How long had it been since that day? He couldn't even remember anymore; couldn't remember the day he became Jack Frost.

Too long... It had been too long.

Jack didn't really mind anymore though. He didn't mind that his was a name more fit to be called a title rather than an actual moniker he could call his own. He didn't mind that he wasn't even the first to be called that name either. Not the first? How could he know this? Simple — because winter has been around for a very long time. To be Jack Frost, he had to have replaced someone for the job of winter keeper. But no, he didn't care about that either. All that he ever cared about nowadays was the fact that the job was his indefinitely, at least until the next Jack Frost would come about and do to him what he did to his faceless predecessor — replace him.

One thing he could never avoid asking, however, was, "Why me?" There were countless other spirits out there more capable, more responsible, and even more willing than he was that could have been given the job.

Jack was no one's first choice.

He wasn't like Spring: always having something sweet to say, or like Summer who was always so passionate about everything. He wasn't even like Autumn; an oddity in itself being that their seasons were right next to each other.

No, our boy, well, Jack was a category all his own.

A quick word to describe our lovable protagonist and you'd get "rebellious" in return. Even with all of Mother Gaia's rules and strict schedules for each of her children's seasons, Jack still found ways to put his special brand of chill to each and every one of them.

And he loved it!

It was a serious thing when it was said that there were spirits far more willing than he was to become Jack Frost. So to balance things out, Jack made one sure promise to himself — if he was going to be stuck with this dead-end job, if he had to suffer being invisible for the rest of his immortal life then he was going to have fun with it!

The night was cool and calm over the beautiful kingdom of Arendelle, its citizens traipsing deep inside the weave of the Sandman's many, many dreams. Unfortunately they were, all of them, unaware of the legend that was about to take place in their humble vista.

Up in the sky a lone, hooded figure hovered above the slumbering town admiring its simple beauty and design, but to be honest, he wasn't there for the view.

"Well would you look at that! This place doesn't have snow yet!" And rightly so as it was still summer after all. "Hmmm, what to do, what to do? Oh, I got it!" He exclaimed mischievously. The mysterious man pretended to grab something in his sweater pocket and brought out what should have been a notebook if only it weren't imaginary. Flipping through its none existent pages and stopping at one in particular he "ah-ed". "Okay, here we are, uhuh, seems doable. Let's try it! One frozen beach comin' right up!"

He did a little warm-up jig and a couple of shadow punches all the while going through his plan of attack. First: epic dive. Second: do awesome flips. And finally — actually, never mind; this was supposed to be fun, not something to be thought of too deeply. "Peace'a cake!" Satisfied with his prep-up, the winter spirit closed his eyes and let gravity do its job.

This is what he lived for, what he yearned for, to feel alive in ways his immortality could never even hope to offer. Wind whipping his hair backwards and deafening him with its loud roar, Arendelle's still waters drew ever closer; still, however, he refused to open his eyes seemingly at peace with his impending demise. He trusted the wind and let it guide his descent, like a leaf dancing in a tempest.

He shouted along the uproar that embraced him in its familiarity, and at the last second, just as he was about to hit the water, he flipped himself upright so that he would hit the bay feet first. A loud splash erupted at his entry, the water unable to withstand the intruding force. The bay rippled and swayed but then returned to its seamless state as if nothing had happened. The fjord was calm just as before.

There was nothing but stillness for a time, and all was quiet as night should be, the only sound being the gentle northern breeze. Underneath the nonchalant waves, however, the sea grew colder, and colder, and colder still until it all started to freeze. A thin film of crystalline, baby-blue ice started webbing its way across the shore's surface like vines reaching towards the sun. Soon after, the entire fjord was ice.

He burst forth his icy creation, spitting out the water in his mouth. "Oh-ho baby! Now that *pffft* that was fun," he declared as he lifted himself onto the now frozen body of water. Breathing in the cold night air, unperturbed by his soaking wet garments, he reveled in his most recent feat of daring.

But it was not to last.

"I don't know about you, but that's what I'd call a good swim! Check that one off the list, am I right?" He jested to no one, and the sad echo of his own voice across the frozen fjord only served to dampen his celebration. "What am I doing?" His sigh was one of defeat as his jolly, free-spiritedness all but faded along with the adrenaline.

What was he doing? Him, winter's incarnate, sky diving — did he not have anything better to do? One can't really blame him though. If anyone had been around for as long as he has, they'd look for ways to keep things interesting too. What's real sad is that he was running out of ideas. Would you believe him if he'd said that he finished his notebook of wintry fun three times already? Don't get him wrong, he was still all for fun-mongering, it was just... getting kinda boring, yes, even for him.

It was not just the boredom too; it was the isolation that came with it that was driving him crazy. Being all by his lonesome for so long, it got to him more times than he'd care to admit. Top that off with being intangible to every living thing on earth, well... One could only imagine what that does to a guy. In fact, if left unchecked —

'You know what you need, Jack?'

— he might just start talking to himself. Oh... Too late.

'You need someone you can talk to.'

"I'm talking to you aren't I?" He reasoned (to himself).

'Besides me, genius. Talking to yourself isn't exactly what you'd call healthy you know. People might even say you're getting to be a bit... crazy.'

'Well thanks for the tip there, pal, but might as well log that one away since I'm already talking to—' He sighed again whence he'd realized what he was doing '— myself...'

Earlier it was said that he didn't mind being Jack Frost — that was a lie.

From the outside the castle seemed quiet enough, however, within its walls was a special kind of panic.

Shouts rang out through the halls as feet shuffled along its tiled corridors. But why the dread? Why such commotion?

"We need cloth and hot water over here! And for the love of every saint out there — where is that blasted doctor?!"

The person who shouted the particularly loud question was none other than the patriarch of all Arendelle himself. The king, without his usual collected self, was barking orders out from his bedroom door at his harried servants. Why? Because his queen was having a baby, that's why!

"AAAAAHHH!" She screamed yet again, pain lancing out in arcs through every nerve in her body.

The distraught king turned to his beloved where an expression of pain looked like it was permanently plastered onto her beautiful, but paling face. Being every bit as torn, the king swiveled one last look outside their door, making sure that everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing before going back inside to be with his wife. He shed his dress robes and threw it to one side. He folded the sleeves of his loose cotton tunic up to the elbows soon joining the queen on their bed. As gently as he could, the king lifted his queen's back off from the mattress and got behind her so she could lean on his chest.

'How could this happen?' He thought. Everything was going fine before then, but now... It was all going wrong.

She could hear voices but muffled as if the words being spoken had to go through a wall, yet even in her pain-filled haze, the queen could tell just how panicked her husband had become in spite his efforts of keeping things together. For others it might have come to them as a surprise seeing their king in such an unkempt state, but she knew — knew that when it came to everything else, he wouldn't even have bat an eye, but oh when she was concerned, he all but loses his mind. Panic would help no one, however, so the queen did her best to show her discomfort lesser than she actually felt — which was saying a lot.

Feeling his wife shift ever so slightly in front of him, the minuscule movement immediately grabbed his attention. Sweat was on her brow, and she gritted her teeth as if she were trying not to cry out. So helpless was the king that he cursed himself.

'What do I do?! What do I do?!' He kept repeating in his head. He was a king, he could reason, or at the very least, a soldier; how was he to know the actions to be taken right there and then? He was trained to take lives out, not bring them in!

"HHHMMM-AHA!" Her toes curled into the bed sheets as she was hit with yet another unnaturally painful contraction.

Though he wished there were more he could do, the king could only whisper words of comfort as he rubbed soothing circles with his thumb on her shoulder he held. "Just a little while longer, love; help will come. It will. Just stay with me, is that clear?"

The question was more like begging than an actual command, and the sad sound he made was so disgraceful that it spurred some of the queen's indignant pride enough for her to give out a reply. Kings were never supposed to beg!

For a brief moment her eyes fluttered and then opened. She knew that he was worried about her, but only seeing him then did she realize just how much. He was a mess. "I'm not going anywhere," she tried to say but then shut her eyes as the pain briefly pulled at her weary muscles. Once passed, she looked up at him again, "...as long as you don't, Henry."

What could he say to that, honestly? There he was too busy worrying while still on she fought. She was so strong. Her eyes held so much fire in them despite of what was happening, and the thought that he should be the same gripped him.

He calmed.

It were times like these that reminded him why she was queen. Fire — the very same one that drew him to her all those years ago and what has grounded him in all his years of service, that fire was what he was seeing then, and for the first time that night, Henry could think at last thanks to his queen yet again.

"I'm staying," he promised, "right here."

'That's more like it,' she thought. "And don't let me catch you sounding so damned pathetic again, understood? Need I remind you of your post, soldier?"

"No, ma'am." He smiled and so did she before closing her eyes again to better concentrate. The king did so as well but the reason was to pray. 'Please... please let us be alright.'

And so on their wait continued.

"What am I doing?" He asked again, this time not to himself, but to the only other "other" still awake at that ungodly hour. He stared the moon down as if all that he was going through was its fault, and it actually was. It was the one who gave him the name. It was the one who gave him the job. It was the one who put him in this… prison. "I said, WHAT AM I DOING HERE!? I know you can hear me! SAY SOMETHING!"

But it didn't as per usual.

Jack's breath was ragged after his screaming, but then he just chuckled albeit bitterly when, yet again, his question garnered him no answers — he was used to it. No point waiting for something he knew was never going to come, Jack figured, and so began to call Wind to take him elsewhere he could continue his fun.

But just like the Arendelle he froze, Jack was unfortunately unaware that tonight was the night he was about to be proven very, very wrong.

With a voice that cut straight into his skull, his name was spoken in a boom not unlike thunder.

Jack faltered in his ascent thoroughly terrified! "Who's there?!" He asked, his question shaking along with his hands. He did a quick roundabout to see if anyone was there with him, but saw no one. Was he just hearing things maybe? "Hello?" He asked just to make sure, but softly as if he were afraid to get an actual reply.

After a while of nothing but quiet, Jack let out a breath of relief before swallowing the spit that had gathered in his mouth, a feeble show of downing his trepidation. "Ooo-kie dokie… Well that wasn't weird," Though sarcastic, his voice came out too small even for him, "Maybe I am going crazy."

Relenting the white knuckled grip he had unknowingly subjected his staff with, Jack's mind cleared enough to wonder what all that was exactly. "It was probably nothing," he dismissed, "or stress. Yeah…" Yeah. Stress — one hundred percent, and he could only blame himself too. Honestly, just look at him; it wasn't even his turn yet and he was already out making everyone's lives better with his snow days! He was too darned hardworking, is what it was; no wonder he was losing it.

The winter spirit couldn't have concluded it any quicker that that be the end of it and think that it'd probably be best if he skedaddled before anything else happened. But as his heart was just beginning to thump out a normal rhythm again, the voice came once more even louder than before if it were even possible.

JACK... THEY NEED YOU, JACK. FIND THEM. QUICKLY.

Jack was pretty sure it wasn't just stress anymore.

"Oh sh—! Okay, alright! So, not just my imagination; this is really happening. I gotcha, I gotcha! So, uuuh," he gulped trying to show that he wasn't too scared (and failing miserably), "wh-who are you, and what do you want?!"

Quiet again.

"Hey man, look, I'm not falling for that again! I'm all for pranks as much as the next winter spirit, but I'm getting really tired of that shtick your trying to pull!"

Quiet still.

"I'm serious! Don't mess with me, bro! I've got a st—" looking down, he remembered what he was holding, and realized just how threatening, or should he say: nonthreatening he would've sounded if he'd actually gone and said stick, "— weapon! And I'm not afraid to use it! So just back o—"

FIND THEM, JACK.

He nearly darn well peed his pants that time, but despite the scare, that time Jack actually heard what it said. "W-what? Find them? Find who? Who do I need to find? You better not be trying to scare me again, because I swear, I'm gonna—"

Unlike before, the reply came quickly, but now it sounded quiet, fading, similar to when Wind finished blowing through a forest.

FIND THEM, JACK. FIND HER.

Like a heavy blanket being lifted off of him, Jack could feel that it was gone, whatever it was. Jack noticed that the air felt lighter too somehow as if the thing that weighed it down just vanished. However, it did not take with it the feeling of restlessness it had bestowed upon him.

"What… the heck… was that?" He did his best to keep standing, but it was like his legs hadn't gotten the memo yet that everything was back to normal and so proceeded to fall on his back side. Jack massaged his temples as he tried to process everything. "Is everything back to normal?" It was a rhetorical question. Of course it wasn't back to normal! The moon just up and scared the living schnitzel out of him! Or at least... he hoped it was the moon.

Jack looked up in the sky at his creator and saw how the moon was shining unusually bright that night, quite enchantingly too if he'd do say so himself. "Find her..." He repeated the words he remembered it saying. Suddenly a sense of dread bloomed within his chest. "W-wait a minute," he stood up still looking at the iridescent sphere in the sky, "who her? Which her? Do I even know her?"

It no longer spoke; back again to the old moon he had known all his life.

"Oh, so were back to doing that again is that it?" A corner of his nose rose into a sneer. "Well I don't know what you expect me to do here! You gave me zip; no name, no address, no nothin'! How am I supposed to find this girl— you tell me huh, bub!"

The doctor arrived a few minutes ago, but even with him there, things didn't look any less bleak.

"What's going on? What's happening to my wife?" He asked the portly, but professional looking man.

"I..." He was afraid to say. This was his king after all. How does one give bad news to the king? "I do not know, my Lord. By all accounts, the lady queen should be well enough for labor, but..."

"But what?" The king was almost too scared to ask.

"But the baby, it's like it doesn't want to be born."

"What?! How is that even possible?

The doctor breathed out tiredly, "I cannot say for certain, my Lord. My diagnosis is... lacking in this matter. But what I can say is that something else is at work here; something that science has yet to encounter. I... I am sorry, king Henry, but there is nothing left we can do."

'Nothing left we can do?' Henry's eyes grew wide and unfocused when all his fears looked like they were slowly being proven true. This is all what they're wait had yielded — Nothing? 'No! He might not be able to do anything; I on the other hand won't give up so easy!'

Determination steeled his nerves, and instead of despairing the impossibility of their situation, Henry Callahan, Arendelle's glorious king and one of her brightest thinkers, made the herculean effort to clear his mind of all things irrelevant.

He had but one mission and that was to keep his wife alive until this whole accursed thing was over and done with. Science, medicine, and reason had all but failed him, however; what was left there for them to turn to?

If everything reasonable has failed you, why not try the unbelievable then?

The words of the person he once looked up to echoed clear as a bell in his mind. To everyone's surprise Henry suddenly bolted to one of the book cases that lined his bedroom's study. 'Where is it? Where is it?! Where— yes!'

The tome of lore, an old heirloom passed down his bloodline from one king to the next — Henry knew what the ancient leatherback contained; the dusty thing might as well have been a children's book what with it being filled with nothing more than legends and worn out wives' tales. His grandfather believed in what its multitude of pages contained, however, and with him having nothing left to believe in, Henry really had no other choice.

His back straightened as the king in him shone something fierce. "Ready the longboats, Mister Gibbs," he instructed his faithful butler, "we have a lot of water to cover."

Author's Notes:

I just want to say thanks to everyone who got back in touch with me even after all these years! Let's get back on this train shall we?