Harmonia | Pokémon Fanfiction

32 | Found/Tonight

Trigger Warning: Existential crisis and despair

Music in media: Found/Tonight by Ben Platt and Lin-Manuel Miranda

17 January, Monday, 6:30 p.m. | Winter

For a while now, the darkness had been roiling. So when she saw the blur of a green-haired giant emerge, consolation bubbled within her and burst just as quickly. All thanks to the reply.

"Icosa isn't here. It's me, N."

This was the second time she's made this mistake. Who could blame her? Both were similar in more ways than one.

But it would be better if none of them had come for her. How was she to look anyone in the eyes in her current state? Who would accept her without first deeming her a monster? Out of the perpetual darkness sprang a thousand names and more, those hideous, little things that left a foul taste in the mouth, like swallowing the bile that had shot up the throat, the lukewarm discomfort, slimy and sticky and burning.

So no, it's not about timing. Not about punctuality or tardiness. Not the tragic one second too late, one tear too many... None of that. When the words wriggled out of her being, the squeakiness sent goosebumps all about her. Her chest itched and her fingers grew numb for a short while.

This was a feeling that rarely cropped up. It had little relevance, little need to appear before her like the hissing Ekans it was.

Silence continued to swell between the duo. She wanted him to speak, but it's better if he said nothing at all. She wanted to howl till she forgot even the simplest of words and their meanings; she wanted to start a fire, go window-shopping, lick an ice-cream cone. She wanted to curse and swear and sully the darkness the way it sullied her.

"All you shitty-ass people who made me this way! Even Giratina wouldn't know how to fuck you over."

Yes, she would say something like this if she could.

No, that's what Icosa would say if he lacked restraint. She wasn't Icosa. She could hardly be considered a human now.

Yes, yes, a pitiful little one.

No, it's a stupid thing to do, pitying herself just because someone familiar had walked in on her like this, like she's some criminal locked up in the cage of time, like it's visiting hours and after this he would be gone and she would be alone again and the sand or snow or ash or whatever this thing was in the hourglass would fail to cover her and her eyes would fail to close at all and she could only stare and stare and stare at the unblinking darkness.

No, this would be something a whole other person would think and feel. These thoughts were probably injected into her headspace from somewhere else, no different all this malice and bitterness because there was no other way to label such thoughts without acknowledging how dirty they were.

She giggled. It felt like a fever dream, having a caring brother, a blissfully ignorant life, a home, a mentor, a friend, two friends, no friends... Each time a happy memory projected itself, it was simply that. A shitty projection, unreal, fictitious, estranged. She grew more and more convinced this girl named Aomine Rae must be a work of fiction, like all halcyon things.

Then this N standing before her must be a projection too. A way of gaslighting the self. Huh, that's a new word. Gaslight. Had she always known this word?

It was an impossible word, especially in this darkness. It was something ancient, something primordial... and mocking.

But this figure before her felt so real. That voice and that mist on the hourglass. They couldn't well be figments of her imagination. Right?