Chapter Seventeen, Part Two
Roll Called
“I’d like to talk to you,” King said.
Unbelievable.
Isaac and King had formed something of a relationship over the shockingly little time they’d known each other but it still wasn’t like the bisharp to ever ask to do anything. And in the middle of the night, darkness so thick that it broke into the house and choked the faint blinking colours of resting electronics hiding like mice at the baseboards, wall mounts, on desks and nightstands that hadn’t been cleaned off by King yet.
He was sleeping on the floor. Trying to sleep on the floor. The bed had suddenly become uncomfortable—with the seance. The heat of his family grew to meet him. The bed reminded him of his father, mostly, and he wanted to feel happy on the floor instead of burning on the bed. Now he just had the inclination to lie spread eagle on the shockingly pristine white carpet and pretend to be a stain for a while, simple and stupid. He still couldn’t believe Hilda (and all her pokemon!) were here. And he’d get to talk with her. And he might get her autograph, if he remembered.
“I want to kill her,” King continued.
It barely registered. She could take him. And despite everything, the substance of the words were not what shocked Isaac the most. He craned his head up against the floor, the mass of his body hissing and tangling in the carpet. King had been acting strange recently. Now, he stood like a scolded child in the bedroom doorframe, open to a faint crack of light that split his helm, reflected off his blades. Cresselia slept somewhere in the bowels of the house. She snored, it turned out.
And Isaac said, “No,” and he looked back out the window. “Don’t do that,” Isaac said, again. As if King didn’t hear. He still just stood there. And Isaac was feeling a little more like himself, which wasn’t a great thing in this case. “Just… I mean, talk to her with me. I don’t know, what do you want anyway?” Then, a great pause. Isaac realising he’d lead himself somewhere weird. What did he want, really? He’d asked before, but didn’t understand the question back then. “Are you still trying to fight me?”
King didn’t answer. He was beside Isaac now, like when they’d first met. He almost expected the claw again, King ready to dig his heel into Isaac’s stomach and lord over him. He didn’t. His eyes shimmered under his helm and Isaac stared into them, uncertain. What was that, anger? Sadness? Happiness, even? Watching him try to force some emotion through was vaguely uncomfortable. Isaac shimmied over to make some space, his shadows clung faintly to the carpet. He patted the space beside him.
He didn’t expect much. His dad liked to do the same to all the kids. He’d shove himself in the corner of a couch, slide to the edge of his bed, reading glasses perched on his nose and legs crossed, and his hand would snake out from his paper on its own, two taps to the sheet. It was patronising though, wasn’t it? A cold pit sank into Isaac's chest and he waited for the reaction.
It worked, somehow. King settled down after. They didn’t touch. They had, hadn’t they? Before? At least once. Now, they didn’t touch. They laid like two corpses waiting at the morgue. Isaac was dead, he had to remind himself. He tilted his head, watching King watch the sky.
“What do you want, King?” He whispered, as if the volume would be the difference. It wasn’t. He said nothing.
They watched the stars for a while. Isaac supposed he should be sleeping, Cresselia recommended it and he couldn’t deny some of the manic edge had been sanded off of him after having a good rest and a complete breakdown. She also promised to help him dreamwalk (or nightmarewalk?) and do… whatever it was Darkrai was meant to do. Things felt busy now, but he had energy building somewhere inside him that he wanted to use.
But they could still afford to watch the stars. Isaac’s family normally lived just outside Castelia, in the cutouts of the skyscrapers so dark against the sky that they forced shapes out of it. Though even if they collapsed one of these days, the misty light emanating from the city roots fought the night’s attempts to provide its own anyways. It seemed simpler in Undella, sharp pricks up in the fabric letting the light in, not a tear, not a smear but so precise and defined and simple, you could pick out each star from the others and from the smear of the galaxy and even in the galaxy each individual piece looked so perfect and content. Light pollution didn’t make much sense as pollution until he had some sort of attachment to Undella and could recognise the murk of the city and the way the greasy trails of buildings and cars smeared not only chemicals but light and noise across the landscape. But maybe that was all Darkrai speaking—this love of the night he didn’t remember before. He thought he could hear the stars singing, too, as Darkrai. New eyes helped him pick out the dots and the spring insects vibrated against the window in harmony with them.
As Isaac hummed to himself and hopefully to the universe, claws clasped over his chest, feeling the complete lack of a heartbeat, he thought he didn’t need King to answer anymore. Maybe he understood or maybe he didn't need to. Maybe there was some pollution there, in the house, and sitting there, happy for once, not on the verge of falling apart, he could pull the pieces apart and make them all seem very simple from far away. That was what King saw, in his little kingdoms of stuff. They had to make sense to him in the same way.
“When you first got here you said you wanted to die,” Isaac reasoned.
King said nothing. Isaac watched him. The way his pincers moved, strange parts folding and unfolding in his mouth, over and over, not making any sounds but wanting. His body was remarkably silent. Isaac was so unused to the harsh grinding still, he always tensed on instinct hearing him walk into the room. That was pollution, too.
“That’s it, isn’t it?”
Nothing. This is what trainers must feel like reaching some sort of breakthrough. He imagined this was Hilda after catching a new pokemon, connecting in their hearts, taking a paw in her hand and finally reaching out, laying down the law, finishing a regimen, whatever else until she and Atlas, Sepira, Kid, Butch, Ace, Giran, shared a smile or whatever counted as one in their species. In King, the breakthrough was stillness and silence.
“Did you want to fight me, King? Really, did you? Do you now? Do you want to fight her?”
Nothing.
Just nothing.
“I’ll kill her,” King said. He hesitated. “I’ll talk to her.”
Isaac understood.
“We’ll probably have to clean this place for… well, family. They’ll think someone broke in.” Isaac eyed the walls. Strands of wallpaper curled off the wall like birch bark, the baseboards dense with drywall dust. He felt high—it didn’t bother him so much if he didn’t imagine his mother’s face on the wall, frowning through the gashes. Nevermind that fixing this didn’t seem possible.
Isaac sighed and sank against the carpet.
“And we can do something about your… mental thing. I’ll try, at least.”
But King didn’t respond.
Isaac did manage to get some sleep. His mind swirled, the same nightmare as before but without Cresselia. King was there, standing beside him. He felt nothing. He stood there on the dock at the end of the world and Darkrai’s words felt like nothing at all.
~(0)~
The red building’s windows reflected Midas’ harsh scowl back at him. In some moments he glanced to his side and was struck with confusion spying the black copy beside him but he could ignore the existential dread Aeimlou filled him with if only he could distract himself with plotting against these horrible ants threatening to overturn the correct order of things.
In some moments, he felt bad for the pitiful, confused expression that nearly constantly decorated Aeimlou’s pointy face—he truly was like a child. Which tempered the threat he posed to Midas but not enough for Midas to stop leading him on. After all, the promise of power seemed enough to draw a lost chick like him and he was certainly too stupid to figure out that Midas would be giving him little of it for as long as possible. He seemed hopeless, all things considered, not fit to teleport let alone cast illusions. It was a wonder he could hover, Midas himself took a couple months.
Hopefully Aeimlou would fall easily into a thrall-like state and would not worry too urgently about anything enough that Midas could worry for him.
Though in his own worry, Aeimlou seemed particularly insistent on not popping that blob he called a master like a boil.
No, he said, and various forms of it. Frequently, from behind, as they hovered around the pokemon center, cloaked in the clouds until darkness fell and any stragglers vacated the earth and crawled into their hideous structures.
Odd. Midas would not normally care, but the fundamental order he believed in was that no lesser creature would command a legend regardless of how irritating and pathetic that legend was. He could not conceive why his lesser clone would tug at his wings in this way, or nip at his fins in the clouds, or wait for him to rest and cruise beside him trying to mirror his scowl. Midas had tried many times to vanish in the mists and the sunbeams but even using his powers, Aeimlou proved tragically adept at picking him out.
He had done little beyond annoy, for now. Thankfully silent now behind the red building, face cracked over the eaves and spying into the human room as they settled down. Shadows fell, the moon cut a circle out of them against the wall and Midas worried his pristine, beautiful, white feathers would stand out too much against the background of the night. To some degree, he envied the cut of black feathers Aeimlou had for himself but he despised that thought as soon as he came about it—he was for the sea, not the night, and really the night was a plague in many respects. He had nothing to be ashamed of.
He smirked and scoffed against his own reflection and Aeimlou gave him another worried look.
He knew how these things worked, generally. While he tried to avoid human structures, there had been times in the past he’d wandered close and become fascinated. His watery memories helped him along. He’d spied the face of a human boy, a creaking smile suddenly captured behind a door. A loud clap. His tiny Latios heart hammered in his chest and a great emptiness made itself known, but then a slick slide at the top window, the boy there. The moment paused. Midas focused in and beyond the smell of lilac and newly wet dirt, rain, waves drowning him. The boy’s fingers were so soft against his feathers, the crooks. Then, the flesh cradled against a strange latch inside, a branch torn from a tree and hooked down, the latch folded up against his push and the window slid up, too. The clamour of music destroyed the boy’s figure in ripples but his smile remained.
Midas shook off the memory. By the time he came to, the window had been opened and he drifted in numbly. Aeimlou followed close behind, murmuring something in the back of his mind.
There, a human habitation. Evenly measured walls, two full, soft beds that pampered the soul perhaps too much. Midas had many theories about that, about all these things that entitle the humans. Scattered bits of evidence were scattered around the room and among her team of pokemon. Some Midas recognised by species, if not name, though Hilda had likely told him before—that serperior looked especially dangerous curled around a scrafty and mienshao. Midas glanced over them and over the pair of humans in two separate beds. He finally spotted that reuniclus slumped in a chair in the corner of the room, his green gel fracturing the image of the green chair behind him, the image a confusing mess of colours and lines in the dark. It made him pick up the pattern, little white flowers blooming through him. Midas smirked. His rolling waves of memory had given way to calm ripples of sleep, their minds in the room lapping against each other and then him, gently. He would try to be stealthy.
He lingered. Not unsure. Certainly not unsure. That Aeimlou had taken pace beside him and his wandering claws had began touching him again—his fins, his wings, tracing alongside with an unseen threat and drawing a shiver.
No, Aeimlou said again, with more force behind his psychic. Blistering and shaking, great wheals bubbling up between them and waiting. His eyes turned sharp in a way Midas did not expect.
“You’re like a child,” Midas hissed, careful to stay quiet. “This is for you.”
I will not allow it.
“What can you do? You haven’t even given a reason.”
What reason? He has exerted his right to live. You have not given a reason either.
Midas scoffed.
“Oh joy. To explain something so simple—”
Can you two let us sleep?
Midas hissed again, hearing the echo localised in their half of the room and immediately feeling whose presence that was. Exactly the wrong creature to wake up. Atlas shook on the chair, rising by barely an inch. Hilda also twitched on the bed beside him, one arm raising up and tired eyes blinking from under a thin sheet. Thankfully the rest kept asleep, light snoring filling the room. Midas did not want chaos.
“Ah, fuck off Midas…” Hilda groaned. She rolled over onto her back, eyes squinting through a jungle of hair. They fluttered in a way that made it unclear how awake she was.
And she would ask you not to wake up Kloe, Atlas said, pointing to the other bed. Midas didn’t bother to follow his attention. He must force a challenge with his eyes, hoping to kill this creature with just a stare—he knew pokemon who could and he fairly envied them.
“Who could possibly care about the sleep of a human? You. Enslaver,” Midsa hissed, hardly able to contain himself. But he could feel Atlas already prepared. A wall of force over him and the rest of the room and even toeing around Aeimlou as the other Latios blinked and pawed at the air.
Sometimes I feel as if I angered the universe in some way. Why must everything exist to remind me of myself?
“I challenge you. To the death,” Midas hissed.
No. Go away.
Midas cut his teeth; Atlas’ sunken, exhausted tone did not fool him and although he’d said it, he thought a formal battle to be quite unnecessary. All this fury begged to be let out and the concept of waiting did not register. He pulled at the air with his claws, keeping a steady hover to hide the swirling energy against his stomach. It trailed through his feathers at the belly, faint pink and bloody as though a wound seeping into water and he could feel it leaking through him and taking a pull of the anger with it—the form of this great injustice felt so heavy even floating there under his claws.
Midas— Atlas warned. And he paused. Wondered. Focused. Closed his eyes and let the forms in the room turn blurry and pink behind his eyes. Aeimlou echoed the same from beside him. Midas, Midas, They sounded so faintly like Mew.
“Just fight him. Honestly,” Hilda said.
Oh, so we’re training again?
“Let’s not do this right now, Atlas. If you won’t I’ll get someone who will. Could kill him. We’ve got another one, after all.” A limb raised off the dull void of a bed, pointing at Aiemlou.
Midas did not dignify the threat or the way Aeimlou seemed suddenly uncomfortable beside him. He reached for the weakness in Atlas’ psychic and felt it—near a pinprick right before him, the psychic energy in his hand licking at it until a faint burst of pain rippled from their connection and Midas’ flooded in, now humid in the room and the barrier—and Atlas’ presence—dropped from Midas’ mind. He had to crack his eyes open to see him.
Atlas seemed so stupid down there, in his chair as the humans and particularly pathetic pokemon did. And stupid as all reuniclus looked. Midas hadn’t noticed and certainly not in previous meetings when they were mixed in with other legends and even the weak pokemon seemed to have some of that pressure rub off on them. His wide, gaping mouth only twitching in the glove of gel, eyes little more than seeing-spots without recognition. A doll sat on a chair. Midas hated feeling the breadth of his mind in the connection. An ocean truly, and unfortunately.
Letting go came easy, his own eyes wide at the crick in his wrist from a mere twitch. The room filled with pink light. Silence, though the sounds of horns and choirs should have risen to meet his action.
And as he opened his eyes, he expected to see a fine mist.
“What?” Midas blinked. The room stayed as it was. Hilda groaned against the light but splayed out lazily. The rest of her pokemon may have shifted or twitched but showed little sign they understood. Atlas held his hands high, faintly singed a harsh red against the side of them, all of Midas’ anger a pure pink curdling in his palms until it vanished and Atlas’ unreadable face peered back.
Midas didn’t bother to remake the connection, though he could feel Atlas tapping on his skull. He screwed up his face, feathers puffing out.
“Fine. I suppose I’ll take up your offer and return tomorr—”
In the haze of the after, Midas failed to feel the pressure beside him until a pinch of claws dug past the feathers of his neck. Only a line of pricks, but tension steeled him. He blinked. Aeimlou wore a face he’d seen frequently on still days in the pond.
On instinct, Midas sank into the claws and felt them as if they were a part of him—Aiemlou a part of his person. Jittery, animal heartbeat and thoughts of Nononono layered over leaveleaveleave. And in the buildup of psychic energy and the sudden thought of a still pond doubling, Midas should’ve predicted what happened.
He did not have the presence of mind to say more than, “Surely you couldn’t,” and gape as he vanished alongside Aeimlou with a sharp pop.
~(0)~
Huh. Hilda supposed some problems solved themselves.
We should be worried, Atlas said. The rattle in his psychic spoke to the damage he took from an admittedly powerful attack. Silent, though. Not another soul woke up.
His ashen burns must look worse than they felt, because Atlas said nothing about them. Hilda could sense the hands of energy pulling at the remains Midas left behind from teleporting.
“Well, what are you gonna do? Can’t follow. I’m more worried about Midas,” Hilda grumbled. And Atlas grumbled too, knowing she was right. She shuffled in her bed, bare, itchy pokemon center sheets sticking to her arms as she rolled over.
I shouldn’t have left them alone in the first place.
“Then just go. Honestly. We’re not having the same talk as in the bus—if you listened to me then.”
Atlas grew silent. She might’ve thought he teleported if she sat still and closed her eyes and let sleep finally take her. But she sat up slightly, pillow shoved into the small of her back. She watched him, wondering what that churning in the air was.
Of course. If I listened to you.
“Shut the fuck up.”
But he continued.
Listening is the issue. Sometimes, I can’t help but imagine what my life would be if you left me in Nimbasa.
Hila sat back down again. Rolled over so he couldn’t see her face. She didn’t know what to think of that. Not the first time she’d heard it but there was no wistful sigh there. No pining for family. Just prickly thoughts. Maybe he was pining, but for the thistles and poison ivy. Teenaged thoughts.
“Sure. What a life,” she mumbled.
I’d gather my family, we’d move through Nimbasa—perhaps we wouldn’t bother with it—and onto Castelia. I’d gather more, in the heart of the city. This is all very naive, of course. But I imagine I wouldn't be so cynical. The city would not open up to me but I would learn and I would force it, eventually. As N tried and failed. I would make it to the league…
What a terrible pause. Hilda crawled her arms up behind her pillow, tangled them with her hair. It’s why she tried to sleep at night, rather than think. All these terrible pauses.
“Really, shut the fuck up.”
But Atlas plowed on.
—It disturbs me that I’ve become like this. I feel restrained. I don’t like being cynical. I don’t like being angry, but it’s what the gods gave me.
The gods. Certainly not her, though she knew what he meant. All of a sudden she was wrangling her hair, fists in tight balls. Her knuckles dug against her ears until the faint sounds of the AC humming crackled and turned to static.
“Right. I’ve ruined you. Given you fucking nothing good, just turned you to shit like everything else in my life.”
Hilda—
“No. We saw. We saw your family, all happy staying in Nimbasa, swimming in the river just the dumbest, laziest fish, ‘do you think about going somewhere else? Is there anything outside the forest, anything at all?’, ‘no, of course not’,” Hilda huffed. She slumped back into bed, too tired to be truly angry but reaching out for it, really, ripping her hand from her hair and taking along strands, slapping the night table and groping in the dark, “I don’t— I hate that I’m guilt tripping you, of all people. But you’d just be there. Let’s not go crazy, here, you’d be there and you wouldn’t care about anything. You wouldn’t go to Castelia. You wouldn’t be angry enough— I, I’m sorry. You’re a teenager and I can barely remember that. I’m sorry.”
She sniffled. Tried to cover it with a cough. Her throat cracked as she started again.
“You make your own problems. I gave you what I said I would. I’d let you go. You could go to Castelia. You could go to the league, right now. You could make it far. You could— fuckin’ pick up where N left off, I dunno. You could do it, but you don’t.”
You’d stop me.
That cut her. More than anything.
“I wouldn’t,” She snapped. Whisper-shouting at the wall, Kloe’s sleeping lump twitching at the hitch in her voice. “You know I wouldn’t. I don’t even know where your ball is, what would I do? Beg you? It’s you, Atlas. It's all you.”
She breathed hard against the mattress. Imagined the soft flesh of Sepira comforting her when they were alone and starving like they used to be. She’d have let her go, then, too. She would’ve.
Atlas tried to construct some image—a new presence in the room, old scents of the forest and blots of sunlight—but Hilda needed more time.
“I— I got the abusive stepdad, Atlas, and I had to leave and survive. And you just got me and I gave you whatever and you didn’t need anything but to become stronger for me. I’m sorry. What could I have done for you? Hurt you? Made you hate me more? Hate all people more, would that give you what you want?”
In the break, she saw the image. It wasn’t in the room. It never was, even though she always expected that. A little river curved gently at her feet, either side disappearing into the trees. The banks were so full with moss, tiny frogs watched her from their little frog cities and all the stones were smooth and glistening from the belly of the bank. The water was so clear she couldn’t even see her reflection. She dipped her feet in and saw nothing but ripples and the cold hands of water rolled up her shins. The stones were softer than they had any right to be. The river numbed her flesh.
Atlas would not apologise in words. Once he tried to write her a poem and he seemed so guilty about it she hesitated to say anything and stood around, unsure. He never wrote her anything again. She liked the images more anyways.
“You should leave. Take Aeimlou with you,” she whispered so low she couldn’t be certain he heard. “You’re not happy. One day I’ll just end up forcing you.”
It will hurt you.
“It will. It’ll hurt you, too.”
He didn’t need to say anything. The wistfulness set in, a cloud settling over them. The mist from the river.
Well, he mumbled, I suppose you are in the training mindset again.
She snorted.
“I hope not. I don’t like to starve. And teenagers shouldn’t be responsible for any living things.”
Atlas laughed, voice rippling in her head.
I know you miss some of it. It’s not like you were happy at home.
“Already told you to fuck off twice.”
I suppose I’ll just use it as an excuse, then. I’ll offer my advice to a mentally unwell teenager, as I once did.
Hilda resented the way rolling her eyes made her feel about that. As if she was the only mentally unwell teenager in the room.
Call your mother, he said, and be nicer to your pokemon. I suppose Juniper, too, and Kloe, and Isaac—
“I’ll call her. You kill Midas and I’ll call her.” He nodded. She got it. She already knew. It was nice to hear him tell her.
Yes, trainer, he said like he used to. She didn’t know whether he was being patronising or not, but she wouldn’t risk another eyeroll for her dignity.
She really should call her mom but she couldn’t promise much else. She’d already planned to be a bitch to Isaac, anyway.
They managed to settle back in after that. Hilda had a nightmare. She couldn’t tell if it was because of Danial or Darkrai’s influence, but it was her being taken by Zekrom, up in the clouds, their conversation ripped from their mouths by the wind.
