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Ethan started getting weird dreams after his ninth birthday. He didn't know what to think of them. They were flashes of things his mind had conjured and his mother told him he had a vivid imagination.
Then he stopped waking up.
The first time it had happened, he had woken up in a hospital. The doctor was immediately paged and he sat there hacking his lungs out as he was confused as to what had happened.
The confusion didn't leave him, even when he was discharged his mother forced tea down his throat and he was kept a week from school, which sucked because they were going over the past Champions of the Indigo League.
But after a while, it seemed like it went away. The visions of places he had never seen before, with pokémon he had never known existed never left.
…
When it was six months past his ninth birthday, he started falling into days-long sleep. His head hurt constantly. No matter what he did he didn't know where he was, who he was even.
It hurts… everything just hurts. He hugged Wingull, his mother's pokémon, and just prayed to Ho-oh for it to go away.
…
Claire woke up in the unknown.
She sat up and felt how off her body felt, how intrinsically wrong she now was for some reason, and just finally thought: 'fuck, I finally got laced somehow'. Which was ironic because she avoided drugs like a plague.
Numb, she felt so numb. Her whole body was pins and needles. For some reason, she was in a room she had never seen before. Her vision swam like a poor animation sequence.
Yeah, this just had to be a weird and realistic dream.
As Claire did most of her problems, she just walked back into her bed and deduced that sleep would fix whatever the fuck was wrong.
Since she could barely understand what was happening, and her body was almost foreign to her, the feeling of going to sleep without difficulty was unfamiliar.
…
The next time she woke up, it was in a hospital. What was happening? She looked at her hands and they were too small, she touched her face and the skin didn't feel the same. Claire looked to the side of the curtain which was pulled up by a grunting… what the fuck?
A standing pink french bulldog, but it also didn't look exactly like a dog. What… what was happening? A dull ache pressed against the back of her eyes, her head was about to pound.
"Granbull." The dog grunted dismissively. It sighed and glared at her, pointing at the monitor as if Claire was the one who was the problem.
Claire went to say something, a murmur along the lines of, well shit, I'm hallucinating. However, as soon as she made a noise with her voice she knew that it was different. That foreignity of the sound caused her to freeze up. Something was wrong. Then she noticed the solid 23 shine above the beast.
This wasn't right. A chill seized her back, and the monster dog tilted its head.
"Bull?" Why didn't her voice sound the same? She brushed her hand against the sheet, gripping the fabric. Her arm was the wrong shade of white, now it was more olive. She lifted both hands in front of her.
Suddenly, as if realizing it was too much, she was overcome by the pain in her head. She gripped the sides of her skull, dully noting that her hair was far shorter than it was before, and the pain became too much to tell anything else.
…
Claire was warped into some kind of limbo. Dreaming about a life that was not hers in between flashes and triangulated ventures of pain. Then, it was the opposite; someone watched the panes and strife of her life. Back and forth. It wasn't like she could reason with what she witnessed. There was no time to process. She just got glimpses, of the thrumming of Ethan and this boy's experiences being drilled into her mind.
His favorite foods were the same as hers; dishes heavy with vegetables and the only sweets were fruit-based. His favorite things to do were the same as hers, hiking and reading. Like her own memories of walking in dense mudwater, he had cherished memories of running with pokémon in the woods. His mother's wingull chasing him silly. Every moment, all the times he remembered a story his mother told him and even the lessons he learned in his school; all the limited knowledge he had of the world around him.
And she was terrified. The human body wasn't meant to swing between being sedated and then writhing in agony. When she awakened, she was stuck in a state of intense pain and beings she didn't recognize.
…
Medicine. Food. Granbull. Mother. Pain. Breathe. Reach. Void. Trees. Wingull. Names. Woods.
The root of a tree outside of her, Ethan's, house. The feeling of Wingull's feathers. The difference in the stars.
Evanescent bright light and the murmurs of prayers.
…
It took weeks for Claire to realize what had happened.
"He's fine, Mrs. Rivers. We aren't sure what happened, not yet, but we can discuss this outside of the room. Ethan is aware now, just quiet. He needs some rest."
But Ethan, Claire, did not speak. She did not speak when Ethan's mother asked her what was wrong, nor when the doctor asked her how she felt. Her body was real and so were the memories in her head. When she looked outside her room when Ethan's mother was not guarding her, she looked outside to the bustling hospital in Cherrygrove to see humans and pokémons working together in sync. A pokémon that something told her was an audino was talking very passionately to a…
Chansey.
Claire was about to genuinely start tweaking.
She was somehow stuck in the body of some boy who wasn't even ten, with an intensely worried mother and without any idea what was happening.
Claire was still convinced she was having a very intense dream. The worst part of it all, was that she was too tired and had a constant headache that prevented her from even freaking out about everything besides crying her eyes out in misery at the pain in her skull.
Right when Claire, or better yet Ethan, was released from the hospital she spent a week sorting through her mind. She struggled to figure out which thoughts were her owns and which ones were Ethan's. She had to filter through all her childhood memories before she realized both her and Ethan's had almost crumbled together. It took countless hours to farse and distinguish herself from Ethan, who had somehow become… something akin to being a part of her?
His voice was there, his emotions were her own, and his memories were now hers. The feeling was hard to describe. How could she? She knew how he felt when he would wake up, what made him giggle, and what made him angry. How he didn't like how the other boys teased him, but he took it in stride because that was how it worked.
Ethan was a bright, if shy boy. Now Claire's mind had consumed him, or they joined together in some abomination.
…
"Ethan, baby, are you feeling any better?" The air was clear from where Claire was seated on the front porch of Ethan's house; she wasn't hungry from Ethan's mother giving her some vegetable curry a few hours before. The situation hadn't quite become real yet. Even though she could feel the wind on her stubby knees and her there were senret's cuddling in the yard.
Claire didn't have the energy to respond, still trying to feel real, in all honesty. She felt bad for worrying such a nice woman so much, but it was unavoidable. Ethan's mother had dark hair like her son, but she had light brown eyes, the color of honey. Everything about the woman made Claire feel at ease, and Ethan's mother had a calm appearance to match that feeling.
"I brought you some food," Ethan's mother, whose name was Rebecca, brushed her hand over Claire's forehead. "Are you okay?" Claire didn't feel stirred by the action, but something still told her that this was her mother. Some part of Ethan's memories or even the kindness the woman has shown her for weeks prompted this. It was difficult. When Claire looked at this woman she felt Ethan's love and adoration.
Claire looked down at the steak seared with stir-fried vegetables on the side. Suddenly, it made her sick to her stomach. From what she knew, and Ethan's memories however muddled they were, she knew that animals didn't exist in this world.
"Is this… a pokémon?" Claire's voice came out mumbled.
The woman grimaced at her question, looking unnerved. That was probably a stupid question. Claire felt uncomfortable with having such familiarity with a woman she didn't know, but she was also warring with the fact it felt like she had known and loved this woman her entire life.
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"Ethan, of course, it isn't a pokémon, it's faux meat." Ethan's mother set the plate down and squinted her eyes at Claire. Ethan's healthy fear of disappointment and her healthy paranoia rose quickly.
"I'm sorry," Claire said, and she looked back down at her hands.
The woman didn't say anything. Her hair fell forward, and she gathered Ethan quickly into a hug.
"We need to get you some Miltank Milk Serum, that'll cure you right up." The embrace was so warm, so full of love that Claire could let it distract her from the fact she felt like everything was wrong. Even if it was just for a moment.
"We are going to a specialist in a few days, we'll figure out what's wrong, just make it to then, baby."
The senrets tumbled in front of them and Clare watched them with tired eyes as she fell asleep in her mother's arms.
…
They couldn't find anything wrong with Ethan.
But Claire... Claire just slept. She tried to keep the thoughts away. The memories, she couldn't think about it without feeling the urge to puke.
She was placed back into Ethan's school, but she couldn't focus. Could barely speak. Despite the fact she was surrounded by pokémon and clamoring children asking her over and over again what had happened, and if she was better, she just…
Melted away. There was no listening, when she tried her headache reared back up and she sat there not comprehending anything. Ethan's mother would rub her back every night, reading her stories but she couldn't hear. Couldn't see.
…
Claire lost everything. All her future prospects, her goals. Her future. She could only deny the fact that this was real for so long.
'I'm stuck in a kid's body' was a bad joke most days, but now it was fucking ridiculous. She traced her face, staring at the stranger in the mirror, and wondered how, how did this happen. The last she knew she was about to go into her senior year of high school.
There would be no more waiting for albums to be released, no more traveling a world carefully mapped out before her. There would be no more seeing everyone she had ever loved. Maybe it said enough about her character that she immediately assumed the worst, but she just knew. Like some part of her was settled into the vast chasm that there was no going back. Claire didn't even know what could have brought her here, what has the power to move souls? A legendary pokemon, or maybe she was reincarnated and didn't remember her death but only her life.
But there was one conundrum, that what she had before was gone.
…
A week before Ethan's tenth birthday, Claire watched Rebecca make lunch for them both. The woman serenely checked over every little thing she had prepared. Sandwiches with faux meat and a fruit salad, because people in Johto didn't eat pokémon. pokémon, the concept was still not catching on for her yet.
"It's been so long since we went out on the boat, Ethan. Remember, you used to love to watch the marills dance… we have a…"
Claire tried to listen, she did, but everything just faded away. She woke up on the couch, clenching her pounding head and looking at the icebox to see a simple note. There was a sour taste in her mouth and her eyes ached.
'Me and Wingull left for a little boat ride! I didn't want to wake you up, and I left you a sandwich on the cabinet. I should be back in fifteen minutes! Love you - Your MOM :D'
Claire stared, the note was a light pink and crinkled at the edges. Probably from Rebecca worrying it with her fingers before deciding to take a break from her sick son. Claire felt unsettled as she took in how dim the room was, and looked out to see that the sun was almost setting in the night sky.
How long had she been asleep? How long had Ethan's mother been out?
It took four hours before the elderly couple next door, the Smiths, told her that her mother was dead. A crash collision freak accident with another boat.
Ethan's mother was gone a week before his tenth birthday.
…
Claire wasn't allowed to help arrange Rebecca's funeral. Ethan's birthday passed in a recession lit with lanterns and incense. Another one for Wingull, her mother's loyal pokémon.
The chasm in Claire grew deeper. Deeper and deeper until it felt like nothing was there at all. Both her and Ethan, the conflicting voices inside of what made her her, now, agreed that nothing mattered anymore.
She was taken from Ethan's house into local custody. They sold her mother's house and locked all their stuff in a storage unit that was based around the passing of children's loved ones over in Vermillion City. Created for the last war effort, they told her.
Everything she had known as Claire, and now as Ethan was gone. Even if it was convoluted and complex beyond her measure, she missed that woman like she now missed her own mother. Her whole family. A pathetic body of grief.
…
She was pulled out of the school. She was put in the orphanage. She was watched and talked to-.
But it didn't matter. None of the conversations mattered. What would be the use of describing them? Claire didn't remember them, and her whole being was agony and then the absence of it.
…
Honestly, Claire didn't understand the inherent intention of being ripped from her old body and placed into this one. Whatever deity had placed her in this dimension and time was surely misguided, whether or not on purpose was entirely up to debate. Maybe they wanted to watch a pathetic idiot stumble and fucking die to a zigzagoon or something. While she wasn't as desolate to have killed herself before she certainly didn't have the determination and courage to become the 'best trainer' ever in some aborted, self-serving fashion.
She didn't have the energy to even be normal.
Was it being placed into Ethan, a newly made orphan and depressed little boy? It was a cosmic joke.
She didn't even want to live, really. There was no grand adventure and wish to be the Champion waiting in her future. Wasn't there supposed to be? In all the fanfics she had read the trainers were strong, whether they had to be or not. All that she had got from this life so far was the resolve to do away with herself which she didn't have the courage to before.
Claire was frustrated with it all. She had loved pokémon when she was interested in it in her last life. That was before everything, of course, but she should've been ecstatic at being placed into a different body. Instead, she was still a null, void as she had been in her last body. Fitting how being in a new life hadn't changed her from being an empty shell of a human, to the irony of now being an orphan child. So that frustration at not being able to be happy grew into more sullenness when the realization of her situation hit her.
The adults were caring in the place she was thrown into as soon as her mother passed. It was funny, in hindsight, at their bewilderment of handling a severely depressed ten-year-old haunting their rooms. The teachers already took her out of school because she was too 'unreactive'. They propelled her to do various things: they couldn't neglect her, and she was too tired and numb to fight it. She was half tempted to put them out of their misery and kill herself already. It took months for her to finally gather the gall to go through with the decision to take her own life.
Eating food, taking in a culture she wanted no part in. Orphans were ecstatic about the movies the patrons bought for them. The latest action with the coolest pokémon. Foods she didn't know the name of. Oran berry pies. Regulated cheap soup was given to people living off the government because half of their economy was pokémon battles, so they spent more money on that. Kids making fun of her staying in bed, staying quiet. They were off put by her heavy and damning presence. Dreams and crying; abandoned children stuck together in a cesspool with heavy intervention by the staff. No one was allowed to be cruel, and they were treated tenderly.
Maybe it was a good thing that Ethan's mother died. Not because she wanted her, god no, but she didn't have to face what her son had become.
Thank God.
Fuck, she wasn't even that woman's son anymore. Instead, she was a bitter, suicidal teenager stuck in a ten-year-old boy being pushed to go on a pokémon journey through the middle of Johto.
"He doesn't get out enough, he doesn't connect to any of the kids, and he barely eats. A journey would be good for him!"
Claire was in denial about it.
Most people had parents to discourage them or welcome them back when they didn't get their first gym badge. Eleven was the youngest age allowed, of course, with heavy guardianship. In recent years, programs and check-up systems have been created for orphans like her so they would have a chance like any other kid. Even though it was rather pitiful and still unfair, according to the older kids. It was interesting to learn about, but very little could keep her mind occupied nowadays.
She wonders if Ethan's mom would've forced him to go when he was older. Now, she was there poisoning his body and that boy's mother was dead.
She had been living in that orphanage for a month before she had finally come up with a fruitful plan. Since the orphanage was pushing to get rid of her custody with a journey anyway, she could just jump off the bridge overlapping the heavy, raging river, while no one was looking. The calmness that had come with accepting the action was the closest thing to relief she had ever received in this life.
…
When Claire had escaped the clutches of Mary, the infinitely kind matron who was always worried for her enough to make her guilty for what she was about to do, she was exasperated at the totodile that stared at her solidly from where she had one leg over the railing.
You can't be serious, she thought.
The little guy's beady eyes were staring at her judgmentally.
First of all, it was so cute she was going to die. Second of all, fuck off. A small 3 glowed above his head (and wasn't that a surprise to see the first few times).
Claire had been able to do that ever since she gained her memories. No one else in this world could see pokémon levels, there weren't any legends about it either, so she very wisely didn't speak about it. It probably wasn't even real. pokémon having levels while being living, breathing things didn't make sense.
Looking over the pokémon, she fought the urge to throw herself back over the edge to coo over the baby pokémon. He was so tiny he must have just hatched! Ultimately, she started to feel like a fucking idiot and shameful of her excitement over seeing the little pokémon. The rush of initial excitement blew over pointlessly and she felt even more foolish. What was she, a child? She thought gloomily. Right, she was. She looked down at her tiny hands and resolved herself to keep doing what she had before.
Well, she looked at the water below and then at the pokémon staring into her soul. This is awkward.
It was probably embarrassing to see her there. She was so short that it was comical how she was almost upside down trying to throw herself over the railing. Why the fuck was she so short? Why couldn't she just get this over with?
The little crocodile-looking shit was watching her. Wasn't totodile a starter in the third-gen? Or fourth? She didn't know which one. It was the game with the fire weasels. Quilvas, or something. They weren't in the wild and she assumed it was because they were dangerous. Why the fuck was it just randomly here? The other kids talked about how only approved, rich or experienced, got pokémon that were starters in the games.
She was doomed to never have a charizard even if she became a trainer, it seemed. The thought was sardonic and ironic, being she planned to take her life, but it still made her snort.
Claire finally got to the point where she was balancing on the railway, digging into her bony, self-underfed ass. Looking down at the river gave her a sense of purpose, it was less violent than usual for some ironic reason. This was it. This is what she had been fantasizing about for years, to be at the pinnacle of her new death. Maybe in the next life, she would have the sentience of a rock or slug and escape the prison of thought.
When she threw herself forward, small teeth dug into her shirt and yanked her against the peeling poles of the rails. The baby pokémon was crawling and yipping, too weak to pull her back as she fell forward again, only being held by the grip the totodile had on her shirt. She squirmed and the adrenaline of falling for a second had her wheezing, her neckline choking her as it prevented her from falling.
She had expected her death to be so swift she wouldn't have to think about it.
"You have to be fucking kidding me." Was all she could grit out, desperately trying to tear her shirt or get the little beast to let her go. The pokémon growled louder, trying to pull her back but not having the strength to do it.
Was the totodile seriously trying to save her right now? What was her life even at this point? Finally, she was able to grip behind her and hit the pokémon awkwardly in the face. She couldn't see what the hell that little fucker was doing, but she still smashed her tiny fist into its snout. She aimed for the eyes but was surprised by how even though he was a weak, newly hatched baby, the fucker's skin was rougher than hers.
She hated how scared she was, was this pokémon trying to eat her?
"Fuck off! Let me go!"
Then, as suddenly as she had screamed those words, she was falling into the raging ravine.