- silver linings -

Giovanni

For eleven years, Silver doesn't know that his father loved him.

His sudden disappearance when Silver is ten certainly doesn't help. It happens when Silver is too young to understand things like crime, and danger, and events that can rip the life he knows apart and change his world, send it spiraling out of his control, in an instant. And his father was all about control. He seemed to always have everything accounted for, everything taken care of and harnessed under his power.

Not that Silver understood why.

He never thought to question where all the Pokemon his father trained with him came from, all the Spearow and Rattata and Bellsprout who would emerge blinking from their Poke Balls in a flash of light, bleary-eyed and confused and, Silver used to fancy when he was feeling a shade more imaginative, with a gleam of fear in their eyes.

Those visits were all he used to look forward to, before. And that is how Silver is beginning to think of his life—before and after, separated by a point somewhere in the middle when his father faded into the past tense.

Before, Silver used to wander the halls of his mansion alone, always with a man or woman or two in funny black outfits to look after him and make sure he didn't wander off too far. When he was younger, he used to bug them to play with him; they always treated him well, he remembered, but never gave him anything more than they needed to. Before, at least once a week, he would wait to hear the footsteps from down the hallway, slow, measured, imposing, to see the broad shoulders pressed in a crisp new suit ducking through the doorway, and his heart would seize in excitement.

"Look what I have for you today, Silver," Giovanni would say as Silver dropped his book and scrambled up to him, and he would click open the briefcase he carried with him to show him with a proud flourish the perfect, gleaming red and white of his newest Poke Balls.

They are some of Silver's best memories, the ones he still revisits after a battle won more often than he would ever like to admit: the evenings, sometimes days, they would train together, his father teaching him all about Pokemon, and with his strong, capable hands, showing him all the ways to battle, to win.

So when Giovanni disappears, Silver's first thought is to wonder if he did something wrong.

Was it because I was too weak? he wonders, thinking back to their last training session. But his father had only laughed heartily, throwing his head back, and congratulated him for putting up such a good fight when he lost. Or at least he remembers. Now Silver isn't so sure.

The fear that it is his fault that his father doesn't come back again gnaws at him, grows into an obsession as the days drag on and slip into the after at some point Silver doesn't want to face, doesn't want to admit is becoming permanent, and he spends nights lying awake and staring at the ceiling, curling his small hands into fists and wishing, If only I hadn't lost…

He thought he had disappointed his father, that he had been too weak to make him proud. But when Silver is old enough to understand what Team Rocket is from the news, it all starts to come together: the late-night calls his father took that turned his patient voice to steel, the black suits with the big red "R" emblazoned on the front, the people in the longer suits and lab coats with nasty voices who laughed too loud and too cold, their voices making Silver shiver in his room where the grunts sent him whenever they came to visit. Even before he sees the report, watching the TV in his room with stony eyes—Team Rocket Boss Giovanni in hiding; authorities on his trail—he is smart enough (Silver was always smart, his father used to praise him for it with that deep, affectionate laugh of his and a firm hand laid on his shoulder) to connect it with his father.

Team Rocket, who lost to a boy not much older than Silver himself, he realizes—it was Team Rocket who was weak.

The weak will always lose, he thinks, eyes narrowing, the knowledge sharpening into a blade inside him. All he can do to avoid losing everything like they did, like his father did when they failed him, is to become one of the strong.

But one evening, curled on his bed, he hears:

"The location of the child of Team Rocket Boss Giovanni is still unknown," the news anchor says dispassionately. "The once-prestigious Gym Leader is known to have had a son, an only child, who must be around the age of eleven at this time. His connections with Team Rocket are unknown, and it does not appear that Giovanni was raising him to take over the organization. Authorities are still searching for the boy known as Silver."

Instead of a photo of himself (there aren't many photos of Silver, only one he knows of, which was in the top drawer of his father's desk but disappeared along with him: him, small and staring wide-eyed at the camera, his mouth half-open, reaching out a tentative hand to pet his father's Persian), the screen shows only a blank silhouette of a face with a question mark and the name "Silver" printed beneath it.

It is only then that Silver realizes, belatedly, his face glowing eerily in the light that emanates from the television, that the reason he was kept in all these dark, narrow hallways, the reason he slept in a room underground and almost never went outside, giving him a permanently pale complexion, was in case something like this ever happened. All the invisibility in the eyes of the world at large—it had all been to protect him, to keep him from becoming tangled in the web of his father's legacy.

His father gave him a gift, he realizes. And because Silver is invisible, it's easy for him to get away.

No one is accountable for him save for a few leftover Rocket grunts, who evaded arrest thanks to their task of caring for the Boss's son and stayed, since, Silver realizes, Giovanni only trusted the most loyal grunts to look after his son. Which, at this point, only means providing him with a few meals a day. But Silver is tired of living like some caged Pokemon; something inside him yearns, claws at him, longs to bite. So the boy who never truly existed in the eyes of the world, who is nothing to them but a silver wisp of fog, slips out of his empty mansion one night, and aims for something like greatness.

Once he's outside, free to journey (Kanto reeks far too much of Team Rocket's failure, he thinks bitterly, so he heads for Johto instead) and battle to grow stronger instead of sitting in a cell or a foster home somewhere, Silver thinks of his father, and how he is the reason for the open road that lies ahead of him. And only then does he wonder faintly, displacing all the notions of abandonment and his own failure and the hurt that comes with them, even though neither the news anchors nor Giovanni nor the Rocket grunts ever used the word, if this is what "love" means.

-.-.-.-

Gold

The whiny idiot, Silver dubs him as soon as he meets him.

"Call me Gold," he drawls, with that wink that Silver is sure he's practiced a hundred times in front of the mirror, even though Gold is his last name and the reason he goes by it is because all he really cares about, the immature dolt, is looking cool and getting as many girls to look at him as he can (they don't).

(And Silver suspects, though he would never admit it to himself, that part of the reason it bothers him is because everyone says gold is better than silver.)

The sky is blazing hot, the sunlight tearing its way through the silver clouds, when the two of them battle. Silver challenges him because hey, that's Cyndaquil, that was the Poke Ball next to the one I took, and because he can't imagine a weaker first opponent to take on to prove his strength, and Gold eagerly accepts his challenge, for no other reason than because he wants to show off.

When he wins, he flips his hair back in a clearly rehearsed way, the one lock he leaves hanging out from his backward baseball cap flying across his forehead, and flings his cue stick (who the hell carries a cue stick around with him?) over his shoulder, quite literally striking a pose in the middle of the road.

"Didja see that?" he gushes at a couple of girls walking by. "Wasn't that an awesome battle? Didja see me win?"

Silver just glowers at him, too disgusted to even speak.

"My Pokemon was weak," he snaps as he recalls the fainted Totodile, turning over his shoulder so he doesn't have to look at its crumpled form on the ground. Pathetic. That was it, that was why an idiot like Gold could win. A fluke, that was all. "Don't count on it happening again."

"Aw, there ain't nothing weak about it," Gold drawls with a cheesy grin. "Didja see that?" Now he's talking to Silver, his eyes wide with excitement. "That was awesome. My Cyndaquil is the greatest Pokemon ever. He and I, we're gonna make it to the League. I'm gonna be the Champion someday!"

"Wimps like you don't become Champion," Silver sneers, and storms away before he can do something drastic to soften the humiliation of it all, like punching Gold in the face.

He doesn't expect to ever see him again, but then, when he's halfway down the street, he hears the voice call after him,

"Oi—hey, wait!"

His Trainer Card, that's all it takes—the one thing that binds their fates irrevocably together. Silver could have walked away and never seen him again, if it weren't for the fact that in his haste to get away, he had dropped it on the road, and Gold had picked it up and—

"You saw my name," he says in a low voice, a cold punch of something like dread sinking into his stomach.

"Silver." Gold is oblivious, twirling his stupid stick in the air and tasting his name on his tongue. "That's funny, 'cause I'm named Gold, right?"

"Give it to me." He snatches the card back, ripping it out of Gold's hands, and jams it into his pocket. Their fingers brush roughly, Silver's cold, Gold's warm and sweaty.

"Silver and Gold. Hey, maybe we should battle again after I—"

"Forget it," Silver hisses, and shoves him hard into the next crowd of passerby that walks by so that he, like always, can make his escape.

-.-.-.-

Kris

In another life, Silver thinks, he could have respected, even admired Kris.

There's a seriousness to her that the whiny idiot lacks, an edge of something like single-minded ambition that Silver can relate to. Kris is someone who operates through goals, through logic, through hard cold facts and data, he thinks. She understands the concepts of strength and weaknesses and the quest to attain one and avoid the other. He can tell by her dedication to her research work; he saw her working day and night at the Elm Pokemon Lab the days he spent peering in through the windows, before he stole in to grab Totodile's Poke Ball. No one can compete with her when it comes to Pokemon research.

But there is that fact: it's too bad she works for Professor Elm.

"You shouldn't have stolen that Pokemon," she admonishes when she ambushes him on his way to Azalea Town, clad in a crisp white lab coat, her raven-blue hair fastened in tight, practical pigtails.

Silver flushes darkly. So Professor Elm sent his assistant to chase him down.

"A Pokemon like that shouldn't have a wimp for a trainer," he shoots back. Shouldn't she of all people understand? "You're the one who's studied it. You know the potential it has."

"Potential for what?" Kris doesn't miss a beat, staring him fiercely in the eye. "To be abused at the hand of a trainer who doesn't even have the moral compass to understand that stealing is wrong, or to aid him in a life of crime?"

"To be strong," Silver answers, trying not to flinch at the way the latter part of her question hits way too close to home. "It would have been weak, just sitting there, or being taken care of by some—idiot. You should be thanking me."

"She," Kris corrects him. "Not it." She frowns, disapproval radiating from every inch of her skin, blinding like the white of her coat. For some reason, her disapproval bothers Silver—in another lifetime, a corner of his mind thinks irritably, she would have understood him. "A good trainer would have known his Pokemon's gender."

"What are you going to do, guilt me into giving it back?" he retorts. His hand clenches tight around the Poke Ball at his waist. "Why don't you just run back and study some more?"

"I may not be a trainer, and I may not be able to battle you," Kris says evenly, still fixing her piercing gaze on him, "but I can tell you this: the way you're treating Totodile now, you're not going to get anywhere. You're not going to win, Silver."

Maybe he had been wrong about her, Silver thinks as he dashes away, breathing hard from the streaks of anger that claw at his insides, threatening to tear through the armor of his strength. So she had been inundated with all that sentimental bullshit as well. Still, the way she looked him in the eye and spoken to him in that calm, measured tone of voice—maybe it was the people around her, it was their fault.

It's too bad she's friends with whiny idiot and his ditzy friend, he thinks again, barreling ahead and running away from her cold, hard, logical prediction (because she's wrong about him, she definitely is)—you're not going to win, Silver.

-.-.-.-

Lyra

He's heard Gold talk enough about her—his best friend in the world, his soul twin, his better half, et cetera et cetera—that he recognizes her in an instant when he runs into her in Goldenrod City one afternoon.

Marill bounces behind her as Lyra saunters into the Department Store, a ridiculous-looking white hat perched on her head, childish brown pigtails sticking out on either side like an electrocuted Pidgey's wings suspended in midair. She smiles at the empty air in front of her and turns to call out to her Pokemon, her voice lilting and annoyingly high-pitched.

"Come on, Mare," she sings, "we're going shopping!"

Silver is rooted to his seat in disgust, peering out the window at one of the tables in the Pokemon Center, and fascinated by the horrifying sight at the same time.

There's something almost eerie about her cheerful smile, he thinks as she strolls out of the Department Store almost two hours later (he's gone training and come back three times in that time), her arms laden with at least four different shopping bags, a garishly pink slurpee drink clutched in one hand. Something almost vacant in her wide brown eyes. It's almost as if, Silver muses, she doesn't look all the way there.

Airhead, he thinks nastily. But of course, it's no shocker that Gold's best friend is someone like her.

He watches disdainfully as she stops in her tracks to rearrange her shopping bags, then twists around and casts a few nervous glances over her shoulder, as if she's afraid of being seen.

What now? he wonders with a sneer. Is she going to steal her next shopping bag?

But he almost jumps when Lyra makes a beeline for the Pokemon Center, steps in through the sliding doors, and passes a mere two feet in front of the table where he's sitting.

My friend Kris, she's a research assistant. And Ly, my best friend Lyra—well, she likes to shop, and read magazines, and watch TV and swoon over hot Gym Leaders. Gold had almost laughed at the next part. He always liked to share way too much about his life with Silver whenever he ran into him, despite how little of a shit the latter made it all too clear he gave. She has a Marill, yeah, but Marill—ha, no, she's not a battle Pokemon.

A sweet gust of air billows past him as Lyra high-tails her way to the desk, her shoulders stiff, her red shoes tapping across the floor as quickly as she can walk. Silver has to fight to keep himself from craning his neck to see what happens next because hey, it's not like he gives a shit.

"Hello, and welcome to the Pokemon Center," Nurse Joy greets her with a smile. "Would you like me to heal your Pokemon?"

"Y-yes," Lyra murmurs, the voice Silver had found so annoying quiet now. She leans down and scoops Marill in her arms, hunching her shoulders forward to hide her from view, and hands her to Nurse Joy.

Nurse Joy grimaces sympathetically. "Tough day of training?"

"Training—?" Lyra swallows, and dips her head. "Yeah. Um. Yeah. I guess so."

What the hell? Silver scowls. Why is she embarrassed?

This he doesn't understand. He can think of nothing more embarrassing than the vapid life she appears to lead now, and nothing that would redeem it more than being a trainer.

Is it Gold? he wonders. The way he had laughed at the thought of Lyra battling…still, if Gold's incessant, mind-numbing rants are anything to go by, he would be nothing but encouraging about any and all of her dumb ideas. Or perhaps, Silver muses, it's because when your friend is that successful, anything you try to do in front of him is only making a fool of yourself. The weak revealing their weakness in front of the strong.

Not like Gold's successful, Silver reminds himself quickly, snorting at the thought, and not like Lyra will ever be.

Still, there's something about the way she aims and follows a dream, even in secret, that makes him sneer a little less at the way her pigtails and her shopping bags and her newly healed Marill bounce in tandem behind her as she runs out of the Pokemon Center and back to the veneer of her regular life. He hides his weakness, he supposes, fingering a button that's come undone on his dark purple jacket, and she hides her strength.

-.-.-.-

Green

Though former Pokemon League Champion Green Oak is all cocky smiles and flirtatious one-liners, the farthest thing from his own attitude that Silver can imagine, Silver suspects the moment he battles him for the Earth Badge that the two of them have something in common.

He has no idea what it is—after all, the two of them come from as different backgrounds as he can imagine, Green the son of the most renowned Pokemon professor in the world, Silver the abandoned heir of a criminal organization—but he senses it all the same. It's in the way the Champion-turned-Gym Leader battles, in the way he drives his Pokemon hard hard and harder, the way Silver used to, almost to the edge of cruelty. There's a steely glint in his eye, and his hands clench unconsciously into fists as he pushes Eevee to Last Resort, one more time, on Silver's Weavile.

It takes Silver by surprise; he would never have expected a man who spends all his free time preening his hair, winking at pretty girls, and snarking nonchalantly at the rest of the world to have such intensity in him.

But then again, he corrects himself, Green wouldn't have been Champion, even for all of five minutes, if he didn't, would he?

Silver loses to him the first time, and narrowly wins the second. In between, he trains in Mt. Moon for a day, remembering the glint in Green's eyes and mirroring it himself when he yells for Crobat to Air Slash the wild Rattata one more time.

But he can't get the look in Green's eyes out of his head, the look when Silver lost to him. It's a look he recognizes all too well: relief, followed by a gleam of vindication, a slight upturn of the jaw, an almost childish hoot of I-told-you-so.

And then Silver's stomach does a somersault when he realizes why it is that Green pushes his Pokemon so hard, and why it is he feels like he can understand him.

It's the way Silver looks when he beats an Ace Trainer on Victory Road, or a Gym Leader, or a stupid Rocket Executive, any accomplished trainer who isn't Gold, who reminds him that in the eyes of the rest of the world, he is still one of the strongest trainers around. It's why, ever since that encounter outside Cherrygrove, he forced his Pokemon to battle even harder, the same way Green does. It's the mark of what Silver has come far enough to realize is envy, of the desperate drive to push harder because there is no limit, because no matter how hard both of them train they'll never have the hope of beating their rivals.

The thought makes Silver vaguely nauseous. At least Red is a silent prodigy, a hero, the youngest and most skilled Pokemon trainer ever known to the League. His rival is just an idiot on steroids.

"Nice work, kid," Green congratulates him when he hands him the Badge, wiping the sweat off his brow, his perfectly groomed hair a disheveled wreck for once. "That was an impressive battle."

Silver opens his mouth to say something, feeling like he should acknowledge the realization he's just had, parse it into words somehow and share it with Green, ridiculous as that is.

I understand, some part of him that's gone all soft and sentimental and pathetic wants to say. Someday we'll beat them. Someday.

Then Green smooths a stray lock of gelled brown hair back into place, the smirk back on his face, and Silver just lowers his eyes and nods gruffly instead.

-.-.-.-

Ethan

He doesn't beat Gold the next time he sees him, but he does the time after.

But not before something happens the day he runs into him in Mt. Moon. Or, more accurately, when Gold runs into him. Silver is out doing his usual training when he hears the footsteps behind him, and the familiar call of "Hey, Silv."

Typhlosion's flames light the dark cavern around them so he can see Gold's figure approaching, the boyish strut in his steps silhouetted against the cave wall.

It's been a while since the last time he bumped into his rival, and Gold looks different. Silver peers at him for a few moments, wondering if it's a trick of the light dancing around the rocky walls that surround them. But no, this is real: his rival is taller, leaner, but more than that, he's shed the goggles he always wore perched over his baseball cap and gotten rid of the stupid cue stick he used to carry around with him. He got himself a new hoodie too, and a thicker pair of shorts.

It's been almost two years since they first met outside Cherrygrove. Silver wonders why he's so surprised at the change.

"Gold," he greets him curtly.

"Nah," his rival says, waving his hand, the fire flickering over his eyes so that Silver can see, inside them, the old impishness softened to a friendly, mischievous gleam. "I go by Ethan now."

Silver scowls. "Ethan?"

Gold, or whatever the hell he calls himself now, shrugs almost apologetically. "That is my name, you know."

"I never knew that," Silver thinks aloud. Ethan Gold. He tastes the name on his tongue the same way Gold did the first time they met, then snaps, "Not like I care."

"I know."

He looks up in surprise; the old Gold would have pestered him with a "Sure you don't, Silv" for sure. But now Ethan's voice is soft, his eyes pensive, regarding the rocks and the distant dirt path beneath them with patience he never used to have.

The two of them battle, as usual. Silver loses, but by a narrower margin than usual, he likes to think. Ethan congratulates his Pokemon, but not in the smug, showy way he used to (Has he really grown up? Silver wonders. Is it even possible?), and then he nods at Silver and says, "Nice job. That was close."

"Yeah. Thanks."

And because Silver feels horribly awkward with the fading animosity between them (he was good at that, always has been), he's actually relieved this time when Ethan starts rambling about his life.

"Did you know," he pipes up, "Lyra's a trainer now."

"Your friend Lyra?" Ethan nods, and Silver has to bite back a grin. "Well, great. Good for her."

"Apparently she has been for a while and she was just…too nervous to tell me." Ethan laughs. "Which is stupid. I would have been all for it."

Another silence, as Silver contemplates the hundreds of ways he doesn't know how to say that he understands what it's like to want to hide a part of yourself, whether it be strength or weakness (but perhaps weakness is strength, he's not sure anymore; maybe Lyra learned that too). Then Ethan says,

"She liked me."

Silver's head whips up. "What?"

His shoulders tense. He may not find Ethan's stories to be the most obnoxious thing in the world anymore, but he never said he was this comfortable with them.

Ethan shifts his feet. "Yeah. She told me. A-After I beat Lance. Said it was part of the reason she didn't want to tell me…she wanted to support me becoming Champion, not compete with me. But I said she's free to challenge me anytime." He laughs. "Y'know, the good thing is, it's not awkward between us. I'm glad we're good enough friends for that."

"So..." Silver swallows, opens his mouth, then closes it, swallows, and tries again. This is not something he's ever had to deal with before, and he has no idea how to respond. "You don't, you know..."

What the hell, he thinks, almost snorting when he takes in the ridiculousness of this situation, why am I sitting here having a heart-to-heart with the idiot I hate more than anything in the world? The title is only half-hearted, though, even in his mind, even though Ethan has just wiped the floor with his team for the thousandth time. Despite it all, Silver has to admit that he doesn't mind this as much as he'd like to say he does.

Luckily, Ethan finishes the sentence for him.

"I don't…like her, then?" Another chuckle, and a shake of his head. "Nah. Ly's my best friend, but it would be too weird being with her that way. I've known her for so long, you know. I just…felt really bad having to tell her that."

Silver has to struggle to speak through the awkward lump in his throat again, and his voice comes out unnaturally low. "I, ahem. I'm sure she'll be okay."

"Silver! You sound like you just swallowed a Geodude." Ethan laughs and elbows him, and the jubilant sound ricochets throughout the cave. Then he scoots closer, a smirk on his face. "I told her I have a very eligible bachelor rival I can set her up with, though."

The snort flies from his lips, and Silver kicks him, hard. "Shut up."

Ethan yelps in pain, rubbing his shin, then turns back to Silver and grins, a stupid, dopey grin that only he can muster.

"You know, you're not so bad, Silver."

"Wish I could say the same for you," Silver scoffs, and Ethan sticks his tongue out at him. "Besides, what the hell was that for, I just kicked you."

"Not as hard as you would've before."

"Yeah, well. You're maybe a little less annoying than you were before."

"I'll consider that a victory," Ethan gloats, and Silver can't help but grin.

There's a pause, and then Ethan says, "I think it was when I battled Team Rocket."

Silver sits very still.

"That's when I changed, I mean. I used to be all about getting to the top just to seem cool so girls would like me or whatever, but then I realized that shit, there are actually bad people out there, people who don't take care of Pokemon the same way I—and you-do." Ethan shivers, and chuckles again. "Battling you, it…taught me to be more serious, I guess. Though no kidding, you seriously need to lighten up sometimes."

"Yeah, well—maybe you could help me with that, being the idiot you are."

Ethan lets out a triumphant cackle and hoots.

"Really? Did I just hear that right? Did Silver just ask for my help?"

Silver grits his teeth. So his intended insult hadn't quite come out the way he wanted. "Don't push it."

"Heh, I won't. Except…"

And there's a conspiratorial lilt to his tone as his voice drops an octave lower, leaving trails of warm breath in its wake as Ethan leans forward. Silver tenses, but something feels strange and different this time, and he fights the reflex to raise his fist and punch Ethan in the face because something feels unprecedented about this, about the air that hovers in that narrowing space between them.

So he glares furiously at the ground instead as Ethan leans over and, for the briefest of moments, presses his lips to his cheek.

The touch of his lips is like a Thunder Shock on his skin. Silver recoils, thrusting his hand out to shove the other boy away, his insides burning with a million livid protests.

"Wha—hey! What the hell was that—"

"You figure that one out, Silv," Ethan chirps, and without another word, he bounds away and disappears down one of the tunnels branching off from the cavern, leaving Silver frozen on the ledge, too flustered to curse him out the way he normally would.

Silver stays sitting there for a long time, his hands clamped tightly beneath his legs, the spot on his cheek tingling in a way that all the Paralyze Heals in the world wouldn't be able to cure.

Silver's not stupid. He knows what something like this means—is supposed to mean.

Is this what it is to feel something for someone, he wonders? A part of him that's beginning to crumble beneath the layers of resolve he's relied on for years to protect him might be ready to admit that it is. But Silver doesn't know what to expect, even if it is true. It's not as if Ethan made him a promise. Besides, Ethan's not the sort to keep promises anyway, or at least the old Gold isn't.

It's not as if the two of them are going to start acting all lovey-dovey or slobbering all over each other or start dating, or anything. Or so Silver tells himself. Gold has always been a player, always ready to flirt with the next pretty lady who came along (and Silver curls his fists in anger when he entertains the thought of himself as that: a pretty lady he's taken a fancy to). Maybe if he actually cared more about him than just some casual fling like he surely does, he wouldn't have just—just—and Silver can't even bring himself to think about what Ethan did without feeling a hot flush creep up his cheeks.

And that's just typical Ethan, Silver thinks with a shake of his head, Ethan Gold who barges ahead in his stupid, careless way and trumpets the thoughts that Silver buries in silence, behind defensive shields and in dark caverns where his heart and weakness lies.

Finally, after what seems like hours, he jumps off the ledge, and finds his way into the daylight again. He calls Crobat out of his Poke Ball, the Pokemon who evolved for him out of a different kind of love, and looks up, wondering where to fly to next.

Like the night when he first left Giovanni's mansion, the sky opens wide above him, and despite himself, he can't help but rejoice in the feeling that there are endless roads that stretch across the blue. Because where the golden rays meet the fringes of the sky, Silver can see in the pearly coalescence of light and shadow that, if he looks carefully enough, every cloud has a silver lining.

(And maybe the reason he starts to win after that, and after he and Ethan see each other again, and again, and again, is because sometimes, when light and shadow collide in just the right way, he can capture the sunbeams inside him and hold them tight within the swirls of fog, so that together they shine all the brighter, all the stronger.)

Author's Note:

Well, hello readers, I'm back!

It's been a two-year hiatus or so (if you read my old fics; if not, welcome!), but around Thanksgiving I got myself a 3DS, picked up Pokemon X, then just had to go and buy SoulSilver and play it all over again, and boom ALL the Pokemon feels all over again. Nothing quite like Pokemon, hmm?

Anyway, I've been wanting to write Preciousmetalshipping since forever, so I'm glad I finally got this out! Hope you enjoyed this more-or-less character study of Silver.

Some random notes: All my love to PokeSpe!Gold despite my teasing, haha, I don't find him nearly as ridiculous as Silver does. I've always thought of Gold and Ethan as two different characters, Gold as his rash lovable PokeSpe self, Ethan as the nice boy next door, but for the purposes of this fic I imagined Ethan could be Gold, grown up and matured. Teenage boys, eh?

Still getting back into the swing of this whole fanfiction thing, so if you could find it in you to send a review my way, that would be wonderful and very much appreciated! Thanks for reading!