Jack was dragging Pitch along the side of a stream, looking for anything he could use as a bandage to cover the impossible wound in Pitch's side. He did find something, a trading post. He decided to take him there to see if they at least had a first aid kit. The woman running the post looked at the door for a second before she called for help. She helped Jack with getting Pitch to a place where he could rest before the woman's son came in to patch up the wound. Jack had specifically asked the woman and her family not to tell anyone they were here, offering to get out as soon as Pitch healed enough to move on his own in return.
"Three days," Jack said to himself. For three days Jack sat by Pitch's bedside waiting for him to get better. He started to ask himself the questions that popped into his head when he last spoke to the Man in the Moon. Where was he if he wasn't in the world he knew? Why did this world need him if it had Elsa, someone with powers near identical to his, surpassing his even. And then came the third question, one that just popped into his head when he couldn't bring himself to leave Pitch the first day of recovery. Why do I trust him enough to make sure he recovers?
Pitch stirred a little, and who knows where he got the strength, shot up out of the bed wide awake. He was panting lightly, as if he had a nightmare… which would be ironic seeing as how he's the Nightmare King. The man in the black tendrils looked at Jack and showed something in his face that Jack never expected from the cold and calculating Boogeyman.
"You stayed?" he didn't sound genuinely surprised, but he certainly looked it.
"I owed you," Jack responded. He picked his staff up off his shoulder and hoisted himself out of the chair. "Besides, you were bleeding, probably still are. Spirits aren't supposed to bleed. Ever."
"It's not blood," Pitch said. "It's fear. Liquefied fear makes up my spirit the same way the Dreamsand makes up Sandman's." Jack got the rest. If Pitch was emptied of fear, he'd be dead all over again. "You're wondering why you trust me," Pitch guessed. Jack made no effort to deny what was just said. "Do you trust me as much as you trust St. North?" Jack shook his head, North was as good a man as anyone could ask for, and he made wonderful things. Sometimes he even made miracles. If anyone was worthy of Jack's friendship, or the leadership position of the Guardians, it was North. "Do you trust me like Edmund?" Definitely not. Yeah, Bunny and Jack got into fights every now and then, and they aren't always verbal, but they were always, always on friendly terms. Bunny even let Jack call him a Kangaroo every now and then.
"What's the point of these questions?" Jack asked. Pitch just went into a lengthy explanation about the levels of trust, using him as an example, which, for some reason, pissed Jack off a little more than he thought was intended. "North is your friend," pitch sounded like he was finishing up. "Edmund is your Rival. The third tier would go to me, for the time being."
"Mutual Survival," Jack said. He wasn't sure he could trust that Pitch was telling the truth, but at the same time, it made to much sense for it to be a lie. "Well then, Partner," he said turning for the door, not wanting another lengthy answer to the question on his mind. "We've gotta get a move-on. If we're going to survive this catastrophe, we need to find that Hans guy, and I know where he could be."
