AN: Alright Scorpio, you got the next chapter out on time! Ten points for me!

RECENTLY RE-EDITED (12/7/16)

Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians or Alice: Madness Returns, unfortunately.

White lips, pale face
Breathing in snowflakes

And they say
She's in the Class A Team
Stuck in her daydream
Been this way since eighteen
But lately her face seems
Slowly sinking, wasting
Crumbling like pastries

A Team ~ Ed Sheeran

~O~

Cupcake has never been much of a gloater, honest she wasn't, but after seeing what Alice Liddell really looked like, the girl couldn't stop herself from feeling a bit smug. She had been right about the website she found.

For once, the mighty, expert of all things supernatural, Jamie Bennett was wrong and she was right!

Usually it was Cupcake who was the first to cast doubt while Jamie held on to the ideas of the impossible with a rock-hard resolve. And he would always bragged when those ideas turned out to be correct. Seriously, after meeting the guardians and defeating the Boogeyman, he wouldn't shut up for weeks about being right about the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy being real. If they hadn't become friends at that point, Cupcake would've socked the boy in the stomach, just to get him to stop talking.

So it only seemed fair that she should get the same bragging rights.

Although, Cupcake wasn't sure yet whether she should rub it in the boy's face tonight, or wait until tomorrow. She didn't want to wait, but it wouldn't be nearly as satisfying to do it tonight since her friend was enthralled with the new spirit in his backyard. All her friends were. Not that she could blamed them, the real Alice looked awesome. Some people may argue that the classics couldn't be beat, but they obviously never met a spirit in real life.

The real Alice looked wicked, just like Cupcake hoped she would. The way she dressed alone was enough to capture the girl's attention. The whole blue dress, striped stockings and buckled boots ensemble was both feminine and kickass, a fashion statement that Cupcake could get behind.

She didn't pull it off as well as Alice, though. The kids at school always poked fun at the old t-shirts that she stole from her brothers and the pink tutus she always wore, but Cupcake had never been the type of person who cared much about what other people thought of her. If having three older brothers taught her anything in life, it was how to ignore people who annoyed her.

That being said, if Cupcake was so uncaring about other people's opinions, why did the prospect of meeting Alice make her feel so nervous?

If she were to self-analyze herself, Cupcake figured that it might have something to do with Alice being her newly appointed hero, and everybody feels a little bit nervous when they were about to meet their heroes. She had always been a fan of Alice in Wonderland, ever since she was a little girl. She remembered watching the old animated movie with her brothers, back before they hit puberty and became jerks. The movie was her favorite, just like Sophie. She even liked it better than Sleeping Beauty and that movie had a cool dragon in it.

The thought of traveling to a strange world of her own, appealed a lot to Cupcake when she was younger. With divorced parents, three rowdy siblings and no friends because everybody was afraid of her, how could she not want her own world to escape to? Even now, the idea still sounded like heaven, especially after learning that Alice was a real spirit, just like Jack Frost and the Easter Bunny.

It was only recently though, that Cupcake decided she wanted to idolize Alice.

When she was younger, Cupcake loved the Alice in Wonderland stories. They were corky, full of color and always made her smile when she was feeling sad. Blonde Alice was fun to watch as she stumbled into all kinds of misadventures, but it had only been a fictional tale to her, an old VHS tape that was now gathering dust somewhere in the back of her closet. Little blonde Alice was entertaining to watch, but she had never really done anything that Cupcake found admirable enough to idolize, so she just became a nostalgic character that the young teen would look back on whenever she wanted to remember the happy times in her childhood.

Alice in Wonderland never received the same belief Cupcake had in the other childhood legends like North or Bunny, not until two days ago when Jamie told her about Jack's bizarre request. It didn't take much to connect the dots and figure out the Winter spirit's reasoning behind the request. Honestly, she was surprised Jamie stayed so oblivious. The younger boy was always so perceptive with those things. Cupcake felt giddy when she thought about Alice being real and she demanded that she help Jamie look up the information Jack was looking for.

Of course, they both had been expecting the real Alice to look something along the lines of the little girl in the stories, so it came as quite a shock when Cupcake stumbled across the website that turned out to be exactly what Jack was looking for.

Before he had shown up in Jamie's bedroom the other day, she had her doubts about how much of the website's contents were true. Jamie wrote it off as a false site, figuring it was probably made up by some wacko with nothing better to do than write bogus history over the internet, which Cupcake found a little weird because Jamie had always been the more open-minded one. But after dealing with Sophie's obsession for years, she could understand if he was a little reluctant to believe something that sounded so depressing to be the true history behind such a happy story.

Admittedly, Cupcake dismissed it too at first, but when they presented Jack with the information that sounded more believable in their minds, it didn't match what Jack knew, so she decided to bring up the previously discarded website. And as it turned out, she had been right, it was the real Alice Liddell.

That was when Cupcake started seeing the old childhood icon in a new light. She hadn't even met Alice yet and she was already starting to look up to the spirit as a million questions ran through her head. What was she like? Was she nice? Is Wonderland real, too? What about the Cheshire Cat? Or the Mad Hatter? Were they real, or were they created by Carroll?

It was Alice's story that really did it for Cupcake though, or what little of her story the website had to offer. To say the very least, it was...sad. Very, very sad, but rather extraordinary, especially if you knew the truth behind Alice's "disappearance" which Cupcake could only guess was when she became a spirit.

Alice started out as a dirt-poor orphan and somehow ended up becoming this classic childhood icon and, presumably, a very powerful spiritual being. A zero to a hero, basically. A nobody into a somebody. Just like Cupcake hoped to become someday.

Cupcake didn't have many friends other than Jamie and his group because the other children were still scared of her. She didn't have any friends in her middle school for that same reason. Her mom never had any time for her because she had to work two jobs to support four kids on her own. Her dad lived on the other side of the country and rarely ever called, or visited. Her brothers were too hung up with their personal lives that only involved her when they were fighting over who had to stay home and watch her, or pick her up from dance class.

School made her feel stupid, TV made her feel ugly and her classmates made her feel fat. But despite it all, she took it in forced stride and fought to keep herself from becoming bitter. She used to be bitter about it and that made her angry all the time which, in turn, only made everything worse. So after making friends with Jamie and the others, she decided to change that.

Things got better for Cupcake after making friends and meeting the guardians, but sometimes she still felt pretty alone, especially when the only guardian she has seen since Pitch's defeat was Jack. Cupcake was a tough girl, but she wasn't made of stone. She knew she could always go to Jack if she felt she needed to and he would welcome her with a smile and an ear for listening, but she hardly ever confided in him, mainly because Cupcake was a rather internal type of person and she liked to keep her problems to herself.

She didn't need a shoulder to cry on, or somebody to hand her a box of tissues. Cupcake was a girl of action. She needed someone she could look up to. Someone to model herself after. She wasn't sure if that person was Alice yet because that sounded a little ridiculous, didn't it? Alice was going to become the guardians' newest member. She would become a protector of all the children of the world, she would be busy with...whatever it was she did as a spirit. So why would she stick around Burgess and let some weird kid follow her around? It worked fine with Jamie when it came to Jack, but then again, she wasn't nearly as lucky as Jamie was.

Cupcake never really had a hero before and she wasn't sure how to approach the dark-haired spirit, so she sat on the sidelines, watching as the boys broke off into a cluster of horseplay while Alice showed Pippa and Sophie how to make a tiara out of the flower bouquet the little girl's father sent her for her birthday. And after a couple more times of trying to get her to go join the others, Jack left the porch to go supervise the boys, leaving Cupcake to her thoughts.

Somewhere within her endless stream of thoughts, she stopped watching the others having fun and stared at her pink hightops with her chin resting in her palms, but just as her mind trailed back to her fight with that annoying boy in her English class, a shadow fell over her.

"Hello."

Cupcake's head snapped up and she found herself looking into a pair of green eyes.

"What is your name?" Alice asked sweetly as she stood only a few feet from the porch steps Cupcake was sitting on.

'She just had to have an awesome accent too, didn't she?' The younger girl thought miserably while she fought to keep her jaw from dropping open at Alice's unexpected appearance. "Oh uh, it's uh, Cupcake..."

"That's a rather peculiar name. How did your parents come by it?"

"Well, uh, it's not my real name," Cupcake mumbled as she fiddled with the ends of her tutu. "Everybody just calls me that."

"Oh, I see," she replied before pointing to the empty spot next to her. "May I join you?"

"What? Oh yeah, sure!" She slid over on the step, giving the woman room to sit. "Go ahead."

"Thank you."

Children have always been resilient types of creatures, but their bouts of raging energy faded as quick as they came and children tended to tire themselves out fast, especially at Sophie's age. It took a while, but Alice somehow managed to answer some of the questions Jamie and his friends had for. She wasn't able to answer all of them, but enough to leave them satisfied. Sophie had stopped trying to gain back Alice's attention and had opted to wrapping her arms around one of her legs while sucking her thumb, a habit that her mother hasn't been able to break her of yet.

As for the other children, they had branched out from flocking around Alice, and moved on to a game of their own. Pippa wasn't interested in playing with the boys and Sophie was too young, so they stayed back with Alice. She didn't really know what to do once her butterfly trick ran its course, but when Sophie told Alice about the gifts she got for her birthday, she mentioned a bouquet of flowers. That gave Alice the idea to show the girls how to make crowns, something Alice's sister had taught her when she was Sophie's age.

She spent the next few minutes showing them how to weave the stems together. Once she felt that the girls could try it on their own, she gave Sophie the half-finished crown she had already gotten started, and helped Pippa with her own. When they were set, Alice pulled herself up from the table and made her way over to the porch where the third girl was sitting by herself.

The porch looked nice and empty, making it the ideal place to step back from everything.

Alice didn't mind if the girl was there. She looked a little older than the rest of group, and thus less likely to bombard her with questions. And perhaps, call it women's intuition, but Alice felt there was an early sense of wisdom blossoming within the girl, or at the very least, a refreshing maturity that made her a cut above the rest.

The girl, Cupcake as it were, didn't say anything as Alice took a seat next to her and smoothed out the front of her dress. They sat there in silence as Alice watched Jack play with the kids and Cupcake snuck glances at her from the corner of her eye. After about the fifth glance, Alice's eyes flickered to meet hers, catching the look and holding it with the intense green hue of her irises.

"You know, if you keep staring like that, I might think I have something on my face," Alice pointed out. Her face was blank of emotion, but her eyes shined teasingly.

"Sorry," Cupcake mumbled, breaking their one-sided staring contest and looking down at her hands. "You don't have anything on your face. I just...I like your makeup."

Lame excuse, but true. Cupcake hadn't come across many people who could make the dark eye-makeup look work. She had seen a lot of girls in her middle school try and fail epically. Not that Cupcake herself was one to talk, either.

The very few times Cupcake found herself bored enough to experiment with her mom's makeup kit, she ended up looking about as glamorous as Tim Curry from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, an extremely weird movie that she watched last month with her oldest brother. She didn't understand a lot of what was going on in it, but she understood enough to know it was one of her brother's don't-tell-mom-I-let-you-watch-this type of movies. He also dictated that she wasn't allowed to ask him any questions about the movie's contents, under any circumstances, so that led her to suspect that the film wasn't meant for her age audience.

"Thank you," Alice smiled again. "I like your stockings."

"Thanks," Cupcake side, looking down at her purple tights with pink stars that clashed with her black t-shirt she was also wearing. "I like yours too."

"May I ask why you're all the way over here by yourself, instead of with your friends?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not much of a flower girl. I'm kinda clumsy with my hands when I'm not using them in a fight. I do better on my feet."

"Ah, let me guess then, you like to dance."

"A little bit...I take lessons."

"But you also like to fight." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Yeah..." Cupcake trailed off as she looked down at her bruised knuckles. "My mom says that isn't something I should be proud of. I think Jack thinks the same too, but I can't help liking it just a little."

"I see." Alice hummed before focusing her eyes on Jack again, who was now lounging on a low branch of the nearby tree, having stolen one of the boy's hats and dangling it over their heads, just out of reach. She rolled her eyes when the ice spirit blew a raspberry at them.

Jack Frost the voice of reason? What a disturbing thought.

"But it's not like I go around picking fights with people who don't deserve it," Cupcake spoke up, defending herself. "I didn't even do that back when everybody was still afraid of me."

"Afraid of you?" Alice echoed, giving the girl sitting next to her a skeptic once-over. Why would anyone be afraid of her? Yes, she was a little bigger than her peers and would probably continue to be for the next few years, but there wasn't anything particularly frightening about the girl, or at least, not in Alice's eyes. The girl only came up a little past Alice's waist, most likely just entering her teen years.

Then again, that was coming from a person who dealt with demons and monsters of her own creation on a near daily basis.

"Yeah, everybody used to be afraid of me, including Jamie and his friends. They thought that I would beat them up if they so much as looked at me wrong. Sure, I was a little grouchy, but I wouldn't have done that. Kinda hurts that they used to think that..."

"At least they don't seem to think that now."

"Well yeah," Cupcake shrugged, drumming her fingers on her knees. "I used to try, you know, before we became friends - to show them that I wasn't really as bad as they thought, but it was like the more I tried, the more scared they got. And I could never figure out why."

Alice made a thoughtful noise before pursing her lips. "Possibly the same reason why people were once afraid of me."

Cupcake stared at the other girl with wide eyes. "The guardians are afraid of you?"

"Oh heavens, no," Alice laughed lightly, but then stopped short as if a second thought occurred to her. "At least, I certainly hope they are not. No, I'm speaking of the time in which I was human."

"Oh," Cupcake murmured, blushing. "Of course that's you meant. Why would the guardians be afraid of you? You're their friend."

If Cupcake hadn't been busy staring at her shoes in embarrassment, she might have noticed how Alice's smile dropped, but she missed the shift in Alice's expression.

"Yes, I am their...friend," Alice said, almost trance-like, before shaking her head. "When I was human, people were very wary of me. Not in the same sense the neighborhood children feared you, of course. I was in no way physically opposing to anybody in the state I was in when human, but I would imagine the reasoning behind the fear is quite similar."

"And what would that be?"

"People tend to fear and shun what they don't understand," Alice spoke while watching one of her stray butterflies flutter its way back into Jamie's backyard. Cupcake stared as the spirit reached out a hand and beckoned the butterfly to her. "Which was exactly what you and I used to be, something not understood by the common person, whether because of the way you dress and act, or the type of background you come from."

As Alice spoke, the butterfly flapped over to her outstretched hand and landed on one of her fingers.

"It's somewhat of the same concept of someone being cruel to someone else because they're jealous, I suppose."

She turned her hand as the butterfly began to climb up her knuckles.

"I, unfortunately, was never able to gain the acceptance of the people around me, but you seem to be doing well for yourself now. Some children may still be afraid of you, but you shouldn't allow that to upset you, so long as you remember that you have five friends that took the initiative to better understand you and see you as you truly are."

The butterfly made its way up her forearm. As it approached her elbow, Alice reached up her other hand and gently coaxed the beautiful insect to climb on to her finger. When it did, she brought her hand over to Cupcake and motioned for the girl to take the butterfly. She hesitated at first, just staring at Alice before reaching out her own hand. She moved it close to Alice's and watched as the spirit tilted the butterfly until it stumbled on to Cupcake's knuckles. Miraculously, the action didn't spook the insect into retreating back in the air.

Cupcake pursed her lips, holding back a giggle as the butterfly traveled over her hand, tickling her skin with its tiny feet. She spared a glance at Alice before looking back at the butterfly. It flapped its wings together and stopped to rest in the palm of her hand.

"As long as you remember who your true friends are and you hold great confidence in yourself, others will come to learn that they severely misjudged you and you'll find growing up just a tad bit easier."

Cupcake gasped when the butterfly on her palm burst into a small cloud of blue dust before disappearing altogether, leaving the smoke to curl loosely around her hand and glitter behind on her skin. She turned her hand over and watched as the tiny flecks floated to the ground and pooled around her shoes. She then stared vehemently back at Alice, awestruck.

Oh yes, she was definitely Cupcake's new hero.

"Thank you..."

She didn't really know what possessed her to say it. Heck, she didn't even know what she was thanking Alice for exactly. Thank you for coming over and talking to her? Thank you for sharing something personal that Cupcake could relate to? Thank you for putting so much in perspective and giving her advice she felt she could actually use? All of the above?

Yeah, all of the above sounded good.

She smiled at Alice which she returned with a nod before the woman looked back at Jack and the boys with exasperated amusement, leaving Cupcake to notice the way she rolled her eyes at the winter spirit's silly antics. The girl looked back and forth between both spirits a few times, knotting her brow deep in thought.

"You know..." Cupcake said while drumming her fingers on her knees. "The others would've never become my friends if it wasn't for Jack."

Alice turned her head to look at her with a slim eyebrow arched.

Taking that as a sign for her to elaborate, Cupcake continued. It was time to pay Jack back for what he did for her two years ago.

"I wasn't exactly the nicest girl on the block," she admitted reluctantly. "So the other kids' fear of me isn't completely unjustified. Even though I tried to make friends, I don't think I was trying my absolute best. I still had a short temper that I wasn't putting any effort into controlling and that drove others away.

About two years ago, Jamie and his friends were having a snowball fight. I was outside building a snowman while they were playing and one of them accidentally hit me in the back of the head with a snowball. I was already pretty steamed because I had a crappy day at school and one of my brothers was being a pain, so I was ready to crush my snowman's head over someone's skull." As better emphasis, Cupcake held out both hands with an imaginary snowman head between them and pretended to slam it down on the ground.

"But then, out of nowhere, another snowball hit me, right in the face." She pointed to her face and grimaced at the memory. Snowball fights were fun, but receiving one directly to the face could really hurt sometimes. "Nobody knew where it came from, which should've ticked me off more, but for some weird reason, it didn't. When I opened my eyes, I wasn't angry anymore. I knew I should've been, but I just wasn't. Everything that was bothering me felt unimportant and far away and I couldn't help but laugh at how upset I was over something that suddenly sounded so stupid."

Alice watched with an amused smile as the younger girl continued with her story.

"It wasn't until a few days later, after the guardians defeated the Boogeyman, that I found out Jack was the one who threw the snowball. He did something to it. He put some kind of magic or something into it that made me just forget everything and have fun with the others. I never would've made friends with Jamie and the others if it wasn't for Jack."

"Is that so?" Alice hummed as she looked back over at the winter spirit who was trying to hang on to his tree branch while shaking off Claude's hold on his ankle. His face was twisted up in a comical display of distress.

"Yeah..." Cupcake trailed off. "So please don't hate him, okay?"

"Pardon?" She blinked at the girl, eyebrows knotted. "I don't hate Frost."

"He thinks you do."

"Well I don't. I only hate people who have truly done me wrong. Frost doesn't fall into that category, no matter how annoying he may be."

"Oh," Cupcake murmured, surprised. She would be lying if she said that she expected Alice to respond differently based on what Jack believed the woman thought of him. "Why do you think he thinks that?"

"Because I'm a difficult person to get along with," Alice replied, not at all affected by her own self-criticism. "Even more so with Frost. As I'm sure a well-grounded girl such as yourself can see, Frost and I are quite opposite from each other. When our nerves clash, it's nobody's fault. Some people just aren't meant to get along."

Cupcake looked at the spirit for a long, contemplative moment before shaking her head.

"I don't agree. I think you guys just need to find some common ground, or something."

"Do you now?" Alice smirked, amused by the girl's confident rebuff.

"Yeah, like, take the initiative to better understand each other. Just like you said."

"Hm, very impressive argument," Alice complimented, making the younger girl smile. "It would be in rather bad taste if I were to not follow my own teachings, wouldn't it?"

"Yep," Cupcake agreed happily before a random gust of cold wind blew through the backyard, causing her to shiver and pull her pink cardigan closer.

"Are you cold?" Alice asked, unaffected by the breeze.

"A little," she admitted. "Unlike the others, I wasn't born in Burgess so I'm not nearly as winter built as they are. Wish I took the time to think before rushing over to Jamie's, otherwise, I might've thought to bring a jacket."

"Here," Alice pulled herself on to her feet and walked over to the picnic table where her forgotten coat was resting. She picked it up and walked back over to Cupcake. "Put this on." She held out the black coat for the girl to take it. "It may be a tad too big length-wise, but at least it'll be warm."

"You're not going to need it?" Cupcake asked, eyeing the coat in Alice's hands, warily. She didn't want to risk messing it up in some way, the material looked soft and extremely nice. "You won't get cold?"

"I'll be fine," she assured her, prompting the girl to take the coat again.

Alice never really needed the coat in the first place. She didn't doubt that Burgess could get cold in the winter, especially with the Spirit of Winter fancying the sleepy town for whatever reason, but even personally crafted winters had nothing on the harsh London ones Alice had suffered through as a human. Living in the East End as an orphan didn't allow her a lot of chances to get her hands on adequate winter attire. A ragged pea coat and a worn pair of mismatched mittens was the only defense she had against freezing rain and snow. It was the norm, either adjust and push on, or freeze to death.

Cupcake took the coat and slipped it on, noting that it smelled like peppermint and violets. It was also a little long on her, but it was warm, so she didn't care.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"Alice! Alice!" Sophie's excited voice grabbed both girls' attention as the blonde ran across the yard. "Look! I finished my crown!"

She skidded to a clumsy halt and proudly presented the floral tiara to her. Both Cupcake and Alice stifled grimaces at the total disaster the little girl made of the crown. One half was neatly crafted, the half Alice weaved, while the other was knotted and almost bare of all flower petals. Sophie seemed to be very pleased with it though, so they praised her anyways.

"That looks fantastic!" Alice smiled sweetly at her, crouching down to Sophie's level.

"Yeah, Sophie. Now you can be a princess for Halloween tomorrow."

"Yay!" she cheered merrily and clapped when Alice place the crown on her head as if she was being coronated, like a princess. After the flower crown was placed on her head, Sophie reached up towards Alice with her hands spread open. "Up! Pick me up!"

Alice bent over and hoisted Sophie up onto her hip.

Once she had her arms wrapped around Alice's neck, Sophie sighed blissfully while resting her cheek against Alice's dress sleeve, sucking her thumb again. Alice tensed up when she felt Sophie's uneven hair spill on to her neck, reminding her just how close she was to her.

"I wonder what the boys are doing," Cupcake spoke up, looking over at the group by the tree with her hands on her hips. Alice followed her gaze.

Jack was now back on the ground, standing the very same way Alice was as the children gathered around him for a change. They seemed to be asking him to do something, if the way they clutched their hands together as if praying was anything to go by, but Jack was apparently refusing their request, shaking his head.

"I don't know," Alice mumbled, more to herself. "Let's go find out, shall we?"

As the three girls approached the gathered crowd, snippets of their conversation allowed Alice to piece together what they were talking about.

The children wanted Jack to make it snow.

"C'mon, Jack," Jamie pleaded, tugging on Jack's hoodie. "It doesn't have to be a lot. Just enough for a snowball fight or something!"

"Yeah, who cares what the weather man or anybody else says?" Claude threw in.

"Easy for you to say." Jack rolled his eyes as he slapped Jamie's hands off his hoodie. "You won't be the one getting harassed by an angry Halloween spirit afterwards."

"Just don't come around until Halloween is over then if you're scared," Monty suggested, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his freckled nose.

Jack let out a huff before reaching over and tapping the crook of his staff on top of the boy's head, causing frost to gather. "I'm not scared. I just don't feel like getting my ear chewed off!"

"What's all this then?" Alice spoke up from the back of the group.

"We're trying to get Jack to make it snow," Claude informed, frustrated by the ice spirit's refusal. He's never refused them before.

Pippa walked up to the three newcomers and tugged on Cupcake's t-shirt. "Help us out, Cupcake. Jack isn't budging!"

Cupcake looked at the redhead clutching her sleeve, then at Jack who was trying to dislodge more hands from his hoodie, and then at Alice who was watching.

"Okay, wait here."

The older girl shouldered her way through the crowd until she was standing right in front of Jack. He watched her approach with a suspicious glare.

"You're not here to hassle me too, are you, Cups?"

"No." She shook her head. "I just wanted to ask you to make it snow a little."

"Sorry, Pinky, I can't-"

"And-," Cupcake added, gesturing for Jack to lean down closer so their exchange would only be heard between them. "-to point out that this could be a good chance to impress Alice. I mean, really impress her. Since it's only Fall, I guessing she hasn't seen you use your powers yet, right?"

Jack blinked at the girl before looking over at Alice, who was busy untangling Sophie's fingers from her necklace. He glared back at Cupcake. "Well played, group dictator."

Cupcake only smiled smugly, giving the winter spirit a sweeping gesture with her hand, as if to say, 'well, go on then.'

He rolled his eyes as he pulled himself back to full height.

"Alright, you bunch of babies. I'll make it snow."

The children cheered, making a b-line for the loose planks in Jamie's back fence, running out of his yard so they had more space to play and frolic when it started to snow. As Alice bent over to put Sophie back on the ground so she could follow, Jack looked at her and waited until her gaze met his.

"Kids, huh?" he chuckled before coughing awkwardly when Alice did nothing but look at him. He let out a puff of air and ran a hand through his white hair. "Keep an eye on them for me until I get back, 'kay?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He was up in the air, leaving Alice alone in Jamie's backyard as she stared up after him with wide eyes, marveled by the realization that the ice spirit could fly.

Well, maybe not fly, exactly. Alice had seen Jack do something with the wind a few times before, like back in North's workshop or Burgess Square, but she wasn't entirely sure what it was.

Perhaps that staff of his did more than just shoot ice, but she supposed that was partly her fault. Showing off one's abilities and powers sounded like something a pair of friends would do, which she and Jack were not. But if she were to guess, Alice would place her faith in some sort of wind manipulation ability that Jack could render into helping him get around in a way Alice always wished she could. And there was that annoying pang of jealousy again.

Alice rolled her eyes at herself, crossing her arms and leaving Jamie's backyard from the same loose board that the children used. They were easy to track down. All she had to do was follow the sounds of excited shouts and laughter. She followed them across the street behind Jamie's house, down a dirt path into the surrounding forest, and came to a pond at the base of an ancient oak tree where the children gathered around waiting for Jack to make it snow.

Alice looked towards the night sky, searching for any signs of the spirit. The moon provided ample lighting due to its full state, but not enough to catch sight of the flighty young man, even more so when clouds begun to fill the sky minutes later.

When the clouds grew thicker and started circling each other, that was when Alice finally spotted Frost. He zipped around high in the air at a phenomenal speed, seemingly doing nothing other than flying in wide loops and fooling around, but when Alice focused in to see closer, she saw that Jack's staff was glowing a bright blue as he dipped and twirled in the air with extraordinary finesse and grace that she doubted even the aeronautical Tooth Fairy could mimic.

He rode the winds, Alice finally decided.

It was the only thing that seemed to fit as she watched him dive down and pull up flawlessly whenever he fell too close to the ground. The wind held him up, almost like a bobbing sail boat on water, tossing him around playfully but never letting him fall, while Jack in turn, laughed as he twisted the clouds to his liking and shot off ice blasts into the gray clusters. The blasts themselves were beautiful, dazzling blue lightning bolts that ripped through the sky, except no thunder nor rain followed, only stunningly crafted snowflakes.

The children cheered while Alice marveled at the boy in the sky and his powers over winter. White specks began to float down towards the ground, covering everything like powdered sugar. She felt the flakes land on her skin and in her hair as she took in her whitening surroundings.

She had forgotten what it was like to watch snow. In Wonderland, there was only snow in Tundraful and it was already on the ground. It never changed because Alice had forgotten how beautiful it was to stand under falling snow and watch it float around her. It was always Spring in Wonderland.

In that moment, Alice couldn't remember the last time she felt so regretful. It truly was a beautiful season; a real work of art.

"There's Jack!" Jamie smiled, pointing up.

She followed the boy's hand and saw the winter spirit floating up in the sky, silhouetted by the moon.

Up in the air, the wind curled almost affectionately around Jack as it kept him hovering in place. He looked down gleefully at the children as they played in his snow. They had already started up a snowball fight and they were scrambling to build snow forts before the teams had a chance to pelt each other with snowballs. He chuckled when he saw Cupcake nail Jamie right in the face with a huge ball of snow and Caleb tackle his twin into a nearby snow bank.

His eyes roamed around the rest of the group, stopping to linger on each member before moving on until he eventually came to Alice. As soon as he did, the unexpected sight had his smile falling from his face and he froze.

Alice was absolutely gorgeous.

She was looking up at him with those green eyes. White snowflakes peppered her hair, creating the classic contrast of white against black. The moon bathed her in its silvery glow, displaying every detail and stitch in her clothing, giving her hair a sharp silver sheen and accented every smooth curve of her figure. It made an interesting sight when she stood tall and proud with his hard work as the backdrop behind her.

He knew he shouldn't be looking at Alice like that, but his immortalized eighteen-year-old body betrayed him; eyes roaming where they shouldn't and what not.

The sight of Alice standing in the midst of his element, covered in snowflakes and looking amazed by something he had created, charmed Jack far more than he knew it should have. It made his grip on his staff tighten, his throat go dry, his stomach flip and his chest ache for no real reason other than just because. And despite the pleasant feeling of it all, it confused Jack. A sense of foreboding rang somewhere deep, something that tried to tell him not to tread along that particular thought process for too long, or else emotional pain of the worst kind would be waiting for him at the end.

Of course, that "something" was far too small and didn't even permeating the forefront of Jack's mind, but the confusion he felt towards the sudden change in Alice's appearance (or rather the change in which Jack was looking at her) was enough to keep him on the defensive.

So when he had the wind take him back down to Earth, he decided not to approach the girl and ask her how she liked seeing real world snow again, because of a random and uncharacteristic shyness. What if Alice didn't like it? What if she saw that sort of thing in Wonderland all the time and it was nothing special in her eyes? Wouldn't that just feel awful. That was his life's work falling around her right now.

Jack stayed in the background after that, only speaking up when one of the kids addressed him and supplying them with more snowballs. As the night went on, he eventually climbed out of his funk and played with Jamie and his friends, but not without keeping one constant eye on his fellow spirit.

Despite the few road bumps, he was glad that night happened the way it did. He felt proud of himself for thinking of bringing Alice to Burgess. Not only had he succeeded in blowing the minds of Sophie, Jamie and all his friends, but he got to see a different side of Alice.

Under all the bitterness, the malice and the indifference, Jack learned something rather extraordinary about her that night.

Alice was a dreamer.

A dreamer in the same way as the Sandman, maybe even more.

Her face mirrored that of the other guardians when they were fully immersed in what they loved to do most in the world; building toys, fawning over baby teeth, painting eggs, weaving dreams and riding the winds, bringing winter and fun.

Once Alice allowed the defenses she surrounded herself with down, it was apparent in the way she spoke and moved. The way she regaled the Bennett siblings and their friends with her many adventures in Wonderland, elaborate tales that were never mentioned in the story books. It was apparent in the way her eyes would light up when she pulled butterflies out of thin air and her brilliant smile when the children gasped.

It felt like he was meeting Alice for the first time. The Alice that resembled the one in the story books.

And later, after the nightmare that fell into motion that night while they were away from Santoff Claussen, he believed that was where he made the real mistake. Maybe if he had paid more attention, Jack would have noticed the figure lurking in the shadows, watching their every move.

Then maybe he could have stopped things before they had a real chance to begin.

AN: Believe me, I didn't want to leave this on a cliffhanger. Hopefully from the ending, you realized that this is the last 'peaceful' chapter and shit will be going down next chapter.

In other news, I made an 'Archive of our own' account and posted this story on there. It's exactly the same as it is here, but I wanted to post the story on other websites so more people will see it. I also posted it on DeviantART. Hopefully it'll inspire some talented artists to create some ROTG/AMR fanart. Serious guys, we need some more of that.

~Scorpiofreak~