Author's Note:
This story seems too crazy to even try and explain. Elsa/AU Anna. Definitely non-Canon. Elsanna, yes, probably. Whether or not any Elsanna in this tale counts as incest I leave to others to care about - it's definitely not my focus or intent.
Before I forget: other languages later in the story are Norwegian and Esperanto courtesy purely of Google Translate so yeah they probably don't make sense, apologies to offended native speakers of either. I suck, mea culpa.
Story trigger warnings: Character death, angst, violence, laughter and love.
A.
Prologue A: Death
"Kristoff?"
Thank God. Relief flooded through her as she made out his distant form. The blizzard had stopped but the cold inside her was getting worse by the second. Oh no, her hands…
Wait, that sounded-
"Elsa?"
Elsaelsaelsa. Hans. Sword. Oh, Lord, SWORD! She looked back at Kristoff. The decision barely took a blink, just long enough to realize that it wasn't an actual choice. She'd never had a choice. Elsa was like gravity.
Moving was horribly hard, thinking even harder. Run. One last thing to do. Be useful, for once. Protect her. Worth it, for her. The pain was a little less now, things were… clearer. Yes, always worth it.
"NO!" You will NOT hurt her.
The sword looked beautiful against the sky, glittering, deadly, cold. Cold like everything else. It was coming down, slowly, why so slowly?
Please, God, don't let this hurt.
A thrumming, pulsing shockwave. A sharp ripping sensation, darkness.
xxxxx
Something moved in the void. Gradual awareness of a gentle kaleidoscopic shift, the darkness dissolving slowly into runs of color, swirls of sound - music. Sense of self creeping back in time with the light. The music, beautiful, washing all around her, her whole being filling with it. It felt so familiar. It felt green. It felt like the heat of the sun on a hot day. It felt like… her.
And no pain. Actually, she felt pretty good. Not cold at all, finally! Man, she hated the cold. She held up her hand – what a relief; it looked normal again, all the blued frost covering it was gone. She grabbed a braid—still white. White? Pure white, luxuriant, strong and healthy.
After a time, impossible to say how long, the chiming colors began to thin and fade until she could see the world around her. She was right where she'd been, but…
Wait. This was confusing. She could remember the sword, and then…?
Hans was sprawled a few feet away, dead or unconscious, his sword lying, blade shattered, on the ice behind him. Kristoff, Sven and Olaf were a short distance off staring at her with horrified expressions. Did she look that awkward? The hair? Was there something on her face? Ugh. What-
No one was moving. Nothing was moving.
She spun around, Elsa had been on the ground right behind her—
If she were granted a single wish to use in her entire life, she'd have used it instantly to unsee the expression frozen on her older sister's face.
"Elsa! I'm OK!" She crouched down and reached out. She needed that expression gone, she needed to smooth it away. "I'm okay, I'm fi— WOW!" There was a sharp spang of color and sound as her hand touched Elsa's face. The shock caused her to lose her balance and fall backward onto the ice.
Fall backward, through something, onto the ice. She looked up.
Oh. Oh—no.
Statue-her looked really scared. And really frozen.
Like, solid.
And really, really-
Dead.
Dear God.
xxxxx
Nothing moved. She'd watched a hovering snowflake for what felt like hours and it hadn't shifted at all. The comforting colors and music that had surrounded her earlier were gone. There was no sound at all. Her body looked and felt completely solid to her but it just passed like smoke through everything and everyone who wasn't Elsa – Kristoff, Sven, Olaf, even jerk-face Hans. She'd fallen again when she'd tried to give him a kick in the side, so she'd contented herself with pettishly stomping on – or rather, through – his toes. He somehow managed to look smug even all splayed out. Looking at him made her so mad, she couldn't even decide if she hoped he was dead. Then she realized that if he were, he'd probably show up here. Ugh. Stuck in for-never with him? She left him alone after that.
Time passed, and didn't. There was no way to tell. She spent a lot of time sitting beside Elsa, just looking. Ignoring the awful expression as best she could, examining this person, this stranger that she'd barely ever seen. It felt a bit creepy to just stare at her, but hey. If she actually was dead and, as she was starting to suspect, doomed to be a ghost, it was probably part of the job description. Every now and then, she'd try to touch her sister, always with the same result. A zap, a tingle and something pushing her hand away. It didn't hurt, but nor was it very pleasant. The pushing-away part felt depressingly familiar. And, she suddenly realized, it might be hurting Elsa. So she stopped that too.
It was maddening. When she tried to go and see if things were any different at the castle or in town she got so weirdly uncomfortable that she had to turn around and come back before she'd gone past the nearest iced-in ship. It felt like something in her chest and head was being pulled backward harder and harder with each step. Which just made no sense. So she tried it again. And again. Each time the discomfort grew with every metre she moved away from her frozen statue-self.
Even walking over to where Kristoff stood, with his also-horrible-though-not-as-bad-as-Elsa's expression, made her feel a bit off.
Eventually, born of sheer boredom, she had a thought. She stomped over to where Kristoff was standing, closed her eyes and concentrated on the pulling sensation. Then she started to walk, feeling how the pull altered as she moved. It was the only thing that changed in this God-forsaken time-frozen world, maybe it could tell her something. Maybe there was a path? Maybe like an invisible maze, a puzzle for the newly-dead. A test? She concentrated. Step. Step. Left. Step. More left. OK… getting better… better…
Bonk. "Sor— yikes!" She'd bumped into Elsa, rewarded with another sparking zing.
Ugh, wow, I'd really like to drape something over her face. OK that's a horrible thought. Way to be a horrible person, Anna.
She took a deep breath.
OK, do it again, this time without crashing into anyone.
She walked a short distance off in the other direction. She closed her eyes, spun herself around a few times for good measure and concentrated, following the pull.
Bonk. Zing. "Argh! SorryElsasorry—"
OK, hang on a minute.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes again and, with a shudder, stepped inside her statue-self. Standing inside her own frozen body creeped her out but she had to admit that her ghost-insides felt not too bad. The tug, however, was still there, albeit gentle. She eased toward Elsa. Better… better.
Zing.
Huh. She wasn't anchored to her statue after all.
xxxxx
Everything kept on not moving. Anna had no idea how long it had been. Hours? Days? She'd cried herself out God knows how many times. She'd tried to amuse herself with everything she could think of. She'd run out of patience umpteen times, losing her temper and storming about, swearing, using words that she wasn't supposed to know, words she'd been taught were guaranteed to send her straight to Hell – like she wasn't there already. She'd cursed until she ran out of combinations, then invented new ones. She'd yelled and shaken her fists at the sky. She'd prayed. She'd begged. She'd collapsed dramatically into a heap of inconsolable princess at least three times. Nothing worked. Everything around her remained exactly one hundred percent indifferent, immobile and immovable.
She couldn't even sleep. Apparently, ghosts didn't get tired.
Eventually she found herself lying on her back, staring up at the ugly grey sky. She couldn't summon the will to move – what was the point? The misery was still there inside her, somewhere in her gut, but by now mostly she felt numb. Not numb as in cold-numb – she didn't feel at all cold, or hungry, or thirsty - but just sort of blank.
And bored out of her mind. If only she'd packed some playing cards. Or anything.
I'm alone, trapped in an empty space with no one to talk to. Forever. This is exactly like it was at home.
The sudden conviction that the afterlife was going to be an eternal re-hash of her empty, lonely life violently banished the boredom. Maybe they couldn't sleep, but apparently ghosts could hyperventilate.
xxxxx
Her options for doing anything that caused something to happen boiled down to two. She could walk around, feeling better-or-worse, or she could sit beside Elsa and get odd zingy sparks whenever she tried to touch her. Her interest in either activity had pretty much paled.
The other thing she could do, of course, was talk. For the first time in forever, Elsa was, like, right here. Kind of. At any rate, this time her sister couldn't slam a door in her face. Or create a snow monster to toss her out before - presumably - slamming a door in her face. Furthermore, Anna was uber-experienced at talking to things that didn't talk back. Plus, as always, it looked like she had lots of time to kill. She decided to just think of Elsa as a type of unfortunately-sculpted Joan.
She got comfortable on the ice beside her sister, sitting as close as she could without zinging, but angled so that she didn't have to stare at that expression. For a few moments she was at a loss for what to say, but after a while the words started to flow. Then, it was easy.
"Hey, Elsa. I'm almost totally sure you can't hear me. But, just so you know, well, here I am and I'm not leaving. OK, actually, I guess I can't, because time seems to have stopped, so I guess don't get a medal for that. Anyway, I'm still here and we're going to talk, like it or not, since you're fresh outta doors. Ha! So there."
"Anyway… Where to start? I mean, yeah, so… my day – or whatever - hasn't been all that great – not that yours was any better, of course. Just to bring you up to speed, I'm pretty sure I'm a ghost – I've got white hair and everything – not that white hair makes you a ghost, I mean you have white hair but you're totally solid, like a rock, not that you're heavy or fat, more just like a statue, a really freaked-out statue with this crazy awful expression you couldn't pay me a million kroner to carve—oh, uh. Wait, let me start again."
xxxxx
"So, look. I'm trying to see the bright side in all this. Not easy, but hey, it's me, right? So… ok, sure I'm a ghost. I still feel pretty much like myself, though, which is good. I don't know what the rules are, but I'm happy I didn't go the bedsheet-with-holes route. Awkward and unflattering. Being a ghost, though, I figure that might not be so bad. I mean, there are all those stories of helpful ghosts who haunt places, right? You know, that sort of look after and protect their loved ones and so on? For example, if they had unfinished business. And yeah, I feel pretty unfinished-businessy right about now. First thing on my list is to punch Hans in the face. After I give you a big hug without the zaps, so ok, second thing is the punching."
"And, hey, if you lock your door, I can just float right through it. I totally will, too, you know. Unless you were getting changed or in the bath or something, that would just be inconsiderate. Right, we're going to have to figure out a way for me to knock."
xxxxx
"Hey. Sorry I wandered off there. Rude, right? Walking helps me think. Seems I have lots of time for that – thinking, I mean. Anyway, I've been trying to make sense of our growing-up, now that I'm finally in the loop about the whole ice powers thing. It really doesn't make a lot of sense to me yet. Near as I can figure, the only reason you got locked away had to have been something about your powers and me, specifically. Everyone else in the castle was allowed to see you sometimes. What I can't figure out is, what did I do? I must have done something when we were really small but I just can't remember. It's all muddled up. Something seriously bad. I must have set you off somehow. I mean, that makes sense, right? I set you off at the coronation and up in your ice castle. You kept freaking out and running away like I was a lit match and you were a bucket of whale oil. Oh, God wait—not whale anything, gah, sorry! Tinder, yeah. Elegant, willowy classy white tinder. Which is a pretty good analogy, I guess? Better than the whale thing, anyway."
"So maybe everyone was just trying to prevent Snowmageddon by keeping us apart? But it can't just be about being near you, like if I had some kind of built-in power-setting-off… uh… power. That doesn't make sense, because at the coronation everything was ok up until we fought. I was right beside you the whole time and you didn't kaboom, though you did seem tense. Ugh, I'm still confused."
xxxxx
"Hey Elsa! I'm back. I had an epiphany. I think I figured something out. Maybe it's kind of obvious. OK, so - you have powerful, inexplicable, possibly dangerous magic powers, right? What's a common reaction people have to things that are powerful, inexplicable and possibly dangerous? Like, how would people feel about, say, a flying invisible bear? OK, bad analogy. Even just a plain old bear, then. Not that you're bearish. Right, you guessed it. Fear. It's all about fear."
"You got scared at the coronation when I got in your face, and boom! Then again when I chased you at your ice palace you went full freak-out and another boom! It's like you can't control the power when you're panicking. I know you can control it sometimes – when you built your ice palace I bet you weren't scared and it's perfect! It's amazing! No, everything bad happened when you were scared. And you only got scared when I tried to get near you, talk to you."
"Which means… you're scared of me. I did do something to you. All that talk of me staying away for my own protection makes sense now. Because I terrify you and then it's the kaboom."
"Why can't I remember? What did I do? Oh Lord, Elsa, what did I do?"
xxxxx
"I just realized something horrible. I did something when we were small and it made you terrified of me, so, yeah, naturally you tried to get away, keep yourself safe from me so you wouldn't accidentally end the world. So what do I do? Every day I sat right outside your door, trying to get to you. It must have petrified you, like a… like a shark swimming by off the pier every day on the off chance you'd be in the water. Oh, that's an awful image. I did that to you for years. I tortured you for years. Oh my God, Elsa. I'm s-so sorry."
"I-I'm gonna s-shut up. Uh, actually, I'll just… go, f-for a bit. Yeah."
xxxxx
"Hey. Sorry it's been awhile. I guess. I don't know anymore. I've been terrified to talk to you. I mean, what if you can hear all this and you're still scared of me? Then I'm just torturing you again."
"It's just that I'm starting to go crazy. I know I am. I don't get hungry. I don't get sleepy. I have nothing to do except think. I've been talking to Kristoff a bit, you know, to give you a break. He says hi, by the way. You two never got properly introduced. He helped me a lot. He's an ice-cutter. We were discussing alternative employment for him if this winter thing of yours doesn't let up. He figures firewood delivery, which I think is pretty darn savvy. Yeah, ok it was my idea."
"We spent a fair bit of time together, these last couple of days, what with all the running around and running away and falling and rescuing each other from almost dying. Before actually dying, of course. I like him. He's good people."
"Oh, which reminds me – you need to remind me later to tell you about the trolls. Real trolls! Wow! They were way less human-eatery than I expected, which is good."
xxxxx
"But anyway, when I look at him now… I like him, maybe a lot but – I'm just not sure, y'know? Maybe he was the kiss I was supposed to get? I mean, the trolls said true love's kiss would thaw my heart. After the Hans fiasco, I figured it was Kristoff. But what if I'd been wrong again? Then the kiss wouldn't have worked, which makes me feel much better about getting between you and Smirky McFaceHair instead. Ugh. Can you imagine if I'd run the other way and it was a dud? First off, you'd be dead, which I'm not even going there. Second, I'd probably have frozen solid while kissing Kristoff and I'd have a stupid pucker for all eternity plus he would have for sure frozen to my lips and we'd have needed a bucket of hot water to get him off."
"So, yeah. All around, it could have been worse. Amazingly enough."
xxxxx
"I guess it's this tugging feeling. It keeps pulling me back to you. Weird, eh? I feel really good when I sit right here. I honestly don't feel like fighting it anymore. I just have to hope it doesn't make you scared, or bug you."
"I would give my soul just to see you blink, not kidding."
xxxxx
"I've been thinking again. Go me. Not that I've had a lot of life experience, but I'm sure it's safe to say that this is pretty much the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Thing is, though, if this hadn't all happened, you were just going to shut yourself away again. You even said so."
"Given the situation I guess I can tell you now. Uh - I had decided to try and leave if you did. Yeah. I mean, I was still going to fight you on closing everything up again, but… well, let's face it. You'd pretty much won. A few more closed doors and I would have been done. It's why the whole Hans thing, right? Which I'm so incredibly sorry for I can't even tell you. But in my defense I only had one day for plan A, to meet someone special who could get me the heck out. If that fell through, Plan B was going to be harder, sneaking out, getting far, far away and taking my chances on my own."
"And I know I could have done it. Plan B, I mean. Lord knows I'm used to being on my own."
"But the thing is, being alone isn't who I am, Elsa. Can you even understand that? It never seemed to bother you at all. Being alone destroys me. I love people. I love laughter, shouting, noise, whatever. I love life. This place, right here, right now, is the perfect hell because I'm ALL ALONE!"
"So I had to leave. It was that or continue dying like I've been dying - slowly - for thirteen years, Elsa. Ironic, eh? My trying to find a way out so I could live, ending up dead instead because of it. But you know what? Better fast than slow. It didn't even hurt. So what if I finished the job in one day? It's a total win, actually. You don't have to be scared of me anymore. Now everyone can go back to getting on with things and I can just end and good riddance."
"OK, I'm sorry, wow, that got bitter."
xxxxx
"I've had to fight off a lot of bitterness over the years and I hate it. It's not me. I always tried not to let the bitter stuff stick, but sometimes it did and then letting it go wasn't easy. But I think mostly I've succeeded. Seriously, it's not who I am."
"But, yeah, it was hard, sometimes. You said maybe fifty words to me in the thirteen years before today. A lot of those were 'Go away, Anna.' What's really sad is that I can't remember you clearly anymore from before the 'go away' stage. I imagine we talked more then? Maybe we played? I guess it was nice? Those memories were a long time ago and they've always felt muddled. Sort of… gappy. They're pretty much lost now."
xxxxx
"Here's a thing. I've been thinking some more about what happened today – whatever - and about what led up to it. And you know what? I loved Mom and Dad. But I might sort of hate them now. Like, a lot."
"It really was all about fear. Something happened and they dealt with it by locking you up when you were eight. Because you had amazing ice powers that scared them. What kind of parent does that? In what parenting book is something as idiotic as that Plan A? Like, where is it written down, "Parenting Rule 42: In the event that your child has awesome supernatural abilities probably tied to her emotions, make sure to shut her away so that she experiences as few normal human interactions as possible and learns to be afraid of everything."
"The really criminal part is that they made you believe their fear. Soon it was you locking yourself up. Oh… it makes me so mad. I wasn't exactly right in what I said earlier. It wasn't just me. Thinking back on it, Mom and Dad kept you away from everyone as much as they could. It was like you were a… volcano that could erupt at any second. And yeah, you're powerful, Elsa, I get that. But I saw your ice palace. No evil powers could make that. Only something and someone beautiful and good. The storm, all the bad stuff? I got that part right. They're your fear. Fear that you were taught. It's not like you were born afraid of yourself. When we were small, I don't think you were afraid."
"Even after whatever happened, if anyone had asked me if I'd be willing to risk your powers to be with you, what do you think I would have said? I'd have been beside you in a heartbeat and I never would have left. I could never be afraid of you. Even now. You killed me and I'm not afraid of you. I would have protected you. I would have kept you safe and shown you how not to be scared."
"But they didn't let me. Mom and Dad insisted on some crazy illusion of safety at the cost of everything. No one can tell me that what they did was the only way. It was insane. I would have stopped the fear before it got to this. We would have stopped it. God, who knows what we might have had?"
"But instead we have nothing. You want to blame someone for today, Elsa? Don't blame yourself. Blame them. They destroyed our family, out of fear. They hurt you, made you so afraid of what you can do, when it's so beautiful. They set the stage for this. They turned you into the tinder and they turned me into the match."
xxxxx
"I'm looking at your face right now and your expression is the worst thing I've ever seen. Seriously, you should see yourself. No wait, you shouldn't. It's awful. Except for one thing that I've realized while we've been talking. It's this: no one would look that way if they didn't care about what was happening. If they didn't care about the other person. It isn't a "she's frozen, ugh that's amazingly gross" look. It's not even a "wow, I am a horrible person for freezing her" look. Though I bet you'll get there soon enough. No, to me it looks like a "something horrible just happened to someone I care about" look. And that's nice to know. Bit late, but really nice. I can't remember a time when I didn't just figure you hated me."
"What I don't get, though, is why? Why do you still care about me? We've shared nothing for almost our entire lives except hurt. I look at you and I see a stranger. You don't know who I am and I know who you are even less. So why do I still love you so much? Why don't I hate you? I thought I did for a long time, you know. Hate you, I mean. But I don't. Yeah sure, you're my sister, but there's no rule that says sisters have to love or even like one another. I don't get it. All I get, Elsa is that, despite everything, I love you."
"To heck with it, I'm gonna kiss you on the cheek. Hold still. Ha. I crack myself up. HA. That's funny too, not really."
Zing. "OW. MTHR-DRNIT."
"O Gret. Now eh cnt fl meh lipz. Yr sch a jrk."
xxxxx
"It was going to be different than this, you know. My actual dreams of the future, hey newsflash, they weren't this. What I wanted… uh. What did I want, specifically? Well, what I wanted first, obviously, was to be with you. To spend as much time as we could together. We would catch up and, you know, do stuff. Explore the town, the whole kingdom even. You'd run the country, Queening away like mad and you'd be excellent at it, obviously, and I'd give you all sorts of really good advice and protect you from anything bad."
"My best dream is where we'd each have found a husband we really loved and they liked each other too and they were sensitive but not too needy and didn't snore or were all hairy – especially back hair, that's a thing, make sure you check - and smelled nice and had great teeth and they'd live with us here in Arendelle, the four of us all together – no way was I leaving you to go off to some dumb other kingdom. And then we'd start having babies. Oh, Elsa, we'd have had lots and lots of kids and we'd be aunts and uncles and moms and dads all together and the castle would have become this huge playground and the servants would always be quitting because of the crazy and there would never be an empty or silent room in our home ever again."
xxxxx
"This is the longest I've been able to just sit with you and look at you and talk and I wish you didn't have that awful look on your face but you do and if you can hear me you have to not blame yourself but you will and I don't want you to. Remember, you aren't the monster in the story, Elsa. So hey, if I can be a haunty ghost I can at least float around and yell at you whenever you're blaming yourself."
"Yep. I've made my decision. I'm gonna haunt the heck out of you. In the nicest possible way, of course."
xxxxx
"I have to introduce you to Joan. You two are, like, stoic-sisters or something."
