warning: description of a triggering flashback which is similar to a panic attack, from elsa as a victim of rape. if you don't want to read, it begins at 'Elsa is breathing loudly beside him', and you can skip to '"It's Jack," he tells her'.

chapter eleven: trigger

(I thrive in the night.)

Jack wakes up to darkness.

For a second, he panics.

I'm blind, Jack thinks with terror. He can handle anything, anything, except this. He can handle broken bones and split flesh and dying friends. But not this, he can't handle this.

But then his eyes adjust, and he makes out the blurry shadows of what looks to be crates and containers, and then the fuzzy outline of his own hand. The memories come back slowly.

There were Nightmares, he'd been drunk, they were ambushed, Elsa had been clutched close to him, Elsa–

"Elsa!" Jack whispers. He fumbles, and then grasps something soft and warm. An arm.

There's a gentle hiss of pain next to him, and then a soft, "Jack?"

Elsa sits up, sways, holding her head. He can vaguely see dried blood crusting her temple, but she's otherwise unharmed.

"Where are we?" Elsa mumbles. Jack staggers to his feet, feeling his way around. There's not much room. They appear to be in a closed off container with stacks and stacks of boxes around them.

"Oh," Jack says, recognising the layout with dread. "We're in a shipping container."

A quick glance at the labels stamped on the boxes show them to be filled with clocks, on the way to department stores across the globe. There is only one sliver of light coming from a crack far above them, but Jack is sure that that would be sealed up in no time. His stomach drops.

Elsa is breathing loudly beside him, and fear drips from her quivering frame, in the way she curls her fingers into the sleeves of his coat.

"Jack," Elsa says, her voice is wavering, "Jack, what do we do? I–I–I can't–it's dark. Jack, I don't like the dark – Jack, it's not–I can't– the man hurt me in the dark–"

Alarm bells go off in his head.

"Okay," Jack says soothingly. He turns to face her head on, trying to maintain eye contact even though he can barely see, tries to look at where her face floats, pale and oval in the gloom. Her teeth chatter maraca-like, her lips trembling to the beat. "Here's what we're going to do, okay? Elsa, I want you to focus only on me, okay? Focus just on me. Breathe with me. Elsa, do you know what's going on? Is there are reason why you're so afraid, apart from the obvious?"

"F-flashback?" Elsa manages to stutter out. Her grip on his wrist tightens to the point of it being painful, but Jack hardly notices. "I've only had one–before, but–I'm not sure–because it was gold teeth, J-Jack, Gold Teeth–"

"Okay, so you've had one before. There's no gold teeth here, Elsa, it's alright," Jack says, feeling himself babble. He doesn't know what to do; he doesn't know about gold teeth or men in the dark or flashbacks. But he does know panic attacks, which is not the same, but that's all he's got. Bunnymund used to have them a lot. He'd watched Toothiana calm him down enough times to roughly know what to do.

But then again, this is Elsa. Not Bunnymund.

"Okay, Elsa. What do you need? Is there anything you need? What can I do?"

"Anna," Elsa forces out. "Anna, I need my sister. Where is she? Is she safe?"

"She's completely safe," Jack lies. "She's fine. She's at home. And you can go home too, alright? You'll be fine, just breathe as I breathe, I'm proud of you."

But Jack makes the mistake of lowering his hand onto hers, and Elsa recoils so fast he's sure she's got whiplash. She retreats into a corner, scrambling on top of a box to put some distance between them.

"Elsa, I'm sorry, I won't touch you again," Jack says calmly, but his own hands are shaking now. Elsa is a cornered animal.

"Elsa, breathe with me. Watch me. Focus only on me, okay?"

But Elsa's sweating profusely now; he felt the clamminess of her hand, and he's sure her pupils are blown wide. Jack steps closer, afraid she'll tumble off.

"Elsa–"

But then he's cut short as Elsa begins to emit a high-pitched keening sound, and she does a full-body spasm. Jack lurches forward to catch her as she falls, and her nails dig into his skin, hard enough to draw blood, and then she's gasping, as if her throat is half closed, as if her lungs have collapsed inside.

(She can't breathe shecan't breathe I can't breatheIcan'tbreathe ICAN'TBREATH I CAN'TBREATHE–)

"Elsa, you're not there, you're not there–"

(There's a hand around her throat and it's squeezing so tightly she thinks she might break, she thinks the bones of her neck might snap, just like her pelvis is snapping and fire her body is on fire and there is blood and wet, guttural grunts and the click and glimmer of gold teeth but she can't see she can't see she can't see because it's dark and here here here is where I am strongestIAMFEAR–)

She's screaming, she's screaming and Jack is holding her down because she's knocked off a tower of boxes and she's struck out at him, scratched his cheek in her flailing, and he can feel her heart hammering against her ribs, and it feels like it might just hammer out of her chest.

"Get off!" Elsa howls. "Get off get off get off–"

And Jack wants to let her go, because the desperation in her voice is too palpable, because she's terrified, because he knows this, recognises this, understands this fear.

But she would end up cracking her head against the crates; the space is too cramped. So he holds her in a tight hug, keeps her arms pinned to her sides while she cries and weeps and all he can say is, "This is Jack this is Jack this is Jack–"

It lasts for forever, almost. Jack can't even bear to think of how long it's been in Elsa's head. When her struggles begin to die down, he starts to count softly, calmly, backwards from one hundred, and by the time he's reached fifteen, Elsa is limp in his grasp, sucking in shallow breaths. The sweat has cooled, and she's shivering.

"It's Jack," he tells her, when the last number disappears from his lips. "It's Jack, it's Jack."

She pushes weakly against his chest, and finally, he releases her. She crawls away from him, her legs no longer working, curls up on her side, and she stares off over his head, far, far away.

In that moment, Jack is quite sure that she doesn't know who he is.

In this sort of thing, I am the only one present. Loneliness and Fear, after all, reigns above everything else.

I'll go onto a bit of a tangent, here. It's really quite fascinating, the number of different characters that Jack Frost meets throughout his life. I'll take you back a few years, when Jack is somewhere just past the start of his criminal journey.

So once, when he'd just joined the Red Crowns a few days after he'd turned twelve, he remembers waking up to bloodcurdling shrieks that echoed around the rundown house that he'd shared with some other younger gang members.

"It's Bunnymund," says a girl who occupies in the bed next to him. She blinks big blue eyes, and in the waning moonlight the bright red of her hair had darkened until it looks like day-old blood. She's actually the temporary caretaker, as their previous one had been injured in an earlier drive-by shooting. Jack guesses her to be around eighteen. "He does this a lot."

"What, scream?" Jack croaks. The sounds hadn't stopped, but the other residents just sigh and turn in their blankets.

"Yeah," the girl shrugs. "It's pretty common around here, actually. The nightmares."

"Do you have nightmares?" Jack asks curiously, no longer drowsy in the wake of new potential information on this strange group that he's now a part of. "Have you killed people?"

"Haven't you?" the girl laughs. "It's part of the initiation ceremony."

Biting his lips, Jack glances to the side. He'd rather forget, to be honest. He'd rather forget the eyes.

"Yeah, but–"

It wasn't personal.

"Sure," the girl continues, sensing that he wouldn't answer her question. "But they don't really bother me. They're just dreams."

"Yeah," Jack murmurs.

The screams stop. The house falls quiet again.

"I'm Ariel, by the way," the girl says, holding out a milky-white hand. Jack shakes it, not sure if he really likes her or not. There's something different about her, the way her cold eyes glint like those of a dead fish, her spidery fingers that hold on just a little too tightly. She grins. "How did your initiation go?"

"I passed," Jack says, intentionally blank.

"How did you kill them?" Ariel is interested now, and Jack just wants to go back to sleep. Back to where he doesn't need to kill or steal or hurt to survive.

Instead, he just makes a noncommittal sound and slumps back down onto his bed. Only the crickets chirp in the humid night, and Jack hears Ariel shuffle beside him. He thinks she's fallen asleep, until she speaks again, her voice soft as waves against the sand.

"I drowned him," Ariel whispers. "Two years ago, my initiation. Dragged the asshole to the bottom of the pool and left him there with his feet cut apart."

"Why?"

(Why, as in, why did you kill him that way? Why did you let him suffer like that?

The days leading up to Ariel's initiation were filled with not only myself, but also Love's lingering presence. I don't quite understand the heartbreak, but I understand the pain.)

"I sacrificed my legs for that man," Ariel says, even quieter, even sadder. Jack thinks back to the first time he sees her, remembers the scars that decorate Ariel's calves and heels and soles of her feet. "I walked on glass for him, left my family. I did everything for him."

"I'm sorry."

Beside Ariel's bedside, Love weeps and clutches at her heart, and I sit myself in the space between their beds.

The following year, Jack begins to have nightmares too.

"There's been no information, ma'am," Hook Hand says, not daring to raise his face to meet the amethyst eyes of his superior. "All other gangs are denying their involvement, and even Ange Noir says they didn't do it."

"It must be them." The room is so icy that Hook Hand doesn't even draw breath, lest his throat is torn apart. "Either the Angels are looking to get their wings ripped off for being so cocky as to kidnap one of our own, or it's the Pride. Scar's being itching to get his claws on Jack, and he's crazy enough to try."

When Toothiana is angry, she quietens down. It's frightening. Whereas others would blow up and cause a scene, Toothiana retreats into herself, until her rage is contained into a tight, hot ball in her chest. But her presence grows tenfold, and the perimeter around her immediate body is evacuated quickly.

When Toothiana is angry, she speaks so softly that her listeners have to strain to hear, and yet one message is clear: she will kill anyone in her way.

When Toothiana is angry, she is unstoppable.

And now one of her own is gone. He's gone, as well as the girl who wasn't even supposed to be here in the first place.

Hook Hand scurries out of the room before Toothiana can decide whether to kill him or not for his lack of new intel, and even Bunnymund is hesitating at the door.

"Check the area where Jack disappeared," Toothiana says, before the man can escape. He freezes, and then sighs. She faces the window, out to where the lone moon hangs in the sky. One or two stars flicker weakly, the rest swallowed up by light pollution.

"We've checked it everyday for the past week," Bunnymund says wearily. "No one's come forth to claim it. If it was the Angels, they would have made it obvious. It's not them, Tooth. They don't have enough manpower to fund a war. We both know that."

"Then what," Toothiana says slowly, as if Bunnymund is the stupidest thing on this Earth, "do you propose we do? Wait until Jack's body is floating down the river? Wait until a bag is delivered at our door with the head of the newbie medic? Fuck, Bunny, I'm not messing around until then."

Bunnymund stares at her for a very long time. Toothiana doesn't meet his gaze.

"You said," Bunnymund murmurs finally, "that when we started this life, we wouldn't get attached. That's what we promised."

"The Red Crowns is family," Toothiana says simply. "Things change."

"We're family," Bunnymund corrects. "I'm family, you're family, Jack is family, Sandy is family. Not the others."

"Sandy disappeared ten years ago and hasn't been heard from since," Toothiana says bitterly.

"He's still family, and you know why he's gone."

Toothiana swallows, and the ball in her chest makes it hard for her to think.

"It's Pitchiner," Toothiana says numbly, changing the subject. Bunnymund sucks in sharply. "If not Ange Noir, if not the Pride, then it's Pitchiner."

"He's already gotten what he wanted, though," Bunnymund says, furrowing his brows. "It's been years; he's settled his score. He didn't get Sandy, so."

The sentence is left hanging.

"So he went for Baby T," Toothiana finishes for him, ignoring Bunnymund's flinch. She has no qualms saying the name. The old wound pricks open, but Toothiana feels that she deserves this. She has resigned herself to suffer for eternity, for letting the unthinkable happen.

"Alright, say it's Pitch," Bunnymund says, trying to pull Toothiana from her thoughts. He's humouring her. "Why would he draw so much attention to himself when before he's been lying so low that people have almost forgotten about him? He caused the roof collapse, which honestly had no benefits to him whatsoever, because all it did was spark tension and kill some small fry. Then there are reports of him meeting up with people from no-name gangs."

"Perhaps he's trying to get allies," Toothiana says. Her brain is working, she's trying to connect the dots; Baby T fades away. "He's got the money to start a war, but not the manpower."

"Do you think he's trying to get territory?"

"Both," Toothiana reads between the lines. "He wants territory, and he's trying to settle a personal grudge. But why wreck havoc on the Assemblea? Why not just go straight for us?"

"Turning all the gangs against you is generally a bad way to do things," Bunnymund says. He's pacing now, hands shoved deep into his pockets, and Toothiana watches the way his steps burn into the carpet. "Unless…"

"Unless he's working against–no, unless he's working with someone–unless someone… ugh," Toothiana rakes a hand through her hair. She's close to something, she knows it.

"Okay, let's step back and look at the big picture," Bunnymund says. "So we know that Pitch definitely is connected to the roof collapse. The roof collapse itself put all the Kings and Queens in danger. So he knows that everyone would turn against him. However, he knows that the only gangs powerful enough to go against him are us and the Angels. And even then, we don't have enough."

"He was counting on us to do it anyway," Toothiana says, speaking quickly. "He was counting on us to retaliate in some way. And since he knows that we refuse any contact with each other except to kill, he was hoping that we and the Angels get caught in crossfire and wipe each other out."

"It was a miscalculation, though. Our signatures moves have changed over the years. We specialise in guerrilla warfare now, whereas before we would just go for the traditional shootout. Ange Noir likes their snipers, so we ended up extracting revenge our own ways, without harming the other."

"So, what? He's doing this to stir shit up, make us kill ourselves, and then swoop in on our territory?"

"We can go with that theory for now," Toothiana decides. "But then, Pitch didn't do a very good job, did he? If it was to work, he should have framed Ange Noir properly."

As if on cue, as soon as she finished speaking, the door bursts open again, Hook Hand reappearing with wide eyes and heaving breaths; he had just run back up the stairs.

"Ange Noir claimed Mister Jack Frost's capture," Hook Hand says. "There's a dead dove dangling from the traffic light on the street where he was taken."

"And has Ange Noir responded to this statement in any other way?" Toothiana asks almost idly, though her fingers are on her pistol.

"One of their reps showed up to reiterate that it wasn't them. Says they're being framed."

"Well there you go," Bunnymund says lightly, resting a hand on Toothiana's shoulder. "Now everything's fallen into place."

Across the city, there's another girl who's on the verge of tipping over the edge. Unlike Toothiana, however, her emotions are without question. Also unlike Toothiana, she can't tell anyone about it.

"Goddamnit," Anna hisses, throwing a stack of papers across the room just as the door opens, and it smacks into Hans' face as he peeks through.

"Ow! What the–?"

"What do you want?" Anna barks instead of apologising. She stalks over to her beaten down laptop and throw open the cover roughly, intending on surfing the online forums to see if there is any new information on missing persons.

(Elsa hadn't been home in eight days, and Anna had secretly gotten in touch with Hiro Hamada from Hero's 6 to hack into the police database for intel on Elsa Queen. She'd filed a police report earlier in her desperation, and Hiro had told her in passing that though it had been lodged, nothing else had been done about it.

In retaliation, she'd asked him to wipe out half of the police database in a moment of blind rage.

"We'll keep our ears out," Hiro had promised Anna. "She's your sister, right? I get it. If anything happened to Tadashi, I'd get revenge too."

"I trust you not to leak her relationship with me to anyone, right?"

Hiro had snorted. "Who do you think we are, Summer Witch? The world runs on money." He then smiled slyly at her. "No guarantees."

And so Hiro Hamada had walked away with pockets considerably fuller than before, and a vague "We won't tell, but people aren't dumb. They have eyes.")

"Why are you so worked up?" Hans sighed. "I swear, girls–"

"If you say anything about periods, I'll end you right here and now," Anna says quietly, not even bothering to hide the gun that she's begun to play with. The safety clicks on, and then off. Hans puts his hands up in surrender and takes a seat beside her.

"Okay," Hans says. "Then what's wrong?"

Here's the thing: Anna doesn't trust Hans. She trusts him like a mouse might trust a cat not to eat it. She trusts him like she'd trust a shark around blood.

Hans wears his tattoo on the odd junction between his arm and the back of his hand, so that the sleeves of his shirt is always half covering it. Anna has always found this strange, unsettling, in some way. Her gut still clenches uncomfortably whenever he's around. She well remembers the flirting and the small presents and wooing, thought nothing of it; she wasn't interested. But then–

Wanna date? Hans' smile was slow. Anna had looked back, almost turned her nose up at him.

Sure.

Sure, because that day, Hans held a rose in one hand, and a knife in the other. Cut if off the bush over there. Seemed a shame to let them wither. Everyone knows the old lady's dead inside anyway; just need to discover her body.

Anna knows what the mothers say. She knows what her neighbours think.

Eighteen and twenty-four. Might as well be her sugar daddy.

But it doesn't matter, because there is something wrong with Hans, and if dating is the way to keep him close, then she's willing to do that.

You have any siblings? You planning to go to university? Oh? An older sibling? Who is she? I'd like to meet her. What's her name–

Too many questions. Hans is too suspicious. He may be high-ranking now, but Anna will not allow him to roam free. He is too interested in Elsa.

"Nothing's wrong," Anna responds irritably. "Just a bad day."

My sister might be dead before the weekend.

"Well, the Crowns still haven't found the Spirit or their new medic. They're going to destroy the city."

Anna fights back the flinch. She knows.

Two hours till midnight, four nights ago, the Red Crowns had torn up the night sky in a flurry of gunshots that had echoed like fireworks but without the lights, as each member of the gang had fired one shot towards the clouds. There had been the tell-tale sound of Toothiana's distinct pistol shots, which had continued blasting up at the sky well after the original ones had finished. This was the Red Crowns way of declaring war. This was their way of telling the city that they were out for blood.

"Has the dove been removed?" Anna asks, snaking out of the arm that Hans tries to put around her waist.

"Yes. The lower gang members are spooked, but the Red Crowns aren't pursuing us as strongly as I thought they would."

"That's because the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny knows it wasn't us who took them," Anna says. "Won't stop their lesser members though. Make sure our men don't do anything rash. This is a new situation, after all."

"What, bein' framed?" A new voice pipes in. Merida gives them a wan smile as she enters, picking her way past the fallen papers and collapsing onto a stool. She's unusually sombre today, evidently having picked up the mood. The sniper looks exhausted, and she massages her wrists gingerly. "Went too hard at the range earlier," Merida tells them.

"Anything new?"

"No. The Olympians and the Pride are being stubbornly neutral in this. I doubt we'll be able to sway them onto our side if anything happens."

"Who do you think got the Spirit, anyway?" Hans muses. "He's third in command, he's strong. He's got enemies, but none stupid enough to outright take him down."

"And why'd the medic get taken too?" Merida joins in. She loves conspiracy theories, and this is the next best thing. "No one gives a fuck about a medic."

"Wrong place, wrong time," Anna says hollowly. She's feeling sick. "Merida, is there anything new you can tell me? What about Aladdin and Jasmine?"

Kicking back, Merida begins to idly braid a strand of frizzy red curls. "Not really. Jasmine is too good at avoiding the subject of her Sandman tattoo, and I right suspect that Al's got it bad for her. I might take him off; he's so head over heels I swear he's gonna try and elope with her or some shit."

"We've got the payments for the Don?" Anna presses. There are too many things on her plate, too many things to keep track of, and though she is completely willing to pass all her responsibilities off to Hans while she searches for Elsa, she knows that can't draw attention to herself like that. So she snoops around in secret, pulling connections, old friends, to see if there is anything at all.

"All set and ready for his next visit," Merida says. She stands to go, but then turns back once more to look at Anna. There's a glint in her eye and the slice of a dagger in her next words. "You know, the Crown's medic," Merida begins casually, and Anna tenses imperceptibly. She feels Hans glance at her. "I dunno… she kinda looks like you."

And when the door swings shut, Hans is humming beside her, and then he nods. "She does."

His gaze is trained on the photo attached to the file that Anna should have destroyed when she had the chance. The file with information on new members from various gangs. Because he's looking again with fresh eyes, and there's no mistaking it. There's a reason why only Hans and Facilier know her last name.

"You guys are both Queens, right? You look like sisters."

They've been in darkness for so long, Elsa can't keep track anymore. She used to be able to roughly gauge the days according to the tiny sliver of sunlight in the corner, but there had been storms, and it had been black for a long, long time.

They had not spoken about her breakdown. When she comes to, Jack simply hands her his coat and sits beside her and tells her about his younger sister.

"Her name's Clara," Jack says. If she could see his face, she's sure he'd be smiling. "My mother liked The Nutcracker ballet."

"How old is she?" Elsa asks, picking at the sticker on a box. Jack had gone around the container several times already, but found nothing that could help them escape. The door is bolted shut on the outside, and they'd shouted until their voices had grown hoarse, but still no answer. The only good thing is that it doesn't feel like they're on a ship, so they should still be on the ports of Stella Morta.

"Started her first year of university this year," Jack says. There's pride in his voice.

"What does your mother do?"

"She's dead. Before that, she was a hooker, I guess. Not really sure. Sort of figured it out as I grew older." Jack is casual about it. Then, he adds, "I don't miss her though. As a mother, she was one of the worst. I hated her."

"Oh."

Elsa doesn't know what to say, so she just huddles closer for warmth. Jack smells like blood, and his coat gives off the unpleasant scent of wet dog, but it grounds her in the present.

"Why are we here?"

She hates how frail she sounds, but she can't bring herself to change it. She just wants to go home. She's tired and hungry, and she feels like she's gone blind. Yesterday, the container door had opened and a bag of food had been thrown inside. Both she and Jack had been too exhausted and weak to react, so by the time Jack had stumbled to his feet and rushed to the door, it had slammed shut in his face, and the bolt outside was drawn across again.

"Probably something I did," Jack says wryly. He nudges her. "Sorry I got you dragged into this, though."

Squinting up at him, Elsa tries to decide whether or not the apology is really sincere though. Finally, she thinks she doesn't care.

"If we get out of here," Elsa mumbles, "I'm leaving this city with Anna. Not even gonna look back."

"That's the smartest thing I've heard you say," Jack chuckles grimly.

Scufflings noises outside draw Jack to his feet again, and Elsa cowers on the ground. Both of them face the direction of the door.

"More food?" Elsa whispers.

"No," Jack murmurs back. "Too soon. They'll be wanting one of us."

And they do. The door opens and a figure steps in, but though Jack tries to gets his hands around the man's throat, he's thrown to the ground.

"You're the Spirit," the man says silkily, daintily wiping his feet on Jack's heaving chest. "Come along, Mister Pitchiner wants to see you."

"Pitchiner?" Elsa hears Jack choke out through bloody teeth. "Emily–?"

And then Jack is dragged out, and Elsa is left alone with silence and darkness (and me).

author's note:

THERE. IS. PLOT.

good news. the next few chapters should have a bit of a faster and more consistent update. extremely sorry for the wait. we're about halfway through the story now.

updated: 23 november 2015