As Lizzie opened her mouth several times, though the black Charizard wasn't saying anything, Leroy knew that he had ironically understood her better in her absence. His heart wasn't being tested or tugged as much as before, Leroy felt a crashing sense of relief that Lizzie had returned. Especially when he had recognized that her quickness to leave was a defense mechanism, to figuratively and literally burn everything that didn't work out and move on to the next. Lizzie had to face what she had done, something that she never did before. Speaking of which, Leroy felt anger blazing his veins as he couldn't stop himself from glaring at her. Lizzie flinched, briefly looking away before turning back to lock eyes with Leroy. Their friendship was already shaky, let alone making room for any sort of hope of being King and Queen. Lizzie had more or less abandoned that dream, and though she came back, Leroy wasn't sure where that left them.
"I…saved your life, I hope it makes up for the fact that you saved mine," Lizzie spoke up, and Leroy scowled.
"You still lied to me," Leroy pointed out. "And you left me to die, anything could've happened to me while I was fainted. You would've had to live with that, so I wouldn't say saving me today fixes everything."
"You're right," Lizzie's eyes watered as she deflated. "I think it's long overdue that I tell you how I got here to Kanto. I wasn't born here, I was born in Johto. My mother, I don't think I ever saw her happy besides when she…well, my trainer put her in the Daycare over and over again. Different mates of all kinds, in order to get that shiny that he wanted so badly. He was so angry, she told me, the way he'd beat her when he didn't get what he wanted…but the one part of it all that kept her sane was being told what she so desperately needed to hear by the mates in her life. That some of them were kind to her, became her best friend before the trainer boxed them away…I don't think that trainer was ever going to hurt me. When I was born, he treated me like I was gold. But those nightmares, of how he'd act if I ever disappointed him…I woke up screaming in my Poke Ball some nights. I had to get out of there. That's when I spent years evolving, fighting, jumping from region to region. I'm pretty sure I lost track of how many regions I lived in: Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Paldea, and so many more."
"What about Charlie?" Leroy asked, and Lizzie took a deep inhale and then shakily sighed as she shook her head.
"He was my second mate, we were both wild and living in Johto," Lizzie clarified. "He was the only reason that I stayed in that hellhole. But when he was whisked away by a trainer on a boat, I raised our eggs before they grew up. And then I followed where the boat had left to Hoenn, in hopes that I could find him somehow. That's when I met my third mate, then my fourth, then my fifth. Then Mimi came along during my adventures early on. She followed me on and off, until decades after I started my journey, she then suggested the region that she came from. Kanto. I've been here for a little bit, probably the shortest amount of time out of any of the regions if I had to guess. And I met my last mate, Venomous."
Leroy listened intently to everything that Lizzie had to say, though the tiny Meowth wondered how much Mimi witnessed over time. Was Mimi somehow unaware of Lizzie's more romantic endeavors, with the big Charizard lying about her breakups each time? Or was Mimi complicit or even supportive of that destructive cycle? Leroy couldn't help but wonder what kind of friend she actually was, especially to stick around with Lizzie for as long as she did.
"These mates either made me fear for being abused like my mother was by our trainer, or they were so kind and loving and that scared me more," Lizzie shook her head. "My mother was as sweet as could be, yet she never encouraged me to leave that human. Why? Did she want me to be codependent on her, so that we could suffer in misery together so it hurt less for her? That wasn't the kind of closeness I wanted from my family, so I left altogether. And when others were as sweet and good-hearted as her, I was terrified of the secret intentions they had. That they couldn't be trusted."
Leroy's heart twisted, seeing just how lucky he was to have a great relationship with Tree Climber before she sent him out on his own to grow up. That was a natural part of adulthood to do so, something that parents did even if such an act broke their hearts. To imagine Tree Climber emotionally gripping onto him to stay, to make her life better…Leroy knew that it would've been easier in the moment but damaging in the long term. Leroy felt a lot of his previous anger ebbing away as he understood why Lizzie did what she did.
"That's why meeting you, who wanted to be everything for me even just as a friend…that kind of selflessness was something I'd never experienced with a guy before," Lizzie admitted. "Even in decades of meeting every kind of Pokémon, some that humans hadn't even discovered before leaving deep in unfound islands or in magical castles in the sky…I never met anyone quite like you, Leroy. But of course, once Venomous told you of my past, I believed you were never going to want someone like me. I didn't deserve you, it felt like the right thing to give you a chance at happiness. Even in my impulsiveness, leaving you fainted when I should've cared about that more than my feelings. I'm sorry, Leroy."
"You're very kind, Lizzie," Leroy smiled, his heart swept up in the compliments and flattery of how highly this explorer of worlds saw him despite meeting thousands of others before him. With how experienced Lizzie was in a multitude of ways, Leroy felt as though he was a Pokémon beyond measure to her. That confidence that he needed to ask her the question he wanted to ask before was there in spades as he blurted out. "So if you feel that way, perhaps you'd trust me with helping raise your eggs? Being the father figure that Venomous can't be, even if it's just as frie-"
"I don't deserve that," Lizzie winced, the pain flashing in her red eyes as she looked at him.
"But you do," Leroy insisted.
"But I have a pattern with mates, one that I don't want you to go through even as a caretaker of my offspring," Lizzie doubled down, and Leroy could see something that he hadn't seen before in the shiny Charizard's eyes. Affection. That sort of look dashed any sort of doubt Leroy had that she only saw him as a friend that she was politely rejecting. And yet there was that same fear that she spent describing, that guilt of how she acted, too much for Leroy to unravel. The Meowth was starting to see Lizzie as she was, instead of the Queen to worship and not question. Or the evil monster that left him to die. She wasn't either, or perhaps she was both, though nothing was that simple. Leroy relaxed, slowly letting go of every expectation and desire he held onto before. Even the King and Queen dream that he wanted so much. Leroy listened as Lizzie continued. "I already messed up our friendship in such an awful way, I've got to take time to process this. I won't change if nothing changes, Leroy."
"You're right," Leroy nodded, looking down at the straws of the nest as his emotions adjusted strongly to his new sense of reality. "I'm sorry for declaring my profession of love, or asking for us to be King and Queen so suddenly, because I got swept away in dreams without doing any of the work to earn that."
"We both got swept away in grand dreams," Lizzie shrugged, her heart torn up at the fact that Leroy saw her for who she was. Blowing fire at her own former mate and leaving the Meowth to escape from confrontation, but she hadn't changed overnight, and it was bound to happen that Leroy would've seen her past.
"I should…probably get my old territory back and spend half the week there," Leroy decided. "Or maybe just hang out here on the weekends."
"Yes, that's probably a good idea," Lizzie laughed, the first time she felt mirth since their difficult conversation started, before she gritted her sharp teeth and stared intensely at Leroy. "But you won't be doing such by yourself, we saw how that went. No, you, me, and even Mimi will plan an attack against those losers and get your territory back once and for all…"
