#(Pitch and Sharpwood)

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Hi Pia! Hope you don't mind me asking but is Mihail from TGATNW autistic? I love the way he's written. And I also love Sharpwood! He's a really interesting character and I'm curious about what a scene between him and Pitch would actually look like.

Is Sharpwood a character you would ever put into one of your original stories like Anton and Flitmouse?

And did Jack ever actually end up letting Anton top him?

Hi anon!

Mihail is definitely neurodivergent, but Lune doesn't have things like 'autism' as a diagnosis, so within the world, he's not autistic. To that end, characters like Mihail can be interpreted how you like!

I write a lot of neurodivergent characters because I am neurodivergent, but unless they say 'I have ADHD' (like Arden), or 'I'm autistic' - they can be what you want them to be in terms of specific diagnosis, because there's multiple neurodivergences that can cause Mihail's behaviour!

I've been tempted to write Sharpwood, but I'm not sure how I'd do it. In The Golden Age that Never Was, I know his final kind of 'partner' he ended up with was a woman, and as I don't like reading or writing heterosexual relationships, I don't really want to write (or read) that. But it also puts me in a quandary of how I'd put him in other stories. His relationship with Pitch wasn't exactly healthy, it was just all he had, until he got home again to something good for him. And I imagine he's going to need many many decades to heal.

He's probably one of the most interesting (to me, I'm biased) characters I've written for a very side character who got hardly any screen time, lol. I was fascinated with the culture of Grisaille (which I threw together haphazardly and then was like 'wait, this is cool'), and sometimes I think about writing something within a version of that world? But it's a bit brain-breaky to think about.

Like, I could keep his world and mind very kind of 'alien' when he was a side character. But I think at this stage in my writing I don't know if I'm good enough to preserve that if he was a POV character, or if I wrote his world. I think I'd be very tempted to humanise it into something more recognisable to me, and that's a big challenge!

But I do love Sharpwood, I have a very big soft spot for him and his awkward ways, and also his...life of heartbreak and loss and being manipulated and essentially being so servile to Gavril out of pure desperation to get something back home after he realised he made a mistake.

Maybe I'll write a human Sharpwood one day! But the things I loved about him most were how...not human he was, and how his biology influenced so much of what he did. I wonder how much of him would be left - at least the parts of him I love so much - if I turned him into a human in the process.

ETA: Forgot to answer this, but yes, I definitely think Anton eventually topped Jack! :D

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Eeeeeeha I'm glad I'm not the only reader who fell in love with Sharpwood! Would you ever write what a scene was like with him and Pitch? Or a scene between Jack and Anton?

Sharpwood's the best!

I don't think I'll ever write a scene between Pitch and Sharpwood mostly because it's firstly two characters I don't really want to write the POVs for, but also secondly, because to me it's... a very kind of sad thing, and I don't really like writing 'sad tragic sex.'

I don't mind writing noncon, but it's hard to write hurt/hurt sex that brings very little comfort and is kind of Pitch...being unkind because Sharpwood craves being dominated (kindly) and he's trying to punish Gavril in a roundabout way and Sharpwood having to be grateful because this is all he's allowed. Knowing that's just...all he gets for hundreds of years, does not fill me with joy.

(I've done it before (noncon Gwyn/Albion), but I learned that I don't really love doing it)

Like Pitch says this about it:

‘I should have done more for him than I did,’ Pitch said finally. ‘This will have to do.’ ‘You did a lot for him,’ Jack said. ‘No. I really didn’t. I was selfish. And I was always angry at his relationship with Gavril, and how he seemed untouched by it. Sometimes I pushed him, just to…have the satisfaction of knowing Gavril had broken him as much as he’d broken me. For a long time – for centuries – I didn’t know why he kept coming back to me. I became kinder to him in time. I was not…initially kind.’

It's not an explicit way to say 'I sexually tortured / coerced / hurt him just to prove he was actually broken and I could only do that by also repeatedly trying to break him for centuries' but that is essentially what Pitch is saying. And I think Pitch becoming kinder, by then, Sharpwood was already quite damaged. There's a reason Sharpwood is initially very on the fence about becoming a traitor to Gavril, despite being fond of Pitch in his own way. But Sharpwood...like, is very broken by his experiences on Lune, and Pitch is a significant part of that. (Pitch was broken by Gavril, but not by Sharpwood - Sharpwood was broken by Gavril and Pitch).

As for Jack and Anton, idk, I like writing Anton with Flitmouse more, so that's what I'm writing! Anton was always so in love with Flitmouse, and their love story appealed to me so much in TGA that writing it now has been amazing. Anton will never love anyone like he loves Alois Flitmouse, and that's just how that is. :)

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Are Grisailleans sexually active? Do they have an interest in those sort of things? Does the dark/submissive and light/leadership translate into physical intimacy as well?

Sorry if you have answered these questions before. I'm just really interested in the concept of biologically necessary submission and dominance

Hi hi,

I don't really see the Grisailleans as being that sexually active and frankly don't even think they have like... standard sexual organs in the same way that we generally do. I don't even know if they procreate via getting pregnant.

That stuff was never core or integral to The Golden Age that Never Was, and I didn't want to overthink it beyond 'they are very alien to us despite looking like us' - and now that it's been many many years later, I just remember that they don't experience dominance/submission or the light/shadow the way that say, Pitch and Jack do.

The clearest example you get of it is literally when Sharpwood is reunited with his people at the end, and you can see the way he acts, and the way Greenbriar acts towards him, and that's like...the bond and the system. More is explained about their culture in that moment than in the rest of the story!

In a way it's like BDSMverse but also kind of not (BDSMverse turned sex averse? Idk). I do know that Sharpwood will be considered aberrant for having been trained to want sexual satisfaction, and that will be considered something that needs to be healed/fixed.

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Ch 53/56 - The Golden Age That Never Was (RotG/Blackice)

Title: The Golden Age That Never Was (53/56)

Rating: Explicit Pairing: Jack Frost/Kozmotis ‘Pitch’ Pitchiner Characters: Jack Frost, Kozmotis Pitchiner/Pitch Black, E. Aster Bunnymund, Sanderson Mansnoozie, Toothiana, Nicholas St. North, Jamie Bennett, Seraphina Pitchiner, The Man in the Moon, Tsar Lunanoff, Tsarina Lunanoff, Cupcake.     Warnings/Tags: Hurt/comfort, Whump, Angst, Book & Movie Combination, Friendship, Minor Character Death, Slow burn, Abuse of Power/Authority, Dysfunctional Relationships, Power Play, Corporal Punishment, Adventure, Space Opera (kiiiind of), Golden Age, D/s, Initiation, Kink, Injury, Grief, AU, apologies to canon enthusiasts and people who love authentic representations of space. (Please see AO3 for more tags).                  

Summary: Soldier in training Jack Overland is approaching the day of his initiation, finally he’ll learn how to fight back against the living darkness and serve the Tsar and Tsarina Lunanoff. More importantly, maybe it will get him closer to Royal Admiral Kozmotis Pitchiner, Jack’s hero, champion of the people. If only anything ever worked out the way it should.

TGATNW - Chapter 53 - Gavril Lunanoff versus Jack Frost

In which Jack and Gavril have a talk, and Jack learns how to lie.

(THREE CHAPTERS LEFT)

Patreon // Ko-Fi

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Ch 51/56 - The Golden Age That Never Was (RotG/Blackice)

Title: The Golden Age That Never Was (51/56)

Rating: Explicit Pairing: Jack Frost/Kozmotis ‘Pitch’ Pitchiner Characters: Jack Frost, Kozmotis Pitchiner/Pitch Black, E. Aster Bunnymund, Sanderson Mansnoozie, Toothiana, Nicholas St. North, Jamie Bennett, Seraphina Pitchiner, The Man in the Moon, Tsar Lunanoff, Tsarina Lunanoff, Cupcake.     Warnings/Tags: Hurt/comfort, Whump, Angst, Book & Movie Combination, Friendship, Minor Character Death, Slow burn, Abuse of Power/Authority, Dysfunctional Relationships, Power Play, Corporal Punishment, Adventure, Space Opera (kiiiind of), Golden Age, D/s, Initiation, Kink, Injury, Grief, AU, apologies to canon enthusiasts and people who love authentic representations of space. (Please see AO3 for more tags).                  

Summary: Soldier in training Jack Overland is approaching the day of his initiation, finally he’ll learn how to fight back against the living darkness and serve the Tsar and Tsarina Lunanoff. More importantly, maybe it will get him closer to Royal Admiral Kozmotis Pitchiner, Jack’s hero, champion of the people. If only anything ever worked out the way it should.

TGATNW - Chapter 51 - Family is Something You Choose

In which Jack gets to properly see and experience Pitch’s ritual before a big mission and decides he likes it. Also, Jack gets some gifts from an unexpected visitor.

(FIVE CHAPTERS LEFT)

Patreon // Ko-Fi

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What would pitch giving aftercare to sharp wood look like? O.o just wondering because it's hard to imagine them being all sweet together like pitch is with jack lol

Pitch definitely caters his aftercare to the person, and no, Sharpwood wouldn’t really respond to a great deal of post-scene affection. Though he does like some. Pitch can’t really draw a great deal of attention to it. (Though sometimes he will, especially if he’s annoyed, which he has been, given some of the things Sharpwood has done for the Tsar).

But usually Pitch just quietly cleans Sharpwood up, encourages him to lie down and sort of find his equilibrium again (it’s not hard to shake Sharpwood from it in a scene like that, and he needs time and stillness to sort of find himself again), very little conversation, and then Pitch always makes a point of dressing Sharpwood himself, afterwards. Basically a sort of ‘I’m the one who gets to do this to you, and I’m the one who will make sure you’re ready to go out and be his servant again.’

Aftercare for Sharpwood can’t involve much conversation, because Sharpwood doesn’t really like talking anyway. He doesn’t need to be told afterwards that he’s good, or that he did well. He just needs someone to accept him for who he is.

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Ch 39/? - The Golden Age That Never Was (RotG/Blackice)

Title: The Golden Age That Never Was (39/?)

Rating: Explicit Pairing: Jack Frost/Kozmotis ‘Pitch’ Pitchiner Characters: Jack Frost, Kozmotis Pitchiner/Pitch Black, E. Aster Bunnymund, Sanderson Mansnoozie, Toothiana, Nicholas St. North, Jamie Bennett, Seraphina Pitchiner, The Man in the Moon, Tsar Lunanoff, Tsarina Lunanoff, Cupcake.     Warnings/Tags: Hurt/comfort, Whump, Angst, Book & Movie Combination, Friendship, Minor Character Death, Slow burn, Abuse of Power/Authority, Dysfunctional Relationships, Power Play, Corporal Punishment, Adventure, Space Opera (kiiiind of), Golden Age, D/s, Initiation, Kink, Injury, Grief, AU, apologies to canon enthusiasts and people who love authentic representations of space. (Please see AO3 for more tags).                  

Summary: Soldier in training Jack Overland is approaching the day of his initiation, finally he’ll learn how to fight back against the living darkness and serve the Tsar and Tsarina Lunanoff. More importantly, maybe it will get him closer to Royal Admiral Kozmotis Pitchiner, Jack’s hero, champion of the people. If only anything ever worked out the way it should.

TGATNW - Chapter 39 - Professor Sharpwood

In which it’s time to chat with Professor Sharpwood, about a great many things.

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Chapter 40 went from 0-100 real fast. Sharpwood seems more human now also, like still definitely an alien, but I can see a lot of things from his point of view now. I love the way you realistically develop your characters. Keep being awesome!

Yeah it turns out when Pitch wants to fuck, then like, the whole ‘let’s tease Jack for months on end’ is thrown out the window. I think Pitch has a bit of ‘my family is safe, my daughter is safe, we have three days here before everything goes to shit and I have to hang out with the stupid Guardians and murder stupid Bunnymund and fight the stupid Tsar and until then I’m going to have sex sorry if that interferes with your plans Jack idc.’

Jack just had a lot of ‘what, now? ....cool beans.’

Sharpwood’s a hard character to reveal, because - in part - he just doesn’t show his emotions like a lot of other characters might. But I feel like Jack’s getting a handle on him now. :D Well, sort of.

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oh great, well now i want to read sharpwood/pitch or somehow, all three of them together

I definitely think that at some point, the right thing to do would be to at least write Pitch absolutely ruining Sharpwood with sensory overload, right?

The ethical thing.

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Ch 37/? - The Golden Age That Never Was (RotG/Blackice)

Title: The Golden Age That Never Was (37/?)

Rating: Explicit Pairing: Jack Frost/Kozmotis ‘Pitch’ Pitchiner Characters: Jack Frost, Kozmotis Pitchiner/Pitch Black, E. Aster Bunnymund, Sanderson Mansnoozie, Toothiana, Nicholas St. North, Jamie Bennett, Seraphina Pitchiner, The Man in the Moon, Tsar Lunanoff, Tsarina Lunanoff, Cupcake.     Warnings/Tags: Hurt/comfort, Whump, Angst, Book & Movie Combination, Friendship, Minor Character Death, Slow burn, Abuse of Power/Authority, Dysfunctional Relationships, Power Play, Corporal Punishment, Adventure, Space Opera (kiiiind of), Golden Age, D/s, Initiation, Kink, Injury, Grief, AU, apologies to canon enthusiasts and people who love authentic representations of space. (Please see AO3 for more tags).                  

Summary: Soldier in training Jack Overland is approaching the day of his initiation, finally he’ll learn how to fight back against the living darkness and serve the Tsar and Tsarina Lunanoff. More importantly, maybe it will get him closer to Royal Admiral Kozmotis Pitchiner, Jack’s hero, champion of the people. If only anything ever worked out the way it should.

TGATNW - Chapter 37 - A Cottage in the Snow

In which Pitch is sleep-deprived and grumpy, and Jack doesn’t realise that he is also sleep-deprived and grumpy. This goes about as well as you can expect. Oh also, Sharpwood is there.

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I'm loving the Sharpwood content and hoping for more! I'm Intrigued.

There will definitely be more Sharpwood!

Although like Jack really needs to get laid so I’m less Team!Character right now and more Team!Get Jack Laid.

Like, for all of our sanity, it needs to happen.

But especially Jack’s.

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Wow, tgatnw is finished- what a wild ride, it was great XD Your last ask got me all curious about Sharpwood now, he's such an interesting character, especially now that we have the context of him in his society. I was wondering why he refused to see jack/pitch again? And why he's not being punished for stealing the orb?

Hiya!

Let’s talk Grisaillean culture, that we saw for all of five seconds.

1. I don’t think he necessarily refused to see them again, I don’t think he was allowed to see them again. Their influence - as far as the Grisailleans can see - has been nothing but immensely damaging to his mind and his psyche (and, it got him killed. He was previously unkilled on Grisaille!) Even though objectively Gavril and the tyranny of Lune is what was most damaging, Grisailleans very much look after their own and generally keep a closed rank society. To them, to see Sharpwood so damaged by what had happened to him was shocking. You wouldn’t let a child play with a bunch of kids, after you found out those kids tortured the child and gave them knives and killed the child right?

Grisailleans feel the same way.

2. Their society isn’t retributive like most in an obvious way. Also, it’s understood that Sharpwood doesn’t really have the agency to fully follow through on all of his decisions. The most obvious way I could show his lack of capacity/agency alongside his intelligence was the reveal quite some time back that he didn’t remember he’d need a pilot to come back to Grisaille. Like, it just skipped his mind. Because for him, on Grisaille, he’d have a pair-bonded partner who had chosen the light, who would decide that and plan things and think about that for him. He just doesn’t biologically have the capacity to understand how these things work.

Now, if you have someone who bonds to other people for leadership biologically, and those people lead them down the wrong path, you could punish them for it, but it’d be pretty pointless. Sharpwood already knows he did the wrong thing. He knew it as soon as he was on the ship leaving Lune, and had no way of getting home again. Like, he’s said this in dialogue.

Sharpwood didn’t steal the orb to benefit himself or Lune. He stole it to ultimately benefit Grisaille. (And it will benefit them). He was absolutely taken advantage of by Gavril, and placed in awkward situations (Pitch propositioned him as well).

And as for Grisaille itself, just like it doesn’t really have words for love, it also doesn’t really have much room for the concept of crime. Injustices can be done, yes, but if they’re perpetuated by Grisailleans, there’s usually a good, logical reason as to why they were perpetuated. Once they can define the reason, they can usually see where they’ve erred and won’t make the mistake again. We know Sharpwood saw his mistake literally as he watched his planet disappear as he left it behind. They’re not going to punish him more, on top of the centuries and centuries of torture he endured having to be by Gavril’s side, as his dog. We also know Sharpwood was forced to live weakened, for centuries, by giving some of his magic and abilities to Gavril to make him stronger. (Like, for example, Gavril could only see into the mountain because of Sharpwood’s abilities).

Grisailleans just won’t see Sharpwood at the heart of that crime. They will look to who tortured one of their citizens, and tried to destroy his psyche, who knowingly used the orb to destroy planets, and they will see pretty clearly that Sharpwood wasn’t the person who committed those crimes. They see him pretty clearly as a victim, and a citizen who made a mistake.

Since people who pick shadow are more inclined to make mistakes without someone to guide them, they’re way more forgiving of it in the case of those who aren’t yet pair-bonded. It’s more of a ‘no wonder you made a mistake, you didn’t have that balance (someone who picked light) to help you. We’re so sorry we failed you this way.’ People are going to be more likely to ask for his forgiveness, given they didn’t see how lonely or lost he was without anyone, before he left. It’s a very different culture to Lune’s (and ours, since Lune was parallelled quite heavily to many different eras in human history).

I also like it as a loose parallel to Jack and Pitch. Without Pitch to lay down structure and guidance and forgiveness for Jack, Jack would hare off all the time and get himself killed. It wasn’t until Jack started trusting more in Pitch’s  guidance (as someone who would have theoretically chosen shadow, as intimated multiple times in the story) that he began to be less destructive and self-sabotaging.

Er yeah, because there is meant to be a loose Jack / Sharpwood parallel in the story as weird as that is.

/shrugs

Things that probably didn’t come across! I mean the story is 400k, so even though there’s actually a lot about Sharpwood in there, it also vanishes pretty quickly under the stuff that everyone is actually interested in reading. :D

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I can’t believe it’s finished 😭😭😭😭 thanks for an amazing story that I will obsess over for the rest of my life. Also I know nothing about sandstorm and sweetleaf but I love them - are they meant to be eran and mosk? If not, did you have any other ideas about them as characters or vague head cannons? they sound adorable. And I’m so happy sharpwood got to live, and how his planet fit him so perfectly... that was unexpectedly moving for me and now I want to live there it seems so nice

They were not meant to be Eran and Mosk! They weren’t nods at all, but someone else asked that in the Discord chat and it’s like no folks, I am just not that smart. But nor would I make a Fae Tales nod in TGATNW. I took great pains to keep all the Fae Tales characters out of it.

(I realised I had a choice early on to sort of have like a Gwyn or Augus cameo or something in TGATNW and I just decided to go the opposite direction. RotG or new OCs only.)

As for those two, I mean, most of the time a person who chooses light and a person who chooses shadow will pair-bond with each other. They are a planet of citizens who basically have genetic dominance and submission (non-sexual) wired into their biology. Which is why Sharpwood was so loyal to Gavril, and then Pitch. And also why he never volunteered information he wasn’t often given, and why he was generally very passive as a person.

So in the case of Sandstorm and Sweetleaf, they’re both servants/attendants, but where one will be more active in nature and take the lead, the other will look to them for leadership and direction, and trust that they will be looked over.

I spent a lot of time thinking about just how damaged Sharpwood has been by his stay on Lune. He naturally gravitated towards people with like, dominating personalities (hello Gavril), but didn’t realise that Lune citizens had no understanding of default caretaking of a person who needs default caretaking like Sharpwood does. Sharpwood doesn’t know how to look after himself very well. He often needs to be told when to eat, when to sleep etc. I mean he can do those things? But he’ll lose track of time or forget to do those things if someone isn’t keeping an eye on him.

When he comes back to Grisaille, it’s going to take him a while - and possibly decades to hundreds of years of healing - to sort of trust or have faith in the pairbond again. My beta and I were quietly imagining that Greenbriar (the Queen) would probably be the one to choose to pairbond with him, since he was previously unbonded, which is also why he gravitated so much towards Gavril. But seeing someone not prone to emotional reaction have such a profound reaction to being back on Grisaille would be enough that he’s gonna have like a million offers for pairbonding, lol.

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Ch 41/? - The Golden Age That Never Was (RotG/Blackice)

Title: The Golden Age That Never Was (41/?)

Rating: Explicit Pairing: Jack Frost/Kozmotis ‘Pitch’ Pitchiner Characters: Jack Frost, Kozmotis Pitchiner/Pitch Black, E. Aster Bunnymund, Sanderson Mansnoozie, Toothiana, Nicholas St. North, Jamie Bennett, Seraphina Pitchiner, The Man in the Moon, Tsar Lunanoff, Tsarina Lunanoff, Cupcake.     Warnings/Tags: Hurt/comfort, Whump, Angst, Book & Movie Combination, Friendship, Minor Character Death, Slow burn, Abuse of Power/Authority, Dysfunctional Relationships, Power Play, Corporal Punishment, Adventure, Space Opera (kiiiind of), Golden Age, D/s, Initiation, Kink, Injury, Grief, AU, apologies to canon enthusiasts and people who love authentic representations of space. (Please see AO3 for more tags).                  

Summary: Soldier in training Jack Overland is approaching the day of his initiation, finally he’ll learn how to fight back against the living darkness and serve the Tsar and Tsarina Lunanoff. More importantly, maybe it will get him closer to Royal Admiral Kozmotis Pitchiner, Jack’s hero, champion of the people. If only anything ever worked out the way it should.

TGATNW - Chapter 41 - Go Deeper

In which Pitch makes good on his promise re: going a second time, and Jack decides to engage Sharpwood’s assistance when it comes to being able to use his ice around people who carry the D/darkness. (Revisits hypnosis tag).

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when you next have an excerpt for Golden Age could we maybe have one? if you don't want to that's okay :)

I am like 6300 words through the chapter now! Which means a weekend update looks unlikely, but a mid-week update might be possible? But anyway, here is an excerpt! It’s a short one:

*

‘Well, you can’tdo that,’ Jack said. ‘You can’t stopsomeone like Gavril from ever being born again. Are you going to executeSharpwood, who thought it was a good idea at the time? What about Pitch, who isthe one who knows how to destroy planets and has done it? Are you just banking on him feeling enough regret? Playing on his misery and makinghim feel like he’s not a part of all of this, so what- he’ll fight to belong?Or so you drive him away? I’m sure that’s part of your plan. If you’ve beenthinking ahead for decades- You putme in the path of Bunnymund, and made it so he could kill me, just to see what Pitch would do! As a test! Don’t think I’ve forgotten. I know what your stupid plans do! And Flitmouse! I don’t see himhere. Someone like you is how we endup in situations like this in thefirst place. People who think they know what’s right for an entire country, andthen manipulate everyone until theyall just tell you that you could never bewrong.’

‘Yes,’ Toothiana said eventually, her voice muted, ‘Ithink North will very much want you to become a Guardian.’

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Ch 40/? - The Golden Age That Never Was (RotG/Blackice)

Title: The Golden Age That Never Was (40/?)

Rating: Explicit Pairing: Jack Frost/Kozmotis ‘Pitch’ Pitchiner Characters: Jack Frost, Kozmotis Pitchiner/Pitch Black, E. Aster Bunnymund, Sanderson Mansnoozie, Toothiana, Nicholas St. North, Jamie Bennett, Seraphina Pitchiner, The Man in the Moon, Tsar Lunanoff, Tsarina Lunanoff, Cupcake.     Warnings/Tags: Hurt/comfort, Whump, Angst, Book & Movie Combination, Friendship, Minor Character Death, Slow burn, Abuse of Power/Authority, Dysfunctional Relationships, Power Play, Corporal Punishment, Adventure, Space Opera (kiiiind of), Golden Age, D/s, Initiation, Kink, Injury, Grief, AU, apologies to canon enthusiasts and people who love authentic representations of space. (Please see AO3 for more tags).                  

Summary: Soldier in training Jack Overland is approaching the day of his initiation, finally he’ll learn how to fight back against the living darkness and serve the Tsar and Tsarina Lunanoff. More importantly, maybe it will get him closer to Royal Admiral Kozmotis Pitchiner, Jack’s hero, champion of the people. If only anything ever worked out the way it should.

TGATNW - Chapter 40 - This Strange Darkness of Ours

In which Jack and Sharpwood snipe at each other, and Pitch decides he needs to get laid.