Chapter 27 – Homecoming

It didn't take long for my mother to somehow propel me into the living room, and deposit me in the armchair near the door. In the blink of an eye, she vanished in the kitchen's general direction, leaving me sitting in the living room with my haversack on my lap. Given that I hadn't been home in nearly five years, it was certainly a rather unnerving experience.

Shaking my head to get myself back into the mindset of the – hopefully – sane, I placed my haversack next to the armchair and headed towards the kitchen. As I passed the den, I saw that some things in there had been moved about. For starters, the shapeless old beanbag that had been there seemingly since the beginning of human civilization was gone, and the television set looked a little dustier than I recall it ever being in my years of living with it.

"Ah, you're back!" came a deep voice from somewhere behind me, causing me to jump a little. "Come here and let me get a good look at you!"

Turning around with a faint smile, I said, "Nice to see you too, Bruiser."

Bruiser was a machamp, and had been my mother's starter when she had been a trainer. Of course, he was a machop all those decades ago, and was now quite old for his species. Nonetheless, he still retained the muscular build that was the hallmark of his kind, and could easily beat a younger machamp into submission if he really wanted to. If you asked him, he was not merely young at heart, but also young in the muscles.

Well, you would probably want to ignore his bifocals when you talk to him, though. There's something just that amusing about a physical powerhouse like a machamp having to wear spectacles to see clearly.

He came closer to me, and used one of his four hands to adjust his ridiculously tiny bifocals. "Still a scrawny little shrimp, though I see some muscle tone where it counts. And that hair... my goodness, it does look better on you than short hair!"

"You haven't changed one bit, Bruiser," I laughed, wincing a little as he pulled me into a massive, four-armed machamp hug and just managed to avoid breaking my ribs. "Ouch."

Believe me, having a machamp regarding you as his little 'not-machop' was a very humbling yet pleasant experience.

Of all my mother's three surviving pokemon, Bruiser was probably the one who treated me with the most affection. Growing up, he had been like an elder brother to me, and had made sure that I knew how to defend myself against bullies by the age of eight. Amy and Allan hadn't been quite as friendly to me, and more often than not, Bruiser had actually rescued me from Allan's sadistic little sojourns into my subconscious – just one of the hazards of having your mother owning a mismagius, I suppose.

"So, where's trainer? I take it she knows that you're back?" he asked me as he released his crushing grip on me and headed to the kitchen. "If my ears are right, it sounds like she's in the kitchen."

"She knows I'm back," I replied, as I followed him into the kitchen. Talk about another place in the house that hadn't changed – it looked exactly the same as it had when I left. All the cabinets, jars, and normal kitchen items were still the same old ones, and it seemed that Bruiser had managed to avoid breaking any more of them since I'd been gone.

It didn't escape my memory that the kitchen was the last I'd seen of my family home before I'd run away to join the army. All I had grabbed was some bread for the road, and it was off to the military depot after that.

How time flew.

I was so lost in my little stew of nostalgia and deep thought that I barely heard my mother and Bruiser calling out my name.

"- anyone in there?" Bruiser asked, waving two hands in front of my face, while the other two made him a sandwich. "Hello?"

"Sorry, just got carried away for a bit..." I blinked sheepishly. "You were saying?"

He gaped at me. "Wait, you understand me now?"

I cocked my head to one side and offered him a grin. "Of course, sweetheart. Picked up a few skills in the army, I did."

"That's a pleasant surprise," my mother said, as she popped up behind me – the woman was like a damned ninjask! – and steered me into a chair. "Now, you're going to sit down and tell us just what you've been up to for the last however many years it's been... Four?"

"Three or thereabouts," nodded Bruiser, as he munched on a celery-saturated sandwich. "And that's right – spill the details!"

All I could do was to stare a little at the two of them as they seated themselves opposite me at the dining table. I was accustomed to things moving fast in the army, sure, but my mother and Bruiser seemed to be even quicker than that when it came to interrogating their long-lost family member. Or maybe not that long-lost, but still!

"Well, I joined the military," I said evenly, as my mother shoved a plate towards me with a sandwich on it – looked like it had tuna in it, of all things. "And um, I got sent to Canalave."

"You must have been quite bad at the whole soldier deal if it took you two years to get deployed to Canalave," Bruiser pointed out, causing my mother to smack him lightly on one of his biceps. "What? I speak nothing but the truth!"

"Can it, Bruiser! Though... he does have a point," my mother shook her head. "You do suck at storytelling, at the very least. Glad to see that's not changed."

I shrugged, and picked up the tuna sandwich. Before I took a bite out of it, though, I saw that my mother had actually trimmed off the crusts, as she tended to do. My father and I never did that on our own, so it had always been one of her little pet peeves that we ate our bread with the crusts on it. For some reason I could place, just seeing those two slices of bread, devoid of their crust, made me hesitate.

It really felt like too much, the sandwich. I'd been eating military-grade chow for several years now, and just the thought of eating that pretty little sandwich made me feel uneasy. Sure, my mother had made it and not eating it would have been horribly rude of me, but something just made me put it back on the plate.

"Is something wrong?" she asked me, sounding worried.

Fortunately, I was spared the difficulty of coming up with a coherent response by Allan suddenly passing through the kitchen's wall and floating up to the table. The mismagius was still considered a young adult by ghostly standards, and his demeanour did little to contradict that.

His red eyes glowed with a mischievous sort of glee as he hovered not three feet away from me, and the ragged ribbons that formed his body blew about in a breeze that only he could feel. "Why, hello, hello... it's been a long time since I've had the pleasure of your company."

"Allan," I said pleasantly, suppressing a wince as I remembered how he had plagued my sleep with nightmares as a child, and how my mother had never believed in my claims that one of her own pokemon was tormenting me in my dreams. "How are the soft toys?"

He positively lit-up upon hearing that, and moved closer to me, brushing the edge of his face against mine. "Oh, they're all fine! They're all still cuddly and adorable, even after all these years... Say, am I interrupting anything? Trainer and Bruiser look concerned."

I turned to look at my mother and her starter, and sure enough, they looked just a little uneasy. Bruiser's glance at my sandwich gave me a rough idea of what was bugging them, though.

"Oh, I'm just not that hungry, long-distance teleportation and all that," I quickly lied, noticing with some relief that their expressions softened up by just a little bit upon hearing that. "Could I take it to wherever I'll be sleeping to eat it? Need to unpack a little."

"Ah, sure..." Mom said, looking a little tired. "I've dusted your old room, so just get down here in time for dinner, will you? Dad will be home in a bit, so we'll have dinner as a family again, for once."

I pretended to not hear that last bit as I snatched up the sandwich and got out of my seat, leaving the kitchen. As I walked to the living room to collect my haversack, I felt Allan's distinct presence somewhere near me, and eventually saw him hovering near the ceiling fan.

"Smooth words, Pinocchio," he murmured, his necklace shining with an eerie glow. "I'll be keeping an eye on you, I will."

I shrugged. "Go ahead, then. Just stay the fuck out of my head."

His smiling reply was hardly comforting. "We'll see about that."

xxx

Going up the stairs to my old room was probably the most unsettling experience since I'd walked through the front door. That old loose stair still creaked, and the pictures hung on the wall next to the stairs were pristine as ever in their frames. Somehow, all those photographed faces, frozen in time as they were – even mine – seemed to be mocking me and following me with their gaze.

Hell, the only thing that prevented me from turning around to double-check for a dokunemon possibly hiding on a photograph and spying on me was the tangible feeling of Allan keeping an eye on my back. Ever had the feeling that you were being watched, followed by no one being around when you turned to look? Well, if Allan was behind you and you turned to face him, you'd be babbling incoherently for a bit once he got done with your fright.

After what felt like ages, I reached the landing above the stairs, and headed to my former bedroom. The door was still the same as I had left it, with that little 'I'm NAKED' sign stuck to it. It was clear that no one had been there in a while, though – a noticeably musty smell lingered about the doorway.

Hesitantly, I grasped the doorknob, and turned it. The door opened inwards, and... There it was – my old room, exactly as it had been those few years back.

I stepped into the room, and silently took in its appearance. My desk was still there, with my old books neatly arranged on it. My high school graduation photograph and diploma were still framed above the desk, while my little clothes cabinet sat next to it as it always had. The piplup plushie I used to sleep with stared at me with its glassy black eyes from where it was placed on the desk, leaning against the cabinet.

And of course, the bed was also untouched. It took me a second or several to realise it, but the sheets were clearly the same as those that had been on it the night I ran away. As the realisation hit me, I somehow felt a curious mixture of nostalgia and nausea. Bile rose in my throat as I started getting torn between caving in to my memories, and feeling disgusted at the fact that my room seemed to now be a motherfucking shrine of a sort.

Naturally, I decided to consult someone whose opinion was always unbiased. And this obviously means that I let Silas out of his pokeball. I figured that it couldn't be worse than my current situation, anyway.

He materialized on my bed, and seemed surprised at the fact that he was no longer in Sootopolis. Blinking slowly as he took in his surroundings, he stuck out his tongue to taste the air, and seemed to flinch a little upon noticing the mothball-scented atmosphere.

"Where are we, Trainer?" he whistled, as he cast a critical eye at my old piplup doll. "Weren't we just at the Hardings' place?"

I shook my head, and sat down heavily on the bed next to him. "Ben teleported us to Jubilife a couple of hours ago, Silas. We are... well, this is my old room."

Silas' eyes grew wide as he began paying more attention to the room and its contents, and he let out a low, rasping sound as he glanced about. "It's... clean. Was it always like this, or did your mother tidy for your arrival?"

"She dusted, yes," I said absently as I picked him up and placed him on my lap. "Otherwise, it's still the same, layout-wise."

My starter remained silent as he digested those words of mine, and let out a bubble that popped on the wooden floor. "Well... it figures, given your nature."

All I did was to nod as I lay down on my bed, shifting Silas onto my stomach as I did so. Oddly enough, it seemed to sag down under my weight, giving me the impression that the mattress itself was letting out a long-held breath, or something.

For a while, there was nothing but silence in the room. The tuna sandwich without its crusts sat on its plate over at my desk, while the wall clock remained mute and frozen at some ungodly hour. My old piplup kept staring off into space with its lifeless eyes, and the soft evening light came in through the window.

"Well..." Silas finally said. "What's the matter, Trainer?"

"I ran away from this," I replied matter-of-factly. "And I really could have pulled a fast one on my parents by not coming to stay here. But yet, I came back."

He kept quiet for a bit, and spoke up in what was probably the most neutral tone I'd ever heard from him. "I see."

I shut my eyes, and tried to scrunch them tightly shut in an attempt to quell the headache that was starting to build up somewhere between my eyes. It really felt like too many things were going one at the same time, despite the silence and relative peace.

Silas' weight on my abdomen seemed to complement the sinking feeling that was already swirling about inside it like a ravenous swalot. Quite naturally, thanks to that I didn't feel inclined to eat the tuna sandwich at all, given that I had already been hesitant about even accepting it from my mother.

"There's a sandwich on the desk, Silas. Tuna," I said softly, running a hand through my hair and exhaling deeply. "It's yours if you want it."

He cast a wary glance at my face, and blew a raspberry. "Bollocks if I'm going to eat that thing now, as attractive as tuna sounds. What's eating at you, Trainer?"

"I ran away," I replied, chewing on my lower lip.

Silas didn't say anything in response to those words, and for that little mercy, I was thankful.

xxx

Dinner was a disastrous affair. Or perhaps that was an understatement.

I hadn't seen my father since I'd run away, of course, and I hadn't been the best of buddies with him even before I'd pulled that particular stunt. And he had beaten me to the dinner table, which made it all the more awkward for Silas and I when Mom called us down for dinner. Thankfully, Bruiser was seated on the fourth side of the table, separating me from Daddy dearest.

Silas must have noticed the pained look I had on my face, because he, curiously enough, remained silent as I placed him next to my dinner plate and scooped some stew in a bowl for him. For a short while, the table was silent save for the sounds of cutlery.

"So..." Dad started, leaving his words hanging as he used to, "I heard that someone's doing quite well over at Canalave."

"Not exactly," I mumbled, picking at my stew with my fork. "Still nothing more than a lowly administrative assistant, really."

Bruiser chuckled. "Modest as ever, my little not-machop is. Why didn't you tell us about your promotion? I heard that you got boosted in rank after the terrorist attacks."

"He got promoted?" Silas chimed in. "That's news to me; Trainer, since when did you get a promotion?"

"Oh, how wonderful!" Mom beamed at me. "Your... General Harding didn't mention that bit when he called."

I sighed, and put my fork down. "I turned down my promotion, Mom. Took an offer for neural implants instead – that's how I understand pokemon speech now."

Dad frowned upon hearing that little bit of news. "You let the government put little chips in your brain?"

As I opened my mouth to answer the question, Silas spoke up.

"Somewhere in his inner ears, actually. And you people aren't the only ones he's shocked with this," my treasonous starter happily declared, earning a swat on the shell. "Did you hear about the Soup incident?"

Three pairs of eyes swivelled to regard me with what appeared to be a perverse sort of curiosity. Out of the corner of my left eye, I swore that I saw the shadows behind the oven glowing a dull red – oh, goodness, even Allan was in on the dinner now.

"Do tell," said Dad politely, raising an eyebrow as he turned to look at Silas. "Just what has he been doing over there? Something notorious, by the sound of it."

I glared at Silas. "Don't, if you know what's good for you."

"Bitch, please," he retorted smugly, ignoring the withering look Mom fixed on him. "Your secrets are mine to reveal, hah!

"Simply put, good sir, your son attempted to boil me alive in a soup pot when we were first acquainted. He even tied me up to make sure that I wouldn't escape!"

"Dear!" Mom squawked, as Bruiser gave me the evil eye and Allan began cackling from the shadows behind the oven where he was hiding. Dad seemed impassive, and merely resumed his dinner with a shrug. "That's abuse!"

I shrugged, and offered Silas a bit of my stew. "Well, he was being aggressive and uncooperative, and I'm not above using torture to obtain what I require from subjects."

"You... torture people?" Bruiser coughed, thumping himself on the back as some food went down the wrong way. "Dear gods above, little not-machop, since when were you such a horrible sadist?"

Before I could give him an answer to that, Silas stepped in, the little bastard. "Since he started going out for drinks with General Harding on some Friday nights. And started passing out naked on the floor of his dorm room. And started getting laid when drunk.

"Did I mention that he is actually quite a nice person to be around when drunk? Not a philosophical drunk, but he does seem to grow a sense of humour when he drinks."

Mom looked positively furious, while Dad steadily continued eating. Bruiser's eyes looked ready to pop out of his skull, and Allan seemed to have died of mirth-induced suffocation, if his silence was anything to go by. Silas looked smug, and all I could do was to roll my eyes at him while mouthing several interestingly colourful words that would've earned me an earful from Mom had I said them aloud.

"This... this is not what General Harding said you'd been up to at Canalave!" she said angrily. "We thought you'd been respectable, hardworking, and an upstanding citizen over at Canalave! But now there's pokemon abuse – by boiling! – and alcoholism problems, it seems!"

"Certainly most amusing," echoed a faint voice from the oven's general direction. "And he's got balls!"

"Thanks, Allan," I said, as I finished the last of my stew. Rising out my seat, I collected the empty plates on the table, and took them over to the sink. "And no, Mom, I'm not an alcoholic – I hold my liquor surprisingly well and only pass out when General Harding lures me into a drinking match."

Dad let out a cough and muttered, "He definitely got that streak from your side of the family."

Even as I did the dishes, I could practically feel the heated glare that my mother sent in my and his direction. And I didn't miss the sound of Bruiser accidentally biting the tines off his fork, either.

I finished drying the last of the plates I'd washed, and headed past the table. "If you still want to continue with the dinner table gossip... well, Silas knows how to make it back to the room. I'm sure he'll keep you entertained for a while."

"Scandalised is more like it!" squeaked Bruiser, as he massaged his temples.

"He also gives me beer, sometimes, if he thinks I'm too rowdy," Silas announced proudly, as I left the kitchen. "Oh, the things I could tell you about Trainer..."

I wasn't quite sure if the thump I heard was due to my mother fainting and falling out of her chair, or if Bruiser had accidentally destroyed something.

Whatever it was, I was glad to be out of the kitchen.

xxx

It didn't take long for Silas to finish scandalising my parents with undoubtedly honest tales of my exploits. I walked into my room after a quick, freezing cold shower to see him sitting on my pillow, which looked as if he'd attempted to fluff it up using his tongue. Well, I hoped that the damp patches weren't all shellder saliva, but one can never be too pessimistic with a crazy mollusc as a partner.

"So, I take it they weren't amused much," I said, as I grabbed my backpack and fished a T-shirt out. "Told them about the gay porn?"

Silas let out a little squeak, and his eyes bugged out a little. "What kind of sick bastard do you think I am? Of course I didn't tell them about your... acting career."

I sat down on the edge of the bed, and flopped down onto my back. "Thanks, Silas."

The room was quiet for a while as we sat there, staring at the ceiling. Or Silas might have been staring somewhere else, I don't know.

"Is it really that painful for you to be back in this house?" Silas asked me, so softly that I almost missed the question.

I shook my head. "Not painful, maybe. More towards suffocating."

"How so?"

"In silence we find our suffering..." I said simply.

"... and in suffering we find our salvation," finished Silas, earning a cocked eyebrow from me. "I am not an illiterate hermit, Trainer. There are some poems I've heard before."

Just as soon as he'd finished speaking, the room's door swung open, and my mother walked into the room. No knocking or anything. I sat up as though I had received a particularly nasty electric shock, and Silas whirled about on the pillow like a miniature turret in a clamshell.

"Mom!" I blinked at her absently. "Umm, could you knock next time? I could've been doing anything in here."

She raised an eyebrow. "Not like I haven't seen everything before. Anyway, your father wanted to let Silas know that he was very good company at the dinner table. Not bad, for your pokemon to squeeze such a compliment out of him."

"I try not to disappoint," Silas said with what seemed to be a smug look. I offered him a pat on the shell, and turned back to see my mother staring at the burn scars on my chest.

"And what happened to you?" she asked me, reaching a hand out as if she wanted to touch the scars, but stopping herself halfway through. "Direct burn marks, if I'm not mistaken."

I nodded, and her expression changed to one of worry. "Yup. A magmortar beat me across the chest during that fire at Canalave."

"Take better care of your self will you?" she said, as she turned to leave the room. "Or at least, ask Silas to watch your back."

"Will do, ma'am," I muttered, watching her retreating back. "Hmph, easy for her to say that. She wasn't there in a fucking inferno!"

"She's just worried for you," Silas hummed, creating a new wet patch on my pillow and confirming my earlier suspicions about the shellder saliva. "So, what shall we do now? Could you take me around the neighbourhood for a tour?"

"Tomorrow, Silas. And that's a guarantee."

"I'll buy that."

xxx

They say dreamless sleep is the deepest of all sleep. But yet, I found myself waking up after several hours of it, and finding that the moon was still shining brightly up in the sky. Maybe it was part of the insomnia I'd seemed to have developed since General Harding had nearly disposed of me at the milotics' lagoon. Or maybe it was just me being on edge thanks to this... forced vacation back home.

I looked down, and saw Silas contentedly sleeping on the bed, snuggled up against my side like an armoured puppy. His tongue was draped over my stomach, and little bubbles flew out between the halves of his shell each time he exhaled. For a few seconds, I mentally had a laugh at what was probably his equivalent of a snot bubble.

And then I looked further away, and saw her.

My mother was sleeping in her usual reading chair, next to my room's door. Apparently, she had snuck in while I was sleeping, and had fallen asleep while sitting there. There wasn't a single book in sight on her lap or on the floor around the chair, so I figured that reading hadn't been on her mind when she'd entered the room.

A breeze blew in through the half-opened window, and the chill that permeated throughout the room served as a chilly reminder that the dorm back at Canalave somehow was stuffier than the Jubilife suburbs. Unusual given that Canalave was a port, but there you had it.

Gently lifting Silas' tongue off my stomach and folding it onto the top half of his shell, I picked up my blanket, and got out of bed. Walking over to my sleeping mother in her chair and wincing slightly at the coldness of the floor, I slowly draped the blanket over her, tucking it in as best I could – not that easy considering her sleeping position.

As I headed back to my bed, she let out a sleepy 'thank you'.

I went back to sleep.