Jack's Departure

"Answer me!"

Jack wondered what was shaking him so roughly. It interrupted his dreams and he was greatly annoyed by it.

"Why won't you let us be at peace? I'm so tired", he was thinking.

He imagined he had said it to whatever was disrupting his peaceful time but in reality, Jack was just a husk. His eyes were open and he was breathing but he was not there.

"Oi!", a strong blow crushed his dreamland and sent him flying.

He was finally brought back and he attempted to get up, gaining sight in his eyes and awakening his mind. But the first thing that headed to his senses was pain, unbelievably excruciating pain and he was at a loss at how to let it out. He wanted to scream but voice won't come to him. He couldn't even groan, something was stuck in his throat. He found it hard to breath and his whole body felt awfully numb.

"Where is she?!"

Jack looked back with all the strength he had left in him.

"Who's that?", he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Wolfe had never looked like that before. Jack thought that surely, that person was someone else. He was wrong. It was Wolfe's voice, the voice that had always been kind and yet commanding. Jack silently stared at this stranger that he thought he knew.

"Answer me! Where's Corsen?", Wolfe grabbed him by his collar once again.

"Corsen", that word meant a universe to Jack and yet he couldn't remember why that was.

"I tried to...", he spoke as if he was just getting the words out of his system, "help her. She's...no..."

Jack rewinded his memory looking for Corsen. What had happened to her?

"I helped her...but she...no I...I ran away...or...I was there, I...", which one was it, he couldn't tell.

Wolfe jerked him back to the mud and stomping his feet went ahead.

"Wait!", Jack reached out his hand to stop Wolfe, "She said we'd lose our place...Corsen...she's alive...she's...right?"

Jack's face fell down into the mud as he continued to mumble. Wolfe spared him a glance of disgust before moving ahead.

*****************

"You killed her", that's all he had been hearing since she was put to the ground. He had come to believe that was true.

The ostracization of the Beasts, the murder of the King, Jack believed it was all his doing. He felt nothing on the matter, no guilt and no remorse. It was just a "happening" to him.

"I will take her place", he had said to Wolfe the day she was left to rest.

Wolfe had punched him to the ground, "YOU couldn't possibly do that!"

And that was when Jack realized he had been taking people's feelings for granted. Maybe this is how Corsen would have felt if Jack had died too, empty and with nowhere to look at. But even when he thought of Corsen, he drew a blank. He concluded he never reciprocated her feelings, in fact he was incapable of doing so. Jack was devoid of all emotions. Still, all his dreams were home to Corsen. Her crimson flowing hair and emerald eyes were a curse that haunted him night and day.

He felt he could hate her for that. And so he left the Beasts one morning and no one talked of him ever again.