He really does know that the only difference would be that he would have found an end to the bullying somehow, whether it be jumping into the bay with a cement block tied to his chest, or a bullet in his chest from being that kid in a school shooting. It would have been dependent on the confidence he doesn't seem to have, and how much of a message he would have wanted to send…
But he knows that he's a conduit, and that no matter how much he ponders, it won't change reality.
And then, it makes his mind trail to how reality played out while he was gone. What happened to everyone that bullied him? How much success do they have, or is it lack-there-of? How many kids did they have? How has it felt to live a normal life…?
It had been a long time since he had wondered, spitefully, how his mother had been. She was the one that had signed for the D.U.P. to be up and running in the first place. Hell, she was the one that had personally called Augustine to haul him away; she had been too afraid to contain him, herself. It wasn't difficult to find that information out, either, and he usually gets this blank look in his eyes when he retraces the memories through his head.
How he had sat at his computer monitors, files open, reading every newspaper article and website page. How he could feel himself trembling. How his glasses shifted part of his hood when he harshly rubbed his palms at his damp eyes.
He didn't even know his mother that well; she was always too busy governing part of the state for her to ever really have time for him, and he did hate her for a long time. That doesn't mean he forgot that she was all he really had in this world. And that doesn't mean that each headline didn't make his chest tighten and his heart sink. Not to mention how the pictures of her dead eyes burned into his memory.
From what he understood, it had been self-inflicted; she had lost her position when it was let out into the media that her own son was a conduit, and it had left her in such a distorted state that it drove her into insanity. Doctors prescribed anti-depressants, and it had ultimately drove her to taking an old strip of rope and…
Eugene breathed a slow, ragged sigh. He shouldn't feel this bad for her, especially all that she had put him through. But he couldn't help it. The back of his hands wiped at the burning tears that kept trying to slide down his cheeks, and he tried to get his mind to move away from all those images and all of those headlines…
And all that did for him was to have that voice in the back of his head beat him down some. He shouldn't be this weak, not when Abigail and Delsin had it so much worse than he did. They each had siblings that actually cared for them, and it brought them to their demise. All he had was a mother that was so ashamed of him that she couldn't find it in her to live anymore.
But..maybe that's what had him so devastated; he grew up to be such a disappointment, that he had to hide himself to feel secure. He had no one that was proud of all that he had done, and it made him feel so..so alone.
He shifted around so he was lying on his side. He wanted to curl up. He wanted to hide and disappear. He wanted to avoid every troubling thought. But it never happened, and when he finally did drift off to sleep, it was with the image of his own mother, neck bruised from the rope, and eyes staring into him with all the despondency that drove her to madness.