Chapter Text
A stiff breeze rustled the curtains, the fluttering a confusing sound to awaken to and Ingo swatted at the air for a few seconds before his brain became sufficiently alert to understand that no, the Pidove hadn’t managed to get into his room again. Stretching luxuriantly he took a swift inventory; no overnight Pokémon incursions, his neck a little stiff but tolerable, bladder borderline. With a grunt he swung his legs out of bed and rose to meet the day, throwing the window wide to bask in the early pulse of his beloved city, resting his chin on his palm and reveling in his awakening senses. The sun caressing his face, the fresh clean smell of warm brick and the river swirling around him. The crawling drone of a cargo plane coming in low on the approach to Mistralton. The call and response of a sanitation crew and their band of Trubbish heading towards the amusement park. The warbling murmur of a damn Pidove in the tree below.
Ingo leaned out to peer down and met the sparkling black eyes of a small feathery puffball looking right back at him, the morning sun making its plumage shine with a captivating iridescence that did not befit such a scoundrel. He frowned and leaned even further, fingers digging into the mortar between the bricks as he squinted. That Pidove was not just any Pidove. He was fairly certain it was the Pidove.
He shook his fist at it. The bird bobbed its head once and cooed, then shuffled on the branch and crapped its defiance. Ingo scowled, closing the window firmly.
In the bathroom the light took a few seconds to warm up, flickering and buzzing while he relieved himself and brushed his teeth, staring himself down in the mirror and running a thoughtful hand over his jaw. If he wanted to he could get away without shaving, but that was how indolence crept in, and before he knew it his face would be a thicket and then where would he be? So he lathered and carefully dragged the blade across his skin with practiced strokes. By the time he finished and had splashed off the residue and whiskers the bulb had settled down to a steady hum. He'd take a look at it when he returned home, he thought. It could probably stand replacing.
Padding back to his room he hummed an old motorman's song, one that he and his colleagues always whistled as they rode the rails and that stuck pleasantly in the ear. He couldn't hear Emmet stirring yet, though Ingo had no doubt he would rise soon enough and would, no doubt, unleash his usual whirlwind of last minute preparations. But while their approach to the morning routine differed, Emmet had never once delayed them, so Ingo let him be and indulged his more methodical tendencies, dressing leisurely in front of the full length mirror hung on the back of his closet door, flicking his tie into a handsome half-Wyndon knot, fastening his watch onto his wrist. A touch of aftershave, pleasingly smoky. In the hallway he pulled his coat from its hook, the tails brushing the ceiling when he swung it up and over his shoulders. It felt good, heavy and familiar, and he shot his cuffs and reached into his pocket for his gloves.
The right was where it should be. The left... the left had vanished. He was certain he'd had it on last night. Hadn't he? The confusing absence of something from its rightful place had him groping across the seam, turning his pockets inside out, searching the hall, even going so far as opening the front door to peep under the doormat. They were always in his coat. It was part of the routine. End of shift, home, gloves off and tucked neatly into his pockets so they would be there ready for the next day.
“Where in the world is it?” he asked aloud, as if the universe might see the error of its ways and reimburse him there and then.
There was no sign. It was simply gone. Ingo ran a hand through his hair, frustrated, glancing at his watch.
“Emmet! Emmet!” His voice resounded through the apartment, imbued with the same imperious authority his passengers heard when he made announcements, his conductor's call.
From the direction of Emmet's bedroom came a muffled cry, a bang, a quick shuffle then Emmet poked his head out from his door, still in his pajamas with his hair wild and his sideburns frizzed.
“What? What’s wrong? Is it a fire? Did we oversleep? Are you okay? Was it the Pidove? I told you that you need to shoo it away, you can't let it think it can get away with whatever it wants. Do you want some help? Is that why you yelled, because you want my help getting rid of the Pidove?”
Ingo ignored him.
"Have you seen my glove?"
Emmet stared at him incredulously for several seconds, his sleep-addled mind attempting to make sense of what his brother had just said, and failing.
"A glove. You called me out here, screaming like it was an emergency, because you can't find a glove."
"Well, not just any glove, I can't seem to find my left-"
"One of your gloves."
"Yes, the left one, now can you hel-"
Emmet closed the door with a bang. That was a no, then. Ingo clicked his tongue peevishly and patted his pocket again in the vague hope it might shake a memory loose.
He had come home. Check. He’d removed his hat and shoes. Check. Then, ah, then he’d gone into the kitchen to drop off the delightful little Cheri cheesecake that he'd enjoyed with Emmet after dinner. He distinctly remembered setting it in the refrigerator and wondering whether he could sneak a bite while his brother wasn't watching. So then, the glove was somewhere in the kitchen.
Ingo searched high and low, peering into cupboards, rummaging in the fridge, standing on a chair to look on top of the cabinets. Not a trace. He paced back and forth around the living room, increasingly annoyed. Of course he could always wear his spare pair, assuming they were still in the sock drawer and there wasn’t some sort of strange glove wormhole that had manifested within their apartment. But those weren't his gloves, they weren't as comfortable, as broken in, and the fingertips were all lumpy. They had a tendency to bunch when he went to shake someone's hand and were a terrible bother, always sliding down to expose his bare wrist, and then he was stuck worrying whether people thought him a slob.
It was a most tedious mystery, and one he was bent on resolving. He marched down the hall to the bathroom to check the laundry hamper, stirring the socks and shirts with a huff. Still thirty minutes until they absolutely had to leave and was it possible, he wondered, that the Pidove had somehow stolen his glove? Maybe the bird was practicing a new and decidedly devious harassment, and had plucked his glove out of his pocket while he'd been asleep and smuggled it out the window? For what purposes, Ingo could not imagine. But it seemed as plausible as any other theory, given their history.
With another huff and a sigh after a fruitless search through the dirty clothes he headed back to the kitchen, glancing through the doorway of his room on the way, reluctantly considering conceding defeat and resorting to dragging out the scorned spares. He caught a glimpse of his reflection as he stamped past, the pale hand and naked wrist stark against the darkness of his coat. It didn't look right, the uniform not complete. Something seemed off about his hat too, and he reached up to correct it.
The immediate freezing flood of adrenaline that doused his spine was not an unfamiliar sensation. Ingo dealt with it often enough, in the heat of an intense battle or in the face of the rare threat of danger, and he was no stranger to the physiological responses that came with it. The increased heart rate, the dry mouth, the tightness in his throat, the cold prickle across his scalp, the way his fingers tingled, were all very well-known to him, pedestrian almost.
But the fear, the sheer overwhelming panic, was a new experience.
He wasn't wearing his hat.
That wasn't his hat on his head.
His hat was still on the hook by the front door.
He did not doubt his eyes but he could not process what he had just seen. Because it didn't make sense. It didn't make any kind of logical, reasonable sense at all. Because his hat was hanging in its proper place so either his brain must have been lying to him, which troubled him greatly, or there was someone in the house. In his room, in his territory. The bed was still unmade and the pillows askew, his clothing and books and personal items exposed, and there was a person in there. Someone had snuck in through the unlocked front door while he was distracted and now they were waiting in his room and wearing a replica of his hat, and, most upsettingly of all, that person was him.
His feet felt nailed to the floor and his heart throbbed in his ears.
A faint creak sounded from the bedroom.
With a yelp he launched himself down the hall, flinging himself against Emmet's door, falling forward in a tangle of arms and legs and slamming the door shut behind him, bracing his shoulders against it. The room was dim, the blinds pulled against the early sun, the only light a thin stripe coming around the sides and the rest of the space cast in shadow. Emmet was back in bed and didn’t even bother to roll over when Ingo burst in.
“Emmet,” his voice was choked. “Emmet get up.”
He received a growl in response and there was a sense of dread plucking at his bowels as the blankets rustled and his brother shifted. The idea of going to investigate alone was too much, but how could he explain what he had seen in a way that didn’t make him sound insane?
He couldn't.
“I think someone’s in the apartment.”
“Haxorus," came the muffled reply, Emmet burrowing into the pillow, determined to claim a few more minutes of sleep. "She can deal with them."
“I’m serious, Emmet,” Ingo hissed. “Please.”
“Fuuuuuck me. Fine.” Emmet slid out of bed, pulling the sheet with him, draping it around himself before he shambled towards the door. “If this is a prank I’ll break your nose.”
Ingo trailed behind him, resting a trembling hand on his twin’s shoulder, Emmet striding down the hall with confidence, the blanket cape swirling dramatically. He flipped the switch and the lights flared on, revealing the empty corridor, and the apartment remained quiet, the windows shut, the door firmly closed. They both stood in silence, scanning the small space, Ingo with his back pressed to the wall and his hand covering his mouth, his gaze flitting between the front door and his own room.
Emmet frowned, the sheet billowing while he turned a full circle, then he stormed off, his footsteps echoing, and flung the bathroom door open. Then the linen closet, the front door, and every single other door and cabinet in the entire apartment. He finally turned to Ingo after his tour, hands on his hips, staring at his brother.
“There’s nobody here.”
"There was. There has to be. I saw... I..."
"Did you have a dream? Like a really realistic one-"
"I saw me. Though I'm not sure if it was really me, or a mirror me, or the other me was the one who was-"
“Ingo. It is seven a.m. and I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
Emmet was annoyed. Of course, because why should anything make any sense and why shouldn’t he be having some kind of breakdown over a misplaced glove.
Ingo tried again.
"It's the strangest thing. I was looking for my glove then I saw a reflection and-"
Emmet interrupted him, holding a finger to his lips, leaning closer with his eyes glittering dangerously.
"Listen."
Ingo cocked his head, listening, but couldn't hear anything.
"I-"
"No, shhh, just listen."
Silence.
"You see," Emmet whispered. "The Pidove isn't here. There's nobody in the apartment. So there is absolutely no reason for you to keep shouting because you got spooked by your own reflection. I'm going to go back to bed."
And he did.
"Emmet-"
The door slammed.
Ingo stared at his hat on the hook and rubbed the heel of his palm into his eye for a long while until lights danced at the edge of his vision. Then he stumbled into the kitchen where he made himself a cup of the strongest, blackest coffee, sitting at the table with his coat bunched around him, watching the sunlight slowly creep across the room. He took a second inventory, a calming one, the one he usually reserved for a particularly rough shift. He was Ingo. His name was Ingo. He had an Emmet and a Haxorus and a Chandelure. His home was Nimbasa and he was a Subway Boss.
All of those things were true.
And, apparently, he also had another twin, or perhaps triplet.
Because there had been a second Ingo.
He was as sure of what he had seen as he was certain of his own existence. But it was impossible. And Ingo did not deal in irrationalities. He sipped his coffee and stared at nothing.
Ten minutes before they had to leave a sequence of thumps echoed, doors and drawers opening and closing, Emmet’s pattering footsteps as he ran around the apartment before he appeared in the kitchen, fully dressed and immaculate, and tossed something at Ingo.
It struck him on the forehead and fell into his lap. His spare gloves.
“Thank you,” he said weakly.
“It was stress.” Emmet poured himself a coffee, wincing when he sipped it. “This is vile. You got worked up. Your eyes played a trick on you. Or something. And I shouldn't have snapped. Sorry. Do you want a day off?"
Ingo shook his head.
"No. I'm okay, really. We should probably go."
They had to run to clock in and Ingo was winded by the time he skidded into the cramped cabin on his first train of the day, his cap askew, his gloves clamped under his arm and his tie flapping. He could hear the muffled announcements from the platform as his passengers boarded and he fumbled with his cap, taking a moment to adjust it, the brim sitting right above his brow, the bill straight. There was a degree of relief in having it on, and the comforting weight, the knowledge that it was definitely him wearing it, the familiar shape reflected in the window with the badge gleaming, all served to minimize the morning's anxieties. Ingo took a deep breath and summoned his most carrying voice.
"All aboard!"