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Lucas is born on a warm summer day at the end of May.
His eyes sparkle like diamonds, and he’s given the nickname Dia to match. He is held with kindness and love, cradled in warmth and acceptance from his mother from the second he’s born until he learns to walk - he remembers his mother’s warm smile and kindness even after that part of his life ends. Although he’s a young age Lucas can tell that his parents don’t like each other very much - perhaps it’s because he’s so young that he’s able to tell. Behind closed doors they’d whisper under their breaths to one another in a way that was anything but loving, and he knows that the sole purpose for which he’d been born was to slap a band-aid over a marriage falling apart. Still, he does what he can. He never cries, never throws a tantrum - he showers his parents with all the love a child can give - maybe then they’d stop fighting, and maybe then they would be happy.
Lucas learns what death is at barely six years old, when it coldly rips his mother from him during his sister’s birth. With his mother gone, his father grows more distant from both he and his sister with every day that passes from then, but for Lucas it doesn’t matter - he’s told that as long as he has his sister, as long as they have each other, things will be fine. The most contact he ever has with his father is hearing him come home after midnight while he’s washing the dishes after putting his sister to bed - It’s two more years until his father stops coming home completely, and he’s sent to live with his grandfather in Sandgem.
It’s then that he meets Professor Rowan for the first time. Rowan is friends with his grandfather - the professor reminds him of his father from years ago, when his father still cared. He wonders if his father thinks of him and his sister still, but such thoughts are short lived with how busy he is with the move and settling in. Lucas often visits the pokemon lab, having gained an interest in pokemon (as most kids his age have) and discovers that the professor requires an assistant. With his natural affinity with Pokémon and the kindness he treats them with, Rowan accepts Lucas as soon as he applies for the job. He's given odd jobs around the lab at first, a few deliveries here and there - Lucas is still young, but the Professor eventually trusts him enough to help file important papers after watching how diligently Lucas works. It’s only a year or two before Rowan has to leave for another region - Lucas is too young to accompany him, and thus is left behind - but not before the Professor gifts him his first pokemon. A newly caught munchlax, which had been sneaking around the laboratory looking for food. The two of them bond incredibly quickly in the professor's absence, having similar personality traits and eating habits - Lucas quickly comes to consider Lax his closest friend (not that he had many before, anyways).
Lucas first meets Dawn and Barry at Lake Verity on a windy day - there aren’t too many other kids in Sandgem, and those that are there would rather ignore him than make friends. He’s never really cared for making friends when he’s got his Pokémon for companionship, yet, he feels an odd desire to get to know the two of them. Rowan gives him permission to go on a journey with the both of them and he does - it’s his first time having friends his age, travelling so far - even when his life is in danger, he’s still having the most fun he’s ever had, going to gyms, stopping team galactic - when it all comes to a head at spear pillar, he can't help but feel saddened knowing that soon, the three of them would have to go their separate ways.
It comes sooner than he thinks it will, with the first time he passes out in the middle of a practice battle with Barry. He wakes up in the hospital with his two friends and Professor Rowan at his side and his first instinct is to apologize profusely. According to the doctors, there hadn’t been anything wrong with him physically - but when Lucas recounts the dream he has Professor Rowan’s face changes to surprise and he dials a colleague on his phone, suddenly knowing the affliction that Lucas has been dealt.
He meets Professor Fennel the next night, but not in person - she comes to him in a dream, and tells him of those who are chosen by Cresselia to guide the dream world. When she talks, Lucas can’t help but feel reminded of his mother despite them looking nothing alike - with that distraction he’s barely paying attention to what she’s saying until she offers him a position as her assistant in Unova. The next day Professor Rowan congratulates him on the position even before he’s accepted it - Lucas is reluctant to leave Sinnoh but when Dawn and Barry reassure him that they’ll always support him he feels confident enough to go - he’ll have his pokemon with him too, after all.
Sinnoh has some large cities, but Castelia city is absolutely massive and intimidating in comparison to any city in his home region. Professor Fennel brings him to her lab and teaches him the basics of how to access the dream world during his sleep, and provides him with a room in her laboratory that he can stay in as long as he’s working with her. His days from then on are mostly the same with working on researching and controlling his sleeping spells - Professor Fennel reassures him that it takes years to have full control over the pulls but he still feels bad for being unable to control himself from falling asleep at random points in the day, especially when he falls asleep at a table and awakens in his bed.
Something that Lucas doesn’t like admitting is how lonely he is - with barely anybody to talk to during the day besides his Pokemon, he often feels alone. Professor Fennel is often out doing fieldwork or busy with writing papers, so she’s often unavailable for conversation so Lucas turns to watching the news and reading articles about happenings in Unova instead. He’s aware of the things happening with Team Plasma but he’s never had an encounter with them himself - he can’t say he agrees completely with their ideals but a small voice in his head continues to tell him that he’s forcing his pokemon to stay with him out of selfishness just like they say every trainer is (he shakes it off - there’s no way it’s like that).
The nights are long and quiet, so Lucas often has the television in his room on as he writes - most of the time it’s used as background noise but he sometimes finds himself distracted on some nights - it’s on one such night that learns of a boy his age named Nate - he later learns from Professor Fennel that Nate is one of the Elite four as well. Watching the footage from the news he catches a glimpse of Nate’s face, and even through the pixels on the screen in front of him he feels something odd in his chest as he looks at Nate’s eyes - Lucas doesn’t understand it himself but he finds himself wondering if he and Nate could possibly be friends one day (but such thinking is just left to passing thoughts - the chances of them meeting are extremely low, anyways).
From Here On Is Just Random Paragraphs I Was Going To Write Around For It To Make Sense But I Just Never Did
He joins the chat when he hears from Dawn about it, having nothing else to do - perhaps he can make some new friends so he’d be less lonely - and he almost immediately meets the one he’d seen before on television. Nate comes over with a an extra casteliacone which Lucas gratefully accepts, and they share a pizza together - Lucas is
He meets a boy named Sorrel very quickly and learns that they’d been friends in the world that Sorrel comes from - a world destroyed beyond repair. Sorrel is just as lonely and lost as he is and the two of them become fast friends - Sorrel even ends up working at the lab with both he and Fennel and Lucas's days are suddenly much more exciting especially when he has a friend to talk to daily.
He knows Lucy doesn’t like him very much. It’s obvious in the tone of her voice when she speaks to him that she’s only putting up with him for the thing that she needs from him; but it’s fine. He doesn’t care. She’s willing to give him food and sit there while he rambles about things in his life (that she obviously also doesn’t care about) and that’s more than he can say for some of the people he’s cared about - and it’s enough. Even if she doesn't like him, her presence is oddly comforting to him in a way that he doesn’t actually know how to describe. So he keeps up his optimism, despite it all.
That part of his life ends suddenly and abruptly with his friend's disappearance, and try as he might he’s unable to find him no matter how hard he tries. With another friend lost to him he feels a part of his heart ache with a longing ; one he does not yet understand
He finds himself swallowed by the darkness more easily than he’d thought. He’d never make this fact about himself known but Lucas succumbs to his negative thoughts quite often - the voices in his head constantly telling him that he’s unlovable and nobody would ever want to possibly stay by his side; that’s why his father never wanted him, that’s why Fennel didn’t notice he was being swallowed; why none of his friends tried to reach out to him, why Sorrel disappeared, why - -
He knows that nobody’s going to come and save him. Darkrai’s already ruined every possible person that would have come for him - not that they would’ve cared enough to try in the first place; he’s not anyone memorable or someone that anyone actually cares about. He’s not
He’s not