Chapter 1: These People Ought To Know Who We Are, And Tell That We Were Here
Chapter Text
It's 1914 when he first meets another immortal. Two of them.
He's been following the wind and the cold, but he tries to avoid the battlefields. Even a creature of such whimsy and mischief can find no games to play where the rifles crack like thunder and young men scream and fall.
He brings snow days and fun wherever he goes, except there. He hasn't the heart to play pranks on men whose days are numbered. He can't bring joy to the trenches; his only means of interaction with the soldiers -- the frost he sends creeping mirthfully over the supports -- just leaves them shivering and extra miserable with their bitter coffee turning to ice in their tired, shaking hands shot with shell-shocked nerves. And in the no man's lands between all he does is stretch a white canvas for their blood to paint when lives are cut far too short, always to end on the tainted snow in more loneliness and fear than Jack has ever known.
It's too much pain, too much pain, and it nags at something bitter and familiar inside that he can't quite name.
But today...
Today is Christmas.
He heard it in passing in Germany: news of a ceasefire, agreements being struck up and down the lines, and his curiosity was piqued. There'd still be fighting, some places. Not everyone would cater to the holiday. But for miles and miles battlefields would stand quiet.
Jack floats above one such stretch of blessed, silent peace, a place he passed once before to see the bright flashes of gunfire and trails of smoke. It was a nightmare then, and it stuck in his head such that he couldn't imagine what the place would be like without the conflict.
"... brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel, when a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fuel..."
The words, so quiet from the distance and the muffling wind that whips them up to him, are almost below hearing. But hear them he does, and it gives him pause. Jack swoops down, winding a zig-zagging path to the bleak ground below like a snowflake, and lands with a skip and a hop in the no man's land. They're...
... Everywhere.
To his left, the German boys laugh in their trenches and talk animatedly in their guttural tongue, exchanging trinkets and sweets and laughs. To his right, the English and the French are passing thermoses of cocoa and replacing the absent gunfire with crackers which shower confetti and silly paper hats.
And they meet in the middle, trading supplies, and treats, and gifts, conversing where they can.
"... Bring me food and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither; you and I will see him dine, when we take them thither..."
A Brit sings the carol gaily, standing atop a low dug-out wall; his voice is honey-sweet and warm. Not far away a handful of German soldiers sing along in their broken, heavily accented English, looking constantly to a Frenchman who, Jack can guess, only just finished translating the lyrics and drilling them the last time the song was sung. It's somewhat horrible, but the other soldiers seem to enjoy it nonetheless, shouting encouragement and piping up loudly and helpfully when the raucous singing begins to falter with forgotten words.
Jack peers around, taking in the scene: the joy, the friendship between men who were shooting at each other yesterday, and no doubt will begin shooting again tomorrow. It's Christmas, so they forget that any of the young men from the other side with whom they so easily share their brief reprieve could be the one who killed a squadmate, a friend, a brother in the battle before.
Despite himself, Jack finds he's smiling.
And then he spots a line of darkness amidst the snow, standing tall and proud and strong among the festivities, watching in dignified silence. Jack's smile freezes, then melts away.
The man doesn't look human in the least, despite sharing their features; in fact, he looks like little other than a shadow that's filled out into three dimensions, a man-shaped cut-out of the darkest segment of night sky the scissor-holder could find. He's nothing but flickering black and shimmering gray decorated only by the sudden contrast of a pair of bright, hot, burning yellow stars that sweep dispassionately over the soldiers until they settle on Jack, and...
... and...
... and stay there.
Jack's breath catches when that gaze doesn't move on as if he isn't there at all, as if he's invisible. He steps cautiously to the side, once, twice, and those eyes follow him the entire way. He's near to hyperventilation when, finally, one dark long-fingered hand gestures languidly for him to come near.
Maybe out of habit, he turns to look behind him and make sure the living shadow means him, and not some soldier. Of course there's a score of men in khaki behind him, but none of them respond. When he turns back the shadow makes the gesture again, smiling just slightly in amusement.
The shadow-man just seems bigger and bigger the closer Jack gets, huge and powerful and intimidating. A soldier sits at his feet, cross-legged next to the place where the inky black robe vanishes seamlessly into the dark, damp earth between patches of slushy snow; he sucks at a cigarette, a tin mug of steaming apple cider in his free hand that -- given the bottle lying not far -- is no doubt spiked with something even more sure to warm the tired young soldier's belly.
"... Mark my footsteps, my good page, tread thou in them boldly; thou shalt find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly."
Jack stands awkwardly next to the shadow-man, feeling tiny by comparison. It's odd to think but something about him oozes life, vitality, and strength, though at the same time (and more appropriately) something about him is deeply unsettling. But he sees Jack -- even now, he's looking at him with a tiny half-smile and unreadable, burning eyes -- and he's the first to ever see Jack, ever, and even if his mere presence feels like it's going to pull Jack under and drown him, the shadow-man makes no move to do so.
"Hello, little one," he says at last in a voice that seems to come from everywhere, and which somehow carries both patronizing amusement at Jack's awe, and a sort of genteel gentleness like he's cooing to a wary, injured animal that might bolt at any moment.
"Uh." Jack knows he's grinning like an idiot, but there's something infectious about the scene around him, and... and jeez, someone's talking to him. To him! And after all the time he's spent mulling over what that would be like, two centuries of carrying on one-sided conversations with people who can't hear, he doesn't know what to say. "Hi," he ventures dumbly. "You here to celebrate Christmas?"
Something ugly and bitter crosses the shadow's sharp face for a moment, and Jack immediately regrets choosing an apparently sore subject to begin his first conversation, but the irritation smooths away quickly. "No," comes the curt answer. "I am here... on business."
Jack nods and plants the end of his staff in the snow. In one feather-light spring he crouches atop the crook, closer to eye-level with the shadow-man but still not quite there. "What's your business?" he asks eagerly.
Gold eyes scan across the revelry. "Suspended, for the occasion. But it will resume in due time."
"But what is it?"
"Inconsequential on a day when it's suspended, wouldn't you say? What are you doing here?" The shadow-man looks at Jack again, and smiles again, and Jack grins proudly back.
"Just sharing in the joy of the season by spreading a bit of seasonal snow. Nipping at noses, you know?"
"A thankless job," says the shadow-man with a knowing, regal nod, "but somebody's got to do it, hmm?"
"You think ol' Saint Nick made any trips hereabouts last night?" This last bit comes from the seated soldier, his smoke-laced words drifting up like a wedge in their conversation though of course he's not talking to them. still, both spirits turn to regard him: the shadow-man with lips pressed in a thin line of annoyance, and Jack with an even wider grin.
"No chimneys out here, chum," he says by way of response when no one else answers the query, even though he knows the man can't--
"S'pose you're right at that. Shame, innit? Maybe we can requisition some bricks to build one for next year."
Jack splutters, and falls off his crook.
An instant later he's crouched next to the soldier, who never turns his head. The young man sips his cider and drags on his cigarette, and watches a Frenchman give an old pocket watch to an Austrian, a gift which is accepted with a deep appreciation of its attached sentimentality despite the scratches and dents on its surface. Or Jack thinks that's what the soldier is looking at, though he can't see the direction of his eyes through the blackened lenses of the motoring goggles he wears. Jack leans in close, his face inches from the young man's cheek, noting only vaguely a radiating heat from the almost-scowling face.
"Can you-- Can you hear me?"
"Sure can, Snow Man," the soldier drawls. "See you, too. Now back up a bit, will you?"
Jack can't find the words-- a person, a human, can hear, can see--!
A cool hand lands on his colder shoulder, and Jack looks up beaming into the shadow-man's face, but he finds a frown there, almost... Almost... He can't quite name the emotion, because it's not exactly sadness, but it's familiar. Maybe it's just familiarity. "Don't get too excited, my boy. He's one of us, not one of them." He nods to the other soldiers to make the distinction, and draws Jack's eyes back down to their seated companion.
Jack turns to look again at the soldier, but is startled to find a cup of cider being thrust into his hands. "Happy Xmas," the young man murmurs, and Jack doesn't know what else to do, so he crouches there on his bare feet and sips, inspecting the other spirits over the rim of his cup. They seem to be content to observe the festivities in silence, and Jack is restless with questions, but he doesn't want to become an nuisance, doesn't want them to shoo him away because, shit...
They see him. They know he's here.
It warms him up from the inside more effectively even than the steaming cider.
Upon closer inspection, Jack realizes that the soldier-that-is-a-spirit-and-not-an-actual-soldier looks... well, exactly like a human soldier, but his nationality is beyond guess. His skin is an olive verging on nut brown that could come from anywhere from South America to the Mediterranean to the Orient, his sandy blond hair could belong to someone from any of the embattled empires or a dozen other places in Europe, and his nondescript, rounded features are a fit for almost any country. His accent is untraceable too, in that it is all accents, a patchwork that somehow works: he speaks with a Texan twang mixed with an Australian drawl, an Irish cadence and an Italian croon, each sentence ending with a Japanese upward inflection; his R's sometimes want to be New English W's, while his W's sometimes want to be Slovakian V's; his T's vanish in Cockney glottal stops while his TH's harden into more prominent German D's. His uniform could belong to any of a dozen ranks from a dozen armies.
"We are both on holiday today," the shadow-man explains at length to whatever question he thinks he's picked out from the multitude in Jack's transfixed gaze.
Jack looks questioningly up at him. "But you're not celebrating?"
"No. The revelry is for... them. Not us. But our work here relies upon them. So long as they are at peace, so are we."
The soldier nods, and when he exhales a long line of smoke Jack smells the sulfurous scent of spent gunpowder and the tang of shrapnel metal twisting out from his frost-cooled blue lips. "The old man's work is done, it is, and ours is just begun."
Jack nods slowly, feeling as though he has caught on. "O-kay. So, uh, which one of you is Death, then?" he asks, looking up to the shadow-man. "Is it you? I bet it's you," he goes on, encouraged by the feeling of having won something special in the velvety chuckle the huge gray spirit gives, "you've got the robe, at least, though you're not half so bony as your portraits."
Even the soldier-spirit snickers a little, taking another sip of his cider. When he speaks, little gray-white puffs that smell again of gunsmoke dance from his lips to the chilly air, and because he hasn't taken a drag from the still-smoldering stub of his cigarette Jack realizes that it is smoke he breathes, not simple clean steam. Smoke, and ash. "Death. Now there's a hard-working fella. Good friend, too, when you can get to know Him. But then again we all get to know Him eventually."
"Dear child, you give me an honor I have not earned; I am not Death," says the shadow-man, cutting over the quiet murmurings of the soldier. "My work often coincides with His, however, as it does with that of my militant associate here. I am fear, you see; darkness, uncertainty. But you may call me Pitch, if it please you."
Jack nods, and nods again, unperturbed by the nature of the spirit called Pitch, because who is he to judge? He's just glad to have met him, to have met anyone, because it's a first, and he hasn't the words for how good it is. He tries to say as much anyway, and earns another of those sickly, distantly warm smiles from the man who is fear, but not today, or at least not here where the soldiers have found their smiles for one brief little breath of time. Elsewhere, where the guns are still firing and the bodies are still falling and the terror is as thick and hot on the wintry air as the blood spray, he is no doubt still Fear -- and maybe the abundance of it in these harsh times is why he is so huge and vibrant and strong.
Jack hazards to tell them his own name, but they already know.
"So, what's your name?" he inquires of the soldier.
"Same as my sphere." Jack stares quizzically, and the young soldier-spirit chuckles, but it's mirthless and never comes through a smile -- only a pained grimace stretched taught and thin over tightly clenched teeth. Jack realizes that so far he hasn't seen the soldier smile once, and something tells him that this spirit never does. "I mean, my name's the same as what I am and what I do. Give you three guesses."
Jack runs through the spirits that he knows of who would fit, here on the battlefield, that aren't Death or Fear. He finds himself drawing a blank.
"Are you... uh, Justice?"
"Naw. Er, ain't she a lady?"
"Oh, right. Pain, then?"
"Close, but no cigar."
"The Saint of Gunpowder?" Jack ventures, feeling snide.
"Ha. I like that one. Should use it sometime. Also: no."
"Then who?" he asks, exasperated.
"That's what I asked you but you wasted your three guesses, and just look at where we are now." The soldier shakes his head.
Just look at where we are now. Jack doesn't think it was meant to be a clue, but something clicks into place anyway. "I think-- Can I try for one more?"
The soldier thinks about this for a moment, looking up at Pitch, who offers no comment; his gray, placid face betrays nothing. Finally, the tired-looking spirit shrugs nonchalantly. "Why not? It is Xmas, after all."
Jack wonders briefly at how he always calls it Xmas, never Christmas, but he doesn't waste time on the thought. "Are you War?"
He finds he's right, because the spirit inclines his head wordlessly, but it might feel like more of a victory if War would offer... anything more energetic than the slow, lethargic nod of a man who might as easily be indicating that, yes, he does in fact have a few last words before they drop the trapdoor open.
Jack takes another long look at War in the light of this new revelation. He is an amalgam of all of the young men fighting in his name, that much is clear -- all of the Allies and the Central Powers, and with a hint of American here and there that shines through, and Jack wonders at the ominous implications, what that means for the land of his birth in the coming years. What strikes him more, however, is what he has already noticed: that War looks very, very tired.
Right now, there's not a soul in the world that doesn't believe in War. And there's a strength to his presence, to be sure, a sort of looming gloam that permeates the air around him as much as the fear that is Pitch, but despite his youthful face -- a reflection of all the millions of young soldiers he represents -- War just looks... drawn. Haggard. The fighting has just begun, Jack fears, but it's begun in earnest, and War looks like he's ready for it to be over.
There's no joy in a soldier's work. Only grim determination, perseverance, dedication.
"Business must be booming," Jack says weakly.
Pitch gives a thoughtful 'hmmm' at that, looking out again at the soldiers who are smiling and laughing and singing and drinking. "Yes," he says at length, answering for himself and for War, who says nothing. "Even now, even here. There is joy, for the moment, but they all still fear... "... what tomorrow will inevitably bring."
"Me," War adds bitterly, taking a rough swig of his drink. He smacks his lips, grunts, sparks a new cigarette after realizing the one forgotten between his chilled fingers has gone out. After several drags, he turns to look at Jack -- or so Jack assumes, looking at his own contemplative reflection in the shadowed lenses and thinking it's probably a mercy that he can't see the eyes beneath them. "I'm just waiting for the big one, and then... Then I can rest."
"The big one?" Jack scoots closer, enraptured by the horrific implications; he can guess what that means, and he doesn't like it, but he wants to know. He doesn't want to know, but he does. It becomes apparent, this close, that War is a living furnace. The snow around him is melted into a muddy slush, so Jack saw earlier, but he didn't consider that War was the cause. His body radiates all the heat of a devastating explosion despite the fact he looks as miserably cold as any of the khaki-clad boys milling unwitting about the trio. Jack backs away again, uncomfortable.
"The one to end them all."
He doesn't say any more, no matter how Jack phrases the question. He doesn't say anything else at all. Eventually, War stands, giving Jack the last of his cider. Beyond reason it's still almost scalding hot, but it tastes as bitter now as the ashes that dance on the air with each of War's resigned exhalations. With a respectful nod to them both, the soldier turns on his heel and walks off across the battlefield, trailing the smell of gunsmoke and hot bullets behind him.
Jack sits there shivering, until he finds a gray hand on his shoulder once more. He looks up into the face of Pitch, which offers no expression of comfort, but is somehow a comfort all the same. Maybe because, despite himself, the Nightmare King has eased the greatest of Jack's own: never being seen at all.
"War, fear, death -- they are as natural to these men's lives, to all men's lives, as the snow in winter. Try to remember that, my boy." He doesn't say 'don't worry' or 'don't be afraid,' because it's contrary to what he is, and wouldn't help anyway. There is no softness to Pitch, but there's some sort of sympathy there.
When Pitch turns to leave, his assurance that they will meet again strikes Jack as something that should -- coming from a man made of fear and darkness -- by all rights be anything but reassuring. But he smiles, pleased with the idea, and waves goodbye to the closest thing he has to a friend.
The German soldiers are trying their hand at singing Good King Wenceslas again, unassisted.
Jack sits and enjoys the rest of the soldiers' impromptu party, and tries not to think about War's words.
"Sir the night is darker now, and the wind grows stronger; fails my heart - I know not how, I can go no longer."
Chapter 2: Afghanistan is No Place for a Winter Spirit
Summary:
It's in 2005 that he meets Pitch on a battlefield again, in a place he'd never thought he'd find himself: a place too hot for Jack and too bright for Pitch, but there they (awkwardly) are.
Notes:
This one requires some willing suspension of disbelief on your part, folks; as I recall, there is no overt reference to the year when the events of RoTG take place, and since we don't exactly see any smart phones or iPads anywhere, I figure it's not too much to assume it could have happened in the late '80s/early '90s.
Which is convenient for a fanfic author who wants Jamie to fight in the early years of the war in Afghanistan.
If there's a calender I missed somewhere in the movie that proves my assumption wrong... Well, shut up and enjoy the story, is all I'm saying.
Prepare for warm fuzzies, kids.
Chapter Text
It's in 2005 that he meets Pitch on a battlefield again, in a place he'd never thought he'd find himself: a place too hot for Jack and too bright for Pitch, but there they (awkwardly) are.
War's been busy in the past almost-century. Jack's not blind to world events, if only for the gloom it casts over the children. In terms of spreading joy and fun, his workload seems to double during the conflicts. In 1925 he works to fight back the shadows of fear reaching across the domestic front from the war on illegal alcohol trade, to fight off the children's terror of the mobsters instigating shootouts in the streets against each other and against police who are all too often as crooked as the rumrunners. In 1940 he struggles to draw the wherewithal for snowball fights out of children still shivering and hungry from a depression that is eventually -- and ironically -- known as Great, so many of them lonely with their mothers working in the factories and their fathers fighting overseas, sometimes never to return home. In 1958 he leaves mysterious snow angels on front lawns to erase the horror on their faces from seeing on television for the first time what their older brothers are doing so far away in the East, with zippos torching thatch roofs and bodies of Vietnamese civilians piled high in dirt roads.
Jack wishes he'd never met War -- Warren, some of the other spirits call him. Warren, as if applying a humanizing name to the spirit of conflict and violence eases the disaster and tragedy of what he is. Warren, as if he can ever really be anything other than War, plain and simple if not pure. Even "Warren" himself had the decency to acknowledge that War is all he is.
He wishes he'd never met War, because for decades he doesn't see him again but knows, horribly, that he's out there somewhere, working and working and working with that grim determination, jaw clenched and face set. He wishes he'd never met him, because with each new declaration of war, those words echo through his head--
"The one to end them all."
--and he looks to the children playing in the streets, sometimes in earnest and sometimes with only a fragile facade of true enjoyment, and he wonders if this new battle is the one.
"The big one."
And that fear only deepens in 2002, when Jamie is old enough to enlist, his own fears of the boogeyman long banished but his belief in the spirit of winter somehow, miraculously and beyond reason, never wavering.
Neither does his resolve waver, not since 2001; not since attending a candlelight vigil with a tearful Cupcake, whose trembling shoulders Jack laid a cold arm over, whose sister -- innocent, unknowing, uninvolved -- had been in the second tower. Not since Jamie came home and watched his own Sophie sleep peacefully, her bedroom decorated now with fewer fairies and bunnies and a lot more teen boy bands. Not since Jamie thought, darkly, framed in the hall light coming through Sophie's door, of how easily it could have been someone he'd loved. Not since Jamie guiltily recognized his own relief that it was Cupcake's heart breaking and not his own.
Not since Jamie determined that the cause of that heartbreak would be set straight.
And now it's 2005, and Jack is... well, not sweating, not really. He's not sure he can. He turns a jaunty grin toward Jamie. Jamie, who has grown tall and strong and fit, and whose clean military buzz cut does little to diminish the boyish handsomeness of his face, with its wide eyes full of Wonder. Jamie, who sits chewing on his MRE lunch in the warm sands under a camouflage canopy. Jack asks him conversationally whether they can qualify the melted frost dripping from his lank white hair onto the shoulders of his already-damp sweatshirt as perspiration, or condensation, or something else. Jamie smirks out of the corner of his crumb-smeared mouth and glances Jack's way, but doesn't answer. They're surrounded by men in fatigues who call Jamie "Bennett" -- just Bennett when they're feeling familiar, or Captain Bennett when standing on ceremony -- and who don't see Jack. Apparently getting discharged on account of mental illness is the last thing Jamie needs, though Jack can't imagine how going home would be a bad thing.
Afghanistan is no place for a winter spirit, and he's groused about it before. On the odd occasions that Jamie is alone enough to risk speaking to Jack, and stressed enough to risk hurting an otherwise indomitable snow boy, he asks, if it's so difficult to stay out here, why doesn't Jack just catch the next good breeze back to Burgess?
Because Jamie's not there. Duh. And Jamie's supposed to be such a smart cookie, too; was he just pretending to read about Newton and Tesla all that time to impress the ladies back home? Did he cheat to get that 98 on the ASVAB?
It breaks the spell that War and Pitch's dominion has over Jamie's typically upbeat heart, and though he doesn't apologize for his mal-aimed irritation, he smiles and laughs, and they both know it's all going to be okay.
Usually they can maintain that belief that it's going to be okay, anyway. Jack struggles more with that than Jamie does, though he keeps it to himself.
Jack spent three centuries afraid before he met Jamie -- afraid, and alone, and afraid of always being alone -- and fear comes easily to him sometimes. Jamie, however, looked the Boogeyman himself in the face and told him honestly that he wasn't afraid. Jamie's not afraid of anything.
Jack spent three centuries not believing in himself, because no one else did, and sometimes that disbelief comes back to him, with the fear that Jamie might still wake up one morning and not see him anymore. Jamie, however, can believe fiercely and wholeheartedly in an eternally-eighteen spirit of winter and fun who can make snowballs in the desert. Jamie can believe in anything.
Jack digs the end of his staff into the hard, dry earth, and strips down to his sleeveless undershirt to tie the sweatshirt around his waist. He leans against the staff, and comments that it's a good thing his skin's not technically living human skin anymore, because with his complexion, he could get a hell of a sunburn out here.
Jamie barks out a sudden laugh around a mouthful of cornbread, spraying crumbs, and shakes his head sheepishly at the oncoming mocking-in-good-fun questions from his men.
"What the hell was that about?"
"That's Bennett for you, always giggling at air."
"Yeah, the guy's his own Abbott and Costello, and we don't get to hear the punchlines."
"You laughin' at me, Bennett? You wanna lose teeth today?"
"He'll put 'em under his pillow, and he'll be the one laughing last with change rattlin' in his pocket tomorrow."
Jack and Jamie share another private laugh at the mental image of a puzzled and put-upon Baby Tooth dragging more adult teeth than she can carry out from under a fat-lipped Jamie's pillow.
And then a child screams, somewhere in an adjacent building, and gunshots ring out, and the fun is suddenly over.
The next few minutes are a hell of blurring movement and cacaphonous gunshots, but Jack dances one step ahead of the charging Marines, into the building, always just ahead of Jamie -- because Jack could only die once, and he's gotten it out of the way and done with, and Jamie's still got one to go that isn't going to happen while Jack's here.
Because Jamie has to make it back to Burgess.
Because Jamie has to build snowmen again with Sophie.
Because Jamie has to wait up for North again with Sophie.
Because Jamie has to hunt for eggs again with Sophie.
Because Jamie has to have children of his own to one day do all of these things with, with Joy and Wonder and Hope in eyes just like their father's, and Dreams of the Memories they'll make.
Because Jamie was the first child to ever say Jack Frost's name with conviction in his voice and belief in his heart, and damned if he's not going to be around long enough to be the oldest, most wrinkled and wizened man to ever believe in the Guardians.
There are superstitions in Captain Bennett's company, because the Captain is guarded by something that brings ice to the desert just for him. The men in his company pray to this something, and call him by every name except Jack Frost; most of them call him Jesus, some (embarrassingly enough) Mary, and some few call him Yahweh or Jehovah, and there's even one fellow who calls him Allah but the others never look at him funny for it. Jamie doesn't deny it, nor does he correct them. In part, he doesn't correct them because, well, who would believe the life-saving miracle of spontaneous ice and frost comes from a throw-away reference from a Barry Manilow song? In part, he doesn't correct them because they need more than anything to believe that Jesus and Mary and Yahweh and Jehovah (and even Allah, too) are looking after them, because they're grown adults, who've grown out of childhood beliefs and into adult ones.
And Jack is happy to help them sustain their beliefs in saviors, even if it's not belief in him.
In the not-so-empty clay building, Jamie turns a corner and comes face-to-face with a young man his own age, an armed and terrified insurrectionist with wide eyes and shaking trigger finger. The young man raises an AK-47 and begins to draw a bead on Jamie, but discovers that the trigger has gone cold and won't budge. He panics, looking down briefly at the ice coating the root of the mechanism, and looks up again in time to see an elbow cracking into his face. Jamie knocks the young man out with ease, and takes the gun from his limp hands, removing the loaded magazine before he tosses it out a window and moves on.
Down another hallway, Jamie finds more enemies lying in wait, but Jack's head is full of memories--
He thinks of taking Jamie to his pond, skidding around its perimeter on his bare feet alongside Jamie and Sophie and ensuring, always, always, that the ice is thick and strong under their skates.
He thinks of Jamie running from bullies who find unexpected ice-slicks under their own shoes, and tumble into ungainly piles while Jamie escapes to the safety of his mother's warm embrace.
--and suddenly the armed men at the end of the hall can't find purchase on the slick ground, and Jamie expertly sets his feet and leans forward, sliding fast along the floor to take down the ones who are made harmless upon dropping their weapons, and to finish off the ones who aren't.
And Jack's a step ahead of Jamie when they reach the room where the screaming child is struggling out of a shouting man's grip, a step ahead so he can see a grenade arcing toward the doorway as Jamie steps through--
And he thinks of playing baseball in a quiet glade with a Jamie just burgeoning into his teens, a Jamie who has dreams of becoming the next Randy Johnson, but whose friends are too distracted by the advent of Girls to help him practice.
--and Jack bats the grenade with his shepherd's crook, sending it ricocheting out the window to explode just outside, the concussion knocking men near that window off their feet.
Jamie takes advantage of their surprise, which he doesn't share.
The next few seconds are filled with short, grim, loud work...
But then it's over.
It's over, and Jack is a step ahead of Jamie as he carries the child safely out, M16 strapped to his back once more. And the terror and the shivering from fear colder than the ice that never affects him is just barely beginning to work its way out of his fingers, and his heart is still pounding like he's fresh out of a nightmare, and he's sure Jamie feels much the same way. But right now Jamie is Captain Bennett with a little girl sobbing into his shoulder, clinging around his neck, and with seemingly iron nerves and will he gives his orders and sees to her care.
Somewhere in there, he finds time to send a glance and a grateful smile Jack's way that warms him from the inside like the sun on the outside. Everything is alright. Jack grins back and cocks a lazy salute before he relaxes all at once, boneless against a wall, and turns his eyes up to look for the moon in the midday sky--
What he finds instead is a familiar streak of black on a shadowed rooftop, and two gold stars looking back, absent of passion.
Jack's breath catches, and he looks wildly to Jamie as if expecting nightmares to come charging out of the ether and rip him away now when everything is supposed to be alright!
But nothing happens, and Jack looks back up to find Pitch still standing there, gesturing for him to come near and wearing the same amused smile he wore in 1914, when he made the same gesture and Jack turned to make sure it was meant for him.
Jack catches a wayward updraft, and goes to him, cautiously alighting next to Pitch. He looks skeptically up at the older spirit, who isn't as huge and strong as the day they met on a quiet Christmas battlefield, and isn't as menacing as when they clashed in sleepy Burgess streets. He's not sure what to say, and Pitch just smiles -- not quite pleasantly, because he doesn't really do pleasant, but not malevolently either -- and offers nothing. 'It's been a while,' crosses Jack's mind, followed by 'You look well for nightmare-food,' but he says neither. Instead, he ventures, with a hesitant smile:
"You here to celebrate our victory?"
Pitch chuckles, neither kindly nor unkindly, and gives him a curious look. "Victory? Well, I'd certainly say you won this round, yes, but victory..." He draws Jack's eyes down to the milling soldiers, and it takes a moment to figure out what he's supposed to be looking at.
But then he spots him, amidst the milling group of Marines hard at work securing the compromised area, a soldier who could be American, or British, or Australian, but then again could be Pakistani, or Iranian, or Afghan -- a soldier who leans against the side of a jeep and sucks without pleasure on a cigarette, watching the activity with hardened features partly obscured by a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses.
"... I would say there is no victory until he moves on." Pitch shrugs. "Me, I'm here on business."
"Which must be booming," Jack retorts snidely.
"Like a hand-grenade."
"I hope you're not planning to use this to cover the whole world in fear." Jack bites it out like a threat -- no, a promise -- his knuckles turning snow-white with his tightening grip on the shepherd's crook. But Pitch shakes his head slowly, giving Jack a wry look, and smiles, just slightly.
"Tell me, Jack: if every day across all the world were a snow day, would it still be fun?"
Jack is puzzled by the question, and hesitates to answer, but Pitch is perfectly willing to keep going.
"It would lose its novelty eventually, would it not? The children would tire of the snow, and long for the spring sunshine and green grasses once more; for the summer smells and the autumn colors. And snow or no snow, they would eventually have to go back to school, miserable and shivering and hating the bitter cold, because they could no longer enjoy it, but would have to work in it, and that's no fun at all."
It's something Jack hadn't really considered. Of course, it's something of a moot point -- it's not as though he's ever had any plans toward world-wide snow days unending, but if he were to try it, he has no doubt that Pitch is right. And he can see where the logic is going, but he waits to hear more, because after their last encounter, after everything Pitch did, it's strange to hear this logic coming from him.
"In Germany, in 1943 -- I saw you there, though you didn't see me. Oh, but that was a busy time for me, and for War, and for Death, and for a couple of their associates. But I had time enough to spy you, looking through the chain-link fences at the skinny, miserable children shivering in the snow, waiting for the day they'd be called for a 'shower' they'd never return from, as were their mothers and their fathers. Did you see their faces, when it was over? When the Americans came to set those who'd survived free?"
Jack shakes his head, no.
"I did, Jack, and it broke my cold, unfeeling heart to see: there was no fear left. Because they'd been afraid for so long. They'd been afraid every day for days they could no longer count, and eventually, they couldn't be afraid any longer.
"For some, survival became a simple thing of day-to-day habit, more than something they truly cared for; for some, to become an empty vessel tossed into the mass graves came to seem more of a mercy than to live another day.
"And they resigned themselves to live that day and the next until they'd be allowed to live no longer, and they resigned themselves to die when their lease on life was revoked by their captors, and they became so resigned to fear and so exhausted of it that they could simply fear no more." Pitch smiles bitterly at the memory, finding no real mirth in it, and it looks an awful lot like the pained grimace that stands in as a pale substitute of a smile on War's face.
"If an 'eternal snow day' is an oxymoron, so is eternal fear. I would put myself out of business; I would gorge myself on fear, and then when I was done, I would simply starve of it. And I want no part of that. Winter has its beauty -- even to me, in the places where it is cold and bleak and dreadful -- and we all enjoy it for a time. But winter must give way to spring, else winter would have no meaning at all."
"So why did you... do what you did? You're contradicting yourself," Jack insists. It doesn't make sense. This spirit doesn't fit the vile and hateful Pitch he remembers from Burgess, any more than that man fit the quiet and contemplative Pitch he remembered from the front lines. Jack hears a noise, and looks around to see War scuffing his way up a flight of stairs to join them on the roof. He doesn't fly, or open up a rabbit hole, or appear through a chimney or a cloud of sand or a shadow. He walks to them with a straight back and a sure step on his own two feet, as any soldier may.
"I did not want the entire world to live in constant fear such that they would forget the feeling of safety, Jack. One must have the other, or neither can exist. Much like you, I... simply wanted to be believed in." Pitch shrugs, almost sheepishly, eyes scanning Jack's face with an unreadable expression on his own, but it's almost as if... as if...
... As if he wants to know he's understood. Maybe not forgiven; he doesn't need forgiveness. Maybe not approved of, because he certainly doesn't need that either. But understood?
Maybe. Just maybe.
After a moment's hesitation, Jack relents and beams at Pitch as he did nearly a hundred years ago. He reaches up and up to put a hand on a shoulder that he can reach as he couldn't back then, in a reversal of roles that makes the Nightmare King look distantly uncomfortable for a moment. Pitch doesn't relax or acquiesce to the touch, but he tolerates it, and that's enough to show that the desired understanding has been reached between the both of them, and Jack returns his hand to his pocket.
He feels... better, he supposes. Somewhat. Comforted, in a way he still shouldn't be when Pitch is the cause. But the feeling drains away when War reaches them, a small cloud of sulfurous and tobacco-laced smoke limning his tense form. Jack looks at him, and War looks back, and Jack has no idea what to say. No idea what he wants to say.
"You'd make a good soldier," War offers in his gravelly monotone.
"Uh." He's not sure whether he wants to take that as a compliment, but from War of all people it was obviously meant to be, so he says 'thanks' all the same. "You've been... busy."
"Yep."
"Still waiting for the big one?"
War hesitates a moment, gritting his teeth around the chewed butt of his cigarette, then shrugs, and nods, and shrugs again. "Would you be surprised to know I'm an optimist?"
In fact, Jack is quite surprised, and says as much.
"When it comes, I'll be ready; when it's over, I can rest." War looks down over the ledge, and Jack follows his obscured gaze down to Jamie, who is looking curiously up at them. He wonders if Jamie can still see Pitch. He wonders if Jamie can see War. "But I believe just as much that it'll never come," War goes on, drawing Jack's startled glance back to him, but the look isn't returned. "And if the day comes when there's no more war, anywhere, and it's time for Death to reap me, I'll go... peacefully."
He looks at Jack at last, and offers something that actually counts as a smile, if only barely.
"Jack?" It's Jamie's voice, and it's only a whisper because of the proximity of the other Marines, but Jack hears it as loudly and clearly as if he were standing right next to him. He offers a pacifying wave down to Jamie, and turns to say goodbye to the other two spirits--
But they're gone, both Pitch and War. He knows they're still around somewhere, because the war and the fear are far from over. But they're not here, not right now, leaving himself -- and more importantly, Jamie -- in peace and safety.
Jack grins broadly, and rides a gentle breeze down to the ground, to Jamie's side, Pitch's words still echoing comfortably in his head in place of the ones War said so long ago that had terrified him (funny how the lord of all fears makes such a habit of dispelling Jack's own).
"But winter must give way to spring, else winter would have no meaning at all."
NeonDoofus on Chapter 1 Mon 31 Dec 2012 02:43AM UTC
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NeverFalling on Chapter 2 Wed 04 Nov 2015 07:11AM UTC
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