Chapter 2-Memories
"Jack! Jack, wake up, this is an emergency," a voice called out to me; though I was still in a sleepy state. The undefined figure kept on shaking me to wake up from bed. "Go away, I still need sleep," I muttered, waving my hand at the person still having my eyes shut. I even moved my body the opposite direction and pulled the fluffy pillow over my head to drown out the outside noise; I wanted quiet. But it didn't help since the pillow was ripped out of my hands, "This is no joke mate, get up, Tooth's home is being attack and we all need to go and help her now!" Bunnymund yelled; he even pulled the blanket away from me as well. I finally rose up from bed, "Fine, fine! I'm up, just go, I'll meet you there," I yelled; I'm not really much of a morning person. "Well hurry up, North is waiting!" Bunnymund then made his way out of the room. Since I was barely getting up I didn't completely get what was going on, after a few moments, then it clicked, "Tooth's place is being attack!" I finally registered it in mind; my eyes widen in shock. I immediately jumped off of the bed, changed as quickly as possible, got my staff, and ran to meet the rest of the team.
By the time I got to the meeting place, North, sand-man, and Bunnymund were all ready there together waiting for me. "Nice for you to join us Jack, now let's go, there is no time to lose, this way, were going to the sleigh," he said motioning his hand to follow him; though I didn't budge, "Wait, wait, wait, you except me to ride with all of you?" I asked following them. We went to another room and North pushed the double doors that were in front of him, "I'm not getting into some rickety old-" though before I could finish my sentence I saw that the elves, and the yetis' were brining it out. I'll admit for him, it was amazing, "sleigh," my eyes were still locked on it. "Okay, one ride, but that's it," I then immediately jumped right in admiring everything in it; I was also accompanied by the sand-man and (forcefully by North) Bunnymund. I was beyond excited when we were about to take off, though as we started to gain flight for a few seconds, I noticed that Bunny was extremely uncomfortable riding; I couldn't help but chuckle a little due to his silly little fear of flying high.
We ended up flying really high and might I say, the whole world of the North Pole looked breath-taking, though since we were really high up, I couldn't help but to play a small joke on my dear friend. I looked down from the edge of the sleigh for a second standing, I then turned to Bunny and smiled, "Hey, you got to see this, it's amazing!," I yelled at him; he slowly turned to faced me, still not moving an inch; I then pretended to lose my balance, got carried off by the wind, and supposedly fell off the sleigh. I secretly lay back, relaxing on one of the sleigh's runners. I saw that he had a worried expression on his face, "Jack!?" he asked; then of course his worried expression faded once he saw me. "Awww, you really do care about me, I'm touched," I said sarcastically; though he just rolled his eyes and went back to his seat. "Will you two stop playing around, we're almost there," I heard North say from ahead of the sleigh. So I ended up going back into the sleigh due to his comment As we were up in the sky, I noticed North pulled out an orb and threw it, the orb activated, opening a portal to Tooth's world. I was completely stunned when I saw what was happening as we went through; it felt like déjà vu since all the nightmares I saw in my dream were everywhere, consuming everything they could. "Oh no," I said under my breath staring at the unpleasant scenery. North then parked the sleigh immediately and everyone sprang into action. They were running to different directions, charging at the nightmares; though I was still in the sleigh stunned, I couldn't move all I could think about was the dream, remembering the dark image of me being devoured by those creatures. But I quickly snapped out of the trance and got out ready to fight as well.
As I fought using my power, every single nightmare I'd hit, vanished into nothing; leaving no trace. Though I figured fighting them didn't do any good since most of them started to retreat, whatever it was they came here for, they got what they wanted and we were too late. As I looked up at the sky I saw that the darkness was leaving, along with Pitch carrying a big bag of something; I didn't know what was going on, but I know i couldn't allow him to escape, so I immediately flew up high charging at him. As I raised my staff to throw a hit, to my surprise, he doge and threw a forceful punch, knocking me off….falling.
"Jack! Jack! Can you hear me? Are you alright?" I faintly heard a voice say to me. I slowly opened my eyes, waiting for my vision to come back to me; as it did, I saw that the Tooth-fairy was hovering over me. "Yeah, I'm alright," I said getting up. "Oh, good, at least there is some good news," she said looking away; though I raised an eye-brow due to her comment, "What do you mean?" She turned facing me, "Pitch, he took the children's teeth; it's the main reason why he was here." But I was still confused, "Teeth? Why teeth?" "The teeth hold precious memories of a child from their childhood, I collect them to keep them safe from harm's way, but now that Pitch has them, he can easily transfer nightmares to every child with the help of those memories; they're like a gateway to the mind were dreams and everything else is located," she said to me worried. "He even has yours," she said moving closer. "Mine, what do mean mine? I was never born a human, well I was one for a brief time, but not enough time for me to lose any teeth," I said back. Though what I said seemed to shock her, which I had no idea why. "You really have lost your memories; completely wiped clean, you may not believe me Jack, but you were once a human…a real person," she said softly. My eyes widen, "What?" Though I quickly denied what she told me, "No, it…it can't be," I said with sadness and confusion. Then…the dream I had last night…about the boy and the little girl…was that my memory? "What…what is going on?" Without another word, I ended up flying off into the distance leaving. "Jack, wait come back!" I faintly heard the Tooth fairly say, but I'd refused to listen and kept going. "I have to know the truth…the truth about myself; I think it's time for me to pay my parents a visit."
After a few hours of flying, I finally made it back to my own home world. Everything seemed the same the way I remembered it before I said my good-bye to my mother. I landed on the softness of the snow and steadily walked searching for the ice-castle I use to live in. After a few minutes of walking, I finally found it; to my surprise, the castle also didn't seemed to change much either. I slowly walked over to the front door, giving it a loud knock, hoping someone will open it. The door opened revealing it to be my father; he too hadn't change either, but what do you except since our kind doesn't really age. "Son?" It took him awhile to register that it was me since he hadn't seen me in a long time. Then he smile, "Son! It's been so long, I almost forgotten how you looked like," he ended up hugging me due to the excitement. "Yeah, dad I'd missed you too, so how is mom doing?" I asked. "She's doing fine, though she isn't here at the moment, but I'm pretty sure she would be glad to see you if she was here right now," he said. "Oh, so can I come in?" "Oh sure, yes come in, come in." As I walked in I heard the door shut, "So how have you been, I haven't really heard from you," he asked walking up to me. "Oh, good, good, I practically have a place in the North Pole with Santa," I said kicking one of my legs back and forward. "Oh, wow, you're doing better than I hoped," he said happily. Though I really felt like cutting to the chase, "Dad, the reason I'm here is because something happened that's been bugging me, and I just want to know the truth about it, that's all," I said to him. "Well what is it, ask me anything." It took a little time for me to say it, but I eventually did, "Am I really yours and mom's real child?" I asked staring directly at him. "Well of course you are, we had you since you were a baby, you and your brother," he said. But I wasn't truly convinced, "Dad please, I really want to know," I said. I saw that he was quiet for a moment then finally spoke, "No… you're not, we were hoping you never found out, how did you?" "The Tooth-fairy said since she collects teeth from mortals." "Oh," he said. "Care to explain." He then grabbed a chair and sat down. "Sit down then and I'll tell you, what I know." So I did.
"You see, it goes back many, many years ago when me and your mother first created this castle. Before you, we were the ones who would bring winter to Earth since we thought it was our job and we decided we wanted to make that our tradition to pass down when we would have kids of our own, but I do believe at the time, that there was this war going on in the moon and the man on the moon knew of our existence, so he wanted our help. We did what we could and sent out soldiers for him to fight alongside him. We ended up establishing a friendship because of that." "The man on the moon, who is he?" I asked. "He was the first guardian that would protect the children before he passed it on to a team." "Oh, then what happened?" "Well honestly, I've never really heard the outcome of the war after that, so I assumed everything turned out okay, so we continued with our lives, and decided to have a child since your mother wanted one so bad. But then one day we heard from the man on the moon again, he reported that he was truly grateful that we help him, but he ask us in doing him a favor that your mother couldn't refuse.
I still don't know the reason why, but he said to us that a pupil of his own one day found you, lying dead in the middle of a forest and the man on the moon couldn't bare it see you like that, so with his magic, he gave you a new body; a new life, in other words, you were reborn, casting away your old body, settling into a new. But along with doing the process, he didn't know that you would turn into a baby; starting from scratch again, so he needed someone to raise you, to be cared for and since you held a similar power to us, he thought it would have been a perfect fit for us to take you in and raise you as our own. And since we were going to have one, your mother accepted and went off to get you from him. But of course at the time, he said it was a child, so we didn't know if you were a boy or a girl and I was anxiety waiting to see the new arrival, and then once we both saw you, you looked so similar to us, that we forgotten you were adopted and basically treated like our real son. Though since your mother heard your name was Jack before, she kind of wanted it to stay that way even though we melded the name together with Frost." "Huh, well that explains it," I said. "Though for the record, at the time of naming you, she said she didn't know why she was attach to that name, but she eventually told me later the reason why," he continued. "So, since the way I looked and the power I had, it was all so surprisingly perfect that I never questioned about it, but then what about my brother?" I asked. "He was the only real son we had, but since he would look up to you, and you two would always play together when you were little, we never really told him you were our adopted son." I then looked down, feeling like if I had a lump in my throat, remembering the dreadful event that happened to him on that day, "Oh," I said with sadness.
"Well…I guess that explains why I was always so fascinated by the humans from Earth…because I was one…but just didn't know it," I said softly. Then another thought occurred to me, "But I was a human again for a brief time, you remember, how come my memories 0f actually being human didn't come back to me?" I said raising my head. "Because those memories were from your past life, the one that was given up, so you can live another, that spell I gave you to become a human, yes it granted your wish, but since I told you there was a way to get out of it, you weren't completely human enough to get the memories from your past life back, sure it seemed like you had a new body, but in reality, you were only human by appearance, you were still the winter spirit we all knew inside, hence why you didn't look the same when you were human again," he said to me. "Oh." "Anything else you would like to know?" I thought for a moment, "How did I die?" Silence filled the air, after awhile he finally spoke, "I'm sorry, I don't really know, the man on the moon never really told us that, he just wanted us to take care of you." Then I thought about Pitch again, flying away with the bag full of children's teeth; I have to get that bag, it holds the final answer of what I'm looking for. I then got up, smiling, hugging my dad, "Thank you for telling me the truth dad; I will always love you and mom even if you really aren't my true parents." "I love you too, Jack." "Tell mom I said hi." "I will." After the heart-warming good-bye, I headed out the door walking in the endless weather of snow again.
I then stopped for a moment, looking up, admiring the snowflakes as they fell. Unexpectedly, though, the moon appeared up in the sky again; it felt like if it was shinning over me, "Why…why did you bring me back? What am I suppose to do? I heard from the other guardians that I was chosen to be in their team, but I didn't think it was from you." I then looked down staring at my bare-feet thinking about it. "Speaking of them, I better go and meet back with them, it seemed kind of wrong for me to have taken off like that; they're probably worried and looking for me by now." As I was about to take flight on my staff, I felt an extremely unusually cold chill running down my spine. "And they're about to be even more worried," I heard a dark voice say. It was Pitch again; no doubt about it. Darkness started to emerge and the creatures came out. They started to circle around, surrounding me. I was cautious and held my staff defensively; though in an instant I felt something grab me; it was so quick. I struggled; I had trouble breathing, it felt like I was having the life crushed out of me; suffocating, whatever it was, it had a grip on my neck. "You think this is painful, oh Jack… this is just the beginning," I heard him say. "You think being a guardian is wonderful, protecting those humans you are fascinated by, well I'll show you something that will make you reconsider the thought; no human has ever been kind to you; you're deceived by a lie!" I couldn't handle it anymore, I was feeling weak, I ended up dropping my staff, my vision started to get hazy as I was slowly losing consciousness.
*Pitch ended up taking Jack…having him now in the palm of his hand.
