I obviously don't own the preview pic, it belongs to Dreamworks. Jack Frost also belongs to Dreamworks and Rapunzel belongs to Disney. All I own is the storyline.
At first, he can't remember anything.
His mind is clean blackboard, with no white chalk remains dusting it up from a previous lesson. All that is present in his mind is the frigid darkness of the water he floats in, and the feeling of relief when he rises out of it. And then, the brief wonder of the Moon telling him his name.
He has the vaguest feeling that there should be something in his mind. That people are not normally born like this, rising out of icy ponds fully-clothed. But then, while standing on the ice, he spots a long stick. He picks it up and finds that it can paint wisps of frost onto whatever it touches, and the utter strangeness of his situation is soon forgotten in ringing laughter and growing exhilaration.
Some secluded, forgotten closet of his mind opens as he dances around the frozen pond, leaving trails of frost behind him. An image surfaces of a blonde girl spinning in circles, a long braid adorned with flowers flying out behind her. It feels like something that doesn't belong to him…a foreign image from a past life, or from someone else entirely. And yet whenever the scene plays over in his mind, he is filled with such a deep feeling of loss that he crumples to the ground, the frost-stick clattering out of his pale hands.
He finds that there are more scenes buried away in his head, resurfacing at odd times and still with no context. When the wind sweeps him up into the air, he sees the blonde girl rolling down a hill, getting tangled in her own hair. When he roughly lands on top of a tree branch and sits up to lean against the trunk, he sees her racing through a summer forest, always a pace or two ahead of him.
He supposes that these images should give him some sort of clue as to who he is, but he's still lost. The pictures don't come together to create a story; all they do is leave him with more questions. But with each memory that comes forth, he's filled with more and more desire to find the blonde girl. And with every memory, desire starts to turn to desperation.
Because, he figures, she's all he has. This strange girl in his mind who might not even be real.
But he has to hope. And when he sees the tiny yellow lights gathered in the distance, he lets the hope become anticipation.
He realizes that flying is something he will have to get the hang of as he hovers unsteadily in the air above the village before crash-landing just next to it. The square is crowded with people gathered around the fire, warming their frigid skin on the cold winter night. He smiles to himself, relieved that he isn't alone after all.
He makes his way into the square and calls out greetings, but no one responds. He shrugs it off, concluding that this particular group of villagers is rather rude, and he'll eventually find some more helpful ones.
A little boy runs toward him, and he leans down to make eye contact with him. "Excuse me, can you tell me where I—"
The boy runs right through him.
Panic seizes him, and he stands hyperventilating for several seconds. He cries out as another person walks through him, and then two more.
And then it dawns on him…a slow, horrifying realization. He is a ghost. And he truly is alone.
What he doesn't see is the girl shoving her way through the crowd, her usual meekness forgotten in her attempts to reach the stranger who looks unduly familiar.
She first caught sight of him across the square, trying to grab the attention of people wandering toward the fire. The brown cape she recognizes instantly, and she remembers all too well the last person she saw wearing it. The white hair, she has to admit to herself, is a little strange, but she is far too hopeful to be frightened.
She tries to keep sight of him through the throng of villagers, but they all push in front of her trying to reach the fire. At last she reaches a gap, and sees him long enough to realize he's leaving, stealing out into the snowy forest. He turns and gives a single glance back, and her heart catches in her throat.
There was that face. The same face whose expressions she had memorized. The same face whose features haunted her fleeting dreams every night since she had stopped seeing it in the waking world.
Then a group of women pass in front of her, and he is gone.
"Jack! Jack!" she shrieks, unable to bear the thought of him fading out of her life again.
The villagers cast her pitying looks and whisper to one another about how "the poor dear's gone mad with grief" and how "it's gotten so bad she sees him everywhere now, I hear."
She pushes past the women, her purple cloak billowing behind her as she tromps out into the knee-high snow in flimsy boots. The women have their mouths open, prepared to talk her out of whatever she thinks she's doing, but she doesn't even spare them a glance.
Despite the fact that he hasn't left any footprints, he isn't difficult to find. She only goes a little ways in his general direction before she sees him a few feet ahead, trailing along despondently.
"Jack?"
At the sound of his new name, he turns. And there she is. The blonde girl, with her sunshine hair braided back and her summer-green eyes regarding him with a swarm of emotions.
And for a split second he wants to laugh. Laugh about how ridiculously easy it was to find her. Here he was thinking it could take years to pinpoint where she was, and even longer to find a way to get her to see him. But instead she had found him in a matter of minutes, and she could very much tell he was there.
So at last, she gets a good look at him. He certainly seems to be the Jack she remembers, with the same playful smirk and teasing voice. But why, she wonders, are his hair and eyes different? She wonders if he's nothing more than a lookalike, a stranger who wandered into the village who just happened to have the same name.
"Rapunzel." The word feels strange in his mouth, but he's pretty sure that's her name. A faint memory surfaces of him teasing her about it when they were children, of her lovely green eyes filling with tears and him immediately feeling guilty.
She plods toward him tentatively, but her eyes betray the burning excitement coursing through her. She speeds up as she draws closer, and wraps him in a tight embrace when she reaches him. "God, I thought I lost you! Don't ever do that to me again!"
It hasn't even been a second before she yelps and pulls back.
"Y—you're so cold!" she gasps.
The ends of his mouth curl up into a smirk. "Well, I did just come out of a frozen pond."
"I just…" She studies him closely, reaching a hand up and pressing it to his face. "How are you alive?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "I just am."
She looks disappointed.
"I can't remember anything," he adds. "Before rising out of the ice. But you…I remember you for some reason. It's just…it's just bits and pieces, but I think I'm starting to understand."
Her tense body seems to relax, and she looks up at him with such softness that he can't help but smile back. That was definitely the right thing to say, he decides.
"What happened to me?" he asks quietly.
"Well…you took your little sister out ice-skating, but then…the ice started to crack. You distracted her long enough to use your staff to get her off of the ice, but you slipped and it broke underneath you, and you…you were gone." She sniffed, her eyes starting to water.
He glances at the staff clutched in his hand. So he had had a sister, and gave his own life to save her. That makes him feel a bit better.
"But I'm not gone." He reaches out and wipes a tear off of her face, freezing it into a tiny pearl of ice. "I'm right here."
"I know."
And as she felt his hand on her face, she lets it sink in how wonderful that is.
Without warning, she loops her arms around the back of his neck and kisses him. He tastes like snowflakes and icicles and everything else frigid, but she doesn't care. She doesn't care. All that matters to her is that she has him back, and she couldn't care less that he feels like ice as long as she can hold him close to her again.
He was hers. She was his. And she'll be damned if she lets death change that.
At first he stiffens, caught off-guard by her. But after a second or so he lets himself lean into the kiss, arms encircling her waist and pulling her up against his frosted-over white shirt.
She can feel his cold seeping into her, frosting over her every bone and spreading to the farthest reaches of her body. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. She decides she wouldn't mind if she froze to death out here kissing this boy she's always wanted more than anything else in life.
She remembers telling him that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Apparently that wasn't long enough.
However long he sticks around as a ghost, she decides she's going to be with him.
Her mouth is starting to grow numb before he pulls away. He looks at her in concern. "What?" she asks.
"I turned your lips kind of blue," he says, looking ashamed.
She crosses her arms. "So be it, then. I don't mind."
"On the upside, you're still a really good kisser," he adds, grinning.
"As are you, although you're a bit out-of-practice," she teases.
She leans her head up against his chest, and he finds another memory of her. A memory of her doing the same thing when they used to lie out in the meadow together, listening to his heartbeat.
She looks up at him sadly. "I can't hear your heart anymore."
"I suppose it's because I'm dead," he tells her softly.
"Right." She leans up against his chest again, as if still desperately trying to find a sound. They stand in silence for a long time.
"So what are you going to do now?" she asks finally.
"I don't know," he admits. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't even know why the Moon brought me back."
She smiles weakly. "I'd say it's because he knows how much I need you, but I know the world doesn't revolve around me."
He glances off into the shadows cast by the snowy pine trees, and then back at her. "I suppose I'll leave. I might as well see the world."
She steps back, hurt. "You're going to leave…me? Just after I've found you again?"
"Do you want to come?"
The words escape his mouth before he can really grasp what he's saying. It feels strange, offering to take this girl who he only knows through fragmented memories along on whatever adventures he decides to pursue. He knows she's going to be very difficult to fly with, especially when he can barely keep himself in the air. And having another person to keep track of would chip away at the complete and total freedom he came so close to having…the freedom to do whatever he pleased, to go wherever he wanted with no one around to tell him otherwise. The freedom that came with being completely invisible.
But he does know that she makes him happy. Kissing her numbed all the uncertainty and fear he was feeling and somehow just felt like home, whatever that was. Whenever she touches him, he found himself craving her warmth. Her presence is calming, like a summer breeze pushing away a stormy gale. And he realizes it's because in this massive, terrifying world filled with things he doesn't understand, the one thing he understands is her.
That, and she really is all he has. For all he knows, she could be the only person in the whole damned world who can see him.
She hesitates, caught off-guard by the thought of leaving everything she knows behind to be with him. He wonders if he's asking too much, but he feels that he has to leave, whether she comes with him or not. There is nothing for him here.
"Rapunzel!" A shrill female voice rings out through the night. She glances back toward the village.
"Rapunzel!" The voice sounds again, sharper and more impatient. She looks back at him, and her eyes harden with determination.
"Yes," she says finally.
He reaches out a hand to her, and she takes it gratefully. They tread off into the forest, flingers laced together. She hops through the snowdrifts in her thick boots while his bare feet sink into them, the cold powder brushing up against his exposed skin. He feels a slight chill between his toes, but nothing more.
"So where to first?" he asks.
She considers for several seconds. "Italy," she says finally. "Rome. I've always wanted to go there."
"All right. Rome it is! And after that we can go all over Europe. Or to India. Or Egypt. Wherever you want." She clutches his hand tighter, as if she's afraid it could dissolve out of her grasp at any moment.
"I love you," she tells him.
And he smiles, because he remembers that he loves her too.
Hey, look what the cat dragged in! And by "the cat" I mean me, and by "dragged in" I mean "submitted exactly 3 Wednesdays since the final chapter of my debut Jackunzel fanfiction 'Caves and Cold Waters'"! For any of you who have been subconsciously longing for more Jackunzel from Infrared-Ultraviolet since my last fanfiction ended, here you go. See, whenever I watch the beginning of Rise of the Guardians I get super-sad like, "But what if Rapunzel was there and SHE could see Jack?" but then I drown in feels because she's not and Jack has to be lonely for 300 years and shit. So what am I going to do about it? Write a fanfiction, of course! So here is a scenario where there is one person who can see Jack Frost from the beginning. Takes major liberties with canon, I know, but crossovers are already in an AU anyway so it doesn't really matter. I DO wonder what would've played out with Jack if he had a believer right from the beginning and didn't have to be alone for 300 years. Also if he had some idea of who he was, or someone there to help fill him in. I suppose we'll never know…*wistful sigh* Oh well, enjoy! Written in present-tense because it just felt right for some reason. Hope you like it!