[r] sound of the heart

[daigo]

he walks alone in the lonely street, and he thinks, he thinks back to what he has been doing. a trip back to hoenn, and he tells wing: stay, stay back at the company and don't follow him. he drops cross's pokéball on the ceo's table, and hopes his father will find it. he carries the rest of his pokémon along with him to isshu, because he knows he will use them.

quietly, he takes out his phone and dials a number. he doesn't have long; despite his tendency to be tardy, he does not enjoy waiting. he does not like waiting for people - such is the impatience of a man who has to run a large company under the iron grip of his father's wishes and desires.

"aurea, it's steven. white forest, please."

he wishes she would hurry, because time is of the essence. he slumps against a tree, trying to think - try, daigo! - of what to tell her, of what to let her know and what should be kept from her.

she is his longest friend, and they have known each other since he was a child. he glances up at white forest - it hasn't changed, since the last time he visited. as he has told cynthia before: isshu is safe. it isn't touched by the war.

[lurker2]

she doesn't like the tone he uses. her hands were shaky but it didn't matter. she practically ripped the door open and fled her home. white forest was the only clue that daigo had given her. steven. she reminds herself.

it isn't long before she spots him. it isn't hard to find an injured man in the middle of white forest when her pokemon are free to roam. scott was the first to the scene. the mischievous look on her face gone and instead a serious gaze was in place.

"daigo." she whispers. he's bloody. he's injured and she quickly makes her way to his side. "i -" she gulps. "what happened?" she looks him over, trying to see where it was coming from.

[daigo]

he remains silent as he walks through the forest. the trees line the side of the pathway, one after the other, in an orderly manner. he realizes that he likes orderly things, and he wonders. maybe one day he'll have a street like that built in rustboro - maybe one day his father would see the sense in having yet another park in the bustling city. he likes the greenery; it reminds him of friends, of family, of pokémon.

wing, his favourite pokémon. they got into squabbles often enough, but he always enjoyed its company. never would a morning pass without a shriek from the skarmory to wake him up - it is still his alarm ringtone. it never fails to wake him up. a wistful smile tugs at the edges of his lips, and he walks on.

he exhales; he realizes his breath is shuddering. he does not believe it, and tells himself - it is all in his mind. it isn't real. all he has done is go back to rustboro to drop a few things off and pack, and - and - and -

the blood is as real as the pain running up the side of his torso, as real as the bullet hole torn through it. he realizes he has been holding his phone all along - it is this realization that causes him to drop it. the phone falls to the ground, through the sun-kissed grass of the summer morning past.

he stops in his tracks when he hears the faint whisper through the forest air. daigo, it calls out to him. yes, she is here. aurea juniper. he isn't moving; he cannot bring himself to turn around. he watches her as she walks before him and stops, giving him a once-over. he smiles faintly at the professor.

"juniper. i ... can you get my phone? i dropped it. somewhere."

[lurker2]

she sees just where the blood had come clearly now and she wants to believe that it wasn't his, that it was someone he fought and won.

but the smile told her differently. daigo never smiles like that when something good happened.

his next words practically confirm it. first steven, now juniper. just the change in names alone were enough to send chills down her spine. they were cold, distant. never had she heard him say that before. this was the steven she never met. "your phone?" her voice is surprisingly calm.

and her gaze flickers from him to where the small device had fallen. it's irrational to believe that he would fall the moment she turned away, but she can't help feeling that it will happen. she picks up the device quickly, snatching it from the ground and shoves it in his hands.

she focuses on the wound, not pulling away just yet. "why haven't you seen a doctor?" she knows how she joked about being a doctor with him, but this wasn't what she was prepared for. she wasn't the kind of doctor he needed. first aid and a few stitches were not enough to stop this.

[daigo]

"i ..."

she is right. why hasn't he seen a doctor? his mind is a haze, clouded and filled with stray thoughts that seem to push to the top of his mind even though all he wants to focus on is the female before him and to tell her what happened. maybe she would know why he ended up like this, maybe she could tell him something. didn't juniper know everything because she was a professor.

"i don't know," he says in an exhale, and a chuckle escape his throat. his baritone is unchanged, still the same voice from before - he flinches when the phone is shoved into his hands, but he thanks her all the same. "ah, there it is." he thumbs through it, and he chooses this very moment to be interested in it, as opposed to previous times where he would refuse to touch the device.

a hundred missed calls. several angry messages from his secretary. a mistakenly-sent message and a reply he got. he smiles at it, his eyes misty. "i think it simply failed to occur to me," he says, and the image of a blue-haired doctor flashes through his head. then, it was a gunshot too. right through his back, but he remembers that he was wearing a covert bulletproof vest.

gabriel stitched him up that time, yes. he remembers the doctor's name now, but he is regions away from him. he stumbles towards aurea, seemingly ignorant of the blood staining the side of his shirt and hers as he leans on her slightly. "they say ... your life flashes before you when you're ..."

his fingers work to type out a message quietly. he presses the buttons, and he needs effort to make sure each letter is typed out. he was on his phone too; this is why he doesn't like this phone - it distracts him! hoenn is a harsh place, rustboro even harsher when his father is in a foul mood.

he was ... probably was ...

... was he?

"aurea, was father in a foul mood? did ... did uncle juan ..."

like he had ordered maine after him, he must have ordered these new people to capture him upon being sighted in the city. yes, it probably is - he tries to convince himself, biting his lower lip as aurea's face wavers before his eyes. "were they drunk?"

he still holds the phone in both his hands.

[lurker2]

aurea glares at him as he flips through that cellphone of his causally. she expected for it to act as one of those casual things that he needs to keep calm, or better yet call someone more qualified to look after him.

"you simply failed to -" she cuts herself off. this was hardly the time to be angry, to get frustrated. this wasn't daigo speaking. the formality is all steven's and she doesn't know how to handle him. her best friend was daigo, who had come back when he moved towards her.

aurea catches him easily enough, although she wasn't quite accustomed to the weight. on reflex, she helps support him. she wants to help him hobble off elsewhere, somewhere with a medical doctor to look at his wound. she listens to what he has to say, arceus, she was having a hard time speaking. her throat felt dry, but her thoughts were loud as ever. don't mess with me. you're not dying. we just need to find you a doctor.

he doesn't continue with his words, but his breathing told her that he was still alive. then she hears the clicking of the damned cellphone. he had better be using it to call someone useful. what she got were a few words of uncertainty.

she doesn't know everything about what happened between him and his father. they had a falling out, as daigo had said. the tsuwabuki heir couldn't have been disowned, but aurea knew better. "i haven't seen them in a long time, daigo." she says in a comforting tone. "but we should get out of here. you need to see a doctor. a medical doctor."

[daigo]

"but you fix stuff. you're my doctor."

he remains silent after his words, and he presses the send button on the phone. he flips it shut and slips it into his pocket. yes, the message will sent, and with his concern taken care of, he looks up at aurea before he falls against her grasp, all six feet of him when his legs give. the blood is still flowing, and try as the wound might to stem the flow on its own, it cannot do so without the aid of a doctor.

"a-are you going to fix this?" he whispers into her. it is like the time when they were children - he falls, she laughs and helps him. she fails to train the steel-types, he helps her. but it is usually him getting hurt and her fixing him up, so why can't she do it this time? why does she want to bring him to a doctor? "you always do. aurea, you always ..."

his hands grasp at her shirt, her sleeves, leaving behind a bloodied handprint. "did i mess up this time?" he asks, "i went back ... home ..." he buries his face in her shoulder. he tries to breathe, but his breath is caught in his throat. he chokes, once, twice, and he stops moving for a while.

but he manages.

"i messed up, didn't i. father didn't want me home. i've been in isshu ... i thought ..." he murmurs over and over into aurea's shoulder, feeling the tips of his finger grow numb. just weeks ago he is in castelia, walking through the shops and staring at all the different things on display. he walks through the city and thinks that, hey, rustboro isn't so bad. it's growing, and one day it'll surpass even this large city!

he has does it, but look at him now.

cynthia, cynthia is smiling at him. she is happy in isshu, away from the war - but he went back, and - a moth flies into the fire like a foolish being, but it burns itself to keep the fire alive.

"can i go back? ... aurea?"

[lurker2]

"i ... "

i can't fix everything, daigo.

and then his legs gave up. she couldn't hold him any longer. no matter what state he was in, he was bigger than her. she had a hard time managing the just standing. instead, she could only slow down just how fast they would fall.

without a word, she pulls up his shirt to see the wound. it's glaring at her. bright, the wound was fresh. of course it was. her eyes narrowed, focused as she looked back up to him. she could feel her vision blurring and blinks them away.

but "i can try."

this wasn't a simple scrape that she can place a some salve and a bandage and be done with it. this was a serious. she carried no bandages on her. nothing but his shirt to use to apply pressure. it was already stained red from his own blood.

"you didn't do anything wrong." her grip on him changes, as she lowers the shirt back down. "it wasn't your fault."

her eyes flickered with surprise as she hearing that he had been here all this time. never once had he called. but this was hardly the time. she pressed on the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, but there was too damn much.

it wouldn't stop.

it wouldn't just wouldn't stop.

she froze when he spoke up again. "to rustburo?" she doesn't want him to go back there. childishly, she wants him to stay here in isshu, away from the war, where it was safe.

[daigo]

soon, he feels his head on the ground and he is staring at the canopy the trees have formed. his dress shirt is stained, and he winces when aurea pulls his shirt up. he tries to struggle, but saves his breath instead. "you can?" he says, and he exhales. his chest heaves as aurea presses against the open wound, and he smiles at her.

"you're ... thank you. thank you for trying."

he is lying flat on the ground, and try as he might to hold aurea by the hands and push her over - then pinning her down to laugh at her - chargestone cavern - cedric and shoutarou - wasn't his fault - "no, not rustboro." - right, he is thinking of the kling and laughing as aurea fails to subdue the creature. he grabs the pokéball from her and tosses it at the pokémon, overpowering it easily.

he has an affinity for steel-types, and he soon realizes it. wing, cross and dust are with him. now, only dust is sitting in a pokéball in the upper left pocket of his coat. "isshu. i want to go back to isshu," he murmurs as his gaze steadily grows distant. "i like summers there."

it is a while before he continues speaking, and now, he has a hand on aurea's, on his wound, on the bleeding, on all the pain he wishes would just stop. "it's not cold. i don't like the cold," he says, and thinks of the mountaintop upon which he would stare and watch the sun rise. he wonders, if the sun is merely hotter in summer, which would explain the cold, and explain how much he dislikes the winter.

"i want to watch the sunrise in isshu. she's here, too."

travelling from hoenn had taken less time than he had expected, but as he lays on the ground, he knows, that the time he used isn't going to return. his father has told him clearly that he doesn't want him back, and that he would pay - he has, but he is greedy, and he wants more. he wants to see the sunrise.

"aurea, where's a good place to watch ..." his breath shudders along with his grasp on hers. "... the sun rise?"

he smiles, and he seems content, at ease, at peace.

((3k wep.))