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Who: Char, Marie, Vinnie
What: A log full of punchings
Where: An unused classroom
When: Friday, March 23
Warnings: Violence and vomit.

Marie was a marked man. ...Boy. Manbaby. Okay, last week hadn't been kind to Char, but that was no reason to let his threats be empty ones. That little tit had messed with Bulba, and as long as Char's around, you don't mess with Bulba. Simple as that.

Classes had let out for the day. There hadn't been much hope of cornering Marie during class hours, and getting the kid on his own after the school day was done with had proven tricky, considering how Marie hadn't exactly been seeking Char out. This was gonna hafta be the best time to get it done -- that narrow little window of opportunity between Marie being safely in class and over in Sonny and Vinnie's dorm. He had his back against the door of a classroom that had been empty and unused for a while now, keeping a close eye on the crowd of departing students for any sign of his intended victim.

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Oh. He probably should have expected as much. He really hoped that Max had at least kept his storytelling to Bulba and Bulba alone, but considering Max was... Max... news of Char's badge of shame had probably reached another few unwelcome ears.

And now it was time to explain something that was not exactly easy to explain. Given how much he struggled to understand how grass-types worked, he wasn't entirely confident that Bulba could understand him in return; he suspected that his daily fights with Max would only come across as immature instigating, and that Max getting fed up with it just the inevitable (albeit extreme) response. Not entirely sure how to convey it, he just settled for the blunt truth.

He shrugged as best as he could, pulling his wings in a little closer to himself. "He got sick of me challengin' him. Wanted to make sure I knew my place, I guess."

When it came down strictly to the differences between fire-types and grass-types, it was true that Bulba had a hard time trying to grasp the differences between them. There was just a disconnect between a species so deeply rooted in the concept of coexistence and one whose pride of self kept them clawing above the rest. Bulba didn't honestly think he'd ever truly understand the fires that made fire-types who they were, but he at least had hopes that he'd be able to figure Char out. He was the only one that mattered anyway ~~until someone apps an Arcanine~~.

He thought maybe he could think about it a little better if he didn't think about the differences. Sure, it might not have been the same hot blooded kind that pumped through a Charizard, but a saur wasn't without its pride. It could be tested and measured just like any other. It could be broken.

Bulba imagined it was similar to the feeling that came when you realized that the person you were struggling to catch up with didn't even care that you were trying to pass them anymore. That it wasn't worth the effort.

He could only imagine how much it would hurt to have someone else stake claim on him. It was a little frightening.

It was also a bit maddening. The Ivysaur grumbled at Char's side. This wasn't right at all. Who would have thought that seeing a more subdued Char would have made him so mad? It remained a quiet rumble inside for the moment, though his brows creased as he continued to watch Char.

Not knowing what else he could say, he just went with what he believed. "That's not where your place is."

~~damn you arcaniiiine~~

Char's gaze flicked down to his shoulder for a moment. "It is now."

It was hard to argue with the pecking order; since Charizards really weren't so good at the whole "equal coexistence where everyone is happy friends" thing, establishing a top Charizard was a necessity for them to live together without tearing each other apart over territory. It was probably for the better that Sasha was so opposed to the ways of her kind; her lack of interest in challenging him had made it easy to file her beneath him. The abnormality of their circumstances had made the Route 10 Charizards so weak, too, that asserting dominance had been utterly simple.

"The real stupid part of it," Char mumbled, "is how goddamn happy I was that he was a Charizard in the first place." At the start of the week, he'd been ecstatic -- a very contradictory sort of ecstatic, considering how unbelievably pissed he'd been about being usurped, and how he'd spent a lot of the time after in sullen obedience. But it'd been a good kind of anger -- he was mad for exactly the right reasons. How the hell, though, do you explain to a docile please-everyone grass-type that there was a happiness to be had in the act of competing? This had to be something uniquely Charizard, one of those entirely unexplainable things; he already knew that Bulba didn't care for his habit of picking fights at every chance.

"Sasha's too tame to get it. Riwane's still a Charmander, and they ain't wired like we are. Max... he got it. He understood what bein' a Charizard's like. I'm happy bein' Green's, but livin' tame means curbin' a lot of things." He was already excessively Charizard as is -- his fights made his brother worry, his wanderlust made his team miss him, his need for isolation and independence made it so goddamned hard to just talk to Bulba about what was on his mind. "I don't... got a lot of people that understand me," he admitted, albeit reluctantly -- he wasn't sure if Bulba believed he was one of those people, "and I don't got a lot of chances to let go and be how I'm s'posed to be. I thought..."

Oh. Here was the hardest part to admit. He might be willing to tolerate contact for the sake of putting Bulba at ease, but this, apparently, was the point where he got uncomfortable and tried to pull away. Find something to look at other than Bulba. Shift his wings and curl his tail and and then immediately reconsider that last one because Bulba probably did not want to be very close to a tail flame. Basically have no idea what to do with himself, because he had no idea how to lay this sort of feeling bare, even after four years of working on this kind of shit. Eventually, he settled for sitting up; this kept him out of physical contact, and had the bonus of letting him drape his wings around himself, like that barrier would somehow magically render him invisible.

C'mon, Char, spit it out. It's not that hard.

"I thought it'd be okay 'cause he was my friend."

He said it quietly, but as soon as it left his mouth, he had to bite back the urge to follow it up with too-loud laughter. How stupid did that even sound? Him, Char, Kerosene... trusting a human and then getting all shocked when that turned out to be a piss-awful idea. It kind of was laughable, wasn't it?

Bulba did not protest when Char removed himself from their contact. Every part of him was telling him to move after him and hug up close, but he kept the feeling firmly stifled. That sort of comfort worked for him, but it wasn't going to work for Char. It had taken them a decade just to achieve a simple hug. This required something else that Bulba quite frankly did not know if he possessed. Char opening up about what bothered him was a thing that was so far and few between that the Ivysaur had nothing to go on in regards to what was doing it right and what was atrociously wrong.

That meant this was as good a time as any to start figuring it out.

He let Char be on his own sitting up, choosing to just stay right where he was while he mulled it all over. "I can understand being happy about it," he ventured out loud. The specific points of why he was so happy were completely lost on him, but he could get the general reasoning at the very least. "It's nice to have someone that's like you around so there's at least one person that really gets it." He already knew he wasn't that close to being one of the few people that understood Char. Maybe better than some, but not in the way that Char really wanted to be understood. It bothered him, but he knew Char probably didn't get him very much either.

Bulba rolled onto his back, frowning up at the ceiling of Char's room. "It wasn't wrong to hope that," he said. It was Max. He might have been hot headed, and sure he had the tendency to do the opposite of whatever someone asked him to do but it was usually because his heart was in the right place. This was different. He thought back to broken promises of how everyone would be okay and his frown deepened. "I thought it would be okay too."

He reached out and gently brushed his hand against Char's side. It was quick and didn't linger, acting as a barely there substitute for what Bulba would have like to have been doing. A very brief reminder that these weren't things Char had to carry all on his own inside his wing fortress.

"He can't keep you down forever, can he...?" Bulba got a little hesitant, not sure if what he was saying was going to hold any water. "Maybe you could make it mean something else for yourself..."

In the wild, the top-dog position was never a secure one; that sort of absolute defeat went entirely against their challenging nature. The idea of the tattoo, of an indelible mark of ownership, had been a uniquely human twist. Even if Char had managed to reclaim his place on the totem pole, he'd still bear that reminder of his own frailty on his shoulder.

Of course, even that much relied on Char being able to actually do that in the first place. Just... take a second to imagine Char beating Max in hand-to-hand combat. ...Are you done laughing yet? No? Give it a second... Okay. Yeah. Definitely not a likely thing at all. Max simply did not lose ever, especially not to runts. Under better circumstances, such an insurmountable challenge might appeal to Char's competitive nature, but with the way things stood, it was hard to feel much more than... well, a vague sense of futile apathy.

The ghost of a touch brought his gaze back down to Bulba. There was another nagging little tail-end of a thought that he'd stepped on before it had a chance to fully form: would this have stung so much if he hadn't been friends with Max? He hadn't been happier during his days of a biting, mistrusting Charmeleon by any stretch of the imagination, but there hadn't been this unnatural obligation to lean on others. He could have avoided a lot of heartache if he'd taken that one little step differently, maybe, but that wasn't a road he could turn down anymore, was it?

"Like what?" Char asked Bulba, a hint of a humorless little self-deprecating smile on his face. "Kinda hard to twist this into anything but gettin' branded, ain't it?"

"...I don't know." As much as he wished he had an answer for that, he didn't. He just honestly didn't know. It bothered him a lot, considering he was the one to bring it up. He stared at that flicker of a smile and furrowed his brow, not really liking what it was he was seeing. "I wish I did but..." Bulba continued to frown and he shook his head.

"I just hate seeing you like this," he finally admitted. Bulba pushed himself up into a sitting position besides Char, staring hard at his knees. "Maybe it's not my place to say it, but I don't think you should have to follow it. You might not have out muscled Max, but who the heck even can when he's not pretending to be a Charizard? Or anything else for that matter." Bulba paused, realizing he was mostly just rambling now. "That doesn't make you weak. It makes you an entirely sane individual.

"Heck, if you got it because he didn't think you were on his level, maybe that's a kind of a demented blessing in a really screwed up douchebag kind of way. I don't know..."

Char knew from experience just how horrible it felt to say something that, while well-intentioned, was not exactly the most effective thing to say. It was pulling that exact same move so many times in the past that made him so nervous about reaching out to Bulba.

So it felt really piss-awful to admit it, but this was... not quite what he'd needed to hear. He had three basic traits etched right into his very core, and Bulba had accidentally slapped them each in turn.

Char was true to his species, even if it made life twice as inconvenient. This included that deeply-ingrained sense of hierarchy, and as atrophied and lopsided as it was, it included a sense of honor. Maybe both Max and Char regretted the outcome of that week, but Char had been bested by someone stronger in a fair fight; to stick his fingers in his ears and pretend it never happened just to soothe his poor aching butt rankled at his pride almost as badly as the tattoo itself did. He might have been a pretty pathetic sight after Max had put him in his place, but even if Char had wanted to ignore his species' ways, flipping the game board like a sulking toddler would only lower him further.

Char, under normal circumstances, also had his species' tenacity deeply ingrained into him. Few words could rile him up quite as quickly as "you can't do it." Fearlessness in the face of daunting odds was a trait prized by trainers -- and one that came in very handy for those little starters that began their journey up against Onixes and Starmies. Char may have left behind a path studded by failures and mistakes, but the notion of giving up against a foe wasn't exactly one he entertained easily. To be faced with it in light of this crushing defeat was strangely frightening; being told "it's defintely impossible" only kindled that cornered, helpless feeling even more.

Not just for the basic, instinctive reasons, either. Char had been struggling with his weakness ever since he was a hatchling; the Aiden days had pressed onto him an inescapable fear that he simply never would be good enough, that he would be discarded as unimportant and eventually left behind. Bulba had been doing his best to seek out a silver lining, but the idea that maybe it was a good thing that Char was too weak to be seen as worthwhile didn't... seem especially silvery to Char. It felt a bit more like helpfully pointing out that Char's nagging little lifelong phobia was totally coming true again right here right now.

...Maybe he was a lot harder to understand than he thought he was.

Char... kind of laughed a little, a breathless sound that had more in common with a wince than anything. "Kid, don't." He looked away, abruptly folding his little wing fortress away on his back and pulling his tail in close to himself. No helpful grass-type pheromones here; this was uniquely Charizard body language... or lack thereof, maybe. A basic defense mechanism: if you're sick, act healthy. Save for the instinctive pulling-in of his tail, it was the equivalent of putting on a poker face. "Look, I'll... I dunno, I'll figure it out. Maybe this'll turn out to be good news. You'd have a lot less to sweat over if I were more reigned in, right?"

It was with one fell swoop that Bulba realized with mounting horror that he had clearly said something completely wrong. He didn't see the folding of Char's wings as a good sign. In revealing himself, Bulba just saw the walls going right back up around him. The flickering flame curled in close to him was the beacon telling the grass-type to get out. The worst part was that he wasn't even sure which part of what he had said had been the worst. He would just have to assume it was the whole lot.

If they had reached this point far before now, maybe things would have still been going okay. With their walls down, maybe Bulba would have had some sort of true idea of the phobias that plagued Char's heart. He knew the dragon had troubles, but he could still only guess at their depths.

The Ivysaur truly believed that his brother was strong. He'd believed it long before he'd ever called him brother. He had no idea to look for anything pointing towards a fear of weakness. The idea of looking in towards the insecurities he was trying to shelve for himself never occurred to him in this regard.

So this reaction confused him. It hurt knowing he'd made it worse. He knew there had been a chance that this would happen but... that didn't make it any less painful to see that he had screwed up. Was this how Char felt all the time? Talking to him?

"That's not..." Bulba shook his head, looking at him. "I don't care. It doesn't matter how much or little I have to worry about. I don't want you to be anyone else, Char. I want you to be... you."

A repitition of the soothing words Bulba had spoken when he'd first peeled Char off the hallway floor. It rang oddly dissonant, though, when it followed advice that was so entirely contradictory to what being Char meant. It would have been so easy to give in to the aloof, solitary Route 10 reptile -- to withdraw, to bitterly laugh and accept this as proof that he was just as incapable of being understood as he was of understanding others. Did Bulba even know what he was asking for when he asked for Char to be Char?

Char was very much aware just how familiar this situation was, despite this being the first time in their decade or so of knowing each other that Char had confided in Bulba. It frustrated the hell out of him. Bulba's first response had shocked Char -- his adamant refusal to talk about himself had been born out of a desire to stave off the uncomfortable looks when Char spoke about his past and spare Bulba adding even more weight to his own heavy, sagging shoulders, but Char only now realized just what it had meant. He'd thought he'd done an okay job opening up after he'd run away, thought that now he was ready to wholeheartedly be part of Green's team, but Bulba... even years after the fact, Bulba really didn't know him, did he?

...Maybe not. He just... didn't know better. Couldn't understand, just happened to be one of the many incapable of tapping into the bizarre reptilian mindset. Char knew how easily Bulba piled guilt onto his own shoulders; it was his duty to spare the kid that uncomfortable ache of realizing his words had hurt where they'd intended to soothe. But at the same time... would backing off, resolving to just handle it himself like he usually did... would that just perpetuate this stupid cycle of theirs? Or would it be a stroke of mercy? Maybe pressing on would just lead to the same result as all the other brotherly encounters: a frustrated, self-disgusted Charizard and a despondent Ivysaur.

He honestly didn't know. This all just came down to another stupid blind shot. Another of those goddamned lose/lose situations, for all he knew, but Arceus almighty, was he ever sick of just dragging himself in circles.

He didn't look at Bulba when he asked, and he kept up that subtly guarded posture. "Kid, tell me the truth... you ever wished I was different?"

Bulba shrugged a bit and looked back at his hands. If Char wanted the truth, Bulba was going to give it to him. He wanted to try and keep these walls down, for better or for worse. That was the only way they were going to keep moving forward, wasn't it?

"... I used to. A long time ago. I'd used to think, 'I wish he were a little nicer.' Maybe I thought you'd be easier to get along with, or that you'd actually like me or something." Bulba loosely folded his hands together, wringing them this way and that. He didn't know what to do with himself when making these sorts of awkward, all out there sorts of confessions. He'd already screwed up once, he didn't know how much worse bringing things out would make things.

Bulba glanced at him briefly before looking back off again. "I used to wish you wouldn't get into so many fights. But... I don't know, that's how you handle things? It's not like you're me or Rhys or Blast or anyone."

"You ain't the only one."

No elaboration, no telltale change in that tail of his. Whether that stung or just verified what he already knew, he apparently didn't intend to say. "You'dve been better off with Rhys or Blast." Not so much self-deprecation as a statement of objective fact: there was no use denying all the harm that latching onto Char had done. He was quite sure that in the beginning, it had only been done out of desperation -- exactly because there was no Blast or Rhys to turn to, only that too-fiery Charmeleon.

"Y'keep sayin' you only need me to be me, but look how messed up we are, kid. How messed up I am," he corrected himself -- Bulba had never done anything but patiently wait for his big brother to figure out how to be one. "This whole stupid bullshit with Max kinda just made a whole lotta stuff a whole lot harder to ignore." Now it was getting a little harder to stay as consciously unaffected-looking; a nervous little ripple of movement down the length of his tail here, a hand running through his hair there. "I keep thinkin' I must be movin' forward. Then something like this happens and I realize all I been doin' is treadin' water." A particularly morbid turn of phrase for a Charizard, but this was something that he was kind of struggling to find words for; this was not Char's most eloquent moment. "I'm startin' to wonder if the only way to get past it is to deal with somethin' I just... don't wanna accept about myself."

A rush of words that he was kind of regretting saying; these sorts of confessions, after all, just lead to Bulba looking at him with that unbearable in-pain look in his eyes. Char bit his lip, casting an anxious look over to his brother, searching for that familiar sign to just shut up already before he, once again, made the situation worse.

There was a little bit of a look. A little bit of worry. A little bit of uncertainty as he tried to figure out what to say. He eased out of it with a small sigh, leaning over to rest his head against Char's shoulder. Char might have been trying to hide off by himself, but this was something where Bulba felt he needed to remind him that he wasn't alone for. He stayed quiet for a moment before he spoke, thinking it over. If he had been given the chance of changing things about Char now, he wouldn't have taken it like a younger, more Bulbasaur like self might have. If there was one part of growing up that Bulba thought he actually understood, it might have at least been this.

"You know I think I figured something out a little while ago." he started up quietly. "The thing about loving somebody is that you love them for who they are." Bulba tilt his head up a bit to meet Char's eyes. "They're not perfect and they make mistakes. It's about accepting their faults along with what made you love them in the first place."

He nuzzled just a touch closer and lowered his gaze. "I think you've come a really long way. Maybe you've hit a wall but... I think you might be right, about needing to deal with things. It's... a lot easier to accept things about others than it is to accept them about yourself." Bulba's issues weren't always relatable, but he knew what it was like to just try and pretend they weren't there.

"I don't know if it's the same for you, but at least for me it's easier knowing someone else accepts them even if you don't."

"I ain't scared of that much anymore," Char admitted. When it came to the effect it'd had on just him, at least, he didn't regret the lashing out or the running away. His team knew the darkest, ugliest parts of him and accepted him nonetheless; they'd proven the strength of their love, and that had forged a steadfast bond. "I know I'm still part of the team, and nothing's takin' that away. The problem's just..."

He glanced down at the head on his shoulder, a little unsure, but he eventually relaxed into the touch. Maybe he could remember what'd made this sort of thing so comforting back in the Charmander days, before the daycare-imposed isolation and evolution intervened. How to phrase it...? The fear wasn't necessarily that acceptance would bring rejection or brand him as unworthy. Green had made it clear Char was always good enough for a place on his roster.

The issue was more... wanting to go beyond just "good enough." The gratitude he had for the ones who'd stood with him through his fiercest years was something more than just words could get across. He wanted to reward their patience, be useful not because it bought his insecure, untrusting heart some tenuous semblance of security, but because it was what they deserved.

But once again, that ugly, unpleasant moral-of-the-story stood in his way: intention alone is useless if you're incapable. He didn't want to say it, but shoving it away and ignoring it wouldn't accomplish much, would it? It was either face up to the truth, or keep aimlessly treading water. He knew he was just marching deeper and deeper into "things Bulba never wants to talk about" territory, but Char did it anyway: he said the dreaded A-word.

"Aiden was right about me."

Ah... him. A nervous flutter started in Bulba's belly at the mention of his name. The mentions of Char's past trainer had been so few and far between that Bulba had never firmly established how he really felt about him. He wasn't sure which stance was the right stance, or what opinions would be the ones that upset things. It was a fear born of already having messed up once. He didn't really want to do it twice if he could help it.

... But he really didn't like him, he realized. The potential for being nice enough when Bulba met him wasn't really enough. He could be thankful for things that had happened, but the notion was very bittersweet and kind of twisted at best. So he was wearing a small frown as he looked back up at Char. Apprehension kept him from wanting to ask, but the need to know kept him going. It was true that he didn't particularly like talking about it, but this was about Char now, not him.

"About what?"

It wasn't really something that Aiden had ever said outright, but it was a statement that Char had picked up on nonetheless, and carried close to his heart for years. It was the reason he'd turned his back on the notion of becoming a Charizard and become so defiant and mistrustful toward people. The same thought that had laid the groundwork for years of self-defeating contradictory motivations, had sparked his lifelong head-over-heels reckless love affair with self-destruction.

He'd spent so many years determined to prove Aiden wrong that admitting it carried an extra weight, an unpleasant notion of defeat. "The whole reason I got left behind was because I was a step behind everyone else. I figured if I threw enough shit in my way, I'd toughen up enough to catch up. Like I'd stop bein' that runt if I just worked hard enough." Char's eyes flicked down to his shoulder briefly. "Ain't like the signs haven't always been there. I think this is just s'posed to be the wakeup call that's too loud to ignore."

Bulba had already looked away again, his fingers curling in the folds of Char's sheets. The nervous flutter in his gut was shifting into a quiet anger. For the trainer, for himself and the whole slew of could ofs and should ofs that might have happened if maybe he'd known anything. If maybe he wasn't such an ignorant kid for so long. The uncertainty of what he had said to make Char withdraw back to himself earlier threatened to keep Bulba backed into a frustrated corner of silence.

"Then what? Who would you be then? None of us have ever thought of you that way…" Bulba pulled away slightly, staring down at his knuckles curled into the bedding. "You can't be behind if we're trying to catch up."

But as much as Bulba could encourage him, it was Aiden's team that Char was talking about, not Green's. It wasn't them Char had been trying to catch up with. Bulba grit his teeth.

"… He didn't deserve to have you at all."

He couldn't blame Bulba for being unsure what to think about Aiden; even after years of dwelling on it, Char couldn't say he was fully certain how he felt either. He seemed to be stuck oscillating between two extremes, not quite sure whether he wanted to agree with Bulba or leap to Aiden's defense. One more instance where he just couldn't find balance. What else is new? Frustrated, he simply looked away from it, withdrew far enough for the two contradictory halves to resolve themselves into a strange, detached ambivalence. He glanced away as well, hands cradling his tail for want of something to do.

"He was the one who picked me," was the best counterpoint he could offer. Maybe it was a little different for Bulba -- he'd been hatched by Green, had spent his entire life at the side of the trainer that he eventually travelled with -- but he figured the kid would understand just how much importance that concept carried for any lab starter. Maybe not the one that Char called his human, but the first one to pick him out of all the bigger, brighter Charmanders in the lab.

"Kid, y'mean well, but... I don't think this is something I can deny anymore. I lost a trainer once, and now... after all the shit we been through, this just proves I ain't even strong enough to defend Green's claim on me." Failure as a trainer's Pokemon. Couldn't register as a worthwhile opponent in the eyes of another Charizard -- failure as a wild Pokemon. Had called someone a friend, then had that trust broken in an unbelievably twisted, fucked-up way. Failure as a softhearted human, too. "...It's stupid how bad this is messin' with my head," Char mumbled, "but... shit, where do I go from here?"

It was a good counterpoint. As reluctant as he was to accept any good from Aiden at this point, he couldn't argue the simple notion of being picked. Out of all the others, that human picked him. He had understood it in Fuschia, and he understood it here. The understanding didn't change the feeling that Aiden didn't deserve to be given that particular Charmander, but voicing it wouldn't prove useful. He let it quietly pass with a glum nod, instead letting himself be frustrated with other things.

There definitely was no shortage of frustration with those other things. It was the hard point where anything he said didn't seem to matter. Bulba could deny things for Char, but it didn't hold any water if the dragon couldn't find it in himself to believe it. It would certainly be hard to, with the amount of things stacked up against him. The Ivysaur grumbled and drug a hand through the back of his hair.

He didn't know how to help his brother stop hurting any more than Char ever knew how for him and it was the most horrible feeling in the world.

"Up," he mumbled back after a little while. "You go Up." He turned gold eyes back to Char, wearing every bit of worry and frustration he had on his face. All those, and a little sliver of what optimistic individuals liked to refer to as hope. "I can't tell you how but… If you really think all that stuff is true, then Up is the only direction you can really go in, right?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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this tag composed by the biggest brainfart oh my god <_>

I AM SO SORRY I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED

NEVER APOLOGIZE GIVE ME MORE

N-NO..............

MOORREEE

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

;;3;;

I WARNED YOUUUU

GIVE.... ME MORE ANYWAY....

hurt me more dawg, she says........

y e s

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