Heart of Frost (#Twistfatechallenge)

Shattered Ice

I killed her.

The words echoed endlessly in my head, and I clutched at my pounding heart, scrambling to sit up. The golden capsule containing my baby teeth--as well as memories of my past--was grasped at my side. I sat inside the icy crevice, the place I'd first recovered my memories after encountering Pitch many months before, far below the earth with my knees tucked to my chest. My breath came out in rapid, billowing clouds.

Her death was my fault...

Glancing down at the memories clenched in my fist, the thought sent a shudder down my spine. Ironic, considering I wasn't one to be bothered by the cold. I recalled back to what'd I just witnessed: I once believed I'd saved my sister from drowning at the site of my own death place, the frozen lake, and hence I was chosen by the Man in the Moon to be a guardian. But, upon seeing the new version my memories had undergone, I was beginning to realize that I was far from a hero. I was a murderer.

I'd witnessed myself sliding my sister to supposed safety, as I had seen before, just before falling through the thin sheet of ice myself and being plunged into the dark, swirling water. What I hadn't noticed before, yet was exposed to just a second ago, was a new addition to the memory. Before I was sucked back into reality, I witnessed my sister crashing through the shattered ice as well, her mouth parted in a silent, eternal scream as she helplessly sank down into the depths of the lake; her brown eyes pleaded for me to save her, but I was frozen. Useless.

Now, every time I blinked, her terrified face flashed behind my eyelids. The memory of her haunted me.

With a cry of anguish, I flung the memory capsule in my hand against the jagged wall of the fissure in the ground. It then clanged to the floor, just as I picked up my staff and flew up out of the fissure. I needed to get back to the North Pole. As I was flying, I felt an icy pain course through my heart like lightning, and I staggered in midair.

"Ow," I hissed through gritted teeth. Once I recovered, the pain in my heart ebbing to a dull ache, I took off in the direction of the north, the ground below swiftly blurring past. Guilt hurts. That was what I brushed the pain off as: guilt. What I wasn't aware of at the time though was that the cause of my agony was something much, much worse.

___

I didn't share my newfound knowledge with any of the other guardians. Not even Sand Man, who I already knew wouldn't tell anyone. They'd probably claim that it wasn't my fault, that I'd tried saving my sister and that I couldn't have known whether or not the ice would break. They'd never admit that I wasn't meant to be a guardian. But in all honesty, it was my fault. If I hadn't taken her ice skating in the first place, she wouldn't have had to die. If I had done a better job of protecting her...

And it wasn't just that. Over the course of several days, I began feeling...different. Ever since discovering that I hadn't saved my sister, as I'd previously thought, cold, bitter thoughts have been bombarding my mind; they all happened to be some variation of "I'm not a guardian, I'm a villain, like Pitch wanted".

As the days dragged on, these thoughts, which entered my brain everyday now without my consent, began to worsen. I stood leaning against my staff in the pristine, endless snow. The wind rustled my snowy hair as I pondered the limitations of my powers. Surely, there's more to my powers than giving stupid kids snow-days. Pitch saw my potential. In what form is ice a good thing? I grimaced. It took my sister, as well as my own life. People get sickness and frostbite from my cold.
Hurling a snowball far into the distance, I drily added, I'd be better off as a villain.