Chapter Text
----Jack----
Jack Frost let out a whoop of giddy excitement as he flung himself in the air to do a subdued, for him, corkscrew through the air. His laughter echoed off the seemingly barren snow-covered landscape, much to the varying degrees of amusement of his fellow guardians. Tooth seemed more relieved than anything, only sparing Jack’s antics a wan smile and North seemed the closest to sharing Jack’s jubilance. The Sandman seemed torn between encouraging Jack to do even more intricate areal tricks while simultaneously trying to comfort one Tooth Fairy. Bunnymund was the quickest to school his features of the smile directed at Jack and attempting to get back to business as usual, in typical Bunny un-fun style Jack noted, as he called up at the flying boy.
“Didn’t think you’d be so jolly after such a bloody row!”
Jack’s excitement immediately cooled at the words, leaving him hovering in the air as he tried to dial back and repurpose his nervous energy. It just wouldn’t do to have that part of him slip out to his only friends and he resolved, again, to keep a tighter hold on the violent tendencies his peace-loving friends undoubtedly would find off-putting.
His stunned pause went unnoticed by the two more colorful guardians and a distracted Sandy, but was met with confusion by the keen eyed rabbit who’d meant it as a (mostly) friendly jab. With a now forced smile Jack quickly shot lower, now hovering only inches from the surprised rabbit. His plan apparently working as the cowed Bunnymund forgot his confusion in the forced closeness with Jack.
“Awww come on Cottontail, can’t a guy appreciate how smooth this all went? I mean, those Wendigo didn’t even get close to the village, none of us were hurt, and the kids didn’t even get a whiff of danger!”
Jack thought he had a fair point, this may not have been his first “official” outing with the rest of the guardians, whose range of responsibility extended far beyond what he’d initially imagined, but it was certainly the one that had gone the smoothest despite the danger involved in fighting cannibalistic wolf monsters. Which, now that Jack thought about it, was hardly surprising considering the utter lack of duplicity in his still newfound companions. In the scant few months since Pitch the rest of the nasties of the spirit world seemed to deem it the perfect time to try and unhinge the still weakened Guardians and pick back up some of their more unsavory habits while they still could. After all, in the last five hundred or so years since the guardians first banded together their sphere of influence over the safety of children gave them some sort of sixth sense when it came to kids in danger. This and the near impossible speeds they each could travel at gave them the appearance of virtual omnipresence to the rest of the spirit world. This shield, more than anything else, is what kept the darker aspects of the spirit off of the modern world and away from the kids.
So even with how weak each of them still were they were forced to lay the smack down on each and every numerous attack on the children of the world. Which led to an extremely frazzled Tooth Fairy, one Santa Claus reliving his glory days as a Bandit King, and a progressively more and more pissed off Easter Bunny. Sandy was as ever cool as the proverbial cucumber, unfazed by the added workload for reasons Jack could barely grasp at. Jack himself however was going strong. The added boosts to his powerbase from finding his core and the belief power of children gave him more energy than he knew what to do with. With everything he’d had to do to simply stay alive these last three hundred years, terrible-horrible-god-awful-things that he could never ever tell the rest of the guardians because they were so fucking pure and kind and they could never let a murderer around kids. And Jack needed those kids. They were all he had.
The guardians could see and speak to Jack, but they could never know him. At least they wouldn’t if he had any say about it. The Joy Jack felt in his core resonating in the hearts of the children who were quickly starting to believe in him was more than Jack could ever give up. So he distracted Bunny, frazzled him until he got those cute wrinkles between his ears when they swiveled between annoyed and overwhelmed. The Easter Bunny would be the hardest to fool, but hey, Bunny was the one he was most used to tricking. After all, he’d been doing off and on since ’68. Compared to that crash course in deception, what was a couple more eons?