Rise of the Guardians fic: In the Cold of Winter
Title: In the Cold of Winter
Fandom: Rise of the Guardians
Word count: 2583
Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians
Warnings: Violent deaths, child abuse, AU, slash, stealth crossover
Pairing: Pitch/Jack
Note: Written for the RotG kink meme over on dreamwidth
Prompt: Here
There is nothing Jack can do, to help them or save them. There is nothing he can do, because he might as well not exist.
Little Elizabeth won't stop crying. Of course she won't. After all, her big brother is dead, he died protecting her. She hasn't said a word since it happened, all she has been able to do is cry.
Jack wants to embrace her. He wants to hold her tight and protect her from all the world.
He cannot. All he can do is bring the frost, the snow, and all things cold.
Something inside his heart, or his soul - somewhere inside him, at least - is screaming and howling, and it won't stop.
Well, maybe there is something he can do. Just one thing.
~
The wind howls savagely that night, and brings with it snow and ice and cold cold cold. It is as though the winter itself is expressing outrage at the death of the child.
Or possibly it is a ghost, a very powerful ghost. In their bedroom, in their house, a man and a woman stare with wide eyes and pale faces at the handprints forming on the frosted-over window.
The woman screams when snow starts to fall from the ceiling. Wind whips angrily through the room, scattering everything. The woman's screams fade down to whimpers, but the wind and the cold is not here for her.
Appropriately, the man is shaking like a leaf in the wind, with fear and with cold. The wind is focusing its attentions on him, now, and a thin layer of frost is already forming over his skin. He is afraid, so afraid. He runs.
He runs out of the room and out of the house. He runs and runs and runs, and does not even notice the way the wind tugs at him, guiding him. Nor does he notice the way the snow, otherwise thick in the air, parts a path for him.
Exhaustion wears on him. He falls down at the edge of a frozen-over lake.
The wind bites him, cold and cruel. He is so, so afraid.
"I'm sorry," he chokes out. "I'm sorry, Peter. I'm sorry that I... that I killed you."
There is only one spirit present, a white-haired winter boy, and the man's fear-born apologies do not appease him in the slightest. "No, you're not," he hisses. The air grows still colder.
Stiff and desperate, the man crawls blindly out onto the lake. He hears the ice crack underneath him, but he is weak and almost snowblind. He is unable to escape before the ice weakens just enough to send him down to a cold, watery doom.
Come morning, the lake will again be frozen solid, appearing as though it never broke.
Something moves in the shadows, a glint of pointy teeth and golden eyes. Maybe I lied. Maybe there were two spirits all along.
You don't know what might be drawn in by terror, by all-pervading fear. Then again, maybe you do.
~
Jack wraps his arms around himself as he watches the crying child. It is Christmas Eve, and this child feels no joy or wonder or hope. All she feels is despair and fear.
Jack was unable to save Peter. He wasn't able to save Elizabeth either. Oh, she might have survived, but she was ever after broken.
If Jack acts now, instead of waiting until it is too late (like he did before), perhaps he can save this little girl who cries on Christmas Eve.
~
Pitch Black watches as the wind carries Jack Frost up and away from the frozen lake where the bodies of a man and a woman rest forevermore. The Boogieman sinks down into the shadows, drops down into his shadowed lair, and starts to laugh.
~
"Jack Frost," murmurs Pitch, and there is something cunning and amused in his eyes and the bearing of his teeth. "For a neutral party, you seem very... involved."
Jack says nothing, only tightens his grip on his staff.
"Do you think they will give you the acknowledgement you crave? No, Jack. They don't know you, and they wouldn't accept you if they did." Pitch's grin stretches wider. "Leave this alone, Jack Frost. If you don't, I'll tell them what you've been up to for the past two hundred years, and then... and then you'll see that I'm right."
He fades away into the darkness, then, although his laughter lingers for a long moment after he otherwise appears to be gone.
"Jack?" says Toothiana. She is hovering by Jack's shoulder, and there is worry in her voice and expression. "What did Pitch mean?"
Jack looks at her, at her kind eyes, and he looks at the other Guardians. They are the first people to acknowledge him, in all of his memory, and even though they kept their distance for three hundred years...
He decides to take a chance.
"I've been protecting the children, the ones no one else protects," he says. "The children hurt by the adults who should protect them. I get rid of the danger." He smiles.
Bunny's eyes narrow. "What d'you mean by that, mate?"
"I get rid of the danger," Jack repeats. "The adults hurting them, I lure them away and kill them with cold and water, before they can do anymore damage."
Toothiana gasps and covers her mouth. North frowns heavily, the usual light in his eyes a little bit dimmer. Bunny's ears flatten as he glares.
There is something heavy and sick-feeling inside Jack, but he nevertheless meets each horrified gaze with defiance. He tries to ice his heart over in preparation for rejection, but a tiny candle-flame of hope has yet to go out. Please, please understand, it whispers.
"Jack," says North. "You mustn't do things like that."
Abruptly, Jack's fear and desperate hope is replaced with angry frustration. "Mustn't I?" he hisses, not quite aware of the frost creeping over the ground or the chilled wind gusting around him.
Bunny shivers and his glare deepens, but he seems, for once, at a loss for words.
"Is not good situation," says North, shaking his head wearily. "But you can't get involved like that. You mustn't murder."
Jack remembers a dead boy and his ever-broken little sister. He remembers a little girl crying on Christmas Eve. He remembers a little boy huddled outside in the cold, slowly dying, and he remembers knowing that all he can do is bring more cold. He remembers many similar cases, far too many.
"Some Guardians!" he snarls, and springs up and away on the wind.
~
As far as the eye can see, it is white. The mountain is snow-clad, as is everything below, and even the sky above is completely clouded over. Jack's arms are wrapped around his knees, which are drawn up to his chest. He is huddled in the snow, and he does not feel the cold. He never has, for as long as he can remember.
"I knew this would happen," says Pitch. He stands out like black on white, to put it as literally as possible. Jack wonders where he came from, and how he did not notice him before he spoke.
"The Guardians don't understand, and they never will," he continues. "Oh, it's all very well to protect the children when they don't have to get their hands dirty..."
"And I suppose you do?" Jack cuts in, automatically confrontational and hostile. He has already been disappointed once tonight, and at this point he does not expect to ever be accepted, or truly wanted.
"Yes, Jack," says Pitch. "I understand, I do. What sympathy can possibly be deserved by people like the ones you punish? None! You and I understand that." He pauses. "Your work, Jack, is like poetry in action. It's poetic justice, it's perfect."
He reaches out, his hand brushes over Jack's face. "So graceful," he murmurs.
And then, somehow, they're kissing, their arms wrapped around each other, tight as though they are clinging to something that might disappear at any moment. Jack cuts his tongue on one of Pitch's teeth. It hurts and their mouths are filling with blood, but Jack doesn't care. It's acceptance, it's wanting, it's needing. It's all those things tied up in touch, after all this time with none of those things given to him.
Pitch is the one who pulls back, and Jack thinks he sees something vulnerable and afraid in the Boogieman's expression. But after all, Pitch too has spent a long time alone.
So Jack leans forward and rests his head against Pitch's chest. "Thank you," he whispers, putting as much of his feelings as he can into those two words.
~
This time around, Pitch comes so terribly or wonderfully close to winning, but the child Jamie comes through when he glimpses the Guardians, just in time to stop his belief from withering away. Somehow, he rallies his friends in spite of their initial disbelief, and it is enough to bring back the Sandman. Pitch comes so terribly, wonderfully close to victory, closer than another him does in a world where Jack Frost also fights against him, but it still finishes the same way, more or less, in the end. Maybe some things are just fate.
Before he was dragged away by the nightmares, his own creations, he showed Jack a way into his lair. Jack goes there just as soon as he can, and finds that it no longer exists. The old bed frame is gone, collapsed into nothing, and the deep, dark hole is a bit less deep and a bit less dark, and no longer anything more than mundane.
He searches for a new way into Pitch's lair. He grows more and more worried as he continues to fail, and then...
And then he discovers the shadows on the inside of a fear-soaked mirror. They are deeper and darker than they should be, and Jack smiles grimly and steps into them, through them. He grips his staff tight as he emerges into the darkness of the underground labyrinth.
"Pitch?" he calls, and receives no answer. He bites his lip. It has been years. Even for an immortal, that has to be far too long to spend alone with one's nightmares.
He does not know how long he searches in the dark; it is difficult to tell time without the sun and the moon, or even the full needs of a mortal body, to measure it by. He freezes over every nightmare he comes across, leaving behind him a trail of deathly sculptures that perfectly combine dark and cold.
He takes Pitch in his arms the moment he finds him, and calls upon the wind to carry them up and out. Above, in the cool darkness of the room with the mirror, he places a gentle, cold kiss to the Nightmare King's forehead, and cradles Pitch's head on his lap.
And he waits.
Pitch eventually wakes up, but he doesn't seem to realise he's awake, at first. He is still and his expression blank, his eyes dull.
It must be Jack's tender touches and soothing murmurs, so unlike a nightmare, that cause the brightening in Pitch's eyes, the beginning of realisation that yes, this is real. He lifts his hand to stroke through Jack's hair, and smiles.
~
It turns out that they make a pretty good team, Pitch Black and Jack Frost, now that their alliance is less newborn and tentative, and they're working together properly. They do just as Jack always has, pretty much, but a bit more frequently and readily.
They leave Jamie alone, at Jack's insistence. "All he did was protect the world, as best he saw fit," he says. "He's not guilty, Pitch. Besides, I'm fond of him, after all the time watching over him, while I was alone."
And Pitch listens, and takes heed.
So maybe Jack Frost has become colder and more murderous, less merciful, but the Nightmare King has mellowed, too. So many things are compromise, and perhaps this one isn't so bad.
I'm sorry, I shouldn't put my feelings here. You'll start to think I'm not an indifferent narrator.
~
There is one particular child, with perhaps the greenest eyes you have ever seen. Both Jack and Pitch are especially fond of this child, who once slept with the spiders in the cupboard under the stairs. He is not frightened by the same things as other children, and sometimes he still talks to the shadows and dark places that the others say hide monsters.
He doesn't ever tell anyone, but just before Aunt and Uncle disappeared, he whispered to the dark Please, please, I don't want to be here anymore. Take me away, please.
He got his wish when Aunt and Uncle disappeared, and he's felt like the dark and cold places watch over him ever since. He even has charmed luck on snowdays, and that he does talk about.
He doesn't believe in the legends that Aunt and Uncle used to tell his cousin about, and always hated for him to hear, but sometimes he thinks that if he did, he might get on best with the things that other people don't like. After all, he knows how that feels.
Actually, he comes closer to believing every day.
~
This time, when Bunny tries to catch Jack unawares with a sack, it... well, it would have worked just as well as the first time, but there is an extra pair of eyes keeping watch, now. Like a slithering, hunting thing, Pitch emerges from the deep shadows and, taking advantage of Bunny’s momentary shock, strikes with a sword formed from solid dark. The Pooka only barely manages to jump away in time.
Jack steps forward and, with all the cold of midwinter night in his voice, says, "What are you doing?"
Bunny is undaunted. "You're working with Pitch now, mate? To murder?"
"They deserve it."
"Probably, but c'mon..."
Jack has heard enough. "Shut up," he snaps, and freezes Bunny's feet to the ground. While the Guardian is tugging frantically and swearing, Jack looks at Pitch with an expectant raise of his eyebrows. For a moment, the Boogieman looks as though he will refuse, but then he places his hand on Jack's elbow and, with a venomous parting glare at Bunny, takes them away through the shadows.
They cling tightly to each other as they travel through the spaces between the world.
Pitch and Jack share the same deepest fear. What do you suppose that is?
~
"Is pity it didn't work," says North. "We must take bigger steps." There is regret in his eyes, but also determination.
Bunnymund scratches at his ear. "I dunno, mate. He might have a point."
"Yes, but this can only lead to darker things. We must stop it now, before he goes too far."
Toothiana wrings her hands, flittering nervously. "What if Pitch tries again? We nearly lost last time, and if... if he convinces Jack to help him..." It is obvious from her expression and the catch in her voice that she does not want to entertain the idea, but she is forcing herself to consider all possibilities.
"Good point," mutters Bunnymund, although he certainly sounds unhappy about it.
The golden images above Sandy's head are flickering rapidly. They glimpse a flurry of snowflakes, a globe being covered with sand, and two figures embracing.
"Is settled then," says North. "We must stop Pitch Black... and Jack Frost."
~
It's starting...
I wonder how it shall end.
Fandom: Rise of the Guardians
Word count: 2583
Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians
Warnings: Violent deaths, child abuse, AU, slash, stealth crossover
Pairing: Pitch/Jack
Note: Written for the RotG kink meme over on dreamwidth
Prompt: Here
There is nothing Jack can do, to help them or save them. There is nothing he can do, because he might as well not exist.
Little Elizabeth won't stop crying. Of course she won't. After all, her big brother is dead, he died protecting her. She hasn't said a word since it happened, all she has been able to do is cry.
Jack wants to embrace her. He wants to hold her tight and protect her from all the world.
He cannot. All he can do is bring the frost, the snow, and all things cold.
Something inside his heart, or his soul - somewhere inside him, at least - is screaming and howling, and it won't stop.
Well, maybe there is something he can do. Just one thing.
~
The wind howls savagely that night, and brings with it snow and ice and cold cold cold. It is as though the winter itself is expressing outrage at the death of the child.
Or possibly it is a ghost, a very powerful ghost. In their bedroom, in their house, a man and a woman stare with wide eyes and pale faces at the handprints forming on the frosted-over window.
The woman screams when snow starts to fall from the ceiling. Wind whips angrily through the room, scattering everything. The woman's screams fade down to whimpers, but the wind and the cold is not here for her.
Appropriately, the man is shaking like a leaf in the wind, with fear and with cold. The wind is focusing its attentions on him, now, and a thin layer of frost is already forming over his skin. He is afraid, so afraid. He runs.
He runs out of the room and out of the house. He runs and runs and runs, and does not even notice the way the wind tugs at him, guiding him. Nor does he notice the way the snow, otherwise thick in the air, parts a path for him.
Exhaustion wears on him. He falls down at the edge of a frozen-over lake.
The wind bites him, cold and cruel. He is so, so afraid.
"I'm sorry," he chokes out. "I'm sorry, Peter. I'm sorry that I... that I killed you."
There is only one spirit present, a white-haired winter boy, and the man's fear-born apologies do not appease him in the slightest. "No, you're not," he hisses. The air grows still colder.
Stiff and desperate, the man crawls blindly out onto the lake. He hears the ice crack underneath him, but he is weak and almost snowblind. He is unable to escape before the ice weakens just enough to send him down to a cold, watery doom.
Come morning, the lake will again be frozen solid, appearing as though it never broke.
Something moves in the shadows, a glint of pointy teeth and golden eyes. Maybe I lied. Maybe there were two spirits all along.
You don't know what might be drawn in by terror, by all-pervading fear. Then again, maybe you do.
~
Jack wraps his arms around himself as he watches the crying child. It is Christmas Eve, and this child feels no joy or wonder or hope. All she feels is despair and fear.
Jack was unable to save Peter. He wasn't able to save Elizabeth either. Oh, she might have survived, but she was ever after broken.
If Jack acts now, instead of waiting until it is too late (like he did before), perhaps he can save this little girl who cries on Christmas Eve.
~
Pitch Black watches as the wind carries Jack Frost up and away from the frozen lake where the bodies of a man and a woman rest forevermore. The Boogieman sinks down into the shadows, drops down into his shadowed lair, and starts to laugh.
~
"Jack Frost," murmurs Pitch, and there is something cunning and amused in his eyes and the bearing of his teeth. "For a neutral party, you seem very... involved."
Jack says nothing, only tightens his grip on his staff.
"Do you think they will give you the acknowledgement you crave? No, Jack. They don't know you, and they wouldn't accept you if they did." Pitch's grin stretches wider. "Leave this alone, Jack Frost. If you don't, I'll tell them what you've been up to for the past two hundred years, and then... and then you'll see that I'm right."
He fades away into the darkness, then, although his laughter lingers for a long moment after he otherwise appears to be gone.
"Jack?" says Toothiana. She is hovering by Jack's shoulder, and there is worry in her voice and expression. "What did Pitch mean?"
Jack looks at her, at her kind eyes, and he looks at the other Guardians. They are the first people to acknowledge him, in all of his memory, and even though they kept their distance for three hundred years...
He decides to take a chance.
"I've been protecting the children, the ones no one else protects," he says. "The children hurt by the adults who should protect them. I get rid of the danger." He smiles.
Bunny's eyes narrow. "What d'you mean by that, mate?"
"I get rid of the danger," Jack repeats. "The adults hurting them, I lure them away and kill them with cold and water, before they can do anymore damage."
Toothiana gasps and covers her mouth. North frowns heavily, the usual light in his eyes a little bit dimmer. Bunny's ears flatten as he glares.
There is something heavy and sick-feeling inside Jack, but he nevertheless meets each horrified gaze with defiance. He tries to ice his heart over in preparation for rejection, but a tiny candle-flame of hope has yet to go out. Please, please understand, it whispers.
"Jack," says North. "You mustn't do things like that."
Abruptly, Jack's fear and desperate hope is replaced with angry frustration. "Mustn't I?" he hisses, not quite aware of the frost creeping over the ground or the chilled wind gusting around him.
Bunny shivers and his glare deepens, but he seems, for once, at a loss for words.
"Is not good situation," says North, shaking his head wearily. "But you can't get involved like that. You mustn't murder."
Jack remembers a dead boy and his ever-broken little sister. He remembers a little girl crying on Christmas Eve. He remembers a little boy huddled outside in the cold, slowly dying, and he remembers knowing that all he can do is bring more cold. He remembers many similar cases, far too many.
"Some Guardians!" he snarls, and springs up and away on the wind.
~
As far as the eye can see, it is white. The mountain is snow-clad, as is everything below, and even the sky above is completely clouded over. Jack's arms are wrapped around his knees, which are drawn up to his chest. He is huddled in the snow, and he does not feel the cold. He never has, for as long as he can remember.
"I knew this would happen," says Pitch. He stands out like black on white, to put it as literally as possible. Jack wonders where he came from, and how he did not notice him before he spoke.
"The Guardians don't understand, and they never will," he continues. "Oh, it's all very well to protect the children when they don't have to get their hands dirty..."
"And I suppose you do?" Jack cuts in, automatically confrontational and hostile. He has already been disappointed once tonight, and at this point he does not expect to ever be accepted, or truly wanted.
"Yes, Jack," says Pitch. "I understand, I do. What sympathy can possibly be deserved by people like the ones you punish? None! You and I understand that." He pauses. "Your work, Jack, is like poetry in action. It's poetic justice, it's perfect."
He reaches out, his hand brushes over Jack's face. "So graceful," he murmurs.
And then, somehow, they're kissing, their arms wrapped around each other, tight as though they are clinging to something that might disappear at any moment. Jack cuts his tongue on one of Pitch's teeth. It hurts and their mouths are filling with blood, but Jack doesn't care. It's acceptance, it's wanting, it's needing. It's all those things tied up in touch, after all this time with none of those things given to him.
Pitch is the one who pulls back, and Jack thinks he sees something vulnerable and afraid in the Boogieman's expression. But after all, Pitch too has spent a long time alone.
So Jack leans forward and rests his head against Pitch's chest. "Thank you," he whispers, putting as much of his feelings as he can into those two words.
~
This time around, Pitch comes so terribly or wonderfully close to winning, but the child Jamie comes through when he glimpses the Guardians, just in time to stop his belief from withering away. Somehow, he rallies his friends in spite of their initial disbelief, and it is enough to bring back the Sandman. Pitch comes so terribly, wonderfully close to victory, closer than another him does in a world where Jack Frost also fights against him, but it still finishes the same way, more or less, in the end. Maybe some things are just fate.
Before he was dragged away by the nightmares, his own creations, he showed Jack a way into his lair. Jack goes there just as soon as he can, and finds that it no longer exists. The old bed frame is gone, collapsed into nothing, and the deep, dark hole is a bit less deep and a bit less dark, and no longer anything more than mundane.
He searches for a new way into Pitch's lair. He grows more and more worried as he continues to fail, and then...
And then he discovers the shadows on the inside of a fear-soaked mirror. They are deeper and darker than they should be, and Jack smiles grimly and steps into them, through them. He grips his staff tight as he emerges into the darkness of the underground labyrinth.
"Pitch?" he calls, and receives no answer. He bites his lip. It has been years. Even for an immortal, that has to be far too long to spend alone with one's nightmares.
He does not know how long he searches in the dark; it is difficult to tell time without the sun and the moon, or even the full needs of a mortal body, to measure it by. He freezes over every nightmare he comes across, leaving behind him a trail of deathly sculptures that perfectly combine dark and cold.
He takes Pitch in his arms the moment he finds him, and calls upon the wind to carry them up and out. Above, in the cool darkness of the room with the mirror, he places a gentle, cold kiss to the Nightmare King's forehead, and cradles Pitch's head on his lap.
And he waits.
Pitch eventually wakes up, but he doesn't seem to realise he's awake, at first. He is still and his expression blank, his eyes dull.
It must be Jack's tender touches and soothing murmurs, so unlike a nightmare, that cause the brightening in Pitch's eyes, the beginning of realisation that yes, this is real. He lifts his hand to stroke through Jack's hair, and smiles.
~
It turns out that they make a pretty good team, Pitch Black and Jack Frost, now that their alliance is less newborn and tentative, and they're working together properly. They do just as Jack always has, pretty much, but a bit more frequently and readily.
They leave Jamie alone, at Jack's insistence. "All he did was protect the world, as best he saw fit," he says. "He's not guilty, Pitch. Besides, I'm fond of him, after all the time watching over him, while I was alone."
And Pitch listens, and takes heed.
So maybe Jack Frost has become colder and more murderous, less merciful, but the Nightmare King has mellowed, too. So many things are compromise, and perhaps this one isn't so bad.
I'm sorry, I shouldn't put my feelings here. You'll start to think I'm not an indifferent narrator.
~
There is one particular child, with perhaps the greenest eyes you have ever seen. Both Jack and Pitch are especially fond of this child, who once slept with the spiders in the cupboard under the stairs. He is not frightened by the same things as other children, and sometimes he still talks to the shadows and dark places that the others say hide monsters.
He doesn't ever tell anyone, but just before Aunt and Uncle disappeared, he whispered to the dark Please, please, I don't want to be here anymore. Take me away, please.
He got his wish when Aunt and Uncle disappeared, and he's felt like the dark and cold places watch over him ever since. He even has charmed luck on snowdays, and that he does talk about.
He doesn't believe in the legends that Aunt and Uncle used to tell his cousin about, and always hated for him to hear, but sometimes he thinks that if he did, he might get on best with the things that other people don't like. After all, he knows how that feels.
Actually, he comes closer to believing every day.
~
This time, when Bunny tries to catch Jack unawares with a sack, it... well, it would have worked just as well as the first time, but there is an extra pair of eyes keeping watch, now. Like a slithering, hunting thing, Pitch emerges from the deep shadows and, taking advantage of Bunny’s momentary shock, strikes with a sword formed from solid dark. The Pooka only barely manages to jump away in time.
Jack steps forward and, with all the cold of midwinter night in his voice, says, "What are you doing?"
Bunny is undaunted. "You're working with Pitch now, mate? To murder?"
"They deserve it."
"Probably, but c'mon..."
Jack has heard enough. "Shut up," he snaps, and freezes Bunny's feet to the ground. While the Guardian is tugging frantically and swearing, Jack looks at Pitch with an expectant raise of his eyebrows. For a moment, the Boogieman looks as though he will refuse, but then he places his hand on Jack's elbow and, with a venomous parting glare at Bunny, takes them away through the shadows.
They cling tightly to each other as they travel through the spaces between the world.
Pitch and Jack share the same deepest fear. What do you suppose that is?
~
"Is pity it didn't work," says North. "We must take bigger steps." There is regret in his eyes, but also determination.
Bunnymund scratches at his ear. "I dunno, mate. He might have a point."
"Yes, but this can only lead to darker things. We must stop it now, before he goes too far."
Toothiana wrings her hands, flittering nervously. "What if Pitch tries again? We nearly lost last time, and if... if he convinces Jack to help him..." It is obvious from her expression and the catch in her voice that she does not want to entertain the idea, but she is forcing herself to consider all possibilities.
"Good point," mutters Bunnymund, although he certainly sounds unhappy about it.
The golden images above Sandy's head are flickering rapidly. They glimpse a flurry of snowflakes, a globe being covered with sand, and two figures embracing.
"Is settled then," says North. "We must stop Pitch Black... and Jack Frost."
~
It's starting...
I wonder how it shall end.