Bunny shifted on whatever plushy surface he had fallen asleep on, slowly waking up. He shivered as his foot brushed against something cold. He reflexively kicked it away from him, burying his face in the overstuffed armrest of the couch he had curled up on. The cold thing went over the other armrest with a loud thud and a pained cry of protest.
Fully awake, he looked over in the direction of the noise, seeing a pale hand appear to grip the armrest, followed by a head of snowy white hair. Jack's frosty blue eyes glared at him while he pointed his newly repaired staff his way, the air surrounding the shepherd's crook crystallizing from the sudden drop of temperature.
"What was that for?"
"You were freezing my feet, Frostbite."
Signs of the previous day's celebrations littered the room, such as platters full of cookie crumbs and empty mugs of eggnog. The others were stirring as well, woken up by the noise. Tooth lifted her head from Sandy's lap to look at them in sleepy confusion. She smiled when she saw Jack getting up to his feet.
"How are you feeling, Jack?"
He stopped glaring at Bunny to give her a warm smile, the staff rising to rest on his shoulder instead.
"Much better, thank to you guys."
"Wonderful!" North shouted, jumping to his feet. "Pitch is defeated again, staff is repaired... again."
They exchanged glances. Jack had mentioned Pitch breaking his staff before, but they really knew nothing about what had happened or when. Jack shifted a little uneasily. He knew what was coming. Bunny cleared his throat.
"So... you had a story to tell us."
"Oh yeah. That."
North sat back down and they all looked at Jack, eagerly awaiting the story. This just made the boy shift in place even more, fiddling with his staff.
"Sit down, mate."
Jack nodded and sighed, taking back his place on the couch next to Bunny. He took a deep breath before starting his tale.
"So, er, I was in Antarctica and Pitch came to see me and he asked me to join him and I sad no and he broke my staff and left. Then I repaired it and left, too."
They all stared, waiting for him to say more, until it became obvious that this was it. He wasn't actually planning on elaborating. Jack stood again and stretched, taking a step in the direction of the room's exit.
"I'm sure we all have a lot of things to do, so—"
Bunny grabbed his arm and pulled him back on the couch. The other had all risen from their own places, obviously ready to protest Jack's hasty departure.
"Jack," North said gently, "I don't want to force you to speak to us, but you're worrying me."
"When did this happen?" Tooth asked. "I wasn't under the impression that you and Pitch had been... enemies before."
Tooth had a point. When they first asked for Jack's help in fighting Pitch, the winter spirit had seemed somewhat amused and mostly indifferent. That was not the expected reaction to getting the opportunity to fight the one who had broken your most precious possession. Bunny doubted that Jack simply didn't care. But surely it couldn't have happened after?
Jack sighed again and nodded. He settled more comfortably onto the couch, apparently ready to actually tell his story.
"You're right. I never had any problems with Pitch before. At the beginning he was even trying to be nice to me. That was kind of creepy."
Pitch being nice did sound like the creepiest thing Bunny had heard. But it shouldn't be surprising, really, that Pitch had been interested in the new winter spirit. They had all judged him too fast, simply based on what he was. He regretted that bitterly.
"So, when was it, mate? Don't tell me Pitch attacked you twice since we beat him and you didn't tell us!"
Bunny prayed that wasn't the case, but he knew that Jack hadn't quite warmed up to them right away. They had ignored him for to long for him to simply thrust them with everything.
"No. I was just as surprised as you to see that he crawled his way out of his lair. No, it was... on Easter."
Bunny exchanged startled glances with the others. Sandy just looked confused. He had a general idea of what happened that day, but he didn't know the details.
"You went to Antarctica after you left us?" North asked, a little confused.
They had all assume he just made his way back to Burgess, to his frozen lake. They had seen him next around there, after all. Burgess was not anywhere close to Antarctica. Jack brought his knee against his chest and clenched his staff tightly.
"I... wanted to be alone. I wanted to throw those damned teeth away where no one would ever find them."
"He has to go." Bunny could not meet Sandy's inquisitive glance. How was he supposed to tell the little man that they had driven their new ally away after accusing him of betraying them? "We should never have trusted him!" He remembered the boy's wide-eyed gaze as Bunny said those words. He awkwardly put a hand on the white-haired teen's shoulder.
"I'm... sorry, you know. For blaming you."
"You were right. I shouldn't have let Pitch distract me. I should have been with you, to fight off the nightmares."
Tooth rose from the couch she was sharing with the still confused Sandy, slowly flying toward them.
"Jack, no! This isn't your fault. We all did exactly what Pitch expected. All of us, we just played right into his hand."
Bunny remembered what Jack had said earlier, in his brief version of his story, about Pitch asking him to join him. Just as they had rejected him. He tightened his grip on Jack's shoulder. They really had just played right into Pitch's hand.
"He told me you never believed in me. That he just wanted to show me that. He said he understood." Jack paused to take a shaky breath. "I didn't want to believe him. I got angry. I attacked him. But he wouldn't fight back. He just kept talking. He said he knew what it was like to be alone. To... long for a family."
There was a moment of silence as Jack stopped talking and no one knew what to say. North looked like he wanted nothing more than to grab the teenager and hug him tightly until he everything was better. But there was only so much a hug could do. Sandy stared guiltily at his feet. Tooth flew the rest of the way to him, placing her small hands on his knees, which he was still hugging to his chest. She was the first to break the silence.
"Jack, I'm so sorry. We should have done something a long time ago..."
"I thought about accepting, you know," he continued tonelessly. "He said he believed in me and that children would, too. I knew he meant that the children would fear me, like they had feared him for a long time, but I still considered it."
It was North who broke the silence this time.
"You made right choice, Jack. That's what matters."
Jack raised his head hesitantly and looked at North, then at Tooth, still hovering in front of him, at Sandy, nodding fervently, and finally at him. Bunny gave his shoulder a good squeeze and smile reassuringly.
"It's what you do that matters, Snowflake. Not what you think about doing."
The winter spirit gave him a small, but truly happy smile. Bunny felt him relax under his hand as he lowered his feet back to the ground. Tooth smiled warmly and North gave a wide grin. Sandy silently clapped his hands together.
"So, what happened next?" Tooth asked, eager to hear the end of that story.
"I told him to leave me alone. He agreed but... then he held Baby Tooth in his fist and asked for the staff."
Tooth gasped. Bunny cursed. North growled. Sandy frowned. Surprisingly, Jack smiled.
"You should have seen her, Tooth. She was so brave! She didn't want me to give him the staff."
"But you did anyway."
Jack nodded at her. Bunny couldn't possibly imagine Jack letting someone get hurt for him like that.
"Pitch wouldn't let her go even after I gave it to him, but she stabbed him with her beak! He tossed her against a cliff; I was so afraid she was hurt but he broke the staff before I could do anything and he struck me with his sand and threw me after her. I found her again at the bottom."
Jack stopped talking and sighed, his good humor fading but not entirely leaving.
"I didn't know what to do anymore. I had nowhere to go, even if I could get out of the crevasse we had fallen in. I might have just stayed there and done nothing, had Baby Tooth not reminded me of the teeth and of my memories. With nothing else to do, I finally took a look at who I used to be."
Bunny pictured, for a moment, Jack lying at the bottom of a frozen crevasse, abandoned by everyone but a little fairy, his staff broken. This story better start being happy soon, he was tired of feeling like his heart was being squeezed by a cold, merciless hand. But he supposed he deserved it.
"You told me about this before," North said, smiling. "You said you saw your family and how you saved your little sister."
Bunny remembered North retelling them this story. It had also involved Jack dying, but the winter spirit smiled brightly and nodded.
"Yes. That's how I understood why I came back as Jack Frost. Why the Man in the Moon chose me to be a Guardian. So I picked up my staff and I willed it to repair itself."
They all stared at that one. That sounded a little too easy.
"Just like that?" Bunny asked with more than a little disbelief.
"Well, it didn't work the first time, so I willed it harder."
Jack had his familiar lopsided grin back on his face, now. It was good to see. They couldn't help but grin back.
"After that, I returned to Pitch's lair, to try to free the fairies. But they couldn't fly. That's when I saw the lights. Only one remained."
This time, Bunny pulled the young Guardian to him in a sideway hug and ruffled his hair.
"And you went and made the kid believe in me again."
"Right. That's the end of the story."
Sandy clapped silently again and they laughed, not really knowing how else to react. It was a lot to take in. But Jack looked relieved to have told them everything and Bunny was grateful of that. He hadn't tried to pull away from Bunny and the pooka didn't let go. North stood up and, with a great cry, threw his large arms around both of them, lifting them off the couch, ignoring Bunny's protests. With a laugh, Tooth tried her best to hug the three of them. He had to snicker when Sandy floated to them happily with his arms spread, then frowned, looking at his small arms. He threw himself on the group anyway, hugging what he could.
They all kept laughing, as if afraid that if they stopped to actually think, they might start to cry instead.
That turned out pretty long, for something that's just Jack retelling one scene of the movie. It's the most dialogue I've ever written in one story.
Now, excuse me while I go write something light and silly to cheer myself up.
