Some Dreams are Made of Unrelenting Memories: Chapter 3

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"You shouldn't be here, Jack."

Jack startled up from the ground and into the brittle, still air. His gasp rippled across the stagnant air and echoed through the concealed nooks and crannies of the cavernous landscape. Disillusioned yet rejuvenated lungs, still gripped in the nightmarish torment they had suffered from the fading realm, clawed ravenously at the oxygen that was provided to him.

The strange absence of excruciating pain disoriented him further as he blearily reached for his staff that had been placed idly next to his body. Bones creaked in the effort and Jack winced. Vaguely, he noted that there was an irony in the repetition of being warned that he shouldn't be anywhere.

"Like I have any choice, Pitch," Jack spat. He staggered up to a stand and glared into the shadowed throne across from him. The abhorrent purring roll of words was a welcomed change, Jack admitted. There was no confusion in discerning between deceit and truth, and now the illusion had crumbled down to a revelation. He was glad for the clarity for once.

This was it. The big speech.

"You really expect me to believe that?"

Jack's brows furrowed as his hostility faltered. Wait. What?

He had been expecting gloating, not accusation.

"Uh, Yeah," Jack replied uncertainly, "I do." Not only was it because he had thought Pitch was the one in control, but also because it was the truth?

The air, which now seemed thick and bore substance, shifted in the uncanny silence and unnerved Jack even more. In the midst of the black sea, amber orbs blinked into existence and burned onto Jack's eyes.

"Mocking me in my own Nightmares and using my own element against me," came the contemplation, "I suppose this is what they childishly say 'A taste of your own medicine."

Pitch barked a forceful laugh. Twin yellow optics flash and the sound of fabric chafing against the rocky earth emitted a muffled protest as he stood. Jack poised himself into a crouch, staff at the ready.

"Wait, wait, what?" Jack stumbled over his words as he hastily chased after his own confusion, "Your nightmares?"

"I don't know if you've realized," Pitch growled and his voice reverberated with sharp disdain, "But you've successfully beaten me at my own game. Laughed as you sent my own Nightmares after me. Or did you happen to ever so conveniently forget the whole ordeal?"

"Like I would be holding this staff at you if I forgot," Jack scoffed, "but I don't understand why or how I'm here!"

"Don't play games with me, boy." He snarled. The step forward clamored more menacingly than Jack expected it to. Amber flecks glow angrily in the overlay of yellow. "I've been playing these things since the beginnings of my existence."

Surprise widened Jack's eyes as they took in Pitch's form which glided onto the faint gradient threshold where there was enough shadow to hug onto Pitch's body, but also just as enough light to capture all the details.

His skin was paler, a sickly shade even more so ill and white by their abnormality in their contrast to his usually dark skin. The King looked pitifully weak and Jack swore he could have seen a shaky limb or two in the struggling erect posture. It was wrong. Was this really the epitome of confidence and fear that he had fought?

Had Pitch's amber eyes had not been so swollen with their unconcealed malice and anger, Jack would have caught the subtle stumble when the slender man strode into the dim light.

"I'm not playing anything with you, Pitch," Jack shot back. The sheer animosity that exuded from Pitch ordered a terse priority upon Jack's posture, but he was uncertain whether it was in his favor to backtrack defensively or go on the offensive when his favors looked so high.

"Right now, we are both dreaming, and you are not an illusion," Pitch pointed at him upon the 'you' and did not halt in his rampage, "I control nightmares, Jack, and I can tell when there's interference. Either the Man in the Moon wants something from me or you've come to make fun of the fallen king as so your nature often commends."

"You've got this all wrong!" Jack cried as he finally erected himself into a common stance of leisure conversation which was, even then, crippled with exasperation. But this did not halt the angered raving.

"As you've been skimming through something that has been weakening me even more than the damage that you and your guardian friends have done to me, I would have to assume that the latter is occurring."

The finger that had once pointed with fervent accusation now fisted with much the same vigor, and Pitch concentrated on it as though it possessed the very bane of his existence and that this withering glare would painfully smother it like he had done with baby-Tooth.

"It's a good thing that I was finally able to pull you out while that blasted nightmare allowed it." Pitch's scathing gaze then wandered upon Jack whose mouth worked as he attempted his own words in, "Pray tell, how did you ever manage to get good ol' Sandy into allowing such sadistic tendencies. If this is revenge, then I must say that his quiet cadence is surely misleading."

The mockery in the last sentence was a familiar taste and Jack wasn't sure if he welcomed its blatant superiority flaunts. He ignored the elusive tremble in the King's seething breaths as much as he could for it brought a great discomfort to him to think that someone so fearsome could fall so far from the lonesome years of not being believed.

This could have been me, Jack thought solemnly.

He took the miniscule pause as quick as he could for he didn't know when Pitch would start aflame again.

"Look, Pitch, I didn't get Sandy to do anything! While one of your stupid Nightmares was chasing you, one of them touched me or something and now I'm here! I don't even know where here is! And before this, I was in a completely different world!"

Jack watched Pitch's face melt from spite to a temporarily mollified, meditative calm and felt his own anxiety follow. Pitch's eyes closed, the amber disappeared again, and Jack is reminded of the fight between the light and darkness that had been a constant theme within the 'other' dream. He had heard of dream jumping before, of struggling through one and waking up to another, but this was a new experience entirely for each detail still retained a fresh imprint like footsteps on newly fallen snow.

The silence is expended again by Pitch's voice. It is an outlandish calm that has taken over the previous hatred and Jack fidgeted under this new calculative tone.

"This is a pocket realm that my nightmares threw me into." He gestured to the monotonous greys that surrounded them and Jack's sagged against his staff when the eyes finally fell away from him, "A purgatory, if you will, that I've been sentenced to as the Nightmares feed themselves full with whatever nourishment they can find. As the inhuman King of Fear, I am uncertain as to what they're drawing power from, but I am so far unscathed after that initial scuffle and chase."

Bitterness tinged the last sentence like burned corners of parchment, blackened but fading.

"Hiding and weeping over my athazagoraphobia isn't too productive," He sniffed, "It has, for the most part, become true," He winced with the truth's mentioning, "And if I am going to change anything, to be real, I'm going to have to power through it."

He sighed, "Fear festering against fear makes for strange results and I wait until these traitorous horses grow complacent in their hunger to which I may escape."

The eyes finally return to Jack and he tensed attentively, his grip tightening over the uneven groves of his staff. Pitch gave him a scanty grin and chuckled, but to Jack, the charade looked strained.

"Fear is innate and The Guardians must have an enemy to face, after all."

Conflicting thoughts now shrouded over Jack's mind. He couldn't let Pitch return over the world, right? He couldn't compromise the kids, and potentially the world, again because he wanted to get out of these nightmares. The Guardians must have an enemy to face, after all…

Jack shook his head. Pitch was describing something with the confidence that his revival would be inevitable, although Pitch held confidence over many things and projected it falsely when he lied. The way Pitch currently looked almost seemed to assure that whatever rejuvenation that he was plotting wouldn't happen for a while.

"Hey, you're the one suffering humiliation, not me."

A frown overtook Pitch's gauntly features again, but he ignored the statement regardless. "It is possible that what you described is something one of the horses is exploiting as one of their sources for their power and you managed to get your mind sucked up into it when it made contact with you."

The murderous glower returned.

"I don't know how exactly, but you and the horse managed to tap into a particularly peculiar strand that has been causing me to weaken more than a child's belief has ever done to me. I'm not gaining any of my powers back; in fact, I'm losing even more of it. It's as though you're injecting humanity into me." Pitch sneered but then brought his fingertips together and bowed his head toward Jack as his eyes attained a fake courtesy, "I would appreciate it greatly if you'd stop."

"Like I would know how to do that," Jack returned the distrustful glare.

Pitch rolled his eyes and released a dramatized sigh, "Perhaps you should describe what you experienced in there. It might help our situation a bit."

"Why should I? As soon as this problem gets solved, what keeps you from leaving me here?" Jack shifted his weight as the shimmer in his eyes darkened considerably, "You've broken promises before."

"Well, Jack," There was no stutter or realization of a loop-hole that might have tarnished his proposal in his words as there had been when Pitch attempted to persuade Jack into joining him in arms, "This specific dream that you've ended up squirming into has, as I've said, is actually stealing my powers if you haven't noticed my appearance."

Pitch brought his hand past the mixed border of light and dark and the ghastly, bony joints seemed to shrivel in the brighter world. Jack cringed at the morbid display. The skeletal thing of a hand is withdrawn back into the dark and, there, ebony wisps consumed it. When the smoke receded, a newly generated hand is in its place, but more paler than before.

"I can't go into the light anymore." Pitch snarled, eyes flashing contempt, "And if this continues, my powers are going to cease to exist entirely and you'd be just as trapped even if I left you here. Only difference is, you'll be suffering with me."

Jack rubbed the back of his neck and closed his eyes. He couldn't just let Pitch go like that, though, could he?

The Guardians.

The thought chimed with such a hope that it sent Jack's eyelids fluttering open. Surely, they were thinking of a solution now. And the Man in the Moon was probably helping them by their side.

Pitch must have seen Jack's new spark of hope for he sneered.

"If you think your fellow guardians can help you right now, then you're sorely mistaken. Having the Man in the Moon as a companion for several centuries allows one to develop some particular skills that abuse some weaknesses. They're probably trying to find a way into my lair right now to confront me about what I've done to you."

Pitch rolled his eyes as Jack bit his lip.

"Even if they found a way through, I'd be in the same state as you. Sandman may try to infiltrate, but these horses are feeding off of me, fear itself. The best course of action would be for you to help me, Jack."

"Wouldn't that be better then?" Jack whispered, "Than to allow you back into the world?"

Pitch's expression seemed to freeze. A crestfallen, hurt quality shaded its features, but venomous antipathy devoured over the entire thing.

"I will always exist in the world, Jack."

"You weren't like this in that dream," Jack muttered, "You were kinder and a strong General."

Jack wouldn't have called that a nightmare. In fact, the general seemed to be the opposite of Pitch and now that it was revealed that Pitch knew nothing and held no participation in what Jack experienced, his previous misgivings of the man's deceit were annulled. Aside from almost getting torn apart by the fearlings, the dream almost seemed like a-

"What…?"

Bright azure eyes peered up onto Pitch's face which is twisted in shock.

"No," Pitch muttered. He winced as though he had been struck and the shadows surrounding him hissed as they latched onto his robes and skin. One of his pallid, perspiring hands pressed the knitted brows, "This can't—"

Jack's own brows furrowed but his eyes reflected a worry that the good general had offered him.

"Pitch?"

Suddenly, both hands were clutching Pitch's head as he stumbled back a step into the abyss of shadows as though something within his mind was shredding from within.

Jack stepped forwards with his own hand outstretched forward. The whiteness of Jack's own skin ebbed into the gloom that Pitch enclosed himself in.

"LEAVE," Pitch roared. His clenching arms dropped to his sides as his piercing glower strengthened in its contemptuous rays. The cavern shook and so did the gothic structures that adorned it. Jack was set off-balance with them and was sent tumbling back into the light. So violent was this earthquake that Jack's mind momentarily worried thought that the entire place would collapse.

"I don't know how!" Jack shouted. Panic settled in as he attempted to stabilize himself against his staff.

Everything ceased abruptly and Jack almost fell again for he had just begun to adjust to the trembles that hatefully wracked against the world.

"Kill that man." Pitch growled angrily. He strode towards Jack and halted where the edges of his body nearly skinned the microscopic boundary where he could not pass. His skin seemed paler now and there was an irrational hysteria that his eyes donned.

For a fleeting second, Jack did not see Pitch. Instead, he saw the fearlings from the dream bristle before him and Jack could not suppress the shudder.

"What?" Jack murmured. Pitch didn't expect him to-

"This General Kozmotis," Pitch hissed, "It will get you out of here once and for all."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Jack shook his head slowly as he took retreating steps backwards away from Pitch whose crazed fervor pricked at his skin, "I can't just kill a man!"

Hadn't he just said that he would rather be trapped in this place than let Pitch reign free around the world? Where was this demand coming from? This was coming completely out of nowhere and threw his words to the wind.

"Of course you can. Your ice has done so before," Pitch sneered, maddened yellow-amber eyes ablaze a wild shade, "And it still can. Besides, all of this is just a crude nightmare. Unlike me, the nightmare will be returning you to that realm soon enough."

Jack flinched at the harsh indictment which wasn't entirely wrong. He opened his mouth to speak, but his protest is caught dead in his throat as his alarmed eyes widen at his hands beginning to fade into the background.
"Kill him."

Jack's attention flashed back onto the King whose growling demand and demeanor resembled and inclined more towards an unhinged insanity of a fearling rather than the being Jack had come to known as Pitch. Jack hated to admit it, but he was intimidated if not downright actually frightened. Jack attempted to respond once more before he was completely consumed by the virus that was consuming him into nonexistence, but it stopped short once again by a sudden, curious thought.

If the general really was Pitch, wasn't Pitch asking for himself to be killed?

By the time he could articulate and vocalize something, Jack had left the realm.

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Pitch glared at the boy disappearing into the environment as a pounding muttering throbbed within the internal space of his head.

This General—his name and features flashed through his tormented mind and bore a strange intimate familiarity that Pitch's hammering thoughts refused to stitch or connect together and something within him seethed with a sharp bellow and feeble cry.

Never had a dream been so tangible in its aftereffects. Although, both Jack and he were caught in a comatose slumber, Pitch's burning fever strengthened and his weakening powers spluttered pathetically in the waking realm. He felt its whittling to his core and it struck mercilessly at him like an accursed parasite.

That General; it wasn't him. Jack was sorely mistaken, but each attempt to recognize the man was met with an excruciation that crippled Pitch to the ground and he felt his prowess wane further. Panting, sharp yellow orbs gleamed dangerously from the chasm of black. There was a monstrous snarl and sinister, manic crackle that accompanied it.

"KILL HIM!"

He would not allow that thing to ruin him.

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Author's Notes

I had several reviews requesting this story's return. Of course, it never went into haitus, but I feel guilty nonetheless for its fall into some surreal purgatory. I had many things plotted out, but these things quickly became convoluted and I knew that the magnitudes of which I had envisioned would require a more skillful and patient hand to maintain. I had this chapter written up awhile ago (A very long time ago), but I had been advised that this was too early and I struggled to develop alternatives which wouldn't branch out into obnoxious side-tales. Eventually, my passions for writing and this fic had flickered out and withered away as my contemplations drew on into an ever increasingly frustrating and unproductive loop. I apologize for the short length of this chapter (especially in comparison to the earlier chapters) and the myriads of excuses I'm providing now. I'm uncertain to the future of this story, but I do possess a question upon any reviews:

Do you prefer longer chapters or shorter ones? Shorter ones bearing the length of the one above and longer chapters bearing the length such as the chapter prior.

Apologies, again, for no acknowledgements this time. The maintenance of that list had long begun to deteriorate with my dissolving interest in keeping with this story and even if I should still possess it now, it is - without a doubt - out-dated. This, however, only shows the sheer numbers of which this story has attracted and I must apologise once more to those of you who have waited so eagerly and were met with disappointment. Nevertheless, enough with this sullen gibberish.

For new-comers, welcome! And for old readers, it's nice to meet you again! I hope you enjoyed this chapter!