Believe in Me

Understanding the Darkness

I apologize for the lack of updating. These past few weeks have been pretty rough and it’s been hard to focus. I hope this is a good chapter, though I need to work back the feel of it so please bear with me. This story will end soon, like I’ve said multiple times. I guess I got so swept up in writing and how happy it seemed to be making people that I sort of forgot that it needed to end at all, haha. Either way, thank you for being patient with me, I always hated when people just stopped updating and look what I’m doing now. Anyways, thank you so much for reviews and stars and even just reading, this story has given me so much confidence and joy over the past… wow, probably a year, that I’ve been writing it. I love to write and I love to know that people are enjoying my writing even more so… it’s a win-win I guess. Sorry for ranting, I’ll let you get to reading. Thank you so much again, and I hope you have a really great night.

As his conscious returned to reality, the hard steel of the chair he was chained to seeming to press against his back once again, Jack realized that he felt even worse than he had before… or possibly ever. The question consistently ran through his heavy mind, repeating as if his thoughts assumed that he had the answer, “Why?” Why was it fair for him or any of them to be forced into such a hard life? Why did he have to leave his friends behind? Why was this happening at all? Why did they have to hurt? Why… why everything? Why did the guardians think the Man in the Moon was so great if he was the one that shoved them into this, if he was the one who was ordering Jack to just abandon his friends in that evil place and run off to safety without them? What  could he say to Ilia and Cloti? ‘Sorry but my job is more important than you? Hope you’re safe alone with every wicked spirit either wanting you dead or in pain?’ No..! Why did he have to listen?! But then the realization dawned on his vengeful mind that he didn’t have a choice. It was either the people he cared about or the world… Now that he thought about it, he was beginning to understand everyone that the guardians didn’t like. He was angry at the Man in the Moon, he was forced to give up what he cared about just to do his ‘job.’ Jack liked humans, he liked to play with the kids, he loved to see their excited, rosy faces when they rushed outside and shouted in joy that it was finally winter, it was snowing. The winter spirit felt a piece of his soul warm slightly when he knew that this happiness all came from him… but what about Pitch? He who was never loved or wanted by any human or spirit, he who might’ve once had a good heart but that heart been ruined by a loneliness that overshadowed anything Jack had ever felt. It was suddenly understandable why the nightmare king  couldn’t just ‘get over it,’ or why he wanted to rebel against the mysterious Moon who cast the man into this darkness and refused to tell him why, refused to say anything other than ‘it’s your job…’ A job he didn’t choose in the first place. Jack suddenly began to understand Grey who fought so hard to keep his bitterness from overwhelming him but was probably on the same track to becoming like Pitch, crazed and shattered with the lack of anyone to care about him, not even being granted the simple ability to die but to be stuck suffering with no way out…. And they weren’t helped. They wouldn’t be helped. They were made to be in the darkness, as Grey had said multiple times. It wasn’t like they wanted to and it wasn’t like there was anything they could do to fix it… now Jack understood. But that didn’t make it feel any better…

Footsteps once more clicked into his hearing but for the first time he didn’t feel any change of emotion hearing them. A bitterness had coated his mind already and for the first time an actual pity arose for the nightmare king. Jack had always been the one to look at the bright side, to find the problem, look for the solution then fix it. Everything would be okay, he’d always state because he’d stop at nothing to help out however he could… but for the first time it felt like he really couldn’t. The world would fall to darkness if he didn’t do what the Man in the Moon said, but that would require leaving Ilia and Cloti behind, letting Pitch and Grey and everyone else endure through that sadness that had plagued them all of their lives simply because they were chosen to be reborn into spirits. It wasn’t fair... but was there no other way at all?