AN: I recently re-watched Rise of the Guardians with my roommate's little sister, and this drabble is a result of my otherwise inexpressible feels. Jack's character is just so...tragic.
A World of White
A snowflake fell, gleaming with matchless glory, handcrafted by pale and loving fingers so that the shimmering lace of ice might dance just as beautifully as its frosted brethren, but retain a soul, a life all its own. The flake descended in a tumultuous gust of wind accompanied by fellow ice crystals that twinkled in the sky like alabaster stars and collected as precious stones, adorning the living and lifeless impartially, decorating the eyelashes of children, coating the winding streets, and blanketing the extended and leafless branches of trees.
A few lonesome crystals floated back to their origin - their bright-eyed maker, and whispered soft words of delight in his ears, twirling briefly in front of his electric blue eyes before blending effortlessly into his white hair or settling elegantly onto his slim shoulders.
Jack Frost welcomed the gentle caress of his creations, tilting his chin back to gaze at Winter's calm sky with lively cerulean eyes equally as tranquil. He shifted slightly to better accommodate the small form in his arms, the little bundle of purity, the light worth protecting. The boldest snowflakes graced the cheeks of the young boy huddled against Jack's chest, melting on contact with heated human skin and trailing as streams of joyful tears down his youthful face.
Fine strands of caramel-colored hair tickled Jack's throat, and he hoisted Jamie slightly higher, amazed that the warmth of a body curled so close in his arms seemed almost capable of thawing the ice which long ago had torn at his human flesh, seized his softly pounding heart, and lulled it into stillness.
When at last Jack had broken through the surface of his watery deathbed, ice pulsed through his veins instead of blood, he breathed frost instead of air, and his heart rested silently and agonizingly heavy in its immobility, useless as a stone.
And the cold began to follow Jack wherever he stepped in pursuit of the far-off laughter of children and the indistinct path carved into the earth by moonlight.
Jamie was wrapped in enough weighty cloth to ward away the chill of Jack's skin, but the winter spirit could not help but trace his fingers over the child's forehead in a gentle paternal gesture and observe the involuntary shivers that inevitably followed wherever his cold fingertips touched. Copper-colored eyes turned upwards and met blue, a hazy question whirling in their depths, but Jack merely smirked and held the small boy closer.
Jack wanted nothing more than to present the child with a world of white, of snow that muffled all sound and remained eternally untouched.
Maybe it was partly because of the dull but aching memory of the sister he left behind, and it was certainly due to the three seemingly endless centuries of loneliness and invisibility that Jack enfolded Jamie so fondly in his arms. He gazed down at the innocent features, the sparse dusting of freckles across a small nose, and believed he could almost see some wishful essence of his sister reflecting in those copper eyes.
And he hoped above all else that somewhere, perhaps far above in the vast expanse of grey sky, his sister was watching, and had been watching all along as he played his games and lit the eyes of countless children with faith and joy. He wondered if this triumph would make her smile; he supposed it would, and sometimes for the sake of his own sanity, Jack Frost imagined his sister, and his parents - whose faces were distorted in his fragmented memory - observing him with small smiles turning the corners of their lips and pride sparkling faintly in their eyes.
But the gaze fixed on the winter spirit at that moment was extraordinary, and, although Jack winced to think such thoughts, far more meaningful than his distant and futile imaginings. For Jamie Bennett's were the first eyes that saw him- the first eyes that confirmed his existence, just as Jamie's voice was also the first human voice to speak Jacks name in recognition. This child alone had made Jack Frost corporeal – practically carving the spirit's form from ice and wind, and providing him with a true purpose after three hundred forlorn years. The Man in the Moon never responded to Jack's calls, but Jamie's single glance had answered every question of why? Why me? and imbued in the sprightly guardian a true reason for his second life: to protect the innocence- the childish laughter- in those wide eyes as long as he could.
Jack Frost was neither fierce nor mischievous alone. By himself, far from the bustling sounds of everyday life, Jack was wordless, as hushed and calm as a fresh winter snow. But in the serene silence he relished his new ability to feel – to at last reach out and have a hand grasp his in response. And Jack was content to stand, motionless but for the gentle breeze that rippled his clothes, by the pond that was both his end and beginning. Jack Frost held tightly to the warmth that he could, after so many long years, finally touch; and he listened in wonder to the sound of the child's fluttering pulse resonating against his chest- almost as if it struggled in vain to pass the steady rhythm along to his own stone cold heart.
Snowflakes gathered in the child's hair and dusted over his light pink cheeks, and Jack watched as the young boy tilted back his head and laughed merrily, brown eyes shining with cheer.
Jack Frost could have sworn at that moment, in a world of pure white echoing with the hopes and dreams of children- children who believed, a hallowed and weary beat rekindled in his frigid chest, and his blue eyes shone with a long-forgotten hint of hazel brown.