Disclaimer and Warnings are on the first chapter.
Warnings: Additional warnings for this chapter include images of grieving, PTSD, survivor's guilt, and child dealing with the death of a sibling (do I really need to warn about that?).
Notes: Here's the second chapter. This one is, uh, very much a good example of why I warned you about mood-whiplash in chapter one.
Chapter Two: Valentine's Day
"Phil, why are you insisting I take bath and wear nice suit? Is just meeting with fellow Guardians," Nicholas St. North, better known as Santa Claus, asked.
The yeti named Phil muttered in confusion at North's words before shaking his head and pointing at a calendar hanging on the wall. North waved him away without looking at the calendar.
"Yes, yes, I know is early in year for meeting, but Sandy insisted. ...why do you insist on bath and nice suit if you are not knowing about meeting?"
Phil sighed before grumbling and pointing at the steaming bath.
"Fine. Fine. I will take bath."
When E. Aster Bunnymund arrived at Santoff Claussen an hour later, it was to the sight of Phil finishing primping an irritated North.
"Well, look at you swanning about. You know you don't have to dress up on our account."
"I know! But Phil insisted," North said as he took advantage of Aster's arrival to break free of the yeti's attentions. "Do you know what meeting is about?"
Aster ignored Phil slapping a hairbrush menacingly against his open palm as he said, "No clue, mate. Sandy's been mum, as usual."
"Probably have something to do with what happened last night," North mused.
"What happened last night?" Aster asked, confused.
"I do not know," North replied with a shrug. "But I could feel it in my belly. I was this close," he said, pinching his thumb and finger a hairsbreadth apart, "to grabbing my swords and dealing with it, whatever it was, but then it was gone."
"You think Sandy knows what it was?"
"We find out soon enough!" North said, slapping Aster's back hard enough to make the pooka stumble. "In meantime, you would like eggnog and cookies, yes?"
"Nah, thanks. I'm ace."
Toothiana fluttered in as they headed for the room they always met in.
"Hi, guys!" she said cheerily in between giving her mini-fairies instructions, "I saw Sandy just a bit ago. He should be here in a minute." Sure enough, as soon as she'd finished, Sanderson Mansnoozie, the Sandman himself, appeared in a cloud of gold dust. He waved happily at them as they all settled in.
"Can we make this quick? Easter's early this year and I've still got prep to do," Aster said as they gathered round the table.
Sandy nodded and got started on why he'd called a meeting, images formed of his sand floating over his head.
"Jack Frost?" North said, looking surprised by Sandy's opening images.
"Oh, is it true his teeth are as white as snow?" Tooth asked suddenly, twitching excitedly in her seat.
"What's that bludger got to do with anything?" Aster asked, giving Tooth a look at her question.
Sandy formed two images, one obviously Pitch Black and the other apparently Jack Frost. The image of Pitch attacked the image of Frost before a third figure representing Sandy intervened.
"How is Jack?" North rumbled, frowning and combing his fingers through his thick beard.
Sandy formed an image of a tangled knot. Menacing looking hands flickered over the knot but fled when the knot shrank in on itself. Aster had no clue what that meant and, going by her confused expression, neither did Tooth. North did, however, because he relaxed.
"Then everything is all right!" he boomed, smiling. Sandy shook his head and created a new image. A nightmare that proceeded to splint into two before multiplying alarmingly quick. Aster frowned and fingered his boomerang. That many nightmares didn't bode well for anybody.
"I don't like this," Tooth admitted. "If Pitch really has that many nightmares and feels strong enough to attack other spirits, then he's going to try something soon." Sandy nodded in agreement.
"So we'll keep a Captain Cook out for nightmares and Pitch attacking anyone else," Aster replied.
"You mean Sandy and I will keep a look out," Tooth pointed out, feathers fluffing out in irritation.
"Well, you do have the widest range out of all of us. Bunny and I have work to do that makes it difficult to keep eye on everywhere," North explained.
Tooth deflated.
"I know," she admitted. "I'll have my girls keep an eye out. But we should meet up regularly for a little while so we can report anything we see! And I mean like once a week, not once every decade."
Aster winced at the thought of losing even more time from his pre-holiday prep but nodded anyway.
"Good! We will meet here at same time next week," North proclaimed, standing up so he could slam his hands on the table, "But before you go, you must eat! You are all far too skinny."
"And you're too fat," Aster muttered only to blink in surprise and then smile in amusement when several yetis ambushed North.
"What? What is wrong? WHAT?! Why are you not telling me today is Valentine's Day?!" North paused when he realized Aster, Tooth, and Sandy were all staring at him. He gave them an oddly sheepish look and said, "I... must be going, but feel free to enjoy the hospitality of Santoff Claussen!" Then North was out of room, yelling orders at his yetis as he moved at a startling swift pace.
"Where's he in such a hurry to get to?" Aster asked. Tooth's mini-fairies shrugged.
"On Valentine's Day? It's probably not so much a where as a who," Tooth replied speculatively. Aster realized she was right and that one of them hadn't seemed surprised by this revelation at all. He quickly rounded on Sandy, who immediately and suspiciously formed a halo and angel wings above his head even as he gave them his most innocent smile.
"You know who it is! Please, tell us, Sandy!" Tooth begged. The former star shook his head.
"Please? Please, please please?" Tooth repeated, giving her best puppy-dog eyes even as her girls joined in the pleading. Sandy started to cave before straightening up and holding out a hand, an image of gold coins appearing over his head.
"You want something in return, huh?" Aster said, folding his arms across his chest. Sandy gave a confirmatory nod.
"How about this? Tooth and I won't bother you about your excessive eggnog consumption for the next decade," Aster offered. Sandy raised an eyebrow.
"The next fifty years?" The other eyebrow rose as well.
"Fine, the next century," Aster conceded. Sandy grinned at him and made an image of a map, pointing at a specific town.
"I know the place. Last one there's a rotten egg!" With that, Aster tapped a hole open under him and disappeared into his tunnels.
Aster was fairly certain he'd arrived in town first, but not knowing where exactly in town he was supposed to be, lost several seconds locating Sandy, who had been followed by Tooth. He found them on the edge of some woods outside a bakery had already closed for the evening.
"Right. Several good hiding places here. Tooth, can you get rid of your girls for a tad?"
"Oh, yes," she agreed before rapidly firing off instructions. The mini-fairies saluted and took off, leaving the three Guardians alone and waiting for the fourth to show up. And he showed up all right. There was no sign of the sleigh, only the warping of reality that indicated one of North's portals before the man himself stepped out, quickly fussing with his clothes and beard, before he headed up the walk and to the door of the bakery.
"Are those flowers?" Took asked, indicating the purple, paper-wrapped bundle North held even as he reached up with his free hand to ring the silver bell hanging above the door. Sandy put a finger to his lips and glared up at her.
"Right. Don't wanna scare off North before we catch a glimpse of this sheila who nabbed his eye," Aster agreed quietly.
"Oh, this is so exciting!" Tooth whispered, practically vibrating. A light came on in the bakery proper and the door was soon answered by a lovely older woman, hale and healthy, who moved with power and grace in spite of her apparent age and weight.
"You're late," she said, a hint of laughter in her tone despite her words.
"Forgive me, solnishka. I had a meeting, but I am here now. And these are for you." North sketched a bow, brandishing the bouquet with a flourish. The woman accepted it with a please smile and unwrapped the paper. Her laugh was partially surprised but mostly delighted as her action revealed a rainbow's worth of plush unicorns, each one attached to a green-painted "stem".
"A blessing of unicorns!" she finally managed through her laughter.
"Is better! Look!" North gently detached a little unicorn from its stem and proceeded to pose it so it stood on three feet on his palm, the fourth out-stretched. North then gently bumped his fist against the out-stretched hoof. Tooth's hands flew to her mouth as she tried not to giggle, Aster's eyebrow rose, and Sandy had a confused look and a question mark floating over his head, but the woman let out a peal of laughter that sounded like the bell over her door.
"Oh, you wonderful man!" she said, kissing North's cheek and causing a pleased blush to appear on his face, "You even watched the show!"
"Of course! Is good show! And you recommended it!"
"Well, come on in! Don't stand on the doorstep."
Aster decided at this moment to risk moving closer. Perhaps he could sneak in behind North while his attention was on the woman? Despite being able to see North, the woman smelled human from this distance, so she probably wouldn't notice. And that's when a pile of snow landed on top of him, accompanied by the sound of very familiar sniggering.
"You!" Aster roared as he leapt out of the new drift and made a grab for the bare feet of the boy floating above him. Jack Frost dodged out of the way with a smirk and moved to hover over North and his paramour who, Aster realized in dismay, were looking right at him.
"I think you had a few stowaways in your sleigh, big guy," Jack said. That seemed to jerk the woman into action because the next thing Aster knew, he, Tooth, and Sandy were being rounded up and herded into the bakery.
"Come on in! Have a seat! It's such a pleasure to meet you! Oh, wait here! I'll go get some refreshments!"
Aster found himself seated at a table with his fellow Guardians and one Jack Frost who was sporting a very amused look. North, however, had a dangerous glint in his eyes.
"Bunny! Tooth! Sandy! What bring you here?"
"Well, uh..." Tooth trailed off, flinching. Sandy was gesturing wildly at the images over his head, making it as clear as he could that he'd been bribed. Aster spared him a glare before North's paramour burst back in from what was apparently the kitchen.
"Here we are! Pecan sandies for you, seed cake for you – sugar-free, of course – and carrot cake cupcakes for you!"
Tooth positively lit up at "sugar-free" and Sandy was already making headway with his cookies, so Aster decided to at least be polite and try his cupcakes. He then bit back a moan as the flavor of the best carrot cake he'd ever tasted flooded his taste buds.
"Mmm! These are really, really good," Tooth said, "What's your secret?"
"Love, dear," was the reply, complete with wink, as she set a large plate of cookies in front of North.
"Hey, where's mine?" Jack whined right before the baker shoved a cookie in his mouth, shutting him up. Aster chuckled. He was starting to really like the lady.
"So!" North boomed, "What brings you here, my friends?"
Aster cleared his throat and explained, "We were wondering what – or who, rather – would make you cut out so fast on Valentine's Day."
"Ah, is simple!" North declared as the baker moved around the table. He swept her into his arms and said, "This is my wife, Jane St. North."
"Wife?!" Aster and Tooth echoed. Sandy, Aster noticed, was unsurprised.
"When did that happen?" Aster managed to ask.
"Over two hundred years now," Jane replied even as she took North's hand in hers and gave him a fond smile.
"But... how? You're human! Or you feel human," Tooth said. Aster, however, had finally started registering exactly what the pictures on the wall were of. Every single one had Jane, already an old lady, and a brown-haired boy who looked an awful lot like Jack Frost.
"Ah, it is a long story. Very sad, but has happy ending!" North said.
"How long have you known, Sandy?" Aster asked.
"Sandy was there at wedding! Would have invited you, but it needed to be a very quick wedding and Sandy and Jack were already there and could be witness."
Tooth looked as flabbergasted as Aster felt when she squeaked, "Quick wedding?" and looked at Jane's midriff.
"Not that kind of quick, dear. I was long past child-bearing age before I met Nicholas."
"What aren't you telling us, mate? And what's with the dark-haired Frostbite in the pictures?"
"Is not my story to tell," North admitted uneasily.
"It's mine, and I'll tell it if you like," Jane said.
"Whoa! Hold on!" Jack protested fiercely before giving Jane an oddly lost look. "Are you sure?"
"Nicholas trusts them. I think we should too," Jane replied even as Sandy nodded vigorously and gave them two thumbs up.
"I was born a little over three hundred years ago as Jane Constance Overland and for as long as I could remember, my older brother Jackson was the most important person in my life. Which is why, at eight years old, I was absolutely devastated when he drowned saving my life in a skating accident."
300 years earlier
Jane woke with a gasp and promptly burst into silent tears, hands to her mouth to muffle her sobs. She didn't want to wake her parents in the big bed next to her trundle bed. It wasn't their fault Jack had always been the one to shake a stick menacingly under the big bed after pulling out the trundle to scare away the monster that liked to hide underneath. It wasn't their fault the trundle felt too big and too cold and too scary without Jack there to wrap himself around her. It wasn't their fault Jack was normally the one to deal with her night terrors. And it wasn't their fault she kept having nightmare after nightmare where she watched Jack fall through the ice and die. After all, it wasn't their fault Jack was dead. It was hers.
It hadn't been so bad when winter was still around. It had been too cold and they had needed the comfort too much for any of them to sleep alone. Now that spring was giving way to summer, however, Jane had been relegated back to the trundle bed and her night terrors had increased tenfold. And so Jane sat alone on her bed and silently tried to slow her frightened tears.
The clock Jane's mother so proudly wound up every day said it was three, the witching hour, and well into second sleep when Jane saw the glowing eyes under the big bed and realized to her horror that with Jack gone, no one had bother scaring away the monster under the bed. Worse, there was no Jack to place himself bravely between her and the monster, no Jack to save her this time, and so Jane screamed, waking her parents. She burst into tears when the candlelight chased away the shadows and the glowing eyes and she refused to sleep in the trundle bed for the rest of the night.
The next night, the sound of her parents quietly talking woke Jane from her first sleep and she hadn't been able to fall asleep again even as she heard them settle in for their second sleep. She didn't know precisely why she did it, but, as her mother's clock struck three, Jane slipped out of the house, not wanting to stay in the empty-feeling trundle bed far too close to where the monster hid. She found herself wandering the path in the woods, eyes darting as she checked every shadow thoroughly as she walked. The woods were creepy in the dark, the moon having set long before, and she kept jumping at odd shapes and sounds. Not for the first time, Jane wondered what she was doing out there.
Without really meaning to, she ended up at the lake. It had been abandoned since the accident. The men hadn't dared tread on the thin ice, even to dredge up the dead body of her brother. A cold snap that first night had refrozen the lake practically solid, making retrieval of the body impossible until it finally thawed in late spring. By that time... well, after trying for hours, the men finally admitted defeat and whispered where they thought she couldn't hear that it wasn't a surprise. Soft things didn't tend to remain intact for long in the water. There was a grave in the small graveyard attached to the only church in town, but Jane knew full well it was empty of anything except a few of Jack's prized possession and flowers that were surely long dead by now. So she came here for much the same reason everyone else avoided it. Around this time last year, the pond was usually where children splashed and played. This year, no one dared. It felt disrespectful to disturb the pond, not to mention the worry of catching bad humors from water a body had rotted in.
Jane flopped down on a conveniently placed rock, the same one, she realized in dismay, she'd sat on to put on her skates that day. For several long minutes she debated getting back up but instead she ended up just staring at the placid pond, which was just a pool of black in the middle of the already dark landscape, until tears blurred her sight and sniffles hitched her breath. It was rage that finally brought her back to her feet.
"You fool! You stupid, stupid idiot! I hate you! You lied! You lied to me! You said everything would be all right and it's not! You weren't supposed to die!" Jane's breath hitched again as her tears, hard and angry choked her. "You weren't supposed to die for me," she finished in a whisper.
"So this is why you came? This is why you braved the forest tonight? To yell at your brother, who dies nightly in your dreams and can't even hear you? How... pathetic."
The smooth, foreign voice froze the fires of Jane's fury with pure fear and for one long moment, Jane wondered if she'd fallen into the lake because she can't breathe. Slowly, shaking, she turned and saw, hidden in the twisted shadows of the trees, the hell-fire eyes of the monster under the bed looking at her. Except it wasn't under the bed anymore, was it? Worse, it was blocking the path home.
"You... you..."
"Me," it agreed in that voice that reminded Jane oddly of honey. The monster moved forward and the shadows took the shape of a man with hair like midnight, skin like a thunderstorm, and teeth like a wolf. The hell-fire eyes stared at her unblinking, marking the thing as inhuman in a way its appearance did not.
"Y-you're the monster from under the bed," Jane stammered.
"Amongst many other things, yes," the monster agreed, gliding closer in a way something with two legs could never manage. Jane squeaked and stumbled back until one foot stepped in the water. She yanked her wet foot out of the pond with a soft cry and then froze. Fear of drowning in the pond like Jack kept her from fleeing back and the monster standing right in front of her blocked any other avenue of escape. Jack, please save me! her mind wailed, but he wasn't coming and it was all her fault.
"Poor Jane," the creature hissed as it loomed over her, "You've always believed in me, but Jack's not here to chase me away anymore, is he?"
Jane choked on a sob, overwhelmed by fear and grief.
"Would you like him back?"
Jane felt time freeze even as her thick tongue managed to form a single word. "What?"
"Would you like him back?" the dark man repeated for her benefit.
"Jack's in heaven," Jane said even as doubt niggled at her.
"Is he really? You don't believe that, do you? No, you don't. Not after all the times the priest has promised fire and brimstone if Jack didn't shape up. He never did, either, did he? And it's not as if he received a proper burial, now is it? Or you would've gone to the grave in the churchyard and not out here, where they left him to rot." The smooth voice ended on a harsh note as the dark man voiced all of her doubts and fears. It continued on, voice honey-sweet once more, "But I can give him back to you. Why, you'd be doing him a favor! Giving him a second chance."
The monster took Jane's hand, making her jump, and pressed a tiny glass bottle complete with stopper against her palm before gently forcing her fingers to wrap around it.
"All you have to do is come back here at moonset on All Hallow's Eve and have with you these three things: a lock of your hair cut from your head by your own hand with a pair of bone scissors, a piece of parchment upon with you've written your name in your blood, and that bottle filled with your tears." He smiled at her, wide and wicked.
"I'll leave you to think about it." Then he shoved her back, making Jane stumble into the water of the pond. Once she caught her balance, Jane realized she couldn't see him any longer. She'd just started to relax when a pair of hands grabbed her ankles from under the water and dragged her into the dark depths of the pond. Jane opened her mouth to scream and swallowed water. She struggled to right herself, to free herself from the icy grasp and opened her eyes with a gasp. She shivered and panted, realizing the only wetness she could feel was her own sweat and that she was sitting upright on the trundle bed even as her mother's clock struck three. Had she even left the house or had it all been a nightmare? Jane didn't know, but the pain in her hand when she tried to make a fist made her look down in surprise and fear when she realized she was still holding the vial the dark man had given her.
End Notes:
Told you Jane technically isn't an OC. :D
I wish the plushy unicorn bouquet was my idea, but someone else already thought of it first and put it up for sale. That's right, you can buy a bouquet of plushy unicorns you can pose. Hee!
North calls Jane solnishka, which is a Russian form of endearment and, like many Russian forms of endearment, it sounds very odd when you translate it literally into English. He's basically calling her his little sun. Bunnymund's Aussie slang, in comparison, should be pretty easy to infer, but if you have any questions, let me know.
The whole "first sleep" and "second sleep" is actually a reference to what is known as "segmented sleep" and it's actually how the vast majority of the human race slept before the Industrial Revolution started forcing people off of their natural clocks. While it's probably not the source of the problem in all cases of insomnia, quite a few people could probably be cured if they just let their body do what it wanted.
As for the whole religious thing in here? Well, Pitch makes for an awesome devil when he's allowed the proper leeway. I will note that I don't agree with the fire and brimstone thing, despite identifying as Christian, but that was a big thing back then and likely what Jack and Jane grew up hearing unless they were Quakers.
So, um, tell me what you think?