CW this chapter: suicide is discussed. Also a lot of depression, which I don't usually warn you about. Should I start doing that? Drop a comment if you want me to start tagging the depresso chapters.

"Evelyn? It's three."

"…"

"I'm gonna take your pokemon down for lunch. I'll leave Trust with you."

"Mhm."

"I'm back. I brought food."

"…"

"I'm going back outside to train, but if you want to talk or anything, I'm here for you."

"…"

"I'm leaving your other pokemon here and taking Trust."

"…"

Silence.

The sound of a door opening and closing.

In violet: "Evelyn!"

"…mm?"

In pink: "Nous l'avons fait! Nous pouvons hear each other!"

"Oh, that's great…!"

A pause. In violet: "We just thought we'd let you know."

"I'm excited for you."

In pink, sounding unconvinced: "Merci."

"I'm sorry. I really am happy for you. You've been looking forward to this."

In violet: "It's okay. Is there anything we can do to help you?"

The first real feeling of the day: a sudden swell of sadness that ballooned and then disappeared.

"Just… Just keep talking to each other. And to the others. Go have fun. Don't worry about me."

"Evelyn–"

"I don't want to bring you all down. Go have fun."

The sound of a door opening.

"I'm back. Did you eat yet?"

"…"

"Evelyn, you've gotta eat something."

"…mmnot hungry."

"Just a little."

"…hnhhhhhhh."

"Please?"

"…mkay."

Silence. No movement.

"I'll go heat it up downstairs while you sit up."

An object leaving the nightstand. A door closing.

"I'm back."

"…"

"C'mon."

A hand on my shoulder.

"Let's get you up."

With some effort – and his help – I found myself upright. Thomas placed a warm cardboard box in my hands. The smell wafting up through the lid – pad see ew – got my stomach to finally feel how empty it was.

"You don't have to eat all of it," he said, placing a plastic fork in my hand. "Just some of it."

I did eat most of it. He also made me drink some water. It was maybe 9 pm or so? I went back to sleep.

When I woke up again, it was 3 in the morning. The room was dark; everyone else was asleep. I felt more awake than I had all day, so I took advantage of the feeling to go and use the restroom. I brushed my teeth, washed my face. Feeling a little better, I went up to the roof for some air.

Hearthome at night wasn't as nice as Canalave or Veilstone – no ocean breeze, no rainy musk – but fresh air was fresh air, even if a little more polluted than other cities. I felt a twinge of disappointment when I saw the roof was empty – I think some part of me remembered Lucas on the rooftop in Veilstone and hoped he'd be here. I walked to the edge and sat on a bench overlooking the city.

Tomorrow, I thought, I'll start training again. We've got about a week til the Valor Tournament. Maybe Dawn and Lucas will stick around. There's not much else any of us can do in just a week. And I'll try and do some of those things from the article about depression. Maybe those will help.

I'd been up there for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes when I heard the door to the rooftop stairs fly open. I turned slower than I should have, knowing Galactic, but it was only Thomas.

"Oh, Mew," he said, sounding relieved. "You're okay."

"Yeah – what did you think happened?"

"I thought – well, I woke up and you were gone, and you left all your pokemon, and Coeur said you were on the roof–"

"Coeur – you mean with aura? She can talk to you with aura too? And sense people?"

"Yeah, and I got worried because… I mean, you've been so out of it today that… I wasn't sure if…"

He gestured out towards the city and I realized what Depressed Girl Seeking Rooftop might look like. "Oh, Arceus," I said. "No, it… It's not bad enough for that. You don't need to worry that much."

"That's the thing. I don't know how much I need to worry," he said. "I don't know what exactly you're going through."

I looked back down. "That's why I don't want to get you involved. That and I don't want to take up your attention. You don't need to worry about me."

"But I'm going to anyway," said Thomas. "I'm your friend. I want to help."

"I don't want to drag you down to my level."

"It doesn't matter." Thomas sat on the bench next to me. I looked up at him. "I want to help," he said again, and this time I realized he meant it regardless of the side effects. He couldn't help but care – but more importantly, he chose to.

So I told him about it – how I'd been feeling, or I guess not feeling, how it drained the willpower from my bones and how that made me worry about Azelf and about Galactic. I told him about being unable to react to Coeur's exciting news, and about the weight of Trust's body in my arms. I told him Lucas had a lot to do with it, which I'd known but buried somewhere deep in my subconscious. Saying it pulled it out and made it real.

"Trying and failing to talk to him gets me down," I said. "And then the feeling sort of tumbles over itself and I get stuck feeling so low that it feels like nothing at all."

"Is that the main thing?"

"It's that and… I think I'm still shook over what happened with Trust, which is weird because it happened right in front of me, but also did it happen at all? If you hear a tree fall, but it turns out it's still standing, then did you hear anything at all? I'm somewhere between grieving my starter's death and being spooked over a close call."

"Have you talked to him about it?"

"No. I didn't want to drag him down either. But honestly, talking to you is going pretty well, so maybe I'll talk to him too."

"How do you feel now?" Thomas asked.

I thought about it. "A little better. It's like a… a really pale blue, not baby blue so much as smoggy blue, like the sky over Jubilife. I still feel tired, like with every movement I'm pushing through water. You know how static friction is higher than sliding friction?"

"I don't know physics."

"It's harder for me to start moving than it is to continue," I said. "Sorry, it's a lot of analogies… I'm not really sure how to express the feeling in language, so I'm just chucking things at you to see if they'll stick."

"No, I think I get it," he said. "Some of those are how I felt after April… you know."

I blinked. "You've been depressed before."

"Yeah."

"You've been depressed before."

"Yeah."

I gazed at him in astonishment. "I didn't realize you know what it's like."

"I didn't want to assume… I still don't think it was exactly the same. For me it was more disinterest than immobilization. Similar thing, different form. Maybe a different degree."

"Still. You get it better than I assumed you did."

He shrugged. "Even if I didn't, I'd still want to help."

"Yeah," I said. Either way, it no longer felt like a one-sided subject.

"The concern I had when I got up here…" Thomas began. "Was it… Is it relevant to you?"

"Not at all," I said immediately. "There's too many things I'm looking forward to, or else need to do."

"That's good."

We watched a glameow across the street navigate a series of fourth-floor windowsills before slipping through an open one.

"How about you?" I asked. "Have you been okay recently?"

"Yeah, I mean, I only get depressive episodes every once in a while, usually over something April-related. But it's all been better lately," Thomas said. "I'd credit being in Sinnoh, or meeting Mesprit, but really it started getting better somewhere in between the two. Maybe traveling with a friend has helped."

I looked at him in surprise. He smiled and stood up. "I'm going back inside. Let me know if you need anything."

He went inside, leaving me to wonder whether there was potential down the road I'd been suppressing.

I woke up at half past ten, which wasn't great but wasn't terrible either. The pale blue feeling from the night before was still there. Thomas and I got brunch at a café, which was empty enough on a Tuesday morning to accommodate all of our pokemon.

"You've been letting Oliver out lately," I mentioned, watching the wooper in question run in circles around a stool at the counter.

"Yeah," said Thomas.

"He's not a secret anymore?"

"Nah. I decided it's not worth keeping him in the ball all the time. Besides, Galactic saw him at Lake Valor, so the secret's out."

Prom and Esther were babysitting the children, making sure Faith, Oliver and Hope didn't destroy the café (especially Hope, who still had togepi energy despite being five feet tall. I'd expected Faith to have a similar development when she evolved, since gengars are notoriously gigantic, but post-evolution she was still roughly the size of a two-year-old human). Trust and most of Thomas's pokemon were sitting at a booth, sliding jam packets across the table at each other. Coeur and Def sat at a smaller table, quiet but emotive. They had a lot to catch up on after two weeks of silence.

I aimed for the foods that the internet had recommended for helping with depression – leafy greens, citrus fruits, beans – and avoided the things it didn't recommend – refined carbs, coffee ("HELL yes, I have an excuse not to drink coffee." "No one was forcing you to drink coffee, Evelyn."). I couldn't tell if it helped my mood.

One major recommendation I'd found was getting exercise and sunlight. In the afternoon, I took a jog outside the city, near where I'd first caught Def, and then did some training with my pokemon. Part of our training was communication practice with Coeur. The side perks of Coeur knowing aura communication (the main perks being a) Coeur has this cool ability! and b) Coeur and Def (and the rest of us) can talk again!) included the fact that we now had a backup communicator, in case Def fainted in battle. Also – very excitingly, given recent developments – psychic blockers couldn't touch aura comm. Fuck off, Galactic.

So we worked on Coeur relaying messages back and forth, with me on one end giving directions and my other pokemon on the other end executing them. The relay took a lot longer than telepathy until Coeur told me to stop using words.

"What?"

"Words are clunky," she said. "It's much easier just to use aura. It's sort of another language, where instead of using words to say what you mean, you just give the meaning directly."

"Uhh… Okay, how do I do that?"

"You know how when you think, there aren't words involved?"

"Uh, no, I think in words."

"You do?" Coeur seemed surprised.

"Yeah? What do you think in?"

"Meanings. Concepts. Images. Do you always think in words?"

"Y– oh, well, not always. I guess sometimes it's more conceptual. Especially when I'm thinking of actions."

"Perfect for battles, then."

I looked at Trust, who we were working with at the moment. I visualized a pattern of motion for him to take – left, right, punch with fire – and projected it towards Coeur. Trust executed the exact move I'd imagined, and in return, I heard a sense of affirmation.

"Hang on," I said in words, realizing something. "This is just like…"

I tried the same concept with Def, in the pink wavelengths of telepathy. He visibly perked up, and I heard a mix of confusion and excitement in return. It wasn't quite the same as with Coeur; there was a buzz to it, aside from the pinkness. The messages were fuzzy for me, since I wasn't used to it, but–

"So that's what you mean by psychic language. I get why you call the other kind human language now," I said out loud, laughing. "It's all just words."

In the evening, as I grew tired, I found my mood dropping. I'd been drinking plenty of water throughout the afternoon, so I figured I was just hungry? But when Thomas and I got dinner at the Pokemon Center, I was feeling worse than I had in the morning.

"Evelyn."

I looked up. Thomas was pointing at a TV behind me, which was broadcasting the news. It was muted, but the headline read, "Jubilife, Twinleaf experiencing citywide power outages."

"Oh, Arceus," I said, reaching for my poketch to call Looker. "Jubilife's second only to Sunyshore in electricity usage. It alone could probably power the whole Galactic Bomb."

"Then why go for Twinleaf, too?"

We locked eyes. I think we both saw the "fuck you" behind Galactic's choice of cities.

Looker didn't need any context. "I'm in Jubilife right now," he said instead of hello. "Trying to see if we have any chances."

"Okay… hang on, you don't have the Key on you, right?" I asked, suddenly alarmed.

"No, I left… I uh, left it with someone."

"Okay, good. Any luck finding the Orbs?" When we parted ways four days ago, he said he'd be scanning Sinnoh with the Spear Key again.

"Not yet. Let's talk about this when I'm not in hostile territory."

"Yeah okay. Keep me posted?"

"Will do."

I hung up and returned to the table. "He'll let us know," I told Thomas.

One tip on the depression article was to get a good amount of sleep. I'm sure staying up as late as we did wasn't ideal, but neither of us could rest. Thomas and I huddled in an internet cubicle in the Pokemon Center lobby, refreshing the news periodically, waiting to see if the blackout would end. Hours passed. At midnight Thomas told me to go back to the room and sleep. I resisted initially, but when I started drifting off twenty minutes later he said it again and I listened.

The blackout lasted the rest of the night.

Will there be a chapter next week? If I procrastinate enough on finals, yeah.

Also wanna take this opportunity to encourage you to go to a protest if you can, and to donate to organizations supporting racial justice, be it Black Lives Matter or a bail fund or the ACLU, and if you can't then stream the video by Zoe Amira, and also sign petitions for justice for victims of police brutality. This is weird because I can't link things, but they're not hard to find. I don't generally get political with Chance A/Ns, but this is humanitarian rather than political, and if you're American and haven't done anything for the cause yet, I don't know what you're waiting for.

If you disagree with the above, I want to encourage you to educate yourself on racial injustice and the American legacy thereof. A couple resources there: 13th, American Son, See You Yesterday on Netflix, The Hate U Give on Hulu, podcasts "Code Switch" by NPR and "The Diversity Gap." Additionally, have you seen your social media flooded with info posts? Read the hell out of those. Don't skim through. Becoming educated is the bare minimum Americans can and should do.

Anyway thanks for reading my stupid pokemon story about irrelevant pokemon things. See you next week unless I develop a sense of focus.