Trapped by Fear

Chapter 32

It was a regular morning at the Pole...almost.

Before the sun had long been up, Elsa heard a knock on her door.

Cautiously opening her door and peering out she saw...

Chocolate?

Just sitting there on the floor. 

Curiously she bent to pick it up and inspected it. It was chocolate alright but why was it there? After smelling and poking it, she took a tiny, experimental bite. It was good, but what had it been doing outside her door? Finishing it, she looked to where it had been wonderingly. Then something else caught her eye, a few feet down the corridor was...another piece of chocolate?

Weird. 

She looked left and right down the passage. This was weird. It couldn't be Pitch, she reasoned. He shouldn't be able to enter the workshop and he would never resort to anything remotely nice like chocolate. Taking a few cautious steps towards it she noticed another piece a little further down the hall.

 Curiously Elsa followed what turned out to be a trail of chocolate. It wound through the workshop leading her further on. She stopped collecting the chocolates pretty soon or her arms would be overflowing. When she finally reached what she assumed to be the end of the trail she took another look around before pushing open a door to find...

Jack Frost.

His face brightened up as soon as he saw her.

"Elsa! You made it."

Seemingly oblivious to her confusion and trepidation he continued on cheerfully while fetching a second chair for her.

"I hoped that would work. I remembered you liked chocolate so I may have uhm 'borrowed' some easter chocolate from Bunny."

"And why did you do that exactly?"

"Oh, right well," he said sheepishly while gesturing around the room. "I may have gone overboard with a prank and just slightly ruined like a month's worth of North's work."

"So why am I here?"

"Ah well seeing as I kindly provided you with a month's worth of chocolate, I figured you might return the favour and assist me in well, fixing this."

One moment passed in silence, then another. 

Finally, she calmy took a seat and began working.

Slightly stunned but also extremely grateful, Jack paused for a moment before joining her. 

---later that same day---

They had been working in silence till suddenly Jack threw down he was working on and groaned in frustration.

"Aaaagh there's so much to dooo, we'll never finish at this rate," Jack whined.

He looked over at Elsa who was efficiently working through her pile of stuff.

"How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Be all 'hard work, deadlines'"

"Well, its needs to be done. So, I must complete it. A task cannot be left unfinished." She answered quietly as if reciting some long-used mantra or instruction. A ghost of emotion passed over her face at those words then was gone.

"But there's just so much!! We'll never finish at this rate."

She looked over to where he was halfheartedly attempting to work. Their eyes met and he correctly read what she was thinking.

Glancing down at his hands then across to where she was working, he hung his head slightly and mumbled out a 'sorry' he tried working harder then, accompanied by many a groan or complaint.

"If we break up the task into sections it will seem easier," she quietly said, seemingly to herself but ultimately directed at Jack. 

Jack shifted in his seat, he leant his head against his hand and looked at her consideringly.

"What do you mean by that exactly?"

She glanced up at him and their eyes met before she quickly turned back to what she was doing without responding. 

"Are you saying there's a way to make this easier?" Jack continued. "Well, what is it?"

She seemed taken aback that he seemed to genuinely want and value her input.

"W-w-well suppose we allocate a certain amount of work to each day. Then it seems less overwhelming and we have plan to make sure we finish on schedule.

"Hmm." Jack pondered out loud. "Makes sense. So how do we do it?"

---time skip----

They had just about finished their quota for the day. As Jack was finishing up his last bit of work he suddenly felt a brush of air. Looking up he saw it was Elsa getting up and walking past him.

"Hey where are you going?"

"Back to my room."

"What why? We just finished, we need to celebrate How about more chocolate! Or maybe-" he tapped the floor twice with his staff and ice quickly swept to cover the floor. Spreading across the room and even out into the hallway.

"We have some fun, we never did get to finish ice skating." he grinned at her mischievously.

"Unfreeze it!"

"No" he said simply while calmly gliding around the ice occasionally performing a daring trick. Almost daring her to challenge him

He had her cornered (well not literally), but she couldn't leave without either ice skating away or using her powers, neither of which she was willing to do. She didn't want to ice skate in front of anyone especially since she was miffed about earlier. And she most definitely was not going to use her powers. She was stuck.

"Hey come on," he gently teased, "are you really planning to stand there all night?"

She sighed reluctantly and took a tentative step forward. 

She wobbled a bit. Jack held his hand out for Elsa to steady herself on the ice floor but she declined. Preferring to right herself and begin tentatively skating across the room.

"Hey there you go, you're good. Not as good as me of course. Hey! You wanna see a trick I've been working on?" 

Without waiting for a reply, he zoomed around her, body low and legs tucked in. Then he rocketed into the air and almost managed a full backflip before losing momentum and begin crashing down. At the last moment he (most probably with some help from the wind) managed to land not on his feet as intended but on his hands instead. If not for that he probably would've landed on his head. 

"MEANT TO DO THAT!" He yelled as he continued sliding on his hands with his legs dangling in the air. "WOOOOO!!!!"

She didn't want to but once again, Jack Frost had managed to get her to smile, if only a little bit.

The moment was broken by a crashing sound and a giant thump. Soon followed by what sounded like objects shattering on the floor and North's distinct Russian accent exclaiming

"What the blazes! Why is there ice on the floor?"

"Scarper!!" Jack whisper yelled, "maybe we can blame Bunny." Before quickly unfreezing the floor and dragging Elsa out a side door. 

As they hurried down the passage they could hear echoing behind them, "FROOOOOST!!!!'