“Hmm? What’s this?” A young man, in fact, barely a man, stared at a rippling reflection, having caught site on a small glimmer. Now, this boy stood at a fair height of around 5'9". His chocolate brown hair seemed to be blown on to one side and got in the way of his key-lime eyes often. But despite his food-colored appearance, he himself was rather lanky. The brunette donned a faded light blue shirt, covered by an open teal jacket, and cheap jeans.

“What is it, Jack?” A girl, perhaps the same age as the lad, asked while picking up a bucket full of water that was sitting next to a long well. As for her, well, she was a little shorter than Jack, her older brother, and had a lighter shade to her hair and eyes. She wore a long pale yellow dress and a short, long sleeved pink jacket covered her shoulders. Her name was Jill.

“Hey, don’t stick your hands in there, you’ll get the water dirty.” The boy, Jack, paid no heed to the girl’s words and continued to dig one of his hands into the bucket he himself was carrying, spilling more water than necessary and soaking his jacket sleeve, as well as the front of his shirt. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time you did that? Ms. Muppet was really mad.”

“Really? No, but look, Jill.” Jack pulled out a small silver crown with some type of yellow gems surrounding the rim. The crown itself was a little smaller than an apple and fit easily in the boy’s hand. “Who do you think would actually drop something like this in a well?”

Jill gasped at the object in her brother’s hand. “It’s really pretty,” she said, gingerly picking the drown up and examining it, “but you should try to find the owner of it. It could be something important.”

A hand grabbed the headdress with less grace than she did, as Jack took the crown back, adjusting his hold on a bucket as he did so. “It can’t be that important if the person lost it in a cheap well...” his voice trailed away at the glare his sister was giving, “Ok, I get it, I’ll ask around.”

“Good.” She smiled, taking her own bucket down a steep hill to deliver the water to the other villagers.

The next day, Jack woke to a slow start. After asking around the whole village, when in actuality isn’t that big a village, the boy was more than tired and wanted to just sleep all day. However, his miser of a sister wasn’t the type to allow a missed day of working and most likely would come in to wake him up.

“Hurry up and get out of bed. Ms. Mary called and we have to deliver her water now.” Jill sneered, pulling the blankets away from his body.

The angry tone in his sister’s voice did ring some type of signal in his head, as she usually wasn’t so snippy, but sleep was so much more appealing. And so, he merely turned away and tried to ignore her.

“So annoying.” She muttered under her breath. Taking a step closer, Jill leaned down towards Jack’s ear and yelled as loud as she could. “Get up, you lazy ass! We’re leaving in five minutes! You better be ready to go by then!” By the time she said the last words, the girl was already out the room and slammed the door shut.

Not wanting to promote her sudden anger, Jack got up and scratched the back of his head. “What’s up? It’s not like it isn’t normal for me to oversleep.” He sighed before changing his clothes. As he was about to put on his jacket, his green eyes looked over to the crown he found the day before. No one claimed to be missing anything and he asked pretty much everyone in the village. Figuring that if he wore the crown, then the owner would see it and ask for it back. Using a couple of pins he found in a drawer, Jack managed to put the crown on his head, in a way that made it look like the ornament was tilting and about to fall off his noggin. Then he left his room, praying, hoping, that whatever mood Jill was in just recently would have disappeared.

At the door, Jill waited with her arms crossed and four buckets stacked at her feet. “Took you long enough. Now hurry up and carry the buckets.”

A sigh escaped Jack’s lips, dully noting that Jill’s mood hadn’t improved in the slightest. He quickly obliged to what she said, chalking up her behavior to PMS and guessing that it would be for the best to just go along with whatever was going to happen.

Less than an hour past and all the buckets were filled before the girl spoke again. “So you still didn’t return that damn trinket?”

Having picked up his share of the work, Jack was about to head down, hands full with the heavy load, and stopped to look back at her. “It’s only been a day, don’t worry. It’d be easier if I have it on me, so everyone can see it, right?” He blinked. Jill’s hands appeared to be shaking and her face twisted with rage. “Jill? Are you ok?”

How strange. Usually she would just flick Jack’s forehead and tell him that he was just a bum. But. Now. Everything was just an annoyance. Every thing Jack said, everything he did, just angered her to no end. And all the little things grew and piled on to each other. Barely noticing that Jack was walking back to her, she shrieked and pushed him with all of her strength, causing him to loose his balance and fall. All the way down the steep hill. A definite crack could be heard as his skull collided with the hard ground, the crown shattering into tiny pieces.

But still, her anger didn’t go away. Jill took a step down the hill. As she walked, somewhere along the way, she lost her footing. And fell.

The blood pooled out of the brunette’s head. More blood than what should be possible, especially since all he did was fall down a dinky hill. Sure it was a steep one, but... An eye cracked opened, and his sight was dyed red. Or that could just be his bodily fluids covering the grass. Silver shards floated above the red liquid and shined in dull eyes. “Right. The crown.” he thought. That might explain the throbbing pain pulsing from his head. Completely ignoring the fact that his head was bleeding like a fountain, or the fact that he should be dead, Jack slowly, but surely got up. After gathering whatever pieces he could find of the shards, and surprisingly being able to think of doing such a mundane action, he staggered back to where his home was.

Once he reached his domain, Jack sat abruptly on his bed, with brown paper and a bottle of vinegar in toll. He stared at the trail of blood he left, but any actual thoughts didn’t come to mind as he picked up the paper and vinegar and started to wrap it around the wound, noticing that some pieces of the crown were still lodged deep into his head. Following his first attempt to pull a shard out came a sharp pain. So he gave up on that and just left what was in there, in there. When the make-shift bandaging was done and he was sure that no blood could seep out, the brunette laid in bed, unable to bear the pain any longer.

Rewinding several hours before, in a place not of the same world, a completely different scenario was taking place. It was in a courtroom, but not one of normal standards. Card suits covered the entire area made of a red heart decor, while in the judge’s position sat a white rabbit; the defense and prosecution being a hare and a dodo bird.

“Alright. Concerning the charge of attempted murder against Frosty, again, the court finds the defendant, Jack Frost, guilty. This ends the case of the People vs. Jack Frost. Please restrain the defendant, and don’t let him escape again!” The white rabbit proclaimed, pounding his gavel. As soon as two guards, in the shape of cards, walked the criminal out, the judge looked at one of his many watches. “Oh, my words, I’m late! Hurry up, men, wrap it up, I mustn’t be late!” Without even confirming that the guards heard him, the rabbit jumped off his post and ran.

“That’s a really reliable judge you got there.” Despite his current position, Jack Frost smirked. The sprite, in all his captured glory, was horribly attractive to say the least. A lean body, that was practically fully exposed and was only covered with an open fur lined coat and tight pants. His piercing ice blue eyes, with a striped tattoo under his left eye, matched the color of his unruly bed-head. A silver crown with blue stones sat at the top of his head.

“Shut up. You won’t be getting away from your sentence this time!” One of the face-less cards barked back. “You aren’t going to be staying in the same Winterland prison you were contained in before. Wonderland’s cells are a hell of a lot stronger.”

That damnable smirk continued to grace the sprite’s feature, if not grow into a full on grin. “Oh really? I’ve escaped ten convictions of child molestation, and seven attempts, eight now, at killing Frosty. Do you really think some cheap heart cell is going to keep me away from freedom?”

“That’s right.” was all the guard said as he shoved Frost into a small cell, viewable to all of the public.

Ten minutes past since the guards left their stations, sure that the sprite wouldn’t be able to escape, especially since he was out in plain view where everyone could see him. Frost sighed before firing a single shot of ice toward the bars, watching for a reaction. What he got was an icicle ricocheting off the thin bars and flying back at his face. Avoiding it easily, he tried again, but in a more wider spread. This caused a defense mechanism in the cell to react, causing a blue fire to neutralize the ice. He sighed once his experimenting was over and laid back, awaiting for his knight in red armor to come find him.

A couple of more hours past, and Frost had already finished freezing all of the surrounding grass and mushrooms and hit on every living being that passed by; he cursed to himself for that fucking stripped catboy trying to be a fucking tease. It wasn’t long before the ice he created started to melt. However, this is Jack Frost, after all, his ice doesn’t simply melt by the sun’s weak ass heat, no, this had to be the cause of someone else.

“‘The hell’re you doing in Wonderland, Frost?”

Not a “how’re you doing?”, not a “hey, why’re you in jail?”, not a “I love you, bro”. Honestly, no respect. “Although,” Frost said, looking up at the man in front of him, “I can’t expect much from you.”

“I’m breaking you out, again, is that not good enough?” the other said.

“Pyro, love, it’s never enough.” he replied, waiting for his acquaintance to make a move. “But are you really planning you break me out in broad daylight? This is a public cell after all.”

Pyro stood there with his hands in his jacket’s pockets. Even though the two of them where brothers, unlike Frost, Pyro Jack was a sprite of the fire element; and so, on the back of a sleeveless hoodie and on his fingerless gloves, bore a fire emblem. His fire red hair looked as if to burn in the blowing wind; the same crown as his own, but with red stones, adorning his head. Orange eyes stared into ice blue for a while before closing, and he smirked, turning away. “Who said anything about me doing something now? Maybe I should let you stay in jail, then you won’t be in such a hurry to go back.” and with that, he left.

Frost looked back at his brother’s retrieving figure, a frown replacing his previous smile. “So, I’m supposed to wait?”

The afternoon slowly past and night made its way into Wonderland, and Jack Frost still found himself caught in his prison with his so call savior absent. “Damn, I don’t really want to be here. Not with all the freaks and weirdos around.” he said, eyeing a rocking horsefly that was drifting past his line of vision.

“Isn’t that what they say ‘the kettle calling the teapot black’?”

Before the ice sprite could turn to see the owner of the voice, the cage he was in suddenly combusted. Rather, pillars of fire erupted from the ground where the bars were planted. The cell was burnt to a crisp, leaving a foul stench of melting steel. Patting off a few ashes that covered his jacket, Frost huffed, glaring at the pyro that just “valiantly” saved him. “Don’t you think you’re being too flashy?”

Pyro stared at the growing fire that spread from one blade of grass to another and spoke, “Even if I’m being too flashy you’ve never been caught escaping, so it shouldn’t matter.”

“There are limits to what you should do.”

“Well, if you’d stop trying to kill poor Frosty, I wouldn’t need to resort to burning every prison you’re in.”

“Don’t use my breakouts as an excuse to further extend your arson hits.”

“Excuse me? It doesn’t matter how many hits I have if I’m not caught.”

“Oh, really? Don’t you know, Pyro, that if your crimes come to light they automatically become the correct thing to do?”

“Isn’t what you’re mentioning supposed to be repenting? What you’re saying and what you do is completely different.”

Their argument continued on, during which they managed to get out of Wonderland without being noticed. And surely, in the news tomorrow, an arson case would be announced along with the notorious Jack Frost’s however many-ths escape.

But before the next day comes, one more event needs to take place. Upon returning to Everland, the Jack brothers met up with something strange. Which might be saying something since they’re both freaks themselves. What they found was the prone body of a young boy, whose head reeked of some type of vinegar and was wrap in the most cheap look bandages ever.

“He looks kinda cute. You know, if it wasn’t for the mummy head.” Frost said, looking over the unconscious body. He kneeled down to try to wake the boy up.

“He looks kinda dead. I’m not helping you again if you add necrophilia to your list of things to do.” Pyro started to continue on his way to an inn, but stopped short, turning back to look at the prone body. “It doesn’t seem like he has any magic either. So if he isn’t dead yet, he will be soon.”

“You think so? Looks like he’s just sleeping.” the ice sprite ignored the reply from the other, which sounded something along the lines of the boy being comatose, and noticed that said boy was holding on to something. “What’s have we here?” Prying whatever was in the boy’s hand, which wasn’t all that hard to do, and threw it at Pyro.

The arson caught it and blinked. “So it broke? Shouldn’t that be even more of an indication that the guy’s dead?” In his hand, were the shards of a silver crown, similar to the one atop his own head.

“He’s still breathing.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“So you’re gonna leave the kid to die?”

“I’m not a saint, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“That’s so horrible of you, love.”

“Oh, really? You probably just want to help him so you can get in his pants as soon as he wakes up.”

“Yeah, really. ...And, so what if I do?”

Pyro’s head dropped a notch, though he should’ve guess that that was what his brother was after; it really shouldn’t be a surprise anymore. “I’m not helping you take care of him, I hope you know.”

Gingerly picking up the sleeping boy, Frost carried him in a bridal style and followed after the pyro. “You’re so cold.”

“Coming from you, that sounds kind of funny.” was Pyro’s automatic reply. But really, he wasn’t paying attention to the two behind him anymore. At this late at night, he doubted that there would be any open inns, but sleeping outside wasn’t something he enjoyed. By some kind of luck, there was a small tavern with lights shining though the windows near the end of the city. The three of them entered and managed to take up rent in there.