#satokasu

In the light, Misty was the Gym Leader. She was iron-willed and sharp-tongued, a girl carved from coral and determination, carrying the reputation of her family on shoulders that had grown strong enough to bear it without flinching.

But at 2:14 AM, the light was an irrelevant concept.

Misty lay flat on her back, her copper hair unpinned and sprawling across the white cotton of her pillow like a spilled inkwell. The room was dark, save for the blue-gray rectangle of the window where the starlight filtered through the humid Johto-bound breeze.

It was too warm for a blanket, yet her skin felt strangely cold. An phantom chill that always seemed to settle in the exact center of her chest whenever the world went quiet.

On the pillow beside her ear, the screen of her phone flared to life.

It didn't ring.

She had set it to a low, rhythmic pulse of vibration that thrummed through the feathers of her pillow like a secondary heartbeat.

She didn't need to look at the caller ID. There was only one person in the six known regions who possessed the absolute lack of boundary required to call a Gym Leader at two in the morning, and only one person whose name could make her lungs instantly forget how to expand.

She slid the green bar across the glass, her thumb slightly damp from the humidity. She didn't sit up. She didn't even lift the device to her ear; instead, she tilted her head toward it, her cheek pressing into the fabric, bringing her lips within an inch of the microphone.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" she whispered.

The reprimand lacked its usual salt. It was a habit, a ritualistic opening gambit from a game they had been playing for years.

Through the tiny speaker, there was a sharp, rustling sound, the unmistakable friction of a heavy quilt being dragged over a head.

Then came a breath, long and ragged, before a voice tumbled out, rough with the gravel of impending sleep but bright with that familiar, stubborn heat.

"I knew you’d be awake," Ash said.

His voice was different through the wire.

In person, Ash Ketchum spoke to the world at a default volume that bordered on a shout; he addressed fields, mountains, and stadium crowds with the same projection.

But now, filtered through the late-night air between Pallet Town and Cerulean City, his voice was reduced to its essential elements—low, raspy, and stripped of the performance of heroism.

"You didn't know anything, you idiot," Misty hissed softly, her hand automatically coming up to cover her mouth, her fingers pressing into her lips as if she could physically hold the sound of her voice within the small radius of her bed. "You guessed. And if Daisy had answered the house line, she would have talked your ear off about hair extensions until sunrise."

"I didn't call the house line," Ash murmured. A small, muffled thud came through the receiver, followed by a grunt. "I called you. There's a difference."

Misty closed her eyes.

Behind her eyelids, she could see him perfectly. He would be lying in his old bed under the eaves of the Delia’s house, his limbs tangled in that ridiculous green comforter he refuse to replace, probably still wearing his t-shirt from the day before because he always forgot to change into pajamas. His cap would be hanging from the bedpost, and Pikachu would be a yellow curve of warmth at the foot of his mattress, snoring in tiny, electric clicks.

"Why aren't you sleeping?" she asked, her voice dropping another octave, turning into something so soft it barely registered as language. "You have that exhibition match in Viridian tomorrow. If you show up with bags under your eyes, the papers will say you've lost your edge."

"Let 'em say whatever they want," Ash scoffed, though the bravado was muted by a massive yawn that traveled through the line like a low wave. "Besides... I tried to sleep. I really did. But the room was too big."

Misty’s fingers tightened on the edge of her mattress. "The room hasn't changed since you were ten, Ash."

"Yeah," he replied, and she could hear him shifting, the fabric of his pillowcase groaning beneath his head. "But I think I used to be smaller. Or maybe... I don't know. When it's this quiet, it feels like I'm the only person left on the map. It's weird."

"It's called being alone," she said, the words slipping out before she could filter them. They carried a trace of the old bitterness, the ghost of a girl who had watched his back disappear down a dozen different dirt roads while she stayed behind with the water.

There was a long silence on the other end.

Not a dead silence, but a living one. Filled with the rise and fall of his chest, the distant chirp of a Kricketot outside his window, and the strange, electric hum of the connection itself.

"I don't like it," Ash said simply. He didn't offer an excuse or a joke.

He just stated it as a fact, the same way he might say the sun is hot or the sea is deep. Obviously. "That's why I called. Just wanted to hear you say something mean so I’d know I was still here."

Misty let out a breath that was half-sigh, half-laugh.

She pressed her hand harder against her mouth, her shoulders shaking against the mattress as she fought to keep the sound from traveling through the thin walls of the hallway. Her knuckles brushed against her nose, warm and smelling of lemon soap.

"You're a jerk," she whispered into the dark.

"See?" Ash’s voice sounded instantly lighter, a small, sleepy triumph vibrating through the speaker. "Works every time."

──────────

They did not talk about the league. They did not talk about the type-advantages of the new generation of Johto water-types she had imported, or the specific strategy he intended to use against the Viridian Gym’s ground-types.

Those were daylight topics. The armor they wore when they were being looked at by the public.

Instead, they talked about the dust.

"There's a spider above my dresser," Ash muttered, his voice fading slightly as if he had turned his head away from the phone. "It’s been there since Tuesday. I think its name is Spinarak, but it doesn't have the face on its back. Just a regular spider. I’ve been watching it try to catch this one moth for three days."

"Don't kill it," Misty instructed automatically. "Spiders eat the mosquitoes that come up from the pond. If you kill it, your mom will have to buy those stupid citronella candles that make Pikachu sneeze."

"I'm not gonna kill it. We have a deal. It stays on its side of the molding, I stay on mine. But today it tried to build a web across my trophy shelf and I had to blow on it until it moved."

"You blew on it."

"Yeah. Like..." Through the receiver, a sharp, wet whoosh of air exploded into Misty’s ear.

"Gah! Ash! Don't do that into the phone, it sounds like a hurricane!" She pulled the device away for a fraction of a second, her heart doing a strange, erratic dance against her ribs before she pressed it back to her cheek.

"Sorry," he chuckled. "Anyway, what did you do today?"

"Nothing," she said.

"Liar. You never do nothing. You're always screaming at someone or scrubbing a tank."

"I don't scream," she defended herself, though her voice remained a fierce, contained hiss. "I instruct with authority. And for your information, I spent four hours trying to convince a Horsea that it doesn't need to hide behind the filter every time the Starmie starts its rotation. It’s got a complex. It thinks the light is an eye."

"Tell it to use Smokescreen," Ash said, his tone perfectly serious. "If it can't see the light, the light can't see it."

"That is the stupidest battle logic I have ever heard, and it’s exactly why your Pokémon always end up covered in mud."

"Hey, it works!"

"It doesn't work for a domestic Gym display, Ash! The tourists want to see the water, not an ink slick."

They moved through the small details of their separate existences like two people sorting through a drawer of old buttons.

They discussed the taste of the bread Delia had baked that morning (slightly burnt on the bottom because Brock had called from Pewter City in the middle of the rise), the specific shade of green the grass turned just before a storm in Pallet, and the fact that Psyduck had managed to trap its own head in a plastic bucket three times in a single afternoon.

It was nothing. It was less than nothing. It was the idle, driftless chatter of two people who had run out of things to prove to each other.

But beneath the trivia, there was a different conversation happening, one written in the cadence of their breaths and the long, unhurried pauses between sentences.

Every time Ash lagged in his response, Misty found herself holding her breath, listening for the slight shift in his blankets that meant he was still there, still conscious, still choosing to spend his midnight minutes with her instead of drifting into the uncomplicated dark of sleep.

"Misty?" he said, after a longer pause during which she thought he might have finally gone under.

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember that night in the Orange Islands? The one where the boat leaked and we had to stay on that sandbar with all the Shellder?"

Misty shifted onto her side, curled her knees slightly toward her chest, and pulled the phone closer until the plastic rim was warm against her ear. "I remember. You lost the oars because you tried to use them to scare away a Tentacruel."

"I didn't lose 'em, they floated away," he corrected lazily. "But that's not what I mean. Remember how cold it got? The wind came off the water and we didn't have enough firewood because everything was wet."

"I remember," she whispered. She remembered more than that.

She remembered the way the salt had dried white on his cheeks, the way his jacket had smelled like wet wool and woodsmoke, and the way they had sat so close together that her left shoulder had been numb from the pressure of his arm for three days afterward.

"I was just thinking," Ash said, his voice dropping into a register that was almost entirely devoid of his usual certainty. "The bed here... it's softer than that sandbar. A lot softer. But my feet are cold tonight, and I don't have anyone to kick when they get like that."

Misty’s throat tightened.

It was a physical sensation—a sharp, sweet ache that started behind her collarbone and moved up into the root of her tongue.

Ash didn't do metaphor. He didn't do poetry.

When he said his feet were cold, he meant exactly that, but when he said he missed having someone to kick, it was the closest he would ever come to admitting that the space beside him was shaped exactly like her.

"If you kicked me with your cold feet, Ash Ketchum," she said, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts to keep it steady, "I would have thrown you into the surf. And the Shellder would have eaten your socks."

A small, wet sound came through the phone.

A muffled, snorting laugh that Ash had clearly tried to kill by burying his face in his mattress.

"You're mean," he mumbled.

"You're a baby."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Misty?"

"What?"

"....."

"I wish you were here."

The words were small, but they fell into the dark room like stones dropped into a still pool. The ripples went out and out, hitting the corners of her wardrobe, the edges of her desk, the glass faces of her trophies, before coming back to settle on her chest.

She didn't answer right away. She couldn't.

If she spoke too quickly, the truth would come out looking like tears, and she had spent too many years being the strong one to let him hear her cry over a long-distance bill.

"Yeah," she said finally, her voice so thin it was almost transparent. "Me too."

In the dark, the imagination is an unruly thing.

It doesn't recognize the miles between Kanto's coast and its interior valleys; it doesn't care about the hours of train rides or the dirt paths that separated them.

Misty reached out with her free hand, her fingers trailing along the empty half of her double bed. The sheets were cool there, pristine and undisturbed. She pressed her palm flat against the mattress, feeling the slight spring of the coils beneath.

With her eyes closed, she allowed herself the dangerous luxury of transposition.

She imagined that the low, steady breathing coming from the phone wasn't digital signal converted by an antenna on the roof, but actual air moving through a room.

She imagined that if she reached out just a little bit further, past the border of her own pillow, her fingertips wouldn't encounter empty space, but the rough cotton of his shirt.

She could almost feel the heat of him. Ash had always been like a small furnace, radiating a ridiculous amount of body heat even in the dead of winter, a byproduct of whatever endless engine drove him through the world.

She could imagine the rise and fall of his shoulder under her hand. She could imagine the smell of him—not the lemon soap she used, but something older, like sun-baked earth, clean sweat, and the sharp, ozone tang that always clung to him because of Pikachu.

He’s right there, she told herself, a childish lie that her brain accepted because the night was too long to do otherwise. He’s just turned away. He’s looking at the wall, and if I whisper loud enough, he’ll turn around.

"Ash?" she said, testing the theory.

"Hmm?"

"Are you still awake?"

"Yeah. Just... looking at the ceiling. The moon moved. Now it's right on my desk. It makes my old pokéballs look like they're glowing."

"Which ones?"

"The ones from Johto. The heavy ones. Kurt made 'em, remember? I still have that broken one we found in the well."

"You kept that?" Misty’s heart gave another of those strange, small thumps. "It was rusted through, Ash. The spring was gone."

"It wasn't totally broken," he muttered defensively. "It just... wouldn't stay closed. But it’s got that nice weight. I like holding it when I'm trying to think about stuff."

"Since when do you think about stuff?"

"I think about stuff all the time," he said, sounding slightly insulted but too tired to really put any teeth into it. "I think about the routes. I think about the towns. Sometimes I try to remember the names of all the rivers we crossed, but I always get the ones near Goldenrod mixed up."

"The first one is the Silph Stream," she said softly, her voice guiding him through the geography of their past like a mother repeating a nursery rhyme. "Then the one with the blue bridges is the Bridge of Wings. And the small one where we lost the map is just called the Creek."

"Right," Ash murmured. "The Creek. We had to eat those weird berries because our rations got soaked."

"They were Tamato berries, you idiot. You ate three of them at once and your tongue swelled up so big you couldn't say 'Pikachu' for twenty-four hours."

"They looked like cherries," he grumbled, but there was a soft, dragging sound on his end. The sound of him shifting his weight, perhaps pulling his knees up, perhaps reaching out his own hand into the empty space of his bed to look for something that wasn't there.

"Do you ever think about the middle?" Ash asked suddenly.

Misty frowned slightly, her brow furrowing in the darkness. "The middle of what?"

"The journey. Not the start, when everything was brand new and we were constantly yelling at each other... and not the end, when everyone went their own way. But the middle. Those days when we were just... walking. When it didn't feel like we had to get anywhere by Tuesday, and we just stayed by the side of the road because the butterfree were migrating."

Misty let her eyes open. The gray starlight was still there, unchanged. "I think about it every day," she said.

It was the truest thing she had ever said to him.

It was a confession that felt larger than any declaration of love or need; it was an admission that her life had been divided into three distinct segments: the time before she met him, the time they spent in that long, golden middle, and the time after, which felt less like living and more like waiting for the next phone call.

"Yeah," Ash said, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register again. "Me too. Sometimes I'm walking through Pallet, and I see a tree that looks like that big cedar we slept under near Violet City, and I swear I can hear your bike chain rattling behind me. It’s like... a ghost sound or something."

"My bike was destroyed, Ash. Thanks to you."

"I know," he said, and for once, there was no argument, no defense. "But I still hear it."

──────────

The conversation had lost its structure. It had become a thing of fragments. Short, drifting sentences that rose out of the dark like bubbles from a swamp and burst without needing a response.

They had reached that specific stage of exhaustion where the filters of the mind begin to fray at the edges.

The guard that Misty kept so carefully maintained—the pride that kept her from asking him to stay, the fear that kept her from telling him how much she hated the word goodbye—was dissolving under the steady, rhythmic sound of his breathing.

And Ash, who was usually so defended by his own simplicity, seemed to be floating in a space where he forgot to be brave.

"Misty?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you tired?"

"A little," she lied. Her eyes were burning, her cheek was numb from the pressure of the phone, and her throat felt dry from the hours of whispering. But she wouldn't have hung up for all the rare candies in the world. "Are you?"

"No," he said, followed immediately by a long, shuddering yawn that contradicted him completely. "I can stay up. I'm used to it. Remember that time we had to watch the incubation tank for the Lapras egg? I stayed awake for thirty-six hours."

"You fell asleep after six, Ash. Brock and I had to draw mustache lines on your face with a charcoal stick from the campfire."

"That was Brock," he mumbled. "You wouldn't do that to me."

"I absolutely would. I drew a little Pokéball on your chin, too, but it smeared because you drooled so much."

"Liar."

"Ask Brock."

"I'm not asking Brock. Brock's asleep. He’s got that big breeder conference in Pewter tomorrow. He told me if I called him after midnight, he’d send his Onix to sit on my house."

Misty let out another sharp, silent laugh, her hand flying to her face again. The skin around her mouth felt warm, heated by her own breath. "He would, too. He’s very protective of his eight hours."

"Yeah," Ash agreed. Then, after a pause that lasted so long she thought he had finally drifted off, he spoke again, his voice so quiet it was almost a vibration rather than a sound. "Misty?"

"Still here, Ash."

"Don't hang up first."

The request was so small, so inherently vulnerable, that it made her throat ache again.

Ash Ketchum did not ask for permission. He didn't ask people to wait for him; he expected them to be there when he turned around, because the world had always adjusted itself to his pace. But now, in the gray hour before dawn, he sounded like a little boy who was afraid that if he closed his eyes, the people he cared about would vanish into the fog.

"I won't," she whispered. "I'll stay right here."

"Promise?"

"I promise. I'm not going anywhere, Ash. The gym doesn't open until nine, and the Horsea can wait for its therapy session."

"Okay," he murmured. "Good. Because... if you hang up, the phone makes that clicking sound. I don't like it."

"I know," she said. "I won't click."

She shifted her position again, sliding lower down the bed until her head was resting on the very edge of the pillow, right next to where the phone lay.

She didn't hold it anymore; her fingers were too tired, too heavy with the weight of the night. She just let her hand rest beside the plastic shell, her middle finger brushing against the corner of the screen where the blue light had faded into a dull, power-saving amber.

Across the miles, she could hear the shifts in his room becoming less frequent. The heavy, rustling sound of his green comforter stopped. The rhythmic, clicking snores of Pikachu had ceased, replaced by the deep, unbroken silence of a Pokémon that knew its trainer was safe.

Ash’s breathing was changing now.

It was losing that irregular, halting quality that meant he was trying to think of something to say. It was widening out, becoming longer, deeper, drawing from the very bottom of his lungs with a slow, mechanical precision.

...

In.

Out.

In.

And...

...

Out.

Misty closed her eyes and let her own breathing synchronize with his. It was an old trick she had learned during those long nights on the road, when they were sleeping three to a tent and the only way to find her own rhythm was to follow the collective rise and fall of the small universe around her.

"Ash?" she whispered one last time, just to be sure.

There was no verbal response.

Only a tiny, soft grunt, the sound of a boy whose tongue had become too heavy for his mouth, his mind already drifting down into those long, green valleys where there were no leagues, no trophies, and no distance.

"Good night, Ash," she murmured into the plastic microphone.

She didn't hang up. She had promised, and a Gym Leader from Cerulean never broke her word, especially not her precious boyfriend from Pallet Town.

She lay there in the dark, her cheek pressed against the cotton, listening to the small, tinny sound of his lungs expanding and contracting three regions away.

It was a strange sort of comfort, this mechanical intimacy, this bridge made of wire and air, but as her own eyelids grew too heavy to lift, she found herself thinking that it was enough. For now, it was enough.

The sun would come up in an hour.

The world would become loud again.

Ash would wake up, eat his mother's burnt bread, and go out to win another match in Viridian with that bright, impossible shout of his. And she would go down to the pools, scream at the tourists, and pretend that the water didn't feel cold.

But for the next sixty minutes, the map was small. The map was exactly the size of a pillow, and they were the only two people left alive upon it.

Misty let her breath out in a long, slow sigh that mirrored his own, and let herself slide down into the dark after him, guided by the steady, unbroken compass of his breathing.

──────────

The world did not wake up all at once; it bled into consciousness through a series of gray gradients.

Outside the window of the Cerulean Gym, the blue-black of the deep night began to curdle into a pale, watery violet.

The silhouettes of the nearby buildings, those high, corrugated roofs of the marine supply shops and the long, elegant curve of the public aquarium, being detached themselves from the darkness, looking like ships rising out of a harbor fog.

Misty’s eyes opened without a transition. One moment she was dreaming of a bicycle with wings that flew over the Johto cliffs, and the next she was staring at the familiar crack in her ceiling plaster that looked vaguely like a Remoraid.

The phone was still there.

The screen was completely dark now, its battery drained down to that critical, single-two percent-digit percentage that made the little red light on the top edge blink in a slow, warnings-only pulse.

But the line was still open.

The timer at the top of the display, if she had been able to see it through the dark, would have read something ridiculous, an hour count that belonged to international business calls or emergency dispatches.

She didn't move her head. She lay exactly as she had fallen asleep, her ear aligned with the speaker, her body stiff from the hours of immobility.

Through the wire, the silence had changed.

It was no longer the deep, dead stillness of three in the morning; it had that thin, fragile quality that precedes the dawn. She could hear the first, tentative notes of a Pidgey flock waking up in the oak trees outside the Ketchum house—a dry, rhythmic chirping that sounded completely different from the coastal gulls of Cerulean.

And then, she heard him shift.

It wasn't the heavy, lazy roll of a sleeper. It was that sharp, sudden indrawn breath of someone who has realized they are late for something, followed by the frantic, rustling explosion of blankets being thrown aside.

"Pika?" a small, disgruntled voice piped up near the speaker—Pikachu, clearly annoyed at having its morning warmth disrupted so violently.

"Oh, man," Ash’s voice came through, completely unvarnished by the night now.

It was loud, slightly raspy, and full of that frantic, morning-energy that Misty usually found incredibly irritating before her first cup of tea. "Oh, man, Pikachu, what time is it? The sun’s already up! My mom’s gonna kill me, the truck for Viridian leaves in like... twenty minutes!"

Misty let a tiny, involuntary smile pull at the corner of her mouth. She still didn't speak. She wanted to see how long it would take him to realize that the phone was still pressed against his ear, or rather, that he was still holding it like a lifeline even as he scrambled out of bed.

There was a loud clatter. The sound of him probably knocking over that old pokéball on his desk, followed by a sharp intake of breath as his bare feet hit the cold floorboards.

Then, everything stopped.

The rustling stopped. The footsteps stopped. Even Pikachu’s small, inquisitive noises died away.

Through the line, Misty heard the sound of the phone being lifted up, the friction of his palm against the plastic casing as he brought it back to his face.

She could hear him breathing—short, shallow puffs of air that meant his brain was working through the math of the night.

"Misty?" he whispered.

His voice had instantly dropped back down into that low, midnight register, as if the mere act of saying her name could re-create the dark room they had lived in for five hours. It was a tentative sound, full of a strange, boyish embarrassment that he never showed in the light of day.

Misty let out a long, slow breath, letting him hear the air leave her lungs so he’d know she hadn't missed a single beat.

"I told you I wouldn't click," she said.

A silence followed. But it was a warm one, thick with the shared knowledge of the hours they had stolen from the map. She could almost hear the red creeping up his neck, the way it always did when he was caught being softer than he intended to be.

"You're still awake?" he asked, his voice incredibly soft.

"I just woke up," she said, her voice still thick with the residue of her dreams. "But the line never dropped. You owe me about six hundred Poké-dollars for the roaming charges, Ketchum."

Through the wire, she heard him let out a long, shaky laugh, a sound that was pure relief, pure Ash, stripped of any competitive armor. "Yeah," he said, and she could hear the grin in his words, bright enough to compete with the dawn coming through her window. "Yeah, okay. Put it on my tab."

"Your tab is already bigger than the Indigo Plateau," she hissed softly, though there was no weight behind it.

"Ash!" a voice drifted from the background of his end—Delia’s voice, faint but sharp, calling up the stairs from the kitchen. "Ash! The Professor is here with the car! If you aren't downstairs in five minutes, we're leaving without you!"

"I gotta go," Ash said quickly, his tone turning frantic again, but there was a lingering, hesitant note in his voice that kept him from dropping the phone. "Misty... I..."

"Go," she said, her voice firm but gentle, the Gym Leader returning to take the oars. "Go win your match. If you lose to some rookie with a Geodude because you were talking to me all night, I'll never let you live it down."

"I'm not gonna lose," he fired back, the familiar spark returning to his tone with full force. "Just watch the news tonight. You'll see."

"I'll be watching," she whispered. "Now hang up."

"You hang up."

"Ash, your mother is going to come up those stairs with a broom."

"Okay, okay! On three."

"One," Misty counted.

"Two," Ash joined in.

They both paused at three. Neither of them hung up.

A small, mutual laugh traveled through the miles. A shared, ridiculous acknowledgment of their own identical stubbornness.

"See ya, Mist," Ash said softly.

"See ya, Ash."

The line finally clicked. The screen of her phone flashed once, showing a bright, red battery icon with 1% remaining, before the display went completely black, returning her to the pale, violet reality of her bedroom.

Misty lay there for a few minutes longer, the phone still resting on the pillow beside her cheek. The plastic was cooling down now, losing the warmth of her hand and the small, digital heat of his voice.

Outside, the first seagull of the morning screamed over the Cerulean pools, sharp and demanding. The day had officially arrived.

She sat up, her red hair falling around her shoulders like a bright, copper shield, and reached for her hair ties. Her limbs felt heavy, her eyes were dry, and she had a long, tedious day of challenges ahead of her.

But as she stood up and walked toward the window, looking out over the blue, mist-shrouded waters of her city, the phantom chill in her chest was completely gone.

Across the region, a car door was slamming in Pallet Town, and a boy with a yellow Pokémon on his shoulder was looking out at the road ahead, for the first time in months, Misty didn't feel like she was the one being left behind. She felt like she was right there in the passenger seat, a permanent fixture in the radius of his whisper.

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━

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Her blanket twisted around her legs, damp with sweat. She kicked it off with a muffled groan and stared at the ceiling, where a single crack split the plaster like a lightning bolt.

Tomorrow’s battle replayed behind her eyes—every possible misstep, every flubbed command, every scenario where her strategy crumbled like dry sand.

The Cerulean Gym’s reputation hung on her shoulders, a heavy, suffocating mantle. She wasn’t just Misty anymore; she was the Gym Leader chosen to represent the region in this exhibition, and the weight of it was compressing her ribs.

Ash shifted beside her, his breathing steady and infuriatingly calm. They had bagged a cheap twin-bed room at a lakeside inn, forcing them to share a mattress while Brock claimed the small cot across the room. Ash was curled on his side, one arm flung over Pikachu’s sleeping form.

The sight made her chest tighten with a volatile mix of envy and fondness. He’d fall asleep anywhere, anytime, like it was nothing. He could sleep through a hyper beam.

“You’re thinking too loud,” Ash mumbled into his pillow.

Misty froze. The room was dead silent save for the rhythmic rattling of Brock’s snoring across the hall.

She turned her head slowly. Ash rubbed his face against the rough cotton pillowcase and squinted at her through the gloom, his dark hair a bird's nest of chaotic spikes.

“You’re gonna burn a hole in the ceiling,” he whispered, the corner of his mouth twitching with a faint, sleepy smirk.

She exhaled through her nose, turning her face back toward the plaster. “Shut up.”

He sat up, stretching until his shoulders popped with a distinct sound. Pikachu grumbled at the loss of his pillow but didn’t wake, merely curling tighter into a yellow ball of fluff.

Ash looked down at her, his eyes adjusting to the dim moonlight filtering through the threadbare curtains.

“Want to go fishing?” Ash asked, as casually as if he’d suggested a midnight snack. “Lake’s quiet at night.”

Misty blinked. The idea was stupid. It was objectively ridiculous.

They had a battle in, she checked the glowing hands of the small alarm clock on the nightstand, exactly nine hours.

The tournament gates opened early. But the walls of the room felt like they were closing in, the air smelled stale with old carpet and anxiety, and her heart was beating a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

“Fine,” she said, her voice a sharp whisper.

Ash grinned. That wide, unfiltered expression that always made him look entirely reckless. And slid out of bed.

His bare feet hit the floorboards with a soft, hollow thud. He crept over to the wooden chair by the corner, rummaged through the pile of discarded laundry, and tossed her a jacket. It was his old, oversized traveling coat.

When she caught it, it smelled like dirt, cedar wood, and old rain.

She hesitated, looking at the worn fabric, then pulled it on over her tank top.

11:37 PM

The jacket sleeves swallowed her wrists entirely. They crept past Brock’s room, his deep, resonant snores actually rattled the doorframe, and crept down the creaking stairs of the inn.

Every board seemed to scream under their weight, but they made it to the front door without alerting the innkeeper. Ash shouldered the heavy oak door open, releasing them into the night.

Misty inhaled sharply. The air outside was cool and thick with the scent of wet grass and distant pine, a sharp contrast to the stuffy room.

It was the kind of quiet that pressed against her eardrums, immense and velvety.

Ash reached into the umbrella stand by the door where they’d stashed their gear and handed her a fishing rod.

It was one of his—the cork grip worn smooth by years of calloused hands, the reel slightly loose but well-oiled. They picked their way down a narrow dirt path to the lakeshore.

The moon was a massive, luminous pearl high in the sky, painting the water silver. The surface was fractured only by the occasional ripple of a water-type breaking for air.

Misty dug her toes into the mud at the edge of the bank. It squelched, cold and yielding, oozing between her toes. Behind them, the trees whispered as a gentle breeze stirred the leaves.

“So,” Ash said, breaking the silence. He cast his line with a lazy, practiced flick of his wrist. The weights whined through the air before hitting the water with a clean plop. “What’s eating you?”

Misty watched her own lure fly into the dark, a tiny speck of red and white plastic disappearing into the obsidian water.

She could lie.

She could tell him she was just restless, or that the bed was uncomfortable.

But the night stretched endlessly in front of them, the water was hypnotic, and the truth sat heavy and sour behind her teeth.

“What if I lose?” The words came out too small, cracking at the edges. She cleared her throat, trying to inject some of her usual steel into her tone. “It’s just—this tournament. It’s big, Ash. There are scouts from the Indigo Plateau. If I mess up, everyone’s going to say the Cerulean Gym is just a joke again. That my sisters were right to leave it to me because it doesn’t matter.”

Ash shrugged, not even looking back at her. His eyes were fixed on the silver line of his float. “Then you lose.” He reeled in slightly, the mechanical click of the reel humming in the night air. “And you get up and kick their butt next time.”

She scoffed, a bitter sound. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have a reputation to maintain. You just wander from region to region, resetting your clock.”

He grinned, crooked and completely unfazed by her bite. “Yeah. Because it’s true, Mist. Losing sucks. Trust me, I know better than anyone how much it stinks to watch someone else take the trophy. But it doesn’t change who you are. It doesn’t mean your Pokémon are weak.”

Something bumped her line.

Misty tensed, her fingers tightening on the cork handle—but it was just a nibble, a curious Remoraid or a small Magikarp, gone as quick as it came.

She exhaled a long breath she hadn't realized she was holding, her shoulders slumping.

The lake lapped at their ankles, a rhythm like a slow heartbeat.

1:00 AM

By exactly one in the morning, the damp cold of the lake had begun to seep through Misty’s jeans.

Ash leaned back against a large, smooth boulder, propping himself up on his elbows while his rod rested securely in a fork of wood he’d jammed into the mud.

“Remember that time you beat me with Staryu?” Ash asked suddenly, his voice echoing softly over the water. “Right after I got Totodile?”

Misty blinked, turning her head to look at him through the dark. “You were obnoxious about that. You whined for three days straight that Totodile’s type advantage should have given you the win.”

“I was pissed,” he corrected, laughing freely, the sound rich and warm. “I thought I was untouchable after the Orange Islands. But you know what? It made me better. Every time you beat me, it forced me to actually look at my strategy instead of just yelling louder.”

He reached out and nudged her ankle with his bare foot, his skin rough and surprisingly warm against her cold skin. “You’re already better than them, Misty. You don’t need to prove anything to scouts or your sisters. So just… do that. Be the person who kicked my butt.”

She stared at him.

The moonlight caught the sharp edges of his face, the stubborn line of his jaw, the dark, earnest eyes that never knew how to look away from a challenge.

It was his stupid, earnest face, and suddenly, the tightness that had been strangling her chest since yesterday morning unraveled completely.

“Ugh,” she said, looking away quickly to hide the sudden heat in her cheeks. “You’re the worst motivational speaker in the world.” But her lips curved upward, a genuine smile breaking through the exhaustion.

They lapsed into a deep silence, the kind that only existed between people who had walked miles of dirt roads together, who knew exactly how the other took their eggs and how they looked when they were entirely defeated.

Misty watched the water, her reflection fractured and reformed with every ripple. Something deeper beneath the surface flickered, a long, dark shadow darting between the moonlit strands of algae. She wondered what Pokémon might be watching them back from the depths, keeping their secrets.

Ash’s fingers brushed hers as he passed her a metal thermos he’d smuggled out in his coat pocket. The tea inside was lukewarm and violently sweet, the way he always made it—practically half sugar packets from whatever diner they’d passed. She took a tentative sip anyway, letting the cloying heat bloom across her tongue.

“You’re disgusting,” she muttered, though she drank half of it in one long, greedy gulp to chase away the chill.

“Liar,” he said, bumping his shoulder against hers.

His skin was radiating heat, even through the thin cotton of his shirt, warming her side where they touched. “Brock says you steal all the sugar packets at diners anyway. You’re just mad I got to them first.”

“That’s an absolute lie, I only take the—”

She cut herself off as her fishing line jerked violently. The wooden rod didn't just twitch; it nearly leapt out of her hands, the reel screaming as the line tore out into the lake at a terrifying speed.

“Oh, you’re mine,” she hissed, her competitive instinct overriding her exhaustion in a split second. She braced her bare feet deep into the freezing mud, leaning her weight backward.

The water twenty yards out churned violently, a furious white splash arcing through the air, catching the silver moonlight.

Whatever was on the other end of that line fought like it had a personal grudge against the concept of being caught.

Ash scrambled up, kicking over the metal thermos in his haste. The remaining tea spilled into the dirt, forgotten. “Holy—is it a Gyarados?!”

“Shut up and help!” Misty gritted her teeth, her forearm muscles burning as the rod bent into a dangerous, terrifying arc. The line hissed as it cut through the water.

Ash didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, grabbing the rod above her grip. His hands overlapped hers, rough and broad, covering her smaller, cold fingers with a sudden shock of solid warmth. Together, they yanked backward with a coordinated shout.

A flash of silver erupted from the lake. Misty barely had time to register the Pokémon’s sleek, torpedo-like body before it twisted midair with terrifying agility and spat a high-pressure jet of water directly into Ash’s face.

He sputtered, staggering back into the mud, but his hand never left hers, holding the line taut by sheer stubbornness.

The Pokémon hit the shallows with a thunderous, heavy splash. It wasn’t a Gyarados.

It was a Sharpedo, its scarred, blue-and-yellow snout glistening in the moonlight, its small, red eyes locked onto them with pure malice. It immediately lunged forward, using its powerful tail to propel its bulk through the shallow water toward the bank.

Misty barely dodged its snapping, triangular jaws, the teeth clicking together like iron shears inches from her knee. “Oh, hell no—Staryu, now!”

With her free hand, she unclipped the Poké Ball from her belt. Her toss was clumsy because of the mud, but the starfish materialized in a burst of brilliant white light, its golden body slicing through the damp air like a heavy discus.

“Hah!” Staryu’s central gem flashed a dangerous, warning red.

Sharpedo recoiled, screeching a low, grating sound as Staryu’s hardened points scored deep along its scarred flank, forcing it back into deeper water.

Ash wiped a hand across his dripping face, his hair plastered to his forehead, grinning wildly like a lunatic. “Okay,” he gasped, shaking the lake water from his eyes, “this is way better than sleeping.”

Misty would’ve punched him if she weren’t already laughing, a breathless, adrenaline-fueled sound.

The Sharpedo circled them in the shallows, its high dorsal fin cutting through the silver water like a literal blade. Adrenaline sang in her veins, hot and electric, completely erasing the ghost of her earlier anxiety.

Maybe, just maybe, this chaotic madness was exactly what she’d needed.

3:45 AM

Staryu spun in place, its core pulsing a rhythmic, steady red as it readied another attack. The Sharpedo wasn't backing down; it charged again, then veered abruptly at the last second, its massive tail kicking up a literal wall of icy lake water.

Misty threw her arm up to shield her face, but the freezing spray still drenched her from head to toe, plastering her hair to her cheeks.

Through stinging, salt-free eyes, she saw the dark shape of the Pokémon barrel past Staryu, targeting the easier prey on the bank. It went straight for Ash.

He dove sideways, hitting the soft mud with a wet, heavy smack. Pikachu, who had apparently followed them at some point or been woken by the noise, was suddenly wide awake on a nearby rock, his cheeks crackling with yellow electricity.

“Thunderbolt—no, wait!” Ash coughed, spitting out a mouthful of lake water as he scrambled onto his hands and knees. “The water's wet! It's everywhere! Pikachu, don't! You’ll fry us too!”

Pikachu’s cheeks sparked indignantly, his ears pinning back, but he held the electrical charge back, stamping his little feet in frustration cutely.

Misty seized the tiny opening. “Staryu, Rapid Spin—now!”

Her starfish streaked forward, a high-speed blur of whirling points that kicked up its own vortex of water. The hit connected with a solid, fleshy thud.

Sharpedo screeched as the momentum flipped it belly-up in the shallows. Its powerful tail thrashed against the mud, sending huge, thick globs of black muck splattering across the front of Misty’s borrowed jacket.

Ash scrambled back up to his feet, wiping a thick smear of mud from his cheek with his sleeve, only succeeding in spreading it further. “Okay, new plan. We run.”

“Are you kidding?” Misty grabbed his wrist tightly, hauling him behind her as the Sharpedo righted itself with a furious, jaw-snapping shake of its head. The water around it was beginning to foam. “I’m a Water-type master! I’m not losing to some overgrown fish in a public park!”

Ash’s fingers tightened around hers, his grip solid despite the slime. “Uh, Mist? Hate to break it to you, but we are the bait right now. Look at it!”

The Sharpedo lunged again—this time, clearing the water entirely in a powerful, airborne arc. Moonlight glinted off its serrated, multi-layered teeth.

Misty’s breath caught in her throat. The creature was massive, a living engine of muscle and hunger, and they were cornered against the boulder.

Then, from the dark shadow of the tree line behind them, a calm, familiar voice cut through the chaos:

“Aqua Ring.”

A sudden, shimmering sphere of luminous blue water erupted around the Sharpedo mid-leap, catching it in midair. The creature was instantly trapped in a swirling, heavy prison of its own element.

It writhed violently, gnashing its teeth at the fluid barrier, but the magical ring held it suspended, neutralizing its momentum.

Misty whipped around, her heart pounding against her ribs.

A tall figure stood at the edge of the trees, silhouetted by the very first, faint gray light of the approaching dawn.

Brock stepped forward into the open, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression a mix of profound exhaustion and deep annoyance.

“You two do realize the tournament starts in exactly five hours, right?”

4:17 AM

Ash had the decency to look instantly sheepish, pulling his hand back to scratch at his messy hair.

Misty just scowled, though her heart was still racing, shaking the heavy mud from her wet sleeves.

The Sharpedo gave one last, furious thrash before Brock’s invisible command dissipated the Aqua Ring. The large fish dropped back into the lake with a loud, defeated splash.

It lingered for a second, its dorsal fin cutting a slow circle, before it submerged into the dark depths, leaving only widening ripples behind.

Brock sighed heavily, rubbing his temple where a tension headache was clearly forming. “I woke up because the inn’s pipes were rattling, and then I saw Pikachu’s sparks nearly frying the back porch from the window. Again.”

Misty opened her mouth to defend herself. To say it was Ash’s idea, that she was just practicing.

But suddenly, the very first rays of sunlight broke over the eastern mountains. The light hit the water, instantly transforming the black, terrifying lake into a sheet of brilliant, liquid gold.

She blinked, the light stinging her tired eyes. Somewhere deep in the pine trees behind them, a wild Pidgey began its morning song, clear and sweet.

Ash grinned, his face a disaster of dried mud and lake water, but his eyes were bright. Exhaustion and exhilaration were warring across his features, and exhilaration was winning. “Worth it,” he whispered.

Brock groaned, a sound that came from the very bottom of his soul.

He lobbed two thick white towels at their heads with the practiced precision of someone who had dealt with these exact two idiots for years.

One smacked Ash square in the face, wrapping around his head like a turban, while the other draped over Misty's shoulder like a defeated flag.

"You're both filthy," Brock muttered, his eyes cataloging the damage—the black mud caked into Misty’s hair, the thick strands of green lakeweed clinging to the hem of Ash's shirt. Then his gaze shifted downward. His eyebrows lifted slightly.

Ash hadn't let go of Misty's hand.

Even after the danger had passed, his fingers were still locked tightly around hers, his knuckles slightly white from the strain of the battle. Their palms were pressed flat together, sealed by a layer of lake water and drying mud, as if they’d fused during the chaos and forgotten how to separate.

Misty's breath came quick, her pulse visible at the base of her throat. She hadn't noticed. She had been too busy looking at the sunrise.

Brock cleared his throat pointedly, the sound incredibly loud in the morning quiet.

They jerked apart instantly, as if a wild Elekid had just shocked them both.

Ash jumped back, his boots squelching in the mud, and began to scrub the back of his neck with his free hand, suddenly fascinated by a particularly interesting clump of crabgrass by his feet.

Misty busied herself with her towel, wringing a gallon of cold lake water from the hem of her shirt, her cheeks flaring a brilliant, undeniable pink that had nothing to do with the morning sun.

Pikachu, perched comfortably on Brock's shoulder now, flicked one long ear. "Pika-chuuu," he trilled, his voice dripping with an implicit, mocking understanding.

Brock decided, very wisely, to pretend his eyes worked entirely in black and white. "Sharpedo migrations are common in this river basin this time of year," he said, turning back toward the path and nudging a trampled reed with his boot. "You're lucky it didn't decide to take a ten-pound chunk out of your leg, Misty."

"We had it completely handled," Misty snapped, her voice a little too high, a little too fast. She knotted the heavy towel around her shoulders like a set of armor, burying her chin in the terry cloth.

Ash opened his mouth, probably to agree with her, probably to brag, which would only dig their shared hole five feet deeper, when a distant, heavy gong echoed across the water from the northern valley.

The tournament grounds were officially waking up. The generators were humming into life.

Brock sighed, his shoulders dropping. "Come on. You've got exactly"—he checked his silver wrist watch—"four hours to clean up, get some breakfast, and not look like you've been wrestling wild Pokémon in a swamp all night." He turned on his heel, already mentally rearranging his first aid kit for the inevitable muscle sprains and throat lozenges they’d need.

​5:15 AM

​Ash fell into step beside her on the narrow dirt path, their elbows brushing with every stride. The intense adrenaline of the fight was finally fading, leaving behind a heavy, weightless buzz in her limbs, the kind of exhaustion that made everything feel slightly unreal, like walking underwater.

​He bumped his shoulder against hers, a soft, deliberate nudge. "So. Still worried about losing tomorrow? Or, well, today?"

​Misty looked at him, really looked at him in the clear, gray light of the dawn.

She saw the dried mud on his chin, the ridiculous way his hair stuck up in three different directions where the towel had ruffled it, and the faint, red scratch on his forearm where he’d hit the rocks to get out of the way of those teeth.

He had jumped between her and a wild predator without a single second of thought. He always did.

​Her stomach did a strange, complicated flip, a sudden, warm flutter that felt entirely separate from the tournament nerves.

​"Shut up," she said softly, but there was no heat in the words, none of her usual bite.

​Behind them, the gold lake glittered in the full morning light, innocent and still, as if it hadn't tried to swallow them alive an hour ago.

​Brock didn't turn around as he led them up the hill. He didn't need to. The silence between the two behind him was louder than any stadium crowd she’d ever faced.

​Misty's fingers twitched at her side, still humming with the phantom, warm pressure of Ash's grip. The gray mud had dried in the fine creases of her palm, cracking into tiny gray lines when she flexed her fingers.

She glanced sideways out of the corner of her eye, just as Ash's arm swung forward in his regular, loose gait, his rough knuckles grazing the soft back of her wrist.

​Before their hands could touch again, Pikachu materialized between them like a small, furry lightning rod. The mouse Pokémon leaped from the grass, planting himself on Ash's shoulder with deliberate precision, his long, lightning-bolt tail flicking Misty directly across the nose as he settled himself.

​"Pika-pi," the mouse trilled, his black eyes bright and entirely smug as a Meowth with a bowl of fresh cream. The way his long ears perked left absolutely no room for interpretation: he had seen every single thing from his perch on the rocks.

​Misty's face burned hot enough to cook a Magikarp. She jammed her hands deep into the pockets of the oversized jacket, Ash's jacket, she remembered with a sudden jolt, and stared straight ahead at Brock’s broad back. The path back to the old inn had never felt so long.

​Brock cleared his throat again, his voice carrying clearly over the morning breeze. "You know," he said, his tone entirely too casual, "the tournament concession stands open in two hours. They serve those big blueberry pancakes."

​Ash’s eyes lit up instantly, his stomach letting out a loud, rumbling growl that broke the tension. "Huh? Really? With the whipped cream?"

​"Yeah," Brock continued, his eyes fixed firmly on the horizon line. "But the syrup they use is sticky. Really thick stuff. It’s hard to hold onto anything else when your fingers are glued together by accident."

​Misty tripped over a completely flat tree root, stumbling into a bush before catching herself.

​Pikachu snickered loudly, burying his face in Ash’s collar.

​6:07 AM

​The inn's yellow porch light came into view, a sickly, pale smear against the bright pink of the true dawn. Misty made a sudden break for it, abandoning her regular pace and stomping up the wooden steps with enough force to rattle the small brass wind chimes hanging from the eaves.

She’d almost reached the screen door, her hand on the brass handle, when Ash's voice stopped her in her tracks:

​"Hey. Misty."

​She turned around slowly, her hand still on the handle.

​He was standing at the bottom of the steps, looking up at her through his messy bangs.

He was grinning, that crooked, slightly sunburned, completely unpolished look that was uniquely Ash, and Pikachu was right beside his head, mimicking his expression whisker-for-whisker.

​"The Sharpedo was right," Ash said, his voice dropping into that quiet, familiar tone they only used when Brock was out of earshot. "You do fight dirty when you're cornered."

​Something warm, dangerous, and entirely wild unfurled in the center of Misty's chest, chasing away the last lingering thread of her gym leader anxieties.

She leaned her shoulder against the old wooden doorframe, tilting her chin up in that familiar, defiant gesture he knew so well.

​"Yeah?" she challenged, a small, sharp smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "And what're you gonna do about it, Ketchum?"

​Ash opened his mouth, his eyes widening slightly as if he actually had an answer—

​Slam!

​The upstairs window directly above the porch flew open with a violent bang.

​"IF YOU TWO DON'T GET IN HERE AND SHOWER IN THE NEXT TEN MINUTES," Brock bellowed, his face pushed against the rusted screen, "I'M RELEASING EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR POKEMON INTO THE WILD AND LEAVING FOR PEWTER CITY ALONE."

​Pikachu, startled by the volume, let out a defensive spark that shocked Ash directly in the neck on principle.

​"Ow! Pikachu!" Ash yelled, hopping on one foot.

​Misty bolted inside the screen door, her loud, clear laughter trailing behind her through the quiet hallway of the inn like a strong fishing line.

​She made it to the shared bathroom first, locking the heavy brass bolt with a solid click. She leaned against the door, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath, her heart hammering a frantic, joyful rhythm.

She reached up to peel off Ash's heavy, mud-splattered jacket, pulling her arms out of the long sleeves—

​Clink.

​A small, metallic sound echoed in the small room. Something small and circular had fallen from the inner lining of the coat, rolling across the white porcelain of the sink before coming to a stop directly near the brass drain.

​Misty’s breath caught in her throat. She froze, her hands suspending the jacket in midair.

​There, nestled against the white porcelain, was a small, blue badge shaped like a perfect droplet of water. The Cascade Badge. Her badge.

​It wasn’t one of the pristine, new ones she kept in the gym vault for challengers. She knew every scratch on this specific piece of metal. This was the exact badge she had lost three summers ago during that ridiculous, frantic race along the Vermilion City pier, when Ash had accidentally shoved her into the surf while trying to beat a stray Squirtle, and they’d both come up sputtering, soaked, and triumphant. She’d written it off as another casualty of their early, chaotic journeys, assumed it had sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

​But here it was. The blue enamel was a little duller now, the silver edges smoothed down from years of being handled, friction-worn by someone’s thumb.

​Ash had kept it. He had carried it in his inner pocket through Johto, through Hoenn, through every single mile of dirt road they’d walked apart. All this time.

​Misty's fingers trembled slightly as she picked it up from the sink. The metal felt remarkably warm, having absorbed the heat from his chest through the thin lining of the coat.

She felt a sudden, violent urge to open the door and throw it directly at his stupid head, to demand why he’d kept it like some sentimental, ridiculous idiot, but instead, she found her thumb tracing the familiar water-droplet engraving, her movement slow, reverent, and entirely quiet.

​The wooden doorknob rattled violently from the outside.

​"Misty! Come on! You're hogging all the hot water and the tournament starts soon!" Ash's loud voice cut off abruptly as the old lock gave way slightly, the door creaking open a mere sliver because the latch was loose.

​She didn't turn around to face him. She couldn't. But she saw his reflection clearly in the steamed-up mirror above the sink.

Ash was standing in the doorway, his towel over his shoulder, his gaze flicking instantly from the small blue badge held tight in her palm up to her eyes in the glass.

​His entire face, from his neck to the tips of his ears, turned a violent, dark scarlet.

​The silence between them in the small, steamy bathroom became immense, heavy with three years of unsaid words, shared campfires, and long roads.

​Then, his voice came again, so quiet, so soft she almost missed it over the sound of the pipes dripping. "You... you never asked for it back, Mist."

​Misty snapped her fingers shut over the piece of metal, the sharp silver edges digging hard into the skin of her palm until it hurt. "You stole it, Ash."

​Ash leaned his shoulder against the wooden doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest, trying to look defensive but failing entirely as his eyes remained fixed on her.

The white steam from the hot water tap curled between them like a physical barrier. "You lost it in the ocean. I fished it out."

​"That’s semantics and you know it." She turned around fully then, her chin lifted high, her knuckles white around the hidden weight in her hand.

​He looked at her, the embarrassment slowly fading from his face, replaced by that familiar, stubborn, deeply knowing grin that always made her want to hit him and kiss him at the exact same time. "You wanna fight about it? Cerulean rules?"

​From the hallway outside, Pikachu let out a long, deeply exasperated sigh, facepalming with one small yellow paw.

​Brock's deep voice boomed up the stairs like a dynamic punch: "I'M COUNTING TO THREE, YOU ANIMALS! ONE!"

​Misty shoved past Ash into the hallway, her shoulder bumping his hard sending him stumbling back half a step into the wall, but not before she caught the sight of his grin widening until his eyes closed.

She jammed the Cascade Badge deep into the pocket of her shorts, the metal burning a literal hole against her thigh all the way back to her small room.

​Downstairs, the inn's old dial radio crackled to life with the first loud, brassy theme music of the tournament announcements. The real battle, the one with stadium lights, referees, and cheering crowds, was coming in just a few hours.

​And somehow, as she looked down at her muddy hands, this one—this stupid, silent, unacknowledged thing stretching between the two of them in the dawn—felt infinitely more dangerous.

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━

© Copyright Protection Notice:

All works belongs exclusively to the author. Do not reupload, translate, rewrite, or alter my creations without permission. It's officially shared only via Tumblr and AO3.

"You sure you packed everything?" Misty asked, flicking the Poké Ball into the air and catching it without looking.

Ash's muffled voice came from inside the bag, "Pretty sure!" followed by the sound of something clattering to the floor, a half-eaten energy bar and a tangled mess of headphone wires.

Ash finally emerged from the backpack, hair sticking up in wild angles, and tossed a handful of crumpled receipts onto the bed. "Found my badge case," he announced triumphantly, though Misty noticed the zipper was half-broken and dangling by a thread.

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. "You're hopeless," she muttered, but the corners of her mouth twitched upward.

The room's AC unit rattled to life with a shudder, blowing lukewarm air that did nothing to cut through the sticky afternoon heat. Ash wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a smudge of dust from who-knows-where across his eyebrow. Misty opened her mouth to point it out, but he was already swinging the backpack over one shoulder with that familiar, reckless grin. "Ready to roll!"

Something metallic glinted in Misty's palm as she uncrossed her legs and stood. "Wait—" she started, but Ash turned abruptly, cupped her face in both hands, and kissed her square on the mouth. It lasted exactly three seconds—she counted—before he pulled back, cheeks flushed but grinning wider than ever. Misty's ears burned.

She cleared her throat and slowly uncurled her fingers, revealing his League ID card and a set of keys. "I meant these, you idiot," she said, voice cracking slightly. Ash blinked at them, then at her, then burst out laughing loud enough that Pikachu startled awake from its nap on the windowsill. "Oops," he said, not sounding sorry at all.

Misty jammed the items into his chest with more force than necessary, her face still blazing. "You'd forget your own head if it wasn't screwed on," she snapped, but the effect was ruined when Pikachu scampered over and climbed onto her shoulder, nuzzling her cheek then turned to his side.

Ash rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish but still radiating that infuriating, sun-bright energy.

"Tell me to stay."

The words slipped out before Ash could catch them, sharp and raw like a fresh wound. Misty froze, her breath hitching audibly.

He immediately regretted it—the way her eyebrows shot up, the way his fingers twitched like he wanted to reach for her but didn't know if he should. The AC unit chose that moment to cough out a dying whine, leaving silence thick enough to choke on.

Pikachu's ears drooped as it glanced between them before tactfully hopping down to investigate the forgotten energy bar on the floor. Ash opened his mouth, closed it, then finally managed a shaky exhale. "Misty, I—"

The hotel phone rang, shrill and insistent, slicing through the tension like a Razor Leaf. Ash jumped like he'd been electrocuted. Misty turned away, busying herself with straightening her already-perfectly-straight towel while he fumbled for the receiver.

"Yeah? Now? But—" His voice dropped to a whisper she couldn't hear over the pounding of her own heartbeat.

When he hung up, his expression was all wrong, too bright, too forced. "Gotta go!" He scooped up his backpack, hesitated at the door, hand on the knob, shoulders tense. For one impossible second, Misty thought he might turn around.

Outside, a horn honked. His ride to the stadium. Away from her. Ash glanced back at her with an expression that made her stomach flip. "So... see you after?" he asked, suddenly quieter.

Misty crossed her arms, refusing to acknowledge how her pulse jumped at the unspoken question beneath his words.

"Only if you don't get disqualified for forgetting your pants," she shot back. The door clicked shut behind him, leaving her standing there, forcing to grin like an idiot, the room suddenly too big and too quiet without his chaos filling it.

Misty stared at the closed door, her fingers curling into fists at her sides. The imprint of Ash’s lips still burned on hers—three seconds, stupidly, embarrassingly counted—but the ghost of his touch felt colder already.

She knew this dance. He’d bolt for the chaos, she’d follow despite herself, and they’d part ways at the next town with half-finished sentences and promises neither could keep. For days, weeks, months, or years that may turn into.

The AC sputtered again, exhaling a stale breath that carried the faintest whiff of his shampoo. Misty grabbed his discarded hoodie from the bed and pressed it to her face, inhaling the faded scent of sweat and before chucking it into the corner with a frustrated growl. “Idiot,” she muttered, but the word tasted like ash.

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━

© Copyright Protection Notice:

All works belongs exclusively to the author. Do not reupload, translate, rewrite, or alter my creations without permission. It's officially shared only via Tumblr and AO3.