Kiss of Death
The golden eyes that stared frantically into Jack's own chilled Jack to the core of his being. Those eyes were filled with absolute terror and pain, panic and desperation. Despite all that the owner of those eyes had done to the Guardians, Jack couldn't help but feel himself filled with empathy when he stared back at the horrified countenance of Pitch Black as his Nightmares dragged him into the shadowy depths of the earth.
Really, when he thought about it, Jack realized that they weren't so different after all. Both of them wanted to be believed in, adored, told as bedtime legends to children throughout the centuries to come. The only difference between them was that one of them brought joy and safety to children, while the other brought terror and sleepless nights. Or did he have it all wrong? Was Jack the one leading the children into the darkness, and was Pitch their protector?
After all, Jack had created quite a few deadly snowstorms and avalanches during his three hundred years. He didn't like to think about the outcomes-the thrill of bringing to life something so wild and uncontrollable and chillingly beautiful pushed aside the hesitancies to make a catastrophe that could result in the deaths of thousands. And what about all those times he'd nipped people's noses, fingers, and toes? Hadn't many an innocent soul fallen prey to his persistent chill and been dragged away by the grim specter of Death? Perhaps fear couldn't kill people, but it was just as deadly as every snowstorm in the land.
Then again, there were times when Jack couldn't deny that fear had saved the lives of him or his family. With a sudden vividness, he recalled a time when he and his sister had been walking together in the woods when a sudden noise had startled her. Jack had teased her and tried to convince her that there was nothing to be afraid of, but his sister kept insisting that something was really out there. After coercing her into walking a couple of steps, she had begun to whimper, and Jack had given in and agreed to take her home. It was only the next day that he had learned that a pack of wolves had been roaming through the very woods he and his sister had been in. The vicious canines had attacked a sleigh carrying food and passengers to a nearby village. The wolves had mauled ten of the thirteen people riding in the sleigh and killed three. Their grisly fate would have been shared by Jack and his sister for sure if fear hadn't coaxed her to return home before tragedy struck.
Jack looked again at Pitch and felt a pang of doubt. How could he let Pitch die this way? Why should he let a man no different than he suffer a terrible fate? He wavered for a moment, remembering all the times when Pitch had attempted to manipulate him into joining him in his miserable darkness. He recalled their first encounter in Tooth's palace; their battles in Burgess; their meeting in Pitch's dark lair; and their argument in Antarctica.
Jack narrowed his brilliant blue eyes as he recounted their long talk together in that icy, forsaken place. Pitch had tried to cajole him into joining his side, but Jack saw through his honey-sweet lies and refused to stay at Pitch's side. He couldn't deny that Pitch's vision of a world where both of them were believed in was tempting, but Jack could never imagine harming an innocent child. He wanted to be remembered as a funloving protector of innocence and joy, not as a figure that returned to haunt childrens' darkest dreams at the most foreboding hours of the night.
Besides, he knew as well as anyone that Pitch had no heart. All he wanted was to cause pain and fear among bright-eyed little ones and create a world full of paranoid, cynical people where love and hope ceased to exist. There would be nothing beautiful or heartening about Pitch's vision of the world. All there would be was endless suffering and terror. Jack may not have been the gentlest or wisest of Guardians, but he didn't want to live in a world like that. A world without fun or beauty would be as joyless to him as it would doubtlessly be to children. So he had done the only rational thing to do under those circumstances: He denied Pitch's opportunity to stand by his side.
When Jack had rejected Pitch's offer, Pitch had shown him Baby Tooth, whom he was holding hostage, and forced him to hand over his staff, the precious artifact that Jack believed to be the source of his power. After Jack had handed it over, Pitch had refused to release Baby Tooth, but fortunately for Jack, she managed to free herself before he had to rescue her. Unfortunately, after Baby Tooth had freed herself, Pitch had viciously slammed him into a glacier and hurled him down a crevice, leaving Jack bruised and unconscious for almost two hours.
The hopelessness that had crashed down on Jack's shoulders when he had awakened alone in the crevice filled his chest once again as he watched Pitch slowly being dragged to his demise. Even after all that Pitch had done to him, it didn't seem fair to leave him to such a horrific doom and merely watch stolidly as though it were only a butterfly flitting through the air.
Maybe, in a time before Jack had existed-or even the Guardians had existed-Pitch had been a good man with a family and an honorable reputation. Maybe some tragic event had befallen him and turned him into the twisted shadow that he was today. Perhaps, deep down in the depths of his coal-black heart, Pitch still had a glimmer of love left. All these years living alone probably hadn't done anything to improve his view of the world. Jack knew that Pitch could have been him if he'd been invisible for only a few centuries longer. What if he had been Pitch? What if there was a chance that somewhere deep inside, enough light remained in Pitch's soul to redeem him? What if he'd been wrong about Pitch's intentions all along?
Jack knew what he had to do to make things right, but he hesitated, wondering what the other Guardians would think if they knew what he was about to do. He knew that if he were Pitch, he'd want to be given a second chance. But after all these years, he'd finally become recognized and beloved. He was no longer invisible, and he'd fought for and won the respect of the most famous childhood legends in the world. All of that could disappear with the next breath he would take. That breath would be his last, but Jack would rather die knowing that he'd saved the life of an innocent man rather than living on with the guilt that he could have helped a person not so different from himself. Besides, maybe Pitch would honor his legacy by changing his ways and helping to protect the children of the world if Jack sacrificed himself to save Pitch.
There was only one way to find out. He would have to leap and hope that Pitch would trust him enough to let Jack save the tormented boogeyman. Jack took a deep breath, preparing himself for what would likely be the last leap he took in his life. Before he lunged, he took one last loving look at the Guardians and the children staring after Pitch with mixed awe and terror. Jack knew he'd miss them, but he'd died for his sister once and he was more than willing to die again to save the one who needed to be saved the most.
"Goodbye, Guardians. Goodbye, Jamie. I…I'll see you again sometime, I promise," Jack whispered solemnly, blinking to erase the tears from his eyes. The shock on the Guardians' and Jamie's faces was the last thing he saw before he lunged forward and grabbed Pitch's wrist like a vise.
"Jack Frost! What do you think you are doing?" Pitch hissed.
Pitch tried to wrench his hand from Jack's, but the boyish winter spirit clung firmly to the boogeyman's wrist. "Trust me. I know what I'm doing. You're…you're not going to die. But you have to believe in me," Jack whispered.
Pitch narrowed his eyes, but he gave Jack a nod of consent. Gulping back tears of fear and sadness, Jack pulled with all his might, struggling with every fiber in his being to wrench Pitch away from the maddened Nightmares. The dark horses screamed and valiantly attempted to drag Pitch down into the depths of his twilight lair, but Jack combated their every inch of strength with another two inches of his own. Sweat dripped down his face and fell onto the icy pond, where it froze like angels' tears. He had no intention of losing this battle. Of all the fights he'd been thrown into in the past few days, none of them were as difficult as the one he was fighting now.
Not only did Jack have to fight against the strength of the Nightmares; he also had to battle his own conscience. As he yanked Pitch to safety, little voices whispered in his ears like invisible sprites: Don't do it. You know better than that. Pitch is cold and evil, and he'll stop at nothing to destroy the childhoods of millions of children around the globe. You're betraying Jamie and the Guardians and everyone you ever cared about. Why are you doing this for him? He doesn't deserve it. Why is he even worth saving? The ones who need to be saved have already been saved. There's no need to try to help a pitiful shadow like him-he's already past help.
"SHUT UP!" Jack screamed aloud. The minute he spoke, he knew that everyone watching would be giving him strange looks, but he didn't care. He had to say it in order to dissuade the malignant voices invading his head. He knew, deep down inside, that what he was doing was the right thing. Despite all that Pitch had done, he didn't deserve the cold, cruel fate that was now staring him in the face.
Nobody deserved that. It didn't matter how evil or good a person was-nobody deserved to be abandoned. Nobody deserved to be thrown into obscurity forever. Jack had narrowly been saved from such a fate himself by the belief of one precious boy, and he didn't intend for Pitch to fall into heartless oblivion. If there was no one to believe in him, then Jack wanted to be the first person. He'd show the Guardians what true empathy meant. There was precious little mercy left in this world, and what little was left Jack knew that Pitch deserved to have.
Jack could feel that Pitch was only a few yards away from safety now. He'd managed to drive most of the Nightmares away with a few blasts of ice-cold lightning from his staff, and only a few remained. The stubborn mares clung to the tail of Pitch's coat like mussels on a rock, clamping their teeth on Pitch's robe and refusing to back down.
"Come on, come on," Jack muttered to himself as he began to summon the power that would slay the Nightmares and free Pitch from his own fear. Tapping into the very core of his being, Jack drew upon the wintry energy charging through his veins and catapulted the Nightmares with the strongest surge of power that he'd ever unleashed. The swelling wave of ice power was even stronger than the one that he'd managed to summon when he'd battled Pitch after Sandy's demise. It swarmed through his being like a shockwave and exploded from his fingertips, channeling through his staff and pulverizing the Nightmares like vaporized stone. In less than two seconds, the last of Pitch's fearsome steeds were little more than a pile of sizzling black dust.
Panting, Jack dragged Pitch to safety before collapsing in an exhausted heap on the ice. "You're safe now," Jack whispered to the rather startled boogeyman. Pitch stared at him with disbelieving eyes, too stunned to even utter a word. The boogeyman blinked at Jack with wide eyes filled with astonishment. He looked as though he'd never understand why Jack had suddenly decided to pull him from the brink of oblivion, putting himself at risk to save the Nightmare King. All that Jack could do was smile faintly in reply. He knew that he'd done the right thing, and no matter what the Guardians or anyone else thought of him from now on, he knew that he'd never regret his decision.
Jack tried to sit up, but gasped in pain as his exhaustion kicked in fully and darkness began to overtake him. He hadn't realized until now just how much of a toll his spectacular attack had taken on him. The last time he'd released a surge of icy magic so powerful, he'd become so exhausted that he'd blacked out for a couple of seconds and would have fallen to his death if Tooth hadn't flown up and rescued him. If a blast of energy a little less than half the size of the one he'd just unleashed had caused him to lose consciousness temporarily, then who knew what would happen to him now?
As these fearful thoughts entered his weary mind, Jack saw to his horror that a small band of Nightmares had gathered around him, boiling malice emanating from their glowing ember eyes. Jack weakly attempted to fight back with a couple blasts of ice magic from his staff, but the feeble flickering sparks that emitted from the staff weren't enough to deter the powerful beasts. Instead, they danced away, almost teasingly, before charging towards Jack and grabbing the hood of his hoodie in their jaws. Then they proceeded to drag Jack across the ground towards the hellish hole in the ground that they had nearly pulled Pitch into.
"NO!" Jack screamed, struggling to escape from the grasp of the Nightmares. Try as he might, he simply wasn't strong enough to fight back against the Nightmares, or even make them drop him. One last time, he attempted to blast them away with his power, but this last act of resistance only made him even more exhausted than before. Finally giving in to the wrath of the Nightmares, Jack let himself go limp as dark spots began to fill his closing eyes. It seemed like hours, but the time it took for the Nightmares to drag him to the mouth of the whole probably only took a few minutes.
Terrified, Jack lifted his head to look back at Jamie and the rest of the Guardians one last time before he was dragged to his doom. All of the Guardians looked absolutely horrified, but the look of sorrow and fright that shone on Jamie's face cut into Jack's heart like a sharpened icicle. It was almost like having to die for his sister a second time. Of course Jamie wasn't his sister, but the bond that he'd shared with the precious little boy was even closer to Jack's heart than the ties of the other Guardians-it was almost as if Jamie were a member of his family.
"JACK!" Jamie screamed futilely as tears streamed down his face. He tried to charge towards the Nightmares to rescue the wintry spirit, but North grabbed the collar of Jamie's shirt and held him back. Jamie tried to argue with the gigantic beefy Cossack, but North's stern voice stopped Jamie cold. Still, Jamie continued to stare out after Jack with tear-filled eyes, reaching his arm out to Jack as though he wished he could snatch Jack back to safety.
The pitiful look speared Jack's heart once again, and a limited but powerful sense of resolve flooded through him. Who was he to lie dying when the boy whom he cared the most about couldn't stand to see him go? Angrily, Jack raised his staff and thrashed at the Nightmares, hoping against hope that they would release him. The Nightmares retaliated by beating him into submission with their hooves before leaping into the hole, bringing Jack with them.
A horrible scream tore from Jack's mouth as the world above rapidly vanished from his sight. "NOOOO!" he screamed again, reaching for the light as though it were a handle to pull him away from the darkness. The only things he could see were the steel-blue winter sky and the bright light of the full moon above as he fell into nothingness.
The moon had always been an inscrutable and oftentimes frustrating figure, but for the first time Jack felt as though the moon were truly heartless. "How could you?" Jack whispered hoarsely as curiously warm tears fell down his cheeks. "All these years, you never told me who I was, and when you finally tell me who I am and let other people see me, you take everything away from me! What kind of a man are YOU? Why would you want me to become a Guardian if my destiny was to die in the first place? Why, Manny? Why?! HOW COULD YOU?! And now Jamie…..he won't ever see me again…."
Jack's sobbing completely overcame him, and for several minutes he drowned in his own tears as he fell ever more swiftly. By the time he recovered, only a sliver of the outside world remained in his blurry vision. "Please….protect them…especially Jamie," Jack pleaded hopelessly. He knew there was nothing more he could do, but he'd prayed to the moon to protect his sister before he'd drowned, and he assumed that she'd continued on without him and grown up into a upstanding young woman without any incident. Hadn't she? There was no way to tell for sure. Now that he was gone, only fate would tell what would happen to Jamie and the rest of the Guardians.
As the moon vanished completely from his sight, Jack's final thought was that he wondered if he'd truly made the right choice after all. Was it really worth it to die for a man who'd manipulated him so cruelly and tried on more than one occasion to murder him? Or had he simply placed everyone he cared about in mortal danger once again?
Jack would have pondered this question more, but just at that moment the Nightmares yanked him through the rest of the tunnel and tossed him into the abyss. And then everything went black.