In Her Image

(author's note: I wrote this in March as I was playing Black/White for the first time. Then I was all "I'm going to edit this, because it really needs it, but it'll end up being awesome." That never happened and it's about to be September, so I'm willing to believe it never will. So, scenes at random points in the game that sort of form a continuity and probably only make sense if you remember/can figure out the exact scene in canon they take place before/during/after and are too long to be drabbles and too short to be real chapters.)

Version: Game, English edition (I just dislike the name "Hilda"), ending spoilers
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me but my game copies.
Warnings: family violence/abuse, Pokemon training as slavery, slash, poly, characters of vague ages thinking about sex, cursing

Chapter One: Weakness

Touko didn't know what she could do. What she should do.

She put a pillow over her head, but at least Bianca was still asleep. Or better at pretending to be than she was at identifying it.

She didn't know who to ask. There was no way she could ask subtly enough about a theoretical situation to not be obvious. Normally she would ask her mother, her teacher, but she didn't want to hear from them, because if they knew what to do, they'd have fixed things. She didn't want to hear that they were useless or complicit and she wasn't sure which would be worse.

Cheren was okay even if he never got it. He was just like that, really smart about everything except people. She couldn't get mad at him for not understanding. It was just how Cheren was.

Bianca has whispered to her while her mother was cutting the cake that she had wished on her ten candles for a Pokémon journey where she could get away from everything and find out who she was.

Touko rolled over on her side of Bianca's bed. It was bright pink even in the dark and felt like it was going to drown her. A plush cage. She shouldn't treat it metaphorically. It was just a bed.

She couldn't hear Bianca's breathing. There was shouting downstairs. Couldn't he keep it down tonight, having reluctantly let Touko sleep over for Bianca's birthday? Shouldn't he be charming in public or something? Touko wasn't allowed to sleep over here usually or to have Bianca over to her house but she wasn't worth courting or putting on a front for. Put she never had told anyone, had she?

A lamp broke loudly. Must have fallen down from the vibrations from the yelling and the stomping. Definitely. And no other reason.

When I get a Pokémon, I'll make sure she was one too. Then I'll help her run away and she'll never have to go back to Nuvema Town again.

How would she do? Bianca hadn't even been allowed to go the day their class took a fieldtrip to Striaton City. But no, that made her sound "overprotective" too. She would set Bianca free, because she was her friend and it was her wish.