Jackie did not subscribe to the thought that people bolted upright in their beds after a nightmare. Nobody woke up that quickly, what really happened was that the person blinked awake and maybe lay disoriented for a few moments before collecting their thoughts. Which is what she did now.

She sat up groggily in her bed, heart still pounding from the jolt of adrenaline that had awoken her in the first place. Running a hand through her long, messy brown hair, Jackie stretched and looked down at her clock.

6:13 in the morning. Awesome. She usually didn't wake up for another hour at least.

Jackie flopped back on her bed with a heavy sigh. What had the dream even been about? It had to have been bad if it had woken her up so abruptly. She focused on the details. She knew it had specifically involved herself and her sister, Emily, but things were definitely off.

For starters, she had been male, and Emily had been called Emma, for whatever reason. Despite these changes, Jackie knew that it had been the two of them, and not some other kids named Jackson and Emma. She frowned and thought harder. They'd been outside in winter, walking through what was definitely the Burgess woods. She'd been in them often enough to recognize them on sight. Emilyâ€"Emma?â€"was clinging to Jack...son's hand, smiling up at him with adoration with a pair of ice skates dangling from her free hand.

There were a few things wrong with that, aside from the Jackson/Jacqueline gender mixup and Emily's change in name. Jackie and Emily had never been ice skating together; they were five years apart and thus never spent much of their free time together, despite Jackie's best efforts to connect with her younger sister in the past. But Emily thought Jackie was strange, just like everyone else did, and fell more into the "bratty child" archetype than the sweet, smiling Emma in Jackie's dream. The two versions of the girl were polar opposites.

"It doesn't make any sense," Jackie murmured to herself.

The dreams that felt like nightmares weren't really anything special when she thought back to them. The only things unusual were that she was a boy named Jackson, or Jack, and s/he spent a lot of time with Emma/Emily. They also seemed to be set several hundred years in the past, back when Burgess was just a colonial village. But despite that, despite the dreams just being quick snippets of scenes in her dream self's life, Jackie always woke up with a rising feeling of panic and her heart pounding in her chest.

Everyone had nightmares. It was common knowledge that a person couldn't go to sleep without an almost complete guarantee that they would have one at some point. It was just a fact of life. Nobody knew when the widespread nightmares had begun, exactly, but it was accepted. Expected.

Jackie's dreams didn't feel like the ordinary kind of nightmare. When she was a kid, they had played off her fears: spiders, drowning, falling from great heights. Scary, but nothing she couldn't move past in the end. These new dreams had begun on her birthday the year prior, when she'd turned sixteen, and she was stuck on them.

Well, she decided, I'm not getting anything done sitting in bed.

With that thought in mind, she dragged herself to her feet and got dressed before heading downstairs. Her mother and sister were predictably already in the kitchen, being morning people far more than Jackie, though Emily had her chin in her hand and was looking rather sluggish as she monotonously spooned up cereal.

"Morning kiddo," Jackie said, ruffling Emily's brown hair. The younger girl scowled and leaned away without a word.

"Jacqueline, I'm going to need you and Emily to walk today," her mother Eva said by way of greeting, rifling hurriedly through her purse. "I need to head into work early and won't have time to drive you."

Emily looked up at that. "But it's cold, Mom!"

"It's December, Em, what did you expect?" Jackie grinned. "Fine by me. We'll have to leave sooner than usual though Em, is that okay?"

"Ugh," Emily sighed. "Fine."

Eva straightened up, smoothed her hair, and slung her bag over her shoulder. "Alright then. Have a good day, girls. I'll see you later. Jacqueline, do your homework."

"I wiiiiill."

With that, Eva left the house, leaving the two girls alone. Just as the sound of the car faded away down the street, Emily finished eating and silently stomped back upstairs, leaving Jackie to deal with their dishes. She didn't really mind; she took care of Emily far more than the younger girl liked to admit. Jackie openly adored her, brattiness and all, and thought it was actually rather cute how embarrassed her sister got about it.

It didn't take her long to get her school things together, and before long the two of them were making their way to the middle school. It was past the high school a ways, so Jackie had to double back around after dropping Emily off. It took a little extra time, but there was a shortcut through the Burgess woods that any student who couldn't drive took advantage of. Emily consistently whined at Jackie to get her license, especially in winter, but Jackie refused on the grounds that practically everything in town was within walking distance. There wouldn't be much of a point, and besides, she liked the cold.

Emily stuck her earbuds in as they walked, leaving Jackie to get lost in her thoughts with nobody to talk to. As it usually did whenever she had a spare moment, her mind returned to her dreams.

They definitely took place in Burgess. The scenery, leaving aside the time setting, was exact down to the pine needles on the trees. If Jackie looked through the woods a ways, she could see the route Jackson and Emma had been taking, presumably to the pond, over three hundred years ago.

She smiled a bit. They'd obviously been very close. What with the fact her dream had taken place in winter and Emma carried ice skates, they were probably going to the pond to play around. The pond in the woods was frozen solid all year around, but even now nobody went near it. It was deemed unsafe and there were rumors of it being haunted besides. Still, though...

"Hey, Em." Jackie tapped Emily on the shoulder, continuing when it was clear she was listening. "You wanna go ice skating sometime?"

Emily wrinkled her nose. "Why? That's for little kids."

"No it isn't. We could have fun."

"You always want to do stuff like that. It's weird. Mom says she wants you to grow up sometime."

Jackie sighed. "Yes, I'm aware. I imagine I'll spend winter break studying until my brains melt out through my eye sockets. She'll probably get me college applications for Christmas."

"Mom also said people stopped getting presents for Christmas when she was a kid," Emily pointed out.

"Wonder why they did that," the older girl mused, ice skating temporarily forgotten.

"Because it was an old tradition, Jackie." Emily rolled her eyes.

"Well yeah, but it's weird, isn't it? Everyone just kind of...stopped."

"Whatever. You're weird." Emily shook her head and stuck her earbud back in, shoving her hands in her pockets and picking up her pace to get ahead of her sister.

"So do you wanna go ice skating?" Jackie called after her, hoping she would hear. She didn't. Sighing, Jackie trailed after her, again losing herself in her thoughts and trying to shake the lingering sense that something was wrong.

Up at the North Pole, what remained of the Guardians was not doing well.

North sat in the darkened room that used to be his personal work room, the once bright colors within dull and peeling. There was only barely a flicker of a fire on the hearth, and a winter storm raged outside. He'd closed the dusty curtains to keep from seeing the snow. It reminded him too much of his failure, and his guilt. His old ice-carving tools were in his hands, being uselessly fiddled with; any sculptures he tried to carve now fell apart in mere moments. There was no magic in it anymore.

He heard soft footsteps approaching and looked up to see Tooth, who peered around the dark room with a lamp in her hand. Her feathers were limp and lacked their former lustre, and she did not fly anymore. Her wings were fragile and looked to have the durability of tissue paper. One got the feeling she would topple over if they merely brushed against her.

"You're in here again?" she asked quietly.

"I like the memories," he replied in a whisper. "This place is so empty now."

It was true. The elves had vanished, the magic in the yetis was gone. They'd all taken to the outdoors, reconciling with their roots as wild creatures. The only inhabitants of Santoff Clausen now were North, Tooth, and Bunny, as Sandy had never come back to them. But the memories remained, of bustling activity, holiday excitement, parties in the globe room...

"Would you like to eat with us?" Tooth continued, breaking the sudden stretch of silence. "Bunny and I, we, um, made some stew. He ran back to the Warren for ingredients."

The Warren was overgrown with weeds, but they could still find wild vegetables, and the occasional odd egg that popped out of the dried husks of plants.

"Why not?" North answered, and heaved himself to his feet. He was still a large man, easily towering over Tooth even when leaning on his cane, but weak. They were all weak. He followed her to the globe room, their typical gathering place even now. Bunny was already there, hopping around countertops. He was a tiny, shrunken little rabbit and definitely not happy about it. The curtains were closed here as well, and the globe was completely dark, so the only light in the room was provided by a few lanterns.

"Where the bloody hell have you been?" Bunny grumbled in North's general direction, using his entire body mass (about the general size of North's fist) to ladle stew into a few chipped bowls.

Despite the sheer desolation of their situation, North would still have to say that hearing Bunny's beefy Australian voice come out of that tiny body was still funny.

"Around," he chuckled, pulling up a chair and collapsing down into it. His knees creaked as he went down.

"Yeah, well, you're wasting good food." Bunny waved the ladle around sternly and nearly toppled off the counter. He passed a bowl to Tooth, who passed it to North. "Eat the crap."

North gave a small smile, glad that they could still find some light in such dark times, and was about to begin eating when a light tremor shook the room.

Bunny dropped the ladle on the floor and all three tensed immediately, on their guard. The only reason they were even in Santoff Clausen was because Pitch had kindly decided he wasn't interested in keeping it, and they never knew if he would ever decide to come back.

The tremor stopped, leaving behind a stark silence.

"What was that?" Tooth whispered.

"If it's that rat, I'm gonna-"

"Shhh!" North hushed them urgently and pointed past the globe to the large Guardian mosaic on the floor beyond it. "Look at that!"

The mosaic was cracking open for the first time in thirty years. All three rushed around it and watched in awe as the crystal below made a struggling effort to rise up.

"Open the curtains!" North ordered. "Manny's trying to tell us something!"

"Now?" Bunny scoffed, though he hurried to do what North said. "He couldn't have, I dunno, said something over two decades ago?"

"Something must have happened!" Tooth supposed. "Something good, maybe?"

"That really would be a first."

The curtains flew open, revealing the skylight. The heavy clouds of the winter storm were clearing and dim moonlight shown in. The crystal rose much more easily but stayed dark for a moment longer, filling the former Guardians with anticipation.

"What is it?" North said to the moon. In response, the crystal began to glow blue and a form began to take shape. A long, lean figure in a hood and familiar cocky grin materialized in the light. The hood obscured most of their face, but after years of feeling guilt and missing that smile, all three knew immediately who it was.

"Oh, no way."

"Jack!" Tooth gasped. "He's...Manny, are you saying he's back?!"

As an answer, a staff took shape in front of the figure, who grabbed with obvious glee before taking off flying, turning into a light fall of snowflakes over their heads a moment later.