loving might be a mistake but it's worth making [ficlet]
WHO: papadragon, dragonsmokes, swatwithdragons and Matthias Blackthorn
WHAT: Zane has news. Now he has to share it with the family.
WHERE: Hotel in Lilycove and Blackthorn City Gym.
WHEN: Late April 1984, after this.
Zane’s hand rested on the video-phone’s keyboard and he stared at the blank screen with equal nothingness on his face. The office was quiet around him, offered by the hotel’s management, but outside he could hear the faint bustle of people somewhere in the direction of the restaurant. People were still eating dinner. For the moment it was distant, and that was enough.
He could have used his personal phone, but its screen was tiny-too small to properly see things, not appropriate for this sort of conversation. He just had to figure out what he was going to say. Everything had changed today, and so suddenly, and none of the most important people even knew yet.
With a sigh Zane closed his eyes, then opened them and dialled, ending on the key to activate the video feed. This call was going directly to Chaz’s personal phone-and it would, even from an outside feed. Not many people had this number.
Chaz picked up after the fourth ring. “Oh bloody hells, don’t tell me you’re ringing to say you’re staying over there for another night,” the man said before Zane could get in a word. “If you are, I resign as your brother.”
“He’s been bad,” Zane said-not a question.
“Masaru, I love you, but your work schedule has got to change. It’s not fair to the cub and it’s not fair to the clan members who need to go chase him down.”
“There’s been things I needed to do.”
Chaz didn’t roll his eyes, but he looked exasperated, running a hand through his long hair. “You have an entire League to delegate to. Delegate. You’re the only person I know who turned down being a gym leader because it wasn’t enough work for you.”
“You’re better at it than I am,” Zane grumbled, even though it wasn’t true and both of them knew it. Chaz loved the socialising, and, true, it made him a better politician, no matter whether it was as a gym leader or as an Elite Four member. But it also meant he wanted to be at home, wanted to be with the clan, and that was why Zane had deferred to him.
“What are you doing over there that’s so important you need to break your promise to Wataru?” The younger man’s face tightened a little. “They haven’t moved on to Hoenn yet?”
They. The Rockets. Zane shook his head. “It’s not that. I wouldn’t have broken my promise for that.”
“Then what?” Chaz’s expression said he wasn’t as sure about that as Zane, but willing to let it slide. Zane almost wished he wasn’t, because it meant he had to answer the question. The dragon tamer closed his eyes, half to brace himself, half so he didn’t have to see his brother’s reaction.
“You remember that Outsider reporter I told you about? The blonde who wanted to do an expose on the impact of the dragon clan in Tohjo?”
“The one you had a fling with, are you kidding?” Chaz didn’t say anything else, but his tone of voice said it all. He was the one who had the occasional fling-never anything beyond the bounds of propriety, of course, and nowhere near enough to be considered a ‘player’, but of the two of them Chaz was more flexible with his relationships. Zane actually wanted relationships.
He couldn’t go into this blind. Zane opened his eyes. “She had a son. My son.”
Dead silence. Chaz stared at him in the screen, slack-jawed. Zane couldn’t even find amusement in the sight; his stomach was knotted too tightly. “Say something,” he growled.
Chaz’s jaw worked for a moment before he found his voice. “Say something?! Like what?! Are you insane?!”
“That’ll do.” Tired, bleak humour that time, coming and fading in an instant. “I was careful, Makoto. I’d swear it before the shrine, I was careful.”
Chaz groaned and buried his face in his hands. “You b-you. You rang me first and not Father. I hate you.”
Zane let out a short laugh. “I needed someone to back me when I tell him.”
“You’re a region away; I’m right here and now I can’t even claim ignorance.” Chaz shook his head; though the words had more weariness to them than anger, they still didn’t sound light-hearted.
“He likes you more.”
Now Chaz rolled his eyes. “Don’t. This is going to be bad enough; don’t even bring me into whatever other tension you believe is between the two of you.”
Fair. Zane sighed. “I’ll try. But I really do need you to keep Wataru for a few more days, Makoto. I need to organise a few things before I can come home.”
“With a new son.” Chaz shook his head, scrubbing his face. “Why now? Who called you? The reporter?”
“Cary Lowell. No.” Zane’s face was set. “She’s dead, Makoto. She was investigating something in the Minamo Caves. They think she got attacked by a pokémon. She drowned.” His expression flickered a little, then. “They only realised something was wrong when she didn’t come to pick Sefton up from the Beachside Daycare.”
“Sefton’s the boy?”
“He’s only eighteen months old, Ma-kun,” Zane said softly, his eyes going distant. “Eighteen months and cute as a button-and smart as hell, too.”
Chaz grinned-or at least smiled something that was a shadow of his usual grin, but still more expressive than anything Zane would have done. “Just as well he’s already yours, or I’d have to tell you ‘no, you can’t keep him’.”
A short laugh was Zane’s response. “There’s something else, and you’re going to have to tell Naoki to prepare for it. He’s got blue hair.”
There was a brief silence while Chaz took that in, and then he closed his eyes, shook his head and sighed. “Well, his mother’s an Outsider. He’s first-generation Motherlander. That sometimes happens. I’ll tell him to be ready, but Masa-nii, you know eighteen months is too young to run most of those sorts of tests and a blood-work will only tell you he’s been irradiated-which is par for the course for anyone born here. If the paediatrician there hasn’t already found abnormalities there’s not much we can do.”
“Tell him anyway.”
Chaz shrugged and spread his hands in silent concession. “You want me to tell Wataru too?” His tone said that if Zane said ‘yes’, Zane was going to find himself staked naked to the gym’s turf at dawn, regional distances or no regional distances.
“No. Put him on and I’ll talk to him.” He grimaced. “Then I’ll speak to Father.”
“You owe the both of us for this, Masaru,” Chaz warned. “Wataru and me.”
“I know.”
“Give me a few. If he’s escaped again you’ll have to speak to Father first.”
Zane grimaced again but said nothing as his brother left the screen, showing only the back wall of the man’s office. Instead the elder of the two brothers spent the next few minutes organising his thoughts and bracing himself. Not that Lance would be able to ‘do’ anything to him-but he could make things hell on Earth for the clan members, and he needed to convince the redhead not to act out too badly.
Then, abruptly, there came the bang of a door and running footsteps, and a head with wild red hair appeared in the viewscreen. It was accompanied by a suntanned face grimy with dirt and small shoulders with a blue-scaled dratini curled around them. “You said you’d be here!” Lance said accusingly, and Zane winced.
“I know, cub,” he said.
“You promised.”
“I know.”
The boy cross his arms, sharp eyes narrowed with dissatisfaction. Dratini’s head was lifted, peering at the screen, ears half-cocked back in either similar dissatisfaction or embarrassment. “Why?” he asked.
“Because your brother needed me.” Equally blunt, no matter that it was to a child or not. Lance was too intelligent to use kid gloves. That was why school had never worked out-most people couldn’t help but talk down to a five-year-old. Now, at trainer-age, Lance got a little more respect, but now, at trainer-age, he was even sharper and more baffling to the average person.
Those grey eyes narrowed further. “I don’t have a brother.” Said with all the confidence of everything he knew to be true.
“He’s only eighteen months old,” Zane said, and then admitted quietly, “and I didn’t know you had a brother either. But his mother died and they ran some tests and found out that he’s ours. So I needed to come and get him.”
Lance was silent for a few minutes, staring with those narrowed, suspicious eyes into the screen. Zane could practically see the boy’s mind ticking over, but he’d stopped trying to predict what the redhead might be thinking.
“When you will be back?” was the redhead’s next demand, apparently deciding that the brother issue was something he didn’t need to bother with until later, for whatever reason. (Zane wasn’t entirely surprised the boy had accepted it so easily, but he was more than grateful, even while his son’s trust in him made his chest constrict with pride and love and just a bit of apprehension that he wouldn’t be able to live up to expectations forever.)
“Tomorrow, with luck,” Zane assured him, “or the next day, at the latest. I want to make sure Cary’s death really was an accident.”
For his sake, the local police would prioritise the case, especially given the implication-if Cary was actually murdered then that meant Rockets were probably in Hoenn. And that was bad for everyone. Fortunately, the fact that no one had come for Sefton was a point against that possibility.
Lance’s nose wrinkled. “That my brother’s dam?”
“His mother, Wataru, yes.” Of course, in circumstances like this Lance just showed exactly why people tended to find him so bafflingly strange. It half made Zane regret that he’d raised the boy in such a secluded place … maybe with Sefton it would be different. Maybe he should move back to the clan’s grounds. Lance needed to start attending lessons in earnest soon anyway, and he would need the clan archives for them.
The redhead just shrugged, but at least didn’t say anything else that was too tactless or overly strange. “Tomorrow.”
“Or the next day.”
Lance sighed, casting his eyes skyward. “Or the next day. Okay?”
Zane resisted a twitch of his lips, but at the same time his chest clenched with the fact that his cub hadn’t demanded ‘Promise?’, and prayed it that hadn’t been one too many promises broken. “Okay. Is your grandfather there yet?”
“’Course. He’s been here the whole time; he was telling me a story when Ma-ji came.”
Zane closed his eyes, mouthing a curse. Chaz, you ass. Of course he couldn’t very well tell their father not to come, and of course he couldn’t very well tell their father not to listen, but he knew Chaz probably didn’t even try. Passive revenge. I will get you for that, brother mine.
He heard the rustle of clothing on the other side of the line. “Hello, Father.”
“Masaru.”
Zane opened his eyes to find his father on the screen, hands steepled in front of him and weathered face impassive, long hair drawn back in a topknot. The man didn’t say anything else, waiting for Zane to speak. But Zane didn’t either, waiting for his father to start.
Zane broke first. “I didn’t know.”
No answer.
“I was careful. I swear it on the shrine.”
Nothing. Zane sighed.
“What was her name?”
Finally. “Cary. Cary Lowell.”
Matthias nodded. “An Outsider.”
Faintly disapproving. His wife had been French by lineage, but not since her great-grandfather. Third generation Motherlander was still a Motherlander, even if she’d been raised some of her life on the Outside.
“Mother was still French enough to have an accent,” Zane pointed out anyway.
“I realise.” For the first time Matthias’s face crinkled with something-faintly, true-near to exasperated resignation. “It seems the attraction runs in this family, nowadays.”
Zane said nothing.
“We will speak on this in detail when you return, Masaru.”
“I know.” He did. Not even Makoto had fathered a bastard child. It was just as well Sefton was his secondborn, or else there would be even more problems thrown up.
“I will have another room in the nursery prepared.”
“Thank you.”
Then, also for the first time, Matthias hesitated a beat; then his eyes softened a bit, and his voice with it. “This will be difficult, Masaru. For all of you.”
“I know. I’ll need to scale back my official activity. And I’m considering moving back to the estate.” Zane said it evenly and was rewarded with a brief flash of surprised gratification in his father’s eyes. They had had long discussions over his decision to live on the edge of the county. Not that it had ever been enough to estrange them, but it was a sticking point and Matthias had spent a lot of time, even years later, trying to convince him to change his mind.
It couldn’t be said that Matthias was ungracious in victory; he merely inclined his head and said, “It may be prudent, yes. I will see you soon, my son.”
“Good evening, Father.”
The screen clicked off, fading to a blip, and Zane exhaled. Not over yet; not by a longshot. He should have known his father wouldn’t let him get away without a face-to-face chat, though he still wasn’t surprised by it.
Shaking his head, he pushed the chair back and rose, exiting the office to let the receptionist know he was done (and ignoring the start of surprise from two of the hotel’s patrons at his sudden appearance). Then he turned toward the stairs, his mind already floors away where his second son was sleeping curled in a dragon’s coils.
WHAT: Zane has news. Now he has to share it with the family.
WHERE: Hotel in Lilycove and Blackthorn City Gym.
WHEN: Late April 1984, after this.
Zane’s hand rested on the video-phone’s keyboard and he stared at the blank screen with equal nothingness on his face. The office was quiet around him, offered by the hotel’s management, but outside he could hear the faint bustle of people somewhere in the direction of the restaurant. People were still eating dinner. For the moment it was distant, and that was enough.
He could have used his personal phone, but its screen was tiny-too small to properly see things, not appropriate for this sort of conversation. He just had to figure out what he was going to say. Everything had changed today, and so suddenly, and none of the most important people even knew yet.
With a sigh Zane closed his eyes, then opened them and dialled, ending on the key to activate the video feed. This call was going directly to Chaz’s personal phone-and it would, even from an outside feed. Not many people had this number.
Chaz picked up after the fourth ring. “Oh bloody hells, don’t tell me you’re ringing to say you’re staying over there for another night,” the man said before Zane could get in a word. “If you are, I resign as your brother.”
“He’s been bad,” Zane said-not a question.
“Masaru, I love you, but your work schedule has got to change. It’s not fair to the cub and it’s not fair to the clan members who need to go chase him down.”
“There’s been things I needed to do.”
Chaz didn’t roll his eyes, but he looked exasperated, running a hand through his long hair. “You have an entire League to delegate to. Delegate. You’re the only person I know who turned down being a gym leader because it wasn’t enough work for you.”
“You’re better at it than I am,” Zane grumbled, even though it wasn’t true and both of them knew it. Chaz loved the socialising, and, true, it made him a better politician, no matter whether it was as a gym leader or as an Elite Four member. But it also meant he wanted to be at home, wanted to be with the clan, and that was why Zane had deferred to him.
“What are you doing over there that’s so important you need to break your promise to Wataru?” The younger man’s face tightened a little. “They haven’t moved on to Hoenn yet?”
They. The Rockets. Zane shook his head. “It’s not that. I wouldn’t have broken my promise for that.”
“Then what?” Chaz’s expression said he wasn’t as sure about that as Zane, but willing to let it slide. Zane almost wished he wasn’t, because it meant he had to answer the question. The dragon tamer closed his eyes, half to brace himself, half so he didn’t have to see his brother’s reaction.
“You remember that Outsider reporter I told you about? The blonde who wanted to do an expose on the impact of the dragon clan in Tohjo?”
“The one you had a fling with, are you kidding?” Chaz didn’t say anything else, but his tone of voice said it all. He was the one who had the occasional fling-never anything beyond the bounds of propriety, of course, and nowhere near enough to be considered a ‘player’, but of the two of them Chaz was more flexible with his relationships. Zane actually wanted relationships.
He couldn’t go into this blind. Zane opened his eyes. “She had a son. My son.”
Dead silence. Chaz stared at him in the screen, slack-jawed. Zane couldn’t even find amusement in the sight; his stomach was knotted too tightly. “Say something,” he growled.
Chaz’s jaw worked for a moment before he found his voice. “Say something?! Like what?! Are you insane?!”
“That’ll do.” Tired, bleak humour that time, coming and fading in an instant. “I was careful, Makoto. I’d swear it before the shrine, I was careful.”
Chaz groaned and buried his face in his hands. “You b-you. You rang me first and not Father. I hate you.”
Zane let out a short laugh. “I needed someone to back me when I tell him.”
“You’re a region away; I’m right here and now I can’t even claim ignorance.” Chaz shook his head; though the words had more weariness to them than anger, they still didn’t sound light-hearted.
“He likes you more.”
Now Chaz rolled his eyes. “Don’t. This is going to be bad enough; don’t even bring me into whatever other tension you believe is between the two of you.”
Fair. Zane sighed. “I’ll try. But I really do need you to keep Wataru for a few more days, Makoto. I need to organise a few things before I can come home.”
“With a new son.” Chaz shook his head, scrubbing his face. “Why now? Who called you? The reporter?”
“Cary Lowell. No.” Zane’s face was set. “She’s dead, Makoto. She was investigating something in the Minamo Caves. They think she got attacked by a pokémon. She drowned.” His expression flickered a little, then. “They only realised something was wrong when she didn’t come to pick Sefton up from the Beachside Daycare.”
“Sefton’s the boy?”
“He’s only eighteen months old, Ma-kun,” Zane said softly, his eyes going distant. “Eighteen months and cute as a button-and smart as hell, too.”
Chaz grinned-or at least smiled something that was a shadow of his usual grin, but still more expressive than anything Zane would have done. “Just as well he’s already yours, or I’d have to tell you ‘no, you can’t keep him’.”
A short laugh was Zane’s response. “There’s something else, and you’re going to have to tell Naoki to prepare for it. He’s got blue hair.”
There was a brief silence while Chaz took that in, and then he closed his eyes, shook his head and sighed. “Well, his mother’s an Outsider. He’s first-generation Motherlander. That sometimes happens. I’ll tell him to be ready, but Masa-nii, you know eighteen months is too young to run most of those sorts of tests and a blood-work will only tell you he’s been irradiated-which is par for the course for anyone born here. If the paediatrician there hasn’t already found abnormalities there’s not much we can do.”
“Tell him anyway.”
Chaz shrugged and spread his hands in silent concession. “You want me to tell Wataru too?” His tone said that if Zane said ‘yes’, Zane was going to find himself staked naked to the gym’s turf at dawn, regional distances or no regional distances.
“No. Put him on and I’ll talk to him.” He grimaced. “Then I’ll speak to Father.”
“You owe the both of us for this, Masaru,” Chaz warned. “Wataru and me.”
“I know.”
“Give me a few. If he’s escaped again you’ll have to speak to Father first.”
Zane grimaced again but said nothing as his brother left the screen, showing only the back wall of the man’s office. Instead the elder of the two brothers spent the next few minutes organising his thoughts and bracing himself. Not that Lance would be able to ‘do’ anything to him-but he could make things hell on Earth for the clan members, and he needed to convince the redhead not to act out too badly.
Then, abruptly, there came the bang of a door and running footsteps, and a head with wild red hair appeared in the viewscreen. It was accompanied by a suntanned face grimy with dirt and small shoulders with a blue-scaled dratini curled around them. “You said you’d be here!” Lance said accusingly, and Zane winced.
“I know, cub,” he said.
“You promised.”
“I know.”
The boy cross his arms, sharp eyes narrowed with dissatisfaction. Dratini’s head was lifted, peering at the screen, ears half-cocked back in either similar dissatisfaction or embarrassment. “Why?” he asked.
“Because your brother needed me.” Equally blunt, no matter that it was to a child or not. Lance was too intelligent to use kid gloves. That was why school had never worked out-most people couldn’t help but talk down to a five-year-old. Now, at trainer-age, Lance got a little more respect, but now, at trainer-age, he was even sharper and more baffling to the average person.
Those grey eyes narrowed further. “I don’t have a brother.” Said with all the confidence of everything he knew to be true.
“He’s only eighteen months old,” Zane said, and then admitted quietly, “and I didn’t know you had a brother either. But his mother died and they ran some tests and found out that he’s ours. So I needed to come and get him.”
Lance was silent for a few minutes, staring with those narrowed, suspicious eyes into the screen. Zane could practically see the boy’s mind ticking over, but he’d stopped trying to predict what the redhead might be thinking.
“When you will be back?” was the redhead’s next demand, apparently deciding that the brother issue was something he didn’t need to bother with until later, for whatever reason. (Zane wasn’t entirely surprised the boy had accepted it so easily, but he was more than grateful, even while his son’s trust in him made his chest constrict with pride and love and just a bit of apprehension that he wouldn’t be able to live up to expectations forever.)
“Tomorrow, with luck,” Zane assured him, “or the next day, at the latest. I want to make sure Cary’s death really was an accident.”
For his sake, the local police would prioritise the case, especially given the implication-if Cary was actually murdered then that meant Rockets were probably in Hoenn. And that was bad for everyone. Fortunately, the fact that no one had come for Sefton was a point against that possibility.
Lance’s nose wrinkled. “That my brother’s dam?”
“His mother, Wataru, yes.” Of course, in circumstances like this Lance just showed exactly why people tended to find him so bafflingly strange. It half made Zane regret that he’d raised the boy in such a secluded place … maybe with Sefton it would be different. Maybe he should move back to the clan’s grounds. Lance needed to start attending lessons in earnest soon anyway, and he would need the clan archives for them.
The redhead just shrugged, but at least didn’t say anything else that was too tactless or overly strange. “Tomorrow.”
“Or the next day.”
Lance sighed, casting his eyes skyward. “Or the next day. Okay?”
Zane resisted a twitch of his lips, but at the same time his chest clenched with the fact that his cub hadn’t demanded ‘Promise?’, and prayed it that hadn’t been one too many promises broken. “Okay. Is your grandfather there yet?”
“’Course. He’s been here the whole time; he was telling me a story when Ma-ji came.”
Zane closed his eyes, mouthing a curse. Chaz, you ass. Of course he couldn’t very well tell their father not to come, and of course he couldn’t very well tell their father not to listen, but he knew Chaz probably didn’t even try. Passive revenge. I will get you for that, brother mine.
He heard the rustle of clothing on the other side of the line. “Hello, Father.”
“Masaru.”
Zane opened his eyes to find his father on the screen, hands steepled in front of him and weathered face impassive, long hair drawn back in a topknot. The man didn’t say anything else, waiting for Zane to speak. But Zane didn’t either, waiting for his father to start.
Zane broke first. “I didn’t know.”
No answer.
“I was careful. I swear it on the shrine.”
Nothing. Zane sighed.
“What was her name?”
Finally. “Cary. Cary Lowell.”
Matthias nodded. “An Outsider.”
Faintly disapproving. His wife had been French by lineage, but not since her great-grandfather. Third generation Motherlander was still a Motherlander, even if she’d been raised some of her life on the Outside.
“Mother was still French enough to have an accent,” Zane pointed out anyway.
“I realise.” For the first time Matthias’s face crinkled with something-faintly, true-near to exasperated resignation. “It seems the attraction runs in this family, nowadays.”
Zane said nothing.
“We will speak on this in detail when you return, Masaru.”
“I know.” He did. Not even Makoto had fathered a bastard child. It was just as well Sefton was his secondborn, or else there would be even more problems thrown up.
“I will have another room in the nursery prepared.”
“Thank you.”
Then, also for the first time, Matthias hesitated a beat; then his eyes softened a bit, and his voice with it. “This will be difficult, Masaru. For all of you.”
“I know. I’ll need to scale back my official activity. And I’m considering moving back to the estate.” Zane said it evenly and was rewarded with a brief flash of surprised gratification in his father’s eyes. They had had long discussions over his decision to live on the edge of the county. Not that it had ever been enough to estrange them, but it was a sticking point and Matthias had spent a lot of time, even years later, trying to convince him to change his mind.
It couldn’t be said that Matthias was ungracious in victory; he merely inclined his head and said, “It may be prudent, yes. I will see you soon, my son.”
“Good evening, Father.”
The screen clicked off, fading to a blip, and Zane exhaled. Not over yet; not by a longshot. He should have known his father wouldn’t let him get away without a face-to-face chat, though he still wasn’t surprised by it.
Shaking his head, he pushed the chair back and rose, exiting the office to let the receptionist know he was done (and ignoring the start of surprise from two of the hotel’s patrons at his sudden appearance). Then he turned toward the stairs, his mind already floors away where his second son was sleeping curled in a dragon’s coils.