-Santoff Claussen, North Pole-

The entirety of the bottom floor, from what Anna could see, was destroyed. It was just a heap of toy parts and springs and hammers and shattered lights. Yetis lay groaning in certain places, Elves struggling to pull themselves out of a wreckage. The wall behind the overlook had three deep gashes in it, cutting violently and diagnally across the wall. Anna could see all of this as she stood there, looking at all of it, as Pitch spoke to her. The others moved quickly forward, spinning around and poised to attack.

But Pitch wouldn't attack.

She knew him better than that.

"Oh my, angry are we? Now, since I'm a kind-hearted soul, I'm going to give all of you some advice: You should be facing the other way." His voice told Anna that he knew exactly what he was doing. Her muscles tightened and her hands clenched, staring forward at nothing. She couldn't move, it hurt too much. It hurt because she was so close, and she had done almost everything right this time. And still, still, she fell short.

"What're you talking about, Pitch? Anna's on our side now! You can't turn us against her!"Aster defended, and Anna closed her eyes a moment.

"...Oh, is that what she told you?" No, no, no, STOP IT. "Ha! I suppose my darling little Anastasia forgot to tell you that if there's one thing she's best at, it's putting on a good face. Isn't that right, dear? Show me that pretty face. No? Well, that's just fine, then, I think I tell this story better anyway."

"What is your nonesense!"North shouted, and she heard him step forward. There was a fluttering sound, and then Pitch was behind her. She knew he was there, could feel him in every cell of her body. They spent centuries in the other's air space, knowing their habits and quirks. They'd enfused in themselves almost an essence of the other, and for Anna that meant never being surprised by what Pitch would do for himself. It also meant that Pitch knew, without a shadow of a doubt, every way to manipulate her.

"She came back here after your little spat because I told her to. She's here distracting you, gathering information that I could use. And I must say, for that first part, she did a wonderful job." His hand grazed her shoulder, and something inside of Anna snapped. She knew why he was doing this. He was angry. He was hurt. He practiced such strict control over everything, and he was starting to lose control of her. He was doing this out of anger. Of fear. And she would not bear the brunt of it any longer.

Screaming, she whipped around slammed a hand around in front of her, passing through shadow as he dissapeared and reappeared a foot from her, Anna seething and feeling a dangerous tingling in her palms. Pitch raised a finger, eyes calm though he knew what was happening to her. That was another thing, one other thing, that they both had learned. It was curious, and neither would ever voice it out loud, but they both knew: Anna would never kill Pitch Black.

"Now, now, not in front of the Guardians. You wouldn't want them to think you're as awful as you think you are." His tone was calm and cynical, but his eyes told a different story. She knew them, cenimeter for centimeter, and saw a raging storm. He seemed smooth and confident, but there was an unheardof anger in his eyes, and anger that even Anna could scarcely understand. She had left, or tried to. She expected him to move on after awhile.

She never expected this kind of retaliation.

"Well, it seems I've done my job here. Anna, dear, do come see me when this is done, we have to get a move on." Pitch cast her one last, deadly look, and then shadows swarmed up from the floor and swallowed him hole, leaving only an empty space. Now, nothing blocked Anna from the looks on the faces of the Guardians.

Wildly, part of her thought they wouldn't believe him. Part of her hoped that this would be like just a few hours ago with the Warren.

But this wasn't the Warren. This was the Workshop.

And this time, Pitch had been here.

Aster looked conflicted, a hurt look to her and then the ground, as if he couldn't believe he'd been proven right. As if he didn't want to be proven right. Tooth had her hands clenched to her chest, blinking her big violet eyes and scrutinizing her. Sandy gazed slowly over the railing at the damage, and then to Anna, a pain in her chest that she couldn't breathe through. And then Jack. Jack, who looked like he still wanted to fight for her, but something was holding him back. He looked to her for an explination, anything to give him a fighting stance for her. To give him a reason not to feel betrayed.

And she couldn't give him one.

North was the worst by far. North wouldn't look at her.

"North..."She tried, a lump of pain in her throat. She could feel it all slipping away. "...North, I tried to tell you, I was going to. I mean, I wasn't going to do what Pitch said, I just came back and you accepted me so I..."

"So if we hadn't accepted you...?"Tooth asked, her voice pained and hurt. Anna's eyes went wide and she shook her head.

"No, not like that! I mean if you hadn't I wouldn't have stayed, I was never going to turn you over to him! I didn't know that any of this was going to happen, there was no way for me to." She didn't know why she defended herself, knowing that by the looks on their faces there was nothing left she could say. Pitch had done it. He'd done that last little thing. But she tried to hold on, she didn't want it to end. Not like this, not because of him.

"North."She turned to him, and he still wouldn't look at her. Even before, even when she'd been awful to him, he'd always looked her in the eye. Now he wasn't. He couldn't even look at her. "North, please."She tried to stop her voice from cracking, tried to keep some sense of togetherness. But she couldn't, because everything was unraveling and she couldn't seem to put things back again.

Finally, after a painful amount of time, North looked up at her.

And she wished he hadn't.

There in his eyes was everything she ever told herself that he felt. Had it been there before or just happened, it was there now. That betrayal, that pain, that aching sadness that someone he had loved so much had done something like this. And she knew in that moment that North didn't believe her. She'd gone to the Warren with them, she'd distracted them, and they came back to this. She really couldn't blame them. But dear MiM, did it hurt. Her breath caught in her throat as North looked at her with big, broken eyes.

"Anna...I think you should go."

Go.

In that moment, Anna forgot that she'd ever known him. She forgot that she'd ever been close to a second chance at life. She forgot the smiles and the Warren and the tiny toy she'd been given and Jack and promises. Anna forgot that any of that had happened, because it very well might not have. Because here she was not just at square one, but far behind that. Because this time it wasn't her leaving.

It was North asking her to leave.

No words could possibly have done anything, and she couldn't speak all the same. So Anastasia did what she always did best. She sucked in a breath, took a step backwards, and turned away. And just like that, she sprinted.

Anastasia left, running and running, not realizing where she was until there was too much snow and it caught her foot. She fell forward, knees sinking into the snow beneath her and chilling her to the bone. She couldn't see that she was miles from the Workshop, or that it was snowing suddenly, or that she wasn't alone out there. Because all she could see were the insides of her eyelids as tears defiantly squeezed out and rolled over her flushed face, arms wrapped around her and hands clutching, leaning forward in a way that almost helped take an edge off the pain. Almost.

She had been so close, and she had ruined it. Everything, everything she did was awful. She couldn't do anything right, she couldn't do anything she knew she should. She walked in on lives and destroyed them, no matter how hard she tried not to, no matter how many times she tried to put things right. She couldn't. And this time, she knew she had nowhere to go back to. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that North no longer wanted her back. And this was it.

Pitch looked down at Anna, standing a small distance away, and refused to admit guilt. But just because he refused did not mean that it did not happen, that it creeped along his gut and whispered into his ear. He had done what he had to do for his benefit, and knew that if he ever lost her he would lose more than a companion. He would lose his only key to beating the Guardians into the shadows as they had done to him. So he had used her and fought back whatever he experianced because of that, and he did it all with a smile.

But that did not mean that he did not feel for her.

In fact, if there ever was anyone he did feel for, it was Anna. She knew too much about him, and he of her, to not have something inside of him trying to tear at his blackened soul for what he had done. So now, Pitch Black was not smiling. In fact, knowing she could not see him hunched over in the snow as she was, his face took on a look of pity and pain. Because he knew what she was going through. Not because he had put her through it, but because he, too, had felt it once.

He knew that many things could be said about him. That he was awful and cruel. And those were true, what he had done he would allow himself no forgiveness, and someday he could come to terms with that. But there was another part, a part no one else could see, that did things to keep her whole. That did what it could to ensure that this girl did not shatter. He took her in on purpose, but had never planned on keeping her as long. His initial plan was a few hundred years, and then that part of him kept pushing off kicking her out. All the way until he was doing anything to make her stay.

He did this because he knew the world wouldn't accept her, and he knew that pain like a second skin. Pitch Black still believed that she was a far better person than he would ever be. He had no delusions of himself, and knew that he had just a few about Anna. She was broken and scared, yes, but she had something else. Something precious and he had tried to keep safe while manipulating her.

And he knew someday that had to end, that push would come to shove and he would do what he had to.

But something troubled him, something that made his lip curl and chest tighten, something that churned in his gut. He had spent more lifetimes than he could count trying to claw his way from the shadows and drive the Guardians into them. And he had to use Anna to do that.

But for the briefest moment, for the quickest of seconds, Pitch no longer wanted to do that.

It stung him, and when it passed he felt a bit disoriented. But it had passed, leaving only small remenants, and all that was left was a pain he tried to smother. When that didn't work, he sighed and knelt, placing a gentle hand on her back. Here she was, just like him. He only hoped she wouldn't end up this cynical and alone. Because yes, he would still have her and not be really alone. But after this, she would not be the same Anna as before. He knew he'd lost her, finally.

And he would soldier on through that, only giving time in afterthought to realize what kind of pain that put him through.

"Come now, dear. Let's go home."

Home.

He'd never called it that before.

He almost cringed when she paused and then began to nod. She didn't even put up a fight. She didn't even speak. She just gave a resigned nod and ran a sleeve across her face. This wasn't the Anna he'd known, and for a moment he wondered exactly how much damage he'd really done. But that had to be dismissed, this was how it had to happen. He just wished it wasn't.

And so he slid his hand along her back and gave her a long look, shadows reaching up from the ground and enveloping them, pulling them down and towards a different place, a familiar place, a darker place.

-Four Centuries Ago-

She still wasn't sleeping, and it was still bothering him. He'd tried to ignore it, telling himself that he didn't sleep either. And yet for some reason, her not sleeping bothered him beyond all measure. His hands twitched as he read over a large, tattered paper in hopes of discerning some kind of weakness in the Guardians, a kill-switch that MiM could have installed. She walked, he knew, in another room. Slowly, with even and paused steps, he felt her walking. And it was killing him.

Finally he slammed his hands on the table with enough force to make the shadows around him flinch back, teeth grinding and a headache piercing his skull. Why, why on Earth it bothered him this much, he would never know.

"This is ridiculous!"He shouted to no one, standing up and storming across the room and straight through a wall. He came out on the other side of a room a ways away, coming face-to-face with Anna as she turned to continue pacing. She jumped and cursed, flailing backwards with as much grace as a newborn giraffe. Almost boredly, Pitch reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her upright before she could fall.

She panted a moment, then exclaimed,

"What the hell is wrong with you?! Phasing through walls like some sort of freaky-"

"Shadow?"He offered deadpan. She paused, blinked, and then shrugged in acceptance. "Now, you're going to tell me why you insist on staying awake at these ridiculous hours of the night." Pitch continued, glaring and folding his hands behind him a bit awkwardly. Anna looked up at him, furrowing her brow and tilting her head to the side.

"I wasn't aware that this cave of literal and embodied darkness and evil had a bed time set up." Pitch faultered a moment, mouth open to say something but stopping himself short, not sure yet how to respond to her quips. "Besides, you're up."

"I don't need sleep."He retorted, and Anna shrugged, looking at the far wall.

"Maybe I don't either."

"Aw, what a quaint idea, except that you and I are two completely different things."He corrected, leaning towards her.

"What do you mean?" She looked confused, and he noticed that her hands were slowly moving away from her legs. Normally, they were plastered there. Subconcious, maybe, he thought.

"You,"He poked her shoulder, moving past her into the room, "are one of MiM's little concoctions. I take offense to your assumption that I am anything of the like."He was occupied as he spoke, looking around the room that she had been afforded. It had a bed against the right wall, a book shelf of some novels he'd forgotten about on the wall straight ahead. At the moment, it was bare. She hadn't had anything to bring with her.

"So what are you? You aren't human, I know that." Her question caught him off guard with half his mind elsewhere. He would learn very quickly that this was no way to speak with Anna, that every bit of him had to be focused on her and her words, or else she'd slip something tricky in there. Unfortunately, he had not yet learned this.

"Well, I suppose I was once a man, but I'm not much of that now am I? At least, not the man I was."

"You were a person?" He flinched, eyes wide and heart stopping. He hadn't just...? But he had. He'd let that little bit slip, and he could feel her eyes on him. He cursed loudly in his own mind, screwing up his face and letting out a breath. Then a strange feeling overtook him, and he looked at the stacks and stacks of books on the shelf before him.

"Is that so hard to believe?"He asked, trying to sound nonchalant. There was a quick silence, and then,

"What happened?" He rolled his eyes and moved around to face her, leveling his best glare. Strangly, he began to notice recently, she did not shrink back from him. Instead, she crossed her arms and continued to look on with a passive expression.

"As if I would ever tell you."He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, and she tapped her foot. A light flickered on in her eyes, a look he did not like, and she offered a cocky smile.

"You don't like me pacing, right?"

"I don't like where this is going."

"Tell about when you weren't you."She offered, "And then I'll go to bed."

Pitch wrinkled his nose at her, the shadows around him thickening, ready to take him somewhere else, anywhere else. He was not having this conversation, not even with this child that knew more of what it was like to be him than anything else in this world.

"I don't tell bedtime stories, dear, my most humble apologies."He sneered, and she shrugged.

"Then I hope you like the sound of pacing through the night."

Pitch stopped and began to reconsider. He gave her a measured look, raising his head and looking down on her. And he saw it in her eyes, the fact that she wanted to know more about him not because she was scared of him, but because she was curious. Curiosity, Pitch had learned, often went hand-in-hand with fear. But there was not fear in her. Only questions.

He had taken her in because he saw that same look in her eyes that he had once had. Before he embraced it, before it became truly a part of him, he could remember that kind of fear. He could remember that look of helplessness. He remembered being that alone. And never, in centuries, had he ever imagined anyone would know what that was like...until her, of course. And he knew this could backfire, he knew he might someday regret it.

But nothing inside of him told him that this would be an awful idea. He did know her story. Maybe, just for her, someone else ought to know his.

"...Fine."He spat out, and she visibly relaxed, jumping onto the bed and pressing her back against the wall, crossing her legs. Refusing to sit on a bed like a teenage girl, Pitch instead reached out a hand and the chair of a desk came to him, slightly pushing it forward and walking around to sit in it. He crossed his legs, folding his hands in close to him and keeping a formal scoul on his face. No sense in making her think he looked forward to this.

She waited expectantly, legs crossed and hands in her lap. And for a moment, Pitch paused. He paused because he knew this was the first time he would speak it aloud. He paused, because looking at her, he wasn't entirely afraid of doing that.

"...I was a man once. And my name was Kozmotis Pitchiner."

-A Cave Underground-

Anna ran a hand along the neck of a nightmare, the creature closing its eyes for a moment before hoofing the ground and dissapearing. Pitch watched her as he layed out his plan, mind not entirely on the task at hand. He looked over to her for the tenth time that minute, saw her eyes wandering the cave, saw thoughts streaming through her eyes. He checked her fear.

Same as it had been for days. She was afraid that something terrible would happen to the Guardians. She was afraid that MiM was watching.

Pitch looked away from her, trying to focus as he stepped up to the Globe and surpressed that ounce of guilt that wouldn't leave him. He knew what he wanted to do, and everything was almost in place, all he needed was her now. Which was why he called her in. But he'd avoided speaking to her for a few minutes, instead busying himself with menial things until he knew it looked ridiculous. Finally, he rounded around the Globe and stood in front of Anna, reaching out and taking her hand.

"My dear, everything's almost set. I just need your special little touch." He said, and as he did the five shadows lifted up from the ground, standing in columns like soldiers awaiting orders, like statues awaiting molding. Anna looked over, and sucked in a breath.

"What do you want me to do with these?"She asked, and Pitch led her to them, lifting her hand to the first and letting it go, letting it hang there in the air. He stepped back, waiting for it, waiting for the sweet sensation of victory.

"I want you to bring these to life. Make just five more, that's all I ask of you. Just five more, and then you wait here until everything's over. You won't even have to see it. And in the end, the world will be a place for us again, everything will be okay. You just have one last thing to do." He motioned to the shadows, and recognition flickered in Anna's eyes. This was a trepidatious kind of moment, and he knew that if she refused that he really couldn't do anything more to persuade her.

She knew what these were. His entire life now balanced on her decision.

"These are their fears." She said quietly.

"Yes,"Pitch explained, "I got them in that day where you were..." He stopped, surprising himself, trying to pick back up again, "In that day when you were with the children. The shadows had a field day on the Guardians, it was wonderful." His voice sounded a bit flat to him, and he didn't know why everything didn't feel as wonderful as he had imagined. Why that guilt would not leave.

Anna paused a moment, and then something inside of him relaxed when she closed her eyes and lifted her other hand. He would never cease to be amazed by her and what she could do, watching with his own eyes as she brought life to something. He almost missed the fearlings solidifying, he was paying so much attention to her. Seeing her jaw tighten, watching her breathing deepen. He'd seen her do this a thousand times before. Each time was spectacular.

She stepped back quickly when the fearlings stood there, stretching elongated back and splitting open jagged smiles on featureless faces. Pitch clapped his hands together and they dissapeared, exhaling.

"Wonderful, just wonderful. Isn't this so much easier now?"He asked her, and he knew what he was doing. He knew exactly why he asked her, he knew why he stepped before her to make sure she had to answer him. Pitch Black was egging her on, he wanted her to say something to him to rid him of this guilt. He wanted to see her snap. He wanted her to hate him. Because doing any of this to someone who didn't hate him...even Pitch Black couldn't take something like that.

She looked away from him and said quietly,

"Let me go."

"Oh, but you don't want to go dear. This is the only place you can call home now, isn't it?"

"Pitch-"

"They won't take you back, you can go ahead and make them try. It won't end up pretty."

"Pi-"

"They'll shun you and lock you up and shove you down in some pit, like you're trash to throw away that no longer exists once they can't see you! It's awful, and unfair, and you're only safe-"

"Pitch!" She snapped, but that was as loud as her voice got. As hopeful as it got him, her voice was quiet next and her eyes held a certain kind of look in them. A soft look. Understanding. And he wanted to cringe away from it. "You're not going to get me to get angry at you."

"Why?" He knew it sounded pathetic, his hands clenching and jaw tight, Anna looking up at him like she knew, like she knew everything going on inside of him. The worst part was that she probably did. She paused, then shook her head and began stepping backwards.

"Because I know too much about you." She left, walking to a door and exiting through it. When it closed, the hollow echo resounded until Pitch snapped his fingers, silencing the room. His breath came slow, turning and walking stiffly to the Globe. He pressed his hand to the cold surface, thinking of centuries spent doing terrible things to her. She could have been a good and happy person, but she wasn't meant for that. She was too much like him, and too different all the same.

And she should despise him. But she didn't.

"She doesn't..." He paused, not sure what he wanted to say to himself. Hate him? Of course she did. She had to, for everything he'd done to her. She was lying, she was avoiding the truth because...because of what? What reasons did she have for lying to him? What benefit could that possibly bring to her? Tell him she hated him, wouldn't that be stating the obvious? But she didn't say that. He thought of that look in her eyes, of how she looked over all the years. How she sat next to him, how she would walk into his rooms without knocking, how she always came back, how she never even once tried to kill him. After everything he'd done.

His fingers slid along the surface of his hollow Globe, lights flickering strong beneath his fingers. All those children, and...

And then it hit him, sending him stumbling back from the lights, eyes wide and disbelieving. For it wasn't that she didn't, it was that she did. He knew, in his very soul. It struck a chord and he looked, stunned in silence at the globe. Suddenly it was so clear, and he wanted to scrub it all away, rake at it with his nails until he could forget it, forget her. But he couldn't, and the realization still echoed in his mind.

She believed in him.

Pitch grabbed at his chest and screwed up his face into a grimace. No. No. He wouldn't fall for something so foolish, sopetty. He was the Nightmare King. No one believed in him, only feared. And he believed that for a time. For a half second. Because he knew that, in all the time he'd known her, she'd never once looked upon him with an ounce of fear. Never. And he should have seen it sooner. Before this, before it had to be done.

Because there was no going back on this now. Pitch didn't know what he would have done had he found this out before, had he found out sooner. Had he not spent so much time fooling himself. And he would never know, not really, only in passing thoughts and times of his deepest sorrow. Because he knew what he had to do now. And he could never take any of it back.