#but also ive poured my soul into those so it was like hm! alright! i wish i had never thought of making them!

[randomwriteronline]

(I Missed You)

(WARNING for a long paragraph featuring depersonalization, derealization and mentions of medication. Begins a little after Ingo was home again. Medication mentions continue until the end.)

The desk across from him was dusty.

Emmet blinked slowly, grabbing the covers idly between his fingers. His eyes wandered about: Excadrill was curled up on her side, Chandelure sat on the pillow with her beady eyes closed; Crustle had discarded his own house on the floor in an unexpected display of vulnerability in favor of hiding under Durant’s steel exoskeleton as if she were a weighted blanket. Galvantula cradled Archeops in her front legs, mandibles nibbling ever so slightly at his feathers, while Eelektross had his tail wrapped around Klingklang’s core, pulling it down to hover closer to the bed; too big to lay on it without either taking up all of its space or breaking its frame, Haxorus and Garbodor sat at its ends, heads leaning on it no matter how awkward the angle might have been, their own vast bodies acting as mattresses for Gurdurr and Boldore respectively.

Well.

This was a brand new low.

Sleeping in Ingo’s bed.

He had managed to avoid doing something that pathetic until now. Even made it through the first year - arguably the worst one - without ending up like this.

The vivid dreams, the ones where he hugged a living man and the ones where he hugged a body bag, where he sank to the bottom of a bog with it and where a Zoroark lured him in its den through his own blind despair - those had happened. He could not control that.

(This had been such a long and pleasant one.)

What had brought him to scrape so hard at the bottom of the barrel, anyways? Emmet struggled to remember the date, but still he was certain it was not around the time of the anniversary of his brother’s disappearance. He drew a blank on whatever he might have seen or listened to that could have reminded him of his twin being there - a song, a movie, a piece of art of sorts… Maybe his coat. Yes, it had to be his coat, he could feel it under his fingertips, under his arm.

God, even worse than he thought.

Taking his brother’s coat and curling up in his bed, like a distraught Lillipup desperately trying to sorround itself with the scent of its trainer.

He raised himself to sit up; a handful of Joltiks clinged harder to his shirt.

He hadn’t even changed himself.

What a fucking joke.

Emmet removed the ‘tiks slowly, gently, one by one, sitting them next to their much larger, evolved sister.

(They had had two Joltiks, both little ladies; in Opelucid, another kid had traded a Spinarak for Emmet’s, and Ingo had gifted his brother his own electric bug. Haxorus had belonged to both of them when he was still an Axew, and so had Garbodor when she was still a Trubbish, but Ingo was the one more involved in their training, so without Joltik Emmet would have remained one Pokémon short - which was unacceptable. When they evolved into Ariados and Galvantula they began a courting of sorts; Emmet followed their relationship as intently as an old lady follows a soap opera, and kept every batch of eggs. His brother had noted they were lucky Emmet had only evolved one of those that hatched, or they might have been drowning in Galvantulas instead.)

(Which would have been much less manageable.)

Now he stared at the dusty pavement where a square block of rock laid, its inhabitant busy sleeping on clean covers.

Both their teams were there. The poor things must have confused him for Ingo. Not that he blamed them, far from it - they were more than allowed to grieve, to have their judgement clouded enough to believe such a poor illusion. He hoped they were having good dreams. Hopefully that would have sweetened the disappointment and heartbreak when they woke up.

His legs shook a little when he stood (at least he’d had the decency of taking his shoes off) and began wobbling his way to his own room.

He vaguely remembered crying so much he had no tears left. His body must have been trying to find an alternative outlet that wasn’t screaming by making him near incapable of moving his feet.

It was 3 in the morning, the alarm let him know with its dull glowing digits.

He thanked it by staring at it for a little longer.

Two hours and a half.

What was he to do for two hours and a half before opening time?

Going back to sleep would have been impossible. He had tried before and it did not work.

He could have just gotten properly dressed and sneaked into the station to do some early work, which on the other hand always worked, at the expense of his breakfast and lunch being forgotten and the blinds remaining closed for the whole day. See if the coffee machine was full, if maintenance had been properly scheduled. Check the lights, the trains, the routes, the timetable and shifts.

Make sure depot agent Jackie had not managed to once again get locked inside on purpose to sleep in the main room for the sake of validating the weird shit they liked to tell challengers about having never been out of the station even just once in his entire life - although that had stopped happening now that the substitute had made it clear through horrendous promises and examples of grievous bodily harm that she was very willing to physically remove him from the premises with a literal kick up his ass.

Emmet pawed at the nightstand to find his Xtransceiver; then, remembering he had not changed into his pijamas, he checked his wrist. The smooth plastic and glass had his fingers sliding over it.

He didn’t even need to look. He found the contact and called.

One ring.

One whistle.

Two rings.

Two whistles.

Three rings.

Three whistles.

Emmet covered the device, brows furrowed, to muffle the sound.

Four whistles.

Pause.

Five whistles.

Pause.

Six whistles.

Like a very insistent steam locomotive.

He turned around, quickly, walked like a fury back in the empty dusty room.

Ingo laid curled on his side under clean blankets, snoring softly, arms reaching out ever so slightly. He looked so tired, with his tattered coat strewn on top of him to keep him warmer somehow, with his Pokémon curling around him so protectively. Close to his legs the sheets were ruffled and pressed where the younger twin had been just a few moments before.

Emmet gazed at his older brother sleeping for what felt like an eternity.

Then the Xtransceiver gave a twelfth ring, and he hurried to close the call before it would wake up any of the resting bodies.

Was he still asleep? Dreaming? His eyes fell back onto the man in his twin’s bed. His hand shook a little as he approached him, fingers bent, arm completely paralysed halfway to the other’s shoulder.

Was this really his brother? So all of that - Elesa telling him the news, Burgh filling him in, learning about the amnesia from Cheren, making all those calls, the nerve-wracking wait, seeing him again, holding him, crying, crying, crying - all of that had been real, and not just an elaborate fantasy? His palm hovered above the body without even grazing it, a horrid thought sliding in his ears to clog his throat and tie it in a knot: would he have woken up, if he touched his brother? Would he have been thrown back into reality if Ingo stirred awake in this dream and found himself on the floor of his twin’s bedroom, alone?

His entire body trembled hard enough to give him spasms. He bit down at his finger to calm himself, almost shoving it whole in his mouth: his teeth gnawed at the bone and left craters on the pulled skin.

Should he risk it? He wanted to. So bad. So bad. The memory - or dream - of holding Ingo lingered at the back of his head. He needed to know he was real. He needed to know this wasn’t fake. And if it was? No. It had to be real. He had to be real. He had to try. He had to. Even if he was scared.

Fingertips grazed the sleeping limb. Then they pressed upon it some more.

Ingo kept groaning intermittently like a train, unbothered.

Emmet laid his palm on the shoulder, cupped it in his hand whilst making sure not to shake it. It was stiff, hard and bony, but its muscles were relaxed.

It was real.

He finally let go of a raspy breath that had lodged itself in his throat and let himself drop to sit back on the mattress.

He caressed his brother’s shoulder mechanically, slowly, softly, trapped in a sort of trance. It wasn’t quite like being drunk, the lightheaded feeling that had him almost ooze out of his own body, or losing his grip on reality – overwhelmed, that was the word: he was overwhelmed, with relief and with such a heavy kind of love falling in chunks out of his chest. Ingo was there. Ingo was alright.

Ingo was back with him.

His hair was longer. At least, it sort of looked like that in the poor lighting. Emmet reached out slowly and caught a white lock in his fingers, twisting and curling it around them. It was clean. A little soft. So unlike Ingo, to have hair like this.

He could have had a mullet now, like he wanted when they were kids. He was too afraid to commit to it fully back then. Maybe this was the right time.

Emmet blinked.

What kind of thought was that, he asked himself in what would have been a laugh if he had been present enough in his own head to muster one. His brother is back after years of being missing, and the first thing he notices is his haircut. If he weren’t aromantic he’d make for a good boyfriend, he assumed - wasn’t it a cliché, that of a girl cutting her hair to make a boy notice and failing. Not that he’d know if that really happened to real people.

He registered all that slowly, distractedly. His own words were white noise against the deafening silence of his senses as he took in his twin’s concrete existence piece by piece, as if composing a puzzle.

He was… Mostly well kept, unlike his clothes. Which was a relief, even if his cheeks seemed a bit too shallow, and his palms and fingertips were cut all over, and his eyes were circled by a faint purple shadow. Emmet cupped the side of his face in his palm, carding through Ingo’s sideburns in the process. His thumb stroked the pale skin softly, carefully; his brother let him coddle him as he pleased, continuing to sleep without a single worry to crease his brow.

The notable loss of mass and the beard made him seem much older. Not frail, somehow - but he still appeared so, to his younger twin; maybe it was how his knuckles peeked through the skin, or how he slept on his side half curled up on himself, as they had stopped doing a little after moving in with their uncle…

Emmet shook his head slightly. Maybe he was just projecting.

He wanted to lay down and fall asleep again, wrapped in a hug around Ingo, but for that he would have had to move Excadrill and he could not fathom doing such an awful thing to her.

She had missed him so much.

(That must have been the real reason she had taken care of him.)

(In her grief she must have convinced herself he was Ingo.)

(Poor sweet thing.)

(Emmet didn’t know that if Excadrill had heard him she would have jabbed him in the stomach with her claw and yelled at him to never think such a thing again.)

The lights from streetlamps outside casted bright shadows through the blinds, distorting colors into colder hues. It made their skin gain a cyanotic undertone, similar to the blue of veins snaking towards knuckles; but Ingo telegraphed each of his breaths by expanding his ribcage with every inhale and snoring softly at every exhale, and Emmet juxtaposed his own breathing cycle with his brother’s, and so he knew they were both alive, there, together.

Then Ingo groaned, whined, stirred; his eye opened and lit the room with how white it was.

Emmet felt his chest implode.

His brother’s scarred hand rose in the air in a clumsy manner: “Emmet,” he called, blindly, grasping at nothing until he was caught by another set of much smoother fingers. His elbow punted itself against the mattress as he tried to stand up: “Emmet – sorry, I’m late - no delays on, on the schedule, I’ll–”

He found himself getting pushed back down gently, with a long slew of hushed monotone no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no‘s almost lulling him back to sleep instantly.

“It’s early,” he heard his little twin say in that voice he had completely forgotten yet missed so much, “Verrry early.”

“Verrry early,” he repeated absentmindedly. It was so immediately familiar.

Emmet nodded, feverish, panicked: “Verrry early. I could not sleep. I woke you up. I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”

“It’s fine,” Ingo reassured him, “It’s fine…”

“Go back to sleep. I woke you up, I’m sorry. Go back to sleep. It’s early. It’s…”

He quieted down as his palm was squeezed intermittently. The fear of waking up from a dream now that Ingo was awake began to wobble, to shrink and wane like an image on distorted water.

“It’s fine,” his older brother repeated.

For a little bit, all they did was hold each other’s hand in the dark.

Then Ingo’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he looked up to Emmet from where he laid on his side, and held his hand a little tighter.

His twin felt a knot in his throat, a sudden shame coiling around him, and murmured sheepishly: “I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s alright, really,” the older brother replied, “Don’t worry about that.”

“You should sleep. You’re… You were tired. Verrry tired. You should sleep…”

“You should too. It won’t do you good to lose sleep like that...”

“I - I’m not…” he didn’t want to lie to him - he didn’t want to worry him, either. “I can’t sleep.”

The rough voice came to him kindly: “Can I stay awake with you, then?”

Emmet nodded with a bit of difficulty. Ingo’s fingertips were rough and calloused on the back of his hand. Suddenly it felt like he was a teen again, and Ingo was their uncle (must have been the beard...), half dozing back off and grumbling but still listening to the night together.

The thought made his heart clench in guilt, and he held his brother’s hand a little tighter to get rid of his musings.

The older twin held his gaze on him for a moment more, swinging their arms slightly. Then his clear eyes turned curiously to look around the room, to the glimpses of furniture the poor lighting showed off through silhouettes and angles reflecting vague sources of cold light in a sort of fuzzy way.

“I don’t… Think, I fell asleep here,” he noted absentmindedly

“You didn’t,” his brother explained: “You were on the couch. I made you wait. I had to change the sheets. They were dusty. I’m sorry.”

His piercing stare returned on the face mirroring his, words soft with puzzlement: “For what?”

“Making you wait. But the sheets were dusty. You couldn’t…” Emmet played with his lined nails for a second or two, tracing them with the thumbs of both his hands. “You couldn’t sleep on that.”

Just for that? Oh, but it was no reason to be sorry...

“You didn’t have to fuss about something that small for me,” Ingo reprimanded him without bite, kindly, though it sounded more like a reassurance than anything else: “It wouldn’t have been a problem…”

“But they were dusty.” his twin insisted. He made it sound like it was an awfully important thing, that they were dusty. That Ingo could have never slept on them because they were dusty, like that would have been an insult to him.

He blew a huff through barely parted lips, like a complaint; Emmet gave an unamused stubborn hum in return.

They were playing with one another’s hands now - tracing and caressing fingers, tickling lightly the skin folding and creasing between index and thumb, circling knuckles, running along the lines carved along their palms, along thin scars, along what remained of the mending left by medical stitches, along thin crusts of punctures pierced open by teeth.

Ingo looked around the dimly lit bedroom.

“This is… My room?” he asked.

His brother nodded.

“You carried me here?”

Now he shook his head. He lifted his gaze a little, to direct the older twin’s attention to the dragon slumbering with deep breaths on the bed’s headrest: “Haxorus did.”

The razor sharp mandibles at the side of the beast’s head felt like smooth bone when he ran a hand over them. Haxorus grumbled lightly, shifting in his sleep so that his scaly head would bump against the pale knuckles; Gurdurr held a little tighter onto him with his own strong fists.

Ingo looked at him with a sweet sort of melancholic awe: “He used to be an egg,” he muttered.

Emmet wheezed a chuckle: “He did,” he nodded. “We saw him hatch.”

“A great honor,” his brother whispered. His neck strained a little trying to get a better look at the Pokémon held by draconic limbs: “And who’s that…? Tim… Con… Gur…”

“Gurdurr.”

Ingo snorted a bit, a stunted, sleepy laugh escaping him: “Could you say that again, please?” he asked  while failing to contain his amusement.

Emmet repeated, rolling his Rs as much as he could: “Gurrr-durrr.”

His brother’s hiccuping giggles were music to his ears.

So he pointed behind himself, to the dark blue and reddish amalgamate of rocks laying on a pile of literal toxic garbage: “And over there,” he said, and he stressed the letter as far as he could again, “There’s Bol-dorrre.”

Ingo laughed softly, hiding his mouth behind tthe back of his hand, muffling his voice as if he was afraid he was being unpolite when his younger brother so clearly was putting every ounce of his phonetic ability to vibrate the trilling consonant just to amuse him as much as possible.

“That’s the little one,” he remembered, “That’s him… And the big- the large one there - she is… Ah, I know it, I know it…Bo, bo… Odor...?”

“Garrr-bo-dorrr,” Emmet nodded, making him chuckle a little more. His thumb stroked his brother’s metacarpal bones through his skin while his chest jumped and trembled with mirth, and a sense of elation like he though he had never felt it before seized him right before adding: “She eats trash.”

“Oh!” at that his twin shook his head against the pillow, still giggly yet now murmuring with slight worry: “Oh, that cannot be good for her…”

“No, it’s fine - it helps her poison,” he was reassured. “And she eats normal things, too.”

“That’s a relief…”

His free hand dug into short, dense fur; with a quiet whirr similar to a purr, the enormous mole at his side shifted a little, removing metal claws to showcase the soft unprotected belly, immediately seized by vicious sleepy scritches.

Ingo watched her kick a little in her sleep as he tried to recall her name: “Drill… Excadrill,” he attempted, turning to Emmet to check if he was right. When his brother nodded he shifted his attention onto the purplish flames barely crackling in the dark, their master in deep slumber: “Chandelure…” he murmured reverently, overwhelmed for just a moment by her beauty.

Something with an exoskeleton rustled a moment as if adjusting itself, making him turn again. He squinted at the indistinct mass, recognizing a pair of bulbous eyes: “That’s - Crust, I think… Crustle... Ah - oh dear,” and now he covered his own eyes, embarassed: “He’s naked.”

Emmet raised a palm to contain the laugh leaping out of his mouth like a playful Tympole, but he could not keep it from spilling all over the covers in a shower of irregular pearls.

“No!” he hiccuped out, trying to direct his focus to the metal sheen above the rock bug: “No, he’s covered, see!”

His brother peeked through his fingers: “Not much…” he lamented, though his tone was delighted as he listened to the stunted chuckles still falling off of equally pale lips. The iron carapace attracted his attention, and he tried his hand at remembering the name attached to the fearsome mandibles glinting dimly in the dark: “That’s… Something about heat, that’s the one who eats her, right?…”

“Yup,” his twin nodded. He took in a breath to regain composure: “She’s Durant.”

“Durant, Durant… A bug,” Ingo noted. His finger rose all the way up to Emmet’s head, curling a strand of hair around itself and pulling lightly, to tease him - getting a silly grimace out of him: “You have an awful fondness for bugs. You have… A whole lot of them. Way too many, really... And they’re everywhere, all the time… In your pockets…”

“I do,” his brother admitted, “And they are.”

As if knowing they were the subject of the conversation at hand, a few weak squeaks arose from a yellow mass just behind Emmet, maybe vexed by a few bad dreams that dissipated once the crying bundle of static-y fuzz was wrapped in a warm palm.

He presented the quieted down pest to his brother: “You meant these?”

Ingo squinted to see the small insect in the dark: “Hmmm-hm, yes, that’s the one... It’s those - they are… Ah-” he clicked his tongue; his finger twitched a little to point behind the small heap, to the huge legs holding something between a lizard and a bird: “The big one’s called… Galvantula, I think. I can’t remember the... Hmmm...”

“Tiks?” Emmet helped.

His twin hummed and screwed his brow: “Tiks - tik, Jol? Tik? Is it Joltik?”

“Yup.”

He nodded, pensively: “We have so many of them… You have so many of them… They keep- they eat the, the… The lightbulbs.”

“Those are too big for them,” his brother replied. He very carefully placed the little soul-sucker on Ingo’s shoulder, picking another one to keep it company: “They like chewing cables though.”

“Ah, you’re right,” the older twin agreed. “They cost us a lot, don’t they.”

“Not anymore. They learned to behave.”

Ingo hummed approvingly as his shirt was nibbled slowly by little mandibles.

His brows furrowed now as he looked at the flying lizard gekkering in its sleep. He struggled to get something out of himself - a gaping hole in his memory swallowed the thin, almost snake-like head whole, leaving him only with a vague blunt noise - and he hated that.

“There’s...” he still tried, pointing at him: “There’s a hard sound in there.”

Emmet followed the clean line of his index: “That’s Archeops,” he filled in the blank for him.

That... Ingo furrowed his brows: “Not ‘chen’?”

“No,” his brother replied patiently, “Archeops. He used to be Archen, but he’s Archeops now.”

It sounded neither right nor wrong to him - though it was most certainly right, because it was Emmet who said that, and Emmet had not lost his memories. The uncertainty made him uneasy.

Now he was focused on a round mouth squashed on itself, fangs peeking through and slimy limbs sustaining the head, indiscernible from the rest of the neck and spine, upon which laid a long crest of sorts. It was huffing regularly in its sleep, eyes closed, with a slight gurgle like boiling water coming from the recesses of its throat. It was his brother’s, he believed.

And no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he felt like it was important to his twin, no matter how hard he screwed his face in thought, he could not for the life of him recall its name.

He detested that.

“Eelektross.” Emmet helped.

It could have been any other for as much as he knew.

“He is my ace,” his brother’s voice explained: “Like Chandelure is yours.”

Ingo nodded, apologizing softly for not being able to remember on his own. No matter - no matter, he did not want to worry anybody with a fould mood. His eyes fell on the complex metal creature hovering sleepily under the enormous electric lamprey, and he lightened up slightly as he gave a fond huff of recognition: “I know that one,” he said, pointing at it, “Its name is a bit silly - my brain makes that sound when I think… Kling-klang, kling-klang, kling-klang…”

That made Emmet snicker: “Does it?”

“Hm-hm,” he nodded as he repeated, overly amused with himself: “Klingkang, Klingklang, Klingklang…”

A long sigh filled Ingo’s chest and deflated him softly, and Emmet watched as that glowing semblance of happiness melted slowly off of his face, as his scarred thumb drew circles on the younger twin’s knuckles, almost mournful.

The distraction had not worked.

It- he was Emmet’s ace, and he had not remembered that. Had not known that. Not felt that - only barely, vaguely, that he had some kind of importance, but nothing more. Ingo should have remembered that. He should have. Just like he should have not needed Haxorus’ name to remember they had seen him hatch, or like he should have not needed any clues to figure out Joltik, or Durant, or Garbodor, or Gurdurr, or Boldore, or Archeops. It should have been easy. It should have been immediate. Instinctive. Like recognizing his own room, and the objects within it - another task he horribly failed at the more he took in his shadowy sorroundings.

“I don’t know enough…” he growled softly at himself. He sounded heartbroken.

His twin held Ingo’s palm a little tighter and brought it to his mouth, to press his lips on it.

“It’s fine,” he murmured against the bony phalanxes comfortingly, “You know a lot. It’s good. You’re doing good, trying to remember. It’s fine if it’s not all at once. It’s better. And you’re here. You’re right here. It’s fine.”

Ingo hummed. He wasn’t that sure of it.

But he remained quiet, stroking his brother’s index with his thumb. He felt the gentle grip tighten slightly and release, tighten slightly and release, to ease his thoughts. Ah - that’s where that quirk of his came from. He had not even noticed how he had squeezed the nervousness out of his little twin at first.

The back of his hand was kissed kindly again. It made the knot around his heart a little easier to digest, enough to think of somethinge else he wanted to remember in some way.

“Is it just us?” he asked quietly.

His brother hummed: “We live alone, yup.”

The silence was filled with the sleep-chatter of their Pokémon. It was comfortable, in a way; but not the point.

“And in our family?” Ingo continued. “Is it just us?”

Ah - of course, that’s what he meant, Emmet thought to himself, of course. He would word himself very specifically usually, to make sure Emmet had no trouble understanding what he meant - but he was so awfully tired, and he was ever so slightly careless when he was tired, so he would lose a little in the translation between thoughts and words, even though he never meant to be unnecessarily obscure or incomprehensible.

But, if this was about family, then he better get - sitting like this was fine, but not for this. He had to... Hold on--

“Hold on,” he murmured, placing his brother’s hand back down on the covers with a careful pat before untangling his own from it as he stood up: “Hold on, I need a chair. It’s not comfy like this. I’ll take a chair. Hold on.”

The older twin followed him with his gaze and immediately disagreed as he started dragging the swiveling chair closer: “Not that one - it’s dusty…”

“It’s alright. I don’t mind.”

“No - it’s dusty,” Ingo insisted (he made it sound like it was an awfully important thing, that it was dusty, that Emmet could have never sat on it because it was dusty, like that would have been an insult to him). “You’ll get dirty…”

“It’s fine. I’ll shake it off,” his brother just assured him. A fleeting thought made it out of his mouth before he could stop it: “I need to dust your room.”

“I can do that later…”

“No. I’ll do that. You need to rest.”

Ingo grumbled in displeasure; Emmet replied by blowing a raspberry at him.

He never lets me help, they both thought. One day he’ll collapse from fatigue and I’ll have to tuck him in to sleep so tight he won’t be able to get out of bed for a month.

A scratched palm reached out once the chair was close enough; fingers still healing from self-inflicted bites caught it tight.

“I’m here,” Emmet assured Ingo as he took his seat next to the pillow: “I’m here. You’re here. I’m here.”

His elbows slid across the pillowcase until his chin was resting upon it as well, snug and comfortable as he leaned his whole back forward. He smiled for a moment, a strange huff leaving him, like a need to cough out a sudden unexplained giddiness, and his grin just grew as he took in the same silly excitement in the slight curve of his brother’s frown. They struggled a second more still with that sudden feeling of complicity, like kids sneaking into one another’s hiding spot in secret - trying to get as comfortable as possible - and finally, finally, Emmet hummed and hawed and bit his lip a little, trying to figure out where to start.

In the end, he decided the best way to do this was chronologically - from oldest to youngest. Hopefully he would not forget anybody.

“We have an uncle,” he began: “Drayden. He’s a gym leader, Dragon type.”

“The one in Opelucid city? Like Skyla said?” his twin interrupted him briefly.

“Yup. And we have a cousin, and a cousin-in-law too. They have two children. Half-siblings. We grew up with them.”

“We did?”

“Yup. The oldest is... uh... eight?” yes, that seemed right. “Eight years younger than us.”

His brother seemed very surprised at that: “We are that much younger than our cousin? Than our uncle’s-?”

“Yup, yup! He had our cousin early. Verrry early. And we were born... I think late. Not sure. But we have younger cousins too. The half-siblings. We’re not proper cousins, but we call them that and they call us that back. The older one is Marshal and the younger one is Iris. They’re both verrry strong. We should battle them again these days, if we can. It would be fun. They’re verrry serious in their battles. Iris was born when we were sixteen.”

“Ah... Then we--” Ingo’s eyes widened suddenly. He gasped quietly at an unspoken realization, and tried propping himself up on one arm as he whispered, leaning a little closer to Emmet, white irises breaking through the darkness with a sort of excited glimmer emphasizing their clarity: “Did we get to hold her? When she was a baby?”

Emmet popped his mouth: “Yup.”

“And how was she?”

“Like a little prune.”

His brother’s awe cracked a little when he snorted: “That’s not nice!”

“It’s the truth. She yelled a lot, so you would yell with her and she would stop. And then you’d stop and she’d start all over again. It was terrible.” and he pushed his nose against the older twin’s, making his head fall back on the pillow while he stared into his pupils with eyes enormous to the point where his expression was comical: “Terrrible.”

Their cackles caused quite the quiet commotion around the twelve sleeping bodies curled up with them, making them all turn and whine and hiss and grumble in a concert of varied calls, and the two men fumbled to reach out their hands and shut each other up, pressing palms to their amused mouths.

Fortunately, none of their beloved beasts awoke.

Emmet kept laughing softly for a moment more, a little stunted, in short bursts, and one of his eyes squinted as it was caught in a square of blueish light peeking through the blinds, another one missing the other eye just barely. He wheezed a little - he had a wheezy laugh, breathy and intermittent, and Ingo instead was prone to long snorts that rattled his throat and face, and in a way it was something they complemented each other in, one of many other little things.

It was a comforting thing to know. To remember.

Like having a family.

“And that’s all of them?” he pressed on. “All our relatives?”

“Yup. For us. Iris and Marshal, they have other cousins too, I think. Proper cousins. Not sorta cousins like us.”

“But they’re not our cousins as well, right?”

“No, not ours. We’ve never met them.”

“That’s a shame.”

His twin hummed in agreement. From what Marshal had vaguely explained a few years ago, the older seemed very serious about battling as well, and the younger was very eager to surpass him. A multi battle... Twins against brothers. All four, very serious. That would have been fun. Verrry fun. The idea curled nicely in his mind like a strand of hair tucked behind the ear.

“Do we have parents?”

Emmet hushed for a moment.

“They’re alive, probably.” he answered quietly.

Ingo understood, as he always did.

“They’re dead to us.”

“Yes.”

Neither were going to talk about this again. Judging by tone alone, there was no need for it.

“Was it our uncle? Who raised us?” he asked instead.

“No. But we lived with him.” a tug at his heart. “He’s a good man.”

Ingo’s hand slipped in his hair, and it felt so very real. He felt it scratch gently at his scalp, soon joined by its mismatched twin with a little difficulty, as the arm had to snake rather awkwardly out from underneath his body; Emmet let him play with his head, let him sway it in his hold and pull it a little closer to his own, until his brother’s beard was almost in his eyes while he pressed his mouth to his forehead. Despite the foreign sensation it felt comforting, it felt real. It felt good and heavy on his shoulders when those scarred arms wrapped around them. He closed his eyes as he embraced him back and soaked into the everything around him, the warmth, the texture, the weight. He smelled like nothing and held him tight enough not to hurt. The phantoms of bruises his brother had sunk in his back when they had first seen each other pulsed dully and sang, reassuringly, that all of it was alright.

“I’m sorry.” Ingo murmured against his skin.

It froze his blood solid.

Like icicles injected in his veins.

“That this… That all of this happened.” he heard him again. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean for it to happen. I swear. I’m sorry. I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

Emmet held him as tight as he could.

“It’s fine. You’re here.” that’s what matters, he wanted to say, but something made it so that he couldn’t bring the words to leave his mouth. So he just repeated it: “You’re here,” he said, as his fingers dug gently into his brother’s hair, comfortingly, “You’re here. I’m here. You’re here. You’re here. It’s fine. You’re here.”

But it didn’t help: “I’m sorry…”

“You’re here. It’s fine. I know. I know. You’re here. You’re here. You’re with me. We’re here. You’re here.”

“I didn’t mean to forget…” you, he didn’t manage to breathe out. “I didn’t want…”

“I know you didn’t. You wouldn’t. I know. It’s fine-” a horrid doubt came to him - why was he apologizing? Why would Ingo apologize? There was no way for him to have cause his own amnesia and disappearance like that, so why? Was this really happening. Was this real. “Ingo - you’re here. It’s fine. You’re here. You’re here. We’re here. You’re here. You’re here. With me. You’re here with me. We’re here. You’re here. You’re here. You’re home. You’re here. You’re here with me. With me. You’re here. You’re here.”

Maybe if he said it enough times it would come true.

Ingo could not cry, but he tried. He tried as he held tight onto his brother’s back, like a child, as he felt Emmet kiss the side of his head and comb through his hair to assure both of them of something he could not vocalize.

“I love you a lot,” he sobbed for the both of them.

His twin tightened the hold around his head and laid the bridge of his nose on his temple. He did not say anything: his neck was tied in a knot; that horrible question spiraled further on its own.

“I love you a lot,” Ingo sobbed again. “I love you so much. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Emmet must have cried too hard the evening before, because he had no more tears in his eyes to shed.

His brother’s voice was muffled: “I’m sorry…”

He kissed his cheek in complete silence. I love you a lot too.

This was too good.

Ingo was there.

Ingo was in his arms.

Ingo was home again.

This was too good to be true.

He was going to wake up at any moment, wasn’t he? He was going to get up and fall off of bed, he was going to go out and talk about how happy he was that his brother was back only to be met with concerned stares and reminders that there were no news regarding his twin’s whereabouts – no, reminders that they had found Ingo’s body, just his body, just his lifeless body, and he was going to be put on medication so that he wouldn’t kill himself directly or through a slow decline into some kind of addiction, because a dream so good could have only come as a misguided attempt at comforting after something indescribably horrid  - he must have drunk, must have eaten something, consumed something, to have such a dream, or such a hallucination, he must have, he must have, and now it was making him spiral into the delusion that Ingo was there, that he had changed the sheets for nobody, that he had not been talking to thin air, that he was not pathetically hunched over his brother’s bed imagining to hug him like a madman – they must have already put him on medication, they must have done that a month ago, when they found the body, and yesterday he thought he didn’t need it anymore, that he was fine, and he didn’t take it, and now look at him, like this… Serves him right, serves him right, serves him right - he needs it, he needs the medicine, he needs it, he needs it, he doesn’t want to be like this, he doesn’t want to be like this, he wants to live, even if it hurts, he wants to like, he doesn’t want to be like this, he doesn’t want to curl up in the idea that his brother is there and solid and real and warm and breathing and sobbing and holding him and telling him he loves him a lot if it means he’ll drown in it and destroy himself in it – Ingo would hate that, Ingo would blame himself, he would be devastated, he would cry, he cannot give Ingo this grief, not when he’s dead, not now that he’s supposed to be sleeping peacefully for as long as he wants without any pesky schedule waking him up early every morning, he shouldn’t have to get up just to haunt his brother to make him function, he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, he should sleep, he should be let sleep, he’s so tired… Life is so tiring, he should sleep… He should be allowed to sleep… Ingo is asleep… Forever, forever, he’s asleep… He should not worry him… He should not worry him… The medication, now, he needs it, he needs his medication - Ingo should be allowed to sleep… To sleep…

Emmet tried to stand, to pry himself away from the hold of warm arms that tightened ever so slightly when he tried to leave (it was not real, no matter how solid it felt, no matter how much he wanted to melt into it), shaking so much he could barely move.

“I need to go,” he muttered, struggling to get the words out of  his mouth. He needed his medication. Now. “I need to – get… Get ready. For- for work.”

“You said it was early,” Ingo murmured, worried, scared, holding him.

The hand squeezing his shoulder to calm his uncontrollable shivering felt real. It felt heavy, it felt comforting. He could not fall for it, he needed his medication, he needed to get himself back on track: “It’s- not- I- I need to-”

But Ingo – the hallucination, it insisted: “What time is it?”

Through some miracle, he managed to get his Xtrans to his face. It was barely 3:45. One hour and forty-five minutes.

He still had an hour and forty-five minutes.

“It’s early,” his - not his brother, said, and he- it insisted, reassuring, gentle, terrified of having done something wrong, of being alone, “It’s still early… It’s still early - Emmet, sit down, it’s early, you’re tired… It’s useless getting ready right now, you’ll have time later…”

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

He had to go. He had to. He had to. Before he drowned. His throat felt dry as he tried his best to think and hack out something that made sense.

“Wash… Face…”

Now he was in the bathroom.

His head hurt and his eyes were burning.

He had promised to go back once he was done.

He squeezed his eyelids shut and managed to cry just a little bit more.

His shaking hands struggled to open the cabinet, searched feverishly through whatever was in there. It should have rattled if it had the pills in it, right? It should have - this? No, no, no, bandaids, bandaids, tape, this...? He knocked something over and cursed at himself. This one - this one rattled, it must have been this one. He unscrewed the lid and blindly dumped as many capsules in his hand as possible; then he stopped.

No. Moderation. Safety first and foremost. Safety through moderation.

He counted the pills as he dropped them back into their container, as if the slow and repetitive motion coupled with his own shaking monotone could have helped steady his nerves, until he had only one still in his hand. Just one. Just one would have worked fine.

Most of the water he slammed down with it ended up splashed all over his face. It didn’t feel unpleasant. Even his shaking seemed to be slowing down just a little bit. Maybe the medicine was working already.

“Emmet,” called the voice from Ingo’s bedroom.

Emmet should have ignored it, should have waited for it to melt away with the chemical aftertaste. But he walked back anyways, exhausted; he sat back on that dusty chair, fell back in those arms that could never be real. He could allow himself this, he thought to himself, leaning into his brother’s hold, just this once... Just one sweet dream. Just one. Safety in moderation. Just one, and then he would have gone back to having lost his twin. Just one nice, sweet dream.

Ingo (if this was him) kissed his forehead. It was soft. It was so soft...

“Try to sleep a little more,” Emmet heard him murmur, almost with a tinge of concern: “It’s still early...”

He held onto that body that shouldn’t have felt as solid as it did.

“I will... Be, off. At work. The whole day,” he stumbled on his words, struggling as he chastised himself a little for warning a dream that he would have never had again anyways. His head felt heavy and light at the same time. “I will be back... Late. At night. Don’t wait up for me. Ok? You need to sleep well. Regularly. ‘s important. El... Elesa will come. At noon, to bring groceries.”

“Elesa?” the voice swam in his ears.

He nodded a little: “Our friend. Dear friend. Dearest. Like... A sister. Sweetheart. Verrry pretty. Verrry pretty... Verrry... She has... We gave her keys. So she won’t.... Phone. Or bother you. You need... To sleep. Skeep- sleep. It’s early. It’s... Go... Go to sleep. You need that.”

His face was sunked back into the crook of a neck: “You need that too...”

“Hm. Hm. Yes. I will... I will...” he should have gone to his own room. Distancing and all. But he felt so sluggish. So tired... Just one dream... Just one... “Can I... Can I stay here? With you?”

The hold seemed to tighten ever so slightly.

If Ingo said anything past that, Emmet wouldn’t have known. The single sleeping pill had him breathing deeply, calmly, wrapped tightly in his brother’s very real hug, in a dusty nest of clean sheets and their tangled Pokémon.