Promises

_____________________________________________________________
 

Words are lightly spoken ...

Laughter broke throw the morning stillness as two children, brother and sister, raced to their favorite tree, giggling behind their hands at the smaller dark haired boy that tried to keep up with them. They scrambled up the knarled old oak like monkeys, leaving the younger boy in the dust.

Golden hair flashed teasingly in the sunlight as hands reached out to help the other up into the tree, fingers brushing each other with tantalizing closeness, but never quite clasping ... when the branch broke, bending and snapping under the weight of it's lively burden, dropping the smaller boy with a crack, so far away from the oh so hard ground.

A horrifying moment of falling, tumbling, ending, of lights and dizzying spins, flashing looks of his friend's horror, the blinding scream of pain and bone cracking like a broken stick ... and the smaller boy was a tangle of limbs on the pavement, leg bent unnaturally under his wiry frame. A rush of terrified nausea almost made the other boy join his friend's plummet as he stared, slipping and sliding to the ground to catch hold of a horribly pale hand as he fought back tears.

Gary? It was more a movement of lips than actual words, a question in pain-filled eyes.

He nodded, clasping his friend's hand tightly under his chin, afraid to breathe, afraid he'd hurt him more ... someone was coming, his sister had gone running for them ...

You'll stay, right?

Once again he nodded, of course he'd stay. He wasn't about to leave him!

Forever?

He paused.

Forever? You and me? No matter what?

The blue eyes hurt so much, begging him to promise ... and he'd do anything to ease it, to make him feel better again, anything at all. It was no great trial to stay by him ...

"I promise, Ash."

Thoughts are rashly stirred ...

There are things that can't be foreseen. Things that can't be expected or prepared for, for they come like a thief in the night, stealing the heart's gold away, stealing away the soul ... and so it happened just that way for him, watching his friend grow up and forget, watching him smile and laugh but never recall the promise he'd made him swear, finding that soon they'd grow apart and leave each other forever. He didn't understand the gnawing pain deep down inside where he barely recongnized it, certainly didn't realize it was loss ...

Then came his grand plan. A perfect plan, a flawless plan ... a plan with a terrible price. To keep his friend tied to him he would have to break his heart, to push him away again and again, yet challenge him, force the ability deep inside to grow and mature, force him to remember by forcing him to feel the same loss. It wasn't something he chose to do, though he pondered and plotted long before the day finally came. It was something he just did. He pushed away his friend, the one he swore his vow to, the one who now held something so personally valuable in his hand so he would grow, so he would return, and so he wouldn't feel the guilt.

The guilt that came from loving. The guilt that was birthed from wanting his friend to stay with him, though it was he who swore. A deep streak that what he felt, now and the first stirring of the then was wrong, not because it was a love, but because it was a selfish love. So he abandoned him. And swore a new oath ... to never be his friend again.

Brightest links of life are broken ...

Vow. I broke my vow. But I did it to save you. You and me ... my love.

By a single unspoken word

_____________________________________________________________
 

Pokemon   |   Fanfiction