Title: Closure

Author: Chibi/Warlordess

Pre-Author's Notes: Again, thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter! I'm really happy that a few people like it, since I didn't really think the plot would mold over well considering the probable amount of times it's been used. Still, I'm really happy that you all have chosen to like it so much! So, um, since I'm usually an author/artist of short words and small, incomprehensive brains, I'll just move right along now.

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon. I don't even think I own this idea. I'm just the first person that I know of whose decided to post anything on FFN/anywhere else about it.

Summary: Ash’s stupidity gains him a visit to Misty’s Gym after his finish in the Hoenn League and there, things between them get a little hasty. Implied and possibly serious AAMR.

---

Chapter Three: Habitual and Atypical

---

Proving her words true, Misty didn't let Ash have one moments rest all morning long. She helped him somewhat, but mostly oversaw his duties as he swept, mopped, vacuumed, scrubbed, dusted; anything that she'd left undone for the last week at least, he was left to start and finish with while she and Pikachu watched from the sidelines as he rushed past looking unkempt with his hair all over the place worse than ever, his jacket hanging off his shoulders, and an expression that said quite clearly that Misty had better sleep with her eyes open that night.

"C'mon Ash, pick it up a little!" Misty cheered with her fist rising into the air. Pikachu mocked her, too comfortable with his ketchup bottle to worry over the slave work his Master was being given.

"'Pick it up a little'..?" Ash quoted, pausing to catch his breath and looking incredulously at Misty as she watched him with humorously twinkling eyes, "I don't think I'll be able to pick anything up ever again!" He whined, his shoulders and face slack and his arms hanging at his sides like doors busted from their hinges.

Misty looked him over, and she seemed to be thinking about something. She stood up, coming to a decision, slapped one fist into her other hand, and turned to Pikachu.

"Whose ready for lunch?" She asked with a smile.

Ash sighed gratefully, thanking any God listening that he could finally get something in his stomach. He threw his mop and bucket of now-grimy water to the ground, followed after his friends (both human and Pokemon) and sat himself greedily at the table while Misty worked herself over the stove, making something that smelled incredibly good.

There was one thing that he'd forgotten, however, as our little raven-haired trainer sat waiting at the lunch table with thoughts of rice balls and fruit sandwiches and parfaits revolving around his head and that one thing was...

"There we go!" Misty stated ecstatically almost an hour later as she landed a bowl of... Some red watery substance with burnt black things floating around in it... In front of her crush. Wondering vaguely if Misty had accidentally cut her finger and bled into the meal, Ash stared down at it with a sense of fear, "I hope that you like it!"

"Er... W-what is it?" Ash asked cautiously, pointing at it, too paranoid to even touch it because he wasn't sure whether some giant tentacle would come shooting out, trying to devour him. Misty gave him a superior stare, as if she thought that he couldn't recognize a decent (wonderful, in her eyes) meal when he saw one.

"It's homemade shrimp gumbo, you idiot!" She slapped him on the back with an over-eager smile and he was almost forced face-first into the bowl. She sat down and leaned forward, wanting to see him take his first bite and hear some sense of praise from him, "Now c'mon, we still have loads to do around here!"

Wanting nothing more than to tell her off for her lack of cooking skills and her insinuations that she was helping him clean, he picked up his spoon with a trembling hand and placed the smallest of bites into his mouth, remembering how his digestive system had almost done a reversal on him last time he'd had to eat her kitchen-work while Brock had been sick.

As soon as he was able to taste the "shrimp gumbo" on his tongue, he was immediately intent on purging the rest of it and escaping into town to find a more suitable excuse for food. That was until Misty lent in on him and he became fully aware that she was trying to see whether or not he was enjoying the food she'd made especially for him.

"So... How d'you like it?" She asked cautiously as he tried as hard as humanly possible to swallow, "Cause I worked so hard on it to make it perfect. I mean, I actually looked up the recipe and placed all of the ingredients in for the gumbo sauce and then I cooked the shrimp and added them and everything so it would taste good... I tried as hard as I could to make it appetizing for you..."

Ash, awed by how she had put so much work into making his lunch, felt suddenly compelled to fake likeness, and so he finally managed to swallow the first bite and then move on to a larger second. Misty's eyes seemed to brighten after seeing him do so, and he felt something inside of him leap at her happiness. After he'd managed to choke back half of his bowl, he put his spoon down and smiled forcefully at her.

"That was... Good... Myst, but I'm full now." And now he was trying his hardest to remember where the bathroom was. His stomach was feeling slightly 'off' at the moment and he knew that if he didn't get out of here and find the resting place soon, he'd be forced to head out back into some bushes to complete his hygienic business.

"Really..? Wow, your appetite must be disappearing as you're getting older." Misty said, looking into the half-empty bowl as he got up to place it in the sink, "Just leave it there; you can wash it later." She said, catching his eye and giving an enchanting smile--

--Whoa, whoa, whoa! "Enchanting"?! Not a word in MY dictionary... Especially when we're talking about HER... I REALLY gotta get to the bathroom. I think she was trying to drug me with that meal... He cleared his throat and looked at the Cerulean Gym Leader with a small grin so as not to let on his inner 'turmoil'.

"Uh, Misty, where's the bathroom? I can't remember cause it's been so long since I was last here." Ash stated, making it look like he had to go. Misty pointed him off in the direction of the upstairs hallway, where the bedrooms and guest rooms were, and he ran off.

"And when you head back down, just come back to the pool area!" She shouted after him, "We still have plenty to do there since we interrupted the cleaning for lunch!" She heard him comply and the slam of a door and then she sat back, picking up Pikachu, who had been attempting to get her attention by stretching his little hands up her leg, and began to scratch him behind the ears, "...I hope that he can remember where the pool area is..."

Ash stared down at the floor with a sense of ill-concealed dislike. He didn't know what was going on but this was getting out of hand. First, for some unknown reason, he had defended his inner feelings towards Misty's "cooking" by thinking about the fact that she'd spent so much time trying to make it. Then he'd actually forced half a bowl of the stuff down his throat to make her think the same thing. And then he'd caught himself thinking of her smile as "enchanting"... He didn't know what was going on here but he didn't like it at all. That had been three absurd actions on his part in one sitting.

Finally getting up and stretching himself before heading out the door, Ash walked down the hallway, catching sight of the names on several of the doors he passed. "Daisy's Room", "Violet's Room", and "Lilly's Room" were inscribed on the first three and then, sure enough, the last one (actually left open, unlike the others) had Misty's territorial markings left on a sign upon the arch.

Glancing up and down the vast hallway, Ash felt pummeled by some invisible wind. He had never known that the Cerulean Gym, Misty's home, was so large. And her living here on her own for over a year now... Ash shook his head, ridding himself of the strange guilt trying to consume him. He shouldn't have to worry about that. Misty could take care of herself for one thing; he was sure that she could handle this place on her own. After all, if she couldn't, she would have turned down her sister's proposal that she come home at once while they were gone, right?

But it wasn't as if she had a choice... Ash found himself thinking unconsciously. He slapped himself. This was not the time to be worrying about Misty Waterflower. There was never a time to worry about Misty Waterflower... What's that? Ash thought, for he'd just noticed a certain vibrant red book sitting wide open on Misty's desk. Unbidden, there was a desperate urging, nagging, inside of him that kept shouting that he should look at the contents on the page. Misty wouldn't care much, right..? After all, if it was something important, she would have been more careful about where she placed such private belongings...

He was unaware that he'd started walking forward until another voice called out to him, and it was not coming from his mind or mouth.

"Ash! C'mon! I know that it can't be taking you that long to use the bathroom! We still have loads to do before dinner and I still have to show you which room you'll be staying in!" Misty moaned, sounding like it wasn't worth the trouble.

Ash snapped awake, finally coming to as he noticed his hand stretched out, barely five inches from the book. He turned around and ran back into the hallway as quickly and silently as he could, hearing footsteps coming up the staircase, and pretended to be looking at a picture that was hanging on the wall right outside Misty's room.

It was a nice snapshot of, what looked like, a younger Misty, her sisters, and a couple of grown ups standing behind them. He could have sworn that the woman had Misty's eyes, while the man seemed to have her complexion. Neither had her hair but he'd always thought of that as an extremely unique part of her, anyways. Looking so much like the four girls in front of them, the two elderly people must have been her...

Misty finally appeared behind him.

"Ash, what--?" Her eyes locked on the photo and her expression seemed to sag with sadness, "A-Ash, c'mon... We've got a lotta things to do and you standing here isn't helping--" Her voice had gone cold and it made Ash turn. Trying to avoid any more trouble, he followed her downstairs and back into the pool area.

Trying to avoid the thought that it seemed much larger and dirtier now than it did before he ate that, er, fortifying meal, he picked up the mop again and began marching over to the other side of the pool, past the diving board.

After a few minutes of tripping over his own feet and sliding over the mess his mop was making, he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Misty holding up her own cleaning equipment and smiling lightly at him, a major difference from her expression about ten minutes ago when they'd been standing outside her room. He gave her a whithering look nonetheless and she looked at him questioningly.

"What? You didn't actually think that I was going to make you do all of this yourself, did you?" She said, laughing at him as he looked at all of the work he'd done so far. He seemed to be imagining how fast she would have brought out a helping hand if he'd managed to move around slower.

"Well, speaking from first-hand experience... Yeah, I kinda did." Ash muttered, only half-angry. For some reason, the knowledge that she wanted to start working now was enough for him to think his load felt only half as heavy as when he started, "But thanks. You probably know more than anyone that I'd need a couple of extra hands here."

"Yeah." She nodded and began walking a bit further forward, in the direction of the other side of the arena, towards the main entrance and foyer, and started working up a bleached lather against the baseboard.

After awhile, he was finished. Sweaty and smelling like bleach, he headed over to Misty so that he could help her a bit on her end. Pikachu was still slurping away his ketchup on the sidelines and was in such a euphoria that he was failing to notice the world around him and so, when Ash just happened to slip on the wet floor and fly straight into Misty, he was too busy licking his paws to Thundershock the two.

Ash tripped on her foot and landed on top of her, his head lolling just over her shoulder blade, his chin and neck arching over her as his upper body fell onto her chest. He seemed frozen because his breathing lapsed as he became conscious of how they were situated around each other. His response was slow, his face coming into view as he raised himself off of her slightly and looked into her eyes...

They're really pretty when you see 'em up close... He thought, still not moving from his position, Whaa--? What the Heck am I thinking?! He thought furiously to himself, still unable to shake off the oncoming blush from their position. He didn't understand any of what was going on. He'd never felt like this before; his heartbeat had never been pacing like a Rattata and he'd never taken notice, nor tried to take notice, of how any girl's eyes glowed or how pretty they were. And now that his brain was sending very different and new images of Misty looking exceptionally cute to his senses, he was suddenly compelled to kneel down and use his lips to--

"--NO! No, no, no, no, no!" He shook his head repeatedly and removed himself from on top of her body, half-heartedly holding out a hand to help her up (well, it HAD been his fault that they fell in the first place) and watching her accept it. At the moment he wanted to be anywhere but there, especially as his visions were currently mutating into what some twisted mind would refer to as "fantasies".

"Oh, heh, sorry Ash. Guess I should have mopped the water in that area a little better so that it wasn't so wet. Um, why don't you take a break and I'll take care of that? And then I'll show you the Guest Room and you can take a nice shower and change before we get something for dinner." She chuckled in a falsely happy tone before pulling herself to her feet and dusting herself off. Ash saw her eyes swing in his direction before she walked away and continued sweeping up the base of the pool.

If I didn't know better, I'd say that she really wanted me to continue with that... What just happened? Ash wondered to himself while walking away from the red-head. Misty eyed him out of the arena before taking a moment to think something, herself.

Don't worry, Misty... He'll grow up someday...

---

Post-Author's Notes: I'm probably the most horrible, sadistic, poorly-advised fan author ever to be heard from, aren't I? Still, I admit that this is where I wanted the story to go, even if it is pretty early, quick-shifted, and badly approached.

But here's some things for you guys to think about:

1.) Misty was the one terrified that she'd give away the way she feels for Ash, but isn't it him whose making the most mistakes?

2.) Now that Ash's mutated thoughts are causing him to think of Misty in different ways, how far will he go to clear everything up between them?

And...

3.) Will he ever get a chance to read Misty's diary? (I'm sorry; I just have to add a sneaking-a-peek-into-the-book-of-female-feelings scene...)

Ne, he, he, he, he... Chibi/Warlordess will not be telling!

--Chibi/Warlordess logging off!