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When Jorge was little, and before he and his siblings chose their names, he’d started to have troubles hearing when his mother was calling him and his siblings home for the night. His brother would tug on his tail, and the next time she’d yell from across the forest he’d hear it faintly and that would be that.
By the time he was left behind when even his nearby sibling’s calls wouldn’t reach him, and his mother had to come out and track him down, he knew something was wrong. There wasn’t anywhere they could go; the Pokémon Centers were more for trainer Pokémon, and none of them were old enough to have developed the wanderlust that brings every Pokémon from their home eventually so he didn’t consider being caught for a chance at answers. So they just did their best. Jorge learned what the words he was slowly hearing less and less looked like on the lips of his siblings and any other Pokémon the small pack encountered in the forest, and his siblings and mother used more and more tail and paw and head movements to indicate what they wanted him to do. It worked.
Most days, it barely felt like anything was different. But some days, the other Pokémon would talk. Not usually where he could see, but a few of the younger ones were more blatant.
“Why do you talk weird?” A curious aipom asked, leaning a little too close.
“What do you mean?” He’d asked back, and the aipom was whisked away by her mother Ambipom not a minute later, scolding about manners, but the damage had been done.
He asked his brother that evening, when the group was gathering together for bed.
“You kind of… pronounce things funny,” He’d told young Jorge. Jorge spent the night thinking about that. He thought he remembered how words were supposed to sound, but it had been a while since they’d even been faint and fuzzy. Even when he was curled up in the warm pile of puppy that was his family, he didn’t stop thinking about it.
The next day, he veered off from his little pack and started to practice. He played with the way the words sat in his mouth, feeling the way the vibrations echoed through his skull. As he rejoined the others, he once again began to watch the way they moved their mouths for each word, and took every opportunity to say the same ones. The next time someone commented on his speech, they told him it was funny. It almost stung, until they invited him to play and wanted him to show other Pokémon his ‘cool voice’. He wasn’t sure how to maintain it, the cadence changing every time he started to slip toward his natural way of speech, but it seemed to get him friends. Community. So he kept doing it. It worked, it was okay. Everything was okay. And it continued to be okay until the day his first trainer came. Then, for a while, all he could really sense was static.
…
It took him a bit, once he was finally away from the horrible nothingness and settling in to this new pack and finding his place within it, to really realize the problem. He hadn’t heard the word ‘ac-cent’ as a pup, and so didn’t really realize at first it was once again a problem with his voice. Honestly when Crap had told him he knew his secret he’d worried for a second that Crap was one of the ‘mons that, when they’d learned of his condition, had started treating him differently. Like he was lesser. So when he’d called him ‘fake’, he hadn’t denied it. It was true, to a degree. He was still doing his voices, making himself seem cooler and more interesting to these nice new Pokémon he so badly wanted to impress and fit in to. And with that memory of the belittling Pokémon still sharp in his mind, he just… neglected to let them know why he sounded how he did. So he’d accepted the help, and accepted the teasing over his inability to mimic the bug Pokémon, but really, what did he expect? The bug’s mouth didn’t move like a Houndour. Everything he did was just guesswork. But the group cared, and he wanted so so much to fit in, so he did it. And eventually it worked! Sort of. His voice became mostly consistent, and Poochie thought he was cool, and he had a date! So what if they didn’t know. It’d be fine.
It wasn’t fine. They’d settled down after a long time in the woods by Exit’s house and he was starting to really feel tired of this. He loved them all, loved Poochie, and would it really matter if he just… stopped hiding? They’d been so nice and helpful and accepting, but he still had to be extra careful to catch sight of everyone’s mouths when they spoke. And Tannenbaum slurred her speech so weird he was lucky if context clues even got him through a conversation with her alone. It made him miss his pack. It made him miss the ease of his mother directing with her tail, of his brother over enunciating just where he needed it. But he didn’t want things to get worse.
When Poochie asked him to talk alone, he was tense. It felt like everything was about to come crashing down, like she’d finally realized he was a fraud. He agreed, and met her at the top of the gentle hill with a view of the sunset she so liked right when she asked, but inside he was barely keeping together.
“Jorge ,” she asked, ears and tail angled in such a way to indicate calm (but it wasn’t enough he could feel the lump in his throat growing-), “You’ve seemed… off lately,” He couldn’t resist the soft whine he let out at the words.
“Hey, hey,” she soothed, and gently pushed against him, moving so his nose gently rested on her shoulder. He crumpled, letting out what must be utterly pathetic sounds as his fears finally found their outlet. He almost felt calm again when the feelings of vibrations coming from her neck made him jump back, nerves returning again full force. He’d missed her saying something.
“Sorry, what was that?” He croaked out, not quite recovered from his upset. She squinted at him, clearly confused, before giving him a look that seemed to see straight into him.
“How? But I was right by your…” She dipped her muzzle as she spoke, and he missed her last word. He could see the gears turning in her head, and had to hold in an anxious whine. “Can you,” she said, before quickly stepping forward and putting her head on his shoulder again. He jolted back, but he’d felt her throat rumble and knew she’d finished whatever she’d been saying. He could guess. But if he was wrong, he didn’t want to reveal himself now, not when he didn’t know where they stood.
She stepped back into his view, and this time made sure her mouth was in full view before asking, “You can’t hear me, can you.” His involuntary whimper gave him away. He wanted to turn away, to hide, but needed to know what she’d say. Would… would she leave too?
Poochie’s expression turned to confusion, then horror, then concern. “Since when? When did this happen?!? Did I miss something? Did-“ and her words were too fast, and starting to become jumbled, and he closed his eyes and hid his head in his paws. He stayed there, frozen, until he felt her hands gently on his front leg. He looked up in her eyes, and they’d returned to the look of care he usually only saw directed at him. The politoed in his throat finally loosened.
“Since before I met you,” He whispered, or at least he thought he whispered. Luckily he’d struck the right side of audible at least, as she looked stricken, for a moment, before forcibly returning to as neutral of an expression as she could manage. They sat in silence for a moment, before she finally opened her mouth.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He whined again, fighting the urge to hide. “I didn’t want to make you not want me.” She gave him the most incredulous look, and then he remembered. Oh. Of course she wouldn’t see him as lesser. She would get it, being different for no reason she could help or change. Of course. He was so stupid.
She didn’t let him wallow for long, instead pressing as close as she could, giving him all the comfort she had. The fear that had been baked into his bones for weeks, months really, finally evaporated. He felt lighter. Maybe… things could change for the better.
(Later, when he was showing her the puppy signs he and his family had come up with and sorting through all the insecurities he’d left unsaid until that point, she mentioned something that brought him up short. “We adapted for Tannenbaum’s blindness, why wouldn’t we adapt for you?”
“Tannenbaum’s blind???” She didn’t stop laughing for what felt like hours. Lighter than he’d ever been, he couldn’t help but laugh too.)