A few weeks had passed since the news had broken loose. The twins had by then officially moved into Santoff Claussen so I had the Treehouse to myself. And, you know... after all the chaos that had been going on for the past six months - or so - it was weird for it to be quiet. I'd just spent five years all alone by choice and now after the ruckus, it felt empty. I'd decided that I wanted to try and find a way to play music in my own house, at least to try and fill the silence. Recently, some scientists with musical backgrounds had discovered that the rings of trees could work like records to play notes. It got my mind spinning.

"Hey, Big Guy? Can you sing?" I had my hand on the inside of the staircase's wall. Now, I didn't mean sing literally, more like humming, but still, I wanted to know if it was possible. I'd always wanted to have a sound system but I never wanted to try and run wires or anything all the way out to the Treehouse. If this worked it'd be almost too good to be true.

The tree swayed slightly, which was often as much of a response as Big Guy could give me. But then the whole tree sort of shivered or thrummed. Almost how a guitar chord felt when you strummed it. I walked up to my room and pulled my guitar out of the back of my closet, taking a few minutes to remember any chords I'd need to play. I started playing How to Save a Life by The Fray, singing along as I did - hoping that this worked and that I wasn't deluding myself.

Around when I got halfway through the second verse I started noticing almost a buzzing sound keeping in key. Now it wasn't like bugs flying around or anything normal, more like a vibrating low hum. I strummed as quietly as I could while I listened and sure enough, Big Guy was playing the song. I laughed out loud. "Yes!" I knew it was probably gonna take a long time to train Big Guy to figure out what songs went with which titles and for it to learn all the songs I knew - of which I didn't even know the full number - but I was gonna keep at it, by thunder.

While I played through a few more songs I thought back to the conversation I'd had with Sam in England after he stopped being mad. I'd asked him why he was hiding out in the woods north of London by an old house and I got an answer I would never have expected. "I used to live here." He said. My eyes sort of bugged out of my head when he said that because I didn't know that he ever lived in Europe period. He did say that he left America at first, right? Confirming, my suspicions and blowing my mind, he pointed at the mansion. "That was my house."

I stared at him, wide-eyed. "How rich were you?"

He chuckled. "I wasn't, not really." He looked down for a second before his eyes were drawn back to the house on the hill. "When I turned seventeen I left home and sailed here. I wanted to make a life for myself somewhere where no one knew who I was. I was going by Samuel Thompson so there was even less to trace me back home. I ended up getting a job with a merchant who had pretty expansive trade routes." He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "Needless to say, he was loaded. He liked me and I was a good worker so he trusted me too. About a year after I started working for him, his wife and daughter visited his shop - which I was watching at the time - to meet the man that he 'spoke so highly of'." There was a small and bittersweet smile on his face.

"Sara and I clicked instantly. We courted for a while before her dad allowed us to get married." My eyebrows shot up. I'd never known that he'd been married before. But that wasn't the most surprising thing at all that he was gonna tell me that morning. He gestured to the estate again. "This had been their summer home. It was a wedding gift to the both of us." His smile turned really sad then. "Less than a year after we were wed Thomas was born." His nose crinkled and he looked up. "We were so happy. After I... I didn't come back here for a long time. By the time I had, other people had moved in and it wasn't our home anymore. That's when I moved back to Salem. I still come here sometimes when I need to get away. Most people don't know where I lived before the Andover house so they don't usually follow me here."

I looked at him for a minute, trying to think of something to say that didn't sound cheesy and stupid. Eventually, I put my hand on his shoulder and said the most cliche thing possible. "I'm sorry."

I didn't expect him to laugh at that but laugh he did. Loudly. He wiped at his eyes, still grinning. "You don't need to apologize for intruding on my solitude, Story. I'm actually kind of glad you did." He turned towards me. "I've never told you about my family here and I really should have. Sara's family were the first people to see me as me and not Samuel Wardwell's grandson. The way I felt about them is how you feel about Jack." He looked back at his home. "This is actually the best place I could have told you about them, honestly."

"Have you ever told Jack?"

He nodded. "Yeah. A few weeks after the shitstorm with Pitch when he got his memories back, he realized that if he had a past then everyone else must have had one too. He asked me about it and I told him about the Trials and my family, I told him about Sara and Thomas, about why I was living at the house in Salem - which he'd always questioned, mind you." He sat back a little and rubbed between his shoulder blades. "I didn't tell him where I'd lived before though. I just told him it was Europe." He paused for a second and cocked his head. "You know, it was right around then that he stopped playing pranks on immortals."

"Aside from you." I grinned at him.

He snickered. "Yeah. He still plays them on mortals - especially his believers, but he doesn't go after the other immortals anymore." His expression changed. "I think he figured out that we all had a less than ideal introduction into our new lives like he did."

I looked down. "I've noticed. I think he's trying to make up for how he used to act. He didn't know that he was being an ass instead of funny. I mean, he's Jack, he's always funny, but you know what I mean." We ended up chatting for a little less than an hour, Sam leaving right before sun up. One of these days I'd ask him why he hated sunrise as much as he did, but I let it go again. I'd just managed to get him not mad at me, I wasn't about to mess it up this quick.

After teaching Big Guy Dollhouse by Melanie Martinez, I set down my guitar for a while. I walked over to the wall and leaned my forehead against it. "Can you do it yourself for a little while, Big Guy?" The buzzing continued without any other form of understanding but at least they were the right notes... sort of. I smiled to myself. Big Guy might have been half a millennia old, but when he responded or showed any emotion, he was almost like a little kid. It was nice to know that he was always there, kind of like the winds.

While he played what he remembered - which wasn't bad, but it wasn't right either - I put my guitar away, grabbing one of my bags out of the back. I'd collected a lot more over the years as they all tended to degrade as time went on. Most of the clothes I'd originally taken with me from home had by now become threadbare and thinner than paper. A lot of them I'd repurposed into some really nice paper, or I'd used to make some costumes that were more ragged looking. A good portion of my new fabric items I'd either made or swiped from garage sales that I saw as I flew across the country.

I packed a few snacks and my sketchbook and hoisted the bag over my shoulder. I ran up the stairs to the roof and took a deep breath. I could smell winter receding into the mountains. The Treehouse was far enough south that even part way into February - what used to still be the dead of winter where I grew up - there was mostly grass down on ground level. Burgess wasn't so lucky, there still being a blanket of snow deep enough for small dogs to get lost in. Then again, that was the way Jack liked it.

I jumped up onto the railing, calling my wings as I did. As time had gone on, my balance had gotten better. I chalked it up to being more familiar with my body after near a century, but that didn't mean I didn't fall over from time to time still. I spread my arms out, feeling the wind try and knock me back onto the roof. I pulled my wings in and flipped off, wooshing them out when I was just below the first-floor balcony.

It didn't take too long to get to Burgess. Well, Burgess adjacent would be a better way to say it since I avoided the city on my way to the woods. Jack had been spending more time than he'd be willing to admit in the graveyard where Jamie was buried and I didn't want him to ask where I was going. The longer I kept Pitch a secret the worse I felt but I didn't relish the idea of everyone's reactions when they found out.

I flew straight for the clearing, rocketing down the hole and barely managing to catch myself before going splat. A few fearlings were on my heels as I searched for Pitch but they didn't try anything so I ignored them.

After a few minutes, Pitch's voice echoed through the lair, a hint of glee hiding under his sarcasm I was so accustomed to. "You seem frightened." Half a second later he was standing behind me.

I spun around. "Of you? No. Creeped out by the lack of personal space? Oh yeah." I took half a step backward to put some semblance of distance between us.

Pitch glanced at the fearlings that were swirling around my feet. After my eyes followed his, he grinned in a menacing way. "They only do that when they sense someone's fears." I shoot him a skeptical look. "So tell me... What is it that scares you." His smile curled up like the Cheshire cat at the notion that something existed that could scare me.

"Why don't you tell me? That's supposed to be your forte, right?" He raised an eyebrow at me, frowning as he did. "Aww, don't like my sarcasm for once?"

His eyes narrowed at me as he scrutinized what I assumed was my 'fear'. After a minute, a smile curled at the corners of his lips. "You're afraid that Jack Frost will leave you." He started walking around me like a vulture. "What could you have possibly done that would force him away from his best friend? Oh did he find out about me? That would do it."

"Stop being so smug. This has nothing to do with you." I crossed my arms. "Jack is in love with me actually, so I obviously didn't do anything." I shoot him a look. "I, however, do not reciprocate his feelings so I'm slightly worried about how he's going to take things when this all ends. Don't think for a second that I actually believe that he'd stop being my friend over this because you'd be sorely mistaken."

He smiled and sighed contentedly. "Ah, delusion. I'd forgotten how much I relish this state of fear." I opened my mouth to shoot a retort but he cut me off. "If that twinge of suspicion at the back of your mind was as subtle as you've tricked yourself into thinking it is, they wouldn't have picked up on it." As he spoke one of the fearlings slithered over my foot.

I kicked it off, suppressing the chill that made the baby hairs on my neck stand up. "Fine I'm worried, but there's nothing you could do about it one way or another."

"Au contraire. If a certain winter spirit were to find out about your involvement with me, I'm certain that it would put a wrench in your relationship." He cocked an eyebrow at me again. "No matter what you call it."

"He already knows I sympathize with you. And he knows why I don't bring it up." I moved to block his path. "Besides, you doing that sounds like a surefire way to lose your only friend."

He scoffed. "Friend." He waved the fearlings off. "Why must you always use that term?"

"Because I am!"

"I know why you insist on coming here year after year! And it is not because of friendship." He snarled at me, inches from my face. "You think I don't realize that your only goal is to relieve the general of his oppressors?" He leaned close, lowering his voice by almost an octave. "Your lies are transparent."

"I already told you I have never lied. Not to you."

"Well aren't I special." He growled as he stalked back towards his throne.

I took a moment to take a breath and calm down. When I was fairly certain I wasn't gonna scream at him, I walked towards the globe, keeping breathing distance between us. "The first time I ever came to see you, I wasn't really thinking. I was just curious if you were still there - and if you were, I wanted to know what you looked like. The next time I dropped in, I wanted to know if I'd dreamed the last one because my visit had been so normal." I glanced at him to see that he was pointedly ignoring me.

"At some point, yeah, I thought that it'd be possible to pull you two apart, but that was always kind of a backup plan to tell people why I affiliate with you." I took a few steps towards him, trying to get a reaction that showed he was listening. "I still come to see you because if I was trapped down here alone with no one to talk to but shadowy nightmare fuel, I'd be really lonely." His eyes shifted toward me just a bit, which was reaction enough for me. "And the more time I spend with you, the more I like you. It's not Kozmotis, not a sinister plot to coerce you into, and not to mock you. I come here because I like you, and I like spending time with you, fearlings and all."

I glanced down and noticed that the fearlings had slunk back to their shadows. "I sort of don't even want Kozmotis back anymore because you'll be gone." As I said it, I realized what I was saying. You know when you don't pause to censor what you're gonna say and once you speak you hear the thought? Yeah, that's what happened. Pitch was staring right at me. "I know who you are, I know what you've done, I even know how you came to exist. I still like you. Even if everyone else on the planet hates you."

He was silent for a few minutes. When he finally spoke, he was back to his normal sarcasm. "More like everybody in the cosmos."

"I get that your biggest goal in life might not necessarily be to get people to like you, but it does matter to you. You showed that when you tried to take the Guardians' place. You showed it when you stopped trying to throw me out too, come to think of it." I smiled at him. "I think you like having someone to bring you the latest gossip instead of hearing it from these guys." I gestured at the fearlings.

"How are you so certain that I am not allowing you to stay near me for my own purposes? I could be using you to get to the Guardians. Using you to know of their plans. Using you to exploit weaknesses I may not otherwise have known about - tsar knows you speak enough to bring down an empire." He rolled his eyes.

I shrugged a little, holding eye contact with him. "I trust you not to. Even if you don't particularly like me, you have a grudging respect. The contempt in your voice isn't nearly as bad as it used to be." As I explained to him why I believed what I did, I sat down at the base of the globe. "Did you know that I've been trying to raise belief in you for a few decades now?" I glanced up at him and saw barely disguised shock.

I could see him trying to ask me why but he was too flustered to say it. "It's not fair that you got brushed into a hole like a lost Lego. Everyone I've met since becoming immortal thinks that you got what you deserve - and they might be right, but no one deserves solitary confinement lasting this long. I want to make it so that if you ever want to walk around topside that you'll be seen. But also that none of the kids run away screaming - I'm not sanctioning that."

"I can't see any of your friends taking that strategy well." He shifted until he was sitting straighter. I think he was trying to play off whatever he thought about my little announcement.

"Some of them think it's batshit insane. Sam hates that I'm telling stories of you at all, but I have him calm. Jack didn't know about it until a decade or so ago but he doesn't think it's the worst idea. Seraphina actually loves the idea, she think's it'd be a great way to get her dad back." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pitch raise an eyebrow. For about half a second I didn't realize what I said that would get that reaction, then I realized that I mentioned Seraphina. Aw shit...

"You are friends with Mother Nature?" The unspoken comment was that I was friends with Kozmotis' daughter. I knew what he was getting at though.

"Sort of? It's a similar situation as with you. I know her and I like to think of her as a friend but I know she wouldn't put it that way." I shrugged.

"Yet you call her by her name." He gave me this deadpan look that, were the circumstances different, I might have laughed at.

"Well, yeah - I don't like using everyone's titles all the time." My eyes widened as I thought of something he probably should know. "Speaking of which. There are two... newcomers to Earth that know who you are and they don't really know about your more recent history on this planet so I'd stay away from anything to do with the Star Pilots for... a few years probably."

He bristled not unlike a cat and went stiff. "'Star Pilots'? Which ones?"

"Ain and Aldebaran Taurus. They never mentioned knowing Kozmotis personally, so I don't think there's a personal vendetta, but they're old friends with Bunny and Sandy so there are friend grudges." He dropped his head to one of his hands. "I mean, when they first got here, I set the record straight that you weren't the same demon spawn the Golden Age saw you as -"

"It doesn't matter!" He shot up, his rage scream echoing through the lair like thunderclaps. "The Alliance still exists!" He stalked towards the banquet table at the far end of the lair - one that I'd always assumed was from the Dream Pirates' galleon. I started following him and got there a minute after he did to see him pulling out maps that looked like they would fall apart if you touched them with anything other than a feather.

"What are you doing?" He was sifting through the fliers like lightning.

"Looking for the star map under the rule of Tsar Taurus." My eyebrows went up.

I looked over his shoulder, glancing at the maps. They were plotted similar to sea maps on Earth, but the words printed on them were in a language I'd never seen and the positioning didn't match any stars I knew. "Why?"

He whirled on me, eyes flashing bright yellow. "So I can see if I ransacked their home! I need to know if they have a reason to hunt me down!" He shook his head before he tossed a few maps aside and kept looking. "I don't... I don't quite remember everything I did for quite some time before being imprisoned by that ghostly child." Nightlight. I'd forgotten that he'd been the one to hold Pitch under wraps for eons before he broke loose. "I suspect it was a side effect, but I knowthat the Dream Pirates and I kept track of the skies we had laid waste to."

I watched him almost absently as he flew through map after map looking for the ghost of a memory he'd forgotten. This was one of the first times I'd seen him showing any emotions. He was usually stoic as a statue and didn't let anything show on his face - let alone his voice. I'd had to spend the better part of a century learning his every nuance just to know what he was thinking when we held a normal conversation. This crazed ball of feelings was so far out of the norm that I was halfway to stunned.

After a few moments, he paused, one map held aloft while he stared at the one on the table in front of him. I stepped around him to see the map - seeing black ink so think I couldn't see the lines underneath it. The mass of black spread from one corner to near halfway across. "So you did attack their home planet." After a minute or two I realized that he hadn't responded. I glanced at him, starting to say his name but it dies on my lips. He looked so lost and far off that I balked. His eyes were glazed over and he looked like he was unconscious or something. "Pitch?" When he didn't respond again I waved in front of his eyes and still nothing. His expression was blank and his mouth was parted. He almost looked like he'd died on his feet.

I was starting to get worried. You broke him. I did not break him, what the hell?! I put my hand on his shoulder, ready to shake him awake. Before I could, he blinked rapidly. "Well, that's different." He said it to himself, I'm not sure that he remembered I was there.

"What happened?" His eyes flew towards me, after a second they moved to where my hand lay on his shoulder. I promptly removed my grasp on him.

He looked down at the map again, rubbing his forehead with his free hand as he did. "I remember taking Elebare, but it was overlayed with another memory of standing on it when it was thriving." He got this really confused look on his face and kneaded his forehead.

"Maybe it's one of Kozmotis' memories." I looked at the ma again. At the edge of the stain, I could barely make out a word in the foreign language. Elebare?

"It must be but it's never happened before." I glanced over some of the discarded maps now that the chaos had calmed. Some of them were almost entirely black while others didn't have a smudge on them.

"Pitch, why didn't you ever tell anyone that you don't remember your past?" I glanced at him to see the confused look gone, replaced by the calculated wariness that he usually portrayed.

"It is not important, nor is it information that must be spread. Why would I readily agree to admit to gaps in my memory?" His unspoken reasonings rang through the silence following his words. 'Why would I admit a weakness?'

I chose to ignore it, looking at the maps instead. I picked up one that had barely any black. "How come you've kept these hidden?" I fingered the paper, noticing that it was thicker than it looked and probably more sturdy that I'd first guessed.

He snorted from next to me. "I haven't, they've been out in the open for decades." He picked up the Taurus map, looking closer.

Oh. "What language is this?" I waved the map a little for emphasis - not that he needed it.

"Tsarian. At least this is how it's written. It's spoken the same way English is." He raised an eyebrow at me. "I'm sure when the pilots appeared they spoke it fluently. I'm surprised you didn't wonder about that." My eyes almost bugged out of my head. I actually hadn't thought about it at all. I knew a few off-worlders before them and they all spoke Earth languages so I didn't question it. Now I feel dumb. "I believe that Tsar Lunar began ingraining the language into this world as early as he could so that if the Alliance ever brought Earth into the fold you would all be able to communicate."

"Can you show me Aries?"

"Why?" Eyebrow again.

"That's my star sign, I'm curious to know how it looks from the other side of the galaxy." I also wanted to see Orion, but that was right next to Taurus and if the direction of the black spread meant anything then I wasn't gonna like what I saw.

He sifted through the pile a bit until he pulled out one that was marginally black. He pointed to a planet next to the star Hamal. "That is Hamari, the core planet of Tsar Aries' domain. Many of the Tsars chose to position their home planets as near the brightest star in their constellation as possible." He scoffed. "Pompous imbeciles. It made finding them far too easy."

I shot him a look. "Okay, it's time to shut up about old conquests."

He chuckled at me, stacking up the maps again. "Why do you care? It's not your world."

"Okay, just because I didn't live on Hamari doesn't mean that Aries isn't important in my life." I handed him the map in my hands and dropped into one of the chairs near me. "Before I even knew about the Tsars I gave a shit about the stars. Especially Orion and my sign." I raised my eyebrows at him as I shrugged.

"That's not what I meant." He side-eyed me, still grinning slyly. "The only immortal world you've ever known is this one. Why stick your neck out for the others when you've never set foot in their part of the galaxy?"

"Because I have friends from there." He scoffed and turned away. "You for example."

He stopped halfway down the table. After hesitating for a second he spun around, glaring. "Why must you test every last nerve that I have?"

I shrugged. "Because it's fun." He rolled his eyes so hard I lost sight of his irises. "Also, travel in general has always fascinated me, space was the only way to do so that I never let myself entertain... Until I met the twins, anyway." I picked up the map on top of the pile and looked close again. "It's kind of surreal to know that there are people on the other side of the Galaxy that don't even know our planet exists and can travel to a planet - essentially just around the corner - in less time than it'd take me to walk to Sam's house."

I set the map back on its stack. A few seconds later, Pitch had reached out to straighten said stack. "Actually they could make it here in less than a week."

"That just proves my point." And makes me feel worse.

After a few minutes, I realized Pitch was watching me like he wanted to say something. I glanced up at him and noticed a mild yet stubborn confusion in his eyes. "Why bother to attempt spreading belief in me? I'm the Boogeyman, no child wants to believe in me."

I hesitated for a second before responding. For some reason, I suspected that blurting out 'because your stories are fun to tell and it's a side effect' wasn't gonna go over well. "Jack has spent most of his life ostracized and alone with no believers. I've seen what that can do to a person." Hell, I've felt it. "You said yourself that you and Jack are similar beings.". I looked out across the lair, it's fearlings slithering through the shadows, leaving whispers in their wake. "If I can keep someone from going through that, I'm going to do everything in my power to make it happen."

He watched me for a few more moments before briskly turning around. "Well, it's probably all for nothing regardless. The Guardians would never allow a world where I could walk around freely." He glanced over his shoulder at me. "Neither would your two new friends, I'd wager." With that he walked off, leaving me with one brave fearling watching for a weak moment where I might crack.

You know, he might be right. I could always bring it up to the others at the next meeting - not that it would change their minds one way or another, but it was worth a shot. But we both knew that they were just prejudiced enough against him that it would be a waste of breath. That's why I was going the backdoor route with raising belief, subtly spreading the notion that he's not a raging psychopath hellbent on destroying the universe. Not anymore at least.

"Maybe not, but I'm still gonna do it." I pushed myself up. "In the meantime, do you think you could teach me how to read Tsarian?" I followed him back toward his throne.

He cocked an eyebrow at me over his shoulder. "What could possibly make you believe I'd do anything for you?"

I shrugged again. "As far as I know, you're the only one on earth who knows how and has documents to use as reading material. The twins definitely know how, but they have other things to worry about, Bunny and Sandy probably could but they have busier lives than I do, and Seraphina... isn't really on a 'let's get together and study' basis with me. Sel may be able to, but I've seen every book in Jack's library and none of them have Tsarian, so that rules everyone out but you."

"But why would I choose to teach you anything?" He turned around and sat down, having just reached his throne.

"I don't know, I mean I'm doing you a solid by making kids believe in you so you do kinda owe me." I leaned against a pillar not too far away. "And I haven't blabbed that you told me about the specifics of the abductions - what you knew anyway." I crossed my arms. "I just sort of figured it'd be a common courtesy thing."

He stared deadpan at me for a moment before rolling his eyes. "Fine, if you will stop attempting to blackmail me, then we have a deal. I will teach you how to read Tsarian - no more - whether you learn in the process is up to you."