Harmonia | Pokémon Fanfiction

30 | Wake Me When It's Over

Music in media: Wake Me When It's Over by The Cranberries

17 January, Monday, 4:30 p.m. | Winter

Let the world burn. Engulf it in pleasure.

Such unearned warmth in winter was the most desirable thing Rae could conjure in her mind. Blistering bitterness roused in her soul, forcing a hiss out of her.

It was a miracle she survived that mighty long fall. She didn't think her hair would catch the ledge of the window and extend till she touched ground, though the searing sandstorm blasted her sideways toward the Pokémon World Tournament building.

Now, she was in a thatched house, weighed down by a thick blanket as a tall lady with long pink hair blocking her ears sashayed toward her with a porcelain cup of jasmine tea. Rae took it with shivering fingers that wound round the hook, then cramped up. She could not hold onto the cup. She could hardly hold onto anything without the paralysing resistance coursing through her being.

"Z-Zorozoro..." She winced as she spoke the Hisuian Zorua's nickname. Having fused with the Pokémon while knocked out by the lullaby, she was glad she could feel little to no pain during the process, though it was all coming to her now in bursts and waves. She could detect his presence within her, yipping and yapping to be set free.

"Don't stress yourself," said the lady as she set the cup onto a saucer and placed it on a mahogany coffee table. "Close your eyes."

Beaming, she slid her hand over Rae's eyes, a morbid gesture reminiscent of a pastor or the like closing a corpse's eyes, but the girl could not resist the tinge of lethargy clouding her senses. Rae obeyed and fell into a lonesome void.

She fell without knowing fear. She did not scream or flail. It was an endless fall through a tornado of yellow eyes blinking and flickering like faulty torchlights in the dark, freezing light crisscrossing untamedly all about her. Rae knew those eyes.

They were Zorozoro's.

They were pleading.

"My body! My body!" he shrieked as he manifested before her in smoke.

Perhaps it was because they were both straddling at the threshold of consciousness, Rae didn't think much about her sudden ability to understand him.

"Our bodies are stuck together," she reasoned.

"No! I don't want to be a scrawny waif! It's your fault that this happened! If you never met me, then I wouldn't have to suffer! It's because of you that I'm suffering like this!"

Rae cringed at his shrill words. Zorozoro was treating it too personally and effectively shifting the blame on her. It wasn't right or fair to say the least, but she was his trainer after all. Someone had to take responsibility and if Zorozoro didn't want any part to do with this, then the only party left was herself.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No!" Zorozoro cried and swatted her aside. Rae ducked and glared at him. "What? Don't look at me like you pity me! I pity you! What kind of creature has such a weird physique?"

"I understand. We had to crawl when we were born."

"No! You don't understand! You think I didn't crawl when I was born? What? Are humans so special?"

"That's..."

Rae bit her tongue. What else could she say? What else could her ideals afford her in the face of such bitter malice?

But that was it, wasn't it? How she'd keep labelling him and repeating to herself how the Hisuian Zorua was full of malice and set up a self-fulfilling prophecy like this. What was it that Zoroark had said?