Read, review, and please don’t kill me! I know this is short, gomen!

I have bugger-all idea what genre to put this in, so I’m sticking it in wherever I feel like.

Hmm, oh, and major Brock fans may not like this. You were warned. ^_^ Take-san doesn’t die, but… well, read for yourself!

And the disclaimer. I don’t own Pokémon. Never have, and, with the amount of money I have, I never will. It belongs to… (Takes a deep breath) Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures and a lot of other peeps.

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He couldn’t speak. Not one word. The psychiatrist sighed. Obviously, this wasn’t going to work. Something had happened to the 14-year-old boy that had traumatized him into not speaking. It was the doctor’s job to find out what.

But the teenager wouldn’t speak. Not to his mother, not to his girlfriend, no-one.

“Why won’t you tell me?” the psychiatrist asked gently, but she got no reply. Instead, he curled his knees under his chin and hugged them. It wasn’t that he couldn’t speak; more like he couldn’t find the right words to describe the emotional torture he’d been through for the past month-and-a-half. Ever since that day… when everything he’d lived with for the past 3 years was turned upside-down, destroyed… He shook his head violently. He never, EVER wanted to remember that terrible, awful day…

The doctor, Dr. Arin Maniaci, PhD bit her pen and let out a sigh. It was like talking to a brick wall. Until he started to talk, she couldn’t analyze his problems; find out what was wrong, and the best way to deal with it.

“Ash?”

He looked at her.

“One of these days, you’ll have to tell someone…” He shook his head. “You don’t have to tell me,” she continued, “You can draw it, if you want…” His reaction was… unexpected, to say the least. He began slamming his head on the cushion in what seemed like a seizure, when he was really trying to get the images out of his head. Dr. Maniaci got ready to call for an ambulance, frightened by Ash’s unsettling temperament, but before she picked the receiver up, he calmed down, and resumed his staring into space.

“Are you alright? Do you want me to call a doctor or something?”

He shook his head. He wanted to be left alone really.

He continued to stare into space for the rest of the session, while the doctor eventually gave up and read one of the huge books in the ominous looking bookcase behind her.

~*~*~*~

The drive home was what it usually was. He sat in the back seat, his mom in the front. Misty sat next to him. She took his hand, and he smiled at her.

~*~*~*~

Misty watched him in his sleep. He was tossing and turning, and she just knew he was having a nightmare. “Women’s intuition” she called it once, and he burst out laughing.

But he hadn’t laughed for ages. Ever since Brock left. She missed that. Ash had become a completely different person. She missed him.

~*~*~*~

Every time he closed his eyes, the images re-appeared. And flashbacks attacked him like a lion attacked its prey. That day…

He’d lived through it, just like any normal kid would. Woke up, kissed Misty, eaten, went out, trained his Pokémon, came back, eaten, done stuff… normal day. But…

He and Misty gotten into a wrestling match, and she won by pinning him to the floor and getting Pikachu and Bulbasaur to tickle him. Then they had a pillow fight, and she got him on the side of the head. His ears were ringing, blocking out minor sounds and as he caught his breath, his mom told him to go wash his face before dinner, and, doing what he was told, he got up, mumbling that he didn’t need to. Typical teenager.

As he scaled the stairway to the bathroom, he noticed that his ears were slightly foggy, as if someone had shoved a ton of cotton wool in his ears, and no matter how hard he shook his head, he couldn’t clear them. Humming a tune that had been on the TV earlier, he opened the door to the bathroom, not hearing the sounds behind him, and turned on the water. He threw water on his face, looked in the slightly steamed up mirror, cocking his head slightly when he thought he saw someone behind him, but just shrugged it off, thinking that he was either imagining it, or his hair had made a shadow in the glass.

But Ash was wrong. There WAS someone behind him. Someone who traumatized Ash into becoming a near recluse. And as Ash turned around, and saw that person, his terror-filled scream filled the house.

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!”

~*~*~*~

His screams woke Misty up, and she saw him crying and shaking.

“Oh God, Ash! What’s wrong?!”

She ran over to him and held him while he cried. Eventually, he calmed down, and slowed to the occasional whimper on her shoulder. Misty ran her hand through his black hair and made ‘shush’-ing noises, thinking that whatever had happened must have been awful for him. She didn’t know how true that was.

“Ash?”

“Oh God, Misty, it was horrible…” he sobbed

“What was? C’mon, Ash, you can tell me,” she soothed

“I-I…”

“You… what?”

“It was horrible…” he moaned

“I know, it’s ok, just tell me.”

Trying not to cry, Ash poured out the whole story of that day, omitting nothing. Misty’s face was serious, she didn’t laugh, like he feared.

“Ash…?”

“*sniff* Yeah?”

Misty cleared her throat, “I think you should tell the doctor about this,” she told him seriously. He shook his head.

“I can’t… She scares me.”

“I’ll go in with you, ok?”

Their eyes met, and he knew she wouldn’t leave him alone. He nodded tearfully. “M’kay.”

~*~*~*~

All of them sat in the waiting room, which was painted a severe ice blue, had ‘The Spanish Flea’ playing on loop, a TV stuck on QVC and was colder than an Articuno’s behind in winter. Ash was holding Misty’s hand so tight she felt like he was crushing it, but if he was scared, so be it. A skinny young man, with a bored look on his face, stepped out, with a clipboard,

“Ash Ketchum, go through please.” he droned.

His grip on her hand tightened significantly and she looped her arm around his waist and led him through.

~*~*~*~

Dr. Maniaci looked at Ash and Misty disapprovingly as they walked through the doorway.

“I didn’t expect the two of you to come through,” she growled.

Ash gave the ‘puppy-dog’ look with his big, brown eyes, and it worked very effectively. She ushered them both through into the room. Ash grinned, he’d been doing that since he was 6, and it worked every time.

“So, Ash, are you two going to sit down?” She motioned to the couch, and they sat next to each other, Ash’s grip still tight on Misty’s hand: he wouldn’t let her leave if it killed him.

“Are you going to talk to me today?”

“Mm-hm.”

The doctor gasped. They were the first words he’d said to her since they had started these ‘sessions’.

“Are you going to tell me what happened to you?” she asked gently.

No reply. He was spacing out again.

“Ash?”

Misty nudged him with her elbow, and he seemed to wake up again.

“Hm? Wha?”

“Tell her what happened!” she whispered, motioning to the psychiatrist in the corner.

“Oh… m’kay…”

He took a few deep, cleansing breaths, and told the physician exactly what was troubling him in two short sentences.

“I…” he paused. “I saw… I saw my friend… my friend Brock naked…”

The psychiatrist raised one heavily penciled eyebrow, thinking that it wasn’t much to be traumatized over, but then

Ash took another shuddering breath.

“He wasn’t a guy.”

Betcha weren’t expecting that, huh?

Read and review, please! Be nice! Please be nice to me! Review! Oh go on, you know you want to! Please? (o^_^o)

Ooh, BTW, Maniaci = Maniac. J J J

Please visit my website at http://come.to/kenjishrine!