Chapter 20

Pitch in the aftermath of what Jack refers to as "The Dumbasses Incident" is… clingy, to say the least. Clingy interspersed with times where Pitch will retreat to a dark corner and pretend not to be staring at her, but he totally is, Jack can feel it.

At first she thought that it may have to do with his pride (he has quite a bit of it), but his outburst that his home is supposed to be a safe place for her says otherwise. He's used to being the biggest bad around, everyone too scared of him to treat him with anything other than caution. Pitch cares about her, even if he can't just come out and say it like a normal person, but then Jack isn't the epitome of normal either.

She knows she's got one or two screws loose, long periods of isolation with only the occasional interaction with other spirits, few of them friendly, will do that to you. She's a little protective of Pitch herself, largely because after a century alone he was the first to actually pay attention to her, to befriend her, but also in part because, so far as she can tell, she is the first person to befriend him.

Knowing that she of all people can talk the Nightmare King down from the brink of a murderous rampage (provoked by how she had been treated, no less) makes her feel a bit smug, she won't lie. Knowing she has that kind of influence over him is a little heady, though she won't use it unless she has to. Probably.

In any case, Jack allows Pitch to hover while she spends the rest of her time lounging around while healing in his home, which is a novel experience in itself - she's been hurt before, though never this badly, and normally she just lets her bruises heal while she gets on with bringing snow, sleet, et cetera. Staying in one place, with someone who cares about how she's feeling, is weird. A good weird, but still weird.

The bed she'd stayed in before is comfortable, and Jack has no qualms about asking Pitch for more blankets and some pillows, using them to make a nest on top of the mattress that she can curl up in when the mood strikes her. Being surrounded by warmth and softness is both new and old at the same time, with vague memories of cuddling with her parents and sister during harsh winters now available to her.

And that right there is the weirdest thing to come out of everything that's happened the past couple of weeks. She'd always found it a little odd that she was raised from frozen waters, but hey, it was during the winter, she's a winter spirit, who knows why the Moon does anything. Any questions she may have had regarding that usually fell to the wayside in favor of Jack just trying to have fun, to try to make her life a little better in the face of the crushing loneliness she usually felt.

She hadn't had much time, between sleeping around the clock and then being kidnapped, to begin to process that she'd died. That she'd had a human life, a family, before she was Jack Frost. It's the dying part that she keeps coming back to, though. Of course she would take care of Emma, of course she would save her baby sister, only nine years old to Jack's sixteen, but that didn't make her feel any less angry at how unfair it all was. She wondered what her mother thought, to learn her older daughter traded places to keep her younger safe. Another member of the Overland family lost to dangerous waters, another empty grave that would never be filled.

"I can hear you thinking."

Jack looks up to see Pitch not quite looming as he exits the shadows in the corner of the room. "I've got a lot to think about," she replies, sitting up from where she had previously sprawled lengthwise across the bed, feet hanging off the side. "I think I understand why the Moon took my memories."

Pitch's shadow does that weird twisty thing it does whenever the Moon is mentioned, while his expression does not change. "Oh?"

Jack nods. "I'm pissed off at him, obviously. Will be for a while. But if I'd woken up with my memories intact, nothing would have been able to stop me from going back to my family, to watching over them. Having no one able to see me is bad enough now, but for it to be my family? To have to watch them mourn me?" She lets loose a loud sigh, head resting against one hand propped up on her knee. "That would have been torture."

"...I suspected as much," Pitch admits. "He can be unintentionally cruel, in trying to be kind." Her statement of no one being able to see her niggles at the back of his mind, something about it off, but he's unsure what.

"The past is the past," Jack says wearily. "I can't help wanting to find out what happened to them though. I… I want to know that they were able to be happy after me."

"And if they weren't?" Pitch asks gently. He's near enough now to practically touch, not quite leaning against the headboard.

"...that's what I'm afraid of," Jack admits quietly. "At least I can remember times when we were happy together, no matter how it ended."

"What about now?" Jack glances up and if she didn't know better she'd think that Pitch looks nervous. "Knowing what you know, or knowing what you don't know, can you be happy here and now?" 'With me' goes unsaid, and realization blooms over Jack like the sun parting grey skies on a cloudy day.

She chuckles gaily, heart lighter than she's felt in some time. "Of course, you idiot," she chides, reaching out for his hand and twining their fingers together. "You're not getting rid of me that easily."

Sorry I'm a day late folks, I got into a cleaning fugue and the next thing I knew it was almost midnight and I hadn't eaten anything all day so writing got postponed xD;;

Things got a lil unintentionally angsty, but worry not! The slow burn will soon catch full fire and we can get to the whole point of the prompt that got this baby rolling in the first place (choice of words very much purposeful ;3)