Frontier Town The Wanderin' Zera

[Namohysip]

Gerome exhaled and nodded. "Happened not too long ago. Like instinct, felt it. Had a thought, what if I went back? Figured I'd've talked to you guys about it... never worked up the courage. Now it's passed... 'n I'm still here. Guess I found the answer myself."

He looked at the glass.

"...Weird how fast time moves. I'd be an old man back home, or long dead. With a family that didn't want a thing to do with me. A daughter who hated me for not bein' there when she needed me. A wife, same way.

"...Makes me wonder if I ran away by choosin' here. But they're better without me. Guess I just wish I could've told'm they were right."

 

[Butterfree]

...A wife and daughter, huh.

Funny. As long as he'd known about Gerome's family, that he'd settled down and found a wife on Forlas and had a kid with her, he hadn't really considered what the guy might've left behind back home.

Dave took a heavy swig of his drink. Jean was looking at Gerome with her ears held low and eyes moistening, probably about to say something cute and hopelessly naïve.

"Do they think you died...?" she said. Okay, maybe not. Good question, actually. Supposedly they'd return right back to the moment they'd left with no memory of any of this, but if Gerome stayed in Forlas for good, what happened back in his world? Would he have just gone to bed one day and then never woken up, dead in his sleep from unexplained causes? God. What a depressing thought.

 

[Namohysip]

"...Mm. Yeah. That's probably what happened," Gerome said simply. "Time flowed. I ain't coming back. So I died. Heart attack from drinkin' too much, I figure. Not hard t' mistake what happened there."

He exhaled, looking up.

"Was brought here by chance. Faller, I bet. Got lucky... or unlucky, and I remember it all. Figured maybe this was all one big stupor from goin' out, drinkin' too much one day, or drinkin' something a little worse'n alcohol. But it's been too long. And once that threshold was reached, somethin'... shifted."

He eyed Dave, putting a claw to his own chest.

"Like I was sittin' up all this time, not totally sinkin' into this body, until just then. That final thread that connected me to bein' a 'human' went away, and now... I'm settled here. Like I c'n finally sit down. Finally breathe out.

"You probably won't ever feel it. Feels normal t'you now. But I guess if y'get stranded here, you'll get it... Bah. That's stupid, though. You actually got somethin' to go back to."

 

[Butterfree]

Jesus. Gerome'd been a sad sack back home, it sounded like. Was it fucked up that he'd ended up tending a fucking bar in the cowboy Pokémon universe? Got to be a constant temptation, right?

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I've got shit to go back to." He glanced at Jean. She still didn't remember, did she. That there were only six kids to go back to now.

He took a swig of his drink. "Well, I'm glad it's got you feeling freer. No regrets about crossing over, made a better life for yourself, got settled in your new body. Sounds like a win to me. Me, I'll be happy to get out of here. No more being a fucking dog, hey."

"Do you ever miss your old family?" Jean murmured.

 

[Namohysip]

Gerome smiled at Jean, but Dave could see the sadness behind it.

"Yeah," he said. "But I'd miss this family, too. Maybe it was a mistake t' start one here if I figured I'd've gone back, or might've, but... I dunno. Somethin' changed one day. You run into the right people, start wonderin', ponderin', and... just happens. Maybe a small part o' me knew from the start that... no matter how much I miss'm, sometimes it's better not t' go back. That I'd regress--that means, that I'd 'go back' to being a bad person again. That they'd go back to bein'... uncomfortable."

Gerome tilted his head back. "Figure best case, they're glad I'm gone. Maybe one day I'll find out... but I figure I deserve it if that day never comes. My home's here, now. I had a second chance. Have a kid that's a prodigy and a wife that can handle my crazy... and she's a little crazy herself. It works.

"...Just... promised myself, on the day I passed the threshold, that I wasn't gonna mess up a second time."

Six Mimikyu huddled around for storytime, their false heads tilting every which way.

 

[Butterfree]

"Well, it's clearly worked out well for you. You all are a picture-perfect little family. Wouldn't have guessed you used to be, uh, less so."

Dave looked morosely at his empty glass for a moment. Loving wife and phenomenally successful kid to dote on. Wouldn't it be great to have something like that to go back to, instead of living alone with a newly-deformed daughter and five other kids dealing with dead friends, gunshot wounds, bullying, and bullshit repressive legislation.

He pushed the glass back towards Gerome. "Another one?"

Jean looked at him and then at Gerome, frowning. "I think..." she began slowly, voice quiet, "I feel like something bad happened back home, but I can't..." The blood froze in Dave's veins. "I don't... remember."

 

[Namohysip]

Gerome grunted and took the glass, and then eyed Jean thoughtfully. He seemed to pick up on Dave's tension.

"Hey, kid," Gerome said, his voice a bit more rumbly than usual, like an incoming landslide. It caught kids' attention often, form what he'd gathered. Enough to get them alert, but not enough to scare them. "Yer dad here, he's got you. Whatever tragedy happened... you've still got each other. That's more'n I had, back then. Ain't that right?" Gerome eyed Dave. "Got each other. Plenty folks don't even got that."

 

[Butterfree]

Gerome's agreement that there had been a tragedy only made Jean look more anxious. She looked back at Dave, a hesitant paw up on the counter. "Something... Something keeps hurting when I think about Will. Is he okay?"

"Hey, hey, Jean, don't..." She had to hear the tremble in his voice, already confirming something wasn't okay; her eyes welled up with tears. What the fuck was he supposed to do? Lie to her? Gaslight her about whatever memories she was getting back? "Gerome's right, okay? We've got each other."

"What happened?" she asked, wisps of Shadow twirling around her fur. "I'm... I'm not in school anymore. Why am I not in school anymore?"

"Hey, hey--" Dave grabbed her, pulling her close, and she wrapped her paws around him, hot tears wetting his fur. "I'm... I'm so sorry."

"I think I..." Her voice had become a hysterical sob. "I..."

And then a scream. Dave held on to her for dear life. "Jean, it's okay, it's okay, I swear--"

Suddenly, underneath his paws, Jean burst into white light.

"Fuck! No!" Her body melted underneath his paws, burning bright, his heart about to explode out of his chest. "Jean! Jean!" Just a Vulpix. She was just a Vulpix here, right? Right? Please be a normal evolution, please be fucking normal--

---

She remembered.

She remembered an alleyway, thoughtlessly reaching out her hand when Jack asked someone to hold the Fire Stone. She remembered blinding light. Feeling her body burning up, patches of hot and cold, vision flickering and blurring alternately. The hot growth in the back of her throat. Dropping to her elbows and knees, painful on the rough pavement, while everything kept changing grotesquely, parts of her bulging and stretching in ebbs and flows, tearing and pulling and ripping.

She remembered fire spilling out of her mouth and the hot burning sensation left in its wake and now the same blinding light and burning--

She clutched her dad tightly as she screamed, but the pain, the hot and cold, the tearing never came. She just grew, in a smooth, tingling sweep, like her body was made for this. Her neck lengthened, her limbs lengthened, her tails split, just like home, but this time it was natural somehow, a feathery smooth landing instead of a hellish fall.

She opened her eyes and blinked into her dad's mane, looking at long yellow paws.

"Jean? You all right?"

She nodded, carefully letting go of him. It hadn't been painful, not at all. But she was still shaking. She glanced up at Gerome, then back at her dad.

There was more she could remember.

"They're dead, aren't they?" she asked quietly. "Will and Mia."

Dave nodded silently.

Jean wrapped her paws back around him and cried into his shoulder.

 

[Namohysip]

The six Mimikyu encircled Dave and Jean like curious puppies, though it seemed they were each trying to think of ways to help.

Gerome, meanwhile, shooed many of them away and said, "Yeah. Memories comin' back like that's a real pain," he said plainly. "But doens't change... that y'still have each other.Take yer time." He slid another sweet drink over. "Here, it'll help. On the house."