Chapter 1
EmperorofPaldea
Active Member
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2024
- Messages
- 109
- Reaction score
- 33
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- MATURE Themes
- Strong Violence
- TEEN Themes
- Strong Language or Profanity
- EVERYONE Themes
- No EVERYONE Themes Apply
- Other Content Warnings
- See fic's content warnings section for further clarification
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is a collaboration between me and the user dragon_trees over on AO3. I came up with the idea and wrote out the basic skeleton of the fic, and they expanded on it. Many thanks to them for making this possible.
The fic also takes inspiration from some other AO3 Scarlet/Violet fics. The basic idea is a worse version of I Know You're in There Somewhere by alottalotta, with an ending inspired by reversing the main plot of Innocent Grace by BeFreeOnWeekends101. Hope you enjoy.
CONTENT WARNINGS: gore, violent death, major character death, detailed as: killing, death of a child, depictions of corpses, depictions of improper burial, brief suicidal thoughts, mental health struggles, and verbal abuse
SYNOPSIS: After the events of the Scarlet and Violet DLC, Juliana refuses to forgive Kieran. He tries meeting with her in the Terarium to patch things up between them, but Juliana's anger causes her to make a catastrophic mistake...
In her dorm, in her body, in her mind, and in any place her vision occupied, Juliana burned.
While her righteous anger was by no means unheard of, while she was no innocent lamb - not a stranger to the concept of being angry with someone - she was foreign to this; the dead-white-hot-rage of the undeath of every Annihilape and the simmering violence of the dark-hearted Ceruledge. She’d never known this, not even for Arven’s parents - someone she was so angry with she couldn’t see him, couldn’t even think about him - couldn’t stop thinking about him.
She knew others would notice wherever she showed herself in this wretched state, and she knew others had noticed. If she were back home in Paldea this could be dealt with, though at no real reduction to the pain. But here she was at Blueberry, someone supposed to be aglow with positive notoriety and the blessings of all those who stood at the peaks of their mountains both here and from home; someone who’d become known for making everything she touched better.
She couldn’t even get through a conversation without it leaking through.
“I don’t know what to do when I know I’m not myself,” she’d confided in Momo over one voice call made in desperation in the early night. “I want to say ‘this isn’t me’ - but it is, and that’s even worse. What am I supposed to do when I cannot forgive someone and I cannot calm down? And my life can’t go on like this, I don’t…”
You give them a piece of your mind, he’d said, and then you figure out how to steer the rest of your life - that is, figure out whether that person’s going to be included in it or not. “You know a lot of us have had to cut someone out, and nine times out of ten, it really sucks. Once you figure it out we’ll stick with you, OK?”
It isn’t that simple, she’d wanted to say.
Kieran was the center of her inferno, but not even really the full reason for it.
She thought of Briar and the impulse to ruin the rest of the woman’s life and slap her for good measure flashed across the flames. A woman, a teacher they were supposed to trust with a form of guardianship, not unintelligent, surely not naive, was just so happy to get what she’d wanted that she’d exploit a kid’s downward spiral to make a window of opportunity for herself. A teacher who should’ve been the voice of reason so happy to get what she wanted that she’d pluck the beating heart out of the world of Pokémon magic. It didn’t even stop there - she’d made Kieran do it for her. Made him be the tool of all greed just for her own idle curiosity. Angered the Earth itself.
She thought of Carmine, and of the mask she’d worn the entire time both in and out of the festival to pretend to be Carmine’s friend, just for the sake of keeping an eye on her little brother, who Carmine so compulsively crushed beneath her boot at the slightest chance. The thought of getting into a fight, getting a fistful of Carmine, pitching her into a wall and demanding she fix this, flashed from the coals down into her nerves - making Juliana fidget uncomfortably. Maybe Carmine had known something she didn’t; maybe it truly was never her business; or maybe she was absolutely right and secure in the wisdom that how Carmine treated Kiki fed the dark seed of insecurity within him that had bloomed into the monster she’d been facing ever since she came to Blueberry.
She’d caught Drayton getting choked up and stopping himself from tearing up once after he and Kieran fought. Drayton. The strongest heart out of all of them.
She thought of how she’d always found it odd that the unstoppable La Primera - someone she very much looked up to - who went wherever she wanted, and took whatever she needed, would never set foot in the Crater. She was even reluctant to issue her own people to anything near the Crater. Juliana had always thought this a strange flaw of cowardice.
But, in this moment, she was starting to see the wisdom in that.
The mesmerising glitter and raw, shining beauty - and the voices - (no one else in the Zero Squad apparently heard the voices) - seemed to only lure to an uncaring death that would be witnessed by no one.
And she’d almost fallen to that unmourned and painful grave.
Because of Briar.
And Carmine.
And, to a degree, because of Sada and Turo.
And because of Kieran.
Everyone else just seemed to want their old friend back. She couldn’t blame the Blueberry League for that. It was reasonable to merely want things to get better for someone they’d cared about. So why didn’t she?
Because she alone saw what she saw in Terapagos’ lair and witnessed how far he’d gone?
Because of how he seemingly stabbed her in particular in the back, taking advantage of how worried she’d always been over him? How he made her the scapegoat and the focus of his own mental train wreck? Made her success and her positive qualities as a model Trainer into the sword for himself to fall on? The term “violated” came to mind.
She wouldn’t want to say this in front of his friends who knew him for longer than she did, but they didn’t understand.
She had been a forgiving person around the Star Bosses, people who weren’t easy to get along with from the start who were blatantly guilty of a wide variety of failings. She’d been open to them, and Penny and hers had become some of her closest confidants, and the ones she was willing to show herself to when she was doing worse.
She’d even become a forgiving person to Arven’s parents - come to mourn them in her own way.
But whether she understood it or not,
Whether she liked it or not,
She couldn’t find it in her to bring any peace into her heart for Kieran.
She needed to know that he knew all he’d done.
She needed to follow Momo’s advice.
She needed to take this fire out on him before she turned it on herself.
…When, and only when, she could stomach the thought of speaking to him face to face.
Off and on - more on than off - she’d been crying herself to sleep.
Within a few days of hiding from the Blueberry League and the Terarium assemblies by living off of two-AM runs to the vending machines, the life of hermit induced malnutrition got to be too much. Juliana had to risk the cafeteria.
She saw him from across the crowded room and felt the blood rush to her head, almost losing her balance. She saw Lacey command him with firm hand gestures to sit with the rest of them even if he seemingly felt bad about it. She saw him lifting his head to scan the room for her, and for the thirty seconds her back had to be turned to get the food she was after, she felt the whole world balancing on the edge of her neck in fear he’d come and try to talk to her.
She got away. The next times Juliana had to eat, she was there the moment the doors opened and out within a few minutes.
What am I doing? I want to go home. But this wasn’t over between her and Kieran yet. Running away without resolving things would only hurt the rest of her friends more.
She wished she could sit with them and maybe have a chance to relax.
…Not with him there.
She eventually needed to visit the Terarium for the sake of her team’s physical and mental health. Lacey somehow ambushed her in the hallway, sticking her arm out like a toll gate.
“Miss Champion, your presence at the League meetings is requested. We can’t-”
“I know you haven’t been seeing me,” Juliana fought through something that went through her nerves as though she were queasy. “Please just leave me alone. Please?”
“We really miss you,” Lacey nodded to acknowledge Juliana’s feelings, but continued on with her argument. “And honestly, I think Crispin and Amarys are starting to get upset about it. Kiki says-”
“PLEASE DON’T,” Juliana blurted out.
She stumbled a little on her feet before putting her forearms up to cross them. Surely Lacey would feel the importance of her own “NO” gesture.
Lacey’s eyes dropped, and her mood. But she kept her shoulders square.
“Okay. Well, why don’t you bring the other four of us somewhere sometime? You could tell us what happened in Paldea if you want.”
“I - but -” Juliana started to crumple emotionally and turned slightly to the wall, holding her upper arm with the opposite hand. “I don’t know if I want to. You guys are getting along with Kiki again and… I think that’s great. I just - I can’t. I’m working on talking to him - I need to talk to him but, I’m not OK enough to do that yet. Maybe this week.”
“Well, then, just promise one thing,” Lacey crossed her arms. “You really lit up the BB League. You made us believe in you and us and in ourselves. Just promise not to abandon us because of something Kiki did, will you?”
“Yeah, alright.”
Juliana awkwardly curved around Lacey and started heading down the stairs at the transition point. She looked over her shoulder.
“Hey, Lacey, I do miss you guys too, OK? I’m just dealing with some shit-”
“It’s OK!”
Her face surprisingly calm and collected, Lacey gave Juliana a big thumbs up.
“Just don’t leave us out forever, is all!”
“Yeah. Just don’t try to do anything, OK? It’s something him and I have to figure out.”
“Deal.”
One night, Juliana didn’t sleep.
She cried, and dozed off, but didn’t sleep. She looked through the pictures she’d taken back in Kitakami and gritted her teeth until she thought she heard one crack. She thought of calling Arven but didn’t want to burden him. She thought of calling Nemona but didn’t feel like listening to her not-mom go on a long-winded wisdom lecture. She thought of calling Penny, but something about thinking of Team Star right now felt too smothering.
She didn’t sleep, and laid (rolled, really) miserably until the sun was well up in Unova. Her eyes hurt like crazy, her vision was worse than before and she felt her blood like boiling oil.
The knife had to be pulled out of the wound at some point and it might as well be now.
Though - she would regret unblocking Kieran on their social media app within seconds as notifications came pouring in. He’d sent something like two dozen messages and even the first few words of each one filled her with hatred and disgust. If these were things being said by anyone else, they’d catch her attention a different way…!
It wasn’t just the life-or-death situation they’d been in which had fundamentally changed her brain chemistry, it was how he’d used her as the turning point to ruin everything…! Even while she was looking out for him!
“Juliana”: Kieran I have you unblocked now because I need to talk to you in person about what happened. I can do my best to be mature about it but I’m not happy and I don’t think I can stand there listening to you apologize. So I guess I need to talk and I need you to show up. On time. I’ll do my best to listen to you depending on how things go.
“Juliana”: I’m pretending not to see anything you sent before because it looks like a lot of bullshit that is not helping so if it’s important say it to my face.
“Juliana”: After lunch closes go to this spot in Canyon [ATTACHMENT]
“Juliana”: DO NOT lead me on now that you’re unblocked just be straight about it and confirm. If you decide to be stupid about this, then I’m sorry but you missed your chance and I’m going to have to go back home and move on.
“Kieran”: I’m sorry I hurt you I know I did and it’s affecting everyone else
Kieran is typing…
“Juliana”: Stop
“Juliana”: Not doing this over text I know the hard way that’s not how you do fights OK? That’s not helping so stop
“Juliana”: After today’s lunch at [ATTACHMENT] yes or no?
“Kieran”: Yes ok but I don’t know if I can get up there I might need to go with you
“Juliana”: ???
“Kieran”: Not everyone has a one of a kind ride pokémon that can climb sprint and fly I’ll do my best to go there
Juliana started typing a response to the passive-aggressive dig about her ‘Raidons, yet another of a thousand digs about how perfect and awesome and special she must be that ate at her soul and had made her feel like she didn’t earn anything that happened on her Treasure Hunt - but I did! My friends do want me there and I did earn it! How fucking dare you make me feel that way? -
-but ultimately deleted it. He was the less mature out of them and she wasn’t about to argue with an idiot at his level.
Instead, she white-knuckled her phone in her hand and pulled on her own hair, trying to catch at least a little sleep to fill the next handful of hours.
She got to the spot ten minutes early, and before long was huddled with her back to the wind, fidgeting by tapping her heels on the ground, hunched over her phone. She wasn’t even doing anything - just opening and closing the same apps over and over.
She managed to work herself up before Kieran even arrived.
She had an imaginary argument with the boy over how he was late, even though she knew he had just said he might have trouble getting all the way up there.
She had an imaginary argument with herself.
“Why do you still call him Kiki?”
“Because I still care about him!”
“He fucking betrayed you!”
“I know!”
“What could he possibly do to make up for who he is? You saw who he was when he decided to treat Pokémon like that.”
“I know! I don’t know!”
“Why do you still care about Kiki? Fuck him!”
“I can’t just turn my back on the whole BB League. We’re going to talk and I’m going to do my best to be mature because I still care about him.”
“Stop calling him Kiki; stop caring; let go and let yourself have a nice life.”
“I can’t just do that, and I won’t. That’s not me.”
“Why do ‘you’ have to be someone who deals with this stuff?”
“Because ‘I’ am the person my friends want and need and ‘I’ am the person who’s ready and able to be a Champion. I’m not giving up on myself and my life over one person treating me badly.”
“One person, huh? Just any person?”
“...Even my friend.”
The wind, up so high, was getting obnoxious.
Why does the fucking Terarium have to have so much wind? Rationally, she knew the dome was large enough and engineered enough to have micro-weather systems, but–
At that moment, mid-thought, she heard someone’s voice pipe up right behind her-
“Hey-”
-and she was so badly startled, her heart jumping into her throat and the rest of her dropping down past her stomach, that she got up swinging. The side of her arm and fist made direct contact with the one who’d snuck up on her.
“Ow! OK… Ow… Ugh…”
Kieran sounded miserable as he rubbed his face, but at least he wasn’t fighting back.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” Juliana cried out, confused and exasperated.
“Well, I was calling you and you didn’t hear! I’m sorry; Arceus,” Kieran whined. “Well I guess I deserve to be hit, right?”
He meant it genuinely, but that wasn’t how Juliana heard it.
She’d meant to start off on a more composed note, but she heard an attack and so she already fumed.
“I don’t know what is wrong with you, and I don’t know what has been wrong with you this whole time or if everything changed while I wasn’t looking, and that’s frankly upsetting me even more, that maybe I never really knew you, and maybe everything I ever felt about you was wrong,” she half-shouted, her voice cracking a couple of times in its strained pitch.
“I don’t know either, I just know what I was thinking at the time, and that I was doing what-”
“No - you did wrong by Pokémon when they were at their most vulnerable - multiple times! And that’s just the start of it! Pokémon are innocent when it comes to humans, Kiki! Terapagos was asleep in its own thousands-of-years home! How can you think you were doing anything right? You didn’t care! You and Briar were acting out of pure greed at the expense of an innocent pokémon that had powers beyond our wildest imaginations and you didn’t think! You didn’t care!”
Kieran just frowned and held his tongue, fully at a loss to respond to that.
“You know how - you remember Nemona? You know how she responded to me winning all my battles with her? With fucking glee! She was happy for me! And it’s not even so bad for me that we could’ve died! Like it’s horrifying, though, and maybe I can’t get over it this time - you know why? Because I’ve been in a life or death situation in Area Zero before! Okay? Are you hearing this? I’ve been almost killed in Area Zero before. And that doesn’t scare me anymore because my friends there STAYED ON MY SIDE! So who else are you going to hurt the next time you feel a hole in yourself you can’t fill?”
“I-” Juliana saw Kieran’s face wobble as he held back tears, and the confusing emotions that warred in her heart only made her head swim more.
Juliana marched on through every disorganized tangent she’d painfully meditated on over the past two weeks. “Everyone fucking goes through that! Everyone I met after I moved to Paldea went through that! And I think Drayton’s even going through that right now! Do you see him hurting Pokémon? His team? Innocent Pokémon who don’t deserve to be hurt? Do you see him taking his anger out on forces beyond his control? Do you see him spitting on his friends and grinding them under his fucking boots? I don’t know how he seems okay now with how you treated him! Who are you going to hurt next?!”
“I was thinking of going home,” Kieran croaked, and tried to hold back a hiccup only for it to shake his whole body. “But I don’t know what to do to hurt the least people at this point. I was going to say-”
“Well I don’t fucking know either but everything you did against Ogerpon’s wishes, and everything you did to your own friends, and what the fuck you agreed to do with a fucked up adult none of us should have trusted - oh and I guess I should talk about what you did to me, Kiki! Do you have any idea what you did to me? ‘Cause now I see that it was all about you going all the way back to when we were fighting over Ogerpon!”
“I was going to say I miss when we were friends,” the miserable truth dribbles out of Kieran, though he freezes the moment that thought has left him in fear that it wasn’t OK to express that thought.
“Were we ever friends?!” Juliana’s voice pitched to a squeak as she choked up and tears clouded her eyes. “I was an object to you!”
Kieran was stunned into silence for a few seconds.
“We were friends! You were the one person who treated me like I deserved to be, like, loved! When my sister started getting uncomfortable that I was getting older, and-”
“You used me as something to breed all your ego on! You used me as an excuse to act out because I made the mistake of thinking we were comfortable with each other-”
“We were fucking friends, Juliana! I looked up to you! You were my only friend when I was at home!”
“What, your Pokémon don’t count for anything?” By this time, unable to control her face from shrivelling up in misery, Juliana was gesturing broadly with her arms instead.
“That’s not what I - OK, you didn’t need to make it out like that! Jules, I was going to say I’m sorry for dragging you into what I was going through! I looked up to you and I thought I could trust you to stay with me while I was so fucking unhappy I felt like I had to either fix it or just go haywire!”
“You did,” the shock of trying to explain the enormity of her complaints almost stunned her, “so much more than just drag me through your own problems. You did so much more than that to me. Do you NOT EVEN KNOW THAT?”
She stepped forward and grabbed Kieran firmly by the chest area of his gym hoodie. He recoiled backwards instinctively, placing much of his weight in her hands.
“Well you want to tell me right? What I did wrong? But I thought you were my friend and I could count on you…! Jules I -” -hiccup- “Do you want to scare me? ‘Cause you’re scaring me… This isn’t like who you were… but whatever I did that I don’t understand, you had me come out here so you could tell me, so…!”
I’m scaring me too, she thought, but what am I supposed to do? Back down now? If he has no idea what effect his actions had, he needs to hear it loud enough to take me seriously!
“Kieran, do you want me to forgive you? Is that what you were hoping for when you came out here? I read your ten thousand please forgive me messages, and do you even realize how thoughtless those are? When you don’t even know what you’re asking forgiveness for?” Juliana’s voice was going hoarse shouting over the wind and choking on the inside.
“I hoped things could at least be good in the club room again,” he confessed.
“Just so you can stab me in the back with a rusty knife later? I gave you an inch,” Juliana was no longer angrily yelling, but declaring in a raised voice, “and you took so much from me that, if I never took it back, everything I’ve worked up to would be gone now. Whatever friendship I thought we had and you thought we had - you decided that wasn’t important anymore back when you almost let me and you and your sister and that fucking teacher die miles under the earth because you couldn’t own up to the destruction you started. Is that fucking clear? I don’t want that to be how it is, Kiki! And - and, and in a way I regret it! But you gave up on any chance you had to be my friend when you left us to die and had to be begged to help us survive! Do you understand that?!”
In Paradise Protection everyone had each others’ backs! Even the enemy really wanted us to live! The contrast between those times and what Kieran did before Terapagos drove her confusion about the meaning of their relationship deep as a nail.
“C-crystal,” Kiki sniffed hard, starting to hyperventilate, “fucking clear, b-but Jules,” -gasp- “I really do-”
“You need to understand how everything you did was about using me.”
When she placed emphasis on those words, she set Kiki down until his weight was on his feet, and pushed him back out of her personal space.
“At any time you could’ve listened to me and even your sister about how you were genuinely improving and that was good enough, but what you did instead - was -”
As each word fell from Juliana’s lips, a sequence of moments happened, each taking until a few words later into her sentence for her brain to see and begin to understand.
First, Kieran waved his arms around like he’d lost his balance. Some seconds passed.
Then, he looked down at his feet. Seconds later, Juliana traced his line of sight to see he was standing on almost nothing. She was still talking. Her brain hadn’t caught up yet.
Then, Kieran took a panicked step forward. When he tried to take a second step, he tripped on his own heel. In lunging forward from that trip, he lost his balance as his hips tilted back.
Juliana stopped speaking, but her brain had yet to catch up into reaction.
Kieran disappeared from sight in the time it took to blink. His palm smacked the crumbled edge of the black cliff and slid painfully as he failed to grab on.
Juliana reached out, as if in slow motion, and swiped at nothing in the air. She knelt down over that cliff-edge and did it again. Kieran was already long out of reach.
She only briefly saw the confusion in his face.
She watched him get small enough below her that she couldn’t make out any detail anymore.
She watched him make contact with the next stone cliff platform sixty, seventy feet below and bounce. Some bird Pokémon flew away. With a small delay, the thwump sound, sharp and a little bit hollow, rung in her ears.
The hand she reached out with uselessly trailed in the wind at nothing.
At this distance, it took many long unbreathing seconds to see the movement of blood pushing its way through the thin layer of dirt and dust.
But when she did, and her eyes had adjusted, she saw it splattered everywhere.
She saw that his clothes weren’t at correct angles as if something was wrong underneath them.
Juliana’s heart blocked her throat.
She made it there slowly and carefully with Miraidon.
She had to fight it; she had to punch it hard in the nose, to get it to return to its Poke Ball. The last thing she wanted was her Pokemon getting involved in this.
The lack of movement might have been obvious, but in the moment, it was deeply disturbing.
She didn’t know how to approach.
“Kiki?”
Deep down, she knew he was dead. She’d just never… never engaged with a… dead body… before…
She got on her knees and scooted carefully over, like he might leap up and kill her too.
She found him with his eyes closed, blood and plasma pooling around his eyelashes where tears might be. She found him with his jaw slightly open and cocked to one side, blood beginning to slowly leak from there too.
She found a spot on his head where his hair was slicked with blood. Juliana touched it curiously, as if trying to check on the wound.
She found it too hot and too tender. MUCH too tender.
And so the demons of everything she could see wrong with his body rose and struck at her all at once. Only the lonely wind witnessed Hell rise and ravage Juliana’s heart.
I didn’t mean to drop you!
She sat on her knees in that deep well of isolation, conflicted between recoiling at the grotesqueness of a dead body and desperate not to let her friend lie all alone.
I didn’t mean to drop you! I didn’t mean to drop you! I didn’t mean to drop you!
So, so many thoughts and an unknown amount of time passed.
The greater demons I didn’t mean to! and You just killed him! and Why didn’t he tell me I pushed him over the edge? and Everyone is going to despise you! and How dare you be alive, now? and I didn’t mean to!!, ROARED, immobilizing the two-time Champion, shredding and boiling her once noble and cheerful soul down to a sludge that might never know itself ever again.
Shadows danced around the edges wherever she tried to escape, just to make her head spin even more - You know, this could have happened to Arven at any point in his journeys. How are you going to tell his sister? WHO are you going to tell? How would you even confess to this? How are you going to get away WITHOUT confessing to this? Your life is over. You’ll either pay with everything you’ve ever built or with your soul. You can’t leave them. You can’t just disappear and hurt more people. You can’t exist without being doused in this blood. Kiki was younger than you and he was struggling; shame on you! Oh, he died thinking of how much you hated him. He was younger than you! He looked up to you! Will you end up being arrested in Unova or Paldea? Or in Kitakami? When will you be arrested? How long can you avoid it?
“Kiki, please come on, get up,” her voice barely broke into sound.
She begged the empty wind to fix this nightmare.
“You were being an immature little shit but that’s OK, because you were willing to hear me out. You were trying to do good by me and I was too pissed off to care.”
She bargained. She scooted forward slightly just to grip at his sweater, and she buried her head between her arm and knees just as the violent wracking cries shivered out of her.
“I’m sorry…”
She was a murderer now, and her life was about to be gone. Her concept of her morality oscillated violently between it’s not my fault - it was an accident and I killed him.
“I’m sorry, Kiki!”
Juliana sobbed, her words slurring together as she cried.
“I’m sorry, please tell me it’s gonna be OK, you can - you can hit me in the face too, just… Kiki, the League is going to be wondering…”
Juliana cried so hard it almost made her fall over into the blooded dust.
She held tight in her fist Kieran’s dead body, growing colder by the second.
His blood gathered now in grotesque pools.
The fic also takes inspiration from some other AO3 Scarlet/Violet fics. The basic idea is a worse version of I Know You're in There Somewhere by alottalotta, with an ending inspired by reversing the main plot of Innocent Grace by BeFreeOnWeekends101. Hope you enjoy.
CONTENT WARNINGS: gore, violent death, major character death, detailed as: killing, death of a child, depictions of corpses, depictions of improper burial, brief suicidal thoughts, mental health struggles, and verbal abuse
SYNOPSIS: After the events of the Scarlet and Violet DLC, Juliana refuses to forgive Kieran. He tries meeting with her in the Terarium to patch things up between them, but Juliana's anger causes her to make a catastrophic mistake...
In her dorm, in her body, in her mind, and in any place her vision occupied, Juliana burned.
While her righteous anger was by no means unheard of, while she was no innocent lamb - not a stranger to the concept of being angry with someone - she was foreign to this; the dead-white-hot-rage of the undeath of every Annihilape and the simmering violence of the dark-hearted Ceruledge. She’d never known this, not even for Arven’s parents - someone she was so angry with she couldn’t see him, couldn’t even think about him - couldn’t stop thinking about him.
She knew others would notice wherever she showed herself in this wretched state, and she knew others had noticed. If she were back home in Paldea this could be dealt with, though at no real reduction to the pain. But here she was at Blueberry, someone supposed to be aglow with positive notoriety and the blessings of all those who stood at the peaks of their mountains both here and from home; someone who’d become known for making everything she touched better.
She couldn’t even get through a conversation without it leaking through.
“I don’t know what to do when I know I’m not myself,” she’d confided in Momo over one voice call made in desperation in the early night. “I want to say ‘this isn’t me’ - but it is, and that’s even worse. What am I supposed to do when I cannot forgive someone and I cannot calm down? And my life can’t go on like this, I don’t…”
You give them a piece of your mind, he’d said, and then you figure out how to steer the rest of your life - that is, figure out whether that person’s going to be included in it or not. “You know a lot of us have had to cut someone out, and nine times out of ten, it really sucks. Once you figure it out we’ll stick with you, OK?”
It isn’t that simple, she’d wanted to say.
Kieran was the center of her inferno, but not even really the full reason for it.
She thought of Briar and the impulse to ruin the rest of the woman’s life and slap her for good measure flashed across the flames. A woman, a teacher they were supposed to trust with a form of guardianship, not unintelligent, surely not naive, was just so happy to get what she’d wanted that she’d exploit a kid’s downward spiral to make a window of opportunity for herself. A teacher who should’ve been the voice of reason so happy to get what she wanted that she’d pluck the beating heart out of the world of Pokémon magic. It didn’t even stop there - she’d made Kieran do it for her. Made him be the tool of all greed just for her own idle curiosity. Angered the Earth itself.
She thought of Carmine, and of the mask she’d worn the entire time both in and out of the festival to pretend to be Carmine’s friend, just for the sake of keeping an eye on her little brother, who Carmine so compulsively crushed beneath her boot at the slightest chance. The thought of getting into a fight, getting a fistful of Carmine, pitching her into a wall and demanding she fix this, flashed from the coals down into her nerves - making Juliana fidget uncomfortably. Maybe Carmine had known something she didn’t; maybe it truly was never her business; or maybe she was absolutely right and secure in the wisdom that how Carmine treated Kiki fed the dark seed of insecurity within him that had bloomed into the monster she’d been facing ever since she came to Blueberry.
She’d caught Drayton getting choked up and stopping himself from tearing up once after he and Kieran fought. Drayton. The strongest heart out of all of them.
She thought of how she’d always found it odd that the unstoppable La Primera - someone she very much looked up to - who went wherever she wanted, and took whatever she needed, would never set foot in the Crater. She was even reluctant to issue her own people to anything near the Crater. Juliana had always thought this a strange flaw of cowardice.
But, in this moment, she was starting to see the wisdom in that.
The mesmerising glitter and raw, shining beauty - and the voices - (no one else in the Zero Squad apparently heard the voices) - seemed to only lure to an uncaring death that would be witnessed by no one.
And she’d almost fallen to that unmourned and painful grave.
Because of Briar.
And Carmine.
And, to a degree, because of Sada and Turo.
And because of Kieran.
Everyone else just seemed to want their old friend back. She couldn’t blame the Blueberry League for that. It was reasonable to merely want things to get better for someone they’d cared about. So why didn’t she?
Because she alone saw what she saw in Terapagos’ lair and witnessed how far he’d gone?
Because of how he seemingly stabbed her in particular in the back, taking advantage of how worried she’d always been over him? How he made her the scapegoat and the focus of his own mental train wreck? Made her success and her positive qualities as a model Trainer into the sword for himself to fall on? The term “violated” came to mind.
She wouldn’t want to say this in front of his friends who knew him for longer than she did, but they didn’t understand.
She had been a forgiving person around the Star Bosses, people who weren’t easy to get along with from the start who were blatantly guilty of a wide variety of failings. She’d been open to them, and Penny and hers had become some of her closest confidants, and the ones she was willing to show herself to when she was doing worse.
She’d even become a forgiving person to Arven’s parents - come to mourn them in her own way.
But whether she understood it or not,
Whether she liked it or not,
She couldn’t find it in her to bring any peace into her heart for Kieran.
She needed to know that he knew all he’d done.
She needed to follow Momo’s advice.
She needed to take this fire out on him before she turned it on herself.
…When, and only when, she could stomach the thought of speaking to him face to face.
Off and on - more on than off - she’d been crying herself to sleep.
Within a few days of hiding from the Blueberry League and the Terarium assemblies by living off of two-AM runs to the vending machines, the life of hermit induced malnutrition got to be too much. Juliana had to risk the cafeteria.
She saw him from across the crowded room and felt the blood rush to her head, almost losing her balance. She saw Lacey command him with firm hand gestures to sit with the rest of them even if he seemingly felt bad about it. She saw him lifting his head to scan the room for her, and for the thirty seconds her back had to be turned to get the food she was after, she felt the whole world balancing on the edge of her neck in fear he’d come and try to talk to her.
She got away. The next times Juliana had to eat, she was there the moment the doors opened and out within a few minutes.
What am I doing? I want to go home. But this wasn’t over between her and Kieran yet. Running away without resolving things would only hurt the rest of her friends more.
She wished she could sit with them and maybe have a chance to relax.
…Not with him there.
She eventually needed to visit the Terarium for the sake of her team’s physical and mental health. Lacey somehow ambushed her in the hallway, sticking her arm out like a toll gate.
“Miss Champion, your presence at the League meetings is requested. We can’t-”
“I know you haven’t been seeing me,” Juliana fought through something that went through her nerves as though she were queasy. “Please just leave me alone. Please?”
“We really miss you,” Lacey nodded to acknowledge Juliana’s feelings, but continued on with her argument. “And honestly, I think Crispin and Amarys are starting to get upset about it. Kiki says-”
“PLEASE DON’T,” Juliana blurted out.
She stumbled a little on her feet before putting her forearms up to cross them. Surely Lacey would feel the importance of her own “NO” gesture.
Lacey’s eyes dropped, and her mood. But she kept her shoulders square.
“Okay. Well, why don’t you bring the other four of us somewhere sometime? You could tell us what happened in Paldea if you want.”
“I - but -” Juliana started to crumple emotionally and turned slightly to the wall, holding her upper arm with the opposite hand. “I don’t know if I want to. You guys are getting along with Kiki again and… I think that’s great. I just - I can’t. I’m working on talking to him - I need to talk to him but, I’m not OK enough to do that yet. Maybe this week.”
“Well, then, just promise one thing,” Lacey crossed her arms. “You really lit up the BB League. You made us believe in you and us and in ourselves. Just promise not to abandon us because of something Kiki did, will you?”
“Yeah, alright.”
Juliana awkwardly curved around Lacey and started heading down the stairs at the transition point. She looked over her shoulder.
“Hey, Lacey, I do miss you guys too, OK? I’m just dealing with some shit-”
“It’s OK!”
Her face surprisingly calm and collected, Lacey gave Juliana a big thumbs up.
“Just don’t leave us out forever, is all!”
“Yeah. Just don’t try to do anything, OK? It’s something him and I have to figure out.”
“Deal.”
One night, Juliana didn’t sleep.
She cried, and dozed off, but didn’t sleep. She looked through the pictures she’d taken back in Kitakami and gritted her teeth until she thought she heard one crack. She thought of calling Arven but didn’t want to burden him. She thought of calling Nemona but didn’t feel like listening to her not-mom go on a long-winded wisdom lecture. She thought of calling Penny, but something about thinking of Team Star right now felt too smothering.
She didn’t sleep, and laid (rolled, really) miserably until the sun was well up in Unova. Her eyes hurt like crazy, her vision was worse than before and she felt her blood like boiling oil.
The knife had to be pulled out of the wound at some point and it might as well be now.
Though - she would regret unblocking Kieran on their social media app within seconds as notifications came pouring in. He’d sent something like two dozen messages and even the first few words of each one filled her with hatred and disgust. If these were things being said by anyone else, they’d catch her attention a different way…!
It wasn’t just the life-or-death situation they’d been in which had fundamentally changed her brain chemistry, it was how he’d used her as the turning point to ruin everything…! Even while she was looking out for him!
“Juliana”: Kieran I have you unblocked now because I need to talk to you in person about what happened. I can do my best to be mature about it but I’m not happy and I don’t think I can stand there listening to you apologize. So I guess I need to talk and I need you to show up. On time. I’ll do my best to listen to you depending on how things go.
“Juliana”: I’m pretending not to see anything you sent before because it looks like a lot of bullshit that is not helping so if it’s important say it to my face.
“Juliana”: After lunch closes go to this spot in Canyon [ATTACHMENT]
“Juliana”: DO NOT lead me on now that you’re unblocked just be straight about it and confirm. If you decide to be stupid about this, then I’m sorry but you missed your chance and I’m going to have to go back home and move on.
“Kieran”: I’m sorry I hurt you I know I did and it’s affecting everyone else
Kieran is typing…
“Juliana”: Stop
“Juliana”: Not doing this over text I know the hard way that’s not how you do fights OK? That’s not helping so stop
“Juliana”: After today’s lunch at [ATTACHMENT] yes or no?
“Kieran”: Yes ok but I don’t know if I can get up there I might need to go with you
“Juliana”: ???
“Kieran”: Not everyone has a one of a kind ride pokémon that can climb sprint and fly I’ll do my best to go there
Juliana started typing a response to the passive-aggressive dig about her ‘Raidons, yet another of a thousand digs about how perfect and awesome and special she must be that ate at her soul and had made her feel like she didn’t earn anything that happened on her Treasure Hunt - but I did! My friends do want me there and I did earn it! How fucking dare you make me feel that way? -
-but ultimately deleted it. He was the less mature out of them and she wasn’t about to argue with an idiot at his level.
Instead, she white-knuckled her phone in her hand and pulled on her own hair, trying to catch at least a little sleep to fill the next handful of hours.
She got to the spot ten minutes early, and before long was huddled with her back to the wind, fidgeting by tapping her heels on the ground, hunched over her phone. She wasn’t even doing anything - just opening and closing the same apps over and over.
She managed to work herself up before Kieran even arrived.
She had an imaginary argument with the boy over how he was late, even though she knew he had just said he might have trouble getting all the way up there.
She had an imaginary argument with herself.
“Why do you still call him Kiki?”
“Because I still care about him!”
“He fucking betrayed you!”
“I know!”
“What could he possibly do to make up for who he is? You saw who he was when he decided to treat Pokémon like that.”
“I know! I don’t know!”
“Why do you still care about Kiki? Fuck him!”
“I can’t just turn my back on the whole BB League. We’re going to talk and I’m going to do my best to be mature because I still care about him.”
“Stop calling him Kiki; stop caring; let go and let yourself have a nice life.”
“I can’t just do that, and I won’t. That’s not me.”
“Why do ‘you’ have to be someone who deals with this stuff?”
“Because ‘I’ am the person my friends want and need and ‘I’ am the person who’s ready and able to be a Champion. I’m not giving up on myself and my life over one person treating me badly.”
“One person, huh? Just any person?”
“...Even my friend.”
The wind, up so high, was getting obnoxious.
Why does the fucking Terarium have to have so much wind? Rationally, she knew the dome was large enough and engineered enough to have micro-weather systems, but–
At that moment, mid-thought, she heard someone’s voice pipe up right behind her-
“Hey-”
-and she was so badly startled, her heart jumping into her throat and the rest of her dropping down past her stomach, that she got up swinging. The side of her arm and fist made direct contact with the one who’d snuck up on her.
“Ow! OK… Ow… Ugh…”
Kieran sounded miserable as he rubbed his face, but at least he wasn’t fighting back.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” Juliana cried out, confused and exasperated.
“Well, I was calling you and you didn’t hear! I’m sorry; Arceus,” Kieran whined. “Well I guess I deserve to be hit, right?”
He meant it genuinely, but that wasn’t how Juliana heard it.
She’d meant to start off on a more composed note, but she heard an attack and so she already fumed.
“I don’t know what is wrong with you, and I don’t know what has been wrong with you this whole time or if everything changed while I wasn’t looking, and that’s frankly upsetting me even more, that maybe I never really knew you, and maybe everything I ever felt about you was wrong,” she half-shouted, her voice cracking a couple of times in its strained pitch.
“I don’t know either, I just know what I was thinking at the time, and that I was doing what-”
“No - you did wrong by Pokémon when they were at their most vulnerable - multiple times! And that’s just the start of it! Pokémon are innocent when it comes to humans, Kiki! Terapagos was asleep in its own thousands-of-years home! How can you think you were doing anything right? You didn’t care! You and Briar were acting out of pure greed at the expense of an innocent pokémon that had powers beyond our wildest imaginations and you didn’t think! You didn’t care!”
Kieran just frowned and held his tongue, fully at a loss to respond to that.
“You know how - you remember Nemona? You know how she responded to me winning all my battles with her? With fucking glee! She was happy for me! And it’s not even so bad for me that we could’ve died! Like it’s horrifying, though, and maybe I can’t get over it this time - you know why? Because I’ve been in a life or death situation in Area Zero before! Okay? Are you hearing this? I’ve been almost killed in Area Zero before. And that doesn’t scare me anymore because my friends there STAYED ON MY SIDE! So who else are you going to hurt the next time you feel a hole in yourself you can’t fill?”
“I-” Juliana saw Kieran’s face wobble as he held back tears, and the confusing emotions that warred in her heart only made her head swim more.
Juliana marched on through every disorganized tangent she’d painfully meditated on over the past two weeks. “Everyone fucking goes through that! Everyone I met after I moved to Paldea went through that! And I think Drayton’s even going through that right now! Do you see him hurting Pokémon? His team? Innocent Pokémon who don’t deserve to be hurt? Do you see him taking his anger out on forces beyond his control? Do you see him spitting on his friends and grinding them under his fucking boots? I don’t know how he seems okay now with how you treated him! Who are you going to hurt next?!”
“I was thinking of going home,” Kieran croaked, and tried to hold back a hiccup only for it to shake his whole body. “But I don’t know what to do to hurt the least people at this point. I was going to say-”
“Well I don’t fucking know either but everything you did against Ogerpon’s wishes, and everything you did to your own friends, and what the fuck you agreed to do with a fucked up adult none of us should have trusted - oh and I guess I should talk about what you did to me, Kiki! Do you have any idea what you did to me? ‘Cause now I see that it was all about you going all the way back to when we were fighting over Ogerpon!”
“I was going to say I miss when we were friends,” the miserable truth dribbles out of Kieran, though he freezes the moment that thought has left him in fear that it wasn’t OK to express that thought.
“Were we ever friends?!” Juliana’s voice pitched to a squeak as she choked up and tears clouded her eyes. “I was an object to you!”
Kieran was stunned into silence for a few seconds.
“We were friends! You were the one person who treated me like I deserved to be, like, loved! When my sister started getting uncomfortable that I was getting older, and-”
“You used me as something to breed all your ego on! You used me as an excuse to act out because I made the mistake of thinking we were comfortable with each other-”
“We were fucking friends, Juliana! I looked up to you! You were my only friend when I was at home!”
“What, your Pokémon don’t count for anything?” By this time, unable to control her face from shrivelling up in misery, Juliana was gesturing broadly with her arms instead.
“That’s not what I - OK, you didn’t need to make it out like that! Jules, I was going to say I’m sorry for dragging you into what I was going through! I looked up to you and I thought I could trust you to stay with me while I was so fucking unhappy I felt like I had to either fix it or just go haywire!”
“You did,” the shock of trying to explain the enormity of her complaints almost stunned her, “so much more than just drag me through your own problems. You did so much more than that to me. Do you NOT EVEN KNOW THAT?”
She stepped forward and grabbed Kieran firmly by the chest area of his gym hoodie. He recoiled backwards instinctively, placing much of his weight in her hands.
“Well you want to tell me right? What I did wrong? But I thought you were my friend and I could count on you…! Jules I -” -hiccup- “Do you want to scare me? ‘Cause you’re scaring me… This isn’t like who you were… but whatever I did that I don’t understand, you had me come out here so you could tell me, so…!”
I’m scaring me too, she thought, but what am I supposed to do? Back down now? If he has no idea what effect his actions had, he needs to hear it loud enough to take me seriously!
“Kieran, do you want me to forgive you? Is that what you were hoping for when you came out here? I read your ten thousand please forgive me messages, and do you even realize how thoughtless those are? When you don’t even know what you’re asking forgiveness for?” Juliana’s voice was going hoarse shouting over the wind and choking on the inside.
“I hoped things could at least be good in the club room again,” he confessed.
“Just so you can stab me in the back with a rusty knife later? I gave you an inch,” Juliana was no longer angrily yelling, but declaring in a raised voice, “and you took so much from me that, if I never took it back, everything I’ve worked up to would be gone now. Whatever friendship I thought we had and you thought we had - you decided that wasn’t important anymore back when you almost let me and you and your sister and that fucking teacher die miles under the earth because you couldn’t own up to the destruction you started. Is that fucking clear? I don’t want that to be how it is, Kiki! And - and, and in a way I regret it! But you gave up on any chance you had to be my friend when you left us to die and had to be begged to help us survive! Do you understand that?!”
In Paradise Protection everyone had each others’ backs! Even the enemy really wanted us to live! The contrast between those times and what Kieran did before Terapagos drove her confusion about the meaning of their relationship deep as a nail.
“C-crystal,” Kiki sniffed hard, starting to hyperventilate, “fucking clear, b-but Jules,” -gasp- “I really do-”
“You need to understand how everything you did was about using me.”
When she placed emphasis on those words, she set Kiki down until his weight was on his feet, and pushed him back out of her personal space.
“At any time you could’ve listened to me and even your sister about how you were genuinely improving and that was good enough, but what you did instead - was -”
As each word fell from Juliana’s lips, a sequence of moments happened, each taking until a few words later into her sentence for her brain to see and begin to understand.
First, Kieran waved his arms around like he’d lost his balance. Some seconds passed.
Then, he looked down at his feet. Seconds later, Juliana traced his line of sight to see he was standing on almost nothing. She was still talking. Her brain hadn’t caught up yet.
Then, Kieran took a panicked step forward. When he tried to take a second step, he tripped on his own heel. In lunging forward from that trip, he lost his balance as his hips tilted back.
Juliana stopped speaking, but her brain had yet to catch up into reaction.
Kieran disappeared from sight in the time it took to blink. His palm smacked the crumbled edge of the black cliff and slid painfully as he failed to grab on.
Juliana reached out, as if in slow motion, and swiped at nothing in the air. She knelt down over that cliff-edge and did it again. Kieran was already long out of reach.
She only briefly saw the confusion in his face.
She watched him get small enough below her that she couldn’t make out any detail anymore.
She watched him make contact with the next stone cliff platform sixty, seventy feet below and bounce. Some bird Pokémon flew away. With a small delay, the thwump sound, sharp and a little bit hollow, rung in her ears.
The hand she reached out with uselessly trailed in the wind at nothing.
At this distance, it took many long unbreathing seconds to see the movement of blood pushing its way through the thin layer of dirt and dust.
But when she did, and her eyes had adjusted, she saw it splattered everywhere.
She saw that his clothes weren’t at correct angles as if something was wrong underneath them.
Juliana’s heart blocked her throat.
She made it there slowly and carefully with Miraidon.
She had to fight it; she had to punch it hard in the nose, to get it to return to its Poke Ball. The last thing she wanted was her Pokemon getting involved in this.
The lack of movement might have been obvious, but in the moment, it was deeply disturbing.
She didn’t know how to approach.
“Kiki?”
Deep down, she knew he was dead. She’d just never… never engaged with a… dead body… before…
She got on her knees and scooted carefully over, like he might leap up and kill her too.
She found him with his eyes closed, blood and plasma pooling around his eyelashes where tears might be. She found him with his jaw slightly open and cocked to one side, blood beginning to slowly leak from there too.
She found a spot on his head where his hair was slicked with blood. Juliana touched it curiously, as if trying to check on the wound.
She found it too hot and too tender. MUCH too tender.
And so the demons of everything she could see wrong with his body rose and struck at her all at once. Only the lonely wind witnessed Hell rise and ravage Juliana’s heart.
I didn’t mean to drop you!
She sat on her knees in that deep well of isolation, conflicted between recoiling at the grotesqueness of a dead body and desperate not to let her friend lie all alone.
I didn’t mean to drop you! I didn’t mean to drop you! I didn’t mean to drop you!
So, so many thoughts and an unknown amount of time passed.
The greater demons I didn’t mean to! and You just killed him! and Why didn’t he tell me I pushed him over the edge? and Everyone is going to despise you! and How dare you be alive, now? and I didn’t mean to!!, ROARED, immobilizing the two-time Champion, shredding and boiling her once noble and cheerful soul down to a sludge that might never know itself ever again.
Shadows danced around the edges wherever she tried to escape, just to make her head spin even more - You know, this could have happened to Arven at any point in his journeys. How are you going to tell his sister? WHO are you going to tell? How would you even confess to this? How are you going to get away WITHOUT confessing to this? Your life is over. You’ll either pay with everything you’ve ever built or with your soul. You can’t leave them. You can’t just disappear and hurt more people. You can’t exist without being doused in this blood. Kiki was younger than you and he was struggling; shame on you! Oh, he died thinking of how much you hated him. He was younger than you! He looked up to you! Will you end up being arrested in Unova or Paldea? Or in Kitakami? When will you be arrested? How long can you avoid it?
“Kiki, please come on, get up,” her voice barely broke into sound.
She begged the empty wind to fix this nightmare.
“You were being an immature little shit but that’s OK, because you were willing to hear me out. You were trying to do good by me and I was too pissed off to care.”
She bargained. She scooted forward slightly just to grip at his sweater, and she buried her head between her arm and knees just as the violent wracking cries shivered out of her.
“I’m sorry…”
She was a murderer now, and her life was about to be gone. Her concept of her morality oscillated violently between it’s not my fault - it was an accident and I killed him.
“I’m sorry, Kiki!”
Juliana sobbed, her words slurring together as she cried.
“I’m sorry, please tell me it’s gonna be OK, you can - you can hit me in the face too, just… Kiki, the League is going to be wondering…”
Juliana cried so hard it almost made her fall over into the blooded dust.
She held tight in her fist Kieran’s dead body, growing colder by the second.
His blood gathered now in grotesque pools.