Chapter 2

Stitches

December 21st, 1990

Wendy Merrick was stacking wood for a campfire, log-cabin style. It was her turn to cook, and she had one of her specialties planned: Trainer's Cassoulet. This was a simplification of (if not quite an insult to) a traditional, rich, hearty, slow-cooked Kalosian stew. She had the white beans right, but her choice of preserved meat was cheaper and less varied than what Mrs. L'Enfant would use back home. Worse yet, Wendy didn't have multiple days to devote to its proper simmering. The seasonings, however, she had expertly identified and gathered herself during the spare moments between hiking and training with her friends and team.

When the logs were ready, she looked around for the designated fire-starter, until she remembered that Ace would still be off practicing with Aaron and Luke. Though it wouldn't be as handy as getting a Typhlosion's help, she dug through her pack for the flint and steel. Then, something flitted in front of her eyes, and she lifted her head.

Flurries. She smiled. Perhaps it would be a white Christmas this year?

Christmas and cassoulet made her think of Nadine again, which dulled her smile a little. Their families had always visited each other a few days before or after Christmas. In fact, Wendy's family, along with Aaron's, may have been at the L'Enfant house that very minute, enjoying some real cassoulet.

She wondered how it felt for Nadine to be home this time of year, with everyone else being either under ten or over fifteen. Not that trainers were never home for the holidays, but when they were, they were supposed to be visiting, not visited. Their aunts and uncles would ask about where they had been, not about whether they were thinking of trying again. A trainer's most natural place on Christmas (not best, but most characteristic) was standing in line at a payphone with all the other trainers who were miles and miles from home, waiting to pay twenty Pyen to field those questions.

Wendy wanted to call Nadine this year, but she didn't know if it would do her friend any good. It might be nothing but a reminder of how she had quit. For that matter, Wendy didn't want to spoil her own Christmas by knowing the call had hurt more than it had helped, especially not when this year's was going to be so special.

Today, she and the boys were in the vicinity of the Lake of Rage, only a few days' walk north of Luke's house in Mahogany Town, where Mr. and Mrs. Andersen had invited them all to stay from Christmas Eve through New Year's. This was easily the most excited Wendy had been for any holiday since she hit the trail.

She loved talking to Mrs. Andersen, who by all evidence was the sharpest, cleverest person in the world. And while Mr. Andersen kept his cards closer to his chest, she loved being around him too because he was so, so much like Luke in every way from his speech to his appearance to his temperament. It was easy to imagine she was sneaking a peak at Luke himself thirty-five years out.

All that, and staying at the Andersens' house would be an opportunity to have Luke show her his old photos again. The last time had moved her more than she thought it would, and in ways she had trouble pinning down. She wanted another chance to figure out exactly what it was she felt, and he felt for that matter, if she wasn't imagining things.

She remembered that she was looking for the flint and steel. Only a few seconds into her resumed search, though, she heard footsteps.

"We're back!" said Aaron, who came into view a fair deal before Luke did.

"Great timing," said Wendy. "May I ask Ace if I can borrow him?"

"Have at it." Aaron lobbed over Ace's ball, and he emerged a few feet away from her. His quills flared up in their usual, playful way at the sight of an unlit campfire. Then Aaron said, "I'm gonna put up the tent now, in case the snow picks up."

"Thanks!"

Luke, on the other hand, said nothing. He simply walked over to his camera bag and sat down. This wasn't unusual for him after a long round of extra practice. Aaron's training regimen was as demanding of the trainer's brainpower and mental endurance as it was of the Pokémon's strength and stamina, which made it all the more impressive how determined Luke was to keep pace. She would have doubted it a year ago, but at the rate he and his team were improving, they just might pose a challenge for her and hers in a few months. And that was all on top of how much of himself he put into his photography. She smiled. He made her want to work twice as hard.

But dinner came first. "Ace, fire please?"

Ace was on the job even as she said "please." With a single, measured breath, the "log cabin" was ablaze and ready to go. The moment his work was done, he flopped onto his back and stared at her with every expectation of getting a rubbed belly for recompense. She was happy to oblige. "Thank you, sir." There was nothing like the naturally toasty fur of a Fire-type.

Wendy remarked at Ace's seemingly boundless energy. All of her own Pokémon were in their balls taking their needed and well-earned rest following the day's training, but if Ace had limits, Aaron had yet to find them.

This reminded her: Luke seemed tired more often these days. It wasn't really affecting him yet, and it seemed to her his Pokémon were keeping up just fine, but she did wonder if it would be a good idea to check in with him on his pace. It was important that it stayed fun for him and for his team. She was pretty sure he knew that, but it never hurt to hear it from someone else.

Though, then again, she also didn't like to highlight the fact that he wasn't in the same class as her—much less Aaron—when it came to battling, which was why he was working so much harder to catch up. She didn't want to discourage him by mistake.

It kept coming up: that question of whether to ask about a friend's choices, or to trust their judgment and give them space. She knew Luke would say the former while Aaron would say the latter, and as far as she could tell, they were both right. Even when Luke was the friend in question this time, the right answer didn't come easily to her, which meant she would probably err on the side of not asking. Which was fine in this case—she would know when it really mattered, after all.

But then, would she? Nadine still hung over her head as the ultimate counterexample.

She forced her attention back to preparing dinner. That, at least, was one thing she knew she could do right. At the same time, she heard Aaron walk over to where Luke was sitting.

"Hey, Luke," he said. "You were saying something earlier about our plans for—"

He cut himself off as Wendy heard the shuffling of feet.

"Hey— OW! The fu—!"

Wendy jerked her head up. It took a moment to understand what she saw.

Luke was swinging at Aaron's face, with full force, over and over. Aaron tried to block his punches and hit him back on the side of the head, but it didn't even slow him down. Luke only went after him harder and harder. Wendy heard the blows, the yelling, the swearing. A splash of blood sprinkled to the ground.

Ace came unfrozen before she did. With a terrible cry, the Typhlosion rushed at Luke in a blur. He collided. The momentum sent boy and Pokémon both tumbling down the opposite ravine. Luke screamed.

Wendy dashed to the brink; heart racing, head swimming. This isn't happening, she told herself. This isn't happening.

She looked. Ace had Luke's shoulder in his jaws and shook like he was trying to tear his arm off. Luke howled in pain. Wendy's voice caught in her throat, and after an agonizing second, she saw that Luke's jacket was smoldering.

Fire Fang.

She wheeled to face Aaron. He held his bleeding nose in his hands and stared down at his friend and his Pokémon.

"Call him off!" Wendy finally screamed at him.

But Aaron said nothing. It was like he hadn't heard her. He just watched.

Desperate, Wendy screeched the order herself. "Ace! Stop it! Ace!"

The Typhlosion held his head still. But he didn't let go. He just growled, visibly bristling at her words.

Wendy looked to Aaron again, silently pleading. Then, he finally said, "Back." Ace let go. As he began to stalk his way up the slope, Wendy rushed down it, all while Luke continued to wail.

"First aid kit!" she yelled back at Aaron before turning to Luke's shoulder. The jacket was completely burned through, and the sight underneath nearly made her throw up. In his writhing, Luke almost rolled onto his side and got dirt in the wound, so Wendy held him down. She fumbled for the canteen on her belt, wishing it had started snowing yesterday so she could pack ice onto that sickening mass of bloody, charred flesh.

Three hours later, the adrenaline was gone. Wendy was sitting next to a hospital bed on the outskirts of Mahogany Town when the full weight of what had happened sunk onto her shoulders and stayed there. Somehow, she had contained the bleeding, set off the emergency flare for the search-and-rescue tower to spot, and made it through the ambulance ride without thinking about anything beyond whether Luke would make it through the day alive and with two arms.

But now? Now, she had to contend with the fact that Luke had just tried to beat Aaron well past the point of drawing blood: to seriously hurt him. It defied belief. Her mind couldn't reconcile what she knew about him with what she had seen him do.

She looked at Luke where he lay. The sling could have been there from any accident, as could have the hospital gown and the outline of the thick bandage underneath, where the nurses had told her he now had twenty stitches. It was the same story with Aaron out in the hallway: A thoroughly bandaged but unbroken nose could have been from anything. It didn't make what she had seen real.

What made it real was Luke's face. His jaw had been clamped shut since she entered the room. He glared at the ceiling with eyes that looked like they might never blink again. It was all she could bear to listen to his manic breathing. But she stayed. She needed an answer, or at least an excuse. It was too much to hope for the excuse to be convincing, or even to make sense, but it at least needed to make today feel less like a demented fever-dream.

She was still afraid to ask, though. "They called your parents," she said. The voice sounded too quiet and shaky to be her own. "They're on their way now."

Luke gave no sign he'd even heard her. Wendy's hands began to shake, but she grabbed her knees to control them. Then, she finally asked it.

"I… I want to know what's wrong… why you hit Aaron like that."

Luke breathed in sharp and held it for several seconds. He didn't answer when he breathed out.

"D… did he deserve it? You didn't s… stop after his nose started bleeding."

Again, silence. Wendy struggled to think of another way to ask, but eventually it was Luke who spoke first.

"I'll apologize to Ace," he said, clearly straining to keep a level, neutral tone. "It wasn't his fault. I shouldn't have spooked him." The tone broke down. "But if I ever, ever see Aaron's face again, I'm going to break his teeth."

Break his teeth. Her own teeth nearly chattered at the words. How could Luke not have had enough? Did he have to see to it that Aaron came off worse than he did? No, all he seemed to care about was that Aaron went away for good, whatever it took. But why?

Wendy's eyes welled up. "Please… Just tell me what's wrong."

"Why."

Now his voice was full of offense, as if he had taken her plea as a deliberate insult. No matter what she said, it just kept falling apart. "Because I need to know how to fix this!"

He turned his head away. He hadn't looked at her once since she came in, and now she couldn't even see his eyes. "There's no point," he said. "You wouldn't even get it. Or you'd be on his side. There's no point. I'm done."

On his side? She never knew there were sides to be on. And "done?" Did he mean he was done with her too, part and parcel with Aaron? That no matter what, she was losing him?

Now she recognized the desperation welling up in her stomach. She hadn't noticed it with her mind stuck on the violence and the medical emergency, but the worst feeling in the world was back. It was all happening again, just like two years ago. She wasn't ready for it this time, either.

Her heart pounded. She had to find out what she was supposed to say. Right now.

"I'm on both your sides! Just tell me what it is! I won't blame you!"

His free hand clenched the sheets. "I said I'm done."

She was already too desperate to think about her words until after she said them. Anything that came into her head, she tried.

"This doesn't make any sense!"

Unless I missed something.

"You were the best of friends this morning!"

Or I took their normal behavior at face value.

"How can one bad day mean more than all the time you've been together?"

Why do I still think it was just about today?

"We said we were going to Indigo, all three of us, and we're so close!"

It was four of us when we set that goal, and now it's going to be two.

Luke's breathing was getting erratic again. He twitched. She knew she was making it worse, but she couldn't stop. This could not happen again.

"You can't just give up like this!"

Luke's back spasmed. Then he exploded. "Get out!"

Wendy sprung to her feet in alarm, but was too stunned to step away. She had never heard any noise like this come out of his mouth. She could almost feel his throat tearing itself to ribbons.

"GEEETTT! OUUUUTT!"

She backed away, bumped into a stool, then stumbled into the woman who rushed into the room. The nurse practically shoved her out the door as Luke's screaming devolved into incoherence.

Wendy could only stagger down the hallway. At first, she had only a mind to get out of earshot. That awful, unrecognizable voice was too much to bear any longer. Soon, either the nurse managed to quiet Luke down, or there were too many walls between them for the sound to reach her.

She needed a friend. Badly. Her thoughts turned to Aaron, who might as well be her only friend in the world, now. She looked up from the floor, and as if he'd known how much she needed him just then, there he was.

He walked toward her. Wendy had every intention of throwing her arms around him and crying her eyes out. But the bandage on his nose gave her pause. She didn't want to jostle him too much. During that pause, she noticed the harsh look in his eyes, and it stopped her cold.

"You done?" he asked, as if she had committed some offense in taking so long to talk to Luke.

If he had asked the question in other words or in a different voice, she might have said yes. She had no hope of changing Luke's mind, and Aaron should have been the first one she'd gone to confide in, to escape with. But something told her there could be no commiserating with Aaron as he was now—that any sign she was loth to leave Luke behind wouldn't be treated kindly.

Instead of answering, she finally asked, "What happened?"

"'What happened?' He's a psycho. He snapped. That's what psychos do. You think I had anything to do with it?"

"I… I never said you…" She clutched her temples and groaned. "He's not a psycho! That's why none of this makes sense!"

"Oh, so it'd make sense if it was my fault?"

"No! I said it doesn't make sense, period!"

A passing nurse glared and shushed them.

Aaron spoke again, quieter this time but with even more acid in his voice. "This is why I didn't want to tell you what bad news he was. You still don't want to believe it. I was hoping you'd get the picture when something like this finally happened, so you'd agree we need to get the hell away from this guy."

Wendy gaped. It was like someone had replaced both him and Luke with imposters while she wasn't looking. This might have been why the first thing she asked was, "…How long have you thought this?"

"'Thought?' That took a few weeks. I've known it for at least a year."

His answer wasn't just wrong: It was pathetically, obviously wrong. Even if there were some tension she had missed between them, it could not have been like this. It bewildered her that he expected her to believe it over everything she'd experienced for herself all this time. There was no hiding her disappointment.

"You're lying."

Wendy had never said those words to anyone. She didn't know if anyone had ever tried to tell her this plain a falsehood on purpose before. She never imagined Aaron of all people ever would.

"Oh, come on! You saw what he did! Normal people don't go from zero to sixty over nothing like that!"

That wasn't the lie Wendy meant, and she had a sick feeling Aaron knew it. "Even if you're right—even if Luke's… got problems… and he's not safe to be around… you couldn't have known it for a year, or even thought it. You can't just pretend to be that good of friends with somebody for that long. Nobody can. Nobody should."

At this, Aaron balked. Wendy went on. "You're asking me to believe you could lie about being friends with him day-in, day-out for two whole years! I know that's not you. I can't even believe you'd want me to think that's you."

Aaron remained speechless, however much he tried to start a sentence. He seethed. But she didn't want him to be angry, and she wasn't trying to trap him. All she wanted was the truth.

"Just take it back," she said, hoping against hope he'd grab the rope she was lowering him. "Just say you made it up because you're mad." She fought back the tears, but couldn't keep her voice steady. "I can understand that. I can't understand this."

He stared at her with a fixed, bitter expression for what felt like an eternity. This was more than enough to mark his eventual reply as a lie beyond any shadow of a doubt: "I'm not lying."

In that moment, it was as if something passed out of Wendy, possibly never to return. She had never felt so alone, nor so disgusted by the proximity fellow human beings.

The latter problem was easy enough to solve. "I'm leaving," she said.

Wendy turned around and walked away. There was no need to debate her plans, since she had no friends to make plans with. They had all been swapped out with strangers that morning, if not earlier. At first, she meant to head straight for the main entrance, but she remembered her pack was still sitting outside the room where one of the imposters was.

When she found it, barely slowing down to sling it over her shoulder, she suddenly heard Aaron from back the way she came. "Look, are you—"

She wheeled on him and screamed, "Don't follow me! I said I'm leaving!"

Then she ran to the lobby, ignoring each nurse she passed who told her to walk. Just as she burst out the front door, she thought she caught Mr. and Mrs. Andersen in her peripheral vision. She didn't slow down. The urge to cry both returned and overcame her, but she kept running.

She wasn't fast, but she could go for hours. At each intersection, she took the turn she knew the least, less to keep from being followed than to make it so she couldn't turn around and easily find her way back. When she realized this was what she was doing, she finally stopped.

Wendy stood at the bottom of a ravine on a deserted Mahogany Town backroad that wasn't three miles from where she was supposed to have spent Christmas and New Year's. She fell to her knees, put her head in her hands, and bawled.

July 3, 1993

Wendy lay awake in her sleeping bag, staring at the stars and remembering. Though she had been fifteen for only an hour, age twelve felt farther away than it had the day before. That was how old they had all been on the worst day of her life. The memory of that day hadn't kept her up all night every night—not even most nights after a month or two—but she knew this wouldn't be the last time, either. In fact, it had troubled her more the last few weeks than it had in some time, surely because of those letters she'd left for Aaron and Luke.

She knew there wasn't much hope of their writing back, assuming they got the letters in the first place, and even less of them saying what she wanted to hear: that it was high time to at least see each other, even if only to talk and not to go so far as to bury the hatchet. A mere frank discussion of the hatchet and whether it should stay above ground would be enough.

The question had never stopped vexing her: What on earth had made them so furious at each other? For as clearly as she remembered every agonizing minute of that day—maybe even every word spoken verbatim, it felt like—she'd never come any closer to piecing together the answer. Going by her working hypothesis, there was likely blame to go around, even to herself (though she had no idea how). Regardless, she could still think of nothing to explain such a sudden, violent, irrevocable turn.

As usual, she looked back to older memories of Aaron and Luke to find any clue, however tenuous. And as always, she kept dwelling on ones that were too happy to be of any help, which finally got her to sleep.

When the sun came up, the past gave way to the present again. She rose, stretched, and walked down to the river to wash her face. Amanda was already there to fill her canteen.

"Mornin', sleepy-head," said her friend, who in all likelihood had managed to wake up first by a whopping five minutes.

"It's too early for insubordination."

"Ma'am, yes ma'am!" said Amanda in her worst joke-voice and with a mock salute.

Wendy was, strictly speaking, not Amanda's superior. She was merely two years older and had been volunteering for the Johto Conservation Society for longer. While the reason Amanda was with her on this surveying excursion was so Wendy could show her the ropes, neither of them was technically on the org chart at all. After Wendy dunked her head in the water—fresh from Tohjo Falls—she got right into laying out the morning's work.

The work was testing water quality. Soon, they had out an array of test-tubes, filters, and other instruments. They also let out one Pokémon each: Wendy's Clefable, Sharpy, and Amanda's newly caught Doduo, Gemini. Clefable weren't known to be outgoing with Pokémon outside their own evolutionary line, but Wendy had made a point of socializing Sharpy thoroughly from a young age. Sure enough, Sharpy was already trying to teach Gemini to get his two heads to harmonize on melody she supplied.

"Wow," said Amanda, taking her eyes from the turbidity test. "She's really something."

Wendy smiled. She knew it.

"I know I asked last year, but you said her name's short for 'C-Sharp?'"

"Close," said Wendy, "F-Sharp."

"Why 'F?'"

"Cause when my dad caught her, F-sharp was the only note she'd sing, and it sounded better than 'G-Flat.' She's branched out since then."

Amanda whistled. "That's some real A-game naming. Do you think Gemini's too basic?"

"Nah, say it's an oldie but a goodie," said Wendy, meaning it. "Besides, you don't want to go over the top with the name just cause he's got those green feathers. It'd go to his heads."

Amanda just smiled and continued to watch her miracle-catch play around with Sharpy. Wendy didn't mind some mild neglect of the work. The absence of strict deadlines was among the perks of being a trainer-volunteer, and who could blame Amanda for relishing the catch of a lifetime?

It had been when they were out tagging flocks of Do's -duo and -drio for Society researchers when Wendy was lucky enough to spot the stray green feathers. Luckier still, the flock they subsequently tracked down had several Doduo of rare plumage, so the Society's rules concerning which rare subjects field surveyors were allowed to catch gave Amanda enough leeway.

As for Wendy, she was done catching new Pokémon. All but her starter had moved on to new families. She couldn't see herself getting around to that last Gym Badge anymore, and as with most other fifteen-year-olds (even those others who had been fourteen the day before), she was already thinking about the future. Sharpy would always be part of that future, and her eventual job would certainly call for a Pokémon so she could take to the field without worry, but it wouldn't call for a whole team.

An hour later, they had finished taking their measurements and were on their way back to Route 27, and thence west to Johto proper. They kept within eyesight of the rocky coast, but didn't battle any of the fishers they passed. Pitched battles (to say nothing of the entire Pokémon League system) were, in Amanda's words, "totally fascist."

"So, you're going to work for JCS full-time when you're done, right?" asked Amanda.

"I'm undecided," said Wendy. "It sounds great, but they don't have a ton of full-timers, and it might make more sense to go to school first. Geology degree, maybe zoology. Whatever I do, I want it to get me outside a lot."

"I might apply soon as I'm back at HQ," said Amanda, "so long as they keep me on the trails and away from the desks. I think there's a real chance to make a difference, here."

Wendy suspected Amanda may be serious about this plan. "You'll run into child-employment laws, you know," she said. "I don't think they can hire-hire anyone under sixteen."

"Hey, if they're serious about healing the world, they'll lie about my age."

Wendy laughed. "I think you'd have an easier time passing for eleven."

"Whatever. If they don't, I'll head to Hoenn and see if the Rangers will."

She would never say it out loud, but Wendy almost hoped the JCS or the Rangers would perform some age fraud on Amanda's behalf, if only because this way Amanda was more likely to pursue her long-term goal through cleaning trash, monitoring Pokémon populations, etc. instead of bombing power plants.

"Anyway," said Amanda, "How far do you think it is to New Bark?"

"We could get there around sundown, if you can keep up."

"Try me!"

Wendy did try her, and they made it in time to spend the night in town. Their next destination was to be Violet City—a six-day walk at Wendy's usual pace. There they planned to split up again, with Wendy turning south for Ilex Forest, and Amanda continuing counter-clockwise to Goldenrod and JCS headquarters.

Violet City was also where, try as she might to keep her expectations in check, Wendy couldn't help but wonder if there would be any letters waiting for her at the Pokémon Center.

It was dusk, and Amanda was regaling Wendy with the time she and her Caterpie got a logging company's machinery completely gummed up with string when they finally reached the eastern outskirts of the city. Wendy's irrational sense of anticipation got more and more of the better of her as they passed through the familiar lamplit streets leading to the signature red roof. It took repeated internal admonishment to keep her mind under control when it came into view.

It's only been a month, she told herself. Neither of them has probably even been here. You'll just have to rewrite the letter and leave it in a few more towns. And if they read it and don't reply, there's nothing to do about that. The past is the past.

There's probably no letter.

"Hey, you good?"

Wendy realized that she had stopped just outside the building and was staring at it. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah. Thought I forgot something, that's all."

They walked in. Amanda dropped off her Pokémon first, while Wendy tried to both look and feel casual, continuing her mental anti-pep-talk. Then it was her turn, and she finally felt ready for the same utterly rote interaction as always.

But then,

"Oh! There's a letter here for you."

Wendy suddenly found difficulty in keeping her feet on the floor.

"Two weeks in a row with letters getting picked up," said the nurse as she dug below the counter. "I think that's a record."

Amanda poked her head across the counter, then asked Wendy, "What's this about a letter? You in trouble or something?"

"I don't think so," she said.

"Know who it's from?"

"Nope," which was technically true.

The nurse resurfaced and handed Wendy the envelope. Amanda immediately inspected the handwriting. "Ooooooh, I think it's from a booooooy!" she said in extremely under-fourteen-years-old fashion.

"Amanda, not now." Wendy let no irritation into her voice, just the calm, unambiguous message that this letter wasn't one to joke about. Amanda got on the same page at once.

While the machines checked on their Pokémon, Wendy took a vacant chair in the corner. She examined the handwriting herself, when it occurred to her that she'd never learned to recognize Aaron's or Luke's handwriting. Training and hiking didn't often call for pen and paper. The letters which comprised "Wendy Merrick" sure looked like they were from a boy, and one whose parents made sure he knew cursive before he left home, but that didn't narrow it down.

"You know…" mumbled Amanda, abashed, "if it is from a boy, I think that's cool, and I'm happy for you."

Wendy's mouth thinned to a frustrated line. She didn't want to fault Amanda for misunderstanding in an un-joking way after her younger friend had so graciously and obediently pivoted to taking the matter seriously. Since there was no shaking her, Wendy decided it'd be best just to explain. She took and released a deep breath first.

"It should be from one of the guys I first teamed up with. I left each of them a letter here while we were on our way to the Falls cause I wanted to know how they were doing, and… well."

Amanda sat down opposite her. "That was the… big falling-out, right? I know you said something about it once, but I don't remember the details."

Wendy shook her head. "I wouldn't have told anyone the details."

"Not asking, not asking," said Amanda, waving her hands. "I can take your word for it. For one thing, you were right to bail when Genevieve and Emily started getting after each other. Wish I'd stuck with you instead then."

Wendy turned the envelope in her hands. "Well, that made me one-for-three with these things. And I missed any signs on this one. I still don't know what they were."

"That's rough."

"Yeah."

Wendy, along with Amanda, continued to stare at the envelope.

"…You gonna open it?"

Wendy knew she was going to, of course, but she couldn't bring herself to say so until she decided whom she wanted it to be from.

She definitely worried the most about Luke. He was the one she'd left with a messed-up shoulder and in by far the more distressing emotional state, which she couldn't deny scared her to think of what he might write. Aaron, at least, she knew was doing well enough to be in the League Tournament, so the worst case for his letter couldn't be nearly as bad. In the end, she decided it would be better to hope for an end to the worry than to keep putting it off, so she crossed her fingers for Luke.

One more deep breath, fingers still crossed, and Wendy nodded. Then, she worked the seal bit by bit until she had the letter to read.

July 6th, 1993

Dear Wendy,

Thanks for the letter—it was nice of you to write. Happy to say things are all going well on my end. It's just me and Zoe now, and she's the picture of health. She's only gotten smarter, too. Usually seems to have an idea of what I'm thinking, which can be good or bad depending on if she feels cooperative. I spend most of my time now working on my portfolio. Got a good angle of Sprout Tower yesterday, and next I'm off to give the Ruins of Alph and then Ilex Forest another go. Want to have recent pictures for as much of the region as I can by the time I apply for jobs.

Hope things are going well with you, too. If you get this and want to write back, I wouldn't mind hearing about what you're up to and how your team's doing. Say hi to Sharpy and Feldspar for me.

Thanks again, and happy late birthday,
Luke

Wendy leaned back and exhaled in relief.

"Nice letter?" asked Amanda.

"Nice letter," said Wendy.

She held it out for Amanda to read for herself, feeling this was the best way to assure her junior colleague of the unexciting pleasantness of its contents.

Amanda perused the text with care, then nodded. "Nice letter." She handed it back. "Is he a painter or something?"

"Photographer. He should be going pro next summer. I'm just way relieved since he was the—" She faltered.

Amanda gave her a moment, but only a moment. "... 'The?'"

"...He was the one who snapped. It was really, really bad. I can't tell you how much easier I'll sleep after how normal that letter was."

Amanda grinned. "Guess I can still say it, then: 'I think that's cool, and I'm happy for you.'"

Wendy smiled back. "Thank you."

"So, that leaves the other one, then. Is he safe to talk about?"

Wendy considered this for a moment. "Pretty safe, I think, but you wouldn't like him. He was just in the Tournament."

Amanda clicked her tongue. "Fascist. Got it."

"Yeah, yeah," said Wendy, with her usual dismissiveness of Amanda's more idiosyncratic political opinions. "Anyway, I've known him much longer—since we were babies, basically. I'm not worried about whether he's stable, just… it's still hard."

"I get that."

The two sat in silence for some time, letting the normal sounds and conversations of the Pokémon Center fill the air, some pertaining to their own little dramas.

The next day, Wendy would say goodbye to Amanda again, but not permanently, even if it might be for a good while depending on what the Society needed done.

What filled her mind, though, was the fortuitous overlap between her immediate plans and Luke's. If he spent a good chunk of time exploring the Ruins of Alph, there was a good chance she'd reach Ilex Forest before him, and could be confident he'd find her reply if she left it in Azalea Town. And if her guess was off, then maybe—just maybe—she could be off exactly enough to run into him in town, and see for herself if they were ready to put what happened behind them. Maybe it could even be the two of them extending an olive branch to Aaron together.

She knew she was getting ahead of herself. The most important thing, and the reason she did in fact sleep easily that night, was that she finally knew Luke was okay.