Chapter Text
That night, he finds himself aware the second he falls unconscious, just as Pitch had said. That day, he’d been wearier than usual. Everything made him jump, from the children’s squeals to his own shadow. He was worn through with nerves. The peace he’d thought he’d achieve with a little rest evaporates, and he’s left huddled in the antechamber of the cave.
He had forgotten what it was like, down here. Feeble wisps of wind tickle his ear as he steps onto bare granite. Where before, Pitch couldn’t leave him alone for a second, he now stands in silence in an empty grotto. The cages are vacant and still, no breeze to move them, and the light from above scattered dimly. He walks in further, aiming for one of the tunnels, relaxing his staff as he peeks over the balcony of a bridge. Nothing moves for several seconds, but then a curl of darkness slides over a rock. He hears a splashing sound from far below, and calls into the gloom,
“Pitch?”
His voice echoes. The pit goes silent, and he urges himself to look deeper. Pitch had brought him here, after all. As he stares into blackness, hovering over the rail, Pitch’s shadow manifests on the far wall. It towers over Jack, slithering through the lights between the darkness.
“Didn’t I tell you, you’d be back?” he starts airily, amused by Jack’s distress. “No magic, no exit, no help; you’re a mess, Jack.”
Jack startles as Pitch ghosts by him, nails drifting across his back. Quivering with rage, he barks into the shadows,
“I’m going to end you, Pitch!”
“How?” The voice wafts by his ear. “You know where I am, Jack. I would never leave you. But you can’t do anything here, and,” he lifts one of Jack’s arms, pressing against his back, “you won’t do anything out there.”
Jack tries to whirl, but Pitch has him locked touching his chest. He has to control his breathing to keep the fear from seizing him.
“I tell any one of them what you’re doing, here, and you’ll be dead in a heartbeat.”
“Then why haven’t you?” Pitch reminds him, and his strategy falls to pieces. “You don’t remember any of this until you fall asleep, and for as long as I’m around, you will end up here, with me, and no way out. I’m only giving as good as I’ve gotten.”
Jack twists and finds himself freed. He rounds on where Pitch was standing and, finding nothing, screams into the darkness,
“I didn’t do ANYTHING to deserve this!”
His wrist is caught and yanked back. He yells in frustration, grappling with the void as it pulls him in. It crawls over him, thousands of tendrils and hands. He can’t breathe. The pressure increases and he’s being swallowed into a voracious heat. Voice muted by a vacuum, lungs burning as fire licks the last breath from his lungs. His thrashing dies out and light bleaches his vision into a tunnel. The last of his effort departing his body, a sudden chill grips his cheeks and he scrambles into it with a final burst.
“There, there.” Strong arms wrap around him and he barely registers sound, gasping too hard for air he doesn’t need. “Shh,”
Pitch strokes his hair and bends his head to rest on Jack’s. His body is freezing compared to the heat from before, and Jack cuddles into it as much as he can, remembering his mother keeping him warm on cold nights. His current predicament notwithstanding, comfort—and any kind of physical contact—are rare. The night before is distanced in his survival state, the nightmare whitewashing his memory. He had been in hell and then removed from it. His savior must have some good intentions.
“Oh,” Pitch sighs quietly into his hair, running his fingers gently through. “No, Jack. Not at all.”
He’s pried from the cold, desperately latching onto it, prolonging the dream before it returns to a nightmare. Pitch holds him at a short distance, just enough that he can look up and see that disdainful smirk. Within seconds, Pitch pulls away, fingers retreating as the heat of the cave climbs again and Jack whines in panic, seeking dead flesh to cool him down.
“Calm yourself.”
Nails glide past his cheek and Jack leans into them, suppressing a groan as they send shivers ricocheting down his spine. He wants it to be over. The memories of the night before flood him and cultivate precious anger. Wrenching from Pitch’s next pass, he spits into the darkness,
“In the end, I’m still a Guardian, and you’re stuck down here, forever.”
“Not forever,” Pitch appears as a vague wisp in the middle ground, drifting calmly along the bridge, “for a while, yes, but not forever. This sort of thing happens to many spirits, at some point.”
His eyes flash with sadistic curiosity, “I can’t wait to see what you’ll do to invoke their wrath.”
An arm snatches around Jack’s waist, and he screams as it drags him into the darkness of the pit, passing through the stone like smoke. A voice is hot and raspy in his ear,
“Meanwhile, let’s have some fun, shall we?”
-
Jack is beginning to despise his waking self. Every night for the past two weeks, Pitch has had him cornered, pinned, or reliving his worst memories. Tonight, he’s confined to the chasm in Antarctica, with Baby Tooth broken in his hands. She doesn’t move, no matter how much he shakes and pleads. He can’t stop crying. The dread hanging over him permeates the ice, and he soaks it up helplessly. The nightmares infect him with their reality, spawning from his deepest insecurities; his greatest failures. Now, it’s his own selfishness that rots inside of him; his betrayal of the Guardians and Baby Tooth and every child on Earth.
But that is not the extent of it.
Pitch has not merely relegated himself to simple, inescapable flashbacks. He’s the Nightmare King. He uses everything in Jack against him. He’s digging up things Jack hasn’t even named; shown futures he’d never achieved. He seamlessly integrates his vicious fantasies with Jack’s own fears. They complement each other too wickedly to resist. Jack begins doubting which are his thoughts and which are the feelings Pitch is growing in him.
And something is growing in him. He can feel it.
It’s changing him, to an extent. Where before, he would bite at Pitch at any given chance, resisting and screaming in some instances to his dying breath, he’s now closed in. He’s been trying to go numb as if the memories are a harsh winter and he’s still human; fragile. If he ignores them, perhaps he’ll become hardened to the unwavering assault. But he only finds himself cracking under the pressure of the nightmare. It feeds off of him, and he can feel its strength leak increasingly from his center. In the daylight, he feels tired and confused. His center is fun and should flow endlessly. Instead, pure fatigue drives him to isolation. His cold snaps adopt a deathly tone, hitting towns too hard for children to play outside. He watches them through windows as they curl up at the fire, hiding from him, and wonders what’s happening to drive them away.
He tilts his head back against the ice, drawing his legs up with a shaky exhale.
And that’s another thing. Pitch makes him feel the cold. He’s plunged back into mortality for days, sometimes, suffering the freeze or watching the last of his breath float to the surface, the moon a hazy wash of light on the ripples of the water. His resentment for Manny springs before he can stop it.
How could he have allowed this to happen? How could he let Pitch do something like this to a Guardian, of all spirits? Jack understands that his existence warrants under a full sentence from Manny’s lips, but the total abandonment he feels right now is a dagger in his chest. He can’t move it, can’t treat it. He can only watch the warmth seep out of him, until there’s nothing left.
Abandonment. He had abandoned the Guardians.
He’s trapped in this moment. Pitch has never allowed him his staff, and he’s never had the will to summon more than a few spirals of frost, on his own. He’s powerless, here.
Sometimes, Pitch will leave him for the night. He’ll be stuck in the same memory, with everyone walking through him, with that same sense of despair and loneliness and futility. In these worst moments, he thinks he wants Pitch to appear, not to have a tormentor, but to have someone to recognize him. To see him and care for him in some way, even if it’s just an interest in his punishment, or whatever Pitch is daring to call it. Of course, Pitch knows best about this fear, and the scenarios he conjures are simply too elegant, too visceral to be staged. He’s sure of it.
Jack is living through some of Pitch’s memories, whether Pitch knows that or not.
A few nights ago, he had watched his friends dissolve against a rapid wall of darkness, cities crumbling beneath it as it lurched toward him in a terrifying, all-consuming maw. Living shadows tugged at his armor and quartered him in their mass, slipping into the seams of his flesh and filling his body with hatred. The pain, the terror, the impotence; Jack understands it all, and Pitch understands him.
But, for now, he is slowly succumbing to hypothermia. The life leeches out of his bones, and his lips are a delicate blue. Exhaustion is taking him, and he questions if Pitch prefers waking him in this manner: if a little dose of death every night is what’s eating him more and more, come day. His eyes close and his hands fall to his sides. At these times, he does manage a small, rebellious sense of peace. The only time he’d died in life was saving his beloved sister, and pride for her wells happily in him whenever he goes under. Pitch has never died. He’s only slogged helplessly from one existence into another. He can’t possibly understand this kind of tranquility; this acceptance of the inevitable. Jack’s mission is complete, and his suffering may come to an end.
Pitch manifests to his left and steps out of the shadows with an odd expression. Jack just barely turns his head, a challenging, aloof look in his eyes as death crawls through his limbs. Pitch only watches him die from the corner, subdued, quiet, for once. He’s never seen a peaceful death. He must be curious.
Jack can no longer muster his voice, but lets out a ragged breath, meant to be a humph. If Pitch wants a show, he’ll get it. Jack is entirely serene. As he surrenders to the ice, patterns form under his sleeves and weave across his skin. Thoughts of his sister are most powerful, here. Pitch usually stops him before he can fully form the image, but he doesn’t like to touch them, once they’re there. As he closes his eyes for the last time, this night, he sees his sister crying and stumbling across the ice, frightened, alone, but alive, and he knows he kept her alive, at least that much longer. He can feel Pitch’s gaze as he drifts into a last, contented sleep, and then he wakes.
-
Jack has lost count, but he’s sure it’s been well over a month. It’s one of those rare nights where he slips under with a sense of removal. Whatever happens to him, he can’t exactly stop it. The toll on his mind is starting to relax, at night, though he’s increasingly agitated, outside of his nightmares.
“It’s normal for the balance to reverse, like this. Nightmares can be very difficult to battle, night after night.”
Pitch’s original fire has calmed some, at least that a few nights, now, he’s taken time to speak to Jack candidly, though hatred continues to roil unabashedly beneath most words. But in this instance, he’s almost calm, possessing himself with abnormal composure. His worst tortures, perhaps, have been exhausted, by now. Naturally, Jack no longer lets his hopes up. He’s come fresh from a very heated argument with Bunny, which ended in several shattered eggs and his being thrown out of the Warren with an angry yell. By now, most of the Guardians are aware of the change in him.
They’re attributing it to the stress of the changing seasons. He hasn’t seen Jamie in over a month, after all, and beyond him, there aren’t many other children able to play with him. See him.
The distant thought of saying something to rile Pitch, Can we get this over with? I’ve got places to be, has mostly left his interest. The rage it elicited, the first couple of rounds, the nights of being ravaged until he felt like a piece of meat on the floor, has mostly passed. Instead, he merely looks at Pitch, silent as snowfall while the other establishes the scene.
It’s rather uncreative, Jack thinks blearily as Burgess wavers into being around him, a late Spring night with frost just out of reach. His hands itch in his pockets as Pitch stands beside him, surveying the town jadedly. Jack tests the boundaries, unafraid of the consequences as he begins walking away. How far does the nightmare go? Does the world taper off, or will he never approach the end? His stomach aches and he halts for a moment, throwing a drained glance back at Pitch.
What?
Pitch says nothing, brow drawing as Jack wanders away from him. The occasional fearling darts through the wood beyond the houses, to let Jack know he’s watched, but the gloomy, empty town is just the space he needs for a moment to himself. What more can Pitch do? He’s submitted him to every relevant pain and fear available. He can make Jack forget these things, but only for a moment, to keep it fresh and, unexpectedly, he seems to be growing bored of that.
The Wind has not visited him yet in his dreams, and he can’t even hear its voice, down here. His strongest memories of blasting through canyons, buffeting coasts with flash-freezes only manifest in brief swirls of ice crystals. They dance on his palm before melting in the false Spring heat.
Another pang hits his stomach and he stops again, holding his hand to it and throwing the other against the brick wall of an alley. He huddles, wondering if mortality has taken him again, and if this is some sickness he’d had as a child, but no memory comes. He’s alone, in the dark, experiencing a pain he’s never known. Fear licks at his senses, but he brushes it off, fingers digging at his gut as he forces himself forward.
He yelps and doubles over the pavement as something knifes through his belly, puncturing his flesh as he claws at it and whines. His breaths come rushed and sparse as he tries to settle himself against the wall, releasing another weak gasp as the pain scrubs his vision and leaves him tumbling against the bricks. He clutches his belly through his sweatshirt and it’s firm, as if freezing from the inside. After a few more strangled curses, he manages to shift onto his back, and sidles up the wall. The trip leaves him shaking and sore. Hands climbing under the fabric, clutching pleadingly at his stomach, he slows with a quivering, horrified gasp. A subtle, firm roundness greets him, coiled neatly in his abdomen. He gropes it as the pain subsides, staring ahead in blind fear, trembling as he lets it take him.
This doesn’t have the same feel as a memory. This isn’t something Pitch has cooked up. Like his growing bitterness, his weariness, this is now a part of him. He can’t even tell what it is, and it petrifies him.
He gives his stomach a rough massage, hoping to break it up. His nails pierce the skin, but he keeps going, ripping at white flesh and begging for the blood to flow, but none comes. Death has never allowed him that. Only Pitch can make him bleed.
The familiar sensation of hands on his wrists pulls him back into focus, and he jolts, shaking as he looks up. Pitch is crouching in front of him, keeping his squirming arms from doing any more damage. His gaze is pointed at the torn hoodie, where skin has been ground away and blue muscle left bare. Breaths still shudder through it, Jack’s panicked gasps grounding him as he becomes more aware of himself.
“Get it out, get it OUT OF ME!!!” He’s screaming without knowing it. Pitch, for once, is surprised by his fear. He comes closer to get a better look, sweeping down as Jack scrabbles away, wrenching at his wrists as they’re collected into one spindly grasp. He sobs as the other hand creeps down to lift his hoodie and inspect, Pitch’s face sporting wonder and confusion. A hot palm lies fully against him so that every tremor is transferred directly into it. Jack wants to calm himself, but can’t stop wriggling. He hates when Pitch touches him. He can’t help it.
The hand withdraws and he jerks away from Pitch’s hard expression. The other steps back and drops his wrists. He goes right back to clawing at himself, and Pitch swoops in again,
“None of that,” he warns. It lacks his usual certainty. He’s floating in open water as much as Jack is. Instinctively, Jack thrashes against him, forgetting the weeks and weeks of torture that taught him too much movement will only warrant more punishment. The hand hovers again over his belly and he closes his eyes, tears droplets of ice and frozen to his face. Carefully, the hand lies atop his cheek, melting the tracks and startling him. A thumb cuts under his jaw and forces him to look forward, and Jack glares earnestly through his terror.
“What did you to me?” he growls.
Pitch looks affronted, like he couldn’t possibly be responsible, but that same doubt flickers in him, and he doesn’t speak. He lends a last peek at the tattered flesh of Jack’s stomach before relenting and donning an intimidating snarl.
“Wake up.”