WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Death, murder, breathplay, bad methods of dealing with psychological trauma, Pitch is creepy.
He'll never understand Jack's love of children.
Even after seeing what they become, what happens to that brightness, Jack is ferociously protective. He'll go out even more now, play with more children and work harder to bring smiles to their faces. He'll bring groups together and spend days in one town. (But he'll never talk about individual children anymore. Jack doesn't let himself get focused and attached now. So at least he learned something.)
"Why!?" Pitch had finally snapped. Jack paused in the middle of some new story about sledding with children, smile fading as Pitch goes on. "Why do you care so much!? You know they won't stay that way! You know what they turn into!"
Jack shrinks in slightly, looking away. "I know." He says softly, eyes going distant. "I know...but I want to protect them while they're like this. They don't stay good for long...and I want them to be happy while they're still bright and before they go bad."
Pitch still doesn't understand. Children turn into humans, and nothing can be done about it. Nothing can redeem them.
He doesn't understand, but he accepts. He accept and watches, perplexed, as each new horror that unveils itself just makes Jack more determined to protect the children while they're young.
To them, he is laughter and gently falling snow and glittering blue eyes showing them new ways to have fun.
To those who hurt them...he's ice and freezing water and a sudden slick area next to a sharp, long fall.
Jack loves children fiercely. But he has very little regard for adults. And he's a quiet, frozen death for the adults who harm children.
Jack never directly kills, but Pitch sees the way he carefully lays out thin ice over a pond that he knows certain men go fishing in. Sees how Jack watches with flat eyes while his victims slip over a precipice or get lost and disoriented in the blizzard that will never let up.
Pitch is pretty sure that Jack's Guardian friends don't know about his little side hobbies.
"They'll catch you one day." Pitch says to him once. They stand in the trees next to some frozen pond in Europe. Everything is quiet (it wasn't a few seconds ago) and Pitch can't look away from Jack watching the fresh hole in the ice. "You're little friends. I doubt they'd approve."
Jack blinks, a short, quick movement that doesn't seem quite natural as he looks up at Pitch.
Pitch can hardly stand to look back, but he can't stand to look away. Jack is painfully beautiful and horrible when he's like this. His colors are drained and he looks like something hewn from the ice. His skin is papery white, with just faint tinges of blue where there should be pink. His eyes are flat and dull and completely blank.
His eyes look like thin ice over very, very deep water.
He looks like the frozen corpse that he is.
"It's only the bad ones." He says, voice odd and distant. "I only kill the bad ones."
"If you only kill the 'bad ones' you'll end up taking them all!" Pitch snaps. "They're all like that Jack! Some are just holding it in, but they know what they are! It's all laid out in their fear!"
Jack doesn't react. He never does when he's like this. He just blinks again and looks back to where the ice is already closing over the lake again. "Just the bad ones..." He says. "Just the ones that hurt the kids. The kids are still good."
Pitch doesn't know what else to say. He never does when Jack goes all dead and cold.
It doesn't happen often.
It's only every few years, that Jack will start getting quiet.
It starts with a jumpy, nervous silence. With Jack leaving for longer and longer periods of time after finding someone who's earned his...darker attentions.
Then the jumping and twitching stops. The silence gets heavy, grows solid and dense and takes a physical form in Jack. Pitch will watch, will always watch, as Jack starts to turn to ice. As he'll go deathly still and lost in his own head, as his skin bleaches out and his eyes go flat and distant.
It's always then that Pitch knows that the latest victim doesn't have long.
Jack never toys with them. He simply uses whatever works best at the time; a blizzard, a collapsed roof, a falling icicle...
Later, when cars blaze down the roads at already deadly speeds, Jack will find how easy it is to make ice blend in with the black pavement (and the Guardians never notice. Never see what Jack is as they try to lure him to them. Too concerned with the precious children to see what Jack can do to the adults.)
He turns into something else entirely.
And it makes Pitch's still heart stammer, seeing Jack like this (like a ghost, a hollow specter of death. A merciless but simple tool of revenge with the dead, frosted eyes of a corpse. Jack becomes a nightmare all on his own).
Pitch does not believe in any powers higher than them. But he would call Jack an angel. A perfect, terrible, beautiful angel of cold and dark and death.
It wrenches at his lungs, makes his blood curdle and his throat close up on the next breath.
It's far too beautiful.
And it's not His Jack.
It's not that Pitch doesn't love the glimpses of this Other Jack. He'll follow Jack the entire time that the boy is a hollow body. Pitch won't take his eyes away from the gorgeous puppet that has replaced his Jack.
But he always breathes out a sigh of relief when the ice breaks and Jack smiles again.
Usually it happens on it's own. Shortly after Jack is done with whoever earned his wrath he'll crawl back. Crawl to Pitch and curl into him...
...and slowly shatter apart.
And Pitch will put the pieces back together. Will hold him and smooth the cracks away until Jack is shuddering and gasping and coming back to life at the touch of his hand.
But sometimes it takes more.
It's been almost an entire season. A season of looking into dead, blank and frosted eyes that should be shining bright. A season of this porcelain, frozen creature wearing Jack's face.
Jack moves like a mechanical doll. Every move just jerky enough to look wrong. It's like everything is programmed in.
It's all wrong, even as Jack reaches up with blue tinged fingers and pulls Pitch down on top of him.
Jack can always tell when just tucking himself up against Pitch's ribs won't be enough.
It's like kissing a glacier, like putting his lips to marble and Pitch presses in for more. He moves slow, running his hands over the sharp and hard skin hoping to coax Jack back out.
Jack presses back, eyes dead while he gasps softly and arches as Pitch slides into him. Fingers like frosted steel digging into Pitch's shoulders.
And Pitch keeps himself gentle and slow and cradles Jack's face within his hands. He moves over Jack's skin, keeping his touches gentle and soft and steady. (Even though he wants to tear at Jack and dig into him until he can find HIS Jack again.)
Gentle is what has always worked. Slow, soft and coaxing touches that thaw and bring Jack back out of his shell.
Jack arches and sighs and moves against him, but his eyes are flat and he isn't breaking down into trembles like he usually does. Pitch kisses him harder, pushes more, clings harder
and he can feel the panic starting.
Jack isn't coming back, Jack isn't breaking through and coming back to life, he's dead he's dead his Jack is dead and he'll only have this monster now.
He hasn't noticed that he's stopped, that he's just shaking now and curled around Jack, still pressed deep inside him while his fingers clutch. Doesn't realize how much he's shaking until a cold (it's a different cold, Jack's cold is a sweet and sharp thing but this is burning and deep and blistering) hand wraps around his, bringing it up.
There's a flicker, just enough that Pitch can feel the slight tremor of fear with it. Jack isn't coming out like he usually does, and they both know it.
Jack's eyes (the terrible flat and clouded blue eyes) stare at him as he brings Pitch's hand up to his throat.
He presses Pitch's palm against his pulse and tilts his head back. His face is blank and his voice is hollow.
"Scare me."
Pitch goes still, feels the air punched out of him and isn't sure he heard right, though his hand is already closing, curling around that thin neck.
He can feel the heartbeat against his palm (not dead he's not dead yet he can still come out) jumping as his fingers close all the way around and start to squeeze. Jack inhales deep, and Pitch can feel the air going through his throat, can feel the way it rattles against his hand as he slowly tightens his grip.
Jack isn't afraid yet, but he's giving himself so completely, giving his LIFE to Pitch, giving his mind over. Pitch presses deeper into him while he presses just a little more with his hand. He wants this to be steady, wants to feel Jack's breath slowly strain against his palm.
He leans down, not quite close enough for a kiss. But close enough to feel the exhales growing thinner and thinner as he squeezes.
Even if he's dead, Jack still starts to feel the lack of air, starts to open his mouth to try inhaling against the pressure on his throat.
Pitch leans in further, breathes in the sound of Jack gasping against his hand and breathes in the last breath Jack lets out.
Jack's body jerks, an automatic reaction with no real fear behind it, but the shadows creep in, hold his limbs down and keep him still while Pitch starts to move.
He braces his weight on the hand at Jack's throat, feels the pulse stuttering and jumping and the muscles straining. Presses harder while his hips slam into Jack.
It makes Jack jump against the shadows holding him down, makes his eyes go wide and his mouth open on a silent sound that Pitch feels caught against his hand. There's a desperate whisper of noise that Pitch digs his fingers into.
He breathes harder while Jack doesn't breathe at all. With his cries silenced there's just the sound of slapping skin and Pitch's own gasping breaths while he pounds into Jack and squeezes more and more.
Jack closes his eyes, fingers scrambling at the stone and arms jerking against the shadows. Pitch can feel how hard Jack is, pressed against his stomach and twitching with each thrust of Pitch's hips.
Jack is straining for him
and Pitch has him.
Has Jack reacting to every thrust and press. Has him entirely under Pitch's control, literally in the palm of his hand. Even the occasional threads of air Jack manages to suck in are only because Pitch lets him.
And then Pitch stops allowing even that. He squeezes and doesn't let up this time, keeps his fingers like a vice as he thrusts harder and then he feels it. It starts as thin cracks, a buzzing in the air that builds as Pitch clenches his hand harder.
He hisses and soaks it in, a desperate clawing fear that grows as Jack begins to struggle. The shadows let his arms go and his hands clutch at Pitch's arm, fingers digging ice into skin while his muscles shake.
But he doesn't try to pull Pitch off.
So Pitch leans in, presses his lips to that open mouth and doesn't stop. Doesn't stop thrusting and squeezing even as Jack's fingers start to lose their grip. Doesn't stop as the fear grows stronger while Jack grows weaker.
And oh that fear. Panicked and desperate and Pitch finally feels it break. Pulls back just enough to watch the ice shatter as Jack's eyes fly open.
Bright and brilliant living blue eyes, wide with panic.
And Pitch lets go.
And Pitch watches Jack come back to life.
Watches him shudder and jerk and heave down air and choke on it. Watches the way his whole body convulses as he sucks in air and comes against Pitch. There isn't a scream, there's barely any sound but labored, hoarse breaths. Pitch feels the fear break and shatter and he groans into the bruises on Jack's neck while he follows Jack's orgasm.
He curls over Jack, panting as Jack's breathing breaks into choked sobs. He wraps around Jack and runs his hands over damp white hair and kisses the tears away.
Jack curls into him, shaking and gasping and alive. And Pitch could almost cry himself when he feels the shake turning into a small, desperate laugh.
Everything will be alright. Sometimes Jack may go hollow and dead and empty. But that's fine, as long as Pitch can bring him back to life.