Chapter Text
Red sent word of his acceptance through Ryme not three days later.
Battling at its highest levels was both his salvation and his greatest regret. Yet when he had been forced to weigh on the decision seriously, turning it over and over in his head as if that would make his choice any easier, he came to realise that the line had been crossed a long time ago.
The moment he had decided to take on the Pokémon League, he had made that decision.
Battling made him come alive in a way that nothing else had.
Now that he’d had his first taste of battling seriously with just Ice-types, the possibilities had branched before him. The type’s defensive weaknesses necessitated creative license in order to patch holes that he had previously worked around by switching, and the new sort of challenge lit up parts of his brain that had grown dusty in the last several months.
Red settled into his role like a Snover to a snowstorm.
His battle prowess and extensive training amidst Glaseado’s icy conditions combined made him a force to be reckoned with. Though he was only battling once a week in the off-season, he had hope that the academy’s treasure hunt over the warmer months would bring a new influx of challengers to his Gym.
Every battle left him with a pleasant afterglow that lingered all the way through the trek back to his campsite, which now resembled a one-person settlement more than a true campsite. The robust tent had been replaced by a log cabin, surrounded on three sides by ice and snow formations that helped it to better blend into the landscape.
“Good battle?” He asked Swablu.
The words flowed easier after a vigorous battle had warmed him up. Ever since they had taken on the mantle of the Gym together, him and his team had grown exponentially in leaps and bounds, trainer battles providing a unique challenge that the wilderness simply couldn’t supply. Cubchoo had evolved already, and he expected that Swablu was well on her way to the same milestone.
Swablu chirrupped a happy note in response.
“I’m glad.” Red let a genuine smile show.
They had won it, of course. Beartic had used a carefully controlled, localised Earthquake in order to knock out his opponents Pawmot without causing an avalanche, before Swablu had then gleefully taken out both a Crabominable and a Hariyama with Disarming Voice, weaving around the Fighting-type moves that both had tried to use to take her down.
After terastallization into an Ice-type, one or two hits would easily have knocked her down, but she elegantly evaded each and every one of them like a trained dancer. For that, she would be getting first pick of the Sitrus berries available this evening. Plus a Yache berry for good measure.
Though terastallization helped to align them with the snowy weather, Swablu and Pikachu remained vulnerable to the ice and cold when not in battle. Yache berries always helped. Terastallization couldn’t be sustained forever, after all, and he had only been given the Tera Orb for use in Gym battles besides.
Rooting around in one of his cupboards, Red found the aforementioned berries and packed them into his bag. He left the Yache berries on the coffee table inside the cabin, letting Swablu and Pikachu have their fill, before wrapping back up and heading outside with the rest of the Sitrus berries – and some Lum berries for good measure.
Though he had found that the Pokémon he had caught locally could hunt or supplement their diets with the land around them, they were all rather fond of berries. After they had their fill, they would wander off into the vast wilderness surrounding the home that they had made at the cabin, and would return by either dusk or dawn the next day.
Red’s team was a team in the truest sense – he was neither their warden nor their overlord. Just as he had chosen Glaseado Mountain as his new home, the Pokémon there had chosen him as a trainer. He often ached for his old team, but his Ice-types helped to fill a bit of the gaping emptiness that his old team had used to occupy.
“I wonder…”
Glaseado Mountain truly had become a home to him. Despite himself, he now held a tentatively firm position here, having officially become one of Paldea’s 8 Gym Leaders. He had more than one tie to the nearby town of Montenevera, and replacing the tent with an actual cabin following his appointment to Gym Leader had seemed to be the final nail in the coffin.
“How did it come to… this?” He asked himself, sat on the porch of his home, looking out over the gently, swirling flakes as they settled into yet another coat of snow on the already frozen ground.
The question tumbled out of his mouth, a lifetime worth of suppression giving way, a dam broken and language unleashed – albeit haltingly – now that the initial threshold had been crossed. Nobody back in Kanto would have believed it, and yet here he was.
Perhaps his mother would have, as she was one of the few who had witnessed Red speaking as a young child. His mother, who he had scarcely contacted in months. A letter every few months, assuring her that he was alive, but nothing more than that. He had not provided a return address.
Maybe it was time to start doing that, now that he had a more solid reason to stay on Glaseado Mountain for the foreseeable future.
Who else would have seen it coming? Certainly not Professor Oak, though Blue… Would Blue have anticipated that he would finally start to speak again? Before they had grown apart, Red knew that he had spoken in Blue’s presence, but that had been a long time ago. A very, very long time ago.
His own memories of that time were blurry, hazy at best, and blank spots at worst.
He wondered what Blue was doing, a region away. Red’s own departure would have left the Champion spot to Blue, who had rightfully battled all the way up to the top of the Kanto Pokémon League. He had snatched the position away in his ignorance, blind to how lonely it was going to be at the top, with his lacking social skills. He didn’t doubt that Blue was making better use of the position, what with the charisma and extroversion he held in spades.
Of the two of them, Blue had always been the trainer who was more worthy of the title.
Today, there was no escaping the enthusiastic locals who were watching his match.
His challenger thanked him for the match, which Red returned with a polite nod, before she headed up the slope to the Pokémon Centre nearby. Following the reinstatement of Glaseado Gym to the Paldean Gym circuit, the Pokémon Centre had extended its working hours to 24/7 like the rest, a natural accommodation to the increased footfall up the mountain.
Red was tempted to make his escape then and there, but there was no point. Ryme was approaching from where she had been spectating the match, and the crowd was sparse enough that he couldn’t exactly claim to have missed her.
“This crowd’s riled up enough to wake the dead!” Ryme commented, as she approached.
Red’s scarf was loosened from the battle, so his full face was visible when he offered a small smile in return.
“You’ve really grown, Grusha. To think that you’re the most recent Gym Leader appointment in Paldea… I daresay that you’re already our strongest. Out with the old, in with the new, huh?”
“Hm?”
“Heh! No matter, I’ve got plenty of fight left in me yet.” She waved a small card in his general direction. “Anyway, I got something to discuss. You got a moment?”
Red lead their way into the Gym building. It was almost identical to Ryme’s own base, but someone had taken it upon themselves to decorate the lobby with garlands of paper snowflakes. He was fairly certain that it was against regulation, but they were charming enough that he didn’t bother to search for the rule-breaker – or take them down.
Ryme commented on them as they moved further into the building, before she got to the heart of why she was here. “La Primera has a directive for me to pass on to you.” The same small card appeared in her hands once more. “She figured the quickest way for it to get to you was if I visited in person.”
Rewrapping his scarf, Red hoped that it hid the slight blush that coloured his cheeks. “She’s… not wrong.”
Outside of his Gym battles, he spent most of his time off-grid.
Ryme laughed. “Least you’re self-aware.”
“What is it?” He asked.
At this, Ryme held out the card for him to take. “She says you gotta go easier on the challengers. You beat her, but your role here is a Gym Leader, not a Champion – even if defeatin’ her means that you are actually Champion-ranked.” She gave him a sweeping once-over. “You’re the real deal, but you gotta tone it down.”
“...Tone it down?” Red blanched. The card only confirmed Ryme’s – Geeta’s – instructions. There were a few suggestions listed, but some of them seemed a little too far. He wasn’t going to catch a whole new team, and keep them intentionally weak, purely for the sake of Gym Challenges.
Intentionally stifling a Pokémon’s potential would go against all of his journey’s goals, and though that journey and its summit had been reached months ago, his principles hadn’t changed.
“It’s up to you how you wanna do it.” Ryme said. “As long as you’re letting some challengers through to the Pokémon League, La Primera will be happy. Can’t fathom what’s going on in her head, but I reckon that much is true.”
“I see.” Red murmured, scanning the list of Geeta’s suggestions once more. Two lines stuck out – and after a bit of thought, he believed he had a solution.
He thumbed his pokéballs, fingers resting on Frosmoth’s and Weavile’s. Their dual typings meant that they were extremely weak to certain types, and though he often worked around that through terastallization, if he limited his battling team to just them instead of the full team…
Frosmoth and Weavile were no pushovers, but a well-informed and resourceful trainer with a full team might have a chance at beating just those two.
“Seems you got an idea?”
“Yeah.” Red confirmed, already mapping out his next Gym battle in his head. “Thanks.”
“A boy of few words.” She huffed, but without any bite. “I wanted to see you in battle anyway.”
He smiled again, this time at the memory of the battle, into his scarf. “How was it?”
His challenger’s team had comprised a Tinkaton, Bronzong and an Armarouge. Out of courtesy, he had limited his own team to just Beartic, Cetitan and Altaria, but his terastallized Altaria had managed to take down all three of them after Beartic had sufficiently weakened the Armarouge. Even so, the terastallization had faded not seconds after the match’s end – this challenger had been stronger than most.
“The locals love you.” She said straight-out, with nary a mention of the battle.
He blinked.
“No point mincin’ words.” Red’s flabbergasted silence set her off again, laughter echoing around the small room. “You’re a bit of a cryptid, and you’re insanely difficult to beat. Montenevera was already fond of you, but now you’re drawing even more trainers and tourists up the mountain? They love you.”
“I… What?”
“I’m learnin’ 'bout you. You hate crowds, hate the spotlight, but love battling.” Ryme reached over, and patted him on the shoulder. “And your battles just about sent my heart pounding out of my chest. But have you ever looked up from a battle and seen the spectators?”
“...”
“Hey.” She made an attempt to lower her voice, which brought it from an announcer’s decibel range to a more typical speaking range. “When I was in that crowd today, most of them were cheerin’ for you, spurrin’ you on. They loved watchin' you battle. You’re settling in just fine.”
“That’s…” He swallowed, slightly overwhelmed. He had seen the spectators, of course, but he hadn’t realised they were there for anything other than the high of watching an entertaining battle. It wasn’t like he stuck around for long enough afterwards to dissuade him of that notion.
Ryme looked at him. “Little guy, you may not have noticed, but you – as you are? Montenevera adores you. You might not live in the town, but you’re one of ours now. Don’t forget that.”
His throat closing off, all Red could do was nod.
Red was working over some online forms relating to the Gym test, his back to the entrance, when the doors opened behind him.
Although his Kanto-style Gym test – ‘battle these two trainers first’ – had been sufficient up until now, five months had passed since his inauguration as a Gym Leader. Almost everyone he knew had been encouraging him to get more creative with it.
Unfortunately, creativity required paperwork and permissions.
He had been thinking of a snowboarding challenge. Helena had introduced him to the sport, and it inspired the same sense of exhilaration that a hard battle usually did. But naturally, something that extreme necessitated risk assessments and funding requests.
The logistics had made his head spin, but Helena had kindly done the risk assessment for him, and his staff had helped with the rest of the paperwork once he had explained what he wanted to do.
He reckoned that if Geeta let Cortondo’s Gym challengers roll a giant olive around, she would allow him to instate a snowboarding challenge, but it was best to get all of his Psyducks in a row before he raised the matter with her.
“Grusha, this nice young man came by mine earlier, looking for you!” He heard Phoebe greet him.
Perfect timing.
He swivelled the laptop around to one of his ever-patient Gym receptionists, allowing her to read over the email he had been about to send Geeta. She nodded in approval, clicking ‘send’ before returning to the rest of her regularly scheduled work. He shut the laptop down, stowing it behind the counter, and turned around.
Phoebe was familiar, but the person standing beside her was almost painfully so. Before he could control his own reaction, he had taken a full step back, straight into the counter. “...!”
Pain shot up his body from where he had jarred his hip.
His throat seized up, in that agonising manner that he had thought he had managed to overcome, but the teenager beside Phoebe took him back a whole year – to standing before the boy who had been his friend, then his rival, and then a source of pain and longing both.
Pikachu bumped himself into Red’s legs, and he gripped the edges of his Mareep-wool coat tightly. He took three deep breaths, as Phoebe’s husband had taught him. He blinked, clearing his vision, and then steeled himself.
Slowly, one tentative hand reached up to his scarf and Red tugged it down, not by much, but enough for Blue to see his full face for the first time since he had left Kanto behind.
It was an admission and a concession wrapped in a single bundle.
Blue was, Red belatedly realised, wearing dark grey trousers in the exact same style as Red’s own, and a navy blue jumper. He hadn’t noticed until that very moment, but Blue’s jumper matched the exact shade of Red’s boots and the blue streaks of his scarf.
When his scarf lowered, Blue’s eyes went wide.
They were in the gym, so there was no way for the icy winds of the harsh outdoors to bite his skin or leave it painfully dry, yet there was a chill permeating his body down to its bones nonetheless.
But Blue’s voice, when he finally spoke, wasn’t the harsh, lashing tone that Red had expected. It was softer, raspier, and ever so vulnerable. "It is you." There was an added quality to it that Red couldn’t quite pin down - wonder? - and his next murmur was so quiet that Red almost missed it entirely. "And you’re wearing blue."