Pillars

There is... an alarming lack of good Jack/Sally fanfiction... anywhere. I must be a horrible Googler, because I am not finding it at all. SO, time to write some. I own nothing. Since this story takes place in the past, there will need to be a few original characters for the sake of the plot. Feel free to let me know if one's getting away from me, but I'll try my best.

Dr. Finklestein laid a heavy sheet over his latest creation, waiting for the electricity to restart her heart, just as the doorbell rang. He smiled to himself; the timing of the Skellington family could not have been better. He could simply lock down the main laboratory while he displayed his latest fog potions to Queen Mallory. Wheeling himself out into the stairwell, Finklestein shut the lab door behind him. "The door is open!"

The front door opened with a resounding creak that filled the observatory instantly. Mallory Skellington, followed as always by her worthless son, stepped into the hallway with confidence and poise. Her worthless son strode in behind her, walking far too proudly for someone who had accomplished as little as he. Hiding his disgust as best he could, Dr .Finklestein began to descend the ramp to meet his queen. "Good evening, m'lady! Terrible night we're having, isn't it?"

"It will be soon, Doctor. We'll need your potions for that." Mallory made no move to meet the Doctor, awaiting his approach impatiently. Jack stirred behind her, twiddling his fingers and crossing his long arms over and over again. "Stop that, Jack." Jack placed his arms at his sides with an angry huff, one which his mother quickly echoed. "I trust everything's to my specifications?"

"Down to the very last molecule, my dear." Finklestein leveled out with a slight grunt, braking in front of the two royal skeletons. "Shall we step into the kitchen?"

"In a moment, please." Mallory took a moment to adjust the brim of her hat. "Jack, these are the potions that allow us to cast heavy fogs on Halloween night."

Jack only rolled his eyes. "I know."

Mallory switched her handbag to her other hand, straightening her belt with the free one. "They will be weak tonight, but we just test the batch immediately after they have decanted to test their potency."

"I know," said Jack, his face growing more empty and his voice more flat.

Dr. Finklestein snarled, and Mallory brought her hand back to her purse. "After that, we must ferment how long they must ferment before they are strong enough to use for Halloween."

"I," said Jack with all the lilt of a falling rock, "Know."

It was quiet in the room for a while, the Doctor and the Queen simply eyeing the not-so-young-anymore Prince, waiting for him to apologize or show interest or simply stop staring at them. The not-so-young-anymore Prince returned their glares like a mirror, refolding his arms in defiance.

"Fine!" Mallory snapped. "Stay out of our way. I'll call you when we leave."

Jack left before she had finished speaking, ascending the ramp with a few long, frustrated strides. Mallory tried her best to hide her face without looking like it, even as the Doctor gave her a hard glare.

"Your son," he growled, "Will ruin this holiday for all of us if he doesn't start acting like a king."

"You don't have a child. You wouldn't understand." Mallory spoke with a cold fury, words carefully rehearsed within the confines of her skull many a time. "He's simply in a rebellious stage right now."

"He has been 'in a rebellious stage' since he was a small boy!" Finklestein barked. "He's a grown monster, Mallory! He's three times taller than you!"

Mallory nodded in agreement out of habit. "And he still thinks he knows more than the rest of us simply because he reads. This year, he will be out with the other monsters, and he will realize the difference between theory and practice, and then his arrogance problem will be solved."

"It's that year already?" Doctor Finklestien mockingly asked.

Mallory stiffened almost imperceptibly, ending the conversation. "The potions, Doctor."

Jack reached for the door to the lab, automatically picking the lock with his pinky when it refused to open for him. The nerve of his mother, telling him about the stupid fog potions again. He'd heard about the fog potions every year for the past 800 years, he knew how they worked. He pulled the heavy door open just enough to slip through, shutting it behind him out of habit.

The nerve of her. As if she knew more than he did. He knew everything she did! He'd learned everything she did by the time he was 500, well through puberty and into his adulthood, and she still believed she had to repeat every little thing she'd ever said to him for his entire life! The nerve of that woman! He scanned the doctor's desk absently, looking for anything interesting.

He found something interesting, a welcome change from the Doctor's usual fare. From the little bits of flesh and tissue, Doctor Finklestein had just finished putting the finishing touches on a monster. Jack stood at his full height, scanning the room and spotting the monster on the Revitalization Table, stirring slightly under the heavy lead blanket. Poor thing didn't even look like it could lift it off its head. Jack felt a cold wave of sympathy and immediately rushed to the table, pulling the blanket off the monster to reveal... a sheet. With a huff, Jack tugged the sheet away.

It was... cute. The monster took only a moment, waiting for its enormous eyes to focus, before it gazed back up into Jack's eye sockets with an adorable kinked smile. The beast was much more symmetrical than the Doctor's usual creations, lacking Igor's ungainly hump and mismatched limbs. The skin was a nice shade of drowned blue, with long red hair and-

Jack pulled the sheet back over the waking woman, averting his eyes a little less than instantly. A cold dread settled into Jack's rib cage. "Sorry."

"It's okay. I couldn't breathe." The monster turned onto her side, pulling the sheet up around her shoulders. "Why do you have clothes and I don't?"

A few answers having to do with the Doctor's scruples passed through his mind, but if Jack told her, she'd probably tell Finklestein, and there went that business deal... Jack kept his focus on a petrified foot sitting on a shelf on the far side of the room. "I have no idea."

"Oh well!" she chirped, not in the least bothered by the situation. "I'll get some later."

With that, she hopped off the table and fell onto the floor in a squishy heap.

Jack felt himself moving before he could tell himself not to, helping the lady back onto her tiny feet using as little of his hand as possible to hold her. After a few attempts at getting her to stand using only his fingertips, all of them ending with her either teetering backwards or falling onto Jack's chest (on accident, he swore to all of the people he'd have to explain this to in the future), the Prince finally figured "Too hell with decency, I have to help this woman" and held her steady by her forearms.

"I feel off-kilter."

Jack was trying too hard not to stare at anything other than her face to be snarky. "I think the Doctor made your feet too small."

The woman took a look at Jack's feet, comparing them to her own. "Your feet are as small as mine!"

"Yes, but I don't have-" Wonderful curves, nice tits, huge tracks of land, gorgeous little hips- Oh, how hard Jack had to work to stop himself from saying something bad. Instead, he squeezed her arms lightly, feeling a mite surprised when she crinkled like a sack of leaves. "This."

Surprisingly, the woman seemed happy with his explanation, face registering her satisfaction. "Oh. Okay."

She evidently felt no need to pursue any further conversation, instead using Jack as a balance as she firmly stroked her legs, attempting to get more of whatever filling she had into her legs for stability. Jack felt himself growing slightly giddy, cheeks burning and spine starting to shiver ever-so-quietly. He knew it wasn't just the nudity of the situation that was making him nervous. He'd had a few flings in the past, all of them dwindling to nothing once his mother learned they weren't advantageous in any way. There was something deeper going on here; he felt... excited, in a non-physical kind of way.

"I need your other arm."

Automatically, Jack gave her the arm that had fallen to his side for lack of something better to do. The lady switched her hands and began repeating the process on her other leg. She seemed so... unaffected by this whole thing.

Jack gasped. The lady looked up.

"What's wrong?"

Seized by joy, Jack took both her arms and pulled her close enough to hug, forgetting the naked. "You don't know who I am, do you?"

"I don't know who I am, sir," she responded plainly.

This was fantastic! She was a total blank slate, a opportunity to introduce himself to someone who didn't already know who he was! He was trembling, he could hear his bones rattling, and he just didn't care! She didn't care, and it was wonderful!

"This is marvelous!"

The lady only blinked, her little mouth quirking into a confused frown. "It is?"

"Of course it is! Now I can tell you who I am!"

"Who are you, then?"

"I!" Jack backed away with a flourish, posing himself as proudly as he could. "Am Jack Skelloh no!"

The lady fell sideways this time due to her unbalanced legs, slamming against the bed and pulling the sheets off with her as she slipped to the floor. Jack wasted no time in picking her up again, unconsciously wrapping the sheet around her in a half-apology. "I'm so sorry! I forgot about your leg!"

"I did, too." She shook her head, throwing her long hair behind her shoulders again. "You're Jack?"

"Jack Skellington, yes." Jack found himself wrapping Sally tighter into her sheet, throwing the leftover edge over her right shoulder. "Do you have a name yet?"

The lady pursed her lips in thought; adorably so, if Jack said so himself, and he did! "The man who was sewing me together called me lots of things, but I don't think they were names..."

Jack stomped that curl of disgust deep in his stomach before it could reach the unbridled happy in his chest. "It doesn't matter, you'll do fine without it for now."

"Okay!" The lady looked over his shoulder and out the window. "Hey, do you want to go outside?"

"I would love to go outside, but first-" Jack backed away slightly, letting the lady adjust her legs until she could stand comfortably. "Let's fix your clothes problem, shall we?"

Jack dashed to the Doctor's desk and rifled about in his drawers, finding notebooks and miscellaneous scraps of paper (one piece of paper including a list of names, all of which had been scratched out) and pens and different lengths of wire and finally, FINALLY, a straight pin. Leaping back to the lady, he pinned the sheet into a makeshift toga, admiring his handiwork as it hung off of Sally's curves like bed curtain. "Isn't that better?"

The lady pulled a face. "I feel like a window."

"Um... all right, then!" Jack felt an urge and simply acted upon it; he brought his fingers up to either side of the lady's head and brushed back her hair. The lady responded with a light blush and a giggle, and Jack's ego soared through the roof. "Come on, I'll show you Doctor Finklestein's library. Maybe we can find someone to name you after."

"It will be just a moment, your highness," pleaded the Doctor, wary of his Queen's gaze boring into his back. "I stowed the recipe away in the 'How to Identify Poisonous Spiders' book. Just a quick glance, an- WHAT IS THIS?"

Mallory scooted past the Doctor to survey the tiny library. Inside, her son was balanced precariously on a stack of books taller than he was, held steady by a blue woman wrapped in a bed sheet. Her son jumped, only just managing to not fall, while the woman spotted her and waved.

Jack blurted, "She was awake when I got to the lab, I didn't do anything."

"She looks like you!" said the blue woman. "Is she your mother?"

"She is! You're so smart, darling!" Jack gestured to the blue woman. "Who is this?"

The Doctor pounded the armrest of his chair in anger. "She is not supposed to be walking around the house in a bed sheet!"

The woman chuckled. "My name's really long."

"And with a sense of humor, Doctor!" Jack positively gushed, leaping down to the ground and displaying Sally to his mother. "At this age! It's your best work yet!"

Doctor Finklestein felt the beginnings of an aneurism building, or maybe that was just rage, before Queen Mallory suddenly cleared her throat.

"For what purpose did you make this monster, Doctor?"

The lady glanced back and forth between Jack and the Queen. "Purpose?"

Jack hid his discomfort as best she could behind a laugh. "Um, just... don't worry too much about it."

"She's simply a maid and cook, your highness," said the Doctor with a sickeningly sweet sound that made every word feel like a cyanide pill dipped in honey. "She will take care of basic chores for me, and I'll have more time to fulfill my duties."

"That doesn-"

Jack began to tremble again, suddenly feeling extremely self-conscious as a member of the royal family. "Um, why don't we go upstairs to the observatory, look at the stars?"

"You will receive a demerit on your town record and half your pay deducted for the next month, but you are allowed to keep the monster." Mallory set her shoulders and turned, signaling Jack to follow. "Come, Jack, it's time for dinner."

"I, uh..."

Jack sighed and gave the lady a parting hug. "I'll see you later."

Confused, but not looking too upset, Sally nodded. "Bye, Jack."

"... and she already knows how to read!" Jack said through a mouthful of food. Mallory smiled warmly, placing more potatos au rotten on her son's plate. "The Doctor's outdone himself this time!"

The Pumpkin Queen giggled, placing her clean plate in the kitchen sink. "Did you do anything to her?" Mallory asked with fake innocence.

Jack burned, the last remnant of blushing he had left. "Um... I taught her to stand, dressed her in a sheet, and spent 20 minutes looking at old Fear's catalogues to find her a dress."

"Well, then. Good boy." Mallory waited until Jack had finished eating before scooping up the half-full plate of food. "When we go back, I'd like you to speak with her again. You seem to get along well."

"We do! It was-"

"You can even teach her a skill we can use for the next Halloween celebration. We need more seamtresses, farmers for the pumpkin patch, and pyrotechnicians. Try to guide her in one of those directions, if you can."

Jack felt as if his mother had simply reached into his ribs and plucked out his happiness like a broken vertebrae. Actually, pulling out a vertebrae would probably been less jarring than that statement. Startled into silence, Jack let Mallory give him a kiss on the forehead and excuse herself to stoke a fire in Jack's room.

"... well, then..." Jack shrugged and nodded to the dog. "What do you say we say 'Screw that' to that plan, eh?"

The dog barked.