Fic: Fractured Kisses and the Sky of Tomorrow, Pokemon
Title: Fractured Kisses and the Sky of Tomorrow
Fandom: Pokemon (Anna gameverse)
Word Count: 1648
Solana is pregnant.
Solana is pregnant and she is frightened. It is a knee-jerk reaction, similar to kicking the man with the maps after he says 'oops' or kicking the bully who stole your lunch money in the courtyard or kicking the doctor after he taps your knee. She presses her hand to the flat pane of her stomach and cannot imagine herself with a balloon of a belly hanging out in front of her. Perhaps this makes her vain. Perhaps this just makes her smart.
She has a lot to be afraid of. She has seen a lot of panic and a lot of strife in her life; very little of it actually hers.
But it's deeper than that. She barely got through her childhood with her soul intact; what was the universe thinking, carving out a part of her right underneath her heart and placing another soul there? Placing another soul there, and charging her to nurture it and protect it and love it unconditionally when she barely had the strength to love herself?
Solana spends half her life forgetting she's not alone anymore.
***
Solana is pregnant.
Solana is pregnant and she lives for the small moments now. For when she'll be sitting at a campfire with her friend Pokemon curled close, and her Plusle will hop to her side and press her long, skinny ear to her belly and remain there, listening, like her baby is telling her secrets even Solana herself is not aware of. For when Tiffany clucks her tongue at her and shoos her away from the coffee, handing her a box of Magikrisps instead, chiding her on caffeine and babies. For when Lunick lays across her bedspread and eats said Magikrisps, going over all the things her baby could be, "What if it looks like you? What kind of tragedy would that be?" For when Spenser quirks his lips as she signs up for maternity leave and asks if he should be worried if she suddenly brings pickles in her lunch, and dodges the Persian paperweight she throws at him. For when Cameron offers to take her missions for her, and she runs her hands through his carrot red hair and tells him he'll be a wonderful father.
He's already the perfect scapegoat.
***
Solana is pregnant.
Solana is pregnant and she thinks she understands now, the difference between the types of men. There is the man who is perfect for you in every way, who buys you roses like a gentleman and won't try to get past second base before marriage, and the man you would never dream of living with but can't live without because he worships you with his eyes and his lips and his breath even when he understands he's way out of his league, and the man who is wrong for you in all the right ways, who loses control at your touch and breathes in your ear like all the world is breathing with you.
She loves Cameron. That's why she married him.
He is calm and assured in everything he does, and his eyes light up when she talks to him and he saves a number of trinkets just for her, and he puts his hands to his enormous belly and laughs whenever she beats her own record at the Safra Sea capture challenge. And she sleeps with him, at night and in their bed because it's too hot in Summerland for anything else, and she hopes it means as much to him as it does to her.
But sometimes, when they’re on patrol and everything is dark except for where the two of them are and nobody else is around, she will kiss Lunick.
She loves him, she thinks. The way you love a Plusle or a favorite cousin or the mailman who always gives your littlest brother a chocolate while his Pelipper delivers your mail. But he adores her and rests his hand on her hip without daring to let his fingers drift up or down and when he kisses her, it’s just the barest aching slide of lips, like he's afraid that if he pushes, she'll flutter away like a Taillow on a broken Capture line. And although she murmurs of infidelity and he backs off in a heartbeat, she wouldn't give those moments away for anything, when it becomes obvious just how important it is to her that people worship the ground she walks on.
And once, just once, she walked into her bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror, at the leaves in her hair and the smudge of dirt under one eye and the handprint-shaped bruise on her hip, and almost hated herself when she peeled a long green hair off her breastbone and let it fall to the floor.
She's slept with Spenser. Just that once, like it's important, on his front porch in broad daylight with autumn leaves swirling across the deck and catching them in the vortex. He devoured her all at once, unrestrained and confident, all come-hither and animalistic in the way his hot breath gusted over her bare chest and the way his hands roamed, and she had never felt as beautiful as she did in that moment.
Cameron never tells her he loves her, because it never occurs to him that she needs to hear it often, and he shows it in everything he does, anyway.
Lunick is too shy to tell her he loves her, but he'll tell her she's beautiful and smart and funny and so, so, so brave and she makes him feel like he can do anything when she's around and that's enough.
Spenser tells her he loves her all the time, many times joking, sometimes just to needle at his friend, and once as serious as he could ever get.
And only occasionally, she wants him again. Wants the wild passion and the words, murmured over and over again into her collarbone.
Cameron kisses her like she's his wife.
Lunick kisses her like she's his god.
Spenser kisses her like the world is falling, and when his fingertips brush against her flesh she feels the same way, like the ground is tilting out from under her and she's going to have to learn how to fly now.
Solana knows the difference between the types of men in the world.
She has one of each.
***
Solana is pregnant.
The doctor, who she remembers as being one of Professor Hasting's assistants, the one who had been afraid of the dark, tells her the baby was probably conceived on the weekend Cameron had been off on a mission with Percy and Leilani.
She wonders if the baby will be born with green hair.
That might be hard to explain.
***
Solana is pregnant.
She is pregnant and she is frightened. She is frightened it will have what she had; absolutely nothing at all. She wants it to have all the chances that were never presented to her, until someone took an interest in her letters and breathed life into her, until a Plusle leapt to her shoulder and a Go-Rock Quad sneered at her, up until she laid on her back and breathed so that every bruise on her body stretched and she knew it meant life.
She just wants it to be loved.
She loves it already. That's why she's having it. That's why she lets Cameron take her harder missions, and why she will browbeat him when he slacks off and that being a father will be his hardest mission yet. That's why Lunick comes over with his hand in Tiffany's and some new information or advice on his tongue and Tiffany presses her ear to Solana's belly and listens to the whusha-whusha of the second heartbeat and goes, "You've definitely got a boy here." That's why Chris brings her Kangaskhan milk and Aria brings her work-out tapes for "after the baby's born." That's why Spenser baby-proofs the Base, and when she asks, "do you love me?" he says, "yes" fiercely and when she asks, "do you need a reason?" he goes, "No."
She carries a baby here, underneath her heart; it is her responsibility, and she loves it. Even when it's the scariest thing she's ever faced (and she has faced every monster you could imagine).
So she takes its soul and pulls it thin like a thread, and then she twines it with her own and cuts off little bits, and then she gives it to everyone around her. She gives it to Cameron and to Tiffany and Lunick and Spenser and Murph and Aria and Elita and Chris and the red-haired woman from upstairs and the Dragonite of the Round Table Bus man and the boy who named a fountain after her and girl who stood waiting for Joel. She gives them each a part of her soul, and her baby's soul, and that way, she can protect them all like she swore to when she put on her uniform and it slid around her like a second skin, and they can protect her and the infant she loves.
Even it's all for naught, even if her child grows up friendless and alone, she wants it to live.
Where there's life, there's hope.
Isn't she proof of that?
"I'll fight by your side forever," she says to Cameron, and he crushes her into a hug that sends her Plusle leaping away with a startled cry and makes his Pelipper squawk with laughter.
"I think you're the bravest person I've ever met," she says to Lunick, and he smiles shy and beautiful and takes her hand and presses his lips to each of her fingers.
"I love you too," she says to Spenser, and he kisses her like it's his last day on earth, like the world is falling and then it comes to a rest, here, on the edges of his fingertips before it brushes over the curve of her belly.
The baby kicks, and he smiles explosively.
Fandom: Pokemon (Anna gameverse)
Word Count: 1648
Solana is pregnant.
Solana is pregnant and she is frightened. It is a knee-jerk reaction, similar to kicking the man with the maps after he says 'oops' or kicking the bully who stole your lunch money in the courtyard or kicking the doctor after he taps your knee. She presses her hand to the flat pane of her stomach and cannot imagine herself with a balloon of a belly hanging out in front of her. Perhaps this makes her vain. Perhaps this just makes her smart.
She has a lot to be afraid of. She has seen a lot of panic and a lot of strife in her life; very little of it actually hers.
But it's deeper than that. She barely got through her childhood with her soul intact; what was the universe thinking, carving out a part of her right underneath her heart and placing another soul there? Placing another soul there, and charging her to nurture it and protect it and love it unconditionally when she barely had the strength to love herself?
Solana spends half her life forgetting she's not alone anymore.
***
Solana is pregnant.
Solana is pregnant and she lives for the small moments now. For when she'll be sitting at a campfire with her friend Pokemon curled close, and her Plusle will hop to her side and press her long, skinny ear to her belly and remain there, listening, like her baby is telling her secrets even Solana herself is not aware of. For when Tiffany clucks her tongue at her and shoos her away from the coffee, handing her a box of Magikrisps instead, chiding her on caffeine and babies. For when Lunick lays across her bedspread and eats said Magikrisps, going over all the things her baby could be, "What if it looks like you? What kind of tragedy would that be?" For when Spenser quirks his lips as she signs up for maternity leave and asks if he should be worried if she suddenly brings pickles in her lunch, and dodges the Persian paperweight she throws at him. For when Cameron offers to take her missions for her, and she runs her hands through his carrot red hair and tells him he'll be a wonderful father.
He's already the perfect scapegoat.
***
Solana is pregnant.
Solana is pregnant and she thinks she understands now, the difference between the types of men. There is the man who is perfect for you in every way, who buys you roses like a gentleman and won't try to get past second base before marriage, and the man you would never dream of living with but can't live without because he worships you with his eyes and his lips and his breath even when he understands he's way out of his league, and the man who is wrong for you in all the right ways, who loses control at your touch and breathes in your ear like all the world is breathing with you.
She loves Cameron. That's why she married him.
He is calm and assured in everything he does, and his eyes light up when she talks to him and he saves a number of trinkets just for her, and he puts his hands to his enormous belly and laughs whenever she beats her own record at the Safra Sea capture challenge. And she sleeps with him, at night and in their bed because it's too hot in Summerland for anything else, and she hopes it means as much to him as it does to her.
But sometimes, when they’re on patrol and everything is dark except for where the two of them are and nobody else is around, she will kiss Lunick.
She loves him, she thinks. The way you love a Plusle or a favorite cousin or the mailman who always gives your littlest brother a chocolate while his Pelipper delivers your mail. But he adores her and rests his hand on her hip without daring to let his fingers drift up or down and when he kisses her, it’s just the barest aching slide of lips, like he's afraid that if he pushes, she'll flutter away like a Taillow on a broken Capture line. And although she murmurs of infidelity and he backs off in a heartbeat, she wouldn't give those moments away for anything, when it becomes obvious just how important it is to her that people worship the ground she walks on.
And once, just once, she walked into her bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror, at the leaves in her hair and the smudge of dirt under one eye and the handprint-shaped bruise on her hip, and almost hated herself when she peeled a long green hair off her breastbone and let it fall to the floor.
She's slept with Spenser. Just that once, like it's important, on his front porch in broad daylight with autumn leaves swirling across the deck and catching them in the vortex. He devoured her all at once, unrestrained and confident, all come-hither and animalistic in the way his hot breath gusted over her bare chest and the way his hands roamed, and she had never felt as beautiful as she did in that moment.
Cameron never tells her he loves her, because it never occurs to him that she needs to hear it often, and he shows it in everything he does, anyway.
Lunick is too shy to tell her he loves her, but he'll tell her she's beautiful and smart and funny and so, so, so brave and she makes him feel like he can do anything when she's around and that's enough.
Spenser tells her he loves her all the time, many times joking, sometimes just to needle at his friend, and once as serious as he could ever get.
And only occasionally, she wants him again. Wants the wild passion and the words, murmured over and over again into her collarbone.
Cameron kisses her like she's his wife.
Lunick kisses her like she's his god.
Spenser kisses her like the world is falling, and when his fingertips brush against her flesh she feels the same way, like the ground is tilting out from under her and she's going to have to learn how to fly now.
Solana knows the difference between the types of men in the world.
She has one of each.
***
Solana is pregnant.
The doctor, who she remembers as being one of Professor Hasting's assistants, the one who had been afraid of the dark, tells her the baby was probably conceived on the weekend Cameron had been off on a mission with Percy and Leilani.
She wonders if the baby will be born with green hair.
That might be hard to explain.
***
Solana is pregnant.
She is pregnant and she is frightened. She is frightened it will have what she had; absolutely nothing at all. She wants it to have all the chances that were never presented to her, until someone took an interest in her letters and breathed life into her, until a Plusle leapt to her shoulder and a Go-Rock Quad sneered at her, up until she laid on her back and breathed so that every bruise on her body stretched and she knew it meant life.
She just wants it to be loved.
She loves it already. That's why she's having it. That's why she lets Cameron take her harder missions, and why she will browbeat him when he slacks off and that being a father will be his hardest mission yet. That's why Lunick comes over with his hand in Tiffany's and some new information or advice on his tongue and Tiffany presses her ear to Solana's belly and listens to the whusha-whusha of the second heartbeat and goes, "You've definitely got a boy here." That's why Chris brings her Kangaskhan milk and Aria brings her work-out tapes for "after the baby's born." That's why Spenser baby-proofs the Base, and when she asks, "do you love me?" he says, "yes" fiercely and when she asks, "do you need a reason?" he goes, "No."
She carries a baby here, underneath her heart; it is her responsibility, and she loves it. Even when it's the scariest thing she's ever faced (and she has faced every monster you could imagine).
So she takes its soul and pulls it thin like a thread, and then she twines it with her own and cuts off little bits, and then she gives it to everyone around her. She gives it to Cameron and to Tiffany and Lunick and Spenser and Murph and Aria and Elita and Chris and the red-haired woman from upstairs and the Dragonite of the Round Table Bus man and the boy who named a fountain after her and girl who stood waiting for Joel. She gives them each a part of her soul, and her baby's soul, and that way, she can protect them all like she swore to when she put on her uniform and it slid around her like a second skin, and they can protect her and the infant she loves.
Even it's all for naught, even if her child grows up friendless and alone, she wants it to live.
Where there's life, there's hope.
Isn't she proof of that?
"I'll fight by your side forever," she says to Cameron, and he crushes her into a hug that sends her Plusle leaping away with a startled cry and makes his Pelipper squawk with laughter.
"I think you're the bravest person I've ever met," she says to Lunick, and he smiles shy and beautiful and takes her hand and presses his lips to each of her fingers.
"I love you too," she says to Spenser, and he kisses her like it's his last day on earth, like the world is falling and then it comes to a rest, here, on the edges of his fingertips before it brushes over the curve of her belly.
The baby kicks, and he smiles explosively.