[fanfic] kettering
Title: kettering
Fandom: Pokémon
Summary: She wants to have meaning more than her infantile mind can articulate.
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Tragedy, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Character Study.
Warnings: language, unethical medical practices, confusing use of pronouns, character death, AU.
kettering
They called her Kris, and she was different from the other donors.
She notices even though they think she doesn't; it's hard not to. Her body does not develop at a normal pace. Why, just a few months ago Kris had been just as tall as Max M. and Liza T., who were seven-years-old, but now - now Kris has wide hips and breasts like Christy L., who is turning eighteen next Tuesday and will be able to start donating soon.
Kris does not understand why she is different. Isn't she meant to be a donor like the others? The white coats that talk to her do not mention donations or finding Meaning through Completion as much as they do to the others, who hear about those things every day.
Perhaps this is because Kris is a "she" and not a "they" like the others are. But this is a secret she isn't supposed to tell anyone else. One of the white coats said so. The teachers reprimand her for thinking she is a "she," because she isn't the only Kris. She simply borrowed her name from the real one, the girl that lives outside these walls and looks up at the sky and breathes the fresh air. They tell her that she is simply one half of a whole, that one day she will become a part of the Kris from the outside and then they will be Complete. That will be the day that Kris lives solely on the Outside, whole and free.
Kris should be happy because of this. One day they will become a "she."
(But the words of that one white coat claw at her chest, reminding her that she is not a "they." It is confusing, sometimes.)
- . . . -
Then the day comes when that one white coat goes away, and Kris forgets that they were ever a "she."
- . . . -
Kris gets a lot of injections - a history of a rushed becoming mapped out on the alabaster of their skin. Their joints ache for hours afterwards, sometimes even for days.
The white coats put them into large machines once every two days that make loud noises, like the monster that lives in the air vents above their bed. Kris has learned to try her best to give the machines what they want. If they don't, the white coats always cut into her to remove masses of deformed flesh from her body.
They do not mind the injections much, not even the loud machines or the cutting, really. In between treatments the white coats let Kris read books with pictures of Outside, and the things they see in those pages makes it all worth it. The other donors do not get to see these pictures; it reminds Kris that they are special, that perhaps they will Complete sooner than the others.
The thought fills them with effervescent glee, bubbling up from within them until Kris laughs so hard they sob, hot tears streaming down their cheeks.
Kris has never seen the Outside beyond the pictures in the books, but they dream of it almost every night. In their dreams, Kris sees the world as gloriously and breathtakingly beautiful, unattainable, like a kite floating into the horizon, replete with color. Kris thinks it would be a beautiful sight to see - all those colors, any color besides the white of the walls and the blue of their hair and the red of their skin after the injections.
In their dreams, Kris always holds the kite before letting it go.
In their waking hours, Kris wants to fly a real kite more than anything.
(If only to know what it is like to live a dream).
- . . . -
Kris often wonders what it feels like to be Complete.
They imagine what it will be like, to have this heart pumping blood and these lungs filled with life, spreading it through the Other's breast, to every cell of her body.
Kris likes to imagine that their hair will darken to the color of chocolate when they finally become a "her" (but - but isn't she a "her" now?), the kind the white coat used to give them and the other donors when they were good. They think of how it would feel to have someone run their fingers through that chocolate hair, made smooth and rich and endless.
When they aren't dreaming of the kites and the Outside, they dream of strong arms that hold them close, their head resting against a firm chest, their ears filled with the steady thrum of the other person's heartbeat. The person always calls them "she" or "her" too.
They think that it would be nice, to have someone do that for them.
- . . . -
And then one day everything stops.
The injections, the visits to the machines, the cutting and the examinations - all of it just stops.
Kris passes their newfound time by sketching kites. They press the dark point of her pencil to all the surfaces in their little room - the walls, the bed sheets, the furniture. They draw until the fine point has been reduced to a dulled, stubby thing that leaves faded gray marks instead of the bold black from before.
But they don't stop drawing.
Soon every inch of their room is covered with kites, soaring against the white of the walls.
They stare at their hands, smudged with dusty black, and wonder when they will be allowed the privilege of Completion.
They hope it's soon.
So Kris waits.
- . . . -
Kris wants to have Meaning more than their child's mind can articulate.
The other donors leave one by one, but Kris stays in their room of faded kites, their pencil long exhausted of lead.
If they aren't a donor then - then what's left for them?
Kris is too scared to find out.
- . . . -
The men in black uniforms come to Kris's room one day to take them away.
They march them through the whitewashed halls, past the disapproving looks of the white coats and the curious, somewhat envious stares of the other donors. The men stuff Kris into a windowless room and use a strip of cloth to cover their eyes. Kris is scared, especially when the room rumbles to life and begins to move.
They didn't know rooms could move. It must be on the count of the wheels.
Kris wonders if they're taking them for donation. For some reason, the thought fills them with more dread than jubilation, and they begin to cry, the warm moisture seeping into the rough fabric of the blindfold.
When the room stops moving, the men pick Kris up and haul them outside. They lead them down a winding path, two hands clamped around their wrists like vices. Those hands eventually leave their sore wrists and pull at the blindfold covering their eyes. They blink, the fluorescent lighting harsh and unforgiving, and sees nothing but sterile walls, the kind they've always known.
And Kris feels like crying again. They'd always hoped that they would be able to see color before they Completed.
The men tell Kris to wait and leave them in that room, closing the door behind them.
It is cold.
Regret washes over them with an intensity their five-year-old consciousness is not ready for, but their nineteen-year-old brain is all too capable of perceiving. Kris has been waiting for this moment all their life, but now that it has finally come, they suddenly don't want to give it up. It doesn't matter that it was never Kris's life to begin with - it is the other Kris's - but - but…
Those thought are absurd, they remind themselves (though it sounds more like the harsh voice of one of the white coats, a reprimand). Kris will be Complete. Kris will have Meaning.
Kris will be able to fly a kite, feel the pull of the wind against their hands. Kris will finally know what it is like to have their dreams come true.
The tears won't stop coming, though.
But when the door opens, there are no men in black suits. There are no doctors in white coats. There is no Other staring at Kris with identical azure eyes, arms outstretched to welcome them into her body.
There is only a boy with sharp gray eyes and a tired-looking face. They wear a black suit, just like the men, but their hair, slicked back along their skull, is a shade of red that Kris has never seen before. The sight is jarring against their eyes in its beauty, makes their mouth drop open in awe as the boy eyes them critically, harshly. Kris curls into themselves, trying to hide from their stare. In response, the boy seems to recoil, eyes dropping away from Kris and resting on the floor, almost ashamed.
"Get up," they demand, voice hoarse, "You look pathetic curled in that corner."
Shakily, Kris complies, their back resting against the wall for support. They are trembling. Is this it?
"My name is Silver," they say.
Oh, Kris thinks with a pang. This boy is not a "they" at all. This boy - this Silver - is a "he." They are almost envious, the feeling bubbling up against the back of their throat. It tastes bitter.
"We are Kris," they reply, voice hesitant and soft.
They have never spoken to a real person before (Kris is not sure if they are even allowed to), but they feel as if they must introduce themselves back - it is only polite.
The boy recoils again, his gray eyes darting from the tiles to Kris's face.
"We?" he repeats, voice incredulous.
They nod choppily, arms wrapped around their torso tightly.
"We are sorry to offend you. Is - is this…?" they swallow, force the lump in their throat down, the questions burning at their tongue. "Are we to Complete, now?"
Kris's eyes fall to the floor deferentially, so they do not see the furious look that crosses the boy's pale face, twists his austere features into something dangerous.
"Look at me," the boy orders.
Kris can't. Doesn't this boy know that lowly halves like them are nothing compared to real people like him?
"Look at me," he repeats, a note of impatience edging into his voice.
Hesitantly, Kris does.
His gaze is intense, penetrating, and Kris wishes that they could look away; it as if those gray eyes are tearing into them and reading every thought that flits across their mind.
"Your name is Kris," he says.
Kris's eyes go wide, uncomprehending. Hadn't they just said that?
"Yes," they confirm, trying very hard not to offend him, "our name is Kris."
With a frustrated huff, the boy crosses the room over to Kris in long strides. Their eyes drop when he puts his hands on their shoulders, the grip tight. The scent he exudes is overwhelmingly tangy and sweet, strong. It makes them lightheaded.
"No," he says impatiently. "Your name is Kris. It belongs to you. It's yours - only yours."
Kris can't help themselves - they shake their head.
Silver shakes her, his grip almost painful now.
"Say it," he snaps. "Say it's yours."
"I can't," Kris chokes out almost frantically. "It's our name."
Kris is a borrowed name. This Kris is not worthy of owning it, but the other Kris is. It's hers, not theirs.
But Kris really wants it. Kris wants this name to be hers, wants to taste the emancipation that comes with the feel of it rolling off her tongue when qualified by the forbidden possessive singular pronoun that had been buried beneath years of repetition and reprimands if she was ever presumptuous enough to assert a sense of self.
The words of the white coat - the one who was kind and always reminded Kris that they were special, that they were really a "she" - return to the forefront of their mind.
"M-my…" they begin haltingly, staring at Silver's chest, at the red 'R' stitched over where his heart is. When his hands tighten on their shoulders again, they look up and meet his eyes involuntarily.
"Say it," Silver says again, except his voice is softer this time.
"My name," Kris whispers, staring straight into Silver's gray eyes. Then, suddenly, a surge of courage runs through their - no, her body, "My name is Kris..."
My name is Kris. My name is Kris. I am Kris.
Something shines dully in Silver's eyes.
"Yes," he affirms. His grip on her loosens. "Your name is Kris."
His voice doesn't sound authoritative or cruel anymore. Now it just sounds sad.
Kris continues staring at Silver. She stares at the red of his hair, the way the light catches on the strands and makes them shine.
It feels like she is holding a thousand kites in her hand, like they are carrying her into the sky along with them.
- . . . -
Silver tells her that he is going to take her home. Kris is not quite sure how to feel about this, but she cannot suppress the surge of excitement that makes its way through her, wild and all consuming, no matter how hard she tries. She imagines this feels like what it's like to be free.
"Is your home on the Outside?" she asks eagerly.
Silver frowns (he seems to do that a lot, Kris thinks), as if he is not quite sure what she means.
"What do you mean by 'Outside?'"
Before Kris can answer him, Silver's frown deepens, stumbling upon the meaning of what she'd meant without having to hear the answer.
"Yes," he confirms. "It's Outside."
Kris feels ashamed of herself. Silver is being kind to her when he doesn't have to be and here she is, reminding him of all the things that makes them different. Silver is real and Kris isn't.
But then there is the feeling of something warm and firm on the small of her back, and she realizes that it is Silver's hand, guiding her out of that little room, down the hallways and back to one of those moving rooms.
It's firm and steady, Silver's hand, and Kris thinks that maybe if he keeps it there long enough he can help anchor her into something real.
She would like that very much - Kris wants to be real too.
"This is my car," Silver says, his voice a bit gruff.
Kris nods, feigning awareness so that she doesn't keep reminding Silver of what sets them apart.
She expects to be blindfolded like she was before, but Silver makes no move to do so. Instead, he fishes into the pocket of his dark pants and fishes out a jangly set of keys, sticking one of them into a small receptacle in the door that Kris hadn't noticed before. As if by magic, a clicking sound comes from the car, and Silver opens his door and sits down in the seat, sticking his keys into another receptacle by the wheel.
Before closing the door, he turns his head to regard Kris with an impatient expression.
"Are you coming or not?" he asks irritably. "Get in the car."
Kris nods repeatedly, the motions making her frizzy blue hair bob up and down, and rushes to open one of the other doors - the one directly behind Silver's - and sits down.
Silver sighs but says nothing else. He just twists the key and the car rumbles to life, making Kris's heart trill with excitement.
She doesn't want to mess this up and make Silver mad at her. She hopes she doesn't make Silver mad at her.
She closes her eyes and thinks that thought very, very hard, hoping that if she does it hard enough it'll come true.
- . . . -
Silver's house isn't a house at all. It's a very large room on the top floor of a very large building, so large that it seems to touch the cloudless cerulean sky. The elevator ride up makes Kris feel lightheaded and her ears pop, but it doesn't seem to affect Silver much, because when the elevator dings again and the doors open, he walks into the room without stumbling.
He shows her to a room with a great big window that opens up onto a small terrace outside. The view from there is so beautiful - she can see all the other buildings, even the spot where the blue of the sky meets the blue of the ocean she'd read so much about in her books. When Silver tells her to come back inside, she notices that when the doors stay open, the yellow curtains flutter like sheets of sunlight whenever the wind blows.
"This will be your room," Silver tells her, and Kris's heart catches in her throat.
"Mine?" she repeats disbelievingly, her eyes wide.
"Yes," he affirms, watching her soak it all in - the soft bed sheets, the impossibly high ceilings, the plush carpet beneath her bare feet, the large mirror that sits on a regal antique dresser, the large closet filled with clothes so many different colors her eyes feel like they're about to burst from the sight of them.
Kris's eyes begin to sting and the room begins swimming. She turns away from Silver and touches her fingers to her cheeks. They come back wet.
It's her room. This room is hers.
"T-thank you," she murmurs.
Silver says nothing. When Kris turns around, he has already gone.
- . . . -
It may be Silver's house, but he isn't home very often.
On one of the days that he does come home, looking weary and exhausted and worse than the last time she'd seen him, Kris makes it a point to ask him for colored pencils.
He waves her request off dismissively, but the very next morning Kris wakes up to find a large box of them sitting on her nightstand. She opens it almost reverently and finds that there are more than a hundred colors squeezed into that box.
Kris takes them and draws colorful kites on her walls - one for each color in her box.
- . . . -
Sometimes Kris sits in front of the mirror on her dresser and stares at her reflection for hours on end, inspecting every detail of her face, her hair, and the creamy skin of her neck and breasts. Mirrors weren't allowed where she used to live, so this is the first time she can acquaint herself with how she looks.
There is something strange about the girl staring back at her from the glossy surface of the mirror - the tilt of her head, the blue of her eyes. She looks odd and unfamiliar, like a stranger. When she runs her hands over the contours of her body, she finds that it feels foreign - she doesn't remember having it last year, not even a few months ago.
If she stares hard enough and she is very sleepy, she might just catch a flash of brown shining in her eyes, covering her hair like a thin veneer. It hovers infinitesimally in the mirror for the briefest of seconds. Whenever she blinks her red-rimmed eyes to get a better look, the ghostly image fades.
She thinks it would be very pretty to have hair and eyes the color of chocolate. She wishes the girl in the mirror always looked like that.
- . . . -
Kris is well taken care of. Silver is seldom home but an older lady with gray hair and kind eyes comes by everyday to make Kris food and clean the floors, the clothes - everything, even when they aren't dirty. Kris likes her. Her name is Mathilda and she makes really good macaroni and cheese, which Kris had recently discovered is her favorite and won't stop eating, asking that Mathilda make her that for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Mathilda talks to her about little things, like how pretty her hair is and how she's such a kind, well-mannered young lady. Kris has to stop herself from saying that no, she isn't pretty, because her hair is blue and not brown and it doesn't look right. That would be impolite.
Television is but one of the many discoveries Kris made when she came to live with Silver. It is one of her favorite things to watch, not because of the shows, but because it's such a wondrous device. She understands that there aren't actually people in there, but the childish part of her always enjoys pretending that they actually are.
One day when she is watching the news, which is actually really, really boring but fun to imitate with hand puppets, the anchors are talking about something called Team Rocket. Thinking of outer space, Kris turns up the volume eagerly. Before she can hear more about it, though, Mathilda races into the room and turns off the television, looking flushed.
When she asks why she did that, Mathilda just smiles thinly at her and says that lunch is ready. Except it isn't. Kris has to wait at the table for fifteen whole minutes before Mathilda lays the steaming plate of macaroni and cheese in front of her.
Kris would ask, but she gets the feeling that she wouldn't get an answer anyway.
So she doesn't.
- . . . -
Whenever Silver is home, he spends most of his time in his private office. Kris had been hesitant to visit him there at first, but after not seeing him for days, she decided to go in anyway. There are questions she needs answered, even if it is rude to ask someone as busy as Silver.
The room is dark, the curtains drawn and the windows shut. The only source of illumination in the room is a lamp on the finely carved mahogany desk. When he looks up from the papers he was reading, the light casts eerie shadows on half of his face, the gray in his only visible eye shining with something indefinable.
"Why am I here?" she asks over the lump in her throat, wringing her hands behind her back nervously.
The happiest moment in her life was when Silver came to get her out of that place, but she knows that this isn't her life to live or her freedom to enjoy. She wasn't supposed to see the Outside with her own eyes. She wasn't supposed to breathe its air with her own lungs. Those were all privileges afforded to the other Kris - the real one.
"I'm not an Original," Kris whispers softly. "I'm not allowed to be here."
I don't even know what I am, she doesn't say.
"Does my Original need me?" she goes on to ask, the question making her throat unbearably thick and sticky. "Does - does she need me to…?"
The shadows have deepened and twisted around Silver's face. They make him look like a monster with half a face, sharp teeth gleaming dangerously in the lamplight.
"She doesn't need anything," Silver snaps harshly. "She's dead."
His eye has gone dark and opaque, even with the yellow light from the lamp shining directly on him. He still looks terrifying - like something out of a nightmare - but Kris isn't scared anymore. Her chest shouldn't feel as light as it does. She shouldn't feel like if she jumped off her balcony she would be swept up whimsically by the wind, feather-light and gloriously free.
Does feeling relieved at the news make her a bad person? Looking at the expression on Silver's face, she thinks it does.
"Oh," she says quietly, the feeling spreading to her head. She sways precariously on her feet, and puts a hand on the smooth surface of the desk to steady herself. She's trying so hard not to smile that it hurts. "Oh."
"It was terminal cancer," Silver continues, sucking in breath like it's physically painful for him to do so. "It started as a mole - a fucking freckle. Just a little insignificant speck on her back that ended up spreading everywhere. Her lungs, her chest, her kidneys... even her brain. We fought it with chemo and radiation but by the time we were done she was going into multiple organ system failure and she needed transplants."
"Then why wasn't I -,"
"Because creating something like you is expensive," he snaps angrily. His hand tightens to a fist in the area right over his heart. "By the time I did get enough money, it was already too late. I paid them millions extra so that you'd be ready in time. But she gave up before you were ready," he pauses, single eye blinking rapidly. Kris expects him to cry, but instead, he barks out a laugh. It sounds choked, like he's gasping for air. "She wouldn't have taken them, anyway. She thought it was inhumane, that it was 'morally bankrupt.' She wouldn't hear of it. Always the fucking goody-goody Champion to the very end."
The relief that had washed over Kris is replaced by something bitter and scalding. Her fake heart twists at his words, tears stinging at her eyes and threatening to spill over.
Something like you.
"So I'm here to replace her," Kris murmurs. It is not a question.
"You're here because I was the one that ordered you made," Silver says tiredly.
Nothing can ever replace her, he doesn't say. It doesn't make it any less audible, though.
He wants to say it and they both know it.
That's all that matters, anyway - intentions, reasons, purpose.
Meaning.
Kris thought she was different. In the end, it turns out that she was made for the same reasons all the others were - to save an Original, to find Meaning in continuing their laughably fragile lifespans.
She feels foolish to have thought any different. To have thought that Silver… that Silver might…
- . . . -
Every night, Kris would turn on her side to look at the sketches of kites on her wall before falling asleep. She would let her eyes trace each and every one and think my name is Kris; I am Kris until she almost believes it.
But tonight, the memory of her conversation makes everything different, his words echoing in her mind again and again. The words that had once offered her freedom when they rolled off her tongue feel constricting now-a new prison to keep her bound.
Something like you.
Something, not someone.
She looks at the kites and they look fake. Feel fake. Are fake.
Kris shifts to her other side so she doesn't have to see them, and closes her eyes so tight she sees stars.
- . . . -
Silver keeps something called a computer in his office. Kris may never have used one before, but she knows what they're used for. She knows that there's something called the Internet - that it has all the information anyone could ever want. She knows that it's free.
Kris sneaks into Silver's office when Mathilda is gone for the night and she is sure that he isn't coming home. Tiptoeing in the dark room, groping blindly at the air around her to guide her toward the desk. She stubs her toe twice, once against a bookshelf and again against the desk itself, so she has to hop on one foot to the grand leather chair behind the desk. She remembers how, whenever she'd peaked into the office, the chair had framed Silver's frame in the darkness, accentuating his form and making him look authoritative, imposing. It dwarfs Kris, though, making her look small and inconsequential.
Biting her lip anxiously, Kris bends down in her chair to start up the device, fumbling around for the power button. When she hits it, the high-end machine whirs to life quickly, illuminating her face in cool blue tones. The screen is blinding at first, but her eyes adjust themselves by the time the log in screen comes up.
On the screen there are two options - Silver and Kris. Kris swallows hard, her heart beating a little too quickly. The other Kris used this computer, too?
Without thinking, she uses the mouse to drag the pointer to the second option, represented by a picture of an odd-looking creature with joyful red eyes and a leaf jutting out from the top of its head. Instead of signing her on, however, the computer prompts her for a password.
Digging her teeth into her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, she types something in at random. The computer denies her access.
Curiously, a small question mark-shaped icon appears. When Kris clicks on it, a text bubble pops up that reads 'the last thing you'd ever expect it to be, Silv.'
An odd feeling sweeps over her chest, equal parts jealous and awed. Her Original wrote that.
On a whim, she types in Kris only to be denied again. Similarly, with Champion the computer also denies her access.
She isn't the Original Kris. She doesn't know what the password is.
Before she retreats back to her room, however, she knows that she has to give it one last time. She tries to imagine what it would be like to be the Original Kris. She imagines what is most important to her, what she treasures most. The only thing that comes to mind is the fleeting dream of her time spent in that sterile room when the scientists were testing on her - to be held by someone, someone who would call her a "her" and not a "they."
Achingly slow, she lets her fingers drag across the keyboard and press the keys. Nervously, she presses enter…
The screen shifts immediately - 'Welcome, Kris' it reads, and it flashes to a picture of her - the Original Kris, just a few years younger than this Kris in the photo - and Silver, smiling at the camera as if they didn't have a care in the world.
Blinking in shock, she stares at the picture wonderingly.
The password was Silver.
- . . . -
The computer becomes as much of a nightly ritual as staring at herself in the mirror. Every night she pads across the hall to Silver's office and logs-in as the Original Kris. Each night she tries to find out more and more.
The first thing she searches for is where she came from, both figuratively and literally. The search engines spit back thousands of links detailing the life of her Original. Overwhelmed, Kris finds a simple looking page with a white background and begins to read.
Her Original, she learns, was born in a small town called Newbark.
Adventurous and inquisitive from a young age, the bio reads, Kris left home on her twelfth birthday after receiving her starter pokémon from Professor Elm. This pokémon, a chikorita, would become her trademark in later years - a stunningly powerful meganium that is forever inscribed into our collective memory as the pokémon that singlehandedly defeated former Champion Lance's entire team of dragon pokémon.
The bio goes on to describe her exploits.
Second youngest Pokémon League Champion in all of history, first female Champion of the Kanto and Johto regions, Battle Tower Champion… the list goes on and on.
She wonders where her pokémon went after her death. She even types in the question 'what happened to Champion Kris's pokémon?', but no one seems to have an answer for that.
Kris must go through hundreds of sites, soaking up every morsel of information she can about who she was made to Complete. She was brave to a fault, most of the sites agree. She faced her illness with the same courage she faced everything else, like how, with her team of faithful pokémon, she had singlehandedly defeated the villainous Team Rocket, something that the Pokémon League itself was unable to do alone.
And there it is again. Team Rocket.
That's what Kris searches for next.
The results are much less positive. Team Rocket is not a spaceship at all, she learns. It was a criminal organization devoted to profiting off pokémon. Horrified, Kris reads through police reports dealing with the findings of the terrible research they hand conducted on pokémon - an eevee that was able to evolve between its forms and consequently became stuck in an intermediate stage, horribly deformed; a scyther who had its limbs removed and replaced by metal prosthesis. The reports went on and on, the pictures only adding to the horror that was slowly settling over her.
Then the reports became frighteningly recent.
After a five-year lull in activity, Team Rocket had resurfaced. With their original leader missing and the Executives that had been in charge when she challenged them gone, the current leader of the organization was unknown. There was no question, however, that it was Team Rocket that was behind these crimes - theft, murder, robbery. A group of experimental pokémon, recently created, were captured by the police and deemed to be the handiwork of Team Rocket.
The comments on these articles make Kris's heart catch in her throat. They were hopeless, every one of them. Some of them went on to say that they wished Champions Kris or Red were still around, because no one else could ever beat Team Rocket.
The world was sinking into fear and despair, and here she was, living behind these walls like everything was perfectly fine.
The insignia of Team Rocket caught her eye. It is a simple one - a large red 'R' that is usually emblazoned of the front of operatives' uniforms. For some reason, it seems increasingly familiar the more she stares at it. She doesn't know why, though.
She also takes care to search for things regarding donors.
There is little to no mention about it recently, except by a few blog posts that detail how inhumane and unethical the process is.
Breeding other human beings for the express purpose of expanding our lifespans is no different from the selfish experiments of Team Rocket, one blogger had written angrily.
If she searches far enough into the past, Kris can pinpoint the time when the technology became available. It was a decade ago apparently, the technology pioneered and funded by a company known as Silph. Original reports had lauded Silph for its achievements, calling it a breakthrough in medicine, the end to mortality.
There weren't very many articles like the blog post, but there were a few.
All the new information she learns makes her head hurt. She is not quite sure what to make of it, or what to think, so one day she stops searching for things like that altogether, tired of hearing of how smart and accomplished and successful the Original Kris was (she was studying to become a pokémon researcher too, didn't you know?).
Instead, she spends her nights looking up fashion magazines, learning what's in style and what's not, how to take care of your hair, what lipstick color goes best with your complexion.
These things don't make Kris's head hurt nearly as much.
- . . . -
She blinks, and the Kris in the mirror blinks back at her.
Frowning, she runs her hand over her face, down her neck, over her breasts. There is still something wrong. Something that doesn't fit.
Fleetingly, her fingers find a raised bump on her left breast, right beneath the scar of one of the times the white coats cut her.
It's wrong, it's wrong, it's all wrong.
The feeling is smothered down when she sees it again - the flash of brown against mirror Kris's eyes, her hair. It stays longer this time.
Kris blinks.
Not-Kris blinks back.
She sighs wistfully, raising her hand to touch it to the mirror. Laying her index fingers against Not-Kris's chocolate-colored hair, she thinks that this girl is beautiful.
She wishes she could look like her.
- . . . -
Silver comes back one day when Mathilda is still in the house, cooking Kris some macaroni and cheese for dinner. Instead of stalking off into the office, he sits himself across the table from Kris.
"Sir!" Mathilda gasps at the sight of him, flushed with embarrassment. "We weren't expecting you, sir!"
He waves her off irritably, looking more tired than irritated.
"Just give me a plate of whatever she's having."
Kris says nothing to Silver, staring at her fingernails instead. She painted them a color called electric pink this morning. There were more subdued shades of nail polish in the bathroom closet, but the thought that they had belonged to the Original Kris made her not want to touch them. She'd ordered over the Internet instead. The man had brought it right to her door, too. It was such a pleasant surprise.
"Macaroni and cheese?" Silver says, tearing Kris away from admiring her nails.
When she looks up at Silver, he is staring at her incredulously.
"You hate macaroni and cheese."
Kris wrinkles her nose.
"It's my favorite," she corrects him, smiling at Mathilda when she sets it out in front of her.
She goes about eating, not noticing how the look on Silver's face twists into something that looks pained.
"Mathilda," he barks. "Get me something to drink."
They eat their meal in silence, Mathilda hovering anxiously and repeatedly asking Silver if everything is okay. Eventually, he asks her to leave, telling her that she can just wash the dishes when she comes in the next morning. Kris waves goodbye as she walks past.
"What ever happened to her pokémon?" she asks suddenly, watching a string of cheese extend between her fork and the plate as she spears a couple of macaroni.
"What?"
The string keeps getting longer and longer, thinner and thinner.
"You know," she says, drawing out the ending of her words like the magazines said boys found cute, "Kris's pokémon. She was Champion, right?"
Silver narrows his eyes at her over his glass of amber-colored liquid.
"How did you know that?"
Kris rolls her eyes.
"You told me, silly."
She jerks her hand back suddenly, and the string breaks apart. Pouting, she sticks the fork into her mouth.
He doesn't answer her question.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," Kris says around the fork in her mouth, eyes shining dully. "It's really dark in here, you know. The ladies from the fashion magazines say that the key to a happy lifestyle is having a lot of open spaces and natural light -,"
There is the slam of the glass against the table and the sound of the chair scraping against the floor. Silver is staring at her from across the table, his eyes wild. He is standing, and some of his hair has begun to break away from the crust of gel he used to comb it back every morning.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" he demands. It is almost a yell.
The silence is deafening, and Kris wrings her hands in her lap anxiously, not quite sure how to react.
"N-nothing is wrong with me," she whispers, "I'm fine. I'm - I'm me."
"No you're not," Silver retorts hotly. "You - Kris - she was never this vapid. She never read those stupid magazines, or talked like that, or liked macaroni and cheese!" he grabs his plate and hurls it against the wall. It shatters, and Kris squeals in fear, "Are you - are you defective? Well? Answer me!"
"I'm not her!" she screams. She is rocking back and forth in her chair, hands covering her ears in an effort to shield herself. "I'm not real! I'm not - I'm not - I'm not!"
Silver stares at her silently for a few moments. Then, he turns away.
"You're right about that," he hisses, "You're nothing like her. You're useless."
He walks away after that, his footsteps stomping down the hallway.
She doesn't stop rocking back and forth, not even when she hears the door of his office slam shut.
All she can think about is the sight of that 'R,' red and imposing, emblazoned on Silver's chest - right over his heart.
- . . . -
When she finally manages to get back to her room and seat herself in front of her mirror, she expects to see ugly red-rimmed eyes and Kris's frizzy blue hair.
But she doesn't see any of that. There is no Other, no Champion mocking her with her kindness and intelligence and bravery. There is only a girl, her hair chocolate brown, her eyes big and wide and not-blue.
With a hitched gasp, she raises her hand to touch at the reflection.
The girl doesn't move with her.
She takes off her clothes to touch at her body, but her hands do not feel the bumpy texture of her scars. She runs her hands through her hair and it is smooth and rich and endless. She doesn't feel the raised skin on her scalp, the bumps on her breasts. Everything is smooth and rich and endless. Everything is perfect.
"What's your name?" she begs the girl. "Please, won't you tell me your name?"
But the girl just smiles at her.
Eventually, she learns to smile back.
- . . . -
She runs away.
She's not entirely sure why, but she knows that Silver is bad. It has something to do with the red 'R,' but everything to do with how he expects her to be Kris when she so clearly isn't. So she can't stay there in that place that belonged to Kris. She can't sleep in Kris's room. She can't steal Kris's life. She can't make Kris's Silver happy. She wants to be happy, so, so badly. She can't do that there.
She leaves when Silver is asleep. She creeps into his office and rummages through his desk drawers, pulling out the stacks of bills he keeps there and stuffing them into her backpack. Just as she is about to close the drawer and leave, she catches sight of something that gleams red. Wonderingly, she plucks it from its confines. It is a ball, wondrously smooth and shiny. With a smile, she puts it into her pocket.
There are papers scattered on the desk. There are words like accelerated cloning process and unexpected physical and mental abnormalities. She doesn't understand what those words really mean (even though something tells her that she should), so she sets the papers down and takes her leave.
Tall lights illuminate the streets of the city, and she feels small and excited all at the same time. She walks down the sidewalk, eyes alight with curiosity as she passes the buildings. Eventually, she comes to a whole other area of town, one where there are men leering at her from alleyways and women in revealing clothing leaning against the brick walls, eying her with hostility. She doesn't know why they're so mean - their clothes look pretty.
A car pulls up to her, and she traipses over to it, leaning over to look the smirking man in the eye.
"Hi baby," he says. "You want to come for a ride?"
But she doesn't really like cars, so she turns him down. He keeps following her down the street though, the car trailing just a few feet behind her. Something urgent tugs at her, and she hurries her steps. The car accelerates to keep up.
The door opens and she starts to run. The man runs after her. She runs until she can't anymore, until there's no place left to go and the man has her cornered.
"C'mon, baby girl. Why did you have to leave so soon?"
He is walking toward her, something vaguely predatory in his movements, and she acts without thinking. She grabs at the ball in her pocket and hurls it at him - anything to keep him away. The man lets out a yell when the ball strikes him in the eye and falls to the floor, a bright flash of light tearing it open.
A green creature appears. It's pretty, she thinks, especially with that flower around its neck.
It looks around curiously, and then its eyes settle on her. They widen, looking like saucers, and it lets out a cry.
"Please!" she cries. "Help me!"
The creature's face sets into something fierce at the sight of the man, who has just begun to back up, arms raised. It charges at him and runs him down, stomping on him angrily. He cries out in pain, but it does not stop until he falls silent. Then, with a small cooing sound, the creature approaches her hesitantly, eyes filled with apprehension.
Maybe she should be scared, but she isn't. She extends her hand out to it, and it cranes its long neck to nuzzle its head into her fingers. She smiles, wondering why there are tears welling over in the creature's eyes.
She didn't know pokémon could cry.
"I'll call you Rose," she says happily, decisively. "Do you want to be my friend, Rose?"
The pokémon lets out a cry, and she beams at it, taking it as agreement.
"I don't have a name all my own yet, so you'll have to help me find one, okay?"
With Rose walking beside her, she walks out of the alleyway, past the mangled body of her pursuer.
- . . . -
People look at her funny. Sometimes they even whisper things like it's the Champion and I thought she was dead. Whenever someone tries to come close enough to ask, Rose growls threateningly, and they leave her alone.
She goes to one of the salons she'd read about in the magazines. Rose waits by the door because pokémon aren't allowed inside. When she sits down in one of those big beauty chairs and the stylist looks at her like she's looking at a ghost, she asks for short brown hair and brown eyes and bright pink nails for her toes and fingers.
It's so relaxing, being made pretty. The stylist runs her fingers through her scalp as she rinses out the dye. It's like a massage. No wonder the magazines say this is so important.
Then the fingers pause. "Honey, there are bumps on your head."
She frowns. "No there aren't."
"Have a feel. No, not there. Right here… Honey, you should go to the hospital. This could be serious."
She shrugs.
"I'm sure it's nothing."
Reluctantly, the lady returns to massaging her scalp.
She sighs happily.
This sure is nice - it's like a massage. No wonder the magazines say this is so important.
- . . . -
Rose almost doesn't recognize her when she walks out of the salon.
"What's wrong, girl?" she asks, bending over to pet at her head/ "Don't you recognize me? I look real pretty, don't I?"
Rose whimpers, but she ignores her, running her fingers over the petals of her flower.
"You're beautiful too, Rose. If I were a pokémon, I'd want to be you."
- . . . -
She catches a glimpse of herself in a boutique's dressing room mirror as she is trying on new clothes. Her hair is brown and her eyes are brown (those 'contacts' were a pain to put in, but her eyes looks so pretty now) and she looks beautiful, perfect, right.
When she walks out in overalls and new flats, the attendant gives her an indulgent smile.
"I think this hat would really suit your hair," she says, and hands her the most precious white hat she's ever seen.
Needless to say, she buys it all.
- . . . -
She is walking down the sidewalk, Rose trailing behind her, when someone bumps into her.
"Sorry, miss!" the boy says.
It's not a problem, she wants to say. Maybe she'll wink like the magazines said she should - he's cute.
But when she opens her mouth, no words come out. She's dizzy all of the sudden, and the world is spinning and before she knows it, she's fallen down.
People begin to gather around her, but Rose steps over her collapsed form and growls with all the ferocious protectiveness that only a pokémon who hasn't seen its trainer in years could possess. The world fades in and out for her, in and out.
At least I look pretty, she thinks dazedly.
Yes, at least there's that.
- . . . -
There's a lot of white where she is now. The walls, the white coats the doctors wear, the sheets that cover her rail-thin body. She thinks she may be back in that place again, but then she sees Silver outside the door talking to one of the white coats and thinks that that can't be right.
There's a nurse fiddling with the machines she's hooked up to. She has brown hair and eyes like she does, and she's very pretty.
"How are you doing, dear?" the nurse asks, bending over to offer her a drink of water.
Lyra, her nametag reads.
That's such a pretty name.
"You were found collapsed on the sidewalk a few blocks from here. Your meganium was quite protective of you, the poor thing. It wouldn't back down until your boyfriend came over," the nurse goes on, tipping the cup back gently so that she can drink. The water rushes down her throat, cool and soothing against her chapped throat.
"Lyra," she reads aloud when the nurse takes away the cup. "Is that my name?"
"No, honey," the nurse says patiently, rubbing a gloved hand up and down her arm soothingly. "That's my name. Your name is Kris."
But she shakes her head no.
"Lyra is much prettier. Call me that."
- . . . -
Silver won't talk to her. He just stands at her bedside, staring at her like she's a ghost.
She - Lyra, it's Lyra, now - knows that he's bad, so she doesn't say anything either.
Lyra expects him to leave, but he stays every night. He talks to the doctor every once and a while, words like cancer and metastasized and inoperable floating around.
When he doesn't think she's looking, Silver hides his face in his hands and cries. Lyra feels bad for him, and a part of her wants to reach out and offer comfort, to hold him and have him hold her and call her a she, a person, a somebody. Lyra would do that for him if he did it for her.
But she knows that Silver is bad, so she pretends to be asleep.
- . . . -
Lyra catches sight of herself in the mirror across the room one day.
The girl that stares back at her is gaunt and skeletal, eyes sunken with blue bruises under her eyes. Her hair is limp and thin. She is ugly.
She turns onto her side so she doesn't have to see her anymore.
- . . . -
She doesn't remember much now.
Food doesn't appeal to her anymore, not even when the sad boy with red hair gives her something yellow and cheesy. She's wasting away, much quicker than she grew up. She's only twenty, the nurses whisper. She had her whole life in front of her, and now it's being taken away. (She is seven-years-old, really, even though she looks much older). It's so unfair. So, so unfair.
But she doesn't think of any of these things. In her last days, Lyra dreams of kites every color in the world. She holds these kites in her hands, and they carry her into the sky - past the treetops and the building tops, past the clouds and into the endless blue where the sea meets the ocean, the taste of salt on her lips.
There's a girl with hair the color of the sky and eyes the color of the ocean waiting for her there, standing on that divide, arms open, smile spreading her pale face open invitingly, welcomingly.
She's so beautiful, Lyra thinks numbly.
Lyra closes her weary eyes - and dreams.