Chapter Text
When Johanna's daughter won the title of Pokémon champion, the Coordinator felt that everything in their life was going the right way- something she never could have imagined after her husband left.
Oh, she'd been beyond frightened when Dawn revealed offhandedly that she was fighting a criminal organization trying to capture and enslave legendary pokémon to do Lord knows what. Unova had just gotten rid of their pest problem, and now Sinnoh was about to incur in another!? But her child, wonderfully, had turned out to be far too capable for them to be a threat. Johanna sometimes wondered where she got all of her talent from, considering how hopeless everyone in her bloodline had been at pokémon battles.
(Of course, Johanna didn't know that her daughter had done so much more than win a few pokémon battles, but the poor woman would literally have a heart attack if she knew her daughter had been flung in Giratina's dark dimension and basically fought Satan to catch it in a ball. It had never occurred to Dawn that this was something her mother would need to know anyway, and all's well that ends well. Right?)
Unfortunately, Johanna couldn't have been more wrong about life being perfect.
(....Oooof course not.)
One morning, a few days after Dawn's 15th birthday, Johanna woke up ready for another day of mothering and training to be the best Coordinator ever, but she found Dawn's bed to be empty. This in itself wasn't an issue- her daughter sometimes woke up even earlier than her. Ah, the joys of youth! This journey had been good for her child. She went about her morning as usual.
However, upon not hearing anything from her all the way up to dinner she worried, as mothers are wont to do. She decided to call, just to be sure her kid was eating! When she did however, she heard Dawn's ringtone from upstairs.
She climbed the steps with an uneasy feeling, this time entering the room instead of lingering at the door. Empty bed. No sign of life. But her bag was still there, as were her clothes and hat and boots, her Pokétch, all things she never left the house without. But, more damning of all, her pokéballs were still there, rolling uneasily as if eager to be freed.
Johanna grabbed them quickly, letting Dawn's pokémon out one by one. Her Infernape, Lopunny, Crobat, Togekiss, Mamoswine and Luxray came out, quickly crowding the room and almost breaking the bed, but Johanna didn't care about that.
"Where is Dawn!? Why didn't she take you with her?"
She could not hope to make out the cacophony of sounds that answered her with any clarity, but their frantic attempts at answering her gave her all the answer she needed. Something had happened to her Dawn, and no one had been the wiser.
In the half a day it took for her to contact any acquaintance she could think of, the authorities and even her daughter's colleagues, all mobilizing to find one girl, the knowledge had already cemented in her heart: Dawn was missing. And none had any idea of how or why it happened.
It only took a few weeks for the rest of the country to realize that too.
-
The thing was, she was not the only one to have vanished without a trace. Around the same time as her, one of the most promising Trainers of Unova - Hilda - along with one of the two bosses of the Battle Subway - Ingo - were spirited overnight after one of their metro battles. The young woman had beaten 20 trainers and once again faced the frowning Pokémon savant, all confident grins and excited pokémon in tow. But neither of them came out of the train car after. When the workers came to check in them they found only their pokéballs scattered on the floor, swaying in disdress.
There were cameras positioned strategically inside every train car, to give the video of the battle to the challenger should they desire it, but the one in the last car had stopped working halfway through the fight. Hilda's galvantula had just released an electric attack, and the ensuing blinding light was the last thing registered. The investigators deduced that the force of her attack must have fried the camera, but how could a camera made specifically to withstand that sort of abuse malfunction without even being struck directly?
And yet, no matter how the subway staff argued, the authorities had their hands tied. They had no leads, no way of proving anything else could have broken the camera, and definitely no way to begin guessing who the hell managed to kidnap two master trainers in the middle of a battle, without taking their pokémon, with no signs of any such struggle, and undetected despite carrying out such a crime in the middle of a moving fucking train.
The bereaved families of those two, much like Dawn's family, had to wait and wait in hope of news coming, but none did. None ever did.
Johanna met with them, just once. To share information, or simply to share in their misery? She didn't know. Ingo's brother Emmet was a man known for his friendly face, always smiling widely and drawling compliments in a way that would normally be charming. Now it just felt out of place, with his booming voice and wild gesturing and wider (forced) smile. The only clear indicator of how shaken he was being, ironically, the amazon he'd brought along as emotional support.
Miss Elesa was the only one able to read his grief, the only one he could rely on after losing his only family. That part, at least, she could relate to, though she had no Miss Elesa of her own to cheer her up. It would have been too shameful to ask Barry's mother to support her when her son needed her, after all.
On the other end of the room, Hilda's numerous family members grieved far more outwardly. Her mother and brother were a mess, with her aunt and two cousins only slightly more composed. Despite living on two opposite ends of Unova, Hilda's mother and her sister seemed incredibly close, holding onto each other tightly like Drifblims trying not to drift away. Nate was similarly anchoring Hilbert, brushing his back and ruffling his hair as if to console a child.
Rosa was the only outlier. She had no Hilda to comfort to complete the parallels, for Hilda was gone, but instead of joining one of the other groups she stared outside the window, lost in thought. Johanna could see a fire in her eyes, not doused by grief but rather fueled by it. Rosa had claimed that the teams her cousin and Dawn defeated - Team Galaxy and Team Plasma - must have had something to do with the disappearences, and it was clear she was going to do something to track down answers.
None of this was fair. The girl wasn't even 14 yet- she was supposed to start her pokémon journey soon instead of worrying about her missing family. Before all this, she'd dreamed of acting in a movie at the newly established Pokéwood and see herself in the big screen just once. She's wanted her de-facto big sister to muss her hair and go "see, I knew you had it in you," even when Rosa didn't know it herself.
Now, that dream lay in shambles at their feet. Johanna wondered what would become of all their dreams, and if whoever plucked their loved ones from their lives cared that they'd fall to shreds.
-
No news came, despite two countries looking and even researchers from other regions lending a hand. But life went on.
Johanna hadn't given up, no, and she was sure the others' hadn't either. She just... Didn't want to stop her life to wait. There was nothing she could do, and her helplessness was like a burn- Dawn wouldn't have wanted this for her. For any of them.
So she trained as a Coordinator like she always did. She even roped some of Dawn's Pokemon into it, the rest being looked after by her or Dawn's friends. It was like they were all working together to keep a piece of her with them.
Barry was the one working the hardest to look after them, but also the one taking her disappearance worst of all. He'd always looked to Dawn as a companion, someone that could match his frenzied tempo with her calm poise, instead of trying to drag him into her rhythm. She was always ahead of him despite being such a slow runner, always in the nick of time when he had his shoulders to the wall.
His absentee father cared, but much like Dawn's dad he wasn't quite mature enough to be a parent. He'd picked battles over spending time with his son before this, and now he wouldn't have known how to handle grief even if he'd tried. The boy was left like an unmoored boat in a sea of confusing and painful waves.
At least Barry and Lucas had gotten closer after everything. Perhaps bonding over how Dawn was always there for them when things got bad. Perhaps sharing dreams or nightmares or regrets. Johanna didn't know, she just hoped they knew they could turn to her if they needed anything. After all, her routine had always been to train and to be a mother, and one part of it had been sorely missing for a while.
It proceeded that way for months. Spring turned into Summer and before any knew it, Halloween was creeping up. That was when something changed. Cynthia herself burst through Johanna's front door like a Rampardos on the loose, her impeccable hair and clothes askew for the first time in her life.
"We've found them. Dawn and the other two- they're back."
Johanna had dropped the Crobat decoration on the ground immediately, disbelief freezing her in place. Only the sound of porcelain breaking brought her back- right, Barry was setting the table, but does any of that matter?
They leave the decorations and porcelain shards on the floor, running out the door.
Dawn was back.