A/N: Hello everyone! Finally got this chapter finished once I dealt with a bunch of other little things in my life. I'm glad to see how many are enjoying this, that's what keeps me writing! Enjoy.
III: Broken Palace
The time around them ceased to function properly as Jack held Elsa close to his chest, feeling the queen's heart pound against his ribcage like a frightened bird beating against its metal prison. The spirit frowned.
Something was wrong.
"Please," Elsa's voice came out in a dry rasp, "let go of me."
Jack released his arms around her just as she attempted to push herself away from him, and something splintered inside of Jack as she turned to stare at him through clouded eyes, her cheeks sucked of their normally rosy hue. He opened his mouth, a second passing by before the words in his mind left his lips. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"It's fine," Elsa stated flatly, stroking her arms as if she were trying to brush off the remnants of Jack's touch. "It's just…I can't…" She tensed a bit and held herself more tightly, turning away from Jack to stare into the green expanse of the forest. Jack felt the splinter cut into his lungs as he filled the empty space in the air with the words, "I understand."
He'd moved too fast with Elsa. He'd known her since her first breath, but she'd only known him for a few hours. As much as he longed to brush his fingers over her ivory skin and run them through her soft white hair, and hold her close and just smell her and feel her, finally given this chance since forever…
…he would never, ever touch her if she didn't want him to.
They stood there silently as the seconds sluggishly ticked by, the air thick with something tense and bitter, before Elsa said something so soft and tiny that it almost escaped Jack's ears. "Jack," she said with a brittle voice, "When you were watching me all those years…did you ever…?" Her voice stilled suddenly like it had caught in a fist, and Jack could feel it struggling to release itself.
She turned back to look at the spirit and when she broke her voice free again, it sounded gray and heavy. "Did you ever…look at me…"
Naked.
Once again, Jack felt the heat rise through his body and into his face, burning it hotter than the summer sun. "N-no," He finally stuttered out, his words thick and clumsy, "I never did. I promise you." Elsa stood still, and Jack could see her throat tighten as she looked at him with hard blue eyes.
Then they softened a bit when they saw the honesty that shined pure and raw on his face. He wasn't lying. "Even when you had all the chance in the world," the queen said quietly, "you never took it."
They walked through the forest a while longer until night fell over the land, but the comfortable silence that hung between them had been warped into an atmosphere that was tight and awkward. The tension buzzing between them was growing into something unbearable to the spirit, and he opened his mouth to say something, anything to shatter the wall that had been built between them when Elsa spoke again.
"Why didn't you ever look at me?"
The subject had reared its ugly head once more as Jack felt his face, no, his entire body break into a cold sweat. Why did she want to know?
"I never wanted to because-" Oh Moon, why did it decide to place Jack into this, "because I knew that you wouldn't have appreciated it. I respected your privacy, even when-"
"Even when you were sure I would have never found out." Elsa finished for him with a voice that hinted amusement. "I never did feel that chill whenever I undressed or bathed. You are quite the gentlemen." Jack didn't quite know what to say to that, so he left her words to hang in the air between them as the invisible wall began to crumble a bit, pieces falling into the snow behind them.
"You were never tempted to look." Moon, why wouldn't she release this damned subject? What answer was she searching for in Jack, what could she possibly pull from his lips that would make her satisfied?
Jack couldn't find it in himself to lie. He was sure that even if he did lie, she could see the lie hanging transparent in the air, and then her trust in him would fall apart. When he replied, it felt like he was chewing on pebbles. "I wouldn't say that. Elsa, if you're wondering that I don't think you're pretty enough to be seen…without clothes, you must be blind to every mirror you walk by. You're-"
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack noticed Elsa's figure tighten suddenly as if she'd been wound with piano wire. "We need to go back," She said in a voice hard like stone, "Something's happened at the palace. I know it has."
She turned towards him suddenly, and their chests bumped together. Whatever she felt, she showed it through the panic in her eyes. Jack almost asked for her permission to touch her again, but she'd already granted it with her arms twisting around his neck and holding tightly. There wasn't time to ask that question, anyway.
He aimed his staff towards the ground and catapulted them both up into the white sky, and flew them both back as fast as he could summon his energy into the staff. He felt the pulse of Elsa's spirit, a nervous rhythm that seeped into her fingers and frosted the part of Jack's coat that her fingers were clenching tightly to. She'd only been this scared once before.
The closer they got to the crystal palace, the more a sense of cold, dark dread wrapped its black tendrils around Jack's insides and gripped them almost as tightly as Elsa held him. He ran over the wind currents fast enough to make his legs sting, until he could see just over the tip of the largest mountain Elsa's palace. But there was something horribly wrong with it.
It was no longer bright and sparkling like crystals in the cold mountain air. The whole palace was covered in something pulsing and black, and the aura that thickened the air about it seemed completely and unapologetically evil.
No, no, oh Moon no.
He felt Elsa clench onto his coat even tighter, if that was possible, and if Jack hadn't been immune to frost he was sure he would have been turned into an icy sculpture already. "It's so black," Elsa said in a voice bordering on panic, "who made it like this?"
Jack felt the name bite against the inside of his throat, sharp like a dagger. He kept it to himself.
Maybe she won't be able to see him. But what if she can?
The two of them landed on the ground as quickly as Jack could allow, and the second their feet touched the cold earth, Elsa broke herself away from the winter spirit and began to run towards the palace, still black and shifting and ominous as an abyss. "No! Elsa, stop!" Jack cried out, but his voice reached deaf ears. He shot himself towards Elsa, having no other choice but to tackle her underneath him into the snow. She immediately began to thrash against him, pushing and slapping and using all of her strength to shove him off of her.
Then he sensed another spirit inside of the palace, no, three spirits, four spirits trapped inside of the black prison, and they were screaming so loudly Jack thought he would go deaf. One of them felt very familiar to him, a bright fiery spirit that used to light up the dark corners of the Arendelle castle.
It was-
"Anna!" Jack heard Elsa shriek as she punched and kicked upwards at Jack, her icy powers drying up dead on his skin. "She's in there! I can feel her! Release me at once!"
He couldn't let go of her, even when he felt Anna's soul crying out towards him like a caged animal. Running into that black fog would be suicide. He spoke to her, mustering all his strength into making his words calm and still as his hands struggled to keep her firmly against the ground. "No, I'll go. You need to stay here, Elsa, you have to."
"The hell I will!" Elsa bit out, her words shrill with near frenzy. "Whatever's in there, it has my sister! Please," she said to him in a voice choked with tears, "Let me go. Anna, she's in danger and I can't let her die, not like our parents did." Those words froze Jack; it cut him deep into the bone to see Elsa like this, her eyes betraying the fear that her only family left in the world could perish at any moment with the last words between them being those as harsh and brittle as broken glass. With no small effort his arms slackened and let go of her, and as she stood up and began her sprint towards the pulsing black fog he ran close on her heels.
They ran over the staircase and through the large front doors gaping open like Jack and Elsa had been expected. Jack had been anticipating him to be waiting on the both of them, perhaps casually strolling about the room or looking out of the window towards the vast white mountainside like he thought the place charming, and stupid.
But the room was empty. Empty except for two bodies lying in the middle of it, frighteningly still. One of them was Anna, and the other was…the blonde boy that had been there so many years ago. Small black things were spinning over their heads, shifting into different images that made Jack feel ill just looking at them.
Elsa didn't see the boy. All her eyes could focus on was the little figure with bright copper hair lying silently on the ground, like she had been lying there all those years ago when Elsa's ice caused her to lapse into a coma.
The queen ran and fell to her sister's side, gently shaking her in the bitter hope that Anna was merely sleeping. When no response came from her hands and pleading whispers, Elsa turned to Jack for an answer, her eyes shining with tears.
"Do you know what's happened to her?"
The spirit's face turned solemn as he replied, "They've been put into a deep sleep. She's not hurt…at least, not physically." Curiously, a small snowman stood next to Anna, its little stick arms and head pulled downward as if it were asleep. There was also a reindeer that lay unconscious beside the boy, little black carrots dancing over its head. Looking harder at the snowman recalled a faint memory to Jack, but he pulled his focus back to Elsa when she asked,
"Who did this to them?"
The name that came to mind was treacherous and taboo, full of dark secrets. It felt like needles on his tongue. "It's Pitch Black."
Her eyebrows knit together as she stared at him, cradling her sleeping sister in her arms. "Who is that?"
Jack suddenly felt a prickling sensation crawl over his skin, and his eyes widened in alarm. Pitchwas everywhere in the palace, seeping through the walls, hiding in the corners, crawling over the floor.
Standing right over Elsa.
"Elsa-!"
Jack wasn't able to aim his staff fast enough as a large wave of onyx sand slammed him into one of the walls, hard enough to make web-like cracks splinter through the ice. Jack fell to the floor gasping for the breath that had been knocked out of him and he aimed his staff at the black figure, channeling all of his anger into the next bolt of frost. The spike of energy flew towards Pitch, but he casually shot a wall of black to guard himself against the attack; it absorbed into the sand and hardened into a grotesque statue of ice and darkness.
The spirit cursed at himself for having been caught off guard, and he heard Elsa's cry of alarm as he shot himself towards the black wall and crashed through it, shards of black ice flying through the air and cutting into his face. He saw that Elsa had created her own barrier of ice against the dark creature, a half-sphere that shielded her and the unconscious victims from the black sand.
It was thick and formidable, but Jack knew that it wouldn't be enough for very long.
"Jack!" The winter spirit heard Elsa's frantic cry muffled through the thick wall of ice as her blurry figure leaned protectively over Anna. Pitch was out of sight, but definitely not out of the castle as Jack could feel his aura stinging the air like needles on his spine. His presence was slithering everywhere around the room.
And then Pitch's voice rang melodiously in the air, thick with amusement. "Two beings gifted with the power of cold. This is more rewarding than I thought it would be." His voice was large and ugly, and Jack felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach as he glanced about the room, gripping his staff hard enough to whiten his knuckles.
"Leave now," Jack heard himself hiss through clenched teeth, "and I might let you go in one piece." He couldn't fight Pitch when Elsa and her sister lay vulnerable to the lord's powers. Even with her own capabilities, Elsa wasn't going to last long battling the ruler of darkness while surrounded in his kingdom.
A dark chuckle rumbled throughout the room and shook the floor. Jack's jaw tightened even more. "Do you really think you're in the position to make those demands?" Pitch's voice came suddenly behind Jack, making him whip around and aim his staff towards the black spirit. There Pitch stood before him, a slender tower of a figure, and the look on his face too dark and heavy to be called a smile. The knot in Jack's stomached coiled sickeningly just looking at him.
"After all," Pitch continued in a low hiss, "your friend's wrapped tight in a ball of ice, and you have sand crawling up your leg as we speak."
Jack's eyes widened and he looked down to see something black slithering up his body, and he slammed his staff into the ground, loosening the sand long enough for him to leap away. But Pitch just chuckled again as Jack suddenly felt even more of the shifting blackness wrap itself around an ankle and slam him against the ground hard enough to make the spirit see white.
Snarling through the pain as he heard Elsa scream his name once more, Jack tried to twist himself out of the sand, aiming his staff towards Pitch, or rather the three Pitches wavering in his unsteady vision. But what he saw made him cease to strike.
Pitch's sand had slithered over the whole of the half-sphere of ice, delicately feeling the barrier for a weak spot, eagerly seeking the life within. "No!" Jack yelled, and without another thought he turned his staff to shoot at the writhing mass of black.
Bad idea. The cold energy struck at the sand and made it retaliate, but only for a second. Then it started to seep through the small hole Jack had created through the ice. Panic gripped Jack's insides like a steel vice, and he turned to strike at Pitch once more, but the dark lord had already disappeared as his voice rang through the air.
"Thank you for that bit of help," Pitch's voice said, hard and mocking.
Idiot, idiot, IDIOT!
The ball of ice suddenly erupted, shattering glassy bits all throughout the room with a noise like thunder. Jack stood hard on his feet, letting the ice whip through the air past him, cutting into his legs, his arms, his face, leaving the sleeves of his coat a tattered mess.
Pitch stood in the middle of the dark room now, and he was holding an unconscious Elsa in mid-air, bright blue fabric clenched in a dark fist. Pitch was looking at Elsa with a hungry gleam in his eyes that made a deep rage tighten the knot inside of the winter spirit.
Jack centered more of his energy into the tip of his staff, anger burning like a cold fire within. He'd been foolish enough to be caught off guard, and now he couldn't protect Elsa, or Anna, or anybody else who had fallen victim to Pitch.
"Just what I was looking for," the dark lord said in a deep rumble as he observed the queen dangling limply like a broken doll in his grasp.
"Let go of her," Jack hissed, centering his staff towards Pitch, but too afraid to strike lest he hit Elsa.
"And why would I do that?" Mocking amusement lined Pitch's voice as he stared at Jack like he was more of a nuisance than a threat. "This girl has something inside of her, something ancient and powerful that hasn't shown itself since you came into this world. Tell me, your highness," Pitch turned his head and asked the insensible Elsa with a voice like an abyss, dark and deep and treacherous, "did my friend on the moon grant you this gift of ice?"
Pitch turned back to look at Jack with a wicked gleam in those silver-gold eyes of his. "Is that so?" He continued in his slow, methodical way like a spider playing with its captured bug. "Well…I would love to pull you apart, piece by piece, my dear lady, and see from the inside what makes you so special."
Fear will be your worst enemy.
A roar tore itself from Jack's throat as the burst of energy shot towards Pitch and hit him square in the chest. Pitch's eyes widened as if he didn't expected Jack to take the chance, but Jack had the precision of an eagle's eye in that moment of deadly anger. A grunt of pain echoed in the palace as Pitch dissolved into a mass of writhing sand, and Jack leaped forth to capture Elsa who dropped to the ground like a stone.
Elsa was pale as the moon in his arms, and twice as cold. But, against all of what Jack believed possible, a small noise left her lips as her eyes fluttered open dazedly. "Jack," She mumbled almost sleepily, clouded cerulean orbs blinking at his face, "Anna…is she…"
Jack heard small noises and shuffling like cloth on the ice floor. He turned to see that Anna and her companions were beginning to stir themselves back to life, albeit as slowly as a glacier. "She's fine," He reassured her with words soft like silk, "all of them are."
But they weren't for long.
"It's her! Grab her, quick!"
"My god, what has she done…?"
"The bitch thirsts for blood!"
Both Jack and Elsa shot their gaze towards the open doors, where Hans stood with a slew of guards, swords gripped in their hands and eyes gleaming with malice. Elsa was suddenly and fully awake now, and as she shot herself up from Jack's arms and readied her hands against Hans, the man with the blurry spirit, Jack felt Pitch's sand began its quick, slithering motion on the floor again.
He was going back towards Anna.
"Don't you dare," Jack growled, and he turned his staff as a burst of ice came forth and crashed into the shifting sand, freezing it into another morbid work of art. A clattering of heavy boots echoed in Jack's ears as he turned to see Elsa fighting her own demons, one hand pushing a guard towards the wall with a of barrier ice while the other shot forth spikes to rip through another guard's uniform and hold him still against the black crystal.
"Fight Pitch!" Jack heard Elsa yell through the storm of frost and shifting blackness, "keep them safe!"
A lump grew in Jack's throat. Elsa needed his help, but Anna and the boy needed it more. He held his staff with white knuckles and began to attack whatever puddles of sand dared to draw near Anna and the rest as they were now half-conscious and struggling to pull themselves away from the heavy, comatose like state that beckoned to them.
"My, she's strong," Pitch's voice marveled in Jack's ears as the winter spirit stood over Anna, who had regained her awareness now and was staring at the fight happening before her with panicked eyes, "I think she may be more suitable as my queen with that spirit of hers. Don't you think, Jack Frost?"
"Lay another hand on her," Jack hissed through tight lips as his staff froze the sand around them, "and you won't be breathing by the next morning light."
Pitch's laughed curled Jack's gut with its blackness. "I'll leave you and your little girlfriend for now…"
From the corner of his eye Jack saw Anna pull herself to her feet, and run towards her sister with feet fast like wind. "Elsa!" Anna screamed with a voice like ragged silk, "Stop!" Elsa stilled her hands, whipping her head around to see Anna sprinting towards her.
"But first…" Pitch's voice rumbled in a voice dripping black.
The sand turned itself away from Jack and slithered towards Anna. Jack aimed his staff at the mass, but it had already grabbed Anna's ankle and was wrapping itself tightly up her legs. Hans was close to Elsa now, too close as he raised his gleaming sword and leaped forward, death in his eyes.
"Let's have…"
Elsa whipped back towards the threat that tingled along her spine, and without thinking she turned and shot a burst of ice from her fingers towards Hans.
"A little…"
The writhing mass of sand that had latched itself to Anna's legs threw her into the air, right into the onslaught of Elsa's fury sparkling like snow dust.
"Fun."
Time had slowed into a horrific parade of stop motion as the gleam of ice sliced through Anna's chest, and into her heart beating furiously like a galloping horse. A small gasp, thin and hollow like a bird's bones, screeched in Jack's ears and froze his insides.
Anna fell to the ice with a small, inelegant thud. Another scream, this time from Elsa as she fell to the ground before her sister and clutched at her shoulders, futilely trying to shake her back to life. Hans stood frozen over the two of them, the weeping queen and her little sister with the frail, flickering soul. Then his eyes hardened with something bright and hot as he raised the handle of his sword and butted Elsa square in the head, knocking her still. Then he said to the remaining guards behind his shoulder, "Take this murderous bitch away."
Hans then turned to look at the boy, the reindeer and the snowman, staring at the sight before them with eyes wide like the moon. "And take him as a witness." He said while looking at the blonde, and the hard fire in his eyes gleamed bright and wicked.
The muted, heavy crack of something immense breaking around them, as Jack looked up to see that Pitch's sand had cracked the high, vaulted ceiling, splintering the ice and loosening it.
All around them, the crystal palace began to fall.
A/N:R/R if you wish to see what happens next...