R59: Desert
Title: Desertion
Characters: Giovanni, Pearl, Tilly Jones, lots of Rockets
POV: Pearl, Tilly Jones
Notes: Warning: VERY Pearl-centric. Also, feel free to skip the first section where they're shouting. I kinda put that in as background. I like the feeling of the rest of this piece though!
This is also like outta chronological order from all my other fics. In my fics, Giovanni is 38 when Silver is born. He is 40 when Silver is kidnapped and 51 during the Battleship scene from Pokemon Special where Sird and Orm nab Silver. This fic takes place when he is 48. (Pearl's about 45.)
“This has gone too far!” She bared her teeth in a snarl, her overly-red lips curling up like an explosion of gore. “Eight years! Eight years, these last eight years! They’re been unbearable! I can’t stand it anymore!”
“Executive lower you voice-“
“No! No!” Slowly, Pearl began to laugh lowly, her throat throbbing with every gasp. “This- isn’t- funny at all! For the last eight years, you’re been- been looking for that boy! Nonstop! Everything you do is to find him! And you don’t even order missions like you used to- now everything’s just a way to get that boy back? Don’t tell me to keep my voice down! These last years-“
“Executive, he’s not just a boy, he’s our son-“
“YOUR SON! Do you hear? Yours! Not mine! I don’t want anything to do with him, okay?” Pearl shrieked again, and while laughing, threw a picture frame against the wall as hard as her tortured muscles could. It shattered into many, many, many little pieces and the entire frame warped, unable to go on carrying the photo anymore.
“Executive-“
“I don’t want him anymore! Not anymore! I don’t! These last eight years, do you know what you’ve been doing? Everything for him, him, him, HIM! Nothing ever for me! You don’t even say good morning anymore! You don’t even call me up anymore! And when I came up to meet you, you told me to get into the queue! Me! Who am I now? You don’t care anymore?”
“Godammit woman, I’m looking for Silver- I have to- my son, my son, il figlio, il-“
“Means more to you than me!”
They were both silent.
“It’s true,” she insisted, her eye widening. “It’s true, isn’t it? I knew it, I know it now, actually.”
Giovanni neither admitted nor denied the query.
Pearl broke out into peals of her shrill laughter. “Hah! It’s all so funny! Do you know what? Do you know what? Do you know how I live? I need you to love me. I need you to need me! I need-“
“Pearl-“
“It’s true. These last eight years, you’ve never even once nodded to me,” she croaked, her voice low. “And you know it. You don’t care, do you? Well that’s fine with me. You’ll never find your son. He’s gone. GOOD RIDDANCE- “
The slap exploded, resonating like a landslide, cracking, shattering.
Pearl gingerly reached up disbelievingly and touched her face. Her fingers came off coated in dark red blood from the split in her skin. He had never hit her before. He had never hit her before.
She looked up at Giovanni. His face was a terrible blotchy red and his shoulders heaved with every pant. He was a monster, a terrible uncontrolled monster, losing every bit of his famous and treasured self-control-
He bared his teeth like a beast and swung his arm back. With a resounding snap, the skin on Pearl’s face ripped even further, blood coating both their hands.
Giovanni hit Pearl twice more before she fled.
In the lonely, early hours of the morning, only a few were drifting around the halls to see the Executive.
Outside the window the sky was cold and dark. The lights from within the hallway made a yellowish half-circle outside on the cold, hard ground. The world was done in dark shades of gray and gray-blue. Tilly Jones pressed her face against the icy glass and felt the chill steal in onto her skin. When she lifted her head, for a moment, there was the barest silhouette of Tilly Jones etched in the fogged-up window.
She was up late at night for a cup of tea at the cafeteria and the meditative solitude of the empty halls. And so she was one of the few witnesses to the flight of the Executive.
For a moment the silence had continued and Tilly had watched the steam curling from her tea. Then quickly, a steady barrage of clicking and a rumbling roar had echoed down the halls.
It had been too early for the cleaning squad. Tilly had looked up with half-frightened curiosity.
The Executive Corvear had been wearing a large fur coat over what Tilly later realized was the Executive’s very best dress. At that moment all Tilly saw was a large bloody gash down her cheek and her hair in disarray and occasionally the flash of sequins. One humungous breast had fallen halfway out of the dress, but the Executive had not seemed to notice. But what really had struck Tilly was her expression- a madwoman, a crazed animal, her teeth ground against the red gash of a maw. Behind that face the Executive hauled a very large half-zipped suitcase.
Tilly had stood and had stood very still, but no matter. The Executive had gone on as if the hallways were deserted- of course they might as well have been.
The suitcase rumbled out of view. Tilly had heard a brief shout, a cackling scream:
“Put everything back where it belongs! Give me me back! Give me myself back! You never did! Give it back! Put it back! Put it back!”
Tilly stood for a while longer, then pressed her face against the window again.
Later they forced the lock on the Executive’s room open. The once-opulent room creaked silently in the stillness. It was like a ghost town. The bed stood made, ready for its occupants, its canopy shimmering faintly in satiny loops. The clock ticked quietly on the wall. Everything else was a mess, as if a sudden burst of movement had ruptured on them all and left just as abruptly. The vanity was cleared off and empty; the makeup and silver-backed brushes and toiletries once standing had all been swept away. The big mahogany desk was torn open, the drawers and cabinets opened and hanging out like hungry mouths. The accounts and records and files remained. Everything else had dissipated with an angry hand. The nightstand was on its side, its innards ransacked and open to the air. The closet doors were rolled open and the closet itself was completely empty. Even the bookshelf was bare, an entire collection of bad pulp-fiction romance novels vanished into the night. And every single picture frame in the room was broken, the glass shattered and coated along the edges with congealing blood. Every photo had been ripped out blindly and without opening the flap in the back.
They had tried to open the curtains but couldn’t.
Pearl sat alone on the train as it wove its way through the darkness. She was completely alone. The interior of the train was cool and the lights hanging from the ceiling swayed back and forth, waving shadows and light across the cabin. She tucked her hands into the soft fur of the coat and turned to look outside the window. The dark abstract landscape flickered past. From the light in the cabin she could see a ghostly reflection of herself on the icy glass. She looked up and saw her own pale face. Her eye was half in the shadows but her green lens of her eyepatch seemed to glow on the glass. She watched as the shadowy landscape rushed past- here a mountain, towering and hazy. There a forest, a mess of pointed shapes. There a city, a group of pinpoint lights. Everything raced past. Everything faded in and out. Only the green lens remained constant.
Those that had heard the scene in the Boss’s office were quick to quietly spread the details. The stories burst out once it was leaked that the Executive Corvear had disappeared. The Executive had been fired and ordered to leave for stealing money. The Executive had been sent away to a safehouse because the government was after her. The Executive had had a change of heart and quit Team Rocket. The Executive caught the Boss with another woman and had run out with a broken heart. The Executive caught the Boss with a man and had run out with a broken heart and a new perspective on men. The Executive had been caught leaking secrets to the police and was fleeing for her life. The Executive was on a life-or-death mission. The Executive was just on vacation.
Tilly Jones heard the stories but didn’t tell anyone about what she saw in the wee, lonely hours of the morning. She continued her midnight tea in the hallways.
She had a place in Goldenrod. She had never used it. Years ago when the housing bubble popped, she had snatched up a little house in the suburbs of the city and, as the prices rose again, had never gotten around to selling it. It was a quaint little house near the bay and in a quiet little neighborhood. It had a little garden with a white picket fence and blooming flowerbeds- Pearl had occasionally hired a gardener to spruce the place up for real-estate advertisements that were never taken. She had already half-forgotten what it looked like, but she remembered it was cute and tidy.
There was a crying woman in the station when Pearl got off the train. The crying woman had looked up so hopefully when the train clicked in. When the doors closed behind Pearl and the train sped off again, the crying woman slumped back down and continued sobbing. Pearl walked past her and watched the woman just cry and cry and cry. Some people were so lucky.
Pearl called a taxi. The driver was one of the night-shift men more alive in the half-shrouded world of the city at night than the overly-clear world at day. Pearl thought it was clever of him. The world at night was invisible and soft. At day it became clear with every harsh detail in spotlight.
Beautiful women with gashes down their faces and huge hastily-packed suitcases and gorgeous fur coats tend to have good stories to tell. The driver attempted to coax a few out of his passenger. Would she like to drop by the hospital for a few stitches? No, she was fine and preferred to head home right away. What was she doing here? Driving to her house. Where was she? There had never been anyone living there. She was away for a while. Doing what? Business. This and that. And why was she coming back?
Pearl smiled at that. “I am running away.”
She tipped the driver generously when she got off. She had never tipped before.
Pearl had already worked out everything. Tomorrow she would go searching for a company that needed someone to keep track of every financial detail, someone to cut costs and maximize profits. Someone who was Good At It. There were many companies who needed her.
She would live as a single woman, perhaps a widow. She would wear modest dresses and bake cakes and cookies and volunteer at charity events. She would wear natural-looking makeup and nylon stockings. Yes, a widow, a woman who lost her husband and child to a single horrific tragedy. That should keep anyone from asking questions. Her name would be Penelope and people would call her Mrs. Penelope.
That seemed nice. If anything, it was fairly okay.
To her surprise, the lights came on when she switched them on. A small rosy wrought-iron chandelier hung in the entryway. Perhaps a few embroidery samples hanging here and there…
Pearl switched on the lights as she rushed on. The rooms rushed by in a blur. Rose and gold wallpaper. Granite countertops. Marble floors. Plush carpet. Pearl kept dragging her suitcase like a woman possessed until she reached the backyard.
She couldn’t find a shovel. She started digging with her bare hands. Dirt splashed across her fur coat.
When her nails were torn to bloody shreds, Pearl carefully laid the photos, the albums, the memoirs into the hole. She pushed the dirt back as a mound. It looked like a grave. A grave in the moonlight. Pearl grinned horribly and looked around for a tombstone.
She had crawled back in apparently. When the birds in the trees started chirping, Pearl awoke in a mess on the carpet. Without meaning to, she crawled up, switched the water on, went to the bathroom, and showered for a long time. She brushed her hair up and wrapped herself in her luxurious Turkish bathrobe. It might as well have been scratchy straw.
Pearl crawled to the bedroom and lay on the dusty bed. She rolled over.
And for the first time in decades, Pearl cried and cried and cried as if her heart would break into two. She wondered if Giovanni were doing the same thing.