Author's Note: In which Elson needs a hug.
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Everything is quiet. Everything is dark.
Elson sits against the wall, idly handling an ice shard, one of the many products of his most recent … lapse.
He's been having those quite often.
It's difficult, being alone. Being … lonely. He never noticed it before, not really.
Not until Jack.
Oh, Jack…
Sometimes, in the worst moments, he blames her, hates her. Curses her name in the hollow depths of his palace for opening his eyes, for thawing him with her warmth, for burning him.
Still, whatever words Elson might say, he needs her. Loves her. And it only takes another moment for him to switch from promising her a painful demise to sobbing for forgiveness. He can never truly hate her. But he is angry and he is alone and there are times when he feels as if he might start choking on the air.
He loves her Jack but she is not here.
Cruel, heartless child! Did she never realize how much he needs her? Forget the world! Cast it aside! It may take care of itself; it has for so many years now. Yet a colder voice whispers in his ear that perhaps she does know. Perhaps, oh perhaps, her love for him simply never ran that deep. She was – is – a child, and how can children understand Elson's kind of love, even if they do know of it? Knowing without realizing. It's an awful thought, another little thing that threatens madness.
Or, perhaps, he is already mad and simply growing worse.
What kind of love had Jack held for him? He never asked – he recognizes now that he was too afraid to hear her answer – and regrets it. The unasked, unanswered question haunts him like a vengeful specter. It seizes his heart in long, bony fingers and squeezes.
He loves her.
He loves her.
He loves her.
And it's all he can think of.
It's rather pathetic, whenever he's lucid enough to think in those sorts of terms. A king of a once-prosperous kingdom brought down to … this. Whatever 'this' can be called. Alone in his hollow home, pining after a girl he'd frightened away.
Perhaps, she was right to leave.
Right to stay away.
Perhaps.
That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt him. Doesn't mean it doesn't sting. She was all he had that actually mattered. Elson thinks of his brother, of his parents, and though he can no longer recall their faces, he knows he loved them. They had also left him alone in a cold palace to idle the centuries away. They … well, he supposes that even they hadn't loved him enough to stay.
Just like Jack.
Everything that ever mattered always left.
Always.
His home has become his prison and he breaks the walls, shatters finely wrought decorations, cuts himself on their icy shards but the pain only drives his frenzy. He roars and rages at the heavens, demanding recompense for this awful life he's been given. And then–
Exhaustion.
He is tired. He is so … so tired. Like a rag wrung out one too many times, and he crumples on the floor in the midst of his destruction. Fresh and old wounds ooze blood and other bodily fluids as he curls up on himself, whispering and muttering and trying to pretend that he can stand living like this.
Time passes and leaves Elson a husk of himself. Ironically, the only thing he hasn't broken or destroyed yet is the statue of the boy. He despises it and all the things it reminds him of, though the glimmer of light and life trapped in the confines the ice has long since faded into a dull ember – still, he cannot bring himself to harm it. Tempting as it is, there's something equally foreboding about the thought of so much as inflicting a scratch upon the gleaming ice.
He thinks of Jack, out in the world, spreading cheer and warmth in a season for endings. He thinks of the sheer joy in her eyes whenever she used to tell him about her exploits and misadventures with the children. She's somewhere out there now, probably doing something productive, something real that matters to her, if not to anyone else. He thinks about that and looks around in his palace. It's a grand place – too grand, he knows, for one person. Too big, too cold, filled with voices and whispers and ghosts that taunt him, jabbing at wounds that time has never really healed.
He feels trapped, but does he have to be? Why should he stay? What, if anything at all, is really keeping him here?
There is … nothing.
But there is a trepidation taking hold of Elson at the thought of really leaving his palace – along with a creeping feeling that he has never really stopped being afraid. He thought he'd gotten rid of that emotion – and in doing so, suppressed all the others – but now seems as if it was more a case of having nothing more to fret over rather than being fearless.
Until Jack came and turned everything upside down. Or maybe she flipped them back to the right side up, he's not quite sure. But things are different now and he knows his old way of life is no longer an option.
Perhaps there's something to Jack's love of the world.
He sets out with nothing but the clothes on his back and some coins in a pouch – currency that, although probably not accepted anymore, can still be melted down into something that can be used. His nerves fray as they rub together and memories he'd long pushed down on a heap of other things come rushing to his mind's eye. He remembers his self-imposed exile, the faces on the people when they realized what he can do, what he is.
But he takes in a deep breath, sets his jaw and steps out of the courtyard. The sun shining down on him isn't any different and neither is the air, but he is different. Jack has ensured that. He also reminds himself that he isn't doing this to find her, though he relishes in the possibility; he is leaving for … well, for himself. He's finding himself and while he doesn't know what exactly that entails, he has a nagging feeling that this is something he must do away from her.
Will he still love her, in the end? He's not sure, doesn't know what the fruits of this endeavor will be, has no idea where he's even going, but he is leaving his ghosts behind and that's quite a good start.
So he takes one more step, then another – and another.
He doesn't look back.
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Author's Note: This chapter takes place during and also sometime after the second chapter.