A/N: So this started out as a pokeshipping week prompt and now its….this…so…we're going to see if I can't make this go for like a multi-chapter thing with an actual plot…I make no promises though…dear gods I wish I knew what I was doing

Into the Woods

They tumble into the center, startling whoever is at the door to lock up. Neither notices. The night is closing in behind, pressing in like a dark pulse. You don't stay outside in the dark here, wherever here is. They're lucky to have made it. They really thought they'd have had to camp tonight and that was never a good plan. It used to be they'd only stay at a center if they were near one or the weather was bad. That had been before, way back when they'd been near The League.

It's storming too. Little bullets of rain that shifts to ice sharp needles of glass for the last mile or so of their sprint to the doors. It's only around seven and already the sky is black. Blindingly so like it only ever is in the caves in Kanto.

This never would have happened when Brock was with them. He kept such careful track of towns and times and centers. No if they'd been with Brock they'd have found somewhere to sleep hours ago and been set up and enjoying a warm dinner. Maybe even already asleep, dreaming of the next days' adventure. Arceus, if Brock had been with them they wouldn't have missed the ferry and had to travel by foot and Lapras towards Hoenn. And that was really it. Brock had been with them for six years. Six years of fights and corrections and instructions and guidance. Six years during which Ash and Misty had only had to grow up.

But now, now they were in charge of their journey in a way they hadn't been since the first months of their tenth year. And they'd messed up. They'd missed the ferry and this…

This isn't Kanto or Johto or the Orange Islands. This, this is different. Professor Oak had taken a look at the map they'd pulled out and his face had gone white. He'd called it the badlands, even though the maps called it Strayanthe, and begged them to wait for the next ferry. But they 'knew' could handle it. They were sixteen and hardly the inexperienced children that they had started out as.

They didn't want to wait and the trip through the Strayanthe was only, really, an extra two or three months by the map. They'd lose that much time waiting for the next boat anyway.

There isn't a League here. They knew that, of course, going in, but hadn't considered what that meant. After all they'd spent their lives in one League or another. Mew, Misty had grown up in a League outpost. The absence of a League made about as much sense as a champion magikarp.

It's not just the absence of a League, though. No, it's that nothing here makes sense and they have no pokémon to fly them out and Lapras can only swim so far. So they continue through…They find towns, sort of. They're sparse, one or two sprinkled between settlements and ranches, and almost unrecognizable. But they're there. There are centers too, scattered almost at random—they're not set up like the ones in League territory. At best they're glorified pharmacies but more often even that is too generous. They're more, herbalist shops, and abandoned ones at that, stocked with whatever the locals can find. At least they almost always have a phone and a list of numbers where a Nurse Joy could, theoretically, be reached. They don't always have lobbies, though, or food or space for trainers needing a break. Few of the centers even have rooms for trainers to stay, mostly they have cots that can be pulled out in front of the medicine shelf and stayed in through the night. The phones can't reach anywhere but other centers in the area. They've tried everywhere-Johto, Kanto, Hoenn—but sometimes even just getting the next town over is a lucky break. Still, it's better than outside. Barely.

There isn't really a police force either. Most towns have a Jenny but she has too much to worry about to focus on fights in the stretches between towns and islands.

Still, they had been lucky tonight. And that's truly scary. Today, today had been a good day…out here. They're still standing, or working on standing anyway. They have all of their Pokémon and they have somewhere to sleep. Inside.

It was a close one though. Team Rocket had discovered them hours away from the next pokémon center on their map and the fight…had not been a good one. Then again, fights never were good here. They still remember that first fight, days after they'd started the trek. They'd thought, Ash and Misty had, that the fight had been a joke. A battle just like one of the millions that Ash and Misty had won before. Jessie and James had a pattern; a motto, some banter, a brief battle and then Team Rocket blasting off again.

Only they didn't.

That first fight, and every single one afterwards, Team Rocket fought so hard and so fast that following and winning were less about training and courage and more about striking first. Team Rocket doesn't just go for the pokémon. It's a lesson written in the scars on their arms. Doctors are scarce here, as difficult to find as Nurse Joys in the area. Even then, most doctors cover several islands alone. A doctor can be called, of course, in case of emergency but those still standing at the end of a fight are rarely the biggest emergency of the day. And getting someone by phone is always a feat here.

Most towns had somebody—a village elder, a midwife, a wise woman—who could help. But, well, outsiders weren't always welcomed and at the end of the day it was sometimes easier to patch one another up then answer questions. Ash and Misty are getting alarmingly good at patching one another up.

But they were lucky today. Sort of. They'd won their fight, if you could call it winning, but their first aid kit—pilfered from a long abandoned center in an empty town—had run out. They were beginning to believe they'd have to camp in the dark with a storm threatening. It would have been a bad night. Ash could hardly see through a black eye and broken nose and Misty was favoring her right ankle. Still, they couldn't camp. Misty threw an arm over Ash's shoulder, handed him Togepi and pointed out the path as they limped along. They were picking their way up a hill, the temperature dropping quickly, when they found him, an old man berry hunting on the outskirts of an unmarked town. He's alone, the old man is, and dirty. No pokémon nearby and no pokeballs anywhere on him. But that's not terribly unusual out here. And he is old, or at least unkempt. His clothes are worn and muddied and he has a shock of blue tinged white hair that trails from his head to a ratty mess near his feet. He didn't have to help them and Misty was almost surprised he had. She and Ash must have looked a horror trudging up that hill in the rain bruised and bloody and stumbling. Still, even with the help, the man made Misty shiver-though that might have been the night—and she shied away from his almost purple nails when he picked out an unmarked center on their worn map.

It had started raining a mile before they reached the center and they'd begun running. Pikachu had shoved his way into Ash's jacket and Misty had placed Togepi in her bag and they had ran. And ran. And ran. Until neither could breathe and they were wet and cold and shivering and tumbling through doors with a crudely marked pokeball on the front.

There's a gasp as they spill into the weakly lit lobby. Misty doesn't hear it. Her world has narrowed to her breath. In and out and in. She coughs and it echoes beside her. Her ankle wobbles and her knees give and something thuds beside her but she's…not on the ground. Something…Ash?

Ash lowers Misty to the floor and she falls to her knees beside him coughing as she catches her breath. His own hitches painfully in his chest. Dimly he hears a wheeze pick up as he starts to shiver. There's another gasp and Misty looks up and promptly chokes on her own surprise. It's Nurse Joy. An actual Nurse Joy and yet, she looks…tired. In Kanto and Johto both, no matter when or how they found a center, the Nurse Joy there is always pristine and smiling with a chansey nearby. But this Joy—her uniform is stained and frayed around the edges and her hair is frizzed. There's a smudge on her cheek and she's not smiling. There is no chansey. But it's Nurse Joy and she can help.

Misty looks over to Ash and catches his eye, nodding over at the woman staring at them. Nurse Joy is gaping, her mouth working open and shut as though she can't find the words. She looks like a seaking and Misty, Misty starts laughing—a light girly sound shoved between coughs and gasps. Ash can't help it, he smiles and then, surprising even himself, laughs along. It hurts, roughly coming up past air he can't choke down, but it's so funny. He has tears streaming down his cheeks when Joy breaks out of whatever has been holding her silent.

"Are you two ok?" Joy asks, keys hanging limply in her hand. She sounds wrong, her voice is rough but that could be them because really, they must look a sight.

They're dripping wet, drenching the floor with mud and water and blood. There's a Pikachu wriggling his way out of a jacket and a Pokémon crying in a red bag. And they're laughing as though nothing is wrong and the sun is shining and they can't hear the screams that make up the night here. Ash is still struggling to catch his breath enough to talk when Misty replies "Yes. We'd like a room though." The Joy nods, smiling to have something to do. She steps around them and locks the doors before near skipping to her computer.

"Trainer Id?" she asks. Ash fumbles for his pokedex while Misty hands over a well-loved gym badge. Joy takes both offered items and looks them over. She types so information into an old computer, groaning as the light blinks unevenly. "One room or two?" She asks, frowning at the screen.

"One." They say together. Joy nods again and it's weird. They know that they don't care around here but it's so strange to be offered one room. It wouldn't be a choice in Kanto or the Orange Islands or even Johto. They're too old, or too young, to be sharing a room alone. In Kanto, if they couldn't afford two rooms, they'd have been sent to one of the trainer hostels that every center ran. They thought, The League did, that keeping all of the trainers together in one hall would prevent anything untoward from happening. Of course, if Gary's stories were to be believed, throwing twenty plus teenagers into a room really stopped nothing.

Joy glances at them again, a small darting look that quickly refocuses on the computer as though staring at them is painful. "Ok." She says. And maybe they'd have been given their own room even in Kanto to avoid scaring the new trainers if this Joy can't even look at them. She hands over their room key, smiling with her eyes screwed shut and asks if there's anything else she can do for them.

Ash and Misty shake their heads in a unison that Brock would have commented on had he been there, and make their way over the elevator. They're too tired and achy to handle the stares. It's only as they're stepping through the doors that Ash thinks to call for a first aid kit. Nurse Joy throws it towards them from the desk and both Ash and Misty watch it arc across the center, neither sure they have the energy to move towards it.

The first aid kit lands in the elevator as the doors slide shut, locking them in the mirrored room with an echoing thud. Pikachu wriggles out of Ash's jacket and walks over to it, smelling it tentatively as though it might attack. Togepi's wails quiet to soft snores. She's cried herself to sleep. Ash and Misty look up almost together and wince. Their faces are reflected in the dinted metal of the elevator and there's nowhere they can look that they don't see blood and mud and scrapes and scars. Even Pikachu is scratched.

Ash chokes on a sob but Misty shakes her head. They can't do that yet. Later, later when they are locked behind a door and patched and clean they can fall apart. Later. But now? Now they have to find the pieces. She glances at Pikachu first, the electric rodent was so good at getting into the fray without getting hit and it shows. He is dirty and his fur is ruffled but he gives Misty a tired chu when he notices her eye. Though there is some blood matted behind his ear, Misty is sure he's escaped injury. The blood is probably Ash's, he had thrown himself in front of Pikachu after all.

She looks to Ash next, not wanting to meet her own eyes, and evaluates his injuries in a pattern that's become routine. Legs, arms, chest then face. He's scratched up, of course-razor leaf will do that—and his eye has all but swelled shut but Misty doesn't see anything that can't be handled by a first aid kit. Thankfully.

There's no way they'd get a doctor tonight. Maybe in the morning—this center actually has a Nurse so, who knows; the phone may work. It may even call out. The elevator jostles and Misty stumbles, crying out as she puts weight on her leg. Ash's eyes dart to her from his examination of Pikachu and in his cringe she knows she has not been as lucky.

Ash reaches out his hand and, for a moment, Misty thinks he's going to brush her hair back from her cheek. It's a moment that ends when everything stings and tears fill her eyes and Ash pulls back his hand with fingertips stained red.

"That's going to need stitches," he mumbles. Misty nods numbly. Something trickles down her jaw and it's warm and wet and heavy. She doesn't want to handle it. At least it's her though. Ash is much better at stitches. Even seeing out of only one eye he's better than she is.

Misty takes a deep breath. The elevator dings, doors sliding open into weak light and shabby halls. She leans on Ash and together they limp shivering into the hall. Their room is blissfully the first one out of the doors. Ash leans Misty against the wall and fumbles with the keys, dropping them from shivering fingers before Pikachu takes them from the floor and gets them, somehow, into the door. Pikachu has brought the first aid kit too, dragging it along behind them in his teeth. They spill through the door into a room with two beds, a drawer and a scratched floor. There's a small bathroom just off the entrance and window that's boarded up. But it looks clean and when the door clicks shut, they're alone.

"I'm going to settle Togepi." Misty says, wincing into the room. Ash pushes her to the bed closest the door and takes her bag from her.

"I got it." He says. Gently he takes the baby pokémon out of Misty's bag and settles it on the bed closest the boarded window. The pokémon stirs and chirps tiredly at Ash before cuddling into the pillow it's placed on. Pikachu jumps up beside Togepi on the bed and nuzzles into Ash's hand, before curling up to sleep. Ash brushes the worst of the mud and dirt from Pikachu's fur.

"He's ok." Misty says and Ash nods. Pikachu is ok, but Misty.

"Stitches," Ash says again, gesturing at Misty's cheek.

"Let's clean up first." She gestures at herself covered in dirt and grime and then at Ash dressed roughly the same. He fetches towels from the bathroom and wets them down. Neither has the energy for a shower but at least they can pretend to get clean. They change, carefully putting on whatever fresh clothing they have left, and then sit on the bed across from one another with the first aid kit between them. Together they open it and pour through it like kids on Christmas morning, only they pull out gauze and rubbing alcohol instead of new toys and games. Ash's mouth sets into a grim line when he pulls out a curved needle. Now they just need thread and….there's no thread. They've emptied the kit and there is no thread.

"Bandages?" Ash asks, Misty shakes her head.

"Fishing line. It's in my bag." Ash retrieves it and threads the needle, sterilizing everything in the peroxide Misty pulls from the kit.

"Ready?" Ash set's the needle to her skin. Misty glances over at Togepi and Pikachu sleeping and nods, biting her lip. Ash starts. Five stitches later her eyes are tearing and her knuckles are white, twined into the rough bedding so tightly she may have cut herself on the fabric, but the pokémon are still asleep.

"Thanks" Misty murmurs quietly, voice rough with unshed tears. Ash says nothing, leaning over to clean a different gash under her eye. They're silent for a moment but it's not the quiet of focus, it's the silence of saying nothing when the air is full of words unsaid. "What's the matter Ash?"

"I don't know Mist, I did just stitch your face up." The words should be sarcastic but they're empty, mike he's hiding something he doesn't want to say. Misty can feel herself getting angry, what in the world does he think he can't say to her. Doesn't he trust her? She's followed him for six years. Arceus, hasn't she shone that she trusts him?

"Try again, Ketchum." Misty replies.

"It's nothing." He says, waving his hand dismissively. "Don't we need to wrap your ankle?"

"Tauros, stop changing the subject." Misty spits, Ash looks down and Misty instantly feels sorry. "Yeah. My ankle needs wrapping."

Ash grabs a wrap from the kit between them and settles himself by her ankle, studiously ignoring her face. For several moments he says nothing and Misty closes her eyes, assuming the conversation is done. It wouldn't be the first time. Without someone to referee they've learned to drop fights before they start.

"Do you regret it?" Ash asks in a quiet voice. Eyes closed and sleep drawing her in, Misty murmurs a response automatically—a tuneless hum that she carries on until the words break in through the fog of her exhaustion. Does she regret what? There's nothing for her to—oh. This again? She'd thought they'd gotten over that in the first week. This, whatever this was, was her choice.

Her eyes shoot open, but Ash's head is down, focused on his task. "No." Ash nods, but keeps his eyes down. Misty scoffs and leans over to stop him. "Hey," She says, placing one hand over his and using the other to draw his eyes to her. "I don't regret it."

"Yeah ok," Ash says, voice betraying his disbelief.

"Ash, what? You think you somehow convinced me to come with you even though I wanted to go back?" Misty asks, tiredly. Ash shakes his head but his good eye is wide and Misty knows that she's hit his fear exactly. "Mew, when have I ever done something I didn't want to do?"

"But the gym closed and we…." He trails off gesturing to the bandages in his hand and the Pokémon asleep on the other bed. Misty shakes her head.

"The gym was my parents dream. Not mine. Not my sisters. I made a choice and so did they." Ash nods, ties off the bandage and looks up. He's not crying, not yet, but his eyes are red and it's not just the blooming shiner that's causing it. "Hey, I don't regret it. Besides, if I had gone home you probably would have made the ferry and then…what? Forced some poor Hoenn girl to follow you around by frying her bike? Please Ketchum, you wouldn't last three days without me." Misty smiles.

Ash grins, "I think I would have lasted longer than that. The ferry takes at least two."

Misty raises an eyebrow, "I stand by my prediction." On the next bed Pikachu coos in his sleep and Ash sighs.

"Asleep and still agreeing with Misty?" Another sleepy coo comes from the bed and Misty giggles. "You really don't regret it though? Coming with me, I mean?"

Misty sighs and launches forward, smacking his shoulder lightly before hugging him. "You are denser than a slowpoke sometimes, Ash. Of course I don't regret it. I didn't regret it when we first got here, I didn't regret it when we decided to keep going through instead of turning around. And I don't regret it now. Though I do regret not having my bike…" she trails off and ducks, laughing, as Ash swipes at her head. He's smiling now. They're clean, almost, and as patched up as they're going to get, the pokémon are asleep and the door is locked and they are something approaching safe.

He throws his arm around Misty again, hugging her to him, and falls sideways pulling her to the bed. She giggles all the while. They're so different then the ten year olds they were. The kids who would have blanched at the blood and screamed and flushed at the contact. Instead, when they land with Misty nearly atop him, she sighs and rests her head against his chest. She's warm and he's exhausted. His breathing slows.

Misty feels her breathing start to match his and her eyes drift ever closer. She spares a glance back over to the other bed, with Pikachu and Togepi sleeping away. She should probably move. Pikachu doesn't usually shock her when she moves him over to Ash. But this bed is comfortable and Ash is warm. She can get up in a little while. Maybe after a short nap. Of not. There is no one out here who knows who they are. No one to complain or notice or comment or tell them they really should sleep in separate beds. It is just them and for now, that's enough.