A/N: FINALLY UPDATED! YAY!

Disclaimer: I don't own RotG

Deep within the recesses of North's workshop, inside the most private, most secluded of his personal offices, where the persistent roar of activity in the Workshop was muffled to a dull murmur by thick walls and a massive oaken door, the jolly Guardian of Wonder himself was working, carving a masterpiece from ice using nothing but his wit, his imagination, his sculpting tools, and centuries upon centuries of practice and experience, along with the obligatory dash of magic that helped give his artwork life and breath.

"Kalinka, kalinka, kalinka moya…"

He was singing as he worked, humming quietly a tune which was more of a mangled interpretation of the original song than a strictly accurate representation, and served to showcase his talent, or rather lack thereof, with regards to the more music-related forms of artwork. However, for all of the (numerous) shortcomings in his stunning terrible contributions to the world of music, he more than made up for it with his breathtaking sculptures, one of which was currently in the middle of the slow and painstaking process of creation, paper-thin shaves of ice peeling away from the gradually-forming sculpture with the aid of a delicate chisel as what was once a shapeless block of ice was meticulously molded into the form of a tiny, dainty ballerina.

"V sadu yagoda malinka, malinka moya..."

With a certainty and confidence that could only be born from years of honing his skills, the Cossack scrupulously and precisely etched the folds in the ballerina's tutu, the fingernails on her minuscule fingers, the strands of hair in her flowing mane, the microscopic eyelashes. With each scrape of the chisel, the ballerina seemed to become more and more alive, until the figure looked like it could start moving and breathing at any moment.

"Akh, pod sosnoyu, pod zelenoyu..."

He looked over it critically, nodding in satisfaction when his sharp eyesight failed to notice any defects in the flawless work of art. Bracing himself slightly, the Russian's beefy fingers tightened slightly around the diminutive ballerina, as he muttered a spell under his breath, a brief silvery glow appearing around the figurine before fading away into nothingness.

A moment passed, during which nothing happened, and the Guardian slumped noticeably, disappointment clear in his vivid blue gaze. Just when it appeared that he had lost hope, however, the ballerina suddenly twitched before leaping from his grasp and taking to the air, silver wisps of icy vapor whirling around the sculpture as it twirled and danced in midair and all around the room, looking more like some ephemeral, nebulous fairy than a mere lump of ice.

The former bandit king smiled, eyes shining with Wonder as he followed with his gaze the lithe movements of the frail ballerina-fairy. He had done it, he had created something marvelous, something beautiful, something that the children of the world would love with all their little hearts-

The door slammed open, catching the ballerina that unluckily happened to be in its way and crushing the brittle doll against the wall, smashing it irreparably into thousands of sharp, glittering pieces. Hours of work, gone in the blink of an eye.

North gaped momentarily, before abruptly glaring at the abashed yeti that was responsible for the destruction of his masterpiece. "Proklyatiye! How many times must I tell you to knock?"

The furry creature garbled an apology. North sighed, contemplating the hours of toil he would have to invest into creating a replacement ballerina. "Is not matter. No use sobbing over toppled milk. What do you want?"

The furry creature garbled an explanation.

"They are here, then?"

The furry creature garbled an affirmative. With a grunt, North heaved himself out of his chair and lumbered out of the room, boots stomping harshly against the hardwood floor as he began to make his way along the corridors and staircases that led to the meeting room. Accustomed as he was to navigating the complex labyrinth that was his Workshop, it did not take him long to reach his destination, a glitter-encrusted green door somewhere on the third floor, and with a mere twist of the door handle he was inside the room where the Guardians generally held their fortnightly meetings.

The first thing that he noticed was that the room was warm, too warm for it to be harboring the cold-loving Jack Frost. Indeed, as he examined the room, he realized that the teenager in question was missing, his normal spot at the window unoccupied, the windows and floorboards untouched by the frost that usually indicated his presence.

This was mildly unusual. For all his…slightly tarnished reputation, Jack actually took his new responsibilities as the Guardian of Fun quite seriously, always arriving at the meetings with a promptitude that had so far never wavered (except for the incident with the wendigos, and to be fair, the only thing that had kept Jack from showing up was that he'd nearly had his arm torn off by the creatures). For him to be over half-an-hour late was very out-of-character for him, and usually could only indicate that something drastic had happened to actively prevent their youngest member from attending.

Now somewhat worried, the Cossack turned to the three other occupants of the room, his comrades-in-arms, and asked. "Does anyone know where Jack is?"

To his dismay, three confused shakes of the head were his answer. Tooth's wings hummed as she inquired, "He's not with you, then?"

"No. I have not seen him for week. Is strange, he usually comes often for books, I do not know why he stopped," an idea came to mind, "have any of you seen him in past week?"

Sandy and Bunny shook their heads, as Tooth wrung her hands. "No, I haven't seen him at all, and Baby Tooth hasn't either. It's like he dropped off the face of the planet or something."

"Maybe he's restin' after the winter season? Bugger's always tired at this time o' year, usually he's crashed somewhere in Antarctica or somethin'."

"Is a little early for that, no, Bunny? Still some snowfall. Besides, he would have told us if he was going to miss meeting."

"...Do you think something bad might have happened to him?"

A somber silence fell over the room at Tooth's question, as each of them pondered her words. It was a very real possibility, as the only time Jack had missed a gathering without any warning was during the aforementioned incident with the wendigos, when Jack had nearly lost his arm to one of the cannibal's razor-sharp teeth, and had fainted from the resulting blood-loss. An experience that none of the four would like to repeat, and yet if Jack was in danger, they had to go help him.

But...if it turned out that there was nothing wrong, Jack would be irritated that they had tried to track him down, and that would drive a wedge between them and him. Jack valued his freedom, independence, and privacy highly, and he would not take well to the idea that the Guardians were likely to search for him for every little thing. He might look like a teenager in body, but he was not some child who needed a curfew and to be supervised at every moment, and he made sure to remind the Guardians of that fact at every available opportunity.

On the other hand, if something was the matter, than time would be of the essence. An unnecessary delay could mean Jack's injury and possibly demise.

Arriving at last at a decision, North spoke up. "One hour. We will wait one hour, my friends. If he has not arrived at meeting by then, we will look for him."

It was clear that none of them very particularly happy with his pronouncement, but they abided by his decision. All things considered, it seemed like the best compromise.

They could only hope that they would not, in the end, regret waiting.

Jamie Bennett was...pretty sure that his professors had to be breaking some laws, because there was no way that giving this much homework to a human being (and attaching to said homework a remarkably short deadline for completion) could possibly be legal in any sense of the word.

Although, in retrospect, it was probably his own fault for taking so many classes in the first place. True, there were many interesting subjects to explore, but he could have at least tried to spread them out more over four years, instead of attempting to do all of them at once. But, no, he had to act like he was somehow the Superman of taking college courses, and now he was paying for it with extreme sleep deprivation and possibly caffeine poisoning. Hell, he didn't even like coffee, but it was either drink it or fail absolutely everything, and Jaime didn't want to add 'flunked out of college due to a lack of decision-making skills' to his list of accomplishments.

Groaning, the eighteen-year-old stretched before reaching for a stack of papers, internally wincing at the sheer size of the pile. Psychology, while fascinating, was a nearly useless degree as far as potential careers were concerned, why on Earth had he decided to take it?

Oh. Yeah. Because Superman of college courses. Right.

Cursing himself for being an unmitigated idiot, Jamie began work on his term paper with no small amount of irritation. False memories, while an intriguing topic in the field of human cognition, were not an adequate replacement for that hazy ideal of sleeping longer than six hours at a time, and Jamie would really like to be taking a nap right now instead of writing an essay while half-dead. Alas, however, it was not to be, and all he could do was labor at the essay with no end in sight as he once, twice, thrice damned himself-

Thud.

Jamie Bennett stared at his dorm window, from whence the thud had came. There was nothing outside the pane of frosted glass, as far as he could see (not that frosted glass was particularly useful for seeing out of anyways), and after spending a moment contemplating whether he was having hallucinations from loss of sleep, he decided that it must have been a bird. A small ostrich, judging from the noise it had made at collision, but at any rate, a bird.

This hypothesis held true for around ten seconds, before a pale, pasty figure that looked more like a human than a bird appeared in the window and began scrabbling at the latch.

That was…way too big and lanky to be a bird.

Jamie Bennett stared at the thing outside his window, and wondered vaguely why he wasn't yet running away from a scene which was rather reminiscent of something from a remarkably bad, remarkably bloody horror movie. The figure's movements were erratic and haphazard, and it kept making strange sobbing noises, like some kind of mournful ghost. It was, in other words, Jack Frost in the middle of a mental breakdown, and as Jamie watched his childhood friend slash older brother open the window and stumble into the room, all his could do was stare.

Jack looked utterly terrible. His gaze was wild and he seemed horribly out of it, stumbling like a newborn calf instead of walking with his usual, effortlessly graceful gait. His clothes were ruffled, his eyes were surrounded by concerning dark circles, his face was stained with dried tear tracks. He seemed to be shaking, lithe body shivering like a leaf in the wind, and all the while he was muttering under his breath, the distant look in his eyes clearly showing that he was only barely aware of what was going on around him.

Internally thanking whatever deities had ensured that his roommate would not be here for the evening (it would, after all, be difficult to explain why Jamie was talking to a person who was by all rights invisible), Jamie hesitantly tried to get the panicked winter spirit's attention. "Um, Jack?"

Jack didn't seem to hear him, continuing to mumble quietly, swaying on his feet as he stared at a point some several miles away. Now seriously concerned, Jamie abandoned his psychology paper and moved closer to Jack, in an attempt to at least hear what the spirit was saying and maybe figure out just what the hell was going on.

When he finally got close enough to make out Jack's words, they served only to worry and confuse him further.

"Gone, all gone, gone, gone, destroyed, broken, they're gone-"

"Jack?"

Jack ignored him. "None left, mutilated, ripped, burned, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone-"

"Jack? What's gone? What are you talking about?"

A flicker of some kind of distant awareness appeared in Jack's cerulean eyes. "...Books. My books. They're gone, they're crushed, he did it, he destroyed them, he promised he wouldn't he promised-"

A shiver of horror traveled up and down Jamie's spine. He knew about Jack's library (how couldn't he, after all Jack was practically some kind of older brother to him), and being a bit of a bibliophile himself, he could empathize with Jack's love of books. The desecration of the library would have completely shattered Jack, and indeed it seemed that it had, if Jack's distracted babbling was any indication.

Resisting the urge to strangle the person who had dared to do this to Jack and his books, Jamie attempted to pry more information from the winter spirit. "Jack, who did this? Who destroyed the books?"

"Gone, they're gone, he promised he wouldn't oh MiM he promised-"

"Jack."

"Why did I ever listen to him nobody keep their promises nobody-"

"Jack."

"Three centuries of lies and I still don't learn-"

"Jack!"

Finally, Jack shut up, although he still had a disturbingly blank look in his eyes. Taking a deep breath, Jamie took a moment to compose himself before speaking. "Jack. Look at me."

Slowly, robotically, Jack turned his head to Jamie, eyes seeing and yet not seeing.

"Jack," said Jamie, his words slow and measured. "Who did this?"

"...Bunny," said Jack, voice raspy like he'd been crying. "Bunny did it."

A/N:

The song that North "sings" is a Russian song called "Kalinka".

I looked it up, psychology is a fairly useless degree as far as potential careers are concerned. I'm too tired to explain exactly why, so look it up for yourselves if you're so interested. Google is a thing, people.

Also, frosted windows are creepy af. Sure, they don't let people see inside, but imagine if a figure suddenly appeared in front of your frosted window and you couldn't see what it was...

I know nothing about college life, so if I screwed anything up, let me know nicely please.

See ya.