Sabrina slipped in through the door then and stood looking at me. "Are you all right?" she asked finally.

"I'm... we're... the wedding has to be called off," I said.

She looked shocked. "Until when?" she asked finally.

"Indefinitely," I replied, trying not to look at her.

"Look, Koga, I have no idea what's going on. All I know is that you ran back here to read a letter."

Now was not the time to ask whether she could find out without my telling her. I took a deep breath.

"I'll explain it to you, as best I can," I began.

She reached out to take my hand. I almost let go, but all I could think was that it might be the last time she would want to touch me.

"When I was twenty years old, I began advanced Pokemon training with a few other students. We were all men except for one woman, and rather typically we all fell in love with her. For whatever reason, she seemed to prefer me.

"We became lovers. Everything seemed right or at least possible then, though we were old enough to know better. Eventually, we started to argue. She called me distant and unemotional. Finally one day she was gone, she had suddenly returned to her hometown and wouldn't answer any of my letters.

"I thought she had just left me, and the training, and eventually I went on with my life. But there was more to it. She was pregnant."

Sabrina gasped.

"You have a child? Why is she telling you this after all this time?"

"She isn't; she died a few months ago. She never wanted her daughter to know who I was. But her grandparents knew, and they want my daughter to come and live with me. Evidently she is a Pokemon trainer."

"You were twenty years old and didn't even think about the possibility that she could become pregnant?"

"Actually, yes... but something must have gone wrong. If you're implying that Janine isn't mine, look at this then." I threw a picture into her lap.

"I didn't mean to imply... oh my God, she looks exactly like you."

I nodded again. "If I hadn't led such a reclusive life someone would have put it all together before this."

She let go of my hand then and put her arms around me. "Postponing the wedding makes some sense... but indefinitely? Don't do that to me."

I shook my head. "I'm not going to make you the stepmother of an orphaned teenager. I'm not going to do anything right now but try to deal with this. It wouldn't be fair to you, or to Janine. And she certainly needs me to be fair to her after all this time."

"It isn't your fault!" said Sabrina sharply.

"I doubt she cares." I replied.

Finally Sabrina backed away. She took off her engagement ring and pressed it into my hand.

"Don't be ridiculous, I don't want this back," I said.

"I'm not going to interfere with your life anymore," said Sabrina, and she walked away.

I sat staring at the ring, remembering when I had given it to her and a little song she had sung for me that day. Finally I put it in my pocket and went to call Janine's grandparents.

Part Two

Ever since Aya had discovered her own psychic power she had been traveling, studying with trainers recommended by Sabrina. I had tried to get Aya to return to live in Fuschia City for a while, but she had been uncharacteristically nasty.

"I have problems of my own without dealing with your youthful indiscretions. The whole thing bothers me to no end. I'm glad I was too young to realize you were such a...."

"Don't even say it, Aya. Look, I'm just thinking that having a woman around would make things easier for Janine."

"Then maybe you shouldn't have ditched Sabrina, hmmm?"

She hung up and I swore at the phone. I was dealing with this on my own.

Janine arrived a week later, traveling alone. She marched up and knocked on the door, carrying a duffel bag and wearing a simple blue coverall and a belt full of Pokeballs.

When I opened the door she dropped the bag and stared at me at me for a moment. "Well, I don't have to ask who your are, I suppose. I could have gotten my mother's looks, but no..."

I wanted to laugh. Actually, though my features did look a bit sharp in a female face, she was a rather pretty girl. I knew better than to try to tell her that. I just picked up the bag and she followed me to one of the guest rooms. Part of me was overwhelmed at meeting my own child; part of me just wanted to get her settled and get out of her way.

"Will this be all right?" I asked.

She nodded. "Look, I might as well tell you, I'm not here for a family reunion. But when my grandparents finally told me who my father was I didn't want to waste the chance to learn what you know about Pokemon, and they agreed."

I nodded. "Fair enough," I replied. Eventually we would have to talk about deeper issues, but I wasn't going to bring them up now.

"We'll have a battle, then, after you put your things away," I said.

She seemed to appreciate the no-nonsense approach.

"I hope you're not expecting me to cook and clean," she said.

"Why, because you're female? I cook, I pick up after myself. That's not going to be a problem."

She nodded and went to shut the door, then hesitated.

"I'm certainly not calling you dad, and I'm not calling you teacher..."

"Koga will do," I replied, and left.

She fought with a Koffing and an Eevee. She had trained her pokemon well, but her battle skills were sloppy. She couldn't even beat my Venonat.

I shook my head at her.

"You're not anticipating your opponents next move. You need to be on top of what's going on, not leave the Pokemon to make their own decisions."

"I haven't had much chance to fight skilled trainers. My mother didn't want me in the league, for obvious reasons."

"She was that against you finding out who I was?"

Janine nodded. I went to cook dinner and she wandered around the dining room, occasionally speaking to me through the door.

She picked up a picture of Aya. "Who is this?"

"That's Aya, your aunt" I replied. Then I realized I should have said "my sister"; Janine didn't want a father or an aunt.

"Where is she?"

"Off doing psychic pokemon training," I replied.

"I suppose I'll end up meeting her someday," she murmured.

"I suppose," I said. "She seems to be in shrew mode these days, though."

Janine laughed and picked up the next picture, which was Sabrina.

"That's the gym leader of Saffron City," I said, before she could ask.

She just raised an eyebrow and said, "Another psychic, isn't she? Well."

"So you do know something about the gym leaders?" I asked her at dinner.

"A little. Whatever my mother would let me find out. Since there aren't many pictures of you floating around it was fairly safe as long as I never actually went for badges."

"I'm sorry if was tough on you during the battles today. I was the same way with Aya when she lived here. It's just how I am."

"I'd be a better trainer if I'd had more of a chance," I saw her grow angry. "For example, if you had actually married my mother!"

I tried not to get angry myself. "You know I had no idea she had a child."

"So? If you really loved her you'd have come after her, and you would have found out. And then I'd have had a real family."

"I really loved your mother, Janine, but I wasn't about to stalk her."

Janine managed a nod, and left the room to go to sleep. There was probably no way she could really forgive me.

Part 3

For a few days I saw Janine only for meals and occasional battles, and she never brought up the subject of her mother again.

Then one morning I was walking outside in the garden when suddenly I was shocked to see Sabrina.

"I didn't hear you come in," I said lamely.

"I didn't use the gate," she confessed. "I just sort of... got here..."

She always hated using psychic powers outside of Pokemon training, or at least hated admitting it.

"I would have let you in, you know," I said gently.

"I know, I wasn't really thinking rationally right now. Will you please talk to me?"

I nodded and led her to a bench where we could sit down. For a while we just sat there awkwardly. Finally Sabrina spoke.

"How are things working out with your daughter?"

"As well as can be expected, considering she has no reason to like me very much. But she wants to learn about Pokemon and I can teach her."

We were silent again.

"And you still think there's not a place for me in your life?" she asked.

"How can I ask you to marry me and move in here with Janine? It just doesn't seem right."

"It doesn't seem so wrong to me. As sorry as you are about what happened with Janine I don't think you should wait to have a life until she grows up or finishes training."

I imagined myself being over forty years old, alone, with little to show for my life but the accomplishments of a resentful daughter.

"I'm not asking you to wait for me," I said.

"I would if I had to," Sabrina said.

"It would be foolish," I replied.

She said nothing, just took my hand.

Would she really remain loyal to me, foolishly or not? She might, she was a determined woman. But suddenly I knew I wasn't going to take the chance.

"Sabrina, if you really think we can somehow make a family out of this situation, marry me then, and Janine will deal with it however she can."

Sabrina nodded. I took the engagement ring out of my pocket and she held out her hand for it.

"How long have you been carrying that around?"

"Since you gave it back; how could I just put in a drawer?"

She reached up to kiss me and I put my arms around her, feeling her hair like cool water poured over my hands.

Then I heard a noise and looked up to see Janine staring at us.

"Having a little gym leader meeting?" she asked sarcastically.

I was too stunned to say anything.

"My mother evidently had better morals than my father, she never chased after anyone else." Janine stomped off at that point.

"She's being very irrational," I said.

Sabrina nodded. "Well, she's no worse a child than I was. Much less in fact."

I laughed, not entirely bitterly.

"I have to go now," said Sabrina. "And I never said... I'm sorry about Janine's mother. It must have been very hard for you to find out she had died."

I nodded and held her again for a while. "Thank you," I said, and she left.

Janine didn't come out of her room for the rest of the day. I knocked once to offer her food but she didn't answer and finally I went to sleep myself.

In the middle of the night I heard shuffling noises in the main gym. I crept around the corner and in the darkness I could distinguish Janine, grabbing Pokeballs from the rack on the wall and stuffing them into her duffel bag.

I turned on the light. "I'm going to have to ask that you leave at least some of them. I'm rather attached to the Venomoth, for example, and I do have a gym to run."

She dropped the bag in shock.

"I guess I underestimated your Ninja stealth," she muttered.

I shrugged. "You also probably didn't know I sleep behind that wall."

"I don't think I could really steal anything," she said. "But I'm leaving, and I'm going to go on a Pokemon journey, by myself."

"Well, you deserve something from me; I could give you some Pokemon," I replied. "But I can't let you go anywhere without getting permission from your grandparents."

"They'll never let me do it," she muttered. "That was the one thing that they were happy about when my mother came home, that she gave up on being a Pokemon trainer. Although discovering she had also brought them an illegitimate child did rather take the edge off that. I'd rather stay here than go back and live with them."

"Did you feel they didn't want you?"

"Well, nobody really wanted me, did they? I was the accident."

"Your mother loved you, and I only wish I had been given a chance. I still don't really understand that."

"I think my mother thought that if you knew about me you would want to marry her and her parents would pressure her to go along with that, and she didn't want to. That thing I said about how if you had showed up everything would be O.K... that was just my little fantasy."

"I don't really know what would have happened," I said. "But I'm still sorry, though that isn't worth much now."

She started to cry then.

"I don't know, I just... I felt like you didn't want me either... I had know way of knowing."

I put my hand on her shoulder. She looked up at me.

"I lied, really, I didn't come her just for Pokemon training. I wanted to know who you were, and be someone's daughter..."

"You can do that. Really," I said.

Slowly she calmed down, and stopped crying.

"I'm sorry I was so rude to you. I guess I knew you would catch me leaving, or after I left.

"I'm glad I did then."

She went on. "And I lied about something else too... my mom had a normal life. She used to date and stuff, when she could find someone who wanted to hang around with a single mother."

"I'm glad she had some happiness."

"It doesn't bother you?"

"The idea that she would run away from me and then mope around after me for years is pretty distasteful, really. I guess I'm not a very romantic person."

"You seemed to be doing O.K. with that psychic chick," she said.

I almost got angry, but then I saw she was smiling, and I started to laugh.

"What's the deal with you two... as if it's my business," she asked.

"It is your business. We're getting married."

"And you're still going to let me stay here? Without me having to call her mom?"

"I want you to stay here, and I'm sure you can call her Sabrina. I honestly think you will like her; she had a difficult childhood too."

"And if she gets angry at me she won't turn me into an action figure?"

I laughed again.

"No, and neither will your aunt, I hope."

"I think I want to stay then."

"Good."

Epilogue

Sabrina and I were married two months later. Janine and a somewhat calmer Aya attended the ceremony. A huge contingent of Pokemon leaders attended the reception. I introduced Janine proudly as my daughter and dared anyone to say anything. In our own way, we make a family.