Jack, not Jackson

Chapter 68: Familar Deaths.

Jack Frost's POV:

I am surrounded.
Monsters wearing friendly faces smile back at me as they come for my head. If there weren't people to protect, I'd let them have it. With the memories I hold, they'd end up giving it back anyway.

I have to win. To at least fight. For Harry. For Callum, for Rowen. For every student, everyone still standing.

I close my eyes as I run my sword through an English Calvary man I'd worked with, the only soldier in our crew who'd been able to keep up with me in speed and dark humor.

The sand dissipates before he falls but i swear I can hear the sound his body makes as it hits the ground. It sounds the same as the first time I had to watch him die but this time, it was my sword and not a bayonet that felled him.

I don't know how many old friends I kill as I slash my way through the figures, trying to find my way back to Pitch. I don't think it matters at this point if it was ten or ten thousand, nothing can stop the despair that's coating the inside of my chest.

I have to focus. Focus on the green and black and not on the figures themselves but I can feel the screams building in me. It feels like holding your breath. Like the pressure building until you can't take it anymore. You either black out, or let it out.

Still, I'm keeping it contained. I've always kept it contained. Just as I begin to convince myself that this won't be the final nail in my soul's coffin. I come face to face with Jason, hand and hand with Piper like they are made from one Nightmare, not two.

I duck Jason's blade and kick his knee out, knowing I jinxed it when I thought I was in control. Spinning past the fallen piper and Jason I turn to see who's next. Nico, his hair curling out of a beanie two sizes too big for him. I grab his arm as he attempts to skewer me and fling him back into the crowd of shadows.

The dread is thick in my lungs and my breathe catches slightly as I whirl to face the next one, apprehension making me more cautious then I've been since I was twelve.

Grover tries to give me a hole in the head the same place one of his horns is sprouting from. I'm not quick enough to dodge completely and blood starts trickling into my right eye like it's trying to tilt the odds in Pitch's favor.

The seven begin to surround me and
I swear the fates are just trying to see how tangled they can make my thread before it finally snaps. Before I finally snap.

Grover disappears in a mute crumbling of ashy grains as my sword lashes out almost liked it wants to avenge me. Evidently my instinct for self preservation does not care if it's Grover or a stranger trying to make me a reverse unicorn.

I'm not ready when I turn and see her.
Her Yankees cap is on, which makes no sense since I've never actually seen her wear it but my brain doesn't care. I freeze, the air in my lungs deciding it's got better places to be.

She looks like anger in teen god form, rage radiating off of her like whatever she's fighting is a major inconvenience and she'd rather just kill you so she can get back to the building design she'd been sketching.

There's no mistake. There's no pretending it's a stranger so I can dust it and move on. It's Annabeth. Blonde or not, it's my wise girl, I can see it in her stance and her eyes.
I'd always been so grateful that I was on her side, and not against her. She was terrifying control contained within the mind of a genius.

I was right of course, facing her was impossible. I close my eyes and relax, half relieved and half apology but the pain never comes.
I open my eyes and come face to face with her. Her eyes aren't gray, but I can see them as if they are. It's been so long since I could picture them so clearly but that's not what catches my attention.

No..that would be my sword hilt sticking out from below her collar bone.
At first I don't understand.
I can't possibly have moved quickly enough without realizing it..right?
But the sword isn't in my hand, it's encased in a spike of ice, as if my element tried to save me.

No no no no. I didn't want saved, not if it meant seeing her die again.

But I don't have that choice. I never have that choice.
I'm not sure if I kneel to catch her or if I fall but the next thing I know I'm on my knees and she's partially on my lap. I try to pull shadow Annabeth towards me so I can at least say goodbye this time but she crumbles before I can touch her.

My hands are full of nightmare dust. Fine partials of black glass that cut into my skin as I clench my hands into fists.
I cannot take anymore.
Keeping up the emotions to weaken the nightmares and kill friends I'd rather die for if I had only had had the chance.

At first I'm numb, like some sort of emotional adrenaline keeping me from processing and feeling what just happened. Then it crashes into me like I'm stuck in between two magnets and they just snapped back together.

As I pull my two. now-red hands to my chest I bend over them without thinking,
I'm being crushed beneath all the things I'd buried, the weight of the dirt on a grave I never got to dig. My own.

I let go.
I stop trying to hold it down. Stop trying to contain it. I cannot be a vessel for so much anymore. I have to let go.
Someone is screaming.
It takes me a minute to realize it's me. Ten seconds to realize I can't stop
and another ten to realize..I don't care.