Luna: Okay so, after all this nonsense floating about regarding the non-existent 'romantic' themes in Charmed's series 'In the Dark', I have written a little something to cheer her up.

Post series, Jack-central. Dark themes.

Read with caution.

III

Night Terrors: Post 'The Dark in You'

III

The house was dark.

He liked to keep it that way. Not because the dark brought him any comfort. It was quite the opposite. The dark was a lonely, terrifying thing that held horrors he had only ever chastised himself for fearing before he worked up the courage to speak to them. And hadn't that been the beginning of this whole mess?

The dark had spoken back.

It had suffocated him, paralysed him, swallowed up every piece of light he managed to keep for himself. It had touched and taken and he had yielded, at first without his say so, but then, sinking deeper under its influence, he allowed it trespasses he had given no other. Unthinking, far too trusting, far too stupid.

The dark was a blanket of numbing fear shaped in the form of a man with glowing eyes and a razored grin, a tall grasping net of insecurities so black and bleak and smothering they could steal breath. Or it had been. Before he'd trapped him in that mirror. And every other reflective thing that could possibly catch his eyes. This dark, the one he was swathed in now, was alien, was one he didn't know, was one he couldn't anticipate and even alone wrapped inside of it, in a room he knew well, he could not make the decision between pressing into a tight corner with his back to the wall, or sitting in the centre of the room so he'd see whatever came at him.

But he could not see.

It was too dark to see.

There could be claws stretching across the floor to grab him, wisps of sentient smoke come to wrap around his throat and squeeze. Pitch wasn't alone. There had to be more than one of his kind, more than one type of monster to make the black corners of the world a danger. The very thought made his chest tight and Jack wheezed, reminding himself to swallow even if his throat was so parched it felt like chewing on sandpaper. Breathe. Keep breathing. There's nothing here. But there might have been. There had been for many years before he had invited it. What else was hiding in the shadows? What else could come for him as Pitch had?

Pitch. Jack gnawed hard on the cuff of his hoodie to keep from biting through his own lip. Even now, the darkness and the remains of their influence writhed inside of him at the barest hint of the name, the barest thought of it. They swam through his core, like bubbles in his stomach and a thick and bitter nausea that urged him nightly into the bathroom to purge his stomach of whatever he had eaten that day.

They whispered things in voices he was certain were not really there. He only ever loved you. He gave you everything. You were safe. He took care of you. But it was a LIE! A filthy betrayal gift-wrapped as a god-send that poisoned and corrupted and-

Jack scrambled up from the small nook by his bedroom door, socked feet sliding over carpet as he raced towards the bathroom, his stomach roiling as he collapsed to the floor, his head barely over the porcelain before he released the mouthful of bile that rose in his throat. He hadn't eaten today, or he had but nothing had stayed down. aside from a few mouthfuls of water and a dry biscuit to stop his gut from hurting and he sat there, face pressed to the toilet rim staring blankly at nothing.

He knew he couldn't stay there.

The bathroom was more dangerous than most places, everything reflective. He had thought to spend the night in there once, just in case he decided to purge again, but that plan had been scuppered when a passing car had shot light through the window, and the polished silver flush he had reached towards beamed back at him with a mouthful of sharp teeth and golden eyes that speared him through.

He had never felt so cold, his skin prickling like he'd been doused in icy water as he'd crawled backwards across the lino fast enough to hit his head on the bath-tub and the sudden irrational fear that Pitch could reach him there sent him running for the bedroom.

How he hated the bedroom.

So many memories. So many falsehoods. They all hurt. So many lies. And he never slept in the bed anymore. He had been taken there against his will. He had laid there, lost in dreams, trusting in Pitch to take care of him and the spirit had satisfied himself inside of him as he lay sleeping.

The mattress now lay in shreds after he had attacked it with a kitchen knife, the blade bright enough in what little light crept in through the window for him to see Pitch reflected and that sad, sad, FUCKING SAD LOOK ON HIS FACE EVERY TIME HE DROVE THE SHARP METAL INTO THE BEDDING...

It made him angry. It made him fearful. It made him feel things he'd rather were locked away tight in a box where he could never examine them. It was all a lie, all one big elaborate plot that left him feeling so dirty he had taken showers in the dark to keep from seeing that face in the tiles of the shower wall. So he tore that bed to pieces, left his room tarred and feathered in stuffing and cried himself into unconsciousness for the first time since the sealing. There was no relief in those tears, only a bone-deep ache that told him he could have fought more, retaliated quicker and the sleep was a pit of nightmares for him to fall into, grey faces and honeyed words seducing him in his head where they could not in his heart.

The ritual itself had been a joke. How exactly was this supposed to help? A restraining order that restrained one's rapist to a distance of half an inch if something shiny was nearby? It was insane.

Pitch had been able to coalesce from every shadow, bleed from walls like ink and rise from the floorboards like ghosts in those old Scooby Doo cartoons, but Pitch was no comical villain in a Halloween mask. He was a dark spirit, a fear spirit, who fed on doubt like it was a four course banquet and bred dependency in his victims that flowered like affection and craved the touch of long ashen fingers. He certainly hadn't lost his touch in captivity, finding everything he could use to catapult Jack into shock, or panic or complete hysteria. He had managed to send him screaming more than once and the most serious misconduct of all? His reactions led to a minor assault charge that Tooth had had to bail him out of after he had punched a guy for leaning in too close wearing his spanking new sunglasses.

Jack screwed his eyes up tight as he tried to block the memory of a mirror image of Pitch leering at him contemptuously from identical lenses, his fingers digging into the cushion he held clenched defensively to his chest as he curled up into a tighter ball by his closet. He could never tell Tooth. He could never tell her, even after everything she had done to help him, that all her efforts had been fruitless. She knew he was still struggling, but she had no idea how much. The pain cut deep, and what she thought was a healing scar was still a gaping wound.

He could never tell her how night after night, he sat staring into the dark with bloodshot eyes, simply waiting for the warmth of familiar hands to snatch him into oblivion. Or more frequently, how often he fell into restless sleep and dreamt it happened so often that he could scarcely believe it wasn't real when he awoke.

He spent his days hiding how awkward it was to walk with eyes downcast, avoiding the gaze of other people, deliberately ignoring windows and mirrors and even the bright glare of sunlight off of car bonnets in an attempt to delay the inevitable. He had stopped leaving the house when it was raining, too often trapped in the deluge with no way out because every puddle was a face he feared staring back at him. He could never tell her he chose the mind-numbing dread of spending the days, weeks, months after the 'cleansing', subjecting himself to the horror of the dark, because the alternative was worse.

He could never tell her, and every time he kept his mouth shut, all he could hear was the rich melodious laughter of one 'solved problem' itching in the back of his mind.

It had sounded ridiculous in the beginning.

That he would ever fear the light so much as the dark.