You Can Always Count On Me
Jun 9, 2019 18:40:30 GMT
Post by Aeroblast on Jun 9, 2019 18:40:30 GMT
Originally posted 26th April 2019 (Final chapter posted 7th May 2019)
Blurb: Ash has a soft spot for the bruised and the broken. When he says "I choose you," he means it for life. (Brock doesn't understand it at all — until, one day, he does.)
[title taken from "together forever" from the pkmn soundtrack]
A/N: This fic should be 4 chapters long (3 main chapters and an epilogue!) so bear with me, please!
This chapter sort of deviates from canon in that Brock sticks with Ash all the way through the Kanto / Orange Islands arcs (for plot reasons)
With that said, I hope you enjoy this fic!
Charmander was a tiny scrap of a thing when Ash first found him. He was desperate to stay where he was in case his trainer returned, adamantly clinging to the belief that one day he'd be welcomed back with open arms.
Ash had believed it too, at first. Brock had later cleared up that misunderstanding, and rage had replaced his concern.
Charmander had attacked him in protest when he'd tried to remove him from the rock. Scratches, angry and red, broke the skin of his arms, puncture-marks from teeth and claws. Ash hadn't noticed until Nurse Joy had pointed it out and Brock had pulled him aside, antiseptic cream in one hand and disapproval darkening his countenance.
"You need to be more careful," Brock insisted. Ash shrugged his shoulders, still jittery and unable to feel pain for the adrenaline. "One day, you won't be able to save a pokémon like you think you can, and you'll get yourself hurt."
"Charmander won't hurt me," Ash countered, as though his arms weren't bloody and sore. "Not on purpose, anyway. He didn't mean to scratch me. He was just scared."
Brock looked unconvinced, but he let the matter drop.
The full scope of Charmander's trauma wasn't obvious until he evolved. As a charmander, he was bright and pleasant, a little too eager to please but otherwise confident in his position by Ash's side. After another confrontation with his former trainer, it became quickly obvious that nobody cared about him quite like Ash did, and things seemed like they were going to be fine.
And then he evolved into a charmeleon.
Brock didn't want to say I told you so, but… he had warned Ash about the hurt buried deep within the fire type. Charmeleon spat flames at the boy and swung at him with his claws whenever he neared and refused to cooperate with him whenever he didn't feel like it.
"Charmeleon," Ash said nervously, chewing on the side of his thumb. "You've gotta listen to me. We're a team, remember?"
Charmeleon, evidently, didn't remember. He snorted smoke and used flamethrower when Ash told him to use literally any other move. When Ash switched tactics and called for flamethrower, Charmeleon's assault screeched to a halt and he abruptly decided that he wasn't interested in battling anymore.
Brock thought Ash was going to rip his own hair out.
Miraculously, the boy held it together. Mostly.
"What happened to that happy lil' charmander, huh?" Brock overheard Ash asking Charmeleon in a rare moment of peace. He was rubbing some strange, herbal oil into the fire type's scaly skin and Charmeleon was revelling in the treatment. "Did I do something wrong? You won't listen to me anymore."
Charmeleon didn't seem to think that was a concern. He snapped lazily at Ash when the boy's hands paused and Ash yelped, resuming his massage.
"... maybe it's just a teenage thing. You'll grow out of it when you evolve again, right?"
Wrong. Charizard was even worse.
At first, he was good. Great, even. Brock thought that maybe Ash was right, and that the disobedience was just a phase. As a charizard, the fire type clearly recalled everything Ash had done for him. As a charizard, he was willing to listen.
And then, like the flick of a switch, he wasn't. It was Charmeleon on steroids. Three times as large, five times as powerful and ten times as unruly.
Ash tried to hug him. Charizard sent him flying with a slap of his mighty tail.
Ash tried to hug him again. Charizard forced him away with a white-hot column of fire.
"You can't keep a pokémon like that on your team," Brock pleaded. "He's too dangerous! He could get you killed!"
"Charizard's my friend," Ash retorted. "Friends don't give up on each other!"
"Friends don't try to set each other on fire, either!"
"I…" At that, Ash seemed stumped. He wrung his hands anxiously, chewing the inside of his cheek. "He's my friend. Even if he doesn't think so. Friends stick together."
"This isn't something you can fix with friendship, Ash! Not everything is that simple!" Frustrated, Brock ran his hands through his hair. Ash stared at him blankly. "Do you really not get it? He's not a charmander anymore. This time, if something goes wrong, we can't fix it with a bit of burn heal. You could die! And I can't– I won't let that happen."
Ash puffed out his chest, squaring his jaw. "I'll be okay. I know I can do this."
I know I can do this.
Those words stuck with Brock all the way to the Indigo League.
"Still think you can make this work?" Brock asked after the battle against Ritchie. Ash trembled, fists clenched, and refused to meet his eye. "Legends, Ash, he didn't even put up a fight. He took one look at Sparky and threw in the towel!"
"I can make this work," Ash said, voice small, "and I will. You'll see."
So he took Charizard to the Orange Islands. Privately, Brock wondered if this was out of spite, a choice driven by the need to prove him wrong.
But he didn't question Ash's decision aloud. He just watched, exasperated and resigned to the fact that Ash had to realise his own naïveté alone, as Charizard turned his nose up again and again, dismissing every one of his trainer's commands with a blasé disdain that made Brock's blood boil.
Eventually, Ash's usage of Charizard diminished, and on the few occasions when he attempted to utilise the fire type, he was quickly reminded of why he'd stopped.
"Ash–" Brock tried after the match with Danny, but Ash wouldn't listen.
"I don't want to talk about it," he mumbled, stalking away.
Brock had never seen him so dejected. Still, Charizard remained a part of the team, his ball a heavy weight on Ash's belt, mocking them all with its presence. If it burdened Ash at all, the boy did a remarkable job of concealing the strain.
"Nobody would blame you for admitting that he's too much," Brock attempted days later, watching Ash glumly fiddle with Charizard's poké ball as though contemplating throwing it away. "There are experienced trainers out there who could handle him."
Ash sighed deeply, looking lost. "Yeah, but then I'd be just as bad as his old trainer. Abandoning him because he's not who I want him to be."
And then Brock understood. "Ash… you know that's how trainers are, right? The successful ones, anyway."
Ash flinched. Brock continued in a firm, pressing tone. "Maybe not so crude as to abandon a charmander without care for its well being, but if a pokémon can't keep up with its trainers expectations, it's out. Only the strong can survive in the competitive scene — it's why so few trainers make it to the top. I'm not saying what Charizard's old trainer was right to abandon him, but he isn't an isolated case."
"But why do I have to do the same? Why can't I be a pokémon master without that?"
"I'm not saying you can't. I'm just saying that all your role models, every great trainer you've ever looked up to — they all have a standard that their pokémon must meet to stay on their team. And if they don't–"
"They're thrown away, yeah, I get it." Ash scowled. "What about you? Have you ever abandoned a pokémon because it wasn't good enough for you?"
Brock blanched, silent and scrabbling for a defence. Then– "... No. My father tried, once, to get me to give up a geodude I'd been training because its long range attacks were useless and its defences weren't up to scratch. I refused, he got mad and we argued for days. Eventually, I benched the geodude, but I didn't abandon it. It's still at the gym, even now."
Ash played with the catch on Charizard's ball and was quiet. Brock drummed his fingers against his knee, deep in contemplation.
Finally, a solution came to him. "If you can't give Charizard up, then why not just bench him? That way, you're safe and Charizard doesn't feel like he's been abandoned again."
Ash seemed dubious, regarding Brock cautiously. "Because… because that's not where he's meant to be. He's meant to battle, I know it, he just… doesn't want to listen right now. But he will, I know he will. I just need to show him that we're on the same side."
His master plan, apparently, was to pit Charizard in their next battle — a duel against the poliwrath of a trainer named Tad — after being bolstered by the evidence provided by Pikachu's defeat that type matchups didn't always matter when it came to fighting. Brock found his logic to be naïvely endearing, if not hopelessly misguided. If Tad's poliwrath could so easily handle a cooperative electric type, then why would Ash believe that a disobedient fire type would be any harder for it to overpower?
Charizard, predictably, did as he pleased, heedless of Ash's desperate attempts to control him. His gratuitous use of flamethrower irrespective of Ash's commands confirmed his refusal to obey — and he went down to an ice beam, as though the situation couldn't get any more humiliating.
Ash freed him from the ice with a jagged rock, palms slippery with blood. He paused just long enough for Brock to bandage his hands and sat through the night by Charizard's side, tending a campfire and working to keep the fire type's temperature from plummeting too low.
"You always do this," he mumbled, rubbing Charizard's cool flank with a heated towel. "If you'd have listened, maybe– maybe we could've won that battle. You're strong… you can take a poliwrath. I know you can."
Brock lay awake and listened. Ash kept talking.
"I wish… I wish you'd trust me more. I know I'm not the best trainer in the world… sometimes I get things wrong. Okay– I get things wrong a lot. But… I'm learning, and I'm getting better, and… I'm stronger than I was when we met and you listened back then!
"It's like… it's like I'm not good enough anymore. And I don't know what I've got to do to be good enough for you. Because I want to be, and I'm trying to be. I just– I don't know anymore. Sometimes I wonder if you'd be better off without me. You'd tell me if you wanted to go, right? You're not just staying 'cause you think you have to?"
Ash bowed his head and threw another stick into the fire. It crackled and roared, spitting embers into the night sky.
"I just wanna be your friend."
The next morning, when Team Rocket attacked camp, Charizard rose to protect Pikachu. He pulled the poachers' getaway machine from underground and reared up, flames curling on his tongue, to burn them—
"Charizard, no! You'll hurt Pikachu!" Ash cried.
And just like that, Charizard stopped.
Ash gave commands; Charizard obeyed them. Brock presumed that it was an expression of gratitude for the night before, a one-time show of compliance. An eye for an eye; a favour for a favour.
Confidence renewed by the sudden change in behaviour, Ash challenged Tad a second time. Again, Ash gave commands; again, Charizard obeyed them, and the poliwrath was finished with a seismic toss.
Overwhelmed with glee, Ash lunged at Charizard, flinging his arms around him. Brock held his breath — and Charizard craned his neck, pushing his massive head into his trainer's embrace and rumbling contentedly.
"That charizard of yours is really strong," Tad admitted, recalling his fainted pokémon. "I had a feeling it would be once you started working together. What changed?"
"I dunno," Ash said happily, scratching Charizard behind the horns. The fire type warbled, eyes shut.
Later, when Tad had left, Charizard blew fire in Ash's direction as punishment for nearly knocking him over — but it felt different. Controlled, deliberately aimed so that Ash wouldn't have to dodge to avoid being scorched.
"Careful," Brock said anyway. "You don't want to make him angry now you've finally gotten in his good books else you'll end up getting burned."
"I can handle the heat," Ash said confidently, and for the first time, Brock believed him.
A/N: Reviews/comments are always appreciated! I try to take all constructive criticism into account so I can improve any future writing I do.
Blurb: Ash has a soft spot for the bruised and the broken. When he says "I choose you," he means it for life. (Brock doesn't understand it at all — until, one day, he does.)
[title taken from "together forever" from the pkmn soundtrack]
A/N: This fic should be 4 chapters long (3 main chapters and an epilogue!) so bear with me, please!
This chapter sort of deviates from canon in that Brock sticks with Ash all the way through the Kanto / Orange Islands arcs (for plot reasons)
With that said, I hope you enjoy this fic!
Charmander was a tiny scrap of a thing when Ash first found him. He was desperate to stay where he was in case his trainer returned, adamantly clinging to the belief that one day he'd be welcomed back with open arms.
Ash had believed it too, at first. Brock had later cleared up that misunderstanding, and rage had replaced his concern.
Charmander had attacked him in protest when he'd tried to remove him from the rock. Scratches, angry and red, broke the skin of his arms, puncture-marks from teeth and claws. Ash hadn't noticed until Nurse Joy had pointed it out and Brock had pulled him aside, antiseptic cream in one hand and disapproval darkening his countenance.
"You need to be more careful," Brock insisted. Ash shrugged his shoulders, still jittery and unable to feel pain for the adrenaline. "One day, you won't be able to save a pokémon like you think you can, and you'll get yourself hurt."
"Charmander won't hurt me," Ash countered, as though his arms weren't bloody and sore. "Not on purpose, anyway. He didn't mean to scratch me. He was just scared."
Brock looked unconvinced, but he let the matter drop.
The full scope of Charmander's trauma wasn't obvious until he evolved. As a charmander, he was bright and pleasant, a little too eager to please but otherwise confident in his position by Ash's side. After another confrontation with his former trainer, it became quickly obvious that nobody cared about him quite like Ash did, and things seemed like they were going to be fine.
And then he evolved into a charmeleon.
Brock didn't want to say I told you so, but… he had warned Ash about the hurt buried deep within the fire type. Charmeleon spat flames at the boy and swung at him with his claws whenever he neared and refused to cooperate with him whenever he didn't feel like it.
"Charmeleon," Ash said nervously, chewing on the side of his thumb. "You've gotta listen to me. We're a team, remember?"
Charmeleon, evidently, didn't remember. He snorted smoke and used flamethrower when Ash told him to use literally any other move. When Ash switched tactics and called for flamethrower, Charmeleon's assault screeched to a halt and he abruptly decided that he wasn't interested in battling anymore.
Brock thought Ash was going to rip his own hair out.
Miraculously, the boy held it together. Mostly.
"What happened to that happy lil' charmander, huh?" Brock overheard Ash asking Charmeleon in a rare moment of peace. He was rubbing some strange, herbal oil into the fire type's scaly skin and Charmeleon was revelling in the treatment. "Did I do something wrong? You won't listen to me anymore."
Charmeleon didn't seem to think that was a concern. He snapped lazily at Ash when the boy's hands paused and Ash yelped, resuming his massage.
"... maybe it's just a teenage thing. You'll grow out of it when you evolve again, right?"
Wrong. Charizard was even worse.
At first, he was good. Great, even. Brock thought that maybe Ash was right, and that the disobedience was just a phase. As a charizard, the fire type clearly recalled everything Ash had done for him. As a charizard, he was willing to listen.
And then, like the flick of a switch, he wasn't. It was Charmeleon on steroids. Three times as large, five times as powerful and ten times as unruly.
Ash tried to hug him. Charizard sent him flying with a slap of his mighty tail.
Ash tried to hug him again. Charizard forced him away with a white-hot column of fire.
"You can't keep a pokémon like that on your team," Brock pleaded. "He's too dangerous! He could get you killed!"
"Charizard's my friend," Ash retorted. "Friends don't give up on each other!"
"Friends don't try to set each other on fire, either!"
"I…" At that, Ash seemed stumped. He wrung his hands anxiously, chewing the inside of his cheek. "He's my friend. Even if he doesn't think so. Friends stick together."
"This isn't something you can fix with friendship, Ash! Not everything is that simple!" Frustrated, Brock ran his hands through his hair. Ash stared at him blankly. "Do you really not get it? He's not a charmander anymore. This time, if something goes wrong, we can't fix it with a bit of burn heal. You could die! And I can't– I won't let that happen."
Ash puffed out his chest, squaring his jaw. "I'll be okay. I know I can do this."
I know I can do this.
Those words stuck with Brock all the way to the Indigo League.
"Still think you can make this work?" Brock asked after the battle against Ritchie. Ash trembled, fists clenched, and refused to meet his eye. "Legends, Ash, he didn't even put up a fight. He took one look at Sparky and threw in the towel!"
"I can make this work," Ash said, voice small, "and I will. You'll see."
So he took Charizard to the Orange Islands. Privately, Brock wondered if this was out of spite, a choice driven by the need to prove him wrong.
But he didn't question Ash's decision aloud. He just watched, exasperated and resigned to the fact that Ash had to realise his own naïveté alone, as Charizard turned his nose up again and again, dismissing every one of his trainer's commands with a blasé disdain that made Brock's blood boil.
Eventually, Ash's usage of Charizard diminished, and on the few occasions when he attempted to utilise the fire type, he was quickly reminded of why he'd stopped.
"Ash–" Brock tried after the match with Danny, but Ash wouldn't listen.
"I don't want to talk about it," he mumbled, stalking away.
Brock had never seen him so dejected. Still, Charizard remained a part of the team, his ball a heavy weight on Ash's belt, mocking them all with its presence. If it burdened Ash at all, the boy did a remarkable job of concealing the strain.
"Nobody would blame you for admitting that he's too much," Brock attempted days later, watching Ash glumly fiddle with Charizard's poké ball as though contemplating throwing it away. "There are experienced trainers out there who could handle him."
Ash sighed deeply, looking lost. "Yeah, but then I'd be just as bad as his old trainer. Abandoning him because he's not who I want him to be."
And then Brock understood. "Ash… you know that's how trainers are, right? The successful ones, anyway."
Ash flinched. Brock continued in a firm, pressing tone. "Maybe not so crude as to abandon a charmander without care for its well being, but if a pokémon can't keep up with its trainers expectations, it's out. Only the strong can survive in the competitive scene — it's why so few trainers make it to the top. I'm not saying what Charizard's old trainer was right to abandon him, but he isn't an isolated case."
"But why do I have to do the same? Why can't I be a pokémon master without that?"
"I'm not saying you can't. I'm just saying that all your role models, every great trainer you've ever looked up to — they all have a standard that their pokémon must meet to stay on their team. And if they don't–"
"They're thrown away, yeah, I get it." Ash scowled. "What about you? Have you ever abandoned a pokémon because it wasn't good enough for you?"
Brock blanched, silent and scrabbling for a defence. Then– "... No. My father tried, once, to get me to give up a geodude I'd been training because its long range attacks were useless and its defences weren't up to scratch. I refused, he got mad and we argued for days. Eventually, I benched the geodude, but I didn't abandon it. It's still at the gym, even now."
Ash played with the catch on Charizard's ball and was quiet. Brock drummed his fingers against his knee, deep in contemplation.
Finally, a solution came to him. "If you can't give Charizard up, then why not just bench him? That way, you're safe and Charizard doesn't feel like he's been abandoned again."
Ash seemed dubious, regarding Brock cautiously. "Because… because that's not where he's meant to be. He's meant to battle, I know it, he just… doesn't want to listen right now. But he will, I know he will. I just need to show him that we're on the same side."
His master plan, apparently, was to pit Charizard in their next battle — a duel against the poliwrath of a trainer named Tad — after being bolstered by the evidence provided by Pikachu's defeat that type matchups didn't always matter when it came to fighting. Brock found his logic to be naïvely endearing, if not hopelessly misguided. If Tad's poliwrath could so easily handle a cooperative electric type, then why would Ash believe that a disobedient fire type would be any harder for it to overpower?
Charizard, predictably, did as he pleased, heedless of Ash's desperate attempts to control him. His gratuitous use of flamethrower irrespective of Ash's commands confirmed his refusal to obey — and he went down to an ice beam, as though the situation couldn't get any more humiliating.
Ash freed him from the ice with a jagged rock, palms slippery with blood. He paused just long enough for Brock to bandage his hands and sat through the night by Charizard's side, tending a campfire and working to keep the fire type's temperature from plummeting too low.
"You always do this," he mumbled, rubbing Charizard's cool flank with a heated towel. "If you'd have listened, maybe– maybe we could've won that battle. You're strong… you can take a poliwrath. I know you can."
Brock lay awake and listened. Ash kept talking.
"I wish… I wish you'd trust me more. I know I'm not the best trainer in the world… sometimes I get things wrong. Okay– I get things wrong a lot. But… I'm learning, and I'm getting better, and… I'm stronger than I was when we met and you listened back then!
"It's like… it's like I'm not good enough anymore. And I don't know what I've got to do to be good enough for you. Because I want to be, and I'm trying to be. I just– I don't know anymore. Sometimes I wonder if you'd be better off without me. You'd tell me if you wanted to go, right? You're not just staying 'cause you think you have to?"
Ash bowed his head and threw another stick into the fire. It crackled and roared, spitting embers into the night sky.
"I just wanna be your friend."
The next morning, when Team Rocket attacked camp, Charizard rose to protect Pikachu. He pulled the poachers' getaway machine from underground and reared up, flames curling on his tongue, to burn them—
"Charizard, no! You'll hurt Pikachu!" Ash cried.
And just like that, Charizard stopped.
Ash gave commands; Charizard obeyed them. Brock presumed that it was an expression of gratitude for the night before, a one-time show of compliance. An eye for an eye; a favour for a favour.
Confidence renewed by the sudden change in behaviour, Ash challenged Tad a second time. Again, Ash gave commands; again, Charizard obeyed them, and the poliwrath was finished with a seismic toss.
Overwhelmed with glee, Ash lunged at Charizard, flinging his arms around him. Brock held his breath — and Charizard craned his neck, pushing his massive head into his trainer's embrace and rumbling contentedly.
"That charizard of yours is really strong," Tad admitted, recalling his fainted pokémon. "I had a feeling it would be once you started working together. What changed?"
"I dunno," Ash said happily, scratching Charizard behind the horns. The fire type warbled, eyes shut.
Later, when Tad had left, Charizard blew fire in Ash's direction as punishment for nearly knocking him over — but it felt different. Controlled, deliberately aimed so that Ash wouldn't have to dodge to avoid being scorched.
"Careful," Brock said anyway. "You don't want to make him angry now you've finally gotten in his good books else you'll end up getting burned."
"I can handle the heat," Ash said confidently, and for the first time, Brock believed him.
A/N: Reviews/comments are always appreciated! I try to take all constructive criticism into account so I can improve any future writing I do.
