A/N: It all began with a parody trailer to The Time-Traveller's Wife. Then came an amv, a time-traveller AU for PalletShipping Day whipped up just hours before the deadline. And then finally a lowly amateur sat down and declared, "One day I'll make this into a fanfic!"

And so I did. This is the result.

1: His Undivided Attention

Ash:

Perhaps I've always known that Gary was different to the other kids, or perhaps I only noticed it after he told me. Sometimes you can just tell when something strange is lurking in the folded corners of somebody's personality, even if they themselves aren't currently aware of it. No matter how tightly it's compressed you still get a twinge in your stomach, a shiver on your spine, a metallic taste in your mouth. It's something you just pick up, no matter how hard you try not to.

I suppose I always thought it had something to do with the fact that I looked up to him and the rare moments where he let his guard down made me realise he was the same as me. Maybe that truly was it for me, anyway, or maybe I sensed something all along but was too young and dumb to say anything. I guess I'll never know.

I hate not knowing where and when he is when I want to know where and when he is. It never used to bother me before I knew about what he'd been going through this whole time, but once I began thinking about it I couldn't stop. It was like a whirlpool had swept me up and I was struggling desperately against the current.

Time's a strange thing. It can be compared endlessly to an array of pointless everyday things. Some say that you can't turn back time, that it's as solid as a diamond, steady and unchangeable.

I prefer to think of it as water, strong but lenient. It tries to defy travellers like Gary, it really does, but it can be bent and pushed and pried under the right circumstances. Gary shapes the time we spend more than I do, and that didn't used to scare me. But now it does.

I hate the feeling of falling behind, but it's something I'm so used to now I can't even try to blank it out. Like the pages of an unfinished story, Gary is writing in the details as I leaf through the first chapter, open-minded and very much confused.

...

[Gary is 20, Ash is 20]

Gary:

Time is a really weird thing that can't be defined to something so simple as a word, because it's nothing and everything and absolutely infinitely impossible while still being possible. Travelling through time is something a lot easier to explain.

Picture this: you're reading a book, perhaps looking over research notes, maybe training with your pokemon, possibly even holding a normal conversation, when your attention wanders for a split second, or you hear a high-pitched sound that gives you a headache, or you feel a tingling in your fingers and toes that makes them curl as you wince and try to compress the feeling.

But it's too late because you're slipping away and you have no way to stop it. You try clinging onto whatever or whoever is near you, be it the nearest chair or your microwave or your boyfriend's shoulders. But you blink and they're all gone, and you're standing in an endless stretch of woods or a busy street, wondering where and when you are and how to find somebody to crash with until the cycle repeats itself.

Fortunately, today is not one of those days.

Today I wake up and I'm in my present time. It's a normal day, not a bad one, and I'm twenty years old.

I'm staring up at the ceiling and feel the warmth of the sun seeping through cracks in the heavy fabric of the curtains. The ceiling is dimly lit, an overwhelming autumn hue that intoxicates me. I take a guess and decide it must be 6AM, before reaching for my digital watch and smirking. 6AM, on the dot.

As I roll over I feel stirring and watch intently as the curve in Ash's lower back arches slightly. His hair is ruffled with sleep, unkempt as he tosses and turns. I'm so tempted to run my fingers through it but I'm worried that I'll wake him and lose this sweet side of him before I fully register it in my mind.

He's soft and safe.

I never want to let him go.

With a sigh I sit up, massaging my hands as this all too familiar concept washes over my head. Ash lying in the bed beside me, mumbling something unknown to my ears in such a small voice thick with sleep that I can't quite make it out. Myself watching him. The gold of the sunrise, the crumpling of the sheets where we found ourselves cocooned last night.

Even as the nagging feeling of being pulled away in the back of my mind begins to grow, this day has begun just like any other and I'm praying nothing changes.

...

Ash:

When I wake up, Gary isn't sleeping beside me and I inwardly freak out; instantly the same thought floods my head as it has done every other time.

He's gone again, isn't he?

Then I hear the clink of the shower being shut off and I breathe a sigh of relief, allowing the sudden rush of panic to leave me.

I'm fine and he's here. He's fine and I'm here.

When he emerges from the bathroom a tidal wave of steam emerges with him. He's dressed but only just, his stay-at-home-day jacket falling from his shoulders, towel slipping from his head. As Gary approaches me his damp hair smells of my shampoo and I smile without it truly meeting my core.

He only uses my shampoo when he's feeling insecure, like he's ready to drop his life and fall again into the past or the future.

"Don't go," I mutter, and he lets out a short laugh. The two of us know that the my scent doesn't help him, not really; rather, he uses it to convince me that he can cling onto the present when he's ebbing away. It never works, but he's only twenty and life is still young. Maybe one day it will save him, maybe it won't.

"I'm fine," he says, but I can sense in his voice that he's holding back, straining for calm and normality in our early morning conversation. Today feels like a bad one, even if he doesn't think so. I sometimes get different gut feelings to him and right now feels like today will be bad, even if he's trying to convince me everything's normal.

We get up and eat, make small talk over breakfast, before he disappears into his study to look over the research reports he's been working on for the past six days. I let out Pikachu and we work on some new moves for a while, wondering how best to prepare for the rematch against the last trainer I battled who was going for my frontier symbol.

At twelve I begin to make lunch, knocking on the door of Gary's study and calling him. When he doesn't reply I begin to wonder if he's disappeared again, but fortunately he pokes his head around the door just in time to reassure me that he's still here.

Because at this point, it's safe to assume that whenever he's not here, he's not here at all.

...

Gary:

The day continues as a normal one, but the tugging feeling is growing and my arms are beginning to grow goosebumps. Ash notices this and furrows his brow. As I shiver he takes one of my arms and rubs it with his hands as if trying to keep it warm.

"Maybe my touch will stop you from going," he says when I ask why.

"It's never worked in the past."

"You never know. There's always a chance."

As I sit back, feeling the anticipation eating me, I murmur quietly, "What's the date today?"

He pulls out his pokedex and checks the calendar application before it drops from his hands with a small clatter. Glancing up at him, I see his face is a little pale.

"Ash? You okay?"

He turns to look me in the eye, suddenly seeming a little overwhelmed.

"Gary, today is May 3rd…"

"And?"

He rests his forehead against mine and I feel my hand beginning to chip away and disappear. I reach up with fingers that are no longer there and try to brush straying bangs out of his eyes to no avail.

Ash laughs shakily upon seeing my failed attempts to comfort him and gives me a little smile, before reaching into a drawer in our coffee table for an envelope that has been growing dust for the past ten years. As he presses it into the hand of mine that's still there, he mutters three simple words that make me tingle and my travelling accelerate.

"Today's the day…"

And then I'm gone.

Ever Grande City

The Hoenn Region

2005

[Gary is 20, Ash is 13]

Ash:

The day has come to a close and my battle against Tyson ended in defeat.

It hurts that I lost when I was so close to winning, but it's only my third league. I'm not an idiot. I know these things take time.

Even so, May, Brock and Max have been treating me like a baby, like I'm something delicate, prodding the league map in my face and suggesting we celebrate at one of the more expensive onsite restaurants.

But before anything else I want to hand in my pokemon, to be healed up.

"We can celebrate tomorrow, when my pokemon are well."

Despite May's complaints she and the others accompany me back on this long trek to the pokemon centre. When we get there, however, Nurse Joy hands me something.

"What's this?"

In my hands, a small brown envelope rests.

"No idea," Nurse Joy replies with a shrug. "A man came to deliver it and asked me to give it to you when you arrived back at the centre. He didn't leave his name. All I know is that he was a researcher because he was wearing a badge from the Evolutionary Conference being held on the other side of town."

"A researcher, huh?" I mutter, glancing down at the envelope. "I wonder what he wants…"

"Are you going to open it?" May asks, peering at my hands. I can tell she's, if anything, even more desperate than me to find out what this is about, so I nod quickly before tearing the envelope open.

A small note jotted onto a messily torn piece of notepaper reads the following:

Ash,

Meet me in The Crabhammer at 6:30. Please come alone. I'll explain later.

"What's The Crabhammer?"

"A restaurant located on the edge of Ever Grande City," May pipes up helpfully. "It specialises in seafood. Pretty empty most of the time though, from what I've heard."

"How do you even find out about this stuff?" I wonder aloud, genuinely marvelling at how she has enough time to memorise every restaurant onsite.

"So are we going to go, Ash?" she interrupts, raising her eyebrows. "It sounds creepy and weird to me. Super suspicious."

Brock shakes his head with a nervous laugh. "I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, guys…"

"But what if it's a trap?" Max points out. "Something set up by Team Rocket to get you alone in order to steal Pikachu! It's exactly the kind of thing they would do!"

"I'll be fine," I reassure them quickly, noticing Nurse Joy's concern at the mention of Team Rocket. "I'm sure it's nothing to be afraid of. But the note says I need to go alone, you see?"

"Oh, we won't cause any trouble!" May cuts in. "If it's nothing to worry about we'll just leave you to it, alright?"

"Well… okay…"

I turn to Pikachu. "I'm leaving you here to heal up as well, okay, Pikachu? You took a lot of damage in that battle. You deserve some rest."

With a disgruntled, "Pika…" Pikachu reluctantly leaves my shoulder and hops onto the front desk.

"Pikachu doesn't like using his pokeball, but he'll be fine," I say to Nurse Joy, who nods understandingly and rubs behind Pikachu's cheek bulbs.

I have my doubts about how much of a fuss May's going to make if the meeting does turn out to be some sort of scam, but nonetheless they follow in my steps as I hand in my poke balls before heading out of the pokemon centre and towards The Crabhammer.

It's a pretty gaudy-looking restaurant, with a giant mechanical corphish pimped out with neon lights hanging from the roof and giant oversized lettering reading The Crabhammer! Nothing Corphishy About It!

"I guess this is the place."

"Kind of weird for a researcher to want to meet here," Max remarks, just as appalled as I am.

"I don't like the look of this place," May mutters from beside Brock. "It's creepy and kind of phony-looking. I bet that letter really is from Team Rocket."

"Even if it is their plan won't work because I don't have any of my pokemon on me, see?" I butt in, motioning to my empty person. "Come on, it's already 6:35. This researcher will already be on edge without me being any later. Lets get this over with."

Holding my head high, I march into The Crabhammer and take in my surroundings. Gaudy purple and red checked floors greet me, with deep crimson walls and black and white checked tablecloths. The whole place looks like it was decked out in '87 and nobody bothered to keep it up to date with the times.

It seems exactly like the type of thing Team Rocket would pull.

As I'm ready to spin on my heels and leave the restaurant, a voice calls out to me.

But it's no, "Prepare for trouble!" and it's no, "Make it double."

It's something far more unnerving.

"Hey, Ashy-boy! Over here! You're not bailing on me, are you?"

Freezing in my tracks, it takes me a few moments to turn around. When I do, at the back of the room, I spot him.

My rival, my friend, Gary Oak. But… older?

...

Gary:

Ash stares at me as though I have two heads and I try not to laugh. This is the first time I've seen him like this, with this reaction to the sight of me so much older than he is. Mind you, it doesn't take much to freak him out right now, given that he's thirteen years old and in this moment blissfully unaware of my condition.

Although, taking his current expression into account, he's probably trying to connect the dots as I speak.

"Ash? What're you-" May, the bandana-wearing coordinator who has been making passes at me from the very first time we met (for me), is now watching me with a stunned look on her face. "Huh? Who's that?"

Next comes a small boy I instantly identify as Max, the bespectacled fresh meat gym leader of Petalburg City, who points at me and gasps, "I know you from your documentary about Kabutops!"

(Which, while I'm extremely flattered that he doesn't just know me from Ash's endless woven stories about me, slightly concerns me, as he hasn't noticed the massive age gap between the twenty-year-old me sitting before him and the thirteen-year-old me on the documentary.)

Finally Brock emerges from the doorway, takes one look at me and exclaims, "Is that seriously you?"

"The answer to that question you so politely phrased is 'yes'."

I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to compress my temper. While I'm by no means peeved that Ash brought his friends along even after I specifically asked for him to come alone, I'm regretful to say I know his friends well enough to realise that poor little Ashy-boy probably had no say in this matter and they were probably the ones dragging him to this gross little diner on the edge of town.

So instead of commenting on this, I motion for them to sit down. "Are you going to just stand there all night? Come and sit down. I have to explain a few things."

As the group mutter to each other and hesitantly seat themselves around the booth I picked out towards the back of the diner, I reach into the lab coat that I picked up from the hotel I was somehow booked into and pull out a small napkin, identical to the ones from the diner, with small notes scribbled messily onto it.

The handwriting, which I've identified as thirteen-year-old Ash's, is scrawled on both sides of the folded napkin and dictate the kind of things I'm supposed to say and do (or rather, what not to say and do) in this fated meeting of ours.

Don't drop too many facts on us at once; Word things carefully to prevent paradox-y hoohas; Don't tell them about us; Especially don't tell me about us; Don't forget to mention the date; The date is May 3rd in our time, September 9th in theirs; Be careful not to give too much information about the future away; Don't order the soup of the day.

I laugh a little at the last one, picturing Ash's face in my mind. What kind of things must he have been thinking as he wrote this list? When exactly did he write this list?

Seeing their curious expressions, I clear my throat.

"So, uh. As you can probably tell, I'm not the same Gary Oak you currently know exists."

"What is this?" Ash mutters in disbelief. "Gary… I mean… you are Gary, right?"

"Don't ask stupid questions, Ashy-boy," I say, deciding next time to bring something I can hit them with every time they do.

May looks up at me uncomfortably.

"Excuse me, but… who are you?" she asks. "I, um… I don't think we've met before."

I chuckle.

"No, we haven't."

From beside her, Max's mouth falls open.

"How can you not know who he is, May? He's only Professor Oak's grandson! Not to mention at thirteen years old he's already one of Kanto's top researchers! How can you not know this?"

"Sorry, Max, but I'm not a geek like you!" she snaps at him. "And don't yell at me!"

"I'm not a geek!" he cries, incredulous.

"Are too!"

"Am not!"

"Hey, cut it out, we're in a public place," Brock intervenes quickly. Ash has barely even noticed, though. He's still watching me, completely dumbfounded.

"Some of you know me, some of you don't. I'm Gary Oak, from Pallet Town. Ash and I have been rivals since we were small. I still consider our rivalry to be strong, even though at this point we were - are - obviously taking different paths. And, uh…" I lick my lips, feeling their eyes bearing into me. "The thirteen-year-old me is currently residing in Kanto, in an island research centre. The me sitting here right now is from a different time. A, uh… a point in the future."

"But how on Earth did you get here, Gary?" Ash finally asks. "I mean, did you encounter celebi?"

I shake my head.

"I have in the past, but I arrived earlier by myself. Time travel is a strange thing, but it's something that I contain nonetheless." I smile faintly at Ash. "I'm a time traveller."

...

Ash:

I stare at him, not sure if I heard right.

"You're a… time traveller?" I repeat carefully. He nods.

"Yep."

"Huh." I lean back. "Please spin me a story a little less crazy."

Gary frowns at me from across the table.

"I'm telling the truth, Ashy. The truth is confusing and it probably won't do any good right now, but that's life. One day the truth has got to come out, and one day it'll have to come to me, Gary Oak, fourteen years old, February 1st. One day you'll have to tell me this story of how I came to visit you, and how I exist, and how the reason he's standing on the opposite side of your campfire in a forest clearing in Sinnoh instead of safely tucked in bed back in Kanto is because he's a time traveller. I won't be there to break this to him, so you're my best shot."

I watch him, wide-eyed and alarmed by how serious his tone is, and sit up straight again.

"You do know how crazy this sounds, right?"

"You're not the first to have told me," he says without batting an eye. He passes me a napkin and as I take it I freeze. My handwriting is scrawled all over, but these are words I've never written on a napkin I've never seen before.

"What is this…?"

"You see this napkin, Ash? You, seven years from today, gave it to me this afternoon when I disappeared. You handed it to me in that stupid brown envelope and told me to come here, that 'today was the day'. Now, where did this napkin come from? I certainly don't know. Did you keep the napkin and write down these famous rules in the future, or did you write down these famous rules right this moment and simply keep the napkin safe, preserved, until the truth came out seven years later? It's like the togepi and the egg. Which came first? We'll never know."

"Isn't this entire napkin one big paradox?" Max pipes up from next to me, eyes as big as saucers. "I mean, if nobody knows where or when it came from it shouldn't logically exist, right?"

Gary shrugs.

"Maybe. But even if we don't know when these famous Ashy-boy rules were written, one can always take a wild guess at where the napkin came from." He plucks his napkin from beside his cutlery and dangles it from his fingers for all of us to see. The pattern imprinted on the edges are a perfect match to that shown on the napkin with writing.

May gasps and leans forward, eyes round.

"That's so freaky," she breathes.

"Tell me about it. At least now you know why I didn't pick out a better place for us to meet," Gary chuckles.

I frown and stare at the napkin, turning it over. Right in the bottom corner is a message that Gary has missed.

Please don't hate Gary.

I stiffen in my seat.

What would I write this for? How could I ever hate Gary?

"You know I don't hate you, right?" I blurt out. He raises his eyebrows at me.

"Well I'd hope not, given that for the past few years you've been following me around like a love struck skitty."

I feel a blush of mortification rising in my face.

"What are you talking about? Don't give people the wrong idea," I growl.

"So you claim to be a time-traveller," Brock states, saving me further humiliation. Gary's eyes narrow.

"I never 'claimed' anything. I have the proof right here." He plucks the napkin from my hands and waves it in front of Brock's face. "There's no denying this handwriting is Ash's. And that the design of the napkin - even the fibres - are the same as the ones served in this restaurant. Yet this napkin is crumpled, dusty and carrying seven extra years on it. Can you come up with a logical reason for that?"

The table falls into silence.

At last, I decide to speak up.

"So how are you here? I mean… how are you a time-traveller?"

He smiles at me.

"You say you've seen celebi too, Ashy?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah."

Gary leans back in his seat.

"You remember that time you encountered celebi, right? The boy that you saved that time… that boy was - is - none other than my grandpa, Professor Oak."

I stare at him, completely overwhelmed.

This whole time… those weeks of subdued silence, the feeling of knowing I would never see Sammy again… and all this time he's been…

"Ash, you've blanched," Gary says with a chuckle, and it takes me a few moments to respond.

"H-How did you find out about that? Did Professor Oak tell you?"

He grins.

"No. You did. You from the future, that is. And then gramps confirmed it for me when I called you a freak and returned to Pallet Town. I've already visited gramps - that was about two years back - to explain the situation, so you don't have to worry. All you will have to do, Ashy-boy, is be my messenger."

...

Gary:

Ash watches me with a look of clear disbelief on his face. Not that I can blame him; I'm pretty sure when he dropped this shell on me I was making a similar expression.

"I don't understand what celebi's meeting with Professor Oak has anything to do with you," he says at last. "Something that happened fifty years ago shouldn't affect you at all."

"Yeah, I sort of figured you'd be like this. But listen here. " I lean forward and meet his gaze, ignoring the others around us and focusing solely on him. I'm a renowned pokemon researcher now. At the age of thirteen I travelled to Sinnoh, hoping the wide open spaces would distract me from all of these thoughts, about time travel and consequences and everything. And then you happened, Ash."

"What did he do?" May asks, drinking in my every word. Ignoring her, I continue to watch Ash, who is staring back at me with the same fierce expression he always shows when I'm trying to explain something to him; stiff with confusion but still so determined to understand.

"By the age of fifteen," I continue, "I began looking at evolution, genetics and the effects that pokemon of legend have on humans around them. With this I managed to extract DNA from both myself and grandpa to compare samples. There's some sort of radiation from celebi that stimulates a reaction in the human DNA. By being in such close contact with celebi, grandpa's genes mutated and I happened. I inherited this mutation, and as a result I often find myself lost in time." I glance around at their different expressions; confusion; intrigue; amazement; disbelief. "But like celebi I have a home. In my present… which happens to be your future."

After my longwinded speech the group stare for a few moments, too stunned to speak.

"…I still don't understand, though, Gary. Even if it's the conclusion that makes the most sense… what proof do you have?"

"The fact that I changed my area pokemon research to this particular field," I mutter, leaning back, "was so I could look more into celebi's genetics and see if the time-travelling genes were the same as mine. It took me several years to eventually find one… of course, you helped out." I frown. "How did you know where to find it, anyway?"

"How should I know?" Ash grumbles. "You're not making any sense, Gary. I've never talked to you about my encounter with celebi!"

"Yet." I grin at him. "Don't forget your future is my past. Our timelines overlap a lot. It's kind of hazardous."

Brock slowly raises his head to meet my gaze.

"If it's possible, would I be able to take a look at your research notes?" he asks, furrowing his brow. "As a training breeder any kind of research involving evolution and DNA would be really helpful."

"Come see me in seven years," I reply, deciding against revealing to him that by the end of the following year he will be aspiring to become a pokemon doctor instead.

"What about me? Where will I be in seven years, Gary?" May asks, perking up. "Am I a top coordinator yet?"

"Only time will tell," I say quickly, trying to steer the conversation away from paradox-y directions. "To be honest, I really don't know you guys very well. I only ever see you at Christmas parties. And…"

I turn to Ash and hand him the envelope.

"You need to keep a hold of this. Leave it in your room the next time you go to Pallet Town or something, just somewhere you know it'll be safe. Never lose it. In seven years give it back to me and we'll take it from there."

"But then if you're giving the envelope to me, to give to you in seven years, where I was the one who gave it to you in the first place, who actually wrote this?" he groans in frustration.

"That is one of the many other mysteries surrounding my condition that will never be solved."

"You're messing with my head."

"I have that effect on most people," I manage with a smile.

A/N: So hopefully this didn't suck. It's been a while since I wrote palletshipping (in fact I'm pretty sure it's only the second palletshipping fic I've ever put up on the internet, since my others have never really taken off before) so I apologise if they're a little out of character. The love will develop soon enough, I promise! /flails around

(Also to readers of Roses, I am so sorry for my creative block. I'll try and get up the next chapter by the end of this month but I've been quite busy and I haven't really had the right mindset for working on respectshipping. I'll try and fix that.)