A/C My apologies for the chapter mix up, here's the actual chapter three.

"No." The word sat hollowly in Jack's throat, barely touching the air as his back collided harshly and painfully with the ground. He hardly felt the impact, and the roar of the battle around him seemed dulled, compressed into a rush of sound that throbbed against his eardrums. Tooth's last few seconds unfurled repeatedly before his mind's eye; the terror on her delicately beautiful face, the desperate spasming of her iridescent wings, the massively overpowering rush of the nightmares around her, inside of her... no. No. No. They couldn't lose Tooth—he couldn't lose Tooth. Sandy had been horrible enough, but it was a whole new level of dismay that wracked him now, because she was the light and life of them all, the rallying point around which the other, wearier Guardians constantly gathered. And if that blazing center was extinguished—then they'd have nothing at all.

Not extinguished, even. Worse. Much worse. Poisoned, twisted, distorted into something dark and terrifying, something wickedly vicious, something fundamentally evil. For that's what was sure to happen—he had seen the nightmares' motion, and he couldn't mistake it. Sandy's defeat had been given through a dagger of darkness, but Tooth was soured from the inside out, burned apart into the ghastly specter that she surely must have resembled now.

And it was fear—of course, desperate, primitive fear that raged inside him now, pinned him to the ground far more effectively than the sea of rabid nightmares that still swarmed above him; the absolutely fundamental urge to get away. Before he could so much as think about what he was doing, he was crawling, his palms scraping the grass-tufted ground and dry sobs clutching his throat as he pulled himself slowly out from under the black froth, surfacing in time to pull in a breath of weak, crisp air. It chilled his lungs, but that didn't matter, because he was free of the horrible, overwhelming projections of blind terror, and then he was forcing himself to his feet, moving forwards without seeing until he found purchase against a tree, its rough bark greeting his palms with reassuring solidity. He slumped into the trunk, eyes squeezed shut to hold back the tears that suddenly hissed and burned behind them, determined not to look back, not to see what had become of North and Bunnymund. He felt his stomach sway and sicken—he had abandoned them like the weakling that he was, tore himself out of the battle simply because he wasfrightened, and surely that rendered him a more despicable being than Sandy or Tooth could ever be, even darkened as they were by Pitch's horrific creations.

"Of course... fleeing the battle, are you? I'm sure they expected as much... I certainly did."

Pitch's voice, somehow, pierced right to his core—before he could think, he was whipping around, his staff extended, tears spilling over his eyes as he shrieked a response.

"Face us yourself, then, you coward!" he shouted into the darkness, scanning it desperately in search of Pitch's solid form. The Nightmare King, however, appeared to exist only in the shadows, for it was from their depths that his laugh emerged, silken and deadly. The knot of sand containing Tooth, North, and Bunnymund was just across the shore, still close enough for Jack to feel the whip of the breeze from their movements, but he still couldn't bring himself to look closely enough to see if either of the other two had been overtaken. "Face us instead of sending your stupid nightmares, fight us like something truly worth fearing!"

"Oh, but I am worth fearing." Every time that Jack thought he saw a stirring figure out of the corner of his eyes, he would turn swiftly, only to be confronted with nothingness. Pitch was leading him about like a fish with a lure, and he hated the feeling of helplessness, absolutely detested it. "And you do fear me, whether you accept it or not... just as surely as you fear their defeat, and fear the fact that none of them believe in you. For they don't, and that haunts you, even now, even when you are far from important in contrast to the people whom you're foolish enough to call your friends..."

The deep-rooted terror that Pitch mentioned then caused a sharp jerk in Jack's chest, almost physically unsettling him, and his hands tightened around the staff. "Shut up!"

"But even if I shut up, it won't make that fear go away. That's what's so beautiful about nightmares... they can never be erased, only suppressed. Buried. They will always be uprooted, in the end... and your fear, Jack, is special... yours will always return to you, because it is your reality. Other than the poor Guardians, so soon to be my own, there is not another soul on in the universe who can see you... you are truly, entirely, absolutely alone in the world."

Once more, thoughts were completely vanquished from his mind. There was nothing inside of him except for aching panic as he thrust his staff into the air and let it lift him, hating the way that even the rush of wind around him couldn't quite drown out Pitch's tenebrous chuckle. He was reeling, shooting through the air simply because he had to escape from it all, escape from himself—hurtling across the lake at a speed that initiated aching pains through every atom of his being, but he didn't care—treasured the pain, even, for wiping everything else away.

Yet it couldn't last forever. The lake was wide but not massive, and mere seconds later he had reached its end, and yet was still flying like a shooting star, barrelling away from North and Tooth and Bunny and Pitch and all the nightmares, and he wondered what the impending collision would even do, whether it would hurt him, whether he would mind if it did—

Hurt it did not, or at least the sensation of utter shock that flowed through his body could hardly be called pain. It was a flash of pure sensation followed almost immediately by still numbness, and it took him several seconds to realize that he wasn't moving, but was instead lying on a floor, gazing at a ceiling—a ceiling?—yes, he was inside, and that meant that the prickling shards burning at his shoulders and back were broken glass, he had crashed through a window...

"H-hello?"

The voice was soft but not quite frightened, more inquisitive than anything else. Jack groaned and gritted his teeth, forcing himself into a sitting position and raising a hand to rub at the back of his whiplash-sored neck. His fingers wandered across the glass-strewn floor until they managed to wrap around his staff, and he took a deep breath, glancing up to regard the person who had spoken.

It was a child—a small, chocolate-haired boy, and it took Jack only a second to recall where he had seen the wide-eyed face before: it was Jamie. The one whom he had set on a sled and guided through the icy streets while his friends gazed on in stunned amazement, the one whom, only hours ago, he and the other Guardians had stopped by the bed of, accidentally woken him up in their attempt to gather his tooth...

And the thought of Tooth and Sandy, of the two who had been lost since then—and perhaps more, for he didn't know, he was a deserter and a coward and had no idea if his other friends were still in their right minds—was horrible, seemed to grip his very heart and twist it with obscene violence, so that his lungs paused and his eyes ached again. It was detestable, to be consumed by such mournful emotion next to a child, in a room that radiated nothing but innocence. And yet this was exactly what Pitch was planning: for these last reserves of juvenile hope and wonder and dreams to be infected, turned irrevocably toxic and malignant.

"I'm so sorry," he breathed, voice cracked, to the blank-staring child to whom he was invisible. "I'm sorry..."

"...Are you... Jack Frost?"

He froze.

Because that couldn't be right, because he was invisible, because this was Jamie and he knew Jamie didn't believe in him, had it proved countless times over—unless this was what he needed, somehow; some sort of physical confirmation—apparently, in the form of a shattered window... a rough grip of disbelieving emotions was rising in Jack's chest, senseless joy combined with genuine disbelief, and he couldn't resist reaching out, his eyes wide, his lips parted.

"Did you just—I... are you... can you...?"

His lungs were paralyzed. He couldn't ask it—was too afraid of the answer, or rather the lack of answer; of how easily it could crush the weak root of hope that had somehow, suddenly found a home within him. Yet he couldn't possibly suspend the eager curiosity enveloping him in thoughtless fire, and so the words tumbled forth from his icy lips to hang in the air, doused with coolness from outside and suddenly very, very still.

"Can you see me?"

And Jamie was nodding—nodding, and his pure young face broke into a gap-toothed grin as Jack rose all at once, uncontrollable laughter bubbling up inside of him, hindered by the pain of his still-recent devastation but massive enough to work past it nonetheless. His mind was a buzzing blank, but a beautiful one, and he could do nothing but laugh in unadulterated happiness as snow exploded around him, drenching them both with soft coldness that couldn't be farther from unpleasant.

"Are you making it snow?" Jamie demanded in fascinated wonder, and Jack nodded in return, his heart racing up to his throat.

"I can do more, too," he got out, and didn't care that the words were simple, almost foolish, because they held all the meaning he needed. "I can... ice, I can make ice and snowballs, like that sled, remember the sled yesterday?"

"What—that was you?"

"Come on, do you really think you'd be able to get through something like that on your own? Of course it was me!"

"That's awesome!" Jamie exclaimed, and utter jubilance crashed down on Jack like a golden wave, overwhelming everything, warming his center until he couldn't smile widely enough to even begin to capture the flawless revelry burning inside of him. "But then... if you can do all that stuff, why did you have to break through the window?"

Break through the window... of course. And instead of allowing his buoyancy to be capsized by the sudden onrush of memories, Jack was only motivated further. Of course, the Guardians—they needed him, and he could help them, he had a believer, he had strength...

"Listen." He leaned forwards, settled his hands on Jamie's shoulders and felt a streak of glee pound through him at the physical contact—he had no time to savor it now, though. "I have to help my friends—the Easter Bunny and all the rest, they're in danger, but I think I know what to do. Promise me you'll say here—and get your friends to keep believing, okay? It's important... I need you all to do that for me. Just that. Just believe. Okay?"

Jamie's brows lowered in clear confusion at the winter spirit's sudden solemnity. "Okay, but—"

It was all Jack needed to hear. He leaped into the air again, called an airy "Sorry about the window!" over his shoulder, and then he was outside again, slipping over houses and streets, gliding across rooftops and between trees until he reached the lake, where he stopped all at once, staring in silent dismay.

He could still see them, just barely—North and Bunnymund, ever-weakening miniature figures on the other side of the dark, glassy ice. They stood back to back, swords and boomerang bared, battling futilely. Jack raised his own staff, but it was a hopeless gesture, because he knew there was no time—even now, new waves of nightmares were coasting forth out of thin air, bombarding the two Guardians in a fight that they surely had no chance of winning. Still, he would try to help them—he had to; he was one of them.

Perhaps if he saw the Sandman awaiting him just a second earlier, he would have been more careful.

Yet, altered and distorted as he was now from the merry-faced golden being whom Jack knew so well, he might as well have been invisible. He was barely distinguishable amongst the swathes of nightmares that thickened the air, little more than one of them—his form was an equally dense black, though not sparkled through with the blue and violet of the sand. He was pure, absolute obscurity.

And Jack barely had the time to acknowledge as much before a sharpened rope of ebony glitter formed at the darkened Sandy's fingertips, whipped through the air and collided with his skull, rendering the rest of the world as inky as the fallen Guardian himself.