Spring Regionals, The 15th. [Present Year]

Ash watched the last traces of the Johto region transform into a vast ocean below. It would be his first time in a year that he would leave its soil for another region. There was nothing left in its boundaries to challenge or seek. His only goal within it had been finished at his loss in the Golden Silver Cup Semi-Finals. The chance to enter the region's Championships once again escaped his grasp. Though the attempt to do so was his only goal.

True Victory, once again, eluded Ash. Whatever clear win he could have made in the tournament was swiftly thrown out the window when he chose not to warn Pikachu of the incoming 'Hydro Blizzard'. It would have been easy attack to dodge and counter, even while Pikachu was turned around - but the verbal command to react to it was never made. Ash didn't want Pikachu to avoid it. Just like the silent words he spoke in his battle, he never wanted to find victory in its outcome.

He had heard Dawn had forfeited her placement before the Final Match could be officially announced. From what May had told him, Dawn only entered the tournament in the first place so she could 'listen to what he had to say four years ago'. And from what May had also told him, Dawn failed to understand what he was trying to say through their battle.

I guess we really can't speak to each other that way, he sadly accepted the thought. Dawn, however, would refuse to accept that fact of life. The blue-haired Coordinator supposedly dropped her Coordinator status shortly after her forfeit, and re-registered as a Trainer in the Battle League. What else she wanted to tell him, or hear from him, through battle alone, he wasn't sure. May had already told her everything he had ever wanted to say but couldn't. And true to her promise: May did not make her choice of words tolerable.

May and Dawn are no longer on speaking terms. It was a decision made by the both of them in quiet, done more out of respect than for spite.

Ash could only imagine how Dawn took the relayed message. He could only imagine how anyone would have taken it. Ash, after all, was never the type to say or feel 'those sorts of things'. But what was said had to be said, because it had become impossible for him to continue the feeling in denial.

The feeling inside his chest had subsided considerably. After he said everything he wanted to say in the battle, the feeling vanished almost entirely, as if it had barely ever existed at all. That idea made him smile. He was glad to not hold onto its burden anymore. If he were to run into Dawn again, he was sure the feeling would come back. But by then, he hoped she would be able to answer it in full.

Not once could Ash bring himself to verbally admit his innermost emotions. He couldn't tell Dawn how much he cared for her, how disappointed he was in her for expectedly caring after Tracey, how hurt he had felt when she refused to listen to him the first time, how distraught he was the day after she had struck him publicly in the restaurant, how depressed he was when his predictions came true the day Tracey left Dawn for another woman, how much pain he endured simply by looking at her once again before the battle could begin, how he had been thinking of her every other day, how he still silently wondered where she was when he woke in the mornings, and how he felt when he realized what that 'something' was about her.

There was always 'something' about the girl named Dawn. How she dressed, how she acted, how she thought, and how she ultimately was who she was. It made her unforgettable, and it made her the center of everyone's attention. That 'something' reflected similarly in himself. After years of introspection and quiet acceptance, Ash had come to realize that Dawn's 'something' was near identical to his 'something'. Identical in every way, yet different in every other way. The paths they took and the choices they made in life seemed to be the only things that separated them from being perfect twins in spirit.

And it was their separating decisions that made him feel the way he had always felt.

As much as he never wanted to admit it... Ash hated Dawn.

He hated her for everything she became over the years, because he could only see himself taking the same, foolish routes that she had. He hated how she treated him, as if he knew no better, when she knew none more. He hated how she talked and the way she acted, holding an air of victory over herself, when she still didn't know what that victory meant. He hated how no one else seemed to notice their similarities, because it made him feel incapable of acting against those thoughts. In his eyes, she was a reflection moving on its own - with every mistake and flaw perceivable - but she was impossible to communicate with, impossible to stop, stubborn as she was, stubborn as he was. He hated knowing that she was somewhere else, making mistakes he would never make, while he made mistakes somewhere else she would never ever make. And he hated knowing when she was beside him, doing exactly what he would have done, if she were the one watching instead. Everything about the two of them, and their unwillingness to solve it together, he hated.

What they would solve, how they would solve it, and what would come from its solution, he didn't know - and he was sure he didn't want to know. He let Pikachu be struck by Dawn's most powerful attack, because he didn't want to see a conclusion from his victory. In the end, he never wanted to prove himself right in hating her. He didn't want to hate her. He never wanted to hate her.

Ash always wanted something else for the two of them. A different emotion. A different thought. A different meaning. And a different victory.

But he could never find it on his own.

He hoped one day Dawn would find it with him, on the field of battle, with a victory the both of them could claim as their own.