Prompt: Everything is wrong and right
Rating: Everyone
Notes: This takes place when Ralph and Ariel were banished for a generation, which was between chapters 3.8 and 4.9ish. This happened, but never featured in the story, though I do want to touch on it later. I still don't really consider it a spoiler.
Word Count: 305
Card: Here
The darkness was a thick, unbreakable wall, and it was everywhere. He was breathing it in, it was on his skin, it penetrated everything and there could be anything hiding in it. There were no shapes, not like the darkness in your room at night – this was pure blackness, the thing Ralph feared the most.
Ever since he was little, Ralph had had a fear of the dark. The way it could turn innocent objects into terrifying shadows, how it hid and changed things, distorted and played tricks on the mind. Darkness could control him, and that was unnerving. The only person in the whole world who knew this was Jim.
And that was by accident, in a tent one night. When Jim had asked if he could come, that weekend Ralph had decided to go camping with his friends on the cliff tops, Ralph had almost said no. Ralph never did understand Jim's obsession with trying to be friendly with him. Maybe Ralph was jealous of his brother, even then. Jim had always been the nicer one of the two.
In the loneliness of banishment, Ralph thought about his brother for the first time in years. Jim Arthur Wrongway, his younger brother. Not the legacy of Jim Wrongway, but Jim himself. The happy, smiley kid that everyone couldn't help but adore.
Ralph cracked a smile, concealed in the shadows. He knew he was in the wrong. He'd been in the wrong for five generations nearly. He'd always been horrible to Jim. And now, it was too late to change it.
Jim would always be the Right child, the perfect, golden child, and Ralph would always be the Wrong child, the jealous and bitter child.
Everything was wrong and right, and that was that.
Hidden by the hell of banishment, Ralph began to sob.