Hello! YellowWomanontheBrink with her first foray into Rise of the Guardians fanfic here! I wrote this a couple months ago and posted to Ao3, but I decided I might as well crosspost it to ffn too. I'm still technically on hiatus because I didn't actually just write this, but I hope you like it anyway. ^_^
This is GEN. Meaning no ships. Me no write romance ever again. You end up with forty thousand words of blooming friendship. :/
Title: This Story Starts With Dialogue
Summary: Pitch Black called himself the Nightmare King, even if most spirits were completely unaware of his existence and only realize he's there when they're ordering him away.
The last thing the self proclaimed monarch expected was to be hauled into a swirling portal and told to find a dangerous Winter Spirit.
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: None
"I'm older than I look, you know. I don't think you have any right to be calling me boy," the winter Spirit said brightly, walking around the large frozen column. Around the nightmare spirit, a blizzard stormed, and he could hardly see. Luckily, as a spirit, he could make himself largely incorporeal. Or maybe it was because he presided over darkness, because the Guardians around him looked pretty miserable.
Jack Frost was probably the only entity that he could label as the bane of his existence, and that was including the Guardians, which was a pretty sad position to be in, by Pitch's standards.
He glared at the elfish looking boy, far too immature if he really was as old as he was rumored to be.
"I'm fairly certain I have the right to be calling you whatever I wish to call you, Frost," he growled out. In the bright, bright snow, this far north where the sun never set, his powers were nearly ineffective.
The Guardians were fools if he ever thought that he could stand a chance, but Pitch knew his limits, and he knew where his powers lay.
Being stranded in the Northernmost part of Lapland, caught in a hurricane of a blizzard was not where he excelled. Their Man in the Moon new nothing. Then again, he wasn't sure if he should've been surprised. The Man in the Moon only knew of Pitch from the shadows of his own brilliance.
"Sad. Here I thought you were supposed to be snarky, what with the way you put down the Guardians all the frickin' time," he mocked. "Guess you only feel comfortable in a position of power, aren't you? I assume it's why you hide under the bed all the time."
Jack drawled, standing on his staff as if he stood upon the ground; that is, lightly and easily without a care in the world, even though all the Guardians were armed and pointing their weapons quite confidently at the Usher of Winter. However, the sprite spoke only to Pitch, and as if the two were in private confidence. Surprisingly, the Guardians had yet to say anything, and so they kept silent.
Jack looked intensely at Pitch's blank face, before nodding. "Just like I thought, Mr. Boogeyman." He flipped off his staff and landed on the snow. The wind died down, and ht blizzard quickly calmed as if it had never been raging, the only thing attesting to its former existence the extra feet of snow coating the ground. He did not explain himself before shifting his pale blue silvery gaze and finally addressing the Guardians, who had also shifted from slightly defensive postures to full on offensive.
Privately, Pitch figured that they were well acquainted with Frost. Then, perhaps he should have figured that when they spoke of his name in utter disdain and terror. Pitch had seen the boy before, painting his pictures on the windows of the children that he terrified, bringing snows and blizzards and dreaded frost. Pitch ignored him mostly; pleasures like those only glittered in the light of the sun or the moon.
"I'm guessing the dear Prince Lunanoff hired tall, dark, and ugly over there to be your muscle, mmm? Maybe you shouldn't have brought him so far North."
"He is not to fight, Jack," North said, quietly, as if he spoke to a dangerous animal. His voice was gentle, but his face was hard and unyielding, a strange expression on the usual jovial (annoying) man. He was afraid. Pitch could feel it. "He find you."
Floating, Jack swung his staff, dragging it through the snow and smirking when the Guardian's all flinched. "That's stupid. I'm where I've always been! Right here, at my little lake!"
'The children you stole are terrified,' Pitch thought. The strength of their fear he had been told to track, and track them he did, before the group was marooned by the blizzard.
"That's a lie. I'm entitled to what all of you have," he replied, sorrow entering his voice, belied by his anger. His face was a book, and now that's Jack's anger had opened its cover he could read every word. "I want believers. I want the strength that I once held in the palm of my hands." He clenched his fists. His hands were small and pale. They were blue near the tips of his fingers, like a dead corpse. All of the extremities of his body were blue, like a person that nearly drowned. "My ways are dead, and I've accepted that. But your methods, your beliefs, are too shallow. So, I've taken what I wanted. I've done nothing wrong."
Fear. Fear of being alone. Fear of loss. That was what radiated strongly from Jack Frost. Idly stepping back, Pitch wondered if he should exploit it, dig deeper and find all of Jack Frost's delightful little terrors and make the cause of all his problems drown in his nightmares.
"The children are not yours! You have no right to steal children off the streets, from their homes-"
"And what lovely homes they were," Jack interrupted. "I would've starved their damn parents too."
Bunny's temper snapped; he roared and threw one of his boomerangs at the winter spirit. The wind suddenly blew harshly, lifting Jack gently up into the air as if he were in a basket. He sneered and sat on his staff like the witches that children feared sat upon their broom. His youthful face was scrunched up in displeasure,and his ancient, pale eyes glittered with an emotion Pitch could not place.
"Watch where you throw that, kangaroo! You might hit someone!" he said, before turning and fleeing on the wind.
Pitch felt worse than useless. More than that, he felt annoyed. His fingers itched. Never had he ever been put in a situation where he was quite so...powerless. But in the bright, yet dim everlasting light of the far North, all the worth he had given himself in the past three hundred years of his lonely existence had been stripped to lay him bare, and in front of his worst enemies as well.
"Does anyone," he muttered, "Want to explain to me exactly what is going on?"
Toothiana at least had the decency to blush under her feathers.
Bunny grunted and thumped the ground hard. A hole opened up next to his foot. "Get in. Follow my lead, and don't say a word. I might be tempted to do something I might regret."
"Will you really? You seem far too frightened to be anything worth worrying about."
"Shut your wretched mouth before I shut it for you," and then the ever-so-pleasant Pooka jumped into the hole, followed by Toothiana, then North. Sandy paused, looking back. He has a thing with Jack Frost, his symbols flashed, before he slinked down the hole as well.
Considering not following, but haunted by the fact that his powers didn't work here, Pitch slunk in as well, if with considerably less enthusiasm than the Sandman.
It was another couple minutes of walking through the North Pole (a nearly identical landscape to Lapland) before he entered North's grand Workshop, where he was glared at by the yetis until he reached the Grand Room where the rest of the Guardians coalesced. Thoothiana's miniature faeries were brushing icicles off her fragile looking wings (a common misconception, he had seen those things neatly slice through thick glass).They chittered, an irritating chorus of high pitched chirping. He detested birds. They were always too bright and colorful.
The only birds he had ever expressed interest in were the ones that terrified children. This...wannabe hummingbird abomination was so unfortunately pretty he doubted anyone out there would be frightened enough to even twinge his senses
"Man in Moon has alerted me to frightening situation," North said tiredly as elves brought everyone hot chocolate. They stayed aware from the self proclaimed Nightmare King. "Jack Frost has been...kidnapping."
"An age old tradition of faeries, I know," he said. "Obviously, you have no problem with it, seeing how you shoved me in a sac.'
"It's different, Pitch," Toothiana protested. "These are children, children under our protection, and he's been stealing them from under our noses for months now-"
"You manage to miss a lot of things," he drawled, smirking. "You didn't even know I existed until your little boss told you to go hunt me down."
North pursed his lips, but did not say anything. Toothiana continued after glaring. "He's the oldest spirit still here, at least to our knowledge. He's not a seelie, if that's what you're wondering. He's the spirit of winter, and he's been here longer than any of us. Apparently he holds a grudge with the Man in the Moon. Usually he doesn't cause much trouble-"
"Maybe you can say that, Tooth, but he's a loon, he nearly wrecked my holiday and hasn't stopped trying since, did the same damn thing to North! He's a selfish brat that can't handle his own power and thinks he's entitled to so much more than anyone else!" Bunnymund ranted.
Pitch coced a thin, thin eyebrow. "Really? Did he really wreck your holiday or do you just not like what he does? You've all destroyed plenty of my hard work with your hope and your wonder and your dreams. Really, all they would need would be a bit of laughter and you might as well destroy fear as it stands," he said bitterly.
Sandy shrugged apologetically.
"Manny believes," North said slowly, "that Jack plans to force children to believe in him and strand them up north, so that he might have his own personal...colony of believers."
"And what exactly is so wrong with that?" Pitch asked, examining his dull, gray nails.
"He's kidnapping unwilling children, Pitch," North said disapprovingly. "Surely you cannot be that cruel that you care not? The only case that has been brought to our attention is the kidnapping of two young children-Jamie and Sophie. They were taken from their parents house the day before Man in Moon called for you to be Guardian."
"And as a Guardian," Bunny jeered, "it's your responsibility to protect kids. Though I doubt you have the ability to protect anything but yourself, coward."
"Go suck an egg Bunny," he scowled. "Maybe you'll enjoy doing that more than painting them."
Bunny only rolled his his eyes and muttered something unintelligible under his breath. Pitch leered back at the temperamental Guardian.
Tooth cleared her throat and continued where North had left off. "He's been hiding from Manny by covering the moon with clouds whenever he kidnaps children. This one time-the children were from America-I guess he got careless."
"So you wish for me to be your bloodhound? To track your enemies by the smell of their fear? And there was no reason you couldn't tell me this before?" he asked, voice growing steadily more and more angry. "You kidnapped me from my palace, dragged me into your godforsaken moonlight and marooned me in the far north because you're too incompetent to hunt down a wayward spirit on your own?"
North's face was red with denial, and he shook his head. "You misunderstand," he intoned quietly. "We call on you because Manny say you are best for the job, so you must be best for the job."
"Your Man in the Moon is a half wit that knows nothing about the real world, just as you fools are! Flat, 2-D characters that do nothing but bribe children into believing you with materialistic things and foolish wishes! Who do nothing but obstruct the work I have spent hundreds of years trying to do, unseen! Who are old and washed up!" he laughed bitterly. "Had I the power, I would kill you myself. Hope, wonder, dreams, memories-shallow things children care not for once they grow old. Terror lingers for years."
He dissolved through the shadows in the corners of the room, twisting out from the other side. "I don't care about Jack Frost, and especially not if he's causing problems for you."
In his wake, he heard Toothiana cry 'Pitch!' in terror and worry. He chose to ignore her cries and vanished smoothly into the shadows, the darkness swallowing his form and spitting him out in the comfort of Sanctuary of Fear.
Privately, he called it his palace.
Dark tunnels dotted with craggy spires and random drops, decorated with hundreds of heavy dark cages and saturated with the smell of earth and the pleasant smell of terror. He could hear the screams of the children that he tormented with a touch, of the smell of night sweat and the harsh pants of waking after such terrors ringing in his ears.
The smell of clean, cold frost was highly unwelcome.
The fern like patterns wove around and around the walls. they were a thing of beauty, but personally, Pitch found that the best kinds of beauty were the ones that lingered in fear.
"Hey, Pitch," Jack said, talking as if they were old friends. "I had no idea that you hated the Guardians that much."
"It's not any of your business."
"But you were talking about me, weren't you? A little bit of snow, a bit of ice, children that the guardians didn't care for suddenly being cared for, and suddenly, I'm the bad guy. Personally, I'm just happy that Tooth's a fairy elsewise they might be lumping me into the same categories as sprites. Can you imagine?"
Pitch could, but he chose not to acknowledge the question. "What do you want, Frost?"
"Frost? How cold."
"Do you mean how appropriate?"
"Puns? Really? I thought they were beneath you, Mr. Nightmare King."
Pitch decided to ignore the sarcasm. He could feel the cold just radiating off the short being; the boy came hardly up to his chest. It was strange that this being, hailed as one of the oldest, if not the oldest spirit hardly came up to his chest.
Despite being shorter, he felt as if he was being looked down upon.
"It is hardly beneath me if I'm right," he drawled, his voice not betraying his nervousness in the presence of the herald. "How did you get in here?"
"I have my ways, Pitch Black. But that's besides the point. I'm here," he flipped onto his staff, "to talk about you."
"And what do you know about me?"
"What do I know? Nothing? What do I think? Quite a bit." He leaned forward, and now he actually was looking down upon the Boogeyman, perched upon his staff like a little white bird. "I think that the Man in the Moon didn't choose you. I think that despite your appearances, you're actually quite weak."
Pitch knew he looked like an imposing man, and carried himself with an aura of power he did not contain. He was smoke and shadows, but as real as his mark upon the psyche.
"I know what you are, Pitch Black. I know what the Guardians don't tell you."
He narrowed his eyes. "What don't the Guardians tell me?"
"You were chosen by the darkness the same way I was chosen by the winter, Pitch. Children near fear, and caution. You, along with traumatic experiences, provide that. In exchange, the heralding spirit requires one thing-belief.
The Guardians have ensured it so that you can never have belief, by countering your fear with lovely that inspire arrogance instead of humility in children. You can't touch anyone, can you? They all walk through you, as if you don't exist."
"Don't I? Sometimes I doubt that," he said bitterly. A small, cold hand grabbed his shoulders with a surprisingly strong grip.
"You exist," he replied simply, staring right into Pitch's bright yellow eyes with his cold pale ones. They looked almost silver in the lack of light.
"I'm going to make a deal with you, Pitch Black," Jack said, smiling mischievously. "In exchange for not telling the Guardians where I am, I'll give you believers."
"And what child in the hardened husks that you pulled off the streets will believe in a terror underneath the bed?"
"A child who is terrorized by said terror of course," he replied back, not missing a beat. "I'm sure you've noticed how you can taint the Sandman's dreamsand, right?"
It was a peculiar talent that Pitch had discovered of himself; that good dreams could not remain good dreams with the touch of the Boogeyman. He could whisper thoughts in children's ears, persuade them to feel fear, but he could not exactly inspire the terror that his shriveled up heart told him to spread. The Guardian's influence was too strong, and his own powers not influential enough to do so.
"And what does the Sandman's dreamsand have anything to do with my own abilities?"
"Jeez, for a man who yearns for belief you're awfully doubtful. Sandy spreads his good dreams with this sand. Reckon you could spread nightmares? Get all the little kiddies to fear you." He shrugged. "And keep the Guardians out of my way. I can get you belief and fear-"
"How can you give what you don't have?"
"I'll give it to you when I get it, but I can't get it if you're constantly leading them to me," he snapped.
"So I can track you. For such a powerful spirit-"
"Before you begin bragging, maybe you'll want to remember who it is you are talking to."
Pitch shut his mouth and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "I know."
"Good." He tried to smile again, but it came out considerably more strained. It was good to see that even the most powerful spirits were uneasy in his domain. He'd reckon that even the Man in the Moon would be unnerved by the aura of the caverns that the Nightmare King called home. "Have some fun with this, why don't you? You're far too stiff."
Whisked away on a cold breath of wind, Jack Frost left Pitch Black alone with no one but silence and the constant presence of his own fear. Then he noticed on the floor, laced with frost, was a palm sized vial of sheer glowing bluish ice filled with glittering, shimmering, moving dreamsand.
Inscribed on the vial were the words. "Our little secret~". The rapidly vanishing frost spelled across the craggy walls in old fashioned handwriting was. "Your second payment will be in a fortnight."