All that was to say that Ingo’s hands had sustained a great deal of damage over the years, and it showed. They weren’t the only run-down parts he possessed, nor were they the worst affected, but they were, without a doubt, the easiest to spot.

 

He was incredibly grateful that, since his return to Unova, nobody seemed to have noticed-- even when he’d lacked anything to shield them beneath. He’d gotten away with hiding his free hand in a pocket while Emmet did a spectacular-- if unintentional-- job of obscuring the other from view, loathe to lose a point of contact for more than a few minutes. It had worked at the time, but there was no sense in tempting Sinnoh, and when Ingo had seen the opportunity to replace his long-departed gloves, he took it.

 

It might have seemed silly, to be so caught up in hiding scars that had since healed over, but Ingo had quickly realized that he couldn’t let them be seen.

 

He was certain that Emmet hadn’t meant to disclose so much, but his twin had been so caught up in his relief that he’d confessed to the fears he’d been living with all this time: that Ingo had been stranded somewhere, hurt and alone, beyond their reach.

 

Some half-buried instinct had risen from the back of his subconscious at the admission; Ingo couldn’t, under any circumstance, let his brother know that those fears had been the truth he’d lived through. Their family had already suffered through his disappearance, would need to cope with a man who was only half of what he should have been. There was no need for them to concern themselves with marks best left in the distant past.

 

Not everything could be hidden, of course, but that had also worked to his advantage. While he tried to highlight the positive and downplay any unfavorable facts, it was simply unrealistic to act as though none existed; he conceded that yes, he was underweight due to a shortage of supplies, and agreed that the subconscious slant of his back required correction. Acknowledging these points seemed to do the trick-- it gave his family specific points of interest to focus on and blurred the details he didn’t want them to notice.

 

There were days where keeping up the gambit became incredibly difficult-- where a story he’d been cajoled into telling veered too close to reality, where hidden injuries twinged in ways that were difficult to ignore, or he had to moderate his breathing and duck out of the way to rein in his racing heart-- but he grit his teeth as best he could and weathered it. It was nothing he hadn’t dealt with in the past; if he could do it then, he could keep it silent now. It was for a good cause.

 

On those days, the Pokemon were a godsend, all of them, regardless of how well he remembered their relationship: Chandelure’s soft crooning and gentle warmth, his bratty weighted blanket of a Gliscor, the ever-sensitive Eelektross with Baby Doll Eyes, Sneasler, unafraid to boss him around when he insisted on pushing himself, the list could go on for hours. And sometimes it was… nice to be fussed over. To admit that it hurt and accept help. In this regard, Pokemon were more practical than humans tended toward, and while they might worry, it was based in the here and now instead of directed toward things they couldn’t change.

 

So Ingo truly believed he was doing rather well. He was able to manage his bad days and use the good ones to reconnect with the life he’d mostly forgotten, causing minimal worry along the way. It was everything he’d set out to accomplish… undone by one simple factor:

 

The friends and family he was trying to shield from the harshness of Hisui began to look into it. For his sake. To better understand where he was coming from.

 

And there was nothing he could say to dissuade them without giving up the ruse.