Darkness.

That's the first thing he remembers.

Dark, and cold, and "he was scared" is an understatement, there's fear freezing up his veins and crawling up his spine and whispering in his skull. Fingers clench, scrabbling against the rough ground and trying to pull himself upright, body responding far too slowly. Everything is darkness, and the darkness is alive, it's writhing and hissing and wrapping itself around him, pressing against him like a pet against a much-loved owner and caressing his face like a lover.

Get out.

His feet won't quite hold him, his legs betray him when he least expects it, sending him crashing down face-first when he tries to walk. If he could only see, anything at all, then maybe there'd be a way out, some small shred of hope in this unending blackness.

But there isn't. All there is is the dark, and the cold, gnawing at the marrow of his bones.

And a light. A tiny spot of golden light, too soft and too faint to illuminate anything around him, but it gives him a goal, something to move towards. And the smallest flicker of hope, not much bigger or brighter than the beacon ahead of him, wavers into being within the crushing depths of fear that seem to overwhelm him. If he can only get to the light, everything will be fine. Everything will be –

Over.

His fingers, then his feet, unsteady though they are, find stairs. The light is closer now, taking on a shape, and he staggers towards it, up through the blackness. The stairs have a shape, the tunnel he's in has walls, and before he truly realizes what it means that he can see them, he's out, falling face-first into an unexpected snowbank and staying there for what seems like an eternity, breathing in the fresh icy scent of the snow and feeling the bite of real cold sting his limbs, so unlike the cold below, the cold that was in the bone and in the brain and couldn't be defeated with hot drinks or warm clothing or –

snowball fights

He rolls over, with a gasp, kicking up a spray of snow that sparkles in the clear silver light of the full moon. This isn't the light that led him out, but he's content to lie and bask in it. For the first time since he woke, for the first time he can remember, he isn't scared. There's something reassuring about the moonlight, and the tiny flicker of hope flares into brilliant life. Everything is going to be all right.

A single golden butterfly flits past his face, its wings glowing softly with a light that isn't borrowed from the moon, and something zings in the back of his mind. This, this is the light that led him out, but more than that, it's familiar, he knows he's seen something like this before but the memory eludes him. Frustrated, he reaches out to the butterfly, perhaps to touch it, perhaps to hold it, perhaps to capture it, even he doesn't know, and stops.

His fingers are the cold grey of snow on a moonless night.

He doesn't know why, but this is wrong. Wrong like the darkness that curled itself around him. Wrong like the sudden terror that comes crashing back into his mind. Wrong like the way those shadows are moving.

He tries to pull himself to his feet, but the snowdrift is deep and soft and the more he struggles the more he only sinks farther in. And the shadows of the trees have formed into one long tendril of darkness, thick and black and speeding towards him over the snow. Before he can move they're on him, coiling firmly around his midsection and there's no way to fight them off or drive them away and they're pulling him back, out of the light, out of the world, back to the darkness and the cold and the fear.

A scream of "NO!", hoarse and ragged and almost unfamiliar, tears from his throat and his wrong wrong wrong grey fingers leave long deep lines in the snow as he tries desperately to find something to hold, something to grip, something to keep him from being dragged back. He looks up to the moon again, and for a split second, seeing that cold impassive face looking down on his terror, he's flooded with hate so hot and bright that the shadows loosen their hold. It's only for a second, though, before they seize him again and, with one final tug, pull him back into their chill and frightening embrace.

This time, though, it's different. He knows the light is out there. He knows the moon is out there, doing nothing, watching. Somewhere, somehow, there's a way back. A way out.

And this time, he isn't so totally alone. This time, he has his name.

Even so, Jamie spends a long time in the darkness.