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You are nine years old, and your dad is missing.
Your mom tells you nothing is wrong. He’ll be home soon. You’re too young to doubt her– of course your mom is right. Of course he’ll come home.
How could he not?
You are fifteen years old, and you’re a newly minted gym leader. Fire-type. Ironic, because fire has been the cause of about half the problems in your life. The other half are because of your bleeding-heart mom, your absentee dad, a bourgeoisie bitch, and a purple-haired witch.
You usually try to drown your troubles in music, which normally works. It’s not like your attention span is all that long. Plus, you get to have your gym battles in a nightclub, which is sometimes awesome enough to distract you from the fact that everything in the world is fucked to hell.
When it’s not, you get around that little issue by clandestinely swiping drinks from the bar. It’s not like anyone is going to question you about the inventory; you own the damn place.
The Teila Resort is nice. It’s a lot nicer than East Gearen, honestly. That detail doesn’t really matter to you, though, because it’s not about how nice the place where you live is. It’s about your pride. It’s about being chased from a city for a crime you didn’t commit, about being shunned for someone else’s sin.
Or maybe you just tell yourself that so you can stay angry at others instead of yourself.
You are ten years old, and your dad isn’t home for your birthday, which means your mom is a big fat liar. She shouldn’t have promised that he’d come back if he wouldn’t.
You ignore the voice in the back of your head asking how she could’ve known when your dad would come back, because of course she should know. She’s your mom. She knows everything. She’s the great Tesla Von Brandt, member of the Elite Eight, and trainers across the region stop barely short of worshiping her wherever she goes.
If only they knew the truth.
You are fourteen years old, and you’ve just made your mom cry.
It happened at dinner. “Sweetie, how was your day?” your mom asked.
“Fine,” you’d grumbled. “Just great.”
Your mom frowned. “What is it, Amber?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” you’d said.
“Sweetie, is this–” your mom began.
“Shut up, mom! Why do you even care?”
“Of course I care. You’re–”
“Then go back to not caring, like you always do when we talk about dad!” you’d screamed.
Even in your room, ten minutes later, you can still hear your mom quietly sniffling, all over some stupid argument about some stupid mood that had made you stupid enough to say such a stupid, awful thing.
You try to tell yourself that your mom deserves it for lying to you about your dad. You almost convince yourself of it.
The next day, your mom is all smiles again, as if nothing had happened, but you know better. You know the way that she clips her sentences at the ends when something is very, very wrong. You know the way that she wrings her hands, the fingers of her right hand covering those of her left, when she’s trying her best to be strong.
You’re too ashamed of yourself to apologize.
You are sixteen years old, and your mom has offered your dad’s room to a stranger.
“What the hell, mom?” you ask. “You’re just giving up dad’s memory like that?”
“Amber, please,” your mom says, her voice low. “Aevis is missing both of his parents, and he’s helped a ton with eliminating Team Xen from Terajuma. Giving him a place to stay is the least I could do.”
“I don’t care,” you yell. And you don’t. You don’t care about his stupid sob story, you don’t care about him helping with Team Xen, and you definitely don’t care if he hears you. “He’s not dad.”
Your mom looks at you, right hand covering left. “Amber, your father–”
You storm off before she can finish. You don’t want to hear this again.
Later that night, Aevis finds you in your room. You flick your gaze up to look at him. “What do you want? More of my family’s memories?”
“Not exactly,” Aevis says. “Look, I’m not trying to erase your dad’s memory, okay? Tesla told me about that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sorry. I’m not exactly sure why Tesla invited me to stay here either.”
“Another one of her weird-ass tendencies. She has to help everyone or else she’ll explode.”
Aevis raises an eyebrow. “That’s… weird?”
“...Yes.” You raise your own in response.
“Okay, then, would you say it’s… weird ‘ass’ hell?” Aevis asks, grinning.
“Hey, watch it,” you say, but you can’t help but chuckle a little. “That’s my mom you’re talking about.”
The grin stays fixed on his face. “Okay, fine. I’ll get out of your hair. See you sometime later.”
“Bye,” you find yourself saying.
Huh. Maybe he isn’t so bad.
You are seventeen years old, and you’re on top of the world.
Between the crowd of adoring fans, the friends who’ve come to see you perform, and the fat stack of cash you’ve made from this concert, you’re willing to consider today a resounding success.
The fly in the ointment is that you’re stuck doing autographs with Venam next to you for the next half hour. She doesn’t have to be there, of course, but she insists on doing it anyway.
It doesn’t take long for something to go awry.
“‘Burn bitches, not bridges?’” Venam asks. “You couldn’t come up with something better?”
“I’d like to see you try,” you snipe back at her.
“Please,” Venam says. “I’d do better than that in a heartbeat. Like– ‘keep fuming on.’”
“That doesn’t even make any sense. You’re awful at this.”
“Whatever, Ambot.”
“Bitch.”
“Ass.”
“Idiot.”
“Okay, that’s enough from you kids,” your mom says. “Venam, Amber, play nice.”
Venam is grinning. You are too. “Sorry, Ms. Von Brandt.”
“Can I trust you two if I leave you alone for five minutes?” your mom asks. “I need to fend off the paparazzi, or tonight will never end.”
“Come on, mom. When have Venam and I ever been irresponsible?”
Your mom coughs.
You flush just a little. “Seriously, we’ll be okay.”
“Alright, sweetie. I love you.”
You flush. “I love you too, mom.”
Venam turns to you as your mom leaves. “Didn’t know you were the type to get sentimental like that.”
“Shut up. At least I’m not as bad as Saki.”
“Yeah, she’d be all ‘I have to tell everyone that I actually don’t hate them before I go to sleep for nine months,’” Venam says. “What an idiot.”
“Absolute buffoon,” you agree.
“Complete moron.”
“Weird as hell.”
Venam laughs, then is quiet. “I miss her,” she finally says.
“...I do too,” you admit. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Awful.”
“I knew it.”
“I’m just saying. If she were here, she’d kick our asses for talking about her like this.”
“Nah, she’d get a robot to do it for her, and the ass-whooping would be generational.”
Venam grins. “We wouldn’t ever recover.”
A little while passes before you talk again. “She really wasn’t ever that bad,” you say. “Why did we hate each other again?”
Venam’s eyebrow arches up higher than you’ve ever seen it go before. “...The Gearen fire. Duh.”
“We both knew we weren’t responsible for that. And it wasn’t her fault her dad was an ass.”
“Yeah. I guess we were just being stupid as usual.”
“Whatever. I’m giving Saki a hell of a hard time when she wakes up.”
“I’m going to dunk all of her clothes in Skuntank shit.”
“Ouch,” you say. “That’s mean, even for you.”
Venam laughs. “Yeah, well, it’s nice to be kids again for a little bit, you know?”
You think about Aquamarine Cave, about how Venam came there to warn you about Grand Dream City not being safe. You think about confronting her for being scared of being scared. You think about falling asleep side by side, lying there together in the sand.
You think about the fact that Venam is a sister to you. You think about the fact that you’re both just kids. You think about the fact that she might die soon, and you don’t want to lose her, but you have to trust her one way or another.
What you don’t think about, for the first time in eight years, is the fact that your dad is still missing.