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The humid air crawls into Yuuri’s windpipe and refuses to leave as soon as he steps out of the Indigo Plateau. Sunlight presses heavily against his forehead and cheeks, as though trying to maneuver him back out of its sight. He must have been waiting in the Pokécenter for hours; he could have sworn he lost his match in the morning. And now here it is, midday. Two other trainers pass by him on their way into the building. They’re holding their badge cases close, eyes set determinedly forward. Yuuri should follow them, probably. It’s not safe to head back through Victory Road so late in the day. He’d emerge from the caves tired, Pokémon drained, only to have to trudge through the woods in the dark. He should go back inside and ask one of the attendants if he can stay on a cot for the night. Every Pokécenter has places for trainers to sleep. Only a fool would head through Victory Road alone at the end of the day.
Yuuri isn’t a fool, but he is a failure, and Victory Road is the only way home.
Plus.
Plus, he has his pride.
He pats the first Pokéball in the leather holder on his right hip. “Okay, Vicchan,” he says, “just a little further. We’re going home.”
Fiddling with the clasps on his backpack, Yuuri takes out a bottle of Repel. There isn’t actually Repel inside it, not the brand name stuff anyway, but one of Yuuri’s neighbors brews up an even stronger alternative in exchange for credit at the Katsuki family store. It served Yuuri well while he traveled through Johto gathering gym badges. He has just enough to see himself home, he thinks, shaking the bottle lightly.
He removes the cap, closes his eyes, and dumps the rest of the contents over his head.
Lukewarm, thin liquid rolls down his hair and neck, evaporating as it goes. It smells like industrial strength oranges, like the cleaning chemicals Yuuri’s mother stocks but refuses to use in her own home. Yuuri sneezes. He’ll have to remember to wash thoroughly before taking any of his Pokémon out. Vicchan especially is very sensitive. Yuuri already made him faint once today. He shouldn’t punish Vicchan any further.
Tired, frustrated, angry at himself, alone, Yuuri unchains his bike and begins the long ride home.
Pokémon trainers often talk to themselves and Yuuri is no exception. It comes from spending so much time on the road without any other human companions.
“You could always travel with someone else,” Mari says when Yuuri is ten and just starting to venture out into the paths north of Mahogany Town with his cuddly new Swinub and his shiny new trainer registration card. “Sometimes trainers do that. I bet Mom and Dad would like it better if you did.”
“Only trainers who have a lot of friends do that,” Yuuri says, holding his Swinub to his chest. “Besides, Viktor doesn’t travel with anybody, and Viktor is the best.” He disappears into the tall grass afterwards, grumbling to his Swinub, and only comes back home for dinner.
At ten, Yuuri’s only friend is his Swinub, Vicchan, and maybe Yuuko from three houses down. Except Yuuko wants to be a Pokémon breeder instead of a Pokémon trainer. Yuuko doesn’t want to travel to towns with Gyms, she wants to spend days at a time on the same patch of shore studying the same school of Gyrados at the Lake of Rage. As the years go by she spends less and less time with Yuuri on the road. Eventually she stops traveling altogether, choosing instead to stay at home and start a family and raise Pokémon alongside her children. When she turns twenty she loans Yuuri her old bike and makes him promise to send regular mail.
He tries.
He buys Makkachin-print stationary at the enormous department store in Goldenrod City, intending to post it all to his mother and father and Mari and Yuuko, and maybe to the trainer he practiced with at the Pokémon Academy in Violet City, Phichit. Instead he keeps every page, because they have Makkachin on them, and Makkachin is Viktor Nikiforov’s favorite Pokémon, and Yuuri is weak.
He buys some Flower Mail on sale to make up for it, but feels guilty until he uses the Makkachin stationary to take notes on Viktor’s battle strategies. Keeping it is easier to justify to himself once it’s covered in special attacks and hit points and diagrams. He needed those pages! He needs those notes in order to become the best trainer Johto has ever seen, and make it to the Indigo Plateau and the Pokémon League and battle Viktor, and beat Viktor, and then maybe marry Viktor if Viktor doesn’t mind.
Except Yuuri doesn’t quite manage any of those last parts.
“I should have trained more,” he says to himself on his way through New Bark Town.
“I should have started attacking sooner,” he says to himself skirting the edges of Blackthorn City.
“I should just…” he sighs to himself, hopping off his bike to better navigate through the slippery slopes on the Ice Path, “…just. Maybe I’m not meant to be a trainer.”
Maybe he isn’t.
By the time the worn-down sign for Mahogany Town is in sight, he’s just about convinced himself to never leave home again.
Mahogany Town is the smallest town in all of Johto, but it has one of the best Gyms. Its leader, Minako, was the Indigo League Champion for three years in the decade before Yuuri was born. Most Champions only manage to hold the position for a year or two.
Viktor’s been the current Champion for over five years.
Yuuri’s been home for about five minutes when he trips over a familiar pointed tail at the back entrance to his family’s shop. A Pokémon yelps, and Yuuri yelps, and as he falls over his own confusion he wonders if he accidentally ate some Mystery Berries, because he can’t be seeing what he thinks he’s seeing.
Viktor Nikiforov’s face shouldn’t be at the back door to the shop.
Viktor Nikiforov’s face belongs on the twenty-three posters hanging on the walls of Yuuri’s childhood bedroom. His childhood bedroom is inside the shop, not outside of it.
Viktor Nikiforov’s impossible mouth widens in surprise.
“Yuuri! We’ve been waiting for you!”
Makkachin, as it happens, is both the cutest Houndoom in the whole world and very forgiving. Yuuri clings to Vicchan as he sits at his parents’ dinner table and watches Makkachin curl up around his feet. She heaves a great brimstone sigh and slowly wags her pointed tail back and forth. At a seat across the table, Viktor Nikiforov, Indigo League Champion, sips tea from Yuuri’s mother’s best porcelain.
“I don’t…” Yuuri starts. He gives up before he can finish his question. It’s becoming a pattern with him.
“Yuuri,” Viktor Nikiforov says again, with such conviction it’s almost like he knows Yuuri’s name, “I couldn’t wait.”
“Wait?”
“To join you here!” Viktor Nikiforov sets his tea down and reaches across the table for Yuuri’s hands. But Yuuri’s hands are still holding Vicchan tight. Viktor Nikiforov places his warm palms on Yuuri’s forearms instead. It’s not better. It’s worse. “I couldn’t waste any time; I had to fly. But then I got here much earlier than you did, of course, since you had your bike, but that gave me plenty of time to familiarize myself with the area. You don’t have to worry. We can get started right away!”
“…started?”
Vicchan grunts a soft symphony into Yuuri’s neck, swine swine swinub!, the way he always does when Yuuri is anxious and the world is too close. This time Vicchan’s frosty cries are joined by Makkachin’s tail softly thumping against the legs of Yuuri’s chair. Somehow it helps.
Viktor is in Yuuri’s house.
Viktor is talking to Yuuri.
Viktor knows who Yuuri is.
Viktor knows who Yuuri is, but it’s not because Yuuri fought him or beat him or married him.
Yuuri can feel a headache coming on.
“Yes?” Viktor ventures, confidence starting to visibly waver. It perks up in half a heartbeat and Yuuri is left unsure it ever really waned. “Starting today I will be your new training partner, Yuuri! We’re going to hone your skills and then by next year you’ll be the new Indigo League Champion.”
At this, Yuuri flat out surrenders.
One of the other trainers in the waiting room at the Indigo Plateau Pokécenter has a metal flask in the shape of a Wobbuffet. She’s been sipping out of it for as long as Yuuri’s been there. He watches her drink in even intervals, dark circles under her eyes. He has nothing better to do while he waits for his Pokémon to be healed. It was going to take a little longer than normal, Nurse Joy had said when Yuuri last checked in at the front desk. His Swinub had taken a lot of psychic damage. That was the hardest kind of damage to fix.
The chairs in the Pokécenter aren’t comfortable.
A steady stream of other trainers – half buoyant and optimistic, half crumpled and defeated – passes through the waiting room. Yuuri will be with the second half as soon as he gets Vicchan back.
Yuuri wishes he had his own flask.
The other trainer, at some point, offers Yuuri a drink from the metal Wobbuffet. It’s fermented Gold Berries, she says. A family recipe. He accepts.
His memory is a little fuzzy after that.
Yuuri is a fucking mess, but Yuuri feels great. Yuuri could climb Mt. Moon with his bare hands. Yuuri could swim around the Whirl Islands. Yuuri could walk out of the waiting room, right past the cots kept for trainers who need to catch up on sleep, and slam his fist against a shiny silver door set unobtrusively at the end of a long hallway marked PRIVATE.
“Yes?” Viktor Nikforov answers when he opens the Emergency Exit to the Champion’s Room.
“Viktor!” Yuuri shouts. It’s Viktor! Yuuri feels like a million billion Glacier Badges, and Viktor is right there and they should dance.
They don’t dance because Yuuri starts dancing by hugging Viktor around the middle and stopping there.
“Oh,” Viktor says very intelligently. “You’re. Oh.”
Yuuri slows down the world’s spinning by slowing down the rolling in his hips. “’m Yuuri,” he slurs.
“That’s right,” Viktor says. His cheeks are very red, just like Makkachin’s Inferno. “I saw you on the Johto news. You fight like I do.”
Suddenly Yuuri no longer feels great. He no longer even feels good. “No I don’t,” he sniffs. Usually Vicchan would be there to lick up Yuuri’s tears, but Vicchan’s downstairs and fainted and it’s all Yuuri’s fault. “I lose like me. But,” he looks up at Viktor, into Viktor’s eyes. They remind him of ice. “But if you trained with me then maybe I would win better than you. Viktor,” he gasps, then shouts, “Viktor come back to Mahogany Town! Train with me!”
Yuuri doesn’t leave until after Viktor says yes.
Viktor says yes immediately.