AN: This is a continuation of the last chapter.

Warning: contents could be disturbing.

The crack was ear splitting.

"Jack!" Pippa was screaming, he had to get to her, but it was suddenly cold, and wet. Jack couldn't breathe. Where was he? It was dark. The water, his mind went into panic mode. He needed to find the top of the pond, but he couldn't see it. Air, he needed air. His lungs were burning. Why was it so cold? He couldn't see. What way was up, down? Mud covered his mouth as he thrashed searching for the place he fell through. Jack screamed but only bubbles escaped his lips. Water, cold and murderous water poured into his lungs. Convulsing he retched water, only to suck it back down again as he tried to suck in air. His eyes were wide yet unseeing. Pippa, he had to get to her to make sure she was alright. She was crying and Jack could hear it. It was worse than the cold. Pippa sobs were all around him, vibrating the very water that held him its captive. He found the ice, but he was too weak to break it. Jack wanted his mother, and her arms to hold him up. He wanted her to sing around the fire. He wanted Pippa. He wanted Pippa to smile and laugh at him and his jokes. But mostly Jack wanted his father. His father before times became hard, and he was stressed. Jack wanted the father that laughed and chased him around the room, laughing. Pounding his suffocating blanket, his vision blurred. Black there was only darkness and Jack was alone and scared.

Pippa screamed and screamed, tears freezing as they fell from her face and hit the surface of the small pond. Pippa began to crawl forward on the ice but more cracks fished out under her touch. A howl escaped her throat as she was forced back to the ponds edge once more. Bubbles and waves broke the surface of the ice, leaking over the rim of the hole Jack had left at the center of the frozen pond. But then, just as quickly as it had swallowed Jack, the water stilled. "Jack?" It came out as a hoarse whisper. Pippa sat shaking on the ice. She didn't know what to do.

John and his wife walked around a bend in the trail, the pond coming into sights. Pippa sat kneeling near the edge of the frozen surface. John frowned he couldn't see Jack. What on earth is that boy up to now? He thought bitterly. Pippa was crying; that's odd Jack never leaves Pippa crying. His wife saw it first, the hole in the ice.

"NO!" she screamed running to the pond. John still unsure of what was wrong dashed after his wife. As she stepped onto the ice he saw it. Reaching forward he grabbed her around the middle pulling her back. "JACK!" she pushed at her husband trying to free herself from his hold. Her son didn't answer. Jack they knew would never ignore his mother when she yelled for him like life itself depended on his answer.

He was gone.

Pippa refused to leave. Jack was coming back; it was a game he had promised it would be fun. Jack never lied about stuff like that. He had to come back. But a small voice in her head whispered he wouldn't. As her father dragged her and her mother home, the voice grew stronger.

John, when later remembering that day would only remember it in pieces. It had been fine that morning Jack had not upset him once that day, which was quite a feat as Jack normally lived to case as much mischief as humanly possible. After taking his family home to the cabin, he had gone through the village for help to search the pond for his son. It had not completely hit him Jack would be dead when they found him in the water's icy deeps. The village men spent the rest of the day breaking the ice and plunging it's depths to retrieve the Overland boy. They searched in vain. Jack was not found. This was something that would haunt John for the rest of his life. He had never been able to give his son a proper resting place. At first He wondered if Jack was really gone. If they could not find him, could he be really alive, and perhaps hurt in the woods unable to return home? Pippa however put such hopes to rest when she told them what happened.

"He pulled me off the cracks… but… fell on them when he did…and he…he" She wailed unable to finish. But she didn't have to for John to know. He fell through. John didn't know what to say. It was his fault. It was his entire fault. John had told Emma that he had check to see if the pound was safe for Jack and Pippa, but he had been tired and didn't want to walk all the way to the pond and back to the cabin. John had lied and said it was safe and it wasn't. John had let his being tired interfere with his job, as a father, a protector. And now his son was gone, he John was entirely to blame. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, was all John could think. It was a phrase drilled into him by his mother when he was young. She had made him say it over and over when he had been bad. My fault my fault my own grievous fault. Jack was named a hero in the town. Jack the boy that he had yelled at for always play games. Now John just wanted to hold him and tell him to never grow up and forget everything he said otherwise. To always be Jack. John never would.

Emily was lying on her son's bed sobbing silently into his pillow. It smelled like him, like soap and rain. She wanted to just hold him. The men had come back without her Jack. Pippa was standing at the door of the room but Emily didn't care. Her son was gone. He had been so small when he was born, so perfect. He was always hers, her gift from God. He had been a gift of laughter every day, a gift of happiness and hope. When she had him she had promised to never let anything hurt him, she had failed so completely.

"Mamma?" Pippa crawled onto the bed and lay next to her.

Emily wrapped her arms around her now only child. Pippa, Jack had saved her, given her life at the cost of his own. Her son, it hurt. Emily did not know how long she laid there on her son's bed with Pippa tucked under her chin. Just holding Pippa, Jack's final gift.

John found his wife in Jack's room. She was just lying, there no longer crying. Her eyes looked a head unseeing, deed. Pippa had long since left her mother to go to her room and sleep. "Emma?" she gave no response. "Emma please."

"He's gone John. He died to save his sister. Protecting her." She sat up on the bed, still not facing her husband. "And all you ever did was yell at him and make him feel like he couldn't please you. John I defended you. I told him that we loved him. I stayed with him when he was sick or hurt. I worried. I did everything. But I wasn't there. I should have been there John. Why weren't we there?

She got up from the bed and turned to face him. She began hitting him in the chest over and over. "And why did you hate him? Why did you never say that you loved him? He never knew." The last sentence was a scream. John just held her against him as she yelled and cried and hit. He could not look his wife in the eye; she was staring at him, waiting for him to defend himself. But she was right. She was right to hate him, more than she knew. John however didn't think he could ever tell her that he had not actually checked the ice.

AN: oh my. That was so hard to write don't hate me for being so evil. I will still be writing about Jack as a human but less often, maybe as memories or flash back type of things.

Guest, Justplanoldme: Is this what you were looking for. I had already written this when you made the request but if you were thinking something else I would love to hear it.

Ami683: I will be working on it. It may be later on but that is going on my to do list.

Thank you for all the reviews you guys are so sweet and amazing to me. I cannot thank you enough for all the support I have been getting from you!