Disclamer : House of Anubis belongs to its rightful creators and owners.
Summary : A line from a TV show he liked perfectly summed up how he worked.
Author's note :English isn't my first language, it's French. If you spot any mistakes or weirdness, please feel free to notify me !
This story is part of the writing month challenge from TheWritter1996: Write a one-shot per day and share it for an entire month. For more challenge, I decided to go one different fandom per day.
Put on a good face
"Wipe out those tears and put on a good face."
That single line had made Jerome pause his dvd, leaving him wondering. One single line and it had so much effect on him. Zelena's tearful face was still waiting to be animated, yet, for a moment, Jerome wondered if this line hadn't been written for him. It wasn't the first time that Once Upon A Time had made him feel dumbstruck, hence why it was one of his favourite show, a show he enjoyed in private, he had a reputation to preserve. What would the others say about him, the great Jerome Clarke, fond of things based on fairytales, he who had claimed so many time that life wasn't a fairytale, thus he pranked to make everyone forget about that awful truth.
Wipe out those tears and put on a good face.
Those were the unspoken words he actually and unconciously lived by.
Smile.
Keep smiling.
Even when it hurts like Hell inside.
Keep smiling, always smiling, people love others who smile, those who cry bug them, the size of your smile shows how happy you are and what a great life you have.
Even if your life is shit.
Even if you don't know why your dad disappeared from your life all of a sudden.
Even if your mom left you in a boarding school when you clearly were underaged for it and only go back "home" during the summer holidays, because it was mandatory, like Harry with the Dursleys.
Even if, to this day, you still can't understand why she did this, what you did wrong, what caused her to let you go when she kept her younger and more demanding child. Not that you hate your sibling, you actually are happy it's not her who's in your shoes, because you know how painful it is and you want to spare her that torment.
Wipe out those tears and put on a good face.
Those words were actually the ones his mother told him when she was about to drive away.
"Wipe out those tears! And put on a good face! Fod God's sake, you are embarassing me! As if I was getting rid of you! Ungrateful kid, this school is super expensive. You're five, for Heaven's sake! You're a grown up! And true boys don't cry!"
Those words, he heard them in his dreams for months before Trudy managed to fill the void his mother left in his life.
Wipe out those tears and put on a good face.
Toughen up.
Even when a madman is about to murder you because you got yourself involved in a mess bigger than you.
Even when your best friend suddenly bails on you. Maybe it's karma because you kinda left him aside when you were bonding with Mara. Still, unlike him, you never pushed him away when he needed to talk. You never questioned his words. You let him in into your plans. He didn't. Why bother crying then?
Even when your sister, one day, is upset and spits at you that she, at least, was desired and not abandoned in a boarding school, better than an orphanage to preserve your mother's reputation, and that she was the favourite child. She was loved. Not you. And even if Poppy was horrified by her own words almost immediately after saying them and apologized several times, the sting remains there, in your heart, because deep down, you know it is true.
You wiped out the tears you felt coming up and you put on a good face.
No one could hurt you if they didn't know they actually had the power to hurt you.
You deal with these emotions later on, alone.
Wipe out those tears and put on a good face.
Ironically, he had said those words to Mara, heartbroken over Mick's betrayal.
"You want to get back at him? Wipe out those tears and put on a good face. He doesn't deserve them anyway. Show him it doesn't affect you, even if it does. Even a guy like Mick will get puzzled at that."
Wipe out those tears and put on a good face.
He didn't really know another way to live anyway.
The End