Disclaimer: Ash: Sure, I can do that : ) Thanks for the idea. Olih: Thanks : ) Silver: Hahaha, thanks, I'm glad you liked them. Vaknuva: Absolutely; I love altoshipping! Still… sorry, but what do you mean by 'Ash transformed'? Beast: Thanks for reviewing! BeeBee: Totally! I think those stories are adorable, too : ) Mitsy: Thanks : ) Ebaz: Thanks so much. Tripolar: Hi, Tri! Thank you so much; and thanks for the compliments! I'll definitely do another Ruby/ Sapphire.
Question: If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
My Answer: Alice. I've always loved the name.
Characters: I've recently gotten into Proton X Lyra, so yeah. Don't judge me. I'm a sucker for rehabilitating bad boys.
Summary: I'm trying out a new spacing technique, so tell me what you think.
Seven Ways Of Looking At-
One murkrow for joy
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Proton is a compulsive liar: sometimes he's from Sunyshore, and other times he's from Pallet Town. But no matter who he talks to, no matter which identity he's assuming, he's never from Goldenrod.
(Lyra is a compulsive truth-teller: she speaks whatever words- whether they be of joy, sorrow or anger- tumble from her mouth, and doesn't stop to think about how it might affect others and herself.)
His accents are infallible and his past is written on the insides of his wrists. His hair is parted differently depending on whether he's being an executive or under cover, and his coloured contacts change as the seasons do.
(Her smiles are infallible and her future is spelled out in her eyes. Her hair remains unchanged, and even as the seasons pass she doesn't flicker. Her flame burns bright, but it's burning in a way that, when it dies, there's not going to be an ember left to get it started again.)
He still keeps the mask of his origins tucked under his mattress, which serves as his Pandora's Box; under it rest wishes written on stationary and long-lost hopes that the dust bunnies have probably eaten up by now.
(She buries hers under the tree house where her and Gold used to play; a treasure box of fool's gold and pressed flowers that smell only of decay.)
He sits on the floor and stares at them, because he's like a murkrow in the way that they both covet shiny things.
(And she keeps on piling the dirt up high, because shiny things always did hurt her eyes.)
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Two for sorrow
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They tangle like kitestrings.
Their strings of fate twist through the air, until the day they collide: Proton's, thin as ether; and Kotone's, no more bright or thin or strong than anyone else's.
(His mouth is red, as if he has kissed an open wound. The blood that runs down his hand is just as holly-bright as those strings, and his words drip like crimson tears into her ears. The pokemon lays dying at his feet, and his aura of power flares out behind him like a cape of maroon.)
Still, they tangle. They tangle, tangle hopelessly, and suddenly their kitestrings aren't flying free but are hurtling towards Earth like a snowball rolling down a hill.
(Proton looks at her with those shining-bright eyes. "What did you say?"
("Beautiful," she repeats. The lilt of her voice is almost sorrowful, the drop of her lashes enticed as she surveys the gore that spatters the floor of the cave. "You're beautiful."
(The scissors, blood trickling from their jaws like red strings, dangle from his fingertips as she stares at him with eyes that contradict: hopeful but helpless, with a dark flame threatening to burn away the protective layer of brown.
("So are you," he purrs.)
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Three for a wedding
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She makes him think back to simpler days: back to when he was clawing his way to the top of Team Rocket as a grunt, and becoming anyone he had to be to do so. She makes him think back to the other brown-haired girl that thwarted him: the one with the contradictory gaze and sorrowful lilt and dark flame that had already burnt away the leaf-green of her eyes.
(He makes her think of days that haven't happened yet: days after her journey, when all the excitement is gone and over with and the only person she's left with is herself. He makes her think of the satisfaction of bloodshed, and the forbidden thrill of it: he makes her think of his contradictory gaze and sorrowful lilt and dark flame that's making the blue-green of his eyes glow red.)
It's like a marriage of souls: he thinks of her with such raw emotion that he doesn't care to explain to himself what he's actually feeling, and she thinks of him with such longing and half-hidden consideration that it blocks out reason.
(And, like kitestrings, they keep being pulled together until they aren't able to pull away anymore: they keep on being pulled together until he finally snaps and hauls her back by force, because wind currents are unreliable and fate has a tendency of blowing the wrong way.)
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Four for death
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"Do you think some people are just born sad?" asks Kotone as Proton guards her cell, scissors in hand in case she tries to escape. The flooring is caving in, and the starlight slants through the breaks in the ceiling. It's a lot like her and Gold's tree house, Kotone thinks- all stolen first kisses and birthday wishes that nobody really cares about anymore.
(Yes, he wants to say. I was.)
"Why are you so calm?" he breathes, the red string of fate curling around his throat and blocking off his airway as he turns to look at her. "Don't you fear Team Rocket?"
(Yes, she wants to say. I do.)
"Team Rocket is human nature," she answers. "It always has been, and always will be. To fear it is to fear the world; and why fear the world when, really, the only thing you need to fear is yourself?"
(He stares so very hard at her, and she stares gently back. And he feels all the deception in him die, if only for a moment.)
"You're beautiful," she repeats.
"So are you," he whispers.
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Five for Silver
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They sit and talk for hours: her on the inside of the cell, hands loosely wrapped around iron bars; and him on the other, scissors clicking in a maddeningly rhythmic fashion.
(They sit and listen for hours: she listens to stories of cubones and graves, and he listens to ramblings of a boy named Silver that he babysat, once upon a time.)
"What's your real name?" she asks one day, sipping the water that had been given to her from between the bars. "You're name isn't really Proton, is it?"
(He smiles his red smile, and the scissors click-click-click against his knee as he feels the deception well up like a balloon inside his heart.)
"Of course it's Proton, sweetheart," he tells her. "What else would I be called?"
(She frowns her red frown, and her nails click-click-click against the bars as she pierces right through him.
(And that dark flame blackens the brown, just a little.)
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Six for Gold
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The walls of his fortress are coming down: he can hear the yelling upstairs, the clomping of boots that shake the ceiling above them and cause dust to filter down.
"They're coming for you," he says simply.
(Those kitestrings are circling his heart, squeezing tighter and tighter and almost making him want to cry with the realization that she's going to end up with that Gold boy and not him.)
"I know," she says in the most complicated of fashions.
(Her hand flutters up to her chest, to that place where her heart hangs, and clutches until her knuckles bleach white.)
Sliding the scissors into the pocket of his jeans, he moves to open the cell. The door swings open, and her shadow-ringed eyes flick up to him, the once-brown irises black as coal in the half-light.
(And she's so beautiful like this, so lovely after having her flame burnt out, so broken-down and defeated and no longer a contradiction for him to iron out.)
"Lance," he tells her, his mouth descending on hers for the briefest of instances. "My name is Lance."
"Mine is Lyra," she whispers over the noise above.
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Seven for a secret,
Never to be told
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Their mouths meet once, twice, three times as the search party raids the upstairs: tables are being overturned, voices are rising and her hands are skimming his abdomen as they come nearer.
And then she withdraws the scissors from his pocket.
The blades click-click-click against his marrow as they snap open and shut, and she falls upon him, her coal-black eyes burning holes into his dimming ones.
(Her mouth is red, as if she has kissed an open wound. The blood that runs down her hand is just as holly-bright as those broken-off strings, and her words drip like crimson tears into his ears. The man lays dying underneath her, and her aura of power flares out behind her like a cape of maroon.)
"You're beautiful," she whispers, tracing his eyes with one long, dyed-red fingernail.
(Then she takes them out, because shiny things always did hurt her eyes.)