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femgenficathonTitle: Destiny Whispers Your Name
Author: fashi0n_mistake
Fandom: Pokémon (games)
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Prompt: #15: Some knowledge and some song and some beauty must be kept for those days before the world again plunges into darkness. --Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930-1999), American author of fantasy novels, short stories and anthologies, poet, composer, editor and co-founder of the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Summary: Legends live forever but nothing else remains.
Author’s Note: I use the name Kotone for the female main character of Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver and Blue for the name of the female main character of the first generation games. This fic is from the POV of Sabrina, the psychic Saffron gym leader. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
akumugan for the beta!
*
“Houndoom, use Crunch now!”
Sabrina knows this child’s story.
She remembers standing here before, when a different girl stood before her with Destiny lapping at her heels, and the familiarity of the scene is enough to make Sabrina’s breath catch. Her visions have not adequately prepared her for this. Then again, nothing ever truly could.
The girl before her is too familiar, too much like that other one. A mere glance told her how this would end.
Because there’s always only one way this can end.
Twice now she has had visions of legends arriving to battle her, making her one more stop on their journeys upward, and twice now have her visions failed to properly convey the sheer power she would face. She stands before these girls and is utterly defeated by their power, just like everyone else in the world.
It as though she stands before a god.
Sabrina watches as her Alakazam falls to the girl’s Houndoom; she listens to her opponent’s cheer and smiles a little as the girl hugs her Houndoom, the light of victory, the joy of it, clear on the girl’s face; and yet her heart still twists a little because she can see the paths Destiny is weaving around this girl.
She can see glimpses of the routes the girl has yet to travel on and the battles she still has yet to fight and, towering above all others, lingering there at the end of all other paths, is the face of that first child.
Destiny is waiting for that battle. Destiny is waiting for them.
And it breaks her heart to know that this girl, Kotone, is heading-no, is already on-the path that Blue tread so long ago.
Blue, who is a legend beyond all other legends.
Blue, who has left the mere mortals she knew behind and ascended to heights to which they cannot follow.
Blue, who has not been home or seen her mother in three long years.
And that’s the crux of it, really. It’s why Sabrina’s heart breaks as she looks at Kotone’s smiling face because there is only one way this story can end and it’s not a happy ending, not for anyone who has ever loved or cared about Kotone.
Because legends are not meant to be people as well; they are meant to be stories which are passed down from generation to generation; they are meant to be inspiration to others and figures of awe and respect. They aren’t meant to be people on top of all that.
They don’t have mothers who sit at home, hoping for their daughter to call or walk through the door, and just plain hoping for any news at all. They don’t have homes to go back to. They don’t have anything at all.
Legends are not meant to be real.
Blue is not real, not any more. She has faded from Sabrina’s sight, the details of her face growing fainter and fainter in everyone’s mind and she is just a story now. A story of an amazing girl who took Kanto by storm and freed it from the grips of an evil organization, all the while she was traveling around the land and crushing its Gyms. It half seems too fantastic to be have truly happened and Sabrina lived it.
She lived it and she remembers being crushed by Blue, remembers how Blue smirked and grinned upon her victory. She had been so at ease with everyone and so confident of herself. So how can that girl not have been real?
And what of Kotone, who is standing before Sabrina right now with her face flushed with victory and her eyes bright with life? She took Johto by storm, freed it from the remains of the same evil organization Blue had crushed years before and who is now doing the same to Kanto. It seems impossible to imagine this girl not being real.
But how long will it be, Sabrina wonders, until Kotone is just a story as well?
How long before Kotone’s smile blurs in everyone’s mind, just like Blue’s smirk has?
She wants to tell Kotone to go home to her mother and forget her journey, to forget the promises she had made and the dreams she still has. She wants to tell Kotone that this journey is not worth it, that the cost of it is too harsh. But the words are caught in Sabrina’s throat and she cannot speak them.
When Sabrina was six years, her powers awoke, causing a spoon so carelessly tossed away to bend and since that day, Sabrina has existed within two worlds. The world in which she interacts with people and Pokemon and the world she can only see and never touch.
The second world allows her to understand things that would normally be beyond her ken. These things are instinctive knowledge of the world, a second sight, and the ability to comprehend the feelings and desires of Pokemon. She loves most of what her gifts have granted her. She doesn’t love knowing all the things she knows, however.
Sabrina had long ago accepted that she cannot change what she sees. Destiny and Fate are forces which she cannot hope to combat because they always win. They know all the paths, all the choices, and their will is done no matter what, no matter what it seems like because, in the end, all roads eventually lead to the outcome Fate desired.
And so Sabrina cannot tell Kotone to stop, just like she could not tell Blue to stop and just like she cannot tell the others, the ones she sees the faintest outlines of, those heroes and legends yet to come, to stop, because Fate will not stop. Fate has chosen its champions and heroes.
But even more than that, Kotone would not stop anyway, even if she knew that, like Blue, she will cease to be real, cease to truly exist in the tangible world, because it is not in her to stop.
It is not in her to leave this journey unfulfilled because that would go against everything Kotone is. She chose to walk down the path Destiny aligned for her and she will not turn back.
Just like Blue would not turn back.
Just like those who have yet to arrive will not turn back.
Sabrina can no more stop these heroes from reaching their Destiny than she can teach a Magikarp to fly.
She wants to, oh how she wants to, but this is not her choice to make.
It has always been theirs.
Kotone stands before her now, grinning so widely and hugging her Pokemon close to her and she’s laughing; she’s utterly pleased with herself and her team and the sight of it even makes Sabrina smile a bit. Her Houndoom, a Pokemon made for war and darkness, is just as blindingly happy. Sabrina can feel the edges of his happiness, the pleasure he feels at the victory and winning for the sake of his Trainer.
It’s refreshing. More than it should be, perhaps.
The edges of familiarity tickle her again. Blue’s Gengar had been just as happy to be loved by his Trainer, as had her Blatstoise.
Blue had been something amazing. Not even a vision of her arrival could have adequately prepared Sabrina for her and the power she wielded so casually. Though, frankly speaking, the entire world has been singularly unprepared for Blue.
Just like how she had been singularly unprepared to truly face Kotone.
But for all the similarities Sabrina sees between Blue and Kotone, now that Kotone stands before her, Sabrina can see just a tiny hint of differences too.
Blue’s eyes and face had never been so open. Blue had never been so free with her smiles-she preferred fearless smirks over bright smiles-and never so free with her happiness either.
And so maybe Kotone, who even after defeating the Johto Elite Four, could still hug her Pokemon and cheer when victorious, will never lose her smile, no matter what choices she makes.
“Your power,” Sabrina begins and Kotone meets her gaze eagerly and unflinchingly, a god clad in the form of a child, “It far exceeds what I saw… Maybe it isn’t possible to fully predict what the future holds…”
Kotone’s story, along with Blue’s, will outlive Sabrina’s own but Sabrina has never minded that fact. That is the nature of legends, after all, to outlive everything, even those things which are real.
Author: fashi0n_mistake
Fandom: Pokémon (games)
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Prompt: #15: Some knowledge and some song and some beauty must be kept for those days before the world again plunges into darkness. --Marion Zimmer Bradley (1930-1999), American author of fantasy novels, short stories and anthologies, poet, composer, editor and co-founder of the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Summary: Legends live forever but nothing else remains.
Author’s Note: I use the name Kotone for the female main character of Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver and Blue for the name of the female main character of the first generation games. This fic is from the POV of Sabrina, the psychic Saffron gym leader. Thanks to
akumugan for the beta!*
“Houndoom, use Crunch now!”
Sabrina knows this child’s story.
She remembers standing here before, when a different girl stood before her with Destiny lapping at her heels, and the familiarity of the scene is enough to make Sabrina’s breath catch. Her visions have not adequately prepared her for this. Then again, nothing ever truly could.
The girl before her is too familiar, too much like that other one. A mere glance told her how this would end.
Because there’s always only one way this can end.
Twice now she has had visions of legends arriving to battle her, making her one more stop on their journeys upward, and twice now have her visions failed to properly convey the sheer power she would face. She stands before these girls and is utterly defeated by their power, just like everyone else in the world.
It as though she stands before a god.
Sabrina watches as her Alakazam falls to the girl’s Houndoom; she listens to her opponent’s cheer and smiles a little as the girl hugs her Houndoom, the light of victory, the joy of it, clear on the girl’s face; and yet her heart still twists a little because she can see the paths Destiny is weaving around this girl.
She can see glimpses of the routes the girl has yet to travel on and the battles she still has yet to fight and, towering above all others, lingering there at the end of all other paths, is the face of that first child.
Destiny is waiting for that battle. Destiny is waiting for them.
And it breaks her heart to know that this girl, Kotone, is heading-no, is already on-the path that Blue tread so long ago.
Blue, who is a legend beyond all other legends.
Blue, who has left the mere mortals she knew behind and ascended to heights to which they cannot follow.
Blue, who has not been home or seen her mother in three long years.
And that’s the crux of it, really. It’s why Sabrina’s heart breaks as she looks at Kotone’s smiling face because there is only one way this story can end and it’s not a happy ending, not for anyone who has ever loved or cared about Kotone.
Because legends are not meant to be people as well; they are meant to be stories which are passed down from generation to generation; they are meant to be inspiration to others and figures of awe and respect. They aren’t meant to be people on top of all that.
They don’t have mothers who sit at home, hoping for their daughter to call or walk through the door, and just plain hoping for any news at all. They don’t have homes to go back to. They don’t have anything at all.
Legends are not meant to be real.
Blue is not real, not any more. She has faded from Sabrina’s sight, the details of her face growing fainter and fainter in everyone’s mind and she is just a story now. A story of an amazing girl who took Kanto by storm and freed it from the grips of an evil organization, all the while she was traveling around the land and crushing its Gyms. It half seems too fantastic to be have truly happened and Sabrina lived it.
She lived it and she remembers being crushed by Blue, remembers how Blue smirked and grinned upon her victory. She had been so at ease with everyone and so confident of herself. So how can that girl not have been real?
And what of Kotone, who is standing before Sabrina right now with her face flushed with victory and her eyes bright with life? She took Johto by storm, freed it from the remains of the same evil organization Blue had crushed years before and who is now doing the same to Kanto. It seems impossible to imagine this girl not being real.
But how long will it be, Sabrina wonders, until Kotone is just a story as well?
How long before Kotone’s smile blurs in everyone’s mind, just like Blue’s smirk has?
She wants to tell Kotone to go home to her mother and forget her journey, to forget the promises she had made and the dreams she still has. She wants to tell Kotone that this journey is not worth it, that the cost of it is too harsh. But the words are caught in Sabrina’s throat and she cannot speak them.
When Sabrina was six years, her powers awoke, causing a spoon so carelessly tossed away to bend and since that day, Sabrina has existed within two worlds. The world in which she interacts with people and Pokemon and the world she can only see and never touch.
The second world allows her to understand things that would normally be beyond her ken. These things are instinctive knowledge of the world, a second sight, and the ability to comprehend the feelings and desires of Pokemon. She loves most of what her gifts have granted her. She doesn’t love knowing all the things she knows, however.
Sabrina had long ago accepted that she cannot change what she sees. Destiny and Fate are forces which she cannot hope to combat because they always win. They know all the paths, all the choices, and their will is done no matter what, no matter what it seems like because, in the end, all roads eventually lead to the outcome Fate desired.
And so Sabrina cannot tell Kotone to stop, just like she could not tell Blue to stop and just like she cannot tell the others, the ones she sees the faintest outlines of, those heroes and legends yet to come, to stop, because Fate will not stop. Fate has chosen its champions and heroes.
But even more than that, Kotone would not stop anyway, even if she knew that, like Blue, she will cease to be real, cease to truly exist in the tangible world, because it is not in her to stop.
It is not in her to leave this journey unfulfilled because that would go against everything Kotone is. She chose to walk down the path Destiny aligned for her and she will not turn back.
Just like Blue would not turn back.
Just like those who have yet to arrive will not turn back.
Sabrina can no more stop these heroes from reaching their Destiny than she can teach a Magikarp to fly.
She wants to, oh how she wants to, but this is not her choice to make.
It has always been theirs.
Kotone stands before her now, grinning so widely and hugging her Pokemon close to her and she’s laughing; she’s utterly pleased with herself and her team and the sight of it even makes Sabrina smile a bit. Her Houndoom, a Pokemon made for war and darkness, is just as blindingly happy. Sabrina can feel the edges of his happiness, the pleasure he feels at the victory and winning for the sake of his Trainer.
It’s refreshing. More than it should be, perhaps.
The edges of familiarity tickle her again. Blue’s Gengar had been just as happy to be loved by his Trainer, as had her Blatstoise.
Blue had been something amazing. Not even a vision of her arrival could have adequately prepared Sabrina for her and the power she wielded so casually. Though, frankly speaking, the entire world has been singularly unprepared for Blue.
Just like how she had been singularly unprepared to truly face Kotone.
But for all the similarities Sabrina sees between Blue and Kotone, now that Kotone stands before her, Sabrina can see just a tiny hint of differences too.
Blue’s eyes and face had never been so open. Blue had never been so free with her smiles-she preferred fearless smirks over bright smiles-and never so free with her happiness either.
And so maybe Kotone, who even after defeating the Johto Elite Four, could still hug her Pokemon and cheer when victorious, will never lose her smile, no matter what choices she makes.
“Your power,” Sabrina begins and Kotone meets her gaze eagerly and unflinchingly, a god clad in the form of a child, “It far exceeds what I saw… Maybe it isn’t possible to fully predict what the future holds…”
Kotone’s story, along with Blue’s, will outlive Sabrina’s own but Sabrina has never minded that fact. That is the nature of legends, after all, to outlive everything, even those things which are real.
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