Start Again

Chapter two: In which Bunnymund visits the wilderness

Bunnymund opened his tunnel and gave the air a cautious sniff before hopping out of his hole. Alaska was not a place he frequented, but that didn't mean he was unaware of the many large predators that called it home. Not that large predators worried him over much. Pookas were not rabbits no matter how many times North called him 'Rabbit-man,' and they did not make good prey.

Sandy had given him the name of the village he had last seen Jack in, but the boy was always difficult to find. It was only recently that Bunnymund had really had a reason to try. He would eventually perfect the art, but for now it had to be done the slow way, starting with where Jack had last been spotted.

The village was a small clap board affair, with not enough places for him to duck behind as he crept through it. It might not have even mattered. It was likely no one here could see him. He almost stepped out from behind the frame of an upturned boat as two children ran by, just to see, but in the end he stayed put. He would have to wait a year to gain back what he had lost.

The snow was patchy on the ground, but not fresh. If Jack was here, he wasn't doing much to fight spring. He sniffed at the air again, trying to pick up the winter child's scent. Instead, he felt the faint tingle that marked Jack's peculiar kind of magic. He followed it to a sled dog yard, finding it full of grumpy canines, lamenting the end of the running season.

They sent up a chorus of barks when they spotted him, and he hushed them irritably. Sled dogs were usually a friendly, over eager lot, nowhere near as high strung as grey hounds. In hind sight, he knew he had all but asked for that alarm to be set off. It had been a somewhat childish way for Jack to vent his frustration, but that didn't mean he hadn't deserved it.

By the time the whole fiasco with Pitch was done, he had deserved far worst. He just hadn't known it until Sandy had told him.

The sled dogs yipped and barked and jumped excitedly, telling him Jack had slept curled up among them only the night before, but they didn't know where he had gone or if he would be back.

He took some time to scratch ears and rub furry bellies before moving on. He could smell the frost on the wind and the faint breath of magic that accompanied it. Jack was moving north.

Bunnymund followed the trail away from the town and over steep hills, moving farther in land. It felt good to stretch his legs and run. He didn't do it often enough. He slowed at the sound of laughter, and dropped to all fours when the musky scent of bear hit his nose.

Jack was sitting on the edge of a rocky stream laughing, a pair of young bear cubs using him as a climbing tree. The mother bear was in the stream fishing. She flung a fish up on the bank for the cubs and Jack used his staff to nudge it away from the water before it could flop back into the river. The two cubs set to playing with it, apparently not quite sure how to eat it.

Jack looked happy, and Bunnymund almost didn't want to interrupt. Necessary though it was, this wasn't going to be a fun conversation for either of them. It was very possible Jack wouldn't want to talk to him at all. He certainly wouldn't have wanted to talk to him if he were Jack. It needed to happen though. Even if in the end Jack didn't forgive him and didn't want to be around him, he needed to at least try.

"Jack," Bunnymund didn't call his name loudly, but the boy still jumped, managing to go from the ground to the top of his staff in an instant.

The mother bear reared up and growled, the cubs scurrying into the water towards her.

"It's just me," Bunnymund help up his hands, palms open. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."

Jack looked at him warily from his perch atop his staff, then glanced over at the agitated mother bear. With a soft sigh he shooed her away, looking as if he would have liked to have gone with her as she lead her cubs farther down the river.

"What do you need?" the boy turned back to him cautiously, showing no sign of coming down.

"Just wanted to talk with you," Bunnymund sat himself on a boulder, hoping it would make him seem less threatening.

That just his presence was making the boy so nervous was a bad sign. He silently thanked the stars that Sandy had overheard him arguing with North about Jack and set them both straight. Now, hopefully, he could set things straight with Jack before they got any worse. The last thing he wanted was to have the boy scared of him.

"Okay," Jack didn't relax at all, looking apt to flee at any moment.

"I'm sorry about what I did at Easter," Bunnymund looked up at him, not wasting time on preamble.

"Huh?" Jack nearly fell off his staff he was so startled, which under different circumstances would have been funny.

"I never even gave you the chance to explain," Bunnymund continued. "It wasn't fair and it wasn't nice, and I'm sorry."

Jack resettled himself with his knee caught in the crook of his staff and looked at the Pooka suspiciously, as if he were trying to figure out what sort of trick he was playing.

"Wasn't very nice to you right from the start really," Bunnymund sighed.

And he meant from the very start. He had met Jack on a snowy Easter centuries ago. Chances were, the boy hadn't had anything to do with the snow that year, but he had obviously been enjoying it and Bunnymund had snapped at him.

Frost was creeping down the staff from under Jack's hands, and the ground under it was icing over. He looked at Bunnymund, then down at the ground, his grip tightening.

"I didn't do it, you know," the boy refused to look at him, his posture ridged, his voice edged with anger, "I didn't make a deal with Pitch for my memories."

"I know," Bunnymund nodded. "Sandy told me. I would have known anyway if I had taken half a second to think. If all you had wanted was your memories, you would have never come back to us after you had them."

Jack swallowed and relaxed his grip, the frost on his staff receding slightly.

"Baby Tooth tried to warn me," Jack said slowly, hesitantly, as if he thought Bunnymund might take back his apology, "but I thought I would have time, and there was a voice calling my name, and it sounded so familiar, and no one ever calls my name."

"It was Pitch," Bunnymund guessed; Sandy had been a little vague on the details of what had actually happened, but then Jack may have been vague in telling it.

"I think so," Jack nodded. "It was my sister's voice, but I think it was Pitch."

Bunnymund winced, "we never should have let you go alone. We should have known that after you knocked him on his backside he would come after you."

"I really am sorry about Easter," Jack slid down to the ground and held his staff behind his back, looking at his feet, "you and Sophie had so much fun getting ready for it, and then it all got ruined."

"It was fun," Bunnymund grinned and chuckled softly, "it was more fun than I've had in a long time."

"I should have come straight back like I said I would," Jack's shoulders slumped.

"I don't know Jackie," Bunnymund heaved a sigh, "there were a lot of nightmares. Having you there would probably have helped, but I don't know how much difference it would have make in the end. He waited until the eggs were dived down the different tunnels before he attacked. We had to split up to try to fight them."

"He wasn't even there," Jack grumbled.

"No, he was off trying to take a piece out of you," Bunnymund shook his head and pushed himself to his feet, relieved when Jack didn't tense or back away. "You think we can be done with this, that we could try again at being friends?" he held his hand out to Jack.

Jack hesitated, and all Bunnymund could do was wait. Jack didn't have to give him a second chance; he didn't have to risk the possibility of being hurt by trying again.

"Yeah," Jack breathed, smiling tentatively, "I'd like that."

He took Bunnymund's hand, and Bunnymund shook it gently, unsure which hand he had had broken fingers on, then let go and rumpled his hair, making the boy laugh.

"There's actually an entrance to the Warren about a mile that way," Bunnymund pointed across the river. "I have some left over chocolate that needs eating."

"Last one there's a jack-o-lope!" Jack grinned widely and took off.

"Have you met the jack-o-lope?" the Pooka dropped to all fours and raced after the boy with a laugh.

Jack chortled in response, and Bunnymund was more than happy to chase after him, closing the distance between them in leaps and bounds.

A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed and favorited! You made me very happy. :)

As you can see, Bunny does not have an Australian accent because I can't write accents and poorly written accents are hard to read.

Not too many book references this time, although I'm sort of leaning more towards Bunnymund's character in the book. Bunny from the movie and Bunny from the book are very different characters. I sort of ended up with a hybrid of the two here, and I hope it worked.

This little story was my response to the lack of resolution about what happened at Easter in the movie. Bunnymund, and to a lesser extent Toothiana and North, accused Jack of selling them out to Pitch, but he didn't do it. He did make a poor decision in not returning right away, but there is a world of difference between making a deal with the enemy and making a mistake, and they never addressed that in the movie. I really felt like Jack's relationship with the Guardians couldn't go anywhere until that had been cleared up, because even if they like Jack, they think he betrayed them and they can't trust him, and Jack has no reason to trust them because they wouldn't even give him the benefit of the doubt.

For anyone who has read Cup of Kindness, this is meant to be continuity with that story, although they are both stand alones.