Author's Note:

Hey guys, so I actually redid this story and am in the process of reposting the chapters. I took out some of the profanity (haha), changed some plot, and generally tried to make it flow better. So, sorry, please bear with me, and I'll try to get them up quickly! Enjoy!

And for new readers: Welcome! I hope you like this story. :)

Oh, and one more note about this story: I'm purposely keeping the shippings really open-ended. I don't really know exactly where it's going romantically, although I do have an idea (probably not overly hard to guess). But it's more fun and suspenseful when anything could happen! So stay tuned! :)

Chapter One

With a sigh of exasperation and a fierce yank at his tawny brown hair, Blue Oak leaned across the doorway and fixed his furious brown eyes on me.

"Tell me, Leaf…what the hell did you do this afternoon?"

I opened my mouth to retort, but the tiny whimper that managed to escape didn't even make it past my throat. My heart sank. You see, there was nothing I could say to explain myself out of the situation. And even if there was, my voice had just made it very clear to me that it had no intentions of obeying me.

Instead, I bit the inside of my cheek and tore my eyes away from his, guiltily. Blue was staring down at my body, but this time, unlike what he usually did with all members of the female species, he wasn't checking me out. Not even close. His eyes traveled over my arms and legs, examining my skin with a mixture of horror and bewilderment, his eyes burning.

Not good, Leaf. Not good. I bit my lip, racking my brains for an excuse.

"And is that my jacket?" he exclaimed, his voice mounting in frustration as he pointed toward an unrecognizable black lump of fabric and mud cradled in my arm. Reflexively, I dropped the coat, and he practically jumped a foot in air.

"Oh…and now you're dropping it? Pick it up!" Blue stopped gripping his hair and flung his hands up in the air, his eyes practically bulging. It would have been a pretty funny sight if the situation hadn't been so serious. "Pick it up!"

"Geez, okay, I will!" I muttered, bending down. My other hand tugged at the bottom of my skirt, making sure it didn't ride up my legs as I leaned over. Because not only did I not want my sleazy friend checking me out, but unfortunately, my legs weren't exactly a pretty sight at the moment. As I stood back up, I caught a glimpse of Blue's face—any other day, he would have unabashedly snuck a peek at the sight of any girl's bare legs. But now he wasn't even looking.

He must have been really mad. Not that I blamed him for it.

At the moment, my skin looked as if a toddler had taken a red crayon to paper for the very first time. Dark red scratches and welts, some fresher than others, crisscrossed all over my skin, trailing from my elbows to my wrists, and some sliced across my shins. Wet trails of dirt shone like sweat on my skin, muddying the gashes into a watery brown-red mess that lay in a thin film over my skin. Gross.

I was only glad I hadn't worn my usual skirt and legwarmers, or my legs would have been even more torn up than they already were. My leggings had ripped at the bottoms, above my boots, exposing the well-scratched skin underneath. I was glad I had grabbed Blue's jacket, or my arms would have looked worse, too.

"Here." Turning over my shoulder, I held the jacket out to him. "Take it."

There was a soft, soggy thump as Blue jumped and pushed the jacket back at me. "Damn it, Leaf, I don't want it!" He stared at the soaked piece of fabric like it was a crime against humanity and wiped his hands on his pants. They left streaks of mud on the tan fabric. "I don't care about the jacket!"

"Oh, really," I quipped dryly. "Because a second ago you looked like you definitely cared."

Priss, I added silently.

"Oh, be quiet, Leaf." Blue scowled, looking very much like a pissed off Pidgeotto, the way he always did when he got angry. "This might come as a shock to you, but I don't really want to hear your smartass comments right now." Pressing his hand against the door frame, he leaned closer toward me, his eyes boring into mine. "Now please, tell me what happened."

I took a deep breath and swallowed, winding a lock of thin brown hair around my finger.

"I…um…" I cleared my throat. "Look, Blue, as you might be able to tell, I really need to go wash up and take a nap right now," I stalled, my eyes darting toward the bathroom on one side of the hallway where we were standing, and toward my room on the other. "Seriously. I've had a long day, I don't want my cuts to get infected, and if you hadn't shown up when I had gotten home, I would have just—"

"Well, too bad, because I did show up," he cut me off. "What, do you expect me to just sit there when one of my best friends comes home covered in bloody scratches and dirt, wearing my jacket, and running past me toward her room with absolutely no explanation?" He shook his head. "No. Sorry, Leaf, but the answer is no. I wouldn't be a very good friend if I didn't ask you what the hell was going on."

I sucked in my breath. Okay, there was no denying it. He had a point. But still…shouldn't a friend's first priority be to make sure that you felt okay upon arriving home, and to get you a nice shower and a warm and comfy bed to sleep in? I was pretty sure I looked like I needed a good nap.

"Okay, fine. I get it," I sighed. "I just—I need to rest right now, okay?" I raised a hand to my forehead and touched the throbbing ache on the spot over my eyebrows. "I've had a rough day, and everything really hurts right now. So…could you please move out of the way so I can lie down and take a nap? Pretty please?"

Blue raised his eyebrows and studied me from head to toe. Maybe I was wrong; maybe he was checking me out. He was probably used to the motion, seeing as he did it to a million girls a day. I tugged self-consciously on the hem of my skirt before I remembered that I was wearing leggings. Ripped leggings, but leggings all the same.

"I can get you a First Aid Kit for your cuts, Leaf, but I don't see what would take such a long and awful explanation that you can't just tell me first," Blue was saying matter-of-factly, his voice calm once again.

I bit my lip. But that was exactly it. I couldn't tell him. If I told him, I would be completely breaking the unspoken promise the two of us had established a few months ago. If I told him, I couldn't even tell you what a horrible friend I would be.

Because trust me, I never wanted to see that look in his eyes again, that gleam of terror I didn't even know could exist in those eyes, could crack such a dent in his flawless exterior.

Honestly, it was better if he didn't know.

"I…I just can't, okay, Blue?"

For a moment, the look in his eyes, the confused vulnerability and surprise that shone in there for an instant, reminded me all too much of the face we had been trying to block out for months.

No. This is Blue, Leaf. Blue, I reminded myself, feeling flustered for thinking of something like that at a time like this. Blue Oak. The annoying kid who had been my rival since we were little. You know, that arrogant jerk?

I was expecting him to call me out on it, to keep pressing on relentlessly about what the hell I meant by I couldn't tell him, the way that anyone would if they heard a stupid answer like the one I just gave him. But Blue surprised me by holding up his hands and taking a step back.

"Well, you're going to have to tell me sooner or later, you know," he said, crossing his arms. He narrowed his eyes and gave me a pointed stare. "But I'm just going to let you know that this 'I can't tell you' business isn't helping your case at all, Leaf. You can't tell me? What do you mean by that?" He shrugged, answering his own rhetorical questions before I could, and thrust his hands into his pockets. "Whatever. I'll find out in time, anyway. But go ahead, you're right, you should probably fix up those cuts."

I stood still and stared at him suspiciously for a few seconds, wondering if it was some kind of trick. He had been so adamant on knowing a few moments ago. Did he really have that much consideration in him, or was he just trying to use some ploy on me, like reverse psychology or something along those lines?

But Blue just smirked back at me and shrugged again.

What an arrogant jerk. I hated that smirk. Always have, always will.

"Well, thank you, then," I quipped, sticking my tongue out at him in immature retaliation, and swept past him into the bathroom.

I turned the water on cold and ran it gently over each of my cuts, wincing as the liquid sliced into them like a blade of ice. At least it wasn't hot water, I reminded myself. Soap also would have hurt like crazy, so I skipped on it and just rinsed out the scratches as best as I could, watching the thin, disgusting, diluted soup of mud and blood and water trickle down the drain.

I frowned. The truth was that I didn't like lying to Blue. I didn't like lying, period. I wasn't one of those people who liked to build up walls and keep all their secrets from their friends. Especially now that we were close enough that we lived together, in an apartment together in Viridian City, located conveniently in the city where Blue worked as the Gym leader.

But on days like this it felt strange. Sometimes, it felt like a huge chunk of our lives was missing, as if a bulldozer had come by one day and ripped part of our apartment away, leaving only a few rooms intact, while the two of us kept on walking around and living our lives pretending that nothing had happened. Even when the roof was gaping open, and one of our rooms opened straight to the outdoor air, we just kept on going with the charade that our apartment was complete. Even if, if we weren't careful about it, we could step off the edge of it any day and plummet straight down to the ground below.

I could hear Blue shuffling outside, his footfalls thumping against the wooden floor, his pants rustling as he paced. I heard the groan of the sofa as he plopped himself down in the living room again and picked up the remote control. I heard the Saturday morning Pokemon cartoons come back on, and I heard him snort quietly to himself and switch the channel to something else that sounded vaguely like the news.

That was what we were doing, though, wasn't it? Having a piece of our apartment ripped away wasn't too far off from the truth. We already pretended one of the rooms in it didn't exist.

The door to the room between ours was perpetually closed, and blank save for a Pikachu sticker that had peeled slightly at the edges. From day to day, we passed by it dozens of times, but we refused to ever look at it. The fingers that had plastered it on the door seemed like nothing but those of a stranger, a ghost. They hadn't actually existed…had they?

I turned off the faucet and grabbed a towel from the rack, dabbing it gingerly on my wet injuries.

But of course they had.

When we decided to buy the apartment and room together, it hadn't been the two of us, just Blue and I. It hadn't been the two of us who had gone out for dinner to celebrate the new Champion and Blue's new job, who decided by the end of the night that we were moving in together. It hadn't been the two of us who had belied that we were an unstoppable team of best friends. It hadn't been the two of us who clinked glasses and drank on it, linking arms, unbelievably excited for our futures.

It had been the three of us, the trio of best friends that had existed ever since we were two-year-olds growing up in Pallet Town.

It hadn't always been Leaf and Blue. Once upon a time, it had been Leaf, Blue, and Red.

But not anymore. Red was gone.

No one had seen him for months ever since the day he disappeared from our apartment without a trace, all of his belongings vanished, even his bed neatly made. He had left nothing behind, no evidence that he had ever lived with us, except for a single unused Poke Ball that he had left on the floor in his room.

No one had been able to find him, not the police, not his mom, not Professor Oak or the Gym leaders of Kanto or former Champion Lance. Not Blue and me. And believe me, we had all tried.

I scrubbed at my wounds and frowned as I remembered the days that had been made up of nothing but We had called everyone who had known Red and flown all over Kanto on our Pokemon's backs, asking random people on the street if they had seen a young boy with a red hat. But of course, they knew who he was. He was the Champion, the legendary Champion of Kanto, and he was nowhere to be found.

He made national press coverage all over Kanto. We saw his face on TV everywhere, with giant, urgent captions glaring at us from the screen: CHAMPION RED GONE MISSING! They had interviewed Professor Oak, who spoke of Red's "humble beginnings" and his conviction that the police would manage to find him, they interviewed the Gym leaders, who talked about what a formidable battler he had been, and they even interviewed his mom, her eyes red-rimmed, her face gaunt with worry. And with a painful jolt, I realized that she was the same kind woman whose home we had visited countless times to bake chocolate chip cookies and sit in Red's room, playing pretend Pokemon Masters.

But worst of all was the thought, pushing at the back of our minds, that the disappearance hadn't been involuntary. It wasn't like Red had been kidnapped or taken away by force, or even murdered. If that had been the case, I couldn't see why whoever had done it to him would have taken all of his belongings, too.

No, his room was completely empty, his bed neatly made.

It was as if Red had never even set foot in the apartment. As if he had been some ethereal guest who had floated in one day, stayed with us for a few months, and then floated right on out again with a tip of his hat, politely cleaning up after himself and removing any sign that he had been here, save for that single Poke Ball that I saw Blue pick and tuck it into his pocket.

Maybe that was his farewell to us. Maybe that was all he had decided to leave behind as a memory of himself when he took off that day, never to be seen again.

It was hard not to believe that he had done that after seeing that empty room, bare as it had probably been the day it was constructed. And yet it was much, much harder to believe it.

It was hard to think that Red wouldn't even bother telling us goodbye if he suddenly decided to leave one day. That Red would even want to leave like this. Didn't we mean anything to him—his childhood friends, the two people closest to him? Hadn't he loved us, the same way we loved him?

Red had never simply been "the Champion" to us. Sometimes Blue acted like he hated him, but all of us knew better. Red was our best friend. Sharp-tongued and argumentative as Blue and I were, Red had always held us together. We thought it would always be that way—the three of us against the world.

I never again wanted to see the way Blue looked after that morning when we found him gone.

The morning he woke up and saw that empty room, his eyes had been so…hollow. It was a look I had never thought I'd see on his face, like a dying flame, eating away at the impeccable coolness of those brown irises.

It was a look I hoped to never see again.

It was a look I never would see again, because Red was gone. We had accepted it, and slowly, as the news about it trickled away and the mystery began to fade into the past, so did the amount of time we spent talking about him. Slowly, gradually, it had dwindled down to nothing.

We no longer talked about Red. Remembering him was too painful. That was our unspoken promise: to never mention him again.

I slung the towel back on the rack and cast a glance into the mirror. Resolute hazel eyes stared back at me from under a long mane of stick-straight brown hair, free from the white hat I had left behind that morning. I set my jaw and stared back.

I wasn't a promise-breaker. That was why I couldn't tell Blue where I had been that morning. That was why I couldn't tell him, no matter how much I wanted to.