-So sorry it took me so long to upload, and it's going to take some time over these next few weeks as well with NaNoWriMo starting up. Thank you all for sticking with it and supporting the story, reviews are encouraged. Enjoy.-
-Santoff Claussen, North Pole-
As hard as Anna tried to convince herself of otherwise, there was still one thing left to tell North. She stood in the midst of scuttering yetis and troublesome elves, tripping as she tried to focus on a hundred things at once. North jaunted along in front of her, pointing things out and calling out to yetis who were working diligently on toys. Christmas was coming up soon, that much Anna knew. She'd tried to make herself forget in the past, but all the decorations and the snow and the peppermint in the air, and she never forgot.
"Ah-ha! Anna, come here, see this!"North exclaimed, motioning her over. She stepped up to him, almost faceplanting as she misstepped to avoid a cluster of elves running around with tinsel looped around their ears, and leaned in to see what he was pointing at. If she couldn't get his attention, he might as well have hers.
North picked up a tiny silver tube with glass at both ends, convex and shiny and casting a rainbow onto the desk beneath it. On the sides were little knobs with nothing written on them, but it looked like the yeti had been in the process of doing that. He huffed and crossed his arms, tapping a finger on a furry forearm and waiting for North to give him back the toy.
"You see this? Es one of my favorites!"He turned it in his massive hands, making the toy look like a toothpick, and Anna tried to smile and agree.
"Oh, yeah, that's a nice...uh...telescope-thing?"She tried, and North got a smile in his eyes that told her he didn't expect her to know what it was. Amused, he held it out to her, and Anna took a moment before tentatively reaching out for it and taking the toy in the palm of her hand. It was about six inches long and not heavy at all, feeling as if the inside were hollow. She turned it around with the curiosity of a child, feeling divets and looking at the glass on both ends. She couldn't even begin to guess what it was.
"Look, look! Into the glass part! Tell me what you see!"
Anna turned it around and, albeit skeptically, she brought the instrument up to her eye and looked in. And inside was a magnificent scene so familiar that Anna was taken abruptly aback for a moment. Her breath caught as she looked inside and saw, in miniature paper figurines, the image of a tall man in a red coat with a fancy brown beard and a young girl, both in the snow and laughing. She knew it, even though everything was paper and two-dimensional. She knew it.
Slowly, she turned the knobs, realizing that the scene moved. It shifted on a gear, the man and girl having a snowball fight, now the girl slightly older and the man a bit rounder. She twisted the next notch, and it was a scene that Anna herself scarcely remembered. The girl was in a bed, the man next to her holding her hand, hunched over with a look of mourning. Anna shifted them just slightly, and the scene turned to a moonbeam falling over the bed and the man sitting up.
Next notch down. The girl and the man were in a field of wilted grass, the snow having just melted, and when Anna turned the notch again the grass sprang to life with flowers blossoming in bunches all around them. Her breath let out, and slowly, very slowly, she moved to the next notch down.
The scene changed. Now, it was of the man considerably larger and his hair much whiter, sitting in a chair by the fire. The girl sat across from him, now older as well, her hair shaved underneath and her clothes a bit baggy and the same bluebird-egg blue. They were smiling, holding hot coco. Anna stared into it for a moment longer, wondering if that was how it really was now. Was it really all that simple? Could everything be summed up in a few scenes of paper?
Gently, Anna took the instrument from her face and blinked down at it, seemingly too small for what it held inside.
"You like?"North asked quietly. Anna looked up at him, saw his hopeful face, and smiled with a lump in her throat.
"I love it. The man got pretty big, though."
"Hey!"He argued and laughed, wrapping an arm around Anna's shoulders and pulling her into a gently playful hug, kissing the top of her head. Now this she remembered. Warm and right, a faint memory slowly coming back to her.
And that's when Anna knew she had to tell him. Before it all ended.
"North...there's something I left out last night. There's one more thing I have to tell-"
"Wooohooo! Coming through, watch out! Jack Frost in the house!"Jack burst into the scene, icing the railing as he slid down it on bare feet, Tooth and Sandy darting along behind him. Aster was rolling his eyes, but bounding towards him. Before Jack could hit the ground, Aster reached up and tripped him, sending Jack tumbling over the railing as Aster reached us first. A smug smile on his face, he crossed his arms and nodded to us.
"Oi, I'm 'bout to head to the Warren and I got that paint you wanted. Pick it up?"Aster asked, North patting my back so hard I almost fell over.
"Of course! We will all take trip! Anna, Warren is lovely!" He leaned down so that only Anna could hear him, "Not as lovely as Workshop, of course."
"Fine with me. You want the first-class look around, sheila?"Aster asked. He seemed to be sincere, albeit a bit gentle and awkward. He was trying to make up for what he had done, watching his words and actions, but Anna was floored that he'd invite her in the first place. No kindness needed.
Everyone stood and waited, which was something she was grateful they had picked up. No more yanking her this way and that, no more speaking over her. Anna could finally breathe and think. Aster looked sincere enough, and Jack was nodding vigorously behind him with a mischevious glint in his eye that only meant trouble.
Which meant Anna had only one choice.
"Sounds awesome. But what's a 'Warren'?"
Aster got a big smile on his face to rival Jack's, lifting up a large foot and saying smoothly,
"You're 'bout to find out, mate."
Thump thump.
With two decisive 'thumps' of his foot, the ground beneath them fell away to a complete 90 degree drop. Anna's stomach found a home in her chest, pushing everything else up into her throat as she fell and fell and fell. She couldn't tell if that incredibly feminine scream was her or North, but she couldn't remember being able to un-glue her jaw until the drop began to turn, now sending them all tumbling along over one another. She caught a glimpse of Jack, then a dirt ceiling, then Tooth, and then a foot that could have been Jack's or North's, everything was so blurred.
The entire time, Anna could hear the rhythmic beating of Aster's feet as he bounded along ahead of them. And she swore that if she ever caught up to him, she would take one of those feet, buy a car, and hang it in the windshield. But, after what seemed like hours, Anna finally caught the quickest glimpse of sunlight before they tumbled out uncerimoniously into a dewy, warm grass. Finally on level ground, Anna rolled to a stop and put her hands up under her, pushing herself up and about to curse Aster to a new plane of existence.
And then she saw what was around her.
Aster stood stalk-still, his fur on-end and his body stiff.
This couldn't be the Warren.
"What happened?"Tooth asked softly, everyone looking up to see a shriveled mass of Earth. The grass was dead and crunched beneath Anna's feet, the trees were almost black or toppled over, no leaves to be seen. What was worse, there were shattered egg shells littering the ground, dried paint cracking on the dusty dirt. The sky was covered in angry-looking grey clouds, rolling and rumbling above.
The air was almost hard to breathe in, thick and scratchy and permiated with a sickening sense of death. It was like a toxin leaked from what Anna assumed had once been beautiful, seeping it into the air around them and making her feel sick. She looked quickly to North, who was looking around with a muted sense of dread. Only Jack looked back at her, both sharing worried glances. He reached out and took her arm in his hand, lightly walking with her along the path.
Aster was up ahead, Tooth fluttering down next to him and trying to speak, but it didn't look like he was responding. Instead, he walked numbly, his shoulders down and a heavy weight over his entire body. Anna couldn't see his face, only see him looking to his sides, ears down and looking pained at every tree and egg and paint spot.
"What happened here?"Jack whispered to her, Sandy catching up to the two of them. Anna didn't want to say it, she really didn't. She bit her lip and knew this had to be her fault. Had she just told North, maybe precautions could have been taken, maybe things would have ended up better, maybe...
"Pitch. It had to be him. He has to know I'm here now."Anna whispered, the words hurting as they wretched from her throat. Sandy tapped the side of her head and she looked over, the little man with a reassuring look and little signs over his head.
"Sandy says it isn't your fault. And something about bananas. Oh! No, it isn't your fault and we couldn't have known anyway." Anna wanted to smile back, to say she was thankful, but all she could manage was a stiff nod.
"But Pitch wouldn't attack here if-"
"He would, if he's as strong now as we think he is."North whispered from above them. No one spoke at a normal level, fearing that anything louder would shatter the already-fragile surroundings. "Pitch would do the same, possibly worse. Now, though, he will target you. Which means we cannot leave you."
"You're all too nice."Anna muttered.
"It's kind of our thing."North answered, following Aster over a hill and looking down into a valley of vast, dead, shriveled grass, on the other end of which seemed to be a dried river coated in blues and yellows peeling on the sides. It was horrible. To all sides, as far as the eye could see, everything was gone. Anna hadn't ever even seen what it had looked like before, but she'd heard stories and seen the delicate way Aster would paint eggs when he thought no one was looking, pulling one out of the belt around his chest and working on intricate details. And then this, all of this, dead and gone.
When Aster fell to his knees, Jack let go of Anna's arm and ran forward, North and Sandy following him. They crowded Aster, Jack's hand on his back as the Pooka hunched over and buried his face in his paws, everyone whispering reassurance to him. Anna stood away, a pain in her chest, looking down to see the dirt kicked up at her feet. She imagined Pitch there, sucking the life out of everything, nightmares and fearlings ripping and tearing and oozing into the very foundation of the Warren.
All while she slept, all while she tried to tell North her purpose for being there in the first place. That Pitch was using her, that he would do something to retaliate. Something like this. Those fleeting moments of peace were beginning to wear her down, giving her hope only to be shattered like this. EVerything she did was toxic. Everything was wrong. She killed everything around her-
Suddenly an idea hit her.
Her eyes widened and she looked around again, heart pounding and thousands of doubts immediately flooding her head. But she pushed past it, she still wondered. It had been so long that she wondered if she could ever even do this again, fearing she'd spent too long in the dark, too long destroying. She didn't know if she could create again. She looked up to Aster, still sitting hunched-over, Jack and the others around him comforting him. The man who had done everything he could to start to apologize, to try and make up for what he'd done.
Anna didn't want to prove him wrong.
She took a few steps back, looking around and holding her hands slightly away from her body. She expected nothing when she tried to awaken an old warmth in her chest, and so was shocked when a tingling began at her palms and spread to her hands. The warmth that she was once used to now felt like a wildfire, almost painful in the intensity, but it was there. It was still there, roaring to life and spreading through veins and into bone and flesh. Her eyes closed, but it was like she was still aware of everything around her.
This was so much different than death. There was no chill or darkness or strife. No strings to pull. Only a warmth, only a fire burning inside that leaked through her presence into the Earth around her. She could feel it all, too. Just like she always had. The life igniting around her, bleeding across her hands and into the air, which moved slightly as if ventilating away all the death that thickened it. She felt life, memories, joy, everything that came with existing suddenly lifting from the ground to the infinite sky above.
It felt like home. It felt like safety. It felt like comfort and love and peace. It felt right. The kind of right that can't be taken away, no matter how terrible things would get.
The only thing that brought Anna back to reality was North's voice. He said something she couldn't discern, and prompted Anna to opening her eyes. When she did, she had to blink away the harsh light that suddenly poured down from the deep blue sky, the Sun showing itself as the clouds were receeding into an unseen horizon. When she got her sight back, Anna looked at what she had done.
The Warren was beautiful now restored to its full potential.
Grass grew almost everywhere, thick and green and tall. The paths they stood on were made of rich, compacted dirt that looked as healthy as Anna had ever seen anything. The trees stood like soldiers, branches fanning out and leaves all sorts of vibrant colors, swirrled vines hanging from spots on the trees and almost reaching the ground. A breeze blew by, light and airy, and rustled up the leaves that sent a cascade of blues and yellows and pinks.
And, near their feet, little eggs with tiny legs scuttered up the hill by the dozen.
"...Okay, that's weird."Anna deadpanned, blinking as they all swarmed Aster, who had stood up and looked on in amazement. He looked down suddenly as the eggs jumped on his feet, swooping to a crouch and holding out his arms for them to jump and perch on. Almost in disbelief, he held them close to him, looking down and blinking. Below them, with a loud rushing sound that got everyone's attention, the river suddenly filled with a violent rushing of what looked like colored water, but they all knew better.
The paint for eggs rushed back in, filling the trench with a beautiful marble-effect of colors. And just like that, it was complete. Everything almost fit back together, like the natural flow of things found its place and kept going. As if this was how it had always been, uninterrupted. Anna couldn't believe it had been her that brought it back.
Aster turned, looking back at her with wide eyes and a mouth slightly ajar. Slowly, and never leaving her eyes, he crouched and the eggs hopped off, tumbling over the other to get to the river. When he stood, Anna had a flash of a moment where she was afraid. Of what, she didn't know. But she was afraid.
"You did this."It wasn't a question, and therefore Anna could give no answer. She could just stand there with her hands against her thighs and a fear in her chest. And then, like a miracle, Aster smiled.
She remembered that smile from back with Jamie and Sophie, bright eyes and relaxed shoulders. It was a lovely smile, and this time it was aimed at her. He was happy, because of her. Anna could scarcely remember the last time that had happened. That she'd made someone happy.
"Well crikey, sheila, guess you're more than we bargained for."He said it in a jovial way, in a teasing kind of way. And Anna breathed out heavily.
"Yeah?"Her voice was so shakey and so awkward that they all had to laugh at it, Jack swooping up and wrapping her in a tight, bone-crunching hug.
"I knew you could do it."He whispered in her ear, making her smile and squeeze him back before he took a few steps back. Tooth fluttered up to her as Jack sped to Aster, poking him and nodding down the hill.
"That was wonderful. Quite a gift that the Man in the Moon gave you."She complimented, nudging Anna.
"I guess...the flipside isn't so pretty."Anna reasoned, still smiling, still walking on air. Tooth shrugged and put and elbow on Anna's shoulder, close and intimate, saying,
"Maybe not. But, if you use it right, it could make room for beautiful things instead of destroying them." Anna blinked, watching as Aster, Jack, and Sandy all took off in a race against the other.
"...I honestly never thought of that." Tooth laughed and lifted off, giving Anna a warm smile.
"Let's go catch the boys before they do something-" She was cut off by a shout and a splash, cringing and smiling, "-stupid."She laughed and turned, taking off down the hill and curving with the turn. Anna was about to follow her, taking a step forward when North's arm came out of nowhere and wrapped itself around her shoulders, pulling her to him.
"Ah-ha! There's my Anna! I knew she was there, deep in your little bluebird eyes!"He exclaimed, beaming down at her as if he actually did see Anna from before. Which made her wonder, as she leaned against him, if maybe, somehow, she was.
"How was this not your fault?"Anna teased as Jack sat, arms and legs crossed and pouting. His once snow-white hair was now a kind of pastel yellow and blue, pink smeared across his jacket and face. He pointed to Aster, who was much better off having known ways to remove the paint(which he did not divulge with the others) and shouted,
"He shoved me in! It was paint! I could get lead poisoning!"Jack exclaimed, and Anna and Aster rolled their eyes at the other. The sun was setting, giving everything a soft darkness about it, and North had tuckered himself out enough to know it was time to go back. His eyes were heavy and he leaned on one of the swords, looking like an old man who stayed up far too late.
"C'mon, you'll clean up at the Workshop Snowflake." She held a hand out to him, which seemed to be mistake #1 of that evening. The mischevious glint flinted across his eyes and he grabbed her arm, pulling himself up and her to him, once again wrapping her in a hug.
Except this time, he was smearing paint on her body and shoulder.
"Jack! You askhdang!" Her mouth was covered as he rubbed his hair in her face, pushing him away and caught between laughing and strangling him, feeling the paint smeared across her face. Jack had no such qualms about laughing, almost doubling over and pointing at her.
"Aww! L-look at the scary spirit! Isn't she so menecing and angsty?" Jack laughed through speaking, Anna about to tackle him when Aster caught the back of Jack's hoodie and North the back of Anna's, both of them blue-in-the-face as they restrained their own laughter.
"It's time for bed now, we all had fun day. Time to sleep, then show Pitch how he cannot keep us down for long. Not with Anna here now."North announced confidently, and Anna would have been flattered had she not been covered in paint and glaring playfully at Jack. North sheathed the sword, still holding Anna, and threw the snowglobe.
As they entered and crossed the portal, Aster asked,
"Sheila, if you can bring things back like that, how good are you at fixin', say, crook paint jobs-"
They were in the Workshop.
Or, more accurately, what appeared to have been the Workshop.
Anna was dropped, and a silence filled the space. No, she thought, nononononono. She couldn't fix this. She couldn't...this was...
"Oh dear, Anna, it looks like you've made a mess...again."