Archive of Our Own ^beta

What a human perspective, he thought thirty years in, as he watched the Sandman's works. How human of him to see the world passing by every second, with nothing to look forward to but maybe a moment's acknowledgment.

-

The Sandman looks so kind, he thought fifty years in. Why don't I talk to him? Why don't I try? Isn't he like me? The children see him, he knows, but why? There's no talk of the Sandman during story time, and there's no way he should be seen and not Jack. But then, he realizes, children believe in sweet dreams. Children believe in sweet dreams, but not the ice twisting on their windows in the night.

-

Joy, he finds, overcomes loneliness. Skating upon the ice he creates leaves him with bubbles in his chest and a skip to his proverbial step, and he knows what it is like he knows the chill and wind and the snow that falls gentle and strong.

Joy.

And isn't it such a wonderful thing, he thought halfway into the seventy-first year. Isn't joy such a wonderful thing to have, even when a war has just ended and you feel like you've been created just for others to hate?

-

Three days to Easter as the moon rests in the sky and with only a moment until he was born, Jack becomes hopeful. The humans say a hundred years is something to show change, the end of one era and the move into another. He hopes that it will apply to him, too. But then the moon sets in just the right spot and he knows it's not true. How silly of him to think it would be. His one hundredth year of life is spent alone in the night, with only the wind there to comfort him.

-

I have no heart, Jack realized during the one hundred and twelfth year. He puts two fingers to his wrist, to his neck, to his chest. Nothing.

There is a young man lying on the charred grass next to him, with blood drying on his skin and the smell of roasted flesh lingering about him. Jack doesn't think it is morbid of him to press two fingers to this man's neck as well, press two to his wrist and lay his head on his chest. Something moves within the man and another part of Jack's brain screams, you can touch him, how can you touch him, how are you touching him?

The answer comes as the (warm, amazing, strong, soft) man finally gives in to death. The strange beat coming from his chest comes to a halt and Jack touches himself again, feels his stiff arms, pale skin, and empty chest. Another moment passes, another hour, and the man is tinting blue. Bugs crawl around him. Birds come to salvage what they can. The fire has been put out and Jack can no longer hear screaming.

Screaming, screaming--dying because of the flames, because of the heat...

-

The wind cries.

Jack doesn't understand why. Doesn't she know why he's doing this? She'd been with him for over a century now, so shouldn't she understand? He has to do this, has to try.

(Italy makes him ache but it doesn't do more than that. It's beautiful though, and he spends another day there. Another day to hurt, another day to hope for something more.)

She screams and it's piercing, but she cannot stop him from being pulled in by the warmer winds. She reaches out for him, he can feel her touch, but he lets her brother pull him into the warmth. Jack thinks, maybe, that he can hear the Warm Wind's laughter. He is reminded of a dead man's unreturned embrace.

(Egypt seems like a good idea afterwards, but the desert winds don't like trash in their land, and so they throw him back to his own.)

Her sobs slice into him like a knife. Jack's regretting his plan now, regretting this idea. He thinks he should have known better. Was he hoping he'd melt? That'd he'd finally be able to leave this strange purgatory? It's like a disease that simply won't leave, Jack thought, burnt and hurting but still not dead. This human-like stupidity.

(The idea comes to him in the middle of the night, as the wind cradles him close to her and whispers sweet nothings into his ear. What kills by just one touch? What melts ice in less than a second? Jack has always liked mountains but he's yet to share breaths with a volcanoes' heart.)

She holds him close once more. She brings him back to the lake, where he's laid onto the cool, quickly freezing surface. The wind still cries and now he thinks he knows why. Misery loves company, afterall. "I'm sorry." he tells her, and she still cries. The Wind (and oh what a change it is, to know this creature is real and like him), Wind curls herself around him and holds him like a mother holds her child. The pain is still there, but it's easier to bear when he knows he's not completely alone.

-

Jack begins to scream at the moon again.

It's stupid and he thinks he should know better. Ten years of it did nothing. What good would another day do? But he tries anyway. Once again, he hopes.

Wind is upset. Jack is crying again when he should be playing, so come Frost, come play, come Jack, Jack, oh please lets just fly away to where the moon won't sit, to where the sun is still bright and kind, to where you won't cry, oh please.

But Jack doesn't listen. Jack keeps screaming and cursing and asking...

"Why? Why did you do this? Why won't you just kill me!?"

-

Jack spends fifty years sleeping and screaming and crying and cuddling into the chilly embrace of Wind.

Each moment is just a little longer than it used to be and yet the winters feel shorter.

However, Jack can't bring himself to care. He's starting to think, It will never end. I'll always be like this. I'll be alone forever. And Wind still curls around him and helps him feel joy (oh, what a wonderful thing, so grand, so beautiful, even just the word leaves him light instead of hollow) but he's learned that the wind's chill is not what he wants.

This disease he's contracted, this strange human desire to be warm, not hot, to have arms wrapped around him, not gusts of cold, and to feel that strange yet entrancing beat that lives within the living's chest...oh, the disease just keeps getting worse.

-

During his one hundred and fifty-second year, he starts to laugh.

It's the most exhilarating time of his life, and knows it's thanks to the few words spoken of him.

He doesn't have believers, no he wouldn't expect such a big change, but he is something to the world: carefree, happy, funbringer, trickster, winter.

Joyful.

It's his favourite word and these people believe him to be it, to have no worries and to bring joy.

And so he does.

-

The following years are lonely, for sure, but he is drunk off of happiness and can't bring himself to care. Yes. There are still those moments, a year or two spent crying between decades, but never has he felt so happy and alive...Jack pauses and takes a deep breath.

Oh joy, oh joy!

-

One Easter, his two hundred and fifty-sixth to be exact, Jack watches the Easter Bunny and frowns. He's seen him every year since his birth but has not once dared to get too close. Although it took awhile for him to figure it out, he knows why other spirits avoid him. And it is not because they hate him, though it could be for some. It's simply that they have contracted the same disease as him, the strange human disease.

Because it is truly so human-like to fear death.

And how silly is that! Because Jack might not know his purpose but he does know his power and it is not death, although he knows it can be.

But all of that aside, Jack has been the one avoiding the rabbit, if he is to be honest.

He doesn't mean to be rude, he really doesn't. But when he even so much as glances at the creature, hope builds up in him. And it is not the fleeting sort that he is used to but it is strong and real and it makes him feel just so full of life...!

And every time, just as the Easter Bunny leaves sight, all of those hopes are crushed by reality and it truly is like being killed.

Forget all of that now, he thinks to himself. You have a job. And he really did.

-

He meant to make it snow and he meant to bury the eggs, but he did not intend for everything to go so wrong.

Jack is held by his neck, and he is choking, but still he has to fight off the thoughts, warm, so soft and warm.

(How many days had he spent wondering what it would be like to hear this creature's heartbeat? How warm it must be to just--)

The Easter Bunny glares down at him and after a moment he is thrown hard to the snow. He doesn't bleed but he can feel the cold seeping deeper into him, where it should not be. The rabbit is saying something but he cannot pay attention because it hurts too much.

Every glance made him feel alive and when it left it felt like he'd died.

But now Life and Hope has cast him down to die (though he knew better than to hope) and where before it'd been like an old man's last breath, this made him feel like the man who had smelt of burning flesh. Hope turns around and begins to walk away. Something breaks.

"All I wanted to do was make you smile!"

The storm that follows kills twelve people, some children.

But why should he care? He's dead.

-

When he sees Jaime, the joy that had left returns in full. There is just something about the boy that makes everything feel better--maybe the endless imagination? No, all children have that, don't they? Perhaps the unnatural kindness he seems to have? That must be part of it, Jack thinks, because I know if he could see me, he would never fear me.

-

It's been three-hundred years and Jack wonders, is this it? He is not disappointed, rather, he is surprised. He is sitting in Nicholas St. North's sleigh with Hope on his right and a Dream on his left. Wonder is before him.

He looks to the sky where the moon's figure glows. Is this really it?

-

"Oh, look, it's happening already." Pitch says. His voice is velvety and must be useful, he thinks, for luring in prey.

When no one else asks, Jack does. "What is?" he questions, and he must be the only one who doesn't know, because everyone else is looking at Tooth in shock as she falls to her knees. He hears Pitch's reply only as background noise.

"Children are waking up and realizing the Tooth Fairy never came," he says mockingly. "I mean, such a little thing, but to a child..!"

Something sinks inside of him and Jack feels desperate in his need to know why. "What's going on?" he asks, panicked. Colourful feathers fall to the ground alongside her.

Tooth stares somberly down at the ground. "They...they don't believe in me anymore."

What?

"Didn't they tell you, Jack?" he looks up at the Nightmare King and knows the bitter tone when he hears it. Oh, what's going on? "It's great being a Guardian! But there's a catch. If enough kids stop believing, everything your friends protect--Wonder, Hopes, and Dreams--it all goes away. And little by little, so do they."

For one moment, Pitch looks expectant. He's nudging Jack towards the truth and, in another world, Jack might not have caught it. In another world, the Man in the Moon would let out a sigh of relief as Jack Frost failed to see the meaning behind those words. Jack would help the Guardians defeat fear and then he'd join them, right after gaining a few precious believers, a few life-saving believers.

For the Man who lives in the Moon, it was an unexpected victory.

But this is not that world and for Jack, that one look makes everything click.

"And little by little, so do they."

Is this really it?

No. It's not.

-

The reaction is slow.

Jack's shoulders slouch. He seems to melt within himself, even as he stands before them. Clouds that should never turn dark get heavy and the thunder rings throughout the palace. The snow falls in flurries.

"You...you know that no one believes in me. All of you. And you...you...?" Jack isn't unsure, and he isn't looking for confirmation. He is simply clarifying.

"Oh good. Good, you do understand." he hears Pitch say. His voice is still bitter, but this time there's something else. Sympathy? Understanding? It doesn't matter.

The Guardians are the ones who are panicked now. Even the rabbit--the one who had proclaimed his hate more than once--was looking at Jack like his world was falling apart.

How human.

Jack pays no mind as the wind tugs at his clothing, doesn't stop her as she yells in the Guardian's ears.

...

Pitch leaves in a whirl of black and, eventually, Jack does as well.

-

Pitch doesn't win.

Not that Jack cares, not that he's been paying attention, but Pitch doesn't win and it makes him curious. Wonder, Hope, and Dreams don't leave, and Jack is unsure on what he feels. He now sits on his lake as the wind howls in rage, beneath the moon who seems to shine a little more dully.

Pitch doesn't win, but Jack does notice a change.

The humans are a tad more mindful of where they walk. They are a little more careful with their words and and how they act. They fear the results, Jack knows, but all he can see is kindness.

Jaime doesn't change a bit.

Well, that's a lie. Jaime is a little less open and a little more shy, but he is still bright and happy and he still makes Jack feel loved, even if he doesn't know that Jack exists...Maybe it's the eyes, Jack thinks one evening. Maybe it's the eyes, because he thinks he must have seen them once, thinks he might have seen them shining his way in the light, once, a long time ago...

-

Pitch did win, Jack learns. But he didn't, he knows.

Because even when children stop believing in the Tooth Fairy, they still believe in memories and that keeps her beautiful. Even when children find out Santa isn't real, they still buy and receive gifts and when they get older, they tell their children that Santa is coming and the wonder in their eyes keeps North lively.

And oh, Hopes and Life. Dreams. Those things never leave you.

Even when you're brought to your lowest and your hopes are gone, you still dream of life and even when you are dead your dreams follow close and your hopes stay alive.

I should know, Jack thinks as he feels the joy in the world around him beat like the heart he doesn't have. He smiles even as he sits alone and cold on the ice, his staff in one hand and the wind chilling another. He smiles and continues to hope and dream for a world that may or may not become reality, just as he has for centuries.

-

When he sees the Nightmare King again years later, he tells the wind to release him and steps forward, not bothering to stop the crackling of the leaves as he walks across the quiet woods.

Pitch looks annoyed but also, maybe, a little worried.

Maybe, 'Oh what could the dead want?'

"Do you want something, Frost? Going to gloat about my failure? Going to give me sympathy?" he spits the word out like it's a vile thing.

Jack pauses. And then he speaks.

"I just wanted to say thank you. That's all."

And that's it because his twenty seconds of courage are done with and he has lots of fun to give, you know? So Jack turns around and lifts his staff up just a bit and calls for the wind to bring him away, quickly, before the Boogeyman tries to kill him or something.

(How nice, so nice it is to want to live.)

"For what?" Pitch says, quickly moving in front of Jack. He looks angry. How strange.

He has to think for a minute. He doesn't really know how to reply. What is he thanking Pitch for?

Fortunately, Pitch is a patient being.

What is he thanking him for?

Sympathy? Understanding? No, those don't matter.

"For what was necessary." he says. And he can see it. It was only for a moment, but he could see it. Jack saw the light in this shadow man, could see amusement, just a little bit of happiness. And in the following second, Jack wonders, Does the Nightmare King have a heartbeat?

-

I think this disease is terminal. Jack thinks as his staff's sparkling frost make shadows by his left, the Wind curls playfully on his right, and something begins to beat in his chest.

-

(Joy, oh beautiful, sweet, wonderful joy!)

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