Solitude and Darkness

by Sumi-Sprite

Fill for the RotG KINKmeme. Sometimes mistakes are made. Sometimes misguidance is given. And too often, the best intentions can be the absolute worst sin. Perhaps imprisoning Pitch Black after his defeat wasn't the brightest thing to do. How do you plan to fix something you yourself broke, Guardians? WARNING! For later suicide attempts, self-harm, and psychological trauma.

25. Will tomorrow come at last?

Solitude and Darkness

Ch. 25.

A/N~ Originally, this was to be one complete chapter, but as I continued to write and write, I found I had to divide it into two chapters! Not that this is something overly annoying, but it changed some plans; mostly for the better! I was actually going to post during the eclipse that too place in August – and on the day before my birthday no less! – but plans had to change due to life. Sigh…

Also, when you complete this chapter, be sure to check out the very important A/N next! There is a very important announcement, and a prize to be won by a select few.

But for now, I would like to publicly thank the participants of my last contest! All contestants from DA.

MantaDrifter (Winner)

KSClaws

Catwoman-cali-onyx

Jamieaizen

Ravenflinch

All were participants on my last SaD contest where they were to design a Dark Spirit aesthetic outfit for Jack! Go check these people out, they are absolutely amazing artists and story-tellers!

Song inspiration – Aoki Tsuki Michete, Ending theme of Kuroshitsuji, Book of Circus.

Edited by The Fallen Angel of Pain

Enjoy!

~S~

~s~s~S~s~s~

How could this have happened?

How, with all they had done in the past for the world's children, could they fall so low? How could the world have fallen to such pieces, and they had never once noticed? How could their world, their haven, their very reason for being, be twisted into such a malicious and deformed entity?

How could Manny have not said anything to them about it?

How could they have let this happen?

How could they have been so ignorant?

North had no idea how all of this could have spiraled out of control. He could not for the life of him think of how such a mess was made, and they never even noticed. Or perhaps they had not cared to notice. He didn't know anymore. He only knew that, before coming back to Libra's Court, he had been hurting, scared and confused. But now, he did not feel much of anything.

A recess had been called recently, to let the other witnessing spirits regain their bearings, and for Libra's wards to tend to Bunny's injuries. He could not recall when he and his colleagues had been taken to a mostly bare room with sparse furniture to wait for the injured Pooka, and for whatever else Libra had to say to them. North only knew that he was oddly very numb. But he was also tired; so very, very tired.

Eyes once shining with wonder, now dull with defeat and exhaustion, surveyed the other Guardians perched on their own seats with a strange sense of distance between them. No one said anything, nor did they tear their gazes away from the floor to which their eyes were glued to. Or in Sandy's case, the ceiling. North did not know why Sandy was so transfixed upon the ceiling of all places, but he wondered if the fallen star was perhaps remembering. Remembering his days as a Star Pilot, his former life of an explorer upon a shooting star. Perhaps he was wondering about his old star ship. Perhaps he was wondering if he would ever get to fly a star again.

North wondered if Sandy missed it. If perhaps, right now, he was wondering when he had forgotten about his former life in space. North would not blame him if he was. It seemed like they were all missing their former lives; when things were so much simpler, when their lives were their own, when everyone and everything was right.

But then their lives were taken from them-…no, they were not taken. They were willingly and blindly given. When the Moon summoned them for their aid, they did not hesitate. They did not consider just what they would be giving up, how much they would be sacrificing, just so they could have something more.

Greed was a sultry and ugly thing. But it always managed to seduce those in their weakest moments. When you weren't looking, it snatched away what was dear to you and traded it away. And you would never know until it was too late, that it wasn't greed itself who gave away your soul, but you yourself who chose to do so.

North looked over at Tooth. The fairy queen had her eyes locked onto the floor, tired and dull, just like his own eyes. She looked so strangely small and alone without her fairies flitting around her. The room was thick with a tar-like silence, heavy and toxic without her chipper, fast-paced voice directing fairies to lost teeth. Her wings, limp and oddly still, looked dull and hazy, their translucency tainted with a sooty film. Their shimmer and vibrant colors were fading, and the sluggish stillness of the glass-like appendages was haunting.

She had no voice, no buzzing wings, no life, no light. Tooth had no more color and light than a lump of coal. North never realized how bright and cheerful she had been before now. He was having a hard time remembering when Tooth had last been so full of light and energy.

In fact, he could not much recall a time when any of them had been so happy. Successful and powerful, yes. But for the life of him, North could not remember a time when any of them had ever truly been happy. They thrived in their former power and success, their influence and status. They laughed, enjoyed themselves, had parties, worked diligently and without falter…

'But were we actually happy?' he wondered, 'We enjoyed what we did, but were we happy with who we were…?'

His eyes lowered, taking in his large, calloused hands. He never much looked at his hands, despite how much he used them in creating toys or fixing things. Calloused from centuries of swordsmanship and crafting, he never considered how much he had done with them until now.

He was starting to realize a lot of things now actually, things they had all taken for granted…

"How could this have happened…?" North startled from his resolve, looking up at Tooth.

The fairy queen was still looking down at the floor, but there was a watery quality to her eyes, as if she was on the verge of tears, but had no strength to even let them fall.

No one spoke, despite the clarity of the answer. It was a sad fact that, despite knowing why it all happened, they were not too sure how this happened. It was something they had not once vocally acknowledged, but it was a silent understanding between them all. It was like an unspoken rule, a secret that everyone knew but never voiced.

Whether it was out of cowardice or weariness, none of them could be certain. Perhaps it was a bit of both. But they all knew that it was just too late to voice things now. It was simply something none of them could bear to face, for it had become so much bigger and uglier than they could have ever imagined. Facing it would mean admitting they had created such a monstrous thing. Facing it meant risking their very sanity being lost at the mere sight of it.

Tooth shuddered, hugging herself shakily.

"So many…" she whispered shakily, "There were so many names Libra listed…but I don't even recall any of them…! I don't remember any faces, voices, or what they did. They're gone, but I don't even know who I am mourning. It…it's terrible…!"

North and Sandy winced, their hearts throbbing in what was supposedly a painful tremor, but all they could feel was a weak quiver. The writhing beast below their hearts was now a familiar thing, grotesque and suffering in its putrid decay. Its claws had long since sunk into and merged with their hearts, stealing away what little emotion they had the energy to express.

This was the most frightening and painful thing about Oblivion. You know you are missing someone, you know they are gone, and you know they will soon be forgotten. But you can no longer recall a face, a voice, or their purpose. You could have been the closest of friends, but once one succumbs to Oblivion, the past no longer matters. Slowly, like puss draining from a wound, you lose that history, that past, and those feelings you may have had for them. They vanish from every plane of Time – the past, the present, and their void future.

Their world had lost almost half of its spirits – some known, some unknown, and some they never even knew still existed. And they could no longer recall who they had been. The names inscribed on Libra's courtroom walls would be all that was left for a short while. But in time, even those would slowly vanish as the owners of those names were slowly stolen from the memories and hearts of all remaining spirits.

Even Harley was leaving them. North tried to think of the once free and wild Spirit of Forgiveness. But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how far back he thought, Harley's face was nothing but a blur. He could only faintly see his colorful clothing, but even that was all starting to distort and vanish. He tried to recall his laugh, but it was muffled; like he was hearing it from the other side of a wall. And the wall was getting thicker, the laughter more distant and stifled. Forgiveness was being forgotten and thrown into Oblivion.

'Will we be forgotten too?' North wondered. Wearily, he looked over at the distraught fairy queen – or was she still even a queen at all at this point?

"Toothy…" he said, "We…this is not…we do not-"

"NO!" Tooth snapped, jumping to her feet and startling North and Sandy.

The two males watched her, taken aback by the emotions flitting through her watery eyes. Rage, sadness, confusion, pain, grief; all of it had overwhelmed her. Her hands, balled into fists, trembled at her sides, her entire body shaking and feathers shuddering. She let loose a pained, choked sob, and brought her fists up, unfurling them to look at her hands. A few crescent-shaped marks marred her palms from where her nails had dug into them, but no other blemish tainted her small hands. In her eyes though, she did not see clean, untarnished hands. She saw blood – the blood of hundreds, thousands, millions of humans and spirits.

The hands of a loving fairy who had once cradled the memories of children in her very palms…and they had been soaked in blood long before she even knew it. They were filthy and defiled the moment she helped lock Pitch away, if not long before that. She had touched these hands to the precious memories and teeth of children.

But North and Sandy had done the same. They had taken their blood-soaked hands and touched the dreams and wonders of children all over the world. North's hands stained the toys he once gave to children, and Sandy's own small hands infiltrated and marred the innocent dreams of oblivious and sleeping children…

Sandy somehow caught Tooth and North's attention, wearily pantomiming his two cents.

We can't change the past, he said in defeat, But…maybe we can fix things before our future breaks…before anyone else is lost…

Tooth's jaw tightened. "I don't even think that's possible anymore…"

North and Sandy gave her confused looks, and the fairy queen lost all strength. Her tremors ceased, and her hands fell to her sides limply. She stared at the floor, eyes watering.

"Every time we faced Pitch…" she started shakily, "Things only became worse. One day we're only fighting him because of something small or silly, and the next, we're trying to kill each other. We never once stopped to think about the fallout, about what would happen if one side actually won…"

She screwed her eyes shut, refusing to look particularly at Sandy.

"Pitch…he had every right to start a war – a real war – when you shot Samhain," she said.

Sandy winced, shuddering once, but his brows creased in a strange sort of quiet resentment. Tooth looked up at him, her own brows creasing defensively.

"Don't even start, Sandy, you know it's true," she said.

"But he did not start a war…" North said before his friends could get into an argument.

Tooth shook her head, eyes falling back to the floor. "No. No, he didn't. He did nothing. He was furious, they were all furious, but he didn't do anything. And when we realized nothing was going to happen, we forgot about it and ignored the incident. It was just a mistake to us, nothing more. It was just a bad dream…"

She fell back into her chair, her tremors starting up again. Her tears could no longer be withheld, and they fell down her cheeks freely. She grasped her arms in each hand painfully.

"We forgot that Samhain was someone's child. We forgot and ignored that Pitch has his own children to look after…! We put it out of our minds and forgot about it like a god-damned lost tooth and replaced it with our greed!" she sobbed.

North and Sandy were stunned, struck by the painful pill Tooth had suddenly put before them to swallow. It was agonizing to their already wounded and exhausted hearts and minds. Yet despite the agony, they could not even muster the energy to feel even more terribly than they already did. It was too late now. They had lost their chance to fight, not against the rest of the world, but for it and with it. They were no longer allowed to even feel the anguish and pain the rest of their kind was now feeling. They did not have the strength, the courage, to shoulder a single scrap of the pain. They could not be trusted with it.

They were now merely spectators, the witnesses of a war. They were helpless and powerless, their tools and gifts completely and utterly useless to the planet itself.

"They were so quiet…" Tooth suddenly whispered, "We never heard from them. We all assumed they were gone. We never thought about what happened to them. But now…"

North looked over at Tooth. "What, Toothy?"

The fairy shook her head, bowing it low. "It's so obvious now. They weren't gone. They weren't dead or destroyed. Pitch's people, they were hiding."

Even sitting down, North felt his equilibrium falter. It was so obvious, just as Tooth had said. The dark spirits had not died – and even if they had thought they died off, the Guardians had never mourned them; they had not mourned the loss of an entire species. But no, they had been hiding – hiding from the Guardians, who to them were not the kind or wondrous spirits others said they were. No, in their world, the dark spirits were the children, and the Guardians were the monsters they wanted to hide from.

They hadn't been hiding to plan or scheme, to plan malicious or evil intentions. Revenge was not on their agenda. All they could afford was the survival of their race, and of their beloved king.

Fight or flight, fight or flight, fight or-

Run. Hide.

Promise me…

The three Guardians startled as a brisk knock was heard at the door of their room, and one of the guards – who were spread throughout the room, but so still and silent that North had forgotten that they were even there – opened it to admit two other guards, and their fourth Guardian.

North rose from his seat, along with Sandy and Tooth. They said nothing, and simply watched as the guard escorting Bunny guided him to the nearest chair.

The Pooka's empty eye socket was now bandaged and cleaned of residual blood and saline. His face and fur above the shoulders had also been cleaned of blood and saliva. His ears, while still riddled with holes, had been treated with a thick salve, and were less inflamed than they were prior to treatment. He said nothing and did not even look at his fellow Guardians, nor did he snap or scowl at the guard leading him to a chair with a hand around one of his arms.

They watched Bunny sit down in his chair, shoulders limp and back hunched. He mumbled something to the guard, too low for any of them to hear. But the guard nodded, and to their shock, the second guard handed the Pooka a box they had not noticed he had been carrying. The first guard shuffled over to one of the others in the room and whispered something to him softly, before he departed the room. The second guard who had been carrying the box gave Bunny one last look before he went over to the other Guardians.

"Your companion has been treated and will make a full recovery on his own," he said curtly.

"But…he is not…" The same, North thought. The guard made no elaborations to knowing what North was thinking, but spoke again anyways.

"The rest of the trial will be resumed in fifteen minutes. Be ready, Guardians." The guard gave no other words, and instead turned and marched briskly from the room. The door shut behind him with a resounding click of the lock.

Silence once more fell over the room, eerie and thick, like tar sticking to their bodies and minds. North, Tooth and Sandy stared over at Bunny, who had so far given no indication as to knowing they were there. Unease writhed in their guts as they took in the broken Pooka, fear and uncertainty tethering them to the spot.

They startled when Bunny suddenly moved. One of his ears sluggishly twitched, and he mumbled incoherently. A paw moved to open the box the guard had given him, and he placed the lid quietly on the floor and propped up against his chair. The other Guardians could not see what was inside, but they could hear a few things being shuffled around inside it – pottery?

The contents were soon revealed, as Bunny brought out what appeared to be a small round pot of paint, a brush, and…

'A…a rock?' they thought.

Bunny turned the round river rock around in his paw, inspecting it like he would one of his eggs. He mumbled again, deeming the rock just right, settled on his haunches in the chair, and placed the pot on the arm of the chair. The box now balanced on his knees, he hunched over and dipped the brush into the paint – black. The color stunned the other Guardians. Bunny never painted with black. It was almost a rule, a law of his, that he would never paint with black, especially not on his eggs. But then again, he had never painted on a rock, unless he was testing colors and new patterns.

He paid them no mind, and with his nose nearly pressed to the stone, began painting it.

North apparently could not take the sight or the silence anymore, and with a sudden burst of boldness (or foolishness), he cautiously approached the Pooka. His boots sounded oddly loud and booming within the silence. Sandy and Tooth stuck close behind North, but even as they stopped, they all gave Bunny a wide berth.

"Bunny…" North started, his voice uneasy, "Are you alright…?"

Bunny said nothing, but he did mumble again, his lips barely moving, and his sole focus entirely on his rock. North felt his hands clench at his sides, his fellow Guardians' unease mounting. North stepped a bit closer.

"Bunnymund," he said a bit more firmly, "Do you know where you are? Do you know who we are?"

Again, no answer was forthcoming, and North felt both anxiety and fear rise up within him. Hopelessness flooded his body like cold water, freezing his blood and setting his organs to trembling. He forced himself to move closer, and after a moment's hesitation, he kneeled next to the Pooka. He was close enough now that he could smell the herbal scent of the salve on Bunny's ears, as well as the more sterile smell of hydrogen peroxide on the fur of his neck and upper chest.

North swallowed, his jaw tightening. Hesitantly, he reached up and touched the Pooka's arm. Bunny stopped painting, but made no move to speak or do anything else. It was like someone had hit the pause button, and he simply held still and stared at his rock, his paintbrush motionless.

North felt his heartrate speed through his ears, and he jumped slightly when Bunny did move his paintbrush – but only to dip it back in the little pot of paint, then slowly and sluggishly bring it back. He resumed painting, and North felt yet another needless crack be added onto his heart.

"Bunny…Aster…" he rasped, "Please…talk to us. What are you feeling? Please tell us that you are still there, that you are alright…"

Of course, he isn't alright, North thought. But he did not know what else to say, what else he could ask of the Pooka. What do you do when your friend is so broken beyond repair? What do you do when the pieces are no longer there, but have since turned to ashes that were soon swept away by Time himself? What do you do to fix someone who was past the point of being broken?

What do you do when one of your best friends has died, but has not left…?

North seemed to get a reaction, and the Russian reeled back when Bunny suddenly turned to look at them. Tooth made a startled noise behind North, her feathers bristling slightly. Bunny only stared at them tiredly, his remaining green eye something completely foreign to them. The iris was so dull and dark, it bordered on black. It had an unnatural depth to it now, its light and vibrant color gone. His pupil was hazy, not unlike the late stages of cataracts.

Yet they were somehow clear, lacking in the maddening haze they had witnessed within Libra's court not too long ago. The fire of his madness had been extinguished by Time himself, and all that was left were the sooty remains in which the temporal Angel had planted a new kind of madness; a deeper, clearer, abyssal sort of wisdom that destroyed minds in exchange for its council.

It made bile rise in North's throat, and he felt his hands grasp the armrest of Bunny's chair in a strangling grip.

Bunny cocked his head, ears limp and flopping to one side. His nose twitched once, and he blinked his one eye so slowly, so lethargically, it was like watching a car crash in slow motion.

He suddenly spoke.

"Angels tell no lies…" he whispered.

The others blinked, but felt the hairs and feathers on the backs of their necks stand on end. A collective shudder ran through their spines, ending in a cold pit just under their stomachs. North swallowed.

"We…do not understand," he said. "Are you alright, Bunnymund? Do you know who we are?"

Bunny made a strange sound in his throat, something that was a cross between a groan and a contemplative hum. One ear twitched, and his head cocked to the other side, as if he were listening to something.

"…follow him…" he said, confusing the Guardians, "Follow him…don't be late…"

The sound of a muffled sob tore North's attention away from Bunny and over to Tooth. The fairy queen had her eyes screwed shut and her hands pressed to her ears, teeth grinding as she tried to force herself to disappear, for her existence to stop so she could find some semblance of sanity and peace.

"Don't be late…" Bunny repeated, swaying back into his chair, the box of rocks sliding down to lean against his stomach. He blinked slowly once, and turned away from the Guardians to resume his painting.

"Don't be late…" he mumbled, an ear twitching and whiskers flickering.

North, impossibly, felt something crack inside of him, and he pressed to his feet so fast that he jostled Bunny's chair. The little pot of paint wavered and fell to the floor, shattering upon impact with a deafening sound that could wake the dead in a fright. The Guardians choked at the sound, but Bunny merely twitched an ear sluggishly. He looked at the spilled paint and the shattered pot. The black paint, spread over the floor and spattered on the chair, was already drying in a thin layer over the floor. Bunny blinked slowly, looking at his brush almost thoughtfully.

North's hands shook. "I…I am sorry, Bunny, I-I will-!"

He flinched when Bunny suddenly dropped the brush onto the floor. He seemed to stare out into an unknown distance, his single hazy eye growing darker. He swayed slightly, like he was just slightly jostled by a lethargic vertigo. His rock half-painted, he turned it over onto its blank side and regarded it.

The Guardians watched the slow actions in morbid fascination and horror. Tooth peered at the guard by the door, about to consider going over to ask for more paint for Bunny, but she paused when she heard North hiss and felt Sandy flinch beside her. She turned back to Bunny, and felt the blood drain from her face.

As a rule, Bunny often kept his claws trimmed and rounded at the tips. His eggs were fragile, magic notwithstanding, and he did not want to risk scratches or cracks, especially in his paint. He kept them blunt, but still long enough so his furry pads would not become an issue and leave marks on painted eggs. They grew quickly though, and were often a chore to wear down. None of them had had much of a chance to attend to personal grooming in over a week now, and it showed.

Yet for Bunny, it seemed to aid him in his new endeavor. Now lacking paint, his brush was useless. But his claws were strong, and his hands were careful. A simple river rock would not be too difficult to mark, and he found no issue with the 'red paint' dripping from his fingers as he clawed the rest of his design into the rock.

STOP! The Guardians wanted to shout, to rave and yank Bunny's hands away from the rock he held and scratched at. But they could not speak, nor could they move. At first, it felt like horror had rooted them to the spot. But upon examination – and the fact that they could examine at all – they realized just what was tethering them back.

It was nothing. A sort of nothingness born of something once so precious and lacking in these times. It was a dead and mad version of what Bunny once represented as a Guardian.

It was with an apathetic sort of horror that they realized why they did not move to act and stop Bunny.

It was hopelessness. There was no point in trying to stop them. They did not even try, because it would yield no results. Something inside them had given up.

And it was this ghostly chain of defeat that kept them from moving, from wanting to move at all. They could only watch as Bunny clawed and carved into his rock, unflinching and uncaring of the painful abuse to his claws. The red paint his claws excreted seemed to fascinate him almost, and the more they watched, the less energy and desire they had to stop him.

The door to the room opened without their noticing, and a female guard stepped in. The click of her armored shoes did not rouse the Guardians from their hopeless stupor, and they only lifted their heads to her when she stopped in front of them.

"The trial is about to start. Come with me," she said. She briskly turned on her heels and began marching for the door. Stopping between her fellow guards to wait for the Guardians.

The Guardians, contrasting their earlier reactions, slowly looked up when Bunny suddenly rose, still scratching into his rock. He shuffled after the guard without looking up, his steps unsteady and meandering. The other Guardians blinked slowly, struck dumb and numb by the suddenly too fast world moving around them.

They looked up at Bunny as he came to a shaky stop and sat on the floor on his haunches before the guard blocking his way. He scratched at his rock still, muttering nonsense and incoherent words under his breath.

His ear twitched. He paused in his scratching. He looked up skywards, and cocked his head.

"Don't be late…"

~s~s~S~s~s~

The air around him was something of an enigma. For with each breath drawn, it did not actually seem to stick to his lungs. It did not fill his chest with the refreshing, rib-tightening atmosphere he was used to. It did not suffocate though, nor did it stifle his airway. It was a strange, frozen sort of atmosphere. The air itself seemed to sit at a standstill, or perhaps it moved with the lazy drift of a dust mote.

It was eerie to Jack. To suddenly be heaving air in and out of his lungs in a panic, and to suddenly be greeted with such stillness. He nearly choked on his own tongue when he first tasted the crystalline air around him.

Ice crystals formed in his throat, tiny and immaculate, not unlike pollen in a spring wind. But the cold of the ice – of the air itself – was an otherworldly one. It was deeper, harsher, so much quieter than his own ice. It crept over and around him like an inquisitive, yet deadly snake. Its tendrils slithered down his throat as if in curiosity, trying to find his innermost workings.

The sensation made Jack cough sharply, dislodging the forming crystals of otherworldly frost. He groaned, flipping over onto his side, a hand coming up to scrub at his tightly closed eyes.

'Where am I…?' he thought, 'And the rabbit…'

Rabbit…rabbit…he had been chasing a rabbit! He had followed it, just as it had urged him, and he had flown to…a clock tower? Yes, a clock tower. But why had he been following it to begin with?

'The Baku…' he realized with a jolt of his limbs.

It had gone mad. Consumed by the very nightmares it once ate, the Baku had pursued Jack in its insanity. He did not want to think of what it would have done had it caught him. He only knew that he would not be alive right now if it had caught him, if he had not followed that rabbit.

He suddenly felt a presence. Something soft and warm, something beloved and chaste. It fell like the softest swan's down over his prone form, so gentle in its pious touch. Its hand tenderly cupped his cheek, and a voice that broke and healed his heart all at once whispered to him.

"Don't be late," it crooned.

Jack felt tears come to his closed eyes, unable to refuse the angelic voice. With a will fueled by the desire to see and serve this entity, he forced his eyes open.

But the presence was gone, and Jack felt his heart quiver mournfully for the briefest moment. And not even a second later, the feelings of adoration and want vanished into nothingness.

He stared dazedly, confused and lost. His very resolve had evaporated into thin air, as if the emotions evoked by that unknown voice had never existed. As if he had never existed.

Jack reined in his resolve. The former trickle of his awareness broke through the barrier holding it back, and he suddenly found himself aware of his surroundings.

He shot up with a gasp, no sooner choking as the frigid atmosphere clawed at his dry throat. He coughed harshly into his arm, gasping and wheezing to dislodge the crystalline dust from his lungs. He gagged, eyes watering as his organs constricted. His back lurched as he heaved onto his hands and knees, blood rushing into his head in throbbing waves. Bile spurted from his mouth, back arching as his body screamed and compressed in on itself in distress.

Nothing was coming up though, and once it became aware of reality, Jack's body abruptly began to unwind. His throat relented its own chokehold, his stomach and lungs settling back into their proper places. He gasped and coughed, trembling and aching. Part of him was certain that his heart had dislodged from his ribcage and was now taking up residence in his brain. His head felt like it was audibly throbbing with his frantic pulse, his blood rushing through his ears in a stormy cascade. He felt his eyeballs rolling in their sockets, disorienting his vision as it was flooded with dizzying whirls of color and light.

Jack groaned as his body slowly settled. The matter making up his body finally stopped trying to rip apart, and he slowly came back into full existence and awareness. He blinked dazedly as his vision cleared, heavy head hanging and providing him with a view of a silvery, mirror-like floor. Exhaustedly, Jack found himself comparing the floor to blue-tinged mercury. His disheveled and pale reflection stared back at him, and the frost sprite had a moment to wonder if it was even his reflection at all. The nauseous, almost drugged-looking boy in the floor did not seem to hold a candle to Jack's appearance.

"Where am I…?" Hearing his own voice seemed to cement Jack's existence back together. He blinked dumbly down at the floor, hands chalk-white and planted on the floor like bleached starfish.

He swallowed thickly around the ball of chalky sand in his throat, his eyes burning from the sensation. He suddenly stiffened in alarm.

He looked down at himself and the immediate area. His bag. His staff. The owl.

All three were gone.

'Oh no…' he thought frantically, twisting on his knees to see if any of his things and his guide were nearby, 'Oh gods, no…!'

His staff, Pitch's staff; they were both gone. The items he had collected from the other dark spirits, his guide; there was absolutely no sign of them. And yet he swore his owl had flown through the portal with him. His staff had been in his hand, and his bag strapped securely over his shoulder.

The portal…

Jack forced himself to still, eyes slowly taking in his surroundings. The portal – it had dumped him here. But where, exactly, was here?

He felt his gut clench, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Muscles shaky and bones feeling like brittle spring ice, Jack forced himself to his feet. Vertigo briefly overtook him and filled his vision with fuzzy black dots. But he forced the dizziness away, and his eyes took in the strange, ethereal chamber he found himself in.

It appeared to be a round room – or perhaps 'round' was not the right word. There were twelve slats making up the chamber's surrounding walls, forming a dodecagon*. Strange, gold metal moldings ran up and down the length of the walls, forming spear-like points. The floor was not as solidly colored as Jack formerly thought. Looking down, he noted how the mercury-like stone more resembled a blue and silver granite, and etched within its odd, mirror-like surface was a gold mosaic patterns that he could not put name or sense to. Constellations, circles, lines and vaguely familiar symbols and glyphs covered the entire floor, dizzying in its designs and shapes.

It was such an overwhelming sight, seeing so much going on inside the otherworldly image. It made Jack dizzy just looking at it.

Click!

Jack gasped, spinning around with wild, frantic eyes at the sudden sound breaking the spell. His eyes settled on the slat of light breaking through one of the walls, he felt himself calm.

The wall, while completely identical to the others, was actually a door. A beam of subdued white light peered into the room, grounding and familiar. And just slightly beyond the light, Jack could faintly see a shadow moving.

He gave no thought whatsoever to his actions or who was there. He simply staggered to the door just as the shadow seemed to turn and walk away. Jack pushed through the door, heart pounding and disorienting confusion stifling him. He just barely caught the shadow's tail end as it turned a corner down a hall. Jack did not waste time, and while his legs were shaky and his brain was a muddled mess, he rushed to follow it.

He barely paid any mind to the ethereal halls and corridors, the strange floor that seemed to waver and swirl like storm clouds through a glass-like surface. The walls, perfect imitations of every single vertical surface, were maze-like and strange in their patterns and forms. Every surface was mirrorlike, but hazy in places. Like a house of mirrors, every surface held Jack's profile at every angle.

He gasped as he staggered into a wall from taking a sharp turn, just in time to catch the ends of fabric from his quarry making another turn around a corner. Split like a swallow's tail, dark and as blindingly black as the void*.

'A tailcoat…?' he wondered.

The frost sprite pressed on, all the while trying to forcibly decide if he should call out to the person or not. A part of him wondered why he was even chasing this person. He had nothing better to go on though. His guide was his only asset in finding his way to where he needed to go, but she was still missing.

"Don't be late," that voice from his half-conscious state whispered to him. It sent a shudder down his spine, but it was also eerily familiar.

Jaw tightening, Jack turned the final corner and intended to make a full sprint. But he suddenly stopped.

The set of round-topped double doors seemed to scrutinize him, their height daunting. Stark white, they were decorated with yet more of that strange, starlight gold molded into spatial and temporal patterns. Gears and cogs were strategically placed upon the door, and in such a way that Jack wondered if they were just decoration, or somehow functional.

A sound not unlike the chirp of a bird caught his attention, and Jack spun around as renewed hope swelled in his chest. But instead of seeing his anticipated owl, he was startled to see something else entirely.

It was a mouse. Or…he was sure it was a mouse.

Its body was definitely that of a small rodent, its fur white as snow. Its distended, pointy nose twitched at Jack curiously, while its beady, jet black eyes stared up at him. Its long, grey-pink tail lay in a semi-curled position behind it, one of its front paws lifted as it sniffed in Jack's direction. But that is where all comparisons of a mouse stopped, and entered a steampunk enthusiast's dream.

It had no hindlegs whatsoever. Instead, round gears made of bronze were attached to its haunches, acting as makeshift wheels for it to easily get around with just its front paws. Upon its back was a windup-key of aged bronze matching to its wheels, leading into a metal-edged hole in its back. And just on its chest, tiny and usually found on the wrists of humans, was a fully functioning watch-face*.

Jack could only gape at the strange creature. Or perhaps it was not nearly as strange as he was making it out to be. It certainly did not look as outlandish as North's elves, and certainly not as fantastically surreal as Bunny's walking eggs. But it was still a very, very strange sight.

But it certainly confirmed one thing; he was not in a place belonging to mortals. This was likely the ward or servant of a spirit.

He eyed the mouse's watch, his throat tightening. He could certainly guess who it belonged to, but he did not dare acknowledge it. Not just yet.

Instead, he cautiously knelt on the floor, but did not get any closer to the rodent. Mouse or not, he was not stupid enough to risk being harmed by something that may well look so innocuous as a trick.

"Hello…?" he offered a bit uncertainly.

The mouse cocked its head, silver whiskers twitching and ears perking. At least it had some minor intelligence, Jack thought.

"Can…can you help me?" he asked, "I'm not sure where I am. Um, I was following someone…I think? A-anyways, I don't know what to do now."

Jack nearly wanted to slam his head into the floor. He was making no sense, and he was sure this mouse shared a connection to its master. And gods help him if the spirit in question did not appreciate intruders and did not want to hear his crazy explanation.

But then again, if the owner of this place was who he thought it was, perhaps they were expecting him?

The mouse squeaked suddenly, and rolled on over to Jack. The frost sprite stood upright, cautiously backing away from the mouse as it rode towards the door. He watched, fascinated, as it turned so one of its gear-wheels was facing the edge of a cog in the door. The teeth of its wheel slid into the cog, and with a simple, slow turn of the wheel, the cogs began to move.

Starting from the bottom of the doors, Jack watched in flabbergasted astonishment as they all began to slowly turn and move. Complicated mechanisms both hidden and seen worked with the motion of the mouse to align, separate, flip and connect gears to new partners. Clicks were accompanied by the metallic rasp of moving metal parts hiding in the door. Deep, beast-like groaning was heard as the larger mechanisms began to respond to their smaller parts, unlocking the majestic doors with primitive ease.

A sharp click was heard, startling Jack, and the doors suddenly began to swing open.

He blinked dazedly, nearly tipping over in a fit of vertigo and awe. He barely caught himself on the frame of the door, staring into the large room.

It appeared to be a dome-like room. The entire half-sphere was composed of entirely white slats divided by into triangle-like 'slices', their points meeting at the top of the dome. The floor was glassy, and perhaps was made of glass. For below its surface was what appeared to be a dark blue stone not unlike what Jack first discovered in the first room. Towards the middle of the room was a large circle that was close to covering the entire room's floor. Framed with gold and silver, it also seemed to sit below the surface of the glass floor. Roman numerals, constellation marks and other signs Jack could not place whirled around the circular display.

Jack quickly locked onto the giant silver arrows protruding from the center of the smallest circle – clock hands. And sprouting from the very center of the 'nose' of the clock was a strange, elaborate device…

It appeared to be a small, round table made of dark silvery metal. A single, thin bar of black metal acted as its single leg protruding from the floor, flanked by a matching set of metal coils that spun around it in a disorienting whirling weave. Its top was mostly gold and silver, boasting an overwhelming array of consecutive circles and other shapes. Round tracks displayed orbs of various sizes on spokes, giving the impression that pressing a button would make them rotate around the board. A crystalline orb sat in an indent in the very center, flanked by gear-like rings of the table's top. The orbs surrounding it, nine* in all, were soon recognized by Jack as the planets of Earth's solar system.

'The orb in the center must be the sun…' he thought. He hadn't even realized that he had at some point entered the room and approached the device. He looked up at the second device hovering over the table and hanging from the ceiling by a single, rope-thin, black metal bar piercing a vortex-like coil that matched the table's single leg.

An armillary sphere*. Jack could recall seeing a few in museums, art events and astrological locales. But he had never seen one so complicated and looming. Mostly silver, many mechanisms and distinguished parts were a worn bronze or gold. Crystalline stones adorned key points and measured locations, with a single, blue crystal ball cradled in its center.

The frost sprite swallowed, suddenly intimidated by the looming contraptions. Their stillness and seemingly nonfunctional and purely aesthetic mien made him suspicious and anxious. He knew these were more than just decoration, but what made them so special, he could not say. Slowly, he circled the table and sphere, looking at it from every angle he could manage. He stopped when he made a few laps around the strange devices, and he stared down at the little ball protruding from the table that was artfully oxidized to look green – Earth.

He lifted a hand, fingers twitching as he contemplated touching it…

The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end, his spine prickling as spiders crawled down his back. He was no longer alone, someone was in the room with him. Someone was-

"Don't touch," a voice purred behind Jack.

"AH!" Jack yelped, spinning around and tripping over his own feet. He winced and hissed as his ankle jerked from being caught by its twin, his pelvis and shoulder screaming in protest as they hit the ground and the table, respectively.

Panting, he stared with wide, stunned eyes at the entity who owned this strange realm. Jack had only met him a small handful of times, and never truly face to face. Yet here he was, Time himself looming over Jack. And yet he was different.

He no longer wore his long tunic and cloak, nor did he appear to be wearing his cog-heeled boots. Instead, he wore something more relaxed fitting, but strange: a white tunic comprised of strips of soft, gauzy silky seemed to lace and weave artfully around his torso. The tunic was strange in that it did not seem to have a back, and was tied to Time's torso by two knots that made up the ends of the gauzy strips; one at the back of his neck, and one at his lower back. Trailing him, the sash-like remains of the tied knots formed the train-like excess of an Obi. The tunic itself was sleeveless, but his arms were still covered. Cinched with silver chords around his biceps, Time's arms were bound piously with loose, sheer-like white sleeves that ended just past his fingertips. Skintight silver leggings adorned his legs, while plain, knee-high white boots with more sensible heels covered his calves and feet.

The strange, almost obscenely revealing top confused Jack at first. But it became all too clear to the frost sprite on why Time wore such a thing, and it made him terrified.

Wings adorned Time's back. Not like the wings of a bird, or even the wings of Angels depicted in human religion. Oh no, these were so much more, so unearthly and looming. Their number did nothing for their otherworldliness.

It took Jack a moment of gaping, but he managed to count not one, not two, but six pairs of wings on Time's back. He had twelve wings, all of them an unnatural white, and glistening with spatial gossamer and energy. They seemed to dwarf Time, yet from his throne-like seat, he somehow brought the wings together and dominated them. Like a king surrounded by his most loyal knights, he held them at his back with the might and crippling grace of a God.

'Oh my god…' Jack thought, terrified and overwhelmed, trembling on the floor like a cornered animal. 'Oh my god…!'

Time suddenly chuckled, reclining in his seat and propping his cheek on a fist.

"I'm sorry, but I am not your God," he purred teasingly, "That title belongs to another."

Jack swallowed, never once taking his eyes off of Time as he shakily climbed back to his feet. He was trembling profusely, his knees weak and breath short.

"H-…how?" he rasped. Time chuckled again.

"You tell me," he said with a shrug, "You're the one who insisted on using one of the portals to my realm – one of the few still existing that is. It's a shame, I quite liked that clocktower…"

Jack blinked, suddenly very uncomfortable. The Prague clocktower…it had been a portal to Father Time's domain? He almost did not want to believe it, but he knew there was no use denying it. There was plenty of proof around him to begin with, and it's not like he could deny suspecting…

"I don't…why am I here?" he asked, "And…where are we? And Sorrows' owl, where is she?"

Time hummed thoughtfully, his free hand playing with something. Jack's eyes widened, taking in the item having previously been hidden by Time's massive wings. His staff – not the one Pitch gave him, but the one the Moon had given Jack. The crook he had used to save his sister, and as a result, died and taken with him as a spirit.

"Give it back," Jack blurted without even realizing. He blinked and blanched, his hands shaking as his eyes flickered from Time to his staff.

Time smiled. "Relax, I can't do anything to it, nothing useful anyways." He suddenly stood, his lowest wings rasping against the floor and curling partly around his feet demurely.

"Your owl is fine," he said nonchalantly, "She feels nothing and sees nothing, which works out well for what I wish to discuss with you."

Jack felt bile rise into his throat. She felt nothing and sees nothing; this could literally mean anything. Best case scenario, Time was somehow keeping her in suspension, or perhaps asleep. Worst case scenario, she was no longer alive…

"Please…" he rasped, his hands itching for his staff, like he was experiencing withdrawal and being tempted by a bottle of alcohol. "Why am I here?"

Time said nothing. Instead he steadily approached Jack. The frost sprite took several steps back until his back hit the edge of the table-like device, his heart pounding. He was almost fascinated though, as Time's six lowest wings smoothly glided with quiet rasps over the floor, and his largest and highest wings were held in a loose fold at his back. Part of him wondered just how the hell Time could stand, let alone walk with such grace with such ungainly wings. They could not be weightless, let alone convenient to walk with. He's seen plenty of normal birds struggle with their wings, especially when on the ground. Time, however, made carrying twelve wings look effortless, if not impossibly graceful.

The temporal entity seemed to loom over Jack, regardless of the fact that he was barely any taller than the winter spirit. He held his breath as Time craned his neck and cocked his head, as if studying him. This close, Jack could pick up the faint, otherworldly scent perfuming the Angel like an alluring musk. His chest was becoming unbearably tight from the scent, not unlike the strangling choke of inhaling cigarette smoke.

Time suddenly smiled, a low, sultry chuckle that vibrated down to Jack's very core rumbling through his throat.

"You are a fascinating entity, Jack Frost," he purred, straightening to look down at Jack. His fingers tapped along the gnarled wood of Jack's crook. "Few people ever catch my attention, but I suppose circumstances have placed you in the spotlight."

Jack's lips thinned. "I don't understand…"

Time chuckled. "Of course not, I do not expect you to have a single inkling of what has transpired."

Jack withheld a flinch. Part of him took Time's words as a jab to his ignorance, but another part of him was unsure. Something in Time's tone did not add up; like there was something he was not saying, something that could completely change the context of his words.

He swallowed thickly, his hands tightening on the edge of the device's table.

"What is this thing?" Jack asked.

Time cocked a brow, his smile widening. He looked up at the device looming above Jack.

"It is an astrological, spatial and temporal armillary*," he said with a shrug, "Quite a mouthful, but you do not possess the lingual comprehension to pronounce or comprehend its actual name. So few entities do, sadly…"

He sighed, suddenly side-stepping Jack to circle the device. The frost sprite, relieved to be out from under Time's looming shadow, tracked the Angel with his eyes. He kept flickering his gaze from Time himself to his wings, catching a glimpse of his exposed back. Or what he could see of it. His wings were thick and clustered together at their bases, leaving very little skin to see between the feathers and powerful flight muscles. Even his long hair covered the space between his topmost wings. He watched Time's hands rapping over his crook, as if testing its durability, studying its every crease and twist. Jack's nerves prickled at the intimate touch…

"Do you know why there are twelve numbers on a clock, frostling?" Time suddenly asked, startling Jack from his resolve. He blinked, bewildered by the random question.

"I…don't know," he said uncertainly, "Because it just works? Because it divides days up into twenty-four hours?"

Time laughed. Jack felt his cheeks flush, though why he felt embarrassed, he could not say. He didn't know why it was a prudent question, let alone why his answer was so funny. It was one of those questions you never think to ask and that doesn't have any real answer, or so he thought. He wasn't so sure anymore. He was talking to Father Time after all.

Time calmed and leaned a hip against armillary table with Jack's staff against one shoulder.

"While that is a cute answer, that is not correct," he said amusedly, "Granted, humans have long since lost touch with origins of various kinds – religion, language, bloodlines, etcetera. But that is not why there are twelve numbers on a clock."

Jack clenched his fists, suddenly becoming impatient.

"Look, I like fun trivia as much as the next guy, but…isn't the world kind of falling apart right now? Why am I here? Why did you lead me here?" he asked.

Time cocked his head, his smile quirking to one side. He was amused. "I wouldn't say 'falling apart'. After all, it's not like this has never happened. And I did not lead you here."

Jack reeled back as if struck, gaping at Time. "Hasn't…wait, this has happened before?"

The temporal man hummed thoughtfully. "Well, not exactly like this, but yes, events like this have happened before. Numerous times."

Jack scrubbed his hands over his face, becoming increasingly confused and frustrated. He had to focus, they were literally getting nowhere in the conversation.

"Okay…okay, look, I just…I just want to know why I'm here. Something led me here, and I would like to know why so I can get back home and…!" Jack paused. And do what? He literally had no idea of what to do now to help make the situation better. Go back to Hal? Possibly, he probably knew what to do next. Go back to the Guardians? It was an idea, but what would it do? Now wasn't exactly the time for a confrontation. He was running out of options though, and Pitch…he was not going to last much longer.

Time suddenly sighed, as if disappointed. "Guardian of Fun indeed…"

Jack blinked, staring at Time in shock. "What?"

Time shrugged, his fingers gently rubbing some imaginary dust from one of the planet-like orbs of his armillary. "You're not playing by the rules, and therefore, you are making this a very boring and tedious venture."

Again, Jack found himself extremely confused, if not a tad insulted. Time looked at Jack oddly, almost deadpan; he would have looked it if his eyes were open.

"Very well, I'll give you a hint," he said, approaching Jack again. "The answers to your questions, and to the questions you do not yet know to ask, are the prizes. To win these prizes, you need to play the game by the rules, and by its cues. You cannot take shortcuts, you cannot race ahead, slow down, or try to take alternative routes. You need to…be creative, if you will."

Jack stared at Time in bewilderment. But slowly, in his head, he was beginning to find a pattern. A whisper of his fun-loving magic tickled in the back of his mind, repeating Time's words in a mantra.

"To win these prizes, you need to play the game by the rules…" he had said.

The game, the rules, the prizes…

It suddenly clicked for Jack, and he found himself almost flinching at the brutal realization. Time grinned, fingers dancing over Jack's staff.

"Do you know why a clock has twelve numbers?" he asked again.

This time, Jack shook his head. "No, I don't. Why are there twelve numbers on a clock?"

Time chuckled, flitting away from his armillary and sauntering towards the other side of the room. Jack, not wanting to fall behind on the invisible chess board, followed.

"Though it fits in for the human's strange need for a linear timetable, the reason for twelve numbers is actually quite simple," Time said, stopping and turning on his heels to face Jack. He turned his chin downwards, giving the impression of looking down. Jack did the same.

He blinked at the large circle of marble-like cobalt just at the edges of his and Time's toes. Within the circle were numerous rings of silver and gold of various sizes. At the circle's very center, there was a large, vinyl record-sized cog. Etched all around it were what appeared to be thousands upon thousands of tiny runes and symbols Jack could not place origin or name to. In its very center, a gold disk was seen. And etched upon it was the Roman Numeral for the number one.

Jack looked up suddenly, and around the planetarium's floor. He could see more blue circles around the central device; twelve in total, all seemingly boasting a large cog, and a number in their centers.

Slowly, he looked back at Time, who smiled in approval.

"What are these?" Jack asked.

"These are what mark the beginning, and the end of every universe that ever was, is, or shall be," Time said. He gestured to the circle between them. "All universes, all timelines, have marker points. These gears are recordings and markers for the most important events of a timeline. They are the turning points, the path the universe has chosen out of a billion to take."

Jack gaped at Time, disbelieving. "Like…these are literally the records of things that happened that…determine the future?"

Time hummed. "You could say that, I suppose. It's not so simple though. These are essentially the events in time that have had the most impact on the immediate world – Earth. They are the summarizations of why you are currently where you are."

He gestured out to the other eleven circles. "Each event records itself as it comes to pass. These events do not exist until they actually happen. Sometimes a future event needs to happen before a past event is recorded, so there are often 'missing' numbers."

Jack's head was reeling, unable to fully keep up with this nonlinear entity known as Time. The Angel suddenly moved, and Jack nearly tripped over himself to follow. They began to circle the room, passing the other disks and gears as they went.

"There are twelve events to any universe - the dawn is one, and the dusk, the death, is the last.," Time said, gesturing to the numbers they passed, "Everything between one and twelve is the catalyst leading up to the end. What those events are depend on the specific universe, but they always, ALWAYS lead to the end. My planetarium and armillary record these events in these twelve gears…"

He suddenly stopped by a circle. Unlike the others, the gear was lacking in runes or symbols, and its center disk was silver, not gold. It also lacked its number – nine.

"As these events happen, they become a catalyst, reducing the number of possible futures. It's like a preliminary sequence if you will, where one path may lead to three more, or three hundred more," Time explained, "But, like a maze, some paths can lead back to where you once were. You will have to choose another path, either taking the same one you did before, or picking a different path and hoping you don't end up more lost, or back where you started. Regardless of your choice though, the maze gets smaller the more you trek, eliminating paths and roads. Soon, there will only be one last path you can take, and you will not be allowed to turn back…"

Jack shook his head in disbelief, watching each number pass them by. He paused, however, when he came to a gear marked as number two. The runes were tiny and many, but there was a small line of them that was enlarged, like a word set in bold. The word was not spelled in the odd runes though. And more than that, it was not a word, but a name.

Kozmotis.

Time chuckled, looking down at the gear Jack was entranced upon. "You found it."

Jack looked up. "Found it…?"

Time said nothing in answer. Instead, he circled the many numbered gears again, stopping at a different one – number five. Jack startled as his wings quivered, and one of them began to glow. The second largest wing over his left shoulder glowed an ethereal blue-white as it stretched out. The tip of its longest primary gently touched the gear's center, its strange incandescence dripping onto it. The runes lit up, and to Jack's shock, began to spin and rotate magically along the metal. Carefully, Time raised his wing, and with it, the gear followed, slowly rotating in the opposite direction of the runes.

Time said nothing in answer. Instead, he approached the gear and looked down on it. Jack startled as his wings quivered, and one of them began to glow. The second largest wing over his left shoulder glowed an ethereal blue-white as it stretched out. The tip of its longest primary gently touched the gear's center, its strange glow dripping onto it like incandescent paint. The runes lit up, and to Jack's shock, began to spin and rotate magically along the metal. Carefully, Time raised his wing, and with it, the gear followed, slowly rotating in the opposite direction of the runes.

Time looked over at Jack, his smile inviting and kind.

"Every event in this room can be played back like a recording," he said. He reached a hand out to Jack in beckoning. "Would you like to see?"

Warnings screamed in Jack's head. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to say no, to back away and flee. But he had nowhere to go; he had no idea where he was. And even more than that, he would forfeit the game. Which means he would never get the answers he needed to helping right the world. He would never figure out what he was supposed to do. He would fail everyone; he would not be able to save Pitch…

Pitch will die.

Time's smile stretched wider as he seemed to read all of this in Jack's expression. He only became more eager when Jack's expression hardened, the sprite nodding once in affirmative.

"Excellent choice, frostling," Time purred.

"Like I have a choice…" Jack muttered. He winced when Time chuckled.

"You always have a choice, little one. It is simply a matter of…choosing your battles, shall we say?" Time stated, "As it stands, you can easily choose to let events play out without your contribution, but it would turn out to be a rather boring venture…"

Time suddenly waved a hand. "But enough of that. I think you're going to enjoy this little show."

Jack was about to snap a nasty comment, but froze as the planetarium shuddered. He gasped, shuffling back as the very walls around him began to shift, falling onto his backside as seams appeared in the walls. The seams widened, the walls themselves sliding away into the floor, and slowly revealing the outside.

Or perhaps 'outside' was not an appropriate word. Jack found himself looking up. He wished he hadn't.

At first, he thought the newly revealed exterior was painted to look like a starry sky, or perhaps displaying night somewhere. But the depth was far too great, the blackness surrounding him too alive to be a simple mural. The great expanse surrounded him, overbearing and chilling, so much wider than the sky at night.

The night sky above him was not, in fact, a depiction of night. Jack realized he was not just looking into it, but he was now in space. The void loomed over him, its stars, galaxies and planets visually standing apart in the most crippling display of vastness. It leered at Jack like a human would a fly; it forced insignificance onto him, pressing down on him until he became smaller and smaller. His gut dropped through his feet, his entire frame trembling, but he was unable to look away from the monstrous void above – all around – him.

Even below his feet, his only point of stability, was the transparent glass floor and the giant clock face seemingly floating in suspension. He gasped, face blanched and skin clammy as his brain struggled to find some form of stability, a point of reference that could stop him from spiraling into madness under the black of the void.

A hand suddenly touched his shoulder, and Jack's body reacted without even a moment's consideration or thought. He scrambled onto unsteady feet, gasping and wheezing, eyes screwing shut as he buried his face in the soft fabric of Time's tunic. He clutched at the Angel in animal-like desperation, trying to draw a breath of sanity and safety back into himself.

Time smiled, amused, but not deterred. He crooned to the terrified spirit clinging to him, keeping a single arm around the trembling frame as he spoke.

"Poor thing," he cooed, "Such vast emptiness, it must make you feel smaller than you already are."

Jack almost wanted to snap at Time, but he could not even find his voice. Every question he wanted to shout was lodged somewhere between his mouth and his brain. Where was he? How did he get into space of all places? Why was he here?!

He flinched when Time petted his hair, a single wing wrapping around him. The feathery limb gave him both a sense of secure relief, but also a sense of dread.

"Look," Time said, a shift in his stance telling Jack he was gesturing to something, "You do not want to miss it."

I fucking beg to differ! Jack wanted to shout. But against every instinct in his body, and any better judgement that wasn't being decimated by Time himself, he peered out of his hiding spot. He kept his eyes on Time's chest, his eyes sliding up to the arm not around him, and following it to the hand that still held his staff. Pointing out into the void, Jack bit back a swell of nausea, and forced himself to look out again.

This time, despite the daunting sight, Jack found himself almost breathing out in relief as he took in a much brighter, though no less intimidating, sight.

At first, he thought he was looking at a blizzard. A very strange, very unnatural blizzard being forced into an almost straight line. But then he saw rocks – meteors and asteroids – and gas-like colors and forms. For one confusing moment, Jack still had to scramble to figure out what he was looking at. He recognized frost and icy formations and particles, glaciers floating in the void. It was so unlike his own ice, charged with something ethereal and far more frigid.

A memory sparked into Jack's mind; one that he wished he could forget, simply for who was also in the memory.

Jamie had once showed him his new astronomy book – a thick tome stuffed full of diagrams, pictures and vital information. Most of said information was a bit too high-level for either of them to understand, but the pictures and simpler commentary were enough for the two youngsters.

Jack and Jamie sat in the human boy's room, the youngest of the two unfolding an expanded page that nearly spanned the entire length of his bed. He pointed to each planet in order, reciting their names…

"Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and…"

"Saturn!" Jack said before Jamie could finish. The boy grinned.

"That's right!" he exclaimed, looking at some of the factoid bubbles around the mentioned planet. "It says here Saturn has a rotational time of ten hours, thirty-two minutes, and thirty-five seconds. Geez, short days…"

"No kidding…" Jack said.

"And sixty-two moons, second only to Jupiter…" Jamie said in awe. He looked up at Jack curiously. "Do you think Manny has cousins on those moons? If he does, he's got a huge family!"

Jack's smile was strained. "I don't know, maybe! I think he's the only moon-guy that we know of…" He looked at Jamie's window, uncertain of the now waxing gibbous moon.

The young boy hummed thoughtfully. "I wonder if he gets lonely up there, all by himself…"

Jack did not respond.

"Saturn…" he rasped, gaping at the tiny fraction of the gas-giant's ring from Time's arms, "I'm on Saturn…?"

Time shook his head. "Not on it. No, you are inside it."

Jack felt like he was going to faint, his fingers nearly clawing into Time's torso in a death-grip. He swallowed back bile, cringing at the tight, painful pressure in his throat. His eyes slid back to Time's hand, more specifically, his staff.

"I wonder if he gets lonely up there, all by himself…"

Jack felt Time slightly loosen his hold on the sprite, causing Jack to only tighten his grip on the Angel. Time chuckled, amused.

"Do not worry," he said, "I won't let you fall."

'I really doubt that…' Jack thought dubiously.

Regardless of his doubts, he looked back at Time's armillary, and tried to focus on the floating gear rather than the daunting nothingness behind it. The Angel's wings shifted, settling into their default positions – sans the wing holding the sixth gear – as the fifth gear slowly spun and hovered over the central crystal orb. Time lifted the hand around Jack to his chest, and gently touched his fingers to the clock in his left pectoral.

"Take a deep breath," he said.

Before Jack could question Time, the face of his internal clock began to glow, and the hands began to move – counterclockwise. And in perfect sync, the clock hands below their feet also began to move, slowly at first, spinning with the same speed of the gear and Time's internal clock hands. The planetarium rumbled and hummed, and just outside, Jack could only gape as Saturn's rings also began to fly backwards. Everything was moving now, spinning in the reverse of time and space; the planets on the armillary table, the clock hands, Time's internal clock, Saturn's rings, everything.

Jack's very breath slowly began to be sucked from his lungs, making him cough and gasp. The hands sped up, the gear now spinning like a top. The orb in the center of the armillary began to glow a bright blue-white, and within seconds, it spat out a single, concentrated beam into the gear's central glass. Like a movie projector, the device's parts began to come to life, spinning and whirring, creaking and groaning as the light traveled up and expanded, converging with the glass-like ceiling. A fantastic fountain of light and movement, it spurted at the top and spilled in an almost perfect dome of light and color within the planetarium. Every star, planet and galaxy began to move, flying back in a whirlwind of temporal and spatial madness.

The light grew brighter and brighter, everything spinning faster and faster. Jack's lungs were scrambling for air. The very pressure of movement made him feel like he was being crushed, being pulled apart yet forced inward in a suffocating compression.

He choked, his grasp on Time weakening. And just when he was sure he would die of the maddening light he could not close his eyes to, it all stopped.

In a blink of icy blue eyes, and a gasp of stifled breath, Jack found himself looking not into Time's planetarium, but into thick, all-consuming darkness. He blinked, as if to clear his vision, or perhaps to prove that his eyes were open, but he still found he could not see. His fingers flexed around Time's tunic, the only source of dubious reality he had. He could feel his eyes straining in the blackness, feeling as if his pupils would tear as they expanded and tried to find a source of light.

He was about to voice his confusion and discomfort, but found himself silenced when a blue light slowly formed into existence. He blinked, the light overly bright to his overwhelmed eyes. But they quickly adjusted, and Jack found the source of light to be Time's internal clock. Subdued shafts of dim light also seemed to appear, sliding out from between the feathers of his wings like gossamer blades.

Jack blinked, eyes adjusting to the new sources of light. "Where-?"

He could faintly see Time put a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture, still smiling down at the sprite. Jack frowned, his hands slowly releasing Time's tunic. Once fully freed, Time's smile widened, and the finger against his hand moved and pointed in front of them.

Jack looked ahead, eyes narrowing in a squint. He could see…something. Something tall and jagged, like a cliff in the distance. He could also see a very faint, very weak line of white light. It seemed to try and reach out from in between the jagged from and a long, spear-like protrusion. He could also see something faintly moving against the sharply cut form; it's upper surface seemed to pulse in slow, steady tandem.

Jack crept slightly closer, staring at the point where the pole pierced the tall form. It moved up and down in such a slow and steady rhythm. Like someone was breathing…

And then he saw it. Two points of thin white light, both marked by milky, overly wide disks of foggy grey. Jack gasped and scrambled back, nearly crashing into Time's chest, but the delicate Angel held firmly rooted to his spot. His hand come down to grasp Jack's shoulder, and they both stared at the shadow-cloaked creature held pinned to the jagged rock. Time with a smile, and Jack with horrified realization.

The creature resembled a tall, lanky man donned in an ominous attire of the darkest coal-black and the bloodiest red. Hair like a wild lion's mane lay limp and plastered to the back of the rock, as if once damp and now frozen in place. It was impossible to discern any details in the darkness, even with Time's brittle light, but Jack could see his eyes. Closed save for the tiniest slit, revealing eyes of bright, sickly white and dull silver. The pupils were blown wide and clouded, as if from sickness, or perhaps death. The disks held an eerie sort of tangibility though, like peering at a scratched mirror through magnified glass; light-refracting.

Jack's eyes slid to the chest, a sense of unnerving cold-hot washing over him in horror. A spear of a make he could not identify protruded from the man's chest, the faintest bit of its spearhead seen at the surface. The head seemed to be made of some kind of crystal or glass, and there was a weak, starved light emitting from it.

Regardless of the unfamiliar eyes, the wild hair, and the unrecognizable clothing, Jack knew exactly who this person was.

"P-…Pitch…" he rasped, gaping in horror at the paralyzed and imprisoned man. He made to scramble back to the trapped Boogeyman, but the hand on his shoulder tightened and help him in place. Jack looked up at Time desperately.

"I have to help him!" he snapped.

Time shook his head. "You can't help him, frostling. This event has already happened. You cannot help him either way, regardless."

"Why not?!" Jack snarled, tearing away from Time's hand. The Angel seemed amused. He made no attempt to restrain Jack, and instead passed Jack's staff along to his freed hand.

"By all means," he said, gesturing to Pitch, "Free him. I can guarantee you will fail."

Jack snarled at the temporal entity, not the least bit amused. This was a mistake. He never should have agreed to any of this. He looked back at Pitch, at his pale, dead eyes and the light-starved weapon pinning him to the rock. He gave no thought whatsoever to his actions, and strode towards the Boogeyman. He reached out as he drew closer, intent on grabbing the damnable spear and-!

And…

Time's chuckle slithered through Jack's ears like a parasitic snake, gnawing on his raw nerves. The frost sprite stared, a mixture of confusion and flickering disbelief somehow simultaneously steeling and thinning his resolve into brittle glass. He stood before Pitch and the spear, looking down at his hand in confusion. He had reached for the spear, but…he missed it?

He reached up again, hesitating for just one moment, before he grasped the spear. But he did not feel it. He did not even touch it.

His hand passed right through the spear, his very form even less than a ghostly presence.

He felt Time step up behind him, his blind gaze locking onto the imprisoned Boogeyman. His smile seemed to be the brightest thing in the cavern, but it was also the cruelest.

"As I said, frostling," he said, "These events can be played back, I never said you could alter them. You can no more interfere in this playback than you could watching a car-crash in a human movie."

Jack did not seem to hear him, but Time's words sunk in like scalding molasses. It burned and stuck to his very bones like tar, pungent and impossible to strip away. He was stunned, struck dumb by the revelation and by this familiar yet unfamiliar entity. He was different, so much…less than what he should be. This was not the Pitch Black he knew so little about. This was a stranger, and yet…!

He looked up at Time, eyes wide and pleading.

Play the game.

"What happened to him…?" Jack asked breathlessly. Time's smile stretched to one side in wry amusement. He shrugged.

"The same thing that happens to all good men who are punished for only wanting to protect," he said.

Time suddenly stepped back, looking off to the side and into the darkness of the cavern. Jack did likewise, and he found himself frowning in confusion. The shadows…did not seem right. He could not discern whether or not it was simply his unadjusted eyes casting an illusion, but he would swear that the darkness was…not moving, but writhing.

He gasped as Time's light dimmed, instinctively shuffling closer to the Angel who continued to smile into the thick, growing darkness. And when his light was not but a washed flicker, an easily dismissed trick of the eye, Jack saw them.

With eyes of washed-out grey and white, and grins that would make the Cheshire Cat himself roll over and die, the Fearlings within the small cave seemed to plaster to the walls like putrid mold. Their whispers and hisses grew as Time's light dimmed, finally weak enough for them to look past and continue to watch their captive king. Jack trembled, but he could not help but look; he felt like a spectator in an aquarium. He stared into the surrounding tanks of deadly sharks and other predators, the only thing separating them being a few inches of glass and metal, and gallons of thick, salty water.

He felt Time grasp his shoulder again, a soft rasp of hair and gauzy silk alerting Jack to his shifting to lean over him slightly. A tiny tug at his shoulder had him looking back at Pitch, his eyes seemingly glued to the phantom-like entity. Time's light increased ever so slightly, but not enough to send the taunting eyes of the Fearlings away. Just enough to see, but not enough to look away.

It made Jack want to cry, to scream and find some way to break the purgatory-like curse so he could free the Boogeyman. Just looking at the man who both was and was not Pitch sent a pang into new depths of his being; a harpoon laced with acid and poison, it reached the deepest and darkest recesses of his heart. It reached a place in him he never knew existed, yet he still found himself guarding heavily throughout his entire life.

It hurt. It hurt so much, and he could not put into words as to why.

"You do not understand how this could be Pitch Black," he said sultrily, "You cannot associate this sad, pitiful creature with the dark yet warm man you are ever so slowly longing to know, to touch, to be near. You do not know who this is, yet you find yourself marveling at how familiar he is. You wish to know more, but deep inside of you, you know this creature cannot give you the answers you seek. Not yet anyways."

Jack wanted to scream, to rave and sob and plead. How Time could simultaneously right his own jumbled thoughts and completely decimate his sanity was a mystery he wanted no part of. But Jack could not turn away. He could not look away from this juxtapose presented to him, nor could he deny the poison-sweet words dripping from Time's lips.

He flinched when Time's hand left his shoulder and, to his confusion, slid over to shield his eyes. His body stiffened as he felt the soft rasp of Time's wings along the floor, their mass encompassing him in a soft yet suffocating embrace. A darkness so unlike the one filling the cavern overtook Jack, and he suddenly did not know which was worse.

"Don't blink," Time whispered.

Jack gasped as he felt his very atoms and cells seemingly vibrating as one. His breath was sucked right out of him as before, his muscles turning to sludge and his bones to jelly in the briefest moment. A flash of something he could not call light passed through his eyes like lighting. And with a speed faster than physically possible, he began to see things; places, people, faces both familiar and unfamiliar.

He saw a small village tucked away within the walls of a magical forest. He saw beautiful, avian-like women ruling the sky and dancing with the wind. He saw a kinder depth of space from the safety of a golden ship – a shooting star. He saw ancient people rapidly growing in populace and advancement, then all but one fading from the very face of existence.

He saw North, clearly in his prime, fit and his hair not yet bleached by age. Toothiana, her face no longer sweet and softened with energetic excitement, now hardened by strife and wrath. Sandy, still aglow with the power of dreams and wishes, yet he more resembled hard stone than gentle dune-tides. And Bunnymund, dressed in the deep greens of spring, his eyes filled to brimming with an intelligence and quiet, stoic resolve Jack would never imagine him possessing.

He saw three more people that he did not fully recognize, but a flash of memory from a stained-glass room matched their appearances. A man older than North, long of white beard and donned in deep reds and snowy white. The ancient man was brimming with magic, his furious, stormy gaze crumbling stone and burning foliage.

Next was a girl. She could not have been that much older than Jamie when Jack had first met him. Soft chestnut hair and brown eyes adorned her childish features, her form safely away from the battle, and her cream and brown attire blending well within the wooded foliage and rocky outcrops.

And lastly, a boy around the girl's age, but Jack could tell just by looking at him that he was no boy. He was something else entirely, something that was never human, that simply…existed. Like starlight converging into a ghostly form, the boy flew through the air with daggerlike precision, starlit whorls curling about his strange, night-black armor. And in his hands…

The faces were suddenly yanked from Jack's sight, and in a cascade of mind-breaking sights, sounds and sensations, Jack witnessed the very events that brought them all together.

Pitch, breaking from the spear binding his heart, mind and body. A boy made from starlight and silence – Nightlight, a voice whispered – and a girl, equally as silent, yet with so much to tell in the care of an ancient man – Katherine, Ombric…

He saw each and every one of the Guardians as they once were. Alone, unfulfilled, longing for a purpose, for a home, for a family.

Jack saw it all; Manny's choosing of the Guardians, leading them on missions disguised as the urgent need for more; more soldiers, more toys, more things to call his own, to say he was not lonely, to say he owned everything he could possibly want.

The innocence of a girl was slowly being stripped away to feed Manny's need to take it for himself. Nightmares plagued her, leaving her aged and scarred inside. She held on for as long as she could, but she was breaking.

And in the final showdown, with Toothiana now a part of Manny's collection, Katherine at Pitch's mercy, the Guardians' wrath crossing a line they did not even know existed, their intent screamed in Jack's mind like a fatal curse.

Kill Pitch Black.

But before anything could be done to the beaten and battered Boogeyman, another flash was seen – this time of actual lightning. The wind shrieked and battered at the Guardians, and with a sick, ear-splitting crack, a woman dressed in emerald greens and cloaked by wild, storm-black hair appeared.

Eyes of wrathful obsidian pierced them all, and before anyone could voice question or confusion, she, Pitch and Katherine were gone.

And like someone had slammed the breaks on reality itself, Jack felt his entire being slam into a wall, his empty lungs heaving as they tried to dispel nonexistent air from the impact. He choked and gagged, feeling his body wavering and disintegrating from existence.

Yet at the last minute, just a fraction of a second before his very existence tore itself off its hinges, it all stopped.

In a disorienting blink, Jack found himself back where he once was. His eyes covered by Time's hand, and his entire body cocooned in his wings. He choked on a gasp, his throat tight and covered in sand. The shock of the entire ordeal could be vaguely compared to being throw unsuspecting into the most frigid, rapid waters of the ocean, and the effect left Jack feeling like there was salt water in his lungs, stomach, and throat. It saturated his bones and leeched into his brain, tinging his thoughts and turning his blood to sludge.

Another blink, and Jack found himself no longer trapped in Time's embrace. Instead, he appeared to be back in the cavern they started in. But it was different, large and vast, the walls worn smooth and round. The pillar Pitch was once pinned to was the only thing standing in the otherwise spherical cavern.

Jack startled when, just behind him, he felt Time move and press his crook back into his hand.

"Stay put," Time purred.

Jack was in the process of trying to figure out what to say to the temporal man, when a sudden crackle of electricity and brittle earth caught his attention. He gasped as Mother Nature appeared from the dust, along with two forms laying limp at her feet.

"Time!" she snapped clearly agitated and anxious, "Where have you been?!"

"Yes, yes…" Time said airily, stepping around Jack to approach the irate woman, "I'm coming, my dear. No need to shout."

Nature snarled, causing Jack to reel back in shock. He's seen Nature angry – he witnessed it firsthand when he and Sandy took her into Pitch's lair to free him, and again when she tortured Tooth without a thought. But this was an entirely different level of fury for her, and it frightened Jack. But somehow, Time's words compelled him to stay where he was. Nature didn't even seem to notice him, yet he was confused as to how she was interacting with Time.

"I am in no mood for your games!" she snapped at the Angel, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, "We had a deal, now it's your turn to deliver. I will not be kept waiting another minute!"

Time smiled, but said nothing. He simply looked past Nature when the youngest of their guests started coming to. The girl, Katherine, was the first to rise with a confused sigh, eyes blinking blearily at Nature and Time. She gasped, trying to scramble back from the two unknown entities. She was stopped, however, by Nature raising a hand and summoning a thick root behind Katherine's back to keep her in place.

"That was not very nice," Time chided, smiling at the frightened girl, "She's clearly unsettled, perhaps a gentler hand should be used?"

Both Katherine and Jack flinched and gasped when Nature whipped around and slapped Time full across the face. The temporal man did not seem the least bit swayed though, and only rubbed his cheek with a raised brow.

Nature was hissing through her teeth, her fury palpable. It made Jack wonder how Pitch could still be unconscious; no one should be able to stay asleep with the irate woman within the vicinity.

"Tempus*, I swear by all that is unholy and evil in this world, I will show no mercy if you do not uphold your end of the deal and HELP HIM!" Nature shouted.

Time's expression became blank; he did not seem to react. Instead, he merely sighed and looked back at Katherine. His smile returned in full as he approached her and held a hand out to her.

"Don't be frightened, little one," he crooned, his aura expanding and brightening, and suddenly he was the most beautiful thing in the room. Nature was avidly looking away with a disgusted scowl, but Jack and Katherine seemed to stare at the Angel in pure enthrallment.

The young girl reached up a shaking hand, her eyes never leaving the ethereal entity as he gently pulled her to her feet. She whined when Time prevented her from getting any closer, but soon calmed when he cupped her cheek. His smile was radiant, and Jack had to fight with every fiber of his being not to push Katherine away to gain Time's attention. Time had given him an order, and he had to fulfill it.

Katherine was nearly on her tiptoes as Time began stepping back, nearly tripping over her own feet as she shuffled to keep in contact with the Angel. Time stopped so Katherine stood right next to Jack, then walked around them as he dropped his glamour. Katherine blinked dumbly, stunned and confused.

"Wh-what the…?" she rasped, before her resolve steeled and she stared at Time and Nature. "Who are you?! Why am I here?!"

"Hush," Nature said, her tone somewhat calmer, but still carrying a sense of anxious urgency, "You will not be harmed, nor will we keep you long. We needed a witness."

"Witness…?" both Jack and Katherine echoed in confusion. As one, they looked at Time, Jack more critically than Katherine. The Angel smiled, and with them standing so close together, Katherine completely oblivious to the boy that did not yet exist, he could have been speaking to any one of them.

"Yes," he said, strolling over to Pitch. He gazed down at the still unconscious Boogeyman, kneeling by him. He reached out a hand to stroke a sallow cheek, ignoring Nature's hiss of warning. He looked back up at Nature with his trademark gentle smile.

"Shall we begin?" he inquired.

Nature scoffed, but did not waste any time. Katherine and Jack watched as she marched over to Pitch and Time. Wordlessly, she bent at the waist and plucked something tucked in Pitch's hair – a bright orange Poppy*. And within seconds, he began to twitch and rouse, Katherine inhaling sharply as his ghostly, silver-white eyes opened.

He groaned like an ill, lethargic animal. The cloak he wore was torn and frayed from the previous fight, and it wasn't until he was on his hands and knees did Jack see it.

He blanched and felt nausea churn in his gut as he stared at Pitch's hand – or what he assumed had been his hand. At one point, perhaps it had been his hand, but now it was no such thing. The flesh from the elbow down was pale – humanly pale and thin, the fingers wrapped – merged – around an oval item. Jack stared at it, the faded image and its flat surface, and he suddenly remember where he had seen it.

Sorrows' locket…

"How…?" he rasped.

No one heard him, but Time smiled as Pitch seemed to regain himself and spring to his feet with an animalistic snarl.

"You…!" he roared, looking around in wild confusion and anger, "Who dares bring me here?!"

Time chuckled, approaching Pitch without a care. The wrathful Boogeyman hissed and snarled, his one good hand going to the sword strapped to his hip and hidden by his cloak. He swung it with wild precision, but it never met its mark. Roots sprung from the ground and overwhelmed Pitch, binding his arms and legs. Pitch shrieked, the sound unnatural and making Jack and Katherine feel ill.

Time clicked his tongue, stopping before the tightly bound Boogeyman. He reached out and plucked the sword from Pitch's grasp, his smile never wavering.

"Poor thing," he crooned, "You must be suffering so much right now."

He held up a hand when Nature made to march over to him and possibly tear his jaw right out of his skull. He watched Pitch writhe and scream, the pale, malformed arm oddly limp. He did not even flinch when Katherine made to speak.

"What…what are you going to do to him…?" she asked tightly.

Jack looked from Katherine to the two powerful entities surrounding Pitch. He was all too eager to have an answer for that exact question. So much confusion, like grains of jagged sand, seemed to whirl within his skull like a sandstorm. Nameless and faceless emotions plagued him, gnawing at him.

"Don't hurt him…" he found himself rasping, "Please, don't hurt him…"

Time cocked his head at them, apparently amused. "He will not be hurt, little one. Rather, after this, he should feel better than ever, if not more stable."

He suddenly turned to Nature, tapping Pitch's pilfered sword in his hand. "If you will, my dear?"

Mother Nature's scowl darkened, but she made no protest. Instead, she flicked her hand, prompting the roots to lowering Pitch. He snapped and hissed as they pushed him down onto his knees. Time knelt before the Boogeyman, chuckling almost giddily when Pitch tried to snap his teeth at his hand as he reached for him.

"You remind me of someone just as mad," Time purred, seemingly studying Pitch, "He was full of nothing but baseless anger and the drive for revenge. His very existence was meaningless, made only to be a parasite and a disease for others to deal with…"

Pitch spat at Time, landing a black blob of saliva on a pale cheek. Time's kind smile sharpened into something malicious, something beckoning and eager.

He reached up and wiped the spit off his cheek with a thumb. "Such fire for such a hideous little worm…"

"Leave him alone!" Somewhere in Jack's mind, he was startled that both he and Katherine had shouted these words. Nonexistent as he was, Katherine did not notice, but he did.

Time looked over at Katherine and Jack. He suddenly rose to his feet, his wings shuffling softly to realign themselves. With quiet steps, he approached the two youngsters, both of which took a simultaneous step back as Time stood before them.

"I find it interesting…" he started with a sultry purr, "How you could have so much compassion for the one man who has turned your entire life upside-down, who destroyed any chance you had of finding out where you came from, who stole you away and plagued you with unimaginable nightmares and fear. I find it amusing…how he could steal your childhood from you, and yet you must feel the need to defend him, when your fellow Guardians not just moments ago all unanimously decided he had to die."

Both Katherine and Jack were shaking, staring up at the mad temporal Angel. And like an echo from the deepest cavern, connecting a far off, hazy past to an even more uncertain future, Jack and Katherine began to speak at once.

"He did terrible things, but he doesn't deserve to be killed," they said, their voices shaky yet determined, "He never asked for this, no one would ask for this…!"

Jack swallowed thickly around the lump in his throat. And while he was silent, Katherine spoke without him.

"No one is born evil," she said, her eyes narrowing in a poor attempt to glare, "Evil is never born, it is made!"

Jack blinked, staring in stunned shock at Katherine. Evil is never born, she had said. Evil is never born, it is made. Her words resonated within Jack somewhere, and from the depths of his own mind, something seemed to light up in understanding.

Evil is never born, it is made.

So what could have possibly made Pitch into that which was evil…?

Jack startled from his resolve at a sound. He looked up, veering back in bewildered shock as Time, a hand over his mouth and his shoulders shaking, began to laugh.

He laughed like Katherine just told him the greatest joke in the world, throwing his head back as his smiling mouth gaped, exposing the pale column of his delicate throat, his perfect white teeth flashing. An arm clutched around his middle as he laughed, the other coming up to demurely cover his mouth as he slowly calmed, his expression of ecstatic glee.

"Hahahah! Oh, child…" he rasped, "You foolish, brilliant human…! Such words should be wielded by one who has experienced the world at its brightest and its darkest. You have only seen light, and a bare fraction of darkness. And yet you go spewing such words, and you believe them…!"

He laughed again, his voice growing shrill. He slowly wound down from his hysterics, oblivious to the disturbed gaping of the youngest witnesses, and the scowling and wary gaze of Mother Nature. Pitch, however, seemed to be staring at Katherine. His expression was unreadable, but something seemed to flash in and out of his eyes like a flickering lightbulb.

Sighing breathlessly, Time's smile became a miserable hybrid of beautiful radiance and malicious darkness.

"Very well then!" he exclaimed, spreading his arms out to his sides, "Let us waste no more time, and make something else of Pitch Black!"

Katherine and Jack blanched. "What are you-no!" Katherine yelped as more roots sprung from the ground, this time to bind her and keep her from chasing after Time.

Turning on his heels, the temporal Angel marched towards Pitch with a frightening sense of predatory anticipation. Time reached down with his free hand, grasping the surprised Boogeyman by the front of his cloak, and hefted him up. The roots binding Pitch shuddered and split from their bases, leaving Pitch bound in the excess and free to be moved by Time.

Jack stared at the bound and struggling Katherine as she pleaded with Nature and Time for Pitch's life – there had to be another way, please don't hurt him, he needs help not an execution!

He then looked over at Time, his resolve suddenly steeling and burning. Gripping his staff firmly, fury overriding his shock and confusion, he rushed at Time.

"Let him go!" he snapped.

Time turned swiftly, one of his wings batting Jack away like an irritating fly. The sprite choked as the wind was knocked out of him, leaving him heaving and coughing on the floor. Clutching his chest, he gaped up at Time as the Angel passed, Pitch struggling in his grasp but unable to gain a foothold.

Nature followed behind Time, her expression tight and, to Jack's astonishment, pained. Her eyes were glassy, as if in resignation, but there was a restrained and exhausted fire behind her obsidian orbs. There was a longing in them, an anguish she could not voice and Jack could not name.

Nature said and did nothing when Time roughly pinned Pitch to the single pillar in the cave, ignoring Katherine's pleas. Time chuckled sultrily, pressing his torso into Pitch's as he gazed up blindly at the Boogeyman, one hand clutching his cloak, the other held to the side with Pitch's sword.

"Tell me, my lovely, hideous Boogeyman," Time crooned, nearly nose to nose with the startled shade, "What do a caterpillar and a seed have in common?"

Pitch was given no time to answer, as before he could even wonder at the odd question being spouted by the mad entity holding him pinned, Time had flicked his wrist, gained a tight hold on the sword, and plunged it into his black gut.

"NO!" Katherine and Jack shrieked in horror.

Pitch lurched, eyes impossibly wide and body faintly trembling. He choked as Time pushed the sword in further until it bypassed Pitch's back and buried itself deeply into the stone. Time stepped back and released both him and the sword, leaving Pitch to hang off the floor, pinned like a butterfly on display.

An airy chuckle left Time as he regarded his handiwork, not unlike a painter scrutinizing his latest masterpiece. Pitch could only cough and struggle weakly to yank the sword out, to no avail. Black blood dripped from his wound and his mouth, forming a black starburst below his feet.

Time suddenly waved a hand, a silver and gold staff forming in his hand. Its top seemed to boast a miniature, suspended version of the armillary table in his planetarium, the small metal balls representing planets slowly orbiting the glowing gold orb of the sun in the center.

"Now then…" he said, regarding his staff, "What shall crown this would-be king? What does one use to burn a witch, and warm the cold?"

"Time…" Nature finally spoke, her teeth audibly grinding, her eyes flicking between the Angel, Katherine and Pitch.

Time did not respond, and only continued to look over the planets orbiting the sun atop his staff. He hummed thoughtfully as Jupiter passed his gaze, and within the gap of the next planet, stared into the orb of the sun. His smile slowly stretched into something unnatural and hauntingly excited.

"Ah, yes, I almost forgot to answer my own question," he said, looking up at Pitch, "What do a caterpillar and a seed have in common?"

Pitch snarled weakly, unable to answer as he coughed up his own blood. Time chuckled, suddenly pausing when a tight snap was heard, followed by a furious and angry cry. He didn't even budge when Katherine plunged the knife she had used to escape her binds into Time's waist. Jack gasped, fingers digging into the ground as he gaped at the borderline homicidal young girl. Time, however, did not even flinch. Rather, he looked down with a smile at the frightened girl. Trembling, she backed away in sudden apprehension as he reached down, wrapping his fingers around the dagger handle. With a wet squelch, he pulled it out, the blade now coated in his silvery, starlit blood.

"North taught you well," he said, continuing to hold the dagger as he regarded Pitch once more. "Now, where was I…? Oh, yes…"

He banished his staff into nothingness, yet he kept the dagger. Katherine gaped, about to make a break for the Angel again, but was stopped by not a root, but a firm hand around her arm. She looked up in terror at Nature, who seemed caught between a scowl and a gaze of sympathy.

"Do not interfere," she said, "He will not be harmed any more than necessary."

"He is already hurt!" Katherine snapped, her voice cracking. Nature's hand tightened around her arm, making her wince.

"Change is painful," Nature said tightly, "Birth is painful. Neither are more painful than they should be. Now be silent, and watch."

Eyes swimming, her entire body trembling, Katherine looked up, as did Jack. The frost sprite, caught in a loose chokehold by what he was seeing, could only shakily climb to his feet and lean on his staff as Time approached Pitch.

The Boogeyman coughed weakly, drained and on the verge of fading from blood-loss. He dazedly looked at Time as the Angel tenderly cupped his cheek.

"What a caterpillar and a seed have in common is simple," he said, "After they endure the post painful process of change, they both become something beautiful. A caterpillar is but a mere seed waiting to grow into a butterfly, and a seed is but the helpless larva waiting to change into a tree…"

He brought the dagger up, still coated in his own blood, and touched the stained blade to his full lips.

"And you, dear Pitch Black, Kozmotis Pitchiner – you both will no longer exist. Just as a seed and caterpillar trade their very existence for something new, you both will trade your individual lives for something beautiful."

He suddenly reached down and grasped the hilt of the sword. And with a strength no one would suspect the petite man to possess, he twisted and shifted it until the once steady stream of black blood became a river. Pitch choked on his scream, hands scrambling for Time's own, but were found to be too slippery and weak. The floor below him was more akin to the concrete floor of a slaughterhouse, or perhaps something even more sinister.

The shock did not stop Katherine from screaming at Time to stop. Nature did nothing. Jack, however, found his strength again, and scrambled to his feet to rush at Time in a desperate sprint, his staff brandished.

"You're killing him!" he shouted, reaching out to strike Time.

But as before with the spear, so it happened all over again. Jack ran right through Time. He stared into nothingness in shock, looking down at his hands and staff, as if they had betrayed him. He looked over his shoulder at Time and Pitch, the darker of the two grimacing and crying out in apparent agony. Time was serene as always. His smile was gentle, but Jack could no longer see it for the mask it was. No, Time had no compassion or kindness. He was a cruel entity, merciless in all his heartless ways. How he could be called an Angel, Jack would never know.

He only knew that, in this moment, he hated Time…

"Now then…" Time's wings rose and stretched from his body. He dropped the dagger off to the side and out of the way as he looked at Pitch.

Jack flinched and backed away until he was standing next to Nature and Katherine. Something in the air shifted. A low, rumbling roar overtook his and the others' ears. Time took a few steps back just as Nature grasped Katherine's shoulders and pulled her back against a wall. Jack, whether by instinct or coincidence, followed.

All three watched Time's wings stretch into their full display, and unseen, the seams between his closed eyelids fluttered and incandesced. Burning, white-hot light seemed to slowly be trying to peer through his eyes. So powerful in its heat and brightness, silvery blood began to bleed from his eyes and streak down his face. The starlit fluid seemed to boil and blacken from the immense heat seeping from his eyes, reverberating throughout his entire body and filling the cavern with its overbearing burn.

Time was not the least bit cowed, and he directed his blind, smiling face to the Boogeyman now hanging on the brink. He now hung suspended in a place not even Death could reach, and would not even attempt to. It was that place between birth and death, that final moment before the final crescendo reached its final ascension and became life.

As if beckoned, Pitch raised his heavy head to look at Time. And just between the arches of his wings, Jack was stunned to see Pitch's eyes. They were as grey and bleak as before, but now he could see fragile, draining life within them. His tears were no longer black, but were rather as clear and pure as the salty waters should be.

His lips trembled as they opened, the roar in their ears growing louder. Yet over it all, they could hear a silent, pleading whisper…

"Sera-"

And with the cruelest intent, it was cut short. Faster than any one of them could even think, their eyes and bodies were assaulted. The very world around them vanished, and in its place…

Light…

To be continued…

~s~s~S~s~s~

A/N~ More to come VERY soon! The next chapter, since it was split off from this chapter, is about 1/3rd of the way done, but I make no promises as to when it will be published. School is kicking my ass now, so I'm kind of trying to budget my time for writing.

Be sure to check out the A/N to win a SaD themed prize, and for artist mentions from my last contest!

1.) A dodecagon is a twelve-sided, symmetrical shape! Or so that's what I gathered from Google; don't ask me about shapes guys, I have zero comprehension of angles, right or otherwise, or what their 'proper' names and categories are. Bottom line is this room has twelve even sides, and an even circumference. The end.

2.) A so far unreleased OC, Laplace is one of the two last living Pooka in the universe. He is Time's steward and servant, and holds the power of space and reality itself. Supposedly, he was part of the reason the Pookan race was driven into its path of extinction, but no one is certain. He is calm, enigmatic, and eccentric. Bunny hates him with a fiery passion.

3.) Time's little minions are steampunk machine-like mice. All of them are identical, and supposedly built by Time himself. Some rumors suggest they inspired the humans' Hickory Dickory Dock nursery rhyme. Others say the rhyme came from something less dignified involving Time and Nature. No one is too sure. The mice are sentient, but need to be wound every now and again, or they stop moving entirely. They seem much friendlier than their master though, and do not seem to bear any of his personality traits. Quiet and unobtrusive, the mice act as Time's messengers, and the literal keys to some of the rooms in his domain, such as his Planetarium.

4.) Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Yes, I included Pluto in the number. I don't care what dumbass scientists say, Pluto is a planet and is not excluded from the party, it is an adorable little ball of Chibi Planet and it deserves recognition as a planet GOD DAMNIT.

5.) Time's Armillary Sphere is EXTREMELY complex due to its function. It visually teeters in the realm of a Galileo Armillary sphere, and a bit of Copernicus Armillary sphere. But again, it is much more complex than these mentioned spheres, and has a much more complex and vital function.

6.) Want a visual of Time's Armillary table? Google 'Steampunk Astrolabe by Davison Carvalho' and you will see!

7.) 'Tempus' is a Latin word for 'time', and one of Father Time's many names. In a human sense, this is akin to his full name. Recall from childhood when you're caught doing something naughty and your parents call you by your full name - first, middle and last name included. This is basically the same thing for Time. His other names include Chronos, Saturn, Pakiž, and other variations of the word 'time' and temporal entities.

8.) The California poppy contains protopine, which has similar (but much milder effects) as morphine, making it a good natural sedative. Although it is a relative of the Opium Poppy, it is not an opiate, so using it won't cause dependence problems. Info gathered from www dot motherearthliving dot com. Nature here often uses Poppies, and other herbal plants, to put people to sleep for various reasons; whether to walk away from a ridiculous confrontation, or to sedate someone for a purpose.

Read and review please~

~S~