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He’d come from elsewhere. The fall to Earth was short but excruciating. Eyes burning from the light of the blast, he’d sensed more than seen the little tsarevich ricochet off of him. His shadows recoiled from around the planet and its satellite, beams shooting from the princeling’s scorched ship blasting him off toward the barren rock. Pitch plummeted toward the planet’s surface and felt his flesh singe. The shadows could not protect him. He was already badly wounded from the battle, though the tsarevich had seemed well enough when they’d parted.
He hit the ground with an explosion, crashing through stone and clear black water into comforting numbness. Paralyzed and desperately winded from the battle, he listened to his slowly calming breaths and kept his eyes closed, shadows creeping sinisterly over his ripped, singed flesh. While he hadn’t passed out at the frightening impact, body broken and set at bloody angles on the stone, eventually the gentle lull of an underground river softly sang him to sleep.
-
Humans were a new development. Pitch had searched the planet for anything that could sustain him, surviving weakly off the fears of slow primates and ancient marine animals. They were not elaborate enough to sate his appetite, and he was always starving. The tsarevich, on the other hand, quickly formed his little castle and sent his ungodly light to invade the one time Pitch felt strong: the night.
The magic of the beams began cultivating the dead of the world. Pitch encountered species he hadn’t seen in millennia, roaming the planet with ghostly aimlessness. Their reanimated power grew as the tsarevich gained energy from the system’s paltry star. Pitch thought it a cruel trick to plague the young world with phantoms when their home civilizations had been able to form actual beings, but he supposed the tsarevich must also be hurting for strength. This tiny star could not provide the light needed to populate a world with whole spirits. The thought made Pitch grin whenever it came to him.
The princeling’s world was little more than a sandbox. He thought to play with the other’s toys.
One by one, spirits would face Pitch and fall or sympathize with his cause. The tsarevich hadn’t yet learned the charisma for wholly loyal subjects. It was child’s play to convince them of his weakness.
With or without these new allies, Pitch soon ruled over the fledgling world. The humans cowered before his icons and he relished their fear as a man at an oasis. Their intelligence grew at a painfully slow rate, often sliding back on scales of war and poverty. He coaxed darkness from their hearts and sowed inherent distrust in the wonders of science and peace; the only things that could save them. Thousands of years passed in clouds of smoke and burning flesh. It reminded him of his fall, of his own body evaporating in the cloying atmosphere.
The first Guardian he meets is someone he should have destroyed, years before. A Pooka, ironically unable to reproduce; a walking tombstone for his species. It was morbid entertainment to remind him how Pitch had culled his entire planet from its system, and crushed every trembling doe screaming for mercy. There were many incidents more vile and interesting, but having a witness to the destruction, and one so sensitive to it, gave him something to look forward to in the battles.
And then there were the others, and the human girl.
All living beings, all too young and too shining with innocence to reach reason. At some point, they had figured they could relate to him; could cultivate guilt in him, a search for penance. Pitch is fond of illusions, particularly about his character. His defeat should not have been a result of his confirming the truth. They drove the darkness away and him with it.
For decades, he felt himself shrinking, power waning with the waxing moon. Where before, he could tower over mountains, swallow whole villages, he was now emaciated and feral, driven to haunting fires on winter nights. That night, there were no fires. He could find no travelers in the midst of his starvation, confined to a dark cave as the moon sleepily, mockingly rose. The energy of a full moon invigorated every creature it could reach. Whether or not Pitch remained in the shadows, he could still feel it spark on his skin. Light had never done him well, but the power tingling at his aching fingertips finally drew him out into the freezing night.
It buzzed around him, though the landscape was frightfully still. No animals, no spirits. Just the blue glow of the moon off the ice, and that electric charge flowing into him from every angle. It reminded him weakly of a star he’d once visited. As he ventured deeper into the woods, the light became sharper, almost hurting him with the surge. He neared a pond just to see a body emerge, swathed in the same blue light. Dumbstruck for a moment by the creature’s ethereal body, the nature of the sight hit him.
A new spirit? His eyes narrowed. The boy was clearly dead. The tsar had never reanimated a whole being. Yet, that light was so familiar. Perhaps he’d seen it, long before he’d come here.
Nightmare sand works on spirits. It is a tangible magical force; technically not sentient. But this creature is closer to Pitch’s own origins. His curiosity rose before he could leave. The tsarevich’s intentions could not be guessed with the information he had. All of his servants are living, to a degree, or at least ghosts. To trap a soul in dead flesh for eternity… well, the tsarevich was rather fond of playing warden, wasn’t he?
His fists clenched audibly and before he could stop himself, he’d wandered onto the ice.
-
Moonlight zeroes in on him and shadows rise like smoke to protect his skin. The energy of the process diluted, the boy that had risen from the water begins to sink. Still, the light will not abide his presence. Approaching the youth, the body sinks further, toes touching the water until shadows lift him back up. Pitch startles as they slip into the seams of the boy’s flesh. He tries to pull them back, only to find them stuck; merged with the floating corpse. It fascinates him. Coming closer, he doesn’t try to stop himself. His hand rises to the boy’s cheek and the forest groans under the sparking energy of the moonlight.
He can feel the darkness inside the boy, can sense it sizzle and clash with the light of the moon, but still, the body does not breathe. Neither does Pitch. He’s not sure what he’s expecting. Perhaps he wants something better for this child?
He doesn’t bother stifling the laugh.
Whether the tsarevich wanted a servant, which is unlikely for the boy’s make, or a companion, which occurs to him only because of his beauty, Pitch will not relinquish what he has stolen. As the tsarevich had taken from him a peaceful afterlife, so Pitch would restore him to at least his own fate. Pulling the body closer, the shadows of his robe peeling back so as not to be absorbed, he summons a breath and gives it to the boy, their lips equally cold, and strangely matched.
If he dies, so be it. If he doesn’t, then the tsarevich may well have created his own enemy.
As the slender chest begins moving, Pitch finds himself releasing the body. He creeps back into the wood, watching the moonlight struggle to cleanse its latest work of the darkness, but the illumination only makes the contrast greater; the shadows deeper; darker. Finally, they and the light fade, and the boy is lain mournfully on the ice. Pitch watches him wake, dewy eyes slow to process before widening, black lashes thick and sparkling with ice. He rises in shaking wonder, glancing up at the moon without reverence, only a childlike curiosity. The tsarevich speaks desperately to him, beams shining futilely and begging to know about him, this boy named “Jack Frost.” But Jack only smiles at the world around, completely oblivious.
Since the boy doesn’t return his words, Pitch speaks in a voice only shadows can hear, wondering if light is a tone that has escaped him.
Your name is Jack Frost.
And there, a smile, a shiver at a voice that seems to come from all around. Pitch catches himself grinning at the boy’s innocent glee. For a few moments, he enjoys the sight of the child learning his powers, gliding over the ice and swirling patterns in frost. Even with the shadows, there remains an untouchable purity, something the tsarevich could not have fabricated. Interesting.
Pitch thinks it cruel to leave him devoid of memories, and again ponders the Moon’s motives. What had he meant to plant? What has Pitch ruined that left the little prince scrambling so frantically after Jack’s answer?
What was Jack fated to do?
-
The next few hundred years, Pitch redoubles his efforts, scraping an army from humans in terror, humans maiming and killing each other. Most spirits of the Moon’s make, who have not turned directly against him, attempt in some small ways to ease the pain these creatures experience. The Fae make unique company, but are a mostly neutral force, one that has naturally developed from the balance of the world, apart from any influence of the Moon, although they are mostly crepuscular. Pitch doesn’t admire their methods, but they wreak their own havoc on mankind, and are the basis of many nightmares. For that, they have some weak ties to him, though not loyal at all.
Jack Frost eventually grasps he’s of the Moon’s make, but not much else. To Pitch’s cackling delight, he grows wary of the Guardians, and finally dislikes them. Pitch laughs for days and frees all nightmares to feast. But Jack is complicated. For all that he avoids the Guardians, avoids other spirits, he is painfully, almost suicidally, alone. He does love the children, but they have never seen him.
Pitch meets him for the first time in passing, after many years of watching him grow. Jack has just iced over a bridge in Russia, so that horses stumble and panic, throwing carriages side-to-side. He seems a little bitter, and that is something on which Pitch thinks he could establish a bond. Though he is still a child by all standards, Jack is cunning. He senses Pitch before he can assume a corporeal form. He can see the hairs rise on a pale, slender neck, and wants to reach out for him, feel soft, cool skin, failing to quash the pleasant memory. Jack is on the bank, squinting at the shadows under the bridge. Pitch leans casually against the frozen bricks and lets his eyes glow. The staff comes up but the claws are still hidden. Jack’s voice is too husky for his boyish body. Whether from disuse or screaming, Pitch should be able to tell.
“Do I know you?”
Jack cannot see them, but Pitch feels the shadows dart beneath his skin, frenzied at the approach of their old master. Now that the body they inhabit is alive, he wonders if he can call to them. He echoes back the words in the voice he’d used to tell Jack his name,
I know you.
Blue eyes widen and the boy’s hackles are up, nearly stepping forward, breaths quickening. Pitch remains beneath the bridge. The shadows, he can sense, urge him every second to take that first step down the slope, to be freed from the dull lamplight in the streets and roam the shadows beneath. Being cryptic is fun, but it does stifle the character. Pitch prefers grander entrances. He thinks to properly introduce himself, to antagonize as he does with all beings, but he feels something quite uncomfortable prickle at him, something more to the rabbit’s talents.
Hope.
He gazes at Jack in disgusted rapture and finds a cautious faith. The shadows don’t pull him forward; the hope does. The pain of it creeps into Pitch’s eyes and extinguishes any games he’d been looking to play. He recoils again into the shadows, unwilling to face this being like himself.
“Wait! Please!”
Jack slides elegantly down the bank, too graceful for his lanky body and yet conducting it with an air that could storm Pitch’s resolve. He stalls for too long and Jack catches the hem of his robe, eyes bright like his own in the frozen darkness. He winces as the shadows detach and wander into the delicate white fingers, escapes as the boy clutches his own hand and drops the staff, collapsing into the snow.
Had there been pain, there would have been fear, but his action was born of neither. Unable to collect himself enough to pursue any other answer, Pitch dissolves into the night air and leaves the boy to his mischief, unwittingly a victim.
-
Were he a better man, neither good nor bad, he might like to think of their meeting as incidental. He might have ignored Jack floating above his grave, restrained himself from reaching out not once, but twice. It’s only shadows that seem weak to Jack, and they compose Pitch. The nightmares were cautious of him at first, as with most Fae, before they learned of the shadows in him. Now they seek him out, curious of his nature and perhaps resentful of him. Sand shouldn’t have personality, but as with the shadows it gathers its form with arrogant intent, a side effect of having lingered too long at its master’s side.
But say Jack is somehow Fae. Pitch never bothered investigating the boy’s origins, and the tsar seems to have either forgotten about him or simply given up. Neither of them know what Jack will be with the influence of the shadows. Without them, perhaps his form would perhaps be more solid; not the dreamy, airy thing lingering on lampposts while children throw snowballs below. However Jack acts, it cannot be disputed that there is darkness, that there is frailty and a temper which he hides from children who cannot see him. Hope exists there, in that darkness. His melancholy is at once a handicap and a salve; his anger a release from the tension of unconfirmed existence. A neglected child acts the same, throwing itself into any attention, unsure of the difference between good and bad, even blind to it. It’s something Pitch can use, come the day. Jack yearns but fears. Hope complements that fear, yet grants him no will to conquer it.
Whatever Jack may have been without the darkness, it could not have been as dynamic; as adaptable as the creature that has formed before them. It may have had the rare Lunanoff blessing, but it couldn’t walk the two worlds at once. Jack knows there is darkness in him, knows his tantrums and sarcasm and desolation are not normal of “good” spirits, and can’t come near the Guardians because of it. He knows it shouldn’t be so difficult to return the startled gazes of other wisps, to confront their disgust and intuition about his being. Even Satan has friends, but Jack Frost is alone. Contaminated by something he’s never seen.
But which element it is, they could never know.
-
Because it occurs around children, Pitch is vaguely aware of it. Jack’s first altercation with a Guardian establishes tense ground between him and the group. He barrels through the Northern hemisphere on a cold front that clashes with an unseasonably warm winter. For whatever reason, he’d been missing. No one but Pitch really noticed, and one could hardly say he did.
Jack thrusts himself through clouds and treetops consumed by unearthly energy; hunger. As if he’d been in hibernation, even in the winter. His only time to play.
The cold sweeps over countries and creates winds and mists that play havoc with trains, delaying Christmas for thousands of families.
Well, more, really, because Nicholas can’t seem to get the damned sleigh in the sky. And Pitch laughs. He sweeps over houses and forests in Jack’s trail, sowing fear in the anxieties and doubts of millions of children, millions of people nervous that loved ones on trains might crash in the winter storm. There are two tempests, that night, and Pitch finds himself grinning along with Jack. Whether or not he can see him doesn’t really matter. Jack is in his element and they’re working in exacting tandem. This is the most extensive contact Pitch has felt with another being (that hasn’t involved fighting) in his life. As he combs Jack’s glittering wake for all the people he’s harmed, he can feel his power growing. This wave that Jack has started pelts the surface of the Earth and captivates it, holds still its breath before Pitch rides white water to fill in the cracks where fear should be.
And he can see Jack enjoying the fear the helpless adrenaline, just as well as him, once he takes notice of it. That first second, first taste, is pleasure in his work before the light in him (the majority of him, Pitch is reminded) quashes the beauty that once glared through. Jack doesn’t feel remorse, but he doesn’t feel good about hurting kids, either. The cold isn’t something he can take back, as storms persist for several days, but Jack does something strange, something Pitch hasn’t seen, or at least noticed, him do.
He isolates himself.
Holed up in a cave on a rocky coast in Newfoundland, he seals off the bay with crashing ice floes and a wicked blizzard. Not even a spirit could navigate it, but then, Pitch isn’t a spirit.
Jack talks to himself plenty, but for these few days he is silent, and Pitch can feel the fear creeping in, building on morals which restrict his nature and place taboos on his art.
They were afraid of you.
They had a right to be.
You’ve killed again.
Jack drags himself into a punishing loop and pulls his hood tight over his head. Pitch watches from a corner of the cave, shadows fat and dark off the fears of all the children, off Jack’s greatest gift yet to the world and feels thankful that he took part in this boy. That his hatred has sown something other than his own damnation on this miserable rock. Jack, by now, has heard of him, but they’ve never interacted that the boy would remember. Pitch thinks it’s time to make his entrance, time to claim whatever his stake is in Jack Frost, but the fear in the cave shifts, and his shadows drink heavily of it.
His gaze is sharp as a whimper echoes in the cold chamber, eyes clawing into Jack’s huddled back and willing him to turn, to prove he’s something to be proud of; something Pitch would even admit relation to.
But Jack remains shivering on the floor, not cold, only weeping. Weeping. The disgust rises before Pitch can announce himself and he’s grateful for it. He files through Jack’s fears, edging closer to his shadow to delve a little deeper; see if there is anything that he can correct.
I don’t want to hurt anyone.
I don’t want to be alone.
I don’t know why I’m here.
For such an energetic spirit, Jack is unrepentantly full of don’ts. Pitch is mostly bored with him by the time he nears the boy’s shadow, but the second he touches it, it’s removed from him. Jack has flipped, chest heaving in panic and staff raised. With tears on his cheeks and shaking knees, he’s not the most threatening of opponents. But he peers unabashedly into the darkness smothering the cave, shadow pressed tight to the wall; isolated as much as himself.
His voice is even hoarser than Pitch remembers. Can he age?
“I know you’re there,”
Unconvincing. Pitch nearly scoffs, but maintains his silence. Corporeal form comes without thinking and he crosses his arms in annoyance. Jack has five seconds to become interesting before he leaves; to be worthy of his attendance.
The boy feels at the wall less as he edges deeper into the black of the cave. His feet know to avoid the sharp rocks and crevasses that populate the floor, even though he couldn’t possibly see back here. The edges of Pitch’s robe sizzle in anticipation. The shadows? Is he being led?
Jack’s posture, too, changes. He begins to relax, the darker it gets, when most would suffocate or panic. He’s not at home in the dark, but clearly wise to it. He’s not afraid of what lingers there because nothing has ever pursued Jack Frost. Pitch is agitated and wants his fear to return. He stays right where he is as the boy steps nimbly closer. A hand reaches out and Pitch doesn’t know whether to fixate on that or Jack’s rising heartbeat, his treacherously calm face. The eyes are unseeing but the fingers can tell. Soft skin touches his wrist, and Pitch is stiller than he’s been in his life. Mouth frozen shut before it could smirk.
Jack stalls, hand now trembling as it wanders. He bites his cheek and clutches his staff tightly. Lips a dark purple, teeth marks evident, he opens his mouth to speak, but his breath cuts off and his jaw hangs limp in shock.
The robe hugs him, as always, clinging to his flesh and trying to enter it. But his skin is more resistant, and Pitch realizes that his hands are coated in a light sheen of ice. Teardrops. The robe is pushed back even as it sends out tendrils to join with him, and irritated by its fruitless insistence, Pitch disintegrates the sleeve and lets Jack explore. His skin is much hotter and the ice melts where it touches him, the softness of his young flesh scintillating. Fingers climb lightly down his wrist, tickling as they brush against his nails and draw back in shock. Before he can read it, the exploration resumes. Jack’s grip on his staff is more anxious than battle-ready; a security blanket, and his touches grow bolder by the second. The whole of his hand wraps around the grey limb, brow furrowing when his fingers can’t quite fit around the muscle. Pitch feels a little pride flare in him and the shadows taste his excitement. It’s increasingly difficult to keep them away from Jack, and Jack’s delectable shadow.
More of his sleeve drops away in anticipation of touch, ripping soundlessly as the search glides upwards. Jack marvels at the heat of living flesh, something he’s never felt, and experiments by trying to cast ice over it. Pitch stops himself from hissing, exhilarated by the patterns Jack grows on his skin. They evaporate quickly, more delicate than the ice on those tender hands.
The boy is at his elbow when it seems to strike how tall this other being is. He lets out a happy rush of air, a sharp sighing giggle,
“Wow,”
The anonymity of the exchange has so far served to protect them. Jack’s hand wanders higher, head tilting up, but he pauses before he conquers the shoulder, and Pitch unwillingly feels nervous that their game has ended.
But Jack always surprises him.
The hand draws lazily to the left, sweeping through the shadows on his chest and drawing across his breast. This time, Pitch does hiss, snatching the little wrist as it bolts for the safety of the staff.
The fear in the air is fleeting, and he’s shocked to find no struggle in the arm he grips. Wonderment nearly bowls him over, Jack’s hope exploding into elation at being touched back. The little hand closes shakily over his forearm and he drops his shadows unconsciously as Jack steps closer, the cold of his body and breath tempering the fire blazing in his chest.
“You… at the pond…”
Jack strains to look up, unable to see Pitch’s conflicted stare. He looks like a child who’s found his way home. He tearfully searches the void for a face, staff cradled at his shoulder while his free hand reaches blindly, worshipfully, for Pitch’s cheek. Perhaps that’s a little too far. Pitch dissipates and Jack’s existential fears jump, that maybe he’s gone through someone again, that he’ll always be alone in this world and really, he comes from nowhere. He lets out a short, panicked whine as he darts around the back of the cave, toes slamming into boulders on the floor as he grabs at shadows. A few rush in before Pitch pulls back, wincing as part of him is severed and flees again into Jack. Drawing his robes close, he shoots into a shadow in the deepest part of the cave, listening to Jack clamor helplessly after him. A desolate scream tugs through the portal, evaporating in his own cavern, chasing desperately after him.
-
Something is missing. No, more than missing.
He feels punctured.
Realization dawns slowly, taking years for each emptiness to be discovered. Parts of his being seem to have disappeared entirely without his knowing, and it increasingly pressures his own existential woes. The severance of the shadows as they pour into Jack, desperate for a new body and not only that. Something about Jack is different. There’s something in him that the shadows need; complement. Pitch doesn’t catch himself watching the boy until it’s already become habit. Snow falls more often at night, and his excuses for blessing children with wintry nightmares ignore the fact that he’s capable of doing his job apart from Jack. Truly, he has no excuse when they’re flying over the Atlantic Ocean, with not a soul in sight to bless with despair. But, to separate…
Jack’s temper is a beautiful thing. Pitch is sure this dull young planet has never known a being so mercurial, so crafty, and so willing to please. Thinking he’s left the children of Europe with a pleasant surprise for the morning, Jack skates over and around the tossing Atlantic waves. Pitch flows easily in his glittering trail that night, filling the tides of delight with enough fear that the presence of Jack’s gift will be twice as welcomed, following a rough sleep.
As a wisp, Jack is an artist, dedicated to his work. But as a personality, he’s a true force of nature.
Following him through the crests is too messy, and riding the nightmares far above too impersonal, so Pitch settles underneath the waves, gliding silently through the dark, crashing waters beneath Jack’s nimble footsteps, watching his shimmering dance from below the stage. Each touch of graceful feet illuminates the darkness, sending a cascade of ice crystals to melt, down below. Jack chills the whole ocean as he journeys, until the crystals remain and shine in his path. He seems almost in a trance, darting along the current to a quick rhythm, sliding naturally by black towers of waves as they topple into whitewater, sylvan feet just brushing the water every few miles.
No moon, tonight, but the aurorae make him more beautiful than the tsar could ever dream. Pitch enjoys their journey, even when the cold of the sea becomes piercing, and he surrenders his body to the shadows to move deftly in the rhythm of Jack’s steps. The waves rise as they progress, out of time with the beat they had established.
Jack should have seen it coming, but Pitch can’t think fast enough to fault him. His actions are quicker than his mind.
The water thunders down onto his tiny white body, thrusting him well below the surface. He doesn’t fight in the slightest, whipped into too many directions to gather himself. Even the fingers usually clenching his staff slacken and nearly drop it. When Pitch catches up to him, shadows extending to transport him, they zap in all at once. He shrieks from the pain of being ripped apart, Jack’s spasms halted by the water as shadows slide under his skin and writhe happily in their new home. A portal opens in self-defense and Pitch summons those lost in the current to fall in, clawing at his arms as he assesses the damage. The transition is too immediate; from the locked, suffocating walls of the ocean to the emptiness of his lair, he’s left reeling and gasping up seawater on the stone floor. His mistake makes itself known before he can reassemble himself, and with the first sound, he collapses back into the shade of the cavern.
Jack.
Bent over and coughing, drenched to the bone and thin enough to snap. Pitch calms as fear floods the cave, nearly shaking the cages with its strength. He gets a taste of what Jack was, whether or not he would want to know.
Jack, I’m scared,
I know, I know, but you’re gonna be alright.
One…
Two…
Sobbing. Confusion. Jack makes a mess of himself on the ground as Pitch watches, pretending he’s not transfixed. Pretending the only thing he’s capable of in this world isn’t just watching. Jack doesn’t know why he’s crying, doesn’t hear the ancient, dead words drifting through his fear. A sacrifice for the sake of a girl; a familiar scream as the darkness closes in. Pitch’s head aches and the shadows lash out hungrily for Jack’s curled form. The staff is some yards away, tugged through the portal by a force he’s not sure he wants to claim.
He doesn’t bother inspecting the gnarled branch or its odd black flecks. He knows his influence on Jack Frost.
After a few more minutes of choking, chest rattling from the pressure of his panic, Jack finally manages a look around. His face is a sight to be seen; mucus and tears mixed with seawater, ice catching in his hair and growing in a sheen over his skin. One second he’s sniveling and the next he’s shining with all the beauty of the Fae. Truly the most mercurial being, by nature, that Pitch has ever had the fortune of witnessing. Consistently.
And now in his home.
Gathering himself a bit more, Jack gets to his knees, huffing around some stray saltwater in his throat. Shaking hands grab at the darkness, Pitch sucking in a tiny breath as the shadows pull close, whispering to them in their voice to settle. It might have been a mistake.
Jack’s eyes dart to him and up toward the ceiling, trying to make sense of the moonless night and the only voice that’s ever spoken to him.
“… Are you him?”
Face nearly blank with wonder, he edges toward the source of the voice.
“I was… in the Atlantic,” he searches the empty, looming cavern, the stark shafts of light, “you saved me.”
Technically incorrect. It just sort of happened. Jack continues as if he can’t hear the painful contention raging in Pitch’s skull, the need to remove him and licks wounds he can’t remember gaining. Meanwhile, Jack only inches closer, unaware of his torment.
“And in the cave, you,” he stands with a dangerous wobble, weak without his staff but unable to see it. He smiles. Pitch’s whole existence pauses because he smiles.
It’s blinding.
“You were there, too, weren’t you? It must have been you.”
From this distance, Pitch can feel the darkness under that translucent skin, unwillingly tugs it closer to him as he collects the shadows of his robe and Jack takes a gasping step forward, eyes widening and hand clutching his chest. He blinks and advances, tremulous smile fighting the slow dread in his heart. A wandering hand reaches out too eagerly, reigning in with embarrassment that should not charm him in the slightest. The smile never fades, piercing him just as brutally as the temperature of the water. Jack is too close and his form too solid. It’s happening again. Pitch bares his torso completely as he anticipates the reverent touches, Jack’s strange grace bewitching as he nears and drags fingers carefully up, up, until they’re resting on his chest.
Pitch bites his tongue and nearly groans. Jack sighs, half-laughing and full of wonder,
“It is you,”
The hand leaves and Pitch grabs at it, yanking him closer. Jack’s pulse hikes astronomically and his breathing is as quick and light as his footsteps. Pitch relishes the contact of his skin, shadows long divorced from him rushing up in ecstatic greeting, threading fluidly through Jack’s nature. His hands wander the white flesh, pushing a waterlogged shirt up slender hips as the cloak drops. Jack shudders as he’s manhandled, unsure of what to do but too grateful to make a peep if it would mean endangering this moment. Pitch registers that part of him wants to die from the humiliation of pursuing a being of Earth with such fervor, but it’s fleeting against the power of Jack’s shivering limbs as they’re bared, the crooked grin trembling, weighted with awe.
Shadows are not individual beings. Pitch cannot see each one clamoring through Jack’s skin to greet him, but he can sense them, and watch how they command the boy’s movements. They have always had some influence. Perhaps he goes too far, uniting with them. Jack gasps at the thumb ghosting across his lip, arms straining to keep him from pulling back in confusion. Pitch holds his cheek instead, and leads him gently forward. Into one arm, then the other…
Their chests touch and Pitch has to stop before folding his hands around Jack’s bony back, reeling from the sensation of the first embrace in his immortal life. Jack is in similar straits, and before he knows it, they’re both smiling, both overcome with awesome glee.
“Wow,” Jack breathes, hands flexing as they draw slowly around Pitch’s torso. Pitch arches, flush against the cool, dripping breadth of another body. It’s as if Jack has been reborn again from the water, freezing and small in his arms, though now his cheeks are rosy with uncommon heat. When they’re wrapped entirely around each other, he breathes again, voice heavy with something like tears,
“Wow, you’re,” he shakes, leaning into Pitch’s arms and quivering harder as he’s accepted, “You’re real. You’re really real.”
Pitch’s existence flares with it. Spirits may not count in belief, but just hearing it does wonders for the soul. His hand creeps up Jack’s neck, pulling his head gently to his breast, fingers winding through the icy white locks. He tilts his head down, arms hugging tighter from the force of the moment, and speaks through the shadows,
You’re real.
Jack sobs out then muffles himself, fears shuddering with too many transformations. He burrows under Pitch’s sharp chin, back shaking vulnerably as long, sharp fingers tense possessively over him. He bows into them, pressing the whole of his body against Pitch’s, ignorant of his nudity. Pitch, to his credit, is doing an excellent job of keeping himself together. Jack’s tears and breaths make his chest slick, something he’s never felt because he’s never comforted someone before. While that is mostly unpleasant, their embrace calms something in him. Coming so close to old shadows, parted only by the thin barrier of Jack’s soul, Pitch feels more complete than he has in decades. The fear Jack provides invigorates him, turns his breaths long and deep.
After a few minutes, he tries to push Jack away to another chorus of fears, and each imagined rejection is so powerful and so terrifying, he’s stunned back into holding the boy as tightly as he can, letting the floor disintegrate and whispering shadows in his ear when panicked hands clench eagerly for his support. They fall through deeper chambers, fearlings stirring in their descent and looking in on the luminous body.
Jack doesn’t glow like Nightlight, can’t soothe anyone just by existing, but he catches any light thrown at him and magnifies it; twists it into something new and dangerous. Just as he magnifies the shadow; the two, however, are distorted by his own center. They are as essential to his being as they are infused in it. And perhaps it’s this danger that attracts Pitch, this instability and stubbornness, how whenever he moves, Jack grips a little tighter, fears tied into desperation and hissing low among the shadows,
Just another minute.
Just one more.
You’ll never have to see me again.
Please.
Please.
Please.
Their fall slows as they reach the coldest part of the cave, Jack’s staff long since devoured by the shadows. Pitch glides into an alcove, arms circled strongly around the thin body nestled against him, and gently guides him to lie down. Unsure of what else he can do, he twines sand artfully in his fingers, and rests them peacefully on Jack’s head,
You may sleep.
And Jack slumbers.