Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to The Rise of the Guardians, be it the movies or the book series. I own Stitch Witch (Ashley) and Thorn Morose.

Nyaa.

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Chapter 11

"Pitch!"

There were numerous sounds of Ashley's disappearing and reappearing as she searched Pitch's Lair. She was furious and frantic, and that combination of feelings shook her inside.

A number of thoughts flooded through her mind. Had he really had some malicious hand in the deaths of her sisters? Did she care? Of course she cared! She had every reason to be angry at the three of them for the life that they left her to, but she still cared for them, loved them deeply in life and in death. Could she stay mad at him if he had done something that awful? She didn't know the answer to that one; that was what was truly horrible.

Finally, she spotted him near his globe. It gave her a moment of pause, watching him think. He was acting so normal, so calm… She wanted to rush down there and scream at him for what he had done. What he might have done. What he probably had done – that she could settle on for certain. She did rush down, filling her lungs with air.

Rather than scream at him, she ran into him. Before he was knocked off of his feet or anything, however, she had wrapped her arms around his middle and burrowed her face into his back.

"Ashley?" She felt him twist around in her grasp, but she did nothing to make it easier on him. His hands settled on her shoulders. "What's happened?"

She shook her head. She didn't want to explain why she was acting the way she was. She didn't want to accuse him of something this awful. Not when she was starting to feel close to him again. Perhaps she was being childish and scared, but… well… she was a fear-based entity, and her only other company was children.

Pitch caught her chin and managed to lift her face up. The soot around her silvery eyes was damp and smeared, giving her a disheveled look. He brushed the tears aside, his face calmer than what he was feeling. "Please."

The Stitch Witch tried to regain some small measure of her usual careless composure, but quickly gave up on the futile effort. "My sisters caught the plague. That's how they died."

She was staring at him. He wondered if she was desperate for him to tell her she was wrong, or accusing him of having something to do with it. He frowned and placed a hand on her head, stroking the wild, red locks. "I'm sorry. I knew about it, if that's what you're asking. I didn't have anything to do with it, but…" He hesitated. "…I won't lie. I could have prevented it if I really wanted to."

Ashley's eyes got a little wider as she searched his face. His words were cold, full of matter-of-fact sincerity. "You could have… prevented it…"

"I could have made sure that they were immune to it. I could have taken it away once they got the disease. I could have even allowed them to survive it. I just… didn't care to." Pitch gave her a pained look, silently begging her to understand while doing his best not to seem as pathetically desperate as he felt. "I was alone. You had been taken from me. We had both been left to die in a fire! But I swear, I did not seek them out to get infected deliberately."

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence. Her expression was blank from the moment he finished his brief explanation until she finally decided to bury her face back in his chest. Her shoulders began shaking, and her body was shuddering; she was crying. Pitch felt an overwhelming wave of pity and guilt – two things he hadn't felt in a very, very long time.

He hugged her tightly. "I'm sorry that I hurt you like this." He rested his chin atop her head. What else could he do? What could he say? He knew what he wanted to do: find whoever had told her that Pitch had had anything to do with the deaths of his three sisters-in-law and kill them very, very slowly, and twice as painfully. He couldn't help himself. He chose his next words carefully. "Have you known for very long?"

"Just now. Tooth and Jack…" Ashley brought up her head and wiped her eyes on the back of her fingerless gloves. She was still sniffling a little. "I don't… I don't think that I want to go up there for a while…"

"You don't have to. You can stay here." He held her face in his hands. "No one will bother you here. You will be safe, and you can rest as long as you want."

She didn't say anything else. She just nodded, and Pitch felt an odd, wild bursting sensation in his chest. He only hugged her back to his chest thanks to the wave of relief that washed over him; it wasn't until a moment later when he realized that this also spared her from spying the almost maniacal grin he got on his face – something that surely would have put her off. But he had to admit it: he was happy that she would not only be staying out of the reach of the Guardians, but she would also be where he could keep an eye on her.

When he thought of her going off to be by herself in this sort of mood… well, he didn't know what to think, really. It just left an unpleasant knot in his belly. She was a creature of extremes when she was human. Who was to say she wouldn't revert to familiar behavior? And with the fantastic abilities that their kind had, and how dark and sinister those abilities could be…

"I have a thought." Pitch looked down at Ashley, who peered up at him miserably. He gave her an uncertain smile, trying to put her at ease. "The fears that you keep bottled up in your domain – there may be a use for them."

She didn't recoil, but she didn't seem happy with the idea, either. "I don't want – "

"Don't misunderstand me. I don't mean to weaponize the phobias that you've held onto. Please… Trust me."

When Ashley didn't return to her tower within the first week, Tooth was worried. At the end of the second week, she felt scared. At the end of the third week, Tooth Fairy was sitting on the rooftop, sure that her newfound friend had certainly confronted her husband and been destroyed for her trouble.

If only she had kept her big mouth shut. And Jack, too; but mostly her.

Into the last week of the month, her routine was back to normal: busy, busy, busy. She remained at her palace in the sky with her mini-fairies, preserving the memories of children around the world. For a while, things started to return to normal, until one of her fairies came back injured, and with quite the terrible story to tell about how it had been attacked… by a child.

She couldn't believe her ears as the tiny creature relayed its tale to her. The fairy had been on a normal run – one coin, one tooth, and it had known exactly where it was going. It had arrived at the child's house. Exchanging the tooth for the coin had been a breeze. But there had been another child in the room. A child that didn't live there, or anywhere, for that matter, with dark, black hair and pale skin, and the largest yellow eyes that anyone had ever seen. The wicked little boy had attacked the fairy, knocking her out of the child's room. The fairy cried as she tried to apologize; the intruder had taken the tooth and disappeared into the darkness like a shadow in the night.

Soon, more stories were coming in from other fairies, about children losing teeth from getting into fights with one another. Most of the times, the teeth never made it under the child's pillow, and when they did, they described the same little boy.

Tooth was at North's workshop before he even called the other Guardians, and when they spoke, it turned out that the fights had been more widespread than either one of them had known. With the help of the globe, North had discovered that the child had shown up more frequently at the homes of children who had siblings. The boy whispered into ears of children, and fights followed after. Older siblings told younger siblings that Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny weren't real, yet they delighted in torturing their little brothers and sisters of the Boogeyman and how they probably wouldn't make it through the night in one piece. Granted, Pitch had never hurt a child beyond nightmares, and even the occasional night terror, but that didn't stop the stories and some well-timed pranks between siblings, cousins, and even friends at sleepovers from trying to scare one another in cruel ways.

Once all five of the Guardians had been gathered and everyone was on the same page, no one had anything to say. It was just… strange.

Bunnymund was the one to break the silence. "Well, it's got to be one of two things, way I see it. Either he finally got to her and convinced her that she's got to be as much about fear and cruelty as he is, or he's bumped her off."

"How could you say that?!" Tooth sputtered. Her face, however, gave away that she feared the same. "Pitch Black is a monster, but he wouldn't… I mean, he couldn't… He cared about her! He really did! Right?!"

Jack put his hands up, trying to calm her down. "Look, Tooth, just in case he did do something to… to hurt her, we need to be careful about what we do next."

Tooth's lower lip trembled and she seemed to wilt slightly. Both of them missed their fellow Guardians looking between them curiously.

"Alright." Bunnymund crossed his arms and glared pointedly at Jack. "What'd you two do?"

"What? What're you looking at me for?!" Jack snapped.

"You both seemed convinced that Ashley is dead or hurt." North noted. Beside him, Sandy nodded. "Even if you don't think that Pitch would be able to convince her to harm children through the spreading of fear, usually a hopeful heart would at least want to go with the option in which their friend was alive. It is strange; that's all."

"So, again: What'd you two do?" Bunnymund repeated.

"The least you could do is leer at Tooth like that, too, and not just me." Jack pointed out with a huff.

Tooth raised her hand hesitantly. "W-We were talking with her just a few weeks ago, and she told us that her sisters had died after catching the Black Death, and we may… have informed her that Pitch was responsible for another version of the Black Death that had all of the physical symptoms of the disease."

"She left immediately." Jack finished, rubbing an arm. "We haven't seen her since. We were a little worried that she might've said something or picked a fight with Pitch again, or…"

"Wait, again? What do you mean, again?!" Tooth gave Jack a terrified look.

He winced. "…I saw her before that. Pitch was using his new Sand Spiders for the first time, only instead of fighting with him, I used his portal to look for Ashley in his Lair. He had drained her once already because she said she'd picked a fight with him. She said that he would have killed her if he'd meant to; like he was just trying to take all of the strength that she'd had stored up. But, personally…" The young Guardian rubbed the back of his neck. "…Personally, I think that he tried to kill her and it didn't work, or maybe he caught himself at the last minute. I don't think that someone like Pitch can love, and considering how much he hates us for keeping him from destroying the world? How much Ashley tries to get along with us? We all agreed that especially for a fear entity, she wasn't a bad person. Dang it… I knew I should have dragged her out of there when I had a chance!"

"I don't think Pitch did kill her." Bunnymund spoke up. "Maybe he tried; maybe his temper got the better of him; but, much as I hate to admit it, I'd like to believe that even Pitch Black has a soft spot in his heart somewhere. Provided he has a heart, of course."

"He does, for her." North stroked his beard thoughtfully. "…I remember every name of every child that has ever been on my lists. There are lists for each age, each country, even each century… Today, I found a new name on one of these lists – one for Germany, and it was from a time before even Sandy and I were Guardians! The lists only last as long as the children on it are still children that can believe, and then they disappear."

Jack frowned. "You think that this is the kid that's been harassing children and stealing the teeth from Tooth's fairies?"

The elder Guardian nodded. "But, more than that, I had to wonder why the boy's name would be on a list from a year long since passed centuries ago. Now I think that, maybe, on the night their home burned, Ashley may have been carrying a child – and if she was, Manny would not have let this child fade away or die when he turned its parents."

"But… But where's it been all this time? That little boy isn't exactly a toddler, so it's not like she could have been 'carrying' it for all this time!" Tooth pointed out.

"Coulda been in her domain." Bunnymund speculated. "Think about it. Yeah, there's a lot of chaos going on in there, but none of it can hurt anyone, either. Maybe it found a fear to latch onto for its own power. His dad's the Boogeyman that causes nightmares, and his mum's a… a trickster who manipulates fears and then takes them away for herself; could be that the little bugger just needed a specific blend of powers… or just needed his parents to find him in there."

Couples were strange things – watching two humans care about each other was intriguing. His parents were different, as far as being a couple went. They cared about one another. They also carried more pain with them. Perhaps that was why he preferred them to human couples; when humans got angry with their mate, there was screaming and fighting, sometimes in front of their young. In his short life, he had yet to see that, and he naturally looked for it.

It was his nature to turn people against one another, and his whispers only worked on children… most of the time. He had whispered in the ears of adults. Sometimes the action got him some astounding effects.

"Thorn, where have you been?"

The Morose child turned his head at the sound of his mother's voice just in time to be picked up. With a small smile, he let himself be held, even cuddling close to Stitch Witch. He loved his parents. They kept him safe, got mad when he slipped away unnoticed – something he had seen other, human parents do, but their children weren't as smart as Thorn was. Human children were nasty and stupid creatures, selfish and blind from the moment they were born.

Ashley frowned, playing with the wild strands of his midnight black hair. "Hey. I asked you a question, little one."

He gazed at her innocently with his large, yellow eyes. "I love you, Mommy." he cooed.

Her brow furrowed at him mildly. He couldn't fool her, but at least he could entertain her; a smile was tugging at her lips, although she wouldn't let it win just yet. "You need to stay with us, Thorn. The world is dangerous for our kind, and you're not strong enough yet. If you're going to go on adventures, you need to at least make sure that it's with your father or me."

He pouted and acted put out. Now she grinned, chuckling lightly. "Don't try to act so hurt with me. In this family, there's nothing more common than a manipulative nature."

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Good Ness, I've been off for far too long! I'm sorry that I dropped off like that. Hopefully, you humans can be slated with this update, and my sincerest apologies!

Nyaa!

*puffs up tail and runs away*