[…hey there. Heh heh. So. Feel free to murder me in the comments, but I had life going on (shocker, I know!). Exams just passed and the most important one of the year is coming up too, so I had to revise and stuff. And I'm also learning guitar and writing song while at it, so yeah. Life! Okay I'm going to go now.]

Prompt: Sandy and Tooth comfort fic.

Pairings: None

Warnings: May trigger depression feels, includes an insane Tooth, random what-the-hell moments in the fic.

Tooth floated down the hallway, almost hearing the ghost of bright laughter echo through the North Pole. Her large magenta eyes filled with tears that blurred her vision in wobbly walls and doors that flickered from place to place. Oh, how she wished that this was just a very long, terrible nightmare.

In all her immortal life, she had never once thought that one day she'd have to walk – fly – down this hallway: the one that led to the worst of the patients, the comatose, the fatally injured, or the ones insane beyond control. Never had anyone been sent to this part of the Pole; he would be the first. Why did it have to be him? Why?

A blue and brown blur whizzed past her in that instant she had been about to break down and she shrieked.

"Jack!" She cried, hands flying to her mouth in shock. "What are you doing? What – how?"

"Hey Tooth!" He grinned like nothing had happened, his staff in hand, signature cocky grin in place. "I'm good now! Woke up some time ago, had a good meal. You?"

"Oh, my god, Jack!" She cried again, and flew at a speed rivaling Bunny's to him, arms outstretched to grab him and hug him close. But as she drew closer, he visibly stiffened, his figure rippling like water and he lurched back.

"Don't touch me," he hissed. "It's all your fault! Where were you when I needed you? Family? You dare call yourself my family?"

"She screeched to a stop, eyes once again filling with tears, tears of shock and grief and acknowledgment of his accusations. Suddenly, the frost boy shuddered like a victim of the Plague, and toppled backwards like a stone statue.

"Jack!" She screamed, and lunged for the frozen, falling boy, but before she could grab him she felt a giant hand anchor itself to her ankle and drag her back.

"No! Jack!" She squirmed against North's iron grip, kicking and screaming. She was dragged forcefully into the whitewashed room she'd visited so many times she knew every scrape and every dent, and as she rounded the corner, she saw his body hit the ground and shatter into a million multicolored pieces.

Her head spun so rapidly she could do nothing but collapse into a heap on the ground, ears ringing with Rice-Krispies-in milk pops, eyes watching with unfocused vision at nothing at all, the room and its occupants splitting in kaleidoscope-like pieces. She dimly heard a few muffled whispers and the door close almost gently. What seemed like seconds later, she blinked and her vision cleared to reveal a dainty china teacup presented by two calloused hands. She blinked again while her brain registered it, before smiling gratefully at the large Russian man and accepting the tea. She sipped it quietly as North mumbled a few words to the ever-silent Sandy and left, leaving the two – no, three alone.

She heard the scrape of a chair dragging on the floor, and then the quiet rustle of dreamsand.

Sandy tapped her shoulder and she looked up. He gestured to the extra chair he had pulled up beside the bed and she forced a half-smile.

"Thanks," she whispered, although she would rather be anywhere else besides there, and pulled herself up to sit in the chair.

She sat gracefully like the queen she was, smoothing her feathers down carefully. She could still remember the frantic, messy letter to North from the 'Burgess Children', as they were since nicknamed, begging the Guardians to come as fast as they could, saying something about Jack. The Guardians had arrived just as the vengeful seasonal spirits delivered the last blow and fled, too cowardly to confront the Guardians. The Burgess Children had explained, tearfully, that Jack had arrived before the spirits could land a single blow and them, and told them to run while he held them off. They'd written the hasty letter to North, but it took them eleven tries to mail it, because the seasonal spirits kept intercepting it. That was all they could tell the Guardians.

When they inspected Jack's limp body, he had been barely alive, deep gashes sprinkled all over his thin frame, third degree burned on his arms and face, courtesy of Summer. When he coughed, specks of blood dotted the snow.

That was five weeks ago. He hadn't even woken once, his labored breathing and occasional twitch of an eye the only indication they had that he was even alive.

"He was right," Tooth murmured, her hands smoothing down already flat feathers. Sandy looked up, surprised, from his careful crafting of dreamsand.

"He said it was our fault that he was injured so badly, and it is. We should've gotten there sooner; we should have been there with him from the very beginning of the fight! And we weren't. Now look." Her voice cracked at the end, and she buried her face into her hands, shoulders shaking viciously as she sobbed, locked up emotions gushing past the dam she had worked so hard to create, the guilt, sadness, pain and grief flowing out of her in salty tears. The tears streamed down her face and onto her lap, her eyes squeezed tightly shut like a child in denial, fingers curled every so slightly into weak fists.

Sandy immediately stood up, ready to pat Tooth on the back and comfort her while she cried, the only problem being that he did not how to comfort a grieving mother-of-sorts, and a question mark formed unconsciously over his head. The soft tinkling of dreamsand drew Tooth out of her quieting sobs, and she looked up, a faint tinge of blush on her cheeks.

"I-I'm sorry, Sandy, I don't why I just broke down like that," she muttered, standing up and heading towards the door before she had even finished talking. "I should probably go now, maybe come back later…"

It was at this point that Sandy finally grabbed Tooth's wrist and dragged her back to her chair. He formed a snowflake over his head, and waiting while Tooth thought.

"Jack?" She guessed. He nodded, and then formed a long scroll that unfurled to reveal the word in harsh block letters "WILL".

"Jack will?"

A bee.

"Jack will be?"

A pretty lady from the eighteenth century, fan open, her hair piled high, dress large an elaborate.

"Jack will be pretty? Beautiful/? Lady? Pretty lady? Eighteenth century…fine? Jack will be fine?"

She managed a grin at Sandy's enthusiastic double thumbs up, but it quickly slid off.

"How do you know that, Sandy? How do you know that he will be okay? Look at him, Sandy! Stuck in this miserable little room, severely injured, comatose, unresponsive, and I – I don't know what to do anymore! If I could have just been there – "

Sandy formed a judge's hammer, a subtraction sign, and an ice cube*, then another question mark.

"I just cant," she began quietly, staring back at her hands, somber again. "I just can't sit here, knowing that I could've done something to save him, not knowing if he'll ever wake up, or ever be Jack again, and wishing that I was the only lying on this bed, not him."

Sandy formed a large fairy's wand and snapped it in his hands, waving it furiously at him as a heart shattered in two over his head.

"Wishes don't come true?"

Sandy then formed a sleigh, four faces of the Guardians still active, the three seasonal spirits that had attacked Jack, Jack's face, two of the three spirits, Jack's face again with crossed out eyes, Bunny with wings, North with wings, Tooth was a sword, Sandy attempting to dodge something, then a porcupine, a gust of wind, a pile of nuts, an elephant, and a dog*.

"So…even if we had gotten there in time, we couldn't have done anything because the spirits can fly, Bunny and North can't, my sword's for one-on-one combat only, the spirits can burn my wings, you can't dodge? So Jack would still be injured?" Tooth let out a little chuckle. "You mean that we still couldn't have stopped us because the three of them could easily distract us while also taking care of Jack, and so Jack would still have been injured? Plus a circus?"

Sandy formed jack's face and shattered it into lots of little pieces, making Tooth flinch, then the Guardians slowly and meticulously picking up every piece to form a whole Jack.

"Oh," Tooth sniffed. "No matter what, we'll put him back together? That's so sweet, Sandy, and we will put him back together. We'll make him okay again, because he's a Guardian."

Sandy formed a framed picture of all the Guardians, smiling.

"And we're family. Thank you, Sandy."

FAMILY

"He's waking up! He's waking up!"

FAMILY

Laughter echoed through the Globe room. The largest Christmas tree physically possible gleamed with lights, right next to the Globe. Yetis hanging up last minute baubles, chains of popcorn and hanging ribbon-full sweet meats shook their fists at the frost boy as he darted close to the tree, plucking random pieces of popcorn from the various chains, some yetis scrambling to catch the falling popcorn chains. Piles of presents lay under the tree, multiple stockings nailed onto the walls for the elves, labeled presents stacked neatly in alphabetical order for the yetis.

The kitchen was full of frantic yetis juggling cakes and creams, meats and vegetables for the grand f Christmas feast later. Flour speckled yetis in aprons and oven mitts lumbered around, occasionally putting out unattended fires or mopping up messes on the floor. For once, the elves could have anything the wanted, which simply meant that they would be occupied at the cookie section for hours and avoid causing mass chaos.

The Guardians were assembled in the mismatched chairs in the cozy room on the third floor of the Pole. Tooth was scolding North about his heavy intake of vodka, occasionally sneaking glances at Jack as he play fought with Bunny, Sandy playing referee.

"It's Christmas!" North yodeled, and took another swig of the heavily alcoholic Russian drink.

"Guess who gave a true white Christmas to five hundred places today?"

"Hmm, you?"

"It's bad for your teeth!"

"Wha? No, the leprechaun did it."

"Come! We have feast today! Toothy, you must lighten up, is just vodka."

"Just vodka?! Did you know that the alcohol in vodka dries up your mouth, which stops saliva production which is what you need to re-mineralize your teeth?! The acids act to dissolve the teeth which first affects the enamel and then the dentine underneath do you hear me?!"

"I bet you can't make North eat his greens."

"You're so on, Rabbit Head."

*Judge's hammer = justice

Justice – ice = just

*Sandy means PWNED. Porcupine, Wind, a pile of Nuts, an Elephant, and a Dog.

[Woah, 1790 words excluding author's notes and prompt/warnings/stuff. Will you all forgive me now? Oh yeah, PJO fans: I'll be returning to that fandom (hooray!) very soon, so stay tuned!]