I guess I was afraid. You know? It's stupid, really. I'm a grown-ass woman, I'm closer to fifty than I'd like to admit, and the worst thing that could ever happen to me already did, twenty-four years ago. But you know better than anyone that it's been hard this past year, after the investigation and that whole showdown with the hospital bosses, and I just didn't want or need any more trouble knocking on my front door.
Or my clinic's front door. Which is more or less as sacred, for me. You run the one ghost-type clinic in Johto, you feel a sense of responsibility, especially when you get the feeling that people are looking for a reason to shut you down. And so when the Sinnish guy showed up, I have to say, I didn't give him much of a welcome.
"Dr Spearing?"
It was about eleven a.m., not that you'd know it down there in the first sub-basement. I'd stepped out into the waiting room to call in my fifth appointment of the day, hoping it'd be something simple; most of my mind was still orbiting the drifblim I had Audrey working on in the inpatient ward. Hyperbaric collapse. You know, we still don't know exactly why – but you've heard me banging on about that before. Point is, I didn't notice him right away, not until he came over and said my name again:
"Dr Spearing, may I have a moment of your time?"
I blinked. He was tall, well built, about our age, with serious features and an even more serious moustache. No pokémon that I could see, though if he was bringing a patient I figured it might be sick enough or big enough that he had to transport it in a ball. Speaking Galish, too. It's not that uncommon. Nobody has Johtoni as a second language, but lots of people have Galish; it's usually the easiest way for me to communicate with an international patient.
"Not unless you're Megan Bloumer or your partner is actively dying," I replied. Behind him, a young woman with a misdreavus straightened up in her seat: my next appointment, I figured. "Speak to our receptionist over there, he can help you."
Lorne was already on his feet, leaning out of the hole in the wall that connects the waiting room to his office.
"I tried, doc," he said, in Johtoni. It takes a lot to break his cool – he's been with us almost since the clinic opened, and at this point he's seen pretty much everything – but his patience was looking pretty ragged just then. Cheeks almost as red as his hair. "He showed up twenty minutes ago and I have not been able to get through to him."
"It's an emergency," said the man, though there wasn't much urgency in his tone. He had the slow, self-assured certainty of a man who everyone has listened to his entire life, and who expects them to carry on listening until such time as he's done talking. Quite annoying. Extremely punchable. "I did try to call ahead, but the line was busy, and there really wasn't time to wait. I'm afraid you may be the only person who can help."
I didn't punch him. Obviously. Just stood there and looked at him for a moment. It's usually enough to unsettle someone who doesn't know this face, and I did in fact see a few of the waiting trainers shift uncomfortably in their seats, but this guy was a tough nut to crack.
"One moment, Ms Bloumer," I said, over his shoulder, then switched back to Galish. "Look, Mr …?"
"Rowan. Maurice Rowan. I'm a Professorial Fellow at Sandgem University in Sinnoh."
Which explained everything, of course. We both learned that lesson pretty quick back in uni: give a man tenure and the god complex comes free.
"Right," I said. "Mr Rowan. What exactly is the problem? You don't look like you have a patient for me."
"Quite right. I don't." He gave me a very serious look, like I was his student and he wanted me to believe he thought what I'd just said was smart. It was sort of cute that he hoped that'd work, I guess, but not much more. "I have a young associate, a trainer, who does fieldwork for me. And, well, she claims to have partnered with a spiritomb."
One time I got hit in the face with a Dazzling Gleam. Mimikyu that didn't want to come out of its disguise so I could examine it. It was like I imagined nuclear war would be as a teen back in the 70s, the whole world burning away underneath the light of God's final judgement. I don't feel pain as keenly I used to, but I felt that, I can tell you.
This was kind of like that. There was the world, and then there was nothing at all but the shock.
"I am not interested in talks with spiritomb," I said. I could feel my northern accent thickening and my hair shift from swaying to outright writhing, but I think I did keep my voice level, at the very least. "If you knew enough to come here, you knew that, too."
"I'm aware, yes. The Fudan University spiritomb, 1977. Entirely wrongheaded. I don't see what other outcome the researchers could have expected, sending in someone so young and recently traumatised to speak with frankly one of the nastiest of its kind."
I wasn't expecting that kind of insight from someone so pompous. He was right, of course. When they flew me out to Shanghai, it had barely been five months since you saved me and I saved you back; I told them I wasn't sure, and they said I didn't have to but it could mean great things for phantasmology, and then they had to fly me back home again after I broke down and the Fudan spiritomb tried to kill me a second time over.
"Please understand," Rowan continued. "She claims this spiritomb isn't hostile. But she was injured while catching it, and the League has taken it into custody as a dangerous wild pokémon. They've also placed her under investigation for intentionally concealing a supernatural threat to the public." He fixed me with a piercing look that I could imagine had reduced more than one young student to stammering. "I can't say more in public, but I consider her vulnerable, and I have grave concerns about her wellbeing if her licence is revoked and she's sent home. To say nothing of the ethical concerns inherent to imprisoning an innocent."
Remember back when you could smoke in hospitals? It was demented, but right then I really missed it. Because as much as I wanted to tell this guy to fuck off and leave me to my work, he had a point, and in the face of a contradiction like that a person just needs a bloody cigarette.
"What are you asking me to do?" I asked. Seemed like the only thing I could say.
"Come to Sinnoh," he replied. "Assess the spiritomb. Talk to my young colleague, Miss Mandeville. If the League won't accept the recommendation of the world's most respected expert on the subject, I don't know what else to try."
"I can't just drop everything and fly out. I'm a doctor, I have patients, and the hospital won't just―"
"I appreciate that." He hesitated. "I won't deny, Dr Spearing, I'm a proud man. I don't like to beg. But I do very strongly believe that Miss Mandeville – Cynthia – and her spiritomb stand in desperate need of help that I'm not able to give."
Silence. I felt the world returning around me, saw all the people sitting there with their sick ghosts, staring. Lorne with his hands braced against his desk, each arm tense as a drawn bow. I wished you were there to help me. But you would only have told me to do what I ended up doing anyway.
"Lorne, do I have an eleven thirty?" I asked, in Johtoni.
"Huh? Oh. Uh, no. Nothing till quarter to."
I nodded.
"Thank you. Mr Rowan," I went on, in Galish. "You have an appointment in half an hour. Wait here while I deal with my next patient."
Even he wasn't so proud that the gratitude didn't show in his eyes.
"Thank you," he said, shaking my hand. "I appreciate it. Now please do carry on, I've detained you long enough."
"You certainly have," I muttered, in Johtoni in case he caught it. "Right. Ms Bloumer? Come through to the consulting room, please."
Do you remember all that? I mean, stupid question, of course you do. The night after I was murdered, after my soul got sucked into that keystone back in the winter of '76, you found me and you saved me. A week later, I saved you right back. It was the worst winter of my life, and the best, too, because if that hadn't happened I would never have realised that I loved you, that I'd always loved you, that the only reason I didn't know before was because you hadn't transitioned yet.
Caused a little transition of my own, too. From spiritomb to spiriternal, the first and only of my kind. This recent study out of Saffron University has confirmed it, by the way – new spiritual analysis of spiritomb fog with modern equipment has proven that they've all got the potential to evolve, to break that stone and regain something like their former selves. It's just that it's one of those bond-based evolutions. No other spiritomb has ever managed to truly love someone, or to be loved back. So there you go, saving me again. Just like you saved so many others.
I'm going to need you to save me one more time now, if that's okay. Let me tell you what Rowan said, then you tell me what you think I should do. Because I have a horrible feeling I know already, and I just don't know if I can handle it.
God knows how, but one way or another I fumbled through that consultation. (Nothing serious. Surface effervescence always looks alarming, but it's usually only a light disturbance of the emotional substrate.) And that's how I ended up leading Rowan down the dimly-lit hall to my office.
"Sorry about the dark," I said, as he stumbled. "They stuck us down here to keep us out of the way, but it's actually perfect for us. Ghosts love it. Including me," I added, the old line coming naturally to my lips as I led him into the pitch-black cube where I check my emails and write up my notes. "Lemme fix that for you."
I reached up and scattered a handful of purple flames up around the ceiling. They didn't cast much light, and my memories of how much the living need to see is a little hazy these days, but Rowan didn't trip over the chair when he sat down, so I guess I got it right.
"Thank you," he said, looking around. People always do that. Thinking how much they'd hate to work somewhere without windows, I guess. "I … well, forgive me. I suppose I expected Johto's finest pokémon hospital to provide better accommodation for the creator of modern ghost-type medicine."
It's a big title. Unfortunately, there isn't really any way I can wriggle out of it. Ten years ago, people assumed it was impossible to treat a sick ghost; then I put a melted haunter back together, the National Service for Pokémon Health gave me some funding, and here we are. Ecce phantasma.
"I'm not all that," I said. "If I've achieved a lot, it's only because I was the first person to care enough to try. Most people still don't. Hence …" I waved a hand at the room around us. "Anyway, Mr Rowan, I don't have a lot of time, and this isn't what you came here to talk about."
"Ah. Quite right." He leaned forward with a quick, businesslike movement, pulling his whole body into the task at hand. "I was called into this situation as both a pokézoologist and as Cynthia's journey sponsor."
"Sponsor?"
"She's an orphan, and doesn't get on well with her remaining family; Sinnish law requires that she have a dependable outside contact while on her pokémon journey. I used to know her mother – she lectured in music history before she moved to Sunyshore – and I stepped in." For the first time, he looked a little unsure of himself. Didn't take me long to figure out why. "She is, ah, I believe the term she uses is transgender. It … places her at odds with her grandparents. I suspect that's why she's made it her mission to turn her trainer journey into a career."
"I can understand that," I said. "You see it a lot here, too. Extend your trainer journey, have a go at pro battling – it tends to be one of the first things kids try to escape a bad situation at home." I cocked my head, curious. "You took it on yourself to help?"
There I went, asking questions, getting invested. Hard not to, really: a ghost and a trans girl, just like us. We were lucky, though. Not that we were stuck in Mahogany in the seventies – God, do you remember the way Sarah panicked when you walked into the store, like you were a hand grenade and all the tins were toddlers? – but that you had the kind of parents that even today are one in a million. We still had to leave town, of course. Mahogany would've killed you like it did me. But we never had to go it alone.
Cynthia didn't have that. What she had, right now, was a friend in custody and one puffed-up professor flying off to Johto on a wild goose chase.
"She's the daughter of a good friend of mine," said Rowan, in a stiff sort of way that sounded like he was trying to conceal some genuine fondness. "And I believe her to be a formidable talent. Most Sinnish trainers don't take more than two or three badges. She collected all eight in fourteen months and placed fourth or above in every tournament she's entered."
I know you don't follow the professional scene the way I do, love, but even you must know these are real sit-up-and-stare numbers.
"Right," I said. "You're thinking, when she comes of age she's gonna get snapped up as a gym trainer."
"I know several Sinnish gym leaders who have her name on their list of new talent to watch. It wouldn't surprise me if, in ten years, she had their job. But none of that will happen if she's struck off the trainers' register for having unleashed a Eumenid-class pokémon on the Sinnish public."
I'd almost forgotten for a moment why we were even talking. The spiritomb, of course. The reason why this was my problem and not just his.
"She says the spiritomb isn't hostile," I said. "And you think I can prove it."
"I know you can." Rowan gestured obviousness. "It wounded her, yes, but it didn't kill her, and she felt safe enough to take it out of the cave where she found it and sleep in the same room as it. Whatever the League might think of her, Cynthia is neither stupid nor a poor judge of character. If she thought the creature was dangerous, she'd have retreated and notified the authorities."
It. Creature. I could make excuses – this was his second language, and mine, and he was used to working with animals in a dispassionate sort of way – but you know me. I wouldn't still be here if I wasn't up for a fight.
"This is a person we're talking about, Mr Rowan," I said, allowing my hair to writhe out into an ominous spectral halo. "Up to two hundred of them, in fact."
I'm not sure he had it in him to look ashamed, but he did pause for a moment, like he was at least taken aback.
"That's exactly the sentiment that needs to be brought into the investigation," he said. "And why I proposed having you consult."
I had to take a moment. Couldn't let myself start to care. You and me have taken on a lot of long odds, and we've beaten at least half of them. But you feel the losses a little harder every year, and these past six months have left me so damn tired of fighting losing battles.
"It's like I told you," I said. "I've got too many fires of my own to fly out to Sinnoh and start fighting other people's. Even if I did, you and I both know it's a lost cause. I'm not going to get through to this spiritomb, and your League isn't going to release them to partner with a teenage girl."
"They … may. We're fortunate enough to have a ghost-type specialist on the Elite Four at present; when I proposed you consult on this, he signed off quite enthusiastically. I'm certain he'll listen, if nothing else."
I raised an eyebrow. Could've raised quite a lot more, but since all that shit went down, I've been extra paranoid about keeping things professional at work.
"Yeah, okay. I'm not sure that changes the calculus as much as you think."
I left it at that. After a couple seconds, Rowan's brows twitched toward each other like two magnets wriggling from someone's grip.
"I confess I'm not sure what you mean," he said. "I've told you what's at stake. You must see why I had to speak with you."
"Sure. Now let me tell you what's at stake for me." I didn't raise my voice. Didn't loom or work the shadows or any other spooky shit. Just laid it out for him, plain and simple. "Late last year a former patient of mine killed twelve people at the Christmas market on the South Bank. Annihilape. They can make a real mess of a person when they want to, as I'm sure you know. His partner was looking at jail time, so he blamed it on the treatment he'd undergone here, and when you work in ghost medicine, every therapy in your toolkit looks like black magic to a cop." I turned one hand over, palm up. Hoped he knew what I meant. "They dropped charges in the end because of a lack of clear evidence, but we're on thin ice with the directors. Going to bat for a spiritomb that's attacking children is not something I can afford to do. Not if I want the Intangibles Clinic to still exist in six months' time."
My speech sat between us for a moment, spreading out like a bloodstain in fresh linen. Then Rowan cleared his throat and took a business card from his pocket.
"I understand," he said. "I can't say I agree, but I do understand. Your work here is vital to a great many people – indeed, to the future of the field. Yet, selfishly perhaps, I can't help but urge you to reconsider."
"I understand that, too. I really do."
There was a pause, then we both stood up at once, struck by the sudden awareness that this meeting was over.
"Well," said Rowan, handing me his card. "If you change your mind, you can call my office at this number. I've also written the number of the payphone at a café in the airport. I'll be waiting there until six for my return flight."
"Right." I shook his hand. Seemed the least I could do. He was annoying as a person, but he'd come here to help two people no one else gave a shit about, and I had to respect that. "I'll, uh … think about it."
I didn't really mean that. But it was true all the same. I've been thinking, love. I've been thinking all morning, thinking till I feel like my thoughts are gonna boil right over and come pouring out of my ears. That's why I came here. I hate to bother you on your break, but … I could use someone to talk it through with. I have an obligation to my work, a kind of ghost doctor covenant. If I get fired, there's no clinic. The people I'm training just aren't there yet; they won't be able to carry on the work without me.
On the other hand, we both know what it's like to be two people no one else gives a shit about. And you remember as well as I do that we wouldn't have escaped that night if the older dykes hadn't swooped in to save us. That's a covenant too, in its own way. No matter what kind of fear I still have. So here I am. Sitting up here with you and a pack of smokes, not sure which way the ash is gonna fall.
(…)
Go for the bloody jugular, why don't you. Yeah, okay. I'm scared. Like I said. And it's stupid, I know, but … but I am. I still have nightmares about it, from time to time. Waking up in that stone, a severed head sprouting from a mass grave. I don't want to look at that again. I can't.
(…)
Yeah. I know.
Sinnoh's beautiful from the air. It looks kind of like home, as if someone cut the north out of Johto and put it down on an island all its own: thick, dark forest giving way to the muscular rise of the hills and mountains. I looked at it and felt like I understood it in a way I couldn't explain.
We landed on the east coast, just outside a city called Sunyshore. Not that I saw a lot of it; by the time we got that close, the rain had started coming down hard, and three feet beyond the window was about as far as I could see. I thought maybe the city name was meant to be ironic, but apparently I was just unlucky enough to visit on the one day this summer that it rained. Guess I should've flown out with Rowan the day before after all, but I had to check in on that drifblim. I needed to … well, anyway. Audrey has it covered. Her misdreavus can help her get the―
Doesn't matter. It's fine.
By the time I finally got through border control – disadvantage of undead travel; people don't like scary ghost women in their airport – pretty much everyone else on the flight had got through, and arrivals was almost empty. Wasn't hard to find Rowan. Particularly as he was waiting with a shortish guy in a black leather coat so long and heavy he had to be either a far-right weirdo or a ghost-type trainer really committed to his theme. Based on the rotom sparking and buzzing by his shoulder, I was betting on the latter.
"Dr Spearing!" called Rowan, as if he wasn't standing next to the goth equivalent of a lighthouse. "We were a little worried."
"You've never travelled with anyone legally dead before, have you? Had to spend forty minutes explaining to security that I'm all safe and cool and not here to eat souls."
"Of course," said the other guy, in heavily accented but word-perfect Galish. His rotom took a long look at me, electric-blue eyes wide as childhood summers, and dived into his pocket. Hiding in his mobile, I guess. I have that effect on some ghosts, particularly those lower down the spectral food chain. "Nathaniel Furman, Sinnoh League. I head the containment squad and serve on the Elite Four during challenge season, specialising in ghost-types."
"I guessed," I said, shaking his hand. "Tacoma Spearing."
"Oh, I know." He grinned at me. You'd have found it very charming; there was something about that haircut and smile that gave the impression of a he/him baby butch. "I can't quite believe you're really here. I've been meaning to make a pilgrimage to Goldenrod for the last two years, only I didn't like to interrupt your work. Tell the truth, I'm sorry to do it now. I know you must have a lot of patients."
"I have a good team. They can handle it." I didn't sound convincing, even to me. I should have been there right then, doing my job. Not all the way up here sniffing at the edge of the Arctic circle. "I, uh … suppose I should thank you for squaring this with the hospital."
"It's nothing. The directors were very accommodating, once I explained the gravity of the situation. A spiritomb, here in Sinnoh! There are reports of two from about a hundred and fifty years ago, during the distortion crisis and the Unification War, but both seem to have vanished not long―"
"Nat, Dr Spearing's come a long way," said Rowan, which was the first thing he'd done I'd ever been grateful for. "And we have further still to go from here."
"Of course." Nat held up his hands in defeat. "My wife says I could talk for Sinnoh. Do you need to collect your luggage?"
I followed his gaze down to my empty hands, realised what he was getting at. That morning, I'd put on the jacket you bought me back in my obligatory butch-of-centre motorbike phase, stuffed my travel papers and a pack of Sacred Phoenix in the pockets, and walked out.
"You can travel pretty light when you don't need anything," I said. "Where are we going from here?"
"Pastoria," said Rowan, leading me toward the exit. People were staring – I could feel it – but I'm good at not caring now. As long as staring's all they do. "It's where Cynthia was found."
"And where the spiritomb is being held," added Nat. "The Coronets make cross-island travel difficult, so we have three containment facilities – one outside Canalave, one at HQ on Gibbous Isle, and one just south of Pastoria on the south coast."
I didn't know where any of these places were, but I nodded along anyway.
"They're both still there?" I asked. "Cynthia and the spiritomb?"
"Yes."
"And how is she? Able to talk?"
"She should be. I heard from the hospital that she's awake and lucid."
Poor kid. I wished I was you, that I had your talent for rescuing children, then I put all that from my mind and tried to focus on what I did have.
"Okay," I said. "I'll want to talk to her first. Need to get all the background information before I meet with the spiritomb. You can never be too prepared with these things."
"Of course, of course." Nat paused with one hand on the door. Its glass panels were streaming with water, the world beyond a vision glimpsed in a clouded mirror. "Oh! I almost forgot." He smiled his he/him smile again. "Welcome to Sinnoh, Dr Spearing. Sorry about the weather."
"It's Tacoma. And, uh … it's fine. Glad to be here."
You'd have known I was lying. He just took me at my word. And the three of us hurried out through the whipping rain toward the car.
Pastoria's quite a way from Sunyshore, along a long highway that curves through forests and fens and black cliffs being eaten alive by a blacker sea. The city itself was crowded onto higher land at the edge of a bog that went on and on forever, all twig rush and peat and sparse, prickly trees. I kinda dug it, but that's the ghost in me, trying to convince the human part that I should hang out in a swamp and lure people onto unstable ground.
The hospital was more of the same, twelve haunted-looking floors of darkened windows and streaky stonework. Nat dropped us off – calls to make, he said: one team out working on a steelix that'd burrowed into a department store basement and another on ghosts infesting an iron mine. I was glad to hear it, honestly. I didn't really want him around while I dealt with the spiritomb; I definitely didn't want him around while I interviewed a teenage girl dealing with a recent and life-altering eye injury.
"He means well," said Rowan, as we watched him speed away. "Thank you for your patience. Applying to his enthusiasm for your work was really the only way I had of securing League backing for this."
It caught me by surprise. Nothing about his demeanour during the drive had led me to believe he had any opinions about the barrage of questions Nat had flung at me on the way.
"Ah, it's fine," I said, which it hadn't been until he said that. "Nothing I haven't dealt with before."
"Yes, well. It's … appreciated." He directed this at a nearby lamppost, head tilted so neither I nor anyone else at literally any angle on the street could have caught his eye. "Shall we?"
"Beats standing around in the rain."
Inside the hospital it felt like my first few days on the job, back when they had me on the dark-type ward. Same faded paintwork, same strip lights, same fearful eyes and worried faces. The only real difference was that I couldn't read the signs. I stood there with my hands in my pockets, not reacting, while Rowan traded Sinnish with the people at the desk, then followed his lead and made for the lifts.
"It seems Cynthia's improving," he said, as we stepped inside. "They've moved her to a less urgent ward."
"You don't sound happy about it."
He gave me a sharp look.
"Because she was admitted here under her chosen name. And her grandparents arrived half an hour ago. They, ah … well, you know. They don't know. About her."
I grimaced. We both know how that song goes.
"I guess they do now." The lift dinged. "C'mon."
We hurried out, past startled radiologists and someone who looked uncannily like my nephew Foster, and through a set of double doors onto the ward. After that, we pretty much just had to follow the noise.
Third bed. A man and a woman about twenty years my senior, kicking off. One nurse trying to calm them down. The most tired kid I'd seen in a long damn time, huddled half-dead on the bed between them all.
"Sophia, Bain," said Rowan, rushing on ahead. "Çe na Rowan …"
He went on in Sinnish, too quickly for me to follow. Didn't seem to do much, except get Bain yelling at him instead as well. I gave him a minute to turn it around, but Sophia grabbed his arm and started wailing, and the nurse started trying to separate them. And I was starting to think maybe I oughta do something, you know, when I noticed Cynthia noticed me, noticed her gasp, noticed her eye go straight to the broken keystone floating in my chest, noticed the starburst of shock and sudden desperate hope glittering around her head, and I felt a cold black fury rise up within me that eclipsed all rationality.
"Hey!"
Sinnoh, Johto, the shadows are all the same: when I call, they answer. Every dark space in the room burst into life, swelling and straining at its roots like angry vines, and half a second later I had dead silence and all eyes on me.
They saw me then. Every last one. They feared me, too. I hated it, and loved it, and wanted to throw up about it, but most of all I took advantage of it.
"This is a hospital," I said, hoping someone here spoke Galish. "As a doctor, I hold the wellbeing of the patients here pretty sacred. You wanna fight, you take it outside."
Bain tried to glance at Sophia, but his body knew a threat when it saw one and refused to take its eyes off me. She mumbled something, maybe a translation; at least, it sounded a lot like what Rowan said a moment later. I didn't react, anyway. Just stood there, looking scary, until they drifted out through the door in his wake.
"Thanks," said the nurse, looking like he couldn't decide whether to be relieved or terrified. "You are …?"
"Dr Spearing. I've been asked to speak to Ms Mandeville here." I gestured to the exit. "Would you draw the curtains on your way out, please? I think we've caused enough of a scene."
"Uh, sorry," he said. "My Galish is …" He waved a hand helplessly. "Seen what?"
"A scene. Like a – sorry, it's a figure of speech. I mean―"
Cynthia said something in Sinnish. The nurse jumped – maybe he'd forgotten why we were all fighting too – then nodded and backed out, twitching the curtains closed as he went.
I waited until all the footsteps were distant. Then I sighed and sat down heavily in the chair by Cynthia's bed.
"Sorry about that," I said. "There's no excuse. They should all know better. Name's Tacoma, by the way."
She gave me a long, searching look. She could only bring one eye to bear on me – the other was buried under the dressings currently muffling half her face – but she made a pretty good go of it all the same. Her eyes were ice-grey and set astride a strong nose like a raven's beak, framed by wild mane of golden hair; when a face like that casts a look your way, you feel the weight of it landing.
"You're a spiritomb," she said. Distinctive accent; it sounded like she'd learned Galish young, from old movies. The words came through clear enough that I could hear her fighting to keep the questioning note from her voice.
"I was. For a couple weeks in 1976. But I got better."
Neither of us spoke for a little while. Normally that means the other person's afraid of me, but I don't think she was.
"Thanks for translating, by the way," I said. "Guess you know why Rowan and the League asked me to come out here. I'm a doctor from Johto, specialising in ghost-types. Here to talk to you about your friend. They have a name, by the way? Nobody could tell me."
She looked up sharply at that, the hope in her eye stinging like a fresh cut, before she reined herself in and her gaze hardened again. I'm willing to bet nobody else had asked, or stopped to think that when a person partners with an articulate pokémon, it's not a case of catching but of befriending.
"Solomon," she said, guardedly.
"Thanks." I took out my notebook and wrote that down. "Any particular pronouns? It's hard to tell with ghosts and I don't particularly wanna start our chat by offending them."
That really threw her, in a way that nearly broke even my stone heart. I knew the type, because that was us, before we got our scholarships and our tickets out of town. Kids from old, cold nowheres who've never encountered a single other queer person in their lives.
"I don't really know yet," she said. "I wasn't sure how to ask."
"That's fine. If I learn during my chat with them, I'll let you know." I made a second note. "Now, I came here first because I figured I should get the whole story before I went and met them. I was hoping you could help me with that, Cynthia."
She held my gaze for a moment, then turned her face away, one hand rising automatically to cup the dressings in its palm. It hurt to look at her. Every time I see a kid in a hospital bed, I think of you, after the accident that ended your trainer journey. Looked like you didn't have a drop of blood left in your body.
"We're in no rush," I said, letting my voice soften. "I know you're recovering from a pretty bad injury."
She let her hand fall, muttered something mutinous in Sinnish. Probably shouldn't have gone with 'recovering', given that we both knew the chances of her seeing outta that eye again weren't great. Dark-type energy is inimical to human life by its nature; when it gets into an open wound, it tends to destroy a person's phagocytes and stall the healing process at the inflammation stage. There's a reason we use extracts from murkrow feathers in leukaemia treatments.
"Do I have to speak with you?" asked Cynthia, eyes down. "Like is this part of the League investigation?"
"No. It isn't."
I gave it a moment's thought, trying to see not her reply but what she was replying to, what she thought I was saying. You spend twenty-five years in a committed relationship with a therapist, you get a little better at talking to kids with problems.
"You don't trust me," I said, in the end. "I get that. The adults in your life haven't exactly been reliable, have they? I figure Rowan means well, but talking to him still makes me wanna run headfirst into a brick wall."
Something moved in her face, like the faint ghost of a long-dead smile pushing desperately at the surface of its grave.
"Still, he asked me out here. Not the League. I agreed because … well, I guess because I've met a lotta kids like you. My wife runs a refuge, see." A second twitch, this time running deeper. It was what I wanted; I needed her to know on which side of things I stood. "For homeless queer kids. And I used to be a spiritomb who got rescued by a trans girl. So, you know, I didn't fly out here to help the League send you home and Solomon to some concrete vault in the middle of nowhere. I think you know that, too. Otherwise you wouldn't have helped me out just now."
A moment passed. Then another, and then another, the silence between us filling up with beeps and wheels and low voices and the thousand other noises of an active ward. Then, at last, she let out a little tch of breath and shook her head.
"A second spiritomb rescued by a second trans girl," she said. "You'd have to be really stupid to lie about that. So I guess that's … true."
"Well, I have been known to tell a stupid lie, but that's just because I like to mess with my nieces and nephews." I grinned. "But yeah. It really happened."
"Yes." She closed her eye. Drew in a deep, stuttering breath. "I … I translated because I just wanted everyone to go away. Not because of anything else."
It seemed kindest to let her think I believed that, so I shrugged and held my hands up in defeat.
"I never said I was a psychologist," I said. "I just fix ghosts. And sometimes I pay my good luck forward by helping out kids who need it. Like now."
Cynthia bit her lip. Let it go. Looked, for the first time in a while, directly into my eyes.
"Gods," she murmured. "I think – I think maybe I do … need some help. And so does Solomon. I promised them. And now … well."
"You haven't broken your promise. You can make good, right here and now."
"Yes." She swallowed. Held my eye. "Tacoma, right?"
"Yeah."
"I do appreciate it. You coming out here. So … let's start again."
She sat up a little, squared her shoulders. When she held out a hand toward me, I almost laughed; it was so much more serious than her age allowed, like a child wearing their dad's clothes. But I've been around long enough to know that we all start out as posers before our identities become real, so all I did was shake it.
"Welcome to Sinnoh, Tacoma," she said. "Sorry about the weather."
I cocked my head.
"Huh. Nat said the same thing."
Her lips parted in something that was very nearly a smile.
"It's what people say," she said, glancing at the rain-flecked window. "So, um – what do you want to know?"
"Appreciate it. Let's start at the beginning, then. You were in a cave network under the hills …"
And I guess you were right, love. Like we both knew you were. Because sitting there, working the fragments of the story loose from Cynthia like buckshot from a wound, I knew that this was the only decision I could ever have made. I'm in, now. For the long haul. And if they wanna send this kid home, if they wanna put Solomon in jail, they're gonna have to get through me first.
