Wow. This took forever to put up. I am really sorry about that, but I had writers block like you wouldn't believe. This chapter is long, and a bit sad I think, but it takes us right up to the movie. I think it is done, but if some things are still a bit confusing, I will put up another chapter to explain a bit, or finish it up if need be. I am also planning a series of one shots of Jack and Sally not included in this story, mostly because they are just fun little one shots where nothing much happens. I might also put up an epilogue chapter of this story which takes place during the movie. Please review, and if you have questions, comments, suggestions, demands, whatever, don't hesitate to ask. Thanks for being patient!

It started out as a routine recon mission. Jack often sent out people at certain points throughout the year to get information on happenings in the human world. It helped him plan out Halloweens. To figure out what was scary this year, how his last Halloween had panned out, that sort of thing. It was something he had started when he became Pumpkin King. It had always worked well in the past, sending those of his people that could pass for humans to get the feel of the Human World. But his people had started disappearing. He wasn't sure why, and the watch pool was dark. It wasn't giving him any sort of proper readings or insights as to why his people were going missing. It showed him image after image of the human world, but nothing of the citizens of the town. Three Vampires and two Witches had never reported in at their appointed times, and we was starting to worry.

"I don't understand it Sally. Nothing like this has ever happened before!" He clutched his head with bony fingers. If he had hair, Sally was pretty sure he would be ripping it out. He paced back and forth in his little room, frantic. "If the humans had killed them, or found them out or something-which incidentally, has happened-the Looking Pool would find them. But I look and look, and they are just…..gone. There is nothing. I can see places in the Human World—Oh! I have figured out how to make Mirrors reversible, isn't that fun? Now, I can look at a Human in a the Human World from the looking pool, and they see MY face in a Mirror instead of theirs! It's brilliant! And, if I hit the Looking Pool in the right way, I can crack their mirror!" He laughed, momentarily distracted. "There's a guy in America-Connecticut? Kentucky? One of those, humans have confusing names for things-calls me "Mr. Unlucky." Apparently, humans have a superstition that a broken mirror is unlucky. I sort of remember learning about that in school. Anyway, I have broken all of his mirrors. Even the ones in his car. He was my test subject." He sighed, thinking with pleasure about the unfortunate man in Connecticut or Kentucky had given him such a fantastic nickname.

Sally didn't say anything. Honestly, she was just relieved he wasn't stressing about his missing people anymore. He really was easily distracted, she marveled. He could be a nervous wreck on moment, and the next jabbering on about a great new way of scaring people. It was uncanny, Jack's ability to flip flop moods in the blink of an eye. He began pacing again, apparently remembering why he got on the subject of the Looking Pool.

"But where could they be? They can't have just disappeared! There aren't any places they could have disappeared to! There is here and the Human World, and I can't find them in the human world and I would sense them if they were in Town. I have sent people looking for them on the outskirts, sent out feelers to our friends outside town, but no one has seen anything." Sally sighed.

"Look Jack, I know you are worried, but it is possible that something totally innocent way laid them. Maybe they got lost or something." Jack glared at her.

"ALL of them? Impossible."

"Improbably maybe. Nothing is impossible." Jack would have rolled his eyes had he any. As it were, he informed her that he was mentally doing so. Sally did it physically. Then she stuck out her tongue. Jack chuckled a bit, allowing Sally's sillyness to calm him down a fraction.

"Seriously Jack, if you don't calm down, you'll be useless in finding them. You have to keep a clear mind." She absently stirred her pond sludge tea.

"I am going to go after them," said Jack suddenly. "I should have gone as soon as Hestia disappeared. I should have known then that something was wrong."

"Hestia was the first to disappear," Sally pointed out. "There is no way you could have known that something was wrong from one slightly flighty Witch not checking in at the right time. Remember? Everyone just sort of thought that she forgot, and was going to report in when she got home. No one saw this coming. You aren't omniscient."

"Ooh, good word." Jack sighed. "I should be though. I am the Pumpkin King. I should be able to know these things. If I can't keep my subjects safe, what good am I?"

"Well, you gave the humans a smashing good Halloween Jack. And there is the whole thing with the mirrors." She took a last long drag from her tea.

"Yes, yes. But too many people have disappeared. I am going myself." Sally frowned. That was a bad idea, she was sure of it.

"But…you don't exactly fit in. You don't look human. Even if you wear a cloak or something, someone could still get a look at you. That's why you send your human looking people to do recon."

"Well, now they are disappearing. I don't know why we didn't just use the Watch pool."

"Because you can't use that to see how people react to something not going on at that very moment. You need to have people out there to ask around. You explained that years ago to everyone."

"Well, maybe it needs to stop. It is clearly too dangerous. I am going to go find those people and bring them back and then find new ways of finding out how the Humans liked our Halloweens." Sally sighed, the feeling of foreboding lodging tightly in her chest. She looked down, glance falling on the pond sludge in the bottom of the cup that gave the tea its flavor. Was there….a picture in the sludge? She peered closely. It was a skull. Weird. She shook the cup. The picture shifted. It now depicted a prostate body in the foreground and the skull….she blinked as, bizarrely, the cup flared into color, what looked like flames enveloping the skull and body on the ground underneath it. She could feel the heat on her face, and she dropped the cup in shock and fear. She might not have a beating heart, but she considered herself alive, and fire was one of the few things she was sure would kill her forever. She also knew from experience that flames were the only thing that could hurt her. Nothing else hurt, but flames, licking at her skin and her hair, devouring her slowly….she had nightmares of being burned. The worst she had ever received had been a small burn on her finger when she had been making Dr. Finkelstien's dinner once-a small flame had leapt out of the oven and burned her. She managed to put the fire out quickly, but she had had to get a new finger. Fire spread quickly on her body and the damage was irreversible. And painful.

"Sally! Sally!" She was dimly aware of Jack's voice cutting through the fog in her brain. "Sally!"

"Jack, what….what just happened?"

"I don't know you just…started staring at the cup and then you screamed and dropped it on the floor." She blinked.

"I think….it may have been a premonition."

"I don't know Sally. I never really believed in those. I have yet to see one come true. Ever. And I have lived a long time. There aren't even any credible stories about premonitions coming true."

"Listen Jack, I think this was real. Please, listen. Don't go searching for those people. Keep looking for them by other means, but please, please don't go looking yourself. It will end in death. I fear….yours."

"Sally,"

"You're my best friend Jack. My first friend in this town. I...I," she paused, as if steeling her self to say something. She sighed, looked away, then back into Jack's eyes. "I care for you Jack. I don't want to lose you."

"Oh, Sally," he said softly, gently caressing her face in a large bony hand. "I care for you too. I promise I'll be safe."

"Please don't go Jack."

"I have to go. It is my responsibility."

"Then let me go with you. Two sets of eyes are better than one, and I can pass as human easier than you. Any disguise you can come up with won't hold up under and even cursory glance. I can get away with it more. By the time anyone tried to get a second look, I could be away." Jack sighed.

"I don't know. It could be dangerous."

"If you don't let me go with you I won't let you go either. I know some really good poisons now. I could knock you out for a week," she threatened. "And you'll never know when to expect it. It could be anywhere, anytime. But you will NOT leave this place without me." Jack laughed.

"OK, OK then. You can come. You are right. Two heads are better than one." Jack grabbed a traveling cloak and then tossed on to Sally. "Ready?" In answer, she pulled the cloak around herself. Jack gave a skeletal grin. "Excellent. Let's go."

He had a secret passageway out of his house. It was necessary, being such a celebrity in the Town. He couldn't always go out the front way, especially if he didn't want to be accosted by admiring citizens, booby traps, or people with "ideas" for the next Halloween, or the Mayor. Especially the Mayor, if he was being honest. Which he tried not to be when making lists of People I Do Not Want to Talk To. Actually, he was honest with himself about it, but when he wrote down the lists (as you do when extremely bored), he enjoyed lying. It gave him a very good idea of who snuck into his house and poked around. The Mayor was one of those people. As was the Witch Harriet actually. Both of them gave him a Bat Ball for his Deathday presents. It was number one on his Things I Want For My Deathday list. Sally, who actually really knew him, got him a new spider scream doorbell and a Rat Tail lasso. She had noticed his old one wearing thin and his screaming doorbell was less of a scream of total terror and more a gasp of surprise and agitation.

Sally and Jack pushed their way out of a dying tree just beyond the edge of town. "Wonderful!" said Jack cheerfully. "Time to find my people!" They let the fog swallow them, covering their entrance into the graveyard. As they made their way toward one of the gravestones leading to the human world, Sally felt a cold hand grip hers and yank her into a dark hole that neither she nor Jack had noticed. She let out a scream as she was pulled head over heels into a dark, cramped space, then dragged along at alarming speed. She tried to get her free hand over to her captive one to release the stitching and escape, but she was scooped up and held by the waist, face pressed against an odd feeling fabric, arms and legs trapped by the powerful embrace. "No, no, no" a voice in her ear hissed. Literally, it sounded a bit like a snake was talking. "Not tonight. Tonight, my dear Sally Ragdoll, Jack Skellington watches you die."

Jack couldn't move for a moment, frozen in shock. Sally was gone, just disappeared into the ground. Was this what had happened to the others? Sucked into the ground with barely enough time to scream? If that were true, it wasn't so surprising that he couldn't find them in the human world, and if someone had booby trapped the cemetery and was hiding them somewhere, it would make sense that none of his contacts had seen anything. He still couldn't sense them, which was weird, but not impossible, if they were far enough away. 'Or dead' came a soft voice at the back of his mind. He ignored it. Jack had many talents, and one was an impressive ability to delude himself for as long as was necessary. He called it optimism. Sally called it being impossibly thick.

Jack bent to inspect the ground where Sally had disappeared. He found the hole quickly, so fast, in fact, that he wasn't sure how he had missed it in the first place. Carefully, he lowered himself into the hole and dropped to the bottom, landing spiderlike on the earthen floor below. He focused, trying to see if he could hear or sense anything that might lead him to Sally. There was nothing but stale air. The tunnel however, seemed to simply be a straight shot to wherever the person who had taken Sally had gone. Jack could see just as well in the dark as he could in the light, and as far as he could tell, there were no offshoots or bends in the tunnel at all. It made a certain amount of sense, he supposed, if no one was supposed to follow the kidnapper.

'Well, too bad for you,' thought Jack, and he began to make his way quickly down the tunnel. He paid close attention, trying desperately to sense something-any sound, breath of air, anything-that might lead him to Sally and the others. He dared not shout or make his presence known, slipping silently through the inky blackness of the tunnel. He needn't have cautioned. The kidnapper knew he was there. In fact, that was the whole point. He wanted Jack to find him, and he wanted Jack to be broken by what he found. The kidnapper cracked a grin as he watched Jack trying to be invisible.

"So many eyes Jack," he whispered. "You can't hide from them. They are always watching." He glanced at Sally. "They all report to me of course. Sometimes, they are even a part of me." Sally glared.

"He is coming for me. You won't get away with this."

"Oooh, how cliché. But you are wrong. I will win. You, my dear, are the prize. I knew he'd come eventually, if his people kept disappearing." He waved a rather shapeless arm at the room around them. Five skeletons hung on the wall behind him. He wiggled the arm for a moment, allowing fingers to appear briefly, and snapped. The skeletons immediately jerked to life, wiggling and jerking about on their chains. "They are dead," he said sounding pleased. "Dead, but animated. They look like they're dancing don't they?" Sally paused, then nodded. They did, a bit. "But they aren't. They are in pain, forever and ever!" He laughed, a dark, cold sound. "As you shall be Ragdoll!" He grabbed the candle that had been on the table nearby and carefully held it to the stitching on her leg. Sally screamed, her cries of pain and terror joining the echoes of the skeletons on the wall, caught forever in a state of pain and torture.

Jack heard the screams, and, abandoning caution flew down the corridor towards the sound. The room appeared with so little warning that Jack was so surprised that he stopped dead in his tracks so suddenly that he nearly toppled head over heels, which would have been quite embarrassing and made a terrible impression on the inhabitants in the room. As it was, it wouldn't have mattered too much, as the only person in the room capable of observing Jack's entrance was the kidnapper. Jack didn't even notice him at first, his whole world completely filled by the view of Sally's charred and nearly unrecognizable body lying motionless on the floor.

"NO!" He was at her side in a moment. Her eyes were closed, and her body was horrible burned. One of her legs was completely gone, the other burned to the knee. Her hair was singed black, the lovely red shade non existent. Her face was grey, and streaked with black burn marks. Her left arm was remarkably perfect, completely untouched by fire. "Sally, Sally, can you hear me?"

"Well, well, well, what have we here?"

"Oogie," growled Jack, whirling to face the boogy man. "What have you done?"

"I have got you Jack. You stole everything from me, so now, I am returning the favor. She won't wake."

"You killed her!" Oogie grinned, showing a mouthful of stickbug teeth.

"Not quite. Not really possible to kill her is it? But she will never be Sally again. She will stay that way forever!" He laughed. "How does it feel Jack? Does it make you angry? Sad? How do you like it when someone takes your whole world from you?"

"Everything you lost was your own fault! You're sick enjoyment of pain is why you lost everything!"

"No Jack, I lost everything because of YOU. Because of you, I am forced to live in squalor, apart forever. No one will come near me because they fear risking your wrath. I am starving Jack! Wasting away! I was born to frighten people, it is the reason for my existence, and you took it away! This is your fault, and so, you brought this upon yourself. If you had been a bit kinder, maybe this wouldn't have happened." Oogie was in Jack's face now, smirking at Jack's furious glare.

The pumpkin king was shaking with fury. He knew, on some level, that Oogie Boogie was insane, and that blaming Jack for his troubles was just him being crazy, but Sally was irrevocably injured, and Jack wondered on some level, if maybe this was his fault. It would probably paralyze him later, but for now, it just made him angry. Without warning, he launched himself at Oogie Boogie, the force of it carrying the two of them half way across the room. Jack dug a bony finger into the eye socket of Oogie's tightly woven spider-silk suit, ripping it open. Oogie screamed in pain and fury. He hurled Jack away from him, causing the Skeleton Man to smash into the wall with an audible crunch. He collapsed on the floor, but pushed himself up rather quickly. He grabbed a chain from the floor, one obviously used for torture, Jack thought, noting the sharp hook at the end. The hook was they only part of the chain not rusting actually. He hurled himself toward Oogie again, who, displaying an agility at complete odds with his size and shape, easily side stepped. He pressed a foot onto a seemingly harmless stone, which, of course, was anything but harmless. Robotic zombies burst from the floor stalking toward Jack with guns longer than his arms. They encircled him, took aim, and fired. They all missed. Well, technically, they all missed Jack, who leapt into the air and landed on top of one of the Zombie shooters before vaulting himself at Oogie once again. Each of the bullets found a target though, lodging themselves firmly into the robot across from the shooter. Oogie made a note to remember not to ever have his Robot Shooters encircle the intended victim ever again. A row would be better, just a straight firing squad. As it was, the bullets completely disabled the robots, leaving them riddled with bullet holes and smoking slightly. He leapt away from Jack's assault, hitting another pressure pad with his hand. Spears began flying out of the walls at impossible speeds. Luckily for Jack, he was even more agile than Oogie, and being considerably thinner, he avoided each spear through a series of gravity defying flips and twists and turns. "Hahaha! Nice try Oogie, but you'll have to do better than that to skewer me!" He jumped at Oogie again, who, once again, evaded Jack neatly. Jack hit the wall again, but instead of smashing into it, he caught himself and held on, insect like, with a bony hand, the other still clutching the hook and chain, then pushed off with both feet, giving himself twice as much momentum when he flew at Oogie. The boogey man just barely got out of the way, and gave a triumphant laugh as Jack sailed past him. Jack landed neatly, and spun, facing Oogie. He picked up a discarded spear and advanced.

"You think you can spear me?" laughed Oogie. He took two steps backwards, and promptly fell over the long chain that was now behind him. Jack was on him in a flash, giving the chain a sharp yank, and trapping Oogie's foot inside a rusting circle. He hooked the chain to a bit of frayed cloth at the base of Oogie's neck and pointed the spear at his stomach. Oogie was unmoving. Jack's empty eyes still seemed to convey a whole slew of emotions, loss, sadness, pain. But mostly an intense hate-fueled rage. Jack poked Oogie with the spear. "You will regret this Oogie. You will regret it for as long as you live. This is the third time I have beaten you. Don't let it happen again, or I will destroy you. Forever."

"You can't. As long as even one of my bugs survives, I can create myself anew. All of my bugs have a shared consciousness, and they are all equally me." Jack leaned in close.

"Believe me, I will end you," he said in a low voice, touching the spear to just below Oogie's throat. Jack backed away, keeping the spear pointed squarely at Oogie's rather sizable middle. He reached the far end of the room, where the chain was hooked to a pulley system, and yanked the lever, and watched as Oogie was hoisted into the air by the neck, his foot getting pulled up his back. Jack watched in silence, unmoving as the Spider Silk suit Oogie used to keep himself together started to unravel, bugs spilling out, going everywhere. This was a bit of a surprise to Jack, he hadn't known Oogie was actually made of bugs. As the creatures scattered, Jack realized what Oogie had meant by "his" bugs.

"If it were anyone else…."well, to be honest, if it were anyone else, Jack would probably use them all the time. As it was…Jack didn't even want to finish the thought. Work could wait. Right now, Sally was what was important. He crouched beside her, fingering her charred hair. He remembered the first time he had met her, crouching very like he was now, having just scared her, accidentally for once. He had insisted she call him Jack, and had taunted Finklestien and hidden her from her creator. He touched her face with a bony finger. "Sally," he whispered. "Sally, can you hear me?" She didn't move. Whatever force had kept her animated seemed to have been removed. He ran a finger over her body, missing every limb that was no longer there. "Oh, Sally. I am so sorry. It's all my fault. My fault. Oh, what have I done?" Some part of his mind said that he was being ridiculous, that this was entirely Oogie's fault, because the former boogie man (buggy man-interjected the part of his mind that was either still in shock, or just plain sick and insensitive) was absolutely insane. 'Shut up,' Jack told the logical side of his mind. "would he have gone after anyone if it weren't for his hatred of me? No! Now go away." The logical side of his mind responded that the only reason Oogie hated Jack was because Jack had punished him based on the laws of Halloweentown, which Oogie had broken because he was INSANE. And a psychopath. Jack once again ignored his logical mind, and buried his head in bony hands, slumping entirely to the floor.

This wasn't Sally. Not this broken shell in front of him. Sally was all dancing and laughter and brightness. She was so….un-Halloweentown, but Jack loved that about her. He found it odd that he liked that she was so very different than anything else he held dear, but she kept him refreshed, entertained, and in line. She was the girl who had danced in the graveyard after escaping Finklestien for the first time, the girl who had nursed him and cleaned his house after he had those wacky hallucinations about very small creatures needing to get someplace quite high. She had wanted to know about them.

"They are small," he whispered. "Impossibly small. There are quite a lot of them, and they are odd colors. Blue and green and purple. They are fuzzy, which is just….well. You would like them, you know, if they existed. I dreamed them up years ago, before I was Pumpkin King. Before I ever even tasted Holy Water. They were a childhood fancy, one I never told anyone about. Nice things have no place here. I named them after me. I was young you see, and wanted some appreciation. They gave it to me, in my mind, at night, before I fell asleep. I would sort of, recount the day to myself, and imagine their little voices telling me I was clever, that I did the right things, that I had such good ideas. They were Nice, and Cute, see, because there aren't anything like that here, and I like things that are new and different. I always liked heights, always. And rickety structures that looked like they might fall any second. Look at my house!" he gave a small chuckle. "I guess, at that party, the first time, I started talking about them, those silly jackernickels. And I decided, 'hell, they are part of me, and I like impossibly high things, so they do too! And it isn't fair that just I get to be at a party, so they must get to the party on the chandelier!' I don't know where the mufflisally's come from. They are red and blueish. The perfect size for a friend to a jackernickel. It isn't fair to separate them. So they were going to the party too, that's when you came in. That's the story Sally. The whole thing. I told you I'd tell you." He couldn't breath suddenly. He looked around the dungeon. Dimly, he noticed the skeletons still hanging on the wall. He thought he knew what had happened to his other people. He was sorry for them of course, but for the moment, he was still trying to get around the idea that he would never see his best friend again.

But….if Finklestien did it once….Jack carefully picked up Sally's still form, and slowly began making his way out of the room, taking care to step on every single bug he could find. Oogie Boogie's warning rang in his ears. As long as the bugs survived, so could Oogie. If Oogie could come back, maybe so could Sally, but if she couldn't, Jack was determined that Oogie never would.

It took him a long time, but he finally got to Finkelstiens castle.

"Help me, please," he gasped out, when the door finally creaked open.

"What have you done?" shrieked the doctor.

"It was Oogie. He wanted to hurt me, so he did it through my subjects, and people I care about. But can you fix her?" Finklestien motioned for Jack to come inside, and put Sally on the table. Finklestien examined her carefully.

"Yes. But it will take a while. And I don't want her near you Jack. She won't be safe." Jack nodded. As long as she was alive.

"Keep her the same way Finklestien. Don't you change her at all. Not one bit. Except for tonight. If you can restore her memories, do it, but not those of tonight. But Dr, you'd better keep her as she is. Or I will be very, very displeased with you." Jack glared so impressively, that for once, Finklestien decided that Jack did quite deserve to be the Pumpkin King. I do hope, that Jack was stretching the truth a bit, exaggerating, but, after what he had just done to Oogie, it is hard to be sure.

Finklestien decided not to call Jack's bluff in this case, which was probably wise, and he nodded. "And try to keep her away from me too. I can stay away from her if I know it will protect her, but I want you to make sure she doesn't get to close again." The doctor nodded once more.

"Before you go Jack my dear boy, here is something for the pain." He produced a small vial from a hidden compartment in his chair, and handed it to Jack. The skeleton man took it, and nodded at the doctor. Finklestien watched as the bony man slowly trudged down the hill to the town. Something stirred in his mostly dead heart. Pity. It was an uncomfortable feeling. But he felt bad for Jack, as the King had obviously liked Sally. He would recreate his rag doll girl, but he would try and keep her away from Jack. For once the two of them were on the same page, and the Doctor resolved to be kinder to Jack in the future. Well, if not kinder, maybe just less hostile. He liked Jack sometimes, he would just have to try and like him more often, that was all. The pity feeling was less intense, now just sort of tucked away in a corner of his mind to be forgotten about. He turned to face the body of Sally the ragdoll. Time to begin.

The potion Finklestien had given Jack did just as the doctor had promised, It took away the pain. Jack remembered what had happened to Sally, but it seemed more like a story, or that it had happened long ago. He remembered her in fondness, and he sort of knew that Finklestien was remaking her, but for the most part, he was able to concentrate on everything else he had to do for the town. Sometimes, he had wild bouts of depression that he didn't quite understand. He grew bored with everything that used to excite him. He felt that something was missing, though he wasn't sure what it was, and it ate him up inside. He found himself thinking about Sally from time to time, but always managed to stop himself before he got too far down that train of thought. It was probably the potion, not allowing him to think of things that might cause him pain, but Jack didn't quite understand it, and that frustrated him. He felt lost and alone. The constant lonely ache deep inside himself didn't help matters either. His Halloweens were still fantastic, but he just didn't care anymore. He adopted a ghost dog that he called Zero, but that only helped for a short time. He loved Zero, and the two were soon inseparable, but the empty feeling soon returned, Jack found himself staring into space more and more often, images of Sally sometimes drifting into his mind, but just as quickly banished, and he never remembered thinking of her later. But, as a few years went by, he stared more and more often at Finklestien's castle, as though waiting for something to happen.

Repairing Sally was no easy task. Sure, she was partly rags, but she was also bits of flesh, which were hard to get. After the body was made anew (and he had to be careful that she was identical, otherwise Jack would be angry…if he remembered to be, anyway, and Finklestien wasn't willing to risk it), the doctor still had to ensure her brain still worked, and that the force animating her could be resurrected. Once she was awake again, he had to teach her anew how to walk, talk, eat—he had to essentially start from scratch. Memories slowly came back to her. She remembered how to sew one dreary afternoon, and she patched up several holes in her dress. She remembered how to run, how to cook, which plants were poisonous and which ingredients were useful in hiding the smell and taste of poison. For a while, she couldn't remember why she knew these things, but that too came back to her. She saw him out the window one night, the skeleton man, and she remembered him. It had been years she knew, since she had seen him last. She heard the celebrations every year after Halloween of course, but she hadn't seen him. Finklestien kept her in the basement usually. She had snuck out that night, knowing that the doctor was in his lab and wouldn't notice if she left her basement room for a while. She saw Jack, and remembered.

She remembered meeting him in the graveyard, learning the poisons so she could sneak out, cleaning up after him when he got drunk, the haunted house….and then…a sort of blankness. She assumed there had been an accident. She decided that she didn't want to know, but she did want to see him again, and soon. A small voice in the back of her mind niggled at her though. "Why hasn't he come to see me?" she wondered. "I would have gone to see him, if there was an accident, and he were hurt." She frowned, trying to remember, to fill in the blanks where her memory stopped. People had gone missing….she and Jack had gone into the graveyard….she thought she remembered something about dancing skeletons, but she passed that off as a dream.

Finkelstein caught her of course, but he was surprisingly lenient about her being out of the basement. He decided it was time she moved back into her old room, but she still wasn't allowed out of the house. She supposed she understood, he had always been over protective, but ever since she had woken up, stiff, unable to move and without her memory, he had been worse than ever. She supposed she was lucky, that she had regained all her memories and abilities back, though Finklestien told her she was better than before, that he had made her entirely fireproof, which she supposed was kind of him, she had never liked fire much.

Whenever she asked him if she could go outside, he simply replied, "you are not ready" and he would tell her to go clean something. She obeyed, she always obeyed. But she planned as well.

Finally, on one Halloween night, she put her plan into action. She dosed the Doctor with Deadly Nightshade and slipped out of the house. She arrived in town just as the festivities went into full swing. She ducked out of sight, watching in fascination as the Halloweentowner's sang and danced. The Hanging Tree was new, she assumed it was one of Jack's ideas. She wasn't quite ready to make her return to Halloweentown society. She had mostly spent time with Jack and the witches, and she didn't want anyone to ask questions tonight.

Suddenly, Jack was there, dancing as a flaming pumpkin on top of a wooden horse before diving into the fountain, rising slow and straight as if he did that sort of thing everyday. She clapped with the rest of the town, smiling. It was just so typically Jack. Always a showman, he grinned and waved and leapt around manically. Everyone started gathering around, congratulating him and flirting and well, brownnosing honestly. Sally frowned. That wasn't at all what Jack needed. Or wanted. It was an excellent show to be fair, but his best yet? Hardly. It was practically old hat. It wasn't really new or inventive at all. She watched as Jack waved off his crowd of admirers and up the stairs to his house. Sally knew he wouldn't go there, not now, not with that look on his face, not with that walk. He seemed…almost depressed. She wondered why, it wasn't as though it had been an awful night or performance. It had been good. Not fantastic, but no reason to get so….melancholy. She followed him.

She hadn't gotten far when Finklestien caught up to her, furious. He grabbed her arm to pull her home, but she used one of her old tricks to escape. She lost her arm in the process, but Finklestien fell out of his chair. He wouldn't be able to catch up. She took a shortcut to the graveyard, arriving only moments after Jack. She had the oddest sense of déjà vu as she slipped from gravestone to gravestone, keeping hidden. Jack had a dog following him now. He seemed to be talking to the dog, or trying to give himself a pep talk or something.

He'd start by being positive, gloating about his fame in the human world, the unfortunate man in Kentucky who had named him "Mr. Unlucky" his ability to perform Shakespeare—that was new, Sally mused. He seems a bit more well read than before. Maybe the new witches she had seen in the village had something to do with it. She seemed to recall Shakespeare wrote about witches a lot-But Jack would always fall back to sadness after his moments of self-praise. He spoke about missing something, about an empty place inside, a longing. She couldn't hold back a gasp when he muttered something about wishing he could give up the title of Pumpkin King. When he wandered off into the woods, she let him go. "oh Jack. What happened to you?"

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He had seen her, of course he had. How could he miss that hair? He had lost her in the crowd, but he was certain it was her. Memory rushed him like a freight train. The pain of that night was less intense as it had been that night, it had been years after all, but it was still worse than it had been that morning. That flash of red hair….A moment later he was sure he had imagined it, but suddenly, all those times he had felt like he lost something made a little bit more sense. But he had promised Finklestien…and he had promised himself. He had to stay away from Sally Ragdoll. Oogie was still around. Lock, Shock, and Barrel still lived in their treehouse just outside of town, but they were getting harder to reach. Jack figured that meant Oogie had rebuilt himself—they answered to Oogie first, and Jack second, though they were still sufficiently afraid of Jack that he thought they might hesitate to break his orders. They didn't booby trap him anymore. They didn't dare. In Jack's mind, that was a plus.

Sally….no, she was safer staying away from him. He wished he could explain it to her. If she was back, she would certainly try and find him. He was so focused on his thoughts, he almost didn't realize where he was, coming to a stop only when he stumbled into a clearing of very strange trees. Trees with little pictures on them, pictures that were not pictures at all, but doors. One in particular seemed to call to him, a pine tree, with full leaves and little decorations…