Author Notes: In this AU, Elsa is blind. When she was attacked by the Weaselton goons in her ice palace and hit the floor as she tried to avoid being hit by the chandelier, it caused whiplash and she went blind. At some point after the events of the movie, she met Jack Frost and they're married, and that's all that matters for the purpose of this one-shot. Enjoy!
Anna laughed as Jack tickled her mercilessly, the two of them rolling around a flowered meadow with the golden sunlight announcing that it was that time of afternoon right before the world was bathed in dusk. Out of breath, they found themselves laying on their backs side by side, the strong smell of flowers filling Jack's nose and mind like a heady wine. He rolled on top of Anna, propping himself up on one arm as he stroked her blushing cheek with his fingers. Her eyes sparkled up at him before she grabbed the front of his shirt with her hands and pulled his mouth down to hers, surprising him with a sudden, sweet kiss. She was in control for just a moment, before Jack regained power, pinning her hands together above her head as he teased her lips with faint touches from his. He watched the way her bare body arched and wriggled with desire for him, and he let out a low groan as he finally satisfied her desire and kissed her deeply, roughly, desperately. She responded with eager passion, getting the better of him in his moment of distraction. Even as they kissed, she rolled him onto his back, climbing on top of him with a confidence Jack found incredibly arousing. Her head blocked the sun, creating a halo of light around her loose red waves and making her look thoroughly angelic.
"Anna," Jack breathed out, pulling her face down to his so that they could continue their passionate kiss. She positioned her hips above his, which elicited a throaty groan from Jack. His fingers tangled in her hair, determined to keep her with him like this forever, Jack bucked his hips—
—Into empty air. He awoke with a start, his eyes opening suddenly and on almost absolute darkness. His heart pounded wildly, and he breathed deeply and slowly to steady its breathing. He glanced to his right, gazing at Elsa across the bed, and sighed softly before staring at the ceiling.
He was disgusted with himself. This was the second time this week he'd dreamed of doing such things with Anna. He didn't know why, and he didn't know how to stop it. When he was awake, there was no woman for him but Elsa. He couldn't even think of other women that way anymore. But in these dreams, Anna was the one he loved, and he didn't even realize he was dreaming until he woke up, and the self-loathing began to kick in.
Frustrated, he tried to sort out what these dreams meant. He desired something, maybe sexually maybe not, that he wasn't getting. He thought of Anna as a sister, nothing else, and was somewhat disturbed by the notion of sleeping with her, given that she was his sister-in-law. So, Anna was not what he desired. Elsa he desired sexually, yes, and she'd been very much withdrawn from him this past month. Perhaps his desires were spilling over into his dreams and seeking fulfillment there. He wanted to see Elsa happy, but she'd never had a truly joyous stage in her life: even their wedding was marred by her recent blindness. So he couldn't really imagine her being as happy as he wished her to be, because he'd never seen her that happy before. And the happiest woman he'd ever met was Anna by far. So, a simple substitution of Anna for Elsa, and his imagination felt that to be satisfying for his desires.
It wasn't, but it made sense, and these dreams making sense was more important than his personal satisfaction. But why would he, a winter spirit, be dreaming of the summer? Perhaps . . . Perhaps some part of him wished that he was still mortal, that he'd never become a powerful spirit at all. For many years now, he'd ached to fall in love, get married, settle down, raise a family, but he'd felt the whole experience was necessarily denied him because of his immortality. And maybe because he'd associated having a family with mortality, and he and Elsa were trying for a child now, his subconscious was occupied with the notion of mortality. Yes, that had to be it. He wanted Elsa happy and he wanted to start a family; that's why he was dreaming of Anna and summer. No other reason.
Satisfied with that conclusion, Jack closed his eyes with the intent of resuming sleep, but now that his own thoughts had quieted, he heard a sound that he'd missed before: sniffling. He rolled over to face Elsa's direction, and sure enough, there she was with her shuddering back turned to him as she cried quiet tears.
"Elsa?" he murmured, deeply concerned. He shifted closer to her as she made conscious efforts to silence her sorrow. Only now did he notice just how cold the bed was, and the air as well.
"I'm sorry I woke you," she whispered bitterly in a broken voice. Jack propped himself up on one arm and looked down to see her small hands clutching at the sheets with which she'd been drying her tears. She'd been crying for a while, it would seem. Had she slept at all this night?
"Elsa, what's the matter?" he asked in earnest. "You haven't been yourself at all this past month. Don't tell me that you're fine or that nothing's wrong, because I know as well as you do that's not true." He waited for her to answer, his breath puffing out in visible, steamy clouds. She remained silent, but for the sounds of her sobbing. He sighed, and reached for her shoulder, intending to comfort her, opening his mouth and drawing a breath to speak, but as soon as his fingers touched her, she sprang out of bed, crying, "Don't touch me!"
With an unbroken gait, she leapt from the bed to the floor and ran straight for the balcony, leaving a trail of icy footprints behind her. Jack had followed her off of the bed as quickly as he could, and when he saw where she was going, he finally understood what was happening.
"Stop!" he shouted, extending his hand in her direction just as she laid her hands on the railing of the balcony. Ice encased her hands and feet, keeping her in place before she could do anything else. Wind and snow swirled around her, but she was far too frantic to consciously manipulate her powers and free herself. Jack strode over to her with a stormy expression, placing his hands firmly on her waist and then freeing her from the ice, tossing her onto his shoulder the moment he did so.
"Put me down!" she yelled, kicking wildly at him ineffectively. He ignored her, and walked back over to the bed in silence, closing the balcony doors with a slam and a gust of wind. He tossed her onto the bed, climbing on top of her immediately and holding her hands down beside her head. He sat on her carefully, not putting his full weight on her, but putting enough pressure on her that she wouldn't thrash about and hurt the both of them in the process. She did try to thrash, but it was no good: he had her pinned. Finally, she settled down, and lay there with an indignant expression on her tear-stained face.
"Let me go!" she demanded, sounding very much like a small child in Jack's opinion, which caused his chest to ache, for it reminded him of their present childless state.
"No, and quiet down, or else the whole household will come running in here to see why you're making such a ruckus," he answered sternly. It proved somewhat effective, for she quieted down, though she didn't calm down very much at all. "What exactly did you plan on doing out there?" he growled in a low, angry voice. He waited for an answer, but she'd firmly closed her mouth, her chin stubbornly set; she wasn't going to answer him. "Elsa, talk to me." He was the one doing the demanding now. "You were going to jump, weren't you?" Her lips twitched slightly, but she made no sound. "Elsa, how can you not see how selfish that is?!" His voice was pained as well as furious. "Did you really just plan on leaving me without even a goodbye? You would have rather killed yourself than stayed here with me?" His anger ebbed as tears rose up in his throat. "Elsa, h-how could you leave me like that? Don't you know how lost I'd be without you? I-I couldn't rule Arendelle alone. I'm nothing without you," he confessed in a low whisper. He slid his hands from her wrists to her own hands, interlocking their fingers and giving them a light squeeze. Her resolve was cracking as he pressed his forehead to her chest, tears flooding his eyes. "Elsa, I can't live without you. How could you do that to me?" Then Jack sobbed against her, feeling helpless against the demons in her mind that had driven her to this. "I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong," he rasped.
She was silent for a minute as he cried. Then she finally spoke: "D-Dont' you love Anna? Wouldn't you rather be with her?"
Jack felt a knife twist in his heart. "No, Elsa, I don't. She's my sister, as much as she is yours. I love you and only you. I love you with so much of myself there's no room to love anybody else." He kissed her collarbone, which was wet with his tears. Although he was afraid he already knew the answer, he asked anyways: "Why would you think that I love Anna?"
"Y-You've been calling her name in your sleep for weeks now," she murmured, her own tears resurging. "I-I thought . . . It was your true desires coming out in your sleep. I thought you regretted marrying me, because there's so much I can't do now." He knew she was talking about her blindness, and it only hurt him all the more to hear her speak of it.
"Elsa, I don't know why I said her name in my sleep. I didn't even know that I was. The only time I see her in my dreams is when I'm trying to ask her why you're so sad, how I can help you, but I can never hear her answer, and I call after her, asking her to repeat it, but I never heard her." It was a lie, and he felt guilty for it, but it was better than the truth in this case.
He knew that he had no subconscious desires for Anna. He knew this because in his dreams, Anna always had Elsa's body, even her eyes. The only differences were the hair color and the freckles. He wanted Elsa, not anybody else. This proof wouldn't be enough for her, though, in her panicked, anxious, fretful state of mind. This was what she needed to hear, or else she might fall apart completely.
Elsa dissolved into tears once more, and Jack let go of her hands as he wrapped his arms around her, sitting up on the bed as he pulled her into his lap, cradling her with her head on his shoulder as she cried. "I was going to jump," she choked out, desperately clutching his shirt in her fists, as if afraid that he would disappear if she let go.
"Ssshhh, Elsa, it's alright," he murmured, stroking her hair and back comfortingly as he rocked her back and forth in a slow, smooth rhythm. "I'm not leaving you, ever. I'll be with you til the very end. I promised, remember? 'In darkness and in light, in daytime and in night, for better or for worse, for blessing or for curse, together shall we be, henceforth til the end of eternity.'"
Elsa let out another sob, overwhelmed with emotion as she heard him recite their wedding vows so perfectly. "I love you, Jack."
Jack Frost smiled. "I love you too, Elsa," he breathed over her forehead before kissing it. He gently unclenched her hands and brought her fingers to his lips. "And I love each of these," he murmured as he kissed all ten fingertips in turn. "And these," he repeated as he kissed the insides of her wrists and elbows, the crest of her collarbone, her rosy cheeks, her eyelids, the tip of her nose, her tart cherry lips, and every inch of her from her chest to her toes: her naval, her knees, her breasts, her ankles, and everything in between. Soon, the sound of gentle laughter filled the warm air as his lips tickled their way over her flawless skin. She smiled, and it was the most luminous thing he'd ever seen. So beautiful was her smile that he couldn't help but kiss it, too. All night long.
His dreams of Anna never returned, much to his own relief. He and Elsa only became closer after that, as they finally began to make serious efforts towards starting a family. It was a new adventure, and they were both a little nervous, but something in the back of his mind kept whispering that everything would be alright. And when he saw Elsa smiling, looking so very much as if she was actually looking at him, he could believe in happily ever after.