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[Pokémon] Changed

35
Posts
13
Years
  • Seen Jul 3, 2011
Rated: K
SoulSilverShipping (Silver/Lyra)

Done as a fun little challenge: put your playlist on shuffle, get a song, write a short section using that song as inspiration. Rinse and repeat any number of times. I did five here, though admittedly with a little cheating. :P

A quick note: these segments are not necessarily in chronological order, though you can read them as such if you wish.

***

It's harder to hold on
To your hands than the hands of time

His hands are rough and old, far older than his relatively small age of eighteen would suggest. They are the hands not of a boy but of a man, one who has been forced to parry the gales of his tumultuous life more times than he cares to remember. In that sense, he often muses, they perfectly reflect his soul.

Veritable mountains he has climbed, both literally and figuratively, in the course of his journey. The scars running across his palms and fingers bear testament to that. Sometimes he is bitter at the red marks, the physical toll his ambitions have wrought upon him, but in the end, what do they matter? It's just skin, after all.

He has done many horrible things with his hands. He has been in many, many fights, and the skin over his knuckles has grown thick and calloused as a result, torn and regrown only to rip against skin once more. The Pokeballs he throws from his hands are cold, and when they burst open they spread nothing but pain and fury.

But the worst thing his hands have ever done, he remembers, was to push her away.

Not just once, too. The first time he did, he thought nothing of it. That was years ago, and they were kids then, still. She was a little, nosy passerby, and the shove he gave her pushed her onto the floor but bruised nothing.

Many years later, he would push her away again, but even though she did not fall, he saw her hurt. She cried. That night, behind closed doors, he cried too. And he stared for hours at his face in the darkened mirror, and at his rough, ugly hands.

---

Let me share this whole new world

With you

The small cave tucked snugly beneath the cascading Tohjo Falls was more than a mere fascination to him. He would visit its dank depths often and rest his back against the rock wall, eyes closed, saying nothing, listening only to the melody of falling water that echoed throughout the sanctuary.

Yes, he thought. Sanctuary. What an appropriate word.

The cave was, to him, a world of its own. It was quiet, isolated, an oasis within yet far from the danger and violence of the reality churning beyond its mouth. Seated there, with only a few boulders and a broken radio (which he felt, for some reason, belonged there) to keep him company, he would feel at peace. With the world, with himself.

Then one day, she comes. Uninvited and without warning, she stumbles blindly through the curtain of turquoise, and he finds himself staring once more into those familiar eyes.

"Why are you here?" he demands.

She is silent for a while. "I've known about this cave for a long time," she says, teeth chattering slightly. "And I don't know why, but… thought I'd find you here."

Half his mind wants to tell her to get out, to leave his personal safe haven, for he fears the magic with which it grips his heart will diminish were he to share it with another. He is not the sharing kind, after all.

But she is cold and wet, so he pulls her close. She restsher head on his chest, and her chestnut hair, dyed dark by the water, falls in waves over his body. Together, they cherish the beautiful nothingness contained within the cavern's tiny walls.

He suddenly realizes that he need not worry. The magic will remain.

---

Maybe I was stupid
Telling you goodbye

He stands outside her door in the pouring rain, just like a scene right out of a cheesy rom-com.

He doesn't like rom-coms. He doesn't watch them. They're corny and irritating, filled with silly ideals and warped philosophies and actors with no chemistry, and wrapped up in a pretty, overly commercialized package.

All right, he decides then and there, he hates them.

What he hates most is the cheesy idea of love rom-coms can't help but preach: the idea that love, in its myriad forms (all exclusively between impossibly good-looking people, of course) is easy. The idea that after the worst of breakups, of fallouts, the simplest apology, a bouquet of flowers, or a valiant act of faux heroism is enough to restore mutual trust and adoration.

It's all rubbish, he knows. No all relationships are repairable. Sometimes it's simply easier for all involved to simply go their separate ways. Sometimes, its better.

Take them, for instance. He's a troubled kid to say the least. He's led a life of crime, having, through experience, become proficient at thievery and swindling and things far worse. She's practically an angel, fresh from her blissful world of puffy clouds and cheerful faces, sporting an irreversibly positive outlook on life than even her five-year Pokemon journey failed to destroy.

Last night taught them something. They won't work. They can't.

Then why is he there? Under the pouring rain, standing before her door?

He doesn't know. He doesn't have a reason. Still he walks up her front step and rings the doorbell. She answers it quickly, eyes red and puffed, almost like she had been waiting there all along.

A strand of hair falls carelessly over her face. Tenderly, wordlessly, he reaches up to sweep it back, but she grasps his rough hand tightly and pulls him close.

Just like a cheesy rom-com.

Then again, they're not all that bad.

---

In the night I hear 'em talk
The coldest story ever told

It's another one of those nights.

They're screaming at each other, and he can feel the blood rushing behind his ears. Angry tears flow from her narrowed eyes. It scares him to see her like this, but somehow it thrills him. Reminds him that he is the only person on Earth capable of cracking her shell of optimism and delight, and exposing the raw emotions beneath. It makes him feel powerful. It makes him feel horrible.

It's not right. He should have given up on that whole power-crazy phase ages ago. For him to even want to demand power from anyone, especially from her…

Still he feels the rage bubbling up within him, and vindictively, he eggs her on, cruelly mocking her, tearing open the wounds that he knows lie deep within her heart. He wants her distraught. He wants her devastated. He wants her furious, like him.

She screams louder, long, thin arms slamming on tables and walls, her auburn locks whipping up a storm around her face. Suddenly she snaps, for the first time he's ever seen. Her hand comes flying towards his face, too fast for him to react, and he reels back at the blow. He instinctively grabs her tightly by the shoulders and pushes her against a wall. Then he sees her almond eyes, wide and fearful, and he backs away and runs out the apartment, not stopping until he's a good five blocks away.

Nighttime plays host to many sinister beings, he knows. Monsters lurking in the dark.

But the monster he has just witnessed, he will never forget.

---

In the end I wanna be standing
At the beginning
With you

He remembers the exact spot where he was when they first met. He's not quite sure why, but it just seems so… important to him. Sometimes he makes a small trip back to New Bark Town, just to shimmy his way up the piping along the Elm Laboratory and peer into a window, mimicking the instant when she caught him for the first time.

God, what's he doing there again?

He doesn't like to think of himself as a creature of instinct. Instinct is driven by hopes, desires, longings. He of all people knows that the man who follows his guts is bound for failure, and nothing else.

And yet there he was, several feet in the air, feet on a slippery metal pole, miles from his intended location, simply because he felt like being there.

Simply because he felt like reliving the past. Reliving the moment when he first looked into her wide chestnut eyes. Reliving the moment when he didn't know her, when she was nothing more to him than an irritation, a distraction in his meticulously laid-out plans.

Admittedly, isn't that exactly what she is now?

He shakes his head, flipping his crimson hair away from his face, and smiles. Then he deftly hops off his perch, landing lightly on the grass below him. Brushes himself off absentmindedly, and off he goes. Whistling.

She's changed him, certainly. Set him on another journey, a wild and unpredictable one, completely unlike the logical path he had mapped out for himself long before he'd met her. And from the very spot where he stood, no less, though he had definitely not known it at the time.

Maybe someday, he decides, he'll bring her here. And spend an afternoon sitting with her in the grass, looking deep into her brown, brown eyes.
 
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