A/N:

Oh - oh my god it's... It's Papers and she's back with an UPDATE?! After 9 months? What a world!

Apologies to any one who has been waiting on this chapter, and extended apologies to everyone who reads this chapter, because I'm afraid I haven't exactly provided you with too many answers. If anything you'll have even more questions.

I have to say I was surprised by how many new readers there have been since I last posted. I mean, the first 11 chapters at least are not easy on the eyes... You folks are the real MVPs, I don't know how you got through it.

(Also...who is that one person refreshing the first chapter 50 billion times? Make no mistake, I see you pal)

REVIEWS:

Skyress1: Jekyll and Hyde is a great way to put what's happening with Emily Jane and Jack. Something is pulling the strings, but I can't say what it is yet.

CrossoverJunkie: I think you know my work well enough that I'm dead set on giving Pitch the redemption arc he truly deserves. I love the concept of a Knight in Sour Armour. It's very Pitch. As for Emily Jane, she is dealing with something much worse, I assure you.

AngelaLove072101: It's great to hear from you again! Hope you've had fun catching up (though if you haven't, the writing quality does improve somewhat around chapter 12)

shutupbeaver: 1.) Your name is hilarious 2.) I genuinely don't know what to SAY?! I am so flattered that you like this story so much. I've had this chapter on file since January and your review was the kick in the butt I needed to finish it off, so thank you. And I hope you enjoy the latest instalment.

shutupbeaver: URGENT REPLY (25/7/18) If you happen to see this, check your PM settings again, they're still off. Or you can just check my profile - everything is there!

Reviews make me work. Let that be a lesson to you all.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

Domestic Violence

I have only one request and that is that everyone take serious note of the content warnings. Some readers may find the final scene confronting.

Valentina easily crossed the rippling vortex of light that shielded her from the black beyond. One step, two, then three, and her low-heeled shoes were crunching against the residual sand that dusted the hall of the Nightmare King. She barely glanced behind her before the North Pole's shimmering image was swallowed by the dying portal. The light faded, and Valentina's only company was darkness.

Structures and walkways of an ever-sinking city towered above her in the gloom. How easy it had been to forget the sheer vastness of the shadow realm in her interlude of cosy nights beside a roaring fire. How easy it had been to forget it almost breathed sinister hostility. Valentina was no fool. She knew she was in danger. If she stayed too long, the fear, the hate of the man she sought would worm its way into her veins. Poison her. Kill her.

"Cupid."

Valentina dared not raise her voice above a breath. The air was too still—like that of a tomb. Her intuition forbade her from disturbing the silence, as though to do so would be a reprehensible crime punishable by death. Absentmindedly, her fingers traced the fractures that marked the skin of her forearms. They caught against raises and puckers that were forming along the lines, deepening like scar-tissue.

One wrong move and the axe above her neck was sure to drop.

Her call was answered nonetheless. Whorls of pink smoke drifted and collected to form her dutiful little helper, a burst of colour on a monochrome canvas. Cupid looked to Valentina with blithe curiosity.

"Well?" Valentina prompted.

Using whatever sight it possessed, Cupid's gaze drifted around the space in slow, serene motions, searching and sensing for Pitch wherever he was lurking. Valentina's spirits sank lower with each passing second.

And then a spark. The most promising bolt of lightning.

"He's here?" Her voice caught. Cupid's answer came in the only form of communication possible: insatiable excitement that erupted as the wisp whizzed around Pitch's throne room like a shooting star, illuminating even the darkest corners for a scant moment.

"Cupid," Valentina hissed, a reprimand in her tone, but hope beating thunderously in her chest. He was here. Pitch was here. Now perhaps everything would be okay. Once she explained what the Man in the Moon had meant, once they had both had cursed his name to the winds for his meddling, then everything would be fixed. The wisp seemed to have heard her, and descended until it was but an inch from her nose. It emitted a happy squeal that sounded more like an ethereal sigh.

"Yes, I know," Valentina laughed softly. "Help me find him, please."

Without having to be asked twice, Cupid disappeared, then reappeared in abundance, lighting a flickering path for her to follow. A chill seeped into her bones when the trail disappeared down the darkest passage of all, tucked away beneath a flight of stairs that lined the cavernous opening like a warped set of teeth. She steeled herself against the draft of dank air that moaned from the belly of the labyrinth, and tried not to be reminded of the horrors that might await her if Cupid was leading her astray.

For Pitch, Valentina resolved, I'm doing this for Pitch, and set off into the ominous shadows, one wary foot in front of the other.

— O —

It had been an age. Longer.

In fact, Pitch couldn't pinpoint exactly when he had last visited this room. The brittle, paper-skinned hand of decay could have sent it crumbling out of neglect and ruin in the last century or so—God's knew most everything else in his realm did eventually—and he would have been none the wiser. Yet here the armoury stood with its cache intact. For millennia, Pitch had disregarded its existence, having refused to confront the painful memories it dredged up out of cowardice and shame. But with the past relentlessly nipping at his heels and showing no signs of exhaustion, he could run from those memories no longer.

Long and relatively narrow, the armoury's walls were adorned with enough weapons to invoke bloodlust in Ares himself. Swords sheathed in leather, expertly crafted arrows, spears, bows, crossbows, a myriad of close-combat daggers. All were neatly displayed in their rightful positions, untouched by his hands nor Time's it seemed. The blades and their hilts gleamed softly, striking despite the low light. They showed no signs of wear or rust. They were immaculate…though the pride they evoked from their creator was embittered at best.

And at the end of this lethal cave of wonders stood a cabinet of crystal.

Pitch stared up at the military uniform of illustrious achievements and noble splendour locked within, and pressed his hand longingly to the glass. How fitting that the golden livery hung on its mannequin should be kept tantalisingly out of reach. Black, Knee-high boots were worn over breeches of a bygone era, and a white, buttoned-down tunic clung to the mannequin's torso. But the ensemble's real statement piece was its tailcoat. Ornamental braided cords—aiguillettes—fitting of a high-ranking officer were fastened to the epaulette* of the right shoulder. They draped in splendid decoration over the breast adorned with silver buttons and were set with moonstones that glimmered. The bullion fringes of the epaulettes shone like spun gold and Pitch absorbed every detail of piping and braiding tucked into its seams. With embroidered embellishments that flared at its cuffs and hemline, his old coat looked nothing short of magnificent.

Except, it wasn't his coat. It had belonged to someone else. A man of the Golden Age.

Should Kozmotis Pitchiner have ever glimpsed the future tragedy that would consume him all those millennia ago, Pitch shuddered to think of the lunacy that the man might have been driven to. Kozmotis had eventually, inevitably lost his mind, unable to cope with the pain of having that which he loved most stolen in the most brutal way possible. But surrendering to the insanity of the Nightmare King had brought a different sort of bliss once he realised, that with his wife and daughter gone, there was nothing left of himself to lose. He had become both a widower and a…well, there was no true title. How could one exist when the death of a child is too awful to put into words? Reduced to nothing, this man had succumbed to such depravity that wouldn't have been right had he still been a father and husband.

A young general.

A hero.

Pitch Black was none of these things. He had far from proven himself capable of loving as he once had; his daughter was alive but estranged; his authority had been exploited for tyranny; and he had fallen so far from grace that even the angels could not find reason to mourn him. But hope was a stubborn little weed. It poked through the cracks of his despair and sometimes he caught glimpses. They were fleeting, dull, and few, but if he closed his eyes he could reach back through the past, almost touch the person he had once been…

Initially, Pitch had assumed Manfred's offer to become a Guardian was nothing but an act of spite or mockery. A way for the Tzar to break the monotony of endless days trapped in eternal solitude, with nothing but the maddening merri-go-round of his own thoughts for company. After all, it wasn't a stretch to assume such a childish man might bore easily. Dangle the spider over a burning flame and see how he dances. But after seeing his—no; not his—old uniform, Pitch's conviction had faltered. What if the Man in the Moon was foolish enough to believe that there was some light to be found in him? And what sort of hero did that make him, now that he had left a history of smouldering destruction spanning centuries in his wake? He had hurt people. He had destroyed whole civilisations. Rectifying his wrongs would not be as simple as slipping that ancient, musty coat over his shoulders and just forgetting.

Yet, Pitch allowed himself to imagine a life where he might somehow rise. A life where he was more than a mere creaking of floor boards, or howling wind in the dead of night. A life where he was free to do as he required. A life where wasn't just trying to survive. There was a balance that was long overdue for restoration, and as a Guardian there was a possibility he could tip the scales in his favour. He could have even begun to formulate a scheme, had he not sensed the presence of a being other than himself in the room.

Pitch snatched his hand away from the cabinet and whipped around with the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. A little pink wisp hovered in the doorway, wavering like the tongue of a flame as it debated whether or not to cross the threshold. He frowned, trying to place his familiarity with the presumed spirit, then his eyes widened in recognition. It was Cupid. The fragment of Valentina's soul. Which could only mean one thing: she must have followed him back to his realm, unable to leave well enough alone, always following the panicked beating of her heart no matter how much logic might suggest that he was perfectly fine. But the question still remained…how did they both find their way through the bowels of his lair?

Cupid seemed in two minds about which direction to go; back down the corridor, or over to Pitch. He took tentative steps to the door, but in the end he needn't have moved at all. Cupid, having made a decision, shot towards him like a dart and collided with a surprisingly solid thud against his chest. Emitting an inconvenienced growl, he rubbed at the point of impact right over his heart and narrowed his eyes at the wisp.

"Do you mind?"

Undeterred by his cold, clipped tones, Cupid appeared to gravitate towards him, pulsating with some semblance of emotion bordering on euphoria. The little thing was almost frantic. It fixated on his hand as he tried to dispel the sensation of heat left tingling at the surface of his skin. He would have to have a talk with Valentina about keeping her excitable minion on a shorter leash. But…shouldn't she have appeared by now? Shouldn't she have already been running to take him in her arms, ready to shower him with words of comfort that she no doubt thought would drag him out of his miserable spiral? Pitch looked to the doorway, still eerily devoid of her presence. He managed to distract the little wisp with the twirl of a spindly, grey finger, but could not distract himself from the way his stomach began to tie itself in knots.

"If you're here, then where is Valentina?" he asked.

Cupid, with eyes that appeared to be little more than dense pockets of smoke, looked to him, then coiled away down the length of the armoury over to the door, a motion Pitch took as a beckoning. His brisk walk was discarded in favour of the shadows, and he emerged instantly where Cupid waited. He peered down the the passage outside, training his sights as far as into the black abyss as he was able, then he looked the other way.

Valentina was nowhere to be seen.

"Where is she?" he repeated, the urgency rising in his voice. Cupid looked to him once more, eyes downturned in what could almost have been an expression of regret. The words of a past Valentina rang in his ears.

I can't go back there. It would be suicide…

Oh, but back to Hell's gate she had crawled, and paved in stone, Pitch feared, was her road of good intentions.

"Take me to her," he said. "Now."

— O —

There was no mistaking when Victor Dupont arrived home. A terrible crash and a resounding bang were all the warnings she received before her husband's hulking silhouette appeared in the doorway of their cramped apartment. Victor had thrown the door open with such force that it ricocheted against the wall on its rusted hinges, revealing a well-worn groove where the handle had struck countless times before. Out of both habit and a sickening sense of foreboding, Renée Valentine Dupont rose from her seat by the modest fire and nudged the little girl at her side to hide behind her tattered skirts.

Victor stumbled in, violating their peace and bringing a draft that extinguished half of the candles Renée had carefully lit. So transfixed was he by the ribbons of smoke that streamed from their blackened wicks, that he was yet to hang his coat by the door.

"Bloody hell, woman. You trying to set the place on fire?" Victor slurred, clearly having been on the drink again. The tavern down the road must have kicked him out for the night.

"No." Renée lowered her both gaze and her voice. "We just wanted some light."

Anger. No; rage flashed in Victor's glassy, bloodshot eyes as he lumbered over to her. She instinctively shrank away and hoped he wouldn't notice. In hindsight, she should have snuffed out the extra candles herself before he arrived. She also should have sent Amelie to bed. Better she faced him alone when she knew he would be returning home in such a state—only, she hadn't been expecting him for at least another hour.

"And why would you need that, Madame Dupont?" Victor sneered. He was close now. Much too close. Renée had to turn her head from the retch-inducing reek of alcohol on his putrid breath. "LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU, HUSSY!" Her heart was a frantic bird trapped in a cage as she lifted her chin and met his cold, heartless gaze. There was a madness barely contained there, something unhinged that plucked without mercy at the thin strings tethering his temper. Victor lowered his voice. "If you tell me the truth, I'll let the whole thing go," he said, lifting a hand to gently caress her cheek. "All I want 's the truth."

Don't flinch, she thought. Don't lie. Don't give him any more reasons.

"We needed it to read," she confessed, "I was giving Amelie her lessons."

Renée heard the crack of his hand before she felt it. Victor struck her clean across the face and she cried out as blood rushed to her cheek. It burned with the agony of having been branded by a white-hot poker. With her mouth stretched in an agonised grimace and her hands cradling her cheek, she fell to her knees whimpering.

"She don' need lessons," Victor spat. "It's bad enough I 'ave t' deal with one of you bloody thinking you know things you shouldn't." He crouched and lowered his shiny, ruddy face until it was directly in front of hers. "Didn't your father ever tell you women should be seen and never heard?"

A toxic stew of resentment and fear broiled inside her. A hatred so strong she could barely stand its feverish torment. How she longed to do things—to make him regret. But all she could manage was a choked sob as she looked back at him through watering eyes.

Renée had loved Victor once, so she made herself believe. And as he jostled and roughly pulled her from the ground, she tried to believe the lie again. His hands were at her skirts, greedy and impatient as they hoisted the scrappy fabric up her thighs while he drove her back against the wall. Over his shoulder, Renée met Amelie's terrified eyes.

"Go to your room," Renée whispered. But though she was usually compliant, Amelie now shook her head vigorously, unwilling to leave her guardian at the mercy of this tyrannous beast. "Amelie, now." But still the girl would not budge. Nor would the lecherous Victor.

Heaven help me, Renée thought, and braced herself to take the plunge off the precipice of her own self-destruction.

"Get off," she hissed, and with a quick but forceful shove she squirmed out of Victor's grasp. He may have possessed an iron grip and he might have been twice her size, but Victor was slow and easily confounded in his intoxicated state. By the time he had realised what she'd done, Renée had grabbed Amelie by the wrist and scurried away to the other side of the room. The table laden with cutlery from dinner stood between them.

"You're telling me what to do?" Victor laughed, a sinister rumble that was in no way humorous. "You're telling ME?!" He pounded a fist against the table, resulting in a disturbing clatter that showed how easily he could break if her if she came within reach. "You are my WIFE, and my God-given RIGHT, damnit! You've got a lot of gall to even dare…"

But she had dared. She had seen her window and flown right through into the dangerous unknown without a second glance. In fact, had she not been so terrified of how Victor was barely harnessing his self-control, Renée might have realised the flame her 'gall' had ignited. Time slowed to a crawl. Looking around the room, she assessed the obstacles between herself, Amelie, and the door. If they could split up and skirt around the table quick enough, there was a chance they could disorientate Victor long enough to escape the apartment and shut its door behind them forever. Yes; they could run away to her father's house. It was four hours away on horseback—if they could steal Victor's mare they would make it. The journey would be cold. Bitterly cold. But not enough to freeze them. They could leave this monster in their dust.

"If you don't do as I say, you're the one who's going to need a lesson," was Victor's hazy threat, permeating the fog of her scheme. Renée was vaguely aware of him reaching for something shiny and sharp off the table; one of the carving knives she had failed to clear away after dinner. At his command, the knife sliced through the air in erratic jabs, though it hadn't left his hand.

Yet.

Then another thought crossed her mind. A dark premonition. A vision that rattled her to her core. He was going to throw the knife. He was going to hurl it across the room with reckless abandon. Oh, it would be an accident, of course, but the blade would still sink into Amelie's flesh. The blade would still kill her.

How Renée knew this for certain, of course, was unfathomable. But she felt it was certain nonetheless. Because she also knew she was going to be the one to change that girl's fate. She would take Amelie's place and thus fulfil the inevitable.

And yet, Renée found herself wondering…what if?

What if, when the knife did eventually leave Victor's hand, his careless aim happened to veer it off its fateful course? Would it perchance skid across the dusty floorboards and land benignly at her feet? Would she even consider…?

And what if—as Victor rounded the table shouting profanities and curses, and Amelie shrank further behind her in terror—she picked up that carving knife? In her hand, would it be transformed? Would it become the key to her freedom? And was it possible that the only lock it would fit was buried deep in her husband's chest?

Renée looked down and was mildly perplexed to see the knife was already in her grasp, but did not question the logic of it being there. She clutched the handle in her white-knuckled grip, bracing herself as Victor approached. With an ugly snarl, he lunged. Renée sprang back to collide with the kitchen bench-top, causing Victor to loose his footing and stumble. He quickly righted himself and threw a punch, hitting her squarely in the stomach. The breath was knocked out of her in a sharp hiss. Victor tried to wrestle the knife out her hand, his arms wrapped around her, constricting her like boa in a grappling hold, and didn't relent until she stomped on his foot with such ferocity that he loosened his grip for a millisecond. It was all the time she needed to turn and knee him in the groin. With a cry Victor dropped to his knees, but pulled her to the ground also. They scrabbled and fought tooth and nail for possession of the knife, but despite Renée's best efforts Victor succeeded in scrambling to pin her beneath him. He used his knees to trap her arms helplessly at her sides. With a perverse leer, he ground her hips painfully into the floor with his bodyweight alone, and reached around to snatch the knife out of her hand. Enraged sobs, the desperate sound of her own anguish filled her ears as she struggled fruitlessly against him. Just as he was beginning to raise the knife, and she was beginning to accept her fate, an almighty clang sounded. Victor's face and grip on the knife both slackened. He slumped, and like a felled tree, crashed to the dusty floor to reveal Amelie, fierce little Amelie, standing behind him with a small, cast-iron pot in hand.

"Amelie…" Renée rasped, so taken aback that it took a moment before she jolted into action and shoved Victor's limp body away.

"I c-couldn't let him," Amelie whispered, slowly lowering her make-shift weapon, still prepared to strike if the beast happened to stir. Renée collected the knife and rose despite the aching stiffness of her body. She gathered Amelie in her arms, whose face was stained by tears of fear and exhaustion. Neither of them took their eyes off Victor. "I had to, I'm sorry. I couldn't let him. I—I'm sorry."

"Shh, don't apologise. You have nothing to apologise for," Renée said, her throat raw and tight. It was a trembling hand that performed the soothing gesture of smoothing Amelie's dark hair out of her face. "I'm the one who's sorry." And clinging to each other in the middle of the devastated apartment that belonged to neither of them, Renée and Amelie mourned a loss of innocence.

Amelie Dupont's happy childhood had deteriorated along with her dear Papa's health only three years earlier. With her father now gone, any opportunity for the girl to learn and grow had been poured away into the bottomless beer glass of her estranged brother. The injustice was deplorable. And it fuelled the conception of a new idea, an idea so morbid it frightened Renée. As she continued to brush Amelie's hair out of her eyes, her tone shifted to the grey between calm and absent.

"I need you go to your room."

"Why?"Amelie asked, her brow creased.

"Because I said so."

"Maman…"

Amelie had started calling her that not long after she came to live under the care of her brother, and it had stirred something unexpected in Renée's heart. On Victor's worst days, Renée had clenched her teeth through the pain of the bruises that darkened her skin, and had done everything she could to calm the frightened girl. She had taken Amelie her under her wing and the two had since fostered a trust that was unshakable.

"Please do as I say. And no matter what you hear, do not open that door." Renée met Amelie's eyes. "Do you understand?"

"Maman—"

They both screamed when a meaty hand grabbed hold of Renée's ankle. To their abject horror, Victor had awoken. Dazed and likely concussed, he snarled incoherent words at them both. He was supposed to stay down, she thought frantically as his grip tightened, it's not possible. Yet here was the medical marvel, rising from the dead to exact his revenge. His eyes were unfocused, but his intention was clear; he would kill her.

But not if she killed him first.

With her other foot Renée stomped on Victor's wrist, eliciting a dull snap and a howl of pain. He retracted his mangled arm and cradled it to his chest. However, Victor was not the sort of person who tolerated being deprived of that which he wanted most. He kicked at Renée's legs, attempting to sweep her feet out from under her, only to be thwarted by Amelie wielding her cast-iron pot. There was a dull, metallic clunk as the iron collided with his skull. He tottered in place, that look of pure wrath never leaving his face. The blow should have rendered him unconscious. He should have been dead.

In the space of a moment, it struck Renée; there was no point in trying to protect Amelie's eyes from what was about to ensue, and certainly no time to usher her out of the room. Taking the opportunity presented, she swiftly straddled Victor as he had done so cruelly to her, and raised the knife so the tip of its blade was directly above his chest.

Their eyes met, and everything—Amelie, the apartment, the world—fell away. None but the two of them existed, and between them every word of unspoken hatred was felt. She clenched the hilt of the knife in her hands, her lips pulled back in a snarl. Victor stopped struggling.

"Do it," he croaked.

Her breath rattled through clenched teeth. Her grip tightened in preparation.

"Do it," he repeated, and despite what must have been the most intolerable agony, he grinned.

She felt her jaw go slack. The bastard…would not cower. Nor would he plead for mercy or forgiveness when she had so obviously bested him. Not even when death was battering down his door could Victor resist his obstinance. That he refused to grant her respect, even when she was prepared to extract it from him tooth by bloody tooth, spoke volumes of his depravity.

"Isn't this what you've always dreamed of?" He hacked out a wheezing laugh. "Am I not right where you want me? Put us both out of our misery. Kill me."

The knife quivered in her hands, encased by her white knuckles. It wanted what she wanted. It was willing do her bidding. Yet, she hesitated.

"All your life you have tried to ignore what's buried deep down inside. You hide from it, and hide it from the world. Because you are afraid. You're afraid of that power, and all this time you have resisted the temptation of wandering down the darkened path. But you hear it beckoning, don't you? You hear it call in the dead of night. What does it say? Who needs love when it is so much easier to hate."

"Stop it."

"No. Embrace it. Feel it. Let it take control once and for all. You know what you must do. KILL ME."

"You are a monster," she cried, shaking as tears burned in her eyes. "You ruined my life!" The Devil himself seemed to be dancing in the depths of his soul. The Devil knew not of pain or remorse. He shook his head.

"Not so. I think you've known for a while that I was nothing more than a necessary stop along the way; the piece to a much larger, more confounding puzzle. But you, Valentina, you're the real monster."

Something warm and wet was coating her hands. She looked down. The hilt of the knife protruded from his abdomen, drowning in a pool of his blood. She recoiled and drew her hands away. She had to stop herself from covering her mouth to silence the scream that rose in her lungs. When had she given in? How had she not noticed the blade pierce his skin with the ease of an unpracticed kiss? The blood was darkening. Ribbons of rust deepened to black as the life drained from his body, until the blood on her hands was not blood at all. It was dark and clingy like tar. Like a living shadow.

"What have you done, Valentina?" the weakened voice rasped.

Then she did scream, for the atrocity of her mistake was too great. The man that looked up at her at her in betrayal, confusion and pain—the man she had murdered—was not Victor at all.

It was Pitch.

A/N:

For those who are confused (and since I don't know when I will have the next chapter ready) that last scene is indeed a dream sequence and it diverges from the ACTUAL events that lead to Val's death and subsequent initiation into the spirit world. For those who don't remember, details are at the end of chapter 14.