Self Destruction

The air reeks of sea salt. Across the grey-blue is a crimson spot in the distance, one where Silver has to squint to see. The Team Rocket members are noisy and demanding—What’s a kid doing here? How did he get inside?—but Silver cares as much for them as he does for that asshole, Gold. Which is not very much at all.

No one is paying attention to the crimson dot. Silver wonders if it’s a pokemon, scoffs that the others aren’t bothering with it, so it’s automatically his. He calls out his feraligatr to the lake, watches steadily as the redness gets closer, appears larger.

There are Team Rocket members there, as it turns out, with reins around it. Scarlet scales, torn through the water, roaring at the wire around its whiskers. It looks at Silver for a moment.

His chest seizes with terror. The other Team Rocket members shoot him a look, call, what the hell are you doing here, get away you stupid kid! But Silver is transfixed on the way the gyarados screeches, whining, almost begging for help. Team Rocket tighten their grips, complain about the gyarados, stupid pokemon, experiment gone wrong, yeah the only thing wrong about him is his personality—

Silver speeds away, turning his feraligatr around, back to the sure. He doesn’t look back at the surf as he pants, forehead wet all of a sudden. He wipes at his forehead with the back of his hand. He’d only been scared because it’d been so loud and annoying. Anyone else would panic.

He stalks off past the Team Rocket members, ignoring when they try to shout out to him again. He has better things to do with his time.

*

His mind can’t get rid of the stupid red dot. Except it’s not a red dot anymore, it’s the gyarados crying out, looking like it’d needed help. It’s a fucking gyarados, it doesn’t need help. And even if it did, where would it go? Gyarados live in the water. It’s not like it can live in the forest.

Silver returns, at night, when Team Rocket’s watch is asleep and their legs are all sprawled out over the ground. He uses his sneasel’s flash to avoid stepping on them, muttering insults as he passes. It’s raining, tonight, but Silver’s walked through near hail so far. The lakeside ebbs onto the sandy ground, splashing as hard as the rain from above.

The gyarados is closer, but not as close as before, when Silver had a hand on the ridge of feraligatr’s back, the other beating in time with his feraligatr’s heart. It’s broken free of its wires, but still thrashing about, like a seizure, like a thunderstorm. Through the thumping of the rain pouring onto the hard lake and hard ground, Silver can hear the way the gyarados roars, faint with the storm, crying, painful and wrecked and unbidden.

Silver feels like his lungs are being squeezed out. He gasps and can’t tear his gaze away from the crimson menace, destroying the dark blue of the lake to have it mold together again, a world unaffected by its anger. By its fury and hurt. The gyarados is here because of Team Rocket, can’t let itself go because of Team Rocket, trying, trying to break away, to become something else.

Before he knows it, he’s running back, chest aching with something more than the pain of running and letting his feet slap too hard against the ground. Silver wheezes and his face is wet. He makes his way back to the Pokemon Center with deep breaths that make his whole body feel sore.

*

That Lance idiot is full of himself, though he doesn’t smirk when he defeats Silver. He goes on about how Silver needs to “better himself with his pokemon” and “they’re not tools, they’re partners.” Silver snorts and pushes back an I know because it’s none of this asshole’s business on how he trains his pokemon, and they don’t complain, so it’s not his fault, is it?

But then he runs into that asshole Gold, who’s weak but not weak enough to not be a threat to Team Rocket. Silver helps him and doesn’t think too much about it. Gold is an asset. Silver thinks of red, the last time he saw red and a grey retreating back. He grits his teeth and in the end it’s all worth it.

*

Golbat evolves into crobat and Silver rides on the high of that, feeding crobat extra food and laughing a little when she nudges at his face, teasing for more. He thinks he will train at the Dragon’s Den, and then maybe take on the Indigo Plateau after that. His chest is in loose knots, but in a way where enough sweating and bruising himself up will allow for him to forget about it after a while.

Gold appears and challenges him and kills his adrenaline. Not because Gold had won, not because crobat has lost her first battle like this—no, because Gold mentions the gyarados at the Lake of Rage offhand, and then says to Silver, “You know the one, the crazy red one?”

Silver clutches his hand around his haunter’s pokeball and tries not to cringe. “Yeah,” he says.

“It was a hard catch,” says Gold, and Silver’s insides shatter inexplicably. “But I got it in the end, so it was pretty cool.” He grins.

Silver feels his head nod. He doesn’t know if he is, but Gold doesn’t look at him funny, so it’s probably a success. One of few.

“Good for you,” he bites out, and manages to not make it sound like an insult.

*

Afterward, he battles zubat after zubat, geodude after geodude. They aren’t much of a problem for his magneton at first, but after what feels like days and is probably hours, magneton whines and collapses after a one hit K.O. battle against a sandshrew.

Silver recalls it and seethes and replays, But I got it in the end, Gold’s stupid annoying words.

A couple of days later, he hears on the tv that the red gyarados has been returned to the Lake of Rage, and the Gold on tv says, “I tried training with it, but I think it likes its home elsewhere.” Silver fights the urge to turn off the tv.

“Maybe there’s another trainer who can bond with it better,” says tv-Gold.

Silver practically punches the off button on the pokemon center remote.

He trains with Clair, throwing himself into battle after battle. Trying not to think of the way Gold had been able to catch the stupid thing, not trembling with fear at all, but the stupid sort of confidence that got him to defeat Team Rocket mostly on his own—the stupid—stupid—he probably used his fucking typhlosion even though it would be weak against the water type because that’s the kind of trainer Gold is, probably was able to catch a gyarados with a fire-type while Silver couldn’t even get the fucking balls to call any of his pokemon out, had to run, had to stare at the gyarados from a fucking distance, buffered by the sound of the rain.

“Silver?”

Clair’s voice has a touch of concern. That never happens. Silver snaps his head up.

“What,” he spits, temple throbbing with Gold, Team Rocket, red red red, the lone gyaaa! through the patter of the rain.

Clair narrows her eyes. “Lose that attitude,” she says. She puts her hands on her hips. “And take a break tomorrow.”

“But—”

“Do it,” says Clair, and there’s no room for argument.

*

So Silver does. He plans on brooding the whole time, but then he’s out walking, hands in his pockets and eyes transfixed on the ground. The next thing he knows his feet are under familiar rubble, and the smell of sea salt intrudes in the air.

Silver lifts his head up. The lake is calm, today; Team Rocket’s trappings had long been removed. Silver sighs and sits on the ground, running his fingers along the small capsules along his belt. He finds his feraligatr, warm and restless, and calls him out.

Feraligatr barks at him before hopping into the water, splashing and basking. Silver smiles. The sun is half-hidden behind silver white clouds, and for a moment Silver wishes he had more water types to soak in the lake.

A small wave ebbs to shore. Silver doesn’t think much of it, until a larger one appears, and then the whole surface is rising like they’re in the middle of the fucking ocean and the water towers like it’s going to kill him.

Silver stands up. Feraligatr’s already pushed himself out, rushing to his side, dripping wet.

Gyarados, gleaming scarlet in the faint sunlight, stares down at him.

It almost looks like a scowl, but Silver has seen enough gyarados in his life to know that it’s just the gyarados’s face. Silver stares up at it, trying to find the same fear as before—but he’s been through hell, seen a lot, fuck, the sight of a black suit turning away from him is more terrifying than this. Silver’s insides, close to his lungs but not quite, feel like a calm waiting for a storm to happen.

“What do you want?” he says to the gyarados.

The gyarados bends its neck down, splashing Silver’s feet a little. It recoils several feet under the water so that its face is even closer. It’s wearing an imploring expression that Silver scoffs at.

“Go on then,” says Silver. He feels stupid suddenly, talking to this pokemon, even though he talks to his own all the time. “If you want to eat me, go ahead.”

Gyarados lets out a low-pitched whine. It nods its head a little, the salty water from its whiskers flicking down, hitting Silver in the face.

Silver glares up at it. “Thanks,” he mutters, wiping his face.

Gyarados makes one last indistinguishable noise, before it’s slinking down beneath the surface, disappearing under the blue. The darkness makes low ripples as it heads back to the middle of the waters, away from the edge, away from Silver.

Silver frowns as it swims off. “Come on,” he says to feraligatr, who glances back before they walk back to the pokemon center. Silver doesn’t.

*

He comes back the next day. He doesn’t let his mind wonder why, and he figures Clair won’t be too pissed that he’s missing another day of training—since battling Gold, she’s been throwing him side eyes that he’d been pretending not to notice. She’d probably be glad for this.

It takes longer for the gyarados today. Silver doesn’t let himself wander towards it, but he knows the gyarados is there, like his mind is the lake and they’re both waiting for it to break through the surface. He takes his feraligatr out and tosses it food every so often. He does not think about what type of food the gyarados might like.

When it rises through the water, feraligatr stays in this time. He crows to the gyarados, and Silver makes a face.

Gyarados doesn’t respond, just looks at Silver like it’s expecting something. Silver huffs.

“Don’t be rude,” he says to the gyarados.

It bends down to look at Silver. Its eyes drop down to the small bag of pokemon food at Silver’s side.

Gyarados practically dives to snatch it up, and Silver yelps. “Hey, hey!” he says, as gyarados throws its head back and downs everything inside. It eats the bag, too, which isn’t a big deal because they don’t cost that much money, but Silver is pissed, anyway.

“That wasn’t yours,” he shouts at the gyarados. “You didn’t even fucking ask!”

Gyarados watches him like it thinks he’s pathetic.

Silver makes a noise of frustration. “Feraligatr, tackle!” he shouts to the sea.

Feraligatr pounces, body heavy enough to knock the gyarados down. Gyarados roars as it hits the water with an uncomfortable smack, sinking down a little. It manages to lift itself up. Its scales look redder than before.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Silver says to the gyarados, who looks mixed between fury and apology. Silver doesn’t know, he’s not a fucking mind reader. “I’m leaving,” he tells the gyarados, and stomps off, not slowing as his feraligatr rushes to catch up with him.

He knows he shouldn’t be so fucking hung up on a gyarados getting his food—it’s not like it has access to human made pokemon food itself, and Silver can always get his own. But he grinds his teeth so hard that it hurts and he tries not to think of the way he’s wearing all black, the way gyarados might be watching him leave, the way he hadn’t even waited for gyarados to go before disappearing himself.

*

He’s there the next day, anyway. Gyarados is already above the water, splashing and jumping about. Silver stands on the shore for all of two minutes before gyarados is rushing up to him at the shore, something caught between its teeth.

Guilt pangs in Silver’s stomach as he thinks of gyarados yesterday. It was probably just hungry. “Sorry about—” he starts.

Gyarados drops the magikarp at his feet.

Silver jumps back. “What the hell!” he shouts. The magikarp is splashing uselessly, fins flopping on the dry ground. Its side is punctured a little, and it looks at Silver with big eyes.

He turns to gyarados, who screeches something.

“Jesus,” says Silver. He kicks the magikarp back into the lake, who disappears immediately, swimming back a little lopsided. “I don’t want members of your family or whatever,” he mutters.

Gyarados peers down at him, blinking.

“I shouldn’t have told feraligatr to attack you yesterday,” Silver mutters, to the ground. He’s not even sure if the stupid thing can understand him, but this feels right, so whatever. “You wanted food. You’re bigger than me. Of course you did that.”

Gyarados dives down to the side. It grabs another magikarp in its fangs.

“No—christ, just put that thing down!” Silver waves him down, and gyarados drops the magikarp almost immediately.

“Anyway,” says Silver, opening up his backpack. “I have more food for you, today.”

He lays the bag on the ground, waiting for gyarados to snatch it up again. But gyarados just looks between it and Silver, like it’s not sure what it’s supposed to do.

“Don’t be an idiot,” says Silver. “Do what you did yesterday. This is—” He inhales sharply. “I’m letting you.”

Gyarados sends him one last questioning look. Then it rears for the food, getting a little bit of sand onto its fangs, gobbling it all up with one swallow.

Silver smiles a little as gyarados crows, out of satisfaction. In the moment, it doesn’t matter that Silver is who he is, that gyarados is what it is, red and wrong and alone, with all the other gyarados and magikarp. Team Rocket is not here now, for either of them; gyarados is still learning, and roars with something that doesn’t quite sound like anger when Silver sends his feraligatr out, because it’d been rocking in its pokeball itching to play in the water. Silver watches as his too competitive feraligatr tries to challenge gyarados to a race. Silver does not think about the future, or the past.

*

So gyarados slots into his life as a regular pattern, between practices at the training den, and breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner. Gold visits every once in a while but Silver doesn’t tell him about the Lake of Rage, though he figures that if Gold ever goes back, he probably knows. He doesn’t bring it up around Silver, though, so Silver is under no obligation to tell him.

Gold tells him about the Indigo Plateau and then Kanto and Red. Silver pretends not to be interested, but it’s not like he doesn’t know what Team Rocket had done before, the legacy that drove them to Johto. He knows. Red, Gold tells him, is strong and nearly knocked Gold down before his typhlosion hit back with barely any health left. Gold is the strongest trainer Silver knows. He’s probably the strongest trainer Red knows, too.

Silver doesn’t know much about this Red guy, except he does and doesn’t want to. He lets his thoughts direct to gyarados instead, something calmer, something that looks horrifying from a distance but nudges up under Silver’s palm up close.

He and the gyarados battle, sometimes, but magneton knocks it out if sneasal or alakazam don’t. Gyarados is sore the first few times Silver wins, but eventually Silver directs it to train against the wild gyarados that live in the lake with it, to become stronger. Gyarados hadn’t struck him as a battler, really, in the beginning of it all. But maybe after wins it’s learning to enjoy it.

(Maybe it likes the way Silver tells it what to do, likes the sound of Silver’s voice. Silver doesn’t let his thoughts linger.)

A handful of times Silver comes to the lake to see some stupid youngster trying to battle it, try to capture it even. Silver stands with his arms crossed and watches gyarados battle, even though it whines at him for help. It manages to defeat the trainers in the end, though, always, and afterward when it bent its head down to give Silver a reproachful look, Silver would stroke its sharp crimson scales and say, “See? You didn’t need my help.”

He is not happy about gyarados, in the same way he is not always happy about his own existence. Every once in a while gyarados will go on tantrums and dive in and out of the water, like it’s trying to tear out of its scales, a dysphoria of being what it is and what it doesn’t want to be. Silver thinks about Team Rocket and tries to understand. He is helpless on the sand on these days, as gyarados cries out, like trying to ignore the pain is too much. It thrashes and tries to shake why it’s here, wants to shed and shed and shed until nothing is left. Silver has seen it shed before: it drops a red scale every time.

And every time, in its place, is another one.

*

Silver comes back to the Lake of Rage one day to see another figure trying to battle the monster. Silver holds back and watches, waiting for another one of gyarados’s ultimate victories.

But it is struggling. The trainer’s pikachu has thundershocks Silver has never seen before, and even though Silver can’t hear the sound of the trainer’s shout, it obeys with such agility that sends shivers down Silver’s spine.

Silver marches over as gyarados looks like it has only a little bit of health left. Gyarados has never lost a battle before, Silver’s chest twists with panic, and he—

The trainer turns around. His eyes are scarlet, faint under the shadow of his cap. Silver freezes in his tracks.

“Oh,” the trainer says. His voice is hoarse and deep. “Hello.”

Rage flares in Silver’s head—images of a back turning, I can’t do this anymore, you’re on your own, I’m ruined—the feel of his own tears falling down his face, not knowing what to do, abandoned, and—

His fists are on the trainer’s collar and so close to his throat and he’s screaming and his head hurts and he doesn’t know what he’s screaming. “You drove him away,” says that voice, so loud and so far away, “you made him leave me, you complete, fucking, asshole—”

He’s shaking and Red is shaking and he’s shaking Red, his fingers are trembling and cold and somewhere, somewhere distant and close at the same time, is the sound of a gyarados whining from pain, from being battered so relentlessly. Silver’s insides are coiling and uncoiling and there is water in his eyes, and all he can see is blurry and red.

A hand wraps around his wrist. Silver shudders out a breath, because the hand is so cold and calloused and is pulling him off, gently. Silver complies, not knowing what he’s doing. He digs the heel of his hand into his eyes.

“Sorry,” says that low, quiet voice. “I’m so sorry.”

Silver laughs stupidly and wants to dive in the water, forget about all of it, forget that he can’t think of him as anything other than Giovanni, Giovanni, who the fuck is Giovanni, where’s Dad, Dad, please don’t go, please—

His face is shoved into fabric, surprisingly cool and soaking up the wet on his cheeks that is not from the rain, or the lake, or gyarados. Silver wants to pull away but feels too weak. That cold hand is on the back of his neck, an attempt at comfort. Silver bites at his bottom lip until he bleeds.

He doesn’t know how long he stands like that. After a while, he finally manages the energy to pull himself off. The red eyes are watching him carefully.

“I never got to introduce myself,” he says.

Silver spits, “I know who you are.”

Red nods, gaze training on every inch of Silver’s face. “I know,” he says, after a moment. “And you’re Silver.”

Silver rolls his eyes and tries to forget that he’d just been crying on this douchebag mere minutes ago.

Red cocks his head to the side, where gyarados is looking between them, despite the minor wounds on his side. “Is this gyarados yours?” he asks.

Silver looks up at gyarados. His hands feel for the six pokeballs on his waistband.

“No,” he says.

Red nods.

“Sorry for hurting your friend,” he says.

“It’s not—” says Silver, but gyarados interrupts with a low kind of screech, so Silver figures he shouldn’t finish that sentence. Instead, he reaches blindly inside his bag on his back, and pulls out a few hyper potions. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, not meeting Red’s eyes.

Gyarados bends its head down, and Silver climbs up on its back. He tends to its wounds, running his fingers down its scales when it lets out low growls of thanks. Gyarados drops him back on land when he’s done, gracefully.

Red is watching him. Silver ignores him and puts his potions back in his bag.

“Where are you staying?” Red asks, after a moment.

Silver shrugs and puts his bag back on. He takes out a handful of pokemon food and throws them up in the air. Gyarados catches them with ease, splashing its tail as he swallows.

“Blackthorn,” Silver answers.

Red says, “I think you should try to catch the gyarados.”

Silver turns around to him. Red is a bit taller, maybe around Gold’s height, and he is older than Silver. His weary eyes make him look even older, like coming down from where the fuck ever (Mt. Silver, he remembers Gold saying) had taken him too much thinking and not enough planning. He doesn’t know what Red is doing here at the Lake of Rage in the first place.

He says, “Isn’t that what you were trying to do?”

He knows the answer before Red says it. “Not really,” Red says. “I feel like you’re meant to.”

Silver scoffs. He hitches his bag up straighter and starts towards the cove of the woods.

“Maybe one day,” he says.

It takes a second before Red is jogging up with him, as cold as a breeze even though there’s no wind. “I’d like to see that,” he says, smiling.

Silver shrugs and doesn’t return the favor. They walk back, and Red does not offer him condolences, or any pieces of advice, but he is there.

Silver returns the next day and gyarados roars out to greet him. His chest aches, a little still, but subsides with the day: there are no reminders because it’s hard to forget, but gyarados helps him remember, that it’s okay to remember. Silver lets himself think of Giovanni, and not think of him.

At nightfall he says goodbye to gyarados, and thinks of the great ball Red had given him, empty and waiting in his bag. Gyarados has already slunk into the water when he glances back. But Silver knows that it is waiting, too. For the next day, and for him.

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