Author's Note: Very short drabble about what an Elsa x Rapunzel relationship could be like.
This Still World
"I just wish I had been there. I could've helped."
I roll over onto my side, watching her in the dim light. She's fiddling with the ribbon on her dress and looking up at the stars. Sometimes she likes our weekly nights out on the rolling hills, where I listen to the sound of the crickets singing to each other and she nudges me from time to time, pointing out another constellation, reading to me stories like she's plucked them straight from a book. It's our own personal quiet out here; we're out in the wide open, but there's nowhere else we can be alone together. Usually she enjoys that.
Sometimes it just makes her pensive.
"Every time you used your magic it was on a physical wound, remember?" I ask. "We don't know if it would've worked on magical ones."
"And now we never will," she whispers, and looks down at her hands. They're small, like mine, but I've felt them against my skin and know the power they hold.
I try not to sigh. I wish it didn't have to be this way. Sometimes I wonder what she sees in me: a kindred spirit, another broken person that she so desperately wants to heal, a glaring reminder of what she had and then lost? Am I all that, or nothing at all?
Whenever I am unsure of what to say, I use my hands.
I thread my fingers through her hair, her feathery locks, feeling how short they are, so out of place for a woman. I imagine this is what it looks like when an angel's wings are clipped. She shudders at my touch – she always does, but for different reasons – and closes her eyes, making a small noise that could either be contentment or resignation.
There's a soft touch at my wrist, and warm fingers curl around my palms, drawing my hands towards her. She has never been afraid of me, and that is the greatest magic of all.
We hold each other in the night, covering, caressing our own personal scars, and wait for the morning to come.