Author's Note: Ok guys.
I'm freaking out.
I just took on two full length ghost writing projects (both due in three months) and a long term substitute teacher position in the home stretch month of when they are due.
I'm freaking out.
I am going to try my absolute best, my stay up all night and crank it out absolute best, to get updates to you for all stories. (Which is nothing new… because Pitch never lets me sleep too long with all the damned nightmares.)
Please bear with me though. I honestly didn't expect to get picked up like this.
Pray none of my other pending proposals are accepted. ._. Pitch has things to say too!
The author is scared out of her mind. It's quite thrilling and makes my life absolutely delicious.
To all my fanatical giggling minions – carry on. My ego has quadrupled in the time it has taken you to read this. I may indeed have love for you yet. Or at the very least, tolerance.
In the distance, Jack hears the colossal door to Adam's room swing open… and close – a damning sound that shakes him to his core, resonating like the final beat of a heart. His hands knot into his pants. He holds his breath, hoping and praying the man will come around the corner and profess… something. Anything!
As the moments drag on, and that faith disappears, Jack gives into despair unlike anything he has ever experienced. He shivers and quakes – the lack of sleep and stress amplifying the devastation. Adam doesn't need him, doesn't want him, doesn't love him… He does not notice the lights above him flicker on and off.
"Jack?" he hears.
The familiar tone makes him raise his watery eyes. Pierre, who stands at the end of the hall, balks when he sees the boy in tears. He hurries forward. In Jack's distress, he almost forgot about Pierre entirely. He doesn't have the heart to feel guilty for it either. And even now, as Pierre kneels, his wide blue eyes confused and searching, Jack has no idea what to tell him. Nothing rational justifies this. The broad man hovers there, looking as helpless as he probably feels. Jack figures Pierre hasn't the slightest inkling of what is going on. All he knows is that Jack won Worlds and now he's sitting in some corner, sobbing like a child. Jack knows he must look ridiculous. The mere idea of this sort of behavior would have repulsed him only a week ago.
"I ran into Adam on the way up to look for you. What happened? What's going on?"
Jack's lip starts quivering again. He averts his eyes. Jack is surprised by the tenderness in Pierre's worn hands when the man cups his face and gently turns it towards him. They meet eyes. Jack disintegrates. He shifts enough to crumble against Pierre's chest, his hands taking feeble purchase in another of his hideous argyle sweaters. Pierre hesitates. He gradually engulfs Jack in his arms.
"I don't want it," Jack croaks. "I don't want it without him."
Pierre sounds perplexed. "You don't want what, kiddo?"
"The Worlds. I don't –" He can't finish. Pierre keeps Jack close while he fetches his key card from the floor. Pierre reaches up and inserts the card into the slot, unlocking the room. He hoists Jack to his feet and practically carries him inside. He takes Jack into his bedroom and sits him down at the foot of his bed. Pierre kneels before him.
Jack doesn't know how to react when he glances up and sees tears in Pierre's eyes. Pierre sandwiches Jack's hands between his own, dwarfing them. "I'm going to go get him. Ok? He's probably just getting cold feet."
Jack frowns, his jaw tight. "… You know?" he asks, wiping his cheeks in vain.
He nods gravely. "I understood the night we saw Black Swan. I saw it in the both of you."
"… In him too?" Jack squeaks. He feels utterly pathetic.
"Yes Jack. In him too."
"Then why would he say that? Why would he leave? Why—" Fresh tears spring to his eyes. Pierre gets to his feet and stoops over to comb his hand through Jack's ash blonde hair. He also presses a kiss to his forehead.
"Don't you move, boyo. I'm going to talk some sense into him."
Jack manages a strangled smile in return. The sympathy and sincerity in Pierre's big blue eyes only drives the knife deeper. There is too much pity in his face. Pierre knows… He knows Adam is never coming back.
"You stay right here. Ok? Right here." Jack just nods, abruptly assaulted by the crippling urge to vomit. Pierre gingerly touches his cheek, turns on his heel, and leaves him. Jack can hear the heavy falls of his hefty feet as he jogs down the hallway. The door to his room bangs shut, rocking the landscape on the entry wall. Jack collapses back into bed and sinks into the sheets. He turns on his side and smothers his face into the pillow. The emotional upheaval has frayed every nerve ending and crushed every sensible thought. He screams into the comfortless cloud, the sound muffled and largely silent in the vacuum of pain. The lights in his room flicker on and off. Jack, buried in the pillow, does not notice.
The questions slither into his thoughts – serpents asking in the most fetid tongue what is wrong with himself, asking why Adam would do this, asking if it is somehow his fault… They caress. They wish away. They soothe.
And then comes a strange, corrosive, perfidious surge. It creeps into his heart, which soaks it up eagerly. Saturated. Seeping. Black.
An organ dripping with black.
Adam lied to him.
Adam betrayed him.
Adam… used him.
Adam never had any true feelings for Jack.
Teenage hormones and too many drinks.
Adam got what he wanted, and made off scott-free. Adam would never love him. And no one ever will.
Teenage hormones and too many drinks.
Only one could... Maybe…
Cold and dark.
Only one will ever…
Jack awakens. The lights flicker again. He sits up in bed cautiously. His eyes and cheeks and blotchy and pink. His throat aches. He glances at the clock. It's midnight. He must have cried himself to sleep.
Midnight. Jack scrambles to find his phone. He discovers no new messages, missed calls, or voice mails. He cannot curb the craving anymore. He thumbs through his contacts until he finds Adam's number. His finger hovers just over the "send" button. And then, to his horror, his contact list begins to disappear. The names scroll by and vanish, faster and faster until only a blank screen remains. His phone has been wiped clean… like a beach after the tide. Jack dials Pierre's number in a panic, which he knows from memory. He blanches when he puts the receiver to his ear and all he hears… is a flat tone and static.
His phone service has been disbanded.
And more dreadful still, Jack can see his breath in the air.
Cold and dark.
Jack leaps out of bed, careens around the corner, and dashes headlong to the door of his suite. He tries the stainless steel handle in anxious jerks. It is locked… from the outside. But this is impossible. It must be stuck. Just stuck!
He pulls and shakes, rattling the sturdy rampart with all his might. Nothing comes of it. Confused and frightened, he whirls around in search of something to help. But he finds something else.
Jack stands rigid when he notices that a black mist is snaking out from under his bed. Paralyzed with fear, he watches the smoky tendrils comb the floor.
Cold and dark.
"Help," he whispers. To his terror, he realizes that he cried himself hoarse… and has nearly lost his voice. The lights flicker again and then shut off completely. "I'm dreaming," he whispers in the dark. "I have to be. This isn't real. It's not real. It's just like the others. It's-"
Two amber eyes open from the opposite end of the room and leer at him. In the harrowing palpable realm of reality, Jack realizes… that he recognizes those eyes.
"You," he whispers.
"Me," replies the phantom.
"From the locker room."
"Is that all?" it asks. A chocolate voice.
Jack slowly shakes his head, bracing the breadth of his back against the door. "… No. Every night since… when I sleep."
"You've dreamt of me," it finishes. "How quaint."
"You're real. You're really real… Who are you?" he trembles.
"I told you," it pacifies. "Over and over, I told you precisely who I am. And in your secret heart, you already know. In the bleakest hours of the morning, when I had you writhing in pleasure, you knew. Cold and dark, my Jack Frost."
The sobering truth hits him head on. With bated breath, "Frost… and Black."
Viciously, "Do you really think you would have won that little tournament… if it wasn't for my influence?"
Jack swallows hard. "What do you mean?"
"As I said: You're no natural talent. I selected you to win. And now you have."
"You never had faith in me," he accuses. "Adam did." The eyes draw nearer. Jack can just barely make out the shape of a lofty body in the dark.
"On the contrary. Your skills are quite real. Your routines are impressive. I merely know the value of hard work – of something earned. I did not throw my trust to the looms of fate – into the tenuous, incapable hands of something I cannot see. I knew. I believed in you, Jack."
"No…" he tries.
"It's always been me. Your trifles with Russell, while entertaining, were merely you acting upon the only impulse within reach. The desire, the passion, the daydreams… They were never about Adam."
"No," Jack defends with gumption. Quickly, "I love him." He immediately regrets it. It's… not true. He is confused. His feelings are not the same as before.
"Do you?" Black taunts.
Jack's brows knit together. He sidles into the corner and presses himself into the crease. "I… I don't… I don't know, I—" But the nightmare is not deterred.
"And where is he now?" Pitch presses. "Gone. Gone like the sun, gone like the moon. It is you and I, alone in the dark. If you recall, it was not him you hoped to have abed… was it? My visits gave you but a taste of the decadence I possess. I see your mind. There is nothing for you beyond this room. Adam could never satisfy you. Not now."
Jack's resolve is shaken. He stands on the precipice of utter ruin. "What have you done to me?" The eyes are so close. Jack stares up into them.
"Opened your eyes, or closed them, if you prefer. Mine is a dark world. Ours is a dark world. It is the world you belong in." Jack recalls well that the sunless months in Alaska, the months they never saw daylight, were his happiest. "I will never leave you, Jack." Yet, this admission is not kind. Rather, it is fraught with dubious intent and laced with arsenic. Jack goes rigid when a hand curls around his throat. Jack seizes his wrist, as if it will help. While harmless now, a clawed thumb digs into the fleshy gap between his jaw, forcing his chin up. Jack cannot look away from the menacing golden eyes. "No matter how strident your determination, or ruthless your desire, you will never escape. You will always return to me," he promises. Velvet chains…
Jack shivers. "I'm scared."
"Are you?" The hand loosens its iron grip. The eyes soften. "Are you really?"
Confusedly, "I don't know. I was… a moment ago."
Sympathetically, "You have lived a rigid life. It is natural to fear what you think is unknown. I offer you freedom," he poses.
Jack cannot tell if the sentiment is true or contrived. He shakes his head as much as the grip lets him. "You offer me a cage," he laments.
"Precisely," Black answers. "I offer you the same direction, the same guidance, and the same control that you cannot imagine living without. As independent and tenacious as you wish you were, something born a lilac cannot become a rose. You cannot change. And I would never ask it of you. I want you like this – distraught, destitute, and vulnerable. Embrace all your darkest fantasies. Delight in them."
"What are you?" Jack whispers, melting.
Through a diabolical grin,"I am the Nightmare King, my foolish frost fairy. And I am not of this world."
"... Where will you take me?" Jack asks, transfixed.
"Away."