Author's Notes: Trigger Warnings: This chapter has elements of mental illness, suicidal ideation, mentions of abuse, etc. Some dark stuff. It's also HELLA LONG. 46 pages in gdocs.

Sorry for the long, long delay. We all had a lot of RL going on and Kate was away from home and busy for a few whole months.


The Boy Who Found Fear at Last

by Kira, Kate, and Kaylin


Chapter 7

"Jack."

It took Jack a moment to remember who the voice belonged to. It was hard to keep his thoughts in order when the wind on his face was so, so distractingly, vibrantly strong.

Oh. Yes. Jamie.

"How you doing, buddy?" Jack responded, beaming at the boy. "It's not too cold for you up here, is it?"

His smile was fixed on his face like it had broken and stuck that way. Between that and the cracked ice that still clung there, Jamie looked as if he wasn't sure whether or not to try and return it.

"I'm good," he answered, each word cautious. "But...I was gonna ask how you were doing."

"I'm great," Jack fired back. "I'm better than great, I'm fantastic. I've never been better."

He patted Jamie on the back, and rested his hand on the boy's shoulder, feeling the warmth, the faint pulse of life through Jamie's summer t-shirt.

Jamie's uncertain smile began to strengthen into a true one. "That's good," he said, "because you were looking kind of...you seemed kind of messed up, just now."

"It's over, so everything's going to be okay now," Jack answered. "That's why I'm great. You know how when something bad happens and then it's over and everything's okay, how it's the best feeling in the world?"

"Yeah. I guess."

"That's why I'm good right now." He gave Jamie another smile but he worked harder on this one. It was less of a rictus grin, it was more genuine. "Now I know I'll be okay."

He didn't say the rest, the ending: now I know that you're okay.

Jamie didn't need to know about the horrors he'd seen, none of them, and especially not the ones that involved him.

The sleigh went in for a landing in Jamie's yard and the Guardians piled out to see Jamie and Cupcake off.

"Oh hey," Jack said, as something floated up from under years and years of muck, "I just remembered something. You have a dance coming up, right?"

Jamie blushed a little bit, but fortunately Cupcake was still dusting the grass stains off her knees, and didn't see Jamie's very quick glance at her. "Uh, sure, I - yeah I guess so," he said, shrugging, as if the dance was the last thing on his mind, and not, perhaps, the third.

"Enjoy it," Jack said, enthusiasm brightening his features. "I've been to so many school dances, and they always start out with kids on the sidelines, all nervous because it's a dance - the sooner you get over that, the sooner the fun can start. And man do they get fun!" he jumped in place a bit, his grip tightening on his staff, an unseasonably cool breeze ruffling the late summer air as he did. "There was this one sock hop, in the 50's, the kids invented a whole new dance move. I can't believe it didn't take off. Let me show you -"

By then Cupcake had started to pay attention, and now the children's worries were entirely forgotten as Jack demonstrated the long-lost dance move. But the Guardians, hanging back by the sleigh, each still with a hand on a weapon, if they had it, were not taken in by the fun.

"The six of you," said Tooth, to a few of her mini-fairies hovering nearby. "I want you to stay here. Two per child at all times, the other two on patrol. Just in case Pitch comes looking for the kids."

The mini-fairies chirped the affirmative and zipped off in pairs, hovering at the edges of the kids' field of vision - not that they noticed, with Jack cavorting to their great distraction.

North had something to offer in the way of protection as well as soon as Jack's dancing was done. "A moment, children -"

The two actual kids, and Jack, looked over. Jack's face lit up as if he hadn't seen North in ages (even though he'd just seen him half a minute ago).

"See these snow-globes?" The giant Cossack crouched, to be near the children's eye level. He held two travelling snow-globes in his hands, offering them to the children. "Now, these are presents," he said, mirth still warming his voice, but his tone held a seriousness the children had not heard before. "But not toys. They are for making the quick escapes, should danger come calling."

They were brave enough to handle a mention of danger, and the Guardians owed them honesty by now, for so many reasons. Jamie and Cupcake took the snow-globes, carefully, looking them over with solemn marvel.

"Only think of where you wish to be, throw them, and poof!" said North, as the children took the snowglobes. "A portal will open there - whether it is home, the Tooth Palace, or the workshop in the North Pole, there you will be."

The children's eyes lit up.

"We can visit Santa's Workshop any time?" Jamie exclaimed.

"You have a palace?" Cupcake asked of Tooth.

"Is for emergencies only!" North said, laughing slightly. "Should you find yourselves in danger, you can come to where it's safe to one of us."

"We should head out. Jack needs some time to get cleaned up and rest," said Bunny, his eyes darting nervously over to their friend.

North patted them each on the shoulder with a massive hand and they turned away back to Jack.

"Are you going to be back soon?" Jamie asked.

There was a strange pause, as Jack suddenly looked like he'd forgotten how to speak.

"Sure," he said, but he'd paused too long for the "sure" to be genuine. His head was rattling suddenly with the possibility of "soon," the very amount of time that he had before him. To do whatever he wanted. There was so much to do. So much - even now, so much sun, so many sounds, from the wind in the leaves to the voices of his friends around him. Sometimes the leaves reminded him of things rustling in the dark. It was all he could do to remind himself that they were leaves. It was all he could do to remind himself what leaves were.

He opened his mouth to say more, but North was patting him on the shoulder. "But first," the Cossack said, with a great show of cheer, "there is much to do! Many questions to ask - a Guardian is always busy, never more so than when the Boogeyman rears his head!" he winked at the children, as if he were not herding Jack back to the sleigh.

They had to get him away before the crack in Jack's armor shattered and whatever was waiting behind came pouring out.

"Bye," Jamie called, a touch of uncertainty to his voice. Cupcake waved too, as the Guardians piled into the sleigh and North very quickly set the reindeer to flying. Jack felt the solidity of the wood beneath him, spread his palms across the lacquered surface, and felt as though fractures were webbing across some part of his body that was not, somehow, flesh and bone.

Suddenly he was shivering.

"I'll see you soon, Jamie," Jack said, giving the boy a reassuring smile. The moment he was on the sleigh and it was up in the air again where Jamie couldn't see, that smile faded away.

Jamie watched as the sleigh rose in the sky, hoping that Jack really was okay - or at least would be okay - and then remembered something.

"Aw,I never did get to throw my throwing boot at Pitch," he groused. He turned to Cupcake who was looking at him expectantly as she tucked her snow-globe into her pocket.

Jack's encouragement had left Jamie feeling emboldened,

"So, Cupcake, about that dance coming up..."

"I'll be around at six to pick you up," she said, smiling. It was a confident, knowing smile, and she said nothing else before turning to head home. "And I'm bringing a fireplace poker, just in case Pitch decides to ruin the dance. You should bring your throwing boot."

"Okay!" Jamie called after her, enthusiasm pouring over his face.

He turned homewards, examining the snow-globe once more, happy that everything had turned out okay. He was going to the dance with Cupcake, Pitch had been defeated once more, and most importantly of all, Jack was safe now and he was okay.


Jack was not okay.

Jack was at the bottom of the sleigh, hiding his face from the wind and the light. He liked knowing that they were there, but just then, there was too much of both. He had held himself together for Jamie, but now that Jamie wasn't there -

Noise blurred around him, wind and familiar voices, safe voices, but there were just too many of them and they were - they were saying his name -

Something touched him. Jack snapped upright and away, but didn't scream. He'd learned so early that screaming just attracted more...

No. It was Tooth. Just Tooth. Her pretty face, even prettier than he remembered, her colors so vibrant - how could any living thing have so much color? But so worried. It took him a moment to remember. That was what worry looked like.

"Jack?" she said. She'd been saying his name over, and over, he realized. "Jack, tell me the truth," she said, or started to say, but stopped midway through "Truth" as Jack curled up again, lying on the floor of the sleigh, curved into a corner and watching them all with eyes half-open against the light.

Tooth looked at the other Guardians, all silent now as Jack raised his hands to cover his eyes a little.

"What truth?" he asked, suddenly, his voice so calm, so...blank.

"You're not alright," she said, looking as if she wanted to reach for him, but not doing it. "What happened? What did Pitch do to you?"

Jack shrugged. "Made me listen to him. Made me tell him stories. Pulled my hair. Hit me."

At the back of the sleigh, Bunny and Anansi, who had finally compressed himself back into a man's shape, exchanged dark looks. Tooth and Sandy each looked near to tears.

"But you're safe now," said Tooth, inching closer, but not touching him. "It's over. Pitch will never touch you again."

There was a hint of steel in her voice, that echoed the dark looks Bunny and Anansi had just exchanged.

Jack shrugged. "Okay."

The blank looks all the Guardians not driving the sleigh gave him mirrored Jack's...everything.

"Exactly how long were you in there, Jack?" Anansi asked.

Jack shrugged again. "I can't tell you exactly."

"Why not?"

"I lost track after the first few decades."

"...but Jack, it's only been a day. We went looking for you twenty hours ago," Anansi went on, brows knitted into actual genuine concern. No trickery, no guile, just worry.

"Oh." There was a hint of clarity in Jack's expression, as he processed it. As if it made sense. "Okay."

"Jack," said North, his voice as gentle as it could be over the wind. "Anywhere you wish to go - we will take you there. Where is it to be?"

Jack lay there, thinking.

"The Tooth Palace," he said, finally. He missed the open air. He had also missed the fairies, and their pretty jewel-brightness, and their gentle affection for him.

"It is done," said North, swirling the snow-globe he had left and throwing it.


The fairies swarmed Jack when they landed at the Tooth palace, and he smiled for the first time since leaving Jamie at home as they covered his body with their tiny fairy hugs. He knew what they were, he knew they were touching him kindly, and their chirping blocked out all of the sounds in the world with a very musical kind of white noise -

They chirped their way into silence as Tooth hovered in front of him, making room for their queen's voice. "Jack."

He opened his eyes, met hers for a moment, then looked away suddenly as if he were afraid to make eye contact.

Tooth's throat constricted. She swallowed her tension away before speaking.

"Jack, do you want to take a bath?" she asked.

He looked at her like he was trying to figure out a trick question. "Maybe?"

He was covered in dust and grime so thick, he could have drawn in it. Tooth nodded to her mini fairies.

"Girls, show him the way. Jack, you don't have to, but you look like you need one," she said, as kindly as possible. She seemed to not want to order Jack to do anything - but orders were what he was waiting for. It was easier, not having to think for himself.

He nodded, drifting along on his own breeze as the fairies tugged him away from the Guardians, towards the lower levels of the palace.

The Guardians all exchanged another glance, but before they could really start to talk, a fairy zipped back to Tooth's ear, chirping in an urgent, but unsure tone.

"I think I should help -" she said.

He wasn't in a state where it seemed wise to leave him alone.

"Go," North said, nodding. "I think also you should."

She left the Guardians, buzzing down to where Jack was sitting in a wide, shallow bath, water trickling down from a spout onto his white hair, just...sitting.

The fairies hadn't even managed to get him out of his clothes - and he hadn't taken them off before plunking, stock still, in the middle of the bath. The only movement he made was occasionally lifting his hand and watching as the water trickled over it, as if he was marveling at the sensation of it on his skin.

He finally looked up at Tooth, eyes wide.

"It's water," he said, as if sharing some beautiful secret with her, one that could disappear if he spoke too loudly about it. "I only saw it a few times. And a lot of time it had monsters or blood in it."

He glanced over at her right after he said that, as if only just realizing that it was a strange or upsetting thing to say and then looked away, back at the water.

"Jack, since your clothes are already wet, why don't you take them off so you can get cleaned up properly and so I can get you into something dry. Is that okay?"

Jack nodded at her vaguely and stood up.

"Girls, can you get him a sheet for privacy and help him out of his clothes?"

The fairies started moving, diligently, disappearing and reappearing with a bed sheet, holding it up as a privacy screen between Jack and Tooth.

"Just let me know when you're back in the water," she said to Jack.

"Okay." He disrobed and climbed back in, then sat, letting the water trickled across his hands. "I'm back in."

The mini-fairies flew off with the sheet and Tooth climbed into the water with him, respectfully keeping her eyes above waist level. The thin layer of ice the was started to spread out from Jack's waist helped with that anyway.

She reached for a water jug and slowly, so Jack wasn't surprised by anything she was doing, poured it over the top of his head, working her finger through his hair to remove the clumps of dust and grime. When his hair was clean, she took a soft cloth that mini-fairies handed her to work on cleaning the frozen dust off of his face.

"There you are," she finally said gently, when his face was clean, just as she had so long ago when he'd gotten Jokul Frosti's splinters in his eyes and she'd cleaned away the blood and ice.

Just like then, she looked beautiful to Jack, beautiful enough, that after so much ugliness, it was a weight on his chest. He let out a breath of air that made hardly a sound and yet, at the same time, was anguished. He breathed like he was desperate for it and choked from trying to breathe it all in at once.

Too much color, too much kindness, too much to take in all at once. This couldn't be his world again. It was too nice and nice things were always taken away.

He was in enough of a panic that he barely noticed Tooth calling his name. The world was swimming. Before long, she and the mini-fairies had gotten him into a luxurious silken robe, soft on his skin - and very old, judging from the look of it. It had been preserved well, perhaps by the magic of the Tooth Palace, but it looked like something out of a history book or from the diorama at a museum about ancient India rather than something people would wear in the modern day.

There was a distinct lack of wing holes so he wondered whose it was, or if there'd ever been a time she'd been a normal human, wingless and featherless.

He wound up in what could only be Tooth's rarely-used bed, covered in blankets, with Tooth holding his hand without really realizing how he'd gotten there. That wasn't to say that he hadn't seen Tooth and her fairies guide him into it, but just because he'd seen it hadn't meant that he'd been living it as it happened.

Only now, did he reconnect with reality again.

"Jack, can you hear me?" she said gently, looking down at him, face twisted into palpable concern.

"Yeah," he said distantly. "Yeah, zoned out for a minute. Too much. I can't - there's too much light and sound and color. It's -"

"What do you need from me?" she asked.

"Stop talking," he said, and then realizing how that sounded, he explained, "I can see you or hear you. I can't deal with both right now. I'm used to everything being dark and ugly. It's too much of the opposite."

Smiling at him, her smile gentle and sad, she stopped talking and simply kept holding his hand, fingers brushing against his.

"And I, uh, I could maybe use a hug right now," Jack admitted, his voice going higher pitched.

She stood up from where she was kneeling to sit next to him on the bed and he scooted over to make even more room, then leaned his head against her shoulder. Feathers. The sweet smell of feathers. Nag champa. Jasmine.

Her arms enveloped him, hands rubbing his back and threading through his hair.

That was when the dam, swollen with decades worth of rain, finally burst. The first sobs were physical, his whole body trembling, and the rest tumbled out like he was a basket turned upside down and shaken. It was the kind of crying most people hoped happened in front of people they trusted or not in front of anyone at all, snot riddled, and rife with ugly snorting sounds,that only happened when the body took over and the mind had no choice in the matter.

Tears seeped out of his eyes, not in drops, but like a flood spreading over a plain. He wiped his face and more replaced them, his whole body shaking even when his sobs made no noise.

She held him and didn't stop holding him, not until the flood waters dried up, and consciousness left him.


Tooth practically had to pry herself from Jack's grip. As he'd fallen asleep, his arms had clamped around her waist like they'd frozen solid in that position. For a while, she hadn't wanted to move. She wasn't used to this, to a Jack that was not okay. Even during the worst of it all when they'd faced Jokul Frosti, there'd been a part of him that never quite stopped being the unflappable Jack they knew. Any moments of rage or hopelessness had always passed.

But his sadness now ran with the kind of depth that came of years of unrelenting sorrow, sadness made to feel so big that now it seemed like he felt that all his life was filled with it.

She had lost so much in her life but the worst of her grief and sorrow had only glanced upo pain like this. A part of her wanted to stay and hold him.

But there was work to be done and there were decisions to be made. So eventually, when he was sound asleep, she pried herself free and left a big squishy pillow in her place. She'd covered him with blankets and left Baby Tooth nestled at his neck.

Then she walked out to meet the others.

It was good timing. Sandy had just returned from delivering some dreams, and as they gathered to make a decision on what the do next, the looks the Guardians were exchanging had changed from ones of varying levels of shock and horror, to a shared resolve - and a deep, growing anger.

Tooth was the first to say it.

"Pitch Black," she said, pronouncing her words as carefully as the queen she was - and as mercilessly as the warrior she also was, "has proven himself too dangerous to be allowed freedom any longer. He's rejected the Enkidu oath more than once. And since I don't know any way to trap him permanently, I'm going to kill him the next chance I get."

She looked at the others - no, at Sandy - as if daring him to tell her she should feel otherwise.

The Sandman, however, had a wry expression on his face, and the sand above his head became little images of Pitch, and Tooth, and a tinier version of Sandy in between them - a tiny version which lashed out at Pitch with hair-thin whips of sand, and pulled the sand Pitch apart. The message was clear - Not if I get the chance first.

"But what are we gonna do about Jack in the meantime?" Bunny put in. He hadn't put the larger of his boomerangs away since leaving Camelot, and he spun it restlessly in his paw.

"See how he is in the morning," said North, a hint of gruffness in his tone. "Is possible he will be better, and then I think, back to the Pole with me to keep an eye on. Yetis will help, elves will help, until he is better, yes. Until we are sure he is not a danger to himself. Sandy -" the gold little man looked up. "In this case, perhaps Jack is to be like a child we guard for a while, yes? He may need sweet dreams for many nights."

Sandy nodded. He would be there. Even now he let off a tendril of sand, letting it snake its way through the Tooth Palace towards Tooth's room.

"Great. I'll look for Pitch," Bunny growled. "I'll get started now."

"I think, perhaps, you won't need to do that for a while -" Anansi cut in. Spiderwebs stretched between his fingers in a complicated cat's cradle, and the spider crossed his eyes slightly as he read the story half-formed there. "Thanks to Sandy," he flashed a subdued smile at the Sandman - "Pitch is most theatrically and satisfyingly hoisted on his own petard, for the moment. You may change your plans once I remind you of a story which, I think, may lead us toward a way to facilitate the death our fairy queen suggests -"

Bunny's voice was soft, almost a mumble, as he said, "Way ahead of you, mate."

"Are you?" asked Anansi, pulling a line in the story web, his eyebrow raised. He looked from Bunny to the story, and his eyebrow rose further. "I see you have been busy," he said, his tone mild in such a way as to be deliberately ironic. "Goodness me."

"Is one night," North said. "We should wait here, in case Pitch breaks out soon enough to make a good story. Is possible?"

Anansi shrugged at North's question. "Many things are, including this."

"Then let us wait," the leader of the Guardians said. He looked at them all, his companions, his friends, his Guardians who, for so long, had been incomplete without Jack. "Let us be here for him, when he wakes."

Let us be here for each other, he thought. How would they all cope, if the Jack that woke was not the Jack they knew?


Tooth had fallen asleep on the bed next to Jack. After her talk with the others, she'd climbed in next to him, initially content to simply watch over him as he slept. He'd briefly woken and pulled her in close so that turned into more of a cuddle, though.

Even as he slept, the occasional tear dripped a slow drip down his cheek, as if he was having nightmares - despite the dusting by Sandy - or filled with such overwhelming sorrow even his sleeping body had to let it leak out.

It made her resolve to kill Pitch even stronger.

She didn't want to see it, though, the slow tears that shouldn't have been there in sleep - or been there ever- and the entire ordeal had been emotionally exhausting so she fell asleep as well. Sleep was a rare thing for her, always as driven as she was, sustained so much by the belief of children, but that meant when it came time for sleep to take her, there wasn't much she could do to resist it.

She drifted off, her hand clasping Jack's tightly.

She woke to empty arms and the frantic chirps of her fairies.

They were tugging on her trying to wake her up.

"Jack! Where's Jack?"

Baby Tooth tugged on her hand to try to guide her. They'd seen him pull himself away from her and sneak out.

Tooth took to the air zipped outside to the others. Sandy was napping on his cloud, tendrils of dream sand reaching out to the people that needed dreams. He had long since mastered the ability to do his job while taking naps of his own. North was tending to his reindeer. Bunny and Anansi had somehow produced a deck of cards out of nowhere and seemed to be playing the most intense game of Go Fish that had possibly ever been played.

"Have you seen Jack? I fell asleep and the fairies woke me up and he's gone!"

Sandy started awake, looking around frantically.

"How did he sneak past us?" asked Anansi quizzically.

"He can be sneaky when he wants to be," said Bunny, hopping to his feet. "It's the only way he's managed to get the drop on me for pranks on occasion." .

"It's all my fault," Tooth said frantically, "I shouldn't have fallen asleep -"

"Is not your fault. Today was an exhausting day for us all," said North hopping into his sleigh. "Sandy nodded off, too. No need for panic yet. The fairies say he went away on his own?"

She nodded. "They would have noticed if Pitch had broken in. And I was right there."

"Then we will find him. He has likely not gone far."

Bunny and Anansi hopped into the sleigh and the mini-fairies led the way, gesturing desperately in the direction they'd seen Jack fly off in.


North turned out to be right.

"Down there!" Bunny called out frantically, pointing to a small glade in the mountains, not at all far from the Tooth Palace. Apparently, he'd only caught a glimpse of white hair and blue hoodie but as they drew closer, the way he cried out "Strewth!" and hopped out of the sleigh, not content to wait until they'd landed, meant there was something to be alarmed about.

When they all drew closer to the ground, they could see why.

North's blood ran colder than the ice that surrounded his home.

Jack hadn't just been sitting or laying in the glade. His body was in a still pool of water, only about two feet deep, the surface slightly frozen over. His eyes were closed and there was a serene expression on his face.

By the time they all landed, Bunny was already reaching through the thin ice and pulling him out, in a complete panic.

"Jack! Jack!"

The moment Jack was touched, he startled, making it clear he hadn't drowned, and when he was pulled to sit upright, he let out the breath he'd been holding.

"What? What?" he cried out, squirming in Bunny's gripped, alarmed at being touched and at the panic the others were showing. "What - what's wrong?"

They all breathed a sigh of relief the moment he spoke. Bunny held the paw that wasn't grasping Jack's shoulder to his chest, as if he'd only narrowly dodged a heart attack of mythical proportions.

"What were you doing under there, Jack?" Tooth asked him anxiously.

"Crikey, mate, you gave us a scare!"

"I was just -" Jack was shaking and it wasn't from the cold. He was still clearly startled. "It was quiet. Too much. Too much light and sound and everything is so beautiful and color. All - the color. And I wanted it for so long." His expression was anguished. "But it's just - it's too much. So I found this pool and I've been laying at the bottom with my eyes closed. Disappearing. No sound. No light. Just...quiet. I can hold my breath a long time; you know how that is."

They all needed to breathe but could hold their breath longer than mortal beings. Sandy didn't breathe at all.

"It's okay. I just come up to breathe when I need to. And I don't mind water that much anymore. I still hate it, but I'm used to the things I hate. You just deal with the fear, you know? You just live in it and it's there, and you let it wash over you and it doesn't hurt as much anymore. You just live with it. I'm good at that now."

They all looked at him with sadness in their gazes and Tooth knew they were all thinking the same thing.

If nothing else had proven that the Jack they knew had been damaged horribly, it was this. The Jack they'd known, before the maze, had loved the light and sound and beauty of the world. He'd reveled in it, in seeing and experiencing everything he could. He hadn't hidden himself away in the dark on purpose.

And even if he needed quiet time to himself, he never would've taken refuge under water. Not when it made him so anxious to have his face wet because of his death.

Now he was dealing with it but it wasn't because he'd overcome that fear. It was because a single fear no longer mattered when you feared nearly everything. He felt that the things he was afraid of were simply something to endure, enough that he could lay under the water, still feeling the same panic and terror it had always caused, and enduring it for the quiet, empty nothing, for the relief it gave from the bombardment of the things he'd missed and yet now caused him pain.

Bunny lifted Jack out of the water, holding him close, and Jack simply allowed it to happen, staring blankly ahead, as if someone manhandling him was another thing to be endured.

"Jack, we should perhaps be deciding now to take somewhere where you might recover best," said North slowly, his usually bombastic voice very nearly quavering. "I was originally thinking the Pole -"

North realized, with a sinking feeling, that the pole was not a good place for Jack. The yetis, helpful as they were, were noisy and harried. The elves, well-meaning as they were, were simple and clumsy, and too prone to mischief. There was too much going on for the workshop. Jack would spend his time there trying to hide from the activity, not warming to it. The same went for the frantic activity of the Tooth Palace.

Jack needed somewhere peaceful, somewhere quiet, where he could get used to being in the world again but not where it felt like his senses were being bombarded.

"Ahem." the clearing of Anansi's throat cut through North's thoughts. "Much as I hate to remind you, North, given that it is not a pleasant thing I must remind you of, but you've forgotten a line of this story which you yourself began."

And North remembered - the hag in the woods with the iron teeth and the chicken-footed hut. "You do not have time to buy my help! So you will have to be in my debt."

And he had promised to do her impossible tasks - when they'd rescued Jack. And rescued him, they had. Physically.

North nodded. "I had forgotten. I remember now."

But as quickly as the Cossack saw problems, he found answers. "Bunny."

"Yeah?"

"Will you take care of him?" North asked. Tooth and Sandy looked at each other, realizing as they did that this was probably their best plan. Anansi considered, looking skyward in thought, and nodded in assent.

Bunny nodded, too. "Yeah. Yeah, I will."

"Will he be all right in the Warren?" Tooth asked. "I mean, he is winter, and it's not exactly wintry in there -"

"I'll take him out for snow as often as he needs," Bunny said. "Just have to work out a trip outside every so often. Easter's more than half a year away and spring is a much faster job to bring in the southern hemisphere than in the north. It's do-able."

"Is calm there, calmer than the pole or the palace," North put in. "It is the best of what we can do for him, just now. And we will help," he added, nodding at Bunny. "Take him to North Pole, and I will take the boy on a bracing walk through the Arctic for a day here and there. It will be good for both of us."

Tooth nodded.

Jack kept staring ahead as they made their decisions about him, leaning against Bunny's shoulder. He was used to having his decisions made for him. It was easier to not think about it - to not think about anything.

North walked over to him and Bunny and knelt in front of him.

"Jack, I need you to look at me."

Jack's gaze teetered a bit in getting there but he managed to drag it up to North's face. The blankness of Jack's eyes cut into North's heart but he kept his voice steady.

"You are not well, my young friend. I know you were feeling overwhelmed but do you understand this?"

"Yeah, I know." said Jack. "I'm kinda a little..." He made an odd fluttering gesture of his hand.

"We think the Warren is best for you now. Is bright and beautiful but mostly quiet. There is light and color, but shade and quiet. Bunny can look after you, until you are feeling yourself again. And we can visit as often as you need us to."

"Okay," Jack said flatly.

"Is this arrangement something you will be happy with?"

Jack simply shrugged. "Sure. I guess."

"Jack," said Bunny gently. "Mate, are you just agreeing to agree or…?"

Jack shrugged again. "I dunno. I'm not - I'm not really thinking right now. More than I have to. So I dunno what I think. I guess that sounds okay."

It was like his ordeal had ironed him out to something flat.

"If anything needs to change," Jack went on, "and I start - I start thinking again, I can just tell you guys where I wanna be."

"Yes, you can. And if you decide you want to try staying at the Tooth Palace again or the Pole, then we can do whatever you wish," North reassured him. "For now, though, there is somewhere I must go. A favor I must repay. I will be back soon and be visiting the Warren, I promise. Is - is it alright if I give you a goodbye hug?"

North was not the kind of man that asked people if they wanted a bear hug or not but he didn't know how much Jack wanted to be touched or not and out of love, he was willing to do whatever Jack needed.

"Sure," Jack said, and at least a little genuine brightness entered his voice.

North hugged him tightly - but briefly - before letting him go and getting to his feet again.

"Bunny, Sandy will be coming to be giving him good dreams. If you ever need to pass news on how he is - or if he wants visits from the rest of us - he can pass them along so you are not having to ever leave him."

"Right," Bunny agreed, picking up Jack's staff and scooping his young friend up his arms, finagling them so he could carry both.

"And now," North said, his chest heaving as he drew in a breath. "I go to repay my debt."


The chicken-footed hut was in the same clearing North had last found it, but Baba Yaga was not in when North arrived.

For a second, leaving crossed his mind. No point in waiting for the old witch if he could be helping Jack - what if she didn't return for a long while?

"I give it ten minutes," North declared to the single reindeer he'd ridden to the Russian forest.

"Ten minutes?" the screech fell on him like wind. Above North, the trees parted as the old witch's flying mortar broke through them, the witch livid inside. She landed with a thud, climbing out of her mortar and poking a long, skinny, iron-strong finger in North's chest. "Your solemn oath is worth only ten minutes? So much for honor! Look what a lazy servant I've saddled myself with. Well if anyone can work the laziness out of you, it's Babushka. Get inside."

"How can I be late, Babushka?" North asked, as Baba Yaga pushed him to the door of the hut. "I have only just found Jack, and he is hurt so badly you can barely say he's rescued at all. Yet here I come to you."

And the sooner I complete your impossible tasks and return to Jack, the better, he thought.

Baba Yaga snorted. "And stupid, too. You were so sure rescue would be as easy as having Jack back in your clutches, weren't you? So sure! And so foolish, you might have signed your life away to me if I had been a little sneakier with my words. You should have been clever enough to negotiate instead of just putting yourself wholly in my debt! Hah!" She unlocked the last of the locks and threw the door open. "But then, you were never famous for cleverness, you only married clever."

She pushed North through the door before he could object. Before he could bristle any harder at the mention of his wife, she slapped something against his chest so hard it knocked the air from his lungs. "Well don't just stand there." His arms closed automatically around the thing, a half-rusted sieve. "Fill my bath with water from the tank! You can use that bucket. Move quickly! I want a bath at sundown, hot and steaming!"

She slammed the door closed behind herself, and every single lock clicked tight into place, locking Nicholas St. North firmly away from the world - and from Jack, wherever he was, however he was doing.


Jack slid onto the grass on his own well enough, but without a flourish upon landing, or any kind of enthusiasm at all. It wasn't so much the frost spirit's solemnity that was unsettling, as much as it was every moment of delight that he was so deliberately not taking.

And he looked around the warren like he'd never seen it before – or like he'd remembered it differently, and was trying to match his visions up.

Jack turned in a circle in place, slowly, mouth agape, eyes half-lidded, as if even the soft dawn-like light of the warren hurt his eyes. When he looked down, past Bunny, his face twitching, he suddenly shuddered, and clenched his fists, rubbing his eyes as if to rub away an ugly vision.

"You all right?"

Bunny loped over, poised to catch Jack. The frost spirit was weaving as if he might fall, but with a deep shuddering sigh, he righted himself, and removing his hands from his eyes, stared at the ground. "Yeah. I'm fine. I'm fine now." He said it as if to remind himself.

"You're not fine," Bunny said, gruffness roughening the edges of his words. Gruffness at the injury done to Jack, but the frost spirit trembled as if it had been directed at him, and didn't look up. Bunny went on, hastily softening his tone. "Whatever Pitch put you through, it's done now, but – look, he's done a number onya. You don't have to tell me you're fine when you're not. All right?" When Jack didn't respond, he added, "You're safe here. I'm gonna look out for you."

Finally Jack looked up, a wateriness in his blue eyes. "It's safe here," he repeated, with just the hint of a question. "You're sure?"

"Absolutely," Bunny said, thinking he'd kill anything that tried to make it otherwise. "My warren, my rules, remember? Nothing's gonna hurt you here."

He gave Jack a smile of easy confidence. Unconsciously, he was ready to hug the boy, or at least get a smile back.

But Jack just nodded and folded, down, slowly, and curled on the grass with his face buried in his arms. Bunny crouched over him, his smile faded.

Three hundred years. Three hundred years of solitude, of purposelessness, and Bunny shouting at him at the turn of every season like a criminal, and he'd still been Jack Frost. Still a spirit of joy and rebellion, and delight.

But Pitch had had him for one day -

His claws bit into his pawpads as he clenched his fists, then released them. A single, terrible day could change anyone. A single terrible day had changed him, forever.

He hadn't had anybody to help him feel like himself again on the worst day of his life, but Jack had him, and for Jack, he could be patient.

"Hey, c'mon mate," he said, crouching down and touching Jack's shoulder. "You're free again. Y'wanna play a game?"

Games were always a safe bet with Jack. He peeked out from between his sleeves, but his eyes were still wary. "What kind of game?"

"Whatever kinda game you want, mate." Bunny thought wildly. "Could be it's about time to track the Groundhog down again, challenge him and the Leprechaun to another rugby match. We owe them a solid beating, remember? This time, we'll make sure that paddy hoon isn't cheating to start with."

"I –" Jack's voice was hesitant. Afraid.

That touch of fear broke Bunny's heart as much as it filled him with anger. "You what? It's all right."

"I don't want to." Jack eyed him, as if expecting anger. The boy shrank in on himself, away from Bunny's touch, like he was expecting to be hit. Or yelled at.

"Then we won't. That's all right, too," Bunny said, and Jack relaxed.

"I don't want to play a game," Jack added, his voice gaining confidence. Just not enough confidence for him to uncurl on himself.

"Right," Bunny said, He dropped from his crouch to kneel. "You wanna talk about it, then?"

"No." Jack turned over, curled up again, away from Bunny.

"It might help," he said. "You might feel better –"

"No!" Jack clenched in on himself, as if he was trying to disappear, and he sniffled suddenly, rubbing his face in his sleeves.

Bunny sighed, but softly. Patience. He could do that. He could do that, he just had to stay vigilant about it.

"All right, mate. But when you do wanna talk, I'm here for you." He reached out and ruffled Jack's hair.

The reaction Jack had to that was a visceral one, his whole body tensing. If he was a cat, his fur would've rolled to stand entirely on end.

He slapped Bunny's paw away with a little screech.

"Don't do that! Don't do that!" he cried out shrilly, practically leaping away.

Bunny stayed where he was, animal-frozen, paw still outstretched. His brows furrowed. "Do what?"

He hadn't even registered the connection between the gesture and Jack's panic. He always ruffled Jack's hair.

Jack gestured vaguely at his hair.

"That. Don't. Don't mess with my hair."

It took him back too much to the time he spent sitting on the floor at the side of Pitch's throne with his hand on his hand, like he was some kind of pet.

Bunny didn't know that. It had become habit for him to reach out and squeeze a paw through Jack's hair. He'd done so not a week before. Had been doing so since he and Jack had worked together to take down Old Man Winter.

Pitch had him for one day -

He relaxed, flicking his ears as his only allowance to his anger at Pitch. "I won't do it then," he promised Jack. Thinking, sighing, he flicked his ears again. "What - what do you want to do right now, Jack?" he finally asked. "What will make you feel better?"

"Nothing!" he cried out shrilly, clenching his fists and throwing his hands in the air. "I don't know!"

He crumbled in on himself again, sitting on the ground and drawing up his knees. Then he buried his face in them and covered his head with his hands.

Bunny reached out towards Jack again, paused, retracted his paw. "Right," he said, uncertain, hating the feeling. "I - do you want to rest? I could go get Sandy -"

"You're going to leave me alone?" Jack asked in a horrified voice, in a tone that rang with betrayal.

"What? No, I'll be right back," said Bunny. "Sandy should be just over Sri Lanka right now, it's barely a hop away -"

At that, Jack practically dissolved into terrified gasping, his chest heaving with short, panicked breaths.

"I need to be alone but can't you stay here?" he sobbed. "In the Warren?"

"Of course I can," Bunny said. Jack's obvious panic was terrible, but at least they'd landed on something he wanted. "Look, I'll stay right here as long as you need. Just - tell me what I can do for you. I just need to know what you want."

So he didn't go blundering into saying things that made Jack nearly have a panic attack. He still hovered awkwardly, caught between his instincts to reach out for Jack, and restraining himself for not wanting to scare Jack again.

"I need - time - to think," Jack stammered out. "Just...stay nearby."

"Right." Bunny paused, trying desperately to think of something to do that was more progressive than nothing. "I'll just -" he pointed towards the dye river, but Jack was not looking. "I'll be around. Nearby. You need me, you just shout. I'll hear ya, right mate?"

Jack said nothing - just sucked in an audible breath through his nose and curled in on himself a little more. Bunny hesitated a moment longer before loping off, pausing a few bounds away to look back at Jack again. The frost spirit remained curled in on himself, his face pressed to the ground as much as he could make it.

Bunny loped out of Jack's line of sight, behind a mossy boulder that stood alone in the green meadow, and was surprised to find he didn't have any more anger left to curse Pitch's name. Seeing Jack recoil, hearing him hyperventilate with terror, had leeched the anger out of him, leaving a space for sorrow.

And fear.


Jamie had stopped being fooled after the first week Jack didn't come by to visit.

The Sandman saw the boy's face at his window as he hovered over Burgess, sending out dreams to all but the Bennett children. Even Sophie was awake at this hour. She stood at the window with her brother, their eyes wide, not with wonder, but a desperate search for answers as they watched Sandy work, waiting for him to see and acknowledge them.

Just like they'd been waiting every night for the last few weeks.

Sandy heaved a silent little sigh as he caught the children's eyes, thinking of the news he could give them - and not wanting to, because the news wasn't good. Even now, with Jack weeks out of the maze, he had not improved. Sandy wasn't even looking forward to the visit he'd pay in twelve hours to the warren, because he'd stopped expecting things to be any better with Jack each night there than they were the night before.

Bunny was trying. They were all trying, but Jack's moods were dark, and his dreams, if Sandy didn't stop by nightly to help, would have been darker.

And on top of all that, the Bennett children were losing sleep, and missing out on sweet dreams. The last streams of dreamsand filtered down to the children sleeping below, and the Sandman drifted down to the two who weren't.

"Jack's not okay, is he?" Jamie said, as Sandy bobbed through the window, holding his sister's hand as they stepped back to make room for Sandy. "He acted like he was, but that was so we wouldn't worry, wasn't it?"

"I worry," Sophie put in, one knuckle against her lips, clutching a ragged, much-loved stuffed doll in the hand that wasn't holding her brother's.

Sandy put on a faint smile, trying to reassure the children. He swirled his hand, leaving a trail of dreamsand in the air that became Jack, sitting cross legged, slumped forward, but a sandy mini-fairy zipped around him, catching his attention, and an image of Bunny put his paw on the sand-Jack's back. A tiny Sandy arrived with an equally tiny Tooth, and as the little Sandman sent dreams Jack's way, he lay with his head on Tooth's lap, all the Guardians gathered around him. Taking care of him. Above them, a clock face ticked away steadily. Sandy shrugged.

"You're taking care of him, and trying to help him, but you don't know how long it will take," Jamie interpreted, as Sophie sniffed. "But where's North?"

Sandy grimaced slightly. A sand North appeared beside the other Guardians, sorting through a pile of soil while a long-nosed figure shook her fist over him. Jamie frowned. "With Baba Yaga?"

Sandy nodded, but pointed to the sand Jack.

"He's... there for Jack, too?" Jamie squinted, confused. "Where is Jack?"

Sophie removed her finger from her mouth, pointing as Sandy rippled a background around the sand Guardians. "Easter place!" she exclaimed, the worn, stuffed bunny dangling from her hand. "I went there!" she declared, looking at her brother. "I went there," she repeated, explaining to him. "To help with Easter. Jack's there?" she asked Sandy, looking to him for confirmation. The Sandman nodded, and Sophie brought her knuckle back to her lips, her little face frowning as she thought.

Finally, she looked up at Sandy and held out the hand that contained the well-loved bunny doll.

"Mr. Floop makes me feel better when I'm sad," she said. "Please take him to Jack, Mr. Sandman?"

Sandy took the toy, nodding solemnly as Sophie released it into his care, holding it like the precious thing it was. .

"Will you tell Jack we hope we feels better soon?" Jamie asked, putting his hand on Sophie's shoulder as she sidled closer to him, leaning into his side and sticking her knuckle firmly into her mouth.

Sandy nodded, as he changed his sand pictographs to an image of both Bennett children sleeping sound in their beds. He tried to give them a stern look, but in the circumstances, he was finding sternness quite difficult.

Jamie nodded, though. "We'll try. Won't we, Soph?"

"Mm-hmm," Sophie nodded.

"But please tell us how Jack is doing more often," Jamie begged, as Sandy floated to the window.

"Peese," Sophie echoed, around her hand.

Sandy pressed his lips together, nodding, and solemnly tipped a conjured hat to them before drifting through the window and back into the sky. He sent out two last dreams for each child before moving on, his eternally sunset journey carrying him across North and South America, then straight across the Pacific ocean to drop dreams on New Zealand, and Eastern Australia. He landed in the center of the Outback with the sun still over the horizon, casting a long shadow on the red earth behind the single leafless acacia tree that marked the Guardians-only entrance to the Warren.

Sandy dropped through the gap beneath the tree's roots, waving up a haze of dreamsand to tip another hat to the sentinel egg standing at the mouth of the tunnel. It stood aside to let him pass,

Sandy emerged into the Warren on the sort of sight he had sadly become used to, one which did not match the gentle springtime air of the place, one of anxiety and - this was unusual - blood.

"Mate, just lemme have a look at it. You bit right down to the bone -"

Bunny had Jack's hand in his paws and was gaping at Jack's mangled, bloody thumb in disbelief. Jack was not pulling hard against Bunny's grip, not enough to pull his hand free, anyway, but his arm was stiff with tension and he was looking around the maze like a panicked bird, his gaze flitting this way and that.

"Are you sure it was me?" he moaned, his words a wail of terror ."I thought I saw - I don't remember biting it -"

"Jack, I saw you do it," Bunny said, pressing the deep pits on Jack's thumb together to slow the bleeding. "You've had your thumb in your mouth the last hour."

"I -" Jack considered this, but his gaze still shot around the warren. He spotted Sandy, but looked him over as if he had much more important things to think about. "No. No. I wasn't - I don't have a wall to mark. It was - they have sharp claws, they'll come out at night -"

"Jack," Bunny said again, as if Jack's name were a tether to pull him back into reality with. "There's only you and me here," he said. "And Sandy." he nodded at the newly arrived Guardian. "If anything got in here besides us, I'd know. Nothing's coming out. It's always day in the warren, mate, remember?"

Jack trembled, like a struck dog, but his eyes settled, staring at a flower growing in the grass beside him.

"It's almost healed," Bunny said, as the flesh of Jack's thumb scabbed over. "I'll get some water to wash the blood up -"

But he had barely even turned to move away before Jack had grabbed his arm and, noiseless, clung to Bunny with all his weight.

"Or not," Bunny added, crouching again, shooting Sandy another look. It had become a familiar look - an "I have no idea what he's doing, or what to do about it" look.

Sandy, too, shrugged. He sent a stream of dreamsand in front of Jack's face to get his attention, but Jack's eyes were back on the yellow flower growing in the grass. He reached out, slowly, as if expecting an electric shock, and touched the edge of the flower. He winced as he made contact, but then, as the petal bent softly under his finger, sucked in an amazed breath.

"It's not sharp. It doesn't cut," he said, in words as soft as a breath. He looked away a moment, as if trying to remember something very, very old. This was the fourth or fifth time he'd marveled over flowers not cutting or biting. He jerked his face back towards Bunny and Sandy. "Did they not cut before?"

Sandy's dreamsand became a stream of dancing Z's in front of Jack's eyes, pulling Jack's gaze towards Sandy.

"Oh. It's time to sleep?" Jack asked.

"Too right it is," Bunny put in. Jack still hadn't released his arm, and was hugging it to his chest, pulling Bunny at an odd angle. "Mate, can I have my hand back?"

Jack's look of betrayal was heartbreaking. Tears welled up in his eyes and dribbled over his cheeks, though the way he took his deep, shuddering breath in made it clear he was trying not to cry. He let go of Bunny's arm.

Overcome with remorse, Bunny reached out to brush Jack's tears away. "Hey now, Jack, I didn't mean t' -"

But Jack rolled over, hiding his face against the grass. "I'm tired! Just - I want - I don't know. Let me sleep."

Sandy hastily sent another stream of dreamsand in front of his eyes, and Jack lifted his tear-stained face to look at the Sandman.

Sandy reached out to pat the boy's hair, but Bunny caught his hand midway.

"Not his hair," he cautioned, shaking his head. "Really."

Sandy retracted his hand slowly, thinking, and remembered suddenly that he had a gift for Jack. He reached into the depths of the cloud of sand he was still standing on, and pulled out the over-loved rabbit doll from Sophie. An image of the little girl appeared over his head, holding the same doll out to Jack.

"Sophie asked you to give that to him?" Bunny asked. Sandy nodded. "She's a sweet kid," he said. "Right, Jack?"

Jack took the doll, and clutched it to his chest the way he'd been hanging onto Bunny's arm. Tears still dripped down the boy's face, but his body was still, his breathing quiet, and looked at the doll as if it was made of water and he was alone in a desert. Sandy let a stream of dreamsand flow into Jack's face, and his eyes slipped shut as a little boy and girl appeared over his head, playing. It was the good dream he had most often.

With Jack asleep, Bunny picked up his bloody hand, letting out a tremendous sigh.

"He's got scars all over his thumb," the rabbit pronounced, wiping the blood away to look at the still-healing wound. "How did I miss this? He said something about marking the walls. We don't scar, Sandy. We don't scar unless the idea of a scar becomes more real than the the idea of us being whole..."

The implications of that settled on both Guardians, and for a moment they both looked at the sleeping boy, sadly.

Sandy narrowed his eyes, suddenly, pointing at the little dreamsand boy and girl. The quizzical look he cast at them caught Bunny's attention as well.

"That's different," Bunny agreed. "Never seen 'im with a spear in his dreams - no, that's not even the same girl, is it? That's not his sister."

As they watched, sudden dark shapes that were not even dreamsand began to cloud around the little boy and girl. The boy crouched defensively in front of the girl, spear at the ready -

Sandy hastily waved the shadows away and cupped his hands around the vision. The shadows dissipated and the boy and girl spun, laughing, as if into the distance. The next dreamsand vision flew down slides of glacial ice at impossible, delightful speeds.

Sandy sat back. Bunny watched the dream, then glanced at him. "Any sign of Pitch yet out there?"

Sandy shook his head. Not yet.

Bunny let out an angry huff of breath, his anger softening as he looked back at Jack. "Well, keep an eye out for me," he said. "Not that I could do anything, even if you did - there's no way I can leave him alone for more than a minute."

Sandy patted Bunny on the shoulder, his questioning gaze asking after more than just Jack.

"Me? Nah, I'm all right, I just can't figure out what to do for 'im," Bunny said, with a sad sigh. "Can't find something that makes him feel better without doing something that makes him two times worse," he admitted. "It's like navigating a forest full of snares." he reached up with a hind paw to scratch behind his ear. "Except every time I trip one, it's Jack who gets hurt."

Sandy winced sympathetically. A set of Easter eggs appeared in his dreamsand.

"Can't even think about that now," Bunny said, almost gruff. "Easter's still seven months away. He might make some progress by then." He paused. "The autumnal equinox, though - that's next month. Baby Tooth is around most days. I'll ask her to stick around and keep an eye on him. I can do the autumnal equinox in almost no time," he said, as much to reassure himself as Sandy. "Might be a bit of a spare spring down south this year, but there'll be other years."

Jack moaned in his sleep, his fingers tight around the stuffed rabbit. The sliding figure in his dream had landed in front of five tall, ornate doors. Sandy waved a hand, and the doors all disappeared, leaving an open, snowy field.

"They always go somewhere dark," Bunny murmured, as they watched Jack's dream.

They sat in silence for a while, as Sandy pulled Jack's dreams away from dark doors and onto new vistas of fun. Just as he'd done every other visit he'd paid to the warren, staying long to guide Jack's dreams away from terror, before he and Bunny could see too much of what those terrors had been.

When an hour or two had passed, Bunny put his paw on Sandy's shoulder. "I'll wake 'im if they go bad again," he said. Jack had been settled safely into a snowball fight on a hill for a good ten minutes. They didn't need much sleep, and the children of the world still needed their dreams.

Sandy hovered, casting one last glance at Jack and wishing he could do more.

"Same here," Bunny agreed, settling himself again at Jack's side and watching the dream for signs of a nightmare.

But Jack slept blessedly on, his dreams staying sweet without Sandy's hand to guide them. In the lull, Bunny looked away, hunched deep in thought.

He heard the beginnings of a moan building from Jack and jumped out of his thoughts quickly. "Jack, oi, mate." He'd learned better than to wake Jack by shaking him without giving Jack the chance to hear him first. He put his paw on Jack's shoulder, still talking. "Wake up. You're still dreaming."

Jack jerked awake, his fingers tight around the stuffed doll like he might break it. His nostrils were flared with anxiety and his eyes were wild, but when he spotted Bunny, he calmed again.

"You're still here." The words fell out of him, not as if he were surprised, but as if he were reassuring himself. That was good - Jack had lost a lot of his ability to reassure himself, and any sign he was getting it back gave Bunny hope.

"'Course I'm still here. This is my home, remember?" Bunny's tone was joking, but Jack took so much reminding of the obvious these days.

"I'm in the Warren," Jack said. "I remember."

He laid back down on the ground, fingers still tight around Sophie's doll.

Bunny stayed where he was, crouched by Jack's back, though the frost spirit had turned away from him. "How ya feeling, mate? Any better?"

"Don't want to talk about it." It was almost rhythmic, the way he said. He had a way of playing with words now, as if he'd put a lot of thought into different ways to babble to himself, to keep it entertaining.

Jack curled around the doll, in on himself - again. Bunny scratched his ear thoughtfully, and loped off a little ways in the silence. He returned, placing some paper and a brush beside Jack.

"You don't have to talk about it, but you don't have to keep it all in, either," he said. It wasn't the first time he'd tried to get Jack to paint his feelings, and Jack hadn't done it yet, but any time might have been the start.

"There's nothing to keep in," Jack said slowly, making a sincere attempt at trying to help Bunny understand. Maybe he was even just trying to figure it out for himself. "It's that it all fell out. All of it. It fell out somewhere. In the maze. And now it's just not there anymore."

"You sure about that?" Bunny asked. His tone said he didn't believe it - but his tone was also probably more confident than he felt. "Nah, mate. Maybe it's buried deep, but I'll help you find it, right? Whatever you need to feel better, we'll figure it out. We've got time."

"There's nothing to figure out," Jack said, fingers playing with the stuffed rabbit's ear. "And time isn't even real. You're talking about it like it is but it's the spaces. It's all the silence when no one talks back. That's what time is. It's - it's relative, you know?" His eyes went just a little wider, a little more distant. "Sometimes it's the enemy."

"That's not how time works, mate. Trust me, I've lived a bit more of it than you. Yeah, there's the bad stuff, but there's always, always something decent that's waiting. There's a time for everything and everything in its time. The good things, they always have their time, and even when it seems like it's not going to be any time soon, it still comes.."

"No," said Jack. "No, when you really need them, that's when those things never come," Jack said intently, as if trying to get Bunny to understand some deep truth he didn't know how to explain. "My whole life is - it's been bad things. It's - the good things were so small, they happened so rarely…"

He tapped his temple. "Did I ever tell you about my other two siblings? Besides Molly. It took me a while but I got most of the rest of my memories back. All different little things reminded me of the more unpleasant bits." He went on, "My mom cried about them for sooo long I wasn't sure she'd ever stop crying. I thought it was my fault, what happened to my first little brother," he said, staring off into the distance.

Bunny just listened as Jack spoke, hoping that the fact he was talking was a good sign even if what he was talking about was so dark.

"She told me I was supposed to protect him and then he died. I scared her because I sneaked away in the middle of the night after the day of his funeral to go to his grave. She told me it was my job as his big brother to look out for him. She explained it better later, after they found me, how no one can really protect someone from yellow fever and how lucky we were that my dad got better from it and that she and I didn't catch it. With my second little brother, it was a typhoid, but, you know, he was younger. It was a lot easier. My dad wasn't in the best shape by then so I helped him make the casket. It was so tiny."

He held his hands in the size of a box.

"And then Molly came but I lost him and I almost forgot him, even before I lost my memories. Even now there's just…bits. And my mom cried so much. Every so often, she'd just cry and cry. And the day we went ice skating, she told me to be careful. I told her we would. But the spring thaw came a little early - not your fault, you were just doing what you did. The Little Ice Age was letting up a little. There wasn't a winter spirit that was running around always making sure the ice was thick enough. And I didn't check - I didn't - so I just did what I could when it started to crack. And then I was no one. And I didn't even remember what it was like to have people to talk to."

Bunny had simply let Jack let it all out, his own eyes wide and glassy.

"That's all there is now," he said eyes wet. "I mean there was some good along the way, sure there was, but now it's tiny little caskets and three hundred years alone." He gestured sharply upwards, towards the real sky that was beyond the warren's un-sky. "Three. Hundred. Years, that he wouldn't tell me anything. And a few years of happy things - which still involved me nearly dying once or twice. And now there's, what, fifty plus years of...of..."

"But you can have as many more as you need, to fill with good things again, Jack. You've got a whole immortal life ahead of ya -"

"To what? To watch Jamie get old and die? For the kids to believe and then stop when they get old and cynical? And time -" Jack said, nodding to himself. "Is relative. Fifty years was a lot longer than fifty years there. It was a hundred. Some tiny little moments, barely a second, they were a thousand years each. Because I saw Jamie die and it was my fault. And - and Manny told me it was my fault. That was a thousand right there, until I convinced myself it couldn't be real."

"Jack -" Bunny could only breathe it out.

"You wanted me to talk about it, so I'm talking about it, and I'm telling you, there is nothing else I can fill my life with that will make it balance out. There is nothing that will make time more than something that's just a space for more terrible things."

"Mate, I know you feel that way now," Bunny breathed out, "I've been there, I've -"

"The field was thawing when you got there. You could smell them just starting to rot and their little faces were still frozen in fear."

Bunny froze in place as Jack spoke, staring at him, slack jawed, fur bristling on end. Shocked, though - perhaps terrified - but not angry.

"It gave me everything. It even gave me some of the things you guys fear. It let me know about some of the things that hurt the people I care about, just to rub it all in." Jack nodded to himself. "You wanna know what I'm feeling right now? I am feeling like right now I wish I couldn't feel anything at all because it's either all that or it's all empty. It's just empty rooms and bad memories painted on the walls. And now I don't wanna die or anything but I just wanna not be. I wish I could just faaade away. Like Johnny Appleseed did. Remember him?"

Jack went on a tangent. "He was a nice guy. Always pushy with the Swedenborgianism, though." Jack's nostrils flared slightly. "Also pretty sexist but, you know, that was close to the best things got then. I always figured it was because he was a grown-up and so new at the not being a human thing. It's like he didn't understand almost everything he'd ever learned was stupid."

He trailed off, staring into the grass.

"No arguments there, mate," said Bunny, trying to recover from the recollection Jack's vivid description had produced, trying to hook onto a train of thought that wasn't horror until he could recover and keep from showing his own. "One time he tried to convert me, said I needed to be a good Christian rabbit to make it alright that I had Easter." He rolled his eyes. "As if Eostre wasn't around before - " he paused, shook his head. This was so very decidedly not the time. "But you don't wanna be like him. Trust me, when you - when you let all the pain out, once it's finally out, there's going to be room for other things again. Just you wait and see -"

"I told you," Jack said slowly, turning to stare him straight in the eyes. "There's already nothing there."

For just one horrifying moment, Bunny almost believed him. It was because of the blankness in his eyes. He felt like if he looked deep enough into his pupils, past the poison inked darkness of Pitch's shadows that had grimed everything up, he'd see an empty cavern, one that could never be filled, not even with a million years hard digging. .

It was just for a moment though because Jack's lower lip was trembling. Maybe there was a disconnect, but there was feeling there. Pain and vulnerability, probably so much that the numbness was the only thing letting him function.

If there was just some way to help him process that and let it all out…

Jack turned away and stood up, clearly wanting space now.

Bunny wanted to say more but also knew he needed to let him have. Space and time he wasn't being bombarded were the things he'd never been given in the maze.

"I'm gonna, uh. I'm gonna go sit in a ball somewhere now," Jack said, not even mustering the energy to lie.

"I'll be here. I - there's more to this Jack. I promise you. It's a road you walk down, but you're not walking it alone, right? But we can talk more later."

Jack just nodded again, with a total lack of sincerity, as he walked away, leaving Bunny alone to ruminate on tiny caskets and thawing ice in near-dead fields, and how the nature of anger meant that even though it was easily snuffed out by sadness, it could just as easily be stoked again into a roaring fire.

Nearby, a piece of chalk lay on a flat stone. Equations and shorthand half-covered the stone, the equations nonsensical by the standards of mortal arithmetic, the shorthand illegible to anyone who wasn't Bunny.

He picked up the chalk and continued the notes, one of his ears swiveled in Jack's direction as he focused.

He didn't know how to help Jack just then, and he didn't know how to kill Pitch Black either - but he could work on both problems at once.


North counted the days by the sounds of the riders zooming by. The white, red, and black-garbed riders who passed morning, noon, and night made their rounds by the hut every day, but not until recently had any of them stopped to help the Cossack in the witch's keep.

The white rider had paused days earlier, perhaps weeks, when Baba Yaga had put North to the task of sorting poppy seeds from soil. Though the rider's tennis shorts and polo shirt were as pure white as the vespa he zipped by on every dawn, he sat in the soil with North and sorted the tiny black seeds from the clinging black dirt, faster even than North with his nimble, toymaker's fingers.

Today the red rider had stopped with the noontime sun overhead. North sat cheerfully beside two piles of sorted corn when Baba Yaga returned from her flight, one rotten and festering, the other golden and delicious.

"I see you had a visitor," Baba Yaga scowled, frowning at the piles of corn and the skidmarks the rider of the sun's cherry red convertible had left in the turf.

North cheerfully slapped his thigh. "The morning rider and the noonday rider have shown their approval, haha! It will not be long that you still have the use of me, Babushka!"

"Oh, yes, you've heard stories," Baba Yaga rolled her eyes. "You're very smart. Now shut up."

North did not, of course. He rose to his feet, beaming. "And none too soon, can the midnight rider come. I cannot wait to see Jack again. It is a sad thing, Babushka, to see a broken friend, especially one so precious as Jack." His smile had dimmed just a little in the remembering, but his joviality was still there. "Still, to see him returned to himself will be all the more joyful! I wonder, how will he have progressed when next I see him?"

Baba Yaga spat. "What a fool you are," she said, her voice flat, as if he were such a fool she couldn't even summon anything more potent than disdain to respond to him with. "I suppose if someone asked you what was the swiftest thing in the world, you would give some fool answer like one of your reindeer, yes? And for the fattest, hah, you might even say yourself."

The question caught North, as he reached down to sort one last kernel of corn. He paused with the golden grain in his hand, remembering.

"The cold north wind," he said, looking up from the corn, distantly into the forest. "The cold north wind is the swiftest thing in the world. The fattest, the rich land from which the people grow their crops. The softest thing in the world is a child's caress, the most precious, honesty."

He sighed.

"The wisest thing in the world -"

"- was certainly not you," Baba Yaga finished for him . "Maybe if you had kept that wise wife of yours, you would not be in the scrape you're now in, and you'd be back in the world to see your Frost Spirit's progress -" it seemed the old witch had been out keeping an updated knowledge of the ways of the world, because she put the word "progress" in airquotes - "and not here, a slave to Babushka!" She cackled, and strode past North, right through the two mounds of corn, mixing the rotten with the clean again. "Look at this mess, idiot! Have you been daydreaming all day, or is there a single kernel of corn ready for my dinner? Do you want Babushka to starve? Because I assure you, that will not happen, even if I have to eat you myself! The corn had better be ready by the time I'm back! My little Vasilisa would already have had the water boiling, but then, she married below her wits, as we all can clearly see."


The days came and went as North toiled, as Sandy and Baby Tooth came and went from the warren, carrying the season along with them, until the autumn equinox had come again.

Bunny couldn't ignore it, any more than he could ignore that Jack was still in terrible shape. But at least this terrible shape didn't begin to weep despondently every time he looked up from staring blankly into the grass, and immediately see Bunny or Baby Tooth.

"You're leaving," Jack repeated, as Baby Tooth buzzed anxiously by his face, and Bunny crouched beside him, trying not to let any of his anxiety show.

"It's the equinox, mate, I gotta do it. You know that. Twice a year, every year. The autumnal's a load easier than the vernal. There's a lot less land in the south to bring spring to. Remember?"

Jack said nothing, but the nothing wasn't wailing, and that was better than he had been.

Still, Bunny's gut was clenched with discomfort. "It's just a quick run around the world, and I'll be back," he promised. "Baby Tooth'll be with you the whole time, isn't that right?"

Baby Tooth nodded enthusiastically, her gold crest bobbing and her chirps as bright and cheerful as she could make them, in the circumstance.

Jack looked distrustfully at Bunny. He was wringing Sophie's stuffed rabbit doll anxiously in his hands, but when he spoke, he said, "You'll be back?"

"In a flash," Bunny reassured him. "I wouldn't even go if I didn't have to. You know that, right?"

Jack dropped his gaze, eyes unfocused, the grip on Sophie's stuffed doll slackening.

"You'll be back," he repeated, and, as if he were falling slowly, folded up and lay on the ground again.

Bunny looked at Baby Tooth. "I think this is the best we're gonna get right now," he said. "If something happens -" he shook his head. "Nothing's gonna happen. Just don't leave him, right? I'll be right back."

Baby Tooth nodded, her cheerful facade dropped for Bunny. He nodded back to her, cast one more worried look at Jack, and bolted from the warren, so fast that the grass rippled in a wave in his wake.

Baby Tooth buzzed near Jack's ear, settling finally on the grass in front of him, her little gaze locked on Jack's unfocused, glassy eyes.

A moment passed before Jack's eyes focused on Baby Tooth.

"Bunny went away," Jack said to her, as if to remind himself. As if she'd only just come to visit, and hadn't been there to see him go. "But he said he'd be back. He said he'd be back -"

There was doubt in his words, though. Baby Tooth chirped at him, reassuring and cheerful, but his eyes rolled up, away, and Jack stared blankly past the little Tooth Fairy as the seconds of the new autumn ticked by.


The final night had come at last. The iron witch had demanded the number of stars in the night sky. North sat on the roof of the chicken-footed hut, eyes on the deep blue sky, idly playing at counting the impossible brightness of the stars in the deep, wild sky.

He did not actually need to count all the stars in the sky - not that he wouldn't have tried, if he hadn't already known this story. The midnight rider would come soon, as had the morning and the noon, and give him the count.

Any moment now. He would hear the growl of the huge black truck the midnight rider had years ago exchanged his horse for, and the man would stop to help him with the final task Baba Yaga had set. The final test to prove he was pure of spirit, in harmony with the earth and nature, worthy of freedom from the old witch's tests.

Worthy to return to Jack. Bunny would surely be ready for a break from caring for the boy, unless the boy no longer needed care. Jack was a resilient little spirit. He had shown them all this by enduring 300 years of purposelessness, loneliness.

Yes, by now he would be ready to leave the eternal spring of the Warren, to finish his recovery at the Pole, among the mischievous elves and the yetis who would surely be so delighted to see him again (perhaps a little less than delighted, once Jack began leading the elves in a more organized mischief in and out of their work). North could hardly contain his delight to think of the fun they would get up with, with Jack as a guest in his home, a perfect playplace for a winter spirit remembering how to play again.

As soon as the midnight rider arrived.

As he would arrive. Surely.

North's gleeful anticipation cooled as slowly as a lake freezing over, as the night went on, and no growl of a diesel engine intruded on the rustle of the wind in the trees. Midnight had long since passed, but the rider had not.

North, tight-lipped, had begun to count the stars in earnest.

"You thought it would be that easy," an old voice croaked from the darkness. Baba Yaga's long nose sliced into the light, leading the rest of her face. "Already you made the mistake of thinking this would be easy as a story, and still - you believed."

North reached for his hip, remembering as he did that there were no swords there. His belt was empty.

Baba Yaga watched the movement, her eyes half-lidded. "Ah. You see now? Here you are - weaponless, coming up on the wrong side of an oath - and an old, iron witch to contend with." Her eyes were hard, and terrible, and fearless, though she was old, and North, even weaponless, was so big and strong.

"My arms are thin," she said, "But I am wiry. You are right to worry just how much strength is in them."

"This has gone on long enough," said North, his voice as calm as the old witch's. "A deal is a deal, Babushka, but even your oath does not give you this much leeway. I do not have to lie down and let you eat me."

His stance was tense, prepared for a fight. But Baba Yaga only eyed him for a moment longer, then laughed.

"I'm not going to eat you, young fool. Scoot over and let Babushka sit."

She plopped down on the roof beside him, patting the shingles when North did not immediately sit. Finally, he took a place next to her.

"Do you know why I wanted you here?" asked the old witch. "Is the answer rattling around in that sieve you call a skull, or has it fallen out entirely? Ah, but you have tested my patience!" Baba Yaga exclaimed, before North could suggest a reason.

"My reputation," he said, when he could get a word in. "Babushka, you said as much when I came for your help -"

"Your reputation," Baba Yaga sneered, "it would be a waste of my time to test that. You were a thief once, yes, we all know this, and now you do the reverse of what you have done - you give treasures instead of taking them. We have all seen this! We all know this. And for the children, they say, you will do anything - that, too, I have seen! That too, I already knew! Look at how quickly you gave your freedom for your little frost friend. That is what else I know. You are old, by many standards, but you are still young. Even you. And you're still an arrogant young fool."

If she had said he had been arrogant and foolish, North would have laughed and agreed with her.

"Babushka," he said, politely biting his temper, "I -"

"You took on impossible tasks -" Baba Yaga began. North cut her off with a laugh.

"Impossible tasks are my sport, Babushka! The tasks I have done -"

"Oh? Your sport?" Baba Yaga echoed, her tone mocking. "then count them!" she pointed to the sky, sparkling black above them. "Count every star before morning. You have tried already, have you not?"

North thought of the midnight rider, who should have brought him the number, his brow furrowed with an edge of worry. The midnight rider was not coming, that much was clear. It was up to him.

He lifted his finger to point out the stars, mumbling the count under his breath. Baba Yaga's harsh laughter stole the number from his mind.

"You cannot," she barked. "You may try until the sun comes up, but you will not count the stars."

"We shall see," said North, terse, as he began his count again.

"And even if you thought you had counted them, you would have the number wrong," Baba Yaga went on. "You would have missed a star, or counted one twice. Or two twice, or a hundred. That is the point, young fool. You cannot count the stars in the night sky. You are in harmony with heaven and earth, and if I had not stopped my midnight rider, he would have brought you the number - but that is the point. That is the lesson, Nicholas Saint North."

"If the count of stars is what it will take to get back to Jack -" North began.

Baba Yaga hit him, a ringing grandmother's blow to the back of his head that made his brains rattle and knocked the number from his mind. "You will listen to Babushka or you will leave here a bigger fool than you came," she snapped, real anger in her voice. "You want to return to your snowflake? You want to help him become whole again? Then learn the lesson I am teaching you - some tasks cannot be done."

North rubbed the back of his head, an unfamiliar edge of frustration sawing at his temper. "I have not become the legend I am by backing away from a thing because it was difficult," he said.

"And that is what all the things you have done have been," said Baba Yaga - "difficult. Reaching the bottom of the sea, stealing the giant's gold, visiting each child in one night - these things are difficult. But for you, not impossible. Even mortals have done some of these things by now. You are unmatched when it comes to conquering tasks so difficult people would call them impossible, but tell me - if you had completed my tasks, if you were leaving to return to your snowflake by now, what would you want? What would you hope to do?"

North paused a moment, caught by the question. "Heal him," he said, finally. "Help him become the boy he was again."

"How?"

"By any means necessary."

"How?" the old witch pressed. "How, you great oaf, who has done so many things that lesser men would call impossible, but who has never had to untangle the mess of a damaged mind? Tell me how you will do this! Be specific!"

For a second, North groped for an answer, but closed his mouth as none came.

"I will tell you how," said Baba Yaga. "Listen."

North leaned in to hear.

"You won't," she said. Her words fell like stones on his ears. "You will not have the boy Jack Frost back. That boy who went into the maze, you will never see again."

"That is not good enough!" North thundered, leaping to his feet. "You speak of surrender and - and lying down and giving up, and perhaps some tasks may not be accomplished, but I will never sit by and not challenge them!"

"No, you idiot, I have said nothing about giving up!" Baba Yaga's voice snapped through the cold night like ice hardening. "Listen to me, and not to your pride. You put yourself in my debt, because you thought you knew my story - you knew I would test your purity of heart, test your nobility of spirit, and you thought, 'These are things I have. The old witch will not surprise me.' Well I have surprised you. I stopped the midnight rider from bringing you the number of stars in the sky, even though you deserved his help. Do you know why yet?"

When North did not reply, she went on. "Because purity of heart and nobility of spirit will get you through much, but sometimes, they are not enough." She raised her eyebrows, deepening the wrinkles on her forehead while revealing more of her cold grey eyes to glitter in the starlight. "You did not think, when you threw yourself in my debt, that your frost spirit might need you after he had been saved. You did not stop to consider that he might be too damaged to leave alone. What if you did not have those friends of yours? What if this story had happened earlier, and your Guardian of Hope and your Guardian of Fun did not love each other yet? Your memory-keeper and your dreamweaver are too busy to nurture a wounded soul. Your spider is too harsh. And you? You are bullheaded and in my debt! But you did not consider these things! You only considered that you knew my story - one story - and that you are Nicholas St. North, doer of impossible things. Pah!" Baba Yaga spat off her roof. "There is for your reputation! There is for your impossible things! You have done difficult things in plenty, but you have never done anything so impossible mortals will not one day do them, and more. But I tell you - no mortal will ever resurrect the person your Jack Frost was before he was hurt so deeply as this. And neither will you. You will not succeed at the task you set out to accomplish - you will not have success on your terms. But that does not mean there is not success to be had."

Her lacerations had touched nerves, and North felt suddenly like the child he had not been in years, learning at a mortal crone's knee, as he never had in his childhood.

"There is a story you must hear," Baba Yaga said, to his silence. "Yes another, but this one you have not heard from one who was in it. Once, a great war swept across many nations. Men died horribly in this war, and women, and children." she ground her iron teeth together as North's shoulders sloped, as if beneath a weight. "And when the war was over, a man returned to his home, and to the loving wife who had waited for him.

"The man who returned home was not the kind, gentle husband his wife had married. This man was cold and gruff, distant, and unloving. When his wife tried to ply him with love and gentleness, he turned her away, leaving her feeling quite as alone as she had when he was away at war.

"The woman went to a witch, and asked for a potion to cure her husband. She did not make your mistake of asking for the man she'd married back - she only asked for a potion that would warm her husband's heart, soften his countenance, and make him respond to her love in kind again. 'I will make you this potion,' the witch told her, 'but you must gather the ingredients. One is very difficult and dangerous to get. You must climb the mountain outside the village, to the den at the very peak where there lives a great bear with a patch of white at his throat. You must bring me a hair from that pure white patch, for without it, your husband will never be cured."

"The woman said, 'I am not afraid,' even though she was. For her husband, she would do anything. She left for the mountain immediately.

"The climb was long, and left her winded and tired. When she reached the top, the bear's den opened before her like a dark gate to hell, and the growls from within turned her bones to glass and her blood to ice. The beast inside snarled at her, but she thought of her husband, and strengthened by her love, she stood her ground. She had brought food with her, delicious food such as a loving wife makes for her beloved, and she set it at the mouth of the cave, backing away. The bear snarled, and ate, and returned to his cave to sleep. The woman thought to creep inside to pluck her prize, but each time she drew closer to the cavern, the bear growled louder and louder, rousing for his sleep to roar her away. She retreated to the edge of the mountain. She did this for days.

"But each day, the bear made her retreat a little less far. Each day, the growls were a whisper softer, as if the bear were becoming accustomed to her presence. Finally, it happened that the woman set her food down, and the bear ate it before her, without a noise at her presence. It was at this point that the woman put her plea forth to the bear. Though it was a crass and cruel old creature, it was too used to the woman not to listen to her voice, and even the angry old thing was touched by the woman's love. But a bear, an old and solitary male, has softness to spare only for itself, and it knew this! Ah, you know something of bears," said Baba Yaga, elbowing North sharply with her bony elbow. "You know the male bears, their ferocity and their selfishness, born of need for no one and nothing but what they can kill and eat. So the bear said to the woman - 'You are kind, and patient, so I will be as patient as I am able, but that is not much! You may pluck one hair from my neck, but once you have done so, the pain will be so much that I will go out of my mind with anger and attack you! Pluck, woman, but be ready to run!' and so saying, the bear exposed its throat, the long brown hair bearing a single white patch.

"The woman did not wait! She snatched white hair from the bear's throat! She ran, with its teeth at her heels and its roar in her ears, nearly falling down the mountain in her haste to get away! When the bear had tired of its chase, she was already hurt and weary, but she continued on her way with her prize in her hand, until she came to the witch's cottage, with its chicken feet and its many-locked door, and the old witch waiting at the window for her.

"'I have done what I had to do,' spoke the woman, dirty and bleeding from her flight, tired and hungry from days of giving her best food to a wild animal, not sleeping lest she become its food herself. The old witch saw that she had, and let her in. 'And now,' asked the desperate woman, 'will you make the potion to cure my husband?'

"'Did I not send you to the bear for that very purpose?' asked the witch, as she threw the precious white hairs into the fire.

"The woman screamed as they burned all up, and would have grasped the very fire to retrieve them if there was anything left to retrieve! 'Why?' she cried to the cruel witch. 'What about my potion? What about my husband?'

"The witch said to her, 'Go home now, and treat your husband with all the patience and all of the courage with which you treated the bear."

"Your frost spirit," Baba Yaga said, when the sun had pinked the sky, and the stars had all winked out, "will never be the same. You may help him heal - but not by pretending that you can have him as he once was."

North sat beside her, silent and thoughtful, his eyes darker and deeper than when he first came to the old witch.

"So what will you do now, North of the Impossible tasks? Continue to insist you will bring the old Jack back? Or approach this new Jack with patience and courage, as the woman approached the bear?"

At length, North spoke, his face lined with resignation and thought. "You say that to help Jack, we must be patient with him. We must help him to overcome the hurt that has been done to him, and arise from that hurt, new, changed, and strong."

"That is what I say," Baba Yaga agreed, nodding.

North nodded with her. "Babushka, I have made many mistakes. Now I see that." Baba Yaga smiled thinly, but with satisfaction. "But I have done one thing right. I left him with the right Guardian."


Jack forgot how long Bunny had been gone.

It didn't help that the light in the Warren never changed. It was never night, or twilight, but always the dawn of morning. It was the dawn of morning when Bunny had left, and it would be the dawn of morning when he returned. If he returned. What if he did not?

The maze had been always the same time as well. The only difference from the warren was that the maze had never been beautiful. Or, no, it had only rarely been beautiful - and even that had been a lie to keep him going just long enough that his despair was that much deeper, when the beauty had fled.

What if Bunny didn't come back?

Jack felt the scream welling up inside him long before it ripped its way out of his wind wasn't something he meant to call up, but there it was, scattering leaves and ripping branches, still green inside with the life they'd had before he'd broken them. Some of the flowers were shredded but many others froze solid, made as beautiful by the glittering ice that covered them as they were made lifeless.

He stopped, suddenly, the sound of his own screams frightening him, gasping deeply. Something might hear, come, and hurt him - but when seconds ticked by and nothing did, Jack felt the scream welling up in him again. It hurt more to keep in than to let out, and wind whipped through the evergreens, tearing up bluebells and sending them flying along with sprays of snow. Bunny'd said he'd come back, but he hadn't, and Jack was alone again, alone -

Baby Tooth's panicked chirps broke through Jack's scream, when he finally felt her little tugs on the strings of his hoodie, he finally let the scream die. As Baby Tooth pressed her tiny hands against his cheek, chirping madly, he looked at her with wonder. He wasn't alone - he'd just forgotten she was there. He felt bad, instantly. She was tiny, but she was his friend, and he'd forgotten her. Just like Bunny had forgotten him -

The freeze solidified with a snap. Jack felt the snow piling at his feet, falling on his shoulders, and the ice settling deep, deep into the rich patch of the Warren around Jack, easily the size of a football field, was as empty of life as Jack often felt.

Baby Tooth touched Jack's face with tiny, gentle hands, but his eyes saw only the ice and snow covering - killing - the green of Bunny's home.

The breath he heaved in was thick with terror. His panic began, much like a small child might after they knocked over their mother's favorite vase on the fireplace. (Specifically, the one that had grandma in it.)

"No! Nononononono," he yelled shrilly, tears welling in his eyes as he dropped to his knees and picked up a wilted flower, the petals mostly battered off by the wind.

Baby Tooth looked back and forth between the snowed-over section of the warren and Jack panicking in the snow. There was no question the plants in the ice were dead, but they were plants, and Jack was Jack. She zipped in front of him, chirping for his attention, holding out her hands, trying to touch his face in comfort.

But she was so small and so easy to overlook twice in a panic.

"Noo, nooo, what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me?" Jack dropped the flower and clawed at his face, beating at his head with his fists. "Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid…"

At that, watching him beating himself up, Baby Tooth finally burst loudly and noisily into tears. That cut through Jack's panic. He turned his tearstained face to the crying fairy, and reached up to comfort her.

"Ssh, no, it's okay. Don't cry. I'm sorry," he said gently, taking her into his hands. "I'm sorry. It's okay." He held her up to his face, nuzzling her with his cheek. "Please don't cry."

She was warm, like a little living jewel against his face, and she stopped crying, patting his cheek and chirping the saddest, most concerned sounds he'd ever heard.

"Please don't cry," Jack repeated. He could hear her tiny, fast-beating heart, pounding louder and louder -

No. Those were footsteps. Bunny skidded to a stop out of the South America tunnel, the sound of his footfalls still catching up to him and a breeze bending the grass in the warren, he'd run in so fast. "Jack! Are you -"

He stopped as he saw the frozen patch of his home, mouth hanging open in shock and what had to be horror. He stood there without reacting, paws limp at his side, taking in the ice and snow in deep, stunned silence.

When he did move, his gaze swept, very briefly, over Jack. Then he reached up to cover his face, shoulders shaking, as if to contain his temper.

Jack's eyes went wide and he let go of Baby Tooth, leaving her to hover in the air. Scurrying back, he grabbed his staff and stood up, holding it tight in his hands in front of him, like a child might hold on to their favorite stuffed animal for comfort.

But the ragged breath Bunny drew in wasn't one of anger. It was a sob - repressed, contained, and he swallowed it before looking at Jack again. "Jack - what is this?"

"I'm sorry." Jack's voice was raspy and thin. "I didn't mean to."

It was too much. He couldn't fix this.

He backed away and took to the air, flying away as fast as he could. He couldn't leave the Warren because it wasn't safe outside and the paralyzing fear of leaving the only place he felt safe would not leave him anytime soon, but there were places to hide, mossy little caves, little nooks and crannies, places where roots created little hollows of silence and shade.

The problem with running was that there was no hideaway in the warren that Jack had found that Bunny hadn't already known about for centuries.

He had barely hidden at all before Bunny had tracked him down, loping easily across well-known landscape.

"I told you I was going to be right back," said Bunny, crouching by Jack's little cave between two mossy stones. "Don't you remember?"

Any minute now, the terror in Jack's heart said that the anger was going to cut through his tone, the anger was going to surface. He'd frozen the warren. He'd seen the dead pookas, run through the melting field. He knew what it meant that he'd frozen it again.

His weeping rose to terrified, guilty sobs. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he wept, hysterics sucking the breath from his lungs. "I forgot - I got scared. I didn't mean to - I'm sorry!"

The anger was coming, Jack knew - it had to, because he'd made Bunny angry so many times and it had always been to do with imposing winter over spring, and he had never done that more intimately than now.

After all the pain he'd gone through proving he wasn't as bad as Old Man Winter, he'd ruined it all. Bunny would be angry at him, soon. No matter what he said. And he'd have to go out in the world, where it wasn't safe, without Bunny's protection, and that would be almost as bad as going without his friendship.

Jack sucked in ragged, terrified breath after breath, and Bunny sat back on his heels, slouched, his expression confused, and so far from anger - not that Jack could see, the way that Jack was curled in on himself, cringing as if he expected a blow that he would have to defend himself from.

"I'm at my wits end, mate," Bunny said, without any of the anger Jack expected. "I don't - I know I'm not helping you, and I wish I knew how I could, but -" he sighed, again. He was doing that so often lately. "You know I have to do my work. I want to help you, and I can't take you, but if I can't leave you here - why, Jack? What are you afraid of?"

Jack's sobs had been quieting, as he strained to hear Bunny's voice, but the last question echoed in Pitch's voice. He could suddenly feel the fingers pulling his hair. "Tell me what you're afraid of now, Jack."

His sob turned into screams and he curled away, pressed against the stone of the hollow, sobbing like the only thing that existed in the world was his terror.

Bunny's heart dropped. He looked at Baby Tooth with a desperate expression as she zipped over, zigzagging with agitation, her tears flowing as steadily as Jack's, helpless to give him insight.

What did I say? he wondered, as his best friend wailed in the dirt like he'd done the last time - probably the last time ever - Bunny had ruffled his hair.

But Jack's sobs were resolving into words. "Don't make me," he sobbed. "I'm sorry, please don't make me tell - please don't be mad. I'll be good, I promise I'll be good!"

Tears poured down his face. Snot dripped from his nose, and clenched so tightly in his hands that the seams were almost ripping, was the doll Sophie had given him. The doll he'd been keeping in the pocket of his hoodie. His other hand was pressed against his mouth - in between words, he gnawed his fingers, spittle dripping down it.

Huddled in the hollow beneath the great oak, gnawing his hand and clutching his toy, Jack looked less like a trapped animal, and much more like -

Bunny sat back. Finally, understanding wiped the confusion from his face.

Ah, he thought, and just as suddenly as he'd understood, felt tears rising in his eyes. He breathed deeply, settling himself before they had a chance to well up.

When he spoke again, his voice was as calm as if Jack had never begun crying at all.

"All right, that's enough of that. It's time to calm down now."

Jack's sobs continued. Bunny waited.

When nothing happened to interrupt his crying, Jack's sobs slowed, and he peeked through his hands to see Bunny still crouched in place, relaxed, his ears twitching forward as he caught Jack's eye.

"C'mon, take a breather," he said, in a low, soothing voice that Jack needed to stop crying to hear. Jack did, but his breathing was still shallow and ragged. Bunny moved only to pat his thick-furred chest softly. "Whatever it is, you need to let it out, let it out here, all right? I'm here for ya."

He held out his arms in invitation.

Jack was frozen, staring in disbelief, as if waiting for the trick to be revealed, like a child waiting to be hit. The thought of the comparison made Bunny swallow back a few more tears. He covered them with a smile, gentle in the face of Jack's misery.

"C'mon," he the calm authority in the world pressed into his voice. "It's time to calm down now."

Slowly, his face still stained with uncertainty, Jack uncurled inch by inch. He crept from the hollow, hesitant, as he obeyed the order, and crawled into Bunny's open arms. For a moment, Jack stayed huddled into a protective ball, Sophie's doll clutched in his hands, even as Bunny put his arms around Jack, hugging him close.

When the tension began to leave Jack's body, it did so in small surges. He leaned a tearstained face against Bunny's chest, gripping his fur tightly with the arm that was still clutching the doll. He kept gnawing on the fingers of his other hand.

"I'll be good," he promised in between gnawing, desperation still thick on his voice. "No more snow."

"Ah," Bunny shrugged unconcerned. "A little snow never hurt anybody. Stick to 'no snow in the warren when Bunny's not around,' and she'll be right."

"Okay," Jack promised, nestling his cheek against Bunny's fur. "Okay."

"I'll make a place you can let some snow out," Bunny went on. "All this spring must be gettin' to ya. No worries. I'll get some things in order - the right trees around the right spot, you can let out plenty of snow when y'need to -"

"I said I didn't mean to," Jack said, his voice high and now even a little screechy. "You left me."

"Now I told you I was coming back," Bunny said, drawing away just enough to look Jack in the eye - but Jack kept his face firmly pressed into Bunny's fur. "Look at me, Jack," he said, with the same calm authority. Jack peeked up, just enough to obey. "I would never, ever lie to you. Got that? I will always come back for you. Because I love ya, very much. Do you understand that?"

Jack didn't say anything. Tears welled higher in his eyes as his head spun with the words. Bunny said them so easily that it physically pained Jack to hear it.

The frost spirit buried his entire face in Bunny's fur again.

"But I was bad," he said, his voice muffled.

"You're not bad," Bunny insisted. "You're upset. It's all right. I can tell the difference." He tried to draw back, to look Jack in the eye, but Jack wasn't done hiding his face.

"But if I was bad," Jack insisted, "You'd still love me? If I made you mad?" His voice was still muffled. "Are you sure?"

"'Course I would." Bunny tucked Jack in closer, rocking him gently. "You're -" he had to pause a moment, to determine exactly what label he was going to put on Jack just then. "You're my family, Jack. Nothing could make that not true."

Jack finally drew back to look up at Bunny on his own.

His eyes were unfocused, teary, and he let out gurgling laughter that was almost as off-kilter as it was delighted.

"You love me," he said, "And you'd never...never leave me alone forever? Even if you were really mad at me?"

"Never in a million years," Bunny said, smiling at him. "And you know I'm telling the truth, because you and me, we're gonna live to see that, right?"

Jack's smile was nearly deranged, tears flooding his cheeks again.

It was love without edges to it. That existed. He'd forgotten what that was like.

He curled up even closer to Bunny than before, as if he would have crawled inside his ribcage right up next to his heart if there'd been room, and threaded both hands into his fur, the doll held tightly at the crook of Jack's elbow.

Baby Tooth flitted over, pushing a hand through Jack's hair and looking at Bunny with all the worry her tiny face could muster.

Bunny put on a brave face for Jack, smiling and leaning over to touch his nose to Jack's forehead in a reassuring brush. But there was as much worry in his expression as he returned Baby Tooth's glance, as he wrapped his arms around Jack and rocked him like the child he was acting.

Pitch had practically ripped through Jack's skin down to the core. He'd wrenched out his inner child only to chain it to himself and that meant Bunny needed to start over from the beginning. He had a child to comfort now, a child to nurture and help reconnect with the world, a child to teach to not be afraid, as the Guardians did.

It was an impossible task and he was not the one who did the impossible with relish - that was North - but he took the impossible on like the burden it so often was. He knew what to do now and maybe that would make all the difference.


In another cave, one dark and sandy, Anansi brooded before two lines of story, each as thin as a breath of fog, shimmering in the scant moonlight that filtered through the cracks in his lair, threatening to break apart on each new draft.

When each web suddenly thickened, the spider sagged to the floor of the cavern, his relief as clear as a sigh.