should i have?

i. pallet

It isn't hard to fall in love when you're twelve and you don't know the difference between your parents' relationship and his. Your dad visits every two weeks, sometimes more, and when he buys you things he makes sure your mom doesn't feel left out. Red's dad would be a myth if he hadn't insisted on his existence.

You kiss him under the drooping branches between your yards and tell him you know what it's like. You never understand the expression he makes when you say that, and you never ask what it means.

ii. pewter

You decide in a fit of optimism that you don't like small towns anymore, but Pewter is deceptively close-knit for a city and you feel lost in its hard grey streets. The museum becomes your shelter, and when one day a traveler from somewhere you haven't heard of tells you about a place where water flows forever and never and sometimes upside-down, you decide that this knowledge is more important than training. To hell with training if you can listen to people's stories all day, you think.

No one else stops by to talk to the girl sitting across from the Mt. Moon exhibit, and you win your badge and wander out.

iii. cerulean

You were a swimmer once, back when you didn't climb through caves for a living, and the smell of chlorine is oddly charming—or maybe it's the sister you challenge, who smiles as bright as the sun and commands her pokémon perched on her throne above the water. Her manicured hand brushes against yours as she hands you a complimentary technical machine, and you wonder about the hours a gym leader keeps and if she ever swims in the lake when she's feeling adventurous and how well she knows the slopes of the northern cape.

You realize you've left your swimsuit in the pokémon center an hour into the next route and don't bother retrieving it.

iv. lavender

How do you mourn when nothing you've lost has been rightfully yours? How do you move past something you passed by too long ago?

Red is leaving town as you arrive, and his lips are wonderfully familiar, but somehow that isn't comforting at all.

v. celadon

You stay the longest here, not because you love it especially, but because you've caught up to Blue and he's on a vacation of sorts. Spend a little time with him while you're here, he insists, and you suppose your next destination can wait.

Nothing is quite like fumbling your way past the ID checks in most of the city's dimly-lit bars and stumbling your way home, forgetting whose pokémon center room is whose and waking up with mostly-softened spikes of amber hair in your eyes. You feel yourself focusing on each day separately here instead of letting them all run together in a mixture of vague goals and possible endings. And you don't have to wonder if what you're doing is supposed to be fun because it is—even if you never communicate to Blue how much his friendship means to you, because that's only an invitation for vulnerability.

You move on in separate directions, and the possibility of never seeing him again doesn't cross your mind.

vi. saffron

You spend your time on the phone with him under perennial fluorescent sunshine as he moves southward to accept a cordial cruise ship invitation, made possible by the worldwide fame of his family name and the emergence of his own. Buildings pass you by and cast shadows across the single scar on your cheekbone (finally, a souvenir of struggle—something to prove you had lived) and you flutter through the gym as if by accident, never batting an eye until she does.

And you let her whisper to you, let her ghost words down your spine and make you shiver in anticipation, let her probe your mind and offer nothing (spoken) in return.

Gym hurdle having been accomplished, you pack your bags.

vii. vermilion

S.S. ANNE CAUGHT IN TROPICAL STORM, headlines read, and you realize you haven't talked to Blue in a while.

He's been all over the television since they first started off—you and Red, too, but Blue is Oak and Oak is fame—and you've heard enough about his genius to reassure you of his safety and make you realize that it's not something you know firsthand. The last time you battled him was ages ago. He won easily, and you thought nothing of it. But the passion he reportedly channels through his gym matches is unfamiliar to you, and not improbable.

You wonder if you can really say you know him.

viii. cinnabar

Your scar is nothing against the map of his torso, where routes are definitively marked with raised white and lead nowhere. You wonder if he wants to tell you their stories as you trace them mindlessly, but he never speaks and so neither do you.

You discipline yourself to stay there and lie next to him, because he seems to enjoy the feeling of the two of you enjoying each others' silent company and it's about time you worked on not fidgeting.

ix. viridian

It's hard to fall in love when you've been skating by the world for nineteen years and he's actually experienced it. Some days he builds up his fantasy walls so thick that he's ten again, flitting around the flat with excitement at the treasures the day will bring, and you do nothing to dispel the illusion; other days he's real, too real, and news of the world weighs him down, your newspaper-thin spirit too weak against the immensity of his.

But you're there, and you learn. You could have been Blue if the world hadn't put you on fast-forward and ushered you forward faster than your eyes go. You could have experienced everything, and you could be re-experiencing it in nightmares.

Is it too naïve to wonder if you should have waited?

a/n: love you