There is something different when the Lorax leaves, besides the obvious. He feels different, but that is obvious, too.
He doesn't realize what it is until years later, when a decade has passed and his face shouldn't look as babyish as it used to, and yet it still does. It seems that he is doomed to a life of terrible reminders and now he's been made one of them.
He expends energy on being angry. At what, he doesn't know, but he pretends to be angry at the Lorax for giving him this curse so he doesn't have to be angry at himself for it. He has empty years ahead of him now, watching Thneedville being built; his town that the townspeople don't even know is his.
No one ever dares to venture into this wasteland he had created, except for the odd few who seemed to have been thrown out of Thneedville for who knows what. There were other odd few who even dared to think anyone was alive out here besides them; one of his early hopes had been that they would realize they were not alone. But alas, he could never bring himself to let them know he was there.
He expends less energy on being angry and more on being guilty, because it's really what he should be feeling. This, in many ways, is what his existence for the past six decades is based on. Living in a graveyard that is miles long and wide; the last time he ever sees the sun being when he had ruined this place.
No one ever ventures out here willingly, and no one has ever survived; this graveyard is such a drastic change from what he assumes is a bright, falsely cheerful town. It is a spot of light on the horizon, most of which is obscured by walls. Just how he imagined it. He wonders if the inside is just as he imagined it, too, but that seems like a far flung hope.
The valley was a place where things went to die now: his hopes and dreams, the life of the valley, and the people of Thneedville. It was his fault, all of it. It was hard to blame it on anyone else now, as it hadn't been when he was younger.
He'd always thought that he was condemned to be the only living thing to survive out here - until the boy.
The boy comes asking after trees - real ones. The Once-ler pauses, safe behind the boarded window where the boy can't see that he is no older than perhaps his twenties. But it would be his voice that gave him away, young and high and still so innocent.
But his voice is decades unused, as ruined as the rest of him. He pauses, and begins: "It's because of me."
He has no idea if this curse will ever end. If he will be condemned forever to be a reminder unto himself.
He hates it, but he has come to hate himself as well for never seeing past his own ambitions. That, too, is a part of this spell the Lorax had put on him.
He almost laughs at how he's gone from calling it a curse to a spell, as though it could be broken. It might never be. Unless...unless what? There was very little hope out here anymore. (Little. As though there was a small chance this could be reversed. It wouldn't, he was sure of it.)
The years go by slowly, and yet it feels like they pass far too quickly. There is no sign of time passing, and he can no longer use his aging as a way to mark it. He feels so weary now, so exhausted.
Who knows how long he's been alive anymore? There is nothing left to say now. He had given up on things a long time ago.
He spends countless, hopeless days after the Lorax had left waiting for the sun to rise again.
He doesn't know why; he knows full well it is a fruitless endeavor. It is, maybe, some last semblance of hope. If the sun could rise, so could he.
The sun will rise, he tries to convince himself, and he can try again. It fails, for the most part, but still he waits for the sun to rise like clockwork. The sun doesn't rise and the fog only worsens, and somehow he can find it in himself to hope.
The boy keeps coming back, insistent on getting this story out of him.
"It's a girl, isn't it?" he teases, without thinking. The boy protests vehemently, scuttling around. "When a boy does something stupid twice, it's usually for a girl," springs from his mouth, unbidden; formed from the memory of his mother coercing him to break the promise he'd made.
The boy huffs, defeated.
He's surprised to find that he doesn't much care that the boy is here under the pretense of impressing a girl. The company of another human being besides himself is enough to ignore that particular fact. He has begun to settle back into his old mannerisms, from before--
...he'd rather not think about it. He is so tired these days.
"Once-ler?" the boy calls, the smallest hint of concern in his voice. "You're not dead or anything, right?"
"No," he responds suddenly - too suddenly, perhaps, because the strain on his voice chokes him, ever so slightly. He coughs, clears his throat, hoping to cover anything up that may have been revealed in that one slip.
He was not as young as he looked anymore, though he wished he was. He wished frequently that he had heeded the Lorax's warning, but it was far too late for that.
They had tried to drown him in the river. It's funny - at the time, he probably wouldn't have cared much if he'd died in the process. If it weren't for his damned thneed, he might have turned out differently. He might not have given in to his mother; might not have been left alone for these six decades.
...he had been well on the way to turning out differently. The way he had turned out-- well, he'd rather not take pride in it. He didn't anymore, but at one point he thought he could get away with destroying the valley.
He'd called it beautiful when he got here. It was a real shame he'd went and killed it. It was more than that, really; it is something that weighs heavy on him, makes it hard to believe this valley was alive once. He thinks he is the only one around who remembers trees, of any sort.
He doesn't want to remember. He doesn't want to have to live through lifetime after lifetime. But that is only his fault now, he supposed - this was an irreversible deed. He has resigned himself to being immortal. No one has passed through here and survived save for Ted - who he has come to grow fond of over these past few days - and himself, in a way, although he had been living here back when the valley was thriving.
His major flaw then, he supposed, was his pride, or perhaps the fact that he never did find satisfaction with what he had, at any point. What he had once thought was a high point in his life he now saw as the lowest point he had fallen to, excepting this particular stretch of his life. But even this is preferable to his failure to see past the thneed's success, past his greed; his failure to see what he was doing to the valley. It was far too late to be forgiven for what he had done.
Oh, the irony of it all - when he first got here, he had been devoid of color and it was he who had leeched all the color of this place and taken it for his own. Goodness, how he hated this suit, with its deep greens and shining golds, some sort of self-centered reminder of his now former success. The only reminders of it now were this godforsaken suit, the thneed, and Thneedville.
He was only...only ever useless in the end. He supposed he was like his thneed in that. He had wanted to be needed and wanted and loved by everyone, only to find that no one did.
It was just a sad invention, he knew. He had held on to it for so long he had begun to believe his family stuck around because they cared about him...except they never had.
He'd held on to the thneed for so long because it had given him his family. He had never had a father, nor a mother who genuinely cared about him, nor the girl who somehow saw the good in him.
It was not a worthy explanation. There was none to justify what he did. But he was...happy, in a way. He hadn't wanted to give it up, hadn't wanted to let it go.
...he had wanted so desperately to pretend to be something better than the broken parts of himself, better than the mess than he was and still is. He hasn't exposed himself this way in so long, laid his emotions down so clearly for another person to see.
Before, when he was nothing more than a child, still growing up, his family had always harshly shushed him, told him to keep his head down and mouth shut. And so he had always been a quiet, solitary child; he had come full circle and become even more solitary than he had been then.
Words would always fail to express his guilt.
It's not until he finishes telling his story to Ted that he realizes what the Lorax had meant by unless. That the stone had not said useless after all.
He thinks of the last truffula seed, left behind by the Lorax with the unless. It couldn't grow here; none of the other seeds had, either, no matter how many times he had tried.
But Ted...perhaps the seed could grow with Ted where it couldn't with him. It could bring a new hope to Thneedville, become a step closer to restoring the valley to its former glory--!
Or maybe this, too, was a far flung hope like the rest of them. He had been happier dreaming. He so desperately hoped this wouldn't prove to be a disaster the way he'd proven to be.
Thneedville becomes a spot of light on the horizon, no longer characterized by the high walls that made it so closed off from the reality surrounding them.
Ted returns, the sound of that infernal bike marking his return long before the Once-ler can see him clearly. He returns excitedly chattering about the town's change of heart; imagine Thneedville flowered and treed! he cries, ecstatic and hopeful, not unlike the Once-ler himself once was.
Ted glanced upward for a moment, eyes catching on the image of the Once-ler before him: as tall as Ted was short, drooping with a weariness he's only ever seen described in stories. But--young. No older than perhaps Audrey or even his mother, at the oldest. (He can almost hear his mother protesting that she wasn't that old. Yet.)
Come back with me, Ted says, without thinking; when he does think, he thinks: yes, yes--let the Once-ler come back with him, see the town flourishing despite how long it had gone without real air or real sunshine or real anything.
Come back, he says, and means it because out here he found a man destroyed by his own ambition who could not find it in him to forgive himself. Out here, he found a wasteland and yet in a single seed there had been hope that the valley could return to what it once was.
The silence is no longer deafening. The air still burns with every breath. Even if the Once-ler could not forgive himself, if it was worth anything, Ted had. His grandmother had. There was a new generation of people who did not know the sun nor the former beauty of the valley.
Even if the Once-ler could not forgive himself, here was a chance at redemption.
Slowly, Thneedville becomes a town of nature; replaces its metal and plastic with dirt and grass. It has been so long since the Once-ler had seen anything living; since he had last breathed fresh air.
The sun begins to show again, its rays poking through the disappearing smog. It is warm and welcoming, as he remembered it to be so long ago. Norma was older, obviously, and oh, their daughter--Ted was his grandson.
Audrey was cheerful, ever the optimist, ever the environmentalist. It was easy to see why Ted had taken such a liking to her.
The valley begins to revive; those seeds he had planted and failed to grow finally began to sprout as the ground healed from what he had done to it. Slowly, surely, the valley comes back to life again.
It's a brand new dawn.