Jack always had possessed solitude, to the point of suffocation and complete unbearable loneliness, but it was one created by people being present but not knowing that he existed. When he truly needed to be alone, Jack flew to the arctic. This time as he flew in such a sprawling gust of wind that it was more of a punishment than anything else. He wanted to be with the rest of the Guardians, but they had no wish to be with him, nightmare or not. He had failed them, completely and utterly, crushing the lives of those that had almost become his companions, friends. Now black swirled into the eyes and souls of these Guardians, and this blackness had settled over North's heart in the outcome of everything.
Here in the arctic, the frosty world surrounded him, freezing these thoughts and causing everything to slow. The sky was a mass of clouds, strangling him between its gaze and the steely slate of the bitter chunks of ice. Normally, Jack could find comfort in the bliss of such complete frost and silence, but now it just caged him even further, reminding him how utterly he was alone now. And it frightened him, horrified him, far more than any monster under beds—after Jack had finally found people he could converse with, they had been poisoned and stolen away by fear. What does it matter? A voice screeched within his head, a deafening roar against the quiet screams of nothing that existed beyond his own mind. You've been alone! You've always been alone! For millenniums you've lived without a word directed towards you. What should it matter that you had the slightest sight of companionship? What difference does it make? But even the slightest lick of friendship had taught Jack such joy that he could not just forget or move past, but itch for with such compassion. And it even worse than the fact that they were no longer with him was that they were instead completely shattered from their previous selves, splinters cast about before being sewn back together in entirely unrecognizable forms, light and kindness swallowed within the shadow of fear.
Another voice stirred, a soft hiss that twisted within him and poisoned him just as darkly as the nightmare sand. It's your fault, too, you realize. You couldn't reach Sandy in time to save him or even help in any form. All you could do for Tooth was watch her struggle, not even offering a single hand to help since you are such a loner you couldn't be bothered by anyone's problems but your own. Worse yet was with Bunnymund, who you could have actually helped. You had been right there with them, but were too busy with a kid that saving your only friends wasn't important enough. To you, none of them must be important enough for a second thought. You're a loner, Jack, always have been, and now, because of your helplessness, you always will be forced into such a role.
"No, no, no!" Jack screamed out loud, his voice bounding around the glaciers in an echo. He pressed his hands over his ears, desperate to free himself of the words that his own mind was concocting. It didn't even sound like Jack, wasn't the cheerfulness he usually managed to carry through with his last breath. Really, it sounded like Pitch, spinning his venomous web of doubt. This thought in mind, Jack spun around stupidly, fervently searching for Pitch with narrowed eyes. As desperate as this was, Jack wanted to see that the words that haunted his thoughts weren't his own, but instead the very force of fear—he wanted it to be a form in which he could hurtle his ice at, causing Pitch to pay for this entire ordeal. Jack didn't want to be so utterly helpless.
Who he did spy worsened Jack's internal pain to the point of nausea. The black cloud suspended in the air in a glittering mass of darkness, floating down without much hurry onto Jack's scene. The wielder wasn't the hated Nightmare King behind this whole terror, but was instead the little man that had been a frightening force enough, even without fear flowing through his veins. From the layered robes to the flimsy tufts of hair protruding from his head, the Sandman was literally the shadow of his former self. The sight of him took Jack's breath away.
"Come on, Sandy," Jack still managed to call out, watching the form hover towards him forlornly. "I know you're still in there, I know you're still fighting! Sandy, I believe in you! I believe in your strength and your kindness; I believe in your dreams and courage! Please... just keep fighting the fear."
The Sandman didn't respond, not through any sort of images, or even the twitch of expression on his face. It couldn't be clearer that these words were coming too late. He was a strangely solemn force, edging towards him until they were standing side by side on the ground.
"If you've given up, then I have to fight you," Jack murmured, his voice barely a breath in this silence, for volume wasn't necessary to communicate the weight of the words that he spoke. Jack's eyes met Sandy's, staring into the vortexes of gleaming black that looked straight through him.
The Sandman responded by taking out a long, slender whip of nightmare sand that glinted lethally. It greatly resembled the weapon Sandy had used just days before on Pitch. He raised it most deliberately, striking down at Jack, who barely managed to dodge in time to avoid the hit.
Tears stinging the edges of his eyes, Jack responded by launching off several spears of ice, the shards glistening in midflight, reflecting off the light of the snow. They shot through the air, clashing against the nightmare sand that composed this new Sandman and shattering to dust. The shards of cold had been utterly useless. Jack gasped at the sight of how powerful Sandy had grown with the nightmare sand seething through his veins. He had no chance, none at all. Still, the two of them continued to fight, Jack thrusting useless daggers of ice while twisting back and forth in an effort to avoid the bite of Sandy's whip. In the end, all that it took was one well aimed bomb of nightmare dust that happened to land on Jack's head, knocking him into a fervent slumber.
Dreams play with one's most fragile fragments of the mind; nightmares tear away at these feeble areas until all that is left is dust. It wears at the conscience, transforming and altering thoughts to fit the flimsy formats the dreams take. That was why when Jack opened his eyes to the world within his nightmare, he couldn't even tell that he was asleep, but instead thought that the ammunition had simply knocked him to the ground. The cliffs of ice still gleamed around him, but were held fast by shadows that caged his vision, causing the snow to save its usual gleam. He twisted his head around, forcing himself to his feet as he gazed around in desperation, attempting to catch sight of the nightmare Sandman. In a moment, Sandy was upon him, looming above him with all of his finesse and power, so suddenly that it wouldn't have made sense if this had happened by the logic of the real world. Behind him appeared another dark figure, her feathers forming an inky mass of black indigo, her wings fluttering behind her in a smoky blur. It really was true, then; Toothiana was a nightmare. On the other side of Sandy the larger, furry figure of Bunnymund appeared, the same rabid version that Jack had seen fighting North.
"No..." Jack whimpered, spying the last hulking specter's appearance behind the entire group of him. Jack stared into the cold, empty eyes of the one Guardian he hadn't even imagined could be turned, for he was always there, with strength in both his stride and his laughter, and it was unthinkable to even have the realization that he was just as likely to be forced into being a nightmare as any of them. And yet, North still stood before Jack, his coat glimmering with the nightmare sand's texture and his facial features emptied from the jolliness that always was such a big part of him.
"There is no more hope for you, mate," Bunny announced, his voice a dead monotone that chilled Jack to the bone, for there wasn't even any emotion cast into the familiar word 'mate'. "This reality is our platform to dispel everything into fear and create a world of darkness for us to thrive in. You are the last light to snuff out in our way."
"Join us, Jack," Toothiana continued, her voice mirroring the same deadpan of Bunnymund's. "Give into the fear. We shall all be together forever; no more lonely solitude; no more pain. Join us."
Jack took a step back, readying his staff before him in defense, his brow furrowed defiantly. "No! It doesn't matter if I'm the only survivor, if all of you have fallen. I will keep fighting until my last breath!" With that off his chest, he fired a row of frost at them, shooting up into the air and continuing to pellet them as he flew.
The nightmare Guardians were flung back, caught unaware by the sudden attack. However, they weren't otherwise affected, and only took a moment to regroup. They plunged into the sky, swirling together in a massive wall of darkness that followed Jack into the heavens. As they moved this they kept murmuring, in a continuous anthem of words: 'Join us, join us, join us...' Jack barely had a moment before they were upon him, swirling around him in a haze of darkness, blocking his view from any light, lashing out at him. Jack continued to shoot ice at them, knowing how useless this all was but still forcing himself to keep fighting.
Suddenly Bunny's paw lashed out, knocking Jack's staff from his hands, and capturing it in his own grasp. Utterly powerless without the wood, Jack plummeted to the ground. His limbs flashed outwards, trying to stall the inevitable fall to no success. Surprisingly, it wasn't the crashing collision of Jack hitting the snow that burst his body into endless agony, crushing every nerve in his body; it was what was still happening in the sky. Bunnymund cracked the staff in two, shattering Jack more completely than if he had broken every bone in his body. Frozen to the ground in the sheer anguish, he watched the Guardians of nightmares glide down beside him, circling his crushed form. For a moment after they had landed beside them, they just stood there, waiting patiently for the inevitable.
"You had no chance," Bunny repeated himself.
"Fine..." Jack mumbled, his voice leaving his lips in breathless grunts. There was no happy ending in this for him, there was only surrender. "I... I will join you." Jack closed his eyes, shutting his lids to a terrorizing darkness that was even more complete than any of the nightmares. The dream world faded away, and yet it still felt so real that Jack was afraid to open his eyes, unsure which reality to trust.
"Good," the cold voice of the Nightmare King said, brimming with sick pleasure. "I knew you'd eventually see it our way."
Jack opened his eyes to find that the waking world was hardly a change from the dream that had just devoured him whole. The only change was that instead of North, Pitch was standing above him with the other Guardians, his grin bearing down on Jack. With eyes opened into slits, Jack watched Pitch finger two halves of his staff, placing them together in what use to form a whole. Reaching out his slender fingers, Pitch sparked long tentacles that grew along the twisted wood, sliding up its surface and wrapping a cocoon of nightmare sand. As this happened, the changes of Jack were very apparent, a dark hue growing from his feet and entangling him in a skin of nightmare that caged the original Jack behind an impenetrable wall.