Entry tags:
Destined (for John_Egbert)
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john_egbert
Title: Destined
Author:kannaophelia
Rating: G
Verse: Gameverse (Gen I/Kanto)
Characters/Pairings: Erika/Sabrina
Summary: Children, it seemed, had some strange ability to disrupt the feature, perhaps because they made the future for themselves. Children, it seemed, could make even the famous Sabrina doubt herself.
Tags: Pregnancy
The familiar scent of grass pokemon, rich and redolent with the sweetness of flowers, with sickly undertones of stun spore and poison powder, clung to the air. Sabrina breathed it in deeply, accepting the dangerous with the sweet. It had been too long since she visited Celadon City.
posted and
Swoobat lowered her to the ground and Sabrina thanked her silently, recalling her to her pokeball.
Sabrina was glad of the pokemon at her belt. She felt nervous, for the first time since... Well, to tell the truth, Sabrina could never quite remember being nervous, not when the world held so few surprises. Her certainty of the future was, she supposed, arrogant, especially as she had occasionally been proved wrong. The first time she had been truly surprised, when the child with the charmander had defeated her, she had not been entirely unsettled. She had been diverted, even, at the thought of a future in which she could not predict everything that would come to her. After all, it was a once only occurrence.
It was only the second child, the one with the totodile, that truly disturbed her ideas of the world. Because if she could be wrong twice, then perhaps she could be wrong about anything... After the child with the umbreon and espeon at the posted and Gym Leader castle, and the child with the tepig in the Pokemon World Tournament, she had almost become afraid of children.
Children, it seemed, had some strange ability to disrupt the feature, perhaps because they made the future for themselves. Children, it seemed, could make even the famous Sabrina doubt herself.
Once the seed of doubt had been sewn, it had been all too easy to lose her faith in her most basic belief in her future, too easy to let it drift away.
In the first courtyard of the Gym, a golden haired beauty and a pair of identical little girls paused in their attempts to arrange a co posted and llection of bellsprouts and oddishes into a charming grouping around a weepinbell.
"The gym is closed. The gym leader is indisposed--oh, elder sister Sabrina!" The beauty broke off what was obviously an oft-repeate posted and d speech, twisting a hand in her long golden locks.
Sabrina clicked her tongue impatiently. Erika obviously had not changed her ways much.
"I'm afraid Erika is--"
"Asleep?" Sabrina's voice was a little sharp, perhaps because she had always felt a little threatened by the lovely girls Erika liked to surround herself with. The grass Gym Leader had always asserted that she don't see the point in spending time with things and people that were not beautiful, although Sabrina had never been quite sure where her beloved glooms fit into that approach. "I'll go through anyway."
"Miss Sabrina?"
Sabrina whirled, prepared to annihilate the little girl with a glance. She was blushing and anxious; Sabrina supposed it took nerves to challenge a gym leader. She felt little pity, for all that. To have her right to enter Celadon Gym challenged! Did this child expect her to challenge her to a pokemon battle?
"Could--would you please autograph Victreebell's pokeball? Mystery Doors of the Magical Land is my favourite movie!"
"Me too, me too!" chimed her twin.
Sabrina felt her lips twitch despite herself. Children, it seemed, were still capable of surprising her.
*
The inner courtyard was cool and green, the scent of flowers even more strong. Sabrina marched straight to the raised platform and looked down at the heap of silk hidden behind it.
She reached down and gave it a prod with one booted foot.
Erika didn't even have the self respect to say "ouch" or look ashamed of herself. Her lashes fluttered gracefully open, and she smiled drowsily up at Sabrina.
"Hello. I missed you. Why are you here?"
"I had a dream. I knew it was important to come."
"Like the dream that told you to go to Unova in the first place?" Erika's voice was as sweetly modulated as ever, without a hint of ice, but Sabrina felt its bite anyway. "How did you find my hiding place?"
"You still snore like a spoink."
Erika giggled. "That's our little secret. Mustn't ruin the mystique." She patted the couch beside her, not even bothering to sit up.
Sabrina l posted and eapt lightly down beside her and sat crossed legged on the seat, trying not to beam at her. It had been too long, far too long, since she returned to Kanto, and not merely because of neglecting her gym leader responsibilities.
"You also," she said sternly, "seem to be even lazier than ever."
"It's not my fault. I'm tired all the time. The roselias simply won't stop grass whistling, and it's so soothing."
"You were lazy before you knew what a roselia was."
"That's true." Erika giggled again. "But truly, Sabrina, I have a special reason to be tired, lately." She let her eyes drift closed again.
Sabrina sat and watched her doze for a while. Erika's lashes lay like fans on skin as soft and pale as a cottonee, her hair a glossy shadow against the softly glowing satin of her kimono. The delicate gym leader of Celadon City, lying asleep among her flowers like a princess awaiting the kiss of true love.
Snoring like a spoink.
Something, however, was different. Erika's skin had always been pale, but had it been quite this pale? There was a barely perceptible green hue to her face. It could have just been the light shining through all the foliage; Sabrina was sure it wasn't. There were shadowy purple hollows under the closed eyes.
Sabrina reached out with her mind, seeking the cause of the problem. Her back stiffened in shock as she found the tiny, fierce spark of life.
"When are you due?"
Erika opened her eyes and sat up a little. "Autumn. When the fruit ripens, so do I. Oh, Sabrina. They told me I would only be sick for a little while, but every day, all day..."
"Congratulations," Sabrina said, ignoring the plaintive tone. Her lips were numb. What else, after all, could she say? I predicted that we would be together and that any child would be both of ours. How could I be so wrong?
Yet, bitterly, it was her own fault. She had waited for destiny to unroll itself, for the perfect moment in which Erika would realise that her dearest friend loved her as more than a sister and they would come together, and meanwhile, life had happened. They had finished their pokemon journeys; Erika had gone to train in the Celadon City gym and had eventually become its leader, and Sabrina had faced her own fight to establish an official Pokemon League Gym in Saffron. Team Rocket had fallen and risen and fallen again, Teams Aqua and Magma had split the world, Team Galactic and Team Plasma had threatened the order of things, and somehow, Sabrina had spent less and less time in Celadon.
She had still never thought that Erika would somehow slip away.
She wanted to ask who but it came out, somehow, as "How?"
"I can't tell you, you know that," Erika said serenely. "It's a secret of my family. Don't you remember? I told you long ago. When we were children."
"When we started our pokemon journey."
"Yes."
*
When Sabrina was nine years old, she sat down at the dinner table and announced, "I know who I'm going to marry when I'm grown up, Mama."
"Who, dear?" Her mother paused in washing rice, the corners of her lips lifted in amusement.
Sabrina resented that. She wasn't a cute little girl, she was nine years old, and what she had to say was very important, not funny at all. Hadn't her mother heard her properly? Getting married was a very serious thing. She persisted in explaining. "That little girl at the Pokémon Breeders outside town. The one with the shiny black hair. I think she's called Erika."
"Oh, honey. Girls don't marry girls. You're going to have to marry a boy, or else how are you going to have children? You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Her mother poured the cloudy water away and ran new, clear water over the rice. " I didn't know you'd even played with her. Have you told her you're engaged?"
She was laughing at Sabrina, with her eyes if not her mouth, and Sabrina felt a prickle of annoyance. She said, firmly, "There's no boys at the Pokémon Breeders, and they still have children. Erika has two Mamas."
Her mother didn't frown, but the glimmer faded from her eyes, and she said, "I'm sure you're mistaken, honey. Two women don't have babies."
All of Sabrina's senses screamed at her that her mother was upset, even though all she did was put the rice pot down and give Sabrina a cuddle. Grownups were so strange, hiding their feelings all the time, as if Sabrina couldn't tell exactly what they were feeling anyway.
Somehow, however, after that, Sabrina was never sent to the Pokémon Breeders to buy food for the Mr Mime who served as their housekeeper and nanny. The little girl called Erika didn't go into Saffron City much, and the Pokémon Breeders didn't mix with the folk of the town except for business, so Sabrina never did get to play with her.
Sabrina's mother didn't refer to the matter again, and Sabrina supposed she thought her daughter had forgotten it. Sabrina herself was content not to mention it. She and Erika were going to get married someday whether they played together or not. She could wait.
Every now and then, Sabrina let her feet lead her back to the Pokemon Breeders. After all, she wasn't exactly forbidden. She would clamber up to a high branch on the berry tree just outside the fence, and watch the women come and go, tending their own pokemon and the ones left in their daycare, bringing supplies in and pokemon food out. And often, Erika, trailing after the two women she called Mamma.
She was an odd little girl, sticking flowers in her dark hair, even though they wilted and straggled loose, stumbling over her skirts as she trailed after her mother, her gaze always absent and dreamy, as if she was looking at something else. She was, Sabrina noted disapprovingly, bad at her chores, often losing interest and falling into a daydream, or even curling up in the short grass and falling asleep when she should have been feeding the nidorans. Sabrina didn't mind that Erika was odd. She was, she knew, quite odd herself.
Sabrina had been right; Erika had two mothers. One of Erika's mothers wore plaid skirts and a pidgey on her shoulder. The other, with her square jaw and grizzled stubble of hair, Sabrina would have thought was a man, if not for the shape of her under her overalls and the fact that she lived on the Farm. She was often accompanied by a machamp as big and muscular as herself.
Sabrina knew from village gossip that the lady with the machamp didn't come from Johto at all. She had come from a region far away, and arrived when the ladies at the Pokemon Breeders had been threatened by thugs from Team Rocket. She and her pokemon had put them to flight, and the ladies had welcomed her machamp, as much as herself, into their community. Life was dangerous for a group of women living so far outside town.
And then, Sabrina decided, she must have fallen in love with Erika's other Mama, and they'd had a baby.
*
On Sabrina's tenth birthday, her mother kissed her on her cheek and handed her a pokeball and an egg. Sabrina clipped the pokeball to her belt. She already knew what was in it; it had been her companion since she was a tiny girl. The egg was more intriguing. She raised it to her cheek, imagining she could hear tiny movements within.
"What is it?" Sabrina had known, instantly, but she had found that informing her mother of the future too often made her uneasy, so it was best to pretend.
"It's a surprise. It will need very careful raising, darling, but it will repay you."
Sabrina carefully placed it in her backpack and kissed her mother in thanks.
"You'll be just fine," Mama said. "You'll have many adventures and defeat the Pokemon League."
Sabrina raised an eyebrow. "I know I will."
For all that she was quite secure in her future, she felt a little bubble of something like excitement as she took the road out of Saffron City. Beyond the limits of the City, there was long grass with hostile pokemon, there were trainers who would test her pokemon's mettle, there were gyms and dangers and...
...a little girl, bursting into tears as her bellsprout was taken down by a spearow.
"Venonat, go!" The bubble inside Sabrina was growing bigger. Her first wild pokemon battle! "Tackle!" The spearow fluttered back, confused, then flung itself in a return tackle. Venonat shook it off. "Tackle! Tackle! Tackle!"
The spearow gave a despairing squawk, and fainted. Sabrina turned back to the little girl, who was cradling her pokemon in her lap.
"My bellsprout is hurt!" She had tears in her eyes.
"You shouldn't have used it against a spearow. Don't you know anything about type advantages?"
Erika tossed her hair, sending a flower falling. "I don't see the point of having pokemon that aren't pretty, like Bellsprout. Please, do you have a potion spray?"
"No. But I have something better." Sabrina called back Venonat, and took out her egg. There were cracks running down its side.
"How will that help?"
"You'll see." She put her arm around Erika. It was necessary, of course, but it still sent a flutter of happiness through her. It was as if Erika's waist was made to be exactly the right size for her own childish arm. As the egg's shell fell off in shards, Sabrina said, triumphantly, "Abra, teleport!"
*
The two little girls sat side by side on the couch in the Pokemon Centre waiting room, holding hands. Sabrina felt content and happy. She had met her future wife and come to her aid at a moment of crisis. What more could she want? She wanted to hug Erika, and brush her pretty hair, and talk to her about pokemon.
"Grass pokemon are weak," she said, sternly.
"They are not," Erika said, stubbornly. "They look delicate and pretty, but they take strength from the sun and other pokemon and they grow."
"Most of them are poison, anyway. A psychic pokemon could go right through them." Hnesty made her add, "well, not Abra, not until he evolves. Psychic pokemon have no weaknesses except ghost attacks, and all ghosts have poison. They are the most powerful pokemon of all."
"Your starter is a bug. And it's poison, too. You can't hate poison types that much."
"Bug poison is stronger than grass poison, anyway."
"You'll see." Erika tossed her hair and giggled, unperturbed. "I'm going to be a grass type gym leader one day. It's going to be the most beautiful gym in all of Johto, and people will come miles to see it. I'm only having girls in it, though. Pretty girls. And I'll be the prettiest of them all."
"Yes, you will." Sabrina smiled at her. "Not of Saffron City, though. I'm going to be the gym leader here."
"I thought the fighting dojo was trying for league certification?"
"Well, I'll just have to defeat them, then. Fighting types are no match for psychic types."
"My mama's machamp is the strongest pokemon there is," Erika said, her sunny confidence unaltered.
"I'll be able to beat it, one day. I'll have to catch more, first. Would you... would you like to travel together?" Her mouth felt dry.
"Yes. We can be best friends," Erika said happily. Sabrina felt a surge of happiness in response.
"Erika, can I ask you something?" It had been bothering her for a while.
"Sure."
"How can you have two mothers?" It seemed like a question of major importance. "Don't you need a father to have a baby?"
"It's a family secret." Erika kicked her legs. "You can only find out if you're a member of my family."
I'm going to be, Sabrina said silently, to herself, hugging the knowledge close.
*
"You said I had to be a member of your family to know how your mother got pregnant," Sabrina said, slowly.
"Yes." Erika reached up and cupped her face. "But you went off to follow your dreams, literally, to be a movie star, and... well. I was lonely."
"But..." Sabrina struggled to process this. "I never dreamed of being a movie star. I went because of a vision, that something important would happen if I did."
"Did it?"
"Well, you got pregnant," Sabrina said, hopelessly. "And if it was because I left... But I only ever dreamed of being a gym leader. And, well..."
She looked into Erika's eyes, which were wide and intense and not sleepy at all. And after all. What was the harm in saying? It was her destiny, or it was not. But the children who had come to challenge her had taken hold of their own destinies. As, it seemed, had Erika.
"You. I dreamed of you." She couldn't quite look at Erika. She turned away, Erika's hand still warm on the side of her face."
"I love you, you know." Erika's voice was choked with tears. "I kept telling you so. And you'd just go all quiet and cold."
"I didn't think you meant..."
"Sabrina, you've met my mothers! For an intelligent girl, you are the most stupid..."
Sabrina decided to do something intelligent for once and kissed her. Erika's mouth was gentle and strong and her hair smelled of grass and living things, and under the silk of her kimono was warm skin and a beating heart.... Two beating hearts, one string and slow, the other tiny and racing.
"I hope you don't mind being a parent," Erika, who might as well have been psychic herself, said when they broke apart. "If I'd known, I would have waited to ask you." She hesitated a moment, and then said, "I would have had it anyway, but it would be nice for you to feel consulted."
Sabrina laughed at her, trailing kisses over her cheek, fierce joy in her heart. "I'll have to move back to Johto permanently. I don't want to be an absentee mother."
"Hmm," Erika said, happily. "We could run a psychic grass gym. We could beat anything. Except maybe dark types. We didn't even know about them when we were kids."
"Stop talking about pokemon." Sabrina kissed her again, fiercely. "Except that you are not to fight any battles in which there might be poison powder or stunspore. You have to think about our baby."
"Of course not," Erika said, snuggling up against her shoulder. "He's a boy, by the way. Oh, Sabrina. I'm so happy, but I just want to cry and cry."
"I feel the same, darling." The weight of wasted time hung over her. But then... there was more than one form of destiny. She and Erika had both had their roles to play in the drama of the world. Perhaps Arceus had had plans for them. She prayed, silently, that the plans were done, and they could face their future together, with... their son. Their son.
"Want to know how I got pregnant?" Erika asked, softly.
"Yes," she said, a little uncertainly. It wouldn't be a man... surely. At least not in that sense. She didn't want to think about it."
Erika laughed against her shoulder. "I meant to visit Mama. She's a very good Pokemon Breeder, after all. And no one knows where pokemon eggs come from. She just told me I would have a baby, and... I am."
Sabrina didn't know whether or not to believe her. But, after all, did it matter? Erika was kissing her neck, and each tiny little touch was like fire, and she was melting inside as Erika's dainty fingers slid up under her top and...
Right now, she could predict the future perfectly.
<<<<>>>
john_egbertTitle: Destined
Author:
kannaopheliaRating: G
Verse: Gameverse (Gen I/Kanto)
Characters/Pairings: Erika/Sabrina
Summary: Children, it seemed, had some strange ability to disrupt the feature, perhaps because they made the future for themselves. Children, it seemed, could make even the famous Sabrina doubt herself.
Tags: Pregnancy
The familiar scent of grass pokemon, rich and redolent with the sweetness of flowers, with sickly undertones of stun spore and poison powder, clung to the air. Sabrina breathed it in deeply, accepting the dangerous with the sweet. It had been too long since she visited Celadon City.
posted and
Swoobat lowered her to the ground and Sabrina thanked her silently, recalling her to her pokeball.
Sabrina was glad of the pokemon at her belt. She felt nervous, for the first time since... Well, to tell the truth, Sabrina could never quite remember being nervous, not when the world held so few surprises. Her certainty of the future was, she supposed, arrogant, especially as she had occasionally been proved wrong. The first time she had been truly surprised, when the child with the charmander had defeated her, she had not been entirely unsettled. She had been diverted, even, at the thought of a future in which she could not predict everything that would come to her. After all, it was a once only occurrence.
It was only the second child, the one with the totodile, that truly disturbed her ideas of the world. Because if she could be wrong twice, then perhaps she could be wrong about anything... After the child with the umbreon and espeon at the posted and Gym Leader castle, and the child with the tepig in the Pokemon World Tournament, she had almost become afraid of children.
Children, it seemed, had some strange ability to disrupt the feature, perhaps because they made the future for themselves. Children, it seemed, could make even the famous Sabrina doubt herself.
Once the seed of doubt had been sewn, it had been all too easy to lose her faith in her most basic belief in her future, too easy to let it drift away.
In the first courtyard of the Gym, a golden haired beauty and a pair of identical little girls paused in their attempts to arrange a co posted and llection of bellsprouts and oddishes into a charming grouping around a weepinbell.
"The gym is closed. The gym leader is indisposed--oh, elder sister Sabrina!" The beauty broke off what was obviously an oft-repeate posted and d speech, twisting a hand in her long golden locks.
Sabrina clicked her tongue impatiently. Erika obviously had not changed her ways much.
"I'm afraid Erika is--"
"Asleep?" Sabrina's voice was a little sharp, perhaps because she had always felt a little threatened by the lovely girls Erika liked to surround herself with. The grass Gym Leader had always asserted that she don't see the point in spending time with things and people that were not beautiful, although Sabrina had never been quite sure where her beloved glooms fit into that approach. "I'll go through anyway."
"Miss Sabrina?"
Sabrina whirled, prepared to annihilate the little girl with a glance. She was blushing and anxious; Sabrina supposed it took nerves to challenge a gym leader. She felt little pity, for all that. To have her right to enter Celadon Gym challenged! Did this child expect her to challenge her to a pokemon battle?
"Could--would you please autograph Victreebell's pokeball? Mystery Doors of the Magical Land is my favourite movie!"
"Me too, me too!" chimed her twin.
Sabrina felt her lips twitch despite herself. Children, it seemed, were still capable of surprising her.
*
The inner courtyard was cool and green, the scent of flowers even more strong. Sabrina marched straight to the raised platform and looked down at the heap of silk hidden behind it.
She reached down and gave it a prod with one booted foot.
Erika didn't even have the self respect to say "ouch" or look ashamed of herself. Her lashes fluttered gracefully open, and she smiled drowsily up at Sabrina.
"Hello. I missed you. Why are you here?"
"I had a dream. I knew it was important to come."
"Like the dream that told you to go to Unova in the first place?" Erika's voice was as sweetly modulated as ever, without a hint of ice, but Sabrina felt its bite anyway. "How did you find my hiding place?"
"You still snore like a spoink."
Erika giggled. "That's our little secret. Mustn't ruin the mystique." She patted the couch beside her, not even bothering to sit up.
Sabrina l posted and eapt lightly down beside her and sat crossed legged on the seat, trying not to beam at her. It had been too long, far too long, since she returned to Kanto, and not merely because of neglecting her gym leader responsibilities.
"You also," she said sternly, "seem to be even lazier than ever."
"It's not my fault. I'm tired all the time. The roselias simply won't stop grass whistling, and it's so soothing."
"You were lazy before you knew what a roselia was."
"That's true." Erika giggled again. "But truly, Sabrina, I have a special reason to be tired, lately." She let her eyes drift closed again.
Sabrina sat and watched her doze for a while. Erika's lashes lay like fans on skin as soft and pale as a cottonee, her hair a glossy shadow against the softly glowing satin of her kimono. The delicate gym leader of Celadon City, lying asleep among her flowers like a princess awaiting the kiss of true love.
Snoring like a spoink.
Something, however, was different. Erika's skin had always been pale, but had it been quite this pale? There was a barely perceptible green hue to her face. It could have just been the light shining through all the foliage; Sabrina was sure it wasn't. There were shadowy purple hollows under the closed eyes.
Sabrina reached out with her mind, seeking the cause of the problem. Her back stiffened in shock as she found the tiny, fierce spark of life.
"When are you due?"
Erika opened her eyes and sat up a little. "Autumn. When the fruit ripens, so do I. Oh, Sabrina. They told me I would only be sick for a little while, but every day, all day..."
"Congratulations," Sabrina said, ignoring the plaintive tone. Her lips were numb. What else, after all, could she say? I predicted that we would be together and that any child would be both of ours. How could I be so wrong?
Yet, bitterly, it was her own fault. She had waited for destiny to unroll itself, for the perfect moment in which Erika would realise that her dearest friend loved her as more than a sister and they would come together, and meanwhile, life had happened. They had finished their pokemon journeys; Erika had gone to train in the Celadon City gym and had eventually become its leader, and Sabrina had faced her own fight to establish an official Pokemon League Gym in Saffron. Team Rocket had fallen and risen and fallen again, Teams Aqua and Magma had split the world, Team Galactic and Team Plasma had threatened the order of things, and somehow, Sabrina had spent less and less time in Celadon.
She had still never thought that Erika would somehow slip away.
She wanted to ask who but it came out, somehow, as "How?"
"I can't tell you, you know that," Erika said serenely. "It's a secret of my family. Don't you remember? I told you long ago. When we were children."
"When we started our pokemon journey."
"Yes."
*
When Sabrina was nine years old, she sat down at the dinner table and announced, "I know who I'm going to marry when I'm grown up, Mama."
"Who, dear?" Her mother paused in washing rice, the corners of her lips lifted in amusement.
Sabrina resented that. She wasn't a cute little girl, she was nine years old, and what she had to say was very important, not funny at all. Hadn't her mother heard her properly? Getting married was a very serious thing. She persisted in explaining. "That little girl at the Pokémon Breeders outside town. The one with the shiny black hair. I think she's called Erika."
"Oh, honey. Girls don't marry girls. You're going to have to marry a boy, or else how are you going to have children? You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Her mother poured the cloudy water away and ran new, clear water over the rice. " I didn't know you'd even played with her. Have you told her you're engaged?"
She was laughing at Sabrina, with her eyes if not her mouth, and Sabrina felt a prickle of annoyance. She said, firmly, "There's no boys at the Pokémon Breeders, and they still have children. Erika has two Mamas."
Her mother didn't frown, but the glimmer faded from her eyes, and she said, "I'm sure you're mistaken, honey. Two women don't have babies."
All of Sabrina's senses screamed at her that her mother was upset, even though all she did was put the rice pot down and give Sabrina a cuddle. Grownups were so strange, hiding their feelings all the time, as if Sabrina couldn't tell exactly what they were feeling anyway.
Somehow, however, after that, Sabrina was never sent to the Pokémon Breeders to buy food for the Mr Mime who served as their housekeeper and nanny. The little girl called Erika didn't go into Saffron City much, and the Pokémon Breeders didn't mix with the folk of the town except for business, so Sabrina never did get to play with her.
Sabrina's mother didn't refer to the matter again, and Sabrina supposed she thought her daughter had forgotten it. Sabrina herself was content not to mention it. She and Erika were going to get married someday whether they played together or not. She could wait.
Every now and then, Sabrina let her feet lead her back to the Pokemon Breeders. After all, she wasn't exactly forbidden. She would clamber up to a high branch on the berry tree just outside the fence, and watch the women come and go, tending their own pokemon and the ones left in their daycare, bringing supplies in and pokemon food out. And often, Erika, trailing after the two women she called Mamma.
She was an odd little girl, sticking flowers in her dark hair, even though they wilted and straggled loose, stumbling over her skirts as she trailed after her mother, her gaze always absent and dreamy, as if she was looking at something else. She was, Sabrina noted disapprovingly, bad at her chores, often losing interest and falling into a daydream, or even curling up in the short grass and falling asleep when she should have been feeding the nidorans. Sabrina didn't mind that Erika was odd. She was, she knew, quite odd herself.
Sabrina had been right; Erika had two mothers. One of Erika's mothers wore plaid skirts and a pidgey on her shoulder. The other, with her square jaw and grizzled stubble of hair, Sabrina would have thought was a man, if not for the shape of her under her overalls and the fact that she lived on the Farm. She was often accompanied by a machamp as big and muscular as herself.
Sabrina knew from village gossip that the lady with the machamp didn't come from Johto at all. She had come from a region far away, and arrived when the ladies at the Pokemon Breeders had been threatened by thugs from Team Rocket. She and her pokemon had put them to flight, and the ladies had welcomed her machamp, as much as herself, into their community. Life was dangerous for a group of women living so far outside town.
And then, Sabrina decided, she must have fallen in love with Erika's other Mama, and they'd had a baby.
*
On Sabrina's tenth birthday, her mother kissed her on her cheek and handed her a pokeball and an egg. Sabrina clipped the pokeball to her belt. She already knew what was in it; it had been her companion since she was a tiny girl. The egg was more intriguing. She raised it to her cheek, imagining she could hear tiny movements within.
"What is it?" Sabrina had known, instantly, but she had found that informing her mother of the future too often made her uneasy, so it was best to pretend.
"It's a surprise. It will need very careful raising, darling, but it will repay you."
Sabrina carefully placed it in her backpack and kissed her mother in thanks.
"You'll be just fine," Mama said. "You'll have many adventures and defeat the Pokemon League."
Sabrina raised an eyebrow. "I know I will."
For all that she was quite secure in her future, she felt a little bubble of something like excitement as she took the road out of Saffron City. Beyond the limits of the City, there was long grass with hostile pokemon, there were trainers who would test her pokemon's mettle, there were gyms and dangers and...
...a little girl, bursting into tears as her bellsprout was taken down by a spearow.
"Venonat, go!" The bubble inside Sabrina was growing bigger. Her first wild pokemon battle! "Tackle!" The spearow fluttered back, confused, then flung itself in a return tackle. Venonat shook it off. "Tackle! Tackle! Tackle!"
The spearow gave a despairing squawk, and fainted. Sabrina turned back to the little girl, who was cradling her pokemon in her lap.
"My bellsprout is hurt!" She had tears in her eyes.
"You shouldn't have used it against a spearow. Don't you know anything about type advantages?"
Erika tossed her hair, sending a flower falling. "I don't see the point of having pokemon that aren't pretty, like Bellsprout. Please, do you have a potion spray?"
"No. But I have something better." Sabrina called back Venonat, and took out her egg. There were cracks running down its side.
"How will that help?"
"You'll see." She put her arm around Erika. It was necessary, of course, but it still sent a flutter of happiness through her. It was as if Erika's waist was made to be exactly the right size for her own childish arm. As the egg's shell fell off in shards, Sabrina said, triumphantly, "Abra, teleport!"
*
The two little girls sat side by side on the couch in the Pokemon Centre waiting room, holding hands. Sabrina felt content and happy. She had met her future wife and come to her aid at a moment of crisis. What more could she want? She wanted to hug Erika, and brush her pretty hair, and talk to her about pokemon.
"Grass pokemon are weak," she said, sternly.
"They are not," Erika said, stubbornly. "They look delicate and pretty, but they take strength from the sun and other pokemon and they grow."
"Most of them are poison, anyway. A psychic pokemon could go right through them." Hnesty made her add, "well, not Abra, not until he evolves. Psychic pokemon have no weaknesses except ghost attacks, and all ghosts have poison. They are the most powerful pokemon of all."
"Your starter is a bug. And it's poison, too. You can't hate poison types that much."
"Bug poison is stronger than grass poison, anyway."
"You'll see." Erika tossed her hair and giggled, unperturbed. "I'm going to be a grass type gym leader one day. It's going to be the most beautiful gym in all of Johto, and people will come miles to see it. I'm only having girls in it, though. Pretty girls. And I'll be the prettiest of them all."
"Yes, you will." Sabrina smiled at her. "Not of Saffron City, though. I'm going to be the gym leader here."
"I thought the fighting dojo was trying for league certification?"
"Well, I'll just have to defeat them, then. Fighting types are no match for psychic types."
"My mama's machamp is the strongest pokemon there is," Erika said, her sunny confidence unaltered.
"I'll be able to beat it, one day. I'll have to catch more, first. Would you... would you like to travel together?" Her mouth felt dry.
"Yes. We can be best friends," Erika said happily. Sabrina felt a surge of happiness in response.
"Erika, can I ask you something?" It had been bothering her for a while.
"Sure."
"How can you have two mothers?" It seemed like a question of major importance. "Don't you need a father to have a baby?"
"It's a family secret." Erika kicked her legs. "You can only find out if you're a member of my family."
I'm going to be, Sabrina said silently, to herself, hugging the knowledge close.
*
"You said I had to be a member of your family to know how your mother got pregnant," Sabrina said, slowly.
"Yes." Erika reached up and cupped her face. "But you went off to follow your dreams, literally, to be a movie star, and... well. I was lonely."
"But..." Sabrina struggled to process this. "I never dreamed of being a movie star. I went because of a vision, that something important would happen if I did."
"Did it?"
"Well, you got pregnant," Sabrina said, hopelessly. "And if it was because I left... But I only ever dreamed of being a gym leader. And, well..."
She looked into Erika's eyes, which were wide and intense and not sleepy at all. And after all. What was the harm in saying? It was her destiny, or it was not. But the children who had come to challenge her had taken hold of their own destinies. As, it seemed, had Erika.
"You. I dreamed of you." She couldn't quite look at Erika. She turned away, Erika's hand still warm on the side of her face."
"I love you, you know." Erika's voice was choked with tears. "I kept telling you so. And you'd just go all quiet and cold."
"I didn't think you meant..."
"Sabrina, you've met my mothers! For an intelligent girl, you are the most stupid..."
Sabrina decided to do something intelligent for once and kissed her. Erika's mouth was gentle and strong and her hair smelled of grass and living things, and under the silk of her kimono was warm skin and a beating heart.... Two beating hearts, one string and slow, the other tiny and racing.
"I hope you don't mind being a parent," Erika, who might as well have been psychic herself, said when they broke apart. "If I'd known, I would have waited to ask you." She hesitated a moment, and then said, "I would have had it anyway, but it would be nice for you to feel consulted."
Sabrina laughed at her, trailing kisses over her cheek, fierce joy in her heart. "I'll have to move back to Johto permanently. I don't want to be an absentee mother."
"Hmm," Erika said, happily. "We could run a psychic grass gym. We could beat anything. Except maybe dark types. We didn't even know about them when we were kids."
"Stop talking about pokemon." Sabrina kissed her again, fiercely. "Except that you are not to fight any battles in which there might be poison powder or stunspore. You have to think about our baby."
"Of course not," Erika said, snuggling up against her shoulder. "He's a boy, by the way. Oh, Sabrina. I'm so happy, but I just want to cry and cry."
"I feel the same, darling." The weight of wasted time hung over her. But then... there was more than one form of destiny. She and Erika had both had their roles to play in the drama of the world. Perhaps Arceus had had plans for them. She prayed, silently, that the plans were done, and they could face their future together, with... their son. Their son.
"Want to know how I got pregnant?" Erika asked, softly.
"Yes," she said, a little uncertainly. It wouldn't be a man... surely. At least not in that sense. She didn't want to think about it."
Erika laughed against her shoulder. "I meant to visit Mama. She's a very good Pokemon Breeder, after all. And no one knows where pokemon eggs come from. She just told me I would have a baby, and... I am."
Sabrina didn't know whether or not to believe her. But, after all, did it matter? Erika was kissing her neck, and each tiny little touch was like fire, and she was melting inside as Erika's dainty fingers slid up under her top and...
Right now, she could predict the future perfectly.
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(Anonymous) 2013-12-20 12:24 pm (UTC)(link)And he'd like Eggsecutor, I suspect. <3
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Oh my gosh, I am so sorry! I apparently fail at Tumblr even harder than I thought, because I did not realize this amazing fic had been posted for me until today.
And I'm upset I didn't find it earlier, because this fic is really fantastic. I love the relationship between Sabrina and Erika here- the contrast between Erika's princess-like nature and the more human qualities Sabrina knows she has is adorable, haha. Snoring like a spoink legitimately made me giggle out loud. I also love how you write Sabrina, especially in the flashback of her as a child. The idea that she doesn't quite understand why people don't like it when she shows her knowledge of the future but holds it back anyway is something I can really see for her.
Also, I love that you wrote this pairing, and that you wrote fpreg for it! Those are two things I honestly was not expecting to get, and I'm so excited that I did. :D You write them in a really interesting, fun way as well. It's the best Christmas present I could have hoped for!
Thank you again for writing this for me, and I am so, so sorry for not commenting sooner!
EDIT: Also! It was necessary, of course, but it still sent a flutter of happiness through her. It was as if Erika's waist was made to be exactly the right size for her own childish arm. is the most adorable line ever, wow. And I really like the detail of Erika's mothers- there's not a lot of detail for them, but there's just enough and in just the right places to make them really intriguing!
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Proofreading
Nevertheless, this remains amazing.
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