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Bronze and Brass rarely spoke to each other about anything other than what they needed to do to stay on the run. Only when they were able to stay in a closed room in a Pokemon center were they safe to talk freely; out in the open, there was a chance that anyone could hear them. Anyone could be eyes and ears for the cult. Not only did it make it risky to draw attention to themselves, but talking about their personal lives in public where the wrong people might overhear came with the risk of giving their pursuers a way to hurt them.
Laying in a soft bed behind a locked door was the only time he could feel relaxed. Camping out was hell, and it meant that they had to take turns keeping watch. But now was one of the rare times that they could both sleep through the night, with little worry that someone would come and grab them to take them away somewhere. Not unless the church was willing to blow its cover to the public.
“What do you dream about?”
Brass didn’t know what compelled him to ask so suddenly. Maybe it was just the chance to get to know Bronze a little better. He was stuck with her, at least for now, so it did feel weird to not know anything about her. He was literally running around with his life in the hands of a complete stranger.
That stranger turned out to be the least judgmental person he’d ever met. She didn’t even stop to question why he would ask something like that out of the blue.
“Usually I dream about being back home. Sometimes my brother is there, but usually not. Sometimes I’m back in Anima, visiting Zircon. And then there’s sometimes these weird dreams that I don’t understand, where things are happening but I don’t know what any of it means.”
Brass had a lot of dreams like that, too. Both the weird ones he couldn’t understand, and the ones where he dreams of being back home with his family. His parents must have been worried sick about him. But neither of them could go back now, not while they were being followed.
“What about you?” she asked him. He should have figured she would, but he didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t want to talk about his weird dreams.
There was also no way to tell her that he would sometimes have dreams about her. Not the scary kind, but the warm kind. They practically just met, and yet his mind was already going weird places. It didn’t help that hearing her voice against the dark silence from the bed on the other side of the room calmed him. Her antics usually brought him nothing but stress, but it was somehow different when they were left alone together.
“Mostly the same. Being back home. But sometimes it’s a nightmare where they’ve caught us off guard and we can’t fight them off.”
He didn’t want to talk about the warm fuzzy dreams. That would just be too weird. And what about Maisie? Brass was certain he had feelings for her, but…
But Bronze did a lot of fighting for his sake, both with the church and in the sense of making sure they’d both have food to eat. She may have been a glutton, but she always made sure Brass had enough to eat before she did the same for herself. It felt as though she’d completely forgotten that the two were fighting each other just as defiantly as they fought against the cultists now.
It got him thinking that maybe she wasn’t so selfish after all.
It got him thinking that maybe there really could be something there.