In retrospect Nicholas St. North can't help but feel like fool. The signs had been there, all the little hints and clues he usually prided himself on picking up on, but he'd missed it this time. It was an inexcusable error on his part, a lapse in his usually unfailing observational skills, skills he depended on because his job depended on it. Reading people was second nature to the Guardian of Wonder; how else would he know just what gifts to give? Missing something like this though, was unacceptable, and this was one mess that could not be blamed on clumsy, overenthusiastic elves.
How could he be the man his friends depended on, when he could not even tell you when it was that two of them had fallen in love? It was so apparent, the way the spoke to the other, the ease with which they fit in each other's space, the surprisingly long list of things they had in common...
The worst of it was North knew why he'd overlooked what had been such an obvious, natural progression of a relationship that had started out turbulent, but had smoothed over so quickly, so easily. Bunny and Jack had fallen into a casual rhythm with each other in such a small amount of time and with so few hiccups that, looking back, he should have started being suspicious even then. When Bunny began allowing Jack small liberties the others either weren't permitted, or had spent decades earning, it should have raised red flags with. It wasn't until the day of both Jack and Aster's separate visits that he'd finally begun to put the pieces together, and even then he'd practically had to be smacked upside the head with the mention of Pooka courting rituals. Stunned almost into silence, North had felt himself falter, nearly fumbling both conversations until he'd somehow mustered up something to say that he could only hope had been appropriately helpful for both of them. The thought that perhaps he'd steered them wrong had been weighing at his ever since.
North shook his head to himself, hunched over his desk with schematics for the latest sleigh upgrade spread out before him. He should be adding the final revisions, but instead he was participating in an out of character bout of self-flagellation. Sighing again and abandoning his work for the time being, Nick slumped back in his chair, absently munching on an oatmeal cookie. He wasn't usually much for introspection or brooding, preferring to live firmly in the now, rather than lament the past, but this whole affair was niggling at him on a couple of levels. Firstly, he was dying to find out how things had gone with both of his dear friends. He could think of no other two people so well suited to each other then Bunny and Jack now that his eyes had been opened, but these things weren't always so simple. As it stood North figured it was just as likely that he could be soothing more tears an hour from now instead of happily planning a wedding.
There would be a wedding, the grandest kind, only the best for the friends North had inadvertently done ill by.
The second thing bothering him, truthfully, was that North did in fact know the reason why he'd subconsciously turned a blind eye. North was an accepting man, wanting only happiness and prosperity for those he cared about, he would never deliberately ignore a personal development of such significance, except he had without actually realizing it.
No, North knew why.
It was because Jack looked so incredibly young.
Despite a voice that sounded closer to a man's then a child, Jack had let slip while relating the events discovered in his memories that he'd died on Easter Sunday, only a few months after his fourteenth birthday.
The boy had been so young.
North knew Tooth felt it too, the pull to the child, the desire to parent, to reaffirm and support and generally smother with the affections the boy should have had all along. Bright, smiling Jack, the Guardians very own child.
But that had been North's mistake right there, hadn't it?
Jack had been a child when he'd died, yes. But after that had three hundred years had passed, long and lonely and difficult, and Jack had grown. Not physically, no, physically the frost sprit would likely never change, remaining as he was, fey and insubstantial until the day he ceased to exist. But mentally? Emotionally? They were dealing with a whole different animal right there.
Yes, the Guardian of Fun was still a child, in several ways. It was clear in many of the things he did, in the way he carried himself. But put any one of the five of them under a microscope and the story was all the same; no matter how old they were, how much they'd seen, they'd done, or how many scars the world had carved on them, they all remained childlike and innocent at heart, able to see the world in shades of light and beauty instead of dark and despair.
It was what made them good Guardians, after all, and as vital as breathing.
North's mistake was letting his own desires paint themselves onto Jack. He looked at the boy as a child his own child in fact, in need of guidance and direction, when he should have been looking at his 'son' as a young man in need of support and encouragement. He'd allowed Jack's youthful appearance and behavior to trick him into believing that he had a chance to father the boy, to raise him, but it was too late. Jack had been mostly raised by the time the ice had taken him, if the stories he'd told about his mortal life had been true, and what little had remained had been left up to Jack himself during his long stint of solitude. No, Jack may have been a child in many ways, but he was a man in more, and North had done him a disservice by denying him that chance to flourish in his own right. A flaw in his behaviour that North would quickly be rectifying. He would have to have the conversation with Tooth, too, next time they spoke.
Sandy and Bunny had never fallen into the same trap it seemed, and North could easily guess at why. For a man like the Sandman, who was literally countless eons old, 14 didn't mean much. Oh, he knew children grew, obviously, but on what timeline Sandy could not have told you. Following in the wake of the sun, spreading good dreams around the globe pretty much non-stop for centuries meant it was always night time for Sandy, which meant the passage of days meant nothing, which meant the passage of time in general held little significance. Too Sandy, people were simply judged as they presented themselves, no more, no less, with no regard to anything related to chronology whatsoever.
For Aster, it was a different story. Pooka were shapeshifters by nature, and while Aster had never excelled in and therefore rarely utilized that particular talent, at least, not that North had ever heard tell of or borne witness too, he had grown up in a society where being someone else was a simple enough endeavor. While Aster had explained to North once, long ago, that most Pooka kept to their natural forms unless required otherwise, their natural forms themselves could be...shifted, slightly, and with little more than a passing thought even for the most untalented of them. Fur colour for one, was changeable, although their tribal markings always remained. Eye colour too, could be transient if the bearer chose. Things like relative size and even gender were also simple enough transitions if one wanted. And also, obviously, age. A Pooka at full maturity usually picked an age they felt comfortable at and 'stuck with it.' Aster had always appeared as a Pooka at his prime, still young and agile, but old enough to appear respectable in mixed company. He could just have easily appeared as an elder, or as a youth barely past his majority, if he'd chosen. So to Aster, physical age also had no meaning, it was the age of the soul inside the body that counted. In Aster's eyes, Jack was a being with three centuries experience as a winter elemental, and just over a decade of frail mortality behind it. While that was not even an eye-blink compared to the Pooka himself, most spirits on Earth were technically 'jailbait,' comparatively speaking, so that argument didn't hold much water.
No, Aster and Sandy had been weighing the boy against his own merit since the get-go, and apparently having great success, while North and Tooth had been floundering in their way to reach out to Jack. Not that Jack didn't care, because of course he did! North knew they had a cherished and treasured friendship, but it had not come as simply to them as Jack's time with Aster and Sandy had, and North had finally discovered that he himself was to blame.
Well, the past was unalterable, but the future was a blank page. North would write a new story going forward, doing his best to be a better friend, to grow himself with the lesson he'd learned. He'd try harder to meet Jack on a more adult level, respecting the man Jack had become, but as always, allowing for the boy he sometimes had to be, in the same way that Nick treated all his friends.
Whatever the outcome for Jack and Bunny, North would be there for them with open arms, as always. Preferably with scrapbook for wedding planning, but hey, one can be optimistic about such things as true love. And no, Jack was not the little boy North had secretly dreamed of having one day, but he was still a fine young man that any father could be proud of, and North vowed to let him know that, someday soon.
Straightening back up over his desk North snatched up a pencil, diving back into his work. In the meantime, he had a sleigh to upgrade, a production line to check up on, and a meeting to arrange. Yes, he should definitely contact Tooth to arrange that little chat, it was too important to wait. Also, it would be pleasant to see her again, she was always such delightful company, and North couldn't deny he had a soft spot the size of a Yeti for the birdlike Guardian.