Chapter Four:
Jack turned away from Toothiana, who was screaming, writhing and shouting out names. Vaguely, he wondered who these people were. Haroom and Rashmi and Punjam Hy Loo. If they were people at all, that was. They could be places or just random words that sounded like names. Pitch seemed to know. Jack didn't want to. If it was bad enough to make the tough fairy queen who had nearly slit his throat minutes ago sob like a baby.. He couldn't even think what would do that.
Jack flinched as he felt a hand on his arm, over the wound Tooth had given him. He looked up to see Pitch's golden eyes with the flickering shadows staring down at him. He needed to stop being so suspicious of Pitch. Pitch had saved his life, twice before in the past half hour. He knew that Pitch had killed Sandy, but they had a history, it seemed. And Sandy, the little sand man who enjoyed sleeping and made those funny symbols above his head seemed to be the one in the wrong. The one who stole all of Pitch's believers. If Pitch was to be believed. He was.
"Let me see that, Jack," Pitch ordered, his voice gentle, but with a steely undertone. "We may be immortal, as in we won't die of old age, but we can still be killed or seriously injured."
"Sandy," Jack muttered. He thawed the ice over the cut. "There. How bad is it?"
"You won't die," Pitch said, his teeth bared in a smile. "You won't lose the hand either. Accelerated healing, it happens to immortals. Lucky really, considering the situations that you get yourself into. Blizzard of 1968. Look at that, it's healing up already." A tendril of black sand prodded at the blood, pushing it back into the wound and following it in.
"The ice helps," Jack said. "It stops it hurting. Are you done?" Pitch gave a curt nod and Jack reapplied the seal of ice and flexed his hand experimentally. It was still stiff and hurt a little, but was much better than before. Jack marvelled at his power. That was a cut that a mortal would probably have bled to death from, and a few minutes later, here he was thinking that it hurt a little. He started to wonder about the arrow that Pitch had shot Sandy in the back with.
"More children are believing in them," Pitch spat, looking at North's globe. The few lights that had been there before, around fifteen, had multiplied rapidly and their were now a couple of hundred. Jack cursed the yetis in his mind. First they had prevented him from breaking in here, then tossed him into the sack and thrown him through the snow globe portal and now they were converting children back to believing in the guardians.
"How did you stop them from believing in the first place?" Jack asked curiously. "Aside from stopping Easter, and wouldn't the kids still believe in Santa and Sandy and Tooth?"
"They already had doubts about Toothiana," Pitch responded. "After she had missed her night of tooth-collecting. You and the guardians managed to clean that up fairly well, but the doubts stayed. When Easter went, their belief in all of the other guardians went too. After all, if the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny aren't real, why would Santa Claus and the Sandman be? Sanderson had been doing a terrible job of keeping my nightmares away.."
"So the guardians still have an opportunity to win the children back with Christmas?"
"Jack, Christmas is just over eight months away." Pitch's laughter echoed throughout the room. "The guardians will be long gone before then. And with all of the yetis occupied with trying to keep children believing in magic.. Well, there would be no presents even if North was alive."
Jack smiled. Maybe he could take over December 25th as a universal snow-day. Everything would freeze, and he could make frost sculptures in all of the towns- maybe with Pitch's sand as well?- and people would be talking about him all through November and December. On the other hand, was there much point in making a universal snow-day on a day without school? Jack laughed quietly.
"How will you know when Tooth has sent the message?" Jack asked. "Shouldn't you make her do that now?"
"Let the nightmare take its course," Pitch said, rubbing his hands together in obvious joy at the look of fear and sadness on Tooth's unconscious face. "It wouldn't be right to stop it halfway through."
Jack looked down at the shapes. He could make out a cage with a fairy inside it. Tooth? Or one of her helpers? Whoever it was, it was definitely a big part of her nightmare. Jack smiled slightly. He could see what Pitch meant by fear being a wonderful feeling. He hadn't wanted to be feared, he'd said to Pitch before. But no one ever had feared him, not really. Maybe it was just because it was one of the guardians. This feeling just seemed out of place for him. He was getting too much like Pitch. Ice, Jack reminded himself. My zone is ice, not nightmares.
"You're enjoying this," Pitch stated slowly, his tongue licking up against his pointed teeth. "I can tell. She isn't the only one here who's afraid."
"So what?" Jack responded. "You're enjoying it too. It was your idea."
"Yes," Pitch said. "I am the Nightmare King. I enjoy fear, I feed off it. I don't feel bad about that. You, on the other hand, are nervous about the idea that you're enjoying being feared. Ice, not nightmares, you're thinking to yourself. Relax, Jack. It's natural to enjoy a bit of fear, it doesn't mean that you're evil. Besides, she tried to kill you. I would be worried if you weren't enjoying this."
"How did you know what I was thinking?"
"I know your fears. You're afraid that you've chosen the wrong choice, that you're going evil, that you're too much like me. That isn't such a bad thing, Jack. We're more alike than you realise. We've both been alone for thousands of years, we've both been living in the shadows of the guardians. Our powers are both unpopular, fear and cold. We're going to rule together, Jack. You can enjoy being feared."
"It's just for Tooth," Jack insisted. "I won't enjoy the fear of children, no matter what you say or do."
"Of course not, Jack," Pitch said, the nightmare sand gathering around him as he laughed. "She'll be pleased with you."
Jack looked down to see Toothiana's eyes flickering open and shut. She was waking up from the nightmare. Seeing her so weak and so terrified had been nice, but it was still a relief when she woke up. He wasn't getting into fear like Pitch was. Just slight sadism, normal for somebody who tried to kill him.
"You're going to send the message to the guardians," Pitch ordered, the sand swirling around him before rising up threateningly. "You will sound oh-so-terrified and desperate for them to come and rescue you. You will tell them that I've been keeping you with the nightmares, and that this is your only chance." The black sand pulsed outwards. "Or I'll place you back with the nightmares."
"How do I know that you won't do that anyway?" Tooth demanded.
"You can't.." Pitch seemed to rise, larger than life, towering over the captive fairy. "I would give my word, but you don't trust me enough for it to be worth anything to you." He laughed. "Remember, I will know if you've done it. And if you don't, it will be worse than nightmares. I have almost ever single one of your fairies trapped. Perhaps I should bring some here. Perhaps if you don't do as I say, they might never end up flying again."
"You wouldn't."
"Oh, trust me, I would," Pitch laughed. "Would you like a demonstration, maybe?"
"I'll go," Tooth said, hurriedly.
Jack watched with interest as Toothiana closed her eyes. Her facial muscles seemed to relax as she left her body. She'd never told him that she could control her fairies. He wondered what other secrets she had. The ability to use swords, a past that made her prepared to betray her fellow guardians rather than relive it, the ability to control her mini-fairies..
Pitch's hand closed around Jack's shoulder and steered him around until they stood face to face. Jack looked to Pitch's other hand; black sand was forming and hardening. The shape that it made was hard to make out for a second, but then it became clear. A bow, like he had with Sandy.
"You must distract the guardians when they come, Jack," Pitch commanded. "Make it a big distraction. Pretend you're going back to their side. But you need to be aware. Shield yourself." Pitch laughed. "I would hate to hit you instead of them."
"How do I shield myself? I can only throw up the ice if I actually know what's coming. Not if you're going to shoot me from behind." Jack looked pointedly at the bow. "I know that it's efficient and all, but I actually quite enjoy living."
"You can make your ice into armour, can't you Frost?" Pitch's long fingers touched the top of Jack's back, where his ice hugged the hoodie. "Make some ice armour. And you wouldn't die if I hit you. You would just become part of my army, part of the nightmares. They take over you."
"Being reborn as a horse that gives bad dreams," Jack said shrugging. "It wasn't my plan when I joined you."
"Pity. I think you'd make a wonderful nightmare. Now make the armour, before they burst through here trying to rescue her."
Jack concentrated hard. Just his torso area, his arms and legs should be fine. The arrow which killed Sandy had been right where the heart would be, if Sandy had one. Jack imagined a little heart made from sand pulsing inside Sandy's body, sending waves of more sand through his veins.
The ice covered his back and stomach in thin layers which should be able to bend over each other, if he'd done it right. Jack was used to creating frost patterns and snowfall, not intricate and practical armour. He tried to bend over and heard warning creaks of the ice grinding. He tweaked the design slightly to make the pieces slide over each other better. It wasn't as flexible as his regular clothes, but he could bend slightly and move easily.
"Will this hold against an arrow?" Jack asked.
"Ice alone probably won't. But ice fused with nightmares should."
Jack pulled off the hoodie, leaving only the almost opaque, ice armour. "Go on." The sand began to feed into the ice in tendrils, spreading like a spiders web. The strands reached around to his back and rejoined the front ones in a circle, before they started to dissolve.
Something that Jack had thought earlier in Antarctica came back to him. It's alright, just an alliance. He isn't getting you to dress in black and ride nightmares or anything. And now, less than a day later, here he stood in black armour. Perhaps riding a nightmare wouldn't be a bad experience.
A hate-filled voice broke him away from his thoughts.
"They know," Tooth stated. "They're coming."
xXx-X-xXx
Wow, I've had lots of reviews, follows and favourites in a pretty short amount of time. Thanks guys. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, even if there's a bit less action than there was last chapter.
-MoonOfPluto