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Clemont props Ash’s arm on his knee before he sprays the disinfectant, coaxing a near silent hiss from his friend. “Ash,” he starts, tiredness creeping into his voice that somehow wasn’t related to their sleepless nights, “Why do you keep doing this?”
“Doing what?” He’s rocking in his place, still a bit woozy from the hit to his head that he took on just a while earlier. Clemont had wrapped that one up first, pulling away Ash’s hair with one of Bonnie’s headbands (one of many that she bought on an impulse with Serena’s encouragement) before applying the bandage, having slightly changed his position to make it easier for him.
Not that Ash ever makes things easier, when the problem first starts.
He thought that maybe he just really cared about everyone, back when he first witnessed this type of behaviour. That he was simply a really strong empath, willing to work just as hard as Pokémon themselves. When he jumped off Prism Tower on their first night diving towards Pikachu, he had assumed it was the result of a lifelong bond that connected them and drove him forward, and that’s still true to this very day. But somehow he keeps finding evidence that it’s never really that simple, when something has anything to do with Ash.
He wanted to understand him, is what he’s saying. He wanted to be him, brave and strong.
He sighs, bending over a little to his left without shifting so he could get the roller bandage out of the first aid kit. “You didn’t have to jump in front of everyone, you know. We could’ve waited for the mother Noivern to calm down before getting out of the cave.”
Ash bites his lip, furrowing his eyebrows as his fists instinctively tightened (it loosened with a small warning tap). “I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing, Clemont! What happened if it came any closer and took one of you guys down?”
“I’m not implying that you should’ve done nothing in the first place, Ash. It’s just that exercising caution would really minimise the amount of injuries and near misses that you keep going through.” He tilts his head as he loops the bandage around, squeezing one finger in to make sure it wasn’t on too tight. Maybe he was also avoiding the harsh burn of the trainer’s eye contact, but that was irrelevant at the moment. “It also seems that you’re forgetting that we can also protect ourselves as well, in case the first plan didn’t work.”
“I don’t regret it, if that’s what you mean.” Sometimes Ash was perceptive, scarily so. It’s another thing that he came to realize through their journey, and it made him feel like there was a mirror reflecting his own image back at him. “Sometimes you have to go out and do something yourself instead of hiding and waiting for it to happen to you.”
Normally Clemont wouldn’t rise to something like that. Normally he would look away, back down, excuse it as a long day with some hard times. But it was late and one of his friends suffered through a needless attack, and the reason he left the Gym in the first place is to learn whatever it was that made Ash so much better— that is to say, maybe Ash is rubbing off on him, or just rubbing him off. “Are you insinuating that I’m a coward?”
“I’m just saying that you’re the one overthinking everything and making it more complicated than it really is.” He’s getting more tense, his muscles bunched up beneath skin and popping out the temporary bandaid he stuck on it to keep it from unravelling. It flutters down, along with one coil of the wrapping over his upper arm. “You can’t guarantee that all of your plans will work. There are times where you don’t even get the luxury to make a plan, and you just have to go with what works best. I didn’t want to fight the Noivern, but if you guys are in danger then there’s no contest about what I’ll be doing.”
He sighs, wishing he knew how to properly tie up arguments, or at least this bandage. Nudging his glasses a little higher, he says, “And what if you’re in danger? You can’t expect to survive everything that comes around, and luck can’t last forever. One day you’re going to end up with more than a few bruises, and I…”
Ash throws his head up, facing him with that force (that dragged him here, somewhere out of his city and comfort zone and into a world so beautiful and yet terrifying); the set of his jaw sure, his gaze tough, shoulders straightened. “Trust me, I’ve survived a lot and I know how to get out of it okay. I’m not an easy person to knock down, so don’t worry about me and focus your energy on what you can do.”
Peeling off another bandaid, this time decorated with a Flabebe, Clemont chews the inside of his cheek. Of course he knows that Ash is capable; his experience has always been worn on his sleeve from the moment he spotted his red cap disappear through the doors of the Lumiose Gym. He’s seen the way he so effortlessly connects with Pokémon and trains side by side with them, and he’s dedicated many nights thinking about the way he rips through obstacles like a tsunami.
But human bodies can only take you so far. Their minds too. It’s something he can’t help knowing too, and the way Ash tries to shake that fact as if it’s a stray droplet is alarming to say the least. He realises that he was losing his footing on the proverbial mountain he was scaling and decides to throw out whatever sticks. “‘Trust me’, says the trainer who is stuck at two in the morning because he won’t admit that he was injured in a fight with the Sound Wave Pokémon.”
“That’s pretty rich coming from the guy whose inventions blows up!” But Ash is laughing, and somehow even that is infectious, and Clemont's mind is still working on overtime regardless of that bubbly lightness because he just can’t help but wonder where does this power end. If it’s enough to tackle Legendaries. If it’s enough to conquer the heat death of the galaxy. If it’s enough to survive his sacrificial streak.
He sticks the last bandaid just below his left ear. The last order of business is to find a way to tie up that stubborn bandage, and so he turns around to rummage through his bag for something that would work. “Seriously, though,” he starts again, once more feeling that pall wash over him. “You should take care of yourself more often. I don’t want to see you get hurt, and neither does everyone else. Even your Pokémon are getting worried.” And even they are getting more reckless, but that’s a problem for another time.
Ash's tone still has notes of joy in it, even as he goes for the same argument in their personal loop code from the Distortion World. “I told you, I can handle it. We’re not doing all this trainin’ for nothin’, y’know!”
It’s getting late. The moon is hanging over them, a silver of its former glory, and the girls are sleeping soundly nearby. No one else is awake but them. It feels like they’re stuck in some sort of liminal space, going around in the same circles trying to prove their point to the other: to be safe but sorry or hurt yet helpful. Neither of them are giving an inch. They don’t know what the future will bring. It doesn’t matter either way.
“You can’t train for every possibility. One day the danger will catch up with you, and then what is everyone going to be left with?”
There’s this ache that’s been resting in Clemont’s chest that he just can’t shake. It’s this wanting that crawls up his throat and hurts his head, and its pull gets stronger the longer he stays with Ash. He starts to feel like throwing himself in harm's way too. He’s been accumulating more bite marks in the last few weeks than he has in the last five years. He’s starting to lose sight of his original goal whenever he catches that familiar grin right before a battle (like this talk right now).
The League is coming soon. And then they’ll part ways, and it’s highly likely that Ash will throw himself in front of another big problem in another region. He won’t be his responsibility anymore, and yet…
Ash flashes him a quick smile and gives him a thumbs up with his free arm, marked with old scratches and new bandages. “You can train for anything if you’re creative enough. And besides, nothing bad has happened yet. Anything that pops up, I’ve got you guys and my Pokémon to back me up.”
He can’t stop worrying. It’s a bad habit, just like Ash and his endless hunger, or Serena dabbling in too many side hobbies, or Bonnie and finding women that were twice his age to marry him with. He likes to think that this habit of worrying is more well-founded though, even if the others are always berating him for it and even if it concerns things like ghosts and a particular someone not eating enough veggies. It does seem that grey hairs were in his future, though, if he ever got to live that long. Maybe by then, Ash would’ve stabilised a little more, and maybe the world would stop ending, and maybe Clemont can finally put a word to the string of unexplained reactions he’s been experiencing. Maybe his inventions would stop exploding. Maybe his friends’ dreams will finally come true. Maybe he’ll stop losing arguments, like right now.
(What can he say? One touch and it feels like his neurons are firing fireworks)
(This battle was over before it had begun.)
He starts to slow down with his searching, bogged down by too many conflicting thoughts. He wants him to be safe, he wants him to be free, he wants to protect everyone, he wants to sequester them into a small pocket of space away from everything bad. Technology and Pokemon. Big dreams and a fearful heart. Ash makes a questioning sound and Clemont shakes his head before resuming his efforts, and it takes everything in him to bite his tongue. To respond with, “I know you’ve been through a lot, but I’m here for you, no matter what. I’m sure that the others are willing to support you too. Just don’t do this alone. Please.”
Ash avoids eye contact when Clemont looks up from the minute-long silence, and the Heliolisk-Light hums fill the background and the small space between them. He’s not thinking, judging by his reaction. From the looks of it, it feels like he’s weighing his options, like when he’s making strategies on the way to a new Gym. It’s around ten seconds later when he closes his eyes and says, “If you really feel that way, then I’ll hold myself back more in the future, okay? I’m sorry that this is hurting you guys, but I have to warn you that it’s not in me to stand by when a battle’s gonna start.”
“I know.” It’s the best he’ll ever get, from him anyways.
“...I’m— Sorry. Really.”
Aren’t they both. Don’t they both know it, how easy it is to put your tongue to the roof of your upper palette, the tip right behind the top of two front teeth to hiss before arching your lips to make an O shape, then following it up by rolling the tongue and throwing the word down. It’s a practised method. Skipping out on the people you love in pursuit of a larger goal, holing yourself up in the process. It’s only that Clemont is finally opening up, seeing them and learning how to balance his responsibilities with his dreams right when Ash is merging them into some sort of monster, haunting him and everyone who ever cares. Because that’s just who Ash is: someone who gets mixed up with dancing instructions and eats too fast and will follow you/lead you through life and death and order. Someone with too many scars to count.
There must be something broken in his own internal system to love someone like him, so wild and untamed. Unpredictable, fierce, soft, a contradiction so vast he could spend lifetimes making codes to encapsulate a small fraction of him and never get close.
That’s just who Ash is. And this just ends up being the hill they’ll die on, at least for tonight.
“Just… try for me, okay? For all of us.”
The shape of Ash’s eyes crumple, making him look forlorn and so much older than he really is. He turns his head a little, holding his breath before letting it go. “I’ll do my best.”
His fingers brush against an unfamiliar object. He pulls it out of the inner pocket it was in to find a hair pin. He remembers how he was stuck moving around the Gym and the lab upstairs while waiting for Ash before he noticed his hair was a lot longer, ever since he was first kicked out of this home in the first place. To make it easier for himself he bought the clip to hold it away from his eyes after visiting his father, and he had it on for a total of a day before mustering up the energy to just trim his hair after a gruelling battle. When rushing out after the others he must’ve thrown that in as well, maybe as a spare equipment part should he need it. There wasn’t much else to say about it; it was unremarkable, a solid black, purely functional. It wouldn’t be missed. Its potentials are limitless and yet it was used to save a hurting arm.
“I hope so.”
He snaps it over the flagging piece of bandage and cuts off the excess.