I am inexcusable. Here is just a blurb for now and jeez I need to get you guys the proper chapter you deserve. Thank you all so much!

Tony was numb.

He sat up on the bed he had been placed in after some alien bastard had clocked him a new one and knocked him out cold. But he was up now.

And he didn't feel a thing.

Ben was still out—limp and quiet on the bed opposite to Tony, his temple mottled with the bruised imprint of Steve's fist. Tony realized distantly that he should be worried, but for some reason everything was still inside him—his chest was a yawning, frozen cavity and his blood refused to flow.

His son was gone.

His son was gone.

He wasn't angry. He wasn't really anything at the moment. It was like his brain was waterproof, and thoughts were raindrops. Nothing was touching him.

There were heavy footsteps behind him. "Tony..." Thor said, discomfort in every syllable. "How...are you?"

Tony might have punched him if he had possessed the necessary motor functions. Either way, he didn't feel like answering.

Thor hesitated before continuing. "I wish for you to understand...what we did to...to your Jack—"

"You said he would be safe," Tony whispered hoarsely. He turned to look at the agitated Asgardian, feeling as though he was creaking with age from so long of sitting, waiting, grieving. "That's what you said, huh? That he would be safe."

Tony didn't notice that Thor had the decency to look ashamed.

"I am sorry, Tony. Truly, we all are. But it was—"

"I swear," Tony twisted around and choked on the fire that was forcing its way up his throat. "That if you say necessary—if you say that what you did was necessary—"

"Tony," Thor said quietly, and Tony wanted to scream, to yell, because Thor sounded too freaking gentle—in the way a father talks to a son. A son. But Tony wasn't a son—not anymore—he was a father. He was a father. It was Thor and Odin—they had killed his son.

But he didn't voice any of this. He just turned back around and stared at his hands. He couldn't feel them.

"I tried everything," he croaked to Thor's silence. Even talking hurt. "I tried every damn thing on the planet to get my boys back." A puff of air—maybe the ghost of a chuckle—escaped through Tony's lips. "I guess this is what I get for overextending."

For a moment, both men were silent.

"It was not for nothing," Thor said suddenly, more than a hint of earnestness in his tone, as if he was trying to suggest that something good could come out of this. "A young immortal—a boy named Jack Frost—can now live because of your son. He—"

"How old."

Thor blinked. "What?"

"How. Old. Is. He." Tony deadpanned.

"Young," Thor said, too eagerly. "Only three hundred years—"

"So," Tony interrupted flatly, "my kid gets sixteen years, and this Jack Frost gets over three hundred. That's really...really...fair." It was a statement that, while soft spoken, had the same impact as if he'd screamed it to the world. A blaring message of the unfairness, the wrongness.

Thor didn't seem to know how to respond, shifting from foot to foot for a moment. Finally, he said, with an air of relief, "I must go. Jack Frost...he has people looking for him. They will be overjoyed to hear of his safety." His voice became cooler, more pointed. "People who care for him. One of them is like a father to him. And I will remind you, Tony: You still have Benjamin. You are still a father."

After another moment of Tony's stony silence, Thor swept out of the room.

Tony waited until the door was closed.

Snap.

At the sound, Ben's eyes flew open as if he'd never been asleep. He sat up quickly, wincing as an ache shot through his skull, but met his father's eyes unflinchingly.

Ben had been faking it. Alright, not a surprise. Tony had suspected that for the past two minutes.

No, the thing that scared him the most was that Ben wasn't grieving. His eyes weren't glassy. He didn't look numb. If anything, he had never looked more focused. His messy brown hair was more rumpled than was common, but he didn't try to fix it. Sitting there on the bed, he looked rigid, immovable. His bright green eyes positively flamed with something fierce—something that set Tony on edge.

Ben looked like the unstoppable force and the immovable object.

"You heard him, Dad. You know what we have to do." Ben spoke with a hard tone and even harder eyes. Like stone. Like adamantium.

"What—what do we have to do?" Tony mirrored, feeling dumb and slow. He didn't want to do anything. Except stop existing. That'd be nice.

Ben looked at him. He looked at Tony, right in the eye.

But Tony felt that he didn't recognize his son. He felt as if this wasn't his son.

If the eyes were windows to the soul, then Tony didn't like the emptiness he saw there.

"We have to kill the thing that killed my brother."

—•—•—

Sandy wondered if this was 'dad-shock'.

If the new spirit had acted like he looked—his mid to late teens—then it wouldn't have been so hard. But no; the said spirit seemed to have the attention span of a tablespoon and the ADHD of a rebellious child in elementary school. 'Jack Sparks' as he was so named just continued to giggle cheerfully, chasing after the odd little misfit toy. He came, on multiple occasions, dangerously close to tumbling right off the dreamsand cloud Sandy had fashioned for him—triggering in turn multiple false-heart attacks for Sandy.

For the first time in forever, the thought crossed Sandy's mind that he was getting too old for this job.

They were gliding briskly through the night, New York long behind them and the North Pole looming in front. It was imperative that the other Guardians meet this new Jack.

And therein lied the crux of the matter. Sandy didn't know how this boy fit into the story of his Jack. Jack Frost, that is. The two undoubtedly were very similar, from the personality to the physical features. It was almost as if they were—

related.

If anything, Sandy sped up in that last mile to the pole, eliciting a tiny, brief yelp from his passenger before he was lost in his game again.

It made sense. It made so much sense, now.

Sandy burst through the doors of the Pole. He needed to find North