You see, Esplouge? Wasn't that fun?
"I... I..."
Wasn't that just so fucking fun?
Esplouge felt the bloodied shard of glass slip out of his hand and fall to the floor, although it barely registered in his mind. He couldn't take his eyes off of what he had done, not even for a moment.
"Wh- why did I...?"
He replayed it in his mind, trying to make sense of it.
He had arrived at Amy's house, had lied to her about something - having a fight with Tails or some other thing that anyone could have made up in the spur of the moment - and then... Everything just became so confused after that. But whatever had happened, it ended with Amy lying dead on the floor, many slashes and stab wounds all over her otherwise beautiful body, and now Esplouge couldn't force himself to look away.
Is that guilt, Eppy?
"Why... Why? Why do keep doing things like this?" Esplouge asked out loud. "I keep..."
Hurting the ones you love?
Esplouge had originally intended on saying "hurting innocent people", but when he thought about it, the voice was right. Every murder he had committed had affected Tails and Amy in some way, even if it was indirect, so in a way, he was hurting the ones he loved. He was always hurting the people he cared about.
"I... I don't understand, if I have all of my memory back... I should be acting... well, how you want me to act. Why am I feeling guilty?"
He got to you, Esplouge. Tails managed to open up your bleeding little heart. And look how you returned that. Do you see, Esplouge? No matter what you do, no matter what you think, you will always be a killer. You will always hurt the ones you care about, and you will always have a blood lust that, no matter what you do, just can't be satisfied. And has it occurred to you that maybe you were lying to yourself before?
"What do you mean?" Esplouge asked out loud. "Lying to myself about what?"
Maybe you always felt guilt. Maybe you just told yourself you were happy, but you were really miserable on the inside.
"You're full of it," Esplouge said contemptuously, finally looking away from Amy in favour of looking towards the door. "When the hell was I miserable?"
Think about it this way, Esplouge; why did you try to off yourself so many times? When you and Shadow were fighting, right before you "died" for the second time, he tried to convince you to get out of there. Do you remember?
Esplouge was silent.
The entire building was collapsing around you, and you knew the bomb would go off, and he tried to get you to get out, he screamed at you to get out, and what did you do? Can you tell me what you did, Esplouge?
"I..."
Esplouge looked down to his feet, trying to replay the memory in his mind.
"I just stared at him. I... I remember, he was screaming at me and I wanted to... I wanted to take him down with me, but at the same time... I just wanted to make sure someone faster than me could get to Tails. I told him to go make sure Tails was okay."
But did you make any effort to get out of there after he left?
Esplouge was silent for a moment before uttering a whispery, "No."
He looked back to Amy's body, forcing down the part of his mind that felt guilty. In his own twisted sense of reality, the blood actually looked nice, as though the red of her dress were somehow glitching, like a program that needed to be fixed. It was like a work of art, although he knew that no one would share the same opinion. All they would see was a dead body or, in the case of a select few, a dead friend.
And then it occurred to him that she probably had a family that would be devastated over the death of such a young family member, and that only added to the guilt. He realized that he had known almost nothing about Amy but for some reason, he had felt affection towards her, no matter how perverted his expression of that affection may have been.
It was because of Shadow and Tails. They both loved her, so you naturally loved her, too.
"But neither of them had anything like youin their heads," Esplouge objected. "Stop trying to compare me to them; I'm my own person."
But why are you your own person? You're just an experiment, you should be exactly like a mixture of the things you were created from. Of course, there was one more thing, if you remember correctly...
"I... What? I don't remember... A third thing? Really? Who was it?"
Not "who".
"What?"
Exactly.
"What?"
The question is not "who" the third contributor was, but "what" the third contributor was.
"I don't understand..."
The colour red...
"What the hell...?"
Like the colour of blood...
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
Isn't there something that causes you tremendous amounts of pain when you go near it?
Esplouge stood in silence, trying to remember what the voice was talking about.
"You mean the red chaos emerald. Right?"
Haven't you ever wondered why the other emeralds don't harm you, while the red one literally makes you feel like your very life is being sucked away? Have you ever thought that, maybe, your life really is being sucked away?
"It... really... So, if I'm around it long enough, I'll die. Right? That's why I can't die; I still have some of it's energy from when Eggman created me. I... Shit, everything's still a little fuzzy... But if I remember correctly... That was the emerald he used, wasn't it? The red one?"
My, I do believe things are beginning to come together in your head. Do you recall when Shadow nearly lost his life? Remember, he was in his Super form, and then he just ran out of time. The emeralds took their energy back, which left him plummeting toward the Earth. He was just lucky he has that little Chaos Control ability of his, otherwise he'd have died, and you'd have never been born.
"And your point?"
My point is, dear, that maybe the emerald is trying to get its energy back from you. And once it does... Well, that energy is what keeps you alive. It is your life, essentially. Eggman didn't know how to give his creation, how to give you life. So he did the only thing that would have occurred to him; he used a chaos emerald. Of course, he wasn't as knowledgeable about how those emeralds work as his grandfather was, so he made a few... mistakes. You wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for that chaos emerald. In fact, your mind was affected quite noticeably by that emerald.
"My mind was affected...?"
The third contributing factor in your creation, and in your personality. Tell me, why do you think they're called "chaos" emeralds?
"Chaos... Fuck, you're the one behind all this shit, aren't you?! You're that fucking emerald and you're in my fucking head...!"
My, you do catch on quickly.
"All this time, all that shit that went through my head, it was all you...!"
Yes, it was. Now what are you going to do about it?
"I'll fucking kill you...!"
Now, now, Eppy. That doesn't exactly work. See, I am what gives you life. So, to kill me, you'd have to make the ultimate sacrifice; you'd have to kill yourself.
Esplouge stared down at his feet, clenching his fists.
"Giving up mylife wouldn't be the ultimate sacrifice..." Esplouge objected angrily. "Giving up Tails' life would. And I'm not about to do that."
Then what are you going to do?
Esplouge picked up the glass shard he had dropped before heading toward the door.
"You have the ability to warp through space and time and you don't know what I'm going to do?" Esplouge remarked sarcastically.
He opened the door and stared out into the darkness of the night, realizing that if things went his way, it would soon be like this for him all the time. It was all just a matter of tracking down that one chaos emerald, and he had a guess where it would be.
--
Some time passed, Esplouge wasn't sure how long it had been exactly, before he got back to Tails' house. Tails was waiting outside for him, sitting on his doorstep. When Tails saw Esplouge, he ran to him immediately.
"Esplouge, where were you, why did you leave so suddenly, do you have any idea how worried I was about you?!" Tails asked all in one breath.
Tails took a step back, noticing the fresh blood on Esplouge's front.
Oh god, no, not now, not after everything, why does he have to go back now...
"What... What did you do?" Tails asked softly, suddenly scared. "Esplouge, what...?"
"Get in the house," Esplouge ordered. "Now."
"N- no..."
Esplouge grabbed Tails roughly by the shoulder and pulled him close, holding the shattered glass against his small throat. Tails wriggled slightly in his grip, but Esplouge managed to hold him in place.
"Get in the house," Esplouge said again. "I've had a shitty night and I really need to talk to you, and I'd much prefer it if we could talk inside. No one else is in there, right?"
Tails shook his head timidly, thankful that Esplouge's grip on both him and the glass seemed to be softening.
"No, it's just me and you," Tails said. He didn't say anything else, although questions were storming through his head. He and Esplouge walked inside, closing the door after themselves.
"So what did you...?"
"The red chaos emerald," Esplouge interrupted. "Where is it?"
"Wh- what? Why?"
"I... I need it for something," Esplouge answered. "It's important."
"But doesn't it hurt you...?"
"Look, do you know where it is or not?"
"It's... It's in Sonic's room..."
Esplouge ran to the room, fully prepared to turn it inside-out in his search for the gem, although the faint red glow caught his attention almost instantly. It was sitting fully exposed on a table, leaving Esplouge wondering how he had missed it before, although by now, he didn't really care. He approached the gem timidly, knowing what kind of pain to expect. Tails grabbed him behind and tried to hold him still.
"Esplouge, it hurts you!" Tails exclaimed. "Why on earth would you...?!"
"Tails..."
The two were silent for a moment before Esplouge continued.
"You know I love you, right?"
"What...?"
"Not like... "love" love, but... I care about you. You're aware of that, right? I mean, I know I've treated you like shit, but I really do care about you. Even when... Even when I tried to kill you, I just... couldn't. There was always something inside me, some tiny piece of reason that knew I would never be able to bear it if I did anything to hurt you.
"And then, just tonight, I realized that everything I've ever done in my entire life was, in some way, meant to hurt you. I've been hurting you, be it physical or emotional, and I know that I just can't stop. Tails, I will never stop hurting you unless something prevents me from..."
Esplouge broke off suddenly, trying to hide his face from Tails.
"Esplouge, please, you're just... You just need help, it might take some time, but I promise I can help you, I can fix you..."
"You can't fix me," Esplouge said quietly. "No one can. I... I'm defective, Tails. I was just... created wrong. And no matter what you or anyone else does... You just can't fix me."
"No, I can, I'm smart enough, I can do whatever you need me to do, I swear..."
"I need you to let go of me," Esplouge said. "I need you to let me go both physically and emotionally. Leave if you have to."
"I'm not going to let you hurt yourself!" Tails argued.
"I'm not going to hurt myself," Esplouge said. "I... Fuck, you're such a selfish brat, you know that?! I'm trying to end your suffering and mine, but you just can't accept that maybe, just maybe, death would be better for me than this hellhole of an existence!"
Tails flinched from the sudden harsh tone Esplouge's voice had taken on, but he refused to let go.
"No, you just need help," Tails argued weakly, tears filling his eyes. "Please don't... Please don't do anything to hurt yourself..."
Esplouge pushed Tails away, but made no move toward or away from the chaos emerald. He merely stared at Tails, wondering why it all had to be so hard. Everything in his life had been hard, why couldn't this one last thing be different?
"Tails... If you cared about me as much as you say you do... Wouldn't you want to see my suffering end? Wouldn't you want to see me finally at peace?"
"But... But you'll come back, won't you?" Tails asked hopefully. "You always come back..."
Esplouge pulled Tails close to himself. He squoze Tails tightly, almost too tightly, but Tails didn't object.
He never fights back...
"No," Esplouge said quietly. "Not anymore."
"It's not fair..." Tails sobbed. "Just when you were doing better..."
"I wasn't doing better," Esplouge pointed out. "Some of the scars from the sleepwalking episode are still there... Not to mention the voice..."
"Voice?" Tails asked. He tried to remember, but he couldn't recall anything about a voice. All of it, everything that was going on, was just too much.
"The... Well... It's sort of complicated... I wrote some things down, but I left them at Amy's house. If you want to know everything, just go there."
"I'm not leaving you alone here," Tails objected.
"I'm not asking you to," Esplouge said, pulling away from Tails and moving toward the emerald, feeling the first sharp singes of pain as the energy, his life, was being forcibly torn out of him. "I'm asking you to go read it when I'm no longer here. As much as it doesn't seem like it, I want at least you to know everything..."
Tails latched onto Esplouge, trying to keep him away from the emerald, unaware that Esplouge was close enough to feel his life slowly ebbing away. Esplouge's body had already began to heat up from the transfer of energy, but Tails assumed it was because of the stress of the situation.
"But why?" Tails asked. "Why do you have to die?"
"Because... Sometimes people make mistakes," Esplouge explained. "And my creation was one of them. Tails, would you honestly prefer I live the rest of my otherwise eternal life in pain and misery, or would you rather I find some peace? Don't you care about me?"
Tails' grip seemed to loosen slightly.
"I do, but..."
"Then let me die. Forget about me. You'll understand all of it soon, as soon as you read those notes I left for you, but right now, you just have to trust my judgement."
Tails' hold on Esplouge loosened even more.
"I'm so sorry I'm putting you through this, Tails," Esplouge said quietly. "Trust me, if I could have it any other way..."
"I... I..."
Esplouge slipped out of Tails' arms and faced him, backing toward the emerald. His body began to glow with a bright red light as the energy was sucked out of him. Tails forced down the urge to run to Esplouge, to pull him away from the emerald they had both grown to hate.
"I love you, Tails," Esplouge said. "I want you to be happy, okay? Promise me you'll be happy from now on."
"I... How can I do that?" Tails asked. "I can't be happy if you're not here..."
"There's always a period of mourning when someone close to you dies," Esplouge said. "You have my permission to mourn, but please try to be cheerful afterwords, okay? I want you to be happy."
Esplouge had to kneel, the pain of the emerald was getting too strong for him to handle. Tails was immediately at his side, kneeling down next to him, trying to comfort him somehow, although they both knew it was futile.
"I don't think I can be happy if you're not here," Tails said.
Esplouge collapsed and suddenly, the red aura grew fainter. His body seemed to darken almost, as though the red from the chaos emerald had been colouring his fur.
The last words Esplouge heard, in Tails' voice, were, "I love you, too."
And then everything went black.