Author's Notes: If you don't recognize the girl at the end of this chapter, she's Neesha from the first Pokemon movie. And since I couldn't find it on any shipping list, Volkner/Neesha is RestorationShipping.
I touch the fire and it freezes me; I look into it and it's black. Why can't I feel? My skin should crack and peel. I want the fire back. - Buffy, during the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Musical
We shine despite the twilight hours, when darkness falls on that's ours. But yet we flee to open ground, where light is found. Your loneliness is not your home, and you're not alone. Not this time, don't go back. We are part of something more that seems to be just you and me, just you and me. - Golden by Klee
I'm so tired.
Why am I even alive? That isn't sarcasm. I want an answer. Why am I even trying? Why… why am I trying to keep going anymore? Anyone else could do this job. It's not hard, not like it used to be. Nothing exciting ever happens, a sea of interchangeable challengers who go down in one hit and those awful empty days spent alone. I can't remember the last time I smiled. When was the last time someone really challenged me? I miss the days where I felt things, where I was alive, yelling and planning and strategizing on the fly. Pokemon battles used to be everything to me. Now I can't truly call what I have battling, nor can I really say I'm alive.
There is an inescapable grayness all around me, thick as smoke. It chokes me every waking moment. I look around me and see so much of the same thing that all sense of time has become meaningless. It might as well be yesterday or last year, tomorrow or next year. There is nothing to mark the time, no new pictures on the wall to commemorate a challenger beating me. No scorch marks or damage to the rooms, either – no one fights well enough for that anymore. It's like I'm in a time capsule. All around me it's as if life had frozen, stalled forever at one single point in time, and I can't take it. When did this become my life? I remember being the rising star of the Sinnoh Pokemon League and how the fans cheered as I was awarded my rank and Gym. They're gone now, of course. They left me to this absolutely worthless existence.
What would they do if I vanished? Six or seven days would pass before anyone even noticed. I don't mean anything to anyone, not anymore. I am that guy, the one people have a hard time defeating so people don't even try. I'm that guy, the enemy no one admires like they do the other Gym leaders. I'm too tough, they say, and their disdain reminds me of what I am. I am a burden on the system, a Gym Leader as tough as an Elite. I shouldn't be here. I should be in the Elite Four, having exciting battles. I should be out there fighting real fights and living a real life. But I can't even try for that anymore. I don't want to. I don't have the strength to go there and make my presence known. Recently, something happened. Something snapped inside me, like a muscle giving way, and I don't know if I'm going to make it out of this alive.
Quite frankly I don't know if I care. I'm so damn tired of this, of all of it. It's all so hard to put up with. Every day is the same as the last. My family never calls and never writes. The Master Coordinators of Sinnoh and Hoenn have no time for me. They never have, ever since I got my first Gym badge. And I'm too sick of trying to even bother anymore. All of my friends either got married or went on with their own careers and forgot me. I guess I'm not worth remembering to them. They say they care to my face, of course, but they go months without talking to me if I don't force my presence upon them. Which I don't anymore – I can take a hint. Why bother to try to go where I'm not wanted, be with people who don't want me there? I'm nothing but a burden on them. So let my depression swallow me. No one will notice and no one will care. I can't even work up the energy to give a damn, and it's my life in the balance. You know you're a loser when even you can't think of a reason you shouldn't kill yourself anymore.
Why am I even faking I'm okay? No one gives a damn. The Trainers in my Gym just want to get strong enough to replace me. Past that they don't care and quite frankly each of them is good enough for the job. I'm beginning to have trouble trying to hide my problems when I know that I could run around naked and no one would bat an eyelid. I'm suffocating in this monotony, in this place with one season, only sunshine and the same Trainers day after day. I don't feel the sunshine on my face anymore. I don't taste the food I put in my mouth. I don't dream when I sleep. All I do is wait, and I don't know what I'm waiting for. Everyone knows I'm a selfish jerk with issues. They all want me gone. Even if they don't say it, they think it and they make it clear that I'm too much of an asshole to be their friend. I don't blame people. I've changed. This isn't who I used to be. Or more accurately, this isn't who I used to fake being. But over the years my strength has faded and I just can't try to be social. Faking I'm doing even kind of alright is taking everything I have.
None of this answers the question, why? And since I don't have an answer, I stand here on the edge of a cliff. Well, more accurately I'm sitting here on the edge of a cliff and looking over the edge to the rocks below. I see all of the jagged, dark forms below me. I can picture how easy it would be to slip off and let this monotony come crashing to an end so why am I still here? I bite back a sigh, looking at my wristwatch. They say most suicidal people will change their mind if given an hour to calm down. I've been here an hour. Though I guess that whole concept was null and void in my case to start with. After all, I don't need to calm down. My problem is an absolute lack of emotion. My world has gone gray and dull, my life has become repetitious and meaningless, and I'm tired. I'm very tired. Why should I try to keep going? It's all pointless. Somehow my life has become empty, unbearably empty and monotone. I don't want this anymore.
My willpower is gone. The old me might've gone off to challenge the Elite Four or travel again. I can't even muster the enthusiasm for that. I am dead inside, cold and devoid of reason to keep going. I've been sitting here for an hour trying to find something to hold onto, some kind of hope to cling to tightly. I want to feel something again, even if it's just annoyance or frustration – I'd even take sadness or hate nowadays. Something. I need something, some emotion, some reason, some motivation. Where are all the old reams I had of becoming the Champion? I used to have such passionate and determination. It was like white hot electricity consuming me and fueling me to the level I've reached now. That's not fair. I fight and claw my way to the top so I can rot in this dull, pathetic shell of a town? What kind of moral to my life's story is that? Try your hardest in life and you too will end up alone and forgotten, never doing a damn thing worth noting?
I wish someone would come here and intervene. Somebody tell me there's a challenger here to kick my ass. Someone call me for once. Someone act like they're happy to see me. Someone slap me just to start a fight. I don't want to live like this. It's too empty – please, someone come here and rescue me like they do on TV. Someone sweep in to tell me how I'm loved and wanted, precious and special or whatever mushy crap it takes to snap me out of this. This can't be it. This can't be what my life's become. I don't want to fall off this cliff, but I'm so tired of being me. I'm so hollow and I don't want this, I don't want this to be how it ends and I can't stand this being my life anymore. What am I supposed to do? Why am I like this? Something went wrong somewhere along the line, and I can't understand what or when.
My eyes close. I let myself fall. For a brief moment fear flickers through me. Then there is only the wind as I plummet, waiting for it to be over. It's like a rollercoaster, and for the record I never could open my eyes on those either. I feel nothing, as I always do. And that's when it happens. A blast of water hits me, pushing me backwards through mid air until I hit the water. Startled, I struggle to swim in the sea as a voice tells me to hold on. I see a pale hand, a Kantoan one, reaching for me over the white mass of Dewgong, a Kanto Pokemon I can barely recognize. Out of sheer instinct and shock I reach for the hand and find strong arms wrapped around me as a firm voice tells me she's got me. My body is shaking all over from the realization of what I've almost done, but her grip on my shoulders is firm as she tells the Dewgong to swim us to shore. I don't think she realizes what I've done. She thinks I just slipped off.
But I can't turn down the only person on Earth who gives a damn that I'm alive. Sky blue eyes shining, she tells me to come inside the Pokemon Center with her. While her Pokemon heal we can talk and she'll get me something to eat. She says I look tired, and I am suddenly keenly aware of her grip on my hands. She's warm and real, and very much alive. I find myself agreeing because suddenly I see color, I feel the ground beneath my feet, I don't want to die. I don't understand it. I don't have to. I just need to be with someone who doesn't see me as the jackass Gym Leader. I want to be with someone who thinks of me as a person. And she does. She sees my emotions and she watches me intently, dark brown hair catching the street light as she tilts her head.
And I'm not tired anymore.