There were no dreams. There were no memories, either. It was strange. It was peaceful, though. Somewhere in the unnatural silence, he figured he was sleeping. He remembered telling… someone, that he hadn't slept since 1985. He wasn't sure how long ago that was – he could have been anytime, for all he cared.
He just felt strange.
He had been hoping for something, not long ago. He couldn't remember what it was. Couldn't remember much of anything, actually. He just sort of… floated for a while. He still hoped, because it felt good to hope. Everything else was distant and out of reach except for the tiny, niggling heaviness in his chest that told him something was wrong, but the feeling wasn't strong enough to disturb him.
So he floated and hoped. He lost track of time, had no idea how long he was there. Then, at some point, he thought he ought to do something. He started with trying to remember. He tried to remember what he was hoping for. He tried to remember who he had been talking to about '85. It felt like all his thinking was taking a long time, but eventually he could feel the answers just outside his reach. The closer he came to remembering, though, the heavier his chest felt.
All of a sudden, he thought he must have been floating too long. He was restless, feeling caged in the vast nothingness. He wanted to see children. He couldn't remember why he felt strange and heavy, but he knew he would find out when he left this floating haven without dreams. When the heaviness spread into his side and tightened into discomfort, he thought he wouldn't like leaving here.
He wanted to leave anyway.
Once he started forcing himself awake, there was no stopping it. Memories, sensations, recollections, and images came first in a trickle. Then a flow. Then a torrent.
Elli had once told him he had a strange way of waking. Jack thought maybe now he understood. A normal person woke up with most of their brain still asleep; it took a little time for them to become aware.
He was not so lucky.
Apparently, he didn't get a break like normal people did, as normal people woke up and felt stupid for a minute or two before they were aware of pain. But nooo! Jack Frost just couldn't bring himself to be normal, could he? He always had to wake up all at once instead of little by little, even as a child who knew nothing of danger. Oh, it came in handy over 300 years of being invisible to all but wild animals and temperamental seasonal spirits, but he regretted the tendency now.
Pain washed over Jack's body like a crashing wave that drags into the undertow. Rising up to the surface of consciousness made him no less surrounded by it, and his waking gasp of air was probably the most excruciating thing he'd felt in a long time. Then the flash of a dagger danced across his mind, and he thought maybe he'd reconsider that when he wasn't busy trying not to scream.
The sound that did escape him had barely enough strength to reach his pounding ears, but he was pretty sure it was something like a moan. It caught in his dry throat, and the coughing fit that followed didn't even let him take a decent breath to fuel it. Fresh agony spiked through his gut with every pull of his muscles, lancing through his chest, even shooting down his arm.
There was pressure on his skin. He was too focused on trying to breathe, and it took him a long time to realize the pressure was actually someone touching him. He focused on those hands, trying to take his attention away from the pain. It helped that any touch was overwarm to his enchanted skin – made it easy to distinguish it from the roiling curtain of discomfort.
Small, gentle fingers combed through his hair, sparking little shivers that eased him and reminded him of Ma more than Samuel. A larger hand pressed down on his abdomen. It made him cough harder and sent fireworks of agony flying behind his eyelids. He managed a half-groan with the next cough. He felt too heavy to knock the weight away, but since the weight made coughing felt like less of a struggle and more of task, he wondered if maybe he should just let himself be handled by the burning touch for a time.
It wasn't really a choice, anyway.
Time passed in a small eternity, but then he was certain his sense of time was just as screwed up as the rest of him. He coughed until his tired muscles couldn't do it anymore, and as he tapered into shallow gasping, the heavy hand lifted, and the voices in the room finally became apparent to him. They weren't shouting, thank heaven, but they were certainly loud enough to penetrate the blood rushing in his ears and the lightheaded fog clouding his mind.
"-you hear me, Jack? I don't know… Do you think he's awake, or was it just instinct?" Gentle, feminine, partnered by a chorus of concerned chirps. That was Tooth. He pried his eyes open, astonished at how heavy his eyelids felt. Everything was blurry and a little bit swimmy and much too bright, but the wax waves were absent and he was grateful.
"Ah, there's your answer, Sheila." Firm, accented and lilting. Bunny. Green eyes and a gentle paw on his shoulder grounded him. "Welcome back, Frost."
He blinked and focused on catching his breath before trying to talk. It took a while, and although he appreciated Tooth's fingers in his hair and Bunny's bracing paw on his shoulder, it was strange, too. Strange that it seemed so natural for them to be touching him, and strange for him to want that contact so badly after decades of trying to convince himself he didn't need it.
Finally, long after the window of conversation seemed passed, out came the dumbest set of words he'd ever put together between breaths.
"Did I go somewhere?"
He wasn't sure if the rush of air he heard from Bunny was a sign of humor or annoyance. Either way, it lightened the serious feel of the room a little, and that did a lot to strengthen the new Guardian through his pain.
"Nah, mate, you didn't go anywhere. You're tough as a cut snake, I'll give you that."
Jack didn't know what that even meant, but he knew the tones of a complement when he heard it – mostly because he rarely got that such things until his new friends had recruited his help. He liked the sound of it, and he was certain it was something he would happily get used to.
But his breath began to rattle in his chest again, and he could feel the pinch of the oncoming coughs. His friends must have seen it on his face, because they were both slipping their hands under his shoulders the next moment. He knew with a fresh wave of dread what they were going to do.
"No, wait –" he barely managed.
"Sorry, kiddo, but you need to sit up," Bunny replied, and his stern edge made Jack irritated. "On three. One…"
Jack did the only thing he could do, albeit half-instinctually. He tensed his shoulders, making himself as rigid as possible.
"Two…"
Which was about as solid as a wet noodle. Oh, this was gonna suck.
"Three."
To their credit, Tooth and Bunny were very good at lifting in sync. To Jack's credit (or so he thought), he cut his keen down to a growl and managed a few reedy gasps before his breath hitched.
Bunny's free arm braced him across his upper chest, and it kept him upright when the coughing started anew. His brain did a funny thing while his vision whited out with the jarring motions – it recalled something of past experience, distracting him just enough to get through his body's personal brand of torture.
Jack remembered an occasion where his chest had felt heavy and his lungs half-filled, as they did now. He had tried hibernating in his seventh year of existence, to pass the summer boredom before he had discovered the vast stretch of the world. He had woken up barely able to breathe, and had spent several days coughing up the dregs of sleep and body fluids that had accumulated over the months. He had learned then that staying still for too long was not a good idea no matter how healthy a person's body was.
Apparently, his body decided to be doubly apoplectic over his extended nap now, which was entirely bogus. … Did he just think a big word? What did apoplectic even mean…?
The current fit, at least, didn't last as long as the first.
"That's it," Tooth's voice soothed through his pounding ears. "Get it out…" She rubbed the back of his neck and his shoulders, but when she dragged her hand up his spine, he squirmed against the unfamiliar sensation. It made him move, and that was just mean.
"Sorry Jack," she said, responding to his latest grunt of protest, "but you'll heal better if we keep your lungs in good shape."
He was exhausted and half-asleep by the time he was done (again, not long), relying entirely on Bunny's strong arm to keep him from folding in on himself. It struck him that having someone to lean on like that was just weird. Nice, but… weird.
In the end, he hadn't coughed anything up, but at least his chest wasn't pinching in that "you will only breathe in coughs!" way.
"That'll do ya for now, eh?" Bunny drawled. Jack really hoped the casual sound in the rabbit's voice was a farce – no one should sound that laid back when someone else has just finished hacking up half a lung.
They laid him back slowly, carefully, but the shifting of bandages and bed sheets was nearly intolerable. Jack was pretty sure he made some sort of noise, and couldn't bring himself to care whether it sounded like a whine or not. His usual bursting vocals clearly were not going to work for the near future. He felt pillows meet his shoulder blades and neck, and he realized he was only mostly lying down, propped into a gentle slope that helped his spine feel less over-rested. He let his head lean back into the kind of softness he hadn't felt in centuries, and it was odd, but he was grateful.
Then again, everything seemed weird right now, and he was grateful for most of it.
"Try to breathe deep, honey," Tooth encouraged. Yeah right…
But her fingers were in his hair again, and he liked that, so he deepened his wheezing minutely to please her. She smiled at him, and he noticed that something was off, but neither his vision nor his mind would focus enough to let him figure out what it was. He did manage to gather enough air to ask a question he hadn't known he needed an answer to.
"Did it work?"
Oh yeah. He'd been in big trouble, and his new friends were helping him. Tooth's smile seemed to brighten a little, and she settled herself on the edge of the bed while she answered.
"Yes, Jack. You're free of shadows now."
The relief that tickled up under his sore ribs nearly had him laughing, so he toned it down to a gasping giggle. He was free! In that jittery moment he wanted to leap out the window and greet the wind, go to Burgess and see his kids, chase Bunny through his Warren, have Phil chase him through the workshop -
Paws glided deftly over his bare chest and bandaged belly, eliciting greater pain on his flank and pulling him from joy to annoyance in a heartbeat. What on earth had happened to him there? Jack remembered some things, but most of the details, while present, were too blurry to understand in the increasing need for sleep.
"What happened?"
There was a brief pause, and Bunny's hands froze for a moment before he resumed. He pulled on one soft layer of bandages to readjust it, and Jack felt like it was dragging his skin off with it. "The darkness jumped ship, mate. I've never seen it run like that, so good on you."
Jack didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything. He tried to grin, though, He felt gratified that he hadn't gone through all this for nothing.
"Tore you up something fierce, though," Bunny continued. "It's gonna take a while to get you back on your feet."
Oh great. Boredom. His best friend! Bunny must have caught a look, or a nonexistent sigh, or an eye roll or something, because he was all business all of a sudden, even if his tone was gentle.
"Now look here," and there was a paw pad nearly poking him between the eyes, "you rest for now. No use worrying about how much trouble-causing you're missing out on."
Jack hated, on a deep and secret level, that Bunny was right. His eyes were already closing, and he had no will to stop it.
"We'll do more explaining when you're awake enough," said Tooth, and he was grateful for the change in tone, because she seemed to understand he had no energy for following up on the confrontation Bunny was handing out on a silver platter. "And we'll try not to let you feel too cooped up, ok?"
He managed a nod and felt his body go completely lax. He hadn't felt this kind of exhaustion since he was… Nope. His brain was shutting down. He'd have to think about that later.
"We have something that will help with the pain, Jack," Tooth was saying. "Do you want it?"
He cocked an eyebrow at her, sardonic, before his eyelids fell shut on their own. He heard her giggle though, and her fingers left his hair, for which he was entirely too sad. A moment later, her hands were gently cradling his jaw, her touch very warm, but not overly so.
"Here," she cued, "just a few drops under your tongue." He opened his mouth, and was surprised by the strong, cloying taste. Was that eucalyptus?
"It should help with the coughing," said Bunny. "It's my own recipe… Don't look at me like that! This stuff is top notch."
Jack wiped the wary look off his face with a tired grin, ecstatic that he hadn't even needed to open his eyes to ruffle Bunny's fur. The next rush of air from the rabbit was definitely a chuckle.
"Cheeky bugger… Right, get some rest, Frost. "
"I'll be back after a while, ok, Jack?" said Tooth. He mumbled an affirmative of some kind. "I've got a palace full of little ladies who could use some good news, I think." With a gentle touch on his shoulder, the sound of her beating wings left the room.
Wait… they weren't going to leave him alone, were they? Much as he thought all their support was a little weird, he wasn't ready to be alone in his vulnerable state. He struggled to open his eyes, tried to raise a trembling hand. There was a paw resting in his palm in an instant.
"Relax, kiddo, I'm right here," said Bunny. Much as Jack would have liked to be independent and snarky to the Pooka, he couldn't bring himself to be anything but thankful for the gentle touch, and the sternly reassuring words, and the company. So he finally let himself relax, and the drifting current of sleep was quickly upon him.
"We will always be here, Jack. Someone will always be here."
He could feel his smile even as he slipped into sleep, and he remember times when he would have taken anything, anyone, to be a family over the solitude. Over the course of a few short days, this family – the most magnificent second chance a person could ask for – had finally answered his wishes. These Guardians were his.
His second chance family.
The moon was peeking through his window. He would not look.
Moonbeams danced across his golden cushion in the corner. He would not acknowledge them.
MiM was concerned. He did not care.
Sanderson Mansnoozie was busy – very busy in his little corner of Santoff Claussen. And what was so busy about staring at the stone floor as if it had wronged him? Oh, so many things.
Like searching for the insipid deity that lurked far beneath.
No matter where a person was in the world, they could look down at their feet, concentrate beyond the floor, and know that the ungracious Boogeyman was there. He was always there, somewhere. There would never be a time that he was not there, for his dastardly thoughts and cowardly center helped keep the world in balance.
That didn't stop the Sandman from thinking over some alarmingly terrible things to do to said blaggard. Therefore, Sanderson stared at the floor, reaching beyond with both mind and center, to pin Pitch Black's location within his shadowy, shifting realm.
Because Sanderson Mansnoozie planned to do every one of the terrible things he was thinking of. It was not revenge, he told himself, if his goal was not to rid the world of the Boogeyman. It was not revenge if all he wanted was to ensure the safety of his fellow Guardians against the threat of poorly controlled evil. It was merely due penance if he walked away before he took the life of another immortal, even when that immortal had come so indirectly close to taking the lives of two different Guardians on two entirely separate occasions.
It was protection. It was discipline. It was ensuring a spirit like them (no matter how dark he was) could not open the ancient gates he could not control. It was right.
What he planned to do was right.
And he'd be damned if he did not find that son of a bitch if it took him a hundred years of sitting in that very corner and staring at the world beneath the floor to find him. He was going to get while the getting was good, and he was not going to waste this opportunity to close Pitch off from the channel of age-old darkness forever. He did not care how exhausted he was, he did not care how weakened he was in that moment or how weak he would become, and he especially did not care about the ethereal light frantically caressing the back of his neck, trying to gather him away from his intentions.
He did not give thought to the darkness creeping into his mind, because this was not revenge.
This was necessary roughness.
Sanderson shrugged the moonbeams off his shoulders and stared at the floor.
"I don't understand; why are marks still here?"
North was fussing. Tooth held in a sigh while she finished washing the rest of the blood from Jack's body. Finally, he was clean from head to toe, and he was exhausted – already asleep.
"They're not dark marks anymore, North," she said, washing her hands in a basin. "That's bruising; look closer."
North leaned forward, running his fingers over Jack's shoulder and bicep. The swirling filigrees were no longer black as tar, but they were a deep, arterial purple. Given a little time, it would look like he had a run-in with a bad batch of yellow egg dye, and eventually it would be as if the marks hadn't been there at all. The exit wound, on the other hand, would certainly leave a permanent reminder of his troubles. The scar that would result would always be there - the blemish of a mystic wound on a mystic body.
"The shadows really tore him up," Tooth sighed and glanced at her work while she dried her hands, succeeding in somehow reading North's mind. "The dagger wounds were bad enough…"
Saying more on the subject was unnecessary. She was right; the shadows' escape had caused the winter sprite's flesh to tear a path between the dagger wounds. It had left the new exit path mangled and badly swollen from the bursting effects, and there was no way to know just how well Jack would heal from the trauma.
"Is blessing Jack is immortal." North stated. He placed a huge, comforting hand on her shoulder. "He will heal as we do."
"Not exactly…" Tooth replied, and she felt a sting of guilt for having to pop North's only bubble of comfort. "The shadowing and purification have taken away a lot of his strength. This won't be a magical ten-day recovery, North."
"That's… unfortunate," he managed, eyes a little wide. "But he will be all right?"
"Physically, yes, but he'll be weak for a while. He needs to recover his center strength before his body will be able to accelerate his healing to normal levels. At least, that's what happened with Bunny…"
"So, we must treat Jack as human," he said, nodding as if to confirm his own statement. North caught on quick, and Tooth appreciated that. However, treating Jack like a fragile mortal child would likely drive him up the wall.
"For now… Help me get a fresh bandage on him," she requested. "After this, I need a bath…"
"You took two already," North teased, though the humor was strained. He carefully lifted the boy into a mostly upright position.
"Have you ever tried getting blood and sand out of feathers? It's worse than convincing kids to floss once a day. Just once!" She held up an accusatory finger to the sky to prove her point, and then grabbed a roll of gauze a little too vigorously.
"Ok, I get it, I get it," he conceded with a small smile. Nevertheless, the mood was already turning somber again. They worked quietly, and Tooth tried to focus on just getting the wrap done right. This was not her expertise – Bunny had the most experience with field dressings and quick fixes because of his rough-and-tumble nature – and eons more life experience gave him quite a range. But after several hours of watching over the sleeping child (not counting the night he had spent at Jack's bedside), the Pooka was in dire need of a rest himself.
Halfway through her second attempt at bandaging, North brought her out of her wandering thoughts with a question.
"Do you think Sandy's all right?" They hadn't seen him since she had prodded him out of his room to check on Jack. That had been over twelve hours ago.
"I'm sure he's just fine," Tooth replied. She tried to sound confident, she really did. She finished off the bandaging, muttered an "all done," and North resettled their youngest on his side upon the mattress. Nary a stir came from the boy, but they weren't expecting it either. Merely being awake long enough to greet North and argue about the pride-ruining reality that was sponge bathing had him nodding off mid-sentence.
"He didn't look so tired when he came back from the dead," North finally commented, still contemplating Sandy's wellbeing. "How can this be?"
Tooth and North sat at the windowsill to watch Jack for a while. She put some thought into her answer before she dared open her mouth, and it delved into some of the darkest memories she possessed. Horrible images of Bunny writhing on an old stone slab. The borderline hopeless rage on Sandy's face when he couldn't properly treat the Pooka. The anguished smile on Old Man Winter's face when she told him Bunny was alive. The way the ancient one slipped through her fingers as ash the next moment… She took a deep breath and steered the conversation in an all-encompassing direction.
"Pitch is the embodiment of fear. The difference between fear and the pure evil of the darkness he tried to wield is enough to suck the energy right out of our center. I'm not certain, but I think when Sandy appeared to die, his center was just kept in captivity, quiet enough that even Pitch didn't realize it. It took just a handful of children to bring him back, so he must have been close to the surface the whole while, biding his time and energy until the right moment, or maybe asleep until the kids woke him."
"Pitch's fear only tied us down," North said, following her thread perfectly. "It was the disappearing belief that nearly got us."
"I think you're right. But evil will kill us. I hate to say it, but I think we were in greater danger of losing all three of the boys during Jack's purification just because of the nature of that evil. Sandy expended so much of his energy protecting and purifying… I wonder if he spent almost as much energy saving Jack as the energy Jack lost by fighting his own condition, you know?"
North crossed his arms and leaned back, a great breath whistling through his nose as he soaked in the information. "How do we know all this from just two shadowing events?"
Tooth had to chuckle a little at that. "There have been more among the spirits, apparently. These two are the only ones we Guardians have been directly involved in. We got all our prior wisdom from Old Man Winter."
North sat and stared at the sleeping winter child, nodding. He was still, and he was quiet. Tooth wanted to ask what he was thinking. She wanted to tell him that Sandy would brood for a while and eventually return to his old self. But she didn't know if that was true. Part of her was afraid to think about what might be going through Sandy's mind now, after witnessing another shadowing when he had sworn it would never happen again under his watch.
There was little more that could be said on the subject anyway, and Tooth could tell by the large saint's quietude that he probably wasn't ready to take in any more information for a while. She didn't blame him; there would be much more to get used to in the near future The silence stretched on for a while. The entire fortress was quiet. It was so different from the everyday ruckus, different even from the happy goings on that the Guardians shared upon their return to the pole. This silence was somber, but uplifted. A little buzzy, but patient. Celebratory but nurturing.
It was a rare type of silence for Santoff Claussen, and for now, that was ok by the Guardians.
Bunny stared at Sandy's bedroom door as if it were offending him somehow. And it was. It was in the way. Had been in the way for the last half hour. He tried knocking again, rapping his knuckles softly on the thick wood.
"Sandy? Just checking' in, mate. You ok?"
There was no answer. Not a single grain of sand slipped through the door to greet him, and it disturbed the Pooka. He knew the dream maker was in that room, he could smell the warm spice and slight dust of the man. He could hear the shifting hiss of sand and breath. Sandy was not sleeping, nor was he heeding the calls of a friend.
Bunny scratched at his bandaged arms absently, only stopping when Mehndi pushed at his knuckles. She fussed over him while he stared at that door, sensing his rising anxiety and trying to soothe it away. He tilted his ear for her when she started scratching behind it, acknowledging her efforts in the subtle shifts of cartilage and fur.
The door would not budge. The dream maker would not answer. So Bunny did the only thing he could think of - make sure he would be there when that door did open. He grabbed a couple fleecy blankets from the nest in his room, spread them before Sandy's suite, and settled there on the floor. Because he would always be there for the man who had saved his life, and he would return the favor in kind if given the chance.
As he curled up and pressed himself against the door, he hoped. As his little offsider settled into the ridge of fur on his crown, he hoped. As he drifted into a fitful nap, he hoped.
Bunnymund hoped this family was not losing their wisest member to the beckoning trenches of bitterness and revenge.
Hi! Um… so, this is a little bit later than I wanted it to be. Nevertheless, you have all been so supportive in letting me know that as long as I update eventually, it's all good. ^_^ Thank you for that; really and truly. I imagine the pace of college life is going to slow things down a bit now that the spring semester is in session, but I can guarantee in full confidence that this story will continue to be updated until it is finished, no matter how screwy my self-imposed schedule.
So yay! Jack's awake. Um yeah. I gotta say, this is not my favorite chapter. Not my best work, but hey… it's good stuff anyway! (Well, would you look at that: confidence! Where'd that come from? Oh yeah, my reviewers!)
A huge thank you to my immensely supportive and ever-so-wonderful reviewers: Alaia Skyhawk, EpicDetour9, ThatOneFan, Catflower Queen, RedKetchup, Dragowolf, FrostFan1, Vampires United, Galem, juniper294, scrubslova, Scyler, naruXhinacrazy, tynder20, Eternal She-Wolf, hope-is-my-life, kyuubecky, TheLadyJazz, FreeFallingOnAMusicNumber, XCountrySkiier03, Annie, IstariannaCrudgo, Galimatias, RainyDayinAstrasia, Chuni Luni, and TaintedPerspective. I heart you guys! Thank you for your express patience and rock-solid support!
And, of course, thank you to everyone. Yes, you who have favorited, followed, and taken the time to read Shadowed Victory at all. I hope I've made your hunt for good fanfiction an enjoyable one.
Ya'll complete me.
~mj