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So, it's been a while since I wrote anything for this fandom. I've still come back to read some fics every so often, but I haven't written anything for it in years- until now. Because once I get super into a fandom, it's bound to drag me back eventually.
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The Guardians were shocked as they took in the figure within the moonbeams, at the person Manny had chosen to join them:
Jack Frost.
A troublemaker who never appeared to take anything seriously, who brought cold and darkness and danger wherever he went, who always tried to break into places where he didn't belong, who ruined Easter more than once, who never managed to get off of the naughty list once he appeared there (though North truly hadn't noticed just when that was- he just knew it had been a long, long time).
It wasn't as though North hated Jack Frost or anything- no, he was a nuisance at times, but North didn't hate him. He was pretty sure none of the Guardians truly hated him (even if it seemed like Bunny got rather close to that line at times).
But the thing was- even if they didn't hate him, they weren't all that fond of him, either, and they certainly didn't trust him. And how could they? All they knew of him was when he had gotten in the way or caused them trouble.
Still. North knew that, if Pitch was going to be a big enough problem that Manny was bringing in a new Guardian, then the situation really was serious. Manny didn't just make new Guardians at the drop of a hat- no, there was a reason why there were only four guardians. Five, now.
So, North didn't trust Jack Frost. Fine. He didn't trust most people in the world to a very high degree, simply out of not really knowing them all that well (even if he protected the wonder of the world's children, there was no way for him to truly know every child, let alone keep track of them in their adult lives). No, he didn't trust them, but it wasn't because they weren't trustworthy- he simply didn't know them.
And perhaps, maybe he didn't really know Jack Frost, either. Rather, he knew he didn't know him. Even with Jack's occasional antics, they almost never interacted, and his attempts to break in (which were almost always intercepted by the yeti's rather than himself) were getting fewer and farther between. He didn't know what kind of person he really was, aside from brief antics. He didn't know his morals, he didn't know his goals or motivations, he didn't know what he liked, or what he disliked. He didn't know where he spent his time or what he really did all day (did he do anything other than create cold? The Guardians, even as busy as they were, did things besides their jobs sometimes).
Really, North knew little about him other than his name and small bits and pieces, pieces which could add up to the wrong picture in the absence of everything else.
So, maybe working with Jack wouldn't be so bad after all. Maybe they had the wrong idea about him, and Manny, who could see just about everything from the moon, knew a lot more about him. After all, he wouldn't have picked Jack in the first place if he was really that bad.
Maybe everything would be fine, and they would defeat Pitch and gain a new coworker, a new friend, at the same time.
North was an optimistic man, so even if he was still a tad bit wary, it was fine. They'd get to know and trust Jack eventually.
For now, they just had to go find him and defeat Pitch.
It would be easy.
Right?
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It was not easy.
In fact, it proved to be incredibly difficult.
It was difficult, and they hadn't even managed to get past the finding Jack part, let alone getting him to work with them.
Which was fine (or maybe it wasn't, but they'd always been able to handle things without him before).
In the end, though, they ran out of time to search for the winter spirit. Pitch began his attack, and he wasn't going to call a time-out so they could find someone to help them fight him. They would just have to make do with what they had.
And that's what they did.
They fought, and it was hard. Much harder than any other battles they'd ever had to fight before.
They lost Sandy. He came back in the end, but none of them had known that at the time, and the empty, hopeless grief that hit them after his loss made it so much harder to fight. Even their attempts to rally around it, to let a sense of righteous vengeance mix into their urge to protect didn't work. It was so hard to be optimistic and hopeful and believe that they could win when one of them had already been lost- had already died.
Somehow, they managed it.
They were all terribly injured and more exhausted than they'd been in a long time, but they managed it.
If Pitch hadn't lost control of his own Nightmares, they wouldn't have.
But Pitch had lost control of his Nightmares, followed soon after by Sandy's return. The kindness instilled within his sand, which had been absorbed into Pitch's nightmare sand after his death, had somehow managed to revolt and put an end to Pitch's evil plan.
Then, as the four Guardians watched Pitch get dragged deep underground by the monsters of his own creation, Jack Frost was the last thing on their minds. Instead, their minds were filled with swirling thoughts of whether the battle was truly over, or that they had finally won, or that Sandy was alive, or simply just how tired and pained they were. They hadn't needed Jack Frost, even if it might have been easier with his help, and now that the danger had passed, he didn't seem to be quite so important anymore. Their mission had been fulfilled, the children saved-
Most of them, at least.
Eventually, the four of them went their separate ways, knowing they had to fix and rebuild everything that Pitch had destroyed. Even with Pitch vanquished, there was a lot of Belief they had to recover, not to mention their homes and bodies.
Jack was a problem for another day.
And that would certainly be a problem.
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