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‘She was such a sweet eevee’ they used to all say, voices tinged with varying levels of pity and disgust, all too muddled together to be distinguished from one another.
‘I don’t know what happened’ he’d reply sheepishly, the lie dripping off his tongue effortlessly, burning like acid, familiar and well practiced.
But she growls, bares her teeth defensively, protectively nonetheless, because she knows that he knows what changed her.
How can he not? She's been with him since the very start, during the simpler times when her only worry was his refusal to eat, and his inability to leave his bed. Some days he had the energy to wrap her in his arms and cry bitter tears into her fur. Those she is grateful for, because most days he does naught but lay still like and stare upwards at the ceiling like he's practicing being a corpse at a funeral. It's during these times, she learns that he’s never felt loved before.
She's been with him through the scarier times as well, when she finds him kneeling on the icy forest floor, fist bruised, bloodied and battered, buried in the rough bark of an innocent tree as he screams through suffocating sobs to the ever-uncaring stars. And when he's calmed enough from his outburst to try to soothe her, he's always careful not to thread his blood into her fur. Through her mews of concern she comes to understand he’ll never be enough for anyone.
Even now, when he can’t help but gaze a little too intensely at the escape rope in his bag, can’t help but hold his breath a little while longer in the bath tub, can’t help but stare a little bit harder at the ground, seeming so far away from the back of his pidgeot. How she wishes she can help carry some of the burden of living off of his shoulders.
Yet, in spite of all of this, every morning (if) he gets up, he enters the bathroom, and exits a different person—a person who’s heart has never been so burdened with the shame of accidentally losing someone so important. And though the public may not see it, she does. From the sickly bags hung under his eyes from searching, drooping with a weight so specific and human-shaped, to the wrong smile that was just a little too much teeth, never reaching his eyes, she watches his facade crack like precious porcelain with each passing day he’s missing.
She despises him.
She hates him.
How cold, she thinks.
To leave a soul so lost, to wait for an eternity for something that it isn’t even able to see just yet.
(Does it exist at all?)
And should even he fail to grace him with it, she will. She will care about Green more than anyone else in his life could bring their sorry asses to. She will commit, unafraid, this so-called sin of loving this devil-born man, just to prove to everyone that he is no demon. She has loved him since the day he first laid eyes on her and so reverently touched the top of her head-- and still, no such hellish tragedy has befallen her. See? He is more afraid of you than you are of him.
She will not falter, no matter how many nights of sleeping by him, small heartbeat against shattered one, no matter how many feather-tipped kisses she needs to lather him in, warm tongue against fragile, porcelain skin. It is no chore to her, because he is a man, not a curse, or a burden.
So she steeled herself to the rest of the world—unforgiving for its cruelty, and for its blindness.
In all honesty, she's not much more than just protective of what’s left; desperately trying to keep him from falling apart, from one final push tipping him over and shattering him into little gilded pieces too small to risk pasting back together again, lest he become more glue than Green. She refuses to let him take hammer to his remains, a shovel to the dirt, and to leave a jaded eevee as the only willing proof of his existence; she’ll sacrifice everything she can to see him through to the softest possible end.
But she's failing. It’s the truth, and the creeping realization that she cannot ignore it any longer begins to smother her. She can't be enough for him to stay.
She cannot pierce through the hard shield of his rib cage, or the dense haze in his eyes. She knows this. He knows this. Some days, he likes to expend energy on pretending that she's helping. She's not stupid. Nor is she naive; a kind, yet strained stretching of his lips, albeit more genuine than what he can muster up for the press, is still nothing more than a placation. When she's feeling particularly frustrated and worn-down, she selfishly wishes he would put that tiny surge of effort towards finally calling the therapist's number on his fridge. Most of the time she can only keep wishing he wouldn't see her as another leech he has to please.
All she can do is watch the invisible chains that tie him to the pit of the earth pull him deeper and deeper, unrelenting. She wants the luxury of anger; to have spare energy to hate herself for her helplessness-- or time, so she can spend it wallowing in self-pity; at least then, she can experience an emotion that isn't tired. She can afford neither. All she can do is continue to be afraid of the inevitable.
Then one day, a kid with his hair pulled through his backwards cap and both a smile and a future brighter than the sun itself strolls into the gym, with information worth more than he can possibly comprehend trailing him like a specter.
And when the star leaves, a new badge twinkling between his fingers, she witnesses with bated breath the re-ignition of a long-perished flame scatter the thick smog over his mind. Shutting down the gym an hour before regular, Green rushes back to his unknowing apartment only to throw on one more layer before he calls out pidgeot. She hops on his lap without missing a beat, and they take off with haste.
It is still incomprehensible, what he sees in him. He’s done nothing but burned himself a path of guilt and sorrow through the fields of Green’s heart, done nothing but greedily take and take and take from him— what else is there left for Green to (foolishly) give?
But she doesn’t protest, her tongue laying leaden in her small mouth. She can’t, not when just the mention of him might have done more for Green in that fraction of a second, than she has been able to her whole life.
Upon landing, he returns pidgeot with such hurry that she almost loses her balance when she leaps off his thighs.
The desperation in his gaze is like a beacon of life shining over an ocean of catatonia— it’s the most motivated she’s seen him be in so many months, as he pushes onward. Her paws land gracefully on the perfect white snow atop this blasted, frigid black peak, before she rushes to keep pace with him.
He’s running towards something, and she doesn’t quite know exactly where, or what-- though she has her hunches-- until she does.
A familiar red jacket and a shock of autumn brown hair hidden beneath a pokeball-patterned hat, dark piercing eyes matching the blackness of the mountain, and a cruel blank stare—she knows him.
But still, when eventually they fly off, a genuine smile tempts his lips for the first time since she first laid eyes on him. Though they didn’t talk much at all, something’s different.
The murky quality that had once taken residency in his eyes have now cleared enough that she can see her reflection in the lovely amber, smooth and shiny once more like a polished gemstone. Though he still has days when his ghosts weigh him to his bed, and sometimes his stare cannot help but catch on that innocuous rope in his pack, if anything’s clear, it’s that Green's beginning to change.
He is sure to visit the wretched mountain at least twice a month, though with every visit she can tell that he’s recovering slowly. Red is mending him back together with the crafty, prehensile hands she didn’t have, piece by gentle piece, stitch by loving stitch. She doesn’t know if he will look he same by the end of it, watching the closing of his scars and rehabilitation of his smile she begrudgingly accepts that this is enough, for now.
Trust. She thinks she can trust Green with him.
Then one night, when the sky is clear, the wind is kind, the stars shining ever so brightly, she wakes up and Red’s here.
A thick, comfortable haze of sleep engulfs her mind-- one that is heavier than she's used to, but it's one she's been acquainting herself more and more with lately as Green's condition improves-- and while she can’t seem to understand anything they’re saying, she can hear Green’s voice thicken, words getting caught in his throat unlike himself and she knows he’s crying. Instead of jumping up to Green’s defense she remains still, limp and relaxed, lets sleep tempt her tired mind a little while longer. Her ears twitch at the rustling of fabric until she hears Green choke out in between sobs,
‘Thank you’
And she knows he’s staying.