Chapter Text
Coming to the Den regularly is meant to be for training, and for training only. Silver has sworn that to himself, and he stays true to that as best as he can, despite all the interruptions he has to endure.
Clair is annoying, if she decides to talk to the redhead, but he doesn’t let her ranting about the elders or her stupid cousin Lance get himself distracted from his training.
It takes a lot of restraint to not give in and join her in her rage, because quite honestly, he doesn’t fancy the elders either – Lance is a whole other topic.
He has to beat that man.
Sometimes, the League Leader stops by, which is also annoying, but Silver doesn’t fight conversations with him as much as he does with Clair. His questions may be even more annoying than Clair’s are, but he asks them sparingly, and when Silver throws a big enough fit, he leaves Silver alone without making a big deal out of it.
Clair is a little harder to shake off, and he never knows why she seeks contact with him if he is just as much of an annoyance to her as she is to him.
Whenever Clair asks Silver something, it’s typically why he’s there and not somewhere else. Silver just says something about how it’s none of her business or that training here is closer to where he sleeps. That’s not even a complete lie, since the Pokémon Centre of Blackthorn City, where he mostly stays in, isn’t too far away from the cave.
Lance doesn’t seem annoyed to see him, so Silver isn’t confused about why the man always tries to interact with him. Doesn’t mean he likes to, but still.
“You know that one of Sneasel’s talent is to sneak up to its prey, right?” Clair lectures him out of nowhere. “You should make more use of that.”
Silver doesn’t pay her comment attention and instead commands his Sneasel to practise another Icy Wind, “accidentally” right in her direction.
Silver looks at her, not moving a single muscle in his face as the blue-haired woman growls and shudders.
“Oh, oops, didn’t saw you there. Maybe you should make more use of your voice to announce yourself, before you bug other people.”
Silver’s Sneasel makes some giggling noises. Silver unashamedly smirks at Clair, who is now clenching her hands into fists.
“You’re pushing it really hard there, boy!”
“Whatever.”
He’s been often enough in the Den to know that Clair just likes to act as if she has all the power. She may rank high, but her cousin definitely has more to say than she has, and even Lance has to bow to the orders of the elders.
“Why aren’t you doing normal kid’s stuff anyways?” the woman asks Silver when he wants to walk further into the cave.
Silver scoffs. “Normal kid’s stuff”
What does that even mean?
Should he just copy his stupid rival, Ethan?
He’s probably loafing around somewhere with his friends. He saw them once in National Park with their Pokémon out, talking away as their partners frolicked through the grass. Silver doesn’t get them. That one girl, Kris, is probably an even stronger trainer than Ethan, so why doesn’t she challenge him? And why does Ethan just… do nothing. He’s Champion now.
“Hey, come back and listen here, you little brat!” Clair now demands. “You may have Lance’s blessings to train here, but don’t think one second that you can act as if you own this place!”
Without giving Silver the chance to point out that he didn’t do anything wrong, she turns on her heels and walks away. He looks after her, shakes his head and mumbles “Whatever, crazy woman” and resumes coaching Sneasel.
‘Just what is her problem?’, Silver asks himself. It’s not like he does something illegal when he’s at the Den, so what does she care?
Sneasel nods at his trainer. Silver mimics it, his smile not as sure as the Pokémon’s.
A few hours later, every Pokémon in his team is done with training for that day, but Silver still is in the Den.
The sun is already gone and there is little natural light left. The lanterns that are sprawled around in the Den have turned on and illuminate the cave.
Silver and Sneasel sit on the floor of the wooden platform, their feet dangling through the railing’s bars above the water. Silver sometimes tries his luck and fishes in the water, but only Magikarp seem to be interested in his bait. He knows he could make a powerful Gyarados out of the Magikarp he has once caught, but he lacks the patience. It would just end sadly for both of them, so he never bothered to try.
Ethan has caught the Gyarados that was causing problems in the Lake of Rage during their journey. Lucky him never had to put himself through the pain of training and evolving a Magikarp. But then again, Ethan would almost certainly not have a problem with taking on a Pokémon as tedious to evolve and as weak as a Magikarp. He would also probably encourage it when it splashes and doesn’t do anything else.
How that boy became Champion is a miracle to Silver.
He shouldn’t have been able to defeat the Elite Four and Lance with the attitude he has. Always running around with a big smile on his face and being quite a bit naïve – he can count himself lucky that Team Rocket is too stupid to actually have tried and convince him that what they do is something beneficial for Kanto and Johto.
But maybe Silver underestimates Ethan on that one. After all, he also was very determined to bring down the remains of that criminal scum.
Silver still hates it that he wasn’t the one who put an end to them. He would never admit it, but he is grateful that they are silenced nonetheless.
Hopefully forever.
If not, then Silver will make it his personal life goal to hunt them down once and for all. He would beat every single one of their weak pathetic asses if that’s what it takes to make them never scurry back into either region.
Sneasel puts a claw on Silver’s arm, sensing that his trainer is thinking hard about something.
“’ts nothing,” Silver mumbles in response.
He’s still new to the whole “Talking to your Pokémon” thing, and although he’s gotten the hang of having Sneasel or Feraligatr walking besides him, it’s still weird.
Silver opens his mouth to let the Pokémon a little bit in on his thoughts, when he hears footsteps. He immediately sighs and makes a face.
They are unmistakably Clair’s footsteps.
“I just came to apologise,” Clair’s voice reaches Silver’s ears. She stands a few metres behind him and Sneasel. “You’re not doing anything you’re not allowed to. I just wanted to give you some advice, that’s all.”
Silver hears her boots clicking on the wood again, indicating that she is about to leave again.
“Hold it!”
He gets up and turns around to look at her. Clair listens, standing with her arms crossed and giving him more or less the evil eyes.
“Do you mean that or did the elders make you say it?” the redhead inquests.
Clair rolls her eyes and shifts her weight onto her other leg, “Not every nice thing I do is just because the elders tell me to do, you dumbass.”
Silver still doesn’t really trust her. “And Lance didn’t either?”
“Boy, you’re not as stupid as you look!” Clair groans. “How should he know? How should the elders know? Think! You’ve got a brain – use it! I know you’ve done that before, for crying out loud.”
And just like that she’s gone again.
“Weirdo,” Silver mumbles.
It’s a word he uses often for Clair, and sometimes for Lance, less for Ethan’s friend Lyra, but still more than for Ethan. They are all weird in their own way, he figures, but Clair sure takes the cake for being the weirdest of the bunch.
In the back of his head, he feels not great whenever he thinks that they are weird – Save for Clair, of course, he would never feel bad for calling her weird. He feels especially not great when it’s Ethan or Lyra.
They aren’t actually weird, Silver would have to admit, if he wasn’t such a weakling. They are just nice, friendly and happy people, and that is apparently enough for him to think they are weird.
Ethan has asked him a few times if he wants to meet up with him and his friends, but Silver always declined. He has seen Lyra once or twice, maybe, during their journey through Johto, and his other friend, Kris, he knows even less. She seems to be not nervous at all, the complete opposite to Lyra, and is definitely the most relaxed of the trio. He hasn’t looked her in the eyes, though, when Ethan once brought the two girls with him to visit the Den. The green eyes of hers have been staring at him in such an intense analytical way that he feared if he would return the eye contact, she would find out about all of his darkest secrets and feelings.
He doesn’t get why Ethan asks him in the first place, seeing how they’re rivals and nothing else. Needless to say, Silver never accepts the invitations.
Whenever Ethan crashing his training in the Den, though, Silver doesn’t send him away, and instead listens to everything that chatterbox brabbles on about.
His gestures are expressive, his voice is loud, just as his laughter, and Silver hates it. He hates it and always tells Ethan that he’s disrupting his training. Then the raven-haired boy would ask Silver if he should go and then Silver would say yes. But sometimes, when Silver makes him aware of his disruptiveness, Ethan goes away on his own.
He hates it when Ethan complies just like that, because that means Ethan didn’t really want to be around him in the first place.
If people want to be around others they would do anything and not just run away at the first difficulty they face, right?
Reminding himself of that, he realises that this means that Clair actually wanted to talk with him when she returned to apologise.
Silver huffs.
Maybe he should join her ranting about Lance one day after all...
But that day is not today, so he gets up and decides he has stared enough into the water.
“Come on,” he tells Sneasel, “we should go.”
Sneasel gets up as well, nodding in agreement.
At the entrance of the Den stands Clair, talking with her cousin Lance. Silver wonders what they are talking about. It must be something serious, judging how the man is wrinkling his forehead even more than usual and, just like Clair, has crossed his arms.
For a moment, Silver thinks about eavesdropping.
He doesn’t get to decide, because Lance has already spotted him when Silver weighs the options.
Upon seeing Silver, Lance quickly un-furrows his brows and waves to him. Clair turns to look who her cousin is waving to. Her face doesn’t soften when she sees Silver, but then again, she also doesn’t look angrier than before.
“Hey, Silver!” Lance greets him when he’s close enough. Silver returns the greeting with a half-hearted “hi”, intending to walk past them and leave the Den. But Lance had other plans. “How was training?”
Silver huffs, “Just how training is.”
“Did you listen to my advice?” Clair asks, scanning him up and down.
“No,” Silver lies.
He did, actually. He just doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction.
“You’re welcome,” Clair says, seeing right through his lie. Her gleeful smirk makes Silver’s blood boil. He clenches his hands into fists, inside his jacket pockets and glares at her.
“I didn’t thank you,” Silver spits out and stomps away, Sneasel mimicking his trainer.
When they arrived in the Centre, Silver is a bit upset that he left the Den like that.
Maybe he could have challenged Lance for a rematch then. Not for that day, but they could have maybe set out a date. His visits in the Den aren’t regular and that makes challenging the man outside of League Battles a bit of a difficult objective.
But now he has already left and going back just to ask him for a battle sounds way too embarrassing, so he leaves it be.
Some other day will have to do.
“I tell you, the boy reeks trouble,” Clair tells her cousin for the hundredth time since she has first met the young redhead.
Lance closes his eyes, “It’s the way he’s acting that concerns me.”
Clair lets a breath of air out, “He is a brat. Reminds me a bit how you were when we were younger.”
At that the man laughs and opens his eyes again. “Don’t you mean yourself?” he asks his cousin, a smile drenched by nostalgia on his face.
Both of them hadn’t been exactly laid-back children. They were always looking for a new challenge, for something that proves that they were the cousin that is the most powerful dragon trainer and not the other one.
Their families had quite a lot to deal with them, and it was because of that uncontrollability and their impatience that they were allowed to start the actual, very discipline orientated Dragon Tamer Training way earlier than usual.
The right decision, everyone would say. Even Lance, and probably Clair too.
“Maybe,” the woman admits, rather reluctantly. “But he’s definitely more like you.”
Lance shrugs, “If you say so. You’re seeing him way more often than I do.”
“Yeah, about that,” Clair addresses the reason why she had called her busy League Leader cousin from his office up on Indigo Plateau all the way down to Blackthorn City, “the boy’s been here very often. He has been here even before that double battle. He comes very early – earlier than me – and leaves late, not sooner than he did today. All he does is train and annoy me to no end.”
Lance makes a serious face again.
Every time he learns something new about Silver, he grows more concerned.
Where and who in Arceus name are his parents?
“You don’t know where he comes from either, right?” Lance asks Clair. She shrugs, huffing again.
“He said he lives close to the Den once, but no idea where exactly.”
‘That’s at least a little bit of info,’ Lance thinks.
“That could help,” he thanks his cousin. “Could you please keep an eye on him when he comes here?”
Clair laughs, which Lance doesn’t take too kindly. He stares her down like a stern older brother.
“I’m not a babysitter, Lance!” Clair eventually states, after she calmed down. “Watch the kid on your own, if you’re so desperate to adopt him.”
Lance should never have talked with Clair about all of this. It was better when he would just talk with Looker about everything. At least that man takes him serious and doesn’t make inappropriate jokes.
“I just don’t like how no one seems to know the kid’s family or the kid himself,” Lance argues. “I have a bad feeling about him.”
That last sentence strikes something in the woman. Her mocking tone is gone and her face sober.
“Don’t push yourself too hard.” Her voice is resolute, not allowing the man to counter her. He doesn’t want to, yet neither can he agree.
He sighs and turns his head away, his brows deeply furrowed. “I cannot and will not make the same mistakes again, Clair. Not this time.”
Her cousin is a stubborn one. Everyone in their family is, really, herself included, but in her opinion, Lance is the stubbornest of them all. So she knows arguing back won’t help. She can only be there for him.
“Do what you must, then.”