Thank you to everyone who's commented, favorited, or followed this story so far! Your support means a lot to me :)
To Jokermask18: Thanks for the comment! To answer your question, no, there isn't another Jack Frost in this universe, but there are various winter sprites and spirits that fill the role Jack Frost has in the movie.
To PeterPanfan13: I'm so glad you like the fic so far!
Now, on to the next chapter!
The inside of the Workshop is exactly the explosion of color, movement, and noise that Jack expected from North. He wishes he could've seen this place under better circumstances, but even now he can't help but look around as he follows the Guardians. The yeti and the elves are hard at work—or at least, the yeti are—with no clue as to what's just happened; it's proof that life goes on even in the face of unimaginable tragedy. Jack supposes that's comforting to some people, but it makes him furious, and he has to work hard to rein it in lest he accidentally set something on fire, because that's a thing he can do now.
Tooth has long since stopped sobbing, but her eyes are still red and puffy. North is crying silently even as he sets his jaw stubbornly. The two of them are leaning into each other as much as they can with Tooth's buzzing wings in the way. Bunny is bringing up the rear of their somber procession; Jack has to fight the urge to turn around and look at his expression.
A few elves run by, nearly tripping Jack and the Guardians, and Jack feels his anger return. He doesn't let go of the tight control he has over his powers, but he lets the anger course through him; underneath it, he feels completely numb, and anger is better than nothing at all.
"We cannot dither," North says, his voice the most subdued Jack's ever heard it. "Pitch will not give us time to grieve."
Jack hears Bunny growl. "Bloody fucking bag of rats," he mutters.
"North, how quickly can we have the funeral?" Tooth asks softly.
"Very quickly," North replies. "I will talk to yeti and have them begin preparations."
Jack lets himself slow down until Bunny's passed him, and when he's sure no one will notice his absence, he turns down another hallway and walks aimlessly. His mind whirls with thoughts of Sandy and funerals and death. He isn't used to spirits dying in such a way. Usually they fade over time, because of age or lack of belief or both, and the process is slow enough for Jack to say his silent goodbyes and leave so he doesn't have to witness it.
But Sandy's death was so… violent.
Jack shudders and looks up, drawing himself from his thoughts. He doesn't know where he is, but there are doors lining the whole hallway. Most of them are locked, while the ones that aren't are supply closets or the like. Eventually Jack finds an open room that he thinks might be a workroom, though its decorations are spartan and there doesn't appear to be a project in sight.
Jack closes the door behind him and walks over to the window. He sits on the sill and pulls his knees up to his chest and wishes he still had his hooded cloak. He makes do by pressing himself as far into the corner as he can.
For a long time, he watches the world go by outside of the window, an endless landscape of white and grey and wind and sky that would take his breath away under other circumstances. He doesn't know what the Guardians are doing. At one point, he hears the low, mournful sound of bells, but he doesn't go investigate. If they didn't invite him to the funeral, it's because he's not a Guardian and he's not wanted, so they probably wouldn't take too kindly to him crashing it.
Eventually, someone comes to find him. Jack sees a faint shadow underneath the door that means there's someone outside of it, but he turns back to the window before they open the door. Their footsteps are soft and almost silent once they enter, but the slight creaking of the wooden floor gives them away as they walk up to Jack's window.
Jack doesn't know who he was expecting, or what he was expecting them to say, but he finds himself surprised when a few moments pass in silence. He turns his head and looks up, and finds Bunny standing there, his hands clenching into fists and opening again in a repetitive, anxious rhythm. Jack notices this immediately, as only someone who's spent their whole life surviving can, but he relaxes once he's sure Bunny isn't going to hit him.
Bunny inhales like he's going to say something, and Jack looks up at his face automatically. As soon as their eyes meet, Bunny's face crumples and his ears lower. Instantly alarmed, Jack half rises, unsure if he's planning on running away or moving closer.
"Bunny?" he says cautiously. "Is everything okay?"
"She's apples," Bunny says with a weak smile, but his ears are still flat against his head.
Jack pauses and thinks for a moment. "Are you okay?" he asks. Bunny's smile falters and he looks to the side, as if he's ashamed of something.
"I'm ready to knock Pitch back into the Dark Ages," Bunny says, which doesn't actually answer Jack's question, but he continues before Jack can call him out on it. "There's actually something I came to tell you."
"Okay," Jack says slowly, sitting back down. He runs the pad of his thumb up and down over the familiar grain of his staff, an unconscious gesture that helps calm him when he's stressed.
Bunny hesitates before speaking, and after a few false starts, he says, "You weren't at the funeral." It's so far from what Jack was expecting that it takes him a moment to register the tears in Bunny's eyes and the hoarseness of his voice. After a moment Bunny's eyes widen and he makes a face, as if surprised at what he said.
"No," Jack says slowly. "I wasn't. Didn't think I'd be welcome."
Bunny frowns. "'Course you'd be welcome. Sandy would've wanted you to be there." Bunny's breath hitches and his eyes water even more, and even looking up at the ceiling can't quite stop a few from trailing into the fur on his cheeks. His voice cracks when he says, "He, um… he really liked you, you know?"
Jack doesn't know what to say. Bunny looks miserable, and Jack's heart aches with sympathy and the urge to offer reassurance, but he doesn't know how Bunny would react to that, so he merely sits there in stupid silence.
Until Bunny bursts into tears, at which point Jack throws caution out the window and pulls Bunny into a hug. Still standing on the windowsill, he's at least a head and a half taller than Bunny, especially when the rabbit's ears are down. He wraps his arms around Bunny's shoulders, and Bunny wraps his arms around Jack's waist and buries his face in Jack's shoulder.
His whole body shakes with the force of his sobs, and Jack's sure his vest is going to have puncture marks from where Bunny's gripping the material tightly with his claws, but he can't bring himself to care. After only a moment's hesitation, he turns his head the slightest bit and nuzzles Bunny's temple.
Sorrow sits heavy on his chest, weighing down his heart and lungs until he's afraid his ribs will break under the pressure, and listening to Bunny only makes it worse. Jack closes his eyes and let's a few tears of his own trail down his cheeks.
"I'm sorry," he says softly. "This is my fault."
Bunny pulls back as if burned but keeps his arms on Jack's hips, which is just distracting enough for Jack to notice.
"What the bloody hell are you on about?" Bunny asks angrily, his expression fierce even though the fur under his eyes is damp. Jack, for lack of having a hood to pull over his head, ducks his head so his bangs fall into his eyes.
"I just… I wish I could've done something more to help Sandy," he says miserably. "I was right there and I was still too slow to stop that arrow. And if I had just paid attention and kept an eye on Pitch, none of this would be happening!"
"Jack, listen to me," Bunny says sternly, his voice still thick with tears. He sniffs and lifts one hand to wipe at his eyes. "None of this is your fault, got that? You did all you could for Sandy, and you saved us! Pitch isn't your responsibility. He's a giant fucking wanker who's tipping the balance because he thrives on chaos."
Jack sneers. "You got that right," he says. "But still. If I was more powerful…."
"Excuse me? Did you hit your head when slipping in that bullshit?" Jack stares. Apparently Bunny gets a lot more explicit when emotional. "You're plenty powerful on your own, or were you not watching the same light show the rest of us saw?"
Jack growls in frustration and steps off the windowsill. "If I was a Guardian, I would've been able to do something."
"Probably," Bunny agrees. Jack shoots him a half-hearted glare, and to his surprise, Bunny gives him a sheepish look back. "And that's mostly our fault."
Frowning, Jack asks, "What do you mean?"
"A day or two ago, the Man in the Moon chose you to be a Guardian, Jack," Bunny admits.
Jack's chest constricts like all the air in his lungs is being squeezed out. "He what?" he says faintly. He looks to the window, as if he's hoping to see the moon out in the sky.
"We were cocky and thought we could handle Pitch without you," Bunny continues, his tone self-deprecating. "We'd done it before, after all. Clearly we were wrong."
Jack's heartbeat speeds up and his mind is a mess of confusion. First his teeth, now this…. He doesn't know how many more revelations he can handle.
"But why," Jack stammers, "why wouldn't the Moon tell me that himself?"
Bunny frowns. "Jack?" he says.
"He brings me back from the dead, leaves me alone for three hundred years without answering any of my questions, and doesn't even have the decency to tell me himself that I'm supposed to be a Guardian?"
"He what?" Bunny exclaims. "You're dead? You died?"
Jack waves a hand impatiently. "I died, but Manny brought me back, and that's so not what we should be focusing on right now."
"If you say so," Bunny says dubiously. He walks over to Jack and, after a split second of hesitation, places a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Look, mate, I'm sorry you didn't have the best life as a spirit. If I had known, I would've let you pop in on the Warren every once in a while." He perks up visibly, and Jack feels his lips twitch upwards the slightest bit when Bunny's ears snap to attention. "In fact…."
"Why are you planning?" Jack asks.
Bunny grins at him, something bright and mischievous glittering in his green eyes, and says, "Something fun."
Jack's heart slams painfully against his chest and starts beating double time, and, horrified with himself, he thinks, Oh no.
Bunny hurries off, calling for Jack to follow him as he heads into the Workshop. Jack takes a deep breath and tries to compose himself before he follows. This is what he gets for complaining about revelations, he supposes. This on top of Sandy and Pitch and his newly discovered fire powers, though, is a lot to handle. It isn't the straw that'll break the camel's back, so to speak, but if this is what one day in the Guardians' company can do to him, he worries over his mental state should he actually become one of their group.
North's Globe is bigger than Jack was expecting, and a lot more pretty. He and the Guardians watch grimly as the lights flicker and go out, which is worrying even though there are still enough believers that the Guardians aren't at risk of fading away.
"Alright, buck up, you sad sacks," Bunny says, hopping up onto the console in front of the Globe. "I never thought I'd say this, but I need your help. Easter is tomorrow, and I'm pulling out all the stops. We're gonna get those little lights flickering again if it kills us."
"Is all well and good, so long as we don't actually die," North says. Jack laughs for the first time in a long time, and North joins in, looking reinvigorated. Even Tooth perks up, smiling widely and puffing up her feathers. "To the sleigh!" North exclaims, brandishing one of his swords.
Bunny hops in front of him, stopping him before he can run off. "I don't think so," he says. "This time, we do things my way. Buckle up."
He taps his foot twice on the ground and a tunnel opens up in the hardwood floor, large enough for Jack, the Guardians, and the elves and yeti who were unlucky enough to be standing too close.
North curses loudly in Russian when they plummet into the tunnel, and Jack and Bunny both laugh as they dive in after them. Bunny quickly takes point, racing ahead to lead the way, while Jack flies close behind the others, dodging flailing limbs and letting himself drift in their wake since he's too busy laughing to pay attention to where he's going.
Only a few moments later, the tunnel opens up and the whole group is deposited none too gently on plush grass.
Still a little breathless from laughing, North says, "Buckle up. Is very funny."
Jack thinks he might be missing something, especially when Tooth and Bunny laugh and look at each other meaningfully, but he's too excited to mind much.
Bunny hops up onto a large rock and gestures widely. "Welcome to the Warren," he says proudly.
The group has found themselves on a bluff, Jack thinks it's called. Spreading out before them is an enormous landscape of color and vegetation and movement, much different than North's workshop but just as lively and clearly just as lovingly crafted.
"Are you sure we're underground?" Jack asks, staring up at the sky. He can't see a sun, but still, everything is bright and warm. "How is there sunlight in here?"
"Magic," Bunny says, winking. In the next instant, his expression changes into a frown. He turns to look behind him, eyes narrowed, nose twitching, and ears swiveling to catch every sound. He looks just like a regular rabbit, and he even starts to thump his foot on the ground before catching himself. Jack has to bite his cheek to force down a smile.
"Bunny?" Tooth peers at him curiously.
"Something's up," Bunny says. At that moment, a high pitched scream issues forth from he closest tunnel. A horde of little walking eggs stampedes out, and Bunny takes one look at them before drawing his boomerangs. Jack and the others quickly follow suit, and even the elves assume crude battle stances.
With war cries worthy of the old gods themselves, they race forward towards the tunnel.
A child runs out.
"Sophie?" Jack says, shocked. Bunny skids to a stop and the others follow his lead, then quickly put away their weapons, and Sophie goes back to tormenting the eggs, content to ignore them for the moment.
Bunny ushers the eggs behind him and away from the child. He looks panicked.
"How did she get here?" he asks. North's eyes widen with realization and he pats himself down.
"Ah," he says sheepishly. "Snow globe."
"Get rid of her!" Bunny demands.
"Don't worry, Bunny," Tooth says in a sing-song tone, twirling in the air so the light catches on her feathers. "I'm sure she's a fairy fan!"
Sure enough, Sophie looks up with awe. "Pretty!" she says, reaching for Tooth.
Tooth coos at her. "I have something for you," she says, brandishing a handful of bloody teeth.
As Sophie runs away screaming, Jack is torn between facepalming and laughing until he cries.
Bunny and Jack sit side by side in companionable silence, Sophie fast asleep in Bunny's arms. It's… nice. Usually their interactions—the few they've had over the centuries, at least—are fast-paced and action-packed; they race each other, pick fights with wendigos and stuck-up winter spirits, and bicker and argue with each other like the worst of enemies, but rarely has an encounter been as peaceful and amicable as this one.
"Not bad, cottontail," Jack says, referencing Sophie and the eggs and over two hundred and fifty years of friendship.
Bunny smiles softly at him. "Not bad yourself," he says. Jack's heart does a painful flip in his chest, and eventually he looks away.
"So," he says lamely. "Now what?"
"Now we just have to get my googies good and hidden," Bunny says. "And then I'm taking the fight to Pitch, with or without help." He looks at Jack defiantly, as if expecting him to protest.
"As long as I can join you," Jack says. "Pitch has my teeth, and he deserves it for going behind my back with all this, anyway."
"Your teeth?" Bunny says, tilting his head in confusion. His eyes widen. "Your memories? You mean you-"
He's interrupted when North claps him roughly on the shoulder, nearly sending him tumbling down the hill they're sitting on. Bunny glares and looks pointedly at Sophie, rolling his eyes at North's sheepish look.
"Look at her," Tooth sighs, smiling fondly.
"She really tuckered herself out," Bunny says, looking down at Sophie like she hung the stars in the skies. It tugs at something inside of Jack, some domestic part of him he never even knew he had. He looks at Sophie and imagines her with dark brown hair and warm eyes, and he has to forcibly drag himself away from that image and back to the present.
"When was the last time you guys actually interacted with a kid?" Jack asks.
"We are too busy protecting the children," North says. "We do not have time for… children."
The Guardians exchange sheepish looks.
"So maybe we are out of practice," Bunny admits.
Tooth huffs out a quiet laugh. "We should get her home," she says, reaching for Sophie.
"I can take her," Jack offers. The Guardians immediately look worried.
"I don't know if that is such a good idea," North says.
"What if Pitch attacks?" Tooth says.
"I can handle Pitch," Jack promises darkly.
"Which is why we need you here," Bunny says.
"You worry too much," Jack says dismissively. "Look, I'm the fastest flier here. It makes the most sense for me to go. I'll be quick as a bunny, I promise." He grins, and Bunny reluctantly places Sophie in his arms.
"Be quick and be careful," he says. "We're heading out soon."
"Got it," Jack says. The Baby Tooth that's been following Toothiana around all this time darts forward and squeaks at him. "You want to come, too?" Baby Tooth nods, and Jack shrugs as much as he can while holding a little girl. "Fine by me."
"Good idea," Tooth says. "Keep an eye on him, okay?"
Baby Tooth salutes, kisses Tooth on the cheek, then darts down one of the tunnels. With a wave to the Guardians, Jack follows.
He feels a little bad about leaving Sophie asleep on the floor, but her mother will put her back on the bed once she finds her. Probably. Jack and Baby Tooth don't stick around to find out. They start back towards the tunnel that'll lead them back to the Warren; Bunny had promised to leave it open for them, since his tunnels and North's snow globes are the only ways in.
They're flying over a neighborhood when he first hears it. It's a voice, young and feminine and achingly familiar, and Jack stops dead in the air and perks up, looking around for the source of it.
"Jack!" the voice calls faintly.
"That voice, I know that voice," Jack mutters, and takes off so fast that Baby Tooth is left tumbling through the air in his wake. He hops from rooftop to rooftop, following the voice as it calls to him, and eventually he finds himself in the woods. Baby Tooth squeaks urgently at him, urging him to leave, but Jack simply… can't. He needs to know who's calling him.
He finds a wooden bed frame, half-decayed and sitting innocently above a deep, dark hole in the ground. Every instinct he has screams at him that this is a bad idea, and he's this close to turning back and flying away, but then that voice calls to him from inside the hole. Baby Tooth flits anxiously around his head as Jack uses the butt of his staff to break the rotting boards of the bed away from the frame.
Jack drops into the hole. The fall lasts only a few seconds, so short that Jack lands painfully hard on his legs. He looks around warily. He isn't a creature of shadows in the same way that Pitch is, but he's tied to darkness and fear enough that the shadows in the room respond to his mood. They wrap themselves around him like a cloak, hiding him from view so that he can observe without being seen.
The room he's in is actually more of a cavern, wide and tall and made of rough stone. Stalagmites and stalactites jut out of the floor and ceiling, giving the whole cave the appearance of a maw full of sharp teeth ready to snap shut. Despite himself, Jack shivers.
Baby Tooth appears suddenly, squeaking nervously.
"Over here!" Jack hisses, and the shadow-spell is broken long enough for her to see him. She darts over to him and settles on his shoulder; he can feel her tiny body trembling against his neck, though she still manages to berate him quietly despite her fear.
"Baby Tooth, not now," Jack says. "Look. We're in Pitch's lair."
Baby Tooth finally goes silent, as the weight of the situation dawns upon her. She lets out a low, wary sound.
"My thoughts exactly," Jack mutters.
"Jack!" the voice calls. Jack perks up instantly, because this time the voice sounds afraid. A fierce surge of protectiveness rushes through him, and Jack knows that whoever this person is, he has to help them.
He can't fly in here; the Wind can't reach him. Instead, he hops in great, arcing leaps that carry him much farther than any human would be able to manage. He comes across another cavern, this one full of rusty metal cages hanging from the ceiling. Baby Tooth squeaks in alarm and flits towards the nearest cage, and Jack follows her, his eyes wide.
Inside the cage, dozens of fairies press themselves against the bars, squeaking urgently at him in a cacophony of noise that he can't hope to decipher.
"You're Tooth's fairies," he realizes. "Did Pitch steal you, too?"
The fairies wail angrily and slam themselves against the cage. Jack looks around at the dozens of cages.
"Alright, I'm going to get you out of here," he starts to say, but is interrupted once again.
"Jack!" The voice sounds terrified, and Jack immediately abandons his efforts and looks down. Hundreds of sparkling golden boxes lie in enormous piles on the floor. Jack feels a bit of anger on Tooth's behalf for how Pitch is treating her life's work, but that anger is overshadowed by the all-consuming need to find his teeth.
He crashes gracelessly onto the first pile but can't find it in him to care about the pain in his feet and knees. Tooth boxes go flying every which way as he tosses them carelessly about, searching for a familiar face. The boxes aren't labeled with names, but he doesn't think his will be too hard to find; if he finds his, he'll know it by the voice that he's sure is coming from his memories.
Jack is still partially cloaked in shadow, so he feels the exact moment Pitch steps out into the cavern. All the shadows in the room shudder for an instant and return to their natural positions, as if Pitch's mere presence is enough to keep them in order, and all of a sudden Jack is clearly visible.
"Hello, Jack," Pitch says. "Looking for something?"
Jack turns slowly, his hands clenched tightly around his staff and his eyes immediately drawn to the golden tooth box held loosely in Pitch's hand.
"Pitch," Jack growls. He launches himself at the Nightmare King, swinging his staff like a baseball bat, but Pitch melts into the shadows with a quiet laugh like he was never there at all. His silhouette flits from corner to corner mockingly, and Jack chases after it, anger making his movements sloppy.
This place is a maze, he thinks. It's like an M.C. Escher painting, all staircases and illusions. He briefly worries about how he's going to get out of this place, but then decides that's a matter for another time.
He finally spots Pitch—the real Pitch, and not his godforsaken shadow—on a bridge that doesn't seem to connect anything.
"Don't be afraid, Jack," Pitch says, and Jack scoffs.
"I'm not afraid of you," he says. "I've never been."
"Maybe so," Pitch allows. "But you are afraid of something."
"Everyone is," Jack says, slowly advancing on Pitch with his staff held at the ready. "Or did you forget that you aren't the only one connected to fear?"
Pitch lets out a humorless laugh. "You may be connected to fear, Jack O'Lantern, but I am fear. You think you can control me?"
The shadow at Jack's side suddenly swells until it covers him, and Jack doesn't notice until it's too late that he's stepped into one of Pitch's shadow portals. He falls with a yelp and lands on hard, unforgiving stone. His staff falls from his fingers and Jack scrabbles towards it, wheezing.
"Fear is uncontrollable," Pitch exclaims, his voice echoing from everywhere at once. "Fear is immortal and intimate in ways only I can understand."
Jack pulls himself painfully to his feet and takes off running, his breath coming in harsh pants. There's a weight on his limbs that tells him he won't be able to fly or hop down here, so he doesn't even waste time trying. Pitch's shadow returns and corners him against a cobblestone wall.
"Something made you this way, Jack," Pitch says, and Jack fights down the childish urge to squeeze his eyes shut. "You want to know what you're afraid of?" A laugh permeates the air like cigarette smoke, and Jack shivers. "Your greatest fear? It's that you're like this for a reason. It's that no one will ever accept you because of who you are. Not your believers, not the Man in the Moon, and especially not the Guardians."
Jack bares his teeth. "Shut up!" he shouts roughly. His vision is starting to go red around the corners, from fear or anger he can't tell, and he knows that he's close to shifting into the Pumpkin King. He holds it back, but just barely.
"You're scared there's a reason the Man in the Moon put you here with no memories and not a single friend in the world," Pitch continues. He appears suddenly, in that jarring way he has, and looms over Jack, half in and half out of shadow. He looks like a shark, with his sharp teeth and grey skin and his unsettling yellow eyes, but Jack holds his ground, even when Pitch holds the tooth box out like an offering.
"Would you like them, Jack?" he asks softly. "Your memories? The answers to every question you've had over the course of your miserable life?"
"Miserable?" Jack says, offended. Pitch chuckles and disappears.
"Why are you like this, Jack?" he asks, and try as he might, Jack can't pinpoint where his voice is coming from. He spins in place, looking from corner to corner almost desperately, his chest heaving and his heart pounding against his ribs. "Virtually unseen, totally unloved?"
Jack becomes aware of just how vulnerable he is right now. He's in Pitch's domain, and Pitch is right: Jack may work with shadows and fear, but Pitch is shadows and fear. He's sustained by them, has practically been raised by them, and he has the upper hand here. It's pointless for Jack to try to hide his fear; he's certain Pitch can sense it.
"Stop it, stop it!" Jack shouts, both at Pitch and at the niggling doubts that hover always in the back of his mind. Right now, they're starting to sound exactly the same.
"The Guardians will never accept you, Jack, not really," Pitch coos. "After all, you're not one of them."
Pitch appears; Jack aims his staff at him immediately, relieved to finally have a solid target.
"You don't know what I am," he growls.
"Of course I do," Pitch says, scoffing. "You're Jack O'Lantern, the Pumpkin King, the Spirit of Halloween. You bring fear and destruction and nightmares wherever you go." He tosses the tooth box to Jack carelessly, and Jack fumbles as he catches it. "In fact, you're doing it right now."
Realization makes dread pool in the pit of Jack's stomach. "What did you do?" he asks.
"I think the question is what did you do?" Pitch replies, melting into the shadows behind him with a quiet laugh. Jack growls and gives chase once again, but the darkness disorients him. His staff glows a bright, angry orange as he whirls around, searching for Pitch. When his eyes finally adjust to the light, he finds himself facing a large stone seal.
He slams his hands against it angrily, then gasps with realization. "Baby Tooth!" he exclaims, but there's no way for him to get back into Pitch's domain. He's well and truly locked out. Panic threatens to sink in, but Jack pushes it down and turns around, intending to explore wherever he's found himself.
Something sharp and brittle is crushed under his foot when he takes a step, and Jack hisses in pain and quickly dances back. His face goes slack with shock at the trail of shattered, colored eggshells he finds spreading out before him. He recognizes this place now; it's one of Bunny's tunnels.
"Easter," Jack breathes, horrified. "Oh, no."
He takes off running down the tunnel, avoiding the eggshells as best as he can. They hurt when he steps on them, and besides that, he can't help but feel as though walking on them would be disrespectful. He's already responsible for their destruction; to step on them would be to add insult to injury.
As he passes a hole in the ceiling of the tunnel that opens up onto the surface, the Wind finds him with a shriek and lifts him bodily into the air. Jack tightens his hold on his staff and shoots down the tunnel as fast as he can go, hoping beyond hope for—something. A miracle, maybe.
The tunnel curves sharply upwards, and Jack follows it and finds himself in a wood somewhere. He lands softly on the grass and heads towards the sound of voices, trepidation nearly making him sweat. Walking around a large tree at just the right moment, he sees the heartbreaking sight of a child walking through the Easter Bunny.
"Oh, God," Jack whispers to himself. He watches with wide eyes as Bunny's ears drop. He sits all the way back and curls his body around the egg in his hands, and looks so defeated that Jack finds himself starting forward before he realizes what he's doing. North interrupts him before he can get more than a few steps closer.
"Jack!" he shouts, and Jack flinches and turns around to find North standing there with his swords drawn, dressed in his black-trimmed coat instead of his white-trimmed one. "Where were you?"
"I was-" Jack starts, but he doesn't know how to finish. He shakes his head. "What happened?"
"The Nightmares attacked the tunnels," North says, abnormally subdued. "They smashed every egg, crushed every basket. Nothing made it to the surface." He plants his swords in the ground and leans on them, looking just as defeated as Bunny.
Tooth flits over to them and immediately notices the tooth box held almost forgotten in Jack's hand.
"Where did you get that?" she asks, and then perks up with realization and looks around. "Where's Baby Tooth?"
Jack stammers and looks up at her, unsure of what to say to prove his own innocence.
"Oh, Jack," she gasps, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. "What have you done?"
"That is why you weren't here?" North demands angrily. "You were with Pitch?"
"I'm sorry," Jack says helplessly. "I didn't mean for this to happen."
Bunny walks up to them, clearly having heard their conversation. He looks betrayed, and he won't even look Jack in the eye. Jack feels his heart break all over again.
"He knows Manny chose him to be a Guardian," he says. His voice is absolutely inflectionless. "I told him after Sandy's funeral."
"And now you know why we didn't want you," Tooth says, her feathers puffing up angrily. "You don't care about kids or maintaining balance; you sacrificed everything we do for your own selfish goals!"
North brings his swords up and starts towards Jack menacingly. "Give me one reason-" he says, but Bunny pushes him back.
"Enough!" he growls, his ears all the way back. "That isn't who you are anymore."
North reluctantly backs down, but he doesn't stop glaring.
"Bunny," Jack says helplessly.
"No, you shut up and listen to me," Bunny says heatedly, finally looking Jack in the eye. His brief flare of anger disappears as quickly as it appeared. Bunny looks close to tears. "Easter isn't just a holiday, and you of all people should know that. It's. . . new beginnings, new life. It's about hope, and now it's gone. This was our last chance to stop Pitch; we're the only ones standing between him and a world ruled by fear, and now no one even believes in us."
"Bunny, I'm sorry," Jack says pleadingly. "I was—Pitch, he—I couldn't—" Jack takes a shuddery breath. "I didn't mean for this to happen," he says. "And I didn't mean to lose Baby Tooth."
"It doesn't matter what you meant, Jack!" Bunny exclaims, and Jack flinches back. Bunny catches himself, and when he next speaks, his voice is quieter. "We trusted you. I trusted you. And now I'm wondering if I ever should have."
Pain shoots through Jack's chest like ice, and he feels his eyes sting with unshed tears. "Fine," he says coldly. "If you're willing to give up two centuries of friendship over one day-"
"Easter isn't just a day! It's part of who I am, Jack, and you're the only one who can stand up ta Pitch one on one, and you weren't here! We had an agreement, didn't we, that we'd always help with each other's holidays? What, you think this doesn't count or something?"
Jack's hands clench into fists. He's so angry he feels like he might burst, so instead of saying something he knows he'll regret, he crouches and pushes himself into the air, flying off so fast that the cheap banner strung between two trees rips right in half.
He can't find it in himself to care.
Jack flies all the way back to North America in only a few hours. He never makes the conscious effort to do so, but somehow he touches down near his pond in Burgess.
"The place where it all started," he mutters to himself. "How appropriate."
"Indeed," says a silky voice from behind him, and Jack spins around, bringing his staff up in the same movement. He isn't surprised to see Pitch standing there across the pond, the glow of the setting sun casting strange shadows that make the planes of his face seem even sharper.
Jack doesn't even hesitate before attacking. He launches himself across the water like a bullet, the wind screaming in his ears, and swings his staff at Pitch, who dodges easily. Stopping so suddenly that his vision blacks out for a second, Jack turns and aims a kick at the Nightmare King's stomach that forces him to lunge backward; in the same instant, Pitch pulls nightmare sand from nowhere and shoots it at Jack, who's forced to take to the air to avoid it.
Power gathers under Jack's skin as his fury builds, and this time he lets the Pumpkin King take over. He clenches his hands into fists; fire erupts over his skin and crawls up his arms without burning him, and he's surprised in some distant part of his mind. Without even thinking about it, he launches a fireball at Pitch, who brings up a wall of sand to block it.
"Enough!" Pitch snarls. "Don't fight me, Jack. We belong on the same team!"
The sand explodes and fills the air with a brief cloud of black smoke, and the Pumpkin King uses the distraction to attack. He drops from the air like a stone and lands hard where Pitch had been only a second before; cracks spread over the ground from the point of impact.
"We belong in our proper places," the Pumpkin King says, turning slowly as he searches for Pitch. "There is a balance that must be maintained!"
"Well, what if the balance is wrong?" Pitch's voice asks. The voice's owner is nowhere to be found, and the Pumpkin King tightens his grip on his staff. The fire on his hands spreads over the wood but doesn't burn it, and the Pumpkin King twirls the staff experimentally. The flames don't go out. "Aren't you tired of being second to the Guardians? Of having almost no believers and not nearly as much power as you have the potential to wield?"
"Aren't you tired of hearing your own voice?" the Pumpkin King retorts. It appears Pitch is done fighting at the moment, as after a few moments he's nowhere to be found. The Pumpkin King shrinks back into Jack O'Lantern, though interestingly enough the flames remain on his hands and staff. With a little concentration, he manages to snuff them out, though he can feel heat thrumming underneath his skin alongside his anger.
"Jack," Pitch purrs, melting out of the shadows, "you and I are alike in more ways than you think. Who else understands the pain of having next to no one believe in you, of longing for acceptance and a family?" Pitch's voice shows genuine hurt for a moment, but it's gone so quickly that Jack wonders if he imagined it. "Besides," Pitch continues smoothly. "What goes together better than fear and the dark? Look at what we can do together!"
He gestures towards the ground a few feet away from them, and despite himself, Jack looks. Spreading across the ground in a large spiral is a thin layer of half-burnt nightmare sand, interspersed with tiny glowing coals. The overall effect is, admittedly, beautiful, but Jack feels nothing but disgust when he looks at it.
"Don't you ever know when to quit?" he asks irritatedly.
"Careful, Jack," Pitch says. "I may be in a good mood after this year's Easter disaster, but that could change in an instant."
"Wow," Jack says dryly. "Vague threats. How original. You forget, Pitch, that I've worked with you for centuries. I'm not scared of you."
"No, I suppose not," Pitch says, sounding unconcerned. He holds up a fist, and at first Jack is too far away to see what he's holding, but then Pitch squeezes the whatever-it-is, and a familiar voice rings out into the clearing, tinged with pain.
"Baby Tooth!" Jack exclaims. He narrows his eyes at Pitch. "Let her go!"
"Not until you give me the staff," Pitch snarls angrily. "I'd hoped to keep you out of this as long as possible, but you've interfered with my plans quite enough. And you've made it clear which side you fight for."
"I fight for no one but myself," Jack says, but he can't tear his eyes away from Baby Tooth's anguished face.
"Give me the staff," Pitch says, each word short and clipped and angry. "And I'll give you back the fairy."
Baby Tooth shakes her head frantically. Jack squeezes his eyes shut, his mind a brief war between opposing desires. After a moment of hesitation, he tosses the staff to Pitch, who snatches it out of the air with one hand. The glowing patterns die out instantly.
"Now let her go," Jack says, and Pitch smiles with too many sharp teeth.
"No," he says simply. "You wanted to be alone, so be alone!"
With an angry cry, Baby Tooth jabs her sharp beak into Pitch's hand, and he snarls and throws her into the middle of the pond.
"Baby Tooth!" Jack shouts, but before he can do more than blink, Pitch has grasped the staff with both hands. He brings it down over his knee, snapping the wood in half in one smooth motion. Agony bursts to life in Jack's chest, so strong and unexpected that he screams. He falls to his knees, clutching at his chest, and is completely defenseless when Pitch's nightmare sand rushes towards him and smacks him carelessly into the pond.
The impact knocks the wind out of him, and he's sure his chest and stomach are going to be a mess of bruises later, but at least the chilly water is enough to shock him back to awareness. He pushes his way inelegantly to the surface, wheezing desperately for air and looking around warily, but Pitch is nowhere to be found. The two halves of Jack's staff lie abandoned near the edge of the water.
Jack's eyes widen in sudden realization, and he takes as deep a breath as he can before diving back down into the pond. The water is clean and clear, and the moonlight shines bright enough for Jack to see pretty far down. He remembers waking up under the surface of the water on the night the Moon gave him his name; he remembers the terror of not being able to breathe, of realizing that he was dead, of becoming aware of his lack of memories. He pushes the fear down and focuses on finding Baby Tooth.
After a few moments, his lungs start to protest the lack of air. He was already having trouble breathing thanks to Pitch's attack, and so he couldn't take as deep a breath as he wanted. The urge to breathe is persistent. He forces himself to keep diving, though, because Baby Tooth is down here and he'll be damned if he leaves her a second time.
He finds her sinking slowly towards the bottom of the pond, still struggling weakly for the surface. Relief that she's alive and awake makes Jack release some of the tension in his shoulders, but his chest is practically screaming with pain. He gives up on any pretense of elegance and carefully grabs Baby Tooth, then holds her close to his chest and claws his way back to the surface.
When his head breaks the surface, he sucks in a huge breath that sends him into a violent coughing fit. In his hand, Baby Tooth coughs and splutters and vomits up water, shivering like crazy. Jack swims to the bank and pulls himself out, then collapses face first onto the ground with Baby Tooth huddled close to his neck for warmth. She's still shivering, which is a good sign; she'll probably get sick because of this, but at least he doesn't have to worry about her becoming hypothermic.
He forces himself to his hands and knees, and then to his feet. Baby Tooth rides on his shoulder, too exhausted and wet to fly. With sluggish movements, Jack walks to the nearest tree and drops onto his butt in front of it, leaning against the thick trunk. As carefully as he can so that he doesn't disturb Baby Tooth, he pulls off his soaking wet vest and tosses it away, then guides Baby Tooth onto his palm so he can cradle her close to his chest.
"What a mess," Jack sighs. Baby Tooth gives a quavering squeak that Jack takes as agreement. She sneezes violently and Jack shifts her closer to his skin, hoping to at least warm her up. She's not nearly large enough for her body heat to help him, but he doesn't much mind at the moment.
Closing his eyes and leaning back against the tree, Jack thinks back on the past—has it really been three days? With everything that's happened, it feels like it's only been a few hours since he first found the Guardians out collecting teeth in Europe. He hasn't slept in all that time, and while beings like him don't need to sleep as much as mortals do, he still feels exhausted and sore, both physically and mentally.
The Wind curls around him tentatively, but all it does is make Jack shiver and pull his knees up to his chest. At least it's not winter; he's used to nippy weather, and in fact, this spring is shaping up to be a little warmer than he'd prefer, but snow could kill him just as easily as it could a human.
Tears prick at Jack's eyes suddenly, and he looks up to try and fight them back. Baby Tooth notices immediately and chatters at him with concern.
"I'm fine, Baby Tooth," he says. "I just…. Pitch was right." Admitting it out loud makes his eyes well up even more and overflow, and he hurriedly wipes the tears from his cheeks, but more follow. "I make a mess out of everything. I couldn't save Sandy, I couldn't protect Easter, I couldn't even notice was Pitch has been doing all these years."
And it has been years that Pitch has been planning. Corrupting dreamsand can't have been easy, and especially not if Pitch was only doing it dream by dream. Jack though the commercialization of Hallowe'en was due to humans becoming desensitized to fear because of an overabundance of fear in their cultures, but maybe it was the opposite. Now that he thinks about it, Pitch had been suspiciously absent for the past decade or so; Jack and Pitch never strolled down the streets together while they worked or anything, but they at least checked in on each other around Hallowe'en.
Baby Tooth puffs up angrily and says something that sounds like scolding. In the next instant she softens slightly and pats Jack's face, so he can only assume that she's trying to convince him that it isn't his fault. And he had done his best with all of this, considering he's not a Guardian, but surely the lack of results means he's lacking in some way, and not that the circumstances were out of his control.
Right?
Jack blinks back to awareness when Baby Tooth climbs down his torso and disappears into the pocket he'd sewn onto the front of his shirt. He realizes that he's frowning, and he forces himself to relax. He shivers again and looks longingly at the pieces of his staff. The wood isn't the source of his power, so while his control over fire is an extremely new thing, there has to be a way for him to access it on his own.
The staff makes it about a hundred times easier, but it's not as if he's never had to work without his staff before, and each time he's managed it. He just hopes he doesn't set himself on fire. Taking a deep breath, he closes his eyes and focuses.
Unfamiliar but still recognizable as his, fire pulses in time with his heartbeat. With bated breath—metaphorically, of course—Jack prods at the fire. He doesn't dare try wielding it with his staff out of commission, but it seems the prod was enough to do the trick. He can feel his body temperature rising, enough that his wet clothes should dry off soon enough. His lips quirk up in a self-satisfied smile that drops off his face almost as soon as it arrived, because an autumn spirit shouldn't be able to wield fire.
"That's a summer element," he says. True, there is a lot of overlap when it comes to lower level elementals—rain comes to mind, as do the barely sentient spirits of all manner of storms and natural phenomena—but Jack is a major spirit in the Autumn Suite and his powers should be strictly autumn.
Jack jolts when he hears a voice calling his name. A familiar voice. He looks down at his shirt pocket, where he'd shoved his tooth box, and jerks back violently with a yelp when he sees the golden glow emanating from it.
"Jack!" the voice calls again, and Jack pulls his teeth out with a trembling hand. Baby Tooth emerges and perches on his knee, and when he looks from the box to her, she nods at him encouragingly and places one of her tiny hands on the lid of the box. Hesitating for the slightest of seconds, Jack touches the box, and his world dissolves into an explosion of color.
The failed Easter scene in the movie spawned a lot of fics about Jack being righteously angry at the Guardians for accusing him of betraying them. The Guardians are often painted as being negligent or even dismissive of Jack's anger, but when I watched the scene again, I noticed that a.) Jack doesn't do a very good job of defending himself, so it's understandable that the Guardians jump to conclusions, and b.) Bunny looks devastated after that kid walks through him.
Plus, with Jack O'Lantern being a holiday spirit himself, he should have a better idea of just how much Easter means to Bunny. You'd think he'd be more sympathetic, huh?