She had missed so much.
Newly-crowned Queen Elsa of Arendelle smiled at the nobleman. She had barely been listening to him, but according to a random book of etiquette in the royal library, the golden rule was to keep smiling even if it was making her facial muscles ache.
"Elsa!"
The queen turned, noticing her sister hurrying towards her, with some prince in tow. "I mean, queen." Anna bowed. Elsa turned fully to face her, trying to appear as regal as she could, being in the presence of a foreign royal. "Me again," Anna said. "May I present, Prince Hans, of the Southern Isles." She reached behind her and took the hand of the foreign prince. He stepped forward.
Good to see she's making friends, Elsa thought.
"Your majesty," Prince Hans bowed slightly. Anna was clutching his arm in a way that Elsa thought was a little too intimate, but she decided not to say anything. The prince and her sister exchanged looks, their eyes a little too bright for her liking.
"We would like..." they both said, a little awkwardly.
"Er... your blessing," Hans continued.
They giggled and held each other's hands. "... our marriage!"
Elsa blinked. "Marriage?" she asked.
"Yes!" Anna squealed.
"I'm sorry, I'm confused," Elsa said. Surely this was some joke? Was it in Arendelle's coronation traditions to play practical jokes on the newly-crowned?
"Well, we haven't worked out all the details ourselves," Anna said, while the foreign prince- Hans, was it?- flashed the queen a broad smile. "We'll need a few days to plan the ceremony. Of course we'll have soup, roast, and ice cream and then..." She turned to Prince Hans. "Wait, would we live here?"
Elsa couldn't believe her ears. Was her sister really inviting a random stranger to stay in their palace? What if they found out she... Elsa's pulse quickened. "Here?" she asked, incredulous.
"Absolutely!" Prince Hans said, all smiles. The amount of smiling this prince was doing wasn't helping with Elsa's nerves.
"Anna..." she began.
"Oh, we can invite all twelve of your brothers to stay with us..." her sister went on, beaming at her self-claimed fiancé.
Twelve?! "What? No, no, no, no, no," Elsa waved her gloved hands, trying to get her sister's attention, but Anna was rambling on and on about the palace having plenty of rooms to house these twelve uninvited guests.
"Wait, slow down." Elsa's voice was firm enough. Anna paused momentarily, turning to her sister. The queen decided she should get straight to the point before Anna started rattling off decoration ideas for the rooms. "No one's brothers are staying here, no one is getting married."
By the looks on their faces, Elsa knew she'd made her point clear enough.
"Wait, what?" Anna asked.
Elsa really didn't want to start giving her sister life lessons ten minutes after they'd finally reunited, especially considering she didn't exactly have a treasure trove of life-changing experiences either. But Anna didn't look like she was about to change her mind. "May I talk to you, please?" A half-glance at Prince Hans. This was sisterly business. "Alone?"
"No. Whatever you have to say, you... you can say to both of us." Anna stepped back to Prince Hans's side.
There were times when she truly wanted to strangle her sister. "Fine. You can't marry a man you just met."
Elsa used to read a fairytale book with Anna before her powers went out of control, and found the stories of princesses marrying princes they've only known for two seconds rather appalling. The whole true love thing was stupid. How could you marry someone you don't know? Even though she'd spent almost her entire childhood and adolescence in solitude, Elsa knew she wouldn't run off with someone she'd just met even though there was the temptation of love, acceptance and freedom. Well, you couldn't be too sure if that was what you were truly going to get if you didn't really know the person, right? Point proven.
"You can, if it's true love," Anna insisted.
Well, apparently her sister had interpreted those stories a different way.
"Anna, what do you know about true love?"
"More than you! All you know is how to shut people out!"
Elsa felt as though someone had just stabbed her. With even more control than she'd ever tried to exert over herself during her years in isolation, she kept her voice steady and said, "You asked for my blessing, but my answer is no. Now... excuse me." Hopefully no one would notice if the queen disappeared for the rest of the night...
"Your Majesty, if I may ease your..." Prince Hans began.
Elsa felt a little appalled. She was the queen of Arendelle and this prince was on her home turf. "No, you may not. And I-I think you should go." She wanted to slap herself for stammering, but there were other pressing matters. Like the fact that her hands felt colder than they should on this warm summer evening. "The party is over. Close the gates," she ordered a guard, walking away. Perhaps she could make it to her room before...
"What? Elsa, no. No, wait!"
Elsa wouldn't have stopped, but Anna pulled her glove clean off. The queen gasped, her heart thundering in her chest. "Give me my glove!" She probably sounded like a whiny six-year old, but if she started blasting ice everywhere in this ballroom... Elsa didn't even want to think about it.
"Elsa, please. Please. I can't live like this anymore."
Elsa wanted to grab her sister and hug her and tell her how much she could relate and how they should change everything... but it was never that simple. There was only one other option, and it was cruel, but it would be for the best. She, Elsa, could be left alone with her powers and no one would ever be harmed again. Anna would be safe, and she could marry whomever she wanted to, as much as Elsa was against it.
"Then leave."
The look on Anna's face broke Elsa's heart. She wanted to take it back, and tell Anna she could stay, but she couldn't deny it was the best idea she had had. Elsa turned away before she could say anything else.
"What did I ever do to you?!"
Elsa focused on the door. A little bit further... "Enough, Anna."
"No. Why? Why do you shut me out?!"
Conceal.
"Why do you shut the world out?!"
Don't feel.
"What are you so afraid of?!"
"I said, enough!"
A brief memory flashed in the queen's mind. When she had accidentally blasted ice at Anna way back when they were younger, she didn't think there could be anything worse than the shock and terror she'd felt.
She was proven wrong. There, before hundreds of royals from neighbouring kingdoms and before her own sister, were pointed ice spikes forming a semicircular wall around her. The royals and Anna leapt back, not a second too soon. A soft crackling sound as the ice continued to solidify hung in the air that was already thick with the shock and incredulity of the guests.
"Elsa..."
The queen couldn't think. The one word that ran through her mind was 'run'.
She fell back against the door, felt for the knob, and fled.
The front door, the front door...
As she ran, Elsa couldn't help feeling guilty. She had just been crowned queen, and there she was, planning to flee her kingdom and seek solitude somewhere they would never reach her, like the North Mountain. She didn't deserve to be queen. All she ever did was bury her problems deep under or run away from them if they grew out of her control.
But then again that was all she had ever been trained to do.
Elsa burst out the front door, but much to her horror, the palace courtyard was filled with almost half of Arendelle, her most loyal subjects.
"There she is!"
"Queen Elsa!"
The cheers of the crowd echoing in her ears, she cast one glance back in the direction of the ballroom. No sign of a distraught Anna. No sign of the royals marching towards her with pitchforks, calling for her head.
She rushed through the crowd in a most unqueenly manner, but the cheering continued. "My queen. Queen Elsa. Long live the queen! Come drink with us." The words buzzed in her ears, but she could only feel despair. If they knew what she'd left in the ballroom...
Elsa took random turns through the crowd. It was suffocating and there didn't seem to be anyway out. She took another turn and came face to face with a mother cradling her infant. "Your Majesty. Are you alright?"
Conceal, don't feel.
Elsa wanted to hide before anyone else noticed she was most definitely not alright. She inched away, eyeing the crowd, most of whom still seemed oblivious to her desperation, when something solid hit her waist. Instinctively, she reached back, only to freeze the entire fountain.
The water solidified, forming an odd-looking sculpture that Elsa would've found beautiful under normal circumstances, as the people of Arendelle gasped.
"There she is! Stop her!"
The Duke of Weaseltown? Wesselton? Elsa couldn't think.
"Please, just stay away from me. Stay away."
'Stay away' had always been the magic word. A burst of ice escaped, knocking the Weaseltown nobleman and his guards off their feet and freezing the doorstep of the palace.
"Monster!" the duke yelled, pointing an accusing finger at her from his undignified spot on the iced doorstep.
Elsa half-glanced at her hand. No one had ever called her that before. But, Elsa realised with a pang, it was accurate.
Her subjects were moving away. The loyal people of Arendelle were looking at her like she was a bug they wanted to squash but were too afraid to do so. But they had parted enough that a way was clear, and Elsa ran.
"Elsa!"
Elsa turned as she reached the bank of a body of water which separated the main section of the kingdom from an icy tundra. It was part of their kingdom as well, and even the source of its main export, but hardly anyone ever went there, save for travellers and ice workers.
"Elsa!"
A crackling sound drew her attention to her feet. She had stepped into the water, but it had frozen where her heel had touched it. Maybe she could escape this way after all.
One last glance back.
Another step, and the ice solidified. She continued to flee, the water freezing rapidly beneath her. She would never return to Arendelle. Anna could be queen, everyone would be happy and safe. They could erase every record of her and turn her into nothing more than a legend if they wanted to.
Though she had abandoned a kingdom of which she was queen, though she could still hear the cries of the sister she'd left behind, for the first time in forever, Elsa got a taste of freedom.
I personally think Elsa was a victim of child abuse. If her parents didn't force her to hide her powers, she could eventually learn to control them and use them for good. Also, who's watching the Frozen season on Once Upon A Time? What do you think of it?