Entry tags:
Versus Nurture (PG-13, Giovanni, Madame Boss, Silver) for stharridan
Recipient: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stharridan
Title: Versus Nurture
Author:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mercoledi
Rating: PG-13
Verse: Games with splashes of anime, Gen IV
Characters: Giovanni, Madame Boss, Silver, OC, Giovanni/OC
Summary: Monsters like Giovanni aren’t born; they’re created.
Warnings: Character death, including causes of death described in brief detail.
A/N: Prompts used: “We burned, we learned” and “Only fools fall in love and I guess I'm one of them.” Sort of got carried away somewhere in here, so I figured it’d be a good idea to mention that. Sorry! Happy holidays, and I hope you enjoy!
Giovanni’s first memory was of Christmas morning. He remembered gold and silver orbs glittering on evergreen branches, the scent of pine and fresh-cooked eggs, the satin feel of wrapping paper and bows in his hands.
The deep, resounding voice of his father.
He remembered his father well, even though the man hadn’t been in his life since he was young. His father was tall. Stocky. A tawny face with slicked-back black hair. Deep, dark eyes. Strong hands the size of growlithe, lifting Giovanni’s tiny body up to his mammoth knee.
Giovanni remembered the warmth of the man — literal and figurative. The way his voice filled a room with his energy and emotion. How his hugs were almost strong enough to break bones. Giovanni had no idea that this man could and had ordered the deaths of countless other fathers every other day of the year or that this man’s anger kept half of Kanto’s underworld clutched in his iron fist. To him, this man was Papa, the person who gave him everything he could ever want.
In the corner of the room opposite the tree and the mountain of discarded wrapping paper stood the mirror image to Papa. While Papa was built like a bear, this person was built like a cat. Her lithe body leaned in the doorway, arms crossed over a red satin robe that didn’t seem appropriate for anyone’s mother. Dark, almond eyes squinted at the father and son, and in response, a tight smile surrounded by full lips crossed her narrow face. Even then, she seemed shrouded to Giovanni: curly chestnut hair forming shadows over her face, voice rarely heard in those days but firm and quiet when it came out, stance always guarded with arms or legs crossed at all times. This was not the openness or warmth in Papa. This was Mama now. Mother in a few years. Vittoria in adulthood. Her after she died.
Back then, she was Mama because she was a wife first and mother second. And in that memory, Giovanni thought he must have loved her. He remembered her back then, the way she sauntered into a room (like she did at that point), the way she leaned down to kiss Giovanni gently (like she did then), the way she gracefully placed herself next to her father and leaned her head on his gigantic shoulder (like she did after that). He remembered that she was beautiful but distant, motherly but somehow just beyond his reach.
He also remembered that she never once held him. As a child, he thought this was perfectly normal.
“Mama!” his father boomed. “Why so quiet? It’s Christmas!”
She raised a hand to her forehead and wormed her fingers through her chestnut hair. “Just tired, Papa. Just tired.”
“Haha! Up all night waiting for Santa just like Johnny here? Speaking of which...” Without allowing his wife to answer, Papa set Giovanni on the floor. “Open the big one, Johnny! C’mon!”
His father was all smiles, and the happiness was infectious to Giovanni. A broad grin crossed his own face as he crawled back to the tree and gripped the sides of the largest package under it. He couldn’t read the label, but the resounding words of encouragement from his father told him it was all his. Tilting his head up, he stared wide-eyed at the package, easily twice as large as he was. As his hands tore into the layers of paper, he turned his head back towards his father, who shouted happily as he leaned over to grab for a camera on the couch-side end table. Next to him, his mother sat stiffly straight, hands folded neatly in her lap as her eyes fell on her husband. Her smile disappeared completely, replaced by a squint and a frown.
Giovanni’s second memory was of his mother in black, her cold hand circling Giovanni’s as they stood beside Papa’s casket.
---
“Team Rocket must always have a strong leader, Giovanni. You cannot be weak.”
That was what his mother had told him after every screw-up he committed from the day his father died to the day he left home. For those seven long years, no one called him Johnny. Mama became Mother, but she wasn’t really much of a mother. The moment her husband was put in the ground, she was Madame Boss, queen of the Kantonian underworld and the leader of Team Rocket first and foremost. If Papa’s fist was iron, Mother’s was titanium. While Papa was capable of being jovial if things went his way, Mother treated her peons with frost and venom if things went right and with the rage of a gyarados if things went wrong. To Giovanni himself, she gave him smiles and tenderness when he was obedient, but she never touched him. When he made a mistake, her smile would disappear, and her voice would remind him of what was expected of him in a low, cold hiss.
Of course, that was if she saw him. When he wasn’t shuttered up in top-notch boarding schools, he was handled by her army of grunts, bulky bodyguards in pinstripe suits who called him “sir.” Her appearances, when he returned home for holidays, were limited to at most an hour a day, much of which was spent across dining room tables.
Giovanni didn’t exactly hate his mother at that point, but he didn’t like the woman either. She was a presence in his life, someone aggravatingly distant yet in control of every detail of his being.
On the one hand, Giovanni couldn’t — and still can’t — blame her. He was the heir to his father’s empire, after all. She was right. It took a certain type of person to run a kingdom.
On the other, the tender moments and smiles and pats on the shoulder were few and far between. Nothing Giovanni did was enough to earn them most days. No amount of cunning he displayed in school, no amount of firmness he gave towards his guards, and no amount of swiftness to answer her or to do what she said was ever enough to earn more than, “Not bad, but you could do better, boy.”
No, Giovanni didn’t hate his mother then. How could he when she was right?
Still, part of him resented the pressure — the pressure more than its source. He had to get out.
That was why he stood before the door to his mother’s office on his tenth birthday, forehead pressed against the mahogany, knuckles resting on its hard surface. He felt the stares of the guards at his back and felt the intensity of their resistance to laughing at him. It took a good portion of his self-control not to turn around and run away and another good portion of his self-control not to snap at them. No, he needed to be calm. He needed to be eloquent. He needed to be everything his mother wanted him to be now more than ever.
So he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then, he moved his fist to knock.
The response was immediate and almost entirely toneless: “Come in.”
A shiver. Another deep breath. Giovanni steeled every fragment of his being and steadied his gaze straight ahead. His hand, as if acting on its own, found the doorknob, and the door swung open in front of him.
Deep breaths. One foot in front of the other. He entered the office and let the door swing shut behind him. The room was sparsely furnished, with a wide desk and a pair of uncomfortable-looking chairs dominating the space. His mother stood at the wall-sized window, the only source of light, with her back towards him. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and as soon as the door shut, they clenched in each other. Giovanni stopped in the middle of the room and waited for her response.
“You’re late,” she growled. “My receptionist told me you were coming up ten minutes ago. Why did you make me wait for you?”
Giovanni mumbled something about the elevator.
“So I can hear you, boy,” she snapped.
He stood — back straight, chest out, eyes up. “The elevator was taking too long. I had to use the stairs.”
“Don’t give me excuses. It wastes more of my time.”
Courage shaken, Giovanni let his eyes fall to the desk. “I’m sorry, Mother.”
“Never mind. What is it you want?”
This was the moment. The very moment that Giovanni was waiting for for most of his life, but his throat contracted. All of the words he rehearsed for months up to this point were fading quickly from his brain. Slowly, he raised his eyes, his expression faltering from a look of confidence and power to one of a beaten growlithe pup. He could almost swear that the air grew colder as the silence between himself and his mother grew longer.
“Well?” she hissed impatiently.
“Mother,” he began, his voice breaking slightly in his nervousness. “It’s my birthday.”
There was a long pause.
“And?”
“And... and I was wondering... could I...?”
“I have a meeting with Pokémon League officials in a half an hour, Giovanni. Please don’t take until then.”
Another deep breath. Better to get it over with.
“Mother, I want to start a pokémon journey.”
There was another silence. For a few excruciatingly long moments, Giovanni thought she was about to turn him down. Then, she turned and bent over her desk as one of her hands snaked out of view to pull open a drawer.
“Is that all?” she asked, softer than how she spoke a moment ago.
Suddenly unable to speak, Giovanni simply nodded.
At that moment, his mother grinned, but he knew it wasn’t for him. It was a cold grin, a snake-like grin, a challenging grin. She didn’t look at him, but he knew she was analyzing him, appraising him as if to ask how long it would take for him to come running home. Her hand, in the meantime, fished into the drawer and pulled from it a red and white sphere. Without an explanation, she tossed it at her son and watched him fumble to catch it.
“Take this to the lab. They’ll give you a pokédex and a starter set of poké balls.”
Giovanni hesitated, staring at the orb in his hands as if it was about to eat him. His mother straightened, the smile fading quickly as she placed her hands on her hips.
“It’s a starter,” she said bluntly. “What do you say to someone who gives you a gift?”
At that, her son lifted his chin and fought every urge to show any emotion. Instead, he nodded once and swallowed his excitement. “Thank you, Mother.”
She scoffed. “Just don’t screw up.”
With that, she turned back to the window, and Giovanni scrambled out of the room. He didn’t need to be told twice for the most part. That was the impressive thing about him.
---
All journeys are not without their rocky starts, and Giovanni’s was no different. Days after he left home, he faced loss after loss, the cold, hunger, angry wild pokémon, forces of nature — everything imaginable that should have driven him back to Viridian. Yet, they didn’t. Every time the thought of going home crossed his mind, he remembered his mother, her snake-like grin, and the last words she gave him.
His starter, Meowth, hadn’t grown that much by the time he reached Viridian Forest. She was a city cat. A house cat at that, more used to hunting fat, tame urban rattata inside buildings instead of the skittish wild ones of the fields, never mind the wild pidgey or weedle that inhabited the forest. For that reason, Giovanni hadn’t caught a single pokémon by the time he reached the first trees, and Meowth was too busy being stung and poisoned to be of much help.
Yet Giovanni pressed on, deeper into the forest, further from Viridian. He had to prove to his mother that he was worth something, that he was strong and capable. He didn’t care how long it took.
On the third day through the forest, Giovanni waded through the brush with Meowth perched on his shoulder. Their eyes skimmed the spaces between the trees for any sign of life, any flicker of fur or feather or exoskeleton. It nearly consumed all of Giovanni’s patience when, at last, something yellow darted down the trunk of a tree. He stopped dead, his eyes fixed directly on the base of the tree as the pikachu dropped to the ground and started pawing at a cache of nuts at its roots. This, he decided, was it.
“Meowth, Scratch!”
By that point, if Meowth was anything, she was obedient. Without so much as a hesitation, she launched herself off Giovanni’s shoulder and directly at the pikachu.
What happened next was almost too fast for Giovanni to observe. The mouse’s ears twitched, and its beady eyes glistened at the approaching cat. Abruptly, it was surrounded with brilliant, yellow light as a deafening boom filled the clearing. Giovanni flinched, shielding himself as he squinted through the light. Only when it faded was he able to see his meowth, lying feet away from the pikachu in a charred heap. The mouse squeaked angrily, its cheeks sparking and its paws grinding into the ground.
Giovanni wasn’t entirely certain what drove him to do it. Maybe it was the echoing of his mother’s voice and the flash of her smile inside his skull. Maybe it was the thought of losing his only pokémon. Whatever it was — whether it was determination or fear — he threw himself out of the brush and dashed for Meowth.
The second ThunderShock was for him, and his entire world burned with light and fire.
When it was done, he slumped over Meowth, his every muscle trembling at once in protest. He shook as he glared at the rat, as he took notice of its sparking cheeks, as his brain strained to come up with a coherent command to send to the rest of his body. Unable to get his legs to move, he shoved his hand into the ground and clenched his teeth in preparation. If he was going to die, he wanted the pikachu to see his face at the very least.
The pikachu’s attack didn’t come. Instead, a butterfree swooped from the trees as a blue cloud of dust burst from its wings. Although the pikachu was quick to react to Meowth, the distraction that Giovanni provided kept it from noticing the bug, and this time, the pikachu took the bulk of an attack. It squealed as the cloud enveloped its body, and although it scrambled to get away its movements became sluggish within seconds. Its paws dug into the earth haphazardly. Its gait swayed until it slumped over. For a brief second, Giovanni thought it was dead until a poké ball flew from between the trees and smacked it in the shoulder. The pikachu was caught before the ball landed on the ground, and with that, Giovanni exhaled in relief.
A few seconds later, the butterfree flitted to the trainer hidden in the trees, and once it reached her, she stepped out into Giovanni’s field of vision. Right away, he felt his breath catch for a second time as he looked at her — a small, thin creature who couldn’t have been older than he was — casually walking into the clearing. The butterfree tangled itself in her short, bright red hair as she steadied it with one thin, pale hand. She stooped gracefully to grab the pikachu’s poké ball, but when she straightened, her hazel eyes moved from it to Giovanni. At once, she gasped and darted towards him, shoving the ball onto her belt while she closed the distance between them.
“Are you okay?!” she asked. “Oh! Ouch. It looks like that pikachu got you. Is that right?”
It took a few moments for Giovanni to realize she asked a question. When it sank in, he nodded slowly. The girl pressed her lips together and dropped to her knees in front of him. Her hands fished into the pockets of her jeans and baggy sweater until she pulled from one a cheri berry that she shoved into Giovanni’s hands.
“That should be enough for you,” she said, “but I’m afraid Meowth’s going to need something stronger. Sorry.”
Giovanni stared at the girl for a good minute before shifting his focus to the berry. He regarded the latter as if it was a holy object, as if it was some kind of miracle in the palm of his hand.
“You eat it.”
He looked up again. She smiled — a genuine smile, no less — and pointed at the berry.
“You eat it,” she repeated. Then, she stood. “Silly. Come on. Eat it, and I’ll show you how to get to the nearest pokémon center from here. Meowth’s going to need help, and you’re not going to do much to help it just by sitting there.”
Slowly, he slid the berry into his mouth and chewed. It took him a moment to realize something about this girl, about the way she stood back and crossed her arms while cocking her head just slightly, about the way she told him the obvious, about everything that was her as he knew her right then. She was the first girl besides his female classmates that he had ever met, and she was almost a mockery of all of them and his mother. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that, exactly, but something about how this girl smiled and spoke — softly but firmly — made him feel completely and utterly comfortable.
That was, as far as Giovanni can remember, the only time he was ever truly afraid of someone.
---
Her name was Beatrice. Beatrice, meaning blessed, from the masculine Viatrix — voyager. But she hated that name. No, she liked being called Trixie. Bea was too old; Trice sounded like an insult. Trixie wasn’t much shorter than her real name, but it rolled off the tongue and sounded cute.
Giovanni took inventory of things like this. He also took inventory of the way she bit her lip when she was nervous, how she ran her fingers through her fire-red hair when she was hammering home a point, and how she did a little hopping skip just before dashing towards a poké ball containing every new catch. When she spoke, her voice was soft, but when she got excited, which wasn’t that infrequent, it grew louder and higher pitched. Although she frequently professed a dislike for skirts and frills, she insisted on dressing in the latest trends and keeping her hair perfect, elements of nature be damned. Wherever she walked, she left the scent of freesia and vanilla behind her, even if she swore she never wore perfume. She was an artist at heart, and although her time with Giovanni was far before anyone thought to create the contest circuit, she focused more on the way an attack looked over how much damage it did, sometimes even insisting on practicing moves and strategies outside of the battlefield to get them just right.
That was why, in all the time she knew Giovanni, he had never seen her win a gym badge. Her pokémon loved her all the same, certainly, but her heart just wasn’t into battling itself. Yet she rarely got discouraged, something that Giovanni could never understand. It was as if the battling didn’t matter to her. As if she saw something else to the journey, to being with her pokémon far from home, besides winning gym battles and facing the Elite Four. And she did love adventuring; she loved seeing new places, meeting new people, and finding new pokémon. The entire world struck her with wonder, and Giovanni, for those first few years, was caught up in her enthusiasm. At first, he had no idea why, but everything Trixie did, either to the world or to him, was a complete mystery in his mind. It was just how she was.
From the moment she helped him find Pewter City, she traveled alongside him. Together, they conquered Kanto’s league (although it was more that Giovanni won the badges while Trixie fumbled during gym battles and rooted for her partner as he battled the Elite Four), and from there, they traveled to Johto, to Hoenn, to Sinnoh, to every corner of the world they could in nine short years. And the further they got from Kanto, the less Giovanni wanted to go home. All he wanted was to feel the rush of winning a new badge, to bond with each new catch, to train and get stronger and conquer new leagues.
And to be with Trixie. Trixie, who followed him everywhere. Trixie, who would battle gyms as a formality only after Giovanni had acquired its badge. Trixie, who seemed more content sitting back and watching her partner’s enthusiasm on the battlefield burn. It took nine full years for Giovanni to come to terms with not only what that meant but also what to do about it. He realized, after a while, that going home was an option, not a requirement. The question was: what was the next step?
The last time Giovanni was ever truly nervous was when he sat in a park in Castelia City, fingers laced, Persian curling around his ankles for comfort. He could feel the bulge of a small box in his pocket, and every time his mind drifted back to it, his heart beat faster. It amazed him, looking back on it in hindsight, that he was ever that weak, that controlled by emotions. He, after all, was the heir to an entire empire, even if he technically wanted nothing to do with it. What kind of prince trembled at the idea of commitment?
Trixie, naturally, didn’t help with that regard. She had come from the ice cream stand with Butterfree dipping through the air behind her and a Casteliacone in each of her hands. Her head tilted slightly at the expression on Giovanni’s face as she sauntered towards him. She had grown in those nine years and filled out into a beautiful young woman, facts that Giovanni had been aware of all that time, but at that moment, with the box pressing against his thigh and her face silhouetted in the sunlight, they struck him now more than ever.
There was no doubt Trixie could tell what he was thinking by his expression because as she sat down next to him and shoved one of the cones his way, she couldn’t help but chuckle.
“What’s with the face?” she asked. “You look like a growlithe who’s just been told he needs a bath.”
He opened his mouth and then immediately closed it. For the second time in his life, he found he couldn’t ask a woman a very straightforward question. Taking a deep breath, he looked away and tried to compose himself.
“You know...” Trixie licked her cone, her pink tongue lashing the ice cream a little too carefully, as if she was stalling to choose her words (which she was, but she would never admit this to Giovanni). “We’ve been traveling together for how long?”
Giovanni looked at his lap and answered lowly, “Nine years.”
“Nine years. And you know what’s funny?”
“Hm.”
She stopped to lick her cone again before continuing. Her eyes rolled skyward, and she leaned her head against one of her shoulders.
“I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you nervous on the battlefield,” she said. “I mean, c’mon. I’ve seen you face down a steelix with just Persian. That’s something else.”
Somehow, Giovanni managed to find his voice just long enough to reply, “I’m not nervous about challenging the Castelia Gym.”
“I never said you were,” she answered. “But you are nervous, and you’re not going to tell me why, are you?”
The silence was answer enough for her. She smiled into her ice cream, her eyes actively staring at it more than him.
“Thought as much. So if it makes you feel any better, I’m nervous too.”
He leaned into his hands. “You? You’re never nervous.”
“About this I am.” She turned her head towards him. “Want to know why?”
Quirking an eyebrow, he frowned as he stared at her from out the corner of his eye. “Go on.”
At that point, she gave him a soft smile, and her voice lowered just a bit. “Because I’ve realized that we’ve spent nine years together, and you’re... that’s a long time, you know? And this is going to sound incredibly stupid, but I don’t really want it to end. And I’ve spent I don’t know how long trying to figure out how to say that to you, but I think that maybe we should stay together.”
Finally, he looked at her. His eyebrows arched, and his mouth fell open slightly as he studied his partner carefully.
“Trixie, are you asking me to—”
“Maybe,” she interrupted with a smirk. “Would you say yes? That was what you were going to ask, wasn’t it?”
He took the other Casteliacone from her outstretched hand. “Maybe.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said playfully. “Yes or no?”
The answer came faster than he thought it would. “Yes.”
“Good.”
For the next few minutes, they sat in silence, watching people pass by. Trixie’s hand rested between them, and Giovanni’s slowly worked its way around hers. As they laced their fingers together, Trixie’s playful expression slowly faded into worry.
“There’s just one last problem,” she murmured.
“What’s that?”
After a brief hesitation, she asked, “What about our families?”
They squeezed their hands. The weight of the question was only now descending on the both of them. And to that, Giovanni had only one thing to say.
“Oh.”
---
Trixie didn’t know about Vittoria. At least, she caught a vague hint that Giovanni didn’t particularly want to talk about his family, just as Giovanni caught a vague hint that Trixie didn’t particularly care for hers. It suited them just fine. In the end, they got by with a quiet wedding, followed by settling down in a remote corner of Johto without telling any of their parents. They thought about continuing their travels instead of settling down, but eventually, something stopped them. Something important. Something that drove Giovanni back to Viridian one winter night.
This time, he didn’t hesitate before knocking, and he didn’t hesitate before entering the room when Vittoria called for him. He simply walked in calmly, back straight and head up until he stood in the center of the office. Vittoria stood facing the window with her hands clasped behind her back, and for a long while, they remained quiet like that, taking in each other’s presence.
“So,” Vittoria finally said, “you toughened up. Champion of five leagues. Good for you.”
He said nothing in response.
“Well then. Business first. You’ll start as an executive, but the others will treat you as a rookie grunt.”
Giovanni glared at her back. “What?”
“Don’t get egotistical. You may be an exceptional trainer, but you know nothing about how Team Rocket works. You’ll need to be trained from the ground up in order to fully understand how we do things around here.”
Her son remained quiet, his eyes staring steadily at her. He didn’t want to flinch, didn’t want to show weakness, even though he knew exactly the kind of reaction he would get from her if he voiced the thought that was burning in his mind at that moment.
She turned her head slightly, allowing him to have a glimpse of her profile. “Do you understand?”
He craned his neck. “Mother, I came to tell you that I have no interest in Team Rocket. I’m married now, and my wife is having a baby. I thought it would be appropriate for you to know.”
“What?!”
He turned and began walking out towards the door.
“Don’t turn your back on me, boy! Your grandfather built this empire! Your father made it grow! I made it glorious! You will not walk away from Team Rocket!”
He opened the door and slipped into the hallway.
“Do you hear me?! Get back here! You will not walk away from Team Rocket!”
The door closed behind him, and he didn’t care.
As far as he was concerned, he was free. And he was going to be Papa. The kind Papa who loved his child, not the ruthless Papa who ruled most of Kanto.
He should have waited until he had the power to do it.
---
It was amazing, in Giovanni’s opinion, how sharp the world seemed after someone told him the only woman he ever loved had died. He had plenty of time to think about that, even years after the fact, but the most vivid day of his life had been without a doubt the day he was informed he would be a widower. The moment the doctor broke the news, everything came into focus. The sound of the doctor’s voice, although the words wouldn't register in Giovanni’s brain, thundered like a freight train rushing through his ears. The white of the doctor's coat, the blue of the hospital floors, and the shocking red of his baby's hair nearly blinded him. The bitter scent of sanitizer burned his nostrils. The cold nearly froze him; the baby's body heat nearly burned his arms. Everything felt like it hurt.
Yet Giovanni couldn't react. He only sat there, uncomfortable in the plush chairs of the hospital's waiting room, as his eyes slowly drifted from the doctor to the baby in his arms. The child squirmed and cooed in his sleep, and with each twitch of his tiny body, he grew heavier and heavier in Giovanni's arms. What was he going to say to the baby?
I’m sorry; your mother is dead?
I’m sorry; I couldn’t protect your mother?
I’m sorry; your grandmother is a monster?
Eventually, the doctor looked down the hallway, his voice stopping mid-sentence (not that Giovanni listened closely enough to pick up the abrupt end). With a low mumble, he quickly apologized and excused himself, hurrying away from whatever was approaching.
At first, Giovanni didn’t notice, didn’t bother to look away from the boy in his arms. So he didn’t realize at first that a woman flanked by two men in black suits slid into the doctor’s spot just a minute later until she straightened her back and let her shadow cast itself over Giovanni. Slowly, he looked up, his eyes eventually locking with Vittoria’s. She stared down at him with mock pity, her full lips pursed and her eyes narrowed just slightly.
“Well?” she cooed, as if she was a mother teaching a child not to touch a hot stove. “Are you done making a fool of yourself over some silly little girl?”
Those were the first words that sunk into Giovanni’s skull since the news, and in the next moments, he had nothing to say to his mother.
“Now, now,” she said. “Everyone falls in love some time. Even me, I suppose.”
She eased herself into a chair next to her son. He refused to move to look at her; instead, he stared up at the lights, silently praying that she would go away.
“It takes time for them to realize that it’s a silly institution.” She examined her nails. “I am sorry for your loss, though. It was such a tragic accident. But the world moves on, and you will too in time, provided you make the correct decision now.”
At once, anger welled in Giovanni’s chest, and it took all his power not to show it, not to act on it. He knew that she would use the slightest gesture against him years from then. But he knew. He knew that she was responsible for Trixie’s death, for the way she was found, mauled by pokémon halfway between their home and the pokémart where she worked. It didn’t take much detective skill at all to figure it out.
Vittoria was there. That was practically a confession.
“Business then,” his mother said, crossing her legs elegantly. “We’ll give you three days to bury your wife, and then you’re to move back to Viridian City by the end of the week. Do you understand?”
She looked pointedly at the sleeping baby in Giovanni’s arms. Her son followed her gaze and stared in quiet rage at his child’s face. The bundle squirmed and cooed in his sleep, stretching an arm out of the blankets until it brushed his father’s chest. Giovanni closed his eyes and nodded.
“Good. To ensure that you follow directions, I’ve arranged to have you escorted at all ti—”
He stood and walked down the hall, shoving past his mother’s guards. Immediately, Vittoria was on her feet.
“Are you turning your back on me?!” she snapped.
“Please, Mother,” he sneered, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Without turning back to her, he continued down the hallway. If she wanted an heir, she would get one. He would bring Kanto to its knees before him if that’s what pleased her. After all, pleasing Vittoria would keep the last thing of his she couldn’t control out of her reach.
And that thing was what he was carrying right at that moment.
---
That was the last time he spent any real time with the boy. From that day forward, the child — his Silver — bounced from caretaker to caretaker within the organization until one day, he simply ran away. He was eight then, and by then, their interactions were limited to only a short conversation at a time. That wasn’t Vittoria’s decision; that was his. Short, terse interactions once a day to make it look like the child wouldn’t be useful leverage. Make him hate his father. Make him run away. Anything to keep the boy out of their her plans. It hurt, but it worked.
In the years before Silver disappeared, Giovanni did his best to be an heir to Vittoria. He learned quickly everything he needed to know. How to conduct an operation. How to talk during a deal. How to look like an upstanding citizen while controlling the underworld in the background. How to blackmail. How to rig a game. How to threaten. How to steal.
He was becoming a monster day by day. He knew that. At nights, he wondered what Trixie would think of him. During the day, he started to forget why he cared. He was far too busy coaxing the boss’s pawns into becoming his own, too busy gathering the resources and the power he needed for the plan that began forming the day Trixie died. Slowly, the organization shifted, slipping from under Vittoria’s hands into Giovanni’s, and the woman had no idea.
It came to a head two years before Silver disappeared — two years before Giovanni’s empire fell to a child from Pallet Town. One night, when the boss left the safety of Team Rocket’s headquarters to attend a gala held by the mayor (a formality, really, to reassure the public that she was every bit the millionaire philanthropist she seemed to be), he slipped into her office and waited.
Hours passed. He watched them through the window, his eyes peering through the blinds to the dark sky over Viridian City. Stars faded as the morning quickly approached, but he didn’t move from that spot, beside the boss’s desk with his back to the door and his hands clasped behind his back. He wouldn’t sleep, he decided, until he knew his plan was complete.
It was nearly dawn, during the hour that the sky grew gray and red, when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said, his voice loud and gruff.
Behind him, he heard the door click open, and a set of boots fell heavily on the floor until they came to a stop in the center of the room. Giovanni didn’t have to turn around to know who it was: a grunt, one of the oldest acquisitions to his army and one of his most loyal peons.
“Sir,” the grunt said.
Giovanni kept his gaze straight and steady on the window. “Is it done?”
The grunt tossed the duffel bag he was carrying towards his commander. It landed with a thud at Giovanni’s feet, and he looked down with mild interest and nudged it with the side of his foot. Its contents were heavy and wet; dark patches were already beginning to form on the sides of the bag.
“Good,” Giovanni finally responded. “You’ve done well. I will see to it that you will be rewarded generously.”
Straightening, the grunt lifted his chin. “Sir, permission to speak freely?”
A smirk crept across Giovanni’s face. “Granted.”
“What now, sir?”
“What now?”
“What is going to happen to Team Rocket now that the boss is dead?”
At that, Giovanni chuckled, the sound rumbling out of his throat. “Dead? Your boss isn’t dead. He’s standing right here. Believe me, Team Rocket is far from through.”
“Sir?”
Giovanni drew his eyes back to the window as the grin broke into a full-fledged smile.
A snake-like smile. A challenging smile.
“Leave me. There is much that needs to be done before my boy returns.”
Although the grunt opened his mouth to speak, he didn’t answer. Instead, he bowed and quickly left the office while Giovanni watched the sun rise.
Yes. There was too much to do before Silver came back. He had to give him a proper empire, after all.
---
In the five years that followed, Giovanni did plenty of things he wouldn’t have been proud of as a young man. His focus shifted completely to building Team Rocket’s empire. At first, he had plenty of reasons — to spite his mother, to give something back to his son, to be as powerful and steadfast as his wife used to see him — but over time, each one fell away until his reason became simply to rule Kanto the way he saw fit. His armies never questioned his motives. To them, he was simply the boss, the one who promised glory when his parents only promised survival. So they killed for him. They tortured pokémon for him. They blackmailed, stole, and cheated for him. They obliterated rival syndicates without a second thought. They did everything in their power to help him expand Team Rocket’s empire until it began to bleed into Johto, but even that wasn’t enough for Giovanni. He needed more. He needed the world.
And then a child from Pallet Town came along. At first, Giovanni thought nothing of it, assumed that the task force he sent to Mt. Moon only failed because they were weak. But then the boy appeared again in Lavender Town. And then again in Celadon City. And then again in Saffron. One by one, the child dismantled the cornerstones of Giovanni’s latest plans. An eleven-year-old boy armed only with completely ordinary pokémon, up against the most powerful criminal empire in Kanto and Johto, and Team Rocket was no match for him.
Giovanni would always remember the boy. He would remember the way he silently commanded his pokémon to attack, the way they obeyed him unquestioningly to annihilate his own team in each of the three times Giovanni met him, the way he stood with his head held high and his expression defiant, the way he said nothing at all even after the battle was through.
But most importantly, Giovanni would remember those eyes. Those determined eyes. Those eyes full of disgust and fire. Even years later, they would leave some part of Giovanni cold and guilty.
It was because they reminded him of Trixie and of himself all those years ago. He couldn’t explain why, but something about the boy’s passion, the boy’s love for his pokémon, the boy’s heated judgment made him think back on who he was and who he had beside him, and after the last time he was defeated by the child, he wondered, briefly, what the two would say to him.
It was the first time in years that he thought of that, and for the next three years, the question wouldn’t go away.
After those three years, Silver came back. It was a chance meeting. Giovanni, fresh from three years on Mt. Silver, contemplated returning to Viridian and to Team Rocket; Silver was running away from it for the second time. Somehow, they met before the gates of the Pokémon League, and there were, quite simply, absolutely no warm welcomes.
It was amazing to Giovanni right at that moment how much Silver had grown to look like Trixie. He had the same face, the same shock of red hair, and the same tiny body that looked like it could never survive the elements but somehow did. The only difference was that in place of Trixie’s broad smile and kind hazel eyes, Silver gave him a cold frown and a heated, dark-eyed glare. Giovanni shivered subtly the first time he saw it; he realized the expression used the same amount of passion, the same amount of hate, that the boy from Pallet afforded him.
For a long while, they had nothing to say to each other, but then Giovanni smirked and prepared to greet his son. Silver cut him off before he could say a word.
“You ran away.”
Giovanni raised his eyebrows in curiosity as the smirk played into a cat-like grin. “There is a difference, boy, between running away and doing what one must to get stronger. I did what I had to do. I trained.”
“I heard you were defeated by a child.”
“The champion at one point,” Giovanni reminded him. “Nonetheless, it was... an awakening.”
Perhaps it was the fact that Giovanni had barely seen Silver in years, and before then, he had less time for his son than for his growing empire. Perhaps it simply was that Giovanni was defeated by a child. Whatever the reason — neglect or disappointment — Silver narrowed his eyes and balled his hands into fists, and Giovanni’s smile faded while he carefully studied his son’s rage.
“You told me,” Silver said slowly. “You told me you were the number one in the world! Are you gonna quit? What are you going to do now?”
Giovanni chuckled and relaxed. The boy had more faith in Team Rocket than he did at that age. Perhaps he had more faith in Team Rocket than Giovanni had even as an adult.
“One must acknowledge one’s defeat before he can move on,” Giovanni replied. “I will go solo for now, so that one day I will form a stronger organization.”
Silver stepped forward. “What aspect of you was number one? Gathering so many only to be defeated by a mere child!”
Ah. So it was disappointment. Giovanni’s smirk returned. Part of him wondered at that point why Silver was so concerned. The empire wasn’t his yet. He didn’t seem to care when he left about what happened to it.
And, if that wasn’t enough, Giovanni had done everything in his power to make Silver hate him, so Silver couldn’t have cared about him.
It was to protect him, Giovanni reminded himself. But... he wasn’t sure how true that was anymore. Clearly, it didn’t work if Silver was so concerned about Team Rocket, and even then, there was something about the boy’s anger, something about how it looked so much like Trixie’s face contorted in disappointment and disgust, that Giovanni found almost soothing. Almost irresistible. As if he needed it. Suddenly, he thought back to his empire, to the way it rose, to how it fell, to all his defeats to the child from Pallet Town, and to all the victories he had against the entirety of Kanto before then. He thought about the duffel bag with his mother’s head in it, and he thought of the parade of years and images up to that point. Trixie’s body. Vittoria’s smile. Papa’s arms. Cold nights herded to bed by Team Rocket peons.
In that moment, after the flicker of thoughts ran through his brain, a single question surfaced and stayed there. Was it worth it?
If Giovanni was a master of anything at all, he was a master of maintaining facades, and when he spoke next, he ensured that all he had on his face was a calculating smile. “Putting together the potential of many is how you produce a huge power. That’s what an organization is. That’s the strength of an organization! I failed to make the best use of my subordinates’ potential, but you shall witness one day the revival of Team Rocket!”
He delivered the statement coolly, as if nothing else mattered besides the organization. At the same time, he kept his eyes steady on Silver, watching as the boy’s face twisted in anger with each word that came from his mouth. The boy felt plenty of passion, but he had no ability to hide it. Not yet. He would learn years from then, but for now, he looked like the boy from Pallet, like his mother, like his grandmother, like himself years ago, like every person Giovanni knew, looking down on Giovanni. Judging him. Condemning him.
Giovanni almost savored it.
That’s right, boy. Hate me.
At the end, Silver looked beside himself. “I don’t understand you! You don’t make any sense!”
Giovanni couldn’t help but smile. “One day, you will understand.”
Hate me, boy. Put all your heart into it.
He turned to leave. Turned his back on Silver, just as he turned his back on his mother. Perhaps he was selfish for it, but, deep down, he felt content. Proud, even, of his son.
“I don’t want to understand you!” Silver screamed at his back.
No. You don’t.
“I will never become someone like you!”
You will be better than me.
“A coward when you’re alone and acting like a tyrant when you’re in front of other cowards!”
A child will always be better than his parents. It is a parent’s duty to see to it that that is so.
“I will become strong!”
Team Rocket must always have a strong leader, Silver.
“I will become a stronger man all by myself! All by myself!”
Giovanni smiled and thought of Mama one last time. Close... but perhaps not correct.
And then, after he dwelled on it briefly, Giovanni finally understood exactly what his mother meant when she gave him that snake-like smile.
stharridanTitle: Versus Nurture
Author:
mercoledi Rating: PG-13
Verse: Games with splashes of anime, Gen IV
Characters: Giovanni, Madame Boss, Silver, OC, Giovanni/OC
Summary: Monsters like Giovanni aren’t born; they’re created.
Warnings: Character death, including causes of death described in brief detail.
A/N: Prompts used: “We burned, we learned” and “Only fools fall in love and I guess I'm one of them.” Sort of got carried away somewhere in here, so I figured it’d be a good idea to mention that. Sorry! Happy holidays, and I hope you enjoy!
Giovanni’s first memory was of Christmas morning. He remembered gold and silver orbs glittering on evergreen branches, the scent of pine and fresh-cooked eggs, the satin feel of wrapping paper and bows in his hands.
The deep, resounding voice of his father.
He remembered his father well, even though the man hadn’t been in his life since he was young. His father was tall. Stocky. A tawny face with slicked-back black hair. Deep, dark eyes. Strong hands the size of growlithe, lifting Giovanni’s tiny body up to his mammoth knee.
Giovanni remembered the warmth of the man — literal and figurative. The way his voice filled a room with his energy and emotion. How his hugs were almost strong enough to break bones. Giovanni had no idea that this man could and had ordered the deaths of countless other fathers every other day of the year or that this man’s anger kept half of Kanto’s underworld clutched in his iron fist. To him, this man was Papa, the person who gave him everything he could ever want.
In the corner of the room opposite the tree and the mountain of discarded wrapping paper stood the mirror image to Papa. While Papa was built like a bear, this person was built like a cat. Her lithe body leaned in the doorway, arms crossed over a red satin robe that didn’t seem appropriate for anyone’s mother. Dark, almond eyes squinted at the father and son, and in response, a tight smile surrounded by full lips crossed her narrow face. Even then, she seemed shrouded to Giovanni: curly chestnut hair forming shadows over her face, voice rarely heard in those days but firm and quiet when it came out, stance always guarded with arms or legs crossed at all times. This was not the openness or warmth in Papa. This was Mama now. Mother in a few years. Vittoria in adulthood. Her after she died.
Back then, she was Mama because she was a wife first and mother second. And in that memory, Giovanni thought he must have loved her. He remembered her back then, the way she sauntered into a room (like she did at that point), the way she leaned down to kiss Giovanni gently (like she did then), the way she gracefully placed herself next to her father and leaned her head on his gigantic shoulder (like she did after that). He remembered that she was beautiful but distant, motherly but somehow just beyond his reach.
He also remembered that she never once held him. As a child, he thought this was perfectly normal.
“Mama!” his father boomed. “Why so quiet? It’s Christmas!”
She raised a hand to her forehead and wormed her fingers through her chestnut hair. “Just tired, Papa. Just tired.”
“Haha! Up all night waiting for Santa just like Johnny here? Speaking of which...” Without allowing his wife to answer, Papa set Giovanni on the floor. “Open the big one, Johnny! C’mon!”
His father was all smiles, and the happiness was infectious to Giovanni. A broad grin crossed his own face as he crawled back to the tree and gripped the sides of the largest package under it. He couldn’t read the label, but the resounding words of encouragement from his father told him it was all his. Tilting his head up, he stared wide-eyed at the package, easily twice as large as he was. As his hands tore into the layers of paper, he turned his head back towards his father, who shouted happily as he leaned over to grab for a camera on the couch-side end table. Next to him, his mother sat stiffly straight, hands folded neatly in her lap as her eyes fell on her husband. Her smile disappeared completely, replaced by a squint and a frown.
Giovanni’s second memory was of his mother in black, her cold hand circling Giovanni’s as they stood beside Papa’s casket.
“Team Rocket must always have a strong leader, Giovanni. You cannot be weak.”
That was what his mother had told him after every screw-up he committed from the day his father died to the day he left home. For those seven long years, no one called him Johnny. Mama became Mother, but she wasn’t really much of a mother. The moment her husband was put in the ground, she was Madame Boss, queen of the Kantonian underworld and the leader of Team Rocket first and foremost. If Papa’s fist was iron, Mother’s was titanium. While Papa was capable of being jovial if things went his way, Mother treated her peons with frost and venom if things went right and with the rage of a gyarados if things went wrong. To Giovanni himself, she gave him smiles and tenderness when he was obedient, but she never touched him. When he made a mistake, her smile would disappear, and her voice would remind him of what was expected of him in a low, cold hiss.
Of course, that was if she saw him. When he wasn’t shuttered up in top-notch boarding schools, he was handled by her army of grunts, bulky bodyguards in pinstripe suits who called him “sir.” Her appearances, when he returned home for holidays, were limited to at most an hour a day, much of which was spent across dining room tables.
Giovanni didn’t exactly hate his mother at that point, but he didn’t like the woman either. She was a presence in his life, someone aggravatingly distant yet in control of every detail of his being.
On the one hand, Giovanni couldn’t — and still can’t — blame her. He was the heir to his father’s empire, after all. She was right. It took a certain type of person to run a kingdom.
On the other, the tender moments and smiles and pats on the shoulder were few and far between. Nothing Giovanni did was enough to earn them most days. No amount of cunning he displayed in school, no amount of firmness he gave towards his guards, and no amount of swiftness to answer her or to do what she said was ever enough to earn more than, “Not bad, but you could do better, boy.”
No, Giovanni didn’t hate his mother then. How could he when she was right?
Still, part of him resented the pressure — the pressure more than its source. He had to get out.
That was why he stood before the door to his mother’s office on his tenth birthday, forehead pressed against the mahogany, knuckles resting on its hard surface. He felt the stares of the guards at his back and felt the intensity of their resistance to laughing at him. It took a good portion of his self-control not to turn around and run away and another good portion of his self-control not to snap at them. No, he needed to be calm. He needed to be eloquent. He needed to be everything his mother wanted him to be now more than ever.
So he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then, he moved his fist to knock.
The response was immediate and almost entirely toneless: “Come in.”
A shiver. Another deep breath. Giovanni steeled every fragment of his being and steadied his gaze straight ahead. His hand, as if acting on its own, found the doorknob, and the door swung open in front of him.
Deep breaths. One foot in front of the other. He entered the office and let the door swing shut behind him. The room was sparsely furnished, with a wide desk and a pair of uncomfortable-looking chairs dominating the space. His mother stood at the wall-sized window, the only source of light, with her back towards him. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and as soon as the door shut, they clenched in each other. Giovanni stopped in the middle of the room and waited for her response.
“You’re late,” she growled. “My receptionist told me you were coming up ten minutes ago. Why did you make me wait for you?”
Giovanni mumbled something about the elevator.
“So I can hear you, boy,” she snapped.
He stood — back straight, chest out, eyes up. “The elevator was taking too long. I had to use the stairs.”
“Don’t give me excuses. It wastes more of my time.”
Courage shaken, Giovanni let his eyes fall to the desk. “I’m sorry, Mother.”
“Never mind. What is it you want?”
This was the moment. The very moment that Giovanni was waiting for for most of his life, but his throat contracted. All of the words he rehearsed for months up to this point were fading quickly from his brain. Slowly, he raised his eyes, his expression faltering from a look of confidence and power to one of a beaten growlithe pup. He could almost swear that the air grew colder as the silence between himself and his mother grew longer.
“Well?” she hissed impatiently.
“Mother,” he began, his voice breaking slightly in his nervousness. “It’s my birthday.”
There was a long pause.
“And?”
“And... and I was wondering... could I...?”
“I have a meeting with Pokémon League officials in a half an hour, Giovanni. Please don’t take until then.”
Another deep breath. Better to get it over with.
“Mother, I want to start a pokémon journey.”
There was another silence. For a few excruciatingly long moments, Giovanni thought she was about to turn him down. Then, she turned and bent over her desk as one of her hands snaked out of view to pull open a drawer.
“Is that all?” she asked, softer than how she spoke a moment ago.
Suddenly unable to speak, Giovanni simply nodded.
At that moment, his mother grinned, but he knew it wasn’t for him. It was a cold grin, a snake-like grin, a challenging grin. She didn’t look at him, but he knew she was analyzing him, appraising him as if to ask how long it would take for him to come running home. Her hand, in the meantime, fished into the drawer and pulled from it a red and white sphere. Without an explanation, she tossed it at her son and watched him fumble to catch it.
“Take this to the lab. They’ll give you a pokédex and a starter set of poké balls.”
Giovanni hesitated, staring at the orb in his hands as if it was about to eat him. His mother straightened, the smile fading quickly as she placed her hands on her hips.
“It’s a starter,” she said bluntly. “What do you say to someone who gives you a gift?”
At that, her son lifted his chin and fought every urge to show any emotion. Instead, he nodded once and swallowed his excitement. “Thank you, Mother.”
She scoffed. “Just don’t screw up.”
With that, she turned back to the window, and Giovanni scrambled out of the room. He didn’t need to be told twice for the most part. That was the impressive thing about him.
All journeys are not without their rocky starts, and Giovanni’s was no different. Days after he left home, he faced loss after loss, the cold, hunger, angry wild pokémon, forces of nature — everything imaginable that should have driven him back to Viridian. Yet, they didn’t. Every time the thought of going home crossed his mind, he remembered his mother, her snake-like grin, and the last words she gave him.
His starter, Meowth, hadn’t grown that much by the time he reached Viridian Forest. She was a city cat. A house cat at that, more used to hunting fat, tame urban rattata inside buildings instead of the skittish wild ones of the fields, never mind the wild pidgey or weedle that inhabited the forest. For that reason, Giovanni hadn’t caught a single pokémon by the time he reached the first trees, and Meowth was too busy being stung and poisoned to be of much help.
Yet Giovanni pressed on, deeper into the forest, further from Viridian. He had to prove to his mother that he was worth something, that he was strong and capable. He didn’t care how long it took.
On the third day through the forest, Giovanni waded through the brush with Meowth perched on his shoulder. Their eyes skimmed the spaces between the trees for any sign of life, any flicker of fur or feather or exoskeleton. It nearly consumed all of Giovanni’s patience when, at last, something yellow darted down the trunk of a tree. He stopped dead, his eyes fixed directly on the base of the tree as the pikachu dropped to the ground and started pawing at a cache of nuts at its roots. This, he decided, was it.
“Meowth, Scratch!”
By that point, if Meowth was anything, she was obedient. Without so much as a hesitation, she launched herself off Giovanni’s shoulder and directly at the pikachu.
What happened next was almost too fast for Giovanni to observe. The mouse’s ears twitched, and its beady eyes glistened at the approaching cat. Abruptly, it was surrounded with brilliant, yellow light as a deafening boom filled the clearing. Giovanni flinched, shielding himself as he squinted through the light. Only when it faded was he able to see his meowth, lying feet away from the pikachu in a charred heap. The mouse squeaked angrily, its cheeks sparking and its paws grinding into the ground.
Giovanni wasn’t entirely certain what drove him to do it. Maybe it was the echoing of his mother’s voice and the flash of her smile inside his skull. Maybe it was the thought of losing his only pokémon. Whatever it was — whether it was determination or fear — he threw himself out of the brush and dashed for Meowth.
The second ThunderShock was for him, and his entire world burned with light and fire.
When it was done, he slumped over Meowth, his every muscle trembling at once in protest. He shook as he glared at the rat, as he took notice of its sparking cheeks, as his brain strained to come up with a coherent command to send to the rest of his body. Unable to get his legs to move, he shoved his hand into the ground and clenched his teeth in preparation. If he was going to die, he wanted the pikachu to see his face at the very least.
The pikachu’s attack didn’t come. Instead, a butterfree swooped from the trees as a blue cloud of dust burst from its wings. Although the pikachu was quick to react to Meowth, the distraction that Giovanni provided kept it from noticing the bug, and this time, the pikachu took the bulk of an attack. It squealed as the cloud enveloped its body, and although it scrambled to get away its movements became sluggish within seconds. Its paws dug into the earth haphazardly. Its gait swayed until it slumped over. For a brief second, Giovanni thought it was dead until a poké ball flew from between the trees and smacked it in the shoulder. The pikachu was caught before the ball landed on the ground, and with that, Giovanni exhaled in relief.
A few seconds later, the butterfree flitted to the trainer hidden in the trees, and once it reached her, she stepped out into Giovanni’s field of vision. Right away, he felt his breath catch for a second time as he looked at her — a small, thin creature who couldn’t have been older than he was — casually walking into the clearing. The butterfree tangled itself in her short, bright red hair as she steadied it with one thin, pale hand. She stooped gracefully to grab the pikachu’s poké ball, but when she straightened, her hazel eyes moved from it to Giovanni. At once, she gasped and darted towards him, shoving the ball onto her belt while she closed the distance between them.
“Are you okay?!” she asked. “Oh! Ouch. It looks like that pikachu got you. Is that right?”
It took a few moments for Giovanni to realize she asked a question. When it sank in, he nodded slowly. The girl pressed her lips together and dropped to her knees in front of him. Her hands fished into the pockets of her jeans and baggy sweater until she pulled from one a cheri berry that she shoved into Giovanni’s hands.
“That should be enough for you,” she said, “but I’m afraid Meowth’s going to need something stronger. Sorry.”
Giovanni stared at the girl for a good minute before shifting his focus to the berry. He regarded the latter as if it was a holy object, as if it was some kind of miracle in the palm of his hand.
“You eat it.”
He looked up again. She smiled — a genuine smile, no less — and pointed at the berry.
“You eat it,” she repeated. Then, she stood. “Silly. Come on. Eat it, and I’ll show you how to get to the nearest pokémon center from here. Meowth’s going to need help, and you’re not going to do much to help it just by sitting there.”
Slowly, he slid the berry into his mouth and chewed. It took him a moment to realize something about this girl, about the way she stood back and crossed her arms while cocking her head just slightly, about the way she told him the obvious, about everything that was her as he knew her right then. She was the first girl besides his female classmates that he had ever met, and she was almost a mockery of all of them and his mother. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that, exactly, but something about how this girl smiled and spoke — softly but firmly — made him feel completely and utterly comfortable.
That was, as far as Giovanni can remember, the only time he was ever truly afraid of someone.
Her name was Beatrice. Beatrice, meaning blessed, from the masculine Viatrix — voyager. But she hated that name. No, she liked being called Trixie. Bea was too old; Trice sounded like an insult. Trixie wasn’t much shorter than her real name, but it rolled off the tongue and sounded cute.
Giovanni took inventory of things like this. He also took inventory of the way she bit her lip when she was nervous, how she ran her fingers through her fire-red hair when she was hammering home a point, and how she did a little hopping skip just before dashing towards a poké ball containing every new catch. When she spoke, her voice was soft, but when she got excited, which wasn’t that infrequent, it grew louder and higher pitched. Although she frequently professed a dislike for skirts and frills, she insisted on dressing in the latest trends and keeping her hair perfect, elements of nature be damned. Wherever she walked, she left the scent of freesia and vanilla behind her, even if she swore she never wore perfume. She was an artist at heart, and although her time with Giovanni was far before anyone thought to create the contest circuit, she focused more on the way an attack looked over how much damage it did, sometimes even insisting on practicing moves and strategies outside of the battlefield to get them just right.
That was why, in all the time she knew Giovanni, he had never seen her win a gym badge. Her pokémon loved her all the same, certainly, but her heart just wasn’t into battling itself. Yet she rarely got discouraged, something that Giovanni could never understand. It was as if the battling didn’t matter to her. As if she saw something else to the journey, to being with her pokémon far from home, besides winning gym battles and facing the Elite Four. And she did love adventuring; she loved seeing new places, meeting new people, and finding new pokémon. The entire world struck her with wonder, and Giovanni, for those first few years, was caught up in her enthusiasm. At first, he had no idea why, but everything Trixie did, either to the world or to him, was a complete mystery in his mind. It was just how she was.
From the moment she helped him find Pewter City, she traveled alongside him. Together, they conquered Kanto’s league (although it was more that Giovanni won the badges while Trixie fumbled during gym battles and rooted for her partner as he battled the Elite Four), and from there, they traveled to Johto, to Hoenn, to Sinnoh, to every corner of the world they could in nine short years. And the further they got from Kanto, the less Giovanni wanted to go home. All he wanted was to feel the rush of winning a new badge, to bond with each new catch, to train and get stronger and conquer new leagues.
And to be with Trixie. Trixie, who followed him everywhere. Trixie, who would battle gyms as a formality only after Giovanni had acquired its badge. Trixie, who seemed more content sitting back and watching her partner’s enthusiasm on the battlefield burn. It took nine full years for Giovanni to come to terms with not only what that meant but also what to do about it. He realized, after a while, that going home was an option, not a requirement. The question was: what was the next step?
The last time Giovanni was ever truly nervous was when he sat in a park in Castelia City, fingers laced, Persian curling around his ankles for comfort. He could feel the bulge of a small box in his pocket, and every time his mind drifted back to it, his heart beat faster. It amazed him, looking back on it in hindsight, that he was ever that weak, that controlled by emotions. He, after all, was the heir to an entire empire, even if he technically wanted nothing to do with it. What kind of prince trembled at the idea of commitment?
Trixie, naturally, didn’t help with that regard. She had come from the ice cream stand with Butterfree dipping through the air behind her and a Casteliacone in each of her hands. Her head tilted slightly at the expression on Giovanni’s face as she sauntered towards him. She had grown in those nine years and filled out into a beautiful young woman, facts that Giovanni had been aware of all that time, but at that moment, with the box pressing against his thigh and her face silhouetted in the sunlight, they struck him now more than ever.
There was no doubt Trixie could tell what he was thinking by his expression because as she sat down next to him and shoved one of the cones his way, she couldn’t help but chuckle.
“What’s with the face?” she asked. “You look like a growlithe who’s just been told he needs a bath.”
He opened his mouth and then immediately closed it. For the second time in his life, he found he couldn’t ask a woman a very straightforward question. Taking a deep breath, he looked away and tried to compose himself.
“You know...” Trixie licked her cone, her pink tongue lashing the ice cream a little too carefully, as if she was stalling to choose her words (which she was, but she would never admit this to Giovanni). “We’ve been traveling together for how long?”
Giovanni looked at his lap and answered lowly, “Nine years.”
“Nine years. And you know what’s funny?”
“Hm.”
She stopped to lick her cone again before continuing. Her eyes rolled skyward, and she leaned her head against one of her shoulders.
“I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you nervous on the battlefield,” she said. “I mean, c’mon. I’ve seen you face down a steelix with just Persian. That’s something else.”
Somehow, Giovanni managed to find his voice just long enough to reply, “I’m not nervous about challenging the Castelia Gym.”
“I never said you were,” she answered. “But you are nervous, and you’re not going to tell me why, are you?”
The silence was answer enough for her. She smiled into her ice cream, her eyes actively staring at it more than him.
“Thought as much. So if it makes you feel any better, I’m nervous too.”
He leaned into his hands. “You? You’re never nervous.”
“About this I am.” She turned her head towards him. “Want to know why?”
Quirking an eyebrow, he frowned as he stared at her from out the corner of his eye. “Go on.”
At that point, she gave him a soft smile, and her voice lowered just a bit. “Because I’ve realized that we’ve spent nine years together, and you’re... that’s a long time, you know? And this is going to sound incredibly stupid, but I don’t really want it to end. And I’ve spent I don’t know how long trying to figure out how to say that to you, but I think that maybe we should stay together.”
Finally, he looked at her. His eyebrows arched, and his mouth fell open slightly as he studied his partner carefully.
“Trixie, are you asking me to—”
“Maybe,” she interrupted with a smirk. “Would you say yes? That was what you were going to ask, wasn’t it?”
He took the other Casteliacone from her outstretched hand. “Maybe.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” she said playfully. “Yes or no?”
The answer came faster than he thought it would. “Yes.”
“Good.”
For the next few minutes, they sat in silence, watching people pass by. Trixie’s hand rested between them, and Giovanni’s slowly worked its way around hers. As they laced their fingers together, Trixie’s playful expression slowly faded into worry.
“There’s just one last problem,” she murmured.
“What’s that?”
After a brief hesitation, she asked, “What about our families?”
They squeezed their hands. The weight of the question was only now descending on the both of them. And to that, Giovanni had only one thing to say.
“Oh.”
Trixie didn’t know about Vittoria. At least, she caught a vague hint that Giovanni didn’t particularly want to talk about his family, just as Giovanni caught a vague hint that Trixie didn’t particularly care for hers. It suited them just fine. In the end, they got by with a quiet wedding, followed by settling down in a remote corner of Johto without telling any of their parents. They thought about continuing their travels instead of settling down, but eventually, something stopped them. Something important. Something that drove Giovanni back to Viridian one winter night.
This time, he didn’t hesitate before knocking, and he didn’t hesitate before entering the room when Vittoria called for him. He simply walked in calmly, back straight and head up until he stood in the center of the office. Vittoria stood facing the window with her hands clasped behind her back, and for a long while, they remained quiet like that, taking in each other’s presence.
“So,” Vittoria finally said, “you toughened up. Champion of five leagues. Good for you.”
He said nothing in response.
“Well then. Business first. You’ll start as an executive, but the others will treat you as a rookie grunt.”
Giovanni glared at her back. “What?”
“Don’t get egotistical. You may be an exceptional trainer, but you know nothing about how Team Rocket works. You’ll need to be trained from the ground up in order to fully understand how we do things around here.”
Her son remained quiet, his eyes staring steadily at her. He didn’t want to flinch, didn’t want to show weakness, even though he knew exactly the kind of reaction he would get from her if he voiced the thought that was burning in his mind at that moment.
She turned her head slightly, allowing him to have a glimpse of her profile. “Do you understand?”
He craned his neck. “Mother, I came to tell you that I have no interest in Team Rocket. I’m married now, and my wife is having a baby. I thought it would be appropriate for you to know.”
“What?!”
He turned and began walking out towards the door.
“Don’t turn your back on me, boy! Your grandfather built this empire! Your father made it grow! I made it glorious! You will not walk away from Team Rocket!”
He opened the door and slipped into the hallway.
“Do you hear me?! Get back here! You will not walk away from Team Rocket!”
The door closed behind him, and he didn’t care.
As far as he was concerned, he was free. And he was going to be Papa. The kind Papa who loved his child, not the ruthless Papa who ruled most of Kanto.
He should have waited until he had the power to do it.
It was amazing, in Giovanni’s opinion, how sharp the world seemed after someone told him the only woman he ever loved had died. He had plenty of time to think about that, even years after the fact, but the most vivid day of his life had been without a doubt the day he was informed he would be a widower. The moment the doctor broke the news, everything came into focus. The sound of the doctor’s voice, although the words wouldn't register in Giovanni’s brain, thundered like a freight train rushing through his ears. The white of the doctor's coat, the blue of the hospital floors, and the shocking red of his baby's hair nearly blinded him. The bitter scent of sanitizer burned his nostrils. The cold nearly froze him; the baby's body heat nearly burned his arms. Everything felt like it hurt.
Yet Giovanni couldn't react. He only sat there, uncomfortable in the plush chairs of the hospital's waiting room, as his eyes slowly drifted from the doctor to the baby in his arms. The child squirmed and cooed in his sleep, and with each twitch of his tiny body, he grew heavier and heavier in Giovanni's arms. What was he going to say to the baby?
I’m sorry; your mother is dead?
I’m sorry; I couldn’t protect your mother?
I’m sorry; your grandmother is a monster?
Eventually, the doctor looked down the hallway, his voice stopping mid-sentence (not that Giovanni listened closely enough to pick up the abrupt end). With a low mumble, he quickly apologized and excused himself, hurrying away from whatever was approaching.
At first, Giovanni didn’t notice, didn’t bother to look away from the boy in his arms. So he didn’t realize at first that a woman flanked by two men in black suits slid into the doctor’s spot just a minute later until she straightened her back and let her shadow cast itself over Giovanni. Slowly, he looked up, his eyes eventually locking with Vittoria’s. She stared down at him with mock pity, her full lips pursed and her eyes narrowed just slightly.
“Well?” she cooed, as if she was a mother teaching a child not to touch a hot stove. “Are you done making a fool of yourself over some silly little girl?”
Those were the first words that sunk into Giovanni’s skull since the news, and in the next moments, he had nothing to say to his mother.
“Now, now,” she said. “Everyone falls in love some time. Even me, I suppose.”
She eased herself into a chair next to her son. He refused to move to look at her; instead, he stared up at the lights, silently praying that she would go away.
“It takes time for them to realize that it’s a silly institution.” She examined her nails. “I am sorry for your loss, though. It was such a tragic accident. But the world moves on, and you will too in time, provided you make the correct decision now.”
At once, anger welled in Giovanni’s chest, and it took all his power not to show it, not to act on it. He knew that she would use the slightest gesture against him years from then. But he knew. He knew that she was responsible for Trixie’s death, for the way she was found, mauled by pokémon halfway between their home and the pokémart where she worked. It didn’t take much detective skill at all to figure it out.
Vittoria was there. That was practically a confession.
“Business then,” his mother said, crossing her legs elegantly. “We’ll give you three days to bury your wife, and then you’re to move back to Viridian City by the end of the week. Do you understand?”
She looked pointedly at the sleeping baby in Giovanni’s arms. Her son followed her gaze and stared in quiet rage at his child’s face. The bundle squirmed and cooed in his sleep, stretching an arm out of the blankets until it brushed his father’s chest. Giovanni closed his eyes and nodded.
“Good. To ensure that you follow directions, I’ve arranged to have you escorted at all ti—”
He stood and walked down the hall, shoving past his mother’s guards. Immediately, Vittoria was on her feet.
“Are you turning your back on me?!” she snapped.
“Please, Mother,” he sneered, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Without turning back to her, he continued down the hallway. If she wanted an heir, she would get one. He would bring Kanto to its knees before him if that’s what pleased her. After all, pleasing Vittoria would keep the last thing of his she couldn’t control out of her reach.
And that thing was what he was carrying right at that moment.
That was the last time he spent any real time with the boy. From that day forward, the child — his Silver — bounced from caretaker to caretaker within the organization until one day, he simply ran away. He was eight then, and by then, their interactions were limited to only a short conversation at a time. That wasn’t Vittoria’s decision; that was his. Short, terse interactions once a day to make it look like the child wouldn’t be useful leverage. Make him hate his father. Make him run away. Anything to keep the boy out of their her plans. It hurt, but it worked.
In the years before Silver disappeared, Giovanni did his best to be an heir to Vittoria. He learned quickly everything he needed to know. How to conduct an operation. How to talk during a deal. How to look like an upstanding citizen while controlling the underworld in the background. How to blackmail. How to rig a game. How to threaten. How to steal.
He was becoming a monster day by day. He knew that. At nights, he wondered what Trixie would think of him. During the day, he started to forget why he cared. He was far too busy coaxing the boss’s pawns into becoming his own, too busy gathering the resources and the power he needed for the plan that began forming the day Trixie died. Slowly, the organization shifted, slipping from under Vittoria’s hands into Giovanni’s, and the woman had no idea.
It came to a head two years before Silver disappeared — two years before Giovanni’s empire fell to a child from Pallet Town. One night, when the boss left the safety of Team Rocket’s headquarters to attend a gala held by the mayor (a formality, really, to reassure the public that she was every bit the millionaire philanthropist she seemed to be), he slipped into her office and waited.
Hours passed. He watched them through the window, his eyes peering through the blinds to the dark sky over Viridian City. Stars faded as the morning quickly approached, but he didn’t move from that spot, beside the boss’s desk with his back to the door and his hands clasped behind his back. He wouldn’t sleep, he decided, until he knew his plan was complete.
It was nearly dawn, during the hour that the sky grew gray and red, when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said, his voice loud and gruff.
Behind him, he heard the door click open, and a set of boots fell heavily on the floor until they came to a stop in the center of the room. Giovanni didn’t have to turn around to know who it was: a grunt, one of the oldest acquisitions to his army and one of his most loyal peons.
“Sir,” the grunt said.
Giovanni kept his gaze straight and steady on the window. “Is it done?”
The grunt tossed the duffel bag he was carrying towards his commander. It landed with a thud at Giovanni’s feet, and he looked down with mild interest and nudged it with the side of his foot. Its contents were heavy and wet; dark patches were already beginning to form on the sides of the bag.
“Good,” Giovanni finally responded. “You’ve done well. I will see to it that you will be rewarded generously.”
Straightening, the grunt lifted his chin. “Sir, permission to speak freely?”
A smirk crept across Giovanni’s face. “Granted.”
“What now, sir?”
“What now?”
“What is going to happen to Team Rocket now that the boss is dead?”
At that, Giovanni chuckled, the sound rumbling out of his throat. “Dead? Your boss isn’t dead. He’s standing right here. Believe me, Team Rocket is far from through.”
“Sir?”
Giovanni drew his eyes back to the window as the grin broke into a full-fledged smile.
A snake-like smile. A challenging smile.
“Leave me. There is much that needs to be done before my boy returns.”
Although the grunt opened his mouth to speak, he didn’t answer. Instead, he bowed and quickly left the office while Giovanni watched the sun rise.
Yes. There was too much to do before Silver came back. He had to give him a proper empire, after all.
In the five years that followed, Giovanni did plenty of things he wouldn’t have been proud of as a young man. His focus shifted completely to building Team Rocket’s empire. At first, he had plenty of reasons — to spite his mother, to give something back to his son, to be as powerful and steadfast as his wife used to see him — but over time, each one fell away until his reason became simply to rule Kanto the way he saw fit. His armies never questioned his motives. To them, he was simply the boss, the one who promised glory when his parents only promised survival. So they killed for him. They tortured pokémon for him. They blackmailed, stole, and cheated for him. They obliterated rival syndicates without a second thought. They did everything in their power to help him expand Team Rocket’s empire until it began to bleed into Johto, but even that wasn’t enough for Giovanni. He needed more. He needed the world.
And then a child from Pallet Town came along. At first, Giovanni thought nothing of it, assumed that the task force he sent to Mt. Moon only failed because they were weak. But then the boy appeared again in Lavender Town. And then again in Celadon City. And then again in Saffron. One by one, the child dismantled the cornerstones of Giovanni’s latest plans. An eleven-year-old boy armed only with completely ordinary pokémon, up against the most powerful criminal empire in Kanto and Johto, and Team Rocket was no match for him.
Giovanni would always remember the boy. He would remember the way he silently commanded his pokémon to attack, the way they obeyed him unquestioningly to annihilate his own team in each of the three times Giovanni met him, the way he stood with his head held high and his expression defiant, the way he said nothing at all even after the battle was through.
But most importantly, Giovanni would remember those eyes. Those determined eyes. Those eyes full of disgust and fire. Even years later, they would leave some part of Giovanni cold and guilty.
It was because they reminded him of Trixie and of himself all those years ago. He couldn’t explain why, but something about the boy’s passion, the boy’s love for his pokémon, the boy’s heated judgment made him think back on who he was and who he had beside him, and after the last time he was defeated by the child, he wondered, briefly, what the two would say to him.
It was the first time in years that he thought of that, and for the next three years, the question wouldn’t go away.
After those three years, Silver came back. It was a chance meeting. Giovanni, fresh from three years on Mt. Silver, contemplated returning to Viridian and to Team Rocket; Silver was running away from it for the second time. Somehow, they met before the gates of the Pokémon League, and there were, quite simply, absolutely no warm welcomes.
It was amazing to Giovanni right at that moment how much Silver had grown to look like Trixie. He had the same face, the same shock of red hair, and the same tiny body that looked like it could never survive the elements but somehow did. The only difference was that in place of Trixie’s broad smile and kind hazel eyes, Silver gave him a cold frown and a heated, dark-eyed glare. Giovanni shivered subtly the first time he saw it; he realized the expression used the same amount of passion, the same amount of hate, that the boy from Pallet afforded him.
For a long while, they had nothing to say to each other, but then Giovanni smirked and prepared to greet his son. Silver cut him off before he could say a word.
“You ran away.”
Giovanni raised his eyebrows in curiosity as the smirk played into a cat-like grin. “There is a difference, boy, between running away and doing what one must to get stronger. I did what I had to do. I trained.”
“I heard you were defeated by a child.”
“The champion at one point,” Giovanni reminded him. “Nonetheless, it was... an awakening.”
Perhaps it was the fact that Giovanni had barely seen Silver in years, and before then, he had less time for his son than for his growing empire. Perhaps it simply was that Giovanni was defeated by a child. Whatever the reason — neglect or disappointment — Silver narrowed his eyes and balled his hands into fists, and Giovanni’s smile faded while he carefully studied his son’s rage.
“You told me,” Silver said slowly. “You told me you were the number one in the world! Are you gonna quit? What are you going to do now?”
Giovanni chuckled and relaxed. The boy had more faith in Team Rocket than he did at that age. Perhaps he had more faith in Team Rocket than Giovanni had even as an adult.
“One must acknowledge one’s defeat before he can move on,” Giovanni replied. “I will go solo for now, so that one day I will form a stronger organization.”
Silver stepped forward. “What aspect of you was number one? Gathering so many only to be defeated by a mere child!”
Ah. So it was disappointment. Giovanni’s smirk returned. Part of him wondered at that point why Silver was so concerned. The empire wasn’t his yet. He didn’t seem to care when he left about what happened to it.
And, if that wasn’t enough, Giovanni had done everything in his power to make Silver hate him, so Silver couldn’t have cared about him.
It was to protect him, Giovanni reminded himself. But... he wasn’t sure how true that was anymore. Clearly, it didn’t work if Silver was so concerned about Team Rocket, and even then, there was something about the boy’s anger, something about how it looked so much like Trixie’s face contorted in disappointment and disgust, that Giovanni found almost soothing. Almost irresistible. As if he needed it. Suddenly, he thought back to his empire, to the way it rose, to how it fell, to all his defeats to the child from Pallet Town, and to all the victories he had against the entirety of Kanto before then. He thought about the duffel bag with his mother’s head in it, and he thought of the parade of years and images up to that point. Trixie’s body. Vittoria’s smile. Papa’s arms. Cold nights herded to bed by Team Rocket peons.
In that moment, after the flicker of thoughts ran through his brain, a single question surfaced and stayed there. Was it worth it?
If Giovanni was a master of anything at all, he was a master of maintaining facades, and when he spoke next, he ensured that all he had on his face was a calculating smile. “Putting together the potential of many is how you produce a huge power. That’s what an organization is. That’s the strength of an organization! I failed to make the best use of my subordinates’ potential, but you shall witness one day the revival of Team Rocket!”
He delivered the statement coolly, as if nothing else mattered besides the organization. At the same time, he kept his eyes steady on Silver, watching as the boy’s face twisted in anger with each word that came from his mouth. The boy felt plenty of passion, but he had no ability to hide it. Not yet. He would learn years from then, but for now, he looked like the boy from Pallet, like his mother, like his grandmother, like himself years ago, like every person Giovanni knew, looking down on Giovanni. Judging him. Condemning him.
Giovanni almost savored it.
That’s right, boy. Hate me.
At the end, Silver looked beside himself. “I don’t understand you! You don’t make any sense!”
Giovanni couldn’t help but smile. “One day, you will understand.”
Hate me, boy. Put all your heart into it.
He turned to leave. Turned his back on Silver, just as he turned his back on his mother. Perhaps he was selfish for it, but, deep down, he felt content. Proud, even, of his son.
“I don’t want to understand you!” Silver screamed at his back.
No. You don’t.
“I will never become someone like you!”
You will be better than me.
“A coward when you’re alone and acting like a tyrant when you’re in front of other cowards!”
A child will always be better than his parents. It is a parent’s duty to see to it that that is so.
“I will become strong!”
Team Rocket must always have a strong leader, Silver.
“I will become a stronger man all by myself! All by myself!”
Giovanni smiled and thought of Mama one last time. Close... but perhaps not correct.
And then, after he dwelled on it briefly, Giovanni finally understood exactly what his mother meant when she gave him that snake-like smile.