Hallow, there, readers!

For those who have just stumbled across this, THANKS for reading it! Pleasepleaseplease R&R, much appreciated!

This is sort of a preface kind of chapter - no Guardians yet, just setting up the general scene. :D Chapter numero 2 will be up shortly, just going to run it past my Inner Editor, and then everything should be good to go!

(FYI, I've rated this T because of some choice words of some douchebag supporting characters, and some implied mature content. Better safe than sorry!)

DFTBA,

doubtfulfig

"Hey, Willow!"

I whirled at the bright little voice, brushing a gloved hand over my chocolately locks to keep them from flying over my face. It was stupid November in stupid Southern Alberta, where the weather didn't seem to grasp the concept of "autumn". I knew my cheeks and nose burned bright red, because when I tried to shove them into the scarf bunched around my neck, they felt raw, like I'd face-planted into velcro. The muscles around my eyes were throbbing, from squinting against the sun, magnified by, like, a thousand by the snow, crusty from a few days of sitting, untouched. A bell rang somewhere down the street, but I couldn't tell which school it was that had dismissed its kids, since they were all along this street, including the junior high and my high school. Little bodies bobbed around excitedly, some clinging to a parent's hand as they turned their faces away from the wind, or one of their older sibling's, while the other shoved a cell phone under the flaps of their ski hats. I knew the little kids were all giddy about the snow, probably begging their parents or older sibling to make a snowman, or make snowangels. But a fierce, biting gale was sweeping people - including me - onto ice, which I found kind of amusing to watch. People tried (and failed) to gain any minuscule amount of traction, flailing their arms and hucking bags and Timmie's cups skittering across the ice. It was hilarious, watching people try to recover their dignity, in a rather undignified way.

I mean, it was funny, until it was me.

"Whoah!" My feet bucked out in front of me, but before my tailbone collided with the ice beneath my feet, hands linked under my armpits, hoisting me back up onto wobbly legs.

"Um, thanks…" I trailed off as I turned my head, since there was no one there to thank. My eyebrows furrowed under my knitted owl ski hat (whom I affectionately called Oswald), but I shrugged it off as I imagined someone skate back down the sidewalk on their backsides, their pride going unscathed because of the good deed he/she had just performed.

"Whoah, Willow, are you OK?" The bobble on top of Emmett's bright orange toque wobbled as he ran carefully toward me through the crowd of students.

I shot him a playful grin. I teetered a bit on my feet, feigning losing balance. "Ah… ACK!" My arms dove down towards him, and he giggled wildly, despite the fact that my tickles were dumbed down by his puffy crimson winter coat.

"Stop…" he begged between fits of laughter, "please!"

Standing erect again, I chuckled at the little guy. Those huge brown eyes had managed to stay warm in this ungodly weather. I rubbed the top of his toque affectionately, exposing red little ears and thick brown hair, curling gently onto the nape of his neck.

"Whatcha up to, buddy?" I held out my hand patiently as he fixed his hat, pulling it back over his hair and off his forehead. Grabbing it, he took little steps to keep his balance on the ice, using me as an anchor.

"Jack Frost sure was busy today!" he declared excitedly, gesturing wildly with his other hand to the snowflakes falling almost horizontally from the whitish-grey mass of sky. Or maybe he was just counterbalancing.

I chuckled, pulling his Avengers backpack from his shoulders. "You can say that again. I sure wish he'd take it a bit easier. I almost broke my butt falling on this stuff!"

"Did someone catch you?" he asked as I slung the little backpack onto my back. He looked like he was trying to skip, but I held his hand so he wouldn't fall.

"I guess so." My breath pushed fog into the swirling mass of white. "I suppose it was my Prince Charming!" I flicked my hair with a wink, except my hair was basically frozen solid, wavy and slightly frizzy from the condensation my breath deposited onto it.

Emmett giggled again as we slowed to check the street to cross. There wasn't a lot of traffic today - hell, it was Brooks, there wasn't a lot of traffic any day - so we crossed easily. Well, we slid across, but I guess that just showed the reason why a lot of cars stayed off the roads.

"I didn't see anyone," Emmett said blatantly. His poor little nose was almost purple, so I pulled up the zipper of his coat.

"Thanks, bud, for pointing out that my Prince Charming doesn't exist," I replied, steering him onto our crescent. The trees were completely bare of their leaves, and instead were burdened with major hoarfrost and sticky snow. It was most pretty like this, when you could sit behind a pane of glass and admire it, but it randomly decided to deposit snow onto our heads. On a bit of a more temperate winter day, we'd play like it was a minefield, and we had to dodge the dumping snow, but I couldn't feel any of me, so I trudged through the snowdrifts gathering on the sidewalk, Emmett cheerfully talking about how he had drawn the best picture of everyone.

"Leo said that I'd copied his picture," he said with a frown, "but even if it looked good, I wouldn't've. His was a lion, and tigers are way cooler!"

"I'll take your word for it," I remarked with a smile, "but I wouldn't want to cross one, even if they are 'way cooler'."

"Oh, I drew a nice tiger, Will!" he explained matter-of-factly. "Like Hobbes!" I knew he was just talking to impress me, but I didn't mind. Not many people tried to impress me. I'd take it where I could.

Together we trudged up the driveway, which was unshovelled, unsurprisingly, and bust into the door. Steam lifted from the doorway as Emmett fell inside, with me stumbling in behind him.

"Shhh," I reminded him gently. He was thumping his boots on the ground, trying to get them to come loose without having to bend down to pull them off. It was loud, not to mention messy - snow spewed everywhere, splatting against the walls. He looked at me sheepishly, sitting on the last stair. As I worked them past his heels, he flipped his toque off, revealing a lovely salad of tousled brown curls.

This kid was the reason I stayed. Just Emmett. Nothing else. Without me, who would he have? Besides, I was finding more and more that I needed him, too.

I held his sleeves as he twirled, pulling free of his sleeves, and he plodded up the stairs in his socks, which were half yanked down his foot.

I chuckled as I hung his backpack on the peg, along with his jacket. I stripped down myself, putting everything away so that no mess would be left behind.

After all, Jason didn't like messes.

Oh, yeah. I call my dad Jason. He's technically not my dad, that's why. If he had a label, he'd be "Not-Dad #16". My real one, along with my mom, had wrapped their car around a tree a few years back - you know, the whole cliché Canadian winter, not unlike the kind that sent snowflakes like bullets into the eyes of innocent citizens. I was seven, and since I didn't have any siblings, it was easy to take just Willow and try and fit her into other families.

I'd seen a lot of them - and not all of them had been bad. Just… not home. I mean, this isn't home, either, but I wouldn't leave Emmett alone here. I've had every kind of family - the soccer, run-her-ass-off mom who's involved in everything; the artiste and his wife, too deep into their work to remember things like peeing and eating; druggies (those ones didn't last too long - I couldn't stand the smell of weed or crack); but the most abundant had been couples who'd lost a kid. Whether it had been a regretted abortion, or a miscarriage, or an accident, or even a suicide, they scooped me up like a kitten and expected me to mold back into the child that they no longer had. Needless to say, it never ended well.

That's how Jackie and Jason started out. Jackie, Emmett's mom, had insisted that she take me. Typical Jackie - give her a credit card and a day off, and she could spend the equivalent of the amount of money to feed the entire continent of Africa. And she wanted a kid, since the daughter that Emmett wasn't had come out not breathing, she didn't want to go through the work of labour again. She just swung by and picked me up, perfectly manicured nails clacking against the steering wheel.

I kid you not, the first thing she asked me to do was to go shopping. With my little bag of belongings plunked onto her backseat, she eyed it deploringly, and took it as an invitation to spend money. On me, of course. That's how it started out. But suddenly I found myself trudging along behind her as she tried on endless "little black dresses" and stilettos that would snap my calves in half.

I followed Emmett into the kitchen, turning on the stove and setting a frying pan gently on top of it. Grabbing the milk, I hoisted Emmett onto the counter to sift through the mug collection in the cupboard above him. I yanked on his earlobe, to which replied by tugging on mine, so I poured a few glugs of milk into the pan. Swirling it absently with a wooden spoon, I thought of how, maybe, I was supposed to become Jackie's best friend. You know, that BFF you go everywhere with, you do your nails with, you let your mascara run as you watch cheesy chick flicks. She was that needy, she chose to adopt her best friend. Yeah, that made a lot of sense.

Too bad I was a bit of a disappointment.

You see, I'm not like other sixteen-year-old girls. Whereas most would prefer to sit around and boy-watch, others would like to go out with their friends and actually make something of their lives, like walk dogs from BAPS (the rather depressing animal protection society in town), or something like that. Not me. I opted to write, surf the web, stream movies on Netflix, and/or chill with my new little brother. This kid was only seven and he understood me better than anyone had since my real parents died.

I could see why. And it made me decide not to blame Jackie. With Jason being Jason, she didn't have any real friends. She couldn't. Even she could see that. Which meant that Emmett, really, didn't have anyone.

Not anymore. I took one look at the mug he clutched in his hands as he hopped onto the floor, and I knew it would take something really bad to get me to bolt.

" 'World's Best Whistler', huh?" I said, spooning in some cocoa.

"Yep," he replied, popping his "p".

"Well, don't demonstrate just now." I bopped him on the chin. "Grab me some peppermint, will you?"

He skipped to the pantry, sliding a bit on his socks, like they were little sleds. You'd think that having an abusive alcoholic as the main source of income in a family would lead to a poorly stashed kitchen, but au contraire, mon ami. Jackie insisted on keeping up appearances, which meant an exuberant kitchen, fully stocked, with the whole black modern glass thing where squares basically made up the entire design. It wasn't fun clipping at full speed around the corner, only to collide with something made entirely of right angles.

At least, this is the vibe I get from Emmett.

But yeah, even if we didn't get company, it was still vital to Jackie to make sure everything looked smoothed over. Like, if she got an unexpected call from an imaginary friend, or something, that she could just whisper to us to go to our rooms and be good. That everything looked just fine, even if a storm with the potential to tear everything apart was brewing underneath.

Maybe she was trying to hide it from Jason. It was a thought I'd had more than once. That, as long as everything looked okay, it would remain okay, although I knew it wouldn't end okay.

Which reminded me, I had to wipe down the walls in the entryway. I didn't want to have to see Jason's butt-ugly face more than I had to. Right now, I highly doubted he even realized that I was a permanent member of the household. If he came out to see me again… and saw the mess we'd tracked in…

I hated winter.

"Here you go, bud," I murmured, spooning the hot chocolate into his mug. "Do you have homework?"

He eyed me blankly, like when do I ever have homework?

"Okay, I'm just checking." I held my hands up in surrender. "I'd say go play with your friends, but it's really cold out there. I don't want you losing an ear or something." When I yanked on his earlobe again, he grinned, a gap from a lost tooth starkly black between his front teeth.

"I talked to Rory and Ben, we're gonna play some XBox."

"Sounds like fun. Don't mess with my Minecraft. Watch out for creepers. Be careful not to spill, okay?"

"Okay," he said, eyes widening at the smell of the minty molten chocolate cupped in his hands.

I tipped the pan over my own mug - "If you were a booger, I'd pick you first!" - then ran it under some water.

"Hey, Will?" Something tugged at a lock of hair.

"What's up, bud?" I looked over my shoulder as I rolled up my sleeves.

"Thanks."

I pressed a smile. "My pleasure."

I listened carefully to his padded steps, and when his door clicked shut, I let out a breath. Jason better not step foot into that room.

As I washed dishes, I had to consciously resist the urge to hum. Stupid Jason was stupid. All he did was work nights, come home, lock himself in his bedroom suite (complete with a mini-bar and fridge - booze before babes, right?) and expect absolute silence during the day. I remembered the first day I came here, Emmett was really excited. You know. The whole "I've always wanted an older sister!" But he was just a smidgen too loud for Jason, and he came pounding out of his room, and… Well, let's just say I was on Emmett's side really fast.

Jason was an idiot. I hated to know that, while Jackie was out "socializing" - i.e. clinging to any woman she met in Safeway, where she worked - Emmett had to come home to nothing. No, not just nothing. Slime like Jason, ready to slip under that door and fly off the handle.

He'd never touched me, but I could see bruises on Jackie. He tried to be careful about it. By the elbow, under a sleeve, or under her collarbone, or under her brastrap. But I saw them.

I guess that's why Jason never laid a hand on Emmett. I absolutely refused to let a jerkface like Jason mess him up. Not this kid.