We stayed the night in the room with the books. They next morning, Jonas was nowhere to be found.

Nervous, I walked out, to be met by mobs of people, seemingly angry.

"Um… Sir, could you tell me-"

"You!" And with that, he pushed me forward. People noticed me, and in an angry rush, they pushed me forward and forward, until I slowly progressed to the front of the mob.

I was in front of the Auditorium. The doors were open, and I could easily peer through. There was Jonas, standing on an empty stage, alone. Hurriedly, I ran up to him, and when I turned and looked at the crowd standing at the door, I suddenly felt very vulnerable. Very vulnerable.

At first, he was only talking to me.

"Gabe… These people are angry. They never were angry before. They don't know how to be angry."

As the front of the crowd noticed his lips moving, for whatever reason, they fell silent.

"We left, and when we left, everything that I had learned for the past year came back to the Community and tormented them."

Silence is contagious. Slowly, the entire crowd became as silent as stone, barely catching his words, spoken without a microphone.

"You probably had no idea how to handle this. You probably lashed your anger out on the only person that could be held responsible, Giver."

Nobody needed to ask who Giver was. They all knew.

"Giver probably helped you as best as he could, like an adult teaching children their first steps. But, still angry, you still held him responsible. Gradually, you recovered. You returned to your old style of life, but now, you were feeling. You accidentally poke yourself with a pencil. It hurts. You know what hurt feels like. No Relief of Pain can make real pain go away.

"Giver lost his daughter. He watched her Release herself, watched her die. That's what real pain really is. Losing something."

Jonas was crying.

"But pain can be healed. Real happiness can help it go away. But all of you were in a world oblivious to that. And now you're here, and nobody can help you go through life anymore. You are now drifting alone in a galaxy of stars so close… but so far away. You have never known life, even though it has been given to you when I left. You have never known real happiness, real pain, real laughter, real tears. You have never known anything."

With that, Jonas walked out of the Auditorium. I watched, and soon after he left, the crowd dispersed.

Slowly, I trudged back to the room of books. Maybe coming back wasn't such a good idea after all.

Jonas was in the room.

"Let's go." He seemed so tired.

"Ok."

umm... well, this chapter is a bit... mushy, i guess.

i've been told to write longer chapters, but since this one fanfic has already been thoroughly written through, i'll try my best on later fanfics.

second to last chapter! enjoy!