Post by Affectionate Zombie on Dec 26, 2008 21:35:01 GMT -5
NAME.
Ellery Dylan Bell. I know it's a little girlish, but that can't be helped. I like my name anyway. It's something different, you know?
NICKNAMES.
Ellie, Ree. ... Yes, okay, these are more than "a little girlish." There's nothing wrong with that.
AGE.
Twenty-four. I don't really look my age, I guess. A little young. ... But then, twenty-four isn't that old, either, is it?
SEX.
Male. See? Girlish name or not, I'm a boy. ... Come to think of it, though, I used to be mistaken for a girl more when I had my hair long. Hm.
SEXUAL ORIENTATION.
Homosexual. I... yes, I am. I'm not too... um... proud of it, though. Mostly I keep it to myself.
===================
APPEARANCE. When you think of me... don't picture me like this...
x
===================
HISTORY. Please... please... don't forget this story. I want someone to remember me.
When had the world turned itself on its head, again? Ellery strove to think of a specific date, time; he wanted it down to the hour, the minute, the second. Millisecond was pushing it, but if he could manage to find out...
Arceus, it just didn't feel like it could be real. He wished... he hoped... he prayed that it wasn't.
Yet here he was, sitting up in bed, with long, silky strands of dark hair resting peacefully in his palm, his fingers stiff and unable to clench, his senses dulled by sleep, his reflexes too slow for him to catch a stray strand that twirled and danced to the floor.
He looked to his pillow, saw more strands there, their brown color seeming black against the white pillowcase. He didn't dare lift a hand to his head, because the image in his mind terrified him. What if there was nothing left, every precious strand fallen to the ground, to the sheets, to the pillowcase? Perhaps it was an unrealistic picture, but then... he felt like he was still in a dream, or a nightmare, so why couldn't it be real? Why shouldn't it be?
He sat staring at the strands in his hand for what felt like a very long time, and when he started to cry, to weep, to bawl as he hadn't since he was a child, the overwhelming fear and sadness had a numbing effect. None of this was real. Was it? Could it be?
Ellery hoped to death that it wasn't, yet wracked his brain at the same time to find some confirmation of its legitimacy, a date and a time. If he couldn't find one, then this was a dream. He would still be scared, but only until he woke up.
Then his sobs gave way to wet, loud coughs, and he dropped the strands of hair to clap his hand over his mouth. It came back red and sticky. His throat and chest hurt.
This was real, and despite how obvious it should have been to start with, his half-awake mind was shocked enough that tears stopped flowing. All he could do was scramble for a date. When exactly had everything changed?
It was dizzying, too sudden. The tears came again, but no more sobbing. Soon, even the tears stopped, and he was a hollow shell, thinking only of dates and places and times and how the blood must have been rushing to his head, since everything was upside-down and backwards.
XXXXXXX
The ideal life of a child is one of joy, of innocence and leisure and playfulness. Not all children are so lucky, of course. Ellery was. His early childhood had been, while uneventful and something he remembered only in bits and pieces and blurry memories, a happy thing. Games with a few of the other village children... Breakfast, lunch, and dinner with his parents... The occasional skinned knee, and a kiss from mum to make it better...
There was school, too, and at its earliest stages Ellery enjoyed it. Nap time, snack time... no teatime, though, school let out too early for that. He had that at home.
Of course, looking back now, he could remember very few details. He'd been very young, and now he was twenty-four years old. He could remember the names of one or two other children, but he wasn't sure if he'd gotten them right. He could remember, too, the name of his first-grade teacher, but that was bizarre in itself, since he couldn't remember the names of any other teachers before fifth grade.
He remembered much more clearly when his father walked out. No, he hadn't understood it well at the time; he'd been only seven, and his mother had endeavored to keep him mostly-uninformed for the sake of not upsetting him. But James Bell had stirred up a right fuss upon leaving. He and Mary had argued. Lots of yelling, a few scary banging noises. They'd been in their room, and Ellery had been in his, sniffling. He hated when his parents fought, and they'd been doing it so much lately...
Finally, the shouting match moved from the room to the hallway, past Ellery's room and downstairs, into the foyer -- out the door. "I can't stand it anymore; you and your bastard can bloody go to hell!"
Mary didn't cry, but Ellery did. He wanted to know where his daddy had gone, and mummy refused to tell him. He wanted to know why daddy had said those mean things. He wanted to know who the "bastard" was, and what did that mean? It was a bad word, wasn't it? Daddy shouldn't have said it to mummy...
But Mary only told him that daddy was gone.
Ellery figured it out later, when he was thirteen. (Some of the story was inferred, and some he'd asked his mother about.) Mary and James had been married a year before she'd gotten pregnant. James had never wanted a child; Mary desperately had. Already their marriage had seemed to be growing strained, and eventually, she started to see someone else behind her husband's back. She became pregnant with her paramour's child. Far from regretful but certainly guilty, she told James everything before he found out on his own. Initially he'd been angry, but then he had reluctantly agreed to care for the child with her, if she left the man she'd been cheating with. She did. Ellery was born, and for seven years James watched after him. Ellie hadn't noticed before, but his "father" had never been as warm, as loving, as caring as his mother. He'd never seemed to have much interest at all, though Ellery's childish eyes hadn't seen it.
Now he understood, and while he supposed he couldn't blame James, he couldn't help but be bitter.
Life moved on.
Ellery was never the most popular or outgoing kid in his classes. He had friends, a choice few that he was close to, but he tended to be soft-spoken and content to watch rather than participate. He was intelligent, and immersed himself in his schoolwork, preferring to stay home after school and study or read rather than going out to the movies with his small group of friends.
Mary had grown more weary and stressed since James's leave, and Ellie did what he could to help around the house. He cleaned, and sometimes cooked, though he wasn't tremendously good at it. Between self-imposed chores and schoolwork, he didn't care to do much else, not because he was tired but more because he simply didn't want to do anything. Smart and with good intent as he was, he didn't have much drive. He wanted to go to college to get a degree in something-or-another, maybe medicine, though it was still up in the air. He considered going out and becoming a trainer, though decided against it in the end, because he didn't think he'd be very good at raising Pokémon anyway. The creatures were interesting, but they didn't usually like him, and he always seemed to do exactly the opposite of what he was supposed to around them. He'd been bitten by stray Meowth, snarled at by his friend's pet Poochyena, and chased after by grumpy old Peter Jules's Machoke more times than he could count.
So what did he want to do with himself, then? Even by age sixteen he didn't really care. Plenty of time to figure it all out, anyway. He could easily get into a good college with his grades; he was very talented academically, and he knew it. Once he got to college, he'd just try out a few different fields that interested him. Eventually he'd find something.
Yes, eventually.
XXXXXXX
He'd been a fool back then, he could see that now.
Living without ambition was one thing when you were young and had years upon years upon years ahead of you. When your days are numbered, though...
No. No, he didn't want to think about that.
But he had to, didn't he? He had to think about it now. If he didn't, he'd never think about it. No more procrastinating. He didn't have the time. It was alarming, the realization that time was a precious and dwindling thing. He'd done so little with his life. So little accomplished... He'd never even seen more than a few cities and towns in Triffael. He'd never had a pet. He'd had relationships, at least, one or two short-lived ones, but he could only imagine love. He'd never... damn it, had he done anything worth mention?!
Straight A's throughout school, over two-hundred books read, three scholarships, and only two friends he still kept in touch with, not counting his roommate that he was only friends with for the sake of both of their sanity. (They had to live together, after all, so getting along was for their best interest.)
Of those things, the only that even mattered was the friends. What would grades matter if he was... if he was dead?! What would people say at his funeral...? "He was a good boy. Read lots of books and got good grades. Helped his mum around the house." Yes, yes, wonderful. But after the ceremony, after a few months, a few years... would anyone remember him? Would anyone look back and think of the boy who got good grades throughout school?
No... no, fuck, why would they?
Ellery squeezed his eyes shut, his head hanging, his teeth biting at his lips. Pathetic. Twenty-four years and no one save for his mum and a few friends would dwell on his memory.
After a moment of bitter thoughts, he wondered briefly what songs they would play at his reception. Would they play any at all? Would be fitting, after all, to have a dull, uneventful, quiet service to celebrate the uneventful life of a dull, quiet person.
How morbid. Was he planning his own funeral, now?
... He still had some time, though. He still had enough time to... to do something.
XXXXXXX
After graduating high school at age eighteen, Ellery made it into his college of choice, a nice little place just on the outskirts of a city in Triffael Region. He'd still not settled on a major, which was enough to really start stressing him out. Maybe he shouldn't have waited so long, but... well, whatever. He had very seriously considered becoming a doctor, and at that point he decided to go with it. Majored in medicine. It seemed a little dull, though, so he went further and double-majored in education. Teaching seemed fun, right? Why not? Worth a shot.
College was more exciting than elementary, middle, and high school had been. He met far more interesting characters than he was used to; small school or not, not everyone was local, and what would have been considered rebellious or unacceptable by small-town standards was accepted at the college. Ellery was nervous, at first, and uncomfortable, but settling in took only a few weeks. His roommate was agreeable enough, even if he liked to play loud, obnoxious music while Ellery studied and sometimes came back to the room drunk late at night. (Mornings after nights like that were never fun.)
He got his first boyfriend there at age nineteen, freshman year. The boy, Taylor, had been in one of Ellery's classes. They hadn't talked much, which had made it all the more shocking when Taylor had come right over one day and asked him to lunch. The relationship was never very serious, just some kissing, a bit of groping. They'd had an easy, mutual breakup, and that had been that.
Sophomore year, he got tired of education classes and switched to biology, though he remained a medicine major. He was twenty.
Twenty-one, junior year. Biology and medicine seemed like a good combo. He stuck with it.
Twenty-two, senior year. Another boyfriend came and went; it had been a train wreck from the start, and this relationship ended a bit more violently than the one with Taylor had. Ellery had no clue what he'd seen in Royce at the beginning. Maybe nothing at all, if he thought about it, and he'd just wanted a little company. No such luck. Ah, well. Plenty of fish in the sea, and he'd caught the wrong one this time.
It was on to medical school from there. He moved to another college, one in a different Triffael city. This roommate didn't play loud music, or come back drunk at night. He was polite, but distant. Very often it was like having no roommate at all, since the both of them would be studying quietly most of the time. His first year passed in a blur of classes and information overloads. It was stressful, and would have been more-so if Ellery hadn't been so dedicated to his homework and to studying.
Then, before he had even turned twenty-four, before he'd finished his second year of medical school, he fell ill. Breathing had become difficult, his chest had been hurting, and he'd been coughing up a lung for several days before he finally went to see a doctor. Ellery had tried to figure out what was wrong with himself, and had suspected pneumonia.
The doctor seemed to think so, too, at first. Medication was prescribed, and Ellery went back to his dorm.
It didn't get better, and as a matter of fact, it slowly got worse, and worse. He couldn't speak quite properly, his voice too hoarse. The coughs had become increasingly painful. The chest pain was constant. He seemed even to be losing weight.
Then, he started coughing blood. That was pretty unnerving.
At that point, even his roommate was telling him to go back to the doctor. He hastily obliged.
A chest x-ray revealed the problem. When the doctor showed Ellery the x-ray pictures, the med student could already tell something was wrong. What was that in his lung...? It... no, surely he was wrong. It couldn't be.
The doctor was grim-faced as he broke the news. He believed that it was cancer of the lung. He was no oncologist, he said, but he would consult one, and give a proper diagnosis within the week. "I'm sorry." And then he'd just... left.
Cancer. Bloody cancer. Lung cancer, and he'd never even smoked before in his life... But of course, smoking wasn't the only thing that caused cancer, and it wasn't like he had to have done something to get it.
... This couldn't be true, though. Could it? Maybe it was just... just... He tried to search his brain for any medical knowledge of what else it could be, and in his mild panic and increasing fear, he could think of nothing, though he knew other possibilities existed. He hoped they did.
XXXXXXX
But no. Of course it couldn't have been any of those other possibilities. Of course not.
That was why he was sitting there, with blood on his palm and his hair falling out, his breath wheezy and chest hurting. That was why he was slowly but surely dying.
It had been officially diagnosed as non-small cell lung carcinoma (more specifically adenocarcinoma), and the standard treatment was surgery followed by chemotherapy. He'd been informed beforehand, though, that even with treatment, he wasn't likely to live more than two years. If he wasn't a med student himself, if he didn't know that not caring for your patients was the best way to deal with things like this, he would have been furious at the doctor who'd told him all of this. (As it was, he settled for being bitter.) Why the fuck didn't he care? Why... how could he just say this, apologize, and walk away because sorry, he had another patient to attend to? Ellery was going to die, and all the doctor could say was "I'm sorry."
A part of him wanted to keep going through med school, so that he could be the one doctor who would care. But the more dominant part of him was disgusted; he didn't want to be involved with this field anymore, and hell, not like he had time anyway.
He dropped out of college and moved back in with his mother, because she insisted it. His treatment was performed at a hospital nearby to Yeni Village.
Now he had irrational thoughts in his head. He wondered why he even bothered with the chemo, because now his hair was gone, and that was almost more heartbreaking than the disease itself. Quickly he pushed that thought away; it made no sense.
Instead of getting up, instead of facing the day and trying to make the best of it, he brushed the hairs off of his pillow and laid back down. He didn't want to think of this right now.
So of course, he dreamed of death.
XXXXXXX
His mother was in shambles, which filled him with guilt, as if contracting a deadly disease was his fault, and her emotional distress had been an intention of his. She mourned the loss of his hair as much as he did, tried to comfort him while she herself was sobbing, and when he so much as coughed, she'd panic and ask if he needed to go to the hospital. (The answer was always "no", even if a single cough was usually followed by many more and maybe a little blood.)
"Dear, you just rest. As long as you need, okay? You can stay here, and... and..." She would say things like this sometimes, during the month he stayed with her, but she would never finish her sentence. She didn't want to acknowledge that if he stayed too long, death would be how he was to leave.
Ellery loved her with all of his heart. He did. She was his mother, and she may not have been perfect, but she cared for him and worried for him and offered him a place to stay despite everything. Of course he loved her. It was why he decided after only a month that he needed to leave her, let her think things through on her own without having to watch after him.
But where would he go? He wasn't going back to college, because there was no point. He could probably afford an apartment somewhere for himself, just a small one, but it would be too lonely.
Or, he could travel. He mulled that over more seriously than any other options. Why not? He needed to see someplace outside of Triffael, see something grand. He needed to have a little fun, and do something rash. He needed to be active, to take his mind off of... things.
He started to pack.
His mother insisted that he stay, because he was ill, he needed to rest, he needed her help. Why did he have to leave? The world was a big place; would he be able to come home again before... No, she couldn't finish that sentence, either.
Ellery smiled a little at her as he pulled a hat onto his head, hiding the bare skin beneath. He promised to call often, to send money and gifts, to take pictures. He loved her, he was leaving now, he had to.
She watched him go and stood there in the doorway for a good five minutes after he had vanished from sight. Then, she silently turned, entered her house, and closed the door behind her.
XXXXXXX
In the nearby city, he caught a train to Triffael's port town, and then took the first ship out. He wound up in a region he'd never heard of, a place called Umaul. It wasn't very big, but it had the most gorgeous landscapes he'd ever seen, like something out of a postcard, and the people there were very friendly to newcomers. Lucky for him, Umaul wasn't big on Pok?mon training. The citizens sometimes had Pok?mon of their own, but going through the Pok?mon League and all of that was impossible. They had no league.
Because of this, he was able to travel the region without worrying about battles or catching Pok?mon. He stayed in Umaul for six months, seeing every large town, plenty of the small ones, and several areas famous in the region. He kept moving, kept busy; just as he'd hoped, sometimes he forgot about his problems. Sometimes. Once he'd been in the region long enough, though, he started to crave more. He took a boat to Kairuu, which was larger than any region he'd been to before, and more interesting, he figured.
Initially
Ellery Dylan Bell. I know it's a little girlish, but that can't be helped. I like my name anyway. It's something different, you know?
NICKNAMES.
Ellie, Ree. ... Yes, okay, these are more than "a little girlish." There's nothing wrong with that.
AGE.
Twenty-four. I don't really look my age, I guess. A little young. ... But then, twenty-four isn't that old, either, is it?
SEX.
Male. See? Girlish name or not, I'm a boy. ... Come to think of it, though, I used to be mistaken for a girl more when I had my hair long. Hm.
SEXUAL ORIENTATION.
Homosexual. I... yes, I am. I'm not too... um... proud of it, though. Mostly I keep it to myself.
DATE OF BIRTH.
April ninth. Glad that I'll probably have at least one more birthday. The rain is always so nice...
PLACE OF BIRTH.
Yeni Village, Triffael Region. Never even heard of it, right? Heh... Don't worry, not many people have. The region's tiny and the town's lucky to even be on any maps. It's home, though. I miss it... sometimes.
ETHNICITY.
Primarily English (he has an accent, too, the type you'd hear from folks born and raised in London), with a bit of Spanish and German. Actually, I do like tea and crumpets. Yeah, yeah... "Hello Mister English Stereotype." Isn't a thing wrong with tea time.
FAMILY.
MOTHER: Mary Bell. I love my mum. She bakes the best biscuits in the world and can curse like a sailor, though at first meeting her, you'd never guess; she seems sweet enough. Such a lovely, funny woman.
FATHER: James Bell. ... Would rather not talk about him. Left when I was seven, haven't seen him since. Bloody wanker. ... Sorry. Language. Moving on, okay...?
AMBITION.
Breeder. Battling's no fun, and coordinating is too... flashy, I guess? I wouldn't suit it. In any case, I'm not likely to make anything of myself. Don't have the time. I just want to see a bit of the world while I can, see. Training doesn't much interest me.
===================
APPEARANCE. When you think of me... don't picture me like this...
x
===================
PERSONALITY. I don't want your pity. Just get to know me... stay and talk a while.===================
x
HISTORY. Please... please... don't forget this story. I want someone to remember me.
When had the world turned itself on its head, again? Ellery strove to think of a specific date, time; he wanted it down to the hour, the minute, the second. Millisecond was pushing it, but if he could manage to find out...
Arceus, it just didn't feel like it could be real. He wished... he hoped... he prayed that it wasn't.
Yet here he was, sitting up in bed, with long, silky strands of dark hair resting peacefully in his palm, his fingers stiff and unable to clench, his senses dulled by sleep, his reflexes too slow for him to catch a stray strand that twirled and danced to the floor.
He looked to his pillow, saw more strands there, their brown color seeming black against the white pillowcase. He didn't dare lift a hand to his head, because the image in his mind terrified him. What if there was nothing left, every precious strand fallen to the ground, to the sheets, to the pillowcase? Perhaps it was an unrealistic picture, but then... he felt like he was still in a dream, or a nightmare, so why couldn't it be real? Why shouldn't it be?
He sat staring at the strands in his hand for what felt like a very long time, and when he started to cry, to weep, to bawl as he hadn't since he was a child, the overwhelming fear and sadness had a numbing effect. None of this was real. Was it? Could it be?
Ellery hoped to death that it wasn't, yet wracked his brain at the same time to find some confirmation of its legitimacy, a date and a time. If he couldn't find one, then this was a dream. He would still be scared, but only until he woke up.
Then his sobs gave way to wet, loud coughs, and he dropped the strands of hair to clap his hand over his mouth. It came back red and sticky. His throat and chest hurt.
This was real, and despite how obvious it should have been to start with, his half-awake mind was shocked enough that tears stopped flowing. All he could do was scramble for a date. When exactly had everything changed?
It was dizzying, too sudden. The tears came again, but no more sobbing. Soon, even the tears stopped, and he was a hollow shell, thinking only of dates and places and times and how the blood must have been rushing to his head, since everything was upside-down and backwards.
XXXXXXX
The ideal life of a child is one of joy, of innocence and leisure and playfulness. Not all children are so lucky, of course. Ellery was. His early childhood had been, while uneventful and something he remembered only in bits and pieces and blurry memories, a happy thing. Games with a few of the other village children... Breakfast, lunch, and dinner with his parents... The occasional skinned knee, and a kiss from mum to make it better...
There was school, too, and at its earliest stages Ellery enjoyed it. Nap time, snack time... no teatime, though, school let out too early for that. He had that at home.
Of course, looking back now, he could remember very few details. He'd been very young, and now he was twenty-four years old. He could remember the names of one or two other children, but he wasn't sure if he'd gotten them right. He could remember, too, the name of his first-grade teacher, but that was bizarre in itself, since he couldn't remember the names of any other teachers before fifth grade.
He remembered much more clearly when his father walked out. No, he hadn't understood it well at the time; he'd been only seven, and his mother had endeavored to keep him mostly-uninformed for the sake of not upsetting him. But James Bell had stirred up a right fuss upon leaving. He and Mary had argued. Lots of yelling, a few scary banging noises. They'd been in their room, and Ellery had been in his, sniffling. He hated when his parents fought, and they'd been doing it so much lately...
Finally, the shouting match moved from the room to the hallway, past Ellery's room and downstairs, into the foyer -- out the door. "I can't stand it anymore; you and your bastard can bloody go to hell!"
Mary didn't cry, but Ellery did. He wanted to know where his daddy had gone, and mummy refused to tell him. He wanted to know why daddy had said those mean things. He wanted to know who the "bastard" was, and what did that mean? It was a bad word, wasn't it? Daddy shouldn't have said it to mummy...
But Mary only told him that daddy was gone.
Ellery figured it out later, when he was thirteen. (Some of the story was inferred, and some he'd asked his mother about.) Mary and James had been married a year before she'd gotten pregnant. James had never wanted a child; Mary desperately had. Already their marriage had seemed to be growing strained, and eventually, she started to see someone else behind her husband's back. She became pregnant with her paramour's child. Far from regretful but certainly guilty, she told James everything before he found out on his own. Initially he'd been angry, but then he had reluctantly agreed to care for the child with her, if she left the man she'd been cheating with. She did. Ellery was born, and for seven years James watched after him. Ellie hadn't noticed before, but his "father" had never been as warm, as loving, as caring as his mother. He'd never seemed to have much interest at all, though Ellery's childish eyes hadn't seen it.
Now he understood, and while he supposed he couldn't blame James, he couldn't help but be bitter.
Life moved on.
Ellery was never the most popular or outgoing kid in his classes. He had friends, a choice few that he was close to, but he tended to be soft-spoken and content to watch rather than participate. He was intelligent, and immersed himself in his schoolwork, preferring to stay home after school and study or read rather than going out to the movies with his small group of friends.
Mary had grown more weary and stressed since James's leave, and Ellie did what he could to help around the house. He cleaned, and sometimes cooked, though he wasn't tremendously good at it. Between self-imposed chores and schoolwork, he didn't care to do much else, not because he was tired but more because he simply didn't want to do anything. Smart and with good intent as he was, he didn't have much drive. He wanted to go to college to get a degree in something-or-another, maybe medicine, though it was still up in the air. He considered going out and becoming a trainer, though decided against it in the end, because he didn't think he'd be very good at raising Pokémon anyway. The creatures were interesting, but they didn't usually like him, and he always seemed to do exactly the opposite of what he was supposed to around them. He'd been bitten by stray Meowth, snarled at by his friend's pet Poochyena, and chased after by grumpy old Peter Jules's Machoke more times than he could count.
So what did he want to do with himself, then? Even by age sixteen he didn't really care. Plenty of time to figure it all out, anyway. He could easily get into a good college with his grades; he was very talented academically, and he knew it. Once he got to college, he'd just try out a few different fields that interested him. Eventually he'd find something.
Yes, eventually.
XXXXXXX
He'd been a fool back then, he could see that now.
Living without ambition was one thing when you were young and had years upon years upon years ahead of you. When your days are numbered, though...
No. No, he didn't want to think about that.
But he had to, didn't he? He had to think about it now. If he didn't, he'd never think about it. No more procrastinating. He didn't have the time. It was alarming, the realization that time was a precious and dwindling thing. He'd done so little with his life. So little accomplished... He'd never even seen more than a few cities and towns in Triffael. He'd never had a pet. He'd had relationships, at least, one or two short-lived ones, but he could only imagine love. He'd never... damn it, had he done anything worth mention?!
Straight A's throughout school, over two-hundred books read, three scholarships, and only two friends he still kept in touch with, not counting his roommate that he was only friends with for the sake of both of their sanity. (They had to live together, after all, so getting along was for their best interest.)
Of those things, the only that even mattered was the friends. What would grades matter if he was... if he was dead?! What would people say at his funeral...? "He was a good boy. Read lots of books and got good grades. Helped his mum around the house." Yes, yes, wonderful. But after the ceremony, after a few months, a few years... would anyone remember him? Would anyone look back and think of the boy who got good grades throughout school?
No... no, fuck, why would they?
Ellery squeezed his eyes shut, his head hanging, his teeth biting at his lips. Pathetic. Twenty-four years and no one save for his mum and a few friends would dwell on his memory.
After a moment of bitter thoughts, he wondered briefly what songs they would play at his reception. Would they play any at all? Would be fitting, after all, to have a dull, uneventful, quiet service to celebrate the uneventful life of a dull, quiet person.
How morbid. Was he planning his own funeral, now?
... He still had some time, though. He still had enough time to... to do something.
XXXXXXX
After graduating high school at age eighteen, Ellery made it into his college of choice, a nice little place just on the outskirts of a city in Triffael Region. He'd still not settled on a major, which was enough to really start stressing him out. Maybe he shouldn't have waited so long, but... well, whatever. He had very seriously considered becoming a doctor, and at that point he decided to go with it. Majored in medicine. It seemed a little dull, though, so he went further and double-majored in education. Teaching seemed fun, right? Why not? Worth a shot.
College was more exciting than elementary, middle, and high school had been. He met far more interesting characters than he was used to; small school or not, not everyone was local, and what would have been considered rebellious or unacceptable by small-town standards was accepted at the college. Ellery was nervous, at first, and uncomfortable, but settling in took only a few weeks. His roommate was agreeable enough, even if he liked to play loud, obnoxious music while Ellery studied and sometimes came back to the room drunk late at night. (Mornings after nights like that were never fun.)
He got his first boyfriend there at age nineteen, freshman year. The boy, Taylor, had been in one of Ellery's classes. They hadn't talked much, which had made it all the more shocking when Taylor had come right over one day and asked him to lunch. The relationship was never very serious, just some kissing, a bit of groping. They'd had an easy, mutual breakup, and that had been that.
Sophomore year, he got tired of education classes and switched to biology, though he remained a medicine major. He was twenty.
Twenty-one, junior year. Biology and medicine seemed like a good combo. He stuck with it.
Twenty-two, senior year. Another boyfriend came and went; it had been a train wreck from the start, and this relationship ended a bit more violently than the one with Taylor had. Ellery had no clue what he'd seen in Royce at the beginning. Maybe nothing at all, if he thought about it, and he'd just wanted a little company. No such luck. Ah, well. Plenty of fish in the sea, and he'd caught the wrong one this time.
It was on to medical school from there. He moved to another college, one in a different Triffael city. This roommate didn't play loud music, or come back drunk at night. He was polite, but distant. Very often it was like having no roommate at all, since the both of them would be studying quietly most of the time. His first year passed in a blur of classes and information overloads. It was stressful, and would have been more-so if Ellery hadn't been so dedicated to his homework and to studying.
Then, before he had even turned twenty-four, before he'd finished his second year of medical school, he fell ill. Breathing had become difficult, his chest had been hurting, and he'd been coughing up a lung for several days before he finally went to see a doctor. Ellery had tried to figure out what was wrong with himself, and had suspected pneumonia.
The doctor seemed to think so, too, at first. Medication was prescribed, and Ellery went back to his dorm.
It didn't get better, and as a matter of fact, it slowly got worse, and worse. He couldn't speak quite properly, his voice too hoarse. The coughs had become increasingly painful. The chest pain was constant. He seemed even to be losing weight.
Then, he started coughing blood. That was pretty unnerving.
At that point, even his roommate was telling him to go back to the doctor. He hastily obliged.
A chest x-ray revealed the problem. When the doctor showed Ellery the x-ray pictures, the med student could already tell something was wrong. What was that in his lung...? It... no, surely he was wrong. It couldn't be.
The doctor was grim-faced as he broke the news. He believed that it was cancer of the lung. He was no oncologist, he said, but he would consult one, and give a proper diagnosis within the week. "I'm sorry." And then he'd just... left.
Cancer. Bloody cancer. Lung cancer, and he'd never even smoked before in his life... But of course, smoking wasn't the only thing that caused cancer, and it wasn't like he had to have done something to get it.
... This couldn't be true, though. Could it? Maybe it was just... just... He tried to search his brain for any medical knowledge of what else it could be, and in his mild panic and increasing fear, he could think of nothing, though he knew other possibilities existed. He hoped they did.
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But no. Of course it couldn't have been any of those other possibilities. Of course not.
That was why he was sitting there, with blood on his palm and his hair falling out, his breath wheezy and chest hurting. That was why he was slowly but surely dying.
It had been officially diagnosed as non-small cell lung carcinoma (more specifically adenocarcinoma), and the standard treatment was surgery followed by chemotherapy. He'd been informed beforehand, though, that even with treatment, he wasn't likely to live more than two years. If he wasn't a med student himself, if he didn't know that not caring for your patients was the best way to deal with things like this, he would have been furious at the doctor who'd told him all of this. (As it was, he settled for being bitter.) Why the fuck didn't he care? Why... how could he just say this, apologize, and walk away because sorry, he had another patient to attend to? Ellery was going to die, and all the doctor could say was "I'm sorry."
A part of him wanted to keep going through med school, so that he could be the one doctor who would care. But the more dominant part of him was disgusted; he didn't want to be involved with this field anymore, and hell, not like he had time anyway.
He dropped out of college and moved back in with his mother, because she insisted it. His treatment was performed at a hospital nearby to Yeni Village.
Now he had irrational thoughts in his head. He wondered why he even bothered with the chemo, because now his hair was gone, and that was almost more heartbreaking than the disease itself. Quickly he pushed that thought away; it made no sense.
Instead of getting up, instead of facing the day and trying to make the best of it, he brushed the hairs off of his pillow and laid back down. He didn't want to think of this right now.
So of course, he dreamed of death.
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His mother was in shambles, which filled him with guilt, as if contracting a deadly disease was his fault, and her emotional distress had been an intention of his. She mourned the loss of his hair as much as he did, tried to comfort him while she herself was sobbing, and when he so much as coughed, she'd panic and ask if he needed to go to the hospital. (The answer was always "no", even if a single cough was usually followed by many more and maybe a little blood.)
"Dear, you just rest. As long as you need, okay? You can stay here, and... and..." She would say things like this sometimes, during the month he stayed with her, but she would never finish her sentence. She didn't want to acknowledge that if he stayed too long, death would be how he was to leave.
Ellery loved her with all of his heart. He did. She was his mother, and she may not have been perfect, but she cared for him and worried for him and offered him a place to stay despite everything. Of course he loved her. It was why he decided after only a month that he needed to leave her, let her think things through on her own without having to watch after him.
But where would he go? He wasn't going back to college, because there was no point. He could probably afford an apartment somewhere for himself, just a small one, but it would be too lonely.
Or, he could travel. He mulled that over more seriously than any other options. Why not? He needed to see someplace outside of Triffael, see something grand. He needed to have a little fun, and do something rash. He needed to be active, to take his mind off of... things.
He started to pack.
His mother insisted that he stay, because he was ill, he needed to rest, he needed her help. Why did he have to leave? The world was a big place; would he be able to come home again before... No, she couldn't finish that sentence, either.
Ellery smiled a little at her as he pulled a hat onto his head, hiding the bare skin beneath. He promised to call often, to send money and gifts, to take pictures. He loved her, he was leaving now, he had to.
She watched him go and stood there in the doorway for a good five minutes after he had vanished from sight. Then, she silently turned, entered her house, and closed the door behind her.
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In the nearby city, he caught a train to Triffael's port town, and then took the first ship out. He wound up in a region he'd never heard of, a place called Umaul. It wasn't very big, but it had the most gorgeous landscapes he'd ever seen, like something out of a postcard, and the people there were very friendly to newcomers. Lucky for him, Umaul wasn't big on Pok?mon training. The citizens sometimes had Pok?mon of their own, but going through the Pok?mon League and all of that was impossible. They had no league.
Because of this, he was able to travel the region without worrying about battles or catching Pok?mon. He stayed in Umaul for six months, seeing every large town, plenty of the small ones, and several areas famous in the region. He kept moving, kept busy; just as he'd hoped, sometimes he forgot about his problems. Sometimes. Once he'd been in the region long enough, though, he started to crave more. He took a boat to Kairuu, which was larger than any region he'd been to before, and more interesting, he figured.
Initially