(A/N: I'm so sorry for my inactivity lately. I don't have internet at home!)

Jack flicks a quick glance at North; a cry for help if Aster ever saw one, even if maybe Jack himself doesn't know.

But the old Cossack does, and reaches out with a large hand to draw the winter sprite behind him. Jack floats there anxiously, not relaxing his death-grip on the shepherd's crook for a moment as North and Tooth move forward to deal with the cranky autumn spirits.

Sandy drifts to Jack's side, touching his arm gently. A series of pictures over his head, of hands and hugs and smiling faces, and Aster thinks maybe he's telling Jack it's okay to ask for help, that's what friends are for.

It's in the uncomfortable shrug of Jack's shoulders, the apprehensive flick of his eyes, that the Pooka realizes the consequences of a three hundred year isolation; Jack has absolutely no idea that's what friends are for.

"What's got them all riled up, Frostbite?" Aster asks with a gentle nudge against his shoulder. They usually play rough, but Jack's skittish as a colt, and his eyes are wide and round when he glances the Easter Bunny's way.

"I have to make the leaves change color," he says quietly, like it's something to be ashamed of. "I- I can feel it, it's time now, and they think it's too soon." Jack squints a little, eyes narrowing in a familiar resilience that warms Bunny's heart in the moment.

Sandy lets little golden sparks of approval fly, and Aster folds his arms with a firm nod.

"Don't you let them tell you what for, Jackie. If you say it's time for the leaves to change, then it's so."

It takes him a minute, but when Jack smiles it sends warmth straight through Aster's chest down into the tips of his fingers and toes. It's hope, soft and sweet, despite having stubbornly weathered hundreds of years.

North and Tooth rejoin them then, the autumn spirits nowhere to be seen. Jack's smile falters a little, but when North beams down at him it blooms back, and the tension in his tiny frame bleeds out.

"I didn't know you made the colors change, Jack," Tooth says right away, and flutters several inches higher in a thrilled little burst. "I'd love to watch! Would that be okay?"

"Uhh," is the witty repartee. "It's not anything special. Aren't you busy?"

And he looks a little nervous again, surrounded by eager faces and interest and kindness, and something in Aster's old heart aches.

"Never too busy for each other," North says sternly, even holding up a finger at the little slip of a sprite to further get the point across. "And this magic I've never seen before! Should be good time!"

Sandy's nodding, and so Jack looks at Aster. Like he'll be the tie-breaker, somehow, like his vote will yay or nay the whole operation. Looks, even now, after all these months, like he's waiting for Aster to shoot him down. But looks aside, Jack's burdened little hope is so thick and warm Aster can taste it like honey on his tongue.

After three hundred years of loneliness, how could anyone still be so kind?

So Aster says, "You open Spring up to me, and close it to Autumn, too? Seems the least I could do, to watch your work now and then."

When Jack laughs it brings a tenderness to the older Guardians' eyes, easily as infectious as his magic snowflakes, and it's somehow similar to all the little lights on the globe; something precious, something young, something to be protected.

And Aster can't wait until that aching, tentative hope finally gives way into joy.