Fic: No Requiem for the Wicked, Pokemon Ranger
Title: No Requiem for the Wicked
Author: wingsofcharity
Fandom: Pokemon Ranger
Pairing: Aria, Joel
Rating: G, but not Disney!G.
Word Count: ~4,000
Warnings: ANGST, MUTHAFUCKA.
Disclaimer: Pokemon Ranger has buttsex with Nintendo. I get it.
done for the prompt "18. lace" at 20_firstkisses
"How many siblings, exactly, do you have back there in ... ah ... Violet City?"
The lips quirk, unrepentant and self-deprecating, then part.
"Enough."
....
The children of the Pokemon School once did a performance of "How Ariados Wove the First Web" and without telling anyone, she bought a ticket after classes got out and sat in the back and watched a parade of brightly-costumed kids tramp across stage, singing about dewdrops and the beginning of time without remembering to stay on key.
Aria forgets what the moral of the story was, in the end, but it was something either encouraging or something ... moral, she supposed. She imagines that every single kid up there pictures themselves in Goldenrod someday, actresses or famous opera stars or Pokemon Trainers.
She envies them their dreaming.
....
"You went to school today, right?" goes the neighbor, hooking his skinny, naked arms around a fence post and hauling himself up so he could look over it at her. He was wet; someone must have left their sprinklers on. She doesn't think highly of people who forget to turn their sprinklers off on days it rains.
Aria locks the gate behind her and goes, "uh huh."
"Did you answer the question she had up on her board?"
She squelches through her muddy front yard, picking up a tricycle and wheeling it towards the porch. "Uh huh."
"What did you put? I thought maybe --"
"It was Poisoning."
"Really?" His eyes go wide behind his glasses, and he starts worrying his bottom lip. "Are you sure?"
Nor does she think very highly of people who second-guess themselves at a moment's notice. "What did you get?"
"Burn."
"The question didn't state anything about the Special Attack stat being lowered," she points out unsympathetically, plucking several plastic figurines of Kabutops and Aerodactyl out of the sandbox and sticking them under the spout. "And suddenly inflicting only half the damage is not something a Trainer can easily overlook. It was definitely Poison."
"Oh." Momentarily crestfallen, he sags against her fence. Then, just as suddenly, perks up, "Hey, do you want to come over for dinner tonight? Mom's calling out for something, so you don't have to sit and smile and pretend her cooking's all right. And maybe after we can take my dad's Old Rod and go fishing for Magikarp down by the lake?"
He looked so hopeful, but a quick glance around the yard showed she no longer had any reason to stay outdoors. "Not today, Joel. Thanks, though."
"Okay." He watched her leave, and stayed there, precariously balanced, long after the screen door had clicked shut.
....
"Why do you think your parents made a mistake in naming you?" says a monk from Sprout Tower, one of her father's friends, as they're waiting in the check-out line at the grocery. The nearby rack of newspapers proclaim that there's been a tragedy across the Plateau, in Kanto, involving an attempted cloning of the Pokemon Mew, resulting in the highly explosive, temperamental Mewtwo, single-handedly resulting in the deaths of almost the entire staff. Or something like that. The supplied picture of Mewtwo looks like a Skitty hyped up on steroids. The newspaper below it is much more stately, merely remarking upon the advances a one Professor Hastings has made in the field of humane Pokemon capture. He'll have something to show his funders, the subtitle says cruelly, one of these days.
They say nothing of the whereabouts or doings of celebrities, of the actresses and Pokemon Trainers the children hope to be. There's no curiosity for them, not in this world of Pokemon and discovery.
Aria sees none of these. She picks at the corn husks in her basket. "It's just that... my parents are sensible people. My brothers and sisters all have sensible names. Why Aria?"
"Can you sing?" puts in the monk diplomatically.
"If I could, do you think I would be complaining about it?" Such is her tone that it makes the monk's Bellsprout whimper and lean against her leg. She sets the basket down and picks it up, just to feel its hairy little roots curl around her wrists. Seeing that she is not angry with it, it leans up and plants several oval-shaped kisses on her cheeks, and blushes lime green at her expression.
The monk puts both their baskets on the conveyor belt and informs the cashier they've each brought their own bags. It's good to be environmentally friendly, he reminds her with a smile like a walnut, all wide and wrinkly. "Names don't dictate who you are or where you'll go, Aria. Nor do looks. Are you going to try out for the Pokemon School's spring production?" he throws in shrewdly.
But Aria is never one to be caught off guard. "You know I have no time, father."
The monk nods and stays silent until they reach the sidewalk outside and say their respectful good-byes.
Everyone knows.
....
"Let's talk about romance, shall we?"
The lips thin, press into the most displeased of lines. Oh, but how many men in Fall City would give their right arms for just an hour of attention from those lips.
"Let's not."
....
She joins Falkner on the basketball court at lunch. It's drizzling, so they take refuge underneath the bleachers instead of on top of them like they usually do. She unwraps her sandwich quickly, as she needs to get downtown to pick up Ivan's suit from the dry cleaners and be back before the bell rings. Falkner, as per usual, doesn't eat anything, but instead watches the older boys throw the ball around, accompanied by their various Pokemon companions. It's less of a game, Aria notices, and more of a contest to see who can steal the ball in the most impressive manner possible.
"You should join them," she tells him, the way she does every day, because the hunger in his eyes must have been like the hunger in hers the day she saw the performance of "How Ariados Spun the First Web."
"I can't," he says, and this time, the sadness in his voice is genuine and final, and not just a product of his shyness.
She stops chewing, and puts her sandwich down. Her eyes ask the question for her, as her mouth is full.
"My father's pulling me out of school tomorrow," Falkner tells her, pulling at the sash of his kimono self-consciously. "He says I've learned enough, and it's time for my real training to begin. He's going to give me my first Pokemon, Aria."
The bread and lettuce and mayonnaise turns to something gelatinous and toxic inside her mouth, and she swallows it the way one might swallow poison. "That's great," she says, her cheer sounding false even to herself.
The look he gives her says that he sees right through her. "He wants me to be the Gym Leader after him. He thinks I'm going to make him proud." He puts his head down, like a Rattata afraid of being scolded. "How can I say no, Aria?"
It's not that, the words fight against the back of her throat, and she puts her head down so he won't see them escaping in all parts of her face. It's .. your father wants the best for you. Your father imagines you the hero of this sleepy, religious city. He sees you making it respectable, more of a blip on the Pokemon training map. Your father cares.
"Pokemon scare me," Falkner says, seeking comfort.
She lifts her head and stares at him, and for the first time, wishes he would just grow up.
....
She wins thirty minutes at the only salon in Violet City for being the top seller of something and doesn't really know what to ask for. The artist smiles and gives her the largest corkscrew curls on the planet; each hoop is as large as a saucer, and they extend into two columns on either side of her face. She takes a long look at herself in the mirror, at the dishwater blonde of her hair and the smallness of her nose and the colorlessness of her eyes.
She brushes her hair out the instant she gets home. Curls never suited her.
....
To everything, there is a season ....
She sings under her breath, copying the question on the board. "Describe the methods used to capture Pokemon using Apricons. Do you think this way was humane? Explain."
There is an empty seat beside her.
Oh, but it is a season of war.
....
Joel scuffs at the ground with his toe, drawing some indistinguishable pattern in the dirt, the way children do at baseball games. Aria keeps her hands on the fence between them, so as to better conceal they way they shake.
Time has been kind to Joel, smoothing out his freckles into one uniform shade and making his face angular, so that his glasses made him look intelligent and not just geeky. He will never be handsome; imposing and respectable, yes, but not handsome. In her affection, very little of that mattered.
"I'm moving," he blurts, and she is chillingly reminded of Falkner's proclamation -- sorry, Leader Falkner -- all those years ago.
"Oh," she says. "Okay."
"There's this island," he goes, then pauses, licking his lips, like already this isn't going like he planned. "They just put some settlements down on it. It's supposedly an extremely nice place to live. Mom wants some peace and quiet; you know how nervous she gets at the thought of any excitement." They share a briefly rue smile, because Violet is anything but exciting.
"And I suppose you came down here to tell me you'll be gone by the close of the month and you want to offer just one more fishing trip?" She keeps her voice neutral.
"No." He steps closer to the gate and smiles that smile that almost makes it seem like he's glad that she's there, when most of the time she's heartbroken to wake up and find herself still in her skin, tilts his head down so he can hold her eyes with his, pinning her in place. "I want you to come with us."
"Oh, ha ha," she goes, taking a step away from him so that the gate swings loose for a moment, metal gears clicking together but not locking. "Of course. Just let me bundle my belongings onto a stick and I'll be right down."
His hand snatches out faster than her eye could follow, closes around her wrist, wrenches her around and back so that they're facing each other, barely more than a hair's breadth apart. She felt every breath he exhaled, warm and moist against her mouth. "No," he puts in, earnestly, every bit the boy-next-door. "I'm serious. And you know how much Mom always wanted a daughter; she'd love to have you along."
"Right, because my parents wouldn't even blink if I just upped and disappeared."
"Would they?" he pinpoints with eerie accuracy.
"This isn't funny, Joel." She tears free of his grip, turns back to her run-down house with its gaping windows and its constant smell of cabbage. When she closes her eyes, she can see beaches, spreading endlessly with Wingull circling in the sky. She sees a city, a fountain, water shattering like the tears of a Dewgong in midair. She opens them, and sees nothing.
"I have chores to do. Have fun on your desert island."
....
Aria always likes to imagine that she is fleeting. Like a Venomoth, just scattering little bits of skin but not leaving anything permanent. She imagines herself flying everywhere, too impatient to walk and too ethereal to run, and never waiting for anyone to catch up.
It would help if she had somewhere to fly to.
....
"I don't understand why you're taking this so badly, Aria," her mother says disapprovingly, as she folds laundry. Behind her, Aria pretends to be fascinated with the newspaper. It's hard, because it's a toss-up between listening to her mother and reading about Fiore and both of them make her want to throw up. "It would greatly help your father's career. He would get enough money to fund another expedition to the Anon Ruins!"
Of course, thinks Aria. Money for Father. Never mind that Oma needs new overalls and the dentists have been pestering to see us for months now and judging by the way Ivan acts at dinner, we need to go. So long as Dad gets the opportunity to bury his nose in those Unown ... like anyone really cares if they were the founders of the nation's alphabet.
"And he's a wonderful young man, Aria..."
"Does he like basketball?"
"Now how am I supposed to know a thing like that?" her mother says crossly, tossing a pair of socks down in the wrong pile. "Would you like to know when he lost his first tooth and what the name of his first Pokemon was? Honestly. Does it matter? He's rich. He'll treat you nicely. He'll help your father."
"Does it matter?" Aria echoes testily. "You're going to have me marry him no matter what I say."
Her mother slams the laundry basket down on the table and begins shoving clothes into it. "Listen to that tongue of yours! Impudent little brat. How on earth did you grow up to be so lazy and ungrateful?" She hefted the basket onto her hip and strutted for the door. "I think you need to help out more around the house; you don't nearly do enough. It's like you don't care about this family!"
She slammed the door behind her. Aria flipped the pages of the newspaper in the dark.
....
Dear Aria,
Got your letter. I'll catch the first boat out. Or, failing that, I'll catch a Lapras! I've got so much to tell you. But why didn't you tell me about all this earlier? Whatever. I'll see you soon. Hang in there.
Yours,
Joel
....
She waters the monks' baby Bellsprouts to an approving chorus of coos and blushes, and there comes a rat-a-tat-tat from the front gate.
She looks up, and almost drops her Wailmer watering can from her shock. A Dodrio stands there, larger than life, two heads twisted to regard her curiously and the other looking up at her house in an expression of such disapproval that she's tempted to laugh and never stop. And perched up on its back is ...
"Come on," says Joel, dressed in an alarmingly violet overcoat and hefting his tinted glasses further up onto his head. "Lemonade's on me."
....
"Do you like it?" Joel extends his arms to indicate his new fashion, and Aria looks at the sterling silver buttons and his white gloves and nibbles her bottom lip. "I caught Falkner glaring at me earlier; I thought it a fitting tribute to my hometown."
"It's flamboyant," she grants, finally, and his lips quirked with amusement, but he does notice she isn't particularly caring about his clothing. He grins then, reaching up to pat his Dodrio on its lumpy shoulder. One head comes down, chirruping, and rests on his shoulder in a surprisingly tender gesture.
He strokes the head, "You should have seen the fuss they tried to make when I tried to catch the 5:00 AM train from Goldenrod with this fine fellow at my side."
"You're a Pokemon Trainer?" Aria inquires with half politeness, half hunger for details. She knows Falkner is an expert in Flying types, but they haven't exactly been bosom buddies in a long time. She wonders if he knows Joel's back in town with such a specimen in tow.
"No," Joel says enigmatically.
"No?"
"No. I'm a Pokemon Ranger."
"Aren't they the same thing?" Aria says blankly.
"Ah, you're thinking of the Trainers of the same name from Hoenn and Sinnoh. The .. uh, naturalists."
"They're environmentally-militant lunatics," Aria elaborated unfeelingly.
He waves this off. "Perspective." Suddenly, with as much hunger in his eyes as she felt in her heart, he leaned forward across the table, like he really needed to get her attention. "Oh, the stories I have to tell, Aria, where to start?"
Aria prompted, "How about from the beginning?"
"There are lots of beginnings. I could tell you the beginning began in Kanto, where Professor Hastings developed the Styler." Here, he produced the most inconspicuous little machine from his vest pocket. It looked a little bit like a TV remote, and Aria had visions of Pokemon Rangers -- all dressed in violet overcoats -- tearing their couches apart looking for them. "I could tell you the beginning was when I met Spenser -- you will never meet such an arrogant, politically correct, patient grub in your entire life! Even if he does know what he's talking about," he admitted grudgingly between his teeth. "But only sometimes."
"How about you tell me what a Pokemon Ranger is, and I can make my mind up from there."
"I think you'll like it, Aria. I really think you will."
....
"Does your hair do this naturally?" Her fiance delicately takes a lock of her straight hair between his fingers, and she fights the urge to shudder and knock his hand away like it was a Spinarak. "It's really pretty. Reminds me of the way thread looks, when its all laid out along a loom. You do have very pretty hair, Aria."
"Thank you," she says, pinching the stem of her glass so tightly she almost wishes it would break, just for the excuse to do something.
She thinks of the one time she curled her hair and thinks, spitefully, that as long as she lives, it will never be straight again!
....
"You could still come with me, you know. There will always be a place waiting for you in Fall City. But I can't make the decision for you, Aria; you've got to take the first step towards your own freedom on your own. You've got wings, I know you do. It's up to you to find them. Otherwise, you're going to waste your life. I'm afraid what you've already wasted is going to make you bitter."
....
"If should anybody think this man and this woman should not be joined together, then speak now or forever hold your peace."
Silence.
One.
Two.
Three.
For everything there is a season ... Aria squeezes her eyes shut, imagines the monks all in a row, orange robes folded across them neatly and looking bored. She imagines the Bellsprout, growing large and tall outside Sprout Tower, and thinks she could never learn to love just one Pokemon. She imagines her house, but more importantly, she imagines the little freckle-faced, half-naked boy across the fence who always kidnapped her to go fishing for Magikarp. She imagines the school, all the children, prancing across a wide open stage and dreaming so hard they got sick.
Her ears buzz with the sound of a solo operatic voice, ringing inside her eardrum. Her dress, the sadistic contraption of ribbons and white satin and frills like the kind of tablecloths they use at tea parties, is what her mother wore; she didn't get a choice even in that. Truth be told, it didn't feel like much of a wedding.
Ironic, how the wedding march sounds so much like a funeral durge.
Even if she did look rather good in white. Maybe, for fun, she'd sew on a violet strip later.
"I now pronounce you ..." Oh, you know the rest.
Her fiance -- husband, now -- turns, smiles like this was all one long victory march, leans in eagerly. She tries not to recoil, stares at a point far above his head, as his lips grasp hers like a suction cup. A plunger, she thinks uncharitably, and if he sucks any harder I'm going to spit sewage all over him.
It is a season to lose.
And then.
"ARIA!"
Forgetting entirely that she is now a newlywed, she spins, sees Joel, who is standing at the back, chest heaving and looking like he was going to burst from his skin at any moment. He cussed about being too late in a manner entirely inappropriate for a church, and then shouted, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Aria sees her husband's father standing, eyes wild and jowls quivering, and opens her mouth to warn him but he sees it too, and sprints for her like he had his Dodrio's legs.
"You idiot," he pants, nods a polite hello to the groom, and turns the full force of his fury on her. "You absolute, fluff-brained half-wit! This is not you! You are not passive --" he tears the other man's grip off her arm, which she hadn't really been aware of. "You will not lie down and take this! If you don't grow wings right now I'll shove you off the cliff myself!"
They stagger down from the sanctuary in discord, one step, two steps, and then the carpeting, with people surging to their feet on either side of them like the walls of a river. Their mouths are moving. She thinks they might be saying something, but this is Violet City; nothing exciting ever happens here.
"Fall City is waiting," Joel says, eyes burning, and blindly, she grasps at the front of her wedding dress, holding it high and kicking off her high heels, and, "Run," she says.
....
"What of your wish to be on stage, in a play, or any of that? Being a Ranger isn't quite the same thing."
But these are a woman's lips, and they tell no secrets.
.....
Oh, but it is a season of war.
Author: wingsofcharity
Fandom: Pokemon Ranger
Pairing: Aria, Joel
Rating: G, but not Disney!G.
Word Count: ~4,000
Warnings: ANGST, MUTHAFUCKA.
Disclaimer: Pokemon Ranger has buttsex with Nintendo. I get it.
done for the prompt "18. lace" at 20_firstkisses
"How many siblings, exactly, do you have back there in ... ah ... Violet City?"
The lips quirk, unrepentant and self-deprecating, then part.
"Enough."
....
The children of the Pokemon School once did a performance of "How Ariados Wove the First Web" and without telling anyone, she bought a ticket after classes got out and sat in the back and watched a parade of brightly-costumed kids tramp across stage, singing about dewdrops and the beginning of time without remembering to stay on key.
Aria forgets what the moral of the story was, in the end, but it was something either encouraging or something ... moral, she supposed. She imagines that every single kid up there pictures themselves in Goldenrod someday, actresses or famous opera stars or Pokemon Trainers.
She envies them their dreaming.
....
"You went to school today, right?" goes the neighbor, hooking his skinny, naked arms around a fence post and hauling himself up so he could look over it at her. He was wet; someone must have left their sprinklers on. She doesn't think highly of people who forget to turn their sprinklers off on days it rains.
Aria locks the gate behind her and goes, "uh huh."
"Did you answer the question she had up on her board?"
She squelches through her muddy front yard, picking up a tricycle and wheeling it towards the porch. "Uh huh."
"What did you put? I thought maybe --"
"It was Poisoning."
"Really?" His eyes go wide behind his glasses, and he starts worrying his bottom lip. "Are you sure?"
Nor does she think very highly of people who second-guess themselves at a moment's notice. "What did you get?"
"Burn."
"The question didn't state anything about the Special Attack stat being lowered," she points out unsympathetically, plucking several plastic figurines of Kabutops and Aerodactyl out of the sandbox and sticking them under the spout. "And suddenly inflicting only half the damage is not something a Trainer can easily overlook. It was definitely Poison."
"Oh." Momentarily crestfallen, he sags against her fence. Then, just as suddenly, perks up, "Hey, do you want to come over for dinner tonight? Mom's calling out for something, so you don't have to sit and smile and pretend her cooking's all right. And maybe after we can take my dad's Old Rod and go fishing for Magikarp down by the lake?"
He looked so hopeful, but a quick glance around the yard showed she no longer had any reason to stay outdoors. "Not today, Joel. Thanks, though."
"Okay." He watched her leave, and stayed there, precariously balanced, long after the screen door had clicked shut.
....
"Why do you think your parents made a mistake in naming you?" says a monk from Sprout Tower, one of her father's friends, as they're waiting in the check-out line at the grocery. The nearby rack of newspapers proclaim that there's been a tragedy across the Plateau, in Kanto, involving an attempted cloning of the Pokemon Mew, resulting in the highly explosive, temperamental Mewtwo, single-handedly resulting in the deaths of almost the entire staff. Or something like that. The supplied picture of Mewtwo looks like a Skitty hyped up on steroids. The newspaper below it is much more stately, merely remarking upon the advances a one Professor Hastings has made in the field of humane Pokemon capture. He'll have something to show his funders, the subtitle says cruelly, one of these days.
They say nothing of the whereabouts or doings of celebrities, of the actresses and Pokemon Trainers the children hope to be. There's no curiosity for them, not in this world of Pokemon and discovery.
Aria sees none of these. She picks at the corn husks in her basket. "It's just that... my parents are sensible people. My brothers and sisters all have sensible names. Why Aria?"
"Can you sing?" puts in the monk diplomatically.
"If I could, do you think I would be complaining about it?" Such is her tone that it makes the monk's Bellsprout whimper and lean against her leg. She sets the basket down and picks it up, just to feel its hairy little roots curl around her wrists. Seeing that she is not angry with it, it leans up and plants several oval-shaped kisses on her cheeks, and blushes lime green at her expression.
The monk puts both their baskets on the conveyor belt and informs the cashier they've each brought their own bags. It's good to be environmentally friendly, he reminds her with a smile like a walnut, all wide and wrinkly. "Names don't dictate who you are or where you'll go, Aria. Nor do looks. Are you going to try out for the Pokemon School's spring production?" he throws in shrewdly.
But Aria is never one to be caught off guard. "You know I have no time, father."
The monk nods and stays silent until they reach the sidewalk outside and say their respectful good-byes.
Everyone knows.
....
"Let's talk about romance, shall we?"
The lips thin, press into the most displeased of lines. Oh, but how many men in Fall City would give their right arms for just an hour of attention from those lips.
"Let's not."
....
She joins Falkner on the basketball court at lunch. It's drizzling, so they take refuge underneath the bleachers instead of on top of them like they usually do. She unwraps her sandwich quickly, as she needs to get downtown to pick up Ivan's suit from the dry cleaners and be back before the bell rings. Falkner, as per usual, doesn't eat anything, but instead watches the older boys throw the ball around, accompanied by their various Pokemon companions. It's less of a game, Aria notices, and more of a contest to see who can steal the ball in the most impressive manner possible.
"You should join them," she tells him, the way she does every day, because the hunger in his eyes must have been like the hunger in hers the day she saw the performance of "How Ariados Spun the First Web."
"I can't," he says, and this time, the sadness in his voice is genuine and final, and not just a product of his shyness.
She stops chewing, and puts her sandwich down. Her eyes ask the question for her, as her mouth is full.
"My father's pulling me out of school tomorrow," Falkner tells her, pulling at the sash of his kimono self-consciously. "He says I've learned enough, and it's time for my real training to begin. He's going to give me my first Pokemon, Aria."
The bread and lettuce and mayonnaise turns to something gelatinous and toxic inside her mouth, and she swallows it the way one might swallow poison. "That's great," she says, her cheer sounding false even to herself.
The look he gives her says that he sees right through her. "He wants me to be the Gym Leader after him. He thinks I'm going to make him proud." He puts his head down, like a Rattata afraid of being scolded. "How can I say no, Aria?"
It's not that, the words fight against the back of her throat, and she puts her head down so he won't see them escaping in all parts of her face. It's .. your father wants the best for you. Your father imagines you the hero of this sleepy, religious city. He sees you making it respectable, more of a blip on the Pokemon training map. Your father cares.
"Pokemon scare me," Falkner says, seeking comfort.
She lifts her head and stares at him, and for the first time, wishes he would just grow up.
....
She wins thirty minutes at the only salon in Violet City for being the top seller of something and doesn't really know what to ask for. The artist smiles and gives her the largest corkscrew curls on the planet; each hoop is as large as a saucer, and they extend into two columns on either side of her face. She takes a long look at herself in the mirror, at the dishwater blonde of her hair and the smallness of her nose and the colorlessness of her eyes.
She brushes her hair out the instant she gets home. Curls never suited her.
....
To everything, there is a season ....
She sings under her breath, copying the question on the board. "Describe the methods used to capture Pokemon using Apricons. Do you think this way was humane? Explain."
There is an empty seat beside her.
Oh, but it is a season of war.
....
Joel scuffs at the ground with his toe, drawing some indistinguishable pattern in the dirt, the way children do at baseball games. Aria keeps her hands on the fence between them, so as to better conceal they way they shake.
Time has been kind to Joel, smoothing out his freckles into one uniform shade and making his face angular, so that his glasses made him look intelligent and not just geeky. He will never be handsome; imposing and respectable, yes, but not handsome. In her affection, very little of that mattered.
"I'm moving," he blurts, and she is chillingly reminded of Falkner's proclamation -- sorry, Leader Falkner -- all those years ago.
"Oh," she says. "Okay."
"There's this island," he goes, then pauses, licking his lips, like already this isn't going like he planned. "They just put some settlements down on it. It's supposedly an extremely nice place to live. Mom wants some peace and quiet; you know how nervous she gets at the thought of any excitement." They share a briefly rue smile, because Violet is anything but exciting.
"And I suppose you came down here to tell me you'll be gone by the close of the month and you want to offer just one more fishing trip?" She keeps her voice neutral.
"No." He steps closer to the gate and smiles that smile that almost makes it seem like he's glad that she's there, when most of the time she's heartbroken to wake up and find herself still in her skin, tilts his head down so he can hold her eyes with his, pinning her in place. "I want you to come with us."
"Oh, ha ha," she goes, taking a step away from him so that the gate swings loose for a moment, metal gears clicking together but not locking. "Of course. Just let me bundle my belongings onto a stick and I'll be right down."
His hand snatches out faster than her eye could follow, closes around her wrist, wrenches her around and back so that they're facing each other, barely more than a hair's breadth apart. She felt every breath he exhaled, warm and moist against her mouth. "No," he puts in, earnestly, every bit the boy-next-door. "I'm serious. And you know how much Mom always wanted a daughter; she'd love to have you along."
"Right, because my parents wouldn't even blink if I just upped and disappeared."
"Would they?" he pinpoints with eerie accuracy.
"This isn't funny, Joel." She tears free of his grip, turns back to her run-down house with its gaping windows and its constant smell of cabbage. When she closes her eyes, she can see beaches, spreading endlessly with Wingull circling in the sky. She sees a city, a fountain, water shattering like the tears of a Dewgong in midair. She opens them, and sees nothing.
"I have chores to do. Have fun on your desert island."
....
Aria always likes to imagine that she is fleeting. Like a Venomoth, just scattering little bits of skin but not leaving anything permanent. She imagines herself flying everywhere, too impatient to walk and too ethereal to run, and never waiting for anyone to catch up.
It would help if she had somewhere to fly to.
....
"I don't understand why you're taking this so badly, Aria," her mother says disapprovingly, as she folds laundry. Behind her, Aria pretends to be fascinated with the newspaper. It's hard, because it's a toss-up between listening to her mother and reading about Fiore and both of them make her want to throw up. "It would greatly help your father's career. He would get enough money to fund another expedition to the Anon Ruins!"
Of course, thinks Aria. Money for Father. Never mind that Oma needs new overalls and the dentists have been pestering to see us for months now and judging by the way Ivan acts at dinner, we need to go. So long as Dad gets the opportunity to bury his nose in those Unown ... like anyone really cares if they were the founders of the nation's alphabet.
"And he's a wonderful young man, Aria..."
"Does he like basketball?"
"Now how am I supposed to know a thing like that?" her mother says crossly, tossing a pair of socks down in the wrong pile. "Would you like to know when he lost his first tooth and what the name of his first Pokemon was? Honestly. Does it matter? He's rich. He'll treat you nicely. He'll help your father."
"Does it matter?" Aria echoes testily. "You're going to have me marry him no matter what I say."
Her mother slams the laundry basket down on the table and begins shoving clothes into it. "Listen to that tongue of yours! Impudent little brat. How on earth did you grow up to be so lazy and ungrateful?" She hefted the basket onto her hip and strutted for the door. "I think you need to help out more around the house; you don't nearly do enough. It's like you don't care about this family!"
She slammed the door behind her. Aria flipped the pages of the newspaper in the dark.
....
Dear Aria,
Got your letter. I'll catch the first boat out. Or, failing that, I'll catch a Lapras! I've got so much to tell you. But why didn't you tell me about all this earlier? Whatever. I'll see you soon. Hang in there.
Yours,
Joel
....
She waters the monks' baby Bellsprouts to an approving chorus of coos and blushes, and there comes a rat-a-tat-tat from the front gate.
She looks up, and almost drops her Wailmer watering can from her shock. A Dodrio stands there, larger than life, two heads twisted to regard her curiously and the other looking up at her house in an expression of such disapproval that she's tempted to laugh and never stop. And perched up on its back is ...
"Come on," says Joel, dressed in an alarmingly violet overcoat and hefting his tinted glasses further up onto his head. "Lemonade's on me."
....
"Do you like it?" Joel extends his arms to indicate his new fashion, and Aria looks at the sterling silver buttons and his white gloves and nibbles her bottom lip. "I caught Falkner glaring at me earlier; I thought it a fitting tribute to my hometown."
"It's flamboyant," she grants, finally, and his lips quirked with amusement, but he does notice she isn't particularly caring about his clothing. He grins then, reaching up to pat his Dodrio on its lumpy shoulder. One head comes down, chirruping, and rests on his shoulder in a surprisingly tender gesture.
He strokes the head, "You should have seen the fuss they tried to make when I tried to catch the 5:00 AM train from Goldenrod with this fine fellow at my side."
"You're a Pokemon Trainer?" Aria inquires with half politeness, half hunger for details. She knows Falkner is an expert in Flying types, but they haven't exactly been bosom buddies in a long time. She wonders if he knows Joel's back in town with such a specimen in tow.
"No," Joel says enigmatically.
"No?"
"No. I'm a Pokemon Ranger."
"Aren't they the same thing?" Aria says blankly.
"Ah, you're thinking of the Trainers of the same name from Hoenn and Sinnoh. The .. uh, naturalists."
"They're environmentally-militant lunatics," Aria elaborated unfeelingly.
He waves this off. "Perspective." Suddenly, with as much hunger in his eyes as she felt in her heart, he leaned forward across the table, like he really needed to get her attention. "Oh, the stories I have to tell, Aria, where to start?"
Aria prompted, "How about from the beginning?"
"There are lots of beginnings. I could tell you the beginning began in Kanto, where Professor Hastings developed the Styler." Here, he produced the most inconspicuous little machine from his vest pocket. It looked a little bit like a TV remote, and Aria had visions of Pokemon Rangers -- all dressed in violet overcoats -- tearing their couches apart looking for them. "I could tell you the beginning was when I met Spenser -- you will never meet such an arrogant, politically correct, patient grub in your entire life! Even if he does know what he's talking about," he admitted grudgingly between his teeth. "But only sometimes."
"How about you tell me what a Pokemon Ranger is, and I can make my mind up from there."
"I think you'll like it, Aria. I really think you will."
....
"Does your hair do this naturally?" Her fiance delicately takes a lock of her straight hair between his fingers, and she fights the urge to shudder and knock his hand away like it was a Spinarak. "It's really pretty. Reminds me of the way thread looks, when its all laid out along a loom. You do have very pretty hair, Aria."
"Thank you," she says, pinching the stem of her glass so tightly she almost wishes it would break, just for the excuse to do something.
She thinks of the one time she curled her hair and thinks, spitefully, that as long as she lives, it will never be straight again!
....
"You could still come with me, you know. There will always be a place waiting for you in Fall City. But I can't make the decision for you, Aria; you've got to take the first step towards your own freedom on your own. You've got wings, I know you do. It's up to you to find them. Otherwise, you're going to waste your life. I'm afraid what you've already wasted is going to make you bitter."
....
"If should anybody think this man and this woman should not be joined together, then speak now or forever hold your peace."
Silence.
One.
Two.
Three.
For everything there is a season ... Aria squeezes her eyes shut, imagines the monks all in a row, orange robes folded across them neatly and looking bored. She imagines the Bellsprout, growing large and tall outside Sprout Tower, and thinks she could never learn to love just one Pokemon. She imagines her house, but more importantly, she imagines the little freckle-faced, half-naked boy across the fence who always kidnapped her to go fishing for Magikarp. She imagines the school, all the children, prancing across a wide open stage and dreaming so hard they got sick.
Her ears buzz with the sound of a solo operatic voice, ringing inside her eardrum. Her dress, the sadistic contraption of ribbons and white satin and frills like the kind of tablecloths they use at tea parties, is what her mother wore; she didn't get a choice even in that. Truth be told, it didn't feel like much of a wedding.
Ironic, how the wedding march sounds so much like a funeral durge.
Even if she did look rather good in white. Maybe, for fun, she'd sew on a violet strip later.
"I now pronounce you ..." Oh, you know the rest.
Her fiance -- husband, now -- turns, smiles like this was all one long victory march, leans in eagerly. She tries not to recoil, stares at a point far above his head, as his lips grasp hers like a suction cup. A plunger, she thinks uncharitably, and if he sucks any harder I'm going to spit sewage all over him.
It is a season to lose.
And then.
"ARIA!"
Forgetting entirely that she is now a newlywed, she spins, sees Joel, who is standing at the back, chest heaving and looking like he was going to burst from his skin at any moment. He cussed about being too late in a manner entirely inappropriate for a church, and then shouted, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Aria sees her husband's father standing, eyes wild and jowls quivering, and opens her mouth to warn him but he sees it too, and sprints for her like he had his Dodrio's legs.
"You idiot," he pants, nods a polite hello to the groom, and turns the full force of his fury on her. "You absolute, fluff-brained half-wit! This is not you! You are not passive --" he tears the other man's grip off her arm, which she hadn't really been aware of. "You will not lie down and take this! If you don't grow wings right now I'll shove you off the cliff myself!"
They stagger down from the sanctuary in discord, one step, two steps, and then the carpeting, with people surging to their feet on either side of them like the walls of a river. Their mouths are moving. She thinks they might be saying something, but this is Violet City; nothing exciting ever happens here.
"Fall City is waiting," Joel says, eyes burning, and blindly, she grasps at the front of her wedding dress, holding it high and kicking off her high heels, and, "Run," she says.
....
"What of your wish to be on stage, in a play, or any of that? Being a Ranger isn't quite the same thing."
But these are a woman's lips, and they tell no secrets.
.....
Oh, but it is a season of war.