sometimes fear is the appropriate response
from the kink meme. Prompt link is in my profile as well a note. I'll be putting fic a day on hiatus for a bit.
fic a day 17
"Fearlings." North booms at the now weekly Guardian meetings, after Tooth is done admiring Jack's teeth and the Yeti's have passed out cookies and Bunny and Jack finish arguing? North is never quite certain how to characterize their interactions. "There's a nest of them preying on people in Ukraine. And since we're past the busy season for Bunny and it's too early for me, we're going to spend a few days rooting them out."
Tooth nods and goes back to staring at Jack's teeth and Sandy forms a series of images, himself, boomerangs, swords, a question mark.
"We should be fine without help Sandy." North says.
"Frostbite might want to come along. He's probably never seen Fearlings." That's Bunny who is very carefully not looking at Jack.
"You should Jack! Fearlings are old enemies of the-"
"I know what Fearlings are." Jack says, interrupting North his voice high and thin.
"Frostbite?"
Jack is cradling his staff like it's a stuffed toy and frost is forming beneath his feet. He looks terrified.
"I know what Fearlings are." He repeats drawing a breath and pulling the frost back under his skin. He doesn't let go of the staff.
"Jack?"
"I don't want to talk about this." He's floating, poised to run, Wind gathered about him.
"What is wrong Ja-" That's Tooth this time, gentle and sweet.
"I don't want to talk about it!" He's out the window before any of them can stop him.
oOo
It's a convenient story for Jack, that he was born in the 1700s from a lake. A good story with all the right elements- a sacrifice, a rebirth. Nobody had heard of Jack Frost before then so it must be where he began. For three hundred years even he thought it was true.
Jack Frost always dies for his sister.
It's just this time his sister was brown haired and brown eyed and loved him terribly and he can't even remember how long ago it was. He pulled her back off cracked ice and threw himself into her place. She lives and he dies in the water, in the cold.
He's forgotten what his name used to be but then again, he's forgotten a lot.
There's a pond that's forever frozen somewhere in the world and Jack thinks if he can find it again he might be able to remember. There's another lake in Burgess that's eternally frozen and he thinks that might be enough.
Before he was Jack Frost, he was Teshub and Xuan Wu, Boreas and Nong, Jokul Frosti, Old Man Winter. The Inuit have two hundred words to define him and on this continent they called him Gohone, Amaguq, Negafook. Before he was any of those he was Snow and Cold, Blizzard and Winter. Humans didn't name their gods until they started writing about them and he predates Jiahu and Vinca, Cunieform and Hieroglyphs.
For ten thousand years when people prayed to the snow and ice, burned fires higher to keep out the cold and bring back the sun, they were praying to him.
Not that he listened.
oOo
He was newly risen from the ice of a pond, clutching a staff that he knows is his, when the Fearlings found him. Found him and consumed him. The next bit gets a bit blurry, dark and alone the scratching shadows of their voices preying on him.
He fights them. Jack Frost even before he was given that name is not one to go quietly.
He fought them for the longest time. But Fearlings are legion and there is only one of him. They dogged his footsteps, hunting the prey they had claimed using every person who walked through him, every spirit who ignored him, attacked him to weaken him, snapping bites out a psyche already weakened by the loss of his family. Jack had thought himself dead, a hungry ghost who could only bring harm.
His fear, the fear of a spirit a feast to glut them until he gave in.
Everybody breaks.
Jack was not graceful in his breaking.
They took him in winter, falling in him, rending him from the inside. The spirit that arose from the night looked nothing like Jack Frost. They changed him twisting him into a shadow, hair and eyes shimmering black and used him.
They had never owned a spirit before and the power the gained was almost worth the fight he put up when they went after children, their fear more choice then the general fears of adulthood- winter, starvation, death. Children are so much more imaginative, fearing shadows in corners and monsters under beds. If their monsters came to them covered in ice, pale dead things than so much the better.
oOo
Everywhere they went they brought fear and cold. They used his powers to bring in blizzards and ice and feasted on fear. They never ate so well as they did with the winter spirit.
When Rome fell they stopped the early winter storm that would have smothered the fires that burned in the city and drank in the panic of the world. Humans used to say that all roads led to Rome. Humans used to say that when Rome fell the world would end. Humans used to say a lot of things. They took away that one constant and gorged themselves in the chaos that followed.
oOo
The winter of 1310 lasts for twenty years and oh what glorious winter it was- long, cold and dark. People starved in their homes rather than risking the blizzards that came when they called, or the wolves. When the spring came again, with it came the black death and the dying began. Fearlings cavorted in the streets and humans burned candles and the dead and witches to keep back the plague but fear was home to stay.
The spirit they took subsided under their satiation and they used his powers to bring more fear. They feasted those years way, using his powers to amplify the fears preying on people, dropping unnatural cold on dying towns.
oOo
Europe grew boring after the plague passed. The decimation of the native peoples of the Americas coincided with the beginning of the inquisition and they happily abandoned the picked over fears of clergy for the fresh fear of sickness and disease that they had never seen before.
The New World was a feast waiting to be consumed.
oOo
People start laughing at the shadows, believing themselves to be too rational to believe in the things they used to fear, the fools. Just because you don't believe it's there doesn't mean it can't kill you.
They settle for the colonists rich fear of the woods, of old undisturbed growths, and the thick dark of uncut trees. The pack is haunting the woods of the north when they come across the girl skating alone on a lake. They weaken the ice beneath her feet, snap branches in the dark parts on the hollow, and watch her spin on the ice calling who's there to the dark like so many before her.
The fear is there weak and gentle but it's thickening with the cold she's shivering from.
"If this is another prank Jack I'll tell your mother!" She shouts to the dark and the ice cracks beneath her feet.
There's a girl on ice that's cracking beneath her feet. She can see them, the hunting pack, the horrified gasp she lets out tells him everything he needs to know and the winter spirit stirs for the first time in decades.
(She looks nothing like his sister.)
oOo
Emma Overland came out to the lake to practice skating after she fought with her best friend. Jack was so funny but wild and careless and so foolish sometimes she couldn't stand it. He'd fallen out a tree this morning and she'd yelled at him for being foolish, her heart thudding against her chest the whole. He'd said she never have any fun with an attitude like that and all she can think of is Samuel Tanner who fell out a tree last year and broke his neck. They'd argued then with real heat and she'd stormed off without a backwards glance.
Now she's skating alone in the woods, fuming at stupid boys, instead of with Jack like she'd told her mother she'd be.
The sun's going down and the winters birds have fallen still. Branches crack in woods and she calls out to Jack that it's not funny, before she remembers that Jack has no idea where she is. Nobody in the settlement does and Emma is just now realizing what a terrible mistake this is.
The ice cracks and she sees them then, shadows of people twisted by the darkness. They've surrounded her.
"I'm scared." Emma Overland says to the dark, to the cold and they laugh. The ice groans under her weight and the things watching her tense, anticipatory. She thinks if I die here my parents will never recover my body, not in the middle of winter.
"Please" she begs "please"
She'll swear later that it was an angel that saved her, casting the shadows out. But in the moment she sees a boy throwing off the dark, with white hair and blue eyes, a smile so bright. There are flurries of blue clashing with shadows and it lights up the lake. He flies to her but the ice has given out under her feet and a crook hooks her before she falls fully through and throws her on to solid ice and the boy is gone into the waters. The shadow men are regrouping and Emma curses herself for a coward, fumbles off her skates and runs for home.
Her mother fusses with the frozen hem of her skirt and listens patiently to her story, clearly not believing a word. The next day the men go out to the lake to check the ice. It's frozen solid and people dismiss her story as that of a frightened child. Out of the corner of her eye she watches the shadow men watch them hungrily.
Come spring when the lake doesn't unfreeze people start believing her story.
Emma Overland spends the rest of her life looking for a boy with white hair and blue eyes, a smile so bright. She needs him because she also spends the rest of her life ducking from shadows and the things that live in them.
oOo
When the winter spirit rises from the ice, the moon is full.
Your name is Jack Frost. It says. And this time the dark shall not have you. It sounds triumphant.
oOo
The problem with remembering is that once you've begun you can't stop. Jack remembers the lake, both of them. He remembers his sister but she always looks like the girl he saved outside of Burgess.
(He thinks his sister had a skinnier face, darker hair, crooked teeth but he can't remember.)
Once he's done remembering being human he remembers the rest. The Fearlings, the cold and the dark and the misery he brought. Jack had thought, in three hundred years that he understood the meaning of loneliness. Now with ten thousand years of memory to sort he knows the he understood very little.
oOo
Joke- what goes together better than cold and dark?
Answer- cold and fear.
You're not laughing. (Neither is Jack.)
oOo
The nest of Fearlings is in eastern Russia, south of Moscow. Was, North should say. They snow globe in to what should be a late Russian summer, having given up, at least for the moment on finding Jack. Sandy had reasoned that he'd send out dreamsand that night and Jack would come to them when he was ready.
There's a localized blizzard raging. The woods are dark and frozen under at least a foot of snow. The wind howls, the snow is blown fast enough to cut them to shreds. Fearlings are shrieking over the wind.
"Guess we found Frostbite." Bunny says, an undertone to his voice that North doesn't like. They could leave but this is so unlike Jack they hesitate. "Press on?" North asks.
"Yeah."
They stumble through the woods towards the center of the storm. A fearling rushes them and is cut through by an icicle before either can react.
"Они называют меня генерал снег в этом округе" Jack says conversationally from behind them. They call me General Snow in this country.
He's standing on a tree branch twenty feet up, leaning against the trunk, completely casual the only sign of the storm in wind mussed hair and bright bright eyes. He looks completely inscrutable, fey and otherworldly. North wonders exactly how much they know about Jack Frost.
They are nearly bent double by the wind and Jack blinks says sorry guys and the wind drops abruptly. The storm falters, stutters, fails. The sun is out less then a minute later and the snow starts melting immediately.
"Jack?-" North starts only to be cut off by a furious Bunny.
"Oi! If you could do this why the hell didn't you stop the blizzard of '68?"
Jack does not flinch. North vaguely thinks of that as progress. "I hadn't figured it out then." He says still far away. "I just needed them gone."
"What?"
"There were kids in the woods. They were going to hurt them."
The wind blows past them suddenly fierce again, Jack cocks his head and throws himself into the air. "There are a few that made it out. You coming?"
They follow.
Jack falls upon the surviving Fearlings with a fury they have never seen in him not even when fighting Pitch.
Nicholas St. North is too afraid to ask.
Notes:
-Teshub a Hurrian storm and sky god. He doesn't exactly fit but I needed a prehistory god and humans who lived where it snowed weren't the societies that left remnants behind
-Xuan Wu and Boreas are north winds, Chinese and Greek respectively
-Nong is a Afghani winter god
-Jokul Frosti a Norse predecessor to jack frost, though much more malicious
-Eskimo- Inuit and Yupik languages have ~180 words for snow and ice
-Gohone the Iroquois personification of winter
-Amaguq an Inuit Trickster and wolf god
-Negafook the Yupik's north wind or the spirit of cold and stormy weather
-Jiahu and Vinca- neolithic writing systems Chinese and Balkin respectively
-You know what Cunieform and Hieroglyphs are
-The first sack of Rome was in August 410. Also I have no idea what winter looks like in Italy
-There was a mini ice age in Europe 1310-1330, lots of famine (including one titled the Great Famine of 1315-1322), death so forth. Theorized to have contributed to the level of destruction the Bubonic Plague 1348-1350 wreaked.
-Historians theorize that 90% of the Native American population was wiped out by smallpox and plague brought by explorers before Columbus arrived in the Americas.