Dear gods i am so sorry it's been so long since an update. I literally have no excuse whatsoever. I owe you guys some fluff or something to make up for it. sorry. ok.

After Crowley's little stunt introduction, Cas had decided he was very much tired of this utter bullshit and that they needed to regroup. In a blink he whooshed to bunny's tree, grabbed him down, whooshed back over to the boys and told them to hang on tight.

Upon arriving back at the motel he realized the room was now occupied by one human, one Winter spirit, one angel and his absurd wings, one six-foot-two rabbit thing, and one moose.

It was a touch crowded, but what really worried him was the look on Jack's face.

"Jack?" he asked carefully. The others watched the tense interaction like hawks.

Jack spoke slowly with flat, cold precision, annunciating every syllable, "I need to step outside for a moment," and he did without another word. The blizzard that ensued would have appeared to most as a massive freak of the atmosphere. The current residents of room 21 at the Lodge Motel knew better.

When Jack came back inside he looked less wound tight and closer to exhausted, so much so, in fact, that he didn't notice the conscious pooka which sat on one of the beds.

"Having a temper tantrum there frostbite?" The Australian accent caused Jack's gaze to shoot up.

"Bunny!" he cried and pulled the rabbit into a hug, "you're ok! Wait. How are you ok?"

Sam couldn't help but grin at Jack's response to his friend. "Cas helped him," he explained, "He's still weak, but it looks like whatever Cas did, it muted the poisoned magic enough for Bunny to wake up."

"I can't believe Crowley's involved," Dean growled. "Actually, yes. Yes I can. Of course that son of a bitch is part of this. I'm so tired of his fugly little face."

"So you've dealt with this wanker before then?" Bunny asked.

"Yeah." chorused Sam, Dean and Cas at once.

"He manages to be involved with anything and everything nasty as long as it improves his chance of survival," huffed Sam.

"But at least he's predictable, which is good." Cas added.

"Wait what do you mean?" Jack asked. He'd blown off enough steam to be functional but he still wanted to give this bastard some hardcore lose-you-fingers-and-ears sort of frostbite for messing with the family and the kids.

"Well," Sam chimed in again (he certainly seemed to be the voice of reason in the little triad of freedom fighters), "he likes to get things done by sticking his neck out as little as possible. Whatever he's using to mess with kids, he's probably using something which already exists and is just altering it, trying to keep his own head as safe as possible."

Bunny and Jack gave each other a knowing look. They both remembered another asshole who'd done the same thing. Jack wondered to what degree that was the case.

"Bunny and me and the other Guardians took on a guy called Pitch a while back. He did something like what you're saying. He took Sandy's dream sand and used it to create nightmares. Fear. His thing was fear. He used it to make kids stop believing in us."

"You think there's a chance Crowely's doing the same thing?" Sam asked.

"Not exactly," Jack replied, "but he might be doing something similar. So they don't stop believing, but they get sick in a way. Emotionally or something. So our magic gets sick. What would do that?" He asked Bunny, hoping the more senior Guardian might know more.

"Hell if I know, mate."

With the new hypothesis, the research began. Sam had his laptop and Dean was skimming through news channels on the tv for any general fishiness. The brothers didn't really want to know where Jack had acquired an ipad but the spirit was struggling to use the thing, which refused to acknowledge his cold digits as fingers. Sam switched with him after a while out of sympathy, but they had to let the tablet thaw out a bit first. Cas was who-knows-where doing angel stuff and Bunny was snoring softly in the bathtub, which he'd lined with towels. He still seemed pretty exhausted and weak, but he was ok for the time being, which was what Jack cared about at the moment.

Jack kept glancing at Dean out of the corner of his eye. He still felt guilty for... whatever it was that had happened. The separation he guessed.

He sighed and thumped his head down on the table.

Sam looked up at the sound. "Jack," he said, "if you need to go outside for a while that's fine. We know you're not really meant to be kept inside like this."

"Nah, I'm fine. I just feel stupid."

Dean muted the tv, deciding this conversation sounded more interesting than the one about Michigan's growing raccoon population.

Jack spun in his chair, his eyes glued to the faded pattern on the carpet. "I just feel guilty for not finding you guys when you left. Dean, you were one of the only kids that could ever see me. When you took off, well, I guess I thought I had just dreamed the whole thing up."

Dean gave him a confused look and replied, "Jack that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

Jack groaned and flopped his head back onto the desk. "Murmf jrrsdtrd ersrrtrsd srmdrms"

"What?"

"It's just that I see things sometimes. Make up people to talk to. I dunno. I was totally alone for 300 years. I got lonely so I made shit up. Got hard to tell what was real and what wasn't sometimes. I figured you were just another imaginary friend. I was stupid. Sorry."

Dean chuckled quietly, "Well I guess that's not so bad. I've seen worse, crazier."

The corners of Sam's mouth twitched into a tiny smirk. "Yeah," he added, "at least your imaginary friend wasn't Lucifer."

"What, like Satan?"

"Yep." Sam nodded. Dean watched his brother with interest. It was the first time he had told anyone else about his days as a head case. Sam continued, "I spent a few months as a raging schizophrenic. Saw the devil and hell all over the place. Gotta love that PTSD."

"PTSD? Like you actually spent time in Hell or something?"

"I was, well my soul was. For like a year and a half."

Jack just looked back and forth between the brothers for a moment, his eyebrows so far up his forehead they got lost in his hair. "Well, shit. Now I feel like a total wuss."

They fell back into silence again after a few swapped tidbits of information. A few kids gone missing, some tots trying to strangle their pets and such, but they were so spread out, they weren't really leads.

Jack liked these guys. They didn't try to make him talk, and seemed pretty cool with anything that got thrown at them. He loved the rest of the Guardians of course, but they were dramatic and probing and a little too grand for Jack's taste sometimes. It was nice to have other friends.