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Sequel to City of Golden Shadow. Got well, well away from me.
Title: Polar Night
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Rise of the Guardians
Characters/Pairings: Jack Frost, Pitch Black, Sanderson Mansnoozie, Wind. Pitch/Sandy, Jack & Wind, Jack & Pitch, Jack & Sandy, Jack/Pitch/Sandy
Summary: In the stillness of a polar night, Jack Frost goes looking for Pitch Black, and stumbles across something much deeper, the legacy of a black arrow, and the bond that it made between the enemy Jack wants to keep safe, and the friend he never wants to see fall again
Wordcount: 6281
Warnings/Notes: Um. Unwilling soul bonds, pain, betrayal, enemies/friends/lovers, complicated relationships
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Polar Night
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Rise of the Guardians
Characters/Pairings: Jack Frost, Pitch Black, Sanderson Mansnoozie, Wind. Pitch/Sandy, Jack & Wind, Jack & Pitch, Jack & Sandy, Jack/Pitch/Sandy
Summary: In the stillness of a polar night, Jack Frost goes looking for Pitch Black, and stumbles across something much deeper, the legacy of a black arrow, and the bond that it made between the enemy Jack wants to keep safe, and the friend he never wants to see fall again
Wordcount: 6281
Warnings/Notes: Um. Unwilling soul bonds, pain, betrayal, enemies/friends/lovers, complicated relationships
Disclaimer: Not mine
Polar Night
There was a strange sort of light down here when winter came. A blue-tinted, perpetual sort of twilight, growing darker the further south you went, until you crossed into the shadow of the Pole and true night fell for weeks at a time. Polar night, where the cold and the darkness curled close together beneath a starlit sky.
He probably shouldn't venture here just yet, Jack thought. Not with the shadow of Easter still so close, not with the memory of cold and dark. To venture into an Antarctic night seemed more than a little like tempting fate.
But he was Jack Frost, wasn't he? Tempting fate was what he did. He wasn't going to be afraid anymore. Or at least, he wasn't going to let fear stop him. He never had, not even when he'd been a human child, in that only recently-remembered past. He'd never let fear keep him from what he loved, and Antarctica was his. His place, full of snow and silence and no-one to tear through him like the ghost he'd used to be. Maybe he didn't need it anymore, not the same way, maybe he wasn't the same insubstantial snow-shadow he'd been less than a few months before, but that didn't mean he didn't still need this place. That didn't mean he didn't want it.
It was quiet here, only the howl of Wind as she cast him through the sky to keep him company. The moon was new tonight, face turned away to watch some other scene. The stars were bright, though, twinkling down at Jack as he circled high above the Pole itself, and the distant touch of an invisible solar wind shot polar fire across the upper reaches of the sky. No North-made signal, this, but Sun reaching out across the world and damn the endless night regardless. Wind keened for joy, howling high to brush fingers with her vast, stellar sister, and Jack let her go, tumbling Earthward to let his friend play as she pleased without carting frost spirits along with her in the process. She purred at him, caught him and tumbled him silly towards distant snowfields, ruffling his hair in gratitude. He laughed, balanced on his staff as though intending to surf downwards through the sky, and she pushed him the last few hundred feet in a happy huff, depositing him unceremoniously in icy whiteness.
He loved her, Jack thought. Lying spread-eagled on his back with ice creeping back across his body, feeling the vast leviathan of his friend spiral away from him to dance with skyfires and solar winds far past the heights where even frost spirits dared fly. He loved Wind, his oldest and dearest spirit companion, and he always would, no matter how strong or how solid his presence grew. It pushed inside his chest with an insistent joy, that love, curled warm and happy and fidgety under his ribs, and he let it. Here, with the snow and the silence and the shadows, he let himself fall back to an earlier time, when that love had been all he knew. Antarctica curled around him, ice and snow and the hidden lakes far beneath them, ponds frozen aeons before a boy had fallen into one of their northern brethren and been resurrected by a silent moon, and Jack lay back into their cold embrace and let himself feel a different, more private sort of flight.
He'd needed this. Desperately, despite all the joys of Burgess and Jamie and the Guardians, despite all the giddy happiness of being seen and known and believed in. He'd needed this quiet, this solace, maybe all the more for how bright and full his life had suddenly become. After so long alone, three hundred years, Jack didn't have the stamina yet to deal with all the busyness of a Guardian's life. He needed silence, sometimes. He needed stillness, and shadows, and the joy of a distant friend above him.
He needed peace, just for a little while. Just for a moment. Even if he'd needed to brave the darkness to find it. Even if he'd needed to face the memories. They hurt, the echoes of a shattered staff and a shadowman's pain, the cloak of darkness a constant reminder, but not enough to keep him away. Not so great that he couldn't endure them, and find some measure of peace regardless.
He wondered if Pitch might, wherever he was. He wondered if there was anywhere a battered boogeyman might go, some hidden crevasse in a friendly darkness, where he could pull himself together and sew little patches of peace across his wounds. Jack didn't like him, didn't know if he'd ever like Pitch again after what the spirit had done to Sandy, but he found himself hoping regardless. Jack remembered invisibility, hard and fresh and new as it had always been, even still, and he'd seen the horror in Pitch's face when children ran through him once again, when he'd faded to nothing but shadows and fear for Nightmares to feast on. Pitch had hurt them, he'd hurt Tooth and Bunny, he'd shattered Jack's staff, he'd killed Sandy, a little, sort of, but despite all of that Jack remembered. He remembered what Pitch's horror was like, he remembered his own, and he couldn't ... he couldn't wish that on someone. Not forever. Not without even a polar silence for comfort now and then.
He hoped Pitch was okay. He hoped Pitch had found some solace. And maybe ... maybe he'd come here half-hoping he'd find the other spirit. Maybe he'd braved a polar night not only for his own peace, but to find an empty crevasse and see if maybe it wasn't so empty after all.
Jack bit his lip, curling sideways in the snow and hiding his face from the sky. He brought his knees up against his chest, the hand with his staff clenching tight against the wood. He shouldn't be considering it. Pitch killed Sandy. Pitch had lured Jack here before, and tried to make him betray them, and when he refused had tricked him into doing it anyway. Would they forgive him for ... for trying to see if Pitch was alright? For wanting to? He'd only just been made a Guardian. It was a bit early to be trying to help out their enemies already. So he shouldn't do this. Shouldn't be here, shouldn't be looking. Peace was fine, snow and wind and memory was fine, but he shouldn't look for Pitch. He shouldn't try and help him.
But the emptiness didn't go away. The Guardians should know that now. What it felt like when people looked through you, when people walked through you. What it felt like to be weak and fragile and ready to disappear. They were alive, all of them, they'd come back and they'd won and they were strong again, but they still knew. They knew what Pitch was now, what Jack used to be, what it felt like. Maybe ... maybe they'd forgive him for helping Pitch through that. Now that Sandy wasn't dead, and they were all safe, and it couldn't hurt anyone. Maybe they'd forgive it.
And even if they didn't, even if they shouldn't ...
Jack opened his eyes, the soft touch of the snow against his cheek drifting away as he raised his head once more. Uncurled himself, pushing stiff limbs out and away, heaving himself to his feet. He stood, awkward and ungainly, but determined now. Or again, really. No matter what, he was still Jack Frost. He didn't let fear stop him. He hadn't let fear of Pitch stop him from helping the Guardians, and he wouldn't let fear of the Guardians stop him from helping Pitch. Not with that memory strong inside him, cold and dark, and the knowledge of what that still meant. Here, in this place, with these echoes.
Antarctica was where ghosts found solace. Antarctica was where the silence wrapped around you and kept you safe. Antarctica was Jack's, and maybe Pitch's, and that meant he could do what he liked, when it wouldn't hurt anyone. He could help Pitch if he wanted to. He could keep the stupid shadowman safe.
Provided, of course, that he could find him. Provided Pitch was even here. But polar night was tempting fate, snow shadows under an empty sky, and the moon was looking elsewhere tonight. If Jack was going to find him anywhere, anywhen, he'd find him here. If Pitch was going to let himself be found, if Pitch had any idea Jack was looking, this was where he'd be.
If nothing else, it could do no harm to look.
Or so he hoped, anyway.
He found Pitch on a summit, in the end. Not the crevasse, leagues distant, still marked by black sand frozen in ice. Though maybe Jack hadn't really expected to find him there. Not when Pitch would need peace, would need time and space to recover. A reminder of their battle wouldn't accomplish that.
He'd thought maybe Pitch might be masochistic enough to try, though. Bitterness, anger, pain. They did funny things, and not even a hole in your heart fit to kill you could necessarily stop them.
Jack would know.
But it was a mountain, in the end. A snowy promontory out over the vast peaks and glaciers of Antarctica, beneath a dark sky still burning with distant fire. Pitch stood silently on the edge, stark in the glare of the snow, no shadows to soften him. To shield him, either. His head was tipped back, his face turned skywards. To the aurora, maybe, or the stars. Or the sky behind it that was empty of a moon. He was smiling. Sort of. There was a black humour to him, at any rate. And something else. Something strange.
"Jack Frost," the boogeyman said softly, as Jack settled warily in the snow behind him. He didn't move, didn't turn to look at Jack. "I wondered if you'd find me here. I wondered if you'd look."
Jack hunched, twitching sideways to catch a glimpse of the shadowman's face, frowning worriedly. There was something strange, alright. Something odd. Pitch didn't sound angry. Or tired, either. Bitter, yes, there was enough of that, so it probably was Pitch. But he seemed ... quiet, maybe. Still. Almost peaceful, in a wry, unhappy sort of way.
If three hundred years were anything to go by, Jack didn't think Antarctica should work that fast.
"Are ... are you alright?" he asked, very carefully. He grounded his staff and flipped himself up to perch on it instinctively, the added height and precarious balance a match for the situation. "You don't look alright."
And Pitch laughed at that. High and cold and cruel, the sound twisting up out of him, a mockery of humour. Jack didn't flinch, not quite, but he straightened up on his staff, balancing on his toes with his fists knotted at his sides. It hurt, that laugh, but it was meant to. It was aimed to wound, and Jack knew well how to deal with that. At the very least, it proved that Pitch was still Pitch, and nasty as always with it. Whatever strangeness had infected him, whatever had happened since the Nightmares had chased him away, Pitch was still the Boogeyman, and he still, from the looks of things, hated Jack quite thoroughly.
"Alright?" the shadowman purred, finally turning around to face his adversary. Jack stared at him, faced him down, but he couldn't help the flinch this time. The tremor, as Pitch finally looked his way, and Jack could see the strangeness there at last.
Pitch's eyes were golden. Not the way they'd been, dull and metallic, but bright. As bright as the Nightmares' eyes had been. As bright as dreamsand. The shadowman's eyes glowed golden, and it was a mix of hatred and pain that shone from them, and something wry and soft and seeping underneath it.
"... No," Pitch murmured, light and amused as he looked up at the spirit perched above him. "Not alright, Jack Frost. Not even a little bit. Happy days for little Guardians, hmm?
Jack stared at him, breathing shallow and horrified in the chill Antarctic air, the skyfires lazily painting the snow-bright darkness around them. Pitch stared back, snide and unimpressed, but with that something under it. Amused, peaceful, ebbing gently back and forth beneath the sharp-edged surface hatred. Something that would be good, in anyone else, peace should be good for people, but in Pitch it was wrong. It was too soon. Like giving up. Like fading away. Antarctica didn't work that fast, and a man who'd killed Sandy and done his best to drown the world in darkness only months ago shouldn't be so calm so fast.
He tumbled down off his staff, pale feet hitting the surface snow and staggering slightly on impact, one hand darting out to catch his still-upright staff. Pitch watched the clumsy manoeuver curiously, a flare of dark appreciation appearing when he realised Jack's fear. A smile, a curl of a grey lip, when he noticed Jack's sense of wrongness.
"Something wrong?" the Boogeyman asked, light and gentle. He moved closer, drifting over the snow while Jack instinctively backed up ahead of him before remembering enough courage to stand still. Pitch hummed at that, approving in a cruel sort of way. "You look frightened, Jack. Surely nothing so scary about a broken boogeyman, hmm? Nothing for a Guardian to fear."
"... What happened to you?" Jack whispered, desperately holding his ground as Pitch came to loom over him. "What's wrong with you? You're not ... you're not acting like yourself. Are you hurt?"
Pitch blinked. Startled, bemused. Almost, for just the barest second, touched. Almost. Not quite. The smile slipped into a sneer, wavered, flickered back to a smile again. Colder, darker. Still gentle, though. In the same way as Antarctica, maybe. Peace in the stillness, mercy where there was no more moon to see.
"Hurt," he mused, watching Jack carefully. "Yes. And no. It's a long story, Jack. Hehe. Or short. Very short. One moment can damn us, after all. You'd know that, yes?"
"Yes," said Jack. He pressed his lips together, courage on the brink of breaking, and then decided. Stepped forward, stepped into Pitch's shadow, and deliberately moved to touch the dark spirit's sleeve. To grab hold of strange shadow-cloth, to scrunch it in his fist and test the substance of it. To see if it was real. Pitch stared at him, curious and still, too still to be him. No attack, no defense, no swirling shadows to pretend he was stronger than he was. To pretend that he could fight, and planned to. Jack curled the shadow-sleeve tight, tangled his hand around it, and looked up at him in genuine fear. "Are you fading? Are you dying? What happened?"
The veneer shattered. Calm and cruelty both, and hatred with them, and Pitch's expression split open over a chasm of terror and a desperate, virulent hope. Jack flinched, staggered back a step and tugged Pitch after him by the fist still locked on the other spirit's sleeve. Pitch moved after him, a wildness in his eyes, a staring terror, and Jack gasped aloud. Fell on his rear, brought the shadowman down on all fours after him. Pitch laughed, cracked and giddy, and Jack found the sense to let him go, to scramble backwards away from him. Pitch didn't follow. On his knees, he knelt upright instead, watched Jack with those bright, new-golden eyes, his hand pressed to his own chest as though to shove something forcefully back in. To gather up his lost composure and shove it back where it belonged.
"Why so worried, Jack?" he asked, hard and savage, ripe with bitterness. Pain. "But no. No, not dying. There's worse than dying out here. You know. You remember." He tilted his head, stared at Jack with yellow-bright eyes, and then breathed. Then dropped his chin, and let himself breathe. "But not that either. I'm not a Guardian, Jack. I don't go away just because the kiddies don't believe in me. I don't vanish just because I'm not wanted."
Jack breathed a little himself. Pulled in a shuddering breath, snow crunching under his hands, before he managed to sit up again and stay the course. "Good," he managed, blinking a bit. Pitch did too. That flare of something again. Something that wanted to be gratitude, but wouldn't ever let itself. "Good. I'm ... That's good. That you're not ... I didn't want that to happen."
Pitch looked at him. Grey and stark in the aurora's light, gold eyes bright with ... disbelief, and anger, maybe hatred, and pain. Pain, half-gratitude, and a wry and desperate humour. That thing that looked like peace, at least to Jack. The stillness of a bitter sort of joy. A polar night, while the Sun and the Wind played far, far above.
"... It's always you," Pitch said at last, distantly, while a strangely soft expression stole across him. "You and him. All the others, I could kill in a heartbeat. I did, or near as damned. But not you. Not Jack Frost. And not Sandy. I can never quite kill the pair of you, can I?"
Jack's heart froze. Blind terror, for a raw instant, the rush of remembered hate, remembered grief, remembered fury. Black sand tainting gold, a tiny figure vanishing before him, while he rushed helpless to stop it. Black and gold ...
... and gold and black. A vanishing, a fading, a strange, defiant peace in a disappearing face. Sandy, pierced through the heart. And Pitch, with eyes now shining dream-gold, bright with despair under a moonless sky. Jack's heart tripped in his chest, a strange terror, and he stared at Pitch in blind comprehension.
"You killed him," he rasped, in dull horror. "Except you didn't. You couldn't. Because ..."
"Because he's inside me," Pitch agreed, so darkly amused. "Because I planted a black seed in his heart, and through it he planted a golden one in mine. Because I should never have messed with his dreamsand, I should never have planted myself in a Sandman's heart, but I did, and now look at me. Hmm? Look at me. The Boogeyman with a heart of gold. Pitch Black with a heart full of dreams, and hope, and warmth. Look at it. Look what I did, Jack Frost. Look what I've become."
He clawed at himself, clawed at his chest for a second, and Jack darted across to him in panic, trying to catch the snarled fingers before the shadowman did himself damage, and Pitch stared him, and Pitch laughed at him. Hard and desperate, for half a second. Yanking his arms down, pulling Jack's after them, shoving his face towards Jack's. Forcing stillness, forcing them both to stop. Jack froze, and locked his hands tight around Pitch's wrists, his staff forgotten behind him.
"What are you ...?" he started, but Pitch cut him off. Not harshly. A gentle 'shh', a small tug on captured wrists. "Pitch?"
"He gave me something," Pitch explained softly. "At my chest. The medallion. Do you see it?"
Jack blinked, and glanced down. The shadow robe had parted, and he could ... he could see something through it, yes. A thin chain, golden, and at the end of it ...
"A coin, Sandy said," Pitch murmured, tugging one hand free to lift the disc, turning it softly between his fingers for Jack to see. Black sand on one side, golden on the other, but in the centre of each a smaller patch of the other. Black bleeding into gold and vice versa, a tiny fleck in the heart of either side. Jack stared at it. Sandy's work. Not Pitch's. Sandy's dreamsand, and Sandy's nightmares. "Halves of a whole. Eventually, anyway. As soon as I'm tamed. As soon as I'm made fit. Hah!"
Pitch's voice was cracking, Jack noticed dimly. It was breaking, and that terror was back, that blind and seething thing, and that hope as well. That gratitude, that half-joy, and Pitch had curled his fingers so tight around the coin that they'd paled from grey to white. Despair and hope. Despair because of hope. And oh, and oh, Jack knew that song so very well. He understood that pain so much.
"... No," he said, and the gentleness of it was distant to his own ears. Someone else, some other person being kind to the boogeyman. Reaching up with ice-cold hands to cup grey ones knotted with terror, brushing snow-pale fingers soothingly across them. "Not when you're tamed. Sandy won't ... He won't. He knows what you're meant to be. He won't take that from you. It's ... it would be wrong."
Pitch chuckled, his breathing hitched. He was leaning into Jack, Jack noticed. Curling down around him as if his own weight was too great to bear. Jack let him, almost instinctively, a snow drift to bear up a starfall. Pitch fell beside him, slowly, almost dreamlike, and Jack caught him because he had to. Because he didn't know what else to do. He caught him, and lowered them both to curl side by side in the snow, under the distant howling of a solar wind against the darkness.
He'd come to Antarctica to find Pitch. To offer solace. But this ... this hadn't been what he'd had in mind.
"I killed him," Pitch murmured lightly. Noting it gently, in case Jack had forgotten. "Everything he loved. As vengeances go, this is a doozy. Damned by my own victory. Brought low by my own weapon. The Sandman has a sense of humour, I'll give him that. He has a sense of fun. Wouldn't you say?"
Jack blinked at the echo, at the accusation, eyes stinging. Frost tears, crystals soft and flaking on his cheeks. Pitch stared, expression soft and startled once again. Gratitude, pure this time, and a stunningly bitter sort of happiness. He uncurled his fingers from his coin, tugged one hand from beneath Jack's, and reached out to brush at the tears where they fell.
"We were thinking of you, I think," Pitch said quietly. "I was, at least. I think he was as well. A joke when you're terrified. Laugh when you're dying, because why not? I knew before. But you ... you make it realer, I think. We watched you. You would have died for him. Killed for him. But you still managed to laugh. To play. To not be ... to not be me. Too cold for him, too bright for me. We made a joke when we realised. It felt like you."
Jack shook his head, sitting up to look down at him. His head felt hollow. There was nothing there that made sense. Pitch smiled at him, small and dark and cold, and something in it said that Pitch knew that. That Pitch knew there was nothing here Jack knew how to understand. But he didn't flare up. He didn't close off, or draw away, or wrap himself back in hatred. Maybe it was Sandy, maybe it was warm-gold in a dark chest, or maybe ... maybe it was Jack. Maybe it was Antarctica, maybe it was the polar night, maybe it was the still, clean thing that lived here. The solace of ghosts, in a still continent made safe by darkness.
"Don't let him unmake me," Pitch asked, very quietly. "I'm not a shining thing, Jack. You know. You fought me, where no-one else would. All alone, even when you pitied me, you still fought. You know who I am. Don't let me fade. Or him. Don't let us ... It frightens me. It frightens both of us. I don't want to be just a dream, or him a nightmare. Help me."
"... I don't know how," Jack whispered, raw and terrified. "I'm not ... I'm nothing like you guys. I just ... I made a game to save her, and I died, and then there was ... It wasn't meant to be like that. It was just a game. I couldn't think of anything else. I don't know how to save people. I just try. That doesn't mean it works."
Pitch shrugged, the black smile back again, the wry humour. "Better than nothing," he opinioned, snide once more, but softly so. "Win or lose, Jack, it hardly matters now. I've gambled and lost already. Five live Guardians and a broken Boogeyman. This is low stakes compared to that. For both of us. It won't hurt you to be an enemy down, and I can't be worse than vanished."
Jack stared, his hands tight around the coin and Pitch's remaining one. He shook his head, distant disbelief, and stared the boogeyman in the eye. "You're kind of stupid, aren't you?" he said wonderingly. "You really ... you're really kind of stupid."
Pitch blinked, rage stuttering hesitantly upwards, like it wasn't sure it should be there, and Jack finally took a turn to laugh at him instead of the other way around. Pitch hesitated, fear and hope and affront, and Jack shifted up onto his feet in a flurry of disturbed snow, one hand snatching a wind-flung staff and the other still caught around the coin and the shadowman's hand, tugging Pitch up and Jack down until they were almost face-to face, a Sandman's coin balanced between them. Pitch flailed, stunned, and Jack smiled at him dark and happy in the starshine.
"You're safe here," Jack told him, blithely serious, snowshine over shadows. "Antarctica. You can come here whenever you like. It's safe for ghosts. It's ... it's good for us, here. You can get your strength back. Practice terrorising the penguins. Do the boogeyman thing in peace and quiet. Okay?"
"What the-- I don't need your permission. If you think--"
"Shut up," Jack said, bouncing lightly on his toes, clenching his fingers hard around the coin. "Okay? Shut up for a second. I'm going to help you. I'm going to keep you safe, and I'm going to figure out ... how to make you and Sandy stay yourselves, I don't know, I will make something up. I'll figure it out. You just ... don't die. Don't fade. Don't go all gold and glowy when I'm not looking. I'll talk to Sandy. I'll fix something." He flashed a grin. "We'll make it a game. Me against the two of you. I'll win. I'm good at bad odds. You're only an ancient terror infecting the guardian of dreams, after all. Piece of cake. I beat guys like you all the time. You might remember me doing it recently, no?"
Pitch stared at him. Blind and distant wonder. "Do you know how much I hate you?" he asked, almost absently. "Do you know how much I really want to kill you both? You and that blasted Sandman inside me?"
Jack grinned. "You can try," he offered. "Of course, that'd mean there'd be no-one to keep you safe from Sandy. And that ..." He tightened his fingers, held on. "You don't want that. Okay? So let me fix it. You can kill me afterwards. When we've fixed it so you can stay all dark and fearsome without vanishing into the night or corrupting Sandy any more than you have already."
Pitch blinked. Carefully. Delicately. He pulled himself upright, all angles and shadows, and rubbed a knuckle thoughtfully against his lip as he looked at Jack, their other hands still linked between them.
"You think that's possible," he said thoughtfully. Asked, maybe. "You think I can have the Sandman in my heart and not be corrupted. Or vice versa. You think you can make that so."
Jack looked at him, pale and cold in the starlight. A little ice child, dead and frozen in the polar night, the spirit of fun and games and joy, fallen still and quiet in the silence. He smiled, and it wasn't a Guardian's smile. It wasn't a child's smile either. Older than that, older than both of those, and only a little bitter.
"I'm still me," he said softly. Tilting his head in the light of the aurora. "Cold and dark, remember? Laughing doesn't make it go away. I remember being afraid, I remember being invisible, I remember what it feels like when they walk through you like you're not there. Being a Guardian won't take that away. I'm not ... Tooth showed me my memories. My human ones. I laughed because I was afraid. I made a game to save my sister, and I died for it, and that's why I'm a Guardian. Because I was afraid, because I was cold, and I saved her anyway. I wouldn't be me if I didn't. You can't be brave unless you're scared first. You can't be good unless you know what bad is. So ... yes. I think you can have Sandy, and still be Pitch. I think you can know what love is, and still be afraid. I think you can know what hope is, and still do terrible things. The same as you can be afraid, and still do good ones. They aren't ... They're not separate. They're not guaranteed. They never were."
Pitch shook, dark and luminous before him, and Jack stepped forward gently. Raised their hands, turned Sandy's coin up into the starlight. Light and dark, poised against and inside each other, a seed in each other's hearts. Like the Moon in the night, and the joy that came in emptiness.
"He won't destroy you," Jack promised, very gently. "He won't. I won't let him, but he won't anyway. Fear doesn't go away that easily. It doesn't ... it doesn't vanish just because it's not wanted. Yes? Pitch Black isn't that easily destroyed. You killed Sandy and he didn't die. I think ... I think if he killed you, you wouldn't either."
Pitch was silent, for a second, a stillness that strangely wasn't hollow, only curious. Peaceable, gentle, in a distant, bitter sort of way. The shadowman stood for a second, and looked at Jack.
"And what about you?" he murmured softly. "What happens if we kill you?"
Jack laughed, and let him go. Let Pitch step away, back towards the shadows of the mountain behind him, while Jack moved towards the promontory's edge and the sea of night and fire beyond it. Pitch moved back into the earth, and Jack drifted out towards the grip of sky.
"You haven't managed yet," he noted, with a bubbling rush of joy. Stillness and solace and the joy of a distant friend. A different, more primitive sort of flight. "You broke my staff and it didn't kill me. I'm three hundred years strong, and a Guardian now besides. I haven't vanished yet, Pitch, and you can't make me."
"... No," Pitch murmured, tucking his coin away into the shadows. "No," he purred, while bright golden eyes faded back into the darkness of a shadow's vanishing. "I don't suppose I can. Jack Frost."
Jack turned away. Turned and ran, turned and leapt, and from somewhere leagues above him Wind reached down to catch him even as he fell. Fierce and strong from her sister's embrace, Wind fell from the edges of the sky, caught Jack in her arms, and threw him wild and free out across Antarctica's endless snows. Pitch fell away behind them, one more shadow in the darkness of a polar night, and Jack felt him go with an odd, bright sort of crack inside him.
He wasn't a snow-shadow anymore, no. He wasn't the fragile thing he'd been, the frost-sprite buffeted endlessly ahead of the wind. He was a Guardian. He was Jack Frost. He remembered who he'd been, and what he'd become, and the reasons why.
Fear wasn't going to stop him. It was part of him, it was the reason for him, and it was never going to stop him. So he could keep Pitch safe. He could keep Pitch Pitch. Because fear wasn't anything to be afraid of. Not for him. Fear wasn't anything to run away from, or shove under the bed, or pretend didn't exist. Like Jamie said. You could believe in the Boogeyman without being afraid of him. You could fight him with a laugh, and still not want to see him destroyed.
Or Jack could. Because Jack was Jack, and he remembered who Pitch was, and what it felt like. No-one was dead yet, no-one had died, and Jack for one wanted to keep it that way, stupid shadowman or no.
And maybe he wasn't alone in that, he thought. As he hurled himself out beyond the ice shelves, as he threw himself out beyond the polar night and back into the world and saw, waiting for him, a golden cloud and a small, bright figure in the centre of it, expression open and pained and quietly, desperately grateful. As Sandy appeared ahead of him, waiting for Jack or for Pitch or maybe both, Jack wondered if maybe for once, maybe in this new life, he might not be alone.
"Sandy," he said, while Wind caught him and held him safe above his friend, while Sandy himself looked up and met Jack's eyes with an expression that was infinitely kind, and infinitely weary. "I ..."
Sandy shook his head, drawing a hand across his lips to mime silence, and simply gestured to his chest. Jack blinked, falling still, and watched ... watched as black sand bloomed gently over a golden heart. An offering, that only Jack could see. An explanation, and an acknowledgement. Jack dropped, Wind lowering him jerkily to the cloud, and reached out with shaking fingers to touch the blackness there.
"He told me," he whispered. "He showed me ... he showed me your coin. He wanted me to keep him safe."
Sandy accepted that. Nodded against it, his eyes creasing in pained sympathy. And then ... then he reached up, cupped Jack's hand with his, the better to gently press it down against his chest. To let Jack spread protective fingers over the darkness there, and to let Sandy silently flash a question.
{And will you?} he asked.
Or Jack thought he did. He thought that was what that meant. And either way, Sandy, of all people, deserved to know. You ought to tell someone when you were planning to help the person who tried to kill them. Jack was pretty sure about that.
"I don't know if I can," he admitted. "I don't know what's happening to you or if anyone can make it better. But ... I want to. If I can. For ... for both of you. For you. And for him."
His hand shook as he said it. Trembled in Sandy's grip, because even if you didn't let it stop you, that didn't mean the fear went away. That didn't mean you weren't terrified, and all the more so for having let yourself hope, let yourself dream, and then done something terrible despite it. Being afraid of losing was so much different, so much stronger, than being afraid you might never have.
In three hundred years of longing, no-one had ever told him that being seen, being loved, might be the most terrifying thing he'd ever experience.
Something moved under his hand, Sandy's heart moving beneath his palm, and suddenly there was a snowflake over Sandy's head. Suddenly there was a smile on Sandy's face, sad and warm and so very bright, and a snowflake made of sand over the Sandman's head.
{Jack,} said Sandy, in the silence, and tugged gently until Jack crumpled, as Pitch had done only a while ago, into waiting arms. Sandy wrapped around him, Sandy burrowed against him, and the dreamsand curled around them both, whispering silent messages in the stillness.
"I'll keep you safe," Jack whispered, remembering rage and grief and pain, remembering a golden figure crumpling into darkness. Remembering golden eyes in a grey face, and a shadowman on his knees. "I don't know how, but I'll find a way to keep the pair of you safe. I promise. I swear."
Night had faded while they fled, Antarctica's polar twilight falling behind them, and now they had come to something else. Not an aurora, not a solar wind's defiance, but a dawn, the Sun stretching his hand across them once more, a daylight that belonged to neither Pitch nor Moon nor Sandy. Light flared across the clouds, across the sea, across the sky, and Sandy shuddered against Jack, the dark thing in his chest flinching with the fear of being seen. With no shadows to hide behind, no night to weave with golden wonders, no Moon to watch over them. Only Sun, and Wind, and the merciless glare of Daylight.
And Jack. Always and forever, for as long as they wanted him and more, also Jack. Jack, who had wanted to be seen, to be believed, to be able to protect. Jack, who had never vanished just because no-one wanted him, who had never given up just because no-one cared. When Sandy flinched, when Sandy shuddered, Jack curled closer around him, and whispered his promises to the spirit in his arms, and the spirit safe in darkness behind them.
And Wind, ancient and powerful and fierce, Jack's oldest friend in all the world, curled herself close around them, and howled her promises alongside his. As he loved her, as she loved him, and because he loved them too.
It wasn't much, maybe. A cold, bright, painful sort of love. The sort of love a heart that had never known company might offer, lonely and fierce and terrified. A wry, tenuous sort of peace, poised over terror.
But enough, Jack thought. Somehow, despite it all, he believed it. He had to, he wanted to, he would.
He loved. And it would be enough.
There was a strange sort of light down here when winter came. A blue-tinted, perpetual sort of twilight, growing darker the further south you went, until you crossed into the shadow of the Pole and true night fell for weeks at a time. Polar night, where the cold and the darkness curled close together beneath a starlit sky.
He probably shouldn't venture here just yet, Jack thought. Not with the shadow of Easter still so close, not with the memory of cold and dark. To venture into an Antarctic night seemed more than a little like tempting fate.
But he was Jack Frost, wasn't he? Tempting fate was what he did. He wasn't going to be afraid anymore. Or at least, he wasn't going to let fear stop him. He never had, not even when he'd been a human child, in that only recently-remembered past. He'd never let fear keep him from what he loved, and Antarctica was his. His place, full of snow and silence and no-one to tear through him like the ghost he'd used to be. Maybe he didn't need it anymore, not the same way, maybe he wasn't the same insubstantial snow-shadow he'd been less than a few months before, but that didn't mean he didn't still need this place. That didn't mean he didn't want it.
It was quiet here, only the howl of Wind as she cast him through the sky to keep him company. The moon was new tonight, face turned away to watch some other scene. The stars were bright, though, twinkling down at Jack as he circled high above the Pole itself, and the distant touch of an invisible solar wind shot polar fire across the upper reaches of the sky. No North-made signal, this, but Sun reaching out across the world and damn the endless night regardless. Wind keened for joy, howling high to brush fingers with her vast, stellar sister, and Jack let her go, tumbling Earthward to let his friend play as she pleased without carting frost spirits along with her in the process. She purred at him, caught him and tumbled him silly towards distant snowfields, ruffling his hair in gratitude. He laughed, balanced on his staff as though intending to surf downwards through the sky, and she pushed him the last few hundred feet in a happy huff, depositing him unceremoniously in icy whiteness.
He loved her, Jack thought. Lying spread-eagled on his back with ice creeping back across his body, feeling the vast leviathan of his friend spiral away from him to dance with skyfires and solar winds far past the heights where even frost spirits dared fly. He loved Wind, his oldest and dearest spirit companion, and he always would, no matter how strong or how solid his presence grew. It pushed inside his chest with an insistent joy, that love, curled warm and happy and fidgety under his ribs, and he let it. Here, with the snow and the silence and the shadows, he let himself fall back to an earlier time, when that love had been all he knew. Antarctica curled around him, ice and snow and the hidden lakes far beneath them, ponds frozen aeons before a boy had fallen into one of their northern brethren and been resurrected by a silent moon, and Jack lay back into their cold embrace and let himself feel a different, more private sort of flight.
He'd needed this. Desperately, despite all the joys of Burgess and Jamie and the Guardians, despite all the giddy happiness of being seen and known and believed in. He'd needed this quiet, this solace, maybe all the more for how bright and full his life had suddenly become. After so long alone, three hundred years, Jack didn't have the stamina yet to deal with all the busyness of a Guardian's life. He needed silence, sometimes. He needed stillness, and shadows, and the joy of a distant friend above him.
He needed peace, just for a little while. Just for a moment. Even if he'd needed to brave the darkness to find it. Even if he'd needed to face the memories. They hurt, the echoes of a shattered staff and a shadowman's pain, the cloak of darkness a constant reminder, but not enough to keep him away. Not so great that he couldn't endure them, and find some measure of peace regardless.
He wondered if Pitch might, wherever he was. He wondered if there was anywhere a battered boogeyman might go, some hidden crevasse in a friendly darkness, where he could pull himself together and sew little patches of peace across his wounds. Jack didn't like him, didn't know if he'd ever like Pitch again after what the spirit had done to Sandy, but he found himself hoping regardless. Jack remembered invisibility, hard and fresh and new as it had always been, even still, and he'd seen the horror in Pitch's face when children ran through him once again, when he'd faded to nothing but shadows and fear for Nightmares to feast on. Pitch had hurt them, he'd hurt Tooth and Bunny, he'd shattered Jack's staff, he'd killed Sandy, a little, sort of, but despite all of that Jack remembered. He remembered what Pitch's horror was like, he remembered his own, and he couldn't ... he couldn't wish that on someone. Not forever. Not without even a polar silence for comfort now and then.
He hoped Pitch was okay. He hoped Pitch had found some solace. And maybe ... maybe he'd come here half-hoping he'd find the other spirit. Maybe he'd braved a polar night not only for his own peace, but to find an empty crevasse and see if maybe it wasn't so empty after all.
Jack bit his lip, curling sideways in the snow and hiding his face from the sky. He brought his knees up against his chest, the hand with his staff clenching tight against the wood. He shouldn't be considering it. Pitch killed Sandy. Pitch had lured Jack here before, and tried to make him betray them, and when he refused had tricked him into doing it anyway. Would they forgive him for ... for trying to see if Pitch was alright? For wanting to? He'd only just been made a Guardian. It was a bit early to be trying to help out their enemies already. So he shouldn't do this. Shouldn't be here, shouldn't be looking. Peace was fine, snow and wind and memory was fine, but he shouldn't look for Pitch. He shouldn't try and help him.
But the emptiness didn't go away. The Guardians should know that now. What it felt like when people looked through you, when people walked through you. What it felt like to be weak and fragile and ready to disappear. They were alive, all of them, they'd come back and they'd won and they were strong again, but they still knew. They knew what Pitch was now, what Jack used to be, what it felt like. Maybe ... maybe they'd forgive him for helping Pitch through that. Now that Sandy wasn't dead, and they were all safe, and it couldn't hurt anyone. Maybe they'd forgive it.
And even if they didn't, even if they shouldn't ...
Jack opened his eyes, the soft touch of the snow against his cheek drifting away as he raised his head once more. Uncurled himself, pushing stiff limbs out and away, heaving himself to his feet. He stood, awkward and ungainly, but determined now. Or again, really. No matter what, he was still Jack Frost. He didn't let fear stop him. He hadn't let fear of Pitch stop him from helping the Guardians, and he wouldn't let fear of the Guardians stop him from helping Pitch. Not with that memory strong inside him, cold and dark, and the knowledge of what that still meant. Here, in this place, with these echoes.
Antarctica was where ghosts found solace. Antarctica was where the silence wrapped around you and kept you safe. Antarctica was Jack's, and maybe Pitch's, and that meant he could do what he liked, when it wouldn't hurt anyone. He could help Pitch if he wanted to. He could keep the stupid shadowman safe.
Provided, of course, that he could find him. Provided Pitch was even here. But polar night was tempting fate, snow shadows under an empty sky, and the moon was looking elsewhere tonight. If Jack was going to find him anywhere, anywhen, he'd find him here. If Pitch was going to let himself be found, if Pitch had any idea Jack was looking, this was where he'd be.
If nothing else, it could do no harm to look.
Or so he hoped, anyway.
He found Pitch on a summit, in the end. Not the crevasse, leagues distant, still marked by black sand frozen in ice. Though maybe Jack hadn't really expected to find him there. Not when Pitch would need peace, would need time and space to recover. A reminder of their battle wouldn't accomplish that.
He'd thought maybe Pitch might be masochistic enough to try, though. Bitterness, anger, pain. They did funny things, and not even a hole in your heart fit to kill you could necessarily stop them.
Jack would know.
But it was a mountain, in the end. A snowy promontory out over the vast peaks and glaciers of Antarctica, beneath a dark sky still burning with distant fire. Pitch stood silently on the edge, stark in the glare of the snow, no shadows to soften him. To shield him, either. His head was tipped back, his face turned skywards. To the aurora, maybe, or the stars. Or the sky behind it that was empty of a moon. He was smiling. Sort of. There was a black humour to him, at any rate. And something else. Something strange.
"Jack Frost," the boogeyman said softly, as Jack settled warily in the snow behind him. He didn't move, didn't turn to look at Jack. "I wondered if you'd find me here. I wondered if you'd look."
Jack hunched, twitching sideways to catch a glimpse of the shadowman's face, frowning worriedly. There was something strange, alright. Something odd. Pitch didn't sound angry. Or tired, either. Bitter, yes, there was enough of that, so it probably was Pitch. But he seemed ... quiet, maybe. Still. Almost peaceful, in a wry, unhappy sort of way.
If three hundred years were anything to go by, Jack didn't think Antarctica should work that fast.
"Are ... are you alright?" he asked, very carefully. He grounded his staff and flipped himself up to perch on it instinctively, the added height and precarious balance a match for the situation. "You don't look alright."
And Pitch laughed at that. High and cold and cruel, the sound twisting up out of him, a mockery of humour. Jack didn't flinch, not quite, but he straightened up on his staff, balancing on his toes with his fists knotted at his sides. It hurt, that laugh, but it was meant to. It was aimed to wound, and Jack knew well how to deal with that. At the very least, it proved that Pitch was still Pitch, and nasty as always with it. Whatever strangeness had infected him, whatever had happened since the Nightmares had chased him away, Pitch was still the Boogeyman, and he still, from the looks of things, hated Jack quite thoroughly.
"Alright?" the shadowman purred, finally turning around to face his adversary. Jack stared at him, faced him down, but he couldn't help the flinch this time. The tremor, as Pitch finally looked his way, and Jack could see the strangeness there at last.
Pitch's eyes were golden. Not the way they'd been, dull and metallic, but bright. As bright as the Nightmares' eyes had been. As bright as dreamsand. The shadowman's eyes glowed golden, and it was a mix of hatred and pain that shone from them, and something wry and soft and seeping underneath it.
"... No," Pitch murmured, light and amused as he looked up at the spirit perched above him. "Not alright, Jack Frost. Not even a little bit. Happy days for little Guardians, hmm?
Jack stared at him, breathing shallow and horrified in the chill Antarctic air, the skyfires lazily painting the snow-bright darkness around them. Pitch stared back, snide and unimpressed, but with that something under it. Amused, peaceful, ebbing gently back and forth beneath the sharp-edged surface hatred. Something that would be good, in anyone else, peace should be good for people, but in Pitch it was wrong. It was too soon. Like giving up. Like fading away. Antarctica didn't work that fast, and a man who'd killed Sandy and done his best to drown the world in darkness only months ago shouldn't be so calm so fast.
He tumbled down off his staff, pale feet hitting the surface snow and staggering slightly on impact, one hand darting out to catch his still-upright staff. Pitch watched the clumsy manoeuver curiously, a flare of dark appreciation appearing when he realised Jack's fear. A smile, a curl of a grey lip, when he noticed Jack's sense of wrongness.
"Something wrong?" the Boogeyman asked, light and gentle. He moved closer, drifting over the snow while Jack instinctively backed up ahead of him before remembering enough courage to stand still. Pitch hummed at that, approving in a cruel sort of way. "You look frightened, Jack. Surely nothing so scary about a broken boogeyman, hmm? Nothing for a Guardian to fear."
"... What happened to you?" Jack whispered, desperately holding his ground as Pitch came to loom over him. "What's wrong with you? You're not ... you're not acting like yourself. Are you hurt?"
Pitch blinked. Startled, bemused. Almost, for just the barest second, touched. Almost. Not quite. The smile slipped into a sneer, wavered, flickered back to a smile again. Colder, darker. Still gentle, though. In the same way as Antarctica, maybe. Peace in the stillness, mercy where there was no more moon to see.
"Hurt," he mused, watching Jack carefully. "Yes. And no. It's a long story, Jack. Hehe. Or short. Very short. One moment can damn us, after all. You'd know that, yes?"
"Yes," said Jack. He pressed his lips together, courage on the brink of breaking, and then decided. Stepped forward, stepped into Pitch's shadow, and deliberately moved to touch the dark spirit's sleeve. To grab hold of strange shadow-cloth, to scrunch it in his fist and test the substance of it. To see if it was real. Pitch stared at him, curious and still, too still to be him. No attack, no defense, no swirling shadows to pretend he was stronger than he was. To pretend that he could fight, and planned to. Jack curled the shadow-sleeve tight, tangled his hand around it, and looked up at him in genuine fear. "Are you fading? Are you dying? What happened?"
The veneer shattered. Calm and cruelty both, and hatred with them, and Pitch's expression split open over a chasm of terror and a desperate, virulent hope. Jack flinched, staggered back a step and tugged Pitch after him by the fist still locked on the other spirit's sleeve. Pitch moved after him, a wildness in his eyes, a staring terror, and Jack gasped aloud. Fell on his rear, brought the shadowman down on all fours after him. Pitch laughed, cracked and giddy, and Jack found the sense to let him go, to scramble backwards away from him. Pitch didn't follow. On his knees, he knelt upright instead, watched Jack with those bright, new-golden eyes, his hand pressed to his own chest as though to shove something forcefully back in. To gather up his lost composure and shove it back where it belonged.
"Why so worried, Jack?" he asked, hard and savage, ripe with bitterness. Pain. "But no. No, not dying. There's worse than dying out here. You know. You remember." He tilted his head, stared at Jack with yellow-bright eyes, and then breathed. Then dropped his chin, and let himself breathe. "But not that either. I'm not a Guardian, Jack. I don't go away just because the kiddies don't believe in me. I don't vanish just because I'm not wanted."
Jack breathed a little himself. Pulled in a shuddering breath, snow crunching under his hands, before he managed to sit up again and stay the course. "Good," he managed, blinking a bit. Pitch did too. That flare of something again. Something that wanted to be gratitude, but wouldn't ever let itself. "Good. I'm ... That's good. That you're not ... I didn't want that to happen."
Pitch looked at him. Grey and stark in the aurora's light, gold eyes bright with ... disbelief, and anger, maybe hatred, and pain. Pain, half-gratitude, and a wry and desperate humour. That thing that looked like peace, at least to Jack. The stillness of a bitter sort of joy. A polar night, while the Sun and the Wind played far, far above.
"... It's always you," Pitch said at last, distantly, while a strangely soft expression stole across him. "You and him. All the others, I could kill in a heartbeat. I did, or near as damned. But not you. Not Jack Frost. And not Sandy. I can never quite kill the pair of you, can I?"
Jack's heart froze. Blind terror, for a raw instant, the rush of remembered hate, remembered grief, remembered fury. Black sand tainting gold, a tiny figure vanishing before him, while he rushed helpless to stop it. Black and gold ...
... and gold and black. A vanishing, a fading, a strange, defiant peace in a disappearing face. Sandy, pierced through the heart. And Pitch, with eyes now shining dream-gold, bright with despair under a moonless sky. Jack's heart tripped in his chest, a strange terror, and he stared at Pitch in blind comprehension.
"You killed him," he rasped, in dull horror. "Except you didn't. You couldn't. Because ..."
"Because he's inside me," Pitch agreed, so darkly amused. "Because I planted a black seed in his heart, and through it he planted a golden one in mine. Because I should never have messed with his dreamsand, I should never have planted myself in a Sandman's heart, but I did, and now look at me. Hmm? Look at me. The Boogeyman with a heart of gold. Pitch Black with a heart full of dreams, and hope, and warmth. Look at it. Look what I did, Jack Frost. Look what I've become."
He clawed at himself, clawed at his chest for a second, and Jack darted across to him in panic, trying to catch the snarled fingers before the shadowman did himself damage, and Pitch stared him, and Pitch laughed at him. Hard and desperate, for half a second. Yanking his arms down, pulling Jack's after them, shoving his face towards Jack's. Forcing stillness, forcing them both to stop. Jack froze, and locked his hands tight around Pitch's wrists, his staff forgotten behind him.
"What are you ...?" he started, but Pitch cut him off. Not harshly. A gentle 'shh', a small tug on captured wrists. "Pitch?"
"He gave me something," Pitch explained softly. "At my chest. The medallion. Do you see it?"
Jack blinked, and glanced down. The shadow robe had parted, and he could ... he could see something through it, yes. A thin chain, golden, and at the end of it ...
"A coin, Sandy said," Pitch murmured, tugging one hand free to lift the disc, turning it softly between his fingers for Jack to see. Black sand on one side, golden on the other, but in the centre of each a smaller patch of the other. Black bleeding into gold and vice versa, a tiny fleck in the heart of either side. Jack stared at it. Sandy's work. Not Pitch's. Sandy's dreamsand, and Sandy's nightmares. "Halves of a whole. Eventually, anyway. As soon as I'm tamed. As soon as I'm made fit. Hah!"
Pitch's voice was cracking, Jack noticed dimly. It was breaking, and that terror was back, that blind and seething thing, and that hope as well. That gratitude, that half-joy, and Pitch had curled his fingers so tight around the coin that they'd paled from grey to white. Despair and hope. Despair because of hope. And oh, and oh, Jack knew that song so very well. He understood that pain so much.
"... No," he said, and the gentleness of it was distant to his own ears. Someone else, some other person being kind to the boogeyman. Reaching up with ice-cold hands to cup grey ones knotted with terror, brushing snow-pale fingers soothingly across them. "Not when you're tamed. Sandy won't ... He won't. He knows what you're meant to be. He won't take that from you. It's ... it would be wrong."
Pitch chuckled, his breathing hitched. He was leaning into Jack, Jack noticed. Curling down around him as if his own weight was too great to bear. Jack let him, almost instinctively, a snow drift to bear up a starfall. Pitch fell beside him, slowly, almost dreamlike, and Jack caught him because he had to. Because he didn't know what else to do. He caught him, and lowered them both to curl side by side in the snow, under the distant howling of a solar wind against the darkness.
He'd come to Antarctica to find Pitch. To offer solace. But this ... this hadn't been what he'd had in mind.
"I killed him," Pitch murmured lightly. Noting it gently, in case Jack had forgotten. "Everything he loved. As vengeances go, this is a doozy. Damned by my own victory. Brought low by my own weapon. The Sandman has a sense of humour, I'll give him that. He has a sense of fun. Wouldn't you say?"
Jack blinked at the echo, at the accusation, eyes stinging. Frost tears, crystals soft and flaking on his cheeks. Pitch stared, expression soft and startled once again. Gratitude, pure this time, and a stunningly bitter sort of happiness. He uncurled his fingers from his coin, tugged one hand from beneath Jack's, and reached out to brush at the tears where they fell.
"We were thinking of you, I think," Pitch said quietly. "I was, at least. I think he was as well. A joke when you're terrified. Laugh when you're dying, because why not? I knew before. But you ... you make it realer, I think. We watched you. You would have died for him. Killed for him. But you still managed to laugh. To play. To not be ... to not be me. Too cold for him, too bright for me. We made a joke when we realised. It felt like you."
Jack shook his head, sitting up to look down at him. His head felt hollow. There was nothing there that made sense. Pitch smiled at him, small and dark and cold, and something in it said that Pitch knew that. That Pitch knew there was nothing here Jack knew how to understand. But he didn't flare up. He didn't close off, or draw away, or wrap himself back in hatred. Maybe it was Sandy, maybe it was warm-gold in a dark chest, or maybe ... maybe it was Jack. Maybe it was Antarctica, maybe it was the polar night, maybe it was the still, clean thing that lived here. The solace of ghosts, in a still continent made safe by darkness.
"Don't let him unmake me," Pitch asked, very quietly. "I'm not a shining thing, Jack. You know. You fought me, where no-one else would. All alone, even when you pitied me, you still fought. You know who I am. Don't let me fade. Or him. Don't let us ... It frightens me. It frightens both of us. I don't want to be just a dream, or him a nightmare. Help me."
"... I don't know how," Jack whispered, raw and terrified. "I'm not ... I'm nothing like you guys. I just ... I made a game to save her, and I died, and then there was ... It wasn't meant to be like that. It was just a game. I couldn't think of anything else. I don't know how to save people. I just try. That doesn't mean it works."
Pitch shrugged, the black smile back again, the wry humour. "Better than nothing," he opinioned, snide once more, but softly so. "Win or lose, Jack, it hardly matters now. I've gambled and lost already. Five live Guardians and a broken Boogeyman. This is low stakes compared to that. For both of us. It won't hurt you to be an enemy down, and I can't be worse than vanished."
Jack stared, his hands tight around the coin and Pitch's remaining one. He shook his head, distant disbelief, and stared the boogeyman in the eye. "You're kind of stupid, aren't you?" he said wonderingly. "You really ... you're really kind of stupid."
Pitch blinked, rage stuttering hesitantly upwards, like it wasn't sure it should be there, and Jack finally took a turn to laugh at him instead of the other way around. Pitch hesitated, fear and hope and affront, and Jack shifted up onto his feet in a flurry of disturbed snow, one hand snatching a wind-flung staff and the other still caught around the coin and the shadowman's hand, tugging Pitch up and Jack down until they were almost face-to face, a Sandman's coin balanced between them. Pitch flailed, stunned, and Jack smiled at him dark and happy in the starshine.
"You're safe here," Jack told him, blithely serious, snowshine over shadows. "Antarctica. You can come here whenever you like. It's safe for ghosts. It's ... it's good for us, here. You can get your strength back. Practice terrorising the penguins. Do the boogeyman thing in peace and quiet. Okay?"
"What the-- I don't need your permission. If you think--"
"Shut up," Jack said, bouncing lightly on his toes, clenching his fingers hard around the coin. "Okay? Shut up for a second. I'm going to help you. I'm going to keep you safe, and I'm going to figure out ... how to make you and Sandy stay yourselves, I don't know, I will make something up. I'll figure it out. You just ... don't die. Don't fade. Don't go all gold and glowy when I'm not looking. I'll talk to Sandy. I'll fix something." He flashed a grin. "We'll make it a game. Me against the two of you. I'll win. I'm good at bad odds. You're only an ancient terror infecting the guardian of dreams, after all. Piece of cake. I beat guys like you all the time. You might remember me doing it recently, no?"
Pitch stared at him. Blind and distant wonder. "Do you know how much I hate you?" he asked, almost absently. "Do you know how much I really want to kill you both? You and that blasted Sandman inside me?"
Jack grinned. "You can try," he offered. "Of course, that'd mean there'd be no-one to keep you safe from Sandy. And that ..." He tightened his fingers, held on. "You don't want that. Okay? So let me fix it. You can kill me afterwards. When we've fixed it so you can stay all dark and fearsome without vanishing into the night or corrupting Sandy any more than you have already."
Pitch blinked. Carefully. Delicately. He pulled himself upright, all angles and shadows, and rubbed a knuckle thoughtfully against his lip as he looked at Jack, their other hands still linked between them.
"You think that's possible," he said thoughtfully. Asked, maybe. "You think I can have the Sandman in my heart and not be corrupted. Or vice versa. You think you can make that so."
Jack looked at him, pale and cold in the starlight. A little ice child, dead and frozen in the polar night, the spirit of fun and games and joy, fallen still and quiet in the silence. He smiled, and it wasn't a Guardian's smile. It wasn't a child's smile either. Older than that, older than both of those, and only a little bitter.
"I'm still me," he said softly. Tilting his head in the light of the aurora. "Cold and dark, remember? Laughing doesn't make it go away. I remember being afraid, I remember being invisible, I remember what it feels like when they walk through you like you're not there. Being a Guardian won't take that away. I'm not ... Tooth showed me my memories. My human ones. I laughed because I was afraid. I made a game to save my sister, and I died for it, and that's why I'm a Guardian. Because I was afraid, because I was cold, and I saved her anyway. I wouldn't be me if I didn't. You can't be brave unless you're scared first. You can't be good unless you know what bad is. So ... yes. I think you can have Sandy, and still be Pitch. I think you can know what love is, and still be afraid. I think you can know what hope is, and still do terrible things. The same as you can be afraid, and still do good ones. They aren't ... They're not separate. They're not guaranteed. They never were."
Pitch shook, dark and luminous before him, and Jack stepped forward gently. Raised their hands, turned Sandy's coin up into the starlight. Light and dark, poised against and inside each other, a seed in each other's hearts. Like the Moon in the night, and the joy that came in emptiness.
"He won't destroy you," Jack promised, very gently. "He won't. I won't let him, but he won't anyway. Fear doesn't go away that easily. It doesn't ... it doesn't vanish just because it's not wanted. Yes? Pitch Black isn't that easily destroyed. You killed Sandy and he didn't die. I think ... I think if he killed you, you wouldn't either."
Pitch was silent, for a second, a stillness that strangely wasn't hollow, only curious. Peaceable, gentle, in a distant, bitter sort of way. The shadowman stood for a second, and looked at Jack.
"And what about you?" he murmured softly. "What happens if we kill you?"
Jack laughed, and let him go. Let Pitch step away, back towards the shadows of the mountain behind him, while Jack moved towards the promontory's edge and the sea of night and fire beyond it. Pitch moved back into the earth, and Jack drifted out towards the grip of sky.
"You haven't managed yet," he noted, with a bubbling rush of joy. Stillness and solace and the joy of a distant friend. A different, more primitive sort of flight. "You broke my staff and it didn't kill me. I'm three hundred years strong, and a Guardian now besides. I haven't vanished yet, Pitch, and you can't make me."
"... No," Pitch murmured, tucking his coin away into the shadows. "No," he purred, while bright golden eyes faded back into the darkness of a shadow's vanishing. "I don't suppose I can. Jack Frost."
Jack turned away. Turned and ran, turned and leapt, and from somewhere leagues above him Wind reached down to catch him even as he fell. Fierce and strong from her sister's embrace, Wind fell from the edges of the sky, caught Jack in her arms, and threw him wild and free out across Antarctica's endless snows. Pitch fell away behind them, one more shadow in the darkness of a polar night, and Jack felt him go with an odd, bright sort of crack inside him.
He wasn't a snow-shadow anymore, no. He wasn't the fragile thing he'd been, the frost-sprite buffeted endlessly ahead of the wind. He was a Guardian. He was Jack Frost. He remembered who he'd been, and what he'd become, and the reasons why.
Fear wasn't going to stop him. It was part of him, it was the reason for him, and it was never going to stop him. So he could keep Pitch safe. He could keep Pitch Pitch. Because fear wasn't anything to be afraid of. Not for him. Fear wasn't anything to run away from, or shove under the bed, or pretend didn't exist. Like Jamie said. You could believe in the Boogeyman without being afraid of him. You could fight him with a laugh, and still not want to see him destroyed.
Or Jack could. Because Jack was Jack, and he remembered who Pitch was, and what it felt like. No-one was dead yet, no-one had died, and Jack for one wanted to keep it that way, stupid shadowman or no.
And maybe he wasn't alone in that, he thought. As he hurled himself out beyond the ice shelves, as he threw himself out beyond the polar night and back into the world and saw, waiting for him, a golden cloud and a small, bright figure in the centre of it, expression open and pained and quietly, desperately grateful. As Sandy appeared ahead of him, waiting for Jack or for Pitch or maybe both, Jack wondered if maybe for once, maybe in this new life, he might not be alone.
"Sandy," he said, while Wind caught him and held him safe above his friend, while Sandy himself looked up and met Jack's eyes with an expression that was infinitely kind, and infinitely weary. "I ..."
Sandy shook his head, drawing a hand across his lips to mime silence, and simply gestured to his chest. Jack blinked, falling still, and watched ... watched as black sand bloomed gently over a golden heart. An offering, that only Jack could see. An explanation, and an acknowledgement. Jack dropped, Wind lowering him jerkily to the cloud, and reached out with shaking fingers to touch the blackness there.
"He told me," he whispered. "He showed me ... he showed me your coin. He wanted me to keep him safe."
Sandy accepted that. Nodded against it, his eyes creasing in pained sympathy. And then ... then he reached up, cupped Jack's hand with his, the better to gently press it down against his chest. To let Jack spread protective fingers over the darkness there, and to let Sandy silently flash a question.
{And will you?} he asked.
Or Jack thought he did. He thought that was what that meant. And either way, Sandy, of all people, deserved to know. You ought to tell someone when you were planning to help the person who tried to kill them. Jack was pretty sure about that.
"I don't know if I can," he admitted. "I don't know what's happening to you or if anyone can make it better. But ... I want to. If I can. For ... for both of you. For you. And for him."
His hand shook as he said it. Trembled in Sandy's grip, because even if you didn't let it stop you, that didn't mean the fear went away. That didn't mean you weren't terrified, and all the more so for having let yourself hope, let yourself dream, and then done something terrible despite it. Being afraid of losing was so much different, so much stronger, than being afraid you might never have.
In three hundred years of longing, no-one had ever told him that being seen, being loved, might be the most terrifying thing he'd ever experience.
Something moved under his hand, Sandy's heart moving beneath his palm, and suddenly there was a snowflake over Sandy's head. Suddenly there was a smile on Sandy's face, sad and warm and so very bright, and a snowflake made of sand over the Sandman's head.
{Jack,} said Sandy, in the silence, and tugged gently until Jack crumpled, as Pitch had done only a while ago, into waiting arms. Sandy wrapped around him, Sandy burrowed against him, and the dreamsand curled around them both, whispering silent messages in the stillness.
"I'll keep you safe," Jack whispered, remembering rage and grief and pain, remembering a golden figure crumpling into darkness. Remembering golden eyes in a grey face, and a shadowman on his knees. "I don't know how, but I'll find a way to keep the pair of you safe. I promise. I swear."
Night had faded while they fled, Antarctica's polar twilight falling behind them, and now they had come to something else. Not an aurora, not a solar wind's defiance, but a dawn, the Sun stretching his hand across them once more, a daylight that belonged to neither Pitch nor Moon nor Sandy. Light flared across the clouds, across the sea, across the sky, and Sandy shuddered against Jack, the dark thing in his chest flinching with the fear of being seen. With no shadows to hide behind, no night to weave with golden wonders, no Moon to watch over them. Only Sun, and Wind, and the merciless glare of Daylight.
And Jack. Always and forever, for as long as they wanted him and more, also Jack. Jack, who had wanted to be seen, to be believed, to be able to protect. Jack, who had never vanished just because no-one wanted him, who had never given up just because no-one cared. When Sandy flinched, when Sandy shuddered, Jack curled closer around him, and whispered his promises to the spirit in his arms, and the spirit safe in darkness behind them.
And Wind, ancient and powerful and fierce, Jack's oldest friend in all the world, curled herself close around them, and howled her promises alongside his. As he loved her, as she loved him, and because he loved them too.
It wasn't much, maybe. A cold, bright, painful sort of love. The sort of love a heart that had never known company might offer, lonely and fierce and terrified. A wry, tenuous sort of peace, poised over terror.
But enough, Jack thought. Somehow, despite it all, he believed it. He had to, he wanted to, he would.
He loved. And it would be enough.
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