Trapped

Summary: The story of a girl trapped in a game. Could be completely canon. No OCs.

She woke up certain of nothing.

Then she thought, my name is Marie, but the name was ill-fitting and somehow she knew: it wasn't really her name, it was just something she was called.

For minutes that seemed like hours, she strained to remember something, anything, but all she came up with was:

I have lived with my mother and near my friends Cheren and Bianca (and thank god, at least if her own name didn't sound familiar, those two did) in a town called Nuvema for a while. She couldn't think of exactly how long, or if her friends had been here the whole time, or what her mother's name was. She couldn't remember if the town had any other residents, or if she even had a father, and if so, what his name was and what he looked like. She couldn't recall how old she was, or if she had any siblings... All that remained, it seemed, were those few details about her friends and basic knowledge: how to walk, talk, count, eat, what pokemon were... Only the barest of details.

[~(*{0}*)~]

When they went to choose their pokemon, her breath caught in her throat. She-who-was-not-Marie had looked forward to this moment for...for a while. Her heart broke once again at how little she could remember. But when she went to choose oshawott, her hand bypassed it and instead closed over snivy's pokeball.

She should have expected this, her mind berated her. She hadn't had any control before, why should she now? Still, her heart clenched, as she was forced into battle even though she knew, just knew that it would trash her room.

Would the rest of her life be like this?

[~(*{0}*)~]

Idly, she wondered what would happen when she went insane.

Certainly it would have to make some difference. But then she berated herself: nothing else had, so why should going insane be any different?

It didn't matter, really. She would find out soon enough, she was sure, because the passing out and waking up at exactly the same moment what seemed like hours, or even days, later*, the blank looks in everyone's eyes, and the monotones they spoke in as she burst into their homes without knocking, giving her advice and repeating it, word for word, inflection for inflection, if she faced them again, was slowly driving her insane... if she wasn't already.

[~(*{0}*)~]

He had become her solace.

By the time she met him, she had given up on ever meeting someone else that wasn't a puppet, at least not in mind, and the thought that she might one day be able to control her own actions had disappeared eons ago.

And then she caught the spark in his eye and she knew.

They couldn't signal each other, not even with the slightest nod or the tiniest wink, but they both knew anyways. Even if their puppeteer forced them to be enemies, they were each other's only allies from that day forward in mind. She disagreed with what he said, she who could not say anything, but who knew what he thought? He was as tethered as she was.

He was her flickering candle against an abyss of smothering darkness...

[~(*{0}*)~]

And then came the day she had been waiting for for what seemed like her entire life.

She was free!

She hardly recognized the sensation. She yelled out loud when she realized, voice hoarse and almost gone from an immeasurable time of disuse. She shivered from happiness and let out all her pokemon, dancing around and singing, literally singing, completely elated.

She made to fly home, to ask her mother about all the things she still couldn't remember. And then she realized...

Everyone was still dead.

Not literally, of course. She hadn't seen any person get even mildly hurt during her journey, and pokemon never did anything more severe than faint – there was never even any blood. Even when her precious pokemon got poisoned (for she had grown to love her pokemon, even if had chosen them herself, even if she would have never chosen them) they seemed to only get gradually more tired until they fainted. It was eery.

But the real problem was that no one had woken up from their stupors. No one's eyes had ignited, no one had cheered, or even smiled. No one had taken notice of the strange background music that she could sometimes hear and sometimes couldn't (right now, she could.)

The light in her own eyes fading, she went to find him, her solace...and then the world disappeared for a moment, and she was back in her bedroom.**

[~(*{0}*)~]

After that, things only got worse. He was gone, the only one who had ever given her hope, and with him went the only will she had left. Her pokemon, at least, were a small comfort.

And then, of course, she watched as she...no, she watched as her puppeteer traded away all her pokemon for weak ones anyone with half a brain and a few nest balls could catch easily. All she had left were pokemon that were as weak as the ones she was getting.

And then she blacked out again, and when she woke, she was once more in her bed. It took a few more minutes to realize that she was once again at the beginning, to suffer through it all again...

*The passing out blurb is talking about saving.

**The point where she gets her free will back is the credits.

By the way, this was cranked out really quickly so it's probably fraught with errors and I'm almost certain it doesn't make much sense, as I was trying to avoid any concrete reference to actual game events so I didn't mess something up accidentally. Sorry.

I promise a oneshot to the first person who can guess who 'he' is. In case you haven't figured it out, the main character is Touko/Hilda.

Stay tuned for a possible alternate ending!