A/N: On a brighter note, I made a bunch of RotG Valentines.
post/42866233158
End of chapter 10:
Passed out, Jack fell down and down until his body was covered in ice. There was nothing he could do as he plummeted towards certain doom. No one could see the boy falling from the sky, and even if they could, they wouldn't believe their own eyes. That was why when a child looked and saw a shooting star, he didn't believe it was a person, and no one believed in Jack Frost.
Jack plopped into a huge pile of snow and his neck snapped. There was no more breath, no more magic, no more laughter or anything. His brown faded vest was frozen and had broken on impact. His heart did not beat. He was dead.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
With the resilience of a dog separated from its master, Jack's staff whipped up into the air and turned this way and that. It steadily went up and made its way towards Jack's corpse. The process was slow, and the wind didn't help very much, but it landed next to him mutely.
Jack lay dead.
His staff shuddered and moved closer to his hand. On contact with the flesh, nothing happened. However, the wood was tenacious. It jumped up like a pogo stick onto Jack's chest, but his head still hung uselessly, as if he were a doll.
It began to snow, lightly as first, but the clouds thickened and threw pellets of hail. Jack's staff dropped to his side and they were both engulfed. It snowed for hours, an inch of snow and a foot of hail. Jack was buried like a child on the beach. They were stuck there for a long time- but then the Moon rose.
Tsar Lunar sat atop the Moon every day and night, or rather, every night and day. It was always nighttime somewhere in the world and his favorite thing to do was watch his old friend Sandy spreading Dreamsand from the skies, intricate imagination pouring down and enticing children's thoughts.
Tsar Lunar was known to the Guardians as the Man in the Moon. Jack Frost didn't know this- he thought the Moon had spoken to him, he thought the Moon had told him his name. But it hadn't been the giant rock in the sky that was inhabited by Lunar Moths and Moonmice. The Man in the Moon had sent a message through space to reach the ears of everyone on Earth, so everyone would know that Jack Frost would be a Guardian one day, just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, just like the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman. Tsar loved his friends very dearly, but he was old, and he could no longer fight or protect the children of the world.
When Jack Frost fell and broke his neck, the Man in the Moon was alerted by his Moonbots with their creaking joints and urgent messages. He listened very carefully to the way Jack had died; trying to find the Moon. Tsar looked down at Earth sadly. He didn't want it to be like this- he didn't want to leave Jack in the dark. But Jack had to figure out for himself the reason he was there. Tsar knew that Jack would grow to love children. He knew that it would take lots of time, and Jack would become very lonely and desperate in the process. But it had to be done. Tsar had resurrected Jack for a purpose, and he would do it again.
He had to do it again.
He thanked his Moonbots and stood up tall, as tall as a very short man could stand, anyway. Jack's position on Earth was close to The Great Lakes of North America, which meant he hadn't travelled very far from Burgess. The Man in the Moon tried to find the spot on the planet with his eyes, and could see the gentle curve of the continent. Carefully, he retrieved his ornate telescope and peered into it, magnifying the spot in Ohio again and again. There was freshly fallen snow for miles, and Tsar Lunar was afraid Jack was lost forever.
"Alright," he said, rubbing two pudgy hands together and straightening his bowtie. "Jack Frost... Jack Frost..."
Down on Earth, Jack's staff began to vibrate and it poked out of the snow. When Tsar said Jack's name for the third time, blue sparks of ice shot from its curved head and flew like fireworks into the sky- surely they would be found now! And, that was just what happened. The Man in the Moon spotted bright blue icy crystals defying gravity and he had a great smile on his funny little face upon seeing the shepherd's crook. Jack would be right there. The staff was not broken.
The Man in the Moon bent down and picked up a very small rock, a Moon rock, extraterrestrial and magnificent. He whispered something into it, direct and important orders, then gave it a gentle kiss. The rock was warm. He checked to see Jack Frost's location again and crushed the rock in old but strong hands- then, he blew. The powder from the rock floated up into the never-ending space but had directions, a very specific place to land, a very specific person to heal.
The Man in the Moon took a step back and smiled. What he'd said to the pebble was simple, an order that would outlive every human and every beast. An order to save every human and beast.
"Save Jackson Overland Frost no matter what."