Iceman
~.~
It had started as quick visit to Burgess on his way across America, and ended with him becoming the most awesome person in the world ever, at least according to the town kids.
Jack had just been passing through – he was just delivering the first snowfall of the year to North America, and since he was in the area, decided to stop by his home town and see how the kids were doing; maybe give them a relief from school while he was at it. He was pretty sure that it was around this time of year that they had exams, and if not, well, who could say no to time off? The snow had started well before he actually arrived, so by the time he touched down, the kids were already waiting for him with massive grins and ammunition. As soon as he was in range, he got pelted by a dozen unexpected snowballs, and his splutters of indignation were enough to send everyone into giggles. The giggles soon turned into shrieks of laughter as the winter spirit wrought his revenge and it wasn't long before everyone involved was covered from head to toe in powdery snow.
And then suddenly Jack felt a sharp but fleeting pain as a snowball found his forehead. "Ow, hey, who threw that?" he demanded, not particularly worried for himself but rather for his charges. A sheepish-looking gap-toothed brunet slowly stepped forth from the mob, hand raised tentatively. "Jamie, there was a stone or something in that one – you could'a hurt someone!"
"Sorry, Jack...I'll be more careful next time," said the younger boy, looking suitably abashed. Then a flash of horrified realisation crossed his features. "Wait, I got you in the face with that one, didn't I hurt you?"
"Nah, 's only a flesh wound, and even if it was worse, I'd be fine in a bit. But if that'd hit one of you, it would probably have hurt a lot more," said the winter spirit dismissively.
Jamie frowned. "How come?"
"How come what?"
"How come a stone in a snowball would have hurt you less?"
"Oh, that's easy. It comes of being a winter spirit – for one, my skin's harder than yours'd be, and then there's how all the pain receptors are mostly frozen and don't work as well as they should – like if you're standing out in the cold too long, not moving, and your toes start going numb."
"If you're that cold, how come you can still move?" piped Pippa, the scientist-in-training. She hadn't quite decided which field she wanted to go into yet, so until she made that choice, she was determined to become an expert on all of them. Just in case.
Jack frowned. He wasn't entirely sure. "I...dunno. Magic, I guess? Same reason I don't need to breathe, probably."
"You don't need to breathe?" gasped one of the twins, voicing the mortal congregation's thoughts. "That's so cool!" There was a wave of overawed affirmations and a few groans at the unintentional pun.
"Nope, no oxygen necessary. But I just breathe anyway out of force of habit. It's actually pretty annoying because when I sleep in the lake, I always wake up with water in my lungs, which is really uncomfortable."
"If it's uncomfortable, why would you do it?" someone asked.
"'Cause cold water is actually really comfy. Not that I'd recommend it to you guys, because you'd get frostbite or hypothermia or drown or all three. So don't try that at home. Or anywhere else, come to think of it."
"D'you have any other cool- I mean, interesting powers and stuff like that?" asked the other twin, narrowly escaping another round of moans; Jack could never tell them apart because they found great enjoyment passing their beanie around and confusing him, and who was he to rain on their parade?
"What, besides the snow-bringing thing? Uh. I don't actually need to sleep or eat, but sometimes I do anyway, just for fun. That's the same for all of us, actually. Um...I guess if you want more me-specific, then I guess I'm technically dead...but that's not much of a power, reall-"
"Oh my god, guys, Jack's a zombie!" said someone; the winter shepherd didn't catch who because soon even his thoughts were drowned out by the cacophony of ecstatic voices that followed the statement.
"Woah, woah, guys," he said in a vain attempt to get the excited kids to calm down. "I'm not a zombie-"
"Yeah you are! You just said-" interrupted Jamie, before being interrupted himself by Monty, who up until then had been mostly quiet.
"If you're dead, but you're still moving-"
"-then you gotta be undead-" continued one twin.
"-so you're a zombie!" finished the other, all of them assured in the verity of their statement. Jack sighed. Really, he supposed, their logic was infallible. Dead but still animate, so zombie. Made perfect sense, but he found himself slightly offended by the term – the word 'zombie' brought to mind a shambling husk of a person bent on violence, and that wasn't like him at all. He mock-frowned at his handful of believers.
"Hey! I prefer the term 'vitally challenged'! 'Zombie' is just plain offensive. Do I really look like I eat brains?" he asked, a teasing smile on his face. They giggled at him, and replied with a negative. "Ha, my plan worked, and now you're too close to do anything about it!" Jack gave his best evil laugh and they spent the rest of the day playing zombie tag.
~.~
Disclaimer: Not mine; if it was, RotG wouldn't have been half as much fun to watch.
A/N: I wanted to write out a headcanon of mine, so I did. Not happy with how it turned out, but I do like the phrase 'vitally challenged'. To anyone who reads Cold War, I'm sorry, I know I should be working on that or at least Exile, Vilify but I have a bit of a block on both, especially CW. And school is leeching all of my creativity and will to write :