Alaia Skyhawk:

Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians, the Guardians of Childhood, or any related characters etc. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes.

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Chapter 18: To Let Go

'October 3rd 1768' the numerals on the wall said, as bells rang out their daily summons and Jack yawned as his always did before floating up out of his personal snowdrift. He wore a particularly wide smile as he did a final sweep around the sanctuary to make sure everything was as it should be, before he soared out through the tunnel to the surface and up into the sky pulling along winter in his wake.

He'd been the Spirit of Winter for fifty-seven years, making him seventy-five years old. Emily had joked about that last winter, saying that his age was finally starting to match his hair. They'd all laughed at that, her and Thomas, Clarrise and their three children, and even their four grandchildren. One sad note was that Albert had no longer been with them. He'd died in 1765, killed by a fever that had swept through the village taking several of the youngest and oldest of the villagers with it.

Emily hadn't been the same after that, a small part of her brightness having dimmed, but she still held to her smiles and laughter, and she still led the way in the Festival of First Snow every year. The Bennett Family had become the caretakers of the Shrine to the Spirit of Winter, and she was indisputably the head of the family. They stood tall at their growing part in the traditions of the village, and Jack couldn't be anything but proud of them, his family.

Still smiling in anticipation of another Northern Winter of fun, Jack made his annual circuit of the North of the World. Swooping over mountains and high, snowy plateaus, past low-lying valleys and over glaciers, he put winter into place. It didn't snow everywhere, in fact it only snowed in a handful of places, and only one of those was deliberate. And when he finished setting Northern Winter in motion, Jack flew back to that place and landed atop the storm-pole an hour after dawn.

The village had the thinnest covering of snow, which sparked in the morning light and was a bright contrast to the garlands on the porches and the berries in the shine below him. The children that waited for him all cheered at his arrival, and he returned their smiles with an exaggerated bow while around them the adults also smiled at the confirmation of the Spirit of Winter's return.

Jack iced over the pole, still smiling, but then his smile froze into place when he noticed something... Emily wasn't among those waiting, and yet the rest of the family was.

Thomas met his gaze and then inclined his head towards the village children. Silently mouthing a handful of words.

'They want you to play with them... Come to my house, later. Emily is waiting for you.'

Jack could only watch as Thomas and Clarrise turned and walked to their cabin, but was then forced to give his attention to their grandchildren and the other youngsters who clamoured for him to make them enough snow for a snowball fight.

Jack obliged them, eventually caught up in the fun and laughter until by midday the children were worn out from their games and went to their parents to help with the rest of the festivities. It was then that he was finally able to slip away, and land upon the porch of Thomas' house. He knocked on the door and waited, until his nephew opened that door.

Thomas came out, blocking the entrance and refusing to meet Jack's gaze as he murmured.

"Uncle Jack, there's no easy way to say this... My mother doesn't have long left, she's been bedridden for weeks, but I think she's held on for you. To see you arrive with winter one last time."

Jack stared at him, his eyes wide with denial before they narrowed with anger.

"She's dying? She's been ill for that long, and none of you told me?!"

"...Jack, don't shout at my son."

The words were barely above a whisper, but he heard them. Jack shoved past Thomas and into the house, where Clarrise sat in a chair beside the bed where Emily lay.

Clarrise got up and went out the door, closing it behind her so that the two siblings could be alone. But Jack barely noticed her departure, not while he stared at the frail form of his greying-haired sister.

"E-Emily..."

She smiled at him weakly, and pointed to the chair.

"Sit down, Jack. Don't stand there like a boy who's lost his shoes and only just noticed."

The joke make his breath catch in his throat, even as a smile tugged at his mouth. He sat down in the chair, reining in his powers so not a scrap of frost clung to his clothing. So he would not chill the air, and so that the only coolness to touch her would be his hand clasping around hers.

"I'm home."

A tear welled up from the corner of one of his eyes, running down his cheek instead of freezing as it would have normally, and she squeezed his hand.

"Don't be angry at the family, they only kept it from you because I told them to. I told them to tend me in this house, so you would not see me bedridden when you collected the letters from my home. I told them not to tell you, so that you could smile and laugh at the stories in those letters, without my illness casting a shadow over you. I told them to hide that I was ill, so that the knowledge I was dying, wouldn't spoil the Festival of First Snow."

Jack felt his lower lip tremble in prelude to a sob, but forced it down.

"You hid it, because you didn't want me to be unhappy?"

Emily nodded, still smiling.

"I knew this day would have to come eventually, and I could see that even though you knew it too, you did everything you could to ignore and deny it. You hid from those painful thoughts, because you didn't want anyone to worry about you. You didn't want your feelings to affect the happiness of the children... And so, even as you tried to deny this inevitable day, I prepared for it. To make sure it would be as painless for you as possible. That you would not have to stand by and watch me slowly fade away. That instead we would have our chance to say goodbye, but without the time for lingering regrets."

Jack took hold of her hand with both of his now, another sob threatening to escape him.

"Why? I could have been here for you. I could have come home early, during Northern Autumn, and been here at your side. You didn't have to do this alone!"

Tears flowed from her eyes now, and she sighed.

"Oh, Jack... The Spirit of Winter is here, at the bedside of a mere mortal woman, crying. You have duties, Jack, and while you will always be my brother, I have had to accept that you are part of something far bigger than me... I accepted that truth, and now you need to accept it as well. I've held on with all my heart so I could be here for you. I've held on to the belief of seeing you again, so I could help you get through this. My belief has kept me here until now, but it cannot hold me here forever, and neither can your belief stop this from happening... You have to let me go, Jack."

Jack sat there, the two of them looking at each other in silence, before he let out a shuddering breath and bowed his head, nodding. When he lifted it again, he wore an unsteady smile.

"Ok, but I'm going to be here for you. I'll be here right until the end."

Emily's gaze was searching.

"Well you can't be here all the time. What about the children? They can't go without the greatest winter playmate ever." She smiled. "You've still got to tell them their first story for this winter. Which one have you chosen?"

Jack hesitated, but then returned her smile.

"The one about the Himalayan Snow Geese."

Emily's smile widened.

"That's a good one... It's been a few years since you last told that one. None of the current children have heard it."

"I know, that's why I chose it."

Jack was still doing his best not to sob or break down in tears, as Emily slipped her hand from his grasp and tucked it back under the warmth of her covers as she closed her eyes.

"Play with the children close to the house tomorrow. I want to hear you tell them their story, and I want to hear them laughing as they play their games with you."

Jack nodded, his entire body trembling even as he did his best to hide it.

"I will. I promise, they'll laugh and cheer more than you've ever heard before."

When Jack came out of the house his normally pale face was flushed, although the cool air quickly dealt with that. Thomas and Clarrise were waiting there, to give their own words and gestures of support, but he remained too hurt inside to fully accept them.

He retreated to a tree near the cabin, where he could watch Emily sleep through the gap in the shutters. She was still asleep when he went inside in the morning and sat with her for an hour, and when she at last woke up early in the afternoon, she scolded him for keeping the children waiting.

Jack laughed at that, even if only quietly, and did as he was told. He gathered the village children in the clear area behind the cabin, and sat there with them to tell them their first story of the year. And when the time came for games, he made sure that every one of them had been touched by his gift of joy and fun. Their laughter ringing out loud enough for the entire village to hear it.

It was growing late, and all but Thomas' grandchildren had gone home, when something at last interrupted the games... Clarrise, standing at the corner of the cabin watching them, and she was crying...

Jack's smile vanished in an instant, at the implication of those tears, and without a word he rushed to the open front door of the cabin and went inside.

Thomas was sat by the hearth with his head in his hands, and on the bed in the corner, Emily lay utterly still with the faintest hint of a smile on her face.

Jack dropped his staff in his haste to reach her, his cold hands taking hold of hers which had become equally as cool.

The sobs he'd held in the day previous, now came to the surface as he clung to her shaking his head in denial. But then he forced himself to look at her face, at her smile, and knew that she'd passed on in the way she had wanted... Listening to him bring happiness to the children of the village.

Jack kept his powers close, allowing his tears to soak into the front of the shirt she had made for him. Allowing himself to grieve like a normal human being, to cling to that illusion of what he was for as long as he could, until time meant that he had no choice but to do something else she'd asked him to do... Let her go.

He was there, sat in a tree, as the following day she was buried beside Albert close to the pond. Part of Jack wanted to scream in grief, to rage and bring storms to vent his emotions, but he could never do that to the village. Instead what fell were flakes so large, that the delicate six-pointed crystals of ice could be clearly seen within each clump. Every one of them was like a huge tear falling silently from the skies, unlike the glittering pebbles of ice that tapped on the branches below him after they'd tumbled from his eyes.

Jack remained where he was until all the villagers had left, before making his way down to the mound of disturbed earth and kneeling there. He then looked towards the pond, just a short way away, and fought to smile.

"Now I know how you felt, that winter I fell through the ice. You were so strong, so much stronger than me... Do you remember that day, when I came back? Do you remember us playing hopscotch by the pond, the way we used to play it every day? Do you remember how I took you onto the ice and pulled you round, never afraid to fall through again because I was there to protect you?"

He faced the grave again, and with a gentle touch he covered it with frost in a pattern of flowers.

"Wherever you are, wherever it is that people go when they die, I know you won't forget me... And I promise you, Emily, that I won't ever forget you. I won't ever forget my little sister, no matter how long I live, and I will always watch over your family... Our family." He stood up and looked to the sky, taking a deep breath before letting the winds carry him upwards. "Goodbye, Emily."

The following days and weeks passed him by in a blur, his grief still raw when he visited the family, but the sharp edges were already beginning to wear down. Emily had done her work well, in making it easier for him. The sudden discovery of her condition, followed by her death the very next day, not giving time for the pain to bury itself too deep in his heart. With her death had come one other thing, the final jolt he'd needed to adjust fully to being an Immortal. It forced him to do that which he'd tried to deny for so long, to embrace without hesitation the fact that he would see generation after generation of her descendants grow old and die while he remained unchanged... And while it hurt, he knew their love and support of him, the joy he knew he would share with them, made it worth it.

But at the same time he also knew he needed to start distancing himself to a certain extent.

He struck up a new routine, where he played with the village children for two days, and then left to do other things for three. He repeated that pattern for the rest of Northern Winter, until a week before Northern Spring was due to start, he left without lingering on for a few more weeks as he'd used to.

He flew back to the Winter Sanctuary, to his ice palace, and to his room with its snowdrift-bed. The floor-length mirror he'd made thirty years previous, to check the fit of his new shirt, was still in there, and gazing into it his own solemn blue eyes gazed back.

He'd been the Spirit of Winter for fifty-seven years, and had existed for seventy-five... And now, more than ever before, he felt old. He looked young, but in his heart at this moment, he was an old man. He felt tired, and part of him wanted nothing more than for it to be over, but another part of him stubbornly clung to the will to live.

He left his icy caverns and took to the skies again, fleeing his reflection and not really thinking where he wanted to go. But the winds knew what he needed, and without him even realising it, he found himself being carried over a town where streams of golden sand were seeking out children. And then he spotted Sandy, not too far ahead.

Jack couldn't bring himself to land on the golden cloud, even when the wind urged him to, and so he dropped onto a rooftop instead. Sandy spotted him right away, and with a small frown he descended to and sat down beside the Spirit of Winter.

Jack remained unmoving in his depression, and silent, expecting Sandy would leave to continue his duties after a while. But no, the Sandman stayed where he was, and just occasionally cast a thread of dreamsand into the air to seek out any children that needed good dreams.

It was nearing dawn when Jack finally broke his silence, and only after letting out a sigh that held the weight of the world.

"My sister died... the day after I arrived home with winter. It was almost as if she... waited for me before letting go." He wiped furiously at the tears welling up and freezing on his face, and then his shoulders slumped. "Did you ever feel like this? Old and tired, wanting it to end, but knowing that you're just going to keep on living?"

Sandy reached out to pat him comfortingly on the shoulder, his expression sympathetic as he nodded.

Jack frowned at him.

"Then how did you do it? How did you make yourself keep going? How was it that you were able to accept this?"

Sandy pointed to a nearby window, at the child that could be seen tucked up in bed, and Jack understood.

"Because the children needed you... Just like the children of my village need me." Jack took a shuddering breath, and stood up before smiling at Sandy. "Thank you, for listening, and for being here for me tonight. I appreciate it."

Sandy floated up to pat him on the shoulder again in an obvious 'any time', and Jack sighed before returning the gesture and flying away. Back to the Winter Sanctuary, to wait for the next Northern Winter and the time for him to return to the children again.

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Alaia Skyhawk: I think I went through half a box of tissues while writing this. I honestly have to say this was the hardest death-scene to write that I have ever written. I was crying from the moment I wrote Thomas telling Jack that Emily was ill.

But we have reached a turning point for Jack, and things are going to start changing for him. Almost as if Emily's lifetime was his 'childhood' as an Immortal, and now he has to grow up and move forward.