“I’m leaving for a few days,” that’s how it always starts and with his back to Cynthia and the others he lifts his arm up high in a parting wave. It always happens like this, always around the same time and for days he disappears.
It takes time before he shows up at their grandfather's door step with a grin on his face, jokes at the ready. He acts like it’s going to be a normal outing, a family trip-- as if they have any of those-- but it always ends the same. They always ended up there. No hugs, smiles, or laughs can change the fact that their parents are gone; their tombstones pronounce it in elegant scrawl and like always it leaves him hallow. It shouldn’t because it’s been so long, but it does. He wishes it didn’t ache, wishes it didn’t have to be this way, but it is what it is. That’s why, for the both of him, he keeps it to himself and acts like nothing in the world can bother him.
Buck sees through it, though and speaks up over the quiet between them. “I don’t remember moms face anymore… Why… Did you decide to become an Elite Four member? I know Gramps can be strict sometimes but… Was it so important… You had to leave?” He shoves his hands in his pockets by the end of it, steely hues impossible to gauge as he stares at his mother’s grave, but his jaw sets and his shoulders tense. Buck’s never wanted to know why and of all days to ask was it really a good time? He wants to get mad about it, but the graves before him quell the quip; he let’s it die in his throat.
We’ve got old videos, pictures, the works, he wants to say, but even he knows he can’t look at them. He’s not forgotten his mother or father’s face but their voices? Those are long gone he’s sure, the one’s he hears from memory a facade. He finds he can’t tell Buck that either, not when he’s the oldest, not when he got to spend a lot more time with them.
“Askin’ the tough questions today, huh kiddo?” He finally starts, finally glances over at his short stack of a brother. “It’s like askin’ why I decided t’train fire types--” a whim, Volkner would say, “--it felt like it was the right thing t’do.” he pulls his hand from his pocket, slips his fingers up into tuffs of fluffy red hair.
How else can he describe it? The battle against the elite that came to town was something else. He’d never felt like that before. The rush, the challenge, the satisfaction of getting to win, getting to face off against trainer’s like that all the time-- and all of them coming to face him. Prepared, knowing his team in advance while he was in the dark about it all. It felt right... it felt like the spark he was looking for. Even if his grandfather was still sour about it and even, worst of all, if it meant leaving Buck and Volkner behind. They seemed to understand though.
“It has nothin’ ta do with gramps, though. It wasn’t easy leavin, either.” all the same he casts Buck a grin as he rests his hands behind his head. “Good thing ‘bout being an Elite though is that I get t’come back allllll th’time to pester ya, right?” If there’s something wrong, he certainly doesn’t pick up on it. Hell, he seems oblivious to the fact that he’s not around as much as he thinks he is.