Spitfire, Chapter 11: You'll just have to wait

Misty sat on the cold counter in the bathroom while Delia rushed to get a white bandage from the first aid kit, luckily, Misty hadn't the same grip in her left hand as she did her right so while Misty's right hand was still bleeding, her left hand was relatively fine; just a little sore. How stupid of her, she thought to herself, to even get so angry in the first place. She was pretty sure, that if it wasn't for the fact that after all of this was over in the next day, she would be able to go home and forget that any of this happened; she might have lost her mind.

Erupted like a volcano in front of all of her old and new friends; that would have been a lovely sight to see. She placed her left hand up against her forehead for a long sigh until Delia returned, and when the mother did; she smiled at the young water-pokemon trainer like she always did.

"What in the world did you cut yourself on?" Delia questioned as she examined the marks in Misty's palm.

"A tin can lid." Misty remarked casually as Delia started to wipe her hand off; Delia shook her head only very slightly with a slight huff, as if not believing the lie for a moment; and while she pat the wound with a damp cloth she looked at Misty.

"You don't need to lie; what has you in such a fuss? You know you can talk with me, right?" Her motherly concern, her genuine smile and voice forced Misty to smile. Delia was always the sweetest. However, Misty could not just start telling Delia about the sudden rush of emerging emotions, so instead she cracked a frown, and prepared a lie.

"I just had a lot on my-"

"Hey Mrs. Ketchum, why don't you let me take over and you attend to your dinner? I'm studying to be a pokemon doctor, so this would be good practice for me." Brock interrupted Delia and Misty's conversation with a grimace; Delia seemed surprised, but then smiled back at him; she nodded to Misty as if saying that she will pick the conversation back up with her at a later time.

"Alright, but don't be too long. I'll set your plates." With that, Delia pushed her way past Brock, and into the dinning room area, where most of the other guests had already traveled to. From the bathroom position, they could only see the entrance to the dinning room, though, unlike before there was an eerie silence that filled the hallways.

"Do you think she ever got back with Ash's dad?" Brock's question had Mistys head craned.

"I thought she and Professor Oak were dating now?" Misty queried while slipping off the counter top and rinsing her hand off in cold water until most of the blood had washed away.

"What if they get married? Will we have to start calling her Mrs. Oak then?"

Misty whipped her head around to look at Brock, he was smirking with his thumb and finger under his chin in a sadistic way, and Misty was flabbergasted at his choice of conversation topic.

"Gross; can we talk about something else?!" Misty exclaimed while drying her hands on the cloth beside the sink. Brock snatched her injured palm a second later, and glared at the crescent shaped wounds. They still leaked a small amount of blood, but with the pressure off of them, they looked like papercuts.

"You must have been pretty angry to do this. Try trimming your nails more and this won't happen." Brock jokingly scolded his old friend while wrapping a cloth bandage around her hand; a single band-aid wasn't quite large enough.

"You have no idea." Misty retorted with a scoff; but Brock shook his head, and while dressing her wound, intentionally pressed on it, causing Misty to wince.

"Ow!" She yelped.

Brock shook his head and spoke: "So, want to tell a friend what had you in such a mood?"

"It's nothing." Misty added, but then Brock pressed on the injury again and she shuddered in pain; knowing that she had to give him an answer or this would go one for quite some time.

She gave in.

"Okay okay," She stammered quickly, ripping her hand away from his large brown ones. "It's Ash...again, he just makes me really angry sometimes." She shot Brock a nasty glare for pressing on her wound; but Brock had no mercy. In one hand, he was very compassionate, in the other, he was very malicious. He set a palm on her shoulder, and then looked her dead in the eye.

"You're better than this." Brock gestured to the dressed wound; and then Misty sighed.

"I know I am, I really do, Brock... it's just.. they... Ash," She exhaled as if gathering her thoughts "Ash and Serena. They stuck their nose up at me; like they were better than me." She spoke sadly while turning away from Brock in order to step into the hallway. Brock raised his eyebrows and leaned up against the door frame in response.

"And why did they do that?"

"Well, Serena did it obviously because Ash is upset with me...but Ash did it because he saw Gary and I..." A slight blush faded over Misty's cheeks as she remembered the faint taste of bread that had still not left her lips and looked away with a twitch in her eye.

"Because you and Gary...?"

"Kissed..." She paused for just a moment, and chewed the inside of her cheek. "Well, more like Gary kissed me. I did not consent." She scratched her cheek, and then Brock grinned.

"Oh damn, and Ash got upset huh? Isn't that a good thing for you?"

"Why do you and Gary insist on that? I'm not here to try and win hearts, Brock."

"Oh please, you and Ash have such a chemistry, that you can't tell me that you haven't even flirted with the idea of telling him exactly how you feel. Besides; in his own weird way, you're one of the few girls he's ever really taken an interest in." Brock said this without missing a beat, and Misty both snorted and rolled her eyes.

She muttered something incoherent, about a bastard and tire swing while folding her arms, upset. "C'mon, Brock. How long have you been telling me this stuff? Throughout his adventures in Hoenn and Sinnoh, I always got these ambiguous letters from you; and I hate to say it, but life got better once I stopped getting my hopes up about Ash and I. I'm not going to jump through any more hoops." She admitted while checking down the hallway to check for eavesdroppers. "And boy, after the last couple of hours, I don't think I'll be coming around much anymore, anyways." That comment, the last one stung Brock and he shifted his body weight so that he was leaning up against the door frame with one leg cross in front of the other, and his arms crossed gingerly.

"You know Ash didn't call me for the last year and some until attempting to invite me to this party? He hardly sent letters, even when I was sending them; and don't get me started on emails..." she paused, "Whatever Ash and I might have had died years ago; if there was ever anything 'between' us to begin with. I mean, how can I even like a guy that has made no attempt whatsoever to keep contact? It just doesn't make sense. If Ash had any feelings for me what so ever, don't you think he wouldn't have realized them by now?"

"Love does weird things to people." Brock admitted while also crossing his arms and shrugging his shoulders. Misty shuddered at the strong 'word'. Brock knew she thought love was too strong of a word for common situations, and she seethed at him. Brock on the other hand thought that it was strange to hear Misty so open about her confession to Ash; he wasn't sure what she was thinking anymore—and to be truthful, neither did Misty. So, Misty shrugged back, and sighed while chewing her nail. Everything was different now that they were older; technically wiser.

"And I'm not going to lie—I am totally upset at myself over this. I was supposed to move past this by now." Brock opened his mouth as if to speak after Misty's comment, but in a confused anger, she interrupted him, stared at him. Her entire body echoed with mixed emotions; one half of her telling her to get through the day and go home, and the other half telling her to stick up her dukes and fight back.

"Do you think I have spent the last four years crying and beating myself up everyday about Ash's negligence? No, I've been improving myself and hoping to move forward and on with my life; I spent evenings out on blind dates occasionally just to feel attached; I talk with Casey, May and Sakura; and hell, even my oldest sister and Gary more than I talk with Ash. I have been over this for a long time—I haven't felt weird feelings and butterfrees in my stomach for Ash in years...and yet somehow, the moment I looked at that stupid boy this morning, all those emotions just exploded-I ended up right back here, feeling like I was fifteen all over again. Confused, an raw, and angry..." Misty had become rather vibrant in her speech, so much as to even point at pictures of them on the wall as she shook her fist and waved her arms about. She couldn't believe she was telling anyone this, let alone Brock—but who better to talk to than Brock? He was almost like her brother.

However, for Brock, her expedite commentary left him feeling like a bag of emotional waste. He hadn't realized just how much Misty had grown over the last years. He would be lying if he said that he was around much at all for one of his oldest friends.

"I don't know what to say Mist...I'm sorry I wasn't around much, either..." Brock started but Misty waved him off, as if he were missing the point. She wasn't upset while she was talking she was flabbergasted at her own inability to move forward; and impressed at his forthcoming. She shook her head.

"No, you called and sent letters, you're fine. I could have gotten in contact with you more often if I wanted to as well—you've been in Johto training to become a pokemon doctor. I just didn't want to disturb you. That's hard stuff." Brock cracked a smile at her explanation while Misty stomped her foot on the ground and exhaled.

Getting over a crush, no matter what age was hard enough; the crush being someone she was with for a long time that was supposed to be friend was even harder. And so she continued, albeit sadly and disheartened. A distant gaze over took her eyes, and she looked to be numb from the neck up. Empty. "Just... like I said... I'm so disappointed in myself for hanging on this long...it... it just seems like if he felt anything for me, anything at all, he would have said something by now, you know?"

"..sometimes Ash needs things spelled out for him, Misty." Brock interjected, but it fell onto deaf ears.
"I mean, Ash is my friend, I think and hope that he always will be... But I just want to slap him upside the head right now and call him a dumb ass for not properly rejecting those girls from the start; or me, for that matter." Misty ho-hummed while chewing on her lips. She had started to clean out underneath her finger nails and pursed her lips, while Brock remained stunned for the correct words.

"You know Ash, he's as dense in the area of romance as he always has been. Just because he has a 'girlfriend' doesn't mean that's changed. Give him a while to get over the shock, and things will go back to normal, okay? Remember, you just need to survive this one day; and then we can go back to our happy normal lives, right?" while he was trying to be helpful and motivational; instead, it cut Misty raw and she twisted.

"No, Brock...just..." she exhaled whist scrunching her nose. Her eyes closed tight in trying to correlate the correct words in her mind.

She didn't want to leave the warmth of her friends again. While she was upset at Ash, she did, in fact, miss him and his antics. In fact, she had so much that she wanted to learn that was outside of the gym—but knew that she couldn't leave it, but she did her best to return Brock's smile, regardless of her own feelings. He left willingly, to study to become a pokemon doctor, but Misty's adventure was cut short, and not because it was her choice to do so. She was swindled by her sisters—and while she was proud of the leader she became, she was at the same time very disappointed in her situation.

She opened her eyes and finally looked up at the dining room and let her hands fall carefully to her sides while she spoke: "Ash is 18, he may be dim-witted, but it's about time that he start accepting his own responsibility. I mean, he can't use the excuse he 'didn't know' forever, Brock. At some point, he has to grow up, and honestly, I think he knows; he's just scared of it."

"Yeah...but unlike you and I, Ash is still holding onto that child inside of himself. He still wants to travel and be the very best. That's who he will always be. He's confused about his own feelings as well; don't get mad at him for something he doesn't understand... At least not yet." Brock defended Ash, but as Misty fell into a pout she stuck her tongue out at Brock.

"I guess you're right." Diffusing her anger almost entirely. Deep down, she knew Ash couldn't help it—but she was so damn frustrated. She was going to remark that she was still a kid inside, too, but thought it better to let it go. "Thanks Brock. But why don't we go get some dinner before everyone starts without us?" Misty spoke while pointing to the dinning room. Brock smiled, clasped Misty on the back, believing that they had solved the immediate problem. For Misty, it just dug open the fresh wound even deeper.

"And, hey, you know you can call me whenever; so long as it's after four, oh, and before seven...and not after nine." He scratched his chin and Misty shook her head and laughed at his comments while patting him on the shoulder.

"Brock, don't worry about it. Thanks for listening to me vent; least I know you won't spill the beans like some other trainer with red hair would." She spoke referring to Gary in a cold-cut manner. Brock laughed nervously in repertoire as they walked side by side to the dinning room.

Author's Note

Blah, this will (hopefully) be my last author's note; sorry for the late update (finals week and last quarter killed me)

In addition, thank you to all of you who have reviewed this story thus far and been enjoying it. Thank you so much for your favorites, your time, and your decency as human beings. I love every review that I get; buuuuuuuuuuut after the swarm of negative ones that I have gotten recently, I'm not going to be reading them anymore until I finish writing this story. I went ahead and deleted a few that bashed Serena, bashed Misty, or bashed any characters; insulted me not for my writing, but for my shipping preferences; and I think I have decided that for a story like this, reading the reviews as I go is just going to garner a lot of negativity. I will start reading them again once the final chapter is up; so if you have major questions, send me a PM; this way, I can at least sit and have some popcorn and scroll through them, both the good and the bad, when I'm actually done with the story.

But like I said, even to those that leave negative or nasty comments, thank you for taking the time to read my story. Just seeing the "x has favorited Spitfire" is enough for me to continue writing.