Chapter Text
Twice a month, every month, they have to go to their grandmother’s house. That’s the new rule they have to follow, Daisy tells him as she pulls the calendar from the wall and splays it across the floor. The bright eyes of a Clefairy shine up at him as Daisy pulls pens from the pouch she’s stashed them away in. They’re the ones she got for her birthday last April, and the ink shines with glitter.
She marks down every other Friday with the purple pen, the Saturdays with pink and the Sundays with a different purple while Blue picks up the green one and starts to doodle in the notes section at the end of the month’s page. The Caterpie’s eyes are too big but Daisy coos at it anyway and uses the pink to add the little bug’s antennae. Then she flips to the next month and the next, marking every other weekend with glitter gel pens. Blue tries to keep up the best he can, doodling down Bulbasaur and Metapod, but his hands aren’t quick enough to keep up with his sister. He abandons his drawings and opts instead to watch Daisy as she fills out the little boxes. Her handwriting is nice and swirly and even if he can’t really read it he knows he likes how she dots the i’s with little circles.
Finishing up, Daisy pops the caps back onto all of her pens and starts to wrestle the one Blue still has clenched in his tiny fist away from him. He huffs and complains and it all ends when he chucks the cap of the pen halfway across the room, surrendering the rest of it to her with a smug grin. Daisy just sighs and tells him to go wait outside as she stands and starts to search for the cap.
He scurries out and waits for only a few seconds before growing impatient, grabbing onto the handle of the sliding door and tugging back and forth, not anywhere near heavy enough for it to cause any real damage. When Daisy does make her way out, Blue starts to chase after her with a cackle.
The two play until the sun has completely disappeared below the horizon, the last ruddy streaks of daylight fading from the sky as they collapse onto the grass. The sky goes from red to orange to a pale yellow and blue before either makes any attempt to move. But finally, Daisy rises to her feet and wipes her grimy, sweaty hands on her skirt before bending over and scooping up her brother. She heads back for the house, Blue squirming the whole way.
He finally manages to wrestle free just as she pops the door open, and while he’s busy locking the door and drawing the curtains just like he was taught, Daisy disappears into the kitchen. Once Blue’s done he trots after his sister, but all she’s doing is messing with the oven and keeps ignoring him, so he leaves. Scrambling up the stairs to his new room, Blue ignores all the unpacked boxes and goes straight for the toys scattered about the floor. He sets up a proper bracket and does battle with the first pair: Magmar and Electabuzz. He mimics the sound of their attacks as they face off, the plastic of the figurines clacking against one another. Some of the battles are faster than others: Gengar wipes the floor against Raichu, obviously, but Tentacruel just barely loses against Nidoking, even with its type advantage. Blue’s just reached the finale of the bracket— Arcanine versus Machamp— when Daisy’s voice reaches him, calling Blue down for dinner. And even though it's really dumb to stop right before the championship match… he is kinda hungry.
She chides him for eating so fast but laughs so hard at the way his cheeks puff out that she forgets to say anything more about it. Not like he would have listened, not with a championship on the line.
But when he’s all finished and tries to leave she snags him by the back of his shirt and drags him over to the sink. Hoisting him up onto the counter, Blue sits criss-cross with chin in his hands as she runs the hot water in the sink and adds soap. Blues scrubs his dishes so fast that suds go flying everywhere, but he gets all the gunk off so Daisy lets him be. Well, she should’ve really, but she follows him upstairs and ducks into the bathroom, emerging with a toothbrush in each fist. She chases him around the whole house before managing to corner him in Gramps’ study, practically shoving the toothbrush down his throat.
Once his teeth are brushed, Blue spits all the toothpaste out into a plant when Daisy isn’t looking. It’s a small act of rebellion that he quickly regrets, forced to scramble up the stairs and put everything away before she gets suspicious about where it went. Blue tugs on his pajamas before Daisy can hunt him down, but when she finally does she herds him straight into bed. Daisy goes through all the motions, but after she’s tucked him in she doesn’t seem to know exactly what to do. She pauses for a few moments before shaking her head, reaching over to the nightstand and turning off the lamp, rising to her feet and murmuring a soft goodnight as she ducks out of the room.
Hmph. So much for the championship match. Blue sulks as he drifts off to sleep, not even dreaming about anything cool— which is even more stupid than Daisy forcing him to brush his teeth.
Gramps is still at the house when Blue gets out of bed, something that hasn’t happened since they first came to the new house. He has breakfast with them, another rare sight, but Gramps leaves as soon as he finishes despite Daisy’s protests. Blue doesn’t even bother to ask if he can come along to the lab: Gramps will just say he’s still too young.
So instead he spends the day with Daisy, who places their dishes in the sink and tells him to go get dressed as she fixes her hair in the bathroom mirror.
They spend the day exploring the town, walking hand-in-hand because Daisy doesn’t want him wandering off. She chats with their neighbors because he doesn’t really want to, and Blue does find out there’s only one other kid his age— a girl named Leaf who lives three doors down.
But Blue doesn’t like her, especially doesn’t like how Leaf’s mom coos at the sight of them together. And he really doesn’t like the way she looks at Daisy when she’s playing with Leaf and isn’t paying attention. Her noise crinkles up and she frowns just a little, so little that she probably doesn’t even realize it; her eyes get all distant and it doesn’t feel like she’s looking at them, but through them instead. It’s the same look that every one of their old neighbors back in Saffron would give them, back when they moved out of their apartment in the city to go live with Gran and Gramps. And then again, when they went from Gran and Gramps to just Gramps.
For the rest of the time they’re out, Blue clings to Daisy’s leg and hides behind it whenever they meet someone new. Just so he doesn’t have to deal with those looks any longer.
Life goes on. The days bleed together and Blue forgets about the new rule until two weeks later, when Daisy wakes him up even earlier than normal. She sits on the floor and helps him pack, ushering him down the stairs with a suitcase in hand before he’s even really awake all the way. Gathering her own things, Gramps is waiting for them by the door.
He walks with them to Viridian City, his Nidorino nipping at Blue’s heels as they make their way through Route 1. The city practically shines with possibility but before Blue can slip away to go find something more interesting to do, he’s ushered into the train station; Daisy giving him money to get something from the vending machines as their grandfather leads her over to one of the terminals. So Blue sits on the floor with Nidorino, scratching between its ears as he nurses a lemonade and idly watches Gramps and Daisy mess around with the machine. Once he’s finished off the lemonade and stomped the can into a little aluminum disk, waiting around gets boring really, really quickly. Especially when Nidorino’s managed to doze off already, leaving Blue with nothing to do. He settles for trying to count all the floor tiles he can see, but when Daisy comes over and offers him another lemonade he loses the number and has to start all over again.
Blue isn’t exactly sure how long it’s been but Nidorino springs to attention in the presence of his trainer as Gramps approaches, motioning for Blue to follow. He does and he’s led to the edge of the platform where Daisy stands, watching as the train doors hiss open; she takes his hand and they both wave goodbye to Gramps, boarding the train with the smallest of glances back over their shoulders.
The ride is fine, if a little boring. Blue spends most of it with his face pressed up against the window, watching the green hills and distant silhouettes of cities as they pass by. He counts every Pidgey he sees— there were fifty-three, by the way— and doodles a Vileplume on the corner of Daisy’s crossword when she gets up to go to the bathroom. Blue knew that Gran’s new house was in Lavender Town: she told him it would be back during the last few days when they all lived together. But it never felt real until now, even when she moved away; out of sight and out of mind, like his mother used to say. He knows about Lavender Town of course he does, but seeing the real thing is… different. The first thing to come into view is the Pokémon Tower, dwarfing all of the trees surrounding the town. Blue only manages to catch a glance filled with smudged purples before the train pulls into the station, Daisy grabbing their luggage and ushering him off of the locomotive.
This station seems a little… different from the one in Viridian. It’s not just the paint or the people, but something else he can’t quite place. It sends shivers down his spine and Blue is more than happy to follow Daisy out.
From the moment he steps foot in Lavender Town he wants to leave. Melancholy hues of purple cover everything the eye can see, even the Pokémon Center looks a little washed out and gray. The shadow of the Pokémon Tower stretches across the entire town, a dark and cold slash that cuts through the oppressive heat of the day.
Gran greets them with a sharp cough, rising from the bench where she’d been sitting and not bothering to say anything else. She takes them to a house at the edge of town where her Golbat roosts on the slanted roof and Arbok lays stretched out across the path, soaking up the sun eagerly. Stepping over the snake, Gran takes them into the house. Her introduction is terse; Gran shows them to their rooms and points out the bathroom at the end of the hall, declares her own bedroom off-limits, and leaves them to get settled in.
The quilt spread across Blue’s new bed is too thick for summer, so he yanks it off and leaves it in a lumpy pile at the foot of the bed. He heaves his suitcase up onto the plush chair across from the bed and realizes there isn’t much else he has to do. So he lays down on the scratchy carpet, and the ceiling is so high up that it seems impossible. There’s a few wispy cobwebs sequestered away in the frosted glass of the overhead light and even when his eyes close, the impression of the lights burn on the inside of Blue’s eyelids. Once he gets bored of trying to make himself see stars, Blue wanders over to Daisy’s room and plops down on her bed, hugging one of the pillows to his chest as she fusses with the earrings and bracelets and necklaces that she brought along. Her room is a perfect mirror of his own, except for the Gengar dozing in the chair over in the corner.
“He’s kinda cute like that, isn’t he?” Daisy whispers as Gengar’s tongue lolls out of its mouth, hands grasping for something in its dream.
Blue shakes his head. Gengar aren’t cute, no matter what. They’re cool and strong, not cute. Gran’s Gengar especially, both of them. He can’t tell which is which, never could. Gramps was always able to, saying the difference was in something about their eyes and their smiles and the length of the little spikes atop their heads.
When Daisy finishes she picks him up off the bed and takes Blue out into the living room. They don’t do much, Gran’s perched in her chair in the corner, reading, and Daisy does her crosswords while Blue meanders. He pokes around in the kitchen for a bit, finding a deck of cards in one of the drawers. Daisy stops with her crosswords and joins him at the table, and they play for hours. They try every game either of them can think of, and eventually they’ve both run out of ideas and have devolved into card tricks. An hour in, Daisy started to make him shuffle after every game and then she stopped to teach him a fancy way that looks pretty cool but makes his hands cramp.
That night, Blue gets barely a wink of sleep. He never thought that Gran’s pokémon would be free to wander through the house at night but they are. From the living room comes haunting scrapes and bumps, likely Arbok or maybe even Weezing; but he knows that the sharp hissing and uncanny whistling of the air has to be because of Golbat. But worst of all are Gran’s Gengar.
Blue doesn’t know how late it is, but it’s late enough that his eyelids are becoming near impossible to keep pressed open, despite the fear that surges just beneath the surface of his skin. He’s so tired that he almost doesn’t see them: the pair of glowing red eyes perched just above a crescent-moon smile. But he does, and it's a miracle that Blue doesn’t scream his head off. Gengar stands at the foot of the bed, tugging at something. Blue’s almost about to break his vow of silence, to shout and holler for Daisy or Gran or for anyone to help him before Gengar opens its mouth and swallows him whole. It doesn’t. It grunts with effort and pries the quilt free— it had been trapped between the wall and the bed.
It bundles the quilt up into its arms and heads for the door, twisting the knob and walking out, just like that.
Daisy doesn’t seem to be having a good time either, a small consolation. On the second night he’s gotten up to go to the bathroom, but is drawn to Daisy’s room by the light seeping through the crack between the bottom of the door and the ground. He tottles in and she greets him with a tired smile, not bothering to ask questions. She scoots over and motions for Blue to join her. Even with the light still on he manages to doze off, the sound of their combined breathing and Daisy’s snoring drowning out all the haunted noises of the house.
The first visit ends and they go back to Pallet Town. Gramps doesn’t bother to ask about how things went.
Months pass, and bit by bit they get better at this whole thing. He and Daisy leave a lot of their stuff at Gran’s house so they don’t have to heave suitcases back and forth all the time. They leave later in the day, now that school’s started again, and it’s really annoying to go straight from school to Lavender Town of all places— but what choice do they have?
Gramps doesn’t take them to the station anymore, instead sending one of his lab assistants to do it. He’s scared of his own shadow but the Vulpix he comes with has enough sense to fend off any attacking Pokémon on her own, at least.
Those are big, obvious things that anyone can see. Like the clerk at the Pokémart in Viridian and how he always slips Blue something small when they stop in, and when he isn’t working there’s always something waiting on the counter, tucked away so only he can find it.
But there are other, smaller things that just Blue learns. Any time he tries to leave and go exploring in the routes around Lavender Town Daisy stops him with a shake of the head and a slap on the wrist, telling him that’s not what these visits are for, that they’re here to see Agatha. That’s another thing he’s learned: not to call her Gran anymore. She’s just Agatha now. He messes up a lot in the beginning. When he says it around Daisy and Gramps they give him this odd sort of look that makes Blue squirm uncomfortably until they either look away or he leaves. And when he says around Agatha? She’s a lot more straightforward at least; smacks him upside the head and glares.
Daisy gets her first Pokémon— a Clefairy with a squeaky voice that likes aspear berries a lot. Clefairy means that they can go up to Viridian all on their own now, something that the lab assistant seems relieved about. Blue kind of misses the Vulpix, but he’s not going to admit that. When they’re at Agatha’s, sometimes Clefairy will sing him to sleep.
Leaf is nosy, he learns. They’re in the same class at school and because she lives so close she sees him and Daisy leave a few times and doesn’t stop pestering him when they’re back on Monday. She asks where she goes and what they do and why they go so often and why they’re allowed to go onto Route 1 alone when they’re just kids. Blue tells her they go to Lavender Town to visit their grandmother. When she asks why his grandma doesn’t live with them Blue tells her to shut up.
He still doesn’t really understand why she had to move but he learns not to ask after the first time; Agatha sends him a withering glare and swats at the back of his head, and it hurts a lot more than any of the other ones. When he asks Daisy she just laughs awkwardly and says it was because of grown-up things— which is stupid because she isn’t a grown-up and knows, apparently.
Summer comes around and his class celebrates the end of the year with popsicles on the playground, chasing each other up the slides and around the swings with hands sticky with sugar. From the shade their teacher hollers and tells them to have some water, so Leaf struts over to the spigot jutting out of the building and drinks straight from its hose.
Blue laughs at her until she calls him chicken and then he does it too; the water tastes a little funny but he doesn’t really care.
Maybe another week passes before something interesting finally comes along, someone interesting. They move into the house next door and Blue watches the team of Machoke as they unload the boxes from the back of the moving truck. Daisy giggles at the way he ducks underneath the sill when an actual person passes by, so Blue sticks his tongue out at her.
She balances a pie on her arm and yanks him up off the floor, dragging Blue straight out the front door. They pause before the house next door, Blue crossing his arms with a scowl as Daisy knocks on the doorframe and stands awkwardly to the side to let the Machoke move in and out freely.
A woman with tired eyes greets them and Daisy introduces herself, prodding Blue with the toe of her sneaker until he mumbles out a hello. The woman takes the pie and marvels at its golden-brown crust, which makes Daisy blush. She heads back into the house and motions for the siblings to follow her, placing the pie on the kitchen counter. And as she calls up the stairs, Blue looks longingly out a window back towards his own house. Seeing the Machoke up close is not worth all of this hassle.
Daisy nudges Blue with her shoe again as the lady comes down the stairs and crouches down, urging a boy forward with a smile and a gentle hand on his back. He’s Blue’s age or maybe a little bit younger, and when he bites on his bottom lip Blue can see the gap left by a missing front tooth. His name is Red, the lady tells them, and Red waves awkwardly before scooting behind his mother and burying his face in her shoulder.
Out of every summer Blue’s had, that one is the best. Red’s just like that lab assistant of Gramps’ at first: nervous as a Rattata. But Leaf works whatever weird magic she has and soon enough he’s playing along with them like he’d always been there. Leaf’s lived there the longest so she shows them all the good spots for catching bugs and the best trees to climb for the best views. Normally Blue wouldn’t let a girl play with them, but he’s pretty sure if he says she can’t Leaf would egg his house.
His favorite place she shows them has to be the creek; it’s a small thing that cuts through the woods that surround town, the water nice and cool and it’s just big enough that leaping over it makes a fun competition.
It’s during one of those competitions at the creek that Blue loses his first tooth. They’re at a new spot that’s wider than he’s used to, so when he jumps he doesn’t make it to the opposite bank— stumbling on the uneven rocks and landing face-first into the water. He doesn’t feel anything, even as he slowly rises to his feet and stomps back over to the bank where Leaf and Red are waiting, which he probably should have known was a bad sign. It’s only when he opens his mouth to tell Red to take his turn that he realizes anything is wrong, blood dripping out of his mouth. Leaf shrieks and Red just stares— Blue clamps his mouth shut, the bitter iron taste flooding his senses.
Leaf is the first to do anything, telling him to sit and wait there before she darts off into the woods and heads back to town.
He and Red sit with their feet in the water, twisting to skip stones downstream. It’s then, throwing rocks as they wait for Leaf to come back, that Red talks. He’s done it before but only in short little snippets, maybe a word or two at a time: now his mouth can’t seem to keep up with all the words he wants to get out. Maybe it’s because he talks so little that Blue sits there, enthralled, as he listens. Red talks about pokémon, mostly. About the ones he likes the most and about type matchups and about how he assigns people pokémon in his head— not ones they would own, but the ones they would be. Blue manages to ask what pokémon he is, and Red’s face flushes. He mumbles out something Blue can’t really hear, but he doesn’t ask again. Even though he kinda wants to, he doesn’t think he could, with how fast his mouth is filling up with blood.
Leaf comes back with her mom and a first aid kit, and even though she tries her best to patch him up Blue still has to go into the big hospital in the city with Gramps to make sure everything is really okay. When he gets back, Leaf punches him in the shoulder so many times Blue’s arm goes numb, while Red just watches on with a worried crinkle to his brow. So Blue points to the empty space between his teeth and declares that they match now. It makes Red smile back, laughing at the absurdity of it all.
Leaf doesn’t like it though, and Red’s mom has to talk her down from trying to make herself match with them too.
He hates going to Agatha’s even more now. Every time he’s forced to leave and every time all he ever comes back to are stories from Leaf about all the fun they had while he was gone. For the first time since the new rule was put in, Blue asks why, but all Gramps says is that it’s “court-mandated” and he doesn’t really feel like pushing any further to figure out exactly what that means.
They go back to school, and while it wasn’t ever really bad before it’s definitely better with Red there. Their teacher doesn’t like how little he talks, but Blue’s happy to use Gramps’ name to get her to shut up. Red is smart just like him, and Blue can talk enough for the both of them.
He was a little worried about what school would do to them, with all those other kids there to steal away Red’s attention, but during a sleepover he says he only has room for one friend and that’s Blue, so there’s no need to worry. Blue almost asks where that puts Leaf, but he’s so happy that he doesn’t dare.
Blue spends a lot of time at Red’s house because his mom insists. She never says why but Blue can guess: Daisy’s gone all the time and Gramps is always working at the lab, so she doesn’t want him to be alone. One time when she’s making dinner, Red’s mom asks him where Daisy spends all her time, giggling that it was probably with a boy. Blue knows better— she’s coordinating. He’s seen coordinators on TV, with flashy outfits and elegant pokémon using their moves to dazzle the audience. It always looked really dumb to him, why would you use pokémon for that and not battling?
But if Daisy likes it… Maybe it’s not that dumb.
It makes sense that she’d want to— Daisy and Clefairy are perfect for it. He tells Red’s mom about all the trips she takes to every city around Kanto to compete, from Saffron to Vermillion and even down to Cinnabar Island. She wins a lot of them, brings back glossy ribbons and shiny trophies to display in her room, so many that they eventually bleed out into the rest of the house and sit stacked up on the shelves or hung up on the walls.
When she is home, Daisy acts so much different than before. She doesn’t like Red’s mom anymore, which is stupid. She doesn’t let him stay over there for dinner and when they go out into town she can’t seem to decide if they should be attached at the hip or if Blue should just leave her alone forever. Blue doesn’t think this Daisy, this new one, would fret over making a perfect pie to impress their new neighbors. He doesn’t think new Daisy would even consider making a pie for them.
He doesn’t like new Daisy.
One time, in late winter, they head to Lavender Town just like normal. Except it isn’t normal because it’s his birthday and Blue wanted to spend it at home, because birthdays are the only time Gramps will stay away from the lab so they can do whatever they want. But both Gramps and Daisy tell him that he has to go to Lavender Town, and when Blue asks Gramps to come with them he just shakes his head and says he can’t. Blue downright begs and Gramps says he won’t.
The train ride has lost its charm over the years, and it's so cold out Blue can’t find even a single Pidgey hiding in the trees. They deboard and follow a familiar path through town to Agatha’s house, stomping the snow from their shoes as Daisy fishes the spare key out from the lamp by the door. Nearly burns her fingertips on the lightbulb.
Kicking off his shoes as he yanks the door shut behind them, Blue turns and is startled to see someone new waiting for them. She seems surprised to see them and calls out to Agatha with a warbling voice, hand sneaking into the pocket of her jacket where it most likely clutches around a pokéball. The woman looks just like Agatha at first glance, but as they wait for her to arrive and explain it all, Blue looks a bit closer. Her hair falls the same way, with the two bits at the front and how it flares out towards the bottom, but it’s much more gray than Agatha’s is. She’s got a gentle face with soft lines around her eyes, kind of like the ones Red’s mom has.
Agatha introduces them as her grandchildren, Daisy and Blue, and the woman’s face lights up. She says her name is Bertha and that she’s visiting from Sinnoh, that she and Agatha are like sisters. He isn’t too sure why she says they’re like sisters; maybe they're cousins. Blue doesn’t have any, but Leaf’s cousins visit her sometimes and she looks just like them.
Daisy makes one of the fancy teas from overseas that she likes and gives a mug to everyone as they settle down onto the couches and chairs in the living room. Blue winds up on the loveseat with a weird, slightly slimy, pokémon draped across his lap: one that Bertha tells him is a Quagsire. As everyone else makes small talk, he tries the tea that Daisy gave them all. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth and Bertha chuckles softly at the face he makes after forcing it down.
At some point his birthday is brought up; Blue isn’t really quite sure how or by who but immediately Bertha’s up out of her chair and whistling for Quagsire, stopping only to ask if he likes pokémon battles. Blue says yes. Before he knows it they’re back out in the cold, down in the southern part of town at the bottleneck of where Route 12 starts. It’s starting to snow again and Blue forgot to grab his big coat but he doesn’t even care because Agatha’s sending out one of her Gengar and Bertha’s got a pokémon he doesn’t recognize— it’s blue-gray with angry red eyes and blunt teeth that it shows off as it roars— and they’re definitely getting ready for a fight. Blue doesn’t think he’s capable of being any happier than he is right then. As Gengar and Hippowdon battle, a whole crowd of people start to gather and watch the battle. He’s jostled every which way as the mob cheers, Hippowdon catching Gengar in its gaping maw and biting down with so much force everyone gasps in unison. He doesn’t even care about how everyone is whispering about how this had to be planned. But Blue knows it wasn’t, that it was all just for him.
Eventually, Agatha wins. And as the crowd thins out and the four of them make their way back to the house, Blue can’t seem to wipe the grin off of his face.
That weekend is one of the best he’s ever had— they do so much that Blue’s whole body aches from all the walking and even Daisy’s Clefairy looks ready to cry. But his cheeks ache from how much he smiled, so Blue can’t find it in himself to be too mad.
On the last night before he and Daisy are set to go back to Pallet, Blue lays awake in bed. No matter how much he tosses and turns, nothing seems to make it any better. He’s tired and it’s not like he’s scared of anything; all of Agatha’s pokémon were worked to the bone and have been sleeping in one of the spare rooms since they got back. And he’s not scared of Bertha’s, they’re big but they aren’t scary.
So Blue slips out of bed and, being sure to avoid the creaky parts of the floor, creeps into the kitchen. He pulls a cup from the cabinet and chugs as many glasses of water he can manage, only having a minor coughing fit as he inhales some of it. It’s just as Blue reaches to the faucet for what has to be the fourth time that something pierces through the silence: the murmur of voices.
Panic seizes him and Blue’s body leaves him no time to think as he bolts out of the kitchen and slides down the hallway, ducking behind the corner as he hears the voices get louder.
“All I’m trying to say is that it wouldn’t hurt to… Try and ease yourself into their lives.”
“I’m not here to coddle those children. They need discipline.” A harsh laugh, scornful. “Heaven knows their grandfather won’t be the one to give it, and it’s not as if you can expect the neighbors to step up, too far above their responsibilities. I get so little time with them, Bertha. I must do what I can when I can.”
“You could always try to work things—”
“No. I owe that man nothing.”
“Don’t you owe it to your grandchildren?”
“I do what I can for them. It’s not my responsibility to handle Samuel anymore.” It takes Blue a few moments to realize just who Agatha is talking about. “He is weak, refuses to move on with his life.”
“It’s not really something many people can just… come back from, Agatha.”
“You don’t understand; he lives in the past, now. What Samuel refuses to accept is that none of those children will ever be her. No matter how hard he tries, nothing will ever replace what he lost.” A pause. “What we lost.”
“I’m sure you don’t mean…”
“I say just what I mean. He sees too much of her in that little neighbor boy.”
If they say anything more after that, Blue doesn’t stick around long enough to find out. His hands are shaking so bad that he nearly drops the glass that is still clutched between them. When he drifts off to sleep that night, Blue dreams of his mother.
Blue starts to see things after that. Weird little things that happen so often they have to have always been there, something that he just never saw. There’s that weird joke Gramps always makes, and he calls it a joke but it’s a really stupid joke, because he pretends not to know Blue’s name, lets Leaf and Red give his grandson a new one. He never makes jokes with Blue at all. And when Red so much as looks at the lab a little too long when Gramps is around, he offers to show Red around. It took Blue years of pleading for Gramps to give him even a maybe, but Red gets it in one day?
He wonders if Agatha was telling the truth or if she opted to lie about ‘the little neighbor boy’ being so much like her. But she wouldn’t have a reason, and Agatha never does anything without a reason.
Daisy remembers her better. Both of them, really. Blue never works up the courage to ask her anything about what they were like.
And things start to change, one right after the other. Daisy’s stopped coming to Lavender Town every other weekend, but she’s old enough and busy enough that no one really cares. Agatha has a cane now. It hurts a lot more than any of her other smacks do, the impact always a dull thud straight to the top of his skull that throbs for a while afterwards. Their weekends together are spent training, preparing for Blue to start his journey.
Something ugly builds up inside of him. It weighs him down like a stone, uncomfortable and oppressive as it rattles around on the inside of his ribcage. Every time Agatha scolds him, tells him to grow a spine, it grows. Eventually he lets it bubble up and spill over, putting a silver tongue to good use. Those are the only times Agatha ever seems to smile at him.
Leaf says he’s getting mean. Blue says she’s being a stupid girl and tells her to shut up. Gramps only ever looks at Blue to tell him to knock it off, but at least it’s something. It makes him really sad if he thinks about it too long, so Blue doesn’t think about it any more.
“You’ve always looked like your father, it’s only fitting that you start to act like him too.” When Gramps says that— offhandedly on a Tuesday night, sat at his desk filling out paperwork— Blue doesn’t know what to do. Nidorino nips at his fingers, irate that he’s stopped playing. Professor Oak only bothers to look at his grandson as he storms out of the lab, slamming the door as he goes.
It’s spring now, the one that came after Blue’s eleventh birthday. Red’s too, and Blue hates that he still knows that. Leaf isn’t there yet but hers is just a few weeks away, and the delayed start won’t keep her back for long.
He stands in the lab, trying not to let his anxiety show as the lab assistants mill about. Gramps isn’t here yet and neither is Red; a cynical part of Blue wonders if they’re together, if Gramps went to go meet Red and see him off. There’s a single Pokéball on the lab table: it’s new and shiny and Blue has no idea what could be inside. He’s tempted to reach out and just have a look for himself, but something stops him. That’s not the right thing to do, or whatever.
When Gramps and Red do show up, it’s together. Typical, honestly, and Blue rolls his eyes and crosses his arms as Red comes to stand beside him. Gramps tells him he should’ve come by later and Blue starts to feel the pounding of his heart in his own ears. Then he says that the one on the table is for Red and that he’ll get Blue another later he can’t take it anymore.
He stomps over and snatches it right off the table, refusing to look at Gramps or Red.
Red still ends up getting his pokémon without having to wait: a Pikachu. It doesn’t look like he really wants to but Blue demands a battle right then and there, and Red knows you’re not supposed to say no to a challenge like that.
Blue and his Eevee win easily, and he leaves before Red or Gramps can get a word in edgewise. As he leaves town, Blue tries not to think about how Gramps went through all the trouble of finding an Eevee— an Eevee— just for Red but didn’t have anything ready for his own grandson.
He leaves Pallet, not daring to even think about looking back.