A/N: Song for this chapter is Centuries by Fall Out Boy. It's so perfect for them I couldn't resist (Immortals is probably going to show up too, cause I have a problem)

Elsa stared at the place where she had sent Jack back to.

Tears began to stream down her face.

Jack Frost had gone home.

Jack frost was gone.

As she began to walk back, stumbling through the dark, she began to sob, the pain and fear and terror of the past few hours finally catching up with her.

She was alone.

Her arm was broken, and she was bruised and blue, her dress torn.

She had no idea how she was going to get home.

Exhaustion finally overtook her, and she fell to her knees beside the wall, leaning against it. Everything was hurting, everything was wrong, everything. All she wanted to do was sleep. As she shut her eyes, she saw a figure approached her, in the dying light of the cave.

Unable to fight it any longer, she let herself fade into the dark.

Jack had tried to be happy.

He really had. He had tried to move one, when he realized that he would never see her again, but all he could imagine was her dying on that mountain, or her kiss, or her smile. He had tried to be happy without her, but it was like there was hole in his heart, and it was draining everything from him.

He had tried.

He had gone back to visit Jamie and Sophie and Pippa and the others. But they had been able to see the emptiness, sense whatever darkness had crept into his heart. He had tried to mask it with smiles, and laughter. But they felt his heartbreak, and that made him feel even worse.

The more Jack thought about it, the more he began to believe that it was not only the loss of Elsa that had caused whatever he was feeling.

Elsa had opened him up in a way no one ever had before. Had opened his heart, made him fall for her in more ways than one.

And something dark had filled the void her light left.

It scared him more than anyone could ever know.

So, he shut himself down. It was easier. It was so much easier than facing this all.

"Jack? There is someone here to see you."

The voice barely seemed to make it through the storms that seemed to fill his mind. Jack stood up as North called to him, and when he did, his unbeating heart felt like it stopped, as he took a step back, gripping his staff.

"Elsa?" He whispered.

He was frozen, standing in place. He felt suddenly very unstable, like he was going to fall over. She was dead. She couldn't be here. This was a trick. This was a dream. This was an illusion. The ice that he usually had such control over crawled to the surface of his skin.

She looked him, smiling.

"Hello, Jack Frost. It's been a long time."

He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to do. So, he did the only thing he could do.

He ran.

Ran to the edge of the balcony, and jumped. A footprint of frost remained, as he disappeared off into the night, leaving them both behind.

"Wind," he murmured into the night. "Take me away."

Elsa stared at the spot where he was, before turning to North.

"I should have known that would happen," she said quietly. "This was a mistake."

"I take it you are Queen Elsa," North said, only his eyes betraying his surprise. The rest of his usually jolly face was completely devoid of emotion as he spoke again. "What can you expect? He just saw a ghost."

"I wanted to see him again... I thought that now I could see him again," she said, looking a little lost. She crossed her arms, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"He was mourning you. He loved you, and he thought you were dead," North said, slightly more forcefully. "To him, you are but a ghost."

"You know why I couldn't talk to him before this, don't you?" Elsa said slow, looking up, and meeting his gaze. "This wasn't selfish, or cruel, even it felt that way. It's the rules. I had laws I had to follow. If I had met him at the wrong time in his timeline, everything could have fallen apart."

"I know that," he said. "I know, child. It does not change the pain he went through these past two months however-"

"Two months?" Elsa said, all expression of the lost little girl that was there before gone, back to the hard, cold exterior. "He lived for two months without me, while I had to lose him, and my sister, and my kingdom. I had to live with that for three hundred years. I loved him as much as he loved me, and yet you make it seem as though I am not a victim as much as he is!"

"I'm not saying that," North said, sighing slightly. "I'm saying that your wounds have had time to heal, and his... His were raw. They were both deep, child, but you have had time to mend."

The icy fire in her eyes died slightly, as she took a deep breath. She looked at him, as if for the first time.

"You're North, aren't you?"

"Yes, indeed I am."

"I'm Elsa, like you said. Not queen anymore however. Not queen of anything, unless you count a kingdom of isolation," she added. "He talked a lot about you, and the other Guardians, and how you saved all the children, and the world. Thank you for doing that."

"Why, you don't have to thank us," North said in surprise. "It's what we do."

"I know that. And that's why I'm thanking you. I didn't think you would get many thanks, at least not as many as you deserve."

"You're right. We don't."

Elsa gave a small laugh, the sound feeling alien. He smiled gently at her. "Come now. Let's go find Jack, before he gets into too much trouble."

Jack hadn't gone far. He was sitting in one of the trees in the forest, where he and Elsa had traveled through to get to the city from the mountain. It was night there, the moon shining off the snow. It felt almost like he had gone back in time. A time where Elsa was alive. But she was. She was here. How could that have happened. And how had he run from there like a coward, when the only thing he had been wanting to do was talk to her one last time? Wasn't that what the purpose of his moping had been? Well, not all of it, but that was a good reason.

"Stupid Jack," he said. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."

He had his knees against his chest, staff held in the crook of his arm, hood on his head. He shut his eyes, wondering how he was going to face her. All he could see was how she looked as she stood there in the door. Her cold beauty. How she looked the same as she always did, but different somehow. Not older... But older.

Wow, Jack. Real eloquent. You're practically a poet, he thought to himself.

"Jack?"

His head snapped up at the voice, which was coming from below him.

Elsa.

He looked down at her. She stood beneath the branches, staring up at him.

"Don't you dare run away from me again, Jack Frost."

He didn't answer.

"Are you giving me the silent treatment?"

"You gave me the silent treatment... For three hundred years."

She sighed. "There was a reason for that. Now, come down, and I'll explain everything. I told North to go on back. It's just me and you."

"No."

"I forgot how stubborn you were. Come down!"

"No."

"I'll climb up there."

"You can try," he said sullenly, feeling like a child. She deserved all the hell he could put her through after the last few months.

"Fine," she said. He watched her, grabbing on the branches, pulling herself up with a grace only fitting of a queen, hand over hand, foot over foot. She only slipped once, when she was almost at the top, right below him. She gave a small cry as the branch under her foot gave out, and she nearly plummented to the ground, at least twenty feet below.

Acting on instinct, he lunged forward, catching her hand, cold as ice. She looked up at him as she hung there, some pieces of her braid flying lose. Now that he thought about it, she didn't look quite older, but more sad. More tired. And more free. Pulling her up in front of him, he watched as she sat on it, nervously looking at the ground below them. Her cheeks were flushed, from the fright of her near fall and maybe something else, and her eyes were kept frozen on their hands, still clasped together in front of them.

Slowly, she lifted her gaze to look at him.

"Hello, Jack Frost."

"Hello, Elsa the Snow Queen."

"I'm not the Snow Queen anymore," she said slowly. "I lost my kingdom."

"When you died."

"Yes. When I died."

"But you didn't. Die, I mean."

"No. No, I didn't."

He fell silent, all his questions feeling like they were running under his skin, and bursting from his veins.

"What happened to you, Elsa? Why did you never come and find me?"

She sighed. "There are rules, Jack. Laws. I don't make them, but we all have to follow them. When someone like you travels between the past and future, any who have contact with cannot make contact again until they are aware of actually making the trip. I couldn't speak to you until you returned from the past. But I never forgot you. I kept an eye on you when I could. You could say I was your guardian angel."

He blinked in surprise. "How often were you there?"

"There were a few times you were in trouble you didn't even know about, and I leant a hand" she said. "And I've seen a few of your adventures. It's not very nice to ruin Easter, Jack." She added the last comment somewhat chidingly, although her eyes betrayed amusement.

He smiled for a moment. "You saw that? That was fun. We should do it again together."

She shook her head, laughing slightly. "That's not happening. I'm not getting on the Easter Bunny's bad side."

He smiled broader for a moment, before it faded, as another question rose to his lips. "How are you here? I'm sorry, but should be dead."

"Ouch," she said.

"Not like that. Like... Normal people should be dead-"

"I know what you meant," she said, a ghost of a smile playing on her lips. She moved forward, so that they were inches apart. She kept her hold on him. "I was supposed to die. But something happened. I don't know if it's when I got my powers, or something different, but for some reason, winter runs through my veins. It keeps me frozen. I don't think I've aged at all since I was eighteen years old."

He looked up at her. "So, you really are the Snow Queen."

"I told you. I'm not that anymore."

"Make it an honorary title. A silence fell between them again, as Jack leaned forward slightly. His fingers brushed over her cheek. Her skin was cold as ice. She was really here. She was alive. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't an illusion. She was here.

"I can't believe you're really here. I can't believe it."

"Believe in me, Jack Frost," she said. "I still believe in you."

"Even after all this time?"

"Yes. Forever and always, Jack Frost."

He smiled, as he pulled her forward, into an embrace. He felt her hesitate before she wrapped her arms around his waist, fingers clutching the blue fabric of his shirt. He felt her breath out a shaky breath.

"I missed you."

"I missed you too."

"I thought I lost you. I thought I lost you forever."

His voice was muffled as he murmured into her ear, his words only for her. Only for Elsa.

"Jack," she said. She sounded sad, slightly sad, and scared, and pained. "Oh, Jack, there is so much you don't know. There is so much you don't understand."

He leaned back, looking at her.

"What's wrong, Elsa?"

"There is a reason I had to come back, Jack. Not just for you. There is darkness in this world, and we have only scratched the surface of it."

"But we're going to fight it together, aren't we?"

"Yes. Yes, we are," she said. She held their hands between their chests, looking up at him. When she spoke again, he could almost hear heartbreak in her words. "Jack and Elsa. Saving the world."

He stood up, pulling her up to her feet. Slowly, carefully, he held onto her, like he had when they had flown together that first time. And just like that, they were flying.

And as he held her, her arms wrapped around him, and his around her, he thought about her last words to him, and all the words he hadn't said to her back then. He wasn't going to make the same mistake again.

Elsa was alive. Elsa was here. And he was never going to let her go again.

A/N: I LIIIIIVVVEEE.

Okay, maybe that's was a bit dramatic. Maybe. But seriously, it's been forever (like not as long as three hundred years but it felt like it). I don't know why this chapter was giving me so much trouble. I think it's cause my first draft was extremely angsty (even more than this, if humanly possible), and I went back, and read some previous chapters, and then felt like I was missing all the fun, lighthearted stuff I used to have here, and that just made me sad. So after over a month of avoiding this story like it had the plague, I burned my first draft in a fiery pit, and wrote this. I like it so much better, so I hope you do too.

A note on the timelines. I wrote the beginnings of this story back before the official timeline of frozen was released, and pictured Jack becoming a spirit, and Elsa being locked up happen in the same year (I think I noted it as 1708 in my drafts?). So Elsa is about the same age as Jack now, give or take a few years. Cause I'm too lazy to change that, we're keeping it as an AU or somethin'. Any questions on that or any other time travel-y thing will address next chapter, so ask away.

Thank you for reading, and come throw things at me if I take as long next time. I hope I don't. This story is practically my child. Don't let me abandon it.

May the fortress be with you!