Based off the poem 'The Raven' by Edgar Allan Poe
I do not own anything to do with ROTG or the above mentioned poem.
The italic lines in quote marks are lines from the poem.
"And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor."
The dying fire crackled slowly disappearing spark by spark as the shadows in the room inched ever closer to the edge of the fading halo of light.
Pitch watched the fire from the other side of the room amid the shadows. Watched as the burning halo shrinked and his shadows gained ground inch by inch across the floor and walls.
There was a man in the room, sprawled across a mattress and deep in the thrall of sleep.
Pitch had considered giving the man some pointless nightmare but he couldn't seem to turn his unflinching gaze away from the light of that fire.
He despised the light and the warmth it emitted.
He willed it to die, to give way to his cold and shadows, willed darkness to creep closer with every spark that fell to the floor.
A single ember hit the wooden floor and stayed. Flicking like a heartbeat before it blazed brighter than before and suddenly a flame was crawling across the floor towards him, as if to chase him out. The smell of smoke and burning wood intensified and Pitch was glad that he didn't need to breathe.
There was a cough, barely audible over the sound of the growing fire that was snaking across the floor and up the walls. The sleeping man woke with a jolt, staring uncomprehendingly at the advancing inferno.
A shadow brushed the man's cheek like a tendril of the smoke that was now filling the entire house.
The man's eyes shot wide, shining bright in the light of the flames as panic descended upon him. Fear. It was fear in the man's eyes it was fear that awoke him fully from his sleep and had him fleeing like a deer and Pitch melted into the last threads of remaining shadow as the house was set ablaze.
Fear had saved that man's life, but was Pitch ever thanked for such a noble deed? Of course not.
No one thanked fear for anything.
Not that he wanted to be thanked, he was resigned to the fact that no one believed in him and perhaps it was better that way. After all; people fear best what they cannot see.
–
"Darkness there and nothing more"
"Nothing's there.." they always said.
"There's nothing to fear."
Oh what fools they were. He was there. They thought themselves bold for shrugging fear off like it was nothing, for denying that they felt it even as they spoke the very words meant to comfort them back into their sleep.
They couldn't see that they needed him.
Fear had kept them alive when they had been nothing more than primitive animals.
No one wanted to feel fear, but they needed it. They would not survive without it.
It made them weak in most cases yes but it could also make them brave.
Such a paradox that concept.
He didn't so much mind it though, so what if fear was complex, so what if someone decided to be brave, fear was still fear no matter if you got over it or not, something else would always take it's place some other insecurity, some other nightmare, some unrecognizable sound heard in the dark, some new monster under the bed or hiding in the closet.
"Darkness there and nothing more."
He would simply chuckle and whisper, ever the bringer of doubt.
"Or is there?"
He supposed he needed them as well. He was a spirit that fed on fear after all.
So even if they did not believe in him. Did not see him as a physical thing, even if they walked through him, they still felt fear. Still felt it when fear came upon them like a finger trailing down their spine.
And it was their fear that he fed on.
Their fear that drew him in, like a shark smelling blood.
Like a vulture drawn to carrion.
It was their fear that strengthened him.
Slowly.
Bit, by bit.
–
"Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore."
A dream? Him? Dream? Oh the naive thought! No he didn't dream but there were times when he remembered what he had been before this… Remembered that he'd had a family. A daughter, the memories were faint and cruel. Filling his black twisted soul with a sense of longing so ponent that it left a bitter taste in his mouth and where anyone else might have felt a shred of hope at such a memory he only felt anger.
Anger so deep and hot that he felt the need to scream for years. But he would never scream. Oh no, he would never let his inner rage show outside of anything more than a grimace and cynical sarcasm.
The most he'd confessed to anyone had been in Antarctica to Frost and even then it had been part of the ploy to appeal to Frost's inner turmoil, take advantage of his pitiful, confused state of mind. Not that it had done any good in the end.
His daughter was long dead he knew.
It struck him as morbidly amusing that he supposed he had her to thank for all of this. He had been tricked by fear once, had thought she had been trapped with the Nightmares in their prison and he had released them in an attempt to save what had not been there.
And the consequence had been to become this.
It was better to forget who he had been. To forget he had a family.
The man he had been was gone. Never to be seen again.
"Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
–
"And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!"
To feel his own fear?
His own despair?
Or rather the memory of fear of a man that was long gone. Long ago swallowed up by the living shadow that he was now? That was some rare, beautiful and tragic suffering all his own.
It was always strange to feel an echo of his own fear. That he himself was capable of still feeling such a thing.
Not that he could do anything about it, his soul was too far buried, to far lost in shadow. It simply left him bitter and angry and oddly numb.
He'd accepted this fate that had been so long ago cast upon him. No point in trying to change what he was. He had nothing more to lose. Nothing to fight for. Nothing to care about.
That was it he supposed. He simply didn't care. If only everything was always that simple to understand.
He didn't care if he saved mortals or doomed them. Fear was fear and however complex it was, however they tried to justify what they felt, if it was the Nightmare King or some physiological response in their simple-minded emotion-driven brain.
It did not change the fact that fear existed.
And by extent that he existed along with it. Forever in the shadows.