“What exactly do you want, Pitch?” North snapped, swords held in his hands. Jack stood to the side, quiet for once.
He didn’t want to be doing this. Not after all that’s happened. It’s been two years since the huge fight, two years was a long time for things to change. Jack thought that things had changed. It was a foolish hope.
“What I’ve always wanted, North,” Pitch’s voice lacked the malice that it once had. It lacked the anger. All the guardians noticed this, even if they didn’t want to. They still wanted to believe that Pitch was still the same evil, horrible nightmare that he had once been. It was hard to when you saw him though.
Pitch wasn’t as strong as before, he still wasn’t believed in, making him weak and almost pitiful. Jack hadn’t realised. He hadn’t seen so much and he wished that he had.
“Pitch, stop it!” Jack snapped, pretending to hate the male just like the rest. Pitch popped up in front of them, a fake, cruel smile on his lips.
“Stop what, Jack? I just want to be believed in; I thought you’d understood that.” Pitch was hitting all the wrong buttons in the youngest guardian. While Jack wasn’t ashamed at what had transpired over the last two years, he didn’t want the guardians to think he’d been betraying him.
So he lowered his staff, much to the shock of them all.
“Stop it, Pitch,” Pitch growled, knowing very well that he wouldn’t be able to hurt the boy, like the boy wouldn’t be able to hurt him. Not while he wasn’t fighting back. It wasn’t fair that way.
“I will be back!” the man vanished into the dark, his gold eyes glowing for a moment.
“Jack, what’s going on, mate?” the pooka stepped forward, a hand on his friends shoulder. Jack shook it off, shaking his head.
“Nothing, I’ve got to go,” Jack was distracted, obvious to the other guardians as he quickly let the wind take him away.
“We have to go after him, Pitch is still out there!” Tooth worried, flying frantically around. Bunnymund and North shared a look of understanding.
“Don’t worry, Tooth,” North rested a hand on her arm “something tells me that there’s no problem.”
Jack wasn’t sure what he was doing as he headed to his lake in Burgess. Over the past two years and after multiple fights him and Pitch had become…friends, he supposed. They were acquaintances.
After one certain horrible fight, it seemed Pitch had given up. Jack had him pinned and Pitch did something nobody ever would have expected. Pitch cried. He cried.
Pitch confessed about stealing the teeth, not because of anything wrong, but because he was remembering. He was finally remembering a past he had never been able to and he wanted to know if it was real. It was pointless though.
Pitch was alive long before the tooth fairy, his teeth weren’t even there.
Jack had been shocked, for a good reason as well, yet he listened. Since then Jack had visited the Boogeyman, finding him wherever he is. It would play out the same, they’d fight and then Pitch would cry. They weren’t real tears, they were more shadows rolling down his face, but Jack understood.
Jack wasn’t believed in either. Jack hadn’t known who he was either. Jack, like Pitch, had been seen as less than nice, because of what they did to try and be believed in. Jack had lost his family as well, all he had ever cared about deep in his heart.
Jack flew to the lake he’d died in, slowly walking across the ice until he came to the part that he had broken through so long ago. He knelt down, the tiny crack showing the space. It was a part that, no matter how much the ice melted and froze again, was always marked with a crack in the shape of a crescent. It kind of looked like a crescent moon.
His fingers traced the shape, closing his eyes. He couldn’t even remember his sisters’ name, and yet he died saving her. He closed his eyes, just remembering the short flashes that his teeth had shown him. He remembered leaving his house when he was taking her ice skating.
He wonders about his last moments with his mum, saying goodbye, his mother telling him to be careful. If he had known…if he had known he would have told her more than just ‘we will’, he would have told her he loved her. He would never have taken his sister skating. He would have followed his mother’s advice and been careful at least.
He sighed, opening his eyes and continuing to sit on the lake before staring up at the Moon. Despite the fact that he now had the power to talk to MiM, he still held a grudge, deep in his heart, even if he understood now. He was confused as to why he had ignored him for so long, though he agreed that it was necessary for the guardians. For today.
“Jack,” said boy’s head snapped up, looking into the darkness surrounding the lake.
“Pitch,” Jack stood with his staff in hand. He knew how this would go down; it is how it always went down.
“You still side with them!” Pitch hissed, slinking from the darkness and onto the lake. Jack didn’t get into a fighting stance; he really had no energy to.
“You still fight for fears,” Jack pointed out needlessly.
“That’s what I do!” Pitch yelled; inside he would never admit that he felt betrayed. He thought that now, now Jack would understand why he needed this. He knew that the only way for him to be believed in was through fear; if kids believed yet didn’t fear he would never be seen.
“Well being a guardian is what I do!” Jack yelled back, stepping towards the seething nightmare king.
“But you don’t have to be!” Jack glared at him.
“And you don’t have to either; you’re just making excuses to hurt kids!” Jack didn’t understand how he could still wish to, especially after remembering his own daughter.
Pitch could take no more, making his large scythe out of darkness he began to swing it at Jack who quickly began to dodge, flipping and flying through the air until he finally got close enough to kick Pitch.
“Stop fighting with me, Pitch, this does you no good,” despite being believed as the guardian who wants to fight, it wasn’t true.
“You stop fighting with me, just let me be believed in!” the boogeyman hissed.
“I can’t let you hurt kids.” Jack repeated, in his mind was a picture of the kids he’d become friends with, his mind lingering on Jamie who reminded him so much of the image of his sister.
They again began to fight, not with weapons this time. It went on for a long time and it was hard to discern just who was winning. Both were bruised and beaten, now off the cracking lake and into the trees. It stopped as Jack was thrown into a tree, lip bleeding as he painfully stood.
“Why do you need kids to believe in you?” Jack had never felt so angered, so hurt, so betrayed.
“Why?” Pitch repeated shocked he’d asked, watching as Jack limped forward and almost feeling guilty.
“Isn’t my belief in you enough?” Jack’s face burned with shame as he whispered it.
“Your—your belief?” Pitch felt he understood, although he denied it vehemently to himself.
“Yes, Pitch, my belief! The same belief that has me sitting beside you after every fight, listening to your tales, listening to your memories!” Jack paused, spitting out blood as he stumbled, incredibly injured.
“That isn’t belief,” Pitch scoffed “that’s pity!”
“No, Pitch, that’s not pity. That’s me wanting to help, that’s me believing stupidly that you weren’t going to hurt kids anymore. Hurt kids like Jamie, or Sophie, or my sister and your daughter!” Pitch stumbled back, though obviously looking the least injured, he felt as if he’d been physically struck.
“Shut up!” he snapped, reaching forward and grabbing Jack by the throat he slammed him against another tree.
“Is this what your daughter—” Jack was again forced to stop as Pitch again picked him up and threw him against another tree. Jack truly struggled to stand up again, instead kneeling as his limbs shook.
“Is this what your daughter would have wanted?” Pitch snarled, head thrown back as he yelled in anguish, falling to his knees.
“Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up! You know nothing!” Pitch screamed at Jack who pitifully crawled towards the king of nightmares.
“I know a lot more than you think, Pitch. I just don’t understand,” Jack whispered, watching as shadows again began to roll from Pitch’s eyes. Instead of sitting back and just watching, he leant forward, wiping them from his cheeks.
Pitch was shocked. Jack had never touched him when he broke down. He simply watched. Pitch hadn’t had gentle human contact in centuries. It felt more than foreign to him.
“I understood why you did this before, you had no one at all, but now you have me and I don’t understand why it isn’t enough,” Jack also didn’t understand why he was being so open.
“Old habits die hard.” Pitch whispered, looking down at the bleeding boy. Pitch hesitantly reached up, his fingers prodding at a bruise on his jaw. Jack winced and jerked his head.
“I—I’m sorry. You’re right,” Pitch stared at the boy in confusion.
“Pitch, am I enough?” Jack asked, ice blue eyes meeting gold.
“I don’t know, it’s hard, Jack. The monsters…they’d consumed me, back then. I am what she fears most, that can’t change,” Pitch looked towards the frozen floor.
“If you’re such a monster then why apologise? Monsters don’t apologise,” Jack hissed in anger again, grabbing Pitch’s chin and pulling his head up forcefully. He wanted to make him believe.
“You’re not a monster, Pitch, and we can change that. I will help; the guardians will help, no matter how long it takes. They’d rather have you on our side than against, understand?” No, Pitch didn’t, but he thought that if he had the Winter Prince with him, then maybe he can try.
Jack smiled at the man before leaning forward, catching the shocked man’s lips with his own. Pitch hadn’t had this contact for longer than a few centuries, but it felt right. With the taste of blood and fear on Jack’s lips, Pitch realised that he was enough.
Jack would help the fear disappear, and that’s all that mattered.