dear_mun | ( up to date on GoC )

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Of course it's great that Nightlight and Sandy saved Katherine. Still, talk about terrible with what happened Lady Pitchiner, she was so brave ... and Emily Jane had to see it. Jeez, no wonder she turned on Typhan. I get it now, why Mother Nature's the way she is — it makes sense. All that stuff about Santoff Claussen's Big Root turning into the Workshop? That's incredible. I feel kind of bad for trying to break in all those times, now. Didn't realize that place was, uh, alive. Whoops.

Still think I'll have to see Bunny grow all those extra arms to believe it, though.

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It makes sense, does it? Do tell, Winter.

[ Ahaha ~~shit~~, just gonna be rubbing the back of his neck, oh no. ]

I, er. I just meant ... [ Rapping his fingers on his staff, frickfrickfrick. ] I think I can understand why you'd get so angry, if you thought ... someone had abandoned you.

I was abandoned, whether it was intentional or not does not change that fact.

[ Yikes. ]

But ... he thought you were dead.

[ If there's any weather in this place it probably isn't looking so friendly at the moment. ]

He thought. He thought? What kind of man takes the vague unknown of never having seen a body of their child before giving up hope?

[ Sorry Jack this is a Pandora's box you shouldn't have opened. ]

[ The breezes picks up and Jack hops onto it, preferring to be off the ground and, you know, any dirt. Where living things might lie. He spares an upward glance to check on the clouds, then decides it's best not to sugarcoat his opinion no matter what the weather does.

Because he's smooth like that. ]

That's not fair. Didn't the Dream Pirates gloat to his face that you and your mom had been murdered? And then he beheaded them and went on to imprison practically a whole galaxy's worth.

[ Not to defend Pitch, but Kozmotis actually sounded like a decent guy. Jack has trouble with the Nightmares alone, he can't imagine what it's like to fight pure shadows. ]

He opened that door and died because he thought you might need rescuing in there.

Edited 2014-02-17 13:42 (UTC)

Because vengeance gave him the strength to purge them all when protection did not?

[ She ain't pulling punches on this subject. ]

I still think your dad loved you more than anything, Emily Jane, even if you haven't for a long time.

My little Winter Prince, I know that you understand the sacrifice of dying to protect that which you love.

But you have never been the one to live through the aftermath, so don't pretend that you have any right to dispense words of understanding and reassurance.

[ Wow, rude. Mostly right, but still!! Shifting his staff to his other hand, he gestures with his free palm. ]

I'm not your 'little' anything and I'm telling you that how it looks from an outside perspective. Don't bring me into this.

[ She doesn't gesture or say anything, not so much as a twitch but the wind deserts him for a pocket of dead air so he can tumble back down. It's not just the ground that obeys her. ]

You say that because you pity him. Pity a monster who has done nothing except corrupt and kill. Why? Because he used a little throwaway line about finding a family with you?

[ Oh, crap. Jack yelps as he falls, landing with a pained grunt where he rubs a hip. ]

You're twisting what I'm saying! [ Hastily getting to his feet, the weather indulges a push-and-pull as his mood sours, chilling the temperature. ] What was that whole thing with me and Katherine? A Darkling Princess, a Darkling Prince. He misses you, even if he isn't himself.

But that thing is willing to settle for anyone, it seems.

[ She approaches calmly, hand out, toward his hip. A touch and it can be soothed and healed in an instant. ]

Jack, do you know what would have happened if you and the Guardians had failed in your bid to stop Pitch?

[ Jack steps back, preferring to remain as he is. He's not a stranger to pain, whoever or whatever inflicts it, and doesn't like it being implied he needs babying after being call little Winter Prince. ]

I know what he is. I'm just saying, how many wars have been fought with him by now? Four or five? Even with what's inside him, it's no wonder he sticks to the shadows when that's where everyone always puts him anyway.

I can be objective and refrain from sympathizing with him. I'm not trying to argue with you.

[ She drops her hand and stays, accepting the unspoken refusal. It's sometimes hard to remember that not everything is ageless, running in cycles too long and too large to be seen by those who see things in smaller increments. A star's orbit, existing in two places at once: Jack is neither adult nor child, and she should do better to learn which way he has cast himself to lean before assuming. ]

About the same number of times he's committed genocide: the Pooka, the Sisters of Flight... the entire Golden Age. How many more have to pay the price of objectivity?

You're doing it again, you're making me sound like I said it's okay for him to do any of that. It's not.

[ Caught between adult and child, forever eighteen, Jack veers between feeling he has a solid, mature standpoint and wavering on it in the face of confrontation. Retreat is much easier than fostering adversity. ]

Don't you want your dad to get better?

My father is dead, Jack. He died long ago in a moment of weakness and if you think that I don't mourn the part that I played in that, you're so terribly wrong.

[ The very air around them quivers, giving life to the tremor she would never allow into her own voice. But she's resolved nonetheless. ]

And this... person that has been left behind is not him.

His arm changed color, didn't it? Katherine noticed. That could mean something, maybe he's trapped inside. If you're stuck in that many Fearlings for so long, couldn't anyone want to come out?

[ Blue eyes skate over her intently. ]

You brought up the fact I don't have anyone. Well, you're right. I know there was a family I came from but I can't pretend after three centuries that I belong to it. That's like pointing to a stranger on the street and trying to care about them, it's not how people work, but if I was told my little sister had done something terrible then even without all those feelings I'd want to help her stop being ill, especially if she couldn't do it herself.

Why does everything always have to be so black and white? That's not fair. People mess up all the time and still want to do better.

[ He has a lot of thoughts on the matter, pacing and absently twirling his staff as he goes. ]

Isn't that what Fearlings and Nightmare Men are? They influence you. That person isn't your dad because he might be locked up inside a living prison that shifted into him instead of staying behind bars.

Can't someone —?

Just how petty do you think I am, to believe that I would have left him a monster if there was a chance to revert him? Do you think I'd have let everyone else suffer in this world, in every world, because I was holding a grudge?

No offense, Emily Jane, but you don't spend a whole lot of time around anyone else and you just dropped me out of the sky because you felt like it. Petty is definitely up there.

[ She holds his gaze unflinchingly for a moment with eyes as vibrantly green as his are blue before she turns away, the warning ozone crackle in the air that had crept up dying off again. ]

[ Both hands slide around the pole of his staff as Jack takes a step back, wary of her retreat. ]

I'm betting not that many people talk back to you either. [ Something eases on the cusp of his tongue, not a sigh but a softening. ] You got dumped on a lump of rock for a long time without anyone at all. The person you wanted to talk to the most never tried to show you he even cared you were alive, I understand what that's like.

Edited 2014-02-17 16:56 (UTC)

[ She doesn't cease her steps though her voice carries back clearly to him. ]

Your desperation to find likeness of yourself in others will only end up hurting you more in the end.