It's May. The northern hemisphere is far too warm for him to be needed, and the southern hemisphere isn't quite cold enough for him yet. He can make snow and frost fun, but he can't rush into an area that's still well above freezing. He could always go and hide out in Antarctica while he waits for winter to take hold, but there aren't people to play with there.
Even he can't make chilly all that fun, though. Best to save his hard work for when snow can stick.
Jack yawns, tired as he arrives at North's Workshop. He'd worked to make it snow a little early in Australia, but a warm front had fought him. Fall wasn't quite ready to let go of the continent yet. Another week or two and he'll be able to get snow on the ground and keep it there, though.
Still, the effort had worn him out, and the big comfy chairs the Guardians use during their meetings are calling his name. For once, Jack has arrived before anyone else, so he has some time to kill before they arrive. A little power nap won't hurt anything.
With a sleepy smile, Jack props his staff up against the table. It's currently covered in various papers, books and tools, but the frost spirit knows that soon enough it'll be covered in delicious snacks. With another yawn, Jack sprawls himself out across the massive chair, and he tosses one leg over the armrest and snuggles into the plush padding.
This time of year is about as slow as it'll be for any of the Guardians, so he expects this meeting will likely go longer than most. The meetings are technically a time for the group to share concerns and provide updates to one another about the children of the world, but, with the globe glowing so brightly and no sign of trouble, the meetings have become an excuse to visit with everyone and sample the delicious culinary creations of the Yeti and Elves.
Bunny should be pretty stress-free, all things considered. This Easter went off without a hitch, much to Jack's relief after the disaster that was last year. Jack had helped Bunny prepare as much as he was allowed, and he'd made sure there was no unnecessary snowfall keeping kids inside and obscuring eggs this year. Last Jack knew, Bunny was still tending to the plants in the Warren and cleaning up stains and spilled paint from the egg decorating... Actually, Jack is responsible for most of the mess, so he should probably go and help with at least some of the cleanup.
Despite being almost half way to Christmas, the Workshop is actually relatively calm. It's always busy, but the work is more steady and calming this time of the year instead of frantic. North can tinker and test out new toy ideas without the crushing deadline looming over him.
Tooth has begun taking more time for herself, as well. She's been letting her Fairies take more initiative and handle the collection on their own so that she can take breaks to go "into the field," as she'd called it. Collecting teeth herself has really helped renew Tooth's love of her duty, and the Fairies have really proven themselves capable of handling things on their own. Tooth has been much less stressed, in Jack's opinion.
Even the Sandman has been less overworked. With Pitch's defeat, all the dream sand he'd stolen and corrupted had been returned to Sandy. The theft had been so gradual that Sandy himself hadn't noticed how much harder he'd been working to continue bringing pleasant dreams to the children. Now that he once again has all his sand, his reach is able to extend to many more kids at once.
It'll be nice to see everyone so relaxed after the year they've had recovering from Pitch's attack and settling into their new normal. Pillowing his head on one of his arms, Jack smiles sleepily. Yeah, a cat nap wouldn't hurt.
North struts into the room with his typical bounce in his step. For once, toy production is ahead of schedule. The Yetis always finish on time, but not before they're exhausted and in need of a long and well-deserved vacation. This year, though, the work has been steady and, thanks to Jack having an open invitation to the Workshop, none of the Yetis need to constantly fend off his entry attempts.
"Ah, how does this always get in such a mess!" he cries, surveying the area where the Guardians will gather shortly. The room had been barren before their meetings had begun to have regularity again. The Guardians had meetings centuries ago, but they'd slowly become more and more rare until they'd almost stopped entirely. It's nice to have the room once more filled with furniture for his friends. Without pressing threats and belief higher than it's been in decades, the Guardians just get to enjoy each other's company for a change.
North had been apprehensive about gathering around the fireplace for Jack's well-being (and, in retrospect, having two Yeti twirl fire in the spirit's face to celebrate his choosing had been a very poor idea), but Jack had assured him that the heat didn't really bother him that much. Jack had requested a chair that was the farthest from the hearth, but had promised North he wouldn't melt or anything.
Unfortunately, the table that should be covered with snacks for said friends is currently strewn with blueprints, letters, and tools. North approaches the table and scoops up a large armful of the clutter before he spots Jack.
The large man freezes in place, surprised to both see Jack here early and for him to be sleeping so soundly. Somehow, his loud entrance apparently hadn't disturbed the newest Guardian, and North would like to keep it that way. As quietly as possible, North carries his current collection of paper away to stow in his office. It can all be sorted later, and it was mostly busy work, anyway.
When North returns for another batch of the clutter to haul away, Sandy is floating above the table and has already spotted Jack. Sandy shushes North with a finger to his lips, and North nods. An hourglass over Sandy's head indicates to North he'd like to know how long the frost spirit has been here and North shrugs. He isn't certain when exactly Jack had even arrived- he'd not expected any of the Guardians for quite some time.
The Sandman looks back at Jack, and he smiles warmly. He knows that Jack spends much of the northern hemisphere's winter active- rarely sleeping and creating fun around every corner. The southern winter keeps him busy, but not nearly as hectic. It's nice to see him get some well-deserved sleep in this brief pause between winters. Sandy yawns thinking of how restful the nap looks, and he quickly settles into his traditional place around the table and settles in for a nap of his own.
Smiling, North quietly stacks the remaining books and papers into one final pile and carries them away. The table is finally clear and ready for the Yetis and Elves to begin filling with plates. Bunny will never admit it, but he's almost ravenous in the months following Easter. Jack usually has a pretty voracious appetite as well, so he hopes the Yetis are prepared for a hungry post-nap munchy Jack Frost.
"It's bloody freezing, mate! When are you going to let me just tunnel in?" Bunny complains loudly, shivering and still brushing snow off of his fur. He rushes to the fireplace to warm up, rubbing his hands together for more immediate relief from the chill.
Jack's arrival must have kicked up a small snow shower, but it's not too terribly below freezing out there right now seeing as it's May. Still, North shushes Bunny with a finger to his lips just as Sandy had shushed him earlier. He jabs a finger in Jack's direction and refuses to explain to Bunny again that the flower left behind from his tunnels tends to ruin North's hardwood floors.
Tooth, who'd been flitting in just behind Bunny, zips over to hover over the table so she can see Jack clearly. She smiles, hugging her own arms. "He must be exhausted," she breathes softly, refusing to wake the slumbering Guardian.
"Must be," North answers as quietly as his booming voice will allow. "Was asleep when I found him."
Bunny abandons the fireplace to approach and get a look at Jack as well. "What's he doing here?" he asks, a little louder than he'd meant to and earning a gentle "shh" from Tooth. "He's always the last of us here and full of energy."
"Long flight?" North guesses, shrugging.
Tooth hovers a little closer to the spirit. "I heard there was an early snowstorm in southern Australia. It probably took a lot out of him to push so early in the season," she proposes, reaching forward to gently brush the shaggy hair from Jack's face. Tooth frowns, not really hearing what North and Bunny are saying now.
She squints, focusing in on Jack's chest.
Her heart pounding, she holds her hand in front of Jack's face and tries to keep it from shaking too badly.
"Tooth? What gives?"
Tooth forces herself to count, trying not to panic, but she reaches 30 and still Jack hasn't breathed. "He's not breathing," she forces out, her panic choking her voice into a hoarse, sharp whisper.
This gets Bunny and North's attention, but Sandy sleeps on.
Bunny, eyes wide and ears pinned low, reaches over to grab the spirit's shoulder. "Jack, c'mon! That's not funny!" he says, hoping Jack's really awake and pulling a tasteless prank.
North feels like his stomach has just dropped through the floor as he grabs the chair and wrenches it away from the table so they can reach Jack more easily. Jack's been here not breathing, and North has been cleaning-
"Jack?!" Tooth cries, her voice louder now as she zooms up to hover over North's shoulders.
The sudden movement and noise finally jolt Jack out of his sleep, and he flails awkwardly toward a sitting position, groping blindly where he thought his staff would be. "Ah!! What!?! What!!?!" he shouts, managing to fling himself out of his chair in his panic when his hand didn't immediately make contact with either his staff or the table. "Ack!" he cries, barely registering the fall before massive hands are scooping him up off the floor and holding him up in the air.
"Jack! Are you okay? What happened?"
"Did someone hurt you?"
Sandman is awoken by the commotion, and quickly picks up that something is very wrong. He floats at eye-level with Jack and forms several question marks in rapid succession.
"Are you sick?"
Jack, still blinking and more than a little disoriented at his rude awakening, squints at the other Guardians. "Uh...what? I'm fine- Did I frost the place over? Sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"No, Jack, you weren't breathing!" Tooth exclaims, upset and helplessly worried for her newest teammate.
"Oh."
North seems taken aback by Jack's simple response. "'Oh?' Is that all?" he asks, slightly turning Jack in his grip to check for injuries.
"Mate, what happened?" Bunny asks, Jack's confusion solidifying that it wasn't a prank. Jack is almost always the first to laugh once his prank has played out, but the spirit just seems confused.
"Nothing happened- I'm fine, really!"
"Jack, honey, you're not fine! What happened?" Tooth presses.
Jack squirms until North sets him back onto his own two feet, and he huffs out a frosty breath. "Look, I... I don't always...breathe. It's not a big deal-"
Three of the Guardians begin talking over one another while Sandman continues making frantic signals to Jack now that he's gathered just what had happened.
Jack backs up, hands up in a placating gesture. "No, no, really," he begins, and the other Guardians quiet down enough to listen. They're clearly upset by what they'd just stumbled on, and Jack can't exactly talk his way out of this without the truth, and they deserve the truth, anyway. "Look...breathing is an... option for me. I do it most of the time, but I've never needed to. I promise, I'm fine, I guess I just don't keep breathing when I'm asleep? Didn't mean to scare you, but I promise I'm all good."
"What do you mean 'option,' Jack? That makes no sense," North is the first to break the silence that follows.
Shoving his hands into his hoodie's pocket, Jack squints one eye in apprehension. "Don't have a heartbeat either. Apparently...I kinda...died. That's why the Man in the Moon picked me," he stumbles through the words, never having said them out loud before. Jack then smiles brightly, really not liking how horrified the other Guardians look. "But, hey, it really comes in handy when there's something stinky. Your sense of smell is pretty dependent on breathing, as it turns out."
His making light of the situation takes some of the tension out of the Guardians, but they still seem distraught.
"Hang on, back up, Jack. You died?" Bunny asks softly.
Jack isn't able to entirely hide his flinch. "Apparently. I thought the no breathing or heartbeat thing was just a quirk, but turns out it's a side effect of death," he tries to joke weakly, but he can tell his teammates aren't going to let this go yet. He wrings his hands together in his pocket and wishes he had his staff to fiddle with as he averts his gaze down to the floor. "So...I went ice skating with my little sister. It wasn't... cold enough. She went too close to the middle of the pond and... The ice is thinner there. It started to crack, but I saved her! She was okay. I was bigger than her, though, and...well, the ice gave out. Breathing and beating hearts are optional when you're a frosty zombie."
Jack looks up when the hum of Tooth's wings gives away her approach, and she hesitantly reaches a hand out to rest on Jack's shoulder. "Jack...we had no Idea... When did you..." She begins to ask, but doesn't quite finish the question.
The frost spirit pulls his hands out of his pocket finally, and one comes up to rub the back of his neck. "After Easter last year," he answers lamely. He'd never really told them about his confrontation with Pitch- it had never come up before, and didn't seem to matter in the grand scheme. Restoring belief in the children of the world was what mattered then, and no one had ever asked what had sparked his discovery of his center.
"Crikey," Bunny curses, "You never said anything?"
"To be fair," Jack begins, scuffing a foot on the floor and looking anywhere but Bunny, "I didn't know I stopped breathing when I sleep. That's new information. I just knew I didn't have to breathe."
The Sandman is floating just above the surface of the table, now, content to watch this unfold.
"But you-" North cuts himself short, shaking his head and looking pained. He knows they hadn't exactly started off on the best foot (far from it), but he'd hoped Jack was comfortable enough to share something to monumental with them by now. "You can come to us whenever you need."
Now, Jack smiles again. "Yeah, I know, but it wasn't the most important thing at the time, I guess, and then it just...didn't come up."
At that moment, several Yetis stream into the room with plates of snacks and drinks for the Guardians. They hesitate at the tense atmosphere, but they place their bounty on the table and file back out as quickly as they'd arrived. Good food can do wonders to resolve tension.
Tooth capitalizes on this, and gestures to the table. She still feels a little shaky after believing Jack was (permanently?) dead, and a comfortable evening around a table with her closest friends would do wonders to soothe her nerves. "Would you share some of your past? If you want? And I'd be honored if you'd hear how I got my feathers," she offers warmly. The other Guardians know her story, but she's never told Jack the tale- not even the basics beyond the vague "we were all someone before we were chosen" she'd provided following Pitch's theft of the teeth.
"Perhaps a tale of my outlaw days?" North chimes in.
Sandy nods enthusiastically, several stylized stars appearing above his head as his own offering.
Nose twitching, Bunny pushes Jack's chair back into its normal place so he doesn't quite have to meet anyone's gaze. "How about the first time I shapeshifted?" he suggests. It's dawning on him how little they know about Jack's past and vice versa. The Guardians have known each other so long that they took their knowledge of one another for granted. They'd made the mistake of assuming Jack just somehow already knew and that he'd share anything he deemed important. Instead, Jack hadn't even told him he doesn't always breathe.
With a smile that grows brighter and brighter with every tiny insight to his fellow Guardians and a promise to elaborate, Jack is almost bouncing. It certainly doesn't hurt that the food smells delicious and he wants to dig in as soon as possible. Jack gestures to the Guardians to get a move on to their own seats so they can get this show on the road. "Let's go, I'm hungry!"