The King of Cold Mountain

by guardianofscrewingup

Deep in a cold place in the earth, an ancient winter spirit has awakened, one that faded and went to sleep long before Jack Frost stood on splintering ice with his sister. With a deadly cold front spreading over the world, Jack and Bunny must put their differences aside to help spring prevail - and to prevent Old Man Winter from eradicating the young upstart that's taken his place.

6. Chapter 6

A/N: To make up for the long delay, we gave you a pretty long chapter. Enjoy! (Just like we'll be enjoying your sad feelings.)

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To the reviewers that said they were dying without an update: Be careful what you wish for since this update will make you die a little inside, too, probably.

FjordMustang: Aaah, you are so attentive to detail. All of those things you listed were things we very purposefully made use of in the story. And yes, like Anansi, Yemaya already exists in real-world folklore and is probably the goddess you've heard of. She has a small cult-like following among children in the ghetto of cities like Miami and we felt a myth figure like that fit well into the universe. We're also glad that you liked how we had North and Jack fight the despair. We feel they both are the types to keep fighting no matter how dark it seems.

feathered moon wings: The three of us find cowriting to be fairly easy. It usually works with the three of us plotting together and creating a chapter-by-chapter outline to work off of for the story. I usually handle the basic plot with the others hammering it into a more complex shape. Then Anders and I write out a lot of stuff, working off each other in gdocs on parts we have trouble with, usually with one of us handling one character and the other handling another (I'm good at Jack, she's good at Bunny and we alternate on the others, with Kaylin helping with North when Anders and I are stuck on him). Then Kaylin swoops in like some story-writing Superwoman and adds in some really funny and touching moments and makes our stuff even better and funnier. Anders and I do the bulk of the writing, but a lot of really funny lines, clever bits, and character moments (like Jack's fish face) are all her. We usually yank her in when we're stuck somewhere.

For the most part, we're all so enamored of each other's brains, we rarely argue over what should happen next and just kind of egg each other on constantly to make things more interesting. If we do disagree, we either pick one person's take of what they think would be best for the scene if it seems the best, merge our ideas of a scene, or drop both ideas and try to come up with something better than both. We also make lots of butt jokes. That's about 95% of the writing process, butt jokes.

Really, I think that's why it's so easy to work together. It's fun and we joke around instead of any of us letting our egos or what we think is best getting in the way. Also, because of the butt jokes.

Rugiku: Yep, Anansi and Yemaya are characters from folklore/mythology. If you pull them up on wikipedia and wiki-walk you might find some interesting stuff. We felt the movie focused a little too exclusively on western folklore when it's a big, wide world out there so we wanted to work in folklore figures from around the world into the story and into the main team to make it feel like it had even more of a global scope.

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The King of Cold Mountain

by Anders, Kaylin, and Saph

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Chapter 6

Yemaja drew into the shallows, where it became clear how she had moved so smoothly across the water. Her lower body became a long, silvery fishtail that trailed behind her, and when she reached the shore, she drew her tail up beneath her in a coil to rest on. She lifted her hand to beckon them in, the silver fan of her tail flashing in and out of the water.

They all stepped into the sea - even Tooth and Sandy. The cold water warmed as they drew close to her. Anansi was the first to bow. The others followed, and when Jack knelt, he felt the submerged ice on his body beginning to melt in the warm water. He had never been a fan of swimming, but now, he fought the urge to fling his whole freezing body into the child-sized waves.

"Yey Omo Eja," said Anansi, who, being the first to bow, was also the first to rise. "My fellow Guardians have come for your wisdom, and your healing."

"And you will have both," she said, overlooking the group, her smile brightening as she saw that Tooth held a small bundle in her hands. "Even in this time of haste, you thought to bring me gifts!"

She sounded as much like a mother pleased at a child's good manners as any of them could remember.

"It's not much," said Tooth, looking humbler than Jack had ever seen her as she held out her offering - several of her long, lovely feathers, shaded from turquoise to violet-edged indigo, plucked carefully from her train. Yemaja took them graciously.

"Feathers from the Queen of the Tooth Fairy Army's own tail, not much?" she repeated, as she wove the feathers artfully into her silver hair. "I know better than that. Only one other spirit wears these - and now, so do I. Truly, a gift beyond compare." She drew Tooth in to stand at her side, and swept her hair behind her shoulder so that the feathers in them caught the moonlight as she and Tooth stood side by side. "Well, my sons? Do we match? Are we beautiful together?"

"Like pearls in shell of abalone," North declared. A little bit of color had come back to his ashen cheeks, and he leaned, his sharded shoulder closer to the water than his other. "Prettier than picture."

Tooth touched her own face bashfully as Yemaja took her hand, loosening the coils of her tail to rest lower, at Tooth's eye level. "While I have you here, little Queen, let's see what I can do for that arm."

"Thank you," said Tooth, holding out her arm, which was scabbed over and looked puffy at the edges. She hadn't complained, of course, but it was obvious to Jack now that the wound could indeed have gotten worse if they'd left it alone for too much longer.

Yemaja dipped her hand in the seawater and poured it, sparkling silver, over Tooth's arm. Tooth winced, but did not object as Yemaja continued to bathe the wound. "As for the rest of you," she said, not looking up from Tooth's arm - "Your wounds escape the ability of the sea to heal, but if you bathe in my waters, you may feel some relief."

North didn't need any further encouragement, shrugging out of his coat to lie in the shallow water. He sighed with relief as the waves washed over his shoulder, and even chuckled with soft, childlike laughter as he floated his hands on the shifting surface of the water.

"Beach day!" he declared. "Perhaps is something we have all been missing. Maybe after all this is over, when Pole is rebuilt, we all take day off, find deserted island, have day of fun and sun, yes? Perfect way to recharge after all this cold and this ice." He put his hands behind his head, sighing with relaxation.

"That sounds great," said Jack, admittedly without his usual enthusiasm, but still, he sat in the water, feeling reassured by North's return to joviality. He did not want to put his face in the water, so he filled his palms with seawater to press to his eyes, but the water had already frozen solid by the time he brought it to his face.

"With all due respect," said Bunny, "we need a little more than pain relief for these two. Anansi said you knew - something?"

Yemaja looked at him with a patient smile. "Oh don't you worry yourself, Bunnymund. I have the advice you came for."

She released Tooth's arm, and Tooth looked at it with surprise, having not noticed the wound closing over in the seawater, the bare new bright pink skin stark in the midst of her feathers.

"There you go, pretty warrior queen," said Yemaja, and she lifted her hand to gently pet the feathers at Tooth's temples, as if she were her own daughter. "Your fine feathers will grow in, as good as new. You won't even see the scar."

Tooth's face split into a beautiful grin, and she couldn't resist leaning in to hug Yemaja.

It was strange to see Tooth - so motherly herself - being mothered by another. It made Jack wonder if she'd had a mother - she had to have, right? She'd had a life before becoming a Guardian and a life meant family, unless she'd magically sprung out of the air. Jack wondered what had become of her mother and if Tooth missed her. Even though she was old, much older than him, she had changed into a myth young like he had. It was hard to tell how young when she wasn't human, but Jack was fairly sure she hadn't been much older than him.

Tooth stepped back, smiling, in line with Sandy, Anansi, and Bunny. North still floated happily in the water, splashing at the surface and humming a little tune. Yemaja reached over and touched her hand to his shoulder, smiling as he exhaled in further relief.

"It may be temporary," he said, sounding not at all bothered by that possibility - "but relief? It is definitely that."

"If I could take your pain from you, I would," she said, her voice tender, and the shards could find nothing in her sentiment to make evil.

"Please," said Bunny, stepping closer again. "We don't have a lot of time."

Those words, the shards twisted easily.

"Bored already?" Jack asked, as he bent forward to dip his face in the water for some of the relief North was feeling. Seawater rushed in his ears and covered his face, and for a blessed moment, the shards did not cut. Jack breathed out in relief.

"I smell it coming," Bunny said. He didn't have to explain what "it" was. Jack stood up in the water. "It's far, but it's gaining -"

"In that case," said Yemaja, rising on her tail again, helping North up, and looking Jack in the eye - "Here is my advice: Only love will save you now."

Jack blinked.

"Well," he said, "Thank you for the advice – the vague, saccharine advice - but if that's all you got for us, I think we could have gone to Brisney World and gotten more or less the same."

Yemaja held one finger to his nose, like a mother admonishing one of her very own children.

"My advice isn't over, little son. The story is lost, along with the Snow Queen, and so I cannot tell it to you, but the point of that story –" she eyed Anansi – "the point of so many stories – is that there is only one thing that can undo the work of the wicked. That is love. Other things may soothe its effects, but love alone can heal. However, there are other things that must happen first to prepare the way for love to undo the work of wickedness."

She took Jack's hand.

"The greatest power of evil, I am sad to say, is that the wounds it inflicts can carry on its work even through our heroes. But though wounds may run deep –", and as she took Jack's hand, she took Bunny's as well – "fortunately for the inflicted, there are few that can be delivered between the good of heart which cannot be overcome by honesty, openness, followed by forgiveness, friendship – and the love which will restore the cycles of the world."

Bunny and Jack looked at each other, and each jerked their hands out of Yemaja's.

"Ah, Sheila, with respect, I think you haven't been paying attention to the last 300 years."

"What he said. He hates me. That's not exactly conducive to friendship, much less love."

"Jack, mate," Bunny interjected softly, "I don't hate you."

"Oh you don't?" Jack scoffed. "Well silly me for getting that impression. Have you been paying attention the last 300 years? It might have taken a while, but I got the message. Loud and clear."

Yemaja took Jack's hand again, and he rolled his eyes. He wanted to leave, but he didn't want to pull his hand out of Yemaja's. Where she touched him, the ice dripping from his skin turned to water and flowed away. He wanted to move her hands near his eyes, hoping her touch would melt the shards, even if only for a moment.

"You came all this way to me for advice," she said, taking Bunny's paw as well. "So I will give it, whether you find it easy to hear or not. Spring needs winter," she said.

"No," she insisted, when Bunny frowned with disbelief. "It does."

He breathed in indignantly, but listened in silence. Yemaja smiled at him with approval.

"It needs the snow that melts into the creeks and fills the aquifers. It needs the freeze that breaks down the old growth, so that the new can rise from it. Without winter, spring would starve. Without winter, spring would have nothing to fuel the rebirth it brings."

"And winter," she said, turning to Jack, "Must concede to spring. Because without spring, winter would be too inhospitable to be fun. It is true," she said, as Jack rolled his eyes. "You have seen the side of winter that does not concede, that is not concerned with whether or not a child can pack a snowball out of the freshly fallen snow. That is not your winter, and it is not the winter the world needs. The world needs the winter that brings rest. That re-creates." Her eyes shone as she smiled. "That brings recreation. But in order to bring rest, winter must have something to bring rest to – and when the time is right, must allow what it has rejuvenated with snow, and with sleep, to wake up.

"That balance will save the world," she said, looking at them both with equal affection and gravity, "But only love will save you now."

Jack jerked his hand from Yemaja's and stomped away, his shoulders hunched, his back bent.

"Jack!" Tooth called, fluttering after him.

Sandy and North followed her, clearly concerned that Jack might do something more rash than just stomping off. Anansi followed, but not immediately, pausing to raise an eyebrow at Bunny. He crept after the other Guardians, leaving Bunny and Yemaja at the water's edge.

The Mother waited in silence as Bunny turned to her with a sigh.

"Your...wateriness, with respect, if this is the only solution you've got, I don't –"

"Don't see much hope in your future?" Yemaja quirked an eyebrow. "You do not?"

Bunny faltered, silently, not wanting to admit hopelessness in any situation.

"I haven't exactly, ah – promoted it," he admitted, softly. "In this case."

"Then you have some very difficult work to do," Yemaja said. "Don't you, my little son?"

He looked stricken at her for a moment – then bowed his head in deep concession.

Yemaja laid her hand between his ears, and he only flinched a little at her unexpected touch.

"This will not be easy work," she said. "But after all, it is your work, Guardian of Hope. Who else could do it, in a moment when hope is so hard to come by?"

A howl echoed down from the north. They all froze, hearing it even over the noise of the ocean and the nearby city.

"Go," said Yemaja, her smiling face suddenly stern. "Across the sea. But rest, when you can. It's important not to forget that. And you will have time -" her eyes flashed in the moonlight. "Passage to the islands will grow difficult soon - the sea is about to become...rough."

Bunny stamped the beach open.

"Go go go!" he shouted, waving them through. One by one the Guardians disappeared into the tunnel, each with a farewell thank you to Yemaja (though Jack's might have been a little softer than perhaps was entirely polite). Jack seemed reluctant to leave her presence, though, and Bunny could tell from the expression on the frost spirit's face that the reprieve in his pain hadn't given him a reprieve from hopelessness.

Yemaja said a single word that stopped Bunny before he jumped through after the others.

"Pull the thorn from your heart," she said, "and there will be blood. But the wound will be free to close."

The wolf howled from the other side of the city. The look Bunny gave Yemaja as he nodded and dropped into the tunnel was fearful - but to a Mother, who knew what lay beyond mere outward expression, it was clear the wolf was not what he feared this time.

---

The wind had picked up when they emerged on a small coral island, barely more than a cave on the sea. The stars were overshadowed by clouds and the waves beat rough against the ragged-edged coral rock.

"Hoo," North said, pulling off his coat and wringing it closer to dry. "Now that we are away from the Mother's care, soaking ourselves in the water seems not so much a good idea." He smiled ruefully as a couple tendrils of dreamsand plucked the coat from his hands and wrung it out for him. "But that is always the way of beautiful women, hmm? Things that seemed clever then seem less clever later."

"Already working on the fire," Bunny said, crouched midway back into the cave. "Not much fuel to scrounge for around here, but I brought some from the mainland."

The Guardians drew in close as the tiny flame grew to a small fire. Sandy conjured a wall of dreamsand behind it, blocking much of the wind out and reflecting the heat back to them. Anansi prodded the wall experimentally before deciding it was sturdy enough to support his weight. Jack wished vindictively that Sandy would shift it just enough to let Anansi fall over, but the second oldest Guardian just rolled his eyes at the eldest.

"So," Anansi said, once he was comfortable. "Now to consider what we know."

"And you must tell us all you know," said North, arching an eyebrow at Anansi.

"All I knew from the stories I caught in my webs was that it was time to involve myself directly and take you to Ye Omo Eja. In terms of knowledge," he raised his human hands, and two of his spiders legs innocently, "I am all tapped out. I am not even sure how Yemaja knows what she knows, if the story truly is lost. The Snow Queen had powerful enchantments around her ice palace to keep out prying eyes, and perhaps Yemaja saw inside using her power over the water that made the ice. But if she knows the story, then the only reason she would be so vague is if telling us a direct answer would make finding the right course of action impossible. Regardless, she spoke the truth - a great many stories are ultimately about the power of love. That which it does not cure, it makes bearable; but for beings like us, who don't suffer the ills of average mortals, it cures an awful lot."

"It can't be that easy," Tooth protested, accompanied by Sandy's vigorous nodding. "If loving people was the only thing needed to protect them from the shards, they wouldn't be a problem."

"Very true," Anansi agreed. "An action needs to be taken or a sacrifice made." He tossed an inscrutable look in Bunny's direction. "We just have to herd this story along and figure out what that might be."

Bunny, hunkered down at the edge of the firelight, didn't contribute to the conversation.

"I think we all agree, this story has enough of tragedy already," said North, as he shifted his shoulder closer to the fire. "So, we must talk actions! Action is more likely than sacrifice I think; love is not a sacrifice. Love, she is better than that."

"I'm not talking about trading your voice for legs, you ninny, I'm talking about - WOOFT!"

The sandwall behind Anansi had very suddenly bulged outward at Sandy's behest, sending the Spider sprawling under his own weight and everyone's glares. "...I rescind the insult," he said, almost meekly. "May I sit up again?"

"You may sit," North said magnanimously. Sandy waved the wall back into shape and Anansi shifted to his two human feet, pouting a bit.

"As I was saying, if there is a sacrifice, it doesn't necessarily have to be permanent. Putting ourselves through some physical and emotional discomfort should do as proof, and after all of the snow I've slogged through, we should at least be halfway there."

It was sudden and startling when Jack reacted, but away from the protective influence of Yemaya, the waves of hatred that were slamming into him one by one like the waves of her beach were overwhelming. Out there in the world, the Old Man was wreaking havoc as they all spoke.

And here they all were talking about something that just couldn't be.

No one would love him the way that was necessary to stop the shards. No one would make that kind of sacrifice for him, and if Yemaya was right that it had to be Bunny, he was as good as dead.

Abruptly just too tired to listen to any more of their useless prattling, Jack punched the stone wall hard enough to leave his knuckles bleeding.

"What's the point?" he asked. His voice cracked with weariness and misery. "You keep talking, like - like there's a way out of this if everyone stands around chit-chatting enough. Like we have any chance at all. He's won. That's it, game over. We might as just - just dig a grave for North and me - no, scratch that, sorry, just for me, because love -" he wiggled his bloody fingers "- is the magic cure-all and at least you all love him. Anyway, we might as well dig a grave for me and move everyone to the equator, because that's it. We're done."

"Jack, you're not -" Tooth started, fluttering towards him, looking concerned.

Now he was so far gone that he shoved her away. "Don't. Don't talk to me. Don't - just -" He shook his head. "I get it. I get it all now. What happened to my eyes isn't a curse. It's given me clarity. I can see the truth now and the truth is everything is horrible. You're all horrible, I'm horrible, everything - everyone is ugly, and all we have are stupid lies and platitudes to try to - to convince ourselves the world isn't that way, but it is."

He'd been a fly on the wall to the worst of human existence for so many years, and until the shards, he'd been able to put them at the back of his mind in favor of a snowball fight. The people he had wanted so badly to see him were so good at hurting each other, at making life more difficult for each other to live, and all the times observing that had come close to breaking him - maybe he would have been better off if he'd broken and gone cold long ago.

And this strange way of existing he'd done for three hundred years - this being a whisper on the wind, a spirit who was given new life by the Man in the Moon - this was horrible, too. It was a false rescue, his rebirth from the pond, from which he'd wandered for 300 years without guidance, without friendship, only to have Manny dangle a carrot of purpose and belonging in front of his face long enough for him to die with the understanding of just what a waste his second life had been.

Jack turned to the back of the cave. The blood dripped down his arm, staining his sleeve, but he didn't notice. "So, go do whatever it is you need to do to convince yourselves that you tried your best. I'll be in there dying like I should have done three hundred years ago."

He turned on his heel and walked deeper into the cave, where the path twisted out of sight, not caring to leave them with better last words.

The Guardians sat in silence, but for the whistling of the wind and the sound of waves. North lifted his hand to his shoulder in an almost unconscious gesture of pain. Beside him, Sandy put a hand on his good arm, but no sand pictograms flashed his thoughts for the others to see.

Tooth looked at Bunny, her expression entreating. Bunny held her gaze for a moment, then closed his eyes with a sigh.

"It is always harder to judge a story when you are in the middle of it," Anansi spoke up, from where he was sitting with his fingers laced together. "But I would say this story has reached a crossroads."

Bunny stood up and left the Guardians, following Jack deeper into the cave.

---

Jack slumped against the calcified coral, lying there without enough care for his own misery to draw them up to his chin. There was going to be no curling up in a ball for Jack Frost, oh no. He would die sprawled out with no regard for dignity in death.

He examined his bleeding hand, watching the blood frost over. He was so numb now from the cold that he didn't even feel the injury. His whole body was frosted, hair weighed down with icicles, cheeks caked with ice. His breath came in little puffs of fog. The hand he wasn't looking at clutched at his chest over his heart.

When he heard footsteps approaching, he didn't even bother to look up. He spoke, his voice cold and hollow rather than angry.

"Go away."

When he looked up and saw that it was Bunny, his expression darkened. "You can especially go away. I never want to talk to you again."

Never wasn't a very long time in this case. Jack felt the ice digging deeper, touching his heart. He didn't have long. If he hadn't been so numb, that thought would have frightened him.

"I know." Bunny crouched down, but didn't sit comfortably, resting on the balls of his feet. "But I have to tell you something. Something that might give you a long 'never' to not talk to me in."

"Oooh, of course. Gotta play the hero. Gotta at least tryyyyy." Jack drew the word in a way that made it sound like he was stretching it out with a rope and then using that rope to strangle it. "After all, you guys need me, right? In case Pitch comes back - can't let the Man in the Moon's hand-picked scab go without a fight. Wonder who Manny'll pick to replace me after I'm gone. Is he gonna ignore them for 300 years, too?" He chuckled darkly. "Or maybe he never ignored me. Maybe he's been laughing that whole time, and now he's ready for the last laugh."

Jack laughed but there was no warmth in it. He looked towards Bunny with a quick tilt of his head, with eyes that were too light, closer to gray than blue now. "Tooth guilted you into this, right? It's not like you actually care - you never cared - so it has to be guilt."

Bunny crouched in silence for a moment, and looked away from Jack's gaze. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. "You're right. It is guilt. I've done a lot wrong by you. So I owe you this, at least. I owe it to you to bring you hope."

Jack laughed once. "Are you serious?" He laughed again, mocking, harsh laughter that stabbed at the air like icicles. Even his puffs of breath looked rough at the edges. "You're here to bring me hope. You. Now. Oh, that's rich. That's really, really rich, after all this - all these years of bringing hope to everyone but me - "

His laughter continued, but it was starting to sound more like sobs.

"It's funny," he said, as his harsh laughter petered out, "because you think you can." Icicles built at the corners of Jack's eyes, where tears would have flowed - if there had been any warmth left in him to let them flow. He observed Bunny staring at the ground, unmoving, with a numbness that was almost a relief, after all this pain - and after all the sharp vindictiveness that had been stabbing at him since Bunny accused him of murder at the Pole.

Or maybe even before - when Bunny first refused, at the same Pole, to accept him as a possible Guardian.

"After all the times you've made me feel hopeless."

Bunny didn't respond, crouched, unmoving, staring at the ground with a glimmer in the corners of his eyes, but when he looked up again, steeling himself with a breath, his expression was only set with seriousness.

"This will bring you hope," he said, finally, still quiet. "Old Man Winter can be defeated. He was once. And I can tell you how."

Jack rolled his eyes, and leaned his head back against the stone. "You know, I might believe that, if anyone was doing what it takes to defeat him right now. But hey, I've got a minute or two before I freeze to death - go ahead and say whatever you want to make yourself feel better."

"It's not going to." Bunny heaved a deep sigh, and there was almost a note of bitterness in his voice.

"Sure it won't," Jack muttered, the bitterness in his voice as biting as the cold nipping its way to his heart. Bunny would say what he needed to say to assuage his sense of obligation, and go about his business able to say to himself that he had done everything he could have done - regardless of whether or not it was true.

"Old Man Winter can be defeated," Bunny repeated, sinking from his crouch to kneel. "And even though things look hopeless right now, they're not - because someone else already defeated Old Man Winter once before when things looked just as hopeless."

"Oh yeah?" Jack asked, thinking of some summer spirit, all rage and fire where Jokul Frosti was rage and ice. "Who defeated him? Why exactly haven't they come forward yet? Why haven't we gone to them?"

"Because it's me," Bunny said, simply. "I defeated Old Man Winter. A long time ago."

Jack froze for a moment. Then he narrowed his eyes, anger welling up.

"Oh yeah, I can really see it in the way you've whipped him straight into shape already. It's not like he's more powerful than all of us put together or anything. Don't worry everyone, the great Easter Bunny is on the case – clearly he's just taking his time because he likes getting to blame everyone else for people dying."

But at the same time, Jack had to admit - of all the Guardians, only Bunny had gotten in a good solid blow on Old Man Winter. Perhaps that strike with the boomerang had only been a lucky fluke, but it had cut the old man deep, and it had left a wound the others' weapons hadn't.

"That's part of the story," said Bunny, building steam as he carried his tale on. "It's not as simple as getting a good one in on the old nong. I never would have been able to do it if the others hadn't been keeping him busy at the time."

"The others?"

Bunny nodded to back in the direction of the front of the cave. "The Guardians. I wasn't one yet. I wasn't –" he paused, sighed as he thought his words through, then gestured largely to his six-foot-one frame. "Myself yet."

Jack snorted.

"Now I know you're lying. Tiny, fluffy Bunny couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag, much less put a dent in Old Man Winter."

"It wasn't in battle. It was...indirect."

"Well spit it out, Cottontail," Jack snapped venomously. "If you're going to tell a lie, at least tell it straight. And hurry it up, will you? Some of us are trying to die quietly back here."

Bunny looked at the ground again. "It's not an easy story for me to tell."

"Why, forget your facts after a couple of hundred of years or so? Maybe if we go back to the Warren, you can find where you wrote them down on a rock so they'd be an eternal testament to how much better you think you are than the rest of us."

Jack said "the rest of us" but those words clearly stood in for "me."

"It goes back ages ago," Bunny went on. "Back when Old Man Winter wasn't so ambitious. When Easter was still Eostre, when the Easter Bunny didn't exist because there wasn't an Easter Bunny." He closed his eyes, like someone stealing himself to leap over a precipice. "There were hundreds."

He looked up at Jack, and his eyes were visibly wet.

"I never wore goggles, Jack. Or a lab coat."

Understanding hit Jack like a snowball with a rock in it.

The self-portraits he'd seen in the Warren weren't self-portraits, after all. Bunny's fury over Jack making fun of them made sense now. It was like Jack had mocked photographs of a dead relative.

No, hundreds of dead relatives.

Jack saw, for a moment, a little more clearly, the cave less washed-out, the lichen on the coral walls a little less grey. He asked, "What happened to them?"

"Old Man Winter," said Bunny, his eyes narrowed to slits, his voice weighted with sorrow and anger - "happened."

He paused again, and in the pause, other things began to make sense to Jack. Their first meeting, so long ago, when Bunny had reacted without a single ounce of humor to Jack's playful attempt to carry on winter. The many times he had continued not to play along when Jack pranked him on the cusp of winter becoming spring. The grudge over the snowed-out Easter.

"It was a deep winter in the north," Bunny went on. "A cold summer night in the outback. I was the only one out when –" he closed his eyes briefly. "When Old Man Winter decided it was high time winter never ended. And to keep winter going forever, he thought, 'why not kill spring at its source?'" He paused, breathing again. "I was the only one outside the Warren. So I was the only one not frozen to death when he struck."

He fell into silence again, his eyes distant.

Jack could only sit in silence, picking apart a three-hundred year rivalry with an entirely new understanding.

Bunny went on, "For a while, I couldn't tell if Old Man Winter had succeeded, if spring could come again or not. The Warren was -" he shook his head, as if deciding that he did not even want to begin describing what the Warren was after Old Man Winter's attack. "If you want the full story, you can ask Anansi. I can't do it justice and frankly I don't want to be able to. But the point is, if ever a situation had seemed hopeless, that was it. Winter had its fingers in deep, long after it should have left. That's what got the Guardians' attention. By the time they came by to investigate, the vernal equinox had come and gone and winter showed no signs of letting up. I'd gotten most of the Warren cleared but it was – it was not looking good."

Once upon a time, Jack would have been moved by all this, and maybe, deep down inside, a part of him still was.

But winter had come again, and the cold had taken over. If there were any parts of him left that were compassionate, they were buried deep under the ice.

"At least it was quick," he said, distantly. "It sounds quick. They were lucky. You just weren't there. Nothing you could do about it." He rolled his eyes away from the lichen-covered wall to look at Bunny. "They didn't die because you hated them."

Bunny breathed in sharply, and for a moment his paws clenched as if he wanted to lash out, but he only looked Jack directly in the eye.

"Frost, I've been wrong about you for a long time, and part of what I had wrong was thinking you could be cruel. I know better now. It may have taken too long, but I know better now. The shards are talking for you. Stop letting them. You don't owe me any kindness, but they shouldn't have control over anyone, much less you."

Jack had to take a moment to consider this, bright eyes wide, fog drifting up out of his mouth with each breath.

"You're just saying whatever you need to," he accused. "To give me hope. Because the Guardians need me, and you still think hope is powerful enough to stop this."

"Because it is. It did," Bunny insisted, with sudden conviction. "If you take nothing else from this, understand that. Old Man Winter knew that without hope, people would fall to him like flies. He attacked the Warren to take away their hope for spring. And he almost managed."

He looked away again, like his past was playing out in pictures on the stone wall. "People were dying. Winter stores were all but used up. There was so little hope left that the Warren was barely alive, and I could only do little things. A couple of eggs to a family who was starving. A crocus peeking through the snow by a farmhouse. If Old Man Winter had seen a single one of the signs I left, he would have come back to the Warren to finish the job -" he shook his head. "But he didn't see. He was too busy gloating - when he wasn't too busy fighting the Guardians. I could never have done it without them." His expression warmed just slightly. "But more than that - I couldn't have done it without the children. They saw the signs and they believed. They were starving, freezing, but they saw their gifts, and they believed that winter would end. It gave them hope - and hope gave them strength."

He paused, with a very small smile, that was full of admiration for those children, hoping when hope was only a tiny thing peeking through the snow.

"It gave me strength, too. They believed I could do the work of a thousand - and so I could do it. That's why Old Man Winter went to sleep. Because in spite of all his efforts, all the children needed was that little spark of hope to keep on believing that spring would come again - and that little spark kept them holding on long enough that spring could come again."

"I don't see how this is supposed to save me," Jack said, but his voice was not a knife anymore - it was plaintive and soft. "There's no hope for me anymore."

"Yeah there is," said Bunny, with calm solidity. "It's all you need. It wasn't the spring that put Old Man Winter to sleep, it was the hope. Old Man Winter is all about folks lying down and giving up - hope is about not needing to. Hope is what lets you endure. It keeps you putting one foot in front of the other, even when the storm is raging all around you. The longer you hold on to hope, the longer you'll be able to resist the shards. The longer you hold on, the longer we have to figure out how to save you - and you have to hope, because Yemaja's right. The world needs your winter, more than it doesn't need his winter. It needs to know how to laugh in the face of danger. It needs to have something to look forward to while the year turns dark. Maybe I couldn't see it, but there's a world full of kids who already did. And they need you to hold onto hope now more than anything - they need to you to see it's still there for you to hang on to."

Jack closed his eyes tight, as if he hadn't heard a word. "Stop talking like this."

But a tear leaked from the corners of his eyes. A liquid tear, that didn't freeze until it had made it almost all the way down his face.

Bunny saw the tear, though, and watched it. "See? There's a start. Something thawed in there. You've got to let this out rather than going cold." Jack's brief, tiny thaw made him smile triumphantly, but his smile faded in the face of how dire the situation still was. "I'm not asking you to forgive me," he went on. "You don't owe me that. But please believe I don't want you to die."

"But you do!" Jack finally exploded, rounding Bunny, looking close to launching himself after him and beating him with his fists. But this rage wasn't cold - it was fueled by hot anger. The tears kept spilling. Some even dripped from his face to the cave floor. "You hate me! You've always hated me!"

"I never did," said Bunny, almost too softly for anyone without rabbit ears to hear.

"I was afraid," he said steeling his own resolve. "Afraid you'd get ambitious. Afraid you wouldn't care and that someone would get hurt over it. It was stupid of me but I -" he paused. "I wasn't thinking straight. Even when I knew you weren't - that you and Old Man Winter were different stories. I've been scared stupid ever since you showed up, and I'm sorry. I know you have no reason to believe it. But I am," he paused, sighing, "Sorry." He paused again. "And I'm still afraid. But for you - not of you, Jack."

"Okay, we're talking about hope, right? You want to talk hope? How about?" Jack had to stop, closing his eyes tight. "How about hoping to have someone to talk to after - after so long that I -"

He stopped to collect himself, finally drawing his legs up, gathering the fabric at his knees in his fists. Every movement, every taut gesture was an expression of deep-seated pain. It was as if the shards had cut into some deep infection and all the nastiness, all the sickness lurking under the surface, was bubbling out uncontrollably.

"I would go years," he finally said, barely able to force the words out through a throat grown hoarse. "Years and - and sometimes decades without anyone to talk to. But all I had to do was bring a spring snowfall and there you were..." the tears coursed freely down his face, barely clinging to the ice. "You were annoyed, but you were there. You pranked me back and I laughed and - and I always hoped maybe one day, you'd laugh too. It was stupid to think -"

He looked at Bunny again, his eyes growing bluer and bluer. The icicles melted slowly under the flowing tears. Water dripped from his hair. He felt the pain, and it was sharp, so much sharper, after having been numb to it. But feeling it was buying him time.

"You were the first person that ever talked to me. And - and even though you were annoyed, you were the first one that was ever nice to me. Even before Sandy. You showed me a new place to play. Told me about - about how everything has its time. Like you cared that I learned something new. Like - like you cared."

Jack looked up at the roof of the cave. "That's how pathetic I am. I wanted someone who couldn't stand me to like me. And even after all that, when I finally started hanging out with you guys, I still wanted - you're a good person, and a good Guardian, and you care about the kids so much, and I care about the kids, but you hated me - "

Jack reached up and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his palms.

"- You hated me and then you liked me. And then you didn't like me but still thought I was a good person. And then you hated me again. And between that and everyone thinking I'd sold you all out to Pitch, like that was something I'd do, and you still thinking I'd hurt people, all I can think is 'How long is this going to last? How long's the friendship train going to keep rolling before they all decide to leave you out in the cold again?'"

Even as he said it, even as he saw Bunny looking at him with an expression of every indication that his heart was breaking, even as he absorbed Bunny's message - that hope would slow the shards from killing him - he knew there was none.

Bunny didn't hate him. That much was obvious. Even the shards couldn't do much to twist the fact that he'd bared his deepest, most personal sadness in an attempt to slow Jack's death.

But the cure wasn't a lack of hate.

The shards sliced deeper into his eyes, the pain freezing the little hope in his heart that Bunny had managed to stir up. Old Man Winter had killed everything Bunny loved, ended his entire world, and Jack had unknowingly for 300 years stirred that horror up. No one could ask him to just get over that sort of pain to save Jack's life. Not Tooth, for all their friendship. Not Yemaja, for all her authority. Certainly not him.

So he was that much more surprised when Bunny pulled him into a hug, pressing Jack's frozen face against the thick ruff of fur at his chest.

Jack struggled.

"Get off! Don't -"

But Bunny didn't let go.

"You're just doing this because Yemaja said you had to," Jack hissed, the warmth of Bunny's fur doing nothing to thaw the ice creeping now from Jack's body to his. "Because Tooth asked you." Resentment creeped back into his tone. At this point, the rabbit could at least let him die honestly and with dignity. "You can't fake a cure - you can't fake love just because someone asked you to."

A tremor went through Bunny's body, as if he were repressing a sob - as one might expect from someone who likely had terrible memories of frozen bodies in his arms.

"It's not real," Jack insisted, but his voice turned into a high, mournful sob before his words were done. "It was so long. So long. And he wouldn't tell me why -" He shook his head against Bunny's chest. "You don't go that long and have it all just work out. None of you are going to miss me if I'm gone."

"I would," Bunny insisted, fiercely. "I didn't have any fun in all those years. Not until you showed up."

Jack's face contorted into a terrible grimace against Bunny's fur and, finally, the ice thawed - at least as much as it was going to. The tears he sobbed into Bunny's fur were indistinguishable from the water melting off his hair and face.

Jack wrapped his arms tight around the rabbit, fingers digging into his fur so tightly it was almost painful, clinging with a raw need that had gone unfulfilled for three very long centuries. The pain stabbed more harshly, the shards magnifying his frailties as much as they had magnified his hurt.

Now that the moment had passed, now that the poison thorn had been taken out of his metaphorical paw, he could see how the shards had twisted their arguments and his long-neglected hurts into something that had just nearly destroyed him.

"Everything hurts worse," Jack gasped out, clinging to that measure of clarity even as Bunny tucked him into a closer embrace and the shards dug vindictively into his eyes. "Everything - the only thing that stops the pain is going numb, but then I can feel my heart - "

"Icing up."

"Yeah."

"We've got to keep your heart from going cold." Bunny looked up, pausing as he thought. "What'll keep you from freezing, mate? What else will give you hope right now?"

"I -" Jack let Bunny go, but Bunny kept his arm tucked protectively around Jack. It made him feel welcome to keep leaning against Bunny's shoulder, so, he did. "I need proof that what I see isn't - isn't true. That there's still good in the world and that it isn't all pain and suffering." He settled into the soft fur, wishing he could feel a little of Bunny's warmth through his thick coat. "That things like fun still exist."

"Fun," Bunny repeated, thoughtful. "Well - we've had some fun over the years, haven't we? A lot of yelling over the hedges, but some of it's funny in hindsight. Remember '56 when the Groundhog got caught in our crossfire?"

The memory was slow to come, but - "Didn't I ice his whiskers to a sign pole?"

"And I may have accidentally wrapped him to it with vines."

Jack laughed once, a chuckle mercifully devoid of vindictiveness. "That so wasn't an accident."

"And icing his whiskers was?"

Jack smirked. "You can't say he didn't deserve it."

"Seppo needs to stop acting like he decides when Spring comes, and that's all I'm saying."

A little bit of Bunny's warmth was finally seeping through his fur, where Jack's cheek was still pressed against it. The touch of warmth made the oppressive cold bite even harder. Jack shivered as his laughter over that particular memory faded.

"What else?" Bunny said, putting his free paw on Jack's arm to melt a sheen of frost growing on his sleeve. "Come on, Frost, we've had more than a few laughs."

"Have we?" Jack asked, pulling back to look Bunny in the eye. "You said you had fun, but I never saw it - "

Bunny chuckled. "I might have laughed when I planned a drop sometime in the 1800's."

Jack gasped with realization. "The dogwood tree of '35!"

"Gotta say, I was surprised you took the bait."

"The whole thing was in bloom a month early. How was I supposed to resist icing it up? You got me good that time. I was stuck in that tree for five hours," said Jack, without a trace of resentment.

"Five?" Bunny looked surprised. "I figured I'd got you for two, three tops."

"The vines were really stiff. You know what I had to do to stave off the boredom? I sang folk songs. Hour four was a straight loop of the Bird Song. You reduced me to singing folk songs. I spent the last hour planning the blizzard of '68."

"Took you that long to get around to it, huh?"

"Well, you know how it is," Jack said, with a chuckle. "A lot of stuff cropped up between now and then. Snowball fights, stuffy Victorians to mess with, movies became a thing - but the seeds of revenge were planted that day."

But they were both laughing, and it wasn't forced, or stilted laughter. It was warm and real. There were years of conflict that hadn't actually been conflict behind them, and even with the shards doing there best to twist everything around Jack back into something horrible, just the fact that he could still laugh, and feel it, was giving him hope - as much as the notion that Old Man Winter could be overcome, had been overcome, was.

And Bunny still hadn't pushed Jack off, and he could feel the edge taken off the chill in his fingers, where he wound them into Bunny's downy coat. Bunny even rubbed Jack's shoulder as Jack leaned against him. The contact was a like a tether, dragging him back from thoughts of not belonging, of having everything he'd gained drifting away, closer to reality - to what he hoped was reality - that it was all solid. That it would stay.

"Three hundred years of bad first impressions -" Bunny said, suddenly, his own mood going melancholy. "We would've had more laughs if I hadn't -" he paused again, exhaling his frustration. "If I hadn't treated you like a criminal. If I'd known -"

"Maybe if I - " Jack paused. "When this is over, we can have them." If he survived this. If they all survived this. He had to try his best to think they would.

"Yeah?" Bunny leaned back to look Jack in the eye again. "So you're gonna stick with us, mate?"

"I'll try," Jack nodded. "If North can do it..."

The shards couldn't twist Bunny's smile as anything but relieved.

"You do that, and I'll make sure we have time to make up with," he said, with conviction. "I promise, no more running off. If Old Man Winter wants you, he's gotta go through me first."

Jack looked deep inside his frozen heart and found no words to fit what he felt just then.

He simply threw his arms around Bunny in a fiercely needy hug, and Bunny folded his arms around Jack again after the briefest surprised pause.

"Okay," Jack croaked into Bunny's ruff.

"She'll be right, mate." Bunny stroked Jack's hair like he was something precious, hugging him like he could thaw him out himself.

Jack buried his face in Bunny's ruff, trying to let some of his warmth reach the cold, stabbing pain in his eyes. His voice was muffled by rabbit fur as he spoke. "Tell me some other times you laughed."

"Ah -" Bunny paused as he patted Jack comfortingly on the back. "There was the equinox of '55 - autumnal, not vernal. You iced the streamers from some kid's party to my tail, remember that? I didn't notice for about an hour, but I had a laugh when I did -"

Jack smiled, as he curled against Bunny like he was a pillow. A pillow of rabbity sinew, if the truth were told, but with a lot of warm soft fluff cushioning it. "I'm really tired. I'm just gonna close my eyes for a moment."

"Sure," said Bunny, with a softness that Jack had only heard him reserve for children. Jack thought of the Easter before, and Sophie, Bunny cradling her with a practiced hand as she slept, and wondered if he'd been thinking back to other children - ones that were smaller, and rabbit-shaped, from centuries before. That thought stabbed at his heart with sadness. He closed his eyes tightly, tears welling over the rime of frost growing on his lids.

Maybe Bunny caught sight of the tears, because he went on. "Then there was '97. North Carolina. Light dusting a few days before Easter, yeah? That was a good one for the kids - a nice, soft snowfall. Saw some of 'em playing on my dry run. One was drawing eggs in the snow -"

"She didn't have gloves," Jack said, slowly, sleepiness creeping into his voice. "So she put socks on her hands -"

Bunny chuckled. "Smart kid. What else - freeze of 1821, I believe. Kyoto. You caught the cherry blossoms, kept 'em around a couple days longer. That was actually kind of pretty, even if they couldn't fall that year. And autumn, when we ran into each other in Wanaka -"

Jack's breathing was deep and even, and when Bunny paused, Jack didn't object.

"- and had a rugby match with the Groundhog and the Leprechaun." Jack said nothing. "And you're asleep, aren't you."

Jack's continued silence gave him the proof he needed.

Bunny finally shivered. "Crikey, this is cold." Ice was starting to spread into his undercoat, and he'd already lost a (fortunately tiny) handful of that to the elf. He picked Jack up as gently as possible, carrying him back to the other Guardians at the entrance to the cave. "Let's get you to that fire while we still have one."

The others looked up as Bunny returned with Jack, surprise and relief mixed on everyone's features when they saw breath puffing into the air from Jack's lips (except for Anansi, who smiled smugly like he'd won a bet).

"How is he?" Tooth flitted over, Sandy close behind.

Bunny carried Jack over to the fire. "Still cold, but he had a thaw." He tapped the floor by the fire, and moss grew thickly on it.

Tooth zipped over, her smile bright with relief as Bunny laid Jack on the mossbed. Sandy alighted next to her and dusted Jack gently with dreamsand. Jack's blank face shifted into the slightest smile as the dream brought him comfort, and the three Guardians kneeling over him shared the same hopeful smile.

Sandy patted Bunny on the shoulder before he floated back over to North. Tooth leaned over to touch Jack's hand.

"He's still so cold," she said, as a thin layer of frost shimmered on his skin.

"It helped," Bunny said, "but it wasn't enough. Whatever we have to do to break the spell, we haven't done it yet."

They looked at Jack, silent, worried. Jack, under the dreamsand's influence, slept on.

"But the talk went well, right?" said Tooth, as the silence grew heavier.

Bunny's expression was distant again, but he didn't look away from Jack.

"All that time," he said, his voice marked with regret. "He was just as alone as I was, and we didn't have to be -"

Tooth placed one of her dainty hands on Bunny's shoulder, and he looked at her gentle half-smile.

"- you want so badly to say 'I told you so,' don't you Tooth?"

Tooth's smile became a little more pronounced. "It's hard to resist."

"Maybe they should call you the Counselling Fairy after all," he joked, but his voice was free from resentment. Silence fell over them again, companionable this time

"Something's bothering me though," Bunny said, his frown returned. "The Man in the Moon - he chose Jack to be the Winter that Old Man Winter wasn't. A better one, for the kids. He didn't let us know at all - why not?"

Tooth blinked with surprise. "Maybe he couldn't."

"He can do what he's done for all of us, talk to us when it suits him, and he couldn't give us a heads-up about the new guy? All that time, we thought he was just new, some carefree little spirit, a little shallow like a lot of the ones are when they're made new - like poor Frosty. But all that time, he was supposed to be one of us."

Bunny paused as Tooth considered that, and added, "And there's something Jack said - about Manny not talking to him for so long I didn't press it, but in all those years, he was alone - Manny couldn't give us even a note about that? Or talk to him at all?"

Bunny's expression said he was very close to casting judgement on their celestial patron. Tooth pressed her lips together, looking at Jack, considering that notion. "It is pretty hard to reconcile."

Bunny grunted in agreement. "It's not our biggest concern right now, but when we're not scrapping for our lives - between that, and this clown having been a Guardian longer than you and Sandy -" he nodded towards Anansi, who was poking with one of his spider legs at the sand candy canes dancing around North's head (at least until Sandy swatted them away). "I wonder what else Manny hasn't felt we needed to know yet."

---

The stabbing cold drew Jack out of his restful sleep, and he contracted into a shivering ball as he awoke.

He opened his eyes by the burnt-out fire to see Anansi lounging beside him, his eyes half-lidded, as if he were lost in a deep memory.

"It was...grotesque," Anansi said, without looking at Jack. "The little bodies, frozen in the hundreds - some encased in ice, some blackened beyond recognition by frostbite. Some sighed as they thawed, as if the last breath of life was only just leaving them."

Jack's own breath stuck in his throat as he caught up to Anansi's speed. He looked around the cave, but it was empty, aside from North sleeping by the sand wall at the mouth of the cave. The others must have been on guard outside, or doing something to obscure Tooth's trail.

"He buried them all himself," Anansi went on. "Sometimes the ice was not so quick to thaw, and he had to break them free by hand. It was long, and dirty work, and the grass was not quick to grow on the little graves. Where there was and is now things that are green and growing, there were only the buried, and the yet-to-be-buried. The seat of all life in this world was every inch a tomb. And no one lived who could say with certainty that, because this was so, all life on Earth would not follow."

Anansi turned his gaze on Jack, looking at him over the edge of his gleaming glasses.

"Centuries later came a frost spirit, laughing as he undid the work of spring, freezing the new flowers as if the seasons were a game he could decide not to play."

Jack stared at Anansi a moment - then his face scrunched up in horrified misery. "Why did you tell me that?"

Anansi grinned and sighed like a connoisseur savoring a fine wine. "The timing absolutely screamed for it."

Jack, who didn't like anything much more horrific than the monsters of the week on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, felt himself close to tears. "I didn't even ask you to tell me! Now that I know how graphic you get, I probably won't!"

"You think that's graphic?" Anansi rolled his eyes. "Jack, I will school you in the fine art of imagery."

Jack struggled not to cry. "Now I'm thinking about it. About the little bunnies all -" unbidden, the memory of Bunny all tiny and fluffy came back to him, except now, the glass shards in his eyes made it all the easier to imagine hundreds of them, frozen solid. He lost his struggle and wept.

A tunnel opened by the mouth of the cave, and Bunny hopped out just in time to catch Jack's descent into sobbing. Bunny looked instantly at Anansi. "What did you do?"

Anansi shrugged, the picture of innocence, as Jack wept on the floor. "I told him an aptly timed story."

"Aptly timed?" Bunny pointed to the miserable pile of Jack. "He is in no state to hear more terrible things and you thought the time was right to tell him some more?"

Anansi rolled his eyes. "The narrative practically -"

"You take your narrative and shove it," Bunny growled. "I did not give him permission to ask the story so you could hurt him with it. Come to think of it, I didn't give you permission to tell him before he asked at all!"

"You also didn't give me permission to tell him of B'rer Rabbit, the Trickster Hare, the Centzon Totochtin -" Anansi pointed out helpfully. "When it comes to stories, I don't wait for permission to tell them. I wait for the moment to be right."

"Rack off," Bunny spat. "You're so up yourself you can't tell when what you've got to say is the exact opposite of what people need to hear. You're all style even when style hurts everyone but yourself. This is why no one wants to work with you."

Anansi's expression was downright indignant. "Like it or not, I am a Guardian and that means we have to work together."

"Then maybe you should figure out how to do that," said Bunny sharply. He turned to Jack, leaving Anansi to his pouting. As he did, the spider myth's pout shifted, surprisingly, to an expression of deep thought.

"I really can't go running off, even for five minutes, can I?" said Bunny, as Jack sniffed and picked at the frozen tears on his face. He put his paw on Jack's shoulder. "Between Old Man Winter and that eight-legged bounce, you really do need a bodyguard."

"I have ten legs," Anansi interjected, his pout back. "At the moment."

They ignored him. Bunny smiled comfortingly, but Jack just inhaled miserably, overwhelmed by the image of a Warren full of ice and death. And he'd snowed out one Easter. And abandoned them long enough for Pitch to ruin another. No wonder Bunny couldn't love him enough to cure the shards.

Bunny's comforting smile faded as Jack brushed more tears from the ice on his cheeks. He knelt down and covered Jack's hand with his paw, the tears soaking into his fur, the warmth of his paw melting some of the ice away. "Hey. C'mere, you sad sack." He hugged Jack again, and Jack buried his face gratefully again in Bunny's warm fur. "It was a long time ago. And this is a different story."

"See if I deign to tell it," Anansi muttered.

North rolled over in his sleep, and awoke abruptly with the pain from his shoulder. "Balakirev -" He looked from Bunny and Jack hugging to Anansi pouting against the wall, his eyes wide with surprise. "How long I sleep? I have missed something?"

Tooth and Sandy zipped in through the open rabbit hole, and Bunny let go of Jack to close it as they came in.

"Jack, how are you feeling?" asked Tooth, zipping in closer, her expression one that could only be interpreted as concerned and gentle.

"I'm -" Saying he was fine was out of the question. They wouldn't believe it and more importantly, it wouldn't help him. "I really -"

What did he say? That he'd been lonely even though he was hiding it? That the shards made him feel lonely even now? That he was scared, tired of seeing the world this way, that he was fighting so hard but running out of strength to keep doing it?

Apparently, he didn't have to say anything, because North stepped forward, weary as he was, and pulled Jack up into a massive bearhug. Tooth darted over and slipped her arms around Jack, too, threading a hand through his hair. Then Sandy joined in, bouncing up into the air and floating over to wrap his arms around them. Bunny stepped in next to Tooth, and completed the five-Guardian hug.

Jack squeezed his eyes shut, tears trickling down his cheeks again.

"Ahhh," North sighed affectionately. "We are holding him too hard. Squeezing the tears out!" Then, either because he knew what those tears signified or because he was contrary like that, North squeezed Jack tighter. Jack snuffled a wet laugh into the prickly fur of his coat.

A scuffing noise caught Jack's attention, and he opened one eye to see Anansi dangling above them, held up on his spider legs, staring like they were some kind of new food he was trying to figure out how to eat.

He spread his human arms, slowly, smoothly, like a predator setting a trap.

"Oh no," Jack said, muffled by the limbs around him. "No hugs for you. You don't get to traumatize me and hug me in the same ten minutes."

Anansi froze, then retreated on spiderfoot, crossing his arms. "I didn't really want to hug you," he sniffed, "It would be like hugging a bundle of frozen twigs. Elbows and ribs, everywhere."

"Sure it would," Jack said, rolling his eyes.

"I just wanted a hug because everyone else was getting one."

"How many centuries have you been this big a baby?" Jack wiggled until the other four let him go. He reached up to rub the tears from his eyes, then blinked in surprise when North knocked his hands away.

"No rubbing of the eyes," the Cossack said, patting down his pockets for a moment. Sandy, apparently understanding what North was doing, plucked a handkerchief - monogrammed, of course it was monogrammed - out of one of the pockets, and handed it to Tooth. "No reason to press shards in further."

"Really?" Jack protested, half-laughing, but Tooth was coming for him with a determined expression. "Hey, guys, I'm three-and-one-fifth centuries old. I can poke myself in the eye if I want."

"You can poke yourself in the eye all you want later," said Tooth, wiping down his cheeks before handing the damp hankie back to North. "Right now, we need you to see as clearly as you can, especially considering what we have to do next."

"And what are we doing next?" Jack asked. "Old Man Winter's soaked up so much of my belief that I hardly have any power left."

"And a direct conflict is likely to end in disaster," said Anansi, "especially if we're to fight the wolf at the same time."

"So let's eliminate one threat, before we tackle the other again," said Tooth, and for a moment Jack looked at her with surprise. She spoke as if their last meeting with the wolf hadn't ended in something pretty close to disaster.

But her eyes glittered with confidence, and her smile was unruffled, in spite of the monster prepared to race across continents to kill her.

"Ready to get back on the road, boys? Because I have a plan."

---

The lone, starving wolf that Old Man Winter called Wilhelm paced along the beach, sniffing the wind for its prey's scent. The marshes around it were full of the smells of small, defenseless creatures, but their scent was like hot air in its nose with the taste of rich blood and soft feathers still on its tongue.

When the scent ceased to blow from the islands to the south and came instead from the west, it turned eagerly north to intercept their path. With the southern swamps behind it and the farmlands of the midwest making for easy running, even the torrents of snow couldn't slow it from pursuing the scent.

The sky darkened and the snow whipped in driving winds as it raced across the crushed remains of cornstalks, to a sprawling grey building where smoke billowed from stacks into the cold air. The wolf didn't notice that the parking lot around the steel foundry was empty, that no human workers had made it past the storm that day to do anything that would have started smoke billowing from the stacks. All it smelled was the blood it had already tasted.

It huffed, and puffed, and blew a harsh wind that shattered the glass windows on ground level, smelling the Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies' blood more strongly as it jumped through the broken window and raced through the foundry, panting in the sudden heat from the steel melting in the belching machinery. Her scent oozed from on high, where she fluttered erratically as if injured - making her all the easier to catch.

The wolf moved stealthily, the sound of its nails against the steel gratings covered by the noise of the wind whipping through the chinks in the foundry. It crept up the scaffolding that lead to a deck on the level of the prey's erratic fluttering. When it was obvious the Tooth Fairy was going nowhere, trapped by a monstrous spider's web, the wolf ran, leaped, lunging for her with gnashing jaws.

Toothiana whipped around to face it as Anansi yanked the spiderweb free from her foot. She cut a single, firm slash across the air with North's borrowed sword, and the wolf howled, tasting its own blood again.

"NOW!" she shouted.

Tooth darted out of the way as Anansi threw a net of webbing at the wolf. The wolf puffed up and exhaled a gale that pushed it over the great cauldron where the Tooth Fairy had set her trap, out of the way of Anansi's net. The wolf landed on the far deck, bunching itself up for another leap at Tooth, who held her ground with the borrowed sword.

"POUR IT ANYWAY!" she shouted, and a boomerang whipped through the air, knocking a lever that fell with a loud buzz. Behind the wolf, a stream of molten steel poured into the cauldron. The temperature in the foundry grew steadily as a layer of dreamsand covered the blown-out windows, filling in the chinks in the building where the wind blew cold air in. Caught between the inferno and prey that bit back, the wolf howled its chilling caterwaul loud enough to rattle the windows in their panes, but the noise of the steel-fall softened the edge of its terrible scream. The Guardians gathered around Tooth, and in the rising temperature, faced with the strength of six, the wolf bared its fangs anyway and snapped, desperate for its meal.

While they corralled it closer and closer to the stream of molten steel, with Jack lagging back, slick with sweat and melted ice in the intense heat, a window burst above them, the glass falling without a sound anyone could hear. A familiar shape fluttered through.

Old Man Winter landed in front of Jack without so much as a glance at the wolf and the Guardians. The roar of the steel pouring covered the sound of his landing. Jack couldn't even hear his own voice as he screamed for help.

Old Man Winter mouthed the words as he lunged - he probably didn't even bother to speak them - "No one can hear you, boy."

But he was wrong.

Bunny intercepted him in a grey blur. His fist landed squarely on Old Man Winter's cheekbone, and the force of the blow shattered his frozen skin, cracks webbing up the side of the old man's face. Thick black blood oozed from the cracks in clotted globs.

The steel finished pouring and the noise cut out as Old Man Winter fell completely to the ground, Bunny skidding to a stop between him and Jack, shaking his fist out.

"Now that was satisfying." Bunny grinned at Jack over his shoulder. "All right there, mate?"

Jack couldn't help but grin back, the little ice that the heat hadn't melted yet sliding off him.

"Just fine." He hefted his staff as Old Man Winter pushed himself upright.

The old man gritted his teeth in pain, but he grinned as he touched the wound on his face.

"So! Someone still has fight in them after all -" he looked to see which Guardian had managed to land the blow, and his bloodthirsty grin turned to a grimace of dismay as he saw Bunny standing between him and Jack, poised to defend.

"Seriously?" he exclaimed, disappointed. "The rabbit. It's really the rabbit again. Now this is just embarrassing - for you guys and me. Well bunny rabbit, where I'm from we ate rabbits for breakfast, lunch, and dinner - literally - but my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle."

"That joke's way too good," Jack called from behind Bunny. "There's no way you came up with that one on your own."

Old Man Winter's fractured face contorted into a nasty snarl. "Treasure those free shots, both of you, because you're not getting another!"

He pulled an ice spear out of the air, snarling with dismay when it melted instantly in the intense heat. Before he could regroup or form another, Bunny was on him, and the two were locked in hand-to-hand combat.

Jack stood by, staff ready, but there was neither need nor opportunity for him to step in. Bunny moved with relentless grace, forcing Old Man Winter back towards the Guardians still fighting the wolf and the vat of molten steel. Old Man Winter reeled with frustration as his blows struck air or glanced off Bunny's lightning-fast blocks, still off-balance and unprepared with his spear, while Bunny moved on a thousand years of preparation.

Jack saw the familiar glint of ice shards in Old Man Winter's hands and yelled a warning - Bunny sidestepped as Old Man Winter lunged unexpectedly with his right hand, pulling Old Man Winter along the force of his own lunge. The old Viking fell to the ground, hard, the ice shards scattering across the steel deck.

Bunny leaped to hit Old Man Winter while he was down, but the old man lashed out with an ice knife that stayed sharp only long enough to cut a few strands of Bunny's fur before it dulled in the hot air. Bunny twisted on his own momentum and landed between Old Man Winter and Jack.

"Go ahead," Bunny growled, and if the grin on his face was as satisfied at the old man's difficulty without the shards warping it, well, Jack couldn't blame Bunny for that. Not one bit. "Get up, Old Man. I could do this all day."

There was no more trace of a manic smile on Old Man Winter's face as he rose. "Well are we dancing, or are we fighting?"

He lunged at Bunny, trying to back him onto one of the shards glittering on the deck, but he hadn't counted on teamwork. Jack leapt forward and snatched the shard - carefully - just before Bunny stepped on it, tucking into a roll that kept him from tripping the rabbit up with his body. Old Man Winter howled with rage as Jack skipped about, collecting the rest of the shards, and Bunny went about showing him the wrong side of a fight.

The lashing of Sandy's whips, Anansi's webs, and North and Tooth's swords stopped suddenly, as with a sudden yelp, the wolf lost its ground, claws scraping at the very edge of the deck. Still it lunged for Tooth, wild-eyed, starving for a taste of her again - with one last blow of the sword, she cut its nose open, and as it reared in pain, she lashed out a final blow that sent it falling into the molten steel below. The air filled with a howl of rage and pain that became the same multi-voiced screech of terror that, even in the heat, chilled the Guardians down to their bones.

It petered out. Old Man Winter howled angrily. "Way to double down, Wilhelm!"

"Seriously?" Jack held the shards awkwardly, afraid to move too quickly just in case they slipped and cut his hands. "You named it Wilhelm?"

Tooth, North, Sandy, and Anansi reassembled around Bunny, barricading themselves between Old Man Winter and Jack. Nothing stood between Old Man Winter and the open vat of molten steel where the wolf had just died. The old man looked from face to face, his expression full of dismay at his outnumbering, and his surprising outclassing.

His expression hardened. "I suppose you'll want me to take the Enkidu Oath now."

"No," said Bunny. He took a step forward, and Old Man Winter stepped back. "But we'll offer you the chance."

"Oh sure, that's real gracious," Old Man Winter, hunched and shuffling, no longer a terrifying figure of unstoppable cold death, but an old man wilting in the heat. "An eternity of defying my very nature just because a few mortals can't take the chill. Remind me why their lives matter more than mine?"

"Are you taking the Oath or not?" Tooth shouted, standing at Bunny's side with North's saber leveled, motionless, in her steady hand.

"Lemme think it over," Old Man Winter pouted. "You can't rush a decision like this. I mean, do I really want to live in a world where you clowns are letting just any kid grow up? I mean - you ever stop to think about all the murderers who grow up safe and sound under your protection? The ways people these days come up with to hurt each gotta admire their creativity. Two world wars and multiple genocides? It's almost enough to make me hang up my icicles and just leave destroying the world up to humanity. Sure it'll take longer but the end result will be the same -" he grinned. "With that in mind, maybe I'll take the Oath. Maybe I want to stick around and see it after all. Maybe I'll even make some like-minded friends, over the years - after all, even I was a kid once. And look what I grew up to be."

"Oath," Bunny shouted, "Or death! In five - four -"

"All right all right," Old Man Winter waved his hands. "I've made my choice. I'll take door number three."

The Guardians as one said, "What?" as Old Man Winter fell, smiling, backwards into the molten steel.

They rushed to the edge of the deck just in time to see the red steel folding over the space where Old Man Winter had just been. They stared into the vat.

"Is - is that it?" Jack asked. "What did he mean by door number three?"

The rumbling was sudden and loud - and then the foundry exploded around them.

The storm poured in, whipping the warmth of the foundry away. Ice froze instantly on Jack, so fast and so cold that he shouted in pain as the shards dug deep into his eyes. North howled beside him, too, before everything was drowned out by Old Man Winter's laughter.

The wind that shattered the walls blew the vat over. Steel poured out and hardened instantly in the cold. Old Man Winter walked out of it, pulling himself free with sheer brute force, his steel shell cracking like alligator skin as he moved.

Jack felt it, in his belly - the power that should have been there, giving him strength, absent completely.

"That," said Anansi, his voice low with horror, "is a winter spirit with the belief of two - in case you were wondering."

Old Man Winter raised his steel-covered hand. Sandy, Tooth, Bunny, and Anansi barely had time to turn before they were encased in a torrent of ice.

Jack screamed as the wind ripped the shards from his hands, scattering them into nothing. When he turned back, Old Man Winter was there and he didn't have time to shout before Old Man Winter grabbed his hoodie and jerked him off his feet.

North lashed out with his saber but Old Man Winter sidestepped easily and a sudden wind blew North to his knees. Old Man Winter grabbed the back of his coat, and the next gust of wind threw all three of them into the air.

"So North," said Old Man Winter, almost conversationally, yelling over the screeching wind as he dragged them higher and higher into the air - "what exactly are your powers, anyway? Not being old, even though you are old? Kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel for superpowers there, isn't it? Or do you secretly have a surprising ability to survive falls from the upper atmosphere that you rarely get to use? I'm hoping that's not one, for the record."

That was it, wasn't it, thought Jack. Jokul planned to kill North by dropping him from high enough and then devour Jack's heart without interference.

"Falls? Who ever died from a fall?" said North, struggling in Old Man Winter's grip. He waved his sword as if trying to cut Jokul, but his free hand slipped into his pocket, slowly, because of his injured shoulder. "Falls are fine. Landings? Not so much."

Old Man Winter laughed raucously, half at North's snark, half at his futile attempts to reach him with the sword. "Oh North, there's the humor I'm going to miss when you're a stain on the ground! Woo, the laughs we've had! I may not be planning to eat your heart, Northy, but that wit will live on in mine. Landings! Now there's a classic for the ages!"

"You know what else is classic?" asked North.

"What?" asked Old Man Winter, still amused.

"How you say, screwball comedy," North said, and he tossed the snowglobe he'd found in his pocket into Old Man Winter's flightpath. "See? There is ball."

"I don't get it."

Vorp went the snowglobe, and a portal opened onto a place that looked very, very red, and very very hot. North grabbed Jack's hoodie and slashed with sudden purpose at Jokul Frosti's arm. The Cossak's weight ripped Jack from Jokul's gnarled grip as Old Man Winter dropped him, yelping in pain as he spun out of control and into the portal. Jack and North fell away as it closed.

Jack grabbed his staff to whip the wind back under his control. Without Jokul Frosti guiding it, it was truly chaotic, throwing snow (and them) in every direction. Jack strained to control it, and when that proved impossible, to ride it - that was a little easier, but not much with North's weight throwing him off. He descended, too fast, the very last of his power slipping away like water dripping from an icicle.

The staff finally dropped from beneath Jack and he and North fell straight down, to a hard landing in a snowdrift.

Jack wheezed, the wind knocked out of him. With a groan, he tried to drag himself out of the snow.

"North?"

The wind shrieked in Jack's ears and the snow pelted his face as if to slough it off. He climbed to his feet with his staff for support, and cast about for North.

"North! Where are you?"

The wind buffeted his body as Jack trudged, stumbling, through the blinding snow. He wiped the ice from his face to clear his vision, and spotted a flash of red in the white expanse.

"North!" Jack ran forward and dropped to his knees next to the older man."North, are you okay?"

North was breathing - and then moving, as he waved a hand dismissively.

"Fine. Fine. Just need - just need moment to rest."

"Okay. Okay." Jack panted, looking up in the air nervously.

"He won't be back soon," said North, guessing Jack's worry. "Snowglobe sent him to center of volcano."

"Do you think it killed him?"

"No. Not with power he has now. Probably just flew out. Still, it may slow him down. Long distance he must travel back here."

Jack nodded and knelt in the snow, waiting for North to recover enough of his strength to get up.

Eventually the old man tried to sit up, but even with Jack helping him, he was too weak. After two tries, North fell back into the snow and lay still.

"C'mon," Jack urged. "C'mon, North, we have to get back to the others. Give it another try, I'll help you up."

"I -" North tried to sit up again, but didn't even make it halfway out of the snow. "I think this will not be happening anytime soon."

Jack stood up, looking into the distance at the steel foundry barely visible on the horizon. "Then I'll go back. I'll go back and bring help."

He started to walk, but North gently grasped his ankle.

"I think this will not be happening either."

Jack knelt in the snow and only then Noticed how pale North was, his normally ruddy skin a nearly translucent gray.

"I have to go," he insisted. "I have to get help. I'm gonna go get help - "

"Jack," North said softly. Jack felt sorrow sink down and pool in the bottom of his gut, like rainwater dripping into a cave. "Stay with me."

"I'll go get help and you'll be fine," Jack said, his voice cracking. "You'll be fine, you'll see."

"Fine," said North, with a very slight sigh, but he made himself smile anyway. "I am maybe fine. But maybe I will be fine elsewhere - I do not think there is any time left to be fine here."

"Don't - Don't say that. Look at you. The shards hardly even affected you. Not like they've been affecting me. You never stopped - you never lost yourself, at all -"

"They have not frozen my heart," North agreed, gasping once for breath, "but still they have taken their toll. Just not the same way as you, because my life has less pain to draw from to be turning my heart cold. There is more for you - not because of weakness or coldness already there - but because there is much more sorrow in your years to prey on. So much you have survived -"

"I haven't - haven't had to survive anything," said Jack.

North touched Jack's face, brushing his fingers against his cheek.

"That shows how strong you are, Jack." North smiled, his face full of the warmth Jack could no longer feel. "That you don't even know what you faced was hardship."

Jack reached a cold hand to North's, holding it in place against his cheek.

"You can't die, North," he said. His voice cracked like an iceberg separating from its fellows to lurk in the shipping lanes. "Who - who will take care of Christmas? Someone's got to rebuild the Pole when this is over, and deliver all the toys."

"Yeti will make do," North said. His mouth, thin and pale as it was, twitched upward in a smile. "Naughty children might receive coal and elf, but yeti will manage until someone else steps in."

Jack wheezed, a weak attempt at a laugh for a weak attempt at a joke. North wasn't supposed to have an answer for that, he was supposed toget up.

"You shouldn't have got in his way," he said bitterly. "I'm gonna die anyway and now you're dying for nothing, because you tried to save me."

"Nothing?" North said, his voice growing weak. "Is not nothing. If you die, too, I will wait for you on other side, so you do not have to face what comes next alone. You have already faced too much alone. If you live, I helped you to live. Either way, only one thing is important, only one thing matters..."

"What? What thing?" Jack asked around the lump in his throat.

"That you know you are cared for, Jack. That," North breathed out, "is worth a life."

He had no last words beyond that. Sometimes, death was not a prolonged ordeal, with time for goodbyes. Finality was not the same as closure.

North simply closed his eyes, as if he was going to sleep. His hand slipped from Jack's cheek, but Jack gripped it as if holding it tight enough would keep North from slipping away, too.

"North?" Jack said in a hushed voice. The wind whipped the name away.

Jack sat in the snow, looking at North's face as the falling snowflakes clung to his beard. His sight blurred, splitting into a kaleidoscope of white, red, and grey as fat tears welled up and rolled down his face.

A vague memory struck him, of a different weathered hand in his own, of his mother weeping as another normally boisterous voice went quiet and another body went still. Just as quickly, that vision was gone, but the feeling of loss remained, magnified by the fact that in the brief time Jack had known him, North was - had been - the first person he'd felt was like family after three hundred years alone.

The cold threatened to sink into his heart, but as painful as it was, Jack let himself feel the grief - he made himself feel it. North had said that Jack knowing he was cared for was worth a life. North being loved - and grieved for - the way he deserved was worth the pain.

Jack lay his head on North's still chest, over his heart, and wept until his tears soaked through the fur of his coat.

As he knelt there, the cold of the wind stole into his bones, cut through to the very core of him, touched the bitter cold of the shards that were already there. The last tear froze to his face, and he no longer felt pain, no longer felt sorrow, no longer felt love, no longer felt anything. The cold, quietly, won out.

Jack stood, leaning on his staff, and trudged away in the direction of the foundry. The weight of the ice clinging to his body bent him nearly doubled over like an old man, and he stumbled into the bleak haze, leaving the source of his grief behind him, half-buried in the rapidly falling snow.

"No one makes it home tonight," Old Man Winter had said. Jack wasn't sure what it meant to the other winter spirit, but he wanted to defy it and make it home. That didn't mean going back to Burgess, of course. It meant going to the others, because they were his home.

It was normal, after all, for people to want to die at home.