Chapter 16
"Mind explaining yourselves?" Pitch growls, barely keeping himself contained. Oh, how he wishes to lash out and take the answers he wants by force, but he knows he is not nearly a match for all gathered, even if Jack weren't recovering -
He goes very still, and the shadows on the wall deepen. "Jack." He mentally catalogued her injuries before he left, so as to better exact proper retribution for them, and there is a darkening blossom on her face that was not there when he left. "Where did that bruise come from?" His voice is very far away.
"Oh, just me and the kangaroo having a disagreement," Jack says flippantly, but her eyes lack the mischief that normally lurks there. "He thinks you're evil, I don't think so, he thinks it's polite to punch someone in the face and call that rescuing, I don't. The usual stuff."
"Why are you takin' his side?" the Pooka demands, incredulous. "After what he did to ya!"
"And pray tell, what precisely did I do?" Pitch inquires, entertaining visions of choking everyone here, but especially Bunnymund, in darkness and despair. Aside from Jack, of course.
"Yeah, what did he do besides actually give a shit about me and help me out when I needed it?" Jack adds, voice dripping with vicious sarcasm. Pitch preens, and if the situation were a little friendlier he might have wiped an imaginary tear away.
Bunnymund snarls, the sound surprisingly threatening when coming from a very tall rabbit. "Besides givin' ya breasts and doing stars know what else to yer body?"
There is a second of absolute silence before chaos descends.
"I would never!" Pitch roars, edges blurring into seething darkness and the thin grip he has on his temper disintegrating. "You come uninvited into my home, you take away the one person I would never harm, and then accuse me of - !" He lunges at Bunnymund, but North intervenes, brandishing a cutlass as he positions himself between the Bogeyman and the Easter Rabbit to prevent them from harming each other. Pitch snarls when Sanderson moves in, the silent Dreamer looking grim as he flanks him.
Toothiana pushes Jack behind her, scimitars drawn as her feathers fluff up in anger. Even if she is only half-Fae she is still Fae, and a Guardian on top of that, and if Pitch has harmed Jack Frost in the way Aster is accusing, she will tear the Nightmare King apart and relish in his blood on her tongue, and obliterate his teeth between her own.
"What the hell!" Jack shrieks. The winter spirit tries to dart past the Tooth Fairy but is blocked.
"Don't get involved," Toothiana orders, rainbow hued eyes narrowed.
"He hasn't ever hurt me!" Jack insists. "This is just a big misunderstanding!" She turns to Mother Nature, who is watching the situation with pursed lips, her only outward sign of expression. "Please, you know I've always been like this!"
Toothiana glances at Seraphina, remembering their earlier conversation and the way she had referred to the winter spirit. "The Moon named you," she says.
Jack turns back to her with wide eyes, grateful she is beginning to understand. "Yes! Pitch didn't do anything to me that they're saying, don't let them -" She looks over to where the Bogeyman looms, all jagged edges in the dark and his face a shredded rage-filled canvas.
"It's all right." Seraphina lays a hand on Jack's shoulder and she looks up, worry and fear in her gaze, but fear for him, not of him. Toothiana lowers her scimitars slightly. "It's going to be fine, Jack."
Then she turns towards the confrontation before them with a soft sigh. "STOP," she commands, and the room shakes, breaking everyone's attention and redirecting it to Mother Nature, as it should be. "Not even five minutes in the same room and already you're trying to kill each other." Seraphina shakes her head. "I honestly don't know why I'm surprised, but I suppose I hoped that after a couple hundred years tempers would have cooled. Now if everyone would please calm down and step away from each other, we might be able to salvage this."
"No," Pitch snaps, solidifying into something less billowy, more present. He meets Seraphina's eyes with his own, amber flecked gray boring into dark gray, almost black. "We're leaving."
"Stand down, Pitch Black," she replies. "No harm will come to either of you here, you have my word." She pulls Jack forward, a gentle hand still on her shoulder. "Jack, would you mind alleviating everyone's concern?"
The winter spirit nods. "The Moon named me Jack Frost. Probably because when I died I was a girl living as a boy, but in the end..." She shrugs. "I'm just Jack. Boy or girl doesn't matter, I'm me. Pitch didn't do anything to me but care, and be my friend." She glares at Bunnymund, who looks suitably chastised.
"Now that that is cleared up," North says brightly, his cutlass sheathed, "let us get down to why we are all here, yes?"
Jack is agender demisexual panromantic and i will fight everyone on this.
Meant to upload this yesterday but life and work got in the way x(((((((((( Hope y'all enjoyed!