Timepiece

A/N: After so many requests for me to add a second resurrection chapter, how could I deny you all?

Many, many thanks for all of your wonderful feedback, and I do hope you enjoy this chapter. All reviews are greatly appreciated :D

The fundamentals for this chapter were inspired by some Sandman art on DeviantART by the fantastic Ski-Machine! Be sure to check out her RoTG art.

Rise of the Guardians (c) William Joyce & DreamWorks SKG

Cold.

It was cold.

It was all he knew—all he cared to know. Icy and dark and dismal and so, so very cold. With open eyes he was utterly blind—surroundings that were blacker than black, a night sky without stars pressing fiercely against his eyeballs.

And it was still so very cold.

—Don't fight—

What was he, anyway?

He did not know. He had never known. Was he a part of the darkness, a shadow of twilight, a Nightmare? Had he ever been anything at all?

—Knock him out—You said it, Sa—

The bitter cold cut at him, inside and out, holding him down with invisible chains of frigid iron. Laughter would echo between his ears on occasion, thick and throaty, and chills would rack his body more brutally than before.

Consciousness came slowly, piece by piece, though all that he could think was cold (and darkness and black and so much fear, a terror of the unknown and the invisible, nightmares of the blind and deaf). Did freedom ever exist? What did it feel like?

Different, unearthly voices would fill his head, some pleading with him or simply speaking, others conjuring the image of a smile or the warmth of an embrace. Senses quickly followed, and that was how the manacles came to be. He was a prisoner, he knew, but where and of whom he did not know yet again.

Yet if he could remember his name—

—Right on time—We gotta help Sa—fight the fear, little man—

He was certain that this prison would lose its hold on him. It had to, he assured himself amidst the pain. If his very existence was being kept from him by the cold and the dark and the chains then he would free himself. Somehow.

Something within him not ravaged by the darkness and constricting prison (his soul, his very being, his dreams) knew that he could not surrender, even if the endless black called him like a lost pet to its master with its siren song, offering infinite rest and liberation from the cold. It was not the freedom he pursued however, and he fought against his prison, no matter how futile.

—How long—Fear will triumph over—How long can you be—I will always be there—Sweet dreams-

He lost track of time, if he ever had any, in the abyss that was his jail. The voices came back in waves, stronger each time, more familiar, but there were no faces, no flick of the switch that returned his memories and livelihood to him. The fear was still so very powerful, and every now and then he would feel himself give in the blackness that was somehow deeper and darker and colder than his own. There would be no respite provided there, he now knew.

—You do not get enough rest, my friend—Ya dill, are ya' plannin' on dying by lack a' sleep? Ironic considering who you are, but—Before you go, did you remember to floss?—I haven't slept in a while either, you're not alone, buddy—

But how long could he resist? For how much time had he been imprisoned—the beings connected to those soothing voices could be dead and dust now for all he knew. And he knew very little.

He felt the darkness surge forward, painfully, bitterly close, and some part of him sensed that his captor had grown in strength. His window for escape was swiftly closing, but he did not know what to do. The snippets of voices would not provide him with a name, his or otherwise, and without it freedom was impossible.

He struggled and tore at his unseen shackles, anguish and desperation at their peak. He could not escape unaided, the voices, the voices had not helped him, not really—there were still no names, no faces to benefit him. The voices were a rare comfort, yes, but nothing more. Rarer now than before, for he had not heard them for some time.

Perhaps it was all imagination. A figment, to keep him from the dark. One that was failing him now. It made sense, on some degree, that the voices that kept the cold at bay would be false, a creation of fear and false hope. Would he ever taste freedom, or would the darkness swallow him whole—

And just then, the voices returned, blocking out doubt and fear and cold and even the black.

—We gotta help Sandy—Don't fight the fear, little man—How can you be believed in forever, Sandman?—Sandy, why didn't you say something?—

Sandman.

He was the Sandman.

He had a name.

And the darkness was nothing to him now.

All at once his shackles fell apart, nothing more than sand, and the black around him turned to brilliant golden light. The cold morphed into warmth like the one the voices had filled him with. He was needed by his friends (North, Bunnymund, Tooth, Jack, the children) and Sandman obliged them, sending the golden warmth from within his cell to bolster them. He was not yet free—the darkness no longer threatened him, not now at least, but in order to obtain complete freedom he would require more, just barely more—he would need something so pitifully small yet enormously powerful—he needed—

"I do believe in you. I'm just not afraid of you."

And that was it.

His prison melts around him, and he can smell the chilled fresh air that hits him in a rush through his surging Dreamsand cocoon. He senses the presence of the children who brought him back and feels a smile on his forming lips. He is coalescing from his Dreamsand, and can wiggle his fingers and feel his toes and there are no shackles to bind him. He does not allow himself to see darkness, and as soon as his eyes are created he leaves them open to watch the swirling gold that is recreating him.

And he remembers—remembers Jack's distress, the Guardians' battle, the Nightmares that never ended, and he remembers the arrow, and the pain and cold and his failure and Pitch is laughing at him—

Soon his body is complete, though he did manage to grab his foe and dump him in the snow before this, preventing him from harming anyone else (he will never hurt any of his family or his children again, of that Sandman is certain).

He floats out of his cloud of Dreamsand, skin glittering gold once again, and confidence surges through him as the wonderfully astonished gazes of the children and Guardians land upon him. Pitch looks up at him with horror.

He will forgive the Nightmare King eventually—

He is the Sandman.

But he will never forget the cold and the darkness that tempted him so.

And he isn't going anywhere.