Baby Tooth was still concerned, despite my reassurances, and was fluttering all about my line of vision trying to get my attention. Deciding I should probably try harder to put her mind at ease, I mustered the energy to put on a smile.
"I'm okay now, Baby Tooth, really, you don't have to worry," I assured her as I stopped walking. At least half of that wasn't a lie. The Spirit Eater hadn't said a single word more to me since I... My thought process stalled on that word, as if fully realizing what I had done. It dawned on me that I was becoming more and more ashamed of my actions. I fully understood that what I was doing would make my friends sad if they knew, and the guilt was gnawing at me from the inside out. The best solution I could manage to come up with was to shove the thoughts into the very back of my mind, and not revisit them until I was ready; if I ever will be ready.
Still not completely convinced that what I said was the truth, the small fairy flew down and placed her hand on mine. She looked deep in thought when something in my pocket caught her eye. Her small body dove into my hoodie with newfound intention, and started pushing something out the other side.
"Hey, what-"
A small Russian doll fell into the snow. Baby Tooth was trying to remind me of my center. With mixed feelings, I bent down to pick up the figurine North had given me months ago. As I held it in my hand, she flew up to meet my eyes. An intense gaze burning into my own, not out of anger; she wasn't angry at me for losing my way. It conveyed a deep kindness and care that I'd never had directed towards me before. Perhaps because I'd never let anyone see me so hopeless. She chirped out a sentence I couldn't understand, but even without knowing what she said, I knew what she meant.
Baby Tooth, and all of the people I was so lucky to call my friends, believed in me.
* * * *
"You have a lot of people worried about you right now you know," Pitch's voice sounded next to me as soon as I walked through the grand double door entrance to North's palace.
"Whoa!" I exclaimed as I threw my hands up ready to chop anyone if they got too close, until I realized it was Pitch. I lowered my very deadly weapons and felt a frosting blush creep up my face at my over reaction. I breathed out the remaining tension in my body and got right to scolding Pitch for the embarrassing scene he had just made me cause. "You can't just start talking right next to people like that without them knowing you're there first!"
"Well, I'm sorry, but I think it was very much deserved for all the distress you caused everyone tonight," Pitch spat out his sarcasm like acid.
Ouch, guess I do deserve that.
"I couldn't hear your thoughts Jack, I thought you were dead," Pitch paused to let that bit of burning information sink right in. "Hell, if you had come back a minute later I would have told the others that you were. Do you have any idea what kind of-"
As much as I tried not to, I stopped listening. Pitch couldn't hear my thoughts. There were definitely thoughts to be heard, so this could mean one of two things: first Pitch has lost his power completely, which is an unlikely option seeing as the world still needs him. Second, his powers don't work on me anymore. The only question is, why?
"Are you even listening to me?"
"I'm sorry."
The simplicity of my apology and the blank look on my face, changed something in Pitch's mannerism.
"I know you are," he said as his face softened. "Just never do that again!" He punctuated his demand with a thwap to the back of my head, which made us both laugh.
