Eggs. Check. Paint. Check. Flowers? Triple check.

E. Aster Bunnymund grinned with satisfaction as he watched a year's worth of handiwork march down the vibrant emerald tunnels. In just a few hours, they would emerge all over the world, bringing with them egg hunts for children and a fresh surge of hope for the new year. Oh, Father Time liked to pretend the new year was marked on January 1st, but Aster knew the real renewal took place on Easter, marked by fresh growth and the beginnings of warmth.

His loping feet send thuds traveling down the tunnels as he raced along beside his marching eggs. The first place they would emerge would be the Eastern Seaboard, nestling themselves beneath park benches and in bushes while the sky pinked with dawn.

With a breath, Aster leapt from below ground, expecting the fresh scents of burgeoning flowers and a promise of warmth from a southern wind.

Instead he inhaled the crisp scent of still air that marked cold.

"Damnit…he's not going to do that again, is he?" Aster grit his teeth, taking in the atmosphere. Above his head, the sky was not yet pink, the dim, cloud-covered sky a deep purple as the sun's rays couldn't get through. The only light he saw was the gold filaments in the distance that marked Sandy's work.

"Hey!" he shouted, thumping the ground with his foot and making a bright red egg fall over in fright. "Sandy, what's going on? This doesn't feel like spring!" His ears swiveled to and fro, a cold draft making him drop them down. The wind, too, felt like ice.

"Damnit…he is going to do it, isn't he?" His teeth chattered with a combination of cold and frustration, his fur prickling on his neck. He was going to kill that little frost-bite.

At least, he would once Easter was over.

XXX

"Oh no, you too?" Tooth clucked at one of her fairies, the poor thing fluffing its feathers in an attempt to keep warm. It gave a shivering coo, then sneezed, nearly falling off her hands from the force.

"Here, lay in the sun. There you go." Buzzing her wings, Tooth placed her chilled employee on the peak of the palace, where the sun was strongest. It nestled among dozens, maybe hundreds, of small fairies, all of them clumped close to warm frost-bitten, chilled wings.

"This isn't like you, Jack," Tooth huffed to herself, fluttering down to her command center. "This isn't funny." Progress was slow, especially in the northern hemisphere. Lights indicating sleeping children with teeth under their pillow slowly faded as the marker of daylight streamed across the map, and Tooth let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding as a light flashed in Europe just as the sun rose. That had been close.

But even as relief swept through her, a dozen cheeping voices met her ears at the same moment lights began winking out over North America. She whirled as dozens of her fairies flew—no, fell—into the palace, some with empty tooth jars. Un-delivered coins clanged onto the stone floor.

"No, no!" Tooth scooped the smallest into her hands, icy cold seeping through her feathers. "What happened?"

The piping voice made her heart race.

An ice storm, covering nearly half the country.

XXX

Three months after Christmas, and North was enjoying some well-deserved rest before the next round of work began.

Or he would be, had a flock of elves not run into his room, their jangling bells driving away any hope of sleep he could have.

"What, what, with you?" he grumbled, sitting up. "Isn't Aster taking care of things? It's Easter, not…"

He trailed off, something deep and dread-inducing going through his gut. An instinct honed long ago from his days in Russia.

Heavy boots clumped on the floor of the workshop as he pulled on his coat and headed downstairs, the enormous golden globe the first thing he set his eyes on.

The golden globe, where lights all across North America were beginning to dwindle.

"What…" North narrowed his eyes. "What is that bunny doing?"

Even as he spoke, a tunnel appeared, and a blue-furred rabbit hopped into his workshop. His ears were down, and the blue was not blue at all, but ice encased around grey fur. North's eyebrows hit his hairline.

"I really hate to say this, mate," Aster panted, shivering and sending snow and ice raining to the ground. "But I think I need your help."

North scowled. "Of course, my friend," he said. "But where is Jack?"

XXX

Jack was powerless.

He could make frost appear out of thin air. He could control the north wind, bring blizzards and snow drifts that made for skiing and skating and sledding.

But putting a stop to ice already created, and stopping a storm like this in progress, was not what he did. He relied on the seasons, the sun and the warmth, to erase his handiwork. He was Jack Frost, not Jack Flame.

But right now, he would give anything to stop the storm. Especially since he hadn't started it.

Wind gusted with hair-flinging force, and even immune to cold as he was, the sound and fury of the whistling wind was eye-watering. Jack took each step with care, grasping at control of the winds in spurts to leap from house to house.

A golden tendril found his leg, and he nearly dropped his staff as it hoisted him up, dangling in front of a very irate Sandy. Question marks and X's danced on top of his head.

"It's not me!" Jack shouted, twisting in midair to try to escape the sand that held him. "I didn't do this!"

Sandy tilted his head, a scowl on his face, an expression that very clearly read "I don't believe you." He pointed a golden finger to the park, where piles of snow had begun burying freshly grown flowers. The petals had already begun to wilt under the onslaught of snow and cold.

Jack's stomach dropped, dread building in his fingers and toes. "Sandy, c'mon," he said. "I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do this, not on Easter." He forced a grin. "This isn't my style." As he spoke, the wind gusted once more, sending him twisting and shaking like an autumn leaf on a branch in Sandy's grasp.

More X's appeared on Sandy's head, and it took Jack a second to summon up the courage to say, "I can't stop it."

More question marks. Then another blast of icy fridid air sent them both tumbling, Sandy's cloud of sand nearly dispersed upon fingers of cold.

Jack reached for the north wind, the wind that always came to him. But this time, it didn't. He hit the ground and rolled, his staff knocked out of his grasp and clattering on asphalt. He stopped next to what had the day before been a green lawn, where Jamie's parents had been tending the growth of spring lilies.

Ice had encased them, and the stalks snapped under Jack's hands as he regained his bearings, his head spinning. He hadn't fallen like that since…

He swallowed hard. Since Pitch. But Pitch was gone, defeated. Jack was a guardian now.

But he couldn't shake the unease that crawled along his spine as he got to his feet in an icy blizzard he hadn't created.

"Jack!" He turned at the familiar voice, and a meaty paw grabbed the front of his shirt. Bunnymund snarled the way only a buck-toothed six foot rabbit could. "What do you think you're—"

"This is not Jack," North said, the tall Russian striding into view. Snow had collected in his beard and on his furs, and he blinked deep-set eyes. His voic was low, almost a growl. "I know this."

"Oh. And I had thought this would be a surprise!" Bunnymund dropped him at the sound of the voice, Jack falling onto his feet and diving for his staff.

"Relax, Jack." Pitche's voice was unmistakable, but the shadowy figure was nowhere to be found. Bunnymund flipped his boomerang from paw to paw, and Jack heard the tell-tale snick of steel being drawn from North. "I'm not so concerned with you anymore. You can keep your little toy this time."

Jack grit his teeth. Through the gloom and snow, Sandy floated near, the only source of light in the dim morning. The sun couldn't break through the clouds and the snow that steadily grew worse.

"Come out, ya coward!" Bunnymund shouted.

"Remember how all of you drove me away? Time and again. First with hope and light, and then with fun and merriment." Pitch's voice dripped sarcasm, and a disdain that curdled Jack's stomach. "And Jack. You rejected my offer." Bunny's eyes met his, a question that Jack couldn't answer, not now. "But now I have no need of you."

"Stop this, Pitch!" North shouted, his voice swallowed up in another gust of cold.

"Oh, but I'm not doing this. It's your old friend, North. And yours, Jack."

Something slithered down Jack's spine, something he didn't want to admit. "What are you talking about?" he shouted.

"Why, the one who made you the pathetic guardian you are now. The one who killed you, Jack. Don't you remember?"

The memory of his sister flashed through his mind. The way he had saved her. The moon, its glow bringing him happiness and contentment.

But before that, there had been the frozen lake. Icy water. Freezing to death.

Jack took a step back, and only a furry paw stopped him. "Don't be afraid, mate," Bunny said, a warning more than reassurance. His gaze never stopped searching for Pitch.

But a different form emerged from the gloom, taking shape in the swirling snow. Stooped, bony shoulders in a tattered white cloak, and a long beard that danced in the wind.

North tightened his hold on his swords. Jack couldn't resist taking another step back, his grip tight around his staff and a name he hadn't known he knew flashing through his mind.

Old Man Winter.