Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians. Dreamworks and William Joyce does.

Summary: They say he hasn't been right in the head since he fell through the ice. They say that the man who is enshrouded in shadows and lives under his bed isn't real. But Jack knows he's there, always watching, waiting to drag this one mortal who can see him into his realm of nightmares.

Ch. 2 Golden Summer

Jackson Overland, Age 10 years…

The sun was blazing overhead and there was not even the slightest wind to stir the golden stalks of wheat in the field. Jack trudged on, wiping the perspiration off his face with his sleeve.

Stupid, old nanny goat, he thought, tearing a stalk in half viciously and chewing on the end.

It was bad enough he was stuck way out here watching his family's goat-herd on a day as hot as this while the other village children were playing in the lake. But today, the peddler had arrived in Burgess sporting off his collection of odds and ends from all across the country side. Jack had been saving a jar of honey for him, remembering from his visit last year that the man had a sweet tooth. It wasn't much, but he was sure it would gain him something in a trade, no matter how small. Then it would be his chance to brag about to everyone, like the butcher's son who was forever boasting on his silver pocket-knife.

His plans had been foiled from the moment he had woken up this morning. Instead, his father had sent him to mind the goats in his place.

"Your mother could have the baby any time now. I want to be with her," Joseph Overland had said before he had sent his son along the way with a packed lunch in a burlap pouch. "And keep a watchful eye on Prudence. She's near for her kidding time also."

Prudence was the meanest, ugliest, most stubborn goat in their herd. One of Jack's earliest memories was of her chasing him around the yard and head-butting him face-first into the water-trough. She was a bully and she bit. Even the goat-herd's head buck got bossed around and kicked by her.

Jack didn't want anything to do with her. He only hoped she would hold off giving birth until the next day at least. So of course, she was gone when he opened the goat pen and let the herd out to graze on the hillside.

The pen wasn't broken and there were no tunnels dug in the ground. No doubt, she had simply climbed over, swollen belly and all. Goats were remarkable that way. What wasn't remarkable was that Jack had to leave the rest of the herd behind and go off to look for her. Predators usually weren't too keen on attacking a herd full of healthy goats with nasty, cloven feet and wicked, curved horns, but one defenseless and alone having just given birth would be all too easy a meal.

Which was why Jack had been wandering across the hillside and valley for hours in the hot summer heat with no sign of luck. He was tired and too thirsty to sit down and eat his lunch. He was just thinking about giving up and turning back when he the faintest bleat reached his ears.

He followed the sound as best as he could with it echoing all over the rocks on the hills, but finally he stumbled across what he was looking for: a brown-and-white nanny goat on flopped on her side nursing two new-born kids, their white coats still shining wetly.

"Twins!" Jack exclaimed, smiling for the first time that day. "Well, I suppose that was worth all the trouble you gave me. Alright, come on, let's go home."

He took one step forward… and Prudence, knobby-kneed, cross-eyed Prudence was on all fours in an instant and charging towards him, horns lowered.

Jack ended up cornered in a crevice between two rocks for an hour tossing bits of his lunch to her as a peace offering which she turned her nose up at. She would lie back down to nurse her kids, then when he would try and escape without her noticing, she would chase him back into the same spot and bleat angrily, shaking her horns in goat-ish frustration when she couldn't reach him.

He probably would have been there all day if his father hadn't come looking for him.

"Left your staff at home again, Jack," Joseph Overland said as he hooked the curved end around Prudence's neck and yanked her away from his son's hiding place. "How will you ever learn to be a good shepherd if you keep forgetting your staff?"

"I don't want to carry that around! I look stupid!" Jack protested, emerging from the crevice. His father had tied all four of Prudence's legs together with rope so she was no longer an obstacle.

He used to admire his father and his work. He used to want to be just like him when he grew up. The boys in the village had made fun of him the first time he had been seen carrying around the shepherd's staff his father had carved for him one Christmas.

"Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb! Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow!" They would chant laughing as they ran around him in a circle. "Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet eating her curds and whey! Hey, where's your bonnet and petticoats, Jackie?"

Jack wasn't sure what he was going to do when he got older, but he would not be a goat-herder for the rest of his life.

"You look far more stupid being cornered by this old numbskull," Joseph declared giving Prudence a sound whack between her eyes that made her cease her mad struggling and lay stunned. "If you spent as much time dedicated learning your duty as you do to daydreaming and plain tom-foolery, you wouldn't worry about what others might think of you." Throwing the nanny goat across his broad shoulders, he stood up. "Now, carry those two kids and let's head home."

Jack gathered up the two new-born kids in his arms irritably. There was no more rope, so he had to carry them like that. They weighed a good few pounds each between them, and it would take an hour at least to get back to the village. Jack's legs were already aching from walking so much this morning. The kids were heavy dead-weights in his arms. It didn't take long for his muscles to give out.

"Just let me sleep here tonight," Jack moaned, stretching out on the ground and pressing his cheek into the dry soil. "I'll be fine."

"And what if the wolves decide you would make a tasty supper?" he heard his father chuckle above his head.

"Leave ole Prudence here," Jack said. "She'll be a sacrifice like in the Bible. They'll eat her and leave a poor skin and bones boy alone."

"Perhaps a rest would be good for a short while," Joseph remarked.

Jack lifted his face off the ground a little. His father was sitting on a tree stump, sweat dripping from his forehead, probably from the heat.

"Did Mother have the baby yet?" Jack asked.

"Nay," Joseph sighed. "She was worrying about you. Said you had been out too long and to go look for you. You're lucky she didn't realize you had left your staff or she'd be doubly as worried and I'd have tanned your hide. Your mother doesn't need that kind of stress right now. It's not good for the baby either."

Jack squirmed a bit feeling guilty for the first time that day. "Do you think the baby will be a boy or a girl?" he asked his father hoping to change the subject.

"No one but the Good Lord knows," Joseph said, a soft smile settling over his weary features. "As long as it's healthy, I'll be happy. What are you wishing for? A brother or a sister?"

"I don't care," Jack said rolling over and letting the new-born kids wobble on unsteady legs over his stomach. One of them licked his chin with its raspy tongue and he giggled at how it tickled. "As long as I have someone to play with."

Joseph frowned. "Are you not getting on well with the other children, Jack?"

"They say our family is strange," Jack admitted staring up into the cloudless blue sky. "Because you and Mother were not born in this village. Because we don't know all their traditions."

"People are mistrustful of outsiders, that's all," Joseph said. "They'll change their views soon enough." He ran a hand over his face. "Ah, do you have any water on you, son?"

"No," Jack said feeling the dryness of his own mouth.

"I'm near parched," Joseph said standing up and adjusting old Prudence on his shoulders, flexing his left arm as he did so. "We're nearly there. We'll take a drink from the well."

"Don't wanna," Jack whined, turning his face back into the dirt.

"Jack, get up," his father said in a warning tone.

"Leave me to diiiiiiiie," Jack groaned not looking forward to walking another step in the harsh, blazing weather while carrying two heavy weights.

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Ephesians 6:1," Joseph Overland recited.

"And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4," Jack recited with equal ferocity, not budging an inch.

Joseph burst out in deep, roaring laughter. "Oh, Jack, no wonder the village thinks our family strange if you call them out like this any chance you get! Never do it in front of Father Goodall though. The man would lose what little hair he has left on his head in a fit of righteous indignation!"

Jack felt the corners of his mouth turn up at the mental image. He started when he felt the weight of the two new-born kids vanish off him. He looked up in time to see his father, stuff them down the front of his shirt, until only their heads remained peeking out of collar of his neck.

"Alright, you disobedient, rebellious child. I'll box your ears when we get home. Move," Joseph ordered pointing one finger out in the distance.

Jack scrambled up happily, the threat of a whipping not bothering him at all. His father might change his mind or be too distracted with his mother to remember later. All that mattered right now was that he had no burdens too carry and was gloriously free.

They had to stop and rustle up the rest of the goats out grazing back into the pen before they returned home first. "I am in desperate need of a dog," Joseph remarked before handing the shepherd's staff to Jack. "Here, young pup, go nip at their heels."

Jack streaked through the tall grass whooping and hollering in delight, waving the staff in front of him like a mad man, scaring the very dickens out of the goats no doubt by the way they fled from him with frightened, startled bleating until he had rounded them all up securely into their pen. Once the task was finished, he did several cartwheels and back-flips to celebrate his accomplishment. With a victorious shout, he raised his staff high above his head to the sky imagining it was his sword and he, the king, had just defeated all his enemies.

"I've raised a young heathen, devil take my soul," his father commented at his antics.

They took her Prudence and her kids with them. New-born goats were too fragile to leave in the pen and a nanny goat's milk would be a welcome addition to their family's meals. The sun was setting when they at last cleared the last bit of rocky hillside and came to the valley where Burgess was nestled snugly in.

"Look, Dad, you can see our house from here!" Jack exclaimed excitedly pointing. "Hey, there's a carriage in front of it! It's Doctor Brown's! Mother must be having the baby, hurry!"

He made it half way down the valley slope before he realized his father wasn't following. Rushing back up, he nearly smacked right into him, slouched on his knees at the top of the hill.

"Dad, what's wrong?" he asked, kneeling down in front of him.

His had noticed his father slowing down his pace a third of the way home, but he had thought nothing of it. He was carrying several heavy weights after all. But his father's pale, pinched face and labored breathing alarmed him

"The goats…" his father gritted out through his teeth looking like he was in pain. "Take the goats…"

Jack obeyed wordlessly, unlike earlier, easing Prudence off his father's shoulders and pulling the two new-born kids out of the man's shirt that was soaked with sweat.

"Dad…" he said again in a small voice.

"Too much, too much," Joseph Overland was wheezing more to himself than his son. "Too long… in this heat…" He reached his right arm up that had begun shaking violently and clawed futilely at his shirt. Fabric ripped and buttons popped as he clutched his chest looking as if he wanted to reach in and tear out his own heart.

"Dad? Dad!" Jack shouted, yanking frantically his father's arm. His father who was unresponsive to his cries and whose head lolled side to side at his forceful shakes.

Somewhere, underneath all the blind panic, Jack thought he understood what was happening. He had seen old Mr. Johnson just collapse while walking through the street. "Heart gave out" was what the grown-ups talked amongst themselves. But Mr. Johnson had been nearing his mid-sixties. His father was young and healthy compared to him. So it couldn't be the same thing!

"Dad, what about the baby?" his own screams rang in his ears sounding frightened and lost. "What about Mother? You wanted to be with her! What about me?! Dad, Dad!"

His vision blurred, he could only make out the dim outline of the man in front of him, the man to whom all his life had seemed like a giant to him, tall and strong. It had started to rain but the sky was still clear, the new-born kids were bleating to be nursed, and in the house below the wails of a baby drifted up the hillside to join their cries.

And a hand stretched out and brushed the raindrops of his cheek. "Jack…" his name was spoken into the air and he was choking in relief as he buried his head into his father's chest.

Slim, bony fingers slipped down to grip the space between his neck and shoulder painfully. "Is that what happened, Jack?" the voice whispered, soft as cobwebs and dark as shadows.

And he wasn't ten years old, he wasn't really here on this hill, this man in front of him was not his father.

He jerked away from the foreign touch, this imposter's hold, and the image of Joseph Overland's face rippled, wavered, and guttered out, until Death's golden-eyes gaze was staring back at him, his lips stretched back into a needle-like, hooked grin.

"Such tragedy for one so young," Death said, clucking his tongue on the roof of his mouth pityingly. "Tell me, do you blame yourself?"

Jack lunged at him with a strangled screech, the painful wound time had attempted to heal ripped raw and open now.

He passed right through him, through black shadows of mist, and the scenery around him was dissolving like rain pouring down on a painting. He was falling through endless darkness and there was no up or down and Death's taunting voice echoed all around him.

"So many 'what if's' you must have, Jack. 'What if I had taken my staff with me that day'? 'What if we had stopped to take a proper drink in such hot weather'?" Long, slender arms spiraled out of the darkness to wrap themselves around him in a clamp-like grip. Cool lips pressed into the skin under Jack's jaw as Death spoke the cruel truth. "'What if I hadn't been such a needy, whiny, spoiled little boy who made my father carry so many burdens that his heart gave out before he could ever see his wife again or lay eyes on the new baby?'"

"S-stop," Jack stuttered shutting his eyes to halt the tears from leaking out.

"Tell me, Jack, do you think he cursed you in his final moments?" Death asked, dragging spindly fingers through the boy's hair in short, rough strokes. "Do you think he still roams the grounds of home unseen, un-heard, doomed forever to watch his family go on with their lives and yet never be a part of it? What would he say to you for being the cause of his demise if you could meet him now, I wonder?"

An eerie, unearthly moan reverberated in the empty void around them. Jack snapped his eyes open to see a form materialize out of the swirling mass shadows, the form of man looking as if he had crawled his way out of the dirt. Rotting flesh hung in tattered shreds off his decaying body. Two gaping black holes were where his eyes should have been gazed unseeingly straight at him. "Jaaa-aaa-aa," the figure tried to say his name but choked on the bile of worms and maggots that fell from his mouth.

"Stop it!" Jack exclaimed in utter horror, wriggling in vain to break free from Death's embrace. "Stop it!"

"Stop what, Jack?" Death murmured curving his mouth into a smile against the boy's throat. "Don't you want to say hello to your father? Or are you afraid of what he might have to say to you?"

"That's not my father!" Jack cried, clinging to the slim line of sanity he had left. "You just want me to believe it is! You're not—you're not…"

"Is that what happened, Jack?" the memory of Death's deception drifted back to him.

"You're not Death!" Jack shouted into the darkness with fierce conviction and the shadows abruptly withdrew a vast distance.

The arms holding him captive squeezed harder as a hand caught the boy's chin in a bruising grip and forced his head up to look backwards into narrowed, golden eyes.

"What makes you say that?" the man asked sharply.

"You would've been there," Jack said as the pieces slowly fell into place. "You would've known what had happened, if it had been you that came for him. So what… what are you?"

"Ah, not so stupid after all then."

He was released without warning with a smooth push away that sent him spinning into blackness where he floated in the void waiting for an answer.

"I am the shadows that stalk at night," the man said holding out his arms wide and the darkness rushed to him and draped itself around him like a blanket. "I am the noises under your bed and the monster that lurks outside your door. I am your worst memories relived and the thing that haunts your dreams. I am Pitch Black!"

And the darkness rose up and crashed over him like a tidal wave.

oOo

Someone was calling his name. Bright light was seeping into the darkness behind his eyelids. Jack cracked his eyes open enough for the blurry form of his mother to slide into focus.

"Wake up, Jack. You were having a nightmare," she whispered as she dabbed a damp cloth across his forehead.

Jack blinked unsure of where he was. "Where are the goats?" he asked feeling the blistering heat of the summer day burn steadily in his skin.

"Goats? Oh, Jack, honey, we sold the herd years ago," his mother sighed, a worry-line creasing the bridge of her nose.

Jack shook his head. "Was bringing back Prudence… and her kids," he tried to explain.

"You're confused, that's all," his mother said soothingly. "You have a fever."

"Fell through the ice…"

"That's right," what sounded like a quickly-stifled sob escaped his mother's lips.

He was making her upset and didn't know why. It took too much effort to think of a reason. Restless, Jack turned his head into his pillow and his cheek prickled uncomfortably. He lifted a hand to brush the sensation away and tiny, black grains of sand fell from between his fingertips and spilled onto the covers. His entire bed was coated with the course substance and he sat up and tried to sweep it off onto the floor because he couldn't go to sleep like this, but his mother caught his hands in her own.

"What are you doing, Jack?" she asked.

"There's sand in my bed," he mumbled. "Black sand, gotta get it off…"

"Jack, honey, there's nothing on your bed," his mother said, running a tender hand across the top of his head. "Here, lie back down."

He allowed her to push him back down gently and lay there stiffly amongst the sea of black sand only he could see. It was scratchy and the sensation irritated his skin, but he dared not mention it lest he cause her any more distress.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled because there was something he needed to apologize for, something buried under the layers of fog swamping his mind.

"Shhh, it's all right," his mother said softly. "You're simply tired, that's all. You'll be better when the fever breaks."

"No… left my staff… I'm sorry," Jack said closing his eyes.

It was raining in his room. Small droplets of water splashed onto his burning forehead and Jack wondered if to die twice by drowning was possible.

To Be Continued…

A/N: Pitch is a cruel bastard, isn't he? That's a rocky start on the road to friendship, isn't it? Jack's not going to forgive him for that for awhile. Alright, I realize Pitch probably hasn't learned to manipulate the dream sand into nightmares just yet in this time period. I'm taking artistic license with this. This story might be a little AU-ish.

I enjoyed exploring my headcanon for Jack's backstory. I got to wondering about his staff. He was carrying it around when he was human. It's not a regular walking staff that villagers might take for treks through the woods. It's very distinctly a shepherd's staff with a crooked end. I figured his family must have a herd of some kind. I chose goats instead of sheep because Burgess is settled over uneven terrain and would be more suitable grazing land for goats. Plus, sheep are more expensive to own and take care of. Goats can manage for themselves pretty well. I got the feeling Jack's father wasn't around anymore while watching the movie, so I let my muse fly free on this. It was heatstroke that brought on the heart attack if you must know. Sorry if I ruined anyone's lives or feelings as they read this chapter. Wait, no I'm not, hehe.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this! Please review and share your thoughts. I love hearing what you liked best and it's the only reward a fanfic author gets. Thank you!^^