AUTHOR'S NOTE: WHOOOOO'S ready for another elaborate Guardian backstory? (OOO! ME! Me-me-me-me-MEEEEE!) ;) Seriously, though, North is my favorite ROTG character, so I'm pretty excited to share this one!
FRIENDLY REMINDER: The ROTG character backstories found in this fanfic are inspired by the 2012 Dreamworks movie "Rise of the Guardians," NOT the "Guardians of Childhood" book series written by William Joyce. This is another way of saying that (while I've worked really hard, trying to make them fit!) the backstories here are all ORIGINAL THINGS THAT I'VE MADE UP, and are not technically canon. I post this friendly reminder of that fact because a few people got confused with my version of Sandy's backstory from earlier (according to the canon BOOK version, Sandy comes from outer space. According to the MOVIE, however, his backstory is never brought UP, so I got to make my own fanfiction version). ;) Thanks for reading, thanks for all of those who have left such kind and encouraging reviews, and I hope you all have a fantabulous day! :)
CONTENT WARNING: The next couple chapters might get a little dark, but then there'll be a very light chapter immediately following. Just stick with me, guys. I swear that Jelsa's going to happen eventually! ;)
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56: NORTHWARD
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BANG!
"AW-JEE-WEAHH!"
"Sorry, Phil," Jack snapped, lighting down onto the carpet and stomping forward as the yeti leapt to close the doors, "I'm looking for a certain rotund, red-faced hypocrite. Seen him?"
"Dah—"
"—WHERE'S THE FAT ONE?!"
Before the yeti could respond, Jack Frost had already leapt into the air again, sweeping into the Workshop and dropping down onto the rail of the closest balcony.
"COME OUT, COME OUT, KRIS KRINGLE!" Jack yelled furiously, "JOLLY OLD ELF HAS GOT SOME JOLLY OLD EXPLAINING TO DO!"
He leapt from the balcony, flying down past the bottom of the globe to the next level in a flurry of snowflakes. As he touched down, the yetis grunting in shock and leaping out of his way, the Spirit of Winter caught sight of him, standing at the end of the manufacturing line with a clipboard.
Jack's blood boiled.
"Jack Frost?" North turned away from the yetis, his bushy eyebrows furrowing in confusion at the gangly, familiar figure that was suddenly standing before him, gripping his shepherd's crook with white knuckles. "You were in Arendelle! What brings you to the Pole?"
"Yeah, I've got a bone to pick with you," Jack snarled.
"What is the matter, Jack?"
As the yetis backed away, letting the white-haired boy step forward, there was a sharp creak. North looked down to realize that the carpet had frozen beneath the Spirit of Winter's feet, a sparkle of snowflakes materializing out of the air around him as the boy then suddenly plunged his free hand into his front pocket, pulling out a folded piece of parchment.
Holding up the letter, Jack Frost said nothing, ferociously glaring up into the Guardian of Wonder's eyes.
North's smile faded. Then, his face grave, he nodded solemnly.
"Walk with me," North whispered.
.
.
You can't be serious, they'd told him.
But he was.
It can't be true, they'd said.
Yet, all of the data suggested a correlation.
But no one's ever done this, they'd insisted.
To all of the doubters, to his financers and colleagues, and to everyone at the university that tried to convince him not to leave, the old professor always posed the same philosophical question:
What is the fastest way to disprove a hypothesis?
Well, they would admit. To provide a counterexample, of course.
And that is what I intend to do, he would calmly respond.
In one final, desperate attempt, the committee reminded the brilliant astronomer of the almost certain result of his endeavor:
But you'll die.
To this, the jolly professor would give a hearty, booming laugh, glaring down the end of his nose and chuckling his same old phrase, the gentle condemnation that had become something of his personal motto. Oh, my dear friends, he would say.
Where's your sense of wonder?
After years of pleading, unable to properly secure funding, Professor Claus—or, by the nickname he'd earned from his rantings about the lights; Professor North—finally set off on his own, followed by an impressively large band of loyal students (including an entire class of adoring undergraduates), to figure it out once and for all, determined to follow his compass northward until he could no longer do so.
Loading up the professor's sleigh with scientific instruments and supplies, the enormous group was soon bidding their loved ones farewell, leaving the school in a mass expedition to the North Pole from across the Russian landscape. And so, they set off, following their compasses forever northward, excited and determined and filled to the brim with dreams of becoming the famous adventurers and scientists that would discover the true source of the Northern Lights.
The university never heard from them again.
But the jolly professor and his students were far from forgotten. Deeply mourning the loss of their brilliant colleague, and missing his humorous rantings about what he referred to as "naughty" data, the scientific community would always remember the contributions of the beloved Professor Claus, and his eventually fatal fascination with the study of the Northern Lights.
Not that he, nor his students, would have minded meeting such an end. After all—as Nicholas believed—losing one's life in the pursuit of knowledge was not suicide, but martyrdom.
And the Man in the Moon agreed.
But, as his loyal students had sacrificed themselves as well, the future Guardian of Wonder could not be expected to work alone. At such an extreme location, Professor Claus's graduate students grew in stature and acquired thick fur to better withstand the work (including Phil, his most recent PhD candidate-turned-post-doc who had decided to join the expedition anyway), while the hoard of undergrads shrank, and thus become easier to manage.
The bells were Phil's idea.
With the Man in the Moon's assistance, the partially-finished observatory was soon transformed into an enormous workshop, carved from the icy cliff (with more than a few subtle grids and compasses placed throughout its design) and surrounded by a number of huts that served as housing for its dozens of workers. Before long, the jolly old professor and his students had gotten back to work, this time aided by immortality, increased physical strength, and, of course, Nicholas's newfound power to manipulate localized magnetic fields for the sake of his various flying machines—which would eventually include the former adventurer's enormous sleigh.
Given his professional background at the boys' college, it was hardly a surprise to the other Guardians when the old professor took their newest recruit under his wing. However, despite the fact that Jack Frost was a three-hundred-and-nineteen-year-old snow sprite who was apparently a fierce enough warrior to take down Pitch, and despite the fact that he was now every BIT as much of a Guardian as his mentor was, the unfortunate truth of the matter was that Jack was still something less than a complete equal, in the Guardian of Wonder's eyes.
In all likelihood, North's lingering sense of fatherly condescension towards his new trainee had less to do with the Spirit of Winter's actual abilities than it had to do with the fact that Jack Frost's youthful appearance and stunted emotional development (which had most likely stemmed from three-centuries' lack of opportunity for social growth) reminded him of his former students. And thus—reverting to his old, academic script—the old professor had soon enthusiastically launched into a regimen of dragging the Youngest Guardian into his office for lectures, using object lessons and anecdotes to instruct his new student in the ways of the Guardians, and duty, and honor, and whatever other heroic and philosophical terms he could come up with at the given time. The Spirit of Winter would usually put up with this for about forty-five minutes or so, after which point the machines and gadgets around the workshop would start mysteriously, and literally, freezing up. At this point, North would usually take the hint, and the Guardian of Fun would be released.
But this particular meeting between the Guardian of Fun and the Guardian of Wonder was anything but typical.
"You. Knew," Jack Frost snarled. He stomped forward into North's office, furiously shaking the letter in the air. "YOU. KNEW. And you didn't tell me!"
Walking in front of him as the door slammed shut, North didn't turn around, rounding the corner of his enormous workbench and reaching for his chair. He pulled it out.
"Six years old," Jack sputtered. "She was SIX YEARS OLD, and you send her—a BOOK?!"
North didn't respond, turning around and sitting in the chair. After a few moments, he looked back up across the enormous workbench to realize that the usually pleasant, white-haired Spirit of Winter was standing now rigidly before him, gripping his glowing shepherd's crook in one hand and the letter in the other and glaring him down with what could only be described as a murderous rage.
His breath caught.
"Jack," he stammered, "I—"
"—YOU SHOULD'VE SENT ME!"
Nicholas fell silent, staring at the boy in shock. His teeth clenched together, Jack Frost was visibly struggling to contain his anger, his chest rising up and down with his breathing as he lifted the letter into the air once again, glaring ferociously into the Guardian of Wonder's eyes.
"You—you should have," Jack gritted, weakly shaking it, "Sent. ME."
His hand trembling, the Fifth Guardian reached forward and dropped the princess's letter onto the workbench. He then stepped back, dropping his head forward as a faint sparkling began to materialize out of the air around his body.
As Jack determinately stared at his feet—either oblivious to the snowflakes silently falling around him, or pretending not to notice that they were there—North drew in his breath.
"Jack… I'm sorry," he whispered. "There was nothing I could do. How would you have expected me to send you, without—"
"—Oh, I dunno!" Jack sputtered, snapping his head up, "Maybe, like, hey! Jack Frost! You've been slowly going insane for about two hundred and eighty-five years or so, and you have no purpose or real friends or anything, but I've noticed that you spend ALL of your time hanging out with kids, and by the way, there's a six-year-old girl in Arendelle who is being LOCKED UP BY HER PARENTS BECAUSE SHE HAS ICE POWERS?!" Jack shrieked, his eyes blurring with tears, "YOU NEVER THOUGHT, IT NEVER, ONCE, OCCURRED TO YOU, THAT THAT WOULD BE SOMETHING WORTH TELLING ME?!"
WHAM!
Jack slammed his hands down onto North's workbench, uncontrolled, jagged shots of ice exploding over its wooden surface.
In silence, the two looked down to the desk.
Seeing what he had done—a few delicate spirals of frost still flowering out from under his fingertips over the messy blast of ice—Jack Frost's cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Swallowing hard, he then carefully lifted his hands off of the workbench, sheepishly stepping back and adjusting his grip on the staff.
"I just—I could have helped," Jack choked, his eyes watery as he stared at the floor. "She was completely alone, North. For YEARS. And I just—! I just wish I could have—done something."
"Done something? Jack! You have become a Guardian," North reassured him, looking up from the jagged ice-blast. "You are there for her now."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't there then."
North watched as the Guardian of Fun let out his breath, staring determinately at the ground in an ill-fated effort to conceal his emotions. In the silence, the flurries of snow began to shimmer into existence around him once again.
Nicholas's heart sank.
"Jack… you know the rules," he said softly, leaning forward across his desk. "When it comes to a matter that would separate a child from its parents, we are not to interfere."
Jack stuck his free hand into his front pocket, tossing the shepherd's crook to himself as he turned away.
"Rules can have exceptions," he muttered.
"Then what is the point of the policy?"
"A policy you made!"
"In an effort to protect the most children from—"
"—PROTECTING CHILDREN?" Jack sputtered, his eyes bulging as he whipped around again, "You've GOTTA be KIDDING me!"
"It—"
"ELSA—was a child!" Jack yelled, bursting out again as he leapt forward, "What, was she some sort of EXCEPTION? Did your stupid 'POLICY' protect HER!?"
"If you are asking me if I'm sorry for my decision, then YES!" North boomed, slamming his fist on the desk, "I AM!"
Jack fell silent, setting his jaw again as his eyes watered.
"Jack—I didn't realize the situation was going to get so bad," North started again, dropping his voice to a whisper. "I was—simply trying to do what was best. For the child."
"Yeah, and some fine job you did, making that decision on your own."
The Guardian of Wonder's eyes narrowed. Pulling in his breath, he placed his hands flat on the desk, pushing himself onto his feet.
"Then what would you have had me do, Jack?" he said icily, glaring as he leaned across the workbench. "Just send you to her, correct? Have the little girl thrown into the asylums, when she starts talking of an invisible man that comes to visit her? Drive a rift between the child and her parents? Give her ANOTHER life-altering secret to keep? Is that REALLY what would have been best, for a six-year-old girl?"
"Well, we'll never know NOW," Jack snarled. "Will we?"
North pressed his lips together, his jaw tense. Saying nothing, he lowered himself back into his chair.
A long, hard silence fell over the office as they glared at each other from across the enormous workbench.
All of a sudden, Jack let out a bitter laugh. He tossed his staff into his opposite hand. "I'll tell you what I do know, though," he scoffed, gesturing with the shepherd's crook. "I know she's damaged. She's way damaged, North—from all that. I see it all the time. The sadness. It's always there, in her eyes. And all of that—fear, and—and being alone—!"
His voice trailed off. After a few moments, North saw Jack clench his teeth together, pulling in his breath.
"With that kind of a situation, and how you left her—like that," Jack hissed, giving his head a shake and glaring into North's eyes. "I'll tell you one thing. And that's that it's a miracle that Pitch Black never found her."
North visibly winced at the comment.
After a few moments, the Guardian of Wonder shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glancing down and to the left. Shaking his head, North then pulled in a deep breath.
He looked up into Jack's eyes.
"And you would be comfortable… harboring your current feelings for her," Nicholas stated emotionlessly, "If you'd known Elsa when she was six?"
"YES!"
North raised a skeptical eyebrow.
The Spirit of Winter opened his mouth again to speak, but then shut it, his cheeks flushing pink as he realized what he had just said. Suddenly uncomfortable, Jack swallowed hard, taking his staff on both hands and looking down to his feet.
"No?" he squeaked.
North didn't respond, interlacing his fingers and staring at the Youngest Guardian from across his desk.
"Well—maybe. I think so. I—!" Jack stammered helplessly, "I don't—look, I don't know, okay?"
North watched as the Spirit of Winter bit his lip, scoffing to himself and giving his head a quick shake.
"Jack… you were lonely," North sighed. "Is nothing to be ashamed of. I only bring up Elsa because—well, it might not have been to your best interest, to have known her as a child."
"This is not about me."
"Do you deny it?"
Jack Frost fell quiet. Gripping his shepherd's crook with both hands, he leaned forward into it, pressing his forehead against its length and staring at his feet.
"Elsa and I are friends," he choked.
"You certainly aren't acting like you want it to stay that way."
Still pressing his forehead against the staff, Jack didn't respond for a few moments. Squeezing his eyes shut—and then opening them again—he drew in a long, pained breath.
"Well, it—it makes sense," he choked. "I mean—doesn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
The flurries began to materialize out of the air again.
Without saying a word, Nicholas pushed his chair back away from the enormous workbench, getting onto his feet and walking around the desk. As he came up to where Jack was standing, sparking snowflakes dotting the air around them, the Spirit of Winter suddenly sucked in his breath.
"She's a girl, I'm a guy, we both have ice powers, AND she can SEE ME," Jack blurted suddenly. "What's the downside!? Technically, we're even both Winter Spirits, and I just—I—I have no idea what's holding her back!"
Nicholas's bushy eyebrows lifted again. Restraining from a smile, he stepped forward, placing his hand on Jack's shoulder.
"It has been very long three hundred years," North whispered. "Hasn't it?"
Jack scoffed, leaping back and pushing the hand off his shoulder. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Women are more complicated than that, Jack Frost."
"I know! It's just—I have tried—EVERYTHING—and—aurgh. It's—look," Jack choked, squeezing his eyes shut again. "If I'm doing something wrong, I wish she'd just—tell me what it is."
"If you are, she will," North chuckled. "But, is not always your fault. Sometimes, things just don't work. Last spring with Tooth, when—"
"—Really!?"
The Guardian of Wonder took a step back. Jack Frost was staring at him in betrayal, his cheeks flushing again with embarrassment.
"You're—really—going to bring that up," Jack breathed.
North shrugged. "None of us thought you were particularly well-matched."
"So, yes," Jack mumbled. "Great. Thanks, North."
"Jack, it is alright! Anyone would be desperate after that long," he continued good-naturedly. "Especially young man like you. We understand."
"Aaaaurgh," Jack groaned, kneading his eyebrows. "North. Why."
"Because you like women so much, Jack."
"That's not what I—"
"—Sometimes, things just do not work out," he continued, not noticing that the Youngest Guardian was blushing even harder, rolling his eyes and turning away. "It was nothing against you, or Toothiana. Nothing either of you did."
Jack didn't respond, staring determinately at the carpet with his lips pressed together. North's eyes widened.
"Unless," he said quietly, "Unless—unless there's something you haven't told us, Jack."
"What? No!" Jack blurted, snapping his head up, "No, no, no, Tooth is—Tooth is great and all, but—it—I just, with—"
He stopped talking, his voice trailing off. Stretching out his fingers on the shepherd's crook, and then curling them around it again, North watched as the Spirit of Winter pushed the gnarled staff against his forehead.
Jack pulled in his breath.
"Feathers," he choked.
North raised his eyebrows.
"Feathers?" he repeated.
"Yeah! Feathers! I mean, if—talking about Tooth, and—well. The thing with Elsa," Jack stammered, "Elsa has—skin—and I—uh, I prefer skin to—wait, why are we talking about this? We are not talking about this."
Scoffing in frustration, Jack shook his head vigorously, leaping to the North's workbench. He snatched up the princess's letter.
"I came because of this," Jack snapped, holding up the letter. "And nothing more. Okay? And you know what? You still haven't given me a legitimate reason, to justify what you did."
Nicholas took a step away, looking down. Without responding, he then turned around and walked back to his desk, rounding the end of the enormous workbench and reaching for his chair.
North sighed as he pulled it out and sat down.
"Jack… making these decisions… the hard decisions," he started, regally drawing himself up, "Is part of being a Guardian. The pros and cons of all options must be carefully weighed, if the responsible choice for the child's best interest is—"
"—OH, no. NO!" Jack interrupted, whipping around again, "You—do NOT—get to lecture me!"
North abruptly stopped talking. His eyes wide, he looked at the Youngest Guardian in disbelief.
"What?" he breathed.
"All your BIG SPEECHES about duty, and honor, and the responsibilities of a Guardian, and WHAT'S it all for?" Jack yelled, his eyes watering with anger again. "Nothing!"
"Jack—"
"—She was a little girl who was being locked up. And, how'd she respond? She wrote to you!" Jack interrupted, "She had no friends, she was scared—SCARED, North!—of talking to her parents, and from her childhood bedroom, from the lowest pit of fear and despair, you know what she did? She wrote to Santa Claus. She believed in you. She—TRUSTED—you," Jack stammered, his eyes going watery, "And look at what happened! You had the chance to make a difference! To do something really significant, or, I dunno, maybe not to even actually DO anything, but to send somebody that COULD!"
"Jack, I—"
"And then—just in case there was some glimmer of hope, a shred of a possibility that Elsa might not be psychologically scarred for the rest of her life, YOU did THAT!" Jack sputtered, "Not only did you NOT send ME, give me a chance to help her, but you left her with even more reason to stay alone!"
North set his jaw. "I was fostering her sense of wonder!"
"No, you were encouraging her isolation!" Jack gritted, "There's a difference! Books are great, okay? I get it. People need books. But you know what ELSE people NEED, North?" he yelled. "Other—PEOPLE!"
Throwing his staff down in gesture, he turned away, his back shaking as he struggled to calm down.
"Jack… I thought it would give her some hope," Nicholas said. "I never imagined it would become an obsession."
"Yeah, well, you thought wrong."
Jack didn't turn around. Letting out his breath, North shook his head.
"I'm sorry that I might have contributed to Elsa's suffering," he whispered. "But we cannot change the past, Jack Frost. I'm sorry she had to experience so much darkness."
"Don't apologize to me," Jack said coldly. "Apologize to the six-year-old girl that you left without a Guardian."
North's breath caught.
The words had hit him like a punch in the stomach. As the Spirit of Winter clenched his teeth together—reaching forward and snatching the princess's letter back up off of the desk—North placed his hands on the desk, pushing himself up onto his feet.
"Because I didn't get you involved—I wasn't being a Guardian?" he enunciated, getting onto his feet. "Choose your next words carefully, Jack Frost."
"I could have helped."
"Really!" North's eyes narrowed again. "You really think I was going to send in some—random—teenage boy, to try and fix everything?" he scoffed, gesturing to Jack with disdain, "How was I to know you could be TRUSTED, with such a delicate situation? With—with her?"
Jack Frost's mouth fell open.
"Okay—uh, FIRST of all," he stammered, "NOT a teenager. And, secondly—EXCUSE me!? I would never have done ANYTHING that—"
"—ALL I KNEW about you, Jack Frost," North said sternly, "Was that you had ice powers, and a centuries-long run on the Naughty List."
"Wait. You—you're saying—you—!"
Jack's voice trailed off. After a few moments—his eyes widening—he froze.
"You didn't believe in me," he breathed.
Nicholas didn't respond. After a few moments, Jack Frost stumbled a step back, looking to him in horror.
"You—you didn't BELIEVE in me?" he squeaked again, his eyes welling up with tears. "North—why—why wouldn't—"
"—I didn't know you, Jack Frost."
Seeing the Spirit of Winter's sudden self-realization, North's eyes softened. He let out his breath.
"And, besides," Nicholas added. "I could not tell you anyway. Not without breaking The Oath of Confidentiality."
"So, another—policy," Jack huffed, rolling his eyes. "Great."
North raised his eyebrows. "A policy that allows millions of children to trust me. It would be worth your time to develop similar one."
Jack glared. "Let's agree to disagree."
"The OATH of Confidentiality," North boomed, drawing himself up and ignoring the comment, "Is less a rule than it is promise. It is Oath that allows children to write to me, make requests from lap, with FULL confidence that I—will—never—reveal their secrets."
Jack scoffed. "Fair enough. What's that got to do with Elsa?"
"If request from a child involves another person, I cannot fulfill it unless both parties independently request same thing," he explained. "To fulfill it without both requests would require me to reveal contents of the first party's letter to the second party, without first party's consent. And that would violate the Oath. That's why I didn't send you before, but that I could, for THIS Christmas. Your request to meet her was indirect, but it still counted."
"Wait a minute," Jack choked. "So—now you could, because—are you saying that the main real reason that you didn't tell me about Elsa was—?"
North nodded solemnly. "For the same reason that I never took you around the Workshop, before you were chosen to be a Guardian."
Jack's mouth fell open. As the Youngest Guardian's wide blue eyes welled up with tears once again, his face draining of color at the horrible realization, Nicholas pulled in his breath.
"You never asked," he whispered.