Jack found himself floating over the lake. He must have circled it at least four times. Maybe five? He didn't know.
He landed on the surface with a light thud, and skated across gracefully.
Just as he always had before he became immortal.
Just as he always will now that he is immortal.
After he and Guardians sent Pitch spiraling into his own destruction, Jack tried his best to stay away from the lake, to keep himself away from the truth of why he is Jack Frost.
Jack! Jack, I'm scared, she said, brown eyes wide in what can only be known as terror.
He was scared, too. He still is. Three hundred years made no difference. Even as the Spirit of Winter, a chill went up his spine, as if he had relived the moment of the ice's deafening cracking beneath his bare feet, the ice-cold water swirling around him, his limbs going numb and losing mobility, his life draining out in pristine bubbles of different sizes, the moon (and the Man within) watching everything from the sky but never moving.
Would I play tricks on you? He had said, trying to distract her from the delicate cracking of the ice.
Yes! She replied, You always play tricks on me!
Old habits die hard then.
He thought of how he could have just opted to go ice-skating some other time, not because he wanted to be mortal, but because he wanted to live to see her grow up.
Because the way he watched his sister grow up was the most horrible experience, filled with frustration, desperation, and bitterness that Jack thought impossible in the duration of one's life.
It wasn't easy for Jack. His family couldn't see him. No matter how loud he called out, or how much he stood in their way, they would always just pass by him.
His sister never heard his yelling as he tried to console her, how she ran back to her mother, tears in her eyes, as she recounted how she watched her brother die before her eyes, how she should have dived in after him, how she should have been the one to die.
His mother, who had fallen into a deep depression soon after it was made clear Jack's body would never be recovered, could never hear Jack screaming at her to care for his sister, asking if he had died for his sister to just have her deserted by her mother, and he watched how his hands could never feel the warmth of her skin anymore (even if he could feel, he was unsure whether warmth would even be there).
Jack watched in horror as his father, frustrated with the lack of a competent wife, stormed out the cottage's door, leaving large footprints in his wake. He tried time and time again to stop him, but of course, his father just passed right through him. Jack remembered yelling at his father to come back, to help mother, to care for his sister. He begged him down to his knees, but as usual, the cry fell on deaf ears. He even followed his sister as she so desperately spent an entire night searching for their father, both praying that he would come back.
Apparently, the Staff would never work on the Frost family; not when Jack tried to land snowflakes on his family during the depressing first Christmas dinner without Jack only to have it pass right through them, not even when his sister had grown older, and by then she must have caught up to Jack at the age of 18.
Jack tried to take her hand, to stop her from doing the horrible things she's had to do to earn money for her and their mother. He watched her face fall when she came back to find her mother lying motionless on the bed, the rise and fall of her chest (the only actual proof that she ever existed) gone from the world. Neither Jack nor his sister would ever feel her warmth again. Jack cried, and the tears froze halfway down his cheek, as she sat at the edge of the lake, snowflakes falling in the winter of Burgess, reaching his hand out as he imagined the feel of her dark brown hair, the pink flush of her cheeks, and her quivering shoulders. He had found out, after years of following her around, that she had never ice-skated after he died.
Jack also found out that he was immortal. But he found that out the hard way, too.
Would you imagine yourself watching your sister take her last breath at the same spot years later, her hair as white as yours (and you could even joke about finally looking alike since your death) with age? To feel the bitterness to see her pale face wrinkled with decades as you looked at your reflection in the ice and finally making the horrid note that you looked like you never even aged a day, as if winter's ice kept your heart beating while your sister was brought down six feet under a few days later?
The next thing he knew, he found himself standing over a grave, pondering over the name of who was just laid to rest. There was something about it, he thought, and it must have been important. (1)
He felt the same as he did when he emerged from the icy lake: new and fresh, yet incomplete, as if he had forgotten a special memory. The only addition to the sensation was depression, and Jack had no idea why, he just stared down at the grave, contemplating on why the person had the same surname as he did, not even thinking of the idea that they might have been related. How would he even guess that? Jack couldn't even remember it.
Jack didn't realize it was his sister until two hundred thirty years later, hours after he and Guardians took Pitch down, staring down at it as more horrid memories of watching over his sister washed over him like the freezing water of the lake.
So there he was, back at the lake, head still down, the images of his sister in every day of her life flashing through his mind. Jack looked back up at the lake, unconsciously wondering how long he had circled it before he landed and skated along the thin ice, creating intricate frosts along the lake, pondering over the idea that his sister might have found them beautiful.
What was painful about then and now was that he would never be able to stay away from this place. No matter how many memories it brought back, both the wonderful and the terrifying, Jack Frost (because Jackson Overland Frost died three hundred years ago) would always come back.
Why?
His spirit belonged here.
His past tied him here.
His new ties kept him here.
"Jack Frost" kept Jack here.
A/N: First RotG fic! It's 1AM and I've got a thesis to defend later this afternoon, so I might as well sleep right now.
(1) The trauma gave Jack his amnesia, for clarification.