Just Harry

"Oh no, no no! C'mon, kid! Don't stop now, you're so close!"

Desperately, Jack Frost cast around for something, anything he could do to stop the twelve-year-old runaway from freezing to death.

It was the dead of Winter and Jack brought the cold, he couldn't take it away. All he could do was ask the Wind to leave ground level and travel high, whipping the clouds into a protective cover. He'd overheard someone once say that a clear night was coldest.

The clouds dulled the full moon, reducing the light the kid had been stumbling through, but the kid had stopped moving three minutes ago.

Stopped getting back up. Stopped crying.

It was only a matter of time before the boy, in a thin grubby jacket and sneakers, stopped breathing too.

The worst of it was that he was so close to town. A ten minute walk at most! Jack had flown there and back several times already, looking for someone to throw a snowball at or a lit window to frost a cry for help on.

But his snowballs almost *never* hit adults. They just... lacked something. And all the lit windows melted his frost instantly, the heaters beneath them blasting away at full strength.

He'd tried to lead the kid, but a snowball had just knocked him down - his legs were so weak! - and he seemed blind to the frost lines that glowed thick under the moonlight. If the terrain weren't so broken, he'd have tried to force the kid to slide home.

Surely even an angry home was better than dying scared and alone in the cold.

A shadow shifted and Jack whirled, furious, to punish Pitch for seeking to torment the poor kid in his last moments-

-only to stop dead, as a boy - a being - that looked almost like a mirror image of himself stepped out of the shadows instead.

The fleeting thought that this was some sort of trick was banished as he sensed the being, felt his nature even if he didn't quite understand it.

The skinny, black-haired, green-eyed being was like Jack. A part of the world, yet apart. And, like Jack, here to help, not hurt.

The boy blinked at him and smiled - oddly shy considering the inevitability of the force he represented. Jack wondered if he was lonely too. Thought maybe he must be, if this was the first time Jack was seeing him.

Jak had seen a lot of people die from the cold, after all, even in this age of electricity and shelters. Never before had he seen this black-haired boy born of Death, just as he had been born of Winter.

The other teen didn't speak to Jack, though, stepping past him instead to kneel by the kid.

He reached out, skin almost as white as Jack's - bone white, not bloodless white - and poked the kid firmly on the shoulder.

"Up you get, Alex." The boy's accent was British, soft at the edges, and kind. "Come on, I've got a blanket with your name on it."

The kid stirred. His eyes cracked open. They closed. He stilled.

He sat up.

Jack gaped as the boy looked up at the black-haired being, either ignorant to or uncaring of the fact that he'd also left his body behind in the snow.

The dark haired teen smiled, comfort and humour and security radiating from him the way cold radiated from Jack. A thick, woollen blanket appeared in his hand.

True to his word, it had 'Alexander McCarthy' embroidered on one side. The boy flicked it around the kid's - Alex's? - shoulders and tucked it in. By the way the kid nuzzled into it, it felt warm, for all that Jack could tell - as a being of Cold - that the actual temperature in the area remained freezing.

"You've had a bit of a night, haven't you?" The boy murmured, sympathy without anxiety. One hand gently cupped the back of his head. "Don't worry, kiddo. Everything's going to be fine, starting right now."

Shyly, the twelve-year old slipped his hand from his blanket to reach for the being who was guiding him away from life. The black-haired boy took his hand with a wink and stood to his full height. Under his feet, before Jack's disbelieving eyes, the snow turned to sand - golden-white and smooth, not like Sandy's but like a tropical beach he'd only ever seen in pictures. 2000 miles inland, the surf broke. The air tasted of salt mixed with fresh fruit and in the distance, loving laughter. In the dead of night the sun shone bright and hot for one single second-

-and the world was dark again, and Jack was alone. Just him and his crook, the being of Winter, standing guard over the body of a child who'd died in his cold.

He should have felt afraid. He'd all but brushed shoulders with Death.

But... kneeling briefly to touch the boy, frosting over his body to protect it from scavengers until it could be discovered, he instead found himself feeling... glad.

Glad that there was someone there for people when they died. There for the children, especially.

And hope, a duality that he would meet the other being again paired with the absolute hope that it would never be under the same circumstances.

But, he was the Guardian of Joy - not Hope. He knew there'd only be one way they'd meet again.

He sighed.

"Wind." He called, barely at speaking level. The wind, hovering obediently thousands of feet above him, came to curl around him instantly. It tugged and fretted, itching to pull him away from something that it couldn't comprehend.

"Take me home." Jack whispered.

And the Wind carried him, not to his lake but to a warm window, through which a different child lay sleeping. One who wasn't cold and would wake up again.

Just Harry