Disclaimer: Sigh, these things get wearying after a while. I do not own Pokemon, blah bla blah, bla blah blah blah.

The pokemon center, with it’s white walls and big red letter P emblazoned across the front, looked like every other of it’s kind the three friends had visited in their travels, although this one was obviously new. The small group trudged wearily up the stairs and stepped through the big glass doors into the center’s reception area. The Nurse Joy at the desk greeted them politely. It was a sure sign of Brock’s worry and exhaustion that his desperate flirting lacked its usual enthusiasm. It was an even surer sign of Misty’s that she didn’t try to stop him.

They all handed their pokemon over the desk and Ash passed her his pokedex so she could check them in. She gave them all some strange looks, particularly Ash, who she stared at for a long time, but as it was them and not their pokemon in such deplorable condition, she made no comment. Ash glanced blearily around the room as Nurse Joy went through the procedure of checking them in to a room. A pair of older pokemon trainers had draped themselves over a couch in the lounge area, staring at the TV in front of them and paying no attention to Ash and his friends. Ash couldn’t see the TV screen, but he could hear the newscaster intoning something about a missing pokemon trainer. It was a story he probably would have been interested in, Ash thought, if he wasn’t quite so tired.

Nurse Joy then handed his pokedex back to him with a smile and a room key. "There you go. You can come get your Pokemon in the morning. The room is just down the hall."

Ash nodded and accepted his things, patting Pikachu goodnight on the head, but before the three turned to go, Nurse Joy added, "This must all be hard for you, huh?"

"Huh?!" Ash stared at her, wide eyed, bewildered. What did that mean? Did she know what was going on? How could that be possible? He could sense Brock and Misty freezing on either side of him.

Before any of them could say anything, Nurse Joy continued. "Or is it just your parents who are the really big fans?"

Ash simply blinked at her. "Umm…" Now he was just confused. Parents? Fans? What on earth was she talking about? Nothing today had really made sense, he decided. Maybe in the morning the world would be working normally again.

"Oh, I’m sorry," Joys voice interrupted his rather confused thoughts. She beamed at them and waved her hands in a placating manner. "I shouldn’t be bothering you all right now. You should all just go take a shower and then head to bed. It looks like you’ve had quite a day."

The three friends exchanged a glance. She had no idea…

As they walked past the television on the way to their room, Ash glanced at it, wondering if the story about the missing trainer was still on, but it had switched to a commercial had come on. Ash let the story leave his mind. Pokemon training was not without risk, (although most trainers did not have quite the knack for running into trouble and danger as Ash and his friends did,) and it was not totally unheard of for a trainer to occasionally go missing. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he ought to have made more of an effort to hear what the newscaster had been talking about.

As the walked down the empty hallway towards their room, another odd thought occurred to Ash. This particular Nurse Joy had seemed a bit younger than the Joys he was used to. And had she actually blushed a little at Brock’s automatic flirtations?

~~~

Dinner at the house behind the Pewter City Breeding center proved to be an awkward, strained affair. Meowth had very nearly burnt the spaghetti. It would have been ruined beyond all salvation in James had not arrived home and rescued it. Even so, it was certainly not a meal that would win any prizes, by any standards. When Jessie had arrived home with the children, James had caught her up in a crushing embrace, not saying anything, simply holding her close, pressing his face into her hair. Jessie let him hold her; nothing needed to be said. The fear of loosing another member of their mismatched family still weighed heavily on everyone’s hearts. She needed the reassurance of his presence as much as he needed it of hers.

Sammy had attempted to throw his arms around his older sister, but Tara had brushed him away, refusing to speak to anyone or make eye contact. Sammy had, of course, burst in to tears again, and although Koji and Meowth had hastened to try to pacify him, their efforts yielded few results.

Then Suzie and her husband, who immediately retreated to his office, had arrived home. Jessie set the table as Suzie took Sammy to play with Ninetails in hopes of calming him down, much to the relief of Koji and Meowth, who had run out of ideas. Koji, in fact, was starting to look rather moist-eyed himself. James made the horrible mistake of attempting to reason with Tara, and nearly got his head shut in the door as a result. He joined Koji and Meowth, and the three of them did their best to stay as far away from everyone else as possible.

When all of them finally sat down at the table together, no one said a word to anyone else. The children all picked at their meals while the adults all tried to pretend they were not doing the same. Finally, they gave it up and Suzie cleared the dishes from the table. James followed after, murmuring something about helping with the washing.

"All right, Koji, Tara, Sammy, up to bed," declared Jessie. Sammy was nodding off over his spaghetti, so Jessie hoisted him onto her hip and carried him to the room he and Koji were sharing for the time being and Koji trailed after her. Tara was staying in the upstairs guest room, alone, except for her father’s espeon. They had suggested that she share the spare room downstairs with her brother, but Tara had said that she had always slept upstairs when she came to visit. They had agreed, in the hopes that she would be more comfortable in the familiar room. Sammy had not wanted to sleep in a room by himself, but now that Jessie and James had arrived with Koji, that problem was solved as well.

Jessie, however, still wondered if Tara might be better off sharing the room with her brother and Koji. On the one hand, she could understand how Tara might want, and need, some time alone. On the other hand, it hadn’t seemed to do much good so far, if Suzie was not exaggerating the number of times the girl had tried to run away, something Jessie thought highly unlikely. Surly, having the others close by would be some comfort to her as well…

She deposited Sammy in bed, patting his unruly red hair affectionately and pulling a charizard blanket up to his chin. Koji dug some pajamas out of his travel bag, gave her a hug goodnight, and wandered off to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Jessie switched off the lights, but paused before she left the room to collect the night light that she had left sitting on the dresser top earlier. It belonged in Tara’s room, and Jessie had only taken it out to change the light bulb. Why she had left it in the boys’ room, she wasn’t sure, but she supposed she should bring it back upstairs before bed, so she went into the kitchen and had Suzie show her where the spare light bulbs were kept, sent James to say goodnight to his son and his adopted nephew, and then headed upstairs towards Tara’s room.

She tapped lightly on the door. "Tara, it’s Jessie."

"Go away."

Jessie sighed. So, it was still like that. Oh, any other time her temper would have snapped then and there. It had been a long, stressful day, and she did not feel like being snapped at by bratty children. But for now, she gave it another try. "Tara, please open the door.

No response. Jessie glanced down at the night light in her hand. How old was Tara now? Seven? Surly, alone in someone else’s house, with her parents mysteriously missing, she would want her night light back. "I have your night light here."

"I don’t want it."

"But I changed the light-"

"I said I don’t want it!"

Jessie growled, turned on her heel, and stalked off to the room she and James were sleeping in. Obviously, she would be making no progress with her friends’ eldest daughter tonight. She would try being nice again in the morning, but she really didn’t know how much longer she could put up with tiptoeing around everyone like this. A few more days, she decided, and then it would be her turn to throw a tantrum and scream at everyone. Hopefully, James wouldn’t mind too much…

When she reached her room, she realized she still had the unwanted night light in her hand. She looked at it for a long moment. It was shaped like a pikachu and made out of blown glass. When you put a light bulb in it and turned it on, it glowed a cheerful yellow, and looked very much like an actual pikachu charging up. It also reminded her of yet another missing friend. Somehow, Tara’s rejection of the little night light, which held such a familiar, and at one time sought after, form, stung Jessie in a way she hadn’t expected.

On a sudden impulse, she knelt down in front of the socket beside their bed and plugged the little electric mouse in. She flicked the switch and it’s body lit up, giving off a friendly yellow light. This pikachu had no intention of shocking anyone, she thought with a small smile.

When James noticed it, after he had crawled into bed beside her and they had turned off the lights, he blinked at it curiously. "Jessie, what-?"

She leaned back into him. "Please, James?" she whispered, not opening her eyes or turning to look at him. "Just for tonight?"

He tightened his arms around her waist. "Of course, Jess."

Later that night, after everyone had fallen asleep and a light rain began to fall, the little glass pikachu continued to shine softly from its place on the wall, chasing back the shadows with its little light.

~~~

Ash lay in his bed at the pokemon center staring at the bottom of Brock’s mattress above him. He couldn’t actually see it. The bright sunset had been the precursor for rain clouds, apparently, and now he could hear the soft patter of rain slapping against the window. It wasn’t pitch black. Even with the stars and moon covered by clouds, a faint shine from the streetlights filtered in through their blinds. But it was dark enough that he couldn’t really see the bottom of the mattress above him.

Ash had not been afraid of the dark for a long time, not since several years before he had started his pokemon journey. A pokemon trainer, who would end up spending many nights camped out alone in the middle of nowhere, had no business being afraid of the dark. It just didn’t work. So when Gary had told seven-year-old Ash that babies who jumped at shadows wouldn’t be allowed to train pokemon, Ash had decided that he’d better stop being scared of silly little things like the dark, and fast.

He’d asked Gary for help, a rather stupid thing to do, when he thought about it now, and Gary had decided that the best way to cure him of his fear was to lock him in Professor Oak’s basement over night without a flashlight. Naturally, this plan had failed spectacularly, and Ash was just luck that the professor had been staying up late working on a research project and had heard Ash’s cries and let him out. Gary had first gotten mad at Ash for getting him in trouble with his grandfather, and then had gone back to telling Ash that if he couldn’t even handle one night in the dark inside, he would never survive being a pokemon trainer.

Desperate, Ash had decided that the only way he could prove that he was brave enough to be a pokemon trainer was to spend a night out in Viridian Forest by himself. He had packed a blanket and some snacks, deliberately left his flashlight at home, sneaked off to the forest that afternoon, and promptly got lost, and then realized that, in his enthusiasm, he had forgotten to tell even Gary where he was going. Things had gone downhill from there.

The only good thing to come out of Ash’s nearly disastrous venture was that sometime afterwards, he realized that the dark didn’t really bother him as much as it used to, because, in the end, the dark itself hadn’t hurt him.

But now… Ash could still remember the cave, the writhing mass of shadows that had enveloped him, entered him, claimed him, and then… Ash shuddered; the room suddenly felt cold. No, not that… He didn’t want to remember that. Ash pressed his palms to his eyes, as if that could help somehow. ‘Think of something else,’ he told himself, ‘anything else. Please…’ He listened to the bedsprings squeak in the bed next to his as Misty rolled over again. He wished she was awake, just so he wouldn’t be so alone, even though he knew that, after the past few days, she needed sleep just as much as the rest of them. He wished he hadn’t left his pokemon, particularly Pikachu, with Nurse Joy tonight, even though he knew they needed a check up. He wished his mind could just stop working, because then he could stop thinking, and if he stopped thinking he would stop remembering. Ash pushed his hands harder against his eyes and tried not to scream.

And then, a small miracle, in the form of a soft voice a few feet to his left: "Ash, are you awake?"

The tiny quaver in the familiar voice snapped Ash’s mind out of the dark cave and back to the pokemon center. "Misty?"

"Ash…"

Her voice was barely a whisper, but she sounded scared. Misty hardly ever sounded scared. This was something Ash could simply not allow. His thoughts still hovering somewhere between the past and the present, Ash reacted in the best way his frayed and sleep deprived mind would allow. "Hang on, Misty, I’m coming," he called in a loud whisper. And forgot that the pokemon center beds, unlike his sleeping bag, raised their occupants several feet above the ground.

THUD.

"Ash? Are you ok?"

"Ow. Owowow." Of course he had to land on his left shoulder again. At this rate, he wondered if his arm would still be working at all by lunch time tomorrow.

"Ash?" Now she was worried.

"I’m fine. I just fell out of bed. Ow."

He heard a rustle of sheets and another squeak of bedsprings, then Misty’s voice again. "Where are you?"

"I’m here." Keeping his still aching left arm pinned close to his side, he reached out into the darkness with his right hand. He felt the gentle rush of air as something passed it close by, then the brush of another set of fingertips against his own. He stretched forward, feeling the warm, slender hand they belonged to before that hand closed around his own. With a sharp tug, Misty pulled him off of the floor and onto her bed.

They sat there for a minute, catching their breaths, Ash feeling his hand tingling slightly in hers. Then, with a soft sigh, Misty leaned back against the wall. Ash leaned with her, as their hands were still clasped, and her shoulder pushed up against his. Normally, Ash would have been horribly embarrassed by sitting in bed with her like this, but at the moment, he didn’t care. She was a firm reminder of the real world, and, at the moment, he wanted that very much.

"I couldn’t sleep," she murmured, her mouth very close to his ear.

Ash nodded, then realized she couldn’t see him. "Me neither," he said, ignoring the fact that they were both stating the obvious.

"I didn’t want to wake you up if you were asleep."

"That’s okay, you didn’t. I mean, I wasn’t. Asleep. But it would have been okay if I was, because you wouldn’t have, or I would have wanted you to, or something…" Ash trailed off, aware that he was babbling.

Misty giggled softly. "Oh good." And then, a moment later, "You could have woken me up, too, if I had been asleep, I mean."

"Really?"

Ash felt her nod. "Mm hmm. And I’d have probably hit you with a pillow."

Now it was Ash’s turn to chuckle. It didn’t matter if their conversation was completely inane. It was taking their mind off of the things they didn’t want to think about, and that was what was important. "But what if I was asleep?"

"If you were asleep, how would you wake me up?"

"Maybe I was sleep walking. And then, if you hit me with a pillow and woke me up, wouldn’t that, I don’t know, be bad, or something?"

"But didn’t you just say you didn’t mind if I woke you up?"

"Oh. Yeah."

"So, I hit you with a pillow. Then what?"

"Then I wake up. And… Fall on top of you, I guess."

For some reason, they both giggled at that. When their mirth subsided, Misty whispered, "We should probably be quiet. We don’t want to wake up Brock."

The both nodded, and managed to sit in silence for a whole half minute, before Ash added, "Or he might hit us with a pillow."

They again broke out into muffled laughter.

"What time is it, anyway?" Ash asked once they had finished.

"I don’t know. Let me check." She pulled his hand, which she had not yet let go of, in front of her face. "I can’t tell," she said after a pause. "I can’t read you watch in the dark." This comment earned another round of giggles.

"We really shouldn’t wake up Brock," Ash said a minute later. "He doesn’t think we’re in Pewter City," he added by way of explanation.

It seemed to make since to Misty, who lowered Ash’s hand to her lap and nodded. "You’re right. We’ll be more quiet."

They lowered their voices to whispers after that and kept their laughter silent. They sat there, huddled side by side on Misty’s bed, whispering about this and that, until, somehow, they both finally drifted off to sleep.

In his bunk above Ash’s empty bed, Brock lay awake, perfectly still, staring at the sterile, white ceiling of a Pewter City pokemon center that he had never seen, in a city that looked nothing like the Pewter City he remembered. He listened to Ash and Misty’s voices as they tried to be quiet in the beds below. He tried to pretend that he wasn’t every bit as terrified as they were that this could be one of the last times they would all check into a pokemon center together like this. He wondered what he would do if he never got to hear his younger friends bicker or laugh at stupid things again, if he never got to bicker or laugh with them. Maybe he would simply fall apart. He wondered if he should have found some way to include himself in Misty’s perilous bargain, so they could at least all face their fate as a team.

He wished Ash and Misty would be loud enough he could pretend they had woken him up, and then maybe he could hit them with a pillow as Ash had suggested, and maybe a little bit of the light they seemed to have found would spread to him, too. Brock closed his eyes, tried to let his friends’ soft voices lull him to sleep. He wished morning would come soon.

Notes: First of all, I’d like to give a big, huge, (if somewhat late) thanks to whoever nominated both "Drowning" and "Breathing" for a reader’s choice award. Whoever you are, that really made my day, so a big, big, thank you again, and lots of thanks also to everyone who voted for them, whosoever you may be. :)

Now, onto this chapter itself. Ash and Misty’s conversation at the end is a little weird. It’s supposed to be the sort of conversation you have with your best friend at 3 a.m. while on a sugar high that’s hilariously funny at the time, but makes no sense and seems kind of stupid in the morning. Brock came out a bit more angsty than I meant him to be, but you can blame that on him, not me. I tried to cheer him up. He just refused to be cheered. On a similar note, I home that Jessie and James don’t seem too wildly out of character (not that we’ve seen all that much of James, yet.) They are supposed to be older and more grown up (they have a nine year old son, after all,) and presumably are no longer really involved in Team Rocket.

Now, if you made it through all those notes, I commend you. As always, please do review, and I’ll see you in the next chapter (or perhaps sooner, with another little one-shot. We’ll see.)