It took Jack an entire day, but while he was flying over a snowy mountain range, far away from any civilisation he spotted a black jacket from above. He dropped quickly to the ground and landed gently on the snowy mountain top. Jack noticed an ice sculpture that had been shattered into a million pieces.
"Go away Frost!" Danny shouted over the chilling wind without looking over his shoulder. He was sitting on the edge of a steep cliff, gazing at the blizzard sweeping through the valleys and other mountain tops around him. Jack frowned.
"How did you know it was me?" Jack called.
"You're the only one who keeps looking for me," Danny answered. Jack crept cautiously forward.
"And I can feel you're nervous," Danny added. Jack bit his lip and ignored his concerns and sat down beside Danny.
"Why are you here? In the middle of nowhere?" Jack inquired. Danny glanced at him.
"I'm on vacation. Not great in hot places so I came to somewhere cold," Danny answered stiffly. Jack scowled.
"But you were hanging around Diana. Don't you want to finish what you started?" Jack ventured.
"By which you mean?" Danny prompted. Jack huffed in annoyance.
"Does it matter? I may not know you or understand you or whatever, but this doesn't seem like you," Jack replied loudly. Danny glanced at Jack and shook his head.
"You wouldn't understand Jack. Now tell me what you want this time or get lost," Danny retorted. Jack scowled angrily at the other teen and took a deep calming breath.
"Alright, fine. The guardians need your help. Pitch is stopping children from believing," Jack began. Danny lifted a hand to silence Jack.
"And let me guess, because I'm the Spirit of Fear you think I can track down the boogieman. Sorry Jack, not how my powers work. Now leave me alone. I'm on vacation. Taking Hallowe'en off," Danny interrupted and got up and walked away. Jack stared at Danny's receding back incredulously. Jack got to his feet and turned to the destroyed ice sculpture. He crept over to it, nervous that Danny would be watching and get angry. Jack bent down and saw an intact face grinning maliciously. He had narrowed eyes and pointed fangs. Jack frowned and slowly pieced together an adult man standing cockily with a long cloak and pointed hair. Jack had never seen anything like it. Jack scanned the white surroundings hoping to spot a speck of black and blue but Danny was gone.
Jack frowned to himself. He should really keep searching for Pitch or Danny. But Jack didn't understand what Danny's problem was. One minute he was angry that the guardians wanted his help then he was explaining that he couldn't help them even if he wanted to. Jack felt that there was a lot more to Danny than the title Spirit of Fear, but Jack didn't know how to see past it. He jumped into the air and decided to return to the North Pole. Maybe the others had better luck than him. They only had three days until Hallowe'en now.
Danny watched Jack go and blinked back into the visible spectrum. He sighed sadly and walked over to the reconstructed statue of Vlad Plasmius. Danny frowned at the man and charged his right fist with green energy and broke the statue into even smaller pieces.
"Sometimes there's nothing better than misplaced aggression," Danny muttered to himself with a small smirk. He returned to his place looking over the snowy valleys. The mountains reminded him of the Far Frozen. A place he couldn't even visit easily now that he was the Spirit of Fear. And even if he did get there it wasn't the same now that Frostbite couldn't see him. He looked up to where the moon would be watching him silent as ever.
"You're worse than Clockwork. You know that. At least Clockwork would tell me when he was ignoring me or not going to give me my answers," Danny grumbled.
Danny lifted his left hand up and created a small ice sculpture of his old family and friends. He smiled nostalgically at the figures. He hadn't been back to Amity Park in at least three years. He'd gone back a few times to check on how his family and friends were, to see how they were dealing with his death. It was about the time that Sam starting dating other guys that Danny stopped visiting, unable to see his still living girlfriend kissing another guy. It was worse than when Sam went out with Gregor, or Elliot or whatever his name was. This time he knew Sam's feelings towards him are or at least were mutual. Tucker and Jazz had gone to college and his parents searched constantly for a full ghost son they'd never find. Danny was dead and they'd never see him again. And he couldn't even tell them that so they lived on, searching and hoping. It was nearly worse than seeing his friends moving on with their lives.
Danny sighed and dropped the ice sculpture off the cliff. His old life was gone. It was a weird feeling. He was mourning their loss except they were all fine. In a sense he was mourning his own death still. He didn't blame the Man in the Moon. Not really. It was his own stupid fault that he got himself killed. He always had to play the hero and he fell for Vlad's trap. At least the fruit loop got arrested for murder after Danny's secret came out as he died.
Now he was in a similar position. Pitch was going to serious hurt, even kill, children who had been through enough. Diana, trapped with an alcoholic abusive mother. Lola, chronic anxiety attacks triggered due to brutal bullying a year ago. Stephen, well he had more phobias than Danny could name which was a lot. Danny had taken to finding the worst cases of fear and staying with those children until they got better or plucked up enough courage to ask for help. He'd helped a lot of kids over the last four years. Children trapped in unhealthy home environments to kids being bullied constantly to preteens showing signs of social anxiety. He decided that he would work with any child under seventeen, or eighteen in extreme cases, no matter what.
It made being unseen worthwhile. Seeing kids coming out of their shells and becoming the confident, happy people they were meant to be. Danny smiled as he recalled the numerous children he'd helped to stop trembling in fear, even managed a few smiles along the way. No child ever saw him but as long as they got help or support, Danny knew that those children wouldn't need to face their fears. Hope, wonder, dreams. They were powerful things, far more powerful than he felt the guardians understood. But fear was powerful too. Enough fear and children stopped feeling those kinds of things. They forgot the joy of Christmas, Easter or getting money for their baby teeth. They shied away from fun and feared making friends. Danny would work with children until they could feel those feelings again.
Danny may be the Spirit of Fear, but that wasn't what he protected. He protected bravery. The bravery to be afraid but to face those fears anyway and doing what they had to do. Ignoring the fear of being rejected and asking the classmate they had a crush on out to a school dance. Ignoring the fear of ridicule and reaching out to the strange kid in the corner. Being brave enough to be who they wanted to be. That was how Danny tried to live after the accident and that was how he died. He knew that was the reason the Man in the Moon created him. But Danny had been used one too many times to allow himself to get close to others. He wasn't frightened of them, he was just angry. So angry he just had to destroy ice statues of his old enemies and on special occasions, Vlad.
We learn a little about why Danny is the way he is. Like I said at the beginning. This is a story of how Danny learns to cope with his family's loss.
Until the next chapter.