Spring

By: Wilona Riva

Disclaimer: Don't own ROTG or DP.

Lords of the Silence

A human child lifted his bright brown eyes in the direction that Jack was facing. "Why am I here, Jack?"

"You need to believe, Jamie," he said, as Spring drifted closer to them. "Then we'll have a party."

"Okay, I'll try, Jack."

"Turn and face me, Jamie," Jack Frost told the mortal child. Daniel landed and joined them, a bit confused; Day signed to him to hush. Daniel took one look at the human child and hightailed it for the trees. Day just sighed. Trust Daniel to turn shy all of a sudden.

"Do you believe in someone who can paint the most amazing designs in the fall foliage?" Jack was asking the boy.

"Yes," came the reply, followed by a gasp as a beautiful auburn-haired girl popped into being beside Jack.

"Well done, Jamie!" she exclaimed, picking him up and smothering him in kisses, to everyone's amusement. "I'm Day Aria Scarlett, otherwise known as the Autumn seasonal."

"Also otherwise known as a hyperactive pain in the neck," another girl said, her short black hair and piercing purple eyes hidden between black wire-frame glasses snapped. "And judging by that look, I take it you can see me, Jamie Bennett."

The boy nodded, his mouth wide open. "I am the Summer seasonal, known to my friends as Leto Somereld," he heard her say.

"Summer, Winter, and Fall," Jamie murmured, "but where's Spring?"

Jack looked over to Daniel. "Hiding behind a tree and trying not to hyperventilate," he replied. "Daniel, come out and see if Jamie believes, you big scaredy cat."

A white haired boy with the brightest emerald green eyes, peeked out from behind a tree. "Am not!" came his retort. Jack rolled his eyes.

"He's not related to the Tooth Fairy, is he?" Jamie asked Jack.

"No, she just made his shirt. He's the youngest and shyest of us all. Little brother, come introduce yourself," he called out.

"I'd rather dance with Gillie Myrtle," shot back the reply. "As least drowning in the fountain is the best she can do nowadays."

Jack winced, then grinned wickedly at the girl who appeared dancing on the surface of the pond. "Is that why you brought her with you?" he teased.

"What? Oh, no! She followed me here," Daniel moaned, when their eyes made contact. She blushed and motioned for him to dance with her.

"I'm getting out of here," he muttered, trying to raise the wind, but Wind gently pushed him back to the earth. "Aw, come on, Wind!"

Silly, flower child, Wind chided him gently, ruffling his hair.

Gillie returned to dancing on the water as if it was a flat mirror, her feet barely skimming the surface. Jamie laughed at the antics of the immortal spirits, then sobered as he remembered they weren't entirely alone.

Day approached and pinned Daniel's arms behind his back. "Come and sit down," she told him sternly. "There is something you must know." Jack nodded, his pale face serious for once.

"I've got him," Day called out to the forest beyond them. "It's safe to come out now."

"Whoa!" Jamie shouted, nearly falling down in shock. "That vampire looks sick."

"I'm not sick," the vampire growled, turning pupiless red eyes at the boy. "Nor am I a vampire."

"W-w-what's going on?" Daniel stuttered. "W-w-what is Plasmius doing here? And Pitch Black too?"

The Boogeyman slithered out of the nearest tree's shade, giving the vampire, Plasmius, one long, hard, searching look, then nodded. "You have learned much in a week, half-immortal."

"You forced me to live through all my fears," Plasmius replied. "But I do not see anyone here but us two and a human child."

"You can see Pitch, but you can't see Jack or the others?" the boy asked.

"Very very rare is the adult who still believes, Jamie," Pitch replied. He led Plasmius to the empty log on which Daniel was now sitting, Day and Leto on either side of him, preventing him from using any of his gifts and vanishing.

Pitch bent down and directed the boy's gaze to meet his own. "Daniel, do you believe the Man in the Moon is a villain?"

"No," the boy whispered, flinching at the sight of the silver and gold eyes set in the ash-grey face of the Nightmare King.

"Do you know why you were chosen?" Pitch asked in a soft voice.

"No," came the even response from the Spring seasonal.

"Before I was the Boogeyman, Daniel Spring, I, too, was a warrior. I volunteered to guard the darkest fears the Constellations were able to imprison. I failed," Pitch told him, his voice was gentle and firm. "I was deceived and was conquered. I allowed myself to be transformed into what I am by my own hatred and fears. I was death to all who knew me before. The Man in the Moon saved me."

"What?!" Jack yelled, slipping and falling comically to the ground.

"Jack, shh!" Leto hushed him.

"Yes, Frost, the Man in the Moon saved me. He gave me my purpose, even though I tried to kill him and his precious Guardians many times over. After we last fought, he gave me a seed and told me to plant it when the youngest guardian awoke and the proper garden was found. Now, Spring, you must water that seed so the Man in the Moon may harvest the precious fruit that will arise from that seed."

"Bitter love," Day answered.

"You are one, Miss Autumn, to be speaking. You, yourself, have a secret you harbor from all others," Pitch said, smirking in response. "Why haven't you told them of the Death Guide?"

"You, sneakly little liar!" Vlad heard, before a young girl, who looked verily much like Miss Manson, shouted, dropping Daniel's arm and lunging for the red-haired girl who leaped away and ran for her life. It hit him like lightning.

He stared wide-eyed at Daniel in his ghost form. "Daniel?"

"Hi, Vlad," the boy answered him dully. "I guess you can see and hear me now."

"You have much explaining to do, little badger," the half-ghost told the young spirit. "But first..."

A loud scream came from the pond. Gillie Myrtle, in the act of trying to drown Leto and Day, who were wrestling beneath the trees in the muddy shallows, turned and pointed to a faint outline that was becoming sharper by the minute at the edge of the clearing.

"Wow!" Jamie murmured, as Pitch murmured something to Jack about the strange sharp mental projectiles of fear he was reading off the newcomers inhabiting the brick house with the bright lights and weird contraption on the roof. "This is more fun than that wild sleigh ride you gave me last Easter, Jack."

"Wild enough, kiddo," Jack murmured, forming a snowball in his hand with his icy breath. With pinpoint accuracy, he hit both Day and Leto with it. "Knock it off; we have company."

"Rune of the Lanterns is still hotter than Eros Valentine," Day whispered to Leto, while wiping the snowball's remains off her face.

"But all the girls love Daniel," Leto murmured, while avoiding Gillie's deadly embrace. "Otherwise, this one wouldn't have followed him half way round the world."

"It's the flowers," Day agreed.

"I like the color of his eyes," Gillie murmured, joining them as they returned to the others. "His dancing is really improving, especially with the flowers that spring from his footsteps."

All three girls looked toward Daniel, who looked up at them confused. Sure enough, a small carpet of flox and clover had cropped up at his feet.

"Girls," Vlad heard Daniel grumble, as they burst into fresh peals of laughter.

"Quiet!" Pitch shouted, pointing at the house. "Someone is coming out."

"Vlad, what did Pitch do to you?" Daniel whispered.

"Something's are better left unsaid, Daniel," he replied softly.

"Jack, how does Pitch know about me?" he whispered to the older boy on the other side of him.

"If it's whispered in the shadows, Pitch will know about it a heartbeat," Jack murmured. "Hush now."

"Oi, Frost!" a male voice shouted from the other side of the pond. "Inviting the dead to our gatherings now?"

"I only started accepting the stupid invitations because I was sick of you trying to beat me up every year for a little early winter fun, Rune," Jack shot back without turning around to see the speaker.

"Where do you want the tables set up?" Rune yelled.

"Over there by the pond," Leto shouted back. "Of all the rotten luck."

The front door on the house opened up and a boy with green skin and glowing emerald eyes dressed like an astronaut came flying out, followed by a skeletal bird. "I see them; Phantom's with them-Plasmius too," he called out to the second person to emerge-a young girl with red hair.

"I don't see anything," the red-haired girl said, her teal eyes scanning the group watching her from the trees. "It's just your imagination, Youngblood. I've got to get the smelling salts to wake up Mom and Dad thanks to the stupid fumes."

"Not my fault the portal exploded and I, uh, we got stuck in your basement just as you blasted yourself to explore another world," the ghost told her. "I'm going to go and say hi to everyone. Looks like they're having a party."

Daniel seriously wanted to bash his brains out by this point in time. "Skulker, I can handle," he muttered to Vlad, "but why did they have to bring Youngblood along?"

"Would you rather it had been Klemper?" Vlad teased.

"Fascinating," Pitch said, show off his wicked sharp teeth in a huge, evil grin. "I think I'll stick around for the party after all."

Everyone groaned, but left to perform the duties that Jack assigned on the spot to them. More spirits would begin to arrive soon, and there was much to be done.

"Phantom, boy, did we ever miss you!" Daniel half-listened to Youngblood chatter away, when he and Jamie went to gather firewood.

"Wind," Daniel called, as his ever-present companion lifted him to the tops of the trees, where he sent a huge dead branch crashing down, almost hitting the human boy, who stayed below. "Sorry, Jamie."

"It's alright," the boy called out, voice shaking slightly. Pitch turned around and gave him a knowing look. Jamie blushed.

"What is most strange," the skeletal parrot said, almost right in Daniel's ear, "is why Youngblood can see your new friends, but not the humans in the house."

"Belief is seeing," Daniel replied, as Wind lowered her flower child to the forest floor, while her frost child gave him a scolding for almost hurting the Last Light.

"I really am sorry, Jamie," Daniel told him, when the bird left to go report to the humans in the house; he recognized it as his former one. Inside would be his family, may be Sam or Tucker, or even worse, the A-Listers themselves.

"It's okay, Daniel," the boy said. "Look at what Rune's doing?"

"Amazing you can see all of us, ghostling," Rune was saying, as Youngblood helped him to write some ancient runes on the planks of scarred ash-grey wood that served as the table. "Not many of your kind can."

"Not many people can see me either," Youngblood was saying as the last rune he had written under Rune's watchful eye was finished. "So now what?"

"We summon the spirits," Rune of the Lanterns said, laughing at the boy's confused expression. "Sorry, bad pun there."

Jack rolled his eyes, then froze as a motion on the forest's edge caught his eye. "Daniel, come away from there."

"They're my family, my friends," the younger spirit protested. "I have to see them."

"You do not exist to them," Jack reminded him. "Remember the awful feeling of having a non-believer walk through you? It will happen again; it is wise to forget them."

"Or not," Plasmius argued. "Daniel was half-ghost before he ever became a spirit. He should, theoretically, still be able to take human form."

"I can't, Vlad," Daniel answered. "And quit talking behind my back as if I'm not there. I'm not a kid anymore."

"Daniel."

"Sorry, Jack," Daniel apologized, his turn to blush. "Isn't it time to take Jamie back home? It's almost sunset."

"Aww!" Jamie yelled, stomping one of his feet on the ground. "Jack, you said I could come to the party."

"And so you did," Jack told him, smiling fondly down at him. "But your mother will be worried about your whereabouts soon; Claude and Caleb can only cover for you for so long."

"Yeah, I guess so," Jamie admitted. "Bye everyone, nice to meet you. Oh, cool!" This last statement was directed at Rune, who'd ignited the glowing runes on the table, which tranformed into glowing lights set up high in the trees all around the pond.

"Let's go, Jamie," Jack told him. "Daniel, stay away from that house until I get back. We'll go investigate together."

"Alright," Daniel replied.

"Spring, I mean it," the Guardian of Fun warned.

"I said 'alright', Jack!" Daniel shouted, a slight echo of a sonic vibration in the air, his emerald eyes blazing in anger. "What more do you want from me?"

"To be safe," Jack whispered, hugging him tight. "Wind!" Jack shouted, snatching Jamie up into his arms and jumped into the open sky, as Wind caught him in her arms.

"Anything I can do to help?" Daniel asked, after Jack and Jamie left, turning to Plasmius, who just shrugged.

"The Danny Fenton I knew would have just ignored the warning," Plasmius said, watching Day and Leto coo over Youngblood's pet. "What are those two doing?"

"I'm not Danny Fenton, Vlad," Daniel remind him. "I haven't been him for some time."

"A mere week passes and already you have matured much, Daniel," Vlad observed. "Not once have you called me 'cheesehead' or 'fruitloop'. I also believe that your little ballerina friend is signing for you to join her for a dance."

"Not on your afterlife," Daniel grumbled.

Neither of the two of them noticed the two figures slip silently from the strange house and move toward the pond.

"You sure you saw lights out here, Sam?" one whispered to the other.

"Positive," came the reply. "Just as I'm sure, we'll find Danny when we reach them. The Parrot was positive it was him, along with Plasmius, and some other ghosts. I saw the lights ignite from the house."

Creating the seasonal spirits eased Jack's loneliness, but also better prepared him to accept MiM's role for him as a Guardian. Now, my question to you, dear Reader, is this: what shall happen at the party? As for Daniel's behavior, he has had very little interaction with the large gatherings the spirit world often celebrates so is naturally shy. Part of this is the same way with me, I don't mind gathering with friends for celebrations, but it makes me very nervous (and I tend to be a bit of a wall-flower) at large social gatherings. My family often gives me grief over preferring solitude in my room than going out with friends to a pub.

This is also the last chapter I've written in advance for this story, so I'm not sure when the next update will come.