(Author's Note: GAH, only almost 2,00 words! I AM SO SO SORRY FOR HOW SHORT THIS IS. I really am; I didn't intend for it to be this short. But the next chapter will come much faster and it'll be much longer, I promise. I've just been really busy with other stuff.

ALSO:

As a side note, if any of you have a tumblr, I made a Jack Frost RP/Ask blog called jackfrostisabout. So if you want to chat with or RP with the Jack you've seen me write, go there and drop a question! It's excellent practice for me to get Jack's character down correctly. Plus it's really fun to be Jack. So have fun with that, guys, I'd love it if you checked it out!)

Elsa's first night in her new home was perfect. No nightmares. No worry. She actually smiled in her sleep. She turned her winter dress into a nightgown, not unlike the one she was used to wearing. Her bed was softer than you'd imagine, being made of ice. She could make fabric with her powers, couldn't he? She'd made a magic gown. She could make a magic mattress, no problem.

When she woke, sunlight streamed in through her window. She knew it couldn't melt a single atom of her castle. Elsa's brand of winter was different. Stretching in as unladylike a way as she could muster—and it felt great—Elsa got up and whirled her nightgown back into the dress. Time to do some more construction work.

As she wandered down the many flights of stairs she wondered how Anna was doing. She wondered when they would have her little sister's crowning ceremony. Anna could marry Hans now, if she wanted to. A coronation and a wedding. It was strange to think Elsa wouldn't be attending either. Well, that was how it should be. Anna could have exactly the life she'd always desired now, and do it safely, without her older sister messing things up.

The inside of her castle was gorgeous—it was everything she wanted. But the outside was looking a little dull. Snow, snow, snow. She loved snow, but really, things could stand to be a little livelier, couldn't they?

Reaching the back double doors on the first floor, she went outside, her feet crunching on the snowdrifts. She just adored that sound.

"Let's start with a garden," Elsa decided aloud.

She drew back her arms, fingers curled inward. There it was again. The storm. It was more than ready for her, and she was still so unfamiliar with the lack of nerves that came with it now. She let it fly, and immediately blue sparks encircled thirty feet in front of her.

Little ice walls outlined a path that branched out, like a cross if you were looking at it from above. Climbing the walls were tendrils of frost ivy, curling as if the glittering leaves were trying to tickle each other. Along the sides of the path, at the base of the walls, were ice flowers of different kinds.

In the center Elsa made a frozen fountain, like the one she'd placed in her palace. It was permanently dribbling into a glass pond that was devoid of ripples, in three different cascades. Around the ice bowl patterned with snowflakes, crystal roses grew. It was the only place, Elsa realized with confusion, that she'd put roses anywhere in this garden thus far. What was so special about roses? No…she knew the answer, but she refused to bring it into the open. It was silly.

Elsa walked among her garden for a little while, running her hand along the parts that needed touching up, the creation bending to her slightest whim. She grinned. It was beautiful—just how she'd imagined it.

She came to a small clearing, one she didn't even know she'd added. It looked familiar, a cul-de-sac surrounded by the same sparkling walls. There were a few blue, icy holly bushes around it, but that wasn't the familiar part. Why was…

Then she remembered. She'd been 16.

"Where are we going, Jack?"

"You'll see."

Elsa stopped at the glass doors leading out into Arendelle's coveted royal gardens. "I can't go outside."

"Yeah, you can," Jack retorted. "You're not gonna shrivel up, are you?"

She didn't laugh, making sure her gloves were on tightly. "It's not that," she blustered. "It's just…what if someone sees us?"

"Well, they'll see you," Jack reminded her, rolling his eyes almost bitterly. Then he caught himself and it was all devil-may-care smiles again.

"That's the problem," Elsa huffed. "If Anna finds out I've—"

"She's not gonna find out." Jack blew open the doors with wind summoned from his staff, snowflakes from the breeze melting in the spring air outside. "She doesn't creep around waiting to see the whites of your eyes, Princess."

Elsa did laugh that time. And she was curious. Jack had promised a surprise in the gardens, and she hadn't been out there in so long. It wasn't like she didn't want to go with him. Smoothing her frock, Elsa nodded to him, forcing herself not to fiddle with the cuffs of her gloves. He'd sense her anxiety as soon as he saw her touch them.

"Okay," she murmured. "Show me."

Jack took her hand and drew her out into the sunshine. Elsa breathed it in, loving it more than winter's chill for once. Jack didn't seem to feel it at all, but he was still smiling. A king butterfly flittered past them, in a dizzy pattern as if it'd had too much pollen.

They passed the fountains in all their burbling glory, Jack dragging his free hand through the water. He left a thin little patch of ice floating in it, but he didn't seem to notice that. He kept touching everything they went by with that hand, and Elsa saw how much energy he kept pent up whenever he was with her. As if he were trying to be a little more poised for her sake. She wished he wouldn't. His long, pale fingers were all over the plants, and sometimes when they brushed a leaf, the leaf would slowly cripple into an autumn gold or a bright orange. Elsa wanted to ask him where he'd learned to do that. But he didn't turn to admire his work, and she realized he didn't know he'd done anything at all. She decided to love this ability for him.

"Almost there," he said, breaking through her observations. He tossed a grin over his shoulder, and she returned it.

Finally they got to the clearing, with benches and stone pots for the flowers, connected to the wall. Elsa thought with delight that they were going to sit in the spring warmth together and chat and joke like they always did. Then she hoped they wouldn't—she didn't want Jack to have to sit still.

Luckily she was wrong. In the center of the clearing, a blanket—actually, it looked suspiciously like one of the drapes in the parlor—was spread out. On it sat a lovely assortment of the treats from the kitchen…and lots and lots of chocolate.

Elsa gasped. "A picnic?"

Jack shrugged. "I was hungry and your room was gettin' kinda stuffy."

Elsa jiggled his arm in a very Anna-like way, still holding onto his hand. "Jack, this is a wonderful idea! I haven't done this since I was little."

"Then what're you waiting for?"

Elsa pushed the memory away. It was hard to accept that Jack had only been a figment to her all along when she kept recalling little things like that. If he was imaginary, how had he set up a picnic and surprised her that way? Had she been surprised? She must've set it up for herself and imagined Jack Frost doing it for her. Or maybe there had never been a picnic at all. 16 had been a stressful year.

Well, the garden was finished. Back inside she went.

She'd been thinking that some of the hallways were looking a little bare. They needed something to spice them up a bit. In Arendelle, each hall had had pictures hanging from the walls, but Elsa didn't want her entire castle looking like Arendelle's. She could do better than a few paintings. She had a different sort of art in mind.

Lined up like suits of armor, she began creating ice sculptures.

She made one of her Papa, the King, and she cried when she created his tender smile. She made one of Mama, too, not realizing she was humming the Norwegian lullaby as she added the lines in the late Queen's hair. Next she did Anna, in her favorite dress, that playful look perfected, right down to the dancing freckles. The sculpture of her sister looked so happy—the expression Elsa hoped Anna was wearing at this very moment.

She decided that the staff deserved a tribute as well—after all, they'd put up with her for so long—and made sculptures of Geoffrey, Berna, Kai, and Gerda.

One the opposite wall she made sculptures of the chefs and even one of the old Arendelle palace itself—a tiny model, placed on a pedestal. She made one that looked like a smaller version of the oldest tree in the kingdom, the one Papa used to take the two Princess out to swing beneath.

Elsa was getting into it; so much so that she didn't really notice what she was doing anymore. All she had to do was think, and the statues sorted themselves out. They didn't come to life—she wasn't that good—but they looked very nice all the same. Very intricate.

The last one she made, she stopped halfway through. Wait. What was she doing?

An unfinished Jack Frost leaned against the corridor as if he were flesh and blood, one foot kicked up to be placed against the wall. He was just an outline; a shape, like a shadow that had lost flatness. No details. No pupils in the eyes yet, no nails on the fingers frozen in drumming the wall, no frost lines on his shawl or spiraling up his trousers.

Why was she creating a sculpture of Jack? He was just a toy she'd put away. The castle, the old tree, the people—they all meant something to her. But childish things were supposed to be left with children. An imaginary friend had no place in her life now. She was free. She didn't have to be afraid. So she didn't need this agitating, too-good-to-be-true winter boy clouding her mind.

Something in her rose up in rebellion. She felt an almost uncontrollable avalanche of shame at what she'd just thought.

"His staff, he needs his staff," she murmured to herself, frantically shooting more ice from her hands, as if to make it up to him.

In the sculpture's right hand a staff appeared, crooked and abnormally tall, the way she remembered it. Next she added a fluffiness of actual frost to his feathery hair, and the teasing smile she knew so well.

No amount of care or concentration could make his eyes look right. She kept trying and trying, whisking them away with a frigid breeze and starting them over on the smooth, glassy face. But nothing worked. Something was missing, what was missing? She had created an entire home for herself; surely she could replicate a stupid fictional sprite!

She took two steps closer to the sculpture. "Oh, why can't I get this?" she asked it in frustration.

The sun flashed against the cold, lifeless figure, and the answer came to her.

There was no warmth in those eyes. And no matter how much magic she possessed, Elsa would never see it again.

Ignoring the sadness that swept over her, Elsa turned and began to walk down the hall with a click-cluck-click-cluck of her heels. A sudden thought struck her, and quickly she walked back to the statue of Jack.

A small smile graced her features. With a flick of her fingers, Elsa signed her name along his shoulder, in tiny flowing letters.