21 (Broken Butterfly)

"Jack! No!"

"Don't be so dramatic, Anna."

Pitch just laughs, an expression crossing his face that Jack thinks must be relief. He allows himself his own small smirk and holds out his hand.

Pitch tosses the staff; it spirals lopsidedly and Jack snatches it out of the air. He closes his fist around the grooved wood in a flare of frost; the sensation of completeness is not unlike having recovered a security blanket after having to face the dark without it. Grinning, Jack straightens up and gestures down toward Anna.

"And part two?"

"No thank you," says Anna primly, nose in the air, gripping the bars that she has not yet managed to budge. "I will get myself free. Without having to betray anyone." Jack rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, I still want her out," he says to Pitch, who cocks a brow and motions. A patch of gloom shifts and writhes up the side of the cage; with a creak of hinges, a door swings open. Anna folds her arms and stays where she is.

"Anna, come on," Jack says.

"No. I'm not going anywhere with you, Jack Frost, you selfish, conniving, mis—misbegotten son of a—a—Olaf! And a—"

"Anna," he says. "C'mon. We're friends, aren't we?"

"No, we are definitely not! Not even if you—"

He holds out his hand to her, quirking an eyebrow, and she stops. Her gaze drops, and then she meets his eyes again.

"Oh," she says. "Okay."

He nods, and Anna steps toward the open door. Jack turns around, bows insolently to Pitch, and puts out his foot to walk into the empty air.

And Pitch sees it—sees that one fear that's been crouching behind Jack's every action, every word, every thought. He knows why Jack stalled and dawdled and detoured, he knows why Jack said yes—

Pitch's eyes go wide, his hands come together, he is slashing shadow across the space between them with all the force he can muster. Jack's staff sweeps up, cutting across the roiling dark blade; ice and ink collide in a spray of black shards and white light. Jack covers his eyes with his sleeve, momentarily blinded. When he drops his arm, Pitch is gone.

A sickening instinct sends Jack turning, turning, like the world is in slow motion and he can't move any faster than it will let him. The ice-water in his veins runs as cold as shock.

Pitch stands behind Anna. Anna is falling.

She crumples forward, veins of black and red zigzagging across the back of her spring-green dress, like poisoned lightning, like the cracks in the ice beneath him as he fights to save his sister. Jack can feel it again, that same sensation, of the world going out from under him even before he fell through the ice—that distant feeling of falling, of failing. All the breath goes out of his lungs and he is left gasping. Anna makes a small sound of pain, and then she stops moving.

"That," says Pitch coldly, "is what happens when someone reneges on a deal with me." Something glitters in the gloom around his hands, dripping blood and shadows and the faintest glint of ice-melt. "Maybe you can learn something."

"That—that wasn't—" Jack can't find himself in the maelstrom, the panicked amalgam of adrenaline and disbelief spinning around him. He's not sure he has limbs anymore, or a tongue. He's just a leaf in this tangled wind.

"You have never once intended to back out," Pitch hisses, the snow-studded obsidian blade spiraling out to surround him in a turbulence of filigree night. "All that lingering—"

Jack doesn't let him finish. He finds his motion again, his need for action; he is leaping and whirling and there are razors in the whirlwind he flings at the Nightmare King. Pitch disappears, replaced with an echoing laugh; Jack darts out of the cage just as the door clangs shut again, trapping Anna's empty shell inside.

For a moment he is plummeting through hollow air, and he imagines letting himself fall. He isn't sure he would survive the crash landing anymore; his limbs feel limp and lifeless, his powers more so. Anna is gone, Anna who almost let him go but believed still, Anna who came to save her sister—

At the last second, Jack flips himself over and tries to hit a four-point crouch, but he lands with more force than he meant to. Dust billows out of the debris and he pulls himself back together, feeling the bruises blooming, the blood trickling down his cheek.

Pitch looms before him, wearing a biting smile that doesn't quite mask his resentment. "That," he says, while Jack struggles to his feet, "seems to have solved this little problem nonetheless, doesn't it? You can barely stand. How… delightful." He lifts one hand, and Jack is certain he can see the dark blots of blood on the sickly-grey skin. Lacy knots of shadow start to come together in his palm.

"How many people still believed in you? Was it… two? And now, I'm afraid… none."

"Kristoff," Jack croaks, "still—"

Pitch shrugs. The snow-laced murk in his hand forms the silhouette of Anna folding up like a trampled butterfly and Jack standing over her, letting her down. "Not after he sees this."

"He won't believe—he'll think it's a trick!"

"But it won't be, will it, Jack?" Pitch closes his hand over the image, crushing it. "You really did just… let her die."

Jack slams his fist into the ground, but the frost that sprouts from his touch is faint, melts quickly. Pitch's laugh weighs down on him.

"Wait 'til I—I'll tell Elsa—"

"Ooooh, a tattletale." Pitch shakes his hands on either side of his face, wide-eyed. "I'm terrified." He curls his fingers behind his back and turns away from Jack, who is on his feet again, but bowed over, breath coming short and heavy. "Elsa told me to remove anyone who still believed in you. She knew her sister was among that… very small number."

"And you—just do what she tells you?"

"Yes," says Pitch, smiling. "I do."

He melts back into his shadow, growing over the walls, towering above Jack. "And so the mountain man is widowed," he declares, voice echoing from stone to stone. "His lovely bride—although." The shadows pause, cock their heads in unison, and Pitch reappears, crouching in front of Jack. "It seems I don't know. Were they actually married?"

Jack closes his eyes. "Engaged," he whispers. They put off their wedding until after Elsa's. And Elsa's—Elsa's never happened.

-o-

He went to see her on her wedding day. Of course he did.

He told himself he couldn't escape it, the entire castle draped in Arendelle's green-purple-gold, Weselton's gold-red-black, and swathes of white like snow-covered hills. What he really should've done was left the castle, sequestered himself in the mountain winter until the whole affair was finished. Weddings were for adults, weddings were for people who had someone else to see them; and most importantly, weddings were boring. He had been to few-if-any in his lonely three centuries; he wasn't going to subject himself to any of that now. He wasn't going to make himself sit there and watch Elsa marry someone nondescript and dull and unwanted.

He wasn't going to make himself watch Elsa marry someone who wasn't him.

The solace of mountain silence would have been no solace at all, with nothing to drown out his thoughts but his own arguments with the moon. At least it would have been a relief from white lace and flowers, every female servant struck by a constant fit of giggles, the huffy glares he got from Anna every time he walked past. He should've left, if only to play with the excited kids in town, all infected by the celebrations—anything to take him farther from this sick feeling in the pit of his stomach at the thought of Elsa at the altar. She was throwing her childhood away all over again. Neither one of them needed to get married—they could just run off together and have fun—

Except he couldn't risk where that would lead—and she would never leave her kingdom. Her responsibilities. Her adulthood. What happened to giving Elsa her childhood back? What happened—

"I need to get out of here," Jack muttered, scuffing his foot on the carpet. A passing servant scowled at him for the patch of frost spreading across the no doubt freshly-cleaned rug. He rolled his eyes and flipped his staff across his shoulders.

"Definitely. Anywhere but here."

But there was no way he was going to let Pitch into the castle on Elsa's wedding day. Not even if a Nightmare invasion would send the whole thing to a crashing halt and maybe—just maybe—prevent the political marriage from ever taking place. Jack couldn't leave the revelers undefended. Couldn't leave her vulnerable.

So he went to see her on her wedding day.

-o-

Jack climbed in her window so he didn't have to brave the hordes of ladies-in-waiting marching in and out of Elsa's room. He waited until she had forced them all out in an icy spray of frustration, then creaked the window open and stepped lightly inside.

Elsa was staring into a three-paneled standing mirror as if she couldn't find herself in it. Not moving—just staring. He came up behind her, appearing in the triple mirror, looking plain and careless beside her luminous confection of a dress.

"Go away, Jack," she said hollowly. She didn't even look at him.

"Hang on, I've got to see this." He stepped back, gesturing for her to turn around. "You look like your own wedding cake."

She turned stiffly; the layers of her skirt chimed like glass and rustled like spring leaves in a soft breeze. She was wearing so many ruffles and laces that he couldn't tell where the fabric ended and her ice began. Stars of frost and beaded snow draped her bodice; snowy ribbons drifted and spun in nonexistent wind; sheer silk whispered out behind her, decorated with spiky flowers of frost. A crown of crystalline crocuses, woven with iced roses, held a veil of rime over her hair, which was half braided on top of her head and half flowing in waves as pale as the winter sun.

"I'm not even sure you can move in that," he said.

"I can't," she said, eyes blank. That expression was starting to unnerve him. "Aren't you going to tell me how nice I look, like everyone else?"

"You always look nice," he said dismissively. "Today you look like a snow—"

"Queen?"

"I was gonna go for 'snowman,' but I guess yours makes more sense. It's more flattering, too."

He noticed her gloves then—gloves that he thought she would never wear again. She was clothed fingertip to elbow in frost as delicate as leaf veins and root systems, as intricate as snowflakes—hundreds of them, repeating their fractal patterns across her skin.

"Elsa, you can't really want to do this," he said suddenly. Part of him thought of grabbing her and diving out the window, letting the wind take them both to freedom. Would that be an act of true love, or just selfish desperation?

"Not all of us can live for what we want."

"Yeah, but I'm not proposing 'all of us.'"

She met his gaze for the first time, and her eyes hardened. There was something about them—it took him a moment, but he realized they were not her usual shallow-sea-cyan, but instead a cobalt like the ocean depths.

"I want to," she said. Her voice had lost its hollow ring and turned itself into something jagged, something that cut him just to hear. "He's a gentleman."

Jack eyed her, his head tilted slightly, suspicion and a glimmer of recognition narrowing his eyes. "What? A gentleman—?"

Elsa turned away, straightening her reflection, tilting her head back. He had never seen her so—queen-like, looking down on the world who would force her to marry some weasel-faced nobleman's son.

"I will be queen," she said to herself in the mirror, sunlight catching on all the sharp edges in her gown. "And I will never have to hide who I am."

"You are queen," Jack said, emotion writing frost spirals onto the floor. They twirled toward Elsa, reaching for the trailing hems of her dress. "And that jerk will probably just make you hide more of the time. I don't think Weasel-Town really likes your powers. C'mon, Elsa, you're wearing gloves. What's with that?"

A servant started knocking at the door, calling that it was time to head for the chapel. Jack's head shot up, his eyes widening. He hadn't meant to be here so long, so late, so close to the end. Elsa clenched her fists, frost crackling over her knuckles. "I want this," she said under her breath. And louder—"Go away, Jack. You had your chance."

"Anna says this is my last chance."

"Anna is wrong," Elsa said. "That's past." She turned toward the door, an iridescent ice track sliding along in her wake. Jack stepped forward and grabbed her arm, above the elbow—above the glove. Snowflakes sparked in the air at the touch—his or hers, he didn't know.

"Let me go," she ordered, teeth gritted, eyes empty and dark and cold.

"At least take the gloves off," he said, and to his surprise, she smiled.

"Done," she said, and the storm exploded out of her.

Jack hurtled back, crashing into the mirror. Its fragments sprayed out into the wind, cutting across his face and hands as the frame folded over him. He fought his way free, feeling the blood trickle and stop. One arm raised to shield his eyes from the whirling blades of snow, he peered into the turbulent sphere, searching for Elsa. She was nearly invisible, white in white, but he found her—and she noticed when he did. She'd been waiting for it.

Her smile curved into something wicked and she threw her arms wide. Curving icicles burst from her knuckles like talons as long as her forearms, tearing the delicate frost to tatters that dispersed in her personal wind.

"Everyone will remember this day," she said, and pivoted away.

The door exploded, gusting the crowd of servants back against the wall to a chorus of screams. Elsa stalked out it, hands thrown wide, storm following her like a lost puppy who couldn't sleep. Jack slipped to his feet and skidded after her, avoiding stepping on her ice trail, which was veined with black as if it had been poisoned.

"Elsa!"

Her icicle-claws extended to the walls, drawing deep gouges in the paint. A curving barricade of spikes leapt up before her, preceding her down the hall, menacing anyone who didn't get out of her way fast enough. Doors broke beneath the wrath of the marching storm. Ice left raw scars in walls and floor.

Jack threw himself after her, but her miniature blizzard absorbed every bolt of ice he flung for her attention. IT was as if she had forgotten him, a mayfly to her winter: unnoticeable, soon dying.

"Elsa!"

He followed her destruction all the way to the chapel. Wedding guests not important enough to be inside and milling servants fled before the two of them. Dignitaries howled in rage; maids and manservants simply cowered, disbelieving, having come so close to trusting their queen again only to see it all torn down.

The gilded chapel doors slammed open, cracking with the force and hanging lopsided on their hinges. The entire crowed lunged to its feet in one collective gasp, most of the spectators proceeding to topple over or climb on top of each other in their hurry to escape.

Multi-hued light cascaded through the stained glass windows to color Elsa's pale fury in scarlet and sapphire. Fields of flower arrangements froze over. Anna had appeared, holding her skirts high to avoid tripping as she, like Jack, ran toward Elsa. At the altar, the Duke of Weselton's son stood, gape-jawed, at his intended bride.

His presence was forgotten Pitch rose out of the shadows at his feet.

Jack shouted, a wordless cry of rage and anguish and failure; Pitch smiled superciliously at him, hands folded calmly behind his back. Elsa stormed up the aisle toward him, through the chaos, through the snow, through Jack's echoing thoughts of I failed, I screwed up again.

"My queen," said Pitch, holding out his hand.

Elsa looked back at Jack. And then she took it.

Her wedding dress shattered, ten thousand fragments of ice and innocence falling away to leave her clothed in frost and shadow. Winter night clung to her like a lover. Her veil tattered and blackened. Her hands were bare.

"My king," she said, holding Jack's eyes, and the Snow Queen and the Nightmare King merged into darkness, taking all the sunlight with them.