"Every time I close my eyes,
I can see all the things I wanted to be."
-"We Had a Little Talk" from What Could Go Wrong by Red Vox
Max held himself steady against a tree with his eyes screwed shut. A cacophony of hurt, instincts and rage waged war in his head while the world around him shifted into a miasma of uncertainty. Tears trickled out of his eyes even though he'd shut them tight as he could. He wished he could let himself cry, but the timer on his dungeon sickness had run out.
"Piika," he whimpered, desperately hoping he could speak. The world collapsed around him as he heard the sound of his own voice. He opened his eyes to see his paw distant, even when it rubbed the tears out of his eyes. The sensations of bark, grass, sounds of his own sobs, the burning sorrow in his heart all fell further away as his grip slipped no matter how hard he held. The soothing balm of forgetting spread itself over his mind, and he couldn't claw it away no matter how hard he tried.
"Take a piece there's not much left,
But I feel that there's something more to say."
All at once, the hurt of betrayal disappeared. With the weight lifted, Max had just enough strength to get a foothold and began to climb when the fear disappeared as well. He felt the bark in his paw. The grass below him. The bag on his shoulder. He looked out at the changing landscape, then back at his own paws. The world around him shifted constantly, never to be what he once knew, but he was still the same.
Are you okay? Still there?
Max took a deep breath to establish control and said, "Yes." His actions still had a nearly imperceptible lag, but he still had control. Without his emotions overwhelming him, he could manage. "What about you?" Dark Matter had never told him the limits of his ability to absorb emotions, but he knew the specter had its reasons for keeping intake low.
The fur on the back of his neck prickled up as if to speak, but Dark Matter stayed silent, and Max could feel the conflict in the air. He grabbed hold of his scarf and started forward. He needed to find this nidoran, but without his badge, he was running half blind. It hurt to abandon the kid, but he had already pushed himself dangerously far. If the nidoran wasn't on this floor, he'd have to give up for the day.
Much of his pain had left, but as he trudged through the dungeon, all the conflict remained. "Cori," he mumbled. An icy wind cut through his fur, and he paused a moment to let himself feel it. Control. He was in control. Even as a knife of betrayal stabbed him through the heart, he had control.
Was I right?
A dark sea of shame and hurt surrounded Max, and he had to pause his wading. Dark Matter's voice, for the first time since they'd battled, broke down into uncertain gasps. Max wanted to ask if he was okay, if it'd absorbed too much negativity, but couldn't summon the words. He struggled and finally managed, "What?" The forest, despite shifting, felt still as he waited for an answer. The warm chill on his neck wriggled in on itself, as if Dark Matter was squirming under an interrogation.
I once thought the world had no good, that pokémon lived only to hurt each other. Our first meeting, I saw the bond between you and your partner, and my view of the world could not contend.
Max felt that void they'd met in for a moment. Guilt and loss ached in the back of his throat as he remembered seeing his partner by his side. He couldn't even remember his name.
When you tried to break that bond in the months that followed, I only grew more certain. Despite your behavior, even when you two attacked each other, that bond never left.
A stab of shame forced Max to hold still before emotions overwhelmed him again.
Even now, that guilt means you care for him.
Max couldn't find a reason to deny it, nor did he have the strength. It felt like a comfort, even. If guilt cut so deep into his heart, it meant he still had one. "Then what's got you worried?" Max asked, closing and opening his paw to make sure he still had control. The fur on the back of his neck singed.
If love hurts this much, is it any different from hate?
The Earth had no other soul on its surface. The dungeon shifting around Max stilled as he felt himself return to that empty void they met in. All the grass, trees, dirt and leaves disappeared. He stood on empty air that held the weight of his paws just the same. His strengthening instincts halted their siege on his psyche, and he knew for certain he wasn't in the dungeon anymore.
Stardust and fire swirled and coalesced before him as Dark Matter took shape. The sight should have struck fear in Max's heart, but he couldn't bring himself to be afraid. The malice, hatred, resentment and isolation he'd felt upon their first meeting hadn't returned to lay claim to the nonexistent atmosphere. Instead, a shiver of sorrow sprinkled down over his fur like a light rain.
Forgive me.
"We had a little talk."
The gaseous ball began rolling in on itself and twisting around once again, focusing all of its fire behind it in a flame both enormous and puny. Specks of dust and gas collided and compacted into a scaled form. Two claws stretched out from the cloud, and arms followed shortly behind as the scales shifted to a familiar orange tinted by darkness. Max recognized the form even before the body had formed. Hindpaws, a tail, a head, a near perfect copy of his old partner stood before him.
"I hope I've not caused you pain. This is the only form I feel strong enough to take, but I wished to speak to you properly," Dark Matter said. When it opened its lips, they gave way to a void instead of a mouth, and its eyes were endless vacuums of darkness. They pulsed with a dim light a few times as Dark Matter tried to form them correctly, but then stilled once more.
"Okay," Max said with a nod. The sight itself was horrific, yet he didn't notice. "Let's talk."
"Thank you," Dark Matter said, bowing its head. "May I approach?" Its face remained blank of any emotion, only moving as little as it needed to speak, but Max still heard the hope in its voice, so he nodded once again. A bit of the tension in the air evaporated. "Thank you." It walked a few steps forward and plopped down on the ground, stretching out a paw inviting Max to do the same.
He did. Max took a seat with only the briefest glance down to confirm he hadn't turned to stone at all when he noticed his bag and scarf were gone. One paw went to grab the air around his neck while he tried to steady his breath.
"Forgive me," Dark Matter said. "I could only bring your naked form here, but do not fret. Your belongings are certainly safe."
Max did his best to force calm into himself. "Where is here?" he asked and looked around.
"The Void Lands," Dark Matter said. Max's heart stopped. "Forgive me." It sat perfectly upright and still, yet its voice sounded like it had dropped its head in shame. "Your body is stone, but I made sure you would not feel it happening." A hint of hurt crept into its voice when it said, "And I could not trap you here if I wished."
Max nodded along with the explanation and forced his clenched paw to relax. "I know you wouldn't do that," he said, and Dark Matter's emotionless form looked relieved. "Call it a phobia, I guess." Max forced a smile and found it not all that difficult to do. His paws went to his lap (maybe he could pretend he was wearing his scarf, anyway).
Dark Matter's approximation of a mouth stretched backward, trying to go wider and pulling a few scales apart from each other until it corrected itself a bit and tilted up. A smile. Technically. Instead of flesh and blood, billowing stardust trickled out of the wounds.
Max had to cover his mouth to cover a chuckle. "S-sorry," he stammered out.
"Do not be," Dark Matter said, returning its face to a neutral expression. "I understand I am a novice, thus my attempts appear comical to the more experienced." Coming from anyone else, Max would've read obvious subtext of hurt from that, but Dark Matter just talked like that. It probably didn't have a lot of experience talking divorced from pain.
As its wounds sealed themselves, Max wondered how watching a perverse smile stretch itself so wide it split itself open didn't scare the shit out of him. An easy guess came quickly. "Why are you consuming all my negative emotions?" he asked.
Dark Matter bowed its head again as if to apologize. "I have two reasons," it said. "I need the strength to keep you here, and I wish to talk to you without your mind clouded by such pain."
That made enough sense for Max. He leaned back to ask, "All right, then what do you want us to talk about?"
"Love has hurt you deeply," Dark Matter stated. Even with Dark Matter consuming them, Max could feel a spike of sadness ebbing throughout the atmosphere. "One who you have put your trust in betrayed it, and others who claim to care for you blatantly disregarded your own needs." If it wasn't taking care of his pain, Max would've told it to shut up with all the painful details. "What good is it, then?"
Max crumpled in on himself. "I'm really not the best one to ask," he mumbled.
The dark-mander stared back at him and nodded. "You are quite terrible at relationships," it said. Max shot a glare its way even as it siphoned out his anger. "But you feel love quite intensely." His glare softened. "You anticipated pain and did not want to allow yourself to connect to another soul, and yet you became very close with Cori." Dark Matter stopped to absorb the ocean of emotions spewing forth from that sentence, and Max greatly appreciated the help. "How is it that love seduced you so?"
The void around them gave Max little to look at other than his conversation partner. He already didn't love eye contact, and the black voids it had for eyes made that significantly worse. "It feels good?" Max offered. He shrugged in the hopes Dark Matter might accept that as an answer, but it did not. His paws started running over each other.
As Max stared hopelessly at the absent horizon, he remembered his last visit. The landscape was desolate then, but there was still a landscape. A world, corrupt and isolated as it was, its absence struck Max with the sense the dying had finally died. "It is for your safety," Dark Matter said.
Max quirked a brow, but didn't take his eyes off the emptiness. "How?" he asked.
"I fear increasing my strength to that point again," it answered. "I'm keeping myself from building power."
As his eyes scanned the horizon, Max let himself pause at its charmander-inspired form. It looked like his old partner, but the form struggled to hold itself together. "You're starving yourself," he said.
Dark Matter tilted its head, but kept its expression untouched. "Yes, that is another way of putting it," it said. Max realized it had no problem with doing that, and its form grew ever so slightly more stable as it absorbed his guilt. "I am a monster," it continued. It must have noticed the uptick in sustenance. "To let me live is a mercy greater than I deserve," it said as a matter of fact, even bowing its head in thanks.
"Hey," Max interjected. "You don't deserve to die."
"I attempted to destroy the world," it said.
"Trying is a far cry from succeeding!" Max shouted.
"All of life we know in this plane of existence would have ceased," it said. Legally, its prosecution was sound. "My continued existence is an active threat to the Earth. If I am allowed to live, it must be in a weakened state."
Its scales grew a bit more orange as it absorbed the indignant rage bubbling up in Max's stomach. "You're wrong," Max said. Dark Matter's voids of eyes grew milky as they filled themselves in properly, though they remained blank for now. It closed one eye and stretched its other wider in an attempt at a quizzical expression, and Max shook his head. "Well, do you want to destroy the world now?"
"A little bit," it said.
Max rolled his eyes. "More than usual, I mean," he sighed. "Is absorbing my bad vibes making you feel any more genocidal?"
Dark Matter paused for a moment, and its eyes remained in that odd expression. Did it think it looked ponderous? "I do not believe so," it mumbled, though seemed uncertain.
"Then why are you torturing yourself like this?" Max asked. More of his anger stayed with him as Dark Matter's form solidified further. "You can't enjoy this." Max threw a paw around him at the desolation all around.
"My comfort is not necessary," it said.
"Then why did I let you live at all?" Max shouted as he hopped up onto his hindpaws.
"I do not know," it answered. Right, Dark Matter hadn't quite figured out rhetorical questions yet.
Even knowing why it answered, sparks of frustration still bounced off Max's cheeks. "I wanted you to have a chance to live! See what you were trying to destroy!" he shouted. "If you're doing this," he threw another paw around them but kept his eyes on Dark Matter, "You'll never understand."
Dark Matter sat silently and finally let his face return to a neutral expression as it thought Max's words over. "I see," it mumbled. All this time it had suffered, and Max had never noticed. He thought it was just generally grouchy. "I'm sorry I have failed you."
"What?!" Max balked. "You didn't, look." He brought a paw to his temple and rubbed it. His frustration faded semi-naturally as he took deep breaths and thought, though of course Dark Matter helped it along. "I'm not mad at you." He sat back down and looked at the nothing below him. "I just feel like shit for letting you do this to yourself for so long."
Silence fell around them. Without even an atmosphere around him, the sound of his own breath and heartbeat pounded in Max's ears. He'd abandoned Dark Matter even though it had been by his side this entire time. "You never answered my question," Dark Matter said. Max looked up confused, so it explained, "Why did you let your love for Cori seduce you?"
Burning embarrassment flushed Max's cheeks. "Please don't say it like that," he said. He shook off the embarrassment and looked around. Dark Matter's form had solidified, but the vacuum around them remained unchanged. "How does it feel?" Max traced the absence of existence surrounding them. "Starving yourself."
A rumbling attempt at a thoughtful hum told Max it was considering how to answer. "Similar, familiar," it mumbled. "Each passing moment, I feel myself dwindling further and further with barely enough sustenance to survive. So often, only my thoughts keep me company, but I fear that anyone else may suffer if I meet them. I find existence itself to be a drain of resources that I do not have."
Empathy mixed with familiarity. "Okay," Max said as he realized they were a bit more alike than he expected. "So, love is kinda like all that goes away, and you just feel warm and fuzzy instead."
Dark Matter nodded, then tilted his head. "Could you tell me more about this warm and fuzzy feeling?" it asked.
"That's love," Max said.
"Oh," it said. "But love is hurting you, right?"
Anger surged when Max remembered what Cori had done. "Sort of," he mumbled. "That's not love, though." He curled his knees into his chest. "It's more just… love dying." He drummed his 'fingers' over his paws as he tried to figure out how to explain love to it. "Do you remember that time we hugged you?"
Dark Matter nodded. "All that I knew burned at once. I felt all that I thought I would become, all that I thought I wanted melt in the white hot blaze of my concept of self collapsing into its own gravity until it exploded into a miasma of incandescent plasma," it explained. "I quite enjoyed it."
Max blinked a few times. "W-was that sarcasm?" he asked.
"No, it felt very good," Dark Matter answered. "It was like, hm." A paw went to its chin, and it tilted its head to angle its eyes to the sky. "Pain?" It nodded its head. "Yes, but it didn't hurt."
Such an explanation strained Max's mind a bit to imagine, but then he realized Dark Matter likely had no experience with positive feelings, so it was trying to explain them with negative feelings. "Pleasure," he said. A humored smile pulled at his cheeks. "It felt good."
Understanding gleamed across Dark Matter's blank eyes. "Is that love?" it asked.
"Nah," Max said. Its expression returned to neutral confusion, and Max chuckled. "Love is where that feeling comes from." Dark Matter nodded. Love wasn't required for pleasure, and thinking such could spell disaster if one is pursued without the other, but Max figured he didn't need Dark Matter to worry about that. Not yet, at least.
"I see," Dark matter said. It went still with its eyes still trained on Max, but it clearly wasn't looking. Max might need to explain that staring was rude, but he'd let it slide for now. They'd just had a breakthrough, after all. "So, by betraying your trust, Cori took the most wonderful part of life and twisted it into a weapon to stab you in the back?"
A bit raw, but so was the wound. "Yeah," Max grumbled. "I opened up to them because I thought I could trust them." His paw clenched into a fist. "Now, I don't know how many people they've told."
"I will not tell anyone about what we have discussed, then," Dark Matter said.
Despite all odds, that got Max to smile. "Thank you," he said. For a concentrated ball of all the bad in the world, it could be kinda cute when it tried to imitate kindness.
Dark Matter stood straight up from sitting in a suitably unnatural way. "Thank you for explaining these difficult concepts to me," it said. "I once again am sorry that I petrified you and hope your old partner's face has not caused too much trauma."
"It's all right," Max said with a smile. He looked at the familiar face and felt a long absent warmth return. "I think I needed to see him again."
"Shall I return you, then?" Dark Matter asked.
Max held up one paw. "Wait," he said. Dark Matter halted all at once, and Max dashed at it before it could ask what it was waiting for. He wrapped his arms around the psuedo-mander and squeezed it into a tight hug. "Let's set a few ground rules, first."
It stood utterly still. Max almost thought he could see fear in its blank eyes. Eventually, it managed to nod its head. One arm went down and pressed its paw into his back. It looked at Max for guidance, and he nodded. The other arm came soon after. "Relax," Max said.
"That is the ground rule?" it asked, and Max chuckled. "Oh." It appeared to try releasing tension, wriggling under Max's hold, and the pikachu considered that good enough. "What are the ground rules?"
"No more starving yourself," he said. "Tell me if you need to talk at any time. Even if it means…." A bit of terror sliced through his heart. He was agreeing to petrification.
Noticing this conflict, Dark Matter squeezed him. "Are you sure?" it asked.
Air left him when he nodded his head. He didn't feel it this time, so hopefully he wouldn't next either. "Ask first, but don't let me feel it," he said. "Not in public, obviously." He squeezed Dark matter and leaned into the hug to draw in some strength for himself. They stood there in silence, feeling the other's warmth.
"Is that all?" it asked.
Max shook his head, and he looked around the empty void surrounding them. "I want you to try making another world," he said. "I know you'll make it beautiful." Silence returned. He could feel its uncertainty and squeezed the hug a bit tighter. "I trust you."
Scales turned to dust for a moment. Dark Matter's form sputtered and flaked in and out of existence, but it made sure it kept the hug. "Thank you," it sobbed. Max nodded and pat the cloud as lightly as he could. "I…." Its words carried the same uncertainty as its form. Speaking as if its first time encountering language, it opened and closed its mouth again and again without saying more than whimpers until finally, barely audibly, it whispered, "I love you."
Joyful tears flowed down Max's cheeks. "I love you, too," he said. "So, how do I get out of here this time?"
Dark Matter squeezed him tight, and he gave it a moment to get its bearings. They squeezed one last time and released the hug. "In order to prevent you perceiving the de-petrification process, I will need to possess your body until it is complete," it explained. "It is what I did to bring you in."
Max stared at it for a moment while he processed that, and a twitch of guilt scurried across its face. "We can talk about that boundary later," he said. It nodded.
"I will be sure you return to your body in a comfortable position you are familiar with," Dark Matter said. Max nodded, and its form burst into dust. The cloud of dead stars swirled around, formed a sphere for just a moment before twisting around and streaming into an imperceptible portal out. Max took one last look around the desolate, dead world and smiled. He couldn't wait to see what it looked like next time.