The Invisible (Jelsa)

Chapter XLII

"Eat something, dad." Azura said, offering the now cold piece of bread as they sat around the fire. Their father had been strangely cryptic and silent the whole time, shooting venomous glares at all of them as if they had done something terribly wrong.

"No." He sighed, "It won't do much now." He mumbled.

"Dad! I can see right through you. You need to eat before you melt away!"

He muttered something inaudible, but it didn't sound at all promising or like an agreement to eat. In, fact he shifted away from it.

"Don't you say things like that!" Colbourne hissed sourly, but refused to tell the group what his father had said. Jack looked at him, a bit surprised, as if he had forgotten his son's sonic hearing ability. Azura still pestered him.

"I haven't eaten in a year, Azura." He said, sighing, "I don't think I could choke it down even if I tried."

"You look younger than when we last saw you." Sarafina observed, breaking that awkward patch of ice for the first time that night. They could have made it back in a day, but Jack did not want to fly and was overall very weak and strained. It seemed if perhaps age was finally catching up with him. He had a look of strained pain twisting his facial features most of the time, and only when they sat did he look somewhat relieved.

"I do? Haven't seen a mirror in a bit." He said dryly, and Sarafina shrank away a bit.

"Everyone missed you, dad." Azura said, "I've been trying to take over your winter, but...well..."

"The other spirits would accept you. Of course." He said, as if it had been so clearly obvious and she simply couldn't have seen it.

"So what do I do about it, then?" Azura asked.

"Nothing. It's not your job." Jack said firmly.

"Well, hell dad. Maybe it is. Ever since you abandoned us!" Caulton suddenly fired at him savagely ,and for the first time Jack seemed taken aback, "You didn't even show up for mom's funeral. Nevada is convinced that if there were trophies for worst father of the century, you'd win hands down!"

"I..." Jack fished uncertainty, and looked at his son as if a lightbulb went on suddenly.

"We needed you the most dad. Heimdall took it really hard, and you weren't there. You've missed so much that...well...it's almost like you weren't there at all. You don't seem to care." Azura said a bit more tenderly.

"I've been underground, and-,"

"You could have checked up!" Sarafina said, fiddling with the strands on her dress, and wiped a tear away, "If you did you'd want to be there! You'd know the grandchildren that are five and six now and have to be explained that their grandfather isn't dead but that he left, and how my uncles and aunts and cousins are grasping for ways to try to make you not to be the bad guy but it's hard. Kids are...perceptive. Or you'd know that Fiona had a really bad cough and we all thought that she was going to die. Or you'd know that..." Sarafina broke off, looking down and sniffling.

"Know...what?" Jack asked, looking around. Everyone seemed to know what Sarafina had been about to say, because the four looked away with sorrow. There was a deep silence, the only sound the crackling of the fire, until Azura spoke.

"You would have known and come back when Gavner got sick..." She said wearily.

"Gavner's...sick?" Jack repeated, as if he couldn't believe his ears.

"No, he's not," Caulton said with a wheeze and Jack let out a visible sigh of relief, but it was short lived, "He's dead."

The silence that followed was even larger and more horrible. The look on Jack's face was what he may have looked like after Elsa died, Sarafina thought. It was such a look of anguish and suffering, and when he looked down she could have sworn a tear turned to ice before it hit the snow beneath his feet.

"When?" Jack's voice was strangled and hollow.

"Six months ago." Colbourne whispered softly, "He just couldn't fight it. I don't know if I should tell you this, but perhaps you need to be hurt a bit. He kept asking where you were, and when you were going to visit him when he sort of went crazy. Heimdall just kept telling him you were on your way. He died believing you were coming to him. But you weren't."

Jack's fists clenched hard, and he turned away with shame. "Oh, Gavner." He said slowly, "Gav."

The fire was dwindling, and Azura took a blanket and wrapped it around her father's shoulders. Not that he got cold, but as an act of comfort. "Tomorrow you can see his grave. He's in the Royal Graveyard, as Uncle Gavner. You would have wanted that. Elsa would have wanted that." She said. Jack nodded numbly and lay down, and curled up in a ball, facing away from his family.

He knew they assumed him to be asleep, but he couldn't stop thinking. For once in a decade, Elsa was not on his mind. He felt like the most horrible person on the planet. Gavner was his best friend, the closet thing to a brother he could ever remember having.

Before he knew Gavner believed, he had always liked the sharp-witted and young voice of the man in the council meetings. Gavner had been twenty-five when he met Jack as such. They'd been thick as thieves for sixty-five years. All the memories swirled in his head; the beers slid across the table whenever Elsa was giving birth, the late nights tapping on each other's windows like teenage girls, the sage advice his friend always had, the night their two children ran off together and the amount the swore that would make sailors blush, and the comfort of him when Elsa had been slowly deteriorating. He had been there, knowingly, but without being obtrusive in Jack's previous worst days. And he'd left without ever saying goodbye, ever thanking him. And now, Gavner- the last person besides his children that had been keeping him alive- was dead.

As the night grew darker and the minds of the four who had found him drifted off into slumber, Jack was now even more convinced on what he had to do.