Chapter Text
The air is chilly that night as the sun sets, blanketing the forest path in misty darkness.
Pikachu walks side by side with Ash, who shivers violently when a burst of wind grabs his clothes. Pikachu coos at him, and Ash fakes a smile over his shoulder.
“I’m sure we’ll reach a t-town soon”, he says to Pikachu through his chattering teeth. “Man, I c-can’t wait to take a nice, hot bath!” He grins even wider after that, but it doesn’t fool Pikachu.
Pikachu just hums quietly. It’s been a rough couple of days. First, it lost focus for a second and got caught by Team Rocket – what else is new – and then Ash had to rescue Latias from a pond, and Pikachu had to ensure that he wouldn’t do anything stupid, like drown. Then, Ash did something stupid anyway and he got caught by Team Rocket! Pikachu still feels rage thinking about Ash stuck inside that little freezing bubble. And then! Pikachu had to rescue Ash by casting a thunderbolt at him – which, normally it knows how to do it in a way it doesn’t hurt Ash too badly, but this time the attack had to be strong enough to break the glass bubble he was in. Luckily Latias decided to save him at the last minute, though Pikachu still doesn’t quite trust that pokemon completely.
There is something odd about that legendary.
Pikachu snaps back from its thoughts when it notices Ash’s walking pace has slowed into a shuffle. “Pikapi?” it asks, “Pika pi-ka?” Ash? What’s going on?
Ash has his arms wrapped around himself, and he stops completely, stalling. He looks around into the darkened forest and grimaces.
“Maybe we should just set up camp here”, he mutters. He’s not shivering so much anymore, but his lips are blue, and Pikachu knows that’s not a good thing. He’s seen Ash like this before, and it’s never been a good thing.
“Pi pikachu pi-ka”, disagrees Pikachu. I don’t think that’s a good idea.
“Why not”, whines Ash, and he starts to take off his backpack. “My sleeping bag’s gonna be warm too. Right? I really wanna take a nap, Pikachu. ‘M really tired…”
“Pi-ka!” Pikachu snaps. It sparks its cheeks in warning.
“I know you wanted us to find a Pokemon Center, but it’s late and I dunno if we’re even close! It’s gonna be much easier to find one once it's morning again, dontcha think?” He sits down gingerly, no doubt feeling all the fresh scrapes and bruises all over him, and starts fiddling with the zipper on his backpack.
Pikachu watches him struggle for a moment, worry and frustration churning in its stomach. Ash’s fingers are white and stiff, and he tries to grab hold of the small dangly part at least ten times before huffing indignantly and bending down, grabbing it with his teeth and tugging the bag open like that.
“See”, he grins weakly, as Pikachu gives him its most unimpressed look. “No trouble at all.”
He pulls out his sleeping bag, and without taking out anything else, or changing his clothes or anything, he crawls into it and pulls it all the way closed so only a tuft of his hair is visible. Pikachu looks around the quiet forest, decides it’s probably safe enough, and crawls in with him. It’s exhausted as well, and Ash needs all the warmth he can get right now. It settles on Ash’s stomach, presses an ear against his chest and prepares for a long night of watching over his shallow breathing. Ash wraps one cold arm around it and passes out almost instantly.
Pikachu doesn’t mean to fall asleep like that, but it does.
It startles awake when something presses hard against the outer side of the sleeping bag. Heart pounding, it scrambles over Ash’s unconscious body and peeks out of the bag.
There’s a small group of wild pokemon gathering around Pikachu and Ash – caterpie and oddish and bellsprout, and one of the caterpie has settled against their sleeping bag, against Ash’s side, like it aims to take a nap there. Pikachu jumps completely out of the bag and shows them with its body that it’s dangerous, and that they better have a good reason to get so close to Pikachu’s sleeping, vulnerable partner.
“Pikachu pi-ka?” it demands. What do you think you’re doing?
One of the bellsprout widens its leafy arms in surrender. “Sprout, bellsprout.” He’s cold.
Pikachu blinks, forgetting for a moment to seem intimidating. “Pika?” What?
Bellsprout points at Ash, and then hurriedly starts explaining how it and the others saw Ash helping Latias earlier, and how they noticed the human got pretty banged up and didn’t really recover from the cold trap he got put into – even though he pretended that he did – and how they were following Pikachu and Ash afterwards and they were just thinking they might be able to help-
“Pi-ka!” Enough!
Pikachu stares down the small group for a moment longer and then relents.
“Pi-kachu.” Come on.
It crawls back into the sleeping back, where Ash still lies unaware, now shivering slightly in his sleep. Pikachu stays by the edge so it can look out and instruct the pokemon how they should settle around his partner so he would be as warm as possible. Once it’s satisfied, it presses back against Ash’s chest and focuses back on the breaths that keep steadily getting deeper and stronger under it.
He’s gonna be fine. Ash’s hand flops around Pikachu’s stomach, and it’s no longer freezing cold. Pikachu curls around his palm and falls into slumber feeling soothed, and incredibly proud of its brave, brave partner.
When Ash then wakes up to the first rays of sunlight five hours later and sits up only to see a group of at least fifteen wild pokemon scatter in every direction around him, the look on his face is a sight to see. Pikachu giggles at his confusion, but after a minute, Ash takes it all in stride like he always does. He zips up his sleeping bag with steady fingers, checks his backpack, and stands up with just the barest wince despite his bruised everything.
“That was a good sleep”, he tells Pikachu excitedly, completely ignoring the fact he nearly froze to death during it, “but man am I hungry now!”
Pikachu rolls its eyes but hops on ahead. No time to lose, then.
It’s a new day, a new adventure, and to be perfectly clear: there is nowhere else it would rather be.