CHAPTER 3: WINTER / COPING WITH THE MEMORIES

Heavy and fierce, the blizzard outside swept the land with a howling wind akin to the roar of an Ursaring. Having once been chased by a whole mob of them, Ash Ketchum would know better than most how loud and terrifying that sound was. Yet he had long since past the point where simple storms scared him, for he had once needed to endure far worse weatheroutsidefrequently. And right now, he was sitting in his bed in the building which held him, watching the night churn with pale flurries of snow, like white demons warring on the grounds. From the screaming of the truly insane patients on the floors above him making it difficult for him to sleep, he mused that someone up there was sharing his thoughts. Should he be disconcerted with that idea, that he might just be going nuts too?

Months after the visit where Misty had left her proof of their union, Ash was sluggishly coming to grips with the fact that it was he, not Misty, who was suffering under numerous delusions. His episodes were becoming less frequent these days, and less often did they disturb and muddle his views of reality. More and more his memories of his life after defeating Gary and the Elite Four was returning to him, his amnesia and his PTSD slipping their holds on him.

He could remember so much now…only the accident was still a shard of chaos wedged into his mind and heart. Yet before it…he could remember celebrating the achievement of his dream with his friends and family. He could remember how Misty and he had started dating soon after the unexpected kiss the others had managed to shove them into as soon as they got the two drunk enough to take courage from the alcohol. Jessie, James, and Meowth had even handed them the brown bottles, having long since quit Team Rocket (Giovanni was happy to see them leave after all the expenses they'd racked up) and started a performing group…though they still had made attempts to snatch Pikachu as a practical joke on occasion. He could also remember saying his vows to the redhead he loved…the shock of pleasure and pain of their wedding night….their tours to visits the regions they'd traveled in, and all the old friends they'd made there.

Their second-year anniversary….

They were staying in the Pokémon Center of Saffron City at the time. Sabrina had offered to have them stay at the gym, a happy glint in her eyes as she'd gazed at them, but they'd turned the offer down, the feelings of positive and negative nostalgia too much to defy. Ash would have probably missed the exact day completely if he hadn't gotten a desperate phone call from May, Drew, and Tracey, reminding him of the date. The truth of that matter was simply that Misty and Ash had been camping for days on the road at a time…and as a result, weeks blended into one another, making the turns of the months insignificant when compared to the changing seasons. Heck, they'd almost missed Valentine's Day…if it hadn't been for all of the decorations in Celadon City at the time they'd rolled around in, they would have accidentally skipped it completely!

But because his friends had predicted something like this might happen again, they'd deemed it fit to call…and caught the date he had. Misty had only smirked, having one-upped him by preparing their celebration herself when he'd gone and scrambled off to find something memorable for her on their special day. In the end, his gift to her had turned out to be a platinum amulet with a Luvdisc engraved on the front, and passages from 1 Corinthians 13 and 14 on the back. It had gone over well, thank god.

Despite Ash's near mishap, throughout the day Misty had seemed oddly giddy, as though she were barely keeping herself from flying apart with some secret joy of hers. Considering she's been sick not too long ago, this had confused her husband…but he came to understand the reason soon enough….

Misty gave him a long, thin box, alike to what might hold a bracelet or watch…he'd opened it and pulled out a thin white stick with a blue end.

He didn't get it. "Mist', um…what's this exactly?"

She crashed to the floor in shock, and then rose, fuming as he turned it over by the plastic end, looking it over. "That's a pregnancy test Ash! How in the world can't you recognize one?"

He was about to retort to that when he paused, giving the stick another probing look, "Don't you pee on this…?"

Reasonably, Misty was quick to get angry with this comment…was he serious? She knew he was developing a sense of humor, but still, this would be a very bad time to employ it, especially considering this particular matter! Yet he seemed to be completely perplexed…by god, was he really that thick? "Well, yes, I did…but that's beside the point-!"

He interrupted her, "Misty, blue is positive, right?"

Was he finally understanding the situation? Maybe. "How you know that and don't know what a test looks like I'll never know," she growled, frankly rather miffed. This was not going as she thought it might…but then, when did things with Ash ever go predictably?

However, her irked mood subsided at the look of growing joy on her husband's face. He set the test back in its box, placing it on the table, and walked over to her, embracing her warmly, "So…we're going to have a baby?"

Misty grinned at him, looking him straight in the face, "Yeah…we are. I even went to Nurse Joy to confirm it. We're going to be parents, Ash Ketchum."

Oh god…she just now thought about what that would entail. Ash and diapers. Ash heating up bottles of milk. Ash probably holding their baby in one arm while he commanded battle with the other. Oh dear god…those were somescarythoughts…!

But despite that wary apprehension of hers, they had their daughter…and while Misty's term made her almost frighteningly atrocious at times, they both enjoyed her pregnancy thoroughly, and were utterly delighted when their little girl was born. Ash had been the one to name her, and had held Sunny and her mother as the newborn suckled her first meal. In all, he had loved every moment that came with being a father…even the sleepless nights where Misty and he had stayed awake with wide, bloodshot eyes, which didn't make their Sunshine stop wailing in the least. For even as grating as some of those times had been, those memories of them were now infinitely precious to him, especially now that their precious little one was gone forever….

…And perhaps it was the weather outside that triggered it, or that very thought in itself…but the memory of THAT night of loss came into Ash's mind, sharp, cold, and horrendously clear and real, like a blade that slid into his heart and twisted in the most agonizing of ways…. The landscape altered around him, yet retained a familiar state….

…The bluffs between Pallet and Cerulean are not particularly nasty ones – they only rose a couple hundred feet at the maximum, and the roads they possess are well-traversed and rarely in disarray. Fallen trees, large branches and stones, were all kept clear from the roads by passing pokémon who knew the dangers the debris posed to inattentive drivers, the potholes filled in by those whose trainers made a living from road repairs. As a result, these winding snakes of asphalt and concrete are usually fully safe, even in the most abysmal of weather.

A snowstorm had blown in towards the end of the evening when Ash and Sunny had left for home, so the father drove slowly along the dark roads. When it came to the safety of his daughter and his pokémon, he refused to take risks, even if it meant he would be late getting them all home. Misty would understand. After all, she'd learned how to drive with him, and comprehended that Ash speed did not equal out to anything good. And knocking over "orange cones" was not an option out here…not with his little girl and Pikachu with him. His old buddy was soon to become a daddy too…his mate, a Marill, had been recently confirmed pregnant by Professor Oak. Pikachu was, of course, extremely pleased by this, and was just as eager as Ash to get back to his beloved female….

But unfortunately, Pikachu was never to see his offspring….

And Sunny would not be the one entrusted with that egg when it was finally laid….

With the heat on full blast, Ash and Pikachu were quick to get drowsy in the front seats…Sunny was already caught between attempting to continue playing her Gameboy game and dozing off. They hadn't seen another vehicle for well over half an hour, and Ash was beginning to suspect that the roads going out of town had been closed shortly after they'd left. No need to risk a car breaking down out here and having people and pokémon freeze to death in the night. As the path began to wind, the lights of Cerulean City glowing on the horizon ahead, Ash glanced back at Sunny, who was fighting to stay awake. They smiled tiredly at each other…there was a flash of light…Ash glanced back just in time to see the headlights of the approaching truck that had come around the turn swerving out of the other lane on the slick dry snow without a warning. He tried to turn out of its path and break, but the snow only rendered his attempt worse than futile, turning the passenger side of the car into the path of the truck. His reflexes meant nothing now. There was a bone-jarring jerk of impact, the sounds of crushed metal and shattering glass, screaming…and then silence and blackness as the chaotic winter world fell away as Ash lost consciousness when his air bag hit him.

The next thing he knew was a flashing of red and blue lights, and the rasp of static and rough voices over walkie talkies. A paramedic was carefully extracting him from the car, the Officer Jenny of Cerulean City talking to the driver of a snowmobile that had stumbled upon the accident and had called it in. The truck driver was on a stretcher, bleeding profusely from his shoulder and head…Ash felt a hot stickiness across his own scalp, and knew that he too, was injured. His right leg was totally numb….

Yet as the thought of Sunny and Pikachu rose in his mind, his concern for his own state departed immediately. He tried to break away from the man half-carrying him to look back at the car, only to see that it had been mutilated into a mesh of twisted metal that crumpled inwards on the passenger's side.Sunny and Pikachu's side!His heart stuttered to beat in his chest, and he looked around to the other ambulance and stretchers for them. By god, were they still in that thing that used to be his car?Where were they?

He twisted his face to look at the man helping him along, "Please, my daughter…my Pikachu! Are they hurt? Tell me, please, what's happened to Sunny? Where's Pikachu? Sir, where-?"

The man looked very reluctant to answer, his lips becoming a thin line…Ash didn't like how he wasn't automatically assuring him that his loved one were fine. Something was wrong…they were hurt,weren't they?Instinctively Ash began to fight the man, his soul brimming with fear…when the other paramedics came to try to restrain him from hurting himself more, he shouted at them to tell him what had happened to his little girl and to his best friend. His screaming and terror was quieted as they forced him into unconsciousness with a short burst of Sleep Powder when he wouldn't calm down, not wanting him to further injure himself. He was placed in an ambulance promptly. And later on, he discovered these truths:

The driver of the truck had fallen asleep at the wheel…he was not a devil. He died in the ER. Pikachu, having not been buckled in, had died instantly upon being thrown into the dashboard before the air bag could deploy…the trauma to his brainpan and the snapping of his spinal cord had made that ruthlessly quick and painless. And Sunny…she'd experienced massive trauma to the head as well, though this hadn't taken her life. Not yet, at any rate. When Ash awoke next, in the Cerulean City General Hospital, he found that Sunny had fallen into a coma that she might never awake from. Misty told him all of this, crying as she did so…and he just held her, too shocked to begin to grieve, feeling her hot tears soak his shirt.

For two weeks, their daughter clung to life…but her vitals were declining, and with them fell Ash's strength. He blamed himself for what had happened, even though it hadn't been anyone's fault…and in his guilt and mourning over loosing his best friend, and watching as Sunny died despite being hooked up to life support, his grief and trauma over being the sole survivor of the accident made him sink into depression. From there, his perceptions of reality began to splinter…. His mind was trying to cope in any way it could to the pain his heart was feeling, repressing memories that hurt him…he could not bear to recall anything to do with his child. The signs of PTSD - the lack of interest, the nightmarish episodes, the insomnia - were noticed swiftly by his doctors. When it reached the point where his fits became too much to manage at home, Ash was placed in St. Roselia's to receive the proper care he needed to find closure about his loss and his close call with death. And all without the prying eyes of the public following his decline into near insanity….

At first, his friends had come to give him company. His pokémon team had helped immensely, yet the loss of Pikachu from their number had made it hard for him to accept them fully. Eventually, the pain of being around him drove the others away, their visits becoming rare. Only Misty and Deliah, who loved him deeply enough to endure that hurt, continued to come to him regularly…but as Deliah was the only one running her own household, this made it difficult for her visit at times. So the face he saw the most would become Misty…the woman he would forget was his wife….

Ash stared out the window…he knew now what was truth and what was fiction. His skewed sense of time corrected itself…and with that understanding, so too came the longing with all his being to go home. But to do that, he knew he would have to get out of this place. Running away was not an option - he would just be caught…so that route would be a waste of time, the senseless use of the commodity that now seemed priceless to him. What he needed to do, quite simply, was free himself from the reason behind his residence here. The disorder that fractured his mind…if he beat it, surely he could go back? To Misty…to the egg Pikachu had sired…to everyone and everything else.

He needed to recover…he so wanted to return to them!

And to do that, he was willing to do whatever task necessary…if that meant speaking at length about the accident, fine…he'd do it. If he had to tearthatshard of metal from his heart to return to his friends and family, so be it! It would kill him in its own way but…ultimately it would be worth it. He couldn't hide from the situation any longer. Not with these revelations running through his head….

And so began the leap in Ash's progress in the fight against the mental disorder that clutched him. The winter night had given him a gift, perhaps in an attempt to compensate for all it had taken from him a year prior. With this comprehension, with time, he might just defeat his PTSD. It would be a hard fight…but he'd defeated countless enemies in countless battles before this point. And now that he knew what he was facing, he swore he wasn't going to succumb to THIS monster again! Surrender had never been an option he'd felt comfortable taking. And he had too much to go back to, to even CONSIDER such an absurd thing!

Oh, he wouldn't give in this time!

Not a chance!