.

Brisk chills and whirls of frost were left behind as the boy guardian cruised and searched over North America for his red-clad sister. She'd always preferred the forest than anywhere else, as Red or Roux. And he'd always been drawn back to Burgess Pennsylvania or near there, where he'd come from; he was kinda working on the assumption that Red would be the same way.

Right now, he was part-way through the Boreal Forest. He'd dashed around a couple yetis (sent by North no doubt) before he saw something that looked like a vapor; kinda like what you see behind a hot grill. Most people and even spirits would brush it off, but then again, he wasn't most people.

"Wind! Long time no see!" Jack hollered as he flew over. He'd been using the wind for centuries, but that didn't mean he saw her all the time, and it had been some time since he'd seen his friend.

At his shout, she'd turned around. When she saw it was Jack, she booked it toward him. He was, admittedly, surprised at that. Wind was a lot more composed than people expected, and she didn't break that form often. And even when she did, he hadn't seen her this frazzled before.

Stalling in the air and settling on a tree branch, he let her catch up to him. "Are you okay?" he asked, somewhat concerned.

Breath finally came to a stop in front of him, seeming to be huffing, semi-transparent hair splayed everywhere. She didn't grace him with an answer, just mimed grabbing his hand and motioning for him to follow.

The currents tried to whisk him out of the tree and follow her, so Jack got a better grasp in the tree and stayed his ground.

"Hey, Wind, I'm sorry but you're gonna need to tell me what's going on if you want me to follow you." He hooked his staff on a branch above him, anchoring himself better. "I have other things to be doing too. I'm trying to find somebody."

She still didn't give him an answer, either to frustrated or preoccupied to bother. She just turned back to him, trying to get him to follow and looking exasperated at his stubbornness. When he still wouldn't move, she and the blows stopped, her just glaring at him, arms crossed.

Jack tried to talk to her again, but he didn't get the chance. A gale-force wind suddenly knocked him out of the tree, and it sent him rushing after its young mistress. He tried to knock his way out, but they just corralled him back in.

"Wind! Come on! I really do need to find somebody, please!" He shouted over the rushing noise.

She gave gave him a hard, sideways glace that said everything. That's going to have to wait.

"No, you don't understand. She's my sister!" Her look softened at that, but she continued taking them on ahead.

Alright, that's enough.

With a roar, Jack shot a blast of ice at the torrents and broke out. He made only a little way before the currents turned on him, refusing to let him go further. Frustrated, he turned around to come face to face with an equally furious Wind. "I'm sorry Frost, but that will have to wait!"

She blew something into his face, and he yanked it off. "Wh-" he didn't finish. The thing that she'd blown into him was a red cloak, worn from use, familiar. "Red." the word come out with worry and a bit of dread as he saw black sand slide out and off the creases in it. He barely caught Wind's next words.

"I really am sorry, but someone else needs you help..."

"No, they're the same person," He said under his breath, mostly to himself.

Breath wasn't sure what to say to that, so she tugged the breezes around him forward and headed off. Jack followed, racing right behind her, resolve in his eyes. "Sorry for acting like that," he said to her. She shrugged, accepting the apology.

They flew in silence, continuing in the Boreal Forest before Wind dropped toward a clearing, Jack following suit. The breezes died away as Wind stopped by the unconscious girl on the ground, and the feeling of wrongness was clear in the air around her. Jack wasn't sure what he'd been expecting when they would find Red, the only things coming to mind being some hole under a bed like what was in Burgess, and Sandy dying by Pitch's black arrow. As he approached Red himself, he found the second idea was closer.

Her entire right arm and part of her face were the same black as nightmare sand, the skin at the edges gray like Pitch's, and her hair turning inky black. She was in a curled position with her face set in a grimace except for the nightmare part, which was strangely expressionless and hollow. Jack's stomach turned over at the sight, and he struggled to hold in his disgust and anger at the Nightmare King.

He'd heard stories of how at Pitch's peak of strength in the Dark Ages, he'd been so powerful that he could turn people themselves into nightmares; mere empty husks of who they had been to be filled with terror to spread like a plague. At the time, Jack had written them off as stories that had been blown out of proportions. He should've known better; he lived in a world of stories after all. But he guessed he just didn't think such an evil and terrible act could actually be done.

That idea had been shaken when Sandy got hit with the arrow, but he hadn't so much turned into a nightmare as he died and disappeared. Now seeing Red like this, at how there seemed to be an empty, completely different person where the nightmare sand had taken over, there was no doubt in his mind that those stories had been true. And that Pitch, no matter what he pretended to be otherwise, was a monster.

Crouching next to his sister, Jack took a better look at the nightmare sand. He played with the idea that maybe he could get rid of it or out of her with his frost, but quickly dismissed it. His frost had obliterated nightmares, and he didn't want to risk that happening to Red. What he needed was something to turn the nightmare in her to what it used to be.

"Sandy." That was who he needed! Jack remembered how when the little guy got the nightmares, they turned back to dreamsand, instead of just bursting them apart. He wasn't quite sure how it work with someone that was flesh and bone, but he didn't exactly have many other options.

He looked back up to Wind, who was hovering uncertainly nearby. She gave him a curious glance. "Sandy?"

"Yep!" Jack set aside his staff, picked up his sister and draping the cloak back on her as he spoke. "He's the best chance I think of for fixing her." Red now in his arms, he grabbed his staff and grinned (albeit sheepishly) at Wind. "Any idea where he is? I kinda ditched the rest of the team by accident."

Breath gave him an incredulous look before rolling her eyes and motioning for him to follow.

.

Red was getting tired. She didn't have any idea how long she'd been trudging through the nightmare, but it didn't seem to end. "What am I doing?"

She shivered as she got clear of yet another patch of darkness with just another one ahead of her. Why was it suddenly so cold? Something caught her eye, and she turned...to see just a slight covering of frost faintly glittering off of the ground. She stared, uncomprehending. What was that doing there? Something then brushed against her shoulders and whirled around, but could see nothing different. Until she looked down.

Her cloak. It was rich red again, with weight and life to it, when just a little bit before it had seemed thin, fragile, and dull. As she looked at it, Red also heard a voice, just barely. She couldn't make out the words, but she could tell from how it sounded that it was Jack. A startled and coughed laugh burst out of her before she could help it. How in the world had Jack found and got to her?

You know what? I honestly don't care how actually, Red thought. He's here, I'm close, I just need to make it out of here. She turned in place, trying to see or find any way she hadn't already tried, hope surging inside her.

The nightmare didn't like that. But then again, having real hope made it the fall so much more devastating than when its sparse.

Red stumbled and cried out as the world around her changed and shifted. When it finally stopped, she found herself in the same clearing she'd been in when she'd fought Pitch. She looked around, trying to see if anything was there, and wondering why the nightmare had changed.

Looking forward again, Red froze in shock and a bit of horror. In from of her was a copy of herself. Except this one had black-gray skin and black hair on the right side of her. And while one of her eyes was Red's own warm ember color, the other was cold, solid gold.

Red took an instinctive step back. Her first thought was that the darkness on copy in front of her looked like a living scar. She also got the distinct impression that it was her; what she looked like outside of the dreamscape, out in the real world.

"Pretty close," the other her said. Red shivered, but this time, it had nothing to do with being cold. It sounded just like her.

The copy gave her a look. "That's because I am you Red."

"No, you're not," Red shot back, to herself as much as the Scar. "You're some, trick, some new nightmare this whole place came up with."

"I'm not a trick. I'm the real you. Didn't you think that yourself when you saw me?" The Scar took a step closer. Red looked away, not wanting to answer. "I'm the one that actually realizes what's going on with us. I'm the one that's trying to face this and get out, not you, who just wants to turn away!" The Scar made to get closer, but Red pushed it away.

"No, I was finding my way out. You're the once who's not letting me. You aren't real, you aren't me!"

Scar glared at her coldly. "Really? Then that means it was you who let Jack die at the lake." Red stumbled back as though the words had been a blow. A pitying smile came on Scar's face. "See? You're already trying to hide, to ignore it. And you did it back then too. So who was the one who had to break it to Ma?" Tears seemed to glisten in the copy's eyes, and Red was struggling with tears of her own.

"Get out of my head," Red said through gritted teeth. But the Scar's voice was stuck there, branded in, and another one worming into her ears too. "Get out!"

.

"Wind! You go on ahead and find Sandy! I'll stay with her!" the spirit of Winter said to Breath as he touched down with Red and set her down. Soon after they'd crossed Yenisei River in Siberia, Red had gotten more tense and started breathing harder, just enough for Jack to notice and realize the nightmare was getting worse. Concern for that and accidentally dropping her if she got worse made him decide to land.

Jack started making something with his snow, still talking to Wind. "Take this with with you," he gestured to what he was making, "and tell Sandy to follow it! After that you can go, you've helped me a lot!"

Breath started to protest, but Jack beat her to it. "No, you're not going to try going there and back," the boy gave a knowing grin. "Remember the last time you tried to get closer to him when he was working?"

He of course knew that she'd gotten overwhelmed by all the sand and had fallen asleep (and out of the sky and on top of him thanks to his dumb luck) before she got a word in edge-wise, and Wind's blush made it obvious that she remembered too.

"Done," he opened his hands, revealing an icy peregrine falcon in his palm. "Alright! This should be able to keep up with you!" Wind nodded, and shot off to the sky. "Just follow her and come back okay?" Jack lifted the bird into the air, and it winked out of sight with Wind.

He turned back to Red, worrying about the visible spread of the nightmare in her.

Evening was falling, as were the shadows, and the shrieks and howls ready for the night. Jack watched them warily, but ready. Good or bad could be coming, but there was no harm in watching for them.

.

"Why?!" The copy was yelling at her now. "I'm the one that you put out for years, the one who had to deal with telling everyone and facing them and their looks of suspicion, anger, and fear! I was the one who handled all the hurt while you hid! And then when life was finally becoming happy, instead of letting me have a taste of that, you shoved me back down, locked away until I was needed again." She came up to Red, looking at her face and in the eye. "So, tell me Red, why?"

Red didn't answer the question, trying to prove herself wrong. "I did face something," You're being weak, the other, rough voice said. "the two kids, I-"

"You died. You failed. You did that then, and you're doing it now here."

You were helpless.

She was stumbling around in the dark. "No I'm not- I mean, didn't-"

"Then why are you here?!"

Couldn't do anything.

"Just stop!" Red was at her knees, arms wrapped around herself as shook with the effort of trying not to listen the nightmare her or the other voice that both seemed bent on destroying her. It hurt.

But the two just forged on.

"Red," Scar was kneeling next to her, faking gentleness. "What are you possibly hoping to gain from all this?"

She shook her head, trying to ignore her. "Jack, I'm supposed to help him. He's out there! I just-"

He can't help you.

"He's out there?" her copy's voice was dripping with pity and pain. "Is he? Really?"

He is. Right? Red focused, trying to feel, hear, or see any sign of Jack or his frost. But the chill, the patch, and his voice...she couldn't find them. Was she alone again?

"How can you help him if you can't help us? Yourself?" Red didn't know how to answer. "Admit it," the Scar said. "you can't, you don't know how. You're powerless to do anything, helpless."

But that's not what scares you...

What? Of course that's what scares me, Red thought, trying to hold herself together and to cut off anything the other voice was saying.

"Just let go..."

"No, I can't!"

What scares you most,

"I can make the pain leave,"

She was shaking.

It was that you had a chance-

"Stop, please just stop, go away!"

"Just stop trying, you're failing."

And you didn't take it.

At those words, a hopeless sob tore out of her. The ground unsteady, she curled inward. How could these things be so cruel, so easily shredding her until she was raw and broken? The rough words felt like a knife digging into her heart.

You were getting out, but you let this monster get to you, and now you're losing the fight.

Her other self was saying more, but she didn't want to listen, she didn't want more poison. Why were they still here? "Just go!"

The rough voice came back, sounding just as broken and hushed in despair as Red; seeming to mimic her as it came.

Can't you see me?

Another twist of the knife. No one could see her, she didn't matter. It was a taunt that was trying to bring her down.

Tears streamed down the Hood's face as she realized that it was all working. She wanted this to be over. To just be gone.

.

Jack was frantic.

He was still with Red, waiting for Sandy to get there, and he could just see the little guy's cloud, and the snow creature he'd sent racing down to him.

But "just" wasn't enough. Red was fading. For real.

The process of the Nightmare was slow before, when he could tell she was fighting back. But suddenly the darkness was spreading hard and fast, eager even, like something had finally crumbled. And Jack could think of only one thing it could be to turn the tables so fast.

His sister no longer believed in herself.

"Please," the cold boy whispered, talking to Red, Manny, the air, anything. He was bowed over the girl, shaking, holding back tears and a death-grip on his staff. "please help her. Don't make me see this again. Not when we're this close..."

The black was almost covering her face, and there were no signs of it slowing.

He shook his head, not wanting, not going to believe it. The boy looked up at the shapes gradually getting closer. He pushed himself up straight, and went forward; he'd be ready for Sandy as soon as he was there and for what ever way he could help.

Behind him, a dark creature, not completely solid, slipped out of the trees it had been in nearby. It curled around the girl on the ground, closed it's eyes, and vanished.

.

Can't you see me? The question echoed in her head, just like how the voice of the other version of her was. Red no longer knew if she was screaming or crying, just that she was lost and going insane from all that was going on inside of her, clawing and tearing for attention. All kinds of things brushed by her, things of darkness and Nightmares, furthering the madness, including a ghostly touch of something bristled, not quite soft.

Then a howl split the air. It was quiet and piercing, even a little bit rough. She felt that bristled, softish feeling press against her again, for firm and real this time as she noticed it. Everything slowed for a moment - or was it more like it woke her a bit? Something warm, wet, and definitely there brushed against her hand. It was sudden enough that the tortured girl's eyes flew open as she coughed with the release, reeling.

And saw her savior. Ten times larger than before. Amber eyes now tinted red, similar to hers. The fur was darker, like it'd been stained by shadows as well as the treacherous sludge that had mottled it years ago.

"Tar?" Red croaked, unable to believe it. The giant wolf's eyes seemed to brighten, and it moved closer. Tenderly. That caught Red by surprise, and she took a closer look at the huge version of her friend. Once she did, she could see little bits of black sand and crusted reddish-brown all over his coat.

Oh.

She would've cried if she'd had any tears left. He was what held nightmares at bay when she'd battled Pitch, and it was him that she'd seen before she went unconscious. Tar had been that thing in the woods that always looked out for her, protecting her, taking the hits. It hadn't been her stupid cloak that always seemed to save her. It had been Tar. Somehow he'd come back with her all those years ago, and she had't even known he was there the entire time.

Distantly she could hear the other her yelling: "Get...-way...sh-'s mine!" and she could feel invisible nails raking at her like the Scar was next to her. She almost whimpered. Was he just another trick? Another way to torment her? Make her realize how pathetic and terrible she was? The nails became more solid as she started to slip away again.

The wolf lunged forward without warning, giant muzzle thrust against the girl in urgency. The rest of the creature surged upward, and then they were running with terrifying force, and she struggled to hold on to him, the one thing that felt real in this terrible space.

As she thought that, her hands digging further into his coat as the Scar's scathing words warred at her ears, Red more felt than heard that rough voice she'd realized had been Tar.

She's wrong.

A scene formed behind her shut eyes at the words, one that Red easily marked as a memory from her recent experience. But she soon found that is wasn't one of hers as it played out. It was one of Tar's.

She could feel the sense of running and hunger, following smells of food rapidly getting stronger, too desperate to take notice of the bitter sent underneath it all. Taking a leap past needles and leaves, paws ready to hit more ground but instead landing in a pit with a strange liquid heaver and more difficult to move in than a rushing river.

The young wolf yelped, the world blurring with colors, sights, and sounds and then disappearing as the evil sludge slid over; sealing eyes, nose, and ears shut, clogging the throat, slowing movement to almost nothing. The terrified feeling that this would be where he would stay as his body began to burn from the inside out, no escape.

Feeling a tremor run through the place, and something grabbing. Trying to fight, but couldn't move; helpless. The rush of going up, and the stuff giving away. Something hard against his nose, smelling, then the stuff rubbed from his eyes, seeing. A girl struggling in the black, the one holding him, face scared, anxious, determined. Saying something as she pulled up. Barley hearing sound with free ears, the word tar over and over as the girl worked to saved him.

One with brown eyes, and red cloak in the background.

Red's eyes had opened in wonder, and as the vision faded away, found herself staring at Tar with the feeling and thought he'd had at the end of the memory still lingering in her mind.

She'd been a hero in his eyes.

Yes, when she'd done that she'd been scared. Terrified even, after everything that happened at the lake. Since that day, she'd never thought she could live up to Jack sacrifice for her; nevermind his example. Whether or not it was true, she'd felt like she had failed Jack and let him die, and never felt she could wash her hands clean enough to ever have the life or responsibility of anything else in them again.

So when she'd heard that tiny yelp and turned in time to see the small wolf plummet into a vat a tar for tarpaper and healing trees, she'd hesitated, unsure if she could do something to save it. It wasn't until after she realized no one else had noticed that Roux managed to make herself try, to shrug off her cloak and leap into the tar unburdened except her mind to save the creature.

As herself, Red had seen it as a moment of panic. But through Tar, she could see it had been a moment of courage.

She's wrong, Tar had said.

And it wasn't until now, from seeing his memory and now his fiercely earnest face, that Red could finally find it in herself to see that he was right. The Scar had lied when she'd said that Red was never the one that faced her problems; that they were two different beings, and that the Scar was the better, truer half. The moment of jumping into the vat to save Tar in spite of her fear, moving her past them and her crippling doubts and risking herself in the process proved that much.

The Scar had really been nothing more than a nightmare, however twisted and savage it had been to her.

Wait, what happened to it?

Red turned around, and could see the warped copy of herself some distance away, on her knees, face set in fury and hatred with tears steaming down her face. With Tar beside her and belief in herself building back up, Red felt an unexpected pang a pity for the form in front of her. She had been that person once; alone and full of nothing but despair, self-hatred, and powerlessness. And with knowing her own past along with her time here, there was one thing she could do.

She walked over to the figure, knelt down, and hugged her even as it hissed and cursed at her. She poured into the thing the comfort and forgiveness she'd needed all along to finally be able to let it go.

.

Sandy made it down to where Jack and Red were. He hardly needed Jack's quick explanation of what happened to know what he was going to ask. He gently raised a hand, showing as plainly as he could to the boy that he understood.

He turned his attention to the girl. To the all too familiar black that had spread over her but seemed to have stopped. But what really concerned him was the pure void at her wrist, and whether or not the girl had the will to come back.

He got to work.

.

Red's arms were trembling, her right one was getting warm. She hissed in shock and pain as it began to burn while the Scar in her embrace scattered into dreams.

Disoriented and stumbling, Red turned, gritting her teeth and blindly reaching out and searching for Tar as a fire erupted and spread under her skin. Her hand finally managed to find him, but passed through him like he wasn't completely there. He let out a strange howl-bark sound, and she couldn't tell of what. Excitement? But why?

He suddenly lunged at her, and she stepped away, shocked. A blinding bolt of light flashed in her mind as she did so, and Red stumbled away from it. She looked back at her friend, ready to ask what was going on, but stopped.

Tar was looking right at her, something glinting in his eyes that made Red take a step back even as the weird light made her wince with pain. It wasn't that something in the look hinted at a monster inside him, but it made her wary for some reason. Suddenly, Red wondered how exactly Tar was here, and if he was what inspired the "big bad wolf."

"Tar...?" She tried to take a side-step around him, away from the blistering light making her whole self throb. But Tar was having none of it. He took a prowling step forward, the thing in his eyes sharpening as a low sound of warning came from his throat.

Wait, why did I think prowl?

Then all at once, it clicked.

It's not the look of a monster, Red realized as her blood ran cold, it's the look of a predator giving chase.

He lunged at her again, and she bolted. Guilt and shame welled up inside her as she ran from her friend, the one that rescued her from the nightmare. When she tried to change direction to keep the light from burning her, he snapped at her. The teeth closed inches from her face, and she flinched as the light pulsed again and as she felt a twinge of terror in her heart. Why was he doing this?

Red caught the pain and guilt in his eyes as she thought that, and she realized she'd said it out loud.

Tar bowed his head, before swinging it back up and letting loose a howl. It was the same sound as before, but now to effect was directed toward her. All of the sudden, Red was hit with a terrible surge of instincts and understanding.

Tar was the big-bad-wolf. Not because he was a monster, but because he was the force that drove them away. He could help her when no one else could - not even Jack - because he was actually in this place with her to help get her. He was helping her, warning her, that the nightmare was gone but that it wasn't over. She needed to get out of here now, get to the light, before the darkness could close on her forever. And Red somehow knew with terrifying certainty that he was right.

It was over in a second, and Tar gave her another look, this one a question. A challenge. Red could only nod before running again, this time with Tar.

She ran toward the light, then blind as the fire flared to her face, blocking him from view with a warm light filled and blocked her vision of anything else.

As her world was filled with searing, golden pain.

So yes, there are some changes here, but nothing super big or story-altering. It was mostly so that I could better emphasize how important Tar is in this part of the story; that he's a real character.

Thanks for all the support you've given, chapter 5 should come around soon!