As promised, chapter 102, which was a request from Akeri la malicieuse. I hope you like it ^w^ (I'm not entirely satisfied with it, especially the ending, but I didn't really know how to fix it...)

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Intervention

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Whenever Jack thought of North, the image that always came to mind was that of an optimistic, rambunctious older man with the soul of someone a fraction of his age, and who never failed to see wonder in anything. He was excitable and animated and 'stop' and 'rest' didn't seem to be in his vocabulary. It was in light of this that Jack was taken by such surprise when he and Sandy turned up at the Pole two days before Christmas.

The North they found in the Workshop wasn't rambunctious or excitable. He was hardly even animated. And far from seeing the wonder in things, he looked more like he was wondering how he hadn't fallen over yet. Jack certainly was. This North had bags under his eyes, sagging shoulders, and a demeanour that showed his mind was far away from the doll he was approving; all tell-tale signs of someone who clearly had not slept in far longer than was healthy.

"You were right," Jack said to his companion, staring at North with wide eyes. The man in question hadn't even noticed their arrival. "This is bad."

Sandy nodded in a pained sort of way.

"When was the last time he took a break?"

Sandy shrugged.

"I think an intervention is in order," Jack frowned, flitting over to perch on the edge of a workstation near where North was standing.

North started at his sudden appearance. "Jack! Is good to see you my friend!"

Jack didn't waste time exchanging pleasantries. "When was the last time you had a break, North? You look like you're about to keel over."

North heaved a sigh, passing off the clipboard he was holding to Phil. "I do not have time! There is still much to be done, and not much time in which to do it. You understand, yes?"

"I can understand being busy, yeah," Jack agreed, "but you shouldn't work yourself into the ground like this."

"I can rest when all is finished," North waved him off, moving on to the next collection of toys. Jack followed, clearing the distance in a single bound.

"If you keep this up, you're going to fall asleep on your feet. Or in the sleigh."

"I appreciate your concern, Jack," North smiled at him tiredly. "But unfortunately I must prioritise."

"You've got your priorities all messed up," Jack informed him. "So I'm going to give you a choice. We can either do this the easy way or the hard way."

North stopped, turning to face Jack fully and crossing his arms, one brow arched as if to say 'I'd like to see you try'.

Jack nodded to himself, having fully expected this. "Alright then." He leaned to the left to see past North to Sandy, "Hard way it is."

North's eyes widened as in that moment he realised Jack had not come alone. But before he could get out more than a startled 'Sandy!', he was hit full-on by a ball of dreamsand and crumpled to the floor, fast asleep. Jack and Sandy high-fived a job well done.

Phil panicked loudly.

"Oh relax," Jack rolled his eyes while Sandy had a couple of yetis carry North off to bed. "We've got this."

Incredibly, this did nothing to calm the frantic yeti, who had taken to gesturing widely and complaining in such a hurried string of garbles that Jack had absolutely no idea what he was saying. Probably something about having knocked out his boss, all things considered.

Jack grinned, snatching the clipboard from the yeti and examining it. Sandy moved to read over his shoulder. "Okay, so basically all that's left is supervising and approving, right? We can handle that."

Sandy mimicked wrapping a present.

"Okay, you go do that. I'll make sure everything runs smoothly here."

Plan of attacked formed, the two of them split up, Sandy heading off to the wrapping room. Jack turned to face a very dubious looking Phil.

"Alright, Phil, lead the way!"

Phil groaned.

...

...

It really wasn't as hard as Jack had expected it to be. By that point, all the toy models had been approved and were in their last stages of production, so he didn't have to worry about sorting out any design flaws or anything like that. The most he had to do was ensure that the last batches had the correct amount of toys and distract the elves when their destructive form of 'helping' started impeding on the yetis' work.

Sandy, too, was mainly just supervising, though he did end up helping out here and there. By dinnertime, the last stages of preparations were done, and the sleigh was beginning to be loaded up by the yetis – something Phil had been adamant they stay out of the way for.

With little else to do, Jack and Sandy headed off to the kitchen for a hard-earned snack.

"North will probably have to head off soon," Jack commented, eyeing the clock on the wall.

Sandy followed his gaze before nodding in agreement, downing a glass of eggnog.

"You reckon a few hours sleep is gonna be enough?"

Sandy's non verbal response was clear enough: it'll have to be.

His question was answered no less than ten minutes later, when a frantic Phil burst into the kitchen and started ranting in the angriest and most anxious tone Jack had ever heard from a yeti.

"Whoa, whoa, calm down for a second," Jack urged, standing. "Take a breath and try again. Slowly."

Thankfully, Phil complied, but the language gap meant Jack was only able to pick up a few words here and there. It was enough, though, for him to realise the crux of the problem.

"Something's wrong with North?"

At Phil's urging, Jack and Sandy followed him through the many hallways to North's room. The man was sprawled out on his bed, still fast asleep. Other than that he seemed fine. Jack glanced down at Sandy helplessly, not understanding what the problem was.

Phil must have picked up on this, because the next thing Jack knew, the yeti had crossed the room and was trying to shake North awake, without success. He stared at the two Guardians hopelessly before pointing at the clock.

Oh.

Oh.

Oops.

Sandy's expression pretty much summed up the way Jack was feeling. "Yeah, I think we might've gone a bit overboard on the dreamsand," Jack agreed. "Is there a way to wake him up?"

Sandy bit his lip and Jack's heart sank.

"I'll take that as a no."

Phil started shouting again.

Jack frantically strained himself to the limits of his mental capacity to come up with a solution. His eyes rested on North's red coat hanging on the back of the door and he only just managed to refrain from shouting 'idea'.

"I have an idea," he declared, sprinting back out into the main part of the Workshop. Sandy and Phil followed him, the first in bemusement and the latter with a great deal of hope. Jack searched the room for a long moment before he found what he was looking for. "Here," he said, snatching up a discarded Santa hat and tossing it to Sandy before grabbing a second one for himself. At Sandy's confused frown he added, "If we're going to play Santa, we're going to have to look the part."

Sandy beamed, shoving the hat over his hair. Phil looked like he wanted to dig a hole and bury himself.

This was Jack's best idea ever.

...

...

This was Jack's worst idea ever.

The winter spirit struggled to hold onto the reins as the reindeer charged forward with impossible strength. Sandy, seated beside him, shared none of his dawning apprehension. They were taking the official launch tunnel, not the crazy supply tunnel North liked to use (purely because Jack wanted to stay in one piece), and the reindeer clearly knew they were not under the control of their master. Jack suspected, too, that Rudolph still held a grudge and was torturing him on purpose.

All at once, the tunnel disappeared and the sleigh was launched into the air. For a precarious moment Jack feared they wouldn't get airborne, but his worries were for naught. The reindeer might want to torture him, but they still knew what they were doing.

"Okay, Sandy," Jack said when he trusted himself to speak without screaming. "Where to first?"

Sandy pulled up the map Phil had drawn their route on and pointed to the first point.

Jack held a snow globe to his face and shouted, "Dezhnev, Russia!" and threw it far ahead of the sleigh.

It wasn't until they'd landed on the first roof that they encountered their first real problem. Jack sat dumbfounded in the sleigh, staring from the massive sack behind him to Sandy.

"How the heck are we going to get that thing down this tiny chimney?"

Sandy tapped his chin in thought. His eyes widened as an idea struck him and he created a series of images in quick succession.

"Yeah that could work," Jack smiled. He turned in his seat and opened up the sack. "...Wait which ones are for this house?"

Sandy didn't have an answer for that.

...

...

North blinked blearily as wakefulness slowly returned to him. He hadn't felt this well rested for weeks. With a large yawn and a stretch, he dragged himself out of bed and headed out into the Workshop, intent on finding out how proceedings had gone while he'd been asleep. Hopefully he hadn't lost too much time with his impromptu nap (which he didn't remember taking. He must have been more tired than he'd first thought).

He was surprised to find the Workshop empty, but a brief search had him locating the bulk of his yeti workforce partaking in a very solemn and anxious parody of their usual end-of-year celebrations. North, who had been on the verge of chastising them for sitting around when there was still much to be done, found his words died in his throat at the sight.

"What is this?" he asked.

The yetis looked up at the sound of his voice, several of them rising to their feet and talking over each other.

"One at a time," North cut them off.

The yetis all glanced over at Phil, who stepped forward and cleared his throat awkwardly before reiterating everything that had happened since North had fallen asleep (or, rather, as he was starting to recall, since Sandy had knocked him out). As the tale progressed, he grew more and more worried.

Part of being Santa Claus meant he had the knowledge of every child, of being able to get from one chimney to another, and knowing exactly what presents each child was to receive. Jack Frost was a winter spirit who could travel very far in a very short period, but he did not have this knowledge. Neither did Sandy, who, though used to delivering to children on a large scale, did not have the abilities to do what North did.

And, worse, North had no way of knowing where they were, so he couldn't come to their aid.

...

...

Jack stood on the edge of the sleigh, reins held loosely in one hand as he leaned over the edge and peered down at the town below. The scene playing out before him, to the untrained eye, would have seemed like anarchy, but it was an ordered chaos, and that was all that mattered.

It had quickly become clear to both himself and Sandy that neither of them were able to do what North did. Their attempt to get down a chimney, for example, had only ended up with Jack getting stuck and needing Sandy to pull him out again.

But they weren't completely hopeless. Between the two of them, they found they had a pretty significant knowledge of the children of any given town, and when Jack didn't know the name of one of them, Sandy was usually able to fill the blanks and vice versa.

As for knowing what child was to receive what present, well, it was pretty handy that the presents all had labels. For kids that had the same name, it became a little trickier, but a quick glimpse of the child's dreams (prompted into a Christmas theme) generally answered the question.

Despite this, though, they hadn't been able to deliver the gifts fast enough; not when it took them so long to sort through all the needed information. And so they'd had to find a new method, which was what had led to the current organised chaos Jack was surveying.

Jack hefted the next present from the sack and launched it with his staff. "Doll for Anastasia coming your way!" he called into the night. One of his frost creations snatched it from the air and its dreamsand companion led it to the correct house. The dreamsand critter then seeped through the glass of a window, reformed, and opened it from the inside, allowing the frost one to hand over the gift to be placed under the tree. The two of them then snatched the cookies for Santa and returned for the next gift.

And so the process continued from town to town, with hundreds of pairs travelling back and forth between the houses and the sleigh, with Sandy always a little further ahead on his cloud of sand, leading the way. Between the two of them, they actually had a chance of getting it all done before sunrise.

With their new system, the only problem that remained was figuring out what to do with all the milk and cookies the kids left for North. The carrots they could give to the reindeer, easy, but Jack knew he would never be able to eat that many cookies or drink that much milk. Sandy, too, would have found the task beyond him, bottomless pit when it came to eggnog or not. And so the solution they'd come up with was to collect it all into one big stash to take back to North later. Well, the cookies, anyway. The milk they'd had no way of storing.

By the time the sun had started peeking over the horizon, they arrived in one of their last towns. Jack didn't allow himself to relax yet, though. They still had a few hundred kids to get through.

...

...

Jack slouched back in his seat when the reindeer came in to land on the runway. Finally, after a very long night of struggling, they'd done it.

"We did it," he sighed, shutting his eyes and holding out a hand for a fist bump. "Great job, Sandman." When Sandy didn't return the gesture, Jack peeped and eye open and rolled his head to the side. Sandy was still seated beside him, but was dozing away, dead to the world. Jack chuckled to himself, letting his eyelid fall closed again as the yetis came to deal with the deer.

"Jack!"

The booming voice startled Jack back to wakefulness. Lazily, he lifted his head and looked over to where North was emerging from the lift. "Hey, North. You look better. A lot more rested."

"What were you thinking?!"

"That you could use a good night's sleep? I could too, actually. Sandy's already beaten me to it. I don't know how you do it, honestly."

"How did you do it?" North countered. "All the lights are still glowing. You have done well, my young friend."

"Teamwork," Jack shrugged. "But I have definitely learned my lesson from this."

North raised an amused brow. "Oh?"

"Next time Sandy calls for an intervention, I'm going to make sure it's at least a week before deadline." Jack shuffled in his seat, readjusting his position so that he was leaning on Sandy. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have a nap. The sack is filled with cookies, if you're interested."

He thought he might have heard some protest or other about using a guest room but Jack was out like a light before North had even finished the sentence. He would later wake, though, to find himself tucked up in the bed of his usual room with only a vague clue as to how he'd gotten there.

Guest Review Responses:

Guest: Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it :3

Painapple: We shall see. I'm gonna try hard to write an even better one just to prove you wrong ;)

Noellesmells1: Thankie! XD I'm still struggling to believe it's been over 100 chapters now. Crazy.

Dingbat: Haha thank you! I'll drag you down with the rest of us ;)

deeznuts: Thank you!

XIcyRacoonX:Hahaha that would hurt so bad XD I think that would push his patience right to the limit. Pin the tail would be forever banned. There might be more like that in future (I'd check the list but I'm so lazy tonight I almost didn't get this chap out ^^;)

NorthernMage: Bad FFN. I have to admit, I did think about making him the murderer, but then I figured that would be way too obvious, fitting though it would be :P