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The first thing I noticed was the silence.
It was an overwhelming silence, one that made itself known to everyone around, forcing you to feel heavy from the weight it carried. It was tense, it was foreboding, but to me, it felt like the freedom I could never have.
The next thing I noticed was the brightness.
It was so bright, and so white, that even when one's eyes was closed, it was still white all around. It was harsh but comforting, bright yet soft, and could bring the warmth I didn't know I had in me to the surface.
I noticed what I was sitting in after that, a cool metal chair; uncomfortable, yet relaxing, rigid, but flexible, and firm in its structure, not yielding to anything.
And when I opened my eyes, it was then I noticed it last:
"Oh, you finally made it all the way down here."
Eh?
It was a place devoid of anything except the chair I was sitting in, just empty white space around me. The floor, the ceiling, the air itself was empty, filling itself with the whiteness that surrounded me. The chair alone was the only thing not white, being the color of rust, despite not being rusty at all.
It was unlike anything I had ever seen before and would probably never see again, completely different from the hell I had always found myself sinking down into, no spiteful voices, no scornful laughter, being at complete and utter peace in the White, White World I had found myself in.
"It took you long enough, always taking your sweet time to get here. Then again, you've always done stuff at your own pace."
There was also something else within this White, White World I had come upon; a voice I swore to myself I would never forget about, a promise I had made over 10 years ago.
"You even had to get help too. Honestly, it's not exactly the coolest way to make an entrance. Like I always tell you, you should learn from the actual master of cool, since you clearly don't know anything about it."
A face I wouldn't forget, tanned skin with light brown hair, dark blue, almost purple, eyes, and a smile that felt as if I had just seen it the other day.
"Well, you're here now, and that's all that matters."
The voice that brought tears to my eyes, ones that could never fall, as I looked upon my very first regret, the boy I called my Captain.
"A-are you real?" I asked, and Captain shrugged, walking towards me with a smile on his face.
"That's up to you Major, or so I would normally say, but this is just a form I'm taking to speak with you. You're put at ease with this guy, so I thought it would be nice if you could chat with your old childhood friend you caused to disappear all those years ago."
I tensed up at his words, preparing for the inevitable fall that always came, before I heard a small laugh.
Huh? I looked back at Captain, who was snickering to himself from my reaction. "Oh, sorry, it looks like you don't get what's going on here yet, so allow me to explain."
He appeared on one of my armrests next to me, wrapping his small arms around my shoulders. "This place is the one place untouched from the hell that's your mind. Honestly, it's pretty screwed up in there, so you really should go see a therapist or something."
He appeared next on my lap, a crudely drawn map in his hands. "See, look here. This place," he pointed the top of the map, where a small portion of the map said normal, "is the part that allows you to go about your day in a relatively normal fashion. Now, down here," he pointed towards a large, shaded area of grey right underneath normal that said not-normal, "is where you spend all your time. It's easily accessible from the abyss, so they can attack you whenever they wish, plus they can drag you down here," he pointed below that, where it looked as if someone had just hastily drawn over the rest of the page that said hell, "where they make you fall down into their hell over and over again until you basically wanna kill yourself. Take a look for yourself." He handed me the map before appearing in front of me again, and I was left with the map in my hands, glancing it over before frowning.
"But where's this place then? I don't see it anywhere," I said, flipping the map around to try to find it.
"Oh, it's a tiny dot at the very bottom of hell," Captain said, and upon closer inspection, there was a tiny white dot that had something written in it. "This place is called your sanctuary, and every hell has one!"
"You make it sound as if this phenomenon is commonplace," I said, and he shrugged.
"It could be, I honestly don't know how it works. I'm just a little five-year-old kid yah know," Captain said, shaking his head.
I scowled, looking between the map and Captain. "Okay, but who are you, really? If not Captain, then, who?"
"Really? After all the wonderful motivational talks we've had together, I would've thought that you would've guessed it by now," Captain said, starting to float around in the whiteness, looking over at me.
"Well, I'm meant to help you, so just so you know, I'm you."
"But I'm me, so how can you be me?"
He let out a smile. "I'm the you that holds all the secrets you lock away, all the truths you try to run away from, hidden away down in this sanctuary." He floated towards me before flipping upside down, locking into my eyes.
"Or, put more simply, I am your Truth."
"I.. see…" I said, leaning back into my chair, sighing as I looked at the Truth who made himself into Captain.
"Well, if you don't like me being Truth, I guess you could say you're the emotion, and I'm the logic. You hide things, I bring them towards you."
Captain flipped back around, landing back down on the ground with a soft tap before clearing his throat. "Anyway, I'm glad you managed to make it all the down here, even if you did have help."
"How did I even get here? Why am I here?"
"Ah, that girl named Pandora, I think that was her name, forced you all the way down here to come meet little ol' me. I think it was pretty nice of her, despite her intentions."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, watching Captain sit down on the floor, starting to stretch his legs.
"More importantly, is the why you are here," Captain said, ignoring my question as he stood back up, stretching his back before standing up straight again.
"Now, let's recap all the things you've kept hidden." Captain said, and I tensed up again as he started to talk.
"Number 1: Your regrets, or, more specifically, your 2nd and 3rd regret. You regretted running away back then, forcing yourself to forget all the pain that Necessitas brought out of you, but you also regret choosing the easy way out instead of going through it on your own. But, most importantly, you regret making yourself forget your friends, regret the pain and suffering you caused them, regret not giving them a chance to help you out at your absolute lowest, at least at that point in time any.
"Now, as for your 3rd regret, this is where things start to get really interesting. The thing you regret about that day, the day you sentenced your entire family to disappear, isn't the fact that you sent them away; no, you were elated at thought of them disappearing for good, never seeing them again. No, what you regretted was the fact you were happy about it, the fact you so easily sent them all away just like that, and you felt absolutely nothing except pure joy and ecstasy."
I could only listen, knowing what he spoke to me was the absolute truth.
"Number 2: Those Your Faults of yours, the ones that haunt you to this day, they all have to do with that year, Junior Year of Highschool, when you were unable to grab that which was right in front of you, for hesitating for far too long until it was too late, and getting absolutely brutalized for it, knowing you could've stopped it all if you had just asked out that girl sooner. Compounded by the lies you told yourself about Regret number 2, and you concocted a hell of your own making, caught in it's web just like that.
"Number 3: Regarding a certain sacrifice you do monthly, you lied to yourself about that as well. In truth, you had been appeasing for a far longer time than you cared to admit, with the outcome following the aftermath of your 1st regret. You always disappeared your seconds to this amazing guy right here, to try to make yourself feel better, if only for a little bit. However, once that family of yours disappeared, you got trapped in a never-ending hell concocted from your own lies about your feelings; you didn't send them those sacrifices monthly because you cared or wanted to appease, nor did you do it because you wanted to feel better about yourself. You did it to run away, making false decisions regarding your 1st and 3rd regret, knowing full well what decision you really need to make in the end.
"You ran from it for so long, you actually managed to make yourself forget the issue, but recent events have forced you to push it down deeper, only for the question to constantly pop up again and again, causing your hell to grow worse and worse, as you ran away from it all.
"You ran away from it. You ran away from your friends, causing your 2nd regret. You ran away from home, meeting that old couple to escape from your pain. You ran away from home, never wanting to see your family again, causing your 3rd regret. You ran away from that girl who wanted to help you, causing you to lose her in the end. You ran away from school, loosing yourself in the hell of your own making, because even that was better than wanting to make a decision regarding the most important question, the real reason why you're here, the cause behind all your strife, pain, and sorrow.
"Which brings us to our final point, the big question you've been avoiding since that day, 12 years ago, when you caused your dear Captain to disappear off the face of the planet, leaving you completely and utterly devasted as you lost someone so near and dear to you for the first time.
"The question that was brought forth once more that day, 4 years ago, when you caused your family to disappear, bringing you absolute happiness and relief that you got rid of the people you hated most in the world.
"The question that has been making it's way to the surface throughout these three years of high school you've been in, the question that you've ran around…"
"The question that plagues you day and night, fueling your hell and nightmares.
The question I never wanted to have to answer.
"Did you kill them, when they disappeared, or did they stay alive in whatever place they might be?" Captain raised each of his hands, and picture materialized itself above each one, one having a poorly drawn stick figure with X's over its eyes, the other one without the X's.
"If you did indeed kill them, then that would make you a murderer, a mass murderer who was so glad that they killed their family even," Captain started, raising his right hand, which had the picture of the stick figure floating above it.
"Or, if they really did stay alive, to whatever place you could've sent them, then that means you've left them there to rot, inadvertently killing them. Or, possibly, with those offerings you've given them, they're still alive. Or maybe they died anyway, who can say."
Captain raised up his left hand, showcasing the stick figure that was still alive. "Either way, it's a problem for each one. If they are dead, then you have to live with the fact that you've killed them for the rest of your life, their deaths weighing on you. Or, if they aren't dead and by some miracle are still alive, then that means you have yet another conundrum on your hands, since you can't bring anything you've disappeared back here again. It could mean you would have to search for them, wherever they might be, or figure out how to bring them back here. Either way, it's a hard choice, especially since you don't know if you can even find them on this planet, or if you can ever actually bring things back. There are a lot of unknowns, and if you die before you solve anything, it'll be the cause of your 4th regret, one that'll haunt you from beyond the grave."
Captain took a deep breath before sighing, nodding at me. "Wow, that was a doozy, but you get the idea, right Major? You know what you have to do now, right?"
I've always known it would come to this, but for me, running away from the issue was a lot better. I didn't wanna live knowing I had killed them, nor did I want to live with the fact they could still be alive, somewhere, and was powerless to bring them back or find them.
I just wanted, to be free of the weight that came from decision.
So that's why, I only I have one question.
"Why now?" Captain looked at me curiously as I voiced out my question to him, between the two options.
"Why must I make a decision now? Why can't I continue to run away, like I always have, never making a decision regarding whether they're dead or alive? Why, now?"
"Iapetus." Captain said simply, and I gritted my teeth as a picture of that man showed up in front of me.
"Because if you don't make a decision regarding that now, you could lose everything all at once."
"Huh? What're you talking about?"
Captain let out a smile as he started to lay down in the air again, floating around my chair. "You can't have forgotten, that those friends of yours are fighting desperately to save you from Iapetus, although I personally don't think they needed to come and do that, but that's just me."
I furrowed my eyebrows, frowning. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Because at this rate, there's a good chance they'll die."
"What?"
Captain shrugged. "Again, it all depends on what decision you make. Well, it would be better if I just showed you what's happening out there so you can see what's going on."
Captain waved his hand, and I was once more sucked into their battle, Captain's final words reaching my ears.
"You already have everything you need…"