#Nico Barnett (OC) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whumpster-fire · 4 years

Text

Whumptober 2020 Day 13: Delayed Drowning

Okay here’s the other half of the story I did for Day 5. Except not half because this turned out waaaay longer than I expected, something like 8k words.

Fandom: Pokemon

Content Warnings: Animal whumpee, Female Whumpee, Minor Whumpee (juvenile animal), Minor Caretaker who gets hurt too, Animal Abuse, Animal Death Mention, Bad Parenting Mention, Hallucinations, Fear Wetting

“I mean, I just don’t understand… what the hell kind of sick bastard just… throws a bunch of baby Pokemon in the river?” Nico ranted to the nurse on duty at the West Rutile Town Municipal Pokemon Center. “Like… I’ve heard of people abandoning Pokemon because they evolved and they couldn’t take care of them, or something, but like… how hard can it be to find homes for Eevees? I mean, they’re like… there’s four or five of them in my apartment building back home!” During the ride in the back of the police car, which had raced them to the Pokemon Center with the lights flashing, he’d been almost as catatonic as the three Eevee kits in his lap, just answering the cops’ questions about what had happened as accurately as he could.

The lecture about him risking his life going out onto the flimsy tree trunk to pull the bag out of the river hadn’t been as long as he expected, and there was no mention of calling his parents, but he still felt like a damn criminal, especially with all the questions like how long he’d had his Trainer’s License, where he’d been last, and so on. It actually sounded like the guys were genuinely interested – one of them said he’d gotten a couple of gym badges when he was young but competitive battling just didn’t work out – but it was still like an interrogation.

With the car’s heater blasting, the Eevees had started to perk up a little. Two of them, at least. They were shivering violently the whole ride there, and stayed snuggled into the sweater, but they were awake. The other one? The nurse had just delivered the bad news, and right now Nico felt like he had to keep talking, and to stay angry, or he was going to break down and cry. The whole car ride he’d been telling himself over and over not to get attached, that they might not make it, and there was a good chance they were kidnapped and would be reunited with their trainers. But the little creatures had pressed themselves against him, and they were making little mewling cries of distress, and he’d just done what he could to try to comfort them. One of them was a bit more curious, and started looking around the cop car after a bit. The other had managed to crawl up inside his t-shirt. She was still damp and freezing to the touch.

The nurse sighed and nodded. She was an older woman, with brown hair that was gray at the roots. “They’re common, yeah. But that cuts both ways. There are so many born in captivity every year that there aren’t always enough homes for them.” She grimaced. “These kits are six or seven months old, probably from the same litter. Probably an unlicensed breeder: the scanners didn’t pick up any Pokeball ID.” Captive Pokemon in Tektos were required by law to have a registered Pokeball by the age of four months. “I don’t think there was much effort put into finding homes for them, either. They’re almost a pound underweight, and based on all the partially-healed injuries it’s possible they were used as Grinders.”

Nico winced. Pokemon battling, real Pokemon battling, was a carefully regulated sport, and it was mostly safe. There were occasionally accidents, but Pokemon in league-sanctioned battles had a rate of serious injury several times lower than professional footballers. But there were illegal underground battles, and even in the League occasionally someone would get caught doing something cruel or unethical. Like Grinding. The best way for a Pokemon to get better, aside from practicing individual moves and techniques with their trainers, was battling against other skilled opponents who could challenge them. But Grinding meant beating much weaker Pokemon over, and over, and over… just using them as target practice. It wasn’t good even for the Pokemon being trained, and for the ‘Grinder’ it was cruel and dangerous. But…

“Why’d they stop, then?” he asked. “I mean… wouldn’t people who were doing that just… keep them until they died or got too badly hurt to run or defend themselves at all? Why’d they try to drown the whole litter at the same time?”

“If I had to guess, because they got found out and were trying to get rid of evidence,” the nurse scowled. “Since the old commissioner got voted out a lot of these underground fighting rings have been getting busted.”

“Oh.” Nico balled his fists. “Yeah. Good. I mean, not that they were destroying evidence, but… y’know, hopefully that means the sons of bitches who did this’ll get caught soon.”

“Anyway...” the woman scratched the back of her head. “The good news is, both of the little girls you brought in today seem to be in stable condition. We’re going to keep them here for observation for at least another night. After that, they don’t have any Pokeball IDs as I said, so they don’t legally have a trainer at this point. You and your friend are licensed trainers, so you have the first claim to any abandoned Pokemon you capture, even if you didn’t use a Pokeball.”

“Okay. Uhh… I mean I, uhh… I’ll have to think about it!” Nico stuttered. He hastily excused himself and claimed he needed to call a couple of people. Erin had already left by then. He was going to talk to her at some point, just to make sure, but she’d said the other day that after Slana she wasn’t going to be ready for another Pokemon for a while. She had four, which was technically enough to earn seven of the eight gym badges needed to qualify for Regionals even if it would be much harder to do so. Nico only had Kenna and Zagi, so to even challenge a gym for his second badge he’d have to add another Pokemon to his team.

But that was the thing. Even if he took in the Eevees, he’d still have a team of two. They were so young it would be a couple of months before it was even physically safe for them to battle, and mentally? Maybe never. If he remembered right one of the semifinalists in last year’s regional championship had a rescued grinder Pokemon on his team, but the interviewers had focused on that precisely because it was rare. There was no guarantee they’d even be okay with being anywhere near a battling arena, not if the sights and sounds were a constant reminder of whatever abuse they’d gone through. And it wouldn’t be fair to them to be shut in their balls every time he had a practice match with another trainer, or during sparring sessions while he was spending time with the others. If what they needed was a quiet home, one that was always in the same place and never involved crashing in cheap rooms or on couches at Pokemon Centers, he couldn’t provide that. At a minimum he could be taking care of an extra two Pokemon. A trainer could have more than six and just select which six would be ‘available’ before a battle, and quite a few did, but it was more work, more mouths to feed, more sleeping space… then again, some trainers had Onix or Gyrados.

And, well… really, Nico wasn’t sure about an Eevee at all. They were cute, but the old saying was: ‘Never bring home a Pokemon if you aren’t prepared to care for its fully evolved form’ or something like that. And usually it was pretty straightforward, but Eevee could take any of fifteen different forms, all of different types, all with different needs. Vaporeons needed water to swim in, Jolteons needed lots of space to run, Leafeons were miserable in places with long, cold, dark winters, Glaceons were miserable in tropical climates, Umbreons liked to be active at two AM, Terreons needed places to dig, and so on. It wasn’t completely unpredictable, because they were more likely to take a form suited to their environment, and you could often see the signs in their personality and behavior, but you couldn’t know for sure unless you used an evolutionary stone or made sure to only train in certain locations or at certain times of day or something.

But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to keep them. It was like some part of him had bonded with the little creatures during that car ride. Like he’d felt a connection. But that was stupid. The poor things were so out of it that he hadn’t really even met them. He’d felt something with Kenna from the first few minutes, but she’d been awake, and aware of her surroundings, and he’d gotten to know her a bit and made sure she liked him before deciding on her as his starter. Then again, new parents always talked about how much they loved their babies even when they couldn’t do much besides sleep and cry. But then again, maybe if people could tell who their kids were before they had them, the world might be a better place. Maybe there’d be fewer kids getting dragged across the ocean to Hoenn every summer so their moms could pretend they actually liked spending time with them for a week or two and the other ten telling them to just go outside and make some friends if they were bored. Maybe there’d be fewer kids getting expensive presents in the mail every holiday season that were lovingly picked out for the kid they wished they had. Nico stared at the contacts list on his phone. No… he felt like he could only tell her the good parts of being a trainer, the easy parts. What would she even say? He was going to call Dad at some point, but he was at work right now, and all he ever really said about it besides ‘You’re the trainer, it’s your call’ was no Pokemon that wouldn’t fit in the apartment.

Eventually Nico made up his mind to make up his mind later. He was planning to stick around Rutile Town for a while anyway, so he’d wait until he could actually get to know the Eevees and they’d fully recovered. He tried to take his mind off it. Go to the nearest gym – Rutile didn’t have one of the major gyms where a badge was needed to qualify for Regionals, but there were two smaller ones – and work on hiding an Ember’s direction with Smokescreen for Kenna and Zagi’s control over Quick Attack. Get dinner, and of course now the sun had gone down so the Jivuyena was stir-crazy but the temperature had also dropped a few degrees so she didn’t want to actually get her energy out outdoors. But at some point, late in the evening, he found himself scrolling through lists of name ideas on the internet, and that was the last thing he remembered doing before he fell asleep sprawled across a couch in the Pokemon Center lobby, sweating like a pig in his hoodie with a living hot water bottle curled up on his chest.

He was shocked awake by a crash like furniture being knocked over. He pushed himself upright, dislodging Kenna and sending her tumbling off the sofa with a startled grunt, then fell off himself, landing hard on his elbow. His curse probably woke up anyone who’d managed to sleep through the first noise.

“Ow! Son of a… what the hell?” He stood up way too fast and was almost brought back down by a headrush.

Other voices around him expressed similar sentiments. There were only a couple of other trainers in the lobby at this time of night – the clock by the Clinic check-in desk said 2:30 in the morning. Erin had long since gone to bed in the actual room she’d rented. The lodging side of the Pokemon center didn’t get that many visitors staying for more than a night or two since there wasn’t a major gym in Rutile and the area wasn’t that popular for catching wild Pokemon. No one was camped out in the lobby for lack of space. The only reason to stay here overnight was if you had a Pokemon that was in bad shape.

There were more crashes, and high-pitched screams. Only some of them sounded human. The other trainers reached for the Pokeballs on their belts. Nico did the same, then remembered both his Pokemon were already out. Kenna cackled and stalked towards the doors to the clinic area, wisps of smoke rising from her back. Zagi stayed perched on the back of the sofa, fur standing on end and sparking.

Then the doors flew open. A young man stumbled out, half dragging an older, heavyset woman. Both of them wore nurses’ scrubs, but their clothes were torn. His glasses were bent and missing a lens, and his arm was covered in blood. He helped the woman to a chair, and shouted in a shaking voice: “Everybody stay calm! Stay calm and get clear of the lobby, now!”

The effect was anything but calming. A dozen possibilities raced through Nico’s mind. An earthquake? A gas explosion? Pokemon thieves? - Rutile did have a gang problem. An out-of-control Pokemon? A truck crashing into the building? “What happened? What’s going on?”

“Keep your Pokemon in their balls!” the female nurse snapped at a trainer who had just brought out a Scyther.

The man zeroed in on Nico. “Are you the kid that brought the Eevees in today?”

“Uhh – yeah – I – yeah, that was me,” Nico stuttered. “What’s wrong? Did something-”

“One of them had what’s called a secondary drowning episode – water in the lungs caused inflammation and more fluid accumulation.”

“Oh, no.”

“We were doing everything we could, but-”

Something flung the doors open again, so hard it seemed like they would come off their hinges. They hit the wall with an earsplitting bang, and a creature skidded into the lobby. Nico caught a glimpse of blazing orange eyes wreathed in a halo of unearthly pale blue flame. It was like the air was sucked out of the room. Goosebumps formed on his skin.

“Jesus!” one of the other trainers staggered back, and reached for a Pokeball. The creature’s head snapped towards the sound.

“I said keep them in their balls!” The nurse’s voice was almost as frightening as the creature… the Pokemon. The shock had gone away a little bit with its eyes off him, and he could see it more clearly now. It was small, not much bigger than a Vulpix or an adult Eevee, with four legs and a slender body. It was almost engulfed in the ethereal fire, making it look bigger than it was, but the energy was concentrated around its neck, paws, ears, and tail. Underneath the fire was dark gray-purple fur. The large head, the short muzzle, the long, diamond-shaped ears...

Nico’s jaw dropped. He recognized this Pokemon. At least, he recognized the evolutionary line for sure, and he could guess the type. “Is… is that a Styxeon?” Eevee could evolve into any type except Bug and Dragon, but the ghost and poison forms were the rarest. He couldn’t remember how they even evolved. Were they the ones that evolved through trading? No, he was pretty sure there was some kind of item involved usually because very few locations had a big enough energy concentration…

The man nodded. “Traumatic Evolution. I’ve never seen it happen before! She suddenly went downhill and we were trying to get her on oxygen, but… basically her body thought it was about to die and… forced itself to evolve as a last resort! But her Aftermath tore half the room apart, and she panicked and attacked us!”

Nico couldn’t speak. It clicked together in his brain. Ghost-type… this was one of the Eevees he’d pulled from the river. And panicked was right. Panicked and furious. The Styxeon darted one way, then the other, claws skidding on the linoleum. She was hissing and spitting and screaming at everyone and everything around her. The other two trainers hurriedly backed away, and the guy with the Scyther recalled it. Zagi kept his distance, but Kenna slowly advanced on her, snarling.

“Kenna, stay back!” Nico ordered. “Kenna, stay back! Damnit… Kenna, return! Zagi, return!”

He got them back in their Pokeballs just in time. The ghost-type just hissed and recoiled at first, but stood her ground until Nico tried to call his own Pokemon back. She flinched and shrank away with a frightened yelp, but then lunged without warning, swiping at the red beam of energy with a ragged dark purple plume trailing from her claws. Her gaze followed it straight back to Nico’s hand, and the glowing eyes met his. He hurriedly looked away, but the feeling of unease, of fear, was visceral.

“Uh… don’t you guys have Pokemon with moves that can… cause sleep or something?” Nico asked the nurses.

“Yes, but right now using any move on her’s dangerous.” The female nurse had hauled herself to her feet and was using a chair as a makeshift walker to back away. “She’s having a massive power surge, but she’s also very weak from the strain of evolving too early. We can’t put any more stress on her.”

“Do you have a Heal Ball on you?” the man asked. He had a Pokeball in his hand, but judging by the sticker on it it already had an occupant.

“No. Sorry.”

“Then let’s just try and get her calmed down on her own and make sure she doesn’t get out of this building.” The man edged towards the Styxeon, but an enraged snarl sent him scurrying back, nearly tripping over a chair. He glanced down at his bloody sleeve.

That left Nico as the only thing standing between the Styxeon and the exit. His fingers brushed the empty Pokeball he had on his belt. No. He didn’t know if he could, even as a last resort. He could never forgive himself if something happened. The way she’d reacted… she’d been scared of Kenna, but not the way she’d been scared of him raising his voice.

“Hey… remember me?” He tried to keep his voice as level as possible. Calm, not aggressive but not fearful either. “I saved you, remember?” Avoid eye contact, avoid staring, but don’t obviously look away. She responded with a low, rumbling growl. “I’m not gonna hurt you, girl.”

The Pokemon moved closer, but off to the side, sinking into a low crouch. That was trouble. He followed her eyes. Uh oh. The door to the lodging area! He shuffled sideways to block her way.“Ah-ah, no, you’ve got to stay -” Then the last word became a startled yell. The Styxeon tensed. Her eyes widened, but she sprang with an unearthly screech. Nico threw his arms up to try to protect his face, but something slammed into his chest, bowling him over. His sneaker caught the edge of the carpet, but he barely even felt his head hit the floor. Her voice was boring into his ears, boring into his brain like a dentist’s drill. Claws dug into his chest, but the thing that had tackled him wasn’t the Eevee he’d saved from the river. Her skin went translucent, and then… then it was gone, rotting and crumbling away in an instant with heatless blue fire bursting from the seams. Flesh sloughed away from bone. Images flashed in front of – no, behind Nico’s eyes like a kaleidoscope on a bad acid trip, and horrible, stomach churning sensations forced themselves on him. Cold, overwhelming cold, icy water and thrashing bodies kicking and clawing at him and burning lungs, pitch blackness and spinning vertigo, and then the stabbing agony of the cold being inside him. Cold metal bars against raw flesh, the smell of dried blood and ammonia and dirty dishes left in the sink too long, with the constant buzz of flies around him, insects landing on him, insects biting, things crawling on him, things moving under his skin. His arms and hands gray, and clammy, and the skin splitting and a writhing mass of foaming maggots erupting from the wound instead of blood. And pinning him to the ground was a decaying, mummified carcass, scraps of ragged fur and blackened skin clinging to a skeleton, orange pinpricks of fire blazing in the black void of empty sockets, a bare skull screaming with its fangs just inches from his face.

Then the fluorescent lights of the Pokemon Center Lobby were spinning somewhere above him, and he was lying flat on his back on the thin carpet. His head felt like it had split open. The Styxeon leapt off his chest, but stumbled, looking wildly this way and that. People were shouting, and there was a Jumpluff hovering near the ceiling. It was a few seconds before Nico could make out voices or even move. He rolled onto his stomach and lifted himself to his hands and knees. His heart… it was so fast… he felt faint, and a bead of sweat dripped from his nose. His ears were still ringing.

“Fuck, bro, you okay?” someone asked. “You went down pretty hard!”

“I’m - okay! Yeah! I’m - okay!” He wasn’t okay. He’d hit his head so hard his neck and jaw hurt, and he felt like he was going to puke. He was hyperventilating so badly he could barely get out one word per breath. But the living nightmare had vanished, and in its place a terrified Pokemon was running frantically back and forth, looking for an escape route that didn’t exist. She was panting, the blue fire was sputtering, and there was so much fear in those eyes!

“Styxeon! Calm down, you’ve gotta – calm down or you’ll hurt yourself!” Nico got to his feet on pure adrenaline, but stumbled and had to steady himself against a chair. The Pokemon’s feet slid out from under her. She landed hard, and took a couple of tries to get back up, paws scrabbling on the linoleum. He staggered towards her, trying to herd her away from the door, ignoring the shouts from him to get away. He wanted to yell at them to shut the fuck up. They were hurting his head, and she was flinching at every one. Stop scaring her, you morons!

She tried to dart past Nico again, but lost her nerve at the last second and ended up cornering herself between him, the wall, and the back of a sofa. She was still screaming her head off with every breath, but the ghostly flames around her gave out. There was no hostility anymore, just desperate terror.

“It’s all right… it’s all right...” Nico sank to his knees. “I’m not going to come any closer, okay? Just calm down… calm down… shh...”

The Styxeon shrank back, her ears flat against her head and her tail tucked between her legs. Her whole body was shaking like a leaf, and her back was hunched over. She bumped into the wall, and jolted forward with a startled yelp, looking back like she hadn’t known it was there.

“You’re safe, girl… nobody’s going to hurt you – ah, damnit...”

The terrified Pokemon’s gaze darted back and forth. Nico, the wall, the couch, the other people and Jumpluff a ways behind him. Her wail faded into a pitiful whimper. Her enormous orange eyes filled with tears, and a puddle appeared between her back legs.

“Sweetie, sweetie, stop! Or – ah, jeeze – at least get your tail out of the way – fuck...” Nico pressed his hand to his chest. His heart still wouldn’t slow down. Oh, now he was panicking? What the hell was he supposed to do? This wasn’t something he’d had to deal with as a trainer. Most Pokemon were way faster to house train than human babies. Unless they were left in their ball too long or weren’t given a chance to go beforehand, it was very rare for healthy Pokemon more than a couple of months old to have accidents. The Eevees should have been old enough. But if those… hallucinations were real, if they were bits of memory, maybe they’d spent most of their lives locked in cages. Had they never learned?

No… no, it was worse. The poor Styxeon looked utterly horrified. There was no way she’d meant to, she’d just been so scared… and the little creature was still cowering, looking at him and flinching away like she expected to be hit. She looked down at her paws with an expression of disgust, but shrank back against the wall, trying to make herself as small as possible, her crouch getting deeper and deeper until she sat down on the soaked tile, sobbing violently.

It was heartbreaking. All Nico could do was keep saying whatever he could think of to try to reassure her. By now the noise had caused a small crowd of trainers from upstairs to gather. She wouldn’t let anyone else anywhere near her, and wouldn’t leave the corner even when Nico backed off, but she at least tolerated his presence. He scooted closer an inch at a time, until his outstretched hand was a couple of steps out of her reach. Close enough that she still had to come to him. She reached forward timidly, jerking back at the slightest movement, but eventually she came close enough to sniff his hand.

She shied away again, but after a minute repeated the gesture two more times, as if to prove to herself that she wasn’t imagining it. She let out a soft whine, and started to tremble and cry again. But then… she closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against his palm. He was almost surprised by how soft and warm her fur was. Part of him had expected to feel nothing but bone.

Nico sighed, and rubbed his aching head. That was the last straw. “Welp.” He muttered to himself. “Guess I have a Pokemon now.” Two really. There was no way he was going to separate the two siblings, especially after everything they’d been through. “Good girl, Sedna.” The moment he said the name, he started second-guessing himself. It was one of the ones he’d been considering in spite of everything about it. According to the website he’d found, Sedna was a sea goddess from a region in the far north. The reason was different in different versions of the story, but in all of them she was thrown into the ocean by her father and drowned, but lived on as a sea goddess or something. It kind of fit, but at the same time it didn’t because it was so morbid to give one of the Eevees a name like that. He kind of liked the way it sounded, but he was still leaning against it because it would be kind of weird for anything but a Glaceon or Vaporeon anyway, and… Wait. Sedna was the ruler of the underworld too, wasn’t she? The cold, lightless depths at the bottom of the ocean? No, that was almost too good a name for a Ghost-type.

Sedna calmed down a little after the crowd was shooed away. Most of the trainers had gone back to bed, and the other two who were staying in the lobby retreated to the other side. It was just Nico, Erin, and the two nurses. They’d admitted defeat on trying to get close enough to Sedna to check that her evolution had actually cleared all the fluid from her lungs, but said it should have. They were waiting for a nurse from another Pokemon Center to relieve them, and a friend to give them a ride to the hospital. Sedna had bitten and clawed the man’s arm, badly enough that he’d need stitches. The woman had fallen and twisted her ankle trying to run after getting hit with an Astonish – the same move the Styxeon had used on him. It was probably a sprain, she said, but a bad enough one to need medical attention, and an X-ray just to be sure. Nico was almost glad he’d been tackled. They kept suggesting that he should go to the hospital as well, warning him about a possible concussion. They’d taken his pulse and blood pressure too, and said they were way higher than a teenager’s should have been, and that if they weren’t back to normal by morning, he needed to see a doctor.

But he was putting that off until morning. Or probably afternoon since after this ordeal there was no way he was waking up early. Sedna needed him. She’d let Erin get closer than anyone else but Nico, but he was the only one she’d let touch her, and even then it was only reluctantly. Nico would have loved if he could just get her to follow him to his room and make her a nest of blankets or towels so she’d have somewhere warm and comfortable to sleep but still have some space, and then he could get some sleep. But the poor thing was cowering in a puddle of her own urine. There was no way in hell he was going to bed and leaving her in that state.

He was going to have to give her a bath. He’d only actually had to bathe a Pokemon once, a few days ago after another trainer’s Swampert had knocked out his whole team in a practice battle. Neither of his Pokemon normally needed or tolerated baths, but Kenna was too tired to get the mud out of her fur with fire. She’d put up with getting wet, but Nico had nearly scalded himself getting the water hot enough for her and she’d been grumpy the rest of the day. Sedna wasn’t a fire-type or electric-type, but she’d been tied up and thrown in a freezing river. Nico doubted she was going to enjoy it. He wished he could just use a couple washcloths, but her hind legs and tail had gotten too wet for that to be enough.

Even getting her anywhere near a shower turned out to be a challenge. This sure as hell wasn’t a good time to try to introduce her to Pokeballs, so his plan was to wrap her in a towel and carry her up to his room in it. It took twenty minutes of sitting there freezing in a pair of swim trunks to even coax her onto the towel. It was crazy how much difference clothing made, although he had also had a fire-type on his lap earlier. Sedna was still shivering periodically – he wasn’t sure if it was from cold or fear.

“You cold, girl?” He slowly gathered up the corners of the towel, trying not to make any sudden movement. “This is going to be nice and warm, okay? I’m just going to pick you up, and – whoa, whoa, Sedna, it’s okay!”

But as soon as he tried to wrap the towel over her back, she freaked out again, trying to jump away with a noise that was half growl, half yelp. Her foot got caught on it, pulling her off balance, and as she tried to run she slipped on the wet floor and fell. Back to square one. The poor creature was even worse off than before, and she refused to set a single paw on the towel again. Had it reminded her of the bag she’d been stuffed into, Nico wondered?

He wasn’t sure if she’d let him pick her up at all, at least not long enough to carry her upstairs. If he could wipe her paws off and lead her into the bathroom, maybe he could at least lift her into the tub. But her following him was a big if. Maybe if he kind of wrapped the towel around his arms and chest, it would feel less like being shoved in a burlap sack? It was worth a try, at least.

“All right, Sedna. I have to pick you up. Just hold still, girl. That’s it...” He kept his voice low and moved as slowly and smoothly as he could. “Come’ere… come’ere...” He waited until he was almost touching her, then moved fast, like he was trying to catch a spider under an overturned cup without it darting away and getting crushed under the edge. He scooped Sedna up with one arm supporting her hindquarters and one under her chest, and stood up holding her tightly. Her eyes immediately widened and she tensed, squirming in his grip. She growled softly.

“It’s okay! It’s okay, girl! I’m not gonna hurt you!” Nico tried to reassure her. He could feel her heartbeat pounding against his chest like a jackhammer. And she was so light. Styxeon was the smallest of the Eeveelutions by a wide margin, around fifteen kilos from what he’d looked up. But Sedna couldn’t have been more than ten, probably more like eight. “I’m trying to help you, please don’t maul me… Good girl...” She was relaxing a little bit, and the growling had stopped. “Okay, I’m going to bring you upstairs...” Then he felt something cold against his arm. Had the towel just soaked through? “Ew, ew, ew, fuck! Erin! Hey, Erin, help me with the door please, my arms are kinda full!”

He marched the Pokemon upstairs as fast as he could without jostling her. He nearly had a heart attack when he remembered he’d left his key in his room when he changed, but luckily Past Nico had apparently also left the door cracked. He shoved the bathmat aside with his heel and tried to set her down gently, but as soon as she loosened his grip she wriggled and jumped out of his arms. She landed hard, her front legs sliding out from under her and her chin hitting the tile with a loud ‘Thwok’ sound. Nico winced. Pokemon weren’t easy to injure, but that had to hurt. “You okay, girl?”

Sedna looked around the room with quivering eyes. She stood rooted to the spot with her tail tucked under, then looked up at him with heart-wrenching uncertainty.

Nico sighed. “Sedna, there’s nothing scary about this.” He slid the door shut behind them and turned the lock. “It’s just a shower. Can you get in the bathtub? Come on girl, get in!” He pulled the sliding shower door aside and patted the rim of the tub. No luck. When he tried to lift her in she twisted away with a warning hiss. “Okay, fine. How about I get in the shower?” He stepped into the tub, turned the shower on, and immediately let out a string of curses until he got the showerhead pointed at the wall.

“Fucking freezing! I’m an idiot!” Sedna, and half the bathroom floor, had gotten misted by the spray. She shook her head violently and sneezed. Not a good start. Nico waited until the water was actually hot, then made a big show of rinsing himself off, including sticking his head under the shower. “See? The water isn’t dangerous! I’m not melting!” He picked up the bottle of shampoo. It had a picture of a smiling Pikachu covered in suds on the front. ‘For fine-textured fur,’ the label read. ‘Contains 15 relaxing herbs.’ Perfect. Pokemon Centers generally assumed trainers were capable of buying their own personal hygiene products, and apart form hand soap everything stocked in the rooms was Pokemon-safe products of various kinds. Most of them were human-safe too though, and it was a long-running joke that you could identify a traveling trainer by smell because everyone was too cheap, too lazy, or too weight-conscious to buy separate soap for themselves. Nico certainly didn’t bother. But screw it, he didn’t need to wash his hair tonight anyway.

It took a long time to get Sedna used to the idea. Nico was glad the Pokemon Center had a good water heater. She pawed at the door at first, but when she’d given up on escaping she started to watch him with exhausted curiosity. She peered over the edge of the bathtub, but flinched and backed away whenever a drop of water hit her. Eventually, though, Nico was able to get her to sniff his hand, then let him touch her with wet hands, and finally… the moment of truth.

“C’mere, sweetie. I promise this isn’t going to hurt you.” Nico leaned out of the tub, got both hands around Sedna’s chest, made sure she wasn’t struggling against that, and lifted her in. She immediately went stiff as a board and splayed her legs and claws out, letting out a high whine. She made a halfhearted attempt to climb back out when he set her down, but didn’t shred his arm when he gently held her shoulders down while he slid the door closed. When she saw there was no escape route, she looked pitifully up at him with her ears flat against her head, and shrank against the far wall of the tub. Her back paws slid uselessly on the steep wall. Her tail was between her legs again, and she started to shiver as if in anticipation of what was going to happen.

“I’m so sorry, girl. I have to do this. I’m not trying to torture you!” Nico said. Sedna seemed to have accepted her fate, but it seemed like she hadn’t so much realized it wasn’t bad so much as she was catatonic from fear and exhaustion. Part of him just wanted to get it over with – it wasn’t going to be unpleasant for her one way or another, so why make the process take longer? That was what he’d done with Kenna – helped out by making the water so hot he could hardly stand to touch it – but her discomfort had been mostly physical. Sedna was scared. He had to be as gentle and patient with her as he could so she wouldn’t associate this with being hurt.

He sighed, and sat down with the trembling Styxeon, and went through the process of letting her sniff his hand, then working up to petting her and getting her fur damp, then turning the showerhead on the wall so the mist came down on her, before finally adjusting it to its gentlest setting and spraying her directly. But something had changed. She was still trying to make herself as small as possible as if that would make the water miss her, but she wasn’t pressing herself against the wall anymore. It was more like she was trying to use him as a makeshift shelter. At first she hovered a few centimeters away, but soon she was pressing herself against his legs, making soft, plaintive noises.

If she was trying to make him feel so guilty he stopped, she was damn close. Nico wanted to cry. This poor, sweet Pokemon… He knelt next to her, stroking her sodden head and shoulders with one hand. He pulled the showerhead almost to the floor, aiming it upward to make sure he got the areas that were why she needed a bath in the first place. By now Sedna was as thoroughly soaked as when he’d pulled her out of the river. Once again he was surprised by how skinny she was under the soft, fluffy coat of fur that was now completely plastered to her body. It was worse now than when she was an Eevee, because her new form was naturally more slender, and evolving without getting a chance to build up energy must have burned off whatever body fat she had. She wasn’t emaciated, but ribs and some of the bumps of her spine were showing.

Actually washing her was the hardest part. He dabbed about three times as much shampoo on the washcloth as he probably needed, but the relaxing formula had no discernible effect. Sedna wasn’t biting or clawing, but she was so tense it was like trying to wash a statue, if statues shivered and flinched when he touched a bruise a spot that hurt and sometimes struggled. Struggle wasn’t totally the right word, because she was too strong for him to stop her, but the foam had turned the whole tub into a slip ‘n slide, and when she tried to pull away or climb to freedom she kept falling. He was trying to be gentle, but when he washed her paws he found bruises and scabs where the zipties had bound her wrists and ankles. There were smaller wounds too, that must have been from being kicked and bitten and clawed by her siblings as they tried to free themselves. At least, he was hoping that they weren’t from before that.

He saved the worst for last: her back legs and tail. He’d gotten everything else besides her head – even if the shampoo wasn’t harmful to get in her eyes or mouth it would probably still sting – and he was hoping she’d get at least a little used to being washed. Now though, he was wishing he’d just gotten it over with, because it seemed like Sedna had tolerated it as long as she could, and now she was at her limit.

“Come on, sweetie, I have to get all of you clean!” Nico pleaded. The Styxeon was pressed against the drain-side wall now, giving him a look of utter betrayal, like he really had tried to drown her again. But she didn’t move an inch of her own free will, and he ended up practically having to wrestle her tail from between her legs with a soapy washcloth while trying to restrain the soaked, slippery Pokemon one-handed. It was almost as uncomfortable for him as it was for her. He found out the hard way that yes, the shampoo really did sting like hell to get into his eyes or in an open wound. Not to mention it tasted awful. And he was genuinely afraid that what little trust Sedna had in him had been shattered.

But as he was checking that the scratches weren’t too deep while he gave Sedna a few minutes to recover before he rinsed her off, something changed. Sedna timidly crept up to him, her head lowered and her long ears folded down so the tips almost brushed the floor of the tub. Without thinking about it, he reached out and stroked her head. She jerked away at first, but more startled then scared this time. She approached him again, and the next thing he knew she was on his lap, dripping suds and pressing her soaking wet body against his chest. She was shaking again, and her breathing was fast and sharp like she was crying too quietly to be heard over the running water.

She stayed there the entire time as he turned the showerhead on her again, making sure he got every last bit of shampoo out of her fur. She leaped out of the tub as soon as he opened the door – and slipped and fell on the tile again – but this time she didn’t stop him from wrapping her in a towel. Her fur was too thick to get completely dry without a hair dryer, which he didn’t have and would probably have scared her anyway. He dried her off as thoroughly as she could, but even after he’d dried himself off, changed, and gotten Kenna and Zagi to settle down, she was still damp when he carried her to bed. Kenna was suspicious of Sedna, but luckily she hadn’t seen the worst of the freakout. She sniffed her a few times, then groaned and curled up near the end of the bed. Zagi was already out cold on the clothes Nico had tossed on the floor.

Sedna’s blinking was sluggish, and she kept staring blankly into space with her eyelids slowly descending. Nico was on the verge of passing out, too. Was he supposed to go to sleep with a concussion? For how long? It had been at least an hour. Was that enough? If he was concussed it probably wasn’t that bad anyway. He’d been able to stand up straight, have a conversation… he was kind of slurring his speech now, but that was probably caused by a serious medical condition called Four in the Damn Morning. Fuck it. Bed. He pulled the blankets back and laid the last remaining dry towel out on the mattress. Without the heat of the shower on her she kept shivering, and he figured an extra layer would help keep her warm. Plus, if damp sheets were like damp pillowcases, they’d be cold and uncomfortable to sleep on.

He patted the mattress. Sedna was sitting on the floor looking confused and uncomfortable. She looked up, but didn’t seem to understand what the gesture meant. He tried again, calling: “Sedna! Come on up, girl! Come on, can you jump up here?” If she actually wanted to sleep on the floor, that was fine, but it didn’t seem like she was scared of coming within ten feet of him anymore. She sniffed at the mattress uncertainly.

Nico sighed. He slid out of bed, and picked the Styxeon up without resistance. “Come on, sweetie. Up you go.” She slumped onto the mattress listlessly, staring at him with an expression he couldn’t quite identify. “What’s wrong?” he asked. He reached a hand out slowly over her head, but she flinched, closing her eyes and backing away until one paw slid of the edge of the bed. “Sorry! I’m sorry, girl! It’s okay for you to be up here!”

Sedna timidly padded back to the towel, inching one paw at a time forward. With a faint sigh she started to knead at it with her forepaws. “Good girl,” Nico said. He rolled over to turn out the light, but when he rolled back over he was met with a pair of mournful orange eyes staring into his. He froze, barely daring to breathe. He closed his eyes, but the memory of the ghoulish, half-skeletal figure on top of his chest returned.

“Ugh… I think you’re gonna give me nightmares, girl...” he muttered. “What do you need?”

The glowing eyes closed, leaving the room lit only by the faint city lights through the curtains. Nico felt the weight on the mattress next to him get closer. With a soft groan that faded to a whine, Sedna snuggled up against his chest, resting her head under his chin. “Oh, sweetie...” he whispered. He could feel the chill of her damp fur through his pajamas, but her body was warm. And breathing – little tense, shallow breaths, but she was breathing. She smelled like lavender, almost overpowering the scent of wet fur. She was alive. The monster that had nearly given him a heart attack wasn’t real – or in a way it was, but it was made of Sedna’s own fear, of her memories, mixed with her kind’s natural power. He’d just gotten a glimpse of what had to be inside the poor little creature’s head.

She was still shivering, her breathing still occasionally lapsing into soft crying. Nico pulled the covers up and folded the towel over her. She’d dragged it over to the middle of the bed before lying down next to him. He couldn’t help smiling. That was just adorable! He just hoped it wasn’t because she thought she’d be in trouble for lying directly on the sheets. He couldn’t wrap his head around how anyone could possibly have not just abandoned this creature, but tried to murder her, and her siblings. Only… they’d succeeded. Only two of the Eevees had made it. A sobering thought occurred to him. Did Sedna know? Did she know three of them had died? Did she know any of them had lived? There were a lot of different legends about Ghost-Types. In folklore some species guided lost souls to the underworld.

But myths didn’t mean much here. Sedna was confused, alone, and Nico was sure one way or another she missed her brothers and sisters. This was a Pokemon who was scared of people, and for all he knew had never been treated with kindness in her life, but was clinging to the only source of comfort that was even the tiniest bit familiar. Tomorrow he’d have to bring her in for a checkup, and hopefully she’d be able to visit her sister even if she wasn’t in good enough shape to leave the Pokemon Center ward yet. And then… it probably wasn’t going to be easy taking care of her, and he was still afraid he wasn’t prepared for what he was getting himself into, but he hoped this bond born of desperation would grow into something real. It already had for him.

He wrapped his arm around Sedna and held her, gently but securely. “It’s gonna be okay, Sedna,” he whispered. “Good, good girl.” He started to stroke the soft, downy fur on her head, and her breathing slowly became more even. The last thing he remembered before he fell asleep was her hugging his forearm against her chest, and pressing herself against his.

~~~

A/N:

So, uhh... kinda went way out of my comfort zone on this one. Good News: I haven’t made a character throw up onscreen for cheap Suffering Points this Whumptober (I ain’t counting Day 4 since that was in the past), which is kind of surprising. Bad News: I made a character wet herself. Which is... ugh. Anything toilet-related is a huge phobia/squick for me IRL, I wasn’t sure if I could even make myself write this one. It took for fucking ever, partly because of how long it is, but partly because of procrastinating to avoid writing the uncomfortable scene and cringing. But I had to do it For The Concept.

Basically I’ve seen a few “Caretaker helping Whumpee bathe” type prompts on here and wanted to do one of those, especially with an animal whumpee, and took inspiration from real-life experience occasionally having to bathe my family’s small dogs, who do not enjoy baths and get cold super easily. It’s pathetic and makes you feel like a horrible person for having to do this to them, which also makes it perfect for whump fics, and doing it to Sedna less than 24 hours after she was thrown in a river and nearly drowned is even better!

But that meant I needed a reason why any decent human being would be forced to give her a bath, because obviously that would be horribly traumatic, and getting into something toxic or otherwise dangerous didn’t fit into the plot. And also while doing my like half an hour of medical research I found that secondary drowning is sometimes treated using diuretic medication.

#whumptober2020 #no.13 #delayed drowning #Pokemon Fandom #fic #animal whump tw #animal abuse tw #minor whump tw #hallucinations tw #animal death mention tw #fear wetting tw #urine tw #bath #Pokemon whump #fakemon #Nico Barnett (OC)#Sedna the Styxeon (OC)#Styxeon

4 notes · View notes