A/N- So, I have a bunch of A Home For Fear related ideas that either don't fit into my headcanon for it or are too tonally dark or otherwise just don't fit. But if I don't write my ideas, they sit in my head and fester until I do. So, yeah, here is the dumping ground for those little stragglers of ideas.

Essentially this is a bunch of disconnected, self-indulgent AUs and drabbles of my own fanfiction. Don't mind me.

This one is a sappy little drabble I did a while back. Most of these aren't this happy.

Light.

How he despises light.

For as far back as he can remember he's reveled in the darkness, the night, basking in the fear and uncertainty of all those around him.

But then the sun rises and light shines down, tearing his shadows apart and dissolving fears into nothing more than half-remembered figments.

Even in the darkness of the night, the blasted moon shines down and lends its gentle reassurance, invading his domain, encroaching on his territory.

And the Guardians, when they come, seem to hold pieces of that light inside of them. It shines out through their actions, their smiles and gifts and their care for the children. They nurture that selfsame light within their charges, the little pinpricks on the globe shining so painfully brightly and driving out his shadows and nightmares.

He wishes he could extinguish each and every one, plunge the world back to the way it once was, wrapped in soft, comforting darkness instead of bathed in piercing light.

And he tries, oh how he tries, but he is cast down yet again.

And he becomes aware of the newest addition, Jack Frost.

It may be one of his greatest regrets that he didn't find the boy earlier.

By the time he realizes how similar they are, how much they could give to each other, it's far too late. He's spent too much time with the Guardians. Jack is already infected by that loathsome light.

By the end, the boy is positively blazing with it, so much so that Pitch can hardly bear to even look at him, so bright and full of missed possibilities.

So when Jack comes to find him, months after his defeat, Pitch expects to see that same painful light. To face that blaze again and be burned, harmed at his core. That is all that light ever does to him.

But, surprisingly, it's okay. Because ice doesn't emit its own light, it only reflects it.

And when Jack is with him, there is no light to reflect. Nothing to burn or blind or hurt him. Jack walks unfazed into the dark as easily as the light and picks Pitch up, guides him to a place where the shadows still lay, even within the light of the world. Jack brings him home.

He knows better than to hope that Jack might chose to stay in the dark. Ice might not have a light of its own, but dark has nothing for it to reflect, and the boy's spirit is smooth and unblemished and hard, with no cracks for shadows to slip into. Decay and blackness slide off him, finding nothing to cling to on the icy soul. And when Jack steps back into the light, he shines and blazes as brightly as any of them.

But Jack still continues to skate effortlessly between the worlds. And when he steps into the shadows, they no longer seem so barren or lonely. And Pitch thinks maybe, maybe, that was what he needed all along.