There is a jolly bristle in the air, a dry-feet-and-warm-cookies-with-milk kind of notion that reddens cheeks and widens grins. Several hat-elves touting gilded trumpets dangle off teetering toy towers, while still more bumble about jingling and dancing in their endearing, if rather destructive, manner. Even the yetis surrender productivity to join them. And beneath a high shelf displaying some truly exquisite wood carvings, Sandy enthralls a huddle of Tooth's fairies with his narration (mime? charade?) of the past days' events. The birdlike pixies respond with awed squeaks and fearful mid-air whirls incomprehensible to all — barring Sandy, and Tooth herself.

Bunnymund turns away from observing the storytelling session just as one of the fairies, in a miscalculated upwards arc, flies headfirst into a golden-dream-sand-mini-North and falls rapidly asleep. Dismayed, the swashbuckling Santa zips after her, catching her just before she hits the tiled floor.

"Don't mind if I do," Bunnymund says, his voice gravelly as he accepts Phil the Yeti's proffered eggnog. A surprising decision, really, given that he's usually annoyed whenever the froth tickles his twitching rabbit nose, but this is an occasion worth the inconvenience.

Now, one might expect to see the Guardian of Fun right in the center of these sprawling celebrations, mischievously frosting up the floor beneath the pattering feet of hat-elves so they skidded and whooped and giggled, or perhaps creating mini-snowstorms within the cavernous toy workshop. All the while of course, chuckling in that hearty way he naturally has — because of (not 'despite' as a certain Easter kangaroo once thought) his own low body temperature, he appreciates the warmth of others' smiles all the more.

However, the height of North's victory party finds Jack Frost lounging on a wooden chair tucked away into a corner, gazing out a stained-glass window (he believes the reindeer depicted is Prancer, but really he's never been terribly good at distinguishing them) with his elbow resting on one bent knee. Left at ease he often assumes this position, curled up loosely into himself the way children do before the crackling fireplace to stay warm in winter. Since he hasn't felt cold in all of three centuries, the habit is seemingly ironic — or is it?

The hubbub of the victory party grows distant. In one continuous motion Jack leans his staff against the wall to the right of his chair, then pulls his hood up over his head, further muffling the noise as if to better listen to his milling thoughts.

Only the Man in the Moon remembers now the nights when Jack's sister would nudge into his warm arms, bony elbows often jabbing him as she wriggled about trying to get comfortable. She might whine briefly about his wiry legs or knobby knees — more to distract herself from the cold than out of actual dissatisfaction. Jack would invariably offer up some of his thin stew as if to compensate her. Of course, more often than not, this turned out to be another one of his tricks. But the early morning sun rays always found them still huddled together on the hearth, their family's only rug scratchy beneath their bare feet, his exhalations ruffling her soft hair, her little toes twitching slightly as she dreamed of happier worlds.

Jack doesn't know it, but even now, subconsciously, he leaves a sister-sized space between his lean limbs.

"Would I trick you?"

"Yes! You always play tricks!"

Then the imagined game of hopscotch he himself didn't find fun, what with the threat to her life hanging over him, weighing down his shoulders and turning his stomach frigid with fear and dread.

Jack's gaze returns to the window and even as he watches, its surface turns icy, starting from the tips of Prancer's antlers. The frost patterns lack their usual free-flowing, floral grace, instead forming shapes whose jagged edges and severe curves spell out the intensity of Jack's protective streak. The ice reaches the reindeer's belly just as Jack closes his eyes and clenches his teeth, reliving the memory: the staff around her lithe waist, the grate of her skates on the ice. The—

The crash he hears next synchronizes perfectly with the cracking apart of the pond's frozen surface. Jack doesn't flinch at the sudden cacophony, doesn't open his eyes — but before he even realizes it, his right hand darts out as if to grab his staff. Then he hears Bunnymund's gruff voice chiding, "Right, I'll have that boomerang back now, if you don't mind." Then North's Russian accent making good-natured the defensive cry, "Elves will be elves, Bunny!"

One corner of Jack's lips lifts in a wry smile and his tense muscles relax. The frost on the window stops spreading. He leans back to rest his head against his chair's gaudy mistletoe-embroidered drape. One of Tooth's creations, he realizes, noticing pretty quickly that the white blobs on it are really tiny teeth masquerading as snowflakes.

He has known his fellow Guardians (personally, at least) for only a few days, but already even without looking, he can anticipate their banter and recognize their personal quirks. Bunnymund and North are easy enough, what with their intermittent disagreeing in distinguishing accents. He can just discern the faint whir of Tooth's wings — likely somewhere nearby. And Sandy, though silent, is identifiable by the feeling of peace and calm his very presence brings about.

They are the only friends he really has — at least, that he remembers having. Granted, children are always fun to be around, to have snowball fights with, to bring snow days to. Jamie, for instance; and not forgetting his friends: Cupcake, Pippa, Monty. Claude and Caleb. His sister Sophie, clutching whole armfuls of Easter eggs, her hair ruffled at the back the way all toddlers' hair gets at some point in time. Jack runs their names through his mind and hears again their individual, unique ways of laughing. He would never tire of his 'job', his center, he reflects — but who, except the four living legends in the same room as him now, could understand just that feeling?

The Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa. More than friendship, Jack muses. Camaraderie, maybe. Jack's only vaguely aware of it when his smile widens into a grin at this realization; his teeth peep out from under his pale lips. And it doesn't at all occur to him how strange he must look — three hundred years of being invisible have a way of making one unused to moderating facial expressions. (The particularly poetic might observe that the unbridled happiness of Jack's smiles reflects the very spirit of having fun — not caring about the embarrassing face you make trying to catch snowflakes on your tongue, laughing when you not-really-accidentally throw a snowball into your grouchy neighbor's face. Getting lost in your merrymaking to find a way back into your childhood, if only for a moment.)

Just then, a small squeak interrupts him again. Its proximity forces his eyes open, and abruptly his entire field of vision is filled with feathers and two shining, mismatched eyes.

"Baby Tooth!" Jack exclaims. The tiny fairy ceases her teeth-admiring at once to flit a short distance away. Jack sits up in his chair, his hood falling backward, as she shrugs her shoulders with an almost dejected shyness.

He grins good-naturedly. "It's okay," he assures her. "I don't really mind."

Encouraged by the words, Baby Tooth darts to his shoulder, settling contentedly in the folds of his hoodie. She sneezes just once, and clings on with surprising strength for one so small when a guilty-looking Jack tries to deposit her into Phil the Yeti's warm, furry hands (paws?).

He doesn't just not mind, of course. He welcomes every raucous hat-elf disturbance, every reminder that after three hundred years of thinking quiet thoughts to his unheard self, he's found a family again. It's strange and huge but endearingly familiar. It's all he has.

And he figures: it's all he really wants.

It's right as the Easter Bunny is about to depart for his Warren, when North stops him with a hand on his furry shoulder.

"What?"

"Do you know meaning of 'naughty' originally, Bunny?" North asks, with a tone that warns his companion of incoming sentimentality. "Never mind, I know you do not."

"You feel it in your belly?" Bunnymund suggests tiredly.

"How did you know?"

North pauses, giving Bunnymund time to not dignify the question with a response, before continuing. "It comes from 'naught' — to have nothing." Now North looks pointedly to the far corner, where Jack sits. Baby Tooth is perched on his shoulder, and he takes subtle but purposeful care not to jostle her too much as he gets up from his seat to stand facing the window. He focuses for a moment on the image of Prancer before coaxing it forward, off the stained-glass.

"Jack is on naughty list, not just for pranks," North adds, but Bunnymund is no longer really listening. He's watching Jack's frost-reindeer as it dances all round the stunned yetis and elves. He's picturing the ruined Easter eggs, remembering the moment he lost what faith he had in Jack. He's hearing again one of their first exchanges at the Pole:

"I know it's no hard-boiled egg, but kids like what I do."

"But none of them believe in you, do they?"

The reindeer skips and hops around Sandy, then nuzzles against North and Bunny briefly before going to hover over Tooth. And they each understand that this is his way of saying thank you — not just for their teamwork in defeating Pitch, either. Maybe more than any child, Prancer's sprightly steps say in lieu of Jack himself, thank you for believing in me, in the end.

Bunnymund taps the ground with his foot to conjure up one of his magical tunnels. Without losing a fraction of his trademark businesslike manner, he says, "Guess we can strike off one reason he's on that list. Leaving maybe... twenty-three others?"

It's his way of saying well, now he's got us.

I struggled with myself for maybe a week before I worked up the courage to publish this. Many apologies for the cheesiness.

Some people have added this to their story alerts; I do have a fluffy RotG fic drafted, that takes place sometime after this, but it'll be published separately.

m.e.