Chapter Text
“You make record.”
It was just words, really Jack knew that. It was words, just words, but he remembered blinking awake a few years into figuring out how humans celebrated Christmas to coal scattered around his makeshift tree. It was soundly and icy, glimmering softly in the early morning sun and the coal stained it. The coal had felt chalky beneath his fingers, it was sticky and wrong.
He got it every year from there on.
Dropped where he originally out his makeshift tree, dark rock instead of something that matters.
Jack didn’t like reminders of that.
He was on the naughty list, and he was a child using that logic because kids go on that list. He’s a naughty little child, misbehaving and disgusting. He’s dripping salty sweat and anger, icicles painting the land around him as he shook because his skin felt like it was freezing off his bones.
Jack hated Christmas.
He played with Jamie in the winter, yes, the snow and ice shining around his bare feet as he threw snowballs at the red faced boy. But it was interrupted by either Sophie or Jamie himself mentioning North, every single time. It got tiring.
Jack was sitting on the tiled roof of the Bennett house, the moon sending gentle rays of redirected sunlight around him. He couldn’t feel the cold, but if he could he would. Snow settled around him, frost spreading around his body and dripping liquid over the edge of the roof. He hated Christmas, but the holiday was soon and North hated it when he went over near his holiday. His day to exist and work and think, Jack couldn’t be settled up in the rafters because it would ruin the system.
He wasn’t in the rafters, for that reason. He was on the Bennett roof.
The guardians had a meeting a few days after Christmas, and he really needed to fix his thoughts before then. Being around them was hard when he got like this, hands shaky because what was he supposed to do? The hope and wonder and memories and dreams settled around him, a heavy blanket that didn’t calm.
Jack stood from his spot on the roof, staff spinning loosely in his fingers as he darted into the sky. He felt like he was floating inside his body, he may as well float outside as well.
Vertigo overcame him, drifting in waves despite being stationary, his brain flowing the subconscious movement vaguely as it drifted. His hands weren’t his, they were pale and bloodless, his body wasn’t his and it shook softly. Random tremors overtaking his arms, flinching at the slightest change in the winds he wasn’t clutching in his grip. He was floating, drifting through the sky.
He liked to drift. It was a thoughtless sensation, really. The benefit of being immortal is that you get lots of time to figure out what’s fun for you, and in Jacks case he liked the lack of thoughts. Mindless play, throwing snowballs, drifting, anything was better than thinking. His thoughts weren’t pleasant, before the guardians it was circling reminders that he didn’t know who he was, and after it was circling reminders that they only care because the moon told them to.
He hated his thoughts so much.
And that plunged him back into himself. No longer drifting, the wind moving around him was too loud, the fabric on his body is too scratchy and wrong. He feels wrong, his hair too heavy and light all at once, the icy hot-cold feeling he always got when he came back from drifting overwhelming him.
The wind guided him to the lake he first emerged from, the familiar coal stain in the corner, the spindly ice tree he carved to celebrate Christmas (he hated the holiday but North loved him when he did that) in the centre of the lake. He still didn’t get presents, and if he did it would be coal, he knew that.
He didn’t bother sparing the tee and extra glance as he collapsed into a snow bank, staring into nothing and just—being. It felt nice, to just melt there. Think of nothing and everything as he tried to replicate the feeling of drifting.
He doesn’t know how long he spent there, probably a day or two, but when he came back there a thick layer of snow atop his hoodie and he felt sore from the lack of movement.
~~~
He hadn’t gotten anything at Christmas since becoming a guardian.
This year he did.
It was coal again.
A black mass, a stain against the perfect ice of his tree, he could feel the sharp little frost splinters in his hand as he tore the tree down, he could taste bile because he just stood there after destroying his magic with his hands. He got coal again.
He was just a naughty, misbehaving child again.
He was nothing again.
Jack cried. They were empty tears, hollow and embarrassed and torn and broken, because he was a bad kid. He wanted to curl up in a ball and feel small, he wanted to have something to hold onto as he cried but he had to go congratulate North otherwise he’s a bad person, he had to go check on Jamie and the other kids, he had to-
Breathe. He should breathe. Or he could drift, and that seemed a lot more interesting, so he went back to his snow drift and collapsed.
His mind heavy and circling and everything was to much. His drifting wasn’t as pleasant, he was underwater but he could hear everything just a little too clearly, he was underwater but he felt more real than he should, he was drifting though. He could feel everything, but he couldn’t think. The sound drowned out by the overwhelm, by the tears and cold and coal still scattered across the lake.
~
Jack liked this generations music. Jamie had gotten him headphones, a snowflake sticker shoved on. Courtesy of Sophie, of course. It felt real, like his body was his, but it wasn’t. He could think when he listened to music.
The boy had gotten him an iPod music player, from memory. Jack had thanked him, of course, but he still felt guilty. He melted into the tree behind him, words echoing around his brain. They drowned out the thoughts as well, perfect at the moment.
’if I could cut my OCD out with a knife, I would, I’d gouge that fucker out’
Hah. He would cut out this ice, he could gouge everything about him out. He’d claw it from himself, leaving it a bleeding, writhing worm on the ground. He could force it down his throat moments later, shove it down into his stomach and ignore the way it made him want to die.
He loved being nothing but his thoughts. Nothing but the images in his mind that he didn’t really want.
He was floating against a tree, words echoed in his brain. He loved those words, and he didn’t get them for Christmas. He got coal and horror and fear, not joy or music or smiles. Why couldn’t he have smiles? Why couldn’t he get music? Why did he get coal. Why did he get this.
He knows why.
He deserves it.
He deserves this.
It’s his fault. All his fault. Maybe he should stop. Stop talking, thinking, existing. Let himself drown into the lake because it’s not like he’s good. He’s just another spirit with one believer. Just another spirit with no one to love him. He was fading, and he was fading fast.
And then he heard something. Shocked back into his body, he looked around sharply and hung his headphones around his neck. It was Bunny.
The Easter Bunny, as Jack knew, hated him. A burning kind of hatred, the kind Jack had for himself. The rabbit crawled out from the tunnel he had made, glaring at Jack.
“Hurry up Frost, meeting!” The rabbit hissed, pulling the thinner up harshly. Jack pushed him off, laughing halfheartedly.
“Sorry, lost track of time, you know how it is.” He excused, stretching lazily. He was sore again, it couldn’t have been that long, right? “I might go by wind, you know, avoid all the dirt and muck down there.”
Bunny glared, a growl rising in his throat as he shrugged the winter spirit off.
“Have fun then.” And with that he was gone. Jack, as he had sad he would, raised himself into the sky and darted to the pole. The wind was fast, he was fast with it, and he arrived only moments after Bunny.
The four guardians were sitting around the room, their eyes snapping to him. Tooth looked relieved, North looked annoyed, Bunny was Bunny and Sandy just smiled.
“Hello, Jack here, how are ya?” He laughed, ignoring the sharp hatred that burnt through al of their eyes. They were angry, they hated him, they were faking their joy. He was bad, bad kids don’t get joy. They don’t get gifts.
“Great! Christmas went well, lots of gifts for children. Yetis worked hard to paint things right.” Thick Russian accented words floated from North, the man laughing heartily. He was faking it, Jack knew he was.
“Nice to know, anyone get a sack of coal?” Jack said. It was exclaimed in a light tone, more of a laugh than anything else. He knew someone did, North knew someone did. He got coal, he got darkness and rocks and chalky stains because he was a child to them and yet he will never be protected.
“Only naughty children, you know that Jack.” North brushed him off, and Jack wanted to cry but he didn’t. He didn’t, and he regretted it but he didn’t.
Not really.
It would’ve made everything worse.
~
Jack curled up in a snow drift and drifted.
He floated.
He breathed.
He didn’t think.
And he didn’t feel as satisfied as he normally would.