October
Jack rolled onto his side, grimacing, and the tall grey man said, feigning concern, "Oh, Jack, are you all right? You didn't hurt yourself in the cloud did you?" Maybe it was simply a figure of speech, or for lack of better word, but had Pitch really called that mass of darkness a cloud? "Oh. Is that what that is?" Jack panted. God, he was tired. "A cloud?"
Pitch shrugged. "Mm, no. Not really. It's more like...a wave of fear." Jack's eyes widened. Pitch smiled, his crooked teeth glinting coldly. "I see you understand how terrifying this is." He said, waving his hand over the wave. "I collected this fear from all over the world. It's amazing how one night can turn the world over to complete darkness. Don't you think? All of this fear is the fear of children all over the world, from every single one of them. Even," Pitch leaned down and met Jack's eyes, "the children like you."
Jack swallowed. He couldn't deny how terrified he was. Pitch had collected this much fear? Halloween night wasn't even half over! "What's wrong, Jack? You look a little fatigued." Pitch reached out a slender hand and brushed his fingers across Jack's forehead. "You're sweating a little." He shook out his hand. "It's freezing, though." As if it was Jack's fault his sweat was practically ice water. Jack gripped his crook and tried to push himself up to his feet. "You're looking well." He said, trying to plaster a small grin on his face. He was already a shade whiter than he usually was. "Considering the last time I saw you, you were running for your life into that dank hole with your own nightmares chasing after you." Jack comically tilted his head and pretended to peer upwards to see inside Pitch's mouth, which was curled back into a snarl. "And missing a canine, courtesy of Tooth."
Pitch snorted. "Nice to see your jaunty nature has returned. I can't say that I missed it." Jack didn't have time to react to the foot driving sharply into his ribs. He crumpled to his feet, trying to suck in needed gasps of air. "Did you miss me though?" Pitch said, haunting over Jack. Jack managed to tip his staff and send a blast of ice at Pitch, point blank. A wall of sand shielded the Nightmare King, freezing and shattering once its job was done. Pitch reached down and ripped the staff out of the younger Guardian's hand. Jack barely put up a fight.
Pitch spun it in his hand; the fern like frost decorations that adorned the wood was gone once the staff was in his possession. "I heard that you drowned before you became a Guardian. I could sense your fear; that's what told me that you could've been what I needed to have the world in my grasp. But as usual, you proved to be a disappointment." He grinned down at Jack and roughly planted his foot against the boy's chest, pinning him to the ground. "You stayed under the ice for months, Jack. You must have iron lungs to survive under the water for that long. Are you good at holding your breath?" Pitch raised the staff, crook side down, poised over Jack's throat. "Let me see."
The wood bit unforgiving into Jack's throat, pressing down so roughly that it hurt, pain burning in the winter's spirits trachea. He could barely give a strangled cry, as his hands struggled to find their way to the wood, trying to lift the pressure. Pitch leaned into the staff, pressing the staff harder and harder into Jack's throat. Now he was panicking. His vision swam, and his last bit of adrenaline surged through his limbs, resulting in a helpless spasm. Pitch was really going to kill him. He was going to win.
"You're not doing a very good job of holding your breath." Pitch frowned. He watched the boy, his pale face draining of color, and the cerulean eyes slowly closing. "What a disappointment." He sighed. "As per usual nowadays. Oh well." He pulled the crook away from Jack's neck. The moment he did, Jack was coughing and curling in on himself. He lay, trying to retrain his lungs to live, but his body would have to do it without his full attention present; he was already losing consciousness. "Well," Pitch said, his voice distorted and far away, "since you appear to be horrible at holding your breath, let's try something else that I know you're good at."
Pitch opened Jack's palm, replaced the staff into his hands, and closed his fingers around it. "Flying." Jack tried to will his body to stay conscious, but it was over; there was no adrenaline to keep him functional enough to at least get safely to the ground. He was shutting down. He could hear Pitch's muffled laughing somewhere near him, but his eyes had already closed, and he could feel the ground opening up below. "Fly, Jack. Fly."
The wind sliced through Jack's skin, trying to keep him aloft, but he was falling too quickly through the open air. The staff threatened to slip from his grasp. The winds began roughly knocking Jack through the air, hitting turbulence in a desperate attempt to wake him up. Jack slowly opened his eyes, unable to open them fully because of the strong wind, but even still, seeing the dead leaf littered floor of a forest coming at him at high speed. Suddenly, he was wide awake, and in a panic. The winds, imitating his literally senseless notions, sent him cascading to the sharp left, slowing his fall considerably. However, the trees were before Jack, before he could slow enough to land safely, and he crashed over the tops of them, breaking branches, twisting him in the air. Falling through the mass of wooden trunks in a dive-bomb fashion, Jack struggled to regain a safe flight, at least enough to reach the ground.
And suddenly, something hard connected with Jack's head, making him drop like a stone, the wind unable to save him, or cushion his fall. Jack landed on the leaf covered ground, the impact of his body hitting the forest floor sending dead brush flying in all directions. Then they gently cascaded down, settling over the young Guardian's unmoving body, as if to keep him hidden forever.