Jack holds a tooth in his hand. It's the third one he's lost, and this one, unlike the other two, hurt when it came out. His parents crouch on either side of him.
"You're brave for not crying," his father says.
"Aye," his mother agrees in her beautiful accent. "And she's a beauty, too. I'm sure the tooth that grows in'll be plenty sharp and white."
Wiping at his stinging eyes, Jack smiles.
Almost the entire village comes to the wedding. Even old Mary Joan Smith, who creaks when she walks, is there, smiling so widely her eyes nearly disappear among her wrinkles. Jack fidgets his way through the ceremony, uncomfortably hot in his best Sunday clothes. His younger siblings aren't any better, but Jack is the only one who doesn't complain. He's holding out hope of getting a taste of that cake, after all.
Afterward, when the mingling is beginning to die down and everyone is starting to make their way home, Jack sneaks out to the back of the church to look for fireflies. He hears laughter before he sees anyone, and he creeps quietly up to the side of the barn and peers around the corner. His sister and her newlywed husband are there, standing close together. She's weaving flowers into his hair, and their smiles are wide enough to see even in the darkening evening.
Jack watches them and finds himself smiling, too.
He's the only boy to help with the birth of his youngest sister, but he can't do much more than haul water and fetch towels. The old mother from the house a mile west is there acting as midwife, while Jack's father is a steady presence at his mother's side.
The labor lasts hours. Eventually, Jack's oldest sister comes to take care of all the children while their parents are busy. They don't worry about anything but the most important of the chores, and they're in bed almost as soon as the dinner dishes are cleaned and put away.
When the baby's first cries pierce through the stillness of the night, Jack is the first one at his mother's side. She's crying, but this happened at the birth of the twins (and, Jack has been told, at the birth of all of his siblings) so he isn't worried. He goes to where his father and the midwife are wrapping something in blankets.
The baby is wrinkly, and slimy, and the ugliest thing Jack's ever seen, and as soon as he lays eyes on it, he knows that the baby will steal his heart right out of his chest, and he won't do a single thing to stop it.
"Jack," his sister whimpers, "I'm scared."
Jack can't think of anything to do except to play the pretending game they'd made up to help chores go by faster. Jack makes faces and does voices and adopts accents he makes up on the spot, and eventually, she laughs despite herself.
She manages two trembling steps with her skates before the ice starts to shift underneath her, and Jack reaches out with his shepherd's crook and snags her around the waist, quick as a snake. He drags her away from the cracks by throwing himself towards them, and he's relieved for only a second before the ice gives way beneath him, plunging him into icy darkness.
It was only Samhain, too early in the year for the ice to be thick enough for skating, and he should have known that. Still, while it isn't quite cold enough for the pond to freeze completely, it's plenty cold enough to kill someone.
Jack comes back to himself with a gasp, twenty years of memories suddenly there inside his head where before there was nothing. His mind feels too full for a moment, and in the time it takes him to adjust to all the knowledge he's gained, he squeezes his eyes shut and breathes through the pain.
But then his eyes snap open and pain is pushed to the back of his mind as excitement takes over. No, not just excitement; ecstasy runs through his veins.
"Did you see that?" he demands, but Baby Tooth shakes her head. Jack lets out a loud laugh anyway. "I had a family! I had a sister! And I—" He stops and looks up at the Moon. "I saved her. That's why you chose me, isn't it? Because I've always been a Guardian."
The Moon doesn't respond, but this time, Jack can't find it in himself to mind. Baby Tooth squeaks at him inquiringly.
"Now I'm going to help the Guardians stop Pitch," Jack says determinedly. He looks around wildly until he sees the pieces of his staff, and then he dives towards them, sending Baby Tooth sprawling. Being so close to him while he was expelling so much heat must have done her good; instead of landing on the ground, she tumbles through the air but stays airborne, her wings finally dry enough to support her. Jack's clothes are mostly dry, too, but he only notices that in the back of his mind, too focused on the task at hand to worry about such trivial details.
He grasps the two halves of his staff tightly, immeasurably relieved that the break is clean; this would've been a million times more time-consuming if he'd had to search for tiny splinters in the dark. He fits the two halves of the staff together and closes his eyes, slowing his breathing down until each inhale and exhale takes several seconds. He reaches blindly for that familiar thread of magic that connects him to the staff, and once he finds it, he grabs on and doesn't let go, even when enough energy rushes through him to knock him down.
Behind his closed eyelids, orange light flashes bright enough to make him see shapes and colors against the blackness, and only once that glow dies down does he open his eyes. Twinetender is completely healed, with not even a hairline fracture to show where the break had been. Fire immediately erupts over his hands and spreads to cover the staff, and Jack laughs breathlessly.
"Wind!" he shouts, and the Wind swirls around him excitedly. "Take me to Pitch's lair!"
The Wind snatches him up and tosses him into the air. Jack pauses long enough to scoop Baby Tooth out of the sky, and then he focuses his attention on the flight across Burgess. It is, admittedly, a short flight, but it's enough to get his blood pumping and his spirit invigorated. He spots the bed that marks the entrance to Pitch's lair and lands heavily on the protruding branch of a nearby tree, and then he pushes off in a huge, arching jump.
A sudden urge takes him, and as he's coming down from the apex of the arc, he swings his staff and pushes hard with his magic. A fireball sparks to life and flies at the bed frame, destroying it in an explosion of splinters and dirt just before Jack drops into the hole with a mad cackle.
"Pitch!" he shouts, his voice echoing like thunder around the cavern. "Come out and face me, you bastard!" There's no answer except for Baby Tooth zipping up to him, shaking her head. "He isn't here?" Jack guesses. He looks around. "All right, then. Plan B."
He leaps and lands on one of the cages hanging from the ceiling. The mini fairies all start chattering at him at once, and Jack leaps from cage to cage, opening the doors. It takes him a while to notice that none of them are leaving. Jack looks around; though their wings are buzzing half-heartedly, all of the fairies remain on their bird perches.
"None of you can fly?" he demands, and they all shake their heads. Baby Tooth's wings buzz angrily. Jack looks around, searching for inspiration, a solution, anything, and he catches sight of gold light glinting off of the wall. A flash of memory surfaces from his first time in Pitch's lair; he'd seen something as he chased the Nightmare King around, but at the time he'd been too angry and focused for the sight to register in his mind.
"Stay here," he tells Baby Tooth, and then he drops to the floor and darts over towards the glow. Upon a pedestal in the center of a small side cavern, a golden globe rests on a stand. Jack grins and hops up to land on top of the globe. It's smaller than North's had been, but it seems to work the same if the lights are anything to go by. Except….
Except there's only one light left. Jack frowns and inspects the rest of the globe, but no, only one of the lights is shining.
"No Easter eggs, two days without any Tooth Fairy visits, no good dreams…" Jack murmurs to himself. He isn't surprised that belief is dropping. He's surprised that it's happening so fast. He looks at the lone light again. It's situated in the United States, in a very familiar area. That's Pennsylvania, and in fact, that might just be Burgess, which means….
"Jamie!"
Jack perches outside of Jamie's window. It's cracked just enough for Jamie's voice to carry outside easily, and Jack moves slowly as he enters the room so as not to miss any of what the boy is saying.
"I've believed in you for a long time. Like, my whole life, in fact." Jack has to smile at that, even as he creeps towards Jamie's bed. "So you kind of owe me."
The well-loved stuffed rabbit on Jamie's bed doesn't so much as twitch, and as cute as it is, Jack has to wonder how children's minds work sometimes. Why would the Easter Bunny be connected to a simple stuffed animal?
"Please," Jamie says, his tone wheedling, "just give me a small sign. Anything to let me know that you're real."
Even though he knows better, Jack finds himself just as tense as Jamie is, the both of them waiting with bated breath for something to happen. After a few moments, of course, the rabbit is still right where it was before, and Jamie sighs and flops back onto the bed. Jack decides to take matters into his own hands.
His control over shadow is limited, and his control over fire is new, but these are drastic circumstances. The Guardians' very lives depend on this one child, and while Jack may be mad at them, he doesn't want them to die.
He snaps and a tiny flame sparks to life in his hand, just barely bigger than a candle flame. It's bright enough to cast shadows on the wall opposite Jamie's bed and to get the boy's attention even through his closed eyelids. Jack moves the flame behind the desk chair sitting innocently in the middle of the room and then reaches out with his magic and grabs hold of the chair's shadow.
Jamie gasps when the shadow starts to shift, but Jack doesn't look back at him. All of his concentration is going into keeping the flames and shadows under control. With a bit of mental prompting, the shadow shrinks and becomes a fat rabbit that hops and dances around on the wall. The rabbit reaches behind its back and pulls out a boomerang, then throws it. The shadow-boomerang whirls around on the wall for a bit before returning to the rabbit, who leaps up to catch it and is yanked along by the boomerang's momentum.
Jamie laughs. "I knew it!" he says, delighted. "You really are real!"
"Oh, he's real, all right," Jack says, and then laughs at himself. Jamie looks over at him, his smile fading a bit. Jack shifts uncomfortably, even though he knows Jamie can only barely see a shadow and not Jack himself.
"Is someone there?" Jamie asks hesitantly, sounding a little afraid, and Jack frowns. He doesn't mind the kids not believing in him—he has enough believers that his powers are bolstered and his ego is stroked—but the one thing he doesn't want is for people to genuinely be afraid of him.
"Yeah, kid," Jack sighs. "Someone's here."
He takes hold of the rabbit again and morphs it, this time into a tall, skeletal figure with wide, empty eye sockets and a Cheshire Cat grin.
"A skeleton?" Jamie says, tilting his head in confusion. Jack smiles and adds another figure to his wall art, a shorter female figure that plucks a string from its wrist and then catches its hand when the appendage falls off. "Oh! The Nightmare Before Christmas!"
"Exactly," Jack says proudly. The movie may be getting older, but he's glad to see that it's still popular with the kids. He's unprepared for the way Jamie's eyes snap to him.
"So," Jamie says, eyebrows furrowed, "who are you?"
Jack banishes the second shadow figure and leaves only the skeleton. Then, for good measure, he adds a grinning jack o'lantern.
"Jack Skellington?" Jamie says, which is close enough to who Jack actually is, apparently, for that to count as belief. Jamie's mouth drops when he looks over at Jack again. "Jack Skellington! I thought you'd be… taller."
"Can you see me now, kid?" Jack asks excitedly. Jamie nods, and Jack beams at him. "I'm not Jack Skellington, or at least not the way you're thinking of. The Nightmare Before Christmas was a movie based off of me, but that isn't who I am. My name is Jack O'Lantern. I'm the Spirit of Hallowe'en."
"Cool!" Jamie enthuses. Then he frowns. "So, wait. The Easter Bunny…?"
"Real," Jack says. "And so is Santa, and the Tooth Fairy, and the—the Sandman." His smile dims somewhat. "We're all real."
"I knew I wasn't dreaming," Jamie whispers. "What's going on, Jack?"
Jack is distracted from answering by a familiar racket coming from outside. He rushes over and looks out the window, and can't stop the smile from spreading across his face.
"The Boogeyman is loose," Jack tells Jamie. "The others and I are trying to stop him, and you're going to help. Meet me outside, okay?"
He flies off before Jamie can answer, and lands on the street outside just in time to see the sleigh land less-than-gracefully in front of him. Violent cursing in what Jack assumes to be Russian erupts as the harnesses binding the reindeer to the sleigh snap, leaving the animals to canter off down the street.
"Jack!" a familiar voice exclaims. Tooth nearly falls over in her haste to get to him, and as soon as she's close enough she throws herself at him and wraps her arms around his shoulders. He hugs her back tightly. "I'm so glad to see you again!"
North carefully climbs out of the wreckage of the sleigh, looking more like an old man than Jack's ever seen him. "What are you doing here?" he asks wonderingly.
Jack smiles. "Same as you," he says, looking over his shoulder towards where Jamie is running across his yard.
"The last light," North says softly. Jamie comes to a stop next to Jack, panting slightly.
"Wow!" he says, stars in his eyes. "It's really you!"
"Wait a minute," Jack says, looking around. "Where's Bunny?"
Tooth and North exchange meaningful looks.
"Losing Easter took its toll on all of us," North says slowly, and Tooth's wings flutter half-heartedly as if in agreement. "Bunny worst of all."
He looks over his shoulder, and when Jack follows his gaze, he notices a small, grey fluff ball sitting on the wing of the sleigh that he hadn't noticed before.
"Oh, no," he groans softly.
"That's not the Easter Bunny," Jamie says, walking up to the sleigh. "The Easter Bunny's tall and cool, and this guy is… cute." He reaches out a finger to scratch at Bunny's chin, and Jack has to stifle slightly hysterical laughter when Bunny's eyes shut halfway in bliss and he leans into the contact, his foot thumping. After a moment, he comes back to himself and bats Jamie's hand away in irritation.
"That's it," Bunny growls, hopping off the sleigh and onto the ground. "I'm sick of this! I used to be intimidating!" He catches sight of Jack's grin and whirls on him, pointing with his paw. "And don't you smirk at me, you bloody drongo. You probably told him to scratch me like I'm some kind of pet!"
Jack's eyes widen at the genuine hurt in Bunny's tone and he opens his mouth to say something, but Jamie beats him to it.
"No, actually, he told me you were real," he says, looking a little sheepish. "Just when I was starting to think that maybe you weren't."
Bunny looks up at Jamie in shock. "He made you believe? In me?" His gaze flicks to Jack, and he looks so touched that Jack has to fight back the urge to coo at him. It's not entirely his fault; Bunny's adorable like this, with his little nose and his big ears and his oversized feet. In fact, he doesn't look entirely like a regular rabbit, but rather like a child version of what he normally looks like, albeit a child still growing into their limbs.
The tender moment is broken when a sudden clap of thunder makes Bunny yelp and flinch. They all look up and see an ominous black cloud floating amongst the regular grey ones currently blanketing the sky. Another peal of thunder, this time accompanied by lightning, outlines the shifting mass of sand in the sky that is decidedly not a cloud. Jack bares his teeth and tightens his grip on his staff.
"Get Jamie out of here," he says.
"Jack, be careful," North replies, and the two nod at each other before Jack streaks off into the sky.
"You have a habit of showing up where you're not wanted, I've noticed," Pitch says as Jack draws closer. He sounds amused but not surprised. "Let's end this, shall we?"
He falls backward and spirals towards Jack with the entirety of his nightmare sand horde at his heels. Jack lets his power gather under his skin and he lets it loose in the form of a rapid-fire barrage of fireballs. Pitch merely laughs and waves a hand, and the fireballs fizzle out before they even touch him, as if they're hitting an invisible barrier.
"That little trick won't work on me anymore," Pitch gloats. He throws his hand towards Jack, palm up, and the nightmare sand streams past him. Jack dodges the first thrust but is too slow to avoid the second wave, which slams into him with all the force of a hurricane. Jack goes flying through the air, too insensible to even try and catch himself. He slams into something hard enough that his vision goes black for a moment.
When he wakes up again, the Guardians and Jamie are crowded around him, peering down at him worriedly. He groans and pulls himself to his feet, leaning heavily on his staff. Pitch's shadow glides by, laughing.
"All this fuss," he says, "over one little boy, and still he refuses to stop believing." Jack instinctively pushes Jamie behind him, his expression darkening as a surge of protectiveness flares to life within him. "No matter. There are other ways to snuff out a light."
As he speaks, shadows pass over the streetlights, blowing them out one by one. It's a smart tactic, both to create fear and to cripple Jack even further, for without light, there won't be any shadows for him to manipulate.
"If you want him, you're gonna have to go through me," Bunny says. Pitch laughs.
"Look how fluffy you are," he coos. "Would you like a scratch behind the ears?"
Bunny's fur fluffs up until he's twice his actual size, and he hurriedly hops back and up into Jack's hands.
"Don't you even think about it!" he snarls.
Pitch appears in the flesh, then, riding astride the largest Nightmare Jack's ever seen. Flanking him on either side are countless others, snorting madly and stamping their hooves with barely concealed restraint. As their shadows grow, spreading towards the light rather than away from it, Jamie presses close against Jack's leg.
"Jack," he whispers. "I'm scared."
Jack flinches a bit as echoes from a life long past swirl through his head. Even though he knows he shouldn't, he looks at Jamie and sees his youngest sister standing awkwardly on that pond, and the same protectiveness he felt over her comes back with a vengeance. He drops to one knee and shifts Bunny to the crook of his arm so he can place a hand on Jamie's shoulder.
"It'll be okay, Jamie, I promise," he says. "We're going to… we're going to have a little fun."
A grin slowly spreads across his face as a crazy, half-formed plan works itself out in his mind. He smiles reassuringly, though judging from Jamie's expression, he comes off a little deranged instead.
"So what do you think, Jamie?" Pitch says softly, as Jack stands up and calls on long-unused power. "Do you believe in—"
"In the Boogeyman?" Jack finishes in an exaggeratedly haughty voice. Jamie looks up at him and bursts into laughter, then slaps a hand over his mouth. Jack grins down at him with sharp teeth and laughs at the Guardians' shocked expressions.
"Jack?" Tooth says.
"I'm a shapeshifter, Tooth," Jack replies in a perfect replica of Pitch's voice. "A nightmare with great hair. Fear me!"
North guffaws and slaps Jack on the back hard enough to send him stumbling forward a step or two. "Is very funny, my friend," he says. Pitch growls, and Jack growls back and flings a ball of fake nightmare sand at him. It's nothing more than some gravel Jack found on the ground (with a healthy dose of his signature laughter magic thrown in) but it distracts Pitch enough to give the Guardians time to escape.
"Let's go get your friends," Jack tells Jamie, grinning as he returns to his own shape. Jamie smiles back and races down the street, leading the way. North can't do more than hobble along and Tooth obviously isn't used to walking, so Jack doubles back and tells them to find a place to hide before he flies after Jamie with Bunny clutched tightly in his arms.
"Oh, strewth!" Bunny yelps as Jack suddenly dives and snatches Jamie up by the back of his shirt. Jamie laughs when Jack tosses him up into the air and then catches him around the waist instead. "Jack! Be careful, you show pony."
"Careful's my middle name, Cottontail," Jack says and follows Jamie's directions to get to his friends' houses.
The shadows reach out to him as he flies by, responding to the joy he gives off by forming into random Hallowe'en themed shapes that shift and dance like flames. This, plus the sight of Jamie hovering in the air seemingly on his own, is enough to get the kids to believe in him. There are gasps and calls of his name—his real name, once Jamie corrects them—as they follow him out onto the street.
"You're a real ace at this gathering believers thing, aren't you?" Bunny says, smiling up at Jack as they fly down the street with a group of kids at their heels.
"Maybe," Jack says. "It helps that these kids are particularly strong believers." And he should know; Burgess is one of his favorite places to be during holidays because of how spirited its kids are.
Jack pulls to a sudden stop when the sky lights up with lightning. A moment later, thunder booms, so loud in the sky that Jack's ears ring when it's finished. He quickly joins the kids on the ground and puts Bunny down so he can better wield his staff.
Up on the roof of a building directly in front of them, Pitch sits on his Nightmare. When he speaks, his voice carries easily over the distance though he doesn't appear to be shouting. "You think a few children can help you against this?" He raises his arms and a tidal wave of nightmare sand rises behind him, writhing against invisible constraints as lightning flashes in the sky above them.
Jack's grip tightens around his staff. "They're just bad dreams," he tells the kids. "They can't hurt you."
"Oh, can't they?" Pitch asks mockingly. His Nightmare neighs and tosses its head, as if mimicking its creator.
"We'll protect you, mate" Bunny promises, and despite his size, his voice is full of confidence. Jack supposes that centuries of being a badass are hard to shake, even when powerless.
Pitch laughs. "But who'll protect you?" he crows, and Jack scowls. He and Bunny exchange angry looks, and jack steps forward.
"I will."
Jack blinks in shock at Jamie as the boy walks in front of Jack and Bunny, staring up at Pitch challengingly. He turns to look over his shoulder at Jack and smiles. After a moment, Jack smiles back.
"I will," Cupcake growls, stalking forward to stand at Jamie's side.
"I will," says Pippa, pushing her shoulders back and crossing her arms to hide how her hands are trembling.
Bunny and Jack exchange awed, touched looks as one by one the kids step forward, forming a wall between the two spirits and Pitch, who scoffs in disgust.
"Still think there's no such thing as the Boogeyman?" Pitch says, and as if that's some sort of signal, the tidal wave of sand suddenly falls forward and rushes towards them with a sound like a stampede.
"Jack, the kids!" Bunny shouts, and Jack hurriedly starts herding the kids behind him. He has no idea what he's going to do since it seems the Nightmares are immune to his fire now, but the sand will have to swarm over his cold, dead body before they touch one of those kids. He looks up and notices that Jamie hasn't moved, and is staring up at Pitch with a calculating look on his face.
"Jamie, come here!" Jack shouts.
Jamie ignores him, and ignores the way Bunny is headbutting his legs, trying to get him to move. "I do believe in you," Jamie shouts. "I'm just not afraid of you!"
The Nightmares don't cease their relentless charge. Jack darts towards Jamie but knows he's going to be too late. Right before the sand hits, he flinches back and closes his eyes, throwing his hands up to protect himself, vaguely aware of Jamie doing the same thing. Instead of the horrific impact he was expecting, he feels a slight breeze as something darts by his face. Confused, he opens his eyes and gapes at the long golden whips of dreamsand that dart cheerfully through the air.
"Jamie, what did you do?" he asks.
"I just touched the sand," Jamie stammers, looking around with wide eyes. "I didn't think this would happen? What is this stuff?"
"It's dreamsand, mate," Bunny says, hopping into Jack's arms again. He reaches up and bats at one of the tendrils of sand, and golden eggs explode into being above his head and begin dancing around. Bunny beams. "The Sandman's dreamsand."
"Cool!" says Claude—or maybe it's Caleb. Jack laughs when the kids immediately perk up, their earlier fear forgotten. He looks up at Pitch and smirks smugly. The smirk only grows when Pitch growls, enraged. Pitch's Nightmare takes to the air and canters towards the kids, only to rear back with a scream when a blur of blue and green darts by, nearly taking its head off.
"Tooth!" Jack exclaims. Tooth zips by overhead, laughing in delight at the feeling of flying again.
"The dreamsand must have given her a boost in power," Bunny says. He peers into the distance. "Hmm. Him, too."
Jack follows Bunny's gaze and sees North sprinting towards them with his swords in hand, surprisingly fast for someone of his size.
"No!" Pitch screams. "Kill them! Do your jobs!"
The nightmare sand reforms into Nightmares that rear up and gallop full speed towards Jack and the kids. Jack takes to the air to avoid them, while the kids scatter. North tosses two snowballs and an entire horde of yeti come through, covered in green and red warpaint and roaring loud war cries in Yettish.
Confident that things are being handled for the moment, Jack hovers in place in the air and holds Bunny out at arm's length.
"Why haven't you changed back yet?" he asks. The words have no sooner left his mouth than Bunny shudders, and so suddenly that the transformation is over with before he can even blink in shock, Jack is holding a full-sized Easter Bunny. Jack falls a few feet before he adjusts to the weight, and then he grins and bounces Bunny a bit. "Huh. You know, you're lighter than I was expecting."
Bunny looks unimpressed. "Cheers, mate." He perks up and looks intently over Jack's shoulder. "We got incoming. Drop me."
Jack lets go of Bunny and flies straight up. The Nightmares that were cantering towards them shoot through empty air, and before they can so much as turn around, Bunny's boomerangs slice through them. Bunny leaps up to catch them on their return trip and when he lands, he taps his foot three times on the ground. A huge tunnel opens up, but instead of dropping into it, he steps back. A second later, the stone sentinels from his Warren—egg golems, Jack thinks they're called—pour through.
Jack watches as Cupcake leads the kids on a charge towards a Nightmare, which shrieks and jerks back when they touch it. It seems to melt into golden dreamsand, and with triumphant cheers, the kids turn to their next target.
With things on the ground—and in the air, thanks to Tooth—taken care of, Jack turns his attention to Pitch. Fire doesn't have the same effect on Pitch as it once did, but it makes Jack feel better to launch fireballs at the Nightmares. They, at least, explode into harmless sand. Pitch growls and urges his Nightmare on, jumping from rooftop to rooftop while Jack mimics him on a string of parallel buildings. They trade blows, fire and nightmare sand being thrown at deadly speeds towards each other but always dodged at the last second.
Jack reaches the last building on his street and leaps across to Pitch's, launching a wave of fire as he lands with a grunt of effort. Pitch takes to the air to avoid it, only to jerk to the side when Tooth streaks by, one of North's swords in hand. She growls and charges towards Pitch, forcing him to dart backward, but she ignores him in favor of taking out the Nightmares grouped around him.
Bunny hops from the ground to a streetlight to the roof, launching his boomerangs at Pitch and forcing him back towards Jack. Together, the two of them herd the Nightmare King towards another roof, where North waits with his one remaining sword. With a war cry worthy of the yeti, North jumps off the roof and lands neatly on the ground, cleaving Pitch's Nightmare in half as he does so.
Pitch goes tumbling through the air but lands lightly on his feet, scowl firmly in place. North rushes towards him, only to jerk back when Pitch suddenly forms an enormous scythe out of nightmare sand and swings it at him in a deadly arc. Bunny and Jack join the fray, while Tooth hovers above and divebombs Pitch whenever she can get away with it.
Eventually, they have him cornered in an alley.
"Give up, Pitch," Jack says, holding his staff in one hand and aiming the crook at Pitch. "It's over. There's nowhere for you to hide."
Pitch grins. "Oh, isn't there?" And with a cackle that echoes around the alley like it was a cave, Pitch melts into the shadows.
Well, shit, Jack thinks. Out loud, he says, "Forgot he can do that."
He looks around warily at the shadows that grow and stretch on the walls. They don't respond to his attempts to control them with his magic.
Bunny's eyes widen. "Jack, look out!" He launches a boomerang at Pitch but the Nightmare King merely deflects it. Jack spins around and brings his staff up, but he knows as soon as he sees Pitch's scythe that he's going to be too late.
A long, familiar golden whip wraps around the handle of the scythe, stopping its arc instantly. Jack can only watch in shock as Pitch is pulled screaming into the air by the arm.
"Can it be?" North whispers, and it snaps Jack out of his stupor.
"Come on!" he says and darts off, Tooth hot at his heels. They arrive just in time to see Pitch land heavily on the ground, but they ignore him in favor of swarming around a newly resurrected Sandy, cheering and laughing.
"Mate, you are a sight for sore eyes," Bunny says, and exchanges an ecstatic smile with Jack.
Sandy flashes a few symbols at them and they obligingly step back a few paces, giving him room to gather his dreamsand into a cloud large enough for him to ride on. As dinosaurs make their slow way around Burgess and manta rays and tiny golden butterflies dart through the air, Jack presses a hand to his chest, trying to decipher if the warmth there is from fire magic or pure, unadulterated joy.
Just an epilogue to go and then we'll be done! Drop a comment to let me know what you liked, what you hated, or what you think I could've done differently. I read and appreciate every single comment I get :)