Last Winter [JackFrostxReader] Pt.16

Never had Jack met a child that absolutely loathed the snow. That is until that one fated night in which he came to land on a city he had so long abandoned because of its constant hot weather; it was never predictable, the weather, and usually his snowflakes melted before landing on anything solid. That particular night, though, the temperature had drop and the winds had grown and it was perfect for his landing.

He had landed on a particularly normal house; there was nothing special about it, but the moon seemed to shine the brightest from that roof. The lights poured over the roofs, to the walls, and into the windows. Jack, like the well behaved winter spirit he is, quickly set to work on investigating these new additions to the city that had not been there when he had been there last.

The frost his body emitted frosted the roof and the edges of the window as he leaned upside down to sneak a peek. The window was soon crystallizing slowly, but he was still able to catch a small bundle shuffling around inside the room in a quick pace. The small figure moved as fast as Bunnymund, if he had been the actual size of a rabbit, that is, but by the outline Jack could tell it was a kid.

At that time he hadn’t known it was you who had been shuffling around in the room, and he had no way of understanding what you had been doing at the moment; organizing your room for the third time that day because it was absolutely organized wrongly by some woman your mother had hired for the day. She wasn’t going to be called again for alphabetizing your books by the name and not by the author’s name.

Jack had been watching you as you stacked up papers and books and what looked to be post cards on the floor. The snow was already falling, changing the night into something magical and forcing every child in the city, and some adult, to run outside and marvel at it. There would soon be enough snow to begin snowball fight and snowmen creation, yet you (as a little girl) hadn’t even as much looked out to see what the ruckus was all about.

You kept that scowl on your face, eyes narrowed at objects you couldn’t reach and that were used on the daily basis. Jack couldn’t help but snicker at how serious a look you had on your face, something he wasn’t used to seeing. Maybe it was because you had no way of knowing it was snowing outside that you kept in your room, he thought, before tapping on the window with his staff and quickly flipping to the edge of the roof.

He waited, leaning forward only the necessary distance to see some people on the nearby street and your closed window. It was only a second before he went to knock again that your windows were pulled open, showing Jack that the small bundle was you in a hoodie a bit too large for your size.

His eyes shone with happiness as your small hand reached forward, palm side up, to touch the falling snowflakes that were falling. You stayed in that position for about a minute before disappearing in a flash inside your bedroom and coming back with a beaker. Jack tilted his head to the side in a curious manner, wondering why a kid your age had such a thing that needed both your hands to hold it. The beaker was placed on the window ledge for it to accumulate the strange substance, as that is what Jack heard you call the snow. He had laughed it off at that moment, waving his hand in the air and causing the beaker to fill up quicker than it would without his help.

Tomorrow, he thought as your window closed; tomorrow for sure you would be jumping for joy when you were met by the object of ultimate fun for kids. It was only reasonable that those from your home didn’t think the snow would last the night, so of course to excitement would be shown for a couple of minutes of snowflakes.

Jack was waiting near the gates of your home the next morning, and though he had expected you up early because of the snow, he had never expected you would be up before the moon had set fully. Your mother had left the house early too, leaving you to lock the door and walk out into the slushy streets of the city.

Fully dressed in uniform, a backpack hanging from your back, and a look of annoyance decorated your face. The night’s scowl, Jack thought, apparently had not yet left you features as you struggled to keep your footing in the snow. Jack said nothing at first, keeping pace with you as you walked, but it was becoming nerve wrecking that you didn’t ass much turn to look at him or ask who he was. And then a thought crossed his mind;
Could you not see him?

But that thought was quickly thrown out of his mind when he had caught you peeking at him; your eyes glued to his face with the strangest of look in your eyes. It was what they held that kept Jack mesmerized by them, locked in place as if he had been frozen in his own ice. What he saw in them that day, what he had not seen in any other that were not Guardians; your eyes held the same light of Wonder as North’s eyes did.

That wonder, though, was slightly different from North. A dimmer light or a different light for that matter, Jack couldn’t explain what it was he saw shining in your eyes that day. But it didn’t matter because right after he introduced himself, the words that embedded into his heart like a small piece of glass, came from your lips without any sign of mercy.

“I hate you.”

Not being believed in and being ignore because of it was one thing, but having someone who could see him, who could touch him say they hated him was simply a low blow. A blow to his newly formed Guardian ego after he had brought a winter wonderland to a place that had not seen snow in a decade.

Did he hate you like you hated him?

No.

Did he hold a sort of grudge against you for not liking his ‘art’ and for ignoring him the rest of the day by hiding inside the school building, which he still thought it was torture for kids when there was snow outside.

Of course he didn’t. His appearance and break-in into your house and bedroom had already been decided the night before. He just hadn’t found a way in the night before, and he had lacked the motivation (malicious intent) to do so.

But your room was strange to be in, and not only because he had accidentally stepped on a book that was open to a page that showed the insides of a frog. You were some sort of freak, is what he first thought as he soaked in every inch of your bedroom. Compared to Jamie’s bedroom, yours could hardly be considered the room a kid let alone a girl. Everything that was in Jamie’s room, the exact opposite was in yours.

In the process of further snooping, the loud sound of the front door opening and closed caught his attention and Jack quickly peeked out of the room. No one would be able to see him, but you would, and that caused his mind to come up with payback methods that would disable North from taking him off of the Naughty list.

Then you came into the room dazed and flushed and looking miserable, yet there was still a fighting spirit that was attached to you that didn’t allow you to look weak even under such circumstances. Jack had managed to sneak out of the room and was watching you outside down when you were slipped into your bed, his eyes filled with worry as he asked himself if you had gotten sick because of him.

It wasn’t soon after he had those thoughts that he found himself locked into one of your look that, even though he had just meant you, was forcing him to question his existence. He had just found out who he was and why he was chosen, and here you were, a little girl that questioned his status as Guardian without having to speak a word to him.
And your eyes . . .

“Jack Frost.” He had been looking into the eyes of your mother, a look of an adult raising an adult and not a child; someone who didn’t tolerate nonsense and expected the same from others. At the mention of his name, Jack had looked away from her and back to you, leaning against the glass for a better look.

Jack had honestly thought you had a change of heart that you would believe in him after having an entire day to ignore classes and think of him and the fun you could have in the snow. Maybe the fever had lighten that small piece of inter child that was in you, but all of that was butchered at the answer you mother had given you, at the utter understanding that filled your eyes when hearing the truth about ‘Jack Frost’.

He was hurt. More so than before because you could see and yet were bent of saying otherwise, and going as far as to have your mother confirm your suspicions, which was a very poor source if you asked Jack. The thought of an eight-year-old girl ignoring him, taunting him, going as far as to let him see that he didn’t exist to anyone by having her mother say he was nothing but an expression.

The grudge against you grew slightly, turning into resentment for you not believe what you saw with your own eyes. And for a moment, after having been struck down from his high horse of instant recognition by kids after becoming a Guardian, Jack had decided to leave and to never come back to this place that lacked believers.

But looking back at your sleeping face, the redness that came with the fever, the unmistakable discomfort that crossed you features; Jack couldn’t simply ignore you and leave you alone until that woman, who he thought was the one who had messed up the room, came. Maybe you had forgotten about that night, or maybe you had never woken up to find him there, but now and again Jack would think of that night.

After that, snow had not fallen and though they missed it greatly, the city folk didn’t mind it as much as others that were used to it. They were sort of grateful that the snow had only lasted two days and hadn’t returned the upcoming year or the next or the one after that. This didn’t mean Jack himself had not come to visit, it meant that he hadn’t been able, or didn’t want to, give them snow anymore.

What if you got sick again?

He had been watching you all these years, watched how you amazed teachers in fairs with project he wouldn’t ever have dreamt of doing. They were the best of the best, judged not with the kids of your grade but with the older kids. Most of the project were based on proving something right or proving something wrong—and you had made a kid cry when you had proved that his project of the Tooth Fairy was wrong.

Jack knew you hadn’t intended to hurt the boy’s feelings let alone make him cry, but you were a stubborn person and didn’t even offer an apology because in your eyes you had nothing to apologies for. As an argument, you clearly said that every project could be argued about, whether it was true, false, or in the process of being one of the two.Fairies, Jack would grin at this, had not proof of existence or of ever having existed.

The years went by to Jack in the blink of an eye, and when he had blink that moment you had crossed the road towards school, you had gone from being a little short kid to someone that resembled an adult. You were moving closer to his age faster than he thought possible, but your eyes and mind hadn’t changed much. They seemed to grow more solid in the beliefs of him, and the other Guardians, not existing.

For the most part, you were still more of a kid than a young adult, and that was proven the moment he witness yet another spirit crushing revelation to kids (he was glad they kept you away from the shopping mall Santa Claus). If you had been more of an adult, you would have not listen to the kids speak about this Jack Frost and how he was the one that brought snow and blizzards and who cause mischief in the ice. You would have ignored them instead of turning to them and declaring you could also make snow.

Jack was curious about this; he couldn’t hide the smile on his lips thinking of how exactly you were going to manage that trick. Once in the science lab of the school, the kids standing in front of you across the table, Jack moved to stand next to you like he had done at random times in the passing years. Like all the other times, you didn’t turn to look at him, passed right throw him like all the other, but the chill that ran through your body was reassuring; you could feel him even if you couldn’t see him or touch him.

Artificial snow. That is what Jack saw you create in front of the kids, who of course couldn’t see him either because they lived in a place without snow. He was arguing at the top of his lungs, waving his arms in front of them so they wouldn’t be tricked by this thing you had copied off him. That wasn’t even real snow!

He should have thought that as insulting, but Jack still found it a bit flattering that from the entire projects you had done, everything that you researched, absolutely everything had to do with ice and snow and water. He had even caught you in the school library reading about spirits and narrowing your eyes at the book when you found his name.

It was infuriating that you could no longer see him like you had once did when you were a kids, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop from coming back. Even if it was just to glance at you from afar, he came every year without fault and walked beside you as if her were walking you to school. Once or twice he had saved you from being splashed by water by freezing it, but you had never noticed.

Then came the time where he could no longer take you ignoring him and took the moment of you waiting for the bus to make his move. Standing in front of you, one hand on your shoulder and the other holding his staff to his chest, he leaned in and briefly laid a soft kiss on your lips. For a moment, for a slight moment when your cheeks took color and your eyes grew wide, he thought that had made you see him.

In the end, it was you’re the cold temperature of the wind against your skin that had caused that, or at least that is how your mind registered it. That was how your minds always found a reason to why random things kept occurring; the mind rearranged everything to fit into your reality.

Should he have told you he had stolen your first kiss because you years of ignoring him had caused him to snap? In his defense, it was your fault for being cute, but he had a feeling that if he’d said that you would have dissected him on the spot out of embarrassment.

Still, at that particular moment, after you had assaulted him and had now fallen asleep next to him with your head on his chest, he doubted you would pull a scalpel to his throat. He’d already helped you dress warmly, wrapping you in a cotton cover before climbing in beside you. The moon was shining brightly again, the weather already becoming slightly warm, Jack could feel that the snow would not last long, and Manny seemed to be letting him now.

The light that poured into the window lit your sleeping face, every other part of your body covered in shadows, except for your casted arm that Manny seemed to be prominently displaying to Jack even more than your paled face. He tried to ignore the ill feeling that came from seeing your arm under the moonlight, to ignore the sound of North coming into your home and placing something under the tree in the empty living room.

If he was lucky, Jack thought, North wouldn’t find him snuggled up next to you hiding from the light of the moon and from his all-knowing blue eyes. This, what he had with you, was something that should have never of happened. There was no doubt in his mind that it would cause trouble, it would make a mess of things, because that is all he was ever accused of before becoming a Guardian; and he wasn’t a Guardian in your eyes.