A/N: Okay I normally don't write author's notes but... gee whiz, guys! Thank you for all the support! I didn't realize that so many people would like this. You all are the best! Also, bumped the rating up to T because of a bad word North says in, erm, Russian. Enjoy!~

Chapter 3
Ashes

"North!" Toothiana cried, bursting through the main entrance into North's Castle. A gaggle of Yetis ducked in unison as she zoomed overhead. "Sorry!" she called back to their shaking fists, and made a round around the two-story golden globe almost admiringly, before finally touching down outside North's study. "North! The strangest thing happened to one of the teeth in…"

As she walked into his study, she grew quiet. Everything, the trains, the air planes, the hot air balloons that seemed so adamant on crashing into something, were all stagnant, parked, dull. Quite wonder-less, to be honest. A frown pulled at her lips.

"North?" she called again, more quietly, to the white-bearded man sitting behind his work desk in an ornate red leather chair.

North turned his head a fraction, as if just noticing her. "Tooth, what is the pleasure?"

"This girl's teeth…" she started, but the words grew heavy in her throat. "Is… is something wrong?"

"I am not sure, but I feel it in my belly."

"It's not Pitch… is it?" The fear in her voice was real.

"This soon? He would need―"

There was a deafening crack and a chorus of Yetis roared. Bunnymund's voice echoed through the workshop, "Sorry mate! Big feet, ya hear?" North and Toothiana exchanged a look. She glance down at the cylinder of teeth, at Jill's smiling portrait, then out of the window at the Man in the Moon. She wished she understood.

Bunnymund ascended the stairs three at a time until he reached the landing with North's study, and made a bee-line for the fireplace. "My feet are bloody freezing! You think you could pass out warm mittie, mate?"

"Bunny! What brings you here?"

The rabbit switched feet, giving North a deadpan look. "What do you think? Three weeks in and he's already being bodgy."

"Who is?" Toothiana asked, the feathers on her forehead crinkling.

"Jack Frost! I'm mad as a cut snake, I am. Guardian material my bloody arse. I told you he wasn't―"

"Bunny, bunny, slow down. What's Jack done?"

"What he didn't do was give 'em in Sydney a snow day, mate." He rubbed his hands together and turned his tail toward the fire, wiggling it to defrost the tip. "Wherever he is, the reason better be London to a brick, mate, or I'm skinnin' him me-self―"

The sound of sand filled the workshop, swirling, waving, until a golden crest came through the skylight, and swirled down onto the landing, Sandman in tow. An arrow pointed over his head, a stricken look on his face.

"Sandy! Why the rush?" North asked, confusion crossing his graying brow. Sandy formed an arrow over his head and pointed to the moon, then the arrow turned into a manta ray, then the sun, then an eclipse and then―a snowflake. "Sandy! Sandy, slow down little friend. What do you try to say?"

Sandy shook his head furiously, and pointed again to the moon, this time with his finger. He mouthed a few words, his voice the sound of sand through an hourglass, and ground his teeth together in frustration.

But North understood.

He roses his eyes to the Man in the Moon, and then down to the seal of the Guardian. A shadow twisted, slowing coming into focus. A shadow with waves of hair and a round face, bulky and thick like a Yeti. Even though it was a shadow, a certain shimmering heat radiated from him.

"Miser," North scowled.

"What does the Man in the Moon want with ole Sunny?" Bunny asked.

Toothiana looked down at the golden tube of teeth, and held it tightly against her chest. She watched as, slowly, like a shifting tide, the shadow transformed into another.

It was a man in a top hat and a cane. A man with a mouth that split his face in half, stitch lips, and sunken eyes that ticked, ticked, ticked like a clock. Toothiana reeled back, pulling a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp, three of her baby tooths ducking behind her feathers to hide. Bunnymund's ears flattened down against his head, his eyes growing wide.

"Mate, that isn't―"

"Chyort voz'mi!" North cursed, then rebuked, "Forgive me, Man in Moon, but why is he here?"

The Man in the Moon forwent an answer, drifting silently behind a cloud, and left just enough light to relay one final shadow.

North grabbed his coat from the coat hanger and hurried down the stairs, the red-hat sea of elves parting like a slow-moving current. "Out of the way, you pesky little elves!"

Bunnymund gave Toothiana a pained look. "Oh bloody hell, it's been two weeks. Two. Hasn't anyone heard of a vacation? A nice barbie? Throwing a rage? Painting an oogie or two?"

"There's… one more thing." The tooth fairy extended the golden-plated tube of teeth to Bunnymund. "She turned eighteen three days ago."

"Impossible. Her picture's still on here."

"I know." She said it softly, almost fearfully. "I don't know why."

From down below, North bellowed, "Everyone to the sleigh!"

Bunnymund shook his head, "I'd rather―" but Toothiana yanked him by his boomerang strap into the air, and swirled down through the workshop toward the sleigh.

Jack gripped his staff tightly, sinking down into a fighting stance. Splays of ice bloomed around his feet in icy ferns. "Stay away from me," he warned.

The man cocked his head. He took a step on the ice, and then another. The pond buckled and cracked underneath him, as if he weighed more than he looked, jutting spirals of hairline fractures from his heel prints. "That is not in my design, dear Jack. Do not be afraid. I am merely a harvester, made as you are made, and as such I have a responsibility just as you do."

"You're no fable I've seen," Jack bit icily.

The man grinned, his teeth impeccably white. The closer he became, the whiter his eyes looked, until Jack could see that they weren't eyes at all, but watch faces, and inside each pupil was a steadily ticking clock. "That is because I am no fable, no fairytale, no metaphor for a chilled nose," he said the last bit mockingly, and rage coiled in Jack's belly.

"Care to say that again?"

"I…" the creature took another step, icing giving way, cracking, crumbling, into the dark frigid water, "…am…" Another step, closer, now Jack could smell him, the scent of freshly upturned earth, "… not a…"

And now the man, this strange thing, was in front of him, easily six feet tall, his skin so pale Jack could see blue veins rushing underneath his neck and prominent cheekbones. Jack was so frightened he couldn't move. His heart hammered in his chest, so loudly it could've broken a rib. While he was already cold, the air around this man was colder, but in a different sense. Jack's cold was a nice cold, a playful cold that swirled and danced. But this man… this man was as cold as spaded earth.

Jack's breath caught in his throat.

"… fable," he finished, and grabbed Jack by the throat. The clock hands in his eyes ticked, ticked, keeping time. Ten twenty-three, Jack thought absently. Just a few more minutes before… He felt the ice give. Suddenly, Jack was very, very afraid.

With a kick, the youth tried to wrench away, but the man held fast, his grip like steel.

"I have come to collect!" cried the man, his voice all-consuming, like Pitch's, but worse, because it rang inside of Jack's head too, a thousand times over, a chorus of crows. The man's hand tightened, and Jack choked, gasping. The night began to eat inward, the stars dulled, his lungs shuddered, the pain of the man's touch writhing his blood and bones, squeezing his soul through a straw. "You stole my due for tonight, but I shall return for her later. You, however, are mine toni―"

"LEAVE THE BLASTED ICE BOY ALONE!"

A gigantic ball of fire knocked Jack from the man's grip. Jack went flying into a snowbank, steaming, his eyebrows singed and hoodie smoking. He stumbled to his feet, grappling for his staff, flecks of smoldering shoulders icing over. The fireball had driven the creature into the water, and let steam roll across the pond like fog. Jack looked up onto the cliff top, and found a surprisingly welcome sight.

"Miser," he muttered.

The King of Summer jumped down, slamming into the frozen pond, leaving blacken footprints in his wake. The air sizzled off of him like heat off asphalt. The ice melted underneath his combat boots. The fable was tall as a yeti, as burly as North, a headful of wild flaming hair and eyebrows to match, a smattering of blotchy freckles on his cheeks, his eyes as golden as the heart of a fire. He cracked his knuckles, and jutted his chin up to Jack. "What up, Ice Boy."

"Aren't you supposed to be in Tampa?"

"Yeah and ain't you supposed to be in Sydney?"

Jack cursed. "The snow day…"

"Bingo. The kangaroo's got his panties in a wad. Silk or cotton, you think?"

"Cotton, definitely."

"Hell yeah." Miser nudged his head toward the crater-sized hole in the pond, and the bubbling water underneath. "What was that thing?"

Jack rubbed his throat, but that wasn't what pained him. It was his insides, squirming still, as if that―that thing hadn't just touched his skin, but his very soul, and wrung it like a wet towel. The feeling settled in his stomach like a stone, unshakable. "I don't know… but it was crazy. You think you got it?"

Miser tossed back his springy fro of hair and belted a hardy laugh. "Nothin' can stand my great balls of fi―"

A hand broke through the ice underneath Miser and grabbed his ankle, pulling him down below the ice with an ungodly force. Steam erupted like a volcano, gushing out like a tidal wave across the icy surface.

"Heat! I'm coming!" Jack shot out across the slippery pond, branches of ice following his every footstep. "Miser!" His voice cracked in desperation. He remembered falling under, the glimpse of the sky, the chill of the water, biting against his cheeks and lips, filling his nostrils, curling down into his lungs like poison. The memory tripped him, sent him to his knees, curling his insides as if snakes were inside instead of his soul. He bit back a scream and pressed his forehead against the cold of the pond, fighting to master himself again, but the memory replayed again and again, his sister's voice filling his ears, the taste of the water filling his mouth.

He couldn't get a breath of air as whatever that thing had put inside of him wanted to crawl out, tear through his flesh and bone like paper. No, he had to save Miser. He had to…

He cracked open his eyes, and gave a cry. The face of Miser floated beneath him, waterlogged, despondent. "NO!" He cried, grabbing his staff, and jammed it down through the ice. It cracked under his weight, but then Miser began to drift down, down, down into the darkness underneath the pond.

A chilled voice sang against his ear, whispery and cheerful, "Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posies…"

Gritting his teeth, Jack jerked his staff out of the ground and swung it behind him, a glow of blue ice electrifying the air. But no one was there. "Show your face! Who're you working with? Pitch? Come out! I dare you! You'll pay for this!"

The voice laughed, hollow and high, as footsteps skipped across the ice. "'Ashes, Ashes…'"

Jack looked down. The monstrous man stood below him on the other side of the ice, in the cold water, grinning a grin that stretched his stitch lips across his entire face. He barely had time to think before the man's eyes glowed, and the ice cracked, and sank Jack Frost into the murky depths of the pond.

"We all fall down."