For @rotgsecretsanta prompt 14: Jack and Bunny investigating a crashed spaceship! ...There was a fic planned, but it’s in various stages of Doesn’t Like Me Right Now, so have a snippet instead.
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Hollow Spaces
“See? Weird, giant... metal... cave. Thing.” Jack finished eloquently, gesturing to the open space.
It wasn’t a cave. E Aster Bunnymund knew that down to his bones. Despite the wear and tear, the weathered metal and the cracks littering the hull, and the fog obscuring the ground--he could still recognize it. The domed shape, the elegant archways, the broken, ancient technology littering the narrow path.
“--Mate, you don’t understand,” Aster said, awed. “This isn’t a cave. It’s a buried Alien Spaceship.”
“What?” Jack echoed, confused. “No? There’s no way it’s a--”
Aster could hear as Jack’s voice died in his throat as he looked around, examining the surroundings with a new eye. In Aster’s peripheral vision, he saw Jack do a 180, then snap back to face him with a blush.
Jack cleared his throat. “--Alright, in my defense,” he started up again, “I found this place WAY before anyone was ever talking about extraterrestrials. So.”
Aster almost couldn’t speak, he was so overwhelmed. But the words needed to be said. Spoken, perhaps, into existence. Swallowing, he forced out a whisper, immeasurably small and breathless.
“...It’s Pookan.”
“Well, I knew THAT,” Jack rolled his eyes. “I recognized the sigil on the door. But I just - I thought it was yours?”
Aster laughed, something between bitter and disbelief. “It’s not.”
“But-” Jack started, then immediately went quiet, understanding the implications. The ancient race, the spacefaring Pooka, the genocide. “Wait... if it’s not yours... Then who’s is it?”
“That’s the million dollar question, yeah,” Aster said, closing his eyes for a brief second before the need to see--to keep an eye on this anomaly, this impossibility, to keep it from vanishing from underneath his nose--forced his eyes open again. He looked upon halls he never thought he’d ever see again, rolling out in all directions, an endless possibility. And he frowned. “...Whose indeed.”
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The World is a Cage
Rating: T
Fandom: Rise of the Guardians
Relationship: Jack Frost/Pitch Black
Tags: Dark!Jack, Lonely!Jack, Bitter!Pitch, Altho only as much as can be crammed into less than 2k
Summary: For the @rotgsecretsanta 2023 prompt: Jack/Pitch with Dark Jack post ROTG when he continues to not fit in amongst the Guardians as the events with Pitch simmer down. Art or fic. Happy ever after only please.
When all you want in the world is to not be alone, wish fulfillment requires the cooperation of someone, literally anyone, else.
On AO3 here.
Here he was again.
Alone.
Jack sat on the edge of a skyscraper over looking New York City. It was beautiful up here, and it was cold. A little bit fun, and very, very dark. The city glittered far below him, the ambient sounds of life drifting up between the buildings to remind him bittersweetly that people were down there. Life kept on, the world continued to spin, humanity continued to thrive, even as it left Jack behind.
Jack picked at his nail polish as he admired the sights. It was black, with a white crackle coating. It reminded him of ice. It felt right. And, well, applying, removing, and reapplying nail polish gave him something to do with all the hours he didn’t spend with kids because…
He had nothing, and no one, else to fill those hours with.
Jack had been right from the beginning. The Guardian lifestyle wasn’t right for him. The kids were great. Jack had always loved the kids. But the endless work, the on-call schedule, the, and he didn’t care how much the others tried to deny it, bribing in exchange for belief?
It wasn’t for him.
It never had been.
There had been a brief time, when Jack continued to pester and bother the others, insisting on making them notice him, pay attention to him, but it got exhausting. Jack had read enough books in the painful years between emerging from the lake and being chosen to know a relationship as one-sided as that wasn’t a real relationship at all.
Jack stopped pestering them. Jack waited for them to notice he was gone. They probably had noticed, but they hadn’t done anything about it. If Jack caught the baby teeth out and about, they might fawn over him for a minute, but then they left. And Tooth never showed up to say hi in their place.
So that was that. No more to be said. Jack wasn’t really one of them. No more to be done. So Jack did nothing.
He slid off the edge of the rooftop and let the winds carry him south.
Time and again, Jack found himself wondering what if. Jack hadn’t had to become a Guardian. There had existed at least one other path his life could have taken, and Jack knew it was stupid to wallow in the past, but he really, truly didn’t have anything better to do. Once he’d brought the snow day, once he’d made sure the kids had fun with it, his job was done and all Jack had left was to loiter by himself and think about it.
And his favorite place to do that was where his choice had been made.
Except…
Someone was already there. Pitch sat against an outcropping of ice, as if he needed to shelter from the frigid wind. It was strange to see him like that, curled up and slumped over. Or maybe it wasn’t strange, and Jack just remembered the times when he stood tall and towered with his spine straight and shoulders back the most clearly. Jack had seen Pitch laid low before. Multiple times throughout their fights. Pitch looking strange here said more about Jack, and what he chose to remember, than Pitch.
There was no point in pretending they weren’t both here. Jack could turn and leave, but he didn’t want to. Pitch had probably noticed him already, what with the black hoodie surrounded by all this white ice. Jack would be hard to miss. And what would the Boogeyman think if Jack walked away now? Probably not anything true. Probably something self-deprecating and uncharitable of Jack’s character and there was no reason to let this remain the status quo between them.
It took effort to walk up to Pitch. There were a lot of ways this conversation could go badly. Pitch’s gift was always knowing the worst thing he could say to someone. There were a handful of ways this conversation could go well, though, and on the off-chance Jack could spend a little time feeling slightly less lonely than he currently did, it might be worth it.
“I admit I'm surprised to see you back here,” Pitch said when Jack stopped mere feet from him, soft voice barely audible even in the quiet of this place.
Jack decided to play along. “Not as surprised as me,” he said. “Weren’t you trapped?”
Pitch didn’t look at him, but his voice grew in volume as he got comfortable with speaking, as he eased into his monologue mode. “Only for a little while, Jack. Everything erodes over time. Even my own fear. It was always just a matter of time that I would break out again.”
It didn’t sound like Pitch was sharpening his words into blades, so Jack took another risk and sat down beside him. He didn’t feel safe, exactly, just… like the worst thing Pitch could do wouldn’t be as bad as being alone again. “Everything erodes, huh? I’m not so sure about that.”
Pitch tch’ed, but it was soft. Gentle mocking. Could be much worse. “If you’re about to preach about love lasting forever…”
Jack couldn’t help it. He laughed. “I mean, I wasn’t. But now that you brought it up…”
“Ugh,” Pitch groaned, shaking his head and turning away. “Optimism. Disgusting.”
“I don’t know,” Jack teased. “Calling your own escape inevitable seems like a pretty optimistic thing to do.”
Pitch waved his hand. “That’s fatalistic. It’s a different thing.”
“Who says it can’t be both?” Jack shot back. He was, despite everything, enjoying himself. Enjoying this verbal spar with Pitch.
“It could be both,” Pitch reasoned, “but it isn’t. Being optimistic about my escape implies I thought my situation would be somehow bettered by it. However,” Pitch gestured at the desolate landscape around them, seemed to swipe right over and ignored their sculpture frozen in time. “As you can see, it was not. I am still powerless, I am still hated, and I am still without my nightmares. My cage has simply been expanded to include the rest of the world, Jack.”
Feeling trapped, even when you could go anywhere. Jack was sad to realize how similar their situations were. As horrible as Pitch had been, Jack wouldn’t wish this on anyone. And he wasn’t… hoping Pitch would rise again and terrorize the world, but he was in a place now where he totally understood Pitch giving the Guardians a taste of their own medicine. Where Jack might enjoy it if he saw it happening again. He loved kids, but…
Kids were resilient. They would be okay without the Guardians bribing them for a little while.
“Does it help to know I’m in here with you?” Jack asked tentatively.
Pitch looked at Jack out of the corner of his eye. His expression wasn’t giving Jack a whole lot of hope, but he waited quietly for Pitch to answer anyway. “Are you really? You have believers now, Jack. You can do whatever you like.”
He couldn’t, though. What Jack wanted to do was belong somewhere, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t change that he didn’t belong anywhere.
He could have some fun though.
“What would you say if I offered to help you rough them up some?” Jack said with the tone of changing the subject.
Pitch stared at him with wide eyes, silent for long seconds. Then his eyes narrowed. “You can’t mean what I think you mean.”
“I mean,” Jack said, “I don’t want to eliminate them. I like kids, Pitch, I don’t want them stuck with nothing but nightmares. But,” he emphasized with a playful little smirk, “I wouldn’t mind seeing Bunny all tiny and cute again for a while.”
Pitch scoffed and looked away, a grumpy hunch to his shoulders. “You’re only offering me half of what I want.”
“I’m offering you more than what you have.” More than what both of them had. A reprieve, if nothing else. It was worth a shot. It was worth Jack’s effort. He continued, putting weight behind his words. “I’m serious, Pitch. I want to see them struggle. I want to see them go for more than a day without belief. I want them to notice me again. To remember I’m fucking here!”
Jack didn’t know when he’d started shouting, but he was. Jack panted as he stared out at the snow and ice around them. At the sculpture they left here so long ago. At… what they could do.
Together.
Jack turned back and found Pitch staring at him with wide eyes again. Speculative eyes that traced up and down his figure, his face. “You’ve changed.”
“I haven’t, really,” Jack said. “I tried playing it their way. It didn’t work. So it’s time to try yours. What do you say?”
Pitch seemed reluctant, like he didn’t trust that Jack was telling the truth. And honestly? Fair. Jack had played a significant part in fucking him up the first time, so it was only reasonable that Pitch wouldn’t believe him now. Jack would just have to convince him.
Eventually, Pitch sighed and quirked an eyebrow. “Better than sitting on my ass out here, I suppose.”
Jack slapped his knee loudly and grinned. “That’s the spirit!”
Pitch turned that eyebrow on Jack. “What? Having nothing left to lose?”
Jack nodded readily. “And everything to gain.”
Pitch pressed himself up to sit with his back straight, his expression fluttering into one of focus and resolve, like the curtain of self-pity and yearning had been pulled back in a rush. “Alright, then. If you’re really serious, let’s make a plan.”
Jack eagerly spun in his seat, crossing his legs and dropping his staff in his lap. This was already the most Jack had talked to anyone in years, and now Pitch was gearing up to talk to him for hours yet. It was all Jack wanted, really, that and a little payback. If they could strike the perfect balance, then Jack would do everything in his power to keep this conversation, these plans, this partnership going for as long as they would exist as spirits.
Jack pushed his hands into his knees and leaned forward to smile at Pitch. “Let’s make some chaos.”
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