Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or realities (unless otherwise stated). I do not make money off of this.

The prompt for this came from an anonymous rotg-kink dreamwidth post.

This is not betaed. If you see any mistakes, I would love for you to kindly point them out.

Jokul believed himself to be a demon when he first rose from the ice. All the evidence pointed to that. But now… now he was neutral and it did not matter what his opinions were, it simply mattered what actions he took, and to make sure that each of his decisions were based purely on knowledge, need and logic. When he was with his friend, he could let loose and converse freely, decide what he wished.

And in the middle of a city, as he was producing a much deserved blizzard, he saw Pitch. Black, smoky, standing stoically against the wind.

"Pitch!"

And everything broke loose. Portals opened, whereupon naive and gullible elves - so far gone from what they were originally made to be - streamed toward Pitch with torches and trumpets, cookies and string lights. And then the Big Four came. They came in battle ready, paint eggs and swords and whips at hand.

They surrounded Pitch and Jokul could feel Wind turning to protect Pitch like a machine that didn't like how something was acting, but Jokul was thinking, watching as how the longer Pitch fought, the darker his face became, the longer and more menacing his shadow, how unlike his friend that was. That wasn't his friend at the moment! But it still was, it was the creature that protected him because it had no other choice, because his friend was a part of him…

Jokul understood. The world stood before him, the universe aligned, his magic crackled under his skin. He understood! He knew where he came from and where he was going, and yet he knew neither. He was meant to be human and not, alive and not, neutral and not. But damn it, Jokul would not stand by as his friend was bullied by the very people meant to preserve wonder and dreams and memories!

Wind appeared before him in a transparent form, and he knew that Wind agreed with him, because Winter was necessary, but Fear prevented too many from dying. Fear made people stop from driving in icy weather, Fear prevented children from going too far and potentially getting lost, Fear made parents leave during a blizzard to find their children, Fear kept people alive and walking even when they thought all hope was lost.

And in return, Winter would help Fear when he could not help himself. Two powerful creatures did not need to be protected but helped, and often such power is shunned and discarded. Hated.

"HOW DARE YOU HARM MY FRIEND!" Ice crackled across bricks and pavement and windowsills, striking snow against shivering pedestrians, collateral, but sad, even though Fear was pushing them away, urging them to go home from fear of the blizzard.

"Mate, don't you want to be believed in? Not feared by the planet?"

"I am Winter. To not fear me would be a mistake. I am neither good nor bad but fear is essential to keep from being bad. Leave me and my friend now, you traitors of your own cause!" He turned to the man of sand. "Can you not see his dreams, his true wishes? The man inside the fear, the one that loves hot chocolate, that dreams of peace and sleep and happiness?" At the shake of the man's tiny head, Jokul grew more enraged. "If you cannot see him, you are growing senile, fallen star. Go back to your people and perhaps learn again what it means to dream!" But he did not send him back, for that was the star's decision. The others were still fighting. Sand glared at Jokul, glared to the very core, in a way that said 'how do you know what it means to dream?'

"Please, Jack, please, come with us! We don't need to fight each other!"

"No, we don't." The Sister of Flight was relieved at that. "But you are fighting my friend, and if I had to chose between strangers and a friend, I would choose my friend!"

Knowledge continued pumping into his mind and body, overflowing his starving mind, drowning and reviving him. He knows, he knows, he knows. And then is enraged. Wind responds to his anger with its own, curling around him and striking out at all. Fear, instead, soothes him, like a friend after a horrible mess.

What he is most angered about is that these children had not reached their intellectual potential and yet acted as if they had. The Pooka, the one that came from another planet and kickstarted life only knew a few planets and constellations, The Star had only watched Earth unlike his otherworldly peers - which watched all - and Sister of Flight and the Bandit are not even a hundredth of their peer's age.

And as he thought about their actions and what their future actions might entail, he became afraid. Afraid for them, and what other spirit, perhaps much more temperamental than he, less understanding… but the fight kept raging on, Jokul's fear fueling Pitch's actions, and Pitch's actions fueling the "Big Four's" reactions. It was circular, and while Jokul wished for them to cease their attacks on one another, there was no way of doing so without causing a future attack to happen with the same naivety that the four expressed.

But in the end, there was no other way to break up the fight.

Belief would not heed to logic, and logic would not heed to belief, and so each would attack the other. There is a way of following both, but neither would work with the other unless for a specific goal.

And so, with a heavy heart, Jokul ordered Wind to send the two apart, causing a blizzard to finally break amidst the city, and fled into the night.

He knew that they would fight again another day, but at least next time he'd know what to do. Turning around, he asked wind to send Pitch a message - meet up where we usually do? - and then lifted up on Wind's reassuring shoulders to careen through the sky. His newfound knowledge told him that he was an elemental spirit, but he also knew that that knowledge made no impact on his original belief that he was a demon.

He was still a neutral soul, and Jokul reveled in sitting on fences. They provided excellent viewpoints of anything.