Chapter Text
Lillie,
The worn pages of her journals are a welcomed comfort. This one is somewhat old now, from nearly a decade ago. Her adventures back then had been so grand — so filled with color and excitement — that she often revisits these recollections, instant fondness and glee embracing her in the shape of boldness and first times.
Back then, and even today, it was these moments that fueled her to keep going, to be brave and decisive. These memories helped her realize what she was capable of. What she could yet accomplish.
There’s a particular memory she wants to find today, something she promised Goh she’d share next time they met (in utter secret, for if Ash finds out, they’re both bound to be in trouble), so she makes her way through the well-known pages until she lands on the specific date she’s been looking for. It’s the last days, mere weeks before their champion friend returned to Kanto, mere weeks before her family embarked in the uncertain adventure to find their father.
The adventures hadn’t ceased, even after Ash was gone. But she could admit something had definitely changed with his absence. They had all felt it, and for the first months after his departure it was a constant turning to his usual seat in the Pokémon school, someone wanting to ask his opinion, or gauge his reaction on this or that topic (she’d been away at the time, but Mallow and Lana had told her, the rest of the team echoing the sense of something amiss).
She finds the page she’d been looking for, and smiles as she skims through it. This was a happy memory, one of her fondest, in fact, another test of character to the great person that was—is—Ash Ketchum. Lillie knew Goh would appreciate this anecdote as well, for he, better than anyone, enjoyed Ash’s greatness on the daily.
Out of nostalgia, she reads through the next five pages of the diary, and is charmingly surprised when she notices the very first attempts of the short stories that would later—much later—become her first children’s books collection. The Aether’s Foundation books, technically; but it had mostly been her doing, and for once, her mother had been nothing but supportive of her projects.
Ah, she’d almost forgotten. These days, in the official copies that circled the world, the name of the main protagonist of the series was different, so was everyone else’s, evolved and changed to turn the stories into real fiction. But back then, in her ten year old recollections, she’d been nothing but innocently honest, and had used their—his—name through the paragraphs that depicted their adventures, admiration and longing filtering through every one of her words. Something too pure for Lillie to mistake. But also too pure for her to ever act upon.
They are kind memories regardless, every last one of them, even that goodbye by the port, as her friends became but tiny dots in the distance, as she waved Ash goodbye with a foolish blush and tearful eyes, chanting thank you, because saying anything else was out of the question, because she didn’t need to say anything else anyways. Thank you was enough.
Thank you is what she writes right now, as she reaches the end of this particular journal, just as she feels the train begin to slow down. We must be here, at last, she thinks, inspecting her neat, careful handwriting on the paper. If it’s to Ash again, or to her decade younger counterpart that she is thanking, Lillie isn’t entirely sure. But she reasons it doesn’t all much matter, for she feels grateful towards both.
They had both helped shape her into the woman she is today, and for that, Lillie knows, she will always be thankful.
...
Gladion,
There are some things that can’t be buried. Not by hours spent at the lab, or days exploring the depths of Alolan forests. Some things, Gladion has learned, stick around, timeless and powerful. Still a ghosting sting, even as the years tick by.
They can’t be buried, but can mostly go ignored. The distance helps. The fact that he’s shortening said distance as he thinks of this, staring out the window of his seat does draw some unease to his mind—and his stomach,—but it’s also important he does this. It’s important he learns to live without necessarily drawing literal oceans between him and his friend.
His friends. Relationships he wouldn’t want to compromise, bonds forged out of shared adventures and genuine support, of rivalries and a burning wish to see the other grow stronger. That’s what he should look forward to, that’s why it’s most important that he keeps his silly, unrequited attentions to himself. Because those could never be, but that which is, is simply too precious to jeopardize.
Gladion doesn’t keep a diary—though he admires his sister’s discipline with them,—but his dad gifted him a travel journal some years back, after one of their first excursions to the wild. It will help you with the noise, he’d said, and at the time, Gladion had thought he meant the sounds of the forest, the wild Pokémon and untamed nature.
But a handful of years later, he understands his father was referring to the absolute uproar that could arise inside one’s mind, the clamoring of his intrusive thoughts too distracting to be pushed aside. Can’t be buried. No. But can be shared in the paper—and the paper only—and lay there, unvisited, near-forgotten, for nobody to read, for nobody to acknowledge.
Gladion himself doesn’t come back to them often, doesn’t like to return to his silly, childish thoughts of years before, the month before, the day before…there’s no need. Once the noise settles, there’s no need for him to go back searching for it again. That’d be counterproductive, and Gladion is nothing if not a pragmatic man.
Yet now, he reaches out for his journal as if literally called by the object, and the scenery passes by him as fast, blurry shapes while he entertains himself with idly flipping through the pages, as if he didn’t know what he’s looking for in it, his finger slowly dragging through the yellowy pages, recognizing them for the hundred time.
Page five, he knows it well. There’s tear stains on it and echoes of hysterical laughter, Gladion’s laments at the realization that his foolish, so young heart had gotten it all wrong, and he blamed himself for thinking things that weren’t while he consoled himself with Lillie’s words, so much wiser than him despite her being so much younger.
Our hearts don’t make mistakes, brother. They’re all lessons for us to learn.
Gladion knows he’s obstinate, and he knows people around him some-times coddle him to escape his flakey temperament. It doesn’t help that their parents are recognized scientists and business people (and multimillionaires), people always want to be on his and Lillie’s best side, to the point that they avoid telling the siblings the truth, or when they are making a mistake or wrong. It’s much better to be agreeable, to say yes, of course you are right, you are so smart.
But Gladion never liked the feeling of being coddled, over-indulged, and he learned to take the praise in with distrust. Were these people only being nice because of who his parents were?
(Lillie, as it turned out, has always been too humble to think any ill of people, but that same humbleness is what makes her so impermeable to people’s fake compliments, and she’s most threatening—far more frightening than Gladion, or even their mother—when she understands someone is trying to take advantage of her. There’s no easier way to get on her wrong side than always trying to be on her good one.)
These worries died quickly with Goh, however, and Gladion thinks that may be why he fell so hard, so fast, so stupidly.
Not two hours into their first assigned project together, only a few days after Goh’s arrival to Alola, to the Aether Foundation, the younger man was already calling Gladion an absolute brute, because that’s not the proper way to classify information! you’ll make it harder to sort through back in the lab…
Gladion didn’t appreciate the questioning of his methods (although he could recognize they were erroneous. It was just…er…easier, with the way he was used to doing it), but at the same time, it was as though he almost did, because in the eighteen months he’d been working at the Foundation, no one had dared correct him on his simplified—wrong—data filing technique. Everyone seemed to be perfectly content with the process taking twice as long when it came to sorting through Gladion’s data, and if they weren’t, well, they weren’t saying anything about it, either.
But Goh had something to say. Goh had something about mostly every-thing, and he was not afraid to voice his discontent, or his excitement, or any and every idea that came to his mind—most of them brilliant, and even those that weren’t Gladion learned to find some value in.
Goh was unafraid, and something in his eagerness to see the world, to discover, immediately made Gladion think of Ash, and yet, in its own way, this fire was distinctly Goh’s, attractive in a different way than it had been on his own rivalry with Ash. The calling was still there, just…different, more gentle and I-want-to-listen-to-you, as opposed to fire-to-fire, and I-want-to-beat-you-in-battle.
That same comparison is written in the journal, drafted as a stupid analogy during a night Gladion remembers had felt eternal, as they were trekking the woods up to the Ruins of Fate, Goh dead to the world on the mat next to his, and Gladion looking up to the stars, searching for answers to questions he couldn’t even formulate.
And so, he’d taken up on writing these comparisons, Ash’s and Goh’s similar yet distinct qualities, trying to make sense of why his feelings were so different from one young-man to the other, when they were clearly two halves of the same whole. Theoretically, Gladion shouldn’t feel too different about them.
In practice, however, Gladion knew it was very, very different.
When he finally figured out the why—a few months after that night—Gladion promptly decided that he was insane, and that he wouldn’t be looking into this issue any further for the foreseeable future. Or ever, actually, he wouldn’t look into it ever.
Gladion chuckles to himself now, looking down to page five, to page fifteen, to his entry of that time Ash and Goh came to Alola on vacation, and fondly thinks back on the young-man who couldn’t have known any better. Whose affections were misplaced but never ill-intentioned, and he finds he likes that young-man some. Innocence is not something one should feel guilty about, and love, on whatever capacity, is not something one should apologize for feeling.
That’s something else Lillie had neatly phrased for Gladion to understand, when he’d confessed to her how guilty and wrong he felt over his messy emotions for his fellow-researcher, how he didn’t want to feel that way, because he knew it was wrong.
Never wrong, brother. We only ought to lear to love them different.
Gladion never managed to decode if Lillie used the plural to sympathize, or because they both felt the same way about someone; but it didn’t matter, because he began to understand what she meant a while after, and he no longer rejected his feelings more than he acknowledged them, understanding as well that there was nothing to be done about them, other than letting them be.
Cue in a few years later, and Gladion has long-since made his peace with his feelings, learned to love different, in a way that allows his friendship with Goh—and Ash—flourish in the best of ways, to the point that his heart is at ease, and open enough that he thinks he could do it again.
Fall in love, that is. Hopefully—as hopeful as a heart can be—with a person who will reciprocate his feelings, this time.
But Gladion is truly in no rush for that, and he’s not necessarily looking forward to acting the fool again in the benefit of buddying feelings. The time shall come when it’s right, and he’ll be welcoming of flushing cheeks and secret glances, of feeling warmth bloom within him when he as much as thinks of a person dear to his heart.
Oh, he should really stop reading through his sister’s diaries, her poetries are much too sentimental for his tough act to keep up.
And, oh, the warmth is for something else entirely right now, Gladion thinks, as he fans himself with a hand then shuts the journal close to try and use it the same way. Alola is fiercely hot most of the year, but this Vermillion sun already feels like it could give the Alolan star a run for its money.
They have arrived at last, it seems, and even though Gladion’s heart has long-since settled in its feelings over Goh, there’s always the kindest thrill running through him, as he thinks of seeing his friends for the first time in so long.
Gladion thinks he’s gotten it right, after all.