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Chapter Text

"We don't have to be alone, Jack." Pitch said softly, holding out a hand.

Jack just stared at him for a moment as if he'd suddenly grown a second head, but then that moment ended and his eyes narrowed, any hint of sorrow being replaced with a raw malice which made even the innocent sky blue of his irises look malevolent. "It took you three hundred years to figure this out?" he hissed quietly, eyes flashing with a dangerous light.

Pitch raised an eyebrow, completely unfazed. He'd been threatened by his fair share of spirits, and there had yet to be any who could harm him. Save Sandman, whom he had dispatched of already. "When you're my age, you'll understand tha-"

Pitch was cut off by a stinging slab of ice being flung against the side of his face, much like an openhanded slap. "I'm sick of this!" Jack roared, the ice beneath their feet heaving as the wind howled louder. Instead of drowning his voice, however, the strengthening gale only magnified his screams. "Every damn one of you treats me like a child. Like I'm too stupid to handle myself. Like I don't know what I want." he howled, the ice bucking with every emphasised word.

Pitch backed up a step, narrowly avoiding a sharp-edged chunk of ice which was flying fast enough to have easily severed his arm. "Jack?" he called out, but the wind snatched his words away before they reached his own ears. "Jack, I never treated you like a child." he called, struggling to keep his cool. For a mere elemental spirit his power was immense, and as a new crack began to form beneath Pitch's feet the Boogeyman felt truly afraid. He couldn't see his own hand if he held his arm straight out, and his arms already felt raw from the needle-like bits of ice and snow carried on the wind.

Slipping into one of the shadows afforded by the new crack beneath him, Pitch ducked out and perched himself next to a glacier about a kilometre away. The storm was growing rapidly in both height and radius, seemingly to expand another ten metres with every blink. When the needling sensation nipped at his chest again, Pitch vanished once more and stepped into his lair. This wasn't good. Not good at all. He wanted to terrorise the children, not kill them! Without human fear he would cease to exist!

Shuddering, he gathered the shadows of his cloak into a mockery of the dress uniform he'd first awoken in. Precise detail, but in pure black where the original had been white and gold. Not bothering to craft a saber, Pitch took a deep breath and stepped into the shadows. The call went out, and in seconds every NightMare was returning to his lair. Those who had absorbed Sandy melded into a single being and trotted after him. The silhouettes of the Guardians were easy enough to find, and as soon as he and the dense Mare stepped into being they were on guard.

"What do you want, Pitch?" Tooth fired off without waiting for provocation, wings fluttering weakly.

Pitch grimaced, but laid a hand on the Mare's neck. "I come with news of a threat even greater than myself."

Bunny scoffed, though he looked very much shorter than normal. "Greater than 'imself? Can you believe this guy"

"I am being entirely serious, Bunnymund." Pitch replied. "This NightMare contains the Dreamsand which once was Sanderson, and I know the location of the nearest remaining believer."

The Guardians exchanged doubtful looks, and Pitch sighed. Time for Plan B. "I speak nothing but the truth. I followed Frost to Antarctica to tempt him with his memories and sway him to my side, but he lashed out at me and cursed my name alongside yours. Now he is at the epicentre of a storm which could very well produce the next Ice Age if he is not stopped."

He looked around at the Guardians, and extended a hand. "If the Sandman is restored, the children's belief will be as well. Now do you want to save this planet or not?"

The three once-powerful spirits turned to begin a discussion, and Pitch bared his teeth. Before they could start talking, Nightmare sand lashed around their wrists and pulled them to face him in a straight line. "Do you fools not understand?" he snapped. "If we do not act quickly, your precious Frost will turn this entire planet into a lifeless ball of ice! Now do you want to live or not?" he barked, golden eyes flashing and voice ringing with the half-remembered authority of a general commanding his troops.

The Guardians looked at him blankly, and then the Tooth Fairy nodded once. "If Jack's hurting, we need to help him." the Nightmare sand loosened from around all of their wrists, and she walked forward to look up at Pitch. "I'll help."

North followed with a grim look on his face. "I will as well."

Bunny sighed and followed his friends, brushing the last dark grains from his fur. "Fine, I'll help. But don't think this means I won't be pounding you later." he grumbled at Pitch half-heartedly.

Pitch said nothing, just looked the Guardians over and summoned up his shadows. "First, we'll revive Sanderson. Then we will stop Frost."

"Pitch," Tooth laid a hand on his arm. "if Jack is really as out of control as you say he is, then we need to act as quickly as possible."

Pitch scoffed. "Look at you lot. You need more than just a handful of Believers to sustain your usual power. And if anything, you'll need to be even stronger than usual to withstand Frost's storm."

Bunny scowled. "Then why are we standing around chatting?" he retorted. "Where's the ankle-biter live?"

Pitch smirked, and without a word shadows swallowed all four spirits and the NightMare whole.

Chapter Text

Pitch stepped smoothly out of his shadow portal, NightMare nickering softly at his side as the Guardians landed in a distinctly undignified heap. Rolling his eyes, the Nightmare King fixed his unlikely companions with a hard glare. "Take the Mare in with you, speak to the child, and Sanderson will be restored to us." When the trio didn't move towards the door he pointed at, Pitch's eyes narrowed. "I could pull you all around the globe to see your dozen remaining believers, but this girl is our best chance. Now go in there."

Tooth fluttered weakly, and Pitch realised that Bunny had shrunk down to no more than 3 feet tall. "On second thought, the Rabbit and the Fairy should do the talking."

North nodded and sat down heavily, flexing his hands. Tooth opened the bedroom door and fluttered inside, looking around as she did. "Number 14 Ormond Street." Tooth muttered to herself, eyes flicking around the sparsely decorated room. "Brushes twice a day, needs to floss."

Bunny rolled his eyes and walked over to the bed, reaching out to tap their believer on the shoulder. His paw sank slightly into the mounded blanket, and he cursed under his breath as he drew back the covers. "Pillows. Clever little ankle biter."

The window swung open, and Tooth felt a warm, almost playful breeze tickle her ankles. Turning around, her eyes widened. "Bunny?"

"Yeah?" the Pooka turned from fixing the blanket back into place, and his jaw dropped. Two figures were flying towards them, both covered in what looked for all the world like Dreamsand.

The boy alighted first, holding out a gentlemanly hand to help the girl back into her room. He wore a green tunic and leggings with leaf-like shoes, and his unruly russet hair stuck out from beneath a short green hat. Her blue nightshirt hung loosely over matching pants, and both children's eyes widened at the sight of the Guardians.

Toothiana smiled and held out her hands palms up, non-threatening. "It's okay, Wendy. We're friends."

The girl relaxed, though the boy didn't.

"I'm the Tooth Fairy, and this is the Easter Bunny. Santa Claus is waiting in the hall."

The girl's blue eyes swept over them, Bunny now the shorter of the two and lacking his weapons, and Tooth with her feathers hanging limp and dull. "I haven't lost a tooth since last month, though. And the egg hunt was this afternoon."

"You don't look like a fairy." the boy interjected, getting up in Tooth's face. "One of my best friends in a fairy."

Tooth backed up a step as Wendy pulled the boy back. "Peter, don't be rude."

The boy rolled his eyes but settled at her side. "What do the Big Four want with Wendy anyways?"

"We need her help ta bring us back up to four." Bunny said, walking over to the door. The NightMare trotted in when he opened it, and Wendy's hand tightened on her spirit friend's wrist. "It's alright, perfectly harmless." he soothed, holding out a paw to the dreambeast. It nuzzled against his touch, and Wendy grinned slightly.

Her fingers rested lightly on its neck, and gold tendrils spread rapidly from her touch. The now-pure creature tossed its head and began to collapse in on itself, until with a flash the sandman stood before them. Wendy gasped and clapped, and her spirit friend's face lit up. Sandy nodded at both, and Tooth felt herself growing strong again as Bunny's shrinking reversed.

A touch of Dreamsand was all it took to put Wendy to bed, and Bunny shooed Peter out the window as North charged in. Pitch was at his heels, still in the ridiculous armour, and Sandy grinned at the sight of them. Symbols flashed rapidly above his head, a snowflake and question mark among them, and Pitch nodded solemnly. Sandy's round face fell into a frown, and he conjured up a cloud for all five of them to ride out the window on. If Jack was to be stopped, they had to work quickly.

Chapter Text

Sandy frowned, looking at his Dreamsand cloud. Pitch had given him a little more than half of the NightMares to be turned back, but still he didn’t have as much sand as he would like. It would have to do, he supposed, seeing as Pitch needed his own forces if they were to stop Jack from turning this planet to an ice-rimed hell.

“What happened to Jack?” he signed rapidly at Pitch, cloud shifting into something akin to a longboat and heading swiftly Southward.

“He felt he was used.” the Nightmare King signed back deftly. His symbols were different from Sandy’s own, harder at the edges, and his sand whispered with a bite like a hissing clicking accent, but they spoke the same language. “That your fellow Guardians had betrayed him, and that I was no better for ignoring him all these years.”

“You said he turned you down more than once.” Sandy raised an eyebrow, signing quickly as the other Guardians equipped themselves with weapons and heavy clothes from North’s enchanted rucksack.

“It would appear that Frost has no memory of our nightmare chats.” Pitch signed ruefully.

“You should know by now that holding negotiations in dreams and nightmares is a bad idea.” Sandy chided. “Not everyone is as mindful of their rest as we are.”

“Well it’s hardly my fault.” Pitch’s signs puffed out of existence with a huff, and the lean man crossed his arms. “The boy never stayed still long enough to talk to except when he was sleeping.”

“Regardless of fault, we have to show him we mean well now.” Sandy signed, conjuring himself a puffy Dreamsand coat. “And if he cannot be reasoned with...” he pursed his lips, looking at the grains of sand which made up the floor between himself and Pitch. A tendril of Nightmare Sand flickered in front of him, and he looked back up to see Pitch holding a sign.

“If he cannot be reasoned with, I will not make you hurt your friend.” Pitch signed, symbols not flickering as they had done earlier. The sand’s clicking was less now, and the hissing more pronounced.

“He can be put to sleep, you know.” Sandy grinned wryly. “He dreams of skating.”

“Funny.” Pitch chuckled, and his sand-sign shivered in a whispery echo of his dry amusement. “I’d thought those were his nightmares.”

“Oi.”

Both dreamweavers turned to look at their furry companion, now bundled into an enchanted snowsuit of some sort and wrapped with a green cloak of a very Pookan style. With his ears tucked inside the hood, he looked absolutely ridiculous. “Yes?” Pitch raised a hairless eyebrow.

“What’re you two up to back there?”

“Bunny.” Tooth chided, pinching his arm. “We’ve made a truce with Pitch.”

“Merely discussing Plan B.” Pitch interjected, conjuring a sleek longcoat for himself not dissimilar to the violently green peacoat Toothiana wore over her snowsuit. “Should Frost prove impossible to reason with, Sanderson or I will put him to sleep.”

“Oh?” North crossed his arms, managing to not look ridiculous despite the fact that he was covered head to foot by a single puffy garment. “And by put to sleep, what are you meaning?”

Sandy waved his hands for attention, and began signing as quickly as North and Tooth could follow. A boy in bed, a barking dog, a flying ball, a string of Zs.

“Oh. That is alright.” North grinned, nodding in approval.

“Could somebody translate that for me?” Bunny huffed, twirling a boomerang in his hands.

“Put to sleep isn’t a metaphor.” Tooth said quickly. “If Jack won’t listen, they’ll hit him with sand.”

“In theory,” Pitch said loftily, picking at some dirt under his nails. “If Frost loses consciousness, his powers will cease to feed the storm and it will dissipate naturally.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Bunny prodded. “What if it gets worse without Frostbite keeping a handle on it?”

“He’s hardly ‘keeping a handle’ on himself at the moment.” Pitch snarked. “But in that case, plan C is to inform Mother Nature of the situation and request her assistance.”

“Yeah, because that worked out so well for ya last time.” Bunny shot back.

Sandy crossed his arms and glared at Bunny, tapping his foot against the golden grains of the deck. Pitch just rolled his eyes and flickered a small set of signs in front of the shorter dreamweaver’s face.

“Ignore him, he’ll have bigger things to worry about momentarily.”

Sandy looked up, ahead of the ship, and clapped a hand over his mouth in shock. There was a veritable wall of clouds approaching at a rapid rate, and the temperature was dropping even faster. Sandy lowered his hand and frowned worriedly. They were travelling quickly, but not that quickly. The South Pole was still almost ten thousand kilometres away, and if what Pitch had said was accurate, that meant Jack was eight thousand kilometres from them. If the edge of the storm had already come this far, they might not be able to even reach Jack.

Bunny stiffened as the temperature began truly diving, and Tooth shivered in her suit. Her wings were trapped, like Bunny’s ears, and Sandy thought she seemed miserable to be grounded. Baby Tooth squeaked and dove into her mother’s hood, settling on the winged woman’s shoulder. Bunny was grumbling and bickering with North, Tooth was shivering and murmuring to the tiny fairy in her hood, and Pitch was bracing himself against a handrail which had formed at some point. Actually, the whole ship looked more like a three-masted sailing ship than a long canoe, and now Pitch was smiling slightly.

“You could’ve asked.” Sandy huffed, drawing his coat tighter around himself.

“You allowed it.” Pitch grinned slyly.

“Brace yourselves!” North bellowed from near the bow of the ship, hands tightening on the railing there. Bunny and Tooth grabbed onto the main mast and some rigging, respectively. Sandy conjured some ropes and strapped himself in place where the steering wheel should be.

Moments later, the ship nearly dropped out from under him. He quickly righted their altitude, but shivered as he did so. Jack was pulling down air from the upper atmosphere, where it was always cold. If he reached high enough, Sandy worried the winter sprite might start bringing in supercooled air. He urged the sand ship faster as they headed into the blizzard. Jack needed to be stopped, or the planet would never be the same.

Chapter Text

Pitch shivered as they neared the epicentre of the storm. Jack’s rage and grief were so strong he felt a little sick, even a kilometre away. He signed an arrow pointing exactly where they needed to go, and Sandy nodded grimly. Several minutes ago the wind had taken on an eerily human wail, a sound of agony in any language, and it now it was clearly Jack’s voice howling and screaming at the world.

Tooth and Bunny were huddled together, and Sandy saw rimes of ice forming on their insulating suits. North was nearly invisible through the thickly falling snow, and Sandy realized with a jolt that the man was almost completely covered in ice. He slowed the ship, and spun a door under the raised bit for the steering wheel. The other Guardians noticed almost immediately, and Sandy swung the door open to invite them in. They would be able to warm the room with their body heat, so long as he kept it sealed with the exception of air holes. He and Pitch, with their bodies made of sand and shadow respectively, had no need of warmth. Sandy only hoped that Jack wouldn’t freeze them straight through before they could knock him out.

---

The air was cold enough to steal the breath right out of Sandy’s lungs, and the fierceness of the wind made taking each next one a challenge. They had come to a stop nearly a mile above Jack, as directly as Pitch could place them. Pitch, who looked practically nauseous and whose coat was beginning to go silver with frost around the edges.

“Are you okay?” he signed as well as he was able. The gusting wind kept changing direction, threatening to rip the sand from his control.

“Frost’s emotions.” the taller sandspinner signed back, and Sandy winced. Pitch, as Fear embodied, automatically tapped into the emotions of spirits and mortals nearby. If this storm had been caused by Jack’s anger and grief, then it only made sense the winds and clouds would be saturated with the same emotions.

“Stay here.” he signed after a moment’s thought. He floated up and off to the side, a hard disc of sand appearing beneath his feet in lieu of favourable conditions for his favoured cloud. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, go get Seraphina.” Sandy held the final sign until he was sure the man on deck had seen it, then he pulled the sands into his coat again. Pitch opened his mouth, to ask something or to object, but the wind snatched his words away long before they could reach Sandy’s ears. With nothing left to say, the squat Dreamweaver looked towards the earth below, and dropped.

The wind screamed past him as he fell, buffeting him this way and that but not even slightly supporting his weight. He plummeted towards the ground, and seconds before impact he threw out a disc of dreamsand to slow him down. The landing was rough, but he rolled to his feet with barely a wince. He was a star pilot, he could survive an impact as small as that.

Jack was nearly impossible to sense, so small and faint had his dreams become in the face of this massive storm, but even the most wrathful spirits had dreams, and so Sandy struggled through the winds which threatened to send him bowling off his disc along the ice and into the sea. Jack was hovering not too far above the ice, and after a moment Sandy realized his young friend was glowing. Not his staff, not his eyes, but his entire body was lit up with cold blue magic. His mouth was open, locked in a scream, but no sound passed his lips. His voice had passed to the storm entirely, which was not a good thing at all.

Sandy tried to form what remained of his usable sand into a ball, but it refused to move at his will. A glance confirmed his fears. The temperature had dropped so far his sand had accumulated a layer of snow, and the top had frozen into a solid sheet of ice. He hovered up on his disc, and with tremendous effort reached up to take Jack’s face in his hands. The teen’s eyes were wide open, glowing so brightly they appeared more white than blue, and Sandy brushed his thumbs over them in an attempt to coax his friend to sleep.

The light coming from Jack began to pulse, and the boy’s face twisted from agonized scream to pure fury. He bared his teeth, and frozen as he was Sandy couldn’t move fast enough to avoid the crook which came in and cracked him on the head.

Far above, a ship of golden sands began turning black.

---

The Winter Boy stirred as frozen hands rested on his cheeks, small and cool against his skin. He would have thought them comforting, but the Winter Boy did not remember such words. Fingers passed over his eyes, and the Winter Boy felt a fresh surge of anger. Who dared to attempt to manipulate him? His head snapped down, and searing cold burst through his veins. GoldDistantWarmSilentDead. He bared his teeth and lifted his staff. GuardianBetrayerLiar. The crook of his staff came away dusted with glittery gold, and the man before him dissolved into so much sand, held in shape by its accumulation of ice and snow. Enemy.

The ice shell dropped like a stone to shatter on the glacier below, scattering dun brown sand across the ice. Satisfied his foe was vanquished, the Winter Boy looked up, eyes piercing the storm as easily as a blade pierced vulnerable flesh. His eyes quickly found their target, and the wailing winds became a furious roar. LiarDeceiverManipulatorThiefMonsterPitch was above him on a ship of sands both gold and black. The gold was quickly becoming black, though, and the Winter Boy grinned with savage satisfaction at that. He shot upwards, and when he came level with the ship he found the BlackGreyGoldSickEvilTwisted lean spirit clutching his head with one hand and holding a scythe in the other.

A blast of icy wind from behind brought Pitch to his knees, and a single quick strike turned the black blood in his veins to sharp-edged ice. He began to slump forwards, but before Jack could smash the butt of his staff through his greatest enemy’s skull, the deck collapsed. The entire ship fell apart in an instant, black sand catching in the wind and cutting across his skin in a way the razor shards of ice did not.

The Winter Boy did not see the other Guardians fall, nor did he care. He knew nothing outside of his storm, but everything within it. He would engulf the world, and then he would know everything. There was a motion behind him, and the Winter Boy’s eyes narrowed to glowing slits. It was not his, not his storm’s, but an outsider. An outsider who could stand to his aura of deadly cold. He spun, staff at the ready, and Baby Tooth squeaked once as she dove into his hood.

---

Baby Tooth was cold, and she was very much afraid. She had slipped from her mother’s hood to sit by an air hole, and then the whole room had turned black and collapsed. She had managed to dodge the worst of it, but her mother was nowhere to be found and the storm was getting even worse. She was about ready to dive and try to find the Guardians when she spotted him, hovering in the worst of the weather and glowing just like her sisters said the one called Nightlight had glowed. Only Jack was blue, like his eyes and the sky and the sprinkle of lights that crossed someone’s face after he dusted them with a magic snowball.

Jack was always cold, but Jack was safe. Jack was nice. Jack would get her out of the storm and back to her mother. She was sure of it. So Baby Tooth dove straight into his hood, huddling in the soft blue fabric and trying not to shiver. Glowing blue fingers pinched her wings, and she squeaked as she was lifted by them. Jack’s eyes were narrowed, suspicious, and Baby Tooth wondered if she had been mistaken in thinking Jack safe. But only for a moment, because if Jack wasn’t safe, Jack who had named her and saved her from the NightMares and helped her momma find teeth and had the prettiest smile ever ever ever, then nobody was safe anymore and she wouldn’t accept that.

Jack tilted his head, and his mouth pulled down in a frown. He mouthed her name, and it seemed to echo on the wind. Baby Tooth chirped curiously, attempting to ignore how very very cold she was. Was Jack okay? she reached up and patted the fingers holding her, getting his attention. The wind snatched her words away, but Jack seemed to hear them anyways.

The glow all over him began to dim, and Baby Tooth grinned. Jack was okay. Jack still cared. She patted his hand again, and pointed at his pocket. He obligingly put her inside, and she rubbed her hands down her arms repeatedly to warm herself. Jack was good, Jack would help, Jack would bring her home. With this in mind, she curled up and fell asleep.

---

The Winter Boy pulsed with magic, the storm swelling as he clutched his head. There were faces in his mind, faces he knew he should be able to name, faces which belonged to his enemies, to the Guardians. But they were smiling and laughing, they were happy to see him, and he should be just as happy to be with them. But no, that couldn’t be right. They had thrown him out for their own weakness, they had given him a taste of true companionship only to snatch it away, they had lied to him and cheated him and broken every promise they’d made. They were wrong.

So why had he not frozen the tiny green fairy when he held her? He had wanted to, she was so small and unsuited for his dawning world, dependent on one of the Guardians he had sent plummeting to the frozen tundra below. And yet, he had tucked her in his pocket and sealed it in a semi-permeable frost, so she could warm herself. He had saved her.

The Winter Boy shook his head. She would make a fine lackey when he ruled the world, that was why he kept her alive. So he could move her to a body of ice and snow once his storm covered the entire world. Not for any connection she may have had to Jack. Jack was dead, buried, and the Winter Boy knew that to unearth that old self would end him for good. He would steal her from her Guardian just as surely as the Guardians had stolen away his hopes and dreams. And Jack Frost would cease to exist.

Chapter Text

North staggered to his feet, leaning on his sword for support as his Believers dwindled further and further. “Jack!” he called, trusting the wind to carry his words where they needed to be. “Jack Frost, I have come to talk.”

Through the blinding snow he could barely see the glowing figure which dropped from the sky, and for one long second he believed that Nightlight might have returned to them at last. After a moment the figure rushed him, and he slid on the nigh-frictionless surface as he raised a sword to block its attack. Not Nightlight. The glowing boy was Jack, his skin violently blue and his eyes so bright they were nearly white. Where had he gotten this much power? Jack had no believers at all, save the ambient belief of other spirits which allowed him to exist and possibly the belief of the Man in the Moon. If this was the true extent of his power with only his own strength, North briefly wondered how much power Jack could possibly gain from Believers.

Jack’s mouth, brighter than his skin but not so bright as his eyes, formed soundless words as he held his staff up against North’s neck. Ice was creeping from the point of contact, but the old Cossack was confident that would change shortly. The wind seemed to hiss menacingly, and North threw himself to the side as a pulse of brilliant blue magic sent a burst of spiny ice from the end of Jack’s staff. Right where his neck had been just an instant before.

Jack spun, and lifted his staff as North struggled to regain his footing. The Guardian noticed a flicker as he scrambled up, and the butt end of Jack’s staff came down where his head had been. “Jack, this is mistake.” he shouted, ignoring the screeching wind which buffeted them. He wouldn’t last much longer, not while he was so weak.

The staff came in and cracked against his leg, bringing him to his knees. “Jack, I am sorry.” he blurted, bringing his swords up to guard against the next strike.

Jack flickered, and staggered back a step, clutching one hand to his head. He was mouthing words, indistinct in the thick blowing snow, but North pushed himself to his feet and took a step towards the winter sprite.

---

The Winter Boy shook his head, pressing a hand to his temple. No, no, he wasn’t Jack. This man before him was WarmBrightRedMerryLeaderWonderful an enemy. He had been the one betrayed at Easter, not them.

The Guardian before him stood, and the b>JackNotjack Winter Boy took a step backwards as his FriendAllyFamily enemy advanced. The Guardian was speaking now, begging for forgiveness, and the Winter Boy’s temper flared. This one had said nothing as he was thrown out for begging forgiveness. This one would not find any mercy at his hands. For an instant the Winter Boy and the shadow of Jack’s memory were in agreement, and there was a flash of blue magic as the red-suited Guardian was frozen from the inside out.

---

Tooth looked around frantically, trying to orient herself in the storm. Without strings of names and places running through her head, her own thoughts were unusually loud and incredibly distracting. Baby Tooth, the single one of her fairies Jack had saved, hadn't died when they fell. She would have felt it if her daughter perished, like a tiny knife in her gut. No, no, she needed to worry about finding her coworkers and stopping Jack. Her girls were safe from Pitch's NightMares in the iron cages Baby Tooth had told her about, and loathe as she was to admit it, Pitch's Realm was safer for them in this storm.

No, no, Jack. She had to find Jack and make him stop the storm. But she couldn't fly, and as she staggered against a strong gust of wind she had a horrible thought. If the ship had collapsed, then Sandy was dead. Even if her wings were free, she'd be grounded by the children's lack of belief. And her girls too, they'd be helpless if a NightMare should get into one of their cages.

Almost as if to accompany that thought, a stabbing pain lanced through her body. Not the death of one of her daughters, but hundreds simultaneously. They were too far away for her to hear their telepathic cries, but before she could berate herself for being glad of that fact there was another stab of pain. This one brought her to her knees with an agonized scream, hands flying automatically to press on the wound and staunch the bleeding. But there was no wound, no blood, only a pain like she'd been run through with something much wider than a blade.

She coughed, and blood splattered on the tightly packed snow between her hands. Was this what dying felt like? The pain which followed her coughed blood like thunder followed lightning was different from the first two, and Tooth moved a hand to press against her chest. Her ribcage was being pulled open, despite the fact that it was perfectly intact under her snowsuit. She was dying. This was definitely what dying felt like.

Glowing blue feet entered her vision, and Tooth hadn't realized how hard she was crying until the tears were streaming down her cheeks. She looked up at Jack, and when she opened her mouth she had to look back down to vomit up bile.

The wind itself laughed, a distinctly mocking sound, and as a cold vice tightened around her heart (how many of her girls were left? A hundred, maybe two?) she opened her mouth to try negotiating with him. He had Baby Tooth asleep in his pocket, and if he remembered even only that much of loyalty she could possibly talk sense into him. Probably. If she could muster the strength to make a noise which wasn’t raw pain. She tried to utter his name, and it came out more a scream than anything else as yet more of her helpers died. She had fifty now, maybe less? Her heart was hardly felt like it was beating anymore, so many of her children had been destroyed. She had made them of her own body in the beginning, hadn't she? It was hard to remember everything she had to do without the familiar rhythm of names and places and teeth being tucked under pillows for her and her girls to collect running through her head.

She had to get up, had to talk sense into Jack, had to find the other Guardians. She had so much to remember, but without the ticking of believers tucking teeth under pillows the pain of losing physical parts of herself was all she could think of.

A burning cold foot pressed on the back of her head, and Tooth choked out a swear. The wind stopped laughing, and for a long moment the world was silent save the rushing of hard snow over densely packed ice. "Please." Tooth gurgled, “Please, Jack, sto-” her word were cut off by something knocking into her from the side, and as they tumbled Tooth realized it was Bunny who had tackled her. The wind shrieked, making both Guardians wince, and Bunny swore colourfully as he tried to stand and found a large bleeding gash in one leg. Jack’s luminescent figure was approaching slowly, and the wind began to laugh as he drew near.

He cocked his head, and spun his staff twice before pointing it at Bunny with a wicked grin eerily similar to Pitch’s.

“He’s not Jack anymore.” Bunny snarled, staggering to his feet to stand over his incapacitated teammate. “We can’t reason with him.”

“We have to try.” Tooth insisted, forcing herself upright through sheer willpower. “He saved Baby Tooth.”

Jack lunged, and Bunny screamed as the blow he deflected burst spikes of ice up his arm. “That was yesterday.” another strike to the same arm, and Bunny’s favouring of his uninjured leg became even more evident. “He’s lost his marbles now.”

“Not all of them.” Tooth dove sideways to avoid being smashed in the face with the crook of the winter sprite’s staff. She came smoothly to her feet and as suddenly as it had come, the pain of losing her fairies was gone. She looked down, and blood dribbled from her lips as she coughed. A shard of ice had stabbed through the front of her coat, her blood slowly staining it red even as it chilled her insides. The wind began to howl triumphantly as Bunny gave a war cry, and Tooth staggered forward under the wind’s pressure as Jack spin his staff to deflect the last Guardian’s frenzied blows.

Distantly, she knew she should be at least trying to staunch the bleeding wound in her chest, but the world seemed so heavy and far away, like she was sinking into warm darkness and leaving it all behind. Vaguely, she was aware of her friend collapsing next to her, of the cold settling in her bones, of blood dripping from her mouth and into her feathers. “Please, Jack, Stop t-” the rest of her sentence was lost in a coughed spray of blood, but he had stopped. He was looking at her, head cocked, one hand tracing the edge of his hoodie pocket. A pocket which, she realised abruptly, contained the last of her fairies.

Next to her Bunnymund tried to scramble to his feet, and swore loudly. His coat was simply gone, probably abandoned in favour of agility when she wasn’t paying attention. More notably, though, was how his snow suit had been ripped open, nearly half the fabric below the knee missing entirely. Along with most of the fur and skin beneath it. “Jack, please.” she held both her hands out as she found her feet, every movement a fight against the dark which crept at the edges of her vision. “I know you’re in there somewhere. Baby Tooth wouldn’t want you to do this.”

His eyes flashed, magic pulsing, deforming the ground around him with rings of jagged ice. He heard her, he was listening. There was still a chance. Toothiana smiled, and took a step forward. “We can fix this, Jack. It’s not too late.”

Jack’s hand next to his pocket curled abruptly into a fist, and Toothiana’s heart stuttered in her chest, a weak cry ripped from her lips as the last of her fairies died. She tried to lunge, but Jack just waved his staff and a gust of wind laden with shards of ice sharp enough to cut blasted her off her feet, into Bunny’s chest. They skidded back far enough the swirling snow actually obscured Jack, and Toothiana pushed herself to her feet with a grimace.

“We can’t reason with ‘im.” the Pooka spat, eyes flicking from Tooth’s face to the dimly glowing figure slowly approaching through the storm. “I don’t like it any more than you, but-”

“Oath or not, Jack is a Guardian.” Tooth’s eyes flashed with a hardness which reminded her companion that despite her gentle reputation she was a Queen. “And Guardians don’t turn on their own.” she drew her sabres and levelled the tip of one at Bunny’s nose. The unspoken words of ‘even when they are controlled by the enemy’ hung between them, and Bunny flinched at the silent invocation of Nightlight’s memory.

The wind began to laugh before he could say anything else, and both Guardians spun to face their youngest member. Jack had his staff shouldered, as casual as he’d been just hours earlier in the Warren, but his face was twisted in a manic grin. Tooth pressed her lips into a thin line, and made no comment on how similar he looked to their fallen friend. In the end, Nightlight had been so mad he had to be turned into a crystal to preserve what little remained of the First Guardian.

Jack twirled his staff twice, then pointed it at Bunny and the wind howled with laughter. The pair of inhuman Guardians dove apart to dodge a bolt of ice, and halfway through her tumble Tooth felt another stab of pain. Okay, acrobatics while still half impaled on a piece of ice the size of her forearm wasn’t her best idea today. She made it to her feet, less one sword, and then the pain stopped as suddenly as it had started. In its place was numbness, creeping like ice across her skin, and she looked down to see a familiar wooden rod sticking out the front of her snow suit. Her brain stopped for a moment, trying to process what had just happened, and then blood began to run down the staff and she opened her mouth to scream only to find more blood pouring out.

The staff was removed, and as she she fell face first onto packed snow and ice the fae Queen was only dimly aware of the world around her. Bunny was throwing himself at Jack again and again, but she didn’t care. She knew she should be at least trying to stop the blood flowing out of her wound, but it seemed such a distant concern. Jack would win, freeze the world over and destroy everyone and everything, and for all she knew she should be horrified by the thought, Tooth couldn’t bring herself to fuss over it. Bunny struck the ground next to her, and Toothiana breathed her last breath only heartbeats before the Pooka breathed his.

Chapter Text

Jack Frost woke with a start, and found himself falling. The wind screamed in his ears, and he pulled out of his uncontrolled dive as the heavy cloud cover dissipated. The iceberg he'd passed out on was directly beneath him, and his stomach turned at the sight. Snow had widened the hunk of ice significantly, but it did nothing to hide the four corpses scattered across the once-pristine surface.

The wind keened fearfully, and Jack swept down towards the most red spot. Tooth laid on her front, and some yards away Bunny was pinned by spikes through his hands, feet, elbows, and knees. It looked like he'd been trying to move, if the trail of bloody spikes in his wake was any indication.

Jack clapped a hand over his mouth and repressed the urge to vomit or look away. He'd done this. He had killed them. They'd been right to cast him out. He'd lost his cool, and the collateral damage had been every single life on the planet. He was no Guardian.

North's eyes were still open, as were Pitch's, and Jack forced himself to lift both their bodies and drag them over to lie near Bunny and Tooth. His arms ached, and the wind cried quietly, and his feet bled from the razor sharp ice. It wasn't until he located what was left of Sandy that the winter sprite collapsed and began weeping.

All that remained of his friend was a smear of sand frozen into the ice. Not even glittering gold sand, just the plain brown sort you could find on any public beach. He'd done this. He had destroyed the rotund little dreamweaver for good, just like he had destroyed everything else.

Jack bent double over the smear, and the wind howled and shrieked around him. The air rang with his grief for hours, his thin shoulders shaking silently. After some time the wind went silent, taking Jack’s voice with it for good. This time, the silent moment never ended.