Thank you all for the feedback and support! I'm glad that I managed to get all the feelings across. Hope I managed it this time, too. :)
4. Unanswered
"If there's something I'm doing wrong, could you... could you just tell me what it is? Because I've tried everything, and no one ever sees me." Silence. Jack received no answer. " You put me here! The least you can do is tell me..." his voice cracked slightly but he pushed on regardless. "…tell me why." He looked up at the moon, not really expecting an answer but still hoping that he would finally get one. Silence was the only answer he got. It was the only one he ever got.
Tears prickled in his eyes. His head was bowed, shrouding his moist eyes in shadows so no one could see him crying Jack took off. He couldn't stand to see the moon any longer nor could he stand tobe seen by it so he flew off into the darkness that hung over the forest near Burgress.
Jack had had enough. No matter what he did nothing changed, hadn't in three hundred years. What was the point to continue trying? Didn't he suffer enough already? What could he have done to deserve this? No matter how many people where around him he was still as alone as ever. Who deserved that? And the only one that could see him hadn't told him anything except his name, had created him just to leave him on his own without any answers.
During the day it wasn't all that terrible. At least it never seemed so bad when he could play with children and distract himself with the fun he caused others. He too had lots of fun by day. But when night came…When he was left alone with his thoughts all the bad things came rushing back.
At night Jack couldn't do anything to escape from his thoughts. That was why it was harder at night for him. Every day he was dreading the time when he was left alone, when everything was dark and seemed worse than it did before.
It wasn't the first time Jack had tried to get answers from the moon. Almost every night since he was born he tried. Sometimes he was screaming and shouting until his voice gave out, other time's he was begging and pleading while sobs tore through his body and his vision was blurred by tears.
A few times it had been so bad that Jack had just stared at the moon silently, overwhelmed by all the pain he had felt for so long. On nights like those he didn't feel sad or angry or frustrated. No, then there was nothing but this deep aching in his chest. He only ever said one thing then. It was the same thing over and over again. "Maybe I can't handle this. Maybe it's just all too much. But you just don't care do you?" And apparently the moon didn't.
Nothing ever changed no matter how much he screamed and begged and cried. Everything he did was wrong. The moon didn't even seem to realize how unhappy Jack was. Everyday was the same shit. Same people. Same routine. And it was getting really old. He hated the way things were.
At the beginning he had been so happy but now he was not. Not at all. And nobody even knew or cared about it. No one noticed his tears, no one noticed his sadness, no one noticed his pain. The only thing they did notice was his mistakes to yell and rage at him without ever listening to him or answering any of his questions.
Jack stood under one of the many trees that surrounded him, leaning against it. His hood was still up, covering his face. Three hundred years of being alone, of being ignored and shunned and he still couldn't get a few answers? Was that really too much to ask for? He hadn't felt this bad for a long time. Actually he hadn't ever felt this bad before at all.
He lifted his face to look up at the moon that he could make out between the bare branches of the trees above him. The sky was pitch black, merely a few stars shining and the moon standing high.
It didn't matter that he wouldn't get answered; at least he knew that the moon could hear him. That was why he still talked to him in nights like these because it was better to talk to someone that could hear him than having no one at all to talk to and admitting that he was really completely on his own.
"I'm just," Jack's voice muttered lowly, "I'm just kinda tired, you know?" Tear were flowing down his pale face, his voice cracking a bit. "I want to stop trying and not care for a while."
His shoulders slumped and when someone had looked at him it would have been clearly visible how exhausted and defeated Jack really was. "I'm a little tired of feeling like a failure…" A sob broke out of him, cutting anything else he might have said of.
Even though the silence that followed his speech was expected it still hurt more than ever. He had been strong as long as he could but it was just too much. He crumbled to the ground, his hands covering his face, covering how his face scrunched up in misery.
A gasp escaped him although he tried to be quiet. Not that it mattered since no one cared anyway. Eventually his gasps became loud, heartwrenching sobs. He cried and cried, so much he couldn't breathe.
"Why?" he asked, his voice quivering and breathless, "Why me? Why this?" His hands were fisted in his hoody above the point his heart was. It ached, his heart ached harder than it had ever before.
"Why can't it just end?" Jack couldn't speak more, his voice breaking and leaving him entirely. He sobbed harder, tried to gasp breaths in between, his arms wrapped around his chest while he knelt on the ground hunched over.
After a while he couldn't even cry anymore, the tears just wouldn't come out. Jack wanted to scream and break everything. He was fucking tired of fighting any longer than he already had. What was the point? The same shit happened again and again anyway. He couldn't see the point of going on anymore.
"Please," he spoke one last time in desperation, "tell me what's the point of trying?" As always silence was his only answer. Eventually he completely collapsed on the floor and just laid there, feeling numb.
It took him until deep into the night before he managed to return to Burgress where he later met Bunnymund and was shoved into a sack and tossed through a magic portal. Jack never told any of the Guardians of his break down that night.