Broken Beliefs
In Burgess's local cemetery, there are three graves who wear the strangest of offerings. / Sequel to Broken Hopes
Warnings: Pretty much the same as the previous stories, only less graphic. Lots of angst.
Author's Note: Shorter than the other stories, but every bit as bitterly awful. Just the way my cold, black heart likes it. This is part of a series. Further information will be posted on my profile page. Let me know if you're interested in seeing more from it. Make sure to read the previous stories before this one, or you'll be mighty confused. Also, I have a lot of trouble with timelines and dates and what not. So if you see things that may not line up with timelines established in previous stories, just let me know, and I'll see if I can fix that.
Just to clear up confusion, there is a minor divergence from movie canon present in my stories: Both Jamie and Sophie were the Guardians' Last Lights, and were acknowledged as such. Sophie came along, but remained in North's sleigh for most of the battle.
The local cemetery is rather odd. It doesn't have the strict linear lines of others, but follows a more meandering path. Most people who lay within the ground here are those whose families lived in Burgess for many years.
Martin Applegate, old, wizened, and grey-haired, watches over these graves as his father did, and his father's father did before him. He cares for the people who went into these graves, and treats them all with respect.
When his time comes, his wife and children and their children, over thirty in number, would mourn for him, leave flowers and offerings at his grave, as so many other families did for their friends and relatives who had gone before.
But there are graves who have no mourners, and so he does his best to make sure that their memories are respected. They have no one else to do so for them, so he sees no harm in bowing his head before the graves with no decorations and sending up a small prayer, or buying some flowers.
There were two graves recently put in, graves he fully expected to have no mourners, because one of the graves used to belong to a mourner who came to the grave she now lays buried beside.
A family lies buried in these three graves.
A son who took his life after years of hell. A mother who died loving a murdering, raping pedophile. A father who had abandoned his family and died in some Third World country's jail – his body did not lay here. And a daughter who used to festoon her brother's grave in dandelion chains, before she took on the world to give her brother back the dignity life had stolen from him, and had her life stolen in return.
The cursed, crazy Bennetts.
He knows there will be no mourners at these graves, as he leaves the cemetery and locks the gate. So tomorrow he will bring some nice flowers to adorn the children's graves. After all, he's known Sophie ever since her first visit to her brother's grave.
It is the very least he can do.
Pitch Black has returned. Stronger than ever, and so very, very awful. The Guardians fight back, of course.
But something is different. They are weaker.
Maybe once or twice they think about a town called Burgess. Maybe in the deepest recesses of their mind they see dark brown eyes filled with wonder and a headful of messy blonde hair.
But they have Pitch to worry about.
And in the light of the Moon, they never think about their Last Believers at all.
Martin returns bright and early to the cemetery. There will a funeral later on that day, and he has to get everything ready. In his arms he carries two beautiful bunches of calla lilies, his present for the Bennett children.
He loops his keys around his neck and locks the caretaker's cabin behind him. He walks down the meandering path, smiling contentedly as the wind carries the first fresh scent of spring to his nose.
He turns the bend and comes to a halt as he catches sight of the Bennett graves.
That certainly is new.
The three stones, once so barren and plain, lacking any sign of a mourner's offerings, have now become altars, festooned with flowers and wreaths and other strange things. He comes closer to the graves and kneels before them, and cannot believe what he is seeing.
He brushes a hand against a flower the lightest shade of blue he's ever seen in his life and pulls it back in shock, tendrils of icy cold still snaking themselves up his hand. A flower made of ice?
Who ever heard of such a thing?
Strangely enough, it is Pitch that opens their eyes. Or rather, opens Jack's eyes.
He has cornered Jack, away from the rest of the Guardians who are busy enough against the Fearlings, and is steadily overpowering the ice spirit. Blow after blow snakes its way under Jack's guard, until he crashes to the ground, bleeding.
Pitch laughs, and the nightMares prowl around him, his elite guard of Fearlings chattering and chortling at the winter spirit's pain.
"You really should have taken me up on my offer, little Jack," he says in amusement. "You and the Guardians never stood a chance once I discovered how to strike your most vulnerable weaknesses."
Jack looks up at him and Pitch raises an eyebrow at the honest confusion that crosses the younger spirit's face.
"What, you mean you honestly haven't realized it yet? Why you and the other Guardians are so weak?" he sighs in mock-paternal concern and drifts down to stand over Jack. Jack stares up at him, and fear snakes around his heart, squeezing tight as Pitch shakes his head.
"I told you, Jack Frost…" Pitch whispers cruelly. "There was always more than one way to put out a light. Or, rather…lights."
Everything in Jack's body goes still with shock and horror as Pitch holds out a hand, and drops a small, stuffed pink bunny rabbit toy to the ground, and Jack swears he hears a young boy's voice talking inside his head-
"…Okay, look. You and I are obviously at what they call 'a crossroads'…"
-before Pitch crushes the toy beneath his foot.
Martin rests the flowers he brought on the grass in front of Sophie's and Jamie's graves.
Then he kneels before Sophie's gravestone, studying it carefully.
It's a simple little stone, a dark granite square with her name, dates of birth and death, and a short epitaph reading: "Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged. Samuel Jackson".
It suits the girl buried within. She'd been such a quiet little thing, and the only time she ever smiled was when she was visiting her brother, and even then it wasn't a real smile, all crooked at the edges, a lopsided thing.
Every day after school, then after work, he would find her there. Sometimes she would only stop for a quick hello – this was when the weather was awful – but most days she spent hours there, sometimes talking, sometimes just sitting there, eyes burning as she looked up at the sky. His wife had commented – on the few times Sophie had come over for dinner – that if Sophie's anger ever got out into the world, she could do a lot of damage with it.
(His wife had worked at the county juvenile correctional facility for years. If anyone knew anything about angry teens and the damage they could do with said anger, it would be her. And Sophie was especially angry.)
But she had never let her anger boil over. She had planned the downfalls of everyone who had participated in her brother's eventual suicide with the sort of crazed fanaticism he only expected to see in those religious zealots.
She'd succeeded, but then again he'd never expected otherwise. Sophie had always been such a darkly determined little thing.
Pitch laughs at the horror in Jack's eyes, grinding the rabbit to rags under his foot.
"I was surprised, Jack, really, that you left an innocent little boy alone. Didn't even bother checking up on him, especially after you found out I was free. That little brat and his sister cost me everything," he snarls, his grey face contorted nightmarishly by fury. "I swore I'd get my vengeance on them, but I never expected them to be left so alone, Jack."
The amusement of that drives the snarl from his face. "I thought I would have to fight through all of you to get to them, but I was wrong, and I had all the time in the world to exact my revenge. No one believed little Jamie when he told them of the nightmares and things that haunted him in his sleep and waking moments."
"You bastard!" Jack screams, and tries to leap at Pitch, only to be flattened by one of the nightMares.
"Ah, ah, ah, Jackie, not yet, not yet! I really haven't had the chance to do a proper villain's monologue in so many years, and you won't ruin it for me now…anyway, little Jack, I made sure both of their lives were absolute hell on earth. Jamie Bennett was weak beyond measure. He cracked so very early, took the coward's way out. At least Sophie Bennett fought to the bitter end. I had to admire her for that, little whore she was…But still, I got my revenge on her, and on the Guardians, in the end." Pitch laughs, long and unbearably cold.
"You're…you're lying," Jack says, shaking.
"You don't believe me? Well then, Jack…go see for yourself, then. Maybe I'm wrong, if you just believe hard enough…" Pitch steps back and fades into the shadows, the nightMares and Fearlings following their master, grinning their ghoulish smiles.
Her grave is strangely ornamented. It is wreathed with the same ice-flowers as the other three, but there are also a multitude of little eggs nestled against the edges. He can't help but pick one up, and swears he feels it tremble in his hands. The eggs are sunny pastel colors that put him in mind of Easter eggs.
But that's ridiculous.
Because who on earth would leave Easter eggs at a grave?
He turns to the other decorations, carefully setting down the egg in its original place. There is a golden cylinder with a flat side, and a remarkable facsimile of Sophie as a child drawn on the edge. It seems welded to the stone's surface, and Martin can't pick it up.
There is also a couple of intricately carved toys, work from a master, Martin thinks, as he picks up each toy and looks at it closely. A butterfly painted in wild colors, a red and green elf with a silly face, and a porcelain doll that looks like Sophie, but with a smile Martin had never seen in the teenager's cold green eyes.
Someone had cared very much, to leave these oddly precious things at her grave.
How could he have forgotten them?!
Jack is flying faster than he has ever flown in his entire life, the Wind speeding him along. He's left the other Guardians in his dust, but they can find him if they need to.
But he's not thinking about them.
He's thinking about the way a madly giggling little girl with messy blonde hair and eyes as green as grass chased around North's elves in the Warren, how Bunny cradled her in his arms when she fell asleep, how warm she felt in his arms when he carried her home, and how big her eyes were when she and her brother raced out to meet them.
He's thinking about, the shocked wonder in a pair of dark brown eyes as his name is spoken by a human for the first time in centuries, the way his eyes lit up with amazement at the sight of the rest of the Guardians, how he stood in front of them and said "I'm not afraid" as he faced down the Bogeyman, and the very first hug Jack had ever had since he died – at least, from a human.
Sophie.
Jamie.
Jack speeds along to where he remembers the Bennett home as being. It's been almost twenty years, he thinks with agony in his heart. Twenty years since he'd seen either of the Bennetts.
What did Pitch do to them, without the Guardians there to protect them? He knows what Pitch was implying, but, but…It can't be true. No, it can't.
He flies even faster.
Martin barely gives Mrs. Bennett's grave a glance. It is decorated as well, with the ice flowers and a few eggs, along with one of those strange golden cylinders, but that is all.
He did not use a single flower he brought with him on her grave.
After the courts had found that godforsaken Trevor Armand, he with the slick clothes and hair and smile, guilty of the most horrid of crimes, Mary Bennett had descended into drinking.
Out of guilt, Martin thinks without sympathy, for letting her perverted husband throw her innocent son in a mental institution, only after turning a blind eye to the fact Trevor had been molesting Jamie for years.
Jamie was a brightly imaginative young lad, not crazy.
Small wonder Sophie had always been so angry on her brother's behalf.
He's flying to their house, but the Wind alters his course. He tries to fight it, but the Wind pushes him resolutely along, and Jack has learned in his many years that if the Wind makes a decision, not even he can budge it.
"Damn it!" he bellows, still fighting its power. "I have to find Jamie and Sophie. Wind, let me go!"
But the Wind tosses him along, knocking him around, upside, and in every which direction for several minutes before it suddenly loosens its grip on him. Still off balance, he drops like a stone in water, and crashes into ice and snow.
Groaning, he sits upright, before glaring balefully at the sky.
"Was that really necessary? And what's wrong with you, Wind? You haven't been that unruly since the Toronto Blizzard."
But the Wind is silent. He stands, and looks around.
He feels dread stiffen his spine as he sees where exactly the Wind has dropped him.
A graveyard.
He walks along, propelled by some unseen force as the Moon shines bright in the sky. He walks for several minutes down the winding paths of Burgess's local cemetery, before coming to a stop in a small alcove. There are three graves here, small and simple granite stones.
When he sees what is written on them, his heart stops beating.
He moves last to Jamie's gravestone.
The most tragic of all the Bennetts, he thinks to himself with a sigh. His stone is as the same material as his sister's, and bears his name, dates of birth and death, and simple epitaph that reads: He always believed.
Sophie had requested that, paid extra with money from her own pocket to have it inscribed on his stone with eyes that were as cold and hard as diamonds. She'd laughed when he asked her, a bitter twist to her lips, and told him that her brother had died for his beliefs.
His grave is decorated much the same as Sophie's is. The eggs around his grave are deep jewel-tones, like perfectly cut gemstones, rich and vibrant and a marvel to look at. Another golden cylinder rests on the side of the stone, with a drawing of Jamie's face as a child on one edge. There are a few toys – made by the same person who crafted the one around Sophie's grave – a Matryoshka doll, a pristine red sled, a stuffed pink rabbit.
There are two carved ice rabbits on each side of the grave, like sentinels, and only one ice flower, a single carnation resting atop the stone.
Martin brushes his fingers around the edges of the carnation and a feeling of utter sorrow that does not belong to him shakes him down to his bones.
He staggers closer and his knees give out.
Three graves.
MARY ANNABELLE BENNETT.
He remembers a smiling woman who played with her children in the snow and gave them kisses goodnight as he watched through the window.
SOPHIE JACQUELYN BENNETT.
He remembers Sophie riding on Bunny's back through the Warren giggling madly and the wonder in her eyes as she carefully painted one of the wriggling eggs, tongue sticking out.
JAMES ORION BENNETT.
Something inside him cracks as he remembers racing along the streets of Burgess, guiding the shrieking Jamie's sled and the way Jamie said his name, all shivery and full of realized wonder.
Jamie and Sophie had died young, both of them eighteen years old when they'd passed, he realizes, and he gasps with shock when he sees that both of them died on Christmas Eve.
Then he sees the epitaph below Jamie's name and his eyes fog over with tears.
'He always believed.'
"Frostbite, why'd you run off in a hurry?"
He turns around and sees Bunny standing there, honest concern on his face that turns to worry when he sees Jack's face.
"Jack, what's wrong?" This from Tooth, who just arrived. The other Guardians are behind her. They must have parked the sleigh somewhere else.
He stands up and moves aside.
"I found Jamie and Sophie," he says.
There is rising horror on each face, the beginnings of shock. Tooth puts a hand over her mouth. Bunny drops to his knees in front of Sophie's grave. North goes white as he turns to the graves. Sandy closes his eyes.
"They died so young," Tooth whispers, seeing the dates.
"Pitch was laughing about it," Jack says and finally he breaks, dropping to his knees and weeping ice-crystal tears that shatter on the ground.
Martin finally stands, cursing his old bones as he does.
In the end, it doesn't matter who left these strange gifts at the Bennett children's graves. He's just glad that someone will mourn their senseless deaths.
He turns to walk away, and feels a sudden gust of bitter, biting wind whip through the graveyard. He shivers, and begins to walk back along the meandering path, hoping that winter isn't going to make a sudden comeback.
He doesn't hear the faint sobbing born on the ice-cold wind, or the shattered voice that whispers before the grave of Jamie Bennett.
"I'm so sorry, Jamie."