World: a mix between special and the games. Still pretty au/ar even then.
Disclaimer: nope. Nothing. Boo.
Warnings: er. Dead character. Nothing explicit/graphic though.
Notes: not exactly a pairing fic as much as it is character study. Which is pretty much what I label everything as, haha. Hope you enjoy. =D

smeared mirrors

Gold meets Lyra in the woods off Violet City.

He swears his heart stopped.

(It was, they reflect later, the beginning of a very broken relationship.)

.

Lyra is not Crystal. She is not, despite the hair, despite the face. A cyndaquil follows her every move and it is this that convinces Gold he is not dreaming.

(Incidentally, she's definitely not Crystal because no way was Crys that…small. In that area.)

Gold looks at her from the corner of his eye. She's trying to catch a mareep for her first badge, something about their evolved form being so cute—and strong, too. That was the important part, she had stressed, and Gold nodded.

She's heard of Gold, too, mentioning it as she furrows her brow at the third mareep to cross her path. The famous breeder that Professor Elm bragged about when he remembered (it isn't very often, Lyra tells him; she only knows because she'd spent her childhood spying through the lab's window).

"They have the same parents, you know." Lyra grins brightly at her newly caught Pokémon, looking up to find Gold staring at her. She doesn't blush and continues with, "My cyndaquil and your typhlosion—though Cynda took a lot longer to hatch."

"Really," he murmurs. In the setting sun her hair takes on a golden gleam, but at his angle she is more shadow than human. If he squints, looks just right, Lyra disappears and Crys takes her spot.

The mareep gets clipped to her belt and Lyra shifts from one foot to the other, lips back into her mouth, eyes downcast. "So, ah…are you just going to…" She waves a hand at the foliage, the waning light, Gold leaning against a tree.

He toys with the idea of leaving, pretending that there was no such girl as Lyra from New Bark Town (and how had he never, ever seen her before?) but there is an earnest look about her. The look all new trainers have before realizing how cruel, how heartbreaking the outside world really is.

(Gold misses it, the naivety.)

"I haven't seen Falkner in a while," he says idly. Lyra nods—and he realizes abruptly she's not just Some Girl. She's made of vague smiles and simple words, and she is most certainly not Crystal because Crystal was straightforward and very much…gone. His hands clench, let go, and repeat. Lyra sees it all and Gold thinks he might just learn to like her when she says nothing.

.

They travel together, despite Gold being sixteen and old and Lyra a bumbling eleven.

Lyra catches Pokémon, earns her badges, does what any trainer does. Gold observes and makes a point of ignoring his phone calls.

(They pretend that it's just their world, and for a while it is.)

.

"Red was eleven, right? I'm eleven, and I'm still…nowhere near the league. And that girl from Hoenn—she qualified at eleven too, that's what you said."

Gold sighs, face oddly pinched. "Red and Sapphire—and Green too—they're just…crazy. The world has enough crazy people. Like Silver. That's crazy."

Lyra looks up at the new name, a stray leaf on her hat—Gold's hand twitches for a very brief, very tense second. "Silver… I think I've met him." She props her chin on her hand, cheeks puffed. "I mean, I saw his trainer card—he sort of pushed me and dropped it, haha…"

"If it had red hair, the thing was Silver." Gold scowls, then wonders if Silver had been shocked too. No, probably not knowing that guy.

She finds the leaf on her head and dusts it off; it hangs in the air for a moment before whirling away. After a pause, Lyra digs in her bag for her badge case, presenting it to Gold with a half-smile. Six gleaming pieces of metal wink up at him and despite himself he whistles.

"Jasmine already? I only left you alone for a few hours."

Lyra bobs her head, pigtails askew. His hand twitches again; he smothers it with the other. "Cynda really helped," she explains, "but the seventh badge… No one really knows the type speciality, right? Because of the last leader, you know, uh…"

"Lost himself in time," suggests Gold. Lyra winces—and Crystal, he thinks, Crystal would have nodded. Gold shrugs. "It'll be a good test for you. Dragons are after the seventh one, anyway… That dratini of yours should help."

He remembers the glazed look on her face when he had unceremoniously shoved the baby dragon into her hands. It had been Crystal's originally, given to Gold after refusing to evolve. He's not too surprised that it still hasn't; the looks might be too similar, even for a pokémon.

"Right…" She's staring at him, eyes plain and brown and a little too like his own, but without the fire. Gold stares right back, waiting, wishing for a tint of red to start creeping up her skin like Crystal's had.

She remains a blank slate, painted with colors he's too blind to see.

"Maybe," says Lyra, and now she beams, "we should have a battle. For variety, and stuff—"

Gold hears it before she does: the sound of a beautiful, wonderful illusion cracking to pieces.

.

They go their separate ways, one heading for a sunset, the other a horizon.

Gold wanders aimlessly and Lyra trudges on and on, becoming crazy like all the rest.

(He doesn't miss her—he misses her face, and Lyra is starting to understand.)

.

When Lyra turns twelve she is gifted with her eighth badge. She tries to smile as she trains on the mountains. Her dratini evolves eventually, giving into nature, and Lyra looks on as it quickly becomes one of her strongest Pokémon. (Cynda watches with his nose turned to the side, snorting.)

The league, she knows, is terrifying and awesome all at the same time. Her mouth goes dry at any mention of them so she puts it off until she gets a call from various gym leaders (including a particularly irate Clair), telling her to go already. Her hands fumble with her pokégear, nearly dropping it into the creek. She has every right to be afraid as this is the same petrifying league from back when Red was a newcomer, but…

She tugs down her hat, swallows, and heads home. Her mother is greeted with a kiss on the cheek ("No, mom, it's not about the money"), Professor Elm is given a passing wave, and the large, boisterous house a ways from her own is given a nod.

It takes her two days to stumble upon the entrance of Victory Road (she blames mixed up road signs and haughty trainers with their poisons). It takes barely an hour to get out of the cave, half-dead with fear and jumping every few minutes at an invisible brush against her arms. She's never truly been alone in a cave before, since the falls are more an attraction than maze (and she misses him, suddenly, in a heart-wrenching way.)

Lyra rubs at her nose and stares down the building before her. She doesn't think of titles or battles—she thinks, for a second, if that one girl trainer Professor Elm had offhandedly mentioned had ever stood right here, breathing in the flowers and having her heart hammering before the greatest pedestal in the Pokémon world. It's a stretch (and Elm never spoke much of that trainer, preferring to pour over his notes) but she recalls the creased photo in the lab, featuring that one red haired boy, Gold, and a girl that—had her face.

Or rather, a girl whose face Lyra had stolen.

Her fingers curl. She—she wants Gold to be here, Gold with his old man eyes. She wants Gold to explain everything, like an older brother explaining the wonders of the world to an awed sibling.

(She laughs hollowly because Gold is not her brother; never will be, never could be.)

The air is fresh in her lungs as she takes a deep, deep breath. Her shoulders loosen and then she takes the first step forward, stepping into the shadow of the league.

(In Kanto, Gold sneezes and turns off the tv.)

.

Lyra runs into Gold on Mount Silver.

She blinks because either he is shorter or she is taller. Gold stumbles, then nods.

(He smiles first, almost broken in the freezing winds.)

.

"I heard you won. Congrats." He offers a flimsy reward, voice cracking with disuse (he's trying to pull a Red but it's much harder alone).

"I haven't won yet," she reminds him quietly. They're on the summit, taking cover in Red's old hideout with a fire burning between them. She's looking for him, the truly undefeated champion, and Gold lifts his shoulders.

"Red sort of…goes wherever he wants, these days." It gives his mother white hairs, Gold has heard, but it's really not anyone's business besides Green's who forcibly makes it his. "Last I heard from Blue he's in Hoenn or maybe Sinnoh. Probably Hoenn; he doesn't like the cold much."

Lyra pokes at the fire with a stick, watching embers flare up into the misty air. "…Do I really look like her?"

Gold isn't one for pictures, not keeping them at least. Crystal was the one who kept them in bundles at Elm's lab so he's not too surprised that Lyra has finally, finally seen the horrible connection.

"You did." She still does, a bit, but Crystal moved with a different sort of confidence. Lyra is quiet, not quite shy, more…contemplative. A dreamer, Gold decides, with her elusive smiles and doe eyes. "…It's mostly in the hair."

Her hand goes automatically for a pigtail. Lyra leans harder against the cool rock, feeling the cold biting into her skin. "Was she a trainer?"

The past tense goes without saying; Gold applauds her tact (he has none). "Not exactly, she—she was more of a pokédex enthusiast. Catching every breathing thing in sight. Professor Oak called her the best in her line of work."

"Oh."

They lapse into silence. His hands are numb even with the fire and just like when they first met, Lyra says nothing.

Instead, she slowly reaches for his right hand, trailing too hot fingers down his skin and on the inside of his wrists. Gold watches (he's gotten much better at it as the years went on) and Lyra carefully wraps his hand in both of her own. She doesn't have dainty hands that can barely cover his but he sort-of likes them anyway.

"I miss her," he says. The words taste foreign because—Gold never has said them before, has he? Never, not even when everything had first started falling apart. "I…I really do."

Her hands are limp, her face pale in the flickering light, and—it's Crystal, Crys with reddened eyes and golden hair, and Gold thinks he's gone insane.

"I'm not her." Lyra says it slowly, like she's trying to teach a child how to speak. Her eyes don't leave Gold's and man, she looks more like him than she does Crystal in that second. "I'm not a replacement, Gold."

It might just be the first time she's ever said his name and it's…it's different from how Crystal had said (screeched) it. Lyra sounds like she's on the edge of a cliff, one foot already dangling off and her lifeline is a confused boy seeing dead people in the living.

Gold is not in love. Not with Crystal, not with Lyra—but Gold is a hero, so he says, "I know," and Lyra almost smiles.