A/N: Another angsty chapter for you all. I promise there'll be some joy again once we push through the angst. But in the time I was not updating, I feel I gained perspective that I wouldn't have otherwise had for the angst that is in this chapter and still to come. I hope you guys find it interesting, at the very least. I wound up reworking this chapter quite a bit.
Leave me a review if you've got the time! Thank you dear ForeverACharmedOne for always leaving me your thoughts.
Admitting it to them meant saying it out loud, and that made it real in a way that was harder to ignore, harder to shove deep into the back of his mind while he went about his day.
Chapter Nineteen: Break The Silence
The window above Jack's bed was closed, with recently-obtained curtains drawn to block out the sun. He lay sprawled on top of the covers, still wearing the suit he had been required to wear for the wedding.
There was a gentle tapping on the window, far too gentle to stir the boy out of his slumber. He was exhausted; it seemed to be a constant anymore.
The wind picked up, whistling through the chimney and rattling the glass of the windows. The gentle taps became thwacks.
Jack cracked his eyes open at this noise, hoping for a moment that his conversation with Apollo had been a bad dream. With any luck, the reception had been, too.
He yawned, glancing at the extinguished fireplace as the wind continued whistling through the chimney. "Whaaaat?" he mumbled, his throat sore.
With great effort, he pushed himself up to a seated position, his suit wrinkled. The formal attire seemed to confirm all at once that the reception and the conversation with Apollo had happened.
Frowning deeply at the thought, he turned to pull at the curtain and see what the fuss was about before daring to consider what he would have to do about Apollo.
A paper airplane hit the surface of the window before being caught by the wind again. It fluttered clumsily through the gusts before flopping against the window once more.
Jack slid open the window, letting the airplane glide inside and land beside him on the blankets. The wind immediately calmed, its job complete.
Eyeing the folded paper, Jack swallowed. There was only one person that had ever contacted him this way.
Surely that wasn't the case this time, was it? But who else could it be? And why?
Jack reached forward, hesitantly, as though concerned that it was all a trick. His fingertips stopped short.
What if whatever was written inside was bad?
He already had to figure out what to do about the Guardians potentially finding out about Melpomene. He wasn't sure he could handle reading a letter detailing his faults from his first believer right now.
Jack stood from the bed, opting to change back into his hoodie and pants before he did anything about anything else. He hoped that doing so would make him feel more like himself, make it easier to breathe.
His skin bared imprints from buttons and folds of fabric that had pressed against him awkwardly as he had laid in bed. The indentation of a snowflake was present as well, as he had taken to wearing Rowan's pendant under his clothes. The worn fabric of his hoodie was a welcome feeling.
He soon found himself eying the paper airplane again.
Once he read it, he couldn't unread it.
What on earth could Jamie want? The boy had lost all faith in Jack, what else was there to say?
More anger was all that made sense.
Maybe this was just going to be how things were from now on: Disappointing children, disappointing the Guardians, disappointing Gods, disappointing himself.
For a moment, he considered not reading it at all. He could pretend he never saw it.
But his curiosity was not likely to let that happen. He would always wonder.
If he didn't deal with this letter, he was going to have to move on to dealing with everything that had happened yesterday.
Both were terrible options, but one was obviously more dire.
Jack's eyes fell to the Polaroids of Rowan on the wall. She had been sure that the Guardians could handle knowing about his past with Melpomene.
Or had she simply said that to make him feel better?
No. No, Rowan wasn't one to lie to spare his feelings.
He wanted to talk to her about this. But he supposed he already knew what she would say.
"They have to hear it from me," Jack said softly, his eyes drifting from Rowan's grin to the trinkets and knickknacks from the Guardians.
It was the only way. The only thing outside of Rowan that Apollo could hold over Jack's head was Melpomene. If he really wanted to respect Rowan's wishes, if he really didn't want to interfere, he had to tell the Guardians about Melpomene, and soon.
Jamie's letter could wait.
North rarely slept in.
He had a vast number of believers, and the power of that belief not only kept him spry and mentally sharp, but it meant that he could function on far less sleep and food than a mortal. But he had danced quite a bit at the wedding, and after walking Erato to her room, he had worn himself out thinking about their exchange before falling into heavy sleep. It was far later than usual when he finally cracked open his eyes.
When he sat down for breakfast, Erato was already there and had already finished her food. She was helping herself to more coffee and poured him a cup as well.
"I think this is the first time I've ever beaten you to breakfast," Erato commented. Her hair was done, her makeup flawlessly applied, two contributing factors to her usually arriving late to the meal.
"Were you not exhausted?" North asked. "I remember you dancing and drinking with the rest of us."
"I recover quickly after weddings," Erato explained. "Everyone is thinking about love."
North nodded, using a rather large bite of ponchiki to buy himself time to respond. Or to change the subject.
He was too old, much too old to be dwelling so much on the woman having touched his cheek the night before, or of the way he had briefly brushed his fingers against her glove.
Erato was the Muse of Love Poetry. She was a flirt. End of story.
Why dwell on love over breakfast?
"It was a lovely wedding, shame they will not be having a honeymoon," North said.
"They've traveled a lot together as it is," Erato shrugged. "Calliope was saying it might be nice to go on a trip if anything is ever calm again."
"The calm will come," North sighed. "But must get through the chaos first. We have been around long enough to see plenty of chaos and calm, and then more chaos and more calm."
"True. At least we got one night off," the muse nodded. "I'm supposed to go to Clio's later."
"A meeting?" North asked. Both the Muses and the Guardians had been having joint meetings lately. He had almost forgotten that separate meetings were supposed to be the norm.
"Yes." She stirred some sugar into her coffee. "We're seeing how the base is coming and discussing any networking we got done at the wedding."
North nodded. Right, the home base that Clio and Bunny were working on should be close to completion now, and would have a room for each of the Muses. Erato had joked that she would continue to "inconvenience" him until he threw her out. But with a hide-out made specifically for the Muses, surely she would take advantage.
And that was fine. He could have meals with the Yetis again. He could focus on his work.
Sure, he enjoyed Erato's company but if she chose to move, he wouldn't be upset.
Right?
He would still get to see her. It didn't matter if it wasn't every day.
Right?
He was so busy thinking about where the Muse might end up living that he didn't hear what she said next.
"What?" he asked.
"A messenger," she said, pointing just past him. He turned to find a small tooth fairy flitting his way.
"Yes?" he asked the fairy, who approached his ear and squeaked softly. North took one more swig of his large coffee mug and nodded before standing upright. "All right."
"Well?" Erato asked.
"The Guardians will also be meeting, it would seem," North said. The fairy had already gone off, likely to get back to collecting teeth. "Jack needs to talk to us."
"Oh," Erato said, brow furrowed, likely for the same reason North's was. Jack very rarely called a meeting. "Well, I hope everything's okay."
"I hope so too," North said. "I will see you for dinner?"
"Yes."
He couldn't help but smile at her immediate response. "Good."
It had been a while since Jack had gathered with only the Guardians. The extra space in this part of the warren, usually occupied by the nine Muses, was vacant, silent, and uncharacteristically eerie for the place.
When had Jack gotten used to the group?
Still, he was glad now that the audience was small.
He had asked Tooth if she could spare her fairies to help gather the others, and she had accompanied him to a tunnel hidden in her palace that led straight to the warren. She had mercifully not pried too much about why he needed to meet with them all now.
It didn't stop her from casting him a worried glance every few moments.
Bunny was growing used to unannounced visitors when it came time to have a meeting, and seemed only slightly annoyed when he asked Jack what this was all about and Jack only said, "I'll explain when everyone's here."
The pooka was tending to his garden a few yards away, back to watering some white tulips as he had been doing when Tooth and Jack made their appearance.
North arrived next, stepping through a swirling vortex and greeting the others jovially. Jack forced a smile in return.
Sandy wasn't long after North, floating in on a dream cloud from a nearby tunnel. None of the other Guardians appeared even slightly tired after last night. Jack had not checked a mirror but somehow knew the dark circles beneath his eyes were prominent.
Bunny rejoined the group once Sandy had touched down. The four of them stood together, watching Jack expectantly.
This was it. Once he said it, he couldn't unsay it.
"So, what's this about?" Bunny prompted.
Jack had spent his commute to Tooth Palace considering the best way to explain what was going on, trying to determine if there was any way to downplay any of it, to dampen the disappointment that was sure to follow.
He wished he had more time to figure this out.
He wished he had more time to sit with what had happened last night.
Admitting it to them meant saying it out loud, and that made it real in a way that was harder to ignore, harder to shove deep into the back of his mind while he went about his day.
His eyes dared not fall above anyone's collarbone.
"I, um. I want you guys—I need you guys to hear this from me," Jack finally started. "Not anyone else."
"What's wrong?" Tooth asked, her voice full of genuine concern and leaving Jack feeling even more ashamed, somehow.
"There was a period of time where I was… romantically involved with Melpomene," Jack said. North was the only one who seemed surprised at this revelation, his brows rising. Jack knew the others had gotten some information from the Muses, but still wasn't sure of the specifics.
The fact that he and Melpomene had at one point had a relationship was just the tip of the iceberg. It was the least unsettling revelation to come.
"I was lonely, and she came along and she saw me. She actually wanted to be around me, and I felt like she understood me," Jack continued. "I didn't know she was the Muse of Tragedy. And I guess even if I knew at the time, I wanted to be seen so badly that it probably wouldn't have mattered."
He had never admitted that before, out loud or to himself. He had always insisted to himself that if he had known exactly what she was when they first met, that things would have gone differently.
He didn't think that was true anymore.
Jack knew exactly who she was when he danced with her last night, after all.
He was staring at the egg statue just past North, the only thing he could really face right now, as he detailed how he and Melpomene would spend their time together. The public executions, the private, slow, and agonizing deaths of those succumbing to hypothermia. The disdain that grew for everyone that wouldn't see him, the bitter and ultimately silent exclamations at the deceased, do you believe in me now?!
As Jack explained, avoiding their reactions, he had the strangest feeling that his voice had gone on elaborating without him. Everything was very matter-of-fact, calmer than he expected. It was like someone else entirely was speaking for him. He barely felt like he was present at all as he continued.
The nightmares about corpses. The way he would grow physically ill as though his body was getting fed up with the death and the misery and rejecting it, demanding something of substance that it never received.
The nights they danced and he was sure it was the two of them against the world, and maybe that wasn't so bad. The times she would make him feel comfortable, accepted, understood, only to reiterate that no one else could make him feel that way, only she could.
The way he was miserable. The way it took years before he considered that perhaps being lonely again was better than being comfortably but miserably attached to her.
How he only found out that she was the Muse of Tragedy because of a chance encounter with Urania, who had innocently informed him.
How he ended things, how she had tried to talk him out of it for a moment but seemed to accept that they were done rather nonchalantly.
"She just went on her way," Jack said. Tooth was hugging him now, he hadn't even noticed that she had moved, and her touch took him by surprise, jolting him back into the moment, suddenly present and affected by the words coming out of his mouth.
He was suddenly very aware that he was shaking. "She just left," he continued. "I thought I loved her, I thought she loved me, she just left like it was nothing, like I was an errand she could skip from now on, she just…"
There was a physical pain in his chest now and he held on to Tooth, instinctually. He must have dropped his staff at some point but couldn't remember doing so.
"I thought I knew better, I thought I knew that I was better off without her and that I was over all of this, I thought that she didn't have any power over me anymore. But then they played our song at the wedding and she asked me to dance and I kissed her and if Euterpe hadn't shown up—I don't know. I don't know why I fell for it again, I don't know why I keep doing this."
"It's okay, Jack," Tooth said gently.
"There's darkness in me, and she knows it," Jack said, his explanation unwilling to slow even with Tooth's reassurances. Stopping now would be like trying to halt a runaway train. "Pitch knows it, too, he tried to get me to join him before I joined the Guardians instead. I never brought it up because I didn't think it mattered, I thought I was better than that now, but I'm not sure anymore. I thought I could be one of the good guys, I thought I could protect children and everything good in the world but she got to me all over again. I was supposed to know better, I—I fucked up."
He struggled to catch his breath and blinked back tears. The ability to explain everything in an even and factual way had slipped away as soon Tooth pulled him into her arms. North set a hand to Jack's shoulder.
"Jack," Bunny said and Jack reluctantly looked his way, somehow knowing that Bunny wouldn't continue until he did. "You didn't do anything wrong."
Jack didn't know what to do with this statement. It wasn't what he was expecting. He felt like he had just been handed an instrument he had never seen and was now expected to play it when he wasn't even sure how to hold it correctly. He was still breathing heavily.
"I did, I know she's not good for me and I still talked to her, I—"
"You are grieving," North said. "You are vulnerable."
Images flashed above Sandy's head, many including instances of Jack's kindness and strength, assurances that he was a good person.
Tooth loosened her grip on him enough to meet his eyes. "It's not your fault."
Jack had gone over a century without crying and Rowan's death broke his streak. After that, it had been harder and harder to hold back, like he had to make up for lost time. He hadn't fought it much the previous night but now he was sheepishly rubbing his eyes and hoping none of the others noticed.
Somehow letting any tears escape seemed like too much. He couldn't tell them all of this and cry in front of them.
But he had been ready for them to be disappointed in him, disappointed like they were when he wasn't there to protect the warren from the nightmares.
Wasn't this worse? It had to be worse than falling for Pitch's plan to distract him.
Instead, they didn't hesitate to tell him that he wasn't at fault, Sandy still highlighting his greatest attributes in the sand above his head.
He wasn't sure why that was affecting him the way it was.
If they were disappointed, he could work with that. But this? What was this?
Did they not hear the part about Pitch wanting Jack to join him? Did they miss the part where he and Melpomene watched people die as entertainment?
He lost his battle with his tear ducts as he felt a tear roll down his cheek, only to freeze partway.
Tooth was hugging him again.
"Breathe, Jack, it is okay," North said.
No it wasn't! Why didn't they understand that? Jack choked on tears and backed away from Tooth, her sympathetic gaze back in his line of vision.
He turned away from them, wiping at his face again.
"Give him a minute," he heard Bunny say as Jack stepped away, his breathing labored. Shouldn't this have gotten easier? It was all out in the open, it should be easier now.
After he told Rowan, he felt better, he felt lighter. Things made sense then.
No one said a word, instead patiently waiting as Jack stood by himself, urging himself to breathe and to calm down. He thought of urging Rowan to breathe and saw her in his mind's eye.
Normally he would shove the thought of the girl away, but he was already upset. She couldn't make it worse. He urged himself to breathe as though he was coaching her, despite how difficult it was, despite the fact that he could feel the other Guardians' eyes on him.
He had to get through this. Whatever happened, at least after today he wouldn't have to worry about them finding out anymore.
Jack cleared his throat, he sighed, and he turned around only when he was sure he had calmed down enough to attempt facing them again.
He felt as though he'd just run ten miles.
He watched them. They watched him. No one sure what to say. Their collective gaze was still sympathetic. He still didn't understand why.
Bunny cleared his throat, as though to test the waters for the conversation continuing. "So. Why tell us this now?"
"Right," Jack said, supposing it was obvious that there was a reason he was divulging this difficult information. "Apollo visited me last night and threatened to tell you all if I didn't convince the Muses to choose him over Artemis."
Jack was relieved to find that this finally wiped the sympathetic looks from their faces, replaced with shock. That, he could deal with. That, it seemed, relaxed his shoulders more than anything.
His breathing was finally, truly, calm.
"Why does he think you can influence the Muses?" Tooth said.
"Because he had influence over Rowan and because he was able to convince the alliance to make a deal with Pitch," Bunny provided immediately. Sandy nodded in agreement. "I don't know why he wouldn't just bribe you with bringing Rowan back."
"He tried," Jack and North both said.
"Why didn't you tell us?" said Tooth, surprised.
"Thought it would be best for everyone to let the Muses and Apollo make decisions without our interference," North said. "That even revealing that Apollo was bribing Jack would influence their decision in ways we should not."
"I talked it through with North and I don't want to be the reason Rowan does or doesn't come back," Jack said. "So, I tried to stay out of it."
Images flashed above Sandy's head, indicating that he believed the Muses deserved to have all the information before making a decision about Apollo or Artemis, and that there was no true way for the Guardians to stay out of the affairs of the Muses and vice-versa.
"Yes, in hindsight, I believe you are correct," North nodded. "And with Apollo now threatening Jack, we cannot allow this to continue escalating."
"You up for filling in the Muses?" Bunny asked Jack. "You don't have to tell the whole story again, but they need to know he's trying to bribe and threaten you."
The boy felt like he could easily take a three-day nap after finally letting the Guardians know all this. He had expected it to be difficult, but the physical exhaustion was an annoying development to be sure.
The sooner he could get this over-with, though, the better. Bunny was right, there was no reason to go into full details with the Muses. The fact that Apollo was threatening him was what was important, not the specifics of the threat.
Sand images above Sandy's head indicated that the Muses would be in the middle of their own meeting right now.
"Yeah, I guess, let's go," Jack said.