Hey, all! I cannot apologize enough for how long this took me. There's been a lot going on, is all I can say. It's been pretty hard, but every message and notification I got from you guys meant so much to me and really helped me get through it.

Special thanks to Peanut Butter Rules, Seryyth (sorry you had to wait so long!), Higuchimon (I'm so glad you liked Pitch's lines!), thatcrazyjellyfish, Sora Tayuya, ShawnaCrazyGirl (sorry I couldn't follow your advice and update soon!), thedreamthieves (your review made me so happy), DarkFrost, HAPPY (also sorry for the delay), trajik007 (thank you for your kind words. I'm afraid this won't be a BlackIce fic but I've seen some really good ones and see where you're coming from!), Nix Red, TheDiamondSwod400 (thanks for the laugh!), and dizappearingirl (your kind comment actually reduced me to happy tears. Thank you for being so thorough and kind), and everyone are all truly wonderful people and I can't thank you enough for sticking around.

I'm going to be working on plotting things out more thoroughly, so it won't take me as long to get more out to you guys.

Sunlight was just flickering through the window when the door flew open with a small bang.

"Jack, I can't find Baby Tooth anywhere-" Toothania stopped. Jack had sat bolt upright in the bed, hair tousled and sticking straight up. There was muted trilling from his shoulder, and a lump wiggled out of the hood.

It took me all night to get comfortable, grumbled the tiny fairy as she rose out of the sweater, do I have to get up?

Toothania's lips twitched.

"I didn't know she wasn't supposed to be here," stammered Jack, "She just came in last night and I thought it was ok."

Everything was fine, Baby Tooth told her mother, I just wanted to check on him. Tell him you're not mad.

"It's perfectly alright, Jack," the fairy queen said absently, "I'm just a little excitable." To Baby Tooth, she added, Did anything happen that I should know about?

Nothing, Baby Tooth reported a hair too firmly, but there was so much else going on that Tooth didn't catch it.

"Jack, North's come up with some ideas. We'll need to gather to hear them. Will you come?"

Tooth watched Jack stumble out of the bed. Moving on autopilot, he went for the table on the side. It wasn't until he touched the water basin and froze the liquid inside to ice that he realized what he'd been doing. He stopped and frowned, beginning to wake up.

"This isn't my house." He said slowly.

Tooth smiled lightly, "Sometimes I forget when I wake up in an unfamiliar place too. We're at Santoff Klausen, remember?"

"No, it's." He stopped. "I don't have a house. I've never had a house. Why would-" He traced the ice designs with a finger, still confused, before looking up.

The smile had frozen on Tooth's face.

"You don't have a house?"

He shrugged. "No." Was this another one of those Guardian rules? You needed a house? "I figured I could crash here- just until we beat Pitch."

"But where have you been sleeping?" she asked, horrified.

Jack Frost grinned. "Lots of places. It's fun to travel around. Wind always finds somewhere for me, and if she can't, there's always my pond."

"I…see," Tooth said slowly. Jack's expression wavered as he watched her face. It hurt her heart, how desperate he was for their approval. Tooth nodded sharply.

"Right then. Once this is all settled, you can come live in the Tooth Palace with us."

Jack's eyes bugged out. "What?" Tooth looked at the shock on his face. "But I don't-"

"You need a place to stay, a real place," she added sharply when he began to protest, "With a real bed. There are plenty of spare rooms in Tooth Palace. I would have offered one sooner if I had known."

He didn't know what to say to such an offer, that much was obvious. Tooth watched him struggle with the idea.

Baby Tooth watched as well.

Mama, why is it scaring him? She asked.

And it was, Tooth realized him. She didn't know if it had to do with the last week or something deeper, something buried in the three hundred years he had been alone, but Jack was scared by the offer.

She could do something about that, at least.

"Why don't you think about it?" she suggested. "None of us are going anywhere for a while. You don't have to decide right now."

Relief flashed across his face, too strong to be hidden, followed by a new kind of worry. "It's a- a really nice offer. I'm not- I mean-"

"It's been a long week." She said for him.

He grinned weakly. "A really long week."

That hurt a little, but Tooth was able to move past it. It was hard to remember how long it had taken the rest of the guardians to work together. The fights and awkward fittings-together had been centuries forgotten. But dimly, Tooth remembered how much patience had been required on all sides before they were first able to defeat Pitch. Jack was no different in this way. With time, he would fit in just fine.

Now she just had to convince him of that.

/

Jack didn't know what to do about Tooth. It was weird having her examine his teeth every time they talked. It was even weirder to have her hover over something else entirely.

And what was that offer of a home? Where had that come from?

Jack Frost could take care of himself. He'd been doing it for years. Yes, Wind had helped him, but he could survive without her as well, if he needed to.

It was odd though, how wistful the idea of someone looking out for him made Jack.

"Between your mom and Jamie, I'm not going to know what to do with myself," her joked to Baby Tooth. She twittered indignantly, "And you, of course."

"Bunny can look at injuries." Jack jumped. From one of the nearby rooms, North's voice boomed out in his best imitation of quiet.

Jack caught the eye of Phil, lumbering down the hall. He jerked his head at the room. Who is that?

Phil gestured at him with a grunt. Immortal.

It was none of his business. Jack had more than enough to worry about on his own. He didn't need to add anyone else's troubles to his own, not with Pitch and Jamie and the Guardians already along for the ride.

Injuries?

Phil let out an indignant grumble when he crept towards the door. Jack shushed him absently as he peered through the keyhole.

Groundhog, one of the few immortals who could stand him, was sitting on the table in front of North. He was a short, squat immortal, with springy hair. They met up every February, not for long before Groundhog kicked him out again, but it was the closest he'd had to a friend in- in as long as he could remember, anyway- so Jack would take it.

"Nah, don't worry about me. It's going to take more than a few scrapes to stop-" Groundhog yelped suddenly, then swore in a long stream that would have made a sailor blush.

North was unmoved. "Iz as I thought. Bunny will look at you."

"I'd rather be looked after by Pitch," sniffed the Groundhog, going on to mutter several unkind things under his breath about rabbits.

"The ice-brat. Jack." Groundhog said, "Is he alright? Word's been going 'round that he's hurt."

"Iz much better now." North said.

Groundhog nodded once. "Well. Good." He cleared his throat. "Tell him that next spring is his call. More weeks of winter, less, whatever he wants."

"He may take that as challenge," boomed North, and Jack must have been imagining the melancholy in his voice because it was gone now, filled with mirth at the idea.

"I'll spread word around about how Pitch is getting too big for his britches," said Groundhog, "S'not like we're any more fond of him than you."

Groundhog was coming towards the door, and Jack was seized with the realization that he didn't know what to say to him, that this went beyond the casual acquaintanceship they'd made up in the past hundred years. But before he could do more than think that, a wooly arm wrapped around him and pulled, lifting Jack off his feet and in the direction of the kitchens.

Phil was tired of being ignored.

/

"Put me down!"

Bunny looked up. One of the yetis was hauling a squirming, annoyed winter spirit up a flight of stairs. Jack was not making it easy for him. Kicking, wriggling- was he actually clinging to the railing on the way like that? Was he a complete child?

"Al'ight Phil, give 'im here." The yeti took one look at the resigned Easter Bunny and dropped the spirit at his feet. With an order to stay put that Aster had a feeling Jack couldn't understand, he lumbered off, leaving Jack lying on the floor in something that Aster struggled to find a word for that wouldn't be a sulk.

"And what were ye doin' to get him so ruffled?"

Jack looked away. "Nothing. I was just looking around. Did-" He stopped. Clumsily stood.

"Did what?"

"Did you know that Groundhog is here?"

Aster shuddered, "Unfortunately. The little cretin uses my tunnels like he owns them. I could tell when he was within five miles of this place. Why do ya think I'm not with North?"

"But why was he here?" Aster grunted. Why was Groundhog here? Why was Bunny here was the real question. Who had appointed him babysitter without a by-your-leave? He had better things to do, like replacing the frankly horrifically outdated medicines in North's drawer.

He started up the stairs. With luck, the show pony would go back to giving Phil ulcers and leave him alone.

But when had luck ever been on Bunny's side? Jack followed him, hopping up the stairs, onto the banister, off it again- crikey, didn't the kid ever stop moving?

"Bunny, how come he was here? Did he see something? Did he have something to do with Pitch?"

Bunny grunted, "Why don't you take it up with North? They're finished talking; I can feel the ratbag leaving now."

Jack leapt off the banister and into Bunny's way. His face was set in a scowl.

"Did it have something to do with me?" he asked flatly, "Did he tell you something about me because he's the one who offered to start that stupid shadow game, and he rigs it too and if he told you that it's my fault Easter happens in winter so often-"

"Oh for cryin' out- look kid, North called in a favor so he'd get Pitch off our back long enough that we could get our plan in motion."

Jack came to a complete standstill, mouth open. He gaped at Bunny like that for a long minute.

"What?"

Now Bunny was feeling hot under the fur again. He pushed past the kid, "Argh, just forget about it."

Jack put a hand in his fur, stopping him.

"No, wait. He really came to help? Even though I always bug his shadow and stuff? You…" this time his voice was even softer, "You guys asked him to come help and he did?"

Well, clearly Bunny was not getting out of this one. Reluctantly he turned to face the kid. He still had that wide-eyed look of confusion on his face, and had they never noticed how much of a child he was before, truly?

"Yes," he said gruffly, because it seemed like Jack was going to need to hear this a few hundred times over the next century and he might as well get started now, "He came to help. From the look of it, he was worried when he heard you'd been hurt. Even stopped making rabbit jokes and everything."

Jack looked down while he was absorbing that. Belatedly, he let go of Bunny's fur. Bunny could have left then, but he didn't. This kid- argh, he was even getting to the pooka now, wasn't he?

"Come on then, Frostbite."

The winter spirit looked up again, confused. "Huh?"

"You're coming with me. I'm not fixing all of North's medicine by myself."

/

The Groundhog skirted by the kitchens on his way out. Chatting up a pretty yeti, he managed to earn himself some slices of fruitcake before leaving.

He only paused at the door to Santoff Klausen. Making sure that no one was watching, he put a wedge of the fruitcake into the lock and pressed hard. What emerged was an imitation of a key, which he stuffed in the pouch he wore around his neck.

From within the fortress came the sound of laughter. Groundhog paused, craning his neck for a glimpse of a white-haired winter spirit, but the noise came from too far inside to help him.

It was still enough to make him hesitate. Groundhog glanced at the pouch, then back towards the Guardians' base. Then he looked down.

Nothing looked back up. And that was why he had to keep doing what he was, despite how he felt about it. His shadow was gone, and the terms of getting it back had been very clear.

"I'm sorry, ice-brat," he murmured, and then pushed out the door and into the snow. He did not take Aster's tunnels.

Please let me know what you think! Your comments really do mean the world to me and I am SO sorry for the wait.