For a time it seemed Pitch was keeping his word. Sandy honoured his own end of the bargain by ignoring any shifts in the night's shadows, though he did pay attention to the dreams children created for themselves in case there were whispers of the Boogeyman.
Though Sandy stopped actively spying on Pitch, Pitch's behaviour after they established their awkward peace together suggested he was significantly more interested in Sandy as a neutral party than he had been when they were enemies. Sandy felt the weight of eyes on him more than once during quiet, dark nights, and the streams of his dreamsand were occasionally interrupted by curious fingers.
Sandy couldn't give Pitch free reign to play with his dreamsand, not when the agreement they had settled on relied on an already hesitant trust, and decided it was best to act before his amusement at Pitch's actions turned to anger.
Sandy lured Pitch out into the depths of a forest, manifested a bench for the two of them to sit on, and wrapped a tendril of dreamsand tight around Pitch's wrists before dragging him out of the shadows.
.
Pitch had a rough landing, but dusted himself off calmly before taking a seat next to Sandy.
"Well?" Sandy asked, eyebrows raised.
"You can't blame me for being curious," Pitch said, running his fingers lightly over the bench's golden back. "The ability to make dreams. Where do you get all your ideas from, Sandman?"
Sandy knew better than to be flattered by the question, but Pitch's eyes did seem to be a little distant with thought - not watchful and piercing as was their norm. "I grew up with interesting people."
Pitch chuckled softly before stretching out, settling his arm close enough to Sandy's that their fingertips grazed. Sandy narrowed his eyes and tensed up, not snatching his hand back, but fully aware he might soon need to.
Sandy knew how cats played games, feigning interest or even lazy affection before striking. "It does make you wonder -" Pitch said, tilting his head back, the bare column of his throat a temptation.
Sandy let Pitch's end of the bench disintegrate, watched Pitch's elegance disappear as he fell to the ground in a tangle of long limbs. For a split second Pitch's face contorted with nightmarish fury, and Sandy allowed himself a moment of smug satisfaction; if Pitch meant to tease Sandy through his possession of a man Sandy was attracted to, Sandy wasn't going to play fair either.
"Very mature, Sandman," Pitch snarled, rearranging himself into a sitting position on the floor. "But as I was going to say - if your dreams come from what you knew before Earth, how do you know all this is real?"
Sandy cocked his head, thinking easily of football, television, afternoon tea - all things he wouldn't have known of if he hadn't fallen and watched the dreams of Earth's children over the years - and wondered at Pitch's expression. Pitch's interest looked genuine, and Sandy couldn't place why, frowning when Pitch dropped back into the shadows, their talk apparently over.
Pitch had a habit of leaving their conversations unfinished.
.
Sandy had a few weeks of peace before Pitch showed up again, and even if he still knew better than to trust Pitch, he didn't mind the company. Pitch hopped through storm clouds to keep up with Sandy, watching him work, and Sandy couldn't resist showing off a little. Pitch hadn't touched his dreamsand since the incident with the bench, but it clearly still fascinated him, and it was always entertaining to create previews of dreams before they reached the children they were meant for.
It felt oddly civilised to be able to acknowledge Pitch instead of playing hide and seek with him.
.
Logic dictated that Pitch would eventually attract the attention of other Guardians. He was growing bolder as time passed, hiding less and less as if he felt confident despite lacking the overwhelming power that had defined his reign, and while the other Guardians were often distracted by work, they weren't fools.
Sandy never would have guessed that when Pitch did finally make himself known to the others he would do so on purpose.
.
When North gathered the Earth-bound Guardians together, Sandy could guess why easily, even if he made a point of playing innocent and taking advantage of the meet-up to overindulge in eggnog. North and Bunny were happy to argue amongst themselves anyway, and Tooth's nature meant she was distracted from the very start.
Sandy hadn't expected a genuine threat from Pitch, and if the moon had not shone down to prove to the Guardians that the threat was real, Sandy would never have guessed the danger they were all in.
.
"Look familiar, Sandman?"
"Now this is who I'm looking for."
"Don't fight the fear, little man!"
.
A dagger would have been more poetic, but Sandy knew, even as the rest of him thought "Why?", that there was a broken sort of respect in Pitch's decision to stab him in the back literally as well as figuratively. Fearling poison crept out from his wound as Pitch taunted him, creeping cold through his gut, and Sandy turned to look him in the eye, standing tall and triumphant on his crest of stolen sand.
Pitch's eyes shone with glee as corruption set into Sandy's chest and arms, too fast and too unfamiliar for Sandy to fight against easily.
"I'd say sweet dreams, but there aren't any left."
Sandy remembered the last time Pitch let him fall, thinking him defeated - the last time Sandy had defied all odds and somehow survived.
He closed his eyes, pictured his ship as she had been before Earth, and let himself sail away on waves of blue-black sand.
.
Sandy had slept away centuries in his dreamsand palace without ever losing or doubting his grasp of reality; drifting in the currents of Pitch's nightmare sand was little different.
Pitch's nightmares had a structure similar to dreams, if far more deceptive about how they worked. Moving between them could be a fluid process or a jarring one - some nightmares were light and teasing, dreams of being sent to school in a towel after a shower, while others were violent, even bloody.
Sandy found older nightmares too as he slept; the nightmares of soldiers who had fallen in the war, of children made orphans and parents made childless. Fearling nightmares were crueller than anything Pitch had ever created, and as Sandy explored, he found himself looking in on the nightmare that had ended the Golden Age.
A General afraid of losing his daughter.
Sandy knew it was just a dream, that Kozmotis' face in the reflections of the nightmare was not connected to the shred of goodness buried in Pitch's heart, but he held onto that image as long as he could, reminding himself why he fought. Pitch was the result of the fearlings, a twisted and haunted version of Kozmotis, and as long as the fearlings had a home in his skin, the battle against them would never be over.
.
Sandy lost his grip on the nightmare as the sands that bore him churned and surged forward at Pitch's command, devouring light everywhere they found it, but the way the sands moved told him he didn't need to hold back anymore. The sands were looking for a very specific sort of light - Pitch's confidence tainted the air, but it also gave away his secrets - and Sandy was determined to get there first.
He couldn't fight the nightmares without help, not from inside them, but could at least misdirect them, keeping the cruellest ones back while the lighter ones took the lead.
A child's hand reached out, brushing against the sand deliberately, and something tiny called out within the sands, fierce and bright and burning.
Brave.
.
Sandy felt the light before he felt his feet or hands or face, the sands around him blasted into something he could shape, something he could use - to dream back Tooth's flight, North's dexterity, Bunny's strength - and something that could be used for him.
One dream; enough to return him, enough to let him show Pitch what it truly meant to be believed in.
When he lashed out at Pitch to protect those who had helped him, he made sure to finish by knocking Pitch out with a hastily crafted fix for the nightmare that had kept him going.
Whether the good buried in Pitch could see the dream, Sandy wasn't sure, but Pitch certainly could. Golden butterflies floated above Pitch's head when Sandy left him unconscious, a remnant of the fields Kozmotis was to open prison doors onto, replacing what had been a fearling swarm.
Sandy turned away, distracted by the others celebrating his return and the responsibility of putting the masses of converted dreamsand to good use. He didn't have a chance to see if Pitch reacted to Sandy's approximation of Kozmotis' daughter, a shock of black curls in a green dress with her face hidden by a book.
.
Pitch's defeat felt complete, but hollow - he hadn't accepted his loss, had been bitter and angry to the end as his nightmares dragged him away, and experience had taught Sandy the hard way not to trust the appearance of weakness.
Sandy waved off North and the others as they returned to the North Pole to welcome Jack into the field properly, claiming he intended to make sure the children of Burgess got home safely.
It was a small lie, as far as lies went, and bought him time to find a way into Pitch's lair.
.
Shadows and nightmare sand stained the floor everywhere Sandy looked, and even though he had seen and experienced the damage corrupted sands could do, he had not expected their solid forms would turn on their former master so viciously.
Sandy charged, tearing apart the beasts with his whips and fighting his ways towards Pitch, throwing a shield of dreamsand over him as soon as he could. With their quarry lost, the remaining beasts slunk away, letting Sandy expand the shield up and out into a tent with room enough for them both.
Sandy stepped inside, leaving Pitch's lair behind in his thoughts so he could concentrate on the man who was bleeding shadows out onto the floor, what little colour there had been in his skin leeching from stone-grey to ash-white.
"Come to gloat?" Pitch asked, his expression more hateful than afraid, and Sandy shook his head, knelt to press a hand to Pitch's shoulder. The rest of Pitch's chest was a tattered mess, and creeping dread numbed Sandy's fingertips.
"I don't want you to die," Sandy said, trusting Pitch could still focus enough to read his speech. "Tell me what to do. I can help."
"Good luck with that," Pitch snarled, closing his eyes tight.
Sandy slapped Pitch, twice, but got no further response; in shutting his eyes Pitch had also shut out Sandy, and Sandy would have shook him for it if it didn't mean worsening his wounds.
Sandy refused to let Pitch's ignorance prevent him from helping the only way he could; Sandy spread a blanket of dreamsand over Pitch, pressing it down tight to stem the bleeding wherever necessary, before resting a hand on Pitch's forehead.
Pitch's skin was cold and taut, his breathing uneven, but the fear he might be too late didn't keep Sandy from closing his eyes and dreaming as hard as he could.
I wish you well, I wish you well, I wish you well.
