It's really hard to concentrate on what I want to say here when I have to hear my brother telling his life story of his day re: snow.
Like, we finally legitimately have snow. Took long enough. Can has snow day?
(Let's see if I can manage to get to work tomorrow.)
So somehow I convinced myself it's Sunday, and that's why you get this tonight. XD
I'd like to extend a hand to LeafeonPrincess for correcting my Australian in Ch. 11. Cheers!
We're organizing a Hug Jack party when this is done if y'all wanna contribute. ;)
Annnd as you know, you're amazing and fantastic. Thank you for being you and doing all the things you do.
The air smelled different. Jack decided that was why he woke up and stayed awake no matter how he tried. A breeze blew in, clean and crisp, and the Wind tugged at his crewneck enticingly. Come on, come, come! Jack inhaled again – a spicy carpet of brown leaves on the ground and sharp pumpkin rind, minty pine in the cold air. His heart surged and before he knew what was happening he felt so alive.
Come out! The Wind called to him again. It seemed so excited and eager and then Jack knew – winter had come to Burgess again. And instinct he'd hoped he'd left behind was doing a fine job of sweeping him up instead.
Unsteady on his stiff limbs, Jack crawled out of his hideaway on all fours, blinking up at the white sunlight. Glare had never bothered him before, but now he actually had to squint while his eyes adjusted after months underground. It was still fairly early; steam rose from the dewy crests of hills in the heat of the morning sun. The rest, the dew that had always known shadows, was not actually dew but speckles of frost crystals. Jack knelt and brushed some of it up onto his fingers; it did not melt on his skin. Experimentally he blew some of his magic onto it in a gentle exhale, and it glowed ever so slightly blue in the low light. Brushing it off onto his sweatshirt, Jack pushed to his feet, walking down the small slope to the lake's edge. He dipped a toe into the water. A hair-thin pane of ice spread over the surface of the lake. Jack wanted to add more as he always did, but any more would not match the rest of the landscape. He didn't want to overdo anything right now.
His eyes finally adjusted to the brightness, blood flowing easily to his underused muscles. Jack followed the call of the Wind into the neighborhood beyond. At length he halted on the sidewalk near a white mailbox with two painted hand prints on it. From the other houses, children poured down from their front doors to the street, bottle-necking at a waiting school bus. They all laughed and joked with each other. Some scraped rime from the lawns and dumped it down the back of their friends' shirts, eliciting shrieks of laughter and "No fair!" that carried like soothing music to Jack's frayed nerves.
The kids hadn't changed. They still loved snow, just as much as they always had.
He hadn't broken anything.
Nothing had been lost.
Relief spread through Jack like a cooling balm. He smiled for the first time since the blizzard. The joyful Wind teased at his hair and pulled him up from the ground. Enough of feeling sorry for yourself, Jack Frost, it seemed to say, Now go and have some fun.
–
He dusted the world with snow days, and watched the shyest kids come out and play, and make new friends. He joined in their laughter and snowball melees, and sent them home with powdery flakes promising more.
Not one child ever saw him.
Still, he kept on trying.
Forty years later, a child finally believed – a little boy named Jamie Bennett.
–
"You okay, mate?"
Jack jerked up from watching the landscape drift by below. He checked himself, schooled his expression into a contented smile. "Yeah, Bunny, I'm fine." He remembered his last moments on the frozen lake with Jamie, and it was easy to glow from that. The smile reached his eyes then. Bunnymund's ears twitched skeptically; his frown did not budge. His ancestral instincts picked up on something Jack Frost could not hide.
Sandy, the most intuitive of the Guardians, seemed to notice it, too. He turned worried amber eyes on Jack and a first-aid kit with a question mark appeared above his head. Are you hurt?
I'm not sure, Jack thought. His smile faltered despite his efforts. The truth was that an unpleasant something had lurked in the corners of this mind since Jamie first said his name. A feeling that this was not so wonderful as he'd always thought it would be; that this was a cheap knockoff of his expectations; that this unabashed joy he felt at finally being seen, heard, touched, believed in, was wrong. It deeply unsettled him, but he could not for the life of him explain why he felt like a traitor now, basking in the glow of belief, the lingering warmth of Jamie's embrace.
It did not hit him full-force until the sleigh had left the ground, after he'd watched Jamie and his friends grow smaller in the distance. Somehow the light of proximity (not to mention the urgency of their battle against Pitch) must have kept the not-quite-memories-but-more-than-mere-emotions at bay. Now that his heart quit hammering and he could relax, he felt he might crumple beneath it.
"I'm fine," he said again, uneasy. Tooth also watched him now, lips tight. She opened her mouth to say something, but then her eyes flickered away and her teeth clicked together. His head buzzed like he ought to have noticed something whisking past his head, but had been too slow to catch it. Straightening, Jack looked fixedly at her. "Tooth?" he asked, eyes a discerning squint. She gave him an apologetic smile.
His fingers curled more tightly around his staff. He didn't realize it until his knuckles began to ache.
North cast a snow globe ahead, and in a blink the sleigh was fast approaching the Workshop. After landing, North and Sandy went ahead (Sandy offering Jack the image of a band-aid to accompany his sympathetic smile before departing), discussing what seemed like plans for a victory celebration. Bunny and Tooth lingered in the sleigh a moment with Jack, who shrank further into himself the more they gazed at him, waiting for him to speak. Letting out a gruff sigh, Bunny hopped out of the sleigh and disappeared after North and Sandy. Looking uncertain, wings flittering with nervous energy, Tooth sidled closer to Jack on the bench seat. The Yeti had already led the reindeer away, and in the stillness Jack even felt little Baby Tooth's eyes on him.
"Jack," Tooth began, awkwardly. This was the first they had been truly alone since they'd met. He recalled her excited victory hug and now it made him want to blush.
"Yeah, Tooth?" He shifted to face her a little more while she fidgeted in place. Her crest flared in her sudden shyness.
"I... I'm glad that you got your memories back, however you did. I'm sorry for getting upset with you." Her violet eyes trained upon the little tooth fairy nestled in Jack's hood. "You know I was worried about Baby Tooth, right?"
Jack nodded understandingly. "Your fairies are a part of you. I'd have reacted the same." And her grateful, relieved smile lit the cave in a way the torches could not. He grinned, at her and at Baby Tooth; he already knew the little fairy had forgiven him by the fact she had not stirred from the folds of his hood.
"You should know, I think, that Bunny forgives you, too. I'm telling you because I think he's too proud to admit it himself."
"Really?" Jack couldn't help asking, genuinely curious to know for sure. His relationship with the elder Guardian had always been the most tenuous. She beamed at him.
"Really. I expect he'll try to make it up to you in his own way; I don't want you to misinterpret anything when he does."
And without her fair warning, Jack realized he probably would.
"Thanks, Tooth," he said. She folded her hands in her lap and her cheeks were the slightest bit pinker. A comfortable silence eased between them. No Yetis roamed around them; the only noise was the crackle of burning torches, the distant sounds of the Workshop echoing down the glacial cave. Despite being surrounded by ice, they felt pleasantly warm. "What did the Moon tell you, Tooth?"
"Hm?" Tooth looked like she'd almost fallen asleep, her head swinging up to face him; the Guardians had all had a long three nights, or thereabouts. Jack slept maybe once a month, if even that, but all of the activity and stress of taking down Pitch had left him exhausted. He couldn't imagine how the other Guardians, who had all lost belief and relied on their magic 24/7 to maintain that belief in the first place, must feel now.
"During the flight. You looked like you were going to say something, but then you stopped yourself. I made a wild guess..."
"Oh, Jack," she breathed, lifting a hand. At first she seemed about to brush a tuft of hair behind his ear, but then her lips pursed again and she instead rested her hand on his shoulder. "I wish I knew how I could help you."
"Help me? What do you mean?"
"You feel it too, don't you?" At Jack's perplexed expression she elaborated. "When you accessed your memories, I could feel it. Like when the horizon becomes just a shade lighter and suddenly you know the sun is coming up." And she beamed at him with such affection that he finally did blush. "Baby Tooth told me what you told her. And I was so proud of you – you took exactly what you needed from your memories, and thanks to you we were able to defeat Pitch Black when all seemed lost." Jack cautiously let the happy chills spread through his limbs; he knew the other shoe hung in the air between them.
"But..." (and there it fell) "Something didn't feel right. Like an itch I couldn't scratch. I could tell something was missing, that there was something you still needed to know. All of your childhood memories were in that box, Jack," she reassured him when the color drained from his face. "There's nothing Pitch could have done to them; only myself and my fairies could have opened the box, other than yourself."
"So..." Something tried to clunk into place in the back of his mind. For some reason he felt scared again. "Did the Moon tell you that? Tell you what was missing?" And would she please tell him?
But Tooth shook her head forlornly. "All he said was I should leave everything to him."
Jack stared at her. "I can't believe it," he muttered, anger etching into his voice and he glared at the floor of the sleigh. "After everything, he's as cryptic as ever? Are you kidding me?"
"I'm so sorry, Jack; all we can do right now is trust that he's going to set everything right. Just like he did with you."
Jack stilled, the anger settling out of his blood. Tooth was right. The Man in the Moon did have a good reason for everything he did. Just by choosing him as the newest Guardian, the Moon helped Jack find his lost memories, his purpose, his center... and at last, he had a family. He turned his eyes toward Tooth, noticed how her vibrant plumage seemed iridescent in the guttering torchlight, like a three-dimensional mosaic of precious stones. "Leave it to me," the Moon had said. It made him want to sulk somewhere. But he'd already been doing that for 300 years. And it was time for something a little different.
"Hey, Tooth," Jack said, and taking her hand made her blush. Grinning at her flustered expression, he gave her small hand a gentle squeeze. "Thanks." Still grasping her fingers in his he stood, pulling her up with him. "Shall we see what the others are up to?"
He laughed out loud at her stammered "Yes" and finally released her. She hovered unsteadily at pace with him, looking quite unsure of where to keep her eyes. Baby Tooth seemed to be chiding Jack's conduct from her perch on his shoulder, but he cheekily pretended not to notice.
Making Tooth blush proved a worthy pursuit. So did casting snowfall over the victory banquet the Yetis prepared that evening, and racing ice tortoises against sand hares. North laughed uproariously at everything, and Bunny became the closest to friendly Jack had ever known after several cups of egg nog.
Everything was changing; they could feel it in the air around them.
And as the new Guardian of Fun, Jack Frost was going to change the best he could.
Jack and the Wind is my favorite thing to write about. This is a thing I've decided.
I don't ship Rainbow Snowcone what gave you that idea. Although I don't think it's more present here than it is in canon? Maybe? I don't know. I know I was having the feelings when I first wrote the scene. Maybe I'm desensitized. /sidebar
Guyyyyyss. You guyyyyyysssssss...
Unless I decide to do something mad like split the next chapter (which, I've tried; I really can't find a good spot), we have ONE CHAPTER LEFT. And it is long. And it is feels. And I'm scared as nuts. Cos I'm so used to posting a one-shot and being like "here it is" and running off to the next thing; so not used to posting a multi-chapter and building a readership (you!) for the story and carrying you guys through to the end. And I really hope you have enjoyed the ride, heart-achey as it is (I get the feeling you have, cos you're still here!); and I really hope you enjoy the end.
It will be here next weekend!
Until then, take care! *hearts forever*