It was a cold winter.
A harsh one. Sharp, raw air nipped at everyone's red fingers and noses—that is, the lucky ones who hadn't lost them to frostbite.
Officer Emerson pulled his scarf tightly around his cheeks. His breath hung in the air like smoke.
Winter. He hated it.
It had never been his favorite time of year, no, but this time was worse. It had taken the people dear to him. He wasn't alone, either; cars kept skidding on the frozen roads. People got lost in snowstorms, trapped in their houses without supplies, freezing or starving to death. He'd even heard of a kid who went out to play back when the storm still seemed like a normal snowfall. They hadn't found the body yet, but it was surely huddled over in a snowbank, frozen solid.
The dry air seemed to suck the very sanity out of his men. Emerson was no exception. His fury at circumstances that no one could control, it kept him warm at night.
Once upon a time, he'd chuckled about Jack Frost drawing in ice crystals on window panes. Now he cursed the very name, having no one better to hate. Winter was immense, terrifying; at least Jack Frost put a name and imaginary face to the idea.
Jack Frost, he reflected, was the worst spirit—ice elf, force of nature, whatever you wanted to call him—that ever existed.
He shakily took a sip of crappy office coffee, stewing over his hatred and listening to the clock tick down seconds until the faraway spring thaw. Not much was open in the town, nothing but essentials; the police force was considered one of them. Their cell security was second to none in the state, and those temporary inmates, vagrants and drunks and homeless loiterers, were all better off here in the station.
A tap sounded at the window. Emerson started in his seat. A neighborhood kid trying to pester the local law enforcement, that was his first thought. But no kid would be out in this weather.
He looked out the window, squinting as somehow, impossibly, more frost layered upon itself, beautiful but deadly designs on the pane of glass.
Jack Frost, he thought with a odious mental growl.
The snow on the roof had finally piled too high to stack up any more, and a clump fell down past the window. As it fell, a face seemed to appear. Emerson squinted. Couldn't be—but it was, a kid out there in this loathsome winter.
The officer stood with a shiver, bundling up his coat a little more tightly (even with the heat on, there was a chill coming from under the doors) and stomping to the door.
"Kid!" he called outside. The wind seemed to take his breath away, so he tried again. "Kid! For God's sake, come inside!"
The boy straightened and looked around, as if the policeman could be talking to anyone but him.
"Kid, Jesus, there's so much snow in your hair it's turned white! Come in before you freeze!"
The boy—a teenager?—shakily pointed to himself, his mouth forming an "o." The winter madness must have gotten to him too. He seemed to be saying something, but Emerson couldn't hear over the wind's howling. He gestured with his whole arm, propping the door open and getting out of the way.
Cautiously, as if he thought the floor beneath his bare feet (!) would break, the boy shuffled his way inside. Like there was all the time in the world, like he wasn't even cold.
Officer Emerson was already using some words that he probably shouldn't in front of a child as he ushered him in. "What the hell were you doing outside dressed like that?" he added after a few swears.
"Y…" No wonder he didn't hear him before. The boy's words were quiet as a whimper. "You can see me?" he finally forced out.
"Barely. You practically blended into the snow." The officer was hunting down the blanket they used for people who came to the station in shock.
"You can see me!" he repeated incessantly. "That means you—you believe in me!"
As Emerson turned with a skeptical look on his face, the boy said with a nod like a dog waiting to be pet, "Jack Frost! You believe in Jack Frost!"
"I sure as hell do," Emerson said with an inadvertent sneer.
"That's me! I'm Jack Frost!" 'Jack' said, laughing, like he couldn't believe what I was hearing. A walking stick he held spun as he jumped on it, hovering a foot or so in the air. Emerson dropped his coffee cup.
"You're-! You're the spirit of winter?"
Jack eagerly nodded.
"You're the one who caused all this?"
"The snow drifts? The icicles on branches and houses? The fast wind, the frost on your windows? That's my work!" Jack was still laughing, but proudly and with a puffed up chest, like he was revealing a brilliant masterpiece he'd finished or a grand prank he'd managed to pull. "All me!"
Emerson's mouth had gone dry. He was crazy. He was really crazy. But that knowledge didn't quench any of the anger that rose its hackles at the childishly ignorant boasts of the boy before him.
If Jack Frost really existed… he was standing right in front of him. He really believed that.
Emerson dug around a drawer in his desk, his throat tight. He just had to… keep a normal front… not get too eager, not give himself away.
"Wow, Jack—I always thought you were real, but the other boys in the department, they said I was letting the cold air get to my brain." He was coaxing him down as he turned to face the evil spirit.
"I can't believe—" Jack Frost was laughing again. It sounded like screeching to Emerson; it scratched at his eardrums like braking tires on ice.
"Here, Jack. I can't believe it either. Let me feel you're real." Emerson almost wasn't able to force the words out of his mouth. Jack just grinned, kicking up his staff like he didn't have a care in the world, and lowered himself to ground level. He took a confident, barefooted step forward, reaching out his hands to offer like he expected the officer to take his fingers and make sure they were solid.
Instead, grimly, Emerson clapped a pair of handcuffs around the teenager's wrists. Evidently Jack wasn't used to touch. His reaction took a couple seconds, and by then it was too late to move.
"Jack Frost," Officer Emerson said formally, with a deadly serious glint in his eye. "You're under arrest for the deaths of uncountable people in my jurisdiction, as well as for numerous instances of property damage and trespassing." Maybe that's not what he should have charged Jack Frost with. But it was Jack Frost. Who the hell cared about due process for spirits?
Jack was panicking, pulling back, though he wasn't nearly strong enough to get out of Emerson's grip as he was dragged into a waiting cell.
"Good luck getting out of here, Jack." Emerson's smile was toothy and predatory. "We have the best security in the state.
"And I don't think anyone's going to bail you out."