I want to make this clear before you start reading this fic: it gets dark. Topics that should be touched on only with care are mentioned, and this story has been known to make people tear up and even cry at the grim tale it tells. If you have any objections to reading the breakdown of a fictional character (who is not mine) by means of deaths, addictions, and other problems, please close this story out and find something happy to read. If you are squeamish or can't handle the topic of suicide or alcohol/drug abuse, turn away now.
If you are choosing to go on ahead and read, have a wonderful time.
The sensation of chasing never leaves his feet, the feel of the wind never quite escapes his hair. Nothing can take away those memories of what he had once experienced, not even when he comes up on the spot where everything he had cherished disappeared from his life. The trail of blood still leads into the mountains, something he's followed many a time just to find a puddle of everlasting despair.
This is the never-ending nightmare he is subjected to each night, and when he sees the lifeless corpse of Suicune colored red with the remnants of its existence, all Eusine wants to do is open his eyes and find out it's all a dream.
And when morning comes, the harsh reality comes back to him just like that horrible nightmare: everything he's ever wanted is lost.
It started when he thought he had cornered the beast, after having chased it for so long (nearly two decades, give or take a few years). There had been many close encounters, but the wrong person had been chosen to reach out to it. This time, he had returned to the Cerulean Cape, the place where he had given Suicune up to the first person, on news that it was there, waiting for him to challenge it in one final battle.
By the time he had gotten there, five hours after the report had reached his doorstep back in Ecruteak, it was too late. Someone, a poacher or lucky passerby, had gotten there first, and all that was left was patches of blue fur and fresh blood, forming a trail towards the mountains. Because this was supposed to be his chance to shake destiny's hand, he followed it, step by step, drop by drop.
What he saw at the end of the trail was pure heartbreak. The body of Suicune lay, mauled into chunks that were stained with its blood. Whoever got to it first was a sick being, he declared, before collapsing onto the pile of what he had always wanted and letting tears fall for what seemed like days.
From that night on, the nightmares happened.
Upon his return home from that disastrous trip, he became a different man entirely. Nothing that the locals would tell him rose his spirits quite like news of a Suicune sighting would have. They came to him daily with invitations to festivals and parties and occasionally a wedding, but he rejected everything for the first year.
The second year started with him venturing outside of his house looking for a familiar face and finding, once again, something that caused his heart to crumble just a bit more. Of all the people in town, one had not come to see him at all, and it was this very person that he saw walking the streets. When he called out to him, he was greeted with a cold stare and silence. He responded to that by asking why the attitude change, but an answer never came.
For the next many years, Eusine found more comfort in his solitude when there was no other people, but instead the friendship of various drinks that could remove the pain, if only for a while.
How many years had it been since the nightmares started? he asked himself one night while cradling his head in his hands. How long had he been living this sad existence, where there were no friends, no dreams, and no good morals left in his life? When was the last time he had spoken with his best friend? Actually, when was the last time he had spoken with anyone other than the kind old lady who brought him food ever week?
He couldn't remember, partly due to the fact that it was a long time, and partly because he had been binging particularly heavily on the alcohol lately. That was probably what had sparked his latest desire to finally leave the little house, just to get away from the poison that was sucking him in. With wobbling legs not strong enough to support a man, he slowly made his way to the front door, and took a peek outside. The sky was bright blue. Like Suicune. The mountains in the distance were the faintest of purple. Like Suicune. The memory of the Pokémon he had wanted so badly shook him, but he knew he had to get over it.
Back into normal society he tried to go, but the people of Ecruteak had heard stories of his recent follies, and were too afraid to approach the obviously drunk man. He didn't mind that the people were ignoring him this time; instead, he felt it was a blessing, since he was sure his voice was tainted with years of misuse. His feet, which were controlling themselves, led him to a very familiar place: Ecruteak Gym.
He knocked on the door. No one answered. When he tried opening it, it was locked. Confused, and not quite in his right mind, Eusine wandered around to the back of the building, where windows he could easily break were. His head did the trick, and even with the blood dripping down his face and the glass shards everywhere, he journeyed into the Gym. It was dark, like usual, but the place was eerily quiet for being somewhere dedicated to fighting.
Then it slowly dawned upon him that maybe the person he was looking for (if he was actually looking for the person, after all) wasn't there. Maybe he had gone to visit a friend or something? It had been many, many years since they had last spoken. Maybe he didn't even work there anymore. But in the drunken stupor, he continued going through the place.
The next room he entered had a smell that he had encountered once before in his life. It stung his nostrils and, even though he was not in his right mind, he could accurately place where he had smelled it before: the time he found Suicune dead. Just remembering the scene that he had encountered after the poacher's murdering of the precious Pokémon brought tears to his eyes, and he began searching for what was causing the smell.
Never in his life did he expect to find the half-rotted corpse of his one-time best friend, slumped in the corner of the room like a rag doll, with a bag full of some sort of plant next to what should have been his leg. Grabbing the bag, he said a prayer for the man, even though he knew he had been dead for weeks, if not months or years, and left the Gym quite promptly.
That bag of weed became his new best friend.
Drugs were an addiction Eusine never thought he would catch himself being wrapped up in. He had known about his friend's love of the illegal things, but he had always sworn that he would never try any of it, ever. Finding that bag next to the body had, actually, been a very good thing, almost a blessing. He finally understood just why Morty had loved the stuff so much, and it brought him closer to the deceased man.
Closer, but not to. Nothing would bring him to that level of addiction that his friend had been at, and he figured that just one bag wouldn't hurt him. But when that bag's contents were depleted, he caught himself wandering back to the Gym in search of more. His looking did prove plentiful, and he acquired several large bags of the plant. It was then and only then that a dark thought crossed his mind: what if it was this plant that had killed his friend?
He pushed that thought out of his mind as he dove deep into one of the bags once he got back to his little house, which had been recently stocked full with alcohol and food. The more he got into the weed, though, the less and less he wanted either of those things. Sometimes he would get the strangest craving for the food he owned, and he would gorge himself on it, just to end up sitting against the wall, high out of his mind, crying.
After four or five instances of that happening, he decided that enough was enough and he was going to have to leave the house, leave everything behind here, and try and start a new, clean life. Yet each time he tried to start over, to become a new man, his addiction would drag him back to that house, and he would try again and again to leave. It seemed that the world wanted him in there, and in there he should stay.
That was exactly what he ended up doing. His life in ruins, with his dreams long dead and his friends all gone too, Eusine decided that it would just be best if he continued living in the little house in Ecruteak, the one that people rarely entered or exited, and that had rumors swirling about it that it was inhabited by a crazy man.
He wasn't crazy. He was a drunk, a druggie, a down-on-his-luck man that had been dealt a rough hand in life. He once had dreams and hopes. Occasionally, the dream of finding Suicune's mutilated body would reoccur, and he would be forced to relive how that ultimate goal of his had been crushed. Even more often, though, he would have much more haunting dreams about how he used to be.
It didn't take more than a look at him, either followed or preceded by a picture of him from before he had lost Suicune, to tell that there was a drastic difference in his appearance. His face had lost all of its color and shape, and was now a haunting memory of the past. His hair, which he used to be proud of, had fallen into such a foul state that there was little of it left, and what there was had little color and softness to it, and was fast approaching the middle of his back. And even though he would have periods of extreme gorging, he was literally no more than skin and bones, animated only by a lost soul.
The state that he was in made it not all that surprising when he started finding himself losing more and more mobility. Nights were spent in the same position, just staring up at the ceiling as if looking to the heavens for sight of his friend.
Nothing ever came out of the sky to greet him, not even the night when he was laying there, screaming out in pain with a voice that had been so abused in past years that it barely worked. That was the night he decided to end it all. All the suffering. All the loneliness. All the heartache. It was all to be over.
He had the rope set up in the house's only closet, neatly tied into a noose. It was something he had contemplated many a time back before he even called alcohol his friend, so everything was foolproof and set to work. As he fastened it around his neck, those memories of chasing Suicune, of being happy and carefree and without a fear in the world flooded his mind. Yet the last thing to cross it was none of that.
It was his old friend, with arms wide open, ready to take him.
The last word to escape his mouth before death was his friend's name.