Hello, everyone! This is a one-shot that I originally wrote in 2012 and have just made some significant revisions to. It means a lot to me to convey what I'm going for correctly in it, so I'd really appreciate any kind of feedback!
Butterfree
“Metapod, just a bit more! Hang on!”
And at that moment, your cocoon split open in a burst of blinding, searing light, and with a flutter of giddy elation in my chest, I knew that you were evolving. This was the dream: we’d been training tirelessly for a full week now, following my second failed battle against Brock. Somehow, at the time, it felt like the climax of everything I’d worked for, like there wasn’t a whole journey and seven more gyms ahead of me.
I remember, almost in slow motion, watching you crawl out and spread your fragile wings for the first time. I remember them quivering as you stretched them out, the experimental twitch of your antennae, that glorious moment when you leapt up and took flight. I remember how you circled me quickly, flapping your wings teasingly in my face, and Brock’s Onix growled, and I said “Confusion!” and you cried out and then…
Of course I remember it. It was my first gym victory; how could I ever forget? I remember the Onix roaring and collapsing, the rumble under my feet as it hit the ground. I remember Brock’s calm voice telling it to return while the widest grin I had ever sported spread over my face. I remember literally jumping for joy, feeling as if my heart were about to explode, and you fluttering down towards me in a little playful loop before landing on my head and snuggling into my hair.
It feels like yesterday.
It also feels like it’s been a long, long time… because it has.
-------
Trainers aren’t supposed to have favorites, but you were my favorite. I loved Charmander and Pidgey and Nidoran to death too, of course, but I’d loved Butterfree since I was a kid, and you were everything I’d dreamed of. When the others were struggling, I could always count on you; your powder moves were indispensable for powerful foes. For those months you were my most powerful Pokémon by far, the pinnacle of my team. I don’t think I could ever explain just how proud I was every time I sent you out of your Pokéball and heard your defiant battle cry, every time a far larger Pokémon’s eyelids drooped as it breathed in your Sleep Powder and slumped helplessly on the ground, every time an opponent admitted defeat and you landed triumphantly on my head, giving me that cute little snuggle of yours. I earnestly felt like you were invincible. I imagined you putting Lance’s dragons to sleep, me carrying you on my head into the Hall of Fame to be crowned champions. I imagined it would be you and me on the covers of the newspapers, me grinning at the camera while you nibbled on my ear.
And then… you started losing. Just the occasional battle, at first. It hit me pretty hard when that hiker’s Onix, the same Pokémon you had so handily defeated in Brock’s gym, slammed you into the ground with its tail and you didn’t rise up again, but I knew you were at a severe type disadvantage, so all things considered it wasn’t that strange. But then it started happening more and more often. My other Pokémon evolved, not only catching up with you but overtaking you, and so did the Pokémon possessed by the other trainers around me. It started to dawn on me, slowly, that you were frail and not very fast. I tried buying carbos, offering them to everyone, but still more and more of the Pokémon we faced would land a heavy blow before you even got the chance to launch a Sleep Powder. Eventually, with a pit in my stomach, I gave in to my nagging suspicion that you were underperforming compared to the rest of my team and decided, silently, to start keeping track.
It was true. You fainted more often than any of them and finished the fewest battles on your own. And the margin was increasing.
Initially I think I explained it as being that I’d been overconfident, that I’d used you in too many battles you weren’t well suited to while I’d been more cautious with the others. I took care not to do that. It helped, a little, but eventually I had to face the fact that you just weren’t keeping up.
I wasn’t disappointed in you. It’s hard to explain, but it wasn’t like that. It broke my heart to realize you were falling behind, not because you weren’t good enough, but because I loved you and loved your joy when you won and loved being able to trust you to win any battle. It broke my heart to have to recall your unconscious form after you’d done your absolute best, to let my hand wander past your Pokéball when I knew you wouldn’t be able to handle my opponent’s next pick, to switch you out and send out Charizard instead because you couldn’t take another hit. And more than anything, it broke my heart to notice that you were becoming more nervous, your battle cry losing confidence – something I could hear in your voice because I knew you so well, even though you were trying not to let me hear it.
(I never told you that I could tell. I never told you that I could feel the increasing desperation in your victory snuggle. I never told you how I felt, or that I knew how you felt. I probably should have, but I didn’t. I don’t think I could quite admit it to myself at that point.)
I started using you less, only when I was facing a Pokémon that seemed like particularly easy prey for you. I suspect you noticed, but you never complained. I know now that it must have broken your heart to see that loss of confidence in your abilities, but I didn’t see that far at that point.
And then I started rotating my team. That wasn’t because of you – I’d caught more than six Pokémon now, and I wanted to train the others and pick the most adept team for any situation. But it wasn’t long before you were rarely on my active team. I felt guilty every time I left you on the PC – I would think to myself that after I’d gotten past this route, or beaten this gym leader, or battled these trainers, I’d get you out again and we’d find someplace where you could really shine and get some training in. At first I really did it. Then I started occasionally deciding it wouldn’t hurt if I just used some of my other Pokémon that also needed training and were better suited to the wild Pokémon in the area for now, and I could get you out later. And then I started putting it off because I knew you were undertrained and would have a difficult time either way. And then I promised myself when I got the chance I would take you back to a lower-level area and there I could surely get you back on level with the rest of my team again.
When I finally did get the opportunity to go there again, I simply forgot. I have no excuse. I had gotten caught up in my journey; I loved my other Pokémon, I was excited about getting Blaine’s badge before my friends, you had been pushed to the back of my mind, and I just forgot about it. When I remembered, I was already on the way to the Seafoam Islands to investigate rumours of Articuno sightings; I couldn’t just turn back.
By the time I returned, I was too ashamed to face you. It had been so long, and I’d just left you to rot. I tried to get myself to go and retrieve you, but I didn’t know what I would even say to you. I told myself I had other important things to do, that I had just one gym left and I might as well get that done without having to first spend the weeks it would take getting you caught up by that point.
I defeated Giovanni, triumphantly watched Gyarados dispose of his Rhydon with a Hydro Pump. And as I left the gym with my badge and looked out towards Route 22, I realized you would never be on the team that I’d take to the Indigo Plateau, and that Victory Road just wasn’t any place for a Butterfree. I decided, really decided, that I’d train you up when I’d taken on the Elite Four; then, surely, I could relax and train whomever I wanted, wherever I wanted.
I became the champion with Charizard by my side. I was ecstatic. My original dreams, that image of you buried in my hair in the Hall of Fame, had faded; I’d moved on, and by this point I’d developed new dreams, dreams about a victory flight with Charizard. And that was everything I’d hoped for. I didn’t even remember that you weren’t there until I was back home, being congratulated by my mom.
Again, I was ashamed. I didn’t want to have to tell you I’d fought the Elite Four without you. I had other Pokémon who needed training, more rumours of legendary Pokémon, an invitation to the Sevii Islands.
I told myself I’d take you out and train you later.
It’s been six years.
-------
And so, now I’m finally standing here, facing the sunset, on the road leading to Viridian Forest, where I first met you that fateful day I headed out on my journey.
The breeze is light and cool, like it was that day. I still remember you, as a Caterpie, crawling out eagerly from behind that tree, my first challenger and my first catch. Now all I can think is that you probably should have stayed hidden, evolved on your own time, and maybe gotten another trainer, a nice bug catcher or somebody, who wouldn’t betray you like I did.
I take a deep breath, and my hand trembles as I reach for your Pokéball. The scratches and tiny dents in its surface are nostalgically familiar; when I got it out I hadn’t seen this ball in so long I was surprised at how worn it was, but I guess I always remembered somewhere in the back of my mind, that sensation of holding it and rolling it between my fingers. This is the last time I’ll hold it like this, I realize, and it stings.
I press the button, and the ball maximizes in my hand. A part of me is still hesitant, still wants to go back and release you through the PC, so the Pokémon Center staff will handle it after closing and I can just pretend it never happened – but that’s not an option. I know that now.
With guilt clenching at my gut, I drop the ball onto the ground, and you emerge from it in the air, facing away from me. I watch, unable to speak, as you scan the area for an opponent, then flutter in a half-circle and turn to look at me.
Your face can’t form expressions like a human can, but I can see anyway in the slight tilt of your head, the confused twitching of your antennae, the slight slowing of your wing flaps, that it takes you a moment to recognize me. That wrenches at my heart more than anything; suddenly it occurs to me that your sense of time on the PC was muddled, that your first realization of how long it’s been is seeing me suddenly a teenager in place of the child that you knew. You hover there silently for a second, just staring at me with those unblinking red compound eyes; I don’t know if the accusation I see in them is real or if I’m just projecting. I try to imagine what must be going through your mind, what it might feel like to realize you’ve been in stasis for years, that everyone you knew has just moved on without you – but I can’t even begin to comprehend it.
“I’m sorry, Butterfree,” I whisper; my voice is hoarse, and as I say it, tears prick at the corners of my eyes. “I should have done this long ago.”
It’s painful to speak, so I point the ball back at you and press the button, showing you that nothing happens, that I’ve deactivated the Pokéball. I throw it away; it bounces off the ground and comes to a rest by the roadside. You stare at it for a second, then look back at me.
“I kept telling myself I’d keep training you,” I say, fighting the urge to avert my eyes; this whole time I’ve been refusing to face you, and I can’t do that anymore. “And I never did. I released the others I couldn’t get the chance to continue training, so they could move on and have a life, but not you. I could never accept that you’d be better off without me. But… you would, and pretending for so long was selfish. It was… it was cruel. I’m so sorry.”
You look at me for a moment more, and then you turn abruptly and flutter upwards, circling a few times in the sky for the first time in six years – six years that you never even knew. I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but I can’t; my mind is full of every time I avoided using you, every time I put off training you, every time I remembered you and realized I hadn’t thought about you for weeks. It’s an aching, suffocating feeling of opportunities lost, potential wasted and friendship neglected.
I expect you to turn in the direction of the forest and fly off, but you don’t. Instead, you slow down, looking back at me. My lip trembles, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes; I wish burningly that you’d just leave before I lose my composure.
Instead, you take a graceful dive, land on my head and bury yourself in my hair. A thousand memories blend together, guilt mixes with triumph and joy and love; everything shatters to pieces inside me, and I break into sobs as my resolve gives way. I can’t do this.
“No, wait,” I say without thinking, my voice thick and strained, “I’ll train you up again, we’ll train and be together and make everything the way it was supposed to be and I’ll never leave you behind again – please don’t go.”
You don’t. You stay, nibbling lightly at me, a comforting weight to remind me you’re still there, while I cry and cry and can’t stop. You stay as I run out of tears and just stand there shaking. You stay while I finally collect myself, wipe my face and take a few deep breaths. I don’t deserve your forgiveness but you stay anyway, and a part of me hates that, wishes you’d just hate me as much as I do so I can stop feeling so undeserving.
“I’m sorry,” I say when I regain the ability to talk, staring unseeingly at the pink-tinged clouds in the distance. “That was… I shouldn’t have said that. It’s your life. I’ve taken enough of it away from you already. I have no right to want anything from you. And I don’t. I just want you to be happy.”
You snuggle up to me again. There’s a burning feeling in my throat as I swallow. Do you not understand what happened? Didn’t I explain well enough? I reach up, pull you as carefully as I can off my head and let your wings take over to hover in front of me. “Butterfree, it’s been six years. You were falling behind and I started treating training you like a chore that I put off and forgot about. And then I didn’t do it even when I remembered because I couldn’t admit it to you, so I just… left you there.”
And don’t you see how selfish that was? Don’t you see that a true friend would never do something like that?
There is a pause. Your antennae droop a little, and I immediately wish I hadn’t brought up your battle performance; it seems like I’m blaming you for it. “No, no, it wasn’t your fault,” I add. “I was being impatient and it was unfair. I should have just…”
I trail off. To be honest, I’m not sure if there is any one thing I should have just done. Would you have been happier if I’d given you special extra training to keep up, a constant reminder that you couldn’t just be part of the team like the others but needed special attention? If I’d continued to send you out only against the weakest of opponents? If I’d continued as normal and you’d just gone on being pummeled and getting more nervous about battling until you dreaded it altogether?
But no, I realize; I know the real answer. I take a deep breath. “What I should have done is I should have tried to talk to you, Butterfree. We should have talked about it. Do you know, I – I could see that you weren’t really having fun battling anymore? You were losing your enthusiasm, I could tell, and instead of asking you about it I just kept dragging you on trying to – to make sure you just wouldn’t lose as much. Like that’d fix it.” I hate saying that; I feel so, so stupid, more so with every new thing I force myself to admit to. “I – can we talk about it now? Unless you want to just go; I don’t blame you.”
You flutter towards me and gently bump my head. Playfully, lightly, a friendly admonishment. I guess you don’t want to go, however bizarre that is.
“So,” I begin, hesitant. How do I do this? It’s not like you can literally talk talk; I’m going to have to do the heavy lifting. “You stopped having fun battling. Do you even want to battle anymore?” You flap from side to side in a noncommittal shrug. “But… I don’t want you to have to give up something you loved. We can still battle if… you did love battling before, didn’t you?”
You do that same indifferent motion again. “Wait, really? But you always seemed so enthusiastic – why…”
You dive straight at me and bonk my forehead again, with a bit more insistent purpose. At first I can’t make sense of it. “…Because of me?”
But it makes sense, now that I think about it, if what you enjoyed about battling was mainly about doing your best for my sake. You lost your enthusiasm because you thought you were letting me down, not because you hated losing. And of course when my reaction was to let you battle less and give you intermittent special training sessions just to keep up with the rest of the team, it only made it worse.
For a few seconds I can’t quite speak; I just stand there, feeling like a colossal jerk, a mixture of emotions fighting within my brain. “Butterfree,” I finally manage to say, “we don’t have to battle. If you’re sure you want to stay, you don’t have to… or if you do battle, I don’t care how you do, so long as you’re having fun doing it. We can just… if you want, you can just come along and… not battle. Or you can battle, if you want. Just tell me if you want to battle and…”
You fly at me to snuggle into my hair again, like you’re happy and everything’s okay now. My mind is numb. Everything is not okay. I still don’t even feel right about taking you with me again; it seems to be what you want, but I can’t shake the feeling that it shouldn’t be. It could all have been avoided if I’d paid better attention, or tried to understand you more fully, or just talked to you instead of leaving you on the PC so I wouldn’t have to – if I’d really treated you like someone who had feelings, instead of something that induced feelings in me.
But this is about you, not me. And I really do want you to be happy.
I clear my throat. “I… I don’t know why you want to stay. But if you do… I’ll do everything I can to make it up to you. I’m never putting you on the PC again, or not unless I talk to you about it first. I’m going to listen to you and pay attention, and talk to you about anything that involves you. And… and my other Pokémon, too. And – if anything’s wrong, and I don’t realize, please let me know. I want you to tell me, because if I hurt you again I’ll never forgive myself, and I’ll try to notice even if you haven’t said anything but if I’m an idiot again, please tell me. And you shouldn’t ever feel obligated to do anything just to make me happy. That’s…”
I pause. This isn’t enough. I pick you off my head again so I can look into your eyes. “Butterfree, I… I need to know that you’re not doing this for my sake. That you’ll actually tell me if I’m being an idiot. You’ve gone this whole time just doing things for me, and that’s… I’m grateful for that but you need to do this for you. If what you really want is to fly away from here right now, I’ll be happy watching you go, I promise. And even if I wouldn’t be, you should still do it.”
You look up at me silently for a few seconds. That’s actually reassuring; it indicates you’re really thinking about it, not just automatically defaulting to sticking with me no matter what. You flap your wings, and I let go of you, watch you turn away and stare towards the forest as you consider it.
You flutter over to the tree where I caught you, and my breath catches in my throat, but I follow with hesitant steps as you circle the tree. I can see now that there are two other Butterfree there, resting in the boughs. You chirp a happy greeting, and they look up; one flies straight into you while the other circles nearby. You gently bump heads a couple times, a familiar gesture that makes my heart clench in my chest. After a moment the three of you settle back down on the branches of the tree and begin a chittering back-and-forth. My heart actually lifts, for the first time since I went to retrieve your ball. You’ve still got friends here. You really would be happy in the wild.
I smile at you, and I mean it. But just as I’m starting to turn around to leave you to it, you cry out again, take off from the branch and approach me again.
“You really sure?”
You give an emphatic midair nod, dive at my head and nibble at my ear. I still don’t really understand how you could forgive me so easily. But I’ll do everything I can to deserve your forgiveness. It’s the least I can do.
I take a deep breath. “You know, it seemed like you were having fun with your friends.” Your family? Not sure. Butterfree that you know. I wonder if they were Caterpie last time you saw them – there’s another sting in my gut. “I’ve been wanting to check out the Trainer House – if you want to stay and catch up a bit more, I could go do that and come pick you up after.”
For a moment you seem surprised. But then give an excited titter and snuggle into my hair for a moment before fluttering back towards the tree. And that… makes me happy.
-------
I got used to having you around again. It’s easy to almost forget what I did to you when you’re there, keeping me company, cheering my team on, as if those six years never happened. You really do seem happy, and your joy warms my heart, like it always did. Maybe I don’t have to understand. Maybe this is just who you are, as a person.
You don’t really battle; you usually seem to have more fun watching, nestling comfortably on my head and flapping your wings eagerly when the others score powerful hits. But now and then, on a whim, you take off and ask to take part. And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but it doesn’t really matter, now. You’re thrilled either way, and so long as you are, so am I.
Some of the others like to watch sometimes, too – not that I hadn’t let them before if they wanted to, but I get the sense they feel more comfortable asking to sit one out now, after I talked to them about it. Charizard snorted when I asked, fighter that he is – but I finally convinced him he doesn’t have to fight those Water-types that make him nervous, either.
Trainers aren’t supposed to have favorites. And that’s fair, because you shouldn’t have favorite people. But you’ll always have a bit of a special place in my heart, as a friend. Every day I strive to deserve the confidence you decided to place in me for this second chance.
And every time you disagree with my plans, or call me on my nonsense with a playful bap of your wing, I feel a little more reassured that maybe I do, after all.
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