Son of the North

Written by IAMGinny

Summary: One hundred years after Jack Frost is born, he is caught trying to sneak into Santoff Claussen, and Nicholas St. North sees the young winter spirit for what he is: a lonely boy with wonder in his eyes. AU. Takes a look at what Jack's life could have been if the Guardians had taken notice of him early on. Ignores any real timeline and not book compliant. Like at all. Or history compliant, really.

Not mine.

Time was more of a human concept, really, and Jack saw little logical need of it for himself. He understood the turning of seasons—of course—and understood that sometime after Christmas that a new year began, though he couldn't pinpoint a date, or rather didn't particularly care enough to remember. He knew that the arrival of the Easter Bunny's holiday usually meant an end to his season. But he didn't keep track in days, months, years.

What would be the point, but to make him more bitter?

He knew that time had passed since the Man in the Moon had pulled him from his lake, perhaps even a lot of it. He had been afraid to return there, at first, but it called to him and eventually he had answered. For a time after that he still avoided the village. He couldn't explain it, even to himself, but that place seemed to leave him feeling bittersweet.

The village had not changed much from what he remembered (and really, how could he remember a place he had spent so little time in, comparatively), perhaps a few new buildings, a few empty patches of grass where livestock grazed, that Jack thought should have housed, well, houses.

Where the village had not changed, the villagers had. He didn't recognize the children—though he was eager to learn to—and he recognized some of the former children in the aged, weathered faces of adults.

This was his first real clue about time. These people—mortals—were not like him. Where they grew, aged, died, he stayed the same. A boy frozen in time, just as he froze everything around him.

He would have learned this sooner, he was sure, but there was just so much out there to explore, and Wind was eager to show it to him. He had never stayed in one place too long, and never returned to the same village twice, even if he brought snow to the same area.

He had found in his travels that he was, in fact, not alone in his state of being. The other spirits never took much interest in him, seeming to be for the most part solitary creatures themselves, but they would explain things to him, sometimes.

He learned that there were many, many spirits out there. He liked to sit quietly at the edge of the occasional gatherings of spirits and listen to tales of Spirits older than what was comprehensible to him. He listened eagerly to tales of The Man in the Moon, though the assembled spirits took his insistence that the powerful spirit was his creator with tolerant-sure-kid looks. He listened to tales of the Guardians of Childhood and Pitch Black the Nightmare King.

The tales were so fantastical that he had at first thought them just that, fairytales. He believed that until he saw the wisps of golden sand trail lazily across the sky one night, the occasionally vivid dream bursting from the sand into an animal or some other happy scene.

From then on he believed in the Sandman, and though he never pinpointed the feeling, the little golden man was filled with warmth that night.

Jack learned that the Guardians were indeed real, though some of them were more friendly than others.

He'd never met the Tooth Fairy, but her little helpers were sweet and sometimes followed him around on their way back from collecting teeth. The Easter Bunny was, surprisingly, a gruff giant of a rabbit-kangaroo thing. Jack had jokingly told him such, once, and the Guardian hadn't seemed to appreciate Jack's playful teasing, as he'd merely growled at him, opened a whole in the ground, and disappeared through it.

Jack decided to avoid Bunny from then on, though the Easter Kangaroo had a knack for catching Jack red handed during his pranks.

He thought he might like Santa Claus best though. He was a relatively new spirit, like Jack himself, and so the others didn't know much about him.

What Jack learned about the spirit known as Santa Claus, he learned from the children. The kids always had stories to tell about the man in red who brought presents to them if they were good. They whispered about the clop-clop of reindeer hooves on their roofs, about the treats they left for the man. They wondered at who made the toys (elves they whispered excitedly), and what Santa's workshop looked like.

Jack loved these times, when the children huddled together after a snowball fight that he had started, and told fantastic stories about the spirits that they didn't see, and yet still believed in. It brought him hope, how few of the children could claim that they had seen Santa with their own eyes, and yet every year they stayed up, waiting for the telltale clatter of hooves above their heads.

Surely, surely, if Santa could be believed in without being seen, then maybe one-day Jack Frost would be believed in too.

It became his goal to find Santa's workshop, so that when he was finally believed in, finally seen and heard, he could tell them of the amazing building in the North Pole where elves made their toys.

Jack thought that years must have passed by the time he tracked down the Workshop of Nicholas St. North, as he now knew he was really called. It was always cold enough to snow somewhere, after all, which meant he always had something to do. Even if that thing was keeping a blizzard on a deserted mountaintop from getting out of hand.

But no matter, today was the day he would see the Workshop in all of its glory! He may have brought a few snowfalls down a bit early to free his schedule—something he knew would get him chewed out eventually—but it was worth it.

His hopes were dampened slightly when he learned that there were furry things all over the workshop, always passing windows and standing guard at any open doors.

He would need a plan then. A distraction maybe?

Jack decided this required planning and more information about Mr. North's Workshop, and so he stayed hidden in snowdrifts the whole day, watching the going-ons of Santoff Claussen.

Jack returned a few more times before implementing any kind of plan to get inside, and when he finally plucked up the courage to try he was easily foiled.

It became something of a game to him—though it annoyed the Yetis—trying to get into the workshop and them keeping him out.

He was sure that at the very least, Nicholas St. North had to know about the spirit who repeatedly tried to sneak into his magical toy factory.

Until one day, he didn't try. He did.

It was grandest distraction he'd tried yet, involving the elves he'd come to see were a bit dull.

He'd managed to get a window open last time without the yetis noticing, and he'd left if a crack open for this express purpose. It was a window into the kitchen, where the excess heat shielded the cold of the open window, and where the elves liked to congregate in the hopes of finding food. After checking to see that the coast was clear he slipped inside. He couldn't stay in the heat of the kitchen for long, but he wouldn't need to if things went according to plan.

He knew there would be yetis out in the hall, probably guarding against him at this point, and he knew that the elves would arrive any moment for a midday snack.

Right on cue, six or seven elves marched into the kitchen with resolute expressions on their faces. The yetis had left a plate of cookies for them, as always, and Jack waited until they were completely absorbed in the treats before making his move.

A snowball landed squarely in the face of the elf facing him.

The elf squawked in outrage and threw its cookie at the elf across from him, igniting the fury of the offended elf.

It was war from there.

It was better than Jack could have imagined. The elves started clobbering each other with the cookies and somehow ended up knocking a bowl of cake batter off of the table, which they all slipped and stumbled in as they continued to invoke battle on each other.

A nearby yeti heard the noise and entered with a long suffering look on its face and already yelling to his comrades to help break up the fight and clean up the mess.

As the yetis set to work cleaning up the mess and the elves alike as the latter cursed vilely at each other, Jack slipped through the kitchen door and into the deserted hallway.

He floated down the hall, hoping for a sign and listening for anyone who might ruin his fun prematurely. He thought he might just make it to the actual workshop when he –quite literally—ran into a yeti.

As luck would have it, he knew this yeti.

As luck would not have it, this yeti also knew him.

Jack tore back down the hall he'd just come from, and the yeti cried out as he gave pursuit. Luck appeared not to be in Jack's favor today (though she really was) and more yetis answered the first's call for backup, flooding from almost every door in the corridor.

"Oh come on!" Jack breathed to himself as he was boxed in on all sides by the yetis, the familiar one pounding its hand against its fist threateningly.

He was half-dragged to the end of the hall, and when he realized that he was being led back towards an exit he tried to struggle free. There was no way he would ever see the workshop if they threw him out now!

"Hey let go of me!" They hadn't taken his staff, and he slammed it down onto the floor with a thud, frost cascading out across the floor around Jack and consequently the yetis. He hopped up into the air as they slipped on slick ice, their grips on him slackening as they tried to steady themselves.

Jack raced back down the hall and for the second time in what felt like as many minutes, slammed bodily into someone. Or almost did, if the person hadn't caught him and held him at arm's length.

Of course that person had to be Nicholas St. North, in the flesh.

Jack had never actually laid eyes on the Guardian, but he certainly wasn't what the children described.

He was terrifying.

The man was huge, first of all, bigger and taller than Bunny. Including the ears. He was also as big around as three or four Jacks put together would be, and it wasn't fat like the children seemed to think. Nicholas St. North was all muscle.

His hair was white, and he sported a long but well cared for beard. These things should have made him look old, but the sheer bulk of him paired with his still dark eyebrows ruined the picture and made his age indiscernible.

His eyes were deep blue, akin to Jack's own though not quite the same shade. They were hard and a bit suspicious as they looked Jack over.

"And what do we have here?" He asked, his eyes still on Jack though the question was aimed at the yetis behind him, who were just then recovering from Jack's frosted floor.

"Ahhhh . . ." Jack mumbled intelligently.

Santa (could he even call such an intimidating man "Santa"?) was still staring at him with that intense gaze as Jack chuckled awkwardly.

Suddenly the most unexpected thing happened.

Nicholas St. North's face broke into an amused, mischievous grin and he let out a loud and genuine laugh.

North had heard many things about the young winter spirit before him. From Sandy's view he was a curious young sprite, barely out of infancy. Sandy had remarked once that he had felt Manny in the boy, and as the oldest of them Sandy was to be trusted on that account. To Bunny he was the devil incarnate. He seemed to enjoy bothering the Easter Bunny and pranking those around him. He was a nuisance, nothing more, nothing less.

His yetis thought much the same with his near constant pranking and attempts to break into the workshop, though North honestly thought it was a bit amusing as long as the sprite refrained when it came close to Christmas.

Yes, there were plenty of opinions to go around when it came to Jack Frost, but there was one North had not heard before.

It was commonly known that Jack Frost was a young spirit—North wasn't one to judge, he was young by spirit standards himself—but he wondered if any of the others realized just how young the Spirit of Winter was. Not only spiritually, but physically.

It was clear that like North himself, Jack had been human before he was chosen by Manny. What had happened that Manny would choose to make a spirit so young, a child's spirit, immortal?

Physically, the boy couldn't be more than seventeen. North knew that in many cultures and in history itself a boy that age may be considered a man, may already have a wife and children. But the boy's disposition was more like that of a child than an adult.

Becoming a spirit tended to enhance the most pronounced characteristics of the being, this was true of all spirits, though especially in the case of the Guardians and those made by Manny. If Jack had been an especially excitable, mischievous human child, those traits would make up a lot of his personality as a spirit.

He had at some point let his hands drop from the boy's arms, and he saw the fact that he hadn't yet run as promising.

Decision made, North turned crisply on his heel and began to walk back to his office, beckoning Jack with a simple "Walk with me."

The child meant to walk behind him, but he pulled the boy up to walk beside him, clasping his shoulder and noticing for the second time how thin Jack was under that hoodie of his.

The winter spirit's lips pursed and he tensed slightly at the touch, as if not used to physical contact.

He purposely led Jack through the middle of his workshop and enjoyed the light that lit up the boy's face, eyes wide and bright with wonder. Jack didn't seem to know where to look, at the stacks of beautifully (if he did say so himself) crafted toys, the decorations that would only get grander as Christmas grew closer, or the yetis working and the elves "helping".

"I thought the elves made the toys?" the child asked, looking up at him inquisitively.

North chuckled, "Is what we want them to think."

Jack smiled up at him, a small, timid thing as if he was still fully aware of the fact that he was probably in trouble.

They made it to his office and Jack ducked the ice prototype of some kind of flying contraption that tried to dive bomb him as he entered before North.

The large man laughed good-naturedly at his machine as Jack eyed it warily.

"What is that?"

"Idea I was working on. Couldn't get it to work quite yet." The Guardian volunteered cheerily as the thing flew circles around his head.

Jack thought that maybe Santa Claus was a bit mad.

"Look Sir, I'm sorry about breaking in. I won't do it again . . ." Jack trailed off uncertainly.

"Why did you break into workshop?" the man asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I . . . curiosity, I guess?" Jack shrugged, pulling at the hood of his sweatshirt self-consciously.

"Was curiosity satisfied?"

"Yes Sir."

North's eyes softened.

"I see no 'Sir' here, just North and Jack Frost. And is pity, I had thought perhaps you would like to see whole workshop sometime, but if you are satisfied . . .?"

"Yes! I mean no! Ah . . . yeah. Yes. I'd like to see the rest of your workshop. North." Jack's cheeks dusted with frost and North thought it must be they boy's equivalent of a blush. It was endearing, and North had drawn his own conclusions.

Bunny would not be happy, but North was quite sure he would get over it. Sandy would be overjoyed.

Jack Frost would never look so lost, nor so lonely, as he had when he'd snuck into North's workshop.

Never again.

It was not uncommon, after that, to see the young winter spirit at Santoff Claussen. Jack had been cautious at first, never coming more than once a week and never overstaying his welcome. He was painstaking in his attempts to be "good" and not make trouble for North or the yetis.

He began to relax after the yetis accepted him as a part of the workshop, though they were protective of the toys around him. Phil in particular took a grudging liking to the boy.

Jack fell asleep on the sofa farthest from the fireplace in the living room one night, and woke in one of the guest bedrooms the next morning. The windows were wide open to let snow and Wind in, who ruffled his hair playfully as he sat up. A blanket drooped down into his lap, and Jack decided that with the cold air allowed into the room, the blanket was quite tolerable.

Over the months (North was a bit better with time, what with Christmas to prepare for) Jack left Santoff Claussen less and less in the evenings, and after falling asleep on the sofa every night and waking in the same room with the windows open wide, Jack began to fall asleep in the room that was his in everyone's minds but his own.

So let me know what you guys think! This will have one more installment, maybe two if I decide to cover the events of the movie, let me know if you'd be interested in reading that. This is really just flow of consciousness writing, and again, I didn't read the books so this is strictly Movieverse canon divergence with some probably really historically/mythologically inaccurate stuff thrown in for the sake of the narrative.