Epilogue: Don't Be Afraid, Of This World Where We Can Meet

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AN: Happy New Year!

Chapter title quotes Tenjou Utena, from the amazing series Revolutionary Girl Utena.

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When Bonita arrived at the gym on Tuesday morning at eight o'clock, not quite ready for the whole day of work, Green was, predictably, already there, sitting in his office like he usually was.

Green was a morning person and a notorious workaholic, something that sat poorly with all the other trainers who worked under him. Bonita, along with Salma and Elan and Ida, all kept late nights and would often meet up after work for drinks and to complain about the endless demands of their leader.

(Arabella was a loner. Who knew what she got up to in her free time?)

But all of them, Arabella included, knew that Green was the best at what he did. They could complain that he opened his gym so early in the morning. They could whine when he demanded they run laps around the gym along with their Pokémon. They could curse furiously to themselves when he picked out a trainer's and a Pokémon's weak point with laser precision and then forced them to work on the areas they found most difficult. But none of that changed the fact that they all showed up first thing in the morning to start their training exercises.

Because they were improving, all of them. Their Pokémon were getting stronger, and they were more confident of their own abilities by the day. The Viridian City Gym, once perpetually closed, a source of shame for the residents of the city, was now open and bustling. And the city was thriving, partly due to their own efforts, since Green had signed them up for several community improvement projects. Spending all day last Thursday out in the hot sun, planting new trees in the park was exhausting but, now, every time Bonita passed the park on the way to the store, there was something comforting about the fact that the third Sycamore along the path was his tree.

But at the moment that knowledge was poor comfort to Bonita, who rubbed at his eyes wearily and did a double take when he realised the exercise equipment hadn't been set out for the day, the windows were still drawn, and that Green's Rhydon was napping in the yard.

Bonita made his way to the office door. Inhaling deeply, he knocked on the door briefly before cracking it open to reveal the too bright glow of fluorescent lights.

"Er, Green? Sir?" Bonita said, squinting as his eyes adjusted. "You know we open an hour from now, right?"

"Shhhh! Shhhh!" Green hushed, waving Bonita in the room, before cursing under his breath. "Shit. Already that late?"

Bonita walked inside tentatively.

Green was sitting with one hand over his mouth and his legs propped up on his desk. There was some kind of electronic devise resting to the side on top of some old paperwork, playing an audio recording.

"Sir, is that Pokégear?" Bonita asked.

"No, you dolt! It's a Fame Checker. Now quiet!" Green barked back.

Bonita blinked in consternation. Green was rarely so abrasive and insulting. Back when he first opened the gym and started training Bonita – sure. But he had mellowed out a lot over the years, and was usually more courteous now.

Green realised his mistake.

"Dammit," he said, sitting up in his chair and flipping the pause switch on the Fame Checker. "I didn't mean to snap at you, Bonita, it's just… It's been a while since I've thought about this one person and they just drop this in the gym's mailbox last night and, well… It's almost three hours of audio recording. I've already listened to it once, but…"

"You've been at the gym for three hours already?!" Bonita said incredulously.

Green turned to glare at him.

"Just listen to this with me and tell me what you think, okay?!" Green said. "I'll fast forward to the important part."

Bonita nodded, as Green reached forward to fumble with the devise again.

Bonita heard the volume increase, and the audio zip through a plethora of voices, young, old, male and female, before Green released the controls and the recording resumed at normal speed.

Bonita sat quietly for a moment, taking it all in.

The experience was bizarre, and absolutely fascinating, because Green didn't have his feet propped up on the desk anymore. He was sitting on the edge of his seat, staring at the Fame Checker as if it had the answer to all life's questions, if he could just reach out and-

"Sir?" Bonita could wait no longer for an answer. "Do you actually understand- Is this person even speaking-? Is that English?"

There was a long pause, during which the Fame Checker wheezed out more unintelligible dialogue, coughs and grunts and things that sounded almost like words but that halted and started again unnaturally.

Green sat silently, not looking at Bonita, and Bonita was afraid he had said something terribly wrong when Green finally responded.

"I… He's gotten worse… And I completely underestimated- It's a lot easier to understand what he's saying in person, when you've got facial cues to go on."

Bonita listened to the recording. It continued on for another few seconds, before it petered out and stopped.

"So you didn't understand?" Bonita pressed.

Green shook his head, before growling and massaging his forehead in frustration.

Bonita looked at Green, who was rarely so emotive about anything that didn't have to do with sadistically handing out assignments to his trainees.

"This really seems important to you, Green, sir," Bonita said, sympathetically.

Green stopped. He looked at Bonita with wide eyes, like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't, but he dared to hope anyhow.

It made Bonita nervous.

"J-just because… If you've put off getting the gym ready for opening for this…" Bonita hastened to explain. "I mean, you always yell at us even if we're only a moment late in opening the front doors…"

Green blinked, eyes peeled wide, before standing and turning away from Bonita.

"I'm sor-" Bonita started to apologise.

But Green interrupted.

"No. No, you're right. This is important to me. It's really important to me," Green said quietly, reaching for the coat he had laying over the back of his chair, and pulling his arms through the sleeves. "I need to go take care of this. In fact, I'm going to take the day off."

Bonita could barely believe his ears.

Green? Take the day off?

A day off from Green's training, and the gym? A whole extra day to hang around at home, not doing anything. His co-workers would be thrilled! He couldn't wait to tell them.

Actually, scratch that. He'd leave a note on the door for his co-workers. He wasn't wasting any time getting back home and back to bed.

"You really mean it? We can have the day off?" Bonita asked, and he could have sworn that, behind him, a choir of angels had burst into song.

Green clicked his tongue. "We?" he asked incredulously.

The choir of angels abruptly started choking.

Green turned to Bonita and flashed his usual cocky smile. "You've got a gym to run, don't you?"

"What?! You mean…" Bonita began.

"If you open even one minute late…" Green warned.

"You mean you actually trust me to defend the Earth Badge all by myself?" Bonita asked.

Green snorted. "Of course not."

Bonita deflated.

Green dug into his pockets and pulled out a collection of Pokéballs.

"This is Exeggutor, Gyarados, Arcanine, and Pidgeot" Green said, as he handed over each Pokéball in turn, "and Rhydon is in the yard." Green paused for a minute. "And Eevee too," he allowed, "although I doubt she'll listen to anyone other than me."

Bonita gulped, accepting the Pokéballs with both hands.

"If you can't even win with my Pokémon, Bonita, there may not be any hope for you after all," Green laughed, reaching to grab the ring of keys on the table.

"You don't mean that," Bonita whined, as Green pressed the keys into his hands.

"No," Green agreed with a mocking smile, "but you better not let this place go to rot while I'm gone. Tell everyone to run their laps, like usual."

Bonita's mind raced. "Wait!" he insisted right as Green marched up to the door.

Green turned impatiently and tapped his foot.

"You gave me all six of your Pokémon." It was the first thing that popped into Bonita's mind. "What will you take with you?"

Green smiled and tossed a Pokéball up into the air, before catching it on its way down.

"A Charizard," he said, before sweeping out the door. "You can do it," he shouted back, assuredly, from the Gym's main hall.

And suddenly Bonita felt that he really could do it, somehow.

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Bonita lost three Earth Badges by the end of the day, and hadn't gotten any of his co-workers to do their laps.

But he had also successfully defended the Earth Badge from an additional three challengers, so he figured that was worth something.

It took Green an hour to walk back to Pallet Town.

Then it took five minutes to discover neither Red, nor Red's mother Delia, were home.

It took another half hour to work up the courage to ask his grandfather where they had gone, and then four hours to fly to the hospital in Saffron.

From there, it took ten minutes to convince the Emergency Room staff to let him through, and five minutes to walk to the room Red was assigned.

It took two seconds to realise Red was asleep, and nine thousand seconds of making small talk with Delia (and serious talk with the doctors) before Red woke up.

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And everything after that took years and years and years. But Green didn't mind so much, because Red was there with him for that part.

~Fin~

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AN: Thank you! It was a journey. Thanks if you've travelled all the way through to reach my note here.

So that's it. Green never visits Red on Mount Silver. I've read alot of stories where Green visits Red on Mount Silver and, while I don't think it's out of character (granted Green knows where Red is in the first place), I wanted to frame Red's isolation on Mount Silver as something that was entirely his own fault, and also entirely his own victory for overcoming.

So I'm happy I could write Red and Green getting together. But I'm happier I could write Red coming to a place where he wasn't willing to suffer, waiting for somebody else to be the one to reach out.

If there's anything you'd like to ask or say, please feel free to comment. You can tell me all about the good, the bad, and the horrible typos.

Thank you again for reading! I'm super grateful to all of you!

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If I had to choose an epigraph:

Poor old Humpty Dumpty, he didn't know what to say. – Humpty Dumpty's Christmas (Obscure Christmas Songs)

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Related fanworks: (Please visit my profile. All fics are posted under my account.)

Stranded in the Great Wide World – The next fic chronologically in this universe, although it's not the sequel to this in a thematic sense. Intended to stand independently of Missed Signals, but give it a look if you're interested. It's a Silver & Delia family fic. Makes the Giovanni connection explicit. Includes Soulsilvershipping conducted primarily through flashbacks. Red & Green to make eventual appearances, but I don't recommend going into it for only that reason.

At the Speed of Light, Going Nowhere Fast – A Pokémon Mystery Dungeon AU fic. An alternate retelling of Blastoise and Venusaur's friendship in this fic, which I'll admit is sort of an alternate retelling of the friendship between Ash's Bulbasaur and Squirtle in the anime. Buddy cop shenanigans.