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Sandy wasn't sure just what it was that clued him in. All he was sure of was that something was very, very wrong with Jack.
He was everywhere, all smiles and laughter and “let-me-help-you”s, but it was somehow just...too much. There was something brittle about it, ready to break at an instant's notice despite the armor Jack had layered over it, three hundred years of nonchalance and “I don't care”s over whatever it was that was hurting him.
Sandy could understand, in a way, the others not noticing – at first, at least. They didn't take notice of Sandy when they got going, which was what let him sit on the sidelines and catch the nuances they missed, so caught up in their own affairs as they were. It was easy for them to get wrapped up in their own jobs, forget everything else, even when they tried not to.
Jack was...the best Sandy could describe it was scraped thin, like butter scraped over too much bread. There were circles under his eyes, worse than they had been before the entire debacle with Pitch and it was obvious, to Sandy at least, that however little sleep Jack had gotten before he'd been dragged into the Guardians, he was getting even less now.
Which meant, when he met Jack flying over the ocean, he had no compunction about pointing at his sand cloud and demanding Jack sit himself down right now, thank you, take a break and explain what was going on.
Jack had laughed nervously and darted away before Sandy could hit him with dreamsand, pretending it was all a game.
Now, though, it was personal. Sandy was going to see Jack get some rest and find out just what he was doing to wear himself out so badly if he had to drag him into the dreamsand cloud by force.
The dodging game of cat and mouse went on each time they met for almost a week, Jack's dodging growing slower each time they met and Sandy's anxiety higher by the day.
It all came to a head a month to the day after Sandy had first noticed Jack's condition when he found the winter spirit at his lake, kneeling on the ice and panting, obviously near collapse.
He looked up with surprise when Sandy hovered next to him, his automatic jump into the wind faltering. Catching himself, he lowered back down onto the ice, grinning up at Sandy and trying to hide his obvious exhaustion.
“Hey Sandy,” he greeted carelessly. “How's it going?”
The look Sandy gave him in return could have been used as the pictoral definition of “unimpressed”.
Still deadpan, he pointed sharply at Jack, then his cloud. No speech or shapes necessary for a message that simple and clear.
No matter how much Jack might have protested later that he didn't, he pouted. “I can't Sandy, I have to...well...you don't wanna know what all I have to do but there's lots and I really have to go and...” he tried standing again, wavering on his feet.
Shocked, Sandy barely got his cloud under Jack in time to break his fall. “I'm fine Sandy, really, just a little dizzy for a second there,” Jack laughed nervously. “I'll just go and...hey, wait, Sandy, don't...”
The protest went unfinished as Sandy blew dreamsand into Jack's face, the exhausted spirit going under immediately. Sandy curled his cloud around Jack, cradling the younger spirit as they rose into the sky. He wasn't going to let Jack out of his sight until he had some answers for just why the spirit was running himself to exhaustion.
Sandy wasn't the type to spy on other spirits while they slept or to listen to what they said while they dreamed. Every so often, though, he was willing to do just that to find out what was going on.
Besides, he could hardly ignore it when the dreamsand over Jack's head turned dark, no Boogeyman needed for this nightmare. Sandy watched anxiously as the nightmare formed, the fact that it had formed from his dreamsand letting him watch as the sand formed into the Guardians. He watched with mounting distress as the Guardian forms turned away the Jack form, shunning and driving him off as the small sand Jack pleaded with them, beating on the barrier between all of them with growing hopelessness as the real Jack began to cry silently in his sleep.
Unable to take any more, Sandy batted at the sand, waking Jack, who came to with a start, guiltily scrubbing at the tears still flowing down his cheeks even as he tried to bail from the sand cloud.
Still muddled by his rude awakening, he was too slow to dodge Sandy, getting dragged bodily back onto the cloud. Jack refused to meet Sandy's eyes until the dreamweaver cupped his chin in his hands, forcing his face up to meet anxious, worried golden eyes.
Almost as if a dam had broken Jack lurched forward, wrapping his arms around Sandy as the words poured out. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, it's all my fault, I'm so sorry, I've been trying to fix everything but I can't, I'm sorry.”
Shocked, Sandy let Jack cry for a few minutes before pulling back, tilting Jack's head up to look in his face, trying to make Jack help him understand.
Jack sniffed a few times, his crying slowing. Sandy knew Jack refused to let show how much things hurt him, bottled them up, and when bottles like that broke then there was little that could be done but to ride out the ensuing Molotov cocktail of emotions.
“It's just...I didn't mean for any of it to happen,” Jack said finally. Sandy blinked a few times before making an egg over his head, waiting for Jack to understand. “Yeah, on Easter. I tried, but Pitch...I shouldn't have listened, I should have come straight back, and if I hadn't gone after those nightmares in the first place...Pitch almost won and...”
A band of sand wrapped around his mouth for a moment, cutting him off, and Sandy shook his head firmly, refusing to accept that Jack was responsible for any of it. He reached out and brushed a few tears off Jack's cheek, forming 'Z's out of his sand over a sand image of Jack on his cloud, making the little Jack curl up, obviously in the midst of a nightmare, followed by a question mark.
“I...” Jack looked away again, and it was only Sandy's eyes that kept him on the sand cloud. “I screwed up again, and no one wanted me anymore. I...I'm trying, Sandy, really I am, I just...I can't be alone again. I can't. But it was all my fault, and I haven't fixed it all yet, so please don't tell, I can't...I shouldn't have told you, I'm sorry, I'll just...”
He made to bail off the sand cloud again, and Sandy had to use his sand to drag him back this time. When Jack kept trying to squirm away, Sandy rolled his eyes and plopped himself down onto Jack's lap, startling him into stillness.
Golden eyes met blue, trying to convey everything Sandy felt, forcing his seriousness upon the confusion in Jack's. Holding Jack's face gently, Sandy leaned forward to brush a kiss on Jack's forehead, his nose, each cheek and one over each eye before brushing a reverentially gentle one over his mouth.
Still holding Jack's face, he leaned back just enough to bring up his sand between them, forming images as quickly as he dared. Jack watched them with furrowed brows, rubbing the last of his tears from his eyes as he tried to interpret what Sandy was saying.
It took several different variations before Jack began to clue in, but then, he didn't have much experience reading Sandy's pictograms yet. Finally Sandy finished his rant and leaned back, waiting for Jack's response.
“But I...” he started when Sandy wrapped sand around his mouth again, shaking an admonishing finger.
The sand images started again, slower this time. A bow and arrow being shot came first, Sandy adding a question mark and sand Jack.
He released Jack's mouth and Jack protested, “Well, no, I didn't, but I should've been faster.”
A little Jack was shot with the arrow, a little Sandman crying over him. He added a Sandman turning to sand and reforming, with a little Jack that dissolved to sand but did not reform. I could come back. You might not. When Jack looked unconvinced he repeated the images, bumping noses with Jack as he finished.
He kept going, each event of that weekend depicted in sand with the question “Did you, personally,” added to each.
Finally he sat back in the sand, gesturing for Jack to talk. When Jack hesitated, Sandy rolled his eyes and made the bow and arrow again, with a clock ticking. After. What happened after.
“Didn't the other Guardians tell you?” Jack asked softly, clutching his staff like a lifeline.
More images, a hand with thumb and forefinger held close together. A little. A snowflake and book appeared next, flipping through the pages. I want Jack's story.
Hesitantly Jack started talking, his voice wavering at points, Sandy's gaze never wavering from his face. Each time he wavered and tried to skip over something Sandy would touch him, a gentle stroke to hand or face, and under those understanding eyes he finally told someone everything that had happened, that he hadn't told anyone else.
Finally finished, he scrubbed at his face, the tears having started up again at some point during the narrative. Those small hands cupped his face again, and Jack looked up in time for Sandy to repeat those kisses from earlier, pulling the winter spirit close when he finished and stroking his hair.
Jack needed all the comfort and touch he could get, even if he refused to show or admit it.
Although he wasn't letting it show, Sandy was furious. He could understand his fellow Guardians, understand why they would jump to the conclusions they had – especially when Jack so obviously blamed himself and believed he deserved it – but he couldn't understand why, in all this time, they still hadn't asked Jack what had happened.
Pushing those feelings to the side to deal with later, he pulled back from Jack and summoned up the only image he could think of to explain what he wanted to know.
A question mark.
Jack stared at it for a few seconds, brushing sand from his face where it had stuck to his tear-streaked cheeks.
“Sandy, I don't...”
It was repeated, bigger, with a sand Jack that hurt itself over and over, dashing about and obviously exhausting itself while carrying a burden far too big and heavy for it to carry.
Sandy X-ed out that image furiously, holding Jack's face again and staring him in the eye, following it with another question mark. Not. Your. Fault. Why do you blame yourself? .
He pulled Jack close again when it looked like the winter spirit was going to argue, dosing him with dreamsand.
“...not fair, little man,” Jack protested even as he slumped against Sandy, curling around his form and holding on tightly. Sandy grinned. Fair or not, he did it.
Now he just had to face the other Guardians about this.
Sandy hadn't realized how quickly they were falling back into old habits until he decided to confront them about Jack. They were still having meetings every month, but they were perfunctory, each giving the briefest report possible before scattering again, not bothering to spend time together.
Keeping a close eye on Jack, Sandy waited until he flew off before confronting the other Guardians. The others had started to leave before Jack, but Sandy had used dreamsand to stop them, hushing each before they could complain.
“All right, Sandy, what's all this about?” Bunny demanded as soon as the window closed behind Jack. “We got stuff we gotta do yanno.”
Sand steam puffed out of Sandy's ears, and he pointed to the couch sharply, forming a ruler out of sand to tap against his palm when they didn't move fast enough to suit him.
Exchanging confused glances, the three other Guardians sat on the couch as instructed.
The next hour was an eye opener for three of the five Guardians.
They'd never seen Sandy so quietly furious, so eloquent with his images and impatient with them to understand.
If that hadn't been enough to shock them all into silence, the story Sandy had for them would have been. After he finished the story of The Easter of 2012 (now with new, bonus, previously unknown to them material), he moved on to point out just how things had started to change, how they were going back into their old habits and ignoring what it was doing to Jack.
Finally Sandy finished, assured that the others had understood him even though they had gone silent a while back. Sandy let his sand settle, looking over the others.
Tooth looked ready to cry, wings down and collapsed onto the couch. Bunny's ears were flat to his back, his fur slicked down close to his body, while North looked far older than usual.
Waving, Sandy got their attention again, spelling things out in the simplest images he could. They were going to fix this, he said with no room for interpretation. They were going to talk to Jack, and they were going to stop backsliding, or Sandy was going to take steps.
Satisfied they had gotten the message, Sandy gave a firm nod before heading towards the window. He had a Boogeyman to lecture and a winter spirit to cuddle, preferably in that order.
The Sandman's work was never done.