Author's Note: Before I carry on with my Frostrauma story and the ISWIDOT M version, I'm gonna wrap up (maybe B[ ) what happened after Bunny apologizes. And yes, for those of you who feel slightly shortchanged in terms of cuddling the last Repercussions chapter, this will make up for it… before abruptly turning and becoming an angst-ridden storyline once again :D. Yup. More depression in this chapter. So much, in fact, that this will probably be a 2+ parter. Enjoy… Well try to at least. :3

~Bunnymund, Jack Frost, and Pitch Black~ Jack's Tree, Pt. 1

Chapter Song: Say (All I Need) by One Republic

*BRIEF WARNING! Self harm and a bit of morbid violence in this chapter!

It was the year 1693, or so the strangers said as they waltzed through Jack along the dirt path of the village. Usually, the invisible boy would've maneuvered around them, seeing that the strange sensation of being walked through sent shivers down his spine. Even the idea of being invisible made him want to curl up into a ball and disappear. But in the midst of his thinking, he simply stared ahead blankly and allowed the townspeople to make their way through him. The feeling of numbness slowly consumed him. Unbeknownst to Jack, it would be a feeling that he would have to endure, and would never grow used to over the years, the feeling of loneliness, helplessness, hopelessness…

Not knowing what else to do or where else to go, he sullenly meandered around the lake he'd come up from just yesterday, gripping his staff and wondering if it too would fall through his hands if he dare let go. He began to grow tired, not only of trying to question the small handful of townspeople that gathered to stare at the lake with a look of loss and sorrow (something that had continued to happen for the next fifty years or so, but what for, Jack never understood), but also tired of walking around aimlessly. He was tempted to go stand on the tin layer of ice upon the lake to see if he could fall through again and maybe leave this place, when something caught onto his pants and tripped him.

He'd quite literally stumbled upon a tree.

It was a fairly tall tree with a thick base and gnarled roots gripping the ground, no doubt tickled by the dying grass surrounding it as it gripped the dirt mercilessly. Out of its many branches, only one stood out to him, one about four or five feet from the ground, one that looked strong enough to hold up an invisible boy.

After unintentionally frosting the dead grass with his pale toes, Jack was gently lifted by the wind and perched onto said branch, the one that seemed to be there just for him. It was here where he spent much of his time before becoming a guardian.

After the following day passed, another day of desperately trying to communicate with someone in the village, Jack took it upon himself to keep track of how many days he'd go without someone to talk to. He'd taken a small knife left outside by one of the villagers and dug a long, visible line into the trees soft bark. Day one of being alone. On that night, he slept on his tree; the day after his rebirthing from beneath the ice a confusing and tiring one to say the least.

Over the next few weeks, Jack found out that the wind was willing to take him anywhere, so he traveled to keep busy, instinctively stopping by barren and dead areas that looked to be the end of autumn to bring a snow day and a few snowball fights to the children. But, no matter where he traveled, he always came back to make a mark on his tree when the sun went down in his village.

As he traveled, he'd come to find that there were many differences between himself and the villagers. The first being that they grew tired regularly, following the sun's suit and sleeping whenever night arrived. Jack, however, grew tired every few weeks, often sleeping intermittently during the summer season beneath the cool shade of his tree. The people in this village were constantly hungry it seemed, eating two to three times a day to keep the hunger at bay. Jack had never experienced hunger; well, a hunger for food at least. As far as he was concerned, he was unrightfully starved of acknowledgement and purpose. Still, he traveled around the world, learning new customs, broadening his language, and always returning to cut the tree.

However, as the weeks, passed, the tree began to fill up with scores, no longer room on the uppermost part of the tree for any more marks. So after neatly labeling that section as DAYS with his knife, he decided (all the while with a disheartened, overwhelming sense of sadness) that he would go by YEARS on the lowermost part of the tree, the untouched bark beneath the branch earning a tally for every year that passed.

Even then, he ran out of room around the 150 mark. But by this time, Jack had deemed keeping track utterly useless, eventually scrawling miscellaneous thoughts over the tallies, all the while secretly recalling how many years it's been.

During his 319 years of unwilling solitude, the tree was his home. When Jack had followed up after the autumn season and brought snow, he'd sleep on his branch until eventually woken by nightmares. Whenever it rained, or whenever the sun's rays grew a little too harsh for his liking, he was sheltered by the trees leaves. After a long day of attempting to get people to notice him, to notice his handiwork with the frost at the very least, he'd sulk beneath the tree. After a strung-out winter season, the tree was his first destination, regardless of the season. It was his sanctuary. It was home. Sometimes, when he'd been through an ordeal, he'd sit under it just to think, and nothing more. Just to think, think about why the moon never talked back, why he was pretty much avoided by the rest of the spirit world…

He'd sit under the tree thinking of ways to hurt himself, too. Using his knife, he'd etch words into his skin only to find that they'd be gone the nest day. He'd sit upon his branch, aggressively slicing, sawing, stabbing at his wrists; his blood would go unnoticed to the children that passed by as the red rain fell to the ground below, flooding the frostbitten grass with a dark crimson. His screaming and bawling fell upon deaf ears. That, or they simply never existed.

Often on this tree, the one that he'd come to call his own, he would talk to the full moon, asking all of these questions - all of these questions that he'd been asking since the beginning! - before finally collapsing into himself when he'd receive no response. Here, he'd badmouthed a certain Guardian of Hope after an unfortunate run-in the day earlier. Whilst he spoke however, Jack cautiously scanned his surroundings and glanced behind him fearfully every now and then. He was fearful. He was deathly afraid that the bunny would find him and grow angry at his words, would attack him and already tell him what he knew was true, would fight him, would pin him up against the wall so he couldn't breathe…

All in all, the tree was his home. He'd fled to it - or just fled to Burgess in general - when he'd felt threatened, like an endangered animal who played the pray fled to their dens or nests to escape the vicious predators after him. This was why Jack left the pole and went straight to Burgess in the first place, not only to check on Jamie and Sophie (who were sleeping since it was night here) but also to seek out the trees protection.

Jack was trembling, he was well aware of this. He was fearful as to what the Guardians would do when they came and found him here. They knew where to look by now, Jack had assumed, and he knew all too well that after everything that happened, he wasn't supposed to leave the pole. He would scare them by doing so. They would be terrified of his whereabouts and his wellbeing after coming to learn of his little self-harming problem. But that didn't matter right now. The consequences of his actions didn't matter to him right now. He just wanted the tree. He just wanted to be near that tree, his tree.

He thought hard about this, taking the knife from its hiding spot in the tree and repositioning himself on the branch. He was most anxious about Bunny's reaction, most of all. He already knew that Tooth (and Baby Tooth, nevertheless) would bombard him with hugs and kisses and that motherly "Don't you ever do that again!" Warning. Sandy would shoot him that disappointed/worried look of his, accompanied with the wave of what Jack nicknamed his "no-no" finger and compensating with a reassuring smile to tell him that everything will turn out all right in the end. North would no doubt be infuriated with the winter spirit's decision, gushing a long and irrelevant dead-serious speech about how his safety mattered and all that. Then he'd follow up with a hug and that weird kiss-on-the-cheek thingy, which Jack assumed must have been a Russian thing.

But what Bunny would do, Jack couldn't say. After what happened that night, he just couldn't say. Would he be like Tooth, embracing him for dear life and giving him a billion reasons why he shouldn't leave? No, he knew Bunny better than that… at least, he thought he did. He wouldn't show his weakness for him like that so easily, so broadly. Something told him that he wouldn't be like Sandy at all. He definitely have something to say to him. So would he be like North then? No, Bunny never struck Jack as the fatherly type, much less one to be saying words of wisdom. Then again, he was finding himself pleasantly surprised with what the Pooka's done so far. He deemed him unpredictable. Would he really just bluntly expel his rage and frustration on him though, after everything that went down the previous night?

With this, Jack thought about all of the emotional turmoil that his careless cutting had put the Guardians through. All the guilt and trouble he caused…

Pitch was right all along, Jack thought to himself as his eyes rapidly began to water. He pulled back his sleeve and indecisively picked at the fraying bandages with the tip of his knife.

"But it won't work, will it, Jack?" a voice emitted from the shadows.

It was an unrealistic turn of events that led up to this equally unrealistic outcome. First of all, Bunny didn't expect Jack to be so aggressively natured. He most certainly didn't envision him lashing out like that, violently hitting him with a ferocious and fearful look. This, too, was something that had caught the Pooka off guard. He hadn't the slightest idea that Jack was afraid of him. He hadn't the slightest idea that Jack's attitude towards him was an overwhelming blend of blurry emotions; hate fore taunting his invisibility, fear for going at him in '68, thankfulness for even acknowledging his existence. And after this, there was no saying how Jack would feel towards him. After all this time feeling scared and angry, how would he cope with the sudden change, the feeling of being comforted and accepted?

No doubt the new guardian was confused, Bunny admitted silently to himself that he would be, too. Confused and scared. Because, unfortunately, confusion and fear met hand in hand. Bunny didn't think he could stand to see Jack in such a fearful, wrecked state. Never again would this poor boy be left alone for that long a time with no one to turn to but himself.

As the thoughts repeated themselves like a mantra of regret in his mind, he held Jack tighter, rubbing his nose lovingly into Jack's pale cheek and purring softly. Jack had been alone and suffering all those years, flooded with questions that he could never ask because his only response was ever silence, hiding behind a mask of fun as to conceal tearstains that he could never wipe away because it was one of the two ways that helped him feel better…

Bunny shuddered, tears spilling over when he clenched his eyes tightly shut.

How selfish, how wrong of him to just assume that after being made a guardian, the boys troubled would gradually disappear. This didn't happen at all; if anything, they intensified, to the extent that the winter spirit wanted to try to rid of himself. He just wanted to be away from it all…

Bunny's thoughts meandered in this melancholy field as he held Jack close. The Guardian of Fun had fallen asleep long ago, after being rocked and caressed in an effort to get him to stop crying. Actually, Jack hadn't been crying for as long as Bunny expected him to. But when he saw the boy start to cry the first time, it broke the Pooka's heart enough to make him follow his guardian instincts and wrap his arms around him, wiping the tears from his eyes and stroking his hair. It also broke his heart when Jack took such a long time to hug back, probably questioning what it meant coming from him of what exactly it was supposed to do. After all, he'd received only two hugs in the past 319, only one of which he'd tried to return the favor as decently as he could (though Jamie didn't mind). When he finally did hug back, though, he clung to him as he were expecting a tornado to come. He'd limply rested his head on Bunny's shoulder, and continued weeping. All the while, Bunny was there telling him that it would be okay, refusing to let up on the hug and softly cooing him. It remarkably calmed him down; it was a matter of minutes until his unbearable bawling had turned into whimpering sniffles, which eventually become nothing more but shaky and uneven breaths. There were a few times where Jack cried to him, "I'm sorry; God, I'm so sorry," only to be silenced with a sonorous purr and a firm nuzzle to the cheek. "Ya ain't got nothing' at be sorry for, ya gumby, s'alright."

"But I-I hit you, Bunny, I-"

"Shh, 's okay, Frostbite. I'm a masta of Tai Chi, ya think I ain't got what it takes to take a few throws? B'sides, if anybody should be apologizin' it should be me."

"But… But you didn't do anything."

"That's exactly it," Bunny tensed. "I didn't do anything, just left ya there all alone… shh, just go at sleep, Jack."

"…Will you… will you be here when I wake up, Bunny?"

Bunny's heart dropped into his stomach at the question, and he nuzzled Jack's damp face. "Yeah, mate. Yeah I will, I promise."

This was why Bunny felt so bad when he woke up and found that Jack was nowhere to be found. Both him and his staff were gone.

And a sickening feeling of dread began to consume him.

"But it won't work, will it Jack?" Pitch stated a with a sick grin. It all came together in the back of his mind. He was going to bribe the boy in the tree, being one with the shadows and keeping his words (and the boy) quarantined within the shadowy boundary surrounding him.

After seeing that Jack had up and fled the pole, Pitch followed him, knowing all to well where the boy would go and what he planned to do.

He'd seen the sleeping spirit in the rabbit's arms, and although he considered the sight a weak and pathetic display, it seemed to have solved his problem quite nicely. He'd knelt down beside Jack, careful not to wake either of them, and placed a hand on his forehead. He smiled to himself after sensing that the depression had greatly depleted, scoffing silently after seeing that it was replace with hope. Again, Pitch grimaced at the fact that Jack would forgive the rabbit so easily. But it wasn't that hard to believe, seeing that Jack would suck up to just about anyone who acknowledged him, anyone who paid attention to him… maybe after this, Pitch's offer for apprenticeship wouldn't be denied. But he'd have to wait for the proper moment, just as he did before; when Jack was lost enough to be led astray with a few meaningless words, but not lost enough to want to give up entirely. Therefore, the Nightmare King would just have to make the best out of it. Pitch digressed, slinking into the shadows as the boy began to stir. Without a second thought, Jack grabbed his staff and fled out the window. Pitch really couldn't blame him, though. He' want his tree to know about all of what happened, he was always drawn back to that one tree. The tree never threatened him or taunted him, and it was always there, always knew he was there.

Pitch sensed the rabbit beginning to stir as well, probably due to the lack of Jack in his arms, so Pitch followed the boy hastily. He wasn't in the mood to deal with a drowsy rodent right now. He followed Jack discreetly, and although the winter spirits depression had been greatly reduced, it wasn't completely gone. It would never leave, it seemed. It would fester, a never ending cycle, sending him spiraling in and out of disarray of emotions…

The Bunny was too late. 319 years too late.

When Pitch had seen the boy contemplating with the knife at his wrists, he had to intervene. Not because he cared, mind you; never would he allow himself to sink so low as to care for Jack again. That is, unless he wanted to redeem himself and accept the offer he was about to put up for grabs. Then he would think about it. He intervened because he couldn't risk losing all the progress and efforts he made to keep him alive.

That, and Jack's fear was the best. No shaking, screaming child's fear could ever compare to his. And if they were apprentices, it would make it all too easy to acquire it.

"In the end, it never works . Your persistence is tantamount to insolence, Jack." the voice echoed. Jack knew who it belonged to, but he simply bit his bottom lip as the words echoed in his mind.

"It may seem like a way out Jack. But the truth is, there is no way out. So instead of fighting it, you let it fester? You let it build up inside of you and eat away at you, bit by bit, until you are nothing? How selfish, how weak…are you not stronger?"

Jack clenched his eyes shut, tears spilling over the edges and trailing down his cheeks before he quickly and swiftly wiped them away.

"You could be stronger, Jack." the voice whispered. "You don't have to be like this… I can help you. It may seem an unwise decision, but what other choice to you have? You can stay like this, alone and hurting, wishing you would just disappear already… or you could join me."

So this'll probably be a four parter. Why am I not surprised? Depending on how much positive feedback this chapter gets, I'll probably just postpone it till later and work on the M version stuff. Cuz that's always fun. : ) That being said, if you really want the next chapters, review! :D Thanks for reading!

969~696