At five, Pallet Town is the entire world. That river down past grandpa's lab is the raging sea, and the oran berry bushes are never ending forests. It's a big and scary world, one to get lost in—one to lose your mind to.

Green remembers the water, licking and lapping, its languid form weaving itself through his toes. He remembers feeling the river breathe—the way it swells like his lungs when it breaches his ankles. He remembers looking at the horizon and seeing Cinnabar—nothing but a tiny maple spec accessorized by an elongated black, smoky arm from the quiet shores of Pallet.

He remembers days where the sun beat down upon his tiny brunette head and cloudy days where everything is shaded in grays. He remembers bubblegum; pink, soft and warm, like childhood, but most of all, he remembers Red.

That October day, the wind is like a minty cushion. Each breath is like a crisp nibble to his windpipe, and when the elder Oak decides to pull him from his daily routine of playing in front of the lab until the sky is the color of watermelon, he can't really complain. The way his grandfather nudges him towards the other boy is nothing short of distressing, and Green can feel his thoughts being scrambled for the first time of many as he meets Red's quiet gaze. He shrinks back behind his grandfather's leg when those ruby hues continue on staring as he offers his meager and shy "Hello."

Red doesn't reply. He never does.

The twigs and greenery leave patches of shaky light to filter through and rest on Red's scalp. Slow breathing slow breathing—

He has to stay absolutely silent.

Not that doing so was really too difficult to do, since Red has managed to utter little more than a couple grunts throughout his seven years of life. He blinks, eyes crusty—Green is standing out in the crossroads of town, the dusty dirt trail unmoving beneath his sandals, and Red can hear, through the bushes and under his feathery wisps of hair:

"Five…four…three…two..."

He feels his breath hitch when Green finally manages the final "One, zero" and pulls his hands from his eyes, slowly turning full circle to survey the neighborhood. The ground crunches underneath the soles of the Oak boy's open toed shoes. Red trembles and eases the nearest bushel of berries, leaves and stems to cover up some part of his face—can Green see him? He can't tell.

They can't see you if you can't see them.

Lie, lie, lie—it's all a bunch of horribly conjectured words formed into a terribly formulated lie. Red thinks just that when Green comes skipping this way after checking behind either of their homes, and Red gets scared—he can't help it. Though he knows for sure Green won't hurt him if he's found, somehow the idea is just as bad.

Losing is bad.

The entire bush rustles when he backs further to its center, trying to shrink himself tinier as the branches grow closer in proximity to each other and his body. It's when he snaps quite a number of those dry, frail branches that Green directs his curious and bright gaze this way. He swallows thickly and quietly, scrabbling himself similar to the way a krabby would to try and maneuver himself to the opposite side of the plant.

Green's footsteps grow nearer and nearer by the second and Red holds his breath, squeezing his eyes shut, as if expecting death himself. He hears Green giggle as he weaves his way into the mesh of branches and when the finger of 'Death' lays itself upon his tiny, limber chest, it is surprisingly not cold, sharp or unfeeling.

"Gotcha."

Red notices, now, as he warily opens his eyes, that Green has a dimple on the left side of his cheek.

Somewhere along the way, a tiny seed of volatility is planted. If it was wrapped up in the geniality, neither of the two ever saw it.

However, when Green pushes Red into the river they always play in, he can feel it begin to pulsate between the two of them. Red feels it move and thresh about in the tender, sweet flesh of their friendship when Daisy pulls him out of the water, reprimanding Green—and they both sense it as their connection begins to rot and bitter.

By the age of ten, it's not only hooked its roots and tendrils around and into their relationship, but it has more or less become it. He wakes up one day, and it seems all he can will himself to do is lay there in bed, and that alone is hard enough.

It's a horrid daze he's fallen into since Green has gone and jammed a monkey wrench into their relationship—all he does now is sit, observing the world, as boring as it may be, from the creaky wood flooring of his room. His NES is well visited, and he's in the middle of finding out that Princess Peach is once again not in this castle when his mother calls him downstairs.

She tells him Oak is waiting at the lab—but when he arrives to the pristine whiteness that is Oak's lab, having spent a short amount of time preparing and making himself adventure ready (mainly due to his mother's request), he finds Green there, dressed in a black polo shirt, cargo pants the same color as the sweater he once wore (lavender), and a fanny pack strapped along his hip.

Red tries to recede back to the door as quickly as he can manage, without catching his friend-turned-bully's attention. When the door creaks open, Green turns his head just slightly, curious as to why someone who just entered would leave so soon, but only catches sight of the back of a ruffling red vest.

He returns to inspecting his grandfather's bookshelf, having lost interest, and the flat of his tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth.

Outside, the air is vivid. Red feels the beedrills buzzing, and hears the pidgeys flying.

When Oak stops him from venturing off into the tall grass, he can't help but wonder where it is the old man runs off to all the time. The professor ushers him back into the tiny research facility, and Green is still standing there, back turned to the two of them. It's not too long before he turns around, though, and to both Red's dismay and relief, the brunette ignores his childhood friend's very existence with absolution.

"Gramps!" He starts with a taxing frown as he turns himself around and crosses his arms deftly. "I'm fed up with waiting!"

Red watches as the toe of Green's shoe taps on the tiled floor, and barely listens as the other makes his impatience apparent to the professor. It seems so long ago that Green's presence held a friendly glow—seems so long ago since Red's seen him smile, really. Red's eyes glaze over as he watches Green bicker more at than with the 50-some-year-old.

Green rolls his eyes and huffs as Oak propositions himself in front of the two youths and begins to talk—Red can feel the air nestled around his left arm shift as Green eyes the table on the other side of the room. Oak begins to go on about his adventures as a child, and while Red just stands and takes it, the wily haired brunette beside him just jostles and wostles, unable to keep still.

"—go on! Choose!"

Red blinks beneath his new baseball cap as the professor motions to the three pristine pokéballs to their right. He feels Green's entire being touslebeside him—"Hey, Gramps! No fair!" There's an almost sort of anguish in his voice as he speaks the next line. "What about me?" With a slow breath, Red sneaks a sidelong look at Green—

And he's caught. Green is already glaring at him with a look of complete revulsion coloring his features.

"Be patient, Green. You can have one, too," Oak offers a relaxed smile, and Green stops violating the other with his eyes, if not with a bit of reluctance.

Red snaps his eyes forward again and pads the rubber soles of his shoes over the linoleum in a flurry. His hand trembles as he stares at the three objects, and he hovers his palm over the middle—then the left, then the right, and then he hears Green groan—Red can practically taste the grimace on his face. Oak chuckles vaguely, and Red guesses it's over his grandson's petulant behavior. With a swipe of his hand, Red snags the middle one, and stares at it as the ceiling lights catch on its top.

Red jolts a bit when he looks over and sees Green grasping the one farthest on the left of the table and says, "I'll take this one, then!"

There's the tiniest hint of that long lost dimple on his face, and when he asks (more like commands, really) to battle, Red can't say he minds it at all.

They battle a lot; whenever the two of them meet up, really. Green is always the one to initiate it, and Red agrees, if only to watch the pure exhilaration on Green's face during each encounter.

He begins to dread each meeting, though, as that exhilaration turns into desperation and desolation. With each meeting, Green grows impossibly more and more distant.

In the what-would-seem-to-be ultimatum, Red takes the name of champ from beneath Green's feet.

And he falls.

Of course he falls.

Red watches as leaf hued eyes darken and those familiar features slowly contort—and he still says nothing when Green shoulders roughly past him.

The air is thick in the hall of fame—his throat is dry as he's instated into the hall, and he thinks that maybe he's a bit parched. Oak is going on about something, but Red really doesn't care about what this Oak says, nor does he care about what that Oak says.

He's only concerned with and about one Oak.

Still, he says nothing. He never does.

Three years after it all Green sits quietly beside him, and they both bore their eyes into the wall of the Mount Silver cave that Red's decided to inhabit. Eevee, a Pokémon the Viridian City gym leader had earned via rocket game corner, lay nestled up near the fire with pikachu.

Red can hear them purring to each other as the fire pops.

"I've heard eevees can breed with pikachus," Green murmurs half mindedly as he drags his finger across the ice cold floor. Red eases his palm over the top of Green's wrist and hand, and Green finds that the other's hand is cold, sharp, and unfeeling—

Like death.

But Red is not dead, nor is he death—simply a cold boy with jaunty bones, and therefore with fingers of the same manner. As for unfeeling, clearly that was not the case, as Green can feel Red, well, feeling his knuckles and tendons.

After a couple seconds of uncomfortably focusing on Red's thumb as it traversed the map of veins on his hand, Green finally manages a tight and somewhat snappy "Can I help you?"

Red doesn't inch his face closer, nor does Red close the gap between them, nor does his hand travel up the brunette's arm to caress his face, no—he just keeps a hold on Green's hand, using his gloved one like a frighteningly cold and twitching paperweight.

"No," Red says with finality. "You can't."

At thirteen, Green has seen the whole world. He's been slapped in the face by the raging sea, and he's lost himself in the never ending forests—neither of the two quite compare to Red, the oran berry bushes, or the river down by grandpa's. Neither of them quite compare to playing until the sky is the color of watermelon, and neither of them are pink, warm, and soft like bubblegum or childhood.

But still, Green sits and listens to the mountain breathe; feels it swell with his lungs as the pad of Red's thumb traces over the knuckle of his index finger.