Title: Untitled
Series: Rise of the Guardians
Rating: T
Characters: Jamie, Sandy, North, Jack, Toothiana, and Pitch. No pairings.
Notes: Movieverse AU wherein Jamie becomes the Guardian of Death after he dies. Contains mentions of suicide.
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Sometimes, as Jamie makes his rounds, he'll see golden sand streaking across the night sky. Once upon a time, he used to stop and watch Sandman bring dreams to sleeping children. He did not observe anymore, not since the time he reached out to touch a brilliant stream and it pushed away from his hungry fingers. The evasion confused and saddened Jamie; in the end, a dream's avoidance was only the second score on his bitter soul.
The start of winter is a heartbreaking time for Jamie. Hospitals always seem fuller when the cold season sets in, and it gets difficult to parcel his time between all who need him. Christmas Eve often finds him in the children's wing, where not even needles and the stench of antiseptic can keep North away. Jamie waits up for the man, protectively watching him work in silence. North is too busy for small talk, so he never learns that Jamie's quiet is because the bedridden children can see him, just as he never learns that many pass on in the night without ever seeing the bright paper wrapping of their presents. Jamie cries in the morning, but by then there's no one left to notice his tears.
Snow brings about mixed feelings in Jamie. During his days as a mortal human, Jack Frost had been his favorite of the Guardians from the moment they met in his bedroom. Jack became a role model to him, even though his duties called him elsewhere. As a boy, Jamie would have eagerly given anything to be near the winter sprite. As a Guardian, Jamie purposely does all he can to avoid him. When you care about someone, the greatest betrayal you can possibly do is disappointing them, and Jamie doesn't need to ask to know that he disappointed Jack the moment he pulled the trigger.
It's rare for him to see Toothiana's mini-fairies out on their errands, but it does happen. Their lines of work just don't often cross, and neither the fairies nor Jamie make it a point to seek each other out. Though one time, a small group of fairies drift close to him on their way back to their mistress's palace, and Jamie wonders aloud if they collect the bad memories of children alongside the good. He doesn't get a response, or even acknowledgment that he had been heard in the first place. It doesn't bother Jamie that much – their silence is as much of an answer as anything.
Thawing ice means the start of spring, and spring means Easter. Out of all the Guardians, Bunnymund is the only one Jamie actively hates. It's not the pooka's fault, of course. He and Jamie don't even talk to one another at all, and they both make the effort to avoid one another for professional reasons. But the whole life versus death issue is not the source of Jamie's hatred, Bunnymund himself is, because Jamie cannot look at Bunny without being painfully reminded of the sister he no longer has.
Ironically, Jamie forgave Pitch long ago. It took a while for him to overcome his childish grudge, but the more he pondered over the man's situation, the more Jamie wondered if perhaps he had just been looking at everything wrong. As much as he doesn't like the Man in the Moon, he knew that all Guardians had some trait that benefited children. Pitch, Jamie guessed, was the Guardian of Courage, and the fear was just a means to encourage bravery; a medium like Sandy's sand, North's toys, Jack's snow, Tooth's collected teeth, or Bunnymund's eggs. But he'd never tell Pitch of his hypothesis – such thoughts were better kept to himself. Unless asked, of course, but that was unlikely; the Guardians avoided Jamie as much as Jamie avoided them.