this fic was originally supposed to be cute fluff, but along the way it kinda turned into something more... so i hope you enjoy. was supposed to be based on Superheroes by The Script after listening to it endlessly, but i guess it's not anymore. hehe. also proofread by EveBelle18, thanks again dear!
WARNINGS: if you're in a good mood right now and don't want feels, you can turn away. this fic will give you a serious heartbreak, i think. also, if you're uncomfortable with character deaths another reason why you should turn away now if you want. still, hope you enjoy. r&r.
Jack likes to smile for the camera whenever he catches the bad guy (whether it's a robber, a killer, or another superhuman with much cheaper superpowers) while striking a confident pose.
Elsa hates anything that flashes and takes a picture that can be kept as a memoir of her forever.
He hates tranquility. He says it bothers him a lot.
She likes peace and quiet. She enjoys company with herself most.
He hates the dark. He says it triggers the darker side of him, and he cripples with fear.
She loves the dark. She tells herself she is one with it, and she is nothing but the shadow of many. Always there but barely noticed. Like her.
He's a mocha type of person.
She prefers dark chocolate.
He always calls dibs on the cherry on top of the chocolate cake.
She shyly takes the last slice of chocolate.
He has the secret identity of a superhero.
She's nobody.
He sees her everyday alone in the halls.
She sees the other side of him every night on the news.
He's staring at her.
She brushes past him.
A sea of people in the hall vast before them, a cacophony of laughter and bruising elbows and kicks to those who dare cross it. He musters the courage to walk towards her and start small talk, not as an acquaintance, not as a jock, not as the second in command of the Superhero team 'The Guardians', but as a friend. Or something a little more than that.
"Hi," he said, leaning an elbow against his locker. He flashed a twitching smile towards her.
Her head jerked to his voice, like a taser, and it makes her drop her books to the floor, hands shaking convulsively. She takes a hesitant look at him from behind her fogged glasses, and immediately averts her gaze to the books scattered on the marble floor, crouching down to collect them.
He watches her first, how her loose braid swings when she moves, small face in a stoic emotion with her ruby lips, liquid eyes, and button nose. Her name is wound in his head, and he does not know why.
He drops beside her.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, a pale hand reaching for her geometry book. "Didn't mean that, sorry. You alright?"
She's already gathered all her books in the loop of her arm, faster than you can say 'snowflake', except for her geometry book which he's holding out towards her in one hand.
"I'm so sorry I didn't mean to, really. Do you want me to walk you to geometry class? I'm—"
She snatched her book from his hand, lower lip caught between her teeth, a knowing nod given before she bolts out of the hall, the bell ringing after her.
He drops his hands to his side, right before running a hand up his tussled white hair, a groan escaping his lips and no rational thought swims inside his head. "—Jackson… I'm Jackson." He subsequently slapped both hands to his face, a few people bumping into him as they scurry off to class. "Fucking smooth, Frost. Just go stop a heist or something."
Lunch in Burgess High was dreadful. Repulsive food was sent flying across tables every now and then, the most sickening sight of mashed potatoes were served everyday, greasy plates, dubious looking people and—
Her.
Jack watched from a distance, his share of potatoes starting to instantly rot in their bowl as he peered at her.
She sits alone in the mass of bodies, people animatedly moving around her and she is all he can see. How she picks the fork and stabs the dry chicken nuggets, twirls it around her thin fingers, before consuming it between her thin lips. Like a predator and its prey, only silent, and no one else sees but him.
He wills his legs to move and he sits beside her, his tray clacking on steel table.
"Do you mind if I sit?"
Her eyes widen, just a bit, a sign of surprise swirling in her bottomless blues before they train back to her food, picking her tray up gingerly between her fingers. And she takes her prey away from him disappearing out the door, leaving an excruciating mark in his chest.
He got his answered, she minded.
The next time he spots her was in the library. The place wasn't his cup of tea, but he grew to love it because of her. He spotted her once, scampering into the brass door whilst dodging towering people in the hall, finding sanctuary in the chaos that was her world.
She sits there, on one of the plush cushions between walls and walls of book-stacked cases. Plopped on the floor, a book exposed to the scented air, a lock of her winter-patent hair escaping her braid. She wore the most audible smile on her weary lips as her eyes flick across the pages, and he watches her for a while over the counter before he gathers a new-found courage to talk to her once more.
"Hi," he said, and he flopped on one of the cushions across her, a copy of The Catcher In The Rye in one hand. "Who knew we'd run across each other again, huh?"
She barely acknowledges his presence, and he knows why. They were too different. He was a jock, too famous and loud to hear his own thoughts. She was a wallflower, who paints her own quiet world with her imaginations and little hope. He was a superhero at the bewitching hour, who fights for justice and truth and he does not know why. She was herself when she was alone, and struggles to live and breathe the air he did.
But this time, she doesn't push him away, but continues to skim through her book.
Jack shrugs to himself, cracking his own book open to act as if reading. He feels her shift in front of him, a little uncomfortably, then it all sinks into silence.
And it was the most comforting silence they had all afternoon.
The following weeks flew by like a dream, and more of the awkwardness was starting to drain away, little by little.
Jack invites himself to sit beside her every day in lunch so she won't feel so lonely, Elsa listens to every babble his lips spill, and realizes his voice is music and lets herself be taken away when he rambles on and on and on about the nothingness of this world.
One time, she giggles.
Jack's jaw detaches from his mouth, shocked, before his lips curve into a full smile.
"Aha!" he cheered, banging his fists on the lunch table, Elsa shyly looking over her food, a retaliation to ignore him. "You giggled! That's—" the words pour out of his mouth before he could stop himself. "—cute."
She blushed, color coating her alabaster cheeks and she ducks her head from his view. He feels color rise to his cheeks too with his inevitable confession, and goes back to quietly horsing with his food.
"You like chocolate," he smiles widely at her, eyes lazily set on the small form that is her as he amusingly watches her chew the sticky substance in her mouth.
She shrugged.
"It's—" amazing, delicious, wonderful, everything warm and nice like you—"good."
He half smiles, content to see that Elsa had just started to meekly respond in their conversations. Limited, but direct. He had broken down a few walls he sought was impenetrable, and it makes him light on his feet just thinking about it.
"Your palate sure is discerning."
And he reminds himself to buy her chocolate for the rest of the week, and maybe, everyday.
Jack doesn't remember exactly how he fell for Elsa, but he remembers that he's always watched her go with the flow of bodies in the halls, making herself look small, spacing out in geometry class, and an inevitable spark began when they first locked eyes across the cafeteria.
And now, with her as his friend, he finds that he must've fallen along the lines of comfortable silences, exchanged acknowledgements, and the pleasant presence of one another, and he knows he's a goner because she is she. And there is no other person he would rather spend his lunch and after classes with than Elsa.
"Come on, let's take a picture!" he whines, a petulant pout on his lips. "Like, what if we graduate and I still don't have your picture?"
"No," she said firmly, eyes trained on her book. Both were sprawled on the carpet of the library, Jack bugging Elsa.
"But it'll be fun."
"I hate fun."
"I won't post it on Facebook."
"Still no."
"Why?"
At this, she stops for a second to think, her lips pursing into an uncomfortable 'O'.
"Because…" she begins, and ends it abruptly, along with his thoughts. "I don't want to be remembered."
But you're a part of me now, he thinks, but couldn't bring himself to say the words. So he stores the image of her in his head, imagining a smile radiating on her face and he wonders if he'll ever get to see that inconceivable sight.
Jack partially wonders why Elsa's wrists are always bombarded with the weirdest fashion. If its not itchy scarves wrapped on her thin wrists, it's heavy cheap jewelry forbidding him to see the pastel of color on her wrists.
He asks her about this one time.
"I'm art," she says confidently without giving him the chance to respond, and goes back to reading her book.
She was.
A nightmare shoots across his face, and it grazes the tail of his eyebrow, and he has to take in a huge gulp of air once he realizes that it almost hit him. It was a close call, and he takes a few even breaths to steady himself in the air.
Pitch's nightmare army damned the city again, consuming everything around them like a drug. Since the few weeks he's immersed himself in Elsa, the crime in the city seemed to have dwindled, just a bit, until this morning when he got a call from his boss, Man in the Moon, that Pitch and his army of nightmares were at it again.
Jack aimed his staff that channeled his ice powers to its hilt straight at one of the firing nightmares at him, and he shoots, lets the dark explode to his feet, and does it again, left, right and centre. His teammates hover around him, Bunnymund with the secret identity of a high school teacher taking down a nightmare with his boomerang, Toothiana, a dentist by day slicing into the monsters with her fluttering wings, and North, the local tattoo artist in 7th street taking down another one of Pitch's minions with his machete.
Sandy wasn't with them, he was back at the headquarters for some reason. But they were fine, The Guardians were fine.
When the army of nightmares diminished into nothing, Pitch's voice boomed into the scrap of the city, horror striking in the hearts of the listening citizens.
"This isn't over, it's never over, Guardians. Especially you, Frost. I will break you bone from bone, and I will not stop until I find all of your greatest fears.
His threat made Jack shudder involuntarily, and the idea of Elsa pops inside his racked brain.
"No, stop it," Elsa wheezed her words between heavy breaths, tears staining her face and it trickles down her cheek, one after another with paper lungs expanding. The sight of her crying in front of him makes his heart stop, knowing it was him who caused it. "Stop being so nice to me."
He just started reluctantly taking her to her classes, carrying her worn backpack whilst he did. He even started walking her home, ears perked and heart alert for anything that would dare hurt her after Pitch's proclaimed threat creeping in the back of his neck.
"Why?" he asked, hurt, hand squeezing on the sling of her bag slung behind him. He sees her hands involuntarily open and close on her sides, unsure of what to do with them.
"Because you don't want to get involved with me, I'm nobody."
"No you're not, you're somebody to me. You're more than that."
"No… just—just shut it!" she screeched, slightly thankful everyone else had dispersed into their school buses and were long gone in their houses. "Stop it, Jack! You don't know me, you can't. I'm a burden, and I don't matter in this world."
He would've been happy to see her finally saying his name, but dares take a step towards her, heart in his throat.
"I don't, I don't know you," he said slowly, afraid his words would make her bolt or break her under him. "But you're not a burden, because you matter to me, Elsa. You're a part of me."
Then he pulls her into a tight hug, careful not to break her, and her sobs are carried into the inky blue sky, the sun dipping across them as the two youths clutch dearly onto each other for dear life.
Again, they find themselves in the school's library. But they don't go there anymore for the silent sanctuary within its peeling walls, or the musk of the scented books, but for each other.
There is nothing between them but sincerity. And this time, she lets him play with the soft palm of her hand, his fingers tracing every idle line, every curve, every her. And she lets herself feel him, his warmth, his touch, his breath, him.
In a long time, they feel alive.
Jack waves Elsa goodbye and she disappears with the door of her house shutting behind her. He was glad to have spent another day with her, and knowing she was safely tucked back in her home, his fears were drained away, assured.
But before he could turn on his heel to trod back home, someone's voice calls for him.
"Um, Jack? It's Jack, right?" a squeaky voice follows after him, a redhead with twin pigtails sporting a rock band shirt emerges from the door Elsa disappeared into, closing it behind her gingerly.
"Uh, yeah," he shrugged, the darkness looming over them almost made him unable to see her face. But she looked like Elsa, one way or another. "And you are…?"
"Hi, I'm Anna. Anna Anderson, Elsa's younger sister." The word sister makes him stop in his tracks. "Um, yeah, I just wanted to say… thank you. For taking care of Elsa, we've been through a lot, you know. Rough childhood and it really blew us to pieces. Though I'm not going to lull you with a sob story but… I think it's because of you that she's slowly recovering. So again, thank you."
Her little sister flashed him a weary smile, and it makes the skin underneath her eyes fold, a profound truth in her words. Just as he moves his lips to speak and ask what made her sister turn cold as stone, his wristwatch buzzes, an indication that there was evil lurking in the city.
He hates saying it, but he has to. "I'm sorry, but I have to go."
His presence suffices her enough to get through the day, and being with her warm enough to feel assures him that she's his.
Time flies by when you're in high school and you're concealing a deep truth in your bones.
Jack is buoyant on his feet, even if he failed his geometry exam and let a thief slip through his digits of twig fingers last night. He is soaring on his feet as he moves to her, because today there is a different glimmer in her eyes that she's thankful to see him again today, and all the bodies moving episodically around him is nothing, and there is only her on the lunch table waiting for him patiently.
A small smile inches over her blood-red lips, and he mirrors it, only wider that his cheeks would allow. He has the strong urge to shout three words she would find cheesy, and only hope to Thor she wouldn't feel disgust towards him.
But before he could even stride to her, an arm pulls him away.
"Jack," Tooth, his teammate, masks herself in the study of students in the room because she does not belong here, and it takes him by surprise. "Jack, Pitch is at it. He's coming after us, he knows who we are."
"What, then how did—"
"He tampered with our watches, he's been watching all along. He knows everything, Jack. We have to go, stop him before he gains more control, before he takes everything we love away."
And for a fraction of a second, Jack moves his lips to retort, that he has to go after Elsa, warn her, run, live, but before he could, Tooth's lips are on his, and she says between his lips that she knows about the girl he likes and it's the only way to confuse their enemy watching ever so closely.
She pulls away, breath sucked out of her lungs before grabbing his wrists to dissolve with the crowd.
"Let's go."
Bus he doesn't hear her, because his heart and mind is elsewhere, next to Elsa's, whose heart is scattered into millions in the anguish of her lungs and chest.
THE GUARDIANS WIN AGAINST THE NIGHTMARE KING, WHOLE CITY OF BURGESS REJOICES
The words flew through the air like a hawk, an instant boom of recognition in the city. The people are loud, and some of them are bowing to them like gods, but this time he humbles himself, Frozen Suit almost torn after the bloody exchange of a battle.
With Pitch in special custody, relief floods him like a dam, and he knows the city is safe. She's safe.
But he does not join their moment of glory or after party, he doesn't sign autographs or flash too big smiles for the camera, he flies off to her, where all that she is is his safe haven from the blaring sounds of cheers and blinding flash of lights.
He hovers over her house, just above her window where he steadies his flight in level to where he knows she sleeps. He doesn't change his clothes or dye his hair dark brown again, because he wants her to see him like this. Who he is, what he fights for, who he lives for; her.
He peeks into the room, and gradually slips and lowers himself down with his suit slick on cobble floor.
"Elsa?" his voice is a piercing sound in the air, an uneasy silence hanging around him. Immediately he knows that something's wrong.
He moves himself animatedly into the room, its mundane walls reminding him of a hospital and it is white and blinding beneath his plastic contacts of blue. Crayons sprawled on the floor, collections of books a mess, bed a wretch. His throat is expanding in his neck, fear eating him away and he knows it is not Pitch's fault.
Then, he notices the door to the bathroom is unhinged from its frame. And with its drastic white after white paint in the room, there is one color that does not belong, and it ultimately hits him that it's red.
It's blood.
He dashes into the bathroom, his heart a wild beat in his ears, and his face drops, horror in his eyes when he reaches the doorstep.
Blood paints the white walls patent to snow, the bathtub drawn and is spilling plasma red on its already red carpet, a sickening balm of blood and death sticking on the walls.
And there's Elsa, on the lips of the tub, her wrist cut open with thick blood jutting from her core, a rusty knife in one hand. Her eyes are blank which were once bottomless pits of seas he drowns in everyday, and she stares straight into him leaving a hole in his fiber chest.
He screams her name, almost too loud for him to recognize his own voice, and he rushes to her side and picks her up before zooming out of the room, with her light in his arms before the tears flood his eyes to obscure his vision.
The bathroom haunts him, the ideas of scarves wrapped along her thin wrists torments him, the reminder that he should've listened to her sister when he was given the fate, the thought that he ever had the humanity to think that she was snow because she was beautiful yet cold disgusted him.
He is crying and his brain is too whacked to remember where the hospital is, and no one is around to see the fall of a great hero in the middle of cobblestone streets shriek mercy into the night. He remembers the art she left with her twig hands in the bathroom walls, a memory that would haunt him forever: Save me.
And on the second of March, Jackson Overland who lives in the name of Jack Frost at night saved the city from the vile and the wicked. But he did not save Elsa Anderson; he was too late.
Elsa, the girl who vehemently dislikes getting her picture taken.
Elsa, the girl who breathes chocolate.
Elsa, the girl who revolts the idea of love.
Elsa, the girl who cuts herself in isolation and leaves fresh wounds lash her wrists open.
Elsa, the girl he's in love with.
Elsa, lifeless in his arms.
aha, not much of a surprise, but aha! i hope i broke your hearts in just the right way, and sorry for doing that too... i'll try to conceive fluff for jelsa next, something to mend your hearts with. feedback is most welcome.
may the fortress be with you.