Bloody biology lab…

Disclaimer: If I owned pokemon, I’d be bloody rich! ^^ I don’t though, ask Nintendo for the copyright!

Notes: <> for telepathy, ** for thoughts, italics if a pokemon talks

I apologize for the various writing styles mixed in this fic

Chapter 5

“You…” Erika’s voice was soft, but measuring. “I feel as though I have met you before…”

He nodded absentmindedly. She’d been his cousin in a few lives, and green was yellow and blue, so she was under his control somewhat, and also under Lance’s, a little, but Lance didn’t really use the grass-types, did he? No, he used dark and ghost and psychic and dragon and ice, a touch of flying at times, maybe a bit of water, but that was all… he shook his head as he looked at her.

“Is your Vileplume all right?”

She nodded, smoothing herbal ointment over the worst of its burns. She had always preferred natural remedies and rest and sunshine to pokemon centers.

He gave her a wan smile, which she returned with a knowing glance. She sent him off with her badge and a bouquet of white lilies, almost as if she knew.

Impossible! None of them really knew, he didn’t know and he only knew now because he hadn’t been reborn. She wasn’t like Lance and Clair and Lorelei and Agatha, they never forgot, almost…

The psychics and the ghosts and the ones with frozen blood within their veins never forgot. It was like the dragon that lived a thousand years, though those thousand years were shattered into millions of fragments, most not even reaching thirty in number. He was sick of doing the same dance and he was tired.

He wanted to get to the Plateau now and find things the way they should be, never mind if memory was a wreck and life was…

Life would be changed. They’d defeat Giovanni and Team Rocket this time. Well, all right, he could not place all the blame on Giovanni, it had been his successor who had carried out the daring plans to burn the towns and kidnap Serebii. Still, he felt sad.

Giovanni was a wildcard, a friend in some lives, and a foe in others. It often made things confusing. And no matter how much he dithered and dallied and whined, he liked some types of consistency. He liked knowing his enemies and allies and what spells to weave and lines to lie.

Maybe he was just lazy?

No, Ash knew he was not lazy. He enjoyed comfort and life bright with sweets and happy shouts, but he understood that it was a narrow path they walked and so easy to fall off the cliff into the yawning abyss below, which was frosted with icing sugar but filled with rusty spikes. Falling was painful, because then others would have to die for his mistakes, and die again even when they wished for life.

It was a lesson he had learned too well.

His pokemon thought him cold but confident, skillful but with little compassion, and occasionally they whispered as they trained upon the secrets that the child held, for he was a child still, though his heart was older.

Bu Ash took himself away, and he whispered the image of Mount Silver, and for years, but not too many, he stayed there, hidden and training, capturing and collecting until he had acquired an army of powerful pokemon, brave and powerful indeed, skilled and cunning, but without a touch of love in their hearts, not loyalty, only competence.

He was too far-gone to notice this.

They obeyed him because he had the badges, glittering pieces of metal filled with more power than most knew, for how else could one brainwash a pokemon to obey? And when the years had numbered four, he was ready, and entered the Plateau.

And though the Elite fell one by one, they were not triumphant, and when the Dragon Master’s last dragon fell, his words of congratulation were cold and filled with shattered glass, and his fingers on the keyboards were pale and stiff, and even as he placed the golden belt around his waist, his eyes were points of hollow darkness.

And Ash finally realized something was wrong.

“Do you hate me?”

The answer that he received was what he had expected, but at the same time not. Golden eyes bleached of color, met his coolly.

“I do not hate you.”

“But you don’t like me either.”

“No.” And it was the ice mistress who cut in, her voice like a blast of the north wind. “For you have great skill and yet your heart is closed. We cannot accept you for your … position.”

“Without a heart even the most powerful trainer will crumble eventually.” Said the old woman, leaning on her staff. There was sadness in her heart, for the potential she had sensed him years ago had darkened to a brooding obsession for power.

Thus, it was dangerous to rewind time…

So they did not hate him, but they did not love him, and so to these cold faces he found himself unsympathetic.

It was a pity, really, because he did not notice until they carried the elder in, eyes blank and staring, bleeding though there were no wounds upon his skin, and even as the Dragon Master pressed his hands to her sides the power failed and only blood came off on his hands.

It was gone.

He had succeeded too well.

“I love you.”

There was a long pause after the words were spoken, and the reply was deliberate, though confused. “You love me?”

“I did this for you. I did this all for you. I do not understand why you cannot…”

But then recognition clicked in his mind with a snap, and he realized that the free price he had assumed had not been so free after all, and the knowledge burned his heart.

What was a second chance without anything to make it worthwhile? What were all the smiles in the world without a fixture? His mother was back, but he had lost all else, and soon, the Team would creep up again, no doubt, and he was not even sure he wanted to fight.

Fighting alone was a losing battle as soon as one raised his sword.

“You took his memories. You took my love.” He accused, as he stood before the shrine. She was impassive.

“You had a choice. You took it. You have failed.”

He lifted his hand, and too late she saw the Master Ball inside it. There was no speed fast enough to flee from imminent capture.

“No.” He said quietly. “You have.”

And as time snapped back to normal and he tasted blood before he fell, he knew he had made the right choice.

End Chapter

End Fic!

Completed 2/14/06

Ash chases Lance. Evil! Serebii. More stream-of-consciousness and weird fancy style writing from me! Happy Valentine’s Day! Angst for the plenty!