Interlude - Home for the Weekend

Interlude

Home for the Weekend

Gray knew he was home before he saw the house.

It was the smell.

Canalave carried salt farther inland than visitors expected. The harbor sat out of sight from this part of the city, hidden behind several blocks of brick homes, narrow businesses, machine shops, and roads that had been patched often enough to become geological records of municipal neglect, but the sea still reached everything. On damp afternoons it settled into the streets and gardens until wooden fences smelled faintly of brine and old stone held the cold of it. Near his parents’ neighborhood, the salt mixed with warmer things: cut grass, somebody burning onions two houses over, the distant metallic tang of a workshop where somebody was still running a grinder, and the heavier smell of machine oil that seemed permanently embedded in half the men on the street.

Gray stepped down from the bus with his backpack hanging from one shoulder and a duffel in his right hand. He had been sitting for nearly three hours and his left leg had gone numb somewhere outside Jubilife, so he landed with less dignity than he would have preferred and had to disguise the resulting stumble as an intentional adjustment of his bag.

Behind him, Bastiodon approached the loading ramp with the solemn caution of a Pokémon who had learned through repeated experience that human transportation systems were rarely designed with him in mind. His armored feet came down one at a time, carefully distributed across the metal, and the bus shifted slightly under his weight despite the driver's increasingly visible concern.

Gray heard the suspension complain.

The driver heard it too.

Both men looked toward Bastiodon.

Bastiodon paused halfway down the ramp and looked back into the bus as if the vehicle itself had behaved suspiciously.

The driver leaned slightly into the aisle and stared at the shallow impressions left in the floor where Bastiodon had spent the journey.

Gray adjusted the strap on his shoulder. “They were probably already there.”

The driver looked at him.

Gray looked away.

Bastiodon finished his descent with a heavy clank of armor and immediately lost all interest in the structural condition of public transportation. He raised his head, drew in the air through his nostrils, and turned toward the residential streets with such certainty that Gray had to smile.

“You remember where we’re going.”

Bastiodon stepped closer and bumped the broad edge of his facial shield against Gray’s shoulder. Gray moved half a step sideways under the impact, caught himself, and gave him a flat look.

“Yes, obviously you do. You’ve been here more times than I can count.”

Bastiodon bumped him again.

“I’m not walking faster because you’re excited.”

Bastiodon began walking faster anyway.

Gray sighed, shifted the duffel into his other hand, and followed.

He was twenty-four years old, halfway through a university program that had somehow grown longer every time he discovered another discipline he absolutely needed to understand, and theoretically capable of managing his own schedule. Theoretically was doing considerable work in that sentence. His mother had called three times over the previous week to confirm that he was, in fact, still coming home for the weekend. The first call had been normal. The second had been disguised as a question about whether he needed anything from the store. The third had opened with, I am not checking whether you forgot, but—

His father had been less subtle.

The message had arrived the previous night while Gray was trying to finish a reading response on pre-modern Sinnohan burial architecture and simultaneously arguing with a classmate in the margins of a shared document.

Your mother thinks you forgot. I think you forgot too.

Gray had not forgotten.

He had, however, remembered at eleven forty-three that morning that the bus left at twelve ten.

Those were different things.

The walk from the stop took less than ten minutes, though Bastiodon seemed determined to reduce that time substantially. Gray let him pull ahead by several paces and watched the old neighborhood arrange itself around them with an ease that made something in his shoulders loosen before he consciously noticed it. The grocery on the corner still had the same faded Pelipper painted on the side wall. The elderly woman across from the laundromat still had three ceramic Wingull lined up along her front step even though one had been missing a beak since Gray was sixteen. Somebody had replaced the railing outside the pharmacy, which offended him mildly because the old one had been perfectly serviceable apart from the rust, and the cracked paving stone near the intersection had finally been repaired.

He distrusted that immediately.

His mother used to joke that Canalave changed by inches because everyone in it was too stubborn to move anything farther.

The house appeared at the end of the street, squat and familiar behind a low fence his father had repaired so many times that almost none of the original wood remained. There were pale boards beside dark ones, two sections reinforced with metal brackets, and one post that leaned just enough for Gray to know his father had promised to fix it properly and then decided it was no longer leaning enough to justify the effort.

The porch tilted slightly to the left. It had tilted slightly to the left for as long as Gray could remember.

The mailbox had once been blue. Now it existed in several shades of weathered gray, rust, and stubborn patches of original paint around the hinges. A small dent near the bottom came from a summer when Gray had been twelve and had attempted to teach Shieldon to return a thrown rubber ball. Shieldon had misunderstood the assignment, charged the mailbox, and then spent nearly an hour looking offended by the consequences.

His mother had refused to let his father replace it afterward.

“It has history,” she had said.

“It has a dent.”

“Same thing.”

Beside the recycling bin sat a stack of newspapers tied neatly with twine. Gray knew without checking that at least a third of them contained something his mother had written and had therefore entered the strange transitional state in which they were technically garbage but could not be discarded until she had clipped every piece she wanted for the folders in her office.

Bastiodon saw the front door open.

Gray saw Bastiodon see it.

The change was immediate. Bastiodon lifted his head so sharply that the metal plates along his neck shifted with a scrape, and then his entire body seemed to lean toward the house before his feet had decided to follow.

Gray narrowed his eyes.

“Oh, no.”

His father stepped onto the porch.

He was still wearing his work trousers and a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled above the elbows. The shirt had a pale burn mark near the hem that Gray remembered from at least two years ago, and one cuff had been repaired with thread that did not remotely match. There was a black smear of graphite or grease along his forearm, another at the side of his jaw, and his hair was flattened on one side as though he had spent part of the afternoon under a welding hood.

He looked tired.

He also looked exactly right.

For one quiet second, Gray simply watched him stand there.

Then his father saw Bastiodon and broke into a grin.

“There’s my good boy.”

Gray opened his mouth.

Bastiodon accelerated.

“Traitor.”

The old gate rattled as Bastiodon pushed through it, and the porch boards began complaining before he had even reached them. Gray’s father, demonstrating the survival instincts of a man who had worked around heavy machinery for most of his adult life and apparently learned nothing, stepped down from the porch and crouched with both arms open.

“You know,” Gray called after him, “that is still a fully grown Bastiodon.”

“I can see that.”

“I’m just making sure.”

“You think I forgot what he looks like?”

“No. I think you’ve decided physics is optional because you missed him.”

His father ignored him.

Bastiodon reached him and shoved the broad front of his face into his chest.

The impact forced Gray’s father backward half a step despite his braced stance. He laughed immediately and wrapped both arms around as much of Bastiodon’s head as he could manage, palms rubbing along the edges of the armored shield.

“Yeah, yeah, I missed you too. Easy. Easy, you gigantic lump.”

Bastiodon answered with a deep, resonant sound that Gray felt through the porch boards even from several yards away. He pushed closer, clearly deciding that the correct response to being told easy was greater enthusiasm.

“You’re gonna put me through the front door,” Gray’s father said, breathless with laughter. “Your mother’ll make me fix that too.”

Gray dropped the duffel beside the gate and rested both hands on his hips. “You encouraged this.”

His father looked around Bastiodon’s head. “I restored him.”

“You paid to have him restored.”

“I found the fossil.”

“You did not perform the restoration.”

“I participated emotionally.”

“You filled out paperwork.”

“Extremely important paperwork.”

Gray walked into the yard while Bastiodon finally allowed his father enough space to stand properly. “I’m pretty sure the restoration lab did most of the difficult parts.”

His father pointed at Bastiodon with all the authority of someone presenting decisive evidence in court. “He knows who found him.”

Bastiodon rumbled.

Gray considered that. “He also eats rocks.”

“Exactly. Good judge of character.”

“Those two things are not related.”

“They are if you’re narrow-minded.”

Gray snorted despite himself.

His father scratched along the lower edge of Bastiodon’s facial shield, right where the armor gave way to softer hide. He still remembered the exact place Bastiodon liked after all these years. Bastiodon lowered his head almost immediately, his eyes half-closing as he leaned into the touch.

There were things Gray forgot regularly. Birthdays unless they were written down. Meals when he was working. Appointments if Lyra—no, he didn't know anyone named Lyra. His schedule. Laundry until he ran out of clean socks.

His father never forgot where Bastiodon liked to be scratched.

The thought came and went without weight.

Bastiodon’s tongue appeared.

Gray saw it.

He also saw the angle of his father’s face and understood what was about to happen approximately one second before his father did.

“Dad.”

His father glanced toward him. “What?”

Too late.

Bastiodon dragged his tongue from the bottom of his chin almost to his temple.

Gray’s father froze.

Bastiodon pulled back looking deeply satisfied with himself.

There was a beat of complete silence.

Gray started laughing.

Not politely. Not the controlled exhale he usually used when something amused him. He doubled slightly at the waist and had to catch his backpack strap before it slipped off his shoulder.

His father wiped a hand slowly down the side of his face and stared at the slime shining across his palm.

“Son of a bitch.”

Bastiodon gave an uncertain little rumble.

His father looked at him immediately. “No, not you. You’re perfect.”

That made Gray laugh harder.

His father pointed the wet hand at him. “You’re responsible for this.”

“I wasn’t involved.”

“You raised him.”

“You found him.”

“That was fourteen years ago.”

“Consequences have long tails.”

“So do some Pokémon. Doesn’t mean I blame myself every time one breaks something.”

“You absolutely do if it’s mine.”

“I blame you.”

“Exactly.”

The front door opened farther before his father could answer, and Gray’s mother appeared behind them with a dish towel thrown over one shoulder and her reading glasses perched uselessly on top of her head. A pencil had been shoved through her hair at some point during the afternoon, though most of the loose strands had escaped around it. She had probably been cooking while reading something. She was always doing two things at once and insisting neither suffered for it.

Her gaze moved first to Gray.

Then to Bastiodon.

Then to her husband’s wet face.

Her mouth curved slowly.

“I see he remembered you.”

Gray’s father turned toward her with wounded dignity. “Nobody is helping me.”

“You told him he was perfect.”

“He is.”

“Then stop complaining.”

“He licked my eye.”

“You still have the eye.”

“Good to know the standard.”

Bastiodon rumbled again and leaned toward her.

Gray’s mother raised one finger. “Don’t.”

Bastiodon stopped.

His father stared. “How the hell did you do that?”

“I have boundaries.”

“You spoil him worse than I do.”

“I spoil him intelligently.”

Gray smiled. “That sounds made up.”

“Most useful concepts do at first.”

His father wiped his face again and muttered something about betrayal.

Gray’s mother ignored him and stepped off the porch.

There was no hesitation before she wrapped her arms around Gray.

He had enough time to register what was happening but not enough time to do anything useful about it. His arms remained awkwardly at his sides for perhaps half a second before habit overcame surprise and he hugged her back.

She was smaller than he remembered.

No.

She wasn’t. He was just taller than the version of himself that still lived most clearly in this house.

Her cheek pressed briefly against his shoulder.

“You lost weight.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“I weighed myself Tuesday.”

“Then your scale is wrong.”

“That is not how scales work.”

“I’m a journalist. I know when evidence is unreliable.”

“You write local politics and shipping disputes.”

“I contain multitudes.”

His father called from behind Bastiodon, “She’s been waiting three days to tell you that you look thin.”

“I have not.”

“You bought extra rice.”

“That proves nothing.”

“You bought the expensive rice.”

Gray’s mother released him just far enough to look at his face, still keeping one hand on his upper arm as though she needed independent confirmation that he had actually arrived. Her eyes moved over him in that familiar inventory mothers somehow performed without permission: hair, face, clothes, whether he looked tired, whether he had been eating properly, whether university had somehow removed a limb since the last visit.

“You need a haircut.”

“There it is.”

“And sleep.”

“I sleep.”

His father laughed.

Gray looked over. “You’re covered in Bastiodon saliva. I don’t think you’re in a position to criticize anyone.”

“That has nothing to do with whether you sleep.”

“It damages your credibility.”

His mother’s thumb brushed once over his sleeve before she finally let go. “Your room is made up. I changed the sheets yesterday because your father put a box of drill bits on the bed.”

“I needed somewhere flat.”

“You have a workshop.”

“The bench wasn’t flat.”

“It’s a workbench.”

“Exactly.”

Gray looked between them and felt something warm settle low in his chest.

There were dishes clinking somewhere inside. The kitchen window was open, and he could smell garlic now, along with something roasting. His father was still complaining about having Bastiodon spit in his eyebrow. His mother was pretending not to smile. Bastiodon stood between them with the serene expression of a Pokémon entirely confident that he had improved the afternoon.

Gray had spent most of the semester sleeping in a room that was technically his but never felt like anything other than the place where his books happened to be. He had friends at university, in the loose academic sense of people who would notice if he stopped showing up to lectures. He had professors who liked him, professors who tolerated him, and one archaeology lecturer who had begun every conversation with him for the last month by saying, “Please do not argue with me today.”

He had work he loved. He had Bastiodon. He had plans stretching years ahead of him.

Still, standing in the front yard with his mother’s hand briefly warm against his arm and his father swearing while trying to wipe Pokémon saliva out of his hair, Gray felt the particular relief of being somewhere he did not have to explain himself before he could occupy space.

His mother turned toward the house. “Come inside before dinner gets cold.”

“I thought we were early.”

“You are.”

“Then how is it getting cold?”

“It will eventually.”

“That’s not—”

“Gray.”

He picked up his duffel.

“Yes, Mom.”

She went inside.

His father leaned closer as Gray passed him. “You see what I live with.”

From inside the house, his mother called, “I can hear you.”

His father did not even flinch. “Terrifying woman.”

Gray smiled.

Bastiodon nudged him toward the porch, impatient to follow.

Gray climbed the familiar steps.

The wood creaked beneath his feet in exactly the places he remembered.

His mother had left the hall light on even though it was still daylight outside. His father’s work boots sat beside the door, one tipped on its side. A newspaper lay folded open on the little table beneath the coat hooks. Somewhere in the kitchen, a pan hissed.

Coffee. Laundry detergent. Printer ink. Machine oil carried in on his father’s clothes. Garlic from dinner. Salt from the harbor clinging faintly to all of it.

Gray breathed in.

Home.

“There you are,” his mother said, squeezing him once before she let go. She kept both hands on his upper arms for another moment anyway, leaning back just enough to inspect him with the concentration of someone examining evidence she already considered conclusive. “You got thinner.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“I weighed myself Tuesday.”

“That was Tuesday.”

Gray stared at her. “It is Friday.”

“Exactly.”

“That is not enough time for a meaningful change in body mass unless something has gone catastrophically wrong.”

His mother continued looking him over, entirely unimpressed by the argument. Her eyes moved from his face to his shoulders, then lower, taking inventory with the same quiet thoroughness she used when she came home from an interview and started arranging her notes across the kitchen table. Gray knew the expression. It meant she had reached a conclusion and was now merely gathering material to defend it.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelPhoenix; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He frowned. “Why are you doing visual calibration when I have data?”

Behind them, his father finally managed to wipe the last string of Bastiodon saliva from the side of his face with his sleeve. He glanced at Gray, glanced at his wife, and decided immediately that there was no useful contribution he could make to the argument.

“Welcome home,” he said.

Gray’s mother ignored both of them. “Your cheeks are thinner.”

“They are the same cheeks.”

“I’ve known them longer than you have.”

“That is biologically impossible.”

“I saw them before you did.”

Gray opened his mouth, considered the technical validity of that statement, and closed it again.

His father noticed.

“Oh, she got you.”

“She did not get me.”

“You stopped talking.”

“I was evaluating whether the premise deserved a response.”

“That’s what you say when somebody gets you.”

Gray gave him a look. His father grinned, still damp on one side of his face, and bent to scratch Bastiodon beneath the jaw again.

His mother stooped and picked up Gray’s duffel.

Gray reached for it automatically. “I have that.”

“I know.”

“You don’t need to carry it.”

“I know.”

“It is literally already in my hand.”

“It was.”

She took it anyway.

Gray stood there with his empty hand half-raised for a second before letting it fall. His mother had always possessed a peculiar ability to transform assistance into an accomplished fact before anybody could object effectively. When he was a child, this had involved tying his shoes while he was still insisting he could do it himself. At twenty-four, apparently, it involved appropriating his luggage.

He looked at his father.

His father shrugged. “Pick your battles.”

“You could help me.”

“I am helping you.”

“How?”

“By telling you which battles not to pick.”

“That sounds suspiciously like avoiding your own.”

“Thirty years of experience.”

His mother was already halfway to the porch. Without turning around, she said, “Twenty-six.”

His father’s expression changed instantly.

Gray looked between them. “What was thirty years?”

“Nothing.”

“Apparently nothing,” his mother said.

His father pointed toward the house. “Go inside.”

Gray smiled despite himself.

Bastiodon had decided the conversation no longer concerned him and started toward the porch, his heavy feet leaving shallow dark marks in the softer patches of earth beside the path. He mounted the first step with complete confidence.

Gray noticed the mud caked around his feet.

“Wipe.”

Bastiodon stopped.

Slowly, he lowered his head and looked down at his own feet.

Then he looked back at Gray.

Gray pointed toward the mat beside the door. “You know what I mean.”

Bastiodon looked at the mat.

Then at Gray.

Then at the mat again.

His father reached past him to open the door. “Let him in.”

“He’s covered in mud.”

“He’s always covered in something.”

“That does not mean the floor has to be.”

“You used to bring Shieldon in with half the backyard attached to him.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“He was smaller.”

His father stared at the broad armored bulk currently occupying most of the porch. “That is technically true.”

Bastiodon rumbled, apparently deciding the discussion had gone on long enough, and placed one foot on the mat. He dragged it backward once with exaggerated care, then repeated the motion with the next. It was not especially effective. Most of the mud remained exactly where it had been.

Gray watched him complete the ritual anyway.

“Other side.”

Bastiodon huffed.

“You have four feet.”

His father leaned against the open door. “You make him wipe all four?”

“Yes.”

“He lives on a ranch half the time.”

“He does not live on a ranch.”

The answer left Gray’s mouth easily.

Then something in him snagged.

He stopped.

His father had already turned away to make room for Bastiodon, and his mother was disappearing down the hall with the duffel, but Gray remained on the porch with one hand resting against the doorframe.

He does not live on a ranch.

Of course he didn’t.

Bastiodon stayed with him at university whenever regulations allowed it, and when they were traveling he stayed wherever Gray stayed. There was no ranch. Gray didn’t own a ranch. He was twenty-four. He was still in university. He didn’t have the money for land, or the reason, or—

For the briefest instant, an image arrived with the absolute certainty of memory.

A wide stretch of green under morning mist.

A pond.

A battered fence.

The heavy shape of a Gyarados breaking the water.

A white laboratory building beyond the trees.

Someone shouting about Magikarp.

Gray blinked.

The image vanished so completely that he was left only with the uncomfortable sense that something had moved just outside his peripheral vision.

His father looked back. “You coming?”

Gray glanced toward Bastiodon.

Bastiodon had finished his extremely performative attempt at wiping his feet and was now standing just inside the doorway, waiting. The familiar hallway stretched behind him. The coat hooks were crowded with jackets. His mother’s umbrella leaned in the corner. A pair of his father’s work boots sat beneath the little table, one tipped sideways because he never put them down properly.

Everything was where it belonged.

Gray looked down at his own hand against the frame.

“Yeah.”

“You all right?”

The question was casual. His father had already begun turning away when he asked it.

Gray searched for whatever had bothered him and found nothing solid enough to explain.

“Fine. Thought I forgot something.”

His father snorted. “Wouldn’t be shocking.”

“Fuck you.”

“Good to have you home too.”

Bastiodon rumbled from inside.

Gray stepped over the threshold.

The house wrapped around him almost immediately: warmth from the kitchen, the faint hum of the refrigerator, a radio playing quietly somewhere deeper inside, the familiar ticking of the clock his mother claimed was perfectly accurate despite the fact that it had been four minutes fast for at least a decade. The air smelled of garlic and toasted rice, printer ink from his mother’s office, and the trace of machine oil his father carried home no matter how thoroughly he washed his hands.

Behind him, the porch door swung shut.

Whatever had felt strange disappeared with the sound.

Dinner was chicken fried rice.

Gray stared at the plate for a moment.

His mother noticed immediately. She always did.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You made that face.”

Gray looked at her. “What face?”

“The one where you think something is statistically suspicious.”

His father, already helping himself to more rice from the serving bowl, gave a short laugh. “She’s right. You’ve got a face for that.”

“I do not have a face for statistical suspicion.”

“You absolutely do.”

Gray looked down at the food again. Steam curled up from the rice, carrying the smell of ginger and soy with it.

“I ate this yesterday.”

His father sat across from him and spooned another helping onto his plate. “Then congratulations. You like it.”

“At school.”

“So?”

Gray frowned.

He could not remember exactly where.

The university cafeteria, probably. Or takeout. There was a place near campus that made decent fried rice if he asked them to use less oil, though he usually had to remind them twice. He could picture the little paper cartons they used and the faded menu behind the counter, but not actually sitting down to eat there yesterday.

His mother took the chair beside him. “If you complain after I cooked, I’m sending you back.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“Good.”

Gray ate.

The first bite settled something in him before he could name what it was.

It tasted exactly right.

Not restaurant right. Home right. There was more ginger than the place near campus used, and the chicken was cut smaller because his mother always said larger pieces made fried rice awkward to eat with a fork. Gray had once argued that this was objectively false, complete with an explanation involving bite size and utensil geometry, only to discover there was no winning that discussion. She had listened to the entire argument and then cut the chicken smaller anyway.

Bastiodon rested on the floor near Gray’s father’s chair, taking up enough space that the chair had been angled slightly away from the table.

His head fit partially underneath.

Partially.

Every time someone moved a foot, Bastiodon opened one eye to check what had disturbed him, then closed it again when the answer proved unimportant.

Gray’s mother glanced down at him. “He’s bigger.”

Gray swallowed. “He’s been the same size for years.”

“Then I’m getting smaller.”

“That is possible.”

His father immediately pointed his fork at Gray. “Do not tell your mother she’s shrinking.”

“She suggested it.”

“I’m giving you survival advice.”

“Noted.”

His mother ignored both of them and folded her hands loosely on the table. “How’s university?”

Gray knew that question was coming.

The answer should have been simple.

It never was.

“Good.”

Both of his parents stared at him.

Gray sighed. “You asked generally.”

His mother waited.

“Try again.”

He looked between them. His father had the same patient expression he always wore whenever Gray started explaining something technical and forgot that normal people usually required context first.

Gray took another bite, bought himself a few seconds, and reorganized his thoughts.

“My historical ecology seminar is good. Professor Hale keeps insisting human settlement patterns are the primary useful indicator for reconstructing ancient Pokémon distribution, which is wrong. Or at least overstated.” Gray paused long enough to swallow. “He’s not stupid. He just keeps treating written history like it starts at the same time ecological history becomes interesting.”

His mother smiled. “You told him that.”

“Not exactly.”

His father snorted into his rice.

Gray looked at him, offended. “I was polite.”

His mother’s smile widened. “What did you say?”

Gray paused, reconstructing the exchange with enough care that both of them immediately became more suspicious.

“I asked whether he believed Pokémon populations ceased to exist whenever humans forgot to write them down.”

His father started laughing before Gray had even finished.

His mother closed her eyes and rubbed briefly at the bridge of her nose. “That is polite.”

“It was relevant.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“He disagreed.”

His father was still laughing. “I’m shocked.”

“We argued for twenty minutes, and then he gave me two papers to read.”

His father settled back into his chair and pointed his fork at him. “So he likes you.”

Gray frowned. “Why?”

“Because if he didn’t, he would’ve told you to shut up.”

“That seems inefficient.”

“It’s university,” his mother said. “Half the point is finding people who argue with you intelligently.”

Gray tried not to smile and failed a little. “That part is good.”

“What about archaeology?”

“Better.”

The answer came faster, and once he started, the shift in him was obvious. He sat a little straighter and forgot about his food for a moment.

“There’s a site outside Celestic they’re letting graduate students work this summer. Mostly survey work, probably nothing major, but there are carved stones that might predate the settlement layer above them. The exciting part is the Pokémon remains. They aren’t arranged like food waste, and they don’t look ceremonial or funerary either. They’re just integrated into the occupation layer, which could mean the people and Pokémon were using the same structures without a clean domestic distinction.”

His father chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds.

“So people had Pokémon in the house.”

Gray stopped.

“That is an offensively simple version.”

His father raised his eyebrows. “Is it wrong?”

Gray’s mouth tightened.

“Not necessarily.”

His father smiled.

Gray pointed at him with his fork. “I hate when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Reduce twenty minutes of context into something basically correct.”

“Trade skill.”

“You work with metal.”

“Exactly.”

Gray looked toward his mother for support.

She was already smiling.

“No support anywhere.”

“You came home voluntarily,” she said.

At the word home, Bastiodon lifted his head from beneath the edge of the table. Gray glanced down and rested his fingers against the armor just above one eye, rubbing there absentmindedly until Bastiodon’s eyelid lowered again.

“I did.”

His father leaned back in his chair. “Still planning on becoming a professor?”

“Yes.”

“No hesitation?”

“About the job or the title?”

“Both.”

Gray thought about it.

The title appealed to him more than he admitted.

Professor Linden.

It sounded good in his head. A little ridiculous, maybe, in the way all titles did when you imagined attaching them to yourself before you had earned them. But good.

“I want the research access.”

His mother answered immediately. “That wasn’t the question.”

Gray sighed. “Yes. I want to be a professor.”

His father smiled, and Gray noticed it quickly enough that he kept talking before either of them could turn the moment into something embarrassing.

“I don’t necessarily want to teach large lecture halls forever. Field research would be better. Archaeology, mythology, old ecosystems, fossil populations. Maybe restoration work if I can get enough technical training. Ideally somewhere with land.”

His father raised an eyebrow. “Land.”

“For Pokémon.”

“You planning on collecting fifty?”

“No.”

Bastiodon snorted beneath the table.

Gray looked down at him. “Shut up.”

His mother laughed. “How many do you have now?”

Gray counted automatically.

“Bastiodon, Butterfree, Dustox, Scizor, Cradily, Absol, Chatot, Aerodactyl, Blissey—”

He stopped.

His fork stayed suspended above the plate.

Something had happened.

Not in the room. Inside him.

A sudden pressure tightened behind his eyes, sharp enough to make his vision feel strangely close for half a second. Gray blinked and set the fork down without quite meaning to.

His mother’s expression changed at once. “You all right?”

“Yes.”

The pressure was already fading.

By the time he reached for his water, the headache was gone.

Gray looked down at his plate.

Nine.

That was right. It should have been right. Butterfree, Dustox, Scizor—

A sudden sadness moved through him so sharply that he stopped counting.

He frowned.

His father noticed. “What?”

“Nothing.”

It was not nothing.

Gray missed Scizor.

The feeling arrived whole, without explanation, and that was what unsettled him most. Scizor was at the university habitat. He was fine. Gray knew that. He tried to picture the red armor, the heavy claws, the pale scratch along the left—

The image slipped away.

Bastiodon pushed his head against Gray’s knee under the table. Gray looked down and rested a hand against the edge of his shield, grounding himself in the familiar weight and warmth of him until the strange grief receded.

His father returned to his food. “Anyway. Land.”

“Enough for habitats,” Gray said.

“Sounds expensive.”

“I’ll get grants.”

His mother laughed softly. “That confidence.”

“I’ll write good proposals.”

“You hate paperwork.”

“I’ll hire someone.”

“With the grant?”

Gray considered that. “Yes.”

His father shook his head. “You’re going to end up living in a cave.”

“That’s plan B.”

“Your mother will still call.”

“I know.”

The conversation drifted on from there, easy and familiar. Gray complained about a lab partner he respected academically and disliked personally, a professor who had spent three lectures describing ancient Sinnoh mythology as primitive weather explanation, and a fossil reconstruction seminar where he had apparently annoyed half the room by asking whether restored Pokémon were being raised according to modern habitat assumptions instead of evidence from their original ecosystems.

His father wanted to know whether anyone had thrown him out yet.

His mother wanted to know whether he had made any friends.

Gray told them those were different questions.

They both laughed.

Later, his mother brought out an old photo album she had found while cleaning.

Gray objected immediately.

She ignored him immediately.

There was a photograph of ten-year-old Gray standing beside a newly restored Shieldon, small enough then to fit between his legs. Gray was grinning so widely that his own face looked unfamiliar.

His father picked up the photograph and studied it for a moment.

“Best thing I ever dug up.”

He did not say it sentimentally.

That made it worse.

Gray looked down at Bastiodon, asleep beside the couch now, breathing slow and deep.

His chest tightened for reasons he could not explain.

His mother turned the page.

More photographs.

Gray on his first journey. His father repairing a torn backpack strap. His mother standing behind a younger Bastiodon with both hands braced against his shield because he had discovered that pushing people was funny.

Gray laughed. “I remember this.”

“You cried.”

“I was twelve.”

“You cried because he knocked your sandwich into the mud.”

“It was a good sandwich.”

His father nodded gravely. “Tragic.”

Gray looked at him.

Rain had begun to tap softly against the windows. The room was warm. The album lay open across his mother’s lap. Bastiodon slept at his feet.

He had nowhere else to be.

No expedition.

No lab.

No screaming Pokémon beneath the earth.

Gray’s smile vanished.

His mother looked up. “What?”

He stared at her. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Pressure gathered behind his eyes again.

Gray looked toward the clock.

8:14.

He looked away.

Then back.

8:14.

The second hand moved.

The minute did not.

His headache sharpened.

“What day is it?”

His father frowned. “Friday.”

“I know that.”

His mother set the album aside. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Gray tried to remember the date.

University term. Weekend. Twenty-four.

He was twenty-four.

The thought itself felt wrong.

People did not normally think their own age with that much certainty unless somebody had asked.

He looked at his father.

His father looked exactly as Gray remembered him.

Remembered.

Not saw.

Gray stood too quickly.

Bastiodon woke at once.

“Gray?” his mother said.

The room had changed without changing at all.

The couch. The curtains. The old album. The smell of fried rice still lingering from dinner. Everything was where it belonged.

Too much where it belonged.

Not perfect.

Correct.

As if somebody had rebuilt the house from memory and only bothered with the details memory had kept.

Gray crossed into the kitchen.

His father stood behind him. “What’s going on?”

Gray opened the refrigerator.

Milk. Mustard. Leftovers.

Three identical containers of chicken fried rice.

He stared.

“No.”

His mother came closer. “What?”

Gray shut the door.

Opened it again.

One container.

Milk.

Mustard.

Vegetables.

Normal.

He stepped back.

“What the fuck?”

“Gray.”

A memory rose in him.

His father beneath stone.

Gray recoiled so hard his shoulder struck the counter.

His mother moved toward him, and he lifted one hand before she could touch him.

“Wait.”

She stopped.

The hurt on her face nearly undid him.

Three years.

The number entered his mind.

Three years since—

No.

He was twenty-four. He was in university. His parents were alive. His father was six feet away in his old work shirt, grease still near his jaw, looking frightened.

Gray’s breathing quickened.

“You found Bastiodon.”

His father frowned. “Yeah.”

“The fossil.”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Quarry edge.”

Gray knew that answer.

He had always known it.

“What layer?”

His father blinked. “What?”

“What layer did you find him in?”

“Gray, I don’t—”

“You told me.”

“I’m sure I did.”

“What layer?”

The answer did not come.

Gray went cold.

He turned to his mother.

“What story were you writing this week?”

She gave him a small, uncertain smile. “Local council.”

“About what?”

“Budget.”

“What budget?”

The smile remained.

Warm.

Patient.

Empty.

Gray stepped back.

“No.”

Bastiodon moved between them.

Gray looked down at him.

Real.

That certainty came immediately.

Bastiodon was real.

But older.

Older than this.

Then the rest came in fragments.

A ranch under morning mist. Magikarp flashing silver in a pond. Aggron. Lyra. Roark. Cynthia. Heatran in firelight. Darkrai. White-violet light.

A scream.

Gray grabbed the edge of the counter.

His parents vanished from his mind beneath the force of the headache.

For one awful second Gray could not remember why he was frightened. He knew he was standing in his parents’ kitchen. He knew his mother was in front of him and his father was just beyond her and Bastiodon had moved close enough that Gray could feel the heat of his body against his leg. Those facts were intact. Everything around them had simply been knocked loose, names and years and memories scattered by the pain behind his eyes before snapping abruptly back into place.

His mother reached for his arm.

Gray flinched hard enough to pull away from her.

She recoiled.

The look on her face hurt more than the headache.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Gray—”

“No. Wait. Please.”

His voice broke on the last word. He heard it happen and hated it immediately.

His mother stayed where she was.

Gray stared at her.

He knew that face. Not generally. Not in the vague way people knew their parents after enough years. He knew the tiny scar near her eyebrow from falling off a bicycle when she was a teenager. He knew her glasses always slid down her nose when she read lying on the couch and that she would push them back up without looking. He knew she clipped every article she wrote and filed them in folders she pretended not to care about. He knew she drank too much coffee when she had a deadline, forgot where she put pencils while actively holding them, and went quiet when she was genuinely angry because shouting felt too easy.

He knew her.

He knew she was dead.

Gray stopped breathing.

The realization did not unfold gradually. There was no careful reconstruction, no sequence of facts arriving in the proper order. The truth tore through him all at once and took everything else with it.

His father was dead.

His mother was dead.

They had been dead for three years.

No.

Not three years from twenty-four.

Gray was not twenty-four.

He was thirty-two.

The kitchen seemed to tilt around him, although nothing moved. His father had died when the house collapsed. His mother too. An Onix had tunneled beneath the property. The ground had failed. There had been a sinkhole, stone, dust, twisted beams, emergency lights, too many people saying his name in voices they thought were gentle.

Gray’s hands began to shake.

“No.”

His mother’s expression crumpled in a way so painfully familiar that for half a second the memory shattered again.

“Sweetheart.”

Gray squeezed his eyes shut.

“No.”

He did not want to know.

That was the worst part.

Some enormous, desperate part of him wanted his own mind to stop working. He wanted to sit back down at the table. He wanted his mother to complain about how thin he looked and his father to tell him he was going to end up living in a cave. He wanted the photo album open again. He wanted fried rice cooling on the table and Bastiodon breathing under it. He wanted to be twenty-four and annoyed about paperwork and convinced that grants would solve every future problem.

He wanted to stay home.

Gray opened his eyes.

His parents were still there.

His father had moved beside his mother now. They were both watching him with the same worried expressions he remembered from every fever, every bad fall, every time he had come home injured from a journey and tried unsuccessfully to convince them it was minor.

Alive.

Warm.

Close enough to touch.

Everything he had wanted for three years stood six feet away from him, and the wanting was so powerful it curdled into anger.

Not at them.

At the room. At himself. At whatever part of his mind had decided to remember. At the fact that knowing the truth felt like being the one to kill them.

The headache drove deeper behind both eyes.

Gray pressed his fingers against his temples. “Why don’t I know the date?”

His father stared at him.

Gray took a step forward. “What year is it?”

Neither of them answered.

“What year?”

His mother moved half a pace closer, careful now. “Gray, you’re scaring me.”

“You’re dead.”

Silence filled the kitchen.

Gray hated himself the instant the words were out.

His mother’s face changed. His father went utterly still. Bastiodon gave a low, anxious rumble and pressed closer to Gray’s side.

“No. No, I didn’t mean—” Gray dragged both hands through his hair and tried to breathe through the pain. “You’re not. You’re here. I’m twenty-four. I came home for the weekend. I was at university. We had dinner.”

He heard himself doing it.

Building the lie back up.

That frightened him almost as much as remembering the truth.

Gray lowered his hands and stared at them both. “Why am I thirty-two?”

His father said his name.

Gray turned toward him. “You died.”

His father’s expression tightened.

Gray wanted him to deny it.

He wanted his father to laugh and tell him he was being dramatic, to swear at him, to say something stupid about cave-ins or university stress or too much coffee. Gray wanted that denial so badly his chest hurt.

His father said nothing.

The kitchen light flickered.

His mother glanced toward the ceiling.

The rain stopped.

Not softened. Not faded into silence.

Stopped.

Gray turned toward the window.

Droplets hung against the glass, perfectly still. One had been halfway down the pane, leaving a crooked trail behind it, and now it remained suspended there as though the world had forgotten what gravity was supposed to do next.

The headache surged.

Gray’s knees buckled.

Bastiodon caught him with the broad side of his body, armor striking Gray’s hip hard enough to bruise, and Gray clung to him without thinking. His hands found familiar ridges in the shield, old scratches beneath his fingers, the physical certainty of something that did not disappear when he looked too closely.

“Something’s wrong.”

His mother knelt in front of him.

“We’re right here.”

Gray looked at her.

“I know.”

She lifted one hand toward his face.

Gray started crying.

He did not know when it began. There was no clean moment where the tears started. Suddenly his vision was wet and his face hurt and he was trying not to make a sound because making a sound would make this too real.

“I know,” he said again. “That’s the problem.”

His mother touched his cheek.

Warm.

That warmth nearly destroyed him.

Her hand was warm. Her skin had texture. Her thumb moved beneath his eye exactly as it had when he was a child and had cried hard enough that she stopped pretending not to worry.

Real.

Impossible.

Gray closed his eyes.

Something screamed beneath a mountain.

The memory came back so violently he jerked away from her hand.

White-violet light.

Stone.

Thousands of Unown moving in patterns that made his head hurt to look at.

Darkrai.

Cynthia.

The chamber.

Cresselia.

The name broke through the confusion like something thrown through glass.

Cresselia.

Gray opened his eyes.

His mother was still kneeling in front of him.

The wall behind her was wrong.

He stared.

The kitchen wall extended farther than it should. The hallway beyond it stretched away past the dimensions of the house, too long by ten feet, then twenty, then more as Gray watched.

Pictures covered it.

His childhood.

Bastiodon.

University.

His parents.

His parents again.

His parents older.

Gray in a lab coat.

Gray stopped breathing.

In one photograph his father stood beside him, gray beginning at his temples. His mother was on Gray’s other side, smiling toward the camera with one hand caught in the front of his coat as if she had just straightened it.

There was a plaque behind them.

Professor Linden.

Gray pushed himself upright using Bastiodon’s armor.

“That didn’t happen.”

His mother turned to follow his stare, but Gray was already walking toward the hallway.

The photographs multiplied as he approached.

One showed the ranch.

His ranch.

His father stood beside Aggron with one hand against the Steel-type’s neck while his mother held Chatot on her forearm. Cynthia was somewhere behind them, half turned toward someone outside the frame.

Gray’s stomach turned.

“No.”

Another photograph.

Gray older. Forty, maybe. His parents older too.

Alive.

Another showed an award ceremony. Gray stood at a podium while his father slept in the front row, arms folded, mouth slightly open.

Another was Christmas.

Another a birthday.

Another an afternoon on the ranch.

Another his mother meeting Pokémon she had died years before Gray ever caught.

The dream kept giving him things.

Not random things.

Good things.

Specific things.

Cruel things.

Gray backed away from the wall.

“Stop.”

His father’s voice came from behind him. “What are you talking about?”

Gray turned.

The kitchen was gone.

They were on the porch.

Sunset spread across the ranch in gold and orange, pouring over the fields until every fence post and blade of grass looked softened by it. Bastiodon stood beside him. His mother sat in a porch chair with a newspaper open across her lap. His father was crouched beside a railing, repairing a section Gray knew had never existed.

Gray shook his head.

“No.”

His father looked up.

“No, you don’t get to do this.”

His mother lowered the paper. “Do what?”

Gray pressed both hands against his temples until his fingers hurt.

He could barely hold onto a thought long enough to finish it.

Twenty-four.

Thirty-two.

University.

Ranch.

Alive.

Dead.

Weekend.

Expedition.

Home.

Underground.

The words did not form a sequence. They collided, each one dragging a different life behind it.

Gray squeezed his eyes shut. “Which one is real?”

Nobody answered.

His father set the tool down carefully.

Gray opened his eyes.

“Which one?”

The ranch stretched behind them beneath the perfect sunset.

Something moved among the flowers.

Butterfree.

Gray froze.

Butterfree drifted above the field, wings bright in the light.

Dustox rested beneath the porch lamp even though evening had not quite fallen. Scizor stood beside the fence, one claw resting against a post. Farther out, shapes moved through the grass, familiar in ways that hurt before Gray could even identify them.

Every Pokémon he had lost was there.

Gray’s breath caught.

“No.”

His father followed his gaze and smiled.

“They’re all here.”

The words went through Gray like a blade.

That sentence was everything he could have wanted.

That was how he knew it was wrong.

“Fuck you.”

His mother flinched.

Gray saw it and broke all over again.

“Not you.” He shook his head, tears running down his face. “I don’t mean you. I don’t know who I mean.”

Cresselia?

The Unown?

His own brain?

Something inside the chamber?

Something building this place out of every memory he had ever wanted to keep?

Gray turned in a circle as though there might be something standing just outside the illusion, watching him understand.

“Why are you doing this?”

White-violet light flickered beneath the sunset.

His father’s face blurred.

Gray lunged toward him.

“Wait.”

The image steadied just as Gray caught a fistful of his shirt.

Warm fabric.

Solid body.

His father looked down at Gray’s hand and then back up at him.

“Gray?”

Gray stared at him.

There were a thousand things he had never said because there had always been tomorrow until suddenly there wasn’t.

“I miss you.”

His father’s expression softened.

Gray almost wished he had vanished instead.

“I know.”

Gray went still.

“What?”

His father gave him the smallest smile. “I know.”

Confusion flashed through Gray and became rage almost immediately.

“You can’t know that.”

The porch lights flickered.

His mother rose from the chair.

Gray released his father’s shirt and backed away.

“You’re not him.”

The smile disappeared.

Gray’s voice shook. “You look like him. You sound like him. You know enough things to make me believe you for a while, but you’re not him.”

His father stared.

“You remember enough to hurt.”

“Gray,” his mother said softly.

He turned toward her.

Tears distorted her face.

“And you’re not her.”

The ranch shuddered.

Not like an earthquake. There was no movement under Gray’s feet, no sound of wood or earth shifting. The world itself seemed to lose alignment.

Sunset became white crystal light for half a heartbeat.

The porch beneath him became stone.

Bastiodon vanished.

Darkrai stood behind his father.

Then the porch returned, Bastiodon returned, Darkrai was gone, and Gray nearly fell from the force of the headache.

“Stop changing!”

His voice echoed from somewhere farther away than his own mouth.

The world ignored him.

His father aged before Gray’s eyes, then grew younger again. Dust covered his face. The dust disappeared. His mother stood beside the porch railing and in the kitchen at the same time, both versions looking at Gray with identical concern.

Butterfree crossed the sky and vanished halfway through a wingbeat.

Gray grabbed his head.

“What year is it?”

Nobody answered.

“Where am I?”

His mother spoke, but her voice came from too far away. Gray could see her mouth moving and could not make the words become language.

His stomach dropped.

“Who am I?”

That frightened him more than anything else had.

The answer should have been immediate.

Gray Linden.

Professor.

Thirty-two.

Son.

Trainer.

Researcher.

The words came apart before he could hold them.

Twenty-four.

Thirty-two.

Ten.

University.

Ranch.

Cave.

Home.

Alive.

Dead.

Gray shouted out of sheer frustration, “MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!”

The ranch disappeared.

The house returned around him.

The hallway stretched impossibly far in both directions, wallpaper repeating itself until the pattern hurt to look at. Doors lined the walls.

One opened.

His parents were at dinner.

Another.

His mother stood in Gray’s lab reading his first published paper while pretending she had not already read it three times.

Another.

His father sat astride Aerodactyl behind Gray, shouting something Gray could not hear.

Another.

Cynthia stood in the living room while his mother asked her a question that made Cynthia laugh.

Another.

Shieldon, tiny again, slept beside ten-year-old Gray.

Another.

Bastiodon old.

Another.

Gray older.

Another.

His parents older too.

No funerals.

No collapse.

No empty house.

No years missing from anybody’s life.

Every road led somewhere kind.

The headache tore through all of them.

Gray staggered down the hall, one palm scraping along the wall because otherwise he was not sure which direction was down.

“Which one happened?”

A door opened.

His father kissed his mother’s forehead while she read.

Another opened.

Gray came home from some future expedition with his parents waiting on the porch.

Another.

A birthday he had never had.

Another.

A Christmas that had never existed.

More lives.

More home.

More of them.

Gray became furious because every one of them was good.

Because each one felt real until the next one appeared.

Because the moment he looked away from one perfect thing, it was gone, and his mind mourned it as if he had truly lost it.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Gray stopped walking.

He understood.

Not completely.

Enough.

The sleeping Pokémon.

The twitching.

The cycling.

A good dream.

Then another.

Then another.

Nothing monstrous in isolation. That was the cruelty of it. Every dream gave you something worth loving, and then the next dream took it away while leaving just enough of the feeling behind for you to know something had been lost.

The headache pulsed with his heartbeat.

Gray looked down the endless hallway.

His parents stood at the far end.

Together.

Waiting.

His mother held one hand slightly out from her side. His father stood beside her with the familiar slope to his shoulders, looking exactly like himself and not enough like himself and more like himself than Gray could bear.

Gray wanted to go to them.

God, he wanted to.

The desire was so simple it stripped everything else away.

The headache became white fire.

Gray took one step.

The hallway flickered.

Stone.

Cynthia lying somewhere nearby.

Darkrai against a wall of psychic light.

Thousands of Unown.

Cresselia screaming.

Then home again.

His father held out one hand.

Gray stared at it.

Darkness began creeping inward from the edges of the hallway.

“No.”

His mother reached for him too.

Gray moved.

He did not know whether he was trying to reach them or get away.

The darkness came faster.

His father said something.

Gray could see his mouth form the words, but there was no sound.

“Wait.”

The walls disappeared.

His mother’s face blurred.

“Wait!”

Gray ran.

The headache exploded behind his eyes.

His parents vanished.

The last thing he saw was Bastiodon as a Shieldon, standing between them, small and bright-eyed and impossibly young.

Then his vision went black.