A/N: I have nothing to say.

Disclaimer: I don't own RotG. Also cover image is a picture by Gustave Dore and is in the public domain.

The first time he held a book in his hands, there was no explosion of fireworks, no dramatic monologue, no sign that he had found the very thing that would later keep him sane for the next three centuries. On the contrary, at first sight the book appeared drab and dull indeed, with a simple brown cover that seemed hardly remarkable, the only clue as to its contents being the words "Gulliver's Travels" printed in gold lettering on the spine.

He opened it only out of pure curiosity, his expectations low. The object, whatever it was, had simply been left in a tree, after all, abandoned by its owner. It couldn't be that interesting, could it?

As a matter of fact, it could. He barely made his way through a couple of chapters before he was utterly captivated, and while the work was slightly wordy to his inexperienced mind, he found it wonderful just the same. He felt almost like he was a character in the story, watching what was happening as Gulliver endured shipwrecks and imprisonment and giant eagles and all manner of impossible adventures.

For the first time, as he read, he felt like he was a part of something.

It took him several weeks to finish the work, for he was only a beginning reader, and the work was complex and verbose, but when he finally completed the read, he felt better than he'd ever had during his fourteen years of life. Somehow, the book had provided a comforting distraction from his loneliness, keeping his mind off his depression and solitude.

Right then and there, he decided he would keep the book for himself. No one else needed it, after all, and it had helped him. Perhaps it would help him again in the future.

Subconsciously, he hugged the tome to his thin and reedy chest. It wasn't quite as good as a friend, but it was a start.

(Meanwhile, in Scotland, a girl was sulking, still upset from the scolding she'd received from her father. She hadn't meant to lose the book, honest.)

(She was banned from the household library for the next three months, but Jack didn't need to know that)

The next book was just as fantastical as the first.

"Robinson Crusoe" it was called, about a man who was stranded on an island. He'd found the rust-red book in the ruins of a library that had suffered a terrible fire, reducing almost all the books within to ashes. "Robinson Crusoe" had survived, however, with only a scorch-mark or two marring the cover and the edges of some of the pages, and with no one else to do so, the winter spirit claimed it for himself.

He loved the book, he really did, but for some reason he felt a deeper connection with Crusoe than with the protagonist of "Gulliver's Travels". Somehow, Crusoe's situation, alone and fighting for survival in a world that cared not a wit for him, resonated stronger in Jack's soul than did Gulliver's unreal adventures.

He loved the two books, however, and just as he decided to keep "Gulliver's Travels", so he opted to keep "Robinson Crusoe," arming himself with one more weapon against the weight of the isolation.

By the time he acquired his third book, "Don Quixote," he decided he really needed a place to store his books. So far, he'd been carrying his small collection wherever he went, but if it was going to grow further, he needed a place to keep them.

He started out by storing them in a hollow in a tree trunk, close to the lake where he was born, and it served him well for a little while. After twenty or so years had passed, however, there was no more room for new novels, and he was forced to consider other options.

Like a cave.

He'd chosen the largest cave he could find that was close to the lake, a hollow in the ground that was hidden among the small hill of rocks that lay on the pond's edge. The grotto was both tall and wide, excellent for his purposes, and with a grin he gingerly laid his three books, his only worldly possessions, the closest thing he had to friends, on the ground.

Three centuries came and went, and over the years Jack's library grew ever larger and ever more elaborate. He watched humans do woodworking and used what he learned to make bookcases for his collection, his skills becoming more and more honed as he constructed bookcase after bookcase, until he ended up building twenty of the things, his first one rough and clumsily-made and his last one looking almost like the work of a professional, complete except for the little varnish which would have finished it but which he did not have.

Slips of paper glued to the shelves and scribbled on with ink served as labels, keeping his books flawlessly organized by author. Books in a variety of languages other than English were introduced to the fold as he learned more and more dialects. By the end of the year two thousand, he had a massive home for his volumes.

Books were not the only thing he kept there, however. As time passed, he also collected many trinkets and knick-knacks from his travels, so many that eventually he had to put his knowledge of woodworking towards constructing and mounting some loose shelves on the cave wall. A bed of a sort was soon to follow, a simple yet comfy nest on the ground put together from scraps of fabric he found.

Gradually, Jack's library also became Jack's home, of a sort. It was too empty to really be called a home, too gray, but it was the closest thing that he had to a home, surrounded as he was by things he could almost call friends.

He lived a life of 'almost', but almost was better than nothing, and was enough to keep him sane.

"That's...a lot of books."

He looked at the fairy nervously out the corner of his eye, watching her reaction, even as he forced a carefree tone into his voice. "Not that many. It's not much compared to North's library."

"Maybe not, but it's not bad fer a spirit who spent all his time alone, Snowflake," Bunny delicately brushed his paw against the spines of the books, noting with some surprise the concerned expression that Jack wore upon seeing someone touch his precious books. "Funny, I never pegged ya fer a reader myself."

Jack shrugged. "Well, you know me. Always filled with surprises..."

"Indeed," stated North as he looked at the books curiously. "Am wondering, where did you find all this? Books not easy to pick up off street, nor is paper, glue, or ink. And how did you make bookshelves?"

Jack rubbed the back of his neck. "It wasn't that hard, to be honest, just took a long time. People trash or abandon perfectly useful things, especially nowadays, so the materials weren't hard to find. For the books, it was slower at first, because people didn't really discard them often, but I started collecting more when dime novels became popular, because they were cheap and I could pay for them with money I found off the street, you know? I didn't want to steal from people."

Sandy, who had been listening carefully to Jack's explanation, then created a sand image of a hammer, a bookcase, and a question mark, his inquiry clear. How did you make the bookcases?

"Those weren't terribly hard to make. I was good at woodworking in my past life, so some of that carried on to my spirit life via muscle memory, and the rest I got from watching human woodworkers. As for materials, there's a forest close by, and I got tools from a cabinet-making shop which was abandoned by its owner and left to rot. He left his tools behind."

"Impressive."

Jack shrugged again, voice nonchalant. "I had time."

There was an awkward and guilty silence at the mention of Jack's isolation, before Tooth suddenly flitted to one of the higher shelves, reaching for one of the books. "Wait, is that a first edition of "Gulliver's Travels"?"

"Yep, but be careful with it, it's almost three hundred years old."

Tooth heeded the warning, carefully extracting the book, before blinking confusedly as she stared at it. "...Are you sure? It looks like new."

"Pretty sure, yes."

"Huh," inquisitively, Tooth began examining the other books. "The others look new as well, but some of them were clearly published long ago..."

"Some of the older paperback ones especially ought ta be fallin' apart by now," added Bunny as he pored over one such book. "But they aren't."

"Strange," stated North as he grabbed one of the books. He frowned almost immediately afterwards, however, something about the book having caught his attention. "Jack...did you cast spell on books?"

Jack looked surprised and bemused. "No? At least, not that I'm aware of? I don't know much magic."

"Then I do not understand...unless..."

"Unless?"

"Well, sometimes a spirit's magic can leak into object, allowing object to be immune to tear and wear-"

"Wear and tear, North," corrected Bunny.

"Is what I said, no? Anyway, it can happen, but only if object has strong sentimental value to spirit."

"...Ah."

That...made sense. It would explain, after all, how his colonial clothes had lasted around two centuries. Heck, they probably were still usable even now, he'd replaced the vest and the cloak with the hoodie more out of preference than necessity, after all.

He was snapped out of his train of thought by Sandy tugging on his sleeve, the little man's eyes burning with a question. Once he was sure he had Jack's attention, the Sandman presented him with the pictograph of a book, followed by one of two books, followed by one of a whole pile of books, and finishing off with a question mark.

"Why did I start collecting books?"

A nod of confirmation.

Jack sighed, then, some of the light-heartedness seeping out of his countenance. He didn't really want to tell them, to be honest, but after all they did for him, he kind of owed it to them. The four Guardians had turned his world of 'almosts' into a more complete and fuller existence, had added the missing piece to the jigsaw puzzle of his life, and while it would still take him a while to get used to it and to be healed for good, while scars would always remain and darkness would always follow his footsteps, the fact remained that he was happier than he had been in a long, long time.

Besides, they were his friends. Wasn't that what friends did, talk to each other?

Taking a deep breath, he began. "It's not that interesting a story, really. A few years after my rebirth, I was bored and lonely, and looking for something to do. I happened across a book someone left behind—the very one you're holding right now, Tooth—and, because I was curious, I started to read it.

"It...it helped with the loneliness, kind of. It was a distraction of a sort, kept my mind off of things for a little while. Then I wanted to collect more books and things pretty much...snowballed from there. No pun intended, of course."

He smiled weakly, but no one returned his grin. Inhaling, he continued. "It kept me sane, to a certain extent. I could forget about the real world if I was in an imaginary one, you know?"

There was silence, and Jack looked away from the other Guardians, suddenly feeling ashamed of showing himself to be so vulnerable, so pathetic.

Seeing his friend's sudden consternation, North spoke up, voice solemn. "No, Jack. We do not know. We can never know fully what you have suffered."

The Cossack took a steadying breath, before continuing. "But we can help you now, my friend, and we will not abandon you again."

Jack was not expecting this, nor was he expecting the group hug North suddenly instigated, pulling all of the Guardians into one mass of warmth and friendship.

It didn't mean he didn't like it, however, and he felt his eyes tear up from happiness, both from the Cossack's words and from the hug which assured him for the hundredth time that no, the Guardians would never abandon him.

There, in the middle of his library, surrounded by his friends and his 'almost' friends, he realized that now his life was whole, and it would never be empty again.

And he cried.

A/N: "Gulliver's Travels" was published in 1726. "Robinson Crusoe" was published in 1719. "Don Quixote" was published in two volumes, one in 1605 and one in 1615. Assuming Jack rose from the lake in 1712, which seems to be the accepted date in this fandom, then fourteen years after his rebirth all three of those books would be in publication.

Also, the reason humans never found Jack's stash of books was because his books were linked to him. When possessions (such as books, or trinkets, or even massive buildings or entire islands) are linked magically to a spirit, they become invisible to those who do not believe in said spirit, just like the spirit itself. This is why non-believers never notice Tooth's Palace, or North's Workshop, or the Isle of Sleepy Sands, or Bunny's Warren, even with satellite technology and things.

...I'm tired.