Brightest {A RotG Fanfic}

Chapter 25 - Red

UPDATE: Play video at -> ~[x]~

Tract title: "Letting Go"

=====

Chapter 25

RED 

________________________________________ 

    He was the King of Nightmares, the embodiment of Fear, the manifestation of darkness... He was Pitch Black. He knew that he was never to feel such remorse, such... humanity. No compassion. No. He was Darkness. He was the one who terrorized the night. He was the chill the mortals felt in their very bones. 

    That was what he must... should be. 

    No. He mustn't think. Not like this. It was not his nature to feel sorry for such a life so short; a light that would have been snuffed out so quickly if he hadn't done anything. 

    The Fearlings... They controlled his consciousness. They locked his memories away, but he could never forget her face. Her soft face. 

    Seraphina, my child. 

    He saw her in another child. Her. The girl he was supposed to torment with his power every night. 

    "...It is only when it's dark enough do we see the beautiful stars in the sky," that girl had said. 

    Until that moment, he had never felt relief. All he ever felt was sorrow and loneliness, the desire to be believed in. In a way, he was like the Guardians: if people stopped believing in him, he would have stopped existing, thus destroying the harmony of the world. 

    He saw in that girl the belief he had been looking for. All her life she had suffered from the trauma of her parents' passing. She believed in her own fear, and that it had the power to destroy her. She never fought it. She accepted it. 

    It was Fear that kept people safe, no matter which angle they looked at it from. The fear of danger, the fear of harm, the fear of injury... of Death. 

    If Pitch had been a Guardian, that would have been his centre. But right now, it wasn't his centre. It was his being, inside and out. 

    Even he was capable of feeling it. The Chaos had showed him. Twenty years ago, the Guardians did so too. His own minions, his trusted steed, had turned on him when they smelt him... his fear of being erased from this world because the children didn't believe in his power anymore. 

    The Chaos had the power to influence. It used a being's memories, its emotions, its mind and heart... 

    The monster had showed him a victory, a chance. He could retrieve his old memories, be free from his prison in himself, to see his daughter again. Like Clara, he had been shown a vision. He saw himself being conquered by his own demons... 

    Never again, he said to himself. Never submit to defeat ever again. 

    It made a bargain with him, the demon. It had said he would see her again for the price of a mortal's mind. It needed his help, a portion of his power. 

    He had been told to create a night terror that would wreck her soul. It needed the special kind of terror that would stop her from differentiating the fact from the false. 

    Initially, he had disagreed. It wasn't his way to make a child fear him and believe in him. He never meant for children to go insane from hallucinations. 

    But it had said to him that this was different. This was not an ordinary child. Besides, it said, he had nothing left to lose. 

    And ever since then, he had created a world of horror in that child's mind. One that could never be put down by that golden man's defences.