General Nightmare
Or: When plans backfire
He wasn't sure when it had started to happen, but start it had.
Pitch began to smile.
He and the new and aptly named Blackjack spread fear everywhere they went. They haunted buildings with chills and shadows that crept and moved and slunk and had no business being there at all. They frightened movie goers on the way back to their cars, delighting in the fear that adults held as much as they did the fear of the children that they fed nightmares to. They caused mayhem wherever they went and any run-ins with the Guardians they had were extremely short lived.
With Pitch's ability to disappear and Blackjack's partnership with the wind and ice, they were hardly able to strike at them before they vanished to spread fear elsewhere. Slowly, the balance was being overturned. Bit by bit, children lost hope for the warmth of spring and the kindness of Christmas was like a faraway memory in comparison to the biting, vicious cold and terrible nightmares.
Pitch was in heaven, but something was changing. He was changing.
He smiled and laughed and joked with his new companion. Blackjack was not made a fearling slave but an equal, his core of fun had been twisted to a different purpose but it was still there, and it was as infectious as a rash.
He had barely noticed it in the beginning. Beating the Guardians, seeing them struggle against the combined powers of himself and the newly appointed Blackjack had been such a thrill, he couldn't stop the delight he felt translating into a crackling laugh. He hadn't thought anything of the glee and laughter because, wasn't it right that he felt this way, seeing his enemies struggle? Wasn't it right for him to laugh in wicked glee? But that wasn't it. Or at least, that wasn't all of it, and the longer he and Blackjack hung around together spreading mayhem, mischief, and fear, the more he felt it.
Fun.
He was having fun.
Blackjack hardly left any child sobbing in fear behind him. He terrorized them by hijacking their sleds, taking them to the brink of danger and death and pain, but he never actually harmed them. He played rough and they went home with bruises sometimes, but alive and laughing from their brush with danger. Blackjack delighted in their terrified screams as they careened towards a tree, but he also delighted in their laugher when they missed it by just that much. His snowballs did not incite hate-filled violence, but the same snowball fights they always did; it was just that more people fell down, and if one or two of the snowballs exploded and scared the snot out of the kids, well, all the better. But they were never harmed.
Pitch didn't hurt kids. He terrified them. All he had ever wanted was their fear.
He had it in abundance with his nightmares now. He hardly even needed to go afield to sew more of it, but he did so regardless. He went with Blackjack, and together they scared the daylights out of many a soul walking home late at night. It was such fun.
He should've known, really. How many times had he been defeated by fun and laughter? So many times he had faltered at the brink of victory because of fun. Laughter came so freely, and he at least should've noticed the slowly dwindling level of malevolence in Blackjack's hungry gaze.
"It was easy, wasn't it?" Blackjack grinned from his perch on the armrest of Pitch's throne. They had returned to the lair, a moment of reprieve. The King of Nightmares turned from where he was overlooking the rest of his home.
"What do you mean?"
Blackjack chuckled, lazily stretching, wriggling his toes as though settling into his own skin. "Changing a Guardian to a darker purpose." He explained.
"The man in the moon made it easy." Pitch grinned back, delighting in the folly of the moon. "Leaving such a prize to decay for three hundred years without tending. Poor Jack. Even once a purpose was found, there was still so much pain in the heart. Guardian of Fun, yes; happiness, though, is no guarantee."
Blackjack's eyes slid lazily closed and he hummed low in his throat. "Yes, that's true." He barked a quick laugh, as though startled by an amusing thought. "Scars are different from wounds though, Pitchster."
Pitch's eye twitched. "Pitchster?"
He laughed some more, clutching his middle and rocking forward, delighted. "I admit, it was easy to take this in. I mean, wasn't it you who showed me that fear and fun go hand in hand?" His grin was wicked sharp, eyes sparkling in mischief.
Pitch paused.
The spritely proportioned boy leapt up, flipping smoothly through the air before coming to a rest behind Pitch, hands joined behind his back.
"I'm not all black though Pitch, I'm still part Jack." He snickered. "And my sense of fun is funtastic."
He tapped his staff sharply down on the ground and a ton of snow fell from the roof, landing heavily on the King of Nightmares. Pitch gave a shocked cry as he disappeared under a cascade of white and cold. Blackjack flipped up onto the heap, freezing it slowly solid.
Pitch roared angrily as the ice solidified around him. "What are you doing?!" He spat.
Blackjack chuckled. "Having a little fun."
"What?"
"I'm not sure if you knew about this little trick, but I, uh, incite fun. So I thought to myself, if my centre of fun is changed by your fear, it should work the other way around, right?" He laughed, his grin a vicious joy, his eyes bright with potential victory. Pitch felt fear.
"I mean, if you can turn me so easy, turning you shouldn't be so hard."
Pitch's chest constricted. "It won't work."
Blackjack laughed. "Won't it? I thought I'd already had some success, given how much you've been laughing recently." He gathered a ball of snow into his hand, blowing on it softly until it glowed bright with a blue magic, winter magic.
"You were already tainted when I changed you, thanks to the man in the moon and those weirdoes." Pitch explained quickly, gathering together nightmares to break him out of the snow and ice.
Blackjack knew from the tiny cry in his heart that Pitch was correct. He was winter's chill, and while he had brought fun, he also brought the cold and snow that caused hunger and sometimes death. He had never been overly bitter about it, had accepted nature as nature. He knew the aching loneliness in his heart from three hundred years alone. Those had been Pitch's weapons, but he knew Pitch suffered them too, and in his twisted mind, if they were so similar in these regards, turning Pitch into someone more fun would be just as easy as it had been for Pitch to shade Jack.
He crouched down, bringing his face close to Pitch, his ice breath fanning over the grey skin, eyes glinting. "Can't hurt to try."
Then it began. Snowball after snowball. Pitch was panicking, the cold and the shadows became menacing. He laughed without reason or thought, and his soul was lifted and filling with slow joy. The shadows began to slip away from his fingertips, slowly, slowly dripping away. His heart was bursting with good humour, a feeling not meant for a home so dark, and the fearlings in his soul waned.
He laughed and laughed and Blackjack laughed with him, delighting in the carrying out of his mischievous plan. This was dangerous. There was too much laughter. Fear and fun made good neighbours but were ill-suited housemates. The darkness began to withdraw too far from him.
Pitch laughed but it hurt, gods above did it hurt. His eyes watered as he weakened, crying out in pain, his anguished cries dissolving into laughter as another snowball struck him. His skin felt the cold and his cheeks began to redden, his dark cloak became gently embroidered with gold and silver. The general was returning.
This had an unforeseen consequence for Blackjack. As the last of Pitch's power faded, the shadows that had clung so desperately to Jack fell away with a sudden painful rush, no longer certain of their purpose and desperate to return to their weakening master.
He fell to his knees, fingers twitching around his staff, breathing laboured as he struggled to regain awareness of himself.
The laughing ended.
"What have you done?" A voice seethed. Jack turned, staring into the handsome face of Kozmotis Pitchiner.
"P-Pitch?" Jack launched backwards, startled by the golden warrior.
"Let me out right now!"
Jack glanced at his hands and his hair, looking for the unhealthy grey that had overtaken him but it was gone. He had done it. He was back to being Jack! Pitch hadn't counted on Jack's own loneliness and desire. Desire for someone in this world to be like him. He hadn't considered that, while he was corrupted, he would seek to change another.
His head spun with familiar thoughts again, his heart so much lighter. Where was he, though? Underground with Pitch? With Pitch. He glanced back towards the strange figure in the ice.
"You have to let me out."
Jack blinked. He calmed. Then he angered. "Why should I? After what you did to me, I should leave you there."
"Jack." The new man levelled the frost child with a steady gaze. Gone was the malice, though the stare was hard. Pitch was no longer as he was, but he was not Pitchiner either. This was a new Pitch born of a maddening darkness, a thousand years of terror, and the sweet, sad heart of a loving father who had lost a daughter. The shadows that plagued him were his own now.
Jack twitched back and forth, conflicted. He wanted to go, oh did he want to go. He wanted to fly away as fast as he could. The wind plucked at his clothes, ready to whisk him away at a moment's notice, but there was something new caught in the ice. This was no longer a nightmare king; this was a broken general of the stars. This was new. He still had the scent of shadows around him, and in time his nightmares would return to cling to him, but for now they had been frightened away by his laughter.
"Who are you?"
"Pitch, maybe."
"Maybe?"
"I'm not sure. I'm so tired." He closed his eyes and sighed, a bone-deep ache of a sigh.
Jack drew cautiously closer. "Why?"
"I'm too old." He tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. "Too afraid. Too weak. I wasn't always, but I am now. I thought to see my Seraphina; I was always weak to that."
"Who is-?"
"A nightmare." Jack made an unconvinced noise in the back of his throat. Free from the dark that had consumed him, what would a general be afraid of?
"Let me free Jack. I can't breathe in this ice." He breathed, sliding his gaze lazily to the frost child.
Jack eyed him distrustfully. "How do I know this isn't a trick?"
"It is."
Jack frowned, unsure. He felt something stir in his awareness, at the very back of his mind, abrasive as black sand chaffing his skin. Something wasn't right. He glanced around the dark but the shadows were not so black as they once were, not so filled with swarming masses of fearlings and shadow men. Gone were the nightmares, but if they were not hereā¦
"You can feel it as well as I. Even free from them, you feel it. They are free to do as they will, but they have none. They are mindless creatures, terrible and mindless. Let me free Jack."
He shuddered, fingers tightening on his staff. "Will you change me back?" He focused his gaze on the contained figure, realizing now that his ice's faint glow was stopping shadows from returning to Pitch, as they had no means to reach him, no path that wasn't lit.
"No, I think I've learned my mistake."
"Who are you?"
"I'm not Pitch, I'm not Pitchiner. I'm neither and both. I don't know." He let out a suffered breath. "I am tired. Give me back my shadows." His eyes were stern.
"Promise you won't attack me or my friends again." Jack levelled his staff to Pitch's face. The aquiline face contorted into an amused grimace.
"I cannot promise that. I will not promise that."
Jack shook his head. "Then I cannot let you free."
The calm features twisted to rage and he snarled at the frost child, the shadows swirling and bubbling and that little presence in the back of Jacks' mind telling him that the Nightmare King was furious. "You will let me have them back!"
"No!" The wind snatched its frost child up and away, feeling his turmoil and sensing his fear.
"I may not have the talent to know at the moment, but I can tell that you're afraid." Pitch crooned. "The guardians are so foolhardy. To deny me strength and to deny me belief, and expect no retaliation? I cannot promise not to seek revenge for my pain."
Jack paused. He hadn't considered, not once. He had seen the look on Pitch's face when a child ran through him, seen the horror and pain. Hadn't Pitch himself been dragged away by fears and nightmares when children stopped believing in him? He raised a hand to his chest. His heart was heavy with empathy and grief.
"Spirit of Winter, Guardian of Fun. I once showed you the necessity for fear, but your beloved Guardians do not understand it, cannot completely comprehend the truth of it whilst they are so afraid of fear. They proclaim to always fight fear, so I shall fight for fear. It is all I can do." And once again the general returned, noble heart on his sleeve, suffering for the good of all. His mood swung back and forth as a pendulum in a clock, alternating between the calculating hatred of Pitch, and the noble intentions of Pitchiner.
Jack hesitated. It's true that once Pitch had shown him that fear was needed, he had even trusted the Nightmare King just the tiniest increment, but then he changed again. Pitch had attacked him! Changed him! Distorted him as the general had once been. But he'd kept his centre, he'd kept fun at his core despite what he became; the same could not be said for the mad creature that Pitch had become after being left alone with the whispering darkness.
"I'm so tired."
He couldn't hate Pitch for his nature, as he had learned not to hate himself for the cold winds that followed in his wake. He did not feel pity, he felt sorrow and pain. Pitch had been condemned long ago, stranded on a lonely planet, cast out, and hated with only shadows to speak to.
"At least give me your word that you will not try to make me one of your underlings again."
Pitch barked a laugh that turned pained. "I will not make that mistake again. When you join my side next time, you will be willing."
Jack grimaced as he drifted back down to stand on the ice before Pitch. "Unlikely."
He took a deep breath, steadying himself for his choice. He couldn't let the fearlings be free, which meant he couldn't let Pitchiner be free of them. He sighed and condemned a madman to return to his fate. He brought down his staff with a mighty crack, shearing the ice in half and fading the glow that it held. He hadn't been prepared for the ravenous shadows that immediately lunged back for their master. He gave a cry of alarm as black sand and shadow fingers rushed in to smother the suddenly terrified and yet triumphant face of Pitch beneath a cacophony of nightmares and fears.
The wind was quick to snatch him away, though Jack couldn't tear his eyes away from the shuddering, writhing mass that was Pitch Black. There were a thousand terrified cries, all quiet in comparison to the gut-wrenching, terror-filled screams of the Nightmare King.
Jack fled the tunnels. Any thoughts of revenge he had left had been frightened away by the cries of the distorted man he left behind.
A/N: Argh, so unhappy, but Penspot, did you see that coming?!
