Chapter One:

The wind howled around his face; snowflakes whirling in every direction. Some flew straight into his face. It seemed mocking now, like the Man in the Moon had been teasing him all along. Jack Frost biting at your nose. He had been so close to believers, working with the guardians. Helping collect the teeth, decorating eggs in the Warren.. The life of a guardian may not have been for him, but it had been fun for a time. They had accepted him.

Tooth had seen past his white teeth to his memories, Baby Tooth.. Baby Tooth had stayed with him when he was in Pitch's lair under the bed when she could have flown off earlier. North had tried to show him his centre, given him the doll with the big eyes. Sandman.. Jack gulped. He didn't want to think about Sandman now. Maybe if he had been chosen a bit earlier, maybe a year before Pitch.. Maybe he could have had the friendship he wanted. Maybe he could have been chasing yetis around Santa's Workshop and freezing the elves.

Jack pulled the box of teeth from his pocket and examined it. It looked handmade, the sort of thing that he saw Sophie Bennett making in nursery. And there were thousands of those in Pitch's lair, more.. Millions. The amount of work that must be put into each one didn't bear thinking about. It would be like if he chose the design of every single snowflake. Then he would have to spend all of his time like North or Bunny, holed up in one place making all year and releasing only one snowfall each year. Jack nearly smiled at the thought of children waiting desperately for their one snow day. Maybe it would become something like Christmas or Easter. Frost day.

He turned it to the side, trying to find the opening. And his face stared back at him. Not his face now, of course. In all of his three hundred years, he had never lost a tooth. Not even that time that he had crashed head first into a street lamp. No, this face seemed a pale pinkish colour. It had a mischievous grin on its face and brown hair spiked around its ears. Did he once look like that? Could he have been so human once, could he have had a group of friends gathered around like Jamie always did? A family, even?

Jack felt a twinge of pain. He might have had friends once, a family once. Maybe three hundred years ago people would have asked him to watch where he was going if he walked into them, instead of just walking through him. But those times were over. They went when the moon dragged him up from under the ice. From the moment he picked up his staff and started flying and freezing his lake. He was Jack Frost now, immortal. He didn't need that life.

He brought the container up over his head and prepared to throw it into the crevasse. His arm arched over, just like throwing a snowball. Just a forward motion. Simple. But his joints froze as his arm reached over his head. He tried again, but the same happened. Could the Man in the Moon not just leave him to embrace his new life? To have fun alone, to stay here in Antarctica, to freeze away all of the anger and disappointment until all that were left were blizzards?

"I thought this might happen," a soft voice spoke from behind him. Jack recognised the voice. It was the one who had caused all of his problems, the one who had stolen Easter, who had made the guardians abandon him.. "They never really believed in you. I was just trying to show you that." He was chasing the shadows through Pitch's lair, trying to find his teeth and then it had all been too late. "But I understand."

That last sentence crossed the line. Whatever had been holding him back before, preventing him from releasing all of his bottled up frustration out on the atmosphere just snapped like it was nothing. "You don't understand anything!" Jack screamed, spinning around. The staff seemed to act of its own accord, shooting an icy blast at Pitch.

A shield of black sand appeared in front of Pitch and his ice disappeared with it harmlessly. "I don't understand what it's like to be cast out?" he challenged. Jack dodged the swarm of sand that flew toward him like a flock of angry bees. "To not be believed in?"

Jack jumped into the air, crying out in anger and firing another jet of ice at Pitch. The black sand rose once again and there was a mighty blast as they connected. Jack could hear cracking and dust swirled all around him. "To long for.." the voice seemed to be coming from all directions and Jack spun.

As the dust cleared, his eyes fell upon the face of the boogeyman. "A family," he finished, his head down. "All that time in the shadows, I thought that nobody else understood. But now I see that I was wrong." Jack lowered his staff and almost relaxed the grip. "We don't have to be alone Jack. I believe in you, and I know that children will too."

The layer of ice that Jack had built up around his innermost fears and desires was cracking and crumbling. Pitch didn't seem like the sort of man to want a family, but could they be the same? Could Pitch just be hiding what he wanted under black sand and the guise of darkness?

"In me?" he croaked.

"Of course!" the Nightmare King cackled. "What goes together better than cold and darkness? Look at what we can do together! We can make them believe!"

Pitch stepped aside and Jack stared into the structure that had been created when their powers collided and erupted. Long spikes stuck out at odd angles, his own ice.. Familiar ice.. Fused together with Pitch's dark sand. Bound together. It shone in the Antarctic sun and Jack could see his face in the ice, just slightly darker than it was before. Small specks of glittering light shone around it. It seemed like the first magical thing that he had seen. Santa's Workshop and Bunny's Warren were magnificent, but this.. This was unique and magical. This was his.

"We'll give them a world where everything.." Pitch continued, his hands waving enthusiastically, "Everything is.."

"-Pitch Black," Jack finished.

Pitch hesitated for a second, but then resumed. "And Jack Frost, too. They'll believe in both of us."

A world where everything was Pitch Black and Jack Frost. It sounded tempting, he admitted. Jack gazed up at the structure which towered above both of them. His ice and Pitch's nightmare sand. Nightmares. Mummy, it's pitch black in here, he'd heard children say. I'm afraid. It would be a world of fear. Jack may not be a guardian, but he didn't want children to fear. He wanted them to play, to make snowmen and ambush each other with snowballs, to just have fun..

"No. They'll fear both of us. And that's not what I want." Jack turned away from the boogeyman. "Now for the last time, just leave me alone!"

"Are you sure, Jack?" the darkness taunted. "You want to be left alone. I know fear, Jack. I know everybody's fears. And you have few, but your fear- your greatest fear- is to be left alone forever. For nobody to ever see or believe in you. I'm offering friendship, power, belief.."

That one word caught him and the darkness seized its chance.

"Come with me, Jack. I will be feared, but that does not mean that you can't be loved."

The outstretched hand tempted him. It was all so.. How did he know that Pitch was bad? Pitch was offering him a chance to be believed in, to be loved by children. How could that be bad? Pitch wasn't asking that he dress in black and ride nightmares. It was just sharing his power. Jack could still make snowstorms and take Jamie on toboggan rides. Besides, the guardians said that they were good, but they didn't even have time for children. They had turned him away for one mistake, one that wasn't even his fault. They let the eggs get smashed and blamed him for not being there?

Jack shook the hand and a toothy smile curved across Pitch's face. Staring at the golden eyes, grey skin and sharp teeth, Jack couldn't shake the feeling that he was making a deal with the devil. But then he smiled back. And laughed. Pitch was so close to the stereotype of a boogeyman, so unlike the other guardians and what people thought of them. There were no depictions of Santa carrying two sword with tattoos down his arms, or Tooth as a sort of bird-ish thing.

"Well done, Jack. You've made the right choice, I promise you. A neutral party no longer, it seems. Anyway, whilst it would be lovely to stay longer here, we both have work to do. I must introduce you to the nightmares so that they will no longer try to hurt you. You'll need to rid yourself of your fear of them."

"I'm not afraid of your nightmares," Jack protested. "I killed most of them, remember?"

"Painfully well," Pitch replied. "But remember, Jack, I am the Nightmare King. I know all of your fears, and whilst your main fear is being abandoned and alone, there are others. Being trampled by horses which prey on fear is lower on your fear spectrum than on others, perhaps, but it still ranks. And there are far, far more nightmares than you killed, I can guarantee that."

"Where are we going?" Jack asked curiously.

"To my lair." Jack grinned at the word. He'd seen children make mini igloos and call them lairs before on his snow-days. Generally the ones who enjoyed their independence and alone time, like him. Their evil lairs, they'd call them. Jack would have an evil lair of his own soon. Well, not his own. He'd probably be invading Pitch's lair.

"Do you still want those?" Pitch asked, snapping Jack away from thoughts of himself on Pitch's shadow throne, steepling his fingers and cackling madly. "The teeth," Pitch clarified. "You didn't seem to earlier."

Jack had forgotten all about the teeth and his memories. He supposed they didn't matter anymore. He would have believers and his ice power now. He could embrace life as himself now, Jack Frost, not whatever his name was before. He didn't need the teeth, even if he couldn't seem to throw them away. He withdrew the container from his pocket.

"Can you.. Can you throw them away for me?" Jack asked. "I don't know why, I just can't," he rambled. "I tried earlier and then I just froze, pun not intended, and couldn't.."

"Of course, Jack," Pitch cut him off. "We're partners now. If we're going to spend eternity working together, you can feel comfortable about asking me a simple favour."

Jack handed the box over, taking one last look at his old face. The sprite-like face with the grin and the spiky hair. Only human and he was so much more than that now. He may not be a guardian, but he would be one of the most believed in immortals. The big two, him and Pitch. The Nightmare King and.. What could his title be? Everyone had one, but he was just Jack Frost. Frost King was rather unoriginal.

The light shone from the golden container as it arched through the air, finally burying itself in one of the half-frozen arctic lakes. He was no longer reliant on the guardians, he'd severed ties. His teeth from Toothiana. The big-eyed doll from North. Sandy was dead. And Bunny.. Well, that bridge was severed when Bunny had yelled about how they shouldn't have trusted Jack, how it was his fault Easter was lost, how Jack had betrayed them to Pitch.

He wasn't really a traitor if they hadn't properly trusted him in the first place, or accepted him. If what Pitch had said was true. But Pitch could have lied.. No. Pitch was his ally now, Jack reminded himself. No more being a neutral party. A portal of black sand opened up in front of Jack, and he followed Pitch through into the darkness.

xXx-X-xXx

So, what do you think? Pitch is hard to write dialogue for, he almost always seems to be cackling in the movie. But I doubted that Jack would go with him if he went into a laughing fit at his convincing Jack moment. I love Pitch as a villain though, so beautifully manipulative. And am I the only one who found the nightmares cute?

-MoonOfPluto