A/N: So this is going to be something a little different for me... This fic is definitely developing some mystery elements, but because mystery is not my strong suite, well, we'll see how it goes. Regardless, I had a blast writing this chapter.

Crossover Junkie: I'm so glad you're enjoying yourself, and thank you, I'm thrilled that you think so. I think you might be right with regards to Val and Pitch ;) and I'm aiming for relations with the Guardians to be very much like that. Pitch would never endure something he found completely pointless.

Now Edited:1/6/17

"So you and Pitch, huh?"

Jack was walking Valentina to her room — one that would be hers while she stayed at the North Pole. With Tooth, Sandy and Bunny having departed shortly after Pitch, Christmas was officially over, and so was the potential threat of a rogue fear spirit. In light of this, North took it upon himself to retire to his private workshop, keen to put his feet up and feast on whatever fruitcake he had leftover. He'd been considerably drained after the difficult stint and just as irate; He needed the day off. This left Jack at a loose end with only Valentina for company, and while she certainly wasn't his first choice on a list of potential partners in mischievous crime, she was still better than nothing. He was balancing on the mezzanine barricade, walking it like a tightrope as he gave her the official tour while she trailed closely behind.

"What about me and Pitch?" She skirted around the question, acting oblivious to what the winter sprite was implying.

Jack rolled his eyes and spun with one bare foot on the wooden beam to face her. "What are you guys?"

Making a show of looking down at her own appearance, she answered, "Is that a trick question?" and shot a small smirk up at him, having evaded interrogation once again.

"Quit playing, Val. You know what I mean."

"I don't know," she shrugged, "what do you want me to say? We're something, I guess. I mean, we're not nothing. Although the world seems to make a pass time out of trying to convince me otherwise."

"So you have a deal," he pondered aloud as he resumed walking, "which means you're on his side even though you're a Guardian?"

"Jack, if you're worrying about where my loyalties lie; Don't. I'm honouring my promise to Pitch. That's it. I'm not sabotaging anyone, I'm trying to stay as neutral as possible. He's expressed no interest in spiting any of you, and I admit he can be shifty, but to me he's completely transparent. As far as he's concerned the less he has to with us as Guardians, the better."

He tilted his head, not sure whether to buy her claim. "Thing is, you're not neutral." He ducked briefly as a miniature hot air balloon floated by, beautifully crafted, as though dreamed rather than created. "Even you can see you're biased, surely?"

There was really no point in trying to dodge his queries now. There was a powerful chemistry between her and this creature of darkness, and now it was out in the open whether she wanted to admit it or not. She blew a stray hair out of her face in defeat. "Perhaps. I'm very..." Her brow furrowed as she selected her words carefully "…Fond. Of him.

"That is something, I guess."

She emitted a small laugh. "You know it's strange, there have been times where I feel he knows me better than I know myself."

"Yep, he has a habit of doing that," Jack agreed sourly, whipping his staff around so that it ended up resting across both his shoulders.

"I don't mean my fears," she corrected him, "I can't quite explain it, there's a weird familiarity there."

"So we saw," Jack reminded her. "Very familiar indeed."

She cringed from the embarrassment of having been caught in a rather inopportune moment. "Not that you were supposed to see that," she groused, "I mean I just know him, and I think he knows me. At least that's how it feels. Does that seem crazy?"

"Yes," he answered curtly. Although he'd been the one to bring it up, he was starting to regret having to hear about her enamoured thoughts pertaining to the fear spirit.

Valentina exhaled with a puff of her cheeks. Jack was obviously determined to hold his grudge and she could see it would cause her no end of strife going forward if it wasn't resolved. Only, this rift ran incredibly deep, and she wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to perform a quick fix and help smooth things over. Not easily, anyway. But she would be damned if she didn't at least try.

"Before, you said he tried to do something," she probed without a trace of inhibition. "Since I've missed so much, I was wondering if you could you tell me what happened?"

The frost sprite came to a halt and gave strange mix between a grunt and a laugh. "You really wanna know," he asked turning to face her. When she nodded earnestly he sucked air though clenched teeth. "Alright, but when you're disappointed that he's not the great guy you thought he was, don't say I didn't warn you."

"I'm sure I've heard a whole lot worse in the last twenty-four hours alone. I think I can handle it."

He shot her an uncertain look, but then shrugged, deciding to just let her have it.

"Pitch is manipulative. That's the long and the short of it. He has the power to use your fear against you and play you right into his hands. When I got chosen, the only things I knew about myself were my name, that there was no way I could actually be a Guardian. As far as Pitch was concerned I was nothing compared to the four of them, and for a while that kept me off his radar. But then I started showing potential with my powers. So he lured me down to his lair with my lost memories, and that's when he started getting in my head. He told me everything I'd ever tried to squash down inside of myself. It was like listening to a record of all my worst thoughts played back to me.

"Then he gave me the memories, but it was only to make look like I'd gone out of my way to ruin Easter and seem like I was conspiring with him. That was his plan you see; Divide and conquer. He placed doubt in their minds and mine, so I ran away to Antarctica and he found me there." Jack laughed humourlessly, "I gotta hand it to him, he's persistent.

"Anyway, then he tried to appeal. Said he knew what it was like to be alone and unseen. That I could never truly be a Guardian cause they didn't understand like he did. He said that together we'd be unstoppable because people would have to believe in us. But he wanted a world of cold and dark and I was just going to be a pawn in his strategy. So I refused, and in return he threw me down a ditch and snapped this old thing…" he held out the staff "…making sure I wouldn't be able to escape. At least he gave it a good try. He thought that being feared was the same as being believed and that's just not true. I always wanted for someone to see me, but never because they were afraid of me."

Nothing could take away from the disappointment she felt in Pitch after hearing Jack's story, but for a moment Valentina was struck by just how similar she and the frosty haired boy were. It appeared existing unheard and invisible was far more common than she'd realised.

"Jack, I'm sorry for what you've had to go though. That's been my life too, no one has ever seen me either," she told him with a small smile of solidarity. "I won't try and justify what Pitch did because it was wrong. Without a doubt. He should never have done any of that."

"You don't seem that shocked though," he noticed and regarded her with a suspicious glance.

"I am… and I'm not," she confirmed sadly. "I regret that he'd even think of doing those things to you, but I also realise that he acted out of desperation."

"Oh yeah? For what, world domination?" he snorted.

"A means to an end."

His brow furrowed quizzically, and his hands slid down the length of his staff as he came to a crouch in lowering himself to her eye level.

"He's lonely, Jack," she elaborated. "He has been for a long time and he doesn't want to stay that way forever."

His expression did not shift. "For Pitch to be lonely, he'd have to have a heart first."

"But he does! Look, I'm not that naive," she replied to his dubious glance, "he tried to manipulate me too, but I suppose I was able to forgive him because I was privy to certain information you're not. That being, I know what Pitch really wanted was an end to his loneliness by any means necessary."

"How could you possibly know that, Val?"

"Because that's what I do: I know the greatest desires of anything with a heartbeat. But obviously they have to have a heart to begin with." She let out a sigh. "As deranged as his methods were to convince you, I don't think he saw you as just a piece to his plan. Maybe he let himself hope that, unlike the others, you would understand him. It might have been for the wrong reasons, but I think he could have seen something of himself in you."

"That's what I'm afraid of," he muttered.

Valentina lowered her gaze. Perhaps that was the wrong thing to say. After all, it was hardly complimentary to be likened to someone with such a horrible reputation. She stifled a groan. Foot in my mouth again... "Jack, I'm not saying you're like him at all. I just mean your situation was fairly similar. I'm sure you could never do the things he's done, especially when some of his actions were so awful. I'll be honest with you, at first I thought he deserved to be brought down, and I stayed because it was my every intention to help do so. But after a while I got to understand who and what he was. He saw it as me giving him a chance to be someone else, and when he did he started to act differently. He let his guard down, and only then did actually see what was in his heart. It was nothing like what I thought it would be."

Jack's sympathy, however, was naught and his expression hardened along with his resolve to maintain his grievance. "Val, I know people can change, but Pitch? He's got you fooled big time. He's just…"

"-As lost as any of us would be if our only companions were nightmares." She rebutted firmly. "Sure, he hasn't changed drastically, but I think he's improved. At the very least he's capable of acting for the greater good. He was the one who made sure that kid walked away with a scratch rather than an impalement. It was his choice. I certainly didn't tell him to do it. And imagine where I'd be right now if he hadn't."

They both suppressed a shudder at the thought.

"You do have a point," he admitted.

"Jack, I see it time and time again. Sometimes we find ourselves trapped in a way of thinking with no way out until someone comes along to show us an escape from a new perspective. That's just one of the ways love - in any form - will change you." It was in saying this that she realised just how true these words were for her as well. If he had needed her to show him that cruel and treacherous was not the only way to be, then she had needed him to help tame the fears in her mind. Of course they each still had a long way to go, but maybe her being dragged down into the shadow realm had been a blessing in disguise for them both after all.

Jack nodded. "Well, in that case he's lucky you found him. It's probably not a lot of fun having to be a jerk all the time."

"I think we're both lucky. I'd be a nervous wreck without what he's taught me," she laughed. "I still am, but I'm getting better."

He frowned, betraying his misgivings and asked, "is he really helping you?"

"To control my own fear, yes. Just mine, no one else's," she reassured him, "He never intended for me to use the sand and I won't be trying to manipulate nightmares again, trust me."

Jack didn't know what to say to that. Of the things the Nightmare King could be, he was trying to be helpful? Strange didn't even begin to describe the idea. "So what are you saying should I do then, just forgive him straight up? 'Cause I don't think I can do that. Not right now."

"That's up to you. No one has the right to your forgiveness and they don't get to decide whether or not they've hurt you. Honestly, I wouldn't blame you if you didn't," she told him, and it was true. In all the conflicts she'd ever guided unwitting people through, when all the facts were laid out before them it always remained their choice to forgive. "But whatever you decide, sometimes it's worth giving people a second chance to make things right. You never know, they might surprise you."

"Funny... I said the same thing about you to the others."

She shot him a wry grin. "Before I blew everything to pieces, right?"

He returned it. "Just moments before."

She chuckled ruefully with a grimace. "Well, I really hope you'll give me another chance fix things. Being able to say 'I single-handedly ruined Christmas' is not something that sits well on your conscience."

He merely shrugged. "It'd be kinda rich if I didn't. You're talking to the guy that's managed to ruin Easter — Twice. Guess Manny's set the bar pretty low this time around." They shared a half-hearted laugh which quickly faded into silence. Jack appeared to be lost in thought.

"Something on your mind," she asked.

"Yeah. Just something that Pitch said." His eyebrows drew together in a frown. "When he found me, he said… He said he knew what it was like to long for a family. I thought maybe he was just saying stuff cause he thought it was what I'd want to hear but… Do you think he really meant it?"

Valentina's lips pressed together in crooked line and she breathed a small sigh. The one time the Nightmare King had managed to tell the truth and allowed himself to be vulnerable, and all Jack had heard was a lie.

"If what I saw in his heart was true, then yes," she said gently, "I think he would have."

In hearing her opinion, Jack eyes were downcast and he actually appeared rather contrite. But it wasn't as though he could be blamed. Really, it was Pitch's own fault for going about things in a manner so flawed. Shaking her head, Valentina dismissed her disappointment in the sorry state of affairs. "Don't worry about it too much, Jack. I'm not surprised you didn't realise."

He gave a non-committal grunt, still seeming troubled. She offered him a consolatory smile and in an effort to change the subject, wondered aloud, "isn't there a room you're supposed to be showing me?"

His expression immediately lifted. "Oh right, this way," he remembered, and leapt from the barricade to the floor. Valentina rolled her eyes, realising she'd have to walk with steady clip just to keep up with the reenergised winter sprite, who was traversing in leaps and bounds ahead of her. He lead them down a long corridor that was situated off the third level, lushly carpeted and warmly lit. They passed several closed doors before he stopped in front of one half way down.

"This is yours," he announced pushing it open. What she saw behind it hardly disappointed. A floor to ceiling window overlooking the majestic mountain ranges took residence on the outer wall opposite the door. A plush red sofa was placed adjacent to it, seated in front of an open fireplace to the right. Just left of the window there was an otherworldly brass horn attached to what could only be described as a music box. And on the left wall there was both a desk space and a small, personal library. The room was softly lit by lamps that dotted the walls at evenly spaced intervals. It was cosy, warm, perfect, and felt like home as she turned about the room.

"North is not playing around here," Valentina admitted, thrilled by how hospitable the Russian was being.

"Right? Hey, check this out," he bounded lightly over to the odd megaphone type instrument and pressed a button. As soon as he did, beautiful music filled the room, which she soon recognised as the pas de deux from The Nutcracker

"I love Tchaikovsky, how did you know?" she gasped.

"I didn't, the music box did. North made them so they play whatever it is you most need or want to hear. It's pretty neat 'cause sometimes you don't know what you want to listen to."

"North made this?"

"Oh yeah. He was like this inventor and a sorcerer's apprentice at some point. He's not just an old guy with a model train set, he knows some serious magic. So he says anyway."

"That's amazing," she exclaimed. "What does yours play?"

Jack scrubbed a hand over his face as he thought. "Punk rock," he determined, "mostly."

"Interesting," she laughed, but really she found it made a whole lot of sense with his rebellious nature. "Is your one like this?" She was speaking now in reference to the room as a whole.

"More or less. Although I don't usually have the fire going, you don't need one when you're this cool." He indicated with a thumb to himself and winked.

Valentina's expression flattened yet again as the overwhelming urge to slap his arm passed, much in the same way it does whenever one finds themselves subject to a terrible pun.

"Aaand I'll show myself out." He retreated with a smug series of finger guns and reached for the door.

"Actually," she stopped him, "I was wondering if you wanted to help me? Only if you've got nothing to do, that is." She was starting to find that she actually liked Jack's company and was eager to keep talking to him. It would take a long time before he'd feel at ease around her, but if she could show him that she wanted to be his friend rather than an enemy not to be trusted, perhaps it would settle his apprehension.

"With what?"

"Potions. I have the ingredients but I'm going to need a lot of utensils," she explained, realising that working without the proper gear might be more challenging than she'd first thought. Hopefully there would be something useful among all the toys and gadgets that scattered the place. "Know where I might be able to find some?"

After a moment of thought he smiled. "I think I might."

He led the way once again, down to the workshop that was unusually deserted - the yetis and elves were taking a day of rest much like their boss - so they were free to poke around uninterrupted. Locating a store cupboard to their right, behind a plain wooden door, they stepped inside to find more tools, materials and even ingredients than anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. Suffice to say it was far bigger inside than its true dimensions allowed.

"Oh!" Valentina wasn't sure where to look first. It seemed like everything one could ever need would be located right here. "You found something alright," she commended him, "look at it all!"

"Now you know how North gets all his presents," he revealed with a twinkle of the mysterious in his eye. "The yetis build everything from scratch and from what I can tell, whatever's in here never runs out. Either that or Phil's way too on top of supply and demand and needs to get a hobby."

She picked up a chunky-looking glass jar and estimated the volume. "Do you think he'd mind if I just helped myself?"

"Couldn't hurt," he shrugged, "He said he'd help and this has gotta count. Plus, you don't want to bother him the day after Christmas," he cautioned, sounding as though he spoke from harsh experience.

"That I don't," she agreed, gulping at the thought of facing him after she'd been his biggest headache of all.

They spent the rest of the afternoon hauling bottles, bowls, obscure substances and strange apparatuses that Jack had never cared to learn the names of up to Valentina's room, chattering amicably the entire way with barely a lull in conversation. When they were finished setting up, the process of making Valentina's signature love potion began. Jack turned out to be far more a hinderance than a help, asking questions incessantly, accidentally knocking things or freezing them in fervent curiosity. Still, she didn't mind. For a friend to laugh and joke with, who simply wanted her there, was worth more to her that day than all the L'amour she could ever make. Eventually though, Jack could see that she would get things done faster without him in the way, and left to find other means to occupy his time while she went on with her work. And work she did, stirring, measuring and brewing, for hours on end, humming along to whatever the music box decided, well into the night until she collapsed on the sofa in a heap and drifted off to sleep.

Deep within the confines of his lair, Pitch released an anguished cry that was magnified as it resounded off stone pillars, ruined marble and crumbling granite. He grabbed at handfuls of his wiry dark hair in shaking fists and buckled as the wave of agony rolled over him again and again.

The Guardians hadn't been the only reason for his departure from the North Pole. He'd needed to get away from her. Too much had happened, and far too quickly. It was the kiss that nearly pushed him right over the edge. What began as a sweet intoxication when her lips met his soon festered into a poison that pierced his cold, black heart like a dagger. The searing pain grew more and more with each passing hour until he was sure he would cry out in torment, and it was made only worse with every soft word and kind gesture he attempted.

He'd managed to maintain a composed facade in front of Valentina for as long as he had to. As such, he was confident she suspected nothing of the turmoil that not only stirred restlessly in his chest, but threatened to break him, to snap him like a brittle twig. She couldn't know what had become of him. It was his pride on the line now and he refused to let himself be known as the spirit who's demise started with a simple kiss.

He felt as though he might be torn in two, like he was being pulled in different directions, ripped apart or severed. The pain seemed to shift and change. One minute razor sharp, the next deep and throbbing. How long had it been — Hours? Days? Years? He wanted it over, why wouldn't it be over!? He screamed again and dropped to his knees, reaching blindly for something, anything to grab onto. It was his own fault, he'd been the fool to admit all those things. Care, affection, what were they if all they did was torture?

There was something that beat from within his chest. It threw itself against his ribcage trying to escape, or propel him into wickedness, or both. Whatever it was revolted against that most wonderful of feelings he'd ever had the pleasure of knowing. He didn't have to behold it to know this thing that had lain dormant for centuries, only to now rear it's ugly head, was comprised of the purest evil. It grappled with his mind and heart, and pulled him back down into the tar pit of woe he'd known for an eternity. It reminded him that no good deed went unpunished, that no matter how hard he might try he would still be this creature: A slave to the dark but a master of the shadows. And who was he to think things would be different? He was not good. He was not nice. He was the Boogeyman and Moon above help anyone who could possibly think otherwise.

But there was one.

All the while she never left his mind, as if, despite the pain it caused, he couldn't bear to be without seeing that face. The face of the temptress, the fiend who so cruelly reminded him what it felt to be alive. It was fleeing as it flashed behind closed eyelids, for he knew all too well that there was a chance he might lose her for good. But as her kind eyes formed and reformed again and again, he thought he felt the pain ebb just a little.

"I believe in you…"

Her voice was a caressing whisper, a hallucination he knew. But it sounded so real in his desperation for a saving grace. In his mind he latched onto her apparition, begging to be pulled from the vortex of vile repulsiveness he was so very close to being dragged back into. One he had been so close to escaping.

"Please…Valentina… please," he moaned deliriously.

For moment everything stopped. The confusion, the spinning, the hurt. Silence rang in his ears and in an instant the agony returned with a vengeance. His world was consumed by an explosion of white hot pain.

His first thought was of death.

He had to be dead. It was the only explanation he could think of for the stark nothingness that stretched out limitlessly in all directions. This was the last stop, the purgatory before the Void. Unless… Unless it was a dream? He couldn't be sure, he wasn't usually one to visit the realm of sleep. In fact, he avoided it at all costs. But surely dreams didn't feel or look like this. If so, Sanderson was definitely loosing his touch.

Of one thing, Pitch could be absolutely certain: If this was a nightmare, it was no nightmare of his making.

Growing impatient, he decided to walk, hypothesising that perhaps if he tried that something might happen. His footsteps, though they echoed hollowly in the empty space, took him in a direction that was neither forwards nor backwards and frustratingly, nothing changed. So he stayed put. He seemed to be in wait, but of what he had not a clue.

A figure then appeared only some distance away. It was unclear, barely even a silhouette and blurred as though it stood in front of a blinding light. All he could say with any conviction was that it favoured the human form. He tried to approach, but found he moved no closer and no farther.

"Who are you?" he called to it. That's when the dreamscape began to change. A scene materialised, falling into place around him and he could only just make out the figure that remained as it did.

Wherever he was supposed to be, he was certain it couldn't be Earth. Everything was wrong. This was otherworldly on an astronomical level. It was celestial, etherial, and boasted some sort of regality. All around him the black night sky could hardly be classified as black at all; It was abundant with galaxies of stars. More than could ever be seen by the naked eye on the little blue planet. No, this was somewhere else entirely. He stood on the dusty ground that seemed almost luminous as it caught the light of those many nebulae and found he was situated near a high wall. It was a building — strike that, a mansion of epic proportions, built into the rock face so that it appeared to rise out of the ground completely organically.

His gaze wandered skyward as he walked towards the base of it, but was drawn back down again when he crunched something underfoot. He was perplexed to find shards of broken glass littered the ground. As he followed the density of their scatter, he saw a shapeless form shrouded in cloaking lay crumpled and hauntingly still at the centre of their spread. He approached it cautiously. Something about it filled him with utter dread and his stomach churned at the thought of what he might find.

Upon reaching it, he peered at the thing and determined that it was almost definitely human. Only, the hood was drawn over their face, preventing him from identifying just who this pitiful creature actually was. He was arrested by a need to know, yet still he held a reservation over disrespecting the dead. He was despicable, yes, but he abided by a code. He should leave it be. But who was it? If he left it alone he'd never know.

In that moment he was hit with a premonition: The mystery would torment him for centuries to come.

There was a reason he was seeing this dream, there had to be. And that was all it was, he reminded himself. He was not bound to the morality of the wakened in this place. Whoever they were would cease to exist when he woke — If he woke. Whether this be a dream or a nightmare, it was still adherent of the same laws. Thus, he shook off the absurd notion that he would be committing some grievous sin by sating his curiosity. Reaching a cautious, ashen hand for the cowl of the hood, he revealed the corpse beneath.

His heart immediately protested. It was a woman. Her eyes were still open, and although it unsettled him greatly, it allowed him to see that they had once been a deep green. She was fair, luminous even, her skin contrasting starkly against her ebony hair.

Thoughts raced in his mind as he tried to comprehend what could have happened that caused an end to her life, each as uncertain as the next. But he did know one thing. He felt that he knew her. He didn't know where from, he didn't know why, and he was overcome with an inexplicable grief that shook him to his very core, mourning someone who by all accounts was a perfect stranger. As he continued to examine the crime scene with a critical eye, he noticed that she was not all the cloak had been hiding. She was curled around a second lump, protecting it even in death and he ripped the concealment away when he thought that something might have been alive.

A doll. It was just a child's play-thing… That would have made an excellent decoy.

He had to deduce this woman had died trying to thwart something or someone, and had done so in the hope that the child might have stood a chance of escaping the same fate. Such a selflessness he was sure he'd never known. Her eyes were still open, staring but unseeing, with any light that had once illuminated them long gone. He knelt beside her and, paying the utmost respect he could unto this fallen warrior, closed her eyes so that she might be accepted into the mansions of rest. But to his abject distress, as soon as he did so her body turned to dust.

"No!" he choked. It crumbled away and drifted into the air, glittering softly in the starlight. He tried to grab at the particles, but they slipped through his fingers tauntingly. He turned about, searching for a clue or a sign, and raked his hands through his hair. She was gone. Just like that.

"Kozmotis…"

He whipped back around at hearing that name but still found nothing. Was he destined to be taunted by it for the rest of his miserable existence?

"Kozmotis."

There she appeared in front of him. The woman. The dead woman. How could this be? He had seen her disintegrate and still here she was, eyeing her own hands and wiggling her fingers in silent wonder. She was not whole, rather she was the ghost of this person, an incarnation of their soul composed of the very dust that eluded him. He stared at her, dumbstruck and unmoving. She bade him come closer and he did in a trance.

"Oh, my dear," she uttered in a hush, looking at his face and form properly for the first time. "What have they done to you?"

"They… done to me? I don't… Who are you?" He was rambling in incomplete sentences, hardly making more sense than this wretched nightmare of a dream he'd found himself in.

"You don't remember."

She sounded on the verge of tears, but it wasn't a question. It was like he was only confirming her worst fears which, strangely for him, he couldn't read. She was not of the living. There was nothing for her to truly be afraid of.

"Kozmotis-"

"Wait. That's me. That's my name," he breathed. It was beginning to come back to him. Through the hurt and grief there had been something else. Something happy. "At least it was…" He discerned that it wasn't that he felt he knew her. He had known her. "We've met before."

"You do remember!" She seemed overjoyed at the idea, but faltered when he hastily corrected her.

"No I don't. Not everything. Please, tell me who you are," he implored anxiously.

The ghostly woman smiled mournfully. "I cannot. Kozmotis, I don't have much time, and I think you know by now this is no ordinary dream. Please, you must try to remember."

"If you tell me I will. Just say it, I beg of you."

She shook her head sadly. "It doesn't work like that. I am sworn against it."

"What...?"

She glanced around, sensing something that he remained oblivious to, and she proceeded as though time really was of the essence. "I've found you once, I will find you again," she promised him. "But until then you must be brave. You must try to remember me."

"But I can't!" He rubbed at his eyes in frustration when his memories refused to cooperate. "I don't understand. Are you saying you're real? How can any of this be real? You were a corpse, you were dead. It's not possible."

"It does appear so, yes. However things are about to occur that you can hardly imagine, the possibilities of which being of little consequence. Kozmotis, you of all beings should know that just because a dream exists in your mind, it doesn't make it any less real. I see what you've become, but you mustn't let fear hinder you from the kindness I know you were once capable of," she urged him. "Be brave. Be brave like you taught Emily Jane."

"Emily Jane," he repeated, searching for a meaning to the name that was just out of his grasp. In his mind it shone like a beacon, but broke his heart all the same.

"Your daughter, Kozmotis. She is your daughter."

"My daughter…"

"I must leave," she informed him regretfully — Already the dust that made her was falling away into nothingness. "But I am so close, my dear."

"No, wait!" he cried. There was nothing he could do, for no sooner had she said this did she vanish without a trace, leaving him to fall terrifyingly into space as the dream shattered like the broken glass that had been at his feet.

...

In her room of the silent North Pole, Valentina awoke with a start.