- Vagabond - Male Reader x Pokémon

Chapter 2: Lost

[Somewhere...]

Darkness. An overwhelming black. A void with seemingly no end in sight. No light or colour, but simply shadows. There was nothing, nothing at all, besides nothingness itself. Not a noise or sight, nothing to touch and nothing to smell. A vacuum of empty space vacant and desolate.

At first, one would have equated this experience to the space in-between falling asleep at night and waking up. When you don't dream, plainly finding yourself awake in the morning a few seconds later. And yet, the temporary sleep didn't end. Rather it remained in everything, stretching on and on forever. However, it wasn't an objectively unpleasant experience. It was devoid of good and bad sensations, simply a place were existence occured and nothing else.

The only comparable situation would be if one were to be drifting away at the bottom of the ocean, or floating gently further into the oblivions of space. Granted, without the added concerns of needing to breathe or crushing levels of pressure.

It was easy to disregard at first, thinking that any moment now the void would vanish and in return a homely bedroom would take it's place. A comfortable bed with freshly smelling sheets. A dresser and draws with family photos, awards or memorabilia perhaps? And yet, the bedroom wasn't appearing. It was strange however, the sight of a warm, comfortable home was a nice image, but that wasn't his home, nor was it his bedroom, or his clothes or awards.

Now that he thought about it more closely, what had his bedroom looked like? It certainly didn't look like that, or at least that's what he believed. No, it most certainly wasn't, but what then did it look like? This soon began to bring more questions forward. Wait, what did my house look like? Where exactly am I from? Do I have a family? Friends? How old am I? What am I? WHO am I?

Well that last question was simple enough, his name was [Y/N]. He was sure of it, it was the only thing that sounded right in his head, whatever way he tried to phrase it. [Y/N]. [Y/N], what though? Did he even have a last name? That was a silly question, everyone has a last name! So why for the life of him could he not just remember his stupid last name. It was one of the easiest questions, even a young child could have answered it, and yet it was so far out of reach.

Everything was out of reach in the void like space. Concepts of space or time didn't even appear to be applicable to his current whereabouts, wherever exactly he was. Wait. WAIT! WHERE THE HELL WAS HE?! He had been able to pass of the blackness around him as sleep. However, as he became more aware of his surrounding he also felt more awake then he had ever felt in his entire life. It was as if he were slowly drifting in a direction, though which direction he wasn't certain. The currents that pulled him along controlled him now. His own body was out of his control.

[Y/N] began to feel an immense anxiousness and a sickly nausea, heavy weight pressed hard against his skull. He grew warmer and warmer by the second, so warm that he felt he couldn't hardly breathe. Desperately clawing at his neck, he swallowed hard and found resistance. He kicked his legs violently, shaking his entire body as hard as he physically could. His nails began clawing into his neck, a hot liquid forming at the tips of his fingers. The first REAL sensation he had felt this entire time, besides fear. He was drowning, or he was suffocating. He was being pulled and pushed, slowly squeezed until all the life was wrung out of him.

In the darkness, the only way that [Y/N] could rationalize the realm around him was obvious. He was dead. He had died, somehow. How exactly, that was unclear, just as everything else before the void around him was, besides his first name. He was [Y/N]. [Y/N]. [Y/N]. Repeating his name felt somewhat comforting actually. As if, despite everything else having been taken from him, he still had this last remaining fragment of his self to latch onto. His name was something no one could take from him, even in death.