Categories > Anime/Manga > Pokemon > Ruby Thoughts
Author's note: Part three, and it's done. Sadly, this chapter can't double as a parody. It's an angst fest all the way.
Disclaimer: Nothing has changed since the first two chapters.
Warnings: Mild spoilers for the dialogue at the end of the game -- possibly one of the worst exit scenes any character could make.
Father
There is silence in the house. When Birch called from Ever Grande City you would have thought that it was his daughter who had just become league champion. He brought her home on her troipus, and hustled her off to bed as quickly as he could. For all I know May went to sleep instantly. I didn't arrive until two hours later. After some old sailor hobbled into my gym with a ticket and told me it was for May, and wasn't I proud that my daughter was the champion?
"So," I look at my wife.
"Everyone says that she has your spirit, and your way with pokemon," she smiled tightly, her her thoughts most likely saying something completely different.
"Indeed."
I wish I knew why this was so hard. This is my house after all. This is my wife, a little aged around the eyes, but still a healthy and beautiful woman just the same. Upstairs my daughter is sleeping, her blaziken most likely standing guard, her manetric curled at the foot of her bed, her wailord in his pokeball, since there is no way that he could come out without an ocean near by, I know that her flygon is on the roof, and I would bet anything that her glalie is in a corner by her bed right where she can put her hand on his cold, craggy exterior should she wake from a nightmare and need to be reminded of the realness of the world.
So why is this so hard? Why does it feel as if everything has changed? Why doesn't this feel like my home? These people - they aren't my family. They don't feel nearly as close to me as slaking. I smile back at my wife, but feel the fragile muscle movement waver and tumble into an abyss.
I try to remember her as the sixteen year old co-ordinator that I first met. The first pokemon trainer I had ever encountered who did not care about battling. But that naïve girl was so different from the woman who I fell in love with and married alsmost as soon as I could. I hadn't liked the young co-ordinator. I loved the good friend who came to cheer me on as I bested the gyms of Johto and Kanto.
And this older version was different from either. There was that melting look of empathy in her eye, of support, both were still there, and all for me. But bitterness had stolen into the picture. Lonliness. This woman would not gasp in uninhibited delight as I kissed her neck. She would gasp, but it would be a gasp of repressed pain, the turbid emotions of knowing that I might not be there tomorrow, so she had to enjoy what she could get now.
There is a creek on the stairs and I whirl around in my chair, glad for the interruption, until I glimpse the familiar stranger there, looking at me with brown eyes and messy hair.
"Hello," I manage. "I see that you've grown stronger."
You are stronger, I think silently. Stronger than I ever will be. You already have the training world at your feet, and it's only been a year and a half since you first picked up that torchic's pokeball. Everything I've worked for and fought for all these years - you have that in the palm of your hand.
Who are you? My rival? My hero?
You can't be my daughter. My daughter is a sweet little toddler who needs me to help her walk. She's not some child prodigy. She's not a great trainer. She's not Professor Birch's prized trainer. She is not the equal of Steven Stone. You can't be my daughter.
I babble, hand her the ticket, and then make the quickest exit I can. I can't face the strangeness, of that house, that girl. How can the daughter I had no hand in creating, out do me? Not even Birch helped all that much. She made herself. Just as I made myself. But she is not my daughter.
Disclaimer: Nothing has changed since the first two chapters.
Warnings: Mild spoilers for the dialogue at the end of the game -- possibly one of the worst exit scenes any character could make.
Father
There is silence in the house. When Birch called from Ever Grande City you would have thought that it was his daughter who had just become league champion. He brought her home on her troipus, and hustled her off to bed as quickly as he could. For all I know May went to sleep instantly. I didn't arrive until two hours later. After some old sailor hobbled into my gym with a ticket and told me it was for May, and wasn't I proud that my daughter was the champion?
"So," I look at my wife.
"Everyone says that she has your spirit, and your way with pokemon," she smiled tightly, her her thoughts most likely saying something completely different.
"Indeed."
I wish I knew why this was so hard. This is my house after all. This is my wife, a little aged around the eyes, but still a healthy and beautiful woman just the same. Upstairs my daughter is sleeping, her blaziken most likely standing guard, her manetric curled at the foot of her bed, her wailord in his pokeball, since there is no way that he could come out without an ocean near by, I know that her flygon is on the roof, and I would bet anything that her glalie is in a corner by her bed right where she can put her hand on his cold, craggy exterior should she wake from a nightmare and need to be reminded of the realness of the world.
So why is this so hard? Why does it feel as if everything has changed? Why doesn't this feel like my home? These people - they aren't my family. They don't feel nearly as close to me as slaking. I smile back at my wife, but feel the fragile muscle movement waver and tumble into an abyss.
I try to remember her as the sixteen year old co-ordinator that I first met. The first pokemon trainer I had ever encountered who did not care about battling. But that naïve girl was so different from the woman who I fell in love with and married alsmost as soon as I could. I hadn't liked the young co-ordinator. I loved the good friend who came to cheer me on as I bested the gyms of Johto and Kanto.
And this older version was different from either. There was that melting look of empathy in her eye, of support, both were still there, and all for me. But bitterness had stolen into the picture. Lonliness. This woman would not gasp in uninhibited delight as I kissed her neck. She would gasp, but it would be a gasp of repressed pain, the turbid emotions of knowing that I might not be there tomorrow, so she had to enjoy what she could get now.
There is a creek on the stairs and I whirl around in my chair, glad for the interruption, until I glimpse the familiar stranger there, looking at me with brown eyes and messy hair.
"Hello," I manage. "I see that you've grown stronger."
You are stronger, I think silently. Stronger than I ever will be. You already have the training world at your feet, and it's only been a year and a half since you first picked up that torchic's pokeball. Everything I've worked for and fought for all these years - you have that in the palm of your hand.
Who are you? My rival? My hero?
You can't be my daughter. My daughter is a sweet little toddler who needs me to help her walk. She's not some child prodigy. She's not a great trainer. She's not Professor Birch's prized trainer. She is not the equal of Steven Stone. You can't be my daughter.
I babble, hand her the ticket, and then make the quickest exit I can. I can't face the strangeness, of that house, that girl. How can the daughter I had no hand in creating, out do me? Not even Birch helped all that much. She made herself. Just as I made myself. But she is not my daughter.
Sign up to rate and review this story