Full chapter title should be "For In That Sleep Of Death What Dreams May Come," but stupid limiting title thing is stupid and limiting.
It's four in the morning. Actually, close to five now. This is where my muse goes. I should stop staying up late.
Pure speculation/rumination/my brain thinking too much. And also PURE MOVIE VERSE. I haven't read the books yet because I live in a tiny town with no bookstore and a library with a really slow and unreliable interloan system and besides that I haven't quite yet mustered up that particular brand of gonna-read-this-and-don't-care-about-no-nevermind shamelessness that allows twenty-year-old college students to request books written for ten-year-olds. I may regret publishing this in the morning because sketchy narration and adverbs galore and almost no editing (I think my sleepy brain caught the worst of it), but I hit that point where I just don't care enough to listen to the reasonable half of my brain and yeah
It was the Sandman who first noticed the oddness of the child-spirit that governed the winter seasons, decades after the boy's creation. He was doubtless not the first to discover the spirit, but he was the first to see Jack Frost as what he truly was. He had been, after all, always the most observant of the Guardians, and the most aware of other spirits and the problems the world presented.
So he kept an eye on the blue-and-white-and-brown figure that hopped around on trees and roof ridgepoles and, later, the tops of the rudimentary streetlamps. He laughed at the boy's antics as he created snow and started fights during the day and played in dreamsand during the night. And he seemed so new and constantly surprised by the world. It was adorable. Not that he'd ever let the boy know that. He didn't make it a secret of watching the boy, either, although no spirit ever cared to ask him what he thought of Jack Frost. Most of the other spirits didn't much care, and though at times Sandy felt concerned for the boy, he couldn't express those concerns adequately to anyone who cared enough to listen anyway.
But Jack Frost knew when he was being watched. He saw Sandy watching him, out of the corner of his eye, and smirked when Sandy merely smiled innocently and kept watching. There were times, in the beginning, when Jack would trace the dreamsand back to wherever Sandy had stationed his cloud. At first he just watched Sandy work, looking in confusion at the images above the small man's head. He tried talking a time or two, but quickly realized he was talking to someone who couldn't talk back—or wouldn't to the point of a couldn't, in any case. This never seemed to bother the boy much. He would help Sandy make his very best dreams, talk for a bit, try to decipher whatever Sandy's replies were, and fly off just when the Sandman was truly getting into the conversation.
It was frustrating, that habit of Jack's of flying off whenever he looked like he was getting too comfortable, but it was also charming. He liked that about the boy, because it wasn't like Jack was flying off forever. He'd just had enough talking. He could still see him, flitting through the clouds, stealing more dreamsand, waving goodbye in secret ways before heading back to earth. They weren't quite friends, but they weren't quite anything else, either.
There were times when the boy seemed lonely, times when he simply flew up to meet the Sandman without a single word of greeting, and just sat with him while he sent good dreams to the children of the earth and ached to send something to the child sitting on the wind next to him. Because Sandy grew lonely too, sometimes, and the child was a joy to him on empty nights. He was good company, good conversation, clever banter, a welcome distraction. He was pleasant, and always courteous enough to come to Sandy's eye level instead of making the small man fly up to his. Even his pranks were a source of amusement and joy—especially his pranks, if Sandy were to be completely honest; he still had a healthy dose of scoundrel in him, himself. And Sandy had noticed one or two done just in his line of sight with a large smirk afterward, as if performed purely for his viewing pleasure. It made the boy's invisibility all that much more heartless.
So, when he was flying low to the ground, enjoying the first snow of the year, and happened upon Jack Frost curled around his staff in a snow bank with his eyes peacefully closed and all the little lines around his mouth relaxed, the Sandman smiled and thanked the Man in the Moon for this chance to make the boy as happy as he so often made others. He gathered up a little handful of dreamsand, thought of his very best wintry dreams, and sent them flying toward the head resting against the pillow of snow and ice.
The sand bounced off that sleeping head and skittered away, dissolving into nothing.
Sandy frowned and tried again to no avail, frustrated. Why weren't his dreams sticking to the boy? It wasn't as if his magic couldn't work on spirits. He sent the Guardians and other sleeping spirits dreams all the time. Why on earth would he be barred from sending a sweet dream to this one child who so deserved them?
After the fourth attempt and giving Jack Frost a dream, the Sandman noticed with growing horror that the boy wasn't breathing.
He darted forward as fast has his sand could carry him, brushing snow from the boy's chin and throat. No warm mist blew from the boy's nose as it did Sandy's, and when he held his hand to Jack's face, he couldn't feel anything either. He pressed his fingertips to the vein at the boy's throat. He waited a minute, then two. There was no pulse, either, no heartbeat whatsoever.
His hands fluttered in the air over the boy's face. He didn't know whether he should attempt to administer first aid or just find a place to bury the spirit. The boy was dead, by all rights, and a hideous aching grief had already formed in the pit of his stomach. Sandy brushed the blanket of snow off of Jack's shoulders and torso, tugging and pulling at the material on the threadbare longcoat he'd actually helped the boy to steal just a year before. He wanted to get him out of the snowbank and somewhere he could have a proper burial. He may need help. He could take the body to North, he supposed. Santa Claus hadn't known Jack Frost, but if Sandy explained how, somehow, he'd become important to Sandy, he would help him take care of things.
But as he tried to pull the body from the snow, the boy groaned, his head twitching. Sandy froze for a moment, heart in his mouth, before tapping his cheek in an attempt to revive him. Bright blue eyes moved behind their lids, then cracked open. "S'ndm?" Jack moaned, pulling a hand from the snowbank to rub at his sleepy eyes. "Whatdoyawant?"
Sandy's heart had dropped back into its rightful place, but seemed to be trying to leap out of his chest. Images flashed above his head—snowflakes, skulls and crossbones, tree limbs breaking, exclamation points, desperate spirals, breaking hearts—he knew he was going too fast for even the best symbol readers, but he was too frantic to go any slower. Was the boy all right? Was he hurt in any way? What had happened?
"Mmhmmm," was all Jack said, blinking up at him. "I'm sorry, I don't—can this wait until morning, Sandy? I was trying to sleep." His eyes were still half-closed, as if he wasn't properly awake now.
Sandy's own eyes widened, his heart moving again, this time dropping into his stomach. Jack was breathing now, slow and steady and even breaths like a sleeper reluctantly aroused, and still no fog formed. And no fog ever did, he realized with a jolt. The small man floated backwards a few inches and shrugged, patting the boy's head. Jack mmrhmphed, then did some fancy motion with the hand not clutching the staff that made the snow in the bank cover him like a blanket. He fluffed up his little snow pillow, adding another layer of ice with a gentle touch, and closed his eyes. Slowly, Sandy moved forward and rested a finger against Jack's throat, where he once more found no heartbeat despite the steady breaths. Deeply disturbed and gruesomely fascinated, he watched with his fingers at the boy's throat as Jack's breathing evened out as a sleeper's would, then grew shallower, then stopped again. But he was sleeping, only sleeping. The waking had proved that.
Sandy had heard the expression "sleeping as a dead man," but never before had he seen a spirit that was dead as he slept.
No, that wasn't right. He'd be dead on waking, too, cold blood flowing through dead veins despite a heart that no longer worked. Breathing in to form words, breathing out to speak them, breathing again out of habit, but not necessity, and stopping in sleep. Sandy had seen ghosts before, but this, this was something terrible and new. This was the Man in the Moon's answer to ghosts, this thing that had clearly died but hadn't been allowed to stay dead. He watched the corpse, trying to convince himself that Jack had been born of ice and moonlight and hadn't ever lived. He couldn't do it. He couldn't forget distant-and-awkward-but-undeniably-human behaviors he'd seen in the boy over the last few decades.
And what's more, Sandy thought, unable to tear his eyes from the body, he doesn't know. It would explain how new the boy had always seemed, how unaware of the world. What Sandy had mistaken for antics and shenanigans had been actual ignorance, and by everything Sandy had seen, Jack had no idea he'd ever been alive. Perhaps he believed himself to be born of ice and moonlight.
Perhaps that made it easier.
Sandy reached forward and brushed a brotherly hand through Jack's white hair. Mortality was something one needed to discover and explore on one's own. He was glad he was unable to put it into words—pictures seemed suddenly so inadequate. He would tell no one, especially not Jack. He doubted anyone else would understand—Sandy didn't understand himself, but he trusted the Man in the Moon—and Jack didn't need the burden of a lost life and an early death on top of the loneliness of invisibility.
He tousled Jack's hair once more, smiling a small sad smile at the contented groan the sleeping corpse gave at the contact, before swarming his sand together again and taking to the heavens. The Sandman's work was never really over. He remained hovering right above Jack, however, so the boy could find him with ease. He truly cared for the boy, but didn't quite know where they stood, especially knowing what he knew, even if Jack didn't. He wanted to be accessible without crowding Jack, to be there when Jack wanted him. It wasn't much, but it was the most he could do.
Perhaps he could only give dreams to living children, but his cloud was always open to the dead.