[rd][fic][Rise of the Guardians] Tutelary 4/?

[sakon76]

Tutelary 4
by K. Stonham
first released 26th January 2013

Numen

Jack cleaved more tightly to his hometown that winter than he'd done for a while. His trips to other regions of the globe were done during the Pennsylvania nights, and were kept brief. He had friends and believers in other areas, and didn't neglect them, but they could tell there was something on his mind.

He was quieter. He was gentler. And somewhere in the back of his blue eyes, a few noticed, simmered an unholy rage.

Days, he shadowed Jamie, and sometimes Sophie. But the nine-year-old girl didn't seem to be having any problems. She was bright, had several good friends, and her teachers clearly loved her sunny attitude.

Not so with Jamie.

The sixteen-year-old, Jack discovered, was quiet and withdrawn in school. He sat in the back, handed in his homework with scarcely a murmur, and was seldom called on in class. Jamie ate lunch alone, took being jostled in the hallways without a word of complaint, and was too careful about double-checking the locks on his hallway locker, gym locker, and bicycle.

Jamie's old friends, meanwhile, were bright and cheerful and popular. The twins were both jocks these days, Jack discovered, members of a local hockey league. Monty had found his niche in the arts department, and preened about The Theatre. Cupcake, who was still stout but moved with the grace and assurance of a lifelong dancer, was right there with him. And Pippa, a 4.25 GPA student, acted as secretary of the student council.

Jack could have forgiven them growing up. He could have been happy for all they were achieving in their lives. He could even have been proud of them being such bright lights in their school. Except for one thing.

They'd turned on Jamie.

He listened, unseen, for weeks, to their whisper campaigns. Watched their snickering and giggles and the fingers being pointed at the boy who ate lunch all alone.

Jamie had once been their friend, their leader. The one who showed them the way back to wonder, dreams, hope, and memory. Now he was an outcast, and they were like a school of sharks circling in on wounded prey.

That, Jack could not forgive.

The day he caught Jamie looking at his wrist, absently rubbing a thumb across it, was the day Jack decided no more.

Fortunately for him, that day the quintet stayed after school, meeting up in the art room to make banners for the school's midwinter arts festival. Jack saw Jamie leave the building, safely on his way home, then slipped inside the high school, and made his way to the meeting of his former friends.

He opened the door and walked right in. Caleb looked up, expecting a teacher, but didn't see anyone. Standing, he stuck his head out into the hall, looked both ways, then shrugged and closed the door behind himself. "Huh, no one there."

"It's an old building," his brother said. "Maybe it just wasn't closed all the way."

Pippa giggled. "Maybe it was a ghost!"

Monty laughed. "Oh, come on! Next thing you know, you'll be saying you believe in spirits like Jamie Bennett!"

Cupcake snorted. "Jamie was cute before we all realized how crazy he is."

Jack felt anger burn low in his soul. "I wouldn't say that if I were you," he warned. But no one heard him.

"Jamie needs to grow up," Pippa, superior, said. She had a red paintbrush in her hand. "It's his own fault no one likes him."

"No," said Jack, who had been watching these five instigate things among their peers for weeks now, "it's yours."

Claude snorted. "Loser," he said.

Jack closed his eyes. "We were all friends once," he whispered sadly, letting the five of them go.

When he opened his eyes again, there was no mercy left in them.

He slammed his staff to the floor. Wind blasted everything in a twenty-foot radius. Ice snaked out, covering the doors and windows, freezing the latches. The fluorescent bulbs overhead froze, shattered, rained glass down upon the shrieking quintet. Fast as the wind, Jack moved while the teenagers were still sheltering their eyes and heads. He snatched up buckets of paint and spun around, splattering the walls and floor and students with their contents. He cackled madly as he knocked chairs and easels over. The posters the five of them had been working on were ripped to shreds and caught up in a whirlwind.

Monty had scrambled for the inner door and was trying to open it, to no avail. He pounded on it and shouted, but as Caleb had noted, there was no one around to hear. Pippa was having the same luck with the outer door; Cupcake fared no better at the windows. The twins stood back-to-back in the center of the room, staring as Jack let the last paint bucket fall. All of them were covered, clothing, skin, and hair, in paint.

Feeling pleased with his work, Jack flew over to Pippa's discarded paintbrush. He picked it up, looped toward the chalkboard.

LEAVE JAMIE BENNETT ALONE, he wrote clearly, conscious of the silence behind him.

Caleb swallowed. "Or what?" he challenged. Someone kind might have ignored how his voice squeaked. Jack was not feeling kind.

He glided back to Caleb. Touched a single icy finger to the teenager's shirt.

Frost-ice crackled all over Caleb's clothing.

Caleb was trembling. "J-Jack?" he whispered, incredulous. His eyes slowly refocused.

For the first time in years, Caleb believed in Jack Frost.

Still hovering, Jack leaned in very close to the teenager. "You lot call your minions off, and stay away from Jamie. Or I'll make this," he said with a gesture around the room, "look like a happy accident."

Caleb swallowed. "J-Jack," he tried again, reaching forward.

Jack raised a hand that crackled with blue-white ice power. Caleb froze. "Jamie's my friend," Jack said clearly. He leaned in close again. "You guys aren't anymore," he whispered.

---

Snowmen

"So then what happened?" asked Jamie.

Jack, floating alongside his friend, grinned. "Then," he confided, "we invented the sport of percussive egg bowling."

Jamie burst out laughing. "You did not!" he accused.

"We totally did," Jack confirmed. "The elves think it's the best thing ever. And Bunny swears up and down that North cheats."

"Does he?"

Jack shrugged. "Who knows?" He looked around, realized where they were. "Hey, let's hang a right here," he said. "There's a house down this way, you absolutely have to see the yard."

"Okay." Jamie followed instructions even as Jack flipped out of the air and started walking beside his friend like a normal human being.

"So," Jamie said quietly after about twenty feet or so, "what did you do to them?"

"To who?"

"Cupcake and them."

Jack feigned nonchalance.

Jamie sighed. "Jack, I know you did something. They got weeks of detention, and the rumor mill says they almost got suspended, and no one's bothered me in days."

Jack huffed a sigh. "Hopefully, I made them realize they'd grown up into bullies and jerks."

"Jack--"

"I didn't want it having to take your mother finding your body in the bathtub, Jamie."

Jamie glared. "I promised I'd tell you if I thought about it."

"And I don't want you to have to keep that promise." Blue eyes met brown. "Don't ask me to have that kind of patience, Jamie. Because I don't."

Jamie sighed. It came out white and cloudy in the pure air. "You can't protect me from everything, Jack."

"I know." Jack's hand rested on Jamie's shoulder. "But I could protect you from this." He squeezed. "Aaaand, here we are!"

Jamie stopped, looked at the yard before them. It was decorated with snowmen arranged in the most macabre scenes he had ever seen.

"The address is included in the town's Christmas driving tour each year," Jack said, grinning.

"...I find that fact oddly disturbing," Jamie said, staring at the tableau of a snowman discovering another snowman's head inside a snowy freezer.

"Come on, Hobbes!" The house's front door banged open. "I've got some great ideas!"

Jamie paled at the sight of the young man carrying a threadbare stuffed tiger. "Jack, this is Crazy Calvin's house!" he hissed at the winter spirit.

Jack gave him a sidelong glance. "'Crazy Calvin'?" he asked. "That's kind of judgemental, coming from the guy talking to his invisible friend."

"You're real!" Jamie shot back. "Calvin's been talking to that tiger since kindergarten, and I've never once seen him be real."

Jack gave Jamie a pitying look. "You didn't see me, either, until you believed," he said, and flew over to where the tiger had been set down as Calvin tested the snow's consistency. "Hey, Hobbes!"

Jamie stood nervously on the sidewalk for a few minutes, watching Jack talked to a stuffed toy. Calvin kept giving the pair glances, too, until finally he stood and walked over to Jamie.

"Why's my tiger talking to your imaginary friend?"

"Why's my friend talking to your stuffed tiger?" Jamie shot back.

Calvin looked miffed. "Hobbes is plenty real. Just because you can't see him...."

Jamie stiffened. "Nobody's ever seen him but you!"

Calvin's face fell, for just a moment. "I know."

Jamie paused. "He's... real?"

"He's real to me." Calvin's tone was defensive.

Jack had stopped talking to the stuffed tiger, and was looking at Jamie now. Jamie couldn't help remembering the way Jack had looked the very first moment Jamie had believed in him. And how lonely the winter spirit must have been before that. "I'll make you a deal," he said to Calvin, not looking away from his best friend's eyes.

"Oh?"

Sometimes, rarely, Jamie didn't know if he was in fact crazy or not. But he clung to the things that he knew to be true, regardless of what names he was called. What if Calvin was the same? "We close our eyes and count to three. When we open them again, I believe in Hobbes too, and you believe in Jack Frost too."

Calvin looked thoughtful. "You think that'll work?"

Jamie looked away from Jack, looked at maybe-not-crazy-after-all Calvin. "It's worth a try."

Calvin suddenly grinned. "For science!" He shut his eyes. Jamie hastily shut his too. And concentrated on believing.

"One... two... three!" Calvin counted.

Believing as hard as he could, Jamie opened his eyes.

And gaped.

"You really do have a tiger," he managed. Hobbes grinned toothily at him.

Calvin whooped and clapped Jamie on the back. "Come on, help us build some snow forts!" he said. "The two of us against the two of you."

"Oh, you don't want to go up against me..." Jack warned Calvin.

Calvin grinned. "Bring it on, snow-man!"

---

Author's Note: Obviously circling back to the traumatic events of chapter two. And the throw-away reference in chapter one! For the first story here, "numen" is a word I've been saving up since it was on the Merriam-Webster word-a-day list on November 25th, 2012. "Numen \NOO-mun\; noun: a spiritual force or influence often identified with a natural object, phenomenon, or place." As for Hobbes... he's a tulpa. Which I'll steal a partial description of from wikipedia: "A being or object which is created through sheer discipline alone. It is a materialized thought that has taken physical form." Or then there's the cut scene dialogue explanation:

"What's a tulpa?"

"Mmm, it's somewhere between a Velveteen Rabbit, a golem, a Frankenstein's monster, and an imaginary friend that comes to life."

"I swear, are we even speaking the same language?"

"Hey, you asked."