escaping the cold | rise of the guardians

escpaing the cold

a/n this is messed up. i don't know what's wrong with me. why did i write this??

warning: death, self-harm, dark!jack

(lowercase intentional, not edited)
***

he was created in the deep dark of a frozen pond. it was fitting, really, his whole life felt like that pond. the lack of air, the biting feeling of the ice water on his fingertips, the suffocating darkness surrounding him.

but then he opened his eyes.

he opened his eyes and was lifted out of the darkness, out of the cold, though he could never truly escape it. he was the cold, there was no escaping himself. he had tried already.

after 300 years alone, a person (but was he really a person) gets tired of not being seen. a person gets tired of doing the same thing over and over to no avail. a person gets tired of life.

but jack couldn't end his life, he had tried that before.

falling from the top of a tree resulted in broken bones, but he was still alive. diving into the cold water of his pond made him numb, but he was still alive. scratching his arms with icicles left him unconscious, but he was still alive.

jack was beginning to give up hope, beginning to believe he was destined to walk the earth invisible to everyone but himself. that was, until he became a guardian.

people saw him. they heard him!

but it was a short lived happiness. after all, being seen for a couple weeks couldn't outweigh the sadness of not being seen for 300 years.

but as jack sat in the snow, idly making patterns with frost, he got an idea.

***

"jamie!" jack shouted, flying through the sky until he reached the boy's house. he was outside on the lawn, his friends were there too.

all his believers in one place. it was sad, really, how few of them there were.

"jack!" the children exclaimed with glee.

"hey guys," the winter spirit said, a grin on his face. "snow ball fight?"

the resounding chorus of yells was all he needed.

snowballs were thrown, and really it was so easy to lead the children away from the house. a quick shout of "catch me if you can" and then they were following him across the street and to the pond.

jack laughed as he flew through the air, spinning and twisting as the kids shouted his name. he ought to get one last cool trick in before he was gone.

a snowball struck him in the back as he planted his feet on the ground, jack whipped around to spot cupcake giggling behind a tree.

he formed his own snowball, though really it should be called an ice ball, and threw it. cupcake's giggling stopped almost instantly as the ice ball made contact with her face. she fell and jack smiled, floating off the find the others.

monty and claude were talking as they walked through the forest, trying to find jack. the group of kids had split up, loving the idea of a hide and seek game.

they died with icicles stuck through their hearts.

next was pippa, who got swooped up in jack's arms and dropped from a height much too high for a little girl to fall from.

"jack!" he heard the laughter filled calls of jamie's voice. his first believer, the only one of his believers left.

"over here!" he called, flying to his pond and placing his feet on the surface. drowning wasn't a good way to go, jack knew that from experience.

jamie came into view not a moment later, smiling and with snow in his hair. he saw jack on the pond and grinned before running full force at the spirit.

he fell through the ice almost as soon as he touched it.

***

it only took an hour or two (jack wasn't counting) for him to feel the effects of his lost believers.

before, when he was not a guardian, there would have been no effects. but now that he was a guardian, the result of having no believers was a bad one.

it was death.

finally, jack thought as he curled up in the snow, he could escape the cold.