Years Lost

They slept again soon after, at what felt like evening, and the next morning, he ate real food again and started wandering around the cavern. He\'d catch her watching him sometimes, and eventually their eyes met for quite some time, before he spoke for the first time since her question the night before.



“What is it?” he barked, wincing when his words sounded too harsh, and she shook her head, looking back toward the door and smoothing her hair behind her shoulder.



“I was just wondering what kind of pokemon you had... Who you\'d brought with you to face this Champion you\'re in search of. Hoping I could see them.”



Something akin to surprise crossed his face, but he nodded, trodding over to his bag to retrieve his pokeballs, then releasing his team into the room.



The Snorlax across the cave opened her eyes and stared at them for a moment, then drifted back to slumber as her trainer held a hand up, dismissing her.



She walked through the room, nodding at the pokemon, stroking their heads and smiling softly. “Is this what you consider strong?” she questioned, her voice clear, though she didn\'t turn back to him.



“Yes,” he responded without hesitation.



“Why?”



Leaf turned to face him, and he took a deep breath, considering the question.



“Because I trained them,” he said simply, his chest swelling slightly as though he dared her to disagree. “Because I cared for them, and raised them to be the best they could.”



She smiled softly, reaching up to pet her own Pikachu. “They are strong.”



His own smile was one of pride, and he knelt to stroke Weavile\'s head.



There was silence between them once more, but now it was calm and comfortable instead of tense.



“Would you like to battle me, once the storm stops?” she offered.



He nodded once. “Yes.”



She put her hand out, and he took a step closer, shaking it.



Leaf took a seat near the fire, and he sat down across from her, feeling slight excitement at the notion of the battle ahead. Nevermind that he should save his pokemon\'s full strength for the Champion waiting for him... this girl would, at least, be a great warmup round, though the more likely option was for him to take this as training, then return to the mountain when the weather became less deadly.



\'Maybe,\' he thought, watching her through the flames, \'she\'ll come with me.\'



“Why are you on Mt. Silver?” he asked, realizing he\'d told her but she\'d never said the same.



“I have my reasons,” she said simply, staring off at the ceiling. “I\'m looking for something, too, I suppose.”



He got up to walk around again, recalling his pokemon once they\'d gotten a chance to eat, spending a while just circling. He\'d grown restless from three days within the cave and his long time laying down, and now on top of it he was excited. He\'d have a battle soon.



“How long do these storms last?” he asked, finally sitting down, this time within a few feet of her.



“Not used to sitting still?” Another phrase that Silver expected to come teasingly, but she said earnestly.



He shook his head. “It\'s time lost. Progress I could have made.”



“Make sure it\'s not wasted, then?”



He stared at her, at the way her eyes, so old compared to the rest of her, studied his face, and felt the gaze draw him closer. He had leaned halfway toward her before noticing, his heart pounding as he pulled himself back away and turned his head back toward the fire.



She was still looking at him when he next dared to glance, a gaze which he quickly averted. “Sorry...” he muttered, followed by a shallow sigh.



Leaf answered by touching his cheek, startling him into jerking his head back up, his eyes wide and glowing in the firelight.



“Honesty is nothing to apologize for,” she whispered, drawing her hand away to rest on his shoulder. “And neither is loneliness.”



He let himself turn toward her, his hand extending, reaching to touch her chin, lift it toward him in a way he wasn\'t sure how he knew. “How long have you been up here, looking?”



“Waiting,” she corrected, and the word chilled him more than the blizzard outside. “A long, long time. Two years.”



Silver leaned into her, drawing her lips to his. The kiss lasted for several moments that were lost in the crackle of the dying fire and the howl of the wind outside, before they separated, gaze locked to one another\'s, his fingers still cupping her face. Her eyes searched his face, seeming to pull every secret from his soul, judging it all.



He opened his mouth to apologize for all of it, and was silenced with her mere glance, her fingers returning to his cheek. “We\'re here, now,” she reminded him, and their lips met again, this time less chastely, more hurried.



\'Make up for lost time.\'



He could feel her fingers in his hair and realized, as their lips opened to one another, that this was the first time he could remember someone touching him with true affection. One of the few times he could remember being touched at all.



Those fingers splayed across his neck, resting on his chest, and he lost his composure, lunging toward her, hands cupping both her cheeks as he slid his tongue into her mouth...



Her taste was something he didn\'t know he\'d been missing his whole life, his senses suddenly alive as he melted into her. The way he held her now, the way she smelled, the soft pants she let out between kisses, all seemed so familiar that he thought maybe they\'d known each other forever, and had simply forgotten until now.



They found themselves laying together on the floor side by side, atop the cot Leaf had laid out for him before, arms wrapped haphazardly around each other\'s waists and necks, their kisses ceaseless, the heat of their bodies pressing together distracting them from the cold as the fire faded to embers.



The flickering orange light was slowly being replaced by an unearthly, mint green glow, eventually leaving them both bathed in the ethereal light as they stared quietly into one another. Silver felt as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders by finding this girl, this person who respected him truly, despite only knowing him for a few days. She cared for him earnestly, and saw him and his team as both worthy and strong, and while part of him felt he should be scared by the way she tore down his walls, none of him was.



They broke apart for a moment, and he was caught by the beauty of Leaf\'s eyes in the pale light. He had no way of knowing that he was lifting a similar weight from her; the feelings of being untouchable, of being separated from her humanity from her time away on the mountain, all vanished simply from his treatment of her as an equal, and as someone desirable simply for them, instead of their power.



She was the one the fear hung onto, somewhere in the back of her mind. Would he still treat her this way once the storm lifted and they had their battle?



The silence enveloped them again as their tongues rejoined, their hands growing more daring as the hour wore on. There was a headiness to her moans that took away his will to ever pull away again. Instead he simply wanted to stay against her forever, feeling the way she sighed when his hand squeezed her breast or teeth found her ear.



Somehow they knew, as the cold started to catch up to them and she pulled her sleeping back up as a blanket, that they were made for this, and that this might be the only chance they had to prove that. Leaf pulled his clothes from him carefully, making no plays for any part of him she exposed, instead pushing the clothes to the outside of their nest for extra insulation before kissing him again. Her cloths followed soon after, lining the other side, and their bare flesh pressed together, combating the shivers that were starting to threaten them.



“Warmer,” she whispered. “We need to be warmer...”



In a moment of boldness, he responded, “We can do that,” and kissed her again, though she pulled back after a moment of soft moaning.



“No... We need more blankets... with the fire gone...”



Bravely he pulled himself from the top of the makeshift blanket, grabbing at his pack and dragging it to them, unstrapping his own sleeping bag from the bottom and unrolling it quickly. They threw it on top of themselves, adding another layer to hold in the heat they generated, though it made breathing all the harder to have the weight atop them.



Leaf kissed him again, then, pressing her forehead to his, whispered, “Now it\'s alright.”



At first he thought he\'d made a mistake, as she carefully rolled beneath their covers to face away from them, until she pushed so closely back against his body that it took his breath away. He nearly hesitated at the motion, before wrapping his arms around her waist, holding her tightly against him. She groaned slightly at the feel of his hardness against her back, draping her own arms over his and squeezing his hand.



He buried his face in her hair, inhaling her scent and sighing it back out, enjoying her warmth quietly. Her hand started to slide along his arm slowly, eventually wrapping her fingers between his and guiding them up to her breasts again.



“I won\'t hold back,” Silver warned her softly, lips brushing the shell of her ear as he started to massage at her goading.



“I don\'t want you to,” she assured, rocking her body softly to rub against the body behind her.



He shifted slowly, his lips resting against her shoulder and hand over her heart as he found entrance and took it, sinking into Leaf as his new reality.



Within her, Silver found everything he\'d lost, the acceptance of the girl who\'d saved his life from the storm now lifting him high above it. Here was everything he\'d been seeking, everything she\'d offered him over the past few days – safety, acceptance, compassion, respect, trust, and now love – all the essentials for happiness, rolled together in one act, and all he had to do was not betray the emotions she allowed him.



He would never even dream of that betrayal, finding her too beautiful, from the way the ethereal light of the mountain\'s crystals lit her hair, to the way her fingers locked just between his, to the way their curves locked together just so. He was certain this girl was a great treasure, one he was meant to protect, but one the world certainly needed, so he would never keep hidden... If anything, he would bring her back to the world, as perhaps she could heal it in the same way she had him. One thing was certain, and that was that he was alive, and this was no illusion of the afterlife; Silver knew that before touching her, he\'d been scheduled to go to hell.



And of course he was not alone in this new existence; the one other person left in the world at that moment clung to his arms tightly, her body tangling around his in ways she couldn\'t have planned a minute before, couldn\'t have foreseen when this boy surfaced in a snow drift days before, but now couldn\'t live without. She\'d known during her years of isolation about the physical emptiness she felt, but hadn\'t noticed the metaphysical one until he\'d filled the first. Now she, too, knew what it was like to be whole – remembered what it was like to be a person, to be cared about her as “Leaf” instead of a goal or obstacle.



She was not an unobtainable bar to the boy thrusting into her. Not something to be defeated, nor earned, nor destroyed. He found her instead as someone to love, someone he needed to express that love to, and in making love to her, he had completed the task so few had ever come close to; by removing the doubts about the world she\'d come to hold true, by proving her wrong, he had defeated her, and she accepted it graciously.



There was no longer need for her to be in control. There was no longer need for her to be alone. For either of them to be alone.



The world that had forsaken them both had signaled its apology to its young protectors by bringing them to each other and allowing them to unite, graciously providing both opportunity and ambiance as their emotional dance stretched into the night.



As he listened to her heart beat against his chest and her light gasps fill the cavern, Silver became certain it was this night she\'d been looking and waiting for, and as she relaxed for the first time since arriving in Saffron City years before, she realized the same.



The way he called out her name would haunt her forever, held in her memory as the most beautiful the word had ever sounded. She whispered his in return, and he drew her hand to her shoulder, kissing her knuckles softly, before letting his face rest back into her neck.



He\'d barely even touched anyone before in his life, but now he was holding Leaf, this girl he\'d just made love, who he\'d only known for a few days. He\'d come to the mountain trying to escape destiny, and instead it seemed he\'d found it.



For some reason, he didn\'t mind.



The next morning, there was no howl of the wind outside, and he felt a little too hot and sticky as he woke up, the blanket draped over his face to keep his head warm. Carefully he pulled the edge back, wondering why things felt too quiet, why he felt suddenly alone at waking up the same way he had for the past few days.



Awkwardly, it was his nudity that assured him the night before hadn\'t been a dream, relieving the nagging worry he had over it. Now the only question that remained was, where had she gone?



A few minutes later, after he\'d dressed, he stepped out of the cave into the open air for the first time in days. The sunlight was bright enough to sting his eyes as it bounced off the snowy ground, and he shielded him as he scanned the surroundings for her.



He didn\'t have to look far.



Sitting just a few feet away, atop an overhang, was Leaf, who was surveying the horizon with Pikachu. Silver stepped over behind her, in awe of the view, as he was certain he could see all the way to the ocean from their vantage.



She turned her head at his footsteps, looking up at her new lover with a quiet smile and several silent questions. Did he still love her now that the morning had come? Would he, still, once he knew the truth, which she\'d certainly have to reveal at their battle?



“Do you still want to battle?” she offered, pushing up to her feet.



He nodded.



Their battle stretched through the morning, the snow melting from the rocks but not the grass as it wore on and the sun drifted higher, until finally only Charizard and Pikachu remained standing, the former unscathed from being her trump card after Magneton was sent out.



“You\'re powerful,” he admitted. They were both sitting atop that ledge now, their shoulders only an inch apart but not touching. “I should go and train more, before I\'ll be ready to take on the Champion.”



“You\'re nearly there,” she assured him in return. Now was the time, she needed to tell him... but he was already standing up, his hand offered down to hers for a friendly shake.



“I\'ll come back here again, before I challenge him. I\'m sure if I can beat you, I can beat him.”



A smile flashed across his face as she took his hand, nodding. He had no idea how right he was, and she was no longer sure she should correct him on the rest. She didn\'t let go of his hand after the shake, instead using it to pull herself to her feet, gazing down into his eyes, both learning for the first time that he was a good half head shorter than her.



He leaned up and kissed her, once, chastely, then patted Pikachu on the head gently, turning to leave without actually saying goodbye. For a moment she watched him, heart feeling both full and forlorn as she watched him climb down the rocky outcrop and start toward the forest below.



Suddenly he stopped, turning back toward her and shouting, “When that battle comes... will you go with me?”



“I\'ll be there,” she called back, smiling. It wasn\'t a lie.