.
RETURNING HOME
CHAPTER 7
"You guys can leave if you want, y'know."
The instant pancake mix Brock found on one of the shelves sizzles in the pan. Across from her Ash sits with his head slumped on top of his arms, the chair rocking forward a bit: "I mean, we've seen the place now. Doesn't look that bad. You don't have to stay."
"Yes we do," she retorts, earning a cross glance in response. Brock flips a pancake in the air.
"We're not going to leave you with just anyone, Ash," he says. "We still don't know anything about these people. Abbie seems alright, but she's not a woman of many words, is she? And that other guy didn't even open his mouth. I'm not sure I trust them just yet."
Ash puffs his cheeks. The chair legs thud back to the floor. "I can defend myself if I have to."
"The goal would be that you don't have to." Brock lifts the pan off the flame and walks to the table to deposit a couple pancakes in front of his face. "Eat. If you get any thinner you're going to disappear, and then we'll have done all of this for nothing. Careful, they're hot."
He sighs and straightens his back some, poking them around with his fork. "I'm just saying, you don't have to waste your time stuck here if you don't wanna."
Misty stretches one leg under the table and kicks him a little. "We're not wasting our time. We're spending it with you," she remarks. She crosses her arms: "What, are you tired of seeing us already?"
He looks up. Pikachu climbs into his lap to sniff at the plate and he jumps slightly, taken by surprise; then the curve of his shoulders relaxes again and a tinge of smile reaches his lips. His fingers brush the pokémon's fur. "I'm not."
"Great, then quit that. We're not leaving."
Brock is back to pouring batter in the pan. "Need a hand with those?" she asks, and he pauses and throws a concerned look in her direction, the spatula raised mid-air.
"Err, I'm good, thanks. I think I prefer you away from any kind of cooking."
"I know how to make pancakes with instant pancake mix," she protests. Brock's eyebrows shoot up.
"...Yeah, well, I'd much rather not take the risk. Hey Ash, ask her about that time she tried to make dinner and I almost ended up in the E.R."
"That wasn't my fault! There was something gone bad. It was an accident. And you're exaggerating anyway."
A slight chuckle comes from the other side of the table. "Gonna side with Brock on this one. I remember your cooking," Ash says. But as her eyes run back to him the sort-of-smile on his face falters—fades again. He presses his lips together and swallows, pushing the half-eaten pancake around in his plate. She remembers that too: the lumpy purpleish sludge her attempt at a stew turned out to be, and his horrified face when she tried to hand him a bowl of it all gloating and proud. Not longer than a couple months after that she'd wake up to find him gone.
It's not your fault, he told her last night. She keeps turning those words over and over like he did his pokéball clock, not knowing how to fit them into herself.
"...Let's just agree you have stronger suits," Brock adds after a beat, perhaps noticing the heavier silence. His hand gives her shoulder a quick squeeze before laying some pancakes in her plate as well.
Ash heads for the shower as soon as he's done eating. Brock's eyes follow him thoughtfully, his lips pursed as he begins to stack their dirty plates into a pile. "I think—he's a little better, maybe," he says as the sound of running water comes from behind the bathroom door. Misty raises her eyebrows.
"Do you?"
He shrugs a little. "He's smiling a bit. He's asked me about my intentions of taking up medicine studies, he seemed actually interested. I don't know, I'm just guessing but—I think it's something, at least."
Misty leans her cheek against her hand with a small sigh. "He's told me a little," she tells him. "I mean about... what happened while he was there. Not much but—a couple things. There's probably so much worse."
Brock doesn't ask, but she can feel a question hanging in the pause that follows. She bites down on her lip and says nothing. After a moment he releases his breath slowly, setting the question aside.
"You can't... undo a whole year in a few days," he states, putting the plates down in the sink. Ceramic clinks against metal. "Especially a year like that. And this—this whole situation probably isn't helping. But we can make an attempt to start, at least. I think—as long as we remind him that we're here and that he's not with that psycho anymore, that's still better than nothing."
"I just want to get my hands on that piece of shit and make him regret even thinking about it."
Her voice cracks a bit on the last couple words, anger spreading like ripples on the water. Brock turns to look at her.
"I'd find that very satisfying too, I'm not going to deny it. But getting revenge wouldn't change what happened."
"It would make me feel better, though," she grumbles. He lets out a sigh.
"Maybe for a minute," he admits. "How are you feeling, anyway? Revenge intents aside?"
"I'm okay." But it rolls strangely on her tongue, like foreign syllables. She pauses for a second. "I think. I'm still not entirely sure I believe this is really happening. I keep wondering if—I'm dreaming it or something and sooner or later I'll just wake up."
Brock's lips fold into a slight smile. "I can pinch you if you want."
"I tried that." She smiles back, but her throat catches on a lump: she swallows it and shakes her head. "Brock, what do you think of this place? I don't want to leave him here alone."
"We're still not leaving," he reminds her. He raises a hand to stroke his chin, his glance trailing off a little. "I'm not sure what I think yet. Maybe I could see if they let me stay a while longer."
"Think they'd allow it?"
He shrugs again. "I'm not as important as you for the deal after all. You know, that former gym leader thing."
He stresses the word on purpose, trying to force out a lighter tone; but a tremble stirs suddenly at the bottom of her chest and rattles up all the way to her lips. Her chin quivers. "This sucks," she says, and it's a much better fit than I'm okay. "It's not fair. It should all be over already."
Brock tears a paper towel from the roll on the counter and hands it to her, and she blows her nose and then crumples it angrily into a ball. "It will be," he tells her. "It might take a while but it will. We'll go back home and we'll take Ash home too. I'm sure of it."
Pikachu gives her cheek a nuzzle. She tries to steady her breath: the water of the shower's stopped. She stands to throw away the towel and then starts to fold the tablecloth.
"By the way, what I said before," Brock says after a couple moments, turning the knob on the sink, "that you can't undo a year in a few days. That goes for you as well, you know that, right? I mean—knowing that Ash is alive now doesn't change the fact that you had to go through all the mourning and everything. So it's okay if you're not okay. It's okay if—it takes a while for you too."
She stops for a second, her hands tightening on the fabric. She breathes in. "Thanks, Brock."
He smiles. "We're going to be fine. Hang in there," he promises. But his eyes wander off again as he does, and it sounds a little like he's saying it to himself as well.
—-
"You should like, think about it at least."
She sighs and finishes sprinkling pokémon food in the water of the aquarium, dusting the last few crumbs off her fingers. Her Horsea and a few Goldeen crowd under the surface to eat. "I already thought about it, Daisy. I said no."
"Oh, come on, it'll be fun! You totally nailed the part that other time. The audience loved it."
"That was a long time ago."
Daisy must notice the sharper edge in her voice, because she actually shuts up for a second. "...Well, it'll be even better this time," she says then, though. "Violet really outdid herself with the script, you should read it, I was like, holding my breath the whole time. It's like a wintery thing, set in an arctic sea, we'd have fake icebergs and snow, you know, to go with the season! And the main part is just perfect for you."
"I'm sure you'd do just as fine," she retorts. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and climbs down the ladder, and shakes her head as her feet touch the floor. "Thanks, but I'll pass. I don't feel like it."
"I'll wait a couple days," Daisy insists. "So you have some time to think about it. Come on, sis, you could use a distraction."
"I don't need a distraction, I have plenty." She folds the ladder and leans it against the wall, rolling her eyes a little. "You know, work. You might have heard of it once of twice."
"I meant other than that. And I do know what work is, for your information."
Misty scoops up Togepi from the floor and turns around. "You could have fooled me," she comments. She shakes her head again then."Really, Daisy, it's nice of you to worry about me, but I'm fine. I already have all the distractions I could need. And I'm not really in the mood to wear a costume and pretend to be a mermaid in front of a hundred people anyway."
Daisy puckers her lips and there's a silence of the kind she doesn't like—the kind that stretches out awkward over a pause, a reminder that people look at her and see the seams of where she has been broken. She raises her eyebrows. "...Fine," her sister gives up after a moment. "But if you change your mind you can like, still tell me."
"Don't count on it. And try not to leave a mess in the gym afterwards like you do usually."
She's done with her duties for the day, so she heads off, listening as the echo of her footsteps follows her along the hallway. Only once she's past the corner and out of Daisy's sight her defenses do finally give way, and she stops for a second, holding Togepi tighter and taking a breath in a shaky swoop. It's like stepping on a missing step every time—like feeling solid ground under her feet one moment and empty air the next. The last time her sisters managed to coerce her to participate in one of their ballets she ran her eyes over the crowd from the top of the diving board and he was there.
A long time ago indeed.
She's halfway to her room when the doorbell rings. "I'll go," she calls out; and quickly pushes the same unruly strand of hair back into place, hastening her steps.
Cold air slips in immediately as she cracks the door open—along with a familiar ball of striped yellow fur. "...Hi, Pikachu," she greets him with a smile; then opens the door all the way. "And hi, Mrs. Ketchum. Did you come all this way with this weather?"
Delia smiles back at her. In less than seven months she looks like she's aged two or three years at least: creases fold around the corners of her mouth and there's gray in her hair, slowly creeping its way down from the roots. She's holding a pink round box in her hands. "Hi, honey," she says. "I had a couple errands to run here in Cerulean and I thought I'd stop by to say hello. And I had these cupcakes I baked yesterday before I realized there were too many for me, Mimey and Pikachu alone and it would have been a shame to let them go to waste. May I come in?"
She's pretty sure that the errands are an excuse, and that she didn't bake all those cupcakes on accident at all, but she nods, the knot of pain in her chest suddenly not as tight as it was moments ago. "Sure."
—-
The images on the TV screen keep coming and going, flaking around the edges. Ash flips through the channels without seeming to pay attention to any of them, his face a bored blank in the flickering blue gleam. After a while he stops, though, and his fingers stiffen around the remote, a slight frown creasing his brow.
She looks. On the screen an audience is cheering, the logo of the Indigo League glowing in a corner. A Tauros rams itself into an Electabuzz's middle a fraction of a second before the other pokémon delivers an electric attack and sparkles go flying all over, and a cloud of dust blinds the camera as both slam against the arena floor. Ash's teeth sink into his lip. The image wavers—freezes, comes back; the dust flies away in swirls.
"Do you miss that?" she asks after a couple moments, as the Electabuzz stands staggering back up. He blinks and turns to her.
"Huh?"
"Battling. Do you miss it?"
He doesn't answer right away: his forehead furrows deeper like he needs to think about it first, like he hasn't asked that to himself in a while at least. Finally he shrugs.
"I did have pokémon while I was with Giovanni," he says. His arm pulls his knees a bit closer. "It wasn't—anything like real battling though. They just catch them and train them to follow whatever order they're given. Even killing if you tell them to."
He looks away. On the screen the Tauros is still standing as well, its hoof scraping the ground. "They weren't even my pokémon, not really," he adds. He turns the TV off and throws the remote aside on the cushions, startling Pikachu a little. "You're not supposed to have any sort of bond with them, they train that out of 'em. It's like they make them into... things you can replace."
The hand still around his knees pulls at the fabric of his pants until his knuckles turn white. Misty swallows. She thinks of what he told her a few nights ago, of how his pokémon were killed after his failed attempt to escape, but it's not just that that makes her throat feel like sandpaper: his words sound familiar. She looks at the scars on his arm and wonders what he would say if she asked how they do that, and her crumpled insides tell her that she knows some of it already. Ash shift uncomfortably on the couch, noticing the prolonged silence.
"Anyway. I dunno if I even... remember how to have a normal battle."
"Of course you do," Brock chimes in gently. Ash shrugs again, though.
"Doesn't really matter. It's not like I'm planning to do any battling anytime soon."
There's hardly any emotion in his voice, but his eyes stay glued to the floor and his shoulders slouch a bit lower as he speaks. Misty purses her lips.
"We could have one," she suggests. He looks back up.
"What, a battle? You mean in here? We'd wreck everything."
"We could push the couch out of the way and make some space. What do you say, Pikachu? You up to it?"
The pokémon nods with a cheerful "pika!", and for a second—a blink, barely—there's a spark in Ash's eyes, a glimmer of a light she still hadn't seen since she opened the door in the middle of the night to find him standing there. But he lowers them immediately after and shakes his head, hugging his knees closer still.
"No, thanks. I don't—feel like it."
Maybe she could insist some more, see if she could find that small spark again. There's a noise before she can attempt to, though—the muffled clang of footsteps on the stairs, and all three turn to look at the door at once.
The footsteps reach their level and Abbie walks in, her sunglasses pushed to the top of her head. "Still all clear," she announces pushing the door closed behind her back; then unhooks a pokégear from her belt and holds it in their direction. "And Mrs. R has something to say to you."
Ash straightens his back a little, dropping his feet to the floor. "Won't Giovanni be able to track the call?"
"It's a secure line." She walks to the couch and hands the pokégear to him. "Neither end can be intercepted. You're good."
He frowns, but takes it and flips it open. She and Brock both lean closer to see as the small screen lights up: Mrs. R's face comes into focus after a moment, a line of static running through the image. "I hope you're getting used to the place," she says, her voice a crackle through the speakers. Ash gives a small shrug.
"It's fine."
She nods, but the line of her brow is crumpled at the middle into the harsh knot of a frown. "I got in touch with a contact within the Team's headquarters," she comes to the point. "I asked for reports on any unusual activities. Apparently, over the course of the past forty-eight hours a number of tracking parties have left the base. My contact didn't know what they were for, and I suppose there is a chance that it is a coincidence, but I think it's quite safe to assume—"
"He knows," Ash interrupts her. He swallows: "He knows that I got away."
"Aye, that's what I was going to say." Static flares up across the screen for a second before the signal settles again. "If that is indeed the case, it pretty much confirms that he has been observing you this whole time and that he hadn't taken action yet only because he was confident that you were still within his reach. But that's changed now, or so it looks."
Ash presses his lips together and says nothing. Misty shakes her head
"But if you have contacts inside the headquarters—that must mean you know where Giovanni is, right? Can't you just—get your police department to him and get his ass in jail? There has to be someone who's not on his side."
The woman looks at her. "It's much easier said than done, child. It's not finding him that's the problem. There's been many an attempt in the past to 'get his ass in jail', as you put it, and so far all have failed. The evidence will disappear or be found inconclusive, admittedly sometimes because of what I do, or all charges against him will be suddenly dropped, or he'll receive a tip-off that could come from nowhere else than from within the force. Knowing where he is means little when his connections make him virtually untouchable."
The silence that follows feels heavy. "Hopefully, that's going to change eventually," she picks up after a brief pause. "As I have mentioned to you already, many people are working against him, both from within and from outside the organization. The highest our numbers, the weaker Giovanni's empire will be. But it's a long process, and a delicate one." She turns back to Ash. "I called to inform you of that new development and to reinforce that it is crucial to your safety that you remain in hiding in the meantime. Giovanni had an advantage until now in knowing he could get you back with little effort. We've taken that from him, and he's not going to like it."
Ash shrugs again, his eyes wavering away from the screen. "It's fine. Not like I was expecting to leave anytime soon anyway."
"I'll get in touch again when I have further developments," Mrs. R says. Her glance runs to her and Brock: "As for you two, don't forget our deal. You can stay a few days longer, but afterwards you will have to be back at your gyms."
The screen goes black almost abruptly. Ash holds the pokégear for a couple moments still, then closes it and hands it back to Abbie. He wraps his arms back around his knees as she hooks the device to her belt.
"So he was watching me all along," he says, and his voice sounds strange, not exactly shaking but not quite steady either. Almost—
...almost relieved. Like not knowing was worse, like having confirmation means now he can at least stop wondering. Misty lays a hand on his arm. She can feel a tremble running through it.
"He's not gonna get to you," she tells him. She turns to Abbie: "Right?"
"That would be the purpose of all this." The woman's hand lingers distractedly on her hip: there's a holster there, Misty notices, the grip of a gun sticking out. She doesn't remember seeing it yesterday. "If you don't need anything I'm going back upstairs. Can't have too many eyes out there."
"We're good," Brock answers. Abbie nods and turns to leave. The sound of her footsteps follows her all the way up; then there's silence, spreading out thick like a blanket.
Ash takes a breath and lets it out slowly. Brock sucks his lower lip against his teeth, tapping his fingers on the edge of the couch.
"He doesn't know where you are. If he did he wouldn't need to send out all those people. He's not going to find you, we're safe down here."
"I know." But his voice still comes out weird, still wavery under the surface. He swallows, then grabs the remote and turns the TV back on, turning the volume up until the audience is cheering so loudly that there's no space left for thoughts.
—-
The cupcakes are frosted pink like the box, multicolored sprinkles dusted on top of each. Lily pokes her head in the kitchen and comments on how pretty they look until Delia tells her to have one, and take some to the others too.
"How are you doing, Mrs. Ketchum?" Misty asks, scratching Pikachu's fur as the pokémon climbs eager into her lap. The woman smiles faintly.
"I'm getting by. I get a little lonely sometimes. I've been helping Samuel—I mean the professor, taking care of Ash's pokémon, but with this cold most of them prefer to stay huddled up inside their pokéballs. I can't really blame them."
"I should come to visit more often."
"Oh, don't worry, dear, I know you have a lot to do here. And I have Pikachu and Mimey to keep me company." Delia's glance trails off a bit, her smile still holding but faltering at the corners. "Sometimes I forget. He was away for so long that it's... so easy to see an empty house and think that he's just on one of his journeys and he will be back."
Misty presses her lips together and finds nothing to say, a lump swelling in her throat. After a moment Delia blinks and turns back to her. "But I didn't come here to talk about me. Tell me about you, honey. Are you doing alright?"
"I'm trying." Togepi waddles around on the table and she leans over to catch it and set it back before it gets too close to the edge. "Taking care of the gym sure keeps me busy a lot, but I like it. I like having something to do."
"I'm very proud of you," Delia says. She seems to notice the shift in her eyes then, though, and the worried ripple of a frown creases her brow: "What's it, honey? You can tell me."
Misty looks down. The cupcake in her plate is still untouched, small pink crumbles scattered around. "Nothing. It's just that—I'm trying. And it's working, I'm okay. Not always, not all the time but—a lot more than a few months ago." She shakes her head. "And then sometimes I feel like—I shouldn't be. Like it's wrong that I even want to be, that I'm even trying, because—because it's kind of like forgetting, isn't it?"
Because he died while he was alone and maybe it was her fault, maybe she could have stopped him if she'd just heard him walk away; and when today Daisy came to tell her about the ballet she was feeding her pokémon and before then she had been battling opponents and mopping up the wet floor and the thought of him hadn't crossed her mind in hours. Delia looks at her in silence for a few moments, then moves her chair closer and gently lays one hand on hers.
"Did you ever cut your hand on a piece of glass, honey?" she asks, her voice soft. Misty looks back up and gives a confused shrug.
"Yeah, I—dropped a glass once, why?"
"And did you ever find a piece of glass on the beach?"
She nods. She'd find some in the sand around Cerulean Cape sometimes, made opaque and round by the waves. "Did that one cut as well?" Delia asks.
Misty shakes her head. Delia pauses again, her eyes wandering across the table like she's collecting her thoughts. "I like to imagine that—all the grief and the memories are like a piece of glass. I'll always carry it with me, for as long as I'm alive. Right now it still cuts. But time will do what the sea did to the one you found on the beach, eventually, and maybe there will be a day when all the sharp bits will be gone, or maybe there will always be some left and I'll still cut my hand on them from time to time thirty or forty years from now. But it will never be smoothed to nothing. It would take much longer than my life for that." She squeezes her hand a little before letting go. "You're not forgetting if you're not hurting all the time. And I know for a fact that Ash would be just as proud of you as I am for holding on."
Misty bites her lip and stares at the crumbles in the plate, her throat tight. "It's okay if you can't believe it right now," Delia adds when she doesn't speak. "But promise me you'll give it a bit of thought. It doesn't have to be now. Can you do that?"
Her lip is caught between her teeth still, hurting. She nods.
"Yes. I—think I can do that."
—-
"What are—the others up to?" Ash asks later, and it kind of sounds like an attempt to fill the silence and push the thought of Giovanni from his mind as well, but at least it's one that includes her and Brock instead of building a wall. He unfolds a little, his arms resting on his knees now instead of wrapped tightly around them. "I mean Tracey, the professor. Gary. How are they?"
"They're okay," she answers. "Tracey is still working with the professor. I hear from him often, I know they're working on a project together lately. He's drawing illustrations for the professor's latest study and it's going to be published with both of their names."
Ash is quiet for a moment, a flicker of smile in his eyes. "And Gary?"
Misty purses her lips a bit and turns to meet Brock's eyes. "Gary—took what happened to you kind of hard," he says before the silence stretches for too long, picking the words out carefully. Ash looks at him with a frown.
"Gary? Seriously?"
"Yeah. The same Gary you're thinking of." Brock smiles slightly. "I guess he cared about you more than he'd let on most of the time. And after you, well,"—he gives a small sort-of shrug, letting the sentence fall off—"he really threw himself into training, more than he ever had. And he won the Johto League."
Ash sits up straight so abruptly that Pikachu is startled again and jerks his head in concern. "What?"
"And that's not the 'taking it kind of hard' part," Misty sighs. She laces her fingers around her knees. "He refused the trophy."
He turns back to her and blinks slowly. "...What?"
She bites her lip. "Yeah. He said—that there was someone who deserved it more and couldn't be there. He didn't say a name, but—I think we can guess who he was talking about."
"Wha—you mean me?" Ash stares at her and then at Brock. "...You guys are messing with me now. Admit it."
"We're not," Brock says. "You could ask pretty much anyone and they'd confirm. It was talked about on the news for days. No one had ever done something like that before."
"But—why?"
Brock's eyes wander across the room, stopping on one of the fake plants near the door. "I don't know Gary all that well. But if I had to make a guess I'd say that your rivalry was... something of a driving force for him, and once you—once we all thought you were dead, well, it all felt kind of pointless. He couldn't beat you anymore, and you couldn't beat him, so instead he won and then made his victory basically worth nothing. That way he did neither." He lets out his breath in a sigh. "He retired from training after that. He decided to follow his grandfather's footsteps and take up studies to become a pokémon professor instead."
"He's doing okay, I think," Misty adds. "He's in Sinnoh studying now. He's working as an assistant for a famous professor there."
Ash says nothing. He leans his chin on his knees and stares ahead, his face all scrunched up in a frown. For a while he just sits like that, mulling over his thoughts.
"You know, you're not responsible for what Gary decided to do, if that's what you're thinking about," she tells him after a bit. Brock's stood from the couch to put together some dinner; the soft sputter of something boiling comes from the kitchen corner. Ash chews down on his lip, his eyes still scrutinizing the floor.
"It's just—" he says. He swishes the words around on his tongue, not quite managing to get them out. "You and Brock stopped traveling, and then—Gary stopped training altogether."
He doesn't add anything else, but the way he pulls his legs closer to his chest again says enough. Misty sighs a little and follows his glance to the same empty spot.
"Well, it's... you know, Ash, it takes a while to—find yourself again after something hurts you really bad. It's not your fault. It just does." She pauses for a moment and presses her lips together: she remembers curling up under her blanket, eyes shut, making the same wish over and over. "It's like—everything you did before suddenly doesn't mean anything anymore, because you're hurting, and that hurt is—it's all there is. And you think you'll never be okay again. But then—time doesn't stop, you know? And eventually you have to do something, even if it's just—to fill the time before you can go back to sleep. And maybe that something isn't what you were doing before, but you realize it fits you, and... you kinda start feeling like maybe you can have a purpose again."
She stops again. Ash still doesn't say anything. "I think—we're not exactly the same people we were a year ago either," she adds. Then turns to him and shrugs, pulling her lips into a smirk. "But you still like us, don't you?"
That earns her a surprised almost-smile. He lowers his eyes back to the floor then, shaking his head. "You're still you."
"But we had time to heal."
He seems to actually consider that for a moment. She thinks of something his mother told her once, months ago, about glass smoothed by the sea. About how time takes all the rough edges, all the splinters, slowly. She could tell him that maybe it'll be the same for him too even if his hurt is not the same as hers or Brock's or Gary's, but she doesn't think he'd believe it, and she's not all that sure she does either, so "Hey," she says instead, and she tucks her chin in her hands, looking at him: "Wanna promise me something?"
Ash gives her a questioning glance. "We'll have that battle," she tells him. "Not right now. You're right, that was kind of a stupid idea. We'd risk destroying the whole room. But when we can all get out of this place. When we'll be safe and that—psycho piece of shit will be sitting behind the bars or whatever. How about that?"
He looks away and his breath falters a little, like the answer got caught in his throat. "Unless you're too scared to lose," she tries teasing. That works, and his eyes shoot back up.
"I'm not—"
"Great." She straightens her back and holds out one hand. "Then we can agree."
Ash just stares at it. "It's gonna be—a long time from now," he says, and she knows she's thinking about Mrs. R's words. She gives a small shrug.
"It might, yeah."
He swallows. Pikachu nudges him—nods his head in her direction in a silent come on when Ash turns to look. Ash's eyes turn back to her outstretched hand, and somewhere at the bottom of them a spark glimmers again, quiet, like the leftover embers in the remains of their fire, still bright red in the dark. Like something not done with, not gone. The pause stretches on for a bit still; then he unwraps one arm from his knees, uncertain. His hand lingers in the air for a moment. For a bit longer than that.
He takes a breath. "Fine," he says finally, and closes the hand around hers. And it's more than just the promise of a battle—hidden at the bottom there's the tentative promise to believe that yes, they will all get out of there; and that sometime-not-right-now his answer maybe won't be I don't feel like it. When she glances up he's looking at their hands as well.
She strokes his knuckles with her thumb a little. Then grins: "Well, get ready then, because I'm going to whoop your ass."
He gives a small exhale of a laugh and lets go. Yeah, she tells herself, it might be a while before they can actually keep the promise, before she can take him home again without having to fear that someone will be lurking in the dark, but at least she got that out of him now. And even if it lasts barely a blink before he withdraws back into himself maybe it's still worth something.
—-
"Sooo, any chance you changed your mind?"
Her sister sticks her head out of the door, her hair wrapped up in a towel. Behind her the bathroom has faded into a cloud of flower-scented fog. Misty rolls her eyes a bit as she walks past her: "Nope. I'm sure you'll be perfect for the part, Daisy."
"You could have a smaller role if you want. Like a supporting character or something."
"Still no." She reaches her room and turns the knob, pushing the door open. She lets out a sigh before walking in. "Maybe next time."
The door slides closed behind her back with a soft click. She flicks the switch and leaves Togepi on her bed, and in front of the mirror she undoes her ponytail and runs her fingers through the tangles of her hair. Her arms drop slowly at her sides after a few moments, her hands tightening around the edge of the drawer. She stares at her reflection for a while.
He died while he was alone. She said he would never be, once, what now feels like a lifetime ago, but in the end she wasn't there when he needed her the most. Maybe she would have been if she hadn't been asleep, if she hadn't been angry. Maybe he was scared, maybe there was time for that. Maybe he tried to call for help and no one heard.
"Toge-pri?" Togepi calls her from her bed, a tinge of worry in its voice. "Yes," she says, snapping out of her thought a little; but her eyes linger on the mirror still. In the end she bites her lip and pulls open one of the drawers. She sets aside a hairbrush, a book, a bottle of glittery blue nail polish Violet gave her. A handful of seashells she picked on the beach.
The photo is still where she left it. On the small glossy surface Ash's fingers are grasped tightly around her wrist, dragging her towards she can't remember what. Her other hand is a blur, caught halfway through pushing her hair away from her face, and her mouth is awkwardly half-open in the middle of a word, but he's looking straight at her and his smile is brighter than the lights in the background. She forgot that photo had been taken until Brock found it tucked somewhere in his backpack, after.
(Did you—?, Daisy almost asked her once, and then hurried out of her room without finishing the question.)
She runs her fingertips over their joined hands, slowly. When she first saw it again it felt like someone had stuck claws through the gaping hole in her middle, twisting and tearing at the edges to rip her in two. Now she stares at it, her breath caught in her chest, bracing herself for that pain to double her over. Trying to will it to when it does not.
It hurts, yes. But not like that. Not like splitting into pieces.
Her teeth press again into her lip. Between the seashells she's pushed to the side there's a piece of smooth glass, deep green, polished clean by the waves.
Togepi calls her again. "Yes," she says a second time and picks the photo out of the drawer, and after a moment of hesitation tucks it into the frame of her mirror. She pushes the drawer closed, leaving Delia's words with the seashells and the glass. "I'm okay. Sorry."
She turns around. Togepi waves its arms for her to pick it up again. "I'm okay," she says one more time as she heads back to the bed, maybe to herself. She still doesn't feel quite ready to look at those words more carefully, not right now, but it's alright. Maybe next time.
—-
There's footsteps on the stairs again later in the evening, heavier ones, and their attempt at a conversation halts into a cautious silence. The footsteps get closer, stop; the door opens.
The man they saw yesterday when they got off the van leans against the doorframe, without stepping in. "Just chekin'," he says, brisk. "Nothing new so far. Need anything?"
Ash shakes his head. "We're okay. Where's Abbie?"
"On watch." The man's eyes run over the three of them, narrowing slightly as they get to her and Brock. "The two of you gonna stay long?"
Something about the tone of the question seems somehow off, like it's not really a question, and the hair on the back of her neck stands up a little. "Actually, I was going to ask if I could stay with Ash a while longer," Brock says, sitting up straighter on the couch. "I mean since I'm not the most important person for our deal, with the fact I'm not the current gym leader of Pewter City."
The man looks at him. "Thought you had the terms of that worked out already."
"We do, I just thought that since I'm not as valuable to you as Misty is—"
"Then you've got your answer."
His face is unfaltering, cold. "We said we'd stay a few days," Misty remarks, frowning. "It's not even been two yet."
He takes his glance back to her. "Don't test our patience too much," he says. "You might end up regrettin' it."
He turns to leave before she can retort, kicking the door back in place with his heel. Again there's the echoing groan of the staircase, the distant clang of the door at the top shutting closed. Silence.
"I don't like that guy," she says, and her fingers grasp the edge of the couch a bit, the words more urgent on her tongue than she'd want them to. Brock looks at the door.
"...Yeah, me neither."
Ash is quiet. His eyes are on the door as well, his brow crumpled. The silence lingers for long after that, tense and heavy.