HOW IT FEELS TO DISAPPEAR: DESCENT
Note: while id usually coin toss on a 50/50 poll, this one feels fair to utilize both.
WARNINGS: Disturbing Imagery, Self Harm
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[Truth] / [Ask your own question]
You watch the ghost uneasily, pulling Eevee closer to you. Her question doesn’t make sense, but…
Your mind wanders back to that young voice. The one calling out to you on the wind, whispers that sounded like a child’s… Is that what she means…?
… You nod slowly.
“… Good. This must be why your Pokemon loves you….” she breathes. You watch as she turns to walk away.
An impulse flares up inside of you. You can’t stand to let another ghost leave you confused.
“Wait,” you call to her, voice raising as she initially seems to ignore you. “DAISY!”
She stops just short of fading into the black.
You tense, dread welling up in your chest. Still, though, you force your words out as a wavering yell.
“Why- Why is this happening?!”
Your single plea hangs heavy in the air. The void feels all the more suffocating for it, and you swear you can feel the weight of it all bearing down on you, threatening to crush and swallow you whole.
The ghost turns to face you, an almost taunting smile tearing open and spreading across her face.
“… Why don’t you go and see for yourself?”
A wave of fatigue suddenly washes over you.
Before you even get the chance to think, your knees buckle, and you collapse to the floor.
…
…
Your head is throbbing. That’s the first thing you’re able to notice.
The second is the feeling of cold, tile floor underneath you.
The third is something small and furry batting at your nose.
Your eyes flutter open. Even with the dim lights of the environment, it takes a moment for your vision to adjust enough to make out your surroundings. As you focus in, the hardest thing to miss is what you register first- Eevee, sitting in front of you with its ears pressed flat against its head. It paws at your nose, seemingly attempting to wake you. Fortunately, once it notices you opening your eyes, it relaxes a bit, stepping aside and shimmying under one of your limp arms.
As you fully wake, you prop yourself up on one elbow and lift your head to look around. You know for certain you aren’t where you blacked out at, but it takes a moment for it to sink in that you’re…
Oh.
Tiled floors. Dim lights. Headstones surround you from every side. A gentle purple coloring to every piece of your surroundings.
It’s all the familiar sights of the Pokemon Tower.
You hold on to Eevee, shakily pushing yourself to a sitting position. A part of you dully hopes that maybe… Maybe, this has all been a bad dream. Maybe you just passed out after finding the Eevee. You try desperately to rationalize it all in your mind, how and why you could have ended up in this place that you never liked nor wanted to visit. This place that you only ever bothered with for the sake of your friend, and to play the hero.
But you already know in your rational mind that your desperate attempts to explain this to yourself are pointless.
After all, you’re still wearing the jacket.
You clutch Eevee closer to your chest as you struggle to your feet. You reach up, re-adjusting and securing your beloved hat. Eevee clings onto you as you try to straighten yourself out, smoothing your dress and new jacket out.
You know very well you’re only doing this to avoid facing the place you’ve wound up in, ‘cause in the back of your mind, you keep noticing more and more details that give away how much worse the part of the tower you’ve awoken in is than you first realized.
You’ve only stepped foot in this area once, and that was only because you had to. Even the idea of it made you uneasy- you know that it’s only gossip and rumors, but… It always seemed just plausible enough to make you want to steer completely clear of the entire graveyard.
You couldn’t help it- death always unsettled you. That one day, any living thing could stop breathing, stop thinking, stop existing, and you’d never really know what happened after- other than them being buried, decaying, and eventually forgotten.
… Children all through Kanto loved to echo the ghost stories surrounding this place, and yeah, maybe they had gotten to you. Malicious and mischievous spirits were one thing- you’d seen those, fought them even. Ghost-types were rare, but not unheard of. Not the sort of thing that kids would tell around campfires in an attempt to scare you, not in this day and age, where any trainer worth their salt could easily catch a Pokemon like a Ghastly, Haunter, Gengar…
No, it was the real rumors that scared you. Horror stories.
A song with tones that drove kids your age to illness, madness, suicide. Grotesque white hands that changed shape into that of your Pokemon and loved ones, just to torment you. A black ghost unlike any Pokemon whose curse could end your life faster than you could even draw a final breath. Whispers of a massive Haunter revered once as a God.
But through all of the wild and chilling tales about Lavender Town that echoed through Kanto, it was the simplest one that had always made your skin crawl most.
They say that once, they buried a human on the top floor of the Tower.
The floor you’re standing on right now.
You feel nauseous at the thought that somehow, someway, after encountering honest-to-the-Gods ghosts, you’d suddenly been dropped here of all places.
You don’t want to play these games anymore. You’ve gone along with it for long enough. Though you see the path through the graves laid out before you, lit dimly by candles and the white glow you’ve come to associate with those damn ghosts, you refuse to keep carrying on. You don’t want to. You need to go home.
You turn around, clinging to Eevee with a bitter determination to go down the stairs and out of this damn graveyard.
… But there’s no staircase. No opening. No way out. Not even a trace.
You run up to the stone wall where it should’ve been, nearly slamming your body against it. Eevee crawls onto your shoulders as you desperately pound your fists against the hard stone, moving back and forth- as if some illusion should drop, as if some barrier will break, as if something would happen. Your eyes are starting to water, the thought emerging in the back of your mind that you’re trapped here.
You can’t be- you can’t be, you can’t be, you can’t be you can’t be you can’t be you can’t. Your Pokemon are powerful- they could break through by force! You reach into your bag by instinct, hoping to get one of your most powerful partners’ Pokeballs- Dragonite, Venusaur, maybe Clefable- anything, anything.
All your hand hits is Eevee’s blanket. Your bag is empty. You left your Pokeballs- your team, at home.
Your eyes and throat start to sting as angry, frustrated tears well up and burn. How could you be so stupid- taking Eevee with, but none of your most loyal companions?!
You slam your hands against the stone wall one more time, unthinking, hard enough to make it fucking hurt. A frustrated, sobbing scream rips through your throat. The hot tears run down your face, and you let your head thud against the wall as you go limp, searing pain shooting from your hands down your arms. The feeling of Eevee nuzzling your cheek no longer does anything to soothe you through your self-directed anger.
You heave a few deep breaths, before whirling around, clenching your now-bruising fists and yelling out into the sea of headstones.
“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?!”
Squeezing your eyes shut, you feel the gazes and quiet laughter of ghosts surround and burn into you. You pull on your hair hard enough to make your scalp hurt, before charging forward into the open pathway of graves.
“FINE. FINE! Whatever gets this OVER with,” you growl, storming past the distant forms of spirits that you can’t be bothered to look at any more than from the corners of your eyes. The robes make them resemble the tower’s Channelers, but hell if you care anymore.
Eevee trembles from its perch on your shoulder, and you look down, staring at the blooming purple on the sides of your hands. You gingerly rub them, trying to soothe the pain. Some of the ire inside you dissipates as you move, and you dully start to regret hurting yourself like that…
Another reason to the list of why you should keep your temper in check, is your only bitter thought.
When you lift your head to pay attention to the path of tombstones laid out for you, though, every thought screeches to a halt.
There, at the end, like a light in the darkness that you’ve been needing.
It’s Blue.
Oh my Gods, you think, you could sob in relief at just the sight of your friend. It’s Blue, it’s Blue- really, genuinely Blue, in full color, flesh and blood, tangible and visible and audible and breathing and alive and real. You nearly break into a sprint towards him, relief washing over you and sending all that dread knotted up in your stomach far, far away.
“Blue- Blue!” you choke out, skidding to a stop right behind him. You open your mouth, about to let every word and cry and every ounce of joy you feel seeing someone you truly know here, living and intact and not white, not pale, he’s colorful, it’s him, it’s him, it’s…
Your words die in your mouth when you realize the state he’s in.
Your tunnel vision rapidly fades away. He’s… not okay. No, something’s wrong. Not with him, you hope- he looks fine, but…
He’s crying. You hear the quiet, gasping sobs. His shoulders are shaking. He’s practically curled into a ball, his hands over his ears and gripping his hair, his knees to his chest, his head lowered and staring straight at the floor.
“Please,” you hear him whimper, “stop- please, make it stop- please, please, just leave me alone…”
… It’s not the floor he’s staring at. You manage to pull your gaze away from him to realize what he’s knelt in front of.
It’s a grave- one far bigger than the rest. The headstone is unmarked, but shouldered on both sides by statues of Pokemon. A rectangular slab juts out of the ground, too… You recognize it from the only time you’d come up here. You’d battled Team Rocket, you remember… Then you’d found Mr. Fuji over this grave, hoping to soothe the angry Marowak’s spirit…
You’d always assumed this grave was hers. It hadn’t made sense to you that you’d found her on the floor below, but you’d rationalized that by assuming the ghosts here just wandered. But thinking of it, if she’d died recently, then a grave like that couldn’t have been made so quickly- certainly not with Team Rocket around. And it had been far too big for just a Marowak…
You put a hand over your mouth, swallowing down the taste of bile at the implications.
Whose grave was this? Why was Blue here…?
Your mind is starting to wander, you realize. You force yourself to reel those thoughts in. You can swallow your own horror, your anger, your confusion for a moment- even now, you can’t let your own emotions make your friend’s problems worse. You’d already hurt him enough before.
“I don’t want this. I didn’t want this.”
His hushed, broken voice breaks your heart. You need to do something, you tell yourself. He needs help. You’re not even sure he’s noticed that you’re here, but you can’t just stand here.