Bah, I'm sorry! I'm writing a new story even though I have a couple others I need to freaking update after such a long time. It's just. . . I don't know. I deleted at least two of them and might delete another one. I don't know yet. Anyways, this one is a Rise of the Guardians fanfic and I'm kind of unsure about it. My friend, who is sort of my editor/coauthor of the story, says it's really good as a first chapter. I guess we'll have to see how it grows and blossoms. I will warn you now though: the first chapter is dark. I'm not even kidding. It's not gory dark, but it is suicide dark. I promise it'll get better though~ So I'm going to stop talking now and let you read. If you don't like it, A) don't say I didn't warn you and B) Don't leave nasty comments voicing your opinions. If you like it and want to say you like it, go right ahead.

Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians, but I sorely wish I did.

Hope was a quiet and timid Junior unlike her foil Kathrine who was much more out going and aggressive. They were both into different things, and couldn't be any more opposite to each other than the fact that they were both in the garden club at school. Yet they were best friends. Kathrine was pretty much the only friend Hope had due to her constant bullying problem and the fact that she was too shy to tell anybody or ask for help. The only place she felt at home was in the garden club, where she was with her best friend and she could stay in the school garden until the school closed each day. Even though Kathrine was always with her, she never noticed how bad things got until it actually happened. . .

Kathrine, albeit having a slightly temperamental attitude, had a very pretty face. Her blue eyes had little gold flakes that were really obvious in the light. Her hair barely reached past her shoulders and was a pale blonde from long days on the beaches of California when she was younger. Again, Hope couldn't have been any more different. Her hair was a chocolate brown and went to about mid-back in waves/curls, which seemed longer for her short stature. Her eyes were the same milky brown. Nobody, especially her best friend, thought Hope would hurt herself on purpose. She had always worn large, baggy shirts to cover the cuts so that nobody would see the harm she did to herself. It got to the point where she just couldn't do it any more. It was just like any other day, but Kathrine though it seemed a bit off.

"Hope? What's wrong? Why won't you talk to me?" Kathrine asked, genuinely worried for her friend. The chocolate haired youth said nothing, but moved instead to a patch of white roses that were in bloom. After a couple of moments, she quietly responded.

"Do you believe in Santa Clause?" She asked randomly. Hope didn't look at her friend, but she seemed serious enough. Kathrine shrugged.

"I suppose. I mean, how else do I still get gifts when my parents are never home. I suppose if he's real I guess the Easter bunny and tooth fairy are real as well. Why the sudden question?" The other junior replied. Hope looked at the clock.

"Keep believing." Hope said cryptically and took her gloves off and put them away, which Kathrine found odd because she normally just threw them on the counter. Hope finally looked at her friend straight in her ocean blue eyes. "Come on, the school's closing up."

Kathrine followed her friend out of the school and up to the crossroads that separated her house from her friend's house. Hope said goodbye to her friend and watched her walk out of sight. That was when she took a different path home than she normally did. Instead of turning right into her neighborhood, she turned left into the forest. Snow had started falling softly and began piling up on the layer already on the ground. She fingered the bottle in her large sweatshirt pocket, knowing full well what she was about to do and didn't regret it. When she was younger she could imagine herself tending to flowers or animals somewhere, but her dreams had been taken from her when the first bully touched her.

Hope finally got to her destination in the middle of the forest. The snow was still falling at a steady pace and it had grown darker with the rapidly setting sun. Her chocolate hair was dotted with white flakes and tears fell from her soft brown eyes as she pulled out the bottle of tiny pills that seemed harmless at first glance. Opening the bottle, she poured most of the contents into her mouth and swallowed. Almost immediately she could feel the effects take affect on her body. Hope collapsed in the snow, her vision blurring and slowly fading. Eventually, she couldn't feel her body any more and she lay in the snow numbly until her vision slowly faded to black. The last thing she saw was a single *hellebore seemingly blooming in her final moments.


Kathrine regretted leaving Hope by herself that evening on their way home from school. Hope had seemed a bit more aloof for the past week, and especially that day. Kathrine had also seen Hopelessness, a spirit, following her shorter friend. When she had first met Hope, the spirit had been a mere grey fog and at times wasn't even present at times, but as time moved on, the spirit showed up more often and became more and more humanoid. The spirit looked like the person it followed with out any hope. Exactly like how Hope looked that day.

The blonde Californian had considered walking with her friend for that exact reason. Instead, she ignored her gut feeling and walked into her empty house. She knew her parents weren't going to be home for another couple hours so she quickly made dinner for herself and went to bed early, all the while with a gut feeling that something bad was happening.

The next day Hope was absent from school. Kathrine seemed almost lost with out her and regretted not checking up on her when she had the chance the previous day. Meanwhile she was also a little bit excited as she had received information on a trip to the Grand Canyon scheduled the next day. She couldn't wait to tell Hope. Kathrine almost ran out of the school towards Hope's home, completely forgetting out the garden. Once again, the beach blonde girl from California ignored her bad feeling and kept running to check on Hope. When she got to the house at the end of the street opposite of hers, she stopped dead in her tracks. A wreath of black roses strung together with silver wire adorned the front door. Kathrine might have thought it as some sort of sick, disturbing holiday decoration if she didn't know the true meaning of it. They were mourning a death. With that bad gut feeling rising, she knocked on the door. It sounded almost hollow. A couple minutes later, Hope's father, a bright man named Jamie with the same chocolatey hair and eyes Hope had, opened the door.

"Kathrine? What are you doing here?" He asked, sounding surprised even though Kathrine came every other day. What struck her as odd however was his red eyes. Hope's father wasn't the type to cry over something. Even a death.

"I just came over to ask how Hope is doing. She hadn't come to school so I was wondering if she had gotten sick or something?" Kathrine asked. Jamie was silent for a moment, but then suddenly started crying again. He cried so hard that Hope's mother, Sarah, had to move her husband out of the way and usher her inside. That's when it got weirder. All of the decorative flowers that had been scattered around the house had been removed and replaced with a small burning candle.

"I must apologize," Mrs. Sarah began, a sob on the edge of her voice as well, "we had thought you had already heard. Unless she never told you her plans at all."

At this point, Kathrine was extremely confused. "What are you talking about? What plans?"

Instead of answering her question, Mr. Jamie handed over a crumbled up note with tear stains covering it. Kathrine read it silently. And then re-read it. And then read it again, just to make sure she had read it right. Hope wrote a detailed note about her life and what was going on in it and what she planned to do about it. Kathrine dropped the note and the world spun around her. H-How could her best friend do that to her? To her amazing and loving family? Hope was the only person Kathrine knew that could name a flower and the only ways to take care of it. She was the only one who could tolerate animals and the wildlife. Kathrine had only joined the stupid Garden Club to be with Hope every day. Now what was she going to do?

The lonely girl bid the parents goodbye and left out into the cold night. She refused their offers to stay with them and dinner and everything else. All she wanted was solitude now. The cold wind seemed colder now and the snow didn't seem as pretty as the sun sunk below the horizon. Kathrine had always enjoyed going outside to paint the sun rises or sun sets, but now. . . She just felt like doing nothing. She didn't even feel like going to school. Like Hope, she felt like giving up on life. Though no matter how she felt, Hope wouldn't want that for Kathrine. Life would go on, and so would she. Even when Hope was gone. Even still, Kathrine felt a burning emptiness in her heart that burned her through the next couple of days.

The next day seemed like a joke. Everybody seemed too happy. All except for the few who noticed her bad mood and decided to copy her like the stupid freshmen they were. There was a harsh winter wind blowing in from the north and the clouds covered all of the sky, matching Kathrine's mood perfectly. She had been so excited to go the day before, now all she wanted to was go home and cry. Not even the somewhat beautiful view of the canyon could make her happy. Instead, she just tuned out the teacher's lecture with some of her music and leaned on the railing. She looked around, only to find one of her friends leaning precariously over the edge of the railing. Right over the edge was a complete drop to the bottom.

"Hey, what are you doing?!" She cried and ran over to her friend. At that most unfortunate of times, a gust of wind blew through, catching the girl off balance on the rail. Kathrine managed to barely get to her friend before she fell over the edge, but at a cost. Her friend had been caught off guard by Kathrine's touch and punched her hard in her chin. Kathrine's head flew backwards and she dropped her friend as she herself was thrown precariously over the edge herself. This time, nobody was there to catch her. It felt like somebody had pushed the fast forward button and then suddenly the back button on the remote, allowing her life to go as slow as possible. She heard the screams of the students as she fell, but there was nothing they could possibly do now. Oddly enough, her mind was blank save for a couple of random questions roaming around her head.

Would Hope be mad at her for dying as early as she had? Will her parents even notice; even care? What was going to happen to her next? Kathrine counted down the seconds until impact on the cold, hard Canyon floor. She had to be honest with herself. Free falling was fun, and if she had to die by any means, she was happy that this was how it was happening. Everything seemed slower and more alive as she flew past the colored rocks of the Grand Canyon. She almost wanted to reach out and touch a few of them to make sure it was real. Before she could even try to reach a hand out, she felt the bone shattering crush on the canyon floor. Everything went black almost immediately, but before her last breath left her, she saw a faint light growing closer. Then everything, finally, went dark.

Elsewhere, a pair of previously chocolate brown eyes opened for the very first time.

If you are confused about the setting and time period, let me explain. This takes place many years after the original guardians defeat Pitch and everything returns to normal. Jamie grows up and has a family as you can tell earlier. This all takes place in Arizona if you couldn't tell by the Grand Canyon part. If this chapter seemed uneven and choppy and stuff, I apologize. I am NOT the greatest author of all time and thus you cannot blame me for any grammar or spelling mistakes this may contain. I try my best though and that is all that matters.

*A/N If you do not know what a hellebore is, look it up. Trust me, that's what I had to do ^^;