Fic: Tall Grass, Pokemon Pearl
Title: Tall Grass
Fandom: Pokemon Pearl
Word Count: 1641
-- and it should be mentioned that Cyrus owns a house.
That fact wasn't too horribly important, because so did a lot of other people, and some people didn't who should and some people owned a couple and he doesn't think about it too often, except when everything else he wants to think about hurts and he doesn't like it because hurting is feeling and he's already knocked that stereotype unconscious, so he thinks about his house.
Then he gets his butt out of Mt. Coronet and goes there, to his bungalow shaped like a nice, fat hoagie sandwich complete with ridged tin roof like stale lettuce or something because this metaphor sucks, out on an island in the middle of the ocean because the entire planet was a whole bunch of islands and granted, some were bigger than others and there wasn't a single place one could get truly lost except in (themselves) the open ocean and Cyrus hated the taste of salt in the back of his throat in the morning.
The walls were white. All of them. White, white, white because the builders got bored and decided the place wasn't worth it.
Mars brings him a can of paint and he looks at it with one eyebrow raised and she blushes, but she blushes at everything and Cyrus is the master of the condescending eyebrow, thank you, so he takes the can and pries open the lid and mixes.
It's a thick, rich blue color, but it's not blue like the sky or blue like the ocean. It's the kind of blue that's not even real.
He falls asleep with his head propped up on his Weavile and that's not comfortable at all but he's not the Leader of Team Galactic because he had snuggly Pokemon, and when he dreams he dreams of the way Diagla glowed blue, the thick rich blue of something not even real or so real that the rest of time and space didn't even bother trying to compare.
He wakes up, throws up, and paints the entire place white. Again.
*&*
"'Most likely to succeed.' You voted me that, didn't you?"
She blinks, gouging her eyes with the flats of her hands like she's trying to rub the sleep out of them or simply giving herself something to do. Or maybe he's wearing ugly socks. He hadn't been paying attention. Then she checks her watch (who the hell sleeps with their watch on?) and frowns. Then she looks at him and frowns some more.
"Cyrus?" Her eyes clear, sharpen, even as the rest of her sleep-swollen face becomes bewildered. "Cyrus, that was high school."
"Surprise!" he goes, cynically, and then thinks he might be better if he just kept his mouth shut. Wasn't it his mouth that got him into this mess?
Wait, no. That was his money. His mouth just helped place that money. And maybe he's gotten very good at dodging responsibility. Maybe that's what he should put under 'career' from now on, instead of 'clever entrepreneur' (and most days, he couldn't even spell that. High school sucked.)
"I haven't gotten anywhere," he says, and she is (ruler of the free world, only the most powerful creature that smells like the earth and wasn't conquered by a little girl in a pink scarf and legwarmers because Diagla was) looking at him like he's insane, and he's just grateful that she's not asking why he's on her doorstep at eight at night and he's not asking why the hell was she so sound asleep at eight. "I hate this world."
"Wait," she goes, incredulous, "How old are you?"
Cythnia wears black like she's just been kissing some corpse in a graveyard, or like she's trying to make herself so dark she could finally find the light in other people.
Well, here it is, Cyrus: you scared off your wife, brainwashed your daughters, and used your money to tap into the most brilliant minds in Pokemon research in order to find a way to screw over the world like it screwed over you, just to start over with some new galaxy so you wouldn't have to wind up on the doorstep of the alma mater, cum laude, something-dumb-in-Latin of your graduating class at a fairly reasonable hour of the night and feel like the slime of the earth. And you're too dumb to find yourself one of those uncanny creatures who work the Pokemon centers who mumbled at you in that, "I'm sorry you ruined your only chance of destroying the world as we know it. Would you like come comfort sex?" voice because Cynthia is a far cry from that.
And Cyrus, Cyrus, Cyrus, if emotions are messy and useless, then how come some little cheerleader from some little town with a name that sounds better as a garbage disposal company trumped your entire lifetime of scheming and planning because she was a teenager and choked full of them?
Emotions, that is.
"You can't just open the book of my life and jump in the middle," he says, and she shakes her head like she'll never understand him (why the hell is she trying?).
"Your life's not over," she rejoins, and he remembers why he came here.
"I'm too old to start over."
"Then don't. Work with what you already have." Wasn't she on the cheerleading squad, too? What's the Latin society for cheerleading?
This really, really sucks.
He looks at his hands and thinks there's a little bit of white paint left on the rims of his nails, and his hands are cracked from seasalt but they're also cracked from training and it hits him like a thunderbolt.
Children grow up with tales of the tall grass, of don't play in the rivers or else the Gyrados will get you, of Pokemon as bad creatures who will mercilessly attack you until you have one of your own. And by then, you're old enough to understand why the world revolves around Pokemon. Don't let the big cities and flashing neon lights and horrible, horrible fashion fool you; humans belong to Pokemon.
And that's why he lost.
And that's why losing isn't going to kill him.
*&*
"We're Pokemon Trainers," he tells his daughters.
They watch him expectantly, eyes slightly glassy and hands folded in their laps. They've got the mental spiel to get through his pep talks and he scowls at them. This is so high school.
"We're Pokemon Trainers," he says again, and Jupiter snaps back to herself with a skeptical "uh-huh. And?"
He opens his mouth, but then it snaps shut of its own accord, because how do you say that? That being a Pokemon Trainer is the one thing the human race has in common and more often than not, with the exceptions of them and like-minded miscreants, it was the one good thing holding this world together and he had come so close to tipping that balance and that wasn't even brushing the surface of what he had almost done.
He laughs. "If I start wearing Birkenstocks and listening to Volkner's finest thought-provoking guitar music, do me a favor and take a Zap Cannon to me."
*&*
Cyrus thinks he should have spent less time studying the philosophy, psychiatry, and general screwed-up make-up of the world and pinpointing what was wrong and what needed to be fixed and more time trying to get down Cynthia's pants like the rest of the male population, because look where philanthropy got him.
*&*
Shortly thereafter, Cynthia loses the title of Champion to the very same brat who doesn't even know how to try out for a cheerleading squad, much less any fancy Latin societies or that Cyrus has voted her Most Likely to Screw Over Old Men for their Livelihoods and World-Domination Plans, Har-de-di-Har-Har.
"That hat makes her head look like a giant condom," he says, and she sighs with her entire body, sagging against his white, white walls.
"Could you get any less flattering?" she wants to know in a tone that suggests he had better not get any less flattering or she might just sick up all over this room right now, and he doesn't tell that he's already been there, done that because there is something to be said for the fact that he has her in his bed at all, this soon after she lost everything that made her who she was and her cum laude didn't help her here, now that she's here with him in his hoagie-sandwich house and
crap, young people these days? Isn't it enough that they're all in a rush to beat old people at being old? Do they have to take their jobs and the dreams they built on harder foundations than all the dreams of a moony-eyed child?
"I hate her," he goes, and thinks he might have startled himself more than he startled her. But he's said it, and it burns and it burns and oh, oh, it burns and hate is probably the most useless emotion of the lot, if he had to pick, but it's already been well established that Cyrus has been nothing to the world if not useless, so it's only fitting that hate chews him over. Hate for a little girl in a dumb, euphemistic hat and unsensible shoes. (Ha, take that, English major.)
And then he and Cynthia have a lot and a lot of sex.
So there.
*&*
(afterwards, he puts her head in her lap and shivers, naked as the day he was born in more ways than one and he really needs to find, like, a metaphor dictionary or something because these just keep getting worse.)
*&*
And --
Hm.
In the end, nobody talks about the folks who lost the war and everybody lives their lives like they're convinced of their own immortality, and most of the time, that's the only way Cyrus can live with himself.
-- Cynthia has purple pajamas. They have little Bibarels on them that are captioned "Hug me!" and the sight of them make Cyrus --
What? You thought I was going to say happy?
Ha. Try the next fairy tale over, baby.
Fandom: Pokemon Pearl
Word Count: 1641
-- and it should be mentioned that Cyrus owns a house.
That fact wasn't too horribly important, because so did a lot of other people, and some people didn't who should and some people owned a couple and he doesn't think about it too often, except when everything else he wants to think about hurts and he doesn't like it because hurting is feeling and he's already knocked that stereotype unconscious, so he thinks about his house.
Then he gets his butt out of Mt. Coronet and goes there, to his bungalow shaped like a nice, fat hoagie sandwich complete with ridged tin roof like stale lettuce or something because this metaphor sucks, out on an island in the middle of the ocean because the entire planet was a whole bunch of islands and granted, some were bigger than others and there wasn't a single place one could get truly lost except in (themselves) the open ocean and Cyrus hated the taste of salt in the back of his throat in the morning.
The walls were white. All of them. White, white, white because the builders got bored and decided the place wasn't worth it.
Mars brings him a can of paint and he looks at it with one eyebrow raised and she blushes, but she blushes at everything and Cyrus is the master of the condescending eyebrow, thank you, so he takes the can and pries open the lid and mixes.
It's a thick, rich blue color, but it's not blue like the sky or blue like the ocean. It's the kind of blue that's not even real.
He falls asleep with his head propped up on his Weavile and that's not comfortable at all but he's not the Leader of Team Galactic because he had snuggly Pokemon, and when he dreams he dreams of the way Diagla glowed blue, the thick rich blue of something not even real or so real that the rest of time and space didn't even bother trying to compare.
He wakes up, throws up, and paints the entire place white. Again.
*&*
"'Most likely to succeed.' You voted me that, didn't you?"
She blinks, gouging her eyes with the flats of her hands like she's trying to rub the sleep out of them or simply giving herself something to do. Or maybe he's wearing ugly socks. He hadn't been paying attention. Then she checks her watch (who the hell sleeps with their watch on?) and frowns. Then she looks at him and frowns some more.
"Cyrus?" Her eyes clear, sharpen, even as the rest of her sleep-swollen face becomes bewildered. "Cyrus, that was high school."
"Surprise!" he goes, cynically, and then thinks he might be better if he just kept his mouth shut. Wasn't it his mouth that got him into this mess?
Wait, no. That was his money. His mouth just helped place that money. And maybe he's gotten very good at dodging responsibility. Maybe that's what he should put under 'career' from now on, instead of 'clever entrepreneur' (and most days, he couldn't even spell that. High school sucked.)
"I haven't gotten anywhere," he says, and she is (ruler of the free world, only the most powerful creature that smells like the earth and wasn't conquered by a little girl in a pink scarf and legwarmers because Diagla was) looking at him like he's insane, and he's just grateful that she's not asking why he's on her doorstep at eight at night and he's not asking why the hell was she so sound asleep at eight. "I hate this world."
"Wait," she goes, incredulous, "How old are you?"
Cythnia wears black like she's just been kissing some corpse in a graveyard, or like she's trying to make herself so dark she could finally find the light in other people.
Well, here it is, Cyrus: you scared off your wife, brainwashed your daughters, and used your money to tap into the most brilliant minds in Pokemon research in order to find a way to screw over the world like it screwed over you, just to start over with some new galaxy so you wouldn't have to wind up on the doorstep of the alma mater, cum laude, something-dumb-in-Latin of your graduating class at a fairly reasonable hour of the night and feel like the slime of the earth. And you're too dumb to find yourself one of those uncanny creatures who work the Pokemon centers who mumbled at you in that, "I'm sorry you ruined your only chance of destroying the world as we know it. Would you like come comfort sex?" voice because Cynthia is a far cry from that.
And Cyrus, Cyrus, Cyrus, if emotions are messy and useless, then how come some little cheerleader from some little town with a name that sounds better as a garbage disposal company trumped your entire lifetime of scheming and planning because she was a teenager and choked full of them?
Emotions, that is.
"You can't just open the book of my life and jump in the middle," he says, and she shakes her head like she'll never understand him (why the hell is she trying?).
"Your life's not over," she rejoins, and he remembers why he came here.
"I'm too old to start over."
"Then don't. Work with what you already have." Wasn't she on the cheerleading squad, too? What's the Latin society for cheerleading?
This really, really sucks.
He looks at his hands and thinks there's a little bit of white paint left on the rims of his nails, and his hands are cracked from seasalt but they're also cracked from training and it hits him like a thunderbolt.
Children grow up with tales of the tall grass, of don't play in the rivers or else the Gyrados will get you, of Pokemon as bad creatures who will mercilessly attack you until you have one of your own. And by then, you're old enough to understand why the world revolves around Pokemon. Don't let the big cities and flashing neon lights and horrible, horrible fashion fool you; humans belong to Pokemon.
And that's why he lost.
And that's why losing isn't going to kill him.
*&*
"We're Pokemon Trainers," he tells his daughters.
They watch him expectantly, eyes slightly glassy and hands folded in their laps. They've got the mental spiel to get through his pep talks and he scowls at them. This is so high school.
"We're Pokemon Trainers," he says again, and Jupiter snaps back to herself with a skeptical "uh-huh. And?"
He opens his mouth, but then it snaps shut of its own accord, because how do you say that? That being a Pokemon Trainer is the one thing the human race has in common and more often than not, with the exceptions of them and like-minded miscreants, it was the one good thing holding this world together and he had come so close to tipping that balance and that wasn't even brushing the surface of what he had almost done.
He laughs. "If I start wearing Birkenstocks and listening to Volkner's finest thought-provoking guitar music, do me a favor and take a Zap Cannon to me."
*&*
Cyrus thinks he should have spent less time studying the philosophy, psychiatry, and general screwed-up make-up of the world and pinpointing what was wrong and what needed to be fixed and more time trying to get down Cynthia's pants like the rest of the male population, because look where philanthropy got him.
*&*
Shortly thereafter, Cynthia loses the title of Champion to the very same brat who doesn't even know how to try out for a cheerleading squad, much less any fancy Latin societies or that Cyrus has voted her Most Likely to Screw Over Old Men for their Livelihoods and World-Domination Plans, Har-de-di-Har-Har.
"That hat makes her head look like a giant condom," he says, and she sighs with her entire body, sagging against his white, white walls.
"Could you get any less flattering?" she wants to know in a tone that suggests he had better not get any less flattering or she might just sick up all over this room right now, and he doesn't tell that he's already been there, done that because there is something to be said for the fact that he has her in his bed at all, this soon after she lost everything that made her who she was and her cum laude didn't help her here, now that she's here with him in his hoagie-sandwich house and
crap, young people these days? Isn't it enough that they're all in a rush to beat old people at being old? Do they have to take their jobs and the dreams they built on harder foundations than all the dreams of a moony-eyed child?
"I hate her," he goes, and thinks he might have startled himself more than he startled her. But he's said it, and it burns and it burns and oh, oh, it burns and hate is probably the most useless emotion of the lot, if he had to pick, but it's already been well established that Cyrus has been nothing to the world if not useless, so it's only fitting that hate chews him over. Hate for a little girl in a dumb, euphemistic hat and unsensible shoes. (Ha, take that, English major.)
And then he and Cynthia have a lot and a lot of sex.
So there.
*&*
(afterwards, he puts her head in her lap and shivers, naked as the day he was born in more ways than one and he really needs to find, like, a metaphor dictionary or something because these just keep getting worse.)
*&*
And --
Hm.
In the end, nobody talks about the folks who lost the war and everybody lives their lives like they're convinced of their own immortality, and most of the time, that's the only way Cyrus can live with himself.
-- Cynthia has purple pajamas. They have little Bibarels on them that are captioned "Hug me!" and the sight of them make Cyrus --
What? You thought I was going to say happy?
Ha. Try the next fairy tale over, baby.