A/N: Hi! This is my gift to brxe for the RLT Spring Gift Exchange. One of the requirements was that somewhere in the story there must be a theme of springtime. It ended up on the fringes by the time I finished it, used more as symbolism than anything else. I hope my buddy likes it and I hope you guys like it! Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

Warnings: Pokemon death, some alternate character interpretation, and a rather AR sort of setting.

Noise

It was spring and he was twelve when he met N. He was young and immature and happy to just have been able to get an Oshawott and a Lillipup and have their Pokeballs at his belt while running through the tall glass that reached his nose on some rainy May days.

N was seventeen and wide-eyed innocence (and stupidity like a Pidove) that was so off-kilter it made him step back and fidget. Touko always called him a coward, a wilting flower, that was why they had been forced to get the same species of Pokemon, according to her, because he was too scared to choose differently than her. (It wasn't true at all; he just thought Oshawott was cute and his always cooed when he came to visit and dangled flowers in his face to sniff. But nobody liked a boy who thought things were cute.)

That was why he hoped he was wrong about N, that for once his instincts were saying the wrong thing about this person staring at his sister. Looking down on her, hating her, looking more at the Pokemon who clearly didn't know any better. His Lillian was nipping at his heels, begging him to run away because something bad was about to happen. But that implied courage when Touya had none.

So he watched.

He watched the Purrloin's fangs sink into Oshawott's flippers, heard the screams of shell against fur covered skin and covered his ears and eventually had to shut his eyes. There was screaming and shouting and already a small mob forming. Someone was being booed, people were yelling, and his vision blurred into blobs. Why wasn't it stopping, why didn't it end? Touya dug his fingers in until he felt pain and still the noises continued until the air ripped with a commanding, slippery voice.

"I want to hear their voices too."

The voice was directed at him, was directed past the should-be-bright Touko twin who was slumped in horror over something, over some small body that was turning the crisp green grass, and for a moment Touya didn't understand why but the Purrloin was licking its paws clean and they were a little too dark and-

No. No, this guy had beat Touko and Touko was supposed to be strong.

N was waiting, arms crossed, Pokemon yawning. "Let me hear the voices of your Pokemon," he said, still in that too hasty, too clipped voice that sounded like it never heard humans talk before today.

Touya wanted to run away, he should have run a long time ago, but now... The voices grew louder and louder and his Pokemon were standing in front of him like shields and...

"No."

Touya blinked, as did N. Touya stared at his hands as he lowered them, enthralled briefly by the silence of the mob and the stillness that had overcome Touko. It gave him strength to repeat himself, even though it wasn't necessary. "No." His voice quavered briefly, but he bit his lip and breathed. "I'm not going to fight someone who hurts Pokemon like that!"

What if Touko's Pokemon was dead?

"You're-You're really weird!" he continued, feeling a little sick but having to go on because there was no turning back once you decided to be brave, that was what all of the heroes said. "You just stare at people and demand things from them and you don't even bother to understand them!"

"What is there to understand? I just need to hear their voices."

The conversation seemed to be on two different planes of existence. "There's plenty to understand!" He felt the tears at the corners of his eyes, cold like the water outside of town. "Why would you take a journey if you weren't going to learn anything? No wonder the Pokemon are so scared! You scare them!"

With those words, he pulled Touko away towards the Pokemon Center.

He wasn't sure who was watching him, he wasn't sure he really cared. But that trainer, N, was horrible. Like those Plasma people! Doing such horrible things and talking about separating humans from Pokemon. Sure, separate them from people like N! But not his sister! It wasn't her fault!

He hated them, hated them all.

Spring was new beginnings, new life. Emphasis on the was.

–

There was an endless amount of beeping, it seemed like days passed before the red lights were gone. And there was no pulse from the monitor.

No life.

Touko fled and Touya chased after her, but not before hearing a desperate wheeze from a nearby incubator. A little blind baby was born, and it called him forward.

"Why are you here?"

These words weren't scripted, but real, covered in small breezes through long green hair.

Touya recognized the difference as they stood outside the Nacrene City Gym. It was like that when he had said 'no'. There were no expectations from this conversation, no answers.

Well, that didn't matter. Touya didn't want answers. He wanted N to go away.

"It's a Pokemon Gym. Some trainers fight at them." Sharp words, words he wasn't supposed to say but would start saying now because he hated N. For Touko too, who would never, ever see him again, not if he could help it.

"That's cruel."

Touya laughed at the irony, at the eventually dawning sun. Beginnings always passed so quickly that they were soon winter endings before you could blink.

"You killed my sister's Oshawott, and you talk about cruelty."

"It was going to suffer-"

"You're the one who made him suffer!" Touya's chest heaved, almost a sob, but he wiped them away, refusing to cry ever again.

N shifted, and it was back, like he had been frightened, and Touya wanted to laugh. What did N, this two meter tall giant have to fear from an insect like Touya, who was only here because he was the forgotten one who had no partner, who had utterly nothing left to be considered valuable.

Touko had had everything. He couldn't be her, there was too much to do, but he could take her dream. Take it and make it grow.

"You think you can just kill Pokemon and, and have someone be okay with it?"

"Humans kill Pokemon all the time, they beat them." N had found his rhythm again, spring quick, faster in the early, warm wind. "That girl would have been kind for a time, then it would have come to an end, it always does, that's why I released it afterward."

"So you're better because you're too scared to keep a Pokemon?" Touya bristled. "You're better because you killed an Oshawott that was happy so it might not suffer later?"

"It saved him," N said in a little, pleading voice.

Better? "It won't ever see the sunshine again-"

Touya moved and without realizing, ended up punching N right in the nose. N stumbled back and before Touya realized what he had done, Dewott had jumped between them, twin shells raised towards N threateningly. No, not N himself, but towards something behind him.

N was silent, looking at a steady trickle of blood from his nose like he had never seen it before. "You've been brainwashed," he said, not to Touya, but to Nia. "Look at what this trainer's done! You think he won't do it to you?"

Nia squeaked vitriol at N, words that Touya couldn't hope to understand but made N step back, shaking his head, eyes comically wide. Was the fabric of the universe undone because someone had said this guy was wrong?

What was he, royalty?

"Nia! Let's go into the museum!" Nia turned at his words and marched away, swinging her shells back to where they belonged.

It didn't matter. Touya had to make it so N didn't matter to him. Touko's dream, his Pokemon, this journey, they were all that mattered.

Everything else was just white noise, like the Pokemon singing through the Pinwheel Forest trees.

–

She called him when he made it from the desert, dressed in a white lab coat and with less puffy eyes than two months before. She had an Audino baby in her lap and a Blitzle winding its way around her legs and a smile on her face.

"Did you know you were always this strong?"

He was weak, because it should be him in the lab coat and her having the adventures.

But all he did was wear a false smile and say. "I'm not strong enough yet."

"When do you think you will be?"

He can't-and doesn't want to- answer that.

–

Ferris Wheel.

He hated heights.

"I'm the King of Team Plasma."

Touya considered overcoming that fear to shove N out of the carriage door. Then he decided against it, settling instead for groaning. "No wonder you act like that."

"I... beg your pardon?" Touya wasn't sure if it was a question out of surprise or if it was a question at all.

"You're so rehearsed, does your daddy tell you what to say?" N winced without noticing and Touya raised an eyebrow. "Royalty is like that in all the books I read. Rarely do they get to do very much. They're just figureheads. Is that you, N? Are you just a puppet for Plasma?" He would feel a little sorry for him if he was. Not forgive him, because he didn't know how, but he could pity him.

"No."

Touya raised an eyebrow, hearing N's voice waver a little, jittery with disbelief. It was like looking in a mirror., like looking at himself hunched by his partner, afraid to fight. But N had not understood sympathy then, or tried for it, and Touya couldn't afford to be now.

"Yes, you are, because if you weren't, you would have had Purrloin stop fighting. One of the most important things a trainer learns when battling," he swallowed. "Is knowing when to stop. And you don't know anything."

He left the Ferris Wheel, and N behind. He was a little less white noise now, but he was still noise.

–

"These kids are having fun, aren't they?"

They were. They were too young to journey, too young to fight but there they were, battling and laughing with their Herdier that they had to have raised with their parents, who must have protected them from the cradle. They looked so happy.

Touya didn't know why he was so jealous.

Alder, the Champion of Kalos, gave him a clap on the shoulder. "Play with them. You might remember something."

"Like what?"

Adler muffled a laugh. "Like what you've been missing with that frown on your face. You haven't been looking for all the sunshine, have you?"

Was N snapping?

The longer they stood in Chargestone Cave autumn leaves breezing in and out of the cave exit, the longer those green eyes were on him, the more he wondered about him. The less it hurt to look at him. He wasn't just the destroyer of Touko's dreams.

He was the King of Team Plasma. He was messed up in the head, stuck forever in winter.

This wasn't just black and white anymore, though he wondered which of them wanted it to be, him or N.

"Things will be simple, there will be an answer!"

"No there won't!" Touya snapped over shock and fear and confusion from everyone else. Again, that damnable no. "Whatever the world is, it's not simple! That's not the way the world works! There will always be an ideal behind truth and truth behind an ideal. You can't separate them! Just like you can't separate humans and Pokemon!"

The air was frozen. Even the zaps in the air were gone.

Until N did snap, whispering. "Yes, I can. I will prove it to you."

That was the first time N had walked away from him.

"Are you going to fight N?"

He was. It was decided the moment he had rung the bell on the Celestial Tower. It was decided the moment that Zekrom had roared from Dragonspiral Tower. He had probably decided to fight when Touko's Oshawott had flatlined. Even though he had kept running away, he would always end up at the same starting point.

Maybe if he did fight, he could finally move forward, since Touko was already trying.

"You are the Hero of the Light Stone!"

Oh fuck that.

"Why is it every time I meet you, you shove something down my throat?"

He was thirteen, thirteen and three years too old for this to make him smile, for the idea of heroism to sound like anything more than tyranny. Not to mention, these words were spoken by Ghetsis, who looked at him like he was a clump of April mud attached to the man's overpriced shoes.

"We've barely spoken," the man countered and Touya laughed.

"But your king has spoken for you." His partners, his six carefully chosen partners are all shivering in their capsules, ready to pounce, ready to kill, but he didn't do it. Touya simply turned, and like he had to N before this guy, walked away, leaving with only the parting shot of "And you force-fed him some crappy speeches."

He knew he was a coward, he knew it from the very beginning. He always avoided conflict, but it had kep his skin alive. And it had led him here, to N, who he was trying to avoid fighting all along because of Touko.

If Touko couldn't beat him, what chance do I have?

"Chance has nothing to do with it anymore," he murmured. "I'm fighting him. I can't run away."

The Light Stone thrummed in his hands, warming like he had bathed it in the many campfires he had made over his journey.

This was the truth.

He wasn't allowed to run away. Touko had been beaten. If he was beaten, his partners would be gone, and humans and Pokemon would be apart, forever, in a world that relied on both of them together to survive.

This was the truth.

N was just a puppet who couldn't recognize reality, but he had still done horrible things. There was no one truth in this world, no justification for anything that had happened over the past year, over the years that Plasma had likely been running around.

Forgiveness had to be proven, had to be earned.

And the only want for that forgiveness to happen at all was if he won here today.

The Stone grew white-hot at his fingers but it didn't burn. Instead he was wrapped in white light and the air was singed by lightning as N appeared and Touya looked at him without fear.

Here I go, sis.

N wasn't allowed to be white noise anymore.

–

The last time N walked away from him, from them, it was with a half-formed apology and into the sky.

Maybe this time, both of them could journey with open ears and with flowers in their hair.