Just felt like putting up a work of mine. This one isn't too fan-fic-ish, but whatevs... still the best completed writing I've done in a while (and a good challenge I had on myself, to try and write the climactic scene well, with how heavy it is). Don't wanna post a story I'm currently working on until I get a couple more chapters done, sooooo yeah. You have this.
Enjoy the depressing-ness, anyways~
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He felt like such the nobleman, such the guardian, every day he pushed around that little chair on wheels. The Gallade didn't mind the barely audible yet still perturbing squeak of the tires every so often, nor the deadness in his bladed arms after each day of pushing, lactic acid taking its toll on the daily vitality of his limbs, nor even the vigilance he needed every second he was awake and every moment he was not. All of those were cumbersome, sure, but it was all worth it as long as the days persisted with the gang intact, most of all the girl in the wheelchair to whom he showed a new crevice of the world with every rotation of the earth around the sun.
"Osteogenesis imperfecta," they called it, her family. It was a congenital bone disorder, but none of her parents had the gene for it. OI, however, placed 35% odds on the victim acquiring it thanks to a sporadic, discrete mutation, and that seemed to be the case with Kellen.
Lucky her.
Her parents had, for the longest time, so vehemently refused to allow her out of the house more than was absolutely compulsory, especially with the severity of her condition confining her to a wheelchair. That's what their jobs were, though, to worry about their little girl with the brittle skeleton and yet the vivid disposition. They wouldn't let her go with her friends once they left around 11-12 years of age, ironically breaking her heart rather than her bones, instead just keeping her in school (which was frightening enough to them, letting her loose in that henhouse for 7 hours a day).
Finally, on the day she reached 13, he made his move as well. He and Kellen got down on their knees (him literally, her figuratively) and begged to let her go out, to explore the world with everyone else… and they relented. Of course, they forced him to be her ever-watchful guardian, but he was going to do that anyways. That was just his nature, gallant and virtuous as he was, as Gallades just naturally were, and all he wanted was for her to get as close to a real life as she could with bones of glass.
Nothing was to happen to her. Nothing.
The day was sunny, about half a year into her ventures, with a somewhat moderate temperature to make Snowpoint residents panic, those at the Outskirt Stand bundle up, and Nimbasans to feel compelled to mow the lawn, walk the dog or play a round of golf. Nobody living regionally could complain about the climate, with it being totally unbecoming of anything dreadful occurring… even the sentinel felt this as he wheeled the girl along, a sense of leisure seeping into his veins as if they were being emanated from the sun making a blitzkrieg through the ozone.
Kellen's legs dangled inches above the ground as she looked around at the landscape. The rolling hills of the area forced Caleb to exert more energy, both in keeping her from rolling away on downhill slopes and shoving her up the inclines. Still, at least he wasn't heading through Mount Coronet again; that ended up being murder on his arms, though the extent that Kellen had enjoyed the excursion was more than enough to offset the temporary agony.
"We're going on the ferry today, right Caleb?" she asked, innocently as always. The Psychic/Fighting type nodded with a smile in reply.
"Yes, we'll be spending the day over in Mossdeep before heading back in the evening. And by the looks of it, the weather will be on our side." At this mid-morning point in the day, Caleb saw merely a small formation of clouds on the east horizon.
Without any other comments they veered over towards the sea, with the plateau smoothly undulating down to the rocks and dunes of the beach. The water made like a fickle blanket, tucking the coastline in before leaving it out to be baked by the sun and cooled by the moon, only to have the tide restart the cycle. The rocks had it even worse than the normal sandy threshold on either side; they were the wives to the tide's abusive husband, especially on days where the conditions were less than stellar.
Over to the north, the vague silhouette of a pier could be seen, with a few early fishermen sitting on the dock and praying to whatever fish gods would hear their subconscious calls for a halibut or sea bass. Hell, they'd take a shark, for infamy's sake at least. Maybe a quick picture before shoving it back into the water, dazed, damaged, but not deceased. That would earn a decent newspaper clipping and a bit of local stardom… much to the fishes' chagrin.
Kellen and Caleb, meanwhile, essentially ignored all this, shifting their natural tunnel vision to the unassuming wharf just a little ways south, with all of two boats waiting to hold enough of a capacity to merit crossing the choppy waters to Mossdeep. There did seem to be a few people standing in queue for the 9:20 crossing though, and with the time being 9:17, they had arrived with near-perfect punctuality.
They paid the small fee to board once the line disintegrated in front of them. Kellen stood, slowly, neurosurgeon cautious, and Caleb grabbed her hands to help her inside the boat. The captain folded up Kellen's wheelchair as they ducked inside, handing it to Caleb after, and he slid it under the wooden benches on which they sat, placing a foot on it to keep the wheelchair from sliding during the trek. Within a minute, the boat was pulling away from the dock, the end of an on-again off-again relationship, boat and dock never quite deciding whether they should stay together or just finally break apart.
The russet benches squeaked slightly as the ferry picked up speed across the sea, apparently taking the place of the wheelchair tires' screeching while it was out of commission. Waves knocked up against the vessel like small rioters trying to tip an automobile, futile as their efforts were at the moment. Up at the front of the small craft, the captain joked with a crewmate and quoted a stand-up routine he'd watched the night before. Amidst all this Caleb and Kellen sat quietly, waiting out the forty-five minute commute in peace.
It ended unexcitingly, with the boat monotonously hooking up with one end of the relationship triangle in which it was tangled. Caleb and Kellen disembarked the ferry first, what with Kellen's handicap, and the two pushed onwards into Mossdeep's downtown district sprawled out directly in front of them at the end of the wharf. Upon Kellen's wishes the duo meandered over to the main commercial street (though mostly for window shopping), and the next two and a half hours were spent wheeling in and out of stores, down and around blocks, their path, from above, looking almost cartoonish in its aimlessness.
They proceeded to hit up the museum section of the Mossdeep Air and Space Station, plus a famous beach on the isle. With Caleb's stabilization at the latter of those locales, Kellen dug her feet into the sand after her first pair of steps, her first time on a real beach. The grains of sand seemed to welcome the newcomer, swallowing her feet with gravity's aid in a poorly versed attempt to suck her in. Every time, though, she would shift her feet or take another shaky step, sending almost every speck into a free-fall back to where it came, only to continue the cycle of course.
The sun was past the midpoint of its decline back to nightly obscurity when Caleb and Kellen decided to head back to the mainland, already exhausted by all the walking they'd done. Kellen had a plastic shopping bag in tow, the kind that made Mother Nature shed a tear in agony, with a stuffed Shaymin-S inside. A content smile rested on her countenance as her bright blue eyes gazed out at the harbors towards which they were headed. Caleb simply wheeled her along at a brisk pace.
The wind had picked up by this point, turning the wind chill below 50 and making the waters much choppier. Boats swayed like New Year's Eve drunks on the cobalt sea's shores, almost irrevocably shaped by man. Up ahead, Caleb spotted the pier where their ride back to contiguous land, and steered Kellen in her wheelchair over in that direction. A ways out from the dock, a familiar boat worked its way over, the riotous waves seeing more success this time with their saboteur thrusts at the boat's sides. Caleb ducked his head as a breeze morphed into a gust, but carried on unfazed as they turned onto the actual quay.
Once again their wait for the ferry was quite brief, with a lack of seats to be filled by folks heading to the mainland. Their boarding time was once again near the waiting time right before, but it took just minutes to head off, with the wind picking up and the waters growing more mutinous. This ferry's benches were much more solidly in place, lacking the squeal of the ones on the way out to Mossdeep, but that sound was replaced by the splashing on the sides, moderate roars of the saline water reverberating on the sounding boards of the boat's sides. Silently, Caleb and Kellen gripped their seats.
The boat drunkenly staggered further and further away from one shore and closer to another, and within minutes neither one was in view. Caleb glanced up at the sky to find just a small assortment of clouds, seemingly unbefitting of such rough waters. He stumbled as he brought himself back down to his seat, Kellen braced beside him, and went back to facing straight ahead, staving off seasickness the best he could as his posture was rocked with the boat's wavering. The crashing waves and the ferry's struggles brought time down to a slow, skulking pace as the passengers waited out the ride.
The rocks of the craft were asymmetrical. 5 degrees portside would come back to 23 degrees to the starboard, and all this constantly threw off the equilibrium of the few passengers, clutching to their seats so as not to get thrown about. Amongst all this, Caleb held Kellen's hand, pressing it onto the wood perpendicular to her posture with his own green one, as water leapt up from the seas in all their revolt and sprayed him slightly.
A second later the boat jerked forward, with a dip in the waves that were mugging the ferry before it lurched backwards, hiking over the kink. Caleb had fallen forward, hands grabbing the seat in front of him to catch himself before he flipped over the bench, still leaning over its back. He fell backwards on the second half of the boat's heaving, back into his own seat.
The boat stabilized after that, reverting to its previously regular swaying, but when he glanced over at Kellen, he saw her with her eyes closed, leaning back with her neck limply hanging over the wood back.
"Kellen?" he asked, shaking her softly, one hand on her and the other one pressing his hand to hers for stability. There was no reply.
He looked her over, his heart rate accelerating as his eyes hit her flaccid neck. Her chest was stagnant, lacking any rise or fall. Caleb scrambled to find her pulse whilst the ferry continued rocking back and forth; after trying four different spots, though, he still came up empty.
"Ohhh Arceus Arceus Arceus…" he muttered, looking around frantically for nothing in particular. His limbs were fidgety as well, one hand grasping the other as he stumbled onto his feet. He could only stand for a pair of seconds before falling onto his butt; he kicked his legs to make a second attempt at merely getting up, and succeeded this time. He'd attracted the attention of the other travelers by this point, and he shakily motioned towards Kellen. A couple of them made the jump over to their area, curious, and only now did Caleb climb back into his seat, saying "I think she… Maybe she hit her neck… just…"
One woman immediately let her hands fly to Kellen's neck, searching for a pulse herself, and she too found no success. The man that had come over looked at Caleb, then slowly lifted Kellen's head, with doctoral care. He shifted it around, testing for something it seemed… and then put it back where it was.
"She broke her neck…" the man said, the craft jolting left almost on cue. Caleb stared at the man in disbelief first, mouth slightly agape at the news he didn't want to accept. "I'm sorry…"
Caleb now gazed down at Kellen, the other two staying put out of some unwritten, social obligation. His lower lip quivered as a couple of his upper teeth bit into it, though he pried them apart once the boat reeled again, not wanting to chomp right through his mouth. He stared blankly at the figure, now a cadaver, his psyche shattered like the porcelain in the bull's china shop. He had one vow, one promise, and there it was, lying next to him with a cracked neck.
He could have thought about the trouble he might have faced, the trust of Kellen's parents sent to oblivion, but that was irrelevant until the moment he walked through the door. Right now, on this quivering boat, an oasis of wood in a desert of brine, all Caleb could think about was his own lost trust, in himself.
He'd felt like such the nobleman, such the sentinel at first, but now, he felt like a regular Benedict Arnold.
