I'm so sorry I was gone for so long. Here's a chapter before the new year!

Triggers include 6ut likely will n9t 6e limited t9-Okay, screw talking like Kankri. THERE IS A BIT OF BLOOD AND GORE, ONLY A BIT, LIKE A FEW SENTENCES THAT INCLUDE THE WORD BLOOD IN IT. AND SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL STUFF, I GUESS, I DON'T KNOW. JUST A WARNING PEOPLE.

Song of the Chapter: Evidence by DaisyXDaisy (yes, it's a Fairy Tail Opening, I know.) Why? Because the theme of the song goes with the chapter, I guess. Also, I just really freaking like it. ^v^ Play it at anytime, I guess that's the new rule for all the songs now.

From last time…

"Vait… so how doez Pitch come into this?"

Jack opened his mouth, presumably to answer North's question, when the scene changed once again. They were in a dark cave with sparse furnishings in, shocker, black. A cloaked figured could be seen growling to himself as he paced across the cavern floor, his back to them. Turning around, they could clearly see his bright yellow eyes.

Pitch Black was never a man for insanity.

"Are we in Pitch's memory?" Tooth asked, wide-eyed at seeing the man before them. Jack stiffened slightly, raising a question from Sandy, though Sandy did not act on it.

"It would seem so," Bunny said, eyes flickering to look at Tooth before returning to the Nightmare King. North hadn't bothered to even look.

Sure, he liked to cause it but actual insanity was a whole different matter.

There were many different types of insane people and many different types of insanity. However, he had made himself two defining categories to place them in. The first was the Fear Category. The name spoke volumes for itself. People overcome with fear, people driven insane with fear, people acting out of fear. It was all in this category.

Then there was the other one. The one he hated. The Capricious Category.

One moment they were cowering in fear, the next laughing as they hacked off their own limbs. It was sickening to watch and even more to have to seek these people out, which he rarely did. Their fear had always had a sort of artificial aftertaste to him.

Unfortunately, Tom seemed to be one of those men. In fact, that was where Pitch was heading right now.

Passing through the various tunnels, he wondered idly to himself if he would have to kill the man. After all, Tom was stealing his fear. That was another thing he hated about the Capricious Category. They always seemed to suck the fear up themselves, leaving little more than an imprint behind. It made him furious. Yes, this man would have to go today.

Tooth winced at the dark thoughts, shying away from them like they were a rotten cavity. North looked concerned, his brows coming together while Jack looked distressed. Sandy had on a weary look of acceptance. Bunny looked on with a thoughtful look.

He heard a 'thud' from up ahead, giving him pause. A tiny voice screamed out, "DADDY!"

His blood ran cold. Oh moon no, not a child. Anything but a child, down here, in his caves. Who knew what the little monster would do?

The sweet feeling of fear lingered in the air, giving way to Pitch's grin. At least the little monster was full of delicious energy. Then just as suddenly as the fear made itself known, it was blanketed by a darker energy. Another presence made itself known and Pitch visibly recoiled. Tom.

"This is where he comes in, isn't it?" Bunny asked rhetorically. No one even dignified it with an answer.

There that man was again, stealing his fear. He really needed to be dealt with, but first… he had to get the little boy out of here. He finally stepped into the cavern, needing no light source as he could see perfectly well in the dark. He lived in it, after all.

He took in the situation immediately, the little boy on the cavern floor and the two men wrestling a few feet away. He needed to get that child out of there. No, not because he cared for the child himself, just for the child's fear. He was done with this thief.

'Jack…' he whispered, remembering the child from the nearby village. He was a wide-spread prankster, even at a young age.

'Jack, don't cry,' he said, watching as the boy's tears stopped. Thinking fast, he blurted out, 'Daddy is here with me. Just come a little closer…'

He watched as the boy propped himself up against the wall, struggling for support. Once situated, he took a tiny step forward. Pitch smirked.

'That's right Jack,' he encouraged, reaching a hand out to him as the child took another step. 'You're almost—'

He broke off as the men tumbled into him. A glint caught his eye before he used the shadows to cross to the opposite side of the room. A half-second of silence filled his ears, a silence that filled the air in a way that said it was meant to be broken.

"RUN JACK!" a scream came from the man that wasn't Tom, who Pitch assumed was Jack's father or close relative. Without warning, the fear drained out the room, as if being sucked into an endless pit.

'Why you…!' Pitch snarled to himself, hoping he would be the one to personally finish the guy off. It seemed that luck was on his side. Ignoring the screaming around him, ignoring the strange spectacle of a man seemingly to be talking to air, he marched across to Tom, summoning his scythe. He chuckled to himself, oh how long he had waited for this moment.

Jack turned away, eyes squeezing shut as his elders watched on with sadden resignation. Death was never a good thing, or a happy thing for that matter. Good things may come as a result of it, and happiness may follow (after all, whoever heard of winning a war without sacrifice?), but death itself is not a joyful thing. No matter who died.

With a sick grin and a short bark of a laugh, he gave a fluid swipe and lopped the man's head off. A spray of dark blood fanned out, coating everything in its grasp. Lazily, without much of a care really, he watched some of it splash on the retreating figure of the boy, not that the child noticed anyway. He was too busy running away and for some reason, that just made Pitch's sneer grow as most of the red liquid landed on him. It wouldn't matter, though, he could clean his robe later and it's not really like it would stain the thing. It was black for crying out loud.

With a soft gasp, Jack unconsciously rubbed the spots where he now knew the blood had touched him. He had known as a little kid that there was blood on him but he thought it was just because he was hurt. Now… he shuddered, letting Tooth's motherly pats (1) and the group as a whole comfort him.

When the kid began crying again, (2) he couldn't help but egg him on. The sweet, delicious fear began to mix in the air again and he'll be damned if he didn't get a good feed out of this before he lets that child go. Which his is letting him go, because as much as he hates to admit it to himself, he cannot harm this child. Or any child for that matter. It simply isn't in him and he can only scare them. He has to feed somehow, though it's more than that.

The expression on their faces when they look at him, actually look at him instead of through him, is the best. Their fear that he might reach out and grab them like he was a physical being and not ethereal one, not one that people step through as easily as if he were air, makes Pitch giddy and high, and sick and disgusted at the same time. The way their eyes shine and reflect his own image back at him makes him feel alive and he needs more of it.

The children, their fear, prove he exists. That he's not just nothing. And when he's scaring them, making them scream for their mothers as they hide under their sheets, gives him purpose, gives him meaning. That he's not just there. He's there for a reason. Which is why he can never hurt a child. Because as much as he hates them, an equally big part of him loves them to. For they give him existence and purpose, and he gives them something back, even if that something is fear. Fear must come before courage after all. (3)

"I… I didn't know Pitch felt this way," Tooth said, her wings slowing to a stop as she sank to the ground. Everyone seemed to mirror this as they each realized that they could relate to Pitch. It was their existence and purpose after all.

"Neither did I shelia, but now we do," Bunny said, eyes hardening in determination. "And when we get back, maybe we can change a few things."

A few incredulous stares were thrown his way, a majority of them from North, but oddly enough, Sandy and Jack seemed to agree with the Pooka. Maybe Manny was right about this whole memory-bonding experience, maybe it would show them new things.

Eventually, he stopped tormenting the poor child and decided to reveal himself. He watched in amusement as the boy's brown eyes widened momentarily before sliding shut, the effect of the Dreamsand taking place. He had stolen some from Sandy a while ago and had planned on experimenting with it later, to see if he could somehow find some hidden weakness to it, but desperate time call for desperate measures. He couldn't exactly deal with a squirming, screaming child, which was sure to have happened if he had used his Nightmaresand. Picking the boy up, he used the shadows to transport him a ways outside the village and left him there.

He watched the child wake up and for a good while, the boy was silent. He seemed to be in some sort of shock or something, Pitch guessed, before coming out of it and letting out a loud cry. It seemed a trigger of sorts because humans just seemed to flood the area. He watched the boy's mother and what seemed like his twin (because surely it had to be, there was no way that brothers could look that alike) come out and comfort the boy.

"Where's daddy?" the twin asked innocently, seeming to have finally noticed that his father wasn't there. The boy sobbed harder.

Later at night, as he went to give the child bad dreams, he found himself staring back into a pair of brown eyes yet again. He had been so sure that the boy had been asleep. Now the twin had awoken and was staring blearily at the boy.

"What's wrong Jack?" he asked, his eyes ghosting over Pitch. A nonbeliever. It didn't sting a bit, not at all. Pitch was a perfect liar.

"Nothing Mich, go back to sleep," the boy said soothingly, pushing the boy back into the bed. The twin rolled his eyes for a moment before succumbing to sleep. The boy turned back to Pitch.

"You saved me. Thank you." It wasn't even a question, how stupid.

"Do not thank me child," Pitch replied, his tone cold. "I only did it so that I can feed on your fear."

The boy looked thoughtful under the moonlight, and sad. "You're the boogeyman, right?"

"Yes," he replied, a bit too quickly. "And you will soon fear me."

The child's eyes seemed to have a weary look, though it seemed right considering all he had been through today. "I'm tired though."

Pitch had seen that look before. It covered the faces of people who couldn't dream, who had let something so wonderful slip through their hand that they couldn't find another one. He knew, all at once, that that child wouldn't dream that night, no matter if it was good or bad.

"Sleep child," he said, laying the boy back in bed. He wouldn't find a meal here tonight and it was better that he leave soon to find one. The child grabbed his hand.

He smiled brightly and said, "The moon brought you to me, you know?" before falling fast asleep. Pitch chuckled at the irony of that statement.

"Pleasant dreams Jack," he said, finally acknowledging the boy's—Jack's—name, even if he had said it prior. Carefully disengaging his hand, he spotted a gleam outside and tried his best to guide a bit of Dreamsand to the boy, in hopes of maybe the boy will dream.

Because for the first time in a while, he hadn't had to scare the boy to prove his existence.

"Jack," North said as the scenery faded away. "Did you really believe that the Moon brought you to Pitch?"

Jack shuffled his feet and bit his lip, looking down at the ground before looking back up again. They were all waiting for an answer, silently demanding one in some cases, and he gave them one.

"Yeah, he saved me. And I guess, in a way, I sort of saved him."

Nobody had a chance to dwell on this as the world faded to white and they were launched into the next memory.

Excuse time! SO I've had this stored away, writing it piece by piece and I finally finished it today. WHOO! I didn't mean for it to come out so... dark and depressing. Wow. Sorry. Did you like it?

Okay so before you guys say anything I have to admit to something: I've become a Homestuck. NO DON'T CLICK THE 'X' OR BACK BUTTON YET, LISTEN. I freaking love HS and it's kinda the reason I've been so distracted lately. Sorry. I started reading HS a few months back, about a month after I put this fic on hold. And by gog, if reading HS wasn't the best decision of my life, I don't know what is. But even though I gave my soul to Hussie, FFN, my stories, and my readers still have my kokoro, okay? Just had to get that out there.

(1) You have no idea how bad I wanted to right "shoosh pap" here.

(2) Sorry if the sentence wording is off, I started writing it in "You" format that HS is usually written in since I've been working on some HS oneshots recently.

(3) THIS IS MY HEADCANON. THAT IF PITCH ON DAY BECAME A GUARDIAN THAT HE WOULD BE THE GUARDIAN OF COURAGE. OHMYMOON, YES. HELL YES. HELL FUCKING YES.

(4) Shoutout to blue008 for constantly coming back to this fic and encouraging me! You helped me finish this chapter blue! *kokoros*