Chapter Forty-six- My Apologies
James spent his time literally flying in front of the attacking magic like he was taking a bullet for someone important and ripping it apart. He put very little of his energy into actually changing them because the kids could do that so much more easily than he could.
Sand exploded everywhere when they let that first burst out, and when they got to the bottom of the barrel of proverbial magic the possessed mortals came running out with stunning viciousness. It took a little bit of time for the kids to realize that they were as safe as they could be, mostly thanks to Jamie.
It was about then in the "battle" that was really more of a demented game of dodge-ball, that the now teens of Burgess started to realize what Jamie had become. He was a Guardian, whatever his official title was, he was a Guardian. They had never seen him so confident, so in control. The way he was moving, flying, freezing, jumping into action and looking like he was actually having fun with it made them think of a superhero.
James, while run down and feeling like he could collapse, was incredibly proud of the boy.
"So…what now?" Claude, or possibly Caleb, asked as he surveyed the piles of unconscious adults littering the clearing. On an afterthought which he honestly couldn't believe he hadn't come up with before, he had been redirecting the already available dream sand at them to knock them out. Now they were littered around in un-ceremonial heaps.
"Let's stick them closer to home?" Pippa suggested.
"Leave 'em in the woods?!" Monty asked, clearly in shock at the suggestion. He had a point.
"Well we don't know all of them, we can't take them home." Pippa defended.
"We can though." Jessica offered, looking between Jamie and Tooth for confirmation. Jamie was all for it, and Tooth nodded in the affirmative. They could do it.
"Good idea. If you can tell us where some of them live, we can drop the rest off somewhere safe." Tooth assured.
"Brilliant, I'm going to check up on the others." James provided. Tooth was going to question that but the second she met James' eyes her heart dropped. He was dangerously wiped, even managing to look sickly. She fluttered back to him as the kids started telling Jamie and Jessica where everyone lived, if Jamie or Jessica themselves didn't already know.
"Are you okay?" She asked quietly, not wanting to alarm the others.
"Of course." He offered rather unconvincingly. She gave the man a look that called him out on his fibbing.
"What's wrong?" She demanded, taking on a more motherly, warning tone. Any defense James was planning to provide was caught in his throat. He let out a massive sigh.
"I'm just coming down with something, I'll explain later you need to go help them, I'm go-"
"No. I'm taking you back to the Pole, what's going on?" She insisted.
"I'm already going back to the Pole." He reminded her, blinking owlishly at the fary in confusion.
"And I'm making sure you get there. Where are the globes?" She asked, looking around for that backpack she had been given. "Jessica? Where's the backpack you brought full of globes?" She asked.
"Oh, I thought I gave it to you?" Jessica half-asked over her shoulder.
"Okay!" She called back. "Darn, I must have left it…come on then." She lifted him up into the air. "Long way it is."
"You really don't need to do this." He insisted again as they made it up and into the clouds.
"Nonsense." Tooth dismissed his concern for her concern being concerning. "Now, what on earth happened? What's got you so sick?" She asked sweetly.
"As far as I can guess, good and bad dreams were never meant to combine in the volume I've needed to lately." He guessed with a shrug.
"It's making you sick, too?" She shook her head. "What are we gonna do with the three of you?" Tooth chuckled. "When one of us gets sick we all start dropping like flies."
"Which is crazy, considering the extreme lack of communicability of most of our illnesses." He agreed with over-the-top vocabulary and an overdone proper British accent, intense on top of the already faint hint he usually sported.
"Well at least it's almost over." Tooth offered.
"Hopefully." James sobered. He couldn't stop imagining Sandy and Jack vomiting and slipping a little farther from the world by the second. He knew that wasn't likely to end in the ultimate disaster, but he couldn't shake the feeling. He had a feeling at least part of his nausea stemmed from that image.
"Come on, let's get you somewhere you can rest." Tooth mumbled quietly, almost to herself, when they made it to the Pole, using the open window mostly for ease.
"I'll be fine, I'll just curl up on the couch or something." He insisted quietly, her volume somehow dragging his down with it. He was leaning on her heavily at this point.
"Hush, come on." She began to lead him down the hall to where they had left the others to the little bed/chair he had been in the previous night. It was comfortable, moveable, and mostly close to the medical equipment and medicine they might need. He stopped arguing.
He must really be sick. She fretted at his sudden submission.
"Tooth?" North called quietly when she got close, surprised to hear that she was back already?
"Yeah, James is a bit wiped, so we-aww…" She cut herself off with that super-strangled noise that was the universal sound for cuteness when she saw North, Bunny, and their charges. She settled the poor exhausted spirit in the little bed that he had claimed the other day, making sure he was comfy before turning to the others for a status report of sorts.
"How are they?" She asked sweetly, finding Jack's forehead absently to check his temperature and pulling back, startled. She was still giving him a wide-eyed stare when North began his explanation, forcing him to start over.
"The connection makes it hard to keep them both comfortable, so we settled on alive…" He offered sheepishly, knowing she wouldn't like that very much.
"Maybe we can try to spend a lot of effort in keeping Sandy super warm and Jack really cool?" She asked. Bunny picked up his head from the pillow it was on and shook his head, minding that he didn't wake Sandy.
"Nah, mate. We tried that and it just doesn't work." Bunny countered. "It just makes 'em both real sick."
"I know, Tooth. We don't like either, but will hopefully be better soon." North said soothingly, scooping up one of her dainty hands. "Why don't you pull up seat and tell us how things went?" He suggested after a second. She nodded, pulling up the armchair on the other side to be next to North.
"They're taking the mortals home, James put them to sleep as they came out, we don't know why we hadn't thought of that before when we were planning, anyway they're cured and on their way home right now." She explained right up front. North nodded, visibly relieved. It was about then that Jack squirmed a little, almost experimentally, and peeked over North's arm to confirm his suspicions about who had joined them.
"Hey, Tooth." Jack rasped, grinning slightly at the fary in an attempt to reassure her, but the damage was done. There was nothing that could make her overlook the sound of his voice or the slight tremor in his frame. Her baby was hurting and he was going to have to deal with the fact that she would fuss over him until he was better.
"Tooth, ease up will ya?" Bunny defended the poor kid, who couldn't really squirm away.
You know she's probably not letting you out of her sight for a year or better now, right? Sandy teased. Jack turned and scowled but it was half-hearted which just made Sandy chuckle at him weakly, but as enthusiastically as he could.
Back in Burgess Jessica was saying goodbye and letting Jamie catch up with friends.
"Your mom is Mother Nature." Pippa said matter-of-factly and with this wide-eyed stare that told Jamie she wasn't really able to wrap her head around it.
"Yeah, and I'm the second Spirit of Winter, Jack being the original and much better at it." He added. She shook her head.
"That's…amazing." She said in awe, still staring at him like she'd just met him. In actuality Jamie realized she really kind of was. She took in the blue eyes, the white hair and the pale completion and Jamie found himself hoping like mad that she wasn't put-off.
"I thought it was cool, too." He shrugged, turning to the others to break what had become an awkwardly tense moment full of expectation and feelings he preferred to leave alone. He was an immortal now and he was painfully aware of that fact. "Any other questions, I do kinda owe ya."
"Yeah, did you know you were raised by Pitch for the last few years there?!" Cupcake practically gushed in awe and disbelief. Jamie cringed, shifting his weight.
"Well, yeah…all the Guardians were around a lot, but…I don't know I just…I thought you'd grown out of it. Obviously I couldn't, but I had thought you would and I thought maybe you wouldn't believe me, you'd think I was playing or worse maybe nuts and that you-" Pippa stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Hey, we aren't mad." She offered.
"Like hell we aren't." Claude fumed. Jamie backed up.
"Now hold on there Caleb, he-"
"I'M CLAUDE!" He corrected angrily. "We thought you forgot about all that, we never did. We all spent years wanting to see them again, worrying about you and wondering why you weren't talking to us. If you'd told us we wouldn't have thought-" He stopped himself and spun on his heels. "Maybe you didn't trust us, but maybe you should have had enough respect for us to-"
"Stop it. Stop it right now, Claude." Caleb demanded, catching their attention when he saw Jamie's shamed and concerned face.
"What's he mean? What did you think?" Jamie asked cautiously.
"We…when you disappeared, we thought…you…" Caleb explained lightly, not really wanting to finish his thought.
"We thought you killed yourself, Jamie. We thought you were dead." Pippa finished. Jamie almost couldn't hold contact with those bright brown eyes when they looked like that.
"I'm sorry, but…we had a lot to deal with and I thought…I thought you'd grown out of it. If I'd known you were so worried I…I'm sorry…" He managed. Claude shook his head and spun, walking off while the group watched.
"Hey, don't worry about him, he just took the whole thing kinda hard cause you saw him last. He thought it was his fault, even when we all told him it had nothing to do with him, he hadn't even been with you, he was just the last one to see you that day and it got to him." Caleb explained, trying to calm him.
"Not…not worry? Guys, he blamed himself for me being dead when I wasn't. How can I not worry about that?" Jamie asked, shocked.
"Hey, it'll be okay. He's not one for the whole emotion trip, he'll be fine." Caleb assured.
"Crap, it's late and I've gotta study, test tomorrow!" Monty finally spoke, but that was because he'd been a little too wrapped up in what they were saying to contribute until he caught sight of the time.
"What? Test? Who's class?!" Caleb asked, obviously worried.
"Gribben." Monty offered with melodramatic dread laced thickly though the word.
"Uh oh." Claude's face paled.
"You forget?" Jamie guessed.
"Yeah, ew chemistry. See ya around?" He asked as he scattered for his things.
"Definitely, I'll be around, just let me know if you wanna meet, North gets letters like clockwork if you need to reach me." He offered as they agreed and hastily ran off toward home.
Pippa giggled at them as they ran and Jamie found it infectious.
"I'll make sure they don't kill each other on the way back in." Cupcake heaved a dramatic sigh and jogged off after them, waving her goodbyes.
"Sorry about all this." Jamie mumbled, kicking the dirt lightly.
"Don't worry about it." She assured.
"So, um…how's…stuff?" He asked, where had his command of the English language gone?
"Stuff?" She chuckled. "Stuff is stuff, and things are things, and we're in high-school so, yeah, stuff." She teased, bumping his shoulder. He gave her the most lost and bewildered look she had ever seen and it melted and broke her heart all at once. He really was alone now, weather he was aware or not, even if he didn't want to admit it. He was alone because there was a dwindling number of people with the same experiences, and on top of that he was a spirit. Something in his eyes felt wrong to her, so he decided she needed to get Jamie back, the usual Jamie. The Jamie she had spent years hoping to get a prom invite from one day…
They talked for hours until the moon was high in the sky, Mani's light shining on them fondly.
I've still got it. Mani chuckled from his seat on a silver beach looking down. Cupid, look out, you've got competition. Oh wait…I made you. Take that! He chuckled, an old man with a lot of time on his hands and good intentions. Although maybe I can't take credit for this one…
Sorry for the wait, I got a little distracted and into a reading phase, but it passed. I'm working on an original so if you don't hear from me for a few days, that's probably what I'm doing. My non-fanfics need some serious love. As always thanks for reading and definitely thanks to my reviewers and followers/favorites. If you have anything you desperately want to have done I'll see what I can do (I'm probably already planning it lol). As always let me know whatcha think! Arlene out. ^.^