Author's Note:

This story was inspired by a post on tumblr which can be found here: post/42355139899/emmaontheice-colonial-frost-until-the-day

The italicized lines are song lyrics from "Dark Days" by Punch Brothers.

"Mother, listen to my heart..." Jack sang softly as he walked along the rooftops of Burgess, Massachusetts on a cold and quiet winter night. "Mother, listen to my heart - just as one beat ends, another starts..." He couldn't remember where he'd heard the song but it seemed to float through his head whenever he let his mind wander. Seeing the town from above, Jack imagined how it used to be, 300 years ago: fewer and smaller houses, a fire burning in the square, children running around before their parents called them in for the night... His memory of it was still fuzzy but bits and pieces would randomly come back to him.

Where ever he stepped, frost bloomed around his feet. Anyone else would've slipped and taken a nasty fall down to the ground below, but of course this was nothing new for Jack and his footing was as sure as ever. He glanced up at the Moon, but the Moon hadn't said anything to him in a long while. "What, even as a Guardian, I'm not good enough to talk to?" he mumbled. With a frustrated sigh he turned his eyes downward again and let the wind pick him up and take him where it willed.

Jack wasn't really that angry with the Moon, not like he used to be. He was just lonely. Sure, the Guardians accepted him now and he saw them every now and again, but for the most part, he was alone. They all had work to do every single day or every single night, whereas there was no holiday for Jack Frost. It meant that he was free and he wouldn't have traded that for some demanding job that kept him from his adventures around the world. He was the Guardian of Fun, after all. It wouldn't do to have him tied to some schedule and unable to actually have fun.

And have fun he did, most of the time. But there were just some nights when the solitude got to him. The wind dropped him into the trees by the too-familiar lake. He alighted on a bare branch with quiet ease, looking out at the ice, the deceptive solid sheet over a cold, watery abyss. "Mother, listen to my heart," he sang again, staring out to where he'd fallen through the hole in the ice all those years ago, "just as one beat ends, another starts..." The words fit too well with what had happened to him. He had died to eventually become a Guardian. Had the Moon made it happen on purpose? Or had he simply picked a convenient person for the role? Unless the Moon decided to suddenly reveal all to Jack, he'd never know for sure.

Jack sat down on the branch, leaning back against the trunk, one knee pulled up to his chest while his other leg dangled off the branch. Staring out at the ice but with eyes that were far away, he wondered for the thousandth time what his life would've been like if he hadn't become Jack Frost. Would he have grown up surrounded by friends and family? Would he eventually married and had a family of his own? "...through these dark days, though they seem to darken as I go..." he continued the song. And then there was his sister... How much more time would he have gotten with her? "Our love will see us through these dark, dark days, sister, 'til it lights the way back home..." He shook his head and closed his eyes. It had to be the way it was, he thought to himself. I had to die. If I hadn't, it would've meant that I hadn't saved her either. Whether or not the Moon had anything to do with it, my death meant that she got to live. But had she had a happy life? Had she lived long and safe? "It can turn the whole world upside down, shake it 'til the sky falls to the ground..." She'd been young, she had seen her brother die. Did the memory of that live in her heart until she, too, died?

"I wish I could have saved you from that too, Em," Jack whispered. He looked back down at the ice on the lake, and with a quick leap, he landed on the spot where the ice had cracked underneath him and the cold water had claimed him. The memory of saving her, the one he'd seen from when he'd opened his tooth-box, was the clearest image in his memory. He remained still, slightly crouched and leaning on his staff, looking toward where he'd last seen his sister. The moon shined down, illuminating the ice with an almost unearthly sheen while imagined her smile, the look she'd had when she realized that she was safe and didn't have to be scared anymore. A ghost of a smile tugged the corner of his mouth up slightly, but there was a sadness in his heart that he wasn't sure would ever go away. "We don't have to reap the fear they sow," he sang, but there was a catch in his voice, a lump in his throat. "The fear of the cold and the dark and the snow," he whispered, adding his own lyrics to the song.

There was no other sound in the night but for his voice and a slight whistle of the wind if one listened hard enough. But suddenly there was another sound, another voice on the wind. "Jack!" It sounded faint and distant, but there was no mistaking his sister's voice, just as it had sounded in the memories it recovered. He crouched lower, leaning more heavily on his staff and knowing that it was just his mind playing tricks with the wind. But then the call came again. "Jack!" It was slightly louder, but with a strange echoing quality that didn't fit in his memory.

He straightened up now, looking around. If not from his memory, where could it be coming from? "Emma?" he called out softly.

"Jack!" the voice of his sister responded. The wind picked up, carrying a flurry of snowflakes that weren't of Jack's creation.

"Emma, is that you?" he asked, slightly louder. The wind blew harder, snowflakes obscuring his vision in every direction. "Emma!"

"Jack, I'm scared!" her voice said, and as he turned back to the spot where he'd last seen his sister, the wind died down - and there she was.

"Em-..." Jack whispered, his eyes immediately tearing up, "Emma?" She seemed slightly unreal, almost translucent and with a soft glow around her, but everything else about her was just the same. Her dress was the same, her brown hair and eyes, the way she stood, trembling slightly with her feet slipping backward and forward, unsteady in ice skates.

"Jack, I'm scared," she said again with a look that begged him to make everything right again. She looked like she was ready to cry.

"Emma..." Jack couldn't say anything else. "It's ok, it's ok," he said, repeating the conversation they'd had so long ago. But something was different, he realized. She was now standing where she'd been standing after he'd pulled her onto the thicker ice. He was standing where the ice had cracked. While neither of them were in any real danger - his very presence strengthening the ice beneath him and the seemingly light quality about her - if either of them were how they'd been before Jack died, it was he who would be in danger, not her. She still looked at him, fear clear in her eyes. He crouched down again, one hand ready to reach his staff out to her. "Don't look down, just look at me," he said anyway, his first instinct to protect her though he didn't know what else to do. "You're not gonna fall in."

She shook her head, her expression changing slightly, more to sadness than fear. Yet again she said, "Jack, I'm scared," he own voice quieter now, her brows knitted with a look of grief. "You were gone for so long."

"What...?" Jack's eyes widened. This wasn't part of his memory.

"You were gone so long, Jack. I've been waiting so long to see you again." He voice shook slightly with emotion.

"To see..." He shook his head, brow furrowed. "To see me?"

"I never got to thank you," she said, a slight grateful smile forming on her lips, "for saving me that day."

"Emma..."

"You saved me..." she said, but then she looked down at the ice, her smile fading and a tear slipping down her cheek. "You saved me, and then you left me." Her voice was just a faint whisper now.

"I didn't mean to," Jack said, barely holding his own tears back. "Emma, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to."

"I know," she said, clear with her tone that she didn't blame him. "I just... I missed you." She looked back up at him. "I had to see you again." Jack didn't respond, but a few tears spilled from his own eyes now. "The last memory of you I had was you falling through the ice, the ice taking you away to where I couldn't see you anymore," she said.

"But you were safe," he said, because that was the only thing that mattered to him.

"And now I know you're safe too." She smiled and reached out a hand. He was too far away to reach her so instead, still crouched, he held out the crooked end of his staff. She grabbed onto it and he gently pulled her across the ice to him. She threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly, her face buried against her shoulder. "Thank you, Jack," she whispered to him. "I'm not scared anymore."

The wind picked up again, a flurry of snowflakes enveloping them once more, and with the wind, she was gone, nothing left but snowflakes whirling up into the sky toward the bright Moon. Straightening up again, he looked up at the snow, glimmering in the moonlight. "I'm not either," he whispered.

"Just as one beat ends, another starts, you can hear no matter where you are..."