sakon76

Scenes From the Life and Death of Jackson Overland Frost
Part 16: Promise Keeper
by K. Stonham
first released 17th October, 2020

May, 2018

It took less than a blink's time between Jamie Bennett disappearing and Jack Frost going feral. Aster, unfortunately, blinked.

By the time his eyes were open again, Time was on his back, Jack's staff at his throat. Diamond dust was in Frost's eyes, and the temperature around them was plummeting so rapidly that Aster could hear the trees creaking, sap preparing to explode.

"Where is he?"

Aster took a half-step back at the ice in Jack's voice. "Mate--" he said, but was ignored.

For his part, Father Time was panting... in relief? "Oh, that's better," he said, sounding for all the world like someone who'd had a splinter pulled out of his paw. "So much better."

Jack's staff shoved the old man down into the snowbank. "Where is Jamie?"

"Mending that damned time bubble," Time said, head lolling back as his entire body slumped bonelessly into the snowbank. "Moon above, having that fixed feels so good."

"Time bubble?" Aster asked before Jack could get a word in. He started rubbing at his arms. It was colder than outside North's workshop.

"Oh, yes. Centered around him." Time sloppily waved an arm at Jack. "I thought it was his to repair, but now I can see it was the boy's job."

No less angry, Jack shoved the man further into the snow. "Where. Is. He?"

"The past." Time smiled blissfully. "I can feel that rift healing. He'll be back soon. Or... did you want to go fetch him? I can do that." His hand rummaged in his robes and produced a small hourglass.

Aster stopped Jack from reaching for it. "No tricks," he warned Father Time. "I may not always get on with Frost, but if you do anything to him and the kid...."

"No tricks," Time said. "This will take him to when he needs to go."

Jack's hand closed on the hourglass.

November, 1709

No progress. But on the other hand, no sign that Jack was getting worse.

Jamie rubbed at his eyes, then froze as a tendril of golden glowing sand snaked in through a window. It swirled, then headed for him and Jack. Jamie swatted at it, tried to bat it away without touching. "No!" he hissed. "Not me, Sandy. I need to stay awake!"

The dreamsand hesitated, then looped around him and touched Jack.

But where normally the sand would form into dreams above one's head, it now fizzled, looking like static or the carbonation of a soda. Jamie blinked. He'd never seen dreamsand do that before.

Leaning back in his chair, he thought for a moment, then opened his mouth.

"Time to close your eyes," he sang softly, voice a little wobbly. He took a breath, tried his best to strengthen it. "Overlook the darkness, and try to dream tonight. Not so long ago, your world was bright. So take a breath, and count to ten, and maybe you can dream again... still dream."

He didn't know where the lullaby had come from, had never heard it from anyone else, but it was one that Jack had sung to him, and sometimes to Sophie, often enough over the years, that it was a comfort now. Jack had sung it to him, and he was singing it to Jack. Jamie let the parallel amuse him, a smile coming to his mouth as he looked at his sick brother-to-be.

"And all the wonder that you knew, will all come flying back to you... if you remember all the hope you left behind, open up your heart and change your mind. Oh, what you'll find, if you still dream!"

He combed his fingers through Jack's bangs. Maybe it was Jamie's imagination, but did Jack's hair feel drier? His skin maybe a little less heated?

Jamie eyed the dreamsand. If he could just coax it, and Jack, into good dreams, maybe that would help? "Fly away, beyond the moon, a place you've been before. Castles made of sand, a golden shore, and every wish you ever made is marching in the dream parade...."

Waves flowed and ebbed in the dreamsand, until suddenly it clarified into a boy climbing a tree, a smaller girl watching from underneath. The boy was clearly Jack; the girl, Jamie assumed, was his sister. He relaxed a little, now that the dream had taken. "Dream, and dream again," he sang softly, watching. "Do you remember building bridges in the air? Every hope you had, and every prayer, they're all still there if you dream. Oh, what you'll find if you dream. Time to close your eyes, but when you awake, still dream...."

He startled as Jack's mother sat down in the seat across from him. Her fingers, too, briefly checked Jack's forehead. "I don't wish to tempt things, but he might be...." Improving went unspoken. Her hope looked terrified.

Jamie suddenly wondered what it would be like for her, a few years from now, losing her son to the ice.

He didn't think he wanted to know.

"I hope so," he said.

"Your medicine...."

"He shouldn't have it too often," Jamie said. "A couple every four hours. So not yet." Above Jack's head, unseen by his mother, Jack and his sister played catch with a ball.

Anne Frost nodded, her hands folded in her lap. "Your song was lovely."

Jamie gave her a small smile. "Thank you. My brother used to sing it to me."

"Will you sing it again?"

Jamie nodded, and Jack's mother listened, learning the lullaby that Jack had taught to Jamie.

Bunny frequently complained about North's portals; Jack had figured out after any number of rants that they probably messed with Bunny's inner ear. Used to being wind-borne, Jack had never had any such problems, but he decided he didn't like Father Time's portal much better than Bunny liked North's.

He got thrown out of the chaotic whirling, flashing colors feeling like he'd been spun up, down, forward, backward, and inside out.

And now he was in night-black freefall. Great.

Before he could even try to grasp the wind, he slammed into snow, and into the hard ice below it.

If he'd still been human, the impact would have broken Jack's neck, several ribs, and probably dislocated his right shoulder. As it was-- "Ow," Jack complained, levering himself out of the snowdrift. He rolled his shoulders as his eyes adjusted, then jumped up into the air, looking around in surprise.

It was his pond, covered in thick drifts of fresh snow.

And Jamie was nowhere to be seen.

Neither was Jamie's house just up the hill and across the road. In fact, there was no house. No road. No cars. As Jack flew higher, letting the wind carry him, he looked around.

A dozen or so moonlit shapes in the distance, houses, caught his eye, and at the sight, his stomach sank somewhere below his feet. "Burgess," he breathed.

Burgess as it had been in his time, back when he'd been mortal.

Jack landed in a tree and looked down at his pond.

Swallowing, he forced himself to drift back down to the snow-covered ice. Closing his eyes, he gently touched the butt of his staff to the ice's surface and sent a jolt of power through it, thickening the frozen water, strengthening it so that it wouldn't break under anyone else's feet.

He cast his gaze up to the moon. "Manny, when am I?" he asked. "And where's Jamie?"

As ever, he got no answer.

It was definitely well past midnight now. Even without the Sandman's help, Jamie's eyelids kept getting heavier and heavier and he kept nod-jerking awake, then rubbing his eyes and shifting in the hard wood chair, trying to stay conscious. Someone needed to stay up with Jack, and Jack's parents were well asleep by now. What if something happened? What if Jack died while Jamie slept? What if he just slipped away between one breath and the next?

The thought was like ice, and not the good kind either. Jamie shook his head again, resolute, and reached fingers out for Jack's forehead again, checking.

"Mmnh." Under his touch, Jack stirred. It was hard to be sure, in the dim light of the small fire, but Jamie thought it looked like his flushed skin was less red? His hair was certainly less sweaty, almost dry. He let himself hope that maybe, maybe the worst had passed.

As dark hair feathered between his fingers, falling back against Jack's forehead as Jamie pulled his hand away, Jack's nose scrunched. His mouth twitched. His eyes, brown as Jamie's own, opened, and looked straight into Jamie's.

"Hi," Jamie said with a smile.

Jack's head shot up like a marionette's pulled by a string. He turned back around, looking in the direction of Burgess. He'd gone to where he'd seen Jamie last, back in their own time, and had been searching wider circles since, looking for tracks or any indication of where his best friend had gone. But now....

Now he knew exactly where Jamie was.

"Wind!" he called, and let it whirl him up into the sky. "Take me home!"

Author's Note: Thanks again to N-chan for superlative editing! And, the song Jamie sings... has bothered me for rather a long time. Since I first saw the film, in fact. (I saw it something like eight times in the theater.) Eventually I figured out what bothered me was the dissonance between the lullaby lyrics and the singing style. (Renée Fleming, the singer, is actually an operatic soprano.) So, here I used the song as an actual lullaby, and a tiny time paradox. Though certainly not the one that Jamie was sent back to fix!