#(rattles my cage) (foams at the mouth) (crawls all over) (screams like a possum) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

randomwriteronline · 2 years

Text

(Down and Up and Down and Up and Down)

Airport was such a strange word.

Ingo repeated it in his loud mind, enounciating the different components clearly.

Airport. Air port. Air, port. Air; port.

A port of air. A port for air. Instead of ships and boats, people docked air on it, docked winds and typhoons and blizzards. Unlike a regular port, an air port stayed inland, away from the sea - maybe to keep the air more in control, unbothered by marine breezes.

Of course those were silly ideas, and he did not say any of that nonsense while he remained in the stark white hospital for a day or so, to have himself checked before he could board the beast called an airplane. The stark white hospital made him think of the stark white hat and stark white coat of the man who smiled with his face, and in order not to think of that he pretended to sleep with his hat over his eyes.

The airport had a roof, unlike a regular port. It was iron and glass, more like a grand central station, but its spaces seemed bigger, airier. Perhaps because the airplanes occupied the sprawling cement field just outside the infinite windows instead of crawling inside.

Ingo stopped and stared at those enormous things rolling closer and further away, landing gracelessly and taking long running starts.

He pointed at them, careful not to smudge the window with his finger: “They fly?” he asked.

Cheren looked around for a second and hurried back at his side from the few meters he had continued marching through without noticing the other’s absence.

“Yep,” he nodded. His hand wrapped around the bony elbow and pulled gently.

The subway master did not budge: “With all that metal?” he argued.

“They have powerful engines,” the gym leader answered.

“They look too heavy to fly,” Ingo continued, very slowly giving in, eyes still fixed on the grotesque machines. “How can they stay in the air even for a few seconds without falling immediately?”

“They’re engineered for that,” Cheren explained quickly, dragging him a bit more harshly across the hall to get to the hangar. “Made specifically so that doesn’t happen - come on, we’re gonna be late - and there's heavier Pokémon that fly too anyways, no? Even Steel types.”

One thing was a Pokémon, another was a man made monstrosity.

Ingo stumbled along without ever removing his gaze from the enormous beasts. An irrational fear told him that if he allowed himself to get distracted all of them would have turned around and charged right at them, turning that careful iron and glass canopy into a burst of broken shards and bent wires.

He could see the resemblance of their silhouettes with those of certain Flying Pokémon, but they lacked completely their lightness.

And besides--

“How do those wings even flap?”

“Oh, uh, they. They don’t.” sliding his hand on an imaginary line in mid air, Cheren struggled to convey what he meant: “It’s really more of... Of a long assisted glide, than a proper flight, but that doesn’t really roll off the tongue that well, you know?”

A woman asked him something. The gym leader showed her a paper of sorts, answered her question and added something to it; she checked if everything was in the norm, reading carefully, and at last handed the sheet back and with an affirmative sentence, making a motion with her hand for the two to follow her. Now there was no more glass; just metal, opaque walls, long tubes that seemed to be of harsh fabrics which attached to the side of the iron monsters.

Ingo leaned a little closer to the young teacher: “And I must board one?”

“I’m afraid it’s the quickest way to Unova,” Cheren nodded.

He heard the man give something akin to a whine.

“Would it take much longer by sea?”

The young man tried dowing a couple figures in his head, fingers scratching the air as he tried to visualize the numbers: “A little less than two weeks, I think,” he finally replied. “And then some more days to get across the continent probably. So...”

Ingo had the same face he always wore, willingly or not, but there was suddenly such a wet and distraught quality to it, similar to the blown humid eyes and miserably drenched expression of a rescued feral Purrloin being very gently but forcibly bathed to get the years of grime off of its fur, that the young teacher found himself fighting a losing battle against the wobbly lopsided smile that wanted to politely giggle at the older man’s distress.

“It’ll be just a handful of hours,” he tried to reassure him.

The subway master ran the edges of his nails against the inside of his fingers and muttered, beyond ashamed: “I don’t trust these things at all.”

Cheren gave a sympathetic wheeze, patting his back as comfortingly as possible: “That’s a common feeling,” he chuckled, “But I promise you’ll be completely fine.”

Ingo certainly hoped so.

The snout of the beast appeared from behind a wall, a long low gurgling noise coming from it as it stood placid on its three pairs of wheels and slurped up something being served in a sort of large cilinder with a straw of some kind; it was smaller than the planes which paraded in front of the glass and steel terminals, with wings attached closer to the top of its head instead of at its middle and large windows across its body.

Somebody - a young woman? - awaited dutifully in a jumpsuit right next to the mechanical death trap. Her hair was auburnred, appearing particularly vibrant against the white and blue shell; she turned to the two men as they began to approach her and waved enthusiastically. Cheren waved back.

She seemed very excited when she ran up to meet them. Her dark blue eyes fixed on Ingo, and she had to hold herself back a moment before she accidentally squashed him in them, instead holding out her thickly gloved hand.

“I’m Skyla,” she smiled. She had a firm grip, tight and snug, and she seemed a little out of breath for some reason, inhaling through her mouth once or twice before she managed to continue with another shake: “It’s... So good to know you’re safe and sound. Honestly.”

Ingo did not say anything for a moment.

“It is a pleasure to meet you,” tumbled out of his mouth automatically.

She had a second of stalling before shrugging in what seemed like discomfort, again struggling a little to find the correct words before she could reply: “You have - you kinda already, uh, I’m...” and she a gave a single breathy laugh, more than a little nervous: “Sorry, hold on, I uh... Nevermind that, it’s good to - pleasure’s all mine.”

She was... Weird.

Not in a derogatory manner. It was only the way she stumbled as she tried to work around his amnesia (something she was clearly knowledgeable of) that made the conversation struggle to continue.

“I take it we know each other?” he tried, politely.

“Oh, well, yes, but it’s fine! It’s - this is probably worse for you,” Skyla let go of his hand. She seemed terribly embarassed at her uncertainty. “So I, I’m sorry if I... If I ramble and say stupid stuff. You can stop me if I get off track, ok? No problem. Seriously.”

“It’s quite fine,” he assured her. He looked beyond her, to the airplane - her gaze following his soon after: “And that is yours?...”

The pilot’s face lit up immediately: “Yes! Yes, that’s -- it’s mine, hm-hm,” she nodded a couple times, hands on her hips as she gave her beautiful little unnatural manufactured bastard creature a look of pure pride and affection, “It’s your ticket home! And we should go... Probably really soon if we don’t want to get there at midnight.”

Seemed fair. The subway master did not oppose her hand as it gently pushed him towards the door on the fuselage.

Skyla turned as he was slowly crawling his way into the empty belly of the beast, directing her attention to her fellow gym leader: “Cheren you wanna come with, or was it next week that you...?”

“Next week,” the young man confirmed, “I’ve still got some stuff to do at Snowpoint and then down at Oreburgh - and I have my flight booked already.”

He what.

If the terror in Ingo’s eyes had been vocalized it would have probably sounded much like a deafening shriek that would have put the most haunting horror movie soundtrack to shame.

So he was going to board that airborne death trap alone? He was going to be hundreds of feet in the middle of nothing, sustained by little more than wind currents, completely at the mercy of the uncaring Fates, inside of what was basically a toy abandoned in the hands of the even crueler and arguably infinitely more volatile whims of the easily angered Tornadus and Thundorus?

Both gym leaders replied to the piercing stare that came from over his shoulder with a very frightened silence.

Skyla was very lucky his nails were so lined, or she would have had to fly the whole way through with four long scratches sunk deep on the side of her cockpit.

"... Is something wrong?" Cheren finally asked.

The booming voice spoke in a whisper, which by normal standards sounded more like a reasonable volume: “You will not accompany me?”

The teacher shook his head, honestly mortified: “I... I can’t, really, I still have stuff to do,” he repeated apologetically; his hand went to rest on his colleague’s shoulder as he attempted to calm the other man: “But you’ll be fine! You’re with Skyla, and she’s a great pilot. She’s never crashed anything like ever. Like not even once.”

That last part might have not been the best thing to say.

Ingo’s eyes were growing more humid by the second. He seemed absolutely overwhelmed with the wet misery Cheren had struggled not to laugh mere minutes before. His head sunk a little deeper in his shoulders.

“I fear I have a, ah... Tendency to tightly grasp things, when I panic.” he explained slowly. His knuckles turned whiter than usual as he held onto the metal and plastic tighter: “I... Doubt it would really happen, but I might shatter my own fingers if left to my own devices.”

Skyla blinked slowly, like an affectionate Glameow. Her gloved hand patted at her chest once before sliding to check on her pocket and belt, at last finding what she was looking for and digging into her coveralls to produce a Pokéball.

She held it out to him with a smile: “I can lend you Swoobat if you want,” she offered sweetly. “She’s soft, and she’s huggable and very cuddly, and good at, uh, comforting people... And also she’s got a big heart-shaped stamp right on her nose. One of those has gotta be a winner. Plus I mean, you’ll be perfectly safe! Uh, there’s safety belts and life jackets and parachutes and all, and like Cheren said I’ve never crashed anything in my entire life, so you know, I’m good at this! You’ll be fine! But I can still give you Swoobat to make sure everthing’s super safe. If you’d like.”

Ingo’s gaze fell on the sphere.

“I would appreciate that very much, thank you,” he murmured as he carefully grabbed it from her hand.

The pilot patted his back comfortingly, hushering him into the hollow stomach of her plane. Peeling away a portion of her gloves she checked on her Xtransceiver for the time: “Yup, we should go before it gets too late,” she sentenced, “No one likes a delay.”

She turned back to Cheren for a moment before letting herself be completely absorbed by the metal beast: “So we’ll see you in a week?”

He gave her a thumbs up: “Right on!” he replied: “Have a good flight!”

With two fingers to her forehead she gave him her goodbye, and then she was completely engrossed.

Her mouth repeated instructions out loud with ease as she led her artificial bird out on the cement field and sat tight, hands on its commands, as it picked up more and more speed. A sudden weightlessness, immediately fixed by gravity, and the sensation of stretching the sky with the plane’s snout as if it were the thin film tightly wrapped around the styrofoam trays where supermarkets would place freshly cut fish and meat -- then she blinked at the infinite expanse of clouds and blue, and allowed her shoulders to relax.

A couple switches flipped, the route set; she let go of the commands to lay back into her seat for a moment, trusting her plane to do the bigger part of the work. Another safety check to make sure everything was in order... Once she ascertained the situation was under control she unbuckled her safety belt and went to see how her passenger was doing.

She found Ingo trembling slightly in his seat, face sunken into Swoobat’s fur as he held her tight. Her lively companion had him wrapped in the gentle hug of her own wings, likely percieving his stress but remaining happy as can be; her nose was pressed to his temple and pulsed with calming psychic waves.

Skyla smiled meeting those frightened near white eyes: “She helpin’?”

Ingo nodded: “A lot,” came his reply muffled by a mouthful of light blue fluff.

She sat across from him, perfectly at ease.

“Don’t worry, this big boy knows what it’s doing,” she reassured him when she caught his glancing worriedly at the now empty cockpit.

“Ah... Autopilot?”

“Hm-hm.”

Though he couldn’t understand how that worked, the word helped finally quell Ingo’s shaking form. His fingers gently scratched just behind Swoobat’s ears, making her wriggle in delight and plant her nose squarely on his cheek as thanks with a high pitched chirp.

He looked like... Ingo.

Aside from that small beard jutting out of his chin, the legth of his hair, the state of his coat and hat, and the way his face seemed to sink on itself - aside from the signs the passage of time had left on him, he was undoubtedly Ingo.

And yet Skyla was not someone he knew. She, who had gotten to know him well enough by now, who had been teased and encouraged by him, who had battled against him in friendly but nonetheless harduous matches, who was the love of a life very close to him, was a stranger. She struggled to wrap her head around the mere idea of it.

It must have been worse for him. Infinitely worse. To everybody else, it was a single man who had forgotten them; to him, it was an entire region he could not remember. He would have had to see all these people, listen to them introduce themselves - he would have had to look at them and wonder, have I met them before already? Were we friends? How much did I know about them? And finally (and as she thought that it sent a chill down her own spine, an uncomfortable feeling like something crawling under her skin as she put herself in his shoes) how much do they know about me?

She felt guilty of knowing him. Of being able to think of him as a friend.

Maybe if this was the first time she had met him, it would have been better.

“May I... Ask you a favor?”

Ingo’s voice snapped her out of her daze: “Hm? Oh, uh, sure.”

He fiddled a little with Swoobat’s fluff: “Would it be possible for you to tell me more about Unova?” he asked. Something in the fidgeting of his fingers seemed at once eager and nervous, as if unsure whether his request was plausible or not: “I’d like to be somewhat... Prepared, so to speak, when we arrive.”

She blinked. Nobody is going to test you, she was about to say - but the point was completely different, wasn’t it.

It wasn’t as if he had known much about Sinnoh even before ending up stranded there, no matter how that happened. Any kind of information gained led him further and further from ending up a mere stranger in what should not have felt like a strange land.

So the pilot tilted her head slightly and nodded: “Sure,” she grinned: “I don’t know how well I can talk about, uh - every single thing, since, you know, it’s a lot, but I’ll do my best! Is there something specific you wanna start from, or...?”

He hesitated halfway through shaking his head, furrowed his brows; then finally he asked: “Is the seventh gym a Dragon or an Ice type one by any chance?”

Huh.

A rather weird one to start off with, but who was she to judge if that’s what his memory had unlocked first?

“Technically it’s both Ice and Dragon, but they’re separate gyms,” Skyla replied, playing with a strand of her auburn hair as her mind wandered back to Brycen’s triumphant return on the big screen after the injury that had him step down from it for years, “But the Ice one in Icirrus City has been closed for a while and Victory Road is still under maintenance since it sort of... Half collapsed a few years ago -- nobody was hurt though! -- and they’re working on putting it back together, so the Dragon gym is the seventh right now.”

She watched as her answer made Ingo’s pale face light up before he sank it back in her Pokémon’s fur, ruffling it in a sort of victorious delight.

“I knew it felt right,” he muttered to himself.

The excitement in his voice left her just as giddy as him. Ingo had always had that puzzling ability of dragging others into the transport of his own emotions through sound alone.

They had so much time on their hands, and so much to talk about.

Several miles away and a few hours later, the man with Ingo’s face was looking at someone much smaller through the bags under his eyes.

“I cannot change the schedule,” he was telling her, struggling to turn through a few reports while his hands were occupied with moving already.

“The station’s schedule can, should and has been changed on various occasions for various reasons and by various people including you,” his interlocutor replied, “Most recently by me, right now in this instant, and it says you have to leave at 9:15 PM.”

He paid her no mind, hands waving lazily and fingers bending to form words: “That conflicts with my shift.”

“Your shift has also been shortened by me in this instant.”

“That’s abuse of power.”

“I will bite your shins off.”

The man with Ingo’s face rubbed at his eyes and whined. A nip at his leg had him look down: a very disgruntled Mawile, her enormous primary mouth holding his limb hostage in a fake bite so weak that he could have slipped out without getting even so much as vaguely scratched by her steel teeth, angrily moved her front paws at him.

“Do not argue,” she was signing at him.

He uncerimoniously stuck the tip of his tongue out at her and went back to concentrating on the paperwork, only to find it being impatiently sorted and handled by another pair of human hands.

“Your personal private schedule says he will be arriving around 11 PM,” his interlocutor continued much to his chagrin, not looking at him so that he could not interrupt her. The sheets of paper made a big rockus as they were slammed on the desk: “So you must leave in time in order not to leave him waiting for over an hour or so.”

“I leave when the station closes,” he replied, piqued, as soon as he was in her line of sight again.

She stared right into his eyes: “You want your brother to walk all the way here from fucking Mistralton City?” she asked, incredibly loudly despite her small stature: “You want him to go through the static hell that is Chargestone Cave and pray to all that exists that the Drawbridge is down by the time he gets to it before he has to spend the night on the benches?”

“No.”

“Then go pick him the fuck up!”

“It’s early.”

“Then when it’s time go pick him the fuck up!”

The man who looked like Ingo hesitated. His hand began signing something, but ended up only dangling aimlessly from his wrist as he bit the corner of his lower lip; he lifted one foot and punted the toes against the pavement as if to crack them against it, althought his shoe prevented him from doing so.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see him. He wanted to. He really wanted. So bad. It had been so long. He wanted to. Needed to. It would have been great. Wonderful. A weight off his chest. But he was scared. It made him feel dizzy. Made him want to yell. Made him want to stay quiet forever. Cheren’s words turned in his brain. What was the point? If he didn’t know him? It would have been cold. It would have been cruel. Verrry cruel. It would have hurt. It would have hurt so much. He wasn’t ready. It had been two days. But he wasn’t ready. And the station protected him. Kept him occupied. Made him think of other things. He had to take care of it. Take verrry good care of it. Follow the schedule. The station’s schedule. It said that he left late at night. He could not contradict it. He didn’t want to. Or he would have had time. Time to think. To get hurt. He had to follow the schedule. Follow the rules.

A little hand ripped a piece of paper and grabbed a pen. She scribbled on it angrily, bit off some clear tape, bent it to make a sticky ring of sorts to attach to the back of the paper, and slammed it on the man’s chest.

He looked at it with some difficulty: it read ‘susbstitute’.

He turned to stare at his interlocutor in the eyes.

She held his gaze with a look like she was going to be on the run for charges of first degree murder very soon: “This is my station now.” she sentenced.

He wheezed a little: “It doesn’t work like that.”

“It HAS worked before!” she yelled from the height of her minuscule stature: “And I will beat this dead Rapidash as many times as I need to if it’s the only thing that gets you to listen to me!”

The man with Ingo’s face slowly threw his head back, mouth open in a long soundless ‘Ah’ of annoyance, much like a child.

Worst part was that it would have worked. Damn him for sticking to the rules.

His little interlocutor ignored his fake tantrum completely: “Your shift has been updated. You will leave the station at 9:15 PM and not come back for the rest of the night or I will hunt you down for sport with a broom like you’re a stray Patrat. Possibly do not come back tomorrow either.”

Elesa ha definitely allowed her to chase him around with violent intent so long as she didn’t kill him, so this was less of a threat and more of a fact.

“Hmmm,” he noted still, fingers cheeky as he signed: “Getting power-hungry.”

“Oh, don’t worry! I hate increasing the amount of my responsabilities too much to usurp you,” she replied with a grin too wide, straight and full of teeth that would have scared a weak heart out of its wits if her grey hat had not been sat in a way that prevented the brim from casting an ominous shadow above it: “But your eyebags are gaining sentience.”

The man with Ingo’s face huffed. Yet another way to tell him to sleep more. Getting creative, weren’t they.

His smile did seem a little more genuine.

By the time the signal that they were nearing their destination pinged to let her know the airport was almost in sight, Skyla had gotten lost in a not particularly helpful tangent regarding the acrobatic manouvers performed by ace pilots on historical recreations of vintage planes for well over forty minutes right after going on a similarly unrelated spiel about those same old models, which had been preceeded by a thorough explanation of a plane’s mechanics, itself introduced halfway through her rambling about how Swoobat flight was possible despite their weight after getting sidetracked from a one-sided discussion about radar waves and their function, which had its roots in the description of the differences between male and female Unfezants, with that topic stemming from a very short lived rant regarding Castellia City having a problem with overfeeding stray street Pokémon which had been made worse by a not particularly well elaborated on organization of sorts that had stirred up quite the trouble, something she had been reminded of by talking about a musical she had gone to watch about a man who believed himself to be a hystorical king after falling off a Zebstrika while on an outing between friends, because Zebstrikas were rather common around Mistralton and she had had her own run-ins with one or two -- though she had actually gotten there starting by a small disertation on why the Forces of Nature were really the Menaces of Nature with their constant fighting and bickering that made the weather absolutely impossible to deal with unless somebody either knocked them out of the sky or whined loud enough at the Abundant Shrine for Landorus to go fetch his bastard brothers. What had brought that about exactly was unclear, but it probably had to do with Humilau being close to Undella.

Ingo had listened very intently and with genuine interest to the mostly completely useless stream of information that had derailed his initial request, not minding it at all; in truth, he was relieved by how intensely focused he was on Skyla’s ramblings, free from the grey snowstorm that for years had kept slowly blinding his senses during long conversations.

His knowledge of Unova was still patchy at best, but in return he knew a lot about planes.

Not that it made them less intrinsically horrifying, but still.

The pinging snapped both of them out of the ranting’s momentum.

Ingo turned to the sound, panic slmming back into his brain without even the hint of a warning: “Are we about to die?” he blurted out as the first of his worries shoved itself out of his mouth.

Skyla clambered back into the cockpit before answering: “Nope!” she reassured him: “We’ve arrived!”

Her head turned back towards him: “Got your seatbelt fastened?”

One of his hands left Swoobat groggy form and went to quickly tug at the cable that had never unbuckled from his waist, making sure it was holding onto him tight: “Affirmative!”

She gave him a wordless thumbs up and took her own seat.

“We can commence landing,” she announced to nobody specifically, almost as if practicing before the inevitable call of the control tower reached them. Autopilot turned off and commands snuggly held in her grip, she began the required procedures that preceeded their return upon the ground.

Behind her, Ingo had his grip already tightened and his face back into the light blue fluff around Swoobat’s neck while the helpful Pokémon returned to press her nose to his temple to offer additional comfort. He screwed his eyes shut and began repeating under his breath the proper landing manouvers and motions exactly as Skyla had described them to him a couple hours earlier, as if the technical lingo were a calming mantra for his shaking nerves.

He did not realize he had slipped into a prayer halfway through the procedure’s steps until he caught himself muttering Almighty Sinnoh above, below and all around me whilst tracing circles with his finger on his forearm and the broken tip of his shoe on the pavement -- invoking Palkia through the shape of its shimmering jewel, politely asking the god for the protection of all those within the anomalously shaped space inside of the airplane with the whispered formula one could have easily heard by wandering into anyone of the Pearl Clan, like Irida and Calaba had taught him to do, whereas when he had observed Melli draw a pentagonal shape over his own shoulder he would hear the other warden call to a Sinnoh that was ‘before, after and present with me’.

He did not dare interrupt himself, did not even consider it, really, used as he had become to the motions and words and sorely needing any comfort he could take. He dutifully finished his prayer, thanked Palkia for its attention, and went right back to his recounting of the pilot’s instructions whilst grasping and releasing the soft fur in which he tried to drown.

The process did not manage to repeat in full: inertia had him knocked against the back of his seat as the plane stuttered for the fraction of a second once it finally touched down.

Skyla found him awfully quiet once the plane was finally still. She looked back at him: the man sat straight, eyes blown wide, shoulders hunched around Swoobat.

“All good?” she asked him as she walked closer.

He turned to her, pale and blank in his expression, the spit image of a ghost: “It’s over?” he replied with a breath.

The pilot nodded as she very gently pried Swoobat from his tight hold (the Pokémon squirmed a bit as she crawled up her trainer’s arm to sit on her shoulder, thankful, because as happy as she was to help Ingo he was starting to crush her a little) and took his hand to help him up onto his own feet: “Yep,” she assured him. “A perfect landing too. Everything’s in order and all.”

Ingo deflated like a pouty Jellycent as he wheezed out a relieved sigh.

She chuckled.

“Welcome to Unova.”

The hangar was quiet. Most private planes sat asleep in their places under the shining white lights, tired from their flights, a few missing, a few being attended to by a couple handfuls of people at best; the steps and tinkering of tools sounded much like the ‘plick’s of water droplets falling on the surface of undergound lakes.

Skyla helped him out of the fuselage, sustaining him with her hand in his own. Ingo did not let go once both his feet were safely planted back onto the earth, and she did not insist he do so as she kindly dragged him towards the exit.

When it first appeared from around the bend, it looked like a flash of bright white against both the dark grey of the cement floor and the dark blue of the night sky.

Then Skyla gasped softly, and Ingo looked at it better as it froze in place.

A few steps away, the man with Ingo’s face looked right back at him.

He was not smiling. His mouth was thinned out, lips almost perfect parallel lines. His eyes were wide, surprised - awfully surprised, circled by a purplish shadow. Somewhat scared, too. His hair was a little in disarray, brushing his shoulders. It was white, like his hat, like his coat, like his gloves. Like his shirt, pants, shoes. He was awfully pale. He seemed paralysed.

Ingo blinked; the man with his face blinked with him.

They both remained perfectly still.

It was like looking in a mirror.

Ingo wondered if the man with his face felt that burning pain right below his ribs too, or that strange dread spreading like a slow electric shock through his lungs, or that feeling of intestines shifting and and bubbling and tying into tight knots.

Neither dared speaking. They breathed in unison, quietly, as if to not scare one another. Their arms seemed to tremble.

The man with Ingo’s face swallowed air, bit his lower lip, clenched his fists. Fighting a losing battle against his shivering body, his mouth turned its corners upwards. He inhaled once; twice. He swallowed again.

“Hello,” he finally said. “I am Emmet.”

His smile was so small.

Ingo stared into his own clear eyes and said nothing.

He did not feel his legs move.

He grabbed the white clad shoulder hard enough to break it and pulled his arms over it, above it, around it, slamming into the chest so much like his with such force that the other body stumbled a moment before pushing back and grasping him in a mirroring hug, fingers sinking bruises on it as the held on for dear just like his own were doing. Their faces were pressed against the crook of each other’s necks and they held tight, tight, tight, trying to tear one one another to pieces, rip to shreds, pull apart, completely disembowel.

Ingo adjusted his grip onto the man he still knew nothing about - his name had been told to him already, their relation had been cleared up, the way he spoke had been described, and he had hated himself because none of that had felt like anything to him, but now! Now, his voice--! His voice--!

He squeezed his brother hard enough to break his spine, and with a broken voice he sobbed: “I missed you.”

It was true.

It was so, so true.

Emmet held him back just as strongly and started crying against his throat without a sound.

His hand crawled up to grasp and scratch at Ingo’s hair, to pull him closer as if it were possible for them to clip through solid matter and turn into a single misshapen man. He heard him hack and cough, struggle against the air trying to reach his lungs, he heard him as he spat out strangled noise after strangled noise, chest heaving and spasming; at last, with a raucous howl, his brother sunk his eyes in his shoulder and wet his coat and shirt with tears so dense he couldn’t help but wail in pain as he cried them.

And Emmet held him, held him tight, cradled his head against his cheek and cried with him, still sinking nails into his twin’s back, still feeling the pain of his skin almost being clawed off where it was grasped, and the burn told him it was real, sweet dragons it was real, it was all real, and he just strengthened his grip.

But Ingo pushed away all of a sudden - struggling to breathe, still yowling, face and eyes red - and with his shaking hand began trying to dry his own tears -- he was making a mess, a mess, he was drenching him...

Emmet reached out, held his cheeks, passed his thumbs against his white lashes, soaking the saltwater in the cotton of his gloves.

Ingo heaved as he grabbed his wrists, just as scared he’d disappear as he was.

Their foreheads collided and the older twin melted back in his brother’s hold, falling on his shoulder again as their arms fought and tangled to try and hold as much of the other as possible. Emmet kissed his cheek, his temple, his hair, while Ingo repeated restlessly apologies and mumblings and longing nonsense, and they sustained each other on shaky legs held up by shaky breaths while shaky hearts pumped faster and faster and faster with a chorus of cacophonic thundering percussions into their ears.

Then slowly, slowly, as they listened to them (slowly), everything calmed. Emmet eventually stopped crying; Ingo’s sobs grew softer. They swayed a little, still wrapped in their hug.

“Do you want to go home?” the younger twin asked.

His brother nodded against his shoulder.

Home.

He wanted home.

He wanted to go home.

Skyla’s voice reached them from somewhere that seemed far, far away: “I could give you boys a lift if you’d like.”

“It’s late,” Emmet replied weakly. His neck buzzed with each strained word.

Ingo heard her smile: “I’ve got a bed in Nimbasa, too.”

The ride was quiet.

The twins kept their nails sunken in each other’s sides, unaware of the night sliding by through the windows and turning brighter as artificial stars trapped in streetlamps began multiplying. Ingo could not stop crying, gasping sharply; Emmet never moved his mouth from his brother’s temple.

#pokémon #pokemon legends arceus #submas #submas ingo #pokemon cheren #pokemon skyla #submas emmet #random writing #(rattles my cage) (foams at the mouth) (crawls all over) (screams like a possum)#blankshippers do NOT fucking touch. i will kill you #ITS THE AFFECTION BABY #GOD i have been trying out the hug on myself and when i say they bruised i mean they BRUISED like it legit HURT #but yeah. i am. god i love writing affection and affectionate gestures #the absolute high you get from it... exhilarating #also! a special voice is here :)

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