EonMaster One
saeculum harmonia
Chapter 70-1
AD: Thank you very much.
Now, I imagine to everyone surprise – I have a chapter ready. This is the quickest I’ve gotten one done in a while. I’m feeling rather proud of myself. I’m also feeling relieved. This could be one of those types of weeks academically.
“Well, I’ve got some bad news, and some good news, Kellen. Which do you want first?”
“…Depends on whether or not you think I’m going to die.”
“Well, that’s the good news. Now that you’re not bleeding internally anymore…your life’s not in any danger. In fact, you’ll be able to travel again before too long, but…with these injuries, there’s no way you’d be able to participate in the Tournament coming up.”
“…I thought it’d be something like that.”
“I know how you must…”
“No, you don’t. So shut the **** up and leave me alone.”
“If you need any—”
“I need you to go away.”
Several hours had passed since that evening conversation with the nurses, and it was now morning. Apparently, he’d been visited in his sleep by several of the Trainers that he knew. Some of them had even brought cards and gifts and left them on the small desk next to his hospital bed. He had been relocated to the Victory Road Pokémon Center, which had better medical facilities designed to handle injuries like broken fibulas and internal bleeding.
A nurse would come in every now and then to help take care of him. After a couple of times of trying to rebuff their efforts, he simply gave in and let them do their job. For the most part, though, he had been lying here, drifting in an out of awareness yet unable to go to sleep, where his dreams could, if only for a moment, deliver him from his reality. He lay there awake, his gaze alternating between the large window to his left and the plain, white ceiling, two limbs on opposite corners of his body hitched up awkwardly to prevent swelling. He felt like he was in a trapeze act gone horribly wrong.
Or maybe this world was a three-ring circus gone horribly wrong…
Whatever it was, he had run out of tears to cry hours ago. (Looking out of the window and hearing the pitter-patter of droplets against it, it seemed that the heavens had taken that task upon themselves.) All his eyes could do were to stare at objects just as lifeless as the dreams he once had. To make it this far, only to have his ambitions ripped away from him – to be a victim of another person’s jealousy, fear, and hatred…
“Excuse me,” one of the redhaired nurses walked in, talking as sweetly as possible, almost as if she was expecting him to vent all of his fury upon her if she said the wrong thing. He turned his eyes on her. “You have a visitor.”
“…Fine, let ‘em in,” Kelly muttered, looking at the ceiling. “At least I’ll see something other than a TV or a wall.”
When at last he turned his head right, he saw a girl, wearing sunglasses, bearing flowers and a fragile, nervous smile. Her black hair flowed in a shiny cascade down to her waist. Kelly’s lip curled. His eyes returned to the ceiling.
“Came to taunt me, hm?” he said cynically. “Or maybe to finish me off, since your boyfriend ****ed it up the first two times? Third time’s the charm, right?”
“Kelly…” the girl whimpered.
“Go on,” Kelly muttered. “I don’t care. I don’t give a damn.”
She set her gifts (flowers and a teddy bear? What was this, Valentine’s Day?) on a chair and came over to approach him. She reached her hand out to him, and the moment she did it, he reached out and grabbed her wrist with his far hand. She fell forward, right over his chest. He snarled through the pain in his two cracked ribs and let go of her hand like it had burned him. When she withdrew it, she saw it had a red mark – but so did the other one, which Kelly had never touched.
A strange request came to Kelly’s mind. “Lean down here.”
She did so, moving her face so that was inches away from his. He took his left hand and removed the shades. She had long, hazel eyes and a very fair, smooth complexion. In spite of himself, his first unavoidable thought was that she was actually very far from bad-looking –
At least, until he noticed that the skin around her right eye was very obviously turning an unpleasant shade of puce.
“What happened?” he muttered, raising his left hand and touching the blemish. She blinked, hissed, and drew away.
“I found him…talking with some of his…goons,” she answered. “That’s when I figured out what he’d done. I heard him talking about ‘using what his uncle left him to finish the job’ – since they didn’t manage to kill you…”
Then, the most shocking thing happened. She broke into tears and, before Kelly could protest or even react, flung her arms around his neck.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “This didn’t have to happen to you…if I’d…”
Every part of him wanted to believe that she was trying to trick him. But there was a difference between crocodile tears and the way Jadyn Mirel was crying. It was less of a sob and more of an anguished wail – the kind a human being is only capable of producing when their heart has been torn in two.
“You don’t need me to forgive you,” he said after a while. She drew back, tears still hanging in the corners of her hazel eyes as she looked down at him. “You…you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I didn’t stop him,” she continued to wail.
“You didn’t know he’d take things this far…” Kelly answered simply. “I didn’t know, either. So please…please try to calm down…”
A bit awkwardly, he slipped his left hand around her back, returning her embrace briefly to reassure her.
“Could I…stay here a little while?” she asked, pulling back after a moment and drying her eyes.
“Why?”
“You’re lonely,” Jadyn replied, putting a nearby chair and seating herself next to his bed. “Aren’t you?”
Kelly looked straight toward the ceiling, his mouth in a straight line. For the first time in hours, his own eyes were watering a bit.
“Excuse me,” the nurse peeked her head around the doorway, almost as if she was afraid to interrupt something personal. Kelly and Jadyn both looked toward the door and watched her come in. “You have another visitor. Should I show him in?”
“Y-yeah, I guess,” Kelly replied. He looked down at Jadyn.
“So, will you…will you ever be able to travel again with those injuries?” she finally asked, a very tentative tone in her voice. She was aware that this was probably a sensitive – even painful – subject.
“They say I will,” he answered. “As soon as next summer. I’m just not…sure I want to.”
“Why not?” she replied.
“…I don’t know. I might just be burned out,” he said simply. “Sick of trying to do something without any support. My parents never really thought I could do it. Or at least my father didn’t…”
“I know how you feel,” Jadyn replied. A bitter smile crossing her face, she went on, “My father doesn’t think that girls should be Trainers at all. I’m surprised I exist, frankly. If he hadn’t married a woman that believed like him – that a woman’s purpose in life is to bear children and support the man – I’d have never been born.”
“Is that why…why you stopped?” he asked. She nodded, gulping back tears.
“…the biggest mistake of my life,” she murmured. “What the hell did giving up my dream of becoming Champion – for him – get me? A broken heart and a black eye. Serves me right. It was so stupid…”
“Stop it,” Kelly said flatly. “You don’t deserve what happened to you.”
“When I watch that girl battle…” Jadyn murmured.
“Who?” Kelly asked, a bit confused.
“The older one,” she answered, and Kelly know exactly who she was talking about. “She can support the one she loves, but still stand on her own two feet. I wish I could be like that…”
Kelly’s mouth twitched. He didn’t really know how to respond to that statement. He certainly didn’t know how to respond when Jadyn started to bang her fist on the nearby table – over and over.
“I’m such an idiot!” she snarled through her teeth, tears running down her face. “If I’d just been able to think for myself, I’d still be Training, you wouldn’t have been hurt…and maybe I would have had the guts to…”
She broke off mid-sentence, her face a bit red for a moment.
“To what…?” Kelly asked.
“…I always wondered about you,” Jadyn replied. “What made you so fearless, to where you weren’t scared of anybody you faced…even though I couldn’t stand you on principle – because he couldn’t – I always wondered what I’d find out about you if we could ever talk to each other…”
“Hm,” Kelly uttered. “Well, now you’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Kelly,” she groaned. “I…I didn’t mean…”
“I’m being serious,” he answered in the middle of her mutters.
Jadyn did not get to ask any questions for the time being, though. At that moment, a boy strode into the room with his hood up, cursing the weather. He looked down at the girl first.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. Looking between her and the boy, he started to question, “Hold on – are you two…?”
“Wha—? N-no,” Kelly stammered. Jadyn said nothing, her cheeks turning the color of a Charmeleon’s tail. “Why are you here? Who are you?”
“Are you another one of that…*******’s hit men??” Jadyn shouted. Interposing herself in between the hooded boy and Kelly’s bed. “Stop right where you are! I won’t let you take another step! “
“Jadyn, get back,” Kelly said immediately, surprised at himself for how little thought it’d taken.
“NO! You’ve already gone through enough!! And if he wants to finish the job, he’s going to have to go through me!!” Jadyn screamed, planting herself two steps away from the approaching hooded figure and refusing to budge an inch.
“J-Jadyn…” Kelly muttered, his eyes brimming with concern and perhaps affection for the girl that had, a week ago, been one of his worst enemies.
“Calm down,” the boy answered. “I’m not here to ‘finish’ anybody.”
“Well, then, who in the hell are you?” Jadyn yelled back at him.
“Somebody that needs your forgiveness,” the boy answered, pulling the hood on his black sweatshirt down. Kelly’s face went white as a ghost.
“No…! That’s not – how in the – you’re dead!” the younger boy’s shocked and almost fearful response came in a croak.
“…Not quite,” the older boy responded, his brown shag of curly waves covering most of his ears and reaching his shoulders in the back – kept from rising skyward by a black skullcap. “But don’t beat yourself up. I’m used to people counting me out.”
“Y-you’re,” Jadyn squeaked, pointing a horribly trembling finger at the older teen. “Y-you’re…you’re…”
“I never thought he’d go this far,” the older boy said. “But I guess, after he got inside information from the League for the initial brackets…”
“What?” Kelly uttered.
“You were going to battle Cliff in the first round,” the older boy said. “If I’d known that, I would have shown myself sooner, and this wouldn’t have happened. That’s why…I need your forgiveness.”
“You don’t need my forgiveness,” Kelly said, trying to sit up. “You idiot – all of your friends and family have been mourning for you for almost two months. Didn’t that occur to you? URGH!”
“Kelly, lay back,” Jadyn implored him.
“You have to go back…” Kelly muttered, managing a smile. “Things have been a mess without you…Matthew.”
The teenager’s weathered-looking, green eyes turned toward Jadyn.
“I’m not sure what brought this on, but…take care of him,” he told her. She nodded. He whirled around.
Otto Marius walked around in the same rainstorm later that afternoon, his head toward the ground as he contemplated what to do. Obviously, since Matthew was not going to be at the Tournament, there was no one there that Otto especially wanted to watch. If he’d had his way, he and what was left of his family would be gone already, halfway back to Pummelo Island, where they could at least find a way to pick up the pieces and start the healing process. Otto knew Brad Carmichael reasonably well, and was a bit surprised to find that Brad and Madeline had become something of an item. Even so, though, he was going to take Madeline home. Brad would come back later, of course, but right now, Madeline needed to be home. And once she was home, he would never let her out of his sight. He never considered himself a fatalist in any sense…
But it was hard, when he watched his oldest daughter, for him not to think that the world just had it in for some people. Of course, it made him grieve beyond words that his son, who had been desperate since early childhood for a real, stable family, had died just as that dream was beginning to become a reality. But to see the state of his daughter, to know that she only had one sibling left out of four, only added to his own suffering.
On top of all of that, he couldn’t help but think that, in a strange but very real sense, the events that had happened to his children were his own fault. After all, if he had simply stood up to his ex-wife when he’d had the chance…
Suddenly, he noticed something shadow him above his head. The raindrops were no longer finding him.
“Last thing we need now is for you to get sick,” he looked down at the girl to his left and let out a gasp.
“Maddie?” he muttered, taking the umbrella from her and holding it over both of them. “What are you doing here? I thought you and Brad were…”
“We broke up,” she said – very matter-of-factly.
“You don’t sound very…upset,” Otto replied.
“Well,” Madeline looked down at the ground. “Maybe ‘broke up’ isn’t really the right word…”
An hour before that, she had been sitting in the lounge with Brad. The sound of rain on the roof was still audible, and as it was relatively early on a rainy morning, not that many people were awake.
“Damn this weather…” the blonde muttered. “I’d like to go down to Victory Road to train some more, but I’d rather not go into the Tournament with a cold.”
“It should pass by tomorrow, right?” Madeline asked. “Why don’t you take a day off?”
Brad grimaced in resignation, as if he knew Madeline’s idea was a good one – and still didn’t like it.
“…How’s your dad?” he asked. Madeline shook her head.
“Still taking it very hard,” she sighed.
“Can’t blame him,” Brad commented. “His only son…”
“Brad, please…” Madeline said with a shudder, her eyes toward the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he answered. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I know…” Madeline murmured. “Brad, I want to ask you something.”
“Sure – go ahead,” he replied.
“Would you…you know…call us a couple? You and me?” she asked. Brad’s face went a bit pink.
“Well, yeah…I guess,” he said with a slight stammer.
“And you haven’t even tried to kiss me yet,” Madeline said. It wasn’t a question.
“I want – wanted it to mean something,” Brad said, turning away from her, his voice growing very morose. “I wanted you to love me before I ever kissed you. After the last couple of days, though…I see…that’s just not going to happen, is it?”
Madeline put her hands over her mouth. “What do you mean by that?”
“We could be friends – you could even like me a lot and think I’m good-looking or a nice guy or whatever,” Brad explained simply. A smirk crossing his face, he added, “But you’re never going to love me.”
Madeline gulped and put her head down.
“On the other hand, I do love you,” he replied, putting a hand on her shoulder. “So much, actually, that I can let you go.”
Her head snapped up. Her green eyes narrowed, and she let out a gasp.
“Let me go…?”
“Forgive me…but you’re being really stupid,” Brad said. “Ever since you saw him again that night, you’ve been thinking about him, wondering what the hell you were thinking when you let him go. And, knowing him, he’s been thinking about you the same way.”
“Brad…” Madeline whimpered, her head down.
“Don’t do that,” he said, and she looked up again. Tears were in her eyes, but Brad’s jaw was set. “You’re feeling ashamed. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I know I don’t have a chance…in fact, I brought you here feeling pretty sure I didn’t have a chance.”
“…You mean to tell me…?” she asked, and she was full-on sobbing now.
“Otherwise, you would have been on your way back to Pummelo on the first thing smoking,” Brad replied. “And by yourself, no less. The state you were in…I couldn’t let that happen. Good thing, right? Your family wouldn’t have been there…and you two probably wouldn’t have seen each other again for years, at least. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have complained too much if you had settled for me…but that was only if he never showed up again. Otherwise, I would have been robbing you of your happiness. I couldn’t do that.”
“Brad…” Madeline muttered.
“He was prepared to make the same sacrifice for you,” he cut her off. “You need to know that. So…could you do us both a favor?”
Madeline nodded, wiping her eyes.
“Smile more,” he said. “I know it’s hard for you, but I know he’d like to see that…and I would, too.”
She nodded again in response, a faint smile cracking on her lip. She leaned over toward Brad, and planted a kiss on his cheek, much to his surprise.
“You’ll…find someone,” Madeline said, standing up. “And she’ll be really lucky. You’re a good guy, Brad.”
“Just don’t go spreading that around town,” he quipped. Madeline offered him a smile and walked away.
“We’re still friends,” Madeline told her father, walking close to him under the umbrella.
“As long as you’re not getting hurt,” Otto murmured. “Don’t forget, you’re still young, and you don’t want to create regrets for yourself later. You remember what I always used to tell you when you were a little girl?”
“‘You’re beautiful – and someday, you’ll find someone that will make you feel as beautiful as you are,’” Madeline recited word for word. How could she forget? “I think ‘someday’ came so fast that I missed it the first time…”
THUMP.
“Watch it!!” Madeline exclaimed, whirling around and holding her shoulder. Otto also turned and tilted the umbrella backward, exposing himself and his daughter to the rain again. The girl looked up into a pair of eyes similar to hers, on a face similar to hers, accented by hair of a dark brown – similar to hers. “No…you can’t be…you’re a ghost. No…no…”
“Madeline…” the boy uttered, walking toward her.
“NO!” she shrieked, rearing back a fist (the boy’s green eyes widened momentarily) and catching the boy across the face with a boxer-worthy right hook that sent him staggering. She looked down at her knuckles, which were red with impact. She had hit flesh and bone – a real person.
All in that instant, her balance failed her. It felt like her legs had turned to mush underneath her, and she fell to her knees, shaking violently and letting out strangled cries. In the midst of her anguish, she felt a pair of arms lock tightly around her and pull her close. She returned the embrace and sobbed unabashedly into his shoulder.
“I haven’t been a good brother…I’m sorry.”
“That’s a really nice charm on that necklace.”
“Thanks…it was his. He left it the night that…”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay. I wear it in his memory.”
“So…how did you two meet? Ouch, Veronica…” a young blonde woman grunted as her daughter used her arm as a handhold to climb into the booth with her. She picked the little girl up and set her on her lap. Both pairs of eyes, so identical in shape, looked intently at the teenager across the small table for her answer.
Brushing a long strand of black behind her ear, the teenage girl heaved a sigh. She didn’t like talking about him – people really should have been able to understand that by now. Then again, this was his family…and they had a right to know.
“We were both born in Cherrygrove,” she said, looking at her knees and smiling fondly. “We met on a beach there about a year and a half ago.”
“That’s a coincidence,” the blonde woman replied with a smile. “Otto and I met on a beach, too. Guess it’s more romantic that way…”
“I don’t believe in love at first sight, Amanda,” Mariah said matter-of-factly. “Actually, the first time I met him, I didn’t like him all that much. But, as I got to know what he was really like…”
“You’re a lot more mature about boys than most girls your age,” Mandi replied. “That’ll be…good for you when…you find someone else.”
“No,” Mariah sighed. “I’m not going to find ‘someone else.’”
Mandi took a deep breath. She looked sad. “I understand how you feel, Mariah – but can you hear me out for a sec? You’re fifteen years old. You’re just a kid, really.”
“So you’re telling me to just go on and date someone else??” Mariah’s eyes went wide. “And what if he dies?”
“You’re being paranoid, Mariah,” Mandi answered, reaching over the table and placing her hands on her shoulders. “Do you really think that would happen to you again?”
“You don’t think I have a reason?” Mariah snarled, shrugging her shoulders away from the older woman. “All the men that have been important to me have a bad habit of dying. My father died in a fire thirteen years ago. Last year, my first boyfriend hung himself. And now this…!”
Mandi’s face went white. “You’re joking.”
“You think I would joke about something like that?” Mariah’s green eyes started to run with tears.
“Mariah, I’m…” Mandi started, but was cut off by the black-haired girl standing to her feet.
“I wish I was still a kid,” she said, her eyes shining.
She stormed toward the door, her face buried in her hands.
“Mariah, wait –” Mandi took a bit of a jog to catch up to her, leaving her young daughter standing there, dumbfounded.
“Mommy, come back!!” she exclaimed childishly before running after her.
The door slid open, and everyone except for Veronica froze.
“Daddy!” she squealed, running over to the oldest of the three figures near the doorway. The man picked her up into his arms.
“Veronica,” Otto said breathlessly, going into his pocket with his free hand and pointing with his chin at one of his twin children. “Do you know who that is?”
“That’s Maddie,” she said.
“No,” Otto replied patiently. “The other one – the boy.”
Meanwhile, Mandi had stopped at a slight distance, her hands over her mouth in surprise as her eyes found her stepchildren –
Both of her stepchildren.
The girl, predictably, was clinging to her brother, who looked just like the picture Mandi had seen a hundred times as Otto talked fondly about his children. His hair was slightly curly and matted a bit by the rain, and his eyes were green and piercing just like his father’s and sister’s. He was wearing a black, hooded, zip-down sweatshirt. He had a nervous expression on his face that was nothing compared to Mariah’s body language. She looked like she would collapse at any moment.
“Go on,” Madeline muttered, shoving her brother out in front of her. “She’s waited for you all this time.”
“Hey, Mariah,” he said simply. The girl nearly melted.
“Oh, Matt…”
He put an arm around her shoulder.
“Matt Marius!” Matt jumped and grimaced. Maybe the hug was too personal a thing in front of his parents, he thought. He looked over his shoulder. Otto was indeed looking straight at him, and Matt didn’t know what he looked like if he didn’t look upset. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Matt immediately felt like the toddler that had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Your girlfriend – and those are her words, not mine – hasn’t seen you for a full two months, and everyone’s been telling her that you’re dead – gone, not coming back at all.” Otto asked, a frown on his face. After a pause, his lips turned upward into a smirk.
“Stop acting like an eight-year-old and kiss her already.”
Matt was definitely taken aback for a second – but he wasn’t about to say no to his dad. Not surprisingly, it seemed to take a couple of seconds for her to register this as reality. When she finally did, she started to kiss back – and did she ever. He could have stayed with her like this for hours…except that something came to each of their minds.
“You forgot this,” she said, going toward the back of her neck to take off his necklace. Matt stopped her.
“Keep it,” he murmured. “Until I get you something better.”
He turned around and his green eyes searched for and found the little girl. She was wearing a red, long-sleeved shirt with rhinestone hearts and jeans. She looked a bit like a curly-haired miniature of her mother with her ears pierced, but she had her father’s nose. She definitely had her father’s nose. Her curious, turquoise eyes were looking at a small piece of paper, and then up at the boy repeatedly.
“Hi, there,” Matt knelt very low.
The little girl looked straight at him, bright-eyed, and said nothing. She kept walking, a look in her turquoise eyes that signaled a sense of familiarity in what she was saying.
“Hi,” she said.
“Do you remember me?” he asked, putting his hands on her shoulders. “My name’s Matthew.”
“Matthew?” she responded, as if she didn’t hear correctly the first time.
“That’s my name,” Matt replied with a fragile smile. “And your name is Veronica, isn’t it?”
She nodded, her blonde curls bouncing against her back and shoulders. She looked down at the picture and then at the real-life boy.
“Matthew,” she repeated. It wasn’t a question this time. “My big brother…Matthew…”
“Yeah…” he replied, bringing her in toward his chest. He took a deep breath in and tried to keep some semblance of composure…but the moment those little arms opened and tried to find his sides, he broke down. Madeline dropped down to one knee and rubbed her brother’s shoulder comfortingly, trying to blink back her own tears. After a few seconds, she happened to look up in the general direction of Mariah and Mandi. A boy was coming down the staircase. His very long legs seemed to take an eternity to reach the next step. The boy laid eyes on the scene before him, and then on her in particular…
Her smile weakened a bit when she saw him, but it never left her face.
He, on the other hand, took a step back, his yellow eyes wide, and mouthed a very clear series of oaths…and promptly ran back upstairs.
Madeline was slightly stung – but she’d lament the shambles that was her love life later. Her brother was safe, alive, and well – and if everything else failed, she had a family to belong to, a place she could call home.
For him, becoming Pokémon Champion was a substitute dream. So many days, doing that, or dying in honor for a cause greater than himself, seemed like reachable ambitions, as difficult as he knew they were. His real dream, since he was ten years old, was to be part of a real family. He, too, had found a place to belong…
Travis stared at the window, watching this afternoon thundershower pound its glass panels with weighty raindrops. It was a sad sort of day, to be sure. Thankfully, he had already been planning on taking a day off…otherwise, this weather would have put a real dent in his training plans. It wasn’t that he hated training in the rain so much – heck, he had traveled in it. But that was in the middle of summer, when it was still hot, and summer storms tended to last all of an hour or two, if that. To try to do the same thing in the middle of fall was another thing entirely – and the last thing he needed was to catch some sort of cold a day or two before the Tournament started.
It had been as Katrina predicted. As the Tournament drew closer, they had both started their own separate training regimens, and spent a lot of the days apart. For him, it was a necessary sacrifice if he wanted to become Champion. He couldn’t take this field for granted – even with Kelly being knocked out of the Tournament.
Strangely enough, it was that event that made Travis waver a bit on his certainty that Cliff had been the one that had been calling the attacks. Perhaps it was because he could not fathom that a thirteen-year-old boy, no matter how twisted, could achieve that level of brutality. The way the attack was described, seemed to be designed more to maim severely than to actually kill. Whoever had done it, from what he had heard, had nearly done both successfully. And the galling thing was, even with the insane amounts of security that were found in the camp, they still couldn’t find any suspects.
That, and they had made Kelly the target. It was well-established that Kelly and Cliff did not like each other; but that still didn’t explain why Cliff’s original targets, the foreign-born veterans like himself, Katrina, and Brad Carmichael, hadn’t been targeted to that degree. Nonetheless, Travis had been on his guard ever since the first attack in the caves. If it weren’t for the fact that they had already agreed to do their training separately from each other, in order to keep the playing field as level as possible, Travis wouldn’t have let Katrina out of his sight.
But he had seen his share of villains – enough to know that, if he were in the attacker’s position, he’d go after Brad next. Why? Because Brad Carmichael, although he himself was a strong Trainer, was the easiest to attack without incurring the suspicion and wrath of about a dozen other people.
But that’s not what happened. For some reason, the attacker wanted Kelly finished off. The attacker thought that Kelly Brennan – a rookie born in Hoenn – was more of an immediate threat.
“<You okay?>” a voice snapped Travis out of his laser focus. In the dim reflection of the windows, he could see an Espeon slinking through the cracked door. “<You look like you’re thinking really hard. Does it hurt?>”
“Very funny,” Travis chuckled.
“<Well, something’s on your mind,>” Angel maintained, jumping up onto the bed and placing her forelegs on his back. “<You never make that face when you’re not thinking about anything.>”
“Just thinking about some of the stuff that’s happened the last couple of days – trying to make sense of it all,” Travis muttered. Kneading his lips once with his hand, he muttered, “Something doesn’t add up. I know Cliff has something to do with it, because of the Jade Hammer connection, but what happened to Kelly – doesn’t seem like him. He’s the type of person that would rather sneak around – but what happened to Kelly was full frontal assault. To order a guy to bludgeon one of his enemies with a sledgehammer? Not the first time the Jade Hammer has done it, but that just doesn’t seem like Cliff’s style. What if we’re dealing with the Jade Hammer and some other group trying to eliminate competition? Or did Kelly hack off someone in particular besides Cliff?”
“<You’re stressing yourself out,>” Angel said calmly. “<It sucks what happened to the kid, but this isn’t the time to be thinking about it. We have a Tournament to win.>”
“I thought you were going to be spending time with your egg,” Travis answered, turning his head and looking over his shoulder.
“<Can’t,>” the mother-to-be replied, grimacing. “<Mariah’s gone and run off somewhere. You know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. She’s really nice and I think she’s capable, but there’s no denying the fact that she’s also an emotional wreck. I don’t want to hurt her confidence any more, but…that is my child, and if anything happens to it…>”
“I know…” Travis sighed. “Damn…so much to think about. I’d be able to clear my head if I could go out and get some exercise, but this rain…”
“<Crescent’s been teaching me not to be so wired all the time,>” Angel replied after a while. “<There are times for it…but when you do it too much, it’s unhealthy.>”
“Yeah…” he murmured, standing up and pacing the room. He made three or four passes before Angel spoke again.
“<You’re going to wear a hole in the floor.>”
Travis stopped walking. A smile crossed his face for a moment. Then the door opened.
Katrina stood framed in the doorway for a moment. Her rose-pink hair, while still beautiful, looked a bit messy, as if she had just gotten out of bed. Travis had no more time to investigate the changes in her appearance. She let out a ragged sigh and fell upon him, embracing him tightly…uncomfortably so at first. This clearly wasn’t a “glad to see you” kind of hug.
He’d been on the other end of this one more times than he would care to count. This was a “I’m so relieved that you’re alive” type of hug. But…why was…
“Wh-what’s going on?” he finally stammered. She drew back enough to see his face. Her eyes were slightly red, which either meant that she’d been crying, sleeping, or a combination of both.
“It was just a dream,” she muttered. “A bad dream.”
“A bad dream?” Travis repeated, concerned. “About what?”
“I came in, just like I just did,” she muttered. “And you were on the ground…”
“It’s fine,” Travis interrupted her. Obviously the attack on Kelly had her just as worried as he was. “I’m okay.”
She nodded and leaned against him. He tried to walk over to the bed, but she would not unlock herself from around him. So, he sat down on the nearest edge of the mattress he could find (Angel leapt out of the way quickly) and guided her down with him. The room was silent, save for the quiet pitter-patter of rain on the window – and dark, save for the occasional flash of lightning.
He held on to her, saying nothing. Even when he stole a glance at her face and noticed a solitary tear or two began to run from her eyes to his shirt, he remained silent. Besides the nightmare, something had happened. Whatever that was, his mouth would do her no good until she said it would.
After a long time, she did finally talk. “You and your family look so happy when you’re together. I get along great with my Mom, but…it’s just not the same. I’d have rather lived dirt poor with two parents who loved me and each other…”
She sniffled, wiping her eyes. Her mournful face turned into a bitter smile. She loosed herself from Travis’ arms and went toward the window. She took a deep breath, looked through the panes in a bit of a surreal expression and said:
“Mom just told me she’s filing for divorce.”
Travis’ jaw sat unhinged for a second, and he stood up about halfway. “Wait…are you serious? Wha—”
“You’re shocked? I wasn’t,” Katrina said. “He’s pretty much lived in Goldenrod City the last couple of years. E.I.’s got him working so hard, and now he’s set to take over the entire company. But he was never around – you know that.”
“I do – but…” Travis uttered. “Your mom loved him, didn’t she?”
“She did…part of me thinks she still does,” Katrina replied. “That’s why it hurts her so much. She doesn’t feel like he loves her – or me – as much as he loves his career. That’s why she couldn’t stand being married to him anymore. I thought it’d be better…but I’m not sure he ever thought of me as his own daughter. He wasn’t the one that decided to adopt me, after all.”
Travis frowned.
“I don’t even know…” she shook her head. “I don’t even know if he ever wanted to have a family. Part of me wonders if he did it just because it was what people expect the average person to do. I guess I should have seen this coming…but that doesn’t make it hurt any less…”
He rounded the bed and stood behind her, his hands locked around her neck and shoulders. She grabbed on to his arms and held on for dear life, as if he was the only thing saving her from a tremendous fall.
“Paulus and my grandfather taught me…” Travis murmured. “…that if you ignore your family for the task at hand, only bad things happen to you. That’s why…”
He guided her shoulders around so that she was facing him.
“I swear to you…”
“Stop,” she cut him off, putting a hand over his mouth. “I trust you.”
She leaned in close to him and started to kiss him.
“Guys? …Guys?” a boy’s voice muttered once, then nearly yelled. Travis looked over his shoulder. Shiro had walked in, hands in his pockets. Hunched over, he looked significantly shorter than his nearly six feet in height. His bright red hair was hanging down over his eyes and ears. He looked rather sloppy without it gelled up, ironically enough. “Sorry for interrupting, but there’s something you guys should know…”
“Can it wait?” Travis asked, turning toward Katrina. “At least for a little bit?”
“I mean…” Shiro muttered uncertainly before catching a look at Katrina’s face. “Did something happen?”
“Shut the door,” Travis said. Shiro did so, and walked over toward the window as his two friends sat down on the bed. Katrina leaned her head against her boyfriend’s shoulder, looking positively drained. Travis stroked her pink hair comfortingly for a moment, then looked up at Shiro. “Katrina’s parents are splitting up.”
Shiro’s yellow eyes popped for about a half-second, then he looked away. A steamrolled expression on his face, he uttered a single word with ironic calmness. Travis let out a sigh, and expected Shiro to grimace cordially and leave. You can imagine his surprise when, without any further conversation, the tall, red-haired boy sat right down next to them.
Were it not for a few deliberate differences, Travis could have been forgiven for thinking that they were all ten years old again. In so many ways, he missed his stolen childhood. He wondered at times how things would have been if the first war never happened. How would things have been if he and Katrina had not started their relationship under such duress?
“You ever wish we could go back?” Shiro asked. “Life was a lot less complicated when we were back at the Academy together, wasn’t it?”
“Of course I do,” Travis replied.
“I don’t,” Shiro answered. “I hate the person I was back then.”
Travis turned to him in surprise. The Shiro he knew had always been so confident – too confident, actually…
“I was such a fake person…” Shiro went on. “Anything painful, I pretty much ignored – acted like it wasn’t there. I justified it by saying that people preferred me happy – but the truth was, I just couldn’t handle the hard things in life. So every time someone came to me with some sort of emotional pain…I’d shut my eyes and stop my ears and pretend it wasn’t there. Sometimes, I’d even run…and I’d do it all with a smile on my face, saying that I still cared.”
Shiro bit his lip.
“I’m not going to pretend to understand what being a child of divorcing parents feels like,” he said seriously. “But…I’ll be here for you.”
“Thanks,” Katrina replied, managing a small smile.
Shiro stood up. “It might not do anything for you right now…but I still think you’ll be really interested to know who showed up downstairs.”
Travis looked down at Katrina. “Are you up for it?”
She took her head off Travis’ shoulder. “It’s better than moping around, in any case…yeah. Let’s go.”
Travis stayed at the head of the pack as they made their way down the elevator. As they came out into the ground floor, they noticed the large crowds. Everyone was inside because of the rain, and on top of that, it was dinner time.
Coming off the elevator, Travis nearly walked right into a familiar-looking boy with a blond mop of hair.
“Brad?” Travis uttered, a bit surprised. Brad Carmichael was one of the many Trainers that had disappeared back into the caves in the days leading up to the Tournament.
“Oh – hey, you guys,” he replied with a disarming smile. “I was just on my way up to my room. Best relax now – I’m planning to get up early tomorrow, once this rain clears up.”
He made his way toward the elevator, stopping right next to the red-haired boy. Shiro, feeling a bit awkward, kept his golden eyes focused straight ahead.
“You’re damn lucky, you know that?” Brad chuckled, looking at the slightly taller boy through the corners of his eyes. “You’d better be good to her. If you aren’t…well, I might not be responsible for my actions at that point…”
With that, he walked off, giving Shiro no chance to respond to his words.
“What did he mean by –” Shiro murmured.
“Shiro!” Katrina was calling out to him. She and Travis were now a distance away. Shiro grimaced, took one last look at the closing elevator door, and waded through the sea of people to catch up with his friends. Standing head and shoulders above many of the young teenagers running around, he was easily visible, especially with his shock of red hair. They waited for him.
Once Shiro had made his way over to them, they whirled around and made their way toward the booths. Travis started to scan the area for any familiar faces, when all of a sudden, a form came darting out of nowhere (dodging a surprised-looking teenage girl that did look familiar) and careened right at him, headbutting him in the belly and throwing two small, milk-pale arms around his waist. It was a child – a little girl, judging by the length of light blonde hair. She raised her head, resting her chin on his navel as she looked up at him. She was smiling, her light blue eyes shining in delight.
“Anhje!” he shouted out in recognition, crouching down so he could return her show of affection.
“Eat dinner with us,” she implored, pulling on his wrist and trying to march him in the other direction. When he didn’t move, she turned around, put on her most adorable smile, and added, “Please?”
Travis let out a light chuckle. “I guess it couldn’t hurt…”
He had looked straight over Anhje’s head and caught sight of another head of blonde hair. She was sitting on the knees of another person – a boy, from the looks of it – and eyeing him with a strange, innocent mix of adoration and curiosity. Next to the two, on the inside of the booth, was another girl about his age. There was no mistaking that hair. The girl was Madeline, which meant that the boy…no, it couldn’t be…
“Matt?” he said loudly, walking toward him.
The boy’s green eyes turned once, then back to someone sitting on the other side of the booth, and then did a double take. He looked down at the little girl and said something. She promptly hopped off his lap and to the ground as he stood up. Katrina put her hand to her mouth.
“I was right…” she muttered to herself. “It was him…”
Shiro’s mouth tightened as he approached. For all of them, the seconds seemed to take minutes. The world seemed to accelerate around him as their motions slowed down.
Then, at last, he was in front of them, looking for all intents and purposes the same as he had the last time they had all seen him. His brown hair was longer and messier, and the look in his eyes seemed to have aged a bit more. He had a smirk of cynical irritation on his face.
“Rumor is that I’m supposed to be dead,” he said. “I think I feel pretty safe telling you that’s not true – although I came pretty close…”
“What…how did…where…” Travis could only stammer. He was alive. Matthew was alive. Even though he could see him, standing here in the flesh, his brain could not get a good grip on what was happening.
“It’s a pain in the *** to go through the whole story – and, frankly, I don’t feel like reliving it,” he said, looking away from them. “I haven’t even told Madeline yet.”
“You…” Shiro spoke – or growled – next. “You…”
“Hm?” he looked at the tall redhead, somewhat bewildered. “Something wrong?”
He shook his head, his lips so tight it looked like his face was stuck. His golden eyes shut and his long, slightly straight nose wrinkled in disdain. Without a further word, he whirled around and headed straight for the elevator.
Matthew frowned. “What’s up with him?”
Travis shook his head. “No idea.”
Madeline came up to her brother, and did a very good Anhje impression by latching onto his arm and pulling it to get his attention.
“Listen,” she said, “I think I’m gonna head up to bed now.”
“This early?” Matt asked. “It’s only eight.”
“Yeah, well…it’s been a long day,” she said, her eyes directed at the floor.
“Okay…see you tomorrow, then,” Matt replied, no hint of protest in his voice. Madeline turned toward him and threw her arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly.
“That’d be great,” she said. With a wistful smile, she added, “Then I’ll know I’m not dreaming.”
She broke off from him and moved toward the stairs, walking backwards and staring at him for as long as she could without knocking someone else over.
“She’s…different,” Matt said, the concerned frown on his permanently tanned face making him appear older than his years. Katrina could have sworn that face looked familiar.
“She’s happy to see you, Matt,” Katrina sighed. “Does that surprise you?”
“Not as much as the clinginess and such,” Matt replied. “She could be really touchy before, but not like this…”
“Well…she’s been through a lot since you’ve been gone,” Travis said, a frown seizing his face as well. Katrina let out an inaudible gasp – now she knew where she recognized that facial expression. Clearly, Matt had “been through a lot” as well. The blue-haired teenager let out a sigh and then looked down at the very confused little girl, who had been standing still in the middle of this scene, understanding nothing.
“You think you could go back to your dad for a little bit, Anhje?” he asked.
“But…” she spluttered. “He’s going to make me go to bed.”
“I’ll find you tomorrow, okay?” he replied with a smile.
“Promise?” she whimpered.
“Promise,” Travis repeated, giving her a hug goodbye. She broke off from him, waving as she jogged in the other direction, to his call of, “Walk!!”
He stood up and set his eyes on Matthew. Now, he and Matthew looked hardly anything alike, but Travis always marveled at how sometimes, looking at the boy across from him was almost like looking at himself in another body. Now that his face bore this weathered expression, the resemblance was almost unnerving.
“So I heard you found a way to end the war after all,” Matt said, this serious expression on his face.
“Don’t go broadcasting that around,” Travis replied sharply. Matt raised one of his brown eyebrows.
“It was always strange to me, how you never wanted credit for anything you did here,” Matt commented.
“You were alive this whole time…” Travis sighed, shaking his head as he looked away from Matt. “Do you have any idea about the hell everyone’s gone through while you’ve been gone?”
“I imagine Madeline’s taken it rough,” Matt said, looking away. Next thing he knew, he was being hoisted up by his hoodie. His feet were barely scraping the ground.
“ ‘Taken it rough’?? We’re lucky she’s still here!!” Travis shouted.
“What do you mean by that?” Matt uttered, stepping back as Travis finally let go of him.
“She’s been a wreck for the last two months,” Travis replied, turning away from Matt. “She…she’s tried to kill herself.”
Matt’s pupils narrowed so much they nearly disappeared, and all he could do was to utter, “Wh-wha…I didn’t have any way of knowing. But I thought about her, I really did – it’s kinda hard, though, when you’re locked in a dungeon…”
Travis’ eyes widened for a moment. “What??”
Matthew shook his head. “Nothing. Is she okay now, at least?”
“She seems a lot better,” Travis sighed, turning and looking toward where the elevator and stairs were. “But…I just don’t know.”
AD: Thank you very much.
Now, I imagine to everyone surprise – I have a chapter ready. This is the quickest I’ve gotten one done in a while. I’m feeling rather proud of myself. I’m also feeling relieved. This could be one of those types of weeks academically.
Chapter 70: At the Eleventh Hour
October 5, PA 2013 – Evergrande City, Eastern Hoenn
“Well, I’ve got some bad news, and some good news, Kellen. Which do you want first?”
“…Depends on whether or not you think I’m going to die.”
“Well, that’s the good news. Now that you’re not bleeding internally anymore…your life’s not in any danger. In fact, you’ll be able to travel again before too long, but…with these injuries, there’s no way you’d be able to participate in the Tournament coming up.”
“…I thought it’d be something like that.”
“I know how you must…”
“No, you don’t. So shut the **** up and leave me alone.”
“If you need any—”
“I need you to go away.”
Several hours had passed since that evening conversation with the nurses, and it was now morning. Apparently, he’d been visited in his sleep by several of the Trainers that he knew. Some of them had even brought cards and gifts and left them on the small desk next to his hospital bed. He had been relocated to the Victory Road Pokémon Center, which had better medical facilities designed to handle injuries like broken fibulas and internal bleeding.
A nurse would come in every now and then to help take care of him. After a couple of times of trying to rebuff their efforts, he simply gave in and let them do their job. For the most part, though, he had been lying here, drifting in an out of awareness yet unable to go to sleep, where his dreams could, if only for a moment, deliver him from his reality. He lay there awake, his gaze alternating between the large window to his left and the plain, white ceiling, two limbs on opposite corners of his body hitched up awkwardly to prevent swelling. He felt like he was in a trapeze act gone horribly wrong.
Or maybe this world was a three-ring circus gone horribly wrong…
Whatever it was, he had run out of tears to cry hours ago. (Looking out of the window and hearing the pitter-patter of droplets against it, it seemed that the heavens had taken that task upon themselves.) All his eyes could do were to stare at objects just as lifeless as the dreams he once had. To make it this far, only to have his ambitions ripped away from him – to be a victim of another person’s jealousy, fear, and hatred…
“Excuse me,” one of the redhaired nurses walked in, talking as sweetly as possible, almost as if she was expecting him to vent all of his fury upon her if she said the wrong thing. He turned his eyes on her. “You have a visitor.”
“…Fine, let ‘em in,” Kelly muttered, looking at the ceiling. “At least I’ll see something other than a TV or a wall.”
When at last he turned his head right, he saw a girl, wearing sunglasses, bearing flowers and a fragile, nervous smile. Her black hair flowed in a shiny cascade down to her waist. Kelly’s lip curled. His eyes returned to the ceiling.
“Came to taunt me, hm?” he said cynically. “Or maybe to finish me off, since your boyfriend ****ed it up the first two times? Third time’s the charm, right?”
“Kelly…” the girl whimpered.
“Go on,” Kelly muttered. “I don’t care. I don’t give a damn.”
She set her gifts (flowers and a teddy bear? What was this, Valentine’s Day?) on a chair and came over to approach him. She reached her hand out to him, and the moment she did it, he reached out and grabbed her wrist with his far hand. She fell forward, right over his chest. He snarled through the pain in his two cracked ribs and let go of her hand like it had burned him. When she withdrew it, she saw it had a red mark – but so did the other one, which Kelly had never touched.
A strange request came to Kelly’s mind. “Lean down here.”
She did so, moving her face so that was inches away from his. He took his left hand and removed the shades. She had long, hazel eyes and a very fair, smooth complexion. In spite of himself, his first unavoidable thought was that she was actually very far from bad-looking –
At least, until he noticed that the skin around her right eye was very obviously turning an unpleasant shade of puce.
“What happened?” he muttered, raising his left hand and touching the blemish. She blinked, hissed, and drew away.
“I found him…talking with some of his…goons,” she answered. “That’s when I figured out what he’d done. I heard him talking about ‘using what his uncle left him to finish the job’ – since they didn’t manage to kill you…”
Then, the most shocking thing happened. She broke into tears and, before Kelly could protest or even react, flung her arms around his neck.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “This didn’t have to happen to you…if I’d…”
Every part of him wanted to believe that she was trying to trick him. But there was a difference between crocodile tears and the way Jadyn Mirel was crying. It was less of a sob and more of an anguished wail – the kind a human being is only capable of producing when their heart has been torn in two.
“You don’t need me to forgive you,” he said after a while. She drew back, tears still hanging in the corners of her hazel eyes as she looked down at him. “You…you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I didn’t stop him,” she continued to wail.
“You didn’t know he’d take things this far…” Kelly answered simply. “I didn’t know, either. So please…please try to calm down…”
A bit awkwardly, he slipped his left hand around her back, returning her embrace briefly to reassure her.
“Could I…stay here a little while?” she asked, pulling back after a moment and drying her eyes.
“Why?”
“You’re lonely,” Jadyn replied, putting a nearby chair and seating herself next to his bed. “Aren’t you?”
Kelly looked straight toward the ceiling, his mouth in a straight line. For the first time in hours, his own eyes were watering a bit.
“Excuse me,” the nurse peeked her head around the doorway, almost as if she was afraid to interrupt something personal. Kelly and Jadyn both looked toward the door and watched her come in. “You have another visitor. Should I show him in?”
“Y-yeah, I guess,” Kelly replied. He looked down at Jadyn.
“So, will you…will you ever be able to travel again with those injuries?” she finally asked, a very tentative tone in her voice. She was aware that this was probably a sensitive – even painful – subject.
“They say I will,” he answered. “As soon as next summer. I’m just not…sure I want to.”
“Why not?” she replied.
“…I don’t know. I might just be burned out,” he said simply. “Sick of trying to do something without any support. My parents never really thought I could do it. Or at least my father didn’t…”
“I know how you feel,” Jadyn replied. A bitter smile crossing her face, she went on, “My father doesn’t think that girls should be Trainers at all. I’m surprised I exist, frankly. If he hadn’t married a woman that believed like him – that a woman’s purpose in life is to bear children and support the man – I’d have never been born.”
“Is that why…why you stopped?” he asked. She nodded, gulping back tears.
“…the biggest mistake of my life,” she murmured. “What the hell did giving up my dream of becoming Champion – for him – get me? A broken heart and a black eye. Serves me right. It was so stupid…”
“Stop it,” Kelly said flatly. “You don’t deserve what happened to you.”
“When I watch that girl battle…” Jadyn murmured.
“Who?” Kelly asked, a bit confused.
“The older one,” she answered, and Kelly know exactly who she was talking about. “She can support the one she loves, but still stand on her own two feet. I wish I could be like that…”
Kelly’s mouth twitched. He didn’t really know how to respond to that statement. He certainly didn’t know how to respond when Jadyn started to bang her fist on the nearby table – over and over.
“I’m such an idiot!” she snarled through her teeth, tears running down her face. “If I’d just been able to think for myself, I’d still be Training, you wouldn’t have been hurt…and maybe I would have had the guts to…”
She broke off mid-sentence, her face a bit red for a moment.
“To what…?” Kelly asked.
“…I always wondered about you,” Jadyn replied. “What made you so fearless, to where you weren’t scared of anybody you faced…even though I couldn’t stand you on principle – because he couldn’t – I always wondered what I’d find out about you if we could ever talk to each other…”
“Hm,” Kelly uttered. “Well, now you’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Kelly,” she groaned. “I…I didn’t mean…”
“I’m being serious,” he answered in the middle of her mutters.
Jadyn did not get to ask any questions for the time being, though. At that moment, a boy strode into the room with his hood up, cursing the weather. He looked down at the girl first.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. Looking between her and the boy, he started to question, “Hold on – are you two…?”
“Wha—? N-no,” Kelly stammered. Jadyn said nothing, her cheeks turning the color of a Charmeleon’s tail. “Why are you here? Who are you?”
“Are you another one of that…*******’s hit men??” Jadyn shouted. Interposing herself in between the hooded boy and Kelly’s bed. “Stop right where you are! I won’t let you take another step! “
“Jadyn, get back,” Kelly said immediately, surprised at himself for how little thought it’d taken.
“NO! You’ve already gone through enough!! And if he wants to finish the job, he’s going to have to go through me!!” Jadyn screamed, planting herself two steps away from the approaching hooded figure and refusing to budge an inch.
“J-Jadyn…” Kelly muttered, his eyes brimming with concern and perhaps affection for the girl that had, a week ago, been one of his worst enemies.
“Calm down,” the boy answered. “I’m not here to ‘finish’ anybody.”
“Well, then, who in the hell are you?” Jadyn yelled back at him.
“Somebody that needs your forgiveness,” the boy answered, pulling the hood on his black sweatshirt down. Kelly’s face went white as a ghost.
“No…! That’s not – how in the – you’re dead!” the younger boy’s shocked and almost fearful response came in a croak.
“…Not quite,” the older boy responded, his brown shag of curly waves covering most of his ears and reaching his shoulders in the back – kept from rising skyward by a black skullcap. “But don’t beat yourself up. I’m used to people counting me out.”
“Y-you’re,” Jadyn squeaked, pointing a horribly trembling finger at the older teen. “Y-you’re…you’re…”
“I never thought he’d go this far,” the older boy said. “But I guess, after he got inside information from the League for the initial brackets…”
“What?” Kelly uttered.
“You were going to battle Cliff in the first round,” the older boy said. “If I’d known that, I would have shown myself sooner, and this wouldn’t have happened. That’s why…I need your forgiveness.”
“You don’t need my forgiveness,” Kelly said, trying to sit up. “You idiot – all of your friends and family have been mourning for you for almost two months. Didn’t that occur to you? URGH!”
“Kelly, lay back,” Jadyn implored him.
“You have to go back…” Kelly muttered, managing a smile. “Things have been a mess without you…Matthew.”
The teenager’s weathered-looking, green eyes turned toward Jadyn.
“I’m not sure what brought this on, but…take care of him,” he told her. She nodded. He whirled around.
“I’ll take care of the Jade Hammer.”
;384;
;384;
Otto Marius walked around in the same rainstorm later that afternoon, his head toward the ground as he contemplated what to do. Obviously, since Matthew was not going to be at the Tournament, there was no one there that Otto especially wanted to watch. If he’d had his way, he and what was left of his family would be gone already, halfway back to Pummelo Island, where they could at least find a way to pick up the pieces and start the healing process. Otto knew Brad Carmichael reasonably well, and was a bit surprised to find that Brad and Madeline had become something of an item. Even so, though, he was going to take Madeline home. Brad would come back later, of course, but right now, Madeline needed to be home. And once she was home, he would never let her out of his sight. He never considered himself a fatalist in any sense…
But it was hard, when he watched his oldest daughter, for him not to think that the world just had it in for some people. Of course, it made him grieve beyond words that his son, who had been desperate since early childhood for a real, stable family, had died just as that dream was beginning to become a reality. But to see the state of his daughter, to know that she only had one sibling left out of four, only added to his own suffering.
On top of all of that, he couldn’t help but think that, in a strange but very real sense, the events that had happened to his children were his own fault. After all, if he had simply stood up to his ex-wife when he’d had the chance…
Suddenly, he noticed something shadow him above his head. The raindrops were no longer finding him.
“Last thing we need now is for you to get sick,” he looked down at the girl to his left and let out a gasp.
“Maddie?” he muttered, taking the umbrella from her and holding it over both of them. “What are you doing here? I thought you and Brad were…”
“We broke up,” she said – very matter-of-factly.
“You don’t sound very…upset,” Otto replied.
“Well,” Madeline looked down at the ground. “Maybe ‘broke up’ isn’t really the right word…”
;251;
An hour before that, she had been sitting in the lounge with Brad. The sound of rain on the roof was still audible, and as it was relatively early on a rainy morning, not that many people were awake.
“Damn this weather…” the blonde muttered. “I’d like to go down to Victory Road to train some more, but I’d rather not go into the Tournament with a cold.”
“It should pass by tomorrow, right?” Madeline asked. “Why don’t you take a day off?”
Brad grimaced in resignation, as if he knew Madeline’s idea was a good one – and still didn’t like it.
“…How’s your dad?” he asked. Madeline shook her head.
“Still taking it very hard,” she sighed.
“Can’t blame him,” Brad commented. “His only son…”
“Brad, please…” Madeline said with a shudder, her eyes toward the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he answered. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I know…” Madeline murmured. “Brad, I want to ask you something.”
“Sure – go ahead,” he replied.
“Would you…you know…call us a couple? You and me?” she asked. Brad’s face went a bit pink.
“Well, yeah…I guess,” he said with a slight stammer.
“And you haven’t even tried to kiss me yet,” Madeline said. It wasn’t a question.
“I want – wanted it to mean something,” Brad said, turning away from her, his voice growing very morose. “I wanted you to love me before I ever kissed you. After the last couple of days, though…I see…that’s just not going to happen, is it?”
Madeline put her hands over her mouth. “What do you mean by that?”
“We could be friends – you could even like me a lot and think I’m good-looking or a nice guy or whatever,” Brad explained simply. A smirk crossing his face, he added, “But you’re never going to love me.”
Madeline gulped and put her head down.
“On the other hand, I do love you,” he replied, putting a hand on her shoulder. “So much, actually, that I can let you go.”
Her head snapped up. Her green eyes narrowed, and she let out a gasp.
“Let me go…?”
“Forgive me…but you’re being really stupid,” Brad said. “Ever since you saw him again that night, you’ve been thinking about him, wondering what the hell you were thinking when you let him go. And, knowing him, he’s been thinking about you the same way.”
“Brad…” Madeline whimpered, her head down.
“Don’t do that,” he said, and she looked up again. Tears were in her eyes, but Brad’s jaw was set. “You’re feeling ashamed. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I know I don’t have a chance…in fact, I brought you here feeling pretty sure I didn’t have a chance.”
“…You mean to tell me…?” she asked, and she was full-on sobbing now.
“Otherwise, you would have been on your way back to Pummelo on the first thing smoking,” Brad replied. “And by yourself, no less. The state you were in…I couldn’t let that happen. Good thing, right? Your family wouldn’t have been there…and you two probably wouldn’t have seen each other again for years, at least. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have complained too much if you had settled for me…but that was only if he never showed up again. Otherwise, I would have been robbing you of your happiness. I couldn’t do that.”
“Brad…” Madeline muttered.
“He was prepared to make the same sacrifice for you,” he cut her off. “You need to know that. So…could you do us both a favor?”
Madeline nodded, wiping her eyes.
“Smile more,” he said. “I know it’s hard for you, but I know he’d like to see that…and I would, too.”
She nodded again in response, a faint smile cracking on her lip. She leaned over toward Brad, and planted a kiss on his cheek, much to his surprise.
“You’ll…find someone,” Madeline said, standing up. “And she’ll be really lucky. You’re a good guy, Brad.”
“Just don’t go spreading that around town,” he quipped. Madeline offered him a smile and walked away.
;251;
“We’re still friends,” Madeline told her father, walking close to him under the umbrella.
“As long as you’re not getting hurt,” Otto murmured. “Don’t forget, you’re still young, and you don’t want to create regrets for yourself later. You remember what I always used to tell you when you were a little girl?”
“‘You’re beautiful – and someday, you’ll find someone that will make you feel as beautiful as you are,’” Madeline recited word for word. How could she forget? “I think ‘someday’ came so fast that I missed it the first time…”
THUMP.
“Watch it!!” Madeline exclaimed, whirling around and holding her shoulder. Otto also turned and tilted the umbrella backward, exposing himself and his daughter to the rain again. The girl looked up into a pair of eyes similar to hers, on a face similar to hers, accented by hair of a dark brown – similar to hers. “No…you can’t be…you’re a ghost. No…no…”
“Madeline…” the boy uttered, walking toward her.
“NO!” she shrieked, rearing back a fist (the boy’s green eyes widened momentarily) and catching the boy across the face with a boxer-worthy right hook that sent him staggering. She looked down at her knuckles, which were red with impact. She had hit flesh and bone – a real person.
All in that instant, her balance failed her. It felt like her legs had turned to mush underneath her, and she fell to her knees, shaking violently and letting out strangled cries. In the midst of her anguish, she felt a pair of arms lock tightly around her and pull her close. She returned the embrace and sobbed unabashedly into his shoulder.
“I haven’t been a good brother…I’m sorry.”
“That’s a really nice charm on that necklace.”
“Thanks…it was his. He left it the night that…”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay. I wear it in his memory.”
“So…how did you two meet? Ouch, Veronica…” a young blonde woman grunted as her daughter used her arm as a handhold to climb into the booth with her. She picked the little girl up and set her on her lap. Both pairs of eyes, so identical in shape, looked intently at the teenager across the small table for her answer.
Brushing a long strand of black behind her ear, the teenage girl heaved a sigh. She didn’t like talking about him – people really should have been able to understand that by now. Then again, this was his family…and they had a right to know.
“We were both born in Cherrygrove,” she said, looking at her knees and smiling fondly. “We met on a beach there about a year and a half ago.”
“That’s a coincidence,” the blonde woman replied with a smile. “Otto and I met on a beach, too. Guess it’s more romantic that way…”
“I don’t believe in love at first sight, Amanda,” Mariah said matter-of-factly. “Actually, the first time I met him, I didn’t like him all that much. But, as I got to know what he was really like…”
“You’re a lot more mature about boys than most girls your age,” Mandi replied. “That’ll be…good for you when…you find someone else.”
“No,” Mariah sighed. “I’m not going to find ‘someone else.’”
Mandi took a deep breath. She looked sad. “I understand how you feel, Mariah – but can you hear me out for a sec? You’re fifteen years old. You’re just a kid, really.”
“So you’re telling me to just go on and date someone else??” Mariah’s eyes went wide. “And what if he dies?”
“You’re being paranoid, Mariah,” Mandi answered, reaching over the table and placing her hands on her shoulders. “Do you really think that would happen to you again?”
“You don’t think I have a reason?” Mariah snarled, shrugging her shoulders away from the older woman. “All the men that have been important to me have a bad habit of dying. My father died in a fire thirteen years ago. Last year, my first boyfriend hung himself. And now this…!”
Mandi’s face went white. “You’re joking.”
“You think I would joke about something like that?” Mariah’s green eyes started to run with tears.
“Mariah, I’m…” Mandi started, but was cut off by the black-haired girl standing to her feet.
“I wish I was still a kid,” she said, her eyes shining.
She stormed toward the door, her face buried in her hands.
“Mariah, wait –” Mandi took a bit of a jog to catch up to her, leaving her young daughter standing there, dumbfounded.
“Mommy, come back!!” she exclaimed childishly before running after her.
The door slid open, and everyone except for Veronica froze.
“Daddy!” she squealed, running over to the oldest of the three figures near the doorway. The man picked her up into his arms.
“Veronica,” Otto said breathlessly, going into his pocket with his free hand and pointing with his chin at one of his twin children. “Do you know who that is?”
“That’s Maddie,” she said.
“No,” Otto replied patiently. “The other one – the boy.”
Meanwhile, Mandi had stopped at a slight distance, her hands over her mouth in surprise as her eyes found her stepchildren –
Both of her stepchildren.
The girl, predictably, was clinging to her brother, who looked just like the picture Mandi had seen a hundred times as Otto talked fondly about his children. His hair was slightly curly and matted a bit by the rain, and his eyes were green and piercing just like his father’s and sister’s. He was wearing a black, hooded, zip-down sweatshirt. He had a nervous expression on his face that was nothing compared to Mariah’s body language. She looked like she would collapse at any moment.
“Go on,” Madeline muttered, shoving her brother out in front of her. “She’s waited for you all this time.”
“Hey, Mariah,” he said simply. The girl nearly melted.
“Oh, Matt…”
He put an arm around her shoulder.
“Matt Marius!” Matt jumped and grimaced. Maybe the hug was too personal a thing in front of his parents, he thought. He looked over his shoulder. Otto was indeed looking straight at him, and Matt didn’t know what he looked like if he didn’t look upset. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Matt immediately felt like the toddler that had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Your girlfriend – and those are her words, not mine – hasn’t seen you for a full two months, and everyone’s been telling her that you’re dead – gone, not coming back at all.” Otto asked, a frown on his face. After a pause, his lips turned upward into a smirk.
“Stop acting like an eight-year-old and kiss her already.”
Matt was definitely taken aback for a second – but he wasn’t about to say no to his dad. Not surprisingly, it seemed to take a couple of seconds for her to register this as reality. When she finally did, she started to kiss back – and did she ever. He could have stayed with her like this for hours…except that something came to each of their minds.
“You forgot this,” she said, going toward the back of her neck to take off his necklace. Matt stopped her.
“Keep it,” he murmured. “Until I get you something better.”
He turned around and his green eyes searched for and found the little girl. She was wearing a red, long-sleeved shirt with rhinestone hearts and jeans. She looked a bit like a curly-haired miniature of her mother with her ears pierced, but she had her father’s nose. She definitely had her father’s nose. Her curious, turquoise eyes were looking at a small piece of paper, and then up at the boy repeatedly.
“Hi, there,” Matt knelt very low.
The little girl looked straight at him, bright-eyed, and said nothing. She kept walking, a look in her turquoise eyes that signaled a sense of familiarity in what she was saying.
“Hi,” she said.
“Do you remember me?” he asked, putting his hands on her shoulders. “My name’s Matthew.”
“Matthew?” she responded, as if she didn’t hear correctly the first time.
“That’s my name,” Matt replied with a fragile smile. “And your name is Veronica, isn’t it?”
She nodded, her blonde curls bouncing against her back and shoulders. She looked down at the picture and then at the real-life boy.
“Matthew,” she repeated. It wasn’t a question this time. “My big brother…Matthew…”
“Yeah…” he replied, bringing her in toward his chest. He took a deep breath in and tried to keep some semblance of composure…but the moment those little arms opened and tried to find his sides, he broke down. Madeline dropped down to one knee and rubbed her brother’s shoulder comfortingly, trying to blink back her own tears. After a few seconds, she happened to look up in the general direction of Mariah and Mandi. A boy was coming down the staircase. His very long legs seemed to take an eternity to reach the next step. The boy laid eyes on the scene before him, and then on her in particular…
Her smile weakened a bit when she saw him, but it never left her face.
He, on the other hand, took a step back, his yellow eyes wide, and mouthed a very clear series of oaths…and promptly ran back upstairs.
Madeline was slightly stung – but she’d lament the shambles that was her love life later. Her brother was safe, alive, and well – and if everything else failed, she had a family to belong to, a place she could call home.
For him, becoming Pokémon Champion was a substitute dream. So many days, doing that, or dying in honor for a cause greater than himself, seemed like reachable ambitions, as difficult as he knew they were. His real dream, since he was ten years old, was to be part of a real family. He, too, had found a place to belong…
Travis stared at the window, watching this afternoon thundershower pound its glass panels with weighty raindrops. It was a sad sort of day, to be sure. Thankfully, he had already been planning on taking a day off…otherwise, this weather would have put a real dent in his training plans. It wasn’t that he hated training in the rain so much – heck, he had traveled in it. But that was in the middle of summer, when it was still hot, and summer storms tended to last all of an hour or two, if that. To try to do the same thing in the middle of fall was another thing entirely – and the last thing he needed was to catch some sort of cold a day or two before the Tournament started.
It had been as Katrina predicted. As the Tournament drew closer, they had both started their own separate training regimens, and spent a lot of the days apart. For him, it was a necessary sacrifice if he wanted to become Champion. He couldn’t take this field for granted – even with Kelly being knocked out of the Tournament.
Strangely enough, it was that event that made Travis waver a bit on his certainty that Cliff had been the one that had been calling the attacks. Perhaps it was because he could not fathom that a thirteen-year-old boy, no matter how twisted, could achieve that level of brutality. The way the attack was described, seemed to be designed more to maim severely than to actually kill. Whoever had done it, from what he had heard, had nearly done both successfully. And the galling thing was, even with the insane amounts of security that were found in the camp, they still couldn’t find any suspects.
That, and they had made Kelly the target. It was well-established that Kelly and Cliff did not like each other; but that still didn’t explain why Cliff’s original targets, the foreign-born veterans like himself, Katrina, and Brad Carmichael, hadn’t been targeted to that degree. Nonetheless, Travis had been on his guard ever since the first attack in the caves. If it weren’t for the fact that they had already agreed to do their training separately from each other, in order to keep the playing field as level as possible, Travis wouldn’t have let Katrina out of his sight.
But he had seen his share of villains – enough to know that, if he were in the attacker’s position, he’d go after Brad next. Why? Because Brad Carmichael, although he himself was a strong Trainer, was the easiest to attack without incurring the suspicion and wrath of about a dozen other people.
But that’s not what happened. For some reason, the attacker wanted Kelly finished off. The attacker thought that Kelly Brennan – a rookie born in Hoenn – was more of an immediate threat.
“<You okay?>” a voice snapped Travis out of his laser focus. In the dim reflection of the windows, he could see an Espeon slinking through the cracked door. “<You look like you’re thinking really hard. Does it hurt?>”
“Very funny,” Travis chuckled.
“<Well, something’s on your mind,>” Angel maintained, jumping up onto the bed and placing her forelegs on his back. “<You never make that face when you’re not thinking about anything.>”
“Just thinking about some of the stuff that’s happened the last couple of days – trying to make sense of it all,” Travis muttered. Kneading his lips once with his hand, he muttered, “Something doesn’t add up. I know Cliff has something to do with it, because of the Jade Hammer connection, but what happened to Kelly – doesn’t seem like him. He’s the type of person that would rather sneak around – but what happened to Kelly was full frontal assault. To order a guy to bludgeon one of his enemies with a sledgehammer? Not the first time the Jade Hammer has done it, but that just doesn’t seem like Cliff’s style. What if we’re dealing with the Jade Hammer and some other group trying to eliminate competition? Or did Kelly hack off someone in particular besides Cliff?”
“<You’re stressing yourself out,>” Angel said calmly. “<It sucks what happened to the kid, but this isn’t the time to be thinking about it. We have a Tournament to win.>”
“I thought you were going to be spending time with your egg,” Travis answered, turning his head and looking over his shoulder.
“<Can’t,>” the mother-to-be replied, grimacing. “<Mariah’s gone and run off somewhere. You know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. She’s really nice and I think she’s capable, but there’s no denying the fact that she’s also an emotional wreck. I don’t want to hurt her confidence any more, but…that is my child, and if anything happens to it…>”
“I know…” Travis sighed. “Damn…so much to think about. I’d be able to clear my head if I could go out and get some exercise, but this rain…”
“<Crescent’s been teaching me not to be so wired all the time,>” Angel replied after a while. “<There are times for it…but when you do it too much, it’s unhealthy.>”
“Yeah…” he murmured, standing up and pacing the room. He made three or four passes before Angel spoke again.
“<You’re going to wear a hole in the floor.>”
Travis stopped walking. A smile crossed his face for a moment. Then the door opened.
Katrina stood framed in the doorway for a moment. Her rose-pink hair, while still beautiful, looked a bit messy, as if she had just gotten out of bed. Travis had no more time to investigate the changes in her appearance. She let out a ragged sigh and fell upon him, embracing him tightly…uncomfortably so at first. This clearly wasn’t a “glad to see you” kind of hug.
He’d been on the other end of this one more times than he would care to count. This was a “I’m so relieved that you’re alive” type of hug. But…why was…
“Wh-what’s going on?” he finally stammered. She drew back enough to see his face. Her eyes were slightly red, which either meant that she’d been crying, sleeping, or a combination of both.
“It was just a dream,” she muttered. “A bad dream.”
“A bad dream?” Travis repeated, concerned. “About what?”
“I came in, just like I just did,” she muttered. “And you were on the ground…”
“It’s fine,” Travis interrupted her. Obviously the attack on Kelly had her just as worried as he was. “I’m okay.”
She nodded and leaned against him. He tried to walk over to the bed, but she would not unlock herself from around him. So, he sat down on the nearest edge of the mattress he could find (Angel leapt out of the way quickly) and guided her down with him. The room was silent, save for the quiet pitter-patter of rain on the window – and dark, save for the occasional flash of lightning.
He held on to her, saying nothing. Even when he stole a glance at her face and noticed a solitary tear or two began to run from her eyes to his shirt, he remained silent. Besides the nightmare, something had happened. Whatever that was, his mouth would do her no good until she said it would.
After a long time, she did finally talk. “You and your family look so happy when you’re together. I get along great with my Mom, but…it’s just not the same. I’d have rather lived dirt poor with two parents who loved me and each other…”
She sniffled, wiping her eyes. Her mournful face turned into a bitter smile. She loosed herself from Travis’ arms and went toward the window. She took a deep breath, looked through the panes in a bit of a surreal expression and said:
“Mom just told me she’s filing for divorce.”
Travis’ jaw sat unhinged for a second, and he stood up about halfway. “Wait…are you serious? Wha—”
“You’re shocked? I wasn’t,” Katrina said. “He’s pretty much lived in Goldenrod City the last couple of years. E.I.’s got him working so hard, and now he’s set to take over the entire company. But he was never around – you know that.”
“I do – but…” Travis uttered. “Your mom loved him, didn’t she?”
“She did…part of me thinks she still does,” Katrina replied. “That’s why it hurts her so much. She doesn’t feel like he loves her – or me – as much as he loves his career. That’s why she couldn’t stand being married to him anymore. I thought it’d be better…but I’m not sure he ever thought of me as his own daughter. He wasn’t the one that decided to adopt me, after all.”
Travis frowned.
“I don’t even know…” she shook her head. “I don’t even know if he ever wanted to have a family. Part of me wonders if he did it just because it was what people expect the average person to do. I guess I should have seen this coming…but that doesn’t make it hurt any less…”
He rounded the bed and stood behind her, his hands locked around her neck and shoulders. She grabbed on to his arms and held on for dear life, as if he was the only thing saving her from a tremendous fall.
“Paulus and my grandfather taught me…” Travis murmured. “…that if you ignore your family for the task at hand, only bad things happen to you. That’s why…”
He guided her shoulders around so that she was facing him.
“I swear to you…”
“Stop,” she cut him off, putting a hand over his mouth. “I trust you.”
She leaned in close to him and started to kiss him.
“Guys? …Guys?” a boy’s voice muttered once, then nearly yelled. Travis looked over his shoulder. Shiro had walked in, hands in his pockets. Hunched over, he looked significantly shorter than his nearly six feet in height. His bright red hair was hanging down over his eyes and ears. He looked rather sloppy without it gelled up, ironically enough. “Sorry for interrupting, but there’s something you guys should know…”
“Can it wait?” Travis asked, turning toward Katrina. “At least for a little bit?”
“I mean…” Shiro muttered uncertainly before catching a look at Katrina’s face. “Did something happen?”
“Shut the door,” Travis said. Shiro did so, and walked over toward the window as his two friends sat down on the bed. Katrina leaned her head against her boyfriend’s shoulder, looking positively drained. Travis stroked her pink hair comfortingly for a moment, then looked up at Shiro. “Katrina’s parents are splitting up.”
Shiro’s yellow eyes popped for about a half-second, then he looked away. A steamrolled expression on his face, he uttered a single word with ironic calmness. Travis let out a sigh, and expected Shiro to grimace cordially and leave. You can imagine his surprise when, without any further conversation, the tall, red-haired boy sat right down next to them.
Were it not for a few deliberate differences, Travis could have been forgiven for thinking that they were all ten years old again. In so many ways, he missed his stolen childhood. He wondered at times how things would have been if the first war never happened. How would things have been if he and Katrina had not started their relationship under such duress?
“You ever wish we could go back?” Shiro asked. “Life was a lot less complicated when we were back at the Academy together, wasn’t it?”
“Of course I do,” Travis replied.
“I don’t,” Shiro answered. “I hate the person I was back then.”
Travis turned to him in surprise. The Shiro he knew had always been so confident – too confident, actually…
“I was such a fake person…” Shiro went on. “Anything painful, I pretty much ignored – acted like it wasn’t there. I justified it by saying that people preferred me happy – but the truth was, I just couldn’t handle the hard things in life. So every time someone came to me with some sort of emotional pain…I’d shut my eyes and stop my ears and pretend it wasn’t there. Sometimes, I’d even run…and I’d do it all with a smile on my face, saying that I still cared.”
Shiro bit his lip.
“I’m not going to pretend to understand what being a child of divorcing parents feels like,” he said seriously. “But…I’ll be here for you.”
“Thanks,” Katrina replied, managing a small smile.
Shiro stood up. “It might not do anything for you right now…but I still think you’ll be really interested to know who showed up downstairs.”
Travis looked down at Katrina. “Are you up for it?”
She took her head off Travis’ shoulder. “It’s better than moping around, in any case…yeah. Let’s go.”
;384;
Travis stayed at the head of the pack as they made their way down the elevator. As they came out into the ground floor, they noticed the large crowds. Everyone was inside because of the rain, and on top of that, it was dinner time.
Coming off the elevator, Travis nearly walked right into a familiar-looking boy with a blond mop of hair.
“Brad?” Travis uttered, a bit surprised. Brad Carmichael was one of the many Trainers that had disappeared back into the caves in the days leading up to the Tournament.
“Oh – hey, you guys,” he replied with a disarming smile. “I was just on my way up to my room. Best relax now – I’m planning to get up early tomorrow, once this rain clears up.”
He made his way toward the elevator, stopping right next to the red-haired boy. Shiro, feeling a bit awkward, kept his golden eyes focused straight ahead.
“You’re damn lucky, you know that?” Brad chuckled, looking at the slightly taller boy through the corners of his eyes. “You’d better be good to her. If you aren’t…well, I might not be responsible for my actions at that point…”
With that, he walked off, giving Shiro no chance to respond to his words.
“What did he mean by –” Shiro murmured.
“Shiro!” Katrina was calling out to him. She and Travis were now a distance away. Shiro grimaced, took one last look at the closing elevator door, and waded through the sea of people to catch up with his friends. Standing head and shoulders above many of the young teenagers running around, he was easily visible, especially with his shock of red hair. They waited for him.
Once Shiro had made his way over to them, they whirled around and made their way toward the booths. Travis started to scan the area for any familiar faces, when all of a sudden, a form came darting out of nowhere (dodging a surprised-looking teenage girl that did look familiar) and careened right at him, headbutting him in the belly and throwing two small, milk-pale arms around his waist. It was a child – a little girl, judging by the length of light blonde hair. She raised her head, resting her chin on his navel as she looked up at him. She was smiling, her light blue eyes shining in delight.
“Anhje!” he shouted out in recognition, crouching down so he could return her show of affection.
“Eat dinner with us,” she implored, pulling on his wrist and trying to march him in the other direction. When he didn’t move, she turned around, put on her most adorable smile, and added, “Please?”
Travis let out a light chuckle. “I guess it couldn’t hurt…”
He had looked straight over Anhje’s head and caught sight of another head of blonde hair. She was sitting on the knees of another person – a boy, from the looks of it – and eyeing him with a strange, innocent mix of adoration and curiosity. Next to the two, on the inside of the booth, was another girl about his age. There was no mistaking that hair. The girl was Madeline, which meant that the boy…no, it couldn’t be…
“Matt?” he said loudly, walking toward him.
The boy’s green eyes turned once, then back to someone sitting on the other side of the booth, and then did a double take. He looked down at the little girl and said something. She promptly hopped off his lap and to the ground as he stood up. Katrina put her hand to her mouth.
“I was right…” she muttered to herself. “It was him…”
Shiro’s mouth tightened as he approached. For all of them, the seconds seemed to take minutes. The world seemed to accelerate around him as their motions slowed down.
Then, at last, he was in front of them, looking for all intents and purposes the same as he had the last time they had all seen him. His brown hair was longer and messier, and the look in his eyes seemed to have aged a bit more. He had a smirk of cynical irritation on his face.
“Rumor is that I’m supposed to be dead,” he said. “I think I feel pretty safe telling you that’s not true – although I came pretty close…”
“What…how did…where…” Travis could only stammer. He was alive. Matthew was alive. Even though he could see him, standing here in the flesh, his brain could not get a good grip on what was happening.
“It’s a pain in the *** to go through the whole story – and, frankly, I don’t feel like reliving it,” he said, looking away from them. “I haven’t even told Madeline yet.”
“You…” Shiro spoke – or growled – next. “You…”
“Hm?” he looked at the tall redhead, somewhat bewildered. “Something wrong?”
He shook his head, his lips so tight it looked like his face was stuck. His golden eyes shut and his long, slightly straight nose wrinkled in disdain. Without a further word, he whirled around and headed straight for the elevator.
Matthew frowned. “What’s up with him?”
Travis shook his head. “No idea.”
Madeline came up to her brother, and did a very good Anhje impression by latching onto his arm and pulling it to get his attention.
“Listen,” she said, “I think I’m gonna head up to bed now.”
“This early?” Matt asked. “It’s only eight.”
“Yeah, well…it’s been a long day,” she said, her eyes directed at the floor.
“Okay…see you tomorrow, then,” Matt replied, no hint of protest in his voice. Madeline turned toward him and threw her arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly.
“That’d be great,” she said. With a wistful smile, she added, “Then I’ll know I’m not dreaming.”
She broke off from him and moved toward the stairs, walking backwards and staring at him for as long as she could without knocking someone else over.
“She’s…different,” Matt said, the concerned frown on his permanently tanned face making him appear older than his years. Katrina could have sworn that face looked familiar.
“She’s happy to see you, Matt,” Katrina sighed. “Does that surprise you?”
“Not as much as the clinginess and such,” Matt replied. “She could be really touchy before, but not like this…”
“Well…she’s been through a lot since you’ve been gone,” Travis said, a frown seizing his face as well. Katrina let out an inaudible gasp – now she knew where she recognized that facial expression. Clearly, Matt had “been through a lot” as well. The blue-haired teenager let out a sigh and then looked down at the very confused little girl, who had been standing still in the middle of this scene, understanding nothing.
“You think you could go back to your dad for a little bit, Anhje?” he asked.
“But…” she spluttered. “He’s going to make me go to bed.”
“I’ll find you tomorrow, okay?” he replied with a smile.
“Promise?” she whimpered.
“Promise,” Travis repeated, giving her a hug goodbye. She broke off from him, waving as she jogged in the other direction, to his call of, “Walk!!”
He stood up and set his eyes on Matthew. Now, he and Matthew looked hardly anything alike, but Travis always marveled at how sometimes, looking at the boy across from him was almost like looking at himself in another body. Now that his face bore this weathered expression, the resemblance was almost unnerving.
“So I heard you found a way to end the war after all,” Matt said, this serious expression on his face.
“Don’t go broadcasting that around,” Travis replied sharply. Matt raised one of his brown eyebrows.
“It was always strange to me, how you never wanted credit for anything you did here,” Matt commented.
“You were alive this whole time…” Travis sighed, shaking his head as he looked away from Matt. “Do you have any idea about the hell everyone’s gone through while you’ve been gone?”
“I imagine Madeline’s taken it rough,” Matt said, looking away. Next thing he knew, he was being hoisted up by his hoodie. His feet were barely scraping the ground.
“ ‘Taken it rough’?? We’re lucky she’s still here!!” Travis shouted.
“What do you mean by that?” Matt uttered, stepping back as Travis finally let go of him.
“She’s been a wreck for the last two months,” Travis replied, turning away from Matt. “She…she’s tried to kill herself.”
Matt’s pupils narrowed so much they nearly disappeared, and all he could do was to utter, “Wh-wha…I didn’t have any way of knowing. But I thought about her, I really did – it’s kinda hard, though, when you’re locked in a dungeon…”
Travis’ eyes widened for a moment. “What??”
Matthew shook his head. “Nothing. Is she okay now, at least?”
“She seems a lot better,” Travis sighed, turning and looking toward where the elevator and stairs were. “But…I just don’t know.”
...continue…