AN: Alright then, this is the part of the story where things get difficult for me, imagery and scenery wise. I tried my best to describe the Vale of Tears. I did a decent enough job, but no words can truly describe McGee's Wonderland in all its beauty. My only saving grace is that you guys already know what the Vale of tears looks like(hopefully), so your mind will just fill in whatever blanks there are in my imagery, which by the way, isn't my strongest area.

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

We're swimming in the blue
The night mist's full of dew
Will I bring light or gloom
My eyes are soaked all way through

Sinking Friendships ~ Jonsi

Jack didn't remember much after being pulled into his closet by the slimy, malicious tentacle that had wrapped itself around his leg.

He remembered the pain of being slammed against a hardwood floor as his body was tossed around his room in Santoff Claussen like an abused rag doll. He also remembered calling out to Bunny one last time just before being swallowed up by the iridescent whirlpool that had become his coat closet, but once he had been fully immersed in the swirling lights, it was a total blur of spinning colors, making Jack feel as if he was trapped inside a child's toy kaleidoscope.

It had been a disorienting experience for sure. Jack didn't know what was up, or what was down because of all the flashing lights and roaring momentum that threatened to shake the very foundation of his entire being. He couldn't even tell if it was his body that was spinning uncontrollably, or if it was just the chaotic wind around him trying to create a nauseating illusion to make him vomit all over himself. Either way, the only thing he was definitely aware of, was that he was falling at an alarming speed.

Where he was falling to and how long it would last, was completely beyond Jack's comprehension, but he was falling fast and he had no doubt that when he finally reached the end of the colorful cyclone he suddenly found himself thrown into, it wasn't going to be a soft landing.

At one point, he thought he saw various objects fly past him as he continued to plummet downwards. They were only brief flashes among the assaulting illumination that nearly blinded him, like fish swimming just below the surface of a rushing river, but Jack had long-since shut his eyes and didn't even attempt to make out what the objects were.

There was an array of distorted voices that he could make out perfectly though. Five or six voices, all whispering in his ear at the same times as his panic and confusion mounted new levels of trauma.

After an indeterminable time of falling, spinning uncontrollably, and hanging on to his staff for dear life, Jack was suddenly hit with another blinding, white light. He closed his eyes even tighter to block it all out, but he felt the air around him change to something less suffocating and vastly open, telling the Winter spirit that he was finally reaching the end of his torturous journey. He opened his eyes to a barreling world long enough to see a large splatter of blue and several clusters of green that could closely resemble a clear sky and trees if everything still wasn't spinning so fast, but that was as far as his observations went.

He heard the loud cracks and snaps of something breaking underneath him as stinging pains whipped along his body and remembered praying to the Moon that what he was hearing, were the sounds of breaking tree branches, not breaking bones.

As soon as he hit the bottom of his long descent, his back connected painfully with a solid surface, sending a bone-rattling wave throughout his entire body that nearly scrambled his brain. Everything went completely dark after that and Jack was oblivious to the rest of the world.

When he finally came around again, it was a slow climb back into consciousness. His memory had not caught up with him yet, just teetering between the fine lines of total recovery and total cluelessness. As far as he could remember, he was laying across his plush bed in North's domain, blissfully brain-dead to his surroundings and the events that had occurred within his last few moments in the land of the awake. There was a slight stiffness to his limbs and a dull throbbing in his spine, but it was all registered as secondary and not nearly important enough for Jack to pull himself from his deliciously comfortable state of mind.

It wasn't until a soft, fluttering breeze brushed along his relaxed face that Jack's brain started to reboot itself. The flapping sound that gradually filled his ears continued for a few moments before coming to land on the tip of his nose where Jack felt a small, tickling sensation against his pale skin.

His face curled up against the annoying stimulation and his eyes closed tighter as he lazily brought up a hand to gently swat away the winged creature perched on his face.

"C'mon Baby Tooth, knock it off. 'm tryin' to sleep."

The flapping started up again as it moved away to avoid Jack's hand, but as soon as his hand went back to rest on his stomach, it landed on his nose again. It didn't even occur to the Winter spirit that the bothersome creature produced a slow, somewhat clumsy flapping noise, instead of the usual, constant hum and chime that was always produced by Tooth Fairy wings. The only thing Jack was aware of was that there was something hovering above his face and it apparently wasn't going to let him go back to sleep, which was something Baby Tooth was known to do when she grew bored of waiting for Jack to wake up on his own.

It tickled his nose again as it steadily walked long the bridge of his nose on tiny, delicate feet until it stopped to rest right in between Jack's eyes. His annoyed frown immediately became an agitated scowl and he opened his eyes with the intent to snap at the tiny fairy for her persistent, and annoying actions, but the words in his mouth suddenly dropped off when his vision was flooded, not with the familiar sight of multicolored feathers and small mismatched eyes, but with two, out-stretched wings of a brilliantly blue butterfly.

Jack let out a loud gasp and quickly swatted the insect off his face before bolting up into a sitting position. He locked his gaze on the flapping creature and watched it warily as if he expected it to charge him, but the butterfly didn't seem too deterred by the spirit's not-so gentle blow. It just slowly made its way out of Jack's reach before joining the few other butterflies fluttering around in the air above him, leaving behind a faint trail of blue sparkles until it disappeared from sight among the trees that Jack now found himself surrounded by.

Jack's breathing increased into light, nervous pants as he whipped his head around in several different directions with wide, azure eyes that frantically took in the new and strange area around him.

He was in a thick, deciduous forest with towering oak trees. They seemed to stretch miles over the top of Jack's snow-white head like skyscraper's with roots and leaves that blocked out the blue sky above him. The sorbet and golden colors of the leaves, matched the late time of year Jack remembered being in, but the fresh scent of Spring and rainfall, the blooming floral life, and lush, green grass he was laying on top of, betrayed what he thought he knew and skyrocketed his confusion to near panic.

With his pulse pounding dully in the back of his ears, Jack immediately begun to scrambled his hands across the patch of grass, that he had previously mistaken as his bed, in search for his beloved staff while he quickly picked his brain for an explanation as to why he wasn't in Santoff Claussen anymore, and where on Earth he was now.

'Come on, think Jack! Think!' Jack mentally prodded himself as he combed his pale fingers through the blades of grass underneath him. 'What is the last thing you remember? Just calm down and think about it for a second. What is the last thing you remember?'

A fight. He remembered Bunny and Alice's fight.

'Okay good. What else?'

Talking to Tooth. She didn't blame him for what happened.

'Thank God for that.'

Then, he went to talk to Bunny. The pooka had been grumpy and shortcoming with Jack, but that wasn't anything new. He talked about Alice though, which was a little unexpected. He was remorseful about their fight and he talked about how she used to be as a child. Before her life went down in flames. Literally.

Their talk started off pretty good with no signs of blame and finger-pointing, but it had ended badly.

'Alright, nearly there.'

Jack went back to his room, laid down on his bed, and...fell asleep? No, that wasn't right. He almost fell asleep. He wanted to fall asleep, but...

'The strange key was digging into his back...'

Yes! The key that was left on his bed! He remembered that!

Everything was starting to come back to him now in a flash. Someone, who has yet to be identified, had left a strange key on his bed. A key that obviously had some weird, magical properties. It had turned his ordinary closet into some kind of portal. Bunny came into his room, saw him, started acting strange, and then the tentacle-

'The tentacle!'

Jack's heart leaped into his throat and he abruptly abandoned his search for his staff. He clumsily maneuvered himself back into a sitting position, his head still slightly disoriented from the fall, before bringing his left leg up near his chin while sticking out his right one for nervous observation. He hissed softly through his teeth as he looked down at his ankle and saw the long, thick strips of purplish bruises that curled around his bony ankle and half of his calf. They stood out sickeningly obvious against his pale skin. Thankfully though, the red tentacle was nowhere in sight. As far as he could remember, the bone-crushing pressure provided by the slimy appendage had released itself soon after Jack had been pulled into the portal.

Speaking of bone-crushing, with a tentative roll of his foot, Jack happily noted no pain in the muscles and bones that made up his ankle. There was a bit of an ache along the skin because of the ugly bruises, but it certainly wasn't anything he couldn't ignore. And even better, when Jack pulled himself into a standing position with a soft grunt, he found he could rest his weight on his ankle without a problem.

As for the rest of his body, he had a few aches in his back that would definitely come back to haunt him later, but again, nothing that he couldn't easily ignore for the time being. He was able to stand on his own two legs and move his other limbs without a hitch.

Now that he was standing, Jack spotted his staff almost immediately laying a few yards away. A powerful surge of relief ran through his body as soon as he was able to feel the familiar sensation of the aged wood underneath the pale skin of his palms. Almost instantly the crooked conduit seemed to glow happily now that it was safely back in its master's hands.

And with that crippling panic attack avoided, Jack went to work with observing the surrounding forest again.

As pretty and pleasant as it was to look at it, there were several things about the forest that Jack knew for sure, weren't normal. Regardless of the fact that he wasn't an expert on forest life during seasons other than his own.

For one thing, other than being freakishly gigantic, most of the trees didn't grow out of the ground. They rested on top of large boulders with their long roots curled around the hard mineral like fingers around a ball.

Even stranger, some of them weren't even boulders. Jack had to walk up to one of the trees and run his hand over the smooth surface of the large, somewhat spherical object that the tree was perched on top of to realize it was some sort of giant shell. An insect shell if he had to guess. It had spiraled grooves and a glossy, orange appearance. Jack wasn't too knowledgeable when it came to bugs either, being a Winter spirit and all, but he at least knew enough to recognize that it was an over-sized snail's shell.

Somehow unable to fully comprehend how utterly bizarre that was, the young guardian slowly let his hand slide off the shell as he begun to walk down the grassy path that led out of the small opening where he had woken up. His azure eyes trailed over everything he passed while his mouth hung open slightly and the gears in his head chugged along two paces too slow.

As he walked, several more things started to strike out at him as extremely odd and unnatural. Autumn-colored leaves drifted slowly down from the tree tops like snowflakes, but never seemed to collect on the ground. There also seemed to be an abundance of oversized objects. Jack passed by a large marble the size of a wrecking ball, sticking out of the side of a boulder and tree. There were huge, colorful mushrooms nearly as tall as him, growing out of the ground and along the dark bark of the trees. He even almost tripped over what looked like an over-sized domino lodged deeply into the ground.

There were definitely a lot of over-sized objects in the forest, enough to the point where Jack was starting to believe he had shrunk somehow, but even more bewildering, they were mostly over-sized toys. Toys that even he remembered playing with when he was a kid, like silver jacks, marbles, and even playing dice.

'Jesus, how hard did I hit my head?'

Was he even awake?

Did all those ill-advised knocks to the head finally put him into a coma? Was that what all this was? Some extremely weird, extremely lucid dream he was having while he laid comatose in some ditch somewhere?

It certainly felt real. Jack could feel the warmth in the air prick at his skin, somehow not entirely unpleasant despite his extreme intolerance to warmer temperatures. He could also feel the cooling reprieve from the shade provided by the trees that nearly blocked out everything he could see of the sky. He could smell the scent of fresh rainfall and lush plant life. He could feel the crisp grass underneath his bare feet. He could see, he could hear, and he could touch.

The noises were serene at least, and normal as far as he could tell. There was the classic chirping of birds in the tree tops, wind rustling occasionally through the leaves and grass, and even the babbling of a stream in the distance. Typical forest noises that he had heard a million times over; although, at one point, Jack thought he heard the faint snorting of a pig, but quickly dismissed it as his imagination.

As unusual and dream-like the forest seemed in atmosphere, Jack wasn't readily willing to believe it was all a figment of his coma-induced mind. He needed a little more convincing before he accepted the fact that he was going totally insane. His self-image could get pretty low sometimes, but not that low.

Whatever this place was, it was real and getting even stranger by the second.

Even more so when Jack rounded a corner and came face to face with an impossible sight that nearly made him drop his staff.

It was another one of those giant snail shells with the oak tree growing on the back, but this shell, was clearly occupied.

Jack raised up his staff in front of him and instinctively fell into a defensive stance as he stared up at the enormous orange snail protruding out of the front of the shell. He would've describe it as monstrous, but he didn't think that would be very fair to the snail since it wasn't exactly doing anything to deserve that title. It just remained completely still next to a cluster of boulders as the tree on its shell stood tall next to the others. It did look down at him though, with its long, beady eyes as it acknowledged his presence with a few lazy blinks. Jack blinked right back at it while slowly lowering his staff with a light, contemplative look on his face. The snail was big and slightly creepy looking, but harmless.

Jack gave the snail a small, tentative wave as he carefully made his way around it and continued down the path. The snail followed his movements with its eyes until he disappeared out of sight.

After that, Jack felt a significant dip in his earlier anxiety and he could no longer hear his pulse pounding in his ears. The tranquil aura of the forest was starting to get to him a little. It made him feel less worried about his current situation. Yes, he still had no idea where he was, but it was difficult to feel threatened in such a gorgeous place.

Things actually seemed to come to life as he walked past them. Large, unrecognizable flowers would bloom as he approached and glow brilliantly, as if lighting up his path for him. He walked along the forest path for an indeterminable amount of time, occasionally having to jump to a high ledge to continue following his path, or walk across a bridge of gravity defying dominoes.

It wasn't until he heard the sound of running water getting closer that he was presented with another shocking sight. One that was infinitely more pleasant than the last.

Jack had just pushed his way through a cluster of bushes when he spotted a tiny creature hovering in the air, near the end of the path, staring up at a large statue at the base of a long stream.

The feathered color scheme, fiercely chiming insect wings, and hummingbird beak were unmistakable.

"Baby Tooth?"

At the sound of his voice, the little fairy broke out of her trance and immediately whipped around, chirping shrilly with a big smile on her face when she saw Jack. She sped over to him as fast as she could and latched herself on to the bridge of his nose, so relieved to see that her friend was okay. She nearly had a heart attack when she couldn't rouse him from dreamland after their crash landing. He wouldn't wake up no matter what she did. Not even when she yanked hard on his hair and poked him in the ear with her beak. When he didn't respond, Baby Tooth reluctantly had to leave him behind to go find help.

Baby Tooth didn't like the strange place they had fallen into.

Yes, it was very colorful and pretty, but it was far too weird and unfamiliar. And even more unsettling, she couldn't hear the constant comfort of Mother Tooth's voice in her head, or sense her welcoming presence anywhere, which was never a good sign.

The last time all her connections to Tooth were silenced like this, Baby Tooth had followed Jack into the Boogeyman's lair to seek out the source of a mysterious voice calling out the Winter spirit's name, and they both knew how well that ended.

"Baby Tooth?" Jack repeated with slight disbelief as he reached up gently pulled the little fairy off his face and held her up by her wings. "Wha-? What are you doing here? When did you-?"

Jack remembered catching glimpses of Baby Tooth during the commotion in his bedroom, but he didn't know she had been sucked into the portal along with him. That would explain the insistent tugs he felt on his hood.

"Why didn't you just let go, Baby Tooth?" Jack asked gently, automatically putting two and two together.

The little fairy chirped softly and averted her mismatched gaze away from Jack's.

As if he even needed to ask.

Of course Baby Tooth wasn't going to just lay around and let Jack be pulled against his will into the unknown like the useless Easter Bunny. It had been moment where some sort of action needed to be taken and didn't want to be caught hiding on the sidelines like a coward, not when someone she cared for was in danger. She was incredibly small and just about as threatening as a real hummingbird, but she'd be damned if she let that stop her from trying.

However, Baby Tooth's core wasn't entirely made of steel. She was definitely going to be in trouble with Mother Tooth and she most certainly wasn't looking forward to that. Ever since meeting Jack, Baby Tooth had inadvertently made a habit of flying straight into danger like a brash fool, which her mother obviously did like, but was worth it to know that Jack wouldn't be lost in uncharted by himself? Of course it was. The Winter spirit was her best friend.

At her wide, innocent gaze, Jack let out a long sigh before letting go of the little fairy's wings.

"Tooth's going to kill me for allowing you to hitch yourself to another one of my messes."

Jack casted a long glance at his surroundings with hardened eyes and a sullen face.

"And what a mess it is," He murmured to himself before looking back at Baby Tooth. She was wringing her small hands together nervously. "Any idea where we are?"

Baby Tooth regretfully shrugged her shoulders and shook her head in response. She had absolutely no clue.

"Hey, what's that on your coin belt?" Jack asked curiously when he noticed something hanging off the back of the gold band that Baby Tooth wore around her feathered waist to carry coins during teeth collections.

Baby Tooth's anxious frown immediately brightened when the boy's question reminded her of the small treasure she had found while seeking out help for Jack. She quickly reached behind her back and pulled her treasure off the belt before excitedly presenting the golden tooth to her friend with an ecstatic chirp.

Why there were small piles of teeth laying randomly on the forest floor, Baby Tooth couldn't even begin to guess, but she felt a surge of pure horror when she came across several of the pearly whites resting in a mound of dirt. Tooth Fairy instinct took over without her consent and her mission to find help for Jack was momentarily forgotten as her one-track mind forced her to rescue the abused teeth from the filthy ground. It was then that she discovered the golden bicuspid beauty laying among the stark white ones.

The next ten minutes were spent gushing uncontrollably over the remarkable treasure she had just found. The other teeth were immediately expelled from her mind in favor of the solitary golden tooth in her tiny hands. She studied every inch of it with pure fascination, briefly noting that it didn't appear to be a baby tooth, but not really caring otherwise. It was absolutely gorgeous and Baby Tooth reveled in the fact that she was able to hold it in her hands.

Eventually though, her all-consuming euphoria finally died down enough for her to remember that she was supposed to be doing something very important, which was finding help for her friend, who may, or may not need immediate medical attention.

She beat herself up harshly after regaining her senses and remembering Jack's condition, but despite the seriousness of the situation and how selfish it came off as, Baby Tooth couldn't force herself to put the golden tooth back on the ground. It almost physically hurt to think about leaving the sparkling beauty behind in the dirt.

She debated with herself over it. Obviously the tooth couldn't belong to anybody if it was just laying on the ground. No one wasn't using it. If she wanted to, she could take the abandoned beauty. There was no one around to stop her. Plus, how ridiculous was it that someone would just leave teeth laying all over the ground in the first place?

So, ignoring her better judgment, Baby Tooth took it with her because her blasted tooth obsession easily outweighing her guilt. She strapped it on to her belt and continued down the forest path in search for anything familiar that could help her figure out where they were.

"Eh, you hang on to that," Jack suggested meekly when Baby Tooth held out the tooth for him to take. Tooth and her fairies may love teeth more than anything else in the world, but Jack could never get over the fact that teeth come from people's mouths enough to touch one without thinking about chewed up food and human saliva. "I'll probably just lose it."

At the appalling though, Baby Tooth quickly hugged the tooth to her chest, cradling it almost protectively against his blasphemous words.

Jack only rolled his eyes before looking up at the statue that Baby Tooth had been staring intensely at when he had found her.

"Whoa," He gasped out softly at the looming, stone structure towering over him and his fairy friend. "Get a load of this thing, Baby Tooth."

It was a large statue of a crying girl.

Her eyes were closed and her expression was woeful as she held her hands against her cheeks as if sobbing into them. Cool, clear water slowly streamed out over the top of the statue's fingertips and flowed down her hands and arms until it reached the statue's waist where it bleed into the stream at the very base, further amplifying the statue's image of a crying girl.

'This is kind of cool looking,' Jack thought to himself as he reached out a pale hand and ran it through the statue's steady downpour of tears. The water felt refreshingly cool and soft against his cold skin. 'Tragic and sorrowful, but undeniably beautiful and expertly crafted. Obviously not natural though. I wonder who made this?'

Jack quickly pulled his eyes away from the statue's lamentable face and trailed them along its other features before his brain started reciting random works of poetry that he had learned from one of the many books in North's library. On the top of his head, he knew several that would accurately describe the lugubrious image that the statue was blatantly portraying.

His gaze moved along the statue's small hands and slender arms, over the deep grooves in the stone that represented the girl's long hair, and finally over the green moss that clung on to the puffy sleeve of the girl's dress-

Wait a minute.

Jack's eyes flickered back up to the statue's soft, oval-shaped face with a look of unrestrained perplexity.

"Baby Tooth," Jack murmured gently, gaining the attention of the little fairy who had been closely observing the gold tooth in her hands, again. "Is it just me, or does that statue kinda look like..."

He trailed off slowly, falling deep into his thoughts as the gears in his head continued turn and seek out believable explanations. There was a nagging voice in the back of his head that had its suspicions about where he was, but somehow, the connection between that voice and the rest of his brain was nonexistent. Repression maybe? Too crazy of an idea for him to handle?

Regardless the reason, Jack only had enough in him to continue staring blankly up at the statue as his brain muddled through repeat thoughts and regurgitated theories until a noise abruptly announced itself and instantly shattered the sense of calm that Jack had allowed himself to settle into since he had first started his exploration of the extraordinary forest he had woken up in.

"Having fun sightseeing, boy?"

A deep, velvety voice broke through the quiet air of the surrounding forest and immediately alarmed the unwilling travelers, causing Jack to nearly jump a mile in the air.

Baby Tooth chirped shrilly in fright at the sudden voice and quickly dived down towards Jack so she could hide within the safe confines of the spirit's hoodie pocket. Once inside, she subtly poked half of her face out to search for the possibly dangerous newcomer.

"Who's there!" Jack demanded loudly as he raised his staff in defense, the aged wood glowing brightly with his ice magic.

His azure eyes frantically scanned over his surroundings, seeking out the person who had spoken, but finding nothing that could be considered threatening. Only lush foliage and vibrant flowers.

"Show yourself!" Jack called out in the classic cliché.

For the most part, his voice remained steady, maintaining the level of authority that was expected of a guardian to be able to produce in the face of possible danger and conflict, but he couldn't entirely hide the slight trepidation in his voice as he searched for an opponent he couldn't find. He nearly flinched when it became painfully obvious that whoever the voice belonged to, picked up on that brief waver in his tone and immediately called him out on it.

"Nervous?" The voice asked mockingly.

Jack didn't respond. He only glared darkly at the shadowed areas of the forest, hoping that would help coax the unknown speaker to come out of hiding so Jack could see him.

"I suppose I would be too if I were in your shoes - metaphorically speaking of course. The unforgiving shrew will most definitely not be happy when she realizes that you are here. She doesn't take too kindly to trespassers, you know."

Jack slowly turned in circles with his staff still held out in front of him, trying to pinpoint the origin of the disembodied voice that echoed throughout the trees and ghosted teasingly over Jack's snow-white head. "Come out where I can see you!"

"Why? So you can singe my fur with ice the second I appear?" The voice drawled lazily. "As tempting as that sounds, I'm afraid I will have to decline."

In vain, Jack tried to follow the haunting voice. His eyes ricocheted off towering trees and looming boulders as his brain drowned out the sound of the flowing stream and several other distracting noises that threatened to break his concentration and throw him off the voice's trail.

Jack felt his eye twitch with frustration and his heartbeat pick up with unease as his efforts were met with failure. He had no idea where the voice was coming from. As far as he could tell, it was coming from everywhere.

He tightened his grip on his staff and prompted it to glow brighter. "Not going to ask again! Come out now, or I'll-"

"Or you'll what?" The voice interrupted caustically, his challenge thick and unrelenting as the words continued to bounce off several different surfaces, keeping Jack light on his feet. "Hit a target you can't even see?"

In response, Jack swung his arm down as hard as he could and watched as a blinding ice blast ripped out of the crook of his staff with a thundering crack, striking several nearby trees and flowers in a wide-range attack. Shining frost immediately blossomed from where the blast hit and swiftly spread to the neighboring plants until the glistening spikes reached the ground and slowly bleed across the grass.

Jack smirked softly despite himself. "Might take me a little while, but I'm sure I'll hit something eventually."

The voice chuckled sardonically, unaffected by the Winter spirit's warning shot and infectious ice powers. It was a deep, unsettling sound that caused unpleasant shivers to roll down Jack's spine.

"Spoken like a true fool."

"Come out!" Jack demanded once more with real conviction. He glanced around again, careful not to let his eyes focus on one thing for too long before moving on to the next.

Not only was his current predicament grating violently against his nerves and making him as paranoid as a jumpy Easter Bunny, but it also gave him a horrible sense of Deja Vu. It reminded him too much of what happened to him in Pitch's lair two years ago. The disembodied voice and Jack's failure to locate its owner made him feel as if he was trapped within the endless labyrinth of the Nightmare King's domain again as the willowy man took cover in the shadows and proceeded to mercilessly dissect and poke at Jack's racing thoughts and deep-seeded self doubts.

Jack didn't like facing an opponent he couldn't see. If he were to be honest about himself, Jack lacked the focus needed to pick apart the many sounds around him and grasp the one he needed to concentrate on. One moment he starts to think that he has a solid hold on the voice, but then the next, it would bounce off the rippling waves of the flowing stream and once again knock Jack off his focus, leaving him grasping at thin air.

"No," Came the voice's blatant reply. "Feel free to throw as many tantrums as you would like, but I will come out when I am good and ready, you stupid boy."

"I'm not stupid!" Jack protested angrily. "Where do you get off calling me-"

Wait a minute.

Why did that just sound so familiar all the sudden?

It took a few moments before the recognition came, but when it did, Jack let out a sharp gasp before taking one of his hands off his staff and frantically patting it up and down his torso. When his fingers came in contact with the slim object he was searching for, Jack reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled out the strange brass key that had started it all. He quickly brought it up to his face and looked at the tag, reading the offending words on the ivory stationery.

Stupid boy

"You put this key in my room!" Jack accused loudly as his eyes widened with stunning clarity. He raised his hand up in the air with the brass key held tightly in between his pale fingers. "Didn't you!?"

He received no response. Only the sounds of chirping birds and chattering leaves as a long breeze gently swept over the area.

"Hey! Answer me!" He exclaimed. "Why'd you give me this key?"

"Well I couldn't very well wait for you to find your way here on your own, now could I?" The voice purred patronizingly. "That would've taken forever and I'm in no mood for patience."

"Who are you and what is this place?"

"I thought you would've guessed that by now. You disappoint me, boy."

"Do you have any idea who I am?" Jack snapped irritably. "Who I'm friends with?"

"I'm perfectly aware of who you are, Frost, and the ostentatious company you keep."

"Then you must have a lot of nerve to think you can trespass in Nicholas St. North's domain and toss me around like that!"

"I did no such thing," The voice protested, for the first time taking on a defensive tone, albeit subtle and nearly undetectable. "I may have given you the key to unlock the door to this world, but it was you who didn't bother to take any sort of precaution before doing so. I fail to see how the blame can be effectively pinned on me if you're the one with the narrow-minded focus."

"Clearly, you're not here to attack me, otherwise I'm sure you would've tried it by now," Jack deduced out loud while slightly falling out of his defensive stance, but making sure to keep a firm grip on his staff. "Would you mind telling me who you are, or are we just going to continue running around in pointless circles until the cows come home?"

"I suppose you could consider me a friend, but that would be stretching it a bit thin. Although, I'm certainly more docile than most of the creatures that dwell within the Vale of Tears."

Vale of what?

"Where are we?"

"Are you always this thick-headed, stupid boy, or am I just lucky to have caught you on one of your off days?" The voice asked in a somewhat clipped tone. "Come now, I'm sure you'd be able to guess if you really put your mind to it."

"Why the hell do I even need to guess!?" Jack shouted, his frustration finally reaching its boiling point. "Why can't you just come out and show yourself to me? What are you, ugly or something? I'm sick and tired of these stupid games! On any other day I'm sure I wouldn't mind standing around getting ridiculed like this, but not today! What's the point of all this!"

As Jack's raised voice echoed throughout the forest trees, a strange, unsettling change in the air became unbearably claustrophobic in a matter of seconds when Jack suddenly felt a thick, living presence appear right behind him and the skin-crawling sensation of someone's warm breath ghosting over the cool skin of his ear and neck.

"I wanted to test if you were worthy," The deep voice hissed inches from the Winter spirit's ear.

Jack bit back a yelp of surprise as he quickly readied his staff again and whirled around to finally confront the haunting voice face to face, literally. However, instead of looking into the eyes of another recognizable spirit, or even human, crystal blue eyes met a brilliantly piercing gold.

This time, Jack couldn't hold back his startled cry as he immediately stumbled backwards to get as far away as he could from the penetrating stare before clumsily tripping over his own feet and falling on to his backside. He couldn't find the drive to pull himself back up though as he stared disbelievingly at the grey figure sitting a few feet away from him.

An enormous, gaunt cat with grey fur and black tribal-like stripes, sat itself on the ground in front of Jack. The highly disturbing, mangy creature was extremely thin, verging on skeletal, with matted fur and large claws at the ends of its paws. It was easily as tall as Jack's chest while sitting, but its size wasn't really what he found so unsettling about it. The way it was sitting and looking at him was what frightened Jack the most. It sat there with its back straight as board, bony tail flicking back and forth in the air, its golden eyes wide and clearly intelligent, and lastly, the highly disturbing, unbelievably human, yellowed grin that it had plastered across its grey, emaciated face.

Jack watched in wide-eyed horror as the bony creature opened its mouth and spoke.

"And by all accounts, you failed."

Jack quickly climbed to his feet, careful not to take his eyes off the freaky creature as he raised his staff and pointed the business end in the creature's direction.

In the back of his mind, he heard Baby Tooth cry out in fright after unwisely poking her head out to see their patronizing, deep-voiced visitor. The little fairy trembled at the sight of the ghastly cat and quickly dived back into her friend's pocket. Jack barely felt the sensation of Baby Tooth burrowing deeper into his pocket as the material shifted against his abdomen. His attention was fully focused on the grinning cat.

He didn't even bother trying to hide his incredibly disturbed grimace. "Jesus Christ, what are you!?"

"Are you blind as well as stupid, boy? Isn't it obvious?" The gray cat smiled wickedly at him. "I'm the Cheshire Cat."

Jack felt his innards plummet and his face drain at the infamous name as the very foundation of his mind was suddenly pulled right out from underneath his feet, leaving him to crash unceremoniously to the ground in unadulterated shock.

"N-no way," He shook his head in half-assed denial. "There's just no way that you're- that I'm- that we're in-"

The Cheshire Cat seemed to revel deeply in the ice spirit's reaction for his golden eyes danced with malicious excitement and his slightly blood-splattered grin curled even higher, purring delectably at the boy's flabbergasted face. "Judging by the unhinged jaw and stark white complexion, I'm sure you now know exactly where you are."

Thoroughly alarmed and unable to respond, Jack felt himself slowly back away as the pounding in his chest and ears returned tenfold. His brain worked valiantly to fully register everything that was unfolding in front of him, but it wasn't until a lone leaf fluttered in front of his balked face on its way towards the ground, interrupting his racing mind and bring him back to the present, that Jack finally moved.

In an instant, Jack's head snapped up towards the treetops and his eyes darted frantically along the clusters of sorbet and honey colored leaves until they landed on a small sliver of blue sky peeking out through the branches.

He quickly gathered up a gust of wind from the air around him and propelled himself upwards like a rocket, leaving behind a sizable patch of frost where he previously stood and a flinching Cheshire Cat as he lifted up a paw slightly and turned his head away to avoid getting bits of frosted mist in his eyes. The panicked Winter spirit didn't even stop to navigate through the tree branches as he approached them. He blew through them face-first with only his forearm and staff to protect him and break away the tree limbs.

When he broke through the treetops, he looked around with wide eyes at the limitless expanse of blue sky, the endless drop into a cloudy white abyss underneath the floating landmass that Jack hovered precariously over, and the other floating islands that surrounded the "Vale of Tears" along with more over-sized, gravity defying dominoes and marbles.

Finally, after being presented with explicit evidence that Jack was no longer in his own dimension anymore, and his encounter with a character he had only every seen in books and movies - a character he was both familiar, and unfamiliar with - only one word came to mind.

Wonderland

~O~

"Tooth, we have a problem."

The fairy queen regarded the fidgety pooka standing in front of her with a scrutinizing stare. "Did you apologize to Jack like I told you to?"

Tooth had sensed the unease and apprehension coming from Bunny the second she noticed him making his way back up the broken, fourth floor staircase. Although, one didn't necessarily need to be very perceptive to pick up on the Easter Bunny's odd behavior since it was rather obvious that the pooka was nervous about something. His ears were twitching more than usual, his movements were stiff and jerky as he walked across the main fireplace area, and he had a wild, panicked look in his forest green eyes.

"Yes," He responded immediately before shaking his head and stuttering. "I-I mean no. I didn't. I was going to, but I didn't get the chance."

Tooth put her hands on her feathered hips and gave him an unimpressed frown. "Aster, I thought I said-"

"I know what you said, sheila. I'm a selfish jerk who likes to pick fights and never apologizes for it. I know, you've already told me that, repeatedly," Bunny snapped irritably in a hushed tone. "But can you just forget about all that for a second so I can tell you something really, really important?"

"Why are you whispering?" Tooth asked, clearly exasperated.

Bunny glanced anxiously around the room at the other occupants, which included all the spiritual beings currently staying in Santoff Claussen except Jack Frost. He offered the Sandman a forced, friendly smile when they locked eyes and Sandy waved from where he was lounging in a chair by the fireplace, but Bunny's gaze lingered the longest on Alice.

She was sitting by one of the broken windows near the fireplace with her long legs tucked underneath her as she worked diligently on re-dressing the wound North had received earlier during their battle to defend his workshop. At the time, the Russian had been too preoccupied with fighting off menacing ooze monsters to do more than rip off a strip of fabric from a fallen tapestry and sloppily wrap it around the stinging laceration on his forearm before charging right back into battle, but now that the fighting was over and the reconstruction of the workshop was well on its way, he allowed himself to sit down and rest while someone properly addressed his injury.

Alice had volunteered to do it immediately. Bunny suspected it was a choice made out of guilt, for not being there to help during the battle, but she also could've just been doing it for a lack of something more productive to do. Bunny wasn't really in the mood to ask though. All he cared about was that Alice's attention was elsewhere. And judging by the wild gesticulating that North was doing with his hands and the boastful tone in his voice, he was conveniently distracting Alice with one of his many, riveting tales of his time spent as a Cossack bandit king.

"We've got a big problem," Bunny repeated as he turned back to Tooth.

"Oh God, what is it now?" Tooth moaned miserably.

Bunny gestured gently with his paw for Tooth to hover closer to him so their conversation could stay just between the two of them. "Well I'm gunna tell ya, but first, you have to promise me that you won't freak out."

"Why do I have the feeling that this isn't going to be good?"

"Will ya just promise me?" Bunny snapped again.

"Oh alright, no need to be so cranky all the time, Bunny," Tooth rolled her eyes before raising her right hand. "I promise I won't freak out."

Bunny threw one last glance back at Alice and North before taking in a deep breath. "Jack and Baby Tooth are gone."

Tooth blinked at him vacantly with her arms crossed over her chest for a few seconds as his words sunk in. "Gone? What do you mean gone? Where'd they go?"

"Well," Bunny let out an anxious laugh as he sheepishly brushed down his ears. "Something happened when I went to go apologize. For the record though, I have no idea how it happened or how Jack did it, but long story short, Jack somehow opened up a portal to Wonderland."

Tooth's eyes widened and her voice blurted out shrilly. "What?!"

Bunny flinched violently at the sound as several heads perked up at the sudden interruption and turned to curiously watch the Easter Bunny laugh nervously again while an awestruck Tooth Fairy stared at him with a dropped jaw.

"Will you keep your bloody voice down!" Bunny whispered angrily when he stepped closer to Tooth and turned them both so they faced away from their friends after trying to appease them with a fake, nonchalant shoulder shrug and a lopsided grin as if he had no idea what Tooth's problem was either.

"Where's my fairy, Bunny?" Tooth asked urgently in an infinitely lower tone of voice. Worry immediately began to cloud her mind when she reached out to her mini fairy through their mental connection but came up with nothing.

"She's with Jack," Bunny replied before dropping his volume even lower. "In Wonderland."

"How did this happen?"

"Like I said before, I have no idea how Jack did it," Bunny said, only partially telling the truth.

He knew exactly how Jack opened the portal. He used Elizabeth Liddell's bedroom key, but for the life of him, Bunny couldn't figure out how the little annoying gnat had managed to get a hold of such a sacred Wonderland relic. Alice certainly didn't give it to him, Bunny knew that for damn sure. The key held such sentimental value to Alice that the girl would never give it to someone she barely knew. She kept it hidden somewhere in her bedroom back in the Red Kingdom. Not even Bunny knew where to find it.

"How do you know they're in Wonderland?"

Bunny gnawed briefly on his bottom lip as he thought about whether he should tell Tooth exactly what happened. "Because I watched them get dragged in."

"Dragged?" Tooth gaped. "By what?"

"Long story," Bunny shook his head and waved off her question. No need to freak the fairy queen out even more by revealing that her fairy and close friend were possibly being held captive by the malignant Red Queen. "I'll explain everything later. The only reason I'm tellin' you this is because I need you to do somethin' for me. Think you can do it?"

Although she didn't really appreciate having her questions brushed off so easily, Tooth only nodded mutely in response.

"I'm goin' to Wonderland to get them," Bunny said, taking no notice of the figure inching its way closer to the duo from behind. "While I'm gone, I need you to distract Alice. She cannot know where Jack is. She will go ballistic."

"And how do you expect me to do that?"

"I don't know, just think of something. Anything. Just don't let her find out-"

"What are we whispering about?"

Both spirits yelped and jumped in surprise when a large shadow fell over them and a hushed, accented voice announced itself.

"North!" Tooth gasped as she held a hand to her pounding heart. "Don't do that! You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

North smiled gleefully and chuckled as he watched his friends calm down from their scare. "Sorry, Toothie. All your secretive whisperings made me curious. I had to find out what it was all 'bout."

Tooth exchanged a nervous glance with Bunny.

"What is it?" North asked as his smile dropped a few notches when he caught their look.

"North, we have a big problem," Tooth said, repeating Bunny's words from earlier. "Jack and Baby Tooth are trapped in Wonderland."

Just like Tooth, North's eyes widened, but not nearly as much as hers did. "Moi Deti! That is big problem. How did this happen?"

Tooth opened her mouth to repeat what Bunny had told her, but she was cut off when the pooka suddenly spoke up.

"Uh, North?" Bunny uttered nervously as he looked around the room. "Where's Alice?"

The Russian looked at him curiously with a cocked eyebrow before following Bunny's gaze. When he didn't see the familiar, petite figure of the young woman staying in his home, his brow knotted in confusion and he pursed his lips in thought.

"Strange, she was here second ago."

"Oh God, she didn't hear us, did she!?" Bunny gaped in horror.

"Possibly," North replied almost flippantly, obviously not seeing the seriousness of the situation. "She was standing behind me, after all. Perhaps you didn't notice."

"Of course we didn't notice her standing behind you!" Bunny snapped harshly as he clutched desperately at his long ears. "You're built like a bloody oak tree, mate! Why didn't you say anything!?"

"You didn't ask."

Bunny groaned loudly before spontaneously breaking out into a run towards the broken staircase, now knowing exactly where Alice went. The other guardians watched the pooka disappear down to the next floor with wide, confused eyes before quickly following suit, albeit at a much slower pace. Sandy silently watched them go as he stayed behind to drink his eggnog. He wouldn't be able to keep up with them even if he tried.

Swiftly maneuvering over fallen workshop machinery and weaving in between large groups of yetis, Bunny made it towards the lodging area of Santoff Claussen in less than thirty seconds. From there, he quickly navigated the long maze of guest room hallways until he finally reached the one that housed his, and just as he had feared, the door to his room was wide open. Bunny didn't even need to go inside to know that he wouldn't find Alice, or his bag of marbles that he had so stupidly left behind in his earlier haste.

Not only was Alice now gone too (and most likely out for Winter spirit blood), but she also made it so no one else could follow her, which left Jack completely on his own.

Bunny let out another groan and shook his head as he pinched the fur in between his eyes. Could this night possibly get any worse?

When North and Tooth finally caught up, Bunny fixed North with a jaded glare as soon as the large man rounded the corner.

"What?" The Russian panted out as he leaned his weight on his knees and fought to catch his breath again after running for so long and trying valiantly to keep up with Tooth.

"Nice going, mate!" Bunny let out a humorless laugh while crossing his arms over his furry chest. "Ya just murdered Frostbite!"

~O~

Jack didn't trust the air around him enough to do any long-distance flying.

Almost immediately he sensed the winds of Wonderland were vastly different from his wind back in the real world, even before the Wonderland winds threw him into the side of a mountain and dropped him unceremoniously to the hard ground.

Jack's wind was always gentle with him. When he was riding through the sky with neck-breaking speed and the wind wrapped securely around him with its cool, familiar embrace, Jack felt comforted and completely at ease, even daring enough to perform his usual death-defying twists and flips. The wind was Jack's first, and only, friend when he became a spirit. It was the first thing to acknowledge his existence, and even though he couldn't interact with the wind on a normal level as one would with any spirit, or human, due to the fact that the wind wasn't much of a conversationalist, Jack cherished the relationship they shared. He was the wind's favorite when it came to the seasonal spirits. He trusted the wind with his life and the vast, formless spirit never dropped him, so long as the Winter spirit held his staff firmly in his hand.

The Wonderland wind was spotty and unstable to say the very least, like a rickety old bridge hanging over a deadly, bottomless drop. With one wrong move, the rotten plank of wood underneath your foot could break loose and you'd find yourself falling to your death.

It yielded to absolutely no command from Jack and it seemed almost malicious in nature. It loved to toss Jack around and make him crash into things. One moment, Jack would be expertly sailing through the air, just above the treetops as he searched for a way to return home, and then the next, his was receiving a face full of hard rock. And Jack would swear up, down, and all the way to the moon, that whenever he was thrown into a hard surface, or dropped on top of some ill-tempered creature, Jack could almost hear the wind around him laughing at his misfortune.

Jack ran around the "Vale of Tears" for what had to be hours before realizing that he had no means of helping himself, or Baby Tooth, return to Santoff Claussen. The Wonderland wind was a constant roadblock that Jack could not get around no matter how hard he tried. At first, he attempted to gently coax it into listening to him, which seemed to work for a little bit before it became apparent that the wind was just screwing with him when its hold on him randomly vanished and Jack plummeted downwards. He also tried forcing it into submission, which was something he would never do to his own wind out of pure respect, but the results of that attempt were even more unpleasant. Who knew there were giant, mutant Venus Flytraps in Wonderland? Jack certainly didn't.

Without the advantage of flight, or the bird's-eye view it gave him over the mysterious land, Jack felt as useless as a lab rat trapped in a maze. Every time he ventured too far over the treetops, the wind had him back on the ground in a matter of seconds.

"Do tell me when you're finished making a fool of yourself." Jack heard the Cheshire Cat call wistfully from where he lounged in the sunlight on top of the sobbing girl statue (that still looked suspiciously a lot like its creator) as he watched with mild amusement when Jack hit the forest floor for the eleventh time. "We have a lot of ground to cover and not much time to do it in."

"And what makes you think I'm going to go anywhere with you?" Jack snapped irritably as he gingerly picked himself off the ground again, finally deciding to give up on riding the winds. Personally, Jack could take a lot of bodily damage before tapping out, but since Baby Tooth was still hiding inside his hoodie pocket, he knew he couldn't be as reckless as he would like to be.

"Because it's incredibly imperative that you do," Cheshire said, his unsettling grin still blatantly present on his face.

"Doesn't sound like it," Jack replied flippantly as he brushed grass and dirt of his hoodie and trousers before standing up straight and giving the grinning feline a blank face. The cat still scared the crap out of him, but Jack wasn't going to give Cheshire the pleasure of knowing that. "Look, I've the read the books before, and seen all the movies and adaptations, so I know how this whole thing works already."

Without a single hitch in his smile, the Cheshire Cat tilted his head to the side curiously.

"You're going to act like you're trying to help me, like you're my only hope to survive Wonderland or whatever, but all you're really going to do is talk in confusing circles, spout pointless riddles that make no sense, whatsoever, and disappear and reappear randomly when it is the absolute least convenient time for me, and all because you get some sick kick out of mentally tormenting lost children. So, as I'm sure you can understand, I'm really not in the mood for all that."

For several seconds the Cheshire Cat didn't respond. Neither spirit moved, only regarded each other blankly until the mangy cat's smile curled higher. "You have a remarkably deep voice for someone your size."

"Ugh! I give up!" Jack shouted after balking at the cat, throwing his hands in the air and turning his back on him. "Just leave me alone!"

"Funny," Cheshire sniffed as he slowly pushed himself in a sitting position with his front paws. "I thought you, of all people, would be excited to be here."

Jack halted in mid-step. He remained silent for a few more seconds before letting out a heavy sigh. "Yeah...I thought so too, when I first learned Wonderland was real. But now, it just doesn't seem...right, for me to be here. This is Alice's world and I feel like I'm trespassing. And I've already done enough of that to be rightfully labelled as an asshole."

"Well, how unfortunate for you then," The Cheshire Cat purred deeply before disappearing from his spot on top of the crying statue and then reappearing a few feet from Jack. "As much fun as I apparently get out of "mentally tormenting lost children", I wouldn't have brought you here if it wasn't crucial. I do have more important things I could be doing right now, you know. You're here because you need to be here, Frost."

"Oh yeah? And why would that be?"

"Because I have no doubt that your intrusion will draw her back to Wonderland."

"Her? You mean Alice?"

"Who else, boy?" Cheshire drawled, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "Ever since that overgrown, cantankerous rodent came bearing the news of Alice's acceptance into your bodacious bunch of overly optimistic "friends" - as you most likely call them - Wonderland has been without its queen and champion, which does not bode well for its inhabitants."

"And that's my problem how?" Jack deadpanned.

The Cheshire Cat narrowed his eyes at the Winter spirit. His grin was still in place, but somehow he still managed to give off an annoyed vibe. "I would imagine after such an attack on your companion's domain, you would want to seek out answers about the wicked beasts' origins, which I highly advise you do. Believe when I say, that is not the last you'll see of them."

Jack's eyes widened at the cat's words. "Wait, those ooze monsters that attacked North's workshop, they came from here?"

The Cheshire Cat didn't respond. He only looked briefly towards the sky with his constant grin and hardened eyes. "I would get a move on if I were you. You've wasted enough time as it is. Alice can't be too far behind and I doubt she'll be very pleased when she finds you."

Jack felt dread pool in his stomach at the very thought and he valiantly suppressed a shudder. "I-I'll just tell her what happened. That I was attacked and dragged here against my will. She can't get that mad if she knows it isn't my fault, right?"

"Perhaps," Cheshire smiled wickedly. "But then again, perhaps not. Perhaps she'll be too furious to care. Whatever ends up happening though, I'm sure I'll have a fantastic time watching."

And with that pleasant note, the emaciated feline winked mockingly at Jack before disappearing completely from sight.

AN: Alright kiddies, say goodbye to the other guardians because that's the last we're going to see of them for the next few chapters! I did a small mentioning of the teeth in Wonderland only because a few people asked for it. There are a lot of game components that I wish I could involve in my story, but not all of them transfer over very well into writing. The teeth collecting in AMR is mainly just a game filler. It's a type of currency for Alice's weapon upgrades, so they won't be much use to Jack, but since Baby Tooth is with him, I knew I needed to at least mention them.

Sorry for any mistakes in the content. Due to the fact that both of my beta readers were unavailable, this is an entirely self-edit chapter, so I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out I missed a lot of errors. As usual though, if you see one, let me know in a review and I'll fix it!

~Scorpiofreak~