Archive of Our Own

“Emmet,” Ingo asks, for what feels like the umpteenth time, “are you certain you will be alright in my absence?”

“Ingo,” Emmet responds, for what also feels like the umpteenth time, “I will be fine.” He is certainly doing a good job of projecting the image of someone who is going to be fine. Ingo wishes, as he often does, that he knew his brother just a tiny bit better—that he could read all of Emmet’s tells and warning signs as easily as Emmet seems to be able to read his. He assumes he could, once. It has been a long road, trying to relearn everything he forgot. “You, however, are going to be late,” his brother nags. “Very embarrassing, for a former Subway Master to be behind schedule. You will ruin my reputation!” Ingo had chosen not to go back to his prior profession, in the end, unable to move past the feeling that doing so would simply be chasing the ghost of his previous self. That decision had been hard on his brother. Many things about Ingo’s return have been hard on his brother, almost as hard as his disappearance itself. It is difficult to fight the feeling that everything he does hurts him, in one way or another. “Now, please, stop worrying about me and go, already!”

Ingo is silent for a moment; he is trying not to worry, he really is. But... “I don’t have to go,” he reminds Emmet, which only makes him groan in frustration.

“Brother,” he says, growing increasingly terse. “You want to go. It is only a few days. I will be fine.” He crosses his arms, clearly fed up. “It. Is. Okay.”

“Seriously, what are you so worried about, old man?” Elesa chimes in, to his right. “I’m not gonna let Emmet get lonely while you’re away,” she adds, voice turning a note kinder, “if that makes you feel any better.” Even if it had not been explained to Ingo that she was one of his closest friends from before, he would have figured it out quickly enough. The way she acts towards both him and his brother is very warm, very familiar. She is yet another person Ingo wishes he was doing a better job of being there for. “You’re leaving him in very capable, very in-need-of-a-top-coat hands,” she assures, distractedly inspecting her nails.

“We are getting manicures after this,” Emmet explains.

Elesa smirks. “Oh, just wait. I’ve got a whoooole weekend planned.”

“See?” his brother reiterates, the two of them now openly conspiring to bully Ingo into submission. They are alarmingly good at this. “We are going to have lots of fun. I will not be moping around at home crying until you get back.” Ingo didn’t say that he was, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t imagine something similar. “Everything will be okay,” Emmet tells him, one last time, smiling bright.

Of course he is smiling. His brother is always smiling, always, no matter what. It reminds Ingo of someone else he once knew. She’d always insist on wearing that same carefree smile, so light, so effortless… despite having plenty of reasons not to.

But, that was a long, long time ago. Neither she nor her smile are around anymore.

“Fine,” Ingo admits. He knows when he’s beat. That doesn’t mean he can’t still issue his own demands. He looks at Emmet very seriously, and says, “Promise.”

Emmet rolls his eyes. “I promise. I will be fine. No moping. No crying.”

“Zero crying! Shopping and movie marathons only,” Elesa adds, a promise of her own.

“Exactly,” Emmet agrees, with a determined nod. “That.”

There is only a bit more cajoling, before their little group finally separates and Ingo goes on his way. He has to stop himself from saying goodbye—because it’s not goodbye. He is going to come back home and see them both again soon. And he cannot come back if he does not first leave.

Deep down, Ingo knows his fear of being separated from his brother is unreasonable. They have spent every single day together since his return, and it’s been more than a few months now. It’s not as though they are incapable of spending a short period of time apart. Emmet is not a child, and neither is Ingo.

As he heads to his gate, Ingo sighs to himself. It is embarrassing, but he can admit that he is probably just projecting. Walking onto a giant metal contraption in order to be flown across the ocean is, well, scary—the sort of thing one might want to whisper a prayer before. But, ultimately, he doesn’t bother. Ingo is not an especially devout man. Not compared to the piety the rest of the Pearl Clan displayed, in any case. 

That said…

When the bearer of the title Champion of Sinnoh formally requests his presence, he can think of no other option but to answer her call.

Actually, Ingo has misgivings about Akari, in the beginning.

He guides her through Wayward Cave, and all but spills his guts to her on what is only their second interaction. He has no idea why he does this. Maybe it's the cover of darkness. Maybe it's the connection of their mutual displacement. Maybe it's because Ingo is simply feeling a tad lonelier than usual today. Whatever the reason, he talks, she listens, and they arrive at their destination without incident or delay.

In the light of the cave’s exit, a previously silent Akari pauses to take a long look at him, cocks her head to the side, and blurts out: “You’re really weird!”

“...Yes,” Ingo grumbles, under his breath. He pulls his hat low, to cover his eyes—a bad habit. It’s no good, attempting to hide. “So I’ve been told.”

“I mean, I totally get it, you know,” the girl continues, completely ignorant—in the way that only children can be—to the fact that she has just honed in on one of his greatest insecurities. “Everyone back in town is always looking at me like I’m crazy and I can’t even figure out why half the time.” She kicks at a rock. “I always feel like I’m saying the wrong thing, or that I’m annoying everyone because I’m different, or whatever. But… talking to you, I think I realized that maybe that’s not such a big deal. I mean, you’re the weirdest person I’ve met so far, and I still think you’re cool, so…!” Ingo does not think anyone has ever called him ‘cool’ before. As she speaks, he thinks to himself, her smile looks so light. So effortless. It reminds Ingo of someone, although he doesn’t remember who. It… hurts, somehow. “So, thanks for that, I think!”

Ingo feels mostly confused by her words. However, it's clear she didn’t intend to be rude, earlier, so he tells her, “You’re… welcome, I suppose.”

The girl giggles in response. “Haha, no problem!” She moves to take off again, but pauses for a moment, turning to say, “It gets a little lonely, being the only weirdo running around Hisui. So, I’m happy I finally got to meet someone else like me!” She flashes him another smile, politely says “see you later,” and then she departs.

It goes without saying that they will encounter each other again, very soon. There is still much of the Highlands to guide her through. She hasn’t even met Lady Sneasler yet.

For now, however, Ingo stands alone where they parted, thinking to himself how very strange that conversation was. How very strange that girl is. And how very, very strange it is that he, too, feels just a touch less lonely, simply for having spoken with her.

There is a girl sitting next to Ingo on the plane.

She’s about thirteen, if he had to guess. A flight attendant checks in with her before they depart, given that she is an unaccompanied minor. The girl waves them off, however, and busies herself with studiously reading a book for the duration of the flight. She doesn’t have the fate of the world weighing down her back. She isn’t all alone, stranded, no family or home or past to speak of. She’s just a normal child—a child taking her first unsteady adult steps, only momentarily on her own. There’s nothing special about her, other than that she perhaps possesses a bit more confidence than others her age.

Her hair is done up in an extremely familiar fashion: half pulled back, two stray locks hanging down around the ears, matching hair-clips on either side. It must be a popular style these days. The similarity to a certain ghost floating about his memory is surely just coincidence. Or maybe it isn’t, maybe it means something, maybe it’s a sign. 

Ingo wouldn’t know, either way.

The plane eventually lands, and all the passengers begin to move about. The flight attendant comes back, and commends the girl for being so well-behaved throughout such a long flight. She ignores them, too occupied with gathering up her belongings. The only indication that she heard them at all is that she rolls her eyes.

The crowd disembarks, and then she, too, is gone.

Akari seems to delight in making stranger and stranger appearances as time goes on.

Today, she has chosen to arrive via air, practically dive-bombing Ingo as she bails early from Braviary’s harness, deftly rolling to a stop in front of him. She holds out her arms and announces, “Tah-dah!”

“An encore performance from the girl who fell from the sky,” Ingo greets, clapping enthusiastically. “Bravo!” She’d nearly given him a heart attack the first time she’d attempted that stunt. He must admit, however, that she has greatly improved her landing. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from Hisui’s savior for?”

At that, Akari pouts. “You say that, but you didn’t even show up to the big party everyone threw in my honor! How come?”

Ah... Ingo was hoping he’d be able to get around that without providing an explanation. Seems not. “My apologies, Miss Akari. My absence was not intended to be seen as a slight against you. I simply…” How to explain this? “I don’t do well with crowds.”

This is both true, and untrue. Ingo does not like crowds in the social sense—large events where one is expected to mingle with peers are not his forte. Crowds in the everyday sense, where one is essentially anonymous—those are perfectly fine. How he has enough experience with either to be able to make a distinction between the two, Ingo does not himself know. There are, after all, no crowds in Hisui. It is a sparsely populated land. And yet, he is certain of his preference for one over the other. Just like his preference for… for singles. Right, he liked singles, he remembers that now! He has no clues about the context of that statement (a single what?), but it’s a hint of a memory, so Ingo will take it.

These sort of hints often seem to come to him, whenever Akari is around.

The girl pouts at him, unmoved. “Uh-huh. You know, if you didn’t want to hang out around Melli, you coulda just said so.” Her frown deepens, as she puts her hands on her hips and announces, “Is he still being mean to you? I’ll go beat him up if he hasn’t stopped.”

Ingo can’t hold back the bark of surprised laughter that gets out of him. “No, no,” he assures Akari, who would surely be a formidable threat to any foe, whether brandishing a full team of highly trained pokemon, or just her bare fists. “Warden Melli is the least of my worries.” Despite his best efforts, anyways. As unpleasant as the other man tries to be, Ingo finds him ultimately harmless. In fact, if Ingo didn’t know any better, he’d say the man’s bumbling attempts to interfere with his business were all part of some sort of juvenile effort to catch his attention. But what in the world would Warden Melli want with an old man’s attention? It remains a mystery to Ingo.

But Akari continues to frown. “Do you just not like people bugging you, then?” The girl’s mood seems to sink further, and she asks, voice uncharacteristically timid, “Am I bugging you?”

Ingo balks. “Not at all,” he tells her, with what he hopes is sufficient enough conviction to sway her. “It may be true that one gets used to solitude, spending so much time out here in the Highlands. However… that doesn’t mean I dislike company.” Spending more time in Jubilife overseeing the training grounds has allowed him to remember that. Everyday socialization that other people seem to do without so much as a second thought comes hard to him, sometimes. But pokemon battles—he could do that all day, without tire. It’s been wonderful, re-discovering a method of connecting with others that comes naturally to him. “And your company, in particular, Miss Akari, I find I enjoy very much.”

Akari seems to think that over, before letting her frown slip into a smile and saying, “Okay, if you’re sure.”

“I am positive,” Ingo reiterates. Under no circumstances does he want Akari to think she is a bother.

“Hmm,” Akari hums, “I guess it’s like… three’s a crowd, right?” She grins, holding up a peace sign, “So if it’s just me, it’s not a crowd. Two’s fine!”

“Right,” Ingo says slowly, suddenly remembering something else. Singles—that is his usual preference. But doubles… doubles is fine, too. It’s not his specialty; that station is typically manned by… by someone else. But he has no problem filling in, when needed. Right… it’s good to switch things up, every now and then, isn’t it? Exploring new combinations keeps things exciting. We should all strive to be constantly evolving. It doesn’t have to be scary, traveling down unknown tracks. “Two is fine.”

Three’s a crowd, Ingo reminds himself, as he spots the Champion of Sinnoh waiting for him amongst the sea of travelers milling about the busy airport. She has brought company. Next to her stands a man holding up a sign with Ingo’s name on it. That’s not how he identifies her, however; she could have been standing there completely alone and Ingo still would have known who she was the second he saw her. The invisible presence (hard to explain in words, like some sort of pressure ) surrounding her immediately gives it away.

“Hello!” she greets, waving him over. “My name is Cynthia. Welcome to Sinnoh!”

She glances over at the man standing next to her, who then opens his mouth to say something, but Ingo interrupts him.

“A pleasure to meet you. An interpreter won’t be necessary,” he informs them, in perfect Kantonese. Over a decade of complete immersion will make a fluent speaker out of anyone.

“Ah,” she replies, seemingly unsurprised, “I thought not. Still! It’s best to be prepared for any situation.” She dismisses the interpreter with a nod, and then it is just the two of them, alone in the middle of the crowd. “Perfect! I was hoping that we’d be able to communicate directly,” she says, tone excessively pleasant. “That should make operating this little tour just that much smoother.” There’s a look in her eyes—a very familiar one—one that wordlessly suggests: ‘There is something bigger going on here than I am currently willing to admit.’

He has seen that gaze before.

This does not bode well. Ingo has only just met Champion Cynthia, and he already distrusts her.

Ingo shouldn’t be surprised, not really. He never trusted the merchant Volo, not from the very moment he met him.

And yet, he is surprised, when he hears light knocking at his door, late in the afternoon—his lodging is on the outskirts of the Pearl settlement, and out of the way to boot, so he does not get visitors often. He is even more surprised when he opens the door and finds a rattled-looking Akari practically curling in on herself.

“Miss Akari,” he begins to ask, “What are yo-”

“You were right,” she interrupts.

He gets her inside quickly, provides her with a place to rest and a blanket, and in return she explains everything that just transpired between her and Volo at the ruins of the Temple of Sinnoh.

“You were right,'' she repeats, when she is finished recounting her story. Ingo is so angry he doesn’t know what to say. “You tried to tell me,” she moans, and she is not wrong: Ingo did, indeed, try to warn her. Volo’s particular interest in the rift was suspect to him from the very start. And then there was the way he would peer at the back of Akari’s head, when he thought no one was looking—always staring, like he wanted something. It was unfortunate that he’d already managed to endear himself to Akari by the time Ingo had met her. When he tried to hint to her that Volo might not be the trustworthy sort, she’d instantly vouched for him, and the events of Akari’s exile had only made her faith in him grow.

Ingo saw through him, though. For reasons he suspects are due to his own difficulty with expressing himself, it's incredibly easy for him to recognize when someone’s personality is nothing more than an elaborate mask—especially one as paper thin as Volo’s. Every interaction he ever saw the vendor perform had a pretext of helpfulness to it, but he never was able to keep that villainous gleam out of his eyes. When Ingo had pointedly told him that his interest lied not in solving the mystery of the rift, but in ensuring the safety of Hisui’s citizens (from people like him, Ingo should have added), he could tell that Volo took it as a challenge.

But even if Akari failed to heed his warning, Ingo felt assured that the girl would be fine. Just because she was innocent and trusting, did not mean that she was defenseless, after all. And in the end, it seems he was more or less correct: Akari is clearly spooked by her close encounter with someone who would do her harm, but she remains, thankfully, unscathed.

It is strange though, to see this girl, who he previously thought unshakable, so deeply frightened. Akari had been in perfectly high spirits following the ordeal with a frenzied Sinnoh. Or Dialga, or Palkia, or whatever it is they’re calling God these days. Ingo doesn’t exactly keep up with these things. Something about having your life completely upended by Fate teaches a man to maintain a healthy distance from matters of divinity, much less in trying to grasp the truth of it for oneself. The entire notion is a fool’s errand.

And Volo was one such fool. He had to be, to think that he actually deserved the right to rewrite the entire world. He was worse than a fool, even, a maniac, to believe that killing an innocent girl would somehow get him closer to that goal.

But he’s gone now—will continue to stay gone, if he possesses even an ounce of self-preservation. 

Furthermore: Akari is right here.

“I just thought he was nice, you know? He was always helping me out… and then when I got kicked out of Jubilife, he knew exactly what to do…” Ingo grimaces at that reminder of his complete inability to be of any help to Akari throughout that entire episode. He had been furious when Lady Irida admitted that she intentionally kept him in the dark about the situation, and then even more furious when he realized that she was completely correct in having done so. Ingo absolutely would have interfered on her behalf, had he known; clan politics be damned. Remarkable, how level-headed Irida often proves herself to be, in spite of her inexperience. It's a never-ending source of frustration to him, the way that the children of this land are so often shoved into the role of adults: Irida, Lian, Akari… All far too young to be placed in positions of responsibility, and yet they all dutifully shoulder the burden anyways. Likewise, it seems to always be grown adults with the hardest heads and the most closed off minds—Kamado and his extraordinarily poor judgment call being a prime example. Akari sniffles as she continues, “I’m so stupid. I should have just listened to you, but I thought I knew better, and…”

“Akari,” Ingo interjects, stopping her. “There’s no point in blaming yourself. It’s not your fault for wanting to see the best in others.” He sighs. “I would have preferred that my suspicions about Volo’s character been proven wrong, and that you not be put in harm’s way, of course… But what matters right now is that you’re safe.”

Her shoulders droop; it appears that she is finally calming down. “Yeah,” she admits, “I mean, I did beat him. So I guess everything ended up okay, in the end...” After a moment, her eyes droop as well, and she mutters, “Woah. I’m tired.”

“Ah,” Ingo perks up, having finally found something he can do for her, “You are more than welcome to rest here, if you need to.” He stands up to leave, and finds Akari’s sleepy eyes following him, confused. “No need to worry, please remain seated. I am simply going to go get wood for a fire.” He rarely bothers starting one when it’s just him; he’s grown more than used to the cold, over the years. But the extra effort is worth it when accommodating a guest. Especially a guest as important as her.

It seems that Akari was indeed tired, because when Ingo walks back in only a couple of minutes later, the girl is out cold. She didn’t even successfully make it into the bed in time; she’s lying halfway on it, head resting on a pillow, legs dangling off to the side.

It… does not seem like an especially comfortable position. “Do you think it would be too untoward if I attempted to move her?” Ingo asks his Gliscor, cozily perched on its post in the corner of the room. 

The pokemon blinks at him, and lets out a low squawk in response.

“Right,” Ingo sighs, gingerly readjusting the blanket so that it at least fully covers her, wishing to himself that he could somehow do more. “Best not to disturb her.”

“Not that I wish to disturb your or your busy schedule,” Cynthia says, sitting in the passenger seat of the car she arranged to transport them to the hotel, “but I wish we had more time during this trip. There’s far too much in Sinnoh to possibly try to show you within two short days!”

“Yes,” Ingo politely agrees, from the back seat, looking pointedly away from the window—it’s been months, and still he cannot adjust to the motion sickness that cars give him. Trains, wonderful. Planes, fine. But cars? Awful. “A shame my schedule did not allow for a longer visit.” He is not, of course, that busy. He could easily have arranged to spend a week here, if he wanted. But he would also be leaving his brother alone for all that time, and he feels rotten enough about his distance from him as it is.

The champion huffs a disappointed little noise. “I guess I’ll just have to do my best with the time we do have, then, hm?” He can practically hear her forced smile. “I was actually hoping to get your perspective on some fieldwork I’ve been working on for a while now. It’s not everyday you get a first-hand account of what the Spirit Pillar originally looked like, in all its glory!”

“The…?” Ingo thinks out loud, unsure of what she’s referring to.

“The Spirit Pillar,” Cynthia repeats, as though she expects that to better help him understand whatever it is she’s talking about. “The ruins at the top of Mount Coronet?”

“Ah. You mean the Temple of Sinnoh.” Why didn’t she just say so?

He must have said something funny, because she chuckles. “Oh, of course, you must know it by its antiquated name. Sorry, I should have considered that.” For a moment, Ingo can see her eyes narrow at him through the rear view mirror. “Makes sense, given your… travels.”

Ingo cannot let go of the feeling that this woman is sizing him up. For what purpose, he has no clue… but he is unable to banish the thought, even as they finally arrive at the hotel she so thoughtfully arranged for him to stay at. Everything, down to the way she holds the door open for him and ushers him inside, feels oddly calculated.

“Excuse me,” she says, walking up to the front counter, “I booked a room earlier today, could you-”

“Tch,” the idle hospitality worker scoffs, pointing at a sign posted nearby that reads ‘Please have reservation details ready so that we can better assist you!’ They flip a stay lock of periwinkle hair over their shoulder, turn up their nose, and openly seethe. “You should have received a confirmation email. Let me know once you’ve gotten it pulled up on your phone.”

They remind Ingo of someone.

They’re hardly the only one. Ingo has been in this region only a short time, but it seems like everywhere he turns, he’s met with a reflection of the past. The airline worker whom he swore had Irida’s eyes. The car driver whose voice sounded almost identical to Zisu’s. The man on the television in his room—a professor, speaking with the host of some sort of talk show—who may as well be a clone of Kamado. Everyone is exactly where he left them, it seems… except they’re not. Much like the scenery, he’s left feeling like he does not at all recognize the place now known as Sinnoh, whilst simultaneously feeling ambushed by constant, fleeting moments of recognition. If he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend he’s back in Hisui.

It feels bizarre—both comforting and disturbing—to return here, to the place where he spent the previous decade of his life. It feels stranger still to find its history apparently still alive, and yet to know, in a truer sense, that it remains very much dead.

Sleep does not come especially easy for Ingo, that night. 

Actually, the act of sleeping is rather sinister, if you think about it. To think, we spend such a significant chunk of our lives lying still, consciousness switched off, achieving absolutely nothing. As if we’re practicing for the day we will inevitably be laid to rest forever, for the end. 

For Death.

The thought scares Ingo, if he’s being honest. It’s all just a bit too uncanny.

When he does eventually fall asleep, he dreams of graves hidden by overgrowth, of wounds that refuse to heal, of families waiting at the station for passengers that will never arrive. All of that is typical fare for him; nothing out of the usual.

Tonight, however, he dreams mostly of Akari. “Oh,” her apparition says, peeking out a window, Mount Coronet looming in the distance. “We always wind up back on the mountain, huh?” It’s a nonsense statement, a random combination of words his psyche jumbled up and spit back out at him. There’s no point in trying to analyze it, in search of some deeper meaning; there isn’t one. 

Still, Ingo is struck by the feeling that there is something he’s missing, something he’s failing to grasp. Akari always did have a peculiar perspective on things.

When he wakes, he lies in bed thinking about the way his dreams seem so often to slip seamlessly from reruns of memories into something more akin to a vision; an opaque mash-up of the past and the pending. They’re the type of dreams that one could almost believe are prophetic—omens of things still to come.

(This is, of course, impossible. Akari, along with everyone else, is gone.)

“So,” Cynthia asks conversationally, as they make their way up to the Temple of Sinnoh—to the Spear Pillar—the following day. “Do you come here often?” She chuckles to herself, amused by her own words, and then corrects, “Did you come here often, I should say. I imagine you haven’t seen it in quite a while.”

Truthfully, Ingo didn’t, despite the fact that the temple rested well within his Noble’s territory. It seemed wisest to maintain a respectful distance from it whilst he went about his day-to-day business. “Only occasionally,” is all he offers as a response.

“Oh? That’s a shame,” she says. “It’s a beautiful trek to the top, if you ask me.” He is well aware of the topography of the surrounding area. He knows ( knew ) it like the back of his hand. “And the view—I promise you’re never seen anything like it.” Ingo is certain he hasn’t, not with highways and skyscrapers littering the horizon, at least. “Oh, I’m getting myself worked up, let’s move a little faster!”

It is a bit humiliating, being so easily outpaced by a woman hiking up a mountain path in heels. Perhaps that’s the point; maybe this is all some sort of elaborate intimidation tactic. Before he can decide whether it is working or not, Ingo catches the sight of something—a small, dark blur, scurrying about a little further up the trail.

“Oh,” he finds himself exclaiming without thinking. “A shiny Sneasel!”

The champion slows her step to examine his claim. She looks directly at the very same jet black pokemon he is referring to, tilts her head, and asks, “Where?”

“Right there,” Ingo replies, insistently. “A black Sneasel—they’re normally not that color.” In all his time acting as Lady Sneasler’s Warden, he had never personally seen a shiny version of a Sneasel, though he knew of their tell-tale feature: dark fur, instead of light. For a time, he thought the idea of extraordinarily rare, distinctly colored pokemon was simply a wives’ tale—something made up to entertain children. And then Akari had paraded into town on the back of a blue-flamed Ponyta. That had cleared up his doubts.

Cynthia gives him a look that clearly says ‘I am trying to be polite, but what you are saying is very silly’. “I think… that you might be confused,” she tries. “That is a completely normal looking Sneasel.”

“No,” Ingo reiterates, doing his best to keep his growing irritation from reaching his voice. “This,” he says, producing a single, painstakingly handcrafted pokeball from his person and releasing the contained pokemon, “is a completely normal looking Sneasel.” He hadn’t intended on bringing any pokemon with him, when he’d decided to leave Hisui behind; the idea of forcibly removing his pokemon from their rightful home was infinitely more painful than the thought of bidding them farewell. However, once he’d crossed over, he’d found that a single, solitary pokeball had unknowingly made the journey with him—Lady Sneasler always did have quite the sneaky streak. She must have snuck it into his coat at some point. A wily Noble, that one. 

Ingo misses her.

“Oh my God,” the Champion says, slowly, after silently watching his Sneasel stretch and ruffle her fur. “You really are from the past.”

“Well,” Ingo responds, “yes.” He’d thought that much was understood.

“I mean, I knew, of course. Interpol reports don’t lie. But this is… there’s a difference between believing and seeing,” she babbles, mostly talking to herself. After shaking her head in astonishment, she turns to face Ingo directly, and tells him, “What you have right there is a variant of Sneasel I’ve only ever read about in books. That subspecies has been extinct for centuries.”

Oh.

Extinct… the notion is hard to wrap his mind around. So much of his time in Hisui had revolved around looking after Lady Sneasler and her kits, making sure that her domain was well looked after and that her broods were healthy, all in an effort to ensure that the next generation was set up for success. It was the wish of every Warden to live to see the cycle continue.

Now, he sees that all that work has amounted to nothing.

“Oh, look at that!” Cynthia bounces on her heels excitedly, breaking Ingo out of his thoughts. “Now this is the kind of thing any pokemon researcher worth their salt would kill to see. Interaction between the extinct and the extant!” Ingo glances at the Sneasels, and finds that she is correct—they have gone from sniffing each other cautiously to chasing each other playfully in very short order. As he watches the two of them romp around, Ingo is struck with an odd feeling. He’s not sure what to call it, although he’s certain he’s felt it many times before. It’s nostalgic, yet painful—a dull ache in his chest. Odd.

“Fascinating,” Cynthia comments, as they continue to stand there and watch. “Two very similar yet fundamentally different specimen of pokemon, and still they’ve managed to accept each other without a second doubt.” She sighs, “Makes you wonder how humans so consistently fail to pull off the same thing.”

The realization hits him like a train; he suddenly knows exactly what the feeling is. It’s a little embarrassing, actually. Barely even 24 hours apart, and he already misses his brother.

“Hey, Ingo,” Akari asks thoughtfully, as the two of them sit at one of the rickety tables outside the Wallflower, eating potato mochi. Akari bought it; she’d bet that she could beat Ingo’s alpha team only using her backup team, and that if she could, he’d have to buy her lunch. The boast backfired. It’s fine though; Ingo is certain that she’ll beat him next time. “Do you think I fit in here?”

Ingo puts his utensils down, and gives her his undivided attention, sensing that this isn’t just idle conversation. “I don’t think you need to worry about the Galaxy Team rejecting you again, Miss Akari. Not after everything that’s happened, and everything you’ve accomplished.” He certainly hopes not, anyways. It concerns him that this worry still weighs on Akari’s mind. Maybe it’s not all that surprising; her integration into this foreign world was by all accounts much more complicated than his own.

She frowns, unsatisfied with his answer. “Actually, let me rephrase that.” The girl scrunches her face up in concentration, searching for the correct words. “Okay, how about this: Do you ever get the feeling that you’re here for a reason? Like, maybe…” She pauses again, turning something over in her head. “Do you think you belong here?”

It’s a strange question. Akari is a very strange girl.

“No,” Ingo answers. If anything, he is certain that he does not. Sure, he has overcome the stigma of being an outsider; sure, he has built an approximation of home for himself. But it is not the real thing. He has no idea what the real thing would look or feel like. But it is not this.

Not that it matters. They are clearly here, now. There is no reason to believe that their situation will change anytime soon. Ingo stopped hopelessly wishing that he could go back a long time ago; humans are not built to travel backwards, they are meant to move forward. The past belongs in the past, he’d told himself. That which is over should be allowed to be forgotten, to finally be put to rest. Every bone deserves a grave.

Only recently has he begun digging those old thoughts back up and re-examining them. And the only reason he was inspired to do that… was the unexpected arrival of the girl sitting across from him. Someone who also found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, with even fewer memories to hold onto than him. She wasn’t even sure what her own name was; when asked, she’d simply chosen the moniker Akari at random. She’d admitted that to Ingo a few days ago, thrown that fact out there like it was just a random aside, and not the saddest thing he’s ever heard in his life.

“Oh,” she says, sadly. “That’s too bad.”

Ingo wonders if Akari feels the same as him. Maybe not, given her response. Whatever force that brought the two of them here might have done her a favor by completely severing her ties to her past self. A meager mercy: the result of which is one less burden for an innocent child to shoulder.

Ingo doesn’t ask her, and he tries not to speculate further on what she might be feeling. In any case, he is left with the feeling that he gave Akari the wrong answer, despite simply telling her the truth.

“Tell me the truth about something,” Cynthia requests, as they stand in front of the ruins at the peak of Mount Coronet. “Do you believe that the past repeats itself?”

“No,” Ingo replies, lying. He has no intention of being forthcoming with this woman. Not when she is clearly failing to be entirely forthcoming with him.

She grins. “Excellent! We’re in agreement, then.” So she thinks. “I admit that I used to believe so myself, once. It’s easy to come to that conclusion, if you don’t know any better. Take this place, for example. This was supposedly where Dialga, or Palkia, or maybe both, or maybe neither, nearly destroyed and recreated the world in ages past, according to legend.” She grins again, her smile thinner, more pointed. “Sound familiar? The very same thing nearly happened again, only a handful of years ago.”

Ingo says nothing.

“Imagine: over the course of history, how many times do you think our world has been pushed nearly to the brink, only for us to avoid annihilation at the last possible moment?” she wonders aloud. “Your native region, Unova… it’s seen its share of strife, too. I read up on that incident at the Pokemon League from a few years back. It must have been shocking, watching that unfold so close to home.” Whatever incident she is talking about, Ingo has long since forgotten it. He continues to let her speak. “Truth versus Ideals… I can imagine how a conflict like that could easily spiral out of control. Though I do wish the adults involved would handle their own dirty work themselves, for once,” she says, sighing. “It’s shameful… the way children so often wind up fighting our battles in our place.”

As distrustful of her as he is, Ingo can’t say he doesn’t mirror the sentiment.

“I see we agree on that as well,” she says, with a polite laugh. “What a pathetic state of affairs. Whoever decided that this was the way things should be was sorely mistaken, I’m afraid,” she continues. “Someone ought to rewrite that rule, at the very least.” 

Ingo thinks about Akari, face pale, hands trembling, shakily recounting the way Volo had ranted and raved at her about his divine right to restructure the universe, right before he had outright attempted to kill her.

Ingo decides that he does not like where this conversation is heading. 

The Champion of Sinnoh takes no notice of his growing alarm. She continues, unabated. “Allow me to share with you what I have found to be the ideal truth of this world:” she declares, the wind picking up around them, “The past does not repeat itself. It rhymes.”

“Are you done?” Ingo asks, impatient.

Cynthia blinks at him, taken aback. “Oh,” she mutters, embarrassed. “Yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go on-”

“Good,” Ingo interrupts, unwilling to hear her out. “Then would you mind finally telling me the real reason you called me here to Sinnoh?”

Cynthia blinks at him again. Ha, Ingo thinks, seems she wasn’t expecting to be confronted outright. “...If you insist,” she concedes, after a moment. “I’ve been avoiding the issue, honestly. But I should probably just get this over with.” She sighs, regretfully, and adds, “I guess I’m not as subtle as I’d like to think, huh?”

“Not at all,” Ingo says, his hand grazing Chandelure’s pokeball. He’s not yet back to 100% proficiency with his old team, but he’s certain he can still put up a pretty good fight. 

“Oh well,” she says, reaching into her pocket and pulling out not a pokeball… but a photo.

Wait, Ingo thinks. That’s not right.

“There was a young girl that disappeared,” Cynthia tells him, wearily, “at around the same time and in much the same manner as you.” The wind has stopped blowing; everything feels frozen in place. “You might not believe me, but this was the very same girl that I watched save the entire world, right here, only a few years ago. She was incredibly strong, and she wouldn’t have disappeared for no reason. Something strange must have occured.” Ingo can feel his stomach drop. “I was hoping you might have some idea on what happened, or where she could be. The investigation has gone completely cold. Any insight would help, at this point.”

When she hands him the photo, he is unsurprised to see Akari’s face there, smiling back at him.

“I knew it.” Cynthia breathes, observing his reaction, her eyes lighting up. “You know where she is!”

“No,” Ingo sighs, not once looking up from the picture. “I know where she was.”

“Aha!” comes a familiar voice, “There you are.” Akari rounds the corner of the narrow mountain path, a hop in her step. “Finally! I was looking all over Hisui for you, Ingo!”

“Present and accounted for,” Ingo calls from where he’s corralling Lady Sneasler’s most recent batch of kits. It feels like they only just hatched yesterday, yet already they are scrambling to get out into the world and explore. Another few weeks, and they’ll be completely independent. They grow up so fast.

“I couldn’t find you at the training grounds, or at the Pearl Settlement, or around the caves,” Akari whines, scooping up the smallest Sneasel in her arms, the runt of the litter. He knows that one’s her favorite. “You really gave me the run around.”

“My apologies,” Ingo says, although he’s not particularly sorry: she’s only giving him a hard time in jest. “I should have known I couldn’t evade you for long, Miss Akari.” It’s nice, the way she relentlessly strives to keep him in the loop, to make him feel included. So incredibly nice, to feel secure in the notion that in your absence, the people that matter most to you will miss you and count the hours until your return.

It makes him wonder if there’s anyone else out there, beyond the borders of Hisui, waiting for him. He finds himself increasingly convinced that there is.

“You got that right,” Akari huffs, “no escape! Especially not when I’ve got something important to show you.” Akari always has something to share with him, every time she comes around: a completed pokedex entry she’s particularly proud of, or a recently discovered crafting innovation, or sometimes just an interesting story from her travels around the region. It’s always something new with her.

“Well then,” Ingo says, having successfully wrangled the rowdy Sneasels, at least for the moment, and taken a seat on a nearby rock. “I would hate to keep you waiting any longer. By all means, Miss Akari, let’s see what you have to show me.”

“Okay, okay, one sec.” She pulls out a pokeball, but then hesitates, apparently having thought better of releasing the contained pokemon immediately. “Um. Do you remember when I asked if you felt like you belonged here?” Ingo nods, not understanding what that has to do with anything. “Can I ask you something else? If… if you got the chance to go back to where you were before, and leave this life behind, do you think you would take it?”

Ingo is silent for a moment, although if he is being honest, he does not need much time to think it over. He already knows what his decision would be.

“Yes,” he answers. “I suspect that I would.”

“Great!” Akari chirps, pleased to have cleared that up. “That’s a relief. I was gonna be so bummed if I went through all the trouble to get ahold of this guy and then you changed your mind!”

She releases the contents of the pokeball, and Ingo finds himself rising to his feet automatically, as though in shock. He is, admittedly, not an especially devout man. But when the face of God materializes in front of you, it is only natural that a lowly mortal stand up and take notice.

“So, yeah, long story short… I’m pretty sure we can use this guy here to go home,” Akari says, patting the divine creature’s side idly, like the being standing before them is just a childhood pet, and not the avatar of the creator itself. “Aw, don’t be shy,” she calls, “they’re friendly!”

“Akari,” he says, voice awed, barely above a whisper, “That’s…”

“Oh! Sorry, I forgot to properly introduce you,” she tells the creature. “I guess it’s sorta like… this is the real Sinnoh? Like, they’re the one who made Dialga and Palkia and Giratina and pretty much everything else. Actually, I met them once before, but I wasn’t really sure who they were, back then.” Her smile is sunny, breezy, like this is all just a normal occurrence for her. 

And, at this point, maybe it is.

“Turns out,” Akari announces, with a wave of her hand, “their true name is Arceus!”

Her true name is Dawn.

It suits her, Ingo thinks, miserably, as he sits in Cynthia’s study and watches her furiously rummage around an endless collection of tomes and almanacs and field journals. Dawn: the earliest rays of light signaling the approaching day, earlier than even the sunrise. The perfect representation of the unlimited potential of a day that is yet young—anything could happen, anything is possible. Life is what you make of it!

But Dawn’s life has run its course.

“Damn it,” Cynthia hisses, throwing some kind of historical record onto the floor in dismay. When Ingo examines it, he immediately finds what it was that so upset her. The page is open to a list of births and deaths in the budding village of Jubilife, during the year of 1638. Halfway down the list of deaths is the name they were reluctantly searching for: Akari, aged 87 years.

“Damn it,” Cynthia repeats, with much less venom, sinking into a chair on the opposite side of the room. She cradles her head in her hands, shoulders trembling. Ingo has no idea what to say to her. Probably an apology, for starters. He misjudged her, he now realizes. This woman’s preoccupation with the legends of Hisui past isn’t due to a sick obsession with power or a foolish desire to turn back the clock. That’s not what was driving her at all.

She was just looking for someone important to her. And, really, aren’t we all?

“I’m sorry,” Ingo tells her, and it’s not nearly consolation enough, but it’s all he has to offer. “I know this wasn’t the answer you were hoping to find.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” the champion laments, running her hands through her hair hopelessly. “I don’t…” She shakes her head, unable to find the words. After a long pause, she looks directly at Ingo, and asks, “What am I supposed to tell her mother?”

That is a dilemma.

“Nothing,” Ingo replies, simply. This, at least, is something that he can do. “Allow me.”

The designated day finally comes; Ingo and Akari each set their affairs in order, make arrangements for their pokemon, and say their goodbyes. Ingo is shocked to find that he has significantly more goodbyes to issue than he expected, and that they all turn into far more emotional events than he could possibly have anticipated.

He knew he’d managed to establish a place for himself here, over the years. But who could have known he’d grown to take up this much space in the lives of the people here, become such a fixture of their worlds? To think, he might never have realized how tied he was to Hisui, if he wasn’t also planning to leave it. It makes him wonder how strong his ties to the place that lies beyond the rift could possibly be.

Ingo supposes there is only one way to find out.

There is something resembling a hole before them, where the avatar of Arceus had stood only moments before, at the base of Mount Coronet. It is hard to describe—like a tear in the fabric of reality itself, a crack where time and space have twisted so thoroughly as to break entirely. They’re meant to go through this thing, ostensibly. Absolutely nothing is visible beyond the breach, only some kind of dark, swirling energy floating within the void. If they want to see what lies on the other side, they are going to have to go in blind. The broken remains of the pokeball that previously housed Arceus’ avatar lie scattered on the ground. The intended message is clear: this is a one-time, one-way trip. Their tickets are non-refundable.

Fine, Ingo thinks. So be it.

“Allow me,” he tells Akari, fully intending to be the first to take the leap. A conductor is a leader; the elder always braves the unknown before the younger. Ingo is not quite sure what the larger context of those statements are, but he knows that they’re true, knows that they’re rules that he has lived his life by up to this point. He does not intend to divert from this course now, not at the crucial moment of decision.

But it is not so simple. Akari falters. “Wait,” she cries, grabbing onto the tattered sleeve of his coat. “Don’t-”

Ingo realizes his mistake immediately. How callous of him… how could he possibly think it was the right thing to go ahead without her? Obviously she would be more at ease if they both moved forward as one unit. In an effort to reassure her—and Ingo would never do this otherwise, the gesture is much too over-familiar, but these are extraordinary circumstances—he grabs hold of her hand.

It is so small, compared to his. And why wouldn’t it be? She is just a child, after all. Not an other-worldly threat, not a prophesied hero. A child. How anyone ever saw her as anything other than that is beyond him.

“There,” Ingo tells her, in what he desperately hopes is a comforting tone. “Just like before. Take care not to become uncoupled from me,” he instructs, exactly as he did at the mouth of Wayward Cave, what feels like ages ago. “Understood?”

But Akari does not respond to his inquiry. “I-” she stutters, a foot scooting back in the dirt, like she’s struggling not to run away, even now. “I-” There are tears standing in her eyes.

Ah. 

So that is how it is, then. Understandable. How many times already has this child been carelessly cast into the unknown, over the course of her short life? It is no great surprise to discover that this is the point at which it has all become too much. He is not at all shocked to learn that even the girl who commands the Gods has her limits. 

Ingo understands. He is tired, too.

“Akari,” he says, slowly, turning around and kneeling down to meet her at her eye level. He does not let go of her hand. “It’s okay if you don’t want to leave.”

Akari had stood before him then, and cried, and cried, and cried.

Dawn’s mother sits before him now, and cries, and cries, and cries.

No one wants to be tasked with informing a mother that her child has died. That part is bad enough. But no one has ever had to inform a mother that her child actually died hundreds of years before she was even born. The truth is a horrible, heavy burden—delivering it to its rightful destination an unrewarding, thankless task. He tries, in a moment of weakness, to look away from the poor woman as her shoulders rack with sobs, but it’s no use. Ingo finds himself surrounded on all sides with further evidence of the tragedy that’s playing out before him: An old report card posted on the refrigerator door. A hand-made Mother’s Day card sitting on the mantle. A single pair of children’s sized Pikachu slippers, tossed aside, waiting, even now, for their owner’s eventual return.

“Thank you,” Dawn’s mother finally tells him, tears still running down her face.

Ingo has no idea why in the world she would say that, of all things, to him. As she futilely wipes at her eyes, she explains herself.

“There’s a little part of you that prepares for this sort of thing, as a parent, you know?” Ingo does not know. He is not a parent. He has no idea what it must feel like. “You watch as your child grows from an infant into an adult, and they just keep getting more and more independent with every passing day, and eventually, it hits you: there’s things in this life that they’ll have to face alone. You won’t always be there to protect them.” With a shaky exhale, she continues, “When you let them loose on the world, you know, deep down, that there’s a chance they might not come back home again. When they first told me that Dawn had disappeared…” Next to him, Cynthia looks away in shame. “I just… I had this feeling. I knew it immediately. My little girl was gone.”

Ingo opens his mouth with no idea of what he could possibly say to make things right. “I am…” He is the reason that Akari is not here. It is his fault. Had he tried harder, tried at all, convinced her to come back with him, they would not be having this conversation right now. Ingo wants to tell her that, he wants to confess his guilt. The words are on the tip of his tongue, he wants to get them out, she deserves to know … but he can’t. “...I am so, so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she insists, for reasons Ingo can’t even begin to understand. “This is good news, if anything.” She shakes her head, “All this time, I was certain that something horrible must have happened to my daughter. That she…” she chokes for a moment, unable to say the one word on everyone’s mind. “That she wound up all alone, at the end. But that’s not what happened to her at all, was it? She wasn’t alone.” Akari’s mother looks deliberately at Ingo, then, like she’s really taking stock of him. To his left, Ingo becomes acutely aware of Cynthia’s equally poignant gaze. “I’m sure it must have seemed terrifying, the idea of being separated from a community of people she’d come to think of as her own.”

“Yes,” Ingo mutters, nearly unable to speak around the lump currently lodged in his throat. “Terrifying.”

“And, despite everything…” Akari’s mother is smiling genuinely now, somehow. Ingo has no idea how, he can’t even begin to understand it. Suddenly, it strikes him how much this woman deeply resembles her daughter—not just in appearance, but also in spirit. Here she is, only minutes after being informed that her daughter is dead, doing her best to look on the bright side. It boggles the mind. “Dawn managed to live a long and happy life, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Ingo says, again, lacking even a fraction of the fortitude that Akari’s mother’s voice possesses. “I’m certain of that, above all else.”

“I’m glad,” she tells him, and there’s palpable relief on her face. “That’s the only thing a parent can really ask of their child. If she was able to do that,” she sighs, wiping away the last of her tears, “then… it’s okay.”

“It's okay,” Akari sighs, wiping away the last of her tears, “if you, you know… if you decide you want to stay, too.”

The offer is tempting. So often, we only take stock of the things we truly appreciate in life as we watch them grow further and further away in the rear-view mirror.

But there is something important on the other side of the tracks—someone important, expecting him at the station. It wouldn’t do to keep them waiting still, after coming this far. He needs to leave, even if doing so is hard. He wants to go back home, even if doing so hurts.

“That’s okay too,” Akari tells him, taking his silence as an answer. “I figured you’d probably still want to go, but…” She shrugs, “well, I was the one that asked you if you felt like you belonged here in the first place... So, if that’s where you think you need to go, then…” The girl is smiling, even as she tears up all over again. “Then I’m happy to see you off!”

“I’m sorry to see you off so soon after such a…” Cynthia pauses, distractedly pushing her bangs back, “a less-than-ideal trip, let’s say.” Ingo has found himself having his second difficult parting conversation within an airport within the span of very few days. He is concerned it might become a trend for him.

“That’s hardly your fault,” Ingo informs her. “In any case, I don’t regret coming here. It was necessary, in order to…” he pauses, fingers brushing against the photo of Akari, still stashed away in his pocket. “In order to tie up some loose ends.” Speaking of which… “Here,” Ingo says, pulling the picture out and handing it back to Cynthia, “I apologize; I did not mean to take a possession of yours without returning it.”

Cynthia does not reach out to take the offered picture, however. “You should hold onto that,” she says, kindly. “That girl meant a lot to you.”

It’s a soft shock to be told that in so many words. But… yes, Ingo thinks. 

She did.

“In that case,” he replies, stiffly, “please accept this in exchange.”

The champion stares blankly at the pokeball placed into her hand for a moment, before the realization hits her, and her eyes bug nearly out of her head. “You can’t give me this,” she almost spits, followed by a pearl of nervous laughter. “This is the only one of its kind in the entire world, as far as I know! There’s no way you’re actually going to just… hand it over? On a whim!?”

Ingo isn’t buying her protests. “She’s not the only one of her kind. You and I watched as Sneasel was recognized by one of its kin earlier, remember?” He tilts his head, looking back at Mount Coronet once more, still visible in the distance through the large airport windows. “And, in any case, I think it might be better for her to stay here, where she belongs. Unova is not exactly a Sneasel’s natural habitat. Hisui is-” Ingo corrects himself, “Sinnoh is her home.” He glances back at Cynthia, suddenly worried that he is acting presumptuous. “That is, if you don’t mind doing me the favor of looking after her. She can be a handful…”

“Not at all,” Cynthia retorts, moving to hold the pokeball a bit more securely. “I’m certain Sneasel is nothing I can’t handle!” She seems to forget that Ingo is even there, muttering to herself, as she gazes in amazement at the item safely in her possession, “now what kind of Weavile do you evolve into, I wonder?”

She might be in for a bit of a surprise. 

“Of course,” she pivots, quickly, having remembered her audience. “I imagine you’ll still want to check in on your old pokemon every now and then, yes?” She hums to herself, slyly, “I would offer to text you updates, but I imagine your years in Hisui haven’t exactly left you especially technology-savvy…” Ingo cannot say that she is wrong. “It’s decided then,” Cynthia declares, with a polite clap of her hands, “you’ll just have to come visit Sinnoh again! I’ll make sure it’s a more pleasant visit, next time, at the very least.”

Truly, Ingo was wrong about her. “I’ll look forward to it,” he tells her, and he means it.

“Well then,” the champion of Sinnoh says, walking away, “Make sure you take care of yourself until then, alright?”

There’s not much time to exchange words, once Akari and Ingo have each decided on their respective paths forward. Only a fool would attempt to keep God waiting, after all.

There is much that Ingo wants to tell Akari, so many things that he simply lacks the words for. In the end, he settles on telling her, “please, take care of yourself.” It is the last thing he will ever say to her. He hopes it is enough.

And, just like that, he departs.

And, just like that, he is home.

It turns out that falling asleep on the plane, if you can manage it, makes the trip feel like nothing. He feels a bit displaced in time and space (well, more than usual), blearily walking down the halls of the airport. Part of him feels like he’s still asleep, like he’s just marching aimlessly through a dream.

Eventually, he manages to stumble over to where Emmet is waiting for him. And that certainly gets him to wake up, alright. Whether it is the way that his brother starts crying the instant he comes into view, or the bone-crushing tackle-hug he all but attacks Ingo with, that actually does the job of snapping him out of his daze, is anyone’s guess.

“Emmet,” he wheezes, when his brother relents enough to allow him to actually breathe again, “you promised you wouldn’t.”

“I said,” Emmet corrects, between sniffles, “that I would not cry,” the hug returns with a vengeance, “while you were away.” Ingo’s shirt is beginning to get wet. Which is a bit gross. Oh well. “You are back now. So.”

“He’s technically correct, you know,” adds Elesa, chuckling to herself as she watches the twins do their thing from a safe distance. Tears are contagious, and supermodels are not exactly fans of crying in public—it would hardly do to let the paparazzi get documented evidence of running mascara. “Zero tears while you were gone. I made sure.” She smiles warmly over at him; Ingo knows she will surely insist on a hug for herself, as well, but Emmet has a bit of a monopoly on the supply at the moment. “Welcome home, by the way.”

It occurs to Ingo that she is correct. He is home now, isn’t he? He came back. He didn’t make a mistake, when he chose to venture into the unknown, to see if the grass was indeed greener on the other side. If he hadn’t taken that leap of faith, he would have missed out on so much. He wouldn’t have been able to give Cynthia that Sneasel, nor tell Akari’s mother that she could finally stop looking, nor put an end to his brother’s endless waiting. He made the right choice. This is exactly where he is supposed to be.

“Fine,” Ingo relents, letting his brother off on a technicality. It’s very unfair—the two of them have successfully ganged up on him yet again. “In that case,” he concedes, sighing fondly at his brother, still sniffling into his shoulder, “Thank you for keeping your promise, Emmet.”

Ingo almost doesn’t hear the last thing Akari ever says to him. Everything happens very quickly, once he steps beyond the event horizon.

“You have to take care of yourself, too,” comes her tiny voice, growing softer and softer by the syllable. “Promise, okay?”

He is unable to respond before everything goes black.

The first thing Ingo does, once they get back to their apartment, is place Akari’s picture in the photo album.

It is not weird. There are various other people, aside from Ingo and Emmet, in the numerous pictures that fill up the pages of the book. There’s Elesa, obviously, and Drayden and Iris. Most of the gym leaders and prominent trainers in the Unova region make an appearance, along with a handful of their coworkers from their years working the subway. There’s also plenty of random strangers that just so happened to make it into frame. It is not at all strange to insert Akari’s portrait into what is supposed to be, primarily, a record of Ingo and Emmet’s memories.

“Who is that?” Emmet asks, glancing over his shoulder.

There is so much that Ingo wants to say. He is the more verbose one of the two of them, after all. He wants to tell Emmet that she was the two-time champion of Sinnoh, a repeat savior of the world, a tamer of Gods. He wants to say that she was just a scared little girl stuck in a terrible situation that was very similar to his own. He wants to say that she is the only reason Ingo is here now. He wants to say that her name is Akari, and that her name was Dawn, and that she’s gone now, and that he wishes so, so badly that he could have done more for her. 

There is too much to explain. He winds up saying nothing.

“Well,” Emmet says, breaking the silence after a moment, “she must be verrrrry important to you, to put her there. That is enough for me.” He is always doing this, effortlessly sensing when Ingo is overwhelmed or unable to organize his thoughts. Ingo appreciates it more than he can say. It has been a very long couple of days, and he is exhausted in a way that an uncomfortable nap on a plane did nothing to address.

So, it can wait. They have time, yet; he will get the chance to tell his brother all about Akari at some point in the future.

Ingo did not get—will never get—the chance to respond to Akari’s final request, before she slipped back into her heritage and disappeared.

But, had he been able… he would have said yes. He would have promised her.

He still has every intention of keeping that promise, despite not actually getting to make it in the first place. He is going to have a long and happy life. He is going to take care of himself. For Akari’s sake, if nothing else.

It’s the only thing he can still do for her, here and now.

It is funny, Ingo thinks, that in order to take care of yourself, you are sometimes required to trust in someone else’s ability to take care of you.

“Emmet,” he calls, only a little too loudly, as he knocks on his brother’s bedroom door. “Are you awake?”

If the muffled non-answer Ingo hears on the other side is intended as a response, then it appears that the answer is a resounding no. Not that that appears to have stopped Emmet, who blindly yanks the door open and then shuffles back to his bed, which he flops unceremoniously onto, without so much as a word.

That’s right, Ingo thinks, as he slides onto the half of the bed Emmet left open for him. His brother is not an especially light sleeper, once he finally does manage to fall asleep. It is hell on earth trying to get him to wake up in the morning. How he ever managed to make it to work on time during the years that he was on his own, Ingo will surely never know.

Years, Ingo echoes in his head, lying across the bed from his brother, who must have fallen back asleep the instant he laid down (or more likely never woke up in the first place). Years. His brother was here all alone in this two-bedroom apartment, filled to the brim with memories, for years. He should be grateful that the gods only saw fit to make Emmet’s sentence two years, while Ingo’s lasted longer than a decade. But he’s not. His heart hurts every time he imagines his twin forced to celebrate not one, but two entire birthdays on his own. It’s not right. It’s not fair. It never should have happened.

And Akari’s mother… she suffered even worse. By his estimation, Akari had lived in Hisui for little over a year before Ingo left. By the time he was able to finally explain to her mother what fate had befallen her daughter, Akari had been missing from Sinnoh for nearly three.

Akari… Dawn, he reminds himself, Dawn. Her name is—was—Dawn. Ingo wonders if she was ever able to remember her original name, before her time was finally up. Part of him hopes that she wasn’t, that her memories remained lost, that she never got wrapped up in the hopeless conundrum of trying to live in both the past and the future simultaneously, the way Ingo is trying to do now. It’s impossible, he knows. No one can be in two places—much less two times—at once. But he doesn’t know what else to do. He lost so much, so many people, so many memories, all in a split second, in a random twist of fate. There are moments where the sheer magnitude of the loss he's endured, across both his lives, leaves him feeling like his chest is going to cave in. He isn’t quite sure how to let go… or if he even should. 

He knows that he doesn’t want to let go. What will be left of the people in his memories, if he does? They’re all dead and buried, reduced to a pile of bones or ash, soon to be reclaimed entirely by the elements. An entire lifetime’s worth of people, and places, and pokemon: all gone. All that remains is what Ingo stubbornly holds on to.

And he will lose more, eventually. Every hello is a goodbye in progress—everything, everyone goes away, in the end. Death, like life, is not a singular moment, but an extensive, drawn-out process: the mind fades, the body rots, and, at long last, the memory disappears from the earth altogether. The fear of death, then, is also the fear of life: it is terrifying to know that we have exactly one shot at this thing. No take-backs. No do-overs. The notion of getting it wrong is enough to paralyze; so many people in this world manage to reach the end without having started anything to begin with, afraid to choose one path for fear of leaving behind another.

Akari was not one of those people.

If Ingo is honest, he has regrets. He regrets not getting to know more of the Diamond clan members before he left—the feud was always so ridiculous to him, so pointlessly arbitrary. He regrets not telling the Pearl clan how much their eventual acceptance meant to him, how he always appreciated it, despite his bad habit of isolating himself. He regrets not telling Commander Kamado exactly what he thought of his so-called leadership ability. He regrets not working more with Rei on his promising but under-developed battle tactics. He regrets not convincing Captain Cyllene of the many noble attributes of bug-type pokemon. He regrets not punching Volo right in his cowardly, two-faced, avaricious mouth.

Most of all, he regrets not being able to help Akari… to help Dawn. She had to go through so much entirely on her own. Much, much more, in a far shorter time span, than he had had to go through himself, during his extended stay in Hisui. It’s pathetic, really; he couldn’t even comfort her in any meaningful way, the handful of times that she had desperately needed it.

But, in spite of it all, he does not regret coming back. He wouldn’t be right here, right now, if he hadn’t. And this is exactly where he belongs, at this exact moment: wide-awake in bed, trying to reconcile the two separate lives he has lived, laying directly next to his brother. His brother, who is the best person he has ever met in his entire life. His brother—and sometimes he repeats his name in his head over and over, that is how much it disturbs him that he ever forgot it—who’s love his heart held onto, even as his mind forgot everything else. His brother, Emmet, who needs Ingo exactly as much as Ingo needs him. His ridiculous, overbearing, sleepy-headed brother… who cannot wake himself up at the appropriate time to save his own life.

Except for this one instance, apparently. Having unwittingly dozed through Ingo’s personal existential crisis, Emmet stirs and rolls over, finds his brother lying across from him, and asks, confused, “This is my room?”

Ingo nods.

“Oh,” Emmet mumbles, still not entirely awake, trying to make sense of the current situation. “Okay?”

His brother’s confusion is well-founded. Previously, the roles have always been reversed. Emmet is the one that usually has trouble falling asleep at night; Emmet is the one that winds up knocking on Ingo’s door at some ungodly hour; Ingo is the one that sleepily scoots over in his bed so Emmet can lay there and mope for awhile before Ingo finally asks what it is that’s troubling him.

There is, apparently, a long history of this particular phenomenon. It has been A Thing for their entire lives, or at least for Emmet’s entire life. That part of Ingo’s life is gone now, lost to the void, save for what parts of it his brother has held onto. Which, thankfully, appears to have been all the important bits. The whole ritual is a bit childish, but that’s perfectly fine with Ingo. After all, he has no other vestiges of his childhood left, none other than this.

He’d had no idea what he was supposed to do, of course, the first time he’d found himself trying to deal with a sleepless, teary-eyed Emmet at three o’ clock in the morning. His brother couldn’t even properly explain himself, he had been so upset. It had been an act of near desperation on Ingo’s part, when he had shakily grabbed his hand, and offered a pitiful, “it’s going to be okay.”

And then, of all things, Emmet had laughed.

“You don’t remember,” he’d finally said, which Ingo had initially understood as the reason why he was upset in the first place. But then, he’d continued: “It was the same thing when we were kids. I was always scared of the dark. But you would hold my hand, and tell me not to be scared. That it was okay.”

Ingo did not at all remember that; he still doesn’t, and he probably never will. So, it was only because he needed to know, that he had asked Emmet: “Did it work?”

“Not really,” came the incredibly blunt reply. “I was still scared.” And yet his brother was smiling, the same as always, when he said, “It was nice, though. It made me feel a little better that you tried.”

“Oh,” his brother gasps, back in the present, his eyes widening in understanding. There is the sudden feeling that they both just remembered the exact same conversation. “Ingo,” Emmet asks, “are you scared?”

Ingo nods.

“Okay,” Emmet chirps, completely undaunted. “Then…” A hand wraps around Ingo’s own. “There! Don’t worry. I am Emmet!” And then, after a beat, he adds, “I am right here.”

Ingo is beginning to realize something. Namely, that comforting someone isn’t actually all that complicated—no one really expects you to have the perfect words, or to magically make their worries disappear.

All they really want you to do is to be there. All you need to be is someone who can lend a welcoming embrace, or a supportive shoulder, or a sympathetic ear—someone to bear witness, if nothing else—just for a while, just until the fear passes. All anyone actually wants from anyone else is to feel a little less alone.

“Better?” a concerned Emmet asks, after a few moments.

Ingo nods.

He is still scared. It really doesn’t fix anything at all, knowing that his brother is here for him, at least for the present moment. The things that keep Ingo awake at night still remain a threat, still loom in the background, watching and waiting and biding their time. Ingo had something very important returned to him, the day he was finally able to meet his brother again. And he will only be allowed to hold that important thing close for a finite amount of time; eventually, one way or another, they will be forced to part, once again. It is tempting to believe that just because they were born together, that they will also be allowed the luxury of dying together. But Ingo sees now how unlikely such an ending would be. Had he not made the right choice, at exactly the right moment, he would have lived out the rest of his life without even knowing that he ever had a twin in the first place. And now, having spent portions of their lives stuck in completely different ages, they have found that they are, ironically, completely different ages themselves. So much has changed between them, even things that should theoretically be impossible to change. But so much has stayed the same, as well—whether it be by eight minutes, or eight years, Ingo was always the older one. He would find it funny, how everything has come full circle… if it didn’t also terrify him down to the very core of his being. He is scared that he might be the brother that passes first, and even more scared that the opposite will come to pass. He is scared that he might leave Emmet alone again, and even more scared of the alternative. He doesn’t want to die, just as he doesn’t want to watch anyone else die; he doesn’t want to be forgotten, just as he doesn’t want to forget.

All this will eventually come to pass, whether he fears it or not. There is no averting fate. Every human life eventually arrives at a singular destination; we all, ultimately, meet the exact same end.

And what can be offered up to distract from the pain of this universal truth? An encouraging word, maybe. Perhaps a comforting gesture. A moment spent together, temporarily fending off the loneliness, merely a blip in the face of eternity.

Which really isn’t so bad, is it? It’s something, at the very least.

Actually, Ingo thinks, as his eyelids grow heavy and he finally manages to get some rest. That’s more than enough.