Author's note:
Because sometimes I like to trick myself into thinking crossovers are a good idea.
(I usually regret it.)
But here's the premise of this might-become-a-thing anyway.
~CW
Jack was what they always called him at the Lodging House. They always knew that was the only name he'd ever respond to, and the the only name he'd ever dropped for himself.
What they didn't know was the origin of the pseudonym.
When the bedroom of the Manhattan Newsboys Lodging House was silent in the cloak of a cold winter's early morning, fourteen-year-old Andrew Morris laid eagerly in his lower bunk, unable to sleep, in wait for the slightest sign of the sun's rise.
As soon as he saw the clouds shyly began to tint rosy-colored out through the large window across from his bed, he grabbed his cap from where it was hanging over the bedrail and scaled the iron latter up to the bunk above him.
"'Ey, Jack Frost," He teased from his perch. "Wake up, wake up, wake up!"
Sixteen-year-old Jack moaned and rolled over to face him, eyes still slits. "Andrew, go back to bed."
"The sky's awake, so I'm awake," Andrew whined. "So we gotta get up."
"Get up when workin' hours start," Jack groaned, eyes drooping back closed.
"But...Do you wanna build a snowman?"
Jack smiled as he slowly sat up. "A'ight. For you, Kid," He said as he grabbed his blue shirt from the bedpost and slung it over his shoulders.
...
They climbed the creaky wooden steps to the spacious rooftop with nothing but an old, melting candle as their guide. Jack set it down in the corner and Andrew followed him, impatiently expecting to see the magic his friend his from everyone else.
Finally, Jack stood in the center of the concrete with Andrew sitting in front of him. He looked around cautiously, just in case they had a shadow sneaking up to see what they were up to.
Then he started to make a gesture as if turning something in his hands. A snowflake levitated between them and grew twice as large with each revolution it made. Flurries cascaded from Jack's hands as he worked. They glowed a bright white in the purple light of dawn.
Jack looked up from his focus to grin at Andrew. "Ready?"
Andrew nodded as he stood up, entranced.
Jack released the snowflake in one big, open gesture. In a flash the rooftop glistened with clear, shining ice.
"Wow," Andrew whispered in awe.
He awkwardly began to glide across the floor, like a baby deer finding its footing. Jack laughed and conjured up a blanket of snow that grew in the corner Andrew was headed to catch him if he fell.
"You got the hang of it!" Jack encouraged, sliding over beside him and grabbing his arm.
"Ya really think so?"
Jack thought for a moment before pressing his palm out at Andrew. Ice skates - made out of real ice! - grew right out if the bottom of the boots he wore.
"This is amazin'!" He marveled as he skated smoothly in a straight line with Jack's help. His friend let go, and he flew freely across the icy glass with a laugh of victory. "Lookit me! I'm like one 'a those ice dancers in the square!"
"Now, before that snowman…Want me ta make it a bit trickier?" Jack offered, stretching out his arms.
"Try me," Andrew replied, swerving to a stop.
Jack glided around the perimeter of the rooftop, a ray of snow from his palms sculpting two sturdy ramps out of fogged ice. A frigid wind blew through his brown hair. He grinned wide as he stopped at the foot of one structure, racked up speed, and soared across the gap, just barely making it down to other ramp. He raced back over to Andrew with a grand sort of "Ta-dah!" motion.
"You've had quite lotta time ta work on this, haven't you?" Andrew guessed with a raised eyebrow.
"It ain't too hard, now," Jack assured him. "You gonna try it or not?"
He nodded and hurried over to the foot of the ramp. It took him a while to bypass the friction, but soon he had built up enough speed skating in circles to make it up the ramp and into the air.
"Hey Jack, I'm flyin'!" He declared as he sailed through the morning breeze, too nervous to look where he was going.
Suddenly, time slowed down. Andrea's trajectory wasn't quite right for landing on the ramp correctly.
"Andrew!" Jack yelled in concern. Panicked, he threw out a hand to produce a pillow of snow where the boy was about to hit the ground.
The silver mist bolted from his fingers, but Jack's aim failed him as well. The flurry blasted Andrew in the right leg with an explosion of white, and he went down onto the ice hard.
Jack screamed Andrew's name again, sprinting over to his side. He scooped up the younger boy's shoulders and legs. His body felt cold, his eyes were shut, and though air softly whistled in and out of his nose, he didn't move a muscle.
Frost slowly danced down his right pant leg to his ankle.
Jack's breath sped up to heaving and then to hyperventilating. This was his fault, and he didn't even know exactly what he just did. If his hand had been an inch to the left he could've killed Andrew. Even if his friend was just unconscious, he had no idea how to fix this…What the hell was he going to do?
Medda. Medda would know.
...
"Jack," Medda Larken called as she came to her front door. "You know it's six in the mornin' an' I need my beauty sleep jus' like everyone else in this town..."
She opened the door with a silk kimono over her nightdress and her hair in curlers to a young Jack carefully holding Andrew with both arms.
"I didn't know what else to do," he explained. "There was an accident, and Andrew..."
"Jack Kelly, did you get outta hand with your powers?" She demanded as she took Andrew and gingerly carried his limp body into her living room. "This ain't acceptable. I swear to the Lord up in Heaven, someday you're gonna-"
"I didn't mean to," Jack replied weakly as he followed her in, closing the door behind them and sucking back the water building up in his eyes.
"You have to learn when to conceal," Medda scolded harshly. She gently set Andrew down on the couch.
"Well, can ya help him or not?" Jack questioned.
"Of course I can, Honey," Medda assured him. She walked into the kitchen and searched her cabinets. "When your parents dropped you off with me, they armed me with remedies like I was goin' into battle. Didn't know back then how much your powers would grow."
Jack knelt by Andrew, carefully analyzing his sleeping face. His skin was starting to pale more and more by the second, and his shallow breaths came out of chattering teeth. He did this to his best friend.
Soon Medda returned with a glass vial of bright blue fluid and set a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Now, I'm sorry for snappin' atcha back there, since it is such an easy fix, but a shot to the heart would have been deadly. Don't you realize what you could have done?"
"Yeah." Jack fought back the tears starting to form once more.
Medda eased the medicine into Andrew's mouth. She sighed. She really didn't want to say this, but it came with her instructions from the Sullivans for watching over Jack when he was five.
"Now, I think I got some bad news to tell you."
"Worse than this?" Jack challenged.
Medda stuck a cork back into the vial and knelt to sit beside Jack. "The remedy comes from kingdoms that reigned hundreds of years ago, and it has some strange side effects from its original intent. It does not have the power to heal the damage done to Andrew's leg, but his memories will be altered to fit. He'll be okay."
"You call havin' a bum leg the rest of your life 'okay?'" Jack shouted, gesturing angrily to unconscious Andrew.
"Will you lemme finish? He'll think he's had it his whole life, and so will the boys at the Lodging House."
"How will they-"
"Shhhh, pretend the plot hole doesn't exist," Medda quietly chided. "But Andrew also will not remember your powers, so you have another chance to keep 'em a secret. They're increasing in strength and ease for you, and so we have to keep you away from the boys as much as possible."
"They're still my pals," Jack said. "They'll still remember me as the same guy, right?"
"Correct," Medda affirmed. "But you aren't to talk to them more than you need to. You mustn't get too close to them. Especially Andrew."
Jack turned to his friend and placed a hand on his forehead. He was regaining warmth, slowly but surely.
"Communication with him has to be completely cut off, or he might begin to remember again," Medda told him. "You'll still sell papers in the mornin', but you'll be stayin' with me at night."
"Medda, you can't be serio-"
"I'm sorry, Jack, it's what your parents told me has to happen if the powers get this strong. This is only necessary to protect you and Andrew."
Jack put his hands back on his own lap. "Yes ma'am," he reluctantly agreed.
…
"Jack?"
Two days had passed, and besides a few stolen glimpses across the street, Jack hadn't seen "Crutchie" at all. He did a pretty good job hiding, but now Crutchie was starting to ask questions, and someone must've directed him over to Medda's. Great.
Jack sat on a massive armchair in the living room, already drowning in guilt. He tried not to listen, but Crutchie's pleas were loud and clear.
Now he knocked.
"Do you wanna build a snowman?" He asked. "Come on, let's hang around!"
Jack winced. No. He couldn't say anything.
"You saw me skate the other day, and Jack, I gotta say, I'm show biz-bound!"
Silence. Crutchie continued.
"Saw you sellin' papes this morning. An' you saw me too. Why didn't you say hi?"
Jack cussed to himself.
"Don't you wanna build a snowman?"
Jack crossed his arms.
Crutchie's voice sounded like he was pressing his mouth against the keyhole. "It doesn't hafta be a snowman…"
"Go away, Crutchie!" Jack barked, facing himself away from the door.
"Okay," Crutchie muttered. "Bye."
…
Crutchie's arrival to the door became routine. Every few nights, the same optimism machine would chug up to his doorstep and take a knock. Jack would always ignore or pretend not to be home. Meanwhile, he had reluctantly figured out his own route by now to avoid contact with the boys. He would go to the gates of the World office at the crack of dawn, buy the least amount of papers he could possibly get by on, and disappear to the shadiest part of lower Manhattan. Then he'd rush back to Medda's before anyone could catch up.
But time continued its constant turning. On the night that brought forth the heaviest cushions of snow since the incident, Jack was sketching the landscape he'd seen in his old leather notepad.
A knock came at the door.
"Do you wanna build a snowman?"
Not this again.
"Or ride a bike to Central Park?"
Jack sighed.
"I think some company is overdue. We sell the same pape, too! Why are we always apart?"
He turned his attention to the door. Maybe he could...
"It gets a little lonely. The boys miss ya still, you and your jabberin' 'bout Santa Fe!"
A sad smile crept up on Jack's face. Of course Crutchie would remember to mention that.
He decided to change is attention before he got too sentimental.
He turned his focus back down to his notepad and nearly jumped. The paper was stiff and covered in frost, and his pencil was frozen to the page with a large chunk of ice.
"Medda!" He yelled.
…
Though it was hard to remember to wear them all the time, the gloves had been the easiest adjustment made so far to accommodate Jack's powers. But since the night of the ice-covered journal, Jack didn't hear any word from Crutchie for a while.
He had come to expect the kid's arrival routinely at this point. However, weeks went by without a peep. He would come back, wouldn't he?
Jack had started spending his afternoons in the living room, just sketching and listening, hoping for some little greeting.
But… what would be the point of that?
Jack had taken Crutchie's loyalty for granted, and lately he'd been spacing out, just sitting and thinking what would be different if Medda didn't give him the vial that made him forget.
Crutchie had always been his brother, through thick and thin, since they found the Lodging House together. Jack stole for him and kept him safe every night they couldn't scrape up money and had to spend the night out on the street. Crutchie kept Jack's spirits up through everything with the ageless good-natured spirit behind his green eyes. Jack couldn't have been older than nine when they made a pact to stick together no matter what. And now, at sixteen, he retraced his steps through his entire past.
How would things be different if he didn't have this stupid curse in the first place?
What would happen if he didn't try to conceal it?
Anyway, Jack realized he was an idiot for waiting for Crutchie. The boy probably assumed long ago that he was just some self-centered jerk who didn't care.
Oh, but did Jack care.
"I'm goin' off to bed, and you should too," Medda called from the hallway one night. "It's real late, and I gotta big rehearsal with the girls tomorrow!"
"A'ight," Jack muttered. He sat against the pine door, tilting his head back. He just wanted the slightest sign, but there was nothing. There was going to be nothing.
He slammed a fist against the door. That's it. It couldn't be mended now.
Crutchie had forgotten him.
He pulled his legs in to begin standing up.
"…Jack?"
He froze.
"'Ey, I…I know you're in there," the voice pathetically attempted. "The boys are still askin' where you've been."
That wasn't even Crutchie's old voice. It was more dark, more grim than he'd ever gotten.
"They say to give up, and I don't want to. I jus' want to see you. Please, let me in."
It was broken.
"You said we were blood brothers." Crutchie chuckled under a weary voice, but a melancholy that was unusual for him weighed his spirits down. "Remember that? Said we'd always have each other's backs…"
Jack turned to look at the golden knob above him. He slowly reached up to grab it, but his bare hand sprung rigid ice from the handle. Jack flinched his hand back, for fear of hurting Crutchie any more than he already had.
It was clear the boy tried hard to masquerade them, but hard, shuttering breaths came from the outside of the house. Crutchie swallowed and struggled through the words.
"Do you wanna build a snowman?"
Jack dropped his head. Crutchie only heard a restrained sob from other side of the door.
More than anything, Bud.