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She keeps the letters in the box her running shoes came in, tucked away secret in her desk.
She isn’t sure why she keeps them; having anyone find out would be a risk. Part of her can’t seem to throw them out. She worries someone may see them in the trash, get too curious. Burning them was what the first one suggested, and she could easily make up an excuse— training her Blaziken, getting rid of some old trash in the fireplace. She can’t bring herself to do it. She’s wanted to so many times, but each time she tries her hand stops, and she crumples the paper in her fist and throws it back in the box.
She doesn’t know when the letters will come, but she always knows when they do.
When she’s not at home, the bird will come up to her, dropping the folded paper at her feet, gaining altitude and perching nearby. But when she is, she can tell then, too, for the Swellow with the black ankle band settles on her roof for her to tell, and she races upstairs before anyone else can see the paper wedged into the smallest of open spaces at her window, just as she had instructed.
On days when it rains, she hears the pecking at her window, and the flying-type squeezes through her window and preens. There are scratches from his talons on the posts of her bed.
In her secret base, she’s greeted with a trill when she enters, the letter placed neatly on the table.
Each and every time, she gives the messenger a purple Pokéblock and an affectionate scratch on the crown of his head.
She never reads the letters right away. She waits. She waits until it’s late at night and she’s sure no one else is awake, and she switches on the light at her desk, or settles close to the fire, or curls next to the lantern, and she reads.
The very first letter was a mystery. She hadn’t known who it was from; the penmanship of her name on the back of the trifold, preceded by ‘League Champion,’ as if she needed reminding, was foreign. The letter was sealed, untampered, the only signs of anything odd being the curling at the edges where it was rolled into the capsule attached to the Swellow’s ankle.
She had briefly wondered how the flying-type had even gotten it out. Smart bird.
The writing had been sharp, and she was terrified that if she ran her finger over the words, small, neat capitals, the edges of the ‘t’s and the peaks of the ‘m’s would cut her.
A feeling of dread washed over her as she continued, the pattern of the words and their meaning sinking in with an uneasy familiarity. The name of Mt. Pyre leaps off the page, the phrase 'words that should have been said,' and she didn’t need to read further to know who it was, what it was about.
She ripped the letter in half and crumples it. Threw it in the wastebasket. She didn’t know why, but she had been furious.
But she couldn’t forget about it, and late at night, she retrieved it, taped it back up, read over it— completely, this time.
She wasn’t going to respond, but she couldn’t…apologies aren’t meant to happen. Not like that. The congratulations in it, yes, she could have understood that— from any other source. She would have accepted that.
She replied, if only to send the Swellow back to his trainer.
They settled into a rhythm, after that.
The letters are never regular, but she never expects them to be. There were times when she would get one a week, times when she would go a month without a reply. She would try to reassure herself, but the arguments would go from 'Unova is far away, unless he's had to move again... to ‘what do you think happened? You’re pen pals with a wanted criminal.’ And that’s just the problem.
Sometimes, she forgets who’s on the other end, and she just vents. Sometimes, she’s the one being vented to. Sometimes, she gets descriptions, passionate speeches on the inner-workings of Reversal Mountain, littered in technical terms she knows he’s probably misusing. Sometimes she gets little more than a paragraph. Each one addressed to her with the title of ‘League Champion,’ every one unsigned except the first.
She keeps them, each and every one. Shoved underneath piles of junk in a box that once held her first pair of running shoes. She never touches them after replying, and she never reads the same letter twice.
She knows they’re not kept on the other end. Burned, more likely than not.
Doesn’t matter. She’s grateful. She can see how the letters have evolved, from the formal and regretful to the almost easy nature of the more recent ones, the physical representation of a thing she hesitates to call ‘friendship’ because she’s not sure what that insinuates.
It’s for the better, she thinks, that he probably doesn’t keep them. She doesn’t need reminders of how people saw the childish print she had before adopting cursive, the simpler speech before she took on the duties of Champion rather than only the title. She doesn’t need a written timeline of her own maturation. And she doesn’t need anyone else to know.
She’s never told anyone about the letters.
She’s not stupid.
She knows they’re evidence – you can’t just have information on the whereabouts of one of the most wanted criminals in the Hoenn region and stay silent about it. As the Champion, no less. She shivers to think what that would mean for her, almost as much as she does when she realizes what the letters must seem, if anyone knew. But it isn’t like that, and she knows there’s an understanding that it isn’t like that, but her heart still jumps when she gets a new one, and she hates that she can’t understand why.
Her mother teases in that way mothers do; each time she comes home she’ll ask ‘so did you meet a nice boy yet, or are you still waiting for the professor’s son?’ She can’t say she’s not interested, that the only people she’s ever had any semblance of that feeling for are much too old for her. So she laughs, shrugs it off, hurries to her room to write another letter.
She’s lucky that the Swellow is a patient bird.
When the letters became regular, she had teasingly written ‘and since when have you had a Swellow?’ as a bit of a throwaway she didn’t expect to be paid attention to.
Sure enough, the response held the answer.
'He dislikes battle. Did you truly think I had only three Pokémon? There are others, I just hesitated to use them. Better that I never did.'
She had forgotten that people even keep Pokémon as pets. As companions other than those for battle. And for him especially, holding back on resources he could have used, but never did--
It was strange. Humanizing. She had heard the worst thing to do to your enemies is see them as people, and she can’t help but see how it’s right. How every one of the letters proves that statement more and more right.
But she keeps writing. Because the conflict is over. The battle was won.
And everyone deserves at least a little mercy.
She can at least offer that.
When she gets the letters, she reads them once, holds them close to her chest.
It's a long way to forgiveness, but she's gotten so many letters, and it doesn't even seem like they're written by the same person she remembers. They're not angry, not self-righteous, but they do hold that same amount of passion she seems utterly enthralled with. It's the kind of writing that moves mountains, the kind that builds armies, yet not too harsh as to be devoid of a strange sort of charm. She never thought he'd have that. No mystery why he lead. Sometimes, she wonders what it would be like to read the letters and not hear her own voice ringing in her head, but one that was meant to read those words.
It's a vain hope.
But maybe.
Maybe she would offer a little more than mercy if she had the chance.