A/N: Happy 2018, everyone.
Disclaimer: I don't own RotG.
In Jack Frost's candid opinion, whoever truly thought that actions spoke louder than words was an idiot.
He could kind of see where they were coming from, though. Where the error had cropped up, why people believed in the lie and the mistake. To an inexperienced person, one unversed in the ways of the world, it would definitely seem like the saying was true.
Problem was, Jack was far from inexperienced. He knew pain better than he knew himself, having felt all kinds of it over the years, and he could say with confidence that nothing hurt more or longer than words. Physical wounds healed, skin knitting together, bruises fading, until there was little to nothing left to speak of the agony suffered. Words, however, were another matter, eating away at heart and soul for years upon years at a time, chipping away at self-confidence and sanity until the left only the broken shell of a person behind.
No. When used well, words were far, far worse than actions could ever be.
There was, after all, a reason he was in his current predicament.
The winter spirit huffed under his breath, the air from his lungs fogging in the cold atmosphere that was Antarctica. He liked Bunny, really, he did, but he was finding it hard to forgive the overgrown lagomorph. Looking back, the behavior of the rabbit seemed overly petty. Yes, it was true that he had accidentally frozen parts of the Warren, but it had been an accident. He really hadn't meant to do it, the cause of his misstep stemming both from his recent power spike due to increased belief, and his exhaustion due to the most recent winter season. Winter was always stressful, but this one had been especially so, for the Winter Court was critically understaffed and Mother Nature had ordained a particularly harsh winter that year.
Before he could explain his lapse in control, however, the Pooka had erupted, hurling invective at the younger spirit without letting Jack get a word in edgewise. The insults rapidly grew more and more obscene, from fairly harmless epithets to slander that questioned Jack's parentage, and with a steadily sinking heart the teen had simply smiled as he waited for Bunny's anger to wear out.
Until it happened.
For all that Jack may seem flippant about such matters, the truth was that the issue of his race was a sensitive topic for the young spirit. For centuries, he had endured baseless derision on the part of other spirits, who snubbed him because of his race, who told him he would amount to nothing, his and his ilk's semi-wild and dangerous powers making them a liability and a threat. He had been turned away, betrayed, abandoned, merely because of something beyond his control.
When they had heard, the Guardians had promised never to hurt Jack that way. Wounds like that cut deep and never fully recovered, but at least he had trusted them to never aggravate the injury he cradled near his heart.
Now, however, Bunny had broken this trust, reopening the age-old gash and causing Jack's soul to bleed anew.
All it had taken was a few words.
"Ya'll never amount ta anything, ya irresponsible trickster! I should have expected this, all winter spirits are the same! Cruel, heartless, and flippant!"
Jack was not heartless. He may hide his feelings away like a squirrel hiding acorns, but he wasn't heartless.
After all, if he were heartless, then his heart certainly wouldn't be breaking.
Bunny was...well, upset. Devastated. Livid. His emotions were currently a tangle of anger, remorse, regret, mourning, despair, self-hatred, and disappointment.
Anger at Jack, at the boundaries the winter spirit had unwittingly crossed. Remorse and regret at his own unwarranted reaction. Mourning and despair at the loss of his people, and hatred and disappointment towards himself.
It was just...Snowflake had chosen a bad day, was all. The thoughtless spirit had no clue why Bunny always kept himself sequestered in his den on these days, and he had no way of knowing. The Guardians simply took it for granted that no one bothered Bunny at this time of year, and no one had thought to inform Jack of the whys and the hows and the whens.
What Jack had done...hurt. Horribly, like a dagger twisting inside Bunny's chest. On any other day, he would have responded with snark and sarcasm, but today…
Today was special. On this day, many, many eons ago, Pitch Black had destroyed the entire Pooka race, leaving only one, E. Aster Bunnymund, behind. Though it had been a long time since that fateful day, it still hurt just as keenly as it had done so mere hours after the event. This kind of hurt and pain never truly faded, for though it may be occasionally muted or forgotten about, it would always come back to haunt Aster in the end. He would grieve the Pooka race for the rest of his days.
Today...today had been meant for mourning, and Jack had entered the equation at exactly the wrong time and in exactly the wrong way. When you are mourning the death of your people, you tend to have little patience for some frosted brat coming into your Warren and freezing everything.
That didn't excuse Bunny's behavior, however. He'd promised, along with the other Guardians, to never, ever deride Jack because of his race. Now, that promise was irrevocably broken, and along with memories of his deceased people, Bunny was now plagued with guilt at what he had done to the winter spirit that was one of his best friends.
He was an idiot. E. Aster Bunnymund, Guardian of Stupidity and Sticking One's Foot Into One's Mouth. MiM, had he bungled this up.
Hanging his head, the Pooka opened a tunnel at random and bounded through it.
He needed time to think.
He'd been wandering around in this forest for the past three hours, and had accomplished nothing.
The rabbit stared at one of the trees. It was a nice forest, very green, with splotches of pink or blue or violet or red or yellow from whatever flowers happened to be growing. He wasn't entirely sure, but he believed that he was currently in Austria.
He should come back here, sometime, when he felt a little less like bashing his furry head against a tree trunk. He could make quite a nice painting with this forest as an inspiration.
Sighing, the lagomorph sat down on a fallen tree trunk, fiddling nervously with his bandoleer as he thought. He would have to apologize to Jack, that was for sure, but right now he didn't trust himself to appropriately converse with the flighty spirit without making things worse. Grief, guilt, and rage was still messing with his head, and the Pooka had never been good with human emotions to start with.
Besides, once he heard the whole story, Jack would feel horribly guilty, and Bunny did not want to open that particular can of worms. He wanted to make the frost spirit feel better, not worse.
The Pooka hissed under his breath in frustration. He wasn't good at this 'feelings' stuff, for El-ahrairah's sake. He didn't know how to handle these sorts of situations, especially when someone as damaged and scarred as Jack was involved.
Ha. Guardian of Hope indeed. What sort of Guardian was he, if he couldn't even make his closest friends feel better?
...If he couldn't make Jack feel better?
So ensconced in such depressing thoughts was Bunny, that he almost didn't notice the figure coming though the trees towards him. The snap of a twig breaking underfoot was enough to alert him, however, and his head snapped up as he reached for one of his boomerangs.
Only for his hand to fall limp by his side.
"Oh, hello, Ostara."
The fellow Easter spirit smiled, her golden-green eyes sparkling. "Greetings, Bunnymund. Are you well?"
"...Tolerably. How are you and Freyja?"
"Doing well, I am glad to say. At times her close friends seem slightly disapproving of our union, but that is to be expected. The Norse gods are a proud lot, and doubtless they would prefer for Freyja to wed a male spirit."
Bunny nodded in understanding. To be honest, he had been surprised as anyone when the two had announced their engagement, but to each their own, he supposed. They definitely suited each other, both being goddesses of new life.
Ostara continued. "But you seem somewhat troubled, Bunnymund. Is all well?"
Bunny frowned, debating whether to tell her. Ostara and he, while both representing the same holiday, were not particularly close friends. On the other hand, he had to tell someone, and Ostara was as good a confidante as anyone.
Without being fully aware of it, he found himself spilling the tale, explaining how Jack had aggravated him (while carefully leaving out the part about the death of his species, he didn't share that kind of information with just anyone), how they had argued, how he had driven Jack away without a second's thought. Ostara listened patiently to his story, an unidentifiable emotion in her eyes, and when he finally finished, she spoke. "I...see. This is most grievous news, Bunnymund."
Bunny scoffed. "I think I managed ta figure that out on my own, Ostara."
"Indeed," by now, the goddess's eyes were filled with fire. "Pray, tell me, where does this Jack Frost live? I believe I might have a solution to your predicament."
Bunny blinked, surprised at the question. "Uh, well he does have a kind of home beside the lake near Burgess, Pennsylvania, but he doesn't really live there. It's mostly storage for his books."
"...Books?"
"Yep. Hundreds of them. The bugger's obsessed with them. Why do ya ask?"
"...No reason. Excuse me, Bunnymund, but I must be going. Until we meet again."
And then Bunny blinked, and Ostara was gone.
Jack was tired. Very, very tired. Rage-creating a blizzard in Antarctica tended to do that to you, after all, especially when you were already exhausted to start with.
Now, he was looking forward to simply collapsing in his nest in his library, possibly with a good book. He didn't want to see Bunny (or anyone really) quite yet, the insult still rankling, and for now all he wished for was solitude. Solitude and a book. The perfect combination when you were a bibliophile winter spirit with far too much time on your hands.
Night had fallen over Burgess during his absence, and Jack stifled a yawn as he flitted towards his cave. Not that the word 'cave' really gave it justice anymore, the place had expanded massively over the past four years, and now it was more of an underground palace than a cave. He blamed North and the man's ridiculous obsession with gifting Jack with as many books as he possibly could.
Still yawning, the winter spirit landed in front of the entrance to the cave. A faint tingle in his skin made itself felt as he ducked through the too-low doorway, the wards that North had insisted on placing humming with magic. It was a good idea on the Cossack's part, he would grant him that, but it seemed to him to be a tad unnecessary-
He stopped dead, and gaped.
Devastation, everywhere, as if a hurricane had turned the place upside down. Bookcases were overturned, smashed, destroyed, while his collection of trinkets had been dashed to the ground and tossed carelessly aside. His nest of cloth was ripped to shreds, bits of silk, cotton, wool, and linen lying about, and his makeshift shelves had been torn roughly from the wall and mangled.
The worst part, however, was the books. They had been utterly destroyed, pages ripped from their binding and left to trail on the floor like the broken feathers of dead birds. Some were burnt, only three pages and a pile of ashes remaining, while others had been damaged by water, soaked until the pages had crumbled into dampened flakes.
It was the desecration of a temple, and he could only spin in place, utterly speechless as he gazed upon the wreckage.
At last, his gaze fell on one book that had seemed to escape the carnage, left alone in a darkened corner. With three steps, he made his way towards the tome and gingerly picked it up, his fingers trembling as the words "Gulliver's Travels" winked at him in gold leaf.
Thank goodness one of them had survived. Thank goodness. At least there was still something left, at least he wasn't entirely alone-
His grip shifted, and the pages slipped out of the binding, falling limply to the ground and leaving him with nothing but the empty cover.
He stared. One, two, three seconds, almost transfigured by the sight of the broken thing in his hands.
Destroyed. Crushed. Never to be fixed again.
As if in a trance, he thought he could smell the scent of spring.
A/N: Ostara is the Germanic goddess of Easter, while Freyja is the Norse goddess of love and new life. The Germanic peoples used to inhabit the regions that are now known as Luxembourg, Belgium, Northern France, Alsace, Poland, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany.
Also, Ostara is a jerk and she should know better.
...Thoughts?