Three years post Make Me Over. You do not have to read that first.

Love to all.

Theme song – "Numb" – Linkin’ Park

Whistling, Takeshi, smartly-dressed, pottered his way up the once winding path to the small picket-fenced garden in one of Masara’s pretty suburbs, up the ramp to the white door and rapped smartly three times, balancing the straw basket in the crook of one elbow as he did so. A muffled yell of "hai hai" could be heard and a shuffled pair of house-slippers indicated that it was Kasumi about to open the door. Peeking around the door, however, Kasumi gave a cold stare, "We already have windows" and closed it quickly again, leaving Takeshi to stare dumbly at one of the painted panels.

Until, giggling gaily, Kasumi swung the door open and her arms around his neck. "Takeshi! It’s so good to see you," she cooed, before pulling away awkwardly, avoiding the pokey straw basket and backing into the house. "Come in, we haven’t seen you for a while!"

Ducking his 6’7 frame under the door and into the hallway, Takeshi noted the subtle differences that kept cropping up in Kasumi’s home, the subtle differences about Kasumi herself, before grinning. "Well, y’know, I was in the neighbourhood and thought I’d see how you guys are doing." Nodding, as they ended up in the back kitchen, Kasumi set the kettle boiling.

"Uh-huh. And the fact that Kenji called me about half an hour ago to tell me that you were on one knee in the middle of the Pokémon reserve proposing to Nanami has nothing to do with your visit?"

"Nothing whatsoever," he replied, turning his face so that the fading pink mark couldn’t be seen in the bright room. "What, a guy can’t check up on his best friends slash future godchild?" He waved a hand almost dismissively at where Kasumi was trying her best to keep herself in a pair of jeans as long as possible before maternity clothes were needed. "And speaking of which, where’s Satoshi?" he asked, eyes flicking to Pikachuu’s empty basket.

"Issui," Kasumi replied, worry clouding her eyes as she cast them into the garden. "He always gets like this at this time of year."

Takeshi nodded in understanding. "Can’t say I blame him," he agreed, sharpening his focus on the small 7x5 photograph on the far wall, where pictures of virtually everyone they had met while armed with cameras decorated it in favour of the blue paint that covered the rest of the kitchen, where Hiroshi’s pretty-boy blue eyes smiled innocently out of his thirteen-year old face. "but he can’t stay cooped up there all day, can he?" He snapped his fingers with a loud click, and waved the wicker basket in the air. "I suppose that it’s a good job I’m here! Picnic on the beach? Go get him out of bed – we may as well make the most of the fact you live by the only quiet beach in Kanto. I was in Kuchiba last week – busy as anything… but all those girls…"

-

A few hours or so later, Pikachuu, Togepi and Mizugorou were racing around the rolling sand dunes that covered the Masara-Toujo coastline, Satoshi was flopped on the sand tanning his legs, Kasumi lolling in his lap trying to ease her ankles slightly, and Takeshi was grinning at the trashy picture-romance scene.

The only thing that tended to detract from the scene was the metal and leather pushchair that the empty picnic basket had conveniently found a home on for the time being.

Satoshi hated it. He refused it entirely at first, demanding the doctors fix whatever was broken in him. He hated the preferential treatment he was unused to – even as a League Master. He refused to sit in it instead of a chair when he worked at Sekiei Kougen as a League Adviser, hated the elevator in the classical old building that had to be installed for his usage, hated the way his office door was wider than everyone else’s. And Kasumi had caught him more than once, sitting on the grass in the garden with Pikachuu, trying to coax Hinoarashi into unleashing a large-scale Flamethrower onto it, melting it into a small puddle of metal and pieces of cowhide.

Takeshi could almost understand why – though he refused to say he did – he didn’t – could not imagine how it felt to be walking along one day, newly-engaged, with the career you – and every other kid in the country – had dreamed about since you were less than five years old, then wake up three weeks later, with tubes down your throat and in your nose, greeted by a grey-faced doctor who calmly informed you of spinal damage incurred by a random bullet, calmly informed you that you would never walk again, calmly informed you of the end of your life as you knew it with a tone of voice one would use to discuss the weather, calmly informed you that you would start therapy to use a wheelchair and not your two own kami-given legs within the next month.

There had been a lot of therapy Satoshi had gone through; the result was plain to see on his face. He looked slightly gaunter than he had three years ago, his arms were a lot stronger than they had been, his legs, weak and useless and almost always hidden behind his trademark denim jeans. His eyes were a darker mahogany, not the lively amber, and they flashed with fury and anger when he found another thing he couldn’t do now, but could then. He depended a lot more (almost entirely) on Kasumi than he had, too, something that had utterly infuriated him.

Of course, none of this was counting Hiroshi’s death, which happened not a few days after Satoshi’s attack. By the time Satoshi was awake and alert, Hiroshi was autopsied, declared a criminal case and two weeks buried, as was Nanako, found with a bullet to the stomach and to the head of her Meganiumi.

And the ultimate injustice of all? The bastard was still out and wandering, free as an Onidrill.

Though now, that fact tended to infuriate Takeshi more than it did Satoshi.

Who, at present, was yawning in time with the ocean waves, softly stroking his wife’s hair as she dozed in his lap and running a hand down her side to cup her swollen abdomen with adoration in his eyes.

"I think it’s a girl," he said suddenly, having been silent for a while long before Takeshi’s reflection. Interested, Takeshi met his friend’s gaze.

"Really? Why?"

Satoshi grinned. "I don’t think she’d be able to sleep so quietly at five months if the kid in there’s anything li--…" like I used to be… he trailed off, watching the waves lap the shore melancholically. "Tide’s coming in," he remarked quietly a few moments later, failing to hide the underlying sadness that laced his tone.

Takeshi nodded. "You want to wake Sleeping Beauty, or shall I?"

"Ore" Satoshi replied, and, standing and shaking himself free of sand, Takeshi picked up some of the blankets that decorated their area of the beach, shaking them out into the breeze, folding them, and setting them back down into the empty basket.

Though, he reflected, watching Satoshi coax Kasumi awake without getting fwapped around the head, Satoshi was lucky in the sense that, unlike Hiroshi and Nanako, he was the one who had survived, got the girl, got married. And, Takeshi noted with a wry grin, he ‘got lucky’ in the sense that while his legs refused to function any longer, judging by the swell of Kasumi’s stomach, certain other things functioned perfectly well.

And both of them were still alive and well. Satoshi and Kasumi hadn’t ended up as Shigeru and Hiroshi had, one blasted through the thorax with a wicked aim, the other, Stoic in nature, almost falling apart at the seams at the front of the Memorial service at the shrine at Sekiei and now reclusive on Futagojima looking after his grandfather’s ocean ranch.

The tide lapped at his bare feet now, Satoshi, thunder eyed and Pikachuu lapped, sat in front of Kasumi with his hands resting on his wheels, pink-kneed and flushed cheeks, and when Kasumi ruffled his hair and a cascade of sand collapsed onto his lap, and he gave a sheepish grin, Takeshi chuckled. Even the clinically depressed couldn’t fail to be cheered up by the sea.

At least, that was the way he saw it, and the way Satoshi’s face was stuck in the silly grin that was so reminiscent of his teens only made him believe it stronger.

-

Shigeru, however, sitting on the Futagojima coast checking up on the latest school of Rapurasu to pass by, en route to Dai Dai Island, didn’t know what to make of the sea; particularly at night, when the sea twinkled to a lavender blue, the sky blazed yellows and oranges, the silhouettes of diving Pokémon anything from grey to brown to black.

He hated the night.

When Hiroshi’s eyes burned through him from the gates of Hell, his bleeding lips begging, his voice gasping pleas. When poor, sweet Nanako screamed in the middle of the forest, where there was nobody to hear her cry as the bullet first shattered the head of her Meganiumi, then through her stomach and through her spinal cord in a messy killing of two birds with one stone, and she collapsed, bleeding to her death, sobbing, to the floor, to slowly die again and again.

But oh, he was a good liar. His alibi was secured in the fact that he dropped out of the year’s competition "out of respect" for his dead lover, and the fact that ‘whoever it was’ hadn’t just gone for those closest to Satoshi, nor those with any decent odds in the competition – and while Hiroshi played the best friend with him, Shigeru could only manage "acquaintance" at best, and while Satoshi was friends with Nanako (hell, Satoshi could be and probably was friends with everyone in Kanto), it was nothing like the friendship he had with Imite or Furura, and Nanako was nowhere near decent odds to succeed in the competition.

And as such, the police put it down to freak random killings by some psychopath who liked a crowd.

And the fact that every gun-nut in Kanto used the exact same type of pistol as he did (even the Safari Zone warden had about six) meant that Yukinari got his license checked, a nod and a Junsa six months after the shootings at the lab in Masara.

And nothing else.

The devil did like to play with him, it seemed.

He had seen Satoshi very rarely during the past three years, League functions aside, usually by coincidence, when Satoshi was visiting the Masara ranch, or both were at Sekiei. He watched Satoshi wheel himself around the large foyer at Sekiei, snapping at over-zealous aides with something choking him from the inside out, crushing his soul as he saw just how dark Satoshi’s had become.

He also knew Kenji knew something. Cute, pretty-boy Kenji, who, since Yukinari decided to shack up with Hanako and take over the Masara garden nursery/grass Pokémon sanctuary, ran the Masara ranch almost single-handedly with Furura minding their baby.

Not that he minded. Though it did seem a pity that the cute ones were almost always straight.

Kenji had called him, actually – late last night – which was early evening in Masara. As though Shigeru didn’t know what the date was anyway. Apparently Satoshi, pulling strings as a League Advisor, had swung it so a memorial service for any – and all – Trainers who had died during their journeys was to be held. And, of course, as Hiroshi’s devastated ‘widowed’ lover, he couldn’t not go.

Could he?

He shook his head. He would have to go – he owed it to the four years of his life he had spent with Hiroshi.

Didn’t he?

Grumbling, Satoshi swallowed a long draft of milk, grinning slightly when Pikachuu hopped onto his lap to lap at the few drops that had missed his mouth from the carton and sailed to his shadowed chin. There was no way Kasumi would be asleep now – at least, he hoped not. For him, insomnia was nothing new, but was easily solved, either by watching something crappy on TV (Pearl Harbour or some other useless fan-girl film usually did the trick), doing something boring (crosswords, laundry piles, counting out medications) drinking something (milk, absinthe, coffee made with just milk, no water) or combing Pikachuu’s fur. Kasumi, however, had been irritable lately, the baby’s newly-discovered sport of "how many times I can kick mommy in five minutes?" waking her anytime between ten at night to five in the morning, at which time, she swore, stormed out of bed and collapsed on the couch, switching early-morning TV on, waking not only him but neighbours three doors down, too.

Not that he minded. She was cute when she was angry, she was gorgeous when she was sleepy, and he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off of her the five months she’d been pregnant.

Besides, the couch tended to be their favourite place, and it was far more effective than a run-of-the-mill alarm clock.

The previous information was kept entirely secret from Takeshi, who would fumigate the damned thing without a blink in case the throws hadn’t been washed properly (they had, but once a hygiene-freak, always a hygiene-freak).

He didn’t like to wake her, though, when she was asleep, hence the milk-drinking and blind hoping. There was a paradoxical maternal innocence about her sleep lately (even though he knew full well she was anything but the latter), with the sheet pushed to settle at her waist, one arm wrapped around her bump, another either as a pillow or around him.

The thick nighttime silence was broken slightly by his wheels as he put the milk back into the fridge and turned himself tiredly towards the door, when he stopped, a pair of pink bunny slippers blocking the doorway and blurring in his suddenly tired vision. "Satoshi," Kasumi yawned, her hair wild and fluffed from the pillow, her nightgown slightly rumpled and clutching a dressing gown to her form sleepily, "why aren’t you in bed? It’s three AM and you have work tomorrow, and the service is the day after."

"Couldn’t sleep," he replied, watching her cross to the cupboard, retrieve a glass and get the same carton of milk from the fridge, his eyes glued to her. "Why are you?"

"Why else?" she replied, a hint of annoyance creeping into her tired voice. "Your child wants to be the national judo champion-" she was cut off by a long yawn; he watched the way her back arched into it differently than it had five months ago.

Cheekily, he grinned, "Well, don’t forget that you’re gonna get even less sleep when she’s born. Feeding at two am, changing at five, bathing at seven-"

"And you’re her father; you can damned well do some of it."

"Of course I would," he replied, looking slightly hurt. "You think I’d miss out on bathing our baby?"

She reflected the cheeky grin he had moments before, "No, but you’d miss out on changing her. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the way you nearly passed out when Furura changed Aiko that time."

"And remind me who threw up?" he challenged with a smirk.

She gave a mock-irritated glare. "That had nothing to do with it – you cooked the night before."

He pulled his eyelid down and stuck out his tongue moments before the pair of them split into fits of giggles until she was cut off by a large yawn. "To bed," he told her firmly, herding her out of the kitchen and pulling on the light string as he wheeled himself out, grabbing his notepad from the counter as he followed Kasumi.

Mostly, he remembered it being black. A loud noise had echoed around the arena, and he remembered feeling as though someone’s overzealous Sawamuraa had aimed a powerful roundhouse kick to his back, sending him flying to the floor and scraping his cheek and chin with the concrete battle surface, and he remembered hearing Kasumi screaming over something – he didn’t know what, and he remembered Takeshi telling him not to fall asleep or close his eyes which was silly – all he needed to do was stand up – it was just a fall, wasn’t it? He’d done that plenty of times before and he remembered some guy in green putting a mask over his face and then he realised that something was very wrong because from where he was lying on the ground he could see Kenji holding Kasumi away while Takeshi was arguing with one of the people in green who had dark blotches over their clothes and everything was ever so strange and he felt quite dizzy when things went dark.

And when he woke up three weeks later, with Kasumi squeaking to a doctor that his fingers were moving, and a doctor shone a light into his eyes, which he tried to shy away from and found the large blue tube in his throat tended to stop that, as did whatever was in his nose and he realised that he was on his front which was odd because he never really slept on his front unless Kasumi hadn’t told him off for snoring which was very rare now they were living together and that his hand, which was right next to his face, had a lot of wires and tape and bandages covering it but in his right he could feel a button which the doctor said he could press and he did and there was something that was ever so nice and fluffy that shot through his tired veins and it felt so nice to sleep when Kasumi’s hand was in his.

It was such a nice little button, really, he mused, as doctors poked him and prodded him and changed tubes and bags and all sorts of different medical things that he watched in a drugged haze of fascination, the length of the fibre-glass needle that had been in his hand, the buttons the nurses pressed and the dancing of the pretty lines of the machines and it was especially nice when the doctor came in periodically and told him that his dressings ought to be changed which, without the friendly little button, would have been very painful, especially the days Kasumi went home to look after Pikachuu.

It, however, just so happened to start to lose its’ effect the day the doctor told him exactly what had happened, and exactly how it would affect him. The bullet had near shredded his spinal cord and shattered his vertebrae; the spasms from blood loss as well as the de-fib during the ambulance ride practically finishing the job, the bullet tearing its bloody way through his abdomen damaging part of his digestive tract, which, the doctor assured, would heal in time and with surgery, but until then, the catheter he had barely noticed was there, and was now painfully aware of, would be sticking around.

And Kami-sama, he hated it.

But then again, there were a lot of things he hated back then. Like the sickeningly perky nurse who never shut up about his Purin and Pippi when he changed the dressings that gradually hurt less and less over the weeks, or the drip that fed into his arm accompanying the nil-by-mouth sign when he could smell the okonomiyaki from three floors down, or the endless, pointless testing the consultant did that ended up with bruises on his legs that he couldn’t feel the ache of, or the way Kasumi often looked like a scared Nidoran if he was in a bad mood, or the way, when he was able to sit up properly, a doctor hauling him into a wheelchair to a bright, airy gymnasium with mats and climbing frames and treadmills and tossing a ball to him which, shockingly, took him days to catch properly, and weights seemed heavier than they had done, and the class where a nurse in a leotard coached him into using a wheelchair for weeks on end and the floaty shrink who spoke in an ever so ‘calming’ voice which made her sound as though she’d been using his button herself.

He remembered taking his anger out on Kasumi. He also remembered her literally slapping some sense into him when he did it the last time, remembered the way she told him off every time he felt self-piteous, the way she shouted him down every time he got frustrated and self-absorbed.

Very few people argued with Kasumi and lived to keep their dignity and ego intact – something he had learned long ago. She always got her own way, which was why a year later, in the grounds of the Masara ranch with Kentauros stampeding in the background, a priest blessed the new couple, both dressed in formal kimono and sitting in seiza. Unusually, for when Kasumi got her own way, Satoshi was grinning too.

Shigeru watched the foaming waves with a hypnotic interest as the express ferry from Futagojima sped its way across the sea to the City, where Shigeru could get the connection to Masara, and in turn, the bus from Masara to Tokiwa, which then had a monorail to Sekiei.

There was a reason he moved so far away, he told himself, dark eyes fixed on the rushing surf that spat from the port of the ship as he peered down, watching Gyarados glare at him from under the water. He glared back, yet accepted their contempt. They could smell the corruption in his soul, even in the crystal blue depths.

He held the plain embossed invitation in his hand, not willing to put it in his pocket lest it crease Satoshi’s painstakingly neat kanji, running his finger repeatedly against the gilded edge, feeling the paper slice slowly into his finger with a mild satisfaction.

His audacity was explicit – to attend a memorial service in honour of those you had slain? Surely the kami would make him pay?

But Shigeru’s eyes flicked towards the kanji of Satoshi’s signature and blew his auburn hair out of his face with a quirk of his lip and a gust of breath. He had made plans for this, he noted to himself, digging his hand into his pocket and feeling the comforting weight that sat there, pointed as though another hand was warming his as he gripped it loosely.

He told himself again that he was only going for appearances – that he owed Hiroshi nothing other than contempt for the way he had treated him, the way he had never really left. Even when Shigeru thought he’d found sacred release, Hiroshi invaded him, from seeing someone with the same hypnotic blue eyes walking down the street, their gaze not seeing him yet searing another brand of guilt onto his soul and spiking fear into his core, to waking up in the middle of the night, aching for his lover’s touch, and hating the seemingly endless, empty bed he lay in. It was useless for him to even try to forget Hiroshi. There would never be any point in trying. Hiroshi would always have some sort of control over him, would be some sort of scar on his soul ready for the devil to drag him down by, every action he did was decided by whether Hiroshi would have done the same thing.

The one thing that worried him was that this was exactly what Hiroshi would do, too.

-

Somewhat awkwardly, Kenji held Aiko on his lap while Furura and Kasumi talked about babies and pregnancy pounds and other stuff like that – things he had no idea why women worried about so – it didn’t matter to him how many or how few pounds extra Furura weighed after Aiko, the fact was that they were a family, something he hadn’t known since he was young.

Satoshi, sitting on Kasumi’s right and at the front of the tiny shrine courtyard, was flicking frantically through a notebook that seemed to be riddled with his messy handwriting, lips moving in prompting memory jogging, furrowing his brow when he came to a badly written kanji that he couldn’t remember the meaning of.

The setting couldn’t possibly have been any more morbid, the shrine in the forest at Sekiei, probably not a million miles from where Nanako was found, and though he supposed that Kanna had suggested it, he could tell from the look on Satoshi’s face he wasn’t pleased at the setting whatsoever.

Neither, sitting perfectly still in the back row, did Shigeru. Kenji frowned. Back row? Surely Shigeru had as much right to sit at the front as Nanako’s parents did, as Hiroshi’s mother did, as Satoshi himself did? That made no sense, him sitting all the way at the back – Shigeru was not the type for humility, not the type to cower away on an occasion of such importance. He bit the inside of his cheek awkwardly – no matter how wrong it seemed for Shigeru, there was every possibility that Shigeru had his own, private reasons for not sitting near the front – maybe he wanted to remain out of the glare of the television cameras that were set up to film the service, all of them with their lenses trained upon Satoshi’s unreadable face.

Shigeru frowned as Kenji turned his head back towards Furura and pulled Aiko further onto his lap. He had his reasons, that much was true. He could quite happily have sat in the front as Hiroshi’s distraught lover and thought it a worthy prize in return for blasting that son of a bitch straight to the underworld. Yet other parts issued feelings of regret and disgust. Why had Nanako been dragged into all this? What was she? And the times Hiroshi and Shigeru had spent together before his ambition took precedent over their relationship?

He shook his head, waves of auburn hair cascading into his eyes, which he swept away with a slim hand, tucking locks behind his ears and out of his face. Myuu would surely give him her judgement when things ended, he reflected, as, dressed in robes of white, black and red, the priest and his miko paraded out of the shrine. Satoshi stiffened, his face rapidly paling, the blessing of the area before the ceremony being consecrated in ancient practise.

Twenty minutes through, Shigeru crept out of the back row.

-

The gruelling service over, Satoshi looked somewhat awkward as he sat next to Shigeru’s standing form, who watched the candles of the shrine flicker and die in the wind, fumbling with the circular bar on his wheels as though he simply did not know what to say to the stoic man beside him. "E-to, I-er, I’m glad you could make it," he said simply, shrugging his shoulders and feeling slightly relieved that he had been able to say that to someone as indifferent to him as Shigeru. A few Poppo cooed in the trees of the shrine’s courtyard as both men watched Akira, Hiroshi and Nanako’s candles fade away, Nanako’s parents and few family members turning and walking towards the gate to where Wataru greeted them and bade them farewell.

"I owed it to Hiroshi," Shigeru replied tightly, ignoring the way Satoshi, once only a few inches shorter than he, was now feet shorter, and feeling his stomach ball up in anger when Satoshi nodded in response to his comment.

"Aa, sou desu né… He probably would have done the same."

And Shigeru wanted to yell at Satoshi, tell him that there was no way Hiroshi would have given a damn so long as Shigeru was quiet, ask him if he knew just how much Hiroshi hated him behind his back, loathing him as much as to willingly destroy him, had not been satisfied with the fact that Shigeru had blasted him off of his feet and into a hospital bed and into a chair that took away dignities that every normal man took for granted.

Unlike the ability to speak – Satoshi was talking again and Shigeru could just hear a gravely buzzing, uniquely Satoshi, through his ears…

"—and Kenji thought I should ask you, seeing as, well, Hiroshi and I were friends and—"

"Ask me what?" Shigeru asked as he tuned back in to Satoshi’s rambling monologue. Satoshi’s face held a moment’s look of frustration before it slowly died away to his easy, polite smile.

"We – that is – Kasumi, Kenji, Takeshi and I were going to go back to our place after the service… we thought that maybe you would want to come too?" he said quietly, watching as the last few candles battle against the soft breeze and one-by-one lose. As a hurried afterthought, he added, "Kenji suggested it – because… y’know, you and Hiroshi."

He and Hiroshi? Keh. There had barely been a "he and Hiroshi". And those who thought there was obviously didn’t know how much of a thespian Hiroshi could really be.

"I… think I’ll pass," he replied, not looking at Satoshi but at the soft wisps of smoke that lifted from the burned candlewicks.

Satoshi looked slightly put out. "Oh. Well, all right. I’ll go tell Kenji then – he and Furura would have taken you," he said, dropping his hands to his sides and moving off.

Hiroshi would have loved to have seen that – silly little Satoshi wheeling himself off not knowing that it was they who had caused it, his ever-astonishing naivety a cause for both well-meaning humour and concern.

He felt reckless, suddenly, watching Satoshi speaking with Kenji, having to look up to everyone instead of the vice-versa someone of his position should expect. The irony was almost painful, something balling in his stomach before a resolution was made. It had to be done, if not for spite of Hiroshi more than anything else. "Ano, Satoshi?" he called across the courtyard. The dark-haired man looked over, an inquiring expression on his face. "Actually, if it’s not too much trouble…?"

He knew, all of a sudden, exactly what he was going to do, come hell or high water, to heck with Hiroshi, let the Inferno stew his soul in burning sulphur; this would be the ultimate payback. And as he sat next to Aiko in Kenji’s people-carrier, watching her brown-lashed baby-blue eyes stare at him in infantile wonder, he wondered if she was how Hiroshi had started, gurgling happily around a teething ring with two loving parents, only to be corrupted along the way by hate and jealousy, and always, always smiling.

Not much later (Takeshi was driving, having kicked Kenji into the back seat not ten miles out of Sekiei), his hands wrapped around a cup of what was supposed to be miso soup yet tasted like the rest of Kasumi’s cooking, Shigeru, listening to Kenji talk about how some of his Pokémon were going at the Masara ranch in one ear, listening to Satoshi and Kasumi wave off Hanako and Yukinari in the other, scanned around their living room for no other reason than curiosity. A portrait of their wedding hung over the fireplace, in turn adorned with various pictures, from Pikachuu and Togepi to a small picture of Hiroshi and Satoshi aged eleven years old the first time at Sekiei, a picture of his mother marrying Shigeru’s grandfather, Kasumi in a water-ballet aged no more than fifteen, wearing a fishtail surrounded by her sisters who were apparently cross-dressing, Satoshi, Kasumi, Takeshi all in suits at Kenji and Furura’s wedding four years ago, the bride and groom themselves taking centre of the picture, and in the centre of the mantelpiece, a small monochrome collage of three or four peanut-shaped objects, each progressively bigger than the other. He quirked a smirk. How angry would Hiroshi be, knowing that there was a 50:50 chance of another Satoshi in the world? Possibly more than one? There was something so deliciously ironic in that, something that would make Hiroshi so very very angry, the possibility of a new Satoshi, now with both his father and his mother’s talents, doing everything Hiroshi wanted to do, being everything he wanted to be so desperately.

Hiroshi had been the topic of conversation, not so strangely enough. Shigeru had made a comment about the photograph, Kasumi had rooted around a cupboard and handed him a few, which were now in his coat pocket, ready to be the next bonfire fuel.

"You’re quiet," Kenji remarked moments later, when an anecdote Shigeru hadn’t listened to about his Burakki received only silence. "Is something wrong?"

"Na…? Oh, no," Shigeru replied momentarily, waking from his silence suddenly. "I was just thinking."

"Mind I ask what about?"

"Just… things,"

"Hiroshi?"

Damn him. But still, what better place to start. "Aa, about Hiroshi." Kenji nodded as though he understood; Shigeru mentally shook his head. Kenji could never understand.

"Do you miss him?" And yet…

There was very little point in lying to one such as Kenji. There was something in his eyes that watched you, that flickered when he knew you were lying, and he’d simply just nod and agree, which was the most infuriating thing on the planet. "Hai, I miss him sometimes," he answered truthfully, "and yet sometimes there’s not a part of me that thinks of him anymore." If Kenji was surprised at all, he certainly didn’t show it. Instead, he nodded.

"Think of who?" Satoshi pushed himself into the conversation, inquisitively looking at the pair. "Hiroshi?"

Kenji nodded. Satoshi returned it in kind. "I suppose it means you’re moving on," he said, Shigeru felt the urge to giggle. "But…" he gave a sheepish grin. "I don’t think I could ever stop thinking of Sumi." He winked at her where she was rolling her eyes at the flattery teasingly.

Shigeru felt the uncanny urge to throw up at the sickening couple-stuff, instead, however, "Actually… that’s something I need to talk to you about."

Satoshi looked up at him. "About Hiroshi? Or Kasumi?"

"Hiroshi."

"Aa. What about Hiroshi?"

Oh, everything about Hiroshi, Shigeru wanted to say. What wasn’t there to say about him? Aside from the stuff people "knew" about him, of course. "Um, well," Oddly, Shigeru found his confidence rapidly fading as he watched Satoshi push himself over to where Kasumi was sitting and tug her hand gently into his. Why would he want to ruin the picturesque scene? They seemed to have moved on from it…

Yet, a voice in his head told him, that would be what Hiroshi would want now – would want Satoshi and Kasumi to carry on their little lives not knowing who was the one to shoot out Satoshi’s spine to the sandy Sekiei arena and thinking of Hiroshi as some shining little perfect boy.

"Three years ago," he blurted out suddenly, and watched as Satoshi’s face darkened, Kasumi looked interested, and Kenji inquisitive, "at Sekiei," he carried on, Takeshi now poking his head out of the kitchen from where he had found one glass that the dishwasher had failed to clean properly and was now cleaning anything ceramic he could find. "When you were… shot."

Satoshi nodded, but didn’t answer.

"The police – Junsa. She-er, released a report saying that in the stadium-"

"The bastard was hiding in the upper rows and used a Psychic type to escape. We know that." he answered shortly, his face passive yet agitated at the same time. "What has that to do with anything?"

"Quite a lot, actually," Shigeru replied, casting his eyes around to avoid Satoshi’s almost piercing gaze. "After Sekiei… the one who… did it-"

"Junsa lost his trail in Wakaba town," Satoshi replied tersely, watching Shigeru suspiciously. "She doesn’t know anything about the bastard after Wakaba… why?"

Shigeru steeled himself. "Does she know that they spent eight months in Houen? And that after that, stayed here in Masara for six? Then they travelled around the Islands? And that they were acting as a proxy for someone else?" Kenji, quick to calculate, was looking at him, incredulous.

Kasumi regarded him warily, wrapping her fingers more securely around Satoshi’s. "And how, exactly, would you know these kinds of things?"

The ever-so-mysterious quote of ‘I have my sources’ dared him to speak it. The inherent male action fan dared him to admit, and threaten again. The Scooby Doo fan begged him to utter the immortal line, "Me, and I would have done it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids!"

Instead, Ookido Shigeru took a step forward, hand casually in his pocket, and laid a heavy metal object on the coffee table, three empty holes, three full in the exposed barrel. It hit the wood with a dead clunk and rested there. He took a step back to allow all to see.

Kasumi shrieked.

A three-man uproar ensued. Takeshi and Kenji leapt to their feet in fury, Takeshi in particular, his eyes black with deadly ire, his brow twisted in a furious glare. There was no serene awareness in Kenji’s gaze, his face glaring and stern to match Takeshi’s.

And Satoshi…

Satoshi stared, open-mouthed, his hands gripping his wheels so tight that his knuckles turned white and his fingers shaded blue. His ears buzzed with Shigeru’s words and the dull clunk of the pistol as they echoed around his head, burning into his memory, filling his mind with disbelief and his heart pounding as though in shock. "You…?" he asked, whispered, his eyes glassed with three years of anger and agony, reflecting Shigeru’s wiry frame as he stood in front of the window. His jaw worked for a moment as though he knew what to say but not how to say it, his brows slowly drawing together and his eyes narrowing as though to shield himself from his own flames. He tried again. "You… did this to me?"

Shigeru just stood there, watching Satoshi watch him with a frightening intensity, hearing Kasumi’s shocked, short breaths behind one hand as the other rested against her stomach, Takeshi trying to coax her into calming down and leading her out of the room. But his silence seemed to fuel Satoshi’s anger further, as each chain locked in his head, each string tied itself to another, each twig kindled and slowly burned away.

"You were the one who shot me?" Satoshi asked, louder this time, his tone slightly rougher. "Is that why you’re here? To tell me – no – to rub it in my face that you’re the one who ruined my life?" he spat, leaning forward as though at any given second he would leap from his seat and tear Shigeru to pieces with his bare hands. Kenji, now standing behind Shigeru with his position as though if Satoshi stood now and swung, he would move Shigeru into the trajectory, or at the very least, punch him himself, made to step forward; a vicious glare from Satoshi stopped him in his tracks. Behind Shigeru’s stoic façade, the passive emotionless glisten in his eyes seemed to flicker and die slightly.

"Not at all," he replied simply, then, as an afterthought, added, "And I’m here because you asked me to." Satoshi’s eyes flickered with anger.

"Then why!"

"Because, regardless of our past, you deserve to know the truth."

Satoshi gave a humourless laugh.

"Go on," Satoshi snarled, his eyes burning uncontrollably, his entire body tense and trembling with untamed fury, "what’s your excuse? Your finger slipped? You just happened to aim that thing at me and – oops" he paused in mocking anger, "that bullet slipped out by its own free will? Or did Myuu herself come down in front of you and give you a divine mission?"

"Iie," Shigeru said quietly, simply, calmly, "She didn’t."

"Then who the fuck told you to do this! You already swore you didn’t want to do it, so what, Wataru wanted me out?" His hair hung wildly now, a mane around his face, hiding his burning, furious eyes from view, but not where his fists were clenching and gripping the soft leather of his armrest, his nails nicking into the hide, his arms shaking with repressed tension.

Shigeru cleared his throat, tapping the toe of one smart boot against the heel of the other; Kenji crossed the room and rested a calming hand on Satoshi’s shoulder. "Wataru would not have been happier than if you were still the League Master in twenty years time. He had nothing to do with it."

If Shigeru expected his answer to placate Satoshi, he was sorely mistaken. Satoshi’s eyes burned brighter, furious, he rounded on him. "So who was it? You have a split personality who’s a gun-freak? An imaginary friend?"

Trying not to react to the scathing remarks Satoshi shot towards him, Shigeru simply responded, "Iie," and folded his hands behind his back. "None of those. In fact, I doubt if I told you, you’d actually believe me."

Humourlessly, Satoshi laughed, a cold, biting laugh that he reserved only for the most contemptuous people he knew. "Try me," he spat, "I doubt anything you say now would surprise me, temee."

Raising an eyebrow almost mockingly, Shigeru admonished, "Now now, watch your language. We wouldn’t want Satoshi-junior getting a potty-mouth before he even learns to sit on one, would we?"

Before Satoshi could say anything, Kenji glared at Shigeru himself. "Leave children out of this, Shigeru. They have nothing to do with it." Admonished, Shigeru nodded, Satoshi shot an anguished look to where Kasumi’s hyperventilation was still audible, along with the crackle of a paper bag, his cheeks and eyes still frenzied with fury.

"Who the fuck did this to me?" he yelled suddenly, breaking the fragile silence. Shigeru looked him dead in his burning eyes. Oh, this was just so perfect.

"Shidekazu Hiroshi."

The red that had boiled in Satoshi’s cheeks vanished almost instantly, eyes wide, ears buzzing, his face quickly paling, his lips parted slightly as though he was about to launch into a volley of furious words yet Shigeru’s sentence had washed them clean away. Takeshi’s jaw hung loosely from where he was listening in the hall, Kasumi sitting limply on the front step. Pikachuu rubbed against Kenji’s cargo-pants covered leg and let off a tiny static crackle that was the only noise in the room apart from breathing and the clock which had no comprehension of the need for the silence.

Satoshi’s rage had subsided quickly, Kenji noted, but his eyes burned angrier still, hating Shigeru in front of him. A silently angry Satoshi was worse than a raging one, he had learned as they had grown up, "How dare you?" he spat, yet the words rolled eerily smooth from his tongue. "How dare you blame the dead for your crimes? How dare you blame one of my best friends and taint his soul?"

Shigeru was the one to snicker coldly this time. "Hiroshi’s soul was always tainted."

"Don’t you dare, Shigeru."

"Dare what? Did you seriously think Hiroshi was angelic and sweet in every way? You believed that bullshit about how you’d win together, complete your dreams together? Answer this, Satoshi – who was your only main rival at Sekiei that year? You know full well I have absolutely no chance of beating you."

"Get out. I refuse to listen to this. Damn it, he was in love with you and now he’s dead—" Satoshi was suddenly silent – so was the entire house. Kenji’s tanned face was also pale, staring at Shigeru as though he had been looking at him for the past three years through muslin drapes. Eyes wide, Satoshi slowly shook his head, his eyes glassing over in horror as links that should never have been connected, even by the most novice smithy, slowly locked around each other, forming a chain of incomprehensible reason. The word itself, spoken so harshly by Satoshi, hit Shigeru. Yes, that was right, Hiroshi was dead, he was gone, he was never coming back, the bullet had taken him away, and Shigeru had sent him away…

"Your eye…" Kenji interjected quietly into the silence, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. He fidgeted uncomfortably. "That time in the hospital – you hurt your eye – you said you’d walked into a door" Shigeru, puzzled at Kenji’s long memory, nodded around the thick lump in his throat at the underlying sympathy in Kenji’s inquisitive tone, surely it was something nobody like him deserved. "Did he hit you?" One nod, so slight even Kenji’s keen trained eyes almost missed it. "Often?" another slight nod.

Kenji’s eyes softened, Satoshi’s, if anything, grew harder, though Shigeru found himself unable to look Satoshi in the eye – felt, if anything, it would be wrong, that he should be bowed at his useless feet for supplication that would never be granted.

Kenji nodded as each thread finally came together into a large, tight knot. "Hiroshi was angry with you that night because Satoshi was still alive? And you killed him because he hit you?"

It was easier to just nod in agreement and let them think of Hiroshi as the bastard he was than to explain that not only was Hiroshi angry, he was jealously possessive, and ruthlessly competitive, and it had taken Shigeru four years to realise that Hiroshi was… well, that Hiroshi was Hiroshi, not the sweet, campishly innocent boy he wanted people to think he was.

"And what of Nanako? Oh, no, please, let me guess, she bitch-slapped you because you thought, like every baseball fan, her team sucks?" Satoshi interjected, hissing with contemptuous mocking lacing his voice thickly. Shigeru flinched, Nanako’s begging, luminous eyes flashing before him, creasing into agony as she crumpled to the forest floor.

Summoning every inch of decorum and audacity he had, he pulled his head high. "I don’t believe that’s any of your business, Satoshi," he said smoothly, turning towards the door. "In fact, I believe I’ve already concluded my business here. If you will excuse me?" and he turned towards the door, not wanting to see the look on Satoshi’s face. Closing the lounge behind him, he heard something crash into it and break into pieces as he walked out of the front door, away from Takeshi’s utterly contemptuous look, as though he didn’t know what to do, though the Gym Leader certainly looked ready to tear him limb from limb.

Kasumi, however, did know exactly what she wanted to do.

Almost shakily, she stood up and followed him to the gate, calling his name. He stopped and turned around, and was met not with the slap he expected, but with a full-scale right hook. Staggering with unexpected force he never would have expected from someone as Elvin as Kasumi, he took a step back, barely managing to dodge a second, stunned, not failing to notice Takeshi’s appreciative look as he calmed her clenched hand by resting his on top, then raising an eyebrow as Takeshi flipped his cell-phone out and dialled 1-1-0. "Aren’t you going to run?" Kasumi said icily. "Not that it would matter."

He shook his head. "Now now, Kasumi, let’s not be so dramatic here. Why on Earth would I want to do that?" he grinned almost mockingly at her tempestuous eyes, the hand that punched him now clutching at the fabric that covered her baby. Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a small red and white sphere, releasing Efui, and, before she could do anything, before Takeshi could intervene with his more powerful swing, he was quickly gone; out of the region even before the dust clouds from Junsa’s motorcycle could be seen at the end of the road.

Spitting on the ground where Shigeru had stood, Takeshi walked back into the house slowly, the cell phone to his ear.

-

Three months later, Shigeru read in one of the few Kanto/Johto tabloids that reached the remote Whirl Island he now resided, Satoshi and Kasumi became father and mother to a slightly early, slightly underweight, baby girl, with, as her step-grandfather later gushed to any journalist who would listen, all ten fingers, all ten toes, Satoshi’s hair and eyes, with Kasumi’s nose and knack for socking her father in the face.

Hope

Shigeru had to quirk a smirk at the optimism in her name as he folded the newspaper once, twice, and cast it from the cliff into the turbulent seas that crashed below. The paper soaked, tore with each violent dash against the cliffs until it was indistinguishable from the foam that topped each wave, and, satisfied, Shigeru picked himself up, humming, heading back to the dry cave before the storm broke.

He had just one thing left to do on this island before he left.

-

Unlike the last time, Shigeru had no fear of the door as he felt for the catch, no fear of the pain that came and went in a heartbeat with a ricocheting explosion, no fear of Hiroshi’s horrified face as he slid down the damp, cold cave wall into swallowing darkness, no fear of the searing, scorching heat that flared up to greet him.

And when those sweet baby-blue eyes stared worriedly into his, he found the phrase "Go to hell" ironically fitting.