The Colors of Us

by ab2fsycho

Chapter 5: Phase Four

 Mother Nature is a Bitch 

“I would take a step back from that if I were you, mate,” Bunny told North. The giant of a man was hunched over looking at a brightly colored frog crawling on one of the many varieties of rainforest vegetation.

“But it interests me!” North exclaimed. Bunny cringed at how close the Guardian of Wonder was to the red and blue creature.

“North, it’s poisonous. One touch could—,” Tooth started, but was interrupted by a voice from ahead.

“I swear to all that’s holy, if you don’t stay in my line of view, I am going to throw you over my shoulder and carry you through here,” Pitch threatened. The Guardians heard Rin snort in response. The little Fearling bastard making an appearance had made them all a little uncomfortable. While Bunny still felt it Pitch’s fault the thing even existed, he could now see just how terribly the Nightmare King wanted Rin gone.

Pitch had led them to the Amazon rainforest, teaming with wildlife that North couldn’t stop gawking at and Bunny couldn’t stop glaring warily at. Pitch hadn’t appreciated the sleigh ride in the slightest, breaking North’s belief that everyone loved his method of travel. Tooth flew alongside the group calmly, innately familiar with the laws of the jungle. Sandy stayed just behind Pitch and Rin, making Bunny think he was chaperoning them in his own way. That seemed right, seeing as both Jack and Rin had already encountered just as many deadly little beasts as North had. Bunny had to admit, though, North was more likely to get himself stung in this situation. There was no way Rin was getting hurt with the Boogeyman hovering over him like so.

Bunny rubbed his paws together furiously. On some level, he was grateful for all the dangers. They gave him something to think about other than the impending doom that would likely ensue from this encounter with Mother Nature. Sandy noticed Bunny wringing his paws and a question mark appeared with several other symbols asking him if he was alright. “I’m fine, Sandy,” Bunny reassured. In all honesty, he really wasn’t fine. He was traveling through a forest where even the plants were predators, with his archnemesis leading the way, and they were getting closer to . . . her.

Bunny realized he had lied to Jack Frost. It wasn’t that the Guardians didn’t speak about Mother Nature. It was just him.



Rin laughed at Pitch’s facial expression as he pointed to a snake. “So this will do what to me?”

Pitch wasn’t the least bit amused. “Boa constrictor. It’ll do exactly as the name says and constrict you. Now stop irritating me and don’t play with it.”

Rin narrowed his eyes, a sly yet fangless grin spreading across his ashen face. At least he was in his midway form and not completely possessing Jack’s body. That apparently required permission. “It hardly looks big enough to do anything.”

“Big enough is not an issue in this region,” Pitch warned. Pitch realized his mistake when Rin’s eyes widened again with delight.

“Ah, so you wanna talk about big enough, now?”

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Pitch sighed as he spoke.

“I bet you wish Jack’s mind was in the gutter more often. That would be tons of fun, and wouldn’t we know it!” Rin twirled the staff in his hands, dancing on the tips of his toes as Pitch directed the others where to go.

Pitch grumbled to himself. The only thing more irritating than Rin at the moment was the scent of fear permeating from the Guardians at his back. Any other time, he would thoroughly enjoy that taste. However, he was being distracted by his own anxious thoughts of what was to come. They were closing in on her borders. He’d advised that North land his monstrous mechanism a good distance from it in the event that she reacted to their presence less than appropriately. Pitch didn’t doubt her violence. He simply didn’t know what degree of violence he could expect of her.

Rin spun in circles before him, laughing at the complicated environment that was the refuge of Mother Nature. Deadly yet beautiful. It seemed oddly fitting for her, and the thought of seeing her after centuries made his stomach turn and twist into knots.

An unnatural snap reached his ears. Pitch’s eyes widened and he lurched forward and grabbed Rin around the waist, yanking the boy backwards. Mere seconds later, a barbed arrow pierced the ground where Rin had been. Pitch released the boy, setting him so that he was standing beside him. In his fright, Rin had retreated and Jack had reemerged.

“What the hell was that?!” Jack almost shouted. The Guardians halted behind them, the tension amongst them building at the sight of the arrow.

The Cossack and the twit reached for their swords, but Pitch uttered, “Stop. That was just a warning shot.”

“She almost hit Jack,” the bird retorted.

Pitch turned to face them, feeling his irritation at their presence returning. “She knew I’d hear it. If she’d wanted Jack dead, she wouldn’t have tipped us off.” In that moment, something whizzed through his hair. Another barbed arrow buried itself in a tree behind the group, proving his point. Pitch’s rage ignited then. He spun back around and stepped deeper into Mother Nature’s territory, staring furiously up into the canopy. “Seraphina!”

At that another arrow flew past, cutting a taut vine above their heads. Upon release, a net of vines encased the twit and left her dangling from the canopy screaming. Like clockwork, a series of traps began to unfold, showing Pitch exactly what Mother Nature had at least attempted to warn them of before she set them off. Large roots curled up from underground, snagging the rabbit and the Cossack as they formed a cage against the tree trunk. Pitch and Jack took several steps deeper into the region, avoiding the vines that dropped down and ensnared Sanderson. Grabbing Jack around the waist again, Pitch pulled him into the shadows and teleported them to a branch in the canopy. He watched as three more traps were triggered, leaving the bird struggling within the net, the Cossack and the kangaroo shouting through their wooden prison to her, and Sanderson remaining cool and collected whilst dangling by his limbs from branches.

“Pitch—.”

“Stay,” Pitch ordered Jack as he ventured back into the shadows and onto the ground. His heart hammered as he searched for Mother Nature and prepared for her to appear and claim her work. “Seraphina, you show yourself right this minute!”

He had the sudden urge to stare up at the canopy. Pitch saw a hand wave, commanding the thick canopy to recede just enough to form a circle of pure sunlight. He backed away, attempting to avoid the obvious trap, and found himself against a tree. Vines then unfurled and pinned him against the bark, one even slipping over his mouth and gagging him. He realized he’d made a mistake too late, and had allowed her to trap him in the one spot in this vicinity without shadow.

He could just barely see through the blinding light the most beautiful face he had ever beheld and could never forget. Piercing silver-gold eyes with cat-like irises stared back at him as she growled, “It’s Sera.”



Jack rode the wind down from his perch, landing behind the woman that had just captured every single one of his friends without a lick of remorse. He held his staff aloft, taking in her appearance as he moved. Once again, he was faced with someone taller than himself. She had long, thick, black hair that had orchids and vines growing and thriving within the mass. Her skin was splotched with many greens, almost looking like camouflage. She didn’t wear the fine dress that Sandy had depicted. Instead, it looked like she wore a brown, leather dress cut down the sides and held in place by a belt that was lined with small pouches. Underneath was what looked like a dark leotard that covered her arms, torso, hips, thighs, and knees. Her shins and feet were bare save for a black dagger strapped to her left calf. Jack’s eyes widened at the number of weapons he could see on her. A quiver full of arrows and a now unstrung bow on her back, a hatchet at her waist, and a stone warhammer just over her shoulder made up the rest of her visible arsenal. Given her display of power through the traps she’d set, Jack hardly found it necessary for her to be so heavily armed.

And given her display, he probably shouldn’t be challenging her at this moment. But she had the people he cared about trapped and he wasn’t about to let her get away with that.

“Let them go!” he said, trying to sound threatening as he pointed his crook at her.

Mother Nature turned and gazed at him, and he finally got a good look at her face. The cat-like eyes threw him off, but her face seemed . . . familiar. He felt a strange sort of recognition as he stared at the shape of her nose and the height of her cheekbones. When she focused in on him, he felt like an insect being studied. Within seconds, however, a grin spread across her face and revealed sharp canines. The feeling of recognition persisted. When she spoke, she almost sounded mirthful. “Well, aren’t you adorable, standing there like that twig is going to do anything.”

“I said let them go!” he reiterated, his hands starting to tremble.

This only made her eyes narrow and her lips tighten into an even more spiteful grin. She spoke loud enough for the others to hear. “The Guardians? Provided they don’t attack, I’ll let them go without question.” She pulled her hammer over her shoulder, making Jack flinch as she slammed the stone head onto the ground. A wave of energy sliced through the forest, and he dared turn to look at his friends. The vines and roots that had imprisoned them released, returning to their places as Tooth, Sandy, Bunny, and North all gathered and tried to recover. Jack felt a wave of sorrow crash through him as he saw Tooth shaking from having been caged. He knew that feeling of uncontrollable fear all too well. At least North holding her was helping her settle her nerves.

Jack turned back to Mother Nature. “Him too,” he declared, gesturing to Pitch. Jack glanced at his partner momentarily, trapped in a circle of light yet again. Jack’s chest tightened with rage and anxiety as the woman before him didn’t even shift or show any signs of wanting to free him.

“Friend of yours? In that case, you’re welcome,” she remarked sarcastically.

“Let him go!” Jack shouted, freezing the ground at Mother Nature’s feet in the hopes that she might take him seriously.

She hardly even lifted an eyebrow. “Jack Frost, huh? The baby Guardian! I thought that was you.”

“Who else would I be?! Now let Pitch go!” he screamed.

“Jack, stop it!” Bunny warned, stepping apart from the others. But Jack was beyond listening to him at the moment.

Mother Nature’s eyes narrowed on Jack, most notably his sweater. She drank in his appearance before she turned to the other Guardians. “First of all, you all should not be here. I made it very clear that I wanted nothing to do with any of your business. Second,” she looked back at Jack, “why are you so concerned about the Boogeyman’s welfare if you’re one of them?” It was almost as if she already knew the answer, but was looking for confirmation.

Bunny spoke up again, “Jack, don’t—.”

“He’s more than a friend,” Jack snarled.

The fury that ripped across Mother Nature’s face was unholy. He didn’t have time to react as she kicked dirt up into his eyes, distracting him long enough to slam the hammer into his torso and send him flying backwards. His innards felt inverted as he landed at his friends’ feet, coughing and gasping for air. He felt completely limp and powerless as he struggled against the pain. He grasped for his staff, but could hardly sit up let alone locate it. His vision was spotted and blurred, his only functioning sense being hearing.

And boy did he hear some colorful language coming out of Mother Nature.



“Sera, what—?” Bunny exclaimed as he left Jack gasping on the ground in the hands of the other three.

She turned and pointed a now clawed finger at him. “Not right now! This is between me and him!”

Before she turned back to Pitch, Bunny grabbed her forearm and forced her attention back on him. “You just sledgehammered one of our own! He can wait!” Bunny snapped, gesturing at the Nightmare King. He felt just a hint of sympathy for Pitch, who was deviating between staring helplessly at Jack and glaring profusely at Sera and himself. The Boogeyman’s whole body tensed against the vines as he struggled to break free.

“He’ll recover! I’m sure he’s put up with worse from him,” she snarled back, yanking her arm out of Bunny’s grip and returning her focus to Pitch. “You hypocrite! You disown me after the bloody Man in the Moon chooses me for Guardianship, and this is how you greet me? After hundreds of years, this is how you come back into my life?!” Bunny takes a step back, watching as Sera’s fury causes the winds to pick up speed. Pitch’s fury matches hers, and Bunny’s sure that if the Nightmare King were in the shadows that they’d be roiling as well. Sera snorts mockingly at Pitch’s shouting, which was severely muffled by the gag. “Oh, do let’s hear your explanation.”

The gag on Pitch’s mouth drops and he spits green before shouting at her. “I did not disown you! You gave me no ultimatum—.”

“You practically told me I was dead to you, and all because of something that a disc in the sky couldn’t even bother telling me himself!”

“You were always too chummy with the Guardians, even after the Great War—.”

“And now you’re screwing one?! Excuse you, but that’s a bit more than chummy—!”

“He’s not like them, and if he’s hurt in any way—!”

“And just how old is he? Three hundred seventeen? That’s not even a third of your age—!”

“Seraphina—.”

“It’s Sera!” she snapped, slamming her hammer down onto the ground again. The hole in the canopy righted itself, bringing Pitch back under the same shadow as the others and releasing him from his binds. When he dropped to the ground and rose to his full height, the shadows did exactly as Bunny suspected and responded to Pitch’s rage. Sera spread her arms wide in mock surrender. “And I would love to see what you’d do to me in the event that your toy is injured. Do show me how much tenderness you are capable of showing to a Guardian.”

Bunny felt the air leave his lungs at the sound of her spite and stepped back again as the Nightmare King and Mother Nature engaged in a staring contest that would surely baffle even the most intimidating creatures on earth. Pitch’s fists clenched until his knuckles were pale as Sera placed her hammer back in its sling. She folded her arms, waiting for his response to her challenge. But he stood still, his rage permeating through the wood. Meanwhile, the Guardians observed silently. When Pitch growled and looked down, unable to strike out against Sera, Bunny stepped forward. “Sera, please—.”

“Can it, rabbit!” she snapped without looking at him. “Centuries of isolation, and you still can’t even raise a hand to me.” She scoffed. “It would’ve been easier to deal with if you could.”

“You’re my blood,” Pitch grumbled, still furious but resigned to his inability to strike her. “I will never harm you.”

“But you have,” she remarked.

“Blood?” came Jack’s tired voice. Bunny turned to see the boy back on his feet, but hunched over from the blow Sera had dealt him. North held his staff, assuring him that it wasn’t lost. Somehow, Bunny didn’t think the knockout Sera had given Jack was going to be quite as devastating as this one. “Pitch, what—?”

“He didn’t bother telling you he was a father, did he?” Sera said snidely.

The hair on Bunny’s body stood on end at the sight of Jack’s dismay. “She’s your daughter?!” he cried.

Pitch started, “I was going to tell you—.”

“Sure you were,” Sera interrupted. “Keep fooling him into thinking you can be an honest, reliable man. It’s certainly worked for you in the past.” One look at Pitch Black and Bunny swore he could hear the Nightmare King thinking, Kill me now.

“Shut up!” Jack said, ignoring his breathlessness and agony and running full force at Mother Nature. “Leave him alone!”

Bunny watched as Jack’s eyes went from blue and white to gold and black, and knew that this was no longer Jack they were dealing with. Sera prepared for him, taken aback by his change in appearance. Bunny stepped between Sera and Rin, the boy slamming into his torso before he could slow up and change direction. Bunny gasped at the impact, and in that same breath called for Sandy. Without pause, the Sandman threw a ball of dreamsand at Rin and knocked him out. The boy went limp against him as Bunny lifted him up and threw him over his shoulder.

It was almost as though the Guardians had decided they’d been quiet long enough simultaneously. Tooth flew forward, looking almost completely recovered from her encounter with the net. “Now that you seem to have finished bickering—.”

“We haven’t—,” Sera said.

Bunny could tell that Tooth had had enough. “Listen up! We have a serious problem here. It has the potential to get catastrophic and we’ve already got one unwilling accomplice on this expedition, so I don’t want to hear another word out of you while I explain the situation. Especially when the end bringer is involved.”

That struck Sera hard. Her eyes widened, the winds died, and Tooth had her full attention. “Nidhogg?”

“Nidhogg, Pillan, whatever you feel like calling him,” Bunny grumbled.

North stepped in. “His minions started targeting us earlier this summer, and only now have we realized that he’s behind all the disasters happening in the world. Man in Moon said that you trapped him before. We want to know if you can do it again.”

Sera stared blankly at them, her jaw slack. She started glancing around, not out of nervousness but out of . . . was she crying? No, she wasn’t. But she was clearly upset, and somehow that made Bunny’s stomach turn even now. One of her hands tangled in her mess of hair as she uttered in disbelief, “He can’t be . . . he can’t be breaking out.”

“He is,” Tooth stated. “And he’s already done plenty of damage to us.”

“He’s indirectly the reason that Jack is part Fearling, as you may have noticed,” North pointed out.

“Give the Boogeyman some credit on that one,” Bunny uttered without thinking.

Pitch prepared to lash out as Sandy started flashing warning signals above his head. The Nightmare King growled, “I didn’t mean—.”

“Enough! Water under the bridge!” Tooth barked. “Can you help us or not?”

Sera still seemed the slightest bit incoherent as she gazed at each of their faces. She closed her eyes, almost as if she were listening to some voice in her head. When she opened her eyes again, she stared at them. “You know for certain it’s him?”

“One of his plague spirits admitted it,” Bunny told her.

She almost seemed crushed by that knowledge. She said, “Then we don’t have much time to fix this.”

“You’ll help us then?” Tooth asked, her tone not as aggressive as before.

Sera’s eyes narrowed on each of them as she recovered her willpower. “On two conditions: one, I’ll lead you to him. I’m guessing none of you know how to find him, and even if you did, encountering his army head-on is suicide.”

The Guardians exchanged looks, realizing she was right. Bunny spoke up, “Okay, but how do you propose we travel?”

“On foot. Given you lot and your portals and flying apparatuses, they’ll be watching the skies.” She pinched her sinuses. “That also negates my storms. I’ll have to save those for the real battles.”

“And your other condition?” North asked.

“Two, once this is done, you stay out of my life. I don’t want to see hide nor hair of any of you ever again, even if the Man in the Moon decrees it.” She gazed up at the sky, as if searching for the moon. “Especially if he decrees it.”

 Tension Coils 

“Before all this happened, a little warning may have been nice!”

“I wanted to, but—.”

“‘Oh, by the way Jack, I have a relative who might greet you with a fist bump. To your guts. With a hammer.’ You know? A warning like that.”

“I didn’t expect her to—.”

“You didn’t expect me to get hurt? Really? Have you seen—?” Jack stopped, knowing full well that he couldn’t blame Pitch for his scars or his attack. That would be wrong and unfair. He was accident-prone, but that couldn’t be helped. He could already tell Pitch was dealing with his own emotional turmoil, and Jack didn’t need to add guilt on top of it.

That didn’t mean he was any less pissed for not having been prepared for this encounter.

“Punch him in the face!” Rin suddenly chimed in as the humming in Jack’s brain returned. Jack rolled his eyes before shaking his head at the suggestion. “Come on! That was a dick move!”

“Shut up, you!” Jack demanded aloud, preparing to sit up. He gasped at the pain the action brought on.

“Would you look at that. He’s crazy like you,” a female voice sounded suddenly.

“Stay away from him,” Pitch growled to Mother Nature.

“Calm down, I’m not mad at her,” Jack whispered pointedly. Pitch’s eyes remained narrowed on his daughter, who didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by her father’s antics. It was just as well. Pitch didn’t seem to notice Jack’s tone. Jack attempted to sit up and redirect Pitch’s attention, but the bruise only made him gasp and fall back onto the Boogeyman’s lap. Though it wasn’t what Jack had intended, he achieved his goal. Pitch’s attention was on him again.

“Yeah, sorry for the blow.” Jack wasn’t entirely sure Sera was sorry for hitting him. “My temper’s atrocious. I’m sure you’ve met someone with similar anger management issues.”

“Your attitude does not come from me,” Pitch snarled.

“Are you sure?” Sera retorted, her eyes narrowing as her canines flashed.

“Okay, can we not use Jack as a reason to bicker?” Jack interjected. “I’m kind of exhausted, here.”

“Makes me wonder what else he’s been used for,” Sera muttered to herself. “A punching bag—.”

Pitch responded, “Peace treaty—.”

“Scratching post—.”

“War tool—.”

“Cut it out,” Jack remarked.

But Sera continued with, “Probably a teddy bear—.”

“Bait—.”

“Definitely a pillow—.”

“Enough, you two!” Jack exclaimed, sitting upright. He immediately regretted his actions as the bruise reminded him of the reason the Guardians had decided to postpone movement until the next day. “Jeez!” he groaned, confronted by yet another worried expression from Pitch. The Nightmare King went to lift up his hoodie again, but Jack stopped him. “It hasn’t changed! I promise. You don’t have to check it every ten seconds.”

“You know, I just figured out what that row of shark teeth was any good for,” Sera said, gesturing to Pitch. Then she looked disgusted with herself. “Ugh, I shouldn’t have put that image in my own head. Definitely not something I wanted to think about.”

“Are you done hovering, or do you have a purpose standing over him?” Pitch snapped. He seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he was the one hovering over Jack, whereas Mother Nature was a good two feet away. Jack groaned. He did not need this. He did not need this at all.

“I was going to offer some remedy for possibly caving in his innards, but you look like you’ve got it,” she said sarcastically.

“You can do that?” Jack asked without hesitation. At this rate, the group wasn’t going to get anywhere. He couldn’t afford to be out of commission, and he was a little more willing to trust Sera than he’d like to admit. Plus, the pain was only adding to his frustrations with the group for having hidden what may have been some scenario changing information.

She turned back to him. “Sure, if your dog will let me.”

Pitch took offense to her terminology. “Seraphina—.”

“Sera,” she corrected.

“Hey! Chill or I’ll make you chill!” Jack interrupted again. He sighed. “Pitch, let her help.” The Nightmare King exhaled heavily, then reluctantly sat back enough to allow Mother Nature to come over and join them. She kneeled on the other side of him, reaching into one of the many pouches on her belt with one hand while bringing forward a mortar and pestle he hadn’t noticed earlier with the other. He didn’t even want to ask how much stuff she carried on her person. As she sprinkled some ingredients in the small bowl, he uttered, “And at least dogs are loyal.” Even when he was mad at Pitch, he still defended him. He could practically feel Rin getting revolted with him for not punching the Boogeyman when he said Jack should.

She stopped crushing the leaves to look at him with one eyebrow raised. “Under different circumstances, I think I might have liked you.”

Well, that was great comfort. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he stated as she resumed mixing the ingredients. Then he squinted. “Liked me how?”

“With a face like that, it’s no wonder everyone eyes you the way they do. Do you know how gorgeous you are?” Pitch actually coughed, tightening his grip on the back of Jack’s neck. Jack couldn’t hold back his blush, or his irritated gasp at Pitch’s possessiveness. Seriously, what gave him the right at this time? Jack glared into space, knowing full well that no matter how pissed he was, Pitch still saw him as belonging to him. Meanwhile, Sera saw these reactions and smirked before referring to Pitch. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see how jealous Bunny was when you demanded he hand Jack over to you.”

“Hey!” came Bunny’s petulant protest from across the way.

“That’s right. No one can tell just how soft he is under all that toughness,” she jested, her smirk growing wider as the group started to feel more and more uncomfortable. She tapped the pestle against the mortar, then glanced up at everyone. She rolled her eyes. “There I go, running my mouth again. Only this time, I actually have an audience. Now, are you going to lift up your shirt or is he going to have to do it for you?”

Jack felt Pitch bristle against him. He looked up at his Boogeyman and attempted to reassure him with a smile. However, it may have come across as a leer instead. But Pitch nodded, letting Jack raise his hoodie enough for Mother Nature to apply her ointment. He sighed, unnerved by the feel of the herbs she’d spread on his abdomen. Were they supposed to tingle? “This feels weird.”

“It should. You’ll heal in no time. Least I could do for knocking you through the air.”

“Yeah, gimme a heads-up before you do that again, please?” Jack requested.

“She might do a better job warning you than the others,” Rin grumbled. Jack ignored him.

“One can only try,” she responded, standing and turning away. Her gaze turned sullen. “We should probably rest up. We’ve got a dragon to hunt.” With that, she scaled a tree and disappeared into the canopy. Jack stared after her, finally taking a moment to let their situation sink in. Then and there, he realized just how unsure of his feelings about everything he’d learned.

Pitch had a daughter. Pitch’s daughter was Mother Nature. They borderline hated one another. Well, she hated him from what Jack could tell. She was supposed to be a Guardian, but had turned Manny down. He hadn’t thought anyone could turn down such an offer. Of course, he’d also initially refused Guardianship but had eventually given in.

Of course, had he and Pitch known each other beforehand . . . .

He didn’t want to think about that again. Not with this new information coursing through his mind. Suddenly, a lot of Pitch’s bitterness and hatred for the Guardians made more sense. A wave of guilt flew through him. Honestly, if he were Pitch, he wouldn’t want to tell anyone about this sort of thing either.

“You’re supposed to be mad, remember? Punch him!” Rin encouraged.

“Shut up, Rin!” Jack snapped again. Even Pitch seemed shocked at his outbursts.

“Do it or I’ll tell Pitch your dirtiest thoughts about him!”

“You wouldn’t dare . . . .”

“Like how you have to think twice before smacking his—.”

“Rin! Cool it!”

“NO!” Just to shut him up, Jack balled his hand into a fist and slugged Pitch in the shoulder. It was so weak that Pitch hardly even looked at it. “You call that a punch?”

“Yes, now shut up and let me rest,” Jack ordered. Rin finally listened and the humming came to an end.

“Do I even want to know?” Pitch asked.

Jack shook his head, then let his previous thoughts resume. He looked at the Guardians, then at Pitch. His chest heaved. The bruise was bothersome, but somehow the pain and aggravation were dulled by his previous realizations. Or it could be the medicine.

Then something struck him. A memory. In Antarctica, one of the things Pitch said he’d longed for was a family. That was definitely something the Guardians had. They weren’t blood, but they had a bond. A bond that had been severed for Pitch.

Because of them. Severed because of them. At least, that’s what it sounded like. Jack still didn’t have the whole story. He did have enough, though. Enough to realize just how painful a subject this must be for Pitch. Again, guilt washed over him.

“I think I get it,” he began with a whisper. “They didn’t just take your believers away.” Pitch looked down at him, his face one of surprise. “They took your family. That’s why you took my rejection so hard.” Pitch was silent, but he really didn’t need to say anything. His face said it all. He looked down, almost ashamed of feeling that level of vulnerability in front of Jack. It struck Jack how little he really knew about Pitch, how sensitive he was about things like this. He was sensitive about anything regarding feelings, to be honest. But Jack knew that Pitch didn’t just up and kill for anyone. Jack meant something to Pitch. Jack only hoped that one day Pitch would trust him enough to explain all this to him. “Pitch?” Jack asked. Pitch stayed silent and wouldn’t look at him. Jack sighed, then reached up and turned Pitch’s head himself. Pitch closed his eyes momentarily before finally meeting Jack’s gaze. “Pitch, listen carefully. I may be mad at you, but . . . I still trust you. I. Trust. You. Are we clear? Now, that means you don’t have to fess up right away. Even now that I’ve been hammered in the guts by a daughter I had no idea you had, I’m still willing to trust you.” Jack sighed before continuing. “Please, have a little faith in me too?”

Pitch gave him no verbal answer. He blinked, his lips tightened, and then he released a tired sigh. Before long, he was pulling Jack closer to him, embracing him as tightly as he could without hurting him. Jack smiled slightly to himself, but realized that this really didn’t cut it for an answer. He found himself wondering if the Nightmare King trusted him at all.



“Crikee!” Bunny grumbled, his heart pounding as he slipped off the branch a little. He was not a climber. He wasn’t meant to leave the ground. This was not his place. Why was he here? Doing what he’d always done, of course. What was that, one might ask? Not what he was supposed to be doing.

He managed to climb up a little higher into the canopy before slipping and cursing again. At that, he heard a soft chuckle. “You suck.”

“Bite me, you bloody git. Not everyone’s equipped to claw their way up a damn tree,” he griped. He was thankful that Sera at least came down to his level and didn’t force him any higher. He didn’t want to think about how he was going to get down after this. “If it’s any consolation, I’m not exactly pleased to be working with your old man either.”

She snorted sarcastically. “You’re not pleased that he managed to steal your latest love interest, is what you’re really trying to say.”

Bunny’s ears flattened, his eyes narrowing on her. “‘A,’ Jack is not my new love interest. ‘B,’ I have a great deal more to hate about him than that.”

“Yeah. I know,” she whispered. She’d heard it before, how Pitch had taken everything from Bunny. He was the last of his kind because of the wars Pitch Black had waged. He’d almost succeeded in destroying Earth during the Great War. Had it not been for the Guardians, he would have succeeded.

Had Mother Nature not intervened, Pitch may have died during the war. But Bunny had long since stopped holding that against her. How could he?

Adjusting his seat on the branch, he turned to face her. She was gazing down at the others, her facial expression sad. Bunny still wasn’t ready to look down, yet. Seeing the sadness in her eyes almost made him want to reach out to her. Instead, he addressed the subject he’d felt obligated to address and at the same time feared to. “I wanted to look for you, you know?”

She didn’t look at him. She just sighed. “It wasn’t fair. Manny should’ve known not to ask that of me. It’s almost as if he knew how Pitch would react. He thought it would push me to your side, but—.”

“If those were Manny’s intentions, then you should’ve known I wasn’t for it,” he interrupted.

She looked up then. It struck him how different she was from the Mother Nature he once knew. She was hardened, more battle-ready than the Guardians. He’d say time out of service had affected them in the opposite way. They had softened a great deal. Sera had always been brutal, but after the Great War she’d at least been . . . Bunny didn’t know. She wasn’t happy, optimistic, or anything of the sort. She had always been saucy, and likely couldn’t have that beaten out of her. But she hadn’t been this jaded. That he knew for sure.

“Sometimes I wished people would stop believing in me,” she said. “I don’t have to go through all of what the Guardians do for them. Humans look at a tree and think of me. It’s stupid, really. I just wanted to disappear.” Her fingers tapped against the branch she was sitting on. “Then sometimes I’d just get so lonely, and I’d find myself wishing for company again.”

“You didn’t have to stay away,” Bunny said honestly. “It’s not like anyone knew about us anyway.”

A small smile crept across her lips. “I couldn’t do that to you.” She paused, as if thinking for a while. “He thought I was chummy. The only Guardian I ever spoke to for any length of time was you.”

Bunny grinned. “Even then, it was mostly kicks and punches.”

“You liked it.” They smiled at one another. Then her brow creased and she frowned again. “Why was it always easier just to talk to you?”

Bunny looked away. It was his turn to snort. “Why is it still easy?”

Sera shook her head. Neither of them knew. They sat in prolonged silence as Bunny finally got the nerve to look down at his friends. He was immediately taken aback by how high they were. Before he got sick, he looked straight ahead through the canopy. His moment of panic was interrupted by Mother Nature asking, “If you wanted to find me, why didn’t you?”

Bunny wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Because . . . ,” he stalled. He inhaled and tried again. “Because I . . . I thought you wanted to be left alone.”

She didn’t look at him. He looked up, but her expression was unreadable. She just kept staring down at the others. Then, as if to change the subject, she gestured to Jack Frost and asked, “Why him?”

“What?”

“I mean, he’s cute, but why do you like him? It’s obvious why he likes him.”

The fact that Pitch had no name or title to her bothered Bunny on some level. It made him wonder if she resented him about as much, but in a different way. That could be why she never returned. It made sense that she refused to speak to her father, but Bunny? Why had he been left behind after their friendship had been almost thoroughly established? He sighed, going along with her evasive questions. “To be honest, he’s a little shit!”

“I can tell.”

“But he made people believe in me. And he’s . . . he’s not a bad fella. He’s just . . . Jack. There’s no other way I can describe him.” Bunny’s ears twitched and he sighed. “He isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s trustworthy. And devoted. That, I like.”

“He sounds like a ray of sunshine. And yet he’s with him,” she said aloud, referring to Pitch. Again, her refusal to name her father bothered Bunny. They were close once. Very close. So close that her friendship with Bunny was a constant torment for her. She always felt like she was betraying him somehow.

And to have him turn on her for something that wasn’t even her decision? Bunny hadn’t been there. In fact, no one but Sera and Pitch knew what happened. All he knew was that the fight must’ve been terrible.

It was then that he realized what about Sera that had put him off earlier. Before Manny had named her a candidate for Guardianship, she used to have butterflies surround her hair and drink the nectar from her orchids. There were no butterflies around her now. Not a one. Seeing her without her butterflies was about as odd as seeing Tooth with her swords again.

He wondered what else she’d lost after she and her father had their falling out and left the Guardians and Manny without an answer.



Mother Nature had never known what drew the rabbit towards her. Maybe it was her disposition. Maybe it was her connections. Maybe it was strictly because the forbidden was tempting. A friendship between enemies of this nature had, indeed, been incredibly tempting. Looking at the company she had now, though, she felt incredibly lost.

Sera could practically feel the tension coiling within the group. Some did not want to be here. Some wanted answers. Some did not want to fight. Some just wanted to burn the last of their bridges and disappear. She was among the latter.

Hiding was normal for her. It wasn’t because she had adversaries, though she’d met her match once or twice millennia ago. She hadn’t spoken to any immortal for a good long while, and she’d hoped it would stay that way. At least, she thought she’d hoped. Confusion set in. Rage came with it as she stared down at the one person she’d once claimed she would risk her life for. There he was, clinging to a Guardian. He was closer to a Guardian than he was to her, now. She didn’t want to feel jealous. She didn’t want to feel anything. She didn’t want them here, and yet here was this hypocrisy staring her in the face.

If he’d caught her clinging to the rabbit in such a fashion, they’d both be dead. Her old feelings for Bunny were the last things she wanted to deal with right now, and having the rabbit right in front of her trying to tell her how he felt didn’t help. Had she missed him? Had she missed any of them? She’d be lying if she said no. She’d be lying if she said yes in some cases.

They had put her into compromising situations before. Did they realize that this one would be no different? Most likely not. They didn’t even know who they were making her face. All they knew was that he was going to consume the world with his armies if they didn’t imprison him again. It would be senseless to try to kill him. That would be as successful as trying to kill her or her . . . .

She couldn’t call him anything. He was dead to her. Whether he liked it or not, she was going to remain dead to him. Sooner or later, that new toy of his was going to realize that he would have to choose, just as she had.

And she just didn’t want to be around for another explosion.

 The Coil Tightens 

The journey was exhausting. The climate was uncomfortable. The tension throughout the group was palpable. The person leading the operation at the time was impossible to work with, speak to, or keep up with, and the one person Pitch felt comfortable with wasn’t talking to him. Pitch reasoned it was nervousness. Jack hadn’t been wholly himself since the encounter with the plague spirits. He also suspected the anxiety stemmed from the impending fight with the end bringer. Pitch kept catching glimpses of the boy’s guilt whenever he made eye contact with him, although Pitch didn’t know what the winter spirit could possibly feel guilty for. In time, he would know. That’s how Pitch operated.

But it was the suspicion in Jack’s gaze that struck a nerve with the Nightmare King. Something kicked in his chest whenever he received that look, and it reminded him of the fog that had overcome him at the beginning. The beginning of this relationship started with an odd feeling within him and now something similar was happening again. What could that possibly mean?

Pitch never really liked change. Change often meant the worst for him. Jack had been an exception on more than one occasion. He hoped the boy stuck to that trend.

But Jack had always been talented at wrecking his best laid plans.



The group continued without stopping, Mother Nature leaping from tree to tree as she led them to their destination. Neither she nor those older than her could deny the pressure on the troupe. It wasn’t just the pressure of what they were setting out to do, the weight of responsibility. It wasn’t just the tension amongst certain group members that caused the pressure. It took everything she had not to look to Bunny. Every now and then, when they had a spare moment, he would give her a reassuring glance or a smile that reminded her of better days. But she would die before she returned those glances, for that would be admitting that she was glad to see him again. She’d already shown him too much. The same went for . . . him. She would never let him find out that his presence greatly threw her off her game.

Plus, he had his own onus weighing down on him. A pinprick of emotion sparked inside of her at the way the baby Guardian was looking at him, but she squashed it before she allowed herself to recognize it. She didn’t want to feel for these people. Not again. Feeling for them never bode well for her.

No, the weight was more. She felt movement. She felt revival. She felt an influx of power that left her weary. She almost felt the same sense of weakness coming off the Guardians. She’d only known one creature capable of wielding this much energy, and it had taken everything in her power to bind and imprison him.

Sera blinked as she leapt to another tree, struggling with those memories. She struggled not to think in general, most days. But being alone, she’d always had plenty of time to think, and all she could think about was how everything usually came crashing down when the moon decided to open its big mouth. Centuries of silence and she didn’t even get am ‘I’m sorry’ from him. No, she only got an ‘S.O.S,’ a plea to save his precious humans once again.

The Guardians can think that she entered into this deal because she cared for the world or whatever if they wanted to. She was more begrudging than that. This was a matter of settling old business, and feelings couldn’t cloud her mind if this was going to work. She needed to get this over with and get back to her life. Alone. So she shut out her thoughts and continued onward.



There were times where Jack was kind of glad to have Rin. He was very honest for something that Jack had once viewed as just dark and manipulative. There were times where the ingrate was helpful to Jack and Pitch.

“I don’t see why you don’t just kick him where the sun doesn’t shine and force him to spill everything.” This was not one of those times.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Jack whispered. He didn’t need to add that the sun never shone on Pitch anyway. Well . . . if Pitch had any say in it, it didn’t.

“Did you say something, mate?” Bunny asked. Jack shook his head quickly.

“Sure it works that way! Things don’t have to be complex or complicated all the time. The two of you sure do make it complex and complicated, that’s for sure.”

“Enough out of the peanut gallery,” Jack grumbled through gritted teeth.

“You’re talking to the Fearling again, aren’t you?” Jack just gave Bunny a tired look and sighed. Had he any energy, he would be riding the wind right now. Out of earshot. But Jack didn’t really have that kind of energy. He and the rest of the group seemed to be more exhausted than usual.

“You’re not getting anywhere by being quiet,” Rin finalized before the buzzing in Jack’s head subsided.

Jack didn’t want to think about what Rin was suggesting. A confrontation with Pitch wouldn’t be very smart considering the timing. However, Jack really did want to know what had happened amongst the Guardians, Sera, and Pitch. Only days ago did he become aware that there were other Guardians aside from the five here. He’d known Pitch and the Guardians had fought before, but hadn’t considered that that fight may have been a full-scale war. There was so much he didn’t know, and the only person who could fill in the smaller details was Pitch. More than anything, Jack just wanted to know why Pitch hadn’t bothered mentioning that he’d had family or how he’d lost them. It wasn’t like Jack was unaccustomed to that sort of loss. Jack knew Pitch was a private creature. It was amazing that he was willing to even sleep around Jack. But Pitch should know that Jack . . . .

Of course. He didn’t know that Jack wouldn’t hurt him. One look at the Nightmare King’s injuries from this relationship and Jack knew that he wasn’t going to get an easy answer from the Boogeyman. He was still a Guardian. Still an enemy. Pitch might as well be physically unable to trust him.

That realization hurt more than Jack thought it would. Pitch didn’t trust him. What right did Jack have to ask for that trust, though?

“You trust him. Isn’t that enough?” Rin returned full force.

“Please shut up. You’re not helping.”

“Mate, I hate to break it to ya, but you’re gettin’ weird over there,” Bunny added.

“You’re not helping either,” Jack muttered. No one was helping. They were only contributing to the twisting sensation in his chest. He really didn’t need this right now. He really, really just needed to not have doubts in Pitch, get this over with, and go home. He could not afford to feel this petty over something.

“This isn’t petty! Would you listen to yourself?” Rin wasn’t letting up, his buzzing growing louder.

“After all he’s done? I can wait a little longer,” Jack whispered as quiet as he could. He sincerely hoped no one heard him, just as he sincerely hoped that he would eventually believe his own words.

“Stop,” his Boogeyman spoke from beside him. He hadn’t realized the kangaroo and the Nightmare King had traded places whilst walking.

Jack exhaled louder than he’d done with Bunny, wondering just how much of Rin’s conversation the Nightmare King could hear. “Stop what?”

Of course, if he could hear it, Pitch was still very good at not letting onto it. Damn him. “That guilt. That . . . sadness. It’s—.”

“It’s what? Uncomfortable? I’m sorry, but I can’t stop feeling just because it puts a bad taste in your mouth.”

“Nice!” Rin chimed in.

“Shut up, you.”

As soon as the words fled his mouth, he realized just how quiet the forest had become. Moreover, he realized the gang had stopped moving. He looked around, the silence dissolving his current state of mind. Not even the hundreds of animals he didn’t know the names of spoke. It was dead quiet. Panic took its place in the forefront of Jack’s head and Rin’s humming grew four times louder. Raising his staff, he prepared for what he thought was coming.

He thought right. Plague spirits surged from the canopy and surrounded the Guardians, Pitch, and Sera. Each gripped their weapons tightly and jumped into battle. Sera swung her hammer in warning, her arrows ineffective against the skeletal structures of the Huecuvus. Tooth and North stuck together with their swords, Bunny readying his egg bombs and boomerangs as Sandy prepped his whips. Pitch summoned his scythe and stayed close to Jack, and Jack stayed close to him. Their hearts hammered in their throats, but they soon realized the creatures weren’t attacking. They were just enveloping them to prevent escape.

Once the group was surrounded, the Guardians plus two forming a circle so that no side was unguarded, a plague spirit spoke shrilly. “The end bringer sends a message.”

Another spoke, “He says ‘hello Mother Gaia.’”

“Oh how touching,” Sera whispered half-heartedly.

“Out of respect, he warns that you should turn back the way you came.”

“Now he shows respect,” Bunny grumbled, his paws twitching around the boomerangs.

“Only for Mother dear,” a third interrupted. “You Guardians will still meet your end. Our master is not foolish enough to try to end nature personified.”

“Yet,” the first spat.

“As comforting as that may be, I can’t allow him to break free from his prison,” Sera retorted. There was a note in her voice that made Jack pause to pay attention to her expression. It was hardened, but he recognized that face. He saw it every time Pitch was hiding something from him.

The Huecuvus cackled. Then another said, “His bonds have never been this loose before. Soon he will devour your world, just as the Man in the Moon forewarned.”

“And you won’t be able to stop him this time, Mother—.”

Before the creature could finish its sentence, Sera’s hammer came crashing down on its head. The other plague spirits screeched as they watched their fellow devotee shatter. Sera lifted her hammer and gestured to them. “Send him this message: I will not sit back and allow him to chew his way out of his prison and burn a path across the earth. This is not the world’s end. This is his end.” Jack shuddered. That rage definitely came from Pitch.

“Then you will burn with him,” several answered in unison. The Guardians and Pitch tensed as the plague spirits started closing in on them.

To Jack’s astonishment, Sera snorted at the threat. “Burn me, then. It’ll be like a volcano erupting on a forest. I’ll just come back stronger and more powerful than before.”

“You need believers to have that kind of power,” a plague spirit countered.

“No you don’t, or else fear would have died centuries ago,” Pitch remarked.

Sera blinked at his defense of her, but didn’t acknowledge him any further. “And I couldn’t lose believers if I tried,” she muttered.

“You will not win!”

“Try me!” she hissed, pupils shrinking as she bore her fangs.

The plague spirits fell upon them then. Jack lost sight of the others and got separated from Pitch as he shot bolts of ice at any skeletal being in sight. The ice was effective most of the time, shattering the creatures on impact. However, there was an overwhelming number of them. Panic rose in him, and the thrumming in the back of his head became so distracting that the spirits were managing to land some blows now. He hadn’t realized that he was still slightly sore in the gut until two managed to tackle him. He froze them solid rather hastily.

“Let me out, Jack!” Rin pleaded.

“Not yet,” Jack growled, throwing the deteriorating carcasses off of him. The onslaught had slowed, and he took the chance to leap onto the wind and gain higher ground. He tried to regain some semblance of where everyone was. He couldn’t see Pitch. Where was he?

“He’s fine. Shadow jumping and crap, now let me out!” Rin demanded.

“Not. Yet!” Jack reiterated as more plague spirits emerged from the woods. Something else emerged with them. “No . . . ,” Jack uttered, his eyes widening. His body trembled at the sight of them, remembering how his last chance meeting with them had gone.

Monkey men were supposed to be extinct, and yet here they were. Tooth looked just as horrified as he felt. There was no way Jack could fight them. Not here. Not yet. Not—.

He forgot all of his previous anxieties over their relationship as Jack realized he really needed Pitch right then. Unfortunately, all he had was Rin. “Now, Jack!”

He didn’t think twice. “Rin, you have my permission.” And Jack was gone.



The battle got bloody very quickly with the emergence of the monkeys, the Guardians plus two showing very little remorse to the abominations. Tooth and Pitch were the most brutal, or so they thought. Every now and then, Pitch caught glimpses of a certain shadow appearing and reappearing. Every now and then, he heard Rin’s absurd amount of laughter. The very sound was bone chilling.

The battle didn’t last long once the monkeys appeared and the plague spirits dissipated. The monkey men were more cowardly than those who’d enslaved them. They retreated quickly upon realizing their opponents were not reluctant in shedding their blood. Pitch couldn’t even remember witnessing this level of brutality amongst the Guardians. Not since the war that ended his reign. It was refreshing, tasting their distress and loath again after so long.

“Where’s Jack?” the twit suddenly asked. And soon his giddiness was clouded by his own fear.

Extending his shadows, he searched for the boy frantically. There was a moment of terror at the notion that the surviving beasts may have taken him. That terror was squelched once he located Jack. He didn’t take the time to alert the others that the winter spirit had been found. He simply teleported to him, leaving them wondering where the both of them went.

The state in which Pitch found Jack revived the panic inside him. Jack had his legs tucked under him as he stared at the corpse of a monkey man. Even Pitch was surprised at the condition of the corpse: its throat had been torn out and a pool of blood had already soaked into the rainforest soil. Pitch dropped to his knees before the boy, ignoring the blood seeping into his own clothes and drawing the attention of the winter spirit away from the body before him and onto Pitch. As soon as the young Guardian realized he wasn’t alone anymore, Jack started rubbing at the blood on his hoodie, hands, neck, and face furiously. Pitch almost shuddered at the thought of Rin using Jack’s mouth to cause such damage to the monkey man’s throat. He went to touch the winter spirit’s hand, but the boy jerked away, squeezing his wild eyes shut and pulling his colorless hair. Pitch was practically digesting the boy’s anxiety and trauma, and it made him sick.

“I couldn’t fight them,” Jack whispered. His whole body was trembling. “I couldn’t fight them, so I told Rin . . . I let Rin . . . ,” he couldn’t finish. He was ready to sob, and that tore Pitch open.

“Jack—.”

“I can’t get the blood off,” the boy interrupted. “I can’t. It’s frozen. It won’t come off. It’s in my mouth. I can taste it. It won’t come off!” His eyes shot open again as he began clawing at his face, as if his nails could scrape the blood from his flesh.

“Jack, don’t,” Pitch begged, preparing to grab the boy’s hands. He thought better of it, though, knowing just what that would do to him while he was like this. He didn’t need the setback in his progress. Instead, he placed his hands on either side of Jack’s face.

Jack clenched his fists, his eyes shutting again as he shook. He began muttering something that seemed unintelligible at first. Soon Pitch could hear him saying, “Don’t let them find me like this,” over and over again.

“Jack, listen to me—.”

“Please don’t let—.”

“Jack—.”

“Don’t let them—.”

“Jack, please—.”

“Not like this—.”

“Jack Frost, listen to me right now.” That stopped the boy from muttering. He even opened his eyes a little to look at the Nightmare King. “You’re safe, do you hear me?” The boy hesitated, but soon nodded. “We’re going to get you cleaned up, alright?” Jack nodded again, then closed his eyes and leaned into Pitch’s chest. Pitch wrapped his arms around him, holding him tight as sobs began racking the boy’s body.

Pitch felt a familiar presence behind him. Rather, two familiar presences. He turned his head only a little to confirm who he thought was there. Sanderson and Seraphina were, in fact, behind him. Fortunately, Jack had not noticed their arrival. The two were courteous enough not to gawk at Rin’s handiwork, at least. Sanderson gestured to Jack, then used his sand to ask if he should put the boy to rest. Pitch nodded curtly, still wanting to keep Jack from realizing their presence. The Sandman made quick work of Jack, the winter spirit asleep in Pitch’s arms within seconds. Once his work was done, the little man walked away and left Seraphina and Pitch alone.

Pitch glanced up at Seraphina then. “You led him to us?”

His daughter’s face was expressionless even as she stared at the body and nodded. “Figured he needed it.”

Pitch squinted. “The others?”

“They’re recovering. Regrettably, they trust you with their baby Guardian.”

Pitch and Seraphina stared each other down, and Pitch picked up on the centuries of anger and melancholy in his daughter. It was instinctual for him to want to comfort her, even now. But that wasn’t what she wanted. All he would be met with was rejection. “Why are you showing an interest in him?”

She pursed her lips the same way he did when he was thinking hard about something. “Maybe I don’t want him to have quite the rude awakening that I did when the shite hit the fan.”

Pitch sighed and looked away, frustrated. “You still think I repudiated you?”

“I was going to say no, you know. I was gonna tell the Man in the Moon to take his offer and shove it in not so many words. But you didn’t trust me to make my own decision.” Pitch shut his mouth and stared down at Jack’s sleeping form. He closed his eyes, fighting the fog teaming in his chest. It now spread to his head. He heard her sigh in disgust. “You haven’t changed. You still clam up when someone calls you out on your distrust.”

“Seraphina—.”

“Please. Just don’t.”

“I lost my temper—.”

“You think?”

“The Man in the Moon took everything from me!” he growled out at last. He checked to make sure Jack was still asleep before saying a little less aggressively, “I just knew he was going to try to take you too.”

Her face hardened as she struggled to hide her rage. Was it rage? No, it was confusion. He didn’t need to taste the emotion to identify it. He still knew his daughter after all. She was just like him in so many ways. Did she inherit anything from her mother?

She said, “He didn’t succeed.” There was a pause before she added, “You were the one who pushed me away.”

“Seraphina—.”

“Don’t!” she snapped. Her shoulders shook as she struggled to maintain her composure. Her gaze kept dancing between Pitch and the body of the monkey man. Then she shut her eyes and evened out her tone with him. “To be honest, I was going to warn him,” she pointed at Jack, “of what to expect from you. I was gonna tell him what you might do in one of your fits of anger, what you might say to him should he be called away from your side to honor his oath. Instead, I’m going to tell you this.” He could see her wrestling with her feelings, the way he did when he had something to say but really didn’t want to have to say it. “Don’t make the same mistake twice.”

“Ser—?”

“Don’t play coy. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t do it. Try trusting someone, just once.” She rubbed her temples, muttering, “We can’t afford to face Nidhogg like this. We have to be ready, and that requires cooperation and group effort.”

Pitch sensed the turmoil within her, and couldn’t help but ask, “Does it hurt you so to face him again?”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“Stop trying to be my dad again.”

She stomped away at that, leaving him with a sleeping, bloody Jack Frost. And it was about to storm.



Sera stalked through corpses, reminded of the war that had torn her world asunder. The war that had eventually left her without an ally to look to for support. The war that had left her alone in these woods. She shook her head, felt her hands shaking as she lost control of her emotions. This happened sometimes, but she was usually alone when it happened. Why did this have to happen when she was with these people? These spirits had abandoned her, made her choose, forgotten her testimony to remain unbound to either party, forced her into a life of loneliness. They didn’t deserve to see her break. And him. How dare he pretend to care about her and who she was about to destroy!

She stalked through the Guardians, none of whom asking why she was in the state that she was in. Save for one, that is. She had never missed him following her and forcing her to talk.

“Sera?”

“No, Bunny.”

“Sera, what’s wrong?”

“Just leave me alone, Bun—.”

“No!” He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. “I’m right here. Talk to me!”

She glared at him for having stopped her dead in her tracks. His expression remained stern, however. He wasn’t going to leave her alone until she spoke. He would be waiting a very long time. “I don’t want to—.”

“If you don’t talk, you’ll be no better than him.” Bunny pointed back in his general direction.

She bristled all over and could hear the thunder crackling in the distance as her frustration grew. “Take that back.”

“No.”

The thunder grew louder. “Take. That. Back.”

“I won’t. Cooperate. You said that’s what we needed, so do it.”

“You EAVESDROPPER!” She launched herself at him, knocking him down onto his back. She sat on his chest, pulling her dagger from its sheath and touching the black metal to his chin. “TAKE IT BACK!”

“Hush, or everyone will hear you and find you holding that,” Bunny warned. He was still calm. Too calm. She regretted desensitizing him to her sudden attacks long ago, because right then she needed him to take her seriously and recant his statement.

“I’m nothing like him!” she growled, feeling her pupils dilate in the growing darkness.

“Says the gal holding her father’s dagger to my throat. If you hate him so much, why’d you keep it?”

“You heard everything I said. You don’t want me to talk. You just want to pester me.” She wanted to press the dagger’s tip further into his coat, but found herself frozen stiff. She couldn’t move or make herself do as her mind willed. She grit her teeth angrily as she instead returned the knife to its sheath, furious with herself for being unable to really hurt him.

“I want to make sure you’re not being hypocritical. I know you hate hypocrisy.”

“Why do both of you have to pretend you care about my wellbeing? At the same bloody time, no less,” she snarled, but she realized she didn’t have his attention. “Are you even listening to me?” His gaze remained distant. “Earth to bloody rabbit!”

“You . . . ,” he uttered, his paw reaching up to touch something at the nape of her neck. She stiffened when she realized what he was looking at. “You kept this too.”

She could just see out of the corner of her eye the magenta aster he pulled from the black mass that was her hair. She had rearranged it so that it was no longer behind her ear, but buried beneath her locks so that she didn’t have to notice it. The only flowers visible in her hair were the orchids. But yes, she had kept the one thing Bunny had given her when they were friends. The aster was his namesake, and it thrived in the bush that was her hair.

Closing her eyes, she turned her head to the side and tucked the flower back into its hiding spot. Standing up, she left Bunny on the ground. He sat up as she asked, “Why did you all have to come back? I was fine without you.”

“We wouldn’t have—.”

“You don’t need to answer. I just . . . I can’t do this. I can’t just go back to the way things used to be, no matter how much you might want it to.” She thought for a moment. “Or how much I might want it to.”

“Sera—.”

“I can’t talk about this with you anymore, Bunny. I already have to fight one person I used to love. Don’t add to it. Please.”

Bunny’s ears flattened against his head. “You fully intend to disappear again after this is over.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact.

She turned her back on him so he couldn’t see her fighting the need to scream out of frustration and confusion. “And this time, none of you will know where to find me.” She prepared to leap into the trees. “You waited too long the last time.”

With that, she took her place in the canopy. Bunny was left with the rain falling down on his head.



She didn’t hate them, but she did resent them. That much, Bunny knew. He felt like a fool. Everything Mother Nature did had a definitive purpose. Why had it never occurred to Pitch that she had allowed him to know her location? That she had wanted them to find her?

She was right. They’d waited too long to try and fix what had been broken between her and the Guardians. Between her and Pitch. They’d only sought her out now because they’d needed her. Not because they wanted her to come back.

Bunny stared up at the clouded sky, wondering if Manny could still see them through the storm. “I’ll never understand why you do the things you do. But I hope you have a plan.”

Because once this was over, he was going to lose her again. And he didn’t think he could handle a second time. He could only imagine how his enemy Pitch felt.

 Release 

Jack woke up to the sound of thunder and the flash of lightning. His eyes shot open, and he was soon grateful for the dreamless sleep. He remembered where he was and what had happened. He grabbed his hoodie, staring and checking for stains. He stared down at his hands, touched his face, rubbed his neck. No blood. It was gone. He worked his jaw. Yes, it was still sore from what he had come to believe was Rin’s signature move. Jack didn’t think he could ever get used to the guy’s love for biting.

A loud crack made him jump and shove himself under the . . . leaf? Leaves could really get that big? He stopped questioning it. He settled with being merely grateful for the cover from the rain. “Pitch?” he asked.

“Here,” the Boogeyman spoke up from behind.

Jack jumped again, unaware that there was even someone behind him. He supposed he should be used to Pitch’s rather stalker-like tendencies by now, but there were times when he still caught Jack by surprise. That wasn’t hard when Jack was already shaky. “Try not to scare me for a bit, okay?” Jack was at least hoping for a quip or smirk, but no. Pitch just stared up at the sky.

“Beautiful, isn’t she. When she’s enraged.” Jack said nothing in response. He just followed Pitch’s gaze up into the storm. Jack glimpsed back at the Nightmare King, Pitch’s expression despondent and bordering . . . depressed. Jack couldn’t recall seeing Pitch this sad. He’d seen him emotional. He’d seen him angry. He’d seen just about everything in Pitch, even the slightest hint of . . . he didn’t want to use the word love, but it worked. But he’d never seen this amount of sorrow.

He realized now may not be the best time, but he had to ask. “What happened? Between the two of you?” Pitch still stared unblinkingly at the sky, almost as if he didn’t hear Jack. Or maybe he was ignoring the question. Figures. “Pitch, are you ever going to answer me?” He suddenly felt like he was talking to the moon again. Expressionless, silent, unyielding, and no comfort to be found whatsoever. Suddenly, he was feeling his own sadness creeping back in. There was something about silence that unnerved him. That something, of course, was the reminder that there’d been nothing but silence for him for three hundred years. He’d never taken not being seen lightly. Eventually it had jaded him, but now it just angered him. He felt his hands start shaking as he struggled to hide his upset from Pitch. Pitch would feel it though. Eventually, he would feel it. Jack just didn’t want that now. He wanted answers, but he wasn’t going to get them. “Where are the others?”

“They have their own shelter somewhere off.” Oh, now he answers Jack. That only fueled Jack’s anger. He glanced about, locating his staff. He went to grab it, but thought better of it. He shouldn’t wield his staff while water was falling from the sky. He’d turn into an ice cube, and then he’d need Pitch’s help again, and then he’d have to deal with that guilt again, and the last thing he needed . . . .

He calmed down before Rin’s thrumming started up and he lost control of his body again. Another thing he just didn’t need. It bothered him that he was suddenly so angry with Pitch, but he couldn’t really help it. He was tired of not being among those who knew what the hell was up. That recent encounter with the plague spirits had only confused him more, and he just needed clarity. But no one was willing to give him that clarity.

He knew Pitch cared for him, but he hadn’t realized just how little he trusted Jack. Only at that thought did Jack’s sudden rage make sense. He was more hurt than angry, but again, Pitch didn’t need to know that now. So he stood up and stepped into the rain, looking for the other Guardians.

“What are you doing?” And now Pitch was going to ask him questions. Great.

“Finding the others.” The rain was cold, but that didn’t bother him. It was leaving a thin layer of frost over his body, but was also dissolving rather quickly.

“You started to freeze over in the rain earlier. You shouldn’t be—.”

“I’ve travelled through rain for three hundred years. I know what will turn me into a popsicle and what won’t.”

For a moment, Jack thought Pitch was going to leave him alone. In fact, he hoped for it. He didn’t want to argue, but he knew that he would if Pitch pushed him. And Pitch didn’t realize how close to the edge he was. So when the Boogeyman manifested in front of him, Jack grunted in aggravation. He thought Pitch’s lair was full of shadows, but Mother Nature’s domain seemed to be even worse. “You’re upset about something,” Pitch stated the obvious.

“Yeah, you ignore my questions. I thought I was done being ignored, but no.”

“I am not ready to talk, Jack.”

“Then say that! Don’t just sit there and let me think you don’t trust me.” Pitch’s face fell briefly. Jack squinted, knowing it wasn’t remorse he was seeing in his partner. “You don’t, do you?” Pitch didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Pitch’s silence was more telling than his words at times, and this silence sealed Jack’s concerns in place. He’d been right after all. He hated being right, because he usually thought the worst. “All this time you’ve been asking me if I trusted you. I should’ve been the one asking.” He sidestepped Pitch, then continued walking.

“Jack, you don’t understand—.”

“I don’t understand what?” he spun around and shouted at Pitch. “Not having your family there for you? Being completely alone? I don’t know what loss feels like?” Pitch’s eyes were wide at Jack’s outburst. Jack exhaled heavily, then quickly inhaled upon realizing what they were doing. “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

“And look how well that one turned out!” Pitch’s own fury ignited at the memory of Antarctica.

“You know what? Look how well all of this turned out! I mean . . . I’m standing in the rainforest, getting rained on no less, with a second personality and a partner whose daughter hates him and tried to tenderize me. Like meat!”

“Yes, my daughter hates me. And why? Because of Guardians like you, always interfering in my business.”

Though it stung to hear Pitch say that, Jack was too angry to let that stop him ranting. “You don’t exactly stay out of our business, you know. Just how many wars have you been in, old man?”

“More than I can count, and not all of them were fought against you. My age and my experience should terrify you.”

“And yet a newb like me handed your ass to you. Oh the horror!”

They were stepping closer to each other as the shouting continued, they’re arms and facial expressions growing more animated. “Thank you for the reminder! It’s your fault I’m still hiding under beds!”

“And it’s your fault I’m even a Guardian. I wasn’t chosen until you showed your face again!”

“I’m the reason you have believers! And what have you given me, Jack Frost? A headache and a new sense of terror!”

“Everything! I have given you everything!”

“And what exactly is everything?!”

“My trust, my faith, I’ve given you myself for Manny’s sake! I have given you my love, you’ve seen my pain and you know my fears better than I do, and you can’t even give me an answer!” There was a pause as they realized what Jack just admitted to Pitch. Jack breathed heavily, his heart pounding from the argument. Pitch just stared, his eyes wide. If Jack wasn’t so ready to cry from his exacerbation with Pitch, he would laugh at how the tables had turned on them. Jack continued speaking before he lost his thought. “I almost lost everything for you, including my Guardianship. What’s more, neither of us are alone anymore? Why do you keep acting like you are?”

Pitch was silent. This time, his silence didn’t bother Jack as much. His anger drained, leaving him with a heightened sense of sadness. Pitch was looking right at him, but he almost felt like his Boogeyman could walk right through him if he wanted to. He felt invisible again.

Pitch gasped like he’d been holding his breath, his eyes losing focus for a moment. He looked like the one who’d been hit with a hammer, not Jack. When he finally refocused on Jack, Jack was stunned to see just how much sorrow had returned to his gaze. “Because it’s all I’ve ever known.”

Jack gave a half-hearted snort. “At least you remember a life before this.”

Pitch’s eyes fluttered shut. When they opened again, he was staring at the ground. “Just barely. Enough to regret.”

Jack’s heart stopped. “Pitch, I—.”

“No. Stop. It’s my turn to stop you. I don’t want your pity. I don’t want your false reassurance. I don’t want your misguided promises. One day, you will leave. You’re all the same!”

Jack felt the tears forming in his eyes as Pitch’s words sank in. He wanted to fight. Manny knew, he wanted to fight. But he couldn’t even summon the energy to clench his fists let alone argue back. He just stared at Pitch, whose face remained stern, almost unfeeling. Almost. He could see the weight of the words Pitch had just spoken bearing down on the Nightmare King’s shoulders. Jack asked, “Then why didn’t you just let me die?” At least Pitch’s eyes twitched, as if the thought just might give him pause.

Jack Frost and Pitch Black stood toe to toe, eyes locked, arms limp, completely solid. Neither moved. Neither thought they could. Jack waited. He waited for Pitch to speak, say something, break the silence. He didn’t know what to expect, but he certainly didn’t expect what passed through Pitch’s lips. The words were flat and cold. “Why didn’t I?”

He couldn’t remember ever feeling so devastated. Jack felt like he was breaking from the inside out. And in that devastation, he found his rage once more. No Rin this time. This rage was completely Jack.

Jack grit his teeth as indistinguishable noises escaped him. He charged Pitch, wrestling him to the ground. Thirsting for physical violence, he was satisfied to feel Pitch fighting back beneath him. He prepared to choke Pitch, but the bigger man flipped him onto his back and held him down by his hair. He could’ve easily pinned Jack by the wrists. That would’ve forced the boy into a submissive state faster than anything else Pitch could’ve done, but he avoided Jack’s wrists still. The consideration just made Jack’s thirst rise. He shouted angrily, jabbing Pitch in the side where his injuries had been only a little while ago. Pitch gasped and released Jack’s hair. Jack saw his window of opportunity and took it, pulling his legs from under Pitch’s and placing his feet on the Boogeyman’s chest. Using all the strength he had, he kicked Pitch off of him. The Nightmare King landed a few feet in front of him.

Both got to their feet swiftly. From the shadows, Pitch pulled his scythe. Jack’s fury mounted as he charged the Boogeyman anyway. Suddenly, Jack felt his limbs start to weigh him down. The more he struggled, the heavier he got. Eventually, his limbs were so heavy that he was on all fours on the ground, still fighting to move forward. When he remembered Pitch’s ability to control his body through Rin, he wanted to scream. Pitch was thorough though. He kept Jack silent, on the ground, unable to move or retaliate. He could still see, though. He watched as Pitch raised his scythe and was prepared to feel its bite. He even dared Pitch to do it with his eyes.

For a man who supposedly cared deeply for Jack, Pitch looked ready to kill him. Jack was ready for it. He understood. Honestly, he would kill him too. He gave Pitch everything, injuries and pain included. Pitch should hate him more than he should trust or love him. Jack would understand if Pitch sank the blade of his scythe into Jack’s back. So why was Pitch lowering his weapon? Why was it dissolving in his hands? Why was he staring down at Jack like he’d just broken something fragile?

“What are we doing?” he asked. The weight didn’t subside, so Jack couldn’t answer. He just continued looking up at Pitch. “What have I done?” Then Pitch was on his knees in front of him, and Jack still couldn’t move or speak. He wanted to, and he wanted to be angry again. Unfortunately, his rage was subsiding and being replaced with aching. Pitch’s facial expression didn’t help the situation. Something about it made Jack forget that they’d just tried to throttle each other. Pitch stared into Jack’s eyes, and Jack’s rage melted completely. Pitch looked like he was in absolute agony. “You look so guilty. Every time I look at you, you look so guilt-ridden. But who’s really at fault in this?” Pitch was starting to sound frustrated again when the weight suddenly lifted. Jack gasped, but it wasn’t long before Pitch grabbed one of his arms. He expected to be pinned. He expected to be attacked, but instead the Nightmare King just yanked the sleeve up to reveal Rin’s mark. Pitch shouted, “How can you trust me when I did this to you?”

Jack didn’t have a definitive answer for Pitch. They just stared at one another. The raindrops felt heavier than before, as if each sphere of water felt just as ignored as Jack had at the start of this argument. Jack suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe, and for once it wasn’t because Pitch was gripping his wrist. He could’ve told Pitch many things. He could’ve told him to leave him alone, as he’d done at Antarctica. He could’ve asked him how it felt not to have an answer, just as he’d done the very day they’d gotten together. He could’ve reassured him that it wasn’t his fault, as he’d wanted to do so many times while recovering from the attack that had left him with Rin. But he said none of those things. Instead, he said, “You’ve had plenty of chances to hurt me. Instead, you end up helping or even saving me. You don’t think that’s reason enough to trust someone?”

Pitch said nothing. They just maintained the eye contact, both expressionless. Neither drew in a single breath. They were completely and utterly still in the rain, which only seemed to grow louder as the silence dragged on. Thunder clapped in the distance. Not a single sound escaped them or the forest as time felt like it had stilled. Pitch’s black and Jack’s blue seemed washed out in the dark of the storm. The only color other than green they seemed to acknowledge was the blue and yellow of their eyes, still locked on each other. Jack didn’t even notice Pitch’s grip loosen on his arm at first. Pitch didn’t seem to notice Jack turning his wrist in the Boogeyman’s palm so that he held his hand. At least, Jack thought Pitch didn’t notice until long gray fingers tightened around his pale ones.

Suddenly Jack was being pressed into the ground with Pitch covering every inch of him, smothering Jack’s lips with his own and flooding his cold flesh with warmth. Jack moaned into Pitch’s mouth, inviting him to deepen the kiss. Pitch did, and the last of Jack’s resolve liquefied with the rest of him. He wrapped his arms around Pitch’s neck, holding him closer as Pitch ran a hand under the hem of Jack’s hoodie. Pitch pulled back slightly, leaving Jack’s lips feeling bruised and hot. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“Too bad no one but me heard you say that aloud,” Jack whispered back. And suddenly, Pitch was smiling against his lips. A smile. That was the first smile Jack had seen in a while. It made him smile too before he pressed his lips to his Boogeyman’s, urging him to continue.

And Pitch did. Hungrily. The adrenaline from the fight pumped through Jack, the aching shifting from side to side in his chest as Pitch slid Jack’s hoodie up his torso ever so slowly. Pitch’s lips left Jack’s briefly, the hoodie coming off completely. Jack gasped as Pitch’s lips then assaulted his neck, sending a rush through Jack that reminded him of how much he loved to feel Pitch’s teeth in his skin. The aching in his chest got worse.

Pitch’s arms wrapped around Jack’s torso and pulled him off the ground and onto Pitch’s lap. The heat of Pitch’s skin was smothering him, but at the same time Jack longed to get closer. The ache in his chest only grew with that need. Tears pricked his eyes as their lips met again. Pitch’s arms tightened around Jack’s waist, and somehow the ache got worse. Pitch pulled away briefly, and Jack sucked in a breath of air. Before he knew what he was saying, he said, “Please don’t ignore me.”

One of Pitch’s hands slid up the back of Jack’s neck and into his hair, fingers threading their way through the white strands. Pitch whispered against the winter spirit’s lips, “You’re not invisible, Jack.” He kissed him before adding, “Not to me.” Jack’s chest went from aching to exploding with liberation as he choked on his tears, which frosted on his cheeks. Their grip on each other tightened as their lips locked again.

It wasn’t long before Jack found himself back on the ground, Pitch having used the darkness to teleport them back under their leaf and out of the rain. Jack gasped as he lost track of Pitch’s movement in the dark of the storm, unable to count the seconds it took for his Boogeyman to slip Jack’s pants off and slide into him. The pressure of Pitch’s penetration forced him to bite his fist, stifling his moans in case anyone might hear them. He was surprised to feel Pitch’s influence pulling his hand from between his teeth, the weight of his power over him making him moan even more. Pitch buried his face in Jack’s hair right beneath his ear as their embraces grew tight yet again. Pitch’s hot breath and the thrust of his hips almost sent Jack over the edge right then and there. “Pitch—.”

“Your teeth, Jack. Use them.” Jack was surprised to hear Pitch so desperate for the very things that had killed earlier that day. He obliged, sliding Pitch’s robe aside and sinking his teeth into the Nightmare King’s shoulder. Pitch growled, retaliating with a bite of his own. Jack’s eyes squeezed shut and his teeth clenched around Pitch’s flesh. This muffled their cries as Pitch dragged his talons down Jack’s shoulder blades and thrust harder, Jack digging his nails into Pitch’s skin. He felt blood seeping from the bite on his neck when Pitch pulled away, but the pain was soothed by Pitch’s tongue.

When they climaxed, Pitch held Jack and kissed him. The kisses softened over time, but their hold on each other remained tight. When their lips were too swollen to continue, Pitch rested his forehead against Jack’s and they gasped for air. Jack became aware of the long scratches Pitch had given him, sensitive to the ground biting into his bare back. Pitch muttered something unintelligible, making Jack breathe out, “What?”

“I do trust you. And that horrifies me,” Pitch admitted.

Jack tightened his arms around him, hoping that it reassured him. It seemed to, because Pitch collapsed on top of him and nuzzled his cheek, the tension in his muscles completely gone. Jack sighed, thankful that the ache in his chest had lifted and the adrenaline was spent. Had the two sensations remained, he might have argued. For now, he was too overwhelmed by the thought of the Nightmare King being afraid to trust him.

And a little surprised at himself for having indirectly told Pitch that he loved him in the midst of their arguing.



They were clothed, soaking wet, and still holding one another when Pitch said, “I overreacted.”

“To what?” Jack asked.

“When the Man in the Moon chose Seraphina for Guardianship. I overreacted.” Pitch took a deep breath, realizing that this would be the first time he spoke of this to someone else. It didn’t feel as terrifying as he thought it would be. Then again, this was Jack. His Jack. His head swam with the reassurance of his Jack’s presence, and his fear almost seemed childish as he spoke again. “The Guardians would’ve killed me in the Great War several times had she not saved me. Yet she considered herself a neutral party. She only stepped in when she thought it absolutely necessary.” He thought for a moment. “I would’ve succeeded in world domination long before you were created if not for her. Even those arguments hadn’t been as dreadful as the fight that ensued when the Man in the Moon called her to join his precious protectors.” Pitch closed his eyes, unsure if he could go into detail about that fight. Jack’s hand tightened on his, and that seemed to calm him enough for him to continue. “We said many things. Cruel things. The cruelest was when I told her that if she chose them over me . . . then she may as well be dead to me.” He sighed, fighting the words that had sparked and fueled his own nightmares. “There are few things I regret more than saying those words to her.” He sighed again, still struggling against the tightening sensation in his chest. “After that, she left. Told us not to follow her. I did anyway, but only to figure out where she went. Only to ensure that no one else would ever find her.” He rubbed his forehead. “I always thought she’d return if we gave her some time. But she never did. The things I said . . . no child could forgive their father for that.”

“You’d be surprised. Maybe she just wanted you to put forth the effort in patching things up.”

“I should’ve thought about that. She always knew when I was following her before. I don’t see how I could have slipped under her radar that day, especially since she was that upset.” Pitch shook his head. “Then again, she gets her insurmountable pride from me. Had I gone to her, we would have wound up fighting again.”

They were quiet for a few moments. Then Jack asked, “This only made you hate the Guardians more?”

“Of course. As you said, they didn’t just take my believers. They took my family.” His brow furrowed as he grew furious at the very thought of his enemies taking everything he had. “Where do they draw the line? Where?”

“If my calculations are correct, you should’ve been more pissed with the Man in the Moon than with your daughter.” Pitch pinned Jack with a gimlet stare. Then Jack realized something. “Manny sure can be an antagonist, can’t he?”

“You don’t say.”

“He’s probably gonna get back at me for saying that.”

“Or he’ll ignore you.”

“Yeah, that’s his motif.” Jack and Pitch shared a chuckle. Then Jack said, “If I were human, I’d say I was going to hell.”

“I’d have to agree with you there.”

Pitch held Jack closer, the rain having eased up just enough. It was no longer thundering, but the rain persisted. His daughter’s words suddenly rang in his ears: don’t make the same mistake twice. He was certain that he’d almost lost Jack earlier. The pain of that loss would’ve been unbearable. His chest ached at the very thought. Jack had called him out, as Seraphina had done with him on a number of occasions, and he’d responded not so favorably. There was a moment where Pitch almost forgot everything they’d been through together. All he’d seen was the Guardian that had rebuffed him in Antarctica. He shuddered to think how ready he was to kill Jack, and held the boy closer at the thought of being left alone again. Jack had been right about almost everything, though. Pitch still acted like he was alone even when Jack had been standing right in front of him, solid and unwavering. He buried his face in Jack’s hair, inhaling the boy’s scent and reassuring himself that he didn’t have to survive in a world without him. His chest felt full with . . . something at the thought of Jack’s words. He’d given Pitch his love. Whether the emotion he felt was relief, glee, or nervousness, he didn’t know. Maybe it was all three. Maybe it was none. All he knew was that he longed to hear those words again. For now, he was grateful that everything had worked out between Jack and him.

He just wished he’d been able to work things out with Seraphina.

“Thank you,” Jack said. “For telling me. Thank you.”

Pitch smiled against his hair. “I should’ve told you sooner.”

“I do have one more question though.”

Pitch could feel his muscles tighten instinctually, but forced himself to relax. He trusted Jack. He really did. He just found it hard to trump centuries of skepticism. “Go on.”

“What’s Sera’s connection to Pillan? It doesn’t seem like she just imprisoned him. There’s history there.”

Pitch stared at his Jack. He almost smiled at the boy’s observance. He always knew too much. Pitch could always rely on Jack to know too much. “She raised him. He was given to her by the Man in the Moon, and then she was told to destroy him because . . . there was darkness in him. Even when he was a hatchling, everyone knew he would bring destruction.” Pitch’s chest tightened further. “It was the first and only time she ever listened to the Man in the Moon without question. And that beast still respected her enough to give her a warning before sending its spirits after her.”

“Let me guess: you feel like you should’ve known she wouldn’t subject herself to Manny’s will again after that.”

Pitch narrowed his eyes on Jack. “How do you figure these things out? It’s ridiculous.”

“You’re easy to read to those who know you.”

“Am I now?”

“Yes, you are. Right now, you’re about to tell me to—.”

“Shut up,” they said in unison. They smiled again at each other.

“This is where you tell me I know too much and you have to keep me around,” Jack added.

“It seems I don’t need to. You’ve already figured it out for yourself.”

Jack leaned in to kiss him at that, and Pitch felt himself relax against his young Guardian.



The next morning, Sera hardly noticed the condition of the forest after her storm, how green it was and how rejuvenated she felt with it. All she saw were the marks on both Jack’s and Pitch’s necks. Somehow, that was sign enough to her that he’d listened. That left her even more confused than before.

But in the midst of that confusion, she felt something akin to happiness. For once, she didn’t shut it out.

 Enter the Dragon 

Free. He was free. He was awake and free. Dirt scratched against his sides, the sound of stone scraping against his scales muffled by the earth he fought to get off of him. He had been bound. Oh, he had been bound for so long that his limbs had cramped with each early movement. The bonds still tied his clawed hands and feet together, but he could feel the growing slack. He could feel everything. He had never felt anything so vividly. His muscles had never been so tense with excitement. His own breath had never felt so hot, so heavy with anticipation. He was going to see the sun. He was going to feel it on his face. He was going to open his mouth and breathe in fresh air for the first time in millennia.

Waking up had been a slow and lengthy process. He’d been tormented with dreams for so long that he hadn’t realized the difference between reality and fantasy. At least the dreams had been somewhat pleasant. In fact, they’d been beautiful. But their beauty made waking even more horrendous. It made him furious. When he’d resolved to remain fully awake, he’d struggled against his bonds. The pain of them rubbing his arms and legs raw for centuries had been enough to render him motionless. One would think that his scales would have protected him from that pain, but the binds had worked their way between his scales and caused him such agony that each time he cried out he just got a mouthful of dirt. He’d had to train himself to resist the desire to keep still in order to work his way out. He’d built up quite the tolerance for pain.

Once the resistance had grown to be enough for him to tolerate the agony, he’d begun to move. He’d begun to work his way upward through the crust of the earth. Once he could move, his followers awakened and found the hole he’d been stuck in. They could hear him. Though he could not open his mouth to speak, they could hear him. They could hear every thought he manifested. So they’d assembled more followers by his orders, creatures from the Far East. The man-beasts were useful, simple cannon fodder. At his behest, the man-beasts had taken up the task of finding the traitorous moon’s followers and destroying them first. Two had done so most eagerly. Two had injured the youngest of the moon’s followers without giving so much as a thought to morality. Picking off each of the moon’s followers one by one had seemed oh so simple. It seemed so simple, he could’ve roared and thrashed and inadvertently dug himself a deeper grave upon realizing that the two man-beasts had foolishly, oh so foolishly, brought down the most dangerous member of the moon’s league.

And he wasn’t dangerous because of his powers. No, the winter spirit the man-beasts had laid low was dangerous because of his connection to an even darker force.

But he had not thrashed and thrown off his progress upward. He remained still, digging patiently and slowly. He told his armies to wait. He told the Huecuvus to wait for him to loose his binds to a certain point. He told them to wait until he was merely a few feet from the surface. When he was, he would tell them to act. This gave him time to think, to wonder how many enemies he was willing to make on his way up. Was he willing to do battle with the personification of fear and the moon’s followers alike?

He’d decided he didn’t care. Once he had dug his way into position, he sent them to capture the Nightmare King who had tortured the two man-beasts to death. He didn’t particularly care for the individual members of his army, but he did believe in retaliation. He worshipped revenge. The Nightmare King would understand that. But he should’ve known that challenging the Nightmare King would’ve led to her involvement.

The very thought of Gaia put all other thoughts to rest. He didn’t stop moving, but he stopped thinking. He stopped thinking of revenge long enough to remember his mother, to remember how sad she’d been to cage him. He thought he could forgive her and had given her the opportunity to run. Still, she chose weakling humans and the moon over him. She even promised his death. The thought should infuriate him. It did. But it would be a good long while before he thirsted for Gaia’s blood. He mourned for his mother. He mourned for her long enough that he jumped when he realized his talons had breached the surface. Reaching through the earth, reaching upwards from his prison, he started to dig his way out. Water came pouring through the packed soil as he whittled through earth, the pressure of the water bearing down on top of him, slowing his progress.

But he was larger than the body of water that was his last barrier between him and the rest of the world. When he fought his way through that last barrier and climbed through to the water’s surface, he was blinded by the light. Light. How long had it been since he’d felt pure sunlight on his scales? He stood in the deep pool, blind but staring up anyway. He was sore, so sore, but he was awake and free. He was so free. The bonds that had held him for millennia fell from his body and his muscles loosed for the first time. Dirt and blood washed off of him and he breathed. He breathed, oh he breathed. When his eyes could finally stand it, he opened them and glanced up at the sky from the deep cavern he’d been buried in. He stretched. He stretched every limb and rattled every scale. He spread his wings and let them feel the sunlight. The sunlight was so magnificent, so amazing. Each movement was unhindered, exquisite.

And he breathed.

Before he could stop himself, he let out the first roar the world had heard from him since the moon ordered Gaia to imprison him.



Sera felt the break before she heard his voice. Once she felt it, she ran. She didn’t even check to see if the others were following her. They were close enough to their destination that she could let them figure out which direction they needed to take. Once she heard him, though, she stumbled and fell face first into the dirt. She scrambled to get upright, taking more time than she cared to getting on her feet. When she thought she would never get up in time, she felt Bunny’s paws under her arms, lifting her up. Once up, they continued running.

Her chest heaved when she came to a grinding halt before a giant cavern. Staring down the massive orifice, decorated with rock and plants, she saw something splashing in the clear pool of water at its base. At that moment, the breath caught in her throat and her heart stopped at the sight of him.

And he saw her.

Time didn’t freeze. In fact, the moment felt fleeting. But even as he stared up at her and bellowed, “Hello Gaia,” almost joyously, she could not move an inch. She watched him feel his way along the rocky and dirty walls, feeling for notches and footholds. The Guardians and Pitch came to stand beside her as he climbed up. It would’ve taken someone their size much longer than the minute it took him to reach their level.

When the two of them were face to face for the first time in she didn’t know how long, she realized just the sheer size of him. His head was the length of her body. He could swallow each of them if he so desired. His neck was the length of nine horses, and she couldn’t even begin to describe the size of his body or his wingspan. Terror should’ve sent her running, fear should’ve split her open, but all she could do was stare and stand completely still. All seemed silent, the birds and creatures of the rainforest included, until she choked out, “Nidhogg.”

“I did always prefer my Greek name, but that is moot.” His voice was deep and cheerful. It didn’t seem cracked or damaged at all from having been encased in earth for so long. She was the one who sounded damaged. “My, it seems you are much smaller than I remembered. I suppose I’ve grown despite the mountain of earth you set on my back.”

“Nidhogg, please—.”

“Don’t beg, Mother, it isn’t like you.” He looked her up and down, ignoring the others standing stunned and horrified around her. “We have changed since last we met. You don’t look at all like the woman who raised me from birth. Has the moon done this to you?”

“You know why I’m here, Nidhogg,” she spat, feeling her resolve but lacking conviction. “You know I can’t let you—.”

“Let me? Dearest Gaia, you don’t need to ‘let’ me do anything,” he scoffed. “You couldn’t control me even if you wanted to.” Sera gasped as his giant, clawed hand swatted her to the side. She no longer stood between him and the Guardians plus Pitch. She tried to get up, but saw flames flickering in his mouth before any of them could act. “Bid farewell to the moon’s beloved followers.”

His mouth went agape as the flames surged from his throat. The group took several steps back as they saw their doom in Nidhogg’s fire, but one remained still. Jack Frost raised his staff and stared into Nidhogg’s mouth. As the flames burst forth through the dragon’s teeth, Jack countered the blast with a stream of ice. He stood, bracing himself against the impact of the outburst, and continued to hold off Nidhogg’s attempts to burn him and his comrades until the dragon realized this tactic was futile and closed his mouth. When he gazed down at Jack, the boy was dumb enough to stare defiantly back at the dragon.

Sera would have to remember to call him an idiot later.

Jack prepared to attack again, the others joining him this time as she got to her feet. When Nidhogg saw this, he flapped his massive wings and the force sent them careening backwards into the forest. He continued flapping, rendering them unable to move as he tested out his first flight. He hovered up, gracefully taking to the skies as if it had only been yesterday that he’d learned his wings. The canopy bowed under the pressure of his wings before he took off, leaving them all there to stare after him. He roared as he flew, and suddenly she could hear the plague spirits cackling and the monkey men screeching.

It hit them all then: the end bringer was loose.



“Jack!” Tooth screamed as the youngest Guardian stood up and leapt onto the wind, following the dragon. She, in turn, followed him.

“Everyone able to fly must go after him,” North reasoned as they heard Pillan’s army crashing through the rainforest towards them. “Bunny and I will stay here and handle the others.”

“We’ve got the gumbies! Go!” Bunny shouted at them.

Sandy took off on a cloud of dreamsand as Pitch snapped his fingers. From the shadows came the familiar whinny of one of his Nightmares. When it appeared, he mounted it. He was about ready to kick and proceed after the others when he saw Sera standing rigid, her eyes wide. “Seraphina—.”

“I can’t.”

“Since when?” Bunny asked. This came as news to everyone.

“I haven’t flown since . . . since . . . I can’t!” North, Bunny, and Pitch all stared dumbly at her as they realized what she was saying. Their stares only made her more frustrated. “Quit—!”

“Stop with the bravado and take one of my Nightmares,” Pitch barked as he snapped his fingers, summoning another. She got ready to shake her head and send a biting remark at him, but he cut her off with, “You must. Don’t be afraid, Sera.”

Whether it was Pitch using the words he only reserved for those he truly cared for or his using Mother Nature’s preferred name that made her stop and listen, Bunny would never know. Whichever it was, it seemed to have worked as she leapt onto the second Nightmare’s back and they chased after Pillan. Once alone, Bunny and North gazed at each other. They heard the monkey men and the plague spirits closing in on them. Bunny knew they were going to need some additional help with this one. “How did I used to say it, mate? Desperate times?” Bunny asked North.

North stared at him briefly, pure joy crossing his face as his eyes lit up. Sticking one sword in the ground, he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a smallish drawstring bag. “Call for desperate measures, my friend.”

North tossed the bag to Bunny, who opened it and took a deep breath before guzzling its chocolate contents. He could feel the effects immediately as his body began to shift and grow larger, his paws becoming clawed hands and feet and his teeth becoming sharp enough to tear through anything. When he’d been transformed into a beast three times his normal size, he let out a war cry he had not used in hundreds of years.



The Pooka war cry sent a visible shiver through Pitch as they chased after Jack and the dragon. Sandy and Tooth had not yet caught up with either, and Sera was still struggling with the Nightmare Pitch had given her.

As they advanced on their target, they could see a black and blue individual circling the dark green dragon’s face. Whenever Pillan unleashed a jet of fire, it was countered by Jack’s frost. The two twisted in the air, and it almost looked like they were dancing. As they neared, they could just barely pick up on the dragon scoffing, “You’re that infant that got my men killed!” They didn’t hear Jack’s response, but it must’ve been enough to anger the beast. He snapped his jaws, almost catching Jack by the ankle.

Sandy led the troupe up past the warring dragon and winter spirit, knowing their greatest chances of surprising Pillan lay in attacking him from above. Once they picked up enough speed that they were keeping pace with the dragon and the youngest Guardian, Sera signaled to Pitch. He nodded, and they both dismounted the Nightmares and jumped onto Pillan’s back. Each grabbed one of the spikes that lined the dragon’s spine to keep from slipping off his sleek scales. Pillan roared as he realized he was being attacked by more than just the ‘infant’ now.

Sandy readied a ball of dreamsand as Jack sent ice bolts into each of Pillan’s eyes, temporarily blinding the dragon. Pillan roared as Sandy aimed and through the ball at the beast’s face. Sandy was taken aback when his sand didn’t affect Pillan in the slightest. Wrinkling his nose, he readied his whips and began fending off the onslaught of plague spirits with Tooth.

Sera pulled the black dagger from its sheath on her leg and went to hand it to Pitch over Pillan’s spikes. He stared at it briefly, recognizing it, then took it. Her gaze darted from the blade to the massive wing beside him. The wing was large enough that it could wrap around the Guardians, Sera, and Pitch thrice and there would still be excess, but it was weak compared to the dragon’s scaled body. Pitch nodded, acknowledging what she wanted him to do, then slashed at the part of the wing that connected to the dragon’s body. Pillan roared again, each cry becoming more earsplitting. Then he tucked his wings and rolled in the air, forcing Pitch and Sera to lace their limbs between the dragon’s spikes in order to hold on. When the beast’s wings extended once more and he was flying straight again, Pitch handed the blade back to Sera and she slashed at the opposite wing. Pillan roared again, but the wounds didn’t faze him. He continued flying as if he’d never been injured. Pitch and Sera exchanged glances, both unsure of what else to do to slow him down as she sheathed the knife again.

Meanwhile, Tooth and Sandy cut through the plague spirits without too much trouble. Jack continued deterring the dragon’s flames, resealing the ice on Pillan’s eyes each time the layer thinned. It wasn’t until the dragon took a blind swing at Jack did the boy get knocked off balance and drop his staff. Without his crook, he started careening down towards the rainforest far below. Sera motioned for Pitch to follow him, the Nightmare King not even hesitating as he summoned his Nightmare and dove after the winter spirit. As a last ditch effort to force Pillan to the ground, Sera straddled the dragon’s back and pulled her hammer from its resting place over her shoulder. She inhaled to steady herself, balancing on the balls of her feet as she calculated the amount of time it took for the dragon to flap his wings. She eyed the joint at the top of the wing, counting the seconds and determining just how far she had to jump. She made her move when the right wing was on an upward swing, jumping and raising the hammer above her head. When she finished counting, she used every last bit of her strength and brought the hammer down directly on the joint. Her whole body shook from the impact of her hammer, and she grit her teeth and hissed at the sound of the bones separating. One last earsplitting, long roar made her head ring just before Pillan tucked his right wing under him and he began his descent towards the earth.

Sera kicked off his back and began her own descent. Before she had time to really panic, the Nightmare she’d ridden galloped through the skies and caught her. She landed on it backwards, and had to regain her balance long enough to right herself on its back. She looked around for the others, catching a glimpse of Pitch and Jack flying side by side towards Tooth and Sandy. The elder Guardians were still battling the plague spirits. Plague spirits and Guardians alike split apart as the dragon fell between them, sending flames in each direction as he spun through the air. Some flames caught the plague spirits. Sandy, Jack, and Sera dodged the fire easily, but Tooth and Pitch weren’t fast enough. One of Tooth’s wings caught flame and Pitch’s Nightmare disintegrated.

“Sandy, catch Tooth!” Jack said over the wind. Sandy didn’t hesitate, both diving for their targets. Sera dove after Jack, knowing his slight form couldn’t possibly withstand Pitch’s weight.

Despite his gargantuan frame, she lost sight of the dragon as his scales blended in with the rainforest. Her whole body was shaking from the ordeal, her battered nerves catching the attention of the Nightmare she was riding. She kicked him onward anyway, wiping sweat and tears from her eyes.

 Spring Awakening 

The battle with the monkey men was over quickly, and again the cowards retreated. North was still swinging when he felt the ground shake beneath him. He liked to imagine that was a dead dragon causing all that raucous, but he didn’t get his hopes up.

Speaking of which, he’d lost track of where the Guardian of Hope had chased the red beasts off to. A moment of panic surged through him as he realized just how far apart he was from his allies. He kept his swords up, glancing about for anything familiar or suspicious. When he saw nothing, he looked up at the clear sky and sighed. Wiping his brow, he whispered to himself, “Am too old for this.”

“North!” came a familiar cry of panic. Lifting his swords once more, he charged into the woods and spun about, searching for Bunny. “North!” the rabbit cried again. North heard him, but didn’t see him anywhere. “Look up, you bloody Cossack!” North looked up, and as soon as he saw what his friend had gotten himself into he laughed aloud. “It’s not funny!”

“Not funny? You’re all tangled up in a tree! How is not funny?” North bellowed through bouts of laughter. The look of embarrassment and disgust on Bunny’s face made his situation all the more hilarious. North inhaled deeply, trying to quell his hysteria before he responded, “At least you are back to normal size.”

“See, this is exactly why I don’t eat chocolate. Not only are the effects completely spontaneous, but I usually wind up in places that I wouldn’t normally dream of ending up in.”

“Oh, so you don’t normally end up in trees?”

“No, you bugger!”

“Not unless there is pretty girl in there.” The look Bunny gave him only made him start laughing again. “Oh don’t look so surprised, you rabbit.”

“How long?”

North placed his hands on his hips. “You think I don’t recognize wonder when I see it? You’ve been after her for as long as I can remember.”

“Have not.”

“Have, too.”

“Have not!”

“Better act fast, or you’ll miss your chance again.”

“Do you want me to die?!”

“On contrary, I’m telling you to live a little.”

Bunny and North stared at each other for a long while, Bunny glaring and North smiling up at him. At long last, Bunny rolled his eyes and sighed. His ears perked up a little as he asked, “Is this how humans normally encourage each other to do stupid things?”

“I’m sure some variant of eggnog is usually involved.”

“And one isn’t stuck in a tree?”

“That can happen at times, but you’re right. It’s not typical.”

Bunny’s ears flattened against his head. He exhaled heavily once more. “Remember when the only thing we argued about was the importance of Easter and Christmas?”

North sighed at the thought. “Good times.”

“Simpler times.”

“Aye. Simpler times.”



“Ow!”

“Sorry,” Jack whispered. He moved between Pitch and Tooth, both burned pretty badly. Tooth’s wing seemed almost shriveled. “How will this affect your flying?”

“It’ll heal slowly.” She looked solemn. “Very slowly.”

“Will some cold help it? It usually helps him,” Jack said, gesturing to Pitch. Pitch was asleep in the darkest part of the area where they’d landed, dreamsand swirling above his head. It was the only way Jack could force him to rest. Rest and a layer of ice over the burn marks on his legs were the only things that would help him heal.

“You can try it,” Tooth said. Jack hurt for her. He couldn’t imagine not being able to fly, and that was the only way she seemed to travel. It was rare to see her feet touch the ground. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen her land willingly.

He readied his ice, but Sera stopped him. “This’ll help,” she said, holding up a green paste that Jack thought looked similar to the crushed herb she’d used to soothe the injury she’d given him.

As Sera spread the goo over Tooth’s wing, Jack asked, “How’d you get it to work so fast?”

“The herb? I have my own garden. Hidden, of course.” She patted the pouches on her belt with one hand before saying, “Figure you can never be too careful.”

“So you make up your own remedies?”

“No. I enhance the effects your average herb has on its user. It took a long time to get them to work this fast. Lots of talking to plants and lots of time spent caring for them. It wasn’t like I didn’t have enough time on my hands, though. You know?” She finished up applying the salve to Tooth’s wing, then watched as Jack covered her handiwork with a layer of frost. Tooth breathed a sigh of relief as Sandy held her hands comfortingly. “My magic is slow working,” Sera continued, “but incredibly effective.”

“Would you say you could fix anything?” Jack asked.

“If I have enough time.” Sera raised an eyebrow. Jack squinted as he realized for the first time that, unlike her father, she actually did have eyebrows. “What do you have in mind?”

He took a deep breath, realizing that what he was about to ask might be damn near impossible to pull off. He asked anyway. “Rin. You’ve barely met him, but . . .,” Jack stopped and looked at Pitch. He thought hard before looking back at Sera and continuing, “Things would be easier if I didn’t have a shadow ricocheting through me.”

“Your Fearling half is bothersome? And he can’t fix that?” she gestured to Pitch.

“Not without hurting me, he thinks.”

Sera glanced up, thinking. “You want him completely gone?”

Jack sighed. “He’s helped us a lot. I don’t want him dead, but I can’t share my body with him forever. Pitch’ll be the first to tell you all the things he’s done to torment us.”

“Just for the sake of curiosity, can I get an example?”

“He stole one of Pitch’s torture tools and threatened to remove my eye.”

“Yeah, he’s gotta go.” She put her hands together, thinking a little more. “Just exorcising him would take some time. Keeping him sentient long enough to find him a new body is another matter entirely.”

“So you can do it?” Jack grew hopeful at the prospect.

“Give me some time to think it over. In fact, don’t expect a miracle till after the Nidhogg business is over with.”

Jack nodded eagerly. “Absolutely! It’s just . . . thank you!” Before he knew what he was doing, he threw his arms around Sera. She stiffened at the touch, and the reality of Jack’s actions hit home. He moved back hastily, releasing her. “Sorry.” The look of utter surprise on her face would’ve been comical had this not been the same woman who hammered his guts only a day ago. Or was it a few days ago? How had he lost track of time?

She shook her head, reorienting her senses before saying, “It’s cool.” Her eyes widened at her own sentence. “Really cool. Damn, you’re that temperature all the time?” He shrugged, but before he could answer, she waved her own question aside. “Just . . . a little warning next time?”

“Yes! Warning! Warnings are important,” he agreed.

She actually cracked a smile at that. “In the meantime, I better go find that last two Guardians.”

Jack moved to sit beside Pitch. “Yeah, can’t imagine what they’re doing.” As soon as Jack was settled beside his Boogeyman, she stood. There was a moment of quiet before Jack let out a surprised gasp, long black and gray arms wrapping around his waist as Pitch practically curled around him. Both of Sera’s eyebrows raised as Jack’s cheeks flushed. “This . . .,” he struggled to continue the thought, “is normal.”

“That’s normal?” He nodded curtly, his lips tightening in a thin line as he realized just how awkward this must look to individuals not used to the relationship that was Pitch’s and Jack’s. “You really are his pillow.”

“Afraid so. He’ll be upset that he wasn’t awake to hear me scream.”

Sera shook her head at that. “I’m walking away now.”

“Sounds good.” With that, she turned and made her way through the rainforest in search of North and Bunny. Jack stared down at the sleeping Nightmare King wrapped almost completely around him. “I’m gonna kill you when you wake up.”



When Sera found North and Bunny, the rabbit was in the exact same spot he had been stuck in when he’d called North over.

North threw his arms up in the air excitedly. “Sera! Just the girl we were talking about and waiting for!” Bunny was going to kill North for that. North placed his hands back on his hips and winked at her. “Dragon is taken care of, right?”

“For now. He’s grounded, but most likely not dead.” She looked up at Bunny. “Do I even want to know?”

“Chocolate was involved.”

“I bet you never climbed a tree so fast in your entire existence.” She looked to North. “Tooth and Pitch were injured in the battle, but I think they’ll be alright. Follow the trail I left you and you’ll find them.”

“And you’ve got the Bunny?”

“Unfortunately for him, yes. I’ve got him,” she said. North looked up at Bunny for a moment, also winking. Then he followed the path Sera had left for him, leaving Mother Nature and the Easter Bunny alone.

They stared at each other for a moment, their faces expressionless. Well, Bunny tried to seem expressionless. He probably looked pissed, but what did anyone expect? He preferred being on the ground (or under it, for that matter), and here he was back up in a tree. She moved first, reaching for her bow. “You gonna put me out of my misery?”

“Somehow, I don’t think it’ll be this easy to get rid of you,” she uttered with a smile. At least she was smiling. That was a little comforting. He just might live through this.

After she’d strung up her bow, she pulled an arrow and notched it. As she took aim, he felt a shudder go through him at how close the arrow’s path would cut past his head. “Aw crikee,” he said nervously.

“Just relax and trust me. You only have a little ways to fall.”

“Fall—!” Bunny was cut off by her loosing the arrow, the barbed instrument skirting his ears and slicing through the vines that held him up. Once those vines were cut, he went tumbling down through the branches to the forest floor. He landed flat on his stomach with a loud thud, and was left groaning from the impact.

“Alright, so I lied. Your landing made your fall a little less pleasant,” she said, unstringing her bow and placing it back in her quiver.

“Ugh,” he grumbled. “You expected that to be pleasant?”

“I expected you to land on your feet!”

“I’m not a cat!”

“So I’ve noticed!” she retorted, stepping over to him. She wrapped her arms around and under one of his, trying to help him up. It wasn’t until he tried to move that he felt an awful sensation run up the length of his back and he cried out. She held him still, but stopped pulling as she looked to find the source of his outburst. “How on earth did you not notice a gash that size sooner?”

“If it’s on my back, it’s not like I can turn around and look at it!”

“But couldn’t you feel it?”

“I tend to lose my senses after a round of chocolate, in case you haven’t noticed already.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed! Can you sit up?” She unhooked her arms from his and Bunny let out another irritated groan before shoving himself upright. He hissed at the pain that shot down his back. She placed a hand on his shoulder, helping him stay up as she looked at the gash. “This is deep. You really didn’t feel this?”

“I may recall a scratch during a fight with some monkey men, but nothing like what this feels like.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a serious problem. Steady yourself. I’m going to try to treat it.”

“With what?!”

“A plant. Don’t get your panties in a twist.” He heard her searching through her pouches in search of an herb that would best help.

“I don’t wear panties . . .,” he snarled, his ears flattening against his head again, squinting into the forest.

“You don’t wear anything anymore,” she said with a snicker. Then her laughter grew louder as she started to crush her herb of choice using her mortar and pestle.

“What’s so funny now?” he asked defensively. He gestured with his paws, but soon realized that any movement only made his back hurt more.

She stifled the giggling long enough to ask, “Remember your egg-shaped glasses?”

“Hey now! North is barred from speaking of my old wardrobe, and now you are, too!”

His protests made her giggling worse. “Why so sensitive, Bunny? I liked your green, egg-shaped glasses. Tell me you kept them.”

“Haha, no!” He hissed when he felt her rubbing something into the gash that he had not been aware of until he’d returned to the ground.

They remained quiet as she continued applying her medicine. Judging by the amount of his back she had to cover with the herb, he was definitely surprised that he hadn’t noticed the injury sooner. When she was finished and had put away her equipment, she came to stand in front of him. “I don’t suppose you can get up and start walking?”

“Do I look like a masochist to you?”

For a moment, their faces were blank. Then they smiled and sniggered as she knelt down in front of him. “You’d have to be.”

“I would, now?”

“As often as I attacked you? And still you stuck it out?” The laughing and smiling died off, and she started to look blank again. “I still can’t believe how easy it is to talk to you. After all this time. Aren’t we supposed to have a hard time with this sort of thing?”

“You’d think so, but we’ve never exactly been normal.”

“What is normal, anyway?” She stopped, then squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh God.”

“What?”

“Just . . . I haven’t exactly gotten used to seeing . . . Pitch and Jack act like a couple.”

He paused, surprised that she actually referred to Pitch by name instead of just calling him ‘him’ or something akin to ‘him.’ The thought made him smile. He said, “No one is used to it. What brought that up?”

“I left just as he wrapped himself around Jack’s waist. Twice. Apparently that’s normal.”

“I . . . haven’t had the ‘pleasure’ of seeing such a thing.” In fact, Bunny had to shake his head to keep from envisioning such a feat.

“That right there was my exact reaction!” she said, gesturing to Bunny’s facial expression. That made them laugh again.

A moment of silence passed over them as they elected to sit and wait for the medicine to really numb Bunny’s pain. Bunny got ready to ask her something, but stopped himself. She probably didn’t want to hear him ask her not to disappear again. Then again, maybe that was exactly what she needed to hear in order to get her to stay in touch with him. But he wasn’t quite brave enough to ask yet. Instead, he said, “So. Wardrobes. What exactly happened to yours?”

She shrugged. “This feels a little more practical than that old dress. It got torn to shreds out here.”

“And all the damn weapons? How’d you accumulate them and how do you lug them around all the time?”

“It takes me hours to focus enough to even get my magic ready to use. I needed something else to protect me on short notice. So I improvised.”

“The knife didn’t cut it?”

“It’s sentimental. And I only use it when absolutely nothing else will work.”

“Sentimental? Like my aster?” She reached self-consciously for the back of her neck at the question, habitually checking to make sure it was hidden. He wanted to smile, wanted to be happy that she’d kept it. Instead, he just felt sad. To hell with it, he thought. He asked, “Is there any way I can convince you not to leave when this is through?”

She sighed, staring down at her open palms. Her silence made him uneasy. When she looked back up, she said, “I’ve already promised Jack to help him with the Fearling. I honestly don’t know what to do after that.” She thought for a moment. “I wanted to remain emotionally unattached from all of you, but you all make it very hard to keep to that plan.”

“Would it be so bad if you rejoined the world, instead of hiding in the woods?”

She pinned him with a gimlet stare. “Hiding in the woods is better than being at the beck and call of someone who can’t even answer a simple question.”

“Believe it or not, we’re just as out of the loop as you are most of the time.” Bunny snorted, then added, “You wanna complain about Manny, the right person to talk to is actually Jack. Three hundred years and he heard not so much as a peep from the Man in the Moon.”

“And he’s a Guardian?”

“Believe me, I didn’t want him to be. He didn’t want to be. But something changed in him, and here he is.” Then Bunny rolled his eyes and grunted. “With the Nightmare King hanging off him.”

“Don’t remind me. I think I’m scarred.”

“But seriously. Would you consider sticking around? I stuck with you all that time.”

“Did you?” Her gaze was melancholy, and he felt a pang of guilt staring back at her.

“I should have.”

They continued staring at each other. Something seemed to click in her head, and the sadness was replaced with minor irritation. Bunny prepared to get punched in the face as she raised her clenched fists at him and said, “I hate you, you fluffy bastard.”

His ears shot upright. “What?!” Before he could react, she grabbed the fur on his shoulders and pulled him toward her. He’d had no idea what to expect, but he certainly hadn’t expected Sera to be kissing him. Warmth surged through him as the reality of the kiss sank in and his arms wrapped around her instinctually. Her grip on his coat loosened as her hands slid up his neck to the sides of his face. Ignoring the pain from the gash, he pulled her flush up against him and eliminated the distance between them. When they finally stopped to breathe, eyes still closed and still holding onto one another, Bunny said, “You have a funny way of showing it.”

“Well, I do. I hate you. Making me have feelings for you.”

“No one makes you do anything, Sera. Don’t even try to blame me.”

He opened his eyes just enough to see her smiling despite herself. They stayed like that for a moment, him watching her while her eyes remained closed. When she finally did open her eyes and look up at him, she said, “Pitch should’ve killed us by now.”

“No, he should’ve killed me by now.”

“At least this time I get to call him a hypocrite if he finds out and says anything.”

“That does not mean I won’t die.”

“Doesn’t mean you will either.” She started wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “I forgot how much hair is involved when kissing you.”

“See, now that’s just rude. You think I can help that I’m covered in fur?” This only made her laugh as she continued wiping the hair from her face. “It’s not that funny!”

“Yes it is.”

“No, it’s not! You and North, finding joy in my plight. What’s wrong with the both of you?” She paid him no heed and just continued laughing. Bunny sighed and rolled his eyes, ears flattening. “I think I can move now. Wanna get going?”

“Awww, so soon?” she asked through laughs.

“You’re the devil.”

“Devil’s daughter, to be accurate.”

“You’re killing me,” he whispered before kissing her again.

 Breaks 

Pitch awoke from a series of pleasant dreams to the even more pleasant feeling of Jack Frost’s cold body against his. Purring to himself, he buried his nose in the Guardian’s hair and inhaled the scent of winter. He’d stopped counting the times he’d told himself that he could never grow tired of waking up to this. His arms tightened around the boy as he positioned himself closer to Jack’s chill.

“Pitch, you’re crushing me,” Jack mumbled tiredly. Pitch’s head was still so groggy from sleep that he hadn’t realized he was almost completely on top of Jack, who was lying on his stomach with his arms framing his face as pillows. Pitch smiled at the boy’s sleeping position of choice. Well, he doubted he’d chosen this position. More than likely, Pitch had inadvertently forced him into it.

He probably shouldn’t be smiling at how vulnerable Jack was to him at the moment. He probably shouldn’t be thinking about it. But the burn on his leg felt great and he had his precious Jack with him. And Jack trusted him and he trusted Jack. The notion was almost foreign to him.

And the skin behind Jack’s ear looked so delicious after such an excellent nap.

Pitch would forever blame his actions on his being only half-awake at the time. For now, he just wanted one small sampling of Jack’s flesh.



Jack came fully awake at the feeling of Pitch’s tongue behind one of his ears. He shivered at first, biting his lip to quell the moan that was ready to escape his lips. When he was done gasping from the contact, he turned his head to glare at the Nightmare King. Jack whispered, “Really?”

“What?” Pitch said absently.

“You do realize we’re not alone, don’t you?” Jack struggled to keep his voice even and quiet, but now Pitch was shifting on top of him, positioning his groin suggestively against Jack’s rump. “Could you calm down a bit?”

“We’re not alone?” Pitch asked.

Jack heard the playfulness in the Boogeyman’s voice and sighed. Gazing out at the sleeping Guardians, he whispered back, “No, we’re not alone.”

“Well,” Pitch muttered before his hand snuck over Jack’s mouth, “you better keep quiet then.”

Jack mouthed against his hand, “I’m gonna kill you,” but Pitch paid little attention. If anything, it made the Boogeyman hum with excitement as he thrust against Jack’s clothed ass. Jack unleashed an unabashed groan at the sensation, but soon felt his cheeks redden as he glanced over at the others. This was most definitely not how he wanted them to see him this early in the morning. Jack gasped again as Pitch’s other hand reached down to cup his growing hardness. He mouthed the Nightmare King’s name against his palm, but this only resulted in a short chuckle and a tightening grip on his member. Pitch thrust again and Jack’s eyes rolled into the back of his head at the thought of Pitch shoving himself into him. He groaned without even trying to muffle it this time, reacting enthusiastically to Pitch’s palm on his crotch. He moaned again as Pitch squeezed his—.

“Whatever the two of you are doing, don’t do it. No one wants to see that,” Sera said from a good distance above them.

Both Jack and Pitch went completely stiff at that. Jack was certain that his cheeks had never been redder as they pulled apart and assessed their sleeping area. Jack was glad that they were partially covered by a bush of some sort, considering how intimate Pitch had been getting with him. At that thought, he turned and glared at Pitch. Pitch looked more distraught over the fact that his daughter had been the one to say something. Anyone else and the Nightmare King would’ve simply shrugged off the look Jack was giving him.

“What are you two rabbits or something?” Bunny muttered from the side. A soft chuckle sounded from the canopy. “Don’t even—.”

“You said it. You have only yourself to blame.”

Despite the good humor, Jack’s face only got redder as he pulled his hood up and tucked himself further into the underbrush, out of sight of the others. He glared out at the now awakening Guardians, ignoring the Boogeyman at his side. For once, Pitch was just as embarrassed as he was.

And to think the morning had started off so well.



Tooth and Bunny checked their injuries before they decided whether they were comfortable moving or not. Though her wing bore what may very well be permanent scars, the twit could still fly. That was enough to brighten her morning. The kangaroo’s gash had healed considerably, and merely stung after its treatment. Pitch’s burn had, of course, almost disappeared due to the rest he’d been forced to take. The morning would’ve been amazing had he not been interrupted. The very thought of it made him almost ill again. Anyone else. Had anyone else called him and Jack out, he would’ve been fine. But no. His luck was only so good.

Mother Nature laid out her idea for what was to happen while reapplying medicine to everyone’s bigger wounds just in case. “Our best chance at defeating him will be catching him by surprise. If we can’t do that, the Guardians could distract him long enough for me to open up a chasm under him.” She sighed before continuing with, “I’ll need you,” she looked at Pitch, “to use your shadows to keep him in the chasm long enough for me to close it on him. You,” she gestured to Jack, “can keep using your ice to mute his flames. You saved our arses with that last time.”

“He won’t survive this, will he?” the twit asked. Sera shook her head. Pitch could see the sadness in his daughter, though she concealed it well. One never truly lost feeling for anything that had come close to being a family member, even when it threatened that person. Despite everything, he ached for her.

“What happens to us? As soon as the ground starts splitting, that is?” the kangaroo asked, cutting through their thoughts.

“How would you and your tunnels fair getting everyone to safety? Will a quake affect them?”

“What about flying?” North asked.

“I’d go with that, but not everyone can fly and it would be easier to open up a tunnel and slide to safety. Does that seem reasonable, Bunny?” Seraphina asked again.

“It shouldn’t be a problem. It would take a lot to collapse my tunnels.” His nose twitched and his ears stood on alert. “It sounds like you’ll be left behind.”

“If everything goes accordingly, I won’t. There’s always a chance that things won’t work out in my favor.” She put away her materials. “Rest assured that no element can truly kill me.”

“But Pillan can,” Pitch pointed out.

She closed her eyes forlornly, not making eye contact. “I don’t think he can bring himself to do it.”

“You’re putting a lot of weight on what you think he can’t do,” he argued.

“Well, what choice do I have? We can’t let him go free.” With that, the conversation ended.

After check-ups, they got back on their feet again. The group moved in a divided formation through the woods towards where Mother Nature thought Pillan had landed. They moved in pairs for the most part: the bird with the Cossack, the rabbit with Jack, Pitch with Seraphina, and Sanderson on his own. The gap between the Sandman and the others wasn’t quite as large, but he reassured them that he could handle trekking through the rainforest on his own. He had dreamsand after all. It still puzzled them as to how his sand had not put Pillan to sleep during the flight. Seraphina guessed that he’d built up immunity to it over time just as he’d built up an insane amount of pain tolerance.

Seraphina and Pitch were silent for most of the walk. The silence between them was uncomfortable at best, but Pitch had a chance to actually speak to her with no one really listening in on them for the first time since she’d given him her advice. The trouble was how to begin to speak to his daughter. It still stunned him that they were working together after so many years.

It seemed only yesterday that she was pulling him from the wreckage of the Great War. The notion didn’t seem completely unrealistic. What were a few centuries to an immortal?

“Thank you,” he started simply. He felt her tense up at the offer.

“For what?” she asked hesitantly.

“Your words. You . . . were right. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to trust.”

She didn’t look at him or respond for a moment, but he could feel her curiosity mounting in place of the tension. “I still can’t believe you listened.”

“Did you expect me to lose my temper?” He found himself being pinned by her gimlet stare. “Well, I did.”

“Didn’t seem to work out too unfavorably.”

“The bottom-line is that you were right. I didn’t realize it at the time, but your advice was exactly what I needed.”

There was a long pause as he felt her confusion stirring, mixing with the awkwardness of his admittance. She broke the silence with, “I’ve never heard you say I was right twice in one day.”

“You and I haven’t exactly been communicating. You’d likely be just as surprised at the things I’ve said this past year.”

“He’s really mellowed you out, hasn’t he?” Her wariness was abating, which made Pitch relax slightly. The fact that she was speaking with him nearly had him smiling.

However, he refuted, “I wouldn’t say that. If anything, I’ve been more violent since he entered the picture.”

“Which is probably why you’re here,” she observed.

He nodded. Another pause interceded their conversation, leaving room for tension to rekindle. Pitch, more than ever, did not want that. He also didn’t want to admit that he’d been wrong, but he’d had to do that a lot lately. What was one more apology? It could save someone. “I am sorry.”

“Okay, what are you up to?” Seraphina eyed him suspiciously, folding her arms as they continued walking.

“What, an apology warrants suspicion? Should I be up to something?”

“I don’t know, should you?”

“Seraphina—.”

“Sera.”

He sighed. “Sera. I truly am sorry. I shouldn’t have hurt you so. I should’ve trusted you. Moreover, I should’ve told you these things much, much sooner. I knew how to find you. I was foolish for not seeking you out, and I was foolish to think that you would come back on your own. You got your hardheadedness honest, that’s for sure.” He half expected her to interrupt him, but she didn’t. She just watched with a guarded stare. So much like him. “You’ve done nothing to deserve my mistrust.” He looked up, reminded of something suddenly. “Save for shoot an arrow at my head.”

“Wasn’t it you who said that if I wanted to hit something, I would’ve? I was merely proving your point.”

He smirked at that. “Still, that was close.” He exhaled through his nose, coming up with what to say next. “You can go on hating me. I’ll understand. But despite what I said long ago, you have never stopped being my daughter. Even if you leave after this is through, you will continue to be my daughter.”

Their footfalls seemed louder once he finished, the tension remaining steady as Sera’s confusion was replaced by frustration. That seemed right. She had about the same reaction to these sorts of situations as he did. Neither was ever willing to give up a grudge. Not without just cause. The silence continued as they proceeded, and Pitch began to feel strangely satisfied for having spoken up. It was odd, this trusting business. About as odd as the concept of love.

He got distracted by the thought. Someone loved him. Jack loved him. He hadn’t realized he was smiling until Sera was giving him yet another suspicious look. He set his thoughts aside as he wiped the smile from his face. “Dear Manny, what has that boy done to you?”

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

“You never smiled.” She reminisced, stopping him before he interrupted. “Not like that, anyway. You smiled, but only when something . . . not pleasant came to your mind.”

“You made me smile. That’s pleasant enough, now.”

He caught her smirk before she tried to hide it. “Someone might think you know something you shouldn’t, you walking around smiling like that.”

Her suspiciousness caught his attention again. He squinted at her, then said, “Is there something I don’t know that I should?”

“No.” She spoke entirely too quickly, making him squint again. He watched her longer, waiting for one of her tells to give her away. It wasn’t long before she started raking her hand through her hair.

“You’re hiding something.”

“You’re reading too much into my distrust.” Her voice was even. No other tells showed. Just the one had tipped him off.

“Is there something I should be suspecting you of?”

“No! Stop acting like my father!” she snapped, raking her hand through her tangled black mane again. It was then that he caught a glimpse of a particular shade of pink that her orchids did not match. He continued staring, trying to figure out what he’d seen when she turned and glared at him. His brow furrowed and he looked ahead. When she thought she’d successfully deterred his attention, she continued walking. The tension in her limbs was high again, but eventually her guard was down.

He took his chance and used the shadows to pull her hair back. She jumped, both coming to a stop as she moved to hide what it was Pitch had sought. But it was too late. She shouted a series of curses before it fully sunk in that there was an aster growing at the nape of her neck. A sour taste reached his tongue as a pit formed in his stomach. He had about the same reaction to her fear as he did to Jack’s, and she was rampant with fear due to his discovery. Though it had sunk in what he had found, he still felt completely numb. “Nothing to hide, indeed.”

“What the hell—?”

“Why would you have that?”

“What do you care?”

His rage began mounting as he watched her try to play it off. “That is the signature of the rabbit. Why is it in your hair?”

She folded her arms defensively. “You’re going to get mad because I’m friends with a Guardian? Really?”

“Friends don’t give each other gifts like—.”

“I still have this!” she retorted, pointing to the black dagger on her calf.

“You’re my child! That is different! Why did he—?”

“We were friends—.”

“—give you that?”

“—and you would’ve killed him.”

They were shouting, now. “Friends don’t give things like that! I won’t kill him now—!”

“Why do I not believe—?”

“He’ll survive if you tell me—.”

“You don’t wanna—!”

“—why you have that!”

“What in Manny’s name is going on here?” Pitch hadn’t realized the Guardians had approached them until the Cossack had spoken. Usually, he only had eyes for one Guardian. At the moment, that particular Guardian was not the subject of his attention.

Instead he glared angrily at the rabbit, his shout fueled by his rage. “Explain yourself!”

“Aw crikee . . .,” the kangaroo’s ears flattened against his head as he held his paws up defensively. The guilt on his face was enough to ignite what remained of Pitch’s anger, and he could feel the shadows starting to roil around him.

“This isn’t necessary—,” Sera began.

“Yes it is!” His eyes never left the rabbit, who started backing up as Pitch advanced on him. “I don’t care if you are the last of your kind! If you’ve tried to repopulate with me daughter, you’ll be extinct!”

“Pitch! Calm it down!” Jack set his staff off to the side, stepping between the Boogeyman and his prey. “Now is not a good ti—umf!”

Jack was cut off by Pitch’s hand grabbing the boy’s face and shoving him so that Jack was standing behind him. “You—.”

“STOP!” Sera shouted, taking Jack’s place between him and his target. “Listen to Jack! Now is not the time for this. We can have this out later.”

Just then, an unearthly screech cut through their conversation. As the group reoriented themselves, Pitch looked up to see the plague spirits swooping in on them. He could hear the monkey men leaping through the forest towards them.

Good. Something he can take his anger out on.



“Next time that happens, mate,” Bunny shouted to Jack as he pulled his boomerangs free and the winter spirit ran for his staff, “hit me over the head and kill me. It’ll be quicker than what he has planned.”

Jack had no time to nod or even acknowledge Bunny’s request. He immediately started flinging bolts at the oncoming enemy. He shuddered at the sight of the monkey men, but refused to let them get the better of him before he’d even engaged them in combat. He really didn’t want the taste of blood on his tongue again.

He got a rhythm down, shooting icicles from his crook at the flying targets and leaving sheets of ice where the monkeys would slip on them. As more monkey men appeared, though, he began to feel himself losing control of his fear. His shoulders sagged as he began to doubt his abilities.

Meanwhile, Rin hadn’t said anything. Jack couldn’t even hear his hum.

He glimpsed how the others were doing as he ran through them and leapt onto the wind. Pitch was having entirely too much fun laying waste to his foes. Swords flashed, whips cracked, and Jack was entirely too distracted by his shaking hands to land a perfect blow on the monkey man jumping from a branch onto him. Jack cried out, unable to hold in his panic as he crashed to the ground face first and the air was knocked out of him. His staff left his hand upon impact. The weight of the monkey man on top of him made him hysterical as he tried crawling from beneath the creature. His whole being shook when the beast grabbed his forearms, breathing and making strange noises against his neck. Jack couldn’t even bring himself to scream as he glanced around desperately for his staff. He thought he’d seen it when the beast squeezed his forearms and suddenly Jack was whimpering. He couldn’t keep his eyes open and he couldn’t even think about his staff. There was only the pressure on his arms and the hot breath against his neck as the monkey man pinning him prepared to rip into his neck.

“JACK!” he barely heard Pitch scream as the monkey man was torn off of him and then, in turn, torn apart by the Nightmare King’s shadows. Jack covered his eyes with his now free forearms, unable to watch the bloodshed. When he was certain it was over, he looked up to see Pitch defending him. Locating his staff, he reached for it and tried to get back on his feet again. He was shaking too horribly. He could hardly keep his staff in hand. He was not cut out for warfare. Looking at the others, they seemed out of place in it. But they were handling it.

He wasn’t.

“I can’t do this, Rin,” he muttered.

He’d never been so relieved to hear Rin’s humming rekindle. He asked almost inaudibly, “Then what are you waiting for?”

“I give you permission, just please—.”

Jack didn’t have time to finish before Rin possessed him for the third time. Rin hadn’t bothered telling him that this was going to be the last. He stared down at the staff in his now paler hands, running a tongue over the now sharp teeth. Running greedy fingers over the wood, he grasped it in both hands and broke the crook over his knee. When the action was complete, he felt Jack’s influence completely disappear as what was left of the blue in the hoodie faded completely to black. Rin’s grin widened as he thought of the winter spirit.

Rin dropped the pieces of the crook and ran headlong into the battle, muttering, “Sweet dreams, Jackie!” You needed the staff. I never did. Silly Jack Frost. What made you think I was ever going to leave without a fight?

 Fissures 

“It was a trap. Nidhogg knew we were coming to finish him,” Sera growled, her hands shaking from the battle. She glared at Pitch, who wasn’t looking at her. “We probably could’ve slipped under his army’s radar if we hadn’t been arguing.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t deny that,” he responded distractedly as his brow creased. He picked up two sticks, which had been lying under the remains of a plague spirit. She recognized them before his eyes widened. “Jack!” he cried.

“Jack’s gone, precious Boogeyman.” That was Jack’s voice, but that was definitely not Jack speaking. Everyone stopped moving as a black-haired, gold-eyed version of Jack Frost stepped among then, fresh blood running over rows of sharp teeth and down his chin. He wiped the blood on his hands off on the now completely black hoodie as he continued speaking, “Well, not really gone. Shall we say he’s asleep? That’s what happens when you break the thing that gives someone even the slightest power over you.” Sera stared at Pitch, and realized that this was the first time she’d ever seen him shivering from fear. She shuddered as she heard the bastardization of Jack Frost laugh at the Nightmare King’s state. The laugh was a chilling noise, one that Sera thought might rival Pitch’s evil laughter at times. “Look who’s scared now!” The creature turned toward Sera. “I had no intention of leaving Jack’s body. You know,” he held up a reprimanding finger as he stared at the others, “I’m a bit hurt that he would still consider that after all I’ve done for him. Wait,” he glared up at the sky, thinking. Then his eyes widened, revealing the black scleras a little more as he stared at them again. “No, I’m not hurt at all. I’m mad as hell! I mean, he wouldn’t be alive without me.”

“We were going to give you a new body, moron. He wanted you to live!” Sera snarled. Somehow, the idea that this little snot could make Pitch shake in terror pissed her off. She risked another glance at Pitch, who was holding the pieces of Jack’s crook to his chest and staring dumbly at the ground.

“Yeah, leave his body and risk you lot coming after me? Really! Awesome idea!” He turned his attention on Pitch, opening his arms and flashing a bloody, sharp grin that was the stuff of nightmares. “Does someone need a hug?”

“Let him go,” Pitch croaked out, his voice sounding completely lost. He looked up, his gaze pleading as he said, “Please, Rin. Let him go.”

Rin snorted, then tsked. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Nightmare Man.”

“You little SHIT!” Bunny cried, throwing a boomerang at Rin. A cold, icy shadow rose up at Rin’s command and deflected the weapon. Bunny threw the other, but that was also deflected. Both were lost in the woods, and Bunny was left defenseless.

“You’re annoying,” Rin muttered, his lips barely concealing his fangs. Then they spread into that terrifying grin again. “Let’s play!”

North and Tooth raised their swords defensively as Rin readied a series of dark, frosted arrows and started firing. Sandy sliced through the arrows with his whips seamlessly, but the onslaught was short-lived as Rin abruptly crumpled to the ground. His limbs suddenly weighed more than the rest of his body. The frost dissolved as his arms folded across his chest seemingly against his will and he rested on his knees. He growled as he resisted his own movements. Sera glanced over at Pitch, who looked incredibly focused. It took everyone a moment to realize he was controlling Rin. North advanced, ready to attack, when Sera stepped forward. Pitch was too focused to defend the boy right now. North looked confused by her interference. “Sera—.”

“Realize you’ll hurt Jack as well,” was all she needed to say. He stopped, lowering his swords. The other Guardians followed suit as Sera turned back to watch how Pitch handled Rin.

“Let. Jack. Go,” Pitch growled as he continued holding Rin in position with his influence.

Rin chuckled, still able to speak. “No can do, Nightmare Man.”

“You can, and you will.” Pitch’s voice deepened warningly.

“Even if I did, he wouldn’t be able to fix his little twig. He’ll be too weak!”

“He’ll be strong enough when you’re gone,” Pitch snarled, dropping the pieces and stepping closer to Rin.

Rin only laughed at Pitch. “You gonna exorcise me, Nightmare Man? Now? You couldn’t do it before, when Jack was strong enough to take it. You might kill him, you know!”

“Crawl back to whatever dark recess you’ve taken up residence in and let. Jack. GO!”

“I cheated my way to the forefront, fair and square! I’m not giving up his body!”

“LET HIM GO!”

Rin squinted, flashing his sharp teeth as he whispered, “No.”

In a flurry of movement, Pitch had threaded his fingers through Rin’s hair while his other hand gripped his jaw. The Nightmare King locked eyes with the Fearling. “Then I’ll make you.”

Rin’s eyes widened into perfect circles as Pitch invaded his head, the boy’s body shaking involuntarily as inhuman squeaks escaped Rin’s throat which was now tightly closed off by Pitch’s influence. Sera and the Guardians could see him fighting Pitch, but Pitch didn’t let up. Rin shook violently, but Pitch held his head in place. Tears welled in Rin’s eyes as he continued to struggle. Sera didn’t know how much longer Rin could fight Pitch, and let out a relieved gasp as soon as black hair and scleras started graying to white. The yellow irises faded to blue as his skin started to regain its normal pallor. The last things to return to normal were his teeth, which shortened and dulled as they ceased to be rows of fangs. As soon as the transformation ended, Pitch let go of the boy’s head and Jack went completely limp. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he started falling. Pitch caught his shoulders and laid him gently on the ground, searching frantically for signs of life.

Only then did the others move forward. As she neared, Sera saw that Pitch was shaking again as he checked for a pulse, breathing, anything that indicated Jack was alright. The closer she got, the more audible his quiet pleas became. She had no time to register what he was exactly begging for before she grabbed his hands and forced him to look at her. A single tear rested on his cheek as his panicked expression met her calm one. When she had him as still as he was going to get, she turned her focus to Jack. She placed a hand on his chest and exhaled, feeling for his life force with her powers. It was hard to locate, especially given that Jack Frost was essentially a reanimated corpse. Manny, you really know how to pick them, she thought.

She was both surprised and relieved when she found it, and began coaxing it to strengthen. It struggled, but obeyed her command. Because his life depended completely on his relationship with frozen water, he needed ice. The closest form of ice his body began to absorb was the water in the ground. She watched as her coaxing him to live started drying the ground around them. As soon as his life force was strong enough, she heard Jack gasp awake. He didn’t open his eyes. He just gasped and coughed, as if he’d been revived after drowning.

“Jack?” Pitch asked as the boy’s coughing tapered off and Sera leaned back. Pitch touched the boy’s face while his other hand grasped one of Jack’s.

Jack’s hand tightened around Pitch’s weakly. “I’m sorry,” the boy breathed out softly.

“You’re such a fool,” Pitch uttered, pulling Jack into a firm yet unrestricting embrace.

Sera watched as the others took turns asking if Jack was alright. She felt drained from using her magic, but realized that she didn’t mind even though she really needed all the strength she could get when facing Nidhogg. Though it still baffled her that she couldn’t stand to see Pitch so upset, she didn’t have it in her to steel herself against the feeling. It was still so hard looking at him, and his apologies seemed absolutely unreal. But despite all the grudges, she couldn’t handle seeing him that afraid.



“Jack won’t be able to fight,” Sera told Pitch as the boy rested against him.

Jack stirred. He was able to move, but he lacked the vibrancy he’d had previously. His energy and appearance seemed dulled by the absence of his staff. “I want to fight.”

“You can’t use your ice, and you no longer have Rin as a fallback. Your ice was your best weapon against Nidhogg anyway. He’ll fry you like this,” Sera argued.

“I can still do something,” Jack remarked. “I’m not going to just sit and watch you all get hurt.”

Pitch cut in, “Jack, you’re practically defenseless—.”

“So give me a weapon. Give me a task.” He gestured to both of them. “You both have tasks. The Guardians have tasks. Opening a chasm, keeping the dragon trapped, getting us the hell outta here, give me something. If I can’t keep him distracted like the others—.”

“You could keep him grounded,” Sera stopped him. Jack looked at her gladly, a spark of his energy returning at the idea.

Pitch didn’t share his excitement. “Could you please listen to me and not endanger yourself?” he begged.

Jack stared indignantly at him. “I can do this. I’m not immobile, and I’m still very fast. You’ll be surprised to see me run.” Jack turned to Sera. “How am I going to do this?”

Sera drew her leg up to her chest and removed the black dagger and its sheath from her calf. Handing it to him, she explained, “This is what we used to cut his wings in the first place. It’s the strongest weapon I have, and I’ll find a way to cut you if you lose it.” Jack actually hesitated to take it from her. “He heals about as fast as one of us on our best days, so a broken wing is nothing to him. Cut his wings, and he won’t be able to force himself off the ground. Got it?” Jack nodded, attaching the blade to his upper left arm. “Get creative if you have to. Just make sure he doesn’t escape.”

“Jack, don’t do this,” Pitch asked one last time.

“It’s my job. I have to.” After Sera told him to gather his strength for the battle, she walked away to reinforce in the Guardians what their jobs were. As she did so, he inspected the black blade. It was smooth, almost unearthly. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. “What is it?”

“It was a weapon used by my armies, during the Great War. It came from the Earth’s center. It was powerful against the Guardians mainly because it had never seen the sun or moonlight until I wielded it. I gave it to her, in case she ever needed a weapon as strong.” He paused, staring at it almost happily. “I never thought she’d keep it.”

“Well, I’ll be sure not to lose it then.” He holstered the knife, then nestled against Pitch’s side and sighed. “The sooner we deal with Pillan, the sooner we get rid of Rin.”

“That is true.” Something about Pitch’s voice sounded odd, though. He almost seemed distant. Was that fear? Worry?

“Something wrong?” Jack asked. Pitch shook his head. Jack huffed, annoyed at Pitch’s silence.

Pitch responded to the annoyed sound with, “Just be safe.”

“As safe as I can grounding a dragon. I should be more worried about you.”

It was Pitch’s turn to huff. “If I end up having to stay behind with Sera, I want you to still go with the others.”

“You think I’m going to try and stay behind with you?” Pitch’s expression was gimlet. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Probably? Only probably?”

“I’m not gonna tell you you’re all right. You’ll either get mad or it’ll go to your head.” When Jack had successfully gotten Pitch to grin, he considered his job done. Once he saw the smirk crawl across the Boogeyman’s lips, he felt like he could take a few moments to rest.



Bunny really didn’t want to climb all the way up to the branch where his boomerang was dangling. He’d already found the other, but this one was causing him problems. His strong desire not to climb up had left him staring at the thing for nearly five minutes, trying to figure out how best to get it down without jeopardizing himself. He was so focused on what he was doing that he hadn’t noticed the shadows surrounding him darkening.

“Rabbit,” came a familiar, dark voice.

“Crikee,” Bunny grumbled, a chill running up his spine as he turned slowly to face the Nightmare King. And there was no Jack to hit him hard upside the head to save him the pain, either. “Pitch?”

“I’m not going to even broach the issue of the rather inappropriate gift from you that Sera keeps hidden. In fact, I’m quite sure if I enter into that discussion with you I will kill you. Unfortunately, I told Sera I wouldn’t.” The Nightmare King’s voice was flat, which only terrified Bunny more.

“So, what’s this about then?” the rabbit asked after a distinct pause.

“I’m afraid I have to ask you to watch over Jack.”

Bunny’s ears twitched as his shoulders thrust back defensively. “We were planning on doing that anyway.”

“But you are the one transporting us out of danger. I’m getting a feeling that if Sera ends up staying behind, I will have to stay with her.” Pitch’s expression went from blank to displaying a touch of sadness. “I fear Jack’s loyalty to me, and I’ve already proven incapable of protecting him from all dangers.”

Bunny wanted to agree to that, but he couldn’t find the words or the heart to. In fact, he found that he couldn’t even make a clever remark at Pitch, a sarcastic retort seeming a bit too harsh even for his enemy. It didn’t feel right to agree or disagree, despite who he was talking to. “Look,” he started to say without thinking, his ears flattening, “I’ll get him out when things get hairy. He’ll fight, but I can handle him.”

The relief on Pitch’s face struck him harder than he thought it would. “I am in your debt.”

“I’ll remember you said that,” Bunny uttered. Then he pointed to his boomerang. “In the meantime, could you knock that down here? As entertaining as it would be for you to see me fall out of a tree, I don’t think I have the strength.” With the wave of his hand, Pitch used a shadow to dislodge the boomerang. It fell, landing in Bunny’s hands. Pitch almost looked bored at having performed such a menial task. “Appreciate it.”

“Just remember to protect him.”

“Guardian. It’s what I do.” Bunny then thought about something. “You don’t do too bad with him yourself.”

“You’re the last individual I expected to hear that from.”

“What a coincidence. I had the same thought.”



It was twilight when the Guardians, Sera, and Pitch reassembled and resumed their trek towards Pillan. Seeing as he knew they were coming, they didn’t bother moving in a formation geared to surprise. Instead, they entered the clearing where he lay in a line, expecting to meet him head-on.

Part of them expected to be disappointed. In fact, they’d wondered if he would even remain in the spot where he’d crash-landed. He very well may have attempted to hide from them. But he didn’t. He was there with a bent wing, a strip of disrupted earth leading to the spot where he stood with his head bowed low enough to stare at them on their eye level. Members of the group shuddered at the sheer size of him once more, but held their weapons aloft all the same. With Jack’s staff in pieces, North had secured it on his sleigh before sending it back to the North Pole. Jack looked strange bearing a knife as his weapon instead.

Pillan’s peeved expression met Sera’s slightly stoic one. They had a moment where they simply stared at one another without speaking. Pillan’s face softened just a bit before it hardened from anger. “Mother Gaia, you sadden me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. She almost sounded genuine.

“I didn’t want to have to harm you.”

“You’re threatening my world. Did you think I was going to let you get away with it?”

“I wanted to create a world with you. Why do you choose those who betrayed you over the one you betrayed?”

Sera seemed struck by the words of the one she’d raised as a child. Her lip quivered for a moment, her eyes shining with tears. Her state didn’t seem sensible until she spoke, “Goodbye, Typhon.”

At the mere mention of his preferred name, Pillan snapped. He unleashed a belt of flames from his mouth, forcing them all to dodge fire. He whipped his head around as the stream continued, setting the trees surrounding them ablaze, trapping them in this final circle. The Guardians plus two could see a legion of plague spirits forming behind Pillan as he moved towards them, roaring furiously as he charged. The shreds of pain from Sera’s farewell in his voice died as he advanced.

The group rose to meet the challenge.

 Everything Ends 

Fire blazed all around them, a sheen of sweat appearing on all of their faces. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Bunny down a handful of chocolates before charging into the fight. North’s and Tooth’s swords glinted in the flames as she soared upwards at the plague spirits and he followed the rabbit. Sandy followed Tooth on a cloud as Jack, North, and Bunny ran forward at the dragon. Sera and Pitch flanked them, Pitch prepping his shadows as he summoned his own army to meet the plague spirits. Jack had never been so thrilled to see Nightmares galloping across the skies. Jack caught sight of Sera stopping, and saw her hands moving in a strange pattern as she began to focus. He guessed she was preparing her magic for her task.

Focusing on his own task, he ran to the side as Pillan readied another round of flames. After dodging the burst, he searched for a way onto the dragon’s back to his wings. He couldn’t very well fly up. He was so used to leaping onto the wind that when it didn’t respond to him, he had initially started to panic. A solution came to him in the form of a Nightmare galloping up beside him. It slowed just enough for him to realize its intentions. Grinning, he threaded his fingers through its mane and swung onto its back while running, clinging to its neck as it lifted off again. It nickered, speeding along the streamlined body of the enemy. Jack searched for a good place to jump off, a place where he won’t readily slide off the dragon’s sleek back. It was hard to see past the layer of smoke from the flames, but Jack managed. Remembering his task, he figured the best place to land was actually the wing. So when the Nightmare flew him back along the other side of the dragon, he inhaled quickly and jumped onto the appendage that wasn’t already broken. He’d hoped he’d timed it well enough that he would land on the joint where a single claw protruded, a claw that could potentially be used as a hook. Unfortunately, Jack had not timed it quite as well as he’d wanted and wound up dangling on the wrong side of the limb. He did land on the joint, but the lower half of his body was dangling above the ground rather than being supported by the leathery skin that was Pillan’s wing.

Pillan roared, signaling to Jack that he knew what the Guardian was up to. Jack coughed through the foul smell of the forest burning and stifled his panic. He started to use the momentum of Pillan’s movement to swing himself into the position he wanted. As soon as he had maneuvered himself onto the wing, a burst of flames licked the area where his legs were. His heart hammered at the closeness of the blast, and he held his position long enough to feel reassured that Bunny and North had regained Pillan’s attention. Once he was balanced on the joint and steady enough, he reached for the knife. In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of a plague spirit screeching and diving for him. He fought to remove the weapon from its sheath in time, but found he didn’t need to. The Nightmare had lingered long enough to protect him as he completed his task. Smiling wildly, he pulled the blade free, angled it, then stabbed at the part of the dragon’s wing that met at the joint. Pillan roared again as he attempted to close the wing on Jack. The movement proved too painful even for the dragon as he instead started raising the wing and letting it fall over and over again. Using the strength he had, Jack released the claw at the joint with his one hand and grasped the handle. Using Pillan’s movement against him, Jack used gravity to his advantage and held onto the knife. The knife was lodged in the skin enough that the combined movements of the dragon and Jack’s weight began tearing a hole in the wing. The longer he held on and kept the knife in place, the bigger the hole got and the further down the wing the tear spread. The skin on the wing was strong, so it would take time to truly sabotage it. Jack’s strategy seemed to be working for now, provided he could both hold on and keep the dagger lodged in the wing.

The chocolate Bunny had consumed gave him an absurd amount of strength as well as four extra arms to wield weapons with. North’s laughter as they kept the dragon occupied only egged Bunny on as he threw egg bombs at the dragon’s eyes. They were able to dodge the flames well enough, discovering that the dragon had an increasingly hard time directing flames at them while they hid under his belly. They were fine as long as they could avoid his feet. Being so low to the ground, they managed to find some reprieve from the smoke.

Sandy and Tooth were polishing off enemies left and right, the remains of the plague spirits falling faster than they could react. The additional help from the Nightmares had made their job easy. They watched the others work from above when they found gaps in the attacks, reassured that Jack wasn’t causing himself further harm, North wasn’t rolling around in his mirth too much to defend himself, and Bunny hadn’t wound up outside of his comfort zone just yet. Pitch seemed at home in the chaos and Sera looked downright calm as she worked her magic, calling forth the earth’s strength. Through the smoke, they could also see the flames Pillan had spurt start to spread outwards into the forest, taking down tall, old trees and causing the jungle life to flee, doing more damage than they could hope to stop. Their group would be completely trapped without Bunny.

Pitch didn’t have near as much trouble with the smoke as the others. He was at home in the darkness it provided. With his Nightmares fighting for him, Pitch focused on gathering as many shadows as he was willing to command. Once he had them at the ready, and North and the rabbit were no longer in the way, he cast a dark series of binds under Pillan that tangled his feet and caused him to stumble to a halt. When the dragon landed on his side, Pitch feared that he’d inadvertently caused Jack to get crushed under Pillan. When he saw a white-haired boy roll out of the dragon’s wing unharmed, knife still in hand, Pitch sighed and continued tying Pillan down with his shadows. He bound the head first. Then the legs and tail. He was working on various points along the back when he felt the dragon truly begin to struggle against his handiwork. He could feel the strain against his shadows as the last set fell into place. The strain began draining him as he focused hard on keeping them taut. He certainly hoped Sera didn’t have much longer to do her work. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold this.

Sera felt the ground start to give before they heard the rumble. The crack started at her feet, driving its way towards Pillan. She opened her eyes, feeling the crack in the earth as though it were forming in her gut. She gasped at the weight of her work, watching the fissure open up and start to swallow the dragon. When he realized what her intentions were, it was not anger that ran across his face. No, it was terror. He was terrified to be trapped in the earth again. Pitch’s binds held him in place though he struggled against his doom. He roared, belting flames in panic, unwilling to sink back into the earth in which he’d been imprisoned for so long. Tears ran from
Sera’s eyes at the sight of that fear, despite the fact that she knew he wasn’t going to survive the entrapment this time.

As the fissure opened wider, Jack stumbled his way to Pitch. He coughed more as he moved, the heat affecting him a lot more than he cared to admit. While the others moved naturally, he felt sweat pouring from his cold body and could hardly breathe. The earth shaking brought him to his knees many times, and he missed the wind and snow more than ever. He made his way to Pitch, who stood protectively over him as the dragon slipped into the crack in the world. Pitch’s shadows dragged Pillan down, and Jack could see Pitch growing weaker from the pull on his abilities. Eventually the only parts of Pillan not in the trench Sera had created were his head and one of his clawed hands. This was about the time Jack witnessed the truly remarkable extent of Mother Nature’s abilities: the fissure in the earth began closing up again.

At this, Bunny opened the portal to his Warren and started ushering people to it. Pitch and Jack moved slowly towards the tunnel, unsteady on their feet and still focused on keeping the dragon in the fissure. Tooth and Sandy dove for their exit, North following shortly after. Bunny beckoned them onward, but Jack couldn’t leave Pitch. The Nightmare King looked so completely drained by the time he was comfortable loosing the binds he’d created for the dragon that Jack had started leading him by the arm, afraid he might fall. Jack stumbled, still trying to hurry Pitch to the exit when Pillan roared and stretched his free hand outward.

To their horror, he managed to grab Sera up in his fist. “If I go, you go with me! You will not leave me alone again, Gaia!” the dragon cried. Jack panicked at the dragon’s words and the sight of Sera struggling in his clawed hand. She opened her mouth to scream, but either the breath was being squeezed out of her or the rumble of the earth drowned out the noise. Meanwhile, the crack was closing and Pillan was sinking ever faster. Jack prepared to run for her, but Pitch caught him by the shoulder.

“Go with the Guardians!” he shouted over the rumbling.

“We can’t—!”

“I’ll save her!” Pitch’s words were barely coherent. The edge and terror in the Nightmare King’s voice and face made Jack even more reluctant to obey.

Despite the heat and sweat and weakness in his body, Jack resolved not to by stifling a cough and squinting at his Boogeyman. “I’m not leaving you!” Before he could say anything else, Pitch pulled him into a tight hug. Jack gasped at the contact, and found himself being consumed with dread. “Pitch, don’t—.”

“I love you, Jack Frost,” were the last words Pitch breathed into his ear as he slipped the knife from the sheath on Jack’s arm.

“Don’t do this, Pitch!” But Pitch had already braced his hands against Jack’s shoulders. “Pitch!” The Nightmare King shoved Jack backwards into Bunny’s open arms, and suddenly he was falling down a grassy tunnel. “NO!” He felt everything inside of him sink like lead as the opening of the tunnel closed and he lost sight of Pitch Black.



Once the tunnel closed, Pitch ran to his daughter. He gripped the knife in his hand as if it were the only thing that could save her. It just might be. Fear brewed inside him as he leapt over the cracks and kept his balance despite the shudders of the earth. His breathing was just as irregular as his heartbeat and everything inside of him felt like it was going to explode if he didn’t get to Sera in time. The distance between him and the giant green fist she was sealed in felt like it kept expanding, and his panic kept rising as he felt like he was getting slower and slower.

When Pitch finally did reach the fist of the dragon, he sank the knife deep into one of its claws, trying his best to force it open. He could almost feel Sera’s breath being forced out of her by the tightness of Pillan’s grip. “Hold on, Sera!” he screamed, digging the knife deeper. He heard Pillan’s bellow as he was being dragged down into the fissure. The clawed hand began sliding with the rest of him as the roars became muffled by the rumbling. Pitch held onto the hand, determined to free Sera or go down trying. The dragon’s end came to pass as he sank, a sudden pop echoing briefly with the rumble as the life was snapped out of the dragon and he breathed his last. The knowledge that they’d accomplished their goal visibly shook Pitch’s daughter. Sera seemed more in pain from the sound of his fate than from the knowledge that she was still trapped in Pillan’s death grip.

However, the grip on her did loosen ever so slightly. He left the knife lodged in the dragon’s digit as he grabbed for Sera’s hands. He was relieved to feel her latching onto him through her tears. His powers were drained from restraining Pillan, but he summoned them all the same to further widen the hand and free Sera. The shadows were weak, but she slipped free anyway, gasping for air and crumpling on top of Pitch as the last of Pillan disappeared into the earth and the crack started sealing itself closed. When Pitch was able to stand, he got on his feet and tried pulling his daughter onto hers. He started glancing around for a way out of the fiery circle they were ensnared in. He breathed shallowly watching the results of his daughter’s work and the dragon’s end. Pillan’s demise had sent nearly all the plague spirits fleeing. All but one.

And that one had sent a spear straight through Pitch’s abdomen.

“DADDY!” Sera screamed as he fell to his knees before collapsing beside his daughter.



Jack landed among the Guardians and immediately started looking for ways to leave the Warren on foot. He was surprised that Bunny hadn’t tried to restrain him with his six (six!) arms.

“I need to go back!” he shouted, pacing frantically.

“That is not good thinking, Jack. Pitch wanted you here,” North told him.

“I don’t care if he wanted me here! I need to go back!” Jack argued. He clutched at his chest as a fit of coughs racked him. “I can’t believe I left him.”

“It’s what he wanted, mate,” Bunny tried to reassure him. But it was hard listening to the steroid (or chocolate, rather)-induced voice of the kangaroo.

“Jack—.”

“What?!” he snapped at Tooth, frustrated.

“Your hoodie,” she whispered. He saw Sandy pointing at it as well, the Sandman’s eyes wide.

Jack looked down at himself, wondering what they were staring at. Before his eyes, the black hoodie began to fade. He grabbed at the cloth, confused by the change. When it started to turn blue again, the realization dawned on him. He yanked up his sleeve, searching for Rin’s mark. His breath hitched and his heart stopped as it, too, began to fade. “No.” He grabbed at his skin, running his nails over the scars of the attack. The scars that had once been gray were now turning pale. “No!” His hoodie was completely blue now, the skin on his forearm the same color as the rest of him. He grabbed his head, searching for Rin and realizing he wasn’t going to find him ever again, realizing that the part of him that had begun to accommodate the Fearling was nothing but an empty space. No, not an empty space. He felt like he had just had an extra layer of skin, a tumor that had been growing on his scalp, removed. He remembered Rin’s words, remembered what he’d said would kill him. Suddenly, Jack heard nothing, felt nothing, saw nothing but the need to run back up the tunnel and find evidence that what was happening couldn’t possibly be true. “NO!”

“Jack!” He hadn’t realized he’d actually started running until he’d hit Bunny’s chest. Jack started hitting him, trying to free himself from the rabbit’s grip, trying any and everything to find his way up to the surface. “Jack, stop—.”

“Please, please, please,” Jack said over and over again as he fought Bunny’s hold. By the time he was too weak to continue fighting, he wasn’t sure what he was begging for. His chest heaved, his throat ached, his heart stilled, and his limbs numbed as he crumpled to the ground, mouthing words that he wasn’t sure he remembered the meaning of. He was barely aware of the tears streaming down and freezing on his cheeks. He was even less aware of the arms that held him close, or the words being whispered into his ear. The only words he seemed to hear were Pitch’s last. When his tongue finally stilled and he couldn’t speak anymore, the heaving turned to sobs and he instead buried his face in the fur on Bunny’s chest, creating fists in the rabbit’s gray coat. The weight of reality crushed him, but he couldn’t say the words. He couldn’t tell the Guardians what he knew. They’d likely already figured it out just from looking at him. But he couldn’t say it. Not when he was sobbing at the very thought of it.



“I’m sorry, Jack,” Bunny uttered as he returned to his normal state, holding the winter spirit in his arms.

He stared up at the other Guardians, who surrounded them both and reached out in an attempt to comfort them. Jack wasn’t the only one devastated by this realization. Bunny knew full well that if Pitch hadn’t been enough to save her from Pillan . . . .

He squeezed his eyes shut and held the broken boy tighter. Warm water flowed between Bunny’s lids, but the tears buried themselves in his fur. Everything inside him came to a grinding halt and suddenly, his body felt like it had become an internal, dry wasteland. The last of the moisture that kept him alive flowed from his eyes. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop thinking of the feeling of his paw running over orchids and one aster, tangled in dark hair.

 “In the darkness with you” 

Sera pulled the spear from her father’s gut, wincing at his lack of reaction. Barely a groan could be heard pass through his lips. Though her own abdomen was sore from having been crushed in Nidhogg’s hand, she bent over and ripped at the edge of her leather tunic. Using her claws, she tore two long, thick strips of cloth from her outfit and did her best to turn them into a tourniquet. She was more relieved than she had any right to be that he actually cried out when she pulled the strip tight around his waist. After she secured the leather, she kneeled down and hoisted him up on his feet. She whimpered through her own pain, draping her father’s arm across her shoulders and buckling under his weight. Using her free hand, she pulled her hatchet free and threw it at the ground. When it embedded in the soil, a den opened up as smoothly as one of Bunny’s tunnels. Her eyes watered as she pulled him into the safety of the air pocket she’d created and laid him on his side in the darkness. When he was safe at the back, she reached outside and pulled the hatchet free, cuing the den’s entrance to close. They were safely sealed away from Nidhogg’s flames, in the dark where Pitch could heal.

“Dad, listen to me,” she muttered, speaking to herself more than to him as she fumbled through her herbs for something that could soothe his pain. “You’re going to live. You’re going to summon your shadows and heal yourself, you got that?” He didn’t respond. There were no more groans and no more sighs. She didn’t know whether or not he was breathing, but she still pulled her herbs out and prepped them. Abandoning the mortar and pestle, she instead elected to shove the leaves into her mouth and chew. She chewed furiously, her fangs cutting into her gums. She hardly noticed. The taste was bitter, but she hardly noticed. When she spat out the mush she’d created, she began applying it to the entry and exit wounds on Pitch’s back and abdomen. Still, no reaction passed through him. She heard nothing. Her heart hammered and she was ready to scream. A line of blood began trickling out of the corner of Pitch’s mouth. “Use your powers! For God’s sake, live!” Sera did scream when her demands elicited no reaction, reaching for the area on his chest where his heart should be. If Jack’s life force was weak, Pitch’s was almost nonexistent. She could scarcely find it. He was so near death’s door that she wasn’t sure she had the energy in her to save him. She didn’t care. He couldn’t summon his shadows to save himself, so she’d do it for him. Pouring every last drop of her powers into healing him, she began coaxing his life force into motion again. The shadows seethed around them as she felt her body being drained. “I don’t care who you live for. I don’t care what you live for,” she breathed as she worked. “Me. Jack. Revenge against the Guardians. The sound of screaming kids after a night of bad dreams, I don’t care! Just. LIVE!”

Sera didn’t know whether or not her magic had been enough. She was so drained, she could only just feel her own pain anymore. She couldn’t hear the rain begin to fall above ground, or the clap of thunder. She couldn’t hear her own heartbeat. She couldn’t hear the shadows, which continued to seethe despite the loss of her contact with her father’s life force. So when she heard a sharp intake of breath, she didn’t know whether it was her drawing her last before passing out from exhaustion or Pitch coming to.



“It’s been storming for three days. The flames have died. There’s no sign of either of them,” Tooth relayed the information her fairies had brought her. While resting up and healing from the final battle, she, North, Bunny, and Sandy had tried catching up on their backlog. Well . . . Bunny really had tried. He spent as much time curled up in his bed of sweet grass as Jack did.

“No sign of plague spirits. The illnesses and disasters they caused have almost completely disappeared or stopped,” North spoke. Jamie’s and Sophie’s mom had recovered beautifully from her illness the day after Pillan’s defeat, and the two children had happily gone back home. They, of course, asked about Jack. The Guardians hadn’t known how to respond, so Sandy simply came up with the answer that he was in recovery.

North and Tooth sat beside one another, holding each other’s hands as they stared at the sleeping forms of Bunny and Jack. Jack hadn’t moved from that spot since Bunny had placed him there. They weren’t even sure Jack had woken up since . . . .

Whether Pitch was truly dead, they didn’t know. They couldn’t know until they returned to the scene themselves, and the storm that was raging over the spot was stalling them.

“Do you think he’ll be able to face it?” Tooth asked.

North shook his head. “I’m not sure. He may just want to be left alone.”

Sandy came up beside them, shaking his head. Using his sand, he told them that the last thing Jack needed was to be left alone. Tooth agreed. “Jack was alone for a long time. He wouldn’t want to be alone now.”

“Either way, we’ll have to wait till the storm settles. We’ll see if he’s willing to return then.” North’s hand tightened around Tooth’s at that. They looked down, tired and still bruised. Sandy had offered them dreamsand, but they’d refused. Despite their exhaustion, it felt wrong to sleep at a time like this.

Somehow, they’d never thought they’d end up mourning their enemy. In a way, they really weren’t. They were mourning the loss for Jack more than anything. And Jack . . . they weren’t quite sure how he and Bunny were doing.



Bunny’s Warren was too bright for Jack, but being in the darkness would only remind him that there was no one there waiting to catch him unawares. He felt stiff and empty. His eyes, face, and throat still stung from his sobs. His body felt heavy. He didn’t want to move at all. He just wanted to go on lying there.

Every now and then his eyes darted to his staff. North had placed it beside him at one point, the crook still in pieces. He didn’t have the will to fix it. He didn’t have the will to do anything.

Bunny had taken to lying beside him. It made sense. This was his bed after all. But he seemed about as listless as Jack. Somehow, Jack had neglected to recall that he wasn’t the only one who’d lost someone important. Though it had only come to their attention hours before the final battle, Jack somehow guessed that Bunny loved Sera.

Though they shared Bunny’s resting area, they never touched. They hardly acknowledged each other’s presence. Jack liked it that way. The emptiness only seemed to spread when someone touched him. When it spread, it hurt. No one truly knew how painful emptiness could be until they were consumed by it in a split second of sadness. Emptiness tended to lurk behind outcroppings of strong emotions. It waited for the explosive outburst, creeping into the cracks of any individual who simply grew catatonic from feeling too much at once. Jack was now the embodiment of emptiness. On some level, he recognized that Bunny was in a similar situation.

Jack saw the poetry in their predicament. Both had loved what some would call the ‘wrong’ people. Bunny had been interested in Jack at one point, Jack knew. His jealousy and bitterness over Jack’s relationship hadn’t simply been rooted in the ongoing combat against fear. Now they were lying together, alone and lost and somber.

For a moment, Jack found his voice again. “Here we are,” he whispered. At first, he thought he’d spoken too quietly. That was fine with him. It wasn’t like he wanted to talk anyway. He already felt the emptiness encroaching on his vocal chords again, reacting negatively to their use. The soreness in Jack’s throat was tolerable at best, but the emptiness made it worse.

“So,” Bunny said, “here we are.” He’d heard Jack. Jack didn’t know whether to feel dread or respite. If he could feel at all, that is. Silence passed between the two of them. Then Bunny spoke again, “If I’d had it my way, this would’ve been a regular occurrence for us.”

Jack didn’t look at Bunny. Though he was right in front of him, he didn’t look at him. His smirk at the comment was just as hollow as the rest of him, but it felt wrong to ignore the statement. It struck him that Bunny sounded just as empty as he did. Without thinking, Jack said, “It wouldn’t have lasted.”

Bunny shared his hollow smirk. Jack looked up long enough to realize that. “You’re probably right.”

The hollowness apparently disrupted Jack’s filter, because he found himself saying, “I couldn’t compare to her.”

Bunny’s eyes and ears twitched at the statement. “I apparently couldn’t compare to him. So I think we’re even.”

“Yeah. Even.” The conversation ended there and they returned to their silent . . . Jack didn’t know if companionship was the right word. These weren’t moments of companionship. The only thing they were silently bonding over was sorrow, so he decided that they had returned to their silent sorrow. That seemed right.



Darkness blanketed them as a storm wailed above ground. She awoke, aching and utterly fatigued from her exertion of power.

“Why?” a voice beside her asked.

She almost didn’t recognize who she was talking to. “Why what?”

“Why did you drain yourself saving me?”

There was a long pause as she assessed their state of being. Both were injured, lying in a dark den she barely remembered producing. She barely remembered anything that had happened before she’d succumbed to her own weariness. It had even occurred to her that neither of them was alive. They were simply floating in a dark space of oblivion, perhaps reliving their final moments. But the pain she felt indicated they were alive. Either that, or she was alive and hearing voices. Even so, she answered, “Because even when I hated you, you never really stopped being my father.”

The storm quieted as they lay recuperating in the dark. The thunder faded when she found his hand and held it. She was reassured when he squeezed her hand, letting her know he was indeed still there and not an apparition.



When the storm stopped, the other Guardians approached Bunny and Jack about returning to the scene of the last battle. Jack lingered longer on his response than Bunny. Jack wasn’t sure he was ready to truly realize the end. But he knew he wouldn’t forgive himself if he stayed behind.

He managed to find it in himself to stand up. His body still felt heavy and yet empty at the same time, but he was alive. That was more than he could say for Sera and . . . .

He picked up the broken pieces of his staff. Everyone took several steps back as he placed the two ends together. He wanted to shout at them that Rin was dead and that he wasn’t coming back just from Jack fixing his crook. But he didn’t. He bit his tongue, and tasted blood as he was reminded of Rin’s betrayal. On some level, he was sad that the Fearling was dead. On another, he was glad to be rid of him. His body was his, and he didn’t have to share it with anyone else. And that brought on more thoughts, memories of days in the darkness. He hadn’t realized just how much the darkness had begun to suit him.

And though he could no longer stand it, he still longed for it.

Jack closed his eyes against the pain that the emptiness threatened to feed on. There was no determination in his mending of the staff, no desperation or true desire. He just placed the pieces together and watched the frost reconnect the ends and mend the broken. He felt his physical strength return at the mending of his tool, but the emptiness only seemed to swarm in on him more.

Actually seeing the battlefield again made his stomach tighten and sour. Part of him was thankful for the feeling. It meant he could still feel. But he also found himself cursing it. He was slightly glad for the gray skies. Brightness would only make him long for total darkness, and total darkness only made him feel more vacant. He found himself freezing the saturated ground just to make sure he still had his frost abilities. The others didn’t leave him alone. There was always someone with him, watching his reactions and making sure he didn’t snap. In his mind, he’d already snapped. All he needed now was confirmation and closure. It felt cold to look at his return that way. But he was Jack Frost. The only good he could do involved the cold.

He spent a lot of time staring at what was left of the rainforest. Burnt corpses of trees lay scattered around the landing strip Pillan had fashioned with his body. The smell of smoke lingered, but the storm that had passed over this section of the woods had almost killed the odor. There was hardly any sign at all that Sera had opened up the earth to swallow a dragon. The only evidence that remained of the battle was the ring of destroyed forest.

But there was no sign of Sera. And no sign of Pitch.

Jack felt a tear attempt to form at the corner of his eye. It froze in place. He blinked, searching for anything to focus on. Anything other than his name. Something had to distract him from the sour pit lying at the bottom of his stomach. Something had to keep him from wrapping his arms around himself and curling up once more.

“It’s like your fairies said: no sign at all,” North conferred with Tooth.

“Where could they have gone?” Jack heard her whisper back. She was trying to be quiet for his sake, he knew. He listened anyway.

“Down with the beast, I guess,” Bunny muttered brokenly. Jack shook his head, closing his eyes against the onslaught of thoughts. It didn’t help when he saw Sandy float over to a spot on the field and pick up what Jack recognized as Sera’s black dagger. It had been half-buried in the ground. The sight made Jack squeeze his eyes shut again as he unbuckled the dagger’s sheath from his upper arm and dropped it on the ground. That was where it belonged: on the ground where its former owners had perished. How apropos. The return had been a lost cause. All Jack had to do was admit what he already knew.

Pitch Black, the Nightmare King, the Boogeyman, was dead.

At least, that was the thought Jack Frost was attempting to accept when something wrapped around his ankles and dragged him down a hole. He screamed shamelessly, rolling down into a dark pit that he hadn’t realized he’d been standing in front of. The others called his name as he crashed against a dirt wall. He gasped, and found panic where nothing had been mere moments ago. He shook, the heaviness in his body suddenly gone. When the four elder Guardians loomed in the light above him, he found himself slightly worried about the situation he’d fallen into. “I’m okay,” he said, more for himself than for them. He looked around at his situation, searching the dark for something familiar.

“I’m coming in,” Bunny said. The rabbit blocked out the light as he entered what Jack determined was a den. How had he not seen it? Could he have been that unfocused? That didn’t make any sense.

He was about to call up to Bunny when a hand touched his shoulder. He froze, his body going completely rigid in response to the contact. His breath hitched as the emptiness fought to retake him, tried to convince him that what he was feeling couldn’t be real. His heart stopped at the feeling of a warm hand sliding from his shoulder over his chest. No, this couldn’t be real. It simply couldn’t be. Though the shadows coiled around him, he still remained frozen. Movement might disturb this mirage, and this certainly had to be a mirage. If it was, he didn’t want to lose it. He didn’t want to be reclaimed by reality.

He hadn’t realized his own hand had betrayed his disbelief and dropped his staff, reaching for the palm on his chest. When his cold fingers ran across the familiar warm ones, he released the breath he had been holding in a short gasp. His hand tightened around the warmth, refusing to let go. The hand he was holding tightened in response. “Jack,” the owner of the hand spoke softly. The sound of his voice made Jack gasp for air again, a smile fighting its way across his lips as tears flowed freely.

And just like that, the hollowness was gone.



“I’ll just leave you two alone,” Sera said, crawling past them to meet the kangaroo. They heard what sounded like two people grappling before she grumbled to the rabbit, “Don’t smother me. I’m bruised, here.” After that, they exited the den.

Pitch grasped Jack’s cold hand, reaching up to cup the boy’s cheek. He felt frozen tears on his Guardian’s face, coupled with a smile that Pitch wished he could see. Still in the recovery process, his night vision wasn’t quite up to par. For now, he just grinned thinking about the winter spirit’s smile. His chest felt like it was about to cave when Jack’s hand covered Pitch’s palm. He thought he’d never feel those hands again, and that notion only made him want to pull Jack closer. His whole body ached, yet all he could think about was getting the boy closer. But they were silent and stayed like that for a long while, content just to hold each other’s hands while drinking in each other’s presence.

“You have no idea,” Jack’s cracked voice finally broke the silence, “how badly I want to punch you right now.”

“Well,” Pitch uttered, “thank you for showing restraint. I’m not sure I could retaliate properly.”

The boy responded with a brief combination of laughter and crying. “When Rin disappeared, I thought you were dead.” Jack sniffled, starting to sound slightly irritated. However, the Nightmare King could also hear the joy overwhelming the winter spirit. “I thought I lost you.”

“You almost did,” Pitch responded. There was a pause before Jack pulled his hand free of Pitch’s. A moment later, Pitch was getting slugged in the shoulder. Though peeved, he was amazed at Jack’s accuracy. “Ow! Excuse me!”

“You’re not excused. You should’ve let me stay with you,” Jack retorted, his voice breaking. Pitch could feel tears freezing in their tracks as they coursed over Jack’s cheeks. The boy moved fast, faster than Pitch was able to follow. One moment Pitch had his hand on Jack’s face and in the next, the boy was carefully leaning over him and kissing him hard on the lips. The part of Pitch that was irked at having been punched dissipated, and he found himself savoring the taste of Jack Frost. He threaded his fingers through Jack’s hair, his other hand on the side of the boy’s neck as they kissed. The tears on Jack’s face made Pitch’s breath hitch and his heart stop. The knowledge of Jack’s pain hurt him, but he had his Guardian now. He wasn’t going to let him go. When Jack pulled back, he whispered, “Don’t make me leave you again.”

“If you insist,” Pitch responded.

“I do insist. You bet your ass I insist.” With that, Jack’s hands clasped the sides of Pitch’s face and they were kissing again. Despite the pain and the ache, Pitch loved it. He loved every minute of having his Jack touching him and holding him and reassuring both of them that this was real. They weren’t imagining it. They were both very much alive.

They didn’t stop until North called into the den, “Everything alright down there?”

Instead of getting annoyed like Pitch, Jack chuckled at the interruption. He called back, “Yeah, I’m fine. He’s still incapacitated, so I’ll be staying here for a while. Meet up with you as soon as I can.”

“I am not incapacitated,” Pitch protested.

“Shut up. Yes you are,” Jack retorted.

“Says you.”

“Damn right, says me.”

“I trust that when you’re powerful enough, you two can teleport out of here?” Sera asked, drawing their attention back to the surface. “I’d very much like to take my hatchet back.”

“Take it,” Pitch responded this time. When she pulled the tool from the den, the orifice closed and left the two alone in the dark.

“Alright,” Jack said, reaching for his mended staff. Pitch heard frost begin to crackle as the boy lined the walls with patterns, the ice glowing slightly and creating enough light as it responded to Jack’s magic. Pitch could see an outline of the boy as he set his staff back down and started to reach for Pitch’s torso. “Where are the wounds?”

“Give me your hands,” Pitch said. Jack did so, and Pitch placed the boy’s palms on the entry wound in his back and the exit wound in his abdomen. “There.”

“You were impaled?!” Jack nearly shouted. Now that the den was closed, his voice echoed slightly and hurt Pitch’s head.

“I suppose I was,” Pitch answered.

“Goddammit, Pitch,” Jack grumbled as he layered Pitch’s wounds in ice. Pitch sighed gratefully at the relief and numbness that followed. He was at peace until Jack fired, “You didn’t even give me the chance to say it back.”

Pitch knew exactly what the boy was talking about in spite of his vagueness. “I already knew how you felt,” Pitch remarked, exasperated.

“I don’t care!” Pitch thought he was about to get punched again, but instead received another kiss. That he wouldn’t complain about. It was tender, not hard at all like before. The gentleness made him groan when Jack pulled back again. That changed when the boy murmured, “I love you.”

There was a moment where Pitch froze, unsure if he’d actually heard. Somehow, it still struck him hard that Jack actually loved him. Jack loved him. He’d said so aloud. Pitch’s grin returned, and he found himself responding with confidence, “I love you too, you fool.” He meant it, too. He’d been so afraid to admit it that he’d refrained from telling Jack until he was certain he might not get the opportunity to do so ever again. How could he not mean it?

“You’d better!” was Jack’s petulant response.

“Shut up and lie down here with me,” Pitch ordered. He wanted to be irritated with the boy, but he couldn’t. He was too busy beaming as Jack slid behind him and wrapped his arms around Pitch’s chest. The coolness of Jack’s body pressing against his back further relaxed the achy Boogeyman.

“How long will it take you to heal?” Jack asked as he settled in around Pitch.

“Maybe a few more days. Definitely no more than a week if I actually get to sleep,” he responded. There was a pause before Jack hmphed. “What are you thinking?”

“That we might be able to get back to the way things used to be.”

“You mean before the attacks?” Pitch felt Jack nod against his neck. “I suppose so. Does this mean I get to kidnap you for another month?”

“Winter is coming. I need to start icing the roads in some countries.”

“The way you phrase that doesn’t seem very Guardian-like.”

“Well, what do you plan on doing, Nightmare King?”

“What I do best, of course.” They both smiled at the idea of normalcy. Well . . . what they had once considered normal, that is.

Of course, things wouldn’t be exactly the same. Not for Pitch, anyway. He never liked change. However, the changes that involved Jack Frost tended to be bearable bordering on pleasant. He was willing to say that he had his daughter back because of Jack. He had many things he hadn’t thought he’d ever achieve thanks to Jack. He sighed, pulling the boy by the arms and forcing him closer. Jack chuckled, his cool breath chilling the back of Pitch’s scalp. The Nightmare King placed a gray hand on one of Jack’s pale ones. The boy returned the gesture, twining his fingers through Pitch’s. Jack whispered, “For once, I get to protect you.”

Pitch’s smile widened. “You do that already.”

Jack snorted. “You think so?”

“I know so.” He pulled Jack’s hand to his lips and kissed it. He repeated a little softer, “I know so.”

And for the first time, Pitch was willing to admit to himself that he was happy. Not just satisfied, not just content. He had someone he both loved and trusted, who loved and trusted him in return. Pitch Black was happy. With a Guardian, no less. Tightening the hold he had on Jack’s hand, he knew he wouldn’t have it any other way.



“Are we actually going to see you again?” Bunny asked Sera. The others had already returned to the Warren, but he didn’t feel right leaving her so quickly.

Sera finished strapping her dagger back in its place before looking up at the gray skies. Then she gazed solemnly at the ruined rainforest. “I have some work to do.”

“Some?” he asked. She pinned him with a gimlet stare before letting her grin show.

“Once everything’s back in order, I’ll try to join the modern world. Good enough answer? You’re not gonna stalk me, are you?”

“Don’t think Pitch is the only one capable of lurking in the shadows.” They both smiled.

They paused as they stared at one another. She said, “I’ll see you around, then, rabbit.” She got ready to walk away, but found herself stopping. Without warning, she turned and threw her arms around his neck. He returned the embrace, careful to avoid the areas on her torso where she was still incredibly sore. As she held him, she whispered, “I still hate you.”

“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t,” he murmured back. When she pulled away and started walking away, he watched her. His grin widened as he did so.

His aster was showing in her hair, now. And the first butterfly he’d seen in the jungle had landed on her shoulder.

 King and Lionheart 

“Pitch, really?”

“He started it.” Jack groaned, realizing he wasn’t going to win this argument with the Nightmare King. “Your first believer decided that the best way to reassure my continued absence in the dreams of children was to tell everyone all they had to do was believe in Jack Frost. So naturally, I decided that those who still didn’t believe in you weren’t safe from my Nightmares.”

“I am not telling Jamie about this. I sure as hell am not telling the other Guardians,” Jack said, pointing at the Boogeyman. The Nightmare King smirked from the shadows of his lair triumphantly. “Wipe that grin off your face.”

“At least I haven’t sent that darling sister of his any bad dreams. North should refrain from gifting her with snow globes. She has no concept of self-preservation.”

Jack snorted at that. It had been a few months since Pillan’s defeat, and things had actually started to seem normal again. Well, almost. Mother Nature had started visiting every now and then. Jack had watched her skin color change from a variety of greens to a series of yellows, reds, and browns during autumn. When winter finally rolled around, her true skin tone appeared: a fair white that was just a shade livelier than Jack’s pallor. Watching Mother Nature was as beautiful as watching the seasons, and the only person who watched her more had to be the kangaroo. She spent more time with Bunny, Jack was sure, but was slowly becoming reacquainted with her father’s home.

Another not-so-normal occurrence began shortly after Jamie and Sophie returned to school. Sophie had decided she was going to torment Pitch about as much as she teased Bunny. It had been disturbing for Pitch to find the blonde child wandering his corridors. Meanwhile, it had been hilarious to Jack. When Pitch threatened to send her a Nightmare, neither Sophie nor Jack seemed to believe him. After a while, it seemed the Nightmare King had secretly grown fond of the girl, and the girl was starting to like the ‘power’ she had over the Boogeyman. Having a believer did Pitch some good.

But Jack wasn’t quite sure how to take Pitch’s new hobby.

“I actually like his reasoning. Scare them into believing. Some of them are actually smart enough to fear something, which surprises me,” Sera stepped up. She now had a group of butterflies flitting about her head, landing on her hair or shoulders every so often. Jack hadn’t quite gotten used to that, just as Pitch was still getting used to seeing Bunny’s aster behind his daughter’s ear.

“Don’t encourage him,” Jack said, pointing at her this time. She held up her hands in mock surrender.

“Admit it: the idea of rescuing new believers from the tendrils of the Boogeyman appeals to you.” Pitch looked entirely too pleased with himself for Jack to condone his behavior, but Jack was done arguing over the subject. Pitch was going to do what he wanted and so was Jack. And so far, Pitch hadn’t caused enough trouble with his Nightmares to warrant Guardian interference. Therefore, there was technically nothing to worry about.

“As entertaining as you two are, I’ve got somewhere to be,” Sera interrupted. “A blizzard is calling my name in Connecticut. You should join me when you get the chance, baby Guardian.” With that, she tapped her foot twice and a tunnel opened up.

Jack thought it was cool that one of the perks she’d received upon entering a relationship with the kangaroo was unlimited access to his tunnel system. Pitch, however, looked terribly annoyed every time she used it in front of him. That didn’t seem to stop her. In fact, it just might encourage her to do it. While most of their problems were resolved, she still antagonized her father in small ways. To save her from Pitch’s intense scowls, Jack asked, “Still haven’t started flying again?”

“I’ll pick it up when I’m ready. After all, it’s been hundreds of years. Wouldn’t want to start off glued to trees or tripping into villages like someone else we know.”

“Okay, who told you that?” Jack asked as she jumped down into the tunnel laughing. His gaze switched from where Sera had once been to Pitch, who had stopped scowling and started smiling like he knew something Jack didn’t. “What is with you guys? Is it my turn to be the butt of the jokes? And seriously! How do you know that?”

“Careful research.”

“You mean stalking.”

“Such rude terminology, yet it means exactly the same thing.”

“No, it really doesn’t.”

“Aww, the Guardian of Fun is no fun at all.” Pitch’s final jest only made Jack growl and turn his back on the Boogeyman. He sat on the edge of the stone bridge they were standing on, looking across the lair. He folded his arms, feeling very put out by Pitch’s antics. He knew the Nightmare King couldn’t help what his center was. He lived on fear, after all. He knew that Pitch was actually doing well staying under the Guardians’ radar. His strategy wasn’t as bad as Jack made it out to be, but it bothered him anyway. Despite all that, he sighed and relaxed as soon as Pitch came to rest his head on top of Jack’s. The youngest Guardian leaned back into the Nightmare King’s chest, letting his warmth soak into him. They truly sucked at being mad at each other. After a few moments of silence, Pitch took on a more serious tone and whispered, “I want to give you something.”

“What’s that?” Jack asked skeptically.

The Nightmare King’s jaw moved awkwardly as he continued resting his chin on Jack’s head and speaking at the same time. “It’s actually less of a gift and more of a symbol of my trust. To other immortals, it would be a sign that you’re under my protection.”

“You’re sure you want to give it to me, then? You really don’t have to—.”

“I am absolutely sure.”

Pitch’s assurance forced another sigh out of Jack Frost. After a moment of consideration, he answered, “Then I accept.” Pitch’s warmth left him momentarily as the Boogeyman readied the gift. Jack briefly questioned his decision, but was soon distracted by the feeling of something sliding around his neck. When he felt Pitch clasp the thing into place, he looked down and picked up the necklace now resting around his neck and on his chest. It was a locket, and it was about the size of his palm. Curiosity plucked at him, and he went to open it. He coaxed it open and found a hand drawn portrait inside. It took him mere seconds to recognize the face of the girl staring back at him. He looked up at Pitch. “Seraphina?”

The Nightmare King nodded. “I know you’ll keep it safe.”

Jack smiled, looking back at the locket before closing it. He let it rest on his chest, tempted to tuck it into his sweater for added security. For now, though, he kept it out. “Thank you.”

Jack stood up on the ledge, which gave him some height advantage over Pitch. Turning to face his Boogeyman, he pulled Pitch to him and hugged his neck. Pitch smiled, wrapping his arms around Jack’s waist and resting his head on Jack’s chest. The Guardian held him there, letting Pitch’s warmth flood him once more. He smiled into Pitch’s hair, wishing he had something of his own he could give his Boogeyman. Somehow he knew what Pitch would tell him if he voiced his wish.

He already had Jack Frost. All of Jack Frost. What more did he need?



Pitch pulled back just enough to lean his head back and kiss his Jack. He was suddenly, uncharacteristically thrown back to the way in which their relationship had begun: the Nightmare King’s lips on Jack Frost’s, saving the boy from a bleak end. Ever since he’d saved Jack, he’d had to get used to the additional chill in his lair. Along with a great many other things.

Pitch found the cold pleasant. It was cool in his shadows, so he felt at home with the winter spirit by his side. Jack had been hard-pressed to leave Pitch’s side when winter returned. Eventually, he’d become retaken with his duties as the Guardian of Fun. Sometimes Pitch tasted the boy’s fear of losing the Boogeyman. Jack’s fear still tended to make him ill.

However, he had all but ceased to sense fear in the boy whenever Pitch touched the Guardian’s wrists. It helped to know that he’d finally broken Jack’s phobia. It made things easier when he wanted to cajole Jack into his bed. Not that he needed much cajoling. Pitch smiled against Jack’s lips. Getting the boy in his bed definitely sounded like a good idea at the moment.

“I love you.” Pitch’s heart sputtered to a halt as the words left his lips involuntarily. He ceased to breathe until he opened his eyes and noticed Jack was looking down at him.

The smile on Jack’s face was enough to make him relax and breathe again. “I love you too,” the Guardian whispered back seconds after.

They didn’t say it often. It was more commonplace for them to tell each other to shut up. But even if they did start saying they loved each other more often, Pitch didn’t think his heart would ever stop leaping each time Jack said he loved him back.

Jack Frost had given Pitch Black many things in the past year. The Nightmare King could only wonder what Jack would do with an eternity by his side.

 

 The End 

Notes:

Events on the horizon: I will be posting the first bit of the coffee shop AU soon along with the first request. Some requests have been combined mainly because . . . Alex's brain . . . did a thing.

You'll see. :)

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Why is Tea Always Gone