Disclaimer: I do not own Pokémon.

on a string

Pokémon - Rated: T - English - Drama - Ash K./Satoshi & his quasi-harem

Misty Waterflower has always been alone - a drop in a moment in time that no one saw and no one heard and no one would ever know existed.

For her entire life, she's been overshadowed by her sophisticated Barbie dolls of sisters and their dazzling smiles. A tomboy, she's been forced to retreat into the shadows and whistle in the dark as the three of them stole the limelight.

(No, revelled in the limelight - it's not like it has ever fallen onto anyone else, anyway. Not in the Waterflower family.)

When Ash Ketchum announces that he's leaving, she's thrown off balance. She isn't ready to have her pillar of support ripped away from her - not yet. He's the only one who's ever paid any attention to her.

So she slaps a bittersweet smile on her face and leaves.

And that's the start of a chain of lies.

May Maple has always been strong - a punching bag that could remain intact even after the hardest of blows. But there are only so many blows you can take until you finally fall.

When she meets Ash Ketchum, he makes her resolve falter. He makes her heart beat faster and her voice disappear and her legs dissolve to jelly. She's been reduced to the flimsiness of cotton. She quivers around him - never, ever has she felt so weak at the hands of a guy. This has to change, quick.

(And sometimes, she admits, she likes not having to put up an overbearingly strong façade.)

So when he announces that he's leaving, she wants to scream at him; to clutch at him; to claw at his face; to make him remember all those moments when they've been accused of being a couple; to stop him from leaving her with another implied promise to burn.

But instead, she sifts through the masks she has and presents him with the one she deems appropriate.

She'll never stop loving him, she tells herself. That's what will keep making her stronger.

Little does she know how much she's deceiving herself.

Dawn Berlitz has always been a dreamer - a stream of bubbles blown into the wind, drifting hazily through the air and never quite landing anywhere.

When she meets Ash Ketchum, she's immediately ensnared within his carefully spun web of enchantment. All the care and concern he showers her with, the subtly dropped hints and his adorably dense smile... She feels like she's trapped in perpetual vertigo, only there's no way of getting off this delirious high.

(She doesn't know if she wants to.)

So when he announces that he's leaving, her bubble, floating ever-so-carefree on the light breeze, is hurled into the midst of a tumultuous tornado and popped.

The corner of hope and dreams she took refuge in in her darker moments, gone.

She's just like a child now - innocent, frantically looking for more soap to blow a bubble of protection, and ultimately vulnerable. Even though she maintains her ditzy smile and has erected another bubble to hide in, she still feels raw. Exposed. Vulnerable.

She is a broken girl of broken dreams, and telling herself otherwise will only make the thorns dig deeper.

Iris Ryū has always been a free spirit - a majestic bird soaring through the clouds, relishing the warmth of sunshine on its back and feeling the wind whistle beneath its wings.

When she meets Ash Ketchum, she feels as though she's been struck by lightning - forced to plummet back to earth at breakneck speed, wind whipping all around her and adrenalin searing through her veins. She's been grounded, literally. Her wings are broken, and while she embarks on the slow road to recovery, she finds herself being drawn to him as a magnet may be drawn to another.

(And after a while, she discovers that she might not mind that much after all.)

So when he announces that he's leaving, she lifts her wings tentatively and finds that they've healed. Still a little worn, frayed at the edges, but nonetheless recuperated. She spreads her wings, ready to take off into the weightlessness of the sky once more, only to realise with a thud that she's spent so long on the ground that she has no idea how to fly anymore.

He reeled her in, healed her and then released her - but broken or not broken, she's still crippled.

She meets the others one day - not one, but three of them. Not complete strangers, but others who are in the same situation as her. Or rather, used to be.

Misty, the tomboy. May, the strong one. Dawn, the dreamer. Iris, the free spirit.

They only have one thing in common: him.

There is a fifth girl.

We know neither her name nor her appearance yet, but Ash Ketchum will come across her in a new region.

She will accompany him on his journey, and somewhere along the line, fall for him.

When he leaves, she will let him go.

Lie.

Love.

Rue.

And slowly, she will fade into nothing more than a plot twist.

(After all, deception is only two letters away from inception.)

I know you never meant to hurt me.
I know I'll never be the same ever again.
But I am your ~ma~rio~nette~ and you are my -mas-ter-,
so ^toss^ me in the air and play me /on a string\
and watch me _fall_
D
.O
..W
...N
and remain blissfully oblivious to the *t*e*a*r*s* that drop
as you turn to your new .toy.
forever suspended in the [ugly] darkness of innocence.

First Published 20 June 2013 on the PokeWrite forum's Drabble Tag - Originally named "Deception"
Republished & Edited 1 August 2013
Partially inspired by Meganium's "Dandelion"

This in no way reflects my true writing abilities - it's just a random drabble that turned into a ficlet after my edit. xP Oh well, I always hated how Ash kept piling up his travelling companions. For Arceus's sake, let Brock, Misty and May come back... They were my favourites.

Thanks for reading!

~TLoC