Curse 'n Pain (Vivienne)

[Seria Floria]

Seria sat on her bed. Her eyes were swollen from the time she spent bawling her eyes out. She felt pretty worthless. Useless. She couldn't help the person she felt she truly loved and cared for, and she couldn't even do well in battles. Nothing she could do felt really 'significant.' She wanted to cling to the light at the end of the tunnel. But was there really one? Next to her, Severa the Liepard had been nuzzling Seria's back for the past while. She couldn't stop. She couldn't stop the tears from flowing down. Melodramatic as it seemed, she couldn't help it. She was just feeling too many emotions right now.

She loved her so much. Seria really did. But nothing she tried to do seemed to work anymore. Maybe Tanya was right after all. But Seria knew that neither of them did any crazy things for the other. No violence was involved. It just almost felt like the magic was fading away. There was no more adventure. Nothing. Seria cried louder. Severa leaped off the bed and whimpered, before hopping back on the bed. Seria grabbed the feline and hugged her. Her Pokemon was all she had right now.

Unfortunately, Seria hadn't locked the door to her dorm. The door was opening from the wind; her windows were open. It was pretty obvious to anyone walking outside her dorm at this point that she was crying.

[Vivienne Montmarche]

Some people thought that Marmalade the Budew was a sweet, innocent little thing; some thought she was probably a little stupid even for some of her crazier antics. Charging into a field full of strange Pokemon earlier that day, nearly getting herself killed. She was, in a sense, fearless. In her trainer's opinion, she was also a bit of a sociopath. That, or the Budew was just a spoiled brat. Case in point for her little antics was that, as Vivienne changed from her uniform into her pajamas, her back turned only for a moment, the bud pokemon bumped open the door. Praline, used to this sort of behavior by now, yipped to her trainer and got her attention.

"MARMALADE!" Vivienne shouted, one of the rare moments she raised her voice at all, let alone to her Pokemon. She was already upset as things stood for the Budew making her look like a fool earlier.

The Budew ignored the yell of her trainer to waddle down the hall of the dorm. In pursuit, her hair still in pigtails, Vivienne caught up to the grass type right outside of a door blown open by a breeze. In truth, Marmalade had taken a step inside, and Vivienne found herself wedged in the doorway as she scooped the Bud up. Realizing she'd stepped into someone else's room without permission, the girl reddened. "I'm so sorry! She can be such a little imp." She apologized as she straightened. It wasn't until that moment though she realized that the girl was sitting on the bed, crying as she hugged a Liepard. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Vivienne had stepped into a rather difficult moment for the girl.

Her first instinct was to turn tail and shut the door for her, to let her cry in peace. This girl's problems weren't hers, after all, and who was she to do anything? She vaguely recognized the girl's face, maybe from a class, or was it Contest Club? Indecisive and feeling uncomfortable, Vivienne's mind was made up when the Flabebe who'd traipsed down the hall after her made a small worrying sound for the other girl. Arguably the least psychotic Pokemon she trained, Vivienne groaned internally before finally speaking again.

"Um....uh....are you......" She paused, obviously the girl wasn't okay, "I-I can leave. I probably should leave....but if you'd like, I can bring back something. I've still got two macarons from the other night?" Sweets always made her feel better at least, and Vivienne was trying to be nice.

[Seria Floria]

Seria heard the call of a young girl - calling for her Pokemon, most likely. Marmalade, the name was. A cute name for a cute Pokemon, as Seria slowly and sadly turned her head when she saw a Budew walk into her room casually. The Budew's trainer arrived shortly to try and get her on a leash. A young girl with pink-hair, she was definitely childlike. Severa turned her head as well and simply purred. Neither Seria nor Severa were in a particular mood to get angry or snappy at the intrusion. It wasn't like Seria to get mad at something like that anyway. "Whatever. It's fine." Seria simply shrugged, her voice still wavering and crackling from her incessant bawling from earlier. She didn't sound particularly mad or angry, though.

"It's funny, though. I haven't made friends with anyone from my own dorm, so it's pretty interesting to have a stranger show some semblance of concern for me," Seria heaved out a weak, melancholic laugh. "But, no thank you. I'm not in the mood for macarons right now, but thanks for offering." Seria sighed again. She wasn't hungry and she doubted sweets would make her feel better. It would just remind her of Amanda again, and that would just make her feel worse at the moment.

"I'm sorry. You can come in if you'd like, but I doubt I could entertain you in my current state."

[Vivienne Montmarche]

There were a few things that, back home, Vivienne would've avoided like the plague. Crying teenage girls? They kind of ranked high on that list. Still, when the girl didn't automatically snap or shove her out, the younger one felt obligated to stay, at least for a little while. She wrapped the Budew in her arms before finding a vacant spot on the floor and folding herself down, her legs crossed to form a cradle with her lap for the plant to sit in.

Turning down the macarons might have actually earned the stranger points in Vivienne's book; the pink-haired girl, despite her social skills (or lack thereof at times) was loathe to share her sweets. She sat there in silence for a moment, making the occasional face at the Budew in her lap and doing her best to keep the socially maladjusted baby from causing anymore chaos. She glanced back up at the other girl, and the lithe cat-Pokemon she was sitting with. "So.....uh....I'm Vivienne." She introduced herself, somewhat informally, "The hellraiser here's Marmalade, and," after patting the Budew to demonstrate who she was, the girl cupped her hand behind one of her pig tails, urging a tiny pokemon floating on a flower out from hiding, "this is Praline. We're new here....or newer, I guess." She was avoiding asking any of the complex questions a friend might, considering it was their first meeting and neither was familiar with the other. Instead, she opted for another plan of attack. Lead the girl away from the pain, maybe make a little small talk. Was this the sort of skill she'd develop to dupe people in the past? Yes, but perhaps she could put it to use. There was a reason she was blessed, or cursed depending on the day of the week, with such a child-like face and slow growing body. People never tended to think the worst of a little girl with a soft voice and awkward manner, after all.

[Seria Floria]

Seria sniffled and sighed again, stroking the purring Severa. "Nice to meet you and your Pokemon, then..." Seria looked at Vivienne, her own eyes swollen and red. "I'm Seria, and this is Severa." she nodded and sniffled, but the tears sort of started to stop. She fell back on her bed and Severa hopped off the bed and turned to look at the Budew, named Marmalade. The Liepard tilted her head but otherwise did nothing hostile, instead opting to curl up in the corner of the room. "I'm sorry you had to see me like this. I've just fallen on hard times. I guess the door was left open or something. Sorry." Seria sighed, her eyes looking up at the ceiling. Vivienne would have to stand up and look down at Seria if she wanted to maintain eye contact.

[Vivienne Montmarche]

"Nice to meet you." Vivienne replied, offering a small smile to the other girl and her Liepard. Knowing the Budew, as the dark cat glanced at it, the girl wrapped her legs a little tighter, actually restricting it from moving. It huffed slightly; Vivienne might not have had a perfect relationship with the Budew, but she knew Marmalade well enough not to let her out of her lap in a perfect strangers room.

When Seria started apologizing, Vivienne's brow furrowed slightly. "You don't need to do that, you know." Even though her voice was soft and small, as much as she was, there was a gravity to it. "Apologize. What's the point in apologizing for the wind?" She nodded to the open window, where the curtains were billowing in a strong nightly gust. "Unless you've got a Castform around here doing it, that is." She giggled after that, before her face settled into a serious one, or as serious one as she could get, "And you don't need to apologize for crying either. Sometimes, you just have to feel things..." Though she had often used her own tears for other purposes, Vivienne had shed a few when she left home sans Lockpick, genuine ones too. Instead of telling her to get over it though, her mother had simply hugged her. She obviously didn't know Seria anywhere near well enough to offer a hug, but a little support, one girl to another? Besides, the other Nature room girl hadn't done anything to earn her ire.

[Seria Floria]

Seria heaved a playful scoff. "I'm probably just pathetic, thinking I can accomplish these things. I can't even win more than one battle. I can't do anything right. Can't even do anything for the person I said I love," Seria sighed, her voice no longer wavered; she wasn't crying anymore. But her voice held a constancy of melancholy throughout, as if she was genuinely depressed about her particular lot in life right now. "Yeah, sure. I'm here to learn, to get better. But right now nothing's getting better, and all I'm learning is that maybe I'm not quite cut out for this, you know what I'm saying, yeah? Maybe it's easy for you to say things, say it'll get better. But life ain't fair, yeah?" Seria laughed now.

"Geez. I ought to take a trip to the mountains or something. Get away from everything. Feeling. What's the point of feeling anything if all it leads to is grief..." Seria heaved, at this point she wasn't even directly addressing Vivienne, all she was simply doing was letting out how she was feeling. She didn't give a flying damn if the pink-haired girl before her thought worse of her for it. She wasn't her intended audience, after all.

"C'est la vie, one might say. C'est toujours le bon moment, another might say. Pas de chance, that's what I'd say." Seria groaned. "I freaking tried to learn Kalosian just for her..." she eventually muttered, unaware if Vivienne actually heard that or not.

[Vivienne Montmarche]

Vivienne's facial expression didn't change much as Seria talked. She'd gotten the girl to stop crying, sure, but she was also seeing the darker side of her for the effort. It occurred to Vivienne that she might've been privy to the older Nature Dorm girl at her lowest point. If she were more like the Budew she was keeping control of, she might've even enjoyed it. Taking pleasure in someone else's misery though, especially a strangers...that wasn't the sort of thing she liked. A bit of annoyance, that was a different story. But this? Not so much.

Being the audience to Seria's one woman show, the uninvited guest to her pity party might've annoyed her somewhat, but Vivienne didn't betray it on her face. So there was a boy involved then, judging by the way Seria spoke about the person she loved? That explained a lot. Of course, as Vivienne settled things into little information packets, she did hear something slightly surprising. The girl's Kalosian was quite good, she had to give her that. The native tongue of her homeland wasn't even something she'd used very often at home. Growing up in an inn, surrounded by travelers both foreign and domestic, you had to learn how to speak other's languages. That might've been why her own accent wasn't very detectable.

Seria's thoughts on learning Kalosian also brought another fact to life. She wasn't having boy troubles, but girl troubles. Vivienne nearly blushed at her own assumption; she was young, and in some ways still a little naive. She let Seria's words hang in the air, still thinking to herself how this wasn't really her place for so many reasons. Then again, maybe it was helpful for the other girl? Talking like that to her friends might've been too tough for Seria to do, or could've made things worse.

"Your Kalosian's quite lovely, even if you did learn it for someone else." Vivienne finally said, "Bien que vous types de sons comme un kiosque touristique." She grinned lightly at this. The way she spoke Kalosian wasn't quite as formal in execution as what Seria might be used to, but it flowed out of her mouth in a natural sort of way. Holding onto the Budew, she didn't look up at Seria when the next thought came out. "You've always got options. You could go live in the mountains, like some creepy hermit." Her voice was as soft as ever, but the halting way she'd spoken at first had been lost. She wasn't comfortable, but some things just needed said, and hiding them behind her usual hesitance probably wouldn't get them to stick. "Or, you could prove them wrong. Prove yourself wrong. That sort of thing." It was a simple thought, but one that needed stated. The last thing she needed was to be the last person to see some girl before she ran off to join the circus, after all. 

[Seria Floria]

Seria sat up when she heard Vivienne's exclamation that her own Kalosian was quite 'lovely.' That hinted her to the fact Vivienne was from Kalos, too. Then again, her name suggested that fact as well. "Merci beaucoup... I am trying to get better, but it is I suppose a relief to see that I'm not embarrassing myself in front of a native," she heaved a sigh and looked at Severa who was in the corner for a moment before facing Vivienne again. "Heh. Being a hermit doesn't sound like my cup of tea. I'm more of an explorer, not someone who would live in those remote places." she continued, looking down at her bed right then and there.

Seria's self-confidence wasn't very high right now. She would have to do a lot of things to "prove them wrong." Maybe do some team reconstruction. She went quiet after hearing that, and started thinking. She was deep in thought, but she couldn't stop taking the occasional glance at Severa who was curled up in the corner.

[Vivienne Montmarche]

"If it's any consolation," Vivienne said from the floor, "I'm pretty sure you'd wipe the floor with me if we battled, so you can't be all that bad at it." It was a feeble attempt to stroke the other girl's ego slightly, but hell, compared to Seria's state of mind when the troublemaker and the Budew had first arrived the Liepard trainer was in a fairly better state. When Seria talked about being an explorer in lieu of staying in the sort of places some of those hermits might have, Vivienne tilted her head. "What if you went on an adventure then? Maybe once you're done here, at the Academy. Take on some gym challenges, see some sights, that sort of thing."

Sitting there, talking to Seria, Vivienne couldn't help but feel a little nagging thought in the back of her head. Why was she here? Not in the sense of sitting in the room with Seria, or the existential sense of on the planet. Spending the time to give the other girl a pep talk had her questioning her own motives. She'd been sent away, swept under the rug to avoid giving certain relatives any more troubles with her antics. Getting a decent education instead of a reform school education out of it was good for starters, and getting to train Pokemon, whichever ones she wanted, was pretty amazing to boot. Maybe she didn't want to be a Pokemon Master or Top Coordinator, or maybe she did. She had time to decide, right? Then again, as the thought registered for her, she realized she might as well say something similar to Seria. She held her tongue for the time being though, waiting for the other to speak.

[Seria Floria]

"I'd be too busy trying to find Legendary Pokemon to really take on the Gym Leader challenge," Seria shrugged, sounding rightfully crazy in front of the girl. The former wasn't entirely sure why the girl remained, but she wouldn't complain about it. "I've been to lotsa places when I was young. I guess it wouldn't be so bad to revisit them again. I mean, the whole reason I'm at this academy to begin with is to make a statement, to prove that I've got what it takes to fulfill my admittedly whimsical goals..." Seria shrugged, fully aware of the fact that her dream was something most considered to be an "impossible dream." Though with assurance from Karin that perhaps this was not the case, Seria was now doubting her own capabilities as a trainer rather than the plausibility of her goal.

"And honestly, I'm sure you'd feel the same way, if you were always losing to your peers and only capable of winning against people by no means you should be losing against to begin with. In an even playing field, I'd always be the loser. It does get frustrating at times."

[Vivienne Montmarche]

So Seria was hunting for legends? It was an interesting goal, she could say that at least. Maybe even a pipe-dream for some people. There were legendary Pokemon all over the world, right? One for each region at least, Vivienne had to guess. She only knew about Xerneas, vaguely at that, from an old story teller passing through the inn one night. Still, at least the girl had a goal, right?

When she talked about always losing on even ground, Vivienne shifted her mouth slightly as she bit the inside of her cheek. Shouldn't you learn from your mistakes? It was like the first time she'd tried breaking into the Pokeball Factory grounds; she hadn't been able to scale the fence before a guard showed up because she hadn't timed their patrols well enough, and because she lacked the upper body strength to climb it quickly enough. She'd adjusted accordingly, waited for the guard to take a lunch break, and picked the lock, playing to her strengths. Of course, that wasn't the sort of thing she could share. As far as Gray Garden Academy could be concerned, she was just going to be that shy little soft-spoken girl from the Nature Dorms with a penchant for sweets and naming her Pokemon after them.

"Well, I'd say I'm sorry for intruding but," She paused for a minute, "I hope talking to someone helped you out a little." It was a simple thought, but one she was sincere about. Giving up on the Academy was what some had done following the attacks or personal melodrama, but in the end it wasn't that bad a place to be, was it?

[Seria Floria]

Unfortunately for the thoughts of the little girl, battles didn't always work in a black and white manner. Each battle would almost always be different, even between the same two people. No two battles would always run the same way every single instance of the time. Then again, it was probably not something that she would have thought immediately of at the time. Seria couldn't read Vivienne's mind and so there was nothing to say anymore about it.

"I guess it did help a little. Thanks." Seria simply said, no longer crying, but she didn't look that much better either. Though one would suppose she was a far cry from the emotional wreck she was a while ago. Then again, she still couldn't keep her mind off of Amanda. Seria still felt like she was failing her. That really didn't help Seria's mood one bit either... And it pretty much showed, as Seria now looked more pensive and serious.

[Vivienne Montmarche]

"Well," Vivienne said, rising from the floor "we should probably get going now." The Budew in her arms, by that point, had fallen asleep. Seria's tears had dried, and the look on her face was....hard to read. It wasn't that Vivienne was a stranger to sadness, but that heavy of despair? It was something she'd avoided throughout her life, shrugging off or channeling that sort of feeling for something else. The girl turned to leave through the door, hesitating for a moment more; some final nugget of wisdom, perhaps? No, just a soft sigh. She walked down the hall to her own dorm room, shutting the door snugly. She felt bad for the other Nature Dormer, but what good was that? Pity wasn't worth a dime of her time, unless it was someone else giving it to her when Vivienne needed them to. She couldn't help Seria with her battling, since she wasn't very confident in her own abilities yet. Finding another Kalosian wouldn't be very hard either, but the right one? Who knew who that was.

"What did you get me into this time?" She murmured to the sleeping plant before returning her to an Academy Ball; the pink haired girl undid the pigtails she'd left her hair in before climbing into bed, pulling the covers around her. Despite the heaviness of the conversation though, it only took Vivienne a few minutes to drift off into the sweet nothingness of sleep.