When Time Collides

Chapter Twenty Six

Jack

" Ugh! These blasted chains!" Jack exclaimed as his back slammed into the wall, a consequence of his struggling. " If only I had my staff -I could break through these!"

" So you can't do what Thor does? And draw your staff to your hand like he does with his hammer?" Hiccup asked doubtfully. Jack's brow crinkled in confusion, and that simple motion gave Hiccup his answer.

" Jack!" Elsa voice was muffled, but understandable through the thick slate of glass that separated her from them. Her pale, panicked face was all Jack could see. He thought he could make out tear tracks across her cheeks, and more falling. " I -I can't stop it!"

She was obviously referring to the snow, which had in those few moments already crept past her ankles and had almost reached to be level with her knees. And, with her emotions as frayed as they were in her frantic state, the snow was building up ever gradually. It hadn't stopped. In fact, it seemed that it was worse.

" Elsa you have to!" Jack sobbed, the tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. He blinked them back harshly. He had to be strong right now. He had to do something more than cry.

" I don't know how." Elsa sobbed, lowering her head. For a moment, she faded from sight, creating a fresh form of panic to set into Jack's stomach. She reappeared, her clenched hands back to pounding on the glass in hopes to break through it that way.

It was no use. The ice was too thick and Elsa's hands only felt battered and broken. The skin raw and discoloured an angry pink with purple beginning to spread through it.

Elsa's knees had become submerged beneath a thick sheet padding of white and silver, and Jack's heart had leapt from his chest to his throat as he struggled to breath and swallow it back down. They were running out of time.

Jack wasn't the only one wrestling to break free; Merida had brought up her legs and using her feet pushed against the wall, angling her arms to extend at an awkward position behind her. It was only when her shoes lose their grip on the stones that she yelped and paused her efforts as she attempted to right herself and try again.

Hiccup's face was crinkled in concentration, his tongue peeked out from between his pursed lips as he manoeuvred his wrist around, his fingers grasping for the nails that held his restraint in place. But his fingers were clumsy and the grooves of the nail too few. He couldn't keep it within his grip long enough to turn or rupture it in some way.

Rapunzel eyes were glassy as she watched her cousin's struggle, and fixed her efforts on forcing her wrist out from the cuff. She bit her lip with pain as the metal cut into her skin, and blinked back tears of pain as she tugged on her wrist; thrusting her body weight backwards to add more force behind it.

When that failed, she resorted back to finding words of encouragement for Elsa; whose emotions were out of control and would be the death of her if not contained quick enough.

" Elsa, you don't have to be afraid of your magic! You could never hurt anyone!" She exclaimed.

But as a look of resigned terror crossed Elsa's face, Rapunzel thought that perhaps that had been the wrong thing to say.

" But I did!" Elsa replied, scrunching her eyes shut and shaking her head to rid her mind of the surfacing memory. " and Anna doesn't even remember any of it! Her memories were taken away. She doesn't understand why I had to push her away. She doesn't understand that I'm trying to protect her! That I-" a sob wracked through Elsa's shoulder, and the frost clinging to her clothing spread to her sleeves and across the interior hourglass surface; taking on the shape of sharp-edged talons. " She could have died! By my hand!"