Rise of the Guardians One-Shots

It's Hard Sometimes

there will be two releases today, this chapter and then a character description chapter but I'll space them a few minutes apart.

this was a request from @JEbackman ! 

Jack has gone back to not eating (having trouble eating/eating disorder) and the pooka's find out, what will they do to help him? I will be putting a TW on this one just for the talk of eating disorder, an I know I usually don't speak on myself and I don't like to but just this once I will. I do suffer from an eating disorder myself and have trouble eating so some of this will come from a personal experience. 

tw: eating disorder

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Jack stared down at the plate infront of him as they all sat in the Pole for a Guardians meeting. He had pushed his food around just right so the others thought he ate, North even complimenting him. He wished sometimes he wasn't so good at hiding it. He laughed at seeing Callahan and Denver get scolded by Tooth and Natasha for playing with the food and focused on that. 

It had been almost two months since he had come back, his loss of apatite starting a week ago. Jack hadn't been able to keep anything down since then. He only ate little bits if someone was watching, making sure to push it around enough so no one could see. When he was offered a cookie, he would eat half and then place the other with an elf. His skin pricked at the feeling of being watched. 

He looked through the bangs of his hair that was in his face to see that Ares was watching him. It was hard to miss how he was watching but noticeable to Jack now that he was actually looking. His grandfather was glancing from time to time at him out the corner of his eye. Jack swallowed before sitting up, pretending to get into the conversation that was happening just so the feeling would go away. 

Ares looked back once he noticed that Jack had turned his full attention to the conversation. Unlike everyone else, Ares had noticed the slight change in Jack. He had made sure to put as much attention as possible on the boy because that's what he did when his boys were younger. He noticed how Jack just moved his food around all night. Ares didn't understand why until he remembered Aster talking about Jack having eating problems. 

He turned away from watching as he pretended to be focused on the conversation about some design Natasha had but was lost in his own mind. He knew what it was like to deal with something and not want anyone else to know, so how did he get someone else to see what he was seeing? He looked to his wife beside him..no he couldn't tell her she would confront him. His son and Lilly would most definitely go straight to him. 

He needed someone that would just watch to see if the problem was back or if he was just overthinking his protectiveness towards his grandson. He glanced around the table until he found someone else that was glaring at Jack's plate. His bestfriend from all those years ago to even now was doing the same as him. 

Pitch sat with his arm on the back of Emily's chair but was focused on the scratched plate infront of Jack. He had noticed all night that Jack's eating had relapsed back into nothing. He watched as Jack expertly moved the food around and acted as if he was eating but wasn't really. Pitch remembered the first time they brought it up to Jack, the talk ending in him running off and Bunny having to go find him. It took them half a year to convince Jack there was nothing wrong with him, that eating was okay for him to do. 

He caught the eye of Ares who had an unusual look of worry on his face. He watched his old friend look from him to the plate and then back again making him realize he had seen it too. Pitch went to motion for a private conversation between the two when he noticed another set of Pooka eyes on Jack.