Chapter 22

“H-how?”

“How did you get yourself arrested? Boy, that’s not a good question for me, Sammy. But by the looks of you, it came with a spicy dash of police brutality.”

Sam sat stunned in his silence at the sight of Tommy through the prison booth window. It simply could not be. Sam blinked hard; it had to be the concussion playing tricks on him. He had hit his head so hard against the ground that he was now seeing phantasms. When his eyes opened, nothing had changed; Tommy was still there. Sam forced his eyes shut again and tried to erase the impossible sight before him, but it was, again, to no avail.

“Whoa, did you develop a nervous tick while I was out or something?”

Tommy was still there—still sitting and grinning and talking—and Sam knew there was only one possible answer left; he was going mad. It was reasonable after all, wasn’t it? He had been through so much since Tommy’s coma after all. The doctors, the international traveling, the lies and deceit, the Phoenix Corporation, the legends, explosions, Barry. Any sane man’s mind would snap under so much pressure. He placed a palm to his forehead and felt the sweat building there, and his thoughts centered on the prison around him; did they have the facilities to care for a prisoner with a declining mental state? Maybe he would be transferred to an institution with padded walls and pills that came in a little white cup and nurses with little red crosses on their hats. Sam could not help but wonder if they would at least allow him to be kept somewhere back home in Johto, but that assumed he was even still safe for travel. His brain stabbed him with a question: what if he had never left Johto? How long had he been seeing things that were not happening? 

“You always went all catatonic when you were under great stress, which is really ironic for me to say, by the by. But you… you’re like the Incredible Hulk’s really nervous brother. Wait… that would make me the Incredible Hulk. Which is really kind of cool.”

Tommy was talking gibberish and Sam knew his mind was slipping further away from any semblance of reality. He knew that at any second, he might see the room fill up with dancing Pidgey. Maybe they would sing him a song and calm him down. He could go for a song.

“Hey…”

Sam suddenly hoped that straight-jackets were either a myth or something old-fashioned and archaic like lobotomies. He may have been going crazy, but what if he had an itch or a cramp? And they looked so uncomfortable to begin with. He did not want to spend the rest of his life forced to hug himself. 

“Hey!”

Sam was shocked from his introspection by a loud smacking noise, and when he looked up, he saw Tommy’s hand pressed against the glass between them.

“Are you okay? It’s really me, Sammy. I’m here for you.”

With the shock of Tommy’s hand slamming the glass and those soft words, the doubt flew away, and Sam knew within himself that it was really his brother seated across from him, no matter how impossible that was. Tommy looked… honestly, Sam had seen him looking better. His blond hair had thinned dramatically over the last year, and Sam could easily see Tommy’s scalp beneath it. His face was drained both of color and volume; it suddenly seemed obvious that spending a year inside a hospital room and being fed intravenously wasn’t the best plan for long-term health. The gray Goldenrod University hoodie that Tommy wore—a shirt Sam had seen him in countless times before—seemed to envelope his body at the neck, and it gave Sam the thought that the shirt could slide all the way off of Tommy’s new, smaller frame. Sam shook his head in disbelief at how Tommy had changed.

“No, I really am here for you. I don’t have anyone else to visit. Just your dumb ass.”

“You look awful. For what the hospital was charging your insurance, they could at least have given you a cheeseburger or twenty before you walked out the door.”

Tommy smiled and lifted his posture back from the window. The fluorescent lights of the visitation ward caught his eyes, and for the first time, Sam truly recognized Tommy. “All right, we got the spunk back in you. Good.” 

Sam finally felt as though he fully had his wits about him. “You realize I’ve only got every question in the world, right?”

“Oh, I know. I’ve seen your test scores, remember?”

“How are you here?”

“Airplane.”

“Wow, I didn’t miss that part of you at all.”

Tommy laughed off Sam’s dismissal of his oversimplified answer, and Sam knew inside himself that he lied. He had missed everything about his brother. 

“I was just sitting there in the hospital, doing the nothing that I did for the past year. My eyes were open, and I could see, but it didn’t really mean anything, if that—it’s hard to explain. It was like I was looking at pictures of things happening to someone else; like a movie I didn’t even care about. And then… it just made sense. I started recognizing things and I could move myself and I knew where I was. I looked up, and…,” Tommy narrowed his eyes at Sam. “You really don’t see where this is going?” Sam shook his head; how could he know? Tommy finally finished, “The legends were there. The Sinnoh ones. Mesprit, Uxie, and Azelf. They were there, just hovering over me. Like… ‘hey, how’s it going?’”

Sam’s body was still, but his mind was moving at a blinding pace, putting together all the details.

“I’m told this was your doing,” Tommy continued when Sam had no reply aside from dumbfounded silence. “When the doctors were running tests on me to see if they could figure out my recovery, they said that you had left to find a way to cure me. It was one of the nurses who’d heard you mention the Sinnoh legends. Of course, none of them thought you’d actually—“ Tommy sighed and rolled his eyes. “All right, lay it on me… how big of one do I owe you?”

Sam was still trying to compose himself. His brain was being torn in several directions by chariots of emotion; laughter, tears, jumping in celebration, and busting through the plexiglass between them to hug Tommy all seemed like equally viable reactions. He felt his mouth spread wide into a smile as an option emerged victorious. “A damn big one.”

Tommy nodded and sat back in his chair. He smiled, too, as he seemed to relax. “That’s what I thought.”

Sam, now fully in the moment of their discussion and no longer distracted by fear of insanity or impossible questions, erased his smile; reality dawned on him. “I’m… I’m in jail. I mean, I’m not a… whatever, but I’m still here. I don’t think they’ll let me out. I mean, I’ve asked, but…”

“Yeah, Professor Rowan told me you’d been playing Action-Adventure Sammy the last few weeks. At the wrongest places at the wrongest times, as it were. So what are we going to do about that?”

Sam slouched in his seat and stared across at Tommy. The plexiglass between them might as well have been the Orre Sea. Tommy was right there, but Sam could not touch him or get close to him. 

“You know,” Tommy suddenly continued, tapping the side of his head with a finger, “besides use the Sinnoh government registry to trace the GPS in that other kid’s pokeballs, thereby proving that you and he never stepped foot in Veilstone City until hours after the attack. I mean, we could do that, but that’s like cheating.”

Sam’s ears perked. “What? Yes! Do that! It will prove that we didn’t do it.”

Tommy jerked his head slightly to the right and one side of his lips curled. “I’m just going to sit here and let you catch up to the conversation at your own pace.”

“You… already did that.”

“And thank you for joining me here at the finish line.”

“So I can just… leave now? Like… leave?”

“I had Rowan call in the details when I arrived. You should be ready to go by the time we’re done here. It was a little bit harder with that Barry kid considering he was actually charged with something, but with your case, it should b—hey!”

Sam did not even need to hear the end of Tommy’s sentence. He bounded out of the seat in booth four and scrambled to the door that separated him from the rest of the prison. His pounding on the door drew him some threatening looks from the inmates who were still in the middle of their conversations, but Sam found he did not care; in a few minutes, he’d hopefully never see them again.

—

The release process went faster than Sammy could even have hoped, and it made him appreciate being a person of insight and interest all the more. After Officer Clarke let Sam out of the visitation ward, Sam prattled out everything he and Tommy had discussed. Then, after Clarke laughed and told Sam that he did not understand a damn thing he said since it all came out in one breath, Sam went through it slowly and more deliberately. Clarke called the front of the prison and apparently received the okay—Sam was free to go. After that came a stop-over in the personal effects hold where Sam was given the release chips to his pokeballs, his wallet, his dead cellular phone, and the rest of what few things he had with him in Veilstone. The police decided to keep the backpack and supplies Sam had stolen on his way to Lake Valor, but that was fair, Sam figured. Clarke finally escorted him to the lobby of the prison, and Sam saw his brother with no barriers left between them. 

Sam knew it was cheesy, and he knew his brother would invariably make fun of him for it, but he could not stop himself from charging Tommy and wrapping his arms around him. It was the last piece of the puzzle left to convince him it was all real. To Tommy’s credit, he said nothing. He merely returned the hug and patted the back of Sam’s head. Everything else in the lobby was set to mute as time lapsed away in the realness of Tommy. It was only the curious thought that he should say goodbye to Officer Clarke that pulled Sammy away from his brother; but by the time he turned around, the guard had vanished back behind the heavy doors of the prison. 

The sun and the breeze outside the Solaceon Prison was the best weather Sam could ever remember feeling. Maybe it was because he’d been stuck in a building for most of a week, but the gorgeous spring day was exactly what he could have wished to walk out to. Sam briefly thought about what the weather was like when Tommy first emerged from the hospital, but thought better than to ask it. After so long apart, they had to have more to discuss than the weather. 

“Are Rowan and Barry with you?” It was an odd question in that the possibility of seeing Rowan after all that had transpired filled Sam with dread, while the thought of seeing Barry alive and well and unincarcerated was rather uplifting.

“No. They’re at Rowan’s home in Sandgem Town. The professor has a press conference tonight they’re all getting ready for.”

“So he really is stepping down,” Sam mused aloud.

“I—yeah, how did you know?”

Sam considered talking about the visit from Mr. Alonzo, but it was better to not burden Tommy with that already. “Just prison buzz, you know?”

“Did you join a gang? Is that how you stayed safe in the showers? Is there anything I need to know?”

Sam replied with a sarcastic pseudo-laugh. “If they aren’t with you, how are we getting back to Sandgem?”

“In style, Sammy,” Tommy answered, pointing towards the end of the parking lot where Sam saw a man standing outside a white limousine. “In style.”

Sam squinted into the distance at the red-headed young man in khakis and collared, button-down shirt. The man grinned as Sam and Tommy approached, and Sam immediately recognized him.

“Bug Catcher Sammy!”

“Miah Vanderbelt,” Sam greeted him back, “What are you doing here?”

“Are you kidding me? My old classmate’s brother gets out of the hospital and needs to come to Sinnoh, and I’m just not supposed to gas up the jet and bring him? What kind of guy would I be?”

Sam and Miah had drifted apart after high school, but it was not hard to keep up with Miah’s exploits. His father had sent him to the prestigious Mahogany Academy Business School to sharpen him for joining his father’s investment firm. Mahogany Academy was one of the best business schools in Johto, as well as one of its priciest, but money was hardly an object for the Vanderbelts. Sam would have allowed himself more envy in his youth, but even then he knew it seemed ill-fitting for a kid that was going to Goldenrod University for free at the same time. Still, Miah would quickly prove his worth in Mahogany, graduating with his degree two years early. His success at school tempered some of the complaints of nepotism when he was appointed to a lofty position in his father’s company. 

“Man, that’s actually pretty awesome of you, Miah,” Sam said.

“I know.”

Sam felt like he did not have enough words to show his appreciation for what Miah was doing, but at the same time, gushing over Miah Vanderbelt was rather unseemly. He settled for a playful bow in agreement as the three of them stepped into the back of the limo.

Sam had never actually been in a limousine before, and he was fairly certain that Tommy never had, either. Sam was not sure where to focus his attention as his gaze darted from the personal cooler situated next to each individual seat along the side windows to the high-definition television screens hung in each corner of the back of the car to the tinted privacy window that separated the driver from the passengers, though the last item befuddled Sam as he tried to figure out how the driver knew what was behind him.

“It’s not bad, I guess,” Miah interrupted his musings, “It’s just a rental, though. Mine back home is nicer.”

“Well, we all have to make sacrifices,” Sam replied, causing Tommy to smack him lightly on the back of the head. Even the slight love-tap caused a pulsating pain in Sam’s skull from his delicate concussion. “But no, it’s great. Better than anything I’ve been in before,” he corrected himself, trying to keep his wincing under control. 

The three of them settled into their seats; Sam purposely taking the longest to get situated since he wanted to see what the protocol was for putting a seatbelt on in a limo, especially since the driver probably could not see what was on his rear. Miah stretched out and left his off; Tommy fastened his own. With the popular vote split, Sam went with shadowing his brother since it did not seem wise to incur Tommy’s wrath so soon after reuniting with him. Once they were all ready to go, Miah pressed a button next to his seat which was apparently the universal limo signal for ready-to-go since the car then pulled out of its spot. Suddenly Sam wondered how many of the prisoners who already thought he was getting preferential treatment just saw him leave the jail and immediately hop into a limo to cruise away. Sam wondered briefly if the prison had a second-least popular inmate, and if the other cons would shank him or something in proxy over their frustration that evening. 

“Oh!” Sam cried, finally remembering something. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Vlam’s Dusk Ball. He looked it over in his hand and lifted his lower lip in pride. “Here’s Vlam back, Tommy.”

Tommy’s head bobbed slowly and shallowly as he studied Sam’s outstretched arm. “No,” he said after a moment of consideration, “you keep her.”

Sam’s brow crunched. “You’re… no, you can’t… just take her back. It’s Vlam!”

Tommy chuckled. “Yeah, I got that part. But she’s been with you for a year. You’ve been taking care of her and protecting her. I think you’ve earned the right to keep her.”

Sam was still incredulous. The only explanation was that, between the broken nose and concussion causing some slurred speech, his brother didn’t understand what he was saying. “But she’s your friend.”

“I know. And if you decide to move across the world, we’ll settle on visitation rights. But for now… I want you to keep her.”

“I’m sorry, but,” Miah broke in while Sam continued trying to process, “I’ve seen that fox in action. If you’re both so eager to give her away, I’ll gladly take her.”

The three of them shared a laugh at Miah’s offering, and Sam reluctantly put the ball away. He wanted more than anything for Tommy and Vlam to see each other, but it would have been rude to release her in the back of Miah’s limo, so it would have to wait until they pulled over.

As the limousine grew uncomfortably quiet, Sam felt a niggling in the back of his mind, like he was on the verge of a realization, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. The harder he tried to think about it, the more the dull ache in his bruised brain grew. He tried to look out the windows of the car to settle himself, but the blur of traffic passing by outside it and the sun coming through it only made him ill. 

“Hey,” Tommy’s voice shocked Sam out of his state, “do these tv’s work or what? We’re never going to make it to Sandgem Town by tonight, and I want to see what happens at Professor Rowan’s press conference.”

Miah grabbed his chin as he looked to the corners of the limousine. “I’m not entirely sure. I just assumed they were for movies, but there might be satellite access. Now where is…” His voice trailed off as he stood from his seat and began searching around it. He bent over and emerged with a controller in-hand. “Found it!”

“What time is the press conference?” Sam asked.

“It is at…,” Tommy crunched up his face as he stopped, “today. It’s definitely at some time today.”

Miah chuckled and shrugged at Sam before turning the televisions on. The cacophony of noise as each screen was turned to a separate channel assaulted the pain in Sam’s skull, but Miah fairly quickly figured out how to turn all but one of the televisions off. He scanned the lower channels for news of the conference, but all they found were game shows and programs with doctors telling people how to live their lives. Miah noted that it was probably too early in the day for Rowan’s conference, and Sam and Tommy agreed; he asked if they had a preference of what program to watch, but seeing how neither of them had any idea what kinds of shows Sinnoh aired, they left it up to him.

Miah continued cycling upward through the channels, and Sam found himself momentarily amazed at the prospect of finding out what kind of shows wealthy people watched. There was no reason for it, and Miah was hardly a stranger whose taste in things was foreign to Sam, but he still found himself expecting to watch an upper-crust program about how to best polish one’s diamonds.

Miah, instead, finally stopped the television on a show that featured a gathering of women. They were eating in a restaurant with white tablecloths and a chandelier above them, and as one of the ladies said something snarky about another’s husband, the latter reached over to grab the snarky one’s hair. A quick brawl erupted in the restaurant, complete with the throwing rolls and the splashing of wine, as other diners who were apparently not part of the show looked on, mouths agape and pressing backwards for their own safety—or, at least, the safety of their expensive suits and gowns. The show would go on for quite a while in the limousine, and Miah did not seem inclined to change it. Eventually Sam was told by the program that it was about the wives of Hearthome City; though given their penchant for wearing colorful dresses everywhere and how little they were featured with their families, Sam questioned just how real they were. Despite the fact that the show starred well-to-do women in extravagant settings, the appeal seemed to be at very base level; it capitalized on shock at each cruel thing the wives said about each other, and seemed to feature far more brawling and censored shouting than Sam would think was normal for real people. In spite of that, by the third consecutive episode, Sam found himself wanting to see one particular wife named Shana get her comeuppance. She was really a jerk.

By the fourth episode, Miah was forgetting to even check back on the regular network channels for the professor’s announcement anymore. As he and Miah engrossed themselves in the embittered women, Sam had almost forgotten Tommy was with them until his brother announced he needed to stretch his legs. Miah pressed another button next to his seat in the car, and within moments, it was pulling over. Sam grew more fascinated with the car that might as well have been remote-controlled.

He peered out the window more confidently now that the car was coming to a stop, and found that they were pulling into a large traveler’s center. After dropping Miah, Tommy, and Sam off at the front door, the limo driver looped the car around to one of the gas pumps. 

“I’m going to get a tea; do you guys want anything?”

Tommy shook his head. “No thanks, Miah. I’m sure we’ll be in shortly. Are we in a rush to leave?”

“I’m not if you’re not,” Miah answered before entering the center. 

“Hey,” Sam said to get his brother’s attention. He pointed towards the side of the building, where a large, worn patch of grass sat. It was clearly a place for people to let out their friends and allow them to stretch their own legs. “Want to see Vlam?”

Sam felt that he was at least as excited as Tommy at the chance to reunite the two of them. Tommy may have been right that Sam had been tending to her, but the older brother would always be her proper trainer. He felt a muscle in his shoulder tighten and twitch with anticipation as they stepped closer and closer to the play area. Sam was amused by the cheerfulness of the place. Large chunks of the soil were uprooted and tossed away in defeated mounds. Other areas of the grass with scorched so badly, it seemed unlikely anything would ever grow there again. And still other patches were saturated in water that had become large, muddy puddles. Each blade of damaged, burnt, or drowned grass was a memory some trainer had made with their friends there.

They had barely just stepped onto the pokemon play area when Sam grabbed the Dusk Ball from his pocket and squeezed it once. Concentrated energy erupted with an static sound from the socket in the center of the ball and coalesced on the ground in front of them. The energy transformed into a familiar sight for both Sam and Tommy; a creamy orange fox with nine tails fluffing themselves out. Vlam, in her typical undisturbed fashion, stretched her front end out slowly and shook her head before setting down in the grass.

Sam looked to Tommy, whom the Ninetales clearly had not seen when she emerged, and grinned in anticipation. He cleared his throat to attract her attention and pointed to his side. When Vlam turned to see what he wanted, her eyes were immediately drawn to Tommy. With a spriteliness that Sam hadn’t seen from the fox in quite a while, Vlam bounced in one fluid movement from her lying position in the grass to standing on her hindlegs before Tommy with her front paws on his chest. She was aggressively rubbing the side of her head and her ear on her trainer, whining as she did so.

“Vlam, Vlam!” Tommy cried, gripping her paws and setting her back down on the ground. He cartoonishly blew on his palms. “You’re burning up, baby. Remember how you have to regulate your temperature when you get excited? You were gonna cook me, Vee-Vee.”

Vlam whimpered again, this time sounding appropriately scolded, and then found Tommy’s shin with her head and began rubbing against it. “Hey, I missed you, too. Daddy missed you, too,” Tommy said, his voice much softer. “Was my meanie brother mistreating you while I was gone?” Vlam barked loudly one time before returning to her trainer’s leg, and Tommy and Sam both laughed in reply. “Man, right under the bus with you, huh?”

Sam nodded, still smiling at the reunion. He gripped the Nest and Friend Balls from his pocket and squeezed both of them to release Bree and Chispa. Bree would certainly also be excited to see Tommy, and Chispa deserved a chance to meet him, as well. 

Bree emerged from her ball facing Tommy and raced towards him. She zipped in figure-eights around him in the air, buzzing happily. Sam’s brother tried to reach out to rub her head, but the Butterfree was too excited and moved too quickly for him to get a hand on. Tommy was a mess of trying to reaching both down to pet Vlam and up to give some attention to Bree; it looked to Sam like two invisible forces were alternately pulling him in different directions.

Chispa was less impressed by the stranger, choosing instead to rush behind Sam’s legs and mew loudly at her sisters, as if warning them the new man might be dangerous. She was so disturbed by his presence, she even flinched when Sam reached down to reassure her. He had wanted to scoop her up with his good arm and comfort her, but she was still shooting off nervous sparks of electricity. She hadn’t been so scared of Barry in the past, but after having been involved in a few battles and getting momentarily left behind at the Phoenix Building, she might have been feeling a little anxiety around new people.

Sam knelt beside her. “It’s okay, girl. They’re both safe. That’s my brother, and he’s a good guy. He’ll be really nice to you if you give him a chance.” Chispa looked to his face, then over at her sisters. They must have seemed to be okay by her, because she then turned back to Sam and started rubbing her mouth on his sling. “You need to make that smell like you, huh?” Sam smiled. “You’re not really bothered by anything.”

“So what’s that thing?”

Sam looked up to his brother, still trying to appease both Bree and Vlam. “It’s a Shinx,” he answered.

“I know that. But you took precious time out of trying to save my life to start catching Sinnohan pokemon? I’m offended! What all have you caught?”

Sam looked down to Chispa and back up to his brother. “It’s a…it’s a Shinx…”

Tommy laughed. “Good job on that one catch then, bro.”

Sam shrugged playfully and continued to watch his brother play with their two friends. Sam had imagined many times that when his brother got better, he’d say something to the effect of “Oh, it was like he was never gone at all”. The reality was quite different, he found. It felt not only like Tommy had been gone, but that he’d been gone even longer than he really had. Sam was not sure what to talk to his brother about, and was happy the attention from Bree and Vlam was distracting him. Tommy’s last year was clearly uneventful. Sam’s, while significantly more eventful, was not something either seemed eager to discuss. Sam did not want to burden his brother with the exact stories of how he’d argued with doctors and medical staffs to the point of being escorted off their premises, nor did he want to talk about the desperate depression that led him to run away from Johto on an unlikely fantasy hunt. Even if the fantasy had come to fruition, even with Tommy standing right in front of him, Sam knew that part was true: he had come to Sinnoh to escape. He wondered, if he had never found the legends and never been able to cure Tommy, would he ever have gone back home?

That was when he felt it again; the strange feeling that his mind was trying to tell him something. The realization appeared as a hummingbird that hovered in front of him and then darted away before he could truly recognize it. His consciousness chased it again, but it had vanished. The bruising on his brain reprimanded him with pain when he started pushing too hard to remember it. 

“Hey guys! It’s on in here.”

Sam’s attention was pulled to Miah’s voice coming from the front of the travel center. 

“That press conference you wanted to see,” Miah clarified while pointing to the door, “it’s on the TV in here.”

Tommy stood upright and whistled, signaling to Vlam it was time to get up and follow. Bree swooped over to Sam’s good shoulder, and Chispa followed along as they all approached the building. If the building had a policy about pokemon being allowed inside, no one said anything to them as the attention of the entire building was focused on the TV above the flavored coffee machine. 

Professor Rowan stood before a blue curtain at a podium with Sinnoh’s red-and-blue flag draped around it. He was wearing thin-rimmed glasses and a brown suit, and he was reading from something atop the podium that Sam could not see. While assuring the region that Barry West was innocent, he admitted that the accusations levied against him were as embarrassing as they were vicious. He went on to say he was stepping down, effective immediately, to help the young man over whom he had legal guardianship get past the incident and remain safe from those who would besmirch his name.

Sam was surprised to see Professor Carolina approach the podium next to Rowan; the latter introduced her as the region’s new interim professor until the Prime Minister could conduct a more thorough search for a long-term replacement. The thought of Carolina and Rowan both being in the same place as Sam turned his stomach upside-down. Neither of them was a particularly huge fan of him, and he knew that he’d be getting raked over every coal they could find. They might even have been bringing some in from Oreburgh just to make sure they had some to literally rake him over if just doing it figuratively grew tiresome.

The conference ended with Rowan and Carolina both declining to take any questions and then referring the media to the Prime Minister’s Office of Public Relations. Sam tapped Tommy on the arm and motioned for the two of them and their friends to head back outside before the rest of the center realized there brought in released pokemon. Miah must have noticed their walking out because he was right behind them. He took a sip from his cup before patting Sam on the back.

“Are we ready to power through to Sandgem then?”

Sam looked up to the sky and then back towards his friend and Tommy. He was as ready as he was going to get.