There was one person.
A special- well no, no, not special. Special held a certain- undertone to it, an affection, a fondness. Special meant important, meant loved. Special meant he took the time out of his day to visit-
Different, maybe. The word was different, yes. Different was impersonal, was detached, and Pitch would sooner crack his chest open, wrench out his cold, freezing heart, before admitting he had grown attached to someone who wasn't himself. So there; there was a different person.
One that kept him from weakening completely.
He knew what that meant. He knew that meant the boy would never find peace, had never found peace- well, maybe he had once, a long, long time ago. It had only taken a few visits to realise that it was an immortal he had found. A boy who would never grow old. Yet he wasn't a spirit, wasn't a legend. He had appeared one day in Munich, filled with grief and agony, and Pitch had been intrigued, and had stayed that way for three centuries.
He was fear. Fear was everywhere. Fear hid under beds, in closets, seeped into the cracks of the walls, deep in the hearts of humanity. He couldn't be destroyed.
The Guardians, those silly chosen Immortals, they couldn't see that. They were oh so blind sometimes.
But that was alright; his world didn't evolve around them.
Contrary to popular belief, he didn't spend every ounce of his time plotting against them.
He had a life.
A lonely life, but a life nonetheless.
He was the reason nightmares existed, the terror and fright that made children curl up whimpering in their beds. He hadn't been born with black sand- he had to learn that. It had been rumours before that, quick whispers, curling shadows that could do nothing but be passed off as a trick of the eye. Human minds were so soft, so vulnerable and susceptible to pain. He had to sit alone before that, on an empty throne, his shadows his only companions.
Only when he'd mastered dream sand, studying and practicing- well, only then could he conjure solid nightmares. Only then could he bend thoughts into reality. Eyes blinking owlishly from across the rooms? Done. Claws at the back of your neck? Yes.
Although the Sandman constantly ruined that (he didn't know why, nightmares were as much art as dreams were, he'd go so far as to say even more than that) there was someone he could keep all to himself.
His favourite.
All that pain he'd wrought was wanted, was welcomed. His art was appreciated, in chilled mornings, in the soft glow of the rising sun.
He'd met many a human who had an ache in their heart. A hollow chasm he couldn't understand. They had numb eyes and shaking fingers. He visited them sparsely, only when their fear was so staggering he couldn't not go, drawn to them like a moth to a flame. He'd met so many wraiths, broken and quiet, but still there was one he didn't know.
He had been stunned to have found him, the sudden force of a new grief lighting a spark under his skin. And the boy was one of them, the empty ones.
Opening his eyes, he felt his feet, bared and cold, meet solid ground. The groaning cars of Munich filled his head, the bustling of a much beloved city. The boy had come back; he'd travelled in the years, but it seemed he had a particular soft spot for the country of Germany.
Looking up at the small, quiet building, he spotted the half shut window at the far end of the right. There were chimes hung by the window pane, shells and stones.
He often stayed back to contemplate – even after the boy awoke – to watch him drown in a pool of despair. There were bad days. Memory faded with time, would always fade no matter what he did, but a bad day would send the boy back where he first arrived, small and uncertain and terrified.
Sometimes, if he were in a particular mood, he would sympathize. To be alone for centuries, watching people pass with the time. Always staring at the clock, fearful of how little time new friends had, how quick the goodbyes. The boy had tried shutting himself away two and a half centuries back. It hadn't been pretty.
Other times, he wouldn't bother.
Human were of no interest to him. He had no need for anyone. His shadows were enough. Who would withstand him? Who could he tolerate enough to let in? He didn't particularly care for any lingering spirits.
With, he thought quietly, in the privacy of his own mind, the exception of this one.
His shadows lead him towards the apartment, the allure of a night terror moving his feet. He entered the room, not bothering to hide away in some dark corner. Safe in the bitter knowledge that he would never be seen.
Sometimes, there would be a tall, Chinese teenager with the boy, but then again, that was only in the recent years. Time was sluggish in his head. He could only ever measure in hundreds, and he'd most certainly slip up if he tried otherwise. He didn't know whether or not the teenager had died recently, leaving the boy all alone.
Friend or lover, or both.
He'd often find the teenager sitting next to the bed, never in it. He had long, ebony wind-swept hair, artfully arranged, tied into a high ponytail. Tank tops were easy in this day and age, were common enough, but he knew enough of the modern world to know that the leather jacket the teenager sported? That needed money. A rich teenager with nothing better to do than watch over his sleeping friend. His fears had been centred around his family, the company his father had built, expected him to continue. His fears had been centred around Edward, Edward, Edward.
Most of the boy's nightmares ended with him shooting off the bed with a scream caught in his throat.
This time, he couldn't find the other.
He made his way across the small room, golden irises catching on the little odds and ends the boy had collected in his travels; keychains with plain stickers, train tickets from 1920, polished pebbles with painted pictures. Thick, heavy tomes littered the shelves, stacked against each other. The room was nearly all shelves.
The boy would always be on the cusp of adulthood, always have the silken skin of a child. He would always have that perfect head of gold, strands now plastered to his damp, perspiring forehead, splayed on the crumpled sheets of his bed. He found himself at the edge, staring down quietly as he took in the rattled breaths the boy gasped out. He had gazed down at many others, the scrunched cheeks of a six year old, the acne mottled face of a seventeen year old, but he knew, gazing down at the trembling boy curled on his side, that he would never again find another realm walker.
This wasn't new.
The boy would wake, with a longing so profound and a vision blurred with tears. The boy would wake with the name of his brother fallen from his bitten lips, sheets torn from the strength of his prosthetic arm. The boy would wake, and scream with fury that he had waken up at all.
Oh to be a human. To have emotions such as pain and grief and loss, to be so complex as to want it, all for the glimpse of a home long lost.
The nightmare was sketched out before him now; he could watch it if he so wished. He wouldn't deny that the ones he made for this boy, were beautiful, exquisite. Nightmares had never been appreciated, never been looked upon with such a reverence, not until the boy decided he'd been lonely enough to do just that.
It was always with the wish in mind that Pitch conjured his dreams. He brushed away the cobwebs of dimmed memories, took time to make his copies with excruciating detail. He played broken conversations over and over and over.
It was already more than what he did for the others.
He wondered if the boy would crack. If the boy would just stop, one day. He wondered if the boy would give in and simply cease to live, until there was no one but Pitch left to remember his name.
Pitch loved his work, would always love it. Without him, there would be nothing left. He was the end, the beginning. There would always be fear.
And yet.
He cast one last look around the desolate room, knowing that if he were to step out into the sitting, there would only be ringing silence.
It felt hauntingly empty to weave horror after horror.
Author's Note: This story has been updated.