Disclaimer: Pokemon is the property of Tajiri Satoshi and Sugimori Ken.
Notes: I'm taking a wee liberty with geography for the sake of artistic license and not having to seriously consider the motion of the tides. I'm also going to mention that writing these two at this age is so much more fun than writing them just two years later.
Rating: "Haunting" is rated T for language. And this chapter too.
Haunting
Renn Ireigh
Chapter Four: Close Encounter
Present Day: Indigo Plateau
"You think we ought to go up there anyway?" Morty asked, looking at the locked door of Karin's bedroom.
((Clair is up there)) Will said again. ((I think we are superfluous))
Morty snorted. "I am never superfluous."
((Certainly you never think you are)) Will agreed, slipping an arm around his brother's shoulder. ((Come on. Leave them to it))
"Don't know what kind of 'it' they can get up to on the side of a roof," Morty said. Will cuffed him on the ear. "Oy!"
((Behave))
"That's never any fun at all," he grumbled, then changed the subject as they headed back down the hall. "I wonder if Sabrina will come this year. The party, I mean. She didn't come last."
((It's been awhile))
"Rumor going around is she was in Silph when the building… fell down. I went into Saffron looking for her, but she wasn't there." He fell silent.
((She's still alive))
"I know that," Morty said, irritated. "I'd be a hell of a ghost specialist if I couldn't tell if my own sister were dead."
((She's safe, wherever she is)) Will said.
"I could find her."
((I don't doubt that, but I am not sure you'd like what you found)) said Will. ((I think we need to decide what we are going to do if Mother does show up again this year))
"As we know she will."
((Seeing as she's entirely liable to stage an encore of last year's performance))
Morty grimaced. "That was ridiculous."
((That was insulting))
"That was vile. Honestly. Insisting I get back to the Tower and breed with every female ghost around the place in the hopes that one of them would spawn a ghost kid?"
((I was offended at the suggestion))
"She's never understood about us, and I'm not sure I want her to. And I sure as hell wasn't going to try to explain it to her in the middle of the damn hall."
((If she was ever sane, she isn't anymore))
"That's the truth." He unlocked the door to their room- well, it was technically Will's, but he spent enough time up here to consider it his as well- and turned on the lights. "You think she ever was?"
((The things she did take too much planning to be the work of someone insane))
"That your professional opinion?"
Will considered. ((More or less))
"Thank you, that clarifies things immeasurably."
Will sighed. His brother had never been precisely the poster child for cheerfulness, but heroin withdrawal was making him flat out grouchy- although that was improving as his limbs came back under his own control. ((I'm not going to try to touch that woman's mind to give you my professional opinion on its state, and that's that))
"Well, whatever it is, she's out of her mind right now and that's a fact."
((No disagreements))
Morty threw himself down onto the bed, long gangly bones sprawled akimbo and blonde hair everywhere, and pulled Will down next to him. "This is our turf and she doesn't belong here."
Will occupied himself with trying to find a comfortable place not already occupied by one of Morty's limbs, which poked one, then gave up and set his mask on the night table. The scars on the left side of his face had faded, but not enough that he was about to go out in public without covering them.
Morty continued in the same vein. "I say we throw her into the pool in Undertow. Nice little parallel."
((I never know whether you keep joking about that because it hurts or because it doesn't))
"I wasn't really joking."
((I mean bringing it up))
"Does it bother you?"
((A little)) Will said, considering it. ((It's not a memory I like having brought up, although I've become rather inured to it, thanks to someone I know))
"I'd bow, except I don't want to get up," Morty said, wedging an arm under Will's neck so he could pull his brother closer. "You think we'd have ended up doing this if not for that?"
((Your specificity is always astounding))
"You know what I mean. This." He levered himself up so he could kiss Will, slow and languid, taking his time. Will smiled.
((I think we might have figured it out))
"Maybe you would have. I wouldn't. I was dumber than that Psyduck that lived in the lake as a kid."
((You think I'd have brought it up?))
"You did," Morty pointed out.
He quirked a grin. ((I did, didn't I?))
"One good thing that happened that entire day."
((You think it was worth the trade off?))
Morty lay back against the pillows again and contemplated, then shifted to bury his nose in Will's hair, which he always swore helped him contemplate, although Will tended to think it just distracted him. Certainly that seemed the case- minutes rolled by, and Morty didn't respond.
Will rolled onto his side and rested his forehead against his brother's, letting the thoughts roll into his mind, and finding them to be memories.
Will closed his eyes and followed Morty down.
Sixteen Years Ago: Gravekeeper Tower
By mutually unspoken agreement they'd decided to split and meet up again at the lake, since they'd long since figured out that Agatha was less likely to come after them if she didn't think they were together plotting ways of raising hell. In a Gravekeeper household, that was less a figure of speech than a slight exaggeration. Will had managed it, once, even though he was psi and summoning and manifestations were technically supposed to be out of his purvey. It had been an excellent distraction maneuver. Cook was too busy defending the kitchen from the poltergeist in the pantry to notice Morty nipping out of the kitchen with an entire tray of cookies. Will had been nine, Morty ten, and the stomachaches were mighty- but worth it.
It was that sort of mischief that led Agatha to curse the two of them more than once. Not the sort of curse she'd have laid upon a spirit bent on rising from the grave, but dire threats all the same, the kind that would get them when they died. For instance, after a particularly impish bit of psi-work stemming from a good deal of incantation which had coaxed some of the fourth-floor ghosts to take up the entirety of Agatha's wardrobe and streak about the Tower, manifesting voices to screech "I feel pretty, oh so pretty!"- well, she'd pointed her finger at Will (who, very sensibly, was running out of the Tower as though all of hell were on his heels) and screeched, "A day will come when you will no longer be able to force incantations past those grinning lips of yours!"
Then, too, the brothers had rendezvoused at the lake, in a boat in the middle since the water also had the added benefit of blocking ghost powers. After they'd got done congratulating themselves, they'd admitted to each other that maybe the night of one of the Clan meetings, with every family member in attendance, might not have been the right time to provoke their mother.
She'd gotten over the brief phase she'd gone through of beating them; it was so long ago that it seemed a distant nightmare at this point, irreconcilable with the mother who was never nice, but who told them they were satisfactory sons and who told them their work was acceptable when they accomplished innovative things. Beating them hadn't worked for very long, anyway, as Morty was uncommonly good at shields, and Will uncommonly good at teleporting. Besides which, at that point Sabrina was going through her phase of blowing things up, and Agatha had wisely decided that provoking any of them was perhaps not a wise choice if she wanted to have children to inherit the Tower- not to mention a Tower for them to inherit. Still, even though she seemed to have gotten over the idea that she'd given birth to three psychics and a daughter of Absol, and no ghosts whatsoever, it was generally unwise to prod her into anything past a fit of pique. She held the Tower, after all, and the Tower had the ghosts. And the ghosts hadn't gotten over the fact that they lived in forced harmony with three psis.
By the time Morty got to the bank of the lake, Will had flattened himself out on his back on the ice midway to the center of the and had, to all appearances, gone to sleep. Morty nudged him with the toe of a boot and Will kicked at him lazily. "Bugger off."
"You first," Morty said, lying down next to his brother. He could feel the energy-work Will had laid on the ice- a thin shield, cold on the bottom and warm on the top, so that he could lie down without freezing but not melt the ice below. "Where're you drawing the heat?"
"Kitchen fire. Not so bad. Dinner will take an extra three minutes to warm up, but hey."
Morty snorted and laid a hand on the ice. Will yelped and threw himself sideways as the shield abruptly heated several hundred degrees.
"Whoops," Morty said calmly, making a sweeping gesture with his hand. The shield cooled down and spread under Morty's body. "There. Nice and warm. Sorry I scorched your backside. Go sit in a snow pile."
Will made a rude gesture at his brother and gingerly lay back down. "Where'd that come from?"
"The sun."
"Impressive," Will said, and meant it. "You melt the ice we're lying on with that stunt?"
"Nah," said Morty, closing his eyes. "Stole some cold off the next star over."
"You lie like a throw rug. Going to take you out and beat you like one."
"You hit like a girl."
"You hit like a four-year-old."
"You hit like a two-year-old. Girl."
"Right, that was inventive," Will snorted. "Seriously, if we go through the ice on this thing, it's fifty feet to the bottom."
"Twenty-five, and we're not going through."
"Good job I trust you."
"When have I ever lied to you?"
Will held up a hand and ticked occasions off on his fingers. "The time when you told me you'd get that poltergeist out of my room, the time when you said you heard Mother talking about marrying me off to one of those shrine keepers over in Johto, the time when-"
"Did you actually believe me with that thing about the shrine girl?"
"I was twelve."
"Pft," Morty said. "Dumb as a box of rocks."
"Scared the hell out of me, you jerk."
"Never had any hell in you. Not my fault you're scared of girls."
"I'm not scared. Not any more than you are."
"Well, I'm not."
"Yeah? Remember when we went up to Cerulean and that red-haired girl tried to kiss you? You were so poleaxed you fell in the pool."
Morty turned beet red. "I'm not scared," he said defensively, and then figured What the hell. "I just… don't like girls. Not like that."
"I know that," Will said, as though he'd just heard "The sky is blue" presented as a great revelation. "It's just you didn't know it, not then. At least I don't think so."
"You didn't know that," Morty said, caught between outrage and resign. "You're making that up."
Will tapped a finger to his temple. "No I'm not. It's okay. I don't either."
"You don't?" This was new information, and Morty looked at his brother in outright shock and more than a little re-evaluation. For his part, Will was lying back on the ice, eyes closed, as though he hadn't said a thing.
"Nah. Looks like it's up to the girls then. I mean, the whole family name thing. You know anybody? That you like, I mean? Guys."
Yes, he thought, but that was a terrible kind of thought even now, and he wasn't going to voice it. Instead Morty levered himself up to a sitting position so he could glare at Will. "We don't exactly get to meet a lot of those, if you haven't noticed. How do you- how do you just know stuff like that? How do you not have to- to-"
"Spend two years soul-searching?" Will suggested.
"Yeah. No! I mean how'd you know that about me?"
Will shrugged. "Sometimes I just know things. It's… it's the same way I know that I can pull heat from the fire, for instance. Or the same way I know when Mother's going to try to have it out with Sabrina so we can get out of the way before the ghosts go crazy."
"Are you prescient?"
"I think so. Maybe a little. I can't tell the future- well, not exactly, anyway, I can get feelings - but there's stuff I know."
"Hey," Morty said, genuinely impressed. "That's- that's almost as good at reading minds. Even I can't do that."
"So of course it astounds you that someone else can do something you can't, Mr. 'I-Pulled-The-Cold-From-The-Nearest-Star.'" Will made a face.
"Well, it's hard to find things I can't do," he boasted, except that it wasn't really bragging because it was more or less true. He had pulled the cold on the underside of the shield from space. He hadn't known for sure that he'd be able, but he figured he probably could, and for a psychic in the middle of puberty and thus the full flush of his power, one who hadn't had any formal training to limit what he thought he could do, that was good enough.
"Well, you can't know your own mind," Will said with finality to take the wind out of his sails. "Your own character is a secret to you."
"Shove off."
"You first," Will said. "Look, you think we should run away?"
"What?" Morty blinked a few times. Will could make Cycling Road turn right-angles.
"Well, Karin did. And Sabrina's not long from walking out herself."
"Who told you?"
"Didn't we just get done talking about how I know things?"
"I guess," Morty conceded. "But look, why us? Seems to me we've got it pretty good here."
"How you figure?"
"Well, Mother's gotten over the fact that we're the only kids she's got, both of us are strong enough to handle the ghosts even if they don't like it, either one of us could inherit the whole thing once she's dead."
"Or she turns the Tower and the job over to one of the other Houses of the Clan."
"She won't do that," Morty said. "That's like giving up. That is giving up."
"I just- something feels wrong," Will said, staring up at the sky until his eyes hurt from the brightness. "Something bad is going to happen. I don't want to be here when it does."
Morty elbowed him. "Ickle brother scared of shadows."
"Shut up, I'm being serious."
Morty wasn't done. "It's okay, ickle, big strong brother protect you."
Will kicked him. "I said I'm being serious."
"I think you're being ridiculous," Morty said frankly. "Look, Mother did all sorts of bad juju when we were younger, I know the kind of stuff she tried to summon up, but she hasn't done that in ten years, I really think she's done with it. We could inherit, Will."
"Don't be blind," Will snapped. "You think an entire Tower full of ghosts is going to accept being kept quiet by a psychic? You don't think they'd try to kill either one of us the second Mother turned her back? You don't remember the last time, when they tried to eat all three of us and we only made it out because-"
"That was a year ago! They don't now!"
"Yeah, because Sabrina exorcised the whole floor of fifths not too long ago, and they don't want that happening twice, so they're not going to tick anyone off while they're under control, but it didn't exactly endear us to them. Remember the sixths grabbing your mind and floating you towards the window? Good job I woke your behind up. You're like a buffet to them, the kind of power you command, they'd have had you jumping out of the window so they could drink it."
"I really think you're jumping at shadows."
Will wasn't done. "You're not sick of living every day having to watch your back? Besides, you know the kind of power flux that happens when the Gravekeeper dies, before the next one takes the job. You don't think that the ghosts wouldn't try to do something with that? Like kill off anyone they could?"
"I think you're underestimating-"
"I think you're overestimating how much the ghosts like us."
"Look," Morty said, uncomfortably aware that this line of discussion was probably going to get him punched. "I don't want to be a jerk, here, and I don't know if this prescience thing makes you see all kinds of possible futures or what, but you're not always known for being the most accurate when it comes to- ghoof!"
He'd been right. Will punched him.
The thing was, some part of Morty reflected as he howled and curled around his stomach, Will could be a shrinking violet and no mistake. Of the two of them, Morty had the guts and the firepower, and if you wanted sheer balls to the wall strength, you called the older brother and left the younger one at home. But there were times when his younger brother turned into someone that Morty didn't recognize- someone whose dark blue eyes turned black when he was angry, someone who could win a game of chess, blindfolded, against old men who'd played for years, someone who could coax and coerce a floor full of angry spirits into fighting themselves instead of siren-singing Morty out of a window despite that someone being psi- the kind of person who shouldn't be able to do that. Someone who could throw a punch and mean it.
Morty lay still, trying not to throw up on the ice. Will tackled him.
"What the hell," Morty choked, throwing himself to the side. It didn't work. Will landed on top of him, pinning him to the ice- or trying. Morty twisted in an ab-wrenching maneuver that brought him sitting up, one knee between Will's thighs, and he used the momentum to grab Will's arm and shove. Will grabbed him in a headlock and the two went rolling across the ice towards the center of the lake, kicking at each other, scrabbling for purchase in each other's bodies. Morty opened his mouth to bite Will on the ear, got shoved, rolled, and ended up with a mouthful of ice. This tastes like salt, he thought to himself with some astonishment, and sat up to tell Will so when the explosion happened.
Will shrieked something profane and threw himself backwards across the ice; Morty did not acquit himself any more gracefully. The windows of the Tower blew outwards. Someone screamed. Mist rolled out from the walls.
Underneath them, the ice groaned.
"I think we'd better get out of here," Morty said, very carefully, feeling that swell inside him that meant that he needed to get ahold of himself before he broke something.
Will struggled to his feet and walked over to Morty to offer him a hand up- and then the ice cracked, all at once, and Will screamed and fell into the lake.
Morty howled and shouted and threw himself down on the ice, yelling his brother's name, sticking his arm down into the water- and then yanking it out just as fast when he felt the chill. Think! he snarled at himself, forcing all panic aside, shoving his mind into quiescence- and then the idea came to him. He made a rope of his energy and dropped it into the icy water- and watched it sizzle out.
Water blocks ghost power, he thought with a panic. That's why we come here- but it blocks psi too…
Morty threw his head back and howled, "WILL!"
Next to him the ice shattered upwards, a pulsing sphere of sapphire-colored energy- the color of Will's aura. "Will?" Morty yelled, but it wasn't Will at all- or it was, but only halfway to the way that mattered.
((TAKE IT))
Will's voice came from everywhere and nowhere, loud but dull and blurred, and Morty realized what his brother had done and why the orb had the same feel to it has his brother, and made a decision without thinking. He dived into the lake.
Water or no water, he could still effect psi-changes within himself, and he did- ripping gills into the side of his neck so he could breathe, pulling the sunlight down with him to melt the ice around him in a circle the size of a Snorlax and to warm his own blood too while he was at it, sharpening his eyes to see in the gloom. He'd pay for all of it later but this wasn't the time to worry about that, not with Will floating down by the bottom, his body empty with his power floating in an orb above the surface, a wraith wrapped around him as though-
Kissing him, Morty said, feeling at once taut and hollow. Which explains everything, really.
Psychics of sufficient power could control ghosts. And those with insufficient power could be controlled by them. It was a fine line, but at the bottom of it was this: those who could be controlled by ghosts could use the powers of ghosts. The theory was simple: let the ghost in, take its power while it was taking yours, throw it out, and keep its abilities for your own.
It took a ghost- like Agatha- to really, really control another ghost, the kind of control that kept one in a grave.
Screw that, Morty thought, and with the power that only a young psychic in the throes of puberty could command, discarded the laws of the universe and blasted the wraith away from his brother. He grabbed Will, kicked off from the bottom, and used the same energy to speed the two of them to the surface.
.
Will wasn't breathing when Morty dragged him out onto the ice, and his face was ripped open and bleeding too close to the eye for comfort, but Morty wasn't the most powerful human psychic for nothing. He started CPR while reaching out with his powers, thinking that if he could only touch Will's mind, he could jump-start his body.
Except that when he reached out, there was nothing there.
"Come on!" he yelled, the heels of his hands working on Will's chest, bearing down with his mind.
He touched empty space. And his brother didn't have a heartbeat.
Morty turned to the sapphire orb that was all of Will's power, but stopped at the last minute- he couldn't force it into the husk of a dead body.
It would have taken a ghost to do that.
He didn't think, because he was afraid that if he did he'd change his mind. He dove into the water, past the ice, looking for the wraith.
Over the lake Agatha's voice echoed: "NO! NOT HIM! THE OTHER ONE, DAMN YOUR EYES, THE OTHER ONE!"
.
He found the wraith drifting at the bottom in the company of others- No wonder the windows blew out, some part of him thought, letting all these out- and forced himself to draw out the same sheer power that had worked before, roping it around himself, the psychic energy that he probably shouldn't be able to pull off. He realized, a little giddy, that he was pulling it out of his soul.
No ghost could resist bait like that- psi energy was alive, breathing and pulsing, delicious to the dead. The wraiths sprung at him, took him in a headlock, kissed him, forced themselves in.
Morty forced himself not to gag at the touch of the dead on his skin, and then had better things to worry about- the gray mist settling over his eyes, the feeling of bleeding out through a nonexistent wound where the wraith was drinking his power. He realized he was tired, and he was cold. Very cold. He thought if he went to sleep he'd warm up.
He realized if he went to sleep Will would never wake up.
The ghosts were inside him now, lapping at his power, the life energy they hadn't tasted in hundreds of years. Morty realized what he hadn't thought about when he dove into the water: that no matter what, even if he came out of this alive, he wasn't coming out of it whole. I just need to be whole enough, some part of him said, and he held himself in perfect stillness for a moment, let the ghosts take one more bite out of his mind, and then wrenched his power away and blasted them, throwing the wraiths out of his body and soul.
Without them he felt empty. He felt his heartbeat slow- had it ever been this loud before? Had he ever been this aware of it?- and then shudder back into rhythm. He choked on the water as he started to breathe again.
Will, Morty thought, and tried to teleport himself to the surface, only to feel a white-hot pain across the inside of his mind like it had been stabbed. Suddenly he realized what he'd just done.
Will, he thought again, shoving away the despair, and kicked his way to the edge of the ice where his brother lay.
.
It was easy for one ghost to reanimate a dead body. That was the problem in the first place, and the whole reason Gravekeeper Tower existed, along with the Clan to guard the spirits of the not-so-restful dead. It didn't take any kind of training. It didn't take much power, either, which Morty thought in an abstracted sort of way was an outstandingly good thing, because he was drained of all his energy like he'd never been before.
He took the sapphire orb, opened his brother's lips, and gently fed Will's body his soul.
Then he waited.
It didn't take long for Will to wake up, and he did so as though from sleep, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes- then opening his mouth to yowl when his fingers touched the open space where his skin used to be across the top of his cheek bone. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Morty watched his brother clutch his throat and felt like doing the same thing. I did it wrong, he thought. I screwed up and I killed his brain, I stuck his soul in but his brain had been dead too long—
((That was stupid, Morty))
Morty looked around for the voice before he realized it was Will's and it was in his mind. Apparently his brother had scrabbled for mental purchase and found it in the time that Morty was still spinning his wheels.
((You could have died. We both could have died))
Will drew his knees to his chest and flexed his fingers, letting sapphire light play around them.
"Well, neither one of us did," Morty pointed out.
((You-)) Will choked off his next word. ((You turned yourself))
Morty couldn't say "Yes."
((You didn't let the wraith turn me. You threw him off and turned yourself))
He nodded, because he couldn't speak.
((You idiot!)) Will yelled, and threw himself at Morty, but he didn't punch him, he grabbed his brother by the back of the neck and kissed him square on the mouth. It tasted a little like blood and a little like salt and their teeth knocked together. ((You saved my life, Morty, you saved my life))
They broke apart, both shivering, and not just because they were on ice. "Yeah," Morty whispered, scrabbling for something to say. "Yeah. You- you weren't going to let the wraith turn you. You chucked your soul up here. Didn't you."
((I meant for you to take the power for yourself)) Will muttered, rubbing the back of his head. ((Look, do you have a mirror?))
"What?"
((I'm losing a lot of blood))
"Uh… no. I don't carry a mirror."
Will sighed, closed his eyes (wincing,) and concentrated. Of the powers that dealt with the spiritual world, psychic energy was the only kind that worked with life- with creation, not destruction. The wounds were new enough that he could heal these, instead of needing a dark-type to burn the death away first. Slowly the gashes met, explored each others' edges, met, new scar tissue wedding them. Morty watched in gruesome fascination.
((I think I had just enough- I was too decent with ghosts)) Will said when he was nearly done. Morty couldn't stop staring at the blood. ((I could make them do things. She was going for me. It should have been me))
"Yeah, well, you were trying to die instead, so some of us with half a brain thought it shouldn't be you. Some of us with more power to throw those wraiths out." He ripped his eyes off of Will's face, then steeled himself and looked inside, where he normally felt full of fire. He felt half-empty, but there was a wall up between his reaching fingers and his reservoirs, a wall he couldn't break down. "Shit."
Will wouldn't look at him. ((You can't use it anymore, can you))
"No. I- I don't think so. I think it's-"
((Say something. Say something to me))
"I've been talking."
((I mean like this. Mind-to-mind. It's… it's innate, it's not a deliberate manifestation of power, you don't have to draw on anything to use it))
Morty focused. He'd never been good at this- this was Will's purvey. Morty slammed things and blew them up. Will snuck around walls and insinuated into rooms. ((I…))
He felt an intense rush of joy and realized it wasn't his, it was Will's. ((You can still reach my mind. You still have a bit of psi you can use. You're not totally…))
((Ghost)) Morty supplied. ((I'm enough of one. I could…))
((Inherit)) Will finished. ((The Tower. The family name. The prestige. The power)) He still wouldn't look up, but mind-to-mind, he couldn't hide- the relief, the sense of foreboding, the fear, the hint of panic, and something else, something different. ((Maybe enough to make up for what…))
((What I lost. Yeah)) Abruptly he stood up and dropped his link with Will's mind. There were things he didn't know if he wanted to feel, not yet. Will was the emotional one. Morty was the one who wouldn't know his own mind without two years of soul-searching. He licked his lips, tasting his brother, and that settled it. "Come on."
((Where?))
"There was salt on the ice. I tasted it when you decked me. You were right. I think we should leave before our mother gets out here."
((But you'll be leaving your inheritance))
Morty was already walking away. He tossed back a wan grin over his shoulder. "Yeah. I know. Are you coming with me?"
((Where are we going?))
"Doesn't matter. You coming?"
Drying their clothes and calling up a bubble of warm air, heat drawn from the cooking fire- a bubble he wrapped around them both, since now Morty couldn't- he followed his brother west, out of the sight of the Tower.
