In which stuff happens involving Jack and the Avengers. Hopefully written well enough that you find it interesting to read. Should I continue it?

ooo000ooo

Darkness. It was the first thing Jack noted as he slowly became aware of his surroundings. Wherever he was, it was dark, and it was cold.

His ice-blue eyes trailed listlessly through the water, their vision blurred and shrouded in the shadow of lids struggling to stay open. At some point they had managed to peel apart. He couldn't remember when. His body felt numb, and an effort to bring a hand to steady his pounding head only produced a slight twitching of his fingers. Somewhere very far away, warning bells were going off in his mind, dulled by the fog that seemed to have taken up residence between his ears during the time he was... asleep? Unconscious?

Sleep called out to him, soft but persistent, distracting his loosely organized thoughts with ease. Muddled as his mind was, his instincts for action were easily overpowered by his desire to lapse into comforting nothingness once more. His eyelids drifted shut as he succumbed back into the black cradle that clouded him, wishing the alarm in his brain would stop ringing soon.

Wake up, dammit.

In the span of what could have been a second or a century, a spark of adrenaline coursed through Jack's veins, prying open his eyes and forcing the fog to dissipate ever so slightly. Jack needed to focus, according to the shouting in his brain. Groggily, he turned his head to look about. Where was he?

Tooth, Santa, Sandman, Bunny. Unbidden memories flooded his mind, bringing him up to speed on all he could remember.

Jamie. Pitch.

The battle between the Guardians and the Bringer of Darkness in Burgess. He remembered it all, yet had no recollection of how he had come to be where he was.

Manny.

For an instant, Jack could have sworn it was more than his imagination that the silver light of the Man in the Moon seemed to penetrate the murky abyss in which he found himself floating. Manny would have an explanation, Jack realized, even if the mysterious demi-deity didn't feel like sharing what it was. Decidedly, it was the best place to start, if not his only real option at the moment. Forcing the last of the drowsy veil from his mind, Jack thrashed his legs wildly and began to kick in the direction that he could only hope was the surface.

Several minutes later he broke through to air. Jack had never been a good swimmer, and as he coughed the liquid from his lungs he thought with some irony that it was a good thing he was dead, else he would have certainly died several feet below. Water streamed off his white bangs and down his forehead, stinging his eyes and obscuring his vision as he struggled to stay afloat. Trying to clear them with his sleeve (also notably drenched, making the whole effort useless) he felt blindly with his free hand for the shore and was surprised to find it right next to his side- in the form of hard, albeit unevenly cut cement.

This wasn't the lake then, but some man made pool instead. He dragged himself from the water and shook off his hands so he could properly wipe his eyes. Water, he decided, was only fun when in ice or crystal form.

"Wha-?"

Again able to see, Jack stared dumbly at the ground. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, and after a moment's hesitation rubbed them vigorously to be sure he wasn't seeing a trick of the dark.

The pool he had climbed from was not so much a pool as it was a puddle- literally an accumulation of drain water in the corner of what Jack suspected might be a long abandoned warehouse. The dim light filtering through the high-up windows made it hard to see much of anything, but Jack could tell that the water barely spanned three feet wide at the most. Ignoring the impossibility of the depth, this was hardly the distance he had swam horizontally in his attempt to resurface.

It troubled him more than he would have cared for.

He crouched down to inspect the water further. If there were such thing as a 'normal abandoned warehouse' puddle, as far as appearances went Jack supposed this would be it. Thick with grime and smelly and stagnant, there were even bits of soggy newspaper and hair floating around on the surface- hair that did not belong to him, he might add. With a grimace he decided that either a shower or blizzard was of order as soon as he figured out what was going on.

Warily, Jack rolled up a sleeve and eased his hand into the water again. He barely got two inches deep before connecting with the cement floor.

His heart rate seemed to find this an appropriate excuse to spike in an attempt at inducing cardiac arrest. Jack withdrew his hand as fast as if it had been stuck in a vat of acid. The black water rippled silently, staring up at him. Jack had never encountered magic like this. "Manny!" He hollered, his voice echoing in the large, empty room. Could it somehow be Pitch's doing? Jack did not enjoy being thoroughly spooked. It was time to get some answers, now. As he spun on his heel he looked up at the windows to see if he they were large enough to fly through.

Where the hell was his staff? The sudden realization hit him like an unexpected punch in the gut, sending him reeling backwards in shock and fright.

Jack's staff was his life. More than that, it was the gateway to releasing his power. Without it, he couldn't even frost the ground beneath his feet. He couldn't make it snow, or create the perfect snowballs, or lift off to go visit Tooth or Bunny or North when he was feeling bored. Hell, he couldn't even understand the wind. Jack's staff never left his grip, not even in his sleep. Panic morphed to anger, which quickly turned to desperation. Apprehensions about the mysterious puddle forgotten, he ran into it's center, bare feet kicking up black water and garbage alike in a frenzied attempt to find his staff.

It wasn't there. Could it have been left floating in the water with him?

With a snarl of frustration, Jack tore across the room, searching every nook and cranny and hiding space there was in the rather empty space. It didn't take long, and when it became irrefutable that his staff wasn't there, he sprinted down the hallway and into the next room. And the next. And the next.

Seven rooms later, he stood panting in the entrance hall of the massive building, jaw set in a worried grimace as his mind swarmed, trying to come to grips with his situation. His staff was gone without a trace.

Panic will get you nowhere but dead Jack, he reminded himself, pressing his forehead against the cold stone of the wall- a small but meaningless comfort. Even if you're technically not living supplanted the other half of his mind. Now he was talking to himself. Great. Next thing you knew he would be developing split personalities like North, too.

It bothered him that the other Guardians weren't around. Not that he really expected them to be- usually they were all off in their own respective corners of the world, tending to their own pressing matters and defending the innocence of children in their own unique way. Still, some unnamed dread continued to loom in the pit of his gut; no amount of halfhearted reassurances would chase it from the shadows. Something was going on, Jack thought, and dammed if he knew what.

Wearily, he withdrew from the comfort of the wall and made his way to the door. A sharp tug on its handle and the large metal frame swung open with little more than a screech in protest from its heavily rusted hinges. A breath Jack hadn't realized he was holding slowly escaped his lungs. Had the door been locked, leaving the building would have proven to be a whole 'nother challenge he refused to dwell too much upon.

A cool gust of wind greeted Jack as he stepped out into the night, and he inhaled the fresh air readily. A quick glance about his location showed him to be about as far as could be from the cityscape he'd been expecting. Rolling hills of dirt and desert greeted his eyes in every direction, a few hardy clumps of grass dotting the landscape in sparse patches. Above him, the sky was a sea of stars, unblemished by the lights of the city. It was a beautiful but discomforting sight. Wherever he was, Jack suspected it was far from North America.

Jack stepped away from the building, sliding a hand into the pocket of his hoodie as he looked up to the sky. He caught himself reflexively raising his right hand to rest his non-existent staff across his shoulders and scowled.

"Manny?" He shouted, feeling slightly ridiculous when he didn't immediately spot the great silver behemoth in the sky. A faint glow outlined the building in front of him, and with slight irritation Jack realized the warehouse was blocking his view.

"Manny!" Jack shouted again as he rounded its corner several minutes later. Walking, he decided irritably, was a highly inconvenient mode of transportation compared to flying. Thank god Bunny wasn't here, or he'd be running circles around him, milking his grounded state for all its worth. The oversized pooka still held a small grudge over his shrinking incident, no matter how vehemently he denied it whenever Jack prodded. His train of thought cut short as his eyes latched on to the sight of the moon.

Or rather, what was left of it.

A thin crescent, barely visible, hung like a ghost in the sky, its once cream-colored surface reduced to a sickly pale white. "Manny!" Jack shouted again, waving his hands and trying to get the moon's attention. "It's me, Jack Frost!"

No beam of light fell upon him, no glow of reassurance filled his heart. Jack knew the moon waxed and waned cycles- of course he did, he was 300 years old- but as he stared up at the being that stood as the Guardian of the Guardians, he knew that Tsar Luna was far from its usual self. The barely visible crescent felt much like a closed eye, unfocused and shied away. Was the moon ignoring him? Jack wondered, incredulous and doubtful all at the same time.

Or, A sudden thought chilled him to the bone, Could it be that this was all the power it had left?

"Manny, please, tell me where I am, tell me what's going on." Jack begged, his trying without success to keep the desperate note from his voice. "Where's my staff, are the others alright? Give me something, anything."

Jack watched and hoped, eyes trained unblinkingly on the barely visible crescent. He waited a long time, but the moon did not respond.

"Please..." He whispered.

With a sigh, he allowed his head to drop and his neck muscles to relax.

It was in that instant that a flicker of light caught his eye.

Jack looked up again in time to see a single star blaze across the night sky, particles of ice and dust streaming behind it as it flew low over his head and beyond the horizon behind him. Jaw agape, he looked back to the moon in wonder. It might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn the crescent looked more like wink than before- though strangely tinged with sadness for reasons Jack couldn't fathom. A smile graced Jack's face in reply. "Thanks Manny. I mean it."

Steps bounding with renewed energy, he turned turned to follow the path the moon had given him. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. All he could do now was head East and hope for the best.

ooo000ooo

Jack took off at a brisk pace, eyes trained on the horizon and constantly on the look out for whatever he was supposed to discover. The moon sank slowly as he covered mile after mile, and the soles of his feet soon became dirty and sore. Except for what eventually looked to be the barest hint of mountains in the distance, there was nothing around for miles, as far as he could tell. Twice he encountered some salamander hunting for a midnight snack- one even ran through his leg while chasing after a moth, a rather disturbing sensation. Three times he was given false hope by distant cacti standing like lone warriors in the night. Jack sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. He really hoped he wouldn't have to walk all the way to those mountains.

He didn't know how long he'd been walking when he realized that the stars were starting to fade into a paling navy sky. Dawn was almost upon him, then. Excellent. And still there was nothing but dirt and a cacti in the distance. The mountains had barely gained an inch in size.

"If I was supposed to turn somewhere, now would be a great time to let me know." Jack announced to the moon in a mixture of sarcasm and hope. No response came, and he muttered beneath his breath, "didn't think so."

The sun continued to rise, and with it, the temperature began a gradual but worrying climb. Even in the warehouse, Jack thought, it had never been all that cool to begin with. Spring had been just around the corner when the Guardians defeated Pitch- technically speaking, the upper hemisphere should still be adhering to the climate requirements of the Winter Spirit. But it dawned on Jack that he had no idea how long he could have possibly been out. It could have been days, or it could have been weeks. Even months. As the air around him heated past the upper forties, he began to suspect he may have missed out on a season or more.

In which case, Jack Frost was going to have a major problem on his hands.

It was impossible for the Guardians to die, at least by normal human standards. Granted, extreme falls, impacts, and other such things could do some serious damage- but unless that damage was inflicted by another supernatural being, it was guaranteed to heal, given enough time. Each did however have their own Achilles heel; Jack's was the summer, or anything that produced too much heat. For all the power and fun that came with being the winter spirit, it also left him extremely vulnerable to all things hot with extended exposure. Especially now, when he was without his staff to channel his magic.

The guardians might not be able to be killed, but they could be erased. Jack had seen it happen to Sandy; just bringing back the memory made him shudder. If the sun melted him today, it might be a very long time before anyone realized he was missing, if they even did. He turned to ask the moon for more help, only to find it had disappeared into the periwinkle sky.

He was on his own, then. Fantastic.

Not much later, Jack noticed as he walked his eyes being continually drawn to the outline of a cactus, barely visible in the distance. Something about it was off, though he could hardly tell what from where he was. Quickening his pace, he soon became able to distinguish more of the strange object- the closer he got, the more familiar it became. It was his staff! Jack broke into a run as the first rays of sunlight came over the mountains and washed the world in light.

He skidded to a halt in front of his staff, out of breath but grinning madly ear to ear. Why it was stuck in the ground at such an odd angle, in the middle of such a desolate place, he hadn't a clue. His smile faltered slightly when he noticed the four strange rocks bearing inscriptions around it. Tied onto the front one, a worn white envelope held in place with a red packaging ribbon. Jack, it read in what said spirit easily identified as North's experienced scrawl. Bending down, Jack reached forward and slipped the letter loose- the ribbon fell away at the slightest tug.

What he saw beneath it made him tumble off balance.

Nicholas St. North.

In lasting memory.

The words were carved in intricate but worn detail onto the rounded stone.

His eyes darted to the similar stones beside it.

Toothiana, Queen of the tooth faerie armies.

Sanderson ManSnoozie.

E. Aster Bunnymund.

In lasting memory.

Rest in peace.

Tombstones. Not stones, but tombstones. Arranged in a diamond, with Jack's staff at the center. Of all the things he might have expected, this was something he would never consider even in a thousand years. Jack couldn't breath, he couldn't think. The hot rays of the sun felt magnified a thousand times over as they beat down upon his back, collecting like a fire inside his chest. His mouth opened and shut repeatedly, though no sounds came out. He could have been crying, he could have been screaming. He couldn't tell. His hands began to shake, and in his stupor his hands fell to the envelope.

Jack.

His name stared up at him blankly. Slowly, he turned it over and withdrew the note inside.

ooo00ooo

The idea for this story has been eating at me for a while, so I decided to try my hand at it though we all know my writing skills could be better. The plot line is solidified, its just a matter of getting the story on the paper, unlike my other fanfics which were kind of spur of the moment (and inevitably didn't work out). Let me know if I should bother continuing this, reviews and critiques (I can take it!) are always appreciated :) I'm trying to keep Jack as on character as possible, let me know if its working? College is a time-killer, so at best hope for a chapter every 1 1/2 week.