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The Pokémart’s automatic doors sighed open with a sluggish wheeze.
Lavender ducked inside, head low, hood half-fallen off her shoulder. Her boots, stained with oil and saltwater, thunked across the linoleum. The sleeves of her oversized hoodie swallowed her wrists, and her gloves—worn at the seams, giveaway items from a mechanic’s garage—barely kept the chill off her knuckles. Her hair, once carefully brushed by someone else’s hands, was now a chopped mess of purples and char—singed unevenly from a grease-fire months ago.
Outside, hovering a foot above the sidewalk, was Mewtwo.
No attempt to blend in. No attempt to hide. Just levitating in full daylight, arms folded in contemplative silence, his tail lazily curling like the stroke of a paintbrush. His body radiated that strange, glassy stillness—like the surface of a lake just before it’s disturbed by something deep beneath.
Children stared. Parents averted their eyes. A Camerupt across the street snorted uneasily and backed into its trainer. And yet, a Chespin approached. Small, scrappy, loud-mouthed—maybe emboldened by rumor, or simply too young to be afraid.
It blinked up at Mewtwo, leaf-ears twitching. “... You? Got caught by that human?”
Mewtwo didn’t flinch. “She has a heart of determination.”
The Chespin cocked its head. “A Rapidash said she spent a whole year buying regular Pokéballs. Didn’t use anything else.”
“She has a heart of generosity.”
“…She had a Masterball, didn’t she?”
“She was saving it.” A pause. “For something important.”
The Chespin squinted through the glass at the girl inside. She was crouched in the corner of the aisle, muttering to herself, comparing prices on stale crackers and bruised berries. She didn’t look like much. “…So what does that make you?” it asked.
Mewtwo followed her with his eyes. His expression didn’t change. But there was a quiet answer in his stillness, in the flick of his tail— he remembers it like it was just yesterday. The Chespin sighed, then scurried off, bored. But Mewtwo lingered in place, motionless save for the slow coil of his tail. The faint breeze stirred the air around him, but didn’t touch him.
He looked through the window again.
Lavender was crouched now, weighing the cost of a revive versus a week's worth of food. Her purple hair—once vivid, pristine—was a mess of chopped layers and sun-bleached ends. Her shoulders were broader than he remembered. Her skin, once too pale for this world, now bore the sun with a kind of rugged defiance. The sunburn suited her, in a strange, wrong way that somehow worked.
She was smaller, then, he thought.
He remembered the day she first stepped into the cave.
A trembling thing, barely taller than his knee. Her voice had cracked when she called out to him, a silhouette against the harsh sunlight bleeding in from the cave mouth. She hadn’t screamed or run. Just stared. And then, the question. Almost a whisper, a faint murmur.
“... What are you?”
He hadn’t known how to answer her. He’d stood in that shadow for years, invisible to the passing world, and she—this bruised little girl in a torn uniform and scuffed shoes—had looked straight at him like he was no more frightening than a riddle to be solved.
“You’re the one they’re looking for, aren’t you?” she had said. “The one my father’s group wants to catch.”
He had floated toward her, just slightly. Testing her resolve. She didn’t flinch. “Come with me,” she said. He remembered the exact way her voice had cracked—like she wasn’t used to asking for things. “My father’s a bad man. You shouldn’t let him find you.”
At the time, he’d been amused. Her ignorance was almost charming. She had no idea what he was—what he could do. No idea she was standing within a thought’s breadth of death. He had almost dismissed her. But she came back. Every day. With bruises, sunburn, and bags of regular Pokéballs. She never threw the Masterball. Not once. He’d wondered if she even had one.
And then—one day—he remembers this day like it was just yesterday. It felt like it.
The man in the lab coat. Cold smile. Same eyes. The one who had tried to lure him out with false data and low-tier scouts, stumbling too close to the island by accident. He hadn’t known Lavender was here. He hadn’t seen her crouched behind the rock.
He had tried to command Mewtwo; Mewtwo had shown him what hubris earned.
That night, Lavender hadn’t spoken. She had offered food, as always. Burnt, as always. He had taken it, floated beside her in silence. He didn’t tell her what he’d done. She didn’t ask.
The next day, she’d reached into her bag and pulled out a single gleaming Masterball.
No bravado. No final speech.
He had let it hit him.
And now, even when she wandered into shops with holes in her gloves and dust on her boots, even when people stared, even when her hair still smelled faintly of smoke—
Mewtwo turned his gaze away from the glass. Not from her. Just enough to give her privacy.
He would always remember. It had been five years since the day she caught him. Six, since the day they met. Mewtwo did not forget time the way humans did. He marked its passage in different rhythms—sunsets folding across new landscapes, shifts in Lavender’s gait, her silences growing longer and heavier with age.
They had been to every region now, he thought.
He could name every one they had crossed, every city’s skyline viewed from the safety of a rooftop or a shadowed forest. Kalos, with its tight alleys and golden towers. Johto’s quiet, rainy fields, where the cherry blossoms fell into her hands like little pink truths. Hoenn’s blazing routes and sea-soaked edges. Sinnoh’s bitter cold. Unova’s crowd-thick cities, its noise, its crowding trains, where she had refused to let go of his cloak-tail, overwhelmed. He had led her through Kalos again, then through Alola, even to Galar’s strange, fog-choked forests.
They moved often. Lavender never said why, but he understood.
She didn't belong. Not in towns, not with people. She drifted around others her age like a ghost—observing, but never entering. Girls her age laughed too easily. Boys her age shouted too loudly. She didn’t laugh like that. She didn’t shout at all.
(It was in Sinnoh, in a cold corner of Eterna Forest, that he asked.
“Do you miss your family?”
She had been making a fire then. Her hands, steady but scraped, paused only for a breath. Then kept working.
“I never really had one,” she said.
He watched her for a long moment. How the snow seemed to make her features more softer.
“My father… was barely home,” she continued, her voice even, factual. “And when he was, he wanted me quiet. Useful. Exceptional.” She shrugged. “My mom called me an accident. Said the only reason I got to eat with the others was because I was good at memorizing things.”
It was the kind of statement a human would flinch at. Mewtwo had learned to mimic many things—anger, disdain, amusement—but he had no answer to give her for that. Only silence. And she seemed to prefer it that way.)
A month had passed since the day the Chespin asked how someone like him could belong to someone like her. The question still echoed now and then, but it didn’t linger like it used to.
Her 18th birthday was approaching. She hadn’t mentioned it. She never did. But he knew. He remembered the first.
(She had spent it in that cave—the sixth month of throwing herself against the impossible.
She had collapsed after the fight that day, face down against the cave floor. Not unconscious—just tired. The kind of tiredness she tried not to admit she carried. He remembered hearing the hiccuping breath, the strangled little sound she tried to bury into her sleeve.
She had whispered to herself, almost angrily.
“Happy birthday, I guess.”
It wasn’t meant for him. Nothing that soft ever was. But it stayed with him.
That night, as she slept, he hovered beside her and let his mind reach outward. He had never used his abilities in that way before—not gently, not to heal. But he reached into the place where her sadness ached loudest and hushed it, just slightly.
She didn’t stir. But the crying stopped. It was the first time he realized he could do something for her, beyond the physical.
Something invisible. Something... sacred.)
Since then, they had crossed oceans, fought trainers who mistook him for her bodyguard, or worse—a prize. Lavender never bragged. Never gloated. She won without raising her voice. She lived quietly beside him, each year gaining more scars, more strength. But not, he feared, more softness.
She was hardening. Slowly. Inevitably.
He watched her now, curled beneath a tree near the shoreline of some nameless route. She had grown taller. Her cheekbones had sharpened. Her boots, once oversized, now fit just right. But her gloves were still those giveaway ones—patched and worn at the fingers. He wondered if she remembered that night in the cave. If she knew what he had done. Or if she thought, perhaps, that the pain had simply gone away on its own.
He hoped she didn’t know. It had been a gift.
One of the few he could give.
The morning was pale and cold, tinged with a sky the color of ash and milk.
Lavender sat cross-legged on a flattened patch of grass just outside the Pokémon Center, rubbing sleep from her eyes with the back of her hand. Mewtwo hovered beside her, silent as always, arms folded like some ancient sentinel carved from stone and will.
In her lap sat a small, black box. Plain. Taped carefully.
“…Did you—?” she started, then stopped herself. Of course it was him. No one else knew. No one else cared.
She peeled the tape away, slow and suspicious, as if it might explode in her hands. But when the lid lifted, her breath caught.
A pair of simple, black gloves.
Sturdy, well-stitched, with padding at the palms, reinforced by the knuckles, and a fine lacing at the wrist. Not factory-perfect—no, they were tailored. The kind of gloves made for someone who used their hands.
Made for her.
She turned them over slowly. Felt the weight of them. A soft little sound left her—a choked laugh, almost a giggle.
“I didn’t see you buy these,” she muttered, more to herself than anything. Mewtwo offered no reply.
She slid one on. Then the other.
A perfect fit.
Her grin was lopsided, real. The kind she rarely wore. “Thanks,” she said, low. Like it was a secret. He watched her the way he always did—no words, no movement. But there was a note in the air now, a silent thrum of satisfaction, almost like music.
A gift given. A wish fulfilled.
Later, they walked into town.
Lavender had heard of a café tucked behind the main street—an odd place, built with curved stone and flowering vines up the walls, where the baristas decorated the foam with little cartoon pokémon and you could order something called a “glazed moomoo-milk brioche.”
She’d been curious. So for once, they indulged.
The café was bright. Smelled of cinnamon and cocoa. She had just taken her seat when it happened.
The door slammed open.
He was loud, like most of them were. Maybe seventeen. Gold-streaked hair under a cap turned backward, expensive shoes, and the smirk of someone who’d never been told “no” and meant it. “I knew it!” he barked, pointing.
“That’s Mewtwo! That’s literally Mewtwo!”
Every table turned. Lavender’s shoulders tensed.
He marched up to her table, all wide-eyed and big grins. “You’re the chick traveling with the Mewtwo, right? The underground’s been talking. What’s your name—Lily? Lacey?”
“... Lavender,” she said flatly, not standing.
“Well, Lavender,” he grinned, “I challenge you to a battle. Stakes: when I win, you hand over that legendary.”
The café went quiet. Her hand tightened around the mug. “I don’t use him in battle.”
“Then you’re wasting him,” he sneered. “You think just having a legendary means anything? Look at your team—it’s a joke.”
She said nothing, only staring down at her drink.
He looked at her like she was a puzzle with too few pieces. “C’mon,” he laughed, stepping back and throwing a ball in the air. “Unless you’re scared?”
The ball burst open—Garchomp. Then another—Hydreigon.
Lavender’s eyes narrowed. Her fingers touched the three pokéballs at her belt. Mimikyu. Espeon. Metagross. Minun.
She stood slowly.
“If I win, you leave me alone.”
“Deal.”
The battle began. Mimikyu was swift, clever, cruel behind that mask. Espeon glimmered, elegant and sharp. But it wasn’t enough. The challenger’s team was a wall of power, brute force and muscle with no poetry. Metagross hit the field. She caressed her final pokeball. Minun. Her last.
The boy grinned. “Just hand him over now. You’ve already lost.”
Lavender’s lips parted, but nothing came. She stared at Minun, trembling slightly. Her eyes shifted to Mewtwo, standing just outside the café doors. Arms crossed. Watching.
She didn’t want to ask.
She never wanted to ask.
And that hesitation—half a second—was all the challenger needed. A flash of movement. A command. An attack.
“Outrage.”
The Garchomp charged. A swirling mass of scales and fury, teeth bared, claws ready. Lavender’s body moved on instinct, arms out as if to shield her Pokémon, even herself. She knew it wouldn’t work.
But it never landed. A pressure hit the air. A distortion, sharp as breaking glass and heavy as gravity.
Mewtwo was there.
He didn’t walk. He appeared.
The Garchomp froze mid-air, claws inches from her face, suspended like a painting. Lavender stared. The café patrons stared. Only the challenger looked angry. “Hey! You can’t interfere like that—!”
Mewtwo’s eyes glowed a deep, endless violet.
“I can. And I will.”
His voice was not spoken. It invaded through everyone's mind, the bass deep and reverb intense.
The Garchomp was flung backward through the café wall with a single thought. The challenger cried out, scrambling backward as the rest of his team cowered in their balls, retreating from the sheer pressure of presence that Mewtwo carried like a second skin.
Silence reigned. Then— Lavender exhaled, shakily. Her fingers reached up and brushed her bangs out of her eyes.
“You… broke the wall,” she said.
“It was fragile,” Mewtwo replied.
She looked at him, stunned. Then laughed—a soft, incredulous huff of breath. “You always say that.” He inclined his head, not denying it.
The café owner peeked out from the back, blinking wide-eyed at the scene. Lavender held up a hand. “I’ll pay for the damages.”
Behind her, Minun tugged at her boot. Espeon purred softly. Mimikyu had disappeared beneath a chair. Metagross tucked in its pokeball in her bag. And Mewtwo, floating by her side, turned just slightly to look at her. Not asking for permission. Not seeking praise. Just there. Always.
Lavender sighs, then smiles to herself. Something soft, something tired.
“Happy birthday, I guess.”
After that café battle, a line quietly formed at the edges of their life.
They trickled in, at first—trainers with too much pride and too little sense, drawn in by the retelling of one spectacular loss. They came to see if the girl truly had Mewtwo on a leash. They came to fight a myth, and leave with proof.
Lavender never invited them.
Still, they came.
At first, she tried to handle things as she always did—her own team, her own pace, her own effort. Her mimikyu, silent and eerie. Her minun, quick like a crack of static. Her espeon, precise and calm.
But it became apparent how most of the challengers had studied her, while she had never heard of them. And slowly—after one particularly drawn-out match where her minun had fainted and her hands shook too much to throw another Pokéball—Mewtwo stepped in.
Sometimes, he ended the battle before she could even react.
Other times, he simply tilted the balance. A well-placed confusion. A force that slowed a charging beast just enough for Espeon to land a perfect hit. Lavender learned not to ask. She never had to. He acted when he felt it was necessary. And yet, word spread.
More battles meant more winnings. More winnings meant no more repairing broken bikes or lifting crates at the pier. It meant hot meals, clean sheets, a day or two without fighting exhaustion.
But Lavender never fought for that.
She never paraded Mewtwo. She didn’t boast. Didn’t schedule matches. If someone came to challenge her, she obliged only because refusing would draw more attention. But she never once called him into a match. It was always his choice.
Still, they taunted her.
“She’s got a god on a leash—what a waste.”
“You don’t even use him right.”
“He’s probably just waiting to drop you when he’s bored.”
“I bet he’s the one controlling you.”
The words didn’t sting at first. Not really.
But they repeated. In different voices. Different places. Always when the battle was most heated, and Lavender’s mind was most exposed.
And one night, something broke. The dream was sharp, hot, and cruel.
It surged from somewhere deep—too vivid to be imagined, too distorted to be remembered clearly. Pain. A scream—her own? Her limbs heavy, a searing flash of psychic pressure splitting through her skull like lightning. She bolted upright with a choked cry, gloves clawing at her sheets, breath stumbling over itself.
And there—just in front of her, in the dark—
Mewtwo.
His eyes glowed with that familiar hue, casting long shadows across the room. His hands were raised mid-motion, his abilities already in use. She could feel it—his energy pressing against the walls of her mind, smoothing out the panic, reaching for her like a balm.
And that’s when it happened.
In the fog of fear and half-sleep, something cracked. A wrong connection, a cruel idea planted by too many strangers.
Her heart surged in panic. Her hand moved before thought did.
“Don’t,” she whispered, voice hoarse, trembling.
“Don’t go into my head—don’t—don’t control me—”
The air snapped between them.
Mewtwo froze. Instantly, utterly.
The psychic energy recoiled, like a wave crashing backward into the sea. He lowered his arms slowly, as though afraid a sudden movement might shatter something between them.
The silence that followed was unbearable. Lavender hugged her knees to her chest, the gloves still on her hands. Her breath shook with every inhale, the dream still clinging to the corners of her vision. He didn’t speak. Didn’t approach. Just stood there—an outline against the dark, impossibly still, his presence no longer humming, but hollow.
And for the first time in five years, Mewtwo felt something new.
Not the sting of rejection. Not anger.
But the terrible weight of doubt.
At first, she tries to laugh. It comes out cracked. A small, brittle thing.
“You know what?” Lavender says, hugging her knees tighter, fingers curling in the new gloves. “We’re not battling anyone else. That’s it. No more. Too many voices—too many ideas.” Her voice wavers, but she forces a grin, the kind that doesn't reach her eyes.
“It’s getting in my head,” she says, tapping her temple. “The wrong things. They’re not true. You know they’re not true, right?” She peers up at him through the dim light.
Mewtwo only nods, slowly.
It’s worse than anger. Worse than silence.
It’s... gentle. Like he’s agreeing, not with her, but with something already decided. Lavender’s stomach sinks. The words she wants to say—I didn’t mean it, I was scared, don’t go—they flutter like trapped wings in her throat. Instead, she settles back down. Pretends to sleep. She doesn’t feel the weight of his presence fade, doesn’t hear the rustle of movement or the hush of air being displaced.
But when she opens her eyes the next morning—
He’s gone.
The days bleed together. A month passes. No challengers.
No gossip, no wandering trainers poking at her steps with wild ambition. As if whatever thread of myth tied her to Mewtwo had been cut. As if the world collectively decided she was no longer part of the legend.
She wanders from town to town, avoiding the quiet that pools in the space he used to fill. She walks slower now. Not out of fatigue, but in hopes of catching a flicker of something in the corner of her eye—a shimmer, a hum, a shadow floating just out of reach.
Nothing.
She tries not to think too deeply, but the thoughts arrive anyway, uninvited.
Was he ever really with me? Was he always just in my mind?
She remembers the warnings from when she was young—hushed whispers, the adults saying there was a monster in the cave. Psychic powers they couldn’t understand.
Don’t go near, they said. Don’t speak to it. Don’t look too long.
She had.
She did.
She had lived with him for months, then years, throwing herself against the storm of him daily. And then, he let her in. Now she wonders if he had been in her mind all along. If the calm after her nightmares was really him reshaping her thoughts—if every moment of safety had been manufactured. Did he quiet her pain, or just silence her?
She sleeps well, now.
Too well.
No dreams. No fear. No crying.
The morning had begun like the others for the past month—soft light spilling in through threadbare curtains, her limbs aching in a dull, familiar way. Her mind felt vacant. Still. She told herself it was peace. That the silence was a kindness. But some days, she missed the ache.
The ache had weight, at least.
That day, she put on her boots without thinking. Left her tent without packing water, without checking the weather. Her legs moved on their own, tracing roads and paths she thought she'd forgotten.
The forest came first.
Sunlight slanted through the canopy above, the leaves whispering with secrets old as the soil beneath her. She stepped over roots like muscle memory. Her eyes passed over the gnarled tree stump with the hollow underneath, and something inside her fluttered.
Mimikyu.
That was where she’d found it—shivering, watching her with those wide, scared eyes. Mewtwo had said it would bite. She’d reached out anyway. It had followed her ever since.
She pressed her hand briefly to the stump, then moved on.
Then came the lake.
Still, glassy. She paused at its edge, recalling the first time she saw it under moonlight, steam curling off the surface. Mewtwo had floated just above it, completely still, eyes reflecting the stars. She remembered his voice in her mind, “The water reflects what you carry.”
Next, the park.
She hadn’t even meant to pass through it—only realized where she was when she saw the rusted swing creak slightly in the wind.
Rain.
It had poured that day. They’d ducked under the slide, both younger, both wetter, both pretending not to care. She had sneezed three times before Mewtwo finally raised a barrier overhead, catching the drops midair. She had laughed at the absurdity. He'd pretended not to notice how warm it made her feel.
Even now, she thought she could hear the patter of rain on a memory that didn’t exist anymore.
She wandered farther.
Places blurred together—trails and tall grass, market roads where they had bartered for berries, a broken fence she once patched up while he watched from a distance. Time folded inward, and her breath became shallow.
And then—
Stone.
Dark, yawning. Familiar.
She blinked and realized her feet had stilled before the gaping mouth of the cave.
She hadn’t planned this.
Hadn’t thought of this path. Hadn’t even noticed how her steps curved in this direction. But here she was, her hands trembling faintly at her sides. The mouth of the cave loomed before her like a storybook ending she hadn’t dared open again. Lavender stepped closer. And the shadows welcomed her like an old friend.
It’s quieter than she remembers.
No wind. No echo of psychic pressure humming against her skin.
Still, she steps inside.
The rocks are just as she remembers them—craggy, cold, worn smooth in the places she once leaned during her breathless rests.
She goes deeper. Past where the light reaches.
Lavender walks the winding stone paths with her eyes half-closed, letting muscle memory guide her. She used to know these turns in the dark. She learned them by touch, by breath, by the way the air shifted around bends.
And with every step forward, a part of her reaches out, not with voice, but with longing.
A wordless call, an aching sort of presence.
Mewtwo, she thinks, not as a command or a question. Just as a name. A shape that lives in the space she carries behind her ribs.
She doesn’t expect an answer.
She just keeps walking.
The descent is endless.
The silence tastes like ash, the air heavier the deeper she goes. Lavender counts the steps, at first, out of habit. But numbers lose meaning quickly in the dark. The cave stretches long and endless—familiar, but distant. Like remembering the outline of a dream after waking.
And then, the earth groans.
A tremor, sharp and sudden, throws her to her knees. She grabs the wall just as the cavern shudders again—stones shriek against each other, and her ears fill with the cracking chorus of collapse.
She doesn’t scream. Doesn’t even run.
Dust settles in her throat as the entrance behind her disappears into rubble. A sigh escapes her lips—too tired to be panic, too late to be surprise.
“…Huh,” she mutters. “Of course.”
She presses a hand to her mouth and laughs. It sounds awful. Her chest hurts from it, and she doesn’t know if it’s the dust or the hollow in her lungs.
Then she cries.
Not like before—soft, quiet, out of sight. These tears are raw and cracking. Her shoulders shake with it. No one sees her now. There’s no one left to keep face for. When the crying runs dry, she moves forward. Not because there’s a way out. But because her body still remembers the way.
She walks, and walks, and walks.
Until she finds it—that space.
The core of the cave. The heart of it. The place where the air always hummed like thunder without lightning. Where he stood, once.
He isn’t here.
It looks like no one's ever been here, for a long time.
Lavender drops to her knees, then lowers herself fully down onto her side. The gloves he gave her are smudged with dirt. She doesn’t bother to wipe them.
She lays in the shape of what used to be, and the hunger gnaws at her edges.
She closes her eyes.
Elsewhere—
The world burns. Or rather, it’s breaking.
Ruins of a stronghold crumble beneath a psychic storm. Walls bent inward, metal twisted into flowers of force and fire. Smoke rises into a sky split open with raw psionic energy.
And in the center stands Mewtwo.
He is breathless, though he does not breathe. Not from exertion—but from purpose.
This was the origin. The root. The hidden network responsible for sending out trainers like wolves. They had planned to claim him like a trophy, like a god caught in a cage. And worse—they had dared to reach for Lavender through their schemes.
His message is etched into the silence that follows. Not in words, but in what remains.
Nothing.
He disappears before the flames finish falling.
Mewtwo returns to her last camp—a tent in the middle of a forest clearing, an abandoned firepit, a scarf left on a branch. He’s always known where she was. Even when he left, he never strayed far. His mind, like a thread, always brushing against hers from a distance.
But now… the thread is severed.
He sifts through the ash. He calls out—not aloud, but with that reaching pressure of thought, of instinct, of something so deep it cannot be mistaken for sound.
There’s no answer.
And yet, the forest speaks.
A Pidgeotto descends, describing a girl with wild eyes and soft gloves
A Bibarel nudges a stone from the riverbank, revealing footprints headed east.
A Clefable points with a trembling hand toward the hills.
The cave.
Another speaks of the quake. A collapse.
His blood runs cold. He does not finish the thought. Only moves. Through trees, over canyons, beneath the thunderclouds. The very earth shivers at his approach. Hours stretch long as he follows the echoes of her path.
The entrance to the cave is buried. The stones are still warm.
Mewtwo lifts a hand.
He does not breathe.
He does not blink.
The stones begin to rise.
The cave swallows him whole. Darkness coils around his limbs like old ghosts, like memory.
Stone parts at his will. Earth peels like parchment. Every step pulls him deeper into the pit of something he cannot name—a sensation both foreign and too familiar. The pressure in his mind rises—thick with psychic static, emotion, and the scent of salt.
He passes Onix, huddled in their coils. They recoil, but recognize him. They nod in respect. One brushes the cavern wall, revealing a handprint small and dust-soft, fading.
He pauses only long enough to brush a single finger across it.
He keeps going.
Croagunk chatter nervously as he passes. Mawile and Gible point their stunted arms toward deeper paths, where Lavender’s steps have disturbed untouched dust.
Her footprints turn staggered. Slower. A scuff here, a palm print there.
—She was tired. He does not know how to hold the feeling tightening in his chest.
Then, he tastes it—salt on stone. Not sea salt, not blood.
Tears.
Fresh and sharp, absorbed into the earth.
The rubble soon follows. Crushed passageways where tremors must have sealed her in. He moves them with precision—no bursts of rage, only deliberate, efficient grace.
He does not speak her name.
To do so would mean fear. Would make it real.
He reaches the core of the cavern.
And stops.
Lavender lies curled, barely breathing. Limbs tucked inward like a child. A starless shape in the place where he once hid from the world.
The stillness is so complete, it crushes him.
He kneels beside her.
Does not touch her—not yet. But his aura wraps around her gently, brushing through her thoughts, her body, like the tide returning to shore. Her breath is faint but steady. Her mind is dim, but safe.
He gathers her in his arms. His hands, made for battle, hold her like a whisper. Her head rests against his chest, one arm limp across his side. The gloves he gave her are still on, though smudged, worn, the threads of his unspoken gift unraveling just slightly.
He closes his eyes.
When Lavender wakes, it is not to the cavern.
It is a dream—or a memory. She cannot tell.
The tree stretches wide above her, its branches cradling the sunlight. Around her: flowers, soft and in bloom. Golden hour kisses everything in sight. Lavender breathes in the scent of hyacinths and moss, of a sky not yet broken.
She blinks once, eyes half-lidded.
She’s been napping on something.
Or—someone.
She turns her head slightly. Mewtwo is there, silent and still beneath her. His gaze fixed upward, at the canopy, as if counting the leaves.
For a moment, she stares. Her heart gives a flutter, too slow to be surprise, too warm to be fear.
Then she hums.
Shrugs.
And lays her head back down.
Mewtwo exhales—not loudly, but like gravity letting go of a breath.
He closes his eyes.
And lets her rest.
His body moves like instinct, like prayer.
Mewtwo’s mind anchors hers. He quiets the panic blooming in her unconscious, maintains a gentle tide of clarity—just enough to keep her soul tethered.
Her physical body is failing.
Bones fractured. Skin torn in places where rock met flesh. Blood loss steep, breath shallow. Muscles weak with starvation. But he doesn't panic. He cannot afford to. Not when she's still there. Still warm. Still fighting, somewhere in that fragile frame.
He floats them up, lifting her in his arms as they ascend the cave’s winding core, mind reaching out in all directions to hold the stone steady, to ease the path. He shields her from the world’s weight, even as his own shoulders bear all of it.
Within her mind, the dreamscape softens. Light dapples through tree branches. Lavender curls in his lap beneath the old tree’s shadow. She rests like a cat in a sunbeam, her voice small but sure.
“I saw it,” she says.
Her fingers are toying with the grass. “Back then. I was still little, but... I saw. My father. You.”
Mewtwo’s gaze does not shift. The wind rustles. He waits.
Lavender continues, “I think—part of me always knew. I wasn’t scared, though.”
She tilts her head up.
“I felt free.”
Silence.
Then—his voice, low and velvety in that inner world: “I made a promise you never asked me to make.”
Her hand finds his. She smiles.
“Thank you.”
Reality. The wind is colder here.
Mewtwo’s arms are slick with blood. Lavender’s, cold to the touch. Every footfall echoes like thunder, and the only sound beyond that is her rattling breath.
He tightens his hold as they reach the cave’s mouth.
And steps out into the world again.
The sun catches them mid-stride, and suddenly, they’re in the field. Their field. The same tree. The same flowers. But this time, reality.
He sets her down in the grass, kneeling beside her.
Her eyes flutter open, dim, unfocused.
“...You found me,” she murmurs.
“I never lost you,” he replies.
He lifts her hand, places it gently to his chest.
Her pulse. Slipping.
Inside her mind, she still lingers.
“You don’t have to fight anymore,” Mewtwo tells her in the dreamscape. “They’re gone. The ones who sent the challengers. The ones who wanted me back. I saw to it myself. You can claim what’s yours now—your family’s name, your peace. You can rest.”
Lavender shakes her head, tucking herself into his arms.
“I didn’t want peace,” she says. “I wanted you.”
He’s quiet.
“... I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I couldn’t give you the life you deserve. Not the labs, not the freedom, not even a real home—”
Her lips part one last time.
Back in the waking world, she looks up at him, her eyes soft, dimmed.
“I’m sorry—” she breathes. “For leaving you so soon.”
The wind stills.
Mewtwo does not move. He doesn’t reach to stop her, doesn’t cry out.
He only presses his forehead to hers.
In the mindscape, he still holds her.
The sun filtering through the tree. The breeze moving the flowers.
There, she sleeps in peace.
There, he does not let go.
Years later.
The sun paints the sky in smudged golds and oranges, the kind of light that feels borrowed from dreams.
Mewtwo sits in silence on a low stone wall outside the Pokémon Center, one leg crossed, arms folded—not impatient, just still. The wind tousles the tips of his fur, and he watches the world go by as if from behind glass. The aftertaste of fear and near-loss still lingers in his senses, but his expression remains unreadable.
Until there’s a rustle near his side, and the familiar thump-thump of little feet on packed earth.
He glances down— A Chespin. The Chespin.
Mewtwo raises one elegant brow. “Still unevolved, after all this time? I would have thought your trainer more... progressive.”
Chespin shrugs, as cheeky as ever. “Eh. My trainer doesn’t like evolving us unless we want to. Says we're perfect the way we are.”
Mewtwo hums. “Sentimental.” Chespin snorts.
A pause.
Then, quieter—“What happened to your human?”
Mewtwo’s gaze softens at the edges. Not quite pain. Not quite peace. A complicated thing, woven from memory.
“She died,” he says, the words folded, final.
Chespin lowers its head, ears twitching. “...Sorry.” Mewtwo nods. Then Chespin continues, “My trainer’s still around. A bit older, I guess. Name’s Ash.”
But before the conversation can deepen, a burst of energy explodes from the Pokémon Center doors.
Out stumbles a girl—sunburnt, violet-eyed, white-haired and half-laughing. Her black gloves are scuffed, and there’s grass in her boots, but she’s radiant with breath and color. Clutched against her chest is a small, lilac-colored Pokémon. It wiggles in her arms and squeaks in protest, to which she shushes it like a misbehaving toddler. She looks up at him.
“Mewtwo!” The girl calls out, her voice peeling joy into the air like a bell. Lavender jogs the rest of the way, the Mew clinging now to her shoulder like a purring scarf. She reaches him, face flushed with the warmth of life, and tilts her head with that wry grin only she ever wore right.
“She bit three people and almost phased through the ceiling,” She grinned, adjusting the sleepy Mew. “A model patient.” She continues, “She got a sticker. First Pokémon Center visit, and she got a sticker. She’s very proud.” The girl nods to herself, and the Mew flutters in her arms and squeaks, pressing the holographic badge to its forehead with childlike glee. Mewtwo stands without urgency, like the horizon was waiting for her before it began to set. His eyes soften.
Lavender blinks at a gaping Chespin, and then back at Mewtwo.
“Did I miss anything?”
Mewtwo shakes his head slowly, as if this was all exactly as it should be. “You missed a lecture on evolutionary stagnancy,” he deadpans, then glances toward the stunned Chespin. Chespin opens his mouth to retort—but a shout in the distance calls him away. “Chespin, let’s go!”
“Coming!” He shoots Mewtwo a look somewhere between awe and confusion before dashing off, nearly tripping over himself.
Lavender bumps her shoulder into his. The Mew squeaks indignantly. They begin to walk.
“To the café?” she asks.
“To celebrate,” he affirms.
They don’t rush. They never have to.
Lavender’s steps fall into rhythm beside his—scarred, sun-kissed, and alive. The Mew swirls around them in lazy spirals. Mewtwo watches the shadows stretch before them, long and golden and soft.
They walk into the setting sun, as if they had all the time in the world.
And maybe—just maybe—they do.
It happened the moment they stepped into light.
The cave behind them groaned and shifted, but Mewtwo held Lavender close, his hand never once trembling. Her breath had thinned to the barest whisper by then, her body failing in ways he could not fix—not with power, nor mind, nor will. But something within him reached into her, just as her soul teetered at the edge.
He had touched her mind thousands of times before. But this was different.
Not a command. Not a link.
Something like a thread—delicate, shimmering, buried deep beneath her pain.
A silent promise.
Live.
Live for what I could not. Live for us.
The spark caught.
Lavender gasped, and something bloomed in her chest like fire and frost all at once. Her body convulsed, her eyes opened, and her breath returned—staggering and shallow, but real. And when Mewtwo looked at her again, her hair had changed.
From soft lilac to brilliant white.
(She would later joke that she must’ve died a little and come back wrong. But Mewtwo only looked at her with quiet awe, as if she’d become starlight incarnate.)
Recovery was long. Lavender didn’t mind the pain—it gave her body something to do while her heart remembered how to feel safe again.
Mewtwo stayed by her side. Always. Not out of guilt, nor duty. But something quieter.
Something that never needed naming.
And then, one morning, it arrived.
A blur of pastel and laughter, twirling midair before crash-landing into their makeshift camp like a comet with too much joy.
A Mew—smaller than usual, lilac-hued, eyes too big and too old. Mewtwo had frozen the moment he saw it.
“... This is a clone,” he said, voice like fractured glass.
“A remnant. A shadow. Someone tried again.”
Lavender looked down at the floating creature, who tilted her head, blinked, then somersaulted in the air before burrowing into Lavender’s lap. Her arms immediately curled around the little lilac creature. Lavender looked up.
“We are absolutely keeping her.”
"We are absolutlely not."
Lavender smile only grew.
Mewtwo’s eyes narrowed. “Without a Pokéball?”
“Mmhmm.”
They traveled again.
It was a strange life. Unstructured. Beautiful. Sometimes quiet. Sometimes full of chaos.
Regions blurred beneath their feet. Mountains. Markets. Oceans. Forests. Lavender would sketch while Mew tried to steal fruit.
Mewtwo often had to phase into invisibility to avoid causing panic in towns.
Mew would chase his tail.
Lavender would laugh until she cried.
Mewtwo, for all his power, had never known anything like it.
On one particularly quiet night, they sat beside a fire—its embers licking up into a navy sky. Mew curled up into Lavender’s lap, her small body rising and falling with each breath.
Lavender stroked her head absently. Mewtwo sat nearby, eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
“She’s... free,” he said, finally.
Lavender glanced up. “Hm?”
“She doesn’t understand where she came from. Or what she is. But she plays. She laughs. She chooses.”
Lavender smiled. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
Mewtwo looked away for a long moment. His voice came softer this time. “I was... aware. Inside the tube. Conscious. I watched their hands. Heard the scribbling of pens, the hum of machines. I felt the cold, always. I never laughed." Mewtwo gazes at the fire. "There was nothing to laugh at.”
Lavender said nothing. She only shifted Mew gently to one arm and scooted closer to him. Her fingers, calloused and worn, slid into his hand.
He looked at her then. He sighs.
“She has your laughter,” he said.
Lavender raised a brow. “She’s a psychic god-baby. I don’t think she got that from me.”
But Mewtwo shook his head, gaze lingering on the way her white hair caught the firelight.
“She does. It’s the same laugh you made, the first time I let the rain fall through the barrier and hit only me.”
Lavender blinked, remembering. A quiet huff escaped her.
“Guess we’re both teaching her, huh?”
Mewtwo nodded. And for once, in the stillness of that night, surrounded by embers and echoes of a long journey behind them, he allowed himself to lean against her shoulder.
Not as a weapon. Not as a savior.
But as someone… living.