Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians. Dreamworks and William Joyce does.
Ch. 9 Confrontation
Sunday dawned with the skies bright and clear allowing its namesake to shine down upon Burgess. The snow still kept its hold over the small village for though the sun's rays reached long, they lacked the warmth to wake the sleeping earth below. The Overland family had to trek across the frozen ground to get to church. The walk itself was fun with Jack and Emma pretending they were on some extraordinary adventure while their mother trailed behind them amused at their actions. Arriving at church was fine too—they called their hellos and how-do-you-dos and sat in their usual pew alongside the Williams family. The sermon itself, Jack was not ashamed to say, he quite blocked out.
It was a habit he had never quite broken since he was very little and first started attending church. He supposed Father Goodall was to blame for it. From the way his mother spoke of God's kindness and love, and the memories of his father reading from the Bible, Jack knew they were stories in there worth telling, worth knowing. Except every time Father Goodall took the pulpit and with jowls flapping wide, fire and brimstone were all he spewed out. It dampened one's spirit after hearing the same message so many times, and honestly, Jack usually spent the next hour or so inventing some fantasy inside his head to escape. If Joseph Overland were alive, there would have been questions later that evening in regards to the sermon to make sure his son had paid attention. But he wasn't alive and that was that.
The best part of church-going in Jack's opinion was the meeting and greeting afterwards where the townspeople found out what their friends and neighbors had been up to this past week. In short, church was the second most buzzing place in the village to hear the latest gossip besides the tavern.
Jack received many a heart hand shake and shoulder clap from the men-folk giving their glad tidings that he had recovered from his ailment. He also was showered with a great deal of hair-ruffling and cheek-pinching from the women he claimed it gladdened their hearts the Lord had granted him his health due to their prayers.
Finally wriggling free from their clutches, Jack made his way to the fence that ringed around the spans of the church and leaned against it.
"Whew!" he exhaled, wiping his brow. "See? I tried to warn you, not the best day. Hey," he said poking at the left side of his cloak. "You still alive?"
He felt a slight stirring in the hidden pocket he had sewn on the inside and then the tickle of little feet as they crawled over his chest. Moments later, the little tooth fairy poked her head out from under the collar of his cloak and chattered her response. It bordered on annoyed.
The morning after his mother had set the nightlight out, Jack had awoken in an aching, miserable cold heap on the floor. He had opened his eyes to the little tooth fairy scant inches away from his face staring cautiously at him. Not daring to even straighten up into a sitting position, Jack remained still and had slowly lifted one finger to touch the bright yellow plumage on its head. The instant his fingertip had made contact, a small explosion of frost flurries had scattered out, causing the tooth fairy to unleash a shrill and startled squeak and stab him in the finger with its tiny beak.
It had been the start of a beautiful friendship.
He didn't know what exactly the full job details were that the tooth fairies had back home, but he soon discovered the little fairy had a knack for picking out pleasing colors and patterns and often helped him with his sewing projects from Tailor Saunders whenever he was in his room alone. He had wanted to introduce her to Emma, but the tiny tooth fairy was extraordinarily shy and always hid if she saw anyone else but him. He thought perhaps she might at least enjoy watching a game of Knights and Horses and planned to take her with him next time. However, the last few days had been oddly warm, warm enough that the skies poured down freezing rain instead of snow and thus, everyone in Burgess had been cooped up inside their houses. Then finally, yesterday night, the weather returned to its usual climate of cold and snow, creating a fresh white blanket upon which today's clear skies dazzled over.
Baby Tooth, pent up with cabin fever, squeaked loudly until Jack had agreed to take her with him, even though he had to remain still for two hours in a rigid-back, wooden pew while she dozed inside his cape.
"How did you sleep through all that screaming anyway?" he wondered out loud. "You gotta teach me that trick, preferably with my eyes open so I don't get into trouble."
"I'm glad to see you're well and about, Jack."
Jack spun around, stuffing Baby Tooth back down into the secret pocket ignoring her indignant trill of protest.
It was Winnifred the miller's daughter, the auburn shade of her hair highlighted by the indigo-colored gown she wore that peaked out from beneath her grey, wool cloak. By her one raised eyebrow and skeptical expression, Jack was certain she had spoken with sarcasm as she had no doubt overheard him seemingly have a conversation with himself. Still, she made no further comment on the matter, getting straight to the point as she always did.
"I saw you. In the woods. Playing that horrid game again," she leveled cool gaze at him. "The ones our parents forbade."
Jack winced. The miller's family had been the one that raised the most ruckus over the children playing Knights and Horses, since it had been their son, Ezra, who had been the one left with the most grievous injury. However, you wouldn't know it if you had seen the boy a week later, shoulder relocated and climbing trees like nothing had happened.
Still, Jack hoped Winnifred hadn't told anyone of their secret pastime. She was a quiet, practical sort of girl and he wasn't sure what she had been doing so far out in the woods that she had discovered the Courtyard. Even Anthony Hawkins hadn't had the luck of finding it and he knew Jack's little band were hiding something.
"And how, pray tell, did you happen upon our secret kingdom, milady?" Jack smiled. "Did you lose your way?"
"I was looking for my brother. It was getting late and he had been gone for hours. With grandfather ailing now, Mother starts to fret over little things like that." There was a slight tremor in Winnifred's voice at the last part; the barest pinch of a worry-wrinkled between her brows.
Jack looked over to where the wagons were hitched. He saw her father, Asher, talking to Mr. Williams as he readied the horses, but neither the miller's wife Julia, nor the old miller James were there. For them to miss church that day, it must be serious.
"If he's ill, Doctor Brown—" Jack began.
"It's the weakening of the mind that comes with old age," Winnifred cut him off sharply. "There's no medicine for that."
He heard the dull anger buried deep in her words, saw the sadness reflected in the blue of her irises. Jack wanted to console her, because sorrow was an emotion no one should suffer alone, but as always, he was a bit inept in his manner of handling it.
"Sooo… you found us but you didn't say hello or ask to join in?" Jack said, changing the subject completing and berating himself for sounding like a fool who lacked empathy.
At the very least, it made Winnifred forget her family's troubles temporarily as she turned a wearied, scornful gaze his direction.
"I didn't find you. If you're talking about that small glen in the forest, I've known about it forever. Ezra and I used to play there when we were younger. I suppose it's his to share with his friends now. Although…" Winnifred pursed her lips as she pressed carefully. "Jack, don't you think you're a little old for such childish frivolities?"
Jack felt the words cut into him as cold and unforgiving as the winter wind. It wasn't the first time he had heard such words before. Even before Emma was born, his own father had been worried that his son hadn't gotten along with children his own age, how often he was alone. As he had grown older, the whisperings and rebukes had only grown stronger. Why did a boy of his age still play pretend and daydream? Why was he not more responsible on his goals, more focused on his future?
It was nothing that had not been said to him before, but never from Winnifred. They had never really been friends though they were the same age, but she had always been polite and listened to him even when he had been recounting some made-up story he half-believed himself. When had that changed?
"What are you saying?" Jack asked wondering why this time those same words hurt as they had not before.
Winnifred's expression softened as she heard his defensive tone. "What I mean is why are you dragging your feet in the present like it will last forever? Sometimes I feel even the younger ones will grow up and mature before you. I don't want you to be left behind."
Jack was uncertain if she was judging him or pitying him. Perhaps a mixture of both. He didn't have time to dwell on it. Ezra popped up between them suddenly, hands on his hips as he squinted crossly at Jack.
"Are you being sweet on my sister, Jack?" he demanded, sticking his tongue out, crossing his eyes and shuddering with enough conviction that he appeared to be having a violent convulsion.
Winnifred swiped him upside his head and his eyes crossed back to normal.
"Because if so, you're outta luck. She's got a beau down in Hawthorne. They write each other awful, sappy lovelorn letters with so much pining drivel, you could wring maple syrup out of them!" A truly devilish smirk played across the boy's lips as he pretended to swoon dramatically. " 'Forsooth the stars done shine down upon me this night with the same light captured in your eyes that I last looked upon thee!' "
Laughing as his sister made a grab for him, Ezra leaped over the other side of the fence and continued to recite line after shameless line. " 'Every day apart from thee, I wither like a flower without sun or air!' 'Nay until I see the familiar swirl of thine writ of hand once more, I shall not rest!' 'I fear that an agreement cannot be reached—such dark thoughts prey upon my mind and I clutch yon letter to my bosom and weep—!' "
At this point, Ezra doubled over choking on air not long after the word 'bosom' had flown out of his mouth, and even Jack couldn't stop the muffled laughter he tried hard to repress because he could tell by Winnifred's flushed face that she was quite embarrassed.
She took the mocking in stride very valiantly though. "I wouldn't expect either of you to understand," she said raising her chin up with dignity. "You're just a boy," she said to her brother before looking at Jack. "And you—you on the cusp of manhood, have the heart of a child. You're like those immortal gods in the legends Magister Phillips used to drone about. They dabble amongst us mere humans because they're bored and they're tired of things never changing. They'll never appreciate deeper, complex emotions past their own curiosity and amusement—and neither will you."
Winnifred gathered the folds of her dress up, the ends of her auburn hair whipping to one side as she turned on her heel and marched off.
"Don't pay her any mind, Jack!" Ezra said, bouncing on the fence's bottom railing with two feet. "You wouldn't want to be her beau anyway. She's all hard-work and bossy. We used to have fun playing together—she'd invent the best games, but then she got older and went all serious. She changed." The boy climbed up two more beams of the fence's railing so he could stand upright on the fencepost. Wobbling a little, he swung his arms out to balance himself. "But you won't ever change, will you, Jack? One day, I'll own the mill and we all can live there: me, you, Gideon and Emma, everyone!" Throwing his head back, he whooped excitedly to the sky, "We'll be the Knights of Burgess! And we'll build this town into a real kingdom!"
"Ezra! Ezra Bennett! Get down from there, boy! Let's not keep your mother waiting another minute!"
Ezra heaved a great sigh, shoulders slumping, before he jumped down and dashed through the snow to hop onto the back of his Bennett's wagon. Winnifred pulled him to sit up front between her and Asher. The boy's shock of ink-black hair contrasted greatly against his sister and father's auburn coloring. He called out his goodbyes, waving madly as he did so, lurching forward a little as the wagon rolled away.
Jack waved back, but the spell of happiness Ezra had cast was swiftly snuffed out as he turned and was greeted with the sight of Thomas Grymes conversing his with his mother.
They stood close together, lingering near the doorway of the church. Thomas Grymes had removed his felt hat and was twisting the brim between both his hands in an almost nervous fashion. Lydia nodded as he talked, tucking her hand that clutched a miniature version of the King James' Bible into the fur muff she wore on the other. They were too far away for their words to carry but the sound of his mother's soft laughter over whatever Grymes had said made something dark and angry knot tightly within Jack's chest.
"Quite a lovely picture, aren't they?"
Anthony Hawkins stood off to one side, that smug gap-toothed grin plastered on his freckled face as he leered at him. Jack resisted the urge to add more gaps to his smile. He turned away, intending to ignore him, but of course, Anthony had no intentions of letting him leave so easily.
"Forget your witching rod, Jack? Or did the devil come back to reclaim it?"
Jack spun back around, a hiss escaping his lips because how dare he start this again right here, right now. Had he not learned his lesson before? Jack did not care if it was one day in the stocks for fighting in the churchyard on the Lord's Day. He refused to be intimidated by the likes of a bully-ing ruffian as Anthony Hawkins.
Jack took a menacing step forward.
"I saw the ice."
Jack stopped in place, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. "What?"
Anthony's expression twisted into something hostile as he spoke, watching Jack's reaction carefully. "The ice that came out of your staff when you swung it around that night on the field."
For one heart-pounding moment, Jack thought he had somehow overseen the entire shadow-shard spectacle, but then Anthony continued.
"You were whipping it about and kicking up snow everywhere, I thought I was imagining it, but then you hit Nathaniel in the face with it and the ice and frost exploded from the curved end."
Jack recalled Anthony standing there in the aftermath of the brawl, hands in pockets, just staring at him oddly. How he had made the sign of the Holy Cross before he left. A cold dread pooled into his stomach. He had seen the unnaturalness…
"What do you want?" Jack asked thickly, feeling like his throat was closing. It was difficult to breathe all of a sudden. He tried to calm himself.
It was all right. All Anthony had was his testimony, same as before, even though it was true this time. Jack didn't have his staff so it couldn't be used as evidence against him if he was forced to demonstrate with it if the stakes grew high enough. Still, he had never wriggled out of one of Anthony Hawkins' frame-ups without blame not once in all his life. Anthony was clever as he was cruel. He enjoyed scheming and was patient enough to wait for the perfect opportunity to present itself before he called wolf on Jack. In most cases, Jack was almost always caught red-handed even if he was not at fault.
Anthony came closer, eyes narrowing full of meanness, and leaned in until his face was inches away, his breath hot against Jack's ear.
"I want you out of this village, you walking abomination of evil."
Footsteps crunched in the snow as several women-folk shuffled past, and Anthony swung a heavy arm around Jack's shoulders and let out a loud chuckle as if they were sharing some boyish joke.
Across the churchyard, Lydia spotted them and waved, a smile lighting upon her face as she took in the sight of what appeared to be two boys making up after a fight. She knew that her son and the Hawkins boy did not get along, but perhaps she had some false notion that they were trying to follow the Eighth Commandment and keep the Sabbath Day holy by not squabbling with each other.
Jack forced himself to wave back, aware that his hand was shaking and Anthony knew it. He felt the other boy lean his weight against his side and steer him around until he was facing the back of the church. A figure stood there in the shadows of the back entrance clothed in black and for a wild moment, Jack thought it was Pitch until he spotted the potbelly bulging against the garb and the white collar poking out the top.
Father Goodall.
His round, pink face scrunched up into a ball of wrinkles as he squinted across the glaring brightness of the snow towards them. His face was shining with the sweat he accumulated after one of his bellowing sermons, but he didn't wear his usual satisfied expression of someone who believed they had just saved multiple souls from hellfire by striking the fear of God in them. He dabbed at his balding forehead with a handkerchief in quick, anxious movements as he stared in their direction. White, bushy eyebrows furrowed low as a deep-set frown settled into place between the loose skin of his jowls.
"Revelation 20:10," Anthony murmured, sadistic glee oozing from his tongue, as he squeezed his arm tighter around his shoulders, hard enough to bruise. "You're going to burn, Jack."
Jack shoved him away and staggered backwards, breaths coming in short and shallow. His eyes darted between Anthony and Father Goodwill trying to make sense of what was what. Had Anthony told him what he had seen? Did Father Goodall believe him? Or was Anthony trying to goad him until his unnaturalness burst forth from pure defensive fear leaving no room for doubt in anyone's mind.
Father Goodall was one of only a few people who hadn't welcomed Jack back. It was strange for a man of God not to be proclaiming what a wondrous miracle this boy brought back from Death's doorstop was. Unless Father Goodall did not believe Jack was a miracle and more like a plague…
Anthony's gap-toothed smiled curved widely like he had already won.
Jack forced himself to turn and walk away. Walk slowly and calmly away like he had nothing to hide, nothing to lose, past his mother inquiring where he was going, outside the churchyard, down the snowy streets of the village and outside its boundaries; weaving through the forest off hidden rabbit-trails and through thickets and hollows, and beyond rocks and steep humps of the land as it slowly formed into the mountains that ringed around Burgess.
Then and only then, when he was sure that he was alone and no one was following him did Jack begin to run.
oOo
Panic overtook his mind and fear coursed through his legs. Jack ran blindly through the woods, crashing through the underbrush, swatting tree limbs out of his face, and tripping over tree roots. He paid little heed to the thorns and bramble that ripped at his clothes, hair and skin. He just ran—a wild, frantic instinct within him screaming for him to get as far away from the village, from Anthony Hawkins' sinister lies and Father Goodall's distrusting, baleful eyes.
He ran until his felt like his legs were on fire, his chest ached from breathing so hard; he ran until he burst into a the open of a small clearing, and then vision blurring, let himself fall fast upon a boulder intending to lay there until both his surroundings and mind had stopped spinning.
A soft, hesitant chirrup came from his cloak and then Jack felt the press of tiny hands against his cheek as the little fairy patted him consolingly.
"I'm alright," he mumbled still not moving. "Gimme… minute…"
He clutched the smooth surface of the rock beneath him, sighing in relief as he felt the coldness seep back into his body. It was winter… why was it so hot? He could make frost now, couldn't he? Wasn't that the reason he had been running? Yet here he lay, sprawled on this slab of rock and the parts of it that his skin was touching had not iced over at all. That was a good thing, right? Then why did he feel like he was burning up inside, like he might melt into a puddle of slush if he lay still long enough?
Baby Tooth trilled worriedly as she tugged at a strand of his hair, urging him to get up.
Jack panted, fighting the pull of sleep on the edges of his mind. He felt as empty and weightless as a wisp of water vapor, like he might disappear entirely if he allowed his consciousness to drift away. Maybe though… if he shut his eyes for a few seconds…
"Taking a nap when you should be out fulfilling your end of the bargain? You are still quite the child, Jack."
The devil himself would appear.
Jack groaned, scrunching his eyes tightly. "Go 'way. Don't wanna talk… not today."
"And here I thought you would be so pleased to have your staff back."
Jack cracked open one eye and peered beadily up at the dark figure who loomed before him, a familiar wooden staff with a curved end held by grey, spindly fingers. He made a half-heartedly grab for it and Pitch dragged it back just out of reach—of course he did—with an amused chortle deep in his throat. Jack tumbled off the boulder and onto the deliciously cold ground below. A contented sigh breezed past his lips as he burrowed further into the snow, feeling the chilly sting of it drive away some the maddening hotness that was making him dizzy.
"Having some problems with the new powers, are we?" Pitch tsk-ed above his head. "Let me guess: have you been shoving them back down hoping they would go away on their own?" There came a light rap of the staff against his head in reprimand. "How typical."
Jack lifted his head from the snow to glare at the spirit. "And where have you been?" he demanded. "Thought you were planning to hound me 'bout making more of those stupid shards, me joining you to create your shadow empire, blah, blah, blah…"
Pitch flashed his needle-pointed teeth into a wide grin. "Did you miss me, Jack?"
Jack flung a handful of snow up at him in response. Pitch disappeared in a swirling column of shadows and reappeared off to his right cackling as he did so.
"What do you want?" Jack asked, rubbing his eyes tiredly. There was no way Pitch was just going to hand over his staff without wanting something in return, and Jack wasn't going to let him take the little tooth fairy back. Speaking of which…
Baby Tooth popped out from under his cape where she had hidden as soon as Pitch had made his entrance, her momentary fear washed away by the outrage she felt at the Boogie Man upsetting the boy who had been so kind to her the past few days. She strode angrily over the top of the snow, her body light enough not to sink through, and shook her tiny fist up at the spirit, a tirade of ear-splitting chitters and shrieks falling from her beak.
Pitch bit the corner of his mouth and stared down at her like he was half-considering to stomp her beneath his foot. "Give back both the staff and tooth, is it? That's a bold request from a punitive fuzz-ball that has nothing to barter. At least the boy is interesting enough, if he ever stops wallowing in his foolish denial that things will revert to normalcy." Gold eyes shifted to where Jack lay half-buried in the snow, the boy's face folded in a kind of petulant pout. Pitch bent over slightly to croon softly above his head. "You have so much potential, Jack. Don't allow fear to squander your gifts."
Jack rolled over onto his side and laughed loudly at the hypocrisy of it all: the Nightmare King advising him not to fall prey to fear. That's right, Pitch had nothing to gain if Jack refused to hone his new skills. Pitch only had returned because he wanted something from him. Everyone wanted something from him. Tailor Saunders wanted him to be a better apprentice so he could take over his job when he passed. Thomas Grymes was only good to him to win the favor of his mother. Father Goodall wanted to save his soul from damnation because he was a reckless, wild, wicked boy, and Anthony Hawkins wanted him to burn.
Just like that, the maddening heat was back, wrapping him up in a suffocating cocoon so thick he could barely breathe. Jack felt the back of his neck dampen with the snow that had melted and a shiver trailed down his spine. It wasn't a cold chill though, more like the ones he remembered from his fever-haze after he had fallen through the ice: bone-achy and coursing through his entire body in waves after waves of sweltering heat so intense he saw spots behind his eyes.
"Stop fighting yourself, Jack, you're only making it worse," Pitch's voice drummed through his head, past the walls of nauseating heat. He felt the smooth touch of fingers trace across his forehead and leaned into their coolness with a small moan. He heard a dark chuckle, but was too exhausted to feel any shame over how weak he must look.
A piercing, enraged squeak sounded near his ear then the fingers on his forehead jerked away violently as Pitch unleashed a warning growl. Baby Tooth had spiked the spirit's wrath once again. Jack squinted through the waves of scorching heat and saw Pitch, his face hardened and eyes sharp gold flints, swing down his own staff at the little tooth fairy. She couldn't fly away, not with that bent wing. An image of her tiny, broken body crumpled at the base of a tree burst into Jack's mind.
Strength he didn't know he possessed drove him into action. With one hand, he reached out, cupping his palm over Baby Tooth and pulling her back to the safety of his chest. Then with the other, he caught the crooked end of his staff as it came down, held on tightly and did not let go even as he was dragged upright out of the snow as Pitch tried to wrestle it from his grip.
"Give it back, it's mine," Jack snarled, staggering until he found his footing.
Pitch's eyes glittered dangerously as his lips stretched into a feral smirk. "Then take it from me, boy."
A memory of the spirit vanishing within the shadows caused Jack to act on pure instinct. He clenched down on the wood, took a deep breath, and pushed. All his bottled up emotions came surging out, fierce and hungry, zig-zagging like white-blue streaks of lightning, following Pitch even as he receded back into the darkness. A livid shout came from the spirit as he stumbled back out of the shadows, shaking his head as if to clear his scrambled mind. He still clutched the end of Jack's staff in his hand.
The staff which was the last present his father had made for him.
Remember your Knowing, someone seemed to whisper right into his ear.
The air around Jack swirled frigid and unforgiving, like the wind in a snowstorm. Frost licked a path upon his skin, coated thick and heavy over his tongue. Silvery-white threads of light flickered in the spaces between his fingertips, even as the heads of small, jagged ice crystals formed along the length of the staff where he held it. The wood crackled with energy, pulsating under his fingers as if it had a heartbeat of its own and glowing a brilliant blue, threatening to dispel in a spectacular display of ice and light.
Abruptly, Pitch let go, tucking his hands behind his back as he gazed at the boy with an almost proud expression. "Feeling better, are we?"
Jack blinked and the power thrumming beneath his fingertips faded away just as the frost and blue light did. He flexed the muscles in his arms and legs to test them. The sickly heat had gone from his limbs; had relinquished its burning claws from his mind. The coldness remained, a familiar and soothing relief now, he discovered with wonder.
Jack stared at Pitch in disbelief and proffered out his staff. "Did you take this from me to teach me a lesson?" he asked because there was no way Pitch had just decided to help him. Sure, the spirit wanted his assistance, but he enjoyed seeing him suffer, that much Jack knew.
"I took it to examine it. It's not every day one encounters a staff capable of such power." There was an odd note in Pitch's tone, an unreadable mask that had dropped over his face.
Jack squashed down any concerns he might have. His father would not have given him anything unsafe. If his staff had powers now, then it was the Man in the Moon who had granted them. "Oh, aye, and what did you find?"
Pitch shrugged carelessly. "That it is a perfectly, ordinary shepherd's staff carved by human hands."
Jack stuck his chin out as he smiled. "The best hands. What did you think it was hiding," he scoffed. "Gold?"
"Mmmm," Pitch hummed, eyelids hooded, his irises nothing but gold slits. "Perhaps… a diamond?"
If there was any malice in Pitch's voice, Jack chose to ignore it. He was quite done being tormented for the day by humans and spirits both.
"You know," he said pretending to think for a moment. "If I decide to help you build this shadow fortress of solitude where you can brood to your dark heart's content of how to take over the world or whatever, I'll need to learn how to properly use my powers so they won't just be exploding whenever you feel like goading me into it."
"Sarcasm suits you well," Pitch said. "Any particular reason why you've had this sudden change of heart, Jack?"
"Well, I thought you could also help me find this center thing I'm supposed to have that the Moon chose me for," Jack said, swinging his staff idly around in one hand.
"No, that's not why," Pitch drawled lazily. "Because you still don't believe all that, not fully." He took a step forward and there was a puff of black smoke and then the spirit was standing uncomfortably close to Jack, peering deep into his eyes and seeing right through him as he always did.
"You want to know how to summon the ice and cold for your own defense against the villagers you first made a pact with me to protect," Pitch chuckled low and spitefully, nostrils flaring wide in excitement as the most tantalizing scent on earth filled them. "They've never understood you and you fear what they'll do to you if they discover what you can do now, what you've become. He continued on, watching the boy begin to tremble in place before him, brown eyes widening in despair as the words ringing with truth dripped like poison into his heart, into the very essence of his soul. "Not only that, you fear of being cast out, forgotten, abandoned, left all alone in this cruel world." He reached out and gripped the boy firmly by the shoulders. "Well, you have nothing to fear there, Jack. You'll never be alone, not so long as you have me, as long we have each other."
Jack's mind had gone slack with terror somewhere as Pitch had thrust the ugly facts of reality into his face. Even now, as he felt a slim hand curl supportively behind his head and pull him close to his chest in a gentle mockery of an embrace, Jack wanted to push him away, tell him that all of what said was a lie, except that it wasn't and, and... Pitch had a heartbeat.
It was sounding in his ears in a solid rhythm like the beat of a drum, steady and strong.
How could a spirit have a heartbeat? If Pitch was cut, did he bleed red or spill inky-black shadows?
The world did not make sense anymore.
Pitch had a heartbeat.
Like him, like his staff, like his…
Jack choked on a sob.
Spindly fingers ran through tufts of his frozen hair, brushing away the snow that clung stubbornly to it. Numbly, Jack stared down at the spiraling tendrils of darkness ringed around their feet and recalled the locket with the picture of the young girl, wondering how long Pitch had been alone before he had encountered him.
To Be Continued…
A/N: Wow, that went a lot more angsty at the end there then I intended. I wanted Pitch to start mentoring Jack in this chapter, teaching him how to use his powers, but nooo, Pitch had to be a jerk as usual first. Not much else to say, lol, yes, I did put Jamie's ancestor in this fic, haha! I couldn't resist mate. I've got Ezra's backstory all worked out. I'm gonna try and weave it into the background whenever I can as the chapters progress.
Revelation 20:10 "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever."
Anthony is a lot more mean-spirited than I originally planned, but hey, muse does what it wants. Fear drives people into a frenzy, causes them to say stupid, hurtful things and not think things through. You must remember though, witch burnings did happen around this era only a few years earlier. The Puritans truly did believe magic was evil; actually anything strange, that could not be explained by normal causes was unnatural and of the devil. I mean, ya'll there's a reason us Americans all got onto boats and sailed away from England. The religious beliefs were that Intense.
Finally, to the folks that have read the books are wondering about That Thing. Pitch suspects. He's not sure and Jack is confusing him. To the rest of you, don't worry, you can still read and enjoy this fic without book verse knowledge. This is mostly based on the movie.
Expect the next chapter sometime next month. Sorry, my schedule is jammed. If you want to leave a review and can't think of what to say, I love hearing what your favorite parts were so far and will be happy to answer any questions you have as long as its not spoiler-ish to the plot. Until next time!