Disclaimer: Pokemon is owned by Nintendo, Gamefreak, etc. Used without permission and not for profit, etc.

I've been wavering over whether or not to post this here, but eh, might as well. Please note it contains massive spoilers; it is also quite dark. Contains violence, abuse, implied violence/death, and generally dark themes. You've been warned.

Gilded Cage

He's just a boy in a cage. Oh, he's still their king, at least in name. But he's locked inside that room - his room, that fucking room, and how had he never noticed before how much like a cage it was?-most of the time, only free to leave at Ghetsis' whim, only for Ghetsis' sake. He isn't even allowed to see his friends anymore, save Zekrom, and only it because he's the only one Zekrom will obey (and not even Zekrom alone can defy Ghetsis, not with the rest of Team Plasma as his pawns how had N been such a fool-)

He'd known a Pidove, once, who'd been caged. Kept by a human in a gilded cage that even the Pidove admitted was quite pretty when the light struck it in a certain way-but never able to see the outside, never free to fly around with its friends or find a mate or live, only fed or played with or cared for when its owner deigned to remember it existed. And it's funny, how he never realized-

If he had, maybe it would be different. Hilda had put up a good fight against Ghetsis, but in the end it wasn't enough. N didn't see her or the champion or her friend (Cheren, was it?) die, but he's aware it happened (as if his father would let them stand in his way). They were taken away to some other part of the castle so that he wouldn't have to see. So that Ghetsis could try to retain the pawn he'd worked so hard to cultivate over all of those years.

But he's no fool. And even if he still isn't certain what's right and what's wrong, in what way is this right? Even if Pokemon would be better off free from humans, which he can't say he believes with confidence, not anymore...there's no way that this is right. As if he could just forget what Ghetsis had said that day. All for the sake of power...that was all he'd ever been worth to his father.

Ghetsis had always varied his means of correcting N, but that was the first time he was ever beaten, that day when he tried to rebel. Then he was thrown, bleeding, into his room, left with the threat of harm to his friends if he misbehaved again and with only his childhood playthings as any solace.

N had always loved books. Despite how few he was allowed to have, or because of it, he cherished the ones he had immensely. They were one of his few ways of learning about the outside world as a child. He pores over them now, to distract himself-from his state of imprisonment, from the things he's done, and the things he's being forced to do.

Math is easy for him to understand. The formulas are finite, unchanging, and predictable. And a complex enough combination of formulas can do wonderful things. It's one of the few things he's always respected humanity for, what they've used their understanding of mathematics to achieve. A ferris wheel, for instance, wouldn't operate otherwise. (That's a sad thing for him to think of, now.)

But math cannot be applied to everything. Humans are more complicated than that, unfortunately, and there is no formula for his escape, nor a formula for hope.

Oddly, he takes the most enjoyment out of reading nursery rhymes, when he put little thought into them before. He'll sit and read the tattered book cover-to-cover for hours, wondering if he's slowly being driven mad by his gilded cage, or if he's just been mad all along.

N fell down and broke his crown

And Hilda came tumbling after