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Jack was fine.

Sure, he'd been completely alone for the past 300 years, but he was fine.

Fine enough, anyway.

He had long-since grown used to the feeling of being alone, of being ignored, of having people walk through him. He was used to it. How could he not be? After a while, you just get used to the way things are, no matter how much it sucks, because you have to adapt. You adjust and accept it because you don't have any other choice because nothing ever changes.

And if nothing ever changes, at a certain point, you start to give up.

Giving up always seemed like a gradual process, or at least it was to Jack. Something in his nature made it difficult for him to just put things to rest and stop trying. It wasn't like he really decided to give up- it just happened. He didn't even really remember when exactly it had started. It was more of a slow process- starting with less enthusiasm, then shifting to a lack of interest and a lack of even doing anything. Eventually, the apathy started to kick in, but he still wasn't through that part yet. There were times when he didn't care, but sometimes he still slid back to caring, to being hopeful and optimistic and it hurt so much.

How much longer would it take for him to finally be done with all this? 50 years? 100? Another 300? Once he stopped caring, it wouldn't hurt anymore, but actually getting to that point was so hard, and anything he tried never seemed to make the process go any faster.

At least he was progressing, though. His bouts of apathy were lasting longer and longer, and the time between them was decreasing. Soon, it would be okay. He just had to get through this, however long it lasted, and then he would be okay.

Unfortunately, this was not one of his periods of apathy, and so, Jack was curled up and miserable, trying not to think about anything too painful. Of course, he failed at that. Instead of thinking about literally anything else, his brain had decided that he was going to think about how everything sucked.

It started with thinking about how lonely he was. About how badly he wanted someone to see him, to hear him, to touch him, anything. Sometimes, he ached for someone to hug him, even though he didn't even know what a hug felt like since he'd never had one. He'd seen them though, seen them so many times. Before, when he was a bit younger, before he'd started to give up, Jack would sometimes try to hug people, only to fall right through them, little more than a ghost or a gust of breeze. That had been one of the first things he gave up on.

Then, he started remembering the small amounts of touch he received from the other spirits- the only people who could actually see or hear him (and yet, they ignored him just as much as the humans who couldn't see him). Part of him hated it because their touch was always somehow painful. It was Santa's yetis throwing him out, it was the sprites attacking him, it was the groundhog pushing him away, it was the Easter Bunny shoving him against a wall or punching him. It hurt, but most of the time, it didn't hurt as much as being ignored did. And that was why there was another part of him that craved that attention, that drove him to keep coming back even though he was certain by now that he wasn't welcome. Being hit was painful contact, but it was contact, and apparently that was something that winter spirits needed (or at least, it certainly seemed so considering how desperate he was for it at times). And so, Jack would break into Santa's workshop and pester the Easter Bunny and play with the Sandman's dream sand and mess with the Tooth Fairy's children.

The contact was always brief and always hurt, but he came back anyway, always knowing the results.

Well, that probably wouldn't matter eventually. He'd been caring less and less about any of the other spirits recently. His body still craved the touch, but his mind tried to convince it that it didn't. Besides, he hadn't really felt like mustering the energy it took to do any of that. He barely had enough to keep his parts of the weather in check, let alone fly around the planet willy-nilly, all for no reason.

It was fine. Eventually, his body would adapt and stop trying to tell his mind that he needed any of it- any of the things he saw human parents do to comfort and care for their human children. He wasn't human anyway, so even if it seemed like he needed it, he didn't. There was just something wrong with him (and maybe it wasn't just that, but there obviously had to be something wrong with him for his life to be like this). He didn't need any of that, he just wanted it, and screaming children don't always get what they want.

So he was fine. He was going to be fine.

And even if he tried to tell himself that while he stared at cold, red lines on his wrist, sitting in the middle of an icy wasteland, he told himself it was true.

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North had a bad feeling in his belly, and he didn't know why.

They had defeated Pitch, and there were no signs that he was going to return. Plus, by now, they had all healed and most of the repairs on their homes were finished. Best of all, the children were starting to believe in them again. More and more children regained their belief every day.

Things should be fine.

But North's belly had never been wrong before, so he knew something had to be wrong. There was something there- they just had to notice it. He only hoped that it wasn't another villain they had to defeat. The Guardians were recovering and the world was recovering, but none of them had recovered enough to face anything like Pitch again any time soon.

Silently, North stared out of the window of his workshop, gazing up into the night sky.

"What are we missing, Manny?"

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Toothiana had never been busier.

Between fixing her palace and getting the children to believe in her and her fairies again, she was working almost non-stop, with only the bare minimum amount of rest. Of course, she had been busy before, but not quite like this. That wasn't exactly unexpected though, considering all that had happened. In fact, Toothiana silently thought that she was lucky. She and her fairies worked every night of the year, so it wasn't too hard for her to regain her lost believers. Not as hard as it was for Aster, at least. He pretty much only had one night a year to gain a substantial number of believers. Thankfully, he was still regaining believers, but much more slowly.

She didn't have any right to complain, not when she was far from the worst off out of the four of them.

Sure, she was tired, but that wasn't anything new, and it wouldn't last forever. Things would slow down a bit eventually. She wouldn't have to personally oversee as much to make sure things went smoothly once more belief was restored. She could delegate more (and it wasn't that she didn't trust her girls- she did! But they were young and sometimes got distracted, and usually that wasn't a big deal because one or two missed teeth every so often could be collected the next night without too much of a hit. But they didn't have the luxury to mess up now).

For now, she just had to suck it up and set aside anything non-essential.

But she didn't even really have time to take a break, let alone have time to take notice of anything in the world going wrong.

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Aster was carefully painting the next batch of eggs, knowing he had to make the next Easter something special. Pitch had ruined this last Easter, and he couldn't afford to have the next one be anything less than spectacular.

Of course, it wasn't like the eggs were really the important part. The important part was giving the children a sense of hope, of new beginnings, of trust that, even if things seemed bad at the moment, they could improve. The kids needed that, and providing it was his job.

So, he was working hard and diligently, even if he perhaps looked relaxed from the outside.

Silently, he was thankful that many parents picked up the slack when they realized there weren't any eggs hidden for their children- either hiding eggs themselves or explaining to the children that the Easter Bunny had been sick or something. He appreciated it, even if he knew that they didn't entirely believe in what they said (though, he wasn't sure how they could both stop believing in him, yet also not question where the eggs came from. It must be some kind of magic, he supposed). It restored belief enough that he could recover, at least. He hadn't liked being small like that, no matter how temporary it was.

He'd liked the children growing hopeless even less, and he wasn't about to let that happen again.

Right then, one particular child was the last thing on his mind.

They hadn't needed Jack Frost to defeat Pitch, and now that the battle was over, it didn't even really occur to him that they should probably inform him of his pending-Guardian status at some point. They hadn't been able to find him, anyway, and they still didn't exactly have time to waste scouring the planet for someone who didn't seem to want to be found. To Bunny, things were in the process of getting back to normal, and the trouble-making Jack Frost wasn't part of their normal.

It really never crossed his mind that, even if they didn't need Jack Frost, maybe he needed them.

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Sandy lazily floated through the sky, releasing his dream sand so it could bring the children of the world pleasant dreams.

Of course, he didn't technically have to direct the sand himself- it was more than capable of working on its own, with just a little bit of direction from himself every so often (he couldn't possibly visit every sleeping child in the world forever otherwise). But Sandy loved his work and didn't usually have anything else to do or anything else he wanted to do, so he spent a lot of time personally overseeing a few children's dreams.

He wasn't doing that tonight, though. No, tonight, he was just the director, and his sand did the work.

The Sandman was thinking. He thought about a lot of things, but this particular string of thought was giving him a considerable amount of worry:

Jack Frost.

The boy was supposed to be a Guardian, supposed to be one of them, and yet, they never did end up finding him. And it wasn't like they hadn't tried- they'd looked in just about every cold part of the world, asked other spirits to keep an eye out for him. But they didn't find him, and every spirit they asked said that they hadn't seen him in at least a few months.

Most of them didn't exactly seem upset about it.

Sandy knew that Jack had to be out there somewhere, though. The Man in the Moon wouldn't have chosen him to be the newest Guardian if he was fading away (which was rare for spirits, anyway). The boy must just be tucked away in some remote location somewhere, or possibly, actively avoiding them.

He just hoped that he was hiding and not that something worse had happened to him. Even if he wasn't gone, he could be hurt or captured, or maybe even sick. A significant part of him worried that might be the case. Maybe Pitch found out about Jack and found him before they did. Maybe he got to him and captured him or hurt him. Maybe Jack was locked up somewhere, with his jailer, the only one who knew his whereabouts, gone.

Sandy desperately hoped that isn't what happened. In the end, they weren't the ones keeping Pitch locked up- it was his own Nightmares, and even they couldn't really get to him. If Pitch did have Jack, they might not be able to ever find him. He would be locked up alone, and maybe he was terrified.

So, Sandy really hoped that Jack was just avoiding them, or maybe that it was just hard to find one boy who could be just about anywhere in the world. It wasn't like anyone knew where he lived, after all (they just assumed it had to be somewhere cold).

Regardless, Sandy had been keeping an eye out while he distributed his dream sand, spending more time in places with colder climates. He hadn't really seen any signs of the boy, though, beyond snow and cold (which didn't need Jack's physical presence to exist).

He hoped the winter child was okay, but he had no real evidence one way or the other, and until they found him, they wouldn't know for sure. All Sandy could do was keep searching.

And so he searched.

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Meanwhile, Jack was in the South Pole, letting the howling winds of the storm he created drown out his voice.

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