Jack yelped in surprise and nearly fell off his branch. The woman cackled wickedly and thankfully backed off, hovering a few yards away in the open air. Correcting his balance, Jack sat up and positioned his staff defensively before looking up at his assailant to find out exactly who it was. The dim moonlight made it difficult, but he was able to make out her individual features.

She was an emaciated woman who appeared to be around her sixties, with scraggly, grey-streaked black hair and a rotting smile. Her skin was deathly pale and warty in several places, and her squinted eyes were colorless and sunken. She looked more like a medieval skeleton than anything, given how she was dressed in a tattered gown from ages past. The woman clearly wasn't human due to the way she rode the air as easily as Jack himself could.

"I found you!" she laughed again in a cracking voice. "Remember me, little one?"

With a sinking feeling of dread in his stomach, Jack realized he did remember her. And he was not thrilled about seeing this woman again.

"Sure," he said, trying to keep his voice from shaking as he tightened his grip on his staff. This was not good. "You're Eve, aren't you?"

Eve's smile broadened. "I did not know we had been properly introduced."

"We hadn't," Jack replied shortly. "One just tends to pick up certain information during three hundred years. You're Eve, the spirit of autumn and Halloween, and you are absolutely crazy."

That last bit had slipped out accidentally, and Jack inwardly smacked himself. Hadn't he learned his lesson about pissing this woman off? Eve was off her rocker, all the immortals knew that, and everyone tried to stay out of her way. Even Jack, who had had very limited contact with the other immortals in the past, understood that much. Especially after his first encounter with her, which he had very much hoped would be the last.

In short, Eve was a witch, and a very unbalanced one at that. All the immortal entities had their own individual powers but it was Eve, as the denizen of Halloween, who had the widest variety, but wouldn't be so bad if she had total control of her mind and didn't adhere to pretty much every witch stereotype ever. Nobody fully knew what was wrong with her, or why the Man in the Moon had chosen such a woman to be a spirit of a season and even given her own holiday. Getting on Eve's bad side was a terrible idea.

So of course Jack had managed to do it.

And now here she was, having caught up with him at last.

Unnervingly, Eve didn't get angry at him in the slightest for the 'crazy' comment. On the contrary, she giggled like a schoolgirl and clasped her gnarled hands together in glee.

"I am flattered you remember me! So you know what I am here for?" Her cloudy eyes glinted in barely-hidden malice, and Jack picked up on that instantly. He knew. She was here about that one blizzard.

Which totally hadn't been his fault, by the way.

He swallowed nervously, "No, actually, I don't. I thought we buried the hatchet a long time ago. Eve, it's been like two hundred and fifty years since that happened, how can you still be upset about it?" He figured it was a good idea to not bring up Eve's many memory issues and instead speak to her as though she were sane.

Evidently, Eve didn't appreciate the effort. The wind around her gusted furiously and she snapped, "Of course I am still upset about it! A blizzard on my holiday?" She laughed humorlessly. "Who do you think you are?"

"Well..." Jack began to edge away from her, preparing to take off into the sky and outrun the woman. He'd managed it last time, and it seemed that once he was out of her sight she completely forgot about him for two and a half centuries. Hopefully the same thing would happen again. "Well, in my defense, I didn't really know what I was doing. I was only fifty years old at the time, you know, and couldn't control my power very well. It was kind of an accident... A total accident, actually. And I apologized!"

"Not enough," Eve hissed, once again moving uncomfortably close to him. Jack pressed his back against the tree, trying not to gag as the rancid stench of her breath assaulted his senses. "I have not forgiven you. You need to pay what is due." She paused in thought, and then her face twisted into the most nightmarish grin Jack had ever seen. "I know what I shall do. You will not be able to cause any blizzards on my holiday anymore."

"You realize it's almost Christmas and not Halloween, right?" Jack deadpanned, and immediately reprimanded himself. Of course she didn't realize that, she was nuts. Which really wasn't helping his situation any, but still.

Eve muttered something under her breath in a language Jack didn't understand, and realizing what she was trying to pull—some kind of bizarre spell-casting—he lashed out with his staff and sent a blast of ice in her direction. The winds surrounding Eve picked up and the ice dissolved into nothing. Before Jack could react, the witch's winds knocked his staff out of his hands, sending it plummeting to the ground. He hollered and turned to jump after it, but to his horror Jack found himself frozen in place.

What was she doing?!

Eve leaned forward and breathed in his ear, "No more blizzards."

With a final burst of energy, a blinding light lit up the clearing and searing pain tore through Jack's body. He let out a tortured yell and didn't realize he had slipped off his branch and had fallen before his body hit the ground heavily. His vision swam and he could barely make out Eve's devious laughter around the pounding in his head. He struggled to breath, gasping for air being made difficult by the stabbing pain in his ribs. All his energy had left him.

Jack didn't know how long he laid there trying to get ahold of his senses, but as soon as the pain receded enough for him to move he began the search for his staff. The wind appeared to have blown it to the middle of his pond, and Jack made his way over to the center, taking care not to crack it. He was vulnerable without his staff, and it would be easy to fall in.

With a sigh of relief, he retrieved his staff and leaned on it, using it to support his weight. His head dropped down, and in the moonlight, Jack hazily got a look at his reflection in the ice. When he saw it, he gasped sharply and nearly collapsed, shock coursing through his body as he stared down at the image.

A boy with brown hair and brown eyes stared back at him.

A/N:

I got a laptop for Christmas~! It's so beautiful. This chapter is the first thing I ever wrote on it, actually. It's hard getting used to a smaller keyboard; the family laptop is a bit bigger than mine. I made so many mistakes trying to adjust, but I'll get used to it eventually!

Anyway, thanks for the favorites and follows, especially in such a sort amount of time! I really appreciate them. (The self-promotion on Snowflakes probably helped. I'll likely utilize that again in the future.)

I'm going to reply to reviews down here from now on because I am too lazy to reply to them all individually and privately.

BobaAddict: This, ladies and gents, is the author of one of the best humanized-Jack stories out there. I highly suggest reading hers if you don't want to waste your time on my swill. *cough* ANYWAY. I'm glad you think so :D

Q-A the Authoress: I actually have to write a biographical essay on Abraham Lincoln over break. My American History teacher clearly dislikes us. Luckily I like to study random things in my free time and already know pretty much every detail about Mr. Lincoln, so I picked a good topic here. Still, though. Homework.

Novanto: Why did that make me laugh so hard?

Myaerdna: That was a very, very nice review and one of the reasons I'm trying to update as quickly as I can. Motivation!

Thanks to otaco, winter's-lion, QuillOwl, Silverblueroses, RandomKrazyPerson, LightMyBulb, Nutella0Mutt, NightFury812, Ms. Agnes, SerenePhenix, and megadracosaurus.