[fanfic] witchcraft
Title: witchcraft
Fandom: Pokémon
Summary: She never wanted to be a mother (but for him, she would do anything). Or, The Rise and Fall of Team Rocket's Goddess Athena.
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Family, Drama, Crime, Romance, Character Study.
Warnings: cursing, speculation.
Notes: I subscribe to the theory that Executive Ariana is Silver's biological mother. I wrote this piece in an attempt to flesh out their rather strained (and lacking) mother-son bond.
"It's over," Archer says.
They are alone in the tunnels under Goldenrod City, having narrowly escaped the Radio Tower before it was filled with black-and-whites. His voice, low and broken, echoes along the grimy walls, and he cannot meet her eyes.
Ariana's hands tighten into fists, manicured nails digging into the calloused skin of her palms.
"What? That's it?" she hisses. "We get beaten by a child and you disband us? Pathetic!"
Her voice is harsh and her words are venomous, but he does not recoil or flinch away from her. Archer simply stares at the floor and the garbage strewn over it, eyes devoid of their usual ambition and purpose. Three years of careful planning and hard work had boiled down to this: defeat at the hands of an eleven-year-old boy. The irony cuts her already wounded pride like a knife, and she grits her teeth against the humiliation-she won't let this happen, not again.
"What would he say?" she grits out, taking a step toward Archer. "Tell me, Archer, what would our Boss say if he saw what you'd have us do?"
"It doesn't matter," Archer replies curtly. "He isn't coming."
The clack of heels against the linoleum floor as she closes the distance between them, the slap of a hand against his cheek.
"Don't you say that!" she nearly screams. "He knows I'm here! He'll come for me, I know it!"
"If we had the boy," Archer returns evenly, pale cheek coloring to a stinging red in the shape of her hand. "Then I'm sure he would."
Ariana seethes, draws her hand back again, but Archer grabs her by the wrist before she can.
"We both know that he would do anything for his heir," Archer says. "The rest of us were always just foot soldiers-easily expendable."
She wrenches her arm out of his grasp and glares at him. He avoids her eyes as he draws himself up and begins to walk away.
An edge of desperation slices into her now-he is the only one that could lead Team Rocket in place of Giovanni; she is too polarizing a figure, too selfish in her reasons for seeking out their Boss, to ever lead. They wouldn't listen to her. She needs Archer, and they both know it.
"What would you have me do?" she demands. She is acutely aware of how pathetic she must sound. "Team Rocket is my life!"
He does not pause, nor does he look over his shoulder at her.
"Proton and Petrel have already escaped to avoid capture," he says flatly. "I suggest that you do the same. Take care, Ariana."
She stands there, stuck to the spot, and watches as he disappears into the shadows. Above her, the fluorescent lights flicker on and off before finally giving out, leaving her behind in the darkness, forgotten.
- . . . -
The police catch up to her a few hours later.
Her hair is wild and her clothes are torn when they find her. She tries to run, but the heel of one of her boots snaps off and she ends up falling to the ground. She had been trying to head west-toward Olivine, toward the sea, but they surround her and demand that she surrender, their standard-issue growlithe barking ferociously.
But she won't give in. Not now. Not ever.
Ariana makes herself get to her feet and smirk at them regally-she is a queen, she will never be caught by the likes of them.
"You think catching me will be easy, hm?" she says, and plucks a poké ball from her belt. "I am Team Rocket's queen, Athena!" she speaks her old codename proudly, like the goddess she is. "Sorry, boys, but your luck ends here!"
There's a flash of light and then Arbok appears, coiling around her feet and hissing threateningly at her pursuers. The growlithe lunge at her, but Ariana is not afraid-the Boss chose her for a reason, after all.
- . . . -
Ariana had been nineteen-years-old when she joined Team Rocket.
She had been young, but anything but innocent-unlike most of the female members of the criminal organization, she did not join out of desperation or necessity. She joined because she loved money and power above anything else, and Team Rocket provided the best opportunity to acquire both.
She gained her fame through the poison-type pokémon she used to kill slowly, through the fullness of her lips, the voluptuous beauty of her full-lipped smile and scarlet hair that spoke of beauty and power and seductive femininity. She was good-one of the best-and she rose through the ranks quickly. They called her Athena because she was a goddess among the grunts, and it was because of this that she was noticed by the Boss himself.
She wasn't a stranger to the advances of men in power-she was just as willing to use them as they were her. When she joined, the Boss's goal had seemed laughable. One man could not rule the world, she had thought. Nevertheless, she had decided to stay in the ranks. Might as well milk the miltank as long as it was alive and kicking, no?
But there was something different about him, with his dark eyes and tight-lipped smiles and custom-made Italian suits. Unlike most of the men Ariana had dealt with, Giovanni did not derive his power from his position; rather, he exuded it himself - with every step he took and each word he spoke.
She knew then that she was dealing with a god among men.
"I've noticed you," he had told her from across his large desk, dark eyes appraising. "You are an exemplary agent. You typify all the traits that a member of this organization should have, perhaps even that a leader has."
"Thank you, sir." Ariana had replied, and she realized that she had been seduced by this man already. She would do anything for him, she decided.
So when Giovanni had requested that she bear him an heir, she hardly batted an eyelash before agreeing.
"You will be well taken care of," Giovanni assured her.
And silly her, she had believed him.
- . . . -
After ten hours of labor, Giovanni's son was born shrieking his tiny lungs out.
Ariana only saw him for a moment-a shock of red hair amid a bundle of white cloth. She had lain in bed, held a cigarette to her lips with shaking fingers, and watched the cause of all her fucking stretch marks be hurried out of the room.
The Boss had decided that it would be best that she not have contact with the child, and Ariana had agreed with him. She never wanted to be a mother; she had only done so because he had asked. Her devotion to him drove her to do incredibly self-sacrificing things (stupid, stupid girl), and perhaps she realized, even then, that Giovanni's heart would never belong to her the way her whole being belonged to him. There were rumors of a plain and simple small-town girl that the Boss had been in love with before his mother, the old Boss, had died and he was forced to take over the organization, but Ariana refuses to believe it. Surely a god like Giovanni could not love a mere mortal. It was impossible.
The years passed, and Giovanni kept his word. He gave Ariana power and wealth, command over hundreds of men and the lifestyle that she had always wanted. She only ever saw the boy in passing (he only had her hair-everything else he had inherited from his father, including the sense that power seemed to lie within him), but she was fine with that. The brat wasn't hers, and she was perfectly fine with that. As long as she was a goddess, that was enough for her.
She still remembers the last time she saw Giovanni. He had just ordered her to oversee the research being conducted in the Sevii Islands along with the other executives. Aside from her orders, he had said nothing else. Ariana remembers that last sight of him, eyes focused on the reports on his desk, ones detailing plans for operations in Mt. Moon and Lavender Town, but most importantly, Silph Co. He was so close to his goals, and it showed in his face.
There were many things she wanted to say to him at that moment, but decided against it. Instead, she had accepted her orders and gotten aboard a chopper with her fellow executives. There would be time for that later. They would have all the time in the world.
When radio contact with HQ was lost, she thought it was a problem with the equipment. Archer ordered the grunts to fix it countless times, but to no avail. The grunts whispered rumors about Giovanni being defeated by a child with red eyes and immeasurable skill. When Ariana heard, she had ordered them to stop spreading such stupid lies and punished them severely. Still, she was concerned. The Boss was usually meticulous about maintaining contact. This was nowhere near ordinary.
She was about to get back aboard the chopper and seek Giovanni out, but then…
Athena was defeated by a boy with plain brown hair and crimson eyes that exuded power with each movement he made and every command he gave his pokémon.
She had stood there in their hideout, pushed against a wall to make room for the boy as he walked by, his expression speaking of terrible boredom and detached apathy.
She had taken the chopper back to the mainland after that to find the hideout under the Celadon casino vacant, the gym abandoned. Her god was nowhere to be seen.
(And the boy - his son - was gone, too.)
In the weeks that followed she would watch her fortune dwindle and her power ebb. But then Archer found her and began speaking of a revival, and despite the fact that Petrel was a blubbering fool and Proton was nothing but a sadist, Ariana allowed herself to believe that they could bring him back.
- . . . -
Ariana never gets visitors, so when the guard announces that she has one, she is more than just a little surprised.
She has been jailed for a little over a year now. She was the only executive of Neo Team Rocket to be captured, so the League took extra care to make an example out of her.
She has fallen far (whereas she was once a queen, she is now powerless to even bend the guards to her will), and does not want anyone to see her this way. But her curiosity has been piqued, and she tells the guard that she will meet this visitor.
The boy that is led to her cell stares at her with contempt, his dark eyes judgmental and unforgiving. She recognizes those eyes, and the red hair that frames his austere features.
She finds that she cannot breathe correctly for some reason, and she splutters a little, drawing an arm around herself as if to protect herself from him.
They stand in silence for endless moments, staring at each other through the bars of her cell. His eyes are searching, and she wonders if he is thinking if it is possible for her to be the woman who gave him life.
(She wonders if he is hoping that she isn't, and cannot blame him. Who would want a washed out criminal as a mother, anyway?)
He is the one to break the silence, finally.
"So you're the woman he had carry his child."
She holds her head high, gathering her shattered pride around herself like a barrier.
"I was the most loyal of his followers," she says, because it's true.
Archer had given up, Petrel had run off like the coward he was, and rumor had it that Proton had found another criminal organization that could make use of his psychopathic sadism. But Ariana had been heading to Olivine to return to Kanto and seek the Boss out there.
But the boy is unimpressed.
"You're a fool," he bites out, and Ariana feels her meager shield shatter. "Figures he'd pick someone as weak as you to push out his kid."
"You do realize," Ariana sneers, tired of the boy's ungratefulness, "that he is your father?"
"I know," the boy replies. "But I'm better than him. I'm not a coward like he was."
Ariana laughs, but it is a hollow one.
"No man could ever equal him. He was a god."
But the boy just smirks smugly. "Which is why an eleven-year old kid stopped him singlehandedly."
Her mouth snaps closed, and she knows that she is defeated. But she stares at the space above the boy's head and maintains her prideful façade. She refuses to acknowledge her position, and waits for him to finish his gloating and leave.
But he doesn't for a long while, and Ariana is shocked to discover that he even returns the next week, and every week after that.
"Why are you here?" she demands on his fifth visit. "Why do you keep coming back to see me?"
He seems to have an answer for everything, but when she asks this, he doesn't reply. Instead, he looks away and takes his leave shortly thereafter, avoiding the question.
Eventually she learns that, like her, he is too prideful to admit to any emotional connection to her, so she stops asking (if only because she is the slightest bit pleased to find that he had inherited something more than her hair color after all).
- . . . -
But one day, when Silver comes to visit, he finds her cell vacant.
Somewhere, the freed goddess laughs.