I missed you so much: The final chapter








With a gasp, Misty fell to the ground in a heap at Ash’s feet.  Ash ran to Brock for help after realizing that there was nothing he could do to help her.  But once he turned around, she was gone.  A search party was created.  Misty had to be found.

“Do you think she wandered off somewhere?”  Brock asked.

“There’s no way she would wander off.  She passed out, for crying out loud!”  Ash stressed, “Mistyyyyy!  Where are you?!!”

After the repetitive calls for her, Misty never replied.

She was gone.

The minutes turned to hours, and still no sign of her.  The sun was beginning to set; no one had eaten all day.  Brock set a reassuring hand on Ash’s shoulder
.
“Don’t worry Ash.  She’ll come back.  Maybe she just went for a walk.”

“No, Brock!”  Ash thrashed off the hand on his shoulder, spinning around, and looked up at him with a red, tear-stained face. “What if she got lost?  Or kidnapped?!”

Brock looked at him with soft, concerned eyes.  Sympathy nearly played an audible tune from his heart as he felt sorry for him.  “You really loved her, didn’t you?”

Ash stood silent for a second.  His face was about to burst with tears and his cheeks turned pink with sadness.  Nearly ignoring his friend’s question, he simply nodded and sniffled and sighed in a shuddering breath, as breathing was quite difficult.

“Don’t worry, Ash.”  He said, putting both hands on his shoulders.  “Misty’s been gone before.  We just have to believe that she’ll come back.”

“But she was passed out!  She was unconscious!”  Ash began to sob, “How-could-she-walk-walk off if…if she’s un-consci-cious…”

Brock didn’t know what to say.  Instead, he grabbed Ash’s arm and lead him to the small, makeshift fire that Tracey was trying to start.  Duplica sat on a large stump at the side of the lake and kicked at the water with her wet feet.  Todd sat next to her, silent with his feet in his lap.   Once by the fire, Brock assembled the small pot above the flames and motioned for Ash to sit down.  He sat.

“Ash, did I ever tell you about the time when Mary got lost?”  

“Mary?  Who’s that?”  Ash sniffled.

Brock handed him a bowl.  “One of my little siblings.”

“Oh.  What about her?”  Ash asked, wiping his eyes with his wrist.

“Well,” Brock began and sat Indian-style on the grass, “It was nap time.  I had just put Mary to bed when I heard John screaming for me.  So, making sure that she was asleep, I left to see what John wanted and he had already fallen asleep.   So, I went to check on the rest of them, but Mary was missing.  She was asleep, and I wondered how she could have wandered off and I panicked.”

“What’d you do?”

“I looked everywhere.  I even checked with neighbors and all over town.  I couldn’t find her anywhere and it’s hard to look for someone with twelve other little peoples to watch.  Turns out though, she had only gone to the bathroom, fell into the toilet, and started her own bath.”   Brock chuckled, “Mary was always the independent one.”

Ash smiled in hope.  “So there was nothing to worry about?”

Brock shook his head, “Nope.  But-:” He said, leaning over the heated pot, “It’s always good to worry, just don’t kill yourself.”  He winked and poured a little soup into Ash’s bowl.





   Misty opened her eyes to the world around her, but it was a dark world…  Too dark.  Slowly, but surely, she sat up, still groggy from passing out earlier.   The environment around her was so dark and so silent that it scared her.   The stars and moon, if there were any, weren’t visible at all and blended into the darkness.  But she could smell the pine, the rain on the breeze and she suddenly heard the tree leaves clattering- shivering and shaking above her.  She felt the ground- a cool, hard, dirt floor.   She must’ve been outside.

   Suddenly, there were footsteps sounding from behind her.  And it was just then did she notice that her hands were bound together with a scratchy rope-type material behind her back, as well as her feet.  There were the footsteps sounding closer and closer to where she sat.   She noticed that she must have been taken capture, and nearly screamed, but a sharp tip of something pricked the side of her neck and in a rough voice someone said,

“Get up.”

Reluctantly she did stand, wishing that she could shout for help, without having that knife against her neck as it shone in the sudden presence of the moonlight. She silently prayed that she wouldn’t trip against something in the thick darkness and push the knife further into her neck.   Those things *were* dangerous…

“Who are you?”  She asked shakily.

He growled softly in reply, grinding the blade of the knife into the skin of her neck.  She winced and refused to scream in shock and pain.  If a simple question could anger this person, what would a scream for help do?  She decided that it was best to keep quiet.   A tiny trail of blood trickled down her throat, and she let it seep into her shirt.  

   



   


   
“Misty!”  Ash shouted suddenly, sitting erect in his sleeping bag.  He was panting, with salty sweat dripping down his forehead and on his face screamed out a worried expression with so much emotion.  He quickly looked around the entire tent and shivered with its emptiness.   Even with Tracey, Todd, Duplica, Brock, Togepi, and even Pikachu, the loss of Misty’s presence left him feeling like part of his soul had wandered off, and it left him feeling… empty…  

   The heavy blanket of silence was suddenly lifted, and there was a muffled shout, followed by heated, angry murmurs from outside.  Desperately hoping that Misty was actually in trouble, and he could save her, he eagerly sprang out of the bag that tied him down and nearly burst through the tent’s exit.   He was met with a strange group of people that he thought he’d never seen before and they were standing by the old pile of sticks that he had once called a ‘fire’.  There must have been at least five of them, all dressed in pitch black, which only helped make Misty’s weary body more visible as it stood out against them.   Instantly, he was excessively pissed off.

“What do you think you’re doing with her?!”  He shouted.

The shortest of them all stood forward and in front of her and cleared his throat professionally, “Oh, we’ll do whatever we want with her,” he said, “That is, until you hand over all of your pokemon right now, along with hers and the rest of your friends, and pray that they’re valuable.”

   The rest of his friends grinned.  Misty’s fatigued face hung low- her pale skin glistening with sweat.





“Duplica, all you have to do is distract them somehow while I run back into the forest.  Tracey, while Duplica is distracting them, tell Ash to save Misty and that I’ll take care of the gang.  Pikachu, you help Ash out.  Okay everyone?”

“Pika!”  Pikachu saluted.

“What about me?”  Todd asked.

“You can… watch out after Duplica.”  Brock offered.

Todd mumbled something about always being picked last as Duplica slowly snuck out the back of the tent after cutting it open with a pocket knife.  Was there any other way?

“Be careful.”  Todd warned her and she looked back behind her and lightly kissed him.

“Don’t worry about me.”  She said and carefully crept out of the tent, nearly stumbling into a tree, when Todd caught her from around the waist.  She smiled, raising an eyebrow as she looked over her shoulder causing Todd to blush.

“Now is *not* the time, guys!”  Brock quietly whispered from inside the broken tent.

Duplica stuck her tongue out, but continued to walk out and into the forest to get to behind the black coated gang without their notice.  Todd followed.  And then Tracey, sneaking around the side of the tent and listening to the gang’s stupid rambling.

Suddenly, there was a thunder clap in the distance and a bolt of lightning lit up the sky.  A few rain drops gathered on Ash’s furrowed forehead.  

“You’d better let her go… you bastards…” Ash growled, his fists clutching.

“I wouldn’t go and get too pushy if I was you, Ash.”  Said the short one.  A tall guy with a knife at Misty’s throat made the blade shimmer in the momentarily released beam of moonlight.  “You just might upset Jordan, and he’s just crazy with a knife.   Especially with a pretty young lady to slice open.”

His words had hurt.  And it made Ash’s heart jump in fear.  Still, Misty had been knocked out cold, leaning heavily in the arms another guy and a woman standing behind her, and they happily held her as they nodded at the short dude’s words.  

Suddenly, something caught Ash’s eye.  To the right of the gang, Duplica emerged from the forest with Ditto and grinned with her hands on her hips.  “Hey you freaks!”  She shouted.

Everyone turned to her and Jordan jerked Misty’s body around with him as if she was a rag doll- her feet dragging on the ground.  Oh… how much Ash wanted to beat the crap out of him just for touching her in the first place, and who knows what else they did…

Duplica stood at the edge of the forest as confident as possible and shouted, “Hey, do you know where this place is on the map?  I’m kinda lost and if you would ever be so kind to-“
“You got some nerve!”  Growled the leader.

“I’m sorry… But if you would just tell me where I am…”

“That’s a ditto, boss.  You think we should get that one?”  Asked the guy holding Misty as they whispered into the short guy’s ear.

He nodded stiffly and the two of them left Misty to fall to the ground when Jordan and another man caught her in midair and held her up before she could fall.  

Duplica watched expectantly as the two goons ran toward her and her ditto, like a couple of buffalo.  She grinned and winked at her pokemon before slamming down what looked like a small bomb.  It exploded a mere second before hitting the ground- BOOM!   And the two buffalos ducked and fell to the ground.  After the explosion, a series of smaller explosions popped as Duplica, hidden in the bomb-fog lit firecrackers and threw them around the two goons.  Quite unexpected.  The ditto laughed in glee as did Duplica as she prepared for the greatest stunt she could pull.

“What was that?!”  Asked the boss.

“It looked like a little bomb…”  Muttered Jordan.

“Nah, really?”  He mocked.

“Well, what else could it be?!”  Jordan asked, offended and dropping Misty so that she hit the ground with a hard thud.  Ash winced as he saw her fall and hit her head and hoped that they wouldn’t carelessly walk over her next.

“You idiot!  You’re going to put her into a coma if you keep thrashing that girl around like that.  Now, pick her up or else we’ll have a dead hostage.”  Said the short one.

An unnamed man in the group sighed and picked her up, wishing that it would just end soon…  Then Misty began to giggle.

“Ah!”  He shrieked, “She’s awake!”  He nearly dropped her himself as she squirmed in his arm.

Jordan grabbed her arm and jerked her around, ready to shut her up, when he realized… that wasn’t the red head.

“What the hell?!  Where is she?!”  Shouted Jordan.

“It’s a secret.”  Duplica said, flicking his nose and grinning like an idiot.

Immediately Jordan whipped out the rather large knife and held it a centimeter from her nose and she gasped in surprise.

“Now, I’m gonna ask you nicely only once- Where is the girl?”

“Ah!  Look, there she is!”  Duplica pointed up to the sky at a celebi.  A yellow- nearly golden- celebi.  “That’s my celebi.  You can have it if you let me and the other girl go.  I’ll bet it’s worth millions, maybe even billions.”  

Jordan looked thoughtfully at this newfound pokemon in the sky floating above him.  The boss stared in awe.  

“Let’s take it.”  Said the boss, “C’mon.”

The short one gathered his men and they chased after the celebi into the woods.  Duplica sighed, having the huge knife out of her face.  Pikachu flashed a fang-bared grin and chased after the gang into the woods.

“Where’s Misty?”  Ash asked.

“She’s… behind the… tent.”  Duplica said, thinking of other things and looking around to find Todd.

Ash ran to the spot that Duplica had described, worried to the brim about Misty.  



   There she lay.  In one piece with a few scratches and bruises, but she looked okay.  Grass that poked up from the ground brushed up against her body as the wind blew and a few more rain drops fell from the dark sky.  A small, dried river of blood traced down the side of her neck where the knife had been before.   He sat sown beside her and gently brushed her damp bangs to the side and brought an edge of his shirt to his mouth, licking a bit of it and gingerly wiping away the dry blood on her neck.

“Misty?”  He whispered softly, leaning above her sleeping form.

He rested one hand on her shoulder and another supported him on his elbow as he leaned a bit of a few inches from her face and stared contently at her relaxed expression.  He watched her eyes twitch beneath her eyelids as he whispered her name over and over like a spell.  

“I love you.”  She managed to say in a raspy breath, trying hard to clear her throat.

The sudden change in sound surprised him, but nevertheless did his eyes water with tears.

“I love you, too.”  He said softly, his voice spilling with emotion.

“Good.”  She nodded, “That’s really good.”  
   
“Yeah.”  Ash laughed weakly, “yeah…”

“Hey,” She began, gently grabbing his forearm, “Kiss me, please.”

He smiled.  

“That would just be the best, most sweetest thing you could do right now-“ suddenly, her knees jerked upwards in a sudden spasm and she softly cried out in pain in the middle of her sentence, “is to kiss me…”

He felt the familiar itch of pain that rose to his eyes causing them to water with tears.

“What did they DO to you?!”  He asked quietly.  He could feel himself getting lost in his sadness for her pain as the hot tears rolled down his cheeks and hugged her tightly, as if vowing to the world that he would never let her go, ever.

She let him hold her and wrapped her arms slowly around his neck, pulling him closer, so that he nearly lay on top of her.  

“I think… they gave me something…”  She said quietly.

“What?  Do you remember?  Do we need to get you to a doctor?”

“I can’t remember… It was a shot… a needle.  It may have been dirty, though…”

She heard him sob suddenly into her shoulder, kissing her neck a few times and sitting up, carefully bringing her with him.

“Come on…”  He whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”






Then, as a bright flash of lightning lit up the heavens, an angry onix growled loudly as it smacked the gang into thin air, a pissed pikachu shouted as a large lightning bolt sent them frying and flying.  Brock grinned victoriously and Duplica snuck Ash’s pokedex back into his jacket pocket as her golden-celebi-ditto chirped and landed on her arm as it slunk into its original pink-blob shape.

“Team Rocket’s blasting off agaaaiinnnn!”

“Shut up, you morons!!!”  






~.~.~.~Back in Hartford City, and the city’s hospital- Hartford Hospital~.~.~.~



“You may see her now, Mr. Ketchum.”  Said the nurse as she looked up from her notepad.

Ash nearly dropped the magazine that he had been twisting in every which and way in his impatience.  Duplica held Todd’s hand tightly in hope and prayer for Misty, while Tracey had already fallen asleep in Brock’s shoulder with a sleeping Togepi and a sleeping Pikachu in his lap.   Brock looked up at Ash,   “I’ll wait.”

He nodded and walked across the cold, lifeless room into the next cold and lifeless room, pushing the heavy door slowly, careful that he might hit a hundred-year-old man in a wheelchair.  The last room to his left… Okay, that was where Misty would be.   The halls were empty, so he ran, feeling his concern get the best of him.  The soles of his feet ground against the shiny tile floor as he opened the hospital door with a sweaty hand.  The room was dark inside.  All he could see was a bed in the middle of the room in front of the door as the florescent hall light spilled in.  

“Misty?”  He asked quietly.

“Hey Ash.”  She said, sitting up.

“Are you… feeling okay?”  He shut the door behind him and flicked on the light.

“Oh, please.”  Misty begged, squinting as she shielded her eyes from the light, her pupils refusing to adjust.

“Oh.  Sorry.”  The lights were out again and he carefully made his way to the bed.  When he reached her, he held her tube-inserted hand.

“I’m sorry.”  He said.  

“For what?”  She asked.

“For being such an absentminded ass…  I shouldn’t have let you lay there by yourself.”

“No… It’s not your fault.”  She whispered, kissing his hand.

“No, don’t kiss me.  I’m supposed to be kissing you.”  He smiled, “You’re the handicapped one.”

“Well,” Misty chuckled, “Give me your best shot.”

“Oh no, my best shot will have to wait ‘till later…”  

They both looked at each other, from what they could see in the darkness, and laughed.

“So, what did that gang give you?”  Ash asked.

“A drug called Julbie.  It’s not as strong as some, but it was beginning to shut down my body so…”

“So it was pretty strong…”  

“Yeah…  BUT, they flushed it right out of my system!  So no more tears, Ashy-boy!”  She exclaimed, trying hard to sound stronger than the last time he had seen her.

“Hey, since when do you come off of calling me that?”   He smiled.

“Since now.”

“Well, this Ashy-boy is in love with Mist-girl.”

“I would certainly hope so, mister.”  She said, playing with the hem of her hospital dress.

He sat down next to her in a small leather seat and kissed her forehead, wiping her damp bangs away.

“Do you remember the other day, at the lake, you asked me where we were?”

“Yeah?”  

“Well, despite the fact that I’m partially injured, it’s two AM in the morning, and we’re sitting in a hospital in the middle of Hartford, I think that we’re still where we were in the beginning.  That day when we were in the lake together for the first time…   On cloud nine…”

“There’s no argument-“

“And the first night that we kissed… I had a dream about you.”  She interrupted, “I just thought I should tell you…  Before something like this happens again, and I’d never get the chance to…to…”  She began to cry.

“It’s fine…  All I need to know is how you really felt about me… that’s all…”  He said, “Don’t get so upset about something that hasn’t and won’t happen.”  And he began to stroke her cheeks,  “And um… I had a dream that night as well…”   He blushed.

Misty’s eyes brightened, “Really?  What was it about?”

“Ne…”  He flushed red, “You’d think I was a hentai or something…”

“Hentai?  No…  If I ever caught you red-handed, I would.  But how could I sleep near you if I thought you were even remotely hentai?  I’d be too afraid you would be groping me or something…”

As she continued to talk of examples of what a pervert would do to a sleeping Mist-girl, a strong flashback re-entered his mind:




::Flashback::

Eyeing his sleepy friend, he tenderly stroked her shoulder, down her arm, to her fingers and back again.  He didn’t know why though…  He frowned.

“What…”  He muttered quietly.

He lay back down, supporting himself on his elbow, and sighed facing Misty.  Her face was blank; the expression empty and cold.  She laid so still, only her chest rising and falling with each light breath.  

‘The beauty of an empty expression…’  Thought Ash, ‘The beauty of emptiness.  The… beauty of… nothing…’


The absence was so inviting…was almost hypnotizing…


Shock pulsed through his body as he came to realize how far up Misty’s thigh his hand had been traveling.  He instantly jerked it away from her body and stuffed it into his pillow, ashamed of his thickheaded actions.

‘Good thing she isn’t awake.’  He thought, a pink blush warming his face.


::End Flashback::



He winced at the memory… should he tell her?  Nah…

On the other hand, all the while she was talking, Misty began to remember the time when she dreamt of him… not the first time… She had remembered how tingly her arm and thighs felt in her dream… mysteriously as it was…  And she felt her cheeks warm at the memory of what she had fantasized about afterwards.  

“So groping your own girlfriend is a bad thing?”  He asked, seeing her blush through the moonlight that spilled from the barred window above her hospital bed.

“Um…”  She stuttered, “I’m not sure anymore… I… guess not…”

“Well then, shut up.”

“Okay… but only if you kiss me.”

“You must really like kissing…”  He said thoughtfully.

“Hm… it’s really addictive…”  She sat upright and kissed him, “Especially when you’re the 'kissee'.”

He shrugged, “I could get used to it…”

The lights suddenly flickered on and there was a light round of applause from behind the two.  Misty would have cringed at the sudden lighting, but her eyes were already closed at the time as they kissed.  She peeked over to the doorway at Brock, Duplica, Tracey, Todd, and a few nurses and a doctor or two applauded, some with tears in there eyes.   (Well… it *is* a cartoon, much less anime.  -_-  You should expect crazy things like this to happen at some point…)  And Ash held up his hands to cover the sides of their faces that were glued together so that Misty wouldn’t have been disturbed by the light.   Her arms hung around his neck like a wreath and soon his hands involuntarily slid down her cheeks and to the back of her neck, up through her hair and down to pull her into a gentle hug.  And they sat like that for a while, bound to each other… And that’s how it happened.





The End.