Note: OMG! This is a random plot bunny that wormed its way into my head via cold buffalo chicken at lunch and an odd conversation involving ducks, screwdrivers, special needs students, and one cold, moldy spicy chicken sandwich.

I do not own Nightmare Before Christmas, nor will I ever. It's a crying shame, too. I love Tim Burton's work.

"Wouldn't you like to see something strange?"

Chapter One: Annabelle

"Your child is perfectly healthy in most respects, sir Skellington, but there is one complication." The doctor stated dryly, as was his job. Jack twitched his left (nonexistent, but still somehow there) eyebrow in a mixture of fear and anticipation.

"What is it?" He asked through gritted teeth.

"Well, we can't exactly be sure. She seems to lack the life functions necessary to her survival, yet she's breathing and moving as energetically as any infant girl I've ever seen."

"What do you mean?" Jack's tone was sharp; he wanted to know what was wrong with his newborn daughter, and damn it, he wanted to know now!

"Oh!" The doctor said in surprise, "Well, um... maybe you'd better come along and see, it would be much easier than trying to explain it. I don't really understand it myself." The doctor led Jack along the stark-white corridor, a strange (but not unaccepted) change to Halloween Town's usual bleak black-and-white decor.

"See?" Jack's eyes widened in surprise as he viewed the child behind the glass window.

"And she was born... with those stitches?"

"All over her body, well, the parts that are actually there anyway. Some of her body is skeletal, and we can't understand how she inherited those genes. It's baffling. Especially since we didn't think you could have a child at all." Jack bit down on his lower lip, or where his lower lip would be, if he had one.

"That is odd... Well, it doesn't matter now. She's my daughter, and I will love her until the day she dies. After that, even. It doesn't matter to me what she looks like."

"But that's another problem, sir Skellington. It was an extremely strange birth. She was stillborn."

". . . What?"

"She was stillborn, yet somehow, she lives. None of us can figure out why. She was born with no brain function, and no heartbeat, and no pulse, and in all senses of the word, she was dead. So why does she move? Why does she coo as all babies do? How is it, now, as you are essentially standing in front of her, she can tell who her father is? It's positively insane."

Jack gave a little knowing smile.

"It just comes with being us."

End of Chapter One

The next chapter will take place when Annabelle (the baby, duh) is five years old. If you couldn't tell, she's the daughter of Jack and Sally.