Note: Shocking. When did this story ever get so long...I tried re-reading it other day and realized it took me longer than I thought.

Chapter 28

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

-Edgar Allen Poe-

A thousand watts travelled from the stomach into Pitch's brain. Or at least, that's what it felt like to him. He vaguely heard someone was letting out a strangled scream but, he quickly realized it was coming from his own mouth. His aberrant shouted startled everyone to freeze as he stood on the deck, clutching the grip of the sabre that went through his stomach.

His legs lost all energy to stand and with a heavy thud, it hit the floor. The air has left his lung after his hollering, leaving his throat tinging with soreness and gasping as liquid rush into his mouth. He gagged, keened and groaned while everything in his head screamed to get the sabre out of his body. His hands were now slippery covered in red.

He felt another revelation stun him besides a sabre sticking out of him like a voodoo doll with a needle.

His blood wasn't black. It was red. They spilled forth like a hot tap, warm and sticky in his hand.

"Don't take out the sabre yet!" Tooth shouted. She rushed to his side and grasped the sabre in the place while Pitch was trying to dislodge in a frenzy of pain. "If we take it out now, you're going to lose more," she paused as her eyes widened, "blood."

Pitch let out a dry chuckle. Blood was what made feel fear? He should have bled red long time ago if he knew.

From Pitch's flickering vision, everyone was crowding around urgently.

"I have never seen a spirit bleed but, Tooth is right. We need a way to seal off the wound first if we were to take the sabre out." North tensed.

"Is there any first aid kit around here?" Bunnymund snapped at Mick. Mick shook his head skittishly.

"You're going to try to-huff-fix me with-with a human method?" Pitch chuckled softly. "How-how foolish."

"Stop talking damn it!" Bunnymund shouted. "We need to try something at least."

Pitch looked at Bunnymund with a mocking glance. Death was a sore subject for the guardians that have surrounded themselves with lights, he thought. They never thought there could be an end to their unending duties.

"I-I have an idea. But I don't know if it will work." Jack stuttered. He didn't know that spirits could bleed. But it has always been such a strange case with Pitch. He bled black blood but, now he was bleeding just like a human would. "Blood is liquid. I can freeze it and seal it off internally and on the surface. But, I don't know if that will help to heal."

Pitch convulsed and coughed blood that was pooling at the back of his throat. Sweats ran down on his monotonous pale skin as if he ran five kilometres in a minute.

Bunnymund looked at Pitch and then back at Jack. "Well, I don't think you can make it worst."

Tooth and Jack glanced at Pitch who was starting to fade in and out of consciousness. Tooth gritted her teeth. "Let's do it."

Tooth grabbed the sabre's grip and slowly pulled out the sabre. Jack was right beside her like a nurse to an operation. He began to delicately pour his power to freeze the bleeding internally and to have it spread out externally. Sweat poured down on Jack's concentrated face while Tooth bit her tongue. Bunnymund looked away with a frantic heart, North stared with a frightful fear in his eyes that did not match his bravado, and Sandy surrounded by sleeping children, gazed at the huddled group with hopefulness.

Pitch felt a numbness; a coldness that was different from his dull dead grey skin that was already sapped of energy. It made his breath frostier, sharper with a hint of peppermint he could taste at the back of his mouth.

Wet red sabre clattered to the ground and at the tearing lied a thin coat of ice that stretched out like a big old scar. Pitch spatted out the rest of the blood that was in his throat and his chest rose and fell at ease.

"I did it," Jack said as he looked at his own hand in surprise. He never thought his ice could be used to ever prevent death. Slowly, he smiled in amazement. Despite his achievement, his expression took a grim turn. Pitch's body was covered with shattering lines that spread out like a brittle piece of collapsing cliff. They were running out of time.

"Who are you Pitch?" North said in wonder. With so many winding and twisting questions, North could no longer ignore the building coincidence that he has been noticing like a detective piecing together clues to see the bigger picture. But, he didn't get his answer because Pitch was already in a deep sleep.

He was alone in the dark. He knew he was dreaming; the darkness was dense, fluid and alive. Something pressed in his abdomen and pain blossomed. It spread like a wild vine with its deadly root that gripped Pitch to freeze on the spot. Pitch hissed and saw a sabre, lodged into his body like a half of a whole. Yet, he wasn't shocked by the pain but by the hands that gripped and twisted the sabre deeper.

Pitch followed the trails of hands and found himself gazing into Jack's eyes. They were cold, hard and unrelenting. Side by side they stood; adamant North, snarling Bunnymund, merciless Tooth and dissonant Sandy. They stared at him with anger and horror, pushing the sabre deeper. Pitch judged their betrayal. It was uncomprehending and appalling that left him panting and wheezing in pain.

Desperate, he opened his mouth to plead, to beg, to halt the procession of his untimely demise. But, they raised their left hand and pointed down. He looked past the sabre and into the darkness. Slowly, the bodies of children surfaced all around him with their pink tongues and white of their eyes glistened.

Stop. He thought. Stop this.

The bodies of children twitched and their slender fingers gently wrapped around his leg. The sabre viciously pulled back, leaving Pitch to bleed out.

I don't want to die, he thought.

But, he gradually fell to his knees and the lethal slender arms wrapped around his like boas.

I'm sorry, Pitch thought. I'm sorry.

The arms wiped the tears and pleasantly cupped his cheeks and his skull.

I want to die, Pitch thought. Let me die.

They forced open Pitch's mouth with unnatural strength. He stared at their dead eyes that smiled almost motherly as if they were all-knowing. The darkness rippled and pulsed like a living geyser. Like a ghost covered in black, it rosed up in its humanoid form and raised its right arm.

Drink, it ordered. Black liquid gushed out of its hand.

No. No. NO-

The arms pushed him toward the black liquid. It soaked his face into his gaping mouth, down his esophagus, and into his core.

Pitch couldn't scream.

When Pitch opened his eyes, he thought he went mad.

All around him were children, sleeping innocently in a king-size bed. They were all snuggled beside him like dolls, some sucking their thumbs while others were rolled up like Roly Poly. Pitch knew he was back in North's workshop. He could feel the soft pillow caressing his neck like a vapour cloud under his skin and the sinking mattress that fit perfectly to his form. The bed was neither soft nor hard, just perfect in between.

Pitch wiped the sweat running down his eyes, swallowed the air, and tried to sit up. Wincing, he propped his elbow to look around the room. All around the beds were empty chairs. He felt the warmth from the artic sunshine and determined it to be past noon.

Pitch patted himself and finding that he was not dissipating into nothingness, he looked at the remaining hour indicated by the necklace pocket watch.

He only had an hour left. An alarm silent rang in his head but soon, that too fell away, buried under the events that rushed back into his head.

But an hour left to do what, he wondered. He has failed to find Mother Goose and let alone finding a cure to his predicament. What he has been doing was fulfilling a promise for an empty-headed child and finding out where the Fearlings came from. He buried his head deep into the palm of his head. He could still taste the fear of the lost child turned into a Fearling at the back of his tongue. It left a feeling of abhorrent and giddy horror that made him want to throw up in pain while smiling in pure happiness. He chocked on the truth, wishing it was a lie.

He stared at the children using only the corner of his eyes; he couldn't bear to look at them and he couldn't bear to touch them with his thin pale grey hands. They cried and shouted at the guilt of his own atrocious nature that would inevitably destroy them all. Clutching his black hair, he felt a rise in laughter rattling his lungs. He throttled and smothered it by covering his mouth with his remaining hand.

He didn't go mad. He was wrong about himself. He was already mad. Madness has followed him like a shadow.

At that moment, the door across from the bed creaked open and Pitch flinched. Sandy tiptoed through the door like a ninja and came to halt when he met Pitch's stare. Sandy then threw his hand up in the air in an exclamation and exited from the very door he entered. After a pause, the door burst open and the guardians piled into the room. Elation filled their eyes and they missed the distraught air that surrounded Pitch.

"What's going on?" Pitch demanded. But no one responded to his question. Instead, North lifted Pitch up and rushed him out the door. When Pitch finally wrenched himself away from the group with trembling legs, he commanded. "Can somebody tell me what the hell is going on here. Now."

"We wanted to tell you directly," Jack exclaimed in excitement.

"Tell me what?" Pitch uttered in confusion.

"We found her. We found the Mother Goose."