6x6shooter
Youngster
- Pronouns
- he/him
Summary:
When forced to reconcile a tragic loss, the wills of three friends are tested, mind, body, and soul.
When forced to reconcile a tragic loss, the wills of three friends are tested, mind, body, and soul.
This story in its entirety will contain: Mention of past infant death, blood and violence, a brief and implied mention of suicide (it should be noted however that despite the impression those three have next to each other, technically all three of those are unrelated to each other)
So, to preface this, I recently came into contact with an old Pokemon webcomic I adored about 7 or so years ago, called Amizade, which later extended into BxB Chronicles, both of which made by Thalateya. It was a webcomic focusing mainly on Bonnibel (Bonnie) Snow, an orphan Mienshao in a modern Pokemon setting in Unova (presumably with humans retconned out) and her relationships with various friends and acquaintances. It was very good at balancing humor and light-hearted character interaction with heavier themes of loss, love, and family. It was exceptionally good at gradually easing its way into a more mature tone, going from wacky and fun to mature and dramatic over its course.
Four years ago, BxB Chronicles stopped updating. Having recently remembered how much I loved Amizade / BxB Chronicles and its characters, and feeling a burning desire to see these characters, I frantically wrote a general plot to a fanfic using the characters, both to give myself some closure, and to a lesser extent give the very slim possibility that hopefully, just maybe, I could convince even one random person out there to give this webcomic a chance, and be touched by it the way it touched me all those years ago. I'm not a writer, but I hope that, just this once, I can make something that moves someone.
I would recommend reading the comic before reading my fic (it starts a little rough but it gets good), as this takes place after the endpoint of the comic, but really instead you could look at it after reading the fic if you're interested.
If the original creator of the comic wants me to remove this fic, I'll do it upon their request. And if they're reading this, I just wanted you to know: thank you. Genuinely, thank you for making something that has made me passionate enough to create something, even if it's not the best.
Oh, also, for those reading, even if you have no desire to read the comics, at least check it out even superficially so that you know what the characters look like, because if you're just picturing the official render for a given character's Pokemon species you're probably gonna get a skewed impression on how they look and it'll make it seem a little weird. Like, an on-model Beartic driving a car is kinda ridiculous but the way one is drawn in the comic has it make sense.
Finally, note regarding the setting: this story (and the comic it's based on) takes place in the modern Pokémon world, except there are no humans, only Pokémon. It’s not that the humans all died, it’s just sort of an AU thing where they’re just not really a thing. Think "Mystery Dungeon, but in a modern setting." Or "Zootopia but with Pokemon and not physically anthropomorphized."
This is my first fic and I don't consider myself to be a writer so keep in mind there is a reason the phrasing may end up being kinda wonky.
Four years ago, BxB Chronicles stopped updating. Having recently remembered how much I loved Amizade / BxB Chronicles and its characters, and feeling a burning desire to see these characters, I frantically wrote a general plot to a fanfic using the characters, both to give myself some closure, and to a lesser extent give the very slim possibility that hopefully, just maybe, I could convince even one random person out there to give this webcomic a chance, and be touched by it the way it touched me all those years ago. I'm not a writer, but I hope that, just this once, I can make something that moves someone.
I would recommend reading the comic before reading my fic (it starts a little rough but it gets good), as this takes place after the endpoint of the comic, but really instead you could look at it after reading the fic if you're interested.
If the original creator of the comic wants me to remove this fic, I'll do it upon their request. And if they're reading this, I just wanted you to know: thank you. Genuinely, thank you for making something that has made me passionate enough to create something, even if it's not the best.
Oh, also, for those reading, even if you have no desire to read the comics, at least check it out even superficially so that you know what the characters look like, because if you're just picturing the official render for a given character's Pokemon species you're probably gonna get a skewed impression on how they look and it'll make it seem a little weird. Like, an on-model Beartic driving a car is kinda ridiculous but the way one is drawn in the comic has it make sense.
Finally, note regarding the setting: this story (and the comic it's based on) takes place in the modern Pokémon world, except there are no humans, only Pokémon. It’s not that the humans all died, it’s just sort of an AU thing where they’re just not really a thing. Think "Mystery Dungeon, but in a modern setting." Or "Zootopia but with Pokemon and not physically anthropomorphized."
This is my first fic and I don't consider myself to be a writer so keep in mind there is a reason the phrasing may end up being kinda wonky.
Chapter 1: Acceptance
This chapter will contain: Mention of past infant death
Orotiv woke up with a start, going prone to upright in an instant, a cold sweat dampening his white fur. His eyes were glazed over with fear, a paw over his chest as he tried to calm his quick-beating heart. The Beartic had woken up from a nightmare, a repeat of the same one he’d been having every night for the past week:In his dream, Orotiv had opened his eyes to reveal that he was curled on the cold white tiled floor of a building. Fluorescent lights overhead beamed down, the oppressive fixtures forcing him to squint to see his surroundings. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he registered the scene in front of him.
It was a hospital room. Laying in a hospital bed was Bonnie, his Mienshao friend. She was skinny compared to most other Pokémon, but had always been a little pudgy for a Mienshao. That didn’t matter in this dream, since her belly was rounded out regardless, her lower half covered by a blanket. And next to her Orotiv saw Blair, Bonnie’s Whimsicott friend, comforting the Mienshao. He also saw Poxie, an Audino doctor they were friends with, standing in the middle of the room, her hands clasped together in front of her, a somber expression on her face. And across the room from Bonnie in this scene, Orotiv spotted himself, standing motionless, holding a swaddle of blankets in his arms.
Orotiv Hawk, CEO of Hawk Express, and Bonnibel (Bonnie) Snow, Pokémon fighting league captain of Team Amizade, were not a couple; that had been made abundantly clear. They didn’t consider themselves “in love.” They just happened to have been two ‘mons who met by chance at a bar one night trying to get wasted, and had a shared view that the idea of a “soul mate” is for suckers. But being friends-with-benefits? That suited the both of them just fine. Over a few months, they would meet up every once in a while, but any connection they had was mainly physical.
That was, until they found out Bonnie was pregnant.
The pair quickly made a plan following the revelation: Bonnie would carry the pregnancy to term and deliver, while Orotiv would be the one to raise the baby. They wouldn’t get married, or have any more kids, and they still weren’t a couple or in love. If anything, their relationship, if one could even call it that, had ended. The deal was that the child would have a father, but not a mother. It would be like a surrogacy, they reasoned. Orotiv, whose childhood was spent more with his family’s nannies than with his actual parents, would have the child he had so wanted to love and cherish, and Bonnie, the familyless orphan, could go back to her familial solitude.
But this...what had been hoped...did not become what happened in the end. What Orotiv was being forced to relive.
Orotiv screamed at the visions plaguing him. “It’s not my fault!” He yelled. “I didn’t mean to get her pregnant! I didn’t know this would happen if she had the kid!”
But the visions refused to dissipate. The only thing louder than Orotiv’s desperate cries was the sad, cold silence of the scene in front of him.
Orotiv put his hands over his face, shielding himself from the horrific sight he had now so frequently seen played over and over in his head. He knew it well. He had lived it for real a few months ago. This was the greatest and worst day of both of their lives.
Bonnie had just given birth to their child. His child. A shiny Cubchoo girl, who before being born he had decided to name Jolene. And there she was: Jolene Snow-Hawk, born 6 pounds, 2 ounces.
That name and those numbers were permanently burned into his brain. He was holding her when he realized she felt cold, even for an Ice-Type. And she wasn’t stirring...She wasn’t breathing...
She wasn’t alive.
Nobody was sure exactly what had caused it. Poxie, the Audino friend they had chosen to be the OB-GYN, simply explained that sometimes a baby just doesn’t make it. They may be sickly in the womb, or they have a bad heart, or sometimes there’s no real explanation. Regardless of the cause, the effect was the same: Orotiv and Bonnie, both so starved of a family, one far more than the other, had lost their daughter before she was even born.
That was why this was the worst day of Orotiv’s life. Worse than the day he broke 3 bones in his leg while skateboarding as a child. Worse than the day his father passed away. Worse than the day his mother denounced his unorthodox relationship with an uneducated, unmarried Mienshao.
It was a day they would never forget.
That was all this dream would remind him of. Of that moment when he held his stillborn child in his arms, so frail, so innocent, so...unfair. But that wasn’t the end of the story that day.
Orotiv had left the room after that, unsure of what to do with himself. He was so excited to have his own little baby girl to raise as his own, but that chance had been snatched away before he could tell the shiny Cubchoo how much he loved her. And Bonnie wasn’t going to do this again, he knew that much. He didn’t even fully understand why she had gone through with this in the first place; she didn’t want the child, nor were the two of them in a relationship. Orotiv’s shot at happiness, at a legacy, at a daughter to love and cherish, had all been taken from him. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to leave this world, to isolate himself from everything and everyone and never look back at this tragedy.
But before he left the hospital, to boldly flee from his broken heart, Bonnie’s friend Blair chased after him, to reveal something that even the Whimsicott himself had not known until 40 seconds prior:
Bonnie was having twins.
Orotiv immediately rushed back, unsure of what to do next. Bonnie wasn’t looking well during the second delivery, and he became wracked with fear and guilt. If she wasn’t able to deliver this one, if she died from exhaustion or some other complication...then he would have been the one who killed her. Two babies and their mother, a close friend of his, would have died, and it would have been all his fault.
But by some miracle (and an emergency C-Section), Bonnie pulled through. And not only that, but the second baby, while feeble, lived as well. A scrawny Mienfoo, which was named Harris. Bonnie said that she had heard the name in a dream, and knew that if she had a boy, he would be named that.
That was why this was the greatest day of Orotiv’s life. Greater than the day he was given a shiny new skateboard for his tenth birthday. Greater than the day he inherited a billion-dollar company from his family. Greater than the day he had met Bonnibel Snow, the only girl who he felt he would ever come close to loving, in that dingy bar.
It was a day they would never forget.
But the nightmare never showed that part of their story. Of Bonnie holding her newborn son, a relieved yet exhausted smile spread across her face. Of Orotiv holding his boy, so warm and full of life. Tears were shed that day, but not just of grief; they were also shed of love, and happiness. That, while one child had not made it, the other was happy and healthy, and as much as she didn’t want to admit it, so was Bonnie. Love wasn’t for her, but during the pregnancy, the idea of having a child to raise as her own had begun to warm her soul. Before Harris was born, Bonnie had talked to Orotiv and mentioned how she was having doubts about her wanting it to be a simple surrogacy; she was hesitant to admit it, but she wanted to raise their baby as well. The idea of them not truly being a couple or “in love” remained, but she had begun to accept the idea of being a mom.
On the other hand, the damage had already been done to Orotiv’s soul, however. The death of his daughter had closed that door to his heart. He wanted to love Harris, but he was...scared. The process of shutting his cold heart away from the world had already been started, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t open it back. He would help with raising Harris, but not as much as he could.
In the end, an inversion of their plan was what came to pass; their child would have a mother as the primary caretaker, and their father would be the one who was more absent.
That part was never reached in his dreams. Only the grief for a shiny Cubchoo, her life taken before it had even begun, was what the nightmare would dwell on, that single moment of Orotiv cradling a cold Jolene. But this time, unlike the other previous 5 or 6 times he had relived this horror every night the past week...this time, his dream didn’t end there; there was another scene that appeared following the one in the hospital.
It was Bonnie, laying a small, feeble body, wrapped in yellow blankets, into a tiny coffin in the ground. Orotiv could see that Bonnie’s face was one of regret and frustration more than grief or guilt. She was always tough like that. She could reconcile when actions had consequences, and could usually shrug off heartbreak and misfortune, but even then she still didn’t know how to process what had happened. She had never lost any family before; she had never HAD family to lose.
Orotiv remembered that Bonnie had taken the body of Jolene to be buried in a place only she would know. She had asked that of Orotiv, and it was the least he could do for the mother of his child. As the dream continued, Orotiv watched as Bonnie somberly placed the swaddled shiny stillborn into the coffin, but he couldn’t discern the landscape around her. It was as if Bonnie was surrounded by a void of darkness, the only visible aspects of the scene being Bonnie, Jolene, and the burial pit.
And then, without any buildup or warning, Orotiv saw Bonnie collapse.
Sometimes in a dream, the dreamer inherently knows a piece of information without it being directly communicated to them. In this case Orotiv knew that in this nightmare, without any due reason, Bonnie had died right there on the spot.
Purple smoke came pouring out of the Mienshao’s wide open mouth, a glazed look on her face, devoid of life or emotion. The smoke swirled greater and greater, until finally, all the dream was nothing but an all-encompassing violet haze.
And that was when Orotiv awoke, snapping upright in less than a second, his brow coated in a cold sweat. Before the Beartic could even steady his breathing, he bolted out of bed, dashing down the stairs and outside to his car, assuming the worst. Orotiv drove frantically through the night, his fur standing on end as he sped down the empty street.
-
Blair’s place was on a hill, making Orotiv’s desperate drive up the inclined road all the more excruciatingly slow. Orotiv hastily parked his car in the driveway of the house. Bonnie and Blair had been roommates almost their entire adult lives. Bonnie had been kicked out of home by her foster caretakers when she was 18, and, with his best friend having nowhere else to go, Blair had offered to let her live in his family’s house. He reasoned that the rest of his family had moved out and it had gotten lonely, so having a friend live with him was cozier than living in isolation.
Orotiv ran to the house and banged furiously on the door. “Bonnie! Bonniiiiiieee!” His hands began to hurt as he pounded ferociously, the mahogany of the door threatening to splinter under the crushing force of his mighty Beartic strength. “Bonnie! Please! I need to know you’re okay!”
Orotiv heard the door click, and stepped back as it opened. Floating there was Blair, Bonnie’s Whimsicott friend, rubbing one eye. He had been working a late night radio show recently, so his sleep cycle happened to be off and he had already been awake despite the late hour.
“Orotiv? It’s three in the morning. What are you-”
Orotiv frantically shoved the Whimsicott to the side. Blair almost certainly would have broken something as he was slammed into the wall, if it wasn’t for his cotton overcoat cushioning the impact. Orotiv frantically dashed past Blair into the house, desperate to make sure Bonnie was okay.
“Bonnie! Bon-”
Orotiv looked into the house’s living room. Slouching on the couch, head leaned back, mouth wide open and eyes shut, was a very tired-looking Bonnie, snoring loudly. Bonnie had always been a bit chubby for a Mienshao, but since Mienshao were usually on the thin side, she didn’t look particularly wide. Her tail was shorter than others of her species, and she was always dodgy about how she lost the other half, but implied it happened shortly after getting into tournament fighting. Orotiv immediately ran to the Mienshao, grabbed her by the shoulders and violently shook her.
“Bonnie! Are you dead?! Are you full of smoke?! Speak to me Bonnie!”
Bonnie’s eyes shot open. “Gah! What?! What?!”
“Bonnie! Are you alive?! Did the smoke get you?!” Orotiv repeated manically.
“Oro...” Bonnie blinked rapidly, her sleep-deprived brain trying to perform the double-task of having to both wake up on a dime and comprehend the ridiculous questions she was being asked. Yet somehow, the single mother was able to discern what was being asked. “Yes!” She groggily blurted out, the absurdity of the inquiry making her doubt her own response. “Yes, I’m alive! Wh...did you say ‘smoke’? Is there a fire?!” Bonnie, in her half-asleep state, began to work on instinct, and panicked. “Where’s Harris?! Where’s-”
“Hey hey! Calm down!” Blair said as he floated over, momentarily recovering from being slammed against the wall a moment ago. “There’s no fire! Harris is right there.”
Bonnie and Orotiv glanced next to the couch where Blair was pointing, to see a baby carriage with a tiny little baby Mienfoo curled up inside it. Harris was sleeping soundly, despite the loud commotion happening next to him mere seconds ago. Bonnie looked back at Orotiv, a stern expression on the tomboyish Mienshao’s face.
“Orotiv! The hell is wrong with you!” Bonnie berated, trying to simultaneously scream at the Beartic but still keep quiet enough to not wake his...their son. “Telling me there’s a fire! I almost had a heart attack! You know I’m still recovering from everything!”
...In truth, the C-section had happened long enough ago that Bonnie had fully physically recovered from the ordeal, Harris having been born about 2 months ago. But the exhaustion of having to take care of Harris had taken its toll on her, which wasn’t helped by the fact Orotiv hadn’t been pulling his weight with helping her take care of the Mienfoo.
“Why are you even here?!” Bonnie yell-whispered. “Shouldn’t you be gallivanting at your mansion or something, partying it up with a bunch of floozies!?” she jabbed, her voice hushed yet still ferocious.
Bonnie’s life seemed to be plagued by irony: the fact that she was the least feminine of her female acquaintances yet was the only one who was a mother; the fact that she had children so fast despite her kinless denouncement of any need for family; the fact that she was supposed to be the absent parent in this equation yet had been doing all the work. All of it felt so tragically contradictory, but right now the thing that was most ironic, unbeknownst to her, was that she thought Orotiv had been having the time of his life partying and surrounded by friends at his mansion, while in actuality he had become isolated and withdrawn from the world after Harris was born, becoming more and more secluded day after day.
But Orotiv was too dead-set to register Bonnie’s snide remark. He tightened his grip on her shoulders. “Bonnie, where was Jolene buried?”
“J...Jolene?”
“Jolene! Our daughter? The one you said you wanted buried in a place only you knew!?”
Bonnie took a second to register, a look of disdain as her brain caught up. “Oh sweet Arceus...” she said with annoyance. “...Orotiv, why do you need to know that?”
Orotiv paused. Not even he had fully considered why he felt he had to know so badly. “I...I just...” he sighed in resignation. “I just haven’t accepted her death.”
A surprised look struck Bonnie’s face. “You...you WHAT?!”
“Huh?” Orotiv let go of Bonnie’s shoulders as he stepped back with a shock, the ferocity in Bonnie’s response unexpected.
“YOU can’t accept her death?!” Bonnie, despite being sleep-deprived, seemed to be firing on all cylinders as she chewed out a very surprised Orotiv. “Listen here you overdramatic icehead!” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but you better stop right now!”
Orotiv was scared and confused at the sudden rage of his friend. Bonnie may have been shorter than him, but at this moment he felt less than half the Mienshao’s size.
“Yes, I didn’t tell you that I was having twins! Yes, one of them didn’t make it! But you don’t have to rub it in my face!” Bonnie said, each sentence punctuated with a stomp.
Orotiv was unable to fully understand Bonnie’s retort. “Bonnie, what are-”
“You think I don’t know? That I don’t lie awake at night thinking about what I may have done wrong?! That somehow, some way, I may have killed my own daughter?! I know I messed up, you don’t have to remind me! What, you want an apology? Screw you!”
“Bonnie I just wanted to-”
“Oh, you wanted closure?! You wanted to accept that your daughter’s dead?! Well we both know that that’s a big fat lie, because if you DID care about Jolene in the slightest, you would have helped me in the slightest to take care of the only bastard of yours that’s still breathing!”
Offended at Bonnie’s insinuation, Orotiv quickly tried to defend himself. “Hey! I helped! What about during that lockdown! You ran away from Harris and I had to pick up the sla-”
Orotiv didn’t even register the sucker punch coming towards him before it decked him square across the jaw. Bonnie may not have been in peak physical condition at the moment, but she was still a fighter through and through, and still possessed a mean left hook.
“Don’t you DARE say I ran away! You and Blair DRAGGED me away while I was asleep!”
“Bonnie!” Blair chimed in. “You weren’t asleep! You were passed out from exhaustion! We had to do something! You had overworked yourself taking care of Harris by yourself...” Blair was unsure of how to defuse the situation, but he still didn’t want Bonnie to think that he had done wrong by her.
“Yeah, and whose fault was that?!” Bonnie said, glaring at the Beartic laying on the ground, one of his paws partially propping himself up with his arm, the other holding his swelling jaw.
It was then that the three Pokemon heard Harris crying. The loud commotion had finally hit its breaking point. Bonnie quickly grabbed him and started trying to console the little Mienfoo as she dandled him in her arms.
“Bonnie, please, I need to know,” Orotiv pleaded. “Where was Jolene buried?”
Bonnie, full of frustration and done with her ex-friend-with-benefits, didn’t even bother looking up from Harris, and simply responded with an unhelpful: “Under a tree.”
“Which tree?” Orotiv asked.
Bonnie’s face soured further as she looked up at Orotiv.
“Leave.”
Orotiv looked at the enraged Mienshao mother and whimpering Mienfoo baby. The thing that was angering Bonnie the most wasn’t grief or offense over the (apparent) guilt-tripping, or annoyance from being woken up; as much as Bonnie would hate to admit it, what caused her the most anger at this exact moment in time was from the motherly instinct activated by her baby crying because someone else had disturbed his sleep. Orotiv causing this fight, waking Harris up, was making Bonnie’s blood boil.
“Bonnie please, I need to-”
“Leave!”
Orotiv hung his head low. While her inference that he was bringing up Jolene just to viciously incite guilt on the Mienshao was wrong, Bonnie was right about one thing: Orotiv had been a very neglectful father. Just like his parents did when he was a baby, Orotiv had shoved his child onto somebody else to take care of. Bonnie didn’t even want to be the one raising Harris in the beginning, yet here she was, taking care of him while Orotiv sulked alone in his mansion. He wasn’t entirely neglecting Harris- he had been taking care of him every once in a while- but he hadn’t been doing enough.
Orotiv turned to leave, but right before he stepped away, he looked over his shoulder at Bonnie and Harris. “I...I want to help with Harris more, if-”
“LEAVE!”
Bonnie quickly grabbed a sippy cup from Harris’ carriage and chucked it at Orotiv, a loud bang sounding off next to the Beartic as the cup collided with the wall. Orotiv got the message and quickly absconded.
As Orotiv walked defeatedly out the house, Blair floated over and closed the front door while Bonnie walked over to her room so she could put the once again soundly sleeping Harris into his proper crib. She had gotten good at calming him down. She almost hated how good of a mom she was becoming.
Blair floated into Bonnie’s room, a sorry expression on his face. Harris was now sound asleep in his crib, but Bonnie was sitting on the side of her bed, hunched over with her face in her hands. Blair went over and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“Bonnie...I’m sorry tha-”
Bonnie instinctively swatted away Blair’s hand, causing him to flinch. After glaring at him for a few seconds, she spun around to face the wall and curled up onto her side on the bed, hiding her face.
“Bon...why wouldn’t you tell him where Jolene was buried?”
“None of your sodding business.”
“...Bonnie...” Blair placed a hand on her shoulder again. “...please...”
Bonnie hesitated for a bit, then finally spoke up.
“He...Orotiv doesn’t...I don’t want him to know.”
Blair stood there wordless, rubbing Bonnie’s back. Bonnie expected the Whimsicott to ask “why,” but when he stayed silent she answered anyway. “Orotiv really wanted a daughter. And he didn’t know I was having twins. I didn’t tell you guys, but at that moment he didn’t know he would have a son too, and he thought that his only child had...I think it broke him a bit. I thought that, if I buried it...buried her, in a place he would never find, he could move on easier.”
It broke Blair’s heart to see Bonnie in such turmoil. Not just because she was his best friend, but because he really did care about her beyond that. Blair and Bonnie considered each other the best of pals, but in reality for him it was much more than that. He loved her, far more than a platonic kinship, but couldn’t bring himself to admit it (at least not again; he had done it once before but Bonnie had been...distracted during his confession).
He could feel Bonnie’s strife, the loneliness permeating her soul, and thought that maybe, if she knew just how much he cared about her, it would help her somehow, maybe make her feel less...alone. He wished that he was even a third as brave as Bonnie, because then he could probably actually confess to her...again...
But for now, at this moment, all he could think to do to soothe his brash best friend (and crush) was pat her back and say that everything will be fine. Well, that and one other thing.
“Do you...want me to make waffles?” Blair asked.
There was a pause. Bonnie turned her head back towards Blair, confusion mixed with intrigue in her eyes. “At...three in the morning?”
“...Yes?” Blair responded sheepishly.
The two stared at each other.
“...Okay.”
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