The room they kept him in was pleasant, for a lack of a better word. It was small, but spacious, near the top of North's dwelling. There was a large window that had a seat right under it, cushioned specifically for Jack as he watched over the dead.
Except, he wasn't dead.
Pitch was lying, unmoving, in the singular bed in the room. Tucked in precariously, a glass of water at his desk which he might want when he wakes. But he never does. He lays in the position they put him in, the only way to know he was alive was the miniscule movement of his chest when he breathes.
It had a rhythm all on it's own. Three breath counts in, three breath counts out. Never once when Jack was watching diligently over him had it stuttered with a nightmare or sighed deeply in his sleep.
Pitch has been this way for the past ten years.
It seems as he was, the curse of aging did not touch him. Nor was he left wilting from starvation or thirst.
Jack watches him from his perch at the window, leaning against the chill and letting that comfort him.
Ten years.
Jack's mind always reels when he thinks of it.
Ten years had past when Sandy struck him with that golden arrow, one made with specific imitation of the very arrow that killed him. Ten years prior when they all thought that would be the best course of action: to rid themselves of the Nightmare King. They thought, surely what happened to Sandy would happen to Pitch; He would disburse in sand of the blackest black and be transformed into light, swallowed by Sandy's dream sand.
But then the unimaginable had happened.
Jack's chest clenches at the persistent reminder, laying wrung and wasted on the bed.
We were all someone before we were chosen. Tooth had told him before and for some reason it had never occured to Jack that Pitch was once someone, too.
That he was a man, once.
With a family, with a duty.
That too, was the most bitter of reminders. The things he saw in that swirling vortex, the emotions that seemed to balloon in his chest that weren't his with every pass of the shadows through him. Thinking about Pitch and the events following and prior consumed nearly his whole waking consciousness.
All five guardians took time to watch over Pitch when it was their time, but Jack most of all seemed to neglect his so-called duties of Guardianship in favor of watching over the sleeping figure. He took some of their shifts, saying their job was more important. The snow will fall with or without him. Children will have fun, with or without his influence.
The nightmares released from Pitch's body were wild and free, and it was very hard to find semblance of any kind of pattern of their attacks. And thus, it was Sandy's job to keep a watchful, even more cautious, eye on their sleeping youths to turn those nightmares into the sweetest of dreams.
Jamie had grown up in the first long slumber of the Nightmare King. He went away to college, moved back into town and settled down with an uptight girl he had met when he came back. But somewhere between that fateful night they defeated Pitch and him being away for college, he had lost the ability to see Jack.
It had hurt, of course. Jack didn't know how it happened, if Jamie's belief of a youthful memory didn't hold stronger or if he had forgotten altogether. When Jamie had called out to him when he first came home, Jack was ecstatic and he met him with gusto and excitement. But Jamie did not see him, standing right before his very eyes.
Jamie, for all his confusion at neither hearing nor seeing the frost spirit, didn't seem too disheartened. He wasn't as devastated as Jack had once thought he would be- or would have been if he forgot (for Jack thought Jamie would be able to see him until he left the earth). Jamie hums and shrugs his shoulders seemingly to himself before heading back inside, to the knavish looking girl sitting on the couch.
After that half-assed attempt, Jamie never once really tried to call out to him again. And after a while, Jack had stopped checking up on him.
Don't make someone a priority who's making you an option, right?
That was fifteen years ago.
Jamie would now be thirty five years old, and the last he had seen of him a couple years back was he was married to that soul-sucking wretched thing and had a couple of kids, raised to believe neither in Jack Frost nor in the other Guardians. That hurt, too, on behalf of his Guardians in siblinghood.
How everything had ended up in such disarray Jack had no idea. By all accounts the death of the Nightmare King should have made a Golden Age come about, like after Pitch's defeat during the Dark Ages did. Instead, nightmares roamed without pattern, without governance, and without bias to whom their victims would be. Kids have grown up and forgotten their heros, the Guardian's reign still clear but nonetheless their power had shrunk as the kids become adults and less and less instill the values of these beliefs of them in their spawns.
That was what they had to show for their supposed heroics.
A slumbering King, no longer the King of Nightmares and Bad Dreams.
And Jack wonders, and wonders, and wonders, if there was anything he could have done before Sandy shot that arrow to understand a fellow spirit.
A spirit, he recalls now, that was alone in every sense and thought. Neither he nor the other guardians, and it seemed neither the other spirits roaming the earth, would ever give him the time of day. It had driven Jack mad before and he could not fathom the alienation the Nightmare King faced throughout the centuries. The same spirit Jack had turned from on that Antarctic slope.
How clearly he could recall now, the waning of the King's voice as he spoke of longing for a family. The disarmed expression, the slope of his lips in distress. And how, in his own feelings of rejection, he had not given a thought to him.
How later, after Pitch's defeat, they stood around watching as Nightmares crept upon the slopes, sniffing at the air for the miniscule scent of fear. How they watched Pitch savagely be chased by his own creations and ensnared, dragged down like a demon was to hell. Jack had shuddered at the scene, hair standing on the back on his neck in a shiver when even cold did not bother him.
But one glance to his new companions, he noticed he could not share in the sympathy of their opposition.
They had watched the horror in near admiration and full triumph. As though the irony of the Nightmare King being devoured by his own beasts was the sweetest revenge.
Once Jack had calmed down from his high of the victory, some years later, a niggling feeling of guilt started to worm and fester in his gut. The Nightmare King was gone and the nightmares across the world were few and far in between, but Jack had come to a conclusion that what the King faced was altogether too disturbing to be left alone.
Thus he sought out the King some fifteen years later, hoping beyond hope to find him plotting their demise yet again, like he was some kind of evil doer in a cartoon, always uncaring of how badly his plans go and making new ones. But what he had found made his heart ache for no other reason than guilt, he told himself.
The man he met was no more than a husk of his old self, with some vague memories of who they were but none of the emotions that were attached to them.
Jack had hoped Pitch would yell and scream, they could argue it out and then, somehow, by divine intervention, come to a conclusion and become friends. A family, maybe, something that Pitch had desperately wanted. Enough to plunge the world into darkness again, so that no one could feel the warmth of familial love.
But those detached and monotonous reactions ate at his heart, his soul. They had done that. They had broken a man that seemed unbreakable. They had ignored the warning signs, kept to their own niche as if better than the rest.
Even now Jack thinks back on how the Moon told them he was to become a guardian and how they automatically, even if there was resistance on Bunny's part, invited him in. How easily he landed himself in North's Workshop with just a word by someone who put everything into play, from the very beginning.
How everything, everything, was an direct or indirect fault of the Man in the Moon.
"That's why we collect the teeth, Jack. They hold the most important memories of childhood."
"We had everyone's here. Yours too."
"Tooth, Tooth!" Jack calls as he lands on the pads of his feet upon a pillar's dish in her palace.
The entire place was alight with pink and yellow hues, reflecting off the mountains around them. Baby Tooths fluttering and chittering as they twirl around him in cheer before going on their way.
Tooth looks up from hovering near an open slot. She closes it and flies down, but does not land, as she greets him.
"Hey Jack." Her smile was a little off, as it always seemed to be in Jack's presence, currently. Like she was walking on eggshells trying not to set him off as Bunny seemed to do so often these days.
"You have everyone's teeth here, don't you?" Tooth nods slowly, skeptical. Jack takes a breath. "Can you find Pitch's?" Tooth's eyes widened.
"No—" she started, not even thinking about it. Her sentence cut off by Jack and his scowl.
"Do you?" Jack presses. "Do you even have them?" Buzzing nervously, Tooth purses her lips before she calls some of her workers to find it.
"It won't help, Jack. Whatever you're thinking it could just as easily blow up in your face." Tooth says softly, perching on her petite feet to rub at Jack's arm. "He's the Nightmare King. Guys like that don't change."
Jack didn't take comfort in this, he couldn't.
"You were the one that said we were all someone before we were chosen." He steps away from her attempted comfort hold.
"Yes, Jack. The Guardians were someone before they were all chosen. Pitch was—"
"Pitch was someone." Jack says with no room for argument. Tooth looked at him with what he could only think of was pity. Like everything that happened just made him crazier, like he was insane for thinking Pitch was anything more than the embodiment of evil.
But they didn't know Pitch like he did, didn't know what it felt like to be invisible to everyone. To be alone for hundreds of years. They've always had each other.
But Jack and Pitch has more in common than just their unwanted solitude. It lay in their lost memories. Jack had been reborn without them. And Pitch… Jack refuses to believe that Pitch would delight in these atrocities if he knew what he was doing, if he remembered who he had forgotten.
Jack holds onto the small flickering lights that showed him a father and daughter, the show of yearning to go home.
How Pitch had been devoured by the duty of his knightship.
"Pitch was someone, too."
Tooth says nothing but kept her gaze piteous. Baby Tooth flew near, buzzing and chirping in quick processions. Tooth's eyes widen in surprise.
"Nowhere?" She gasped. "Are you sure? Not even in the caves?" Baby Tooth chirps more, taking a seat on Tooth's shoulder. Baby Tooth quiets and looks to Jack, apologetic.
"I'm sorry, Jack… it looks like we don't have his teeth." Jack was about to argue. "We've never seemed to have them." Jack's mouth slackens at the information, deflating. He was so desperate to know more, but this also solidified his belief in what he saw.
"Pitch was from a different world." Jack says quietly, nodding in thanks to their attempt. "Thanks anyway."
It's always easier to place blame on others. But in this case Jack would consider it justified.
If the memories were something he could consider to be true, then the blame lies not with Pitch, who was doing his duties as general, but with the previous king of the Lunar Castle who had given the role of guarding the nightmares solely to him, without help.
Surely the king had to know how mentally taxing it was on one person? Surely the man was more sympathetic to his general's plight and family situation?
But to not give more than a few hours for them to spend together, that was cruel.
Knowing all of this created unease in Jack's heart.
And though the Man in the Moon was not the king that kept its general practically confined to his duty, he was the one to send Tooth, and North, and Bunny, and Sandy and him, to fight against Pitch.
Instead of—-
He doesn't know. Instead of explaining how he came to be? Instead of saying his father's general had been swallowed by demons? Instead of saying he needed help.
Jack pulls his knees closer to his chest, hugging them tightly. He pulls his hood up over his head, staring at Pitch's chest and counting the rise and fall of his breaths.
It was getting darker outside the window and with a single glance Jack saw the moon peeking over the horizon. With a minor scowl Jack turns bodily to shut the blinds and pulls the curtains closed.
If the Man in the Moon thinks he could spy on a sleeping man without Jack getting in the way, he had another thing coming. Though, to be distinct, Jack feverently watching over Pitch as he slumbers wasn't the same thing.
Jack was there for… Moral support. For if and when he (because he will) wakes up. He was a Guardian to him, now. Even if the others only entertained the idea.
A knock at the door had Jack raising his eyes from Pitch's chest. There stood North with a plate of cookies and a glass of milk in either hand.
"Hey there, Jack." His voice is a low, gentle rumble as he steps into the room. His steps were light despite his big and heavy frame, like he was trying to walk on actual eggshells without breaking them. "I thought I might come see how you do. And give this. You been here since last week. Why not take break?"
Jack acquiesced, happy that the nightstand was close enough to his seat with only a few feet between him and the bed, that he could reach out a hand to grab a cookie. He paused before he bit it.
"This wasn't in the elve's mouths, was it?" Jack asks in favor of ignoring North's question. North laughs, deep and low as he grabs his belly.
"No," North shook his head, an easy going smile on his face as he thinks Jack had lightened up and started to joke. "Phil made, I brought up."
Jack watches for any signs of a lie before he bit down into the cookie, the chocolate chips melting in his mouth. It was nice, even though he didn't need to eat or drink, it was still comforting. In a passing thought, he wonders if Pitch had ever been able to try it out.
"Thanks…"
North leaned against the wall near him, eyes gliding between Pitch's sleeping figure. Jack, and the newly closed window. He says nothing of it, though, since the first time he had asked Jack had practically blown a fuse at opening it when the moon was out.
"Jack…" North starts and trails off. He sighs softly. "You should rest too. Pitch wake up or maybe not. You are still Guardian, you need to save strength too."
Jack doesn't argue or agree, nibbling bit by bit on his freshly baked cookies. He could hear the worry in North's voice. Hear it echoing from the other Guardians.
North and Sandy the most supportive. Sandy had even gone as far as trying to give Pitch good dreams. But the sand didn't twirl around his head, it fell like oil on water.
Tooth was less than enthusiastic, having a giant grudge against his past actions.
And Bunny was no help at all. At the beginning he and Jack had gotten into many, many, fights regarding Jack's actions. It got so bad the yetis needed to break them apart. There was one time they did attack each other, four years ago, after Bunny had grown tired of Jack's apparent greater sense of duty to their nemesis than to his duties as a Guardian.
Battered and bruised, Jack didn't leave Pitch's bedside for a whole month and he scarcely saw Bunny following that incident. If they held team meetings, Jack would either be briefed at a later hour or he would stay on the support posts far, far away from the Pookah.
"I'm fine." Jack murmurs quietly. As a spirit he really doesn't need to sleep, either.
"Didn't they tell you, Jack? It's great being a Guardian! But there's a catch. If enough kids stop believing, everything your friends protect - wonder, hopes, and dreams - it all goes away. And little by little, so do they."
He does, however, need people to believe in him. He already feels weaker as the years drag on, especially in the encouching months as he stayed cooped up in North's workshop, waiting for Pitch to wake up. He's not in danger of disappearing any time soon or anything, and as annoying as the worried glances and whispers of the Guardians are, he didn't feel compelled to stir up belief among the children for his own sake.
North hums as if he thought about it, nodding his head while he had his huge arms crossed. "I'll send Phil to bring blanket for you."
Jack nods, watching the door close behind North before his eyes slid back to his current object of worry.
Jack breathes in a deep breath and exhales.
"Be realistic, Jack!" Bunny growls, crowding into his space as they stood in the hallway that led to Pitch's residential room. "You can't stay cooped up in here! You'll die!"
Jack scowls, hunching up his shoulders. "I don't care." Bunny stutters, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Y-you don't care?" He scoffs. "Of course you don't!" He says sarcastically. "Because only you would not care about being believed in after you spent three hundred years trying to make others believe in you!" Bunny seethed. "No, you know what. I'll deal with this myself." He turns as if to go into the room.
Jack growls and a gust of wind came from nowhere. The Pookah shivers and cries out as he falls forward, his feet frozen to the floor in uneven ice. Jack steps around him, glaring. He ignores Bunny's stutters at forming a sentence. He keeps his gaze until he steps into the room, slamming the door shut.
Jack takes a breath, huffing it out in a sigh.
He was so tired. But of course what else could he expect when a few years more had passed with Pitch in comatose.
Throughout the silence of the years Jack entertained the idea of what could have happened if he had agreed to being with Pitch. If he had just been a tad more desperate for any kind of belief in his spirit that he would take people fearing him.
"What goes together better than cold and dark?"
Jack had even entertained the idea of spreading nightmares just to see if it would wake Pitch up.
Waiting for a spirit was nothing. A decade passes by in a blink of an eye, centuries pass in seconds to their time. It still slowly drove him to insanity, enough that he thinks up those absurd ideas and justifications for them.
Jack had been so tired recently he stares at the empty space near Pitch, tempted to lay down with him.
Jack stands, finally giving in. He took the two steps from his seat under the window to stand next the bed and hesitates for a half second.
Jack's eyes go wide as he counts the seconds of his inhale.
One. Two. Three… Four. Five.
Jack's eyes dart to his face, watching the flutter of his lashes, the first change in seventeen years. Pitch's breath released in a deep sigh.
Jack waits, breath caught, for Pitch to open his eyes.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed it! Wow. Can't believe it took me five years to finish the rest in a day lmao.
