"You need to eat, Pikachu", Bonnie urged the mouse Pokemon.

Pikachu ignored the girl, retreating to its burrow of pillows to be alone with its own tears. Sighing with frustration, Bonnie hurled the bowl of Pokemon food at the wall, making the pieces explode and bounce around the room.

"What was that noise?", Clemont questioned tediously, creaking the door open.

"Pikachu isn't eating! Serena just wants to be on her own all the time like you, and I still don't get what's wrong with Ash!", Bonnie yelled with frustration.

"Bonnie..."

Clemont slowly kneeled down, placing his hands on his sister's shoulders.

"It's...it's...just not that easy..."

"What are you talking about?!"

The girl threw a tantrum, waving her arms around frantically. Desperate for an answer. But how would Clemont explain to his sister the concept of passing, when she was yet to reach the tenth year of her life and was already experiencing a loss without knowing it?

"Please. I just-I...I can't-..."

Tears streamed from his eyes, staining his glasses. He let go of Bonnie, facing away from his sister. He had to be strong for her. He knew Ash would want that. But his voice continued to break, leaving him no choice but to dart towards the door.

"Cle-"

"I'm sorry!"

The slamming of the door echoed through the lab, nothing but a painful release from the mourning silence.

----------

"Ngh!"

Sawyer aggressively grunted, hurling his notebook at the wall. Dried tears quickly replaced. His trembling hands took hold of those once vital pages, which he now deemed nothing as he tore it apart.

"I looked up to you...", he mumbled through gritted teeth, ripping the words away, "I wanted to be like you...I. Wrote. Down. Every. Thing. I could learn from you...and now WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW THAT YOU'RE GONE?!"

His final shriek forced him to abruptly stop as fragments of the former notebook slipped away from his palms. With his face in his hands, a bloodcurdling cry escaped him. 

Shauna, Tierno and Trevor, sat not too far away from him, flinched from what they heard.

"Anything...if anything would've been different, he'd still be here. If it wasn't for Team Flare", Tierno whispered, looking down as did the other two, "Ash would still be here"

Trevor silently nodded, maintaining silence.

"He was such a happy kid...", Shauna murmured, "I kinda miss him too. And Serena still hasn't come out of her room..."

She looked up towards the isolated room above, in which the aforementioned honey-blonde locked herself away.

She sat motionlessly in the corner of the room. Staring at the window, the one source of light. Her usual ocean eyes now dull and grey. A blue ribbon hanging loosely from her fingers. 

"Ash...?"

She muttered his name over and over again, as if she was summoning him. As if the more she called him, the more he'd fade back into her life. Nothing changed except her mind. She was the calmest in the situation; because she refused to believe it.

"Ash. This is such a long dream, you know? It's been going on for days now"

She could almost hear him answering back.

"It seems so real. Everyone else is so sad. Even Shauna keeps asking me to come out of my room, like she would do in real life. But I know this isn't real life. I know I'll wake up and get to see you smiling again"

She rocked herself back and forth, holding her knees back with her arms.

"I just don't wanna come out, since everyone else keeps trying to tell me you're dead. It keeps getting funnier, the fact that they think you're dead. I'm waiting for you to come back, so I can prove them wrong. I'm waiting, Ash"

Little chuckles made their way out of her throat. Her unwashed hair and body swayed back and forth.

"I'm waiting. I'm waiting, Ash. Come on. I'm starting to get pretty impatient here"

She eventually burst out with laughter, not caring for the melancholy trope throughout the rest of the lab. Her fake happiness flooded the room. Her agonizing laugh of denial.

"I knew you'd come back!"

----------

Professor Sycamore tightly shut his eyes, struggling to cope with the disturbance of the present. He needed to do something before that girl went completely insane, but he could barely focus on his own work without the sight of the coffin haunting him. Mairin, who understood the idea of death unlike Bonnie, reassuringly placed a hand on the man's shoulder.

"I miss Ash too...", she mentioned, trying to comfort him, "He was pretty cool, and he helped save Chespie"

What she said was true. Although she hardly knew the boy, he seemed like such a nice person, and without him, it was a good chance Team Flare would have succeeded. Why did the world have to come with the price of a sacrifice?