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Communication in the Form of Rain Dance (G, White/N) for memorialrainbow
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memorialrainbow
Title: Communication in the Form of Rain Dance
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
digitalized_
Rating: G
Verse: Games, Gen V
Characters: White, N
Summary: Meeting each other is just the first step. Next, they need to learn how to communicate.
--
After searching for so long, she sees him waiting for her in the Castelia Central Plaza. It's not fair, she thinks. Two years of searching, and it's him that finds her, rendering all her searches pointless. Rationally, she knows there's she should be glad, it's enough to know that he's doing well after the events two years ago and she's happy for him, but she still feels like she's been deprived of the satisfaction of completing her goal.
And worse, she can't think of a single thing to say.
"How are you?" N asks, his hands in his pockets.
"What are you doing here?"
He looks nervous, and White realizes she might have sounded too harsh, but she's not good at small talk either. What a pair they would make, she thinks, not being able to converse through anything but pokemon battles. Throughout her adventures in Unova, he used pokemon battles to talk to her, but she doesn't want to fight him, not anymore. Fighting him always took everything out of her.
"I heard you came back...I came to look for you," he says, eyes darting left and right.
She takes a few steps forward, until he's barely an arm's length away. She's almost forgotten how tall he is until now, when she has to crane her neck to reach his eyes. "So, what did you want to find me for?"
He blinks several times before looking straight at her, suddenly serious. "Thank you," he says out of the blue.
"For what?"
"For stopping me," he says, and it's her turn to look away. "For teaching me how humans and pokemon could work together. For everything." He moves backward for some room and bows, and she realizes this must be something he learned after their last battle. "Thank you."
"You did most of that yourself," she replies. "I only fought you. I heard you helped save Unova this time--I have to thank you for that."
She heard about the return of Ghetsis too late, although she should have guessed that someone with Ghetsis's ambition wouldn't give up so fast. She should have known that as long as Ghetsis isn't in jail, he would try again to take over Unova, and she should have hunted him down before his recent plans nearly ruined her homeland. It's too late to speak of that now, and she's glad someone else took care of Team Plasma this time around, but she should still have helped.
When she finally came back to Unova, it was all over. Her mother was alright, and so were her friends, but most importantly, she heard that N returned to Unova as well.
And then he found her before she found him.
"It was something I had to try," he says. "I couldn't stop him in the end, but to attune for my mistakes, I had to try. You shouldn't thank me for that."
"Then you shouldn't thank me for stopping you," she says, smiling when she sees N looking confused. "This is too serious for the middle of the streets. I would like to talk more. Would you like to go somewhere?"
She expects him to refuse. After all, during these two years, he ran whenever she came near him. She knew he did, she came close enough multiple times to know that he must have left as soon as he realized she was near.
He says yes. That surprises her.
--
Walking alongside N is awkward at first. His paces are longer, and he doesn't know to slow down, so she has to run after a few steps to catch up. Finally she strides forward and walks before him, until he catches her intention and lets her lead.
It's easier after that. They walk through the streets of Castelia without speaking, and she wonders if he's been here before but doesn't know how to ask. Maybe this is their limit, she thinks. She knows now he's moved past his old life and the events two years ago, and he's said what he wanted to say. She doesn't want to say goodbye, not yet, but she doesn't know if there's anything left between them to talk about.
She notices that he's stopped only after she's nearly two meters away.
"Would you like a Casteliacone?" he asks.
White frowns. She's not wearing the warmest clothes, and it's getting rather cold. She eyes his clothes--at least she's wearing a jacket, he's only wearing a shirt. "Do you? Isn't it a bit too cold for that?"
"I don't know, are they cold? I heard they're famous but I don't know what they are," he says honestly.
She can't help it--she laughs. "Oh, why not. I take it you don't know where they sell it, either? Come on."
She buys two for herself and her pokemon, and he ends up buying seven for all his friends. They find a corner in Central Plaza to sit down, and she sees that he's carrying a full team of ice type pokemon. Naturally they love the cold, but she giggles when he starts shivering after finishing barely half of a cone. His Vanilluxe and Glaceon ends up fighting for the rest while White finishes her own with her Samurott.
They sink back into silence as soon they're finished. This time, it's N who manages to pick up the thread of conversation again.
"I'd like to try something in Nimbasa--would you like to try it with me?"
She shrugs and answers yes. He makes a hand motion and an Archeops swoops down to pick him up. She commands her Sigilyph to follow.
--
She expects them to land...well, anywhere else other than the building in front of them. The ferriswheel was her first thought, but of course that wouldn't be something he has to try, so she thought maybe he meant the redecorated roller coaster. Or anything else in Nimbasa would have made sense, and it's a pretty big city, there's plenty of things to try.
Instead, they're in front of the Gear Station.
"This is a terrible idea," she points out plainly.
"My friends want to try, and I've never done battling for fun before."
She sighs and tries to inch away from the station. "That's why it's a terrible idea." She doesn't look at him, not wanting to see his dejected expression, if he even has one. More likely he would close down first, and that would be even worse. "So, which pokemon...which one of your friends are participating?"
"Any of them," he says.
"I know you're an impulsive battler and you allow your friends free rein, but this is another terrain."
She's not very experienced with the Battle Subway herself. She fought there several times, to test out new moves and give her team some practice, but it's not her strongest suit. She's better with a full team working to compliment each other, and using just two or three pokemon to plan for everything isn't something she does very often.
"Their moves?" she asks, and he write them down for her. "I'm not sure I can work with your team," she says truthfully, wincing when he tries to grab the paper out of her hands. "I don't have ice type pokemon, your hail is going to hurt my pokemon."
That he can understand. He says that he has other friends that would like to try fighting, and asks her if water type would be better, given that she has Samurott.
"Politoed, Kabutops. I'll be taking my Ludicolo, definitely, his name's Tad by the way, but the other's going to be a problem...Maybe for variety, I'll go for Laura? I don't really have a lot of choices. I'm not normally a double battler, you know."
He looks perplexed after her rant, and she realizes he's never thought this much about pokemon battles. He's never needed to, he can always ask his friends how they prefer to fight and he's probably never done double battles either. She decides that if she's going to do this, she might as well charge ahead without thinking. Her Scrafty it is for the last member.
--
She starts each round with Tad's rain dance. He goes for a hypnosis on one pokemon, and a hydro pump on the other, while she follows up with surf.
In the fifth fight, Tad goes down the first time. It's not the first time her pokemon faints in battle, of course not, but it's the first time it happened while she's fighting alongside N and she can't help but think oh, this is totally going to give him more reason to look down on her. Losing Tad breaks down their basic formation, there's no one to set up rain dance and she's not sure Laura can take the rest, even if Laura's one of the pokemon she's trained the longest.
"There's still three rounds," he says calmly, and she sees his hand come near her shoulder before he withdraws it.
She takes a deep breath. This isn't the time to panic. Their opponents are down to two pokemon only, she's pulled through tougher situations than this.
By the thirteenth battle, sacrificing at least one of their team becomes routine. She expects N to quit and start accusing humans of using pokemon for the joy of battling, but to his surprise he quietly allows the train staff to heal his pokemon after each round and doesn't talk to his pokemon any more than he did before. He paid extra attention to how their opponents treated their pokemon at first, but after the first few battles he stopped doing that as well.
She also sees the glowing determination in his eyes. No matter his stance on pokemon battles, he has the instincts for it, and while he fights like a pokemon sometimes, he's also smart enough to pass human judgement at critical moments.
Will she be able to defeat him now, with him no longer denying his human side?
She wonders which pokemon he would choose to fight her, and what she can do to counter him. Only a few hours ago, just thinking about fighting him made her feel tired, but now thinking about it makes her tremble with excitement and she knows it's something they have to do in the future.
After the seventeenth battle, they take a rest, listening to the train as it speeds on.
They fight the subway masters for the first time after the twentieth battle finishes. It's her first time fighting the both of them at once, but Politoed's hypnosis hits more often than not and Laura manages to set up enough rounds of dragon dance to sweep the opponents away.
By the thirtieth battle, she starts believing she can feel his heartbeat alongside hers. She doesn't know how to talk to him, but this she can do. Battling like this, she can feel his strength, and she knows he must feel hers too. It's their dedication towards pokemon that binds them together, and they might choose to express it in different ways, but it's ultimately the same thing. Maybe this is why N wanted to try this, she thinks. Maybe he felt that they conversed better through pokemon battles as well and decided this would help them reach other better than fighting each other directly.
In the fifty-second battle, Tad is poisoned and Laura is paralyzed. She grits her teeth in frustration and it's no use, Kabutops is down soon and Politoed follows. Their streak ends there and right then and there she thinks it's not enough, she can do better, they can do better.
"We should have been able to go on longer," she says.
He shakes his head. "I'd like to stop here."
She pauses her thoughts. She's not here to prove anything, and she's not here to break records. If she was, she would have specifically picked pokemon for this and arranged their moves completely based on how well they do in double battles, but that's not her style. N is right, of course. They got what they came here for.
"Come somewhere with me?" he adds.
--
Somewhere turns out to be Anville Town. It's not White's first time here, but it's N's, and coming here with him, the place feels different.
They look down at the tracks together.
"Humans made these," he says.
She asks him what he means.
"I used to have a toy train set, and I thought it was special because it moved on the tracks I put together. But when I learned they exist in larger forms for practical purposes, the romance of it was lost, and it was no longer special to me. I even thought it was silly that humans had to rely on trains for transportation, but that's not true. Not all pokemon can move the same way, but they can all travel by train. Humans may not be perfect, but the world isn't worse because of us."
He referred to himself as a human. She can't remember if he did before, but this time it made an impact. She feels his hand bumping on her arm and their heights makes this inconvenient, but she grabs his hand into hers. She feels him tighten, but he doesn't pull away.
There's a lot of things she wants to ask him, but they just finished several hours worth of conversation, and she thinks it's more than enough. They can work on talking to each other through words later.
memorialrainbowTitle: Communication in the Form of Rain Dance
Author:
digitalized_ Rating: G
Verse: Games, Gen V
Characters: White, N
Summary: Meeting each other is just the first step. Next, they need to learn how to communicate.
--
After searching for so long, she sees him waiting for her in the Castelia Central Plaza. It's not fair, she thinks. Two years of searching, and it's him that finds her, rendering all her searches pointless. Rationally, she knows there's she should be glad, it's enough to know that he's doing well after the events two years ago and she's happy for him, but she still feels like she's been deprived of the satisfaction of completing her goal.
And worse, she can't think of a single thing to say.
"How are you?" N asks, his hands in his pockets.
"What are you doing here?"
He looks nervous, and White realizes she might have sounded too harsh, but she's not good at small talk either. What a pair they would make, she thinks, not being able to converse through anything but pokemon battles. Throughout her adventures in Unova, he used pokemon battles to talk to her, but she doesn't want to fight him, not anymore. Fighting him always took everything out of her.
"I heard you came back...I came to look for you," he says, eyes darting left and right.
She takes a few steps forward, until he's barely an arm's length away. She's almost forgotten how tall he is until now, when she has to crane her neck to reach his eyes. "So, what did you want to find me for?"
He blinks several times before looking straight at her, suddenly serious. "Thank you," he says out of the blue.
"For what?"
"For stopping me," he says, and it's her turn to look away. "For teaching me how humans and pokemon could work together. For everything." He moves backward for some room and bows, and she realizes this must be something he learned after their last battle. "Thank you."
"You did most of that yourself," she replies. "I only fought you. I heard you helped save Unova this time--I have to thank you for that."
She heard about the return of Ghetsis too late, although she should have guessed that someone with Ghetsis's ambition wouldn't give up so fast. She should have known that as long as Ghetsis isn't in jail, he would try again to take over Unova, and she should have hunted him down before his recent plans nearly ruined her homeland. It's too late to speak of that now, and she's glad someone else took care of Team Plasma this time around, but she should still have helped.
When she finally came back to Unova, it was all over. Her mother was alright, and so were her friends, but most importantly, she heard that N returned to Unova as well.
And then he found her before she found him.
"It was something I had to try," he says. "I couldn't stop him in the end, but to attune for my mistakes, I had to try. You shouldn't thank me for that."
"Then you shouldn't thank me for stopping you," she says, smiling when she sees N looking confused. "This is too serious for the middle of the streets. I would like to talk more. Would you like to go somewhere?"
She expects him to refuse. After all, during these two years, he ran whenever she came near him. She knew he did, she came close enough multiple times to know that he must have left as soon as he realized she was near.
He says yes. That surprises her.
--
Walking alongside N is awkward at first. His paces are longer, and he doesn't know to slow down, so she has to run after a few steps to catch up. Finally she strides forward and walks before him, until he catches her intention and lets her lead.
It's easier after that. They walk through the streets of Castelia without speaking, and she wonders if he's been here before but doesn't know how to ask. Maybe this is their limit, she thinks. She knows now he's moved past his old life and the events two years ago, and he's said what he wanted to say. She doesn't want to say goodbye, not yet, but she doesn't know if there's anything left between them to talk about.
She notices that he's stopped only after she's nearly two meters away.
"Would you like a Casteliacone?" he asks.
White frowns. She's not wearing the warmest clothes, and it's getting rather cold. She eyes his clothes--at least she's wearing a jacket, he's only wearing a shirt. "Do you? Isn't it a bit too cold for that?"
"I don't know, are they cold? I heard they're famous but I don't know what they are," he says honestly.
She can't help it--she laughs. "Oh, why not. I take it you don't know where they sell it, either? Come on."
She buys two for herself and her pokemon, and he ends up buying seven for all his friends. They find a corner in Central Plaza to sit down, and she sees that he's carrying a full team of ice type pokemon. Naturally they love the cold, but she giggles when he starts shivering after finishing barely half of a cone. His Vanilluxe and Glaceon ends up fighting for the rest while White finishes her own with her Samurott.
They sink back into silence as soon they're finished. This time, it's N who manages to pick up the thread of conversation again.
"I'd like to try something in Nimbasa--would you like to try it with me?"
She shrugs and answers yes. He makes a hand motion and an Archeops swoops down to pick him up. She commands her Sigilyph to follow.
--
She expects them to land...well, anywhere else other than the building in front of them. The ferriswheel was her first thought, but of course that wouldn't be something he has to try, so she thought maybe he meant the redecorated roller coaster. Or anything else in Nimbasa would have made sense, and it's a pretty big city, there's plenty of things to try.
Instead, they're in front of the Gear Station.
"This is a terrible idea," she points out plainly.
"My friends want to try, and I've never done battling for fun before."
She sighs and tries to inch away from the station. "That's why it's a terrible idea." She doesn't look at him, not wanting to see his dejected expression, if he even has one. More likely he would close down first, and that would be even worse. "So, which pokemon...which one of your friends are participating?"
"Any of them," he says.
"I know you're an impulsive battler and you allow your friends free rein, but this is another terrain."
She's not very experienced with the Battle Subway herself. She fought there several times, to test out new moves and give her team some practice, but it's not her strongest suit. She's better with a full team working to compliment each other, and using just two or three pokemon to plan for everything isn't something she does very often.
"Their moves?" she asks, and he write them down for her. "I'm not sure I can work with your team," she says truthfully, wincing when he tries to grab the paper out of her hands. "I don't have ice type pokemon, your hail is going to hurt my pokemon."
That he can understand. He says that he has other friends that would like to try fighting, and asks her if water type would be better, given that she has Samurott.
"Politoed, Kabutops. I'll be taking my Ludicolo, definitely, his name's Tad by the way, but the other's going to be a problem...Maybe for variety, I'll go for Laura? I don't really have a lot of choices. I'm not normally a double battler, you know."
He looks perplexed after her rant, and she realizes he's never thought this much about pokemon battles. He's never needed to, he can always ask his friends how they prefer to fight and he's probably never done double battles either. She decides that if she's going to do this, she might as well charge ahead without thinking. Her Scrafty it is for the last member.
--
She starts each round with Tad's rain dance. He goes for a hypnosis on one pokemon, and a hydro pump on the other, while she follows up with surf.
In the fifth fight, Tad goes down the first time. It's not the first time her pokemon faints in battle, of course not, but it's the first time it happened while she's fighting alongside N and she can't help but think oh, this is totally going to give him more reason to look down on her. Losing Tad breaks down their basic formation, there's no one to set up rain dance and she's not sure Laura can take the rest, even if Laura's one of the pokemon she's trained the longest.
"There's still three rounds," he says calmly, and she sees his hand come near her shoulder before he withdraws it.
She takes a deep breath. This isn't the time to panic. Their opponents are down to two pokemon only, she's pulled through tougher situations than this.
By the thirteenth battle, sacrificing at least one of their team becomes routine. She expects N to quit and start accusing humans of using pokemon for the joy of battling, but to his surprise he quietly allows the train staff to heal his pokemon after each round and doesn't talk to his pokemon any more than he did before. He paid extra attention to how their opponents treated their pokemon at first, but after the first few battles he stopped doing that as well.
She also sees the glowing determination in his eyes. No matter his stance on pokemon battles, he has the instincts for it, and while he fights like a pokemon sometimes, he's also smart enough to pass human judgement at critical moments.
Will she be able to defeat him now, with him no longer denying his human side?
She wonders which pokemon he would choose to fight her, and what she can do to counter him. Only a few hours ago, just thinking about fighting him made her feel tired, but now thinking about it makes her tremble with excitement and she knows it's something they have to do in the future.
After the seventeenth battle, they take a rest, listening to the train as it speeds on.
They fight the subway masters for the first time after the twentieth battle finishes. It's her first time fighting the both of them at once, but Politoed's hypnosis hits more often than not and Laura manages to set up enough rounds of dragon dance to sweep the opponents away.
By the thirtieth battle, she starts believing she can feel his heartbeat alongside hers. She doesn't know how to talk to him, but this she can do. Battling like this, she can feel his strength, and she knows he must feel hers too. It's their dedication towards pokemon that binds them together, and they might choose to express it in different ways, but it's ultimately the same thing. Maybe this is why N wanted to try this, she thinks. Maybe he felt that they conversed better through pokemon battles as well and decided this would help them reach other better than fighting each other directly.
In the fifty-second battle, Tad is poisoned and Laura is paralyzed. She grits her teeth in frustration and it's no use, Kabutops is down soon and Politoed follows. Their streak ends there and right then and there she thinks it's not enough, she can do better, they can do better.
"We should have been able to go on longer," she says.
He shakes his head. "I'd like to stop here."
She pauses her thoughts. She's not here to prove anything, and she's not here to break records. If she was, she would have specifically picked pokemon for this and arranged their moves completely based on how well they do in double battles, but that's not her style. N is right, of course. They got what they came here for.
"Come somewhere with me?" he adds.
--
Somewhere turns out to be Anville Town. It's not White's first time here, but it's N's, and coming here with him, the place feels different.
They look down at the tracks together.
"Humans made these," he says.
She asks him what he means.
"I used to have a toy train set, and I thought it was special because it moved on the tracks I put together. But when I learned they exist in larger forms for practical purposes, the romance of it was lost, and it was no longer special to me. I even thought it was silly that humans had to rely on trains for transportation, but that's not true. Not all pokemon can move the same way, but they can all travel by train. Humans may not be perfect, but the world isn't worse because of us."
He referred to himself as a human. She can't remember if he did before, but this time it made an impact. She feels his hand bumping on her arm and their heights makes this inconvenient, but she grabs his hand into hers. She feels him tighten, but he doesn't pull away.
There's a lot of things she wants to ask him, but they just finished several hours worth of conversation, and she thinks it's more than enough. They can work on talking to each other through words later.