Well, there weren't as many reviews to the last chapter as I would have liked to see, especially since I worked so hard to make it a good, long one. Guys, I put a lot of time into that, and was expecting a little more feedback than that.
But, onto those of you who DID review(I which I thank you very much for, it's nice to know that some of you care enough to leave your reviews every time);
ELLE555- Thank you for saying that. My vocabulary is a little more expanded than most people my age, because I spent my childhood reading books bigger than me instead of socializing and making friends. As for the SAT thing, if you think my writing can be used for that, and I'm only 15, then I just got infinitely less worried about having to take them, because by that time, I should be some kind of writing god it I can write SAT material now.(I'm kidding about the writing god thing, but I am actually extremely complimented that you thing my writing is SAT quality.)
Savarra- Thanks. I listen to a lot of indie/alternative bands, so I usually don't have much trouble coming up with songs to use in my story.
Fellowship of Avengers- Why, thank you. Being crazy is very helpful whe writing a character who gets her power from Insanity, so that's good. And, yes, she'll forgive him... eventually. But I have to much more anxiety to cause before that happens, so y'all are going to have to sit tight for a while. Sorry, but I'm just mean like that.
PCM- Um, no, it was the Titanium cover by Madylin Bailey that I had in mind(also as an indirect reference to what Willow's singing would sound kind of like, but not QUITE as perfect as that. I'm not making a Mary Sue here, folks. That song is also my jam. I should post a cover on YouTube, so y'all know what I mean.), but I think he was the one who originally wrote it. I first found the song on a Rise of the Guardians AMV(if you want to know the meaning of good music, those AMVs have the best songs/bands EVER.) and it was sung by her. All I knew was that it was a cover, because that's mostly what Madylin Bailey does, but I didn't know who originally wrote the song. And your years of experience haven't failed you yet, because there is both a sad story, and a mountain of anxiety in store this chapter, so grab your Guardians plushies and squeeze 'em with everything you've got, because this will be tense.
Fluffythorne- "suicide is never the answer. Self-mutilation is."? What the hell? Was that some kind of jab, because I never tried to kill myself, thank you very much. I'm slightly offended by that. But, there are other things in your comment to address than that. She did not hit Jack intentionally, she was trying to beat off things that seemingly did not exist. No, there were no repercussions last chapter, but I've given you all enough fluff. Now, it is time for pain, and, yes, there will be Hysterium(I see what you did there) to pay, but not in the sense everyone is probably thinking. Yes, Hysterium is the reason no one else can see the little poppets(I mentioned before that poppets were the form they took), but they aren't trying to force her to do anything. The whole point of them is to make Willow believe she is going crazy because no one else can see them, which will eventually make her mind easy to take hold of. If Willow believes she is crazy, Hysterium can latch only that belief and... go from there. I can't say anything else without major spoilers. The hallucinations are mental, but they can indirectly affect her actions in the tangible half of reality. I tried to bring up Jamie, because you mentioned before that I needed to include him more, so I did. Yes, Willow can sing sing. I have exaggerated a bit from my own ability, but I also don't want it to be that incredible perfection MB has on the track. I will not be having any of that MS-ishness. I also picked that song as a way for Jack to be completely entranced by the song, but not by her singing alone. Thank you, I try very hard to keep even my own characters in character(does that make sense?), so I try to keep up with her drawing, as well. That is also why I included the singing bit in that chapter, because Jack knew she could sing, but he didn't know she could SING, however, I don't plan to keep her singing such a major part of everything as her drawing, because she doesn't really like to flaunt, and drawing is just a pastime for her.
sassysaw- Yes, midnight is a rather reasonable hour for me to be up, I can't help it. If I fall asleep any sooner, it's because I was reading my History textbook(I'm not kidding. It's THAT boring.). Well, whether I "bring the heat" will be up to you to decide, so here is that chapter 13 you were waiting for.
Another light round of snow spiraled into Willow's lap, coating her drawing with a fine sprinkle of snow. She picked up her sketchbook and puffed on the freezing powder to clear the sheet once more.
She had been sitting on top of the Pole for about two hours now, drawing the glacier before her. The scene was nearly complete, taking her less time than usual because of the simply layout and lack of dark colors. For the most part, there were only the slightest shadows on the snow to indicate it was anything but a smooth blanket of softly shimmering porcelain.
Of course, this also brought forth the challenge of drawing the light on the snow.
A good hour and fifteen minutes of drawing and shading had been dedicated to drawing the highlights correctly. A few of the smaller areas held the light like it was supposed to, but the large masses of it were sketched and erased in an unending cycle. Finally, she dropped the pencil into the thin snow beside her and yanked the braid from her hair, hoping the messy length would shield the back of her neck from the drifting flakes.
"You know, I'm not sure if you brought me up here as a nice gesture, or to rub in my face I can't draw the light on the snow." she said, rolling her torso so she way laying on her back and watching the snowflakes as they swirled from the sky. Most of them floated around the tower, redirected by Jack so that she didn't get too cold after having only recently recovered from hypothermia.
Of course, he couldn't keep them all out, and whenever a few flakes slipped through, they always seemed to make her drawing their home.
"I brought you here for two reasons. One, the scenery is amazing, and you have a thing for scenic, and two, I thought this would be a good opportunity for you to practice the snow, seeings as how you have such a problem drawing it." he smirked.
"No, not snow. Sunlight on snow." she corrected, earning her an eye roll. "Besides, it's not like you could do any better."
"Really?" he leaned forward, brushing his finger over the peak of a hilltop, coating it in a thin enough layer of frost it shouldn't damage the paper. "Seems to me I can."
She swatted his hand away from the page. "Yeah, well, when you can do that with a pencil, not your powers, I will eat my words." she said, rolling her eyes to him in return.
"Okay, I'll hold you to that. I have an eternity to practice." he grinned tauntingly.
She rolled her eyes before turning her gaze to the gentle cascade of the cottony flakes. After a moment, Jack flopped into the snow as well, but facing the opposite direction so their heads were side by side, but their feet went in different directions.
"Jack, what's it like to be able to control the snow, and, well, winter?" she asked suddenly, turning to look at him.
He considered her question for a long moment, finally answering, "Well, that's kind of hard to explain. It feels like the snow and ice is an extension of who I am, and it kind of is. It's connected to my emotions, so if I'm upset or anxious, the wind will pick up and the snow will turn into a whiteout, if I'm not careful. I can usually control it, but sometimes I just can't focus and it slips away."
"What happened during '68?" He gave her a curious look. "While you were gone, I was talking to Bunny a little bit, and he made a comment when he was telling be about me passing out in the forest. He said something like, 'If we hadn't found you when we did, it would have been '68 all over again.'." she explained, and Jack's face darkened.
"That was one of the few times I really lost it." His gaze shifted to the sky and she noticed the snow thickening and the gray of the sky deepening. "It had started out as harmless, just another snowy afternoon. It had gotten late, and I was just drifting though a small town in Louisiana, I don't usually spend much time that far south, when I heard someone telling a story. I got closer, and realized that it was coming from an open window in the hospital. There was a girl in the bed, probably around twelve, with IV's all in her arms and she was hooked up to about four different machines. It was kind of depressing to see someone so young in her position.
"I listened to the story the girl's father was telling her, and almost fell out of the air when I realized it was about us. The Guardians, I mean. The first time I was there, he was telling the story of who the Sandman was, and the next day was the Tooth Fairy, and so on. There were probably other stories before those, but I never did find out what they were. Anyways, for a while, it seemed like she was getting better. Sometimes, I would write on the glass in the frost, but no one ever seemed to see it.
"The last day I was there, something happened. I still don't know exactly what, and I never particularly wanted to know, but her health started to deteriorate really fast. For a while, she didn't say anything at all, just listened while about three doctors argued with her parents. It was pretty sad to watch, because up until then, she never really let her condition get to her. She smiled all the time and her eyes sparkled when she laughed. She would comment from time to time on how it sucked not to be able to walk around for herself, but other than that, she didn't really let it faze her.
"Eventually, they all left the room, I can't remember why. The window was cracked open and she had hardly moved since they had first begun to talk, so the only thing I could hear was the heart monitor beeping. Her eyes were a deep brown, but they were different this time. Before, they held this light to them, so full of life and charisma, but they were now dull, flat. For the first time, it seemed like she had given up. I started writing on the window again, expecting it to be ignored like it always was. But it wasn't. She just happened to glance over at the window, and the tiniest spark of like flashed in her eyes and they widened." he laughed bitterly, but the edge of sadness was unmistakable. "For the first time, someone could actually see me, or at least what I was writing, but at the time, I was thrilled she could see anything at all.
"For a little while, we kept up a small conversation, me writing on the glass and her talking. After a while, though, I could tell she was slipping. She seemed to have a hard time staying awake and the heart monitor was getting slower. I tried as best as I could to keep her going, tapping on the window whenever she tried to drift and writing about things that would maybe excite her a little bit, like the other Guardians, but even that stopped working."
There was a heavy pause, and Willow brushed some of the quickly accumulating snow from her jacket, before zipping her sketchbook beneath the thick cotton. The cold was beginning to seep through the thick layers, but she didn't say anything. Not yet, she wanted to hear the end of Jack's story.
"It seemed like only seconds, when her eyes finally slipped closed, but the flat chime of that machine seemed to drag on for hours before a nurse burst into the room, two of her doctors soon afterwards. I could see her parents in the doorway, crying. Her mother seemed to have some kind of breakdown, but her father hardly moved. He just watched as the doctors tried to revive her as his wife sobbed into his shirt. It didn't matter, though, they were too late."
Jack sat up and twisted around so he still faced her, his legs folding as he draped his arms around them. Willow also straitened, brushing off the thick snow that stuck to her clothes and hair, the white smears in stark contrast to the black of the fabric.
"Do you know what the worst part of it was? Just before she died, she looked right at me and said 'goodbye', but she wasn't just looking out the window at something she knew was there, no she had to have seen me." His eyes dropped to the snow that now covered the roof in a thick quilt of crystalline glitter. "The only person to have believed in me in two hundred and sixty years, and she died when she managed to see me.
"After that, I just lost it. I was sad and angry that the life of someone so young had been so brazenly snatched away, but it was also an almost overwhelming sense of loss that the first person who saw me, or at least I'm pretty sure she did, had to be taken away. The snow came down like crazy, covering everything on this half of the continent with eighteen inches of snow, and at least twelve on the other." He sighed and shook his head, the silvery strands waving lightly in front of his eyes. "I still wonder what it was like for her parents, to have lost their child on Easter Sunday. Easter is supposed to be about Hope, but for them, it was the day all hope seemed to abandon them. That's why, for the longest time, I had a small grudge against Bunny. I thought that he should have been there to give hope where there wasn't any, but the spark of defiance had vanished, and I suppose he was too busy to help her."
Willow mulled over his words, having all but forgotten her original question that led to the story in the first place.
"Do you know her name?" she finally asked, unsure if there was really anything else to say.
There was another long pause, before he finally answered, "Mary Katherine Joyce."
(*)
Willow had continued to draw the landscape, having little success with the sunlit snow, but images of Jack's story kept flashing through her mind. Possibilities of her appearance would slip into her mind, as well as the snowstorm him grief brought and the girl's father telling her the storied of the Guardians. Her pencil paused on the page as she considered the story. It sounded like she would have had some form of cancer, and she knew it must have been hell for her family. Most of all, he father, whom had sat by her side for days and wove marvelous tales of the protectors of her childhood. The way he told it, the stories seemed to be what had kept her going for the longest time.
She couldn't imagine how painful it must have been for anyone to watch someone they love slowly waste away and die. When her father had died, two Marines had knocked on their front door, one holding an honor badge and the other explaining to the little girl and her mother why her daddy was never coming home again. Her daddy had been very brave and saved many lives, and she should never forget him.
She had cried for the next two days solid, and her aunt had come down from Montreal to comfort the grieving pair, but more than anything, she seemed to intrude upon that grief. Her mother would lock herself in her room all day with a bottle of vodka, whiskey on tequila and Willow shunned all company. She, too, would lock the door to her room whenever she was in there, and if her aunt would try to sit near her, she would simply get up and move. Eventually, she realized that neither Willow nor her sister would have any benefit from her staying.
However, she was wrong.
Within days of her leaving, her mother began to lash out at Willow, often in a loud, possibly violent way. She would shout that it was her fault that he was dead, that he would have never gone away if he hadn't needed to protect daddy's precious little girl. Her mother would stagger drunkenly and take slow, clumsy swings at her wherever she tried to tell her mother that it wasn't her fault, but that only seemed to anger the woman more. Eventually, she learned to just accept whatever her mother would throw at her without complaint, for face a worse consequence.
Now, she answered to no one but the vile woman, submissively bending to her cruel will to avoid further punishment. Usually.
Her fingers lightly traced the taunt pink tissue that striped along her cheekbone, remembering her burst of defiance at her mother. She usually took the screaming rants in silence, but she bottled up anger had finally broken the pressure gauge and she simply burst, and had paid for it.
She glanced down at the drawing to see thin lines where the shaking of her hands had left thin trails of graphite beneath her hand. She sighed and slipped the pencil into her pocket, realizing that she wouldn't be able to do anything else to the sketch, she didn't have it in her.
"What's wrong?" Jack asked, noticing her bout of frustration.
"Oh, nothing. I just can't really concentrate. I keep thinking about that girl you told me about." she said, fiddling with the curled end of her hair.
Jack simply nodded, before leaning forward and looking at her drawing. "Are you still having trouble with the snow?"
"Yeah, I've erased it so many times, it's a miracle I haven't rubbed a hole through the paper." she muttered. Jack studied the partially completed landscape for a moment, the faint gray smudges staining the white of the sheet.
"Would you mind if I looked at the other drawings?" he asked. She hesitated a moment at the question, before closing the book and passing it to him without a word.
The cover of the sketchbook was a light brown with a bumpy texture. He lifted the cover to see another sketch of the pond, but this one was different. For starters, there was no snow, and the trees burst with the lush greenery of summer leaves. Sunlight reflected off of the water, creating the illusion of ripples.
"I thought you couldn't draw sunlight?" he asked, smirking.
"I can't on the snow. When it's on water, the light is really smooth, but when it's on snow, it's very uneven. Each little snowflake casts its own light, and there is so many little places to have to either leave white, or shade in, and I can never get it right." she told him. He nodded and turned the page.
This time, it seemed to be some kind of bird's nest, with three little eggs nestled inside, but it had only been partially completed.
"Why didn't you finish this one?" he asked. She glanced over at the sketchbook in his hands.
"Oh, I found a sparrow nest in one of the trees by the pond, so I started to draw it. I had only been there about half an hour, when the mother bird came back. She started squawking at me and biting at my hair, so I had to leave. I probably could have finished it from memory and educated guesses of what it would look like, but I decided to leave it alone. That way, people ask me why and I get to tell them the story." she said, cracking a small grin.
He leafed through several more landscapes from the forest, some from the ground, some from the trees. Only one stood out.
It was an up-close view of the pond, the focus being on ripples caused by dripping liquid. What caught him off guard, was how much darker the shading on the drops of liquid were, and how the deeper saturation seemed to follow the ripples. Images of the threadlike lines on her arms flashed through his mind, and he quickly flipped the page.
On the next page, it was another sketch of the pond, but this time, the trees were scantily dotted with shriveled leaved and several drifted across the surface of the pond. The sky in the background was a darker shade than most of the others and the reflections on the wiry branches blended into the deep tone of the water, so she must have drawn this later at night.
After a couple more pages, he came to the snow covered image she had been drawing when he first met her. She had simply given up in drawing the snow, having shaded it to look like there was no light on it. The ice on the pond still had the reflections, but the snow did not.
The remainder of the pages were the brightly colored images of the Shop and the Guardians, with the glacier being the last one. He closed the sketchbook and handed it back to her.
"These are really good. How long have you been drawing?" he asked, immediately regretting it. Though she didn't know it, he already knew the answer.
"Um, about nine years ago." she answered carefully. "Some... stuff, had been going on, and I just needed a way to pass the time. I got a sketchbook, and I guess it sort of stuck."
Jack nodded, but curiosity got the better of him despite her obvious reluctance to talk about it.
"What do you mean 'stuff'? Did something happen?" She stiffened at his question and she shot him a warning look.
"I mean 'stuff' as in I don't really want to talk about it." she said sharply. Jack sighed.
"Willow, losing someone close to you doesn't mean you have to shut everyone out." Her eyes flased to his face, both shocked and confused. His heart sank as he realized his slip.
"Wait, how the hell did you..." her eyes unfocused a bit and he could practically see everything clicking into place in her head. When she looked back at him, he knew if looks could kill, he would be pushing up daisies in all his immortal glory.
"Willow, let me explain..." his voice died beneath the acid glare burning through his skull.
"Don't. Say. A goddamn thing, Jack." she hissed, her voice low. "You know, I thought you might be different. I thought, maybe, just one person could actually be who they said they were. You were hiding something, and you lied right to my face! That crazy bitch may be messing with my head, but she told the truth when you didn't! What the hell am I supposed to do with that!" she yelled, and Jack searched for something he could say that wouldn't make things worse.
"I-I didn't want to. She had told us that once you found out, you would try to leave and get stuck in the snow again, or something. You still had hypothermia, and I was afraid that something like that would happen." he told her, but her anger didn't lessen.
"But that still doesn't tell me why you would have even opened the one book that I obviously was trying to keep out of sight!" she said, throwing her hands into the air, before taking a deep breath. Her hands shook violently and she clenched them into fists in an attempt to control her rage.
"I found it by accident. It looked like just a regular sketchbook, so I didn't know that it would be like a diary. I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to snoop on you." he said, guilt coloring his voice.
Her eyes were closed and she concentrated on breathing evenly. "The point is, that you opened it without my permission. You could have just left it there, but you didn't." There was blanent accusation in her voice, but even Jack knew that it was justified.
"Please, I'm sorry. I didn't-"
"No, don't apologize, you know damn well it's too late for that." she growled, cutting his off. Her breath whooshed out in a sharp hiss and she pinched the bridge of her nose. "You know, I probably wouldn't have even been half as pissed if you had just told the truth to begin with. Instead, you chose to lie, and broke any trust I had for you."
He shrank beneath her words, every bit of it striking him like a knife of shame. Betrayal shone bright in the duo tones of her eyes and her hands grasped her biceps to control the shaking.
"Willow, just listen." he started, but her eyes flared.
"Listen? To YOU?" Mirthless laughter danced in the anxious wind. "Wow, you must be pretty damn arrogant to think I would believe anything you say."
He took a step towards her, hand half outstretched, but she stepped back with another glare. "Get away from me. I don't want you to touch me." she said, taking another step back. Jack eyed the edge of the roof nervously.
"Okay, fine, but please don't stand so close to the edge." he pleaded, the clay shingles only extending another eight or so inches, before there was a three hundred foot drop to the snow below.
"Yes, mother." she mocked in a high falsetto. "Oh, please, I'm a big girl, Jack, I can take care of myself. I don't need you, or anyone else, coddling me like I'm inept." she said, taking a small step closer to the edge, leaving only a couple of inches of space. She felt like a petulant child in doing so, but why shouldn't she be petulant? If he could lie to her so easily, doesn't she have the right to a bit of childishness?
Panic bubbled in Jack at her nearness to the ledge. Flashbacks to his sister at the pond raced through his mind, but they seemed to have reversed roles. Instead of her wanting to get away from the danger, she stepped towards it. He glanced at his staff, then how far away she was. If he moved fast enough, he should be able to hook her waist.
He shifted forward, preparing to lunge forward, but she caught the movement. Her foot twitched and she wobbled a bit. Jack took this opportunity and shot forward, swinging his staff, but she saw it coming. Her hand batted the staff away, and the motion finally caused her to pitch backwards just enough. Her eyes widened as her feet slipped from the edge. Both she and Jack scrambled for the other, but each was met with empty air.
She did not scream, causing Jack's shout to ring out all the louder.
"Willow, NO!" he cried, frozen with fear for a split second. Then, he dove off the edge, praying that it hadn't been a half second too long.
Her eyes were wide with fear as she fell. Long hair swirled around her face and she spread her arms and legs in an attempt to slow her fall, and one arm reached up to Jack. He tucked his limbs to his body to quicken his own fall, but she was still several feet below him and the ground was coming up fast.
He thrust out his staff, hoping the length would be enough. Her hands fumbled for the wood and the tip of it poked her collarbone, but her fingers simply would not grasp it. She managed to curl her hands around it but her grip was loose.
Jack, however, did not realize this, and quickly slowed, thinking she had managed to grab the staff. There was a sharp tug as it caught on something around her neck, and the collar of her shirt tore, slowing her fall. She fell to the ground with a sickeningly quiet thud into the snow.
Fists of icy steel seemed to lock over his throat at her still shape. He dropped to the ground, his staff falling from his hand into the snow as he dropped beside her. His hands shook as he struggled to remember what to do in a situation like this. He had seen it plenty of times during car accidents or fires, but the actions of the emergency medics escaped him for a terrifying moment, before a small tidbit came to him.
Hands still tremoring, he reached forward and pressed his fingers to the side of her neck, just under the edge of her jaw. Relief flooded him like the torrent of a broken dam at the gently pulsations beneath his touch. He slipped his arms beneath her neck and knees, lifting her gently. He was turning to bring her inside, when a glint of silver flashed on the snow. He shifted his grip and scooped the object out of the snow.
A crystal pendant on a snapped silver chain. That's the tug he must have felt when his staff snagged her collar. He slipped her necklace into the pocket on his hoodie, before leaping into the air, hoping more than anything that she would be alright.
Okay, I was trying not to leave a huge cliffhanger, because, honestly, I was planning to cut it off when she fell and make y'all wait until next chapter to see what happened, but I decided not to under the consideration I did not want to face the grief I knew I would be getting from Fluffythorne for doing so. Besides, I still have a long way to go before the actual suspense comes about, so I'm not quite ready to kill her off that easily.
Also, guys, I'm disappointed in my lack of reviews. I think last chapter hit a record low, with only six individual reviewers for that particular chapter. If my reviews don't start going up again, my updating will start to space out again, because when I get more reviews, it lets me know people are actually into my story. If this keeps happening, I might have to resort to updating after a certain number of reviews, and I really don't want to do that to the awesome readers who HAVE reviewed every chapter like sassysaw, Fluffythorne, psychochirpingmistress, and Fellowship of Avengers(if I left someone out by accident, please tell me and I will add you in), because I always can count on knowing they will review. I don't want to withhold the story from you guys, but I'm a little hurt on how my reviewers have waned off like they have. I know several people who have favorited/followed this story, and even favorited/followed me as an author. I'm very appreciative for that, but if you liked my writing enough to FAVORITE me, why won't you review and tell me that?
So, please review guys, they mean the world to me!