Chapter 6

After Jack made his way out of the Warren he went strait to Burgess. There was something he needed to look up, and for that he needed to borrow a computer.

He hadn't been trying to get back to Wonderland the entire month he'd been gone from it. He still had his duties as a winter spirit to take care of, and he often made plans to stop by and see Jamie and his friends. His Wonderland search had filled up his time in between.

He swooped down and landed on Jamie's bedroom windowsill, and knocked on the glass. The window immediately opened to reveal Jamie's grinning face.

"Hi Jack! Are we having a snowball fight?" he asked, letting Jack step inside.

"Maybe in a bit, kiddo," said Jack with a fond smile. "But first I need to look into something. Can I borrow your computer?"

"Sure," said Jamie eagerly. He darted out of his room to get it. "Mom, I'm borrowing the computer!" Jack heard him call as he ran back with the laptop.

He placed it on his desk and opened google. Jamie had to do the typing, as Jack had a bad habit of icing electronics.

"So what do you need to look up?" he asked.

"Houndsditch Home for Wayward Youth," Jack replied, moving so he could look over Jamie's shoulder. "It's an orphanage from way back when."

Jamie typed it in, what came up was an archived article from a London newspaper. The title made Jack's heart sink. Across the top of the page were the words Wayward Home Houses Dark Secret.

Jamie moved to click on it, but Jack quickly took his hand off the mouse and stopped him. If what Alice had been implying was true, then there was no way he could let Jamie read this. "Hold on, Jamie, I don't want you to read this."

"Why not?" asked Jamie, looking affronted. He wasn't used to Jack leaving him out of things.

"I promise I wont ice the computer. But if what happened in this orphanage is what I think happened, then I want to spare you the nightmares. I promise I'll give you the less traumatizing version of it later," Jack said seriously.

Something in his tone seemed to have convinced the boy. So Jamie left the computer, and moved to sit on his bed with a good book.

Jack sat at the desk and clicked the link. The article opened up to an old picture of a orphanage building with a few young children milling around it. Under the picture were the words:

Wayward Home Houses Dark Secret.

What started as a search for a missing man, quickly turned to a dark scandal for London's Houndsditch Home for Wayward Youth. When it was first noticed that Dr. Angus Bumby, a celebrated doctor and therapist for insane and troubled youths, had disappeared without a trace, a search was conducted to locate his whereabouts. Further investigation showed that one Alice Liddell, a maid at the orphanage and former mental patient of Rutledge Asylum, had also gone missing on the same day. At first any number of theories flew around at this discovery, ranging from the two running off to elope, to Liddell having a psychotic relapse and murdering Bumby before going on the run. Sadly these theories were put on hold upon a shocking and disturbing discovery. It seems good Dr. Bumby was not so good as he seemed, as it was discovered he was the racketeer for a child prostitution ring. Having used his skills as a hypnotist and a psychologist, Bumby had been conditioning and grooming the next generation of prostitutes from the orphans in his care, by erasing their memories and then selling the children to whatever pedophile would pay for them, then enjoying the profits that this brought in. The children have since been sent to Rutledge Asylum, and according to Doctor Heironymous Q. Wilson most of them are likely to make a recovery once the hypnotic suggestions are pulled away, though it would take time, and care. However it is unclear what lasting damage will be in place. The man-hunt for Bumby and Liddell continued, until it was discovered that a suicide happened in the Moorgate Station the same day the two went missing. Cleanup reports that there was only evidence of one person jumping in front of the train. Whether this suicide was one of the missing persons remains undetermined, but it is considered a likely possibility. Should anyone have information about this monster of a doctor, or the still missing Alice Liddell, they are encouraged to contact the authorities immediately.

Jack had read enough. He quickly shutdown the computer and bolted out the window. He shot off to his lake and once there he let out his anger and frustrations in the form of a small but powerful blizzard.

As the storm raged around him, thoughts of what he'd just read kept spinning around in his head. How could anyone do that to a child? And Alice, how had she been effected by this, aside from the manifestations of the insane children?

Alice had said she had killed the monster responsible, and Jack had a good feeling as to who the person under that train had been how he'd gotten there, and he couldn't bring himself to feel an ounce of sympathy for him. It wasn't the way he would have taken care of that scumbag, but he had to applaud Alice for stopping him.

When he'd finally finished venting he sat down on his frozen lake, exhausted from the power he'd spent.

After a few minutes he heard the sound of approaching footsteps picking their way though the now deep snow. He looked up to see Jamie and his friends approaching him.

"Jack, are you okay?" asked Jamie, looking frantic with worry on his behalf.

"Of course he isn't," said Cupcake. "He just made a whole super blizzard."

"That was awesome, by the way," said Claude, trying to relieve the tension.

"Yeah," agreed his twin, Caleb. "We could see it from our house. It was this huge storm that was only hit the forest, and nowhere else."

"Yeah," said Claude. "I just wish our parents had let us get a closer look, but they were scared it'd come over the town. So we had to watch it from the window."

Jack felt sheepish. "Yeah, sorry about that. I was trying to vent without hurting anyone."

"Well, that worked," said Monty, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "No one was hurt by it, but the weather reporters are scratching their heads trying to figure it out."

"So what happened anyway?" asked Pippa.

Jack sighed, and stood up. "After a prank on Bunny, I ended up in Wonderland and met Alice," he stated simply.

The kids gapped at him, before exploding into questions, all of them trying to talk over each other.

"Wait, Wonderland's real?"

"She's real too?"

"I knew it!"

"No way!"

"How is that possible?"

"Did you meet the Queen of Hearts, or any of the others?"

"How'd you get there?"

Jack held up his hands trying to calm them down. "Whoa, whoa, one at a time."

Jack went on to tell them the whole story, from his prank on Bunny (the kids laughed at that) all the way to his conversation with Alice in the Skool library. Then he came to the part about what had made him so angry.

"When Alice told me about how no one helped the kids in that orphanage, I wanted to find out what happened," he said cautiously. He didn't want to tell the kids what had happened there, but he knew he had to tell them something. "So I used Jamie's computer to look it up. From the looks of things Alice used to work there before she moved to Wonderland permanently. And while she was there she found out that the man who ran the orphanage had been hurting the children there in terrible ways. So she stopped him."

The kids let out exclamations of appreciation for that.

"Wow, who'd have thought," said Caleb.

"Alice in Wonderland, the kick-butt action hero," finished Claude.

"Is she a Guardian too?" asked Jamie.

"No, I don't think she was chosen by MiM to be a spirit," said Jack thoughtfully. "I think it was more like Wonderland was more powerful than she thought, and by being there so long she made herself a spirit, or something."

"Maybe she was able to tap into one hundred percent of her brain," said Monty thoughtfully. "Humans can normally only use ten percent of their brain power, and people are always theorizing what would happen if we had more access. If Wonderland is really a manifestation of her mind, maybe through that Alice was able to reach more of her brain power than normal. Then, maybe any belief that came from the books helped to sustain her after all this time."

"You've been watching way too much sci-fi, Monty," said Pippa in amusement.

Jack shrugged. "Eh, it's a decent theory. I have no idea how we could prove it though. Who knows, maybe that's it, or maybe Manny did pick her, and didn't tell anyone about it."

"I still think she would make a good Guardian if she protects kids too," said Jamie stubbornly.

"Can we meet her?" asked Cupcake eagerly.

"I don't know," said Jack with reluctance. "From what I've seen Wonderland is a lot more dangerous than the books and movies say it is. And Alice didn't really like me going there at first. I don't think she'd be happy if I brought company."

"Well, could you bring her here?" asked Cupcake, not easily dissuaded.

Jack looked thoughtful about that. "Hmm, maybe. I can ask her at the very least."

"Yes!" cheered Cupcake.

That was when Jack noticed the kids were all shivering visibly. While the storm he'd caused may have died down, the temperature from it was still much too cold to stand out in for long.

"Come on," he said, and started to herd the kids back to Jamie's house. "Let's get you guys some hot coco, and start planning out our next snow war."

They all agreed, and the rest of the afternoon was spent in the Bennett's kitchen as they planed their next snowball fight over steaming mugs of hot chocolate.

*A*A*A*

It wasn't long after leaving the Bennett's residence that he noticed the Guardian summons in the sky.

Hoping nothing was wrong, he took to the sky and flew strait to the North Pole.

When he arrived there his fellow Guardian's were already there, discussing something in serious tones. As he entered, he realized they hadn't noticed him yet.

"… The winds were impossible to navigate, so my fairies came back to tell me what happened. I'm telling you guys, something is wrong," Tooth was saying worriedly.

North was frowning and stroking his beard, while Sandy was looking concerned.

"That's not all," said Bunny, who was clearly grumpy from being dragged from his Easter preparations. "The gumby's been in my tunnels any spare moment he gets. Said he was tryin' to go back and meet someone that he couldn't reach his usual ways."

Jack realized that they were talking about him, and he smacked his forehead. Of course his recent behavior would worry his teammates.

This caught Sandy's attention, and their smallest member quickly notified the others of his arrival.

"Jack!" exclaimed Tooth when she saw him. She darted over and gave him a quick hug, before she began checking him over for injuries, and asking questions very fast. "Are you alright? What happened? How are your teeth?"

"Tooth, Tooth, not so fast," said North, striding over to them. He then turned his attention to Jack. "Jack, vhat has happened? Ve vere getting reports of a freak blizzard over Burgess?"

"No one was hurt!" Jack exclaimed quickly. "I made sure to keep it away from the town."

"We know that, Frostbite," snapped Bunny, looking a mix of concern and annoyed. "What we're concerned about is what made ya make that storm in the first place."

Jack shuffled his feet and refused to look at them. "I got angry. I needed to vent," he said quietly.

North placed one of his massive hands on Jack's shoulder. "Jack," he said softly. "Vhat happened."

Jack sighed, and for the second time that day he told his story, but this time he didn't leave any details out.

Needless to say, the Guardians were not happy about what they heard.

"He erased their memories? And turned them into- to-!" exclaimed Tooth, her feathers bristling in rage. "Why that-!"

"Why didn't we know about this?" asked Bunny, pacing furiously. "Do- Are things like this still happening? Why didn't we do something?"

"For same reason ve didn't know about Jack's memories and loneliness," said North in a regretful tone, as he slumped into a chair the elves hurriedly pushed forward. "Ve spent to long locked away in our domains that ve did not pay close enough attention."

Sandy with a solemn expression made an image of an eye looking around.

"Sandy is right," said Jack, trying to cheer his friends up. "We can't do anything about the past now. All we can do is move forward, and keep a better eye out from now on. I already promised Alice that I'd do that anyway."

"I'll tell my fairies to keep a closer eye out," said Tooth.

"I think ah'll start doing some patrols when I'm not too busy with my googies," suggested Bunny.

"Is good idea, Bunny," North agreed, perking up a bit. "I vill start too, as it is off season right now."

Sandy made a pair of sand binoculars and nodded.

The Guardians made more plans to be more vigilant with their charges, before turning back to the other matter Jack brought up.

"About this Alice, mate," said Bunny, cautious to approach the subject. "Are you sure she's safe?"

"No, I'm pretty sure she isn't," Jack said honestly. "I mean, I haven't seen her in action yet. But the way she held that knife, and from how the Wonderland people talk about her, I'm pretty sure she's a tough fighter. But she's not a bad person, and she's lonely. I'd like to be friends with her if she'll let me, and I think I might be making some headway in that."

The Guardians all sighed, knowing there was no way for them to talk Jack out of this. Trying to stop him wouldn't work, and would only lead to hurt feelings all around.

"Just be careful, Jack," said Tooth, giving him another hug. "I know you want to help, but we don't want to loose you."

"Yer showing me where this tunnel is," Bunny said in a tone that left no room for argument. "I won't go out it, unless that Sheila says it alrigh', but I wanna know where it is just in case."

Jack nodded in agreement, happy that they weren't going to try and stop him.

As Jack flew away, Sandy watched him go with a reminiscent look on his face, thinking of things long past.

*A*A*A*

A/N Some of the idea that Alice made herself a spirit comes from seeing a lot of trailers for that new Lucy movie. I haven't seen that movie yet, but I liked the idea, and I thought that if anypne tapped into more of their brain than normal people, it would be Alice. Some of the reactions from the Guardians was inspired by Sakon76's fic The Bad Things. All in all, now just about everyone is on the same page.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.