Hello! So this story is set from 1914-1917, although there really is no history in here. Enjoy!
He was leaving.
Her breath quivered that morning as she woke, and her hands shivered with the thought. Gray light filtered in through the window, and quietly Elsa dressed and washed her face, all the while knowing that today he was leaving.
Today Jackson Overland Frost would be departing in the 26th infantry of the Great War for some little gray villages in France, and today he would be gone.
Quickly, Elsa slipped out of her house, careful not to wake Anna and her mother. A loud snore from Anna's room confirmed her deep slumber, and Elsa put a hand over her mouth to cover her smile as she walked across the cool grass, next door to the Frost property. The Frost residence, much like the Arendelle's, was a grandiose affair characteristic of the warm American south, with curling ivy and charming white verandas, inhabited by a boy she was much to shy to call a friend.
The grass was trim today, she observed, and when she reached the west gate of the property, she stopped. The dull gold of the gate gleamed even in the pale wash of sunlight, and her hands smoothed over its worn handles before she could let herself in.
There was no fanfare when she opened the gate, just a small click, and Elsa felt mildly disappointed that no one cared about her trespassing on the Frost property. But she remembered her reason for the intrusion, and when she looked around the garden, she spotted him. Her breath caught.
There he was.
There was Jack, not a hundred feet away from her, sitting on a gazebo watching the sun crawl its way up the sky.
She knew he would be up; he always watched the sun rise, but today, dressed in his Army uniform, Elsa felt a sudden shyness when she approached him. She routinely watched him stare into the sun most mornings, but her watching was always from the safety of her bedroom window. Now that he was in full view, her cheeks flushed.
Pull yourself together, her mind commanded. Control yourself. It's the last time you'll see him in a long, long time. Make it count.
So impulsively, her voice called out to him in the thin morning air. "Jack!"
When he turned his head and saw her, she raised her hand in a hesitant wave, and waited patiently as he walked toward her. For his part, he gave her a small smile and kissed her hand, motions they had gone through as neighbors time and time again. With no question, they both sat on benches in the gazebo. Elsa's hand burned slightly.
There was no verbal greeting or exchange of pleasant courtesies. They'd known each other since they were children, but Elsa never experienced an intense silence like this with him before. He was usually joking around and constantly in a state of excited happiness.
Today was different.
"Today I'm leaving," he said quietly, turning to face her. His eyes drank in her appearance, reveling in the way the first sunbeams of the morning framed her face.
"I know," she replied. Her hands shook with nervousness, and her heart raced as she realized Jack was looking at her intensely.
"I'm scared," he said, looking up at the sky again. She followed his gaze, and together they watched clouds billow and ripple. The sun was beginning to shine.
"I'm scared," he repeated.
Instinctively, her hand reached across the white bench to cover his, and he sucked in a breath as he felt her cold skin. Her hand felt soft, and Jack toyed with the idea of actually holding it someday.
"Sorry I'm so cold," she murmured, looking down. It was perfectly normal for someone to cover someone else's hand for comforting purposes, she knew, but something about touching him made her mind go wild. Her hand didn't move away, and he didn't want it to.
"It's alright," he replied. "Looks like you'll be warming up soon. Another beautiful day."
His voice sounded hollow, and Elsa wished she could find someway to make him happy again.
But Jack wasn't happy. When he was drafted, he wasn't happy. When he was shoved into a uniform, he wasn't happy. And even now, when he sat next to one of the prettiest girls he knew, their hands barely touching, he still wasn't happy.
So she took his hand fully in hers, and even though her stomach leapt at her boldness, she forced herself to look him in the eye.
"You'll…you'll be back soon," she said. "Even if it takes a million light years, Jack, you'll be back soon."
He watched the defiant look in her eyes, and felt the wrapping of her hand around his. It felt like falling in love with her all over again. The first time, he recalled, had been when they were sixteen. It was late at night, and he had convinced Anna to raid the Arendelle's kitchen for sweets that were being boxed up for guests leaving a party. Elsa tagged along only for Anna's sake, shushing the giggling duo, and looking like the worry wart Jack always thought she was, even if she looked magnificent in a powder blue gown. But when Anna walked out of the kitchen triumphantly, a little worse for wear, Elsa's face broke out into a brilliant smile and laughter, and Jack was stunned. He felt the first inkling of love then. As time progressed, the inkling spread. Now that they were eighteen, now that she was sitting right next to him, he knew without a doubt that she had left a mark on his soul.
"I'll be back soon," he repeated, ripping himself from past memories, still empty but maybe with a little bit more substance now. "I'll be back soon."
"You don't even have to say goodbye," Elsa said. She gave him a small smile.
He tightened his grip on her hand, realizing their reality. "But I'm still going to say goodbye."
"In that case," Elsa said, "I have a present for you. So you know that you're not really going."
"Is it a goodbye present?" Jack asked, the ghost of a smile on his face.
She smiled in turn and shook her head, taking her hand out of his grasp and producing a small package from her coat. He took the gift in his hands, noting the careful purple wrapping paper.
"Open it after you're gone," she said, lightly putting a finger over his hand when he tried to open it. Even her fingers were lovely, he noticed.
He looked up at her. "Is this some kind of secret?"
"Top secret," she replied.
He nodded, putting the package in the pocket of his coat.
In silence, she realized the sun was now in full swing. Jack took notice too, squinting. They both searched for words on the tips of their tongues, wondering how their goodbye would play out, and how it should play out. There was a distinct difference. There was the goodbye that should happen—the goodbye in which they kissed, in which they told each other all the things they were too scared to say. And then there was the goodbye that did happen. Jack mumbled something, and so did Elsa.
They both knew the reality; he was leaving.
And he left.
And she didn't get to tell him that she'd miss him.
And he didn't get to tell her he loved her.
The present was a pack of stamps, and a photo.
Jack smiled at the stamps. It meant he could write to her, and he told himself the stamps meant nothing. That he and Elsa had ties that stretched back to their childhood, so it would make sense for them to keep in contact. But the whimsical side of his head imagined that it was slightly, maybe, possibly true that Elsa slightly, maybe, possibly felt connected to him in some deeper way.
He never forgot her in the gazebo, especially when he looked at the photo.
It was a picture of her and Anna. His thumb traced silently over her face, and even during the war, when men drank women and slept with alcohol, he never forgot her. He was lonely, and the loneliness burned.
The war was horrible. Jack almost slipped into a black hole of despair and self-hate.
But he didn't. Because she was there.
Because her handwriting was small and perfect, except when it was rushed and became intensely curly. Because they wrote each other as often as they could, even when Jack was carted around Europe. Because he looked at her photo every night.
Their letters were nothing special. They never wrote anything impulsive. There was even the occasional note from Anna, and Jack would always laugh when he remembered how much fun he had with her.
Whenever he lay in the bunk with the moon, Jack kept himself sane by remembering home. By imagining the day he would come back, the day he'd finally see her again, the day he'd feel like a human again.
Maybe today wouldn't be the day. But he knew he'd be back soon.
The Great War ended in 1917. It consumed his life for three years. For three years, Jack wished, waited, and wrote. For three years, Jack slowly lost hope, until the day a final letter showed up.
It told Jack he could go back home.
A part of her soul ended in 1916. The fact that her father was missing threw her family into panic for a year. For a year, they waited, suspended on the edge of grief and insanity. For a year, the Arendelles slowly lost hope until the day a letter showed up in 1917.
It told Elsa her father was gone.
When Jack arrived home, safe and sound, his mother cried. His father, who stayed behind as a government official, hugged him so fiercely Jack thought he might burst. And Emma, now a young girl at fourteen, stayed shy until he hugged her and she shook with sobs.
They ate dinner together, with everybody sneaking peeks at Jack as if they couldn't believe he was real. In some ways, Jack didn't feel real. He felt like he floated sometimes. There he was, back in his old life, but nothing would be the same.
And the looming question of Elsa danced over his head. They stopped communicating in 1916, and it drove him mad. That last year, he sent three letters, before feeling humiliated and frustrated. Not even Anna wrote. He probably knew something was wrong, but what if? What if Elsa was done with him, what if she was tired of waiting for something Jack didn't even know if she wanted? What if she was engaged to someone else?
What if she was on to better things?
Later that night, after dinner, as his parents discussed his going back to school and getting a proper degree, he enquired about the Arendelles.
His parents balked at his words. His mother broke it to him. The word that the father was dead, the mother died of a disease and a broken heart, and Elsa was left to formally take up the family business in the textile industry all hit Jack at once.
Dead, he thought. Her parents are dead.
And a second thought. She's completely alone.
Jack couldn't sleep later that night. He couldn't really sleep for the past three years, but this night was particularly bad. He knew he had to see her. She probably knew he was here anyway.
She's completely alone.
Quietly, he slipped on his clothes, and by the light of the intense moon, slipped quickly out of the house.
He could feel an intense energy thrumming in him as he walked toward the Arendelle residence. She probably didn't want to see him. But he was going to see her anyway. Even though they stopped talking for the past year, Jack knew that those first two years had been too important for him to leave behind.
Those two years proved to him that his love transcended distance and time.
He needed to see her tonight.
He didn't even know where he was going, so when he came upon the east gate of the Arendelle residence, he just let himself in and wander the gardens. He passed through impeccably trimmed flower bushes, and walked aimlessly through the garden, searching for a girl with a shy habit of looking down at her hands and the lightest dusting of freckles upon her face.
And he found her.
Sitting on the white veranda, Elsa Arendelle looked unearthly. She reflected the moonlight, and she glistened as she stared into the starry sky.
His voice called out to her. "Elsa!"
She jumped, and her breath caught. His voice was so familiar, his face was so familiar, but it couldn't be him. It couldn't be him, it couldn't be him, it couldn't be-
It was him.
She nearly ran to greet him, but she simply stood up, and then froze in place. Because he was running, moved by some power above, and in the moonlight, he wrapped his arms around her. They were both breathless.
He hugged her.
Convinced it was some sort of dream, Elsa's arms returned the hug, and her hands felt his back.
"Elsa," he murmured. "Oh, God. Elsa."
"Jack," she said, her voice breaking slightly.
He pulled her gently out of the hug then, and they drank each other in. She noticed how much older he looked, and the slight hints of stubble on his chin. He noticed how she looked more and more like her mother as she grew into an intense beauty.
They both noticed the sadness in the other's eyes.
He took her hand then. The night was cold, but neither of them cared. Her heart ached when she saw him, and suddenly her grief wasn't so bad anymore. She tightened her grip around him.
"Did you miss me?" he asked with a little smile, raising a hand gently to tuck a strand of hair that had fallen out of her braid. She sucked in a breath. "Because I missed you."
"Of course I missed you," she said, reaching out a hand to touch his face lightly, not caring if it was improper. He smiled at her. "Of course I missed you."
They sat on the veranda together, both of them silhouettes in the moonlight reaching back together.
"I hope you're well," Jack said sincerely. His hand squeezed hers lightly.
"You've heard," she said quietly. He nodded.
"Are you okay?"
"No," she answered honestly, not willing to think of her parents now. So instead, she looked him directly in the eyes, and a tiny part of her soul soared. "No, but I'm a little better now."
"I'm glad."
"I'm glad too," she said. "I'm so, so glad you're back."
They talked for hours then, about both trifling and heavy things. Jack didn't want to discuss the war, and Elsa didn't want to discuss her parents. So they shifted onto other topics, like Anna's multiple hilarious ventures into society, or stories Jack heard that made both of them laugh until their stomachs ached and Elsa felt like she couldn't go on.
And even when they discussed things that were heavy, like Anna's fickle engagement or Jack's friend losing a leg, they felt light. Throughout their conversations, they continued to touch each other lightly on the face or the hand.
Neither of them cared that they were being impulsive, that in other lives they'd never dream of touching each other tenderly so sudden. Neither of them cared about the fact that they had obligations, families, that existed outside of any love life.
They lived in the fact that after years of separation, the universe had finally decided to put them back together.
They talked long enough for hints of the moon to disappear. The sky began to lighten, and the first hints of sun appeared in the sky.
Neither of them knew who went in for the kiss first. All that mattered was that it happened. That all of a sudden, his hands were cradling her waist gently, that her hands wrapped around his neck. It felt right, it felt sweet, and Elsa curled her hands into his hair in pure joy.
That night, after three years, their lives clicked into place.
That night, he told her he loved her, and she replied with such simplicity that Jack could only kiss her again and again until she giggled and pulled away.
"It's a miracle," he said in between kisses. "It's a miracle."
He was staying.