"Summer Snow" by Kingdra for Chocolateowls
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chocolateowls
Title: summer snow
Author:
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kingdra / Rating: PG
Verse: games, takes place in Kalos
Characters/Pairings: Wikstrom/Dawn, also with Malva, Drasna, and Siebold
Summary: Wikstrom is startlingly taken by this new challenger.
Content Notes: There is a lot of overdramatic and slightly embarrassingly cheesy narration and I blame that entirely on Wikstrom's point of view. Fluffy. Also I kind of love the E4 dynamics. I hope you like this, Dreamwidth user chocolateowls :)
*
"Come!" Wikstrom shouts, to whomever had risen to his chamber. He counts: this is his fifth challenger today.
She's pretty, with long black hair and clothes that don't particularly match each other. Wikstrom chuckles, and says, "Lady, friend, you are not from around here, are you?"
The girl giggles. Perhaps at his speech, which Wikstrom encounters more often than he'd like. Malva always insists he fakes, and it's an insult to Wikstrom's honor every time she does.
"I'm not," the girl says. "I'm from Sinnoh." And then, "Should I curtsy?"
She's teasing, but is also smiling, and Wikstrom puts a gloved hand at his waist self-consciously.
"May I have your name?" he asks instead.
"I'm Dawn," says the girl.
Wikstrom steps down from his pedestal and takes Dawn's hand. "Enchante," he says, and kisses the back of her palm, "to meet someone so breathtaking. Dawn, truly, the start of a glorious day, preceded by darkness, the maiden of fair light…"
Dawn giggles again. "You're ridiculous," she says.
Wikstrom glances up, slightly offended—but she's still smiling at him, so he thinks she is teasing again. She looks too gentle to be mean. Wikstrom wonders how she does in battle.
He realizes he's been staring at her for too long, and clears his throat. He lets go of her hand.
"Let us commence!" he says, marching back up. "To the most honorable and beautiful battle! En garde!"
Dawn is still smiling, but Wikstrom thinks it may be a good thing.
*
She destroys him, utterly, and Wikstrom has never been more taken with a woman. He says, when she is done, "My fair Dawn, what adventures will you find this afternoon, once you are done with us Elite?"
"Well, um," says Dawn. She's pocketing her Pokeballs. Wikstrom still has his Aegislash out, polishing its handle.
"I'm not entirely sure," she says. "Calem was going to show me around Kalos; he's doing research on the Mega Evolutions right now."
"Exciting!" says Wikstrom; internally, he is saddened. More time in Dawn's presence would make his week, he thinks; meeting her has already made his day.
"Well I'm not that sure of that, though," says Dawn. "I guess I'll be in Kalos for a while. I just wanted to do some training, and exploring…"
"Ah," says Wikstrom—this is his chance! "Would you like me to show you around, my dear lady? Some other time?"
Dawn's got that same brightness her face, like a lightning bolt to his iron heart. "Where would we go?" she asks.
"Anywhere you'd happily like," says Wikstrom, graciously bowing at her, and Dawn does curtsy this time.
Wikstrom feels his face flush.
"I'd be delighted," she says, in a fake sort of airy voice, and then, "I'll be staying in the hotel in Santalune. If you want to visit me."
"Is this an invitation?" Wikstrom asks.
Dawn's turned to go. She walks down to the entrance and looks back only once.
"You decide," she calls.
*
Wikstrom ponders at these parting words for entirely too long. Too long then turns into two days. He has been battling with perhaps less focus, and he may have lost three battles, which by his own standards are entirely too much. He needs not training, he knows, pondering over his losses one afternoon while leaving the League.
Wikstrom thinks of Dawn, maybe on a fresh winter day with snow sparkling in her hair, and—
"Hey! Wikstrom!" shouts Malva's very loud voice.
"Ah, m'lady Malva," says Wikstrom, waiting as she and the others caught up. He has forgotten to leave with them, so caught up in his thoughts.
"Don't use your 'm'lady' bullshit on me," Malva says. "Why've I gotten a few challengers in the past few days who've been talking about how their battles against the guy in the stupid suit of armor had been too easy, huh?" She shoves at him, though—said suit of armor does not make much of Malva's shoving.
"She's had to make those challengers lose so badly they cried," Siebold says.
Drasna shakes her head disapprovingly. "Those poor challengers."
"Thinking that we were some easy win? Poor challengers my ass," says Malva.
Wikstrom laughs at her. Pridefully, he thinks. Perhaps a bit nervously. "Well," he says, and then realizes that he doesn't actually know how Dawn had done on the day he'd met her. She had defeated him beautifully, of course, but Diantha had at one point, too.
"My dear Malva," he says. (Malva rolls her eyes and definitely mutters, "I'm not your dear.") "Apologies for my failing concentration. The trainers have been better now, have you not noticed?" And then, as carefully as he can, "There haven't been many who've beaten Diantha recently, have there?"
They're at the League entrance. Drasna turns to bid goodbye to the guards, who lock the door behind them.
Malva grumbles, "Only one, so she'll probably have to find Serena now. She's some trainer from Sinnoh. I could tell because she was wearing too many clothes."
"Ah, yes, her," Siebold chimes in. "She has exchanged some foreign recipes with me. She's oddly fond of poffins."
*
Dawn is a plague in his mind, a plague he could not have wished more for. She is in Santalune and he is in Ambrette and that, he thinks, is valid enough reason to not yet visit her.
But he is a master of wooing—a Master, he says!—and cannot help in buying a pretty, matching outfit from one of the Lumiose boutiques. And then—his romance getting the best of himself—mailing the clothes to her. But he has always been a romantic and furrows his eyebrows and avoids looking at the ink when writing, With love, Wikstrom on the tag before sending his skarmory off to deliver the gift.
"You are a master, Wikstrom," he tells himself. "The lady shall not say no to your gift. And even if so…" He pauses. "It is the thought that counts," he decides. "Dawn is a kind maiden. Surely she will, at the least, respect my affections."
His skarmory comes back with nothing but a piece of paper, a small helmet doodled onto it.
Wikstrom feels at his exposed hair self-consciously.
*
Next on his agenda is chocolate. Roses, as well. They are not particularly difficult to find—in Lumiose, at the least—but neither are certain other people.
"Wikstrom!" Drasna says warmly, as he leaves the flower shop.
Malva and she are sitting at an ourdoor cafe right next to the shop. Wikstrom almost drops his gifts.
"Who are those for?" Malva asks curiously, over her glass of wine.
"I—uh—" Wikstrom hesitates. "Relevance is impartial! Implications of appearance may not always be true, but I can assure you it is nothing that will interest you—"
"Shut up and let me see." Malva attempts to wrench the chocolates from him, but he pulls them from her grasp.
Drasna is peering over at him with kind eyes, which weakens him. "Are you in love, dear?" she says. "I remember being in love—or at least, having so many dragon masters longing to win my heart."
She sips from her wine.
Wikstrom crumbles. "A woman," he says, and Malva look up at him.
"I have fallen," he says, "hard, fast—graciously. For a woman."
He sits at the table and sets his flowers and chocolate down.
Drasna says, "Oh, this is not a complete party! I must call Siebold," and Malva looks at the label on the chocolates.
"'To Dawn,'" she reads. and then, "Isn't that the trainer who last beat Diantha? You talked about her the other day?"
"She has stolen my heart." Wikstrom gazes off into the sun. It is like Dawn, bright, captivating. He clutches at his chest.
Malva sort of stares at him for a while until, after Drasna's quick Holo Caster call, Siebold arrives, looking like he'd rushed over from the open market, carrying bags of fresh food in his hands. "I arrived as soon as I could!" he says, flourishing an apple. "There is news of love? Drasna, that's what you told me, right?"
"Correct." Drasna's eyes are twinkling. She seems pleased, compared to Malva's honest expression of bewilderment.
Siebold looks between Malva and Wikstrom before Wikstrom sighs, "There is a lady in my life. Dawn."
"Oh! The challenger from earlier," says Siebold. "Memorable, memorable. Enjoys the strangest, but not the most entirely unpleasant foods. Here," he says, handing Wikstrom the apple. "For your love."
Wikstrom takes it. He sighs again, continues thinking of Dawn. The fleeting wave of her hair, eyes gentle, soft on him.
"As this is fitting!" says Siebold. "She is a queen, and you are her knight! But this is no forbidden romance, as there is no king to stand in your way! You—"
"He's only known her for the duration of their battle," interrupts Malva, and pokes him. Wikstrom doesn't react. "Which, if he'd been like this, wouldn't have been very long."
"Her battling was elegant," says Wikstrom, "but I did not go easy on her, if even mere traces of that thought have crossed your mind."
"Just saying, I'm just saying." Malva puts her hands up. "A little creepy, don't you think?"
"Creepy? Not at all," says Siebold, and puts a hand on Wikstrom's shoulder. "Love is love."
Wikstrom takes his shoulder as well. "Thank you, my brother," he says. "Your support for my passion, it means—" Briefly he is no longer thinking of Dawn, but his comrades—his friends! "My world has become one woman," he says to Siebold, "but it is not without you, either!"
"This is the most embarrassing thing I've ever had to witness," Malva says.
Drasna is still beaming, her smile as warm as Siebold's hand on him, and Malva's sharp words.
*
He mails her pokedolls, and stones (personally polished) as well, in exchange for little ribbons that he does not ask for. Dawn never sends any of her presents back, though, so Wikstrom thinks she must enjoy them. Who would not—his stones are so carefully polished that they could be mistaken as gems, in the light.
When she says him a particularly magnificent ribbon one day, attached to his skarmory—and his skarmory seems reluctant to let it go (he's put the ribbons on all of his pokemon and they are completely taken with them)—he puts it on his aegislash who has one less than the others. And he decides.
He will go to Dawn. He will go into Santalune and ask her if he could be her knight. And she—as Siebold had so magnificently and accurately put it—would be his queen. Yes. She would destroy anyone who tried to cross her, but he shall defend her first!
Wikstrom thinks about it all that day and does not do anything until the next. As soon as he is fully dressed in his best, most polished suit, brighter than an ampharos's tail, he leaves on his skarmory, flies to Santalune.
He locates the hotel almost immediately. He plucks up a nearby flower, first. (When he realizes it's a flabebe, he drops it and picks an actual one.) Then he takes a deep breath and enters the hotel.
"May I be directed to Dawn's room, if it is convenient?" he asks the clerk, who gives him the room number. He takes another deep breath and goes upstairs.
He knocks at her door. When she opens it—bright eyes, dark hair falling like sunlight, without a beanie—he stands up straight and then bows.
"Madam," he says, holding out the flowers. "For you."
Dawn's hiding at her door, giggling. She takes the flowers. "Thank you," she says, and adds, "my lord."
Wikstrom is certain that he is flush in the face, but he chooses to ignore it. "I have come, er, to offer my, um—"
"To show me around Kalos?" Dawn asks, and Wikstrom latches onto her words immediately.
"Yes, that!" he says. "I will be your guide today, my lady."
"Cool," says Dawn, and then opens the door a little wider. "I should get proper clothes on first, though. You can come in, if you want."
Wikstrom enters. As Dawn retreats to her closet, he does his best to avoid her, even though she isn't even taking any clothing off—he looks, instead, at her suitcase and other items randomly assorted across the floor—pokeballs, open poffin cases, an empty box of chocolates. Her empoleon is in the corner, a coat on his arm, and appears startled when he sees Wikstrom.
"Don't worry," Dawn says. "He's harmless." Wikstrom doesn't know if she's speaking to him or the empoleon.
The empoleon narrows his eyes at Wikstrom. Perhaps at his armor, and Wikstrom shifts his shoulders back a little more.
"I'm done!" says Dawn, coming out of her closet. She's wearing the coat that Wikstrom had sent her earlier, along with a small puffball hat. "How do I look?"
"Dashing, I daresay," Wikstrom says.
Dawn's empoleon squawks.
"I told you, he's harmless," Dawn says to him. She marches up to Wikstrom and he suddenly gets the urge to loop his arm around hers. He doesn't, though. "Shall we leave?" she says, in that same sort of airy voice she'd used many days ago.
She has a full-faced smile on and Wikstrom cannot help but join her in expression. "Yes we shall," he says, turning towards the door.
The empoleon squawks again. Dawn sighs and turns around and says, "Fine, fine, if it makes you happy." She picks up an empty pokeball on the floor, turns it over in her hand, and then returns the empoleon to it.
"He wants to join us," she says, rolling her eyes.
Wikstrom watches her. He can only hope to come close to her brightness. "Whatever makes you happy," he replies.
*
He takes her to Ambrette Town first—"It is my home, after all"—and as they walk through the aquarium, Dawn admiring the skrelp, Wikstrom asks, "What has brought you to Kalos anyway, lady? I do not believe we have discussed this before."
"Oh," says Dawn, peering at a particularly small skrelp struggling to swim out of its nest. Its mother dragelge is helping. "I thought a change of scenery would be nice. Vacation. Sinnoh's awfully cold."
Wikstrom's eyes drift to her thigh-highs. "I can tell," he says, and then quickly glances away. He is a gentleman. Gentlemen do not ogle at ladies, particularly ladies of their own interest.
"What do you do in Sinnoh?" he questions. "Or, if it is rather fitting, what have you done? What has spurred this desire for a change of scenery, my Dawn?" Her name is warmest on his tongue.
The dragalge pushes the tiny skrelp out of the next, and it floats across the water, seemingly caught off-guard. Dawn's giggle catches in her throat and Wikstrom has never heard anything more wonderful.
Once the dragalge has joined the skrelp and helps it start to swim, Dawn turns to him. "I've," she says, and shyly glances down. "I suppose I'm the Sinnoh champion, though I've battled Serena here before, and—" she shakes her head. "We draw, every time."
"Champion!" Wikstrom is wonderfully terrified! "My, you certainly are a powerful trainer."
"Well." Dawn shrugs. "I've… There were a few issues along the way."
"You are extraordinary," says Wikstrom, awed. "I am not sure if my presence is worthy of—"
"Are you mocking me?" Dawn asks, and Wikstrom laughs, feels not, perhaps, particularly light—like coal under iron, and he looks into her eyes and she is, too, until a swarm of luvdisc pass through the display behind them and bump very audibly against the glass.
He shows her the Glittering Cave and picks out some lovely rocks and Dawn is enamored, tries to press one to the shoulder of his armor.
*
They arrive at Lumiose eventually, and even though Wikstrom has it in mind to show her around the winding streets, Dawn says, "Can we go there?"
She's pointing to Prism tower and Wikstrom says, "The inside isn't very exciting, I'm afraid; tis only a gym."
"Can we go up?" Dawn asks.
Wikstrom says, "Hardly anyone doth try," but Dawn says, "It looks very pretty."
"You, my lady," Wikstrom says, casting his eyes on the tower once more, "are correct. Up we shall go!"
They take his skarmory, though there are elevators inside; Dawn wants to go to the uppermost part of the tower, so Wikstrom takes her past where the elevators can go. They perch at the top, skarmory setting them down, and Dawn says, "This is lovely."
Wikstrom is watching her. "It is," he says, softly. They are so close—the sun is setting, but to him, with her facing the rays, she is the true embodiment of light—Wikstrom does not know why he has never met her before—
Something in Dawn's pocket rattles suddenly and they both slightly jump, and then Dawn laughs as she grasps onto Wikstrom's arms to hold steady.
"It's empoleon's pokeball," she says. "He might be displeased. I'm safe," she assures the pokeball, patting it on her waist.
"You are safe," Wikstrom says. "With me."
Dawn smiles at him. "I know," she says.
She leans in. There is no space between them, suddenly, and Wikstrom is surprised at her lips on his own. But they are soft and it takes him half a second to press back, before—
"Wikstrom! Oh, am I interrupting something?" Malva's voice is loud as always and they've pulled away at this point. "What are you doing? Who's that? Where are you?" Malva's hologram attempts to look down. "Are you flying? Is that Dawn?"
Wikstrom is flustered and Dawn laughs. "Hi Malva," she says.
"Wikstrom, wh—"
He quickly turns his Holo Caster off. Dawn is stifling giggles behind her hand, and he says, "Apologies, that was—incredibly inopportune, and we—" He clears his throat.
"That was quite nice," he tries again.
Dawn agrees, "It was."
She takes his hand in hers, too. They watch the horizon. Wikstrom looks at her: she is more radiant than the city, than either east or west sides of the sun.
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I'll start off by letting you know there's no way I can properly convey how much I LOVE THIS.
THE KALOS ELITE FOUR ARE FABULOUS I AM SO HAPPY YOU INCLUDED ALL OF THEM. I just love the snippets of their personalities and Malva, beautifully disgruntled Malva. They're gossipy but supportive but concerned and I am so in love with this dynamic.
WIKSTROM. Oh man this was so wonderful because his cheesy narration never felt once out of place and I was smiling like an idiot the whole time. This was such a perfect gift for the holidays because it was so fluffy and light and anytime I need cheering up I just think, but remember when Wikstrom was an absolute fool for Dawn? And she laughs at him but it isn't mean-spirited and I can imagine her face as she keeps receiving all these gifts and it's all so sweet I am just sort of asdfghjkl.
EVERYTHING IS SO LOVELY LET ME SHOUT IT FROM A MOUNTAINTOP. Grumpy empoleon is fantastic and Dawn is adorable with glimpses into how strong she is and I really love the line 'Wikstrom laughs at her. Pridefully, he thinks. Perhaps a bit nervously.' and there were even luvdisc and I almost made a prompt about cheesy luvdisc romance lore alone and I hope you understand how much I am flailing with joy over this story.
Thank you so, so much for giving my silly prompt a chance and turning it into so much more than I could have ever hoped for. This absolutely made my holiday! <333333
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