Chapter Text
Jack ghosts over the entrance in the Earth every time he passes through Burgess. He doesn’t have the will to appear to the children, barely managing a brief snowstorm before tucking into the wood to be alone.
Jamie grows distant as he seems to disappear, and finally stops seeing him altogether. The feeling strikes him while flying, sudden and quick. There is no warning, no fanfare for his pain. He feels Jamie’s belief slip from his heart and screams, losing hold on the wind and tumbling to the ground, landing hard on the ice below. The air is knocked out of him and he can’t even struggle. His mouth cracks open in a soundless gasp, body convulsing in slow motion on the forest floor. Tears freeze over his cheeks and he clutches his chest once he finds the strength. As he slowly regains control, he curls into himself, guarding his belly, hands creeping under his sweater to feel the soft, flat skin. His sobs are sparse and choked, back shaking as he grips the cold, lifeless flesh.
His sorrows are loud enough to summon company. The shadows lengthen in his anguish, flicking at the edge of his vision.
Pitch slips from behind a tree, the darkness lethargic around him; exhausted. His form is out of place in the wonderland around them. The world is quiet but for Jack’s crying, and Pitch stays restrained at too far a distance, deafened and numbed by the broken sound.
“Well?” he asks lowly. His voice is hoarse, eyes too tired to carry their usual fire. If anything, he looks like he’s about to collapse. Jack buries his face in his knees and holds his stomach tighter, sobs soft. He tries to make himself smaller but Pitch growls,
“What are you doing, Jack?”
Then softer, tired again,
“Why do you keep coming here?”
Jack lifts his face enough to look up, eyes shadowed and wet. His cheeks are sharp and tinged purple, not round and pink. He looks like a dead boy curled and gone to sleep. The thought tugs at Pitch and he wants to hide, to leave. He won’t face this now.
The voice is cracking, wrecked, but he still aches to hear it.
“I can’t feel him!” Jack sobs and the need is beautifully clear, and Pitch so wants to acknowledge him.
Both of them have felt loss. Both of them have searched for something more and found only pain. Pitch turns to leave, but his pace is slow as he drifts back toward the frozen maw. He looks over his shoulder, and Jack has already folded in again.
“You may follow.”
The shadows help to tug him up, but he still can’t stand, so Pitch backtracks and lifts him carefully into his arms. The weight is wrong; he’s too light, frail enough to be damaged. But Pitch holds him close and pretends he hasn’t changed, that nothing's happened. He tucks the boy’s head under his chin and murmurs over the crunch of ice,
“It’s alright, Jack, you’re alright.”
Bunny is a spirit of Spring, of fertility and new life. Jack couldn’t help but feel a bit out of place in the Warren, even if he did his part to freeze the dying pools as kids went tumbling by. The warmth was a bit much for him, and he lingered in the shade, more often than not. His ice sculptures didn’t melt instantly, there. Being the Guardian of Fun, he couldn’t help but joke around with it, and put on the poshest, most arrogant accent he can when he sneaked up behind Bunny in the dark.
“Hello, old friend.”
Bunny about jumped out of his own skin. Fur.
After a day of lounging down in the green, escaping the summer heat above, Jack wondered about his predicament. The Guardian of Fun was the most exciting one of all; the most lively. Winter was the best season, hands down, and the kids loved every minute of it. The few kids that believed in him, even more so. He wanted to spend all the time he can with them, but he only had a few months.
He felt guilty, wasting his time visiting other Guardians. They certainly didn’t go out of their way to see him. The new guy. And when his season was furthest from his grasp, he felt entirely displaced. The southern hemisphere simply didn’t have the population he needs. Feeling welcomed in all corners of the world seemed to be a plus of being a Guardian, but not one he’d had the pleasure of experiencing. Winter, however much he loved it, certainly has its negative connotations.
How many kids have been lost to a blizzard on an egg hunt? Gotten frostbite from opening a Christmas present? Gone to sleep for the Tooth Fairy and frozen to death?
Jack has killed more people, mostly by accident, in his 300 years than several wars put together. In his effort to bring joy and beauty he inevitably, unconsciously, murders.
He did try to be gentle, but the blizzards come to him by nature, and nature is impossible to control. His desires to be seen, to be acknowledged, led to some very miserable situations for humans, he would admit, but they can’t know a loneliness of three hundred years. They can’t know the emptiness of his isolation, the fact that he couldn’t hold Jamie for long without making him shiver and pull away. None of the Guardians could ever understand his laments.
None of them could understand going without family for so long.
And Jamie, Jamie was brilliant, Jamie was his light, his first friend, his first believer.
But Jamie was human, and humans are very delicate.
Jack wanted something of his own. Not a palace or minions or sentient eggs. He wanted someone to talk to him where no one else could, who would chase him to Antarctica or mountain peaks and not tremble from the cold. Whom he could hold and comfort without fear of harm.
He wouldn’t say his Guardianhood alienated other Winter spirits, but they had no interest in him prior to it, and it inspired no allegiance.
Most of the spirit world, in fact, seems to hold a similar opinion of the club: if they’re not a part of it, it doesn’t faze them. And so his isolation was carved deeper.
He asked Bunny, one day, with two daisies over his eyes to block out the light, if a wisp can make new wisps.
“Only Manny can do that.”
Jack sat up, the flowers falling, laced with filigree ice,
“But some were here before. How did we reproduce without him?”
Bunny didn’t blink,
“… S’not been done since before Manny got here.”
“So it’s possible?”
“I…” He seemed unwilling to answer, afraid to disappoint, but he scratched his neck and thumped his leg, “I don’t know, Jack. Only life can beget life.”
Jack was quiet, his smile losing its usual gleam. He toyed with the daises and plucked their brittle petals.
“Oh. Yeah. I forgot.”
He wanted very much to forget.
Soliciting someone like Eros or Ishtar to help him may have been smarter, but Jack simply wasn’t that type. While he gobbled up friends whenever they come, pursuing anyone so old, so hard to reach, was a little unnerving. At the time, he wasn’t even sure how to go about it. Which is why his next choice, while surely not the most appropriate, seemed the best.
He flew back to Burgess, left a snowstorm at Jamie’s door, and prowled through the howling woods for the gap in the Earth.
Pitch wouldn’t mind a few questions, at least. After the obligatory pleasantries.
The wind can’t be summoned below the surface, so Jack fell as gracefully as he could into the darkness, lips thin as he tumbled further and further down. The world assembled itself around him, the darkness absolute and curious. The cavern lurched fully into being as he touched down gently on white stone, smoky edges of the rock swirling into view. The caves had never been so vague in their shape. He remembered Pitch being all edges, stark and defiant. The new realm around him was ethereal; more suggestive of form than solid at all.
He guarded his staff out of habit as shadows began stirring on the walls.
“You’re holding your breath. How flattering.”
Jack tensed and tried to squash his frown, taking a short breath to prove Pitch wrong.
“Don’t be formal on my account. Please, relax.” The stone in front of him swirled with darkness and he tucked his foot back, standing straighter as shadows rose from the floor. Pitch was as bony as he’d last seen him, but the hem of his robe floated off and dissipated, giving the appearance of a trail. The sleeves tapered from fabric into shadow, the line between indefinite. He was barely holding himself together. Jack, unfortunately, could understand.
Pitch lifted his chin, hands clasped in front with a disinterested sneer,
“Well?”
Jack forgot to speak. The older spirit lofted a brow as his voice finally crackled into being. It felt faraway, almost useless,
“I want to know something,” he said, trying to be firm as he stared up under his eyelashes. Pitch frowned at his sincerity and crossed his arms,
“How perfectly suspicious,” he smiled, lifting an airy hand, “Go on. Ask away.”
Jack kneaded his staff and opened his mouth, but the words were clunky and hoarse,
“You’re…” he struggled valiantly, but the idea embarrassed him, “You’re older than Manny. Right?”
Pitch’s sneer wavered between angry and entertained. Jack had to squint to see him right. His features blurred as he moved, as if he weren’t really there.
“I have always been, Jack. Is that all?”
“No,”
Jack replied too quickly. He said the first thing that came to mind,
“Have you ever had a kid?” The question was earnest, and Jack needed to know. If Pitch could do it, he could do it.
He wasn’t sure if he’d ever asked a crueler thing. For a brief second, Pitch looked broken, stunned; as though Jack had just stabbed him and licked the blood from the dagger. Alarmingly fast, his expression quieted and his guard went up. The edges of his cloak snapped more insistently into reality, laid flat on the stone floor.
“Why do you ask?”
The moment of truth.
“I, I want to know if it’s possible. If you’ve done it. If spirits can do it.”
Pitch regarded him much more carefully than when he’d come in, arrogance and parlor tricks scaled down to something minute.
“Under proper conditions, yes. We can reproduce.” His tone came back to normal as he prodded nastily, “Why, Jack. Have you found someone to settle down with, then? The perfect fairytale ending?”
Jack blinked,
“Do I need someone?”
He hadn’t given good thought to the idea of bringing someone else in on it. Snow bunnies and ice dragons simply formed at his will, and he at Manny’s. Pitch was elusive in his explanation, distancing himself with a few steps toward the bridge.
“It would take an extraordinary amount of power to form a new, complete being. Shadows, alone, require effort you’ve never known.”
Ignoring the insult, Jack followed him and continued, excited to have found a possible end to his goal,
“So you have done it? If there were two spirits, could they make a complete spirit? Would it have to grow up?” Too trigger-happy to care, he fired questions one after another at Pitch, each more breathless and demanding than the last. Pitch turned slowly, faced him fully, a wicked smile creeping over grey lips,
“You want a child?”
“I mean, well, if that’s what it would be,” Jack stumbled, cheeks purple and knuckles white from the thrill. He looked up, stars in his eyes, “Yeah,” he said, panting a little, too happy, “I guess I want a kid.”
Pitch stared him down as if he were the craziest, funniest thing he’d ever seen, then pivoted and began skulking across the bridge.
“Then all you’ll have to do is find a living partner to contribute.”
Jack’s smile faded and his heart shuddered to a stop,
“Living?”
Pitch glanced over his shoulder,
“Oh my, yes. Wisps can carry, but they cannot impregnate. You would have to find a human, or a god, who would deem you worth the fifteen minutes.”
“You’re not a wisp.”
That stumped Pitch. Jack, if he were a bit more adept, may have noticed the evil shiver that crawled through the shadows. But he pursued him ecstatically, ignorant of the consequences.
“I will not take part in a child, thank you.”
“You don’t have to. Just help me. You’ll never have to see me again.”
He understood Jack’s desperation. Jack didn’t. He faced the boy with a smug grin, a feral cat coming upon his prey,
“Well. Since you asked so nicely,”
The processes were varied, with dangers and benefits accompanying each. Jack had expected some sort of incantation, a squealing goat nailed to the floor with Pitch circling him, painting his body with symbols in its blood. Well, perhaps not that satanic, but he hadn’t thought it would appear so simple. Pitch addressed him clinically, as if he didn’t really want to be there. He told him to stand his ground, that what he was going to do was going to hurt worse than having someone walk through him. Jack could hardly fathom it. Pitch standing in front of him, hand raised, was the last thing he could remember.
A strange crawling feeling, like being caught in a hive, overtook him. He shook off the shadows creeping upon him and saw Pitch looming above, clearly irritated. The pain had knocked him out. Desire for new life was easy enough, but granting his wish would apparently require much more than he’d wagered.
The usual sensation of being ripped apart, sure, but then Pitch had gone and tried to put something there; to replace something in him. Everything under his skin felt charred and immobile. Mouth dry, tongue tight and teeth clenched, he could barely gasp the words out,
“What… was that?”
Pitch’s form was less sure, once more, the fringe of his being filtering in and out of existence. Truly, he didn’t want to be there, but his tone was quite bored, and all too clear in Jack’s ringing head.
“I thought this might happen. This way is too difficult. A shame.”
Jack grimaced, picking himself up, piece by piece. He wondered if he could leave anything behind; being fragmented always left a spirit wondering.
“I can do it.”
Pitch’s noncommittal hum pricked his ears and turned his grimace to a frown.
“Well, then, let’s get to it.”
Without warning, he plunged his hand into Jack’s belly, pale fingers immediately tearing at his wrist and robe. Jack was delirious from the pain, the emptiness; Pitch’s own effort to complete it. The boy’s legs failed him and Pitch let him fall, flexing his hand with an agitated energy. If Jack wanted it, so be it. But he would damn well take it like a Guardian, whatever that meant.
So Pitch stalked up again, and shivered at how Jack tried to crawl away.