such great heights

come down now, they say

x

James sees a girl with red hair that falls to her hips and blue eyes that have seen much pain and he probably falls in love with her right then and there.

The girl's name is Jessie, he hears from the whispers across the classroom; she's new and she's sad and she talks with the ratatas that scurry around the school yard. His classmates—they call her mean, rancid, that she's tainted with swears that burn her tongue and sins that line her soul; the kids talk, spread rumors, but they all forget that she is in foster care and that she goes to home to a heavy hand and returns with a heavy heart. His teachers—they call her strange, isolated, that she's a girl with a tragic life and it seems to radiate as lurid as the bruises on her cheek and the cigarette burns on her arms; over coffee in the lounges, they question the foster parents and their credibility, but a few dollars under the table wipes the concern away and they forget they see her crying when she goes home.

But he doesn't make excuses for her behavior nor does he turn a blind eye to her upbringing. He calls her Jessie, plain and simple, and he decides he'll be her best friend from now until forever.

x

Today, her eyes are the color of silver and blue and diamonds that have been too long in the rough, and on the jungle gym, she asks him why he's too nice to her. His mouth runs dry and his sweaty palms grip the monkey bar tightly. Slumping his body forward, his feet drags through the sand when he moves slowly along the path of candy-colored metal molded into a thing of child play — the school could use a bit more care, he thinks, when his hand scrapes along some rust. James decides not to answer her, not right away; instead, he steals a look behind him, and watches her swing from the tire in tree.

Her little fingers find the tendrils of hair that falls to her face and tucks it back in place. Pale arms cross against a skinny chest; huffing, she repeats her question with gusto, and not a trace of sadness envelops her words.

"Because I like you," he says simply, turning away from her diamond eyes and her messy hair.

"You like me?" she asks. "What happens if you stop liking me?"

James jumps down from the monkey bars. He glances at her. Her face is entangled with panic and wonder and her eyes steel into a cold grey when he doesn't answer as quickly as she'd must have liked. The boy only shrugs. "It doesn't matter."

"What does that mean?" she whispers, her hands fisting into the fabric of her tattered and torn summer dress.

"I'll still be nice to you, I think," he says, and if he's right, her smile finally reaches her eyes and she dashes forward to grab his hand.

When they run for the bushes that line the sidewalks, he thinks that he'll never quite stop liking her.

x

The bully is a head taller than James and has knuckle as hard as brass and a kick that earned him the spot on Pokemon Tech's region-renowned soccer team. Currently, the boy is pinned against the brick wall in the alley behind the school. The slick winter wind bites at his exposed skin, and James hopes to God that someone will intervene.

Unfortunately, it's been about fifteen minutes and his jacket is probably frozen solid and the bully is still yelling obscene things in his face. All James wants to do is leave. All James does is cry.

"Shut the fuck up," he screams in his face, drawing him closer and closer until his breath is on his. The bulky spits in his face and shoots him a grin so malicious, James almost recoils right then and there. "You fucking faggot."

"W-What do you want fr-from me...?" James stutters. He attempts to pry his hands off his collars and turns his head to avoid eye contact. "Please let me go."

"Yeah, let him go."

Both boys whip their heads to see the owner of the voice. And there she stood in all her glory, with hair pinned up in a bun and her face dotted with the splashes of mud puddles and a heavy parka wrapped tightly around her tiny frame. The bully, with red hair like fire and freckles as furious as flames, laughs. "A girl, Jaime? That's all you send to fight your battles?" He drops James to the floor and moves in front of him, crossing his arms to stand his ground.

James, however, is rather terrified by it all. Jessie couldn't possibly hold her own against a beefy, bumbling idiot like him. He's only being honest, since an eight year old girl in a parka isn't too frightening up against a much too bulky ten year old.

But like always, she surprises him.

"I don't like it when people are mean to my friend," she says, slinking off her coat and letting it fall to the sleet-smooth road beneath them.

The bully knits his brows together. "And what are you going to do about it?"

She raises her fists in front of her face and lunges her foot back a bit. A giggle, a shrug, a twinkle in her eyes; she retorts, "Fight you."

"I can't hit a girl—" he starts off, casting an incredulous look to James, who is paralyzed with complete fear.

But her foot meets his chest and he is slammed back into the alley wall before he can argue. She smirks at her friend, who weakly smiles back, and then says, "You can't hit a girl? Good; you won't put up much of fight then."

The bully scrambles to his feet and growls at Jessie in anger, his face turning beet red in embarrassment. He bum rushes towards her, his body awkward and ungraceful as he throws his fist forward to punch her. It is to no avail; she merely steps back, her hands behind her back, a smile upon her face, and the boy slides in the sleet and lands on his back. And somewhere beneath the fear, James feels a sense of pride and gratefulness for Jessie.

The boy yelps in pain, writhing as his back arches on the ice. Jessie steps forward and places a foot on his chest, teasingly pushing on his ribcage with his every haggard breath. "Oh, you definitely can't fight a girl," she says in mock surprise. "Do you promise you'll never bother James again?"

"Yes," he cries out, pathetically, resignedly. "Yes, I will never bother him again."

Pleased, she removes her foot from his chest. He sobs, utterly defeated and utterly shamed, blubbering out, "Please don't tell my mom!"

Jessie has already maneuvered around the sniveling ten-year old and stuck out her hand for James to take by the time she replies, "Of course I won't, she'd have forgotten by the end of the year. I'll tell the entire school. You'll always be known as the boy who was beaten up by a girl."

She lifts up a shocked James and offers him a lithe smile, her eyes shimmering with tears from the cold and her arms like rails covered in gooseflesh. Walking around the shivering body of the bully, she picks up her forgotten parka and leads James out of the alley, both ignoring the cries of James' tormentor.

"Thank you," he tells her after they cross back into town square. They duck into an old comic book store for shelter from the sheets of rain and hail pouring down from the clouds, her eyes growing wide in curiosity and his squinting in distaste as they are met with dozens of books on display.

She picks up a frayed, dust-covered stack of papers, bound together by stale tape and rusted staples. Jolthikman, it says on the cover. James watches her flip through the book in amusement, and is so engrossed in observing her every move that he almost jumps when she glances at him. She purses her lips together as she says quietly, "I can't do that for you every time."

He takes a step behind him, and his back hits the rack of newer comics. He recoils at the noise. "I know," he says, wincing at the sounds of the tumbling books hitting the floor.

One of her eyebrows lift in response. "Okay," she hums. She returns to her comic book, not even batting an eyelash at James's struggle to replace all the fallen comics.

Much later, before they part at the railroad tracks and the lake that divides their subdivisions, he asks her where she learned how to fight like that.

"They stop bugging you when you learn to fight back," she tells him, like a secret, like a lock and key conversation that no one should ever listen in on. "I guess I kind of had to."

And that was it, because she runs across the tracks and away from him before he could ask anymore.

When he's safely tucked in the confines of his bedroom, he wonders why.

x

Jessie never goes to his house. He never goes to hers. They like it the way they are: always meeting somewhere new, always exploring new places with just the two of them. Today, they're on the steps of some museum a city away, and she is playing with Growlie and he is making a sandwich for the both of them.

James is focused on perfecting her turkey and ham on rye, but his hand gets tangled in the strings of her burlap purse and he tries to shake it off without telling her he may have accidentally touched it with his grease-stained fingers. Her voice sings his name like a song. She tells him that she's hungry. She asks him for her sandwich.

In a hurry, he pulls his hand to unwind himself from the snarls of her bag (and this is when he first learns that women are deadly beings that carry even deadlier things) and all the contents within coming spilling out like a broken faucet. Her worn books and her ratty dance shoes and the money she has stolen from her foster parents cascade out from the sad excuse of burlap, down the steps and to the street. James freezes. It's probably the first time he cusses.

And even Growlie stands still, his head caught beneath the hand of the girl slowly boiling to a steady anger; the puppy moves out from under the palm that closes into a fist, shuffling to the other side of the steps as inconspicuously as he can. Betrayed, the boy sends a glare to the cowering pokemon. Of course he would leave James in the wake of a disaster.

He closes his eyes and braves himself for anything Jessie could give him.

Nothing happens.

His eyes open tentatively, waiting for her knuckles to knock his cheek or her palm behind his head, yet all he sees is her figure retreat to collect her fallen things without much complaint. When she comes back, she shoves the bag into his stomach and holds her hand out expectantly.

"Jessie?" he asks, his voice no louder than a whisper.

She sneers. "Where's my sandwich?"

x

"Will you ever leave for a Pokemon journey?"

They had been playing in the arcade across the street from the school when she asks this. He freezes; his finger that had been tight on the trigger to release the pinball eases, and his face hardens at the thought. James's eyes do not leave the game in front of him when he replies, "Will you?"

Jessie leans into the machine next to him, her hair ghosting his cheeks when she bends her head in giggles. "I asked first," she says, her laugh still laced in her words.

He frowns. "I asked second."

"James," she hisses, her tone turning stern when she places a hand on his shoulder. Yanking him back to face her, her features soften, and her fierce blue eyes melt into something subdued. "We're twelve, after all. It's only a matter of time before..." she says, her voice trailing off when she ducks her head again.

And he's stuck between a rock and a hard place. He had been planning to leave within the next month — though his parents had not expressed any delight in this, he had already made up his mind. His father had made preparations, his mother had already called up her friends across the region to ready their houses for his imminent arrival, and he already has an appointment with Professor Oak to retrieve his starter.

But Jessie.

She looks at him with blue eyes frayed at the edges, her lips pulled into a tight and she looks completely, wholly surrendered to his every word. It is then he realizes that maybe he doesn't want to leave her, not yet, not like this.

He exhales through his mouth and says, "No, I'm not going on a Pokemon journey."

Silence. Her fingers unravel themselves from around his shoulder.

"Nani no haji," she whispers, resting her elbows on the glass cover of the pinball machine. Her fingers splay over the cracks and the rusted nails as she pulls her lips into a brisk smile. "What a shame."

"I don't want to leave you alone here," he says, trying very hard to not look at her directly in the eye. His finger hovers over the trigger again, squinting at the ball resting dead center in the machine. "Besides," he continues, pulling the lever tightly under his finger, "I don't think I'm cut out for training and all. I'm not very good." At that, his jaw clenches and something like regret stirs within him. Pushing it away, he finally turns his head to glance at the redhead. "Jessiebelle told my father I ought to stay here; I think he will actually take her up on that."

She buries her face into her arms in laughter. "Jessiebelle can go fuck herself, seriously."

He allows himself to smile. "Tell me about it."

A silence follows the laughter and he deposits another dime into the machine to play another game. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jessie bite her lip, scrunching up her face in deep thought. Just as he releases the pinball, she jabs him hard in the rib, a small laugh emitting from her lips.

"Ow!" he yelps, his hands flying to his side as she moves to hit him again. "What do you want?"

"You're going to think I'm crazy, but hear me out," she says, pursing her lips together as if still deciding what to say. "Why don't we run away together?"

He stares. Finally: "No."

"Why not?" she questions, brows furrowing together.

"It'd be hard," he tries to reason, his mind racing to find any drawback or loophole in her plan. It fails him, but he pushes on, "It's impossible. They'd find us, Jess."

"They won't if I'm around. Trust me, James, we'll be fine, it'll be perfect," she eggs on, grabbing his hand roughly to emphasize her zeal. "Besides, you hate it here. We hate it here. Running away... it won't be the worst thing, you know. It'd be good for you. And for me, too."

He almost doesn't hear this, though; his hand is in hers and her blisters from home are rough while his palm is smooth. It makes him feel like a million butterfrees are flying in his stomach. It almost scares him. But he nods his head and he mumbles some kind of agreement, his eyes focused on hers and he watches them swell with elation; somehow, he says something right, and the next morning, they leave to pursue a better adventure.

x

Jessie joins a biker gang during the time she had gone out to buy some medicine for their Pokemon, which, inadvertently causes him to join as well. They are thirteen and she is a bit prettier and a looks a bit older than she really is. He is taller and lankier with a baby face to boot; between the two of them, she looks fifteen and he looks eleven and that greatly bothers him.

Freedom is harder than he'd like to admit. Paying for his own stuff, taking care of not only himself, but Jessie and their pokemon, and trying to survive the regular perils of being a teenager is difficult, especially without the silver spoon in his mouth anymore. Jessie, however, throws herself into this lifestyle and enjoys it. The air is fresher for her and the water tastes better on her tongue and the biker gang only loosens her even more.

He, however, is an embarrassment. While she can stand on the seat and swing a chain over her head to elicit fear in the people around, he can barely ride without falling and hurting himself.

But she always tends to his wounds at the end of the day, so it's not too bad, he reasons.

x

They leave the biker gang when things got too gritty for his liking. Jessie didn't want to leave, but he packed up without telling her, and he forces her hand by proposing an ultimatum: him, or them.

And in the end, with great consideration and harsh words that almost hurt, she chooses him and begrudgingly accompanies him to the train station. They've booked a one-way ticket to Pewter, because he's decided to challenge the League and wants to start where you're supposed to start. She tags along, with much debate, but she comes with nonetheless.

James almost notices the way she stares out the window with some subdued form of longing, but he ignores it. She didn't have to come along, he argues to himself.

A part of him reminds him that while she didn't have to come, he's the closest thing she's ever had to a family. People don't give up on people like that so easily. That thought bothers him, so he pushes that part of him to the very back of his mind in hopes of never having to face it again.

x

Jessie strikes up a friendly acquaintance with some boy they run into at Lavender. He's tall and tan and the type of handsome you'd find in movies and magazines; his name is Will and he's not like James in any way. His arms are buff and his skin is taut and his bravery and mastery are almost palpable. No, he isn't James, but he's seventeen and something about her strikes a wrong chord within him.

Jessie is her own person, however. James has no business in who she talks to or what she does.

Still.

He has no business with who she kisses and touches and loves and loses, but it's very hard to restrain his emotions when he watches her give her all to a boy who takes her heart and tears it apart when he's done. She insists that she has her own battles and that this is one of them, but after Will there is Matthew and Harou and Austin and Clyde and there are simply too many soldiers toying with her heart. And damnit, it hurts him; he hates being the one fixing her up and dabbing at her tears for her to go back out there for one more round. She falls and falls and falls, but she will always get back up. That, he thinks, is such a bittersweet downfall.

x

The first time he is kissed, it is by a girl with blue hair and bluer eyes and he is fourteen at a market trying to buy some bread for Jessie's sandwich.

Well, that isn't the entire truth.

He is fourteen and she is sixteen but she looks much younger and acts much older. He's an echo of his father, now; tall, but built, long-limbed but graceful, cute, but with a rougher handsomeness. The blue-haired-blue-eyed girl is named Melanie and she's from Pokemon Tech, too, and she's all curves and dimples and eyes soft like clouds in the sky. She's not Jessie, not by a long shot, but he'd harbored a crush on this Melanie for a long, long while, and that kind of thing sticks to you.

Apparently, by the way she beams when she see him at the market, she has, too.

James and Melanie talk some, laugh some, catch up and gossip. They walk along the lake and grab a bite to eat for lunch; he almost forgets about Jessie at the Pokemon Center, if not for her solitary text message of, "Where are you?" that illuminates his Pokegear.

So he must go and leave and he's almost saddened by that.

"I had a great time," he tells her, rubbing the back of his head with his hand. His cheeks warm and he swears to all things holy, if he's blushing, he just might kill someone. Eyeing the ground, he murmurs, "Listen, if we ever run into each other, we should do this again."

"Yeah?" she asks, her smile reaching her eyes.

"Yeah," he chuckles, and God, she's so beautiful.

His heels are halfway turned when Melanie grabs him by the collar and slants her lips against his; he kisses back, but it's not quite what he was expecting. It's desperate, rushed, and not at all what the movies make it out to be. There are no fireworks. There are no butterfrees in his stomach. And when it's over and she writes her number on his hand, he leaves with swollen lips and feeling a little dejected.

Then he walks into the PokeCenter and sees Jessie curled up in a chair in the far corner, her face wrinkled in frustration and her eyes hard with irritation. His heart falls and the kiss seems more like regret than anything else. He takes a seat next to her and joins her in silence, his hands falling to his lap and his feet stretched out to touch the table; the lack of words is uncomfortable, but he supposes there's a reason why.

Finally, she heaves a sigh. "Where the hell were you?"

It isn't angry, but it is sharp all the same.

"Buying bread," he says evenly, avoiding her stare, where disbelief is so, so evident. It isn't a lie. Not really.

"You were not buying bread for almost five hours, James," she says with incredulousness. Her voice grows stern as she grips the arm of the chair tightly, her eyes softening for a split second before reverting back to her stony exterior.

"The line was long," he says, hopeful that it would convince her. At this, her eyes roll, and he inwardly kicks himself for even thinking that his lies are believable.

"James," she hisses in warning.

He winces at that. Caving, he says, "Alright, fine. I ran into someone, that's all."

"Your dad?"

He shakes his head.

"Jessiebelle?"

Another shake. Hell no.

"Then who?" she asks, flustered with the aura of mystery he keeps around the subject.

Considering his options, he keeps his mouth shut for a few moments. A part of him doesn't want to tell her what happened — as if she's tethered to him (as he is to her, but he would never admit that), as if she is his and he is hers and they are in an unspoken relationship with each other. This is cheating, that part of him screams, this is wrong. But at the same, she isn't. And perhaps, he thinks sadly, she never will be.

So with a steady voice and a tight smile he says, "You remember Melanie from school, don't you?"

He almost doesn't notice the glint of jealousy in her blue blue eyes.

"The pretty one?" she asks, her voice edged with unspoken criticism. She narrows her eyes as she continues, "That's who you spent five hours with?"

"She's good company," he defends.

"She's rancid," she throws back just as quickly.

He crosses his arms. "She's lovely!"

"She's a bitch!"

"She's so sweet!" he tries, hurriedly losing any reasons he has to defend this girl from his best friend.

Jessie rolls her eyes. "She told everyone that I was a drug dealer!"

"That was in seventh grade!"

"She's a whore!"

"She's a good kisser!"

There were about fifty other, fantastic ways to combat her last argument. Unfortunately, he did not pick one of them and instead chose the worst possible option. Upon realizing this, he sinks back in his chair and slumps further to the ground. Hopefully, she doesn't take this the wrong way.

"Oh?" she prompts, not even letting the outburst simmer in awkwardness. "That's how it is, then?"

"Yeah," he says pithily, his eyes falling to the wall beside him.

She nods. Her fingers grip the ball capsule tightly — her Pidgeot, one of two Pokemon she loves so dearly. Shaking her head, she echoes back, "Yeah."

Later, in their hotel room, they don't talk about Melanie or the League or anything in particular. Few words are exchanged for bread and butter, but it is quiet and there's not much left that could be said. In the grand scheme of things, he is fourteen, but he feels so much more older.

x

James calls Melanie when Jessie is sleeping, or when she's in the bathroom, or when she's at the market buying food. It's always a pleasant — but fairly empty — conversation, and suddenly it's more of an obligation than a long-distance relationship, really.

But then Jessie walks in with a short dress and high heels and suddenly she is fifteen with a cigarette hanging off her lips and a boy with an expiration date due in two weeks on her arm. None of this ever angers him, at least not outwardly, but whenever he thinks about it, he picks up the phone and dials the number he knows by heart. Like a reflex, he thinks.

x

Months go by and it's the same old shit. James builds his team wisely — types covered, moves perfected, happiness peaked — and he has four badges left to go. Jessie tags around if only because she has to, and there in stands, there cheering him on, there for him when he loses, when he wins. But he chooses to not notice her unhappiness because it's easier that way, easier to ignore misery in his company because damn it, it's supposed to be JessieandJames not James... and Jessie.

This act continues on splendidly, he thinks. Hotel rooms and alleyways and Pokecenters become crowed with his bursting laughter and his gleaming smiles and his happiness accompanied with her forced giggles and her tight lipped grins and her...apathy. He shouldn't notice but he does. He should hate it but he doesn't.

It's only one day in Kanto, somewhere in Saffron in a small café, that she tells him, "I'm leaving in a couple days."

The tea in James' mouth grows bitter. At first, he's silent and stunned; swallowing, he reaches forward for a napkin tucked underneath her coffee. Almost immediately, her hand crashes down on his, her fingers grabbing his palm with a roughness he missed. He clenches his jaw and shakes her off of him.

"James," she begins slowly, like she knows his heart is breaking and like she knows it's because of her. Damn her intuition. Damn her. "Did you hear me?"

"I heard you," he says after a few seconds of hesitation. His eyes droop closed as he runs his hands over his face — it was a long day of training and battling, and he really lacked any sort of energy for stuff like this. His heart thrums in his chest, sorrow coursing through his entire body and ripping him from inside out. There's only one thing he manages to spew out of his dry mouth — "Why?"

And she fucking laughs. "Because traveling with you — sucks, man," she tells him, like his breaking heart is not real, like what he feels with his entire body is a simple illusion. Like they are not real, like they are a simple illusion. His fingers curl into fists and the blisters on his palms he's acquired to match hers nearly break open from his instantaneous anger. He dares to look at her, and her eyes are blue like the ocean waves kissing the shoreline in Vermillion and it is the color of the memories she's missed and the memories he hated.

"What?" It's like he can only speak in questions.

"I need to find myself," she says, effectively diving into self-searching bullshit she probably read in her spare time. "And with you, I can't. It's suffocating — no offense," she adds quietly. "Look, you're great. I love you, James, you're my onii and I'm so glad you've found what you're good at. But face it, I'm not cut out for this lifestyle. I need to know what I want in life, and I know for sure it's not this."

"What's this?"

And there he is again, ladies and gentlemen, making an ass out of himself one question at a time.

"This is waiting around in the sidelines, waiting for you to be done so we can do something you want to do," she says with finality. "And for God's sake, James, don't you notice how unhappy I am? For the past six months, it's been—"

He breaks in when she pauses slightly for a breath, "Is this about Melanie?"

James drops his eyes the moment she takes in a deep breath. He winces when he hears the receipt crinkle and rip under her hand. Wrong move, pawn stolen, checkmate.

"No, James," she nearly yells in the crowded café. Some people around them fall silent, some stare. "This isn't about Melanie. This is about your head being so far up your fucking ass that you really can't tell that whatever comes out of your mouth is utter shit. You think I'm so vapid that I'm going to leave you over a girl? You think I'm that superficial? God, James, I knew you were selfish, but I didn't —"

"Me? Selfish?" he starts, anger swelling within him. "I let you have your fun with the bikers and I nearly got killed hanging around those buffoons."

"You didn't have to stay."

"You didn't have to come with me," he argues, and he's right in some way.

Some form of quiet settles around them and he watches her anger melt away. They say nothing for minutes until he repeats, "You never had to come with me. We never had to leave."

"And where would we be, James? Huh? Tell me, right now, look at me and tell me that we would've made it this far," she says almost pleadingly. Her fists unclench and her fingers rest on edges of the table. It pains him, how soft she is being, because this isn't like her. She bites her lips as she says, "I'm going to Hoenn on Tuesday."

"What's there for you that isn't here?"

The question is a bit pathetic. He realizes this the moment is escapes his lips.

"I don't know. That's the adventure, I suppose."

He wants to cry but he can't, not with her looking at him like he's going to break at any second. He hates it, hates this, and he fucking hates her. His lower lip quivers and it nearly betrays him; ducking down so she doesn't see him so weak, he says meekly, "I wish you didn't say goodbye. I wish you just — left. Without a word, God, that would have been better."

"You deserve more than a sayonara written in lipstick on the mirror. I gave you this, at least," she murmurs under her breath. As if he doesn't deserve her, though that might be his fabled selfishness talking. She grips her coffee tightly in her hand and says something about it being too cold and something about buying some supplies for the hotter weather in Hoenn. She will be back for dinner and that they should rent a movie, or something.

Jessie carries on as if she had not just broken up with him. At least, that's what it feels like.

So he leaves, the coward he is, and he'd love to say that it was hard but his anger actually made it quite effortless. He packs up quickly and boards a train to get him anywhere but Saffron — Sabrina will have to wait, he thinks to himself a bit ruefully.

His pokemon, when they begin to notice that the pretty red-haired girl that often acted as their second master was gone, they questioned him. In the end, it never mattered; in two weeks, his vaporeon got over it and his crobat stopped glaring at him, and within three months it was as if she never existed.

Jessie doesn't call him, doesn't track him down. He's glad — if by chance he had the misfortune to run into her again, he'd probably be dead upon sight. And it's not that he doesn't miss her, because he does, immensely. It's just that he largely preferred this goodbye, and after all, he always gets what he wants.

This is probably the selfishness Jessie was talking about.

Months and years go by and he stops calling Melanie; he never so much thinks of her again, as stupidly predictable it is. He gets the eighth gym badge and he treasures it like it's something to be treasured, because after all, in the materialistic world he lives in, it is. It's a gateway to the Elite Four, and then, the Kanto championship, and then he'll laugh at those who doubted him. He battles and battles and trains until he's exhausted, but it doesn't matter, not really, because at the end of the road he is not good enough to win anyone in the Elite Four no matter how hard he tries. Somewhere in the part of him that still clings to the memory of Jessie tells him that it is because there is no one to cheer him on anymore.

How ridiculous.

x

Pieces of pieces of him are left and he struggles to live. Rates of hotels get expensive and sooner or later, he will have to quit the dream and either go home or get a job. He wants to do none of this, but reality calls for otherwise, so he starts over.

It isn't long before he (tearfully) releases all his Pokemon.

And somewhere down the line, he loses the part of him that remembers how to fight on. He lingers in dingy bars he manages to bribe for drinks with a wink and a slurred compliment, in hotel rooms he breaks into, in cafés he steals bagels and water bottles from. He lingers on and on until someone notices him.

"If you join Team Rocket, none of this will be necessary," the woman with legs that never seem to end and lips that are as red as the color of Jessie's hair. Her fingers, soft and long and so sensual, trace the letters "T" and "R" on his arm. "We require little of you. Just your name and your allegiance."

He says yes in a heartbeat if only because he has not eaten in four days.

x

James sees Jessie at the Team Rocket Academy and his heart fucking drops. He has to scatter to his knees quickly to recover before the drill sergeant yells at him for not paying attention, soldier!

Hours later, he still thinks of her as he lays in bed, arms crossed behind him, and he tries very hard to remember how her voice sounds like. How blue her eyes are. How she smells like adventure and old perfume and the musk of the city. He remembers until it's five in the morning and he has to get up even though he hasn't slept a wink.

And when they assign him to her, he thinks he has been given a second chance.

a/n: i rarely write pokemon anymore, but there might be a sequel to this. all mistakes are mine, and i'm honestly not 100% sure how true to canon this is. a fic request from an anon on tumblr. reviews, as always, are love.