Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or realities (unless otherwise stated). I do not make money off of this.
The prompt for this came from an anonymous rotg-kink dreamwidth post.
This is not betaed. If you see any mistakes, I would love for you to kindly point them out.
After Jack was initiated as a guardian (sometime after winter), he surprised almost everybody by helping them out as much as he could. If he couldn't help out, he tried his best to find out what small, itty-bitty way he could help out was.
With Bunny, he wasn't the best with paints, having only had frost to work off of, but he quickly learned how to gently frost the googies in such a way that it couldn't harm them and painted over the frost before it could melt, producing gorgeous painted eggs that looked more like winter than spring, even if Jack chose a brighter color. Bunny was grateful enough for the extra help to have a grander Easter the next time that he didn't grumble that much and engaged in friendly banter with him.
With Tooth, he sometimes flew alongside her, providing with conversation and a helping hand, grabbing a tooth and replacing it with a coin just before she reached the window, turning it into a game that she (admittedly) usually won. It was reminiscent of when all the guardians grabbed teeth from beneath pillows and bonded over slips and falls and bags of chompers. After a long run with Jack, Tooth would often invite him for a quick tea break and the two would natter on about this and that and everything.
Jack often swept into North's Workshop and messed around with the yeti and elves (the latter more than the former), keeping the troublemakers to a minimum amount of trouble whenever he was around. When he wasn't catapulting elves over the Workshop roof (sometimes blocking out the hatch where MiM let down his moonbeams. It scared North the first few times, but as soon as he found out what was going on, he said "Go for it! As long as elves out of trouble and ruckus not caused, game is everything!") he was watching North diligently carve out a new toy. Every time he left the office, he placed a small replica of something or other that he thought looked cool on the table.
Sandy didn't need help, but Jack found time at least once a week to track down Sandy and talk with him a little bit. Each time he visited, he got better at interpreting the sand symbols and they had light playful banter that wasn't broken up by the requirement to translate everything Sanderson Mansnoozie said. Occasionally, he would give an idea for a dream, especially if somebody needed a new dream, one that Sandy would make up. While the dreamsand would knock him out if thrown at him, Jack could touch it with his fingers to see what the dream would have been and provided with criticism and suggestion to each one.
Soon the guardians met up near the beginning of summer (in the northern hemisphere). Bunny was shaking the snow off his feet and warming up near the fire while Sanderson was drinking eggnog and listening to Tooth talk about all the teeth she had collected and how nice it was to once again be in the field with her girls. North was sitting nearby, occasionally putting in his own thought to her near endless stream of words.
"So where is Jack again?" Bunny asked after his feet were sufficiently warmed.
"Oh, he is off to start winter in southern hemisphere with bang! Somewhere in… Argentina and then to Australia I believe he said." North waved his hand in slight dismissal. "Boy will be fine. Has done this for long time, eh?"
"Oh North! This looks so amazing! Are you planning to make these as toys?" Tooth's voice broke through their conversation as she played with a 3-D maze within a circular form. She was trying to make the metal ball roll through the maze and was doing fairly well.
"Ah, yes! This is one Jack thought up! He very creative, thought of the design and with a little of my tinkering, poof! Three dimensional maze!" North looked excited as he talked about it, holding up the other one he had sitting on the mantlepiece. "These original models, all others being made now."
"I know! Jack is so sweet! He still helps me out with tooth collecting, still makes it as fun as when we were racing around the cities." At this she smiled and put the maze in her lap. "He actually beat me sometimes and he is such a good sport when he does and doesn't win that I usually don't even notice!"
"Ay, helped me paint some really early googies for the next Easter. He also helps me take care of the still growing googies, he's got very good control of his snow, can make it so soft that it melts before it touches the ground!" He shook his head ruefully and chuckled. "And here I thought he didn't have good control of his ice. He doesn't have anymore excuses!"
Sandy gave a thumbs up and giggled silently. Then he signed to the others (as best as he could) that Jack and him are bros, talking about dreams and thoughts and the world while he spread his dream sand. Then he signed that they didn't really take any measures to get to know him and maybe they could go and see if they could help out…
The guardians didn't understand the second part, but the part about how they didn't do anything to really meet with their newest guardians struck a strange note.
"Why don't we see him right now? He must at least have another blizzard somewhere and we could maybe somehow help, even just a little bit? At the very least we could watch and get to know him better!" Tooth exclaimed, leaping into the air, forgetting about the toy in her lap which was just barely caught by sandy before it hit the ground. Sandy put the toy back on the ever enlarging mantlepiece and floated up as well, presenting a check above his head in agreement.
North was immediately excited as well and went to get his winter cloak and while Bunny grumbled a bit about having to be in the cold for an extended period of time, he thumped open a tunnel and sent a few googies after a coat and socks so his feet don't fall off. His ears would just have to sit tight.
"To the sled!" North bellowed, already stomping off toward the "Garage", as Jack dubbed it.
"Oh, no, mate, I am not going in that death machine!" shrieked Bunny and thumped out a tunnel before jumping in. "Meet you near Watsons Crag!"
North shrugged his shoulders before shouting again "To the sled!"
In almost no time at all, everybody was at Watsons Crag. Bunny was already there, conversing with Jack and riding out the teasing of actually wearing something other than his bandolier. When North came over, Bunny quickly took the opportunity to step out of the spotlight and stood next to Sandy.
"Jack, do you think we could do anything to help you right now? Or maybe just watch you bring in the snow… It's just you helped all of us and we want to help you too and now just seems like the perfect time…" Tooth tapered off a little, a true testament to her embarrassment.
"Well, I don't know how you can exactly help me.. but you can certainly watch. Just, um… don't get in my way. That's really it." He was rubbing the back of his head and toes were poking at the cold ground, occasionally sending a burst of frost that melted quickly, but not of its own volition.
"Okay!" As everybody sat down or floated around, Jack stood perfectly still in the clearing. For a few moments there was no sound, no movement and everything was anticipating something, something big and strong and powerful.
And then the magic started up. It was slow, seeping in like a glacier but building up so slowly that you couldn't tell when it started building up. Over time, this thin crackle of magic built up until the very air was trying to hold back big fat globs of snow from the outside. Once again, the wind was starting to build up, swirling around Jack's ankles and then going around the magic-laden air, keeping it together, compact, strong.
The sky above them slowly became a cloud, grey and light and with the feeling that great things were about to come. Jack was still absolutely still, perhaps only his eyebrows furrowed at the magic around him. The magic built up more and more until it was built up to be as thick as a wall and one could barely breath and then everything just released.
All the clouds spread across the mountain range down into the valley and around the clearing. Big fat globs of snow rained down from the sky and Jack finally opened his eyes and took control of the wind, leading it this way and that. This cloud to snow but this one to stay and simmer a little. This one to have fat globs and this one to weave spindly snowflakes.
It was all an orchestra of beauty and Jack Frost was the Maestro. He played everything just right that the snow piled up at just the right height and the temperature didn't feel that cold. The wind was everywhere but nowhere, it didn't blow that hard on the lower layer of the atmosphere, letting the snow on the ground disperse naturally, little breezes drifting snowflakes to the tops of trees and to the bottom of a nearby ravine.
Bunny had the urge to draw Jack's actions, to seal a moment of this unearthly dance on paper and pen, to be able to keep this memory forever.
Oh how he loathed that he couldn't see past his jealousy in 1968. Blizzards were gorgeous and wondrous pieces of art that couldn't be confined to the page. They required to be seen in person, to be seen live, to have the spotlight attention on the world's stage.
And of all the blizzards E. Aster Bunnymund had seen, nobody made them more beautiful than Jack Frost.
And looking at the other guardians from the corner of his eye (so as not to look away from the beauty) he knew they thought the same.