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It was almost impossible for Jack to relax when people were watching.
Relaxing meant screams in his ears and blood on his hands, relaxing meant the fat melting in his cheeks and fingers turning blue from the cold between breaths, relaxing meant every atom in his being vibrating with an otherworldly resonance, freezing the air around him with one eye and combusting it with the other.
Blue and red. Cold and heat. Hell for other people.
A simple hell. Translatable for people with nerves, synapses and flesh, translatable for people whose souls haven't yet left a brain made out of hormones and meat. Nothing compared to the torture that Jack had felt. Nothing. The agony of pain without pain receptors. Free from the limitations of a body his soul had suffered in a way only conceptual to humans in terms of hot and cold. Slowly burnt whilst still conscious, every part of him in horrific agony as he was crammed into a space that cauterized his very spirit, held down against molten metal unable to flinch away as it surrounded him and filled his non-body. Slowly freezing as his soul missed the realness and warmth of his physical form, shivering without movement or friction, naked in the snow without the comforting numbness that would come with time. Because that was the thing wasn't it. Pain receptors switched off. If you held a brand to your skin for a century, your mind wouldn't be able to express the pain, eventually shutting down the nerves or forcing you to disassociate. Without a mind you couldn't do that, Jack simply felt it
Jack wasn't bitter. He really wasn't. They couldn't understand what he'd been through, not really (not that they'd tried) and it wouldn't be fair to punish them for not being punished. He'd brought back hell but hadn't Let himself become it, hadn't Let the molten metal drip out his mouth, hadn't Let the liquid nitrogen loose with his tears. Had helped make the nukes inspired by his agony, but hadn't launched them.
Ha. "Bring 'em hell." Talk about making a saying literal. Hell was his soul now. The snow and fire intertwined in his being like a mockery Yin and Yang. It was up to him if he released the pale physical pretend of it into the world. And he wanted to, he really wanted to. His time in the underworld had made him spiteful beyond human measure.
He wanted to relax around people, he wanted to open himself up. Show them the ugly parts that would destroy them in the process, make them just as ugly as him. He could. He had the capacity to release the Eldritch Horror that was hell made physical, hell made personified through the conditions of his escape.
He didn't though. Not through honour or love (and those emotions still existed, he loved Niki dearly and he cared for his hotel but they were so much smaller than the all encompassing pain) but through spite. Jack had something that made him special and he horded that close to his chest. It was something they couldn't take away from him because as long as they lived Jack would know that he was better than them. More powerful than them. More powerful than 50 withers. More powerful than even Technoblade even though he could never show it.
Not more powerful than Tommy though.
Power came through pain, Jack understood. Tommy, the little prick that he was, had a lot of it and although his power wasn't conventional or well, physical power, he affected people's souls in ways that seemed to Jack more impactful than shooting at a man with fireworks. Burning hatred, sickening betrayal, overwhelming possessiveness and unwavering loyalty, all things otherwise normal people felt for Tommy. Things that Jack had felt for the boy over time. Things that proved Tommy was the most powerful person on the server. Not through mere physical prowess like Jack now had, through influencing people's souls.
Jack got his physical power over bodies through horrific pain to his very soul. Tommy got his overwhelming influence over souls through horrific emotional and physical pain.
Yang to his fucking Yin.
Jack hated Tommy. Not because he'd hurt him. Not because of any betrayal. Because he was drawn to the extremes that Tommy inspired. He couldn't be anything else but hateful. If he was he might find himself starting to relax. They might see him. Might feel the horrors he'd unleash.
Jack was spiteful, he knew that, but what the fuck else was he supposed to be?