I feel like this chapter is epically bad.


Grim is laying under a bed.

The entire architecture of the place makes her feel like she's fallen down a hole, into an abyss. Which she has, technically.

Like Alice, she thinks wryly, down the rabbit hole, to Wonderland.

But this is no Wonderland.

It's nearly as odd, with the giant, empty cages hanging from the ceiling and the grey globe with glinting golden lights all over it.

But it is not Wonderland, not even a little bit.

Because Wonderland is not under a bed.

How deliciously clever, poetic even, that the Boogeyman's lair would be under a bed.

Grim wonders if anyone has ever stumbled across it.

The rickety old wooden bed in the middle of a forest, over a deep hole. She wonders if they laughed, because it is sort of funny. A bed right in the middle of nowhere, just sitting there. She wonders if Pitch's fearlings heard the laughter.

She wonders if they came to get rid of it.

She sits up, rubbing her head. She doesn't really know how long she was laying there.

But she does know something. Three somethings, in particular.

She knows it's dark. She knows it's cold. And she knows she's scared.

"Ah," a voice says, coming from everywhere, "I see you've come back to the real world."

Well, well. Speak of the devil.

She looks up at him, eyes narrowing and she feels like she should stand up to match him. But she's so tired. Her bones protest at the mere thought. She has never felt so weak.

So she keeps sitting, staring up at the looming figure of the Nightmare King. He radiates power here, in his domain.

Grim watches as his lamp-like eyes rove her form, and she silently dares him to say something about how pitiful she must look, on his floor.

She decides she will stand then, because she can not take him looking down at her. She grunts and thinks that if she were not ageless, not immortal, that perhaps her joints would creak.

She leans on her scythe slightly; Pitch smirks.

"Sorry about the fall, dear," he says, not sounding sorry at all, "But you were deadweight, I simply couldn't hold on."

She narrows her red eyes at him, "Deadweight? Is that supposed to be a joke?"

He looks almost genuinely surprised, before smiling, "Not at all, merely an ironic coincidence."

Grim tightens her fingers around the stem of her scythe. Pitch is making her nervous. This whole place makes her anxious and sleepy at the same time. She wants to run and scream, yet at the same time she feels she could drop and sleep for a thousand years.

Not like anyone would miss me.

She shivers at the thought that passed through her head. She wonders if it's just the lair, the Boogeyman's presence that makes her fears seem real enough to touch.

"Why did you bring me here?" She demands, looking up at him. She realizes for the first time that he has no eyebrows, and the chilling effect it has on her spine.

"We had a deal," Pitch explains slowly, voice like poisoned molasses, "You for the children."

She rolls her eyes and growls, "I know that. Don't patronize me."

Pitch raises the place where his eyebrows would be.

Grim feels something both hot and cold rush through her veins. She felt strong suddenly. The command made her feel powerful. Like she could twist anything and anyone and make them bow at her feet.

She remembers a time when being powerful and confident wasn't dangerous, it was only good, because needed to be both those things to do her job.

But now, the temptation of a different power, an evil power, makes her scared to be the strong girl she was once.

She shakes her head. She needed to control herself. Thoughts like that come and go, she couldn't act on them. She had a duty to the world, to the Protectors–

Her middle feels empty as she realizes she may never see them again.

Her voice cracks slightly as she says in a less dictating tone, "I meant, why am I here? What do you want with me?"

Pitch chuckles, and motions to something she can't see. He doesn't even bother answering her question. "I have someone here you might know," he smiles widely and she feels sick.

Out walks a man, skinny and so pale you can see through him, with no color at all. Even his eyelashes are translucent white.

His smile is one Grim knows well.

Grim snarls and almost starts toward him, but her knees are too wobbly.

"Erasien!" She shouts, voice echoing all around, "I knew it! What are you doing here?! How are you here?!"

The Great Eraser merely clasps his hands and shrugs. His voice is as colorless as his appearance, "The Lady of the Sun isn't the only one with the power of inter-dimensional travel, Grim Reaper."

The way he says her name makes her feel inexplicably furious. She eyes them as she restrains herself.

Pitch and Erasien look so different it's almost comical.

Pitch is dark, tall and proud, the very personification of monsters in the closet.

Erasien is slight and small, looking more like a grumpy ghost than anything else.

Grim notices they stand apart slightly, a person-sized space between them, as though they're waiting for someone to—

"No," she whispers, and their smirks widen as they share a glance.

Her stomach plummets into her toes and she plants her feet firmly apart, squaring her shoulders in an attempt to appear untouchable.

Her hands are shaking around her scythe.

"Told you she'd cotton on quickly," Pitch drawls in an amused way to Erasien, as though talking about a clever toddler.

"I will never join you," Grim spits acidly, chest puffing out, "Never. I am–"

"A Protector?" Interrupts a mirthlessly laughing Erasien, emotionless eyes never leaving her pale face, "Please. Do you really think you're still welcome in that little club?"

Her heart feels like a hand is squeezing the life out of it.

"You saw the way they acted," Pitch continued, stepping closer to the still girl, "The way they treated you."

Grim bares her teeth suddenly, pointing her scythe at the grey man accusingly, "That was you! That was your fault!"

Erasien came forward as well, so that Grim was retreating back.

"No matter who's fault it was," the Nightmare King says dismissively, "They didn't know it was me. They thought you were crazy. They didn't understand."

"Exactly!" The black-haired girl breaths, "They had no clue it was you–"

"But doesn't that make all the difference?" Erasien intones, raising a pale eyebrow, "If they really cared, if they really loved you like they claim to–"

"They do care about me! They do love me, they do–!"

"Then they would have believed you."

Grim freezes.

They smirk together once again. They've struck a nerve, and they know it.

Pitch presses on, "Wouldn't they have, Grim? If they had really accepted you and trusted you, then they would've believed you. But they didn't."

Death's head is spinning, thoughts and words all twisting and jumbling together. She tries to remain firm, "Yeah, but—"

Erasien groans frustratedly. He's not a patient entity, and never has been. "But nothing! They scorn you! They cut you down and make you feel useless! Don't they?"

"They're just–" Grim defends desperately, only to be cut off by the same question.

"Don't they?"

"They don't mean to–"

"Don't they?!"

"YES!" Grim shouts so loudly that she can hear birds above squawk and fly away. "Yes." She repeated quietly, looking away, for this admittance makes her feel weak, ashamed.

She leans still heavier on her scythe.

Pitch's smooth voice speaks this time, soft and gentle, and it almost feels like he really does care. "You don't belong there, Grim. It is so clear that you are far superior to them."

Grim looks up with widening eyes, and feels a pleasant tingle in her chest at the complement.

"You were always the odd one out, with them. They can't understand you like we can."

Erasien nods fervently, face alive with unusual emotion. "We know how they made you feel, lonely and strange and exiled. We would never treat you that way. We would never cage your power like they did. We appreciate what you can do, we see the marvelousness in it! In you!" His colorless eyes pierce hers in a way that makes it difficult to look away.

She's not sure she wants to.

"We three," Pitch says, voice filling with clear excitement, spreading his arms grandly, "We belong together. We can do great things together, Grim, just think of it! With you, there would be nothing standing in our way!"

Grim stares at the pair of them, at Pitch's pointed teeth and spiky hair and the blurry edges of Erasien's body.

She realizes for the first time how strong they look, standing there.

Like they said, they understand. They know how it feels to be scorned and feared, but they use it to their advantage! It's almost heroic really, more heroic than those Guardians or Protectors.

She could be that strong. She could be standing there, in the middle of them.

Grim moves toward them this time, one booted foot in front of the other, counting her footsteps.

They look at her, both impatient and exhilarated.

Each of them holds out a hand, and nod encouragingly when she reaches for them hesitantly.

Sudden panic flares up in her, cutting through the haze, the moment they each have one of her hands; everything in her screams in protest. Her mind whirls and races to remember everything good, everything ounce of love she held. This wasn't right, this was terribly, horrifyingly wrong.

"Wait–!"

But it was too late.

Her whole being was on surely fire, it must be, it hurt, her skin was blistering. She thrashed and writhed, but hands she could no longer see in the blinding whiteness of pain still held her.

She felt memories being tugged harshly from her mind, and experiences them over again as they leave in a spiral of fiery pain.

Meeting Morgan, who giggled and pointed at her ear piercings and said she wanted some hut like them one day...

The Protectors, telling her that she was the newest member of their team, that this was her purpose, her destiny...

Waking up to find that she had red eyes and unbreakable bones and a scythe that could reduce mortals to piles of ash...

Then her mortal memories, ones where things weren't as brilliantly colorful, ones were she was a poor farm girl and her sister, her precious little Rosie with her pretty little blonde pigtails, died from a sickness that was all Grim's fault.

And then the darkness took it's turn, replacing the white with all-consuming black, thick and impenetrable.

Her heart shriveled, her love was washed away and replaced with hatred, and the intense desire to taste fear, delicious fear, especially the fear of those infernal Protectors and Guardians.

The shadows surrounded her and changed her, soothing her burning flesh and smoothing it back to it's pristine white, and it was beautiful and powerful and spectacularly right...


She blinks open her eyes, and they glimmered gold in the darkness of the Boogeyman's Cave.

Erasien and Pitch have their eyes trained on her carefully.

"How do you feel?" asks the Nightmare King, as Erasien's glassy fingers twitch.

Grim considers this, pursing her newly blood-red lips and flexing her pale fingers almost experimentally.

Shadows around her trembled, as though greeting their newest master.

She let a smile cross her face and reveal pearly fanged teeth. For the first time in a long while, her voice doesn't waver.

"I feel right at home."