Chapter Text
There was Nothing, then an egg appeared and Arceus came out of it, creating reality. An incredible amount of energy was released, creating both matter and antimatter equally. But they immediately began destroying each-other. To keep their new reality from immediately disappearing, Arceus banned almost all antimatter to the "nothingness" that was there before them. Arceus then created Dialga and Palkia and with them Time and Space, effectively giving rules and purpose to this new world of matter. But the "nothingness" was not meant to hold anything. It was against its very definition. All the antimatter began spilling back into reality. Arceus was then forced to create Giratina to control it and make sure all was kept separate. Giratina alone was capable of living in this Not World, which became the Distortion World, not empty anymore and extremely unstable.
Time and Space could NOT exist in the Distortion World. While antimatter alone could somewhat exist there, if only under control, Time and Space were the very things defining reality from the Distortion World. It was what made them separate. Giratina alone was capable of navigating both as the only living being made almost only from antimatter.
The human brain cannot comprehend a lack of Space. You could see an empty space, a space infinitely small or big, but it's always space. Same with Time. You could imagine time stopping like a picture, you can imagine time travel, but no time at all? Impossible. Try. Our very existence is limited to Time and Space. So what happens when, after millions of years (from the reality where years are real) a human being steps into the Distortion World?
Cyrus didn't notice how... wrong everything was at first. He was too focused on trying to... what was he trying to do again? He lost against the kid... then Giratina was defeated, and he had decided to stay there. Alone. This felt like the right decision, but for some reason his head was starting to hurt and thinking seemed weirdly difficult. Thinking was all he ever did. All the time. It was what he was best at. Why did it feel so hard suddenly? Trying to calm down, he took a big breath and looked around him. Everything immediately made sense. He was breathing, but couldn't feel any air entering his lungs. And his surroundings had changed. It was hard to notice, because everything was pretty much the same. Same pieces of land and rocks floating around, same waterfalls, same plants... but they were all placed at completely different places then minutes before. He tried to look away, looked back, and there! it had changed again! Even right in front of him. He was sure there hadn't been water there before. All of it was making his head hurt.
Despite this, Cyrus slowly got used to this weird.... "place" he was stuck in. The human brain is full of wonders. It couldn't deal with time not existing, so it made it up, just like in a dream. Cyrus could definitely feel a before, now, and after, but the rest was completely blurry. Sometimes it felt like he'd been there for years, sometimes minutes. He could walk for what felt like hours without anything changing around him, and suddenly everything would turn around in a blink. He had tried to drink the water, but that too had been like a dream. He couldn't swallow it, but when he tries to swim he could, with some difficulty, breath underwater. He always came out perfectly dry.
After a while, Giratina had come back, having recovered from their battle against the kid. Cyrus would always see them flying around in the corner of his eyes, but if he tried to look directly at them, the pokemon would be standing perfectly still, staring right back. Cyrus would alternate between walking straight with no goal and just sitting in front Giratina. Neither would move, and it would feel like forever.
While the way he experienced his surroundings was blurry, dreamy and confusing, once he had understood it, his thoughts came back clearer than ever. All Cyrus did was think. Think of his ideals. Think of what had gone wrong. Think of the past. Of the future. Think. Think. Think. And... feel. Piece by piece, emotions came with the thoughts. Sadness. Frustration. Anger. Then some happiness. And then, always a tiny amount at a time, every emotion a regular person experiences everyday. And for the first time since his childhood, he let them come. No-one would know. No one would see him have these emotions. They had absolutely no consequences in this world. They were safe. They came to him, and left on their own. What a curious sensation.
But a some point a new one came and broke everything: boredom. He had been at peace for so long, alone with his thoughts and the comforting presence of Giratina. Yet, just as slowly as the rest, he started to want more. Someone to talk to. Something to tinker with. Sunlight. A pokemon battle. And those emotions were dangerous. He couldn't just watch them come from afar with curiosity like he had been doing before. Of course, he tried to bury them. He was good at that. But with it, old problems came back. Cyrus had barely been aware of his body since stepping into the Distortion World, but suddenly his usual back pain was back. He didn't feel hunger or thirst, but started to miss it. He didn't feel tired, but the want to sleep just to turn off his brain for a while became sometimes overwhelming. It had been so nice, alone in a world with no spirit other than his, it had been everything he wanted. But looking back it shouldn't have been a surprise that his own feelings would once again turn on him and ruin everything. He had never accomplished his goals after all.
Cyrus definitely stopped walking and kept his place sitting in front of Giratina. He started talking to them. Spilling all his thoughts to the giant dragon. Giratina stayed just as still as before. Cyrus screamed to them, whispered, threw stones, but they never moved. Cyrus had, at the very beginning, decided not to ever let his pokemon out of their balls. They were still hurt from the fight and would be too confused by the distortion world. He didn't want them to live through that. He had come to term with the fact that he cared about them. He cared a lot. He cared so much. About everything. It had always been the problem. He had managed to repress it so well before that he had forgotten, but now his whole life was so clear.
Eventually, an idea came to him. He looked into his pockets for a while and found a single great ball. He threw it a Giratina and to his surprise the giant god of the underworld just went into it like any pokemon. Obviously the ball didn’t shake once before Giratina burst out, but by doing so they had to move, just a little, in order to get into their initial stance. This simple movement, this proof that Giratina was alive and well aware of him broke something in Cyrus, and he began crying. He hadn’t cried since he was eight. That memory had only come back not so long before, when his introspection weren’t bringing him so much pain yet, but now that pain was all he could feel. He was only eight, it was so unfair. Cyrus was chocking, air didn’t exist there, how could he breath? He was only eight. Had he always been eight? It felt like he had stopped existing after that. He had only been thoughts. Thoughts fighting against feelings. But he hadn’t been him. He kept crying and choking for what felt forever. Everything felt like forever in the Distortion World, but this one was the worse.
Yet, eventually, Cyrus calmed down. He managed to stop trying to breath, as he didn’t need it in the first place, and looked up at Giratina again. To his surprise, they had moved again. They were closer and their eyes showed something that looked a lot like curiosity. But this time, it made Cyrus feel happy. He was glad he didn’t have to feel so lonely anymore. Giratina finally felt like a living being. The calm in his heart had come back, and he managed to take a step back again from his memories.
A weird cycle started after that. Cyrus would be calm and walk around, then start to get bored, then anxious, then have a breakdown, and be calm once again. And every time it happened, Giratina would be more and more involved. They started flying around in Cyrus’ line of sight when he was walking, and would react to his words and movement more and more when he stopped to look at them.
Cyrus came to many realizations during this time. The most painful ones being to accept he no longer wanted to change the real world, and to accept a part of him wanted to go back to it. Not enough to actually try to find a way back, but enough to leave him daydreaming about seeing some people and places again. The most surprising realization though, was that Giratina seemed to be… learning emotions from him? Every time Cyrus had a breakdown, Giratina would get closer, and react more and more. The Irony made Cyrus laugh more than once. Some type of god, with unimaginable powers, was learning emotions from the one man who hated emotions enough to want to destroy the world over it. Very slowly, they formed a bond. It wasn’t like with his other pokemon. It was subtle, but so strong. With this came another realization: Giratina had been keeping Cyrus alive because they were lonely. There was no way a human could be capable of living there on his own. Maybe Giratina had chosen Cyrus because they were so similar? Alone, feared, cut from emotions yet willing to rediscover them together.
Cyrus had been talking to Giratina about programming when suddenly his own shadow appeared in front of him, surrounded by a blinding white light. It was sunlight. Cyrus didn’t get the time to react, a hand grabbed his arm and a woman’s voice said “You’re coming with me” and just like that, he was pulled into the real world.