Memo set a little pastelito at each grave, and next to it, a carnation. While it was more likely a wild Pokemon would come along and scavenge the sweet pastries, he liked to think it was the meaning behind the offering that would soothe the souls here.

It didn’t take him too long-- the graves were all rather new, the soil around them still soft and loamy. He was careful to not tread directly on top of them as he went back to their little picnic area, set off away from the burial sites in a place dedicated for gathering.

There were no bodies below them, was the important part.

“You doing okay?” he asked, coming to a seat on his knees. He knew Alex struggled with his fear of ghosts. “I really appreciate you coming out today. I made lots of good things to eat to thank you.” And to work out his guilt and conflicted feelings. But mostly for Alex.

Alexei Ivanov
autumn's ominous wind

☉

Memo couldn’t hide the disappointment on his face. He didn’t know which made him feel worse: that he’d asked Alex here in the first place, or that he’d expected him to lie to not hurt his own feelings.

God, he was supposed to be quieting his demons, not feeding them.

“I just.”

He let himself trail off, eyes going unfocused in the middle ground.

“I. Don’t know if my family is alive or not.” He exhaled a measured breath. This whole being honest about his feelings thing was. New. “And I’m not sure… how that makes me feel.”

As soon as he said it he regretted it. It sounded dumb. He was an imbecile.

Alexei Ivanov
autumn's ominous wind

☉

Memo was new to this whole processing negative emotions thing. When you spend so long feeling like your life has no meaning and you’ll never amount to anything, and then finally, finally break free from that… it hurts to go back to.

It is much easier, instead, to wall off the negativity and shove it somewhere far away. Which is what he’d gotten so good at doing, building walls and buffering them safely with positive thoughts, good feelings, and successes.

Until they’d all been violently ripped out of his head and he’d been forced to stare down the barrel of his own failures and the secret, inner workings of his own heart that he’d gotten so used to ignoring and running from.

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” he said, voice eerily flat. He turned his hand over where Alex reached out to touch him, letting the other man’s fingers come to rest between his thumb and palm and giving them a grounding squeeze. “When I--,” his breath caught, and he swallowed hard, “in-- in the digital sphere, when I saw the destruction caused by Necrozma I.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and pretended to be anywhere else.

“I was happy.”

It comes out quiet, barely audible over the whispers of the wind.

Alexei Ivanov
autumn's ominous wind

☉

“I. Of course not.” He said, though the words were like rocks in his mouth, thorns in his throat. The idea that he even had to explain this to himself… it was a strange dissonance, not knowing the person who resided inside your body.

It was exhausting.

“I could never be happy about the suffering of others, no matter how cruel and unaccepting they were.”

That part he knew for sure. That was a certainty.

“But I also don’t feel panicked about not knowing if they’re alive or not. And that… that bothers me. I think I should be worried. They’re my family, after all, and Necrozma’s destruction was… awful.”

Maldacena’s screen flashes before his eyes once more. His eyes glaze a bit.

Alexei Ivanov
autumn's ominous wind

☉

“Do you want me to say that the prospect of my family being dead makes me happy?” he asked, point-blank, shuddering with the revulsion of it all. “It doesn’t.” It’s said with conviction, with purpose; the words carry weight.

He looked down at his hands in Alex’s, head tilted, frowning. Alex’s hands were warm compared to his own, which was… a shock. An impossibility.

“I… I suppose I could try,” he allowed, settling into something less agitated, more sad. “But I don’t even know if they’d reply. I’m already as good as dead to my parents. They made sure of that.”

By limiting his options. By beating him. By making sure no one in the community would offer him assistance, leaving him cold and hungry and on his own.

“I’m not on my own, anymore,” he says, quietly, like in a dream, something that he has to verbally remind himself of because it feels like something his mind has made up.

Alexei Ivanov
autumn's ominous wind

☉

He tilted his head, letting Alex’s little tidbit of knowledge marinate for a bit, like a beam balance seeking equilibrium. All he could really do was try, right?

“God, what would I even say.”

His boyfriend echoed the mental sentiment verbally. Though Memo did wince, a little, at being called defeatist.

“I never used to be.” It’s remorseful, wistful, like remembering the ghost of something once thought fond now gone sour. "Or maybe I used to be better at internalizing it." There’s a taste of panic on his tongue, the panic at losing who he is, not recognizing the person he’s become. It’s in that moment he realizes and remembers why he hates self-reflection: it feels pathetic. It feels cold. Another useless habit, piled atop a pyramid stack of them.

“Do you ever feel like you don’t know who you are anymore?”

He turns Alex's hand over in his own, tracing the lines of his boyfriend's palm with his thumbs.

Alexei Ivanov
autumn's ominous wind

☉