Linguaphile

Though one might not think it from how busy he always seemed to be, North actually knew each of his yetis individually. He knew each one's name and age, the sound of their voices, and a good bit about their preferred jobs in the Pole. He may be a little brusque when he was frazzled, but anyone who knew North knew that he cared a great deal about his workers.

So when he was reading over his to-do list while walking back to his office one afternoon and heard in the clamor a sentence of Yetish in a voice that he couldn't immediately place, it was enough to catch hold of his scattered attention and pull his eyes up from his paper.

North scanned the multi-leveled room for the owner of the voice, his eyes passing over a variety of flying toys and working yetis. He heard Phil's excited voice and looked over to see the Yeti facing away from him, talking to somebody North couldn't see. The voice that North couldn't place spoke again, and though North couldn't quite catch the words, it almost sounded as if they were spoken with a slight accent.

North furrowed his brow and took a few steps toward Phil, trying to hear the conversation, and catch a glimpse of the other conversationalist.

Phil was saying something was very good, and he was impressed at the fast learning.

The other voice said it was all the practice over the years, ending with a laugh that North recognized instantly.

Jack spoke Yetish?

Phil shifted as he replied, revealing the smiling much shorter Guardian of Fun, who waved and called out a Yetish greeting to Stu and Bob as they passed by, making them smile and garble their own greetings in response.

North stood there for a few moments while Jack and Phil wrapped up their conversation, Phil giving a surprised Jack a furry hug before hurrying away to bellow at Sam, who was about to knock over a stack of freshly painted toys. Jack stood behind for another second, his stunned expression melting into a happy little smile that warmed North to see. The boy still seemed surprised when people touched him, but he obviously welcomed the affection. And after three hundred years without physical contact with another person, the Russian thought sadly, startling at being touched was hardly anything unexpected. North shoved aside the guilt the thought pulled up and made a mental note to set a Pole precedent for showing physical affection to the winter spirit. Namely, increasing it's frequency. As the elves already used him as a climbing wall, and the Yetis were clearly growing fondly protective of their resident youngest Guardian, North didn't think it would be a difficult thing to implement.

Jack would never again need to go without the touch of beings who loved him.

Jack had looked up during North's moment of introspection and his smile grew when he saw the Guardian of Wonder. He jumped lightly into the air to clear the heads of a passing gaggle of elves and landed softly beside the older immortal. "Heya, North."

"Jack." North smiled down at the white haired teen, a wave of deep fondness taking him a bit by surprise. He certainly didn't mind, though, and his smile grew wider. "You did not tell me you spoke Yetish."

Jack looked surprised, but smiled. "Well, I'm not exactly fluent yet. But I'd picked up snippets from Phil over the years of trying to break in, and once I had those it wasn't too hard to learn enough to converse now that I'm here so often," he said, shrugging dismissively.

North laughed and shook his head slightly in affectionate disbelief. "Ah, Jack, you are too modest. Is very impressive!" The boy looked about to disagree, but North cheerfully spoke over him. "Bunny and Tooth have been coming to Pole for centuries and never learned very much, and here you are, speaking like expert after just few months! Is remarkable, my boy."

Jack shrugged again, but a little smile played at the corners of his lips. "I like languages," he said in explanation. "I've had a lot of practice learning new ones, and Yetish really isn't too complex. It has a little nuance, but it was easy compared to how hard I had to work to get the Mandarin tonal differences. And Polish consonants. Arabic was pretty tough, too- especially since I started learning those earlier on after the moon woke me, so they took me a really long time to learn," Jack said, almost seeming to forget he was talking aloud in his enthusiasm.

North smiled warmly at the younger spirit's ardor, but he was still rather distracted by the languages Jack had mentioned. North knew a great deal about languages (came from having a job that called for reading letters from children around the world), and he was more than enough of an expert to know that the three Jack had listed were among the most difficult languages to learn.
"How many languages do you speak, Jack?" North asked, curious.

Jack's attention snapped back to North, and he laughed a little. "Sorry, got a little sidetracked there. How many languages do I know?"

North nodded, ducking absently when a jingling elf strapped to a flying saucer by a length of tree lights nearly careened into his head.

Jack grinned at the elf and its harried companion, who was running after the flying toy and its rider with the remote control. The winter spirit laughed at the scene before hopping into the air and using his staff to hook the runaway vessel and pull it to the ground. "Seatbelts," he observed (almost) seriously, nearly managing to quash his smile before kneeling down to help the ground elf unwrap the lights from the dizzy flyer. "Always a good precaution for a test flight."

The ground elf nodded proudly with a jingle, while the newly freed pilot elf staggered and nearly fell over, looking distinctly green.

"I forget the actual number," Jack said as he stood up and rejoined North, leaving the elves to the mercies of Paul, who had nearly tripped over them and was now in the process of lecturing them on Workshop safety. "But I can comfortably speak nearly all of the major languages- all the ones that your average English-speaking person would think of when thinking of languages. I also know a lot of dialects and slang, and I know at least snippets of a lot of the more obscure and tribal languages, even if I can't speak them fluently. You name it, I probably know at least a little of it," he said, grinning with joking cockiness.

North stared at the impish boy for a moment in wonder, before laughing warmly and clapping him on the back, the impact making the smaller Guardian stumble slightly. "That is quite amazing, Jack!" He praised, starting toward his office again with Jack dodging Yetis to keep pace at his side. "I am impressed! Even I do not speak so many languages so well. How did you learn them all?" he asked unthinkingly.

Jack's smile dimmed slightly, and his eyes seemed to focus on something North couldn't see. "I found ways," he said with a small shrug. "And I had a lot of time to learn. A lot of them I learned mostly just from listening. Even if people can't see you, you still want to understand them, if only to be included that much." He said the last part almost too quietly for North to hear, his bright blue eyes duller than usual for a split second. He pasted on another smile without missing a beat, and if North had been as distracted as he usually was, he might have missed it. "Worked out well though- it can be pretty funny to listen in on cross-cultural conversations when you speak both languages," he said, grinning mischievously before waving cheerfully when Sandra called a hello to her favorite visitor. The yeti baker, who had taken to feeding Jack cookies every time she saw him, she held up one furry finger and strode from the room, probably to fetch a tray.

North smiled warmly at the youngest Guardian, but his blue eyes were shadowed with sadness, and a bit of guilt. Jack had a remarkable skill for finding the good in things, and making the best of bad situations. But as Bunny had reminded them all only a few months ago, the winter spirit had hurts that would take time and care to heal. The Russian couldn't do anything about the time, but he was determined to make great contributions when it came to the care, and that involved finding ways to make Jack feel included and valuable.

North's eyes widened, his eyebrows shooting up with a small gasp of excitement. He snapped his fingers. "Idea!" he announced, pointing in Jack's face. "Why don't we put your language skills to good use?"

Jack went slightly cross-eyed trying to look at the finger North held in front of his nose. "What do you mean?"

North turned and threw open the door to his office, striding in with Jack scrambling behind. "I get thousands of letters, every year," he explained, rifling through his desk drawer to pull out a stack of folders, which he dropped onto his desk with a loud thump! "Letters are from children all across world, in many languages. I know enough of most of them, but takes more time for me to read them. But you know them better! Would you like to help translate them?" North asked, looking at Jack.

The blue-eyed winter spirit stared at North, his expression astonished. "Seriously?"

North smiled at Jack's disbelieving tone. "Only if you want to."

Jack gazed up at the Russian for a minute, before his face broke into a slow, delighted grin, one that made his eyes sparkle like sun on freshly fallen snow and sent a shock of warmth through North, straight down to his toes.

The winter spirit let out a short laugh, the happy sound ringing brightly around North's office. "I would love to," Jack said, his smile making North fleetingly glad that Tooth and her fairies weren't at the Pole today.

North threw back his head and laughed straight from his belly, startling a tray-laden Sandra, who had just opened the office door bearing warm and aromatic fresh cookies. "Then what do we wait for? Let's get started!" he announced.

Jack took the tray of chocolate chip cookies from Sandra with another blinding smile that nearly made the yeti baker drop her remaining tray. "Perfect timing, Sandra," he said in Yetish, carefully settling the tray on North's desk.

Sandra garbled something happily about her genius boy, learning Yetish so well, and ruffled Jack's white hair before pulling the blushing winter spirit into a crushing yeti hug. Laughing again, North left him to the baker yeti's mercies in favor of selecting a perfectly baked cookie, inhaling its mouth-watering aroma before taking a bite and sorting the folders between languages he was comfortable in, and ones Jack would interpret faster.

Once Sandra released him and merged back into the bustling chaos outside North's office, Jack plopped down in the chair across from North, face slightly flushed and hair messier than usual, and grabbed a cookie from the tray. North chuckled and slid a stack of folders labeled in various scripts over to the younger Guardian, who took them with eyes shining with excitement.

"Well then," Jack said, grinning happily. "Let's get started!"

***0***

North's list had grown significantly longer. The two Guardians were numerous hours in, and the Pole's cookie supply was multiple platters less. (Actually, it probably wasn't; Sandra and Ralph had probably replenished as many as Jack and North had eaten.)

Jack was sprawled with his head on the arm of the chair closest to North and his legs dangling over the other, a stack of letters to read on his stomach, and another dangerously tilting tower of completed ones on the floor, which the white-haired teen added yet another to after making a note on his list.

An elf who had gotten into the office at some point that neither of the Guardians could remember and eaten an unholy amount of cookies was face down on the desk, snoring in a cookie-induced coma. North ignored the noise with a practiced ease and reached for another cookie, munching absently while his eyes skimmed over the latest letter.

"North?" Jack said, yawning and tilting his head up so North could see his nose and chin above the shaggy white hair.

"What is it, Jack?" North asked, his eyes on his list as he wrote. Cassandra, age 6, request: pony.

He heard the scratch of Jack's pen as he wrote down the next child, and the rustle of another letter joining the complete stack. "Thanks for letting me help," Jack said quietly.

North looked up from his list to stare at the mop of hair and sprawled legs that were all he could see of the youngest Guardian. He shook his head, and a fond smile spread across his tired face. "No, Jack," he said, his own voice softer than it's usual boom. "Thank you, for helping."

Jack made a tired noise of contentment and wrote on his paper again, and the two drifted back into a warm companionable silence.

***0***

North yawned and rubbed his eyes tiredly, reaching for another letter. He jumped slightly when the door slammed open, and Phil barged in, already in the middle of a tirade scolding about North staying in the office the entire night that North stopped listening to after absorbing the first sentence.

North glanced at the row of time zone clocks on the wall, his bleary eyes finding the clock for the Pole, and was surprised to see it was nearly six o'clock in the morning. He hadn't realized he and Jack had been working so long.

He stood and stretched his back while coming around the desk, waving the yeti off. "Yes, yes, Phil, enough mothering. We just lost track of time, did we not, Jack?"

Jack didn't answer. North looked down at the chair the younger spirit was draped across, and a smile spread across his face. He held up a finger to silence Phil's resumed lecture. "Shhh, Phil! Look."

The boy was fast asleep, his head dropped down to loll against his chest, which was still covered in letters. His right hand still held a pen, resting limply on a neat (very long) list of children, and his other arm had slipped to dangle off the edge of the chair.

North rested a large hand warmly on the teenaged spirit's shoulder, his heart brimming with warm affection. He silently thanked Manny for bringing Jack into their lives, even if they had waited far longer than they should have.

Phil also looked fondly down at the sleeping winter spirit, before turning a reproachful glare on North, quietly garbling shame on the Russian for keeping the boy working so long.

"He wanted to help," North defended in a loud whisper.

The yeti shushed him harshly, and he continued in a lower tone. "He did not tell me he was tired. He was so happy to help…" he said, trailing off.

Phil nodded understandingly, and North knew they were both thinking the same thing.

Jack would go to great lengths to make other people happy. They would have to help make sure he didn't let it be at the cost of himself.

North squeezed the boy's narrow shoulder gently, his heart full of warmth. "You are quite special, Jack."

The winter spirit shifted slightly and mumbled something in his sleep, making North smile softly. He cleared the papers covering Jack's stomach and gently shifted his head into a more comfortable looking position, careful not to wake him.

The boy had earned his sleep.

Jack would wake later to a full breakfast waiting for him on the desk, North dozing softly in his chair with his feet propped on the edge of the desk. North would wake when Jack sat up quietly and smile at the youngest Guardian, and the two would share breakfast in companionable quiet, no language needed to feel the warmth that filled the room.

Because love transcended languages.

A/N This one… kinda went its own direction from the very rough plan I had for it. I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with how it turned out, especially the ending, but here it is anyway! (I may come back and edit it later ¯\_()_/¯) This one will have later parts based on Jack's lingual knowledge! (Mostly cus I'm a nerd who loves languages and wishes I could learn so many!)

This story will be sporadically updated with mostly individually wrapped one-shots, but they will be interconnected! I've read several fics of the other Guardians learning things about Jack (and loved all of them), but some made Jack seem a bit... delicate? If there was one thing I got from him in the movie, it was that he had the stubbornly tenacious ability to still find the fun and laughter in life, in a situation when most people would have given up. So this story will be a lot of fluff showing how an easily bored and fun-loving spirit made the best of his 300 years! Hope you enjoy, and leave a review! See you in the next chapter!