Chapter Text
If I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have known six months could pass so quickly.
There's so much to do: redesign the gym, take intensive classes, learn how to be a Gym Leader, catch the Pokémon who will be on the eight gym teams. There are so many meetings and regulations and lessons that everyone feels torn five different ways. We spend the winter months travelling the region, jumping from gym to gym to study and battle and learn.
True handles it with a grace that would have surprised me at the beginning of her journey. It doesn't now. There are struggles and anxieties born from asking too much too quickly, but we ride them out. In Saffron, Sherri is able to work her magic and lets True disappear for a few short hours; the girls come back to Sherri's tiny apartment red-cheeked and wild-eyed and happy, with their hands threaded together.
I am at True's side when Kanto's newest High Champion is named in March. Peg Hartfield takes her mantle with a smile and powerful, declarative words. Chris sends her off with smiles and handshakes, looking years younger; Lance, Johto’s current High Champion, welcomes her with pats on her arm and promises to work together “much more smoothly than before.” The two High Champions spend hours behind closed doors, discussing ways to better their regions as High Champions.
Normally it’s the High Champion who receives presents from their staff, but Peg Hartfield gives us something game-changing: Sed.
“She’ll be slow to trust,” she warns us, as rain dribbles down her office window. “But she was never mine to have, I don’t think. Keeping her with you will do her good.”
I expect a rampaging monster, another Jackson, but she is deathly quiet when she meets us. She trains with us and watches our every move; she meets with True’s gym teams and tries to find a synergy there. Hyde, though still as energetic and loud as ever, is the one who fights the hardest to integrate her into the fold, who stays by her side and talks for hours about everything and nothing. Eventually, with a few well-placed stories and gentle talks with True, she comes into her own—still quiet and reserved, but alert and eerily focused.
We don’t hear much from Gary and Cassidy—they’re learning their own codes and regulations, restructuring their routines. But once in a while our schedules will line up so we can talk over video. The time spent traveling and training has done her good; there’s a new bulkiness to her shoulders and a renewed spark in her eyes, and though she isn’t allowed to tell me about the secret procedures of the International Police she goes on and on about the beaches of Sunyshore, the people and Pokémon she’s met.
I tell her to head out to Solaceon. Two weeks later I get a postcard with an inked paw pad signature and promises to meet again soon.
April gives way to May with its usual relaxed ease. Johto holds its Indigo Challenge and crowns a new Champion for the year, a bright-eyed boy with shocking gold eyes. The Professor pairs the year’s new trainers with their Starters, and prepares his notes for the big Ceremony in the morning. It’s one of the rare years where there are more than a dozen trainers setting off from Pallet Town; the Professor has been in this business long enough to know that there’s an ebb and flow to these things. But I had watched them from my secret place in the rafters, watching them interact with their brand new partners. Many have made the journey from the eastern towns and cities of the region to be in a prime position to challenge Kanto's newest Gym Leader. The young Pokémon have been just as eager, and that's made them near listless in the laboratory tonight.
They know who I am and what I’ve done, and who my Trainer is. Between playful teasing and mock fights they throw questions at me, and I answer them the best I can—I haven’t evolved because I never felt the need to; I don’t battle professionally anymore; True is headstrong and shy and good; she is not her father. They ponder each answer with blinks and slight nods. And then, like clockwork, they’ll ask another.
“What’s it like to fight in the gyms?”
It does them no service to sugarcoat my answers. “Exhilarating. Terrifying. The best and worst experience you’ll have in your life.” There’s a soft beat of silence as they wait for the rest of my answer, fixing their wide eyes on mine. It takes me a moment to find a second part. “You have to work with your team to make sure you succeed.”
One of the Charmander, a dark little thing with the brightest, greenest eyes I’ve ever seen, curls her fists. “I hope we get to fight in a gym tomorrow!”
“No, I’m gonna fight in a gym tomorrow! I’ll be the first to challenge the new Gym Leader!” The Bulbasaur looks up at me with fierce determination on his face. “I’m gonna be the strongest.”
It’s such a strong declaration from such a tiny Pokémon that I can’t help but laugh. “One battle at a time, okay?” I glance over to the clock just before it rings the nine o’clock hour. “Besides, it’s time to get some sleep.”
One of the Squirtle frowns so deeply that I’m afraid his frown lines will last beyond his evolution. “Can’t we stay up a liiittle longer? I’m not sleepy yet.”
But from the corner of my eye I watch a few Charmander rub their eyes with the backs of their paws, and a whole group of Starters fight unsuccessfully to hide their yawns. “You’ll be sorry if you can’t stay awake on your first day,” I tell them, and fight back a chuckle. “Now c’mon, into your balls.”
The room gets thicker and sleepier as the group of Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle start to fall asleep on their toes. With every flash of red and disappearing body I think of another new story about to begin. Like every year, I wonder how far each of them will go: if some will become just companions to their new trainers, if some will fall in battle, if one might just make it to the Indigo Plateau and battle Peg for the year’s Championship.
But this year’s different; they’ll all have to pass True if they want to go farther than Viridian. There’s something strange and wonderful in that.
The outside air is still warm despite the late hour. Most take it as Moltres’s work, a sign of bright beginnings in the midst of a new High Champion and a new crop of trainers setting on their journeys. It’s an old superstition, impossible to prove or disprove. I might have erred on the side of science, of the changing seasons being tied up in the tilting planet and trips around the sun. But I’ve seen stranger things.
I look up into the last few rays of light to see Jackson and Clara riding high in the clouds, diving in and around each other. Whatever nervous animosity had exploded between them in the Indigo Plateau had disappeared. They are back to their old selves now, flying and sparring and being each other’s confidants. I hear Hyde in the distance before I see him, sitting beside Britt and Sed. The Rhydon is far more patient with him than any of us had been at first, listening to his stories and offering a few meager ones of her own. It is a strange partnership, one that seems to make sense in an abstract way.
“…Wasn’t blown off course?”
I grin at the familiar voice and follow it around the bend. The Professor cuts an intimidating shape against the setting sun. He leans against the wood bannister, one hand running through a mess of his graying hair. What surprises me is his companion.
“My dad’s a Hoenn native,” the Wingull says, bouncing nervously on his tiny feet. “Doesn’t remember getting caught, he was just surfing on the waves. Next thing he knew, he was down by your volcano. I don’t really know anything else.”
Oak nods solemnly. “I see. Thank you for talking with me.”
The Wingull finally notices me, because he hops into the air with a panicked warble and doesn’t look back. The Professor takes a long moment to turn behind him, and when he does it’s with an understanding smile. “You could have announced yourself.”
“Could’ve.” I jump onto the bannister beside him. “Another migrant?”
He nods. “With the way the winds have been blowing I expected to see a few Pokémon thrown off course from their migratory patterns. But it’s more than just this Wingull. Johto seems to be having a more difficult time with it.”
But it will only take a few determined, powerful fighters to cross the Tohjo mountains. “Will the new kids be okay?” I ask softly.
“They will,” Oak says confidently. “We’ve had bigger scares than a few misplaced Pokémon. And with you and True in Viridian, I’m sure things will be fine.”
We’ll cross the bridge when we get to it. I take a deep breath of the early summer air and sigh. Hyde’s booming laughs echo across the lawn; if I concentrate I think I can see Britt hang her head.
“You should probably get going before it gets to be too late,” the Professor says, jarring me out of my observation. “Wouldn’t want you all to be too tired to start battling our new trainers in the morning.”
“They won’t be ready that quickly,” I scoff.
The Professor laughs. “You’d be surprised. Now get going.”
I don’t need any more persuasion. The grass is dry and slightly yellowing under my paws as I run across the field and into the trees. At this time of night, the Pidgey have retired to their nests, satisfied from a day of sparring and hunting. The further east I go the fainter Hyde’s laughter becomes, the smaller Jackson and Clara appear in the sky. Soon the only thing I hear is the cracking of sticks underfoot, and the gurgling of the river.
Years and years ago Cassidy and I had fished a sopping wet True out of this river, in this exact same spot. She’d been energetic and stubborn and wild, a “my way or the highway” child who took life by its horns. Some of that reckless abandon had disappeared with age—life and the people around her had changed too much, had taught her to be careful. But I’d seen a spark of that small girl when, a year ago, she had sat on that boulder and had asked me to do what should have been impossible.
That spark is there now when I find her, hunched over that same boulder with her arms crossed on top of her knees. In six months she’s regained the weight she’d lost on her journey; she seems happier with herself, more at home in her skin. Despite the chill she doesn’t wear her jacket, just a blue tank top and a battered pair of dark jeans.
"I had a feeling I'd find you here," I say loudly.
She turns to me with a lazy smile on her face; she doesn’t move from her spot on the boulder. "I wasn't ready to come back just yet," she says. "Was everyone worried?"
"Just Oak," I say, and clamber up on the rock beside her. "He doesn’t want us up past curfew.”
She laughs at that, stretching out on the mossy stone. The moonlight catches on the river and the swaying leaves, bleaching them silver.
"I can't believe it's been a whole year," True says softly.
It had all begun with a question, one simple request. Even now, with tears and laughter and badges and blood behind us, I find it strange to think. The sun will come up and True will open her doors to the flood of overeager challengers who want to put their skills to the test for the first time; and I will be at her side, watching a new batch of trainers learn.
"Did you think we'd ever end up like this?" I ask.
"No way," she laughs. "If you told me last year I’d be a Gym Leader I wouldn’t have believed you.”
I smirk. “If anyone told me I’d battle for the Championship I would’ve thought you’d knocked your head.”
True’s hand is a steady, familiar weight on the top of my head. “Makes me wonder what the next year is going to have in store for us, huh?”
I follow her eyes up to the stars that are just starting to poke out from the sky. The brisk breeze that whispers over us pricks at True’s exposed skin, fluffs my fur out. I would be content to spend the night out here, with just True and the stars and the gurgling of the river. But we have things to do.
“The others’ll start wondering where we are,” I say softly.
“Guess so,” she says. True puts on her jacket slowly, savoring every last second we have out here. I think she knows that we won’t be able to come back out here for a while, just the two of us. She stands up sure-footedly but brushes a hand over the boulder, still warm from hours of sitting. I jump back to her shoulder.
“Do you regret coming with me?”
I don’t look up at her. I have mourned our lost teammates and my brother the way I hadn’t allowed myself to in years; it doesn’t stop the nightmares from coming. Sometimes when I swallow I can still taste the salt from the Seafoam Islands, and the chlorine from Misty’s and Erika’s pools.
But there’s a home waiting for us just a few miles away from here, a few minutes on Clara’s back. There’s a gym full of Pokemon eager to test their abilities against brand new opponents. We won’t be coming back home in the darkness; Sherri will be waiting for us there, probably wrapped up in a brand new project despite being on vacation leave.
My nose finds a place against her neck, right at her pulse point—it is a steady, rhythmic feeling, a promise. Even now I can feel mine slow down to match hers, beat by beat. I tell her, “No.” I tell her, “Thanks for asking.”
The gentle hand that strokes my back is answer enough. We turn our backs away from the rock, away from the river, and step into the dappled moonlight. It feels like a beginning.
This time, I’m ready for it.