Pitch sits in his home of shadows and darkness. He sits here and he ponders, feeling confused, lonely, and generally abandoned. Lately he's had a question trapped inside his head. You know how sometimes, someone says something to you, and it just bounces around and around your head? The ghost of their voice is always there asking you that question again and again and again until you can't take it anymore?

Pitch stands up and walks. When he gets to patches of shadow he simply disappears into it and re-appears someplace later. And again, in his head, the question is asked.

The question is: What is my purpose?

Pitch shuts his eyes, finding comfort in the total blackness this does to his vision. "Don't think about that," he mutters to himself, trying to push his mind into a more comfortable area, such as black, darkness and nightmares. But he can't. And finally, in one of the many moments of weakness he has been experiencing lately, the thoughts all flood back to him and slice like razors around his head.

Why? Why would anyone force him into living this way? It's not fair. It's never fair.

"I started off okay," Pitch whines to himself in a surprisingly childish voice. This is the excuse he's been telling himself almost all of his life. Kozmotis Pitchiner. The words are alien in his head. Was he really once a hero of the Golden Age? Was he really once loved? What did his daughter even look like? He doesn't remember. He was conned into accepting his position as the Nightmare King through her. As he guarded the voices of the dark, they whispered things to him with her voice. He went in, scared, not for himself but for his daughter. That was when they possessed him. They planted a dark seed in his heart and he was too weak to resist. There was no going back after that. He was the King of Nightmares, the Bogeyman, everyone's greatest fears personified. People cursed his name when something went wrong. Every bump in the night, every scary thought, whenever the wind whistled and sounded a little too close to the sound that a ghost might make – it was Pitch's fault, it was all Pitch's fault. Pitch accepted this as his due. Over the years of his reign, he had grown to realize that people needed a scapegoat; people needed someone to hate and to link and blame all their problems on. In his years of possession he had grown bitter and cynical and downright paranoid of anyone who knew his name. He killed and caused pain and ruined lives because that was how he saw the world.

And then, of course, came the years of the Guardians, the years of happiness. Fear of the dark, of the Bogeyman, suddenly only applied to children. And when, as the parents told her children so much, that there is no Bogeyman, there is no Bogeyman, THERE IS NO BOGEYMAN… Pitch Black began to fade.

Alone in his lair now, millions of years later, thinking of his memories and no longer even taking pleasure in his earlier ones, Pitch collapses to the floor in a puddle of self-hate and confusion, hugging his legs. Didn't they get it? Did no one get it?

Causing destruction and disaster, being hated by all, making the world a worse place, becoming a symbol of hate and fear…

That is the only thing Pitch knows how to do now. The only thing.

He. Had. Given. Up. Everything. Could nobody understand that? He had given and given until there was nothing left for him to give. What did his daughter even look like? Lately the memories have been surfacing more. Not large memories, or perhaps even real ones, but… feelings, reflections, sensations. Like the flash of blonde hair in the sunlight, or small freckled hands on his own… a smile, perhaps, or the just the hint of one, a smile that in his fevered and ravaged state causes him only more hate and disgust.

And now, after everything he's done, all the things in the world that he is responsible for, all the lives he has taken and ruined and all the pain he has caused…

Pitch finally gives in to the demons inside him and lies on the floor of his prison, hating everyone, especially himself, because that is all he knows how to do now. He lies there and he cries, the tears echoing off the cold and empty walls.

His tears are black, and they hiss and sizzle on the stone floor.