.

Purple

"Life is but a dream for the dead."

–Gerard Way

Echos…

Voices…

Mom…?

"Some things are alive and then, when they stop being alive, they're dead. You, Misty, are alive. See how you move and think and live? That's being alive."

"Then what's dead?"

"Death is what happens after you're alive. You don't move or think or do anything. Your body is still there but you are no longer in it. Understand?"

"Not really…"

No, not really. Her thoughts were all twisted. Twisted like a rope. Twisted like spaghetti. Twisted like a sick, empty smile bringing about nothing but pain and pain and pain. Twisted…

But she couldn't move. She couldn't do anything. So…was this death?

But was she thinking or was this just happening? What was the difference?

She couldn't see anything. There was just black everywhere. Like the inside of a Gyarados's mouth if you were wandering unknowingly and fumbled your way in. So scary. Then, slowly pervading through it, were wisps of purple, curling around the vacuum she was in. Tendrils moved toward her and while she couldn't feel them, she couldn't help but think that they were going down her throat, choking and suffocating her.

Not again…

There was no scent, nothing to breathe. Only nothing to breathe. Could you smell nothing? If you're not breathing and not smelling anything is that the same as breathing and smelling nothing? What was nothing? Nothing was lost. And she was lost.

Everything was suddenly spinning—or swaying. Her eyes couldn't focus on anything, so she couldn't tell which direction she was going. All she could see was a sick mixture of black and purple, playing tricks on her eyes so she couldn't tell where one ended and one began.

Is a Zebstrika a black horse with white stripes or a white horse with black stripes?

Nausea overcame her and she felt the need to heave, purge the purple dizziness out of her. In the whole world there was nothing but dizziness and purple. So were they the same thing? But she couldn't feel anything. So the wooziness didn't go away. No, she just kept spinning and spinning and spinning and spin…

Round and round they go, where they stop nobody knows.

Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posy. Ashes, ashes, they all fall…

A flash of red. Permeating through the endless night of black and purple was a dull red centering her vision. The dizziness came and went and the red dot was all she could see through the endless space. It seemed familiar. Purple was dizzy and red was not. That was good to know. She'd keep it in mind.

She wanted to walk towards the red. Red good, purple bad. She wanted to reach out and touch it, but she couldn't move. She wasn't even really there, was she?

So was this death? Or…

Or what?

Somehow, someway, somewhere something became visible in the distance, as though she was moving forward but without the assistance of a floor beneath her. That was promising. She focused her energy on making her way towards that thing because even if she wasn't moving, it was otherwise working.

A world around her began to take shape. The haze of the dark swirls continued but, as they ebbed and flowed, they parted to reveal two parallel lines. Lines marked by mirrored perfect intervals on either side of her.

She was the middle. The balance beam with equal amounts of world on either side. But was she toeing the beam or was she the beam?

A hallway. No ceiling, floor, or walls, marked only by the imaginary edges by which those sides would meet. And doors. Oh, so many doors.

At each crack where the doors met the would-be floors was a blinding white light that she couldn't look at, as it was so blinding against the dark backdrop of this world.

So, should she open a door?

Innocent curiosity answered, "Yes," but there were infinite doors in front of her…And she realized that she wasn't just faced with that but there were also now infinite doors behind her.

Infinity plus infinity. Two infinity equals infinity but one infinity is bigger than the other. Then are the two prior equal? Who's to say? One infinity, two infinity. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. Red good, blue…?

In front or behind. That thought providing her maddening focal point, she didn't know how she could possibly choose which door to go through first. Or if she even could.

Curiosity finally getting the better of her, she turned her focus to the closest door on her left, being mindful to look only at the knob and not the blinding whiteness invading so very near. Purple bad, red good, white…? Good or bad or…?

But unlike before, she didn't grow closer to the door, she grew further away. All of them began to vanish along with the purple swirls. They curled like smoke around the world taking them away like a smoke bomb disappearing act.

Wait! She still didn't know if this was death or life or…

Beeping. What was that beeping sound? Ugh, it was hurting her head. The sound grew angrier and angrier, as though it was forcing its way into her skull and swirling her brain around like an eggbeater.

She groaned, or at least she tried to. It came out as more of a strangled hiss, as her throat was really dry. And then it hit her all at once.

Her head hurt. And not from the beeping, it just hurt all over to the point where it was throbbing, like it was trying to claw its way inside out of her. And the rest of her felt tingly. She wanted to squirm, shake it off, jump in a pool to wash it off but she found that she couldn't even really move.

But she could a little. So she opened her eyes and after a few blinks she found herself in an unfamiliar room surrounded by a few people. One in particular was wearing a white coat and made his way over to her with a smile growing on his face.

"You're awake," he said as he approached her.

"Oh, thank God!"

Misty flicked her eyes to where the new voice came from and saw her mother with her hand pressed to her chest and a look of relief flooding her eyes as tears leaked out.

"Mommy," Misty rasped, the word coming out more as puffs of air than actual vibration.

"I'm here, sweetheart," her mother said as she went to Misty's side and grasped her hand tenderly. Misty could barely feel it. Just a little pressure and warmth more than the specific feeling of having her hand held, but it was comforting nonetheless. "Your sisters are outside."

But who was that other guy looking out the window?

Misty swallowed a few times to try and lubricate her throat, ignoring the terrible taste that she found when she did so. She then was about to ask her question, but the man in the white coat beat her to it.

"I'm your doctor," he explained simply. "You had a bad time in the ocean and so we had to take you here to the hospital to treat you."

The doctor then went on to ask Misty a few simple questions. Most of them were really easy and as the time passed she began to get more and more feeling in her body, gaining her range of motion back as well.

So, even though Misty hated being in the hospital room and she still didn't understand all the random people that were in there, she grew more comfortable with the doctor. He seemed like a nice enough man, and her mother was still on her other side, rubbing soothing circles on her hand.

But then they got to a question that Misty didn't know the answer to.

"Do you remember what you were doing right before you woke up?"

Misty furrowed her eyebrows together. "I watched my mom do a Battle, then I played in my room while my sisters painted their nails, then I went to the beach," she ticked off, recalling each event as she did so.

"And then?" the doctor prodded.

It was getting fuzzy. "Then…I went into the ocean."

"And then?"

"…I don't know."

Misty's mom turned to her with a concerned face. "You don't remember?"

Misty turned her head towards her to the best of her ability. "I don't remember," she affirmed, tears welling in her eyes.

"It's alright, sweetheart," her mother soothed, petting her hair comfortingly. "You're fine, so it's alright."

"Yes, she appears to be fine, miraculously," the doctor concurred. "But we still need to give her an MRI to ensure that she doesn't have brain damage or fluid in her lungs. It's pretty standard for near-drowning victims."

She'd almost drowned? She didn't remember that at all.

Her eyes were still moist with tears and she tried to blink them away. Before long she was carted out of the room. She caught a glimpse of her sisters, who looked relieved to see her, for once. That put a slight smile on her lips, but mostly she felt unsettled. The doctor and her mom told her that she would be in a loud tube for a little while, but that it wouldn't hurt. She was scared of that, but something else was bothering her too.

There were strange people in this hallway too, just like in the room. And they all looked confused when she looked at them, just because she was being rolled down the hallway. She turned away from them and focused on her mother, who kept on giving her reassuring smiles.

Her throat still hurt and her head hurt unbelievably, but overall she was feeling better. The doctor had said that she was lightly poisoned and that that was why her body was paralyzed, which meant that it couldn't move. But they had given her an antidote and it was working quickly.

The doctor said he was confident that she would be fine, however unlikely it had been that she would make it out of her situation alive at all. She was lucky.

And she would be fine.

Well, she never wanted to do that again.

No, the MRI hadn't hurt, but it had been so loud and made her head hurt even more. And she had been stuck in there for so long. And even though the doctor had said that her mom couldn't join her in the room with her, she saw a couple other people step in. Eventually she had just closed her eyes and tried to relax as much as she could.

The good news was that now she was going home and would only have to go back to the hospital once more in a few days, assuming nothing went wrong.

She really hoped nothing went wrong.

And it didn't look like things would because her sisters were certainly back to normal. They were squabbling in the back seat while Misty got the rare privilege of sitting in the passenger seat. Usually only Violet and Daisy got to do that, and they both argued with their mom before finally giving in and letting Misty sit there. She was sick, after all, and they did feel at least a little bad. Daisy had even offered Misty a candy from the gift shop which she was currently sucking on gleefully as she enjoyed her first class view. At least being sick had its benefits.

Not that they outweighed how bad Misty still felt. She kept on coughing. The doctor had said that she had pneumi—pneumo—something that would keep her coughing for a while more. She wasn't happy about that, but the sucking candy was actually helping and apparently she was lucky that the cough and the headache were the worst of what she was dealing with.

They drove by the ocean. The same one that had tried to swallow Misty whole but had only managed to get a hold of some of her memories in its grubby hands.

"No more going to the beach alone, Misty," her mother said in a forceful voice as she caught a glimpse of Misty's wandering eye. "Ever."

Misty could agree with that. She didn't want to go to the ocean by herself again. As she turned her eyes back to the road she felt herself let out a breath of air she didn't even know that she had been holding. She then let out a painful cough, taking out her candy as she did so.

No, she wouldn't be going back in the ocean. Maybe not even in the pool.

"Okay, mommy," she wheezed as her cough began to trail off.

"No swimming at all until your pneumonia goes away."

"Okay."

Maybe she'd just stick to watching Pokémon Battles for a while. She turned back to look at the beach again. Maybe she'd just watch them on TV instead of by the pool. Yeah, that was a good idea.

Wait. That was different.

"Mommy, what's that person doing?"

Her mother spared a glance at the beach. "What person, sweetheart?" she asked.

"That person on the cliff."

Another quick look out the window and her mother frowned in confusion. "There's no one on the cliffs, sweetheart."

Misty was still looking out the window. That wasn't right. There was someone climbing the cliffs and jumping in the ocean. She'd never seen people do that before. It looked dangerous. But her mom was driving, so maybe she just hadn't gotten a good look at them.

Then, a few minutes later: "We're home, sweetheart."

Her sisters had already hopped out of the car and were impatiently making their way into the house. Misty hadn't even noticed her mom open the door and start unclipping her seatbelt. And now her candy was nothing but a little stick in her mouth. She pulled it out and handed it to her mom who took it and then picked Misty up to carry her into the house. Misty smiled. Her mom hardly ever carried her anymore.

"We need to get you some real food," her mom said as she set Misty down and tossed the stick into the trashcan nearest to the front door. "What do you want to eat?"

"Mac 'n cheese!" Misty answered immediately. That was what she always said.

"Okay."

Misty smiled, surprised. Her mom hardly ever said yes to that anymore. It made her wonder what else she could get. She quickly put on her sweetest face and looked at her mother with big eyes. "Could Brock come over too?"

That gave her mother pause as she thought over the idea. It was a great idea, though, if Misty did say so herself. Brock was older and very smart, so it was almost like she would have an extra person to take care of her instead of her mom having an extra person to take care of.

More importantly, though, he was her best friend. Kind of her only friend, if she was telling the truth. Her sisters said that all of the time, but she didn't like to think that it was true. Her mother assured her that she would have more friends once she started going to school. She had only been able to meet Brock and his siblings because his family had a Gym too. But they had a Rock Gym, so it wasn't as cool. It was fun to climb the rocks sometimes, though…

Misty shook herself out of her thoughts and turned back to her mother, from whom she was still awaiting an answer. Eventually she nodded. "I'm sure we can work something out with his parents."

Misty gave a little happy dance, jumping and spinning about the room. All of these perks! Maybe being sick wasn't that bad.

Suddenly she started coughing again, heaving as her body nearly folded in half at the middle until her chest felt like it was ripping out and tears came to her eyes. She even felt light-headed, which made her headache start throbbing again.

No. Being sick was really bad.

A/N: Okay, I have a couple of things to say that I would have said last chapter, but that A/N was already days long, so here I go again! First of all, this story has two prevalent themes in it that were also integral parts of Weather the Storm, another story of mine. For that, I apologize, but it'll be totally different from that story, I promise! Second is a kind of a warning, I guess. I'm just going to say straight away that Ash doesn't appear in the story for many chapters and that this is an incredibly Misty-centric tale. Don't worry, though! This is totally PokéShipping and Ash will be here in plenty later. There's just pacing to it. And it will be all the sweeter with the wait, right?

Ehem, anyway, hope you enjoyed this installment! Yes, Misty survived! But what's next? Oh, and for something completely different, I'm going to thank my wonderful beta C'sMelody down here! Love you, girl!