The smell of cardamom reached Miyuki before anything else.
She stirred beneath the thin cruise ship blanket, the fragrance pulling her from a dream she'd already forgotten. Cardamom, and beneath it something warmer, toasted sesame oil, the faint sweetness of caramelized Tamato Berry, and the steady, confident sound of a knife meeting a cutting board in rhythmic quarters. She knew that rhythm by now. Eight months of mornings had taught her to recognize it the way a musician recognizes a particular tempo, even half-asleep and through a wall.
Sasuke was cooking.
She lay there for another moment, letting the gentle roll of the SS Lugia rock her. The ship moved differently from the SS Dragonair that had carried them at the very beginning of their journey, that enormous vessel had cut through waves like it resented them, all stability and industrial power. The Lugia was smaller, more honest in the way it acknowledged the sea. You felt the ocean here. You remembered you were a visitor on someone else's territory.
Three days into a five-day crossing, and the rhythm of shipboard life had settled into something comfortable. She reached for her tablet on the nightstand, unlocking it to the Johto Breeding Center directory she'd fallen asleep reading. The screen was still open to the Goldenrod City entry, a sprawling facility run by the Uzumaki Clan that she'd heard about since childhood. Her mother Hanako had studied there briefly, before she'd chosen fieldwork over institutional research. The genetic sequencing equipment alone was two generations ahead of anything Miyuki had used in Kanto.
She allowed herself a small, private smile, then pushed the blanket aside and reached for her clothes.
The suite's kitchenette was modest by the standards of their Mobile Home, but Sasuke had claimed it within an hour of boarding. He stood at the narrow counter in a loose dark shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, his back to the short hallway that connected the two bedrooms to the common area. Victini sat on the counter beside a bowl of cracked eggs, its small orange body leaning over the rim to watch the yolks with an intensity that suggested it was memorizing the color.
"You're going to fall in," Sasuke said without turning around.
Victini chirped indignantly and pulled back a fraction of an inch.
"Morning," Miyuki said from the hallway.
He glanced over his shoulder. His dark hair was still slightly damp, he'd showered before starting, as always, because Sasuke Uchiha would sooner fight a Gym Leader in his sleep than cook with unwashed hands. His crimson eyes registered her presence with a flicker of warmth he probably didn't realize was visible.
"Sit down. Five minutes."
"What are you making?"
"Something I've been thinking about since we left Viridian." He turned back to the stove, adjusting the flame beneath a wide pan. "The international market had Johto spices I've never been able to get in Kanto. Belue Berry reduction, fermented Figy paste, a Lum pepper varietal that only grows along the Johto coast." He lifted a small glass jar and tilted it so the morning light from the porthole caught the deep violet powder inside. "Tamato-cardamom blend. The merchant said it's been a staple of Johto home cooking for three hundred years."
Miyuki sat at the small fold-out table and watched him work. There was a quality to Sasuke's cooking that she'd tried to articulate many times and never quite managed. It wasn't just technique, though his technique was impeccable, honed through three years of feeding himself in Crown Tundra's unforgiving wilderness. It was attention. The way his hands moved with a surgeon's precision, yes, but also the way he paused occasionally to smell, to taste, to hold a piece of Figy root up to the light and examine its grain before deciding how finely to mince it. He cooked the way she practiced medicine, with the understanding that carelessness had consequences, and that the difference between adequate and excellent was always worth the effort.
"You're staring."
"I'm observing. There's a difference."
"Hn." The ghost of a smile. "Observing."
The sound of another door opening saved her from the flush she could feel building. Kasumi emerged from the second bedroom with her phone pressed to her ear, crimson hair loose and wild from sleep, still in the oversized Goldenrod University t-shirt she used as pajamas. Her violet eyes were bright despite the early hour, and she was nodding rapidly at whatever the person on the other end was saying.
"—yes, Mom, I know. Six weeks is tight, but I've been training the whole crossing. Espeon's new routine is almost ready, and Gardevoir..." She caught sight of Sasuke at the stove and mouthed smells amazing before continuing into the common area. "—Gardevoir's Moonblast integration is cleaner than it was in Saffron. I think the ocean air's actually helping her focus. How's the Violet City hall? What's the stage like?"
She dropped onto the couch beside the porthole, pulling her bare feet up beneath her. Victini abandoned its egg-watching post and bounded across the room to land in her lap, settling in with the practiced ease of a Pokémon that had claimed every warm surface on the ship as personal territory. Kasumi scratched behind its ears absently while her mother's voice, audible as a bright, rapid stream even through the phone's tiny speaker, filled her in on Johto Contest logistics.
Miyuki pulled up her breeding center notes and half-listened to Kasumi's side of the conversation, letting the two rhythms, Sasuke's cooking and Kasumi's chatter, weave together the way they always did in the mornings. Familiar and safe. The kind of background that had become, over eight months, the sound of home.
Kiyomi was the last to appear, which was unusual.
Normally the auburn-haired researcher operated on an internal clock that would have impressed a military officer, awake at 5:30, showered by 5:45, seated with coffee and academic texts by 6:00, regardless of timezone or sleep quality. But this morning she'd been up until nearly 3:00 AM reading, and the evidence was visible in the shadows beneath her golden eyes and the slight disarray of her hair, which she'd pulled into a hasty bun rather than letting it fall in its usual cascade past her hips.
She emerged from the bedroom she shared with Kasumi carrying her tablet against her chest like a shield, and the first thing she said, before good morning, before commenting on the food, before acknowledging any of them, was...
"He said yes."