With wide eyes, Elsa watched her assailant transform to solid ice at Jack’s feet. The burly brute never even saw it coming, so focused on her the entire time. He’d been so intent on his torture; so determined to pull information out of the queen that she didn’t even have…

Her throat was raw from screaming.

She could almost feel the multiple ways the cries of pain, more animal than human at times, seemed to pull from her throat at different volumes, with varying levels of force. It was as though, on the way up, each wounded plea carved a different path ascending the walls of her throat. It hurt, and scratched, and her mouth panted with a heavy dryness like she’d been sucking on cotton for days. But that all was the least of her problems.

“Ja- ck,” she whimpered weakly, words clawing their way past her chapped lips painfully. It hurt so much to talk. But the simple utter of his name paired with the soft rattle of chains as Elsa slumped against the wall at her back seemed to do the trick, pulling the winter spirit out of whatever daze he’d been trapped in. His cold eyes like ice found hers, and idly, she wondered just how awful she looked.

Lacerations covered almost her entire form, she knew that. She could still feel the sting of most of them, but the wounds that caused her the most pain were the ones still fresh; the deep carves into her collarbone and forearms. How long had she been here? Days? Weeks? Months? Time had blurred together after a while.

At first she was only shackled in her place, shoved into the far corner of the cell, the cuffs she’d been bestowed with covering her hands completely. The next step after the interrogation, she knew, would have been to cut her icy palms open for dissection. But first, whoever had trapped her here was hoping she’d talk. Even if it meant using extreme methods to coax the truth of her powers out of her.

Funny. No matter how much she insisted, through the pain and the tears, that she was as clueless and desperate for knowledge as them, the less the man wielding his knife seemed to believe her.

    Jack swallowed thickly, staring at the man on the ground in stunned disbelief as if he himself couldn’t understand what he had just done. His staff was still sparking, covered completely in icy blue frost that seemed to only get thicker and thicker underneath his tight grip. That staff, which so often brought snow days and fun times to innocent kids and weary adults, had just ended a man’s life. The worst thing in his mind was that he didn’t think he regretted it one bit.

    He was a protector of the weak, of the innocent, of all their hopes, dreams, and laughs, and he’d just killed a man. What would the other Guardians think? What would they say? Were there rules about this? There couldn’t be – he couldn’t lose his position because he was defending someone. The swords North carried couldn’t just be for show, right?

    It was just a few weeks. Hardly the longest Elsa had gone without seeing him. Jack was busy more often than not, and while that ‘business’ was fun and games that he never tired of, it still kept him away frequently. When he had returned to the Arendelle castle, guards were positioned at every entrance. He didn’t remember security ever being this tight, even after Hans. They had proved useless against his invisibility and he had quickly set out to locate the Queen, yet had found her distraught sister instead.

    Elsa had been kidnapped. Nobody knew why, or where she was taken, or who was behind it. The entire kingdom was scrambling for answers for their misplaced monarch, and Jack didn’t waste ten minutes more on castle grounds when there were so many places to search and so little time before he was needed elsewhere. It actually hadn’t been very difficult to find her. A secluded house, colder than it should be with locks on the doors. Breaking in had been even easier, and he’d just followed the sound of Elsa’s pained screams.

    The sound of chains and his name in a whimper was what brought him out of his stupor, and his staff finally stopped crackling with building magic as he refocused his attention to the task on hand. He had to get Elsa to safety before whoever else was involved with this plot returned to find the man dead, and he had to get her wounds treated. Nausea rolled his stomach despite not even remembering the last time he’d eaten, and his hands hovered in hesitation above her before he dared brush his fingertips across her cheeks.

    "Hold still,” he mumbled unnecessarily. From the way she appeared to have been beaten, he doubted she would have the strength to thrash enough to hinder him as he pried the handcuffs off of her. Pulling apart metal wasn’t one of his talents, but they’d both frozen the chains over enough that it wasn’t too difficult for him to break with a heavy swing of his staff striking it against the ground. Jack reached out, hooking his arms around her waist but not yet trying to lift her.

    “Can you walk?”