Searching (WaR 2017)

pokémon: hoothoot
required cc: 5-10k (simple)
actual cc: 7,288 (according to Google Docs)
war prompt: mystery // not-so-distant future // pokémon and humans, together but separate

Searching
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I still remember exactly when you caught me, Trainer, even though I don’t have to remember anymore. The year, the month, the day, the time… All of that information is stored in the back of my mind. I can recall it in an instant and under any circumstance.

Everyday, you’d ask me to repeat the year, the month, the day, the time back to you. You’d come up with the most ridiculous ways to try to trick me into forgetting. Needless to say, you never succeeded at fooling me. What’s interesting, too, is that you asked me at 6:04 P.M. everyday, like it really mattered. How meticulous you thought you were, and how careful.

2025, December 6, at 5:43 on a Wednesday morning. To you, the list was merely a bunch of numbers put together to prove my perfect ability to sense the earth’s rotation functioned. But that list of numbers meant so much more to me. That’s the exact year, month, day and time when you barged into my life and I allowed your madness to consume my own.

We kept each other alive, Trainer. Did it matter if being alive hurt?

Not to you, apparently. You’d linger in front of mirrors and talk about how you saw not your body, but a fading silhouette, the mere idea of you and what could have been had your father not died at the hands of another human so long ago.

While you ruminated on the pain of your past, an awful bitterness would wrap itself around my throat. I wanted to scream about how pointless the search for your father’s killer was. I wanted to scream the truth. The only thing stopping me? The fact that you wouldn’t believe me regardless.

You wanted to use my ability, Trainer, to calculate the exact time your father took his last breath using all the clues you’d gathered so far. You wanted a time more accurate than a mere autopsy’s, in the hope that some light would be shed on the truth of his death. It astounded me, how I wasn’t even present during the murder and the information you relayed to me pointed to one obvious conclusion that you refused to acknowledge.

I did make an honest attempt to tell you the truth, once. All I could muster in the end was the energy to mumble under my breath. The sound of my voice alone, the sheer weight of the answer you were searching for, was enough to convince even our shadows to crawl away from us. The silence that followed, sharp and alarming, left me feeling so desperately sorry.

I kept my mouth shut after that. We kept each other alive, after all. If it hurt, we’d just have to move on as best we could.

I always wondered about some things, Trainer. Did you ever love me? Did you ever love your first pokémon? Your only pokémon? If your father were still alive today and none of us were hurting quite so much, would you have found me anyway and loved me then?

Because I at least tried to love you, Trainer. Seriously, I did, as implausible as the notion seems. It was peaceful and not at all lonely, being one of the few hoothoot left in the forest I called home. It wasn’t a bad life, and I’d have been fine without you. I at least tried to adapt to life with you. I at least saw your pain, then tried to take your heart and make it start again. Eventually, I learned that the name you gave me was the name of someone no longer living, which would’ve been fine had the whole ordeal not been so harrowing once all the puzzle pieces fell into place for me.

We spent so much time at the police station, with me watching you beg for records that the officers insisted didn’t exist. You called daily to check for any updates on the investigation when it’d been closed forever ago. Everyone there stared at you with pity in their eyes, not bothering to tell you the truth, either. They’d tried and you failed to listen. The courts had tried and you failed to listen there, too. There was something about the newfound silence that made it feel like time was being stretched out, that your pain would never disappear.

I wish they had helped you again when it was clear that your mental health was deteriorating at a rapid pace. You were just a kid when your father was killed, Trainer. It was an accident. You got the help you needed and functioned normally for a couple years—how long exactly, even I couldn’t tell you. Of course, it didn’t last. But I’m sure it was nice while it did.

I’m sorry, Trainer. I understand how one day you can wake up, and suddenly, everything that mattered to you before simply slips out of reach. I wish I could tell you how much longer it’ll be until your pain goes away, even just a little. I’m no psychic-type, as you know. I was just the closest thing you could find at your level of experience with pokémon training.

2011, May 10, at 3:14 in the afternoon, there was a car accident. You learned this much from me, Trainer. Not that the specifics filled in the gaps for you like you’d hoped. I obeyed your commands and remained loyal because there was little else I could do without causing further problems.

There was an accident in a car that happened to belong to your father, and while he drove, you happened to be sitting in your booster seat in the back, right behind the driver’s side. At that age, your main concern was how to convince your dad to buy the coolest new toy that your friends bragged about at school.

You know, you never did tell me what that toy was. I was curious, less about human trends from that year and more about why you didn’t spill every last detail of the story after repeating it to me a million different ways. I suppose that, deep down, your subconscious knew the truth and suppressed certain details of the story, no matter how minute.

Your father wouldn’t hear another word about this toy. He said he had a headache, that work was busy and hectic. You made a bet with him: if you could make him laugh, if you could make his bad day a good one, he’d get you the toy. Jokes were never your forte, so you resorted to tickling him. You could only reach his neck. It served as a distraction long enough for him to take his eyes off the road long enough to crash head on with a rhyhorn crossing with its trainer walking alongside it, oblivious.

Those are the facts we’ve deduced, Trainer. You were young and it was an accident, yet you blamed yourself. You probably blame yourself now. I haven’t seen you in two years, five months, three days, five hours and eight minutes. It’s felt like a lifetime. But when you realized I knew too much that you didn’t want to know, despite your incessant efforts to get us to that point, you released me.

It should go without saying that life passes for me in a new way for me now. If I can manage it, I ignore my ability. I ignore the earth rotating and I ignore the human concept of time. Because when I notice the seconds ticking by, when I notice another rotation cycle beginning, I can only guess as to whether you’re still suffering or if you’ve accepted the truth for what it is.

Everyday I see other pokémon, other humans. New places, old places. It’s all the same. Just another creature that’ll die down the line and dissolve into some part of the earth that millions of others have touched before. One particular human’s life shouldn’t complicate things for me, but it does.

Wherever you are, Trainer, I can’t help but hope you’ve found the peace you were searching for.

 

Thanks a ton, @Synthesis! Again, I appreciate the feedback on writing style, punctuation, and whatnot, since I've been told I can be a bit, uh, unnecessarily verbose and confusing sometimes.

I'd like to claim an Azurill for WaR, please. :3