TEEN: - Ongoing The Trainer With No Dreams (PG-13, Original)

[Dragonfree]

So this idea that's been cooking in my head is being written now. Fweeness.

Basically this is my second trainer fic, but unlike The Quest for the Legends, I've actually already made up approximately what the plot is about now as I'm starting it. All comments are appreciated.




Chapter 1: Timothy

It was a lovely morning in Buttercup Town and a perfect opportunity for a bored teenager to escape momentarily from the mansion of his stern aunt by offering to go to town and do her shopping for her.

Timothy McGordon Lee inhaled the sweet morning air with relish, stretching his face momentarily up towards the warm rays of the sun in the faint hope that they would make him look a little less like a dead body. Sitting inside a stuffy library with his nose in a book all day had done that to his skin.

He let the air out with a sigh, opening his eyes to smile at the Haunter that hovered over his shoulder; the Pokémon was grimacing at the sunlight, that uncomfortable blinding phenomenon that he was not made to understand the human’s affection for. Tim looked up the street he was standing on. Simple houses on both sides and a couple of intersecting roads. It wasn’t the biggest or most interesting town around, that was for sure.

He blinked sleepily and almost subconsciously tried to improve the look of his hair with his hands. It had been naturally caramel-brown, but a couple of years ago he had dyed it purplish-black and done it spiky in a perhaps slightly comical imitation of his ever-present Pokémon companion. He had been hoping it would perhaps attract some female attention – naïve hopes, he had now realized: being homeschooled and coming painfully seldom to town, not to mention being filthy rich, living in a mansion and being followed everywhere by a cynical Haunter who would without warning make telepathic remarks that dripped with sarcasm at every opportunity, was not a good recipe for popularity.

Not that he particularly minded that part. The natural desire for human company seemed considerably trivialized by the ever-present Ghost Pokémon, even though he admittedly functioned more as a shoulder muse or voice in his head than as ‘company’. It was more simply a dull need for doing something in a halfway normal manner at last, after having been the village weirdo for his whole life. But he was subtly fond of that hairdo anyway, and had ended up keeping it.

Tim realized with horror that he had been thinking about his hair for about twenty seconds now and quickly stopped that to walk hastily on along the street.

He looked to the right, running his gaze past the small houses. His eyes stopped at Professor Hawthorn’s house; it took a moment’s realization to notice that the Professor himself was standing outside the door. The old man stretched his aging back with awkward difficulty before turning, adjusting his rounded spectacles and noticing the teenager heading toward him.

“Timothy!” the Professor called with delight. “Long time, no see!”

“Professor!” Tim called back before sprinting the last few meters towards the Professor, one of the few people in town that he could generally tolerate. He smiled and shook Hawthorn’s hand.

“How are you doing, Professor?”

“Oh, just fine,” Hawthorn chuckled. “Been preparing the starter giveaway. I’m expecting Professor Elm to deliver them to me today. Speaking of which, are you too getting a starter tomorrow?”

The old man smiled kindly, but Haunter grimaced and rolled his eyes, knowing he was just out of the Professor’s line of vision: “Oh, dear, it’s that time of year again,” his telepathic voice sounded in the back of Tim’s mind.

Tim laughed politely. “Sorry, Professor. I’m still not interested.”

Hawthorn shook his head. “Honestly, Timothy,” he said gravely, “you’re getting too old. You’re what, fifteen now? I hope you know that the longer you wait, the more difficult it is to start if you ever change your mind. All the kids your age are now training for the Long-Time Trainers’ League, and you haven’t even started the First-Timers’ League! You will regret this for your whole life if you don’t go. There is no feeling more humiliating than being beaten in battle by a much younger child.”

“How persuasive,” Haunter’s voice commented in Tim’s head. “Does he realize there are already eleven-year-olds who could whip your ass if you became a Pokémon trainer now?”

“Stop it,” Tim silently scolded, not without a hint of amusement. “You’re making me giggle. Professor Hawthorn will be hurt if he notices.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever want to be a trainer,” he just said to the Professor. “It’s just never seemed that appealing to me. I don’t get what the fuss is all about.”

Professor Hawthorn stroked his white beard and shook his head. “You are such a strange child. Every boy literally and figuratively dreams of being a Pokémon trainer, but no, not you. Why are you so different? Why don’t you have dreams of adventures and glory like everyone else? You always say you’re ‘just not interested’, but it has to go deeper than that! Everybody is interested! What is it that you dream of, if not Pokémon training?”

Tim looked at him, his smile skewing a little as Haunter raised his eyebrows. “I… I don’t dream,” the boy said distantly, opening his mouth as if to say something else but then closing it again. The Professor looked at him blankly.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” Haunter muttered, and Tim nervously agreed.

“You… don’t dream, you say?” the Professor asked hesitantly, narrowing his eyes at the boy. “Literally?”

“Never had a dream in my life,” Tim replied truthfully, shaking his head. As he saw the old man peer at him suspiciously, his stomach churned in noticeable discomfort. He looked at his watch, hoping the Professor would take the hint and tell him to get going, but his wish was not fulfilled.

“Well,” Hawthorn said suddenly, “if that is really true, it’s probably that darned Ghost’s fault. Having a Pokémon that has gained notoriety as a Dream Eater follow you around since you were a newborn can’t be very beneficial for dreaming, can it? I’d get rid of it if I were you.”

“You wish,” Haunter said coldly, glaring at the Professor out of the corner of his eye and folding his arms, at least as far as it was possible with disembodied hands. Tim felt most like a bucket of icy water had just been dumped on his head.

“Haunter is my only friend,” Tim replied defensively. “What do you think I care about some dumb nonsensical visions that normal people supposedly have in the night? It sounds pretty damn loony if you ask me!”

Perhaps the Professor noticed the sudden harshness and distance in Tim’s voice. In any case he muttered some form of apology and turned distractedly around, finishing the uncomfortable conversation with a half-hearted, “Well, if you change your mind, anyway, you’re welcome to come see me tomorrow morning.”

As the Professor shuffled hastily back into his house, Tim turned back in the direction of the shop and walked on, trying to act like nothing had happened despite his trembling hands.

“Change your mind? We’ll see about that, you old coot,” Haunter said coldly.

Tim did not respond.

 

[Dragonfree]

Note: Chapter two is not consistent with the first version of chapter one, so if you haven't already, read the revised one.

Chapter 2: Cynthia

“You look down, kid.”

Tim nodded absent-mindedly, switching the heavy bag of groceries to his other hand.

“You don’t need to take it so damn seriously that he wanted you to get rid of me, you know,” Haunter added. “I know you love me, but I know nobody else does, and so should you.”

Tim shook his head. “It’s not that,” he replied. “It’s the reason he thought I should get rid of you.”

It had never crossed Tim’s mind before that his lack of dreams was in fact Haunter’s fault, but the Professor’s theory made considerably more sense than he was prepared to admit. To think that all this time, his best friend, by now just about inseparable from him, had perhaps been the cause of his condition…

He wondered, not for the first time, why his parents had left him with his aunt and a Haunter as the only individuals for him to rely on before their mysterious disappearance. Not for the first time, he found no sensible answer. He wondered, not for the first time either, whether his parents were dead or just hiding somewhere. The image of his aunt popped up in his head, definitely not for the first time, asking him crossly whether he thought she wouldn’t tell him if she knew.

“Hmm,” Haunter said, snapping him out of his private thoughts. “It makes some sense, now that I think about it.”

“And it doesn’t make you concerned?” Tim asked aloud, stopping in the middle of the road. “That it might be your fault?”

“Hey, kid,” Haunter replied, sounding slightly offended, “don’t try to put the blame on me. I don’t have a choice whose dreams I suck up from the environment. It just grabs whatever is near unless I concentrate on someone in particular. Don’t make a big deal about it on me! Didn’t you just say that dreams sound like loony experiences, anyway? Be glad I rid you of them.”

Tim sighed. “Let’s just get home.”

They turned off the main road onto the small dirt road leading to the McGordon mansion. It was inside some small woods that just allowed the rooftop to be seen from Buttercup Town over the trees. When he was younger, he had often been greeted on his occasional trips to town with his aunt by kids keeping at a safe distance while whispering among themselves and pointing not-so-secretly at the mansion. He still always felt a twinge of some uncomfortable feeling of not belonging when he walked this way.

When they reached the huge front door of the mansion, Haunter simply floated through the wall. It was a trick he liked doing to cheer Tim up; he let out a forced laugh as he knocked on the door and thought gloomily of all the children over in Buttercup Town who could carry the keys to their homes.

The door opened with a creak as the simple face of their servant Jack peered out. Jack was one of the townspeople, a rather ordinary, dark-haired man of about thirty years old who had not too long ago gotten the position after his predecessor died. He still lived in town, but came there every morning to work and keep them company and left in the evening. He also had an adorable nine-year-old daughter back in town whose curious, innocent smile could always get Tim in a good mood if he wasn’t already.

“Hello, Tim,” Jack just said and smiled politely. He was never very formal in his job, and his aunt didn’t seem to mind, which Tim was grateful for. The stiff demeanor of the previous one had tended to make Tim nervous around him.

“Hi, Jack,” he just greeted, stepping through the open door to reunite with Haunter. “I’m just going up to the library; tell my aunt, will you? Oh, and bring her those groceries.”

“Of course,” Jack replied, took the bags and walked towards the marble staircase on the right.

Tim smiled after him. He couldn’t help liking Jack; he had those pleasant gray eyes and invariably seemed to enjoy his job, which had always puzzled Tim a little but gave the mansion a friendlier, more trustworthy atmosphere.

But Tim looked left and ran up the left staircase to his aunt’s private library, his favorite place in the world. It may have made him pale and the stuffy air may have been unhealthy, but he loved reading more than anything else, and since his aunt had first decided to let him into it, he had hardly left it out of fascination with the shelves upon shelves of interesting books. The worst part was he had by now nearly finished reading every single book of interest in it, and he had no clue what he would do once he was done. As a kid, before being let into the library, he had never liked to play make-believe games like other children his age, and would have been essentially bored to tears, had it not been for Haunter’s endless love for entertaining the boy.

He shuddered at the thought as he pushed open the wooden door of the library and stepped into the one place he felt truly safe and relaxed. He closed the door behind him and sat down on his chair, still where he had left it last time, to sigh a little.

He glanced at the dusty shelf next to him where he usually kept the books he was in the middle of to find it empty. It took him a second to remember that he had finished that book the previous day and it was time to look for a new one. His mind wandered, looking for a subject worthy of research.

Dreams.

Tim had read all the books on dreams found there already, but he felt that this was a good time to reread some of it. He stood up, remembering one in particular that had been good and walked to the shelf where he thought he had last seen it.

He stopped there. A book was lying open on the windowsill on the right. He looked at it curiously; he never left books lying around except on that particular shelf.

“Has Auntie been reading or something?” he wondered aloud, picking up the book as Haunter, who had been looking around near the ceiling, looked down at him. He had been under the impression that his aunt hardly used the library at all. He closed the book and turned it to read the title and front cover.

“Holy crap, Haunter!” he exclaimed. “She wasn’t just reading it – she wrote it!”

Haunter descended, his expression very skeptical. “How could she have written it? Last time I checked she spent all day watching TV.”

“Well, it says right here,” Tim said, still astonished. “The Curse, by Cynthia McGordon!”

Haunter put up a thoughtful expression. “Right. So either she wrote it, or she found it in a bookstore and felt so offended by some writer having stolen her name that she bought the book and is now secretly writing this other Cynthia McGordon hatemail whenever you are not around.”

Tim turned the book over. “She wrote it all right,” he said and pointed at the small black-and-white picture of the author on the back cover. The thick curly hair, skinny face, square glasses and thin lips could not be mistaken for anyone else.

“Intriguing,” Haunter commented. Tim nodded in agreement as he turned the book over again and had a quick look at the first page, but then his face fell in disappointment.

“Damn. It’s fiction.”

Haunter rolled his eyes as Tim handed him the book. “I’ll never understand what you have against fiction.”

“Why would I want to read about something that’s not real?” Tim insisted for the umpteenth time, folding his arms.

“They’re right when they call you weird, kid,” the ghost Pokémon just said and shook his head, hovering up towards the ceiling with The Curse in his temporarily solidified hands. Tim just rolled his eyes back and found the dream book on the shelf, pulled it out, wiped the dust off it and sat down to read.

As it turned out, he ended up rereading the entire book, staying decisively silent to Haunter about some forgotten but familiar passages:

Recently, scientific evidence has seemed to suggest that the role of dreams as a part of sleep is to aid the development of the sections of the brain concerned with imagination, creativity, adventurousness and daring. This seems logical as dreams involve mentally seeing unreal events and absurdities and often involve the dreamer in a situation more exciting than his or her daily life. Thus we may expect a person who does not dream, assuming there were otherwise no interruptions to his or her REM sleep, to feel unmotivated to participate in new and unknown activities, have a difficult time seeing imagined events in his or her mind’s eye, and fail to be excited by fictional material…

But just as he was reading the last lines of the book, there was a careful knock on the door.

“Tim?” he heard Jack’s voice. “Your aunt wants you for dinner. And I’ll be going home now. See you tomorrow.”

“See you, Jack,” Tim called back, finished the book quickly, put it back into its shelf and walked to the door.

“I’ll be seeing you, Haunter,” Tim said, looking up at the Pokémon. Haunter was still drifting near the ceiling with the book in his hands, but looked up now.

“It’s an interesting book, you know,” he said. “You’d like it if you weren’t so insistent on everything being real.”

“Shut up,” Tim muttered, but couldn’t help smiling to himself as he opened the door to leave Haunter in the library. His aunt didn’t like Haunter, so she didn’t allow him to accompany Tim to dinner.

He pushed the large door of the upstairs dining room, stepping carefully inside. His aunt was sitting by the middle of the longer end of the long dinner table as usual, and Tim took his seat opposite her without words, only barely sparing her a quick look. Her hair had once been a vibrant red, but had begun to gray early and was now slowly all acquiring the dull, lifeless silver of an old woman, tragically changing her otherwise beautiful face to seem tired and weatherworn. She was also wearing a dress. In fact, she was always wearing a dress. Tim suspected she was mildly obsessive-compulsive about clothing.

She pushed the fried fish and potatoes towards Tim and he put some on his plate. One thing he liked about his aunt was her cooking. Even as she put more and more work on Jack and was contemplating hiring another household helper, she always insisted on doing the cooking herself, for which he was grateful. The simplest of dishes became delicious when she made them.

“I found the book you wrote in the library,” he finally said after a few mouthfuls in silence.

His aunt looked up quickly, her expression momentarily frantic before she put up a fake smile. “Oh?”

Tim just nodded and looked at her.

“Did you… did you read it?” she asked oddly.

He shook his head, swallowing the potato he was chewing. “It’s fiction.”

His aunt’s face was blank for a second, but then she nodded all too quickly. “Oh, yes, of course.”

“Haunter is reading it, though,” Tim added. He was getting a little suspicious. His aunt was behaving very funnily – but perhaps she was just nervous about him finding out she had written a book. He tried to believe that, but just didn’t.

“How was your trip to town this morning?” she asked in a painfully obvious attempt to change the subject.

“Fine,” he answered and was not going to say anything more, but somehow he continued anyway: “I met Professor Hawthorn. I told him about my condition. He said he thought it was because of Haunter.”

His aunt looked at him with sudden hostility. “Haunter?”

Tim nodded, already regretting that he had said that. He did far too much of speaking more than he should.

She shook her head. “I should have gotten rid of him right at the beginning! We’re letting him go now, no matter what my sister said when she left you here. He’s done enough harm to you already. I’m sure Susan would have agreed if she had known…”

“We don’t know it’s because of him!” Tim said defensively. “It’s just what the Professor thought!”

“And of course he’s right!” his aunt shouted, standing up. “I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it before! I never should have let that vile creature into my house!”

“Leave him alone!” Tim protested. “He’s my best friend! He’s my only friend!”

“And he practically crippled you!” his aunt hissed, striding out of the dining room. Tim ran after her, not sure where she was going, but discovered it soon enough. She was not at all ignorant of her nephew’s habits, and did not even feel the need to ask before assuming that Haunter would be in the library.

She swung the door open, glaring at the ghost who was still reading peacefully near the ceiling.

“Get out, you evil creature,” she growled, an unsaid threat dripping from her voice. “Get out, and never show yourself here again.” She suddenly noticed what the Pokémon was reading as he looked at her, and immediately her eyes widened. “And stop reading my book!” she cried angrily.

“Do as she says,” Tim told Haunter silently, terrified. “We’ll figure something out tomorrow, right?”

The ghost nodded quickly and a moment later had disappeared through the wall, the solid book slamming against it and dropping to the ground.

Tim watched his aunt pick up the book and hold it protectively with her hand, taking a few deep breaths. “Go to bed,” she finally said. “Now.”

He was stunned. Never in his entire life had he seen his aunt so frantic, so angry or so unreasonably upset. Generally she was calm and friendly.

“Didn’t you hear me?” she shouted at him. “Get to bed!”

He recoiled, not daring to point out he had had hardly any dinner at all or to ask why she was suddenly behaving so strangely. “Yes, Auntie,” he just breathed before she stormed out.

He wasn’t bold enough to disobey. He silently walked out of the library and across the corridor to his room, got himself ready for bed and then curled up, still shaking, under his blanket.

He would have imagined that Haunter was beside him as usual and everything was as it normally was, but he was not one to imagine things for comfort. He just squeezed his eyes shut, cleared his mind by mentally reciting passages from some books he had read, and waited for sleep to sweep him away.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Very interesting. I never thought about that side effect before, but I suppose it makes perfect sense.