Always With You
by K. Stonham
first released 24th August 2013

Even before he knew what his center was, before he knew who he was, Jack had always felt a certain... something... for adults. Or, at least, the kind of adults who shrouded themselves in uncomfortable clothing and dour frowns. The kind of adults who never had time for rainbows, or kids, or to look up in wonder at the softly falling flakes of a first snowfall.

(He'd read Dickens, and as little fun as that was, far too many of the man's characters were as dour and sour as the adults Jack alternately despised and pitied. Scrooge was merely the outlier example.)

And so it was that when he finally, finally got back to his own time and place, popping out of a green-tinged time-warping portal, he was relieved to find it was winter and he was in Burgess.

He was slightly less relieved when he checked the windows of the Bennett house and saw a lanky young man curled up, sound asleep, in Jamie's bed. Jack's heart sank.

He shouldn't have been surprised, and in a way he wasn't; time travel always messed things up. It was like it was a rule or something.

The image of the young man he just left superimposed it over the one before him, and Jack couldn't help the reflexive cringe. Brown hair gained a reddish tinge, and the closed eyes that should be the color of hazelnuts were instead green. And there was no laughter, no joy in the eyes of the boy he had watched grow from a young dragon-tamer to the chief of a bizarre Viking tribe.

He couldn't take back the words he said then, and he would most likely never see Hiccup again. But Jack was a Guardian of Childhood, and his last words to the boy who had been his friend should have been something better than a vicious fight.

It had still hurt, though, when he'd flung the words at Hiccup, "You're no fun anymore," and seen them... not even make a mark. Just disappear, like they'd never been spoken. Like all those winters of play had never meant anything.

"Leave," Hiccup had said flatly, and Jack had. He'd left Berk, taking his softer, gentler winter with him, and hunted until he'd found a way home.

Jack hated having lost his friend, and he didn't know what had happened, what he'd done wrong, what had changed while he was away that last summer.

And now he'd been gone from Burgess for years, apparently, and Jamie was all grown up, and... and even if he remembered Jack, even if he still believed in him, it was probably going to be just like it had been with Hiccup, and something was going to be wrong.

Jack's eyes flooded and he wiped them angrily. He hated crying, and sometimes it felt like he'd spent half his afterlife doing nothing else. So he sucked it in and sucked it up and got on with his job, because he did have a job to do, thank you very much. He decorated the town in his prettiest frost, his nicest snow, the best icicles he could make. Burgess always looked fit for a Christmas postcard by the time he was done. It was the least he could do for the town that'd been his home for centuries.

It was mid-morning by the time he finished, and he stood contentedly in Lake Park, satisfied with a job well done, admiring the precise slant of the boughs of the pine trees. Others (Bunny) might not appreciate it, but aesthetically there needed to be a particular ratio of snow-to-branch thickness to get it looking just right, and Jack had taken a long time to master it.

A snowball hit his back, exploding into a thousand glittering puffs of white. Jack whirled, shocked. He couldn't remember the last time anyone snuck up on him, landed a hit like that.

Jamie, tall and gangly and smiling, stood before him, snow crystals decorating the palms of his gloves. "It is you," Jamie said, and if his voice was a little deeper, it was also full of that same excitement as when he was ten. "You came back! I mean, North said you would, but I was starting to get worried..."

He was smiling, full of light the way Hiccup no longer had been.

Jack felt the edge of his worries start to shiver away, transfiguring into snow powder to be carried away by the wind.

"You can still see me," he said.

"Of course I can!" Jamie rolled his eyes.

Jack swallowed his sob of relief, almost choked on it.

Jamie grinned. "Race you to the sledding hill?" he offered.

Jack grinned back and did one better. "Who needs a hill?" he asked, and suddenly the ground was slick beneath Jamie and Jack was flying, guiding a path that looped through the woods and back out again. Jamie's shrieking laughter echoed in his ears. The sound patched a hole someone else had torn in Jack, soothed the pain. He knew that, simple as it was, this was all he needed for happiness. His friends, and their laughter. And even if he couldn't erase what happened between himself and Hiccup, at least he could focus on what had come before that.

Astrid approached Hiccup where he stood on the cliff above the docks. She couldn't help remembering doing this before, back when they were kids and his dad had hauled Toothless off in a quest to find and destroy the Dragons' Nest. The set of Hiccup's lines was different now than it was then; he'd very much grown into a man. But the misery in his shoulders was... well, not quite the same, but very close.

"You had to do it," she said.

"Had to break my friend's heart?" Hiccup sounded somewhere between angry and resigned, with almost none of his usual sarcasm present.

"You know what would have happened if Jack hadn't left." The Elder's oracle had been very specific about that. The winter spirit needed to return to his own time and place; Ragnarök itself might have occurred if he'd stayed any longer.

"I know." Hiccup sighed, and if she heard the softness of tears in that, Astrid resolutely ignored the weakness he was displaying. "I just wish he knew..."

"Hey." Her hand settled on his shoulder. "He's your friend. Someday he'll forgive you, and remember the good times." That was how friendship worked.

"Yeah." Hiccup looked back out at the horizon, where they'd caught their last glimpse of the fleeing winter spirit. "I just wonder if I'll ever forgive myself."

"Remember the good times," Astrid repeated, hand tightening briefly. "If you do... then he'll always be with you."

Author's Note: Inspired by the art at: kadeart dot tumblr dot com slash post slash 58342306288 slash 5-years-later. (I hate how fanfiction-net eats links, don't you?)