Chapter Text
The world is an inherently cruel place.
The strong prey on the weak.
The weak are crushed by the weight of the world.
From a very early age, Silver was aware of it. He was never blind to the terrible reality that adults around him were reveling in. From a child in Team Rocket’s grasp, to a homeless kid, to a wanted criminal, he was always watching the cruelty of people. The strong would hurt the weak, and as a child with no home, Silver was very weak.
That drove him to chase strength. Not from something as flimsy as the facade of Team Rocket, but from the power of Pokémon. Pokémon would make him strong. Pokémon would give him a sense of control.
And then he was curb stomped by three losers with weak, pampered, pet-like Pokémon.
Consecutively.
The first loss was the worst. Kris’ smug, casual smirk, as she left him reeling, was unbearable. The way she snatched his trainer card, the way she handed it back with satisfaction, the way she immediately ratted out his name to the stupid police…
He never thought that someone so weak would eviscerate him so quickly.
It didn’t matter how he could beat down every other trainer he saw. It didn’t matter when he got his first gym badge. It didn’t matter that he was able to mow down wild Pokémon.
Kris made him angry.
She was the one who stirred up the embers in his spirit. The one to make him feel small again, immediately after he felt strong for the first time in his life. It wasn’t acceptable. He needed her to be sorry, he needed her to suffer. He needed to beat her, and he couldn’t beat her. She managed to put him into the ground, over and over. But she wasn’t alone, no. Of course not. She was only the first one to make him feel small all over again.
Ethan was the second. The first time they met, Ethan was doing something stupid to help Elm, that weak little wimp of a professor, and Silver kicked him to make him go away. The second time, Ethan stomped him flat.
He blamed it on Ethan picking the Pokémon with a type advantage to his. Ethan had laughed.
The sound was so similar to Kris’ unbearable, disgusting, repulsive smirking, that he was immediately sick to his stomach. Silver kicked him again. Ethan yelped.
It didn’t make him feel better.
Ethan seemed so content to keep popping up again. He was always catching Silver, always re-bruising the ego Kris had just bashed her heel into. They were an annoying pair, a rock and a hard place.
And the third, the most unbearable, was Lyra.
She’d made the mistake of looking very slightly like Kris. With her stupid hair and her stupid shorts. She looked like a younger, weaker, easier to bully, version of Kris.
He challenged her because she only had one stupid and dorky little Pokémon at her side, a fat little water type that he’d assumed he could beat. He was wrong, again, of course. Lyra destroyed his team, and she didn’t seem to care, either. She smiled, and it wasn’t like Kris’ smirk. Sympathetically. But not warmly. There was something missing from her gaze that Silver couldn’t place.
If Kris was the rock, and Ethan was the hard place, Lyra was a mallet made for no other reason than to slam into him, over and over, to drive him further into the tight, suffocating space.
They were always winning. They were always giving him the most unbearable looks.
Like they saw his weakness.
It wasn’t fair.
He wanted to be the strongest. He needed to be. He would be.
Silver trained and stole and battered. He broke into abandoned buildings and hid in the tops of trees. He slept on the side of the road and against the sides of route gates. Chikorita evolved and she became bigger, stronger. She tried to sleep by his side, but he kept her in her pokéball. Even if she could be helpful with finding dry and warm places to sleep. It was cold out and she was annoying. Better in the ball than sleeping by the road with a homeless kid.
But it made him stronger. It would toughen him up to be cold and wet, he thought. He told himself that it was going to make him less pathetic.
Less like Giovanni.
Chikorita was a good pick. The grass type would be able to overtake any ground types. He would have picked that blue one, but Kris already took it. Another reason to hate her. She got the better Pokémon, because she was given it, and he had to settle for second best because she got what she wanted handed to her.
Nepo baby. Bitch. Rotten piece of shit, goody-two-shoes snob with her stupid hair and her stupid jacket and her stupid smirk.
Like she could read right through him, like she knew who he was from a single glance. His Pokémon should have been good against Kris, but she already had an entire team of six by the time he caught up to her. He could barely believe it. And Ethan, despite his obvious intelligence disadvantage, was equally able to catch up to him and best him. And Lyra, despite her obvious type disadvantage, didn’t even seem to break a sweat over their battle. All three of them, the weaklings, the useless, worthless pests, continued to pop up at random places to annoy him.
It shouldn’t even be possible. He told Bayleef to be better. He caught a few Pokémon. He stole some, too. Gastly and Zubat were both weak. Magnemite did better. Sneasel, ripped out of the hands of some pathetic trainer who could barely stutter a yelp, was a good Pokémon, but not good enough.
He couldn’t win.
He was unraveling.
Kris was always one step ahead of him, Ethan one behind, Lyra a complete wild card. When he attempted to take on Team Rocket, he realized that the three of them knew each other. He realized that he was the butt of the joke in more ways than he’d thought.
They were dressed up as Team Rocket. Sneaking in, though he first thought that, somehow, the strongest people he knew were telling him that Rockets were worth even considering.
It made him lose his temper. He’d screamed and yelled and swung. He couldn’t even remember how it ended, just that Team Rocket’s radio tower takeover ended eventually, with a messy, violent battle. If he tried, he could guess that Kris delivered the final blow, but he wouldn’t want to think about it anymore.
He didn’t want to think about how they all looked at him.
There weren't any attempts to explain to the other two who he was. There wasn’t any confusion. They only seemed surprised to see him there, and shocked when he screamed at them. He saw the way Ethan put his arm out in front of the other two, how Kris pushed past it anyway, how Lyra looked between them. They were a unit. The three of them. They knew each other.
Did they meet on a route somewhere?
Did they grow up in close towns?
Did they talk about him?
It wasn’t fair. He was struck, in that moment, by how jealous he was. The way that they had each other. The fact that they could be strong in a group. The comfort they gave each other.
Not fair.
Not fair at all.
He stole a Kadabra, because they were meant to be strong. It wasn’t good enough, but he needed to prove this to himself. He needed to prove that he could be the strongest, and that would protect him from the others. He needed to win.
Silver challenged the trio in order, for the first time, at the League.
This was the moment where he was going to prove that he was truly the strongest. This was the moment where he was going to show them how much he’d improved. This was the moment, this was his moment, his moment, where he was going to absolutely obliterate the entire group of them and get his ego back.
He told them as much.
Kris hadn’t even really reacted, she’d just pulled out a ball and given him that smirk, that godawful smirk. She had been eager to see his progress, and he’d disappointed her.
Silver saw it in her eyes. He told her that he would figure out just what made her so strong, and she’d just given him that stupid look again. Kris brushed past him and made her way to become the Champion. He found out, later, that she did win. She’d become the Champion and immediately, she’d thrown away the title, because she wanted to travel the region in search of more, and stronger, opponents.
But when Ethan stepped into sight, he didn’t know that yet. He only knew that his loss to Kris stung, and Ethan was close enough to hurt for it.
And he immediately demanded a battle.
And he lost.
Silver could hardly believe it. Against Kris, he could accept it. She had some kind of inhuman appetite for battle, some sort of meticulous training that he couldn’t keep up with. But Ethan, who gave him a small smile and a shrug? Ethan, who had a disadvantage against him from the very beginning?
That couldn’t be right. Silver couldn’t even believe it. He said something about realizing what he was missing, and Ethan had patted his shoulder as he walked past him.
Kris, sure. She was some kind of prodigy. Someone that even legendaries bowed to.
But Ethan?
Ethan, with his lackadaisical speech and annoying use of yo and stupid naming conventions?
Something in him was cracking, and by the time Lyra skipped up to him, Silver was already losing pieces of himself. And what fell away burned like anger. He snapped at her. He called her weak, and told her this was the end of the line for her. He told her that he’d beaten every single person in Victory Road so far, and she would be next. He told her that he would win. He told her that he was strong.
And he was wrong, of course.
Lyra didn’t get excited as they battled. She wasn’t taking it seriously or casually. She wasn’t an eager battler like Kris, or a playful one like Ethan.
She watched him, the entire time.
When he was down to one Pokémon, he knew what was going to happen was already inevitable. He’d lost to all three of them. Even now, he couldn’t beat them. It didn’t matter, he couldn’t win.
Even when he gave it everything he had, he couldn’t win.
He murmured his shock. Even giving it everything he had, every single one of them beat him. Silver wondered if the Dragon Tamer was right. If there was something he lacked. And Lyra touched his wrist. She’d said something, as she left, and he barely heard it, didn’t register it until after she was already leaving, but he still called out after her. He still yelled his response, just to have the last word.
I haven’t given up on becoming the best trainer. I’m going to figure out why I can’t win and become stronger. When I do, I’m going to challenge you. I’ll beat you down with all my power.
Silver told her to keep getting stronger, until then. And she just smiled.
And then he was back to being alone.
Alone, when they had each other. Alone, when Rocket was gone again. Alone, when some rotten kid with a stupid expression destroyed him again.
That was the last time he saw any of them, for a decent bit. He was alone for a while after that, because he went to train. He put his Pokémon to the flames, until they were refined and perfectly ready to take on anything.
He trained alongside Claire, and he learned to take her comments without yelling back.
Kris was off doing something dangerous and extreme, no doubt. What an adrenaline junkie she could be, for such a polite, dry person. Sometimes, he worried about her.
He pushed himself to his limit, but never over it. He pushed his Pokémon to their limits, but never over them. It was crucial to his training. If he wanted to be able to defeat the League and prove to everyone that he was more than a street rat, more than a thief, more than just another bad thing to come out of Team Rocket… He’d need to be able to make a name for himself, on his own. He’d need to be able to stand on his own two feet and not fall this time.
Not that he could remember a time where he wasn’t on his own.
But more so that he couldn’t admit that he would lose again. He needed to prove to himself, first and foremost, that he could go the distance. No matter who his opponent was, no matter the task, no matter the strength it would take, if he could just find what it was that was missing…
Ethan went back home. Silver didn’t know where home was for Ethan, had never asked, had never cared, but he wondered, for a bit. Just every now and then.
Home, for Silver, was becoming more and more the Dragon Den. Even when he wasn’t training, he was always in the area. Hiding somewhere or tucked away in the corner of a cave, scowling at anyone who dared to come too close to him. Like a territorial Growlithe. A feral Pokémon.
It was better than sleeping in the rain, but not by too much.
Caves are cold and hard. Grass, at least, provided a small amount of cushioning. Silver was more than used to finding places he could hide out and keep warm. His Pokémon had become a big help with that, and he was relieved to find that they weren’t complaining about sleeping in a cave, either. At some point, he’d started to worry about them being unable to battle well if they were sore and cold and tired still.
Lyra had a daycare to help run. She had a purpose and a reason to keep moving. Food on the table and a warm bed, waiting for her. Whatever that felt like, he’d forgotten.
By the time he was ready to face them again, he’d already lost track of each one. But he knew enough about how they operated, and he made for Mt. Moon. Back to Kanto, one of the worst regions in the world, a region soaked in misery for him.
It was raining when he arrived at the mountain’s exit.
Silver started out at the grey sky, before he turned back towards the rest of the cave system he’d finally managed to navigate. He knew that it wouldn’t be long before the other three arrived. He knew that they’d likely heard, already, that he’d beaten Lance. From Lance himself, no doubt, so proud of how much he’d grown. Whatever that meant, it was sickening to hear.
At all costs, Silver wanted, needed, to prove that he hadn’t gotten soft. That he wasn’t going to crack under the pressure of three points driving into him.
He stood at the exit to Mt. Moon, and he waited for them.
Kris came first. Silver didn’t even pretend to be surprised when he saw her trekking towards him. She looked up at him, and her eyes lit up with a violent fire.
There was a pokéball in her hand before he even opened his mouth.
Silver told her that he’d finally figured it out. What he was lacking. He was sure that he would beat her this time. Kris told him that she was excited. Excited. Her unbelievable appetite for battling, even when he was certain he would finally be able to crush her, wasn’t as shocking to him anymore. He couldn’t understand it, but he knew what it was.
He knew, watching her give commands, lean into the fight, jump around and yell. She was having fun battling. She was cheering for her Pokémon, encouraging them. It was the loudest she’d been.
It was their closest fight.
And still, he lost.
For the first time, Silver relented with grace. He admitted his loss, and he told her, no matter what, he was going to keep training, and he was going to beat her eventually.
She’d smirked again. It wasn’t hostile or smug. It was just a lopsided smile.
“Oh, that’s a big improvement. I’m going to be waiting for you, alright? Be safe, now.”
Silver wondered when he’d come to take her smirk as something less than a provocation or a gloat. She was genuinely happy for him. She walked past him with her head held high, and Silver watched her go, knowing that she was stronger, knowing that she still had something he didn’t.
But he was closer than before.
He stepped off the path, and healed his Pokémon. He’d told them not to worry, he told them to shake it off. He was still certain that he would be able to win eventually.
It was barely a break before Ethan was jogging up the pathway.
Silver walked back into the way, and Ethan stopped, and Silver explained himself a second time.
That he’d learned what he was missing, and he was ready to take Ethan on again. He’d been training in the mountain’s rocky caves. He was ready for this.
His Pokémon were ready for this. Maybe not for Kris, but he was certain he could take on Ethan, and prove himself the stronger trainer. And it was close, closer than with Kris, but he’d still lost. He’d still been forced to admit defeat. To face Ethan’s lazy grin and know that he’d come so close, only to lose again. What was he still doing wrong, he wondered? His Pokémon were good, weren’t they? Or were they weak, because of him?
For the second time, he admitted defeat with something close to humility. Silver told Ethan, with his head held high, that he was still going to become a stronger trainer. He just needed more time with his Pokémon, surely.
And Ethan grinned at him.
“Yo, that’s the spirit! You better come find me then, yeah? I’m looking forward to it!”
He walked past Silver with his head held just as high as before, and Silver knew, immediately, that he wasn’t going to beat Lyra, either.
But for some reason, he just had to try, anyway. He couldn’t stop himself from challenging her, even when he admitted that he knew she was strong. It wasn’t a desperation to prove himself that drove him to fight. It was something else. Something that was sprouting up in his chest as he healed his Pokémon, as he stood at the mouth of the cave, as she approached.
Silver confessed he wasn’t sure why, but he needed to fight her. And she obliged. And for the third time in a row, he was defeated.
His Pokémon weren’t even losing their determination. They fought just as hard as they had against Ethan, and against Kris. They were just as motivated as before. The issue had to be with him. He had to be the problem. His Pokémon were weak because he wasn’t good at making them stronger.
The only solution to that would be to get stronger.
He recalled his fainted Pokémon and again, for the third time, he accepted his loss with dignity. His Pokémon weren’t strong enough yet. They needed more training. He needed more training. He needed to get better, so that his Pokémon, who were behind him all the way, and were trying to support him, were doing their best, would get better, too.
Lyra had giggled at him. It was like, again, she and the other two were all in on a joke of some kind that he’d miss. Some little humor that only they could understand.
“Don’t quit, okay? You’re trying really hard, I can tell. I can’t wait to see how it goes!”
But before she left, she pressed something metal and foreign into his hands. A PokéGear, as she’d said. He didn’t really hear what she explained after. He was staring at the glistening black object in his grasp. The way the red light on the bottom, with a purpose he still didn’t know, gleamed up at him. It was impressive. It matched his jacket. It was picked out and bought for him. Something expensive, something sleek, something a street Rattata shouldn’t own. It had to have cost her a decent amount of money. More money than he had.
Whatever she said, he didn’t hear any of it. He could only hear the ringing in his ears. And then, the sound of her footsteps, leaving him behind again.
She skipped past him with a bounce in her step.
And he was alone.
Clutching the lifeline like it would pull him out of the muck of his entire life. Like it could wash away the rot that clings to him, as if this piece of a better world, a world fitting for people who are both strong and brave, belongs with him. He wouldn't even know how to use it. He wouldn't have any numbers to put into it. He should have chased after her, and given it back, but his feet refused to move.
The red light flashed cheerfully with a message received.