Rise of the Guardians One-Shots

Once there was a Golden Age

Pitch Black sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. For the past several hours he had been going through his hoard of belongings in his underground home, sorting through the vast amoint of items he had accumulated over his many centuries of life. He had been sorting all his stuff out since Easter Monday. That had been almost five months ago. But he preferred not to think about that time. The bitter defeat. Instead he focused on what he had in front of him. He had barely made a dent in his trove.

His hand was still in his hair, halfway across his head, as he thought. He was the Nightmare King, and yet here he was, cleaning up a lair. Sorting out old belongings like an old man. But it was better to do something than nothing. If he did nothing, he was afraid he would lose whatever shattered sanity he had left.

He let his hand finish running through his greying hair. He wasn't truly old, even though he was ancient. His physical, bodily age did not match with the years he had lived. He knew his body was that of a man older than 35 years, but not quite 40 years, and yet his hair was greying. Not one or two or even five strands. The whole of his hair was covered in white streaks. By terrestrial standards, the grey had come a little early, although he had noticed that people's hair were greying earlier nowadays.

By the standards he had known, the extra terrestrial ones, the grey was much, much too early. Almost forty years too early.

He rubbed his forehead, trying to focus.

When most people heard the word 'immortal', they immediately assumed that age was frozen. No aging. That wasn't entirely accurate. No, the aging depended on the immortal. Such as Jack Frost. He would never age, he couldn't age. Nicholas St. North was different; he had been young once. Pitch could remember him back then, all those years ago. He remembered that North's hair had been as black as his own had been. North had aged, however; he had once been physically younger than Pitch, and then suddenly he was so much older than him. The magic in North let him keep the strength and ability of a young man, and once he had reached a certain age the aging process had stopped. The rabbit wasn't able to age either. Sandman had never been able to. As for the fairy, Pitch believed she was still able to age a little, but very, very slowly. Maybe one physical year every hundred.

As for himself, he couldn't age physically either, or he thought he couldn't. No. That wasn't strictly true. The dark powers he had kept him from aging. So if it were age, his hair ought not to have been greying.

Of course, he knew the reason for the grey. It was the same reason his eyes had dark circles, or his cheeks were hollow. He couldn't age, but his body reacted in similar ways to stress and unhappiness the way mortals did. He wondered whether Jack's hair, had it not already been white, would have too turned white despite his youth.

He couldn't remember last seeing himself in a mirror without the grey.

He rubbed his forehead, making circles on his eyes with his thumb. His head was aching, as were his eyes. He ought to get some sleep.

He was afraid of going to sleep. He had been afraid to go to sleep for five months. He knew that the instant his eyes would shut, the nightmares would return and plague him like they had been doing for the past five months. Before he didn't dream. He wouldn't have had nightmares if he could have controlled them, but now they consumed him at night.

His Nightmares, the horses, those were long gone. When they had dragged him to his lair and then... Pitch didn't want to remember what they had done. But after it all, they eventually disappeared. Without their master's power they were unable to live on. The only nightmares now were the ones that tortured him in his sleep.

He fell over. He was exhausted, but he was terrified of sleeping.

Ironic that the Nightmare King was so afraid of nightmares. But at the same time, he had enjoyed the fear of others, not his own fears. Was that why he had taken to enjoy causing fear? Not just because he gained power from the fear of others? Was all of it just so that he could distract himself? He had been so afraid, so angry, so unhappy, and he had felt a sardonic pleasure in making others feel what he felt. Perhaps it was all a way for him to punish the world that had made him this way.