Her arms pin-wheeled in the air as she fell, her chest tightening and her vision blurring, and all the while the throaty grind of black rotors hacked in her ears above even the ringing of her screams. She saw the sky yawn above her and glimpsed eternity there, and she felt the blue underneath her, calling her, oh yes – the blue called her home, because there her home would always be, with the sun and the cold and the emptiness and the thing that wasn't a bird.
She clenched her eyes shut and waited for that void to engulf her – she felt her body curl up and her arms wrap around her face to cover it against the end – but suddenly something was nudging the tensed muscles of her forearms, and when she moved in response she could feel her right elbow digging into the dirt. The sounds of the forest began to penetrate the fading reality of the blue, and she cautiously relaxed her body, letting her arms fall aside. Syn nuzzled her cheek and made a worried sound in his throat.
She pushed herself into a sitting position, brushing the dead leaves from the right side of her face and her hair. Distantly, she could hear the faint, cacophonic wingbeats of the Pidgey she had spooked, and she felt the hot pricks of threatening tears behind her eyes. She drew her knees to her chest and pressed her clamped eyelids into them to force the moisture back. It had been the fourth flashback she had experienced since leaving the city, but it had been by far the worst. She felt the tang of fear at the back of her throat. If one struck her while she was in a dangerous situation… hell, even if it wasn't a dangerous situation… and she hurt someone… or hit her head…
But Syn was tugging on her sleeve now – she pushed the thoughts away and smiled despite herself.
"It's okay, Syn. I'm alright now. Sorry I scared you, bud."
He gently clambered into her lap and allowed her to embrace him. Taking deep breaths, she felt each beat of his heart slowly ground her to the present. She closed her eyes again and considered moving on.
She wanted to get to Pewter City quickly so that she could make up lost time and earn a badge… and she thought that perhaps some good luck might keep the flashbacks and nightmares at bay. They were still four or five days from the mining city, though, and she didn't feel as though she could walk any further for awhile. Besides, Syn could use some training – he had learned to use Leech Seed pretty effectively while at the hospital, but she knew that more powerful techniques would be needed to deal damage against the Rock- and Ground-types used by the Pewter leader.
When she rose to her feet, she swayed only once – an improvement.
As the afternoon passed, Syn gradually became more skilled at using his vines in combat. At first he simply lashed a fallen tree until he gained confidence in his power – after a few short hours, he was striking sticks and other small objects from the air with a respectable accuracy.
At one point, they were presented with the opportunity for an addition to their team – a Spearow took issue with their practice and swooped in to scold them. Syn quickly took a battle stance, and Jayde readied an empty ball in her hand… but memory is powerful, and she couldn't escape the flicker of a morphing bird clock in a cold bedroom – an image her mind associated with salt and iron and pain.
The Spearow escaped, and Syn was once again left to comfort her until she could regain both her feet and her composure.
She hissed and jerked her arm away from a clutching bramble, knowing that it had drawn blood even without rolling up her sleeve to examine the scratch. She had expected that she would grow used to the thorns in the forest after nearly a week of grappling with them, but it seemed as though she was hyper-attuned at the moment to both the pain and the startling grip on her clothing. Syn, on the other hand, trundled through even the densest thickets beside her, paying little mind to the possessive barbs that pricked at the thick leather of his hide. She tracked his progress when he was out of sight by the sounds of snapping branches and the sharp whicker of the thistle.
She heard a sudden clamor of cracks and turned, expecting to see Syn finally giving up his tough-guy act and making a break for a clearer path, and even as her head thudded against the packed earth and fresh scrapes opened on her face she assumed that she had been startled into another flashback – the only issue with that hypothesis was that she was never fully aware that a flashback was happening until it was over. And her flashbacks didn't typically growl or show long, white fangs. She felt the fear overwhelming her and the familiar sense of reality slipping (like a mask slips, maybe, her mind murmured from far away), but a sudden call grounded her again and kept her consciousness in the present.
"Willow! Come back! What's the matter with you?"
This shout was followed by further crashing to her right as its owner tried to locate the object of their search – named Willow, apparently. Jayde had ascertained by this point that the growling mass on her chest was not aiming to brutally murder her, so she let her previous experiences with such agitation take over – she let her head rest on the ground, showed her throat to her attacker to indicate submission, and relaxed her body. The creature stopped its outright snarling, but she still sensed some cautious hostility buried beneath the victorious stance it took. She held her pose until she felt thudding footsteps to her left – suddenly the weight on her ribcage was gone, and the scuffle between the two Pokémon racketed on her right as she rolled quickly into a defensive crouch.
A boy suddenly burst from the thickets, panting – he barely had time to register the scene before him before he went tumbling beside her as the squabble inadvertently struck his thin, denim-clad ankles. He swore and shoved his body away from the fight, his long, sable hair plastered against his face and contrasting with his milky skin. His hand swept back across the pine needles and flinched back when it accidently struck her worn sneaker. He glanced up, startled, and stared for a few moments as his mind worked.
"Oh shit, she jumped you, didn't she? Fuck, I'm so sorry," he stammered, getting to his feet, still wary of the brawling Pokémon.
He held out a hand to assist her, but by then she had already straightened from her crouch and risen. He dropped the hand, reconsidered, and then extended it again.
"I'm so sorry about her. She's not always the best behaved around strangers, and she's a bit too headstrong for her own good." He paused before offering an apologetic smile. "I'm Cameron. Um…nice to meet you? And please don't murder me?"
Jayde smiled at that and then shook his outstretched hand. "My name's Jayde. And," she added, glancing over the boy's shoulder, "we should probably split those two up before they start murdering."
The boy proved himself a passable medic after insisting that the scrapes on her face needed to be cleaned. She was adamant, though, that the abrasions weren't serious enough to waste a Potion on, so they settled for water and a bit of rubbing alcohol. The sting of the alcohol was still only that – just a sting – but each time it met her frayed skin she dug her fingernails into her palms and clenched her teeth. He winced sympathetically and apologized each time he saw this and, in an effort to distract her from the smarting bite, gestured towards where Syn's Pokéball (which she had managed to persuade him into after assuring him that he had acted very heroically and therefore deserved a rest) was clipped into her belt.
"So what Pokémon is that?"
Her eyebrows rose a bit, but this was more in amusement than confusion – his question served only to support her suspicions. "Syn? He's a Bulbasaur – Grass/Poison. My first and so far only Pokémon."
"How'd you meet?"
She appreciated the diversion and told him of the testing and of that first day of her journey. When he asked why she had not caught any other Pokémon, she said simply that she wanted to wait until she and Syn were more comfortable with each other – she avoided all mention of the conference. She returned the serve of conversation after a few moments.
"What about you - what's your story? If you're an escaped convict or something I promise to give you a five-minute head start before I call the cops. It's the least I could do." After a few seconds of silence – during which he pretended that the bottle's lid was fighting him and therefore required all of his attention – the corners of her lips perked up in a teasing smile. "It's not every day we see a Houndour around here, considering they tend to live on the other side of Mt. Silver." Still no response, but she could see him smiling and shaking his head. She took this as confirmation and finished as he busied himself in putting the cloths and alcohol away. "So what's a Johto boy doing on the wrong side of the mountain?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that there was a law against us."
She laughed. "It's just that most people start their journeys in their home region before they move on."
"How do you know I'm just starting? For all you know, I could be league champion in every other region."
She grinned and wrinkled her nose mockingly, waving her hand below her nostrils. "Sorry, pal, you reek of don't-know-what-the-hell-you're-doing. If I had to bet, I'd say all those other Pokéballs in your bag are empties."
He smiled sheepishly and picked at a thread on the cuff of his pale-green plaid shirt, remaining silent. She pouted (trying not to smile) and crossed her arms like a child who hadn't gotten her way. She put on a whiny voice and said, "Oh, come on. I told you how I started. Your turn."
He rolled his eyes, but she could see he was suppressing a smile. His fingers released the thread and moved slightly forward, gently grasping the edge of his sleeve. "Well, I'm not a criminal or anything. Just… I don't know, looking for a change, I guess? It's just, like…" He paused before sighing and turning back to her. "Okay, so you met Willow, obviously. You're right, she's my only Pokémon. We met about a month ago near my house – uh, in Cherrygrove City?" He looked at her and continued after she nodded in recognition.
He described a small pack of Houndour that lived just outside of town but that frequently visited the city. They weren't troublemakers – most people simply considered them part of the landscape and occasional nuisances. He said that he must have seen them dozens of times growing up and received countless warnings from his parents to give them a wide berth. One day, though, as he was walking home from school, he had heard a cacophony of barks and snarls. He had run towards it, his curiosity incapacitating any common sense, and discovered several of the Dark Pokémon attacking something they had cornered against a dingy brick wall. He had heard whimpering and knew that they were badly hurting whatever creature they had set upon, so he had picked up a few pieces of shattered asphalt and threw them. The Houndour had seemed to consider retaliating, but they had simply snapped a few times more at their prey before running off, their nails clicking against the broken pavement of the alleyway. Cameron had run over to the Pokémon, its fur shiny with blood, and tried to reach out to it.
He smiled at this point and grasped the edge of his cuff more firmly before pulling it back, revealing a slightly pink, puckered wound – the four worst places, two equidistant on each side of his forearm, were clearly deep puncture wounds – which would no doubt leave an eye-catching scar.
"I guess I could have gotten it treated more than I did, but it feels… I don't know, sentimental? As insane as that sounds." He looked down at it with that same fond smile. "It hurt like hell, and it'll leave a mark, but it's just something that happened, you know? And it was mostly my fault. Plus, it was the thing that sparked me." He laughed. "Again, as insane as that sounds."
She grinned. "Amazing how quickly training can turn you philosophical, huh?"
Once they had both stopped laughing, he returned to his story. Willow had bitten him deeply, and he had jumped back and to the side – as it turned out, that recoil saved him a far worse injury from the shards of blue flame that then struck the wall behind him. He had just decided that the Pokémon didn't need help if it could fight back that much when – with a faint whimper, almost a murmur, that he said was still one of his clearest memories – Willow collapsed. No fuss or fanfare. She had just crumpled to her side and drawn shallow breaths through a mouth that had no doubt tasted the oil and trash of the neglected concrete. He said that he didn't know why exactly he didn't just run home to get his bite treated and left her to her own chances – it's what his parents would have told him to do, after biting his head off for approaching an injured Pokémon in the first place. After all, there were plenty of Houndour, but only one of him.
"It was just… it felt like the first time in my life that I actually did anything valuable, you know? Because there's only one of her, too. Like, the stupid bite didn't matter, the bite wouldn't kill me – but leaving her there would have killed her. So I just took my jacket off, picked her up in it, and started running."
His running had led him to the nearest Pokémon center a few blocks away. They had quickly whisked Willow to emergency care while another nurse cleaned the bite. He had then called his parents and told them he was out with friends.
"The lie? I don't know, it still just seemed so surreal to me. I knew they would flip out, and I just didn't want to deal with that right then. And when the nurses came out a few hours later and said that she was stable, and that I could see her… Well, I guess I was surprised she was a her, first of all, but when I walked in and saw her on the bed…" He smiled, taking out her Pokéball and switching it from hand to hand. "She was still supposed to be out cold, but when I came in and stood next to her, she opened her eyes a bit and nuzzled against my hand. I'm not sure she was really aware of it, but she still did it. And I guess that's when I knew that I was about to tell a fuck-ton more lies to my parents than just 'I'm out with friends'." He resumed picking at the same thread on his cuff, seemingly unaware.
"So I got home and I did a bunch of research on Houndours and training and stuff, and when I went back the next day and they said she was free to go, I asked her if she'd like to come with me. We couldn't actually leave for a while, but when I held up this Pokéball that I bought at the store earlier – she seemed a bit nervous at first, but I think she trusted me. Well, maybe part trust and part 'I bit you and that didn't scare you off, so at least you're not a wimp'. And she pushed the button herself, and-" He laughed and looked at the Pokéball in fondness and amazement. "I had a Pokémon. I spent the next couple weeks doing research and buying some supplies and hiding all of it from my parents, and I applied for a license behind their backs, too. By the time I got it, I was all set."
Jayde grinned in understanding. "And you came to Kanto instead of going through Johto because your parents would start checking there first."
He nodded. "Yep. I left them a note saying that I was going on a journey, and then I just hopped on a bus to New Bark and onto another one to Pallet. I don't really have a set plan after that. It's just, with my parents… it's not like it was always my dream to be a trainer and they forbid me from going on a journey or anything. It was just never really on the table to begin with. I never considered it before, since they always talked about me going to university right after school like it was a set thing. And then Willow made me realize that it wasn't." He paused again. "My parents do love me. It's not like they mean to control my life, or like they do it to be assholes. It's just how they are. And they're really great. But the life that they want me to have, and how my life should actually be… I don't know, I guess I want to figure it out on my own. You know?"
She smiled and nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean. My parents always worked a ton, so I mostly stuck with myself. That's part of the reason why I was at the lab so much. It was almost more at home for me than home was. They weren't mean or anything, same as yours, but they just needed to pull in enough money so we didn't have to stress about taxes and stuff. It was just the way it was."
"Yeah." He looked down to his cuff, where he had finally pulled the thread loose, before grinning and looking back up with deep blue eyes flecked with starlight. "You wanna know a cool thing I learned from all that research, though? That fire move that she used was Will-O-Wisp, but they don't learn that move on their own. At least not usually. Pretty much the only way that she could know that move was if she used to have a trainer. I don't know if that explains why she trusted me so easily or if that's why she flips out on me so much. Maybe both."
She smiled with a tinge of sadness. Abandoned Pokémon usually had a smorgasbord of issues. Her smile perked up after a few moments, though, as she looked at how happy he was to be out here, even if he did still reek of don't-know-what-the-hell-he's-doing.
There was no real discussion of their sticking together. They simply ate dinner – Syn and Willow were still glaring at each other, but at least there was no growling – and talked a bit more before going to sleep.
And that night, for the first time in weeks, she didn't wake up screaming even once. And though there were a few Will-O-Wisps in her dreams, her mind never once reminded her that they were blue.
Sorry about the late update! Exams are next week, so I've been juggling work for all my classes on top of this.
Thanks for reading, and stay gold (yep, I'm sticking with that - The Outsiders is one of my favorite books, and Frost's poem that they reference in it is awesome).