I do not own Pokemon or Fantina, nor do I one the song "Dance With Me", by Zoli Adok, which was a major inspiration and is used in the summary. I own this conceptual look into Fantina's character, as well as her...dancing partner.
The French listed below was obtained from .
For The Domain's June Writing Challenge, as set forth by .Lost-Blue-Phantom., following the rules and regulations listed in this challenge. For the sake getting this out on time, I decided to forgo her use of an accent, to be edited back in when judging is finished at my prerogative. That being said, TEEM BLAIK. IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. ;D
It was her favorite place in the entire region: a club tucked away underneath one of the roads that powered the city. The upper levels were topped with glass, actual glass bored into the side of the rock, that pedestrians on that road could look straight down onto the dance floor. At night, the glimmering lights from the disco flared up towards the sky in a perverse light show, broken by the bodies bouncing rhythmically on the floor. She'd come nearly every weekend, taking the train with some friends from the University of Sinnoh at Canalave. They'd stay in a cheap hostel or sometimes claim Trainer status to use the Pokémon Center to crash in after a night of dancing. For her, it wasn't about the time they'd be wasting there, skiving off their studies. It wasn't about lying on the beach and watching the ocean in the night. It wasn't even about the club itself.
It was about the dance.
--
He was standing nonchalantly on the platform when she and her roommate arrived to board the train to Sunyshore. Wearing a green pullover sweatshirt and some loose black workout pants, he wasn't much to look at until he turned and his soft gray eyes caught hers. He blinked for a second, until someone walked between them and she turned onto the train with the rest of her group, and his focus blurred and she was gone.
--
They went to the club early that weekend; the few that had decided to have one last trip before finals and studying and the summer vacation started. It was dark already when they arrived: two boys, one girlfriend, and the two roommates. They lost no time hurrying to the dance floor, and before too long, they were swaying and pumping in time with the beats.
She lost herself in the rhythms like she did every time; her lanky body bouncing perfectly in time with the beat of the music playing. Soon, it happened like it did every time: boys began competing for her attention; her roommate would whoop and holler and steal a man of her own to disappear off to some dark corner; the rest of her friends would disperse, leaving her alone with her suitors.
She'd always choose the one who could move with her rhythm. The only one who could keep up with her. The suitors varied; she would soon tire of them, and leave to stand on the balcony hewn from rock and watch the waves crash before losing herself in the anonymity of the club again.
--
"Dallas, what are you staring at, man? You've been spacey since we got onto the train earlier. What's up, dude?"
"Her," he replied immediately. "Who is that, Jason?"
He squinted over the bar. Cracked a grin. "Huh."
Dallas hadn't moved; his gaze was lost in watching her as she spun and twirled. She didn't seem like she entirely fit in the club scene. He could see she moved like a dancer but a dancer who would be more at home on the stage than in the club.
He couldn't take his eyes off of her. She dipped and gyrated and swung and he was lost in her rhythm.
--
She had rounded the corner to the cool balcony air when she crashed headlong into a figure coming the opposite way, sending both sprawling in a heap of limbs.
"Alors! Forgive me, monsieur!"she exclaimed, clambering to regain equilibrium. The man she'd bumped into looked up at her with a bemused smirk on his face.
His breath hitched when he noticed that the girl he'd been watching earlier was sprawled atop of him, panting from exertion. Her lavender hair was pulled into a Ponyta-tail that fell halfway down her back and around her front, with two short stands that framed her face well. She blushed at his notice and demurely looked away for a second, then back. His were warm and inviting, a deep gray that spoke of cloudy beaches and far-off rain showers. She felt at home in his eyes.
"Enchante," he said flawlessly in her region's native tongue, taking her hand in his and kissing it gently. "My name is Dallas Chadwick Thurston, a stuffy old Sinnohsian name that ought not to be forced onto anyone, but you can call me Dallas. Who might you be, mademoiselle?"
"My name is Melissa Fantine; enchante, monsieur," she replied, blushing. Her bracelets banged as she moved her arms. "I'm sorry for knocking you over, Dallas Chadwick Thurston."
He smiled a crooked smile built for charming. It wasn't merely for pleasure or a lay this time. He was genuinely interested in her. "The pleasure's all mine."
"We will have to see if that is true, non? " she fired back immediately.
She picked herself up off the floor and cast a small glance back at Dallas, winking before slipping back into the sea of people
--
Her group was going to the beach after a few hours sleep. The hostel was on the outskirts of the town-for travelers bypassing the city-so the trek into town took a while before they were able to reach the beach. The rock formations rose around the sand, blocking the worst of the sun's rays in the afternoon. This morning, the beach was not crowded but not sparse; a few people were dotted here and there.
She found Dallas lounging atop a rock, hunched over a sketchbook. Every so often he'd look up and scribble hastily, drawing perhaps some Tentacruel or Mantine floating aimlessly on the waves by the beach. Sunyshore beach had nothing to compare to the bigger beaches, like Slateport. Rocks dotted the shoreline and the roads of the city stretched from tall outcroppings over the beach itself. But for those like her, the beach was just one step in the dance of life, a step quickly undertaken and then discarded.
She padded up to him, feet making soft impressions in the soft sand. She was wearing something blousy and free; a white sundress atop a swimsuit; a large sunhat clutched behind her back. Her long lavender hair spilled from its Ponyta-tail in the back. A large pair of white sunglasses hid most of her face.
Demurely, she went right up to him and sat, back to back, on the rock. He didn't stop his own rhythm; one pencil stroke went up and another went down as he continued. She turned her head up to look at the sun, feeling its warmth on her pale skin.
"Melissa Fantine," he acknowledged, scribbling again in his sketchbook.
"Dallas Chadwick Thurston," she replied.
One of her toes dipped into the cool water, and she idly watched a colony of tiny Staryu float around the disturbance she created.
"I couldn't keep my eyes off you last night," he told her without preamble, "you were…intoxicating. The way you dance…it's like…like Arceus himself touched you, created the dance for you. I couldn't believe it. You should be in the ballet or something. Working for the Opéra Sinnoh. What are you going to do, anyway?"
She merely cracked a smile. Wistful. Her violet eyes looked down at her feet, and the rock. "I want to be a Gym Leader. I want to be the apex, is a word?"
"Wrong usage," he corrected with a slight grunt, "You want to be the Champion?"
"Non, cheri," she corrected him. "I want to have a Gym. I have Ghost-types. I want to be the apex at a Gym with Ghosts. They are the most beautiful of all creatures. Do you train, Dallas Chadwick Thurston?"
He scribbled aimlessly on the paper for a few moments, the two enjoying a long, comfortable silence. She watched as her friends began a game of sand volleyball with some others their age across the way. She wondered if he'd come along, and then swirled her foot in the water again.
"Would you like to see it?" he asked, shifting finally.
"Oui."
He ripped the paper off of the pad and shifted until he could look her in the eyes. His green eyes sparkled in the light of the sun, and she once again lost herself in his eyes. She took the proffered paper and glanced down at it, then did a double take.
"No, I don't train," he replied huskily, "I'm not sure what I want to do with my life, yet. Father wants me to go into the family business. He sells stocks or something, does something so stuffy and stifling that I just want to scream and tear my eyes out or jump in the lake. We used to live near Lake Valor. I don't like Pastoria much. I want to move to Jubilife or Hearthome. You hate the drawing, don't you? If you do, my feelings won't be hurt, promise, it was just a doodle-"
She put two fingers on his lips, stopping his sentence there and turning upward and inward so their shoulders brushed together. In a low, husky whisper, she responded, "Shhh, cheri. This picture…c'est magnifique!"
"It's crap," he muttered playfully as she leaned her head against her shoulder.
"Shhh. C'est magnifique."
Without another thought, he let the picture blow away on the breeze from the sea. It drifted lazily in the air a few feet, until it gently touched on the surface of the water, and both of them watched it until dissolved in the seawater. She sighed and he encircled one arm around her, drawing her close. She laid one arm on his leg, gently rubbing the skin on his knee.
"I want to be an artist."
They sat in silence for a long while, feeling the warm sun.
"Dallas?"
"Oui," he grunted in her native tongue as she looked up at him, removing her sunglasses and cradling them in her lap.
"I think that...I don't know what to think about you. You have something in your eyes. My grandmother… she was how you say? She told people the future? She told me, that when I met the man I was married for, I would see something in his eyes. I would see myself. Je danse dans tes yeux."
Dallas stared at her for a long while, studying the shape of her jaw and the soft pout of her lips and the way her violet eyes shimmered and how her sunhat perfectly framed her face and created a dazzling halo of effect that he wished he could capture forever.
"Your grandmother said you would see yourself dancing in my eyes?" he repeated, throatily. "That's…well."
Her eyes hardened, and she leaned from his embrace. "Do not insult her memory," she hissed, but Dallas quickly softened her with a brush of his palm on the back of her hand.
"No, that's not what I meant. It's just strange. No one's ever said that to me. I don't…well, look at me! I'm not the most interesting specimen on the beach, you know."
Fantina smiled softly, her lips pulling up softly. "In the end, it is who I choose to dance with, non?"
She leaned forward and his lips brushed hers, infinitesimally, a ghost of a kiss, the sun making a halo on their skin.
"…Melissa," Dallas sighed, brushing his forehead against hers, "I'm engaged. I'm going to marry a girl next month, my fiancée, like Father wants. Then I'm getting a job at the biggest stockholding firm in Sinnoh to train at, before I assume control of the company. She's a good girl. I can't do this to her. She's…waiting for me. She's from Kanto. A Kanto-kin. I was supposed to pick her up in Canalave but her boat was late. I came here…one last time…to draw the ocean..."
Fantina touched her nose to his, her bangs that had escaped her ponyta-tail rubbing against his forehead. She felt his breath leaving his lips and coming into her body; a tiny spark of an unending rhythm that she couldn't break. Wouldn't break.
"Then I will dance alone, until you can dance beside me," she whispered. "If we can only dance when Arceus holds us in his thousand arms, when Sinnoh and my region and all the others have fallen, and I can only dance with you then; this is how long I shall wait."
"I'm sorry-" he began, but she put her fingers on his lips again, shaking her head as she looked into his eyes one last time.
"Do not be sorry, Dallas Chadwick Thurston. It may be I dance alone, but in my heart, I am dancing with you."
She kissed him then, one last and first and final kiss. The beach, the rock, the water, their friends, the Sinnoh region; everything melted away for the contact of her lips on his, his tongue against hers, their breath together, a rhythm and a dance of life and love that could not be broken.