Lindon did not wake up for the rest of the day. Cashe carried him all the way to the Pokemon Center, leaving his arms and legs burning by the time they finally arrived. The sun was setting and Cashe did not have time to help Emilia with setting up camp before his appointment, only taking a minute to dump Lindon into his sleeping bag before running off to the Pokemon Center.

In the end, Cashe was right on time, opening the door for his appointment just as it was supposed to get started. He slumped into the room, collapsing onto a chair. The room did not have a couch, the Pokemon Center was much smaller than the one he visited in Hau’oli City, but did have several comfortable chairs. Dr Atwood was waiting for him, as usual, sitting on the same chair that she had in Vermillion and Hau’oli.

She observed him with a pair of raised eyebrows as he collapsed in his chair.

“It looks like you are having quite an adventure so far, Cashe,” she said.

“Sorry,” Cashe said between breaths, “It took us longer than we thought to get through the wild area of the route, and it was difficult for Lindon. I ended up carrying him all the way here.”

“Is he well?”

Cashe waved away his therapist’s concern, and coughed as he recovered, “He’s tired. Not used to all of the hiking yet. Should be fine soon.”

“Very well. Once you have caught your breath, why don’t you tell me how you have been since I last saw you.”

Cashe took a few deep breaths, “I’ve been doing better.”

***

Cashe returned to camp to find Emilia stirring a pot over a small fire using a wooden spoon. She glanced at him as he approached and quickly looked away, her eyes losing focus as she slowly stirred the soup, gazing off into the distance, staring at nothing. Omanyte and Charmeleon were out of their pokeballs, watching the surrounding fields carefully.

As far as Cashe could tell, it was unnecessary. They were far from alone in the fields. With their proximity to the Pokemon Center and the location at the end of a route, many trainers chose to set up camp in the welcoming fields surrounding them. He could see many camps in the evening light glowing with their own campfires, trainers preparing for the night without any pokemon out and about, comfortable with their safety.

Cashe stepped into camp and leaned over the steaming pot, catching a whiff of a medley of vegetables. Dinner wasn’t much, just a hearty vegetable soup, but it would be enough, a smart choice after the exhausting day they had.

“How’s it coming?” Cashe said, slouching down beside the fire.

Emilia bit her thumb as she watched their dinner cook. Her eyes flicked over to Lindon. He was still fast asleep and wrapped up in his sleeping bag. Though he might be faking it to get out of helping out like he was this morning.

“Let him sleep,” Cashe said, “If he’s hungry he can have the leftovers.”

“It’s my fault,” Emilia said. She stirred the soup again and bit her thumb with extra force. Cashe frowned at her.

“What’s your fault?” Cashe said.

“Everything.” Emilia gave the soup a violent stir, splashing some of the broth into the fire and causing it to hiss, “Lindon’s exhausted, you had to carry him all the way back, you nearly missed your appointment, last night…” Emilia’s breathing turned rapid and shallow, her eyes widening in panic.

“Hey,” Cashe stood. He tried to take the spoon away from her but she had it in a tight grip. Instead he pushed her away from the fire and forced her to sit, “We already talked about this. Everything is okay.”

Emilia pushed back against Cashe trying to return to the dinner, her eyes darting back and forth, “I need to finish-”

Cashe pressed a hand firmly against her chest, forcing her to the ground. He yanked the spoon from her grip and replaced it with his hand. She squeezed at him with a furious strength, sending a painful jolt through his arm.

“Deep breaths,” Cashe said, keeping his voice low and leaning over Emilia, “Look at me, focus on my eyes. In and out. In and out.” Cashe locked his eyes onto hers and he took deep breaths, He could feel Emilia’s heart fluttering through her chest.

He caught her eyes and she locked onto him, mirroring his breathing, her chest rising and falling with his in a steady rhythm.

“That’s it, focus on me,” Cashe said, taking another deep breath, “Look at me. It's just us. We’re fine. Everything is okay.”

Cashe continued to speak to her in a low, comforting tone for several more minutes. Slowly, Emilia’s heartbeat returned to a steady pace and she relaxed, her panicked eyes calming and focusing on him.

“Feeling better?” Cashe said, leaning back and removing his hand from Emilia’s sternum. Her hand still squeezed tightly at his, but it was no longer painful.

Emilia nodded, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. She sat up and wiped them away, “I’m sorry.” She whispered.

“For what?” Cashe said, “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Emilia nodded but hung her head, not looking at him.

“Come on, Emilia,” Cashe said, taking her hand again and giving it a comforting squeeze, “We talked about this. Everyone is fine. No one got hurt. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is,” Emilia said, pulling her hand away from Cashe and crossing her arms over her chest, “You should be able to understand that by now.”

“It was just a Haunter looking for some dreams,” Cashe said, “It wasn’t anything dangerous.”

“It could have been!” Emilia said, slamming her hands against the ground with a soft thud. Omanyte looked over at the noise, shifting to move to Emilia’s side, “No!” Emilia nearly shouted, “Keep watch!”

“Hey, we’re safe here,” Cashe said, gesturing around the field to the many trainer camps closer to the edges of it than they were, “Nothing is going to sneak up on us.”

“Something could!” Emilia said, but she relaxed slightly, her eyes focusing on the lights of distant campfires as if seeing them for the first time, “We won’t always be surrounded by other trainers,” she said, her voice dropping to a low murmur, “Some of the places we are going will have dangerous pokemon. Territorial pokemon.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“That’s why it’s good that we make mistakes now,” Cashe said, “When we aren’t surrounded by territorial pokemon.”

“We can't afford mistakes.” Emilia glowered.

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Not me. Not anymore.”

“You don’t get to choose.”

“I can’t make mistakes! I need to be good enough!” Emilia shouted. Charmeleon and Omanyte turned to stare at Emilia and Lindon stirred in his sleep. Emilia’s eyes went wide at her outburst. She looked away from him. The fire crackled in the silence that followed.

Cashe let the silence stretch and glanced at the soup, shuffling away from Emilia to check on it. She would talk if she wanted.

“I can’t make mistakes,” Emilia said again, this time her voice almost a whisper.

“Nobody's perfect,” Cashe said, stirring the soup gently and not turning around.

“My sister is.”

“Which one?” Cashe said, “Because I met two and neither were perfect.”

Cashe heard Emilia grumble something and turned around. She had curled up into a ball and had her arms wrapped around her legs.

“Why do you need to be perfect?” Cashe said.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Emilia said, “You can’t understand.”

“I don’t. But I never will if you don’t tell me.” Cashe turned back to the soup and took it off the fire, scooping the contents into a pair of bowls. He walked to Emilia’s side and handed her one, “Careful,” Cashe warned, “It’s hot.”

Emilia murmured her thanks and took a careful sip of the soup, making a small face at the heat. She sighed, “Growing up in a famous family is complicated.”

Cashe took his own sip of the soup, holding back a wince of pain as he ignored his own advice and burned his tongue. He watched Emilia closely. She was tired. Her long, brown hair fell over her face hiding her emotions from him, making her appear lost and small. Her shoulders slumped and she brushed her hair over her shoulder, revealing a forlorn expression in her delicate features. With her confidence and her forward personality, it was easy to forget how new to this she was, but in this moment, she looked like nothing more than an anxious girl.

“It was nice as a kid,” Emilia said, lifting her bowl to her mouth and blowing on her soup, sending puffs of steam cascading through the air, “Everyone knew my name and everyone was nice to me. People would come up to me and give me little presents. A bit of candy, maybe a berry or two. Tips on raising pokemon.” Emilia sighed again, “Ellie started making waves when I was in junior high. Things changed.”

Emilia took a big bite of her soup and chewed on the vegetables for a long moment before she continued, “It was my teachers that changed first. They started talking about how great Elise was in school, how they always knew that she would do great things. How much of a pleasure she was to teach. They never said it aloud, but it felt like they were expecting me to do the same when they said those things.”

“That can’t be easy on a teenager.”

“It wasn’t,” Emilia confirmed, “And then Maggie started doing her thing. She’s only a year younger than Elise, so with those two making their names known, it was a lot of extra attention on our family. For a bit, reporters would camp outside my school to ask me the same things everyday. Have you talked to your sisters, any news about Elise, I heard Maggie has a new boyfriend, care to comment?” Emilia snorted, “Maggie always has a new boyfriend, as if I could tell any of them apart. My friends and classmates got pulled aside and offered money for rumors and gossip about me. Things got so hectic that Mom and Dad moved to Pallet Town and took over Great Grandpa’s labs to get away from it all.”

“Where were you before that?”

“We were still in Viridian City.” Emilia took another sip of soup, “I stayed behind to stay in school with my friends and went to Pallet Town for summers.”

“When did Selena start making a name for herself?”

“Right away,” Emilia muttered, “She delayed her journey after graduation to visit us in Pallet Town over the summer. She started right as I went off to trainer school. She beat a Second Circuit Trainer on my first day of school and nobody could stop talking about it. After that, my teacher’s expectations weren’t just feelings anymore. They were explicit. “If you want to be like your sisters, do this, do that, listen to me.” Blah, blah, blah. Selena managed to become a champion a year and a half later and she was the Viridian City Gym Leader six months after that.”

“It didn’t help, I take it?” Cashe said.

“It brought everything into the forefront. It made things bad,” Emilia hung her head, “People stopped treating me like I was a student who would be great one day and started treating me like someone who was already great. “Can you do this for me, any tips on how to raise a Vulpix, can you introduce me to your sister?”” Emilia made a terrible face and took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax. “Ellie actually came home to help, but there was only so much she could do. She was part of the problem, after all.”

“Did it make things worse for you?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. For a bit. It was Annie who ended up getting me through it the most. Kind of funny that she had no idea what was going on, just that I was not happy. She’s such a sweetheart,” Emilia’s eyes glistened as she recalled a memory, taking a second to smile at her soup, “After-” Emilia’s smile turned to a scowl for a moment, “After some things happened, she promised to make me happy forever.” Her smile returned, “Don’t know how she was planning on doing it, but it was so cute. She made a big declaration and everything. It was like watching an Happiny declare she was going to rule the world. It was adorable.”

“Did she manage it?” Cashe smiled.

Emilia returned his smile, her eyes sparkling for a moment, “Things haven’t been so bad.”

Cashe nodded and finished his soup, placing his bowl to the side and laying down to peer up at the stars. Even with the light from the campfire and the campfires around them, the darkening sky was brilliant, stars winking against a wash of deep blue and swirls of light as the galaxy showed itself in the night. He spread his arms out, accidentally poking Emilia in the thigh.

She copied him, stitching out on the ground and poking him as well, though much more purposefully.

“You know, there are people you can talk to about growing up in a famous family,” Cashe said, his voice low as they lay together, watching the stars. He glanced at her where she lay, gazing at her for a long moment, “Professional people.”

Emilia didn’t meet his gaze, a slight breeze blowing her hair to obscure her face, “I know.”

Cashe poke her again, this time in the side, “I’m not just saying that. All that pressure can really break people. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

Emilia snorted, “I’m not going to break, Cashe.”

“Back on Earth, it happened all the time to people who became famous at a young age,” Cashe said, “Our society was different, we had a lot of different hang ups around people and what they did, but enough was the same…” Cashe trailed off, letting the rest of the sentence go unspoken.

“I’m not going to break, Cashe,” Emilia said, this time with a soft voice, “I haven’t yet.”

Cashe turned away from her, peering up and into the stars, “You know, Omanyte is probably really tired,” Cashe said, “She was running around that damn field for hours with the rest of us. It might be nice to get her over to the Pokemon Center so she can rest up.”

A little pout formed on Emilia’s face.

“The Nurse Joy was really friendly,” Cashe continued, “She didn’t mind at all that I came in a sweating, sticking mess and was almost late for my appointment.”

“I know what you’re doing, Cashe,” Emilia muttered, turning onto her side to look at him, “I’m fine. Really.”

Cashe continued to watch the skies, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am just concerned that Omanyte isn’t getting the care she needs. You should bring her to the Pokemon Center.”

Emilia frowned at him and glanced over at Omanyte. She did look worn out.

“You’re right,” Emilia sighed, “She could use some proper rest.” Emilia stood, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Could you ask about my next appointment for me?” Cashe said before Emilia walked away, “I can’t remember when it is.”

Emilia narrowed her eyes at him, “Cashe-”

“Do it for me? Please?” Cashe said, sitting up and staring into her dark eyes.

Emilia bit her lips and looked away. She turned, calling Omanyte back to her pokeball and left the camp without a word.

*****