Five years later.

Serena POV

A lot can happen in these five years. Things and people fall apart. Hearts get broken, healed slowly, and then shattered again. People change, some for the better, some for the worse. Soul mates are found in the most random places.

Dreams are chased and, in some cases, realized. Friends become strangers; enemies become friends, and sometimes more. Many tears are shed, smiles brighten faces and serial daters settle down with the one person everyone thought would never last.

Most importantly, life goes on, no matter what.

The years that had passed since I bade Ash a tearful farewell at lumiose Airport had been eventful, to say the least.

May, Dawn and I made it a point to get together at least once a week for dinner and gossip after high school. I never really had much to contribute to the conversation in regards to relationship talk but that had never hindered us before. May and I mostly listened to Dawn as she gushed about Paul before we got a chance to talk about ourselves, but we were used to that, even expected it.

Dawn surprised us all by dating Paul for far longer than anyone could have imagined. I had been forced to eat my words and concede that Paul was probably the best thing to happen to flaky Dawn for a long time. Sure, he was cold, overly responsible and slightly boring but his calmness kept Dawn's ditzy nature in check. Still, sometimes, May and I would look at each other, clearly wondering what had happened to our serial dating friend.

"I never thought I would see the day when Dawn would be having a five year anniversary of anything, let alone a relationship," May had muttered to me as we watched Dawn and Paul whisper to each other across the table. But they were crazy in love and happy, which was all that mattered to us. Trust me; an unhappy Dawn is a force to be reckoned with.

Nobody wants to see that.

Paul was successful in his own right; nobody could accuse him of being a male gold digger, even with the expensive gifts Dawn showered him with. He went to university on a soccer scholarship and got drafted in his freshman year and went on to play for the Lumiose Giants. Of course, Dawn dragged May and me to several of his games to 'support him'. Dawn ended up taking a makeup artistry class after high school, surprising nobody when she graduated top of her class. If there was one thing that girl was passionate about, it was makeup. Her reason for taking the course?

Rolling her eyes when I asked her, she explained, "So that I can look like a celebrity when I put on my makeup. Duh!"

Classic Dawn.

May shocked her parents by choosing to go to university to obtain a bachelor's degree in Sociology rather than hang out at home and 'live like a Kardashian'.

Her words, not mine.

"You don't have to work, you're an heiress!" May's mom spoke, trying to reason with her stubborn daughter, who was immovable.

May wouldn't hear of it. "But I want to help people who need my help."

Finally, after a long and protracted argument with her parents, who didn't understand why in the world May would want to pursue higher learning after she had graduated high school. May got her way and attended University at the behest of her father. It might have been reluctant about May's future plans, but if she insisted on following her dreams, she was going to follow them at an League school. Hell, she definitely could afford it!

Over dinner the summer before we started university, May explained to me why she wanted to study Sociology and have a career when she didn't need to.

"If I can help just one child who is in a situation as bad as yours was, Serena, it would set my heart at ease," she admitted to me, the heartfelt emotion on her earnest face bringing tears to my eyes. "You're probably my biggest inspiration. I always wanted to be as brave as you."

When she was in her second year, May was coming home on the subway one night (I know, right? Props to me for finally being allowed to teach her the ins and outs of subway) without her bodyguard and her MetroCard slipped out of her pocket as she walked off the train. A random guy who saw it happen picked it up from the floor and ran after her. They ended up grabbing a coffee together and talking until the café they were chatting in had to shut down for the night. It was, to quote May 'love at first sight'.

Seeing how May's eyes lit up whenever she talked about Drew always brought me back to that conversation we had back in high school when we talked about our favorite clichés. May had always been partial to the love at first sight cliché and now she was living it, which made me smile every time I thought about it.

They were due to get married in December after over three years of dating and Dawn and I were the bridesmaids. Unfortunately, Dawn had the most grandiose concepts for the wedding and she was trying her best to push her ideas onto poor May. So far, May had yet to crack. Her cousin was already begging to design the wedding dress, she didn't need to hear about pale pink unicorn centerpieces too.

But who would have thought that out of the three of us, my life would turn out to be the one with the most twists and turns?

Then again, maybe not.

Let me start with the obvious- me and Ash.

Although we tried our hardest to make the long distance relationship work, we both decided that it wasn't working after a couple of months and decided to let it burn and go our separate ways. Yeah, I used 'let it burn' in a sentence. I'm proud of myself. We broke up on Skype, and the last thing Ash whispered before he cut the video conferencing call was "I still love you, though," tears glimmering in his eyes.

The breakup hurt us both, if the long phone conversations we had with each other after the fact were anything to go by. I never actually talked about our dating fail after that, going to great lengths to skirt around it and act like Ash hadn't been the center of my world for a few all too short months. By ignoring it and burying the hurt and pain I endured thanks to us breaking up, I assumed that people wouldn't realize how deeply losing Ash as a boyfriend affected me. My plan worked for a while, and then he moved on after a few months and started dating a girl from his school called mokoto.

Thanks to the staunch support of my friends and My mom who had to comfort me during a couple of 'why me' speeches and who provided ice cream, sappy rom-coms and Kleenex whenever I needed to wallow, I managed to pull through, despite being crushed by his betrayal. Okay, so maybe I was being a drama queen since we hadn't been dating for months before he hooked up with Mokoto but can you blame me? Although I put on a front, telling him that I was happy for him and Mokoto, it wasn't easy for me to deal with it.

Living by the motto 'If you love somebody, set them free. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were', I left everything relationship-wise up to fate and immersed myself in my studies, becoming the proverbial bookworm. My studying and extracurricular activities paid off majorly. I graduated from Lumiose in the top 3 of my class, proud recipient of the Gates Millennium Scholarship and I was accepted to Eastman School of Music at the University. My mom, Mark, Steven Stone and Officer Jenny were on hand at my graduation ceremony.

As I walked across the stage, praying that my heels didn't catch on my robe, I saw My mom breaking down in her seat near the front. She later told me how proud she was of me, saying I was the classic example of someone who had nothing to believe in turning the world on its head and taking everything I was owed. When I told her that I owed every single one of my accomplishments to her, she cried even harder.

After his graduation from kanto, Ash visited his family for a week, Mokoto in tow. I kept coming up with excuses to avoid him, not wanting to open myself up to the hurt that I knew seeing him with another girl would cause. But when the May's family invited us all to dinner at their house the day before Ash was to leave, I couldn't hide any longer. Mokoto turned out to be a really sweet girl with an kantonion accent. Ash- he hadn't changed a bit. The evening wasn't half as bad as I expected and when I left to go home, I promised to keep in touch with Ash. Encouraged by his mother's revamped humanitarian efforts, Ash and Mokoto headed back to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. It was as though, now that he had the freedom to travel wherever and whenever he chose, he didn't want to come back to Kalos. I saw him twice after that, first when he flew back to watch Leaf's 2nd grade play, and again when his father passed away. I attended Mr. Ketchum's funeral to pay my respects and Ash and I had a long talk at the repast after the burial service.

"I'm just glad we sorted out everything before this happened," he told me wistfully, staring at a blown up picture of a laughing Mr. Ketchum with a cigar in his mouth. "At least I'm not bitter about anything that happened in the past." He shot a crooked grin my way which threatened to release butterflies in my stomach. "I guess I have you to thank for that."

My eyes bulged at his cryptic sounding voice. "What- what do you mean? I didn't have anything to do with- anything!"

Of course I knew that he was talking about my heart-to-heart with Mr. Ketchum the day I accompanied Ash to Gary's grave, but Ash couldn't prove that I had anything to do with his father's little 180.

Another grin, just as Mokoto walked up, balancing a tray of sandwiches precariously with one hand while texting with the other. "Sure you didn't."

My relationship with Mark and his sister kept getting stronger with time. When I visited them during the summer of that dramatic year, his entire family embraced me into the fold. My new grandparents simply adored me and Mariela, Mark's sister, was enthralled by how much we looked alike.

I still volunteered at the Vanville daycare two days a week. Miss Jessie finally quit before the kids turned her hair white and her replacement was far more children friendly. I also found time to mentor William though the Big Sister program. He was the only little boy who had a female mentor and he claimed it was 'awesome'!

With my busy life, I didn't have much time for romance. My track record backed me up, because since breaking up with Ash, I only had two friendly relationships. One was little more than a winter fling with an exchange student during my freshman year at Eastman but it fizzled into nothing. He went back to Alola and I moved on easily.

The other relationship was with Calem.

It wasn't premeditated at all, far from it. In fact, I hadn't seen Calem for months when I bumped into him outside school building during my second year at Eastman. We exchanged numbers; he called me and took me out for coffee. The next thing I knew, he was sitting across from me at our little corner table, telling me how much he'd always liked me and that know-it-all voice in my head was going 'I knew it!'

I had to ask for approval before we started dating but I was cool with it because according to her, "He's been a totally different person since he ran into you again."

So we started dating, even though it took me a while to tell Ash about it. I mean, Calem was definitely going against the guy code, right? You surely weren't supposed to date your best friend's ex-girlfriend, were you? But I decided that it would be better if Ash heard the news from me. He took it pretty well and I'm sure I was just imagining the tightness in his voice when he told me "Tell Calem he'd better treat you right or he'll have to answer to me."

His threats were unfounded. For the year that Calem and I dated, he did treat me right. But we clashed over the most ridiculous things and eventually I couldn't take it of his drinking and incessant partying anymore. I had the whole 'it's not you, it's me' talk with him and we decided to just be friends. It was better that way.

After Calem, I was more than a little bit disillusioned with the mess that was my love life especially since all my friends were happy couples and Ash had been with his girlfriend for over two years at that point, and decided to put it on hold while I focused on important things. After graduating from Eastman with a Bachelor's degree in Music, I got a job teaching music to impoverished inner city kids at a community center. It was hardly glamorous but I loved every second of it. I'd always had a soft spot for kids and getting paid to teach was a dream come true for me. Within two months, I moved out of our Vanville apartment along with my mom, whom I practically had to drag out of the building to a modest two bedroom apartment. It was hard to leave the old neighborhood, but at the same time I was glad to start afresh.

At least I made good on my promise to move my mom out of the hood.

But I couldn't start afresh without admitting one very important fact to myself- I was still in love with Ash. I had never stopped loving him. Some days I would lay in bed, just reminiscing over our brief past together, wondering what might have been if Mr. Ketchum didn't send him to the Kanto would we have still been a couple?

Who knows?

Not once did I ever told Ash how I still felt about him. I mean, he was dating that girl and he was happy with her! Why should I throw a spanner in the works by asking him if he ever thought about us? So I kept my feelings to myself, hoping that one day we might get a second chance to make things work but knowing deep inside that it wasn't going to be possible.

Ash and I still talked constantly but I had all but forgotten our old promise to meet at Lumiose tower in five years to open the time capsule when I got a short and simple email from him one random Tuesday morning.

'Dear Sere,

Let's meet on Saturday. Lumiose tower at 4. Bring a shovel. Don't be late.

Ash.'

Which brings us to the here and now.

That email was the reason I was on Lumiose tower, shivering in my cottoned jacket as I patiently waited for Ash to show up, trying to keep the 'he won't show up' thoughts at bay. I wasn't late, even though I didn't bring a shovel, not that we needed one since I had already located the capsule, but Ash was nowhere to be seen.

My mind kept coming up with various reasons as to why he still wasn't here at 4.15pm. Did I read the time wrong in my excitement?

That idea was quickly crossed off my mental list. In the days leading up to today, I read and reread that brief email, searching in between the lines for some hidden meaning, smiling at the 'Sere' salutation... I was positive that he had written '4', but just to be on the safe side, I pulled my iphone out of my pocket and checked the email again, nodding to myself.

Yup. 4.

It was possible. After all, it was a Saturday and Lumiose has a busy airport. But I wasn't too sure about that explanation. He would call if he was. Ash was just too courteous not to call. Maybe he changed his mind.

That was the one my overactive imagination kept turning to and I couldn't do anything about it. Sinking down onto a weathered bench, I turned the capsule around in my hands. So many memories...

My dad's locket. Bonnie's pencil. My lucky pencil.

"If he's not here in five minutes I'm opening it," I said out loud, prompting an older couple to stare at me before muttering to each other under their breath.

Five minutes stretched into ten and I started getting worried as another ferry landed and Ash wasn't among the flurry of people that got off. Ash was never late for anything! That wasn't his style.

I shook my head vehemently, whipping my shoulder-lengthened hair around my face.

Where was my Leaf in Ash? He wouldn't have fired off that email if he didn't intend on showing up, right? Ash was a man of his word.

Ten minutes turned into twenty-five and even I had to concede defeat. It was getting chillier by the second and Ash still wasn't here. Maybe I should just open the capsule, take out my stuff and leave him a 'Serena was here' note?

Maybe he got sidetracked by Mokoto.

The instant that snide thought swooped into my head I felt embarrassed and rightfully so. What had Mokoto ever done to me?

He wasn't my man when they started dating though.

But still!

Yeah, five years on, I was still arguing with myself.

Deciding that opening the capsule then catching the ferry and heading home was my best bet, I tried to unscrew the cap but failed. The grime coating the capsule smeared on to my hands, making me groan.

"Shoot," I muttered, wiping my grubby hands on a Kleenex. Cracking my knuckles I tried to open the capsule again, this time gripping the bulk of it between my knees as I tried to twist the top off.

A reproachful voice behind me exclaimed, "You're opening the capsule without me?"

"Ash!" I exclaimed out loud.