AN: Oh happy day! We hit four hundred reviews! Yay! I was really excited about writing this chapter for you guys! And in case some of you forgot, I'm still working on my Bunny & Alice sidestory, and I recently published a ROTG/AMR Modern day AU fic. Thought it would be fun. So if you like AU's, go check it out!
This chapter references my Bunny & Alice side story pretty obviously at one point, so if you're not on the B&A bandwagon, you might not entirely get it.
Also, as another reminder: I CANNOT reply to reviews left by people without Fanfic accounts! I would love to, but the website won't let me! If you want to get in contact with me, log in to your account, or sign up for one.
Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians or Alice: Madness Returns.
By the time Jack finally remembered to tell his friends about Pitch's return and the dark spirit's attack on him and Alice back in the Burgess forest, none of the other guardians were very surprised by the news. Yes, it was vital and potentially dangerous information that should be taken very seriously, but not at all was it shocking.
It just seemed like common sense that it was Pitch Black who attacked them. The unique and distinguishing shape of the unidentified monsters had been too much of a coincidence. They knew the Boogeyman had to be involved somehow.
The only thing that really incited any sort of reaction from the elder spirits was the strange fact that Pitch chose to attack Jack and Alice separately, instead of overseeing the assault on Santoff Claussen, but then again, that eventually made sense too after a little while. Attacking the two spirits that strayed from the herd was, without a doubt, a very conniving move to make, which was right up the Nightmare King's alley.
Despite the new development in the mystery of the black ooze though, none of the guardians appeared to be as excited or concerned as Jack thought they would be. When he tried to talk to North about it, the Russian only shook his head tiredly and told the Winter spirit that they would discuss it all later before leaving to rally the yetis for debriefing and clean-up duty.
After Bunny and Alice's fight (and potential falling out), the despair and stress of that entire evening finally took its grating toll and the workshop sunk into an unpleasant silence as everybody idly moved about the area and helped clean up the mess.
Bunny didn't stick around very long after Alice left. He had been acutely aware of the sad and sympathetic expressions on all his friends' faces as the girl's last, gut-wrenching comment still hung heavily in the air, but he wasn't in the mood to deal with their pity. He stormed off to his own guest room in North's domain without a word. He didn't even acknowledge Tooth when she tried to reach out and follow him.
Everybody else just wordlessly broke apart and started cleaning the first thing they could get their hands on. The fight had been just as upsetting to watch as it was to be actively apart of it and everyone was feeling overwhelmingly depressed by the vehement spectacle. However, nobody was feeling lower than Jack was. He had been the worst out of all the wide-eyed bystanders because he was the only one who couldn't claim innocence in the situation.
Jack stood around mirthlessly for several minutes, quietly watching the yetis work diligently and the elves slowly emerge from their hiding spots, before he eventually moved to pick up the discarded broom that Alice threw at Bunny nearly twenty minutes earlier. He went to work with sweeping up the glass on the floor as a shoddy attempt to make himself useful for the first time that night while being mindful not to accidentally step on any glass and cut his feet. As he worked, Jack couldn't help but replay what just happened over and over again in his head while he gnawed anxiously on his bottom lip.
He was vaguely aware of it when Baby Tooth hovered over and chirped curiously in his ear, but Jack didn't look up from the floor until he felt a hand lay itself gently on his shoulder.
"Are you alright, Jack?" Tooth asked softly, her amethyst eyes blinking with concern as she floated around him from behind. Her small feet were hanging inches from the stone ground so she could be at eye level with the pale spirit.
Jack let go of his lip and put on a forced smile that he hoped came off as reassuring. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"You sure? Bunny didn't hurt you or anything when he dropped you, did he?"
Jack scoffed lightly, looking mildly amused before gently shrugging off the fairy's hand. "As if that could hurt me. Come on, Tooth, I'm a lot tougher than that."
She smiled warmly at him as she let her hand drop. "I know you are. I just wanted to make sure."
"Shouldn't you be making sure Bunny's alright?" He asked. "Or Alice?"
Tooth nervously twisted her fingers together out of habit as she threw an uncertain glance at the hallway that inevitably led to the lodging section of North's domain.
There was nothing Tooth wanted to do more than flag down Bunny and Alice and drag them back to the workshop so she could help fix what had been so harshly broken between them, but neither seemed to be in a reconciling mood at the moment - no real surprise there. Sandy already reported that Alice had locked herself up in her guest room and nobody wanted to risk receiving a boomerang to the face just to see if Bunny was okay.
"I think we should let things settle a little bit before we do anything else," Tooth eventually replied. "There's still a lot to be done in here first. We need to help the yetis get back on their feet as soon as possible. Christmas is still a few months away, but setbacks can be harmful if not handled carefully enough."
"Yeah, I suppose so," Jack commented offhandedly as if he could understand anything about that, which he couldn't. Jack Frost was a Winter spirit. He never had to deal with setbacks because he's usually the one who causes them.
"North's going to call a meeting later and we're going to discuss what we should do about Pitch."
"What are we going to do about Pitch?"
Tooth sighed and dropped her hands before shrugging her shoulders. "Honestly, I have no idea. I guess at the meeting, we're going to talk about what happened, compare a few notes, and maybe try to track down the entrance to Pitch's lair so we can confront him face to face."
"And you think that'll be a good idea? Now that he has those...gunk monsters in his nightmare arsenal?" It was mostly a question but Tooth could hear the slight challenge in Jack's voice as he spoke.
She only gave him another shrug as an answer. He looked at her closely for a few seconds with sharp blue eyes before turning back to the glass on floor. There was a long silence afterwards that only contained the sounds of broken glass scrapping across stone, yetis grumbling in the distance, and the low hum of Tooth's wings.
When seemed it like their conversation had ended, Tooth quietly excused herself and turned to go see if North was in his office. She planned to pop over to her Tooth Palace for a quick moment to check up on things, but she wanted to make sure North didn't need her for anything before doing so.
Just as she was about to fly off though, Jack spoke up again.
"Tooth?"
The colorful fairy turned back around to look at Jack. He had stopped sweeping and was now looking up at her while his pale hands wrung themselves uneasily around the broomstick handle. She felt the feathers of her crest roll up slightly as her heart melted at the almost puppy-dog look he was giving her through his silvery white bangs.
"Yes, Jack?"
He seemed to struggle with his thoughts for a moment as his blue eyes darted aimlessly over the glass on the floor, clearly debating with himself on whether or not he should say what was on his mind before ultimately deciding to just let out. He didn't want the concept of over-thinking to twist his head up more than it already was.
"Do you think this is my fault?"
Tooth blinked somewhat owlishly at the ice spirit and letting out a short laugh. "Well of course I don't. This isn't anybody's-"
"No, I didn't mean about all this," Jack cut her off with a wave of his hand when he caught her eyes flickering over the mess around them. "I was talking about Bunny and Alice. Do think what happened between them is my fault? ...and be honest," He added the last part tentatively when Tooth hesitated.
Tapping her index finger repeatedly on her lower lip, Tooth thought for a moment before asking, "You want me to be honest?"
He nodded.
"I think that certain things could've been avoided if you two had just taken the time to tell someone where you were going, but no, I don't think this is your fault, Jack. Nobody could've known what was going to happen tonight. Bunny would have never reacted the way he did if there hadn't been an attack."
Jack nodded again wordlessly in response as he looked back at the ground.
"Do you think it's your fault?" Tooth asked quietly.
"No...I guess not," Jack murmured. "All I was trying to do was give Sophie a nice birthday and help Alice loosen up a bit. I know how important new guardians are to you guys and I thought maybe I could help convince Alice to accept her guardianship if I showed her some of the modern world and what it's like to be a guardian. Is that so wrong?"
It was a rhetorical question but Tooth shook her head regardless as she listened.
"And it was going so well too!" Jack groaned miserably while resting his forehead against the top of the broomstick. "And then all this crap happens and it blows up right in my face!"
"I know, I know," Tooth reached over and lightly patted the Winter spirit on the shoulder. "It was a very nice gesture though, Jack. I'm sorry it didn't turn out like you wanted it to. Did Sophie have a nice birthday at least?"
Jack thought about it for a moment before actually cracking a small smile at the question. "She'll probably be talking about it nonstop for months if that tells you anything."
"Mm, good," Tooth hummed while returning Jack's smile with a bright one of her own. She was so relieved to know that there wasn't still any resentment between her and the Winter spirit after their own little spat earlier. Bunny and Alice's fight helped put a lot of things into perspective and Tooth hated the idea of Jack still being cross with her for being too overbearing.
"Do you think they're going to be okay?"
"Well," Tooth breathed, not needing Jack to specify on who he meant by "they". "Usually, I would say yes. People can't just throw away nearly two centuries of friendship over one fight...but you know how stubborn those two can be."
"Should we do something?"
"I think they just need a little time," Tooth assured him as she tugged playfully on the strings of his hoodie and poked him lightly in the chest. "Although, Mr. I'm-Never-Wrong, I'm sure an apology for scaring him so badly wouldn't go unappreciated."
He let her poke him a few more times before he swatted her hand away when Baby Tooth tried to joyfully join in by poking him blatantly in the collarbone with her beak. "Yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying."
"Great! You should probably do that now then," The fairy queen clapped her hands together and hovered up higher in the air, several feet over Jack's head before he had a chance to protest. "And when you're done talking with Bunny, send him my way, okay?"
"I'll make sure to do that if he doesn't slam the door in my face first," Jack replied cynically as he gave her a half-hearted wave of dismissal when his friend flew off to another section of the workshop.
After some careful maneuvering around the glass on the floor, Jack traded the broom in his hand for his staff and set off for the lodging area of North's domain with Baby Tooth following close behind him like a loyal watch dog.
The little fairy had barely let Jack out of her sight since his return. He always found it funny whenever she took it upon her tiny self to be Jack's personal guard fairy, as if she could do anything other than chirp shrilly with attitude and hide in his hoodie pocket when trouble presented itself. She could be tough and brave if she needed to be, but usually, Baby Tooth was all bark and no bite. It was incredibly adorable to watch her try though. And it was also a little flattering to have Baby Tooth so overprotective of him, even more so than the guardians because if he was about to do something stupid that no one would approve of, she couldn't really do anything to stop him except pester him with chirps and squeaks in hopes that would make him stop, which really never worked. One firm scold and a mild swat of his hand usually quieted her down, for a little while at least.
The walk to Bunny's guest room was long and uneventful.
Occasionally, Baby Tooth would mischievously pull on the hair at the base of his neck and try to hide when he turned around, which Jack retaliated with by sending a puff of cold air and snow flurries in her direction, making her shiver and sneeze cutely, but nothing else notably interesting beyond that. Just the muffled sounds of his bare feet against the stone floor and his cheerful whistling as he navigated the guest room hallways. When he passed by the hallway that housed Alice's room though, Jack paused and stared down the hallway at the last door. For a brief moment, he thought about walking down there and knocking on the girl's door, but then his common sense had him quickly deciding against it. He wouldn't know what to do or say if he found out Alice blamed him for her and Bunny's fight.
Jack was so tired of being Alice's enemy. He didn't want to be thrown back at the start again like some ridiculously long and repetitive board game that nobody could ever seem to win, especially after he had discovered there was an entirely different person under her cold and collected façade, just waiting to stride out and belittle him in her oh-so confident ways.
As stupid as it might sound, Jack found he actually...liked being with Alice.
Well no, not with her. That was a bit of a misleading statement. He liked being around her, not with her. She was actually quite interesting to talk to once you got past her jaded disposition and colorful insults.
She was also kind of...nice to look at, but that was an entirely unrelated matter.
Regardless though, Jack figured he should probably just go along with his original plan and apologizing to Bunny before doing anything else. So without another glance, he continued on his way wordlessly as he passed by several more hallways until he came to the one he knew Bunny's room was in.
Jack had never been inside the pooka's room, but he had been in the hallway a few times before and thankfully, he had a good memory. Not as good as Tooth or North's, but good enough to remember how to navigate the nearly impossible labyrinth that was Santoff Claussen.
When he reached Bunny's door, he tapped out a merry tune against the dark wood with the crook of his staff and waited for the grumpy pooka to answer. Nearly five minutes passed before Jack heard any movement within the room. He leaned in a little closer to try and guess if the Easter Bunny was going to answer the door, or just ignore it, but he jumped back in surprise when the door was suddenly pulled open without warning and Bunny's tall figure appeared in the doorway.
The pooka must've just finished washing up from a shower or bath because his gray and white fur was matted down with excess water and his boomerang holster was stripped from his chest, leaving his pelt bare, and as the bedroom door drifted open more, Jack felt the uncomfortable sensation of heat and steam waft out from behind the furry spirit.
Bunny didn't even look remotely surprised to find Jack on the other side of his door. How could he? That ridiculous knock he heard all the way from inside the bathroom could've only come from one person.
"What do you want?"
"Uhhh," Jack begun eloquently when he felt his earlier confidence abandoned him in the wake of Bunny's piercing glare. "Candygram?"
Bunny's eyes narrowed further as he regarded the boy cold and indifferently before moving to slam the door in his face.
Seeing the action coming from a mile away, Jack quickly reached out and propped a pale hand firmly against the door to keep it from shutting all the way. "Hey now, don't be like that, Bunny. I come in peace."
"Go away!" Bunny's voice drifted somewhat miserably from behind the door. It was only inches from being completely closed, but to Jack's satisfaction, he didn't feel the pooka try and force the barrier between them shut, which led him to believe his furry companion didn't wholeheartedly want him to get lost. Or maybe he did and Bunny was just too lazy to force him. Either way, Jack wasn't leaving.
"No, I wanna help."
"Haven't you already helped enough?"
"Apparently not. Otherwise, everything would be fixed already."
Jack heard Bunny groan contemptuously before the creaking of rabbit feet against a wooden floor signified that the pooka was no longer standing behind the door. Taking that as an indirect invitation, Jack shouldered his way into the Easter Bunny's room, but only to have his eyesight suddenly assaulted by the color of intense green.
The guest room was coated in the color. The Spring themed hues were mainly hunter and clover green with the occasional baby blue and canary yellow - probably an attempt to make the occupant of the room feel more at home and comfortable. North always went out of his way to accommodate his guests with personal touches like that. Jack's own room was primarily blue with one entire wall carved out of ice, just like what North had in his office.
"Just go away, Frostbite," Came Bunny's muffled response as he picked up a discarded towel from his bed and lazily dried off his head and ears.
"No, I want to help," Jack insisted again before flopping down on the plush surface of the bed next to his friend. "You know, in some small way, part of this could be seen as my fault-"
Bunny snorted loudly as he vacantly watched Baby Tooth fly into his bathroom, probably to inspect what kind of toothpaste and floss he used.
"- but I'm sure everything can still be fixed."
Seeming to visibly deflate even more than he already was, Bunny let out a long-suffered sigh as his head and ears dipped considerably. "I uh, I wouldn't be so sure 'bout that, Frost. That was a pretty nasty fight, even by our standards. Not to mention...everything Alice said was true...you know, about her not needing me anymore. I guess it's been like that for a while now, but I was just too blind to see...or maybe I did and I was just trying to pretend I didn't. Either way, it's crystal clear now."
Jack felt his own mood drop as he watched the pooka stare forlornly at the ground, acting so uncharacteristically remorseful and depressed that it was starting to affect Jack as well. It wasn't a very pleasant sight for him to see the usually proud Easter Bunny in such a stark contrasting state, practically wallowing in self-pity like he was. Despite past grievances and seasonal feuds, Jack considered Bunny one of his closest friends - and secretly, one of his favorite guardians, but Jack would rather die than reveal that fact to anyone - so it was difficult to watch him so clearly in distress over what happened, especially since some of Jack's own personal choices earlier that night helped cause it all.
He might not be completely at fault for what happened, but Jack had to admit - albeit begrudgingly - Tooth was right. After knowing what he knew now, leaving the Pole without telling anybody did sound a little foolhardy.
"Hey now," Jack prodded Bunny's arm gently with his elbow. "Stop being such a downer. So, you went a little papa bear and Alice got angry. Big deal. What doesn't make that girl angry?"
He looked over at Bunny for a reaction, but the pooka just continued to stare off at nothing.
Taking a huge risk, Jack tentatively reached out a hand and patted Bunny's shoulder. The gesture was far too awkward to be comforting in any way, but hey, at least he was trying. That was always the important thing, right?
"I'm sure she'll forget about it in a couple of hours," Jack insisted flippantly before pausing for a second when he fully registered what he had just said. "Or maybe she won't. She looks like the kind of girl who could hold a pretty mean grudge. But in any case, I know the other guardians won't rest until everything is peaches and cream again. So I guess we have that in our favor..."
Of course, halfway through his oh-so supportive "pep talk", Jack realized Bunny wasn't listening to a word he was saying. Not that he really minded. He probably wouldn't listen either if their roles were reversed. Although, if their roles were reversed, would they really be having this conversation? Didn't the past two days just prove that it was perfectly acceptable if Alice hated him?
"Bunny?" Jack asked eventually when the Easter Bunny still didn't move. "You okay?"
"Do you know what the first thing Alice ever said to me was?" Bunny asked, completely out of nowhere. "The very first thing?"
"Uh, holy crap is that a talking kangaroo?" Jack suggested cheekily after the randomness of Bunny's unexpected question wore off. "Oh wait, no. Those were my first words to you."
"Can't you take anything seriously?" Bunny snapped harshly as he glared at Jack from the corner of his eye.
Jack couldn't help but laugh at the pooka. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry, Bunny. I was just trying to brighten the mood. Go ahead and continue. I'll stop. I promise."
Bunny held his scrutinize glare for several more seconds before sighing deeply and answering with, "Australia."
"Australia?"
"Australia," Bunny confirmed, scoffing gently to himself. "What a weird thing to say, isn't it? I mean, most kids would just say hi or somethin', but not Alice..."
There was a bit of a thick silence then where neither spirit spoke while Bunny seemed to be taking a solo trip down memory lane. Jack kept his promise and only looked at Bunny expectantly as he waited for the older spirit to continue. As he waited for Bunny to pull himself from his thoughts, memories of two years ago begun to resurface in Jack's head. Memories of when the guardians had to collect the children's teeth because Pitch had kidnapped nearly all of Tooth's fairies.
The look on Bunny's face perfectly mirrored the one Tooth had on hers when she and Jack were collecting Jamie's tooth. A raw mixture of sadness, pride, regret, longing, and overwhelming nostalgia. All of which Jack felt individually throughout his long life in isolation, but never all at once. Never in that melancholic cocktail of emotions, and part of him felt a little grateful for that.
"Of course though, that wasn't until 'bout the third time we crossed paths. The first two times, she didn't speak to me, at all. Not a lick. And for a while there, I thought she was mute like Sandy. She would just stare up at me with these wide, unimpressed eyes as if seeing a giant talking rabbit was an everyday thing. Oh lord, did she creep me out."
Jack let out another short laugh. "Kinda like she does now?"
Bunny smiled gently at that for a moment as he stared off vacantly at the floor, but then something passed over his furry face and the smile was gone.
"I know you must be sick of hearing this, Frostbite, but she wasn't always the way she is now. She wasn't always so angry and suspicious towards other people. She wasn't always so mean, ya know?"
Jack closed his eyes and let out a long sigh of his own. He didn't like where this was heading. "I know Bunny."
"She actually use to be a sweet little girl," Bunny continued, not noticing the way Jack's hands begun to wring themselves nervously around his staff. "She was always on North's Nice list because she was a good kid. Brilliant too. I sometimes couldn't even believe the words that came out of her mouth. She had a better grasp on the English language than North did!"
The pooka was smiling fondly now as memories just kept coming. It had been a while since Bunny had thought about Alice's childhood. Understandably, it was an extremely taboo subject with Alice, so it wasn't brought up often. In all honesty though, Bunny didn't like talking about it much either. He usually confided in Tooth whenever the rare urge to talk about Alice flared up in his head. If he had been in the right frame of mind at that moment, he would've waited until he found a private moment with the fairy, instead of unloading all that personal information on to Frost, but Bunny was feeling rather indifferent, and perhaps a little spiteful towards Alice.
And besides, would it be so wrong if Bunny showed the ice spirit that Alice wasn't nearly as unjustified in her bitterness than he thought she was?
It was too bad though that Bunny didn't know that Jack was already aware of nearly everything, and of course Jack wasn't readily willing to share that incriminating information with anybody just yet, so he did nothing but sit quietly and nod as Bunny continued to talk about Alice's childhood.
"But even then, she was alone. No friends," Bunny said morosely. "Children just didn't take too well with her. Some even bullied her because they thought she was deranged or something, which I thought was bloody ridiculous. That kid had more brains and creativity in one tiny finger than those little brats had in their entire bodies. You could've given her any object, and no matter how plain and boring it was, she would turn it into something. Give it a whole new name and everything."
"She sounds amazing," Jack smiled. "I wish I could've seen her like that."
"Yeah, but that was all before..."
Jack felt his stomach drop and then lift again when Bunny slowly trailed off. It took everything inside his scrawny body to resist finishing the pooka's sentence. For a moment there, he almost did. It almost slipped right out of his mouth, but he somehow managed to catch himself just in time.
"Before what?"
Part of him wanted to say it though. It was exhausting having such depressing information hanging over his head all the time, even if he sometimes forgot he knew. Jack was tempted to spill his guts and just deal with the consequences, but he ended up saying nothing and he almost hated himself for it.
Regardless though, it seemed as if he had lost his opportunity to speak up anyways because whatever dark place Bunny's mind drifted off to, it apparently dragged his indifferent mood down with it and his trademark scowl made its way across his face again before he abruptly stood from the bed.
"Nevermind," He said gruffly while walking over to his boomerang and egg holster that was resting on a nearby dresser.
"No," Jack protested. "What were you going to say?"
Bunny was clearly not in the sharing mood anymore, but Jack couldn't help himself from pushing. Maybe if he could get Bunny to tell him about the fire and the death of Alice's family, nobody would ever have to know about his own selfish snooping. He could just take the newspaper articles out of the desk drawer in his room, toss them into the fireplace, travel to Burgess and swear Jamie and Cupcake into secrecy, and then pretend nothing ever happened. If Alice ever asked how he found out, he would just say Bunny told him. She couldn't get that mad then, could she?
Admittedly, that was a bit of a coward's way of approaching things, but Jack was the Guardian of Fun, not Steely Resolves.
"Nothing, Frostbite," Bunny stressed warningly as he pulled his holster down over his ears and head. "Forget I said anything. We should be getting back to the workshop. That's more important right now."
"Come on Bunny."
Bunny hesitated as he thought something over for a moment before ultimately shaking his head at himself. "You wouldn't understand."
"I think I could understand," Jack insisted. "At least a little."
"No," Bunny grounded out through his teeth. "You wouldn't."
Jack felt his own agitation boiling underneath his skin, but he refused to let it show with anything other than an unimpressed glare. This was not going to become another fight. "Why won't you just say it?"
"Why won't you just stop being so annoying?" Bunny shot back defensively.
Jack rolled his eyes. "Oh wow, that was clever. I've never heard that one before."
Practically seething again, Bunny walked over and roughly ushered Jack off the bed and towards the door. "Just shut up and get out of my room before I kick your teeth in."
When Bunny was just about to, quite literally, toss Jack out the door, Baby Tooth came out of the bathroom and froze when she saw the Easter Bunny manhandling her friend again. She chirped shrilly in panic and immediately rushed to Jack's aid.
Before they had set out to visit the grumpy pooka, Tooth pulled Baby Tooth aside and charged her little self with the duty of peacekeeper. After the upsetting scene earlier that evening, her queen wanted absolutely no more fighting, and neither did she. Unlike mother Tooth, Baby Tooth never liked the Easter Bunny very much because he was always grouchy and being mean to Jack, but now, she definitely didn't like him! She went straight for his big, stupid ears and started pecking at them until he finally let go of Jack.
"Get out of here you little buzzard!" Bunny snapped as he proceeded to swat Baby Tooth away from his ears before he managed to land one on her. It wasn't hard enough to hurt her or anything, but enough to send her sprawling away with a few rolls in the air while her wings fought to straighten her out again.
The little fairy's mismatched eyes swirled around in her head like billiards as her world continued to spin. She held a tiny hand against her forehead to try and ward off her dizziness. When everything was still again, she glared darkly at the back of the pooka's head as her feathers shuddered angrily like a rattlesnake's tail. She gave one last, high-pitched chirp before taking off down the hallway.
"Okay, sheesh," Jack held his hands up in surrender. "I just thought I could help since I know Alice little bit better now."
"Oh, and I suppose you know everything about her, don't ya Frost? Because you spent one evening with her?"
"What? No! I never said I knew everything about her," Jack threw back indignantly. "I just think I know more than you're giving me credit for."
"Yeah right," Bunny snorted loudly. "What did she tell you then? Did she tell you all her secrets while you braided each others hair and painted your nails?"
Jack immediately opened his mouth to retaliate against the pooka's snide remarks, but then remembered seconds later that his knowledge about Alice's past was supposed to be a secret. His mouth closed again and his confidence left him. "No, not exactly..."
"That's what I thought," Bunny smirked in ill satisfaction when he saw the boy's azure eyes drift towards the ground.
Bunny roughly brushed past him and moved down the hallway, but Jack wasn't quite ready to lose their argument yet. "Ever think that maybe Alice confided in someone other than you, Bunny?"
The grey pooka stopped short and turned back around, laughing almost sardonically at the boy. "Frostbite, even when we're on the verge of killing each other, there isn't anything she would tell you that she wouldn't tell me first."
Jack knew he should've let the comment go and not fuel the fire, but Bunny's smug, know-it-all smirk just grated harshly against his nerves and rubbed salt in the raw wounds. Spiritually, Jack was three hundred and twenty years old, but the part of his brain that was still eighteen wasn't going to take the pooka's insults laying down. He narrowed his eyes at Bunny's back as the overgrown rabbit walked away and his mouth opened of its own accord.
"Did she tell you that she thinks you're replacing her with Sophie? Because she told me."
Childish? Most definitely, but the Winter spirit couldn't help feel a low sense of triumph when Bunny stopped short in his tracks again. He couldn't see Bunny's face because his back was still turned, but his ears easily betrayed him. They perked up at full height like they usually did whenever something surprised him.
Jack prepared himself for some kind of rash reaction from the hot-tempered Spring spirit, but to his surprise, Bunny didn't do anything. His ears only slacked again before he continued down the hallway and leaving Jack standing alone.
Jack watched Bunny leave with a deep frown until his furry figure completely disappeared into another hallway, but the pale spirit didn't stick around very long afterwards. He was opening the door to his own guest room and slamming it hard behind him in less than five minutes.
He barely resisted the urge to coat the entire room with a thick layer of ice to help vent out some of his lingering frustration, but for the sake of North's nice, handcrafted furniture, Jack ended up just letting his body fall back on to his rarely used bed like a sack of rocks while groaning loudly.
Screw the workshop, he would help out later when he wasn't feeling so exhausted. It was all just too much for him right now. The long, agonizing day had finally caught up to his usually energetic body and it was an absolute miracle that he was still conscious once it all hit him.
Could nothing ever be easy?
Did he have some sort of bulls-eye on his forehead that said something like, "please treat me like crap, I love it"?
All Jack was trying to do was help fix things, and not just because they were partially his fault. There was also a high moral factor included in the mix. He didn't like seeing friends fight. Friends should cherish one another, not scream in each other's faces over some stupid miscommunication.
The whole situation kind of made him feel a little mad at Bunny and Alice for fighting. Jack spent centuries wishing he had someone to talk to other than himself, the wind, and people who would never answer back. On his loneliest days during his isolation, Jack always promised himself that he never fight with his friends if he ever made any.
Although, that was before he was chosen to be a guardian.
There was an odd balance to friendship that Jack never really understood until he joined the guardians and became their friend. He always knew friends were suppose to fight with each other, he just didn't realize how nonchalant it could sometimes be. It was just an unavoidable aspect of any sort of close relationship between two people.
He also knew that, ironically enough, the closer the relationship is, the more fighting there was, especially in a whacked up relationship between two ill-tempered spirits like Bunny and Alice. Friends fight all the time, just like siblings and couples. That was just a fact of life and no one was immune to it. Jack would've given anything to have a friendship like Alice and Bunny's during his years of isolation.
Sure, one of them could be pretty nasty towards the other sometimes for whatever stupid reason, but they were a team together. The only thing that could truly break them apart was each other, and Jack hated the idea of being a contributing factor in their falling out. He couldn't let that happen, regardless if he was involved or not. He had to do something to help.
At the moment though, Jack doubted he had enough willpower in his body to even get up from his oh-so comfortable bed, let alone tracked down Alice and see if he could fix things with her since he failed horribly with Bunny.
Once his back met the plush surface underneath him, he knew it would take something big and really important to make him get up again. The warm, welcoming embrace of unconsciousness was beginning to slowly take over and Jack didn't plan on doing anything to stop it. The idea of sleep sounded like heaven to him.
However, just as he relaxed deeper into the blankets of his bed with an euphoric sigh while his racing mind was slowly shutting down, his traitorous brain inadvertently registered one last thought.
There was something digging into his back.
Jack tried to ignore the nagging thought and the curiosity it threatened to produce, but once it was there, he couldn't get it out. His mind wouldn't give him a break for once in his long life and let him fall asleep!
Cursing the world and all who inhabit it, Jack curled up his face in irritation as he reached underneath his back and fished around for whatever it was he was laying on until his fingers hit something solid. He let out another hateful groan as he pulled up the top half of his body into a sitting position before holding his hand out in front of him and opening it to look at the small object.
It was a key.
"What in the..." Jack's brow knotted in confusion as he blinked down at the oddly shaped, brass key resting in his palm.
The key looked very old, a bit downtrodden, and heavily tarnished in certain areas, but still in relatively good condition. The bizarre, circle-like top was beyond him though. It looked like it was shaped into some kind of symbol that he had seen somewhere before, but nothing came directly to mind. Mainly because Jack was more focused on figuring out why the key was on his bed in the first place.
"Now where did you come from?" Jack asked the strange key as he scratched the back of his head.
He turned the key over in his hand a couple of times before his blue eyes trailed along its length until they landed on the small tag hanging from the top of the key by a single string. He held the ivory colored tag between his long fingers and read the elegant written, purple lettering printed across it.
Use Me
Jack's confusion increased tenfold as he stared down at the tag. "What the-? Use you on what?"
He flipped the tag over and discovered more writing on the back.
On a door, you stupid boy
"Oh..." Jack trailed off before scowling indignantly. "Hey!"
'How rude,' He thought bitterly as he continued to give the key and offending tag a scrutinizing glare.
Where did the key come from? It certainly wasn't there the last time Jack was in his room. He would've remember something like that. Who left it there? Why did they leave it there? And where did it get off calling him stupid?
Jack clutched the brass key tightly in his hand before quickly getting up from the bed and looking around his room, his earlier fatigue immediately gone and forgotten.
He didn't exactly know what he was looking for since the key didn't come with any further instructions other than to "use it on a door", which unsurprisingly didn't help with his confusion at all, but he figured he should at least start by looking around his room for anything out of the ordinary.
Much to his growing frustration though, Jack found nothing. Everything was exactly as he had last left it; spotless and barely used.
It should've came as a comfort to know that nobody was rifling through his stuff while he was gone, but the extreme lack of clues only served to confuse and frustrate him even more. It wasn't like his room was inaccessible to everybody but Jack. Technically, wasn't even his room. It was North's. Anybody could just walk right in if they wanted to, but there really wasn't any reason if it was empty. The guardians could be incredibly overbearing sometimes, but they always respected his privacy.
Jack let out an agitated huff when his search turned up nothing. He gnawed on his bottom lip in thought as his eyes did another quick sweep around the room before looking back down at the key in his hand again. He stared at it intensely for several seconds before letting his gaze drift towards the closest door that was less than three feet away from where he was standing.
He didn't know what door the key was supposed to unlock, but the white tag said "a" door, so did it really matter what door he used it on? Was it some sort of skeleton key that could open up any locked door in the complex? And if so, shouldn't something like that be in North possession, not Jack's?
The tag said to use the key on a door, so when Jack finally decided to humor it, he turned to the closet and stepped forward to slip the mysterious key into the lock, all the while muttering under his breath about how ridiculous he was being.
"What am I even doing?" Jack asked himself as he put the key in and turned it, mildly surprised when it went in and turned without a hitch. "Listening to a piece paper. Am I really that stupid? This isn't going to do anything. It's not like I don't already know what's in this closet. Just a bunch of dusty old coats, a couple of moth-eaten shirts, and a red silk dress for some really weird reason. Why is that thing even in there? Does one of the yetis have like, a weird secret fetish for -whoa!"
Jack immediately scrambled backwards in surprise when a flurry of lights burst out of the key hole and from underneath the door, nearly tripping over the blue rug on the floor in the process. When he found his balance again, he held up the crooked end of his staff at the door in defense.
The dark wood begun to rattle furiously on its hinges. It banged loudly within its constricting door frame and caused the brass doorknob to tremble along with it as Jack watched in bated apprehension, his fingers gripping the aged wood of his staff nervously while his feet shifted against the creaking floorboards. The door continued to shake ominously in front of him until something on the other side banged against it hard, making Jack jump back even further when the door was broken of its latch and sent flying open, instantly flooding half of the room with light.
Jack had to duck his head behind one of his arms to block out the blinding lights that poured from the open closet in a mass of swirling colors. The illumination hurt his eyes and made them sting to a point where he couldn't keep them open fully, but eventually, they grew adjusted to the offending light as it gradually dimmed down its own velocity until it became a tolerable lackluster glow, all the way to the point where Jack was able to lower his arm and stare directly at the brilliant whirlpool swirling slowly within the confines of his closet.
A mild breeze blew out of the glowing closet, gently ruffling through Jack's hair and clothes as it passed over him with a curiously distinctive scent that he would've never expected to smell in the barren, ice-covered desert that North's domain was built on; the fresh, telltale scent of a lush forest in full Spring.
Slowly, Jack inched closer to the glowing closet with his staff still held out defensively in front of him until he was barely a foot away. He reached out tentatively and gripped firmly on to the door frame with his free hand as he leaned in to look inside for anything that might give him any explanation of what the hell just happened to his closet. It turned out to be a pointless endeavor though. Standing that close to the closet, the lights were far too bright to see anything but blinding colors. They were starting to make his head hurt and his eyes sting again like he had just spent an hour staring directly at the sun.
He stepped back and rubbed his burning eyes with the palm of his hand and a soft hiss. When he finally blinked away the flashing black spots that clouded his vision, Jack looked back at the closet again helplessly as he tried to figure out what he should do next.
He didn't even notice that the door to his room had opened until he heard his name.
"Frost!"
~O~
Could nothing ever be easy?
Was anyone even aware of how close Bunny was coming to ripping his own ears off? Did anyone care? It certainly didn't seem like it with the way everybody was just relentlessly throwing more and more stress in his face without a second thought until it all just became one big catastrophe after another.
Not only did Bunny have to find some way to deal with what happened between him and Alice, now he also had to worry about this whole "replacing Alice" thing that Frost just dumped on his head. As if Bunny's day wasn't already bad enough after the unexpected attack on Santoff Claussen.
Why in the world would Alice ever think he was trying to replace her? What could he have possibly done that would make her think such a ridiculous thing? Sure, the dark-haired hellion was no pleasant walk in the bloody park, especially at times like these, but unsurprisingly, neither was Bunny. If Alice could still somehow deal with him after so many years, he could certainly find a way to deal with her. And even if he couldn't, that wouldn't be enough to keep Bunny away from Alice. They had history together. History that no amount of meaningless fights could erase, including the horrible one that just transpired between them.
As always, Bunny was more than willing to forgive and forget if Alice was. It was only a matter of waiting for the right time to seek out the girl and reconcile.
For the moment though, Bunny decided not to think about it much. He knew he would feel horrible later for making Alice think he was trying to replace her with some someone else, but he was just too emotionally exhausted to deal with it now. Immortal or not, the Easter Bunny still had his limits.
So it did not help his developing headache, whatsoever, when Tooth immediately tore into the pooka with a furious rage as soon as she spotted him climbing up the broken, fourth floor staircase.
"Aster Bunnymund!"
Bunny froze in mid-step and flinched deeply at the shrill, angry sound of the Tooth Fairy's voice.
Middle name and full last name? Not a good sign.
"Get over here now, mister!" The furious fairy demanded as she hovered in the air near the main fireplace. She had one hand on her hip in that classic, "I'm cross with you" fashion while her the other hand pointed to the spot in front of her with one, perfectly manicured finger. There was an obvious puff to her iridescent feathers and the fuming glare on her pretty face instantly told Bunny that he was in big trouble.
With dread in his stomach and his ears flat against the back of his head, Bunny let out a deep breath and walked towards Toothiana in stride. He was twice her size. She didn't intimidate him.
"I should skin you right now and make you into a pooka floor rug!"
Okay, maybe she intimidated him a little.
"Oh lord," Bunny groaned miserably as he approached her. "What is it now?"
"Don't play innocent with me!" Tooth snapped before pointing to the little fairy hovering just above her shoulder. "Baby Tooth told me what you did to Jack."
Bunny scoffed loudly and crossed his arms over his as he fixed his green glare on Baby Tooth. "Little snitch."
"How thick is your head, Aster?" Tooth asked, slipping into lecturing mode. "Are you determined to make everybody hate you just so you can win a few pointless arguments?"
Knowing by now that it wouldn't do him any good to reply when Tooth was speaking rhetorically, Bunny only nodded his head in acknowledgement while repressing the urge to roll his eyes in exasperation.
If Tooth had noticed the pooka's blatantly rude gestures, she didn't bring any attention to them. "After everything that has happened tonight, why would you pick another fight with Jack? Why, Bunny? He was only trying to apologize!"
"He was trying to snoop," Bunny rebuffed. "You know how much of a rat he is when it comes to secrets. He was just trying to get me to talk about Alice...nearly worked too."
"And so what!?" Tooth asked irefully, throwing her hands up in frustration. "So what if he knows!? Everybody else does, so why can't Jack? He's part of this team too, Bunny! And he's going to figure it out eventually! It isn't fair to leave him in the dark like this!"
"How many times do I have to say it, sheila?" Bunny groaned as he pinched the bridge of his nose with his paw. "It's not our place to tell him. It's Alice's. If she wants him to know, she can tell him herself. That's the golden rule of respect for beings like us. You and I both know that."
"Oh, don't start preaching morals at me," Tooth huffed indignantly. She could, somewhat, tolerate having the spirit world handbook used against her in an argument if it was coming from someone like North or Sandy, and only if she truly deserved it, but Bunnymund? Absolutely not. After the spectacle he made of himself earlier, he was the last person who should be using that trick. "Regardless of how much you try to downplay everything, it isn't fair to Jack."
"Everybody has the right to keep their past life a secret if they want to," Bunny pushed forward. "You don't see me walking around telling Alice that Jack drowned to death in a lake. And why is that? Because that's Jack's story to tell and it isn't a life or death situation that she doesn't know, just like it isn't life or death that Jack doesn't know. I respect people's personal business, Tooth. Yes, it isn't fair to Jack, but sometimes things ain't fair and there's nothing we can do about it."
Tooth's feathers rattled at the slight insinuation that she couldn't respect people's personal business. That wasn't it at all.
Tooth didn't like being the bad guy in these types of situations. She didn't like coming off as pushy and meddlesome. That just wasn't who she was. However, at the moment, that's who Tooth needed to be because she was the only one around who could do it. Sandy had left hours ago to start his dreamsand rounds and North's attention was obviously needed elsewhere.
It was a common burden when one found herself as the only female member on a team full of headstrong men. And as a queen, Tooth knew it was one of those dreaded moments where she was about to become very unpopular, but when she opened her mouth to demand that Bunny go apologize to Jack immediately, she froze in mid-action when her eyes caught sight of something blue over Bunny's shoulder.
"What's your bloody problem now?" Bunny asked gruffly when he saw the way Tooth's amethyst eyes widened and she choked on her words. Following her shocked gaze, Bunny turned around and felt his blood run cold when he saw what Tooth was staring at. "Oh..."
During their ever-regurgitated argument, neither spirit noticed it when Alice steadily climbed her way up the taxing, fourth floor staircase and stopped to listen curiously to the loud discussion between the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy that she couldn't help but overhear.
She stood silently at the top of the staircase with one hand holding the banister, and the other hanging loosely at her side, watching them with an expressionless face as they stared back at her with wide eyes. After several long, awkward seconds, the dark-haired girl wordlessly turned to her left and followed along the stone path, away from Bunny and Tooth, and towards some other part of the workshop without giving a single indication of how much of their argument she had heard.
"Oops," Bunny hissed sheepishly through his teeth once the sharp echo of Alice's boots clicking against the floor finally faded out.
Tooth closed her eyes with a heavy sigh and started rubbing her temples with her fingers while Baby Tooth slapped her forehead with her palm.
"Ya know, you could've told me she was standing there..."
"Go apologize," Tooth ordered simply as she shut her eyes tighter and continued to ward off a headache.
"I don't know if I should," Bunny remarked uneasily before throwing a wary glance over his shoulder where Alice disappeared. "She still looks a little ticked off about earlier-"
"Not to Alice, Bunny," Tooth cut him off irritably. "To Jack. Go apologize to Jack."
"But-"
"Go!" Tooth barked angrily as she pointed in the general area of the workshop's lodging section. "I'm sick of the fighting, Bunny! I may have stood around like an idiot while you bulldozed your friendship with Alice, but I am not going to make that mistake again. Go apologize."
"But-"
"Now!" Tooth demanded again without giving Bunny another chance to protest before hovering up high in the air until she reached the workshop rafters where a small grouping of mini fairies awaited tooth collecting orders from their queen.
Bunny scowled darkly after her retreating form, but ultimately let out a defeated huff and turned around to head back to the lodging area of Santoff Claussen for the second time.
He barely gave the little fairy that followed him a second glance as he hopped down the broken staircase, that he had just wasted ten minutes climbing up, and idly made his way through the rest of the workshop. Baby Tooth chirped somewhat smugly at him and Bunny could just imagine the self-righteous look on her tiny face for successfully getting the pooka in trouble with her mama bird, but he decided not to dignify her with any sort of response as they quietly made their way through the empty hallways.
Frost's room was a real pain to get to because of how secluded it was from the rest of the guardians' guest rooms, which was why Bunny made it a point to avoid ever having to go there. In the lodging area of North's domain, there were more than enough hallways, full of empty guest rooms for each guardian to have an entire hallway to themselves. Jack's was furthest away because the temperature in his room, and hallway, were always freezing cold.
Although it may be highly ideal and comfortable for the spirit of Winter, sometimes that cold seeped into the neighboring hallways and not everyone in the Russian complex enjoyed freezing weather as much as Jack did. Bunny being one of the prime examples.
The pooka suppressed a heavy shudder when he entered the hallway that housed Jack's room. Visibly, there wasn't much difference between Jack's hallway and anybody else's hallway. The ice spirit usually did a good job of not allowing frost to coat the walls because he feared it would damage the finely carved wood that was North's property.
The only way one could tell that they were getting close to Jack Frost's room, was the puff of cold breath that appeared in front of their faces as soon as they step inside the hallway.
Bunny grumbled indignantly to himself as he moved closer to his destination at the end of the hallway. Baby Tooth started shivering fiercely because of the harsh chill in the air. She wrapped her tiny arms firmly around herself and stubbornly fought back the sneezes she knew were coming.
"Serves ya right, little tattle-tale," Bunny chuckled smugly at her.
The small feathers of the mini fairy's crest rolled up and she glared sharply at the pooka with mismatched eyes, but before she could fire off into a series of high-pitched, annoyed chirps, her attention was drawn elsewhere when further down the hallway where Jack's room was, a bright light suddenly glowed from underneath the door.
Bunny noticed it too and he immediately picked up his pace until he reached Jack's door.
"Frost?" Bunny called tentatively through the door as he knocked a few times. He pressed one of his sensitive ears against dark wood and tried to listen for any distinctive noises on the other side. When he couldn't pick up on anything, Bunny knocked again. "Frost! It's Bunny...open up!"
Still nothing.
"Alright then, I'm coming in now so if you're doing anything embarrassin', ya better stop!"
Bunny waited again for a response. One of his paws wrapped tightly around the brass doorknob after about ten seconds of waiting before he threw all caution to the wind and pushed open the door.
He was only mildly agitated when he discovered that Jack was indeed inside the room, but had failed to acknowledge the Easter Bunny's calls.
"Frost!"
Jack quickly spun on his heel with wide eyes and bit back a surprised gasp when he saw Bunny standing in the doorway of his room.
"What in the bloody blazes is going on in here?" Bunny demanded, giving the Winter spirit a suspicious glare before pointing at the light show shining behind him. "What did you do, Frostbite? What's that behind you?"
"I didn't do anything!" Jack spoke up defensively, instantly giving himself away with how quickly he replied.
Not believing him for a second, Bunny rolled his eyes and stepped into the room. "Well, obviously ya did something, mate. Move over and let me look."
"No! wait!" Jack protested somewhat desperately, but his friend didn't listen as he moved towards the closet and yanked the smaller spirit out of the way by his blue hood to stand next to where Baby Tooth was hovering quietly. Jack ignored the little fairy's curious chirp as he watched the profile of Bunny's furry face intensely as the lights from the closet highlighted the tips of his fur.
The pooka's expression of bored amusement slowly dropped when he got a full look of the swirling maelstrom inside Jack's closet. He stared wordlessly into the lights that spilled out the doorway for several, long moments before turning to look at the white-haired spirit. His face was completely blank of all emotion, but his eyes shined with a curious sense of bewilderment that Jack had never seen before.
"How in the hell did you do this, Frost?"
Bunny's tone of voice wasn't angry and accusing like Jack thought it was going to be. He figured Bunny would still be fired up from their previous spat and immediately assume Jack had been messing with something he shouldn't have been. It was a rare and welcomed reprieve to be spoken to by Bunny in such an uncharacteristically civil way. His tone was surprisingly calm and collected, but filled to the utter brim with confusion.
"I-I don't know," Jack stumbled over his words a little when he realized Bunny was waiting for a reply.
The Easter Bunny gave him an unimpressed frown. "Really? That's the answer you're going with?"
"Honestly, Bunny," Jack insisted. "I don't know what it is, or how I did it. In fact, I didn't do anything. It was the-"
Jack nearly jumped a mile in the air when he suddenly remembered the brass key he had found on his bed. How it slipped his mind in the first place, he had no idea, but once he remembered, he started patting himself down and searching his pockets for the key.
Bunny gave Jack a funny look as he watched the boy rub his hands all over himself for seemingly no reason at all. Even Baby Tooth couldn't help screwing up her tiny face in comical confusion at her friend's silly actions.
Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Bunny turned around and moved away from Frost and the closet as he reached behind his back and pulled his boomerang holster over his head. With a grim face, Bunny searched through the tiny pouches sewn into the holster where he usually kept a little medical supplies, a small lock-picking kit, and a few other emergency items.
"Has Alice been in here recently?" Bunny asked absentminded while he searched his holster for a certain bag of marbles.
"Uh no, why?," Jack replied, continuing his own little search for the key as he checked his hoodie pocket again. The thought didn't even occur to him that the key was probably still in the door's keyhole where he had left it until he was just about to get on his knees and search the floor. When it finally did, Jack almost wanted to slap himself at his own obliviousness.
"Do you have any idea what you're standing next to?"
"Some kind of portal, or something like that I'm guessing?" Jack answered as he fished the brass key out from behind the open closet door.
"Yeah...something like that."
Bunny cursed under his breath when he discovered his holster was void of all marbles. He must've accidentally left them back in his room somewhere when he was arguing with Frost, which fortunately ruled out the possibility of thievery on Jack's part. The kid apparently had no clue he was standing in front of a portal to Wonderland, and yet, Bunny couldn't decide if that was good or bad. How Jack managed to open up the portal was the real question though.
His night had just gone from exceedingly horrible, to unbelievably confusing in under five minutes.
"Bunny? What's going on?" Jack finally asked after waiting for Bunny to turn around and face him again.
Both spirits had their backs turned towards the portal, which would turn out to be a very dangerous mistake because neither of them noticed when a flicker of movement surfaced from within the portal and slowly slicked its way across the floor towards an unaware ice spirit like a slithering snake creeping up on its unsuspecting prey.
Bunny let out an exhausted sigh as he shut his eyes tight and ran a paw over his long ears. "Frostbite, I think you should go back to the workshop. Let me deal with this."
Jack opened his mouth to automatically refuse Bunny's brush-off, but the words immediately dropped when he felt something slimy and warm wrap itself loosely around his bare ankle. A shiver of disgust jolted up his spine at the unsavory feel of it against his cool skin like a giant, wet tongue. His azure eyes widened in nauseated confusion to see some kind of red tentacle tangled around his ankle, slowly making its way up his calf.
He quickly looked up at Bunny to see the pooka still facing away from him before looking back down at the tentacle wrapped around his foot.
He let out a surprised yelp when he saw the tentacle looking back up at him with a newly spouted eyeball. He could slowly feel panic boiling in the pit of his stomach and his limbs twitch with the desire to pull away from the clammy appendage clinging to his leg, but the Winter spirit's brain remained in neutral as he just stared into the red, heart-shaped pupil of the tentacle's disturbing eyeball. Even Baby Tooth tried to get Jack to move away from it by tugging anxiously on his hood. It wasn't until the eyeball blinked at him that Jack finally snapped into action.
"Uh, Bunny," He called nervously as he raised his trapped foot off the ground and balanced his weight on the other. "Help?"
The pooka turned around with an annoyed 'what-did-you-do-now?' look on his furry mug, but it dropped immediately when he saw the boy hopping on one foot with something red curled around the lower part of his scrawny leg.
"Help me?" Jack pleaded again while trying to dislodged the tentacle from his ankle by shaking it off. "I think its glaring at me now!"
"What in the..." Bunny slowly trailed off as his ears lowered and his eyes skimmed across the tentacle's glossy, red surface until they widened again when he saw that it was coming from the portal behind Jack. "Frostbite...stop moving."
At the slight trepidation in the pooka's voice, Jack's insides turned to stone and he stood as still as possible. "Bunny, please get this thing off. It feels really, really gross. Should I freeze it?"
Bunny shook his head as he pulled out a boomerang from his holster and stepped closer to the rigid ice spirit. "No, that'll just piss it off. Let me try and pry it loose with my boomerang. Believe me, you don't want this thing to go taut while it's wrapped around you like that. It's like a bloody anaconda."
That was not an exaggeration. Many decades ago, Bunny once had one of those red tentacles sneak up on him and wrap tightly around his chest while he was helping Alice clear the Red Kingdom of lingering bodily tissue from the Red Queen - who Bunny fortunately never had the chance to encounter before her sudden disappearance. The malicious appendage of raw muscle squeezed his body like a fluffy stress ball, breaking several of his ribs and nearly collapsing one of his lungs before Alice managed to sever it from the main membrane that clung itself to a nearby rook statue.
Jack eyed the slowly advancing pooka warily as he continued to balance on one leg with Baby Tooth hovering near his head, the tiny fairy watching with wide, nervous eyes while Bunny inched closer.
"Alright, but if it breaks my leg, you're going to be my nurse until it's fix-"
Jack cut himself off as he let out a pained yelp when he felt the red tentacle tighten its hold on his ankle in a crushing, unrelenting grip that practically cut off all blood circulation in his foot in a single squeeze when the red eyeball caught sight of Bunny coming towards it with a weapon. The immortal teen then let out another cry when he found himself unceremoniously yanked off his other foot.
The tentacle held Jack up in the air by his foot for a few seconds as Bunny and Baby Tooth stood off to the side in silent panic before it harshly dropped the boy to the ground with a loud thump, knocking the back of his head against the hardwood floor and the breath out of his lungs.
"Jack!" Bunny called out when he finally snapped out of his shocked stupor and swiftly moved forward to help his fallen comrade.
Jack was laying limply on the floor, groaning and holding his throbbing head with the tentacle still wrapped tightly around his ankle, but before the pooka could reach him, a second tentacle suddenly emerged from the glowing portal and lingered menacingly in the air for a few seconds. It waved slightly back and forth in clear warning towards Bunny before lashing out in a red blur and whipping the Easter Bunny square in the chest, hard enough to send him sprawling backwards several feet and on to the floor.
Still disoriented, Jack tried sitting up to stop his head from spinning so he could pry the tentacle off his ankle, but the assaulting appendage yanked sharply on his leg, making him fall back on the floor again. His groans of pain and frustration soon turned into panicked cries when he suddenly found himself being pulled into his closet by the tentacle. Baby Tooth let out a shriek of horror at the sight and immediately flew over to Jack without a second thought and started pulling on the ice spirit's hood in a fierce attempt to keep him anchored to their world, but being the feathered paperweight that she was, she only ended up being pulled along with him. The little fairy refused to let go of her friend though.
"Bunny!" He shouted out to the fallen pooka for help, but Bunny was still fighting valiantly to learn how to breathe properly again after that crippling blow the second tentacle delivered to his chest.
Jack frantically searched along the floor with his hands for something to grab on to so he could fight against his undesired descent into the mysterious portal that led God knows where, but his pale fingers only managed to grab hold of his staff. He clung desperately to the aged wood like a lifeline as the tentacle continued to drag him gracelessly across the floor and into the closet, and despite the iridescent whirlpool still glowing rather spectacularly within the small doorway, Jack felt his panic peak when the tentacle gave one last yank on his leg and fully pulled him into the closet before he could call out to Bunny again.
The Easter Bunny's stomach dropped painfully when he finally managed to pull himself up into a sitting position just in time to see Jack get pulled into the portal and swallowed up completely by the lights.
"Dammit!" Bunny swore loudly, sending a sharp bolt pang throughout his already aching lungs.
He ignored the pain in his chest and quickly climbed to his feet again before stumbling his way to the closet door as the second tentacle slipped back inside the portal and disappeared along with the first. Bunny reached the closet just as the tentacle pulled the door shut with a loud slam that rattled a few decorative pictures hanging on the otherwise, barren walls of Jack's room, and caused a nearby vanity mirror to crack harshly down the middle.
Bunny fumbled with the doorknob as he struggled to gain back control of his limbs. He wouldn't be much help to Jack if he couldn't even get a grip on himself.
After a few tries, the pooka finally managed to get a solid grip on doorknob of the closet door. He had to yank on it hard to get it to open because it almost felt as if something was holding it closed, but when it finally gave way, the only thing on the other side of the door was an ordinary closet filled with dusty old coats.
And no Jack Frost.
AN: Alright! Now we're finally getting somewhere! Although, I'm sorry to disappoint, but ONLY JACK will be going to Wonderland. There would be just too much going on if I were to send everybody to Wonderland.
Honestly, it would be absolute hell for me to try and describe, not only Wonderland (an extremely difficult task in itself), but also describe FIVE individual character reactions without letting the overall plot stall too much? I seriously can't stress enough how much hard it would be to send everybody. I wish I could though, I really do. On the bright side, I do plan to use as many AMR concepts, locations, and characters as I can during Jack's visit to help make up for it!
Also, this was a SUPER long chapter, so sorry if I missed any grammar mistakes. If you see one, let me know in a review and I'll fix it! Thanks!
~Scorpiofreak~