Chapter Text
The sky was grey, and swollen with clouds. Snowflakes caught on his eyelashes and froze, sticking in his white hair and giving him a rakish look. He sighed; and marveled at how while human breath released a puff of air, his was so cold it was a little below the temperature outside.
He’d thought it was normal; that every spirit’s breath disappeared like that in the cold. He hadn’t realized how strange it was until Easter of ’68, with the Easter Bunny breathing down his neck in angry gusts of shockingly warm air. He’d toned it down after that: no more nasty blizzards, no more ice patches under tires to see if the cars would slip. He’d been fascinated with how when the humans went as cold on the outside as he was, he could touch them. They were usually soft, like smooth rocks after the river’s unfrozen.
Then he realized they were dead. The light, the feeling he got when he saw them happy, everything; it disappeared as soon as he was able to touch them. He stopped trying to touch them after that.
-*-
Pitch visited him at his pond and seemed confused when he said nothing. He perched in his tree with his staff and watched Pitch blunder around his real offer: to frighten human children into submission, and make everything “Pitch Black and Jack Frost”. It wasn’t an appealing offer. He refused, and smiled icily at the Nightmares Pitch had brought to back him up. He wasn’t afraid.
He was surprised, however, when the Guardians of Childhood (including Bunnymund) appeared on his lake through a dimensional wormhole brought on by a snow globe.
“You can’t do it, Frost!” Bunnymund shouts, tiny in size but voice still just as strong as that day in the woods, when his chill got out of control. He tilts his head curiously at them.
“Whatever he’s offered you, Jack, you can’t take it! He’s going to hurt innocent children!” The Tooth Faerie flits towards him. The Guardians gasp as an ice cube with breathing holes rises up from the lake like a giant maw and swallows her whole.
Santa leaps forward. “Tooth!”
“I’m fine! It’s like a giant hamster ball…” She sits on the floor cautiously, and huffs out a small breath. Jack watches it form in fascination: even when he controlled his ice, everything was so warm. “It’s not cold…”
Bunnymund starts and turns to stare openly at him. He meets the gaze, stares curiously into it, before returning to Pitch with a dismissive wave of his hand. The frosty wind curling around the ice answers Pitch’s request for him: it’s been his voice since he woke some 300 years ago.
{No, Pitch Black.} The sound of it makes Bunny’s ruff rise and the Nightmares to twitch and stomp. It’s inhuman and cold, with no emotion or inflection. Wind doesn’t understand such things, only the languages humans and spirits speak.
The lake flips with his mastered skill, and rushes Pitch as one unit, one weapon. It clings to his form and drags him beneath the surface, choking him with water and shards of splintering ice-glass. Jack watches the area pensively, studying it to make certain Pitch cannot fight his way to the land again. Without Pitch’s control, the Nightmares melt gracefully back into the Sandman’s dreamsand (which Jack regards with fascination and astonishment, and wishes he could touch but no, never again, Sandman breathes and thus is off-limits).
The ice cube releases Tooth once it’s realized she’s no threat to him. Her faeries chitter unpleasantly at him, but only one approaches him. He darts to another tree and watches her stare open-mouthed at the place in which he’d been standing.
He waves, and flies away before Bunnymund can approach. The rabbit owes him nothing, and he doesn’t want to chance accidentally touching him again. Bunnymund may think him heartless, but not even he missed the frost clinging sadly to Bunnymund’s fur the last time they met.
He resolves to be alone for a long time, until he can sufficiently convince himself that touching is bad.
He’s dangerous, and thanks to Bunnymund, he knows it.
-*-
“That Jack Frost is quite da character, is he not?” North scratches his head in thought, absentmindedly watching Sandy argue with one of the faeries. Symbols flash gold above his head, almost faster than North can see; but North has an old warrior’s instincts, and he can usually catch the gist of whatever Sandy’s trying to say.
“He’s different. He used to be all curiosity and gleeful energy.” Bunny mutters, catching Tooth’s attention from where she’d been staring at the lake, where Pitch disappeared under a maelstrom of ice shards and frozen tidal waves.
“You’ve met him before, Bunny?”
He scratched one ear. “Once. It wasn’t a happy meeting.”
Sandy turns to watch him. A question mark shifts into being above his head with almost scary grace. Bunny winces. “Remember the Blizzard of ’68? That wasn’t caused by a malicious spirit. He did it.” The others inhale sharply, some of the faeries clutching each other closer. “Killed hundreds of humans because once they were dead, he could touch them. The thing was, once I grabbed him and started yelling at him, he got this shocked look on his face, like he hadn’t realized what he was doing.” North frowned at this, brow wrinkling in thought. “I let him go, and he ran off. Haven’t seen him since.”
Tooth sniffed, turning back to the lake. She flutters over it, searching for Pitch’s frozen form. When she finds it, she grimaces.
His mouth is open in a silent scream, eyes wide. Bubbles of air can be seen where they escaped his throat and froze on their way to the surface. His hands are hooked claws trying to fight the liquid menace. The shadows that had fought to defend him were carved in jagged, beautiful inky swirls around his body, crusted over with frost and ice. It’s deadly and wild, but controlled.
“Maybe…maybe we’re wrong? He didn’t seem angry, just a little confused and maybe surprised.”
Bunnymund shakes his head. “Trust me on this, sheila. It’s best to leave that kind well alone.”
-*-
Jack spent a lot of time at the lake where he woke up. It was quiet, and peaceful, but with the Guardians there he had to find a new spot to inhabit for a few days. He flies to Burgess, the closest human town, and settles on a child’s windowsill. The ledge frosts beneath his feet and spreads thin, icy ferns across the surface of the house. A bird croaks and flutters desperately away as he chuckles at the spectacle.
Inside, a boy is being tucked in by his mother. His little sister is bouncing ecstatically on his bed, wrestling with the dog and shaking her plastic faerie wings whimsically. He can't stop the smile that curls his lips, nor the pleasantly cool wind that winds gently into the room and ruffles their hair affectionately.
Jack waits comfortably until the mother is gone and the boy is asleep before gently pushing open the window and climbing through. The boy shivers and wraps his blanket even tighter around himself, but a lump rises from beside him, lanky blonde hair hanging over bright, bright eyes. She grins quietly and hops off the bed to dash into his open arms, flinging her own around his waist. He chuckles, a soundless thing that breathes a chill onto the walls and creeps over the fabric on her nightgown. It's not cold, just decorative.
She gives him a gap-toothed smile, which he returns, before clapping her hands silently and racing back over to the bed. She tunnels under the blankets again for a moment, then re-emerges clutching a soft, worn rabbit doll that she waves shyly. He nods affectionately and reaches back to the glass, letting frost crystals spread from his fingers to form a small white rabbit on the glass. He motions forward and the rabbit multiplies, flying off the wall with a hundred more of its kind, dancing and rolling around Sophie, Jack's only believer. Jack's only friend.
He'd met her at a hospital a year ago, laying in her bed and drawing lackluster rabbits on the drawing pad the nurse had given her. She was mouthing words, things her mother had said and Jamie had said, but no sound was escaping the confines of her throat. Jack, realizing she was just like him, had left her a rabbit drawing in the window and a snowdrift that wasn't cold. To this day, the nurses had insisted she had some guardian angel protecting her, because her room never got too hot that summer, when the air conditioning system in the hospital malfunctioned for three weeks, and every time she got sad, they swore they saw snow-white rabbits playing with her. Even she'd begun believing the stories, and thus, she saw Jack.
He loved her. There's no way he'd give up her love for some stupid future with nothing but a repeat of a time when he didn't know any better. He's careful now; she's safe with him. If anyone tried to take her away, he didn't know what he would do. But his ice and Wind's voice wouldn't be the only thing chilling to the bone.
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