And They Lived Happily Ever After

By: Circe

I've only gone about a mile into the woods when I have to sit down. Walking and trying not to cry is hard work. God, in a million years I never would have imagined the scene that played out tonight. I was thinking more along the lines of hearts and flowers and fairy-tale endings. But then, I thought Jessie cared. Heck, I thought that she loved me, just like I love her. I guess I am the moron that she called me. I sink down, sitting on some rotting, fallen over tree. I call out Weezing, because he looks as depressed as I feel and because I need somebody to talk to.

"Weezing!" It translates roughly into 'Where's Arbok?'

"With Jessie." I tell him. He rotates in a circle and looks back at me.

"Zing? Weezing?" Great. 'Where's Jessie? Where's Arbok?'

"They're both back at camp, Weezing." I tell him. Then I have to grab onto his smaller head to keep him from heading back to where we've just come from. "We've left Team Rocket. We don't live with Jessie and Arbok any more." For once Weezing's face is totally blank.

"Wee?" Wonderful, Weezing doesn't understand. What the heck else is new?

"No, we don't get to see them anymore. We've left. Forever." I fight back a rough sob. Damn, that hurts. I've never imagined the words 'forever' and 'Jessie' hurting before.

"Weezing, ezzing, Weezing." I have to hold back hysterical laughter. God, he's thicker than I am.

"No, we're not going back tomorrow Weezing. We aren't ever going back." Inspiration strikes. "We've been fired." That he understands. Weezing completely understands the word 'fired'.

I wrap my arms around Weezing's largest head and lean my own against it. "I'm sad Weezing. I miss Jessie." I tell him, and I want to cry so bad that it hurts.

"Weezing, whee." 'Miss Arbok' he agrees. I sigh. I knew he would. Weezing is a virtual idiot and the only friend he has is Jessie's Arbok.

I guess the ring is worthless now." I say after a while. See, a while back I bought this tiny little diamond. I wanted to ask Jessie…but that won't happen now. What a rotten fairy-tale ending I got.

"Weezing!" 'Pretty!' Weezing has a great exuberance for the ring. I've been keeping it in his pokeball so that Jess wouldn't find it.

"Yeah, it's pretty. But we're not going to give it to Jessie. We're going to get rid of it."

"Zing!" Weezing's 'no' sounds horrified.

"Yeah, Weezing, the ring means that we'd be together forever, me and Jessie and…"

"Weezing! Weezing!" 'Arbok! We're hired!'

"NO!" I'm sharper than I mean to be and Weezing looks hurts. "No, Weezing I don't want to go back to work for Team Rocket. Marrying Jessie is good and Team Rocket is bad. I can't be married to Jessie and be in Team Rocket. Besides," I whisper, my throat aching and tight from just the thought, "you can't raise babies in Team Rocket."

"Zing, wee?" Great, Weezing doesn't know what babies are. That's not really surprising considering that Weezings reproduce by mixing special gases with each other. Mix the right stuff (and it's probably accidental on their parts!) and poof! Out floats a little Koffing. Umm, what's a good analogy for having babies? One that Weezing might actually understand. Oh! I know!

"Like Ekans! Having babies is sort of like when Arbok has a clutch of Ekans. Arbok would get all round and then she'd have a bunch of little Ekans. That's what I want Jessie to have, but people babies, not snakes." I hope he understands.

"Weez?" He doesn't.

"No. Little people, sorta like Mondo only smaller." I mime cradling an infant with my arms. "I'd give Jessie the ring so we could always be together and then Jessie would get all round and then this tiny person would come out and Jessie wouldn't be round anymore. That's a baby. Then we'd all share the baby and be a family." I try to explain again. Weezing can be more than a little vacuous.

"Weezing, weez. Weezing, zing ezzing, zing wee! Weez, Weezing!" It takes me a few minutes to translate all of that. It works out, roughly, into this: 'Tell Jessie ring, tell Jessie bad, fired! Find Arbok babies, Jessie babies! Family!' By the time I had this all figured out Weezing was on a beeline straight for camp, and although he may not look it Weezing can really move! I take off after him because the last place I want to go is back to the scene of the worst moment of my life.

I don't manage to stop him. In fact, I come up to the camp just in time to hear Weezing ask Jessie for Arbok's babies. Ohhh, that is just great. Time to step in and stop things before they can get even worse.

"Weezing!" I shout, coming into the clearing. Not truly original, but it does make Weezing look at me and stop talking. At least for a moment. Then he goes back to talking to Jessie and nudging against her waist. What the heck does he want?

"Uh, sorry, Jessie. Weezing was missing Arbok." I apologize because I really have nothing else to say. I'm too raw from the words that we exchanged earlier. Just seeing Jessie hurts more than I ever knew it could. Her face is all red and blotchy, she's still ticked off, I guess. Meowth looks furious and before I can get another word out he fury swipes me. Ow, pain.

"Cheese-Whiz, Meowth, what was that for!" Meowth gives me this look that says today I am especially retarded. Too bad, I'm not going to guess what the heck he's mad at, especially since I already know why he did it. He hates cooking.

While I'm busy with Meowth, Weezing is busy accomplishing his twisted goals. A flare of red light tells me what he was after when he started nudging Jessie. Arbok. He's managed to call Arbok out of her pokeball. Oh, this is just terrific. Arbok not only understands Weezing, she can also clarify what it is that Weezing wants.

"James, what is Weezing telling me about fired?" Jessie also understands Weezing; she just doesn't get the syntax. "And why does he want Arbok to have babies?"

"Ah, fired. I told him that we were fired, to explain why we weren't at camp." I wonder if I sound as desperate as I feel. I hope we can just skip over the whole 'babies' bit.

"And the babies thing?" Nope, I guess we won't just forget that part. What the heck am I gonna say? There is absolutely no way to rationally explain that one away. Turns out that I don't have to.

"Charr-boka! Char! Bok, Char-Bok!" Oh no. Please tell me that Arbok did not just tell Jessie that Wheezing has a ring and wants to get married. Please say that I imagined the part where Arbok said the word 'babies'.

"Wow, James." Meowth sounds amazed. "You've got the sickest pokemon I've ever met. Weezing and Arbok aren't even the same species! Mating. Wow."

YES! Weezing's incompetence comes through for the home team! I call him back into his pokeball. It's time to go. Being here hurts. I turn to leave, I've got to leave.

"Char-bok. Char-boka!" But Arbok calls for me to wait. What does she want? I wait and Arbok slithers up to me and before I know what she means she hit's the button on Weezing's pokeball and lets him out. He has something shiny with him. Uh-oh.

"Weezing!" 'Pretty!' Yep, Weezing has the ring.

"Charbok!" Arbok agrees. Oh great. At least our pokemon think that I have good taste in jewelry. I'm kinda numb with horror as I watch Weezing carefully transfer the diamond ring from his front tooth to the end of Arbok's tail. I can feel laughter bubbling up in my chest. Today could not get any worse. It just could not. Jessie is staring at the ring, but for once I can't read her face.

"Sicker than I thought!" Meowth says from behind me. "I can't believe Weezing bought a ring to give to Arbok." I'm just too fragile to deal with this now. I've been on edge for the past hour and I finally fall over it. I turn to Meowth in a sad rage.

"It's not Weezing's ring and it's not for Arbok!" I'm yelling at somebody for the second time in my life. At least it's not Jessie again. "God, Meowth! You and Arbok are just as dumb as Weezing! But at least he know what's actually going on!"

"What is going on, James?" Jessie's voice is small, faraway sounding. When I turn to face her I find that Arbok is sitting in front of her, offering Jessie the ring on her tail. I take a good look at Jess's face and something raw and broken in my heart heals. She looks soft and sweet and vulnerable. At least the last look I'll ever have of my Jess isn't the one where she's screaming at me and telling me what a screw-up I am. Maybe.

I walk over to where Jessie is standing with Arbok. Arbok looks nervous, and I can't blame her. I probably look a little unstable. I reach out and pat the top of Arbok's head, and then rub the spot behind her hood.

"It's alright, Arbok." I reassure her. She slithers away, probably joining Weezing, who was last seen floating a bit to close to the fire. Now it's just Jessie and me and she's holding the ring that I bought for her. "The ring is yours, Jess, I bought it for you."

She doesn't say anything and I don't know why. Meowth starts to say something from behind me and I can't keep myself from turning on him. I am really not able to deal with all of this now.

"Shut-up Meowth!" I yell before he finishes his first word. "I've had the worst night of my life tonight! First Jessie and I get into a horrible fight and then I quit my job because I want to marry Jessie and have babies but we can't do that in Team Rocket but Jessie doesn't want to leave and she doesn't love me even though I'm crazy in love with her and then Weezing acts like a big idiot gas-bag and runs all the way back here just to make a fool outta me by telling Arbok all that crap about having Ekanses because he's too dumb to understand about babies!" I'm gasping by the time I've finished and my ears are ringing with how loud I've been shouting. It's why Jessie's voice takes me by surprise.

"Say that again." She's sounds so quiet and strange. When I look back at her there are tears sliding down her cheeks. From behind me I hear Meowth say something that sounds suspiciously like 'ah crap, not this again' but I don't care. Because Jessie is smiling as the tears roll down her face.

"Which part? The one where Weezing is an idiot or the part where Arbok has Ekans?" My own voice is hushed, but maybe that's appropriate because we've spent most of the night shouting.

"The part where you love me." There's a hint of a laugh in Jessie's voice and the tears are starting to stop now.

"Oh, that part." I tell her, smiling. Grinning, really, from ear to ear. "Well that part starts at Pokemon Tech and it doesn't really have an ending." I decide to go for broke and I take the ring from her hand. "It's got this interesting part in the middle where I buy you this ring, this one here," I hold it up between us and take her hands in mine. "and I try to give it to you but I'm just a big chicken and instead we end up fighting and I do the dumbest thing I've ever done and walk out."

Jessie laughs, a sound that I can never get enough of. "Is that same part where I say a lot of stuff that I don't mean just because I'm a coward who doesn't know how to say that I'm in love with you too?"

I pull her into my arms and drop a light kiss onto her forehead. "Yeah, that might be the one." I laugh and hug her tightly. "There's a better part right after that where I bumble my way into asking you to leave Team Rocket and marry me and have kids with me."

"Then the part where I say 'yes' and you put that ring on my finger." Jessie holds out her left hand for me to put the ring on. Huh, I guess I'm about to get engaged.

"Yeah, that part comes next." I agree as I lift her hand and kiss her ring finger, and once it's on her hand, I kiss the ring too.

Then I kiss Jessie, a tender kiss on the lips, and it's the next part for a long time. Usually this is how fairy-tales end, but this isn't a fairy-tale and it's definitely not the end. There's still a whole lot of story left to write. The best thing is that we've got the next fifty years or so to finish this story. But I think I know how it's going to turn out.