A/N: Hi! This idea just came to me one day while I was reading and I thought, hey, this sounds like a really interesting concept to eke out :) Hope you guys enjoy this. Warning! This is unbeta-ed so I'm sorry if there's any typos or misused grammar here. Feedback is always appreciated!
Disclaimer: I don't own either Jack Frost or Rapunzel. They both belong to Disney and Dreamworks respectively. If I did owe them though, I'd totally make them canon - just saying.
A Guardians' duty is to the Flumes, to his kin and to the life beyond, extending under his care...relying on his compassion, steady on his own core understanding.
-A Time Guardian's age old adage
He was distant, as far as the stars were from the earth, like a spectator in heaven, watching down benevolently from his high seat among the constellations. He was untouchable, like a million floating universes, spinning rigidly in his own axis. He was also cold, abandoned to his own devices for the past hundred thousands of years, left to walk in his own path, away from any being in the whole entire universe – not just one universe but millions of them.
He had seen it all, had seen millions of wars raged on in different planets, in different continents whose name most of us can't even pronounce, let alone comprehend. He floats like a ghostly figure, invisible but all watching, enraptured by the inhabitant's capacity to love, to live and to fight. He had seen millions of planets explode from its own internal pressure, watched as every being took its last breath but he would never intercede, never lift a finger to help for he was damned to watch, to do nothing but watch as millions died all around him.
Then he would open a time Flume and replay the entire scene again, observing things that he had missed. He would watch as parents and offspring's ran, their hands – projectiles, claws, whatever they had to hold – clasp between them like an unbreakable chain of bonding. He had never felt that before, no one had ever held his hand.
He would then watch as their home planet collapsed upon itself, tearing parent from child, a heart from its home away, into the endless void that was destruction.
He would simply move on, find another planet to observe and if he was curious enough with that planet, he would open a second Flume, simply to see what time held in store for this floating plethora of rock, gas and liquid pressure. It was mostly, if not always, destruction.
He faintly remembered his name, remembered who he was before some mysterious being placed him in the centre of the Universe, with a key to travel between dimensions and time pockets. They were enshrouded in shadow; they took him up from death's doorstep and gave him a name. He couldn't remember what his name was but it was a name.
Despite being cold, distant and calculating, he yearned - yearned for someone to talk to, yearned for someone to elevate his loneliness even if they just caught his eye. He yearned for someone to tell him that he wasn't invisible, that he wasn't just a fractured fixture in this existence that he was worthy of being seen. That he was worthy of being loved.
That was when he caught sight of her.
It was an accident, a wayward Flume that opened up to this far distant universe. Upon stepping out of the time pocket, he had known that something was different in this system. That something completely foreign was lingering in this universe, something he had never seen from his visit to other systems.
He followed the trail, letting his instinct lead him. The voice in his head that sounded so much like him but not at all like him whispered to open another Flume, this time over a planet called…Earth?
He scratched his head but followed the voice's instruction and came upon the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. It was a world full of color, full of traditions, cultures that he had never thought he could comprehend.
All of it was amazing, sensorial, beyond his imagination.
He looked down at the inhabitants, ignoring their suffering and focusing on their relationships with one another. He saw strange flesh toned creatures with five projectile digits for hands, walking with various people whom they shared a bond with.
He could see parents with their children, partners bonded for life, some of them barely bonded, and some standing on the threshold of being bonded. He could see companions, walking by with gale laughter trailing, expressions of care and love so blatantly written on their faces he wondered if any of these strange beings have ever died for love. Died because of love.
Love…that was the foreign feeling he had felt when he first stepped into Earth's Flume.
It was all disconcerting and vaguely overwhelming.
Among all the planets he had seen, this one was the most personal, the most interactive one he had ever came upon. It seemed as if the inhabitants themselves relied on this strange power…this strange feeling call love.
He spent the next few weeks here on this wonderful, alien planet, watching their inhabitants interacting among each other, feeling their emotions hit his heart with a gleeful vibe. He stared wistfully at them, knowing he was on the cusp of obsession, of feeling this wonderful emotion he previously hadn't known.
This love.
He had to force himself to look away after the third week, preparing to open a Flume when he heard it. From his perch on a balcony he could hear that someone was crying.
After being showed this amazing emotional revelation of a planet so wrapped around its inhabitants that one race couldn't survive without the other, he found it slightly fearful that someone would be sad, could be sad.
He drifted from his position and towards an open window. There was a young woman in there, her hands clutched around a faded photograph. It was a picture of her and another young man, both of their arms wrapped around each other.
"Why did you have to go," she sniffed softly, as if testing the words before she could admit it was real. "Why did you have to go and leave me here, Eugene?"
Her hands traced the man's face, carefully, her finger lightly touching his brilliant smile.
"I told you not to drive too fast but you would never listen."
He was struck by her soft words, of the raw pain in the back of her voice that he couldn't help it. He placed the tips of fingers against her temple, barely a brush and edged her memories from her mind.
He saw flashing lights, a loud piercing sound that induced fear in the very fibers of his heart and a dead body. The dead body had a face resembling the man in the photograph.
He pulled away, gasping for air and for the first time, really took in this woman.
She was slim, her age a diminutive against his, a fraction so small she could have barely seen a smidgen of what he had seen. Her large, bright green eyes were filled with…tears – wasn't what that strange emotional fluid was called? – And more of them traced a faint track down her cheeks. Her hair was the unusual but almost common gold that most women from the west and north of this planet had but there was something about it that glimmered in the faint light of the dingy apartment.
Her threadbare sweater hung against her thin frame and she wore nothing but shorts underneath it. He felt his face heating up but he wasn't sure why. This was the first time he had ever reacted this way when faced with Earth's inhabitants. That thought was scary and left him breathless.
For one, out worldly moment, the woman recoiled from his touch…as if she had felt him. Her eyes scanned the area in front of her, the place where he was crouched, with fearful trepidation. He wanted to call out to her, to ask if she could see him but hesitated.
He quickly opened another Flume before he could do something foolish, something that one of the inhabitants of this young planet would probably do. He forced his heart to let go of its strange attachment to this planet and faced the bleak darkness of another endless void that lead to nowhere in this forsaken space.
He tried to put the image of her tears out of his head and for a moment he was successful, having thought he left behind the imprint of that planet and its people.
He never expected to get the image of those bright green eyes stuck in his mind for the next uncountable period of time.