Zastruga is one of my favourite works of fanfiction I have ever read. Would you ever be willing to share a brief summary of how you had planned for it to end?
In retrospect, I think part of the reason I stalled out and could never get the last chapter done is, to tell the honest truth... It was basically going to end like the movie did. The last chapter I posted functionally completed Jack's new arc, and all that was left was the fireworks of a big triumphant fight scene, with the biggest difference being that the increased length of the story had put the Guardians in even more dire stakes for them to rise back from. But Jack was still going to free the tooth fairies and rally the kids to restore their belief, and Sandy was still going to come back, and North was going to recover from his gut wound, and they were all gonna band together and kick Pitch's ass.
The biggest difference is that it was going to end on an epilogue scene where Jack came to find Pitch slowly recovering in a much-diminished version of his lair. He'd keep his distance, but tell Pitch that he'd heard the stories now of when Pitch used to be a kind father, and that he believes them because he could see the potential there. He's not going to let Pitch Black hurt him anymore. But he hopes he gets to meet General Pitchner someday.
The final note of the story would've been Pitch responding to those words with an attack, only for Jack to be long gone, leaving him alone in the dark once more.
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So yeah, that's what I intended. But truth be told the entire time I was writing that story I was also being driven slowly insane by Alaska's weird day-night cycle and by the time I recovered from that I just couldn't get through a fight scene long enough to do the end of a fic that long justice. 😞 Who knows though, it's been ages since the last time I watched the movie and I've still got the last book in the novel series sitting on my TBR shelf. There's always the very very slim chance that one of those will kick my ass into gear long enough to give the little monster a proper send off, I do feel bad that never quite stuck the landing.
