Content warning: This entry contains sexual activity between a human and a pokémon (both when they are adolescents and adults), pregnancy, blood loss following childbirth, and drug addiction.

MOMENTS

Snapshots from Mewtwo's and Cassandra's lives, some of which are compliant with Angelic Shadow's canon, some of which no longer are.

Sunshine:

Mewtwo struggled to hold onto his youngest daughter, who was determined to wiggle out of his arms to reach and eat the white sand below them. Maya and Christopher chased each other through the shallows, sometimes using their telekinesis to launch spouts of water at one another. Cassandra, sprawled out on a towel, called from them to be careful of the krabby nearby, who wouldn't think twice about pinching them if stepped too close. Shadow, with his swollen nose, had already learned that lesson the hard way. All in all, it was a peaceful day, and Mewtwo found that he didn't mind the sunshine. For all that he'd thought of himself as a creature of the night in years past, his family didn't belong in it, and they wouldn't let him consign himself to darkness, either.

Colorless:

Of her mutations, Cassandra's eyes were easy to overlook. They were a pale gray that seemed normal at a glance. However, they were missing the protective pigment that even the most light-colored eyes had. They were vulnerable to bright light, so if she wasn't careful, she would need glasses by the time she was twenty. The knowledge was like a grain of sand in the back of her mind, irritating her whenever she had to shield her nearly colorless eyes from the sun. But when Mewtwo complimented them, saying they reminded him of the color of moonlight, it was hard to not like them just a little for that.

Absence:

Mewtwo was listless as he waited for Cassandra to return from her mission. It might have been different if he had training to focus on, but his powers had plateaued months ago, and not even the highest-leveled pokémon were a challenge for him now. So he was stuck with waiting and feeling strangely cold, even though his room in the Viridian City Base was temperature-controlled. Why, he wondered, did her absence make him feel this way? Later, after he returned to New Island and built his castle, he looked at the Nurse Joy he'd brought along and felt similarly uneasy. It wasn't because he cared about her—her medical knowledge was what interested him—but then he realized what the problem was: he couldn't help but wonder if, somewhere out there, someone was colder because of her absence. He dismissed the thought quickly. After all, once he'd remade the world, that Joy and whoever loved her would no longer exist. So why bother feeling guilty about it?

Little:

Cassandra had never imagined what it would be like to be a mother, but now that she was one, the smallest sensations were searing themselves into her memory: the twins' tiny hands touching her face, their chubby limbs flailing against her hospital dress, the chirps they made when she kissed them. They were such tiny things, so terrifying soft and fragile, and they were hers. Her little miracles.

Float:

Before Cassandra taught Mewtwo how to swim, she made him learn how to float. It was a difficult lesson for him, because it meant relinquishing control to her, even though he still thought of her as "that rude girl that Giovanni was forcing him to train with." But now he needed to trust that she wouldn't let him flounder. Eventually, he managed it, the top of his head pressed against her stomach as the waves in the pool rocked him. It…wasn't bad. It was soothing, even. She seemed to know what he was thinking, because when she looked down at him, she smirked and said, "I told you it was fun."

Death:

It was too late. No matter how fast she ran, she wouldn't reach him in time. Death had come for them, roaring above the trees, swooping towards the cabin she'd left behind. The helicopter's gunner launched a missile. The force of the explosion threw her back into the snow, her head knocking against a root within it. She blacked out. When she came to, there were splinters in her face, her ears were ringing, and fire filled the clearing where the building had been. It wouldn't have been enough to kill him before—it shouldn't have been, even now—but she couldn't sense him anywhere inside of that blaze. He was gone.

Feathers:

Selena and Caleb looked at their daughter's back, where two downy, unnatural limbs jutted out. The doctors said it would be best to amputate them, but they moved and stretched like her arms and legs, and they didn't appear to be hurting her. If that changed, they could reconsider, but it was Cassandra's body. She should decide what to do with it when she was older. As it was, Selena ordered the doctors to let their "angel" be. Caleb, thinking about why Cassandra had those wings and feathers to begin with, didn't speak, but nodded and hoped that they weren't making a mistake.

Broken:

Some evenings, when the moonlight poured through their bedroom window, Cassandra looked at them with sad eyes that didn't seem to be seeing them, but a ghost just behind them. Maya and Christopher checked afterwards, looking under their beds, behind the curtains, and even in the cobwebbed corners of their closet. There was never a ghastly hiding there. Eventually, they asked her about it. She froze and then, in a quavering voice, explained, "You just remind me of him sometimes." They hadn't thought much about their father before she said that, or about how losing him must have broken her heart. But they decided that if they could, they would fix it.

Cookies:

Cassandra didn't know how to bake. Even chocolate chip cookies, which had the recipe printed on the back of the bag, were beyond her. Michael, who'd learned how to make them when he was five, decided that he couldn't let that stand. What ensued was a flour fight which covered them both—and Rose, when she stepped inside to see if there was cookie dough to steal (salmonella-poisoning be damned)—in blooms of fine, white dust. Later, when his superiors asked him how watching their informant was going, he shrugged and said it could be worse. He didn't think they'd approve of him dumping a bag of flour over the ex-assassin's head, but it was a memory he would cherish for years to come.

Drug:

Cassandra hadn't intended to become dependent on her medication, but the pills stopped the nightmares and numbed the pain…along with everything else. Without them, her life snapped into sharp relief, and the missions Giovanni gave her no longer felt like scenes from someone else's life. She was there, truly there with her victims, and the horror of it left her soaked in sweat and shaking, her breaths coming in ragged gasps. So she always stayed on top of her refills. If she needed them faster than Dr. Yarrow thought she should, he didn't say anything. He just handed over more of the drug without looking at her. Maybe that made him a bad doctor, but it helped to know that no matter what happened, her job couldn't hurt her anymore. She never had to hurt again if she didn't want to.

Father:

Caleb barely recognized the young woman his daughter had become. He remembered her as a cuddly toddler who loved wearing green, eating raw onions, and listening to his bedtime stories about knights and dragonites. The agent who stormed through the Viridian Base had the same glossy hair, the same gray eyes, and the same glower she'd had when he'd told her it was bedtime, except now she wore it constantly. The only time he saw her smile was when she was around Giovanni's pet legendary—Mewtwo, that was its name. Her eyes lit up around that creature. There was something familiar about that look, but it took him a while to place it…and when he did, his stomach turned over. That was how Serena had looked at him when she'd spotted him on campus, with a hopeful, budding love. That was alarming all on its own, but the hunger in the clone's eyes seemed to suggest that the feeling was mutual. It was bad enough that Giovanni was turning Cassandra into a soldier. If it got out that she'd been intimate with a pokémon, she'd be ruined. He had to do something. Maybe he should grab her and run as fast as he could out of Kanto? He'd been tempted to before, but now—

But there were also security cameras to dodge, and encrypted files to crack, and documents to forge if he wanted to get her out of the country. By the time he was ready, he was too late. Giovanni's insurance policy was in place, and the trauma train that Cassandra was already on went off the rails. First there was Biancardi's attack, and then the missions, and then she was in the hospital for a gunshot wound, and then Mewtwo disappeared in a puff of smoke and debris. There was no light in her eyes after that.

Caleb didn't know what to do. He wanted to hold her and tell her that everything would be okay—but even if he could get to her, why would she believe him? Why would she even listen to him? She'd been hurt by so many people. Why would she think that he was any different? He might be her father, but he hadn't been there for her, and nothing he could do now would make up for all of things he hadn't done to keep her safe. She would know that. She would hate him for it. And Caleb couldn't blame her—not when he felt the exact same way.

Scars:

Cassandra hadn't had this many scars the last time they'd made love. She shivered as Mewtwo traced the lines with his fingertips and tongue. If he had his way, she'd never gain any new ones. He wouldn't let anyone else hurt her. He would do everything in his power to give her a life of peace and comfort. He didn't think about the other types of scars she could get—the ones that marked the heart and soul—or how his attempts to shelter her might backfire. No matter how good his intentions were, not letting her make her own choices was still a betrayal of her trust. Only time would tell if that was a scar he could heal.

Cycle:

When Shadow thought about it, he didn't like how history seemed to be repeating itself: Children losing their parents to cruelty and abandonment and death; lovers being torn apart by those who should have protected them; how trauma and grief and rage was passed on from one generation to the next. Watching Mewtwo and Cassandra dance around each other in Lavender Town, he wondered if they'd learned enough to break the cycle. He hoped they could. He wanted them to be happy together, and for Christopher and Maya to have better childhoods than they'd had. Didn't they deserve that?

Red:

Cassandra had never liked the color red, which was unfortunate. For one thing, she looked really good in it. She could rock a slinky red dress with ruby earrings and necklaces if she wanted to (sometimes, for those annoying galas Giovanni threw for the League to appear respectable, she did). For another, red was a part of the Team Rocket uniform, probably because someone somewhere had decided that black and red should be the universal colors of evil—because of their associations with darkness and blood, no doubt—and Madame Maki had loved classic villain tropes (rumor had it that she'd chortled and everything). Cassandra didn't know if Giovanni had tried to redesign the uniform when he'd inherited the Team, but if he had, it had been too entrenched by then to change. And then there was the whole blood thing. It stood out so much after she'd had a hard day of work. She didn't think her job would be any easier if she liked the color red, but maybe she would cringe less at the sight of it. If only that vandalized copy of Meteor the Big Red Arcanine: Meteor Goes to the Doghouse hadn't fallen into her six-year-old hands, scarring her for life. Without it, she might have turned out normal.

Tears:

Mewtwo had been a child when he'd last cried. He'd never liked showing signs of weakness, and tears—no matter why they were shed—were always a sign of that. They meant that you were vulnerable from an overflow of emotion, be it from joy or sadness or rage, and people like Giovanni took advantage of that. Yet as Christopher stared up at him, bruised and trembling but alive, Mewtwo couldn't hold the tears back. He knelt, embraced his son, and reassured him that everything would be okay. He was safe. They were safe. And it was time for them to go home.

Blackness:

Cassandra had been prepared to die for a long time, though she hadn't thought it would happen like this: hemorrhaging in a hospital bed after giving birth, with blackness fuzzing around the edges of her vision. There was something morbidly funny about it, considering what she did for a living. No blaze of gunfire and glory for her. No, instead she was dying like an unnamed mother in a Victorian novel. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, though—didn't she deserve a rest? And maybe if an afterlife existed, she could con the reaper into letting her see her loved ones. Her mother. Amber. Mewtwo. It was a nice thought…but if she left, she would be leaving her children behind, alone and vulnerable. The world would eat them alive. She couldn't let that happen. No matter how much it hurt, she had to stay and keep them safe.

Flutter:

Serena was trying and failing to stay awake while watching 2001: A Space Odyssey when she felt her baby girl move for the first time. It was like a newborn bird testing out its wings, a soft, frantic, fluttering sensation. She sat up and was halfway through calling Caleb's name when she remembered that he was away on a "business trip." He hadn't known how long it would take. She flopped back down, cursing Giovanni and Team Rocket and her husband's loyalty to both. If he didn't come home soon, she was going to throttle someone, probably his best friend. Could anyone blame her for that? Would "I did it because of my pregnancy hormones" hold up in court? Fortunately, she didn't have to find out. When Caleb came through the door a few days later, jet-lagged and carrying a carton of her favorite ice cream, she guided his hands—cold from the dessert—to her stomach and told him what she'd felt. While it was too soon for him to feel the same thing, his huge, dopey smile made up for the wait.

Tender:

Everything about this moment was tender: her lips against his, her skin under his fingers, her gaze whenever they came up for air. Mewtwo nuzzled her shoulder as he rocked into her, shivering with pleasure. She squirmed in his arms, gasping at him to pick up the pace. They were interrupted when the hearth-fire beside them crackled and spit out embers. They cursed and tried to move away from it—when had they gotten that close?—but given how entangled they were, they only managed a clumsy roll.

"You—ah—could have used your psychic magic shit instead," she panted at him.

"Do you mean I should have levitated us?" he asked.

She blinked. "Have we tried that? Fucking in zero-G?"

He didn't think they had, actually. "Not yet. Though we could experiment—"

"Just don't drop us," she warned him.

He laughed. "You have my permission to skin me if I do."

"Deal," she said, tightening her grip around him.

God:

People said there were no atheists in foxholes, and while Cassandra hadn't fought in any wars, she'd seen enough violence to offer up a prayer or two. It couldn't hurt to try, even if it didn't seem like anyone was listening. Maybe that was because of what she'd done, though. Didn't God have a rule about killing people? But if she prayed for her children, would God listen then? They hadn't done anything wrong. They hadn't even been born yet. Would they end up suffering for what she'd done? Would they be punished for what they were? Team Rocket was calling them abominations, and sometimes she thought her guards might be thinking the same thing. It wasn't fair! But then, when had the universe, or God, or whatever cosmic force decided these things, cared about being fair?

Lust:

No one had ever explicitly told Mewtwo that he shouldn't lust after a human, but they didn't have to. There were editorials that railed about how perverse human and a pokémon trysts were, horror stories about the STI outbreaks that came from them, and even a section in the Kanto Trainer Handbook explaining how very illegal it was. "While most pokémon are very intelligent creatures," the handbook said, "they cannot give consent to humans, given their inability to communicate with us clearly." Furthermore, if any signs of sexual contact were found between a pokémon and their trainer, the pokémon would be taken by the PPS and the trainer would be prosecuted. So overall, it would be a terrible idea for Mewtwo and Cassandra to do anything like that. She might not be his trainer, but she would still be punished if they were caught.

When he was alone with her in her apartment, though, he sometimes daydreamed about it. She'd put on some science fiction movie and rest her head on his shoulder—her hair smelled like vanilla—and sometimes she even grabbed his arm if a monster with a melted face jumped out on the screen. The shock of it always made him want more contact, and sometimes it took all of his concentration to not start having some truly embarrassing thoughts. Especially when she started stroking the fur on the inside of his wrist. It was such a tiny thing, but it drove him mad. He had to get up and leave more than once, claiming that he just remembered that he had a meeting with Giovanni about some battle strategy or a new move-set that the man wanted him to try. She stared at him, bewildered, and then said, in a weirdly slow voice, "You really should check your schedule more closely. People hate it when you keep them waiting." She seemed to be getting at something, but he didn't have enough brainpower left to parse it. He conceded that she was probably right and then booked it back to his quarters, where he climbed into a cold shower. There. No more feverish daydreams. No more thinking about how much he wanted to kiss and feel up his friend. She was a friend. Nothing more.

Hide-and-Seek:

"Damn it—damn it, you need to tell me when we're playing hide-and-seek! When I couldn't find you, I thought—I thought you might be—oh god, come here—" Christopher's mother cut herself off as she hugged him tightly. It was the first time she'd been sharp with him and the first time he'd seen her crying from fear. He promised that he would never do it again, even if he did find another perfect hiding spot.

Blue:

Cassandra hadn't had her period in two months. That wasn't strange for her—she'd once gone a whole summer without having one—but she also hadn't been having sex then. Intellectually, she knew that she couldn't be pregnant. Mewtwo wasn't human and she was pretty sure that genetics didn't work that way. But the "what if?" needled at her, so she went to the drugstore and picked up a test.

As she waited in the bathroom for the result, she wondered—what if it could happen? What if she could get pregnant someday? Did she want kids? Did he? It was hard to imagine how they would make that work in Team Rocket, even though she knew plenty of other agents had families. They would have to adopt. Could they adopt? She'd heard that it was harder for single parents to do that, because whoever had the kids wouldn't count Mewtwo as her partner or even as a person. Giovanni might be able to pull some strings, but that would mean telling him why she wanted to adopt and who she wanted to raise the kid with. She didn't know if he would approve. He still didn't know about them.

It would really be easier if Mewtwo could knock her up. As she looked down at the test, though, she saw two blue lines. Negative. Well, that wasn't a surprise…so why was her stomach sinking? She couldn't really be disappointed, could she? That was ridiculous. She couldn't have a baby now! She was only sixteen. And yet, later that night, when she curled up next to Mewtwo and tried to tell him what she'd done that day—tried to find a way to make a joke about it—she was mortified to feel herself tearing up. When he asked her what was wrong, she shook her head. She was being stupid. They were going to have a future together. If there were parts of the fairy-tale happy ending that they couldn't have because of who they were, who cared? They would find other things to share—things that would just be theirs. They didn't need anything more than that.

Winter:

Mewtwo hated how cold and wet winter was, much to Cassandra's dismay. "You just haven't experienced the fun parts yet!" she insisted, dragging him outside. His attempt at making a snow angel wound up being a misshapen mess because of his tail, while the snowballs he tried to make "the old-fashioned way" (because using his telekinesis was apparently "cheating") crumbled between his fingers. Cassandra, after getting a face full of snow after teasing him about it, decided that sledding might be what finally converted him. As they hurtled down the slope, Cassandra yanked on the reins, barely keeping them from plowing into the snowmen and snowpokes that dotted the hill. He asked if he should use his telekinesis to control their direction more reliably, but she grinned and said that would ruin their fun. When they hit a chunk of ice and the sled pitched over, sending them sprawling into the slush, Mewtwo half-considered telling her, "I told you so." Then he heard her laughter and saw her red cheeks and sparking eyes. The snow was still terrible, he thought, but that image of her, wild and careful—maybe that was something he could look forward to every year, when the clouds and the cold rolled in.

Brother:

Cassandra was an only child, so she didn't know what it was like to have a sibling. Silver and Domino were the closest she'd had to that, growing up, and they hadn't seen enough of each other for it to count. There had been Amber, too, but their friendship had been as bright and short-lived as a tea light's flame. That, and it felt odd to consider her a sister. So what she knew about siblings was mostly what she'd observed from her children: how they teased each other, how they squabbled over crayons and toys and the last peppermint chip cookie, how they instantly had each other's backs when a ghost or a glinting-eyed sentret ambled by.

And when she thought about it like that, her thoughts were drawn not to the children she'd known years ago, but to Michael: how he threw her favorite chips at her in the snack aisle (honey barbecue), how he fought with her over what trashy TV show they should watch that night (he liked the one about the melodramatic doctors, predictably), and how they compared their targets at the firing range to see who was the better shot. She could almost see why Mewtwo had been worried when he'd first met her roommate. They were so comfortable together after five years and in sync when it came to caring for Maya and Christopher. From the outside, they probably had looked like a couple. But it had never been like that between them. As Cassandra placed a white rose on his casket, she scrubbed the tears from her cheeks and thanked Michael for being such a good brother.

Moonlight:

When Mewtwo and Cassandra were young, they'd stargazed together, learning the names of the constellations and the stories behind them from books. When they were apart, they gazed at the moon instead. It was alone in the sky, and that matched their dour moods better. In later years, as he searched for her, he counted the moon's phases, tracking the time, and ignored Citlali's suggestions that he should give it a rest already. He was going to find her. He could still feel her, as if a thread connected their hearts. Sometimes he felt it tug in his chest. Was she was thinking about him then?

On the other side of the thread, Cassandra sang a lullaby to her children—poorly, because she'd always been better at the viola—and tried not to miss their father. He should be here with them. Instead, she only found him in the color of Christopher's eyes and in the curves of Maya's face. It would have to be enough. She knew that. But still, on the nights when the moonlight was especially bright, she couldn't help but remember him and wish for more.

Thank You: To SpinarakShorts for beta-reading and to Shiguya Retomasi, Mai-danishgirl, Dark Magician Girl Aeris, Kayasuri-n, and Kosaten no Kokinatsuyosa for reviewing the original version of this fic.

Author's Note: This fic was written as a gift to Kayasuri-n, who gave me the 25 Words Prompt Challenge this was based on.