Warning: This story will contain incest at some point (soon, hopefully), so if that's not your cup of tea, please adhere to the rule don't like, don't read.

Prologue

"Yes, Mr. Eriksen. No, that won't be a problem. Of course not, that would be unacceptable– look, why don't we save the details for the meeting? I'm about to cross the city line; I'll be there in a couple of minutes. Yes, that sounds good. Goodbye, Mr. Eriksen."

Elsa sighs as she ends the call with an irritated tap on the earpiece in her ear. Ever since the death of her parents three years prior, the board of directors of her father's company (or her father's cronies as she privately liked to call them) had been keen on dragging her back to Arendelle and have her follow in her father's footsteps.

Elsa, who had been studying architecture in Corona for the past three years, had been adamant about getting her bachelor's degree before returning to take over the company. However, after three years without a chief executive officer, the board of directors had gone through the official channels to demand a meeting regarding the company's future and Elsa's role in it.

And that is how she ended up driving all the way from Corona to Arendelle on the second day of her summer break, in her battered, second-hand car whose air conditioning had decided to stop functioning somewhere between the first and second hour of driving. That, coupled with the fact that it was unusually warm for early June, and Elsa's preference for cold weather, had done nothing to shorten the long drive.

Elsa and her father had gotten into many a fight throughout the years over whether or not she would take over the company, or be allowed to pursue a career of her own choosing. At an young age her father had sent her off to a number of different boarding schools, all of which took pride in grooming kids for a future in what was referred to as 'the business life'. He had claimed to only want the best for his daughter, but Elsa had quickly learned that whatever was best for the company unanimously became what was best for her.

Stubborn as she was, Elsa had refused to let her father mold and shape her life as he saw fit to do. Her refusal had resulted in an infinite battle of wills where, admittedly, her father had always had the upper hand, since she – as a minor – had possessed no legal power to go against his decisions. Elsa had done everything she could think of to get in trouble at school, hoping against hope that maybe if she got expelled, they would just send her home.

Oh how naïve she had been.

The more rules she broke, the more homework she threw away, and the more pranks she pulled on her teachers, the more control her father exercised over her life. Her visits home became far an in-between, and she was moved from boarding school to boarding school, one stricter than the other.

It had been suffocating and frustrating, but most of all it had been lonely. Estranged and cut off from her family, and constantly moving from one school to another, loneliness had been Elsa's only constant companion. Her mother had done nothing more than beg her to acquiesce with her father's wishes and put an end to their constant fighting, never understanding Elsa's refusal to take over the company, effectively aligning herself with her father in Elsa's eyes.

Her sister... Her sister had been another matter entirely. Elsa and her little sister had been inseparable from the moment they first laid eyes on each other, and not a day had gone by at the Arendelle Manor without the two of them cooking up some sort of mischief. Elsa had never found life dull when in the presence of her sister, and had, as most other children her age, never imagined that those happy days would come to an end, replaced with the harsh reality of growing up.

When she had finally become of legal age, Elsa had enrolled at the first and the best out-of-town university that her scholarships afforded her to. Corona University had been affordable and satisfactorily far away. There had been no doubt in her mind that her decision to leave had been right. But then news of her parents' dead reached her...

Elsa grinds her teeth as the memory pushes its way back to the forefront of her mind. She can't afford such painful memories to resurface right before her meeting with the board of directors. She has to stay calm and focused and-

Lost in her thoughts as she is, Elsa doesn't notice the hunched figure shuffling across the street before it's too late.

There's a loud thud mixed with the sound of screeching tires, splotches of red splashing onto the windshield as the car careens off-road, stopping only when confronted with the solid trunk of an old tree at the edge of the forest lining the road.

It all happens in the blink of an eye, leaving Elsa with little time for anything more than an ineloquent exclamation (one she hasn't used since her early adolescent temper tantrums). Then there is pain, followed swiftly by an all-consuming darkness.

Author's notes: This was a prompt I discovered on tumblr (by izzyvonheeringen) that I wanted to try my hand at. I've shipped Elsanna since day one, and I've been meaning to write something for the fandom for a while now, but never got around to do it because, you know, life's a bitch that won't give me a fucking break.

And on that happy note, I hope this was somewhat satisfactory. I have no beta and I suck at going through my own writing to check for mistakes, so I apologize in advance if you come across any. That being said, I plan to make this a multi-chapter story despite having stuck to oneshots so far. Gulp!

As some of you might have noticed, the prologue is loosely inspired by that of The Walking Dead. I've only played that first part of the game though, so that'll be the last of that. I know I make their father out to be some sort of villain, but remember, this is a modern AU, so there has to be a reasonable explanation for Elsa and Anna's separation that doesn't include cool ice powers. I debated on whether or not to let Elsa keep her ice powers in this, but I came to the conclusion that it might make things a bit too easy.

This was pretter short (duh, prologue), so consider it a taste of what's to come!