Dawn had played a lot of video games with Barry in her youth. Games with magical fairy-inspired guides or mysterious waifs that teased a player with breadcrumbs of information as the plot progressed. Games in which the tutorial held your hand a little too much, or whose advice was obtuse to the point of uselessness.
She’d never expected to find herself smack dab in the middle of one such setting, aided by a ghost who couldn’t have clashed with the landscape any more if he’d tried-- but that was perfectly fine, since nobody else could see him.
It was counter to everything she’d learned from the media form when her quest ended-- with Volo and Giratina both defeated at the crest of the Spear Pillar-- and nothing happened on that front. Usually there was some kind of goodbye at the conflict’s end, whether tearful or long awaited, but no; Dawn continued to live her life in Hisui, dutifully filling out her Pokedex as Galaxy Team’s most haunted surveyor.
Not that she wanted the Conductor to leave her! He’d been the single biggest factor making her stay bearable-- someone to commiserate to in matters she couldn’t discuss openly, who’d stuck with her when Jubilife had wiped their hands of her, the only one who actually knew her name. It just… it didn’t resolve anything. They were no closer to understanding why she and the Nobles could see him when others couldn’t. They didn’t have any idea why he was in Hisui when everything about him screamed that he was from somewhere-- and likely, somewhen-- else entirely. They didn’t even have the first inkling who he was or what his name might have been. The most they could work from was a stringent adherence to the concept of ‘safety first’ and the railway jargon he couldn’t help but pepper into every other sentence.
Hence her name for him. He’d acted as her guide through Hisui, he talked like a rail enthusiast, he was the Conductor.
Or Ducky, if she was feeling… well, ducky.
And even now-- even with the Pokedex complete and Arceus defeated-- the status quo had not changed. Sure, she was back in her time of origin, but she wasn’t home; she was in a foreign land again, still visibly a fish out of water as she listened to the guiding words of a man nobody else could see.
At least back then she’d had a baseline as to the native Pokemon, but not here.
Fortunately, the Conductor was inexplicably knowledgeable whenever she asked after a Pokemon or started down a dead end. It had made sense in Hisui-- he’d spent two years as an invisible observer prior to her arrival, so of course he could offer helpful insights-- but didn’t add up in Unova. It seemed to indicate that he’d been here at some point, but, of course, he couldn’t confirm or deny.
They would get to the bottom of it, Dawn decided. Just as soon as they made it somewhere with a Pokemon Center.
Unfortunately, they’d landed in front of a remote shrine, and the only town they’d passed through thus far boasted limited services within what was clearly some manner of battle facility. While she didn’t doubt she could compete, fighting her way up a giant tree was not on Dawn’s agenda for the time being; the Conductor seemed oddly interested, though, which marked it as a site to revisit at a later point in time.
It could wait until she made it somewhere she could call home, though.
Eventually, after a bridge, a close call on a rocky cliff face, and being steered away from a forest, they made it to a city.
And not just a city-- a massive city! It was so far removed from anything in Hisui that it wasn’t even funny. Dawn didn’t even know if anywhere back in modern-day Sinnoh was of a similar scale. Maybe-- maybe-- it was roughly comparable to Veilstone, with its department store, or the bustling port of Sunyshore, but even compared to the most lively Sinnoan cities, this place still felt enormous.
It was overwhelming, and, even though he tried to help, the Conductor’s innate sense of direction led them not to the Pokemon Center Dawn had been hoping for, but some kind of public transport. She shouldn’t have been surprised; ever since they’d gotten here, he’d been able to drift through the landscape with a vague sense of recollection, but any specific requests were too far out of his ephemeral knowledge base.
And, so, she’d made a mistake. As she’d often done when studying-- or fleeing from-- Pokemon, she’d asked him to scout ahead, to see if he’d be able to find their end destination without the limits imposed by the physical world. Dawn hadn’t counted on just how much busier the city was, how much harder it might be to pick a person out of the omnipresent crowds or how damningly easy it would be to drift along them, unaware of what she was doing. Before she knew it, she wasn’t outside the row of shops they’d diverged before, but nestled among patrons of a fairground.
She didn’t know how she’d gotten here. She didn’t know how to get back.
She tried once, in vain, to call for her friend, but it was immediately swallowed by the din of modern life.
For the first time since that emphatic promise that she wouldn’t be alone in Hisui, Dawn wanted to cry.
---
The Conductor didn’t know much, but he knew proper procedure if one was lost in an unfamiliar environment. It hadn’t done him much good when he’d awoken in Hisui, absent everything that made a human human, but better late than never, he supposed.
He’d been unable to locate a Pokemon Center within a reasonable amount of time, and returned to where he’d split from Dawn to find her gone. Though he hated phasing through other people, he hadn’t had much of a choice as he sifted through the crowd, trying to work out where she might have been shunted to the side. When night began to fall and he hadn’t had any luck, he was forced to conclude that the strategy wouldn’t lead to any meaningful result; while common sense dictated that one was more likely to regroup where they’d lost their companion, he dearly hoped that Dawn would have better sense than to return here after dark.
So he’d done the next best thing: he gone back to seeking out a Pokemon Center. It was the one landmark they’d been looking for since arriving here, and what Dawn had specifically asked him to find for her. If it was so important, surely she’d look for it on her own.
If he could find it, there was a good chance he’d be able to locate her, as well.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t entirely sure what a Pokemon Center was. There was a lingering sense of asylum that he couldn’t explain, but he didn’t know what purpose it served, beyond being a place Dawn could theoretically contact her family. He’d been told he would know it by the red roof, and while the darkness didn’t make navigating by color alone ideal, the streets here were brighter than even Jubilife Village’s after sunset. While he hadn’t found success before, given enough time, he could do this.
He could and he did. But there was still no sign of Dawn.
After some observation, he concluded that a Pokemon Center was a place to rest and heal. With a further hour’s study, his understanding grew to include the fact that people-- specifically people who traveled with Pokemon-- could find shelter here for the night. It was entirely possible that Dawn really was here, and the late hour had forced her to find a place to sleep.
While there was nothing stopping him from searching to see if that was true, he absolutely could not, under any circumstance, trespass on another’s space uninvited.
And so he waited in the facility’s main body, watching the trickle of people who sought assistance in the deepest hour of night-- watching as it opened into a stream of bodies departing for the day. He stayed stationed there, where he could pick out every face as they exited the temporary lodging, until morning had well and truly passed.
With a sinking heart, he realized his companion might not have made it here.
He didn’t know what to do.
---
The last several days had been incredibly hectic for Emmet, in spite of the fact that he’d spent exactly half of one shift at Gear Station.
It could largely be chalked up to the fact that, midway through said shift, an anomaly had been reported along the green line. Isadore and Ramses had been sent out to survey the area, but only made it a handful of minutes before hastily calling in, reporting that Emmet needed to get over there, asap.
That was when fear had first clenched his heart, and it had yet to relinquish its grasp.
Because, when he’d arrived onsite, he’d found exactly what he’d afraid of: his brother was laying, limp and unresponsive, along the tunnel floor. In the moment, it hadn’t mattered that he looked none the worse for wear-- only that he was still and silent.
With the gentle rise and fall of Ingo’s chest, however, hope managed to slip through anxiety’s hold on Emmet.
That had been days prior. There had been no change in the time since, no indication that his twin would wake, and with doubt constricting his every move, Emmet was beginning to resent the space that tiny bit of hope occupied. He’d had days to pose every question imaginable, from the practical to the grandiose-- what was going on, why couldn’t his brother wake up, why would the universe return him only to keep them apart?
So when that same universe forwarded a message from the local precinct-- non-emergency, but concerning the outdated missing persons case-- Emmet had had enough of asking questions that might never see an answer. He tasked Haxorus with guard-dragon duty and marched down to meet the responding officer and her witness in the waiting room.
The girl was vaguely familiar-- in a way that neither he or Ingo would likely work out until they pooled their information-- but it seemed the same couldn’t be said for him. Her eyes widened the instant she realized who she was looking at and a hand gravitated toward her mouth. Officer Jenny didn’t touch as she steered her away, to an aside room, and Emmet had to grant her points for that, at least.
Dawn’s story was this: she’d been stranded in Unova with only a friend at her side. They’d been lost for days-- “kind of”-- and, upon reaching Nimbasa City, had gotten separated. The kicker was that, once she’d found safe harbor at the station and was asked to describe her missing companion, she’d described Ingo. Perfectly. She hadn’t used his name-- hadn’t even known his name-- but every detail she included matched.
Only that wasn’t possible. If she’d been in Unova for longer than a week, maybe, but for the first time in years, Emmet knew exactly where his brother was. He couldn’t have been wandering around with Dawn when he was out cold in a hospital bed. And how could they have been lost if it was Ingo with her? The two of them worked in regional transportation, for the dragons’ sake; the idea that he could’ve gotten lost so close to home was laughable.
When he voiced this skepticism, Dawn went quiet. Understandable-- he’d all but kneecapped her story-- but, instead of insisting, she took up the burden of asking questions. Why was he here, in a hospital? How long had his brother been here? And for what? Did they know why Ingo wouldn’t wake up?
He kept his smile in place, but was keenly aware of the edge to it. Emmet might have excused himself shortly thereafter, if Officer Jenny hadn’t stepped away to answer a call at the same moment.
“He’s not there.” Dawn said bluntly, as soon as the door shut. “That’s why-- it’s just his body. The rest of him was helping me.”
Emmet raised a single, doubtful brow.
Frustrated, she set a hand on either side of her bandana and briskly ruffled her hair, “That’s kind of what I thought when we met, you know? That he was a ghost. I guess I was kinda right.”
“A ghost.” Emmet echoed, and while there was still a dubious hint to the twist of his lips, his mind kicked into overdrive.
Dawn didn’t seem to catch onto the fact. “It didn’t explain a ton, but that was the only way some stuff made any sense. Ghost Pokemon can disappear and float through stuff, so-- uh?”
She stopped abruptly, waylaid by the pokeball Emmet set on the tabletop between them.
“This is Chandelure.” He said without preface, “She is Ingo’s partner Pokemon. She is also a ghost. I believe she may be able to test your theory.”
“Chandelure,” Dawn echoed, testing the syllables, wondering, “I think he remembered her. A little.”
There was a beat of silence. Dawn winced at her gaffe.
“Explain.”
Looking firmly off to the side, Dawn’s hands found one another, tangling together nervously, “That’s the other thing that made sense if he was a ghost. He didn’t really… know anything about himself? I didn’t even get his name until Officer Jenny showed me the missing person flier. The only things that ever came back were someone he battled next to and a fire type Pokemon. I thought it was just… part of being dead or something.”
“He is not dead,” Emmet snapped for the umpteenth time, more out of habit than because she needed to be told.
“Yeah,” She said, immediately, but with an unexpected softness to her voice, “Yeah, I think you’re right.”
---
He hadn’t meant to become so thoroughly misplaced. Truthfully, he hadn’t.
It was just… there was a Pokemon.
That didn’t explain it satisfactorily; there were Pokemon everywhere, of all shapes and sizes, but not like this. Some rang a distant bell, but this one-- this one was so achingly familiar. The wrought iron limbs and perfect globe of its body, the flickering purple flame at its core-- he’d suffered a vague recollection of it, once, but the experience had been difficult to weather.
Parts seemed… different, but not necessarily wrong, and the Conductor had found himself trailing after it without quite meaning to. Like all others, the Pokemon didn’t acknowledge his presence-- however, its flame grew subtly brighter as they lingered together, and with time, more appeared. Not lanterns, like the first Pokemon, but smaller, waxy white bodies that shared the same gentle glow.
The Conductor had no recollection of these Pokemon, but he was certain one of their ilk had been important to him. Precious, even.
Slowly, the midday sun waned, and with it the afternoon he’d wasted. He knew he should depart immediately-- he still had to locate Dawn-- but at the same time, he didn’t know how to turn away from something that resonated so strongly with his missing memory.
Before he knew it, dusk had begun to fall.
It was hard to notice beyond the haze that settled over his mind.
---
The instant she began to manifest, Chandelure was off like a shot. Without a word of command or clarification, she phased through the wall and, when the humans-- tragically solid-- didn’t immediately follow, cried from somewhere out in the waiting room.
For his part, Emmet had already leapt up and was reaching for the door, but Dawn spent a moment maneuvering around the side room’s furniture.
The ghost barely waited for them to catch up, swiveling impatiently in the air until she’d deemed them ‘close enough’ and resumed her mad dash through the city. It was only by virtue of having lived in Nimbasa for so long that Emmet had even the slightest edge on navigation, and, frankly, he was a little surprised that Dawn was managing to keep up so well.
Even when properly lit, the side streets could be treacherous past nightfall, but Chandelure kept them safe twice over: her light illuminating any hidden faults in the walkways, and her single minded determination scaring any potential encounters away before they could challenge, question or mug either of the humans charging after her.
Chandelure only began to slow as they reached the edges of the park beyond Gear Station. She started to twirl in the air again and, for a moment, it seemed that it might have been a signal that they’d arrived, but as she drew higher into the air, it became apparent that she was taking a moment to reorient herself, to pinpoint her station now that they’d crossed the bulk of the distance. Then she froze, shrieked in outrage, and took off again, toward a cluster of slightly-distant, twinkling lights.
Litwick, Emmet realized as the shapes grew beyond their pastel flames, led by a single Lampent. Quite suddenly, he understood Chandelure’s umbrage.
While the folktales were greatly exaggerated, they were built upon a kernel of truth: feral Litwick led people astray in order to feed upon their energy, wasting time weaving convoluted circles while their prey wasted away. And the Lampent… well, perhaps its presence shouldn’t have been a surprise, given the circumstance. They were, after all, renowned for haunting cities in search of fuel.
The younger Pokemon scattered with Chandelure’s furious arrival, but the secondary form was slightly more stubborn; it crackled back, indignant, refusing to bow to its fully evolved kin.
And between them was the object of their animosity.
Even more ethereal than the ghost Pokemon, he knelt on the ground, shoulders slumped from exhaustion as he raised his head to look from one to the other. Neither of the lanterns acknowledged the motion, fixated on one another as they were, their hissing raising from a simmer into the boiling keen of a kettle.
The Lampent flared brighter in challenge, and what might have been the dimmest flicker of recognition was burnt away from the form below.
That would not stand.
“Chandelure,” Emmet called, and she immediately shifted her arms, anticipating his orders.
If the Lampent wouldn’t depart on its own, they would simply have to make it leave. Disruptive passengers and sore losers could only hope to find themselves ejected from the platform with merciless efficiency-- so if her Shadow Ball landed just a heartbeat before the directions could feasibly reach her, if the attack seemed ever so slightly more vicious than usual, what could be said, other than that she was verrry good at her job?
Lampent-- conscious only because Chandelure wanted it gone-- fled as soon as it regained its bearings.
In the crisis’s wake, neither trainer or Pokemon seemed quite sure how to proceed-- so it was Dawn, more accustomed to dealing with this phenomena, who stepped up.
Or, rather, ran up and fell gracelessly to her own knees.
“Conductor?” She asked, waving a hand in front of the spectral image of his twin, “Ducky?”
“Ingo.” Emmet said, more firmly, and the man in question blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision.
Following Dawn’s lead, he knelt down so they were on the same level. Chandelure looked between them-- the two of them, oddly, Emmet and Dawn-- and gave a low, uncertain whistle as she lowered her hovering height.
Though they were mere feet apart, her searching eyes couldn’t seem to land on her trainer.
As he looked back to the apparition before him, Emmet found himself on the cusp of reaching out and had to fight the instinct, clasping his hands together to still them-- but the motion, small though it was, seemed enough to draw Ingo’s attention. With a bleary, barely-there focus, his eyes fixed, first, on the folded hands, and then on their owner’s face.
“Emmet?” He managed, so faint that even a whisper might overtake it.
Heart pounding, all but strangled by the last-ditch effort of fear digging in its nails, Emmet beamed at him.
Woozy but determined, Ingo veered closer. One fist uselessly braced against the ground, he leaned into his twin’s space and reached up, hesitating only when the reality of the situation seemed to dawn on him.
There was a small, almost disappointed, “Ah,” and Emmet decided to hell with it, unlacing his hands to meet the gesture, intangible though its terminal was.
Chandelure let out a muted chime, looking from Emmet to where his hand lingered in the air, and then the same distance opposite him. Her eyes were still unable to hone in on her human, but she was trying. She was trying so hard.
They would fix this, so she could finally see him again. So Emmet could finally hold him again. So he could finally live again.
---
Haxorus’s tail gave several restrained wags as they returned to the hospital room. Gentle though the thumps were, Emmet still grimaced on behalf of whomever happened to occupy the space below them and hurried over to her, ruffling her snout and praising her for keeping watch.
He wasn’t sure how, given that his brother didn’t currently match up with the physical plane, but he was keenly aware of Ingo hovering by his shoulder, curiously looking her up and down. It was difficult to fault him for honing in on the six foot tall dragon but, at the same time, the thought that he didn’t notice his own body laying half a room away was… amusing, to a point.
It was less amusing to consider where the inattentiveness might have stemmed from-- the pack of ghosts siphoning off his life force, or whatever had reduced him to this state in the first place.
Emmet recalled Haxorus and turned to where their attention was needed, only to come to an abrupt halt when the motion put him nose to nose with Ingo, who startled and moved back.
“Can I help you?” He asked, entertained, to an answer of averted eyes and sheepish, “Not used to anyone else seeing me...”
That would certainly be a track they’d need to clear, in time. For now, however, their task was making it a possibility in the first place.
Where Ingo had failed to spot the room’s focal point, Dawn had not; she idled at the foot of the bed awkwardly, nibbling on her bottom lip. Every so often, she’d tear her eyes away to glance at the both of them, as if reminding herself that this was legitimate. Emmet offered a level smile and stepped nearer, assuming his usual vigil. Automatically, he took the hand laying atop the blanket, exactly where he’d let it rest before.
Almost apprehensive, Ingo drew nearer, inspection of his own body cut short by frequent looks in Emmet’s direction.
Finally, he said, “We’re twins?”
There was a beat of silence.
“Are you just realizing this?”
He opened his mouth to little effect, and snapped it shut in favor of pointing-- to Emmet with one hand and his own still form with the other.
“Yes,” Emmet said, voice deliberately flat to mask his amusement, “I have been made well aware.”
“Give him a break,” Dawn said, and in spite of her words, she was clearly trying to tamp down on a grin of her own, “Ghosts can’t use mirrors.”
Ingo ducked his head, embarrassed and-- perhaps simply to give himself an out-- reached for the hand in Emmet’s grasp. He vanished instantly; for just a heartbeat, Emmet’s anxiety gained ground again, but then there was a sputtering cough and the limp hand instinctively began to curl.
“I had forgotten about breathing.” Ingo wheezed, just in time for Chandelure to complicate the matter by knocking the breath out of him.
“That is concerning.” Emmet said, and then proceeded to do nothing as she kept him pinned, secure in the knowledge that her cheer meant nothing was actually wrong.
Chandelure, spectral angel that she was, spent only a few moments there, then looked up at Emmet with big eyes-- globs of luminous lantern oil slowly arcing away with her movement-- and inched herself to the side, out of her trainer’s one-armed hug. The free hand made to follow her, until its owner followed the ghost’s line of sight.
When, instead, it diverted toward him, Emmet seized it and wasted no time pulling his twin upright, into the gentlest hug he could muster. It was hard to maintain. The rapidly loosening bindings around his heart had to go somewhere, and his arms desperately wanted to pick up the slack, to hold on and never let go-- but stubbornly, carefully, he did his best to match the infinitely more welcome pressure around his own chest. It was… faint, and he didn’t entirely succeed at reining in his enthusiasm, but it was also perfect.
A weight rested against his shoulder and he immediately turned into it, pressed a kiss to the short grey hair. Whispered a near-frantic, “Thank the gods.”
There was a soft snort against his neck, echoed by an audible scoff somewhere else in the room. It didn’t escape his notice, but he just didn’t care enough to pursue the point right now. He had much more important matters to attend to.
Three things happened in rapid succession, at that point: the limbs tangling around him went slack, there was a brief, startled, “Oops,” and, before Emmet had the wherewithal to do more than tilt his head up, he caught a glimpse of Ingo-- firmly back outside of his body-- leaning into place again.
Situated as they were, it was impossible to read his expression, but the embarrassment was clear in his tone as he rasped, “I will… endeavor to prevent that from happening again.”
Internally batting away fear’s second swipe, Emmet patted his brother’s back. “A project for another day. I will be right here to assist.”
A beat of silence, and then a heavy exhale. It could have been from reacclimating to physicality, but something in the back of Emmet’s mind told him it wasn’t; it was a veritable sigh of relief. He wondered if he’d done the same, before, when he’d finally had his twin back in his arms. He wondered if he’d been just as obvious to Ingo.
Emmet only let go when Chandelure began to get impatient-- which meant it had been substantially longer than even his time-table-oriented mind had caught-- and his brother reluctantly leaned back, only mollified when she clambered into his lap. One hand cradling her globe, he looked up to the foot of the bed and quirked what could be called a smile.
“Hi, Ingo!” Dawn chirped, moisture still gathered shamelessly in her eyes, “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“Hello, Dawn,” He echoed, tired, but voice warm, content. Though he didn’t look, he subconsciously gave Emmet’s hand a squeeze, “It’s nice to finally be met.”