A/N: Hello! It's been a minute. This year has been a lot to deal with. I had intentions of taking August off and starting to post again once September hit, and obviously I took most of September off as well. I needed a bit of a break from the chapters because they just weren't cooperating with me, I had a few health things to deal with, my grandfather passed away, it's been a lot of distracting life stuff.

Mental health-wise, as well, things have been really hard the last couple of weeks, but in a way that I do feel like I've made a lot of progress. The thing about making mental health progress is that it's fucking exhausting, though. I wanted to draw more than I did, I wanted to write more than I did, I tried to just let myself take a break and circle back around when it felt better. I'm also in the process of changing up my medications, so we'll see how that goes.

I have, at least, been able to do quite a bit of writing this past week and feel okay posting a chapter again, so, yay, here we are! Let me know what you think and thank you to those of you that checked in.

Here's another reminder that my tumblr page, "somethingquite-peculiar," will usually be updated when there's chapter delays.

"Is it bad, that I kind of preferred it when everyone was on the same page that us being together was a bad idea?"

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Plain As Anyone Can See

"We need to talk, privately, now."

Tooth eyed Bunny in surprise, her mouth half-open as she had been in the middle of directing some of her fairies when the pooka had bounded his way onto the platform from one of his tunnels.

He looked a bit... unhinged. Even his whiskers seemed crooked now, his eyes somehow both alert and exhausted. This was becoming his new normal, and Tooth was growing concerned.

"… Cleveland. We've got seven lateral incisors, four left, three right, and then two right canines," Tooth said, electing to finish directing the fairies. "One is at 26 Elm, which is one of our flagged residences for aggressive pets. So, I want a pair of you to take care of that one, all right? Be careful."

The fairies squeaked in response before darting off. Bunny was tapping his foot impatiently.

"All right! Everyone, you're on your own for a little bit! I'll be back," Tooth called. Squeaks came from every direction, surround-sound acknowledgement from her miniature helpers.

"At the Warren, c'mon," Bunny said, summoning another tunnel and disappearing through it quickly. Tooth furrowed a brow and followed. She knew that the Warren was more private than her palace, but for the most part, if they stayed by the pond, enough privacy was presumed.

It must be very important, whatever Bunny had to say.

The tunnel had barely closed behind them before Bunny was talking.

"I took Rowan and Jack to Ganderly today, so we could look into Jack's staff. It's definitely the same one Nightlight used."

Tooth blinked. "Wait. What? How did you figure that out?"

"It responded to the name of Nightlight's staff. Jack asked it to reveal itself and it transformed into Nightlight's staff exactly," Bunny explained. "The glowing dagger and everything."

"Wow, I—what do we do?" Tooth said, receiving a frazzled shrug in response. It was absolutely significant that Jack had ended up in possession of the weapon that the rest of them had assumed was simply gone for good.

It was absolutely significant that the staff that had only ever worked for Nightlight, now only worked for Jack.

It was absolutely baffling that Jack had come into possession of the staff when he was still mortal.

"No wonder it worked on the Shadow People," Tooth considered.

"That's not all," Bunny said. This was already so much, how could there be more? "Rowan opened the door to Katherine's room."

"No!" Tooth said at once, eyes wide. "It's been locked since—!"

"I know," said Bunny. "I had Jack try the door to Nightlight's room and it opened, too."

"Both of them!?"

"On top of that, they've been having other dreams that lined up with Katherine and Nightlight's lives, and they both experienced déjà vu as soon as they got inside Ganderly," Bunny said. He was speaking quickly, but Tooth was having no trouble keeping up, hooked on every word. "I don't think we can keep dismissing reincarnation anymore."

Tooth took a few seconds, considering what to do with all of this.

"Yes… all of this together is difficult to brush off," she said evenly, thoughtfully. "I suppose another explanation could be that, if Rowan and Jack aren't Katherine and Nightlight in another life, maybe Rowan and Jack are their successors. Maybe the enchantments understood that Rowan is a storyteller, that Jack has become the rightful owner of Nightlight's staff."

"Do you believe that?" Bunny said.

"I don't know. I think either is possible, but… but it's hard not to think it's reincarnation with all of this," Tooth said. She sighed, considering her time with Jack and Rowan under this new context. "Jack was so smitten with her right away. He kept saying they were just friends, and maybe he did think so at the time, but there was something there, even then."

Tooth could very clearly recall Jack assuring her that things were platonic with Rowan. It had been exactly what Tooth had wanted to hear, and she was eager to accept it as fact at the time.

But it had quickly become clear that it wasn't true.

"And then, I think of Nightlight, and I think he had feelings for Katherine right away, too. But it just didn't occur to him for ages that they might be romantic feelings," Tooth continued.

"Can I just say: It is extremely annoying that I told him not to get close to a mortal, that it would end badly, and then it did end badly. But then, it turns out, the mortal he got close to might have been his wife in a past life?" Bunny said, rolling his eyes at the entire situation. "So, even though I was right, getting close to a mortal was a bad idea, I'm also wrong somehow because this was the exact mortal he should have gotten close to?"

Tooth laughed slightly at Bunny's predicament, then hummed thoughtfully. "No one else ever really had a chance with Jack, did they?"

"I hope you're not still beating yourself up about that," Bunny said.

"No, no, I'm over my crush," Tooth said, hoping her smile read as sincere.

Getting confirmation that Jack was not romantically interested had stung a bit, but it hadn't devastated her the way she had expected it would.

The lack of complete and total heartache, the fact that she really did feel happy for him when things had worked out with Rowan, seemed to imply that her feelings had never been all that deep in the first place. They even felt sort of silly now with all the Nightlight context, for she had never looked at Nightlight that way.

But in all honesty, she was glad she had confessed to her feelings, had gotten her answer from him, instead of dwelling on "what if?" She was glad to know where she stood with Jack, glad to still have his friendship.

(Now, her feelings for a certain winged boy, those were confusing, conflicting. They were feelings she tended to avoiding facing head-on. There was always something else to deal with.)

"Good. I don't know what it is about that kid, he's really not that charming and yet he's got all these admirers," Bunny said, shaking his head.

"His charm just doesn't work on you," Tooth said. "Because you had already decided you didn't like him."

"Of course I didn't like him!" Bunny said at once. "He kept interfering with my work!"

"And now?" said Tooth.

"Listen, he got attached to a mortal despite all good judgment, and now I care about the annoying winter spirit despite all good judgment," Bunny said. "No good decisions were made here, by any party."

Tooth smiled, knowing that Jack and Bunny both would never outright say something too nice about the other.

The smile faded, however, as she backtracked, back to why Bunny had asked to speak to her in the first place.

"Do you think Manny knows?" she asked.

"He's got to at least suspect Jack, otherwise I don't know why he would change his appearance. Mr. Qwerty and I are still trying to figure out how Jack got his hands on the staff, if the staff found him or if Manny planted it," Bunny said.

"The staff is some amount of sentient," Tooth said, unsure which version she would prefer. She supposed she wanted a version in which Manny was not so conniving. "Do you think… I wonder if Manny didn't say anything to us, didn't tell us about Jack needing help or guidance or anything, to not give away that Jack might be Nightlight."

"Could be. We all knew that Nightlight, Katherine, and Ombric didn't want to be immortal anymore. He said he respected that choice, and as far as we knew at the time that was the truth," Bunny said.

"If he had told us right away about a boy he had resurrected, if we knew that he had changed Jack's appearance—we would have had questions. At least, I hope we would have," Tooth said.

"He waited until Jack had established himself in the mythological community as an outcast, as a trickster, an annoyance. Everything Nightlight never was," said Bunny. "Even when I pointed out the resemblance, when Jack was first chosen, that's as far as I thought it went: just looks. Because until I got to know the kid, I never thought he was actually anything like Nightlight."

"We're all going to come out of this feeling very stupid for trusting Manny, aren't we?" Tooth said.

She honestly already did.

"Probably," said Bunny.

"What about Rowan, Manny's not the only one at play, do you think anyone knew about her?"

"She's harder. Manny might suspect something with his 'live your story' comment. I feel like if Apollo knew something, he'd have brought it up when he was trying to extort Jack," said Bunny. "I'm also not completely sure Manny or Apollo know about Rowan just because Apollo resurrecting a former Guardian and making her a Muse would cause problems with the two of them, wouldn't it?"

"You would think," said Tooth. "But Manny never makes it obvious when he has a problem with someone."

"Yeah, that's a trait of his I'm starting to hate."

"What about Ombric, anything on him?"

"Not yet. I might talk to Clio, see if she knows anything about reincarnation or notices any patterns," said Bunny. "I don't know where else to start without drawing attention."

"That is hard," Tooth frowned. "You'd have to ask a death spirit otherwise, and they might not keep quiet. I wish there was a way to know for sure."

"Right, I wanted to ask you about the teeth," said Bunny.

"What about the teeth?" Tooth said, unsure how that had anything to do with finding someone's reincarnation.

"Do you have to experience all the memories from all of the teeth, or can you focus in on just one?" Bunny asked.

"We usually focus in on just one unless otherwise necessary," Tooth said. "Why?"

"You have Katherine and Nightlight's teeth, right? Mr. Qwerty and I want to see if Rowan or Jack can access a memory from those teeth, just as a bit more evidence," Bunny said.

Tooth's stomach sank at once.

"Oh," she said.

"What?" Bunny said, tensing up, immediately aware that something was wrong.

He was right.

Something was wrong.

Once again, Tooth found herself feeling rather stupid.

"I don't have them," said Tooth, her tone defeated.

"What do you mean you don't have them?" Bunny said, eyes wide. "D—Did they get lost when the Nightmares stormed the palace?"

"No, that's not it," Tooth said, shaking her head. "Manny has them."

Both of Bunny's paws were at his temples, as though he could get a grip on a coherent thought quicker that way. "W—Why the hell does Manny have them?"

"It was a little while after they passed," Tooth said, frown fixed. "He said that he was starting an archive, up on the moon, where important parts of our history would be safe from the majority of threats. He asked me for the teeth. He said that Katherine and Nightlight didn't need reminders anymore, I might as well clear up some space. So, I handed them over."

Bunny cursed under his breath. "I don't like this. Not with everything else."

"I don't either," Tooth said. "And I don't think we can ask him to see the teeth without giving something away."

"No, not at all," said Bunny. He sighed heavily. "Every time we make a little progress, there's just more questions and more problems. I still don't know what the hell we can even do about Manny, especially with the Muses' coup so close."

"It might be safest for everyone to not rock the boat," Tooth said, her expression still grim. "At least, for now."

"Yeah. I don't like it, though," said Bunny.

"I don't either," said Tooth.

How long could they keep this from boiling over?

"You didn't have to do that."

Jack hadn't spoken much since he and Rowan got back to the cabin.

He had set his staff against the wall and then settled heavily onto the sofa, sitting with his head cradled in his hands.

Rowan suspected he was attempting to get his crying under control so that she wouldn't see. He seemed to still be reluctant to let her see him that way.

His declaration that she had broken his century-long streak of not shedding a tear made it clear that this was an issue he had been carrying around for a long while. Rowan wanted to blame it on the time he grew up, with its corporeal punishment and toxic masculinity.

But it wasn't as though those things didn't still exist three hundred years later.

Jack had never struck Rowan has hyper-masculine, and that was likely part of why she had found him attractive in the first place. It made moments like this baffling. Was it some strange sense of masculinity that kept him from wanting to show vulnerability? Was it mixing with his years of isolation, with his stubborn will?

Rowan had busied herself with the coffee maker, unsure what else to do and not wanting to force anything. She had been watching the flame crawl down the match, closer and closer to her fingertips when Jack made his statement.

"Didn't have to do what?" Rowan asked, flicking her wrist to put out the match.

He set his hands down finally, and glanced her way. "Come to my rescue, I guess, by getting us out of there."

"Did I embarrass you?" said Rowan. Perhaps he hadn't wanted any acknowledgement of his distress. Perhaps she had brought too much attention to it.

"No. That's not it," Jack said, and Rowan's shoulders immediately relaxed. "I just. I wish I had handled it better."

Rowan frowned and tapped her fingers against the counter for a moment. "Well, how are you supposed to handle it?"

"Just. Better," Jack said, his voice more of an exhausted sigh.

Through the windows, the sun was nearly set, the limited light spilling in a warm yellow and orange.

Rowan stepped to the light switches on the wall and turned them on. The light of the oil lamps that ignited was warm and yellow as well, softening the shadows in the room at once.

Still wearing her boots, her footsteps were heavy as she approached the sofa and took a seat beside Jack.

"I know you've, um, you've really held Manny up as a good guy," Rowan said. She remembered the night she had overheard Jack venting to the moon, concerned about their relationship. She remembered the awe Jack had, seeing him at the ball. She, herself, had never given him that much thought before her death, assuming he must be all right because Jack obviously thought he was. "And someone that you can trust. It's uh. It must be hard to learn all of this about him."

"A lot of it isn't even news," Jack said, still not looking at her directly. "It's just, I guess, a clearer picture. And I don't know why I couldn't see it sooner."

Rowan reached down to unzip her boots, considering what to say to that.

"Sometimes, in my art classes, the professors would remind us to take a few steps back and look at the whole drawing," Rowan said, hoping that where she was going would be helpful. She set her boots aside. "Sometimes, they would tell us to go into the bathroom and hold our drawing up to the mirror to see it from that flipped perspective. Because when you're up too close to something, when you get lost in tiny details, and too used to seeing something one way, it's hard to see the whole thing for what it really is."

Jack nodded along, finally glancing her way long enough to spare her a brief, half-hearted smile.

"You'd think three centuries would give me perspective," he said.

"Three centuries that he forced you into without any guidance," Rowan said. "He set you up to start with nothing but a name. He's the one that limited your perspective."

"At least before, I could think that there was a good reason for all of it, that I was really chosen because I was supposed—that I'm meant to protect children," Jack said, now focused on the fire, his eyes still wet with tears. "But it's sounding more and more like—like this whole thing was just—just because he wanted Nightlight back."

"Jack, there's… no good reason to do what he did to you," Rowan said, hoping her tone was as gentle as she was intending. "Nothing about that made you better suited to protect children. You're kind, and you're brave. You're gentle and you're thoughtful. And you're all of those things despite what he put you through, not because of it."

Jack didn't respond to this, eyes still fixed to the fire, expression still defeated. Rowan wasn't sure that he believed a single word that she had just said.

But she did.

She believed so strongly that Jack Frost was special, that he had taken the centuries that would have made anyone bitter and refused to lose his humanity along the way. He was a fighter.

He had a light that would not go out.

Rowan reached over to offer Jack her hand. He glanced down at it for a moment before taking it.

"Why does he get to decide who you are and the reason you're here?" she said.

"It's hard to feel like I have a say in the whole thing, I guess," he finally said. "Years of no one to talk to, no one to acknowledge that I exist, no connection with other people outside of those few years with Melpomene. Hard to dream of anything better or different unless—heh, unless there's divine intervention."

Rowan set her head on his shoulder. He hesitated, then leaned his head against hers.

"You love kids, right?" she asked. She already knew the answer. She had seen him brighten around children, eager to assist or join in their games. She had heard how Jamie spoke about him, the excitement in his voice at even the mention of Jack.

"Yeah," Jack said.

"You love helping them have fun, right?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Then if you want that to be why you're here, that's why you're here. Some old guy in the moon can't give that to you or take it away," Rowan said. "You can do that whether you're an official Guardian or not."

"I don't even know how I'd go about stopping being a Guardian," Jack said. "I—this whole thing, it made me feel like I belonged somewhere. Finally, I knew where I was supposed to be, what I was supposed to be doing."

"You don't need to be a Guardian to spread joy," Rowan said, her voice firm. "You don't need to be associated with Manny."

"I'll lose the others if I leave. It's not like Manny will—it's not like he'll pretend to be okay with the others still associating with me like he did with Nightlight. N—Not now that we know it's a lie. If it comes down to me or Manny, I can't ask them to pick me, not knowing North will—North—"

His free hand was trembling, reaching for his head, still leaning against hers. His voice had cracked. She knew without looking that he was wiping away tears.

She tightened her grip on his hand and set her free hand to his arm, unsure what else to do.

"It's okay," she said, her voice soft, her heart breaking for him. "It's okay. North is okay. They're all okay. Bunny knows this is a problem, so it's not gonna sneak up on anyone. All right, nothing is set in stone right now, and it's not like Manny is the only one that can do magic here."

"They've all been—they've been associated with Manny for millennia. If it's between me and him, I'm going to lose them," Jack said.

"Jack," Rowan said, brow furrowed. "They love you at least as much as you love them, okay, give them a little credit here. We'll figure this out."

For a moment, they sat there, Jack's head still heavy against hers as he took deep breaths, the trembling easing a bit with each one. With each breath, Rowan traced a slow circle into his sleeve.

"Whatever happens, I'm here," she said finally. "Regardless of alliances, regardless of Manny or Apollo, regardless of who you may or may not have been in a past life."

"Mm, Sawyer, I think we're losing the 'may not' argument more and more every day," Jack said with a bit of a sigh. There was a click as the light in the coffee maker was extinguished.

Rowan frowned. She asked again, in vain, "There's really no other explanation?"

"Not that I can think of," Jack said. "It would be one hell of a coincidence otherwise."

"And now Mr. Qwerty thinks we're soulmates," Rowan said, wincing slightly. The sentient book's comments had made her feel awkward, once more a spectacle for immortals to gawk at. She had only known Mr. Qwerty for a short while, and yet he seemed so completely sure when he made this declaration.

"God, yeah, that was weird, right?" Jack said, lifting his head to properly look her way. She returned the gesture. She was glad to see that his eyes were no longer brimming with tears.

"Is it bad, that I kind of preferred it when everyone was on the same page that us being together was a bad idea?" she said.

Jack actually chuckled a bit. Rowan smiled at the sound.

"When the expectations were low, yeah," he said. Rowan pulled herself to her feet, only releasing his hand when he stood as well, and went to tend to the coffee maker. "Although, North was always rooting for us."

"Yeah, Erato was, too," Rowan said, setting two mugs on the counter. "But… soulmates. It's—it's so sappy."

"Mm, Bunny is trying to convince me that being sappy is not a bad thing," Jack said, seeming awkward to even relay this concept. Still, Rowan smiled, glad to see that at least this topic wasn't leaving him shrinking away and hiding tears so far.

She poured the coffee. "Does he think we're soulmates too?"

"I dunno, he doesn't seem like the type to buy into that," Jack said. "Do you think we're soulmates?"

"I don't know that I ever really believed in soulmates," Rowan said, handing a mug to Jack. He cocked a brow and before he could speak, she added, "And I know that sounds very stupid because I believe in Santa Claus."

"Well, Santa Claus does exist," Jack pointed out.

Rowan added sugar to her coffee. "Yes. But there's several billion people on this planet. It's weird to think that just one of them is who you're supposed to be with romantically, isn't it? I'm sure there's a lot of people that either of us could still be happy and in love with."

She might have sad that, and at least logically she believed it.

Emotionally, however, her heart was trying to reject even the idea. Maybe there were other people in the world that she was compatible with and could love.

But she didn't want anyone else.

"Probably," Jack said, taking a drink from his mug. "But none of them would have had the same, uh, electricity we had when we first met."

"Are you referring to the stun gun?" Rowan said, glancing up from the mug she was stirring. Jack smiled. She rolled her eyes. Yes, this was the one she wanted, out of the billions of people on the planet. "If you broke into their apartment, too, I'm sure you could have gotten attacked in a whole variety of ways."

"But I didn't. I broke into your apartment," Jack said, setting his mug back on the counter. "And even if I hadn't, with everything going on with the Shadow People, we would have met anyway."

"You do think we're soulmates," Rowan said, smirking slightly. "You think we're simply meant to be."

She spoke the last few words in a sing-song voice.

"I think that the idea of loving someone else the way I love you is technically possible, but difficult for me to imagine," Jack said.

"Aw. You are a sap," she teased, lightly blowing on her coffee, her cheeks betraying her teasing tone by turning pink. Hadn't she just been thinking more or less the same thing? "Bunny will be thrilled."

"I think," Jack said, setting a knuckle gently beneath her chin to draw her attention to him rather than her mug. "That you turn me into one. And that talking to you feels like talking to someone I've known my entire life."

Her smile grew sentimental as she blindly set her mug back on the counter, never glancing away from him.

When had they gotten so close, faces mere inches apart?

"I don't know if that makes you my soulmate or proves that at one point you were Katherine and I was Nightlight and we've done this all before. I just know that I've lived with you and I've lived without you and I, um," he paused, as though all the syrupy sweetness of his words and caught up with him and he needed a second to adjust and unstick his teeth. "I never want to live without you again."

For a moment, Rowan wasn't sure what to say. Familiar guilt that she felt any time she was reminded that she had left him mourning her settled into her stomach, mixing strangely with the way her heart was still swelling at the rest of what he had said.

"Katherine and Nightlight seem like they had a beautiful story," she finally said. "It seems like, despite what immortality and Manny put them each through, they built and lived the story they wanted. And now, now, we're supposedly destined to be together because we might have been Katherine and Nightlight before?"

The word "might," in that sentence seemed like a desperate attempt to hang on to a version of reality that was less complicated, a version of reality that hadn't existed for her since that evening she came back to her apartment to find that Jack Frost had broken in.

She moved her hand from the counter, sliding her fingers between those on his free hand.

"I don't want to be Katherine and Nightlight," she continued. "I want to be Rowan and Jack. I want to keep figuring out what being 'Rowan and Jack' even is, because what I've seen so far, I like. It feels right. It feels like it was always supposed to be this way. I want to live our story, not theirs. They already had a turn."

"Now who's a sap?" Jack said, taking on that smirk with a quick quirk of the brow that left her both rolling her eyes and feeling slightly weak at the knees.

"You turn me into one," she said, her gaze sliding down to his lips as she spoke.

It was happening again, another moment that was pleading, desperate, for a kiss.

Rowan clenched her teeth slightly, frustrated that she was back to where she had ben when they were "just friends" and she would sketch his smirk in her notebook, thinking about the fact that even Peter and Wendy had gotten one kiss.

But one would never be enough, and it felt so out of reach.

She just wanted to kiss him the way she could before meeting an early demise.

Maybe this time it would work.

But maybe it wouldn't.

Her heart was pounding, her grip tightening on his hand.

The part of her that was afraid wasn't as loud with his icy blues locked on her.

Her lips met his, not nearly as confident as she would have liked. He paused, seeming surprised that she had gone through with it, and obviously holding back as well.

Was that why there was a disconnect? The odd feeling that something was off? Or was it still this stupid new body? She couldn't shake the notion that Jack wasn't kissing her but a strange copy.

She pulled back, frowning, releasing his hand.

"Rowan," Jack said. She reluctantly met his gaze, those frustrating blue eyes, again. "Don't rush things. Okay? We have time."

All the time in the world. Eternity.

She didn't want to feel this uncomfortable for an eternity.

"I'm trying," Rowan sighed. She slid her arms around his waist, leaning into him, a consolation. His arms settled around her shoulders, and he hesitantly kissed the side of her head.

Her hair had felt better for a while now, and thankfully this small peck did not leave her feeling disconnected.

For a moment, they stayed like this. She tried to be grateful that she could at least hold onto him, that she could listen for the sound of his heartbeat, that she could match her breathing to his and feel comforted.

She still really wanted that kiss.