#anyway fun times lie ahead w emmet and ingo having to get used to each other again and ingo having to realize that emmet can be real

[m1sosazai]

ok so i've read the fics where ingo recognizes emmet right away, or very soon after meeting, or when he sees emmet he gets flashbacks and tries to run away or something bc he thinks his brother is actually some illusioned-up zoroark or something. also those fics where they meet in their dreams, or in the rifts. which are all very good!

but specifically that one fic where ingo sees like, little hallucinations of emmet out of the corner of his eye after he gets some of his memory back stuck w me. and basically i think...

what if when the twins meet again, maybe w the PLA protag or the clan leaders... emmet sees ingo give a quick glimpse at him, then pointedly ignore him.

he can't figure out why (is his brother mad at him for not finding him sooner? has he been so traumatized by the separation that he can't look directly at him, the way emmet had a hard time w mirrors during ingo's disappearance?), but meanwhile, ingo is frantically running down his mental checklist of tasks.

1. did he get enough sleep? (yes, a full eight hours before he was roped into this meeting, plus w the baby sneasels and lady sneasel.)

2. did he have enough to eat? (yes, he had a meal at the wallflower a few hours ago... with some cake lures and berries as emergency provisions if he does get hungry.)

3. is he injured anywhere? (no, the last wounds he got, some abrasions from the debris that flew up while he was fighting akari a few weeks ago, healed up just fine.)

having checked off all the criteria, ingo slowly looked up, and despite his better judgement, very carefully met gazes with the white-clothed man with his face that was still, inexplicably, there.

"warden ingo, are you alright?" professor laventon's assistant asked him quietly.

"yes, my engine is in perfect condition," ingo lied, deliberately turning away from the obvious hallucination. maybe it would vanish when he stopped making direct eye contact with it, like it always had before - he couldn't entertain the possibility of his mental state potentially getting worse and having the white-clothed man appear outside the dire situations he'd always seen him it in.

(he didn't need more people in the pearl clan whispering about his uncanny habit of talking to the air, or akari eyeing him with concern whenever he was caught spacing out while turning to the left after she'd felled one of his pokemon in battle.)

so yeah, ingo is very used to seeing emmet whenever he gets into trouble somehow... so much so that he has a hard time remembering that he CAN talk to his twin now, in the flesh, without people looking at him crazy lol.

of course, emmet isn't going to stand for his brother ignoring him forever, no matter what he might've done or what ingo thinks, so he ends up goading him into talking to him right in the middle of the meeting (about past-future information exchange or something prolly, idk), and ingo ends up yelling at him like "not now, sleep hallucination! we're in the middle of something!" (bc most of the time he's suffering from insomnia when he sees hallucination-emmet, and "injury hallucination" is significantly more worrying to most - and also rolls off the tongue less imo - to say), which attracts everyone's attention. and the twins have an argument-sation about whether emmet is hallusionary (thank you esama for that great combination of hallucination + illusion), whether it was polite to yell at your brother (remembered or not, real or not) after not seeing him for a while, and how much sleep ingo usually got in a night.

after a while of this, rei is like "...who are you talking to, warden?" (bc honestly akari gets all the spotlight and i like to include cute nerdy assistant boy more), and ingo points at him like "SEE, he just asked who i was talking to, THAT MEANS you're as fake as always!" and emmet scoffs (still smiling in relief tho) before rei is like "actually, i meant 'who is that man who looks like you, warden?'"

ingo realizes that people can see his hallucination, somehow, and spends a brief moment horrified that some zoroark has brought his friendly illusion to life to torment him, or perhaps he's dreaming right now - before it hits him.

the illusion is... real. that's a real man standing before him, feeling very familiar, who looks just like him.

and ingo just derailed a meeting to debate with him and reveal his possibly decaying mental state.

...ingo is very embarrassed.