Jack wasn't sure how long he'd been hammering away at the ice, but he was fairly sure it'd been a century. Or at least five minutes. Either way, the stuff kept growing back! No matter how long he went at it, with anything from a scimitar to a frozen jar of spaghetti sauce, it just wouldn't tunnel! Eventually he had to give up and seek alternate ways of escaping.
The problem was that he was in fact trapped with in ice. He couldn't stop ice from existing, and he apparently couldn't cut through it, either. Ironic how Elementals kept having their own elements turned against them. The Wind wouldn't be able to wear the ice down, either, so he would have to wait until the world decided to heat up and melt the mountain. That would be millenia of waiting. Hundreds of thousands of years with nothing to do. Forget power sapping, he would die of boredom before he got out!
And...he would miss all of Koz's firsts. He wouldn't be able to see him for millenia, after he'd already lost him for hundreds upon thousands of years before...he might be forgotten, left here to wait forever.
No! Jack blinked, hard, and refused to admit to how wet his eyes felt. Think of escape. Think positive. Once you get out, you can stick around Kozzy and refuse to leave him alone. Focus!
His only real hope was to wait until General Winter came back-presumably he'd make the ice breakable again so that he could get his own ice off the bars to avoid having his powers drained until he died, and then Jack might be able to escape. Escape and see his almost-father, and his almost-sister, and his almost-family. How to keep the General from stopping him from escaping, though?
Well, a nice whack over the head might take care of the General for a while, and if timed properly, he could get out then. The General would be dead meat once he got out, and all would be happy, and no one would notice a thing. Yeah, that sounded good.
So Jack waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Went back to sleep for about two weeks.
Woke up and waited some more.
Seriously, was this guy stupid?! Jack had to wonder after what he estimated to be almost a month of boredom. The cave had an eerie, shadowy glow to it, so it was difficult to tell what a 'day' might be, but this was just ridiculous. He walked up to the ice that hid the bars, to see...
Oh.
There was no magic in that ice anymore.
The General was...gone.
Well.
"Uh, here lies what remains of the idiot who decided to kill me...? I didn't even like him, but he was a Winter spirit, so...I guess that's pretty sad..." Yeah, Jack was never gonna deliver another eulogy again. He was terrible at it.
"Yeah, whatever. I can't believe this." He groaned. "Not only did I get kidnapped, while I was sleeping, but now the only guy who actually knew where I am is dead, because he was stupid and let his powers get drained by his own trap. Why does this always happen to me? I mean, is there a sign on my back? This guy needs more what even in his life, please assist? Does someone organize all of this? Because I would really, really like to meet that person. I have words that I would like to share with that person. Just...how? Why? Is it even possible for one person to have this much stupid in their life? I'm gonna blame the Moon. Goodness know everything else is his fault!"
Well, ranting wasn't helping, anyway. He had to get out, if the General was dead that probably meant that the spell regenerating the ice was undone, and he could happily smash through it.
And right as he was about to do just that, someone did it for him.
Sitting in the windowsill not far from the globe room, someone was brooding. Kozmotis had had to admit, as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into more than a month, that he may have been wrong, and Jokul may possibly have been in more trouble than he'd thought. Not that he was worried or anything! Just...rightfully concerned. Jokul knew his way into trouble, and not always his way out.
Jokul had disappeared for longer than a month at a time before, of course, and with less provocation, but there had always been some reason, some kind of warning that he wasn't going to be around. Often in the form of a Blizzard of Ultimate Unhappiness. That he had said nothing, had even implied that he'd be back soon, was...troubling.
Then, just as Kozmotis had been contemplating looking for the boy, there was a huge feeling of terror somewhere in the world. A spirit's fear. No other fear felt exactly like a spirit's worst fear being realized, and this fear felt wintry Immediately he shot out of the corner he'd commandeered solely to sulk in, alarming a passing elf, and shot towards the fear, using shadows as transport until he ran out at the edge of a blizzard.
The Guardians were already there-when had they gotten there? How had they known? It didn't matter, though. Nothing mattered so much as getting to the center of the storm. He began to walk inwards, but his progress was slowed by all the snow in the way. Why was there snow in his way? Even at his most upset, Jokul had never put snow intentionally in his way. Unless...was he upset at Kozmotis himself? He'd been a terrible parent to Jokul, even though he'd considered the boy his son. He'd left him alone for millenia, and forced him to hide in order not to hurt him.
Kozmotis felt a surge of guilt. He should have done something, done better for his children...he should never have allowed Pitch to exist...
He was interrupted from his angsting when he was lifted by the back of his cloak and shoved into a sleigh.
"Walking is no good. Use the sleigh instead! Is much faster!" North boomed.
Kozmotis stopped struggling and settled between Toothiana and Bunnymund; the sleigh would be faster than going on foot, and the blizzard didn't have much in the way of shadows to travel in.
After some near-misses with trees and the ground, the heap of Guardians was thrown into the eye of the storm. Here Kozmotis could feel the fear, and it didn't taste quite right. It was fear of death, of powerlessness, and it was someone's greatest fear. Jokul had rarely feared either, and certainly not as intensely as this. As much as Kozmotis might have wished Jokul would fear death a little, just enough to actively avoid it, this wasn't him.
So who was it?
A whimpering groan was enough to send Bunnymund bounding over to a heap of snow, and Kozmotis is reminded unpleasantly of his rebirth. Shoving the memory away for later, he followed, and watched as Bunny dug for a second or two before uncovering a man who looked to be thirty or so. He had dark hair and seemed inches off from death, but he was very slightly transparent, which tipped them off that this may not be a mortal they were dealing with.
"Who're you?" the Pooka asked the man.
"I...I am a fool," came the whispered reply. "I dabbled in forces I was not to disturb, and now I am punished for it. My only redemption as I pass on is in the certain death of my enemy...If I am not to rule the winter, then there will be no other...I will die in peace."
And then, as if he was clinging to life just so he could be dramatic one last time before he died, the man faded and turned to ice, leaving his blizzard to blow itself out.
"Well, that was helpful. Blighter couldn't have been more annoying if he'd tried." Bunnymund muttered.
"But that sounded like Jack he was talking about. No one else can rule winter? Jack's the only winter spirit I know of," Toothiana worried.
"Ye knew of this guy, then? I say Kozmotis was right, Snowflake can take care of himself. There's prolly a gazillion winter spirits hanging around we've never heard of, and now there's two less." the Pooka argued.
Kozmotis decided that this was an excellent time to mention his worries from earlier, which had led to his involvement in this investigation in the first place.
"Actually, I suspect that all may not be well with Jokul. He rarely disappears for this long without warning, and you said yourself that he was going to play a practical joke on you. It's unlike him to leave this kind of thing hanging. I fear something may have preoccupied him in order to prevent him from contacting us for this long." By which he meant: Jokul is probably dying, we should fix that now.
"Why did you not say anything sooner? We will go to find Jack now!" North decided, breaking into the forming argument.
"Very well, but do we have any way of knowing where he is? I don't think I can find him unless he happens to be afraid," Kozmotis asked.
There was a moment of silence as each Guardian tried to figure out how exactly one goes about tracking down someone with the Wind at their side, especially when there was a chance that that someone didn't want to be found. Sandy raised a hand, almost seeming to have an idea, but then shook his head.
"Great. So now that we think Frostbite might be in trouble, we can't find the little blighter. Tooth, can your fairies look out? They might find him, he seems too like them." Bunny looked frustrated, but there was really nothing more to be done.
"Right! We will be finding him soon!"
A month later (a month too long!), a hyper-vigilant Kozmotis felt a tickle of cold, wintry fear at the edge of his mind. It was subtle and tiny, but it was there and it was familiar. It could have been no one else but Jokul. Wary of another blizzard, he first told North that he'd found Jokul...Jack! He called himself Jack now...and they hurried to summon the other Guardians.
They flew farther and farther south, following that tiny flicker of suppressed fear to the Antarctic. They landed, eventually, at the mouth of a cave that practically screamed magic.
"Do you think he's down there? Maybe he made his own palace!" Tooth enthused.
"If that were the case, he wouldn't be afraid. He's suppressing it well, but he is a little bit afraid, so he's likely in trouble. We should be cautious." Kozmotis supplies. Sandy seems to agree with him, and Toothiana seemed willing to at least consider the point, but Bunny and North apparently don't care about silly things like tactics and subtlety as they summoned their respective warrior-helpers and charged straight in.
"Oi! Snowball! Where are you? If this is a prank, I'm gonna tan yer hide!"
Kozmotis wonders sometimes how these people defeated Pitch, who supposedly had kept some of Kozmotis' intelligence. Then he remembers vague memories of dancing on globes and other ridiculousness, and all doubts are eradicated.
With a sigh, the remaining three Guardians entered the cave, not even surprised when Baby Tooth appeared from...somewhere.
Kozmotis could see that the cave was made of ice, with some residual magic that implies that it was at one point made of magic, instead. Perhaps magical ice. It had no noticeable furnishings except for a blurry window of ice that Kozmotis could barely see through. There was one blur through it, though, bluer than the ice was with brown at the bottom. He watched as it moved agitatedly from side to side, before coming straight up to the window and touching it. That was Jokul! But as contact was made with the ice, a surge of fear was repressed. Jokul was refusing to be afraid of something, perhaps the bars were hurting him? Maybe he was afraid if them, the Guardians? They should approach the bars carefully, they could end up hurting Jokul himself if they weren't-
A yeti smashed through the window.
Great.
Kozmotis swept forward, trying to get to Jokul before something bad happened. Jokul was sitting on the ground, apparently having been knocked back, by the crash of breaking ice, but otherwise in perfect health. As he approached, Jokul's face lifted and broke out into a relieved smile brighter than the sun.
"Jeez, I thought you guys would never find me!"
They both will blame spontaneous delirium for what happened next.
He swept the boy up in a tight hug, practically squeezing the life out of him as he tried to reassure himself that his boy is safe. All of the pent-up worry and guilt from the time when he was Pitch, all the concern over Jokul's disappearance, it all came pouring out in that moment. He felt Jokul stiffen for half a second, and then relax until he was squeezing just as hard. The two of them barely notice the Guardians trying to keep quiet and discreet in the background. All he can think of is that his children are back, and he has them back, and they can have the rest of eternity together. As a family. At last.
First: Should I write a prequel with mini!Jack running around bothering Kozzy and Seraphina?
Whew! Wasn't expecting that. I didn't think I was going to end it this chapter, but the ending appeared. Yeah, Jack was wrong about how long he was missing for. And also, those two are so passive-aggressive and emotionally repressed that they managed to put off their tearful reunion, but the prospect of losing each other again was a bit too much. And I wanted a hug scene. That too.
Uh, I hope you enjoyed! I love you all, truly and personally, and I never would have gotten this down without you. Did you know I had viewers from Finland?! You're all so thoughtful and kind, I'm glad to have been able to present to you my talents, such as they are. A list of all y'all who reviewed, since I can't find a list of who viewed without reviewing:
Mystichawk, Maddie, and Agent Yaoi, my lovely and most consistent three reviewers without whom nothing would ever have happened;
Angelic Frost, lilyflower5189, Jokermask18, and skywright, my non-anons;
Sarah L, anon, and Raver's Spirit, my anons; and
Lamiely Medford, who is adorable.
Thank you all so much!
