Jack Has DID - A Jacksepticeye Short Story

Chapter 5

A/N: Trigger Warnings: (Not as bad as last chapter) Self-harm, death, suicide, injury, self-deprecation, language. Much of the same from last chapter. Discretion advised. Enjoy!

I think we need to go back to therapy. Chase's voice was firm in his head, tone leaving no room for argument.
Jack shook his head. "No."
They hadn't been back to see Dr. Jeffrey since Jack's episode, weeks and weeks ago. Both alters had reached the conclusion that whatever Jack had heard during that session was the same entity that had attacked JJ and, presumably, Dr. Schneep. No one had heard from the doctor for almost five days now. Something had happened, that much was clear, but he'd just vanished. JJ was distraught. Chase tried to stay with him as much as possible, and as a result Jack barely heard from him.
Jack, this is serious. We have no idea who this person... this creature is. No idea what it wants. This could destroy us, d'you get that?
Jack ran his fingers through his hair with a sigh. "Then we'll figure it out ourselves." he insisted. "I'm not going back until we figure out the alter's purpose. Or at least their motives."
How are we going to figure that out?
"I don't know."
Chase scoffed. How reassuring. I don't care, Jack. Whether you find out what's really happening. All I care about is finding this guy. And when I do, you better believe he's gonna pay. He hurt our family, Jack, and when I find him, I'm gonna kill him.

Jack had started to hate the inner world. He used to be able to talk to his alters; the whole place had seemed bright and wonderful.
Now he could rarely talk to anyone. With Schneep gone, anytime Chase fronted Jack had elected to watch over JJ. The Brit just stayed curled up in his bed, sheets pulled almost completely over him, silent tears in a constant trickle down his cheeks. Jack hated it, but all three of them knew that without the doctor JJ wasn't likely to change.
Jack was sitting in a chair beside his bed, gently stroking JJ's hair. It didn't do much, but he knew Jameson liked it nonetheless. After a while, the alter fell into a fitful sleep.
Jack sighed. What the hell had happened to Schneep? What could this persecutor possibly have done to make him disappear? He knew the German wouldn't just leave JJ.
"Jack."
The voice startled him; for a brief moment his heart leapt at the thought that Dr. Schneep had returned. This excitement quickly faded as the voice spoke again. "JACK." Its accent wasn't German. It was Irish.
Jack rose to his feet, eyes narrowed. "Where are you?" he demanded, looking around. "Who are you?"
"Come find me." The voice was spiteful, mocking.
Jack glanced at JJ, confirming he was still asleep. Then he walked around the bed and out of the room. The hallway was dark. A dim green light flickered throughout it; Jack couldn't tell where the source of it was. He'd never seen the inner world like this.
At the end of the hallway, a figure was standing with his back to him. It was glitching in and out of focus, at times disappearing completely. A soft, static buzz was slowly growing in Jack's ears.
"What do you want with me?" he said, clenching his fists.
The static stopped. The figure turned, glitching silently. His eyes were glowing bright green, the source of the glow that bathed the hallway. Jack had to shade his eyes, wincing slightly at the brightness.
"Jack." The Irishman shivered. The figure's lips hadn't moved. Even more terrifying, however, was its uncannily similar appearance to Jack.
"Why are you hurting us?" he tried again. He wasn't scared; he felt oddly calm. He wasn't sure why. He'd thought about meeting this alter a million times. Having something so dark and harmful inside him should have terrified him.
The man remained silent for several seconds, eyes narrowing and dimming the green light as they did so.
The glow must have been coming from somewhere else, though, because a moment later it hit the alter's face and arms and caused Jack to audibly wince. Jack had seen graphic things in his life, between playing horror games and nightmares and everything else, but this was the worst by far. There wasn't an inch of skin on the persecutor's neck that wasn't covered by a cut or a scar. His arms were the exact same, and the cuts ranged from faded white scars to freshly bleeding lines. All were relatively the same shape and size.
"I only hurt two." the alter whispered, voice reverberating throughout the room.
Jack was transfixed by the wounds. He shook his head to clear it and met those glowing green eyes. "JJ and Schneeplestein. What did they ever do to you?"
The alter's head tilted slightly. "I did not mean to hurt the doctor. He was in my way."
The Irishman felt a wave of rage wash over him. "But you meant to hurt JJ? What the hell did he ever do to you?"
"His fault."
"What is?"
"Everything. All of the trauma. All of the pain."
"That's ridiculous." Jack said, looking back into the bedroom where JJ slept. "He's harmless. He doesn't even speak."
"He was there for our abuse, Jack."
Jack swallowed hard and turned back to the glitching figure. "I know that. They've told me."
"I was there, too."
At this, Jack shook his head. "Chase and JJ were there. Chase told me. There was no one else; he would've known."
The figure laughed, actually laughed, a chilling, high-pitched sound that sent shivers down Jack's spine. "You think I haven't learned to hide myself after everything I witnessed? Everything I endured?"
Jack watched him quietly. "Who are you?"
"What do you want, a name?"
"Do you have one?"
"Nothing you need to know." More glitching. "Now make this simple, Jack. Get out of my way, and let me and Jameson have a chat."
"If you really think I'm going to let you near him again-"
"Why do you think you can HELP?" the alter growled. "Everyone thinks they can help. That DOCTOR thought he could save him... but I've always been here. Do you honestly think this is the first time I've visited your precious BOY?"
Jack paled.
"This is between me and him. It's been far too long, and I no longer care about being noticed. You lost your doctor already. Would you like to be next?"
He should've been scared. "You mentioned that you've only hurt two people. But the doctor was only in your way. Who else have you harmed?" The alter's eyes burned brighter. He gave no reply. "You want to hurt JJ. Why? Do you honestly think he could've done anything to stop our abuse?"
"He could have tried!" he screeched, voice cracking. His chest was heaving; he looked incensed.
"There was nothing to try." Jack replied. "You can't put the blame on someone for something they couldn't possibly have controlled as a child."
"He deserves this." the altered hissed.
"We were five!" Jack said, hand wrapping around his wrist to keep him grounded. "None of us did."
"We felt that pain. He felt it. He was BORN from it. Now he'll feel it for the rest of his life."
Jack wet his lips, taking a deep breath and slowly meeting his eyes. "Are we still talking about JJ," he asked softly, "or you?"
The glitching alter went still; Jack could see him tremor slightly.
"What's your name?" Jack asked again.
A moment of silence. "Anti." he whispered, eyes distrustful.
"Anti." Jack looked at him and carefully took a step forward. The persecutor tensed but didn't move. He waited a few seconds, then kept walking, pausing a couple feet in front of him.
He reached out and gently took Anti's hand in his own, eyes looking up and down his arm. "You did this to yourself." he said. It wasn't a question.
The persecutor's eyes were narrowed. He was still tense, like a snake preparing to strike, but he didn't attempt to pull away.
"Why?"
Anti swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing up and down. The flicker of light drew Jack's eyes, and they widened at the sight. He was amazed he hadn't seen it sooner, but a deep red line cut its way across his throat, dripping wet and fresh with blood.
"You should be dead." Jack whispered.
The persecutor licked his lips and opened his mouth to reply.
Behind Jack, in the bedroom with JJ, a loud crash sounded. He whirled around instinctively, heart pounding. When he turned back, Anti had vanished.
"Fuck." He stood staring for a moment at the spot where Anti had stood. Then he turned and hurried into the room.
JJ was sitting up in bed, clutching his puppet close to his chest. He was shaking, tears leaking from his cheeks. The lamp beside him had fallen off his bedside table, shattering on the floor. He looked up when Jack walked in, looking so upset it physically hurt the Irishman.
"Hey, hey. Deep breaths, JJ, it's alright." Jack made his way over to the Brit and gave him a gentle smile. He reached out his hand to him. JJ took it hesitantly, closing his eyes as Jack's thumb ran across the back of his own. "I'll clean this up, alright? You just get some rest."
It took a while to calm him down, but JJ eventually rolled over and curled back up in his sheets. Jack stroked his hair for a moment, sighing. Then he bent down and began to pick up the glass shards, thinking about Anti the entire time.

Over the course of the next week, Jack didn't mention Anti to Chase at all. He knew exactly what Chase planned to do, and he wasn't sure he wanted it to happen. Anti had done awful things. But he was hurting. And while Jack wasn't sure he wanted to trust Anti completely yet, he didn't want to run the risk of Chase harming him. Or worse, Anti harming Chase.
In the meantime, he researched persecutors as much as he could. He still wasn't ready to go back to Dr. Jeffrey yet, but he made sure to fact check articles and get as much reputable information as he could. The more he learned, the more convinced he became that Anti wasn't inherently 'evil.'
Persecutors weren't inherently evil. They had been through so much pain, often remembering much of the abuse. Since it was the only thing they knew, the only life they knew, they continued the process long after the source of the abuse was gone. They turned the pain on themselves or other alters they believed to be at 'fault' for what they'd endured. Suddenly everything Jack had experienced with Anti was making sense.
Most of the sources he'd read, however, had pointed out that the cycle didn't have to last forever. Much the same as when Jack had first been diagnosed, the key to helping persecutors was communication. They had to be shown that the pain didn't have to continue and, with time and patience, they could heal and eventually become one of the system's fiercest protectors.
Now he just had to prove it to Chase.

Jack ran his fingers through his hair with a sigh. He'd been feeling dissociated all day, but he desperately needed to finish recording the video. He was already falling behind. He blinked his eyes a few times to clear the dissociation and tried to focus on his computer screen.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in the inner world. "Damn it." he muttered. Not that Chase could help it, but he always seemed to front at the worst times as of late.
He headed to the bedroom to check on JJ. Hopefully he was doing alright. When he reached the threshold, he stopped dead, staring at the man sitting on the edge of JJ's bed.
Dr. Schneeplestein looked up at him, breaking into a tired smile when he saw Jack. "It has been a while, Jack. Ja?"
Jack couldn't speak. He looked over at JJ, whose eyes were dry for the first time in weeks. He was sitting on top of the bedsheets, legs criss crossed with his hands in his lap.
"How-" Jack shook his head. "Where have you been?"
"Ah, a long story, perhaps for another time. Thank you for caring for JJ while I've been... away."
The Irishman simply nodded, still in disbelief. Dr. Schneep pat JJ's hand gently and got up from his chair, making his way over to Jack. He led him out into the hallway and quietly closed the door behind him. His face had darkened slightly. "Jack."
He frowned at this change in tone. "Something wrong?" he asked.
"I was attacked." he said quietly, eyes shifting around the room. "By something I've never seen before."
"A persecutor." Jack replied, nodding.
"You've seen him?"
"Yes." Jack took a deep breath. "Doc, about him, I-"
"Does Chase know?" Schneep asked. "He hurt me. He hurt JJ."
"He hasn't met him yet." Jack admitted. "I'm afraid of what will happen, but he's not what you think."
Schneep looked at him incredulously. "Not what I-"
"Jack?"
Both men turned at the sound of the voice. Jack's eyes widened at the sight of Anti standing in the middle of the hallway. He was glitching, head bowed, eyes watching the Irishman through low-hanging bangs. His arms hung limply at his sides, dripping with blood.
Dr. Schneep's gaze was fearful, but he instinctively moved to protect the threshold of JJ's bedroom. "That's him, Jack, that's him-" he whispered furtively.
Jack held out an arm behind him, a sign for Schneep to wait.
"Anti." he said quietly, taking a step towards the persecutor. "What happened?"
The alter rapidly glitched, head going to the extreme left and then extreme right before his glitches settled down. He just continued to stare at Jack with blank, pure black eyes. He looked dead.
Jack continued to make his way towards him, ignoring Schneep's protests behind him. He stopped a foot in front of him, watching him closely. "Anti..." He reached out; before he could touch him Anti glitched and vanished.
He took a deep breath and turned back to look at Dr. Schneep. He needed him to understand. "He's in so much pain." he whispered, voice almost desperate. "You can see that, can't you?"
The doctor's eyes were still wary. Despite himself, he met Jack's gaze, wet his lips, and gave a slow nod.