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As he moved out of the darkness, the shadows he took with him billowed behind like a velvet cloak of night. He showed a ghastly smile full of jagged teeth, unable to hide his terrible joy at the sight before him. She could not sense his presence, he was certain; she was so caught up in her book she did not notice him gliding towards where she was curled up in her window seat, a quilt draped over her lap. Her lips curled up at whatever she was reading, one finger softly touching each word that absorbed her attention.
The innocent, blissful obliviousness she was in lifted his spirits. There was much less joy to be found in frightening people who were already in a depressive state, after all.
“Haven’t seen you in awhile, Your Royal Darkness,” the girl said, breaking the silence Pitch had been so sure he kept, and making him stop in his tracks, startled. Her grin broadened as her face turned his way, though her fingertip never missed a single bump on the page she read. “What? Didn’t think I’d hear you, huh?”
He refrained from letting out a petulant sigh. He never let anyone see him lose his cool demeanor if he could help it, even though it was not really in Anna's nature to judge him harshly.
He would often make her aware of his presence with a quiet word or sound out of courtesy, but that always wasn’t needed. Sometimes she would hear him enter her room anyway, even when he took care to glide noiselessly over to her. Each time he entered her room at night, tried to be quieter and quieter, and almost every time she heard him. They had turned it into a sort of game without calling it a game. She wouldn't tell him how she could sense his arrival. (And to his ego's consternation, sometimes she managed to make him jump.)
The only times she didn’t know he was there was when she was too absorbed in a book, writing in her diary, busily listening to the sounds of the kingdom she wasn’t allowed to visit settling down for the evening out on her balcony, or learning music on her viola, a hobby she once happily told him her austere sister had finally allowed her to take up a few years ago. It was possible, he thought, that even an ice queen like Elsa was not totally immune to Anna’s wide eyes and begging. He found himself unable to fight it, sometimes.
“Were you even really reading that?” He asked, glancing at her book. He did not read Braille, but knew Anna was fond of juicy romances and swashbuckling adventures, and guessed it was one of the two.
“Yes,” she told him, pretending to sound affronted. She placed a bookmark inside it and set the book on a nearby table. “I wasn’t really listening for you. I play fair. Unlike you."
“It’s not unfair if it’s simply in my nature to walk through shadows soundlessly.”
“Don’t you smirk at me,” Anna told him in her stern monarch voice. She pointed at him like a schoolteacher catching a naughty student. “I know that smug tone in your voice.”
He was smiling, but it was a rare occasion where he was not being smug at someone else’s expense. He didn’t even realize he had a smile on his face. It was only how she amused him, her confidence around him; a total absence of fear in her eyes, when he usually visited her. Anna had not told him about how she got that way until years after he’d met her as a little girl. Just an accident, she had said.
He had spent enough time in Arendelle to know Elsa was a magic user who could manipulate ice the way Pitch manipulated shadows; he knew even before Anna had told him. He knew the sisters had played as children and something had gone wrong. He could sense a lot of fear coming from Elsa’s wing in the castle, and imagined she might be struggling with guilt, if this ridiculous way of protecting Anna by never letting her leave the castle said anything. It almost made him laugh how little the queen knew her sister compared to him, the monster under Anna’s bed. Anna got bruises almost weekly from all the running around the castle she did when Elsa wasn’t nearby, swearing the castle staff to secrecy.
He never pushed her to talk about her injury, which seemed to be the one thing she felt uneasy discussing. The only physical evidence was the right eye that was significantly and icily bluer than the left turquoise one. Every other topic under the sun she was only too happy to offer up or ask his opinion about. How lonely she must be to find such solace and entertainment from the likes of him. That was, perhaps, the most amusing part of her. And a part that pained him to think about.
“You’re being quiet again,” she noted, and stood up to walk over to him. “Are you staring at me?”
“What if I am?” he retorted, but she looked slightly amused, not offended.
“You’re always quiet now. You visit me less.” She stopped about an arm’s length away. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m the Boogeyman,” was Pitch’s dry answer. “I have a world of children to keep frightened. That, Your Highness, means I am very, very busy.” It was only half a lie. He had made time to visit her many times ever since she was small, sometimes as much as twice a month. As of late, he'd felt troubled at the idea of being here too much, yet it pained him to stay in his bleak underground palace with only the Fearlings for company.
She wasn’t put off by the lack of warmth in his tone, but the grin had vanished from her face as she tucked a loose lock of hair behind an ear. “You never sit by me or touch me, either. I mean, you haven’t for months. Did I… do something?” Her voice had lost its steadiness.
That took him aback. “No,” was all he could think to say. What words could he use to explain why he felt the need to stay away, yet would always naturally be drawn back by her? He didn’t even want to think about it himself.
She chewed her lip, icy eyes staring just past him with worry on her face. “It’s just that… I already scared off Elsa forever, and I… I thought I did something to upset you, too-”
“Elsa chose to stay away because she feels responsible for you,” he interrupted, unable to keep the sharpness out of his voice. “You didn’t do anything to her. Or to me.” And neither of us deserve you, came along a thought, though he couldn't tell if it was Elsa or himself he was truly angry at.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, making herself smile unconvincingly. “I won’t talk about it again.” It was what she always did to get rid of any tension in the room with anything, apologize and appease. It grated him.
“Don’t,” he made his tone lighter and cut what short distance there was between them and stood only a foot away from her, which didn’t make the tightness in his chest relax, but he did it anyway. “Don’t.”
He didn’t know what he meant to do, he only wanted her to stop acting like she wasn’t worthy of other people’s time and attention when it was the other way around entirely. And now, something in the air between them had shifted; Anna’s eyes held a mix of concern and caution in them. She slowly lifted up her hand and reached out, finding his shoulder.
“You never get so close to me,” she said, looking up at him, with a promise of her bright smile returning to her lips.
“How could you tell I’m taller?” He was still, almost afraid to make her stop and back away, though he felt certain her touch rendered him immobile even if he had wanted to move.
“Your voice is waaaaay up there. Like, it sounded like it came from the ceiling when I was little.” She giggled. “It still does.” He felt a wave of unbidden relief course through him, breaking tension he had not known filled him.
Delicately, she ran her hand from his shoulder to his chest, right over his heart.
“You’re always so cold,” she gave a little shiver, but did not remove her hand. “Your heart is pounding.”
He knew it. He couldn’t stop it, though he willed it to.
"Is that really why you don't visit much anymore?" She asked, looking up at him. "Or were you just trying to spare my feelings?"
The Nightmare King has no feelings, much less spares them, is what he might have said, had he enough sense left.
"No," he answered, somehow compelled by the physical contact to speak truthfully. “I just…” He took some comfort in the fact that she could not see him; he wouldn’t have been able to speak at all had he felt her scrutiny right now. He didn’t want to let her in, but neither did he want to be the other cause of rejection in her life.
He groped for the right words, wondering how to tell her that her presence was too much to be around anymore without making it sound as bad as that. He almost spoke again, when she simply wrapped her arms around his waist. Not for the first time in that short hour, Pitch Black was struck dumb. She had hugged him as a little girl, and only stopped around the middle of her teenage years.
She was young, yes, but no longer a child at nineteen. That was the crux of the issue. He raised a hand to touch the burnt-red hair turned to honey in the light of the waning moon, looking at how it flowed over her shoulders in thick waves, but stopped short of touching it. His long fingers curled into a fist and he lowered his hand.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Anna told him, snuggling into his chest, though she had complained of his cold just moments ago. “I’m just happy to see you again.”
“You’re not a child anymore,” he spoke up, surprising Anna into looking up at him. “That’s why. I don’t… I don’t know how to be around you anymore.” There was no simpler, painless way to say the rest, so he didn’t. Pitch was not used to lacking a way to express himself and bluntly telling people what was what. It was unsettling that one person should have such an awkward effect on him. Him, the King of Nightmares. The Boogeyman who should be frightening her, and no doubt would, if she’d been able to see him when he'd first come to the castle years ago.
She stood, waiting for him to say more, though. Instead of answering at first, he reached out once more and ran two fingers through her hair. He had never touched it before. He'd never had any desire to up until the atmosphere they shared changed back when he realized he felt differently about her. Her hair felt like silk against his rough, cold skin, and she didn’t show any sign of discomfort to be touched by him like that. A blush crept up into her cheeks, and she slowly released him from her hug, but reached out for his hand.
“Well, I hope you do stay around me. For as long as you can. And I hope you… I mean, if… I just…” she made a frustrated sound. At least that’s two of us who can’t spit a word out tonight,he thought wryly, in spite of it all.
But she sighed and said at last, “For what it’s worth… I don’t see you the way I did as a child, either.”
He realized he wasn’t breathing, and at her words, was finally able to inhale air. The dam was finally broken. Wits returned to him, he lifted her hand to his lips, and after a long moment, said, “Then… given that I am in the business of scaring children, that’s a relief for both of us.” He felt the corners of his mouth lift back into a smile.
A laugh sang out of her. It would be different between them now, and forever, he knew. A heaviness was lifted from his heart.
“Come on,” she ordered him cheerfully, tightening her hold on his hand with enthusiasm. She hopped in place, and the sight of her spirits lifted again, admittedly, lifted his own. “I’ve been reading alllll day. Let’s go sit on the roof and talk more.”
At his lady’s command, he pulled her into his embrace, wrapped them both in a shroud of darkness. He would stay at her side up there forever if she asked, a lone black gargoyle eternally protecting her. And he would be happy to just listen to her talk again. He had missed the sound of her voice.