Okay. Here it is. Everything I have wanted to say to you is in the end. Thanks for the ride, guys. See you in the next one.
North stared at the place where several blips had been once before. An entire section of Turkey had suddenly lost belief in the last few days. He squinted at the area on the globe and then watched another one drop off. He gasped and dropped the mug of milk in his hand, missing the small red capped elf that stole a cookie off the plate in his hand.
"Bunny! Sandy! Tooth!" The large grey rabbit hopped out of the corridor to the left and his ears twitched with curiosity.
"What's going on, North?" he wondered with concern.
"Several children just stopped believing in Turkey!"
"They stopped believing in a crazy bird?"
"No! The country! Look! Where lights were before no longer are there!" North punched the air in the direction of the globe where the lights had once been. Bunny's emerald eyes widened with understand. "I say it's family. Pitch has taken over a parent or two and now kids hopeless."
"Sounds like hope is a job for the Easter Bunny mate!" he said with pride, ripping out his boomerangs and swinging them. The plump golden man sped out of the other corner, waving his hands desperately. Above his head were the images of Jack, Morgan, a heart, a house, and an alarm clock ringing obnoxiously. Jack and Morgan were going to be back from their honeymoon any minute.
"Perfect timing!" North laughed, large belly rumbling with his enthusiasm. "Prepare the sleigh! We ride when they get home!"
"Wait! Wait! No, we can't!" called the frantic female voice of the fairy flying in from the doors to the shop above them. In her arms she carried a large bundle of cloth, Baby Tooth buzzing around it with concern. "No, not yet! I need to show them something!"
"Tooth? What is big deal?" North asked impatiently.
"Please, they're-" Tooth caught sight out the window of a couple, holding onto each other, swirling on the wind in the direction towards them. She gasped frightfully and then spun away, wings buzzing with her speed of flight. "I need to go speak to them!" She sailed off, leaving the other Guardians dumbfounded and dangerously in need to discover what she was going on about. North gestured to Bunny who swiftly made a tunnel all three of them dropped down into.
The emerald, aquamarine, and blue feathered fairy hovered on the doorstep clutching the wad cloth to her chest. Morgan pointed ahead at the greeting they were to received and Jack sped up, dragging her along behind him. As they reached the doorstep, a depression formed in the ground near the house and it opened up. Out of the darkened hole appeared the large, rotund Santa, and with him the warrior rabbit and the golden man of dreams. When all three had jumped out of, the whole closed up on the ground behind them.
"You guys didn't need to give us greeting party," Jack chuckled, but it was obvious he was a little touched by their waiting for him. He squeezed Morgan's hand.
"Have you lots of fun?" North wanted to know, and Morgan's only response was a blush. Bunny rolled his eyes when he noticed to color on his cheeks.
"Actually we did, thank you for asking," Jack said as innocently as possible. The lump of cloth in Tooth's hands shifted and she looked down at it worriedly. "What is that?"
"Well, it's..." she stuttered. "Something I thought... considering neither one of you... and Jack you said you would love... well, maybe you... a baby." She held out the bundle for them to see, moving aside the cloth a little more so they could look at the child's face. It whined and made a coughing sound before it rolled back to face Toothiana again. Morgan swallowed and pressed her hand to her heart.
"Why do you have a baby, Tooth?" Bunny wondered with concern thickening his voice. She rolled her fuchsia eyes.
"It... needs a home," she whispered, tracing her fingers down its round face. "I was doing my rounds and I saw it. Abandoned. A hopeless mother left it out in the cold and no one bothered to take a look and make sure it wasn't just a pile of clothes. I have no doubt the hopeless mother is one of Pitch's latest victims, but this child..."
"It can't be more than two days old," Morgan said.
"It's near hypothermia temperatures... I couldn't just... so I just..." she stammered, trying to put together a coherent sentence. "And on my way here I realized... no one probably knows this child's existence. There was no name or anything and it was just left there... to die."
"That's a little more than hopeless," Bunny scoffed with disgust. "Not even Pitch could create a person so horrible."
"I think he helped feed the motivation though. It's fear that drives mothers like that to do such... do something so terrible... On my way here I thought... this child. We can nurse it back to health, make it okay again, but then I remembered. Morgan, you had hypothermia. And after that you just seemed to be so... used to the cold."
"I still freeze but yeah, I'm a little more accustomed to it now," Morgan corrected, but did nod to her statement.
"No one knows who she is, where she came from, she has no name, she's two years old, with hypothermia, but it isn't bad yet. Once it's passed, Jack... you could touch her. You're a newly married couple, I'm sure, despite how much you love each other, it can get pretty lonely..."
"Tooth... what are you..." North carefully said, but his cheeks and nose were as red as his eyes were wide. His smile grew when he noticed the direction she was headed with her argument.
"She has no parents, and you can't have kids. Jack, more than anything you wanted... a family. Of your own." Tooth held out the child. Morgan's hands trembled as her fingers curled over the folds of cloth that encapsulated the newborn. She kept her close to her chest, rocking her soothingly. Jack peered over at her face. The child was sniffling and crying quietly. It's face was white from the cold, bruising around her lips from the effects of the cold. Slivers of blue eyes through her tired, fallen lids and chubby face, rounded with practically a ball for her chin. The child looked so distressed and tired, and too weak to make a big deal about it, but still managed a whimper and a weary cry.
"Thank you," Jack said quickly, spinning the Tooth Fairy into a grateful embrace. His nails dug into her back, the emotion of the situation taking control of him. "So much. Thank you." He turned back to stare on the baby, an infectious grin breaking in his face. "She's perfect."
"Opa!" North cheered. "You two, you are parents! Well, Morgan, you are mother again." She laughed. "Jack, you will make good dad."
"But what will we call her?" Morgan wondered, keeping her close to her body to formulate body heat and fight back the effects of the cold sickness.
"Wendy," Jack instantly, and the others all looked at him with bewilderment, but Morgan exchanged a knowingly look with him. There was no other possibility that fit her as well. Wendy was her name. Looking at her face, they just knew that was who she was.
"Wendy," Morgan laughed. "Child of J. and M. Barry. Child who is raised by fun and imagination, surrounded by hope, memory, wonder, and dreams, and living in a world that is impossible but still exists. Wendy Barry Overland Frost."
"I imagined having a family for so long," Jack whispered softly, daring to touch the chin of the child who was nuzzling into Morgan's neck. "And it seems... it's becoming real."
"There is reality," Morgan said to him. "In the imagination."
This has been such a wonderful, painful, stressful, and fantastic journey. I would like to thank my fiance, who will never read this because he doesn't like ROTG (what the hell is wrong with him?) for putting up with me typing loudly in his ear over our calls and bouncing ideas off of him and moaning and complaining and expressing my frustrations. Thanks, love!
Thank you to you all who have stuck by me! For those who were there in the beginning, for those who came in the middle, and for those who came in the end! Thanks yo you all for your support! You really helped make this story keep on going at the rate it did. This story really helped me flesh out practice as a writer and it really gave me some experience in dabbling with major parts of literary devices. And your wonderful feedback just kept on encouraging me. To those who said I have a great story, to those who called me talented, to those who said I had the best ROTG... you have really given me hope and inspiration and I just love you all. To those who have said I am the best... I assure you, I am not, but it is a very touching thing to hear.
Writing this has given me so much. Experience, faith in myself, and it helped teach me things a long the way. It gave me a better insight, and it helped me think, especially from the questions I received from you all. My inbox is always going to be open so you can certainly keep asking more questions. It has given me some wonderful friends and new points of view. It's changed me, and there's so much more this story has done for me. I have made myself cry, I have made myself laugh, you have all made me cry, you have all made me laugh.
This story blew up into so much more than what is was to be, and I am thankful for that, but now it has come to its closed. This is my baby, and while it is nice to be free of it, it is also weird and heart wrenching. I have fallen in love with what I have written, and you helped me to see the gems within it. To my readers old and new, I thank you so much. It has been a wonderful adventure. Thank you all so much.
Don't forget to message me about the Q and A I am planning. And I assure you, I am not leaving FFN. I have plans for a sequel as I have said. I have plans for a Peter Pan fic. But first, I have a one shot coming up for ROTG, and then... I need a break.
Stick around for the sequel guys. I'll be here. Remember, there is reality in your imagination. Just believe in it.
Lots of love. Rosie.