Disclaimer: Don't own. Kudos to Dreamworks Animation, seriously.
Title: After Dark
Word Count: 2,194
Summary: And Jack learned the hard way that after dark, all of the world's secrets came out, mortals' and non-guardians' alike. – Jack Frost, voyeurism.
Warnings: Voyeurism.
Author's Notes: 11/22/12. I saw The Rise of the Guardians today and just hadto write something for it. I hope this didn't turn out too creepy. It got into my head and just wouldn't get out.
Musical Inspiration: "Won't Back Down" by Benjamin Francis Leftwich (Tom Petty Cover).
Retroactively beta'd by ebonyquill. She's also the one who recommended this song, guhh.
After Dark
. * * * .
Jack got that the Guardians were supposed to be for the children and all, what with the holiday cheer and shameless bribery of shiny gifts and baubles—the old man in the moon's latest fix for the world's endless suffering—
—but no one ever said anything about the children who had already grown up.
. * * * .
Jack sits on the windowsill, watching the glass panes curl with lace from the puffs of his breath, and tries not to think.
Because inside this room is a girl—a young woman—come home from a long day of work, settling in for the night, just as he knew she would be.
It is late, the winter sky already dark with night, and she all but stumbles into the room, bundled tight with peacoat and hat with matching gray mittens. She barely manages to flick on the light of the desk lamp before she falls to the bed with a heavy sigh, basking in the soft, warm glow of the small, cozy—empty, empty, empty—space, and before Jack can even register what he is doing, his body automatically shifts forward, and he is peering farther inside.
For a few moments, all is still but for the slow, steady pattern of her breathing, and Jack watches on in fascination; he hasn't had much need for breathing in many centuries, but it's one of his favorite parts about watching the humans, and sometimes if he watches close enough or listens close enough—if he hopes hard enough—he can almost pretend that the feeling of fullness, the one he can't ever fully remember, has returned.
Finally, she moves, little by little, as if waking herself up. First, her fingers, then her neck, rotating slowly against the down of feathers, and soft tendrils of dark chestnut brown hair slip free from their hold. She is tired, more so today than any other day, because her back is still stretched long against the covers as she undoes the buttons of her coat, and it seems she has no intention of rising up, even as she shifts, carefully slipping one shoulder from the sleeve, and then the next.
The gloves soon follow, woolen and gray, followed then by her hat and scarf, all tossed carelessly to the floor in a growing pile of winter clothes. Jack has already abandoned his breath, waiting in stillness on the other side of the glass, and he can't tell if it's more to do with the fact that he can't believe he's watching this—he can't believe he's here again—or the fact that he can't see as clearly when his breath hides her behind his frost, and he doesn't know which is worse.
She's beautiful; soft and small—but just his size—and by day she's filled with laughter and warmth and bright smiles, and he's lying to himself when he spends his days telling the wind that he isn't consumed with the thought of what it would be like to talk to her, to laugh with her, to make her laugh. She leans farther back into the mattress, her dark hair fanning out along the downy white as she stretches her slender arms up above her head, and her eyes are restless beneath their lids. He has refused to look at her face until this point, watching with the tenuous hope that perhaps, just perhaps, tonight would be the night that he would finally be strong enough to break away.
But he is Jack Frost, and self-discipline had never been one of his strengths.
The woods behind him are quiet, save for the distant owls and night creatures, but they dare not come where winter so clearly reigns. The street is also quiet, save for the distant hum of car engines farther down along the long, winding road and the room, save for the sound of her shifting over the covers. Just as he thinks that she's going to fall asleep, she toes off her shoes, which clatter to the hardwood floor, and she slips her sweater over her head—a deep, dark red, and what he wouldn't give to see blue—without even bothering with a single button. Creamy, smooth shoulders reveal themselves to his wide eyes, and it's true what they say, he thinks irrationally, his gaze gliding over the gentle ridge of her collarbone beneath her cream-colored tank top, about there being too many buttons in the world.
She won't last much longer, he sees, because she is already growing frustrated with the clasp of her jeans, and just as he half-thinks that she's willing to sleep in them, she tears them down her legs with half-hearted kicks, and ice-cold shock shoots up his spine at the sight sprawled before him. Chestnut waves and bare legs and long lashes, and a warm light, catching the crease between her brow.
Jack swallows hard, and waits for her to hide herself under the warmth of the covers, but she doesn't. He doesn't dare press himself any closer to the glass, but he is so close, and still nowhere near, and his eyes trailing wonderingly over the hills and valleys of her shape, mapping the memories that he knows will have to last him for centuries.
She opens her eyes then, and he can feel the fear and wanting claw its way into his chest, the bullet of ice piercing through his heart as he sees that lovely shade of brown, mixed with gold and light, and hazed with sleep and silence. Jack has to wonder what she could be thinking about. Did she see the snowflakes I made her? he wonders. Or the frost I left for her this morning?
She sighs deeply, chest rising high with the unsteady breath, and Jack's forehead sags against the window, his breath unfurling a trim of filigree swirls along the window's edges. From across the room, she shivers, and Jack's heart sinks lower in his chest.
The young woman looks to the ceiling, eyes lost to near-sleep, and releases a sad, little laugh; he recognizes the loneliness instantly.
She whispers, "I don't know what I'm doing wrong."
And he breaks, because—
Three hundred years of loneliness—of resentment, of frustration, of invisibility—is a lot to ask of an endlessly seventeen-year-old boy.
. * * * .
For a long time, he had not known her name. He'd told himself that it might take the fun out of it, might ruin the game if he got to know each and every single mortal he stuck around for more than half a minute, but when he caught himself coming back on the third day—and then a fourth and then a twelfth—he knew that something was different.
Moderation had never really been his style.
She watched over a little girl everyday, a rich, young daughter from the other side of town, which is how he found her in the first place. The child had a knack for mischief, which the ever-brash and restless Jack appreciated, and it wasn't long before he'd cast his spell over their wintry afternoon stroll through the park. The woman had a penchant for following rules—which he detested—but a toughness streak that impressed him, and a way with sweetness and smiles and warmth. This, he thinks, is what had drawn him in most of all.
Just indulging a little curiosity, he'd thought defiantly, staring up into the darkening sky. What's it gonna matter?
But the girl he thought he knew by day was not the woman he saw by night, and Jack learned the hard way that after dark, all of the world's secrets came out, mortals' and non-guardians' alike.
He'd watched as she laid herself down to sleep, too old for the Sandman's golden dust and too young for such an early night, and pressed his fingers to the glass as she cried silent tears into the pillows.
He had returned the next night, and almost every night thereafter.
. * * * .
The reason for this, he thinks, is because he is a fool.
The reason for the almost, Jack thinks, is because he is a coward.
. * * * .
He does not dream. He vaguely wonders one morning, floating through a cloudless sky on an aimless wind, if he might ask Sandy for help—perhaps even merely in jest, for the sake of his pride—but decides against it. The dreams Sandy conjures are safe places for innocence, where safe-kept wonders are played over and over in the minds' eyes of children.
Jack considers it once more as he watches her turning in sleep, one dark strap of a camisole slipping over the curve of a shoulder, and—
He could never imagine tainting that world with the things he wishes he could do to this woman.
. * * * .
Sometimes.
Sometimes he sees her staring out her window into the nothingness of the trees, tracing her delicate fingers over the frosted glass, just where his fingertips rest on the other side, just long enough to make him hope.
But then she'll rest her temple against the cold glass, tired after a long day, and close her eyes, and it won't matter, because she's never been able to see him, anyway.
. * * * .
There is talk in the town when winter is especially mild this year, perhaps except for the houses closest to the forest—but that's to be expected, isn't it?Still, Man in the Moon stares down at Jack Frost with his glowing light, and Jack knows that he cannot continue to linger.
But it's not goodbye, he tells himself. Not really.
Jack is careful to close the window behind him, although he knows it will probably do him little good. In a strange, detached sort of way, he knows that there is heat in the room, although he cannot quite feel it the way humans do, but he also knows that it should offer some measure of a shield against his inevitable chill, however futile it may seem. This gives him just the slice of courage he needs to carefully make his way closer, silently pressing the soles of his bare feet into the wooden grain, step-after-step, with a lightness of foot that he'd never quite been able to understand.
Her breathing is deep and restful, and as he crouches near her side, peering into her peaceful, sleeping face, he drinks in the sight of her, greedily; he has never been this close, not while she was inside, not after dark.
And it's then that he hears the gentle rhythm of another piece of her, humming wonderfully from her chest with life and love and life. The sounds of her mortality ring together through his mind like a song, and Jack decides that his favorite part about watching humans—about watching this human—is the sound of her beating heart.
He longs to reach out and touch her, to brush away the stray locks of hair curling into her eyes, just to see, to know what it might feel like. He can imagine, but it's not the same.
It's never the same.
His chest tightens as fantasies flood forward, visions and images of a never-remembered once-human life—of what it means to have someone see you, to hear you—and the hope that one day he won't have to ward off the reality of his isolation anymore, that the madness and the loneliness and the never-ending distractions—that never, never work—will stop. It will all stop.
Jack reaches forward and gently pushes aside the long bangs that had fallen into her eyes, careful not to brush her skin. She curls in on herself, huddling into the blankets, and his face falls.
He wants to run, and the coward that he is and pretends not to be wants to leave now, before he can see any more—no more shudders, no more tears, no more brown specked with gold—but he does not know when he will be back.
But he will be back.
Her body stills, and Jack's eyes narrow with focus, his mouth slanting into a grim, determined line.
"One day," he whispers, as he lifts the blanket higher, tucking the edge around her exposed neck. "You'll see me," he vows, leaning close, and when he sees the goosebumps raise over her skin, he imagines that it's from the sound of his voice, and not the chill. "One day, you're gonna believe in me. And when that day comes... I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but you'll know me," he whispers, feeling the declaration spin itself into the very fabric of his soul.
She breathes deeply, and when her eyelashes flutter, he knows that it's time to leave. With a sigh, Jack whispers in her ear.
"Neither of us will be lonely anymore," he mouthes, careful not to nip at her skin, and he swallows away the pain. "I'll find a way."
.
.
.
I promise.
.
.
.
She begins to stir, but he is already at the window, outside looking in, and when she looks up toward the trees and stares—when her gaze lingers for just a moment too long at the spot where he sat staring back—he calls upon the wind, and lets it take him away.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.