Imagine living in a world with no light; a void of nothingness that you call your home; a world where you are hated or feared by those few who know you, but you prefer that to the other option—because being hated is better than being invisible. So you strive for every ounce of recognition you can get; for anything at all. So what if the world views you in a negative light…at least they see you. Well, at least they used to.

Then others like you come, except they're different. Instead of fear, they rely on light and belief, so they spread their hope. And then people start learning, spurred on by that hope and faith, and you fight it because the only two things in this world that can battle fear are knowledge and faith. Faith in someone or something—such as an old man that can break the social bounds and reward you for following rules or an older brother who can protect you—and knowledge that usually the darkness under your bed does not hold within it some sort of unspeakable evil; that darkness itself cannot hurt you, but only what hides within it.

I don't have that luxury, because I am the darkness. I am dread personified. The knowledge I have is that I am a source of terror and that I will always be either feared, a pariah or invisible. And who can I have faith in? The Guardians who hate and fear me? The Man in the Moon? The one who may very well have chosen me to become like this?

Please.

The Guardians seem to think that all I am capable of feeling is fear and hate. The sad thing is they are not completely incorrect. I can feel fear, hate, anger, perhaps some triumph for those battles I actually win, pride in my own successes (as few and far-between as they are), elation at the power I can gain and wield…and that is it. How can they possibly know what it's like to be so lost for so long—buried so deeply in the darkness that no light could ever possibly hope to reach me? They can't. So I came to the conclusion long ago that if I cannot rejoin the world of the light, then I will drag that world down into the darkness with me!

But I failed. I am once again trapped back in the darkness; ensnared and alone with the fear of my own making because how could I be so foolish as to ever believe that I would be able to escape it?

It is at times like this, when I am lost in my own solitary void that the stillness gains a sentience and the quiet becomes thunderous. It is then that I once again see and hear those visions—the horrible, terrible and utterly painful flashes of what I think were once my memories long ago. Images come to me, so brief that I can never hold on to them; pictures of nobility and fighting and loving. It is these instances I hate the most because I begin to empathize with the Guardians. I used to protect those who mattered to me or those who once surrounded me simply because I knew they mattered to someone else.

It is agony, because I no longer understand what those feelings are like.

Oh, yes, I can feel pain too.

The memories that sting the most are also those that give me something to cling to—a feeble anchor in the blackness. I remember a laughing girl, plump with baby-fat and long, brown hair falling out of a thin braid as I help her chase butterflies through a field on a warm, spring afternoon. It's amazing because I don't recall the light hurting. The very concept boggles my mind.

I remember nothing else about her, except that I used to love her—before I moved beyond the ability to love; before I woke up like this.

I vaguely remember the Man in the Moon telling me that my name was Pitch Black. I figured out the growth of power through human fear on my own. I made my own name as The Boogieman, but when I am once again alone, I remember flashes of butterflies and sunlight…and it hurts, because I am darkness, and I am fear, and I can never hope to have such things again.

So I couldn't get over the fact that when Sandy knocked Pitch out, he had butterflies dancing around his head. Seriously...BUTTERFLIES! So my friend and I each came up with different takes on it. I think hers is going to end up far happier than mine... ^^;