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“What are you doing?” Jack asked Pitch. Pitch was now holding a piece of Jack’s crook in each hand, looking at it oddly.
“Trying to figure out how you mended it the last time.” The bad dreams still came, but Pitch knew Jack was starting to feel less disconnected from the world. He interacted with the Guardians more, the emotions seeming more genuine. Still, Pitch wasn’t sure how whole Jack was without his staff. Many days had passed since Jack’s first attempt at getting any sort of rest, and Pitch was concerned about the condition of his arm.
“It took willpower, which I am in short supply of right now.”
“I can tell.” The wood did not react to Pitch the way it would’ve if intact. He remembered how the staff had become laced with shadow instead of frost the day he’d broken it. That day in Antarctica. Not a pleasant day to recall, but he tended to remember small details in spite of himself. “I wonder . . . .”
“No. No wondering. I’ll fix it when I feel strong enough.” His arm was still in a sling. It would be a little longer before Tooth allowed him to discard the thing.
“I wonder if that day will come sooner if the staff is repaired.” He looked at Jack, who squinted up at him.
“You have a point.” Jack stood slowly, getting out of bed for the first time. He took a few tentative steps to Pitch, then leaned into the taller man. Pitch set the pieces of the staff down on a table to help Jack stay upright. “Walking is harder than I remember.” Pitch watched Jack reach for the bottom part of the staff and place it in the hand still trapped by the sling. The arm was weak, and Pitch watched a tremor of pain wash through Jack’s body as the boy reached for the top half of the crook. With both pieces in hand, he made an awkward attempt at fitting them together where they had come apart. He focused, and Pitch could feel Jack’s powers surging through the boy as if they were alive and sentient. The Guardian closed his eyes, struggling with the ineptness of his limbs and the still difficult positioning of the pieces when the weaker hand began to slip and lose grip on the bottom part of the staff. Pitch caught it before it really did fall out of Jack’s hand.
What happened next was nothing but a blur to Pitch. A blur and a kick to the chest. There was a moment when the staff flashed at the intersection, Jack’s energy surging through the wood until the frost touched Pitch’s hand. After that initial contact, he saw nothing. He only felt. He felt something inside him, something small yet vital sucked out of him. He was sent staggering into the table, bracing himself against all the points of impact before collapsing on his seat. He grabbed at the section on his chest where he felt like a hammer had been brought down on him. He could not feel Jack. Where was Jack?
“Jack—.”
“Pitch, what happened?!” The boy’s voice came from the other side of the room. Judging from the tone, he’d experienced something similar.
Pitch worked to focus his vision, breathing in deeply in an attempt to settle the hammering in his chest as well as the pain from the kick. “I’m not sure. Shouldn’t you know?”
“How should I know?!” the boy sounded hysterical.
“It’s your twig!” Pitch fought the blurred vision, fought the emptiness that ghosted through him before the void was filled once more. “I think you took something from me.”
“Huh?”
“I think you may have skimmed off some of my power.”
“I did WHAT?!”
“Jack, really . . .,” Pitch’s voice trailed off as he finally focused back on his surroundings and found Jack’s face. His eyes widened, and his heart hammered more. “No . . . .”
“Pitch, what is it? What’s wrong with me?”
“Jack Frost, how do you feel right now?”
“You said my full name. Almost. This can’t be good!” The boy was standing, his staff intact and at his feet. He had full use of his previously broken and shredded arm. He was frenzied, but that was not what Pitch was staring at.
“How. Do. You. Feel. Right. Now?” Pitch couldn’t have made the question clearer if he tried.
“I—.” Jack interrupted himself with a growl as he pulled his hair. “I feel insane! I’m stronger, but my mind—.” He growled again, this time louder. “I can’t! Something’s wrong!”
“Yes. Something is very wrong,” Pitch agreed, realization hitting him full force as he briefly acknowledged the darkness the crook now possessed before returning his focus to Jack’s face.
Because the boy’s irises were turning golden, the sclera of each eye becoming black as pitch while shadows surrounded the eyes themselves. This was not Pitch’s Jack, and that actually terrified Pitch.
Up until a few minutes before, Jack Frost was feeling normal. Now, his mind was being assaulted.
The lights. The lights bothered him. He squinted. He covered his eyes. He pulled his hair, but the humming in his head didn’t stop. It just kept on going. It wouldn’t stop. As if he needed this. As if he needed the humming on top of the faces.
The faces. The faces of the monkey men. His attackers. The perpetrators. They were getting closer. They were relentless. The faces and the humming and the feeling of hands on his wrists wouldn’t go away, wouldn’t leave him alone, the fear. The fear. The fear. It didn’t end. It didn’t stop. It couldn’t stop. He begged it to stop stop STOP!
The lights. He wanted them off, he wanted them off. He wanted dark. Dark was safe. Dark was familiar. Dark meant Pitch and Pitch meant safe and safe meant he wasn’t going to get hurt. This was wrong. This felt so wrong, why did he feel this way? Why was there all this fear but no pain?
The pain had stopped, but the fear remained. Why must it remain? Why couldn’t it go away like the pain? Why were the lights so PAINFUL?!
Hands. He felt them on his face, pulling. Where were they pulling? The hands were burning. They burned his skin, they burned his cheeks, but he liked the pain. He liked this pain, this pain was good, this pain meant safe.
These hands were Pitch’s. That face was Pitch’s. Pitch looked about as scared as he felt. Pitch looked at him. He was looking at him. Pitch saw him. He liked being seen. He liked being seen by Pitch.
And suddenly the humming seemed bearable. The feeling in the rest of his body returned, and he realized his throat was raw. Had he been screaming?
“Listen to me, Jack.” That voice. That voice chased away the fears. He loved that voice. “Pay attention. You need to breathe. Deeply. Follow my lead.” He obeyed. He had no problem obeying that voice. That voice meant safe. Safe meant no harm would befall him. He breathed. He inhaled and exhaled, slowly and deeply. He matched the rhythm. He followed that voice, watched that face. He loved that face. “Jack, are you in there?”
“I’m yours,” he said. They slipped out. The words. The words just slipped out. It was easy. It was honest. It was the truth.
“That’s nice, but I want Jack now.” That face was worried. Why was it worried? Was it hurting? He touched the face, the lovely face, but everything he touched turned to ice. The face pulled away and looked at his hands. He’d done something wrong. Oh no, he’d done something wrong. “No, no, listen to me. It’s okay. We need to relax right now.”
The humming ceased completely. A bit of Jack snapped to the forefront. His eyes widened further as he looked into Pitch’s anxious eyes. “What’s happening to me?” He wasn’t panicking. Not like before.
“Jack, good. One of my shadows got inside your staff and now it’s infecting you.”
“What?! I can’t—.”
“Listen to me. You can’t panic. You have to stay calm. If the Guardians see you like this, we’re both dead.”
“What?!” Jack clawed at his eyes. “Why are they burning?” He looked up at Pitch in realization. “What’s happened to my face?”
“Jack, you don’t—.”
“What has happened to my face?!” He got up off the floor, moving fast enough that Pitch couldn’t catch him. He stalked over to the windowpane, his footsteps leaving patches of ice as he moved. He glimpsed back at where he had been sitting. God, the area was almost completely covered in ice.
There was something wrong with the ice. There was something familiar about it, but very wrong. All of this was wrong. He crawled across the bed, freezing the mattress and its sheets as he made his way to his destination. He looked into the windowpane, trying to figure out what had made Pitch so frightened earlier.
His eyes. They’d changed. He touched the skin. His hand was frozen, but the flesh surrounding his eyes was molten. Oh God, how was he going to explain this?
“Jack, stay calm—.”
“Am I going to stay like this? How am I going to keep this a secret if I look like this?!” Jack could feel the hysteria coming back as he turned to face Pitch.
Pitch was standing at the bedside, his movements restricted and his gestures small. There was a distance between him and Jack that for some reason really bothered the winter spirit. “If you calm down, I think you’ll go back to normal.”
“You think?!”
“It’s been a very long time since something like this has happened, Jack. I’m not sure how to fix this anymore.” His mind was slipping again. The humming started in Jack’s head, making him fall on the bed with his hands covering his face. God, the lights. “Jack, it’s okay.”
Light yet burning fingers grazed the skin of his wrist, and before he knew it he was flailing. “NO!” The faces. The faces were back. They were back and his wrist was scalding, like they were trying to hold him down again.
Inside, Jack felt lost. Lost in this new him. What was happening to him?
“Jack, it’s me.” The boy was curled up on the bed in the fetal position, his back to the wall as he hummed to himself. He wasn’t calming down. How was Pitch supposed to get him calm? He tentatively placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. When Jack didn’t shrink away, he took it as a good sign. “Just breathe. It’s okay. I’m here.” He wasn’t sure if he was trying to tell Jack it was okay. At this point, Pitch felt like he was trying to convince himself. “What have I done?” He’d put both of them in danger, that’s what he’d done.
He looked about the partially frozen room. He knew that ice well. The ice was a combination of shadow and frost, a sturdier form of what Jack’s powers usually consisted of. The perfect blend of cold and dark. Pitch remembered it better than he’d like to.
Pitch was surprised when the boy uncurled enough to crawl to him, his pale hands clutching Pitch’s sides as he nestled under the Boogeyman’s arm. Pitch pursed his lips as he felt something within him snap. The boy was shaking so much, one would think his own ice was freezing him. Pitch wrapped his arms around Jack instinctively, though a few seconds ago the boy had been terrified of being touched. “Don’t leave me.”
“Why would I leave you?” The plea struck Pitch as odd, and it concerned him. Once again, he felt the desire to delve into the boy’s mind and figure out what was running through it.
“Just don’t. I’m scared. I’m alone.”
There were two things that concerned Pitch Black about the Guardian named Jack Frost: his safety and his willingness to put his faith in someone like the Nightmare King. Pitch was well aware of what he was. He was an entity of fear. The embodiment of fear. And trusting fear was helpful, but at the same time detrimental. Both of the major concerns he had for Jack Frost hit him hard at the boy’s statement. Pitch had done this to Jack. How was Pitch going to protect Jack from himself?
“I’m sorry.” Pitch could count on one hand he’d said those words and meant it. Unfortunately, this was one of those times.
Jack woke up in Pitch’s arms. Usually, that would be a pleasant experience. At the moment, though, he felt absolutely drained. Wasn’t rest supposed to make him feel . . . rested? If so, this recent rest had failed him utterly.
He opened his eyes, glancing about the room. It was half frozen. Then he remembered what had happened prior to having slumbered. He pulled out of Pitch’s embrace to glance at himself in the windowpane. His eyes were back to normal, lids matching the temperature of the rest of his body. The irises were blue, each sclera white. Normal. He looked like Jack Frost. Not the other . . . how was he supposed to refer to the Jack with gold and black eyes?
“Pitch?” he asked, turning back to the Nightmare King. Whatever he was going to say melted on his tongue when he saw the guilty expression on the Boogeyman’s face. That expression looked so out of place on Pitch that Jack wanted to scream at him to stop. “Pitch, talk to me. I can’t read your mind, and to be frank I probably don’t want to.”
“Do you realize how serious it is that you have one of my shadows trapped within you?” Pitch wasn’t looking at him. Why wasn’t Pitch looking at him?
“Serious enough that you and I could get into a shitload of trouble with the other Guardians?” Jack asked. Pitch still refused to look at him. “You can’t just suck it out like you did with the black sand?”
“Don’t you think I would’ve tried that if I thought it would work?”
“How do you know it won’t?”
“Because of the nature of its entry. It came to you because I helped you mend your staff.”
“So break the staff aga—.”
“No!” Pitch looked up at him this time. His expression went from guilty to fierce in a matter of seconds.
“I fixed it before. You saw—.”
“You will not break your staff again. It could jeopardize your current state of being.” Pitch’s resolve was showing. He was ready to fight over this, but so was Jack.
“You would rather I have one of your minions swimming around inside of me than try snapping a twig as you called it?”
“Your arm is healed now. Your powers are restored. That was the goal of this endeavor. Break your staff and there’s no telling what might happen to you.”
“You don’t think getting one of your shadows back is worth taking a risk?”
“It is one shadow out of many. I only have one Jack, and he is trying my patience with this self-destructive tactic,” Pitch nearly shouted.
Jack was taken aback by Pitch’s declaration. “Are you saying you value me over your minion? Minions. Whatever.”
“What is wrong with you?” Pitch squinted at him as he said this.
“I’m infected, for one thing.” Jack also squinted, but from thinking. “I think that’s a song—.”
Pitch held up his hands like he was ready to choke the boy. “How do you only respond to a piece of everything I say to you? Are you a selective listener?”
“I heard everything you said. I’m just responding to what I think is important.”
“Well, your scale of import is severely impaired!”
“I don’t think it is—.”
“Jack, listen—.”
“No, you listen!” He stood on his knees so he could meet Pitch at eye level. The Boogeyman actually shut up. “So I’ve got a . . . thing inside of me. You want it out. I want it out. How do we get it out? We snap a stick. That’s dangerous in your opinion, and yes! Your opinion matters to me, no matter how ridiculous I find it! So we’ll find another way. Until then,” he paused, sighing. He reordered his thoughts, figuring out how to say this. “I need . . . I’m going to need your help. I don’t know,” he sighed again. “I don’t know how this thing works, and I don’t want to end up turning everything,” he gestured to the frozen parts of the room, “into this.” He rubbed his forehead, sinking back onto his seat as he did so. Then something struck him. He looked back at Pitch. “Shouldn’t you be on board with this whole . . . Jack turning dark thing?”
“That creature wasn’t Jack. It was someone else entirely and has the potential to become very, very dangerous. To you, to the people you are close to, even to me.” Jack almost jumped when Pitch took his hands into his. “To satisfy your lopsided scale of importance, I do value you over the shadow I had no intention of letting corrupt you.”
Pitch almost sounded disgusted with himself for saying that aloud, which only made Jack smile. “Pitch, you killed for me. You think that doesn’t clue me in to how much you like me?”
“’Like’ is a very light term in this situation. You could’ve used a better verb.”
“So you’re an English teacher now?”
“Shut. Up.” Pitch punctuated each word as he cupped Jack’s face in his hands and pulled him closer to the Nightmare King. Jack’s smile widened when Pitch pressed his searing lips to the Guardian’s forehead. “Of course I’ll help you, you fool.”
“Hey, you may come to like this new side of me.”
“Are you hearing yourself?”
“Yep.”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” Jack laughed at that. Though his Boogeyman was irate with him, he noticed how relief was beginning to seep into Pitch’s expression. Pitch, of course, would not admit that he was relieved. Admitting wasn’t his forte. But Jack knew.
“Am I interrupting something?” a voice sounded from the doorway. The two froze at Tooth’s voice. Jack stayed calm, but he could see Pitch getting ready to twitch anxiously. If Pitch kept doing all the worrying for Jack, he was sure the Boogeyman was going to fall to pieces. Then again, the Guardians wouldn’t kill Jack for having a shadow stuck inside him. What they’d do to Pitch was another matter entirely. No matter how used to Pitch they were now, this surely violated several unspoken rules.
Let me handle this, Jack thought as he gave Pitch a reassuring smile. The Nightmare King nodded, relaxing the slightest bit as he took a seat at the table. Great, now it was Jack’s turn to be the comforting one. They were both mentally challenged and screwed at the moment. He turned his attention to the Tooth Fairy. “We’re good. What’s up?”
“May I ask what happened?” she said, gesturing to the patches of ice that still hadn’t melted.
“Oh, we—I mean, I fixed the staff. Pitch insisted, and he was right. Arm’s as good as new. Created a nasty blast, though.” He glimpsed at Pitch, who looked like he wanted to glare at Jack but was too busy trying to act naturally to do so.
“That’s great! Let’s see the arm.” She flitted over to the bed, which was also still frozen. Though the sling had fallen off during the incident, the bandages around his forearm remained in place. She started to unravel the gauze gently and slowly, as she had done many times. She believed the half-truth Jack had given her, and for that he was appreciative. Hopefully that half-truth would be all she needed. As she started to unwrap the bandage, she looked over to Pitch. “Is he okay?”
The Boogeyman certainly didn’t look his normal shady self, that was for sure. “He’s been like that since I found out about the . . . the . . . killing.”
“Oh,” she muttered. She blushed red, returning her focus back to the bandage. “That.”
Now that she had her back turned on Pitch, Jack could see the Nightmare King really was glaring at him warningly. Jack squinted back at him, mouthing that he would freeze him solid if he didn’t chill out. “Do the other Guardians know about that?”
“They know the threat is ‘taken care of,’ but Bunny and I haven’t exactly been forthcoming on the ‘how’ of it.”
“I guess that works.” Jack looked back over at Pitch, keeping his arm still so Tooth could finish was she was doing. He again tried to give Pitch a reassuring smile, but the Boogeyman wasn’t having any of it.
“Jack?” Tooth’s voice sounded different as she whispered his name. “What really happened?”
“Wha—?” He stopped as he looked down at his arm. His eyes widened and every organ in his body felt like it had ground to a halt. The angry slices and gouges that had once been scarlet were completely healed, flesh undamaged and everything. Undamaged save for the fact that the skin had healed back gray. Pitch’s gray. He now had a permanent pattern of gray on his arm where the monkey men had laid open his forearm. He had no half-truth for this one. He couldn’t cover this up. “Shit.” He dared to look at Pitch. The Nightmare King’s eyes were wider than Jack had ever seen them and he looked like he wanted to pull his hair out.
“One of you better tell me exactly what happened in here. Right now.” Tooth’s gaze flitted between the two, her feathers flaring as she struggled to contain her fury.
“It was an accident—,” Jack began. Pitch was too stricken to speak. The Nightmare King’s eyes were locked on Jack’s arm.
“What kind of accident?” Tooth’s attention zeroed in on Jack. Good. As long as he kept her attention on him and not Pitch, Pitch might have a chance of getting out of North’s Workshop alive.
“I mended my staff, but it did something really weird with one of Pitch’s shadows and this happened.” He held up his arm.
“That can’t be everything.”
She was determined to hear the entirety of this explanation. So Jack told her, as quickly as he could and as calmly as he could. He explained everything, knowing she wasn’t going to leave without hearing it all. When he finished, he said, “We can’t tell the others.”
“You’re damn right we can’t tell the others!” Those words coming from Toothiana were scarier than they should’ve been. She was furious. “North will kill him. Bunny will definitely kill him!” She flew over to Pitch, getting in his face. “And let me make something very clear to you: if I didn’t know what you did for Jack, I would kill you too. But you’ve earned this one reprieve from me. If anything happens to him because of this, you will get more than a punch and a quarter the next time I find you.” She moved back over to Jack. “Do not leave this room. Keep your arm covered. I will tell everyone you’re resting up and to leave you alone just in case. When I get back, I’ll have a new shirt for you and you’ll be free to go. Get yourself under control. Find a way to fix this without breaking your staff. I have to agree with Pitch on that one.” She flew to the door. Before she left, she turned back to them. “You two were trouble from the start,” she muttered.
Jack felt the slam of the door go straight through him after that.