First of all, thank you for all the support. You guys are great.
I hope you like the second part of this story as much. As always, I'd be greatful if you could point my mistakes, it helps me with English.
Thanks again for all your amazing words of support! Enjoy!
"Hiccup, what's wrong?"
"Mer, I've been trying to call Jack for hours and he won't answer. I'm worried!"
"Take it easy, I'm sure he's okay."
"No! Listen, he's been acting weirder these last weeks. And on this day, two years ago..."
"Yeah, I know, I know. The accident… Wait! You don't mean to tell me…"
"Yes!"
"Oh, God... Hic, I'll meet you at the lake. Call 911."
"Already have. And I'm about to get there."
For long moments, all that I could be sure about was the darkness, yes, different shades of darkness swallowing me into oblivion, pulling me further down towards the bottom of the lake.
I don't know how to explain it, but the weight of the darkness eventually crashed me out of my body. Suddenly I was standing once again outside the water, right next to the hole that I had fallen through. I leaned a little, and I was able to see myself sinking deeper into the water, but I wouldn't dare say that that boy was me.
I wasn't him anymore, and it felt okay.
I looked around me, taking it all in. The wind blew, but I couldn't feel its coldness stroking my face. My feet were bare, but I didn't felt the pain of the freezing temperature against them. The ice was no longer cracking with my weight.
By the movement of the top of the trees and the riddles in the water, I noticed that everything was flowing much more slowly than normal. Even the ice, which is supposed to freeze back together almost instantaneously, was still broken. I was the only thing that seemed to move in normal speed. A bird's flight proved my theory right, because it crossed from one side of the valley to another in an impossible slowly way.
The silence was somehow musical. Every sound was distant, but not totally absent. It reminded me of those moments when you are concentrating so much in something that you can barely hear what someone sitting right next to you is saying. And there was also a calming echo that surrounded even the sweet lack of noise.
The colors seemed to be made of light, which made them brighter but paler, and gave everything the looks of an old photograph.
Funny thing, I never felt scared by any of it.
Out of curiosity, I leaned once again over the not yet frozen ice and watched myself sinking deeper, noticing that it also happened in slow motion. I hadn't moved much from the surface, and I figured that in real time, the old me had been in the water for no more than seconds. I kept watching my body growing smaller, hoping that it would reach the bottom already and that the ice would freeze once again. Then I could consider all of this done with, and I would figure out what to do next…
"Jack, what have you done ?" A voice that I had been terrified to forget asked.
I turned around at once, loosing my balance. I felt my jaw falling, and the things I wanted to say and the questions I wanted to ask remained trapped in my throat, unable to reach my voice. After a moment of silence, a word finally managed to escape from my lips.
"Elsa?"
She smiled the brightest of all smiles, and a confused but honest laughter came from my lungs while I closed the space between us. I held her in a desperate hug that she returned, and all the time I was a mess of teary eyes and pieces of laughter. And I couldn't help but notice that even though the touch of the wind and the cold of the ice were still unnoticeable to me, I was able to feel the warmth of the girl's body.
I took her head between both my hands, and her fingers reached to mine. My forehead touched hers, and I closed my eyes, overwhelmed.
"Elsa…" I whispered.
I opened my eyes once again to find that her blue ones were staring at me. Their old glimmer was still there, the one that made her one of those persons who can smile with the eyes and fix everything with just a gaze.
I studied her face, taking in all the details that I used to love about it, like the color of her eyes, or the splash of freckles on her nose, or the way that strands of her hair escaped from her braid. She seemed to have some kind of light to her, but then again, she always had. Her smile hadn't grown old a day, and I felt the urge to kiss her lips.
But I didn't.
By feeling that impulse to kiss her, I was hit from the inside by the memory of the last time that I had felt such a need, when she was nothing but an empty body with a cold pair of lips and a missing soul. That deadly kiss was the realest thing that I ever felt… what if this girl standing in front of me was nothing more than another one of those lies that I told myself when things were the most unbearable?
I took a step back, afraid of her. Her smile faded a little.
"I won't hurt you Jack."
"Who are you?" I asked. Maybe it was a ridiculous thing to ask, but I couldn't help it.
"It's me, Jack. It's really me." She said, coming towards me. I took another step back. "Jack, it's me, Elsa. Don't be afraid."
She kept walking towards me, and I kept walking backwards, trying to fix a mess that was rising in my heart. But soon I was standing just by the hole in the ice, and it took a moment of distraction in which I looked down to see the boy still sinking into the depth for her to reach me.
The girl placed softly one hand over my heart and another one in the back of my neck.
"I'm still me, Jack." she whispered, her head approaching. Her lips were just one instant away from mine. "And you are still you…"
I felt my eyes widening in fear when she kissed me, but after a brief moment they were closed and the fear was gone. My heart became an island where only she and I existed. I felt myself smiling against her lips, and a tear made of joy was rolling down my cheek when we finally pulled apart.
The kiss might have taken just seconds, but I felt a part of me resurrecting, a part of me that had died when she did. Just like that, my troubled soul was fixed and my heart was full with a love that was never dead, after all.
Elsa escaped from my embrace, taking a step forward and kneeling by the cracked ice, staring at the old Jack surrounded by darkness, sinking in slow motion.
"Oh, Jack. What have you done?" she asked again, but it didn't felt like a question.
I kneeled besides her, turning her face towards mine. "I wanted to be with you again."
"But this isn't how it's like supposed to be, Jack…" I noticed the seriousness in her voice, but I couldn't help but to smile at the sound of it saying my name. She noticed, and chuckled while standing up, me following suit.
"Well, it is done now." I stated. She looked hearth broken for a split second, but soon turned around and started walking away. I followed her, until we reached the edge of the lake, and we sat down in the snow. She took my hand in silence and I noticed that she was still the only thing around me which temperature I could sense.
"No, it's not." She said firmly.
"Humm?" I was confused.
"It's not done, Jack. You are not dead yet."
"What?" I asked, more confused yet.
"Have you noticed how time passes slowly? The time that you really have spent under the water hasn't been enough for you to drown or to freeze."
"Oh, I see. Then don't worry, Elsa. We just have to wait a little bit longer…"
"In fact, they sent me here to convince you not to die." She said, looking me right in the eyes.
"What are you talking about?" My voice was angry.
"You can choose, Jack…" she started, but I interrupted.
"Well, I don't see how" my tone was slightly rude. "My body is in the water, and the only one who knows it it's me."
"I think you are underestimating your friends, Jack. They know you better than you think."
And as if on cue, Hiccup came rushing into the valley, right in front of me. Seeing him running was strange, because he moved slowly like everything else in the valley. He stopped and scanned his surroundings.
"Jack!" he screamed, and his voice was like and echo with no end and no beginning.
"Hiccup! Wh… what? What are you doing here?"
My best friend didn't answer, but started running once again in the slowly kind of way. I saw his movement frame by frame, capturing all too well all the details of the pain in his expression.
"He can't hear you, Jack" Elsa said.
Just then, Hiccup reached me, but instead of crashing into me, he just passed right through, like I was nothing. The feeling of it sent shivers to every part of me, and for the first occasion in all that time, I felt cold. I turned around, following with my eyes the strange movement of the boy, still unable to understand what had just happened. I jumped a little, in surprise, when Elsa took my hand.
"But… but he called my name" I said, staring at our intertwined fingers as if that connection could explain the one that hadn't happened with Hiccup.
"Look, Jack…" she said, pointing at Hiccup with her free pale hand. The boy was just reaching the fence surrounding the frozen lake, leaning a little over it. "He meant the real you."
"Jack!" came Hiccup's echo of a voice.
"I am the real me." I said to Elsa.
"Well… one point of view." she answered, and then smiled at Hiccup.
I raised my eyes to see what he was doing, and the image of Hiccup jumping above the fence and heading to the water took me by surprise.
"Hiccup? What are you doing?" I asked him as if he could hear me. I approached hurriedly to the lake, Elsa following me like a warm shadow.
My widened eyes follow Hiccup's slowed movements. His steps were shaky when he first walked into the thin ice, but soon they became quicker and quicker. Maybe he was running, it was hard to tell, but I sure knew that he was at least going as fast as his cautiousness allowed him to. I watched in terror the thin ice cracking below him, but surprisingly, he wasn't scared. His eyes were fixed upon the big hole, in which he knew all to well that a sad boy had just fallen through. I couldn't believe that the ice hadn't broken already, but he reached safely the spot where my body was sinking.
It wasn't until he jumped through the whole that I finally understood what he was doing. The water splashed and swallowed him.
"No! Fool, stop it!" I screamed at his swimming figure.
Elsa took my hand again, and I looked desperately at her.
"Calm down, Jack." she said, sweetly. "Nothing will happen to him, I know so."
I believed her, but still I couldn't help but to look back at Hiccup. I saw him swimming right towards my sinking body.
"How do you know?" I asked Elsa in a whisper.
"I can tell. Besides, he isn't trying to die."
It was difficult to look what was happening down there, among the shadows, but I could distinguish perfectly Hiccup's motion when he extended his hand and take hold of my body's forearm.
Right in that second, I suddenly felt nothing but cold in my skin and heat in my lungs. I felt as if the lack of air was burning me from the inside. The beats of my heart were desperately drumming against my chest and against my temples, and my mind felt all of it with detail.
Elsa surrounded me with one arm, and all those sensations were gone just like that, but I was terrified, with my both hands pressed against the place where I had just felt my heart fighting.
I looked down at the two boys, and noticed that Hiccup was already reaching the surface. I figured that perhaps during those seconds in which I felt slightly alive again, time had gone by normally. Hiccup gasped for air when he emerged from the water, dragging my body along.
"Hiccup, stop! What are you doing, you idiot? Leave me alone!" my words made no effect on him.
"Come with me Jack" Elsa's sweet voice ordered me. "We need to talk."
I let her pull me away from the struggling boy who was risking his life for nothing.
The light of the moon illuminated Elsa's features while she dragged me into the quiet forest. Her arm was linked with mine, and her contact was easing the storm inside me.
It had been a while since I recognized where she was leading me to, but I still let her guide the way. There was a tree in the forest, not far away from the valley. We used to come there a lot, when she was around. We would just sit there, and tell each other our pasts and our fears and our secrets. One of those times, I carved our names by the very bottom of the tree, so the marks would grow higher as time passed. Back then, it felt as if those marks represented a promise that could actually last forever.
We soon arrived.
The shadow of our tree was transparent, almost absent. It seemed to be sleeping in peace. Elsa stayed behind when I let go of her arm and took a step forward, kneeling to see the marks. I caressed the letters of her name, and just like everything else, I couldn't feel their texture, or their temperature, but I tried to imagine that they had the kind of warmth that Elsa had, like thin sunlight in a winter morning.
But those letters seemed to be angry at me, and I knew why. I hadn't come to visit the tree ever since the owner of the carved name died. I had let the tree grow taller for two years without daring to come and witness it. For me, that tree was exactly like the stone that had behind the little box that kept Elsa's ashes. It was something in which her memory lingered… in which no more than her memory remained.
Even when the tree rejected me, I sat against it when Elsa did. My arm went around her and I almost didn't notice. I smiled recognizing in this an old habit that I had back when I felt able to protect her. What a fool.
But not one of those old regrets mattered then, sitting with her, against the tree that knew so much about us.
"I've missed you so much, Elsa" I confessed playing whit her fingers. She brought my hand up to her lips and kissed it.
"I'm sorry" she said.
I took her chin to force her to look me in the eyes.
"Don't be. It was me who failed you."
"Oh, Jack. You didn't fail me." Her voice was just as warm as her. "You loved me."
It was me who looked away.
"Exactly. I loved… I love you so much, Elsa. And still I couldn't do anything to save you."
When she put a hand in my cheek to make me look at her, she wiped a tear away with her thumb. She was also tearing up.
"Please, don't say that. Don't feel that."
"But it's true. I couldn't even tell you goodbye, or tell you what you meant to me."
"But I knew it Jack. I died being sure that you loved me. And it comforted me."
I have heard her speaking in that kind of way when she was alive. Her whole expression was serious, and the truth of her words was touchable.
"And where have you been, Elsa?" I asked, resting my head against hers.
"Everywhere. I'm always with the ones that remember me. I have seen my parents crying, Jack. I have memorized Anna's silence, and I have touched your pain with my own hands. But I can't feel sorry for any of you. I can't feel sad. I can't miss my life. I'm always at peace. Dying was scary, and lonely, but it was only a moment. After that, I've never been alone." Her voice had become quieter with every word. She finished with a smile. That smile seemed intended to someone who wasn't me.
"So, do you visit me often?" I asked, and she chuckled.
"I never leave your side." Her tone became darker. "You were more broken everyday…"
"But now I'm fine." I said. "Now I'm with you."
"Jack…" she started.
"No." I interrupted. "I won't go back. I haven't felt this alive in a long time, Elsa. Until now, I was as dead as you. Only that I was truly alone."
"Perhaps you chose to be."
The kiss I pressed to her lips in that moment was sad and desperate. Just like me.
When we pulled apart, she rested her head in my chest, and I surrounded her with both my arms, as if I was trying to stop her from being taken away from me.
I was relieved after learning that she hadn't been suffering those two years, and I was more than happy to find out that all that time, she had somehow existed.
Every now and then, she said something to try and convince me to go back to life, to my mom, to my sister, to our friends… but I pressed a kiss to her head, dismissing her intentions. After a while, she stopped talking, and there, in the musical silence of that moment without a time, my forgotten tree forgave me.
And so did I.
I jumped into standing when I felt a powerful pain hitting me right in the chest. It could only be described as lighting. The cold against my skin was back and more intense than before, and for a brief moment, I could hear loud voices whose owners I couldn't see nor recognize.
"I'm sorry." said Elsa, standing up from the ground after I pushed her. "I should have warned you."
"About what?" I asked. The pain had gone as fast as it had come.
"Don't worry. That was the first one, but I don't think that you will be able to feel the next ones." I still didn't understand what she was talking about.
"Close your eyes, Jack." Elsa ordered me. I did and she took my hand. "Now open them."
To be once again standing by the lake took me by surprise, but not as much as the little crowd that had gathered there. They were all rushing in slow motion.
Hiccup was standing aside from the group, wrapped in a blanket and not taking his eyes off of them. I also recognized the girl with fiery red hair that was hugging him with one arm, and holding a cell phone with her free hand, talking with someone. I didn't know who Merida was talking to, but the mere idea of the possibilities send shivers down my spine.
All the people in the small group were wearing the same clothes with a red cross printed in the chest. An ambulance with more people wearing the same uniform was parked near by, and one guy was getting a stretcher out of it. I knew that the little group was kneeling around my body before coming close and looking at it by myself.
The old Jack laid on his back, over two blankets that someone had extended for him to avoid the contact with the snow. He was impossibly pale; his skin had some kind of white that lingered between blue and gray. His eyes were closed in a scared expression. A woman was holding his chin up, and the white of her gloves made the white of his skin look all the most sickening.
"One more time. Charge, and… clear!" another one of them said, while pressing a defibrillator device against my body's bare chest. I heard detail by detail the terrifying sound of the machine charging, and gasped in anticipation of the pain that I thought would come, but just as Elsa had said, I didn't feel anything. I saw the back of the old Jack curving up in the air, as if something was trying to break his ribs and escape from inside him. I placed a shaky hand above my chest.
"Stop it!" I ordered, but by then I knew all to well that they couldn't hear me.
"They won't be able to bring you back, Jack. Only you can!" Elsal said, letting go of my hand and turning me around from the scene.
"Stop it, Elsa!" I said, raising my voice.
"No, Jack. I won't allow this. You only have to truly wish it and you will live. Please, please, don't do this for me!"
"This isn't only about you…" I replied, and I spoke so lowly that I wasn't sure she had heard me. But it was true, it wasn't only about Elsa, it was also about me, trapped in a life that I couldn't keep on living.
"You need to go back, Jack! Please, go back." I knew by the way in which her voice trembled that I was running out of time, and that if she was to convince me to go back, it was right then or never.
"Back to what?!" I was angry.
She cracked half a smile.
"Maybe the proper question is 'back to whom'." Her eyes stared at something behind my shoulder, and I turned around so quickly that I almost loose my balance.
I saw exactly what I was afraid to see. My mom's car had just stopped as close to the scene around my body as possible, and with a broken "Stay in the car, sweetheart." she slammed the door closed and ran towards the little crowd. I perceived her movements just as I had with Hiccup's when he had run earlier, frame by frame, and it was as if I could see her getting older by the second. Her face was distorted with a pain that I knew well, for I have felt it every day since Elsa was taken away from me. I remembered myself running through the halls of the hospital, to afraid of not getting to her in time.
To be reminded of that made me look away from my mom, but then, as if by accident, my eyes stared into the ones of my little sister, who was disobeying, timidly getting down from the back seat of the car, and it was all worse. She reminded me of my soul, and of all the few good things that were still in it.
Overwhelmed, I turn around to see Elsa.
"Why are you doing this to me?" I asked, and my voice mirrored the mess inside of me.
"I'm no doing it, Jack. It is you, you are doing this. But you can stop." Her intentions were clear.
She thought that by making me witness all of that, I would change my mind. But she had miscalculated. Dying was something that I had decided firmly long ago, and of course I had considered the damage and pain I would cause to those who didn't realize that my life meant nothing. The mere idea of it haunted me every night, but the absence of Elsa haunted me more. I lived two years in which everything had reminded me that my Elsa no longer existed, and the thing that reminded me of it the most, was me.
So yes, it hurt like flames to watch all the hearts that I was breaking, but my mind was made up. Only one frightening question remained…
"Don't you want me to be with you?"
"Of course I do, Jack. Of course I do." she smiled a sad smile. "But not like this."
"And what difference does it make, then? If you want to be with me, who cares about how…"
"I do. And you should." She extended her arm behind her, pointing at the scene. "You are not like this. This isn't you, Jack"
"You are wrong."
"I'm not. I love you, and I know exactly why. I love you because of who you are, and it scares me to see you letting go of that, Jack. You are not this person."
My silence and the look of my eyes was the only answer I could manage.
"If you die Jack, you will no longer be the one who I love so eternally, and so, you will never be able to love me as much as you love me now."
"Why can't you understand?" I asked, genuinely confused. "I can't live with out you, Elsa! I simply can't!"
"Jack, I am always, always with you."
"Shut up!" she jumped a little, startled by the anger that I couldn't keep on holding in. "It's so easy for you! You just say that you are always with me and everything… but what about me? Huh? WHAT ABOUT ME?! I can't be with you, I can't see you, or touch you or tell you I love you…" I paced frantically back and forth while screaming at her. "I mean, how dare you?! You just come here and tell me to live again… well, guess what?! I wasn't living. I haven't lived a day since you left!"
"Jack…" I didn't hear her voice, but I notice the movement of her quivering lips.
"I mean, you have no idea!" I continued "You don't know how it's like to be me and to wake up every single day wishing that I hadn't. And… and to realize that all the good things that you still have mean absolutely nothing… my family, my friends, nothing matters, nothing makes me happy! Everything just died! Everything was dead, just like me! Just… just like you. "
She was fighting back the tears, and to notice it made me realize that so was I.
"You just died, Elsa!" my voice became even louder. "And I couldn't get to say goodbye! Why? Why didn't you wait for me?!" I looked at the sky above me, feeling that the moon was looking back at me with all its unmerciful greatness "WHY?!"
But the moon gave me no answer, so I looked again at the pale blonde girl who was now crying as honestly and as brokenly as I was.
"I… I haven't lived a day…" I repeated with a cracked voice, walking towards her with drunk-like steps "Not a single day." Her arms crashed me, returning the possessive hug I gave to her.
"Why didn't you wait for me?" it was my soul more than my voice that was speaking now. Both our legs seemed to lack the strength to keep us up, and we soon were kneeling against a white snow whose coldness I could finally feel, but we hold on to our hug as if it could save us from what was eating us from inside.
"Why didn't you wait for me?" I wished I could just stop talking. "Why, Elsa? You killed me."
"I know it." came her whispered answer." I lied earlier, Jack, when I said I couldn't feel sad. There's one thing that I can feel miserable about, and it is the fact that I destroyed you. I will have to deal with it through eternity." She tightened her embrace around me. "I'm trying to save you from that. I'm trying to save you from killing what you love the most."
I started to cry even harder, about me, and about Elsa, and about the decision that my heart knew was right in spite of all the feelings that it couldn't get rid off.
Before I buried my head in her shoulder, I got through my blurry vision the image of my little sister, gathering in her tiny hands my shoes that until then had been in the same place I had left them before stepping into the cold, thin ice.
It was only a second, but it disturbed my entire soul and broke me in a new kind of way that made everything look different, and as I continued to cry harder, I used all my might to remind my heart that no matter what, the most important feeling inside of it was still and forever would be my infinite love for Elsa.
That was what mattered, and knowing that, I was ready to face whatever my decision might bring.
"Okay, one last time! Charge and… Clear!"
Thanks for reading and wait for the last chapter.