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When Gary Oak is five years old, his parents get into a car accident. He’s the first one to see the truck barreling toward them in the intersection, his throat locking up with fear when he tries to call out. It strikes them full-speed from the side, and the slick roads send them spinning into a pole.
His parents are dead before the first responders make it to the scene, and Gary spends the evening sitting on a hospital gurney, waiting for his grandfather to arrive.
His thoughts are a jumbled loop spinning in his head, but one stands out from the others, repeating over and over as his fists clench at the blanket in his lap:
If he had been faster—if he had cried out when he saw the car—he might have saved them.
And with that terrible realization settling onto his small shoulders like a leaden weight, he tells himself that he'll get stronger, that he’ll never again be helpless when someone he loves is in trouble.
—
He meets Ash a week after his parents' funeral.
Ash is a tiny ball of energy with skinned knees and messy hair. His smile reminds Gary of sunlight, and he feels something clench hard in his chest when he offers one to Gary. “Hi! I’m Ash! What’s your name?”
“Gary.”
“Nice ta meet’cha!” Ash grabs Gary’s hand, pulling him from the tree stump he’s sitting on. “Let’s go play!”
Gary opens his mouth to protest, but Ash gives him another beaming grin, and Gary’s resolve flows out of him like water. “Yeah, okay.”
—
It doesn’t take long for Ash to worm his way past Gary’s defenses. That’s just who Ash is—disarming and endearing and impossible to ignore. Gary hasn’t met a single person immune to Ash’s particular brand of charm, and Gary’s smart—smarter than most of the other kids his age—so he knows a lost cause when he sees one.
He follows the reckless fool everywhere, hoping to provide a stern voice of reason to the boy who would walk straight off a cliff for never glancing at his feet.
He has… mixed results.
Ash jumps headlong into rivers just to see where the current will take him. He stumbles into and out of pitch-black caves, searching out the secrets of their labyrinthine tunnels. He scales trees with ease, perching high above the ground like a sentinel overlooking his post, keen eyes always on alert for his next adventure.
And Gary?
Gary learns to swim better just to catch him. He offers his hand for Ash to hold in the dark. He fearlessly climbs even the tallest oaks and maples just to be the steadying hand that helps Ash keep his seat on narrow branches.
And he thinks that will be enough, that he can make himself nimble and fast and strong enough to keep Ash safe, but—
When they’re eight, Ash falls out of a tree and breaks his leg. Gary is right there to grab him, but Ash’s shirt rips when he takes hold of it, and the dark-haired boy goes tumbling anyway.
In those moments when Ash plunges toward the ground, in the space between hitting the forest floor and regaining his breath to wail in pain, it comes to Gary all over again—the glare of headlights closing in, the acrid stench of burnt rubber, the copper taste of blood from where he bites his lip too hard. He can’t breathe, can’t scream, can’t cry out Ash’s name for the terror seizing his lungs, knowing—knowing—that he’s failed again.
He looks down at Ash’s prone figure on the ground, leg jutting out at an unnatural angle, and he doesn’t want to see his face, doesn’t want to catch the empty look in Ash’s eyes that he’d seen in his father’s, staring at him through the rearview mirror until the paramedics arrived, but—he has to.
Ash’s eyes are wide and blurring with tears when they meet Gary’s, and he only has a moment to think thank god, thank god he’s not—before Ash opens his mouth to start screaming.
After he carries Ash to Pallet Town on his back, after Delia scoops him up in her arms and Gramps drives them to the ER in Viridian, after Ash is poked and prodded and x-rayed and bandaged up, Gary locks himself in his room for three days.
Because now he knows the truth—that he can’t stop bad things from happening, no matter how hard he tries. He can’t protect the people he cares about. He can't save them.
He can only make sure they’re strong enough to save themselves.
So, when he finally answers his grandfather’s entreaties to come out, to eat something, honestly, Gary, he doesn’t visit Ash. He doesn't scrawl his name across his cast or bring him games to stave off his bed-ridden boredom. He doesn't hug him and tell him how glad he is that he's all right. He doesn't lay down next to him on his narrow bed and whisper that, for a moment, he thought Ash was dead, that when he watched him fall, it felt like the whole world was falling with him, knocked out of orbit and careening through empty space.
He doesn't do any of the things he desperately wants to, because he knows that, for now, he can't be Ash’s friend.
He can only be his rival.
And it doesn’t matter if Ash never smiles at him anymore, it doesn’t matter if he stops coming to the lab to play, it doesn’t matter if they don’t take their pokemon journey together, like they always said they would.
Every taunt, every easy dismissal, every utterance of "well, if it isn't Ashy-Boy" makes Ash want to be stronger. Strong enough to beat him. Strong enough to beat anyone.
And that?
That is all that matters.
Because someday Ash will figure it out—that this is how Gary loves, and maybe—just maybe—it will be enough to make Ash love him in return.