Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Rise of the Guardians
Title: In Due Time: Chapter 5: Exactly As Planned
Characters: Pitch, Jack, Guardians
Word Count: chapter: 3,220||story: 16,425
Genre: Drama||Rated: PG-13
Notes: This is mainly movie-verse, but with some elements from the book-verse.
Summary: [WIP, Pitch, Jack, Guardians] Pitch knows he would've won if he'd had Jack on his side. If there had been no Guardians to fight him. So he's going to make certain that those things are what happens. The laws of time do not allow change. But Pitch is the Nightmare King, and he makes his own laws.

Jack held onto all of his memories as hard as he could. He refused to give them up for whatever would happen when they arrived back in normal time. No, would it even be normal time? It couldn't be, not with everything that had already happened. Or not happened. Or changed.

He figured out one fact very quickly: he hated time travel.

"Here we are." Pitch's voice echoed uncomfortably close to his ear and he pulled himself away the second that he could, cracking one eye open to look around. There was the clock and the room, each the same as they'd always been. Pitch stood close still, watching Jack with hints of anticipation glimmering in his sunset eyes.

Jack's gaze flickered here and there, tense, nervous, expecting any moment for something to change, for the effects of all those efforts to come crashing in on him. Wasn't he going to remember three centuries of whatever Pitch had decided to do with him all those years ago? Consider Pitch the only person worth listening to? The only person worth obeying?

It turned his stomach to think about it, and it didn't stop turning, and slowly, ever so slowly, Jack began to smile.

Pitch began to open his mouth, but Jack shook hs head, grinning ever more widely. "Whatever you did, it's not working. I remember everything the way it really happened."

"What do you-" Pitch took a step toward Jack, and Jack darted away, light as a snowflake on the breeze, laughing.

"It didn't work, Pitch! The Guardians stopped you!" Jack kept out of reach of Pitch's grabbing hands, laughing with every word. "You lost!"

"I haven't lost!" Pitch snarled, shadows and sand rising to swirl all around him. "They can't stop me, because they don't exist anymore! All we need is time. Then you'll remember our life together!"

Jack grinned, perching just a few feet away, ready to dart along at a moment's notice. "If that's true, then why don't you remember yet? Shouldn't you know all of this already? Shouldn't you remember what 'really happened'?" Jack made scare quotes with his fingers at that.

Pitch flowed into the darkness and rose up next to Jack, fury in every line of his form. "How dare you? You are not to deny me!"

"I always have and I always will!" Jack started to zip away, but the shadows circled around him without warning, keeping him penned in. He didn't back down. He didn't have a reason to. Nothing Pitch did could scare him now.

"Apparently you being a rebellious, obnoxious child cannot be changed so easily," Pitch growled, circling Jack in physical form and in shadows both. Jack ducked away; he wasn't afraid, but he hated Pitch doing this anyway. "But there are other ways to deal with the last Guardian." Pitch had teeth. Lots of teeth, and the way he smiled at Jack showed every last one of them. "I have those cages still. I could lock you up in one of them forever while I get about with the business of ruling the world. Would you like that, Jack? To never again see the sun or the sky, to never make snow days or blizzards? To know that the world lies in the palm of my hand and you can't do anything about it?"

Jack stumbled at that, breathing in harshly. He wasn't afraid of Pitch. He never had been. But Pitch's own words rang in his mind from their first encounter in his lair.

You are afraid of something.

He'd never thought about not having his freedom to go when and where he pleased, and to think about it being taken away made him shake down to his very core. He'd never survive that. He needed the outdoors; just being inside North's workshop for more than a couple of hours made him itch to get into the fresh air.

The edge of Pitch's robe brushed far too near him, and Jack took off again, scampering at full speed, or as much as he could manage without his staff. He didn't say anything; he didn't have the breath to. All he wanted to do now was get out of here and see the stars again, to feel the kiss of the wind and the delicious aroma of pine.

Pitch's laugh echoed from all around the room and he couldn't find a door; perhaps there wasn't one, he hadn't seen one in his other trips around this place, and he needed air!

What he got was a sudden thump into something or someone far taller than he was, covered in fur that carried the sharp scent of paint, and which chuckled in a low, familiar voice.

"Hey there, mate."

Bunny.

Alive.

Jack wasn't often at a loss for words. But as he stared into those familiar, and very amused, green eyes, his throat closed up and he did the only thing he could: slammed his fists against the other's shoulders.

"Where have you been?" He would get answers later, no matter how much the ache for them burned in him now. But if Bunny was there, then that meant he could get out of here. And that meant that Pitch had not won, could not win, would not win.

"Tell you all about it once we're back at the Pole." Bunny patted him on the shoulder and looked to where Pitch stood only a short distance away, fury glistening in his sunset eyes. "Coulda told you this wasn't gonna work, Pitch."

Pitch's fists clenched, the sand swirling more around him, the shadows thickening. "How? How are you alive?"

"Not just me, mate." Bunny jerked his head, and Jack followed where his eyes led, and out of a swirling portal that twisted the air into a multi-colored spiral of wonder there came three other very familiar figures, each one waving at Jack and giving Pitch looks that clearly spelled out his forthcoming defeat. "I brought some friends."

"I don't think I care how. I think you're all finished anyway!" Pitch's scythe gleamed in his hands and he swung toward Jack, the only one unarmed. Jack didn't wait around to get hit, having already seen the movement. He needed his staff, but even without it, he was light enough on his feet to dodge the blow, feeling the wind of the strike ruffle his hair.

"It's not fair to hit someone who can't hit back!" Tooth spun past Pitch at high speed and as she passed Jack, something long and slim clattered to the ground next to him. He barely had time to register she'd knocked Pitch back before it dawned on him what she'd dropped.

His fingers folded about his staff and he rose to his feet, frost glimmering at his fingertips, unable and unwilling to stop the grin that lit up his face.

"I think Jack should handle this one, guys," Tooth said, buzzing backwards to hover over the others. North and Sandy exchanged a quick look, then both nodded, as Jack turned toward the man who'd kidnapped him and threatened to unmake everything he was for his own sick enjoyment.

"Thanks." Jack swung the staff, ice shards shooting out that Pitch dodged only by the skin of his teeth. The Spirit of Winter leaped forward, pressing his advantage, slashing at Pitch with everything that he had. He didn't know how long he'd been here, but he had a lot of repressed anger to get out, and he couldn't see any reason to hold back.

"Now, really, Jack, you know that you can't get rid of me forever!" Pitch sank into the shadows, his voice coming from all around. Jack looked this way and that, trying to find some place he could target. "We've done this once before, haven't we? And I always come back."

"Maybe so but I'm going to feel a lot better after this." Jack took careful step after careful step. "You can't make me work for you, Pitch. No matter what you try. I'm always going to say no to you."

"You can think that all that you like, but there will come a time when it changes. Dark and cold are meant for one another far more than anything else." Pitch drew himself together in one corner of the room and Jack started over there. "We have forever for you to figure this out, Jack. And I'll be there when you do."

Jack's only answer was a blast of arctic cold that by all rights should've frozen Pitch where he stood. Only the fact the Nightmare King slipped through the shadows kept him safe. Everything fell silent in the wake of his departure, the sound of Jack's heavy breathing the only noise in the room.

Finally, Bunny came to rest a paw on Jack's shoulder. "He's gone."

Jack nodded, turning to the others, trying to deny the tears of relief that pricked at his eyes as he took them all in. He'd been too busy before to really comprehend it all, but there they wore, one and all, safe as could be. "You're all right."

"We weren't in any danger," Bunny said, while Sandy produced a myriad of sand shapes that Jack was far too tired to try and understand at the moment. "We can explain all of it back at the Pole, though. And after you get some rest."

Jack would normally take up the chance to argue with Bunny just for the sheer pleasure of it. Right now, however, he only had one reaction that he felt fit the moment: he gave each and every Guardian the largest, strongest, hardest hug that he could manage. If this was a dream of any kind, he never, ever wanted to wake up from it.

"All right. Spill it." Jack perched on the back of one of North's chairs and stared at the other four. He'd barely let himself sleep the night before, for fear that all of this would be some twisted dream of Pitch's. If Sandy hadn't slipped in there, he might well have never closed his eyes all night.

But here they were, just as they always had been, and he wanted to know what in the name of everything had happened.

Bunny glanced from him to the others, then shrugged. "Like I told Pitch, we could've told him it wasn't going to work. You can't change the past. No one can."

Jack's eyes didn't lift off the other. Frozen fury glinted in the back of his expression, just waiting for the chance to unleash it. "What did you say?"

"Nothing Pitch would've done would've changed anything, Jack. None of us were ever in any danger." Tooth fluttered above him, taking the time away from ordering her minature selves out for a few seconds.

Small trickles of ice formed under Jack's fingers, but he kept himself under control. For now, anyway. "Think you could give a better explanation than that?"

"It's not that difficult. Changing the past isn't allowed. The thing is, Pitch trying to change the past was part of the past." Bunny's ears twitched a fraction. "If we didn't know that he was going to try already, we wouldn't have let any of that happen. But we knew that it would."

Silence fell in between them for a few momnets while Jack worked through this. Thinking about what he'd heard before Pitch's attack, he realized that made somewhat more sense now.

"You knew all along he was going to kidnap me and take that clock." He wanted to get that cleared up as soon as he could.

Four sets of eyes exchanged worried looks before North spoke. "We also knew that you would not be harmed. That you would make it through in one piece." A small smile touched his lips. "And that you would help to put me where I needed to be."

Jack's grip on his staff tightened a little. "What?"

"When you moved me from that forest to the village...the Cossacks in the area would've missed me in the wodos. But in the village, I became the only survivor, and they chose to take me in." North shrugged. "And I became who I am."

"Pitch doesn't know as much as about us as he thinks he does," Tooth added, waving to herself. "My parents realized something had happened to my father, and they were able to fix it shortly after they were married."

Above Sandy's head, images that Jack recognized after a few moments of concentration as being what he'd seen during one of those time traps sprang into existence. Sand Pitch appeared, with Sand Jack next to him, and Sand Pitch threw something at Sandy's long ago ship. The ship flew hard, missing another planet by the barest breadth, and circled around, landing hard on Earth's other side.

"So what about me? And you?" Jack's hand flicked between himself and Bunny. "What made that right?"

Bunny grinned, fingering the edge of one of his boomerangs. "That's something that we fixed. As soon as you're ready to go."

"Say what?" Jack wanted to get a solid, unchangeable, completely truthful answer for once in his life. "Can't you just spit it out?"

There was a deep sigh from Bunny. "If I tried to explain it to you, you wouldn't understand it just yet. Better if you see it for yourself. It won't take long."

Jack never quite figured out how he kept himself from icing Bunny to the floor. Perhaps it was just the lure of knowing he'd get an answer if he didn't. But he sprang to his feet and glared at his fellow Guardian. "This had better make sense."

"As much sense as anything to do with time travel ever does." Bunny shrugged and led him over to where the clock rested, guarded by two yeti.

They stood once again on the Pooka homeworld, with the Nightmare King's ship unleashing all the hell that it did above them. Jack kept himself hunched and tensed, wrapped around his staff, watching everywhere he could. They weren't far from where he and Pitch had stood earlier, though he couldn't be certain of just which direction the 'other' him was.

"This is what you need to know, Jack," Bunny told him, murmuring into his ear. "History can't be changed. Got that so far?" Jack nodded, and the Pooka continued. "So what Pitch did was something he was always going to do, and you were always going to be there with him watching it. That's why we couldn't tell you anything. You would've tried to change it."

Jack's grip on his staff tightened further, his lips thinning, even as he knew Bunny was right. There wasn't any way he would've just let Pitch attempt to kill Bunny, even if he knew that Bunny would make it through all right. He just couldn't have.

He started to ask something else, but the words fled when he saw Bunny with his eyes closed, focusing on something else. He might've tried again, but in the next moment, Bunny's fur shifted darker, and he grew a couple of inches taller, with broader shoulders and a deeper chest.

"What in the-"

Bunny waved him to silence. "Wait and see."

Jack was far better at waiting than most people might've expected. It helped that he didn't have to wait long, as Bunny moved out of the thicket they'd hidden in and toward a group of Pooka a short distance away. It took a moment for Jack to recognize the scene, since he was seeing it now from the other side. One of the Pooka lay on his back, wounds that could only have been inflicted by a scythe bleeding into the ground. Jack caught sight of white hair on the far side, just before the other him was pulled away by Pitch.

This is...what I saw! The Pooka who charged out to tend the injured Bunny... was Bunny! Changed just enough so that he wouldn't be recognized, either by the other Pookas or Pitch or Jack himself.

That was what he'd meant, Jack realized now, all the pieces falling into place. Bunny had saved himself, with Jack there. Jack watched as the changed Bunny administered first aid, along with a few pieces of candy that seemed to ease the other Bunny's pain.

"Take him where he can rest for now," Bunny told the others. "This fight's going to go on for a long time."

Jack could hear pain in Bunny's voice, and bit his lip. He's the last Pooka. But he was here, saving himself, not all the rest of them. It twisted something deep within. Bunny might've been able to save them all, or at least more of them. And because he knew that he hadn't, he didn't.

Time travel sucks.

Even knowing Pitch, of that era, wasn't anywhere around there didn't help Jack feel any better as he leaped down the hole that led to the fear master's lair. Only knowing that he needed to do this, that he'd presumably done it before, or always would do it, or something kept him going. It didn't take long for him to find himself; he could always find the cold, no matter where it was.

His younger self lay there, still caught up in nightmares, staff just out of reach, features twitching. Jack watched only for a few moments before bending to pick himself up.

Man, if I could tell you... He knew so much that he would like to have said, but Bunny had made it clear: he couldn't change anything. It wasn't allowed. It wasn't even possible. If he tried, then he would be stopped. He hadn't even remembered being in the lair this far back, which meant he'd wake up somewhere else, and not even know this had happened, until it did.

With the help of the wind he swept up out of the lair, one Jack and two staffs in his hand, and headed to a comfortable place he remembered waking up in several times in the past. He grinned to himself; if this was the wrong place, someone would stop him, wouldn't they?

Soon enough he had his younger self tucked neatly away with his staff behind him. Bunny stood a short distance away, resting on a rock, so as not to give away that a large rabbit-shaped being had been in the arae.

"Understand now?" he asked, his voice pitched low. "Time travel's not easy. Can't change anything. All you can do is watch."

Jack nodded; he didn't like it, but he understood, regardless. He still wasn't entirely happy that they hadn't given some hint, of course, and he doubted that he ever would be.

But what Bunny said caught at him, and he turned his attention to where he knew the village rested in the snowy woods. "Bunny," he said quietly, "if all we can do is watch...is there someone I can watch? Just for a little while." He knew he didn't dare stay long; his old self would wake up eventually and meeting in person would not be a good idea.

"All right. Where and who? And when?"

Jack smiled. It was a thin and weak smile, but one all the same. "Over there, right now, and ...my sister."

The End

Notes: My first Rise of the Guardians fic. I feel kinda proud of it. There will be more in the future, of the genfic and shippy variety (I'm a Jack x Pitch & Jack x Bunny 'shipper, in case you are wondering). I hope you all enjoyed this. The basic book concept I used is that if you try to change history, Bunnymund pops up to tell you you're being naughty and won't let you. So I wondered, what if the attempt to change history was a part of history itself? And thus this little story was born.