A/N: When I started writing this, what I had in mind was a little bittersweet one-shot about Jack's sister mourning her brother's death. But somehow, it started to take on a more cynical tone, and before I knew it I was writing something darker than I expected. I'd never written anything quite like this before, so . . . I don't know.

Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians.

I am nobody. The most useless soul ever to be born.

I wish, with all my heart, that that day had never dawned. How much better it would have been, if the sun had never risen that morning and I had lain in bed staring and staring at the full moon until the earth had run out of light and the apocalypse had come! At least then, Jack and I would have died together. I would not have owed him anything.

But the sun did rise that day. All my worst nightmares came to life on that cold, frosty morning. I was only little, but I will never forget what happened to Jack because of my own foolishness. Why did I cry out, beseech him to help me, when he too was in danger? I could have stood tall and accepted my fate while he climbed to safety. But I was naïve, and I was selfish. If only Jack had been the same – perhaps we would have fallen through the ice together and moved on together.

But no. He, the strong one, the brave one, the compassionate one, fell victim – and I, weak and cowardly as I was, survived. Because he saved me. The impotent little sister who was not in the least deserving to be saved.

Years onward, I asked myself, "Is life always so cruel? Does it thrust misfortune upon those who care for others, and give to others, and live for others? Does it ensure that all the filth and scum of the world live long lives and drown in pools of riches?"

I have never answered these questions.

After the tragic incident, I was taken home. I did not understand why my mother caressed me so, or why salty tears dripped from her eyes and froze in my hair. As far as I was concerned, Jack was still playing a game. Surely, just surely, I would soon hear a splash and he would somersault out through the hole in the ice, drops of water clinging to his hair and clothes and sparkling in the sun.

For days and days I waited – then days turned to weeks, and weeks to months, and still no Jack manifested himself, ringing the bell with a big parcel in his hands or laughing while he swung about in the precariously high branches of a great oak. By that time I had been taught the concept of life and death. I knew that time would not be so kind as to return and repeat itself.

Oh yes, I missed him, most terribly – but, once again, for the most selfish of reasons. I missed not his love and benevolence but the games he had invented and the hours of fun in the snow, which were to be no more. I wanted to play. I wanted to have fun. I wanted everything for myself and nothing for him. At his funeral I cried and cried for sleigh bells and makeshift sleds and Christmas dress-ups, for the dainty snowflakes we used to catch in our hands and the big, snow-covered fir trees he always dragged into the house at Christmas time and decked with baubles and candy canes.

At some point I learned to move on in life – fall in love, start a family, do as much good as was possible in an attempt to atone for my wrongs – but all this I did with a guilty conscience. The fact that I had brought about my own brother's death was something I could not simply ignore and cast from my mind as though it was nothing. It lingered and haunted me for the remainder of my days, jeering at my misery when I was alone, like the sort of disease that never really goes away. It laughed mockingly as my hair was gradually robbed of its colour and vivacity, and my cheeks of their healthy pallor.

There came a day when I ceased to live, a day that had been eagerly awaited since my soul and being had begun to wither. For years I had yearned to join Jack in whatever place humans were taken to when they died, or otherwise, simply to be together with him in the state of nonexistence; and if Heaven or Hell or the afterlife existed, I wanted to seek him out and say how very sorry I was that he had had such a short life. But try as I might, I could not find him. Not a trace that suggested he had ever been in the world of the dead – not a single strand of the brown hair we had both inherited, not the sound of his musical laughter, not a tiny castle crafted out of icicles. There was nothing.

Reaching the end of hope, I did what many desperate people resort to – believing the impossible. What if Jack was still alive? What if he had found a way out of that freezing lake and wandered to the other side of the earth? If he had, no matter – he too would one day have to say goodbye to life, and until then, I had to wait.

Sometimes I sat and fantasised about seeing him so much that I felt a strange sensation in my chest, as though he was calling to me, telling me he was still alive. But the next day it would be gone completely, and I never had much of a recollection of what I had been feeling. It was difficult, but I nevertheless managed to convince myself that it was all my imagination. Perhaps I had not lost my old-age senility, even in death.

It was not until about three hundred years later that the sensation returned, stronger and more persistent than ever. It stirred and bloomed within me, filling my inactive veins and spreading to my fingertips, slowly and timorously at first, but then flooding my entire body and confidently taking control of all my senses. That time it lasted longer than all the previous occurrences, which had been brief and bittersweet.

But then I told myself, "This simply isn't within the realm of the possible. No human can live for three hundred years."

After decades of false hope, I stopped believing. In myself and in my brother, in faith and joy, in the spirit of Christmas, in the very concept of 'fun' – which in years gone by had been the driving force behind my toothy smiles and peals of laughter.

It has now been another century, and still Jack has not come.

I have waited for four hundred long years.

Alone. All alone.

Perhaps death is not as cruel as life. It has no doubt granted Jack happiness wherever he resides. And it has given me despair. The despair of being alone and of not knowing what my next nightmare will be, and when the horrors will unfold.

I am Jack's sister. I am nobody.

The most useless soul ever accepted into Death's embrace.