Nonexistent (Rise of the Guardians)

14. Confronted

I woke up, and I was immediately overwhelmed with the feeling of intense cold. My fingers and toes were stinging with cold, and my nose felt like it was about to fall right off my freezing face. I sneezed and wiped my runny nose with the back of my hand, realized that I was wearing Jack's hoodie, and sat bolt upright, looking around myself to find that I was in an icy crevasse, surrounded by bluish white ice and covered in multiple blankets.

"Bloody hell its freezing." I grumbled, wrapping Jack's hoodie and the blankets tighter around my torso and heading over to the opening of the hole, where a bright white light was pouring in. I poked my head out, blinked at the pristine white landscape around me, and popped back in with a yelp. It was flipping subarctic.

"Holy-!" I exclaimed, staring in shock down at my torso, or rather, what covered it. Jack's hoodie was stained and smeared with dark red splotches all across the front. Blood.

What the hell happened?

"That settles it. I'm dead. Absolutely dead. The afterlife is a frozen wasteland." I muttered sarcastically, shaking my head. I sat back down against the far wall, the thin opening of the ice cave shielding me from the blustering wind outside. Pulling the blankets tighter around myself, I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes, just thinking. How exactly did I get here? What was going on? Why was I wearing Jack's hoodie, what's with all the blood, and where was he?

My last question to the world was answered as a grunt sounded from the entrance, followed by the padding of bare feet on the ice. My eyes shot open and I whipped my head up to see Jack squeezing through the entrance to the cave, a white tank top replacing the hoodie that was currently on me.

He turned around slowly, a sigh escaping his lips as he shook the snow out of his hair. When he looked up and saw me, curled up against the wall of the cave, and looking up at him with wide eyes, he whooped and slid across the icy cave floor, grabbing my forearms gently and letting out a breathless laugh.

"Allie, thank goodness you're alright! I thought you were gone for good." He said, his blue eyes bright with relief. Relief, not happiness. Something was wrong-really wrong- of Jack wasn't even a little happy.

"It takes a bit more than the boogeyman to get rid of me," I smiled tiredly, "although he did come pretty close."

Suddenly, Jack's eyes narrowed, his eyebrows knitting together so tightly that they almost met in the middle. I cocked an eyebrow questioningly, looking at myself to see that I wasn't some sort of monster- spirit hybrid. I was still me, so Jack's reaction was pretty random in my opinion.

"Allie, since when did you have a stripe in your hair?" He questioned.

"What? What are you talking about, Jack?" I snorted in disbelief.

"There's a silver streak right by your ear." I stopped short and blinked in surprise. I cocked my head, wondering if I had heard him wrong. I turned to face Jack with a questioning look on my face.

"I swear, Jack. If you're playing a trick on me right now, so help me I'll-"

He assured me that I did indeed have a silver streak in my hair, right next to my right ear, and told me that I still looked just fine as he sat next to me.

"I don't care about that Jack! Hair doesn't just decide to change colors!" I exclaimed, brushing my annoyingly tangled hair out of my face. Now that I took another look at it, there was a silver streak mixed in with the messy black strands. "Something must've triggered it, when I was in the tunnels. When I was with... Pitch..."