Joyce had gone to a lot of places. She'd gone to Rome and jumped off from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, travelling in between shadows. She'd seen the marvelous melting ice in the rivers and canals of New Zealand, stomped on most of the flowers in Versailles, and even shouted "I'M IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE!" when she'd checked very carefully that the step she takes to walk out of her shadow would be exactly on the border of the Arctic Circle.
There were plenty of famous places still waiting for her to go to; yet she was feeling so hollow. Her heart felt like a main blood vessel was missing. Everywhere she went, no matter how she tried to forget, the memories of Jack still came floating back up her mind.
The jumping sensation on the Leaning Tower of Pisa resembled flying with Jack, so she went away. The melting cloud-like ice in New Zealand recalled memories of Jack's powers, so she went away. The blue and white flowers in Versailles resembled his white hair and his blue eyes, so she stomped on them before leaving. (That time in the Arctic Circle was just a small treat for herself.)
Now Joyce was back in the Antarctica again, where she continued with making ash sculptures of the world's animals, intentionally leaving out humans. Humans were too much of an influential species to touch.
"Joyce?" Jack's voice, without warning, suddenly rang up from behind. She froze as fear ignited like a fire in her, coursing through her every vein. What in the name of Jesus Christ is he doing here?
Turning not without dread, she turned to see –
No one. No one was around. There was only white mist half-hovering in the air, and snow, reflecting the sunlight, too bright for even a shadow.
What was that? "Joyce!" Jack's voice rang up from the same direction again; but it wasn't full of worry: it was full of mischief, like he was hiding somewhere in the snow and was waiting to jump on her at the right moment.
She couldn't help but let a smile slip onto her cheeks, walking cautiously towards the origin of the voice. "Jack! Come out this instant!" she shouted into the snow, half-joking, half-readying herself for any danger.
She couldn't help but wonder why Jack was here; but nevertheless, she had to find him, explain it all clearly, and leave with a proper adieu. She couldn't just let Jack keep going in circles. That would make the Guardians worry about her instead.
"Joyce! I'm here~" she heard his voice again, seeming to be further away.
She dashed towards the voice's origin, being both longing to see him and dreading to see him. To see him would mean flying free, and skating and laughing all night long; but not seeing him would mean his safety, which seemed to be more important at the moment. And that was exactly why she wanted to see Jack: she just wanted to break it all off, and tell him to leave her alone.
The white mist cleared in front of her, revealing – a bare bed.
With a hole underneath it. Well, she thought. That was less than what I thought. The bed didn't even have bedsheets: it was just a few broken wooden planks.
"Joyce!" Jack's voice came clearly from the hole below.
She decided to be more cautious. She picked up some snow, and threw them into the hole. No sound of the snow splashing into anything came up. The girl tried again with a penguin ash-doll that she'd conjured up. Again, no sound or echo came up. That's strange. She thought Jack would at least ask her why she was throwing snow and black penguins down onto him.
A curious interest sparked up. Hm. This seems worth inspecting. Without thinking about the distance she might have to travel and how in fact a jump that long may kill her, she jumped in, darkness happily engulfing her.
The fall didn't really last that long. Joyce stood on solid ground in less than two seconds. She looked up, trying to see where the hole she came from was. Hm. No trace of the hole. This is getting very peculiar indeed.
She turned her attention back to looking at her surroundings. She stood on a half-circle platform, with a wall behind her, though she felt no reassurance. Empty birdcages hung on chains from above, with grey staircases leading to seemingly nowhere all around her. Sunshine came from above, though she had no idea where it came from. This whole place had a creepy sort of feeling to it, the walls a shadowy, mystic sort of grey, the birdcages darker than the darkest night.
Then, as an uncomfortable feeling started settling on her, the black-haired girl realised something: someone was watching her. And not just any someone. It felt like…someone who could travel between shadows. Someone with a particularly bad intent. Thrice she had seen the slight flicker of a shadow of a man, tall and with spiky hair, moving away just slightly not in time.
"Hello, dear," a voice, cold and, somehow, fake, suddenly rang up from behind.
She turned quickly. There, the man whose shadow she'd seen three times. He wore a shirt that seemed to extend into a long sort of tunic, just slightly dragging on the ground. His nose was really long, though it kind of matched his high cheekbones and his unnaturally V-shaped chin and his grey skin and eyes. His smile looked so…plastered, like a thin veil covering the cruelty below.
"Decided to come here to thank me at last, haven't you?" the man said.
Joyce was baffled. "Thank you for what? We haven't even met."
The man's smile evaporated quicker than water vapour. His eyes thinned into two fine slices of doubt. "You really don't remember?"
Joyce was even more confused. "Who are you? I don't recall seeing you before at all."
The man's horrible acidic smile came back. "Oh, bother. I'll tell you now, then," He paced closer to Joyce.
"I am the one who created you. I am the one whom you cried for mercy at the last moment before your death, before you were supposed to die of drug abuse," the tall man's eyes twinkled, resembling the wicked look one usually unconsciously apply when thinking of ways to kill a bug in front of him. "In short, I am your father."
Shock hit Joyce with more impact and force than she thought, like a giant fist of air. She staggered backwards, into the wall behind her. "I am your…what?"
The man moved towards her. "Daughter," he said, as his face began to fill with spite. "And you shall obey me; together, we will rule the world."
Joyce couldn't hold her confused rage back anymore. "What 'rule the world'? I'm not even interested in the world," And, taking the chance of shocking the man, she dashed forward, and gripped the man's left hand.
Absolutely nothing happened.
The man laughed a horrible laugh. "That little ash trick doesn't work on me, my girl," he said. And with a harsh flick of his hand, he pulled Joyce off balance.
While she tried to regain her balance, he kicked her in the stomach, the imminent pain causing her fall to the floor as she clutched her stomach hard, her intestines protesting.
Despite the harsh pain in her, Joyce bravely tried to control it, and managed to claw her way through a few strips of the man's long tunic, before a knife materialized against her throat, making the black-haired girl freeze in the midst of her attempt to hurt the man.
"Lie down," the man commanded—though his voice was sweet and gentle—as the knife moved with his words. "Or I will find your head a very interesting ornament in decorating my home."
"It won't fit in," Joyce replied, although she did have to admit, the knife was ever so intruding, and cutting just a small part of her throat, not enough to cause any serious damage, but enough to make her lie down obediently.
"Now," Joyce watched as the man flicked his hand ever so slightly, pressing the knife to the closest possible position before breaking her trachea. "Tell me that you will obey me and work for me, and I will, perhaps, spare you."
Joyce said nothing. Her expression was blank but her jaw was held tight, in a stubborn way.
"No? Well," the man said, as he suddenly lifted the knife, letting the searing blood ooze out of Joyce's throat. "That was probably the worst mistake you could've ever made in your life."
The black-haired girl was just a second too late to understand what this grey man was going to do.
And she understood, finally, when slashes of fire launched in her stomach, her forearms, her shoulders, burning with more pain than a bonfire could cause. She was too slow to wince: the next blow was always too quick for her.
The silver flashes kept cutting the black-haired girl, until she suddenly felt a leg positioned near the edge of her left lung.
The time she understood.
She closed her eyes.
And waited.
Although the wounds were scorching, burning away her precious energy to roll away and save herself, she kept her eyes firmly shut; she wanted to keep her sight from all horrors that she knew she would have to face sooner or later. She wanted to live in her momentary peace.
The man kicked in, so hard that Joyce could hear her lower left ribs snap apart with a dull crack.
The pain was clear and sharp, worse than a thousand glass pieces dragging its way through her whole body.
But that wasn't the end of this horrible nightmare: she felt more and more kicks, some from her left and some from her right, striking at the same time as her abuser spoke.
"You – are – my – daughter – and – you – will – obey –" she heard him shout, one word matching one kick, until the last one, where he stood on her right hand's wrist, pressing down with all the forces of the universe and cracking her bone – before hissing, "Me."
Her second broken bone jerked the black-haired girl, originally going to fall into a coma, awake once more. She tried to take in more air, but her burning lungs choked her, and all she could do was watch in horror as she saw the man come up to her and cut a deep slash across her palm, holding out a bottle to collect as the slick black blood gurgled out.
In addition to that, when the blood flow started to slow down, the man took up her hand, and squeezed her hand to get more blood, twisting and pushing and pulling her flesh. Joyce had to fight the instinct to scream or gasp in pain—which was very hard to do so—as it would hurt her broken ribs even more.
By the time he was finished, Joyce was already half-drenched in her own blood, caused by the numerous small thin slashes across her whole body. Her lungs were protesting and telling her to breath in more air; but her ribs were opposing and burning, and therefore not helping with clearing the fog in her head at all.
Suddenly, the man's voice interrupted her thoughts about her wounds. "My name is Pitch. Pitch Black. Some call me the Boogeyman, while those who fear me call me Master. But of course, you can also choose to call me Father." Seeing the lack of response from his child, he dug one of his legs into her broken ribs, making the pain flare up more quickly than anything, searing and killing. The black-haired girl couldn't help but gasp—resulting in another, even worse, wave of pain.
The man chuckled slightly, releasing his foot but keeping his hand held on to his daughter's cut palm as he knelt down. "I am Fear, while you are Death, my girl," he said, his voice soft, like how one might lure babies to sleep. "You see this bottle?"—He held up his spare hand—"This will never run out, and as long as I drink from it, I will be able to tie myself up as a part of your soul. Isn't this just the best way for a parent to monitor his only child?"
Seeing that his daughter was falling into a coma once more, he kicked out once again, harder and more brutally than anything into her broken ribs, and she jerked awake once more, slightly panting. Fear wasted no time: he grabbed the thick black hair by its roots, and shoved the girl up against a wall, drinking big, thirsty, longing gulps of her blood while forcing her to watch.
"And one day, I will let you know how 'wonderful' it would feel like to disobey me, too," this time, he allowed his girl to slip into a coma, but not before he hissed the last of his words, his voice soft as a cat: "this is just a piece of cake, not a punishment at all."
A/N: Thank you to all those who read my past chapters, and I hope you also like this chapter! (Really really sorry to my main character Joyce for suffering so much) It is my deepest regret to say that my school's second term has started, and my homework is sttarting to pile up. It'll be a long time before I could be on FanFiction :( I'll try my best to get on FanFiction if I could squeeze some precious time out before or in my Easter holidays. But if I can't, then it would be summer before I'm gonna be active here once more :(
Really sorry guys :(
(But anyway I still hope you'll like this chapter and be patient enough to wait ;)
Disclaimer: I do not own the Rise of the Guardians)
