"Hi! Hey you? What's your name?"
Elsa stood at the end of a long hallway surprised to hear the energetic voice carrying across to her from the other end. She stared at the little girl before her; auburn red hair separated into two pigtails and inquisitive teal eyes smiling back at her. The girl was clad in a light pink dress and was dragging a plush snowman at her side. Her head was cocked slightly in the most innocent of curiosities. She couldn't have been much younger than Elsa herself, maybe five or six.
Elsa hesitated and took a second to glance around the empty basement corridor, a flit of nervousness and confusion splayed across her brow wondering if the girl could possibly be talking to someone else? She couldn't possibly want to talk to me, right? Realising there was nobody else around she slowly turned to face the girl before her, lightly brushing a hand over the platinum blond bangs which escaped from under a black headband, the rest of her hair tied up in a small braid. "I'm… It's Elsa" she called back gently.
"Elsa! I haven't seen you before are you a new maid or something? My dad says I'm not supposed to be down here so maybe that's why I've never seen you! Don't tell him I'm here though I don't want to get in trouble! Oh, and I'm Anna! And this is Olaf!" she lifted the snowman above her head, grinning across the hall with a mischievous look of triumph.
Elsa felt a small smile tug at the corners of her lips, it felt foreign, uncomfortable almost, unwelcome.
"Anna there you are!" A large maid came bustling down an adjoining hall sighing heavily. "How many times have I told you about wandering off? What would the General say?"
"I know Gerda, I knoooow" she moaned flailing her arms in an over dramatic display of apology "But the sky was awake, so I was awake". She turned down the hall to give the other girl one last grin, wave her snowman, and call "Bye Elsa" before bounding off as quickly as she had appeared.
"I want to hear each and every one of you!"
"Sir, Yes Sir!"
"You think you've got what it takes?"
"Sir, Yes Sir"
"Then I want to see you prove it! Everybody stop and give me 50, on the ground now! Faster, faster let's go, let's go!"
"Sir, Yes Sir!"
"I can't hear you!"
"SIR, YES SIR!"
Fifty? Elsa almost smirked dropping to the ground with the other recruits. No problem.
An hour and many more training exercises later and they finally were done training for the day. Dinner was served in a large cafeteria hall that connected to a much larger training facility known as the Arendelle Academy for Advanced Military Training.
"Wow I am exhausted" A broad shouldered blonde man collapsed into the table, practically tipping his food tray over. "Ah whoops" he muttered, grinning bashfully.
"Speak for yourself Kristoff, at least the Drill Sergeant didn't make you run two extra laps" Another boy groaned slumping beside him, running a hand through brown hair. "I swear that guy's got it out for me".
Kristoff and Flynn were always a delight around dinner time, there was always something new for them to complain about. Every night a new topic that deserved the honour of their sarcastic wit.
"And then we have the Snow Queen over here," Kristoff gestured incredulously at her through a mouth full of bread "who barely breaks a sweat while the rest of us look like we just came back from a fucking waterpark".
Elsa glanced up at the boys. She was use to comments like this; it was the same every time after all. The boys complained about how hard the training was while she breezed through each exercises like it was a walk in the park. Her sharp blue eyes narrowed and she replied back coyly "I'm very sorry to hear you can't keep up with me Kristoff, my deepest sympathies".
Flynn practically roared with laughter, clutching a slim arm to his abdomen. "Was that..? Was that sarcasm I do detect?" He leaned over the table in mock surprise "Jesus Els you have a sense of humour after all!" he teased settling back onto his seat.
"Yeah, Yeah, I can keep up just fine thank you" Kristoff pouted. "Just because I don't get to slum it with the maids in the General's mansion doesn't mean you're better than me" he joked, pointing a finger at her and taking another large bite out of his bread.
Elsa stiffened at this. She had regretted ever telling the two boys about her living situation, even though she knew they were only teasing her it still struck a chord. It wasn't like she had asked to live there, and she certainly wasn't treated like a member of their family or anything, she was just like the staff in stature, nothing more.
Like Kristoff had mentioned she lived at the end of a long hall in the basement in a small service room no bigger than the dormitories the other recruits stayed in.
It was hard to explain why she even lived there anyways. Memories flooded back to her when she thought about it. Car doors locking, screams, gunshots, broken glass, helicopters, soldiers, being carried away. A man in a uniform coming into an empty waiting room and kneeling down before her, staring into her vast blue eyes, asking her what she felt.
She remembered that he looked at her surprised and pleased at her response. He had taken her pale hand in his and told her he would take her away and that she would be safe. Then she was at the end of a long hall in a small service room in the basement. It was just another new start.
She lived with the staff, and worked with them when she was a little older, still only odd jobs because of her age. The General came to check on her a few times over the next year. His family and chief advisors lived upstairs and she would see them on occasion when she and the other staff did cleaning jobs.
But every once and a while he would come down and check on her. He would ask the other staff about her, how she was developing, if she had enough to eat, etc. "Cold" they would always say, "Hard to read", "detached". When she was ten years old he came to her and said that she was going to be very important one day. He had looked again into her eyes and smiled "very important" he stressed.
She was pulled from staff duties and spent almost all of her time in the Academy then. A tutor met with her every other day from then on and she trained in the gym when none of the recruits were there. She was given full access to the upstairs library, though cautioned to stay out of sight.
Just because she had that privilege did not mean she was privileged. She was still regarded as no higher than the staff and it certainly did not mean she was premised to approach the general or his family or advisors in any way other than that by which she would if she were a member of the staff. She had agreed to his terms without hesitation, and eight years later here she was, finally training as a full-fledged recruit.
Her thoughts focused on the library, as she blocked out the meaningless banter coming from the boys in front of her. She thought back to the long nights of study and silence, but mostly to the second time she ran into red hair and unmistakably bright teal eyes since they had waved at her from the hall.