James panicked, taking a cloth and bringing it hastily to the drawing's face, but paused, remembering Jessie in the garden, that sad look that always followed her, and realized why he had subconsciously drawn her. He let the cloth drop to the floor, and decided the drawing was gorgeous, and his angel would stay Jessie. She had been deeply hurt as well from the accident, and James could clearly see it now. Though she had tried to be the person she was before he had been shot, James knew her too well to believe her false happiness and hope.
James made a few improvements to the charcoal outline and began the tedious task of preparing the paints. He worked the rest of the day, and still, only got a few brush strokes onto the canvas before he heard a sharp knock at his door.
"James? Meowth told me you were in here all day, you okay?" he recognized Jessie's voice, and the "Meowth-told-me-to-ask-so-I'm-going-to-even-though-I-really-don't-want-to-or-care" tone. He dropped the paintbrush he was holding, coated in a shade of red exactly matching Jessie's hair in terror and lifted the canvas from the easel.
James' eyes darted about the room, looking for a suitable place to conceal his secret from Jessie. "If she finds out about this I'm so screwed!" he thought to himself, but grinned slyly as he noted the long bedspread dangling just over the floor. He dove forward, landing on his knees and gently slid the painting under his bed. The easel and paints he stashed haphazardly in his closet, after closing the tubes with whatever lid he could find and unlocked his door.
James opened it and Jessie stared coldly into his eyes, her animosity hidden guilefully beneath an appropriately concerned expression. "You okay?" she asked again. James nodded. "You didn't eat any lunch, aren't you hungry?" she asked. James shook his head. Jessie frowned at him and turned slowly over her shoulder. "Well, Meowth and I are going into town for dinner, you can stay here if you want, there's bound to be something in the fridge, see ya later," she said and walked down the hall.
James poked his tongue out at her and slipped back into his room, locking the door behind him, and stopped at the crimson stain on his carpet. He picked up the paintbrush, scowling. "Shoot, that was the wrong red," he thought, having just seen Jessie's hair, and moved to retrieve his canvas. He winced as he bent to pick it up, noting a faint streak of red paint on his bedspread. His hand finally found it, and he gently pulled it from its hiding spot.
James sighed in relief to find the paint strokes he had started were relatively unscathed, and he set the canvas on his bed to drag out his easel and paints. He worked until he heard the front door open, and Jessie and Meowth return, arguing loudly over something. He cursed silently and stashed his supplies in the hiding places he had determined earlier that day. Deciding he did not want to deal with Jessie or Meowth any longer that day, he unlocked his door appropriately and slipped into bed.
True to his suspicions, his door opened slightly shortly after. Jessie peered through quietly, noting that his lights were off, and sighed, whispering to Meowth. "He's asleep, let's leave him alone," she said.
Meowth nodded, staying at the door, watching his friend carefully. "James is up ta somthin', and I don't like it," he muttered quietly and closed the door behind him as he left.
"Great, one of these days one of them is going to find my painting, I guess I'll have to work at night," James thought, and so began the odd schedule of completing his work of art.
James moved from working during the day, and sleeping at night, to doing exactly the opposite. He set his alarm to go off nightly at midnight, when he would start his work, and paint until he grew weary. Then he slept, often until late hours of the day. Jessie and Meowth rarely saw him, as even when he was awake, he kept mostly to himself. James felt that they were no longer his friends, that they no longer cared, and neither did he, but there would come a day where his life as he knew it then, lived in depression and angst, would change completely.
James took out his painting that night, and smiled warmly. It was nearly finished. He sighed and set it on the easel, knowing he would most likely complete it before morning, and dipped a tiny paintbrush gingerly into a deep crimson. He brought it to the arrow through Jessie's stomach, trailing the blood from it, striking against her white garb. He smiled again, the fact that he only smiled now when he was painting suddenly coming to mind, and rinsed the bloody color from the brush.
Unbeknownst to James, Meowth stood outside his window, attempting to catch even so much as a glimpse of what he had been doing for so long in there at night. His acute hearing picked up the sound of the door being opened and James' slowly dimming footsteps as they went down the silent hall. Seizing the opportunity, the feline crept back into the house, furtively pressing his back against the wall and shuffling to James' room.
He had left the door open slightly, and it required minimal effort on Meowth's part to open, and he crouched on all four paws to enter. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, they searched, and soon found themselves upon the painting. His jaw dropped as he scrutinized it, nearly not believing what he saw and he stood back up on his hind legs, walking closer. "I...It's Jessie," he whispered in awe. He heard the door open behind him and he whirled around, his expression changing to one of terror. James' mirrored his as he returned to find the cat looking at his painting.
Meowth watched the tears spring to his eyes as he shuffled in a pile of paper full of small drawings on his desk for anything to write on and explain himself, but Meowth leapt onto the surface, upsetting all that rested there and stopping James. He let a few tears slide down his cheeks before wiping them away with his hand. "Ya don't need ta explain James, but where on earth did ya get dat?" he asked in bewilderment.
James found a pencil, wrote an answer and showed it to the feline. "I painted it."
Meowth's eyes widened as he glanced back to the beautiful painting again. "You? You did dat?" he asked. James nodded solemnly and took a seat at the edge of his bed, finally locating the notebook he normally used. "I'm sorry," he wrote. Meowth smiled and batted the book from his hands.
"James, don't feel ashamed. It's da most gorgeous ting I've seen in a while, next ta you coming back ta me," he said climbing into his lap and wrapping his arms around James' neck.
James did not know at the time what Meowth meant, but he sobbed just as hard as his old friend as he held the Pokemon close, grateful for his friendship.
Meowth turned and smiled at the now completed painting. "Ya know, it's beautiful, but it's missin' somthin," he mused. James scrutinized the scene, searching for any negative space, or flaws, but only when he found none, did he understand what Meowth meant.
James put the cat down on the bed, and stood, moving to his canvas. He picked up the miniscule brush he had used earlier for the blood in his painting and, dipped it in black paint instead. He turned over his shoulder and smiled, which brought more tears. The first time Meowth had seen a genuine smile from James overjoyed him. He turned back to his painting and gingerly and carefully brushed "James LeBlanc" into the bottom right corner in longhand.
"Dere ya go! Any great artist signs his works," Meowth said curling into a small ball at the end of James' bed. He put the brush back into the glass of water and sat down, yawning. He glanced about to ensure that no tubes were open and drying or brush bristles fusing together with paint and nodded approvingly. He swung his legs up onto the bed inching his head up to meet the pillow and sighed contentedly. He closed his eyes, but one was forced open as he felt Meowth walk across his side.
"Need some company tonight?" he asked.
James smiled and pulled him down in front of his stomach.
"I missed you pal," Meowth said and purred lightly, closing his eyes and nuzzling closer to his friend, and they both fell asleep, and for the first time in months, James felt something odd. While he had drifted off, his lips had been curled into yet another genuine smile, as he finally felt a moment of true happiness.
Jessie woke the next morning in her typical manner, forcing herself out of bed swearing she should just stay there. To her, life seemed to get worse every day, she hardly ever saw James any longer, and it had been weeks since he had even written a note to her. It was as if he was really dead. She contemplated crying as she dressed, but decided that her tears were no longer over him, but for her life. She felt dead, like part of her had been locked away, waiting for something that would never come, and one does not cry at their own death.
She walked numbly to the kitchen and gasped in shock to find James and Meowth already sitting at the table. She raised an eyebrow as she watched them. Meowth grasped at his stomach and dramatically fell to one side, then sat up laughing. James smiled at this, chuckling silently as well, and raised a steaming mug to his lips. Jessie could not help but notice how he looked. When she had first brought him home, he had been thin, too thin, and his eyes had no life behind them. His whole persona had been changed, and even now this was the first time she had seen him smile in months. Yet as she gazed at him, his emerald eyes sparkled with vitality, and he had regained the body had once had. His face practically glowed with the same health and lust for life he had once possessed.
He glanced up and upon seeing her, much to her astonishment, smiled warmly. He nudged a second mug her direction and she sat next to him, taking it. Meowth and James met eyes furtively, and grinned, then turned to Jessie.
"Mornin' Jess!" Meowth called.
She sipped the coffee James had prepared for her and set the mug on the table decisively. "Okay, I want to know what the hell happened," she said harshly.
James looked hurt and looked for anything to write on and with.
"What do ya mean?" Meowth asked confused.
"You two were just as depressed as I am, and now we're all chipper as Pikachu, what the hell happened that I don't know about?!" she repeated, her voice laced with tears.
James tapped her on the shoulder and shoved a piece of paper into her hand. She let tears fall as she read it. "Jessie, nothing happened, I've just decided to move on with my life, I've got a new outlook on things, and I'm happier because of it. I think you need to move on too."
She wailed in anguish, crumpling the note and throwing it to the table. "God! I'm so sick of this!" she screamed and fled the kitchen, toppling her chair on the way out.
"Jessie! Don't!" Meowth called and made a move to follow her. James held a hand out to him, shaking his head, and followed Jessie.
She pressed her back against her door, which she had just slammed shut, sobbing as she gently lowered herself to the ground. She had been used to depression, knowing that everyone in their home felt the same way. She knew she could never recover from the tragedy, and the concept that James, the one who really had been hurt, had moved on and not her, caused her to realize that she would never be the same. Fate has chosen her for an experiment and it had been a total failure.
Jessie jumped at the light knock on her door, and inched over away from its path. "Go away!" she hissed, knowing James had followed her, and that he would not go away. He opened the door, and found her on the floor, casting a soft smile down at her. "God could I hate you more? Get out of here!" she screamed through tears. James knelt in front of her, stroking a cheekbone tenderly until she looked him in the eye.
His were full of life, and vitality, the same eyes Jessie had fallen in love with so long ago. Though his mouth could not tell her, they gave her his message of hope, that it was never too late, and she could be saved. She did not have to be this bitter and resentful, and that he would always be there for her. Jessie's eyes told a different story, one of futility, of a soul that had lost its other half, and even though it appeared to have returned, she knew that James was very different. James knew he was the same person inside now, he had resolved his conflicts through his artworks, and even had another painting in mind.
The differences in opinion about James drove the stake into the heart of their old friendship even deeper, threatening to break it forever, never to be repaired. James felt tears gather in his own eyes as Jessie gritted her teeth and looked away from him, the same hate for him burning brighter than ever in her eyes. He sobbed silently, wrapping his arms around her neck and holding her close. She cried harder, feeling James' shoulders convulse as she returned the embrace, and hearing nothing from his throat.
"Just...Just leave me alone," she sobbed, burying her face into his neck. "Please go, I can't take this much longer," she said, running a hand through his now freed, and silky blue hair. He no longer wore the bandages, and the wound had sealed neatly, leaving an undetectable scar.
James backed away and brushed a stray hair away from Jessie's face and stood, moving to the door. Jessie curled into a smaller ball, putting her face into her hands to continue to sob. She did not even look up as James left her alone to drown herself in her own sorrows.
No one spoke for the rest of that day except Meowth and James. They retreated to James' room to put any additional touches on his painting, and Jessie, remained to think.
She contemplated the cruel hand fate had dealt her, and why she was so cruel to the person she still cared about most in the world. "I don't hate him," she muttered later that evening as she sat in front of her mirror. Jessie ran her broad brush through her unkempt red hair and sighed. "I don't hate him at all, and...And I never did. I still love him more than anything." She looked away from her disheveled appearance and closed her eyes to ward off tears. "I hate myself," she groaned, "and I'm hurting James because of it, now I have to tell him the truth."
Jessie stood gingerly, and stiffly made her way to James' room, pausing at the door, to hear Meowth speak to him soothingly. "Aw c'mon James! It ain't your fault! Jessie's just...Real confused right now, just work on finishin' dat so yous can it get it displayed somewheres!"
Jessie raised an eyebrow, but shrugged opening the door. "James, I feel terrible and I really just need to-" she stopped as her eyes came to rest on both James and Meowth standing in front of a painting.
The art was of a battle, and a fierce looking one at that, in the background, but the main focus was an extraordinarily familiar angel, falling in death in the foreground. James stepped aside, all color visibly draining from his face as he sat heavily down on the bed, cradling his forehead in his hands. "James you...You painted this," Jessie whispered gazing at herself in the painting. She gasped in pure joy, a hand coming to her mouth and tears gathering in her eyes as the full meaning of it struck her.
Ever since James had been a child, he had not been permitted to live his life as he chose. That and many other things were the sole reasons why he had run away, and joined Team Rocket. It had been a struggle, but before the accident, his real personality had begun to shine through. Though Jessie had known what it was all along, she had fallen in love with the James that expressed himself fully, unabashed. With his loss of speech, so came a loss of communication, and expression, but had found it again through art.
His painting contained the one element that loses many artist's acclaim, emotion. The work thrived with it, as if James had poured his own being into a few oil colors on a canvas.
"James when did you do this?" Jessie asked.
He looked away, ashamed, and scribbled something into the notebook he already held in his lap from speaking with Meowth. Jessie read it, and smiled warmly at him. "Every night at midnight, I'd wake up and work until morning." Jessie had been wrong about James. He was not the fragile bird robbed of its essence as she had once thought. Her Nightingale still sang, but he sang at midnight, when no one could hear his song but himself.
Jessie closed her eyes and sat next to James, wrapping her arms around him lovingly. He smiled and returned the embrace, resting his chin on her shoulder. She drew in a deep breath and brought her mouth to his ear. "I love you James, more than anything in the world," Jessie whispered. He had come back to her, and in those few beautiful words, James felt Jessie return, and the dagger driven through their hearts was removed.
He pulled away, smiling broadly and as their eyes met, and mouthed the words, "I love you too," to her.
"Oh James," Jessie whispered as he gently lifted her chin for her lips to meet his.
Meowth watched as they kissed, grinning in delight. The love had been there all along, but it had taken the tragedy to make them realize how much they needed each other. He smiled as the kiss became more passionate and ducked out the open window. "Dey'll probably be wantin' dier privacy," he mused and shut the glass panel securely behind him, leaping joyously into the yard to chase the flying points of light, oblivious to the joyous song of a Nightingale trilling in the depths of the night blackened trees.
Jessie held James closer to her, feeling his familiar warmth against her own, and his relieved breathing on her neck. "I'm so sorry James, I've hurt you so badly, and I swear you are the best thing that's ever happened to me, I forgot that I loved you, and I hated myself for that. I never hated you, and I never hated myself, I hated my mind because I lost sight of what really mattered," she explained, feeling James' lips brush her neck. "You're my other half, I'm nothing without you, and when I thought I had lost that, I lost myself," she whispered as she felt the kisses continue along her chin, and finally on her lips again.
She smiled as she kissed him back as passionately as she could, with more love and emotion than she had ever shown anyone, and didn't protest when James' hands moved to her back and her thin nightshirt, lifting it gently. She welcomed it, but it only reached her shoulders before she felt James back away suddenly, releasing his hold on her and looking to the side, his cheeks crimson with embarrassment.
He shook his head as if to punish himself, but looked back at Jessie as she caressed his face lovingly and gingerly. "Yes James, I trust you and I love you, I trust you with everything, my heart, my mind, my soul, and my body," she said lying on her back, bringing James with her. She pulled him close, her chin resting on his shoulder and her lips close to his ear. "Make love to me James, make me happier than I've ever been in my life," she whispered.
James let his tears of joy fall as Jessie slid his shirt adoringly over his head, and he did the same for her. He cried as their souls and bodies became one, living the blissful moments slowly, treasuring the love he had found in the one person he knew he was meant to be with. Making love to Jessie was something he had often dared to dream about, but never imagined would happen until he was positive he could feel her tender touch, and her loving, passionate lips upon his. The tears of joy ran harder as the night progressed, until at last, it was over, and Jessie fell asleep in the comfort of his arms.
James lay awake only a short time after Jessie drifted off to sleep, savoring the feeling of what they had done, and the feeling of her in his arms. He buried his face into her now loose and sweet smelling hair, smiling. "I'll love and cherish you forever Jessie," he whispered, the biting pain of speaking searing his throat with the slurred and near undecipherable words, "why should good things like that be around for so long, and then die in an instant? I'll make it last forever, I never want it to end."
Jessie awoke the next morning before James with a smile on her lips. She closed her eyes happily as she felt herself still in his arms, and his soft rhythmic breathing behind her. "God, he has to be the most beautiful man on earth," she thought to herself, only then realizing he had cried with joy the previous night. He looked innocent while he slept, as if nothing in the world were amiss and everything was as beautiful, and full of passion as their love the night of latter had been, and Jessie smiled at what she finally had, that had in reality been at her side all along. "I'll always love you James, I'll never leave you, and I'll never give up on you like that again," she whispered as he began to stir.
She turned to face him, kissing his forehead gently as he opened her favorite eyes in the world, inches from hers. "I never thought I'd be so happy waking up next to you," she said as James kissed her lightly on the lips. Jessie put a hand behind his head, smiling at the silkiness of his blue-lavender hair and continued the kiss he had started.
It was broken rudely however, by a sharp rap at the door. "Hey James! It's late! Getup!" they rolled their eyes at Meowth who had officially killed their first romantic morning with each other and sat up.
Jessie located her clothing and quickly pulled it back on, handing James his shirt which had gotten in with her pile. He donned it gratefully and smiled as he realized Jessie was blushing slightly. "Hey, I smell something good! Think Meowth cooked for us?" she asked turning to James. He shrugged as they exited James' room, and headed into the kitchen.
Meowth stood at the table, grinning proudly at the two plates of French toast sitting in waiting for them at the table. "Meowth thought youse two needed a nice mornin!" he said fervently.
James chuckled as he realized what he meant and sat across the table from Jessie.
"Well thank you Meowth, that was a rare step out of character, but I appreciate it," Jessie said, already throwing herself vivaciously into her breakfast.
"Well I gots one ting ta say, next time ya wanna sleep wid James, I suggest keeping it down, da neighbors mighta heard!" he said smugly.
James stifled a fit of laughter as both he and Jessie's face turned a mutual crimson and their eyes met. Jessie smirked and put a hand over her mouth, unable to contain her laughter and both she and James shared another precious moment together.
After breakfast was finished, James led Jessie back to his room, snatching his notebook from his nightstand. "I have another idea for a painting," he wrote, "if you'll do it." He smiled sheepishly at her as she nodded in agreement and began the outline on the pad of paper for his newest work of art.
Meowth watched them together, smiling in joy as Jessie reclined casually on the bed, posed with her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling with a wistful, yet hopeful expression. Her body was covered in a few key places with a soft satiny material Meowth noticed, but that was all, and she had left her hair down from the night before, laced with flowers James had picked himself. "James, lets see ya bring your angel to life," he whispered.
