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Pokémon Storm in a Teacup

Storm in a Teacup

kyeugh

you gotta feel your lines
Staff
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. farfetchd-galar
  2. gfetchd-kyeugh
  3. onion-san
  4. farfetchd
  5. farfetchd

Storm in a Teacup​

W3074J7_d.jpg

One-shot / 1.8k words / Rated T for some language and implied child abuse​
this story was written as a secret santa gift for a user at the Outskirts Stand, helloyellow17’s Colosseum-oriented discord community. my lorre knowledge is spotty at best, so i’ll hope you forgive any inconsistencies with canon and enjoy this story!

Wes had hoped desperately that the readings were wrong, that there couldn’t possibly be a shadow pokémon at this house—but, for once, he had been wrong about being wrong. It was just as he remembered it, almost—shabby plank walls with peeling blue paint, flyaway feathergrass climbing through the weathered porch, nightshade consuming the piles of asphalt shingles that had fallen to the lawn. The boarded windows were a new addition, but they fit right in.

“You were right,” Rui said. “This really is the middle of nowhere. But you were right, there’s definitely a shadow pokémon here… I can feel it. How do you think it ended up somewhere like this?”

They put it here, he could have said, to torment me.

It felt wrong and shameful for her to be at his side here, like she’d walked in on him changing, only he was bearing his soul rather than his skin. For once, he felt grateful for his habitual dourness and mood swings—she probably didn’t think anything of his sullen expression right now. It could be just another one of his moods. Refuge in a scowl.

“There’s probably canned food inside,” Wes offered half-heartedly. “Maybe it escaped from its Snagem goon and wandered here looking for a meal. Who knows. I didn’t come here to learn its life story.” He fidgeted with the Snag Machine on his wrist. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“Fine, Mr. Grouchy. Jeez.”

The ramshackle steps creaked beneath his dust-caked boots as he ascended them. The door was tricky, but he opened it with familiar ease—turn the handle, then lift and shove with the shoulder. He wondered if Rui would notice how well-worn the wood was where he’d leaned into it.

It smelled like dust and rot inside, not by coincidence. There were still cups left on the dining table, ratty shoes at the door, warped wood floor scattered with yellowed pages bearing a child’s furnace-charcoal doodles. He could practically hear the voices that once echoed off these walls. The clattering of kitchen utensils, the odd whining of the limescale-dressed faucet, the gravelly voice reprising “No me hagas pegarte.

Feeling nauseous, Wes wrenched his eyes shut, took a breath through his nose, and listened for sounds—real ones.

Nothing.

“I don’t think it’s in here,” Wes said at last. “Let’s check the storm cellar.”

“What storm cellar?” Rui asked. “Wait, how can you tell it’s not in here? You didn’t even look in the bedrooms.”

“I just know, okay? It’s not a big house, I’d hear it knocking around.”

“Let me just check to be sure,” she said, and advanced towards one of the bedroom doors—that door.

Stop!” Wes cried out, a note of desperation in his voice. Fury bristled on the back of his neck and anxiety fluttered deep in his stomach. “Just… Can you go wait outside? I’m sick of this twenty questions shit. I have a job to do. Just stay out of my way.”

Rui opened her mouth to protest, outrage written on her face, but must have thought better of it because she clamped her mouth shut, shot him a piercing glare, and stormed outside without a word. She tried to slam the door behind her, but it just clattered uselessly against the doorframe and creaked back open again.

Once he couldn’t hear her footfalls or the shrieking of the old wood boards beneath them, he allowed himself a heavy sigh. He hated snapping at Rui—these days, anyway—but it was too much right now. He’d have to explain and apologize when they were far away from here, when the specter of this place was behind them and whipping his nerves raw no longer.

“Come on guys,” he said gently to his espeon and umbreon. Espy chirped back at him, apprehensively. He could feel the spininess of her emotion-scape through their psychic link, but it didn’t take mind-reading powers to know his pokémon were feeling just as shaken up as he was.

After all, they grew up here too.

- - -​

Wesley was not a picky eater, but the breakfast really was dreadful—the egg was at once burned on the bottom and unpleasantly slimy at the top, the bread was brittle and striped with lines of acrid char, and the refried beans were warm in some places and tin-cold in others. He really wished he didn’t have to eat it at all, but it was clear that the mere act of cooking had put his father in a rotten mood, and Wesley had no interest in making matters worse.

He choked down a final bite of unseasoned bean mush and pushed his plate an inch forward. “Gracias, Papa—it was really good.”

His father let out a bemused snort at that. “Was it, now? Hmph. Now go bring tu mama some coffee—she needs her energy.”

Wesley nodded enthusiastically and lowered himself from his chair to pour her a cup from the dun metal pot on the stovetop. The hand-crafted mug was warm in his hands. He ferried it to her room dutifully, his pet eevee chipper at his heels.

For his many flaws, Papa was fastidious about keeping this room in the best condition—the sheets were properly white, the vanity table’s mirror pristine and dust-free, the floor perfectly swept. Mama stirred awake at the sound of his entry, too-gaunt face and gossamer black strands bathed in curtain-filtered sunlight—she slept often these days, but never deeply. Her eevee awoke too, scrunching up his paws against his face and shaking a little as he stretched.

“I brought you your morning coffee, Mama,” Wes said, kneeling by her bedside. She took the mug with trembling hands and a gentle smile, then placed it by her side and tucked a strand of Wesley’s hair behind his ear with the other. Her touch was cold. For just a moment her expression knotted with worry, and he thought he knew why—his thirteenth birthday was still two months away, but his hair was already flecked with white on the sides.

“My sweet boy,” she said. “My whole world. Why the sad look in your eye? Your mother will be okay as long as you keep bringing her this mug each morning.”

He nodded glumly. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe that, of course. Even if Papa’s mood were the only barometer he had, it was clear enough to read. Things had been getting worse for a long time, not better. But it didn’t help anyone to say that out loud.

“I know,” he said instead.

She smiled again, a bit sadly this time. “Let me tell you a morning story. It was one my dad always shared with me when I was your age. It’s called The Rookidee and the Pitcher. Have I told you this one before?”

“No,” he lied.

“I can hardly believe it… It’s such a good one. It was a dry, dry summer in the Great Orre Desert, and there was a little rookidee who was so thirsty he thought he might die…”

She got a few words out after that before her speech became unintelligible and she drifted back into sleep. With a sniffle, Wes exited her room—Papa was gone from the living room now—and ducked into his own.

She hadn’t made it more than a few sentences into that story since last spring.

No matter how he felt, he knew better than to weep—he could practically hear Papa shouting “No me hagas pegarte” from the other room already. He just shook, back to the wall, as the tears streamed down his face silently.

It wasn’t going to be okay. It just wasn’t. It didn’t help anyone to say it out loud, but sometimes he just wished someone would. His life felt unreal—every day was a charade, a great performance of okay-ness for an audience of no one. Maybe it would break him to hear the truth, but maybe hearing the words would at least root him back into the Earth. It was too lonely, drifting through space.

His little eevee curled up against him, looking up at him with big brown eyes that he knew somehow were pleading, pitying him. The little creature’s fur was so soft and warm in his hands. Wesley pulled him close and sniffled—he smelled like clean laundry. Such a delightful creature, so pure in spite of everything.

The fuzzy little thing might have been the only okay thing in the world.

“I love you, Eevee,” Wesley choked out.

Mrrp,” Eevee said back.

Maybe it was delirium, but Wesley was sure he understood what the little chirp meant:

I love you too.

- - -​

The shadow had been in the storm cellar after all. Gonzap’d probably hoped that he’d have to root through every room first, open all the old wounds. Good thing he was a fucking idiot.

He had gotten the last laugh, though. The pokémon had gone down easy—just one hit from Umbreon rendered it vulnerable enough for capture. That wasn’t the hard part, and Wes knew it wasn’t supposed to be.

It was a sinistea—little and delicate, yes, but it wasn’t just any sinistea. He had seen the cup that formed its body before, knew the fingerprints that were impressed into its rough-and-ready clay.

When Rui climbed her way into the storm cellar at last, she found Wes there with his back to the wall, holding a purring Espeon close to his chest, his body racked with silent sobs.

She didn’t say a word as she moved to his side and slid down the wall to sit beside him, wrapping a delicate arm around his shaking shoulders. He couldn’t face her now, couldn’t get a word out, so he kept his head buried in his arms where she wouldn’t see the tears streaming from his bloodshot eyes.

When she tucked a strand of silver hair behind his ear, he fell apart.

Rui didn’t ask him questions. She didn’t make demands. She just pulled him close that way for a moment, and he could smell her candy-sweet perfume, could hear her heartbeat through her jacket.

“It’s okay, Wes,” she said. “It’s going to be okay. Really, it is.”

It didn’t feel that way. Nothing had felt okay for a long time. Except…

Except…

Wes wiped his face with a wrist. He didn’t feel okay, but for the first time since he was a boy, he dared to believe it wouldn’t be that way forever.
 
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tomatorade

The great speckled bird
Location
A town at the bottom of the ocean
Pronouns
He/Him
Partners
  1. quilava
  2. buizel
Yeehaw, I'm here for the fastest review in the west, pardner. I really appreciated the review you left my fic a while back and am now realising I don't think I've read anything of yours, so the stars have aligned on this blessed day. Plus, my knowledge of Orre is also fuzzy so we are kindred spirits.

Right away I'm having flashbacks. I don't actually remember if this dynamic between Wes and Rui is clear in the games or if I've osmosised it from a lot of fanfic depictions, but it's cozy. The edgy/grumpy/cynic guy and upbeat/naive partner is a classic construction that never gets old, I suppose. I can't really speak to accuracy, but I picked up on it basically from the first lines when Wes thinks the shadows pokemon is there to torment him. Also jeez is something only the most innocent among us can say tbh.

Although ah, it seems Wes is more right than I thought. The premise here is really strong. It takes a little to become clear but it's a great slice in the middle of some story happening somewhere. I love how this is born out of what feels like a regular chapter in a different story, if that makes sense. I also appreciate the setup in the first paragraph. There's great care payed to detailing this house in a way that both sets up the location and Wes' discomfort nicely. And the details are wonderfully specific--my favourite might be the furnace-charcoal doodles.

And Wes is trying to cover up his past by being grumpy : (

I almost wish there was more description of espeon and umbreon coming out. As he says, they grew up there too, but only espeon gets a single line to react and umbreon gets nothing. It feels like there's some space for a more fleshed out reaction imo.

Reading the flashback made me wonder where Orre was based and it's apparently Phoenix, Arona. Huh. Sorta just a weird factoid, but then it certainly makes sense for characters to know spanish, which is what originally prompted the question.

There's some masterful worldbuilding in this flashback. Every couple of lines something would come up to answer a question I didn't even know I had. One eevee being his mother's, for instance, or the smoothness of inserting his age in a way that would otherwise be difficult. I love the way we sink into his mother's illness. It's not ever clear what she has, but it hits a little ways in and is clear without being explicit that it won't be getting better. Also with the abusive dad. I think fanfic has a hard time implying abuse without outright showing it, but there's so much to pick over here even before the flashback. Wes' whole reaction primes you for the worst and by the time we realis he's a bad cook it's over.

It ends sweetly, at least. In a sad sort of way. I don't know what the canon is, but in case this is yours, I love that one of current-wes' eeveelutions was originally his mother's. There's this kinda throughline of holding onto good things from the past, even if that past sucked that comes through in details like this.

And what a powerful ending. I love the way his past comes back both to hurt and comfort him here. The sinistea reveal is strong. It's a really distinct pokemon to use, actually, and not only because I haven't seen a lot of it in fanfic--it implies a lot about his mother's fate that make this ending deeply sad. I read the bulbapedia entry and it felt like one of those Hemingway six-word sad stories lol.

On the other hand, of course, Rui is there to reassure him.

I do have some mild criticisms for the ending, though. One is transparently biased because I love umbreon and we just don't see him. It sort of ties into my previous criticism, but both eeveelutions are mostly absent, but just present enough to be distracting and hhave me wonder wy they're there at all besides just being Wes' pokemon. Especially considering how the end with Rui connects with the end of the flashback, I think it would hit harder if the eevee pals were given a bit more. Highlight the ways they comforted him in the past, maybe, and this little found family Wes has at the end. idk.

I think that's my biggest complaint about the fic in general. The writing is great, there's a real sense of the place and especially of the impact it has on Wes. I love the he breaks down in the end. It's especially cathartic for an edgy boy like him and remarkeably organic for only like two thousand words.

Really great fic! I saw you put up a bunch more oneshots so hopefully I'll end up getting to those during blitz, too!
 

Umbramatic

The Ghost Lord
Location
The Yangverse
Pronouns
Any
Partners
  1. reshiram
  2. zygarde
Hi! Here for Review Blitz! Keyugh Orre fic? At this time of day at this time of year locallized entirely within this forum? Let's check it out.

Wes saying "they put it there to torment me" made me laugh at first. At first.

Oh to be a Shadow Pokemon scavenging for canned food in an abandoned house. Truly the dream.

I do like the ever so slow reveal that this is the house where Wes grew up. It's really nicely done and paced, especially given the short nature of this fic.

I gotta say. "Wes" sounds cool and badass but as soon as you change it to Wesley it sounds like he's an orphan from an 1800s novel who's going to get ground up and made into coal.

...Oh. OH. His mom is THAT kind of sick. I don't know with what - early onset dementia? a lobotomy? Some secret third thing? - but it's clearly rough. I don't blame Wes for feeling nothing's going to be OK ever again.

Adorable Eevee shenanigans are truly the only comfort in the wortd. The little mmmrps...

I laughed very, very hard at "GONZAP'S A FUCKING IDIOT"

Ah a little Sinistea. A very familiar little Sinistea. Gonzap or whoever else did this really wanted to make this as fucking personal as possible huh.

Aw, Espeon hugs. And then Rui hugs. It's really nice to see Wes get a chance to be emotionally vulnerable for some good ol' hurt comfort when he's always portrayed as this unflinchable badass.

And then Wes learns the most important lesson about depression: that your brain is being mean to you over your trauma and it's OK to hope things will get better.

This was a really short and sweet fic, really cute, hit all the right feels. Thanks for sharing.
 

HelloYellow17

Gym Leader
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. suicune
  2. umbreon
  3. mew
  4. lycanroc-wes
  5. leafeon-rui
Howdy! It was only a matter of time before I swooped in to review this lovely work, haha. This was a treat to read the first time (albeit bittersweet) and it was even better on the second read.

It was just as he remembered it, almost—shabby plank walls with peeling blue paint, flyaway feathergrass climbing through the weathered porch, nightshade consuming the piles of asphalt shingles that had fallen to the lawn. The boarded windows were a new addition, but they fit right in.
One thing that you truly excel at is descriptions, particularly of scenes. You paint such a vibrant picture that not only shows what the house looks like, but also the atmosphere surrounding it as well as sprinkles of Wes’s opinion of it—which is clearly not a glowing one. It just flows so well and I am genuinely incredibly envious and in awe of this skill you have. It’s gorgeous prose.

For once, he felt grateful for his habitual dourness and mood swings—she probably didn’t think anything of his sullen expression right now. It could be just another one of his moods. Refuge in a scowl.
I love this so much, it gives such an insight into his character and a little bit of the dynamic between these two. “Refuge in a scowl” is a powerfully raw line.

The clattering of kitchen utensils, the odd whining of the limescale-dressed faucet, the gravelly voice reprising “No me hagas pegarte.
Not a Spanish speaker, so I had to look up the translation, and—oh, ouch, it was like a lunch in the gut. Once again the description of the house’s interior is so vivid and packs a powerful punch. It feels haunting, but in a very sad, somber way—the fact that dishes are still left out and shoes are still by the door, that drawings are still scattered around…this house was abruptly abandoned, and that alone has so many depressing implications.

Stop!” Wes cried out, a note of desperation in his voice. Fury bristled on the back of his neck and anxiety fluttered deep in his stomach. “Just… Can you go wait outside? I’m sick of this twenty questions shit. I have a job to do. Just stay out of my way.”
Oof, this was harsh. Smart of Rui not to argue or escalate here, at least. You can tell his reaction here is a very raw and uncontained one, and of course his first line of defense when someone is about to discover his vulnerability is to put up a cold, tough guy act.

She got a few words out after that before her speech became unintelligible and she drifted back into sleep. With a sniffle, Wes exited her room—Papa was gone from the living room now—and ducked into his own.

She hadn’t made it more than a few sentences into that story since last spring.
Already depressing enough, but that last line hurt when I read it. Just…ugh, the fact that Wes has been repeating this interaction for months now, slowly watching his mother wither away—it’s a torturous image. And so unfair that he had to deal with it so young.

I’m curious about whether you had a specific illness in mind for her when you wrote this? Or if it’s just that classic Vague Sickness that characters tend to get, never really meant to be expanded on.

His little eevee curled up against him, looking up at him with big brown eyes that he knew somehow were pleading, pitying him. The little creature’s fur was so soft and warm in his hands. Wesley pulled him close and sniffled—he smelled like clean laundry. Such a delightful creature, so pure in spite of everything.

The fuzzy little thing might have been the only okay thing in the world.

“I love you, Eevee,” Wesley choked out.

Mrrp,” Eevee said back.

Maybe it was delirium, but Wesley was sure he understood what the little chirp meant:

I love you too.
Hhhhhh my heart 😭 at least he had some consolation during his miserable childhood. Heartbreaking that one of his eevees was also his mother’s. Makes their connection to him all the more personal.

It was a sinistea—little and delicate, yes, but it wasn’t just any sinistea. He had seen the cup that formed its body before, knew the fingerprints that were impressed into its rough-and-ready clay.
oh FRIGG my HEART. 😭 What a despicable move, man. The worst part is, this is just the beginning—he’s still going to have to work with this Sinistea to purify it, unless he can task someone else with the job. This means constant exposure to extremely triggering memories.

Wes wiped his face with a wrist. He didn’t feel okay, but for the first time since he was a boy, he dared to believe it wouldn’t be that way forever.
I love the little spark of hope here at the ending—that yes, up until now his life has been heartbreak after heartbreak, one tragedy after another, but it doesn’t mean it will always be that way. It doesn’t mean he’s doomed to feel trapped and suffocated forever, and I love that this hope comes in the form of someone—Rui, in this case—being there to hold him when he didn’t have that before.

It blows my mind how big of an emotional gut-punch this story manages to pack in so few words. Not a single line is wasted, and every detail carries some form of emotional weight. I honestly don’t have any criticism for this! It does exactly what it sets out to do, which is providing a short vignette into Wes’s backstory. It’s not really mean to fill out every surrounding detail or explain the missing pieces, and I think the brevity and singular focus serves to make it more powerful.

Very well done. This is an excellent one-shot and I can’t believe you just whipped this up in so short a time period. Amazing job!
 

kintsugi

golden scars | pfp by sun
Location
the warmth of summer in the songs you write
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. silvally-grass
  2. lapras
  3. golurk
  4. booper-kintsugi
  5. meloetta-kint-muse
  6. meloetta-kint-dancer
  7. murkrow
  8. yveltal
  9. celebi
The gang goes to Orre! Nothing bad ever happens in Orre!

My favorite character in this story is the house. This is not clickbait. At first I was a little impressed that this version of Wes knows/cares about feathergrass and nightshade, that whoever owned this house was going to plant the edgy symbolism berries, but then we just keep learning more about the house, and I realized that literally this house is the antagonist of the story, or, like, at least the setpiece for all the conflicts. I think it’s a rad framing choice for a story that’s ultimately about coming home to sob about your trauma in your backyard. The details around the house are well-chosen, both with how they convey the harsh passing of time and how Wes is borderline expecting them. It’s one thing to leave your home behind; it’s another to leave it expecting it to only get worse.

The character work on this was also a huge standout even for the non-house folk. Wes jumps back into his edgy kinda snark pretty early, but there’s a distinct difference between him and Wesley, which I thought helped the flashback land. Papa and Mama serve more as backstories/justifications for who Wes is today, but I think you do a good job of establishing the broad strokes of their characters really quickly–details like Papa still cooking breakfast really help ground things. I think, and this is obviously Eon slander so feel free to yeet, you might be better off with having just one of Espeon/Umbreon present–there’s a lot of stuff happening in the wordcount and that they serve interchangeable roles here (somewhat literally, as there’s only one eevee in the flashback), which feels a bit distracting. I think the alternative is to flesh them both out more, but the story doesn’t really feel about that.

Mama flashback has some really poignant details in there as well. I’m a sucker for parents obviously lying to their kids and their kids obviously being old enough to see through it–there’s some sort of unspoken contract in “just keep bringing this mug each morning” that they both still agree to that really breaks my heart. Does Mama think Wes still believes it? Unsure, but both answers are really sad. I was also really gut-punched when you introduced the idea of a storyteller and then didn’t tell the story, lol. It works great for the pacing of the fic but also brutally grounds the family dynamic here–there’s no nice meta-story bow that encapsulates how Wes gets to feel, and there hasn’t been one since spring. Maybe things will get better. I imagine you picked the Crow and the Pitcher for the pitcher part of it, but I do think the idea of resilience/trying again and again fits as well.

Not sure what your opinion is on edits since this is completed secret santa and all. I thought the prose was really solid though, and there were certainly some standout phrases–Papa’s mood as a barometer that’s becoming clearer to read, the limescale-dressed faucet, the way the breakfast is simultaneously so many things at once and all of them add up to being awful. Overall there’s a really dense amount of detail packed into the wordcount and I thought that was rad. Some quick line notes and a musing about LOrre in the spoiler if you wanted:
I didn’t quite follow the connection to shadow sinistea. That there’s no wild shadow pokemon is probably more of a gameplay thing, and–I’m realizing that if your exposure to LOrre is mostly handfuls of dust i have deeply misconstrued what happens in the games. Canonic LOrre is that Cipher makes shadow pokemon in their super secret lab and then distributes them to trainers because, idk, they want shadow pokemon to go beat up other pokemon and being evil and shit. Game!Wes goes around snagging shadow pokemon from trainers because only trainers have shadow pokemon and obviously you can only steal bad pokemon–but the Snag Machine itself is special for its ability to catch pokemon that have already been caught, not for its ability to catch shadow pokemon (Game!Wes only encounters shadow pokemon that are already caught, so the overlap is entirely 1:1), so it’s a little unclear to me both why Wes would ready the Snag Machine and why there’s a wild shadow pokemon hanging around in the first place if this is taking place in a setting that’s close to the mainline games. That being said, I think a really easy fix that would let you keep 98% of the story is just–Gonzap thinks there’s a shadow pokemon here, don’t have to explain why because Gonzap is a fucking idiot, Rui initially thinks there’s one too because the sinistea is giving off the same anggy aura vibes of being a shadow pokemon when they approach, door to your heart is closed or whatever. But this sinistea surface-pings as a shadow pokemon even though it’s not literally shadowed, because it’s born of the grief/resentment/loneliness following Mama’s death, and Gonzap missed this detail because Gonzap is a fucking idiot, and Wes sort of realizes this but it gets pushed to the background because he's crying in the storm cellar.

“You were right,” Rui said. “This really is the middle of nowhere. But you were right, there’s definitely a shadow pokémon here
I don’t think the”you were right” repetition here does enough to feel emphatic. You could probably rephrase it to “You were right, this really is in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t expecting a shadow pokemon to make it out this far, but … you were right about that too” or something–but tbh it’s mentioned later that this whole operation was Gonzap’s idea, so I’m not sure if it makes sense for Rui to think that Wes was right about where the shadow pokemon was, unless there’s some weird convolution where Wes is hiding Gonzap’s involvement from Rui or something.

They put it here, he could have said, to torment me.
Italics start a bit early here, but also, eyyy lmao my edgy boy.

Your mother
I’m admittedly a bit opinionated on how bilingualism is approached in fic–so this is something that probably won’t bother other folks at all! But I do think if you have one character calling another by foreign language epithets as the bilingualism bit (Papa calling Mama “tu mama”), then when that character doesn’t use that epithet (Mama calling herself “your mother”), it feels intentional–like maybe their family is mixed/bicultural, Mama doesn’t speak the language, sorta thing, which didn’t really feel like an important focus of the story and never came up again oop.

No matter how he felt, he knew better than to weep [...] He just shook, back to the wall, as the tears streamed down his face silently.
I think “weep” just implies the shedding of tears. If he’s afraid of the sound alerting Papa, I think something like “sob” would convey that better.
 

K_S

Unrepentent Giovanni and Rocket fan
Storm in a teacup
Blitz review oneshot event

Its orre... Worse its Cipher (either run by greevil or his admin son) and theyre compitent. Of course its going to be bad and more than likepy a plant to shake up Wes' confidence.

And right out of the gate Wes is hiding behind rei's expectations. This is not looking good.

Wes is tipping his hand letting slip tmi. Rei isnt picking up the hints. I suspect the basements going to be bad news. And driving rei off seems like a really bad idea. If Wes flashbacks, or if the shadow mon is a paychic or ghost type hes going to be insanely vulnerable.

Amd we're seeing some of the past. Looks like poor Wes' mother is stupid sick. I wonder if he inherits her eevee and which one of the eeveelutionons is hers verses his?

Of course its a ghost type and considering Wes relationship to hot liquid in that home a haunted tea mon would be a perfect twist to the knife. I wonder how Snagem knew so much?. Why Wes bared so much? Had he been alone i suspect this would have been insanely damaging.

But rei reaching, out mirroring wes' mother by accident, being the final straw that let him vent his pain and start healing... By sheer luck wes had enough resources to take the hit and start to break away from the agony.

Though how that goes long term feels like the start of another tale rather then a question to be answered here..
 
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Flyg0n

Flygon connoisseur
Pronouns
She/her
Partners
  1. flygon
  2. swampert
  3. ho-oh
  4. crobat
  5. orbeetle
  6. joltik
  7. salandit
  8. tyrantrum
  9. porygon
Darn you,,,

This was such a short, powerful story. If I had a nickel for every short and exquisitely written Wes oneshot I've read this week I'd have two, which is incredible.

It felt wrong and shameful for her to be at his side here, like she’d walked in on him changing, only he was bearing his soul rather than his skin.
I think about this line constantly. The raw vulnerability of someone being there in your space, in the place where everything happened, the way it translates to this sense of shame. The shame of being perceived. The need to always feel covered up to feel safe.

Refuge in a scowl.
What a fantastic line. Refuge. The need to get somewhere safe emotionally, he finds this in a scowl and MMMMM chefs kiss

gravelly voice reprising “No me hagas pegarte.
So the second time around I suspected but had to double check the translation. :unquag:

He hated snapping at Rui—these days, anyway
Awww

He really wished he didn’t have to eat it at all, but it was clear that the mere act of cooking had put his father in a rotten mood, and Wesley had no interest in making matters worse.
The details and subtext and unspoken parts are so powerful in this fic

Even if Papa’s mood were the only barometer he had,
Was the only barometer?

No,” he lied
I'll never get tired of 'X lied' as a speaker tag

Wes wiped his face with a wrist. He didn’t feel okay, but for the first time since he was a boy, he dared to believe it wouldn’t be that way forever.
Oooohhhhh oh how dare you

I'm such a sucker for comfort and emotional angst and hopeful endings. And this one really nails it. It can be hard to make a 'it'll be okay' ending feel genuine, but I think it feels very right here.

Rui is gentle and comforting, and feels sincere but also sympathetic and most importantly understanding.

The prose and story are oozing with such a sense of lingering pain. Wes feels haunted by his past, and it's so fitting that such a delicate little pokemon like a sinistea, and also a ghost, is what was left for him.

It tugs the heartstrings. It's okay to be vulnerable sometimes and drop the charade. And in doing so "it's not okay" can become "it's ok".

It did make me wonder. I guess Gonzap must have known a lot about Wes's past. And had a way to get a Sinistea into a particular cup...

I don't think the story needs to elaborate on it, but it did make me kind of curious in a good way about how all that works. How a Sinistea forms, and how Gonzap knows so much about Wes.

Phenomenal little treat. Probably the perfect length to read while sipping tea
 
Partners
  1. skiddo-steplively
  2. skiddo-px2
  3. skiddo-px3
  4. skiddo-iametrine
  5. skiddo-coolshades
  6. skiddo-rudolph
  7. skiddo-sleepytime
  8. snowskiddo
  9. skiddotina
  10. skiddengo
  11. skiddoyena
  12. skiddo-obs
Q Orre fic, ooh, eyes emoji

"No me hagas pegarte."

welp. Start as you mean to go on, I guess!

He could feel the spininess of her emotion-scape through their psychic link

Love this. Doesn't take mind-reading powers for us to sense the tension through that description, either.

jesus fuck the man hits his son just because he's upset about his sick mother? (Or even if he hasn't literally done that in the past, things have clearly been harrowing enough that Wes assumes he'll get beat for a reason like that.) What an absolutely awful case of denial he must be in. If I just terrify my kid into never crying about it then that means everything's fine!

It's very very oof how you could sort of tell from the beginning of that particular exchange that Wes has heard that story multiple times, but the hard swerve into how she can't even finish it because she's so exhausted, how she doesn't seem to remember...

So, uh. So Gonzap is Wes's dad here, is what I'm picking up, maybe???? Like how the hell else would Snagem/Cipher know about this little nowhere house and all the hyper-specific trauma it would provide? I guess it's possible they could've been around the house for other reasons, maybe Papa was also a member separately or something, but... idk I just think maybe economy of assholes is the simpler answer. Which, like. Bruh. For all the culmination of terrible emotions that coming back home creates for Wes, he was putting up with being in Snagem with his dad for a good while there, too, if that is in fact the case.

When she tucked a strand of silver hair behind his ear, he fell apart.

ooooouuuuuugh ;-;

Part of me wonders if it might've been nice to see a bit more acknowledgment of the vees at the end, beyond just Espy's comforting purring, just because there was more emphasis in the flashback just before on how his eevee was about the only thing helping him keep it together. But even then, he's had the eevee basically his whole life, and while they've been a comfort for sure, Rui's presence is new, different, and perhaps more understandable as something that would've changed and allowed things to move beyond just comfort and into actual (eventual) recovery. On balance I think it still works as-is!

Very touching, tons of tactical gut punches. Someone on TRcord mentioned this as a fantastic example of telling a story through negative space and hoooo boy they were not wrong. Every scene, damn near every line is load-bearing here, and what a heavy ceiling they're all supporting. You get the heavy swings with all the No me hagas pegartes that make it plenty clear enough what was going on, but it's underscored by the careful way Wes does (and doesn't) speak to him. Mama's room is the only one really described, and yet we know so much about the condition of the rest of the house just by the emphasis on it. "It didn't help anyone to say that out loud" tells you all you need to know about what sorts of things saying it out loud has done in the past. Such a short piece and yet so dense with emotion.

So yeah, hell of a Merry Christmas to whomever the lucky recipient was! I hope they enjoyed it; I know I sure did. Fantastic stuff!
 
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