Chapter Text
Three years.
It had been. Three. Whole. Years.
To the day, actually. Today was the third anniversary.
Three rotations around the sun since Ingo quite literally disappeared right in front of his brother. Emmet was beginning to hate the sun. Why should it get to continue about its merry way when there was such a pressing matter at hand? It was quite bold of the sun to keep on shining, keep on burning, keep on lying the way it did, Emmet thought. It dangled in the air, putting itself on a pedestal despite having broken every promise it ever made, and still, it begged to be noticed. It taunted those below it with the mirage of a bright future that would never come to pass, laughing maniacally every time an unfortunate, hopeful bastard was carbonized just as they thought the light was finally within reach.
Emmet adjusted his hat to ward off the celestial tormentor that evening. Try as it might to dig into his irises, he refused to acknowledge it further. He did not want to acknowledge anything that he was supposed to acknowledge, especially not the thing he was supposed to acknowledge tonight. The same thing everyone else except for him has already acknowledged.
It was the fact that Ingo was not coming back.
At the urging of Elesa, Uncle Drayden, and a therapist, Emmet had agreed to do it. He was to go to the very place in which Ingo seemingly vanished from existence, read a short script he’d written previously, and finally accept that Ingo was gone. Only Elesa would accompany him. Emmet could see her now as he peered underneath the brim of his hat. She was hurrying toward him in a pair of stilettos, wobbling a bit in her rush.
Elesa finally caught up to him, panting heavily. “I’m so sorry for being late, Emmet,” she apologized between gasps.
Emmet hadn’t even noticed the time. “Fashionably late as usual, Elesa,” Emmet teased with a genuine smile.
“Oh, hush it,” she scolded, clumsily trying to remove her shoes right there in the middle plaza.
“Ugh, my feet are killing- WAAAH!” she broke off as she lost her balance and swayed to one side. Emmet caught her and let her brace himself against him.
“I really thought you’d know how to walk in those by now,” he said with a smirk.
“Shut up!” she growled, smacking him lightly on the arm. She took off both shoes and shook them threateningly at him.
“What’re you gonna do, stab me?”
“Famous last words, motherfucker.”
“I have fucked no mothers, Elesa.”
“I can’t say the same,” she said with a giggle and a dramatic wink. The two of them started walking toward their destination, willfully ignoring what it was they were about to do.
“Arceus!” he exclaimed with a startled chuckle, “That is too much information, I think.”
“You started it. I finished it.”
Emmet huffed, his heart already starting to race despite Elesa’s attempts to distract him. She gently laced her fingers with his own and asked, “Do you have it?”
“Yes,” he replied softly. With his opposite hand, he felt around his pocket. There were two pieces of paper inside of it. One was neatly folded and the other was a crumpled mess. He only wanted the former at the moment. Elesa could not know about the crumpled piece of paper yet. He carefully sifted through the pocket for a moment before he revealed the correct piece of paper to Elesa. His eyes darted toward the ground for a moment to ensure that he hadn’t dropped the crumpled piece.
In his other pocket was a box of matches.
Elesa could not know. Elesa could not know. Elesa could not know.
And then the two walked into the subway. They proceeded without speaking, so all Emmet heard was their footsteps echoing throughout, the sound changing slightly every time they went down a floor. Eventually, they made it to the labyrinth of defunct tunnels. They were completely shrouded in darkness, and a damp chill hung in the stagnant air. It was completely untouched by sunlight. Emmet liked that.
The section of tunnels had been out of service for almost a decade because it became a high-traffic area during migration seasons of certain Pokemon. The problem was that these different migration seasons collectively took up the entire year, so no more trains could be run through them. Still, Emmet and Ingo had checked them routinely. There was still quite a bit of machinery in there, after all.
That is what the two of them had been doing when it happened. Well, it’s what they were supposed to be doing, anyway.
They’d received reports of an unusually large swarm of Zubats hanging around, so they’d gone down there together to investigate it. It had just been the two brothers, with flashlights in hand, poking around. They never actually found the horde of Zubats, but neither twin felt like returning to the surface just yet. The two of them had not seen much of each other on that particular day, so naturally, some shenanigans ensued once they were back together. They ended up playing a version of tag where they tried to catch each other in the beams of their flashlights. Emmet, the quieter twin, had been winning, but Ingo wanted to beat him. He was catching up. Emmet loved winning more than anything, so he could not allow his brother to catch up.
The two started ducking underneath old machinery, climbing old ladders, and hiding behind old generators. The perfect darkness was occasionally broken up only by quick flashes of the beams produced by their flashlights. Their erratic footsteps never seemed to go silent, and neither did their hysterical giggles, which increased in intensity whenever one of them was heard smacking into something.
They knew better.
They knew better than to be fooling around in there like that. In the dark. With all those spare parts lying around, countless safety hazards.
It was dangerous.
But they had done safety checks beforehand. They always did safety checks.
It should have been safe. It should have been safe. It should have been safe.
And according to Emmet’s memory, it was safe.
The two of them were approaching the end of their little game, and they hopped out of their hiding spots and pointed their lights at each other at the same time.
“Ha!” they cried in unison.
“Oh dear,” Emmet said, his tone flattening. “I thought I had won.”
“As did I,” Ingo replied. He paused, then opened his mouth once more, but it was in that moment that he simply…vanished. His flashlight clattered to the floor and rolled off to the side, the light hitting the wall behind Emmet.
No strange noise, no miraculous flash of light, no strange sensations. Nothing. He was just gone.
No matter how hard Emmet tried, that was all he could remember. Others told him that he was wrong, that his mind was playing tricks on him, that he had blocked out what actually happened to Ingo.
A few accused him of lying.
He’d been investigated thoroughly. Those accusations had been laid to rest for the most part, but Emmet knew there would always be people out there who suspected he had done something horrible to his brother. It hurt him to know that there were people out there who thought he could do something so unthinkable.
Though only a few people thought Emmet had done something on purpose, many more still blamed him. The general public assumed that there had been some sort of accident in that tunnel and that Emmet either caused it or failed to prevent it. Whether he was telling the truth about his memory was still hotly debated.
Truthfully, Emmet also believed it was his fault.
Emmet felt his foot nudge something heavy. His throat clenched up and his hands went clammy. He knew what it was, but he shined a light down at it anyway. Ingo’s flashlight. Emmet had never collected it.
They’d made it to the spot. It was time for Emmet to say goodbye.
“Elesa,” he choked.
“It’s okay. Here,” she handed him the paper.
“It’s not okay. It is not okay because he is not coming back.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Emmet took a deep breath and unfolded the paper with trembling hands. Elesa quietly stepped toward him and pointed her own flashlight at Emmet’s little script.
“Th-thanks.”
“Go on, it’s oka- erm. Yes, go on,” she stammered.
Emmet began to recite his little script. “Ingo, my dear brother. I am Emmet. We have been together our whole lives. We’ve done everything together. We know each other better than most people know themselves. But three years ago today, I watched you disappear. You vanished. That is what I remember. Something else probably happened. I don’t know what happened. But I miss you terribly. I have gone to extreme lengths to find you even after others gave up all hope. I do not wish to abandon you. But there is no hope left. To continue living, I have to move past this.” His voice began to shake. “I am here to accept that I will not find you. You are not coming home. Wherever you are, Ingo, I hope you are comfortable. I will meet you there someday.”
Elesa gently plucked the paper from his hands, though he kept them suspended in the air as if he were still reading it. Emmet became vaguely aware of the fact that he had sweat through his gloves.
Ingo was not coming home. Ingo was not coming home. Ingo was not coming home.
Emmet could not make a sound. He could not breathe. The acknowledgment was sinking into his bones. It was becoming the truth. No, it was the truth. Ingo was not coming home.
Buried deep in that truth was also a sickly sense of relief. Emmet no longer needed to wait. He no longer needed to stay. His suffering could end. He did not ever have to face the sneering sun again.
If Ingo is dead, then I am too. I will reunite this two-car train. You are a wonderful little sister, Elesa. I love you. I’m sorry, but I cannot do this anymore. I have nothing left in me.
That is what the crumpled note in his pocket said.
He stood like that for a moment and then suddenly remembered that he was supposed to pick up Ingo’s flashlight. He bent over stiffly and grabbed it, holding it out and away from him like he didn’t know what it was. The coldness of the metal seeped through his damp gloves. It was heavy, too. Heavy like a tombstone. Heavy like his heart.
“Good job. You’re doing great,” Elesa said awkwardly.
“Elesa?”
“Yes?”
“Do you mind if I take you back to the plaza and give you Ingo’s flashlight? I’d like to spend a few minutes down here by myself.”
“Hm. Yes, that is fine, but don’t stay down there for more than a few minutes. I’ll stay in the plaza and wait for you.”
“Alright.”
So Emmet and Elesa went back up to the surface, and Emmet handed Elesa the flashlight.
Elesa suddenly crushed him in a tight hug. It felt nicer than he expected it to. He rested his chin on her shoulder and let himself relax a bit.
“I’m giving you twenty minutes,” she said. “If you’re not back by then, I’m going down there to find you.” She released him from her hold. He was reluctant to let go of her. She would be sad. Verrrrrry sad. She’d already lost one big brother, it would be devastating to lose another. And obviously, she was already worried about losing Emmet, too. That’s why she’d given him the time limit. It made the whole situation trickier, and he would have to move quickly. He couldn’t bring himself to be frustrated with her, though. She only wanted to keep him safe. He did, however, feel verrrrrrrry guilty for what he was about to do.
He turned away, knowing full well that the last expression he would ever see on Elesa’s face would be that of concern. For him.
He descended the staircase. After a few flights, he detoured into a hallway that contained a few rooms that used to be offices. It was all ruined in a flood before the subway was built. There were a few stained, crumbling desks left in there along with some overturned filing cabinets. There was one overhead light glowing dimly. Emmet chose the desk nearest to this light, smoothed out his note to Elesa, and laid it there. He then picked up a small chunk of concrete and placed it on top as a do-it-yourself paperweight. A drop of liquid landed next to the note as he bent over it. Was the ceiling leaking? He looked upward, searching for the source of the droplet, and felt something slide down his cheek. Oh…he was crying again. When had he started crying again?
Emmet’s breaths were coming a little too quickly now; he was starting to get dizzy. Elesa…his poor little sister. Elesa was stronger than Emmet, though. She would be devastated, but she would be okay. She would be okay. Elesa would be okay without him. No, really, she would be.
Emmet desperately tried to calm himself so he could continue. He was still bent over the note, and he still had tears running down his face, but his breathing was slowing down. He took one trembling hand and clumsily wiped his face off. He was alarmed to see a fresh, red stain on the cuff of his white sleeve. He touched his face once more and it came back with more blood.
Emmet was prone to chronic nosebleeds. When he got overly anxious, his blood pressure would sometimes spike so quickly that it would trigger a spontaneous nosebleed. Thankfully, their severity and frequency had decreased over the years. Because of Emmet, Ingo had gotten good at treating nosebleeds as a young teenager. Elesa was always a bit squeamish about it, though.
But he was fine. Elesa would be fine. Ingo would be-
Nope, no he would not.
That was why Emmet was hunkering over a suicide note with a bloody nose, after all.
It wasn’t a bad nosebleed, though. It stopped as quickly as it came. Emmet licked his hand and used the saliva to clear the vermillion crust off his face.
It was time to keep moving. Five minutes had already passed. He was running out of time. He had to do it before Elesa came down to find him. If she got too close, he may accidentally kill both of them.
Emmet made his way to the abandoned storage unit. It was a massive room filled mostly with old electrical equipment, gasoline, oil, and pressurized gas tanks. A perfect explosion hazard. There was still an old “no smoking” sign near the entrance, though over half of it was rusted.
Yeah. He was gonna blow himself up.
Like the fucking sun.
He’d show the sun who was boss.
Let it mock him now.
Emmet checked his watch. He had five minutes left until Elesa would come for him. He took the matchbox out of his pocket.
He opened it, nonchalantly picked a match, and closed the box again.
He attempted to strike it. He missed. His hands were shaking too badly.
He let out an aggravated groan.
A noise.
A noise?
No, just his mind playing tricks on him again.
He lifted his hand again and-
He heard it again.
Footsteps.
Elesa? Was his watch off? Or did she come down early?
They did not sound like Elesa’s footsteps. They were too heavy, too slow, too uncertain.
They almost sounded like-
No. His mind was playing tricks on him again.
But if someone was down here with him, Emmet needed to know. He didn’t want his little stunt to hurt anyone. The footsteps continued.
“Is someone there?” he called, his voice bouncing off the walls and returning to him like a boomerang.
No answer. “Elesa?” he called.
No answer. It was just his head.
He checked his watch. He had two minutes.
He struck the match with finality. It roared to life this time. He stared at it for a moment, transfixed by the sight, in awe of the power he suddenly held. He took a step back. He was going to drop it in the gasoline canister situated neatly between two large containers of pressurized gas.
He heard the footsteps again. He paused briefly and decided to ignore them. They weren’t real. They weren’t real. They weren’t real.
He turned around, now facing the gasoline. He took a step forward. Another.
“Emmet!” an achingly familiar voice called.
Emmet’s blood froze. No. It couldn’t be.
“Why the fuck is this happening to me?” he hissed to himself. “What did I do to deserve this?” he asked, not even knowing who he was directing the question toward.
It was probably the sun. It loved carbonizing people just as they thought that they were about to reach the light. It loved to give people hope and rip it away just to hear them howl at the moon in their agony. Emmet didn’t think the sun could reach him down here, so far underground.
Fuck the sun.
He was standing directly over the gasoline now, the still-burning match dangling precariously above it.
“EMMET!” the voice cried once more, so loud now that he could feel it vibrate the floor beneath his feet. It was tinged with a type of desperation only one other person aside from Emmet would understand.
Wait. He could feel it. The vibration. That was different. That could have been real.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Could it really be…?
It called his name once more. The footsteps were getting closer now. If Emmet were to turn around, he could probably see who they belonged to.
He was so scared to turn around. Because if it wasn’t him, well…Emmet did not know what would happen next, but it would probably be worse than him blowing himself up.
Ingo…
Emmet shoved the lit end of the match in his mouth to snuff it, biting down hard enough to break it cleanly in half, and he turned around.