21. In Which Trig Breaks a Leg

Twig left the shrine carved into the mountainside with an odd feeling of heavy-heartedness being lugged behind her. The mountain air was cold as she descended— perhaps even colder than it was when she traveled up the peak— but she wasn’t able to pay it much mind when her head seemed full of static instead of any coherent thoughts. Cresselia’s description of Darkrai in the long-bygone past was jarring when contrasted against the Darkrai Twig knew, but it made a painful amount of sense when compared to Ark— someone who reeked of loneliness and isolation, who was eager to be trusted and relied on. It tugged at her heartstrings in an unexpected way. She wasn’t prepared to feel such a deep sense of pity when she greeted him at the foot of the mountain.

“Are you well?” He asked without a moment’s hesitation. “You seem rather sullen.”

“I’m alright. Just tired. I’ve got the perfect thing for that, though.” She gave him a weak smile and held up the feather, tied with a cord into a small pendant. “Lucky me, right?”

“Ah!” He returned her smile wholeheartedly, eyes turning into happy crescents. “Certainly. I take it that this Cresselia was charitable enough to part with the feather willingly?”

“Yeah? Why wouldn’t she?” 

“I don’t quite know.” He tilted his head slightly, turning his eyes up in thought. “I merely found myself suspicious of Dusknoir’s conviction that she would be generous enough to offer help. I can’t say it was for any good reason, though. Just a hunch.” 

Twig hummed. Hopefully the hunch wasn’t thanks to any of his memories coming back. “Well, I got what we came here for. Let’s head home.” 

“Head h—?” He blinked, eyes widening before he smiled after a moment of surprise. “Yes, let’s.”

The trip wasn’t as awkward as it could have been. Admittedly, Twig couldn’t exactly tell Darkrai that she had just become privy to his entire past, all of which he would find alien and bizarre unless it came to him as a memory returning. She wasn’t about to say that Cresselia gave her a life story she wasn’t sure she should have ever heard in the first place. That definitely cut into the awkwardness of it. 

She tried to imagine a walk home with Grovyle after Dusknoir told him all the stuff she had confessed in private and found herself shutting the thought down as soon as it came to her, dreading the hypothetical scenario. That would be absolutely unbearable, and as much as she disliked the Darkrai she once knew, she was glad she wasn’t in the role of Grovyle in the scenario she thought up. Admittedly, if it were Darkrai in her place in that scene, he probably would just kill her. And honestly? She wouldn’t blame him. That would be an awful position to be in, and she was glad Ark didn’t remember enough to truly be in it.

He had taken down all of the campsite while she was gone, so it was simple to set off on the homeward journey. Twig still found herself obsessively comparing the three darkrais she was made aware of, but it was easier to shove the disconcerting contrast away when they entered a mystery dungeon and she got to enter the exploration team headspace she so loved. 

She did not love stepping into a monster house, however.

The traps were named for the viciousness of the creatures that the dungeon would summon from the ground and walls— they weren’t true pokemon, not capable of being reasoned with or spoken to— they were just constructs that hungered for senseless violence; monsters who wanted to break you underfoot. Twig stepped into the chamber and felt the telltale shift of atmosphere as the creatures began to appear and promptly spun around, shoving Darkrai back into the tunnel they were traveling and hissing for him to run.

There was this unfortunate thing about monster house pokemon, though— they didn’t get tired. Twig knew they weren’t going to outspeed them, but she had the hopes of getting into a better vantage point to take them out one by one. That was the beauty of having an onix staring you down from the end of a narrow corridor— nobody could get around them to double-up on their attacks. 

Darkrai was silent up until that point, even seeming lost in thought, but even he understood the sudden urgency in Twig’s face and melted into the shadows to open up the corridor ahead of them. Twig took the opening to run past but grabbed his hand when he reappeared to pull him along behind her— she was used to Kip insisting on staying back to hold off the hordes of a monster house, and she wasn’t about to waste any time seeing if Darkrai was of the same disposition.

She heard the crackle of fire when they were just about to slip away into another corridor. The chamber they were in was long and wide, and it made for the perfect opportunity for the enemies to disperse and get in some longshots where they could. It was in that moment that three things occurred to her— first, Darkrai was behind her and would take the hit. Second, she was panicking at the sound of flames popping and roaring as the blast of fire hurtled toward them. Third, she was moving, and she hadn’t even realized that before the blast hit.

She shoved Darkrai off to the side, out of the blast range but not into the momentary safety of the corridor she’d intended, and suffered the full impact of the ball of fire. It honestly didn’t even hurt that much— what did hurt, though, was being launched into the wall behind her at mach eight. She heard something crack, loud and sickening, and she had a feeling it wasn’t just the crater she left in the stone as she fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs and pain. 

Time seemed to slow. Darkrai stared at her for a moment, and an odd sort of recognition took over his features before a familiar anger overtook that. She thought she heard him mutter something along the lines of She’s already…? But didn’t have time to worry about whatever the weird look he was giving her meant, because she was staggering onto her feet, slumped against the wall with a bad leg and her head spinning as the rest of the horde approached. She gritted her teeth and motioned to the horde, and Darkrai shook himself, coming awake and letting loose a volley of darkness that left the constructs shattering into nothingness. 

Neat. It was good to know he could hit multiple targets with such ease. Twig wished she knew that before her leg was screaming at her for taking a hit that Darkrai could probably shrug off like a gentle slap. 

“Are you alright?” He asked, voice somewhere between worried and ticked off. 

“I’ll manage— What about you? I shoved you pretty hard. You good?”

“I—” The anger dispersed at her reply. He looked less like Darkrai and more like Ark now. Weird. She wondered what had upset him so much before. “I’m well. You are not, though. Have you any healing items?”

“Y-Yeah, side pocket of the exploration bag— there’s bandages, splints— stuff like that.” She let out a hiss of pain when she tried to set her foot on the ground and it sent shocks of agony up her spine. “Ugh… Of course I had to go and break something… There’s some jars of balms in the bottom of the main pocket. They help numb stuff. I’m gonna need those too.”

He nodded and sorted through the bag, presenting her with the items she indicated. He had to help her tie the splint— her hands were shaking too much to be of much use getting it tight enough to do its job properly. Unfortunately, even after downing several berries and doing all the proper work to heal up, Twig still could barely put any weight on her leg. Looked like it was a bad enough fracture she’d need to recover at home the old fashioned way. At least her head wasn’t spinning anymore. That was a plus. 

Darkrai wordlessly reached out to help her walk. Twig accepted the offer and slung her arm across his shoulders. 

This was awkward. Very, very awkward. She did not like having to lean on him so heavily. But she couldn’t think of any other way that they’d get out of the dungeon and make it back home, not unless he carried her, and she wasn’t about to propose that sort of idea. 

They made it out of the dungeon soon enough, and without any further scuffles or monster houses. There wasn’t any trouble beyond Ark trying to make conversation. And the trouble there was that he was trying very hard.

“You mentioned a fellow apprentice during your training who has been taken under the Guildmaster’s wing, yesterday.” He began as they exited ear-shot of the dungeon’s entrance, safe enough to speak at a normal volume without attracting the attention of any foes within. 

“Who— Bidoof? What about him?”

“Nothing in particular. I was wondering about what other apprentices you trained alongside.”

“Um. There’s Loudred, who I hated at first because he was kind of annoying and a jerk, but he’s pretty cool. Sunflora is really sweet even if she’s also kind of shallow. Diglett was quiet and always wanted to prove himself. Corphish was… Corphish.”

“Do you not like this Corphish character?”

“No. He’s just… We don’t really click.” 

“Hm. Have you read any books that you found useful as of late?”

“Uh. I don’t like reading, so no. Not really. I have a grand total of one book in my house and I’ve barely gotten past the introduction.”

“Truly? I found it quite intriguing— almost breezy in how it was written.”

“You read it?” Twig tried to remember anything in that old textbook on memory loss that could have been troubling for her and Darkrai’s situation. Nothing came to mind, but she had only skimmed the table of contents, and what if he found something useful?

“It had very few useful notes on actual memory recovery. It really just discussed the physical process of recollection in the brain and how imperfect it is.” He motioned to a tall cluster of soft greenery leaves as they passed. “Do you know what that plant is called, by chance?”’

“Dude, what’s with the sudden chattiness?”

Silence.

“You never talk this much.”

A pause. “I was hoping to keep your mind off the pain. Is it working?”

“Uh… About as much as talking can, I guess.” She frowned. “It’s bracken fern. It’s used for a bunch of medical stuff.”

“It is? How so?” 

“It helps with nausea, vomiting, headaches, inflammation— that kind of thing. Uh… Lots of people think if you grind it up into a paste, it’ll be a good disinfectant, but it doesn’t do much for that kind of thing at all.”

“Is there a plant that does do much for disinfection?” He sounded genuinely curious.

“Saint Rosa’s Veil is a mushroom that grows pretty far underground— it’s perfect for clearing out any germs in an area. You just toss a couple of them that are going to spore into a room where someone was sick, close the door and wait a few days, and you’re good to move someone new into there.”

Ark hummed a sorrowful noise, and Twig frowned. What was he so sad about? She was just talking about a kind of fungus that was used all the time when she was a kid to clear out bunkers where people succumbed to… 

Oh. 

Maybe he’d seen more than she thought on that night when he glimpsed her nightmares. He might know about her parents’ fates at the hands of a plague, too. 

“A-Anyways, I’m just glad nobody else knows about me busting my leg,” She said, trying to lighten the sudden change in mood. “I hate the thought of Grovyle finding out. Could you imagine how awful of a nag he’d be?”

“Ah… Yes. I can… I can imagine.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You sound guilty.”

Silence.

“Why do you sound guilty?”

“No reason,” he said far too soon for it to be true. 

She couldn’t get him to ‘fess up about why he sounded so skittish all of a sudden, so she decided to quiet down and answer any other questions he came up with while they traveled back to home base.