Author's Note:

Given that the last time I updated this fic was in 2018 (6 years ago and a horrifically long time) I'm not sure any of you following will remember this story. Or me. After all, a LOT has happened since then, both globally and in my personal life; some of it unbelieveably challenging, some of it more wonderful than I could ever imagine I deserve.

If you care to rejoin me, I have a 10,000-word update for you all that took literal years to write (Papers doesn't like training sequences in fiction or real life). I can't promise updates will be any quicker than this, but know that this fic is certainly not dead and I have missed you and the Guardians dearly.

(Also, I have barely proofread this but I couldn't stand waiting any longer to share, so I'll go through and do a shame edit tomorrow)

Onward, my friends :)

Summary: In which the Guardians and Pitch learn the roles of their newly appointed titles.

Chapter 8:

Trials

The mechanical whirring of enchanted toys sailed within an inch past Sandy's ear but he barely noticed.

"You are in charge," North said with a grand gesture out to the workshop floor swarming with yetis and elves.

Sandy felt like the air had been sucked from his lungs but he tried to keep his mouth from hanging agape. He did not flinch when a turtle-like contraption swam its way across his path, nor when a pair of yetis tested spring-powered, foam dart guns on each other with reckless abandon. No pressure, was all he could think to himself. No pressure at all.

"That means you are overseeing research and development," North continued, "and keeping up to date with Head Officer of Magical Occupational Health and Safety—that is Bill."

Bill the Yeti turned from a conveyor-belt contraption and gave them a wave with the leathery hand that was not holding a clipboard. But he either lacked enthusiasm or was deeply confused by North's Pooka physique. He shrugged to himself and turned back to investigating the machine, which was something for wrapping presents, Sandy supposed.

"You are talking to stable hands to keep reindeer well looked after," North continued. "You are not letting elves into private workshop or kitchen larder unsupervised. You are Manny's messenger; you alert us all when he wishes to speak. You are constantly watching globe to see if trouble is afoot. You are inventor of toys, keeper of sorcery, inspiration to children—Guardian of Wonder! But…!"

North kicked off with his hind legs and hopped over to an angle grinder with a block of wood beneath its serrated blade. He looked Sandy dead in the face, turned it on, and sliced the wood in two like a soft pat of butter.

"…Most importantly, you are not drinking and operating heavy machinery," North concluded as the saw's whining died.

Sandy offered a sheepish, silent chuckle. He had sobered since they set Jack's plan into motion, but perhaps not enough to grasp what it meant to be North's General Manager.

His most complex duty seemed to be the research and development North had mentioned; a feat of deft sketches and ice-carvings that brought new toys to life, sometimes literally. Those carvings were sent down to the workshop where the Yetis replicated them en masse. After that, he simply needed to help along the way with an authorising signature or two.

The rest of Sandy's job was to delegate. But for someone used to being a lone sentinel, the idea of managing a workforce unnerved him. Some days, he barely managed himself. Better, he thought, to have taken the edge off with a bit of liquid courage.

North beckoned Sandy to follow him over to the pulley-controlled elevator. They passed several prototype sculptures on their way. Flashes of Sandy's new face caught his eye, reflected by glossy ice. He still struggled to recognise the man looking back. The greyed, frazzled hair and pinkish cheeks were all his, he reminded himself for the third time in as many hours. Quite dull compared to his once constant, golden radiance.

Once Sandy was onboard, the gate clicked shut and he lurched on his feet as the platform began its ascent.

"I am taking you to third floor, old friend," North announced. "To the library. This is where our troubles began. I will be away often after today, da? So, I need you to begin search for the book that holds our counter curse. Whenever you are not busy in the workshop. Any time you can spare. You will not be alone; the others will come and help once they are more settled but for now…you are first line of attack."

The elevator creaked to a halt at the third-floor mezzanine. From where they stood, the Globe of Belief sloped down into a shadowy underbelly that made the lights of the Southern Hemisphere shine with a stark light—and made it even more obvious when a handful flickered out.

North stared with his paws drawn to his chest as the south of Chile drifted past. Its lights looked more sparse than usual, like many of their regions of influence. He twitched his nose with a sigh. "Come." He motioned. "First the library, then our duties await."

Sandy followed North on short legs with puffing his only way to complain about the pace. He arrived at the library entrance well behind North, with burning thighs and bright cheeks, struggling to catch his breath. A quick demonstration from North showed him the lock combination, which he committed to memory. Inside, he found Ombric Shalazar's collection just as he remembered it: old, a little dusty, and smelling faintly of ageing pages and stiff leather. Though, some of the books were a little more airborne than he recalled. That was something North had 'imagineered' and coordinated himself.

When the doors were safely closed off to prying ears, they migrated through the study spaces outfitted with mahogany desks and soft reading lights. The faint rustling of pages followed them.

"Truly, Sandy, I do not know how things went so wrong," North confessed. He rubbed his face with a paw, disturbing the well-groomed appearance of his fur. "Jack is well-meaning, but distracted. I cannot be there for him always. I also cannot understand what the problem was that books tried to fix."

Sandy made to interject and remembered he had no way of doing so.

"He wanted to learn sorcery." North settled on his haunches by a red, velvet armchair. "Perhaps the books try to offer transfer of knowledge but fail because Jack is…how do you say…without knowledge of our world? What is the word…?"

Sandy tapped his foot against the ground. Being unable to interject, he had to endure North's thoughtful humming until he filled his own mental blank.

"He is naïve!" North exclaimed at last. "He does not consider the consequences of his actions."

Sandy nodded congenially and puffed his cheeks in a sigh, all while scanning the room for a pen and paper.

"Perhaps I was hard on him. But he must learn what he does affects all of us."

Sandy tilted his head in a slight shrug of consideration and a nod of agreement. At least from then on, Jack would be abundantly aware that others may have to pay a price for his carelessness. For Sandy, that price was his one method of speech.

"And now book is missing! Shostakovich. How it goes missing…it is unheard of. We must assume breach of security somewhere, but where? It could have been Pitch but he was accounted for, as were we. Unless Nightmares are acting for him. No, he would not be able to control them after the effects of the curse. However…"

Sandy rolled his eyes and trundled off to inspect the incantational lectern for something he could use to get a word in edgeways. In a cupboard built into the lectern, he found a small, black tablet and a pencil of reddish-pink chalk, possibly intended to make short term notes on spells before casting. Sandy smirked. Whatever its former purpose, it was his now. Not that North seemed to have noticed.

"Pitch has made trouble in the past but I do not believe he is making trouble this time. I have interrogated staff already; none of them know how book was lost. Nobody could get in or out without our knowledge. Security is stronger than Slavic knee—"

SCREEeEeEeeEeee!

North's ears dropped and flattened. He pressed his paws to them and winced. If he had not been covered in fur, his skin might have paled. He shot Sandy a look, entirely unimpressed.

"Manny's craters…Sandy. There are other ways to get attention than scratching blackboards."

If Sandy could have scoffed, he would have. He shook his head, exasperated, and communicated his first words since having his magic altered: the curse stole my voice.

"It stole your…? Ah. Of course. No sand symbols. But you are creative in your solution, my friend! The board should serve well until things are back to normal. But keep scratching to minimum."

Fine, he wrote in a quick, cursive scrawl. What does the book look like?

"I only saw for a second," said North. "Everything happened too quickly to tell which one Jack found. It was red. No, brown. Red-brown. Hard-cover in leather. Gold detailing."

Sandy could have sunk to the ground with his head in his hands. That described three quarters of the books in the library already.

"I know, it is not much," North admitted. "The only other way to find the book is to hone intentions."

Meaning? he scribbled beneath his previous line.

"Books respond to problems based on intention. It cannot be just that we want to find counter curse because curse is inconvenient to us. I enchanted retrieval system to respond to altruism and learning. So, we must find out what Jack was trying to achieve and reverse engineer the problem."

Why didn't you ask him while he was here?

North folded his arms over his chest. Where once the simple action had made his Cossack's frame appear domineering and immovable, it made him, as a Pooka, appear shrunken and avoidant. "I did," he said. "When we realised book was missing, I asked but…" North's mouth twisted. "I was not, ehh, fragile about the asking."

Sandy narrowed his eyes and set his brow in a questioning quirk, which North met reluctantly.

"Either he could not remember, or he would not tell. He was upset. Not making sense. He says I do not understand what he tries to do."

Sandy dusted the tablet clean with the loose sleeve of his robe and scrawled a response so quickly it had no cursive flair, only a few letters scratched out: Do you?

North threw his paws up in a shrug. "If I did once, I do not anymore. He is withdrawn, not stepping up to duties, interfering with my work. He is focused only on distracting those around him. I understand transition to Guardianship can be strange; we all wore same shoes in the beginning. But this seems different."

Sandy tapped his chalk pencil lightly against the edge of his tablet in thought. Give it a day or 2, he wrote eventually. Swapping roles means less pressure. Jack will calm down. Then u can talk about what happened.

North only had a few seconds to scan what was written before Sandy dusted it away and added: And apologise.

"Apologise?"

Sandy nodded.

North blinked, flabbergasted. "What do you think I did?"

I think there are some things you've done recently that you're not proud of.

"Perhaps I was a little harsh. Just a little," North conceded. "But he must know what he has done."

Sandy dusted the tablet and tuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he wrote. He does know. Now he needs forgiveness.

North looked at the tablet and sank heavily into the chair Jack had occupied right before everything went wrong. "You are right, my friend. Of course, you are right. Perhaps I have been so caught up doing what is best for the children, I forget Jack is also like child to us. He needs guidance. And patience."

Sandy tapped his tablet.

"And forgiveness." North nodded to himself. "At this rate, I will not see Jack for another two or three days, when we all meet here again. I will get message to him through Bunny. Then we will have words and I will find out from him what I can."

Satisfied that he had helped North and found a tool to let himself speak (in a way), Sandy hopped into the chair adjacent to North. A book resting on the arm of the chair flapped away with the coordination of a startled goose. He let his feet dangle just above the floor.

"I still do not know how book could have gone missing. I do not believe it could have been stolen. It is impossible. It must be here somewhere."

Sandy glanced at North. One look at the paws clasped firmly beneath his chin said otherwise of his conviction.

"Pitch has no reason to steal book. Being stuck in Tooth's place—for any reason—would cause more harm to him than do him good. Risk and reward, nyet? So, the book must still be here somewhere."

The books swirled above them, intermittently taking off and moving as one. They knew where they wanted to go, where it was they should be. So, unless it truly had been stolen, what was stopping the book with their counter curse from finding them?

"Even if Pitch has no reason to stay and help Tooth," North added, "Perhaps it will do him some good to learn from her. And to have Jack under his tutelage. Perhaps he will gain some perspective in his time working with us, not against us."

Or maybe, Sandy mused, Pitch would find new reasons to loathe the Guardians entirely.

— O —

—

Somewhere beneath the unruly tropics of far-north-east Australia, the Warren, subterranean realm of spring-time, lay peaceful and serene. Lofty trees with grand trunks stretched into lush canopies high above the Warren's floor, reaching for a greenish-gold light of indiscernible origin. Moss-covered boulders sat clustered on the edges of verdant cliffs rich with ferns and creeping vines. Trickling waterfalls rushed down to streams that flashed every colour between red and violet, bypassing behemoth Sentinel egg statues with stern faces. Such was the tranquility of the Warren, the Sentinels might not have known their former keeper was in trouble at all, had he not crashed through the boughs of an evergreen tree with a terrified cry.

Jack winced at the thud Bunny made on impact with the—thankfully—soft grass. The twisted branch of his staff clanged against the branches above and clattered to the ground a few feet from Bunny's head. Jack puffed his cheeks in a sigh and searched for the right feedback to give.

"So. That was a start, I guess?"

Bunny groaned and rolled over onto his back. "I'll give you a start…" he wheezed as he tried to breathe back the air he had knocked out with his fall. Eventually, he grabbed the staff and used it to lurch back to his feet. The grass where he'd landed had turned pale with a frost that stretched to the edge of the clearing, not for the first time since they began training hours ago. Glittering, ice-blue gashes in the surrounding tree trunks and snowfall that was on its way to becoming slush were the pieces of evidence left from Bunny's failed attempts at flight.

It was hard enough for Jack to teach someone how to fly when he had never come up with a step-by-step guide. Harder still when he had to remotely pilot someone else's heavier, ganglier body

~Make him fall again.~

…And next to impossible when Bunny's sharp fear roused the voices he had been desperately trying to ignore.

"I know it takes some getting used to," he said to Bunny's frustrated and pained remark, "but why don't we try that same exercise again?"

~Again!~

Jack growled under his breath and willed the voices into silence. Not that they seemed to listen.

Bunny quirked his upper lip in a stare of disbelief, amusingly buck-toothed even in his human-esque sprite form. "Sure, why not? Sorry, did you not see the way I got dropped on my arse?!"

Jack stifled a laugh. Wind rushed around them, stirring leaves and petals into looping currents that told him it had only been trying to cheer him up when he was so disappointingly Earth-bound.

"See! You did it on purpose!" said Bunny, having glimpsed his conspiratorial smirk to Wind.

"Did not. I respect you too much."

"When have you ever?"

"I don't control Wind, Bunny; you do," he said, trying not to become exasperated, "And even then, it only listens because you're asking it to. Try thinking of it as less like reigning in a horse and more like surfing a wave."

"Surfing a wave," Bunny repeated, shifting his weight from foot to foot, shaking his arms out, all to psych himself into another attempt. "Hang on. I don't even know how to swim."

"Then consider this your first lesson," he called as Wind charged past him and swept Bunny up in a gust of leaves, appearing to pluck him off the ground by his collar. Bunny screamed.

~Again! Again!~ the demonic voices cheered. ~Drop him on his head!~

It took everything in Jack to ignore the almost drunken intoxication he felt in the presence of Bunny's pure, adrenaline-fueled terror. Letting it overpower him would only bolster the disturbing commands of the voices in his head. They were loud enough with Wind tossing Bunny this way and that.

"Grip the staff in your hand," said Jack.

"I'm gripping! I'm gripping!—Woah!"

Wind picked up its pace, buffeting Bunny with invisible punches. The only way to see Wind was to follow the formless flurry of leaves and petals. Jack watched it lift him higher, then slip out from underneath him and let him fall several feet in a nasty game of catch. Then, to Bunny's horror, it began spinning him in the of spirals of a small tornado.

The hammering of Bunny's heart almost took Jack under. The palpable fear rushed to his head, a sudden clearing of the sinuses, a taste of some long-craved, forbidden elixir.

Jack willed himself into the present. "Now tell Wind to slow down."

"SLOW DOWN FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE!"

Bunny soon span to a stop mid-air, gasping, his fair complexion having turned the pallor of the Warren's pale green. He held onto the staff in a death-grip.

"Who's Mike?" Jack asked lightly.

Bunny stared down from high above, livid, but in Wind's grasp he was but an oversized kitten dangling by the scruff of his neck. "I'm gonna kick your arse into next Thursday if you don't tell me how to get down, now," he threatened weakly around a stomach-heaving gag.

"Okay, okay," said Jack, "we'll get you down. Just don't let go of the staff this time."

"The wind knocked that bloody stick out of my hands and you know it."

"Even if it did, you know what to expect now. So, don't let it happen again. Now, you're going to want to close your eyes and relax."

"Are you having a laugh?"

"Not when you're up that high."

The haughty look on Bunny's face sobered.

"Just listen to what I say and trust me. You can do that, right?"

Bunny growled in frustration but complied and, with one last uncertain glance to the ground far below, squeezed his eyes shut. "Now what?"

Jack paused. He had never really stopped to think about what came next. It just happened. But he cast his mind back to more than forty-eight hours prior and imagined himself lightly stepping off a bower, certain that he would be caught before he plummeted to the ground.

"Talk me through what you're feeling," said Jack.

Bunny's face scrunched in concentration. "I'm feeling a bit sick, if I'm honest."

"Ignore that. What do you feel in the space. Where is Wind? Around you, behind you, beneath you?"

"Well, it's kinda everywhere, isn't it?" Bunny snapped. "No wait. It's holding me up, but there's something else here. Like a foothold or…"

"Try and step into it," Jack prompted.

Tentatively, Bunny's bare feet paddled in the air, searching and feeling for something that would make Wind release him from its grip and instead let him fall into its cradling arms. There. His body suddenly appeared more buoyant.

"Now lean forward."

Bunny dipped his chest forward and instinctively reached his arms out in the position of a skydiver before the deployment of a parachute. He was still suspended in air but this time he was riding the breeze, not being thrown around by it. This time, with the staff firmly in hand, he was in control. He opened his eyes.

"Woah, Nelly…"

"That's it," Jack called. "Now think about where you want Wind to take you. Make it crystal clear in your mind."

"Down," said Bunny. "Please, Moon, take me down."

Slowly, Wind nudged him in a gentle decline, which he instinctively made to fight against. However, as he drifted and picked up speed, he adjusted. Soon he was almost upright.

"You're almost there," said Jack.

In small measures of trust, Bunny took little steps and landed on cushions of air. And when the surprise of feeling sturdy on his feet shocked him into freezing with his knees drawn to his chest, still Wind carried him on in a wide, gentle arc that gradually brought him back to Earth.

"Hey." Bunny's scared expression lessened. He tried stepping in tune with Wind again. And again, he did not fall. In his newfound confidence, his steps quickened to a run.

"Hey!" Bunny exclaimed.

"You're doing it," said Jack.

With another set of quick, gliding paces, Bunny laughed and in it, Jack heard the same peal of unbridled joy he himself would let out whenever he soared through the stratosphere on nothing but air.

Bunny moved in leaps now, hopping from one foot to another in a style reminiscent of the way he ran as a Pooka. A style all his own. And with each leap of faith, Wind was there to catch him, to propel him onward. He was a hare on the run; a sparrow freewheeling on air currents; a figure skater defying gravity.

He was flying.

Bunny's whooping laugher echoed around the clearing as Jack spun on his heels just to keep the streaking comet of him in sight. He laughed softly to himself, wondering now if Bunny would ever want to come—

~ Down ~

Jack felt a chill run through his core, like someone had taken his guts in a cold fist and yanked them into his feet.

"What do you want from me?" he croaked, no longer paying attention to Bunny. He shuddered as the voices repeated their command:

~DOWN~

"Down where?"

But even as he uttered the question, Jack knew exactly where he was being summoned.

~We've been waiting.~

"Then keep waiting, 'cause I'm not going!"

"What?"

Jack pivoted to see two Bunnys with four feet firmly planted on the ground. The whole Warren was swimming and shimmering.

"Geez, you look how I feel," said the two Bunnys. "How I was feeling, anyway. What's wrong? Is it something to do with Pitch?"

Jack's double-vision merged back into a coherent picture. All he had left to suggest that anything was wrong was the cold dizziness that turned his stomach.

"It's fine. I'm fine."

"Hey, hey, hey. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…"

"I said I'm FINE."

Jack clasped a hand over his mouth and a hush fell over the clearing, save for the pattering of miniscule feet as the Easter eggs fled to their Sentinels. He kept his hand pressed to his lips, as if that would recall the guttural, demonic rasp that had escaped him, as if it would make Bunny look at him with any less fear.

"That wasn't me," Jack whispered beneath his hand.

But Bunny's alarm only grew, as did the whites of his eyes, until his green irises were two perfect rings floating within them. "But it came from you," he whispered back.

It had. But it hadn't sounded like him. It had sounded an awful lot like the voices in his head instead. Jack told himself to breathe through the shock, through the fear simmering inside Bunny, through the soft jeering laughter that rang in his ears that was meant only for him.

And breathe he did. Even if it was through gritted teeth.

"I hear…voices…sometimes," Jack admitted. "I've been hearing them ever since we changed. Especially when I feel fear, like yours. And to me they sound like…that."

A look of understanding softened the creases in Bunny's forehead. "No kidding," he said. He pursed his lips, looked askance, then asked, "Do you know what they are?"

Jack shook his head. "No. What I do know is that I'm not going down there. Not for anything and definitely not for Pitch. Not when that's exactly what they're telling me to do."

Bunny said nothing and instead searched his face, probably for signs that he was telling the truth, that he was to be trusted.

"I think we're done for today," said Jack flatly. "Congratulations on your first flight." He turned in the direction of the continental tunnels. "Not only did you not die, you're now living proof that I can actually teach something."

"Thanks. I think?" Bunny replied. He glanced down at the staff in his hands, the way it illuminated with ice wherever he held it, and jolted. "Wait, where are you going?"

"I don't know. Out," he said, trudging off. "I need to clear my head."

"Just a reminder: I don't know how to use the stick yet!"

Jack did not turn around. "We'll cover it next time. Until then, don't touch anything with it. Simple."

With no answer from Bunny, his retort felt lost, absorbed only by the moss underfoot as he kept his eyes trained down.

~Down~

~Down~

~DOWN~

"Oi!"

Jack paused. He heard Bunny's quick steps across the open Warren long before he would have if he had been his normal, spritely self.

"I think you might be wrong," said Bunny as he caught up.

Jack turned around. Bunny's face was stoic, but there was still fear underneath. There was always fear, Jack was learning. Waiting. Watching. Coiled inside like a snake waiting to strike him unawares.

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked.

"The voices," said Bunny. "I don't think staying away from the Shadow realm is going to keep them quiet."

"Really?" he replied, but it did not sound like a question. "So, what? You think I should go down there and see what they want?"

"Not alone, but yes."

Jack looked Bunny up and down, took in his new spritely frame fused with his former Pookan physique of dense muscle mass, the way his hard-set brow was betrayed by the nervous tremors of his hands and the crunching of his toes.

"You want to come with?" Jack asked drily.

"Ha. I'd rather stick my coight over a dunny full of spiders. No. I'm not going down there. But Pitch will, least of all 'cause he has to if he wants to stay alive after all this is over. Listen, I'm not saying it'll make the voices any better but with Pitch around to show you the ropes of whatever it is he does, I don't think they'll get any worse, let's just put it that way."

Jack stilled and looked at Bunny, somehow with more clarity than looked at anything for the past day-and-a-half. "You know what they are, don't you?"

Bunny hesitated. "In a very, very crude kind of way. That's why if you've got questions, they're better answered by Fear Factor himself; not me."

Jack sighed and as he did, his shoulders dropped under a weight that had been pressing down on him for hours. The cloak that draped over him like a second skin seemed to be tugging him at its whim. Instead of letting him drift off to the cold, damp climes of the Scottish Highlands as he had intended, he felt a pull towards the North American tunnel. The hem of the cloak slipped back in a train, blending into the shadows that stretched along the ground from out of the dark passage. His choice in the matter seemed to be dwindling.

"If I didn't know any better," said Jack, "I'd almost think you respect him."

Bunny's face darkened. "Pitch and I have a long way to go before we reach anything close to respect. A long, long way. And as much as I hate traveling by any means other than subterranean, I'll deal with all the flying bullshit—and you—well before I deal with him. I don't envy what you have to work with. Not at all."

The corners of Jack's lips curled. "That sounds more like the Bunny I know."

"That said, you are the one who got us mixed up in a curse so, you know, fair's fair."

Jack smiled thinly. "Can't argue with that."

With one last consolatory glance shared between them, Jack began down the tunnel that led home, and beyond, to whatever horrors awaited him in the hall of the Nightmare King.

— O —

Cuspid, Berlin, Sector 2.

"Are you still listening, Pitch?" Tooth called.

Pitch blinked through the fog clouding his head. "Obviously. I'm a captive audience, remember?" he replied with feigned laziness, ever the contrarian.

Tooth gave him a terse look, but there was a twist to the corner of her mouth that betrayed he had hit some kind of nerve. Despite aiming for some semblance of harmony, that was one aspect of his residence the two of them hadn't figured out how to reconcile. Probably in part because Pitch hadn't felt game to take his leave…not that he wanted her to know that.

Whatever the look, it fled the moment Tooth asked, "Alright, what did I just say?"

Pitch looked askance and scoffed. "Really?"

"Really."

He glanced at the ridiculous set that Tooth and her fairies had constructed on one of the palace's platforms. It gave him no clues, mostly because he couldn't get over the absurdity of creating an almost-to-scale imitation of a generic child's bedroom from little more than the ornate, jewel-toned pillows and blankets that apparently furnished Tooth's chambers. He already detested anything resembling a pillow fort, but this irked him in a whole new way. Everything down to the child's stand-in had been considered—that was a bolster the size of a four-year-old in a plum purple. It wasn't exactly sophisticated but it would do, Tooth had said, at least while they assessed his technique and trained him to collect teeth properly.

First primary molar, Perth, Sector 8.

Unfortunately, training was slow-going, since Pitch was fighting to focus for more than five minutes.

"You really don't trust me with anything, do you?" he said coolly, ignoring how heavy his head felt amid the grating mental interruptions of Lateral incisor, cuspid, central incisor.

"Maybe I would if you could prove you've heard a single word I've said."

"Oh, I've heard everything. It's just taking its sweet, bloody time to stick."

Tooth shared a glance with the two fairies that were on hand for the demonstration, one of whom Pitch recognised as the heterochromatic hellion that Jack favoured so dearly. "This isn't exactly hard, Pitch," she said. "And I know for a fact that you're sharp, so what gives?"

"What gives is that I'm tired, Toothiana," he bit out. "Not to mention the constant ticking of information is like listening to the Speaking Clock at all hours of the day, except I don't get to hang up the phone. But if it really bothers you, I believe you said, 'Don't meet your doom; go around it.'"

For a moment, Tooth's expression hovered somewhere between irritation and abject confusion. "I said leave the room the way you found it."

"Well, I was close."

"Not even a little bit."

Tooth pressed her fingers to her temple and sank down on the pile of blankets and pillows posing as a makeshift bed. Pitch looked on in bemusement, having half expected her to fly off the handle in a rage at his obtuseness. He was ready for another verbal spar nonetheless.

"I know we're asking a lot of you," Tooth said without lifting her head.

There was a beat.

"But?" Pitch prompted.

Tooth sighed. "No, no 'buts'. And if there were, I've forgotten them. Frankly, I feel as exhausted as you look."

Pitch lifted a brow. Since Tooth's return, her eyelids would flutter every so often, heavy with a hankering for sleep he was close to understanding himself. If she stopped moving for too long, dreamsand particles would settle around her like silt in a still body of water. All the while she was trying to keep up appearances, hiding the half-erased hand she had returned with in the folds of her sand-speckled clothes. It had shocked him at first glance—both for the sight of it and for how much he found himself caring. She didn't seem to be in pain, but it had made his stomach turn and was still in the back of his mind. Yes, Pitch would have wagered that she looked as beaten up he did, though current appearances considered, he wasn't in a rush to find a mirror. But even if he felt any sort of sympathy or kinship, even though to his mind she evoked the image of Ophelia submerged in a slow river of dreams, it did not colour the flat words he spoke in response.

"Then you have a base understanding of what I'm up against."

"Alright, there's no need to measure swords," Tooth said with a hint of a smile. It vanished as quickly as it appeared. "The coordinates can be overwhelming. When I first became aware of a tooth being placed under a pillow, it scared me because once I realised it was something I was intuitively aware of, it became something I could never un-hear."

"Marvellous," said Pitch.

"You learn to place it to the side, in a way. It's like turning down the volume on a radio. You can't change the frequency, but you can make it quieter until you want to tune in again."

While Pitch found little comfort in Tooth's candour, he envisioned what she had described and imagined reaching into his mind and turning down the dial that would grant him a reprieve from the Speaking Memory Clock.

"…How long did you say it takes to learn?" he asked.

"Um. A little while."

The look they shared was a helpless one. A mutual understanding that for spirits such as themselves, a little while could be anywhere from tens to hundreds of years.

"How about this, said Tooth, "I'm giving you my permission—my encouragement, in fact—to ignore the instinct. To just deal with it later. Even if it's loud and demanding all your attention, let it go for now. That way we can get through the exercise and maybe, finally, take a breather."

Pitch folded his arms. "I'm going to object purely on the grounds that I refuse to let the notion of your permission interfere with anything I let myself do."

Tooth raised a brow.

"…But so be it."

And though he was loath to admit it even to himself, the knowledge that he wouldn't be chewed out by the Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies for blatantly ignoring a key duty did make the thoughts significantly easier to set aside.

"Alright, let's resume," said Tooth, getting to her feet in a hazy puff of gold dust. "When entering the room, your best bet is always the window. Can you tell me why?"

"So you can just as easily leave when you realise collecting bloody, gummy teeth is the last thing you want to be doing with your Saturday night?"

"Part of that was close! But no. We pass through the window—"

"Pass through?" Pitch interrupted.

"Yes. We can pass through almost any solid barrier. But we use the windows because we can see what's on the other side before we do. It saves any awkwardness if the child is still awake, or if one of the parents is still there."

"And what if the parents are fifteenth century dungeon wardens who've neglected to give the child a room with windows?"

"I know you're trying to be difficult, but that's a fair question when dealing with rooms in, say, an apartment complex. Normally, it's not a big deal since the mini-fairies handle pretty much all everyday exchanges. They can do a recon without being noticed since they're small. If the coast needs to be cleared, they can duck out of sight in a flash."

Pitch tilted his head. "I see. Then why, pray tell, do I need to know all this?"

Tooth's happy demeanour dropped. "Because there are some situations where it's better for you to intervene. Situations where, for example, someone has kidnapped your entire workforce in the hopes that you'll disappear."

Pitch pursed his lips beneath Tooth's cold glare. "Fair point, carry on."

"Once you're inside the room, efficiency is key. You need to determine the clearest flight path, find the tooth, and vacate the collection site leaving everything the way you found it. But that process hinges on how well you can collect the tooth without waking the child. I find the best method is to press your hand into the mattress slightly, so they don't feel the pillow shifting around as much. It also helps if you have small hands. Yours aren't exactly small but they are slender and delicate looking."

Pitch's affronted gasp almost caused him to choke on his own spit. "Slender and delicate?!" he spluttered.

"That's a good thing," said Tooth, earnest expression unwavering.

"Maybe in your world. I defy anyone to describe the Boogeyman as anything other than terrifying."

"Well, when you're the Boogeyman again, you can 'defy' as much as you like."

Pitch grunted, infuriated that he was allowing her to quite literally ruffle his feathers, but they seemed intent on giving away his every inner thought. "Whose idea was it to do things like this anyway?" he asked, desperate for a subject change.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what's stopping me from sprinkling bloody teeth over their pillows and stealing their money instead?"

"A moral compass…?" Tooth replied, aghast. "You can't steal money from anyone, least of all children."

"I take it you're not receiving constructive criticism at this time."

"We'll make a box for you to leave your suggestions. Back to the tutorial. Now."

Pitch approached the setup sullen and, frankly, a little bored. "Fine. A quick game is a good game, or…something along those lines." He was barely making sense, his mind little more than a container of soup. More than anything, he ached down to his bones and was done procrastinating if it meant he could let his mind drift away from reality for a little while. He stepped into the boundary that denoted the room, as it were, and made an exaggerated show of skirting around tables, hopping over toys and crawling to the 'child's' bedside. He looked back at Tooth and with a mocking flourish asked, "How was that?"

"You were heavy on your left leg."

"Oh, please…"

"And you definitely shouldn't be talking right now."

Fine, he mouthed and turned to the bed. The bolster had been laid longways with an end, the head, perched upon the pillow. The tooth was supposedly there, so he did as Tooth had instructed and slid his hand underneath, pressing into the mattress to keep any pillow disturbance to a minimum. His fingers found something hard with irregular points and edges, albeit a little larger than anticipated. Carefully, he extracted it, pressing his hand into the mattress all the while. When his hand was out from under the pillow, he pulled his hand away.

"Woah, hold on!" Tooth called. "You can't just let the mattress spring back like that. That's an instant breach for sure."

"Does finessing the mattress of all things really matter? I found the tooth," he said, waving it in her direction.

"It does matter. Because now the child is awake. See?"

Pitch looked down in time to see Baby Tooth slap a pair of wide, round googly-eyes on the bolster.

"Awake indeed," he said, unamused.

"That aside, let's see what you picked up."

Pitch turned the 'tooth' over in his hand. Though it was less like a tooth and more like…a knucklebone.

"Ooh, so close," said Tooth. "You found a jack instead."

"Is this not just a pretend tooth?" asked Pitch, beyond weary.

"No, I put a real tooth under there too. The thing about kids is they leave toys all over the place, including under their pillows. You need to be precise enough to know what you're handling by touch alone and you need to do it right the first time. Too much fishing around and you wake them up."

Pitch stood from the pool of his feathers and dropped the game piece onto the bed. "I didn't think children played knucklebones anymore."

"They call it Jacks or Scatter Jacks since the idea of using actual bones is a little off-putting, but sure they do!" Tooth looked at Baby Tooth. "…They do, don't they?"

Baby Tooth shrugged and shook her head with a chirp.

"Rarely, by the sounds of it," said Pitch smugly. "You know, you're not exactly keeping up with the times, Toothiana. Even I know children nowadays prefer toys that light up and make obnoxious noises, or worse still, come fitted with a screen. And they call me ancient."

Tooth's expression, which had lightened since they agreed to try and be a touch less scornful of each other, soured to a frown. "We're getting off track."

"Perhaps, but speaking of jacks, I have one who needs to be shown the finer arts of darkness and I think we've both reached the limits of our patience for today, don't you?"

Tooth's frown deepened. "We agreed to keep at this until we couldn't."

"Exactly. I don't know about you but I, for one, am exhausted. I haven't caught a break since I woke up in that Gods forsaken forest listening to all of you trying to figure out how best to dispose of my body."

"That is not what we were saying!"

"Close enough."

They stared at each other, Tooth fuming, Pitch too apathetic to care.

"I need to rest, Toothiana. I'm not going to allay any anxieties you have when I can barely stand. I cannot perform what you're asking of me. Not right now. No matter how simple it might be. And do also remember I need time to give Frost an induction to the duties he's supposed to be performing for me." He fixed his mouth in a phony smile. "As charming as my company surely is, you need to let me go sooner or later. Though for the sake of everyone involved, I'd opt for 'sooner'."

Every argument Tooth could come up with seemed to cross her face. Silently, one by one, she let them go. They had worked through the night and the ambient glow that kept Punjam HyLoo illuminated in darkness was giving way to the peach light of dawn. She sighed and said, "Can you please try one more time. Just one. And after that I won't say anything else, and you can leave as soon as you wish."

Pitch stood rigid, his feathers rippling and eyes narrowing dangerously.

"Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not keeping you here against your will. Not…intentionally. I am just asking if you would oblige me one more time." She nodded at Baby Tooth and the other assisting mini fairy. They zipped away to some place high above and returned with the red bag from North, and a handful of helpers to carry the weight of the glass baubles. Tooth opened the bag and pulled out two.

"Here. These were meant for you, so it stands to reason that you should be able to use them whenever you want." To pitch's surprise, she placed a Snowglobe into each of his hands and stood back. "One to take you wherever you need to go. And one to bring you back."

The choice was his. Leave unceremoniously, or do something that was, as far as he was concerned, undeservingly charitable.

"You say I'm not here against my will," Pitch started quietly. "This looks an awful lot like a fixed return trip."

Tooth shared a look with Baby Tooth. "I wouldn't blame you if you thought that. I suppose it would be easier for me to have you believe that. But…your path is your own to choose. I can't make you come back here. You could take that Snowglobe and hide away in some remote mountain range, or that other one and travel to a pocket of space where no one would find you ever again."

The thought almost made Pitch's mouth water; to run away and shed this responsibility for which he never asked. Space was cold and uncaring, but indifference meant invisibility. Where once he might have literally killed to be anything but, he was beginning to understand the old adage, 'be careful what you wish for.'

"But you know as well as I do that whatever existence you try and carve out would be short lived," said Tooth, interrupting his daydream. "You're tied to this curse. And if—when the last light of childhood belief disappears, so do you. So do we all."

Pitch turned one of the Snowglobes in his hand and the colours of Tooth Palace bent and refracted in shards of rainbow. It was certainly made of glass, but lighter than it appeared. As though the center might have held nothing more than an empty vacuum of potential. It was the notion of potential which he could not let go of.

"What is North's plan then?" he asked bitterly. "I'm not a prisoner but the only way I get to leave is if I go out on parole with a few of these things?"

"I don't think North had a plan," said Tooth.

Pitch rolled his eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"

Tooth gave a small, tentative chuckle that drew his sharp gaze. "What I mean," she continued, "is that the Snowglobes were just to bring you to and from the palace for a little while. I don't intend for you to use them forever."

"Then what do you intend for me, Toothiana?"

She smiled and, for just a moment, glimmered like liquid gold. "To fly of course."

"Fly?!" Pitch strained his neck to look at the gold iridescent wings that had been twitching and jolting along with his every movement, emotion and thought. So thin and delicate they were, he couldn't believe they could be anything other than ornamental. He could barely feel them unless he tried to move them.

"Yes. You need to learn, otherwise you'll be relying on charity from North for as long as we're stuck like this." Tooth examined the nails on her good hand. "I can't imagine you'd be a fan of that now, would you?"

Pitch clenched his jaw. He would rather have plucked out his feathers one by one. Granted, the idea of flying was only slightly more comforting. Tooth met his gaze. Despite her provocative snipe, her face was earnest, soft, and it caught him off guard just a little.

"I told you. I don't want you as my prisoner," she said. "I won't make you look for anymore teeth and I won't force you to come back here once you leave." She gestured to the Snowglobes. "Though I would be extremely grateful for the former and indebted to you for the latter."

Nerves played across Tooth's face. Though he gained nothing from them anymore, Pitch knew all the hallmarks. The furrowing of her brow, the flexing of her hand when she so desperately wanted to wring it in her other one—the one she refused to let him see. He held her fate in his hands now…she was letting him choose. Him, the spiteful asshole she had no reason to trust nor reason to believe would return. Him, the rendering of fear incarnate who, until so very recently, had shown her nothing but scorn and malice. Here she was showing him faith.

He almost wished she had kept acting as his warden and dragged him to the shadow realm by the ear. It would have made the unfamiliar discomfort that flared in his chest at what he was about to do far easier to squash down.

Pitch looked Tooth square in the face, into the amethyst shards of her shining eyes. With a barely audible grunt he tore his gaze away to the floor, set his resolve and muttered, "Lake Burgess."

In one second, he had thrown the Snowglobe to the ground and opened the portal in a flash of white light. In the next, he was gone.

— O —

With Jack's departure from the Warren came North's arrival, the former being unaware of how close their paths came to merging and the latter being relieved to postpone, at least for the time being, what would likely be a tense reunion.

Bunny led North through the Warren's production line, light on his feet with the icy breath of winter surrounding him. But as light-footed as Bunny may have been, North observed that he still looked ill at ease, taking too much care to avoid brushing up against the greenery surrounding him. The notion of a blight of frost on the Warren was intolerable, Bunny had said when North commented on his jittery gait. Nor would he ever forgive himself if he was the one who caused it.

The unease Bunny felt was not lost on North. Ever since his center had shifted, the North Pole had felt disconnected from him somehow, or he from it, leaving a hollowness that just did not sit right. But when he stood in the heart of Bunny's realm, which was a far cry from the coziness and busyness he was used to, the very earth hummed with an energy that settled within him. As soon as he entered the Warren, the hollowness carved by his own realm vanished.

None of this boded well for North's standing in their 'friendly' Christmas-Easter rivalry.

"So, here's where the magic happens," said Bunny, gesturing to opalescent dye pools and streams. "The way it works is—"

"Da, I remember," North interrupted. "We were here not so long ago. I have seen your production process; everything was very simple."

"Simple?!" Bunny exclaimed. "Mate, this is a feat of intricate artistry on a mass scale. Simple is a gross understatement of what's going on here."

"But it was self-sufficient, no? Eggs have little feet and they run down to the dye pools. Flowers and vines paint eggs, make them pretty. An understatement of production process, yes, but a fair statement on what you do? My friend, you stress too much; that is what you do," North chuckled.

Bunny regarded him coolly for a moment, poising North for their usual debate to kick off for the millionth time. Instead, Bunny spoke with calm evenness.

"You've been saying a long time, 'Easter isn't Christmas.' And you're right. It's not." Bunny leapt lightly up onto a boulder with a flurry of snowflakes and gazed out over the Warren. "It's better."

North's Pookan fur raised on his hackles as he wound up to argue back. Bunny cut him off.

"Let's go over it then!" he slipped down and went to the mouth of the stream where it opened into a dye pool. "Each egg is painted with special dyes that carry the hopes of children. They're dusted with a pollen dye in the fields of Lily of the Valley. Then they take a nice relaxing dip in the dye pool streams. Then they jump out, all gussied up, and get etched with shapes and patterns by vines on their way to the tunnels. I also tend to pull some batches aside and hand paint them which is meticulous work, but it's worth every brushstroke when the kids find them on Easter morning."

With his mind ticking over with new-found fascination, North watched as the vines rippled and swayed in the soft breeze emanating from Bunny's being.

"See," said Bunny, "straightforward it may be, but it's still based on a sophisticated design."

North chuckled. "The design is sophisticated, yes. But I am yet to see what you bring to the table."

Bunny flared his nostrils and gripped his hand around the staff. "You're also yet to see any eggs running through here. Noticed that?"

"I…" North took a closer, stunned look at his surroundings. The Warren, alive with movement and pastel colours when he had last visited, was now eerily still. "I had not noticed," he admitted sheepishly.

"Yeah. That's your job. The eggs come from you."

North could only stare in horror.

"Wait, no! Not like that!" Bunny all but screamed.

"You said you didn't—!"

"I DON'T!"

They both cried out in disgust. The grass at Bunny's feet had frosted over.

"The Warren has its own means of production, yes," Bunny elaborated, haggardly. "But it needs power to do so. It needs power from the Guardian of Hope, which is now you."

North looked at the bulbous tulips that sprouted all over the realm, now dormant and waiting. "What do I do?"

"You've gotta feel the energy of the Warren and give back to it. Connect to the natural forces, ya know?"

North scrunched his nose. "This sounds very hippy-dippy…"

"That's just the way it is," Bunny snapped. "If I can learn how to fly in an afternoon, you can try this. Best part is you don't have to be thrown around in the air like a ragdoll. Now ground your feet and concentrate."

There was little use arguing, so North did as instructed. "What am I concentrating on?"

"Notice the energy of the Warren. It's all around you. Feel how it connects with you through the soles of your feet and courses through you, like an electrical current, but it shouldn't be painful."

North shook his head. On the contrary, it was pleasant, a light hum that warmed him to his core.

"That energy flows through you and out, back to the earth. Hold yourself there. You're a conduit. That's how you bring the Warren to life."

It had only been a few seconds, but already North noticed there was a different quality to his being that had not existed before. He felt connected, whole and energized in a way he had not known before. It was symbiotic, harmonious, and it gave him strength.

"But where are the eggs?" North asked, looking around the still-deserted Warren.

Bunny grinned, almost triumphantly. "They don't appear until you give this place hope."

North raised a furry brow. "But I am hope. I was doing that just now, da?"

"Remember how I said Easter is better than Christmas—and meant it? That's what you need to believe if you're gonna be me for the next however long we're stuck like this. Doesn't matter if that's the objective truth or not. You need to believe in hope above all else if you want to bring it to the rest of the world."

"Bah. I can still think Christmas is better while believing in hope."

"Oh, you reckon?"

"Da. Watch me now."

North closed his eyes and tapped back into the Warren's current of energy, letting it flow in and out of him in pulsating waves. Time slipped away and he could have sworn he was transcending dimensions until he opened his eyes and felt himself 'drop' back into his own body.

North glanced around at the Warren, visibly unchanged. His gaze landed on Bunny who was at once smug and impatient.

"Wow…nah, yeah, you really showed me."

"Mysakovsky," North hissed.

Bunny rolled his eyes. "Here's a bright idea: why don't you try it my way? I know it might kill you, but let's see what happens!"

Despite what he would rather have Bunny think, North was only half resistant to the idea at this point, and mostly out of childish pettiness. He knew there was a very real impetus to getting this right, and there would be disastrous consequences if he didn't. He could set aside his pride just once.

"Tell me about hope as you know it," he said.

Bunny blinked, apparently caught off guard by North's sudden shift in attitude.

"Well…hope is…" As he searched for the words, his brow furrowed. Then it lifted. "You're used to looking at the world and being inspired by it, right? You build upon what already exists or you invent things according to how you see they could be, to bring out the wonder that's waiting to be found. Hope doesn't always work like that. You can find it in the world, if you look closely; in first rays of a sunny day after winter, or the way a butterfly emerges from its cocoon renewed and ready to take flight, or in the laughter of children. But often, and always when we need it most, hope comes from ourselves. The way an activist speaks truth to an oppressive power, the way the chronically ill pick themselves up just to go about their lives every excruciating day, the way a parent feels seconds before hearing the cries of their newborn; that is hope that cannot come from anywhere but within. It's the ability—the sheer will—to see light even when we feel overcome by darkness. Hope is what makes life go on. It goes far beyond any one day or celebration. It's the most powerful force on Earth."

Bunny seemed almost lost in a daze, his eyes shining while the last of his words had become thick in his throat. North himself was rendered speechless. In fact, he said nothing at all as he closed his eyes and reconnected with the Warren.

He thought of his days as a young Cossack, how lost he had been until he found a little girl that changed the way he saw the world. He thought of the uncertainty he had felt in his then-new role as the Guardian of Wonder, and the nights he spent gazing up at the moon wondering why Manny chose him of all people to watch over the children of the world when he felt so very unqualified. And he thought of the moments when he pushed his uncertainty to the side, if only for a little while at a time, and drew on something within that would empower him to the decisions that needed to be made; that he would not just be enough but be better tomorrow than he was the day before.

Something scurried over North's foot.

With a jolt, he opened his eyes found the culprit running away on two little feet, down to the dye pool streams. An egg of the Warren.

All around, more eggs were beginning to emerge, bobbing on tiny legs and joining a caravan that wound through the production line and ended in a multicoloured parade that headed toward the Warren's intercontinental tunnels.

It was then that he noticed the warmth that settled in his core and radiated to tips of his ears, fingers and toes. It was vitality and strength. It was life borne of hope.

"Not bad," said Bunny with a smile that could have been something akin to pride. "Not bad at all. You'll be running this place in no time."

"Here is to hoping," said North.

But North was not a man (or Pooka) content with maintaining the status quo. In his mind's eye, a week down the line, he was not just running the Warren, he was improving it. He just had to speak to Phil about acquiring some paintball guns.