He is not received well by Toothiana's underlings, but he barely puts up a fight. The moment one of those little flying rats spots his form emerging from a pool of shadows clinging to the floor in the corner of one of those intricate hanging towers, the alarm is raised, and he finds himself surrounded by effervescent puffballs with pointy beaks. On high, the queen descends, and she has a pair of thin sabers in her hands that Pitch has not seen for centuries.
He cocks his head. "I was wondering what had happened to those."
She looks at him with a frown, seemingly surprised by his presence, then slides the weapons back into their respective places on the gold circlet about her slender hips. "Can I help you?"
"Yes. I need to look at some teeth."
She lands in front of him, eyes immediately sad. It is as though every Guardian has given him that look when he mentions something pertaining to the Incident. He has only said a few words, and she already knows why he is here. "Alright. Come with me." She does not fly, but walks. It is so strange, trailing silently behind her, but he waits until they reach the tower of North America. Tooth flits up to one of the higher tiers for a moment and returns just as quickly with a circular box in hand.
Pitch stares at the carefully hand-drawn picture on the side. "But this is…"
"I know," she mumbles. "I know why you're here. Sandy dropped by a few hours ago. I figured that was the one you needed to see." Pitch ponders at her perceptiveness as she rises into the air again. "You can look at it here, or you can take it with you if you'd like."
He smirks. "Rather trusting for one whose existence I nearly destroyed. Thirty years is hardly long enough to erase my crimes."
"No amount of time is great enough," she agrees, though her smile is weary. "However, no matter what you have done, I think that this time, what we did was worse. You are the enemy, so of course we oppose one another, but…we hurt one of our own. And…" She looks like she wants to say so much more, and Pitch would willingly sit there and listen for once in his life, but she backs out and flies off to do her job.
Pitch finds himself a nice secluded place on the tower where there are not too many tooth boxes or fairies and settles in for a trip down memory lane. When he touches his fingers to the top, the world becomes bright and crystalline before his eyes and he is plunged into the memories of Jack Frost's sister.
He absolutely refuses to linger for long, but he does fast forward to when the little girl sees her sweet brother's death. He does not know the exact details behind Jack's rebirth. All he knows was that the youth drowned. As a matter of fact, he vaguely recalls being there, or at least passing overhead to see a figure plunge beneath the ice. The spike of fear had been delicious. However, he had not given it a passing thought.
Now he sees how she screams in shrill terror as the water splashes a bit over the fractured ice, beneath which that lithe body has just disappeared. Pitch listens closely and can hear the harsh pounding of Jack's heart slow into something softer after a minute, and eventually stop altogether. He releases the breath he has unconsciously been holding; at least death came quickly and Jack did not suffer much. If anything, the brutal shock of the icy water hopefully made much faster work.
The little girl's shrill cries bring her parents, and other villagers. They herd her away and wonder if they should break up the ice in a late rescue attempt, but everyone with eyes can see that the best that they can do is fish out the body, or at least wait until spring to do so. Through the confusion, Pitch watches the girl bury herself in her mother's warm skirts, while the woman chokes back a sob. Strangely enough, her daughter has suddenly stopped crying. At least, she has stopped making sound. She stands there, trembling, and slowly turns to look at the pond.
Pitch is not sure what it is, but there is something in her wide brown eyes that is feverish and a bit desperate. He starts when she takes several quick steps forward and steps onto the ice, whispering, "Jack."
Her mother screams and two men capture the child quickly before she can do anything foolish.
Pitch blinks and the scene melts on into the girl's life. She grows into a gangly, awkward little teenager with homely dresses and thin lips and a straight back. Jack Frost always returns to Burgess, sans memories, and stirs up a bit of fun for the children. Pitch cannot see it, but he recognizes the spirit's work like the back of his hand. When they dash about through the snow, however, she looks upon them as though they are idiots, for she has learned that it only takes a little crack in the ice to end everything. No one realizes that Jack Frost's ice is strong and solid and infallible, though. Not even her. Then again, no one realizes that Jack Frost exists.
She moves into young adulthood and everyone now knows her as the girl who does not know how to smile, or the girl who does not know how to have fun. One young man comes along and somehow manages to be just right for her. He is funny, but knows how to be serious around her enough that she is comfortable. And they love each other. Pitch can see that. So they marry.
She has her new husband build her a house close to the pond—the pond where her dear brother died. And every day, she looks out the window, staring at that place. Through spring, summer, and fall, she goes and sits by the water's edge every day. In the winter, after Jack has visited – though she does not know this – she walks right out into the middle of the pond and stands there, looking down at the very spot her brother plunged through.
It is maddening behavior. She is mad. Her husband worries for her, but never questions her strange obsession. He grew up in the village knowing the story of poor Jackson Overland and his untimely demise.
The woman is impregnated sometime later, and she gives birth to a girl, then a boy a year later. She does not name the child "Jack" as Pitch thinks she will. However, something changes a few years after the second birth. She allows her children to play with others, but absolutely forbids them from venturing near the pond. They never disobey her on this order. Not only because they know the story of their would-be uncle, but also because something in their mother's eyes makes them fear for their safety. Not from the pond. From her.
The husband, he knows she would never…and yet, through the woman's eyes, Pitch sees his hesitation when he catches her staring at the pond. The Nightmare King supposes he can understand why Jack grew so upset over this. Naturally the boy must have wanted to vent some frustration because he was not there for her, but despite the few lives that were lost due to those storms, that gives no reason for the Guardians to have tried to remove the memories of this woman from his head.
Pitch is still immersed in these images, and he feels the canister in his hands. If he lets go, he can just find Jack and comfort him and try to mend the rift between that little group, even though he would rather have Jack all to himself. However, something in that woman's gaze makes him clench the box tighter and urge the magic to show him the end.
To his surprise, it is the next winter, according to what the spell tells him in his soul. There she is, looking out on the ice. She takes a few steps out onto it, then pauses hesitantly, looking around. Then she shuffles the rest of the way forward to the place Jack had plunged down. A warm breeze sweeps the pond and she turns her head skyward with an unintelligible prayer.
Pitch starts. Winter is ending. Spring is almost here. And she is stupid enough to stand on the thin ice which is barely keeping her from the still frigid waters below. "You," he starts to say, but she cannot hear him.
And then there is movement out of the corner of his eye.
Jack is there.
How this is possible, he is not sure, because that woman looks in his direction and still does not seem to see him. So how is it that he is showing up in this memory?
The youth twirls his staff and stands on the pond, blinking and watching with curiosity. "Lady? Hey, you shouldn't stand there."
Why doesn't he just reinforce the ice so that she does not fall in?
"Jack," Pitch says urgently, wondering if somehow, something with this canister is faulty, or perhaps Jack is actually there somehow. But no, this is clearly a memory. The woman cannot see Jack, yet Jack is there.
She shifts, and the ice cracks.
Jack looks on impassively. "Lady, if you can hear me…no, why do I even bother?"
Pitch watches. Jack is not being cruel. He is simply…neutral. This is not like him.
Suddenly, she looks straight at the frosty figure. Jack starts, eyes lighting up with hope as she whispers, "I believe in you, Jack. So I know you'll save me. I'm not scared anymore."
It floors the boy, and he takes an excited step forward. However, he suddenly pauses and his face lapses into grim annoyance, because she does not see.
She is praying to Jack, Pitch thinks. The old Jack. The brother who risked his life for her.
"Someone else, huh?" the winter spirit mutters so bitterly, raking a hand through his white locks. "Well, he's got a nice name, at least."
His sister continues to look straight at him, and something in her gaze is warm and trusting, despite the icy nature she has maintained through the years. "I believe in you," she says again, and shifts.
Ice splinters.
Jack does not move.
And so, the woman of Jack's past, his dearest sister, leans into the ice, which cracks and breaks apart, and Jack looks on with surprise and discomfort while she is lost to the depths of the dark, biting water.
That is all.
Rage flares up in Pitch's heart at the lost expression gracing the spirit's face; he knows Jack could not have physically touched her to give his aid, but the least he could have done, the least—
"He didn't know."
He gasps as he is wrenched out of the memories by soft hands curling over his. He looks at Tooth, who is sitting beside him, her wings drooping, eyes saddened. After a second, he snaps, "What do you mean he didn't know? He was right there! All he had to do was reinforce the ice and she would have lived."
"But he didn't, Pitch. It's because he was a young spirit and it was not uncommon, and he felt a connection with children more than adults anyway. The Man in the Moon chose him because of his bond with children. Because of how Jack died, it is in his nature to care more for the little ones. Of course, he tries to take care of all humans now, but…back then? Well, I suppose I can't justify it, but what do you want me to say?"
Slowly, the unusual sting of anger fades from Pitch's chest, replaced with horror. "What did he want you to say?"
She traces her fingers over the memory box. "I…don't know. I guess we said the wrong thing. We were at the Workshop when he finished looking through all of the memories. He came to us and showed us, and we thought it was awful, but we didn't throw a big fuss. We...we went about it all wrong!"
"He wanted you to chastise him," Pitch clarifies. "Because not only was it a life that he did not try to save, but also because it was his sister. He looked her in the eye and heard her say that she believed he would save her, and then he watched her die without moving a muscle. He believed that he deserved some form of reproach."
"Yes."
"And because you did not tell him what he wanted to hear, he felt so guilty from it that he went off to vent."
"I…yes. I guess…we said that it was awful, but it was in the past and he didn't have to worry about it, even if it was his sister. We said he was making a big deal out of nothing. That made it worse. The guilt just consumed him and then the storms started, and the winters ran long, and we tried to tell him—we said such stupid things! We tried to convince him to stop by using her death as a reminder, but he grew angrier. We said that more lives would be needlessly lost, but the storms grew harsher."
Pitch can see it all now. Everything is falling into place. "So you told him to forget about it, and he couldn't. And now people are dead, and you tried to prevent more deaths by erasing his memory. Which was an accident," he adds when he sees her heartbroken expression.
"Sandy was just trying to reach for her. All of those kids got in the way! It was so rare for Jack to be having a good dream at that time. We didn't think he would. He'd drop by North's to take a nap sometimes, but all he'd have were nightmares, and he'd wake up screaming, and his entire room would be frozen. We thought it would be simple, but we should have never interfered."
"Whose idea was it?"
She swallows. "Bunny…made a passing comment at a meeting when Jack was out. It wasn't a joke, but it was just a theory. Like, if there was a way to just make Jack forget he had ever seen his sister's memories. After the meeting was over, I…" She chokes up, and Pitch curses the man Jack has made him today, for he covers her hands comfortingly with his and waits for her to find her strength. "…I went to Sandy and said it could be done, and I could show him how. So we went, and I was going to take back the teeth, and then Sandy would go in, pull out the memory, and store it somewhere…"
Pitch has almost heard enough. He just wants to find his winter sprite. "Why did Jack show up in the memory? She couldn't see him."
Tooth sniffles pathetically, and Pitch is quite tempted to pull away, but he forces himself to remain a statue. "I wish I could explain that, but I can't. My only theory is that…maybe she did see him."
His heart stutters with amazement.
"…Did you tell him that?"
"No. He never asked. The thought came to me sometime later, but he was already in such a fury that I didn't want to make it worse. Learning that would crush him! You can't tell him. If you want to help him so much, then you just can't."
Pitch nods slowly and rises, depositing the box in her delicate hands. One final query pushes into his skull and he nearly laughs, because all this time, he has only been thinking of Jack and his involvement in this whole mess, when he had originally started prying to find out answers about himself. He supposes now is as good a time as ever to ask.
"Why did Jack wake me up?"
The fairy blinks, then glances away. An odd light gleams in her eyes. She does not speak for several moments, and Pitch is almost willing to just walk away, because this isn't about him anymore. It's about Jack. But—
"He wanted to get back at us."
His soul suddenly feels cold.
"You mean—"
"I don't know what he would have done if you had awoken with power and strength. But you wouldn't have needed much convincing, I bet." She does not say it cruelly. "What we did was unforgivable, and he was willing to…do something unforgivable in return. That meant bringing our greatest enemy back to power." She pauses. "I suppose only Sandy and I were targets. But I would not have been angry either way if you were strong, and neither would Sandy."
"Is that why you were so cordial upon seeing me on Halloween?"
"Jack told us what he had done later that same day, and he wasn't sorry for it, but he told us you were weak and weren't much use to him."
That cuts him deep, but he purses his lips and remains silent.
"We weren't so sure. We thought he wanted us to drop our guard, so we were waiting. Thinking that he – that you would get us when we least expected it. We didn't bear him any grudge though. No one did."
Pitch snorts. "Well, that backfired splendidly."
Tooth laughs wetly. "It did, didn't it." At last, she looks at him again. "I guess you should go find him. Do whatever you can to make him smile."
The Boogeyman steps into the shadows of a detailed archway and inclines his head at the queen. "You put too much faith in my abilities."
"Not at all. I believe in you."
If his heart warms at those powerful words, he does not say a word. And he never will. "What makes you so sure that he'll listen to me?"
She smiles rather calmly for one who has ruined the life of a friend. "After seeing his sister's memories, he didn't return to Burgess for a long time. It was only after we…tampered with him that he thought of getting you. You, Pitch Black, are the cause of his first return to his home in a long time."
Author's Note: "It's finals week," she snarled.