4: In Which the Past Comes Back to Haunt You

If Twig hadn’t glanced over her shoulder as she passed— if her unease hadn’t shot off the charts as she turned the corner— she wouldn’t have even caught a glimpse of the guy that had messed her life up even worse than the Dark Future. Her mind was going a mile a minute, wondering how Darkrai was still alive, why he was so close to Verdant Village, what nefarious plans he had for the world and all the people she loved within it— he knew she was alone, he had to, and he knew that she didn’t have any backup—

But all her thoughts ground to a stuttering halt when he rasped a quiet Hello.

“Uh.” She blinked. “Hi?”

Silence. 

“What— what are you doing here?”

He tilted his head, looking up in consideration, and paused before he answered. “I’m not sure.”

More silence.

He eyed her bag for a moment, icy gaze slowly turning back to her face. “Could you spare some food?”

Mechanically, she reached into the satchel and held out an apple, fingers twitching with nerves as he came forward to accept it. Darkrai looked… different somehow, coming out of the ferns. There was something off about him that she couldn’t place, but she also noticed he was scuffed up pretty bad and realized he was definitely at a disadvantage with the types of pokemon frequenting the mystery dungeon. She was still on autopilot when she reached into the bag with her other hand and held out an oran berry as well. He accepted them silently, moving back to lurk behind the ferns. Though with the way he held himself, it wasn’t lurking, not really. More like waiting, or hiding. Cowering. 

He swallowed the berry first and was slow in finishing the apple. He watched her as he ate. She watched him in return. 

“Where are you going next?” She found herself asking. 

“I do not have many plans as to my destination. I lack much direction, as of now.” 

That didn’t match up with the master planner she was so terrified of. Was she imagining this? Had her janky little peabrain finally overclocked itself enough to start hallucinating things? 

She grit her teeth. Summoning her courage, she intended to threaten him with something along the lines of ‘Listen up, Darkrai, we beat you once and we’ll do it again.’ But she only got as far as the first three words when his response made everything fall into place. 

“How—” He looked completely disoriented, shocked. “How do you know my name?” 

… Oh. 

Right. He went through a Passage of Time that was tampered with just like she had, didn’t he? And now he had amnesia. Poetic justice, she supposed. A bit of tit for tat, eye for an eye, quid pro quo comeuppance for the sadistic dastard. 

And yet. 

Was the jolt of concern she felt something like Kip felt when he first found her, or was it fear that he was bluffing, and that this was another ruse like Cresselia was?

He was waiting for an answer. 

“Lucky guess,” she lied. 

The look he gave her was less one of a monster relishing the way she squirmed and more one of confusion. “Hm. I have not encountered someone who recognized me enough to know my species name. Apologies for losing my composure, albeit briefly. It was not right.”

Was this the same darkrai? Were there multiple darkrai? Cresselia sure as heck never mentioned there being more than one member of the type of Legend she’d been tracking down across time and space, and she didn’t seem the type to let something so important go unsaid. But Twig could not wrap her head around the lord of nightmares apologizing for simply raising his voice in surprise. That jolt of concern had settled to wrap itself up around her ribcage now. She was definitely afraid of the possibility of this being another trick, but it was becoming clearer that she felt more pity for the person before her than terror. 

She knew what it was like to be lost without knowing anything other than your name. She wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy. And yet, here he was, having suffered the same fate as he had inflicted on her.

She spoke before she realized she’d opened her mouth. “Do you have somewhere to spend the night?”

He blinked, eyes widening in surprise. “No.”

“You can crash at my place tonight. You look… Well, you’ve looked better. I think some rest would do you a lot of favors.”

Darkrai followed her out of the mystery dungeon, noticeably wary whenever the pokemon within cast appraising glances their way. Twig hadn’t thought twice of the stares before that ominous paranoia flared up, and she was starting to realize why all of the dungeon’s inhabitants seemed so strangely on edge today. People didn’t have to be asleep to feel unsettled by Darkrai’s presence, and that was putting it lightly. She didn’t stop by Gardevoir’s place, only leaving the massive apple and a note for Lyra on their porch— the family was always out in town square by this time anyhow, and even if they weren’t, she wasn’t in a rush to expose them to the dread that was so painfully thick in the air thanks to the Legend trailing in her wake like a second shadow.

Darkrai took in the interior of Twig’s home with a scrutinizing eye similar to Gardevoir’s. She was starting to get the feeling her decor situation was more dire than she realized. She tucked the thought aside and went about her usual routine of unpacking her bag of wares to sell and goods to use herself, and was surprised to find that Darkrai’s presence was actually less noticeable than she expected. It was more like a bruise than a dagger between her shoulders. If she pressed on it, she would realize just who was standing in the corner of her kitchen and watching her prep sitrus berries for supper. But if she left it alone, it was only a dull ache at the back of her mind. 

She wasn’t used to cooking for two anymore. It had taken her weeks to stop making meals like Kip was there to eat them with her, but she had finally adapted, and now she had to add in a second serving at the last minute when she remembered that was what you were supposed to do when someone was in your home. 

Darkrai hadn’t spoken since he had passed over her doorstep. She dished a second bowl of simmered vegetables and savory berries and offered it to him, and he stared down at the bowl for several moments before accepting it. It was then that he broke the silence. “I appreciate your hospitality, Charmeleon.”

Somehow, Darkrai referring to her by her species name was the strangest part of this situation. It always weirded her out how Pokemon made such a big deal out of only using personal names when you were good friends with someone, or at least significantly older or of a higher rank than them, but it oddly managed to clash even harder against her upbringing as a human when Darkrai didn’t refer to her as Twig. She told him she didn’t mind it if he used her given name, introducing herself. 

“… ‘Twig’ is your name?” He asked, a note of confusion in his level tone.

“Yeah. What about it?”

“It seems a peculiar monicker for one of your heritage.”

“What do you mean by h—?” Her tail twitched as she puzzled out his meaning, and the flame at its tip flickered a slight peach. “Oh. I, uh, I was named by a grass-type.”

Darkrai hummed in acknowledgment, then began to eat. 

Twig realized that she must have had a human name once, and she didn’t know what it could have been. Did Grovyle know? Why did she feel such a need to learn a name that didn’t matter anymore? It stung at her heart, the idea of her forgetting a name given to her by a family she couldn’t recall the faces of. 

And then she realized something horrible.

She had remembered her past. Yes, she had only recovered bits and pieces of it, but she had remembered them nonetheless. But if she had begun to remember who she was before her amnesia… couldn’t Darkrai do the same? Couldn’t the person sitting across the table from her remember whatever motive he had to shroud the world in darkness? Couldn’t he recover his cruelty, his sadistic cheer at others’ misery?

She’d been treating him as a charity case, but she should have been seeing him as a timebomb. 

It was a struggle to sleep that night. She’d locked and barricaded the door of the guest room she retired in despite knowing it meant nothing— if Darkrai wanted her dead right now, she would die. She didn’t have Cresselia to guide her through a maze of terrifying shadows. She didn’t have Kip to back her up and keep her from breaking down. When she did manage to close her eyes and slip away into slumber, it was only to be greeted by nightmares. Dreams of being chased by monsters, of being crushed by walls that closed in further on her with every inhale, of being eaten alive or burned until her very bones were nothing but charred ash… When she woke in the morning, it was to an exhaustion that weighed her limbs down like lead and to a fear that made them buzz with anxiety. 

What if Darkrai remembered? Was it even a matter of ‘if’, or was it a matter of ‘when’? Could she do anything to stop it? She had often reflected on how different her life would’ve been if she encountered someone other than Kip on the beach that fateful day. She had wondered if she had been picked up by Koffing and Zubat if she would have become just as vile as them, or if she had been taken in by Kanghaskan whether she would have ever become an explorer. She had wondered if she had wandered off on her own, alone, if she would have evaded Dusknoir’s initial discovery of her identity, if she would have never reunited with Grovyle, and if by the following chain of events Temporal Tower would have truly fallen and the Dark Future would have been guaranteed. If she had been taken in by someone who had told her they knew her before she lost her memory, though… If she had been given lies that seemed to click together well enough to be true…

She slid the lone piece of furniture that she’d placed in the guest room— a dresser that was scratched up and cheap as dirt when she bought it— out of the way. She unlocked the door. Darkrai was staring out the window when she entered the main room, watching the sliver of light on the horizon grow brighter as dawn broke. 

Darkrai began to greet her when she cut him off. “Do you have somewhere to stay?”

He paused. “As I said yesterday, I do not have a designated residence at the moment. I—”

“Why not stay here? Indefinitely. I don’t— I don’t mind, and I’ve got the room. So it would work out great for us both!” 

He watched her in silence.

She could feel herself breaking out in a cold sweat. Arceus, don’t let him see through this. Please, please—

“Very well,” Darkrai finally said. “If you do not mind my remaining here, I will not refuse your hospitality. Thank you, Twig.”

“Great! Great. Uh. Cool.” Her forced smile wavered. “I’m going to go, um… check my inventory for when I go to sell at the market.”

Darkrai watched her disappear into the hallway. She could feel those icy eyes picking her every move apart with surgical precision, analyzing the way she ducked into the guest room again to lock the door and get her hyperventilating back to a nigh-undetectable volume.

She couldn’t help but wonder just how much of a mess it was that she’d dived headfirst into.