He’d since come to terms with the stark difference between himself and his twin; it was something only a select few people would ever see, after all. If they’d decided they were comfortable enough to uncover their wings in front of someone-- which was to say Elesa-- odds were that person already knew how to tell the two of them apart, independent of color scheme. And really, if his wings had stayed black, what would that have meant for the Battle Subway’s aesthetic? The lighter color scheme had been a matter of practicality first and foremost; it was far easier to hide white feathers against a white coat than to try obscuring them against black.

Truthfully, he didn’t even remember much about the period of illness that had triggered the change. Mostly, he remembered their parents’ worried faces and how hot it had been, even when he repeatedly kicked off his covers. There were snatches of Ingo’s voice-- words too foggy to have withstood the test of time, but incredibly upset nonetheless-- and he knew that, when the sickness finally ran its course, he’d woken up to an otherwise empty bedroom. Any further detail had been lost, and by the end of it, his feathers had been dappled with a grey that, slowly, gave way to the white he now carried.

Oh, he’d been so upset back then. Their mother had explained to him that it was perfectly fine; the change didn’t mean he was sick, just that he had been and was better now. Their father had tried the angle that it should be a mark of pride, showing how resilient he’d been. Neither of those had been the issue, but, then again, Emmet was relatively certain he wouldn’t have accepted any argument tried on him. The only thing that he’d tolerated had been the mumbled, “Well I think they’re pretty.” as Ingo clumsily worked through the feathers, buried up to his little wrists.

To an extent, it had been his twin’s easy acceptance that soothed his mind, but also the limited scope. Emmet didn’t care what had caused the difference; he couldn’t understand the intricacies involved or why his illness had led to it, and he had no reason to be proud when he wasn’t even fully aware of how harsh the sickness had been.

An opinion, though-- that was easy. He didn’t have to follow Ingo’s logic; there didn’t even need to be any logic.  If Emmet wanted to, he could disagree, the way he liked tamato berries and Ingo didn’t, where neither of them was wrong.

Funny enough, Ingo eventually came around on tamatos, and Emmet came to accept his white wings.

Part of him, though, had never stopped wanting to match.

His hands combed through feathers, and he tried to figure out what entity might have overheard the long lived wish, which Pokemon might have deliberately misinterpreted it. Not like this-- he’d never wanted Ingo to be the one who retook their symmetry.

There was precious little dark amongst the light greys and whites, and that which existed was on its way out, damaged by time and claws. It was very, very clear that the one responsible for grooming his twin’s wings hadn’t been a human, but Sneasler. Feathers were nicked and tattered, but likely by no fault of the noble’s own; it couldn’t be easy to maneuver with such wickedly long claws. Even though he spotted a blood feather that had been cut and stemmed, it was still better than leaving the wings to wither.

The parts Ingo had been able to reach on his own were better, less frayed by several orders. That the amnesia hadn’t been able to erase the natural urge to preen was a comfort; though there was no evidence to suggest that the impairment might be reversible, that was one tiny bit of hope.

For all the physical damage that existed, plain to see, Emmet’s biggest concern was the shift in attitude. The broken feathers would molt and be replaced, and the color would eventually stabilize. What would be trickier-- far more akin to his own internal crisis as a small, confused child-- was the fact that Ingo had been doing his level best to avoid acknowledging that he had wings, and it… wasn’t difficult to tell why.

The Pearl Clan stared. There was an implicit understanding that the clan was a whole, and Emmet, at least, was an outsider. Maintaining any sort of relationship with them would have relied on blending in as much as possible and, therefore, hiding anything that stood out.

No wonder his brother’s feathers were in such a state. Stranded on the opposite side of the world and lost to time without even a working memory to fall back on, reliant on people who accepted him only once he buried a major facet of his being, and even then seemed wary of the mannerisms that made Ingo himself… Emmet had considered his side of their separation stressful-- he’d even joked, ruefully, to Elesa that the whole thing was going to give him grey feathers-- but not to this extent.

He thought back to the hazy days after his wings had turned, combing the depths of his memory for anything that might offer some measure of solace, and came up empty handed. The underlying issue here wasn’t a matter of cosmetics, it was that Ingo’s view of his wings had changed for the worse. He couldn’t write that off with senseless positivity, and any contrasting opinion he could offer would come across as an empty platitude at best.

There was something he could do, though-- maybe not here and now, but a step forward once they got home. He decided right then that he would stop covering his own wings up, would prove to Ingo that not everyone judged so harshly.

In the meantime, he let his hands sink into the dappled feathers, wrist deep.