" she stuttered.

"I think that should be my line. You're in my room."

Looking up, the girl glanced at her surroundings and gasped. She scrambled to sit up as her hands frantically pulled her pink skirt over her thighs.

"Oh! I'm… I'm so sorry."

Raising her eyebrow, Misty took a good look at her. The problem, much to Misty's frustration, was that first off, the girl was a mess. Second, she was a girl. At that point, most of Misty's hatred was towards the male persuasion, and she had a sneaking suspicion she had a reason to sympathize for the newcomer. Because of that, her intense anger towards the entire world eased up just a little, and curiosity pushed her to have an ounce of courtesy.

"Never mind," Misty said. "Are you all right?"

The girl looked away. "Y-yeah. N-n-no n-need to worry. I'll… I'll be fine."

Sighing again, Misty got up and walked across the room to sit down heavily next to her. "You don't look fine."

In the ensuing silence, the other girl looked at her lap. After awhile, her lips just barely moved to let her speak in a small whisper, punctuated by a sniffle.

"It's a long story."

Misty crossed her arms. "Well, I don't have anywhere to be anytime soon."

"Well…" The girl wrung her hands. "You see… I tried to admit my love to someone, and…"

"He turned you down, didn't he?"

The girl looked at Misty with wide, startled eyes. "Is it that obvious?"

"Well, you are crying."

She forced herself to smile. "S-sorry. It's all… it's all really silly, though. I mean, he doesn't even notice me. I was stupid to—"

"No, you weren't!"

Misty jumped to her feet. The girl looked up, startled by the sudden snap in the water trainer's attitude. Even Misty was surprised by her own sudden outburst, but she wasn't about to let a girl show weakness when it came to love. That was just blasphemy in her book.

"Look, even if he was a jerk to you and turned you down, don't think of it as a loss. Think of it as a victory!" Misty exclaimed. "You got up the courage to tell him how you feel, and that's the important part. That way, you'll know how to handle things for when the real one for you comes along!"

The girl blinked as her tears suddenly stopped. "I… I guess."

Misty balled a hand into a fist and held it up. "And so what if he's a jerk anyway? Let him teach you how to handle rejection and move on! No matter what he did to you, you can survive! No matter what he called you when he talked to you! No matter how much he ignored you! Even if he was a stupid jerk who didn't realize after years of traveling with you that you had a crush on him, so he ended up waltzing off to another region with the pokémon he cares about so much and forgetting to call you once in awhile!"

At that point, the girl was leaning a little away from Misty. "Are… are we still talking about boys in general, or…?"

Ignoring her, Misty continued, "This will teach you how to fight in the war of love! The heart is a battlefield, girl! You weren't stupid! You were learning how to parry!"

"…I think you lost me."

Misty sat down next to her and exhaled. "What I mean to say is don't call yourself stupid. Every little thing you do now will help you find the person who's right for you. So what if he's a jerk? There's other, better men out there. You'll find someone else. Trust me."

Smiling, the girl rubbed her eyes with the back of an arm. "I… I think I get it. Thank you."

Seeing her expression, Misty couldn't help but smile herself. "Don't mention it, um…" Right then, she paused, realizing she didn't know the other girl's name.

"Dawn," she said. "You know… you're pretty smart. You must've done this a lot."

Misty crossed her arms and grumbled, "You could say that."

"Then, if you don't mind me asking," Dawn continued, "how do you know if you've found the one for you?"

"Well, I don't," Misty replied. "I haven't found him, either."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

She shook her head. "It's not your fault. I just have bad luck, I guess. Or maybe I'm not going after the right guy. I've heard things, though."

"Things?"

"Well… yeah. Like…"

Misty turned to Dawn and gently put her hands around the girl's face. Dawn shivered, feeling the cold of the trainer's skin.

"When you find the right one," Misty said, "he'll hold you gently and look into your eyes like this."

She connected her gaze with the coordinator's. Dawn blushed as she looked deep into the blue-green eyes of her companion.

"Then," Misty continued, "he'll lean in… like this."

Slowly, Misty leaned towards Dawn, nearly kissing her. Instead, she closed her eyes and said the last few words.

"And then – and this is the important part – he'll kiss you… like this."

The distance between them closed, and Misty's lips brushed Dawn's. She slipped her tongue out of her mouth, pressing against Dawn's soft lips until the girl opened just enough to let her in. Her arms slipped down, tracing the coordinator's curved shoulder and smooth torso until her hands rested on the small of her back. A warmth circled Misty's neck, and she realized that Dawn had slipped her arms around her shoulders. The girl tasted like berries, and although she seemed clumsy, as if she didn't know what to do with her tongue (which she didn't, but Misty didn't know that), it wasn't that bad of a kiss. Misty could feel her body go warm and fuzzy and her heart beat faster and…

Suddenly, the two girls pulled out of the kiss, stared at each other, and realized something very important: the very reason why their male relationships weren't working. With that, they said a single word in perfect unison.

"Oh."

Ending Author's Note:

And there you have it. The eighth and final piece to an eight-part-long holiday fic. Now, for the explanation.

You see the genre up at the top? It's parody. Now, here's the reason why, and it wasn't because most of these had twist endings. It was actually because a lot of these are riffs on popular tropes I've seen during my time writing in the Pokémon fandom. No, this is not another one of those bitter commentaries that pop up and try to embarrass writers by showing them the error of their ways or something. Granted, I laughed at those, but I'm just not that great at them. Really, the entire point to this endeavor was just to point them out and make lighthearted cracks about the things I've noticed in this fandom.

To start off, the first four chapters are centered around the concept of keeping characters, well, in-character. In the first chapter, Ash is more interested in training than romancing; Misty is the one out of character. (She's a tomboy, not a damsel-in-distress.) The second deals with the fact that Paul doesn't actually care about Dawn (to the point where he doesn't make an effort to learn her name) and that romance based on the concept that opposites attract or that the more you hate someone, the more you secretly love them don't necessarily work out that way. The third features the fact that May is just an Ash with a chest, and finally, the fourth tries to explain that if Jessie and James were actually in-character, James would only be wearing the pants in the relationship in a literal sense (and sometimes not even then).

After that, I start to deviate from character rants. The fifth chapter deals with cliché plots, namely high school fics and the idea of romance always persevering… or something. The sixth establishes that there's other holidays besides Christmas. Also, that Hanukkah is a legitimately awesome holiday. (I mean, really, when else can you gamble as a holiday past-time?) The seventh deals with cliché chosen-one fics while explicitly riffing on some of the more popular trends in Pokémon fanfiction, and finally, the eighth deals with unconventional loving because, really, I personally believe there's absolutely nothing wrong with love in all its forms. So long as, you know, you're not out there bonking children or the family dog, you know what I'm saying? But that's just me, and I'm aware it doesn't float everyone's boat.

But the short of it is this. If you laughed for whatever reason, awesome. If you got the warm and fuzzies from some of the parts that were actually warm and fuzzy (like the above scene), then that's cool too.

However, if you're looking for a moral to the story, all I'm saying is you don't have to take a character out of character to write a good romance fic. You also don't have to reuse the same plots just because they're popular or stick to the same setting just because it's Christmas. (You could if you wanted to, sure, but the whole point of this is an off-handed comment, not a guide to the do's and don'ts of fanfic.) And most importantly, don't close your mind to other ways of looking at love until after you've looked at all the perspectives and said, "I respect you, but it's just not for me."

With all that said (and sorry to be preachy), I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I wish you all a happy belated winter holiday of your choosing.