The cold wind rushed in through the open window, Jamie couldn't stand to shut it though.
No.
He'd shut that window too much in the past few years.
Not this time, not right now. Despite the fact that if his younger sister Sophie were to somehow sense the icy draft coming in through that window and come into his room to scold him and close it….
No he wouldn't let her.
She wouldn't dare, she would not deny him this hope. This last hope.
To see his friend, one last time, never mind that Jamie hadn't seen Jack in a long, long time.
He had faith that the winter spirit would find him. So he simply stared out the open window and watched the snowflakes flutter past; a small happy smile on his lips.
–
Jack felt the overwhelming sense that something was wrong, a deep foreboding in his gut that grew with every passing day.
A sense of fear that was persistent and unyielding.
The reason this fear unnerved him was the fact that everything seemed fine.
No lights on the globe flickered out at an alarming pace, no ominous whispers from the shadows, no prophet-like warning from The Man in the Moon about a gathering threat.
And yet something felt off, Jack had the sense that something was going to happen.
Paranoia had him pacing, ice-blue eyes darting to the globe with each back and forth step.
Then a sudden thought gripped him so unexpected yet undeniable and the fear in his gut hardened to something else, causing an almost irrational sense of panic.
He froze.
His footsteps faltered and he stared unblinking at the massive globe before him, part of him wanted to brush off the awful feeling that had wormed its way into his brain but that feeling in his gut was now even more impossible to ignore.
North had always to him- and everyone else for that matter- to listen to your gut.
Jamie.
Whatever was going on it had something to do with Jamie.
Jack felt like even the winter wind couldn't carry him fast enough.
–
The window was open.
Jack pushed it open even further, snowflakes following him in on a gust of wind, dancing around his feet before settling to melt on the wooden floor.
It was not the same house Jack remembered but he should have expected that, people rarely stayed in one place their whole life.
Jack took a moment more to look around the room, a smile tugging at his lips as he spotted the photographs of Mount Everest tacked up on the wall amid other pictures of various family members and friends and even a couple of greyhounds that must have been pets of Jamie's through the years.
Jack padded barefoot across the cold wooden floor towards the bed that lay in the very center of the room.
He didn't know what he had been expecting, but it wasn't this. Jack blinked, startled to see an old man in the bed.
There's no way that's Jamie. Jack thought.
Even as the man turned his head ever so slightly towards the winter spirit and Jack saw a spark of that childlike wonder in his eyes.
Glimpsed that inner light that was just so familiar. There was no more denying who was looking at him.
"Hello, Jack old friend."
Jack couldn't help the start of a joking grin.
"I'm not the one who's old."
"No." Jamie chuckled, voice sounding soft and raspy. "You haven't changed a bit."
"Jamie? Are... you all right?"
The old man smiled, eyes still shining and opened his mouth to reply-
"How touching." A dark voice whispered mockingly, emanating from the shadows.
Jack whirled around and came face to face with the spirit that had just materialized.
"Pitch?! What are you doing here?" Jack hissed, subconsciously placing his body between the Nightmare King and Jamie.
"No need to be so dramatic, Frost." Pitch replied tone jaded.
"Why are you here?" Jack demanded again.
Pitch rolled his eyes. "Really Jack, I would have thought you would put two and two together faster than this. Clearly I give you too much credit."
Jack lowered his staff, trying to pick apart the older spirit's words, Pitch Black was an expert at double sided speech.
"What are you talking about?" Jack eyed the older spirit warily.
"Did you have something to do with this?"
"Don't be ridiculous." Pitch scoffed, making no move to come closer to the defensive winter sprite.
"I am here," Pitch continued after a moment. "Because he is afraid." Pitch gestured nonchalantly towards Jamie who had not spoken a word during their entire debate.
"He is dying and afraid." Pitch took his eyes away from Jamie.
"And you are afraid as well." Pitch fixed his golden-silver eyes on Jack for one single moment before moving them back to Jamie. "How strange to feel his fear now, after so many years. The fear of the last child who believed when all other children had forgotten." Pitch mused.
Jack raised his staff once more and still Pitch did not move from his spot at the edge of the shadows.
Jack once again looked back to Jamie, scanning his friend's aged face with a new sort of desperation now that the fear he'd been denying was finally confirmed aloud.
The fact that Jack was dead didn't bother him so much anymore, but when faced with the idea that Jamie was laying on his deathbed?
Jack refused to accept the fact that his friend- the first person to believe in him- to see him- was dying.
And yet. Some part of him had known that was the case before Pitch had even made his presence known.
Jamie finally spoke then, lifting his head off his pillow and looking past Jack... at Pitch.
"I meant what I said to you all those years ago. I do believe in you, I'm just not afraid of you."
Jack's mouth dropped open, his eyes darting between Jamie and Pitch.
Here was something he'd never thought he'd see. Jamie acknowledging Pitch? Admitting that he had believed in the Nightmare King the same way he believed in the Guardians?!
Pitch met Jamie's gaze, considering the dying man before him and not looking at all shocked by what Jamie had just admitted. He'd known that Jamie believed in him, but to have him admit it -not just once but twice- was something else entirely. "No, you are not afraid of me. You fear death."
"Yes."
Jamie lowered his head back down to the pillow, as if that single word had lifted some invisible weight off his chest.
Jack watched horrified as Jamie's eyelids slowly fluttered shut.
"Thus what I had sent out to do decades ago is finally completed; his Light has gone out."
Jack whirled once more to face Pitch.
His eyes glowing with blue-white light as ice began to spread outward from his feet and a howling wind rushed into the room with such force that the window shutters banged against the wall.
Pitch was fairly certain that he heard the glass of said window shatter and still he refused to move from where he stood, observing the actions of the grieving winter sprite as proof for his next words.
"And you," Pitch spoke. Not even bothering to raise his voice to be heard over the howl of the wind.
"Your fear was that you would lose the first person who ever believed in you." a small malicious, knowing smile crossed Pitch's face as he watched Jack's turmoil.
"Why do you think the other Guardians don't hang around kids Jack?" Pitch taunted. "because mortals die Jack. Mortals die and we do not, this," Pitch pointed at Jack and in response a gust of wind rushed at the Nightmare King but Jack wasn't focusing enough to hit his mark and the wind ended up whipping about the room, knocking things over and ripping the photos off the walls.
"is only happening to you because you got too attached."
The tempest stopped as suddenly as it had began. The various objects the wind had picked up were reclaimed by gravity and crashed to the floor with a deafening bang and shattering of more glass.
Jack glared at Pitch eyes still glowing blue-white but despite the malicious amusement in Pitch's smile his eyes reflected no hostility; merely the deep and cutting gaze of a spirit whom had lived far longer than Jack- far longer than any of the other Guardians.
"Welcome to immortality Jack, awful isn't it." With that last comment Pitch finally vanished.
The ominous blue-white glow faded from Jack's eyes.
And back at the North Pole a single light flickered out on the globe.