And here's the rebooted chapter 2!

…..

A deafening and somewhat awkward silence feel upon the entirety of Santoff Claussen. Even the yetis and elves seemed to have dropped whatever they were doing to listen in. Alec and Emily stood patiently waiting for a reaction out of the stunned guardians.

The guardians in question all exchanged glances. Jack… had parents? None of them had ever considered the childish guardian to have parents. It was a given that he might have had them at one point-they all had those things at one point-, but an immortal still having parental connections? It was unheard of.

North considered Jack to be his son. He enjoyed dragging the boy into his office to work on his ice sculptures-which as expected, Jack Frost was very skilled at. There was also the fact they both liked to eat cookies (North could always count on him to help eat the aging ones before they got too stale), and had a knack for causing trouble. Jack reminded North of his days as a thief, and he served as a source of nostalgia for the old man. If North was honest, he always imagined himself teaching Jack to use his swords and reading him some of his favorite stories in Russian (which he learned Jack could understand when the older man let slip a Russian curse and saw Jack snickering about its meaning). But now Jack had a real dad. North's chances of getting to that close place with Jack just lessened considerably.

Tooth eyed Emily with a disbelieving look. She was certain Jack didn't even know the woman existed, and Tooth knew for a fact that she herself had spent more time chastising the boy too. in her eyes, she was more of a mother than whoever this stranger was.

Sandy looked between the two older guardians trying desperately not to glare down the new spirits in the room-to no avail, he might add. He was unsure of the whole idea, but it wouldn't do anyone good to start an altercation. Just as he was about to put a hand on Tooth's shoulder in reassurance, the loose cannon of a rabbit walked hastily over.

"Well, answer me this-if Jack's your son, why leave him on his own? To his own devices? Alone? For three hundred fucking years. Doesn't strike me as something parents would do," Bunny growled at them, his voice every bit as bitter as the alcohol he had previously consumed.

"This is no excuse but we didn't know how to tell him. We were aware of the fact he lacked any memories, let alone any memories of us. For his sake, we decided to let him figure things out for himself. Of course, then time went by quicker than we could keep up with," Mother Nature said with her eyes downcast.

"He was doing so well, albeit there were things we wanted to warn him about, reach him-, but he probably wouldn't be the same person if we held his hand the whole time. He probably wouldn't be a guardian. We're very proud of him," Alec told them. Then he added, "And then there was also the matter of Emily's father finding out."

As soon as the white-haired man said that, Emily shot him a scathing didn't miss it. "Who is your father?" she asked, but she already had an idea of who it could be.

Emily narrowed her eyes at the colorful woman, "That information is need to know."

Well, that confirms it.

The mood in the room shifted drastically, and everyone seemed to feel it. So Mother Nature decided to break the heavy awkwardness. "And Alec was too scared of him."

"Em, I'm still scared of him! Everyone on the planet is scared of him!" Father Winter retaliated. "Besides, he isn't exactly trustworthy. Or fond of me. Not at all."

Emily laughed. By now, the guardians were beginning to catch on. But nobody felt the urge to confront them on the matter. The guardians still weren't sure if the two deities were telling them the truth.

Then, Alec shook all of their hands, telling them it was nice to meet them face to face and disappeared. But not before threatening to have them froze and shipped to the nearest supermarket in the form of Fla-vor-ice Popsicles if they should ever think of being loud at this hour again.

Emily gave them one last wave, "And please keep this from Jack. We waited so long to tell him, we missed our chance. There's no point in digging up a bunch of suppressed three-hundred-year-old emotions right when things have calmed down." Then she disappeared with her husband, leaving the guardians standing in silence with their mouths gaping open.

"What are we supposed to do?" Sandy signed.

"Well, we're not going to tell Jack-" North started in his thick Russian accent.

"What?" Bunny cut him off. "Of course we have to tell him! Do you know how pissed he's going to be if he somehow does find out and realizes we didn't tell him?"

"It isn't our responsibility. Alec and Emily are his supposed parents and it's their choice if they want him to know or not," North explained.

Bunny looked like he intended to protest further, but he opened his mouth and shut it again. He finally glared at North and turned away.

"Where are you going?" Tooth asked.

"Nowhere," he said curtly and beat his foot against the ground, opening a hole and disappearing through it.

….

Bunny resurfaced at the edge of a pond he knew Jack frequented. Darkness had fallen over the town hours ago, so Bunny didn't expect Jack to still be up in his tree wide awake. The spirit sat with his back against the trunk, one leg propped up on a branch and the other dangling off the side. His staff sat abandoned in the crook of another branch nearby.

"Jack?" Bunny called up to him.

Jack looked down at him, startled, "Bunny? What are you doing here?"

The rabbit didn't let slip the way Jack said his name. No nicknames this time. "You're still awake?"

"I guess I am. Do you need me for something?"

"No, actually I just wanted to check in on ya. You never came back like ya said ya would."

Jack looked away when Bunny sudden jumped in the branch, crouching down a few feet away from him, "Oh. I forgot, I'm sorry."

"Ya don't have to apologize. Are you okay?"

"Bunny don't take this the wrong way, but do you ever feel like it's pointless to be a guardian? There are so many bad things, there's no way we will ever be able to help every kid from all of it."

Bunny's face fell with every word. It was so strange to hear the morose tone in the normally-carefree spirit's voice. He didn't like it. "Frostbite...you're absolutely right."

Jack's eyes shot back to Bunny's, thrown off guard with how quickly the rabbit agreed with him.

"We won't be able to help every kid. But, what we can do, is give them something bigger to believe in. So they don't have a good home life, so their parents are getting divorced, or they live in a home with twelve other siblings-we can't really do anything about it. But we can give them something to hold on to, to hope for. It's kind of like religion, wouldn't you say?"

"I don't think I understand the similarity," Jack said truthfully.

"Think of it like this-adults go through a hardship, and they pray to God or gods to help them get through it. Whether they really believe it or not, it does give them hope for something greater in the future. A peaceful afterlife. We give kids an opportunity for happiness, so long as they believe it's there," Bunny moved closer with every word, trying to get the kid to understand.

The rabbit saw the faintest hint of a smile on Jack's lips, "Thanks Bunny. I think I get it now."

Bunny smiled back at him, "Glad I could help, mate."

Then Jack had to go and ruin the mood, "So, Kangaroo, did you drink yourself drunk off your ass again and break a dish?"

Bunny scrunched up his nose in irritation, "No, North broke one of his own this time."

Jack laughed while Bunny scowled at him-though on the inside he was actually happy to see Jack back to his normal self. Then he remembered what he came here to do, "Jack, do you know Mother Nature or Father Winter?"

"I do. I met Mother Nature like two hundred years ago, I think," Jack thought. "She's always getting on my for snowing out Easter-"

"Good to know who's side she's on."

"-Yeah," Jack laughed. "Father Winter I haven't actually met in person. He leaves me notes with any instructions he has for me, but he doesn't ever come see me in person."

"That's weird, I wouldn't peg you for someone who listens to orders."

"I'd rather not. It used to be pretty messed up. See, Father Winter used to leave me a list of people who were destined to...die… from frostbite and the cold. He said it came straight from Death himself."

Bunny listened quietly while Jack struggled to get out what he wanted to say. The spirit's voice shook over the words 'die' and 'frostbite.' Clearly it wasn't an easy subject for the kid; Bunny couldn't imagine how that must have been. But he didn't judge, he just nodded for Jack to go on.

"I refused to do it. It hurt just to think about it. But after awhile I realized if it wasn't that person then, it was just somebody else the next day. There was no point in avoiding it. So, I did it. But I couldn't ever handle it. I'm guessing Father Winter caught on too because he stopped leaving me those kind of lists. He probably took over it himself."

Well I'll be damned, Bunny thought. I guess the 'parents of the century' were looking out for him all along.

Jack stopped talking. The two sat in silence in the tree, neither feeling the need to say anything. They just sat and watched the moon's reflection in the water below.

After a few minutes, Jack asked if he could spend the night in the Warren. Bunny understood after that heavy conversation that the kid probably didn't want to be alone. He agreed and hopped down from the tree, opening up a rabbit hole and letting Jack jump down it first.

Back at the Warren, Bunny lead Jack into one of his guest dens with a stack of blankets and bid him goodnight. Jack looked at him gratefully and through himself into the bed with child-like grace. It was only then that Bunny realized he never told Jack the truth about Father Winter and Mother Nature-not that it was good time for it anyway.

….

The next morning, Bunny checked in on Jack in his guest room. The white spirit was coiled around an array of blankets, his hair (if it was even possible) looked even messier than it did before. He snored quietly, the only indication he was even breathing was a piece of hair that had fallen over his mouth. With every exhale, Jack blew it away, only for it to fall back in its original place.

Before Bunny registered it, he felt a small smile break out across his face. The smaller guardian looked adorable. Bunny decided he liked Jack better when he was sleeping, at least that way he couldn't talk back to him or call him 'kangaroo.'

Then he felt angry. Jack deserved to know he could potentially have parents. He carefully closed the door to the guest den and grabbed his boomerangs from his kitchen table. A pencil and scrap piece of paper sat on the counter and Bunny scrawled a note to Jack telling him he could help himself to the food in his pantries and he would be back later. The rabbit also added that the brat spirit should stay the hell out of his personal stash of cookies on the top shelf of his left pantry. Of course, he realized how stupid that was and had to write a whole new note, this time leaving out the location and the fact he even had cookies at all. As a split second decision, he hid them in his room under his bed. Try to steal them now, Bunny smirked.

He opened another whole to the world above, specifically in a cool, grassy area where Mother Nature had been known to frequent. It was beautiful. As an entity of spring, Bunny could appreciate the soft, delicate flowers of every color and the trees that reached the clouds and had long branches that wrapped around themselves in an embrace. There was a pond too, one so clear Bunny could easily count the large rocks stationed at the bottom.

But he wasn't here for sightseeing.

"MOTHER NATURE!" he roared. He honesty didn't know where she was, but she would hear him eventually. "EMILY! GET OVER HERE!"

When he finished his spiel of commandments towards the sky, the doubled over on his knees gasping for breath. He opened his mouth to shout again, but a voice cut him off.

"Do not yell at me."

Bunny jumped, instinctively placing a hand over his heart to slow down its rapid thumping. "Sheila, don't scare me like that! Clear your throat or something. Get a damn cowbell."

Emily rolled her eyes and tried to put on a pleasant face, "Can I help you with something?"

"Yes. You have to tell Jack the truth. Whether you're really his parents or not-i still don't believe you-this involves him. And he deserves to hear it for himself."

"I can't just-"

"Don't tell me Mother Nature is a coward. Don't tell me she can't handle a seventeen-year-old kid."

"He's not a kid anymore, and you know it."

"Well, good, then you should have no problem after all, we're all adults here, right?" Bunny smirked knowing he had her beat.

"He won't take it well," was her last argument before finally sighing and saying she would get Alec, and Bunny needed to bring Jack here.

Bunny didn't hesitate to retreat back to his Warren and drag the spirit out of his kitchen and to the field. The rabbit still wasn't sure if Jack was ready to hear it, especially not after their talk last night. But they couldn't hide the truth forever.

….

The entire five second trip over had been filled with Jack demanding to know what the hell was the rush and complaining about how he still needed to find Bunny's cookies (apparently he had seen the crumbs left behind and had enough experience with cookies at Santoff Clausen to know exactly what they were). But when Jack caught sight of the recognizable woman, he ceased his grumbling and immediately thought of all the bad and questionable things he had done over the past few months. "Mother Nature! I am so sorry for all the usually cold springs!"

"Jack, you're not in trouble!" Emily said.

"Then what..." Jack looked between the two of them, looking for an answer.

"We wanted to tell you, we're your parents," Alec didn't bother to waste any time beating around the bush. Jack didn't say anything. He just stared at them with his mouth open.

"W- Ho- N-" Jack stuttered. "No you're not," they couldn't be. He had parents when he was human. He had a sister! Even if they were-which they weren't-, why didn't they tell him before? Three hundred years ago would've been nice. Despite the fact he was outdoors, he still felt like walls were closing in on him. His breath kept catching in his throat, coming out in strangled gasps. All those years in a tree, alone, with nothing but his own demonizing thoughts making him relive his mistakes, pointing out his faults, forcing him to overanalyze every little thing-all that time, he could have had people to turn to?

"Yes we are!" Emily said pleadingly.

"No! I had parents. They were human. I had a sister! I've seen some of my human memories, and I remember my parents. You. Are. Not. Them."

"Will you give us a chance to explain?" Alec said calmly but you could hear the urgency in his voice.

Jack kept muttering, "No no no no..." He started to stand up but Alec put a hand on his chest and gently held him in place while he tried to get out an explanation.

"You were born around three hundred and seventeen years ago. When you were born, you were mortal. We were baffled, you should have been a spirit. Since you were human, we couldn't touch you. You didn't believe in us."

Then Alec spoke again, "We couldn't take care of you, so we gave you to a human family. We watched you grow up with them."

"Wait a second, if Jack was born human, how's he a spirit now?" Bunny said suddenly.

Jack had never told them what he saw in his memories. He didn't care to explain them now. "If you guys are my parents then why did you leave me alone for three hundred years?" He practically yelled. Emily looked like she was about to say something but then Jack cut her off. He was suddenly so angry with them. "For three hundred years I had no one! I had no memories! Nothing! Then you just show up and say you're my parents? You're not! I don't have a family." Jack jerked himself out of Alec's grip and was gone, leaving Alec, Bunny, and Emily alone in the open field.

….

So that's a wrap on the second one. I hope you guys like the new direction I'm taking the story. Thanks for reading!

~BSotM