Just a little something that popped into my head after watching Shine. Great movie, by the way.

NOT THE BIG PROJECT I'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT.

Crazy.

It's such a loose term, used so callously nowadays, that Pitch Black is actually offended by it.

"Crazy" could mean anything, depending on the context. From being overzealous to not fitting in with social norms. Maybe it's the kid who likes to read instead of playing video games. That's "crazy". Maybe it's the man who walks a tight rope across Niagara Falls. That could also be "crazy". Maybe it's the girl with the vow of celibacy, even when her boyfriend wants otherwise. That, depending on the opinion of the persons involved, could also be "crazy".

It used to be that crazy only meant insane. The literal abandon of sensible thought. A psychiatric disorder. Fanatical. Nutty. Mad.

Like the girl who sat with her legs hugged against her chest, staring up at him like he was a meal she didn't particularly want to eat, but was hungry enough to devour anyway.

Barely five minutes before, he'd been thinking that asylums or, as they were called nowadays, mental institutions, were pretty much the best places in the world.

So much paranoia. So much terror. So much mental abandon.

It tasted wonderful.

There weren't many children in these places — children's fear was the best — but these people often had to do. An easy snack. Just something to keep him going as he rallied his Nightmares. He needed it, anyway; it had been half a millennium since he'd last walked this earth. Five hundred years after the first Nightmare War, since the oh-so-heroic death of that accursed spectral boy and his first humiliating defeat. This time, he was determined that he would not lose again. With his new power, he could take out that blasted Sandman and, once and for all, bring the Guardians to their knees.

It was a new age, a new twilight. Pitch Black barely recognized this world, but he was determined to make it his.

So were his thoughts as he stopped outside the huge stone building, standing straight-backed in the shadows cast by two huge pine trees in the front. Had it been daytime, the place might've looked even inviting…to a mortal, that is. Now that it was nighttime, it was inviting…to him. He could smell the fear right now — the feral, primal paranoia of the unstable; so delicious now…what might it taste like, with the help of nightmares? Oho, his mouth was nearly watering, just thinking about it.

He fell backwards into the shadows and emerged in a long, vacant, pristine white hallway. At such a time of night the hallway was relatively dim, but for a second Pitch was blinded by the few electric lights overhead and the stark white walls. When his vision cleared, he looked around. There were wooden white doors, just like an apartment building's or a doctor's office, except the handles looked as if they belonged on the doors of the national treasury, or maybe of a jail. Several of the rooms were empty, but in several he felt the pounding, persistent terror or, more often, complete lack of it.

That wasn't particularly uncommon in these nuthouses. However, everyone had something they were scared of and, with just a bit of mental prodding, the Nightmare King could unleash the fear of even the maddest.

He entered the first room. It was one of the already-frightened, a Middle Eastern-looking man in maybe his early twenties. He was lying on the rough carpeted floor instead of the bed, curled up into the fetal position and shivering. The reason was not a mystery. After all, it wasn't overly warm in the room and the man was completely naked. Pitch had no idea why the young madman had tied his pants around his bedpost and was not sleeping in said bed, but he realized that he might never understand humans. Especially these.

The man's dreams were disturbing to even the King of Nightmares, so Pitch decided to cut the guy a bit of slack and not add to the horrors. So he just stood for a while, breathing in the fear and filling the hungry hole in his lightless heart. But it took a lot of fear to strengthen a fear-spirit and soon, Pitch got bored of the taste.

So he left the naked man where he lay and shadow-traveled to the next occupied room. This one was a wild-haired blonde woman, and was actually clothed and lying in bed. She lay on her stomach and muttered strange things in strange languages. She needed a nightmare, just a little one. The dream she was having was more disturbing than the nightmare was, anyway.

And so began turning Pitch's all-too-familiar cycle — shadow-travel, stop, see, feel, give nightmare, taste, shadow-travel again. During regular cycles, a nightmare-giver could chance upon dozens and dozens of men, women, and children who to the casual eye seemed exactly the same, even on levels of unconscious terror. Most were of the first-level kind, the kind normal for unaffected, comfortable people — nightmares about getting fired from a job, humiliating yourself in front of peers, going to school naked, losing a toy to the mean boy next door. Such petty things. So sweet, creamy, delicious, revitalizing. And very fattening; they weren't things to indulge on too much. Couldn't have an obese Nightmare King. It would ruin the image.

Sometimes he had the luck to stumble on the second-level kind. The ones with more truth in them than fantasy. Going to school and being beat up again by that bully, losing your true love, being rejected by everyone you want to be like, failing to live up to your parents' expectations and receiving subsequent punishment. Bitter things, they were, but good for him. Like spinach. They left a strange aftertaste, though…almost…a guilty aftertaste, like that of alcohol. And, like alcohol, these kinds were somewhat addictive. These were the kinds that made him stronger than others, but the mental cost was worth reconsideration. These kinds always made him feel depressed.

Then there were the level threes. Product of post-traumatic stress disorder. Most common in veterans, orphans, criminals, and other people of that like. Things like being back on the battlefield, suffering under the hand of the parents who didn't love you, firing that fatal shot over and over and sometimes even into yourself instead of your victims, seeing your beloved hero of a brother crash through the ice that should have consumed your life and not his. The one word to describe these was burning. Not quite spicy, just…burning, whether with heat or cold or pain or maybe just the intensity. They made his heart race in its perpetual, immortal circles and his hands tremble from adrenaline. He still didn't know if he liked them or hated them; often it depended on his mood.

And, finally, there were the broken. Level fours.

Also known as "the crazy".

Strange things — that was all he could use to describe them. Color-splattered, bulging, distorted, screaming things. Sometimes all three lower levels blended into something even more horrifying, or something that was just plain bizarre. Pitch had had a long time to study dreams but half the time, these didn't make sense to even him. They could taste sweet and creamy and cool, then suddenly shift to something horribly salty and dry while the tasting was still going on. And sometimes, they didn't even seem to have taste at all. They were definitely different and definitely a change in pace from the monotonous collection of mostly first- and second-levels.

But whatever level fours were, they were still nightmares and it was still fear and it still made him stronger.

He had just finished up in a mumbling elderly man's dreams — level four, just like a lot of the others in this building — and was preparing to shadow travel to the next room when he realized he'd skipped the one across the hallway. He wondered why until he remembered — he'd dismissed that room as empty, because he hadn't felt anything inside it at all. Not fear, not mania, nothing. Just…emptiness. But there was a person there, he knew. He could feel the good dreams now, dancing in the corner of his mind like an annoying little gold flag, or maybe an itch, but the only question he had now related to why. Why was he sensing good dreams?

No matter, he told himself. I just have to go put them out. No big deal.

He let himself melt into the shadows and emerged in the room across the hall. Like the other rooms, it was furnished in all green, soft grey, and white — ugh, white — with minimal furniture, simple décor, and thick-glassed windows to keep any wards from breaking through. Like most of the other rooms, this one had been personalized. Articles of clothing, mostly baggy pairs of girls' jeans and huge white t-shirts, lay in piles pushed up against the walls or over chairs. Assorted candy wrappers, clumsily shoved underneath furniture or just tossed on the ground, were everywhere. A worn, well-loved copy of some book called A Little Princess rested on the bedside table next to a blue plastic sippy cup.

The occupant of the bed had pulled the sheets out and lay in the fetal position, the blankets cocooned around her body in such a way that everything about her was covered except her thin bare feet and her shaggy head. From where he stood, Pitch Black could only see the back of this head and the dreamsand butterflies that fluttered over it. The girl had one of those haircuts where the back was trimmed short, like a boy's, and the front — or as much as he could see of the front — was left longer. It was white in the moonlight and her pale skin seemed to almost glow.

Now why did that seem so familiar?

Pitch dismissed the thought and went to examine the dream. Not the stereotypical "good dream", really, just butterflies. Little golden butterflies flitting through an endless black sky, nothing much, just a simple dream for a simple child. Though, he amended upon examining her closer, she could hardly be called a child anymore. She had to be in her early teens. At youngest, twelve.

So…if she dreamed a child's dreams, acted in all ways a child, and was still technically a child, why did she sleep in a house of madmen?

He realized, not for the first time and definitely not for the last, that he had been talking to himself and that the blanket-wrapped ward was stirring. And suddenly, the soft little butterflies over her head were gone and she was muttering to herself, quick halting words that didn't even seem like English words but rather, a language of her own. A language composed of rapid-fire stuttering and small interjections and incomprehensible muttering between phrases.

"Oi, it's-it's night, isn't it, hmm…I — I was dreaming — and oh, oh, oh what a lovely thing…gold butterflies in a black night — or was it black butterflies in a gold night? S-s-someone was talking, yes, someone was talking, talking, hmm…a man, yes, I see…I see…"

Pitch was almost breathless. He usually liked it when they woke up — usually with a start, gasping in breath, wide-eyed as they tried to separate the real waking world from the world of their nighttime terrors — but this, this was different. He'd never had a dream victim wake up on him before, much less a mad one, much less a one who claimed to hear his voice…

And so he decided to take the plunge. "You can see me?"

The girl, with her back still towards him, was silent for a very long time. Then, without moving, she replied, again in that same stuttering, unstable voice:

"No, no, I can't see you, can't see you of course because — because I'm not looking at you, yes, yes, of course, but I hear you of course, of course I hear you, I can hear everything now…I hear and see everything now…they — they — they say I'm crazy, and that's why I hear and see everything, that's why I see the Sandman and Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, and that's why I see the Boogeyman when he comes in his shadows every night — oh yes, I like that phrase, in his shadows, beautiful little phrase; need to write it down — but no pen or no paper —"

Somewhat annoyed, Pitch interrupted, "Are you awake?"

The girl was quiet again as she processed this. Then came her low, quick voice again, "Oh yes, yes, yes, of course I'm awake, just because my eyes are closed and I am lying down doesn't mean — doesn't mean I'm not awake. I — I — I am usually awake, yes, awake, you see, insomnia, they call it, INN-SOM-NEE-AH, I-N-S-O-M-N-I-A…"

Pitch let out a sigh. Then it was another one of these whackjobs. It wasn't particularly uncommon for psychiatric wards to see a spirit, especially a Guardian. They called them "hallucinations", but they saw them anyway. No one really knew how it worked but, in the case of the desperate ones (of which he could not deny his status), even the crazy believers were better than no believers at all. This girl wouldn't be the first, and he doubted that she would be the last.

"What is my name?" he asked, just to test her.

"Your name? Why — why, to know your name I would have to look at you and think of one that sounds right for you — but I'm — I'm not looking at you, you see, so — "

"Yes," Pitch cut in again, more than a bit annoyed, "I get this. So why don't you just turn around and look at me?"

"Ah, yes, I could do that, but — but it could be that you're not real, or — or — or that you are real and I'm the only one who can really see you, or maybe you're just another — just another shrink try-trying to prove me crazier than I really am. Ha. No one's crazier than me. So I suppose, I suppose, th-there's no real harm, no real harm at all in checking, just one little check, yes…"

And in a flurry of blankets, she threw back her quilts and scrambled up. Within the space of a heartbeat she was sitting there, crouched on the balls of her feet and balancing on the mattress, staring up at him with the largest, roundest eyes he had ever seen. Pale green eyes, almost too big for the face. Still bright with childhood. Childhood, he added, and mania.

"You look like Nightlight," blurted Pitch before he could stop himself.

The girl frowned and began biting on her thumbnail. Her voice was thoughtful. "A nightlight, hmm…I stopped using those around seven…the older orphanage wards didn't like it, but — but — but I didn't like the dark, and I did like candles…and then I might've maybe possibly might have tipped one of them over onto Jason's bed, oh poor Jason, my, my Jason boy, my friend, only friend, trapped — trapped with a club foot, he couldn't move, he couldn't move — " She fell silent, her eyes wider than ever.

Pitch felt a small flare of satisfaction. He saw it now. He remembered it; he'd been there. A fire in an orphanage. Fifteen children dead. Twenty more injured. The instigator? Sitting right in front of him. He was willing to bet if he ripped off her loose white t-shirt now, he'd find the remains of burn scars all over her back and shoulders. Not that he would, in any case.

"And did he die," Pitch began smoothly, sitting on the bed so she was next to him, "because of you?"

He hoped for a revelation, a sudden spark of fear in the eyes, maybe a few tears — but he didn't get any of them. "Oi, yes, yes, of course he did," she dismissed. "But — but — but it's not my fault. I d-don't care, don't care at all, don't care. In fact, in fact I think I did him a favor. Wonderful Christian boy, he was, probably sitting on God's lap right now. Where he is now is better than this hellhole. Better than the other one, too — h-h-horrible orphanage. Horrible ladies. Horrible friends. Not even friends. Bullies. See, they — they all say that I messed up my own head with too many books, too — too much reading and too much piano-playing — but — but — but it wasn't me and it wasn't the fire, not the fire, not anything like that. It was them." Her gaze turned cold and stony and a grin tweaked out of the corner of her lips. Her voice was quiet, almost like a hiss.

"I w-w-watched them burn."

If Pitch had any doubts as to why this girl was here, they were gone now. He raised an eyebrow. "So you're a murderer, then." If she was, he could work with that.

But she wasn't, and she was thorough in making her point clear. "Oh, no, no, no, of course not no, m-murderers do it on purpose, accidenters, yes, I like that word, accidenters like me, crazy accidenters, do it on accident, and it was an accident; I was young and I was innocent and I was scared — but I'm not scared anymore." She gave him a devilish smile. "I — I'm never scared anymore."

Pitch scowled. Obviously, he wasn't amused. "Why not?"

The girl tutted and waved her hand in the air before going back to playing with the plastic medical bracelet around her wrist. Around and around her wrist, but never off. She wasn't allowed to take it off. "Never mind that. My — own — answers — are — irrelevant. People in white — stupid people in white coats, stupid white coats, never ever listen to why. Never listen to me. Not me, not me, not me, nope. Just take the pills and be good, be a good little girl, just take your medicine and we might even let you have a new b-b-book, but they never buy me books, the liars. Lying liars. I need. Books."

"But you have a book." He gestured to the little worn paperback on the bedside table.

"Yes, yes, a book, I do have it," she rambled, scooping up the book and flipping through the pages before throwing it onto her pillow. "But — but I don't have others, just this one. I read this when I was two years old, you know. They have a name for that. HIGH-PER-LEX-EE-AH. H-Y-P-E-R-L-E-X-I-A. Not like insomnia. Different things, very different. Like I need different books. More. New ones. It gets terribly boring in here, you know."

"I…see."

"Ah, yes, yes, of course you do, yes," she sighed. "You're the Boogeyman. You hide under beds. No one likes you, no one believes in you, you're always alone — "

That was the last straw. Pitch stood to his full height, seething mad. How dare this girl — this impudent, mad, mortal girl — mock him! "You — " His fists were clenched and he was shaking, but he didn't really care. "YOU WOULD DARE MOCK THE KING OF NIGHTMARES, MORTAL?!"

He loomed over her at his full height, shadows and nightmare sand swirling around him. But, to his surprise, she didn't even look up. She only stayed where she sat, hugging her skinny legs to her chest and staring straight forward.

"…j-just like me," she continued, as if she hadn't even been interrupted. "No one likes me, no one believes in me, I am always alone…just like me, just like me."

Pitch's eyes widened and he stepped back, the shadows slinking back to their respective corners. Well, he hadn't expected that.

Sharply, the girl's head turned to him and she scanned him up and down with those huge pale eyes, as if gauging how fast she might be able to judo-flip him and throw him out the window. Not an improbability.

But instead, she asked in a perfectly normal voice, or as normal as her voice could ever be, "C-can I help you?"

He frowned. One second she'd been rambling mad and somewhat depressed, the next she was asking if she could help him. "Why?"

She shrugged and looked away. "Oh, I don't know, just a new leaf is all — we got off to a bad start you know — so we're turning over a new leaf, or at least I am, unless you want to continue with the last conversation which was fine, oi, tot-totally fine with me — "

"No," he said.

"All right then. Now if you — "

"Why aren't you afraid?"

That pale head snapped over to him again. "I don't know what you mean — afraid — I was afraid before and now I'm not, never will be, nope, never — don't see what's really honestly so hard about that. N-n-not that hard."

"But why not?" Now he was just annoyed. "Why aren't you scared?"

She looked away, shrugged, and began playing with her plastic bracelet again. Ward 292, it read. Payton Smith. Dr. Ronald Garofalo. He guessed that the first of the two names was hers. "That's — that's — that's not for you to know." He didn't think she stuttered because she was afraid; even now he could feel no fear from her at all. "I — I — I am a strange person. C-crazy. Unstable. Insane. Synonyms. Syn-synonyms l-like cinnamon, cinnamon candy. It's delicious, yes, yes, bad for teeth though, the Tooth Fairy told me that last time, l-last time she visited-d, sugar bad for — "

"The Tooth Fairy came here?"

"Oh, oh, oh yes, yes, she did, f-f-five of her, one big, four smallish, yes, one big, very pretty, like — like — like a bird, yes!" Her voice took on an awed tone and she held out her hands in front of her, looking at her palms before flipping them over to look at her nails, then back at her palms again. Her nails were nibbled to stubs. "C-c-colors, colors, she had so many colors, and p-purple eyes. Beautiful purple eyes, beautiful purple wings, like, like, like b-butterflies, yes, like the butterflies of my dreams, and — and — and the Sandman knows — "

Pitch felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle at the very mention of the accursed dreammaker. "The Sandman?"

"Y-yes, the Sandman!" she nodded and fell backwards onto the bed, spreading her arms and legs out like she was making a snow angel on the sheets. "Little, little, little gold thing, yes, adorable, not like me, but he — he — he liked me anyway, the cute little thing. He — he — he and the Tooth Fairy, they, they were the first to come to me, and — and — and they were all here, all four of them, and — oh! Oh, it was amazing not to be alone — "

"They were here?!" Pitch was aware that his voice was nearing the level of a shriek, but he didn't care. The Guardians were here, with this girl?!

A dreamy smile was on the girl's face and, still lying on her back, she brought her legs into the fetal position and looked at her hands. "Yes, yes, yes! Never really alone, they said, they're here so long as I b-b-believe, yes. And — and not just them, others too, oh so many others, and — and — and only I can see them — it bought me a whole new line of meds but — but — but I don't care; I'm not alone anymore — "

Now Pitch really was interested. "What kind of others?"

She curled up on her side with her feet by the pillow and her head resting in the heap of blankets, as if ready to go to bed. "Oh — oh, hmm, the — yes, Father Time!" she exclaimed, playing with the folds of her blankets. "He — he — he came once, did-didn't r-really say much, hmm…and M-Mother Goose came to read a — a — a bedtime story. And…Death, quite kind actually, even with — with the b-black cloak. Funny man, yes, he has…nice sense of humor. And M-M-Mother N-Nature clear-cleared away some clouds once so — so I could see the stars, and — and fireworks, yes, on New Year's — "

"Mother Nature," cut in Pitch, frowning. Mother Nature had never liked him for some reason, and he didn't know why.

The girl nodded vigorously. "Y-yes! Yes, yes, her, and — and sometimes her — her children come with, ad-adopted children of course, n-not her real children. Four of them. Four like seasons. The — the spring one is v-very nice, a little girl like me, be-beautiful golden hair, and — and — and a white staff w-with a blue-green ball, glass ball on it, it controls rain and flowers — April Showers bring May flowers hmm, yes…

"And, ah, summer, there's — there's a woman, tall and red, yes, yes, v-v-very tall, with — with feathers like — like the Tooth Fairy, except gold and red, very warm, Phoenix she calls herself, like the bird, except no butterfly wings, no little-selves…

"Oh! And — and Autumn, that's just his name you know, n-not very nice usually, b-but he's really lonely too, and paints the trees for me. Me and Phoenix, he tells me, but d-do-don't tell h-her, b-because she doesn't like him and he — he likes her, b-but too afraid t-to tell her…he's — he's not very nice sometimes, but he's — he's my favorite, because — because he likes butterflies too, butterflies and colors and candy, and he helps the butterflies fly, fly away to where it's warmer, not cold, b-but he can-can't have colors on himself, because that's — that's just how he is. Brown." She gave a small little shrug.

"And, hmm — oh, and winter, younger than Autumn and Phoenix but older than April, and — white hair, and a stick, a stick like Autumn and April, and a blue shirt! He — he's nice. Nicer than the others. Friendly, b-but…he — he acts sometimes like I can't hear him, be-because, you see, I — I'm the only one who can see him, and — and — he thinks th-that everyone who — who can see him will be m-mad. Mad. I am mad. He — he knows I am mad. Th-th-they all know I am mad…"

She fell silent again, her eyes downcast. Then she looked up at Pitch.

"D-do you think I am mad?"

At first, Pitch really wanted to reply "Oh yes", but something held him back. Here was this girl, staring up at him like he was the last person left in the world who understood her. Huge, pale green eyes. Daring him to make the decision.

But in the end, he only shrugged.

"I don't know," he said, and stepped into the shadows.

By a pure stroke of luck and maybe a little bit of curiosity, Pitch Black found himself in the same mental hospital, standing by the same bed, and looking down at the same girl.

About a month had passed — Thanksgiving was just over. Christmas was coming, and even the hallways of the asylum were decorated with handmade garlands of paper chains and strands of silver and gold tinsel. Personally, he hated it, but he didn't tell Payton that. He learned, just by looking at the scraps of green and red construction paper in her wastebasket and by listening in on two night shift workers conversing in the break room, that she had assembled ninety percent of the chains by herself. He was surprised that they had even allowed her to touch a pair of scissors.

She was awake when he came this time. She sat in the window ledge, looking out at the cold landscape beyond the window. The moon smiled down at her and its beams illuminated the whole room. Pitch was careful to stay in the shadows as he debated on whether or not tonight was the best night to ask again, but he was here anyway and he needed to know.

"I have returned," he said, instantly regretting it when he realized that he sounded melodramatic.

The girl didn't even do so much as turn around. She just stayed there in the window, watching, waiting. "Hmm, so you have, so you have," she mumbled in that peculiar, vague little way of hers, with seemingly insensible mutterings before and after phrases, as if she was testing out the way she would say certain things.

"You're awake," said Pitch bluntly.

"I-N-S-O-M-N-I-A," she spelled. "Remember, always remember, mm."

Pitch sighed, then nodded. "Of course. Insomnia." And schizophrenia, he added in his mind, but he didn't say it aloud.

She didn't say anything in reply, and so he decided to take the plunge.

"Why are you not scared?"

Her response came without hesitation. "Well, why do you need to know, hmm?"

The question took him off guard and even as she continued to spout random mutterings that had nothing to do with the topic at hand, Pitch's mind spun. Why did he need to know? Well, for one, he was the Boogeyman! He was supposed to know everyone's greatest fears and if he couldn't find any fear in a person, he was the one who was supposed to give it to them! Simple as that.

And yet, when he looked into Payton Smith, he found nothing. Old traces of fear — fear from the past — yet nothing in the present. Not even a decent phobia to call her own. He remembered that when she had talked about being visited by some of the other spirits, she had even mentioned Death. And not in the way people who had met him usually mentioned him, with fear and suspicion that he was glaring over their shoulder, but rather…she'd said he had a nice sense of humor. Since when had the Grim Reaper had a sense of humor?

Well, Pitch reflected, the mad ones can bring out the best in all of us. Since they're not afraid of us, we're not pressured into scaring them.

And yet, that didn't answer his entire question. She wasn't just not scared of him; she was plain not scared of anything.

Why, now that was the question.

"I need to know," he replied carefully, "because I am the Boogeyman. I am supposed to know everything about fear, especially about people who don't have any."

"Oh, oh, oh I'm sure I have fear," she mumbled. She turned and looked at him. "I — I — I'm j-just not afraid."

The words hit home. And for a long time, the Nightmare King and the psychiatric ward stared at each other, locked in a silent war of wills. But eventually, Pitch had to give in. He couldn't win this one just yet.

He inclined his chin, said "I see", turned on his heel, and left her room the same way he'd come in.

Five times in the next three months did he return.

Five times did he ask the same question.

Four times did he go away without the answer he wanted.

The last time was the night before the beginning of the end, as he would later call it. Four days before Easter.

Payton was prepared. A small purple wicker basket rested on the floor at the foot of her bed, with a glass bottle of soy sauce next to it. When Pitch arrived, it was the second thing he saw — the first being the occupant of the room in question — and the first thing he addressed. He bent down, picked up the bottle, and looked at Payton. She was sitting cross-legged on her pillow, staring back at him creepily.

"Why do you have soy sauce in your room?" he asked her.

She continued looking at him creepily. "It — it's very good on eggs, you see."

He frowned. "Soy sauce?"

She nodded vigorously.

"How did you get it?"

A shrug in reply. "Hmm, stupid cooks. Stupid people. Not hard to steal things. Yes. Stolen."

An easy enough answer, but he didn't think it was as easy as she said it was. She was a mental ward, for darkness's sake. There must've been a riot in the dining hall for her to the chance to slip out and hide a bottle of soy sauce in her room. Then he realized that that had probably been the case.

"I'd put it back," he told her. "You might get in trouble if someone finds you with it, and I doubt that there will be any eggs this year anyway."

She frowned. "But — no — eggs?"

Pitch fell silent and turned away. He felt no reluctance as to what he was about to do. Why did children need eggs, and presents, and good dreams, and coins underneath pillows? That was the thing; they didn't. What they needed was fear. Fear kept them alive. Without fear, they turned into…this. A glassy-eyed, wild-haired, deathly pale madling, cursed to a life of half-coherent mumbling inside these cold asylum walls. This is what a child could be without fear.

But now the real question was back. How and why was she like this at all?

"Payton Smith, I need an answer." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her stiffen — he'd never said her name before. And so he turned to face her head-on, unflinching.

"This might be the last time we ever speak face to face. So I need your answer, and I need it now."

She kept staring at him, unreadable.

"Why aren't you scared of anything?"

She was quiet as she looked down at her hands. She whispered something that Pitch couldn't make out, and he cleared his throat.

"I…didn't quite catch that," he said awkwardly.

"Oi…that's — that's just it," the girl murmured a bit louder. "Nothing, nothing, nothing at all."

Pitch frowned. Nothing? That was it? "What do you mean?" he asked.

"N-nothing," she continued, raising her head and looking towards the window, with its curtains thrown back to let in the moonlight. Sitting on the bed, cross-legged like a child, with her face and hair illuminated in such a way by the moonlight, she resembled Nightlight so closely that Pitch couldn't help but wonder who this girl really was. "Nothing at all, all of nothing, nothing. No reason to live. Nothing to hold. F-family, gone, no friends, no one, really… And pain, pain, pain is nothing, nothing at all, hmm. Monsters swallow me, swallow me whole and alive, I don't care. No screams, no fear. But — but not courage, not bravery, not daring, no, no, no. Never fear. Not a heroine here."

Pitch advanced on the girl, not in a threatening way but rather with anticipation. She shrank backwards, not in fear but in discomfort, and noticing the small gesture Pitch instead knelt at her side.

"But I don't understand," he admitted, his usually smooth voice shaky. "What do you mean?"

The girl looked away and down at her hands again. More correctly, at the little plastic medical bracelet reading Ward 292, practically shouting the numbers. Mocking her. Reducing her to a title and three digits, not a person with a name and a mind. She spun it with her finger, around and around her bony wrist.

"N…nothing," and she was trying so hard — oh so horribly hard — to keep her voice steady, "nothing left to lose."

Pitch left soon after, entrapped in something of a daze. It was hard to speak and so he hadn't tried too hard; he only thanked the girl and stumbled out of the room as fast as he could. And here he was, being whisked down his shadow paths on the way back to the lair.

Of course, he said to himself, over and over and over again. She has nothing left to lose, and so she has nothing left to fear.

It was a valuable little piece of information and Pitch was amazed that he'd never found it before, or at least seen the clues. Here was a girl who'd lost everything — her family, her friends, her home, her mind, her future. And, since she had nothing left to protect — she didn't even seem to feel the need to protect her own life — she had nothing left to fear. It wasn't courage. Just raw, reckless fearlessness.

And that could be dangerous.

As much as his selfish mind protested, the visits had turned out to not be a complete waste of time. It had given him a bit of new insight, something that may help him in his understanding of the human mind and how to take it over. And so he tucked this tidbit away, hoping that it would come in handy later.

After all, it did no good to target children who didn't fear anything anymore.

Fear. Falling. An impact —

And more fear.

Blinding, searing terror.

And pain — oh gods, so much pain —

It took every last ounce of strength to throw the Nightmares off and to destroy them, every last one of them, to scream and tear at his clothes in the madness of vengeance as the cold stone walls of his lair watched. He would make the Guardians pay for what they did to him. He would kill all of them, listen to their screams as they crumbled into blood and black poison sand, and he would enjoy it.

He — would — have — revenge. He wasn't afraid of what they could do to him.

He had nothing left to lose.

A small smile bloomed to life on his lips, transforming quickly into a full, inane grin. They could do nothing to him that was worse than his current state. He didn't care about the believers now; all that mattered was revenge.

Nothing left to lose. And so, nothing left to fear.

Fearless.

Abandoned.

Mad.

Crazy.