84 Hunter [#20]

Jackson's mind was a mess, after Sad Jack John was once again in another part of Jackson's mind- This time, as soon as the shard was connected to Sad Jack, a wave rose and dragged him deep into the water, where he sank until he was falling, falling until he landed into a room full of mirrors. The walls reflected him, but they weren't reflections of what was happening but of what happened: Every loving moment between them both, every moment he saw him, every moment they were together, every moment they kissed and had intimate time together, every single thought was digging through his skin, cutting him in thousands of slashes and gashes of blood and gore- but he felt no pain.

Only this deep sensation of love.

Love so strong it made John so weak at the knees that he felt himself falling, all the shattered mirrors dug into his knees, making him feel not pain but see and feel the love Jackson had for him. It was ever consuming. It was sweet. It was sick. It was so possessive that he could feel his own self slipping away at the thoughts of being owned by Jackson as the best thing that could ever happen to him! Until a hand suddenly helped him, pulled him from deep under, and dragged him back to his body - It was Jackson, who looked completely shattered, various pieces of him missing but replaced by fragments of John himself, pieces John didn't know he had lost! "Hi. Love! Welcome to the Love Room. Here you can know how much I want you~" Jackson spun around, the pieces of John that were on him were bleeding, forcefully shoved where they couldn't be placed or shoved where they didn't cover the holes fully and therefore John could see how broken everything was.

"Jack-" John tried to talk to his beloved, but Love Jack just shushed him with his finger, everywhere they walked and passed by, John saw someone - People Jackson loved in his life. He saw women with words attached to them (Sister, don't forget about her) and (Mother? Love her. Hate her. Love her. Hate her...) and another mirror. A golden mirror with the words [Love], but the mirror was missing a large shard. "This is where you fit!" Jackson simply picked John up and walked towards the mirror. He forcefully tried to shove John on the crack, to "fix" it, and make himself whole again. It was toxic, it was wrong, but John didn't know how else to help! But no matter how many times Love Jack tried to make John fit, even breaking the mirror itself and bending it beyond recognition, it couldn't fit John.

"Why...?" Love Jack whispered: "Why?" John sighed softly before he picked the shard from the pink bag and placed it on Jackson's hand, saying: "Because, Love, you have to rebuild it yourself... With my help." And so, together, Jackson started to place the many, many shards around into the big hole in the mirror, even dugging from John's bleeding knees to recover the mirror. When the mirror was complete, to John's utter surprise, it wasn't him in the mirror... It was Jack.

"Ah..." Jackson whispered when he saw the mirror: "...I forgot." As Love Jack started to crack and heal, John saw the Jackson in the mirror shift from an adult version to a smaller, childish version of his love - Kid Jack? "I was meant to love all Jacks, wasn't I?" Love Jack pushed John forward, who went willingly, touching the ever changing mirror on the wall. The moment he did, the reflection showed him instead, and in a brief moment, he no longer was in the room of mirrors but was instead inside a library on fire.

He looked down to see that the bag of shards was gone - And with he bag gone, he had no idea how to get to the next Jacks! He saw a book fly by, on flames, and screeching like a banshee. "Stop right there, criminal scum!" One of the books growled at him, another one passed by screaming: "Spooky Scary Skeletons -" Screaming, not singing. 'What...?' Suddenly, John saw Jackson but wearing Librarian clothes. Talk about stereotyping, huh? "You're here!" Librarian Jack ran towards him, holding three golden books on his hands: "Love Jack started helping the other Jacks. You only need to help King Jack! He broke himself in three pieces and hid in the most precious memories, go, quick, I need to clean this mess." Before John could say anything, the three books were shoved unto his hands, the first one he looked at was titled [Christmas Brings].

The scenario bled to gold, like that old Warnerbros intro.

"Jack, stop!" A little girl screeched, making the small boy by her side chuckle and laugh - His hand was dirty with flour, flour he had just thrown on the little girl's face. Their mother had this small fond smile on her lips as she watched her children bicker and throw small amounts of flour on each other, and someone John soon recognized walked forth - Jackson? "Jason, help your brother Jack clean his mess." The mother said to Jason, someone who John had clearly recognized as a smaller version of Jackson. "Sure, mom." He looked to be about 6 to 7 years old, while the little girl and boy looked to be both 4 and 5, respectively. Jason held his brother's head for a second to help him get rid of the white flour on his hair when suddenly there was this impact.

The loud sound of a door being kicked open.

John watched as the whole world bathed in gold once again before time started to pull back, and when he opened his eyes, he once again heard the little girl's voice screeching: "Jack, stop!" The scene played once again from then on, with Jackson (Jason) helping his younger brother before the sound of a door being kicked open broke the serene and peaceful world and everything went back in time. This repeated 3 more times before John started to fight back, pushing his way through the memory, going for the door that was about to be kicked open - The moment he got to the living room, the whole bright and colorful house turned gloomy, there was no more love in the air but the smell of blood as he heard the woman scream: "Jason, take your siblings and run!" He didn't understand what was happening until everything happened so quickly.

He was now standing in an empty house, broken furniture everywhere. On his feet stood a woman, Jackson's mother, unconscious. On her arms, there was a little boy, couldn't be older than 5 years... Bleeding from this large gash on his head. "Mom? Jack?" Hearing the boy's voice, John turned and saw the younger version of Jackson walk forward and stop right where his mother and brother were. Soon, the whole world around him was covered in the color of gold once again, and before his very eyes, the small version of Jackson just spoke: "...he did this, you know? My father." Jackson turned to look at him, his eyes glowing golden, as he kept saying: "He killed my brother. That drove my mother further down the edge. After his death, my mother started calling me Jackson and wouldn't stop, so I just accepted it as my new name... Soon after, she had a psychotic break and started using drugs, me and my sister were separated by the foster care system, only meeting after adulthood."

John couldn't say anything, no, he didn't want to say anything.

"She found me, she took me from the foster house I was in, she "adopted" me and changed my name to Jackson Lumos Tenebris, Jackson Light Darkness... I don't know why, but she called me her light and her darkness, I looked so much like my father that -" Little Jack stopped, there were cracks on his body where golden light poured out of. "I don't like Christmas." That was the last thing he said before the entire memory faded to white, only a small golden sphere with several cracks floated before John, and he instinctively knew the name of it: [A Broken Mind].

Before he could process what just happened, the next book glowed, showing him that he couldn't take a break. The title of the book read: [Music]

When he came to the memory, everywhere, as far as his eyes could see, was white. The only colors he could see were these hundreds of thousands of musical notes, and said notes played each a melody, a song, a hymn- John could hear a lot of songs, a lot of them, all he heard at least once coming from Jack's head.

(A/N: Let's play, spot the song! In the end, there will be the name of every song, comment on the paragraph with the name of the song, if you know it, or can guess.)

"Honey, you're familiar -"

"I wanna make my murder look like a suicide -"

"I should be over all -"

"How~ How can you catch the sun?"

"The winner takes it all -"

"It's the terror of knowing -"

"Oh, let me hold you - I'll never let you go again -"

"As the earth burns to the ground -"

"Ooh~ There he goes again! Ooh -"

"He said one day -"

"Say our love is a flame, not an ember -"

"King of shadows, king of shade - Hades is king, of the underworld -"

"Flowers, I remember field of flowers -"

"Sometimes when I wanna run away and hide -"

There are so many songs, the majority playing at the same time in so many different harmonies that it made John's head hurt, hurt because he couldn't help but focus and listen on every single song at the same time, which was not possible. So what was - What he was supposed to do!? He didn't know what he was supposed to do! "Music..." John whispered to himself, and the moment he did, he saw a small pale blue musical note (🎶) flow out of his mouth-

How are you supposed to leave a place filled with music? Of course: Singing!

-Scene End-

Author Notes: Here's the song names~

From Eden - Hozier

Cotard's Solution - Will Wood and the Tapeworms

Sill Into You - Paramore

Come Into My Arms - November Ultra

The Winner Takes It All - ABBA

Pressure - Queen

Until I Found You - Stephen Sanches

As The World Caves In - Matt Maltese

Good ol' Fashioned Loverboy - Queen

The Nights - Avicii

Masochism Tango - Tom Lehrer

Epic II - Hadestown Soundtrack

Flowers - Hadestown Soundtrack

Villain I Appear To Be - Diamond Jack (Rachel Kim)