Word Count: 1,169
As frost cradles him in its icy grip he distantly hears the sound of humming. It's a thing to ponder on, the humming, because Steve is sure that he's dead. But, if he's dead, then why is there cold and dark and humming? His mother had said that when he died, when he finally left the world behind, he'd be surrounded by warmth, light, and laughter.
Only one of those things are present.
Because the humming has transformed into tiny chuckles, and Steve thinks he hears the tumbling of glaciers in that sound. He concentrates on the sound, trying to decide if the humming really is laughter or if it even exists. Before he is able to decide though the sound comes to a halt; leaving the cold and dark and whistling winds.
Jack is curious about the man that is trapped in the ice. When he first finds the man he is surprised, he is astonished that someone is encased in his domain.
He kneels and reaches out a single pale hand and touches the frozen water where the man is entrapped. Wonder lighting his face as the ice whispers to him. Echoing the faint sounds in its core.
ba-bump thu-bump ba-thump
Jack feels his eyes widen as a laugh tears itself free from his throat. The man in his ice is alive!
Steve has lost track of time.
The only thing that even hints at a passage in time is the sound of the humming that could be laughter.
It comes and goes with the wind it seems. Because he'll be stuck in silence and then all of a sudden the humming will return. It will shatter the almost silence that Steve is surrounded with constantly (he thinks that the ice whispers to him, but that's not possible, because ice can't say anything, let alone whisper) and he will hear what he thinks are words.
But that can't be. The humming laughter and the thing that creates it and the maybe words aren't real. It's just Steve imaging things, like when he was a child and to frail to go out and play. He'd imagine a playmate then, someone who wouldn't mind sitting inside with him while the others played.
He's simply reverted back to thought up friends.
He talks to the man in his ice sometimes. Summarizing the vast changes that have swept across the lands since he's become whatever he is. Since he rose from the lake as Jack Frost; a being with no memory of what he once was. A wisp ignored by humans and spirits alike. Jack chortles lightly as he regales the frozen man about some of the more wondrous changes that society and the world have went through. He also growls in frustration, teeth grinding as he spits out the recent flaws of humanity. How they've spent decades developing bigger, grander, deadlier weapons to cut each other down with.
The humming has become broken. It stutters into a start and then breaks off randomly, it's simple melody has changed, becoming closer to words then nonsensical sound.
Steve isn't sure what to think of it.
It is 1999 when Jack visits the man in the ice for the final time. He gazes at the sheet of cold that separates him from his only companion. Knees bent he gently levels the snow over the spot he knows the man to reside; there have been others lately. People that are searching, questing for something. At first Jack had thought that the odd boat was a lost soul. Pushed off course by the winds that he knew so well, but after the tenth ship had sailed not a mile from the man he talked to, he knew. He knew that these ships that had been coming for human decades were for this man in his ice. That this man had a place to belong, that there were people who cherished, cared, adored him.
That this man was not like him. Was not abandoned. Left alone.
And since he has people that care, Jack should leave him be. Lest his state of being is contagious. After all, maybe his loneliness is a curse. Placed on him for some sort of misdeed, and if he spends too much time with others, who's to say that they won't also be cursed?
He can't do that to this man. This man that has been his silent companion for years. This man that has lost years to him already.
So Jack floats. He lets the wind tug him high into the sky and away. Away from the man in the ice. Away from the people that are searching for him. Away.
The humming that could be laughter and the broken sounds that might of been words have stopped. Silence and darkness and cold are the only entities present; and Steve feels alone. Alone because the humming has halted and the ice has lost it's slow drag. The quiet whispers of the element encasing him have gone silent.
His solitude is broken by a earth shattering screech that reminds him of Howard Stark and the metal contraptions that he kept company with. The ice that has trapped him is slowly being chipped away; this he knows because the ice is finally speaking again. More aptly, it is screaming. It shrieks and wails, and he thinks that he'll go deaf from the sound.
He tries to talk, to tell whatever is ripping the ice apart to halt. But his jaw is frozen shut and his voice is lost. He tries to move, to force his body into stopping this beast that is harming his constant. But again he can do nothing.
Steve recalls his childhood in those last moments of being in the ice's embrace. He remembers his inability to fight back, to protect, to serve. And he wonders if leaving the ice that has kept him company will be like when he left his old body behind.
Jack touches down after the invasion in New York. He feels the grief and pain from the ice that he enchanted to protect; the portion of his magic that he left behind is still crying for the man that was torn from it:
Where? Gone? Why?
He carefully collects the shards of magic, pooling them into his cupped palms he gently blows outward. Freeing the pieces and imparting his knowledge so that this magic can rest.
He is safe. He left to protect, shield, guard.
His magic soars free, elated to know that it's man is still alive.
Jack watches as the fragments collide with each other in the wind, slowly forming one magic again. One magic with one goal. To encircle it's man. And as Jack watches, the part of his magic that he left with the man in his ice goes to rejoin him. Captain America. And Jack feels strangely fine with this, that his magic has chosen an adult to safeguard.
After all, the man resonated as a child to him.