Hello everyone! And so I ease your waiting pains! Here at last, Chapter 8.

"Love me, my brothers...[for] your love shall be like His, born neither of your need nor my deserving, but a plain bounty. Blessed be He!"

-C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

And Bunny dropped with it.

In fantastic irony a dreamsand whip curled around his wrist and he was jerked back into North's waiting arms, pinned like a vice. Jack and Tooth with several yetis appeared beside Pitch and hauled him to his feet, staggering in his head stopped spinning the first things his eyes focused on were Bunny's, and then he could not see for the red.

"Wretch! Vile cheat!" he screamed, kept back in the yetis' firm grip.

"Murderer!" shrieked Bunnymund as he struggled to get free of North's hold. "Traitor! Let me go!" he cried. "Let me kill him!"

"No, Bunnymund! That is not what we do," North pleaded.

"It's what he does! Let me return the favor!" Writhing, he got in several good hits, but North shared in his anguish and so endured the onslaught. Eyes damp, he clutched him tighter and whispered in his ear,

"No, Eadmund," and then more softly, "do not become what you hate." Bunny trembled, eyes glittering; his legs twitched from the overpowering urge to leap at the Butcher, the Assassin of Stars. But the words had met their mark. As North relaxed his grip, despairing, he was still.

"Keep him," said North to Sandy, who offered a sad smile and comforting pat on his friend's paw. He mourned, too, in his own quiet way. Youth made these hurts sharper. Little could he begrudge him his anger, for they both had lost much.

North's eyes blazed as he rose to address Pitch. Fists clenching and unclenching, his jaw worked as if to grind what was proper to say from his brain. It was difficult to decide, as he scanned Pitch's inscrutable gaze, able to discern neither remorse nor anything else in his ashen stare.

"You told me you were no longer our enemy." Pitch's eyes lit up and then died in the same instant. Knitting his brows, he stared at North's feet and murmured,

"I am not."

"Liar!" cried Bunny, pointing with all the conviction of the judge and executioner in one. His rage returned, he stood up to his full height and roared, "You will be our enemy until the day you are dead!" Sandy stepped back from him in shock. Tooth and Jack were halfway into fighting postures. No one in the gigantic bustling factory dared make a sound.

"Let's go," North finally said with a heavy-hearted sigh, and all except Bunny hastened to leave. The portal, at this point, was looking increasingly friendly every second they stayed.

"Pitch Black!" Bunny suddenly called, stopping them before they could escape. North did not turn, and placed a firm, though not forceful hand on Pitch's shoulder to keep him doing the same.

The guardian of Hope stood up on his toes, shoulders back and ears straight. He looked tall enough to be a pillar in the expansive room. Then, raising his right fist, his pillar seemed to take root to the center of the earth and his voice filled the Warren—though he did not even shout—ringing in their ears until they thought the ground would shake with it.

"Pitch Black, henceforth are you without Hope. Wherever you seek it, it will evade you. Attempt to keep it and it will revile you. In the darkest hole, it will not come to you, no matter how much you call and plead. You will never see it so long as you survive. So may it be!"

Bunny's eyes shimmered with something powerful. Equally holy and deplorable, it had built and upheaved worlds. Sandy knew it in both awe and terror, Tooth's heart raced, Jack shivered, and Pitch was as stone. Their welcome was expired, and no one protested when North urged them through the portal.

Back at the Pole, the remaining guardians proceeded to North's workshop while Pitch was escorted to his room. Not a one of them cast him a backward glance…except Jack, who looked back just in time to see Pitch bow his head, grimacing like he'd been punched. Assembled in the workshop, North slammed and bolted the door, causing the others to start and fidget uncomfortably.

"Won't you all sit?" North asked, remarking this. No one preferred to, and without a word he settled himself into his chair at the imposing old wood desk. Scowling, he regarded each of them with a look that was at once assertive and helpless. For only the second time Jack could remember, he looked old.

"It has come to this," he finally said. "Pitch has shown us he is not willing to cooperate-"

"But that's not true!" interjected Jack. "He's been alright, and more cooperative than we expected him to be. Hasn't he, Tooth?" he asked, turning to her. She shrugged and frowned.

"It still may not be wise to keep him with us, Jack, if he and Bunny are only going to fight."

"But, you saw what I did. That wasn't his fault. Bunny was asking for it!"

"Because he has good reason!" said North. Leaning forward over the desk, he pinched the bridge of his nose and then fixed Jack in the gravest look he was sure the boy had ever received. "If you knew their history, Jack, you would understand." Taken aback, he frowned and shifted from one foot to the other.

"Okay then. Tell me why we're blaming Pitch for a fight Bunny started." The three older guardians exchanged a pained look. Tooth hovered forward and, clasping her hands, met Jack's eye with such a sad expression that he almost hesitated.

"Jack, Pitch is the reason why Bunny is the last of his kind," she said. He balked.

"Wha-?"

"Ages ago," North began, "he was a child in a time called the Golden Age. It was an era ruled by Constellations. Bunny's family were leaders of the Pookas, a race of giant philosopher-rabbits, the cool-headed diplomats of the age. For a time, all was peaceful, but then a threat arose in the form of the Fearlings, Dream Pirates, and Nightmare Men. They were Darklings, things like the Nightmares we fought, who fed on fear, but worse. They not only stole dreams, but tainted the soul and stole all their victims' hope and happiness. They ravaged whole planets in this way. The Constellations, led by MiM's home constellation, Lunanoff, declared war on the Darklings to rid the age of their evil. After years of fighting, they won the war, but then an even greater threat appeared in Pitch. Under him, the Fearlings finally accomplished all they had sought to do."

Here North paused. Sighing and placing his hands flat upon the desk, he studied its imperfections, cracks and scratches from so many years of use. They reminded him of scars.

"Under Pitch, they razed planets, put out entire constellations, and obliterated peoples…including Bunny's. He was just a child, and Pitch destroyed his whole world…Do you understand, now, Jack?" For a very long time he was silent, dumbstruck, hardly able to relate the horrors North described to Pitch: the one who had confessed the yearning for a family, who had offered him a place by his side.

"What could a genocidal maniac ever want from a family?" he wondered. No answer presented itself, and it unsettled him all the more.

"S-so, what are we going to do with him?" he asked. North leaned back tiredly in his chair.

"He cannot stay, that much is certain."

"But will he be allowed to just wander?" asked Tooth. She could feel her fairies in the back of her consciousness, listening in, and added, "He could get into trouble again."

"He would have to be monitored, of course," North assented with a nod.

"Wait, what about the nightmares, and those other things you talked about, can they still get to him?" Jack asked. Though he certainly would deserve it, he had far from enjoyed seeing Pitch dragged, screaming, away last Easter. North gave a bitter snort.

"You need not worry. Pitch has survived much over the ages. No doubt he will continue on well enough." Jack somewhat doubted that. He opened his mouth to protest, but was cut off by Tooth.

"I still don't know, North," she said. "I'd feel better if I knew he wouldn't be able to interfere with my fairies. You know how easy he is to lose."

"Hmm. We might be able to hold him somewhere." Then the two fell into a discussion of possible spells, places, and the proper meld of metals to use if they were to make bars for a cell. As Jack listened, something pierced his heart. It hurt. It was the biting loneliness of three hundred years thinking he had been thrown away by a callous benefactor. All the while he had been meant for good things, but if not for a convenient calamity—thanks to Pitch—he would have never known. It was a very sudden thought, and as such Jack was suspicious of it. But his heart was too good, and the feeling too persistent.

"No," he said, interrupting Tooth and North, who turned to him in surprise.

"Sorry, Jack?" asked Tooth. "What did you say?"

"No," he said again, shaking his head. "We're not going to just imprison him."

"Jack." North gave him a sad, sympathetic smile.

"No!" He refused to listen. "We didn't do that to him last Easter. It wouldn't be right to do it now. We can't just throw him away, especially not after all we've learned about him!" He laughed and threw out his arms. "You didn't throw me away when I caused trouble, and look how I turned out!"

"You are not Pitch!" said North, tone turning grave. Tooth frowned reproachfully at him and took over.

"Jack, whatever you think, whatever similarities you see, you are nothing like Pitch. You're only mischievous. You're fun, but Pitch could do real harm. Think of Sophie and Jamie. What would you do if something happened to them again?"

"But that's not what he wants! North, you stood up for him when none of us wanted to! Where did that go? Tooth, your fairies will be fine, and you and Baby Tooth know it." Jack paced, throwing out his arms with each revelation. "Maybe he was evil, but now he wants to change, and I, Jack Frost, as one the Guardians, refuse to let us give up on him!" he declared, beating his staff upon the floor with unexpected finality.

North's brows rose so high they made his eyes appear larger and Tooth looked desperately to him for support. He did not respond. Steepling his fingers, North stared hard at the youngest guardian. Even if that was the truth, what could they do? Pitch's presence would cause dissent and eventually Bunny's restraint would give out completely. Jack, he realized, could never fully understand their ages-long feud, as the youngest, least disillusioned of them all.

"The youngest guardian," he mused. "'And out of the mouths of babes…'" Jack was certainly no babe…no, he was wiser, and North chided himself for his blindness.

Considering him, North asked, "You are set in this way of thinking?" Jack nodded and looked at his feet.

"Could we please just not let anyone else be like me?" he replied, and in his heart North beamed.

"Well then," he said, looking from Jack to Tooth's dismayed face, and then to Sandy, who had stood quietly while the others argued, confident his fears would be well contended by Tooth where he was unable to voice them. "I feel we must all apologize, for we have forgotten to ask the last guardian's opinion. Sandy…" He looked up in surprise at being acknowledged and stepped closer. "As the one who would continue to allow Pitch's apprenticeship with us, it seems his fate…lies in your hands." All eyes turned to him, filled both with hope and fear, and the Sandman breathed a heavy sigh.

Pitch wished it was night already. He needed his stars and the late afternoon sky was too bright.

"It would be more appropriate," he thought dismally, slouched on the bed. "I'd be back where I started." There was no other place for him but in the dark. He expected no more. Certainly they would expel him. At the very worst they might shut him up to a slow, painful demise, and he shuddered to imagine it. Even the former Nightmare King was not immune to that fate which all spirits dreaded most: a tedious, torturous slide into non-existence. Few, excepting the indomitable Nature Spirits (of which Jack happened to be one) were exempt. They would go on for as long as the earth itself, and Fear, being another primal, undying force, allowed Pitch to be able to survive without the supplement of Belief for so long. The Fearlings, symbiotic parasites that infected him to his very core, fed on fear and gave him strength. As long as he propagated the world's terrors and worries, turned dreams into nightmares and comforting light to chilling dark, they kept him alive.

But Pitch was no longer causing fear. The mere memory of a child's scream set his teeth on edge and dropped a weight in his chest that ached like a broken bone improperly healed. Rubbing at the jagged scar above his heart, he grimaced.

"Never again."

However, the question North himself had put about what he would do for the rest of eternity weighed as heavily as the guilt upon Pitch's mind. He would never be able to answer it on his own without resources or a single friend to aid him, and in the face of wandering aimlessly, uselessly forever, reminded always that he was unseen and fated to remain so; he almost preferred being locked away.

His introspection was cut short by a knock at the door and the surprise of such a courtesy made Pitch jump and spin around like a startled cat. Jack's head appeared around the corner. He sucked in a timid breath, spooked, it seemed, to notice Pitch sitting on the bed.

"Is it done, then?" he asked, smoothing the front of his tunic. Jack nodded. Breathing deep, Pitch straightened his spine and lifted his head. At the very least he would go to the gallows with dignity. "Lead on," he said, expecting Jack to escort him to his fate, but the frost spirit had the audacity to look confused.

"Where?" he asked. Pitch's brows shot up in shock. He never expected such cruelty; allowing him to choose where he would die. Scowling, he thought, but nowhere came to mind.

What does it matter? Wherever I go I will only do one thing.

"…Because, I was gonna go to the kitchen for something, if you wanted to come along," Jack said. Pitch narrowed his eyes at him.

"What?"

"Did you wanna come with me to get something to eat?" he repeated. Pitch blinked.

"I don't…Sorry?" he stammered, utterly flummoxed.

"Maybe you should just get some sleep, Pitch," Jack suggested with a smirk. "Sandy won't let you slack off tomorrow night." It was becoming a possibility that there was something wrong with his mouth as Pitch had lost all powers of speech.

"I still don't…" he stuttered, gaping at Jack as if he had never met him before. The guardian gave an uneasy smile.

"Sorry, Pitch. You're not getting away from us that easy," he said, scanning him up and down. Pitch felt his fear, face falling. They must have told him. As the former Nightmare King, he knew every kind of fear existing. Each had a distinct flavor, like delicacies at a feast, and Pitch had acquired quite a taste for his unsavory bread-and-butter. But Jack's fear of him was bitter, vile. It filled his chest with a leaden chill and made him want to be sick.

"They stole me, Jack," he said, voice breathy from sorrow. "I'm sorry. Can you please, please believe that?" Jack said nothing. Staring Pitch in the face, he wanted to believe him. But this time he would have to prove it.

"Be ready first thing tomorrow morning," he said shortly, and closed the door.

Pitch stared after him for a long time. Pangs of guilt, a relatively new emotion, aggravated the ache in his chest. Shuffling over to his seat on the bed, he leaned forward on his knees and stared out the window. He needed his stars—what was left of them—to shine as bright as they could. He would wait for them, if it was one night or a thousand years, if they never came, if in walking into the light he was consumed…

He would watch for his stars.

Thanks everybody for waiting! Liked it? Loved it? Hated it? Review and let me know! Bonus points for suggestions of how you want me to start the next chapter!

-Q.R.