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“Jack!”
The cries of his friends echoed in Jack’s head as he flew away from a large burst of Pitch’s nightmare magic.
“Don’t do this, Jack!”
“What, is that all you got?” Pitch laughed as Jack sent a massive sheet of ice in his direction. The ice was instantly consumed by large swaths of darkness.
“Just wait until my friends get here,” Jack threatened as he created several large snowballs floating in midair. He began to hit them at Pitch with his staff, one by one, like how he had seen the boys play baseball with their new gloves and mitts on Christmas Day. “You’re gonna regret-”
Pitch effortlessly avoided each projectile without even sparing Jack a glance. “Oh, but don’t you know? They don’t care about you, Jack. They never have. They only keep you close because they fear you.”
Something in Jack’s face faltered, moments later being swept over by a steely resolve. “No. That’s not true.” He used his staff to hook onto a sneaky tendril of Pitch’s shadow and throw it away from his body. “They’re my friends, they said so! They care about me-”
“They’re keeping you under a watchful eye because they know how powerful you would be without their ever-present control. Haven’t they ever kept you from doing what you wanted to do? Forced you to stay within their lines, their regulations, their rules? Don’t you just hate rules, Jack? They get in the way of all the mischief that we both love to cause so much. It’s not meant to harm anyone, it’s just a bit of… fun. ”
“I- It’s not fun, because people are getting hurt!” Jack exclaimed, his hands trembling as he pushed them forward and sent out a sheet of ice, thinner and flimsier than the last.
“The ever-feared Jack Frost, and all he can manage is a few measly snowflakes.” With a sweep of his hand Pitch was able to consume Jack’s ice in a tidal wave of darkness, drowning his little sparkles of light inside of an all-consuming shadow. Pitch then began reaching into children’s nightmares, pulling out jacks pointed like caltrops and shadows that moved like insects built not-quite-right, and throwing these childhood fears at Jack in a temporary distraction.
“Nobody’s afraid of me except for you, Pitch,” Jack snapped back, flying closer to street level to protect himself with the soft yellow glow of the streetlights. The smaller distraction shadows easily faded in the soft light. Jack cracked a small smile at himself for thinking so quickly on his feet.
“Maybe you should make them afraid!” Pitch taunted. “Your so-called friends , the human children, everyone! At least then they would believe in you, and you could be something other than a nobody. ”
Pitch reached into a child’s nightmare and pulled out something long and thin. Like a toy gun.
Headshot.
The unexpected quick blast of shadow slammed into the left side of Jack’s head, and he knew no more.
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“ Is he gonna be alright? ” a quiet voice came from far away.
Jack tried to open his eyes, but the sudden light was as blinding as a thousand fireworks at midnight. He quickly shut his eyes with a low moan.
“I- I think he’s waking up,” a feminine voice echoed around what felt like a very small space.
“Ya better be right, mate, or else we’ve got a lot bigger problems on our hands,” replied a masculine voice with an Australian lilt.
It took Jack a moment to identify these voices as his fri- as Tooth and Bunny. Clinging to consciousness took so much energy, enough that it felt pointless to even try opening his eyes, or saying anything to anyone that may or may not be present. He settled for attempting to breathe regularly, and for listening to what they were all saying about him. Maybe he could glean some insight about their thoughts that way.
“How bad is he?” a deeper voice– North’s– came increasingly closer to ask.
“We think he might have a concussion, but we’re not sure,” Tooth began explaining. “Whatever it was hit him in the head pretty hard. We really should wake him up…”
“And ruin the last good sleep he’s had in hundreds of years? I don’t think so, Tooth,” Bunny replied.
A soft jingling from elsewhere in the room indicated Sandy’s contribution to the discussion. A thermometer was pressed into his mouth in response.
“He’s warm, warmer than he should be,” North said, blocking a welcome shadow in Jack’s closed-eyelid perception of too-bright lights.
“Well how warm is too warm?” Bunny asked quickly, the telltale sign of his anxious foot-tapping reverberating through the bedposts and shaking the mattress Jack was laying on.
“Anything warmer than zero is too warm for someone made of ice and snow,” Tooth interjected.
A too-warm hand touched Jack’s forehead, which was covered in a sheen of oppressively hot sweat.
“He needs to sleep it off,” Bunny said decisively. “Everyone out, except Sandy, you can stay and watch him while he’s sleeping. Make sure he’s alright.”
The hand was removed from his forehead as several pairs of footsteps retreated from the room as well as the wind of buzzing wings. Jack relaxed back into the fluffy pillow as the lights were finally turned off. Even with his eyes closed, he knew Sandy was nearby, probably making small animals and creatures out of his dream-dust.
It was reassuring for Jack to mull over the words the Guardians had said. Maybe they did care about him after all. He still had friends that were willing to watch over him and take care of him, even when he was injured so badly.
With a soft sigh, Jack fell into a deep sleep, woven throughout with dreams of playing in the snow with his best friends in the whole world.