Where do you stand that is out of the crowd?

For Ethan, he simply stood above them all.
Silver stood in dark places, stealing and chasing.

For one, it worked too well, and the other not well enough.

Ethan remembers meeting him well. Crystal clear in fact, he recalls shocking scarlet hair, lips turned into a scowl, and - when Ethan spoke a quiet hello - an angry voice. What the hell are you looking at?

It reminds him of the other man, the one he only vaguely remembers part of but never acknowledged, the one he doesn't like to think of ever.

He also recalls the locked-away hurt from that simple, blunt question, turning and leaving the second person to be immediately horrible to him.

What the hell are you looking at?

You, Ethan had wanted to say through muted lips and stilled vocal cords. You look so interesting.

Silver doesn't really remember it. Only subconsciously, he recalls an apprehension of being caught, the relief when it was only some dumb kid (his age). Their first meeting to him is their actual second, where names are unwillingly traded and one-way insults, driving the other boy away (Gold, he says he's called.) like everyone else. Silver felt no remorse because he didn't know how.

Gold was just someone else, just another sword on which to cut himself.

He doesn't give Silver his real name. In fact, only his mother and Lyra even know it, and Ethan has always used it as a way to hide, cramming a hesitant shy personality under a confident, bubbly exterior, just a few cracks remaining in it.

The proper first meeting with Silver one of them.

It won't happen again, he promises himself, and wins their first battle easily to prove it to himself.

Gold was just another person in his way, another obstacle to achieving his ideas of dreams (without realising that they are just copies of others, and a desperate cry for attention). He stole the pokemon to help him get there and feels nothing more about it. When it lost, he scolded it, and when it won he pointed out faults, told it not to get arrogant, it's still pathetic and a long way from useful, and he ignored the disappointed look on their faces because he didn't know what it meant.

Every time he meets Silver, each of them is slightly ahead in different respects. He is further to defeating Team Rocket (although it's not what he meant to do) and Silver is always a gym ahead of him (Ethan suspects it's not his main goal either). It's purely this that causes them to meet and conflict every time, more and more skill on both sides each time, and Ethan (Gold, really) always seems to win. Silver gets annoyed at him, and everyone, storms off and swears victory the next time, Gold inviting him to try (Ethan hiding in the background, he doesn't like the fights so much).

If they could only swap progresses, they wouldn't fight so much, Ethan surmises.

Silver becomes aggravated as he begins to feel things that he doesn't like, or even understand. Pity, sympathy, even some joy when they win, the team, not even just his victory anymore but theirs, but he doesn't like it at all.

Weak, he remembers being called. Weak stupid filth, and it motivates him each day. Ignore the emotions and concentrate, because he'll never be successful if he can't beat every trainer, if he is not strong in every aspect of mind and body.

Secretly, he thinks that he'd ask Gold if he had the guts.

Ethan notices the confusion, almost stretches a hand out with the quiet voice of inquiry (that had only surfaced last when he first met Silver, an eternity and yet only months ago) before he remembers who exactly he is talking of, gratingly recalls how Silver would never talk to him through choice, and instead puts his hands on his hips, grins sardonically and yells 'Beat me next time!'.

Silver swears at him, but Ethan realises that 'Gold' is melting away somehow, and he's not even sure how or why, a looming identity crisis, and so forgets to even wave.

Gold begins to falter, Silver thinks he's beginning to see between lies he didn't even know existed, and yet he can't even capitalise upon it, somewhere deep down he's excited to find out what Gold is genuinely like, used as he is to a confident loudmouth who yells obscene and annoying things, who struts around like he owns the place, and is generally aggravating.

At the back of his mind, an image of a quiet boy extending a greeting to his then unawakened self emerges from the deep of unhappiness like a glinting coin, but he throws it back into the well.

Impossible.

He thinks it is anyway.

For a single moment, he stands at the very top of the world, peering down on everything that he's conquered, made it through. Team Rocket, no longer existing (and hopefully never again). All the gyms, the trainers around Johto, Lugia fought and released.

And yet he still doesn't really know who he is.

He turns as they discuss his entry in the Hall of Fame, and finally speaks up.
'Ethan.' They turn around, curious. 'Not Gold.'.

For whatever reason, he boils with anger that he should find out Gold's real name from a passing glance at a paper of all things, his smiling face next to several other higher-ups in the League, and he's determined to find out why. Why it was ever kept from him, why it ever happened, why the cloud of nervousness and uncertainty emanates from the photograph still.

Silver looks like a storm, Ethan can almost see the black clouds swirling around him, a slap across his face like lightning, a cry of 'You lying bastard!' like thunder.

He's fed up of pretending, can't think how he held up his pretence so long.
"Who else did you hear calling me Ethan?" he whispers challengingly, escaping the magnetic spiral of the storm clouds, until he is far enough away when it finishes its thought process that he doesn't hear Silver say, 'No one.'

And then the relief.
I wasn't the only one.

Silver's curiosity is given a good month or so of time to build in the space between encounters. When they finally meet again, it is nighttime at a festival in Blackthorn City, Gol-Ethan (he reminds himself, it's so strange) in the usual attire for such an event and Silver refusing to adhere, wearing his normal clothes and sticking out.

Ethan smiles shyly, a tiny motion of amusement on his mouth, before pinpointing the exact reason why he was not dressed properly.
"You couldn't find a yukata."

Silver scowls, but the champion knows that it's the truth, gently pulls him towards a clothing stand.

Ethan manages to cajole Silver into joining the traditional dances with him, a mostly elegant shuffle that Ethan is surprisingly good at and Silver can't accomplish to save his life, but here, under a clear night sky and non-judgemental stars, he thinks he might be happy.

I know the ending is meh and the whole thing is confusing, but I kind of liked this. Don't even really know why, and it may or may not be finished, but I hope you enjoyed it as well.