Chapter Twenty-Nine: Drizzle and Dresses

It was drizzling a bit when Serena and Ash left Vermilion City. They'd said goodbye to Dawn and May the evening before, who were both resuming their own journeys, and now they were heading north, towards Saffron City. It wasn't raining hard enough to warrant looking for shelter, but it was so constant that it still wasn't exactly pleasant to walk through, either. At least they had their rain coats to stay mostly dry.

Serena looked at Ash as they walked. She'd gotten so many chances to kiss him yesterday, and yet she hadn't acted on any of them. Both her own victory at the Exposition and Ash's at the Gym would've been great. Dawn and May being present didn't even matter much, because both of them were clearly aware of the feelings Serena had for Ash and the feelings Ash had for Serena, which he was displaying more and more openly recently.

But somehow, no matter how good the moment had seemed to be, it still didn't feel like it was the right one, and so once again Serena wasn't really sure about how she felt. If a double victory wasn't the right moment, what was? Would there ever be a moment perfect enough to match what she thought should be their first kiss? What if there wasn't, and they'd end up completing their journey through Kanto without having moved beyond where they were now?

And for that matter, what would they even do once this journey ended? After the Indigo League and the Grand Expo, both Serena and Ash would be moving on to their next challenges, but there was no guarantee their journeys would align anymore. Ash might've fudged the situation a bit to tag along with Serena now, but he'd surely be focusing on something else by the time he'd cleared his Kanto challenge for the second time.

So, whatever she intended to do, Serena knew it would have to happen while the journey was still ongoing. It certainly wasn't going to be now, though. Sure, in movies she'd often seen people passionately kissing in the rain after some emotional reunion, or something, but the simple truth was that even this drizzle was cold and annoying, and she had no intention of standing still in it to kiss if she could just as easily wait for a dry Pokémon Center, or even their tent. The tent might even fit in some weird, symbolic way, given their first conversation about love had been in the tent while it was raining.

Still, she was fairly sure that she wouldn't be making any moves even once they'd set up camp for the night. There was still plenty of time left on the journey, after all. Saffron City would only be the fifth Exposition and Ash's fourth badge. They weren't even halfway yet, and they'd surely have plenty of adventures before they got there.

Ash noticed her looking at him and said, "You're looking lost in thought."

"A bit, I guess," Serena said, feeling a little embarrassed at being caught staring.

"What're you thinking about?" Ash asked.

"Uh, you know, just…things," Serena said, feeling her face heating up a little bit more.

"Like?"

Serena sighed. "Just…wondering what's going to happen when our journey here ends," she said a bit unwillingly. "I mean, when I've won the Grand Expo and you've beaten the Indigo League…" She smiled faintly. "…what will we do then?"

Ash shrugged. "I guess we'll just go on our next journey, right? Something will come on our path, I'm sure," he said.

"You haven't given it any thought?" Serena asked.

"Not really," Ash said. "I don't tend to think that far ahead." He grinned. "But 'not thinking that far ahead' is kind of my thing, I suppose. Honestly, though…I just focus on what's right in front of me, I guess. My next Gym battle, or the League challenge I'm competing in, and what comes next, well, I'll see that when I get there. Besides…I don't really…like thinking about the end of a journey. I like thinking about beginnings, yeah, but endings…not so much. Endings usually also mean goodbyes, and I'm not really a fan of those."

"Didn't you say that it makes you happy when people follow their own dreams?" Serena asked.

Ash nodded. "Of course it does. But I can be happy and sad at the same time. It's…hard to explain. The goodbye itself is difficult, but once that part's done, I'm fine. I'm looking ahead again. But thinking about having to say goodbye, that's probably the hardest part. So yeah, I want everyone to be able to follow their dreams, because that's what I would do, and somehow that usually tends to happen around the end of my League challenges, which is also usually around the time when I'll come across a Pokémon from a region I haven't been to yet, and then I'll go there to challenge whatever League they have, and just travel around to meet as many Pokémon and people as I can."

"But because that didn't happen in the Kalos League, you weren't sure where to go next?" Serena asked.

Ash nodded. "Yeah, exactly. I was really happy when you said you were going to Kanto too because it meant we'd be traveling together for a bit longer."

"A goodbye you could avoid?" Serena asked quietly. In their previous conversation, she'd thought that Ash didn't have any particular feelings about parting ways with anyone, aside from the moment itself, which she'd of course seen with Goodra, Greninja, and Clemont and Bonnie. But now, it appeared like the thought, too, bothered him on some level.

"Not avoid, more…postpone, I guess," Ash said. "I don't think you can really avoid goodbyes forever. It just doesn't really work that way. I think I just prefer not to know when they'll happen so I don't need to think about it. Most of them tended to happen at the end of my travels through a region, though, so I just associate those things with each other now. So as to what will happen after the League and the Grand Expo are over? I don't know, but I do know that I'm glad that this was a goodbye I could postpone a little bit longer."

He smiled and looked forward again, and Serena did the same. Once again, she sort of understood what Ash was saying, but it seemed like far too heavy a way to think about things, coming from someone who was so apparently casual about going his own way. There was definitely some kind of conflict in him, something even he with all his bravery didn't really want to face. At the extreme of things, of course, there would always be a goodbye because people just didn't live forever, but she and Ash were barely seventeen; longevity really wasn't much of an issue. And even in the shorter term…hadn't he said that not being in the same place didn't really matter because the feelings didn't change?

Could it be that Ash was afraid to say what he really wanted, somehow? Serena could certainly relate to that, because even though she'd had feelings for Ash ever since she met him, it had only been a few weeks at most since she'd first admitted to being in love with him out loud, and that she wanted to be with him. She had no doubt that Ash had feelings for her as well, but did he want to be with her? And if so, how did he envision that going?

Was that what it was about? Was he also afraid that their dreams wouldn't align anymore, so they wouldn't stay together? She glanced at Ash once more. He didn't look like anything was bothering him; he looked the same as always. Maybe it was just the gloomy weather making her think all of these heavy thoughts. It wasn't like she needed to 'solve' anything now, anyway. Better to just make the best of every moment, even if the weather wasn't exactly cooperating.

The rest of the day, though gray, passed relatively lightly. They'd eaten lunch in what appeared to be an abandoned shed, and then carried on walking through the endless drizzle until it was finally time to have dinner, after which they simply decided to spend the rest of the evening in the tent, taking a day off from training because of how active they'd been over the past week.

Serena rummaged through her bag, trying to find a specific magazine with articles on Pokémon care and grooming, but it seemed to have buried itself at the very bottom of the bag, forcing her to take out most of what was inside to get to it. Ash and Pikachu leaned over the other magazines to see what the covers said.

("'Which dress would suit you best?' I think it was an orange one, wasn't it, Ashley?") Pikachu asked.

Ash groaned. "The worst part is that it's probably true. That one looked better than the other times I wore a dress, anyway…"

Serena giggled, before turning around and asking, "Just how often did you wear dresses?"

Ash and Pikachu looked at each other, clearly trying to count. "I think…four times in total?" He began to count on his fingers. "Once because I got banned from the Celadon City Gym, once to help a nervous Trainer confess to a girl he liked — and before you ask, that was May's idea — once because we got dragged into helping at a maid café, and once because Iris wanted revenge on an all-female theater group."

("I had to pretend to be a girl too, for that one,") Pikachu said, ("because male Pokémon weren't allowed in, either.")

"Uh, how did they check…?" Serena asked uncomfortably.

("Just the tail,") Pikachu said quickly, and Ash chuckled.

Pikachu shuddered. ("It's the one time in my life I wished Pokémon regularly wore clothes,") he said.

"I can imagine," Serena said with a smile. Then she looked at Ash and asked, "And one of the other times was because you got banned from a Gym? Why?"

Ash looked a bit embarrassed and said, "That was on my first trip through Kanto. We visited a perfume shop and I didn't like the perfume, so they kicked me out, and when I tried to go the Gym instead it turned out that the Gym Leader was the manager of the perfume store, so I was banned."

"And your solution to get in anyway was to dress up as a girl?" Serena asked in amusement.

Ash grinned sheepishly. "That wasn't actually my idea. See, Team Rocket had been thrown out of the Gym as well, so they suggested dressing me up as a girl and posing as my parents to get us all inside."

"You listened to Team Rocket?" Serena asked incredulously.

"It…wasn't my finest moment," Ash said. He sighed. "But I was angry they banned me for not liking perfume, and I wanted the badge, and I figured I could handle Team Rocket anyway, if they really ended up causing problems."

He shook his head. "I know I shouldn't have done it, but…"

"You don't have to feel guilty," Serena said softly, seeing that Ash was clearly bothered by it even now. "I'm sorry I made it seem like I was blaming you. I mean, we've teamed up with Team Rocket in Kalos a couple of times."

"I just don't understand those guys," Ash said with a shake of his head. "I mean, I don't think they're actually bad people, somehow, but then they do something horrible that hurts Pokémon and people for the sake of their boss and I just can't stand for that."

Serena nodded slowly. "Yeah, I get what you mean. I've seen them being so…human and vulnerable too, and I'd think that maybe they'd turn over a new leaf, only for them to go back to stealing and lying afterwards."

("It's not like they mistreat their own Pokémon, either,") Pikachu said. ("All of them are incredibly loyal to them.")

"I just wonder what they're up to now," Ash said. "They haven't been following us like they used to, and every time we run into them it's by coincidence, while they're doing something else. But aside from Zapdos, I just don't get what they were after. The Zubat at Mt. Moon and the Water Pokémon at the reef weren't exactly rare or especially powerful. I guess they could still sell them, or something, but ever since I met them they've been obsessed with Pikachu in particular, and now he just seems like an afterthought to them."

He shook his head. "They're up to something, I know it. I just…don't know what."

"But…is it really up to us to do anything about it?" Serena asked uncomfortably. "If we don't know what they're planning, we can't really do anything to stop them."

Ash sighed deeply. "I know," he said. "I'm just…worried."

"I understand. So am I," Serena said. "But whatever they might be planning…if it comes, we'll face it together."

She smiled at Ash, and after a moment he smiled back in his usual, confident way, the smile Serena couldn't get enough of seeing.

"Yeah. Together."

Dear Arceus, this chapter was so hard to write. I think it ended up fine, but man, this took a long time to do. Again, tomorrow I probably won't be able to post since I'm at a theater thing, so the next one will most likely be Saturday. See you in the next one!