Author's Notes: This fic is eating my brain. I must get it out. ._.
Broken Glass to Sweep Away- Chapter 2
"May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return."
-Robert Frost, "Birches"
The Guardians did not come, and it was stifling here, below the earth – suffocating without the chill of the winter air. All around him, blackness pressed like a live thing, shifting and creeping nearer each time he looked away. It was his imagination; this Jack knew with near certainty. This was the realm of the boogeyman, of things unseen from the corner of your eye. There was nothing to fear here but fear itself.
They did not come, and he searched for a way out, coaxed what ice he could conjure without the staff from his fingers, until the cage's bottom was slippery with it. He broke off crystalline chunks, held them in fingers that did not feel the cold, groped in darkness for a lock and inserted icicle after icicle, makeshift picks that did not do their job.
They did not come, and Jack paced in the tiny space like a caged animal, two steps down and two back, feeling the ground shift beneath him as the cage spun on its chain. The words of the Nightmare King clung to his thoughts, as restless as the winter spirit himself, equally as trapped. They would not leave him, would not retract the tendrils of doubt planted so expertly where intended.
They did not come, and the boy grasped the bars in his hands and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, leaning all his weight upon them. He pressed against them, slid his arm through to the shoulder and strained, for he was slight of build, and perhaps he might slip between them and be free. His skin grew red and raw; his palms chafed and bled with the effort, and still he was no closer to a way out.
They did not come, and time was hard to fathom in this place without light, but Jack began to feel it all the same, in the gnawing persistence of hunger and the ache of muscles without space enough to stretch. He broke icicles from the cage's roof to sate his thirst, sucked them absently and stared into the shifting shadows. The silence was hard to bear for a boy such as him, so used to the whirlwind of excitement that forms a child's life.
Jack waited. And he waited. And still they did not come.
When at last the voice spoke from behind him, its smooth calm a brilliant shock after hearing nothing for so long, the spirit of winter startled and whirled to face it, discovered a watchful face with eyes that glowed like a bonfire burned to coals. "Have you begun to reconsider?"
Pitch stood on nothing at all – or perhaps there was a ledge so swathed in shadow that it remained invisible to even Jack's eyes, now long accustomed to the darkness of the chamber.
"The only thing I'm considering," the boy told him, defiance welling up to chase away the uncertainty gathered in the corners of his thoughts, "is what I'm going to do with you when I get out of here."
"Brave words." The Nightmare King did not react; the smile, thin-lipped and self-satisfied, did not waver. "But not, I think, the truth. Have you forgotten so soon?" The man tipped his head to one side, as though considering a work of art he intended to purchase. "I know your fears."
Jack folded his arms over his chest, the gesture as much unease as belligerence. "If you knew what I was afraid of, you know I can't be afraid of it anymore."
Pitch sighed the sort of sigh favored by a man attempting to explain a lesson to a particularly dull child. "The beauty of fear is that it's never a static thing," the Nightmare King told him. "It evolves. It changes, in time, to become something that it never was before."
The boy's hands were not loose now, but knotted into fists; the impulse was to move, to escape this conversation by leaving it, but the cage prevented any retreat.
"Oh, I know." The tone had grown indulgent – almost fond. "You think your problems solved. You think you have everything you've ever longed for." What hid behind those words might almost have been mistaken for concern, if it wasn't for the laughter that danced, unvoiced, beneath them. "Did you enjoy it? I must say, it didn't last for very long." In the dimness of the room, it was just possible to make out the careless way that Pitch raised one hand, as though shrugging something aside. "A handful of months, for all those centuries spent waiting."
"It's not over yet." Jack's voice was hoarse when he spoke, was tight with emotion. He could not hide the little sparks of dread beginning to shiver down his spine – not from Pitch - but he could pretend. Could put on a show of anger, as though the man might be convinced.
The Nightmare King paused, turning to face him. "You'll only prolong the inevitable if you tell yourself lies, child." It was not entirely certain in the gloom, but Jack thought the man's expression made a mockery of sympathy. "In the end, it hurts all the more."
"Right." The spirit of winter scowled – unfolded his arms so that he could clasp the bars of the cage in his hands. "Like you care how I feel."
Pitch's laughter was a thing of complicated secrets, of shades within shades. "All this time, and you've yet to discern my intentions? How you feel, my dear child, is all I care about." There must have been a ledge after all, for in the places that Jack had thought only empty air, the man passed like a ship on still, dark water - silent and graceful. "I'm afraid your friends did quite a bit of damage to me with that little stunt of theirs. My options, you understand, are somewhat limited."
The boy watched him approach, listened for each even footstep as it fell. "So you need more fear."
"Yours, to be direct." Jack had not looked away – had scarcely taken the time to blink – and yet when he opened his eyes, there was Pitch, close enough to touch him. The man's teeth were white and sharp, the pale of them drawing the eye in the dim light. "And how convenient it is that you already believe in me."
"Some good that does you." The winter spirit lifted his chin and set his jaw, threw the words out like a challenge. And if he recoiled just a little at Pitch's sudden proximity, it was, given the circumstances, understandable. "I'm a Guardian, remember?"
"As it so happens, you're also a child." The Nightmare King's smile grew just a touch wider - showed just a touch more teeth. As though drawn by the tiny retreat, he leaned in nearer. "And while your fear is not quite as delectable as a human's… well. One mustn't quibble over seasoning in the face of starvation."
"So what - you're just going to keep me?" The winter spirit forced a laugh, but it was a brittle thing, swallowed up in the long shadows of the cavern. "That's the big plan? Hold onto me until you can make trouble again?"
A knowing look sifted into eyes that glowed like lanterns. "Oh, I intend far more than that."
Jack snorted in disbelief, shook his head as though the motion could ward the idea away. "If you had something better lined up, you'd have started it already."
"Are you so sure I haven't?" Pitch paused, allowed the words to simmer. "Picture, if you will, a child. The poor dear is breathtakingly lonely. Perpetually excluded." The stare that settled upon Jack was like the jagged edges of ice on a pond long, long ago. "For a few kind words or a simple embrace, he would lay bare his heart – would do anything to please. But he's never been given the chance."
The boy could feel that stare around his heart, closing in with the deadly creep of frost in a garden's roots. "Stop."
"In fact, he's been all but invisible." It might have been kindness, on any face save this one. It might have been pity, but for the way the man's lips still curled up at the corners. "Even the ones who could see him never glanced his way."
"Stop it." The fingers clenched tight around the bars loosened their hold, began instinctually to draw away.
"Has it been everything you dreamed of, Jack? To be touched?" The boy was pulling away, now – saw where this would go – but he was not quite fast enough. With all the grace of a striking snake, Pitch stretched out a hand to reach inside, traced the planes of a pale cheek with surprising gentleness. "To be spoken to? Believed in?"
No answer came, but the Nightmare King had not expected one. He could feel it well enough, the emotion that roiled in the wiry frame before him, threatening to spill forth. "I-" Jack began, but he got no further. If his voice had been rough before, had been suspiciously tight, now it was frayed at the edges, coming undone.
"You think yourself immune to me. Is that it?" Pitch's thumb traced the ridge of a jaw, smoothed over the freckles that dusted Jack's cheek. "How frightfully brave of you, when I can snatch away everything you've ever wanted. How tragically heroic." The hand drifted slowly upward, over temples and forehead, to slip into hair as white as the snow the boy so reveled in. It hovered, then stroked the way one might comfort a child after a nightmare. "Do you know how easy it would be? To leave you here, alone in the dark, while your fair-weather friends enjoy the absence of you?"
The boy had begun to tremble. Just slightly, but words have power, and these had worked their way inside. They pulled down the pillars of hope; they rendered the contentment that had begun to bloom there, in these past few months, to a quivering ruin.
"I'll be here, of course," Pitch told him, as he petted the child's hair, "but it's not truly all you've feared unless the isolation is complete." As though driven by the revelation, the elegant fingers withdrew. The Nightmare King took back his hand – pulled it out through the bars of the cage once more. "With no one to even glance your way." The smile, for all its mildness, was horrific to behold. "Just like old times."
Oh, yes – words have power. And these had bowed the child's head, had driven the shaking in his shoulders to a visible affair. Jack's face was a study in emotion, always; he did not disguise his joys nor his sorrows, and now his expression was so much shattered glass, the breaking of his heart writ large in the damp lashes and reddened eyes.
Merciless, the boogeyman closed for the final blow. "And in eighty years or so, when the last of the children you so love have turned old and grey? You'll die when they do. Here in the dark, with nobody to care." There was something self-satisfied about the smirk that graced the Nightmare King's lips. "They told you, I hope, the perks of being a Guardian?"
No response came. In the silence, Jack heaved in an unsteady breath that sounded suspiciously like a sob.
"It's your last chance, Jack." Pitch had half-turned already, as though he meant to walk away. "Speak, if you would have one final farewell. After this, I'm afraid, there won't be anyone to answer."
The boy took another shaking breath – and this time, Pitch thought, there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was. Jack raised his head to glare at his captor, and there were tears frozen slick and glossy on his cheeks. "When they come for me," he said, "I'm going to laugh in your face."
"Oh no, child." The boogeyman began to walk, steps even and measured as before, back into the darkness from whence he'd come. "If they come for you."