A/N: It's late, I'm sorry. But my life is filled with so many exciting things that are coming up that I'm literally being exhausted by excitement! Also I had to split this chapter into two because I would have given you all heart attacks if everything happened at once. SO here is part one :)
SHOUTOUTS BECAUSE OHMYGOSH TWENTY REVIEWS ON ONE CHAPTER THAT'S A RECORD FOR THIS STORY AND YOU GUYS ARE AMAZINGGGGGG!
Taranodongirl1: It's coming! It's coming!
AzazelLuciferDeathCrowley: Oh he will be making a reappearance MWAHAHA!
8fangirl8:angst gives you warm fuzzies?! Here *throws angst* take some more warm fuzzies! They're plentiful this chappie :))))
Sheeijan: I like Bunny too, I didn't want to make it predictable and have him hate Jack. I like Bunny much more this way :)
TearsDrippingDown: HERE IT IS WAHHH!
Beanie-art1: There are big plans about big plans about other big plans in this story ;DD the answer to your question is at the end of this chapter DON'T GO READING IT OUT OF CONTEXT NOW, YOU WAIT AND READ THE REST! Here have a squeegee face .
Moonshroom420: patience my friend! Pitch's plot will soon be uncovered!
A Stripped Tigger: yes and no…
Bug349: don't worry, we all want to kill him. I might just shake things up and kill someone else…wait you weren't supposed to read that…
Guest: read below and find out!
Doubled-Helix: He's quaking in his boots…er…robe. And yes Bunny is a total sweetie in my fic!
Fireyouko: I will definitely be writing more! And all your questions will be answered shortly, in the next chapter!
Jesusfreak200: Bigger plan. Definitely.
Five Until Class: meh its okay to have fun reading angst :) Otherwise there wouldn't be so much of it!
Sol and G'syr: calm down you two! Here, have another chapter, I look forward to our weekly trios of conversation!
Dan: Thank you!
Guest: Yay Yay Yay!
KusajishiFukutaicho: wow your name is hard to spell! I had this idea for quite a while, but this story has taken on a life of its own! I'm glad you're enjoying the story :D
Thisisentertaining: Again I'm so glad you noticed my allegory! And yes, the questions will still remain! YUS!
Kiss-My-Asphault: Sorry my story made you cry! Here, have an update…but I would keep a tissue box on hand from now until the end of the story…
JEEZ CHILDREN! That was a lot of reviews! Took me half an hour to reply to them all! THANKSABUNCH :D
ENJOY CHAPTER 9! I don't own RoTG
Where we left off:
They all left, one by one, to see to their duties. Sandy had dreams to cast, especially now when fear was on the loose. Tooth had fairies to direct, calling for her girls to receive their assignments at the pole. She couldn't fly to her palace. North had toy production to oversee. Christmas was in six weeks and as much as he would love for time to stop for a few hours, the clock would only go on ticking regardless of his wishes. Bunny was the only one left without a duty to fulfill. It was too early to begin his seasonal preparations, not that he could have made it to the warren anyway, so he stayed in the room with the sprite they had "saved" and waited for him to wake up. It was the least he could do after being the first one to land a punch.
Chapter 9: Fool Me Thrice
Jökul slept for three full days, the first of which was undoubtedly the worst of the bunch. The boy appeared dead, eyes unflinching beneath their lids and skin growing ever paler as the wheezing breaths slowed to a crawl. No ice or chill emanated from his body; he was like a corpse.
They kept someone in the room with him constantly in those early hours, fearful that either Pitch would make an appearance or the boy's soul would beat a hasty retreat. Thankfully, neither occurred and by the morning of the second day, the boy's breathing began to find rhythm in the beats of his heart and all of the wounds received a thick plastering with ice to begin the healing process. Encouraged by these signs of revival, the Guardians began to nurse the hope of a full recovery. But their jobs took precedence and there were times during those two days that no one could be spared to sit with him and he was left alone for a few hours. It was during one of those lonely stretches on his third day of liberation that Jökul finally opened his eyes.
The room was very bright to his catacomb vision, the lamps searing his sight and causing pain. Grey eyes clenched shut and a slithering whine crept up his throat. He felt no fear, his mind hazed both with pain and the ever-present fog that clouded his reflections. Disoriented and weak, Jökul lay there for some time, snippets of thoughts popping up and shining briefly with the desire for anything other than this emptiness. Anything to fill the void where rage or comforting oblivion once stood. He was a nothing now and he desperately wanted to be a something. Anything.
Body numb yet throbbing with pangs of pain, Jökul rolled off of the bed, the cotton blend calf length shorts and tie tunic doing little to cushion the impressive drop onto the wooden floors. The IV in his arm ripped free but he hardly noticed the blood or the pain. Nothing mattered anyhow.
He stumbled aimlessly around the room for a while, gasping for breath and straining his stitches until he happened upon a doorknob and managed to turn it. The room opened to a hall that wasn't quite so bright and he staggered down it, taking turns randomly and ending up in even brighter places before retreating back into the shadows. He wandered for so long he lost track of where he came from—not that he ever knew where he was going to begin with. During his time with Pitch, the shadows in the wall would swallow him up when he wandered and spit him out wherever Pitch was if he had been summoned or in his cell if he was getting in the way. But when he collapsed in an exhausted and quivering heap in the darkest corner of an outcrop, the shadows did nothing at all. They did not drag him kicking and screaming or sweep him away before he knew what had happened. They merely sat there and made the light that much more brilliant.
The tears came long after the pain did, more a product of confusion and the void where voices had once whispered to him than the pain that had him crawling with ice and doubling over on himself. He had been abandoned and no one would ever find him. So he curled up in the shadow and waited for nothing.
He sat there for quite some time, knees to his chest and arms wrapped around them before the dull sound of thumping and scraping broke through the fog. Weary grey eyes lolled open, long since emptied of tears yet still blurry, and beheld a creature hobbling down the hall on three legs towards a door. Jökul shrunk further into the shadows when it passed and watched tiredly as it opened the door and went inside. His eyes drooped to half-mast, the thumping from the room doing little to break his lack of concentration. The yell that followed, however, brought him to his senses rather quickly.
The creature roared again, the cry muffled to Jökul's cotton-filled ears but loud enough to make him cringe and press himself further into the corner. The creature was halfway through another yell when it caught sight of him. Relief slumped the being's shoulders and it hobbled over to him, saying little things that made no sense and drawing ever closer. Jökul whimpered and cringed when it came close but the creature made no move to retreat. The boy could not help but lash out when a paw was set on his arm. He struck with his foot, the impact suddenly flushing out the empty and making way for the full. Gone was the terrifying nil and returned was the whole that took him over and gave him rest. He was nothing yet everything and he wholeheartedly abandoned himself to that which filled him yet did not satisfy. It was foreign but it was something.
The creature cried out and backed away but Jökul was on him in a flash, out of the corner's safety and into the open, lashing out in uncoordinated grabs and swipes. He gasped for air past stitches and a damaged windpipe but did not halt his advance even when the pounding of other feet came thundering down the hall. Ice shot up the walls and the creature scrambled back from him. It blocked his blows but sent none of its own.
Easy kill. The whispers crooned, laughing as his fingers danced with deadly hoar frost.
Suddenly strong arms plucked him from his feet, pinning him to a broad chest and refusing to let go no matter how loud he screeched or how hard he kicked. His feet met their marks and ice spread from every part of him, coating his captor because it still refused to release him. Voices screamed and yelled around him.
Blinding, maddening rage boiled his blood and filled his bones as he howled and struggled against the arms that held him. But suddenly the rage drained away as dread filled the pit of his belly. Gold! Gold! Gold! It danced around him, sending the whispers shrieking and retreating, leaving him only with their fear as proof that they were once there. But he struggled on through the fear and screamed even louder the closer the man of gold came. Long, shimmering arms wrapped around him, sliding over his brow and touching his face. The moment the grains touched his eyes he fell limp against the arms that held him. His fight was gone and it was all he could do to remain conscious as they carried him off and laid him back down on the soft thing. He vaguely felt them grabbing at his arms and legs before the shimmering arm brushed his eyes and sent him back into oblivion.
~.o.~
North, Bunny, and Sandy sat in the great room silently nursing hot drinks while their minds ran circles around their problems. The boy had awoken, and though the improvement had been staggering, they couldn't help but feel a bit guilty when they realized they wished he still slept.
North groaned and rubbed his knuckle between his eyebrows, a tension spot that always throbbed when he faced great tribulations. "Vhat are ve to do vith him?"
No one answered for a time; they were just as baffled as he was. Pitch had not been there to instigate an attack yet the boy still assaulted them.
"Well," Bunny began, his paw gently picking at the bandages around his leg. "The lil' guy's tied up now so ah think we're safe fer at least a bit." He paused to take an audible gulp from his mug. "But we need ta do sumthin long term."
North nodded again. "Vhat happened again?"
"Ah went in ta check on 'im whin ah got back from restin' an the room was empty. Ah yelled fer ya, thinkin' Pitch came an' got 'im, befer ah saw 'im huddled in tha corner with tears runnin' down 'is cheeks. Ah tried to help 'im but 'e kept flinchin' and whimperin' like a pup before e' snapped and jumped me."
"Das it?" North asked. "Vhat changed?"
"Nuthin' really. Ah didn't do anythin' different from one second ta the other. But 'is eyes went from grey an' bleary ta kinda milky whin he attacked. An' the screamin' whin ya picked 'im up was different. Even more different when Sandy came in."
North nodded curtly and rubbed his forehead. Nothing made sense! From the moment Pitch pulled him out of the shadows and disguised him as a beast, confusion reigned supreme. He sighed again.
"Ve vill keep in room tied up for now. Velcro should be holding strong to keep him in bed. Ve'll tink of someting else in morning, but tonight I vill talk vith Man in Moon to ask vor help."
The others nodded in agreement and began their nightly routines. Sandy and Tooth were back on their feet, the latter directing little fairies and former sending off streamers of dreams, but Bunny and North remained at the pole, retreating to different corners of the large estate to rest and request help.
The night was cast in the silence of the arctic chill but morning came with a torrent of activity. Jökul had escaped his bondage by squeezing ice in between the Velcro straps to separate them and had wandered far from his room in search of a way out. The voices said it was time to make it snow outside. It was only by chance that he wandered down the hall in which Sandy was perched in a sitting room and the little man was able to drop him before he could damage anyone or anything. The third time they were not so fortunate.
The leather buckles they held him down with provided only a momentary distraction when he woke and once they were removed he tore through the workshop in search of an open window or door. A yeti got in his path and tried to stop him from escaping into that cold and unforgiving landscape. She had been one of the few chosen to treat the boy when he was injured and could still remember the horrid wounds she had treated. She tried to handle Jökul with care, recalling the deadly lacerations, but the boy remembered nothing and sent her through a wall. He would have escaped had North not arrived and grabbed him by the ankle. A demonic squall filled the air and Jökul kicked, clawed, and shot ice at his captor. North held strong and refused to release him until Sandy came and put him back to sleep.
They left him lying on the floor while they tended to the yeti. Many ribs were broken and a few of the bone shards had punctured organs. They almost lost her that night. Had it not been for her resilience, she would have died from her injuries.
North himself was sporting more than a few new wounds. Frost burns covered his body and bite and claw marks mangled his tattoos. With Bunny out of commission he seemed to be the only one strong enough to hold the boy down. After three escapes his strength was growing thin and they were loosing hope. The Man in the Moon was not answering and the boy only grew more violent with each encounter. The restraints couldn't hold him any longer so Sandy wrapped a band of dream sand around his eyes to keep him asleep. They didn't enjoy resorting to such a resolution, but anything was better than waiting for him to kill someone.
North and the others questioned more than once over the days that followed whether or not they should have ever put the child in the sleigh. It was a horrible thing to think of, and it ate at their very centers to know that it had even crossed their minds. The sprite was not in control of himself, that much was obvious, but they didn't know how to fix him, didn't know how to help him, and couldn't help but consider that death might have been better than the living hell the poor boy must be facing.
But the thought that edged most dangerously along the sides of those was the possibility that the boy really did know what he was doing. The prospect that the evil they felt within him came, not from Pitch, but from his soul. And with that thought came the only fathomable option. The boy would have to die.
These thoughts and many others fought with the center in each of the Guardians of Childhood for many days, driving them to the brink of insanity with a never-ending cycle of fear and guilt. Fear of what the boy may be and fear of what they might have to do. Guilt when they realized that they had entertained the thought of putting a child to death. Fear when they thought of what the Moon's Commander thought of their musings and subsequent guilt when they realized how very horrible it was to allow their human fears to block the power of that Spirit in their lives. Round and round they went, fear and guilt playing tag as the world melted around them. They were blind to the moon and its pleas for them to listen, and blind to the light in the world that shone through the shroud of darkness.
They shut the moon out with their worry and he found it easier to soften the hard heart of Mother Nature than to break through the iron door that was their fears and guilt. He could not help them if they would not let him, so he turned to one of the old and faithful followers to guide their wayward hearts. She fought him too at first, but the memory of blue eyes that shone with light and potential finally broke through her shields and sent her to knock on the door of the Guardian of Wonder.
So I'm going on vacation next week (I will be gone for a few update slots) and I will try to get a chapter up before I go (and no I will not be posting while I'm gone, the forest does not have wifi…sorry). Lucky for you guys its already written and edited and I'm just going to make you wait until Monday or Tuesday before I post it :P
Thanks so much for reading, and if you feel so inclined, pop a review in the box and make my day! (Lets beat 20 reviews! WHOOT WHOOT!)!
~Victoria