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the first ;
Staying closer to the village named Burgess was technically a lot safer, especially since Jack didn't really know his way around yet, but it was also boring as hell. So. When Jack ended up getting really fucking lost for the very first time on a cold, starry night in the middle of chasing after a firefly that was actually a really really bright star, well—
Jack was not surprised.
It wasn't all bad though. After flying for what seemed like forever, Jack finally found himself an island unlike anything he'd ever imagined. Who knew that such powerful landscapes could exist so close to such an ordinary forest like Burgess? (The little lake village was beautiful, of course, and Jack felt especially at home there, more so than he could say for any other village or town he happened across, but perhaps that could also be said for the wind and sky and—)
Anyway, this place was a lot more interesting than anything he'd seen so far. Tall mountains with smoke barreling from the top, crashing waves in sparkling blue-green waters, entire forests and groves with such vibrant shades of green that Jack had never known could exist… A large ship—something familiar in theory, perhaps, but now it was sitting before him on the distant harbor in a uniquely novel way—next to lagoons and plains and woods. Incredible.
The island was so rife with life and variety and strange new things; the colors so rich, the sun so bright, and the movements so swift and soundless that Jack could almost pretend like this force of life and energy somehow included him too, like someone was actually there with him while he sat on the edge of a far-reaching cliff and looked out at the gorgeous sunset over the lively waters. It's just like any other sunset, Jack tried to play it off, even if in the same breath he knew he was only delaying the inevitable.
Jack really didn't want to leave just yet, but the truth was that he could feel himself being called back. (By who? The Moon? The memory of the pond?) He didn't know what it was, but he couldn't seem to shake the feeling that he didn't belong here, in this place. It didn't feel right. Jack didn't know much about his history, or where he was supposed to go from here, but Jack knew this much: this wasn't where his story was supposed to lead. It felt like he'd skipped too far ahead, or backwards, or… sideways.
He also didn't know if he'd remember how to get back to this place, after he left.
But his skin was itching and winter was singing somewhere, and as much as Jack would have loved to stay and explore (what else was there to do?), he couldn't ignore the instincts crawling beneath his skin.
Jack allowed himself a single sigh, clutched his staff more tightly in his hand, hopped to his feet, and realized a second too late with a deep-dropping stomach that he'd accidentally knocked something through the air with his staff. Hard.
"What—?"
Jack barely had time to register the bright flash of light stuttered tumultuously through the air before one of the shadows from the forest behind him erupted into a feral snarl—and then something was slamming into him, knocking the breath from his lungs, forcing a sharp, ferocious pain shooting through his side, his back, the base of his skull.
Jack choked down whatever words had been reaching up out of his throat, and after a terrible, disorienting moment in which Jack saw nothing but blackness and heard nothing but sounds of muffled rage, he blinked his heavy eyelids open to blearily stare up at whatever it was that was on top of him.
It was another boy.
"Apologize!" the boy shouted directly into Jack's face, harsh and loud and spitting. His knee was sharp over Jack's sternum, and Jack's arm hurt from the sharp point of the boy's elbow digging into the soft flesh and bone of his upper arm. The merciless grip on his wrist against the biting edges of tiny rocks and pebbles and was that, was that a dagger against his neck? "Say it and mean it!"
As the boy bore down onto Jack's lungs, the first traces of understanding began to dawn on Jack. (Awareness and realization was steadily catching up to Jack's brain, and his eyes widened with shock as the boy's grip grew tighter, his handling rougher—) A sharp dig of the knee sent Jack's ribs creaking; Jack wasn't even sure he needed them, but he gagged out a startled groan, anyway.
"Say you're sorry or I'll make you!"
Jack tried to move his other hand, an instinctive and automatic reaction, only to realize that the boy had his other leg pinning it down. That explained why it fucking hurt so much, but—?
(Are you like me? Jack dared to wonder, as a searing cough ripped its way through his chest. Are you wandering, too?
How long have you been lost?)
The questions soared up his throat, desperate and suffocating, but the hand and blade pressing down on his neck only granted him more gasping and stuttering. The sharp pain in one arm suddenly subsided, replaced by a long-bruising ache, and Jack blinked his way to full alertness, only to find the absolutely confusing sight of this boy still straddling his ribs, suddenly sitting up straighter over his chest, seemingly battling and swatting his hands at nothing.
No—it was something small. The tiny, bright light that he accidentally swung at with his staff...it was—a tiny girl? Jack's eyes widened in understanding even as a jolt of sharp-shooting pain skittered through his ribs, taking the brunt of all the boy's struggle. A fairy?
"Tink!" hissed the boy, completely heedless of the havoc he was wreaking over Jack's lungs. "Tink, stop it!"
A sharp cry made it past Jack's teeth, surprising them both, and Jack's head fell helplessly back against the hard earth. The impact left him blinking rapidly, made the edges of his vision turn fuzzy. He tried to look up at the boy through the haze, blearily realized once more that the boy was staring back, and parted his lips to speak, foggily hoping that the words would finally find their way out.
(Why can you see me?
How can you be touching me?)
But maybe he was imagining this. It wouldn't be the first time his dreams had hurt, though this was admittedly rather vivid. Maybe he'd finally gone round the bend and lost whatever mind he was supposed to have. It wouldn't be the first time Jack had made up a fantasy where somebody could see him (and it wouldn't be the last), though he wasn't really sure why his imagination was so determined to beat the ever-loving shit out of him.
It's a trick, thought Jack, and suddenly it was the only thing that made sense.
"Tink, shush," the boy hissed, and Jack watched with heavy-lidded eyes as the light and the girl or the fairy or the whatever came to hover just above the boy's shoulder. She looked angry, but she wasn't glaring at Jack. What in the world…?
"Name yourself," the boy suddenly commanded, adjusting the blade of his dagger and sitting back onto his haunches over Jack's chest, provoking a gurgling, sickening groan from the back of Jack's throat. The boy held firm, but watched Jack's face warily, suspiciously; he didn't seem at all concerned about one of Jack's arms sprawling limply and freely out to the side.
Jack tried to clear his throat, but was taken aback by the thickness he found within. Were his eyes stinging?
"You dumb?" the boy demanded, clearly through with waiting, and something slowly began to click in the back of Jack's head, something like this is the most elaborate trick the universe has ever played and is he talking to me? and this is… real…?
"You," Jack rasped, and his chest was suddenly heaving with broken spurts beneath the sharp point of this boy's naked knee. His throat felt raw from so much coughing, but the boy only stared at him—in confusion, trying to see what to make of him—and awareness and realization and hope and need spiraled through Jack, churning his stomach and spilling over into his blood, so fast and so hard that Jack actually almost tried to sit up against the force of his bracing knee—only to be shoved harshly back down into the ground. He didn't care.
"You can see me?" he gasped, then devolved into a fierce, painful bout of racking coughs against his attacker's hold.
The boy was looking at him with a distinct brand of irritated confusion now. "What're you talking about?" he demanded, clearly put off-guard and on-edge. "I'm not blind."
No, Jack thought, desperately, then realized all at once that the boy could hear him, that he could see him hear him feel him, was bearing down on him and readying to cut into him, could see him, and Jack was so overcome that his lungs ached with it, that the delirious laughter spilled from his breath so quietly that he couldn't even hear it, so quietly and so stutteringly that when coupled with the giant wet tears that spilled down his cheeks, it almost seemed as though he were crying. As though Jack were sobbing.
Panic spiked its way into the boy's frame immediately. "What the hell's the matter with you?" he demanded quickly, clearly alarmed. Jack's laughter only strengthened, both in volume and in ferocity, until he felt the boy above him begin to shift with the movement of Jack's shaking chest, until the boy suddenly scrambled to rearrange his weight and glare deeply into Jack's face.
"You're," Jack rasped, interrupted by bouts of incredulous, relieved laughter and gasping breaths both, "You're the first one. In fifty years."
For a moment, the boy only stared at him, deep and distrustful with those glinting green eyes.
"You don't make any sense," he accused, and sounded deeply offended by it.
I know, Jack closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the hard-packed dirt. It hurt. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt, but it was real, and it was also strange and confusing and probably meant that Jack was more than a little messed in the head, but it was real, and that was all that mattered. I know, I know.
The boy had gone very still above him, but when Jack opened his eyes and tried to twist his head again, he felt the bite of a blade pressing closer to his skin. The boy's gaze was hard, colder (real), and Jack slowly felt his world shift back into place, felt his insides begin to calm. His throat was very dry, but the truth was suddenly so much easier to swallow.
"What is your name?" the boy asked, steely cold, and Jack knew that a wrong answer would end in blood.
He inhaled deeply, and let the uncomfortable ground beneath him pull him down, anchor him. Soil and earth and everything he was not.
"Jack," he exhaled, staring into piercing green, and felt his lips tingle with the sounds. It's been a long time, he thought, feeling the weight of everything bearing down on his chest, so much heavier than another lean boy's attempts to pin him down. How long had it been since he'd heard his name—at all, let alone without impatience or dismissal or a too-busy Guardian's scorn?
A very long time, Jack thought.
For a moment they merely stared at one another, silent and assessing, lost in the sudden calm of an unfinished struggle. At last, the fairy at the boy's side gave an impatient, irritated huff, and—at the behest of a few powerful kicks of her legs at the air beside his face—the boy made a very disgruntled noise and gave a begrudging glare, and then Jack was suddenly free to breathe.
"Jack, is it?" the boy stood back, fists nocked supremely into his hips. His head cocked to the side. "A bit boring, I guess. We'll work on it."
Slowly, Jack tried to lift his head. Every bone in his body ached, and the world was suddenly very bright. His body was unhindered on the ground, but he still felt the weight of him. "What?" he murmured, unsteadily raising himself onto his elbows. The rocks bit into his skin, but Jack gritted through it.
"You should pick a new one, since you're here now," the boy went on, sounding decidedly more agreeable. "Something clumsy. Thick and clumsy, maybe? Or crazy, since you're clearly out of your mind."
Jack exhaled sharply, unable to argue. Who knew? He probably was.
"Where… where am I?" Jack managed, finally raising himself into a mostly-seated position. He glanced around, taking note of the vibrant sunset and the rolling waves, and caught sight of his dirty, bedraggled pant legs. He'd need to wrap them again. They were worse off than ever before.
"You really are a Lost boy, aren't ya?" The boy sounded strangely delighted by this. "More than the rest of them, anyway."
"Lost boy?" Jack's gaze trickled over to the figure in front of him. For the first time, Jack took in the sight of his attacker-turned-host in all of his unusual glory. The boy wasn't so much a boy as he was a very young man, the traces of which could be found in the roundness of his tanned face and the slight build of his frame. The way the vines and leaves and cloth fit over tight muscle and skin. The feather-light curls on top of his head.
Jack was suddenly fascinated with the long stretch of his own limbs, scrawny and lean and familiar in their awkward sense of unfinished, like he'd grown too quickly too soon, and suddenly stopped. His skin was pale, nearly the color of the whiteness of the moon, and his hair…
"Boy, you are a dense one. That's all right, though," the boy assured him, sounding much more cheerful, and looking rather amused at the sharp arch of Jack's questioning brow. (The fairy, he noted, was giggling silently, though trying to hide it.)
Jack was beginning to feel more and more like himself, and more and more like he might have given this boy the wrong impression; just because he hadn't been seen by any human in fifty years (And was this boy a human? Jack wondered, suddenly quite unsure) and just because he only sort of had the sense of how conversations with a human were supposed to go, considering he had no real basis for comparison, it didn't mean that he was gonna let himself become a pushover. Jack was about to open his mouth wide to tell him so, then faltered at the sight of his genuinely pleased grin. He was looking Jack up and down, unabashedly, and Jack suddenly had nothing to say.
"All right, then," he declared, firm with finality. "Stick with me, and I'll get you straightened out."
Jack felt something shift in his chest. It was unnameable, but he wasn't sure he didn't like it.
"You?" he muttered, and wondered if the boy could hear the dubious disrespect.
But the boy had the attention span of a small forest creature, apparently, or at least the memory of one. With a disarming bark of laughter and a sweeping gesture of his arm, the boy—who had evidently forgotten that he'd tried to hold him at knifepoint not more than a few minutes ago—shot an arrogant grin down at Jack's dirty, tear-streaked face, and that, that was the start.
"The name is Pan," he declared, extending a hand with callouses on the palm and dirt beneath the blunt nails, and as Jack stared at the sun-tanned earth-bathed skin he heard, "You're in Neverland now."
He reached for the hand without thinking about it, simply because, impossibly, he could.
The boy gasped and wrenched his hand away before Jack had even made it to his full height, and the lack of support left him unbalanced and stumbling. "What?" he heard himself murmuring, stiff with shock and worry and embarrassment, even as his mind spiraled rapidly out of control, as he clutched the wrist of his hand that had—that had touched—
"Damn, you're cold," Pan hissed, flexing his fingers like mad. He stared down at the skin curiously, examining it, and with every second passing by, Jack found himself considering Pan's hand a little more closely, too.
And then Pan's gaze jumped high, grin spreading wide, sparking Jack out of his staring. He had no reason to feel guilty. Honestly.
The fairy flitted directly in front of his face and Jack inadvertently flinched. Oops.
"Sorry," he mumbled, though whether it was for staring at her friend or for knocking to her with his staff, he couldn't be sure. Either way, she seemed more than appeased.
"Come with me," Pan ordered, also seemingly satisfied, what with his bright teeth and bright eyes and the excited air about him. Jack really should have set the record straight about this whole commanding business right then, but then Pan reached out and grabbed Jack by the wrist and tugged him forward. Jack decided it could wait unit later.
And then he realized that Pan was tugging him to the edge of the cliff.
Jack quickly bent down to scoop up his staff, feeling the familiar surge of security and comfort as it hummed in his fist. His fingers were practically tingling. When Jack glanced back to the boy beside him, Pan was smirking, full of mischief.
A split-second of is that what I look like? was quickly followed by this does not bode well.
"What are you doing?" Jack asked—gently, because Pan had not yet let go, and Jack didn't really want him to.
"Not what I'm doing," Pan countered, squeezing his wrist tight. "What you're doing… I saw you fly down here this morning, without fairy dust. You're gonna show me how you did it."
"Dust?"
Pan rolled his eyes. "Magic. Forget Jack—you need something slower. Hey. Speaking of," he bit his bottom lip, and before Jack could argue or protest or defend himself, Pan was stepping back and dropping Jack's wrist from his hold. Jack stared, surprised. "When's the last time you played a game of tag?"
"Tag?"
Pan barked out a trail of genuine laughter, positively delighted by his findings; Jack felt a rather flat expression slide onto his face, if only to save it. (So what if he didn't know what the hell this boy dressed in vines was talking about half the time? Jack obviously wasn't the only out of his mind, here.)
"You, Jack," Pan leaned in close, whispering loudly and full of purpose, "Are it."
"I'm what?" called Jack, whose heart was kicking up a fuss inside his chest at the sight of Pan so far away, soaring through the open air beyond the cliff.
Pan's laughter carried on the wind, and Jack welcomed the familiar breeze with a deep, resounding breath. It steadied him, even as he felt the balls of his feet begin to spike and prickle with anticipation.
"I bet you're as slow in the air as you are in the head!" Pan called between cupped hands, and Jack's feet finally left the ground. "No one can catch the likes of Pan!"
Well. That would make Jack Frost the first.