What about you?And isn't that the question? And is it fair that so little a one should feel so damning, slide through all her armour of time and distance and Yoshiro to seek what remains of Junya, because that's what it is, isn't it? That Junya is still the dull ache behind her ribs. That Junya is the waning red and gold of a dwindling summer, a season whose glory dwindled far too early when the bitter winds of autumn came howling home. Shioda Yoshiro and Shioda Junya were never meant to coexist, the latter meant to rest easily between the interred ashes of Ai and Hinata, drowned beneath a blanket of yellow and white chrysanthemum.
Junya was the one who still remembered, who climbed in the courtyard tree with that little, golden-haired girl, picked sakura blossoms for her. Held her hand when the boughs whispered in the winds, and found a way to coax her higher, higher still, until they could count the fletchlings nested at the corner of the tile roof, see the cramorants dip low over distant houses in the evening. Who listened, told stories, laughed until her father got the ladder and bribed them lower, beckoned from their escape with promises of rice candy and rides on Hinote, whose stripes were only just starting to gray with age.
Yoshiro is the armour beneath which all those things were laid to rest, cannot exist in the same world as
Amber Lenoir , but is here all the same, a Bolthund race to her heart that she's certain the other would feel if their palms still touched. Yoshiro remembers other things, the scent of smoke and copper upon the air, heavy as a shroud in the halls of a nine-tailed enemy. The little tufts of golden fur that littered the ground like flower petals, marked all the places Torao had found purchase, sunk his teeth in deep until an ancient pokemon ceased its struggle.
It is vindictive and relentless by nature. Those who cross it even once will be cursed for a thousand years, along with their descendants.Her brother's voice as they sat beside the still waters, telling her,
They cannot curse you from beyond the grave.Yoshiro remembers the trembling in another's voice, pleading and rough with smoke, the trembling in her own then-unmarked hands as she lifted her father's blade down from the mantle upon which it had been just another empty possession - a trophy to laud a fleeting Húxiān victory. And then another of Oba Guiying's little lessons: how to send a message. When the Húxiān find their brother, he is bereft his head and his hands. Hours later, beneath the dull neon in downtown Johto, she received the first of what will become many stripes as Amber Berry smiled brightly on the flickering screen of an old television.
When the program had cut off for a news bulletin - report of a yakuza hit across the city, presumed retaliation for the Shioda massacre she had considered it to be symbolic.
Shioda Yoshiro and Shioda Junya were never meant to coexist: but they do.
They both came to Hoenn for her.
They both watch Amber Lenoir from behind dark lashes, their darker irises drinking in the way that she lights up in a sneaky little smile, how the corner of her mouth quirks up just so, how she holds the plush Houndoom in her arms with an aura of barely concealed delight. And when she rests her chin atop it, bites her lip, they are both completely done in. Perhaps that shouldn't be a revelation, that the one would climb the tallest tree for her, and the other burn the world, that they both, in their own way, could l-
No, she thinks.
Ours is a secret, too.She realizes that she hasn't answered, not just yet, and should soon. That the silence between them cannot last forever, has already lasted too long, years and leagues, and a continent apart. She realizes, all at once and also a little too late, that she hasn't looked up from the scarlet of the other's lips in what has to have been a solid minute, and how that must look, and -
How many times have I looked for you in someone?
How many times have I stood in the crowd only to slip away just before you could see?
How many near misses to keep you safe, only to find out I could lose you even if we never met again?The heat creeping over the back of her neck, tinging the shell of her ears with a dusky pink, is unfamiliar.
What about you?That you would call me Junya again - and -
I want to ruin our friendship - are wishes that exist simultaneously, occupy the same space and time. She doesn't speak either of them aloud, but acts, catches the Houndoom plush in the other's arms by one ear and uses it to pull the blonde in. Her other hand, all sharply inked knuckles and subtly calloused fingertips, comes to rest at Amber's jaw as she ducks in just so.
And in the instant that their lips meet, she thinks that Amber was wrong.
The thunder never followed me at all, it was always yours. The kiss is warm, gentle, shockingly earnest. The sort of kiss that Junya may have shared with her one summer, had things been different.
It ends abruptly to the shutter of a camera, the bright bulb-flash as an enterprising paparazzo snaps what must be a lucky shot. The transition is stark, instant, a curl to the upper lip, a tightening at the corner of the eyes as she shifts back. He boldly snaps another picture.
"Get that fucking camera out of my face." Her voice is rougher than she expected.
When she moves, Shioda Yoshiro doesn't so much catch the camera as she catches the whole damned paparazzo.
