Hiii everybody!
First thing's first: Happy New Years Eve and stuff! I know you all are probably out getting trashed at parties and are too busy to read little old me's last chapter, but I know there's a few of you out there that'll enjoy it.
Secondly, no I'm not as sentimental and mean as I pretended to be in the last chapter. I say sentimental because in all reality I am RELIEVED to be finished with the Boogeyman and mean because I left you guys at a MAJOR cliffie that I'm sure had you guys jumping up and down in your seats and screaming at me.
But no, no no no I'm not that mean.
I'm far worse, because instead of having an epilog that wrapped up everything all neat and tied a purple ribbon around it I'm deciding to give you ANOTHER EVIL CLIFFIE! But instead of telling you ANYTHING I'm deciding to just let you guys read it and decide for yourself.
And lastly, can't wait for the reviews!
A month. An entire bloody month without communications. An entire MONTH since everything had settled down and and he still hadn't seen her pop up on his screen or heard her happy voice bubbling from his speakers.
Pitch Black paced about the room, wearing a rut into the rock floor of his caverns but he didn't care. He was too anxious. No, anxious wasn't quite the word for it. Happy? A little, but it was more than that. He didn't know, his feelings were getting harder and harder to describe these days. Anger and resentment had been ursurped by love and happiness, which he didn't mind in the least. But now other feelings, like worry and that nagging feeling that might be anxiousness but was not sort of morphing into a gut sensation, like North described when he felt something 'in his belly'.
"Bah," he said, shaking his head as he passed in front of his computer screen which was sitting on a table in front of him, glancing at it once before turning around and continuing his pacing. "It's just nerves. I'm just nervous is all. I haven't seen her in nearly two months- well, technically I never saw her at all," he added to himself with a small smile. But hopefully that'll change soon.
He han't told anyone else about this, but he had been thinking about asking North if she could come to the Pole for Christmas. It was the least she deserved, being the one who had started all this for him and had started hi on the road which had eventually led him to his home and family.
I'll take her to the Pole for Christmas, he thought excitedly, grinning now as he passed the screen again which was just as lifeless as ever. Then here, then the Palace, then the Warren and then finally to Cloud Castle to meet Kozmotis, Archaline and Sera! Oho how she'll love that!
After things had settled down somewhat, when the Pitchners were squared away in rooms at the Pole, Manny and Nightlight had left to go back to the Lunar Palace and everybody was ready for a relaxing evening, he had flown to the nearest computer with Tooth at his side and tried to email her, but had gotten no response.
"It's probably nighttime where she is," Tooth had told him comfortingly as he leaned back in the computed chair, looking crestfallen. "She'll see it later."
But she hadn't. Or, at least if she did see it she hadn't responded.
For three weeks Pitch had waited, albeit less than patiently. Though Tooth had tried to help him relax his anxiety had gotten the best of him a few times when he had asked North and the others to please try and find her for him. They had been happy to do it of course, especially Jack and Bunny because they had wanted to know what she looked like from the beginning, but when North had searched the Globe he literally found not a single trace of her light.
"Must be problem vith rotation," he had muttered to himself as he twisted at the Globe controls. But when he had checked again, to his and Pitch's dismay he had come up empty. Then, being a thorough man, North had looked over the Naughty and Nice lists- mainly the Naughty, but both had turned out to be useless, as they didn't know her real name.
By that time, Pitch had begun to get extremely worried and had asked the others- well, begged really, to go out and find her for him and they all agreed without a second thought. At least, they tried. Bunny had scoured the Americas, North and South trying to find even the slightest evidence of her, Tooth told all of her fairies to be on the lookout for teenage girls with purple hair and if they saw any of them to tell her immediately, Sandy said he would search the dreams every night until he found her and Jack promised he would look at every place he brought snow to.
And every one of them had come back with their heads hanging low, day after day for the last three weeks, with not a single scrap of news.
Not that he blamed them. It wasn't their fault of course, it wasn't anybody's fault. There were a lot of children in the world, and plenty with odd-colored hair, so really it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
At least, that's what he had told himself during those first few weeks. But now he knew better. There weren't that many purple-haired girls in the world, and less than one percent of them were American. So it really shouldn't have been that hard.
"But none of that matters now," he told himself happily, plopping down on his couch and pulling his computer closer to him. "I've found her!" At least, he hoped he had.
As an afterthought, and feeling that it was a long-shot but worth it to try, Jack had also asked Jamie to try emailing her and some of her friends on Fanfiction to see if they knew where she was. No one had responded until this morning when Jamie had sent Pitch an email saying that after almost two months of inactivity, one of Abby's friends, the one called Fanty, was online again. Upon seeing this news Pitch had flown to his inbox and typed a lightning quick and full of typos message asking if she knew anything about what had happened to her. He was currently waiting for a response.
"Please Manny," Pitch prayed as he watched the online icon blipping slowly next to Fanty's name on his inbox page. She was writing something. "Let her know what's going on! Let her know where Abby is!"
He was so busy praying that he forgot one of the cardinal rules of life. Be careful of what you wish for.
The icon blipped once, then the bar with her name on it grew bright. A new message! Pitch's hand lunged for the mouse and immediately clicked on it, opening a new page. The screen automatically scroll down to her newest message- which was, incidently the first one she had ever sent to him. His eyes flew across the screen, taking in the short message in a single glance.
Hey Pitch, I'm sorry but this isn't Abby. This is Fanty. I'm not sure if you remember me or not. One of the three weird amigas? The one who wrote Listen to your Heart?
Anyway, I'm so glad to hear about your memories being returned. That's really great and I'm sure Abby would've want to know about it as soon as possible but... well...something's happened. And I don't think I should tell you about it over email. Would you consent to a skype call on Gmail? That way we could talk...you know...face to face.
Regards, Fanty.
As he had been reading Pitch's smile had slowly begun to droop into a frown of worry, and when he read the request to skype part his brow furrowed in confusion. "What could be so important that she would let me see her face, just to tell me?" He wondered aloud, clicking the repsonse box and typing a quick Yes please.
A few seconds later a strange new icon came to life in the lower right hand corner of the screen. It looked like the silhouette of a person, but it had no features. He clicked on it which brought him to an entirely new page, one he had never seen before with blue borders and his own face staring back at him from a small box in the corner of the screen. He frowned, peering closer at it. Was that really how big his nose looked?
"No," he muttered as the screen began to shift, changing from straight black to a lighter shade of midnight blue with a whirling spiral of black and white in the center of the page that spun around and around. Fanty was coming on. "It's just a trick of the camera."
A few minutes later the whirling loading screen faded and a face appeared. It was the face of an older teenage girl with olive skin, dark brown hair that hung in wet trails down the sides of her face and equally dark brown eyes that, when he looked closer, appeared to be slightly tinged with red around the outside.
Pitch smiled, hoping that whatever the reason for her red eyes, it didn't have anything to do with him and Abby. "Hello." He said, trying to sound friendly. "You must be Fanty."
Fanty nodded without smiling back. "Yep, that's me." She said in a flat, monotone voice that was the complete opposite of the bubbly, quiky voice Pitch remembered listening to, all those long weeks ago.
Pitch waited for a few minutes for her to speak, but when she didn't he coughed awkwardly. "Ahem. Was...there something you wanted to tell me about Abby?" He asked, though he already knew the answer but he felt it would be rude to just ask where she was.
Fanty, who had been staring off into the space beyond the screen for the last few minutes, blinked once as her attention shifted back to the screen. "Oh. Right. Sorry I..." She paused, glancing down at something Pitch couldn't see. "I have a lot of things on my mind right now."
Pitch nodded. Teenagers often did, what with school and homework and friends and such. She was probably just going through a rough patch with her classes. "Well, if you'll just tell me how to get a hold of Abby so that I can thank her, I shall leave you to your business." He told her. "And I'm very anxious to speak with her again, so if you don't mind-"
"Pitch,"
Pitch paused. "Yes Fanty?"
Her face was, if possibly, more downcast than it had been before and her eyes looked watery. "I- I don't know how to t-tell you this gently," she said- well, more stammered than spoke. Her voice was low and wavery, as if she was minutes away from breaking into tears.
By now Pitch was getting worried. "What?" He asked, his gaze never wavering from the screen. "Tell me what gently?"
She hiccuped. "I..I guess it's better if I just get it out quickly."
Pitch's hands were clenched so tightly they were going white. "Get what out quickly?!" He demanded, his heart starting to race. Something was wrong here, something was very very wrong. "Fanty, can you please just tell me what's going on?"
Fanty took a long, deep, shuddering breath before speaking again, and when she did what came out of her mouth was something he didn't expect at all. "Pitch, I don't know how to tell you this... but Abby's dead."
XXXXXXX
And just like that, the story ended.
Bard leaned back from the book he had been so captivated by for the last six hours with a puzzled look on his face. "It just...stops?" He wondered aloud, taking the book in his hands and flipping gingerly through the pages, checking to see if he had missed something. He checked the pages he had just read moments ago and then he checked the pages left in the book, which were all completely blank.
He humphed, closing the book and setting it back down on the table in front of him. "That stinks," he muttered, pushing his chair back from the table and standing up. He turned his back on the table, nearly knocking over the candle that illuminated the small space of his Chroniclarium, which was just his fancy word for writing office, with his bulky tail. After turning back around to make sure that he hadn't knocked the candle over, Bard lifted his arms up and stretched.
"Gods above I've been sitting in that chair for a long time!" He groaned, rotating his head, stretching his neck and rolling his shoulder blades to feel that satisfying crack and then a pop as his joints and cartilage snapped back into alignment. "I really need to take Sherry's advice and take a break every two hours or so. This constant sitting is going to make me fat."
After popping everything he could until he felt nice and limber, Bard yawned and checked the grandfather clock standing by the entrance. It was a quarter to eleven at night. No wonder he felt so tired.
Bard knew he should go to bed. He knew that, if Sherry were here and not partying it up with her Naiad buddies- which he thought was a little hypocritical of her since he hardly ever left his caves, she would want him to go to sleep. He could practically hear her voice in his ear right now. "Bard, you need your sleep. You spend hours and hours and that desk and it's turning you into an old man. You need to eat more, go out into the sun more often. And don't give me that crap about how the sun burns you."
Bard made a face. Sunlight. Sherry's life-source and the bane of his existence. He hated the sunlight and everything it stood for, if only for the fact that it really did blister his scales. Then he glanced back at the book, sitting so innocently on his desk and yet sooo tempting he could barely look away. It was like the book was calling to him, begging him to continue the story.
Bard rolled his eyes. He had a choice that he needed to make here: Should he keep looking for the rest of it, or should he leave it? That was the question.
"I need to go to sleep dammit!" He told the book waspishly. The story would be here tomorrow, if there even were a story to look for. He could read it then. Right?
"Wrong." Bard rolled his eyes skyward. "Gods above I'm utterly hopeless," he muttered as he picked up the book again and started searching the outside for any sign of a continuation on the story. It took him less than a minute to find the number stamped on the lower part of the book's spine, beneath the title: The Boogeyman Tries to Understand Fanfiction. It was a Roman numeral for one, and where there's a one...
"There's bound to be a two."
It took three strides for him to reach the bookshelves on the other side of the room and start combing them for the next volume, which he found a few minutes later. The second volume was the same size and shape as the first, with the title written in the same script on the spine beneath the Roman numeral for two: I May Be Dead, But I'm still Pretty. But, to his disappointment when he opened it there was only a small paragraph written at the top of the first page.
"What does any person say when they wake up in a strange place they don't recognize?" He read aloud. "It's different for each person. Some people say, 'Who's there?' As if asking are they alone. Some people call out for loved ones- those lucky enough to remember who they are. And still others don't say a single word. They just stare blankly at the world around them, taking in each and every detail and filing it away in their minds for later. This is where our girl comes in. She is one of the ones that don't say a single word. Even though she was cold, and everything was pitch black, she wasn't scared. She was weirded out. And because of that the first words out of her mouth were-"
Bard stopped. "Oho this is too good," he said, re-reading the last line once before reading it aloud. "And because of that, the first words out of her mouth were: Where the hell am I?" The Chronicler beamed. "The story goes on." And he was still smiling as he slipped the book back among its blank fellows who were standing ready, waiting for the story to go on and retired to his rooms for a good night's sleep, the title of the newest story in the lives of the Guardians echoing in his mind.
I May Be Dead, But I'm Still Pretty.
Which will be coming to Fanfiction in February! Stay tuned...
