The Quiet After the Storm

Chapter VII: Jack

The only sound I could hear was my breath… in, out; in, out. There was something I wanted to say – something I had to say – something impossible to say – and somehow, I had to get it right the first time. I knew there wouldn’t be another chance. I closed my eyes, swallowed hard, opened my eyes again and found myself looking at her. I would always be looking at her.

I took another breath, hoped I would get this right. “When you were younger, and your sister got hurt, you didn’t do it on purpose, did you?” I was hoping that she would answer that; that I could connect with her somehow, but she just continued to stare past me. She didn’t want to even acknowledge the possibility that she was not at fault. But I had to go on.

“Elsa, I’ve made mistakes too. Some of them were small – the kind that no one ever knew about. Some of them were big. And some were the very worst kind; the kind that hurt the people who were close to me.” Her gaze shifted, and I sensed that I was getting her attention.

“You don’t want to forgive yourself for what you did,” – Why did I always say things in the worst possible way? I tried to hide the panic in my voice, didn’t want to say anything now, but I needed to finish – “and no one will ever be able to make you. That’s your choice.

“But if you don’t, this palace will eventually become your prison. You can surround yourself with such incredible beauty; you have such a great gift! But I’m afraid that someday you won’t even be able to see this beauty anymore. You won’t have time to stop and see all that you can do, because you will be spending all of your time thinking about the one thing you never could.”

As I spoke, my breath came out like steam, my words forming tiny ice crystals that quickly dissipated; so quickly that I couldn’t see where they had gone. I just had to hope that some of my words were getting to where I needed them to go.

“If you do this, if you keep your heart closed, you’re right that you will never be hurt again. But you will also never be truly happy. You will never know joy. You will never know love again. I never wanted to be hurt again, either. Didn’t want to open myself up to anybody. But now I’ve met you, and I don’t have any choice – I couldn’t keep you out of my heart no matter how hard I tried. I NEED you. And I want you to know that it’s the scariest place I’ve ever been; and still, I wouldn’t ever consider giving it up. If I had to choose between returning to the safe world I just came from, or staying here and taking all of those risks, I would never even consider going back.

“But you need to make that choice yourself. You can keep yourself free from sadness; and as the years pass, that fortress of ice around your heart will grow thicker and thicker until you won’t even be able to see through it anymore. But you won’t really be forgiving yourself; you’ll just be locking that part of you away, safe from view, far from reach.

“Or, you could open up your heart to me, and let me in, even if it’s just a little bit. Yes, there will be some pain from time to time, but I promise you, together we will have more joy than you ever imagined. And when the pain does come, you will never have to face it alone again. No matter what happens, whatever we go through, we will always be together.

“So, you have a choice. Stay the way you are; and as the years pass, your heart will grow cold, but you will be safe inside, and no one will ever be able to harm you. Or join me, and we can both discover the people we never imagined we could be.

“Who would you rather be? Elsa, or the Ice Princess?”

I stopped. There was so much more I wanted to say, and I hoped that she understood that I could never go back to who I was, that I would never be truly happy without her. But I couldn’t – if what I said didn’t get through, I would have to accept the fact that I would need to return to an existence that no longer had any meaning to me. And no matter what happened, my heart was already in pieces; it would never be whole again without her. So I waited.

She said nothing. But she was looking directly at me now. I couldn’t look anywhere else; there was nothing else for me to see.  I was waiting for what felt like forever, knowing that the rest of my life would hang on her next words. So I waited.

She said nothing.