Hello, everyone. As always, I'm sorry for any mistake that you may find, and if you do, I'll thank you if you could point it out, it helps me with my English.

I hope you enjoy this one.

.

I've always had the feeling I would die in this tower. Even when I finally escaped, even when Gothel was defeated, that feeling wouldn't go away.

Since the day I broke free, I have return to this place a few times, and every single one of those few times made me feel as if death was a better option. And now here I am once more, wondering how much more I can take before pain kills me, just that this time I'm sure it will.

I don't know what Pitch's problem with me is. My hair is long gone, and Jack, Jack is too… But I guess it doesn't really matter. I stopped asking 'why' many, many years ago, the first time I came back to the tower…

The day Eugene died in my arms, and no tears and no magic and no reasons would stop him from slipping away right through my fingers. Right before my eyes. That day I learned asking 'why' is useless.

"Now, what is that sad face all about?" came his voice from the shadows. The golden gleam of his eyes was the only thing I could see. But his voice and his eyes were all it took for me to know that he was smiling.

I made no sound or movement that could prove that I've heard him. The first days here I would fight back, and yell at him, and make all kinds of threats, even when I knew that no threat coming from a chained person could be taken seriously. But after who knows how many days of being standing in the middle of the tower, being tortured, surrounded by his nightmares and drowning in the feelings they brought, I was just exhausted. All I wanted was for this to end, to finally die here like I always was sure I would.

"Oh, don't cry, precious one" Pitch said, making me notice that I actually had let a tear escape from my eyes. He took a step towards me, into the light of the moon that came in through the window. His hand caressed my cheek, whipping the tear almost fatherly. I moved my head away from his cold touch, holding his gaze with all the strength I had left in my heart.

"My dear nightmares here, are really dying to show you something." he said, the smile still present in his face. "Then you can die or whatever you want. Just promise me to pay attention. I so do need your beautifully painful despair." I still gave no answer "Do you promise, Punzie?"

"Don't" I said, my voice weak in a whisper. I couldn't stop myself from speaking, even when I knew that he called me that on purpose, to get a reaction. But it just hurt a lot to hear that nickname said in a voice that wasn't his.

Pitch's smile grew wider. "Good."

With that, all the nightmares came at me from everywhere. I couldn't know how many they were, but they were so many and came so close to me that I felt I couldn't breath. I wanted to scream, and I do think I did, but I was unable to hear myself in that freighting ocean of black sand.

Then I noticed some images that started to form between the sand. Those images terrified me more than anything I had seen and felt in the past days… they were so clear and so real it hurt, and they were telling a story I knew very well, a story about a girl with a gift that was also a curse, and this images were showing me all the times she thought pain would make her die in the tower.

A young Rapunzel asking why she couldn't leave the place she was trapped in.

A now gone Mother Gothel, chaining Rapunzel in the tower, covering her mouth so no one would hear the screams.

A trap.

A knife.

A piece of broken glass.

A life.

A lost new dream.

A hug given to a corpse that could never give it back.

And Jack Frost...

The images slowed down… I was sure they somehow knew that this was the memory that hurt the most.

Jack had left early in the morning. Rapunzel found the note he left, saying that it was very important that she met him in the tower.

It was unusual, yes, but she was sure it was important. She made her way to the dark place, and climbed the stairs that now were always unbarred. Rapunzel hadn't been there in a long time, the last time was shortly before she first met Jack, actually. She liked to think of it as a matter of destiny, because life brought her a new dream when she thought she would never find one.

And how quickly, and how deeply she loved Jack. With the pass of the years, the boy became the most important thing in her broken life, and day by day, he fixed her. Sometimes Rapunzel thought that she was fixing him, too. Only she was able to see him, and Jack too was the only one who could see Rapunzel. The real Rapunzel, that is.

Jack would never leave her side. He always told her how grateful he was for her, how she meant all the world to him. They healed each other's wounds and created a bond so strong it seemed it would endure eternity.

"Jack?" Rapunzel called his name, the walls of the tower echoing her words.

"Hey, Punzie" Jack replied behind of her.

The girl didn't smile, because she sensed in his voice that he was not alright. She took a step towards him, but he took one away.

"Jack?"

"Look, Punzie" Jack begun, his blue eyes staring "I'm leaving."

"What? Jack, what?" Rapunzel didn't need his last sentence to end with "you" to completely understand what he meant.

"Yes, Rapunzel. I told you to come here because I don't want to make a big deal out of it, and that is what would've happened back in the palace, but the thing is I'm done. I don't want to be around you anymore. I'm just… I'm done."

"Why?"

Never ask why.

"Because I don't love you."

Rapunzel had forgotten what real pain was like.

"I… I don't believe you."

"Well, too bad for you. But if you want an advice, it would be better if you did. Then you could get over of all this mess that we were and find someone who wants to be with you."

"But… But, Jack, I love you"

He laughed. He LAUGHED.

"Well, I'm sorry. I never thought you would take all this thing so seriously. I mean, it's logic! I'm a spirit, Rapunzel, and you are just a human girl. How could I ever be in love with you?"

"I don't know…" the girl answered so quietly she wasn't sure Jack could hear her.

"Hey, don't take it the wrong way. All this was real fun, but not anymore. I've had enough of you."

"Jack, please don't go, I…" Rapunzel began.

"Look, you are making this worse. If I tell you I'm done, I'm done. There's no more. It would be better if you just left. Goodbye, Rapunzel." He turned his back.

"Jack…"

"Goodbye, Rapunzel" He said again, not even looking at her.

"Goodbye, Jack" I answered to the image made of black sand. It looked so much like him… the most painful thing was that ever since that day, I have been convincing myself that I could hate Jack, but now, on seeing him, I realized that I don't love him even a little less than the day he broke my heart.

Every word was just the way I remembered it. Every word hurt as much as it did the first time he said them. And every word was true. I never saw Jack again.

I couldn't take the scenes any more, I couldn't keep on watching, and besides I didn't need to. I remembered it all perfectly. Those images before my eyes, are the ones always playing inside my head, always lingering inside my heart.

That day, after he said goodbye for the second time, it took me a few moments to sink all in, tears streaming down my face in silence. After a while, I just turned around without a word and made my way down the stairs, each step making my pain grow heavier and colder. By the time I made it outside, it was unbearable. I only made it a few steps away from the tower before I collapsed to the floor and cried all my pain out, but never getting rid of it. It was clenching to my very soul, breaking all the pieces of me that I thought Jack had fixed.

Right there, in the grass, while I felt lonelier than ever before, I wondered if Jack could hear me crying from the tower…

"Please, stop!" I begged Pitch. "Stop it; I already know how this ends."

"Oh, but you don´t." he answered with a loving tone. Against my will, I looked back to the vivid images made of sand.

I saw me leaving the tower, but the scene stayed with Jack. After some moments, he started to turn around towards where I had been standing, slowly and carefully, as in to verify with the corner of his eye if I was already gone, and when he did, he turned completely, staring blankly to the empty space.

He seemed surprised, and hurt, loosing his balance for a second. The frozen expression in his face melted away. Taking hold of his staff, bending a little over himself, he closed his eyes and touched his chest. It looked as if he was trying to stop his heart from falling. In a whisper, he let out a "No."

"Jack?" I questioned to the sand.

The winter spirit swallowed hard after opening his eyes, and walked with weak steps towards the opened window. The moon's light illuminated his broken features. He seemed older.

"You did the right thing, Jack"

Pitch emerged behind the boy, from the shadows. He put his hands on Jack's shoulders, following his gaze outside the window. I understood that Jack was watching me go away. I knew he saw me collapsing to the ground when his eyes widened and tears came to them.

"Forgive me." Jack said to the wind.

Pitch behind him smiled. "Stop that, boy. We are all better off this way."

Jack's expression went cold again, but a different kind of cold. The kind of coldness a soul could have. "I'm not doing this for you."

"Oh, I know" came the answer. "But it still surprises me that you would just give me what I need to win back my power."

"Just let get this over with. Do I have your word?"

"Why, of course Jack. Your beloved Rapunzel will be completely safe." Jack almost managed a smile.

"Fine" he said, sighing sadly. "Now you can kill me."

Pitch chuckled. "You forgot to say 'please'."

I felt my crying eyes widening in horror as Pitch nightmares surrounded Jack, just like they were surrounding me in the present.

"Yes, Jack! Feel that lovely despair." Pitch said.

I understood that Jack was also being shown images that would cause him pain. I saw the black sand before him changing, but it was so quickly that I only understood glimpses of those scenes: a little girl standing on thin ice, a lot of cold water becoming darker as seconds passed, a silent moon, the feeling of not existing, of being invisible…

And just like it happened with me, the images slowed down. Jack screamed loudly and painfully. I didn't understand what that one last image was about, but I saw it in his blue eyes that it was killing him.

"Pitch, no! No!" screamed Jack, holding his temples as if something was trying to crawl its way out of his mind. "No, Pitch, please, don't!"

"No! Leave him alone!" I found myself screaming.

The Pitch in front of Jack smiled down at him, while the boys eyes slowly closed.

"Please, don't…" I was sure then that that was the last thing Jack Frost ever said. He was gone.

The black sand around me dissipated slowly, leaving a smiling Pitch staring down at me. I felt more broken than ever. Was Pitch really killing Jack while I was crying outside the same tower in which he died? Did my self pity really stop me from realizing what was going on? Why did I believe Jack so easily when he said he didn't love? How could it be true that all this time I didn't knew Jack was dead? Shouldn't I have been able to feel it, to somehow sense that the love of my life was gone?

Pitch laughed, guessing my train of thought.

"Yes, my dear."

I felt a new kind of darkness surrounding me, and I knew that that was the end. I was about to die…

"What did you showed him, Pitch? What was the last image about?" I asked with the little life I still had inside.

But before everything went dark forever, the last thing I could hear was his answer.

"I showed him what I was going to do to you".

.

"Don't go."

"Never."