We're Already Legends (Jack FrostxReader)

~chapter thirty~

It's dusk in Burgess and a certain little believer was not going to quit his hunt for at least one egg. Jamie, atop a ladder, strains for what looks like an Easter egg hiding in the rain gutter. The ladder totters and Jamie loses his balance, beginning to fall. "Whoaaa, whoa, whoa...aahh!" He grabs the gutter but it breaks loose, sending Jamie crashing down into a mound of snow. As he gets up off the ground, he sees that the Easter egg was in fact a dirty old tennis ball. Jamie stands up, bewildered, and dusts himself off as his friends laugh. A few have empty Easter baskets. "Let's check the park again." Caleb looks up. "Really?" Claude, annoyed, rolls his eyes. "For what, the Easter Bunny?" "Guys, I told you, I saw him! He's way bigger than I thought, and he's got these cool bommerang-things-" Caleb shakes his head. "Grow up, Jamie." Claude sighs. "Ah man, seriously." Jamie looks between his friends, confused by their odd behavior. "What's happened to you guys?" Jamie looks to Caleb as he speaks. "It was a dream. You should be happy you still get dreams like that and not..." They begin to turn away from him. Cupcake, haunted, finishes Caleb's sentence. "Nightmares." Pippa's the lone straggler. She looks tired, depressed, and hands Jamie her basket as she leaves. "Forget it, Jamie. There's just no Easter this year." She drops the tennis ball in his basket. "I can't believe this." Jamie shouts out to his friends. "He really is real!" Pippa walks away, trailing the others. Jamie doesn't know what to believe. He hangs his head and looks into the Easter basket, which is empty. "I know he is." Meanwhile, back at the North Pole in the Globe room, the majority of the workshops workers circled the Globe of Belief. Yetis stare at the globe, in shock as more and more lights begin to fade away. And while this was happening, Jack had fled to Antartica. He stared forward on an iceberg at the arctic circle. He had to do this. He had to get rid of them. His teeth, his memories, his answers. He had to toss them. He risked too much getting them, now he just wants them out of his sight. The tooth box now being a bad memory because of his recklessness and due to losing his snowflake. Jack runs to the edge of the floating iceberg, ready to throw his tooth box into the ocean. He resits, looking down at the box as he clutches it in his hand. "You've really never been more a-alone in your life?" He quickly turns around, his guard now up. But he relaxes once he sees it's just Stardust. "Starry? What, what are you doing here? And how did-" She cuts him off as she walked over to him. "How did I know exactly what you were thinking? Jack." He clears his throat as he looked down at his tooth box. "I know. I'm sorry, I just...I need to get rid of these." She could tell he was struggling in his mind. "Jack...you are not alone. You'll never be alone. You don't need to get rid of your teeth, your memories. You just need to come back with me, to regroup with our fellow Guardian friends to come up with a, a gameplan. Please? We need you." He chuckles at her lightly. "Starry...I, I, I..look, I don't belong in that group. Look at me! Bunny is right. I'm...I'm not a Guardian. Manny made a mistake." "Jack..." She looks up at him sympathetically, parting her lips to say more to convince him to go with her, but then halts her actions, looking off to the side warily. Jack notices her demeanor change, and looks down at her with concern. "Starry, what is it?" The familiar English accented voice of Pitch caught their attention, they turned to see him standing a few feet away, his hands behind his back. "I thought this might happen." He stood too close to them for Jack's liking so he stood in front of Stardust protectively, glaring at Pitch as he continued to speak. "They never really believed in you. I was just trying to show you that. But I understand." Jack whips out his staff and shoots a burst of frost at Pitch, but it's quickly deflected by the nightmare sand Pitch defends himself with. "You don't understand anything!" Jack continues to attack, while Stardust struggles to decide whether to stay and help or go inform the others. She finally decides on going to get help, but as she gets ready to shoot up into the sky Pitch hits her with nightmare sand. She squeaks and immediately falls to the snowy ground, landing harshly on her side. "Ah!" Her vision goes blurry as she fights to keep conscious. Jack, witnessing this, furiously lashes out his staff. Pitch blocks the attacks of ice and frost. His control over the nightmare sand has gained considerable strength. As Jack, wide eyed, glances at Stardust Pitch shouts to the winter spirit. "No? I don't know what it's like to be cast out?" Pitch then strikes back, putting Jack on the defense. Jack quickly turns away from Stardust then jumps in the air. Their show of force escalates until they're shrouded in a blanket of snow, ice and wind. As the wind and snow settle, Jack looks around stern and alert. "To not be believed in. To long for a family." Jack turns around to face Pitch. There's a look of compassion on Jack's face as he listens. "All those years in the shadows I thought, no one else knows what this feels like. But now I see I was wrong." They lock eyes. A moment of true connection between them. "We don't have to be alone, Jack." Stardust tries to sit herself up, trembling a bit as she does so. She looks up at the two not too far from her, and mumbles softly. "This, this isn't a trick, Pitch is making a real offer here." He continues to try to persuade Jack into joining him. "I believe in you. And I know children will too." Jack seems to actually be considering this. "In me?" "Yes! Look at what we can do!" Pitch gestures to a fantastical ice and nightmare "sculpture" that was created when Jack attacked him. "What goes better together than cold and dark?" Jack looks at the fractured reflections of themselves cast in the icy sculpture. "We can make them believe. We'll give them a world where everything, everything is..." Jack turns to face Pitch. "Pitch black?" Pitch, realizing how this looks, clarifies. "And Jack Frost too. They'll believe in both of us." Jack stares at him, considering the offer. Stardust watches with wide eyes. "Jack, no.." He finally gives Pitch his answer. "No, they'll fear both of us. And that's not what I want." Jack turns and walks away as Stardust sighs in relief. "Now for the last time, leave me alone." Pitch looks confused and hurt, and Stardust knew his feelings were true. This is not the response he was expecting. Then, his eyes flame with anger. He made himself vulnerable, and Jack rejected him. No more negotiating now. "Very well. You want to be left alone? Done. But first..." Suddenly Jack and Stardust hear a familiar twitter. Pitch reaches into his coat to pull out.. "Baby Tooth!" Stardust shouts from her position on the ground, unable to move the lower half of her body yet. Jack charges forward. There's terror in Baby Tooth's eyes. She lets out a squeak as Pitch clenches her tight with his fist. "The staff, Jack." Jack doesn't lower his staff as he keeps it aimed at Pitch. A smirk forms on Pitch's lips as he stares at Jack. "Fine, then if the fairy's not enough of an offer..." Pitch snaps his fingers and beside him swirls a twister of nightmare sand and once it fades away, he gasps and widens his eyes. "Snowflake." Jack settles and the winds and snow subsides. Y/N was barely able to stand in such a weakened state. She slowly walked over to Jack, her eye lids drooping. "J-Jack?" She passed out and Jack caught her quickly before she hit the ground. He looks over her body, seeing some bruises here and there. He clenched her to him closely and his staff as he glared at Pitch with watery eyes. "What did you do? What did you do to her?!" Pitch looked at him with satisfaction. "I did what was necessary, Jack. Now that we got that settled, the staff. You have a bad habit of interfering. Now hand it over. And I'll let her go." Baby Tooth twitters, looking to Jack and shaking her head no. Off to the side, Stardust starts to get feeling back in her legs. She wriggled them a bit, trying to wake them up. "Come on, c-come on legs. Work!" Baby Tooth struggles to get loose, but Pitch only tightens his grip. She can hardly breathe. Jack sees he has no choice. Right as Jack was about to hand over his staff, "No!" Stardust blasted Pitch with a ball of her energy, thus causing him to release Baby Tooth. She tweeted happily and zipped over to Jack's side. Pitch growled and glared at the red head then suddenly he had a smug looking face. Jack and Stardust shared a smile then looked back to face Pitch, but seen he was no longer there. Jack immediately began looking around alert. He heard a yelp, Stardust cried out as Pitch grabbed her by her hair and yanked her up off the ground, due to her legs not completely awake still, she was leaned against Pitch as he tightly wrapped his arms around her body. She was on the verge of tears at this point. "Don't cry, my dear Star. As long as Frost here obeys, I'll set you free. No harm shall come to you, love." She whimpers and does her best to pull as far away from him as possible. "Is, is, is that what y-you told my sister right before you, you beat her?" He chuckles as she struggled to get out of his grasp, which only made him tighten his hold on her. "Don't ask don't tell." Jack's had enough from Pitch. He was glaring at the man with murderous daggers. "Let. Her. Go. You bastard." "Of course, Jack. Just give me the staff. If not, I'm happy to play with my new toy. The other one wasn't as fun to play with. I broke her rather quickly. But this one?" Pitch roughly tilted Stardust's head back slightly, leaving her neck wide open. "A-Ah..J-Jack?" She squeaked. "Don't, don't do it." Pitch continued. "I'm interested to see how long she'd last." He lightly traced a bony finger across her neck, making the motion of slitting her throat. He didn't want to kill her though, he just made that motion to scare Jack. Pitch wants her alive. He wants her to be able to feel. Jack hands over his staff to Pitch's waiting hand. Pitch twirls the staff. Jack holds Y/N close to his side as he glares at Pitch, getting the feeling that he wasn't planning on going through with his side of the deal. "Alright, now let her go." Pitch's face fell as he looked at Jack with a deadpan stare. "No. You said you wanted to be alone." He gripped Jack's now blackened staff as he leaned forward a bit. "So be alone!" Pitch meant it literally, and so he blasted nightmare sand at Baby Tooth, which then sent her in the air and down into the mouth of a crevasse. "No!" Jack, enraged, can't believe what he's seeing. Pitch tosses Stardust to the side, causing her to yelp as she hit the ground, laying on her back knocked out due to her head hitting the ground hard. But not hard enough to bleed out on impact. He then lifts the staff and breaks it, over his knee, cracking it in two. Light explodes from the staff and terror comes into Jack's eyes, clutching his chest as if in pain. While Jack was down, Pitch sends a burst of nightmare sand, blasting Jack and slamming him into the iceberg wall behind him. As the ice cracks, Jack comes loose and falls forward into the chasm below. Pitch looks down into the ice fissure chuckling. He throws the broken shards of Jack's staff down into the crevasse and casually walks away, back to Stardust's unconscious body. He stares down at her for a moment, then bends down and picks her up, carrying the unconscious Guardian bridal style and disappearing on the horizon. Jack, trapped in the crevasse, brings his legs up closer to his body, curling up back against the icy wall. "What have I done?"