Cold and Dark: A New Dawn

Summary: Pitch seeks out Jack Frost after discovering he has been picked as the next Guardian and persuades him to join the cause.

A/N: I'm new to this fandom, but my colleague is obsessed with this film and is inadvertently getting me into it. She was talking about how different everything would be if Pitch had got to Jack first, so I decided to write this. So, this is for Natasha! Probably won't be too long, about 20 chapters or so according to the outline I've managed to put together, but I hope that people enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians, and I am not affiliated with any of its relating studios, nor am I seeking to make a profit from this fanfiction.

Pitch looked up at the moon, his dark nightmares chasing each other across the cold night sky. After centuries spend battling his old friend, and the subsequent centuries recovering, he felt he was ready. Ready to take his rightful place in the world. The dark ages would be nothing. Not compared to what was coming, the reign of terror he was about to unleash on the unsuspecting planet.

A sudden flash of movement further down the street caught his eye. Standing on the electricity wires, wires which now ran across the entire globe, was a young boy, no more than eighteen. Of course, this would be no ordinary boy. From his frosted, blue jacket, bare feet and white hair, Pitch was confident with assuming that this was Jack Frost.

Knowing that this child was looked down on by the Guardians and not believed in by anybody across the five continents, he strained to hear what the boy was saying as he looked up at the moon.

"You put me here!" Jack spat out venomously. "The least you can do is tell me… Tell me why…" He trailed off, hopeless. The one time he had heard from the moon was waking up in a lake, almost three hundred years ago. He had heard his name whispered to him, as if from across time. He assumed that a sense of purpose was far too much to ask for. Causing mischief wasn't too bad, he supposed. It served well enough to distract him, if nothing else.

"I wouldn't hope to get anything out of him," Pitch said, lazily, watching with some amusement as Jack span around wildly to find where he was. "He doesn't care. Doesn't care about anyone but himself, really. Him and those bloody Guardians."

"Who are you?" Jack demanded, still turning around in circles.

Pitch sighed, rolling his eyes. Was this really who the man in the moon had chosen for the next Guardian? A petulant child with no more idea of how the world worked than the wire he stood on.

"My name is Pitch Black," he said, smoothly, his voice dripping like honey. "But you probably know me as the bogeyman. I'm sure your mother told you stories about me."

"The bogeyman!" Jack snorted. "Liar, the Guardians made the bogeyman up to stop children, and me, from having fun!"

"Jack, Jack, Jack," Pitch materialised behind the boy, crooning, a wounded expression on his face. "I'm disappointed and, frankly, a little hurt. After all, you're one to comment on being believed in."

Jack visibly bristled as he turned to finally come face to face with Pitch. The Guardian of Fun and the Bringer of Fear eyed each other. Jack was apprehensive. When the Prince of Nightmares seeks you out personally, it's never a good thing. That was something he actually did know, beyond not having a purpose and his own name. Pitch was looking for a weakness, any kind of in. He knew Jack's worst fear – never knowing what he was there to do, never being believed in – and, almost more importantly, knew how to use it against him.

"The way I see it," Pitch continued after a long, tense silence, "is that we are both on the same page. You don't have to be alone, Jack." His voice became pleading as he tried to appeal to the softer side of the boy, the side he was going to need to snuff out as soon as possible, before Tooth and her charms, or North and his wonder, could get to him. "What goes together better than cold and dark?"

Pitch smirked broadly, although Jack misinterpreted the almost predatory look as a welcoming smile. Jack frowned, clearly thinking hard over Pitch's offer. The boy was pretty slow, considering he'd been around for the past three centuries. Had he not even bothered to learn the most basic of logical thinking in that time?

"But, you're all about fear," Jack stammered. "And I…" He struggled for a minute to find what he wanted to say, and to think about what it was he actually did. "I make people happy. I make them have fun!"

Once again, Pitch resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"My dear boy, just today did you not guide a child through heavy traffic on a wooden sled?"

"Yup, that was me," The boy seemed proud of his stunt.

"And the child had fun?"

"Yeah, of course he had fun!"

"I'd imagine he was scared, though," Pitch said carefully, winding his way into Jack's subconscious. He gently prodded his fears, fears which were all the more prominent for his one sided conversation with the man in the moon. "Terrified, even. And yet, he had fun. There's no true fun without a little fear to start the adrenaline. Just think about skydiving and rollercoasters. So much fun… But terrifying."

Jack stared up at Pitch, a look of almost adoration in his face. He could see it so clearly in his mind. Him and Pitch, watching over a world where children had nothing but fun. There was no Easter Bunny, mad over a supposedly ruined Easter, no North to complain that the children were under awed by presents when presented with a fresh blanket of snow at the same time. He could see no Sandman, no one to send the children to sleep and ruin their games… And no bloody Groundhog to send him away early and ruin his fun.

"Well, Jack," Pitch said, knowing full well what Jack was thinking, and knowing full well that the vision in his head would not be the vision which he was putting in play. "Are you with me?"

"I'm with you," Jack replied, no hesitation in his voice. He wasn't seeing Pitch and the darkened street in front of him, though. He was seeing the same crowd of children from this morning. A crowd around him, throwing snow and laughing… Laughing with him!

"Wonderful news, Jack," Pitch murmured. "Now, there is much we must discuss."

Jack shook his head free from the images dancing around his brain.

"There is?" he asked, disgruntled.

"Come, come, my boy. You can't expect us to defeat the Guardians with no plan, can you?"

"I suppose not," Jack grumbled.

"Wonderful! Now, you should know that one of them will be here at any moment to take you to North's workshop." He held up a hand at the quizzical expression on Jack's face, quickly silencing any questions that the boy may have. "The moon has named you as the next Guardian."

Pitch wished he had a camera as a murderous shadow passed across Jack's face. That would show the moon, the child he had picked was capable of so much more than he was doomed to.

"I will not be a Guardian," he spat. "That really does go against everything I stand for! So many rules! It's all so boring!"

"And, yet, you must become one." Pitch carefully arranged his face to look pained as Jack stared back up at him. "It's for the Greater Good. We must have someone on the inside. That someone is you."

"I'll do it," Jack replied. "For the Greater Good."