cheddarbiscuit Presents:

Matchsticks.

Disclaimer: Do not own.

Notes: I was going to sit on this for a while, develop it a little more—but it's FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH.

I can't not post it.

So I guess this makes this my first Holiday Special.

Chapter One:

He used to love Burgess. Really, he did. He had always felt inexplicably drawn too it; and he always loved winter in the north because it meant he could spend his days in Burgess. He had loved seeing how it changed over the years, pointing out what was always the same to himself, freezing the new things for the first time, and looking at the toll his ice took on the older places.

He used to love the lake, and he had no idea why at the time, he would sit on the frozen edge and he would feel nostalgia, joy in his eyes, butterflies in his belly, a tingle in his spine, like he was home and he didn't need to be seen. At the time, Burgess had been important because he had been 'born' there, as Jack Frost. So, on some level, he knew it had been important. Never in those three hundred years had he imagined he had a life—much less one that ended in Burgess.

He actually hates Burgess now.

He winds up in near panic because he manages to convince himself that his baby sister is still there somewhere. She is not, of course, she has been dead for several generations, but his heart insists that she is. She has to be. She's just around the corner. He just cannot accept that she is not—this is Burgess. She has to be here! She has to be here so find her you idiot! He remembers her face, but he cannot remember how she died. Three hundred years he had watched Burgess so fondly, and she had slipped away under his nose. He had never even noticed.

Did she ever move away? Did she ever get married? Surely the neighbors didn't let his family starve?

He cannot come to terms with it. He sees her everywhere. Every pair of brown eyes. Every lock of dark hair, every turned up nose. The laughter of every child. They all make him jump and turn around, searching wildly for her.

Didn't she look exactly like Jamie? She must have looked exactly like Jamie.

He hates Burgess now.

So much.

The ice on the lake is never thick enough for his liking. When he looks at it he feels the shock of the cold water again—and what is strange is that it bothers him the spirit of cold. He can hear his little sister crying and he cannot do anything about it. The ice is never thick enough for his liking, but he can't freeze it through because that will kill the fish, and he can't kill the fish, because then everything else would die out, too.

But the ice just isn't thick enough for his liking.

Is it worth it to see Jamie?

Yes.

But the ice on the lake is always so thin.

He needs to talk to someone about these flashbacks, they are not good, but he cannot think of anyone who would relate to it, or any of the other Guardians he would want to bother—they are always too busy. It's not right to hate his home town, the town most of his believers are from. It's not worth it. He cannot even manage to be conflicted about it. He hates Burgess—loves the kids, though.

Jamie's astounding observation cut through his thoughts, "You're always fussing over the lake."

He is sitting on a rock with a big puffy coat on, and long underwear under his jeans, and long, heavy woolen socks. He had taken off his ice stakes for a rest while the others still skated over the lake's cut-up surface and Jack went around making sure the ice was not too thin. He paused, looked at Jamie, and said, "I don't want you to fall in."

Jamie laughed a little, "It's freezing out. It's thick enough."

"Yeah, but..." Jack reached for an answer that felt reasonable, "You're wearing it down!"

"Not that much!" Jamie replied, "You're fussing over it like Mom fusses over the floor when she mops."

He was right. Jack stood fast and stated bluntly, "It's not thick enough."

Jamie replied, "Why not?" he asked, "What about all of the other lakes? You fuss over all of them, or just this one?"

"I just don't trust this one!" Jack exclaimed loudly, prodding the thick ice with his staff. Well that sounded a lot less crazy in his head. The kids stopped abruptly and all looked at him. He felt very embarrassed and he laughed awkwardly, "What I mean is... No, that's pretty much what I meant. I don't trust this lake."

"Why not?" Jamie tilted his head.

"I... Well, I... I just don't want you to fall in."

"But it's thick enough." Jamie replied.

He should not have said it again, but he did anyway, "I don't trust it."

Jamie laughed, "Why not?"

Shockingly, it was laughter that made the Guardian of Fun snap, "Because this is where—" he stopped himself.

Jamie's mocking ceased instantly and he was all ears, "What? What? This is where what?"

The others had migrated towards him now, and if he had not been able to fly, he would have been trapped, each one was demanding an explanation as to why the ice of Burgess was so fickle and dastardly it could not be left unsupervised. Jack jumped off his ice and hovered for a second, "You'll have to catch me."

"No fair!" Pippa exclaimed, "You can fly."

He zipped off, and when he glanced back, they were all scrambling out of their ice skates and into their boots. Jack did not stray too far from the beaten path, and instead perched in a tree, too tall for any of them to climb, and waited for them to catch up.

They followed him as he hopped from high treetop to treetop, and when they got bored of craning their necks to see him, he descended, still going from tree to tree, but not actually flying. When he began to fly it was high up, so they could all see him, and just fast enough to outpace the fastest of them. When they had spread out far enough on their own, he doubled back, bringing them into a group again, and just barely missing their grabbing hands.

He dipped towards the ground, tracing back over their heads and going in a circle around them, at a speed he though would be too quick for them to catch, but just slow enough to see the big smile. Amidst the cries of unfairness, a pair of hands grabbed his staff and brought him down to the snow. Hard. And then a second pair grabbed his left ankle, and a voice exclaimed, "Caught you!"

"Okay, okay." Jack faked a grin, but his stomach was sinking fast, "You caught me."

He shook Cupcake off his staff, and Jamie off his leg and got to his feet. He considered zipping off again, but he had to be held to a certain level of integrity. He was a Guardian now, and they had wandered quite far into the woods, leaving them there would be un-Guardian like. The woods were dark, and the trees thick, so he walked ahead of them, to a brighter clearing, where the dastardly and fickle lake could be seen. He could leave now—they had a landmark to find their way by.

But it would still be un-Guardian like.

So he told them, "It's where I died."

Jamie looked genuinely sorry for laughing at him, "Oh." Then a burst of enthusiasm came back, "Wait you were human once?"

Jack took offense at that—human once—he was human now, in his opinion. He had never stopped being human. He may have forgotten who he was, but he still held onto his humanity. He sat down, and they followed suit, finding places to sit in the snow and fallen pine needles and leaves.

"Yes, I was human... once." He used their words for it. He supposed, from their point of view, he was not really human anymore, "I had a Mom, and a sister and I guess I had a Dad at one point, but he died when I was little, so I don't really remember him, still."

"Do you remember what happened to them?"

"No." Jack confessed. He looked at the lake, "No, I don't."

"What was your name?" Pippa asked. She sat immediately to his right, with her ankles tucked in beside her, clinging to them with one hand and leaning on the other, away from him.

"Jackson Overland."

Her head tilted a little, "And your sister?"

"Emily Overland. My mother's name was Rosalie."

Jamie got to the true grit of the story. He was to Jack's immediate left. He leaned in eagerly, brown eyes glowing, "But how did you die?"

Pippa frowned at him, but did not say a word about it, because she, too, was interested in how Jack had died, so she made sure her mittens were pulled on, and she scooted closer to him in the snow.

"Well, when I was eighteen, and the snows had just started falling, and the lake had just frozen, Emily and I decided to go ice-skating..." he looked in the direction of his old house. He had never thought to look for it before. Suddenly distracted, he stood up.

"Hey!" Jamie shouted, grabbing his sleeve.

Jack kept walking, "Oh, right, anyway, we decided to go ice skating. It was not particularly cold that day, not freezing, I mean—so, not cold enough for the ice to stay thick. We did not realize it was thawing out so quickly. When she paused for just a second—it was just the wrong spot. The ice cracked."

They drew in closer, and Jamie gripped his wrist tighter. Jack distanced himself from the memory. It was just a tumble of emotions. He had died and saved her life—but even if she had died and he had lived, he never would have seen her again, ever. Facing immortality without family seemed empty, and when he thought about that he was sad and angry, but proud of himself for how he had handled the situation and how he had saved her life.

"So I told her to keep calm and still, and I managed to get her to safety, but when that happened, I found myself on thin ice, and it cracked. The shock knocked me out, and then the water killed me."

This should be where his house was.

No one asked why Jack had come this way. They just let him be, a man with his memories, standing before the skeleton of a house, mostly buried in snow. He took a few steps forward and prodded it with his staff. It had fallen into ruin some time ago. It was gone now.

"So that's where that old urban legend came from!" Caleb said, a light bulb clicking in his head.

"Huh?"

His twin picked up the thread. "Oh, yeah. Long ago, two kids went out to the lake to ice skate. The ice was too thin, and so one of them fell in, by the time the second one had brought help, he had already been in for too long and had drowned. The lake froze over again, and when spring came, the fish had eaten even his bones." He paused for effect, Jack did not interrupt. His voice changed entirely, "And they say, when the ice is too thin, you can see his face beneath the ice, warning you away from his watery grave."

"Okay, that's creepy."

"Well, not really—he's warning you away from death, so, he's actually being kind of nice."

"But, it's still creepy."

"Okay, fine. It's creepy."

Jack poked around the mounds of snow in the remains of his old house. Using what was left of the walls, he could trace the outlines of the rooms. His bed had been where he was standing right now, and he felt a sudden yearn for it, he wanted—and it was the strangest thing—to run to his mother and cry about the fact that everyone he had known in life was now dead, and he had completely forgotten about them. It was very strange.

He was still in denial about the fact that he had no bed at home to curl up in, and no mother to cry to.

He blinked away a few burning tears in his eyes.

"Jack! Jack!"

Jack turned to see that they had congregated around him once more. He masked the pain, "What is it?"

It was Cupcake who demanded his attention first, and Cupcake who spoke. "Is Bloody Mary real?"

"Who?"

"She's an urban legend—if you say her name three times in front of a mirror, she'll appear. Is she real?"

"No, of course not!" Jack was actually not sure. "Well, I've never met her." He corrected himself, turning away from where his bed used to sit, "That's not to say she's not real—don't test it, anyway."

Cupcake laughed, batted at Clyde and said, "Told you."

"He didn't answer at all! He didn't even know about her!" he replied, "That does not count."

Jack tuned them out again, and continued to walk around the long-gone ruins of his house, while they debated the possibility of Bloody Mary, because if Jack Frost was real, and Santa Clause was real, and the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman, and Pitch, and because not only was the Easter Bunny real, but he was eight feet tall and spoke with an Australian accent, then Bloody Mary was not all that far-fetched.

And you know what? They had a point. When they put it that way, Bloody Mary was not all that far-fetched, and that worried him. He looked towards them and ordered, very seriously, "Don't try to summon Bloody Mary. Ever."

They laughed again, not at him, just at the idea—that old Mary was surely real.

"What about the hook-hand."

"Captain Hook?"

"No, no, the Hook Hand. The serial killer."

"Oh, that one."

"No, I don't think he's real." Pippa said, That one involves a car—too modern."

"But what about Bigfoot?"

Jack started to listen again, just in time for that, and he said, "Maybe they're all just seeing Bunny. He does have big feet."

Jamie frowned, "The Easter Bunny never attacked hikers, Jack."

Jack chuckled to himself, because it was not true, but that did not stop him from envisioning it—Bunnymund going into a frenzy and mauling hikers, that is. He went back to searching the remains of his house with a lighter heart, just very briefly. He did not know what, precisely, he was searching for. It was probably nothing, at least—nothing specific. Just some memento. He got lost in his own thoughts again, and he wondered why he had not come by sooner. He had thought about it a few times, he had just been too scared to do it. Doing it would make him admit to himself that they were truly gone.

But even now that he was here, he could not admit it to himself. He could immerse himself in the truth, but he could hardly even acknowledge it. What was wrong with him?

His family was dead. He was poking around the ruins of their old house. It was three hundred years ago. Along with the sinking suspicion that he had been someone looming over him for three hundred years, there had also been the knowledge that—if it were true—whoever he had shared that life with was long gone. Three hundred years, he had known this.

Why was there this intense screaming in his heart, then? This strong denial of everything? Like he was in a dream and trying to make sense of everything, but it was all fluttering away. His head was crowded with thoughts, but it all felt so empty and sound proof, like snow.

This was where Emily's bed had been. Jack remembered that she had a trunk to keep the little things of personal value in. Schoolbooks, and old trinkets and toys and one single journal, which she wrote in every night. Jack did not take the time to keep one, which is why Emily had gotten it, and not him. He raised his staff and drove it into the ground above where he last remembered it being, expecting to hear a hollow thunk! if the trunk had been buried. He just heard the squeaking crunch of the snow, and then the dirt.

"Slenderman was created online!"

"But what about all those old tales that are like Slenderman?"

"Stop it, you're giving me the creeps."

"Yeah, man, we're in the woods. Time and place."

Jack turned around to look at them. They looked to be just fine, except for the fact that Jamie was going on about this character named, 'Slenderman' and while he was enjoying every second of it, his peers were not. "He can always be found in woods, just like these."

Monty shuddered and looked around.

Jack got curious, "Wait, who's Slenderman?"

"Only the coolest urban legend ever!" Jamie said excitedly, "He's a tall, skinny faceless man in a black suit and red tie. He stalks kids and takes them away forever—no one ever sees them again! No one really knows how he chooses his victims, but if you think about him too much, you're basically inviting him to stalk you, and he'll keep doing so, gradually unnerving you until you're sick with fear."

"That does not sound very cool." Jack cut him off, "That sounds worse than Pitch—and Pitch is a big deal."

Jamie laughed. Monty asked, "But he's not real, right, Jack? He's not even real so Jamie can shut up, right?"

"Don't worry!" Jack replied, "I've been around three hundred years and I've never seen nor heard of any Slenderman—I've been in every forest on the planet, and I haven't seen him."

But, then again, he had never been looking. All of them, except for Jamie, looked too freaked out to stay in the woods, particularly Monty. And Jack tried very hard not to make the leap in logic that if he were real, this Slenderman could be real, too. Or Bloody Mary. Pitch was bad enough, Jack reminded himself, we don't need anything worse than him.

Jack felt a cold chill trace up his neck. He turned around, and thought he saw, very briefly, a tall man amongst the trees. He jumped back in shock, and blinked, and the vision was gone.

"Did you see him?" Jamie demanded, ecstatic, "Jack did you just see him?"

"No." Jack said, "No I didn't see anything."

They trudged back to the clearing, then on to the lake, and by that time they had wasted a good chunk of the afternoon, so they went through the sparse trees and down the hill to the street that Jamie lived on. Once Jack and seen them to the haven of their home town, he flew away and looked out over the woods. His eyes were not too sharp—not by a longshot—and so not seeing anything was not actually much of a comfort.

He flew over it, still looking, but he did not know why. He was not real, and if he had been, North and the Guardians would have taken care of him—stealing away children? The guardians would never let that slide. Jack would never let that slide. And, by Jamie's own words, he would be on Slenderman's list. Thinking about something like that at all was too much.

And threatening Jamie was definitely something Jack would never let slide.

"But he's not real." He muttered, mostly to himself, but this was a feeble reassurance. He knew the power of belief—and if enough people believed, who was to say Slenderman would not simply spring into existence? Jack did not know—and, truth be told, he did not want to know. But if anyone knew, it would be North. He had to go see him, he was a guardian, and any potential threat had to be shared, right?

"Wind." He turned his face to the south, "Take me to Santoff Claussen."

The wind picked up and then howled, and caught him, pushing him with incredible speed to the North Pole, to Santoff Claussen. Even if North had never heard of Slenderman, someone there must have. They had a great many things there, a library, and even then, there was a pub, which was usually filled with spirits with stories to tell. The wind deposited him on the top of the large evergreen tree, all gussied up for Christmas—but thanksgiving was yet to pass.

He sat, perched on the tree, and looked down at the people milling around below him, minor spirits and major ones, interspersed with them were a great many humans, each one loved their job, and their home town, and a great many of them happened to be named William.

It was located a few miles to the west of North's workshop, down the mountainside—so very few mortals actually saw North's workshop, because few could manage the climb. Sure, they could see it. In the morning it's shadow hung over the town proudly, sometimes it peeked out from behind the clouds, but the only ones that could scale the mountain were the Yeti, good luck getting one to carry you. People did not go up, the Yeti came down. There was a much-needed sporting-gear store that had nothing but winter goods, and right now it was advertising coats, because Santoff Claussen had three seasons: Cold with no night, Cold, and Cold with no sun.

It was just cold now, with the sun starting to show from behind North's workshop. Jack pointed out the pub to himself, and the library, which looked to be closed for the moment, or at least dark, but in the shadow, everything was dark. He saw the groundhog heading out of the pub and the leprechaun heading in, and today he saw more ice golems than normal. Jack grinned. The ice golems seemed to always try to chase him down. Like the Yeti, they simply had an inherent hate of him. If North managed to chase off his fears—which he most likely would—then Jack would waste a day getting his spirits up avoiding them. He looked up the mountain to North's house.