Chapter Text
Jack never actually made it out of the North Pole.
His brain was foggy and his heart was beating too fast, and he couldn’t even see right. Everything was swimming in front of him, as if he couldn’t focus on anything, or he was walking through a dream. He didn’t have a destination in mind- he just needed to get away .
He ended up hiding in the first enclosed space he came across, a small closet that had been left partially-open.
Jack quickly slipped inside, his shaking hands having trouble grabbing the doorknob, but he got it eventually. Then, with the door shut, he slid to the floor. His shaky hands reached up the grab onto snow-white hair, tugging hard.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe, but his breath was coming out in shuttering, panting huffs, so he had to be breathing, right? But with his chest this tight, it certainly didn’t feel that way.
He gripped his hair harder and ground his teeth against the pressure. Air hissed from between his teeth, cold like the winter winds.
His heart was thumping, squeezing his chest in a way that let him feel each pulsing beat of his heart, pumping the cold blood around a cold body. He was so cold , he was always cold, but this was a different kind of cold. There was something wrong with it, something screaming at him that he was in danger.
His fingers, still grasping his hair tightly, were thick with the heavy numbness. They didn’t feel like his fingers- they felt like ice, the fingers of an ice sculpture, the fingers of a corpse in the snow, the frost-bitten fingers of someone who’s spent far too long in the cold (and maybe they were; after all, he’s always been in the cold).
Tears fell from his eyes, more from the stress his body was under than because of any emotions. Despite their saltiness, they still froze against his cheeks, creating miniature icicles. His eyes themselves burned as his vision continued to swim.
Just like his eyes, his shoulder burned, the only part of his body that burned with heat rather than cold.
His blood was rushing too loudly for him to hear, so he couldn’t be sure if the Guardians were looking for him. He couldn’t be sure if they were yelling, trying to find him so they could kick him out (or something worse). He couldn’t even be sure if they knew he was still there or not, nor could he tell if he was being loud or silent. If he was being loud, though, someone would probably find him. They would find him, and he didn’t want that, but he couldn’t stop this. He couldn’t. His body was out of his control, and his thoughts were buzzing fast, and his limbs wouldn’t cooperate, and the world around him was melting away, melting away like ice in the flame, melting away like snowflakes on a tongue, melting away like the snow in spring.
He was melting away and freezing over, and he couldn’t tell if this was real or a nightmare.
XXX
It only took a second for Jack to fling snow at them and run off, but it also only took a second for the Guardians to blink that snow out of their eyes.
What took longer was wrapping their minds around what happened.
“Oh dear…,” Toothiana spoke softly, not knowing what to say.
Sandy made a few concerned symbols over his head.
“That… could have gone better, yes,” North sighed.
Even Aster, now that Jack was gone, was quickly calming down as he realized that something had just gone very wrong. Much more wrong than just a simple argument between people who had a history.
He ran a hand through his fur, flattening an ear in the process.
“Aw, geez, I didn’t think he’d get that upset over all this,” Bunny mumbled.
And that was true. He got angry, and he wasn’t completely thinking clearly, but his intention hadn’t been to upset Jack. He wasn’t all that happy about Jack being there or about him being selected as a new Guardian, but his goal hadn’t been to upset Jack just for the hell of it. He’d wanted answers- he’d wanted reasons . It wasn’t until then, after the yelling had stopped that the idea suddenly occurred to him.
Maybe Jack didn’t have those answers either.
Maybe he wanted them just as much as Aster did, if not more.
“So… What now?”
“… I mean, we might be able to catch up with him?” Toothiana suggested. “We should probably make sure he’s okay, right?”
“… Do ya think we’ll actually be able to find ‘im? He hid from everyone for months .”
“That’s…”
It turned out, however, that they didn’t have to find him or catch up with him. Because, while the four of them tried to decide what to do without wasting too much time, one of North’s yetis poked its head into the room and grumbled something out in its own language.
Hearing what it said, North’s eyebrows crinkled in concern.
“Apparently, Jack is in closet,” he told the rest of them.
“… He’s what now?”
“Gregory said he heard strange noises from inside one of the closets,” North explained. “I think it is safe to assume it is him.”
“Why would he go hide out in one of your closets, mate?”
“Well, only one way to find out,” North shrugged. “Gregory, can you show us which closet?”
The yeti just nodded and turned around, beginning to lead them without checking to make sure that they were following. North gestured for the rest of the guardians to follow, and so they went down the twisting halls of North’s workshop, matching the slow steps of Gregory.
Eventually, the yeti stopped, pointing out one of the doors down a hallway.
At first, they didn’t hear anything- no suspicious noises to indicate that Jack was there, but then Bunny’s ears twitched as they picked something up. A short, sharp breath.
Before the others did anything, Bunny went a few paces down the indicated hallway. Sure enough, the sounds got louder, being loudest when he stood in front of a door labeled ‘broom closet’.
Looking up, he saw that the other Guardians had, in fact, followed him down the hallway, and Toothiana was already lifting a fist to knock on the door.
“Jack?” she called out.
They didn’t get a response, but even those of them who didn’t have more sensitive hearing could hear it now: harsh breaths punctuated by occasional sobs and gasps. The sound of it stabbed into Aster’s heart with guilt as his mind identified the noise. Jack was crying, and he had, really, been the one to make him cry.
Any further knocking garnered no more of a response than the first time, so instead of continuing, the Guardians decided to just try opening the door.
And if Aster was guilty before the door opened, he felt even guiltier now.
Jack was curled on the ground amongst the closet’s scattered contents, pulling his hair tightly enough that he was definitely pulling some strands out, and it very likely hurt. His chest was expanding and deflating rapidly, shuttering in time with Jack’s choking sobs, and he still didn’t show any sign that he was aware of their presence. He likely couldn’t see them, considering the fact that his face was hidden in his knees.
Moving slowly, Aster knelt down so that, if Jack decided to look up, he wouldn’t find the six-foot tall rabbit that sent him into this state standing over him. Now closer to Jack, he could also see that the boy was shaking with small tremors.
It wasn’t until then that Aster figured out what was going on. Jack wasn’t just crying - he was having a panic attack.
That first realization was soon followed by a second: Jack was small .
Jack was a child.
Technically, a child older than any human alive on Earth, but still a child ( forever a child).
And Aster had sent him into a panic attack.
“Aw, geez,” he muttered, running a hand across his ears.
It was then that Toothiana fluttered forward, reaching out with the intention of comforting him. But the second her hand made contact with him, Jack flinched away, jerking violently as his breathing suddenly got even faster.
“NO!”
The boy pushed himself farther into the closet, but he was finally looking at them. Or, in their direction, at least. Jack’s eyes were moving from place to place rapidly, and he was blinking a lot, so Bunny couldn’t really tell if he was actually looking at them.
“Jack?” Tooth called out quietly, looking like she wanted to reach for him again.
Aster understood why. He understood now that he’d finally realized that Jack was still a child, still someone that they were supposed to protect. He knew that she wanted to comfort him, to calm him with a caring touch, but Aster knew that was a bad idea. Jack clearly didn’t want to be touched right then, at least not by them (and he couldn’t exactly blame him for that).
Jack’s only response was to shake his head- though, since it didn’t really make sense as a response, it might not have been intended to be one.
“What should we do…?” Toothiana asked, turning back toward the other Guardians.
Aster was then reminded that, out of the four of them, Tooth was the one who typically came into the least contact with children. She spent most of her time at her palace directing her fairies. Before they had to defeat Pitch, when was the last time she’d even left? Other than the occasional Guardian meeting, it had probably been a while.
So it made sense that she didn’t know what to do.
“He’s having a panic attack,” Aster stated, keeping his voice quiet.
He watched Tooth’s eyes widen before her gaze darted back to the panicking boy.
“Let’s… just back up and give him some space for now,” Bunny suggested, his chest heavy.
He didn’t really know what else to do, either. He did know some ways to help with panic attacks, but he was reasonably sure that most of them wouldn’t help here. Jack didn’t trust them, barely even knew them, and his panic attack had essentially been their fault. So being this close to him and trying to get him to let them help would probably just end up making things worse.
And so, Aster, Tooth, and North each backed up from the doorway a bit. Sandy, however, did not. Instead, the man snapped his fingers, clearly having an idea.
Then, before anyone could question him, let alone consider if they should stop him, Sandy tossed a small handful of sleep sand at Jack, knocking him unconscious.