If by any chance you had read this story: Okay, so I originally posted it as a Jackunzel story some months ago, but then Jelsa happened and suddenly I couldn't keep on writing it, especially the ending… But I love this story so much, so I figured I could make it about Jack and Elsa instead. I had to change some things before I actually liked it, but I'm happy with the results. Hope you liked it too. ENJOY.

So, I've always been more of a one-shot person, but I'm trying to change that because people always ask me to continue my stories and I literally can't. What you are about to read, usually would have been a real long one-shot but I played with it a little in order to separate it in chapters (most likely three) I hope it works; it's been really difficult for me to write this.

As always, I'd love if you could point out my mistakes with English, it helps me.

Disclaimer: Don't own a thing.

Two years had gone by already. The most slow, cold and empty days of my life. Time had become just a burden.

I was walking slowly through the city. There was no one around, but so late in night it was unlikely that someone would be. My steps echoed a little, and every now and then my shadow would appear, distorted by the dim lights.

The frozen wind of the winter was blowing strongly against me, and it almost seemed that it was trying to stop me. To be honest, the cold weather did made it a little difficult to keep on walking, but my steps remained firm and my mind determined. The thought of the wind trying to stop me made me smile and my cheeks ached a little with the movement. It would have been logical to say that it happened because the wind had been hitting my face for so long, but at that point, I chose to believe that it was because that was the first smile that had come to me for months, since I stopped smiling even my fake smiles.

Two years…

My mind was thinking about everything and about nothing. I tried to concentrate only in my destination, because I was afraid that if I allowed myself to think about something else I would regret my decision. However, I couldn't help it but to think and remember and long. Images and feelings splashed my memory with all kinds of emotions…

I thought of my mom back at home. She was probably sleeping, oblivious to what I was doing at the moment. Mom had noticed that something was not right with me, but she figured it was normal and that it would go away with time. I also thought about my little sister. She was young, but she could tell better than mom that I was deeply broken. Many times during the past two years, she had come to my room in the middle of the night and woken me up from a nightmare, then crawled into bed with me, taking my hand with her little one, trying to stay awake with me until morning.

Then I thought of my friends, feeling even luckier. They were good friends, and I wished I could have been a better friend to them. After all, they had also been scared by life with the same blade that had pierced my heart.

I needed to admit that I was grateful, and that that made me feel sorry about all this, but still I didn't change my mind and kept on walking, because behind every single one of my good memories, and the incredible people in my life, and the perfect feelings still inside me, there was the terrible shadow of this day two years ago, the day in which I started to fall apart in the most unfixable way. That day I tried my best to reach the hospital in time, I really, really tried. But by the time I got there, she was already gone.

Elsa was dead.

And it took me only a few days to understand that so was I…

I hung up the phone, my heart paralyzed. In a matter of seconds, I was already in my car starting the engine.

It couldn't be happening. I found it impossible to believe what Hiccup had just told me over the phone seconds ago. While I raced trough the streets of Burgess, I repeated in my head his words until I had them memorized, but that only made them all the most unbelievable.

"Jack! Merida called… She… she said that Rapunzel and Elsa were in a car accident. I'm on my way to the hospital, but man… it was bad, real bad. Punz is okay, but Elsa… just hurry, man. Hurry up…"

I noticed that I was crying, and whipped the tears away with my fist, but they didn't stop. I had the most terrible feeling beating in my heart, and it was drowning me.

I was driving as fast as it was possible, ignoring all the red lights in the way. It must have taken no more than fifteen minutes to reach the hospital. I recognized Hiccup's car already in the parking lot. Also Rapunzel's and Elsa's parent's. Why was everybody already there? That only made the suffocating feeling inside me bigger, and I ran towards the ER.

I resisted the urge to scream her name the minute I walked through the door. I frantically looked around, with a few tears of pure despair streaming down my face. I don't remember asking a nurse for directions, but I do remember following them. I do remember running right towards the aisle she had told me. I do remember counting desperately the numbers on the doors until I spotted the one I was looking for. I do remember running even faster, extending my hand in anticipation…

…and I will never, ever forget the look on Hiccup's face while he came out from behind the door before I got there.

"No…" I whispered.

My best friend closed his eyes, and he instantly seemed ten years older. He didn't say a world, and instead he closed the space between us. His arms surrounded me in a painfully honest hug.

"No!" this time I screamed.

I started crying uncontrollably and I let the pain to take over me in screams that I heard as if they were coming from someone else in the distance. I literally felt my heart breaking; I felt every little part of me being torn apart. I felt that I was made of paper. Of burning paper. Of ash. Of nothing…

Hiccup didn't let go of me the whole time. I think I even hit him, but he didn't move, and his feet were holding me better than my own. A voice in the back of my mind said that I needed to get out of his embrace and walk through the door, but my body didn't respond. I was frozen.

At some point, Merida came as well, and she and Hiccup managed to move me from the empty hallway. I didn't know where to, but they sat me down while I kept crying all my hurting pieces out. I felt my friends patting my back, and hugging me, and whispering thing that I nodded to but never listened. I was outside me. I was lost.

By the time morning came, my tears had already become silent. Elsa's parents came into the room. I automatically walked to them. They hugged me, and I hugged them back, or perhaps it was the other way around, I don't know. I was busy being scared, because by their presence there, I understood that it was my turn to go to her and to say goodbye.

Hiccup walked with me in silence. When we reached the door, there was no need for me to tell him that I needed to go in there by myself.

"I'll be right here" he said.

She was lying in the bed, and it suddenly was as if it was everything that existed. While I walked slowly towards her, I got scared to see her injured. I doubted I was brave enough to see her all bruised and beaten. I was scared that the last image I'd ever get of the girl I loved so much was the one of a broken body. A relieved sigh escaped from my lips when I reached the bed and I noticed that her body didn't seem destroyed at all.

It was as if she was sleeping, and it made that tiny piece of relief go away. I started crying uncontrollably once more. She was perfect, she was young and for all I could see she was just a tired girl sleeping…

"Wake up." I begged while I stroked her cheek.

But with that gentle touch I began to understand that she wouldn't. The coldness of her skin snapped me out of my useless hopes, and I started to notice detail after detail, proof after proof… her coldness, her stillness, her paleness, and in a disturbing kind of way, her peacefulness.

I fell to my knees, taking hold of her arm. I buried my head in her sheets while I kept on crying, and the grip of my fingers was so tight that it would have hurt her if she had still been able to feel. All the memories I had about her were crashing inside me like a furious ocean, and I hold on to them as if they could prove that what I had before me was a lie.

But my love for her would never bring her back just like her love for me hadn't stopped her from leaving. All the promises that we had made to be together forever seemed so naïve and childish then.

I managed to take her face between my hands, staining her closed eyes with my tears that rolled down until they got lost among her silvered hair. I stroked her forehead and tenderly kissed her lips. The kiss made me collapse to the floor, where I started screaming like a demented person in such a way that made Hiccup come through the door.

After that, I don't remember much, because all that I could think about was the kiss full of her absence. That kiss had been the ultimate proof, the one thing that made me truly understand that the love of my life wasn't in that body anymore and that all that I loved about Elsa was gone forever, leaving behind only that empty sack of the bones in which she had existed.

The following days passed by in a blur and I cried nonstop. I actually do believe that I ran out of tears because I have not cried ever since, although my pain still lingers. But there is one other thing I still remember. In her service, her sister asked me if I wanted to say some goodbye words to her, and everyone politely left the tiny room when she told them to. She exited last, and gave me a destroyed look with a soulless smile. While she closed the door after her, all I could think about was how Anna's eyes were so much like Elsa's.

Later that day, Hiccup told me that everyone had gone silent outside the room, because they could hear my screams repeating again and again the same words.

"Oh, God, please! Make this stop! Make it stop!"

As I continued to walk, my hand rose to my lips and I tried to brush away the feeling of that cursed kiss with my fingers. It didn't work, of course, so I dropped my arm and walked even faster.

I was getting closer to my destination. I was positive about my decision. That night I was finally acting, but I had taken the decision long, long before. Everyday I felt the pain of her absence like it was new, and everyday it tore me apart until my pain was the only piece of me that I was sure about. After her death, it was only a matter of days until the pain was able to take over me and I became it. I had slowly transformed into my pain. My tortured soul was the only thing that had remained from the fool who thought that he could be happy with Elsa forever.

I had decided this because time kept passing by; because my nightmares were always about her coffin and the terrible feeling that she didn't belong there, or about the little box that contained her ashes; because she was dying also inside my memories, and every time I could see less of the girl I had fallen in love with and more of the corpse who couldn't kiss me back, and I desperately needed the girl back. Mostly, I had decided this because what terrified me the most was that I could get over the pain and be happy again. It terrified me that I could forget her.

Oh, yes. That night I was brave enough.

I could already see the lake from where I was, and I walked faster still. I smiled almost sincerely when I noticed it was frozen. I had come the day before and it hadn't been frozen yet, which meant that the ice would be thin. I sat by the edge of the lake as soon as I got there, and took off my shoes and socks. When I did, it was as if a big weight was being lifted from my shoulders.

I knew I had made the right choice the moment I took a step into the frozen waters. I felt the coldness striking my bare skin like a lightning coming from below, but I instantly felt again a weight being lifted, this time from my heart.

I walked deeper into the lake, each step relieving my tortured soul.

A few steps later, I was already able to hear the ice cracking below me. Moved by an unknown impulse, I raised my head towards the sky, closed my eyes and smiled, and this time I was sure that the smile was honest. I took another step without hesitating, and another, and another. The cracking of the ice was getting louder with every movement I made. It was dangerously real and it was music to my ears. The shattering ice was then the only thing separating me from Elsa, and when the loudest crack of them all reached me, I felt something that overwhelmed me after two years of its lack.

Peace.

It was then that the thin ice finally gave in, and I fell into a precious darkness that accepted me like I belonged there.