Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians.

Warning: There is Death. If you don't like to read about people dieing (not descriptive) don't read.

Three Hundred Years

"Darkness. That is the first thing that I remember. It was dark, and it was cold. And I was scared."

A small child huddled in the corner, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to hold in her pained sobs and block out the yelling from the other room.

Her small, starvation thin arms were crossed protectively over her bent knees, holding them in place against her bony chest. The pain in her side, something that had developed just a few days ago when she had been thrown across the room by a kick, bubbled angrily through her body. Her long black hair hid a swollen black eye.

She wasn't stupid like everyone thought she was. She knew what was happening, but she also knew that she couldn't tell any one. If she did the man in the other room would kill her mom, and no matter what she couldn't let that happen. Not even her mom knew what the other man had done, and she preferred to keep it that way.

She knew that she was dieing.

It had started a few days ago with the kick to her side. At first she had thought that one of her ribs had broken. The pain of broken ribs faded after a few hours as she became accustomed to it. This pain, however, did not fade or go away; it got worse.

Before long it had spread, encompassing her entire right side and leaving her unable to move. Something had happened, and now she was dieing. The sad thing about it? She didn't care, not anymore.

Darkness slowly crept up on her as her world faded in and out around her, tears coming to her swollen eyes. She had tried so hard to protect her mom, too keep her from finding out, but she knew that she wouldn't be able to hide this, not this time.

And she was so, so scared.

The shadows around her flickered, as if ready to jump forward and devour her weak form as soon as her body gave out. Cracked frames of old pictures glared down at her from the walls and the window creaked slightly, left open from the last time she had tried to look out, to see the snow.

A cold, biting breeze swept through the room, chilling her already cold form and making her sob harder. Small, intricate snowflakes drifted silently through the window to the floor even as ferns, formed by frost, bloomed across the floor.

Unnoticed by the young girl, sad blue eyes watched the child's suffering with a broken heart, wanting to help but knowing that he could not. He was Jack Frost, spirit of winter and bringer of the cold. His season brought death, his touch had no heat to give.

This girl had caught his attention because of her love of the snow. She would always wait eagerly for the first snowfall, year after year, so that she could watch it from her window as it drifted peacefully to the ground. This year she had not come.

He had gone looking for her, wondering what had happened, only to find her broken, hanging on to the last strings of life as she struggled to breath even through the crippling pain.

Maybe if he had been sooner he could have done something, could have stopped her from getting hurt.

Maybe if she could see him he could give her comfort, but she could not, and he didn't.

"I am so sorry," Jack murmured softly as he crouched down in front of the small child who stared through him unseeingly, "I'm sorry that I can't save you."

He looked down at his hands, both of them clutching the wooden staff that was balanced on his legs, "I . . . I wish I could help you," his eyes closed as tears that instantly froze on his cheeks fell from his pale blue eyes.

Something tingled through his figures and Jack blinked in surprise as he looked down and found a small swirl of blue magic forming over his hands. Carefully he cupped the magic with one hand, watching as it formed into a single, larger than normal, snowflake that glowed faintly. Glancing between it and the girl for several moments Jack smiled slightly, taking it as an answer to his wish, and blew the snowflake toward her.

It landed on her nose, melting from the heat of her skin, and she flinched back it surprise, blinking for several moments as her eyes seemed to refocus and suddenly she was not looking through him, but at him.

Jack felt his breath freeze in his lungs as his eyes went wide. She could see him?

Slowly, painfully, the girl's eyes went wide and she smiled with cold, lightly blue lips. Her entire face lit up as she shakily reached out with one hand and touched his cheek. Wonder spread through her and her hand shook slightly where it rested on his face. Jack didn't dare move, not knowing if this was real.

'Thank you,' she mouthed, her breathing becoming less pained and further in between, 'thank you for caring.'

The light left her eyes and her hand slipped from his cheek, leaving a feeling of emptiness behind.

For the first time in the ten years since his awakening at the lake Jack cried. He cried, not for himself, but for the young girl who had been so strong and yet so week.

The next day the girl's mother would come searching for her only child, only to find her leaned against the wall, eyes closed in a semblance of sleep, and no heat to her body, but a smile on her lips.

Her last moments had not been of terror, but of peace.

"But then . . . then I saw the moon."

Jack gazed up at the pale moonlight that filtered through the trees and illuminated everything around him. The snow glistened gently under its soft rays, so different from the harsh glare of the sun. His feelings for the moon, however, were not as favorable as they were of its light.

The moon had brought him into this world, this cruel and hurtful world where no one could see him. It had given him a name and guided him to the surface of the lake. It had been there in the beginning . . . and then it had abandoned him.

It had left him alone, not knowing his purpose, and with only the wind and snow for comfort.

"Why am I here?" Jack said softly, looking up at the round orb floating in the dark sky, "Why won't you tell me?"

Tears slipped out of his eyes, freezing as they got caught in his eyelashes and causing a light dusting of frost across his face. For nearly a hundred years he had waited for the Man in the Moon to tell him the answer to that question, but he had never responded.

A hundred years is extremely lonely for someone like Jack Frost who has no one to talk to, no one that likes him anyway. He had tried, at one point, to talk to some of the other spirits who he had found were the only ones that could see him, though most of them were not human. It had been a disappointing endeavor, to say the least.

All of the spirits that he had tried to talk to had either ignored him, or tried to kill him.

After that he had taken to avoiding them at all costs; which was, annoyingly, harder than he had expected. Apparently, once he was aware of the other spirits, he started running into them at every turn.

His encounter earlier that day had been particularly rattling and he closed his eyes as the memory swept through him.

"What are you doing here!" the angry, snarling voice startled Jack from his place crouched on a branch watching the snow fall.

Jack turned, blinking owlishly at what could only be the Easter Bunny.

The large, overgrown rabbit glared up at Jack and he was surprised to find the hatred in the others eyes. It was not unexpected, but he had thought that at least one of the Guardians would have been more kind when it came to dealing with him.

"Why?" Jack asked, his grip on his staff tightening unconsciously in case he needed to flee.

The Easter Bunny snorted and Jack noticed that he was clutching a boomerang in his hand, "It's Easter, mate," the rabbit growled, his eyes flashing, "How are the kiddies supposed to find their eggs if they are buried in snow!"

Jack felt his throat dry as he tried to swallow, sensing the rabbit's rising anger with him. He had just wanted the kids to have fun, and he hadn't known that it was Easter. The holidays of others were something that he rarely paid attention to.

". . . I'm sorry?" Jack tried to pacify the raging rabbit, though he wasn't completely sure what the other was talking about. Why were the kids searching for eggs?

"I'm sorry!? I'm sorry?! Look mate," the Easter Bunny's eyes glinted dangerously, "either get with it, or get out of my way."

Jack hesitated, still confused, "Why?" he tried again, only to yelp as he was forced to dodge out of the way of a flying projectile.

The wooden object spun through the air with a deadly sharp whoosh and landed back in the rabbit's hand. The Easter Bunny razed the weapon again and growled lowly, "Go. Away."

Jack didn't stick around to see what the other was about to do. With a silent sob he shot into the sky and out of sight.

A pale hand curled over a large cut on his upper arm, a souvenir from the flying projectile the Easter Bunny had thrown. It would take months to heal. Jack felt the tears freezing on his face before they made it to his chin.

He may not bleed like the other spirits did, but that didn't mean he did not scar.

He had lots of scars.

"It was so big and it was so bright, and it seemed to chase the darkness away. And when it did . . . I wasn't scared anymore."

"Dear Santa Claus."

Jack paused by the open window as he heard the whispered words. Turning he silently landed on the windowsill and looked in, his eyes focusing on the child laying on the floor belly down with their tongue stuck between their teeth. A concentrating frown made its way across her face as she tapped her small pencil against her lips.

"No, that's not quite right . . ." she muttered and scratched out whatever she had already written.

Jack leaned in, fascinated with what she was doing. Was she . . . writing a letter to Santa Claus?

The little girl chewed on the end of her pencil as she thought and Jack wondered what she was going to put. He had always wondered how North knew what to give the children when Christmas came around.

"Dear Santa Claus . . ."

Unknowingly Jack's breath frosted the window he was looking through and the girl looked up with surprise. Jack froze, unsure, but relaxed as it became clear that the girl hadn't seen him.

He wasn't sure what he would have done if she had.

Instead, her eyes had focused on the large snowflake pattern that now decorated her bedroom window. A grin spread across her lips as, it seemed, she had an idea.

"Dear Santa, please let us have snow for Christmas this year."

Jack felt his heart sink in despair. If there was one thing that North could not deliver, it was a snowy Christmas.

He, however, could.

"Why I was there, and what I was meant to do – that I have never known. And part of me wonders if I ever will."

North stepped from his rickety sleigh into the freshly powdered snow and heaved the sack of toys over his shoulder. He carried it with him to the chimney and then disappeared down it into the decorated home beneath.

He never once wondered why this Christmas there was an extra heaping of snow softening his footsteps nor why the belief in him skyrocketed.

He never once noticed the silent form of Jack Frost granting the one Christmas gift he had never been able to give. Snow.

"My name is Jack Frost. How do I know that? The moon told me so. That was all he ever told me."

The horns blared around him. It was all too colorful, too loud, too . . . too . . . everything.

Jack sucked in a deep breath and ducked under the flying torches, careful not to let them touch him. Were they trying to kill him?

Several of the elves (Who knew they were so short?) forced him back onto a patterned circle and tried to give him shoes, which of course he had not desire to accept.

Beyond the chaos he could see North being handed a large, dusty book which the man immediately flipped open to a seemingly random page and opened his mouth.

Jack scowled and raised his staff, angry that they had the . . . the audacity to even joke about this.

He could not and would never be chosen to be a Guardian by them.

Memories of what he had seen the past three hundred years flashed through him.

…

A young girl, locked in a room, crying silently for help even as the life slipped from her broken body. No one else was there to comfort her, no one else but him . . .

…

A boy no older then five, begged for Santa to give him something to help the pain go away, if just for one day. Jack kneeled down and carefully frosted over the large, infected cut, numbing the area even if it was only for a while.

…

A small child huddled under an overhang with their older sibling sobbed softly into the scratchy fabric of an overused jacket.

"Are Mommy and Daddy coming back for us today?" the younger child asked.

The older hesitated, but then smiled slightly and brushed the hair out of the other's eyes, "One day, Jacob, we'll go a see Mommy and Daddy again, and they will be awake this time."

The younger child's face lit up even as fevered eyes searched blindly for his older brother's thin, skeletal face, "Really?"

"Really."

Jack watched the two sadly. A week later he dug two graves for the children whose parents would never come back and who the Guardians would never know had passed on. They were just two out of thousands, after all; they didn't really matter in the big picture . . .

…

"Dear Santa," the small girl wrote, "Can we have a snowy Christmas this year?"

North didn't provide the snow, but Jack did.

…

The Guardians only noticed the children when it was their turn to go out and lavish them with gifts. They did not see what he did, so obsessed with trying to do their jobs perfectly that they forgot the real purpose of being a Guardian.

The children.

The end of his staff boomed against the tiled floor, sending frost spiraling out in every direction and causing several of the elves to go skittering backward.

Anger burned in his eyes, carefully disguised under the deep blue through hundreds of years of practice. Everyone was quiet as they stared at his silently fuming form.

"Who said I wanted to be a Guardian?"

If anything, he already was one.

"And that was a long, long time ago."

Did you like it? Please review and tell me what you think!

For those of you who are following my other stories I am working on another chapter of Frost Ferns but it may be a while before I post it, so thank you for waiting.

(Posted: 9/21/15)