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Ingo woke up.
It was still dark outside, slight glimpses of stars within the sky barely visible beyond the window where the wind howled, but Ingo knew that dawn wasn’t far off. He needed to get up and prepare for the long day ahead of him.
His eyes were still very tired so he did his best to manage without having to open them all the way. It wasn’t all that hard, however, as he knew his living quarters like the back of his own hand. Through the slits he allowed his eyes to open to he saw that his room was dimly lit, and mentally kicked himself for leaving his lantern on all night as he rolled out of bed. It would do him no good now, not until he managed to scrounge up enough coin to buy oil from someone, so he left it at the head of his bed and made his way across the room.
He scratched at an itch along his side as he removed his nightwear. First things first: he needed clothes. He pulled out of his closet his tunic - noting that it needed a good scrubbing in the stream soon - a pair of pants, socks, and then his hat and coat.
Hmm, that was odd. His hat and coat looked… clean. And well kept. He took note of how nice his hat and coat appeared as he eyeballed them a little closer. Silently, Ingo preened himself for doing such a good stitching job that they almost looked good as new in the low light. Undoubtedly, however, once he was in full sun, they would look much more like their ratty selves upon him.
Next he had to clean himself up. He slowly left his room, gently closing the door behind him as he went, and stumbled as carefully as he could until he found himself before a sink. As it ran, he splashed some moderately warm water on his face, taking note that he should probably boil more later if he wanted to do this again in the evening without the shock cold water gave.
He lathered up his cheeks and pulled out the knife he kept under his tunic, removing as best he could the stubble that had grown on his chin. He couldn’t quite remember when he decided to be done with the little goatee he’d grown, but he certainly wasn’t allowing it back onto his face now.
As he shaved he glanced at himself in the mirror above the sink, feeling an incredibly deep, clawing loneliness chewing at him from the inside out. It had been a part of him now for so long, far longer than Ingo would ever wish to admit. He felt despondent, disconnected, separated from pieces that were integral to who he was. As he looked into the eyes in the mirror, he saw someone whom he missed desperately. His permanent, signature frown looked out of place on his reflection and, mindlessly, he tried to force a smile to make it look like how he knew it should. It was impossible, however, and somehow, the failure gave him a strange sense of relief. He felt like he didn’t need to smile, that his reflection simply wasn’t enough anymore, but he couldn’t remember why… and still, the aching pit of loneliness and longing groaned deep within his being. He just hoped the feeling would one day ebb away and he would finally be at peace.
His knife nicked him just to the side of his chin, and Ingo hissed as he pulled it away. The blood pooled into the wound, though it wasn’t a deep enough cut to drip, and he huffed to himself softly. He hadn’t meant to lose himself in his thoughts, his morning sleepiness making him prone to spacing off. He realised that he’d been rubbing the smooth side of his knife against his already shaved jaw for around a minute or so. Instead of dwelling on it, or the train of thought that had overtaken him, he cleaned off his knife in the sink, splashed his face with some more warm water to wash away the blood, and then made his way out of the bathroom.
He needed to put together light rations that would last him until he could reach civilization but wouldn’t slow him down. He didn’t even need to watch where he was going, his body simply doing what he needed it to do. He felt more than saw the sandwich he prepped and then packaged away, then the water bottle, and then a couple of fruits, which he weighed semi thoughtfully before alternating packing them up or putting them back. There were a couple of stops he’d have to make along his way back down the mountain, if he wanted to reach Jubilife Village in any sort of timely fashion and get caught up in… whatever was happening now. He was sure he needed to make the journey, there was something pressing that he needed to be in the midst of such a large group of people for. It would be taxing to take the journey in the first place, and that was, he figured, the sole reason for the anxiety gnawing at his stomach. As well, he wished to avoid any run-ins with Alphas, if only to preserve the health of his own team, so he’d have to take a little bit longer of a path than his normal route.
Suddenly, his eye caught on something just in the corner of his vision, and he stopped what he was doing. For a moment, he stood before the window next to his food storage and stared out through half-lidded eyes at the stars beyond. His hands clutched the countertop as he kept himself from swaying from exhaustion, and he felt so very finite, watching the lights from so far away twinkle in the slowly brightening sky. Ingo knew he’d never learned astronomy, or bothered to remember very many names of the constellations, but he knew the one staring down at him that early morning. It had been there for him many times, albeit in various positions in the sky. Relatively recently, it had kept its watchful eye on him from low on the horizon while he was stuck in limbo without his memories. Now, though, out the window, he saw it had returned to its rightful place nearer to the centre of the sky. Unsure as to why this thought had stalled him so much, Ingo watched the constellation glimmer, as though he were waiting for it to be washed out of the sky completely by the sun. There was so little in the world that was clear to him at any given moment, but Ingo supposed that constellation always would be, for him…
“Ingo?”
The sudden voice came from the entrance to the kitchen, and Ingo jumped as he spun around to face its owner head-on. After a moment, he realised who he was talking to, and Ingo took in a breath as he clutched his chest just above his racing heart, braced against the counter as he folded in on himself a little.
“Emmet!” Ingo wheezed.
Emmet, at the very least, had the decency to look a little sheepish as he scrubbed at his eyes with a fist, having clearly just woken up. “I am sorry. But I heard you moving around at this early hour…”
As Ingo collected himself, he frowned, then glanced around. He’d simply been preparing for the day, it had to only be an hour or so until sunrise… but wait, no wonder he didn’t feel like his reflection in the mirror was enough, Emmet was right here! And- wait, Emmet wasn’t supposed to be here. Emmet didn’t belong here at all. He was only supposed to be a piece of Ingo’s dreams, and he was supposed to be unnamed, and… not in his pyjamas. Actually, now that Ingo thought about it, the kitchen he stood within didn’t look like it belonged anywhere in Hisui. It certainly didn’t look like his tent, tucked into the side of Mount Coronet. No, it belonged in his barely recovered memories, in…
Ah, wait. He understood now.
“Unova, Nimbasa, home,” Ingo muttered, and Emmet’s smile softened. “Right. I am home. Apologies, I did not mean to wake you.”
“It’s fine,” Emmet mumbled, trying to remain quiet so as not to disturb the early morning peace, “I am getting more used to this routine. At least you didn’t get halfway to the station before you woke up enough to remember where you were this time. I don’t think our night shift would be verrry pleased to have to call me for the second time this week at this hour.”
“No, I don’t think they would be, either,” Ingo said as he tried to match Emmet’s volume level. “Still, though-”
Emmet waved him off as he came further into the kitchen. “No. It’s alright! If waking up before even the sun comes up is the price I have to pay to have you back then I will get a little less sleep. I’m not losing you again just because of a little morning wake-up! It’s funny, anyways.”
“Funny?”
“Yep! You gave the station managers quite a scare the first night you were back.”
“Ah.”
Ingo remembered that night, perhaps a little too clearly. He’d been in a bit of a daze, the previous day having passed at blinding speed. He barely remembered speaking to the creator of all things, Arceus, but he remembered the way the night shift had screamed when they thought his ghost had come back to haunt them all for even slightly slacking off while on duty. Emmet had nearly killed himself laughing when he’d been called, despite having sobbed into Ingo when they’d finally reconnected. Ingo supposed the whole situation made sure the night shift stayed ever-vigilant, though, so he tried not to feel too embarrassed over the whole ordeal.
“What’s happening today?” Ingo asked in an attempt to change the subject.
Emmet hummed in thought as he came to lean against the kitchen counter next to him. Ingo still wasn’t quite over the fact that the pair of them lived in an actual, solid, roof-and-walls home , and not tents or cabins. He was still reeling over the simple fact that they lived in a true, proper city, after having spent years in near isolation in his tent in the Highlands of Hisui with no one but the company of his Pokémon and Lady Sneasler. This place had many, many people, it had massive people-moving machines that Emmet called cars, it had real, physical trains! When he lived in Hisui, Ingo would only occasionally stop by civilization if he was in need of supplies the Highlands didn’t provide, or because he was called into a meeting. Even when he was given a station at Jubilife Village in the training grounds to officially battle for the Galaxy Team, the normal people traffic that he’d see over the course of an entire day was substantially less than that which he’d see now in a single hour outside. Everything was so overwhelming in Nimbasa City, and Ingo was just glad he didn’t have to get used to it all immediately, like he’d feared when he had first returned back from the past. His brother (his twin ! Who he had forgotten! His closest friend in the whole world!) had made sure to take him home almost immediately, and only told those who he had deemed relevant enough the fact of Ingo’s return. He’d listened as Ingo told him all of what had happened, slowly, over the course of a couple of days, and had been more than happy to fill in the blanks when Ingo had told him he’d lost huge swaths of his memory of their lives before Hisui. Of course, only around a day or so had passed before the news had been informed of the missing Subway Boss’s return, and suddenly all of Unova was clamouring to see him. It was heartwarming, that Ingo meant so much to so many people, but it was all so much , and there were far too many people recognising Ingo in the streets when he and Emmet went out. Thankfully they had people and friends they could trust to keep the media at least partially off of their backs, and Ingo had slowly been allowed to acclimatise back to city life.
“We are going to introduce you back to Gear Station,” Emmet said finally, after a number of minutes, “and we are going to see if being back there is still too much for you. If it is, then I am taking you to the amusement park and we are going on the Rondez-View Ferris Wheel, so that you can see the whole city from above. It will make my job easier if I can point things out to you that way. And if Gear Station isn’t too much for you, then we will look into what you need to do now so that we can work together again, and then we will go to the amusement park and ride the Rondez-View Ferris Wheel. Either way, we are going to the amusement park.”
Ingo chuckled at the conviction in Emmet’s voice by the end of his spoken to-do list, and then nodded. “Sounds good. I am excited to get back to our regularly scheduled routine - I look forward to the maintenance check today.”
Then he glanced over at the coffee maker behind where Emmet leaned, and read the time off of its front. 4:48 in the morning. It was far earlier than either of them should have been awake, if they wanted to do anything productive by the time the sun was up. Ingo looked back at Emmet just in time to see his brother try and stifle a yawn, the arms of his pyjama top folding over his hands.
“We should go back to bed,” Ingo said gently, and Emmet nodded along with his words, his eyes barely able to stay open after each blink. “We both need rest. Thank you for stopping me before I got too far.”
“Of course, brother mine,” Emmet hummed as he bumped his shoulder into Ingo, perhaps harder than was necessary. “It is what I am good for.”
“As well as other things,” said Ingo, as he resolved to deal with the things he pulled out for his imaginary trip to Jubilife Village later, when he was more awake.
Emmet’s smile gained a sly quality to it as the pair of them began to move back out of the kitchen and towards the hall their bedroom doors lined. “Like having better looks.”
“We look identical.”
“You look like an old man.”
Ingo huffed. “I do not. I am fixing my posture-”
“At my insistence-”
“-and the wrinkles I gained in Hisui are already starting to go away thanks to Elesa’s incredible skin care tips and regular beauty check-ups.”
“Beauty queen.”
Ingo’s frown deepened, though he kept his tone playful to indicate he meant nothing by it. “Would you rather I looked like your father rather than your brother?”
“No,” Emmet said, his voice suddenly very serious, and Ingo turned to look at him as they stopped outside of their respective bedrooms, “I’m just glad to have you back, no matter how you look.”
Ingo softened his features, and leaned back against his closed door. “And I am glad to be back.”
Emmet nodded once, then yawned again. Ingo reached across the hall to pat him on the shoulder before he turned towards his door.
“Goodnight,” Ingo said, as quietly as he could.
“Sleep tight,” Emmet replied.
The pair then slipped back into their bedrooms, and as the door closed behind him, Ingo sighed silently to himself. As he looked across his room, he saw that the ‘lamp’ he’d ‘left on’ was, in fact, his dear partner Pokémon, Chandelure, and as his eyes fell on it, Chandelure chimed quietly to him from his bedside table. The table clearly didn’t fit the Pokémon anymore, and in all honesty Ingo would have thought that simply hanging from the ceiling would have been much more comfortable for Chandelure. Yet the Pokémon hadn’t dared sleep further from Ingo than the distance between the short, squat table and the bed, as though afraid Ingo might vanish in the night again; Ingo couldn’t blame it for wanting to be so close.
As he moved over to his closet he cast a glance back at Chandelure again, noticing it was watching him with something like amusement in its eyes. “Oh, you saw me get out of bed and didn’t bother to interrupt me, hmm? I got dressed and everything, but nothing from you?”
Chandelure chimed again, and this time it sounded more like a laugh to Ingo than anything else. Ingo huffed again, but then smiled as best he could at it as he slipped on his nightwear. He padded over to the table’s side of the bed, where Chandelure rested with the majority of its limbs hanging over the edges, and crouched down in front of it. It watched him with its bright yellow eyes, the flame behind its glass body flickering small and dim, and he smiled at it, before placing a hand against its cool body.
“I missed you as well,” Ingo said, to which Chandelure twinkled something soft and happy before it slipped its eyes closed again to sleep.
Ingo watched the flame inside of it extinguish, indicating Chandelure had already drifted off, then he got back into bed. He turned his head towards the window in his room, and watched the stars twinkle outside for a couple of moments.
It was hard, sometimes, and occasionally the quiet made it harder. He easily got lost in his own head, and too many mornings had been spent panicking over where he was and how much time he’d wasted sleeping when he should have been performing duties for people and Pokémon who no longer walked the Earth. He still didn’t remember everything, his memories locked behind splitting pain and a terrible, impenetrable fog in his mind that only cleared in the rarest of minutes. But as he listened to the familiar sound of wind against the house he’d remembered only in lost moments back in Hisui, his dearest Pokémon next to him, he knew he’d always get through those sometimes, one way or another. He was home now, he was with the people he loved and who loved him back, with or without memories. As he fell asleep once more, he knew that he’d be alright, in the end.