Author's Note- I don't know if having a cliffhanger counts as an April Fool's Day prank, but if it does, haha, I got you good! (Here, I bring a peace offering chapter, please don't kill me.)


Jack abruptly woke up, lying on the ice of his lake with his staff beside him. He smirked. "I knew it."


Pitch roared his displeasure and hurled a dusty chair across the room to shatter against the wall.

That wasn't supposed to happen!

Jack wasn't supposed to act that way!

He'd crafted the nightmare perfectly! He'd played off the boy's fears! He'd shown Jack just what he was capable of, reminded him of when they were enemies! He'd played the part of the villain perfectly- No, he was the perfect villain, he wasn't just playing a part! Jack should have tried to blast him away! Why hadn't there even been the slightest flicker of fear or doubt at the end?

This was supposed to prove Jack wrong! That blasted trust was supposed to be a lie! It had to be a lie!

He wasn't trustworthy! He was the Nightmare King!

Jack was trying to trick him, had to be trying beguile him into… something. He was sure of it! It made no sense otherwise!

Maybe, maybe he'd gone too easy with the nightmare. Hadn't raised the stakes enough. He could have done far worse, looking back on it now. Jack had never given much thought to himself. Self-sacrificing to a fault, just like the rest of those idiotic Guardians. Jack's weakness and strength lay in the same place, in the children he protected. If he'd harmed the shade of a child in front of Jack, that surely would have made him snap…

But he had only wanted to put Jack on the defensive, only scare him a bit and prove that, hah, of course he didn't trust in the boogeyman, not make the Guardian hate him.

…Why didn't he want Jack to hate him?

Well, that had an easy answer. Jack was the only thing standing between the Guardians and him; he knew that very well. He still wasn't strong enough to try to take the Guardians on yet.

It had nothing to do with the fact that he enjoyed Jack's company; that the constant, aching loneliness that he'd known his entire existence vanished when the Guardian came to bother him. The fact that he cared about Jack didn't factor in at all.

Wait, cared about Jack? About a Guardian?Where had that thought come from? That wasn't something he should be thinking!

Oh no, he was going mad. That was the only explanation for this bizarre behavior. That was it, this was the end. After a lifetime of humiliation and failure, he'd finally been driven round the bend. Next thing he knew, he'd be making daisy-chains with the rabbit or something. Or handing out presents to childre-

He already did that. He'd been doing that for years! Pitch let out a strangled little whimpering sound and collapsed to the floor in despair.

Lying face down on the dusty rock, Pitch resolved that he was not going to get up. No, he was going to lie here on the ground until the world came to an end. Maybe then he could salvage what last few scraps of dignity he had left.

"Hey, is it safe to come in, or are you still in 'I am Pitch, destroyer of worlds' mode?"

Pitch fought the urge to scream in frustration. He couldn't even be allowed to die in peace, could he? "Is being the architect of my destruction not enough for you, Jack? Now you have come to torment me further?" he grumbled into the floor.

"What are you talking about? I didn't even touch you." Pitch felt a gust of cold wind pass over him as Jack landed nearby.

"No, you didn't have to, did you? Very clever. Was this your plan all along, Jack?"

"Uh, Pitch, are you feeling alright?"

"No. I'm not. I'm going insane."

"Well, I'm not about to argue with that, considering the way you're acting right now." Jack paused for a moment, as if anticipating a verbal barb to parry. Pitch didn't oblige. "…Are you going to get up?"

"No."

"You are literally the weirdest person I have ever met, Pitch," Jack sighed.

"Wonderful. Does that inspire you to leave me alone?"

"Nope! I knew you were weird from day one. Come on, Pitch. You can't sulk forever."

"Watch me."

Jack made a vaguely disappointed noise and Pitch could hear him pacing back and forth. Maybe if he just lay there very quietly, the Guardian would get bored and go away.

In retrospect, that was an empty hope if there ever was one.

A cold hand lifted the collar of his shirt and suddenly there was snow shoved down his back. Pitch yelped and recoiled at the sudden chill, scrambling into a sitting position to glare daggers at Jack. "What is wrong with you?!" he snarled.

"I figured it out! You're miffed because we didn't have the big showdown you set up with so much effort!" Jack crowed, grinning and bouncing from foot to foot. "You could've just said something, you know. I'm happy to oblige."

Pitch gaped at Jack for a moment. That was what the boy had gathered from all this? Really? By the darkness, he was even more of an idiot than Pitch had originally thought.

A sudden snowball to the face drove even those thoughts out of Pitch's head. That was it. He had enough of this little brat. "I'm going to kill you!" Pitch shrieked, warm, welcome anger replacing all the other odd emotions that had been tormenting him.

Jack laughed. "That's the spirit!" He was abruptly cut off by a Hellhound leaping out of the darkness and driving him to the ground. After a brief scuffle, Jack managed to freeze the beast and bolt away, hotly pursued by Pitch and his hordes of nightmarish creatures.

Through the lair they charged and clashed, fighting tooth and nail to gain the upper hand. They shouted taunts and insults at each other and collected their own sets of bruises and scrapes. Snow and sand was spilled over the floor, shadows and ice wresting as the temperature dropped to a point where both their breaths came condensed and harsh and ragged.

The raw simplicity of the fight seemed to act to clear Pitch's head and calm his nerves. The adrenaline singing through his veins and the hot rush of the struggle soothed him, seemed to confirm that this was right. This was what he was made for, this was where he belonged.

He was just overthinking this. There was no reason why he should care if a Guardian had a misguided sense of trust in him. If anything, it would make his job easier.

And so what if he was fond of Jack? The boy was amusing, when he wasn't being infuriating, and useful. Besides, Pitch liked lots of things, for instance… well…

In any case, he liked plenty of things and that hadn't changed the fact that he was still the boogeyman. There was no reason why enjoying the mayhem he and Jack got up to had to change that either. He was the same as always.

And if Jack wanted to delude himself otherwise, well, that was his business. Clearly nothing Pitch could do would dissuade him from that foolishness.