Life is a comedy and mine has decided to travel in a direction way too goddamn similar to the current arc of Chance, but I need you to know: all of this was already planned. I'm not gonna change course; I'm just gonna let you know that this is still all stuff from high school. There's also a lot of major differences between Chance and my own personal farce that ultimately make it a very different situation anyways, despite the similarities. So. I guess tl;dr: idk I'm just gonna continue as planned, I promise this is still old material and not new.

(CW for very light self harm)

Megan's first instinct was to pull me into her arms and let me cry into her shoulder. Once I'd settled down some, she took me into her living room, settled us both on the couch, and said, "What's going on?"

I told her. I gave her a brief backlog of what I hadn't wanted to say before – falling for Thomas, the Trainer Ball – before telling her what happened before and after we went to the lakes.

Megan frowned. "So, wait," she said. "He found out you liked him and immediately decided he didn't want to be friends anymore?"

I nodded mutely, hugging a sofa cushion.

"That's.. that's not how… You didn't even ask him out."

I shook my head.

"But why would he…? That doesn't even make sense. Falling for him isn't a fucking crime."

I blinked. Outwardly, Megan was acting confused, but she was pissed. I'd never seen her so angry. She took a deep breath and continued with deliberate calmness: "You guys are friends. Close friends. He knows you too well to shove you away at the drop of a hat. So you like him – so what? That's something you can work through. It might be awkward for a second, but your friendship should be more than salvageable. It's not something to give up on immediately."

"I guess so," I said weakly.

Megan looked at me, and some of the anger left her. "I'm sorry this is happening to you," she said. "You deserve better than this."

I leaned into her arms. As much as I usually avoided pity, Megan and her words and her sympathy lessened the pain a little and layered something comforting over it.

The words she smells like flowers floated through my brain, and this time I didn't bury the thought.

I didn't feel like talking too much more about Thomas, so we started talking about other things. We went out on a walk around Twinleaf, ending at a cafe specializing in traditional Sinnoan food for lunch. Trust hung out with us outside of his pokeball.

On our way back, we took a detour to Lake Verity. The lakeside was alive with human and pokemon activity – Megan pointed out the construction crews, the environmental groups, the wildlife specialists, and all of their teams of pokemon helping to reconstruct the lake. Machokes and staraptors moved rubble towards the old shoreline; scientists surveyed the lake and surrounding forest; chanseys and pokemon doctors waited on the side in case anyone got hurt; a small army of water types led by Crasher Wake spewed water into the lake, swapping out when they got tired. It didn't quite look the way I remembered, but it was certainly starting to resemble a lake again, and I knew it would keep improving in the coming weeks.

Tricia was there. "My lab's keeping tabs on the progression of the lake," she explained. "I'm off in a few minutes, though."

So we ended up going to Tricia's house, where we went and played Nanabgrams, and at some point Tricia asked about Thomas.

I got quiet.

"Did something happen?" she asked, worried.

Confession: Tricia and I, after our resolution to work towards staying friends, hadn't really called in the last month. In between the week I spent in the snow and the week I spent trying not to think about Thomas, the one time we tried to call had fallen through. So, once again, Tricia was behind on my news.

I told her all about traveling to Snowpoint, and dealing with Galactic in Snowpoint Temple and at the Lakes, and how Thomas had… What Thomas had done. She looked perplexed.

"Why would he do that? With no explanation or anything?"

I shrugged helplessly.

"It's rude, right?" Megan said.

"Super rude. You at least gotta talk to them, give them that closure," Tricia agreed. "What's he doing now?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. I went straight to Sunyshore. I've been trying to keep my mind off him for a week."

A flicker of pity showed in Tricia's eyes. Before she could say anything, I blurted out, "I don't… I don't want you guys to feel bad for me. Please don't feel sorry for me."

Tricia paused, swallowed her sympathy, and nodded. "Okay. We're still here if you need us, though."

I smiled, relieved. "Okay. Thanks."

I had only ever underestimated Tricia Vu.

Tricia's mom insisted we stay for dinner even though we were unplanned guests. As the sun slipped under the forest west of us, Def reappeared in Twinleaf. I said goodbye to Tricia and Megan and went to collect my pokemon.

"Did it work? Are you feeling better?" Coeur asked when I reached Bebe's house.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, your rebellion worked, are you happy now?"

She nuzzled her head into my knees. "Yes."

Over the next few weeks, I busied myself as much as I could, this time taking care of myself so my pokemon wouldn't worry. We went to the gym (the one for working out) early each morning, then teleported back to the Pokemon Center so that the cute little poffin shop on the way back wouldn't remind me of the time Thomas and I (didn't) make poffins together.

We took a break at 10 and talked strategy. This involved finding creative ways to keep Faith and Hope interested, which led to setting them up as sparring partners (it made sense: the bird who could target anything versus the ghost who could melt into shadows). When the children tired out, they joined us as we talked about maneuvers and combos in group settings (Galactic) and single battles (Volkner).

We trained a little physically outside the Pokemon Center before stopping for lunch. Now that I had a full contacts list, I was able to message a bunch of the trainers I'd met at tournaments and get lunch with them. A lot of them had only Volkner left, and therefore were also staying in Sunyshore. In a single week, I got lunch with Ashley de Leon, Omar Knight, Sean Obi, Emily Wu, and Renee Fournier. We talked about strategy – which I hadn't done before with a lot of people, and which was super helpful in terms of widening my horizons – and the impossibility of battling and defeating Volkner, and also just about anything and everything else.

Sometimes they would ask about Thomas. When that happened, I'd freeze for a second, then shrug. "I don't know what he's up to," I learned to say.

In the afternoons, when it was warmest out, my pokemon and I did the bulk of our training. It was all the drills we'd done before – target practice, strength training – plus new ones that fellow trainers had told me about. We also started training with the other seven-badge trainers – since we were all training for Volkner, it made a lot of sense for us to help each other out. Plus, Ashley's team had multiple electric types, which helped the rest of us train against electricity. Prom and Hope got a lot of practice dodging electricity this way, even though they likely wouldn't end up fighting Volkner.

After dinner, I still needed ways to distract myself from thinking about Thomas. So we went out on the town.

Sunyshore had recovered from the mass blackout right after the lake event (yeah there was no way it was Volkner's fault), which was especially evident in the electric shine of the city's nightlife. I was a little wary about going out alone at night, but it turns out it's super common to bring all your pokemon to nighttime concerts and other events. So my whole team and I went and watched plays and comedians and musicians I'd never heard of and some I had, and I added new music to my poketch almost daily.

And then the day was over, and if I was lucky, I was exhausted and fell asleep immediately.

And if I wasn't, I thought about Thomas.

I had no idea how he was doing – if he was lonely, if he'd made more friends to replace me, if he'd gone and defeated Candice without me there to push him. If he had the badge, where would he go next? The only gym leader he hadn't beaten was Volkner, but if he was so determined not to see me, would he still come to Sunyshore?

A lot of the time, my thoughts turned sour. Fuck him. Fuck him for pushing me away without a second thought. Oh no, you have to deal with someone having feelings for you, how awful. We'd made ourselves vulnerable to each other so many times, and now he'd decided none of that mattered. I was better off without him. He could fuck off.

But whenever Ashley's ampharos did something cool, like electrify a damp battlefield just enough to boost electric-type moves, I instinctively thought to tell him for Esther. Whenever I passed the warehouse district, I thought of us fighting Galactic there four times. We'd been traveling together for so long that just trying to exist was like walking through a personal landmine of reminders. I got into a habit of digging my nails into my palms whenever I thought of him, but at some point I realized that was probably bad for me and pulled away from the impulse.

At any rate, keeping busy and having a specific goal – taking down Volkner – was getting me out of bed in the mornings. Coeur and Def were still keeping tabs on me, and I did take several more weekend day trips back to Twinleaf to hang out with Tricia and Megan, but so far, I was feeling invigorated rather than burning myself out, and distracted rather than succumbing to the jaws of despair I knew would consume me if I slowed down.

This is what trainer life is supposed to be, I think. Training with your pokemon daily in strategy and strength, comparing notes with as many other trainers as you can, living and breathing pokemon. I wish I could say it was completely fulfilling – like, don't get me wrong, I felt like I was accomplishing a lot, but there was an emptiness that told me I wouldn't remember this period except as a blur and a feeling and maybe a couple of scattered memories.

But we trained and kept busy, and time passed the way it does when a major change has upended your life: normally.

In late February, Looker came to check in. "Still nothing from Galactic," he told me over coffee. "No blackouts, no attempts on the Spear Key or the ruins, not even a grunt causing havoc in a back alley. I haven't been able to locate any new production sites for the Red Chain or bomb, although that's partially due to the sheer amount of red tape I've had to clear first."

I sipped my mocha. He seemed peeved in a way I wasn't used to seeing. Normally, he'd take whatever bullshit the HQ threw his way, defending if not just agreeing with them. But I guess normally he wasn't swimming in a probation-induced pile of approval paperwork.

"Otherwise, though, I wanted to check in. How has everything been?"

"Pretty good. Been keeping myself busy. I'm hoping to challenge Volkner pretty soon."

"That's good. You've been mostly on your own? Or, with your pokemon?"

"No, I've been training with other people."

"Oh, good." He nodded to himself, raising his coffee to his lips.

"How are Dawn and Lucas?" I asked him.

"They're well. I met up with them in Canalave. Dawn has defeated Byron, so they should be heading to Sunyshore soon. She asked about you, but as we hadn't met up yet, there wasn't much I could tell her."

I nodded, feeling a little guilty for having left without saying goodbye. My jaw clenched reflexively as I remembered why I'd done so.

Looker put down his cup. "Do you want to ask about him?" he asked quietly.

I paused with my mocha halfway to my mouth. I looked at the table.

"I… no. No, I don't," I said, frowning as I shook my head.

Looker nodded. "Okay. Is everything else going okay? You're still anchored in time?"

I nodded. "Time's going fine. I've, um… I've been keeping myself busy so I don't have too much time to think about things."

Looker nodded again, looking bemused. Then he sighed. "I do that all the time. Let me know if you need anything."

This explained a lot. "Will do. We're still getting therapy after this, right?"

Looker made an offended face. "Evelyn Meyers, I do not intend to go back on our deal."

I laughed. "All right."

Several hours later, I realized why he'd reached out in the middle of a whole bunch of nothing: it was the 21st of February. Last time around, this was the day I reached Spear Pillar, after three days of climbing Mount Coronet, and lost to Mars and Jupiter. This was the day I traveled in time.

In other words, as much as we'd been rewriting the path to this day, there was no denying that we were now solidly in the future.