The World Without Them || Original Pokémon Fanfiction ✓

Chapter Forty: Two Halves of a Whole

~~~ Sage Tooley ~~~

 Blindness. 

 Suffocation.

 I'm drowning.

 Sage kicked around blindly, writhing in black liquid. Her joints screamed at the effort, and her eyes and lungs burned viciously. She didn't know where she was or how she ended up there, but something was very clear:

 Her life was in danger.

 The greenette reached out in hopes of touching the surface but came back with nothing. There was no light, no way of knowing which way was up. Her heart rate climbed with every passing second she didn't take in a breath.

 Finally, her limbs grew too tired to move anymore. Sage sank further and further away from any hope of saving herself. This, she realized, was what it had all come to. The constant running, the devastation, the pain she had endured for years -- it all ended when the dam holding her emotions back broke down, releasing her inner thoughts and horrors like a tsunami that threatened to swallow her whole.

 Just as Sage had come to accept her fate, she felt her feet hit something solid. The scene before her changed, and she found herself on a beach. The pressure on her chest from holding her breath vanished and her clothes dried out. She could feel the sand beneath her toes and just a little ways away was the ocean, its waves breaking gently against the shore. A breeze rustled her wavy green hair as the sun set on the horizon. The Iris looked around.

 This is Valcoast. What am I doing here?

 She brought her hand up to her face and gently ran her fingers across her cheek. Nothing hurt and she couldn't feel any of the contusions she knew she should've had. But as confused as she was, the girl stopped questioning it. Being home and smelling the sea and seeing the familiar surroundings was comforting. It made her feel as if a missing piece of herself had been found and put back into place.

 Before Sage could process another thought, she set out down the beach. At first she walked, but eventually her pace picked up until she was jogging. She grinned as a wave came up and washed over her feet. 

 As she made her way across the sandy expense, something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. It was a small gray building with white trim sitting at the edge of the woods. She gasped. She would have recognized that structure anywhere.

 It was the Valcoast Seaside Bakery, the entrance to the Tanna Society.

 Sage broke out into a run towards it. All common sense left her as she approached the bakery. Her relieved smile stretched from ear to ear.

 I'm finally home.

 But in the blink of an eye that same smile disappeared. She skidded to a stop as smoke suddenly spewed from the windows and underneath the front door. She watched in horror as flames trailed up the walls and engulfed the building until it was one large inferno. Sage covered her mouth with her hands and fell to her knees, tears already spilling over her eyelids.

 "No. Please no. Not again," she said between sobs. 

 Her surroundings changed just as gunfire rang out.

 Sage felt the sand get replaced by cold rock. She shakily wiped away the tears that still graced her cheeks and got to her feet, the sound of bullets leaving the barrels of firearms still blaring in her ears. She was in a small, dimly lit room. It took her a moment to adjust to the darkness, and even then she couldn't pinpoint where exactly she was.