Spring

By: Wilona Riva

Disclaimer: Don't own ROTG or DP.

The first five chapters of this fic take place 3 years prior to the events in ROTG movie, which places Danny at 11 yrs old, Jack at 17 yrs old, and Jamie at 7 yrs old. From chapter six on, the story shifts to a year after the events of the movie. Day and Leto hid, while MiM prevented Daniel from crossing over the world barrier until a week after the movie's events. Chapter 17 of Feathers and Dust needs to be read prior to reading chapter six of this story, as you will not understand what will be going on when we get to that point in time.

Chosen

Seven years old Jamie Bennett was busy shoveling the snow off the driveway, so his mother could go to work. Looking up, he sometimes wished that the story of Jack Frost was real. Who wouldn't have loved to have a good old snowball fight about now? He shivered slightly as hot, cold, and cool flashes ran past him. He could make out blurry forms out of the corner of his eyes, but turned and saw no one. Sighing, he picked up the shovel and returned to his work.

"I think the boy sensed us, Jack," Leto said, as Wind drove her onwards. "Where are we going anyway?"

"After 300 years, that would be really nice," Jack mused. "I was so alone before MiM woke you up." He looked down at the town below and the boy shoveling the boardwalk. "Poor kid, having to work on a gorgeous day like this."

"Yeah, it'd be more fun if he could see or hear us," Day said, catching up to them. "We're headed to the lake, aren't we?"

"Yeah, Red," Jack told her. "MiM told me that Spring would awaken soon."

"Three hundred years of silence," Leto grumbled, "he tells you no more than your name and purpose. Now, he's really chatting all of a sudden. Man in the Moon sure is strange."

Jack froze, his frosted blue hoodie pulled over his blue eyes and looked askance at the two girls at his side. Autumn and Summer were both girls roughly two years younger than him. Autumn was petite with auburn hair pulled into a ponytail and sparkling green eyes. Her outfit consisted of a worn-out long-sleeved gray t-shirt and a brown plaid skirt. Summer wore her dark-hair really short, her amethyst eyes framed by dark, sooty lashes. Today, she was wearing a white daisy trimmed dress, dark green leggings, and a silver charm bracelet she'd found somewhere in her travels around the globe.

None of them, he noted, wore shoes-not that he was complaining.

Wind gently descended around them, pulling toward the earth and the lake. Beneath one of the old gnarled trees, Jack spotted a sleeping black-haired boy wearing lavender pajamas with white buttons and a pair of gray socks. He was about the age of the boy who'd been shoveling the walkway.

Jack looked upwards at the sun beginning its downward slant to the mountains. Soon MiM would awaken and they would have a new companion.

"Sam, have you or Tucker seen Danny at all today?" a panick-stricken Madeline Fenton asked the two eleven years old children, who just walked into the kitchen.

"No, Mrs. F," Tucker said, sharing a worried glance with the girl beside him. "He didn't show up at school today. Is he sick?"

"I'm still saying it was ghosts!" Jack Fenton's voice wafted up from the basement.

Sam hid a smile. What she loved about the Fentons was their blind-sided obsession with all things supernatural, especially ghosts. Danny, himself, loved reading stories about spirits and bigfoot. He often imagined what it would be like if he were a ghost, which promptly freaked him out when he realized what his parents would do to him if they ever caught him if he turned into one.

"It wasn't ghosts," Maddie shot back. "Jack, honestly, why does everything you think about have to revolve around fudge or ghosts?"

Sam signalled to Tucker that they needed to slip upstairs to talk to Jazz, Danny's older sister by two years. Danny was really close to her, not that he'd ever admit it. Knocking on the door with the mad scientist teddy bears, they heard Jazz call for them to enter.

She'd been crying off-and-on, they could tell right away. "Jazz, what happened to Danny? He wasn't in school today," was the first question Sam thought to ask.

"He vanished during the night, after we all went to bed," Jazz said. "Dad thinks ghosts kidnapped him, but Mom thinks he ran away. He got into that big fight with Dash Baxter yesterday in the park, when Dash shoved some girl off the monkey bars."

Sam growled something under her breath.

"So what do we do now?" Tucker said, edging away from Sam.

"Mom's calling around to see if anyone has seen him. I mean, how far can an eleven years old boy get in his pajamas and a pair of old socks?"

"He's waking up, Jack," a girl's voice exclaimed. "Isn't he adorable?"

Danny's blue eyes opened up to see two girls and a white-haired boy floating beside him. Shrieking something about ghosts, he tried to stand up and run, every story his father ever told him about the evil horrors of ghosts ran through his mind.

You are Daniel Spring. You will wake-up the world after the cold, dark winter.

Danny looked up at the bright, full moon where the still small voice seem to come from. His memories slowly began to fade as his new companions introduced themselves. He never noticed when his black hair became the same snowy white as Jack's or that his sapphire eyes became emerald as Man in the Moon finished the transformation of the boy.

Clockwork was angry beyond imagining. The boy, who was to have been the most powerful ghost since Pariah Dark had been created, had vanished from the timeline, while he had been watching! Who was powerful enough to snatch a human child from under his very nose?

Jack nodded to the boy, when he looked at him for confirmation. "We are the spirits of the seasons," he explained. "We can't be seen or heard unless the humans believe in us. I've been trying for 300 years and still no luck. But the Man in the Moon finally answered my loneliness and sent me you three for companionship, besides Wind."

Watching the humans, MiM smiled. The boy would not be found until Summer advented. He would return the boy here; no memories of either world would follow him when he crossed over the boundary. He would see to that; he had the boy's baby teeth after all and had given them to Toothiana for safekeeping.