Chapter 39: Aftermath
Ugh.
What is that smell. Antiseptic and dirt and something metallic underneath and why is it so bright and where am I.
I opened my eyes and immediately closed them again because the light was wrong, too white, coming from above in a way that made my skull hurt. My whole body felt like someone had taken everything out of it, looked at it, decided not to put it back, and left.
Something warm was pressed against my side. Something breathing.
I opened my eyes again, slower this time. Let the light in in pieces.
Canvas ceiling. Not a real ceiling, canvas, stretched over metal poles. A field tent. There were other beds around me, cots really, and people on some of them. Bandaged arms. Sleeping faces. The quiet sounds of a place where people were recovering.
The warm thing against my side was Deino.
He was curled up tight, his head tucked against my ribs, and he was asleep. Proper deep sleep with his breathing slow and his body heavy against mine. His ball was on the ground, open. I think it fell because the other Pokéballs were still on the table next to me.
He'd let himself out.
I. Didn't want to wake him. So I didn't move. I just lay there and felt him breathe and tried to figure out how I'd gotten here and how long I'd been out. But I was too tired to care so I just lay there.
I couldn't resist it though. Just a little, just my fingers settling between his ears. He didn't wake up. He made a small sound in his sleep and pressed his head closer.
Pieces came back. The grunt. Skuntank. Weavile. Prinplup going down. Rhyhorn standing in front of me. Deino breaking out. The scream. The pull in my chest. The Dragon Pulse.
The explosion.
I let it come back in whatever order it wanted and didn't try to organize it.
Voices outside the tent. Two people, close enough to hear but not talking to me. Talking to each other, the way people talk when they think everyone around them is asleep.
"...still hasn't woken up. They moved him to Floaroma General about an hour ago."
"The grunt that the new guy was fighting?"
"Yeah. Took the blast full on. Burns across his whole chest and face. The medic said she'd never seen damage from a single attack do that to a person standing that far back."
"Is he going to make it?"
A pause.
"They don't know."
Something sat heavy behind my ribs.
I'd done that. Me and Deino and whatever had flowed between us.
I waited for it to crush me. It didn't. It was just there. A weight. Not the kind that breaks you, just the kind you carry. The grunt had been between me and something bad and there hadn't been a choice and what happened happened. I didn't feel good about it. I didn't feel destroyed by it either.
Deino shifted against my side. His breathing changed. A big stretch, his whole body going long and stiff, jaw opening wide.
"Deiiiii."
He smacked his lips twice. Blinked. Or did the Deino version of blinking, which was mostly just his head moving side to side like he was checking that the world was still where he'd left it. He yawned again, smaller this time, and shook his head and his fur went in every direction and he looked like a mess. A tired, groggy, just-woke-up mess who hadn't figured out where he was yet.
Then he found me.
"Dei?"
"Hey." My voice came out rough. Dry. "Hey buddy. I'm here."
He lifted his head. Pressed his nose into my hand and made a sound I'd never heard from him before. Low and long and so relieved it almost broke something in me that the grunt hadn't.
"I know," I said. "I know. I'm okay. Are you okay?"
"Dei dei." He pressed closer.
I held him. Didn't count how long. Just held him and felt him breathe and felt the pull between us, quiet now, barely there. Like a river after a flood, slowly finding its way back.
There it was. Even now. Even barely awake. That connection. The warmth that only existed between me and Deino. Never with Prinplup. Never with Rhyhorn. Just him. Just us.
I'd never really felt it before. Not like this. It had always been there, this background thing, this warmth I didn't question because I didn't know to question it. But now, after that fight, after it took everything out of both of us, it felt different. Permanent. Like something that had been sleeping had woken up and wasn't going back down.
And maybe I could learn to use it. Not the way it happened out there, not everything pouring out of me until I collapsed on concrete. But something in between. A good chunk when it mattered. A small boost in a tough fight. Or nothing at all when it wasn't needed. Maybe.
I focused on it. For the first time ever, I actually tried to feel what it was.
Warmth in my chest. A thread running from me to him. And when I paid attention I could feel Deino on the other end. Not thoughts. Not words. Just him. Tired and sore and relieved and close.
"Can you feel this?" I whispered.
"Dei." He lifted his head. Toward me, the way he always did, without eyes but knowing exactly where I was.
"This thing between us. This... whatever it is. Can you feel it too?"
Quiet for a second. Then he pressed his head into my chest, right where the warmth was strongest, and made a sound that meant yes.
Both of us then. Something that connected us, that let me give him strength, that turned a Dragon Breath into a Dragon Pulse and nearly killed a man and left me empty on the concrete.
I didn't know what it was. Didn't know where it came from. Didn't know if it was something I'd always had or something that came with dying and waking up here or something that was Deino's or something that only existed because we'd found each other.
But it was real and it was ours and it had a cost and I needed to understand it before it cost more than I could pay.
Later. Right now Deino was warm against my chest and I was alive and he was alive.
"Okay," I said. "Okay."
I closed my eyes. Not to sleep. Just to be still.
Deino stayed where he was.
Footsteps on packed dirt. Heavy, deliberate, the walk of someone who wanted you to hear them coming.
I opened my eyes. Nolan was standing at the foot of my cot with his arms crossed and his Arcanine sitting next to him. He looked tired. Not the managed kind from yesterday. Actual tired, the kind that sits in the bones.
He looked at me. Looked at Deino. Looked at me again.
"So you're awake."
"Yeah."
"How do you feel?"
"Like I got hit by a truck and the truck reversed and hit me again."
His mouth twitched. "Yeah, that tracks."
He pulled a folding chair from somewhere and sat down. His Arcanine lay down next to him, nose on its paws.
"Did I not tell you not to go inside?"
I opened my mouth and closed it again. Yeah, this was going to be awkward.
"Yeah. You did."
"But you still chose to go inside. Why?"
"Because I saw that all the strong people were outside and not inside, so I made a choice to help and it worked." I paused. "I think."
That last part came out wrong. Not confident, not defiant, just... someone saying yes while not being entirely sure yes was the right answer. Nolan stared at me.
"You freed fifteen hostages, destroyed Galactic's energy extraction setup, and then walked out the side door and picked a fight with a ranked operative." He shook his head. "I'm impressed, young man. But also you are the most stupid person I have ever met."
I didn't dare say anything back.
"But I have to say, you helped. That is for sure." He pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket. "I have a list here. The hostages you saved are all at Floaroma General. Two with broken bones, one with a dislocated shoulder. The rest are dehydrated and scared but alive. The equipment you destroyed set Galactic's operation back significantly. Our tech people are saying weeks, maybe months before they could rebuild what you broke." He paused. "That's not nothing, kid."
"Okay. That's good. That they're all safe, at least," I said.
"But that's not the best part yet." He leaned forward. "After all that, you nearly get yourself killed. Not by him, but... we don't know what happened. You have no damage on you. No burns, no cuts, nothing. But still you fell down and had no energy left in you." He looked at me hard. "What happened?"
"Yeah," I said, with an awkward smile and a hand behind my head. "Can I not talk about that right now? I still need to figure that part out myself. What happened. I think I know, but I'm not sure."
"Okay." He sat back. "So first you disobey me. Then you go inside. You help, but not only that, you almost get yourself killed. And now you don't want to tell me why you almost died." He let out a long sigh. "Very nice, Ryan. I still don't know why I even let you help in the first place. You sounded so promising." Another sigh. "But I have to be realistic. You saved fifteen people and stopped whatever Team Galactic was doing in there. I have to commend you for that. For being brave enough. Or stupid. I don't know which one it is yet."
"Probably both," I said. And then I didn't know what to do with my face so I just kind of looked at him and shrugged and it was the worst shrug I'd ever done in my life.
Nolan stared at me. Then he laughed. Not a big laugh, more like the kind that escapes you when someone says something and you can't tell if they're joking or just genuinely that stupid.
"Probably both." He shook his head. "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right." He rubbed his face with one hand. "You know what pisses me off, Ryan? It's not that you went in. I've got rangers twice your age who wouldn't have gone in there alone, and honestly they'd have been right not to. What pisses me off is that it worked. Because now I can't even be properly angry about it and believe me I want to be."
I almost smiled. Almost. Didn't feel like I'd earned it yet.
He was quiet for a second. Rubbed his face with one hand. His Arcanine looked up at him and then back at me like it had seen this exact conversation happen before with other people.
"That explosion at the end," Nolan said. "What was that?"
My hand found Deino without thinking. Tightened.
"Dragon type move. Dragon Pulse."
"From that?" He nodded at Deino. Not mean about it, but genuinely confused because Deino was small and curled up against me and looked about as dangerous as a sleeping cat right now.
"He's stronger than he looks."
Nolan looked at me. I could see him deciding. Push or let it go. He'd already asked about the energy thing and I'd shut that down and now I was being vague about this too and he knew it and I knew he knew it and we just sat there in that for a second.
He let it go.
"Alright." He stood up and the chair scraped on the dirt. "Your other two Pokémon are healed up. The nurses did what they could in the balls. They'll be sore for a day or two but they'll manage." He stretched his back and something popped and he made a face about it. "I need to get back out there. Cleanup's going to take the rest of the week at least."
He started walking. Stopped. Turned around.
"For what it's worth, kid. What you did in there mattered. The people you got out, the equipment you wrecked. That mattered. I'm not going to pretend it didn't just because you did it in the dumbest possible way." He paused. "But next time someone in a ranger jacket tells you not to go inside a building, I need you to at least pretend you're thinking about listening. Can you do that?"
"I can pretend."
He stared at me. Then his mouth did the thing again where it almost became a smile but didn't commit.
"Rowan picks interesting kids," he said.
He left. Arcanine followed, looked back at Deino once, then kept walking. Its tail swayed once.
I lay there for a while. Not thinking about much. Just lying there with Deino against my chest and the sounds of people moving around outside and the canvas ceiling and the smell of antiseptic that I was getting used to even though I didn't want to.
Then I reached for Prinplup's ball and Rhyhorn's ball on the table. Both warm. Both steady. They were in there, resting, and they were okay. I held them for a second each.
"Hey," I said. Quiet, just for them. "We did good in there. All of us. All four of us. Rest up, yeah? We've got a forest to get through."
I put them back. Deino made a small sound against my chest. Already falling asleep again. I let him.
I left the field hospital in the late morning.
Nobody tried to stop me. A nurse who looked like she hadn't slept checked my vitals and told me to eat something substantial and drink water and rest if I felt dizzy and avoid any battling for at least two days and I said I would and meant about half of it. She gave me a look that said she knew exactly how much of it I meant but she'd done her job and the rest was on me.
Nolan was gone. Back to coordinating the cleanup, someone said. The Windworks was still standing behind me as I walked out. Still running. The turbines turning in the wind like nothing had happened.
"Okay, time to go. I need to go north. Let's hope the rest of this journey to Eterna City is going to be less eventful."