A/N: I don't own anything, please heed the rating. Rated for language, sex, and dubcon, viewer discretion is advised.

Pitch never imagined doing something so tedious as rifling through children's teeth.

Frantic and cursing to himself, he dug through every single damned vial until he found the one with the familiar, albeit brunette, smiling boy plastered on it.

The Shadow King ran his thumb over the gold designs that seemed dull in comparison, unable to grasp that the vial could be the exact same as every other child's in the world, when held within was so much more.

Jack's teeth... he had found them, at last.

Because forbid that Pitch be able to use his shadows to hunt down a needle in a haystack. And so the dignified and posh Pitch had succumbed to crawling on and scraping up his knees to find what he was looking for, and if he hadn't been aware before, he certainly knew now that there were a lot of children in the world.

Everything was going so splendidly. He would lift the vial, gold and beckoning and with it in his hand, lead Jack down a path of shadows. Jack would see an answer, simple and offered up to him in forfeiture and when he finally had his memories back, Jack would have no choice but to choose a side.

Which was Pitch's motivation to crawl around for the blasted things in the first place.

Pitch Black... the content (and tamer) of nightmares, held to himself the small case, wrapped up easily in his long fingers.

He had suffered many losses in his life.

He had earned the world of nightmares and shadows.

There was nothing the Man in the Moon could take from him because he had nothing.

Nothing but Jack Frost's teeth.

Even with all he had seen, Pitch found the knowledge of what those pearly-whites possessed to be marvelous.

They were the only thing between him and what he had lost, a burn far too recent, merely a short three hundred years prior.

It had all been so simple.

"The teeth? Why do you care about the teeth?"

The answer had been before him the entire time, Pitch just had chosen not to acknowledge the possibility, maybe because it sounded like a pathetic excuse one gives themselves to calm erratic breathing in a fit of tears.

Maybe it's not his fault.

It is, after all, the more realistic, scathing deductions that seem to stick.

Maybe he just doesn't believe in you anymore.

Pitch smiled in a way that showed off each of his glittering teeth, the quivering of his lips indiguisable.

What happens next, changes the playing field.

Closing his eyes slowly, Pitch Black touched the memories within the casing and was cast into a world forgotten by everyone.

Everyone except for the Nightmare King.

There was once a boy named Jack. Loyal and charming, he was loved by many, but none so much as his darling sister, Pippa.

Pippa had been the foundation of Jack's multitudinous audience. With each stupid, daring act he performed for the amusement (and possibly approval) of his peers, it was sweet little Pippa and her alone that lacked excitement or adrenaline for her brother's endeavors.

Instead, she was seeping fear.

It was at first, so marginal that it could not feed a lonely shadow.

But as Jack began to perform his daring deeds for growing crowds, the fear settled like an ember in a famine field and ignited.

That is how Pitch came to know Pippa, the charming girl who doted too much on the concerns of her brother.

A starving animal will find red meat if it is left to permeate the air long enough.

As such a creature, Pitch, long dwindled and forgotten, found his way back to a place where he once pulsed terror through the veins of each living being.

Shivering and stumbling through the snow, cold even in the blaring sun, Pitch had wondered where such a strong and throbbing fear could come from at the brightest hour of the day.

Was it not shadows and darkness that crept into a child's mind and spoiled it until it was just his taste?

Through the village he trekked and sneered at all the happenings that were so innocent and happy. How confused he was when the source of his calling oozed from the center of a crowd of children, each laughing and cheering and chanting.

Jack! Jack! Jack!

And then he heard it... the whimper and stammer of a child wrapped up in fear; drowning in it.

"Please be careful! Jack!"

Pitch came to the realization that he had been summoned from his dankest cave, from within which he rotted, by the love one held for another person.

It brought a smile to his face, one that ached his cheeks for they had not uplifted in many, many years.

Pitch always was a fan of irony.

Pitch stuck around because where else had he to go? A pitiful depiction of the terribleness he once was, the man of shadows stayed where the fear was strong, right beside the child Pippa.

How he lived for the tar of fright, letting it warm him through the coming of winter. In a world where few were ever afraid, his feast was plentiful so long as the boy named Jack continued to endanger himself for a cheap thrill.

It wasn't until later that Pitch realized no such 'cheap thrill' existed, only the want Jack had to see a smile on his sister's face, another perfect example of that delicious irony.

It had been a fortnight of trailing after and feeding off the scraps of fear Pippa left behind as she followed her brother; the Nightmare King strong again after so many weak nights.

And so he blew the flames in the dry grass just slightly, and they became an inferno.

The terror Pippa experienced for the sake of her brother became something far more sinister.

Lying in bed, she held the covers that kept away the chill to her chin, small knuckles turning whiter and eyes wider as the shadows danced across her walls.

It was Pitch's favorite puppet show, his fingers nimble as they traipsed in grand designs. His own special theater in which he is both actor and audience.

He adored the way Pippa's breath grew shallow and clipped, the way in which her gaze darted about every which way.

The room became an oven and Pitch basked in it's emission...

Until a light leaked in through the crack of the door, followed by a candle and something even brighter holding it high.

The boy, Jack, had come at the whimpers of his ward. They called to him, however quiet they might have been, big brother was here and there was nothing to be afraid of.

"There is nothing to be afraid of."

Pitch thought to himself that he could come to despise this boy with time. The soft pink in his cheeks and spiral of messy brown spikes were plain enough but even Pitch had to look twice at his eyes, each a puddle of warm liquor.

"Yes, there is nothing to fear." Pitch spoke aloud to those that neither saw nor heard him.

He slipped into the shadows of Jack himself, behind the boy who stood as a beacon. Pitch manipulated his silhouette, changed it into something malicious and then heard the most gratifying thing.

"But fear itself."

The scream of a scared child.

Pitch spent the night lounging on the beaten desk beside Pippa's bed, watching her where she curled into her protector.

He often sat there, unamused, pining, calculating manors in which to frighten poor Pippa to a point where her fear could spread into the other children.

Fear always spreads.

The only thing between him and the infection taking root was Jack.

The damned brother he'd once been almost grateful for.

If it hadn't been for Jack... Pippa would have never felt fear strong enough to draw the attention of the Nightmare King to her. But now, all he did was act as a balm to the rampant flame Pitch had started; containing it, weakening it.

It was a war that only pitch was aware of, settling under Pippa's small, wooden bed.

He followed her out each day, as she followed Jack.

He'd whisper to Jack.

"Yes, that seems frightfully dangerous. Do go on ahead."

Although Jack could not hear him.

The brunette boy would leap across branches with his thin arms and Pitch would turn and stare at Pippa as she frowned and called up to her brother for him to "Be careful!"

But Jack never really was. If he was anywhere near as reckless as he appeared, Pitch knew Pippa had plenty to fear.

Back beneath the young girl's bed, Pitch dragged a single sharp nail up the soft wooden underbelly of the frame, for no other reason than boredom.

The hitch of breath he heard above him was enlivening. She had heard him.

Although Pitch knew it was pointless to celebrate victory against an unwilling (and ignorant) opponent, he could not fight down the desire to boast rattling in his chest.

He did it again.

Scratching beneath the bed, when Pippa could no longer keep herself awake out of fright, she dreamed of horrible, wretched things.

If fear was fire on a cold night then a nightmare was water in a desert.

He touched the terrors that floated to the surface of her mind... and reeled back.

The image he got was no monster nor plague.

It was her very self, alone and very much without Jack.

Even with the Nightmare King himself under her bed, Pippa's biggest fear was still losing her brother.

If Pitch was capable of sympathizing, he might have in that moment, just a bit.

The more a person believed in fear, the stronger Pitch became.

And one day, he reminded himself, they would once again believe in the boogeyman.

And to think such a regime would come from the concerns of one little girl.

Pippa was proof that all it takes is the belief of one child for something to become real.

Because she did believe. She believed in the fear and the nightmares and the skittering sounds from beneath her bed.

She believed so strongly that she jolted from her sleep one night with a cry.

"Jack!"

And Pitch rolled his eyes because she often did this, crying out for Jack.

And Jack came, because he always did.

Pitch had nothing against the boy personally. He was an alright lad. Did his chores, took care of his sister, oh wait, that one was detrimental to Pitch's plan, so maybe he wasn't so 'alright'.

"There's something under my bed."

Pippa whispered, as if afraid that something would hear her.

"Don't be silly Pippa. It is probably just a mouse."

"No Jack. It's not a mouse. I know what mice sound like."

"I'll take a look. If it'll make you feel better."

The light from the candle Jack always brought with him lumbered over to the bedside.

Pitch could only stare as the young man knelt down and reached a hand into his domain, into what he had claimed as home for the sake of pretending he had one.

The Nightmare King was not pleased.

The pink hand crept further beneath the bed, closer to Pitch's own.

He watched it approach, and then...

It touched him.

The sensation was a physical phenomenon, the touch of another being something so far distant in the past, the aesthesis had been lost entirely to Pitch.

Until now.

He did not know who withdrew quicker, himself or Jack, but the human wasted no time in dropping low and gazing under the bed with such confidence, his candle lighting each crevice.

He stared right into Pitch's eyes.

And never saw him.

What he did see, Pitch noticed, was the scratch marks on the frame. Far too large to be made by a rodent.

First Jack's face contorted with confusion, and then serenity.

"There's nothing down here, Pippa. Nothing to be afraid of."

He was up and out of sight.

Pitch just stared at the place he once was and flexed his hand.

It still tingled.

Since the encounter, Pitch couldn't help but notice Jack as something more than just the source of Pippa's fear.

He eyed him a bit more often, when they were out and about for the day or when he would hold Pippa in his lap and read her happy stories before she settled down for sleep.

The nightmares were not every night, but they were frequent and the young girl would wake and cry and her brother would be there, without fail.

Those nights, Pitch would watch the gentle nature the brunette exposed as he coddled Pippa close. The foolhardy boy that pranced through the village was gone and before the Nightmare King was a simple young man, desperate to chase away all the bad dreams.

From the day he arrived, Pitch kept close on Pippa's heels, like a dog chasing a bone.

He couldn't explain why he chose one night to follow Jack from where he tucked his darling sister in. Out of the room and far from the bed he'd claimed as his home, Pitch crept the halls that creaked beneath his footfall.

Every so often, Jack would stop and turn to look over his shoulder and Pitch couldn't help but think that maybe...

"Can you hear me, boy?"

No response. There never was. The last person Pitch had ever spoken to was Manny, and it had been more of a threatening, burning, rage.

Jack proceeded to his room without so much as a stir in his attention. The wood cabin was simple in design but nicer than many Pitch had seen. They could have been the perfect family, hard working parents that were well-known within the village and two precious little children to follow in their footsteps.

Pitch found himself rolling his eyes frequently since coming into the house.

In his room, Jack sighed and stretched shoulders. He sat at the edge of his cot, Pitch noticed, nowhere near as nice as Pippa's frame. While her's was sturdy and rich in color and varnish, his had been chipped away by years of wear and stood on uneven legs.

"Do your parents favor your sister more?" Pitched asked the air, looming before where Jack sat, chin resting in his hands.

"Is that why you started all of this..." He waved his hand through the air. "this?"

Jack made no indication that anyone spoke, just sat and looked into the darkness when he should have been sleeping.

The walls had a emptiness about them, although they were no more barren than any other room.

Perhaps they were a reflection of the boy they sheltered, but Pitch didn't even know where to start in matters of lonely humans.

He stared with a longing to know, why did Jack not go to bed? The hours were slipping by quickly and soon the moon would be gone and with it the chance to sleep, even if for a few short hours in a blanket that scraped the softness off his skin.

And then it hit him.

He stayed in Jack's room that night. Standing, pacing, sitting across the way in a rickety chair, the whole while watching Jack's tired eyes strain to stay open.

When the sun peeked over the east, Jack had just slipped into slumber, still propped up and waiting...

Just in case Pippa had another nightmare.

The light chased away the darkness and Pitch stared with his jaw slackened and his eyes clouded at the young man.

"When was the last time you had a night's sleep?"

Stalking over to the slouched form, Pitch settled his hands on Jack's soft shoulders and his stomach churned when they did not pass through, but rested against cold skin.

Winter only seemed colder and the sun did little to leaven the chill in the air.

Pitch did not stop to think about why he did it, but he pushed down on Jack's shoulders until the boy was strewn across his cot. The Shadow Man even pulled the thin blanket up to his chin, before leaving to find Pippa.

She was soundly asleep and a darker part of Pitch scorned her for it.

The damsel Jack revolved his life around, snoring away while her brother fought exhaustion just in case she needed him.

For the first time, Pitch considered leaving the small house and making his way back into the mountains.

At least there he was never conflicted in his own feelings.

Pitch didn't start to hate Pippa, because what sort of Nightmare King had personal vendettas against what may as well have been their meal? But there was certainly something that hadn't been there before, a mar on his indifference, one that seemed to spread as he noticed the bags under Jack's eyes every morning.

They only got deeper as Pippa's distress grew stronger.

Each day, pitch paid a bit more attention to the boy, taking note in any change of his otherwise rambunctious gate or the ease of his smile.

Pitch could not help but be intrigued by the boy, sure there were parts of him that longed to understand his sacrifice to protect his sister, but mostly, how could Jack touch him?

No one knew fear the way Pitch did and he could recognize it by the distinct bitter taste it gave the air.

Jack was not afraid of anything.

He worried over Pippa, sure, but through his confidence in his own ability to protect her, he did not fear for her.

It was sickening to see someone so... so...

Invulnerable.

Pitch decided it would be best to test his ability to communicate with Jack.

He would whisper things into the boy's ear but Jack would show no sign of response until Pitch leaned just a bit too close, brushing his nose against Jack's soft, brown hair.

At that he would reel back and stare at where Pitch stood and it was almost disappointing how each time, Jack saw not a trace of him.

Such occurrences usually took place in the kitchen, where Jack would warm himself by the iron oven. It was the only place the boy chose to be alone.

It gave Pitch a sort of sick enjoyment to know he regularly intruded on the boy's solace.

"Why can you feel me, Jack?"

Pitched asked one afternoon beneath grey clouds, running the tip of his finger down the shallow of the brunette's back and watching him shudder.

"Jack? What's wrong?"

And there was the fear, it was Pippa's as usual.

Pitch always wondered what Jack's fear would taste like and what it would take to make him afraid.

"Nothing, Pippa. Get your coat on, it's cold."

Maybe that is why he kept touching Jack whenever given the opportunity. A graze of knuckles, a wandering hand, a brush through his hair...

Each time, Jack offered nothing but a twisted expression, confused (and nothing more) at the strange phenomenon he had been experiencing.

"Does anything get under your skin, Jack?"

Pitch would ask.

"Tell me what gets to you, Jack."

Pitch was growing restless.

He was never a patient spirit.

And then one day... everything changed.

The day had been long and very cold and even Jack had been consumed by a level of exhaustion that he could not be stirred from.

Pitch knows because he did not come when Pippa cried for him in the throes of her nightmares.

As the dreams fought on through the night, the fear seeped from her like a fog and settled on the ground. From it, Pitch rose up and stared at his hands that trembled with power.

And then Pippa woke, her eyes blown wide, she stared up at the Nightmare King and let out a scream.

She had seen him.

She saw him.

He had very little time to swell with pride before Jack burst in through the door and out of pure reflex, Pitch melted into shadow and soared under Pippa's bed where he felt he belonged.

"Oh Jack! I saw him! I saw him! The Boogeyman, Jack!" She cried, tears and snot trailing down her little pink face.

"It was just a bad dream, Pippa. There is no such thing as the Boogeyman."

Pitch shook his head and rolled his eyes (again) as Jack went about comforting his darling sister.

"Please Jack, I saw him! He's under there."

And Pitch could only guess that she had pointed down at her tattered mattress.

He was bored of such a routine by then.

Resting his chin in his hand, Pitch watched the skirmish of feet and whispered pleading as if it had become mundane.

The boy would look around, glance under the bed, shake off the chill he felt at the base of his spine, and that would be it.

Just like usual.

"Jack. There is something there. I know it is there. Just look."

Her voice sounded so hoarse, so desperate. It sickened Pitch how she milked her brother's sympathy.

"Alright. I'll take a look."

Pitch didn't so much as flinch when the brunette boy dropped to his knees and peered into his darkness.

But Jack froze.

Then Pitch froze.

There was no mistaking the recognition in the young man's eyes. Their whiskey wells glittered even in the dark and the Nightmare King was unsure which one of them was more alarmed in that moment.

He had seen Pitch, seen him and continued to see him and the only thing Pitch could come up with was

"Do you believe in me?"

Shoulders still stiff, Jack rose with no indication that he had heard the Nightmare King. He stood for what felt like hours in raging silence. Outside, the wind had calmed like a tamed sea and the walls stopped their nightly creaking, there was no doubt in Pitch's mind that in that moment, he was very real to Jack.

"Jack?" Pippa pleaded, clutching at his night shirt.

"There's nothing there, it was just a bad dream."

His voice was far too steady, the calm collected in him like a puddle and soon Pitch could not even feel the girl's fear anymore.

Things resumed the way they had been. Jack tucked her away for the night and skittered back to his room, the only difference being a heavy hesitance in his step.

When Pitch clambered back out, Pippa, who now had a very determined look about her face, could no longer see him.

He stomped about and cursed the Man in the Moon, the people of the earth, and Jack.

All it took was a reassuring lie and she had stopped believing.