Chapter Text
It’s like knives, he thinks. Ash hasn’t been stabbed before, surprisingly, but this feels like what he imagines being stabbed is like.
The knives twist deeper as he realizes there is no electrical warmth against his body. He can feel the static rippling through this dark, dark space, but he doesn’t feel fur, and that’s an issue.
For some reason, he feels like he should be hurting from more than just this ice crawling its frozen way into his veins.
His lungs are bursting, bursting, painful and burning and freezing and too small and he realizes, all of a sudden, that he is underwater. He is drowning.
For the--what, tenth fucking time? He’s lost count.
It is around this time that Ash realizes he should try to surface for air, he should try to have some sense of self-preservation. He has absolutely no clue which way is up, so picks a direction and just starts swimming, hoping for the best.
The pressure is increasing. It might just be that he’s out of time, out of air, or maybe he’s going deeper, but Ash is anything but stubborn and keeps clawing at this watery tomb, hoping beyond hope beyond hope that he’s going the right way. Hoping beyond hope beyond hope that his best friend is okay.
…
Another zap spreading through the water, urgent and panicking and insistent. Something against his skin, something soppy and soggy and concerningly clumped, and Ash can’t register what it is, but it gets under him, right at his navel and just pushes, pushes up(?) up up, and it’s a slow going process. Too slow, too slow, and an eternity lapses (Ash is pretty sure he’s not conscious for the whole of it) before this dark blackness is broken by a shaft of white, white white white everywhere, and when he’s zapped enough to force him to pull himself to shore, the snow bites into his frostbitten skin like angry ekans.
He coughs. He coughs, coughs, coughs, hacking up half a lung, and it makes him so nauseous he throws up, just a little. It burns. He’s pretty sure it’s water.
It’s all he can hear, until he finally, finally stops, a “...api! Pikapi! Pikapi!” cutting through the ringing.
It’s his best friend, screaming his name, a painful, desperate thing. Pikachu’s voice is hoarse. Ash wonders how long he’s been calling him.
“He-,” he tries and fails, voice cracked like thin ice. “Hey, buddy.”
Pikachu barrels into his chest, and it makes Ash cough a little more but he doesn’t care. Pikachu is nuzzling into his sternum before crying out, flicking an ear into his shoulder. He paws at it, which makes Ash wince, and he looks down.
Oh. Right. That’s why he had the nagging feeling that something else was supposed to be hurting.
That is...an alarming amount of blood. It’s congealed weirdly, still very wet but frozen, halfway, red flaky ice falling onto the white, staining it scarlet.
Scarlet snow, Ash thinks with a snort. That sounds like a metal album Dawn might listen to.
Well. The first order of things is probably to get out of this snow. They’re freezing, fast, he and Pikachu. Some of his blood has stained Pikachu’s coat, and his fur is freezing stiff and red. Ash has stopped shivering.
If he knows one thing, that is bad (he’d learned that the hard way, back when he was the ripe age of ten and his pokemon kept him from dying overnight in the snow.
Okay. Get up. Get up. Get on his feet, hold Pikachu close. Body heat. (Also, he just needs to hold Pikachu close. Pikachu almost died today. Still can).
Only one arm is working right now; the other hangs limply at his side.
(He thinks, absently, about how his mom would kill him if she knew he’s ruined the shirt she so painstakingly made for him.)
His legs barely hold his weight. They feel like anvils, feel stuck and frozen to the ground like he’s been hit by an ice beam. Jump, then. Jump around, avoid slipping. Jump, jump, get blood pumping. Jump. Run.
His lungs are hurting, somehow, even more than when he was underwater. The cold air picks at them, stabs them, burns them with icy fire.
That doesn’t matter, not one bit. What matters is getting Pikachu to safety, saving his buddy’s life.
Oh, yeah, and his own, secondarily.
Step after step after step blurs together, sparse trees becoming more evergreens with black trunks, blood going drop drop drop on the snow.
Ash hopes they aren’t following him. He is practically putting up a sign, pointing to where he’s gone.
He has absolutely no idea where civilization is. He hopes it’s close. He hopes to fucking Arceus it’s close.
That god better save their asses.
Pikachu, who’s been consistently almost falling asleep, only for Ash to shake him awake (“Don’t fall asleep buddy, or you’ll never wake up.”), perks up. Ash isn’t sure why. He leaps out of his trainer’s arm (which hurts like hell, since it jostles the other shoulder a bit) and lets out a big thunderbolt, a beacon into the sky.
That’s a signal.
(Ash thinks, for a second, that it might be a signal to the wrong people, before dismissing it, because they’re too desperate right now. If no one sees it, they’re going to die.)
Pikachu does it again, bigger this time, and he’s panting and panting, and shivering terribly, so much Ash can hear his teeth chatter from several feet away.
There’s no response.
Well, then they’re fucked.
They’re going to keep going, though.
“Come on, Pikachu,” Ash says, starting to walk again, but Pikachu barks at him. Stay here.
“Pikachu, we have to…”
Stay here.
Ash stays.
For a moment, there is nothing, nothing but snow crinkling under his run-down sneakers and one thick drop of scarlet falling onto white, seeping into it.
And then there is everything, for there’s a beam of lightning and a crackle of thunder about a mile away, and this is a return signal.
Someone sees them. Someone is coming.
Pikachu barks at him again, taking off at breakneck speed, and Ash stumbles after. It hurts too much to run, and the snow is thicker here, his feet sinking in more and more, but he runs anyway, because he is operating on nothing but pure adrenaline (has been, for too long now). They keep going, but pretty soon even adrenaline isn’t enough, and Ash trips on a particularly deep hole in the snow. He would’ve faceplanted straight into powdered ice, which would make him die right then and there, from embarrassment if not hypothermia, when something catches him.
No, it’s some one, and they catch his bad arm, and he cannot stop the some-sort-of-inhuman-sound that wrenches its way out of him.
The someone promptly drops him, so he ends up getting a face full of snow anyway.
Shit, it’s even colder now.
“Are you alright?” comes a worried voice, and it's the first sane human he’s heard other than himself (and even that is pretty debatable at this point).
Ash wants to quip back. He wants to say “Perfectly well, and you?”
But he doesn’t do that, because this person is just trying to help.
(Well, maybe he does, but it’s muffled into the snow.)
This time he’s pulled up by his waist, and the grip is surprisingly gentle.
He catches sight of a raichu first, and then the stranger’s face, freckles and a gap-toothed smile, and thinks that she should probably get braces. He doesn’t say that, doesn’t say anything, just stares blankly. “My name’s Carter,” the probably-nineteen-year-old says. All Ash can do is point at his mouse, saying “Pikachu,” at himself, saying “Ash,” before he goes limp in the person’s arms.
He’s not sure how long it’s been, when he wakes up. It’s not as cold anymore, but they’re still outside, clearly, so maybe not that long. There’s a loud, loud whirring, and there’s wind in his hair, and he’s leaning against something really warm.
Oh, he realizes. They’re on a motorbike, looks like, the type Officer Jenny let him ride in the cart of on his first day being a trainer. The really warm thing is her, and Pikachu’s in his lap. He’s wearing a coat he didn’t previously have.
His throat hurts like a bitch. Actually, his shoulder hurts like a bitch, too.
Everything hurts like a bitch.
They’re not on snow anymore. They’re on some sort of highway, railings overlooking snowy mountains. After a moment, Cartner notices he’s awake.
“We’re almost to the city. You were in the middle of nowhere, kid.”
He bites out an “I figured that out.” (Also, she’s only, like, four years older than him, why’d she call him a kid?)
He realizes, belatedly, that they’re speaking in Unovan. He wasn’t in Unova. She’d just--she’d just talked in Unovan to him when they met, and he’d responded in kind.
It could just be that Unovan is a common language to use even in other regions, but...he’d fallen asleep when he’d first been taken hostage, because it was an overnight thing, and he’d been so unconcerned about the whole thing he’d let down his guard.
There were a lot of places one could travel over a night.
“Um,” he starts, teeth still sort of chattering, “where are we?”
He can’t see her face, but he can almost feel her furrow her eyebrows. Maybe it is the way she ever-so-slightly stiffens. “Getting close to Accumula Town.”
Oh, shit, so he is in Unova.
He must say something aloud, because she stiffens even more, saying “Were you not in Unova before?”
There is an option here. Lie, which there is no real reason to, but he doesn’t want to worry her any more than he already is (he can feel the way Pikachu sighs like he knows exactly what Ash is thinking); or, tell the truth, which is a better idea, but is harder to explain, and Ash doesn’t really want to.
He goes for the truth anyway. “...No?”
Carter’s voice is insistent, now, almost demanding. “Where were you before?”
“Johto, doing another run through--”
“ Johto? How’d you get here without realizing?!”
It gets louder, all of a sudden, as a semi passes them, and Ash pretends he doesn’t hear her.
They don’t talk more after that.
They round the top of a long incline, and Ash can see the buildings of a small town. He shivers in the chill, which bites its way through the coat he’s been given. His shoulder hurts. A lot.
She doesn’t talk to him until they reach the first building. “I’m taking you to the hospital. You’ve probably got hypothermia, and your shoulder…”
“Yeah?”
“Were you shot?”
He doesn’t answer, and she coasts to a stop. She turns to look at him. “Were you shot?” Carter repeats, more insistently.
“...what do you think ?”
Her lips purse. She doesn’t say anything, but Ash thinks that she is annoyed.
He’s sort of trying to annoy her. Sure, it’s a jerky thing to do, but he’s having a really bad time right now, and she’s asking too many questions. “Pikachu to the Pokemon Centre first,” Ash says.
“You’re hurt more.”
“I don’t care. Pikachu first.”
“We’re going to the hospital.”
They’re going nowhere with this argument, even as Ash insists once more they go to the PokeCentre, but Carter is one controlling the motorbike--not that Ash could if he tried, since he’s pretty sure it’s a two-handed thing--and she drives forward. Probably to the hospital.
Ash sinks down, skulking, feeling Pikachu press into him a little harder. “Hold on, buddy. We’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna get you all fixed up.”
Pikachu agrees with Carter, which Ash thinks is pretty stupid, but whatever.
They’re almost there, and it’s this sort of soporific silence, snow blanketing the town so it’s almost asleep, when everything goes to shit.
For the second time today.
The thug with the gun is here, and they’ve got it aimed straight for him.