Chapter 1

Authors note: Hey just saying to everyone reading, this picks up after the events of ROTG and if you haven't watched the movies you WILL be lost. You have been warned. Feel free to comment on any plot holes you find or any other errors. I try to make as few as possible mistakes, but it happens. Ideas are always appreciated even if they aren't used right away. I probably will do one shots in another fic and I will write about anything but romance. Well, I don't know, if the idea is good enough I will consider. I intend to finish this fic so even if two people read it I will finish it for you! I am going to try to update every few days. Probably just over once a week. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I obviously don't own Rise of the Guardians or else it would be nowhere near as awesome of a movie as it is : )

NOTICE: I completely revamped this and the other chapters so you really should re-read what has happened because I changed one or two major details in this.

Update 1/20/2018: Okay so this story... I started this my freshman year of high school and simultaneous college. I had no idea what I was getting into and while I thought I was good at writing, I wasn't. I'm still not great. I'm a junior now and I've actually grown a lot as a person. I want to be a college professor. Still deciding what to teach. Probably either calculus, psych, or a religion course. I have an amazing boyfriend/bestfriend whom I've been with for a few years. I actually met him while I was writing this. I kind of have my life somewhat in order. I'll at least fix this a little and maybe give it some closure for you guys. I'm sorry I completely abandoned this when I said I wouldn't, I really am. I'm going to try and make amends. Thank you all for the encouragement over the years, you have no idea how much I appreciate it.

Key:

Normal/ present

Memory

March second started like any other day. I woke up, made a couple snowstorms, got a few kids out of school, I did get one couple together (still proud of that), and generally was having a good time. Late in the afternoon was when I found myself at the South Pole. That's normally my go-to place for messing around. It has virtually no people, so pretty much anything is fair game. I have a few penguin buddies I hang out with occasionally, they're not the smartest birds, but they can see me so hey, not going to look a gift horse in the mouth with that one.

Anyway, I digress. See that's the thing. One thing you need to know about me is that I'm a guy. At that, I'm physically a sixteen-year-old guy. My attention span isn't going to be so great. That day, I guess it was particularly short because one second my staff was in my hand, then I figured I'd skate so I left it in a snowdrift for... like... two seconds, and then it was gone.

Honestly I should have guessed sooner, but like I said. Not always the quickest guy on earth, but I got the hint when Pitch appeared behind me with an eyebrowless smirk.

Seriously that's weird. I wonder how he lost them. Maybe they got singed off? Hmm... Focus Jack. Jerk shows up with staff in hand. Right.

"Looking for this?" Pitch said with every bit of his usual greasy cockiness. So I'm not going to lie here. I may have been the slightest bit worried about him having the staff on him but hey, I mean I sure as heck wasn't going to tell him that, so I just opted to roll with it.

"Yeah. Thanks. I'll take it back now." I cocked an eyebrow and gave him my best moody teen glare (Which is pretty good if I do say so myself. Plenty of time to practice it on Bunny.).

"You really think I came to chat?" He questioned with an amused half-smile.

"Eh, well a guy can hope." I shrugged and put my hands in my hoodie pockets, keeping my shoulders back and taking a step forward.

He smiled darkly as he twirled my staff in his hands. "I never said you were wrong... It's a fickle thing isn't it? Life... It can be snuffed out so easily." I refused to break eye contact, but tilted my head suspiciously. That sounded like the start of an evil monologue. I've always hated those.

"Now obviously it's not the same for everyone. For a human all you need to do is stop their heart. For a spirit though... it's different. There will always be fear... there will always be hope, and memories, and wonder, and fun, but that's not what keeps one of us going." He drones slowly in his annoyingly smooth (British? African?) accent. No not African. Definitely British. African accents are harsher. He doesn't sound half that cool. Wait. Focus on the conversation at hand.

I ran a hand through my hair and sighed. "There's always going to be emotion as long as there are people Pitch. You're wasting your time if you're trying to get rid of me. Just give me my staff back and get a hobby. Sit in on college classes. Pick up an instrument. It's actually pretty fun. Try it."

Pitch chuckled and shrugged halfheartedly. "Hobbies? I knit of course."

"Really? That's pretty nifty." He rolled his eyes and gave me an unimpressed look. I was impressed that he was able to pull off sarcasm. "Hey some people like doing that. I tried it for a bit. Ran out of material pretty quickly though and honestly I don't love stealing." Pitch flicked his hand and two chairs made of coarse black sand appeared. He took one and fairly obviously intended for me to sit as well, but I just crossed my arms and shifted my weight slightly.

"Fair enough, though I left my original point." His eyes met mine again and something I couldn't quite read flashed behind them. "Do you know what keeps spirits going?" He looked genuinely curious, which threw me off guard slightly, so I sat down. I was starting to think that maybe this really would just be a normal conversation after all. He wasn't doing anything overly threatening besides having the staff now carefully placed beside him in a way that said 'I'm not touching this right now but neither are you.' I decided that playing along would probably be my best bet for the moment.

"Sure, a spirit thrives off of their center and you need people around the world to have belief to keep going. That's why we can't really die as long as people exist." He raised a patch where an eyebrow would be if he had them... seriously what happened there?

"You're close, but not quite there. For most spirits, yes belief keeps them going; however, it isn't belief in the emotion which supports an entity, but rather the belief in the entity itself. Children believe in the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Clause, and so on and so forth. They also believe in the Boogeyman, and a few believe in Jack Frost or... well Jokul, but that's a touchy subject from what I understand." I sneered slightly at that comment, but he continued as if he hadn't noticed. "Normally, someone becomes immortalized through belief. The rest of us survived through myths and legends passed on, but you? No Jack Frost. You're different."

"I have people that believe in me. I always have. Jack Frost nipping at your nose? That has been around for ages." Pitch rolled his eyes again at that and leaned forward in his chair.

"Do you honestly believe that the occasional joke can keep you alive? That you can have the power of an entire season through only a few careless words tossed about every now and then? No. As I said. You were different. You had only one believer and you died saving her. Don't interrupt me. I'm not finished. Anyway, even that isn't enough to make someone a spirit. If everyone who saved a person became immortalized there would be nearly as many spirits as there are people." Thoroughly annoyed at this point, but still intrigued, I did little more than scowl.

"So what gives? What's your theory?" He picked up the staff again, immediately making me go from annoyed to worried.

"You needed something to keep you anchored. Something with enough memories and power and belief inside to keep you going. In other words, this staff." I didn't respond to that statement. If I was being honest with myself I couldn't.

"Jack, this staff remained in your family for years before you, but when it was passed onto you it changed. You gave your little town hope. You showed the rest of the village fun and this staff kept those memories. You kept your village going, not by outright leadership, not by organization, or substance, or even determination. You simply kept everyone going like life was a game. You had fun with it. That's what your center is. You used fun to keep people going and when you used fun to essentially commit suicide for your sister? That stayed too and the Man in the Moon used it to bring you back. You don't have believers. Not really." He paused and leaned forward slowly in his chair, looking for all the world like someone who was contemplating a chess move, which was more scary than nerdy in this case.

"You have a staff. That, Jack Frost, is your weakness. You have belief now, so technically you could survive for a while, but not long. You have too much raw power, and without the staff? It will kill you." He leaned back and I could almost hear a 'checkmate' echoing in the silence between us.

"You broke that before and you still had your ass handed to you. That was before I had believers."

"Well, this time I won't leave something that you can just stick back together of course…" He laughed darkly, but somehow it didn't seem like a cheesy cartoon villain anymore. This time I have to admit I was actually scared.

"I think you get the picture by now, and doubtless you're at least smart enough to know when you've been beaten." He bent the staff until it began to creak in protest and suddenly, all I could see was white. I collapsed into the snow as my entire midsection felt like it was being slowly torn apart.

As suddenly as it was there it was gone, leaving a phantom ache in my chest and me prone in the snow.

He said nothing: never gloated, never commented, and that was almost worse. He only gave the smallest smirk before taking the sturdy piece of wood and snapping it like it was nothing. Something in my chest broke in response, not physically, no that would have been merciful. This was something else. Something harder to heal, and I knew it. Every snap hurt a little less than the last one until all that remained was an overwhelming feeling of numbness and a heavy exhaustion which I didn't bother to fight.

Bunny's POV

"I'll get Frostbite. Nobody screw this up when I'm gone." It was Jack's five year anniversary of becoming a guardian and normally we don't celebrate anniversaries-after a couple hundred years it gets old-but for Jack it was still a big deal, so we decided to make it a priority this year. I glanced at the globe in the workshop and spotted a blue mark down at the south pole. Of course that was where he would be even if it was still winter in Burgess. I hate cold. I always have, and I always will, but I still had to go find him so I opened up one of my tunnels and jumped in.

At first I didn't see anything, but after looking around for a bit I saw a speck of blue on the snow, thank Moon Frostbite doesn't wear white or I would never be able to find him. I called his name but there wasn't a response and as I got closer I realized that he was on the ground and he wasn't moving. I sped up a little and realized he was closer than I originally thought.

"Hey. Frostbite." I shook him. Nothing. I started to panic. "Oy, Frostbite. Nap time's over, wake up." Then I did what I really didn't want to do. I checked for a pulse and my heart broke. "No" I whispered and held the tiny teen to me, crying. Then I felt a slight movement in my arms.

Jacks POV

I woke up to sobs as I realized someone was holding me. Wait, is this Bunny? Yup, no one else is that furry. I never thought I would see the day where Kangaroo cried. Then I realized that everything was aching. "H-Hey Kangaroo, not so tight, y-you're crushing me" why did I just have to stutter?

"Jack! What happened, I thought you were, I thought…"

"You're not getting rid of me that easily, Kangaroo." Wow, this must be bad, Bunny was crying and he didn't protest at the Kangaroo comment. "I-I'm fine," wow. That wasn't very convincing. I tried again "Seriously Bunny, I'm fine." I opened my eyes and saw that he was seriously concerned.

"Jack, a few minutes ago you didn't even have a heartbeat. You are not fine."

He shifted and I gasped. Seriously, why can't I keep my mouth shut?

"Frostbite, tell me what happened."

"I-I don't-"I gasped as I remembered what happened. "Pitch broke it."

"What do you- oh no…" Recognition dawned on his face as he realized what happened.

(Memory Bunny POV)

It was about two years after the little bugger had become a guardian and since Easter had just ended, Jack figured it was fair game to prank me in my off season. After a week of constant badgering I had had enough. I found Jack asleep at the lake one day and not knowing how else to get the kid to pay attention, I took the staff. He woke up immediately and grabbed for it. It wasn't very hard to keep it out of his reach considering our height differences. He gave up when it became apparent that he had no chance.

"Hey not funny Roo, give that back."

"No, I want to talk to ya about messin' with my warren."

"Fine but I really need my staff back." The look on his face probably should have cued me in on the fact that he was serious, but in my defense so was I. He had killed one too many endangered plants with his games and I needed to fix it. Instead, I got annoyed... which, in retrospect, was my automatic response to a lot of things.

"I don't want you tryin' to fly away before I'm done talkin' with ya. I'm sick you freezing everything whenever you feel like it!"

"I won't fly away, just give me the staff." He held his hands up in a placating gesture but I had fallen for that one before.

"No. You'll get it back in a minute." I don't know why he was so jumpy that day in particular, but he got frustrated and took a lunge at the staff again and I held him back with one hand on his chest.

"What is so important about the staff right now? Can't you pay attention for two seconds?" As I said this, I threw the arm holding his staff back farther so he couldn't get at it, but what I didn't realize was that I was next to a tree. The crook went onto a branch and snapped. Jack went limp.

"Jack!" I shouted and caught him by the hood before he hit the ground. I gave a horrified glance to the staff before focusing on the kid. He wasn't breathing.

"Frostbite, this isn't funny!" Spirits couldn't die. They would have to lose almost all of their belief before they actually got weak enough to fade.

I checked his pulse. Nothing.

It just isn't possible.

I checked again.

Nothing.

Then I started chest compressions on my little brother.

I kept at it for upwards of ten minutes, but in the end there was nothing I could do but sit there kneeling by the kit's body, knowing that it was entirely my fault. That the only family I'd had in thousands of years was gone. The other guardians were my friends, but that kit laying in front of me was my brother. We argued, we competed, and we generally annoyed each other to wits end, but I loved him. Now that I had gotten used to having family again? I couldn't live without it.

E. Aster. Bunnymund cried on April 6th, 2016, by a lake in Burgess.

Yeah so that's that...