"Oh, man. Jack, you need to sleep."

"Nnh?" Jack's head tipped back to look up at Jamie. It took him longer than usual to adjust to the light, and longer again to recognize his friend. A half-empty Coke bottle hung limply from one hand. "Oh. Hey, Jamie."

"OK, you are staying at mine tonight," Jamie said firmly, throwing himself down next to Jack and waving the Coke bottle in his face until he drank. "Just for a few nights so you can catch up, we'll figure out some kind of timetable until you get back on track-"

"No," Jack said weakly, pulling himself upright. "M'not leaving him alone with Emma."

Jamie bit back a cry of frustration. "He's left her alone this long!" He grabbed Jack by the shoulders and looked into his eyes. "Jack, listen to me. If you walk around like a zombie then you're not gonna be able to help Emma, Boogeyman or no. So you can quit with the heroics and for once put yourself first, because no-one else is going to save her. OK?"

Jack chewed his lip. "I don't trust him," he said finally. "And who's to say he won't follow me to your place this time?"

Jamie fell back on his heels. Jack simply refused to hear reason, so Jamie had to hear him out instead. "What's he done?" he asked resignedly. "To make you not trust him. More than you already did, anyway."

"Yesterday. He- I dunno. He just- he told me all this stuff about him and turns out-" Here Jack yawned, his mouth stretching way beyond anything Jamie would have thought possible. "Turns out the reason no-one else can see him is because they don't believe in him. So I guess you were right."

"Huh." Somehow, this didn't ignite the same flame of triumph that it may have three days ago. "Go on."

"And- I think you were right, saying that he's lonely or whatever. Like, I think that's why he's hanging around me, because he has no-one else to talk to. That doesn't justify him," Jack added quickly. "I'm not defending him. It just is."

Jamie tried not to smile. "So how come you don't trust him?"

Jack squirmed uncomfortably. "He… he also said something about there being bigger fish in the sea than me. What's that supposed to mean? Am I some kind of stepping stone in a master scheme? Because, I mean, if I am then I wanna be able to stop him before he does something really bad or attack someone else-"

"And you're worried about Emma," Jamie finished.

Jack squeezed his knees. "Yeah. And I'm worried about Emma."

Jamie sighed and rubbed his face. "Look, I get where you're coming from and all, but you've still got to get some sleep. You won't be able to think straight and eventually you'll just keel over anyway."

"Yeah, I know." Jack swilled the Coke bottle contemplatively. "It's just… It's scarier than it was before, you know? The nightmares- up until now, they were just creepy. Creepy, but bearable. But now that I know he's there, and he can tap into my fears just like that-" Jack snapped his fingers. "-and I'm scared of what he can do, Jamie."

Jamie's head snapped around to look at his friend. In all the three months they had known each other, Jamie had never seen Jack afraid, much less heard him admit it. Jack was an entity, answerable to no one. Invincible. Whether he was admitting it now because he was truly sleep-deprived or simply needed help, Jamie didn't know. But if it wasn't a game before, then it definitely wasn't now.

"I know," Jamie said eventually. Jack looked miserable. "But you have to sleep. Even just once every few days. Promise me."

Jack managed a weak smile. "Promise."

/|\

Going to sleep, it turned out, was much easier in theory than it was in practice.

Even after blacking out four times at school. Even after enduring a thousand nosy comments and a lecture on the importance of sleep and his schoolwork. Even after practically being pulled home by Emma, who was half his size and a quarter of his weight. Even after being thrown sharply down on the couch and instructed not to leave until he had slept, not even to help Emma with her homework.

Lying on that couch, he felt more awake than he had for days.

Pitch hadn't appeared. No snide, shadowy remarks, not even a single eye watched him from the shadows. He knew that this apparent absence should calm him down, make the concept of sleep just that little bit more attractive. But it made him uneasy, like a gazelle about to be attacked by a lion. He knew there was something there, but he was powerless to do anything about it. And so he waited.

With a weary sigh of resignation, he reached out and turned the TV on. Emma had never specified that he couldn't watch TV between consciousness and sleep, with the latter being both less likely and inevitable.

Friends was on, as per usual. Jack flicked past it dismissively. On Discovery Channel an unfairly big lion was taking down a gazelle. Not something he needed to see. Emma's favourite program- Adventure Time- was also on, but she was supposed to be doing homework, so he sailed right past that one too. When Emma finished her homework and came to check on him, she found him staring blankly at the television and scrolling non-stop through the channels, like his finger had been glued to the button.

Needless to say, she was not impressed.

"Oh-kay, this has got to stop." She snatched the remote away from Jack's hand- the lion was still gnawing away at his gazelle on Discovery- and Jack blinked as if coming out of a trance, then glared at her.

"I was watching that!"

"You are not watching anything until you've had some sleep," Emma said firmly, pushing Jack down into the depths of the sofa by his shoulders, forcing his head into a pillow and clumsily tugging his eyelids shut.

Jack hesitated. "Does this count?"

Emma whacked him upside the head, albeit gently. Jack chuckled to himself, keeping his eyes shut lest she hit him harder. He wondered if he was starting to rub off on her.

If Pitch's fatherly knowledge was anything to go by, then he certainly was.

"Go to sleep," Emma told him gently, and he cracked his eyelids open just enough to see her retreat to her own bedroom.

Once she was gone, he opened his eyes fully and sat up on his elbow. Of course, everything Pitch had said the night before was right, more or less. But it had never really occurred to him that he might actually be a role model for Emma. It just… He'd never thought of it that way. She was his sister, not his daughter. No-one had ever… Well, he knew she'd depended on him, but it just never struck him that way.

Slowly, reluctantly, he settled back into the chair. Great. First the Boogeyman, now moral issues. He was too young for this stuff.

He wasn't sure how long he lay there for, staring blankly at the television. If you asked him about it now he probably wouldn't remember it. But as the sun sank lower in the sky, so too did his eyelids, and after three long days Jack Overland finally fell asleep.

In the shadows opposite the couch, a pair of yellow eyes appeared.

And they laughed.

/|\

The cold pierced him like a thousand icy needles, piercing him to the bone. Water rushed into his lungs and through his veins, freezing him slowly from the inside out. One by one his arms and legs and fingers seized up until he could have sworn that he'd never even had any to begin with, that he had always been a speck of consciousness floating in this vast, icy abyss, illuminated only by a silvery light from far, far away.

Beyond the impounding pressure of the water, the ceiling of ice over his head, he still heard her scream. A scream torn with fear and anguish, begging him to come back. And try as he might, his limbs would not obey him, and he could not swim, and he could only watch and listen in silent despair as the darkness closed around him and she disappeared…

Jack wasn't breathing when he woke up.