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Storm in a Teacup
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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