Disclaimer: Nope, I don’t own the boys.
Author’s Notes: This is my
spn_j2_xmas present for
becc_j. I meant to work out some art to go with it, but with one thing and another there wasn’t time, and all I managed was one very draft-y drawing of Sammy that wasn't worth posting. So it’s just the story.
It kind-of-sort-of works in three of the prompts. I hope you like it. *g*
Side note… This is vaguely, very vaguely, a companion piece to The Teind on All Hallow’s Eve. I wrote this first though - almost as soon as I got the prompts, in fact - and the stories aren’t related at all so it needn’t bother anyone.
Many thanks to
nygirl7of9, who lets me send her things like this to beta on a regular basis without batting an eyelid.
Summary: Sam and Dean are hunting Jack Frost. There’s one important piece of information they don’t have.
Spirit of Winter’s Chill
It was the fifteenth of December. The countryside was a Christmas card. The lakes were frozen over. The snow was a thick carpet broken only where the ploughs had cleared the roads. In every café and restaurant, mistletoe and holly festooned the walls and carols played on the speakers.
Sam and Dean Winchester, in an empty playground at the edge of a small town in the mountains, looked at each other over the rapidly-disintegrating body of Jack Frost.
“You know,” said Sam, “I almost felt sorry for him. He was only trying to make beautiful things.”
“Yeah, he was a regular Picasso,” Dean grunted. “I’m sure the four people who’ve died of frostbite this week think so.”
“I know he had to go,” Sam muttered. “I just… I wish it didn’t have to be that way.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Come on, princess. Let’s get in the car and get someplace warm. I’ll get you hot chocolate, maybe that’ll make you feel better.”
“Hot chocolate with vanilla and marshmallows?” Sam asked, eyes brightening.
“Turns out I’m a total pushover, so yeah. Whatever you want. Let’s go.”
Not so fast came a voice, that wasn’t so much a voice as it was a presence that filled the air. I have unfinished business with you.
Dean stepped in front of Sam instinctively, raising his gun and looking around for something to aim at.
Foolish boy. Your brother is safe from me. My business is with you.
Out of nowhere came a blast of blue light. It struck Dean in the chest. He felt something freeze inside him, icy tendrils snaking into his veins from the spot where the light had hit him. He crumpled to his knees, gun falling to the ground.
“Dean!” Sam was kneeling next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “Dean! Dean, talk to me.”
“Sammy,” Dean whispered. His breath chilled his lips.
“Dean.” Dean felt Sam shift. “Who are you? What did you do to him?”
Dean looked up. He thought he could see a figure standing in the snow, a tall man with a white beard and pale skin, wearing a thick black coat. But maybe he was hallucinating.
Dean wrapped his arms around Sam’s neck, trying to warm himself.
I am a force of nature, came the voice, and Dean knew without looking that it was coming from the strange man. When people believed in such things, they called me the Winter Lord. And I did nothing to your brother. It is an ancient spell. He who strikes down Jack Frost must replace him.
“No,” Dean whispered.
“You mean Dean’s turning into Jack Frost? He’s going to go crazy and kill people?” Dean felt Sam’s arms tighten protectively around him. “No. There has to be something I can do!”
Let me tell you a story. Many, many years ago, there lived in a faraway town a selfish young man. He had no love in his heart for any creature, and no creature had love for him. Over the years he had quarrelled so much with his parents that they turned him out of the house. He had no friends, and he had treated all his neighbours so poorly that none of them would offer him shelter. He went up into the mountains, where the snow was falling, and when he could walk no more he sat down.
I found him, and I would have claimed his life, as I claim all those who wander on cold and blustery nights. But his heart was already cold, full of bitterness and anger, and my power cannot freeze what is frozen already. He became Jack Frost, sometimes my ally and sometimes my enemy.
From that day to this, whoever strikes Jack Frost must take his place. So it has been, so it will be.
“There must be a way,” Sam insisted. “I’ll do anything, give you anything.”
“Sammy,” Dean protested weakly.
“Shut up, Dean. Please, just tell me what I can do.”
There is a way. I am the Winter Lord, but I am not unfeeling. In minutes, your brother’s mortal consciousness will fade, and he will reawaken as Jack Frost. He will not know you, or remember that he ever had a brother or a life other than that in the service of the Winter Lord. His heart will be frozen. In seven days’ time, on the Longest Night, my magic will be strongest and will claim him utterly. Nothing you do will save him after that.
But, between now and the Longest Night, if you can teach his frozen heart to feel, you will have your brother again. At midnight on the twenty-second of December, he will be mine forever.
“Sammy,” Dean whispered one last time, closing his eyes.
Jack Frost opened his eyes a moment later, wondering why he was lying on the ground in the arms of a strange mortal. He pushed himself up and scrambled away.
“Dean!”
Jack Frost scowled, holding up a warning hand when the mortal tried to approach him.
“Stay away from me!” he spat. “You think I don’t know who you are, hunter? Stay away or you’ll find out why nobody has ever succeeded in killing Jack Frost.”
“Dean, please.”
The mortal took a couple of steps forward, ignoring his warning. Jack Frost let him get close enough and then grabbed him by the throat. Tendrils of power snaked from Jack’s fingers into the mortal’s skin. His lips went blue, eyes bulging as he clawed at Jack’s hand.
“This is your last warning,” Jack hissed. “Stay away from me.”
It was the sixteenth of December.
Jack Frost was working on a parked car. One finger touched the windshield, magic swirling out of it and leaving an icy wake as it went.
He felt a tug in the region of his navel. He stiffened, trying to find something to grab, but he knew it would be pointless. A summons was a summons. You couldn’t do anything about it, except maybe terrorize the person who summoned you so completely that nobody would dare to do it again.
Jack let the magic pull him.
He found himself in a motel room. A hunter’s motel room, clearly; the musty smell, decrepit carpet, and assorted guns and knives on the bed all pointed to that. So did the hunter standing outside the pentagram holding Jack prisoner.
“You again?” Jack said. “Pity. I thought you were smart.”
“Look,” the hunter said, holding up empty palms in the universal gesture of I’m-unarmed-let’s-talk. “I think we got off on the wrong foot yesterday. I’m not trying to hunt you.”
“You’re not? Funny, it seems like I’m trapped in a pentagram.”
“I just had to make sure you listened. Here, see, I have these for you.” The hunter reached behind him and held up a bottle of Scotch and a large tub of ice cream. “I would’ve got pie, but I was afraid it would freeze if you touched it. Stupid, I know, but… Well, how about it?”
“How about what?” Jack asked, crossing his arms. “I still have no idea what you want.”
“I want to be friends.”
“Friends?” Jack scoffed. “Have you forgotten who I am? I’m Jack Frost. I was here before your grandfather’s grandfather was born, and I’ll be here after your grandchildren’s grandchildren are dead. I don’t make friends, especially not with mortals.”
“I… I understand that. I just thought you might… I don’t know… make an exception? Please?”
“Why would I make an exception for you?”
“Please. I know what most hunters are like, but I promise I don’t mean any harm. Can we just try?”
“Try?” Jack considered the hunter. He was big - nearly as tall as the Winter Lord, and broad. But he had an odd vulnerability that seemed at odds with most hunters Jack had come across. “You think you can buy my friendship with whiskey and ice cream?”
“No, of course not. I wanted to do something nice for you. Please. Give me a chance.”
“All right. Let me out.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”
The grin that broke across the hunter’s face was so blinding it almost - almost - made Jack feel a moment’s guilt. But then he remembered that the hunter was a hunter and he was Jack Frost, which meant they were natural enemies. The lion didn’t lie down with the lamb, not in real life.
And Jack Frost was no lamb.
The hunter scuffed the edge of the pentagram with the toe of his boot. As soon as the gap appeared, Jack stepped out, feeling power surge into his body.
The hunter was holding out the ice cream with a shy smile. Maybe some part of Jack’s long-forgotten conscience smote him. Maybe it didn’t. If it did, it didn’t last long. Jack was moving with supernatural speed, and before the hunter could do more than widen his eyes Jack had him on his knees in a chokehold.
“Oops,” he whispered in the hunter’s ear. “I just remembered. I don’t make friends with mortals.”
The hunter opened his mouth, but with Jack’s forearm pressing on his windpipe, no sound came out.
“Don’t move,” Jack hissed, sending a little wave of cold into the man’s body. He gasped, eyelids drooping. “I don’t want whiskey. I don’t want your offerings. I don’t want to be friends. Next time I see you, I will kill you on the spot. We clear?”
Jack released the man and strode away, pausing to grab the tub of ice cream before he went.
All said and done, there was no sense wasting perfectly good ice cream.
If he stopped in the doorway and turned for one last look, if the betrayal in the hunter’s hazel eyes made him feel a pang of something he couldn’t identify, nobody had to know.
It was the seventeenth of December.
Jack Frost was tripping through the town, send whorls of ferny patterns over windows, frosting the streets in a layer of ice, when he saw the hunter sitting on a bench under a lamppost.
His jaw clenched as he made his way over.
“I thought I told you to stay out of my way,” he snapped.
“I’m sorry,” said the hunter. “I shouldn’t have summoned you or done the pentagram thing. I can see how that would give the wrong impression. I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“Yeah, right,” Jack sneered. “I know hunters.”
“I don’t have any weapons. I came to you, I’m on your turf. Please, can we just talk?”
“Talk?” It was a long time since Jack had talked to anyone. Most people weren’t worth talking to, and those who were worth talking to weren’t interested in a vagabond ice spirit. “I… Yeah, I guess we can talk.” He sat on the bench. “But this doesn’t mean we’re friends.”
The hunter looked a little hurt, but the expression was gone before Jack could begin to feel bad for snapping, and he said, “OK, I get that.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Tell me about you.”
Jack laughed. “Really? You want to hear about how I kill people when they’re rude to me? About how I claim lives for the Winter Lord?”
“No. I want to hear about how you make snowflakes and frost patterns. That must be fun, or you wouldn’t be doing it.”
“I… Fun.” Jack sighed. His breath formed a flurry of little snowflakes that whirled to the ground. “Yeah, it’s fun. It makes the kids happy when they get a snow day. That’s nice, you know, to feel like somebody likes me. Most people don’t like Jack Frost anymore. They did, a long time ago, when people liked skiing and tobogganing and playing outdoors. Now I’m just a nuisance who keeps them from getting to the video arcade or the movies or whatever.”
“I’m sorry. That must be hard.”
“Well, what are you going to do?” Jack glanced at the hunter with a bitter smile. “So have I depressed you enough for one day, or are you hanging around for more?”
“I don’t have anywhere to be.”
“You know what was always hardest?” Jack said wistfully. “When kids grew up. One year they’d be outdoors, having snowball fights and… they’d be happy. And then all of a sudden they’d be too old, and they’d just want to be inside with dry socks and… Well, Jack Frost was an annoyance to them.”
“Wow.” The hunter was smiling at him. “You’re secretly a big softie, aren’t you?”
Jack scowled. “No, I’m not. I hate kids.”
“You don’t want to, though. It can’t be pleasant to hate everyone.”
“It works for me.” Jack shrugged. “Don’t go feeling sorry for me. I don’t need it. Tell me about you, hunter. Why are you alone? Don’t you guys usually work in pairs?”
“Yeah, we do.” The hunter ducked his head, but Jack could see enough of his expression to know that it would have wrung his heart if he’d still had a heart. “I… I used to hunt with my brother. He… He’s gone now.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Happens, though, right? One of the perils of being a hunter and tangling with things bigger and stronger than you.”
“I guess so.”
“What was your brother’s name?”
“Dean.”
“Dean.” Jack shrugged. “Never heard of him. What’s your name?”
“Sam.”
“Sam.” Jack tried out the name and shook his head. “Sam. Sam. Sammy?” To Jack’s shock, tears spilled over in Sam’s eyes. “Hey, if you don’t like it, just say so.”
“No, that’s not… it’s fine… it’s just… My brother used to call me that.”
“Oh. I’ll just stick to Sam, then.”
“No, that’s… it’s OK. I’d… like it. If you called me Sammy.”
“Sammy.” Jack started to smile, and then caught himself and turned it into a scowl. “This still doesn’t mean we’re friends, by the way. I don’t do friendships. It’s just… interesting to have someone to talk to.”
“Then you want to talk to me again?”
“I wouldn’t be completely opposed to the idea. Maybe. I don’t usually have a lot of free time, you know. Jack Frost, middle of winter, things to do, lakes to freeze.”
“I understand. But if… maybe… if you do want to talk tomorrow, I’ll be here.”
“Really? You want to waste your time sitting on a bench on the off-chance I might have time to come see you? Well, suit yourself, kid.” Jack got to his feet. “I’m going.”
He hurried away. When he chanced a backward glance over his shoulder, Sam was still sitting on the bench.
It was the eighteenth of December.
Jack Frost didn’t give more than a passing thought to Sam. He didn’t for a moment expect that Sam really would wait for him. Nobody did that. People might claim to be nice, or to want to be friends, but in the end all anybody wanted was to look out for themselves.
Jack went about his daily business, skipping over fields and skating over streams. Once he saw a small dog that seemed to have wandered away from its home. He reached out to claim it, but it looked at him with big damp eyes that reminded him oddly of Sam’s, and he snatched back his hand. He cursed himself for an idiot, but he let the dog live.
It was nearly sunset when Jack found himself going back to the bench. He wasn’t going to see Sam, of course. Sam would have left by now. That was why he was going, to remind himself that everybody was fickle, nobody hung around on a random bench all day, and it was stupid to expect people to care.
Even when he got close enough to see a figure on the bench, Jack just rolled his eyes. Some vagrant, probably.
But then he was there, and Sam’s bright hazel eyes were looking up into his.
Too bright hazel eyes, Jack realized, and he scowled, not sitting down.
“Have you been here all day?” he demanded.
“I told you I’d wait,” rasped Sam.
“You idiot. You’ve made yourself sick.” Jack crouched in front of Sam, palming his cheek. Even to Jack’s icy fingers, it felt cool. “That’s… not possible.”
“What?” asked Sam.
“You should feel hot. Humans always feel hot to me, even when they’ve been in the cold too long.”
Then Jack remembered two days ago, and the day before that, remembered blasting Sam with his power, twice. Twice in two days.
Sam hadn’t made himself sick.
Jack had made Sam sick.
Jack would normally never have felt guilty about that. Mortals got sick and died all the time. If he helped a couple of them along, well, that was just nature’s way. Nature wasn’t kind.
But Sam had waited here for him all day. Sam had offered him whiskey and ice cream.
Jack had standards. Killing people who were careless about the cold, or who threatened him, that was one thing. Jack Frost didn’t kill people who tried to be nice to him, however silly they were.
Jack didn’t know how to fix it, though. He didn’t heal.
“Go back home,” Jack said, getting up and hauling Sam to his feet. “Or to that motel you call your home.”
“But -”
“I’ll come and find you there.” Jack gave Sam a shove in the direction of the street. “Stop being an idiot. Get inside and get warm. You amuse me and I don’t want you to die just yet. Go.”
Without waiting to see if Sam obeyed, Jack whisked himself off to the Arctic palace of the Winter Lord.
What is it? the Winter Lord asked impatiently. I’m busy, I’m about to cause a snowstorm that’ll shut down all of northern Europe.
“This won’t take long. I have a question I need you to answer. Then I’ll go and you can carry on with ruining people’s holiday plans. Hypothetically, if I… touched someone with my power and they… started to succumb, and I wanted to reverse it… How could I do that?”
Hypothetically? asked the Winter Lord, raising one silver eyebrow. Do you want to tell me what this is about?
“It’s…” Jack shrugged. “It’s a mortal. I blasted him, but I don’t think he deserves to die.”
Really? Eight hundred years you’ve existed, Jack Frost. You’ve taken lives in every continent. You’ve killed adults, children, animals, plants, half of Napoleon’s army… And this is the first time you’ve told me someone doesn’t deserve to die.
“He’s nice.”
Nice. The Winter Lord grimaced, as though the word personally offended him. What’s this nice person’s name?
“Sam.”
Sam… Sam? There was something in the Winter Lord’s expression that Jack didn’t like. That’s… interesting. Very interesting. He might manage it after all.
“Manage what?”
Never mind. I think I want to give Sam a sporting chance. If you really want to help him, you need to go to the Summer Queen and beg a flower from her crown. Steep it in boiling water and give it to Sam to drink. That’s the only way to save a mortal touched by the Frost.
“How do I find her?”
Go to where it’s summer and call for her. She’ll find you. But be warned, Jack. The Summer Queen has no love for the Winter Lord. She might not be willing to give you anything.
“Thanks,” Jack said brusquely, turning to the door.
Jack.
“What?”
Take my horse, said the Winter Lord. There’s no other way you’ll get there and back in time.
Part II