4. Together

They had settled for stories. It was a sufficiently peaceful activity and it definitely wasn't boring. Well, that depended on the storyteller of course. But in this case there were no bad choices. All of the Guardians had enough years – centuries – on them to have experienced a lot of interesting and appropriately whimsical things. At first Jack had protested, told the others to go back to work. But none of them would have any of it. Not even Bunny, even though he would surely have his hands full catching up with his deadline of getting the eggs painted and hidden for Easter once he got back. Instead of working they had just sat down onto the bed that was not really spacious enough for five beings of varying sizes and started taking turns in storytelling. They all seemed to be perfectly fine with abandoning their duties for a whole day and instead sitting cramped in a quite frankly freezing cold room just to keep Jack company. After realizing that fact Jack found it very hard to stop smiling even when smiling started to hurt.

It was Sandy's turn to be the storyteller, and he put on an amazing one-man show. He created dozens of images that danced around in the frozen room. He gestured wildly and used his expressions as much as he used his dreamsand. Occasionally he had to take a break to send forth a few good dreams that bounced out of the seams of the now closed window and found their way to the sleeping children around the world. Then he would always continue as if nothing had happened, conjuring up more sand miracles and dancing in the midst of them.

Even though Jack had seen the little dream weaver at work hundreds of times, he couldn't deny being totally enchanted by the act. He sat on his bed, hugging his knees while the other Guardians floated or sat by his side, all staring at Sandy's performance with varying degrees of wonder. Sandy made another vivid sand image that slowly dissolved at his command, and then started wrapping the story up. It finished with a Fin written over Sandy's head in nice cursive writing. The word hung in the air before Sandy let the grains of sand scatter and gave a small bow.

The others applauded.

"Wonderful, Sandy!" Tooth exclaimed, "That was one of your best!"

"Very good!" North nodded approvingly.

Sandy beamed at them.

"That. Was. Awesome!" Jack joined the complimenting with barely contained excitement, "I didn't even know a hang glider could get you into so much trouble."

Sandy gave another bow and then carefully let his feet touch the icy floor. He found a slightly less frosty spot on the floor and conjured an art deco -style dreamsand chair for himself.

"Who's turn is it now?" Tooth asked, "Jack, you're the only one who hasn't told a story yet."

Really? Jack did a quick mental check on it and realized Tooth was right. They had started with Bunny's epic adventure involving a time-traveller using an old car as the time machine and then moved on to Tooth's description of her childhood in a peaceful village in Asia. Then had come North's rather graphic tale of a ferocious battle he and his old bandit group had gotten into. Tooth had at one point commented on the unnecessarily gory details, but North had remarked that the even the youngest person in the room was over three centuries old and continued that the violence in his story was nothing compared to what Tooth had once sworn to do if she ever encountered the Monkey King again. It had shut the fairy up about the issue and made Jack morbidly curious of what exactly Tooth had sworn to do at the face of who was apparently her mortal enemy. He had decided not to ask, though, and Sandy's brilliant show had then made him forget about the whole thing for the moment.

But now it was his turn? All of the other Guardians were looking at him expectantly and it made him a bit uncomfortable. Being stared at was still kind of new to him.

"Sorry," he said, "I don't think I can top Sandy's show."

"Bah!" North exclaimed merrily, "Is not about topping anyone. Is about telling a story."

"I know. I just can't think of anything now."

"Really? Are you getting tired, Jack?" Tooth asked worriedly, "Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine. What do you want me to tell about?"

"Something happy," Tooth said immediately. There was something odd about her smile. It was as warm and genuine as ever, but also strangely fragile. Jack didn't know why that was. But he decided to let it go and just shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, I'm happy now. As in, right now."

It wasn't much of a story. The second part wasn't even much of a sentence. But it earned him a very moved smile from Tooth, and an awkward punch to the shoulder from Bunny. Sandy formed a dreamsand smiley face and North pulled Jack into a one-armed hug. The chilly air in the room seemed to be warmed up by the sheer mushiness that now surrounded them.

"C'mon, guys," Jack's voice was muffled slightly by the sleeve of North's coat, "Don't get too sappy now."

It didn't take more than one day for Jack to go from an unconscious heatstroke victim back to his energetic self. When night began to fall and the Aurora Borealis – completely one-hundred percent natural this time – coloured the sky with vivid waves of light, Jack was already much better and ready to fly away. The others hadn't let him get up from the bed until they had made sure he was absolutely fine. It was annoyingly overprotective of them, but Jack decided to let it slide, just this once. Mostly because there was a little, childish voice in his head that kept repeating how wonderful being cared about felt. But the winds outside were getting way too restless to be ignored any longer, and Jack was restless as well. All the traces of the heatstroke were gone, and even the other Guardians had been finally convinced to leave him alone for a while. It was time for Jack to get back to the great outdoors.

He cracked the room's window open and hopped onto the sill. His bare toes curled around the edge, and he breathed in the fresh air. Cold wind stroked his hair, and he leaned forward, ready to dive...

"Close the bloody window, Frostbite!"

Jack froze in mid-step over the edge of the windowsill and turned back to see the mighty Easter Bunny shivering at the doorway. Tooth slipped over Bunny's head, her wings accidentally brushing Bunny's long ears and causing the rabbit to flinch rather comically.

"Jack?" Tooth asked, "What are you doing?"

"I was going to close the window once I was out!" Jack said defensively, "I'm feeling fine now. I want out."

Bunny studied him critically.
"Ya do look better. And the sooner ya're out of my hair the better."

"Nobody asked you to stay," Jack fired back with a wide smirk. Ahh, meaningless arguing with neither side really meaning what they said. Yes, everything was back to normal.

"Yeah, well, someone is asking you to stay," Bunny said and crossed his arms. Probably to mask his shivering.

"Who?"

"North is!" Tooth piped in, "He had yetis make dinner!"

Tempting. Eating wasn't really a necessity for a spirit, but Jack had to admit that he had taken a liking to the yetis' cooking. He slowly slid back onto the floor and stood up straight, setting his staff over his shoulders and took a moment to think. On the other hand, he wanted out. He really did. He had been in one place for way too long.

"Ya coming?" Bunny asked.

And on the other hand, the Guardians had stuck with him through delirium, freezing cold and even ignored all the slips in their schedule because of him. So in return Jack could easily handle a few more hours without making it snow. In fact, it was safe to say that Jack was more than prepared to suffer through some very uncomfortable heat just for the Guardians.

He smiled at his friends and the open window slammed shut behind him, courtesy of the wind.

"Yeah, I'm coming."

Author's Note: Alsksdlcmxls my brain is not working at all today! Gah! And of course that kind of day is the best day for doing the last edits to this story. But on the bright side I think this chapter sucked even before the edits... wait, that's not the bright side at all. But hey, it's done! And look at that fluff that is there to cleverly hide the fact that I'm temporarily running out of ideas. Yay. My writer's block is even taking over fanfiction-writing now it seems. BUT this story was quite fun to write so no regrets at all! And you people seemed to like it so that's awesome!

Okay, I put some random references in this chapter so I might as well mention them here:

Sandy and hang gliders: This is a super obscure one. When I was little I used to watch this German Sandman -show called Sandmännchen. It's actually still on-going. So according to Wikipedia the show was first started in East Germany, and the fact that the Sandman used a hang glider in one episode was probably a statement against local travelling restrictions because hang gliders were forbidden in DDR.

Bunny and time travellers in a car: Kinda obviously a reference to Back to the Future. And to the fact that Bunny is a time traveller in the books and apparently uses his free time to make sure that other time travellers don't mess with history.

Tooth and the Monkey King: again, the books. Although so far she hasn't really sworn to do anything gory to the Monkey King, but she did at one point (SPOILERS AHOY!)consider snapping his neck with her bare hands, but then decided to just leave him to be brutally mauled by wild jungle animals(SPOILERS OVER).

I guess that was all? Thank you all so much for your kind comments and favs and everything. I'm so happy!

Have a nice weekend!