(no subject)
The problem was, that Jack had the sinking feeling he'd been to Shin'ichi's caves before.
It was ridiculous. There were thousands of miles of cave systems all around the world, dark dank places where water dripped maddeningly and the ground was nothing but precarious rubble. Surely there were enough places where light got reflected and reflected through some small, glistening crack to cast a sourceless glow from the dripping walls, or possibly was lit by something microscopic and bioluminescent. Surely the ancient door had been hauled in by Kid, or by Shin'ichi, sometime early on, and they'd never bothered to replace it with nice things the way they had with the furniture. Why would they, when all it was there for was to keep the warmth of the hearth in?
But Jack somehow felt that he'd been there before. And the cave system had looked nothing like Bunny's mossy, flowery burrows.
The abandoned bedstead in an old clearing near Burgess was little more than an outline of rust and a few peels of paint anymore. What paint hadn't been taken by bowerbirds was a grungy, colorless brownish gray, almost lost in the leaves and grimy litter strewn about the clearing.
Jack swallowed hard. He didn't fear this place, exactly, and he certainly didn't hate it -- Pitch had hurt Bunny, kidnapped the fairies, lured Jack in and terrorized him for what seemed like minutes instead of hours, but he'd also lost to them-- but he didn't like the area at all. It just felt so joyless.
The hole to Pitch's lair was narrow and uneven, a gaping crack in the ground barely large enough to fit Jack, rather than the perfect round burrow hole it had been in '12. Jack wriggled through, getting scrapes on his stomach and back where his hoodie rode up, and landed in a crouch on the dusty tunnel floor.
To his left, the tunnel wound into darkness tinged with the sour reek of fear-sweat. To his right...
Music. A violin, faint and slowly crooning through a melody that -- as Jack floated that way over the rough stone, and the tune became distinct from its echoes -- sounded vaguely familiar. Something old, something un-Pitch-like (not that Pitch seemed the type to play an instrument), something... feminine, somehow? Power and color and decades old, something that brought to mind bright little faces and stocky little girls. Cupcake's daughters and grandchildren, who'd loved to watch an old favorite with her...
Fighting evil by moonlight...
Definitely not a Pitch song.
Jack found himself humming, despite the oppressive darkness and the promise of... what? If Shin'ichi was the player, if he was here... Did he ever take a break? Somehow Jack couldn't picture it, not when so much was at stake, so if Shin'ichi was here... someone small and probably hurt was listening.
... always there to defend...
And there was the worn-out wooden door. It stood unlatched, creaking ever-so-faintly in the slight breezes around Jack, and he slipped easily inside.
Shin'ichi was draped in the wingback tonight, his hooded coat missing and a violin set tiredly on his shoulder. Eyes half-lidded and lost, he played as if he'd forgotten the violin was there. On the couch off to his side...
In Jack's hood, something tiny squawked and jerked free, and a tiny iridescent-blue bullet went streaking past his face, shrieking in tiny outrage.
Pitch yelped and jerked away from the little girl asleep under Shin'ichi's coat, and the violin screeched to silence.
"What--?" Shin'ichi twisted to look at Pitch -- at Pitch, as if he saw the Boogeyman!
"Just a bug," Pitch hissed, fending off Baby Tooth's furious attacks. "Ow! Little rat!"
Shin'ichi stumbled out of his chair. "It stings? Keep it away--"
"I know, I know!" And Pitch froze, stiff but not iced over, with the crook of Jack's staff at his throat. Baby Tooth hovered before the Boogeyman's face, needle-like beak aimed impeccably at his eyes. "Shin'ichi. Stay. Very. Still."
"I don't see it." But Shin'ichi didn't move. "Is it... the girl, is she...?"
"Fine. Let's just keep quiet and calm here," Pitch murmured, hands up and eyes pinned to Jack's. "We've no wish to wake her."
Jack sucked in a breath through his teeth. Nightmares. She had to be...
"No, you're right," Shin'ichi said quietly. "This is no place to wake in." Then -- as Jack noticed the black grains trickling slowly out of the girl's hair, and Baby Tooth buzzed furiously closer -- he continued, "Can we catch it before it stings her?"
"I believe," Pitch managed to barely sneer the word, "that we may manage to shoo it out. Eventually. If we don't alarm it." He paused. "And it's highly unlikely a sleeping child will do so."
"You had better talk fast, Pitch," Jack hissed. "And get your nightmare sand off that child, before we do something you'll regret."
Pitch made a show of relaxing slightly. "I do believe it's attracted to the scent of the sand I'm harvesting. Not planting."
Behind them, Shin'ichi sighed. "Right. Of course."
Pitch frowned. "Don't be starting this now, please, Shin'ichi. I rather prefer that you've more company than upset, sleeping children."
"Dreaming," Shin'ichi muttered, before turning back to his violin. He lifted it, light reflecting off the polished wood, and set bow to strings. This time he stayed standing, and the tune that came out...
Jack flinched at the pain in it, tears pricking at his eyes.
Pitch sighed. "And we're back to this. Infuriating little ghost."
"Pitch."
"Well, at least we may speak freely now." Pitch let his hands fall. "Do call off your pet tooth, Jack. I'm certain we can behave like civilized adults here, without such threats."
Baby Tooth said something harsh and piping, and Jack didn't move his staff an inch.
Another sigh. "What did you need explained?"
"Nightmare sand. Off the child. First."
"What did you think I was doing?" Pitch growled. At their disbelief -- Baby Tooth scoffing openly -- he glared. "I don't need to create nightmares for one of Shin'ichi's children. They've lived enough of them that I can harvest their terror directly."
Jack faltered. He... really wanted to believe that. To believe in Shin'ichi, and in Kaito... but it was Pitch.
But with as much sand as was streaming from the child's head, she should be screaming herself awake by now. Shouldn't she? But -- Jack risked a glance -- she wasn't. She lay trustingly, openly, completely relaxed, and what shapes the sand made were of slender flare-skirted girls blasting vaguely human monsters to pieces.
Slowly, Jack's staff eased away from Pitch's throat.
Pitch stared in unabashed shock. "You... are the most naive little..." he sputtered.
Maybe so. But, "Fun and Joy," Jack replied. "You can't really have either without trust. So." He stepped back, gesturing with the crook. "Harvesting, you said."
Pitch's hands lowered slowly, until his taloned fingertips just brushed against the swirls of girl-shape and the sand rose in a stream. It leapt from one hand to the other, a long skein twisting in on itself like spinning yarn, passing through his curled fingers and beginning to take form again in the darkened shadow of Shin'ichi's chair.
It took only seconds for the first long-legged, gangly colt to stumble free. It was tiny and awkward, its armor plates looking more like folded velvet and its eyes glowing an infant green, and when it mouthed uncertainly at the air there were no blackened fangs in its mouth.
Pitch clicked his tongue, and the flowing sand nudged the colt towards Shin'ichi's flame-maned horse to nurse.
"This isn't really helping your case, Pitch."
"They must needs come from somewhere, Jack," Pitch said, watching a second colt form, this one more slowly. "And I don't particularly care to starve." The sand looped around his shoulders, almost comfortingly, and he made a face. "As it turns out, I need not cover the world in darkness to sustain myself. Blame the twentieth century's population explosion."
"Which happened before 2012," Jack pointed out.
"It took a while to adapt." One tendril of the sand balled itself up, bounced off Pitch's head. "... And a few rather heated philosophical discussions when Shin'ichi was in the mood. One rather more effective for not coming from some moon-blinded bastion of good cheer and quick judgements."
Jack bristled -- excuse him, his core was 'good cheer' and his judgement might not've been so 'quick' if Pitch hadn't been kidnapping fairies and trying to murder Guardians right and left! -- but before he could say anything, Shin'ichi sighed and set his violin aside.
"About time someone called social services," he muttered. "Here we go again." And he walked right through Pitch and the flowing nightmare sand.
As Shin'ichi gently took his hooded coat off the little girl, shaking it out and putting it on, Jack gaped at Pitch. "I thought he could see you."
"In case you hadn't noticed, it comes and goes," Pitch choked out acidly, one hand fisted in the lapels of his robe. "Misbegotten Moon do I hate that."
Jack almost wanted to ask if Pitch was okay. Which was stupid because he knew exactly how it felt and how fast the feeling wore off (physically, instantly; emotionally... not so much). Intead, though, Jack just instinctively angled himself out of Shin'ichi's way before he could get walked through as well.
"Comes and goes, huh?" Jack murmured, watching Shin'ichi cradle the child and lift her, still sleeping, from the couch.
Shin'ichi's coat was oversized enough on his small frame that, with the little girl curled in his arms, he could still use the open lapels as an effective blanket for her. He clicked at his horse, which nudged the two colts away and rolled to its stomach, then Shin'ichi mounted the horse's bare back, tapped it to stand, and in a flick of blue-fire mane and tail, horse and riders were gone.
When he looked back, Pitch was staring almost forlornly at the spot where the horse had left. "He doesn't believe in magic, you understand."
Doesn't believe in...? Well that made some sense, being a youth of the early 21st century, but surely he had to notice himself doing mundanely impossible things, like being twelve for nearly sixty years? His horse's burning mane and ability to disappear?
"He believes in horror," Pitch continued. "And in people causing it -- which is apparently close enough to believing in a Boogeyman for him to see me -- and in himself and his ability to save them. But whenever I do something the slightest bit too magical for him to accept..." Pitch gestured an eloquent 'poof!', something that made the back of Jack's throat burn faintly with bile. "Once again, I cannot exist," he said with a bitter, resigned smile.
Jack swallowed. Fun and Joy. What happens when someone's happiness is so twisted in on itself that it comes right back out the other side? Like what's the word, schadenfraude? But that was about other people, right? Pitch's usual Joy was schadenfraude, this was more masochism. Amused at his own pain. But whatever the word was, Jack suddenly knew.
He could taste it. Not quite in his belly.
He hated it.
So he leaned on his staff, peering up at Pitch under his bangs. "You know, if it helps..." please help please please help, "I'm always gonna believe in you, right?"
Baby Tooth chirped in disgruntled agreement.
And slowly, as fragile and thin as first frost, something very like joy trickled through the sense of Pitch in Jack's mind.