gravity

Dawn/Lucas

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She could have become a gym leader, an astronaut, a doctor. She could have left everything behind to follow her calling; sail across the endless oceans on the back of her faithful Empoleon, bury her toes in Hoenn's warm sandy beaches, taste a thousand different flavors of Castelia City's world-famous ice cream. She could have run off with someone she met on one of her adventures and lived the rest of her days in a fifteen-story apartment in the heart of the city, breathing in the intoxicating city air. She's always been restless, an adventure seeker whose dreams reach high into the atmosphere, impossible to satisfy.

He doesn't understand why, then, she always comes back.

The day Dawn returns from her vacation, there's a knocking on his front door. He can hardly believe it's her. Thinking it's the mailman, he opens the door and suddenly she's there, launching herself at him and throwing her arms around him. She smells like snow and citrus; everything foreign and simultaneously familiar, little ghostly reminders of his childhood. Her laughter rings through the silence of the small town like crystal; it's a welcome change, he thinks fondly.

He feels unworthy. She scares him, sometimes; she's an anomaly, a mystery waiting to be solved, and he is hardly fit for the job. He, Lucas, is just a humble boy who's never been out of Sinnoh, and his heart has been stolen by a girl with flying sapphire hair and a radiant smile and eyes like the wide blue sky. Dawn deserves better than him, he thinks. She's always been too good for him.

"I missed you," he tells her shyly, once he's worked up the courage. The girl in his arms laughs, runs her fingers through his hair and tells him she missed him too.

She tells him later that he is her anchor. He doesn't know how to reply, so he simply blushes in response. Dawn doesn't seem to mind; she smiles at him, and he cannot help but hope.