(this chapter skips ahead almost 1 year into the future. It's North's side of the story for Chapter 2 of "Your Father.")

Scorched (North's POV)

North was working when he got Smokey's message. He paid no attention to the little whisps of smoke in the air until they formed an image and started talking.

"North. North, are you there?"

North looked up and frowned at the image of the bear wearing a forest ranger's hat. "Hello. Who are you?"

"Smokey Bear. Spirit of Forest Fire Prevention."

"I see. How can I help you, Mr. Spirit of Forest Fire Prevention?" asked North, trying to be patient.

"No, I don't need anymore help right now. Your son already helped me out."

"My son? I take it you mean Jack Frost, yes?" North asked. Since last November, more and more people were coming to believe that Jack Frost and Santa were related.

It had been confusing at first – how North felt about that, I mean. It was understandable how they'd come to the conclusion that Jack was North's son. The resemblance they bore to one another was more than just passing. They both had white hair, but dark eyebrows, even though North's hair had some silver in it. And they both had bright blue eyes. Both Guardians were associated with winter which seemed to make everyone think Jack lived at the North Pole with North. The truth of that was North had offered Jack a home there, but Jack had declined. He had spent 300 years roaming the earth, coming and going as he pleased, and not having any other people in his life. Gradually, he was accepting the Guardians as true friends. Perhaps in time he would come to see them as family.

It hadn't taken North very long to realize that he didn't mind people thinking Jack was his son. A child of his own . . . that was a dream of his that had so very died long ago. Before he became immortal, in fact. It had been a hard one to let go of, but when he had, he'd buried it and left it in peace. Until now. The very idea of taking in Jack, an immortal child who'd been gifted to him and the other Guardians by the Man in the Moon himself, was enough to take North's breath away. Right now there was very little he would not have traded to have Jack feel the same way.

But he did not know how Jack felt about being mistaken as North's son. And North knew that it had happened to him at least once. Probably more than once. He worried that it bothered Jack. Certainly, the one time he'd been mistaken for North's son that North knew of had inconvenienced him greatly. The memory of the fiasco that last Christmas Eve had nearly turned into still made North shudder. He worried that Jack's association with him might inconvenience the boy even more in the coming years. North had no shortage of enemies amongst the world's immortals. He dreaded the day came that another of his old enemies tried to settle their score by using Jack.

But North still had not done much to silence the rumors of those who whispered Jack Frost was his son. He told himself it was because he worried the boy would learn that he'd blatently denied being his father, and would be hurt, but if he was honest with himself, he wasn't denying the rumors because he liked the idea too much.

"Yes, sir. Frost is here. That's one fine boy, you raised, North. He helped me put out a huge blaze this afternoon, but I think he overreached just a tad. Indian summer, you know. And smoke inhalation."

North held up a hand stopping Smokey. "Are you telling me that Jack is injured?"

"Not injured, per say. Unless you consider smoke inhalation an injury, which some people do. And possible dehydration, he's got that too. Exhaustion seems to be the big thing now for him, but he may have had a heat stroke too."

North had heard enough. He pulled out his snow globe and shook it, bypassing the tooth, egg, and sand castle icons until the blue snowflake that represented Jack appeared. He tossed it then strode through the portal into what appeared to be a cave.

Jack was laying on a bed of leaves, his face flushed and his eyes closed when North approached. His breathing was labored and his chest made a slight rattling sound with every breath he took. It sounded painful. And North felt a pain begin growing in his own chest, looking on Jack like this.

"Could you come pick him up? Oh, you're here already!" Smokey looked surprised by North's sudden arrival.

"How long has he been like this?" demanded North.

"Since I found him . . . about half an hour ago. But it took me awhile to find him –"

"How long is awhile?"

"Well, it's been a couple hours since we got the fire out."

"Hours? He's been like this for hours?!"

"I got him back here and out of the heat as soon as I could! And I started looking for him as soon as I knew the forest wasn't going to turn into an inferno again!"

"But it took you hours to find him? Hours? Why did you not call for someone to help look?"

"I sent out a call to every immortal in the Continental US for help when I realized this fire was in danger of burning down an entire town! The only one who answered was Frost! If the threat of a town being burnt to ash wasn't enough to get other people to come out and help, I doubted anyone else would have roused themselves just to come find one misplaced winter spirit who might or might not have actually been in any danger!"

Smokey had a point. North didn't care. Seeing Jack like this angered him. And knowing Jack had been like this for hours . . . that tore at his heart.

He crouched beside the boy, the leaves he was laying on crinkling under his weight.

"Jack? Jack? Can you hear me, Jack?" He let his hand rest on Jack's brow and was not pleased to find that the boy was warm to the touch. For him that had to be a blistering fever.

Jack moaned in pain but didn't open his eyes. They fluttered slightly, like he might have been thinking about it, but then stopped, as though he'd drifted off again.

"Jack?" asked North again, smoothing back his snowy hair that was now stiff with sweat and soot.

"Father?" asked Jack groggily.

North jerked in surprise at hearing Jack call him that.

"Father?!" Jack cried out again, and his eyes shot open. His hands twitched, like he was trying to move them and reach for something, but then fell weakly back onto the bed of leaves. North could only stare at him in surprise, even though he knew he should have been saying something or doing something.

Jack stared right back at him through feverish eyes. Like he didn't seem to understand what was going on. Confusion creased his features. Then he groaned, a pained look crossing his face.

"Are you alright, Jack?" North asked. A stupid question. That groan had clearly been one of pain.

Jack made a sound like a kitten mewling, then closed his eyes again. North watched in growing concern as one tear spilled out of each eye and rolled down the side of his face. He had only seen Jack shed tears once before, and on that occasion his tears had fallen from his eyes like beads of ice.

North put his hand back on Jack's brow and smoothed back his hair again. "Jack?"

"'m awright. Jus' over heat'd," Jack said, slurring his words slightly.

"Come. I take you back to North Pole where it is nice and cool." He slid one of his arms under Jack's back, and the other underneath his knees then lifted him bridal style, leaning the boy against his chest. Jack shuddered slightly as his head came to rest against North's shoulder and North felt a tug at his heartstrings. Was this what it really felt like to be a father? To have a son? To hold his son when he was hurt?

If so it was much harder than North had ever imagined, but also much more wonderful. As he walked back through the portal to Santoff Clausen, he found himself wishing that Jack actually was . . . no, it was wrong to wish that. He knew it was. Jack had had a family once. Even though he only had very vague memories of them they had existed. It was wrong to wish away their existence for his personal desires. He knew Jack wouldn't appreciate it.

Back at the North Pole he immediately took Jack outside. Tucking him into a bed with blankets, with hot chocolate to drink may have been the right treatment for a normal boy, which Jack was not. Warmth was the problem right now. Cold was the solution.

He layed Jack down on a snowbank and was about to start piling snow overtop the boy's frail body, but the wind beat him to it. A gust stirred up millions of snowflakes from where they'd previously fallen and repositioned them overtop Jack Frost like a blanket.

"Thank you," whispered North to the wind. Before that moment, he'd never actually understood Jack's insistence on personifying the wind and insisting it was his friend, but now it seemed that there was something to it.

The wind whistled in reply and North saw a few more snowflakes swirl in the air around Jack's face, brushing against his cheek like a caring friend's caress. Then the wind was gone and it was silent. North puzzled over that for a little bit, finally deciding that the wind must have withdrawn so as not to accidentally remove the snow off of Jack.

He sat beside Jack for a long time, waiting for the boy to recover. Before he'd been outside too long one of the yetis brought him his hat and coat so that he didn't freeze while waiting for some sign of improvement.

He smiled when he saw the red flush creep out of Jack's skin and his usual pale pallor began to return. His heart grew lighter when he heard how Jack's breathing grew more steadied and he no longer sounded like he was in pain with every breath he took. And he wondered if this was what it was like to be a father, sitting by his son's bedside.

He didn't know how Jack would feel about those thoughts . . . but since Jack was not privy to his thoughts it was a mute point anyway. So he thought it would be alright to pretend . . . just for a few minutes.

For Apostrophia, Grecia 427, Zarz, and anyone else who asked to see Scorched from North's POV