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Misty can’t shake this odd feeling that something is missing.
It should be an afternoon like any other, sitting in a pokecenter and recuperating. Relaxing. But there’s something ever so slightly off, like two puzzle pieces jammed together when they don’t fit, like an ocean without salt. She shifts her weight and tries to ignore it.
All around them, idle chatter and cheerful dings fill the air in a cluster of noise. Misty tries to ignore that, too, tries to not get annoyed about it. They’re in a pokemon center. This is to be expected.
But her headache pounds, a dull throb. Somewhere behind her, a pidgeotto screeches, an awkward backtrack to some other group’s laughter. Brock’s voice, from over by the counter, pitches high and flirtatious before sinking back into the din. Sometimes, Misty likes to wake up early and experience this atmosphere in full, sit in the middle of everything just to watch the world go by; people being people, pokemon being pokemon, coming and going in turns. It can be nice to be in the center of things, unnoticed, uncriticized, just being.
Today, however, her head aches, and this sense of something missing can’t be washed off her skin. Today, she thinks she’d like to be in bed, tucked under a dozen blankets in a nice dark room. The world going on by itself for a little while.
Furtively, she pinches her nose and scrunches her face up at the ceiling, watching the lonely light above swing in place with every heavy step of a blastoise. The brightness doesn’t help the persistent ache, so she looks away. Watches instead as Ash pops out from the bathroom, chatting up a storm, Pikachu following right behind him and nodding along. Claws click after scuffed shoes, and it’s nothing new, nothing strange, but something feels off.
“Hey, Ash?” she asks when he rejoins her, and then keeps quiet; Ash is useless at conversations until you can catch his attention.
No response. He keeps blathering on. Psychic moves or something.
Brat.
Shifting makes her sneakers queek against the tiled floor, and elbowing him in the side makes the younger boy shoot her an affronted look. She’d stick her tongue out at him, except Pikachu looks too, eyes narrowed, ears and tail twitching. Alert.
Right, she thinks, that.
“What you do that for?” Ash moans, complaining and loud and contributing to the noise of the room. Misty shrugs unrepentantly and offers him a cheery little grin, ignoring the pool of pain at the base of her skull. Maybe the thing that is missing is a piece of her own self, and now the hollowness of it is creeping up her brain like frost.
It’s kind of a ridiculous thought, whimsy and weird. Something her mother would scoff at, for sure, and Misty shoves aside in her mind and moves past it.
He’s scowling, big pouty eyes and an annoyed twitch to his brows, totally playing up the pain for sympathy points. Pikachu, though, Pikachu just watches, crouched low on its trainer’s shoulders, claws digging into fabric.
It makes it hard to fall into that teasing rhythm. It makes the sharp little grin fall right off her face.
“I just wanted to know, is, uh, is Pikachu okay?”
Ash blinks, hand reaching up to dig into soft fur. Misty can tell he doesn’t even really register that he’s doing it, the motion as instinctive as breathing. “Huh?” he says, “Yeah, ‘course Pikachu's okay. Why wouldn’t it be?”
The words get trapped in her stomach, fluttery uncertain things. She tries to imagine, for a second, telling the truth. Hey, Ash, some untraceable thing is not the way it’s supposed to be, and your starter is the only one who seems to recognize that . Yes I realize I sound crazy, but believe me, it’s true!
She feels her ears grow hot and turns away. Tugging at her ponytail does nothing but make it an awkward mess, but it gives her fingers something to do.
Pikachu watches her pull the band out, watches her with those bright little eyes. Ash is still petting it, but it hasn’t curled into the motion like it usually does. Misty thinks of sentinels, of statues, and resists the urge to shudder.
Her head aches. There’s a woman at the counter speaking in a nasal tone and it certainly isn’t helping.
“I don’t know, it’s not my pokemon,” finally spills out, and her tone is too sharp, too unkind. She gets snippity when she’s in pain. According to her sisters, she also looks like a constipated lickylicky, but they can suck it.
She breathes. Tries again.
“It just seemed a little quiet, I guess. Err- clingy?”
It’s Ash’s turn to look at her too closely, like he can see right through her, like she’s paper thin. Misty breathes and listens to a little girl coo at her ekans. Listens to the ocean lap at the pier outside, inhaling and exhaling to the tide.
Finally, he looks up at the ceiling, wincing away from the light like she had a few scant minutes before. She blinks and wonders if he has a headache, too.
“I dunno,” Ash says, but it’s a little too quiet. Like maybe he’s noticed Pikachu’s odd vigilance without really recognizing that’s a thing his brain has picked up. He does that a lot, Ash. It's kind of endearing when it's not annoying. “I wasn’t really paying attention, I guess. Pikachu, ya good, buddy?”
“Ka-chu, Pikapi!”
Fingers in yellow fur, scratching behind one long ear. It sounds like a yes. It feels like a yes, bright little syllables all in a row. For a moment, everything is normal and Misty watches both of them smile, watches Ash adjust to his starter’s shifting weight without thinking about it, distracted by the cheerful dings meaning his other pokemon are healed. A kid starts crying, a teenager snorts, a charmeleon breathes out a huff of smoke. The world moves on.
Ash disappears. Pikachu stays on his shoulder and keeps watch.
“You noticed it, too, then,” Brock says, suddenly appearing behind her, and Misty jumps, swinging out at him on instinct. He dodges, barely, raising a brow at her, and she rolls her own eyes at him in turn, crossing her arm over her chest. He must have finished with his flirting. He’s cradling something in one of his palms.
“Yeah, I guess.” The words come out stilted. Small. Brock hums and keeps his gaze on their ragamuffin kid talking to Nurse Joy at the counter, pikachu on his shoulder, smile on his face. Ash certainly seems relaxed.
Pikachu doesn’t.
“It’s weird that it refused to let Nurse Joy heal it.”
Misty nods. “Uhuh.”
“And that it’s so clingy to Ash right now.”
Another nod, another moment. Ash is putting pokeballs onto his belt, and somewhere a venusaur groans. It takes her a second to realize that Brock is holding out a hand with a collection of little white pills standing in contrast to his dark palm.
She shoots him a questioning look.
“Pain meds,” he says, “for your head.”
Misty takes one and swallows it dry, ignoring the bad aftertaste. She wonders what gave her away. When Brock swings back a couple of his own, waterbottle gurgling, she wonders about that too.
Maybe it’s just a day for headaches.
(But that doesn’t sound right, either.)
Something off, something wrong. Misty can’t remember when she woke up this morning, what she had for lunch. The throbbing in her head is so very noticeable, but she doesn’t know when it started. Just these little tiny things coming together to make an off center picture. When Brock reaches for Pikachu on Ash’s return, it sparks and glowers.
The older boy pulls back. Ash doesn’t seem to notice. He does, however, take the little pill offered to him, biting down on it like it’s candy. Gross.
Concerning too. Misty is missing something here. She’s sure of it.
Pokemon collected, they step out of the center and into the sunshine. It’s already afternoon, so it won’t be a long walk before they have to set up camp, but it’s nice to be outside, to be surrounded by the peace of nature. For some reason, it feels like it’s been longer than a few scant hours since they’ve experienced this life on the road.
There are puddles on the trail. Her sneakers slosh around the worst of them and she wonders when it rained hard enough to make such massive pools of water. This morning there had only been a light shower.
She thinks. She thinks it was only a light shower. But what if-
A leaf catches bits of light up ahead, and her eye catches on it. The logic of it all slips away from her, like it was never there at all. The sense of something missing stays.
Misty breathes. Pikachu has decided to abandon its perch on Ash’s shoulders in favour of being curled up in its trainer’s arms, sparks occasionally escaping from the mullish ball of yellow. Above the younger boy’s head, Misty trades a concerned look with Brock.
The world moves on. It feels off-tilt.
Finding a place to sleep that night is slightly difficult, considering how wet the whole forest is, but they find a grove with enough upper canopy coverage to keep the earth below somewhat undrenched. Misty watches Ash bounce around their new encampant with an excited air, barely processing his chattering, just taking in the way that he’s moving and breathing and alive. It’s a weird thing to take in, but it’s a good thing too. It says, hello, we’re all still here. Misty breathes it into her lungs and tries to hold it. She doesn’t know why.
The campfire is lit, sleeping bags are unrolled, and tables are set up. It’s the usual checklist for any given evening. Misty does it and thinks this is supposed to feel normal. She watches Pikachu start at small noises until Ash starts grooming it, saying something quietly into its ear. She thinks, this doesn’t feel normal at all.
"Kinda weird," Brock comments as he makes stew, multitasking with his eyes on a map beside him. "That pokecenter was kinda out of our way… anyone remember why we decided to head down this close to the coast, again?"
Brushing Pikachu's fur, long soft strokes, Ash just shrugs. "Beats me."
The pokémon shakes its head, too. Misty shifts her stance from foot to foot and cradles sensations in her palms.
(Something missing. Something off. It's tucked into the folds of her mind. It's an afterimage of an afterimage: just not quite there.)
"We could have just accidentally swerved off course," she offers, but that doesn't sound right either. The quiet thrum of pain at the back of her head, previously vanquished, starts to ache.
Brock hums, neither affirming nor denying. Just acknowledging that she's been heard. It's one of the things she's always appreciated about her older friend: around him she never feels ignored. There has been a bit too much of being placed aside in her life, her ideas stolen or discarded, her presence dismissed. Watching does not mean she’s always seen. Being seen is not always a good thing, when she’s at home.
But she’s here, in the woods. With her friends. Carrots plop into the stew, orange against cream. One by one by one. Ash moans about being so hungry and doesn't stop working his way through Pikachu's fur, calloused fingers careful and constant. Misty wonders if this is his way of letting his partner know that he's here, that they're together still. She wonders why it's something Pikachu needs.
That night, after a campfire, after a warm dinner, after everything, Misty lays awake and watches Pikachu slide into Ash’s sleeping bag instead of curling up by his head, a lump underneath the fabric where Ash’s stomach should be. With every inhale and exhale, the little bulge moves up and down. She wonders if that’s on purpose. If the little mouse wants to keep track of Ash’s breathing.
Misty wonders about a lot of things. Her head aches.
She rolls onto her back and looks up at the stars. The world moves on.
If she didn’t know any better, she would say something terrible had happened. That Ash had gotten hurt or something and Pikachu is worried about him. That they all are, keeping a little too close: soft touches, sharp eyes.
But he’s not injured. He isn’t. Misty knows that. A few scant hours ago Ash had failed at doing cartwheels in long grass, scarfing down food just the way he always does. Everything is normal. Everything is fine.
Except something feels off. Something feels not right. Except Pikachu hasn’t left Ash’s side for anything and Ash- who usually encourages it to go play- has let it stay that close. Except they lay together in this quiet dark and Misty watches her friend run calloused fingers over the lump of his partner, the way that his eyes pinch with something darker than what belongs on his face.
She watches. Misty has done so much watching in her life.
She wonders what she’s missed.