Love Lost, Chapter 21b: Absences, concluded.
#42 of Love Lost
Love Lost, Chapter 21b: Absences, concluded.
Joe let Alice enter first. She had not said a word since she caught up with him. She patted the love-seat as she passed it, indicatively. He sat and watched as she went to the kitchen and returned with drinks. Offering Joe one, she sat beside him, took a deep breath, held it, and released it very slowly with a gentle vocalization.
"I don't want to talk about this. I--it's so embarrassing, but..." Alice trailed off, glanced at the coffee table, and fidgeted.
Joe cleared his throat. "Are you okay?"
Alice shook her head side to side forcefully, swinging her antennae wide and hard enough that they collided with each other making faint slapping sounds. "I've been doing things I don't want to do. To see Daddy, I have to get special permission from a particular person. To get him to do me a favor, I have to do him a favor, and every time it's a little bigger. I'm a shrewd negotiator, but every inch I've had to give I can't take back. Now I'm at the line that I promised myself I wouldn't cross."
Joe shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."
Alice sensed his half-lie and dispelled it. "Remember the movie we saw a few weeks ago? With the blonde woman who..."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"So, you've--"
"No! Not--that. But, after my next scheduled visitation, if I want to schedule another--that."
Joe shifted again. "Maybe this is something you should talk to Dad about. I mean, I don't really know anything about this; that sorta thing."
Alice took his left hand. "I don't need to discuss it, really. I know what is right, I know I've gone too far already, and also know I wouldn't un-do what I've done because Daddy is worth it to me. Everything up to this. I don't need to discuss this. I just need to know that you support me; that you will support me, after I tell him that I won't be able to see him again, until..."
Joe placed his right arm across her shoulders. She leaned toward him a little. "How long is he going to be in there?"
"They sentenced him to twenty, total. He would be eligible for parole at some point, but my insider's information indicates that it's not going to happen; not unless I become completely cooperative."
"So it's more than telling him you won't be able to visit him anymore."
"I haven't told Burner about any of this. Well, not the details. He knows what he's figured out, which is enough to know that something's wrong but not enough to do anything about it except to notice when I need his warmth. I guess that's really what I need to talk to you about. If you're willing to tell me, has he said anything to you about this?"
Joe shook his head. "He's been kinda quiet lately, actually. But you've both been pretty down since the house thing, and the Scarlet thing, so I thought it'd be best not to bring it up."
"Scarlet. I feel bad for her. I--uh, anyway, it's weird but because Daddy raised me like a human, mostly, and I have a human perspective on things... like fidelity. The things I've done I did because I felt like it was worth it, and that I wasn't actually doing anything, so I figured that B wouldn't really mind as long as I always came home okay. But now that this has come right up to the limit, I realize how close I've come to crossing it, and now that B's wanting our relationship to become everything it can be, and in a human way, I feel... uhm, like I've already crossed it."
Joe gripped the bulk of her right shoulder, squeezing and massaging it gently. "I kinda think I know what I should say, but I'm not sure if it'll sound right to you. So, I guess I'll just say this: We all love you, and we'll be okay."
Alice returned his squeeze upon his left hand. "I can't know if you're right, but that sounds good to me." She released that grip, turned, climbed completely into the love-seat, and drew Joe into a hug. "Scarlet's aura and yours react in a complicated way. That's not good, and that's not bad. Be careful, though, because you're younger and less worldly than I am, so you might not see that sort of line coming."
"Two things," Joe asked as Alice let him loose, "one, what makes you think there's anything between Scarlet and me? and two, you're older than I am?"
"Just a little. I told you I was a riolu for a long time. As for Scarlet, well, she's obviously not becoming a smaller part of your life now that your project is over, right?"
"I'm not going to start a fight over her being at the park. She got a pokemon, she needs to train it, that's the place to do it. And, I just won't be there when she is."
Alice tilted her head down a bit and poked him with her gaze. "You're going to avoid her for the rest of the year, and as a junior and as a senior if you wind up sharing classes then, too?"
"Classes will be chance, but the park: I don't need to go. Burner practices when he wants to and I don't have any other pokemon who need to train there."
Alice tilted her head up a bit and rolled her eyes dismissively. "Oh, so, you're going to play video games all the time instead of socializing?"
Joe gently pushed Alice away from himself. "Maybe."
She smirked at him and resettled against the cushion before her grin faded. "Don't waste your youth. You're growing up faster than you realize. That happened to me, even though I actually physically grew very slowly."
Unexpected noises in the kitchen got their attention in time to glimpse a purple wisp coasting around.
"Marianne, what are you doing?" Joe asked from afar.
Another noise. "Oooooo, nothin'!" she admitted.
"Seriously," Joe asked again with a hint of James' tone, "what are you doing?"
One more sound accompanied an annoyed vocalization before she emerged and came before Joe and Alice. "I'm arranging things to make your father really upset."
"You're hiding the keys to the liqueur cabinet, stealing the batteries from the remote control, and turning the silverware so the forks point at the front of the drawer?"
Marianne scoffed, Alice hummed inquisitively.
Joe blushed a little. "The first time I did the dishes all by myself, I didn't put all the utensils in the same way. I learned."
Marianne muttered, "Those aren't bad ideas," while she floated about without any obvious direction.
That got Joe's attention. "What is it, Marianne?"
The ghost whipped her two primary tendrils behind herself and glanced at the ceiling. "I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do."
Alice perked up, sympathetically and re-positioned in her seat. "You're up against a hard decision, too, today?"
Marianne drifted down onto the armrest. "It's no skin off of my nose--no nose, no skin. I'm not sure the timing is right, is all."
Joe became nervous. "Timing for what?"
Marianne shifted again, making it look like she was leaning on an elbow against the back of the love-seat, except she was leaning away from the love-seat's back. "For upsetting the entire household. The emotion sponge being awol makes this seem like the right time in one way, but I'm not sure if James is feeling up to it. Then again, I don't think waiting will help; might make it worse."
Joe rolled his eyes. "I wish I knew for sure what you were talking about. You think you're being mysterious and intriguing, but you're just being annoying. Look, I know there's something wrong with Dad. Every time he says you've been feeding off his dreams too much and that's why he's not well, he also has a problem with a shaving nick that won't stop bleeding. Or, a paper cut, whatever. It stopped happening for a while, but now it's happening again. I know something's wrong. I looked it up. Is it what I think it is?"
Marianne elevated. "That... that's not what I'm talking about."
Alice took up Joe's left hand again, her ears having fallen flat. "You know it is, Joe."
Joe muttered a curse and started to lean over. Alice caught his forehead with her own as she moved to comfort him. Marianne floated back into the ceiling; her nature was to be the cause of upset, and this was not the right time.
"Did it just flip her off?" Solymar asked with a brewing bellyful of chuckles. She was not sure which was more amusing: How the umbreon expressed its disobedience to its owner, or how it casually evaded Petunia's attacks and responded with dismissive counterattacks. Terrance only brought three antidotes, and the umbreon seemed to be able to cast toxic in its sleep. Scarlet's frustration reached a maximum. "Fine, do whatever you want, just win the fight!" she shouted. The umbreon looked up toward Scarlet, raised one paw to Petunia's nose level--catching the linoone's tackle well enough that all of her momentum went into making both pokemon slide across the grass for a meter--and then, after shoving Petunia's exhausted and enervated body aside, Idis trotted to the broken line of paint, sat beside it, and placed her left paw upon one marked blade of grass.
"Willful out, one point against the challenger," announced Matthew before petitioning Terrance for twenty quatloos.
Idis trotted toward Scarlet, who complained enthusiastically about the umbreon's performance, but it passed by its current owner to instead stand upon a pile of red feathers lying in the grass beside the concrete picnic table. "Is this your first time being badly poisoned?" she asked in their shared tongue.
Burner grumbled, gurgled, and grunted.
Idis intended to say something consoling, but Scarlet recalled her first.
Solymar shifted aside with a frown as Scarlet imposed to sit on the end of the concrete seating.
Scarlet crossed her legs and placed Idis's ball upon one kneecap as she spoke. "I thought pokemon were naturally obedient."
Terrance stroked Petunia gently as she suffered through the poison, as he was now out of meds. "They usually are, although some don't like being traded to a less-experienced trainer."
Solymar added, "It probably wants to go home, or free. It's obviously telling you something, even if it isn't wasting words on you."
"Words? It doesn't talk."
"I think it can," Solymar replied, "and if you release it we can find out for sure."
Scarlet released Idis. The umbreon sat on the grass and scratched behind its left ear with a hind leg as though an insect or an itch was bothering it.
Solymar leaned forward while everyone else at the table, save Percival, looked on. "One-hundred-twenty-four underwear gallop felt chronograph tellingly bang."
Idis shook her head and squinted a little.
"Positive," proclaimed Solymar as she leaned back. "A mute pokemon understands what we say well enough that it'd know that sentence was nonsense, but that'd just get a head tilt. This little one tried to make sense of it." She glanced around at her audience with a prideful, self-impressed aura about her.
Idis recognized that this girl could be fun, and trouble. "I guess you sussed me out," Idis said as she approached Solymar. "Next time I find a secret about you, I'll be sure to share."
Solymar laughed, clearly defensively, "Are you threatening me with extortion?"
Idis sat on Solymar's feet, leaning against her legs like a cat. She even purred before replying, "Not yet."
"Komo!" Solymar shouted, despite her machoke being not more than two meters away, seated on the other side of the table, "Twist this nuisance into a pretzel."
As he turned about to rise, Idis leapt up onto Solymar. The impact pressed her back against the hard table and her weight bent Solymar over its surface painfully. "Don't move," Idis hissed, flexing her claws against Solymar's neck as she brought her nose against the girl's. "And don't ever threaten me. Do you understand that well enough to know that I'm not talking nonsense?"
"Uhhh--huh," Solymar whimpered.
"It's good that we understand each other, now--"
After a few fumbles of the ball, Scarlet got Idis returned.
"Lock it in!" Solymar shouted.
The ball jostled in Scarlet's hands until Solymar snatched it and rotated the ring around its button. "You gotta get rid of that umbreon." Solymar returned the ball to Scarlet.
Terrance leaned over and checked Solymar's neck. There were marks but the skin was not broken. "Well, at least you gotta do something about it. It's clearly out of your control."
The ball jostled again. Scarlet looked at it and squeezed it between her palms to steady it. "I've never seen wild pokemon do something like that."
Solymar pulled out her compact and examined the damage for herself as best she could. "Wild pokemon don't; even the Dark-types would rather trick you than fight you--everybody knows they crumple under kung fu. Only evil pokemon do things like that. It needs to be put down. If a pokemon goes for the neck on a human, it's just a matter of time."
Percival, who had been fully engrossed in his trainer's device's combat simulator, suddenly looked up and around as those words struck his ear. Then he turned to his left and looked at Sam.
Sam was seated as though in meditation, soaking up rays, apparently even more oblivious to what was happening than Percival had been. As Percival looked away, Sam opened his right eye for a second and closed it again.
Considering the weight of the situation, Joe was handling it quite well. Then again, deep inside he had already gone through the shock and the coming to terms with the matter in a protracted way; all that remained was letting the pressure out. The first thing that came to his mind introspectively was that he now relied on Alice, who an hour before came to him for support. She led him by his hand back into the living room from the bathroom and sat him down.
"Are you going to be able to pull it together?" Alice asked, lifting his chin with her paw, "Dada will be upset if we let him know we know what he knows we know."
"I think so," Joe said before sniffling sharply. "What's that phrase, 'stiff upper lip'?"
Alice's face flashed a couple of emotions. "Yeah. But try not to remind me of that. Bad times."
They sat together in silence till Burner arrived home. Walking off its primary effects helped, but Idis's poison still had him off-balance. Alice whispered something to Joe, left the couch, and guided Burner through the beads and into their room.
Joe was not privy to their conversation, but he could tell which part was about what Alice had been doing to see her daddy, and which part was about James' health condition. Marianne seemed restless, dipping through the ceiling intermittently. Joe turned to lie across the love-seat for a while, enjoying a period of quiet, until all of the beads were swept aside. He looked across the living room and saw Burner, wrists alight, stomp out of the house.
Alice timidly appeared among the swinging beads. "He didn't take it as well as I had hoped. I think we need to stop him, but I don't know how." She approached the window. He was now jogging. "I don't think we can catch up with him. He's so fast once he gets moving."
Marianne swept through the living room, "Way to give up, kids." She punched through a number of walls and spooked one of the less familiar neighbors as she cut a straight line to Percival's room. Therein, she addressed one of that room's residents. "Burner's headed to the rich side of town. You should stop him."
Sam squinted at her and looked back to his book.
"It's all you, Scrub Brush; if you don't catch up with him, nobody can. I'll make it worth your while. HEY! Go stop him from getting himself and Joe into deep shit."
Sam squinted at her again, and tried to look back to his book, but she covered its text with her tendrils.
"Why should I?"
"Because you're his mentor." She wrenched his book away and tossed it across the room.
"Was. You were there when that ended."
Marianne slumped over him. "You let him down, and he hasn't been the same ever since. He needs you, Sam. Right now."
Sam barged through the hallway, shoving Percival aside as he emerged from the bathroom. Frankie looked around the corner from behind them, and kept Li'l Sis from coming around it. He ignored Delilah's question of where he thought he was going; not only for a lack of time to explain and a sense of duty but because he truly did not know. He squinted and saw a fuzzy red figure in the distance. He ran.
Idis whimpered, cornered in what she had hoped was a hiding place, although it was merely a gap between the clothes dryer and the wall; a laundry basket served as a screen.
Martin was totally buying it. "Yeah, that's a real killer." He knelt beside the basket. Idis flashed her rings and slicked herself with bilious ichor. "Aw, come on. Nobody's going to hurt you." Idis pulled back again, as far as she could. "We'll leave you alone for a little bit, and when you're ready to come out, we'll give you something to eat, okay?"
Idis lowered her head and made a sound.
Martin stood and glared at Scarlet, pushing her back with his gaze. He left the garage and closed its door partially, so the place would be dark and quiet but the umbreon would be able to nudge the door open and enter the home at will. "What do you think made this pokemon act like this?"
"It's a trick, Dad. That pokemon pretended to be a mute, then when one of the girls at the park called it out, it jumped her and could've clawed her throat open. "
"Right. It doesn't look ready to claw its way out of a damp paper sack. I know you're used to them coming up to you ready to play, but this one obviously needs to warm up a little, so let it. Whatever it's been through--"
Idis could no longer hear Martin speaking for want of proximity. Deciding that she would not emerge until all had gone to bed, she dragged a stray towel into the crevice, wriggled into the most comfortable position she could manage, and decided to nap for a few hours.
"--in its ball. I mean--"
"No, I forbid it," Martin said forcefully, interrupting his daughter. "Balling it won't help that pokemon any. It'll just show it that you don't care, and I know you do or you wouldn't have captured it."
Scarlet almost replied, but dummied up.
"That friend of yours must know how to handle pokemon with attitude if he can keep that blaziken of his in line, maybe he can help you with this one?"
Scarlet muttered something inaudible at first, and then repeated it clearly when Martin demanded she speak up. "I said: I don't think he wants to see me coming around."
Martin pulled the handle of his recliner chair. Its mechanism clanged as its footrest emerged. "Did you piss him off?"
"He's blaming me because one of his pokemon bailed on him and I guess he thinks it's my fault because I didn't get along with it for a while."
"Why not?"
"Psychic-type."
Martin stared her down again.
"Gardevoir."
Martin returned to a typical recliner posture and exhaled slowly. "I see."
Blaring horns and squealing tires alerted Burner to what was catching up with him. When Sam ran, he disregarded traffic signals. Indeed, he carried so much momentum that he almost could not stop, and Burner caught him as he otherwise would have overshot his target. Instead, they toppled and tumbled once along the sidewalk. With some disoriented effort, they partially stood and partially disentangled.
The lizard spoke first. "Your ghost, Mary, sent me to stop you."
Burner stood up straight and defiantly. "This does not concern her."
Sam followed Burner. "She is concerned. Why?"
The blaziken hesitated briefly but continued on his way.
"Burner, where are you going, and to what purpose?" Sam grabbed Burner's left arm.
Burner turned and tried to yank it away, but Sam held him fast. "I'm going to talk to a man who has been abusing Alice."
Sam looked around and recognized the colors of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant's sign a block and a half away. The sign featured a welcoming pokeball emblem. "Not until after you talk to me about it."
Burner resisted as Sam yanked his arm to lead him down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. "This doesn't concern you, either."
Sam looked back at Burner. "I am concerned. Mary is concerned. Alice is probably concerned, too. Will you neglect us all?"
Waiting for James to return home felt like a prison sentence. To Alice that meant something slightly broader than it did to Joe. Sitting on the love-seat and counting the seconds was strangely calming, but when James' automobile pulled into the drive, the placid air dispelled.
James hardly faced forward and cast his keys aside when Joe grappled him, sobbing gently, asking, "Why?" repeatedly, each time with different, omitted, words to follow it. Why didn't he come clean, why did he keep it a secret, why did he spend money on a swimming pool that could've gone to treatment, why did he tell Alice and swear her to secrecy, why did Marianne get involved, why didn't he trust his son with the truth, and most importantly, why did this have to happen?
James could not answer so many questions implied in words. The best he could manage was to put his arms around his son--and, as always, recognize that his son was markedly taller now than the time before, owing to the infrequency of this interaction between them--and tell him that he loved him, that he did what he thought was best, and that he was sorry for it all.
Onyx tapped his claws against a bedstand in defiant annoyance. Hunter Hague was too busy counting money to care.
"What, you don't think I give a damn about my 'mission' anymore, do you?"
Onyx vocalized strangely.
"Screw that. I'm never going back to Ocimene. You can go home if you want to, though. I bet Simon will be happy to see you come home a failure. Actually, you can tell him I'm dead. That's probably best for both of us."
The raven shook its head.
"Yeah, yeah. I've worn that excuse out. Look, I'll buy you a dusk stone if that'll make you happy. Hell, I could buy you a bunch of them."
Onyx scoffed.
"What? You like being a little turd?"
Onyx stretched his wings out a little and waved them quickly, then he stretched them out completely and waved them slowly.
Hague activated his trainer's device and confirmed his suspicion. "Evolution brings your speed down. Okay, but, your power comes up." He turned the T.D. to show the bird a bar graph on its screen. "You can't hardly fight for shit right now, so--"
With a cry that sounded like a curse, Onyx hopped onto Hague's left shoulder, then hopped again to grip one of the man's fingers with his talons and guide Hague through a number of screens on his T.D., explaining for the fool what Onyx could not say.
Hague added up the bill. Large, but manageable, and nothing that his trap-and-flip business could not recover. "If I get you that rock and those T.M.'s, you'll quit giving me attitude?"
Onyx touched the brim of his hat-like crest with the tip of his left wing and nodded.
"Fine, fine, we'll go shopping in the morning. Now get some rest. Turd." Hague turned off the light and then he and Onyx settled into their respective places.
They had survived dinner and a sense of normalcy seemed to spread throughout the Rainier home. Indeed, nothing had actually changed. James was still riding a slow decline of health, Joe was still sitting beside an empty chair, Alice was still facing the end of her visitations to Palmitoy Penitentiary, Burner was still very upset with the cost exacted by those trips, and Marianne was still lurking just above the ceiling. If anything, the air had been cleared and the weight that they bore felt a little lighter, now. But, only a little. The problem was that the answers to those questions did not resolve any parts of their issues. The elephant in the room stood motionless; talking about it fixed nothing. Secrecy was an insulation that covered a naked fact that none of them actually wanted to gaze upon.
Uncomfortable hemming and hawing abounded as each member of the family sought a way to change the topic without making it obvious that they were trying to change the topic. All failed. They needed a new problem that would overshadow an absent member and the disease of another.
Whenever a problem needed creating, Marianne sensed her calling. She seeped through the ceiling and looked around. Everyone was in the living room, seated in something of a loose circle, staring blankly at the television. She came before James with a nervous expression. "J.R.?"
"Ghost?" James replied without turning his attention to her.
"Condition 1: I get to make it worse. Condition 4: You own up to this."
"Gho--Marianne, you said--"
She silenced him with a tendril. "It's time. I did what I could to make it easier. You're welcome."
Joe watched her drift away, switch off the television, and visit the kitchen. "Dad, what is she talking about?"
James' face shifted to an expression of shame and regret more intense than anything Joe had seen from him. Alice sensed even more-fearful colors in his aura. Marianne emerged carrying a box, which she placed squarely on the coffee table after sweeping it clean of the clutter that was upon it. She opened the box and withdrew his sash from a years-past try at the League. Spreading it out flat, the badges' pin backs sang as they slid across the table surface.
Joe's jaw dropped. "Dad, you were in League and you never told me?"
Burner canted his head.
"It was just for one summer."
Joe looked alternatively at his father, the sash, and the pokemon in the room. "So you got some pokemon, got three badges, and then let them go?"
James looked away, toward the front window. "Something like that. I kept one when I went into the service, but he moved on before I got out."
"Annnnnnd," Marianne inflected in a leading way.
"Don't do this," James whispered, "Marianne," he pronounced with deliberate perfection and averted eyes, "please, don't do this."
Marianne slashed a tendril through the box, catching and propelling a pokeball from within into James' lap. She lifted the coffee table up a bit and dragged it aside to create an open space before him. "Push the button, or I will."
"Dad," Joe asked with a wavering voice, "you've had... you've always had a pokemon?"
James shut his eyes and pursed his lips. He squinted harder when he heard Marianne repeat herself. "Not here." He stood and left the room, pacing to the hallway toward his bedroom.
Marianne went through the wall and returned three seconds afterward, dragging James through with her. "Here. That ball hasn't been opened in over a decade. We're not going to miss this special occasion."
She stood him up before the nonplussed group and hovered above the cushion where he recently sat.
"Marianne, I hate you."
"Not as much as you hate yourself. That's why we're going to make this right, right now." The ghost floated through the ceiling.
James raised his arm, slid his thumb around the ball's locking ring, and depressed its button.
Before a meter-tall form took its final shape and ceased to glow, all could tell that its pose was defensive, that of someone about to be struck. Becoming animated, its suspended motion continued into a partial crouch and a shivering whimper. The incoming blow never connected because a long time ago, James made a hard decision. He had done what he thought was best. Nel cautiously lowered her arms and opened her eyes. They met with James'. She made a sound and tried to step toward him, but collapsed. James knelt and snaked his hands beneath her arms and pulled her up. She whistled faintly, convulsed in his arms, and collapsed again.
"A decade..." Alice muttered.
Marianne descended beside her, holding a white book with a padded cover. Flipping it open, she indicated one photo in particular. "That's the last one with both her and Baby Joey, so I'm guessing he was just old enough to rat the rugs when J.R. put her away."
Alice glanced at the photo album for a moment and shoved it away. She started walking for the door, but looked at James the whole way. "I once told Sis she was wrong about you. I was wrong. I was so wrong."
Burner asked where she was going in their own language, and followed her out when she ignored his question.
Joe left the couch, crouched beside the orange-furred body, and ran his fingers through its pelt. "Dad... I can't believe this. You had a pokemon all this time, and you locked it in a ball and I don't know, kept it in storage all this--all my life? Is that why you didn't want me to have a pokemon; because you were afraid I would treat one like you did?"
James hefted up his floatzel and carried her off to lay her upon his bed.
"Answer me, Dad!" Joe shouted as he pursued James.
James checked Nel's pulse and breathing; both were faint but steady. "Your mother was drunk. She had a baseball bat--a silly he'll-grow-into-it present for you--and she was angry at Nel. She was jealous, really. When you would fuss or cry, she couldn't get you to stop, but Nel would make you giggle and calm down in no time. She'd been hostile to Nel ever since she noticed that and since... since I told Nel never to fight back. I didn't want it to come to this. The first couple swings were misses and only broke some of her own stuff, but Nel got cornered and Beverly lifted the bat up to the ceiling. That's when I recalled her. I took her to the pokecenter, and I was going to release her, but I couldn't go through with it. Nel was a gift, sorta. Really, a duty; a charge. She was given to me by somebody who trusted me to give her a proper home--the home she deserved--not like the three she had before I got her. I didn't want to fail her, I didn't want to fail my wife, I didn't want to fail my boy, and I didn't want to fail Nelson. So, I rented her a powered safe deposit so she could sleep and dream until things settled down. After your mother decided to start over and left us, I realized that things hadn't settled down; they just got messed up in different ways. I couldn't bring Nel back; she couldn't replace your mother, but I knew she would try in every way she could. That wouldn't be healthy for any of us. So I left her in. And, year after year, it was easier and easier to leave the bad memories in the past." He turned around and sat on the foot of his bed. "I brought her home when you got your pokemon. I thought it would be good to give her to you. You had a ralts and--and you know how I felt about that--and a male torchic; I knew I could trust that one to protect you, but to care about... to care for you, that's a little different. Nel loved you because of who you were, not because of Psychic-type bonds or a starter's sense of duty. It seemed like the right time. I came home that day to learn that Burner took off and I wasn't sure if the other one would run away too or if you would want to bother with pokemon once you learned how much trouble they can be. When I realized that my worst fears, that the ralts would become your enemy, were not coming true, but that my second-worst fears, including that it would take over your emotional life, were coming true, I didn't want to complicate things by letting Nel out. But, your spectre is right. Now's the time. If this cancer decides to stop playing a good parasite and kill its host, you don't need this surprising you." James offered to Joe Nel's ball.
"No, Dad," Joe croaked, "she's your pokemon; she's your responsibility. You take care of her. You wouldn't let me get away with anything less."
James smiled. "I'm proud of you, Son."
"...Dad, I..."
James stood and hugged his boy. It had only been a matter of hours, but he nonetheless seemed a little taller.
Nel twisted her body a little and opened her left eye.
She smiled.
The scary-looking man had told her the truth: If she was patient with her new master, they would one day share a wonderful happiness.
Alice sat beneath the I-Z bridge, visible at a distance only by the orange puffs that occasionally burst from her companion as he stewed. Burner felt powerless, which annoyed him greatly. Sam was right: picking a fight with Alice's influential client would cost her her final visitation and likely cause for his entire family a kind of trouble that they could not handle. He did not know what to think about James. He knew that James trusted him with the peripheral knowledge of how he "took care" of the Nel situation, but seeing it in the flesh changed his impression of it all. He resigned to keep Alice company. She would say things from time to time. He would nod and grunt a confirmation that he heard her. That was all she needed from him.
"All those years in a ball," Alice spoke, eventually, "and he didn't care about her. I thought my read of him was right, I thought I couldn't be so wrong. Sis knew better. My aura sense can't be trusted." She sobbed. "I'm sorry, Daddy." She captured Burner's attention. "I'm sorry I told you you could trust me."
Burner reached out to touch her. She yelped and turned to fall into his embrace. "It's all my fault, B. Daddy let down his guard because I asked him to, because I thought I was ready, because I thought I could do anything. I was so wrong. I was wrong about everything. I was wrong about my senses, I was wrong about my house, I was wrong about believing that James loved his pokemon and just didn't let it show, I was wrong to think that I could handle that nasty old man, I was wrong to tell Sis that if she felt she needed to find something she should go... I'm always wrong. Why, B? I try so hard; why do I always get everything wrong?" She banged her fists against his body in vent of frustration.
Burner held her tightly. "Do you think you were wrong when you ate my Halloween candy?"
Alice sniffled. "That wasn't my decision. That was the advice of a wise old sage with a psychic pokemon that I got in the same kind of box, the same night."
"That candy came from..." Burner manhandled Alice to carry her down the slope of the embankment beneath the bridge. "We will visit the sage, then, and see if he can answer your question."