Ch. 42
Imported from SF2 with no description.
--Tempest--
Annabelle approached me at dinner, and stared into the low burning fire as she sat down. Her presence made me want to leave, but her posture convinced me to wait.
“I apologize.” She said, without looking up. “I shouldn't have compared him to Ma… my trainer. My former trainer.” She emphasized with a sigh as she poked at the fire with a stick, embers dancing upward in their acrobatic little dance. I expected to see some measure of resignation, or falsehood on the lucario's face, but she looked genuine. Contrite.
I had to count, mentally. To stop myself. There was so much I wanted to say, but master would've been disappointed in me. Maybe I would have been, too. “You have your reasons. But I don't take back what I said before, I'll defend my love.” There wasn't any sense pretending otherwise. “I understand that you have your own feelings about it, but what he is to us? To Claire and I both? We wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.”
“So… that's why her mother…” She trailed off, and glanced my direction hesitantly. “Did he h…. Stupid question. You love him, all he would need to do is ask, right? If only I'd had the luxury.”
I shook my head. “From what Claire told me, they were both learning about each other, about themselves in some ways. It was mutual, but she took pride in starting it. She wanted him, wanted him to want her.”
“She ... “ I paused, and moved closer to the fire, sitting down beside Annabelle, who waited patiently for me to find my words. “When we first met, she didn’t hide it at all. I’d stumbled on their tent, and on the left overs of dinner. The scent was delicious, and I was enjoying the scraps. She startled me but we got to talking. We were both so much younger then, it feels like.”
“She was curious about me. As a girl, I mean. I … before then, I’d never tried anything like that, but something about her, I just… she made me want it. I followed after them as they traveled, watched him from a distance, for weeks. Every night she and I would sneak off and make love, and every day I’d watch how he treated her, how good he was to her.”
Annabelle sighed at that, and nodded. “So how did you end up with him?” She asked, tossing the stick into the flame. “I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“Well… Claire… she’s honestly a pervert. No… more than that, frankly, she’s a slut. I know that sounds horrible to say, but she loves it, delights in it. She used to ask me to watch, as close as I dared to get as he took her. She got off on it, and she teased and taunted him to take her in all kinds of places. I got lots of good looks at some of the hottest things I’d ever seen. Way more than what she and I got up to. And she’d do perverse things with me after, I knew his taste before I ever f-”
“Hey, don’t need to know that.” Annabelle said, interrupting. “So she got you turned on to him, and put you in front of him?”
It was a frustrating question. Not the question itself, but the way she said it made my fur bristle. The implication couldn’t have been more clear, painting her, and him like they were abusing me. Like she set me up and let him have me.
“No. She actually sat me down and talked to me about her worries, her fears and anxieties. She was his only pokemon. He’d never even looked at another one to bring along. They fought together, ate together, bathed together, slept together, made love and fucked and she was his, but more than that, he was hers. Purely.” I sighed, and looked up to the sky. “And she was afraid that she wasn’t strong enough. That they’d find their limits, and he’d give up, because being with her was worth more than being a trainer. She was terrified of letting him down, and she didn’t … want or need to be his only. He was trying to be good to her, but it wasn’t what she wanted. The opposite of it, honestly. She wanted to enjoy his happiness, if that makes sense.”
Annabelle spoke up, with a smile. A genuine smile for the first time since we met. “So she was worried about him, about his future. Not just.. I see.” She fell quiet again, and shook her head. “Sorry, you were saying?”
“So she asked me, flat out, if I thought I could love him, too. The way I did her. She asked me if I could come with them, and trust him the way she did. Asked me to think about it, to think about what it meant, because he’d be counting on me to be there with him, for the rest of his life, for the rest of mine. I wouldn’t be able to wander and roam the way I used to. She made me really think about what I wanted.”
“And you wanted him?” Annabelle asked, glancing my way.
“I wanted her. I trusted him. Watching him all that time, when he thought nobody was? I knew who he was at heart. I knew how careful he was with her, how much he cared for her. How much it meant to him.” I replied, shaking my head. “But I also knew what it meant, what it was going to be like. I knew… I wanted it. I wasn’t saying no. I didn’t know I’d fall in love with him. But I was fine with being fucked. No… I wanted him to fuck me. Watching him all that time, I wished it had been me.”
For a while, we were both quiet. I’d thought about getting up to go lay down, but she spoke first, and I stopped, mid motion and sat back down.
“My first trainer was Anna. My name was Belle.” She said, as she pulled her knees to her chest. “She was an old woman, and I helped her around the house. She had a granddaughter, who loved me and used to play tag, and hide and seek. I had to pretend I couldn’t feel where she was, because she always felt a little disappointed when I finally ‘found’ her. Sophie… she was a sweet kid, but she was always a little frail.”
She paused, and tossed another twig into the fire, watching it burn in quiet contemplation. “She got sick, Sophie, I mean. Really sick. And it was going to be expensive. Anna didn’t have the money, and she started reaching out for help, she got desperate. That’s when she met my former trainer. He was a pampered prick who promised to pay for Sophie’s treatment, in exchange for me.”
“Just like that, I was sold.” She said, with a heavy sigh. “Nobody asked me what I thought. Nobody asked me how I felt, and nobody called around to see if I was okay. I wasn’t. He hurt me… that very first night, he hurt me, and threatened me. If I acted out, at all, he’d take all his money back, and Sophie would die, and it would be my fault…. So he hurt me, again and again, and I let him.”
I didn’t have words. Didn’t have anything. The idea of it, of suddenly belonging to someone who would hurt me, violate me, threaten me... It was alien, and yet I remembered how close a thing it had been, when we first met Mira. Would he have let me go? I wanted to believe I knew better, but it was hard to be certain. I knew how much we had all learned from it, him most of all. I was grateful I didn’t have to know that answer. That I’d never have to know it.
“When they found me, I was half starved, battered, terrified. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t make words. My fur was falling out in clumps, where he hadn’t personally pulled it out. It was matted and filthy with his scent. I couldn’t even feel anything, I was numb.” She paused, and stood up. “I could smell you on him, and the other way around. I… when he didn’t give me a straight answer, I just …” She shook her head, as she stood up. “I didn’t have the right. I’m sorry for treating him like that.”
I could have let her just walk away, leave her to her thoughts, me to mine, but I took her hand and tugged her back before she could get away. “Nobody’s angry at you for it. But I still… why ‘Annabelle’? I don’t think I’d be able to hear her name if I were in your place.”
She sat down with a huff, and stared into the fire quietly for a long time. “I ask myself that a lot. What she did… the way she abandoned me like that. I should hate her. I should hate her as much as I hate mast… my former trainer. I should hate them both. I don’t hate her. I’m sad for her. I’m sad for everything that changed.”
“I don’t… want to forget that someone used to love me.” She sighed, as she wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging them to her chest again. “I don’t want to forget that, even if they changed their mind later.”
I didn’t say anything, I tried to find words, but there weren’t any. I couldn’t defend her first trainer any more than I could have defended mine for putting us at risk so long ago. Some things are just wrong. Sometimes we make horrible mistakes. I knew that better than anyone.
He and I were both lucky that we didn’t lose each other forever. But I knew he wasn’t the only one to make mistakes. I had hurt him just as badly, hadn’t I? But we were still right there for each other. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to suddenly not have him there.
In the midst of my quiet thoughts, she sobbed, and shook. Angry, frustrated tears and a voice tight with pain. “Why did she do that to me? Why did she sell me to him? Why didn’t she look me in the eyes before sending me away? She didn’t even let me say goodbye to Sophie… How could she do that to me?”
I had no answers, and my hand on her shoulder was cold comfort to the weight of those questions. I couldn’t say anything.
I couldn’t say a word and that hurt worst of all.
---Wendy---
When I found the two in the morning, Annabelle had fallen asleep leaning against Tempest. Tempest was already awake, but it seemed only just, and as I packed up my sleeping bag, and got ready to face the day, the two began talking. Agreeably, to my surprise.
I didn’t know what had changed but I was glad they figured things out. I didn’t want to try and put myself between the two if it came to blows. I made sure we had everything, and handed out the last of Cocoa’s milk. It kept well enough, but I knew too much longer and we’d all be fairly incapacitated.
“Well, I’m not sure what the plan is, going forward. I’ll be counting on you, Annabelle. I’m ready to go whenever you two are.”
She nodded, and after a moment, took my hand in hers, her ears falling back for a moment as she spoke. I didn’t need a translation to figure out it was an apology, and just shook my head. “Hey now,” I said, as I gave her hand a squeeze. “No need for that. We got off to a rough start, but today’s a new day. Let’s just make the most of it, okay?”
I pulled out the tablet, and messaged back to camp, but skipped anything longer than a greeting, a location, and after asking Annabelle, the direction we were heading, roughly speaking. I wasn’t feeling up to a long conversation, and something told me he’d be fine with the brevity.
Annabelle led us into the woods, as the morning wound on. Up a slowly increasing incline along a trail only she seemed to know. I couldn’t say how long we’d been walking, minutes bled into each other in the quiet rhythm of our footsteps, but as we made our way up, I could see through the tree line, over the canopy, the clearing we had left that morning.
I stopped looking back after the first few hours, and focused on my breathing. I was already exhausted from the climb, but I wasn’t about to stop. I shifted the pack on my shoulders and forced my way up the incline, my body burning with the exertion the whole way.
It seemed impossibly close to us, for how long I felt we’d been walking, and was even more beautiful from above. We had climbed a mountain, it seemed, and the view from where we were was phenomenal. The whole world it seemed, a sea of trees, stretched out below and beyond, as far as the eye could see. Walking down from the summit back into the treeline on the opposite side, we made our way even further.
It hadn't been much easier, down than up. The narrow trace we were on wound through the woods and past standing stones and fallen trees. The whole world around us seemed something out of a fairy tale, and I delighted in the sight of it. I was so distracted, I almost fell into Annabelle as she stopped. Confused, I tried to move past her, but Annabelle stopped us with a hand, and took two steps forward, calling out.
From the concealment of the trees and brush, two pokemon came forward, and greeted her. A lopunny, who welcomed her with open arms, and a nidorino who hung back and watched Tempest and I with curiosity.
She began to speak, gesturing to us, and roughly over the hill we’d just climbed. Reiterating, I presumed, the circumstances that brought us here. After a moment, Tempest stepped forward, and held up the pokeball that contained Claire. Whatever she said was interrupted halfway, with the lopunny shaking their head, and spending a moment in thoughtful pause.
With a nod and a welcoming motion, the three of us began to follow the two of them down the other side of the hill. I could only hope it was a positive sign.
We could all have used a little positivity, I imagined.