Shadowlands
Part 1: Deathly Desires
by K. Stonham
first released 18th December, 2012

December, 2017

Jack had met Mort before. Of course he had; people die in winter, sometimes out in the icy wastes, caught in a blizzard. Which wasn't always Jack's fault, but sometimes it had been. And unable to help the stranded individuals, unable to even touch them, the only thing Jack had ever been able to do was stay with them until death came.

So, he'd met Mort plenty of times, and heard more about her through the immortals' gossip vine. Little things like her weird predeliction for playing games in certain circumstances.

It had never before occurred to Jack that Mort must have been present at his own death, nor that the Man in the Moon made a... deal? Arrangement? Something of the sort, anyway, that allowed for Jack to stay out of the afterlife, and become a spirit on Earth.

Now, though, Jack was thinking on that, and thinking hard. He didn't know the details, of course, and was pretty sure Manny wouldn't tell him if he asked. The other Guardians, Jack thought, didn't really have anything of the sort. No hard stop, no sharp delineation between before and after, alive and spirit. He had the impression that their transformations into immortals were something more gradual, perhaps even something that had gone unnoticed for years after it happened.

So he wasn't sure if any of them even really knew Death. Christmas and Easter, they wouldn't really see children dying, would they? Especially not Bunny. Sandman... well, there were so many dreamers; did Sandy count them all? Toothiana was the most likely to know Death, unless she really did keep the teeth of dead children forever, which Jack thought would be a little creepy. But then he'd never quite understood Tooth's obsession with teeth. Especially not her obsession with his, which she was never going to get to collect since they were all permanent teeth.

The thing was, though, even though Jack knew Death, he didn't know how to find her. He could hang around a hospital, waiting, but that was callous and cruel and he wasn't that kind of person. Too, there was the fact that Mort didn't take care of every death personally any more than he was present for every winter snowstorm. So finding her would be a dice roll at best.

In the end, he just waited until the next time their paths crossed.

A few years after Jack had gotten his memories back, been sworn in as a Guardian, and finally, finally become visible to children, he met Death again.

It was a snowy winter in New York City, and he was whirling a skydance of snowflakes for the amusement of the children below, when he caught a glimpse of a long black cloak ruffling in the wind.

With a wave to the children (some of whom, judging by their return waves, saw him, and some of whom didn't), Jack set off, following Death.

He caught up with her at the Brooklyn Bridge, where he landed next to Mort atop the eastern tower. "Frost," she greeted him, pulling back the hood of her cloak to reveal skin as pale as his own, eyes so dark a brown as to be nearly black, and long straight chestnut hair. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, and underneath the cloak, he'd heard, dressed like a goth version of Stevie Nicks. But mostly she kept the cloak on. With the hood up, it apparently saved her on arguing with the dead.

"Mort," he replied, nodding. "Working?"

She smiled, but it was a curiously tight thing. "Always." She nodded at the bridge below. "Jumper, in about three minutes."

Jack loved his job. He'd never been quite sure how Mort felt about hers.

"Congratulations, by the way," she said. "Heard about your promotion."

Jack grinned and ducked his head a little. "Thanks."

She studied him. "You want something."

He straightened. "It's that obvious?"

Mort quirked an eyebrow at him. "Most people don't follow me unless they want something."

"You caught me." Jack sighed, leaning on his staff. "What happens to people after they die?"

"The shadowlands." Her face was calm.

"Is that like heaven, hell, purgatory...?"

Death shrugged. "Depends on the person, and what, deep down, they think they deserve in the afterlife. Some don't stay there long; they reincarnate. It's all in the state of mind, really."

Jack sighed again. "And if someone like me wanted to talk to someone there?"

"I got sick of people asking for that a couple thousand years ago, Frost." Her head tilted slightly. He wasn't sure if her expression was curious or calculating. "For you, though... I can arrange it. But it'll cost you."

Jack felt like grinning. "How much?"

"Not how much. What."

"Okay," Jack corrected himself, "what'll it cost me?"

Mort looked away, briefly scanning the bridge below for her scheduled jumper, then studied the chill gray waters of the Hudson Bay. "I'm sick of chess and gin rummy."

"Have you considered LARPs?" Jack offered.

She rolled her eyes, her irritation the clearest emotion Jack had ever been able to read off her. "Video games are popular these days. I want to try my hand at them."

Jack blinked.

"I can't exactly have a GameCube set up in the shadowlands," she snapped at him. "Electricity doesn't run to there."

"And you can't power it by...?" He waggled his fingers to mime magic.

"No. I've tried." She crossed her arms and looked away.

"Hmm." He leaned on his staff, thinking. Jamie had a video game setup, and would probably let Jack borrow it for a good cause... "You won't kill a system just by touching it, will you?"

"Do you ice everything you touch?" she retorted. "Come on, Frost, you know we can keep it in check."

Jack shrugged. "I know I can. Didn't know if you were different."

"Mm." Her eyes locked onto a man in a shabby brown suit, wearing one of those fleece-lined hats with earflaps. "There he is."

Jack watched in silence as the man walked out to the middle span of the bridge, looked around furtively once or twice, and pulled something, a picture, from his jacket pocket. The man kissed the image, then reverently put it away again.

Jack looked away as the man climbed over the railing.

Mort tensed, then relaxed. Jack hadn't even heard a splash.

"He'll be all right now," she said, and tugged her hood back up. "I've got to go collect him, Frost."

"I'll see what I can set up," Jack said. "Got a way for me to contact you?"

Death hesitated, then tugged off one earring. It was a dangling silver spiderweb. She handed it to him. "Tap on it when you're ready. Don't break it," she said, and was gone.

Jack stood on top of the tower for a minute longer, then tucked the earring into his hoodie pocket and flew off himself, trying not to think about winter plunges into icy water.

Buffalo was due for a good snowstorm.

Jamie, now fifteen, looked unimpressed by Jack's request. He sat at his desk chair, arms crossed, expression mulish.

"Oh, come on, I never ask you for anything!" Jack groaned.

"You do too. You ask me to ditch all the time, and sometimes you talk me into it, and then I get into trouble."

Okay, Jack had to concede that point. "Yeah, but it's worth it, right?"

Jamie unbent enough to grin. "Yeah, it is." He studied Jack's face, took a long breath, and sighed. "Tell me exactly why you want to borrow my PS4 - which, by the way, I spent six months saving up for - and this time, leave in all the long boring parts you usually try to skip."

"You sure? It's a really long story."

"I'm sure."

Jack sighed and slumped into the window seat. Where to start? At the beginning, he guessed. "First off... you know I'm dead, right?"

Jamie straightened up, expression shocked. "No. You never mentioned that."

Jack sighed again, and blew his bangs up with a huff of air. "Long backstory short, I lived here in Burgess, about three hundred and, mm, ten years ago or so. Normal colonial kid, brown hair, brown eyes, normal parents, a little sister like Sophie. Except then she and I went skating on the pond in winter. And the ice wasn't quite thick enough." He hefted his staff momentarily. "I used this to get her to the thicker ice, then the pond broke under me. I drowned."

Jamie looked green. "In-"

Jack nodded. "In that pond, yeah."

"Oh, Christ." Jamie's head was in his hands.

Jack regarded him for a minute. "It was a long time ago, Jamie."

"That doesn't make it better!"

Jack ignored the pepperiness. "Anyway, a day or two later, the Man in the Moon pulled me up out of the ice and made me into what I am now." He fingered his bangs. "White hair and all."

"How the... how the hell are you so calm about this?!"

Jack looked levelly at the teenager. "It was over three hundred years ago, Jamie."

"Yeah, but-"

"I've seen your report cards. You don't care about much else that happened three hundred years ago. Why do you care about this?"

"Because I know you!" Jamie yelled, then looked away, face flushed.

Jack stood and knelt down in front of Jamie's chair. "Jamie." The teenager looked at him. "If it hadn't happened, you wouldn't know me."

"That's... different," Jamie mumbled, but by his tone, he was at least taking Jack's point.

"So." Jack pushed to his feet and went back to the window. "I get reborn without a scrap of memory from my human life, spend three hundred some-odd years railing at the Moon for not telling me jack, and try to keep myself amused and from falling into the pit of despair. Then, one day, Manny decides the Guardians need some extra help, picks me, and you pretty much know the rest."

"Which is still not telling me why you want to borrow my gaming system."

Jack sighed, ran a hand through his hair, then stuffed it into his pocket. "Not having my memories for most of my life was probably a good thing. It would've killed me to watch my family grow old and die without ever seeing me. But now that I do remember? I want to see them again. Just to make sure they were happy, to make sure they were okay with what I became."

"Closure," Jamie said.

"Yeah."

Jamie hesitated, then spoke. "Um, Jack, if that was three hundred years ago, they're all dead."

Jack smiled slowly. "Did you know that Death runs around like I do?"

Jamie's eyes grew wide. "Jack..."

"Oh, it's okay." Jack waved off Jamie's worry. "She's cool. We've known each other for a long time. Thing is, though, I asked her. And she said she could let me see them again. But she wants something."

"My PS4?" Jamie looked downright skeptical.

"Well, not yours in particular. But... you've heard that Death plays games sometimes, right?"

Jamie nodded. "And if you win, she lets you live."

"She said she's sick of card games and chess. And she doesn't exactly have a plug for a game system in the shadowlands."

"North has electricity at the Pole," Jamie pointed out.

"The Pole is a real place. I think Mort's realm is another reality or something."

"So let me get this straight." Jamie ticked off his points on his fingers. "You want to see your family again. So you make a deal with Death. This deal involves the use of my PS4." He looked up. "This had better not be a scenario where I die if I lose a game, Jack."

"Cross my heart," Jack promised.

Jamie was still hesitant. "I dunno..."

"Jamie." Jack's voice was very quiet, and very serious. "What would you do, if it was your mom and Sophie that you'd never gotten to see again?"

Jamie was very quiet for a minute. "That's playing dirty, Jack." He took a breath. "But fine. Christmas break's next week; I can spend as much time showing her the ropes as she wants."

"Great!" Jack tackled Jamie in a hug.

"Jack!" After a minute, Jamie stopped flailing and hugged back. "Just don't ever say I never got you anything for Christmas."

Author's Note: This was originally part of the "Scenes From the Life and Death of Jackson Overland Frost" series, but it didn't quite mesh with the tone of that piece, so I took it out and made it into its own work. It's still in the same universe as Scenes, though. As for Death, I didn't want to borrow either Pratchett or Gaiman's versions, so I made up my own. I'm still pondering whether or not Mort has a younger brother named "Taxes." :) Unfortunately, I end up with the niggling suspicion that she may look like one of those people from the Twilight movie posters. Well, whatever. I also wanted to do a Jack-tells-Jamie-his-backstory thing, but most of the writers I've seen do so, set it only a year or so after the film. Ten or eleven, though really seems too young to find out your best friend/big brother drowned in that pond you skate on all the time...