Chapter 1: Only the Truth
Nubushi
しぶい
- Pronouns
- she/her
- Partners
-
Summary: Rosa is frozen in an ice crystal during Team Plasma's attack on Opelucid City. This was not part of Colress's plan, and he is determined to fix the situation—but in doing so, he forced to come to terms with feelings he would rather have kept hidden. Sequence of two related one-shots. Colress-centric Colress/Rosa. B2W2 spoilers.
Genre: Romance, hurt/comfort, angst (ch. 2)
Rating: PG
Content warnings: none
Chapter 1: Only the Truth
The ground rocked beneath them in the roar of an explosion.
Rosa and Drayden exchanged glances. The gym leader and mayor of the town, Drayden had just been explaining to her about the relic that had been passed down through his family for generations, the DNA splicers, and the legend of how the two dragons Reshiram and Zekroam had split from one being into two. But he had scarcely finished his explanation when they heard the blast, felt the ground shake beneath their feet.
“What was that?” Drayden asked. They emerged from his house to see a gigantic shadow over the town. In the sky, an enormous steel-plated ship floated above them, blocking out the sun. Rows of glowing blue oars fanned the airs like fins of a mechanical fish.
In the prow, two panels opened up to reveal a hole from which a gigantic cannon emerged. Rosa stared up at it, transfixed. There was a high-pitched keening sound as the cannon angled down, and its mouth began to glow blue.
A blast.
Rosa threw an arm across her face to shield her eyes. When she lowered it, there was an enormous cluster of ice crystals in front of her, radiating a cold so intense that she could feel it from yards away. The cannon swiveled towards them.
“RUN!” Drayen barked the command.
Instinctively, they split up, taking two different paths. Rosa dodged around the massive ice crystals that had been left by the cannon’s first blast, then zigzagged through the stone-paved streets. One after another, she could hear more and more blasts from behind her. But as she rounded a sharp bend, the stones beneath her feet were suddenly coated in ice. Her feet slipped out from under her. Her back slammed hard against the ground, and her momentum sent her sliding across a sheer sheet of ice to come to halt against another towering pillar of ice. She rolled on her side and struggled to prop herself up with her elbows. The freezing cold bit through her hands, and her feet scrabbled on the slick sheet ice beneath her.
She had just struggled to her feet when she looked up at the sky and saw the glow of the cannon mouth, pointed straight at her.
Colress rested his elbows on the desk in his office in the frigate, fingers laced together and his chin propped on his hands. He schooled himself to keep an expression of polite interest on his face as he listened to his subordinate’s report on the operations at Opelucid City.
In a stroke of good fortune, a certain girl trainer who had been thwarting Team Plasma’s plans recently had been caught in one of the blasts from the Plasma Frigate’s ice cannon, and was frozen in an enormous, unbreakable ice crystal. The mayor, Drayden, and the other trainer, the boy with the spiky hair, had slid around on the ice chasing after Zinzolin and the Shadow Triad, but had been unable to recover the DNA splicers which the Shadow Triad had stolen, the true object of today’s operations. Everything had gone splendidly, completely according to Team Plasma’s plan.
Colress’s plan, on the other hand, was in considerable danger of being completely ruined.
“Very good, you are dismissed.”
When the subordinate had saluted and left, he pushed his chair back—noticing with a detached part of his mind the way his hands shook on the surface of his desk—and stood to pace the metal floors of his narrow office.
His thoughts jumped erratically. How had it happened that Rosa, of all people, had happened to be in Opelucid City just at that time, and to be the one person frozen in a lucky shot by a grunt? And why in space and time had they been firing on people? The ice cannon had been meant as a threat, Ghetis strutting his power and ambitions of dominion, a matter of complete indifference to Colress—but regardless, the team members had been instructed not to aim at people or pokemon.
Should he investigate to find which grunt had ignored orders and fired the cannon at a trainer? He examined the thought briefly, dismissed it as quickly. Whoever it was, they were no doubt being lionized by their comrades now, and to punish the grunt whose cleverness everyone was celebrating would make him seem like an unnecessarily strict taskmaster. He enjoyed cordial relationships with his subordinates—perhaps partly because in his mid-twenties, Colress was much closer to their age, but more likely because anyone was preferable when compared to Ghetsis—and didn’t want to lose that rapport.
But that wasn’t what was important. He took a deep breath and forced himself to think calmly, in a logical order.
The first flaw of his plan was that he hadn’t considered that anyone would be caught in the ice crystals, let alone Rosa. Rosa was crucial to his plan, and most definitely not expendable.
The second flaw in his plan was, he had engineered this weapon without having any way of melting the ice that it created. Not only that, but he did not even have any idea what Kyurem's ice even did to human cells. Could she be thawed out and restored safely? The doubts of how long she could stay frozen, and whether there would be negative side effects, gripped his heart with ice just as potent as Kyurem's. Doubtless he would be thought cold by some, if they knew what his true plans were for Team Plasma and this trainer, but there were some things he would not stoop to even for science. Murder was one of them.
Even without knowing for sure whether thawing out a living being trapped in Kyurem's ice could be done, the only option was to do everything possible to try. His mind raced furiously, trying to think if there was any sort of machine he could fabricate that could melt the ice crystals, but he simply had nothing at his disposal that could equal the power of Kyurem’s ice.
There was only one being in this world that could possibly do that.
Decision made, he exited the office, locking the door behind him.
“Going somewhere, boss?” asked the grunt stationed outside his door.
“I’m going down to Opelucid City myself to have a look myself.”
“Ah. Please be careful.”
Colress smiled slightly, waving a hand in dismissal. He felt a little shaky, still, but from the guard’s lack of a reaction, he must have passed for normal. “Don’t worry. No one knows who I am, remember? I’m just an ordinary scientist.”
It was deep into the night, and Colress’s breath, and the breath of his companion, a young man who wore a baseball cap over a mane of unruly lime green hair that spilled down to his waist, clouded in the frigid air. They lurked in the shadows of a row of pine trees, looking into the frozen streets of Opelucid City.
Colress had been fortunate to find N, and especially in such a short time. This was the advantage of having a few psychic pokemon in his mostly steel-type team. He hypothesized that a psychic like his beheeyem would be able to pick up on the enormous amount of energy emitted by Reshiram, who was rumored to have some psychic abilities herself, though it was not her primary power. And he had been correct. Beheeyem had quickly pinpointed Reshiram’s location.
He was even more fortunate that the same idea had not occurred to Ghetsis, whose plan for locating his adopted son was to use Kyurem to freeze the region, hoping N and Reshiram would openly move to melt Kyurem’s ice. The man had clearly been intelligent once. Now he was a shell of his former self, a husk filled with hatred and rage, and blinded by them. The intelligence remained in the form of a sort of craftiness, cunning in some ways, stupid to the point of idiocy in others. He lacked the clear-sightedness and insight that could only be obtained by looking at all evidence objectively.
“You think we can get in without being seen by anyone?” N asked.
The timing, Colress judged, would not get any better than this. It was a clear night, with light from the moon and the few stars that could be seen this close to the city, and Opelucid was well-lit with street lights as well. However, everyone was cowering inside in the aftermath of Team Plasma’s ice attack, and they had not seen anyone stirring outside for quite a long time. Even Drayden and that other trainer, whose name Colress either had never learned or could not remember, had given up their efforts to melt or shatter the ice and retreated indoors.
Colress nodded to N. “Follow me.”
The streets of Opelucid City had turned into an icy maze. Chilling mist rose from the frozen streets. Massive, glittering crystals blocked entire streets. Even in the places where they could be navigated around, being able to reach the gap between a clump of ice crystals and the buildings around it was a delicate matter, as the ice underfoot could cause them to slide haplessly at any time.
But Colress had already found the place they were going, earlier in the day, and knew the way.
“Here,” he said as they reached their destination.
It was, perhaps, an unnecessary statement.
In the central crystal of the cluster of ice in front of them, they could clearly see the shadowy silhouette of a young trainer, a few years younger than N, maybe eighteen or ninteen. When he had come during the day to find where she was frozen, he had even been able to see the expression of wide-eyed fear perfectly preserved on her face. Remorse stabbed at his heart. He had invented the cannon, and the device that drew energy from the ice dragon Kyurem to power it, but this had not been what he intended.
N walked up to the crystal, raised a hand towards the surface, wisely stopping just shy of touching it.
“Can Reshiram melt that?”
N nodded. “If anyone can, it would be my friend.”
He spoke the name of the pokemon. When the legendary dragon materialized, vast and shining in the dark, for a moment Colress’s regrets and worries were forgotten as he gazed up at her in awe. She was white all over except for her brilliant sapphire eyes. Snow-white feathers blended into gleaming opal scales, with only the glow in her bulb-shaped tail hinting at the fire she held inside.
At a quiet command from N, Reshiram breathed out a carefully-controlled stream of flame. As Colress observed the pokemon, and the effect of her fire on the ice crystal, he had an impression of immense power held under extreme restraint. Reshiram had started with the top of the ice crystal before working her way down to the base, where Rosa stood. Rivulets of water trickled past their feet. The ice melted slowly at a steady rate, and Colress turned his eyes from the dragon to watch for the moment the last of the ice imprisoning Rosa would be gone.
Reshiram modified her angle, melting all of the remaining ice until there was only a thin, glittering shell remaining around Rosa; then with a final, gentle breath, the shell dissolved, and Rosa slumped to the ground, unconscious.
The moment the flames were gone from around her, Colress was there, kneeling by her side and gathering her still form into his arms. Her body was cold—much colder than a human should be. He observed her carefully. The movement was faint, but her chest was rising and falling, and there was a tiny cloud of fog when she exhaled.
“She’s breathing,” he announced, rising and turning to face N and Reshiram. “But very cold. Is there anything else Reshiram can do for her?” His worry filled his voice with urgency.
N and Reshiram exchanged glances.
The dragon bent her white neck so that her head hovered just above Rosa. She opened her mouth and exhaled, very gently. There were no flames, but a wonderful cloud of warmth enveloped Colress and Rosa together. He could feel Rosa’s temperature rising. She still felt cold, but not the same way as before. It was a normal cold, like the way his own hands felt when he had been out in the cold for too long. She stirred in her sleep, shifting towards him; a hand reached out to curl against his chest.
The dragon gave a rumble so soft it was barely audible.
“She says that’s all she can do for her. She’ll be okay, but she needs a human to be with her and warm her up the rest of the way.”
Colress frowned at the still form in his arms. Warm her up the rest of the way? What was that supposed to mean?
He hesitated, then spoke again. “N . . . I apologize, but could I ask you for one more favor?”
“Yeah?” He looked over at Colress. They were nearly the same height, but N tilted his head, probably to get a better view from under the brim of his baseball cat.
“Could you take her somewhere safe to let her finish warming up? I . . . may not be the best person for her to wake up together with.”
“Why’s that?” N asked, all unsuspecting innocence. “From the lengths you are going to save this trainer, it’s obvious she is important to you.” He looked Colress over again, appraising. “Surely you’re not someone she needs to be afraid of?” A faint note of doubt crept into his voice. “I mean, you’re on her side, right? Fighting against Team Plasma?”
“I suppose you could say I am on her side . . . in a way. But am I fighting against Team Plasma, absolutely not. She doesn’t know it,” he said, looking down at the trainer sleeping in his arms, “but I am their boss.”
“What?!” N automatically shifted into a battle stance—feet braced, center of gravity lowered.
Reshiram gave a soft grumbling roar.
N looked up and made eye contact with his partner. Pokemon and trainer locked gazes for several moments, in which Reshiram rumbled some more. Eventually N’s stance relaxed, though his expression remained wary. “Reshiram says you’re not a bad person.” He folded his arms over his chest and tucked his chin so that his eyes—even in the dim light of the streetlights and the moon—were further plunged into shadow by the bill of his hat. “But if you’re the boss of Team Plasma, why are you doing so much to help her?”
“It’s imperative that she be able to reach the Plasma Frigate soon, before your father fully implements his plan. Based on my observation, this trainer is the only person who has a possibility of stopping him,” he said, then amended his statement. “Well, it doesn’t matter to me whether she wins or Ghetsis does. All I care about is finding out the truth about which approach is better at bringing out the potential of pokemon. That is the real reason I have been working as the boss of Team Plasma for the last two years.”
Reshiram bent towards N and gave another long, low rumble.
“Hmm,” N said.
“What is she saying?” Colress asked, sensing that no explanation would be forthcoming without prompting. It was interesting to see N’s famed ability to speak with pokemon in action. Speech with pokemon was not his primary research interest—though he supposed it was tangentially related—but nevertheless fascinating to observe. Besides, this seemed personally relevant.
“She says it’s not true you don’t care which side wins. That you want to see this trainer defeat Ghetsis and prove that bonds of love and trust are superior to his cruelty.”
His glasses were slipping, and he wanted to push them back up his nose, but unfortunately both of his hands were full with Rosa. He settled for raising the angle of his chin minutely to keep them from sliding any further. “A researcher has to be objective,” he said, cradling the young trainer in his arms.
N looked the two of them up and down. “There are a lot of things I don’t understand about this situation,” he said. “What your motives are. Why you are working for Team Plasma, but you are trying to help this trainer defeat my father.” He paused, exchanged glances with the dragon beside him. “But I trust my friend—I trust Reshiram."
The dragon rumbled softly in reply.
“Also, I’m still learning about human emotions, but I can see that trainer trusts you from the way she is clinging to you.”
Reshiram gave an affirmative mutter deep in her throat that needed no translation.
“The calculation is simple,” N said, spreading his hands. “Whoever you are, and whatever your purposes are, it’s obvious she is going to be a lot more comfortable waking up with you than with someone she’s never met before.”
He was right. She didn’t know he was the boss of the team she was fighting against; to her, he was just some curious researcher who enjoyed observing her interactions with her pokemon. And although their interactions had been somewhat few, it would probably be less alarming to wake up in a room with someone she knew to be friendly than a complete stranger, however kind. Colress sighed, looking down at the young trainer in his arms, the fingers curled in his shirt. She was so slim, so delicate-looking, yet holding such unparalleled power and tenacity within her. When he looked up at N again, his resolution—or resignation, perhaps—must have shown on his face, because the younger trainer simply nodded at him.
“We’ll be waiting to step in when you need us,” N said. Reshiram’s form dissolved into the night, and N disappeared into the shadows.
Colress sat in a chair of the hotel room he had gotten, sipping a cup of coffee and waiting for Rosa to finish her bath. He had been relieved to see that reaction at seeing him when she woke up had been surprised, but not alarmed. But she had been cold—visibly trembling, and unable to stop, so he had heated a bath for her, hoping that soaking in hot water would relieve the chill that seemed to have seeped into her very marrow.
“Colress.” He looked up to see her emerge from the bathroom, huddled inside a towel wrapped over her nightgown. “I stayed in the bath until the water cooled down, but I’m still so cold.” Her voice shook with distress. “Am I ever going to feel warm again?”
This was not good. It was the result he had hypothesized. He had heated up the bath water so much he had been worried it might be a little too hot—rationalizing that if it was, she could wait until it cooled a bit, or add some cold water. If even after the healing of Reshiram’s breath, even after staying submerged in hot water for such a long time, she was still cold, how long was this effect going to last?
Colress crossed the distance between them to put his hands on her shoulders. She was shivering like a leaf in a storm. “Shhh, it’s all right.” He didn’t have much experience with this, but he tried to speak in a soothing way, like he would to a child. Being in an extremely weakened physical state often caused one to revert to a more childish state of mind, he had observed. “I’m sure it’s only a temporary thing, and you’ll be able to feel warm again soon.” Reshiram had said she would be all right. The opinion of a fire dragon pokemon was not the same thing as that of a human medical doctor, but on the other hand, he supposed that due to her connection with Kyurem, the remnant part of her that had been left over when she and Zekrom split, she might have more of an understanding of Kyrem’s ice than any human did.
He reached a hand up to feel her forehead; even after her hot bath, her skin was cold and clammy.
“Your hand is warm,” she said, looking up at him. Her eyes were soft and guileless.
“It’s because your skin is so cold,” he said matter-of-factly. Even without a precise measurement, he felt sure that her temperature was much lower than the average for a young woman her age. He left her, went to fetch his lab jacket. “Here, put this on,” he said.
As she took his jacket she slipped the towel off from around her shoulders, looking confused for a moment about what to do with it until Colress took it from her. Her body shook with another bout of shivering as she was left in only her thin nightgown. He hung up the towel, then went to search the closets for spare blankets. By the time he brought the hotel blanket to her, she had put on his jacket—ridiculously too large, of course, hanging down far below the hem of her nightgown. He wrapped the hotel’s blanket around her shoulders and led her to the chair closest to the heating unit, which he turned up as high as it would go.
“Any better?” he asked gently after a few minutes, but he could easily observe without asking that she was still shivering.
She shook her head. “Sorry, you’re doing so much for me, but . . .”
“You don’t need to apologize,” he said, feeling her forehead once more. “I should be the one apologizing.”
That was a mistake; he had not meant to let that slip. What if she asked why? Without knowing his role in Team Plasma, she had no way of knowing how great his responsibility was for the fact she had been trapped in the ice in the first place.
But she didn’t ask. Instead, when he removed his hand from her forehead, she reached out to grasp his hand. He met her eyes, startled by the vulnerability in their expression. Her hands were like ice.
“Sorry,” she said again, dropping her eyes. “It’s just . . . your hand is the only warm thing in this room . . .”
He sighed. For all his striving to maintain scientific objectivity, this trainer stirred up feelings of tenderness he didn’t often experience. Well, there was no help for it. He needed her to be in good shape so that she could be at her best when she confronted Team Plasma.
Which happened to include him.
“Here,” he said, reaching into the cocoon of blanket. “Put your arms around my neck.” She complied, and as she leaned forward he slid one arm around her back and the other under her knees, picking her up and then sitting in the seat with Rosa in his lap. He rearranged the blanket to cover them both, wrapping his arms around her to provide as much warmth as he could. Rosa buried her face in his shoulder, obviously self-conscious, but clinging to him like a child to its mother, still shivering.
It must be the physical contact, he thought. Bits of knowledge floated to his mind. Hearing from a classmate in university, a pre-med major who wanted to become an OBGYN, about how important skin-to-skin contact was for newborn babies. Learning about the way that whenever a deerling was born, its mother had to groom every part of its body with her tongue, or it would not be able to survive. Humans were mammals, and Rosa was like a newborn emerging from a womb of ice. It shouldn’t be surprising that she needed physical contact from another human being.
“Colress.”
“Yes?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Her voice was muffled by his shirt, but still audible.
“You know I am researching the forms of interaction between humans and pokemon. As I have said before, when it comes to drawing out the potential of pokemon, you are really excellent. I’m very curious to see the outcome of your confrontation with Team Plasma.” He strove to keep his voice calm, objective, but despite himself, his voice sounded much gentler than normal, even to his own ears. “In other words . . .” He could hear his voice start to catch. “You are too valuable of a research subject to lose.” The attempt was a failure. As hard as he was trying to be dispassionate, or failing that to seem cool and detached, he could tell no one would be convinced by this kind of act.
Rosa shifted in his arms, lifting her head and pulling back just enough that she could look up into his face. Colress met her gaze, trying to analyze her reaction. Her expression was doubtful, searching.
“Is that the only reason?” she asked softly.
In Colress’s life, there was only one ideal, which was supreme above all others. Truth. In pursuit of that, he ignored every other consideration. He was doing things that he knew seemed cruel, but he had to see the evidence that would prove what the answer to his question was. He could never be satisfied otherwise.
And so, he had never in his life been able to bring himself to lie. He often left things unmentioned that it did not behoove him to reveal, like not mentioning to Rosa that he was working as the boss of Team Plasma. But to say something false would go against not only everything he stood for, but everything that he was.
He was not ignorant of the emotions that Rosa brought out in him. He couldn’t keep pretending, even to himself, that they didn’t exist.
He allowed himself to brush the back of his hand against her cheek, feeling the muscles in his face soften and relax as he looked into her eyes. “No,” he said.
She dropped her eyes and gave a long sigh, but freed a hand to join his, lacing their fingers together. He felt her shoulders drop as she relaxed. “I’m glad.”
He didn’t know how long it was between when she dropped her head back down to rest against his chest, and when her even breathing indicated that she had fallen asleep, though his mind remained alert through that time, observing as her shivering gradually died down, and noting that the temperature of her skin, before he had realized it, crept back up to normal.
At some point, he dozed, as well, and when he woke again the faint grey-blue light of early dawn was filtering through the curtains. He cautiously disentangled himself from Rosa to stand up, and by some miracle, she shifted in her sleep but did not wake. She must be a sound sleeper. Still, he didn’t dare to risk retrieving his lab coat, so he left her still wrapped in it, tucking the blanket back around her.
The room was like a sauna; his body was damp with sweat. He felt her forehead one last time, reassuring himself that her body temperature had returned to normal at last, and lowered the thermostat to a toasty 74 degrees Fahrenheit, recalling that a comfortable temperature for women was usually slightly higher than for men, and considering that after being frozen in a huge chunk of ice, she might like it a little warmer than usual.
It was time for him to leave. Being in such a weakened physical state had reduced Rosa to a much more child-like state than was usual for her. Normally, she was independent, determined, and perceptive. He didn’t want to be here and face the questions that a recovered and likely much more clear-minded Rose would doubtless have. He would have to leave his lab coat, but it was fine, he had others.
He had hoped to see and touch base with her a few more times during her journey, before she fought through Team Plasma for a final confrontation with its leaders, Ghetsis, and him. But he did not dare to do so now, for the same reasons as he did not want to be present when she woke up. He would have to keep an eye on her progress from afar.
However, it wouldn’t be right to leave without any kind of word. He left her a note on the pad of paper on the nightstand. Hopefully someday she would come to understand, but whether she did or not was, in the end, not the most important thing. After stopping for one long, last look at Rosa, he closed the door quietly behind him.
Rosa woke to a sensation of warmth. She was wrapped in several layers, and curled not quite comfortably in a chair. She reveled in the too-warm heat for as long as she could stand, then shrugged off her blanket, then the lab coat that she had on over her nightgown, to stand up and stretch. It was Colress’s lab coat, she clearly recalled, and she felt her face heating as she reviewed her memories of the previous night. Picking it up, she folded it over her arm.
“Colress?” she called out. She looked around the room and could not see him anywhere. The bedsheets were crisp and untouched. The bathroom door was open and the lights off. She peeked inside anyways, then returned to stand in the center of the hotel room, her eyes sweeping the room for any trace of him. Her gaze fell upon the nightstand. There was something written on the pad of paper on it, and a strange device next to the message which she had never seen before. She picked up the note, which was written in neat and precise cursive, and read it.
“This is only a prototype, but it enlivens pokemon and brings out their energy. It can’t be used in battle, but you may find it useful in your journey. Please take this, and stop Team Plasma before it is too late. We will meet again sooner than you think. Colress.”
Except for the sound of her footsteps on the gangway, and the quiet slap of water against the frigate’s hull, everything was silent. There was no trace of any of the black-clad Team Plasma members who had manned this frigate only two years ago. They must have all truly disbanded and moved on to other things. Peering through the mist, Rosa could barely make out anything on the upper decks fore and aft, but she thought she saw a faint silhouette of a figure in white by the railing near the ship’s prow.
Her footsteps sounded loud and clumsy in her ears as she walked up the metal stairway to the upper deck. Surely he would have heard her, he thought, but he did not turn, seeming absorbed in whatever it was in the distance that he was gazing at, or more likely merely his own thoughts.
“Colress?” Even from behind, there was no one else it could be, so why did the question come out so hesitantly?
He turned, and his eyes widened.
“Rosa. I’m surprised that you found me here.” His expression was soft, but barren of the calm half-smile he always used to have. “After all, it has been a long time since Team Plasma has disbanded. All of the former members have moved on to other jobs, so I hardly come here myself. There’s nothing left . . .” His eyes were distant. “Nothing but memories, and an empty ship.”
“Then why did you come here?” she asked.
“To think about things.”
“What kind of things?”
He looked at her for a long moment before speaking. She wasn’t sure, but was there a hint of warmth in the depth of his eyes? “For example,” he said at last, “a certain trainer who was strong enough to conclusively prove, beyond any doubt, that Ghetsis’s way was wrong.”
“You still think about that?” she asked, shy. A breeze picked up, and she brushed back a strand of hair, which she wore loose now, from her face.
He smiled, but his face looked stiff, as if he hadn’t practiced in a long time. “I’m still thankful for that,” he responded. “And you? What brings you here?”
She felt herself growing a little warm, and hoped that it wasn’t showing in her face. She turned it away from him, anyways, to rummage in her bag. She pulled out a clean, folded piece of white cloth. “I came to return your lab coat.”
He chuckled. “Is that the only reason?” he asked, gently, and she recalled that time, two years ago, when she had asked him the same thing in the hotel room they had shared that night.
“No,” she said, smiling.
He smiled, too, a full, genuine smile this time.
She started to move towards him, but she only had to go halfway before she was enveloped in his arms, in the clean scents of linen and soap, and the faint tang of metal.
It was the first time they had seen each other in two years.
But it was the last time they ever parted.
Genre: Romance, hurt/comfort, angst (ch. 2)
Rating: PG
Content warnings: none
Anything, as long as it is kind! I appreciate c/c as long as it's phrased in a kind way; I don't thrive on harsh criticism. I'd also appreciate if you can point out at least one or two positive things.
Chapter 1: Only the Truth
The ground rocked beneath them in the roar of an explosion.
Rosa and Drayden exchanged glances. The gym leader and mayor of the town, Drayden had just been explaining to her about the relic that had been passed down through his family for generations, the DNA splicers, and the legend of how the two dragons Reshiram and Zekroam had split from one being into two. But he had scarcely finished his explanation when they heard the blast, felt the ground shake beneath their feet.
“What was that?” Drayden asked. They emerged from his house to see a gigantic shadow over the town. In the sky, an enormous steel-plated ship floated above them, blocking out the sun. Rows of glowing blue oars fanned the airs like fins of a mechanical fish.
In the prow, two panels opened up to reveal a hole from which a gigantic cannon emerged. Rosa stared up at it, transfixed. There was a high-pitched keening sound as the cannon angled down, and its mouth began to glow blue.
A blast.
Rosa threw an arm across her face to shield her eyes. When she lowered it, there was an enormous cluster of ice crystals in front of her, radiating a cold so intense that she could feel it from yards away. The cannon swiveled towards them.
“RUN!” Drayen barked the command.
Instinctively, they split up, taking two different paths. Rosa dodged around the massive ice crystals that had been left by the cannon’s first blast, then zigzagged through the stone-paved streets. One after another, she could hear more and more blasts from behind her. But as she rounded a sharp bend, the stones beneath her feet were suddenly coated in ice. Her feet slipped out from under her. Her back slammed hard against the ground, and her momentum sent her sliding across a sheer sheet of ice to come to halt against another towering pillar of ice. She rolled on her side and struggled to prop herself up with her elbows. The freezing cold bit through her hands, and her feet scrabbled on the slick sheet ice beneath her.
She had just struggled to her feet when she looked up at the sky and saw the glow of the cannon mouth, pointed straight at her.
●●○○●●○○●●
Colress rested his elbows on the desk in his office in the frigate, fingers laced together and his chin propped on his hands. He schooled himself to keep an expression of polite interest on his face as he listened to his subordinate’s report on the operations at Opelucid City.
In a stroke of good fortune, a certain girl trainer who had been thwarting Team Plasma’s plans recently had been caught in one of the blasts from the Plasma Frigate’s ice cannon, and was frozen in an enormous, unbreakable ice crystal. The mayor, Drayden, and the other trainer, the boy with the spiky hair, had slid around on the ice chasing after Zinzolin and the Shadow Triad, but had been unable to recover the DNA splicers which the Shadow Triad had stolen, the true object of today’s operations. Everything had gone splendidly, completely according to Team Plasma’s plan.
Colress’s plan, on the other hand, was in considerable danger of being completely ruined.
“Very good, you are dismissed.”
When the subordinate had saluted and left, he pushed his chair back—noticing with a detached part of his mind the way his hands shook on the surface of his desk—and stood to pace the metal floors of his narrow office.
His thoughts jumped erratically. How had it happened that Rosa, of all people, had happened to be in Opelucid City just at that time, and to be the one person frozen in a lucky shot by a grunt? And why in space and time had they been firing on people? The ice cannon had been meant as a threat, Ghetis strutting his power and ambitions of dominion, a matter of complete indifference to Colress—but regardless, the team members had been instructed not to aim at people or pokemon.
Should he investigate to find which grunt had ignored orders and fired the cannon at a trainer? He examined the thought briefly, dismissed it as quickly. Whoever it was, they were no doubt being lionized by their comrades now, and to punish the grunt whose cleverness everyone was celebrating would make him seem like an unnecessarily strict taskmaster. He enjoyed cordial relationships with his subordinates—perhaps partly because in his mid-twenties, Colress was much closer to their age, but more likely because anyone was preferable when compared to Ghetsis—and didn’t want to lose that rapport.
But that wasn’t what was important. He took a deep breath and forced himself to think calmly, in a logical order.
The first flaw of his plan was that he hadn’t considered that anyone would be caught in the ice crystals, let alone Rosa. Rosa was crucial to his plan, and most definitely not expendable.
The second flaw in his plan was, he had engineered this weapon without having any way of melting the ice that it created. Not only that, but he did not even have any idea what Kyurem's ice even did to human cells. Could she be thawed out and restored safely? The doubts of how long she could stay frozen, and whether there would be negative side effects, gripped his heart with ice just as potent as Kyurem's. Doubtless he would be thought cold by some, if they knew what his true plans were for Team Plasma and this trainer, but there were some things he would not stoop to even for science. Murder was one of them.
Even without knowing for sure whether thawing out a living being trapped in Kyurem's ice could be done, the only option was to do everything possible to try. His mind raced furiously, trying to think if there was any sort of machine he could fabricate that could melt the ice crystals, but he simply had nothing at his disposal that could equal the power of Kyurem’s ice.
There was only one being in this world that could possibly do that.
Decision made, he exited the office, locking the door behind him.
“Going somewhere, boss?” asked the grunt stationed outside his door.
“I’m going down to Opelucid City myself to have a look myself.”
“Ah. Please be careful.”
Colress smiled slightly, waving a hand in dismissal. He felt a little shaky, still, but from the guard’s lack of a reaction, he must have passed for normal. “Don’t worry. No one knows who I am, remember? I’m just an ordinary scientist.”
●●○○●●○○●●
It was deep into the night, and Colress’s breath, and the breath of his companion, a young man who wore a baseball cap over a mane of unruly lime green hair that spilled down to his waist, clouded in the frigid air. They lurked in the shadows of a row of pine trees, looking into the frozen streets of Opelucid City.
Colress had been fortunate to find N, and especially in such a short time. This was the advantage of having a few psychic pokemon in his mostly steel-type team. He hypothesized that a psychic like his beheeyem would be able to pick up on the enormous amount of energy emitted by Reshiram, who was rumored to have some psychic abilities herself, though it was not her primary power. And he had been correct. Beheeyem had quickly pinpointed Reshiram’s location.
He was even more fortunate that the same idea had not occurred to Ghetsis, whose plan for locating his adopted son was to use Kyurem to freeze the region, hoping N and Reshiram would openly move to melt Kyurem’s ice. The man had clearly been intelligent once. Now he was a shell of his former self, a husk filled with hatred and rage, and blinded by them. The intelligence remained in the form of a sort of craftiness, cunning in some ways, stupid to the point of idiocy in others. He lacked the clear-sightedness and insight that could only be obtained by looking at all evidence objectively.
“You think we can get in without being seen by anyone?” N asked.
The timing, Colress judged, would not get any better than this. It was a clear night, with light from the moon and the few stars that could be seen this close to the city, and Opelucid was well-lit with street lights as well. However, everyone was cowering inside in the aftermath of Team Plasma’s ice attack, and they had not seen anyone stirring outside for quite a long time. Even Drayden and that other trainer, whose name Colress either had never learned or could not remember, had given up their efforts to melt or shatter the ice and retreated indoors.
Colress nodded to N. “Follow me.”
The streets of Opelucid City had turned into an icy maze. Chilling mist rose from the frozen streets. Massive, glittering crystals blocked entire streets. Even in the places where they could be navigated around, being able to reach the gap between a clump of ice crystals and the buildings around it was a delicate matter, as the ice underfoot could cause them to slide haplessly at any time.
But Colress had already found the place they were going, earlier in the day, and knew the way.
“Here,” he said as they reached their destination.
It was, perhaps, an unnecessary statement.
In the central crystal of the cluster of ice in front of them, they could clearly see the shadowy silhouette of a young trainer, a few years younger than N, maybe eighteen or ninteen. When he had come during the day to find where she was frozen, he had even been able to see the expression of wide-eyed fear perfectly preserved on her face. Remorse stabbed at his heart. He had invented the cannon, and the device that drew energy from the ice dragon Kyurem to power it, but this had not been what he intended.
N walked up to the crystal, raised a hand towards the surface, wisely stopping just shy of touching it.
“Can Reshiram melt that?”
N nodded. “If anyone can, it would be my friend.”
He spoke the name of the pokemon. When the legendary dragon materialized, vast and shining in the dark, for a moment Colress’s regrets and worries were forgotten as he gazed up at her in awe. She was white all over except for her brilliant sapphire eyes. Snow-white feathers blended into gleaming opal scales, with only the glow in her bulb-shaped tail hinting at the fire she held inside.
At a quiet command from N, Reshiram breathed out a carefully-controlled stream of flame. As Colress observed the pokemon, and the effect of her fire on the ice crystal, he had an impression of immense power held under extreme restraint. Reshiram had started with the top of the ice crystal before working her way down to the base, where Rosa stood. Rivulets of water trickled past their feet. The ice melted slowly at a steady rate, and Colress turned his eyes from the dragon to watch for the moment the last of the ice imprisoning Rosa would be gone.
Reshiram modified her angle, melting all of the remaining ice until there was only a thin, glittering shell remaining around Rosa; then with a final, gentle breath, the shell dissolved, and Rosa slumped to the ground, unconscious.
The moment the flames were gone from around her, Colress was there, kneeling by her side and gathering her still form into his arms. Her body was cold—much colder than a human should be. He observed her carefully. The movement was faint, but her chest was rising and falling, and there was a tiny cloud of fog when she exhaled.
“She’s breathing,” he announced, rising and turning to face N and Reshiram. “But very cold. Is there anything else Reshiram can do for her?” His worry filled his voice with urgency.
N and Reshiram exchanged glances.
The dragon bent her white neck so that her head hovered just above Rosa. She opened her mouth and exhaled, very gently. There were no flames, but a wonderful cloud of warmth enveloped Colress and Rosa together. He could feel Rosa’s temperature rising. She still felt cold, but not the same way as before. It was a normal cold, like the way his own hands felt when he had been out in the cold for too long. She stirred in her sleep, shifting towards him; a hand reached out to curl against his chest.
The dragon gave a rumble so soft it was barely audible.
“She says that’s all she can do for her. She’ll be okay, but she needs a human to be with her and warm her up the rest of the way.”
Colress frowned at the still form in his arms. Warm her up the rest of the way? What was that supposed to mean?
He hesitated, then spoke again. “N . . . I apologize, but could I ask you for one more favor?”
“Yeah?” He looked over at Colress. They were nearly the same height, but N tilted his head, probably to get a better view from under the brim of his baseball cat.
“Could you take her somewhere safe to let her finish warming up? I . . . may not be the best person for her to wake up together with.”
“Why’s that?” N asked, all unsuspecting innocence. “From the lengths you are going to save this trainer, it’s obvious she is important to you.” He looked Colress over again, appraising. “Surely you’re not someone she needs to be afraid of?” A faint note of doubt crept into his voice. “I mean, you’re on her side, right? Fighting against Team Plasma?”
“I suppose you could say I am on her side . . . in a way. But am I fighting against Team Plasma, absolutely not. She doesn’t know it,” he said, looking down at the trainer sleeping in his arms, “but I am their boss.”
“What?!” N automatically shifted into a battle stance—feet braced, center of gravity lowered.
Reshiram gave a soft grumbling roar.
N looked up and made eye contact with his partner. Pokemon and trainer locked gazes for several moments, in which Reshiram rumbled some more. Eventually N’s stance relaxed, though his expression remained wary. “Reshiram says you’re not a bad person.” He folded his arms over his chest and tucked his chin so that his eyes—even in the dim light of the streetlights and the moon—were further plunged into shadow by the bill of his hat. “But if you’re the boss of Team Plasma, why are you doing so much to help her?”
“It’s imperative that she be able to reach the Plasma Frigate soon, before your father fully implements his plan. Based on my observation, this trainer is the only person who has a possibility of stopping him,” he said, then amended his statement. “Well, it doesn’t matter to me whether she wins or Ghetsis does. All I care about is finding out the truth about which approach is better at bringing out the potential of pokemon. That is the real reason I have been working as the boss of Team Plasma for the last two years.”
Reshiram bent towards N and gave another long, low rumble.
“Hmm,” N said.
“What is she saying?” Colress asked, sensing that no explanation would be forthcoming without prompting. It was interesting to see N’s famed ability to speak with pokemon in action. Speech with pokemon was not his primary research interest—though he supposed it was tangentially related—but nevertheless fascinating to observe. Besides, this seemed personally relevant.
“She says it’s not true you don’t care which side wins. That you want to see this trainer defeat Ghetsis and prove that bonds of love and trust are superior to his cruelty.”
His glasses were slipping, and he wanted to push them back up his nose, but unfortunately both of his hands were full with Rosa. He settled for raising the angle of his chin minutely to keep them from sliding any further. “A researcher has to be objective,” he said, cradling the young trainer in his arms.
N looked the two of them up and down. “There are a lot of things I don’t understand about this situation,” he said. “What your motives are. Why you are working for Team Plasma, but you are trying to help this trainer defeat my father.” He paused, exchanged glances with the dragon beside him. “But I trust my friend—I trust Reshiram."
The dragon rumbled softly in reply.
“Also, I’m still learning about human emotions, but I can see that trainer trusts you from the way she is clinging to you.”
Reshiram gave an affirmative mutter deep in her throat that needed no translation.
“The calculation is simple,” N said, spreading his hands. “Whoever you are, and whatever your purposes are, it’s obvious she is going to be a lot more comfortable waking up with you than with someone she’s never met before.”
He was right. She didn’t know he was the boss of the team she was fighting against; to her, he was just some curious researcher who enjoyed observing her interactions with her pokemon. And although their interactions had been somewhat few, it would probably be less alarming to wake up in a room with someone she knew to be friendly than a complete stranger, however kind. Colress sighed, looking down at the young trainer in his arms, the fingers curled in his shirt. She was so slim, so delicate-looking, yet holding such unparalleled power and tenacity within her. When he looked up at N again, his resolution—or resignation, perhaps—must have shown on his face, because the younger trainer simply nodded at him.
“We’ll be waiting to step in when you need us,” N said. Reshiram’s form dissolved into the night, and N disappeared into the shadows.
●●○○●●○○●●
Colress sat in a chair of the hotel room he had gotten, sipping a cup of coffee and waiting for Rosa to finish her bath. He had been relieved to see that reaction at seeing him when she woke up had been surprised, but not alarmed. But she had been cold—visibly trembling, and unable to stop, so he had heated a bath for her, hoping that soaking in hot water would relieve the chill that seemed to have seeped into her very marrow.
“Colress.” He looked up to see her emerge from the bathroom, huddled inside a towel wrapped over her nightgown. “I stayed in the bath until the water cooled down, but I’m still so cold.” Her voice shook with distress. “Am I ever going to feel warm again?”
This was not good. It was the result he had hypothesized. He had heated up the bath water so much he had been worried it might be a little too hot—rationalizing that if it was, she could wait until it cooled a bit, or add some cold water. If even after the healing of Reshiram’s breath, even after staying submerged in hot water for such a long time, she was still cold, how long was this effect going to last?
Colress crossed the distance between them to put his hands on her shoulders. She was shivering like a leaf in a storm. “Shhh, it’s all right.” He didn’t have much experience with this, but he tried to speak in a soothing way, like he would to a child. Being in an extremely weakened physical state often caused one to revert to a more childish state of mind, he had observed. “I’m sure it’s only a temporary thing, and you’ll be able to feel warm again soon.” Reshiram had said she would be all right. The opinion of a fire dragon pokemon was not the same thing as that of a human medical doctor, but on the other hand, he supposed that due to her connection with Kyurem, the remnant part of her that had been left over when she and Zekrom split, she might have more of an understanding of Kyrem’s ice than any human did.
He reached a hand up to feel her forehead; even after her hot bath, her skin was cold and clammy.
“Your hand is warm,” she said, looking up at him. Her eyes were soft and guileless.
“It’s because your skin is so cold,” he said matter-of-factly. Even without a precise measurement, he felt sure that her temperature was much lower than the average for a young woman her age. He left her, went to fetch his lab jacket. “Here, put this on,” he said.
As she took his jacket she slipped the towel off from around her shoulders, looking confused for a moment about what to do with it until Colress took it from her. Her body shook with another bout of shivering as she was left in only her thin nightgown. He hung up the towel, then went to search the closets for spare blankets. By the time he brought the hotel blanket to her, she had put on his jacket—ridiculously too large, of course, hanging down far below the hem of her nightgown. He wrapped the hotel’s blanket around her shoulders and led her to the chair closest to the heating unit, which he turned up as high as it would go.
“Any better?” he asked gently after a few minutes, but he could easily observe without asking that she was still shivering.
She shook her head. “Sorry, you’re doing so much for me, but . . .”
“You don’t need to apologize,” he said, feeling her forehead once more. “I should be the one apologizing.”
That was a mistake; he had not meant to let that slip. What if she asked why? Without knowing his role in Team Plasma, she had no way of knowing how great his responsibility was for the fact she had been trapped in the ice in the first place.
But she didn’t ask. Instead, when he removed his hand from her forehead, she reached out to grasp his hand. He met her eyes, startled by the vulnerability in their expression. Her hands were like ice.
“Sorry,” she said again, dropping her eyes. “It’s just . . . your hand is the only warm thing in this room . . .”
He sighed. For all his striving to maintain scientific objectivity, this trainer stirred up feelings of tenderness he didn’t often experience. Well, there was no help for it. He needed her to be in good shape so that she could be at her best when she confronted Team Plasma.
Which happened to include him.
“Here,” he said, reaching into the cocoon of blanket. “Put your arms around my neck.” She complied, and as she leaned forward he slid one arm around her back and the other under her knees, picking her up and then sitting in the seat with Rosa in his lap. He rearranged the blanket to cover them both, wrapping his arms around her to provide as much warmth as he could. Rosa buried her face in his shoulder, obviously self-conscious, but clinging to him like a child to its mother, still shivering.
It must be the physical contact, he thought. Bits of knowledge floated to his mind. Hearing from a classmate in university, a pre-med major who wanted to become an OBGYN, about how important skin-to-skin contact was for newborn babies. Learning about the way that whenever a deerling was born, its mother had to groom every part of its body with her tongue, or it would not be able to survive. Humans were mammals, and Rosa was like a newborn emerging from a womb of ice. It shouldn’t be surprising that she needed physical contact from another human being.
“Colress.”
“Yes?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Her voice was muffled by his shirt, but still audible.
“You know I am researching the forms of interaction between humans and pokemon. As I have said before, when it comes to drawing out the potential of pokemon, you are really excellent. I’m very curious to see the outcome of your confrontation with Team Plasma.” He strove to keep his voice calm, objective, but despite himself, his voice sounded much gentler than normal, even to his own ears. “In other words . . .” He could hear his voice start to catch. “You are too valuable of a research subject to lose.” The attempt was a failure. As hard as he was trying to be dispassionate, or failing that to seem cool and detached, he could tell no one would be convinced by this kind of act.
Rosa shifted in his arms, lifting her head and pulling back just enough that she could look up into his face. Colress met her gaze, trying to analyze her reaction. Her expression was doubtful, searching.
“Is that the only reason?” she asked softly.
In Colress’s life, there was only one ideal, which was supreme above all others. Truth. In pursuit of that, he ignored every other consideration. He was doing things that he knew seemed cruel, but he had to see the evidence that would prove what the answer to his question was. He could never be satisfied otherwise.
And so, he had never in his life been able to bring himself to lie. He often left things unmentioned that it did not behoove him to reveal, like not mentioning to Rosa that he was working as the boss of Team Plasma. But to say something false would go against not only everything he stood for, but everything that he was.
He was not ignorant of the emotions that Rosa brought out in him. He couldn’t keep pretending, even to himself, that they didn’t exist.
He allowed himself to brush the back of his hand against her cheek, feeling the muscles in his face soften and relax as he looked into her eyes. “No,” he said.
She dropped her eyes and gave a long sigh, but freed a hand to join his, lacing their fingers together. He felt her shoulders drop as she relaxed. “I’m glad.”
He didn’t know how long it was between when she dropped her head back down to rest against his chest, and when her even breathing indicated that she had fallen asleep, though his mind remained alert through that time, observing as her shivering gradually died down, and noting that the temperature of her skin, before he had realized it, crept back up to normal.
At some point, he dozed, as well, and when he woke again the faint grey-blue light of early dawn was filtering through the curtains. He cautiously disentangled himself from Rosa to stand up, and by some miracle, she shifted in her sleep but did not wake. She must be a sound sleeper. Still, he didn’t dare to risk retrieving his lab coat, so he left her still wrapped in it, tucking the blanket back around her.
The room was like a sauna; his body was damp with sweat. He felt her forehead one last time, reassuring himself that her body temperature had returned to normal at last, and lowered the thermostat to a toasty 74 degrees Fahrenheit, recalling that a comfortable temperature for women was usually slightly higher than for men, and considering that after being frozen in a huge chunk of ice, she might like it a little warmer than usual.
It was time for him to leave. Being in such a weakened physical state had reduced Rosa to a much more child-like state than was usual for her. Normally, she was independent, determined, and perceptive. He didn’t want to be here and face the questions that a recovered and likely much more clear-minded Rose would doubtless have. He would have to leave his lab coat, but it was fine, he had others.
He had hoped to see and touch base with her a few more times during her journey, before she fought through Team Plasma for a final confrontation with its leaders, Ghetsis, and him. But he did not dare to do so now, for the same reasons as he did not want to be present when she woke up. He would have to keep an eye on her progress from afar.
However, it wouldn’t be right to leave without any kind of word. He left her a note on the pad of paper on the nightstand. Hopefully someday she would come to understand, but whether she did or not was, in the end, not the most important thing. After stopping for one long, last look at Rosa, he closed the door quietly behind him.
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Rosa woke to a sensation of warmth. She was wrapped in several layers, and curled not quite comfortably in a chair. She reveled in the too-warm heat for as long as she could stand, then shrugged off her blanket, then the lab coat that she had on over her nightgown, to stand up and stretch. It was Colress’s lab coat, she clearly recalled, and she felt her face heating as she reviewed her memories of the previous night. Picking it up, she folded it over her arm.
“Colress?” she called out. She looked around the room and could not see him anywhere. The bedsheets were crisp and untouched. The bathroom door was open and the lights off. She peeked inside anyways, then returned to stand in the center of the hotel room, her eyes sweeping the room for any trace of him. Her gaze fell upon the nightstand. There was something written on the pad of paper on it, and a strange device next to the message which she had never seen before. She picked up the note, which was written in neat and precise cursive, and read it.
“This is only a prototype, but it enlivens pokemon and brings out their energy. It can’t be used in battle, but you may find it useful in your journey. Please take this, and stop Team Plasma before it is too late. We will meet again sooner than you think. Colress.”
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Except for the sound of her footsteps on the gangway, and the quiet slap of water against the frigate’s hull, everything was silent. There was no trace of any of the black-clad Team Plasma members who had manned this frigate only two years ago. They must have all truly disbanded and moved on to other things. Peering through the mist, Rosa could barely make out anything on the upper decks fore and aft, but she thought she saw a faint silhouette of a figure in white by the railing near the ship’s prow.
Her footsteps sounded loud and clumsy in her ears as she walked up the metal stairway to the upper deck. Surely he would have heard her, he thought, but he did not turn, seeming absorbed in whatever it was in the distance that he was gazing at, or more likely merely his own thoughts.
“Colress?” Even from behind, there was no one else it could be, so why did the question come out so hesitantly?
He turned, and his eyes widened.
“Rosa. I’m surprised that you found me here.” His expression was soft, but barren of the calm half-smile he always used to have. “After all, it has been a long time since Team Plasma has disbanded. All of the former members have moved on to other jobs, so I hardly come here myself. There’s nothing left . . .” His eyes were distant. “Nothing but memories, and an empty ship.”
“Then why did you come here?” she asked.
“To think about things.”
“What kind of things?”
He looked at her for a long moment before speaking. She wasn’t sure, but was there a hint of warmth in the depth of his eyes? “For example,” he said at last, “a certain trainer who was strong enough to conclusively prove, beyond any doubt, that Ghetsis’s way was wrong.”
“You still think about that?” she asked, shy. A breeze picked up, and she brushed back a strand of hair, which she wore loose now, from her face.
He smiled, but his face looked stiff, as if he hadn’t practiced in a long time. “I’m still thankful for that,” he responded. “And you? What brings you here?”
She felt herself growing a little warm, and hoped that it wasn’t showing in her face. She turned it away from him, anyways, to rummage in her bag. She pulled out a clean, folded piece of white cloth. “I came to return your lab coat.”
He chuckled. “Is that the only reason?” he asked, gently, and she recalled that time, two years ago, when she had asked him the same thing in the hotel room they had shared that night.
“No,” she said, smiling.
He smiled, too, a full, genuine smile this time.
She started to move towards him, but she only had to go halfway before she was enveloped in his arms, in the clean scents of linen and soap, and the faint tang of metal.
It was the first time they had seen each other in two years.
But it was the last time they ever parted.
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