Jack's return. Sorry this took so long guys, I know there's no excuse but you'll be happy to know that this is the end of the story. Just one more chapter to go which I've already written and should be up following this one, an epilogue, and perhaps some rare extra chapters. But, for now, please enjoy ending. I've worked really hard on this.

The white-haired youth nodded, leaning on his cane. He had cleaned up a bit since last they had seen each other. His hoody had been mended and his face had been healed. All the little cuts Koz had fussed over, all the bruises which stood out like blood splatters against snow. They were all healed. The only thing that was different was his eyes. They weren't wide, full of the childish glee Jamie had described. They were heavy with sorrow. Lidded. Worried. "Does anyone else look this devilishly handsome?" He asked, raising an eyebrow and all the pain instantly vanished behind a dull mask.

Kozmotis dropped his hands. "If you're here for Jamie you're going to have a hell of a fight taking him." He told the winter sprite bluntly. "I will not let him go back to that place or anywhere near those people."

"Those people, as you so politely call them, are my family. And Jamie's friends." Jack told him, giving a new meaning to the phrase icy. "And what gives you the right to choose what's safe for Jamie? You barely know him! Hell you barely know me!"

Kozmotis raised an eyebrow. "So, they told you, did they? About how I found you? Helped you, the Jamie? I wonder, did they tell you the whole truth?"

Jack shook his head. "They didn't tell me anything. I used some of my own magic." He waved his staff and a single shard of ice formed in his palm, perfectly circular. Just like a mirror. Jack handed it to Koz who took it gingerly. "Look at it." It was an order.

Koz looked and saw his own face reflected in the ice. But...it wasn't his face. Not from now, at any rate. It was his face from a long time ago- or, at least it felt like a long time ago. He was talking to...well Jack. Jack, who was lying on the same bed which Jamie was lying on right now.

"Can you hear it all?" He asked, looking from the glass to Jack.

Jack nodded. "Every word."

"Then you know how worried I was for your sake."

Jack nodded. "Yeah it was...kinda creepy in a way. The way you spoke to me when you know I couldn't hear you, that wasn't so bad, but when you started running around like a chicken with your head cut off. That worried me."

Koz nodded sheepishly. "Yes I...suppose I did act a little stupidly in the beginning."

"But you cared." Jack replied, giving him that same side-long look Tooth had given him when he had gotten angry with Bunny. "You care, about me and Jamie. Even though you don't know either of us."

Kozmotis nodded emphatically. "I do, I really do. I don't know how to explain it but you...you remind me of me when I was younger. You and Jamie both. Jamie because of his willingness to believe in everything, even me, and you-" he stopped. He was rambling. Koz cleared his throat. "Why are you here, Jack? Trying to steal me back to the Pole so that Aster can beat the crap out of me?"

Jack laughed. "No, though I'm seriously annoyed I missed you punching him in the nose." He reached into his hoody pocket and brought out the book. "No, what I want are answers, Kozmotis."

Kozmotis sighed. "And I would love to give them to you boy. If I had any. But I don't, and that's the truth."

The boy nodded. "I know. We all want answers- the Guardians, you, Jamie, but I need them, no matter how bad they might be."

Koz blinked. "That's... a good way to look at it Jack. It shows me you're not biased in this whole affair, just because I look like Pitch Black." He was pleasantly surprised, to say the least. Where the others had just made snap judgments- here he was thinking of mostly the rabbit and the Sandman, Jack seemed to prefer taking an empirical method to this little problem. Not to pass judgment, but to get answers.

Jack shrugged. "To be fair, I hardly noticed the resemblance. I was more focused on the fact that you had my great grand nephew in your arms and was about to leave with him."

That one threw him for a loop. "You're...Jamie's great granduncle?" Jamie hadn't mentioned anything about this!

Jack nodded. "My little sis grew up around here. After I fell through the ice and died, she moved into a mental institution where she married her doctor and had a kid. I watched their family grow and bloom, never remembering that they were all my family until I got my memories back."

The way he spoke was so disconnected, Koz noticed. So despondent. "Does...he..."

"Know? Nope. He doesn't know a thing. I always meant to tell him, but I never got around to it." Jack shrugged. "Too much work to take care of, meetings, spreading fun around the world. Keeps me busy."

Koz had to admit, he was slightly surprised by the boy's serious attitude. From what he gathered, the boy was supposed to be a fun-loving prankster. Incapable of seriousness. And he said as much.

Jack laughed. "That's what everybody else thinks too. And I am a mischievous kid at heart. But I also know not to take things too far when they get serious. I know that there's something extremely bad going on. North and Jamie are both sick, you're confused and disoriented, and people are cropping up fear-sick all over this town."

That caught Koz's attention. "Fear-sick?" He hadn't heard that term before but it seemed to fit.

"That's what I call it," Jack told him with an idle shrug. "That feeling in your chest, that icy utter terror that you can't seem to escape no matter how hard you try. It's a sickness, Kozmotis. And, as much as I hate to admit it," here the boy's gaze dropped down to his feet and he shuffled them nervously. "As much as I really, really hate to agree with the guy or even- moon forbid, defend him," he looked back up. "Pitch was the only one who could keep the fear in line."

"You talk about it as if it's an actual living being." Koz observed.

"It is. Unfortunately. All of our elements have a certain life to them. Fun, wonder, hope, memories, and fear. They make the humans who they are. And we, as Guardians, are supposed to safeguard that."

Koz nodded. "I see. Then why wasn't Pitch Black initiated into the Guardians? Fear seems to be just as important an element as Fun and Wonder." He'd been wondering that very same question for a while now. Maybe he would get his answer.

Jack sat down on the bed beside Jamie. Kozmotis did the same. "What you have to understand about Fear, Koz," the boy said, using his hand like a conductor to narrate. "Is that it's incredibly addicting. Once you feel fear for something or someone, it never really goes away. It lives inside you, breeding, eating away at your heart like a parasite. Most people can control the fear they feel in everyday life, turning it into apprehension and anger, worry and frustration. Fear mutates to suit its host."

Koz raised an eyebrow. "How do you know so much about it then?" He asked suspiciously. "I thought you were the Guardian of Fun?"

Jack nodded. "I am. But Fun is the enemy of fear. Know your enemy, right?"

He wasn't convinced. "There's more to it than that boy, I know it. Come on, spill." He nudged the youth in the ribs.

The boy let out a long, heavy sigh. "I knew I would have to tell somebody this eventually," He murmured to himself before lifting his head. His lips were parted in a small smile and his eyes were twinkling again. "But I didn't think it would be to a human."

Koz shrugged. "Hey, I'm just trying to get some answers out of all this." He replied, lifting his palms skyward.

"Fair enough." Jack took a deep breath. "I knew Pitch Black. Before the Nightmare War." He began, raising a hand to stop the instant question forming on Koz's open lips. "Please Kozmotis, I will answer your question but I need to get this out now."

Koz shut his mouth.

"I'm only three hundred years old," Jack continued. "So I didn't know him for very long, compared to the Guardians but I did know him better than they did. He was there, the day I fell through the ice and became a spirit. He helped fish me out of the lake." Jack shivered, remembering that night, all those years ago. "There wasn't any moon when I came through the water. Clouds had covered it. All I could catch was my name before Manny left me alone. I was so afraid, so confused. I didn't know what to do or where to do. And then…"

Kozmotis could guess what happened next. "Then he showed up?"

Jack nodded. "He appeared from nowhere. A dark shadow against the snow. I was utterly terrified of him when I first met him and rightly so. Before the Nightmare War, he was the thing that hid under the bed and in the closets of children. He was the Boogeyman, through and through." A pause. "He asked me what kind of spirit I was. Those were the first words ever spoken to me as a spirit. I told him I didn't know, and he nodded, as if he had expected that answer. He directed my attention towards my staff which was lying on the ground, saying, 'you're going to need that.' And then he left me without a trace."

"Let me guess, you tried to follow him?"

"Are you kidding?" Jack looked at him as if he were insane. "A tall, dark figure with spiky black hair, shining golden eyes and shadows playing around his body? No way. I wanted to get away from him as soon as possible!" He chuckled. "But Pitch just kept coming back."

Koz glanced down at the book in the boy's lap. "Is any of this in the diary?"

"No. It might be in a different one though, which I'm glad for. If the Guardians found out I had been, to quote Bunny 'consorting with the enemy'," he raised his fingers in a sarcastic air-quote. "They love me and I love them, but they really need to stop jumping to conclusions. Bunny especially."

Koz nodded. "The rabbit wanted to stuff me in a big red sack when we first met."

Jack guffawed. "I guess he was trying to fill in for North. That's usually his thing, by the way. I'm kind of mad that you didn't get to meet North. He's an alright guy. And he helps keep Bunny in line."

Koz nodded. "I do hope to meet him some day. But back to your story."

Jack nodded in return. "Right. Well, over the next few years Pitch just randomly showed up in my life. Once when I was staying in Italy, he spent a whole week following me around just to watch me work. Then in Murmansk, he appeared right in the middle of a blizzard I was trying to control and helped me stop it before I leveled another town. It was weird but kind of comforting. He seemed to want to help me learn more about my powers, how to use them and how to keep them under control. After a while, we became good friends. He explained to me about the importance of fear and what it has to offer the world, which really helped me understand where he was coming from. He told me all about the Guardians, who they were and what they did, and I resolved to not have any part in it." Jack paused, smirking. "You know how that worked out."

Kozmotis nodded with a smile. "Indeed. You became one of them."

"Yup. But only because of what Pitch did to me."

"And what was that?"

Jack closed his eyes, trying not to see the look of glee on Pitch's face as he completed his first trial. "You know what Nightmares are, right?"

Koz nodded. "The demon-horse thing I saved you from."

"Right. Well, Pitch as still trying to make them when we became friends and, about a hundred years ago, he finally succeeded. I was there at the time. He was trying out a few new spells to create a creature to do his bidding and help spread the fear when he couldn't because of the Guardians. Nightmares are originally made from dreamsand, did you know that?"

Koz shook his head.

Jack looked down at his hands. "Well, they are. But they don't have a single spark of goodness in them. The first one was the worst." He was having trouble forming the words again, while his brain supplied the memories in horrifying detail. "The first nightmare he ever summoned was nothing like the horse you saw. It didn't even look like a creature, actually. Just a big, lumpy mass of black sand with bright golden eyes." He shivered. Those eyes… "It was made from nothing but darkness and pure, animalistic instinct. The most basic needs were all it knew: To feed, to hunt, and to fight. Nightmares can't go very long without food, and so it latched on to the only scared thing in the room."

Koz paled. "You?" His voice was barely a whisper.

Jack nodded. "Me. That thing looked at me like I was a five-star buffet. Pitch couldn't communicate with it. He couldn't command it to stop. It pinned me down like a ton of bricks." Another shiver. "It utterly petrified me. I couldn't move, couldn't fight back. Basically I was a powerless little child, and the Nightmare knew it. It delved into my deepest thoughts and fed off of everything which terrified me. Drowning, losing a loved one, dying again, losing my friends. Everything I hold dear to me the Nightmares ripped the outer flesh of worries away and exposed my fear for what it was. Raw, unrelenting. And for it, a full-course meal."

Koz listened in horrid fascination. How could this have happened? How could the Guardians have allowed this to happen? Hadn't they claimed to be the protectors of children?!

Jack caught his gaze. His eyes were cold and almost lifeless, but there was a spark of determination hiding behind the sapphire irises. "But that wasn't even the worst part." He told Koz.

Koz's voice was barely an audible rasp. "What could be worse?"

Jack smiled bitterly. "Oh, it got a lot worse from that point on." He replied. "You see, all the time the Nightmare was drinking my fear- and it went on for several hours before I managed to finally work up the strength to force it off of me, all that time Pitch was watching me from barely a few feet away." He could see a frown creasing the brows on Koz's face and nodded. "He was barely a few feet away," he continued, asserting what the human was already working out in his head. "And he let the thing feed on me. He made no attempt to stop it. He was too drunk in the fear."

"Drunk?"

Jack nodded. "Nearly all the fear a Nightmare leeches from a human being gets transferred to Pitch eventually. At the time, the Nightmare barely knew how to take in the fear, let alone transfer it. But Pitch has a natural ability to feel fear, kind of like a radar. And what with so much fear in the room at once, it was like a night out on the town for him."

Koz nodded slowly as the realization finally dawned upon him. "He embraced your fear as energy. Fear keeps him alive and since he hadn't been able to go out very often without being spotted by the Guardians-"

"Bingo." Jack agreed. "He got drunk on the massive amounts of fear."

Koz was still frowning. "But…you said you got away."

The boy nodded. "I did. As soon as I gathered enough strength I blasted that thing full in the face and bolted out of there. And I never once looked back. From that point on, our friendship was null and void. I never wanted to see the Boogeyman again as long as I lived." He heaved a mighty sigh. "Then came the damn Nightmare War."

Koz put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "You don't' have to talk about this if you don't want to," he said gently but Jack merely brushed it away.

"Nah, it's not like that. I'm over the whole he tried to end the world thing. Actually, I think it's fairly justified."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I mean, I probably would have done the same thing, given a few hundred more years in seclusion." He admitted. "And the funny thing is, the Guardians knew that when they yanked me into the driver seat of this madhouse. They knew full well that I hadn't been one of their staunchest supporters. They didn't know about my history with Pitch and thank the moon he never told them, but it's still ironic. They condemned one spirit for his years spent in the dark because no one wanted to be his friend while they praise another. It's a cruel joke is what it is Kozmotis."

Koz nodded. "I agree. A cruel, sadistic joke on the part of the universe."

Jack twirled his staff like a baton thoughtfully. "He never was the same," he murmured, watching the slight haze as the staff spun.

"Pitch?"

"Yeah. He never was the same after I left. For years afterwards he kept trying to make it up to me. He would follow me on my rounds- thinking I didn't notice him but I did. And when I caught him he would act all nonchalant and ask me how I was doing, claiming to have just happened by." He snorted. "He really was the worst liar on the face of the planet."

Koz ventured a question. "Did you ever…try to find him again?"

"Oh yeah, loads of times." Jack told him, halting the spinning staff. "Like I said I got over it about four years later and went looking for him to apologize for snubbing him and see if we could be friends again. But when I found him he was…"

"Depressed?"

"Unstable." Jack corrected. "Not quite depressed, but there was something in his eyes that I hadn't seen before. Later I learned what it was, but that was after he sicced the Nightmares after me and I had to fight for my life."

"And…what was it?"

"Madness." He replied simply. "The Boogeyman had gone off the deep end. He was obsessed with over-throwing the Guardians and destroying me because I had, to quote him, 'betrayed him to the light'. When I tried to tell him how insane a plan it was he just laughed and waved me away. He didn't do his job- or, at least, not in the way he was supposed to. He kept instilling fear in the hearts of little kids but it was stronger, harsher fear. The dark fears only adults are capable of harboring. Death, destruction, plagues, epidemics, unrelenting darkness."

"And do you blame him?" Kozmotis asked, watching the boy carefully through half-lidded eyes.

"Of course I blame him!" Jack replied without a seconds' pause. "He put thousands of children in therapy before the Nightmare war even began! He gave some of them nightmares so dark that even an old soldier would run screaming to their moms."

Kozmotis could not believe this! This was going back on everything the boy had just told him! He opened his mouth, ready to let fly in the defense of the Boogeyman but them Jack raised a hand.

"However," he added calmly. "The Guardians drove him to that. It was a lose-lose situation and it panned out exactly how I expected it to. Yes I threw my lot in with the Guardians- not like I had much of a choice," he added bitterly.

"You could have remained neutral." Koz pointed out.

"True. But then the Guardians would have been over-run and Pitch would have covered the world in fear and darkness. And I couldn't let that happen." Jack smiled at the thoroughly confused look on Koz's face. "I understand this whole cosmic balance thing better than you all seem to think I do," he said with just the barest hint of smugness. "I get that you have to have fear, and that you have to keep the amount of fear in the world balances. I seem to be the only one in fact. But I also knew that Pitch needed to survive."

Kozmotis nodded, speaking his thoughts aloud as understanding solidified in his mind. "You helped them put down Pitch so that maybe he could take a step back and learn from his mistakes."

Jack nodded. "Bingo. Give the man a snow-cone." He clapped.

Koz ignored the mockery. He was still frowning as more pieces of the puzzle turned out not to fit quite right. "But then, why didn't you help him afterwards?" He asked, looking the boy straight in the eyes. "Even Sandy went to visit him after the Nightmare war but you didn't. Why is that Jack?"

At this, the boy ducked his head and Koz saw a shameful tinge blossom on his cheeks. "I…couldn't get through. Barriers." Jack mumbled, his voice muffled by the curtain of hair hanging over his face.

Kozmotis folded his arms over his chest. "Bollix."

"I couldn't!" Jack protested defensively. "They were made to keep people in and out."

"But not Guardians?" Kozmotis asked slyly, holding up the book. "Sandy got in somehow, remember?"

Jack raised his head and scowled at the book. "He was the one who made the barrier. So obviously he was able to turn it off for a short amount of time."

Kozmotis sighed and laid the book down beside them. Then he reached over and put a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Jack, I know there's more to it than that." He said gently, using the kind counselor's tone which had helped save many a frightened child. "If you don't want to tell me that's fine, just know that I will be here if you need to talk about it."

They were both silent for a long time, Jack's mind racing about wither he should tell the human. Spill his guts, so to speak. He had pretty much told him everything else, so why not this too?

He took a deep breath. "I was afraid." He finally admitted, lifting his head to stare into Kozmotis's eyes.

Koz nodded. "I thought as much."

"No, not afraid of what you might think." Jack quickly interjected, raising his hand again. "I wasn't afraid of what Pitch might do to me or what the Guardians would do if they found out. I was afraid…" Another deep breath. His heart was racing. "I was afraid of becoming Pitch's friend again."

Kozmotis sat back, momentarily stunned.

Jack chuckled at the look on his face. "Yeah, I know. Stupid reason right?"

The human licked his lips thoughtfully. Actually, it explained a great deal. "Not at all Jack." He reassured the boy, smiling his kindest smile which slit his face cheek to cheek. "In fact, it makes perfect sense." The boy hadn't wanted to go back to Pitch for fear of becoming friends again, which would in turn strain his relationship with the Guardians and eventually lead to another war in which Jack would be forced to either take the Boogeyman's side or flee.

The winter sprite nodded. "I guess. It felt a lot like being a coward at the time, but I kind of ignored it until it went away."

"And that's why you never went to visit Pitch." Kozmotis concluded.

"Yep. I was too afraid and so, eventually I forgot about him. Or, at least I tried to forget about him. I think he was always there, somewhere in the back of my head." Jack tapped the back of his head with a white finger. "Watching." His hand lowered. "And now he's gone."

Kozmotis nodded sagely. "And we're left holding the bag."

Another long stretch of silence followed, during which Jack stared mainly at his bare feet and Kozmotis tried to process all of this new information as it pertained to the Guardians. He was trying to factor in all the relevant information for when they, eventually, met up again. And when they did, oh boy was he going to give them a talking to. None of them would be safe, not even Toothiana. He sort of wished North was awake so that he could chew him out too. A teenager had been able to grasp within three hundred years what they hadn't in over a thousand! It was utterly ridiculous! And unfair to boot.

What that man must've gone through at the hands of these beings, he thought, staring off into space as he pictured the Boogeyman's visage staring back at him. Like a mirror. A darkened mirror. His face was ashes, his eyes embers. Like the elements of fire brought to life by passion and anger for his cause.

"When are they coming?" The words were out before he even knew he had spoken them, but he didn't take them back. Of course the Guardians would be coming soon. It was stupid to think that they would let Jack come alone.

Jack shrugged. "The only reason they let me come at all was I promised to help talk you into coming back. I told them to give me an hour or so and..." he checked the clock on the wall. "That was about an hour ago, so they should be here any time."

Koz couldn't help it. He tensed up slightly. His child and wife would be in the same house as people who were basically murderers.

"Don't worry," Jack reassured him. "I promise they won't hurt you or your family."

"Can you guarantee it?" Kozmotis asked dryly. "These are the same people who killed a man for doing his job, threatened me and left you to die."

Jack shook his head tiredly. "They didn't kill Pitch. He killed himself."

"They drove him to commit suicide, Jack. It's the same damn thing." Koz retorted coldly, turning away from the boy. He didn't want to talk to him anymore but, against his better judgement, questions continued to batter against his skull and eventually he voiced them. "Why do they want me there so badly?" He demanded, shifting his weight on the bed to glare at Jack, as if this were somehow all his fault. Which it technically was. "What's so damn special about the Pole?"

Jack gave the who knows gesture with his free hand which wasn't tapping his cane against his knee in response. "We have question and my answers aren't enough. And the only way to get those answers is for you to talk to our leader, or so they told me. Personally I don't see the big deal about it but-"

"Your leader?" Koz interrupted, frowning.

"The Man in the Moon. The original Guardian. The one who originally started all of this with Pitch, back in the day. According to the others. I still have my doubts as to who really started it but he's the one to blame for most of it. And the one to thank."

"Thank?"

"Without Manny, Pitch would have tried to take over a lot sooner than he did, and he would have succeeded." Jack replied matter-of-factly. "It's a given. Manny was the only thing Pitch was truly afraid of, he told me. That, and not being believed in. But all spirits are afraid of that."

He would have said more, but at that precise moment the door opened and a familiar golden Guardian strolled through the doorway as if he owned the place.

Kozmotis immediately jumped up. "Sanderson." He nodded respectfully at the little man.

The little man nodded back, drawing a question mark in the air with his finger. It hung like the query it represented in the empty air, rotating slowly while the two men facing Sandy watched it carefully.

"We were just about to call you," Jack answered for Kozmotis quickly, shooting him a look that said don't speak. "Koz here isn't too thrilled with going back to the Pole but I think he's realized that it's the right decision. Right Kozmotis?"

Kozmotis raised an eyebrow at the boy. "Who were you talking to?" He asked, mildly amused. "We've been over this Jack. There is no way in hell or high water that I am going back there. If you lot want to come here and talk that's fine, but you aren't getting me back to that ice castle without knocking me out first."

As if he had been expecting this, Sandy hefted a dreamsand orb about the size of a baseball and nailed Koz with is right between the dark eyebrows. Kozmotis was asleep before he hit the bed and as such didn't hear Jack scolding the little man while tiny butterflies flew about his head.

"Did you have to do that? I almost had him ready to leave!"

Sandy shrugged, causing a dreamsand truss to carry the unconscious man form the room. He asked for it.

Jack rolled his eyes as he gathered up Jamie's sleeping form and followed the little man out. He just hoped they could make it out of here before-

"Daddy?"

"Kozmotis?!"

"Oh snowballs."

XXXXXXXXXX

Kozmotis's dreams were not like a normal human's dreams. But that's because he was not a normal human. Obviously.

Where a normal human's mind was clogged with thousands upon thousands of memories- semantic ones, episodic, declarative and procedural alike. Thoughts to be files away for later, thoughts on thoughts, memories which had happened years, months, weeks, minutes, seconds ago, all flowing together in a jumbled mess with what the human's mind perceived as time passing and the stories of others, trying to match it to their own stories of their lives. It's not that uncommon and is actually why most humans take a while to fall asleep. The brain is a marvelous thing. A computer of epic computations and unending possibilities.

But that's the problem with it.

For all the mind's capabilities and computations, it cannot shut itself off to allow its owner even a few hours respite. That's where the process of dreaming comes in. Instead of storing all that useless information from the day, it gets siphoned off through dreams back into the cosmic energy of the world and becomes new thought, new ideas and new experiences.

But not in the case of one Kozmotis Pitchner.

He had found, even from a very early age, that he didn't retain information the way other people did. While his memories could be counted on to be a fraction higher than average and his intelligence was certainly so, it was his ability to dream which often left him tired and confused.

When he was young, he often had trouble recounting his dreams. But that was not because he had a bad memory. It was because he didn't have any. At least, not without trying. At first when he went to sleep, all he saw was blankness. Nothingness. Unending shadows, from the time he closed his eyes at night to the time he opened them when the rooster down the street crowed. At first he didn't realize anything was wrong. He thought all children dreamed like this.

And he continued to believe this, even as he grew older and the blankness started slowly disappearing, in favor of endless reels of his life and memories. He was overjoyed to see these images in his sleep but quickly learned that they didn't come all the time. Only when he concentrated did the images come forward and even when they did, they didn't feature any mythical creatures or fantastic adventures. Rather, the plain, every day images of his home and friends.

As you can imagine, this was rather upsetting for young Kozmotis. He would sit at the tables in the lunchroom and listen to his friends swap great adventures from the dreamrealm while he remained trapped in the dull reality.

Of course he tried to combat this thing, this malady he and he alone seemed to feel the wrath of. He started reading fiction books just before going to sleep and almost immediately upon finding himself in the dream-world, he started visualizing those creatures from the stories. Gigantic demons with curved ram's horns and hoofs like an elk's, dragons with scaly hides and mischievous boggarts. He tried hard, he really did, but they never seemed to turn out quite right and he would end up sitting in his room with a tiny Kraken oozing across his floor while he watched in fascination.

The affliction started affecting him in earnest at around age twelve. When he was still in primary school. He wake up cranky for what the parents thought was no reason at all, he would snap at people and generally become a secluded, unsavory individual until finally, his parents took him to see a sleep therapist where they discovered the source of his problems.

According to the doctor, Kozmotis had been born with an influxuated cortex and an impacted Amygdala. He had no idea what those words meant upon first hearing them, but eventually he learned that through a random series of events, he had been given a condition which stopped him from having proper dreams. The memories were there and he could take the imprints from his memory of reading about the mythical creatures and transfer them through his mind to the part which allowed him to dream, but it wouldn't be the same as manufacturing the image himself.

Armed with this new-found information, Koz set out to find out all that he could about why he couldn't dream. Why this cortex thing stopped him from enjoying what others could. And he found a lot more than he bargained for. According to some very prestigious scientific journals, people with his condition frequently experienced lapses in cognitive function- being able to talk and see correctly. They tended not to live very long- only about fifty years or so, and that because they couldn't rely on natural dreams, some of them relied on cleansing comas to keep their sanity and mental faculties in check.

The cleansing coma was a relatively new theory in neuroscience. The theory that, if one had the correct brain patterns, you could achieve a deeper level of sleep than that of REM or fourth level sleep. This state allows the sleeper to access all memories and thoughts from almost their entire lifetime and gives them almost limitless time to think and plan. Kozmotis wasn't too interested in that- expect when the time came for final exams.

He spent years trying to learn how to craft his own dreams but it as in his twenties when he met Sara that he finally gave up trying and settled for the memories instead of the dreams. And he was happy with it. In fact, he hardly ever paid attention to his dreams or lack there-of anymore.

Until tonight.

The first proper dream the man had had in all of his years began with him sitting in the middle of a dark room, lit only by embers smoldering in a grate several feet away.

He knew immediately it wasn't a memory because he didn't remember this place. He'd never been here before- that he knew of.

Koz looked around, taking in the scents and sounds. Smoke, light and rich. The wood burning wasn't oak or birch. Fir maybe. The chair beneath him creaked. It was red. Not the fiery, in your face red of the chairs in the Pole, but a mellow, blood-like red. The fabric was old beneath his hands and looked like it had been a long time since it had seen the light of day.

Another creak, this time from behind him. Someone else was in the room. Koz stood, turning around on his heel. Another chair sat nearer to the fire. Same kind of chair. But there was someone sitting in it. The gentle snores told him they were sleep, but he couldn't be sure as their face was hidden in shadows.

Kozmotis reached out a hand to touch their shoulder. It felt cold. "Hey," he said gently, shaking the shoulder. "Hey, wake up!"

The person stirred. "Hm?" The head rose and Kozmotis froze. Sleepy, golden eyes rimmed in silver stared back at him from an angular, ashen face. Sharp cheekbones rippled in the flicker of the fire while a brow graced with nonexistent eyebrows furrowed. "What are you doing here?"

He shrugged. "I was...hoping you would tell me." He admitted, looking around at the space they were currently occupying. It appeared to be a library, judging by the shelves set behind them. There was just enough room to move amongst the labyrinth of books between the towering shelves. I would hate to be stuck between those, he thought with a grimace.

The man closed the book which was resting in his lap. He had evidently dozed off while reading- not a hard feat in such a relaxing environment, but now was wide awake and alert. "Well, I can hazard a guess but I doubt any of my answers will make sense to you." He answered honestly, shrugging his lanky shoulders.

Koz sat gently in the seat facing his doppelganger. "Try me. Believe you me, I've seen some messed up things in the last few days. Nothing would surprise me at this point." He was trying to say it as a joke, but Pitch- for of course it was he, didn't seem to think it was very funny.

He sighed and laid the book on the table beside him, then laced his fingers together and sat back in his chair and watched him carefully, his eyes which were starting to remind Kozmotis more and more of eclipses scanning him like a laser. After a moment, he said, "Do you know who I am?"

Koz nodded. "Of course. You're Pitch, aren't you?"

Pitch bowed his head mockingly. "At your service."

Kozmotis automatically nodded back, then he frowned. "But... I thought you were dead." He said, a little unsure of what he should say. According to the book he had been dead. But yet here he was, sitting right in front of him. Now, normally a person would make the connection between this place not being one he recognized and a dead man sitting before him and conclude that this was a dream. But Kozmotis, having never experienced pure dreams, hadn't the first clue what being in a dream felt like. And so his brain didn't make the connection.

"I was dead." Pitch told him with a small smile. "I still am technically."

There followed a slightly awkward pause where the two men regarded each other carefully. Kozmotis had never seen anything like him before, and probably doubted that he would again. His face was gaunt with hollow skin around his eyes, as if he had spent too many long nights in front of the fire squinting at tiny words. He couldn't see much of it, as he was facing the man head-on, but from the way it spiked out his black hair gave the unsettling appearance of feathers. He kept tap tap tapping away at the arm of the chair, beating a pattern which gently echoed through the dead quiet room.

Finally, Pitch smiled and leaned back in his chair as if deciding something. "Well," he said, glancing up at the sky. "I suppose this means Lunar broke his promise to me. Can't say I'm surprised. He never was one to keep an oath. Unfortunately, spirit oaths are no longer binding as they once were." He chuckled. "Back in the glory days, when a spirit promised something their oath was kept on pain of death."

Kozmotis nodded, not really sure what to say to that. Thankfully, Pitch seemed to have enough to say for both of them.

"But that was then. This is now." He continued, seemingly unfazed. "And I suppose, since you're here, that means the Guardians found you?"

Kozmotis told him with a shrug. "More or less. By the way where are we?"

Pitch shrugged, looking around. "I'm not too sure myself. I'm guessing we are in a dream, as that's the only way I would be able to talk to you. Did Sanderson knock you out perhaps?"

Kozmotis thought about it. "Yes, yes I believe he did."

"There you go."

"You still haven't answered my question," Koz pointed out, slightly annoyed. "You mentioned something about a promise. And who is Lunar?"

"Tsar Lunanoff. The Man in the Moon." Pitch answered, though he didn't elaborate any further. Instead he re-laced his fingers and gazed intently at Kozmotis. As if he was merely a specimen under a microscope. "You're not at all what I pictured you to be." His voice was even, thoughtful.

Kozmotis blinked. Wasn't that his line? "I beg your pardon?"

Pitch chuckled. "Hmm. Well-mannered, eloquent, poorly dressed, poorly groomed and slightly supercilious. Well, I suppose you can't have everything." He murmured. "What did he give you? A family? Some cushy job as a therapist? I know how Lunar works, so don't bother trying to lie to me."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Koz answered firmly. "I've never met this Man in the Moon before. I was supposed to, before Sandy knocked me out."

"You were supposed to?!" Pitch was suddenly very on-edge. "Oh my my, he's got a lot of gall doesn't he!" His hands were balled into fists. "Promises me 'salvation' and all that nonsense but brings me back after just a few measly years? Faith rewards the gullible. Luckily for you I'm better than gullible." Then his hand relaxed.

Kozmotis wouldn't lie, he was worried for his safety. This might just be a dream, but he knew from research that you could get injured in dreams and have the effects carry over from the dream and into your physical being. Thankfully, Pitch seemed to have gotten the anger out of his system.

"That's what he does, you know." He said quietly, looking down at his feet. "Lunar. He takes what's already inside you and makes it stronger. Better. But he does it at a cost. There's always a cost. And you never answered my question either."

"What question?"

"Did he set you up with a family?"

Kozmotis frowned. "I don't know about setting me up with a family," he said carefully. "But I do know I have a family."

"What kind?"

"What does that matter?"

"Just tell me." He sounded almost wistful.

Kozmotis shrugged. "They're my family." He replied, unsure why he was still talking about this. "My wife, and my daughter Sera."

Pitch raised an eyebrow. "Sera?" He repeated, a small smile creasing his lips. "That wouldn't be short for Seraphina, would it?"

Koz frowned. How did he know? "Yes." He answered. "But how did you-"

"That is a cruel, cruel joke Lunar." Pitch interrupted, once again looking up at the ceiling. He sounded slightly enamored. "I knew you had a sense of humor, but I never knew it was so delightfully wicked."

Kozmotis frowned. He was...conversing with the ceiling. "Care to explain?"

Pitch looked back at him blankly. "Why should I? You know already."

"I beg your pardon but I do not." Cordial even in the face of certain exasperation. That was him.

"Don't play stupid." Pitch chided him. "It doesn't become you. You know perfectly well why I- why either of us, are here."

"I honestly do not." Koz answered. He was lost. In more ways than one. "The only thing I know, for sure, is that you're supposed to be dead and I'm here because Sandy knocked me out. I don't know anything else about a Tsar Lunanoff or Man in the Moon." He saw that Pitch was frowning as he took all of this in but he didn't really care. "I'm just trying to get this all figured out and get the Guardians off my back so that I can return to my family and live out my life in peace."

Silence.

Suddenly, Pitch frowned and leaned in even farther. So much so that Koz had to lean back to avoid colliding with the man's nose. "What are you-" he tried to ask but Pitch swiftly shut him up with a raised hand. He closed his mouth and watched mutely as the Boogeyman stared relentlessly into his eyes, as if he were probing him for some deeper thoughts.

"Oh gods above," Pitch breathed, looking him up and down. His expression had morphed from annoyance to sheer disbelief. "He didn't!"

"What?" Koz asked weakly. "What didn't who do?"

Pitch leaned back again, a grimace on his face as he ran his hand through his spiny black hair. "Well...I should've expected as much." He murmured, ignoring Kozmotis completely in favor of talking to himself. "Lunar always was hopeless at remembering small details. Still though, why didn't he-" then he snapped his fingers. "The mirium effect. That must be it. He took the original memories and used them as the cosmic base for this shell and left an imprintation on me so that I could still remember. But you can't." He glanced up. "That's playing dirty old friend."

Suddenly, Kozmotis found himself standing. His heart was racing and he wanted to leave. Now. Before he heard something he didn't want to hear. "I want out." He told Pitch curtly. "I want to leave. I want to go back to my family, now!"

Pitch blinked, Kozmotis's words snapping him out of his rambling daze and, once he realized what Koz was doing, he too stood. "Kozmotis," he said gently, lifting a lanky arm until his hand rested on his shoulder. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you can't leave." His tone was much kinder now, more human-like and gentle.

Koz's mouth was dry. He could barely rasp out the question. "Why?"

"Because you're not really here to begin with." He answered. "You're a shadow. A fragment of memories long-since dead, given form because you were needed as a barrier to keep me from dying. Whatever human memories you have are false. They were crafted to fill in the gaps. You don't have any living family any more. They all died in the Golden Age."

He was starting to shake. The stress form the day, these questions, the answers he was getting it was all starting to weigh down on him and upon hearing that last sentence, he buckled. The ground rushed up to meet him with a sickening crack, but there was no pain. Strong arms picked him up underneath the armpits and carried him over to the nearest chair with a grunt of exertion.

"Damn humans," Pitch Black muttered. "Drama queens, the lot of them. Though I suppose it will be easier for you to listen to me now that you aren't trying to run away."

His world was blackness, but only because his eyes were shut. All he could hear was Pitch's voice and the crackle of fire in the grate. What was going on? Why was he here? Why were either of them here?

"I'm going to tell you a story Kozmotis." Pitch was saying. "It's the easiest way for you to understand how all this came about. It's a story about a man in a time long-since past. A great man. A general. One of the greatest generals ever known to mankind. He had a family just like you, with a wife and a daughter. But he was away a lot, fighting the monsters and darkness in the world. And so rarely saw his family."

It was if the Boogeyman had been made to be a story-teller. The words flowed across his lips like gossamer trails, painting flashes of pictures clear as daylight in his mind.

"But evil must be kept at bay. It was chained up, tossed away to rot. Much like myself. Oh the irony." He chuckled. "Anyway, this great General was set to watch it. The Fearlings were locked away and with them the general, for many many long years. Then he made a stupid mistake. The general thought he heard his daughter screaming and crying inside the cage of the Fearlings and so he let them out. Oh, he tried to resist," he added when Kozmotis raised his head groggily. "But it didn't last long. He finally opened the doors and in doing so he let all the darkness in the world free."

"And then what happened?"

Pitch shrugged. "What do you think? That darkness flowed into his body and turned him into me. When I woke up I was in pitch blackness. I didn't know anything about my previous life or who the General had been. Basically, I was thrown into a destiny that I never wanted and wasn't told a thing about it. The years went by. I learned that I could only live through instilling fear into others."

Kozmotis nodded, slightly appalled. "My gods, that must have been the loneliest existence on the face of the planet."

Pitch chuckled ruefully. "It wasn't that bad an existence, to be honest. After a while I got used to the solitude. I accepted my lot in life and tried to make the most of it." Another scowl flitted across his face. "Others weren't so accepting."

Kozmotis frowned. "I thought you said you remembered his life? Or, at least you seem to remember it now."

"I didn't," Pitch corrected. "Not until many years later when the Guardians beat the holy tar out of me and left me for dead. Then, for some inexplicable reason- probably something to do with the beating, the memories came flooding back. I didn't know what to make of them, so I tried to ignore them. As you can see, it didn't work. Then I tried to help the children, acting on that one spark of decency retrieving your memories had brought me but again, I was beat down. Ignored. Left for dead. I resolved it wouldn't happen again."

"That's when you..."

"Went completely hell-bent on destroying everything and bringing the world to kneel in fear at my feet? Yes."

Kozmotis really didn't want to say it but the words were out of his mouth before he could stop it. "Did it have anything to do with Jack?"

At that, Pitch looked up sharply. His eyes were wide, as if Kozmotis had uttered a curse but he kept his cool, smoothing down the front of his robes. "What makes you say that?" He asked evenly.

Koz chuckled. "Jack told me about you two," he revealed with a small smile. "That you had been friends before this whole deal with the Guardians."

Pitch snorted. "Friends. Ha! It was more like me trying to keep the little winter rat out of trouble." But underneath the sarcasm Koz could see that his word had definitely effected the Boogeyman. He seemed...more subdued.

"Fair enough." Koz agreed. "He does seem to be a bit of a handful when he's awake."

Pitch nodded in agreement. "You should see him on a sugar-high. My gods it's like the Aether itself it powering his energy."

They both had a good chuckle over that as a gentle silence bloomed between them. Neither knew what else to say. Koz was still trying to figure all of this out- was this just a dream? He wondered. Or was it a vision? Was Pitch really here? Or was it just his mind, playing tricks.

"So...you're not dead?" He finally asked, looking across at the Boogeyman who was still smiling.

Pitch shook his head. "No, though I very nearly was. The lack of belief had slowly been killing me and I was ready to surrender myself unto Aether."

"You tried to kill yourself." There was no way of sugar-coating it.

Pitch nodded. "Tried and almost succeeded." He agreed. "Almost. If that damn interfering glowworm hadn't found me I would have. But Lunar has to keep his pawns in check and he wasn't going to let me off that easily."

At this point Kozmotis had decided to just repeat each word he didn't understand in hopes that Pitch would explain. "Glowworm?"

"Nightlight. The Man in the Moon's brother and henchman. He flies around at night, bright as a firefly and almost as obnoxious. I suppose he had been keeping an eye on me for some time, on Lunar's orders of course, and didn't want to intervene unless he had to. That's Lunar's way of dealing with spirits; he stays out of their affairs until he absolutely has to. I was about to break one of his rules. I was about to leave the game. He couldn't abide that, so he sent Nightlight to bring me back to the Lunar Palace."

Kozmotis could've guessed that he hadn't gone willingly. And he mentioned so.

"Of course I didn't go willingly." Pitch told him scornfully, scowling. "He was the being I hate most in my lifetime, responsible for almost all my misery. And yet I had to let him save my next to worthless life. Utterly pathetic."

"He...saved your life?"

Pitch sighed. "Much as I hate to admit it, yes. He did. I was a broken spirit, ready to die. Even Lunar doesn't like seeing spirits waste away into nothingness. He caught me just before I could do the deed and basically talked me off the ledge. I woke up in the Lunar Palace with the princes looming over me and I won't lie, it nearly scared me the rest of the way to death."

"Yet here you are."

"Here I am." Pitch agreed. "I wanted to die but he wouldn't let me. Said I had a lot more to offer the world." He chuckled. "He tried everything to get me to become the Boogeyman again. And I mean absolutely everything. He tried begging, pleading me to return to my duties. He tried threatening me. He even tried to bribe and convince me. Telling me about how he would promise no interference from the Guardians if I did my job right and played by the rules."

"Bribery."

"Exactly. Little better than blackmail. I would either do as he says, or face the full might of the Guardians and himself."

Kozmotis frowned. "But... that wouldn't have worked." He said slowly. "Without you, the world cannot fear. Jack told me this."

"And that's exactly what I told him. And he understood. He knew full well that his power over me was next to none. And so he made me a bargain." His voice was steady as a rock, with hardly any emotions and little to no regret. "He told me that if eternal sleep was what I truly wanted, then he would give it to me. Under one condition. That I help the next Boogeyman."

Koz frowned but Pitch was already answering the unasked question.

"Spirits are chosen based on what they do in life." He explained. "Most of them have to die before they become spirits but some rare ones- like me, are created by different means. I still have to abide by all the usual rules, can't be seen unless I'm believed in, can't kill human beings, blah blah blah. Anyway, Lunar told me- promised me, on his family's honor that if I helped the next Boogeyman learn how to do his job I would be set free. Forever." Pitch shrugged. "Initially I didn't want to do it, but Lunar told me it would be giving the next one a head start. Something I never had. And maybe it would help keep the relationship between the darkness and light balanced."

"So you agreed?"

"What choice did I have?" He asked, shrugging. "He wouldn't let me die unless I helped. And truth be told, I wanted it over with. The fight for belief was just too much for me. It had taken too much of a toll."

Kozmotis nodded. "Is it truly that awful to not be believed in?" He asked hesitantly, aware that this was a sensitive subject for the man but at the same time curious regardless.

Pitch nodded wearily. "It's one of the worst feelings in the universe. Both Jack and I can attest to this. Like falling through ice and fire at the same time. One of the reasons I didn't want to keep going. I didn't want to feel that again. Even though I don't need belief to survive it still hurts. I only fought so hard for it because it was something I believed was owed to me."

Koz frowned yet again. "Wait, I thought that you had to have belief to survive?" He asked, puzzled.

Pitch nodded. "In a sense. I live on Fear and Belief, and I can't have one without the other. If they don't believe in me, they don't fear me. And if they don't fear me, then they can't believe in me. Either way, I end up fading into nothingness. As I eventually did."

"So...if a child doesn't see you-"

"Belief isn't something that happens when a child sees you." He interrupted. "It's actually the opposite. At least it is for me. The children don't need to see me to be afraid. Merely knowing my name would be enough to give me access to their dreams to turn them into nightmare. You see, children naturally believe in fantastical things. It's part of what makes them so important to the world. They are willing to believe in anything, especially if they don't see it. It's only when they get older that their faith disappears. But in that time when they will believe in everything, they help us by spreading their stories. Some of them might not be all that true, but at least people know our names and just that can boost believe a thousand-fold."

"Interesting."

"It is, actually. If no one knows our names and what we do, we fall away. Back into the void of energy that helps to create spirits so that a new one can be made. Of course," he added. "No spirit's name is truly ever forgotten. They just slip into legend and myths. Have you heard of Isis? Odin? Quetzalcoatl?"

Koz nodded.

"All of them were spirits. Every single one. But they had their time and slowly people stopped believing in them. So they slipped into the void and new spirits took their place."

The man frowned. "But...people still believe in them to this day." He was confused. "There are still people living in Iceland- descendants of Vikings who believe in the old gods."

"They believe in the idea of the old gods," Pitch corrected. "Not the gods themselves. True belief is almost completely unwavering, with little to no doubt. Adult belief is almost more potent as child belief, only because it's harder to come by these days because all adults want proof. Children don't need proof because they have faith."

Kozmotis nodded. It all made sense, in a roundabout way. "OK," he said, raising a hand. "OK, so because of the lack of belief, you were about to fade away until you made a deal to help the new Boogeyman in exchange for eternal rest. I understand that and can believe it. But I still don't know what all this has to do with me!"

Pitch gave him a very sad smile. "Kozmotis, who do you think is the replacement?"

His jaw dropped open faster than a wall street stock market. "You don't mean..."

He nodded. "'Fraid so. Remember, I told you Lunar doesn't let anything go to waste. And that includes bodies. He took my body and fixed it up in the shape of a human. Gave it memories from another life and did the same thing he did to me; plopped you in the driver's seat of a hopeless destiny."

Koz's mouth had gone dry. He could barely speak. "My...whole life... has been a lie?" He asked. "I'm...not real?"

"Oh you're as real as I am." Pitch told him, clapping him on the shoulder as if to solidify his point. "Probably more so, actually. Since I'm almost dead. You're just...a different kind of real."

His head was spinning. So it was true. It was all true. The Guardians were right. He was supposed to be the next Boogeyman. And that meant...

"That means I am going to die." His voice was barely above a whisper. "To become a spirit, I have to live the right kind of life and then die, only to be brought back later."

"That's what I'm guessing he planned to do, yes." Pitch agreed. "But plans have changed. The Guardians found you before you could become a spirit and now they have a biased opinion of you, which throws the whole idea out the window."

"So..." Kozmotis raised his head, looking directly at Pitch. He could see the hopeful glimmer of his eyes reflected in Pitch's emotionless ones and knew that there wasn't much reason for him to hope, but he figured it wouldn't hurt either. "What happens now?"

Pitch heaved a mighty sigh and stood, his entire being radiating an aura of reluctant reassignment. "Now," he said slowly, shaking off invisible dust from the front of his robes. "I'm going back."

Kozmotis blinked. "Back?"

"To the world." Pitch clarified. "I'm going to keep being the Boogeyman." He smiled and put both hands on Kozmotis's shoulders. "Thank you for your help Kozmotis. I'm sure Lunar will find a good human to transfer your consciousness to when this is all over."

"But- you- I thought..." I thought you wanted to die.

Pitch seemed to sense the unspoken words. "Killing myself was a coward's way of getting out of my job," Pitch told him calmly, still smiling that odd smile. "I know that now. I knew that before but this time I understand. I don't get a free pass Kozmotis. I never will. That's just something I'm gonna have to live with."

"But... If you come back..."

"Where will you go?" Pitch's eyes were sparkling. "Don't worry about that. There are plenty of bodies just waiting to be inhabited by spirits. And not my kind of spirit," he added when Kozmotis's eyebrows shot up. "I mean a soul."

"You're...going to put me in a child's body?" Kozmotis asked, not too sure how he liked that proposition.

Pitch nodded, seemingly oblivious to his discomfort. "Of course you won't look the same," he told the human. "You won't have my face. And you won't be able to access any of your memories from the General's life. You might get a rare flash of images or the occasional dream but apart from that you will be completely normal."

It was a tempting proposition. To forget all this madness and just let Pitch take over again. To just return to the human being he used to be. Or hadn't been. "You would be able to fix them," he murmured, running through all the possible positive outcomes inside his head while some of them leaked through out into the open. "Jamie and North. The fear-sickness would be gone. And the Nightmares... they would be gone too. The world would go back to the way it's supposed to."

Pitch raised an eyebrow. "Pardon me?"

Koz didn't immediately hear him. He was too busy still mulling things over in his head. Pitch had to shake him to break him out of it. And when he did, he explained about the fear-sickness that had been effecting North and Jamie and the wild nightmare that had almost killed Jack. Well, he thought as he finished and Pitch sat back, smiling. That answers one question. The Boogeyman definitely hadn't been watching his life through his eyes.

"My my, without me the world truly does go to hell doesn't it?" Pitch mused, grinning like a shark that spotted a bare behind. "Well, that will indeed be the first thing I put to rights when I return. If I return." He added, looking meaningfully at Koz. "It is your choice you know. You inhabit the body, so technically you can choose to become the Boogeyman in the future. And Manny will back your play. He doesn't know anything about this," he gestured to the room around them. "And so when you eventually end up talking to him, you can basically let him do the talking to the Guardians and live out the rest of your life in peace."

The phrase 'rest of his life' got him worrying again. "Will I still have Sera?" He asked. "And my wife? Will they disappear once I die? Will they even know what happened to me?!" He was on his feet again and the sudden switch from sitting to standing brought a rush of blood flowing down his veins. Oxygen was hard to find. He lurched forward but Pitch caught him, sitting him down back into the chair gently.

"They weren't ever real, Kozmotis." He told the man gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. "They were shadows. Memories given flesh, just like you. I'm sure Eros will hook you up with a decent human woman when you grow old enough and the rest will follow. It's not like you're going to remember any of this if you do choose to let me take over. And in the event that that happens then yes, they will fade."

Kozmotis nodded. "But...they won't be dead?"

"No. They will be in... Let's call it stasis. Until they receive bodies and eventually find you. And that's-"

"Assuming I don't take the job yes I heard you the first time." Kozmotis interrupted, waving a hand. He needed time. Time to think. But time was the one thing he didn't have much of. Figures. "So, let me get this straight: If I agree to take the job they will fade and I will turn into an immortal spirit whose only function is to spread and control fear. A being who is hated above all by others because they don't understand his job."

Pitch nodded.

"Or, I can choose to let you take the job which in turn gives me a whole new life without my face or memories- except in dreams. A clean slate, with a new family and a new home. Effectively erasing everything I was and giving it back to you."

Pitch nodded again. "Exactly."

Kozmotis couldn't help it. He chuckled. "Quite a choice."

"Quite. And one that will impact the entire world, should you choose in error."

Kozmotis threw him a glare. "Thanks. Like I wasn't having enough trouble figuring out what to do." He told Pitch sarcastically.

Pitch shrugged. "Hey, like I said it's your choice."

Koz frowned, noticing something strange about the former Boogeyman's attitude. "You're being remarkably calm about this." He commented thoughtfully, looking at Pitch's gray, wane face. "Doesn't my choosing to not be the Boogeyman put you right back in your place under the beds?"

Pitch gave a resigned nod. "It does indeed. But it's no more than I'm used to. I've done it for thousands of years Kozmotis, and probably will continue to do it until I finally do wither away. But at least I will die with the knowledge that, even with the darkness inside me, I finally did some good."

Kozmotis sighed. "Then I guess that's my answer." He replied, folding his arms over his chest and looking stoutly at the Boogeyman. "I'll do it."

Pitch was clearly surprised. His lack of eyebrows shot up and he even looked impressed. "You'll..."

"I'll do it." Kozmotis repeated firmly. "I'd rather doom myself than force someone who has already gone through hell and back to another thousand years of persecution and pain, just for doing his job. Enough is enough Pitch. I'll do it."

Pitch didn't say anything for the longest time. He just stared blankly back at Kozmotis, looking past his eyes and seemingly into his very soul. Kozmotis looked back at him with equal steadiness, wondering what the former Boogeyman was thinking. They sat for the longest time, just watching each other. Silence reigned. And then Pitch stood up, extending a hand outward to him.

Kozmotis stood and took the hand, expecting a solid handshake between respected comrades but what he got was actually much better. As soon as his hand closed around Pitch's he was pulled into a tight embrace and felt another hand patting him on the back while Pitch whispered, "You are a brave man."

It all happened so fast that at first, Kozmotis wasn't quite sure how to response. He stood there awkwardly, frozen like a deer caught in the headlights until Pitch released him. He was smiling.

"You are a brave man," he repeated, still holding onto his hand. "And you will be a credit to the title Boogeyman."

Kozmotis nodded stoically. "I hope so. Just as you were."

Pitch laughed quietly. "I was a mistake." He replied, shaking his head. "You were meant to be the spirit I was. And you will be, ten thousand times over."

Kozmotis took a deep breath and went to thank him for everything that he had done. There were so many things he was thankful for. He was thankful for a chance, and for the answers he had been given. And eh as thankful for the peace he would now be giving Pitch. But before he could say any of this however, a slight pain spiked through his heart and he staggered.

Pitch as immediately at his side. "What's wrong?" He asked. "Are you alright?"

Kozmotis tried to answer but it was like his throat was closing up. "I...don't know." He rasped. Suddenly the room seemed much more dark. "I can't see!"

Pitch nodded thoughtfully, carrying him over to the closest chair. "You're starting to wake up. I thought this would happen soon. It's OK, just relax. I can't promise everything will be alright when you wake up but I can promise that I will help you in every venture you need me, from coping with the loneliness to learning how to control the fear. I promise I will be there."

Kozmotis nodded. His head lolled sleepily. "One...last thing before I go."

"Yes Kozmotis?"

"Who was the General in that story you told me?"

Pitch's glittering eclipse eyes shining in the rapidly encroaching blackness were the last things he saw as he started to wake up. His voice sounded like it was a hundred miles off. "I think you know, General Pitchner."