The tears froze before they could fall from her cheeks to the ground, crystallizing on her skin like diamonds. In her arms, Anna shivered imperceptibly, clutching her cloak tighter to her shaking frame, burrowing herself further into Elsa's arms. The queen drew her close, pressing her sister's cheek against her own. She felt another shiver run through the girl at the contact.
Before, Elsa had never known the cruelty of her gift, the pure horror she was capable of bringing. But now, looking around her, she was struck again by the havoc she had created. All around them, snow hung in the air, glinting in the unrelenting sunlight. It hovered over frozen bodies lining the street, icy blue where life had once been. Petrified in place, she could still read the terror on her subject's faces. A mother sheltering her baby in the crook of her neck, a man standing before a woman crouched in the street, hand upraised towards the sky in defense. Young, old, it made no difference. None had been spared.
Besides Anna.
Hans lay at their feet, sword still in hand, hardened where he had fallen when the wave of grief escaped Elsa and spread through the town. She hadn't heard the prince fall, hadn't heard Kristoff's shouts before it was suddenly all silent. No winds blew, no one spoke, no snowflake brushed the ground. As far as she could see, it was all frozen. Dead. Gone.
Until Anna's frozen form had warmed beneath her touch, life spreading from her heart and into her limbs. Her upraised arm fell around Elsa's shoulder, and she collapsed into her sister's arms. There, through their embrace, Anna had seen the price of her act of true love. The price of Elsa's love for her.
She'd breathed her name. A small, tiny, gasped sound.
"Elsa…."
But her breath was already catching in her throat, her fingers turning blue once more, the moisture in her eyes turning to ice.
Poor Anna. Only human, no powers to speak of. Cursed with a sister cold as death. The only person alive for miles, the only person who could remain unaffected by the cold, was no source of warmth for the princess.
Now, she lay against the queen's chest, face pale white, freezing all over again but in a completely different way. Only human. And Elsa was not. No matter how much she tried to fool herself into thinking it, no matter how long she spent trying to find any sort of joy in her heart, any sort of strength to save her sister, she couldn't. All she could see was a future as empty as the fjord around them, frozen silver and blue and white, a future devoid of color and life and… her.
Because Anna was dying.
Here, in her sister's arms, who had the power to create life, to breathe into snow and give it sentience. But she couldn't heal, couldn't breathe life into her little sister's trembling form, couldn't even warm her in her arms.
Weak as a long-decayed flower, Anna could hardly move. She couldn't speak. Every so often, she would open her warm blue eyes and look up at Elsa, move her lips as if to say something. No sound came out, but Elsa knew. Of course she knew.
Her name.
The name Anna had grown up saying to a wooden door, the name she still called for during nightmares. The name Elsa had heard coming through the cracks in the floorboards, where Anna's bedroom sat beneath her own, where she had gone to cry as a child. The name Anna had called for days after their parents' death. Needing comfort, needing family, love. Needing someone to hold her.
And now, now that she finally was, it was too late. She couldn't give Anna the warmth she needed, now that it was truly warmth she was lacking for. It was such a cruel end. After a cold, barren life locked behind doors, she would die in a cold, barren wasteland of death.
Anna trembled more violently, shrinking further into her cloak to clutch at the last of the warmth she could find, as though her body heat could save her.
She raised her eyes to Elsa's, managed a small smile and a tear escaped her eye before hardening, in the exact place Elsa's had frozen. Her eyes, such a warm blue, so different from the color of ice, looked past Elsa to behind her head.
"The sky….." she breathed, relaxing into her sister's arms as her strength left her. Elsa followed her line of sight, looking away from the girl's wondrously alive eyes to gaze at the sky above them. Somewhere in her mind, she heard a little girl's voice say, "The sky's awake."
They sat that way for a while, Elsa cradling her little sister as she had when she was born, holding her in their mother's lap and saying, "We're always going to be together now."
When she looked back down, Anna's eyes had faded to ice, and her chest moved no more. She looked up blankly at the sky, gazing into eternity, a single tear frozen forever on her cheek.
And Elsa was truly and finally alone.