*Cracks knuckles* We're setting in for the long run. I estimate five, maybe six chapters left. Here we go. Will search for needed editing later, but for now my fingers hurt.

A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day.

-Emily Dickinson, poem no. 1212,c. 1872

Past:

The food was tasteless in his mouth.

But he chewed. He chewed because he had to. Because Pitch had told him to eat, and he couldn't think of disobeying.

"It is good to see you so obedient," Pitch remarked, idly looking at the piece of neatly cut chicken on his fork. "You used to cause so much trouble. I am glad you have seen reason."

Jack did not respond, but continued to eat.

Pitch ate the chicken thoughtfully, and when he swallowed, took a drink from a tall glass of blood red wine. "Just think, we will continue like this, just the two of us, forever. Isn't that pleasant?"

Forever. They would be like this…forever.

Jack Frost had been teetering on the edge of breaking, with the choice of letting himself fall and fracture into so many shards, or (the word 'forever' echoed in his head in his mouth in his heart and he did not want that forever) he could pull himself back.

Jack lifted his chin, his face the blank that had become normal. He looked at Pitch. There was a spark.

"Of course," he answered.

Pitch smiled. "Wonderful."

They continued eating as the seed of rebellion was planted in the chest of Jack Frost.

Present:

Toothiana sipped her tea, and watched Jack from over the rim of her cup. He'd only come back to Tooth Palace a few days ago, the fairy he called Baby Tooth hovering at his shoulder every chance she got. Really, if the little one hadn't been doing her duties Toothiana would have been a little worried at how attached they were.

She took note of the staff leaning against a nearby pillar. The last time she'd seen him carrying it around, it had been during the Blood Rite, when he had had to use it. Ever since, it had always been hidden away somewhere. But since his coming to the Palace, he'd taken to carrying it with him between locations, setting it down the moment he reached whatever destination he'd had in mind. Like it was an afterthought.

Toothiana recognized a power conduit when she saw one. Without his staff, Jack was surely left less powerful than he was with it. But the way he handled it, always so quick to set it aside if he had it with him at all, made Toothiana wonder if Jack wasn't terrified of himself.

Her small thumb glided over the teacup handle, the gloss smooth and shiny. She contemplated North's information. Jack was free, he said, and intended it keep it that way. But Tooth was beginning to think that wasn't entirely correct. She suspected his bondage went deeper than the mere body. He was free, wasn't he? Yet once he was in a place he rarely left it, never tried to venture out on his own. He'd contently stayed in the Tooth Palace during his stay, and only sought to slip between places he'd already been, like North's Workshop. He made his presence as small as possible, and seemed to treat himself as a burden.

There was only so much physical freedom could do if the mind was still in shackles.

Luckily, Tooth considered herself to be excellent at picking locks.

"Jack?" she asked, and when his attention turned to her, continued. "Have you ever considered going out with the girls to collect teeth?"

Jack's fingers tightened around his cup. "No…"

She smiled kindly, and took a sip. "You can if you want. We'd have to find a way for you to move around quickly, since you can't fly like us, but that shouldn't be too difficult. I'm sure North or Sandy could come up with something." Maybe even Bunny, with the new, less hostile interest he'd taken in the situation.

Jack surprised her when he responded, quietly, "I can fly."

"You can?" She furrowed her brows, great liquid eyes curious and bewildered. "Then why haven't you?"

Jack's eyes darted to his staff, then away. Ah. Tooth gave a mental nod. So that was it.

"Are you afraid of it, Jack?"

Jack jolted, his eyes wide and uncertain.

Something like sadness gripped her heart. "It's a part of you," she said calmly, "but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. When was the last time you flew?"

Jack pulled the hem of his hoodie sleeves over his palms, fiddling with the ends. "Three hundred years ago." Toothiana hid the shock from her face. "That was when Pitch found me. And after that I was never—…almost, never allowed to use it."

Three hundred years to someone like the Guardians wasn't very long when you lived a life like they did. But in a situation like Jack's, forced to live stagnant and isolated, three hundred years could feel like an eternity.

A word Jack had said niggled at her. Found, he'd said. Pitch had found him. It brought back to mind her theory of Jack having always been with Pitch. "Jack, how long were you alone before Pitch found you?"

Jack seemed confused. "An hour? It might have been two."

Tooth was silent for a moment. "And in that hour," she said lowly, "you flew?"

Longing swept Jack's face like a passing wind, and was gone. "Yes. Just a little bit."

Tooth stared down into her tea. "I think," she began soothingly, "that you should go flying."

"You won't keep watch on me?" he asked incredulously.

"No." She gave him a look that was two parts kind, and one part terrible understanding. "You're not a prisoner, Jack. You don't need to be supervised like one. But if it makes you more comfortable, you can go with some of the fairies on their rounds."

Jack's face was blank, like he wasn't sure how to respond, before he gave a stilted nod. "Okay," he said, eyes darting to his staff nervously. "Okay. I'll try it."

Tooth stood up, and her wings fluttered as she came to hover by her chair. "I'll alert some of the fairies then. There's a group about to head to…," she trailed, her eyes gaining a far off look as locations flooded her mind, "Russia. I'm sure they wouldn't mind you going with them."

Jack retrieved his staff, holding it carefully in his palms. "Okay," he agreed. "I'll just…take a moment to try and figure out how this works again."

As he made to leave the high pavilion they always had their tea on, Tooth abruptly remembered something. Once, she'd asked him who he'd been before he was with Pitch, and his answer had led her to believe he'd always been with Pitch. (And she'd been right.) But now, it occurred to her that there was another question she should have asked.

"Jack," she called, and when he turned she asked, "Who were you before you were Jack Frost?" He seemed confused, so she expounded. "Were you human? Were you already a spirit?"

"But," his words were stunted, and heavy with pauses, "I wasn't anyone before I was Jack Frost. I woke up like this."

"You mean," Tooth's tongue felt thick in her mouth, "you don't remember?"

Jack shook his head. "Am I supposed to?"

"Maybe," she answered, but reassured, "It will be alright. We'll figure it out. Don't worry. Have fun flying."

Jack hesitated, but went on his way. Tooth watched him go, her mind turning to the hundreds of thousands of tooth boxes in her archives, and wondered if one of them belonged to the boy with winter in his eyes.

The first few tries were less than graceful, but it hadn't taken Jack long to get the hang of flying. He took to the wind like it was an extension of himself, slipping into it like he'd shed his skin and replaced it with sky. It felt right.

Jack was careful not to use the staff for anything else, memories of a blizzard and fingers frozen black making him cautious. The group of fairies he was with worked efficiently, and they steadily worked their way across Russia. Between the cold and the wind, Jack felt more at peace than he'd ever felt previous.

They were passing over a forest when smoke caught his eye. Smoke? This deep in the woods? It wasn't the smoke of a wild fire, but rather the more tame, streamlined smoke that came from chimneys. Who would live so far from other people?

Curiosity, something Jack had long stopped paying attention to, stroked his awareness with cautious fingers, and for the first time in a long while Jack reached out and grabbed hold.

A fairy turned and twittered a question at him when he idled in the air, and Jack gave her the best look of reassurance he was capable of. "I'll catch up," he promised. "I just want to look at something real quick."

She nodded uncertainly, but left him to his devices. Jack swooped below the tree line, following the smoke, and when he touched ground it was in front of a hut. But it was like no hut he'd ever seen before. The roof, which came to a high point, was covered in straw and thin patches of snow, the chimney whose smoke he'd followed reaching high and crooked from the left side. The porch had a roof, but it was rotted through in places, and three stairs leading up to it were nothing but rickety looking planks, nails sticking out hazardously. But the most extraordinary, strange thing about it were the long chicken legs that held it up, and kept the stairs from touching ground.

As he awed, the hut suddenly lurched forward, the chicken legs bending so that the stairs rested at Jack's feet. He shot back a step, surprised, and the door to the hut opened.

Jack pulled his staff close to his chest, and despite the warning bells clanging in his head, was drawn forward. The stairs creaked under his feet, and he was careful not to step on a nail. He crossed the porch and stepped through the door. It closed behind him.

He looked around. A stove, thick and heavy, was pushed against the wall to the right. Shelves were haphazardly attached all around the room, various strange things in jars resting upon them. To his left was a bed, the mattress thick with straw that poked through in places.

There was a fire across the hut's one room. In front of it Baba Yaga sat in a creaking rocking chair

"Hello Jack," she said in a voice like scraping metal. She gave a wrinkled smile, and the firelight glinted on her iron teeth. She tilted her head, clumped hanks of long white hair falling into her face as she gestured at the chair next to her own. "Won't you have a seat?"

Jack found himself unable to say no. As he crossed to the fellow rocking chair, the floorboards groaned.

"Baba Yaga," he greeted quietly, perched on the end of his seat like a bird prepared for flight.

"Jack." She took a deep breath through her sharp nose. "You have been to St. Petersburg," she noted.

"How did you know?" he asked, surprised.

"I know the Russian smell," she answered. "And while you do not have it, you do carry traces."

Jack considered trying to subtly sniff himself, but abandoned the idea.

"So the pet escapes its cage," she said, "but for how long? Pitch isn't one to forgive his things easily, Jack."

"I'm not going back," Jack denied.

"Oh, you aren't?" Her thick eyebrows writhed up her forehead. "But aren't you tied to him? You still obey his rules, don't you?"

"That's not true!" Jack exclaimed, suddenly heated. "I'm not obeying his rules! I-I'm speaking! I took off the cloak! I left his side!"

"Bah!" She waved away his words with one spindly hand. "What do those rules matter? I'm talking about the unspoken ones, the ones he forced into you without ever telling you what they were." She reached out, her arms suddenly impossibly long, and tapped his forehead with one chipped nail, the smell of the rot at the beds invading his nose. "I'm talking about the rules in here."

"I-I don't," he said adamantly as she retracted her hand. "I don't follow his rules."

"Of course you do," she mocked cruelly. "You obey him even now, you're his Consort—"

"I'm not his Consort!"

Silence rang out following his outburst, the crackling fire catching on the dark blue of Baba Yaga's eyes. She looked him over for a moment, then sat back in her chair, the red and black of her peasant dress making her face and skin seem paler than before.

"Well then, why didn't you say so?"

Jack floundered. "What?"

"Of course you won't be free of him so long as you consider yourself his," she explained, "but since you don't, it might just be possible after all."

"Oh," he whispered.

She grunted, and the wrinkles around her eyes might suddenly have been the kindest thing he'd ever seen. "Remember that, and you'll get by." She stomped on the floor once, and the front door swung open. "Now get out of my hut; I have things to do. And Jack," she added when he started to stand. She locked eyes with him, "There are some ties that only the soul can break."

He nodded, trying to puzzle out what she meant, but not sure where to even start. He left the hut, and the moment his feet were on the ground once more, the house stood up on its chicken legs and began walking away.

"Thank you!" he yelled after it.

When the hut was out of sight, Jack looked up through the trees at the sky. He rose into the air gently, taking a deep breath.

"I am not his Consort," he murmured aloud, and believed it.