Together At Last

(Chapter 7)

After 15 minutes of walking Jack's group was sure that their path would lead them to Pitch. This became apparent after walking for nearly 10 minutes and not finding any adjacent paths to go through. It's not that they couldn't see them but they were all blocked off by insane amounts of unmoving black sand.

That meant either of 2 things. Either Pitch was a terrible cleaner or he was leading them somewhere. They were more inclined toward the later. And where he was leading them to? Well… they were about to find out.

In the distance, they were able to spot a wooden door right in their path. They hurried their pace and quickly reached the door. It didn't look like anything special but it also didn't let the group see what was behind it without them opening it first.

Jack looked back at Bunny and Sandy and received a nod from the both of them. He took a deep breath and grasped the door's handle and slowly opening the door. As Jack pushed it open, all three tried to look at was on the other side. Unfortunately, all they could see was darkness.

"Did Pitch skip out on the electrical bill? Why is it so dark here?" Bunny asked.

Suddenly the whole room lit up, momentarily blinding the three and forcing them to cover their eyes. Once their eyes got adjust they took another look at the room before going in. The room was almost completely similar to the first one except for a few small mounds of black sand spread throughout the room and what seemed to be an empty throne in the back of the room.

"Is that better?" A voice the three were very familiar with asked. The voice echoed all around them, making it impossible to hear where it came from.

"PITCH" Bunny called. "Where are you? Show yourself"

"Watch your manners you're a guest here remember?" Pitch asked.

"Don't toy with us Pitch. Where is Tooth?" Jack asked.

"Still searching for her, Jack? Is it because she's a Guardian? Or do you still think she loves you?" Pitch asked.

"You were the one that made her call me a monster" Jack accused. Bunny and Sandy were fuming at this point. Jack had left out this detail during his story and could very well guess how painful it must have been for Jack to be called a monster, by Tooth no less.

"Like I told you before, the fear and disgust were already there. I merely gave her a push in the right direction" He said. "But if you still want her then don't worry your jolly old friend is very close to finding her"

Immediately, a wave of relief swept over the three followed by one of fear. "How do you know where North is?" Bunny asked.

"Because this is my lair, I know where everyone is in here" Pitch said, stepping out from behind the throne with Father Time's cane in his hand. "… As well as my pets of course"

The fear they were feeling for North came back more intense than ever but the three did their best to hide it. North could take care of himself. Besides, they had their own problems now.

"Remember guys, follow the plan" Jack said.

"This'll be easy" Bunny said. Bunny had plenty of reasons to be that confident. All they had to do was stay away from Pitch and attack him from afar. Since the room was very spacious, Jack and Sandy could easily fly away from him and there was no way Pitch could ever keep up with his speed.

"Let's hope so" Jack said. Sandy nodded in agreement and all three of them assumed their fighting stances. Hoping to catch Pitch by surprise, Bunny threw one of his boomerangs at Pitch as hard as he could. Since the boomerang was flying at an incredible speed and Pitch still hadn't made a move to dodge or block, Bunny was confident he would be able to land a good hit.

…He was wrong.

In a flash, Pitch turned the cane in his hand into a scythe and cut the boomerang in half. Both halves fell to the floor besides Pitch as he propped the scythe against his shoulder, smirking.

"Okay" Bunny said. "Maybe it won't be easy"


On the other side of Pitch's hideout, North was slowing walking further into the passageway where the fearlings he had just defeated had come from. The reason for his slow pace was plainly obvious since the cuts and bruises he had all over his body were easy to spot. Especially the deep gash he had on his forehead from which blood was pouring out and incredibly dark bruise on his left leg, marking the spot in which the bone was probably broken.

This did not stop his quest to find the missing member of the Guardians. Even if he had to limp and lean on a wall until he found her, he would not give up. Coincidentally, this was exactly what he was doing.

It had been over 5 minutes ago when North had finally finished fighting through the hordes of fearlings in his way and afterwards resumed his search for Tooth not having stopped once to catch his breath since then. Luckily for him, the path hadn't separated once, meaning that he was probably going the right way.

His breathing was ragged and his vision was blurry. But that didn't stop him from keeping searching. And it certainly didn't stop him from spotting…

'A door?' He asked inwardly, stopping in his tracks. Unlike the other doors he had encountered before this one wasn't on one of the sides of the tunnel, instead it was blocking his path. And also unlike the others, this one seemed to be relatively new.

He hadn't seen any other doors on his way here so behind the door could only be one of two things: Either it was a dead end with nobody inside of it and this had been planned all along to slow him down or Tooth was behind there.

He limped his way towards the door and rested his hand on the handle. He took a second to catch his breath and then pushed open the door.

What he saw almost made him throw up.

The room was smaller than the one they arrived but it was still big enough to fit all the yetis he had brought in with his snow globes. But the part that really caught his attention was what was inside the room. There were several contraptions riddled with spikes and blades along with a vast collection of whips and knives on the walls.

In other words, he had just found the torture room.

Like the entrance, most of the … 'furniture' inside the room seemed new, meaning that Pitch must have gotten them for a purpose. Ignoring the voice in the back of his head that told him to get of there as fast as he could, he delved deeper inside the room.

Part of him wished that he wouldn't find Tooth there for fear of what Pitch could have done to her but he knew that the sooner he found her, the better. He wished that for the first time that day he would have some luck and find Tooth uninjured.

Fortunately, his prayers were answered.

In the darkest part of the room, was Tooth, both chained and unarmed. North immediately ran or limped, rather, towards her as fast as he could. Upon closer inspection, he noted that she was either unconscious or asleep. He took a look around and spotted a set of keys on the other side of the room on a table.

He figured that maybe he and the Guardians arrived earlier than what Pitch had expected and therefore didn't have time to do anything to Tooth.

He retrieved the keys and after a trying a couple of them, he finally found the right one and freed Tooth. He, with much effort, carried her to the one table that wasn't used for torture and lied her down on top. Afterwards he attempted to wake her up.

She stirred in her sleep and slowly opened her eyes. They were blurry at first but soon they adjust and could finally see who was right next to her. She recognized North and immediately sat up so that she could hug him. She started to cry.

North returned the hug while whispering comforting words to her. Her loud sobs filled the room as she let out all of her tears. After a while, her sobs started to become quieter until they eventually stopped. Tooth broke the hug and cleaned her face from a few remaining tears with her hand.

"T-thank you" Her voice was barely inaudible, almost like a whisper, probably so that nobody else could hear her.

"No need thank me, you're important to all of us" He reassured. "Especially Jack"

Hearing Jack's name only worsened her mood as she remembered when Pitch showed her yelling at Jack and calling him a monster. "I doubt it" She said.

"Why do you say that? Jack loves you, you know that" North said. Tooth's word made North frown. Of course she was important to Jack, she of all people should know that.

"Not after I called him a monster, he doesn't" She insisted, making North's frown deepen. Why would Tooth call Jack a monster? North had never seen love as strong as theirs so what could make her call Jack such a thing.

"Jack didn't say anything about that but if you saw how worried he was for you, you wouldn't be able to say that he didn't love you" North explained, trying to lift Tooth's mood. Unfortunately, it had an almost opposite effect.

"But how can he love me? He hates having people think he's a monster, that's why he hid it from us in the first place" She explained as she started crying once more. "Pitch even said that he didn't even bother asking about me when you fought him right after he showed me calling him a monster"

"That's because I asked first" North explained. "Besides, you can't believe what Pitch says. I bet he fed you nothing but lies"

"No, he didn't" She said, lowering her gaze so that he wasn't looking at North's eyes. "After he showed me that, I started to remember the exact same things"

"Tooth" North called, having enough of her depressing attitude. He put a hand under her chin and slowly lifted it so that he staring her in the eyes once more. "Jack could never hate you, just as you could never truly think of him as a monster. Fear is not our enemy and fear doesn't make us weak, rather, it shows us what our weaknesses are. Do you feel weak when you're around Jack?"

"N-no, I don't" She smiled. "When I'm with Jack, I feel safe, like no one could ever hurt me while I'm in his arms"

"Something that makes you stronger like that, could never be feared" North finished.

"Then how was Pitch able to control me if I'm not afraid of Jack?" Tooth asked.

"Tooth… That was probably fear for death itself, we Guardians and all the spirits alike have already faced death once but we got a second chance. Having been separated from the people we once cared for hurt all of us. We don't want to have to go through that again and that's why we fear Death" North explained. "Pitch probably used that fear and turned it against Jack. So you might think that you're afraid of Jack, but if you look inside yourself you'll realize that you love him more than you ever imagined"

Tooth stared at North in awe as he finished his speech. She closed her eyes and remember every moment she had spent with Jack. She smiled and slowly opened her eyes as she realized what North said was true. She once again wiped her face clear of any tears and climbed off the table so that she could stand on her own feet.

"Thank you, North. I shouldn't have doubted myself" She thanked before moving to North's side and putting his arm back around her neck and placing it on her shoulder, confusing him.

"Wha-"

"You're hurt, right? I'll help you" She said, still smiling.

North smiled back and thanked her as the two of them started walking towards the place where their friends were fighting Pitch. Their pace was slow due to North's injury but that didn't matter to Tooth. All she wanted to do was help Jack and her friends who were currently fight as hard as they could to save her and she'd be dammed if one of them died because of her.


30 minutes have passed since Jack, Bunny and Sandy engaged Pitch and since then the results of their fight have not been good. The three Guardians were currently spread out throughout the room and around Pitch in a triangle.

They're job was to stall Pitch long enough so that North could rescue Tooth and then they would all work together to finally take down Pitch. So they were also hoping that they could tire Pitch out, even if just little.

This was harder than they expected.

After Bunny threw his first boomerang at Pitch just for him to cut it in half, Pitch moved to the center of the room and since then he had been blocking, deflecting or cutting through each of their attacks with only the scythe. He hadn't even broken a sweat while the three Guardians seemed ready to pass out from exhaustion. That was proven when Bunny tripped over his own feet and fell to the floor.

"I think this game is getting boring, don't you? Maybe it's about time I ended it" Pitch said as he sadistically eyed the Guardian of Hope. He finally moved from his position in the center of the room as he took off in Bunny's direction at mach speed.

Before he could Bunny however, Jack made a thick wall of ice between them in hopes of giving Bunny enough time to get back on his feet before Pitch could get to him. His plan succeeded and Bunny was able to get up and get some distance between himself and Pitch.

Jack let out sigh of relief. Unfortunately, at the moment he did he lowered his guard for enough time for Pitch to change his direction and run even faster toward Jack. If possible, his sadistic smile became even bigger as he got in range to attack Jack with his scythe.

"You're mine now, Jack" Pitch said. Jack put his staff between himself and Pitch and closed his eyes as he waited for the inevitable to come.

Except it never did.

"No, he's mine" A female voice called from the side. Pitch turned his head to the side to try and see who the voice belonged to, but was only met with a kick. The kick was strong enough to throw Pitch off his feet and send him across the room.

Jack slowly opened his eyes to see feathers and a rainbow. He had finally found his one and true love.

"TOOTH"