Melchiah Trash #1

Let me be clear, Kain wasn't a love interest to her in canon, but the narrative clearly wanted him to be. Here is the fallen lord returned to life in order to save his people. Yes, he's brash and arrogant, motivated by vengeance not justice, but he's useful. He saved Umah's life, a feat no other could even attempt. He slaughtered the vampire traitors who had eluded their comeuppance for two centuries in a matter of days. He's handsome and powerful and driven and would make a good mate if Umah could curb his more reckless side. But he's also a warlord on the path to becoming a tyrant every bit as awful as the one they both seek to defeat. And in canon he killed her for trying to prevent it.

Now take a step into another timeline and back a few years, when Umah rescued a young woman from her would-be muggers and won another little ally to her cause. Gina was a quiet girl, always on edge like a rabbit poised to flee. But she heard things because no one ever imagined it would matter if quiet little Gina heard even if they did notice her. Gina was helpful and never any trouble. No one questioned her. No one paid her any mind when she ran an errand for a dear friend in the Sarafan Barracks. And no one knew what happened to her once the place went up in flames that night.

Umah kept her end of the deal. She respected a mortal with no romantic aspirations of undeath. Gina Hakkety died that night, but in a cheap room overlooking the docks, Rowan Hakkety was born. Umah smiled sharp toothed as she fastened the buttons on a more-than-second hand waistcoat. Rowan was also quiet and helpful, but he didn't scurry through life unnoticed. He'd buy a round for anyone at his local, often in payment for losing a round of cards. He was easy to talk to, easily impressed by big strong men in gleaming armour, and oh so sympathetic when their planned hunts failed.

And at the end, Umah had to choose. The man who cut a bloody path to victory for her or the man who opened doors towards it slowly with the light touch of a latch-key. Cast away that lingering sympathy for the pawns sacrificed along the way or stop living life like a zero-sum game. Embrace the battle, or just what she had spent all this time fighting for?

Pitch Black has always been the fear of what was lurking outside the cave mouth, beyond the little circle of firelight where humanity huddled. His was the fear of the unknown, of what was lurking in the shadows, of what it might do.

But fear and faith come in many shapes, and they are not all shadows of the Nightmare King. Sometimes, instead of the creeping fear of something stalking in the night, there comes the certain concrete terror as the tiger leaps, a moment not of anxiety but of knowledge before the fangs clamp down.

That fear is what feeds you, not of the unknown which the human mind fills with terrors, but fear of knowing and not being able to escape.

For millennia you subsisted from those moments of terror at the end of a tiny life, far beneath notice, far beneath personification. Over the centuries, though, you began to grow stronger as humanity learned and learned to fear. The dawn of farming meant failed harvests and the sickening knowledge of hunger to come.

Then the start of science. Copernicus. And better, Darwin. Mortals slowly stripped themselves of their comforting arrogant assumptions about being the centre and pinnacle of creation. The horror of it nourished you, even as Pitch started to fade away into a children's tale.

There are no words to describe the anger felt by the slowly fading shadow of Pitch Black. He despised you, turned his thoughts from the Sandman, and set his sights upon toppling your throne.

You might not even notice for a while, too giddy on your new life and sudden strength, but Pitch finds his way in. Little whispers in sleeping minds of all that is unknown between the stars and beneath the sea. One mind in particular was made almost as much of fear as the two of you. A writer, Howard, who feared everything he did not know and then feared most of what he learned. You could have glutted yourselves on him alone if he were not so frail and mortal. Still, it was your first meeting as equals that he didn't try to turn into a battleground.

He was taken aback by your greeting. How couldn't he be? Didn't you know what you had done to him? First the Guardians and now you try to push him out of the world, and you - what - want to be friends?

Or more than friends? He grins, sharp teeth flashing white in the gloom. Oh, he can use this. He can use you and the Man in the Moon has no irrational fondness for a fear spirit.

He tells himself this as he gathers his army of Nightmares. He does the same thing when he lets them loose and sends a delicious wave of fear to bolster you both. The lie that there is no affection there doesn't crumble even when his horde turns on him and drags him down into the darkness beneath the world. That only happens when you turn the hungry Nightmares aside with a wave of your hand.

(~goodgriefwhatanerd)

@goodgriefwhatanerd I have been hoarding this ask and rereading it like -

I love this interpretation of pitch being horror and anticipation, with the new spirit being terror and certainty – a delightful twist I don’t think I’ve seen before!!

Also I could be wrong but that Howard writer – HP Lovecraft reference? The inventor of cosmic horror being haunted by two literal fear spirits is such a delicious thought. Have you seen the comic by rinpin on deviantart? They were one of the storyboard artists for ROTG and did a brilliant little comic about Pitch and Lovecraft meeting.

My beautiful ghost girlfriend who gets hidden by safesearch filters, so is under a cut for mild gore and blood in higher definition than most of the mild gore around here. I want to gently clean her up and give her nice clothes and cuddles and adopt her fucked up baby and be a better husband and father than the fucker who killed her.