Author's note: My take at a contemporary Alternate Universe for Frozen. Enjoy.

Snowgirl and Iceman

The radio crackles slightly as the news announcer shifts in his seat, his local accent strong as he adjusts his tone for the more serious news item on his sheet.

"Arendelle is still suffering from a blight of criminal activity beating all records. The mayor's opposition are blaming the surge of muggings and assaults on what they perceive to be his lack of authority. Mayor Weselton has not been available for comment, but sources close to him say he is very ticked off, ya? I remind listeners that our Mayor's latest response to the soaring statistics was that he intends to tackle the issue at its heart fiercely, in his words: like a bull with the face of a lion. Radio Arendelle would like to urge citizens to exercise caution in the port and student districts at all times."

The tapping of papers on the desk finishes off the news section, as a jingle begins to play in the background.

"And that is all for your morning news today!" The man's voice is back to its customary cheerful tone, his beaming smile behind the microphone obvious to all who listen. "I shall now leave you in Stefan's capable hands for music hour. Next bulletin at noon! Yoo hoo!"

Chapter 1: Distance

Elsa Countess of Gyllenblom

The old grandfather clock in the hallway rings the hour. My shoes click along the corridor in time with each chime. One, two, three... On the seventh step, I stop, along with the clock which resumes its more subtle ticking. I stand still, staring at the door before me. I lose count of the seconds I spend observing the designs beautifully painted on its white panelling. Waves of nostalgia assault me as my fingers trace the shape of a flower. This door used to be familiar, a daily sight back when the paint on it had still been fresh. Now, as I notice the cracks in the paint, the scuff marks that no amount of cleaning could get rid of and the odd dent or unexplained stain, I remember how foreign it has since become to me.

This is Anna's room.

With a deep sigh, I recall the reason why I am here. Pulling up the gloves on my hands, I rap upon its entrance. There is no answer. I wait a moment, puzzlement furrowing my brow. When the silence, still populated only by the ticking clock and my own muttering, extends long enough that I start worrying at my lower lip, I give in and rap again, my voice hesitantly calling out her name.

"Anna? Anna, it's me."

Hey sis, it's me, Elsa, that girl who can't even eat breakfast in the same room as you.

Ignoring my inner voice, I push down the door handle, letting the door creak open before me. Anna couldn't have gone back to sleep, could she? Johanna did say that she had been down for breakfast, right? The elderly maid, her hair grey from nearly two decades of cleaning up my sibling's messes, had mentioned Anna going back to her room to get ready for school.

"Anna!" I hiss as I creep into her room, hating the feeling of intruding, regretting the offer I'd made the night before as I felt the inside of my gloves grow slick and cold. My skin itches. I remind myself to keep cool. Hugging my arms to my chest, I take a deep breath. "Anna, if we don't hurry you'll be late for class."

As I take in the mess of her room, the discarded bed sheets and obvious lack of eighteen-year-old girl, the tingle of my powers fade. My frustration is replaced by disappointment. I cannot see Anna, nor can I see her satchel. Striding over to the ornate window, I take my seat to observe the sight I'd feared.

There she is, astride her bike in her bright purple anorak, the white satchel I'd been looking for solidly strapped onto her back. Her helmet is pulled on tight as she swerves past one of our guards, waving energetically at him as she powers down the private road out of the castle's grounds. I groan as I hold my head in my hands. I had told her last night that I was willing to drive her to school. With the way the town has been recently, I am reluctant for her to go to school alone. The local news is full of stories of people being robbed on the street or attacked. Ever since the start of the "crime spike" as it is referred to, I have had Gerda, our housekeeper drive her to and from Arendelle High.

Gerda has today off. She has a family event to attend on the west coast. After all the time and care she has devoted to our family over the years, I would never have dreamed of saying no to her request.

Nor would I have expected Anna to refuse a car ride with me, then again, she did love running about in the open air, come rain or shine. I brought back to mind her reaction from the night before.

"You want to drive me to school?" My sister had looked startled, her strawberry blonde plaits whirling around suddenly. I had caught her in the corridor after dinner, too nervous to ask her while we had been eating. Her face showed signs of conflicted feeling as she wrung her hands. "I'd been thinking of cycling tomorrow. I haven't been on my bike in ages!"

"Please, Anna?" Despite the desperate tone in my voice, my plea sounded weak even to my own ears. I wanted to tell her how much I worry, how much I care, but the words were stilled. Fear and guilt, as always, holding me back. I do not want her to see my guilt; I need to conceal my fears. Instead I waited, elbows gripped tightly in gloved hands.

Her turquoise eyes then fixed on me, the most direct look she had given me in months. Anna's usually open face, normally flitting between emotions clearly, seems guarded. Is my sister hiding something I wonder? The thought is chased away as quickly as it comes. I'm the one hiding the big, heartbreaking secret. I'm the one who hides behind a door, who avoids her if I can.

"I don't want to be a burden." She said. I could sense pain behind the words, a self-deprecating softness in her voice as she once more turns her eyes away from me. I could not understand how she could ever consider herself a burden. I still can't. Before she could say anything else, I stepped up to her, my proximity forcing her to meet my gaze.

"I'll come for you at seven." My voice sounds sharp, the words slightly more commanding than I had intended. Tilting my head, I allowed myself to show the deep fondness I always have for her, my words coming out softer now, my right hand swinging down to hang loosely by my side as the other gently continues to hold onto an elbow. "And Anna? You are never a burden, you hear."

I still remember the look of hesitant hope that had flickered in her eyes. It was followed by a chuckle as she shook her head, whatever thought she had had left unshared.

"Fine Elsa, I'll consider it..." Resuming her walk down to her wing of the castle, she called out, a small lilt in her voice. "Better go and finish my homework. See you tomorrow morning then!"

I had been looking forward to it, but now... As I watch her cycle away from her bedroom window, I am reminded of how time leaves its mark. How long has it been since Anna and I last managed to hang out, chat and play as sisters ought to? For years she had been most determined to break through my self-imposed isolation, to shatter the barriers our parents and I had erected. There have been times where she got very close to making me drop the mask, moments where she and I would share a smile, a quip. Yet for every instance where our bond was allowed to reform ever so slightly, there were several times as many where the door would remain shut, my eyes would stay dull and my lips sealed by fear.

No wonder she gave up. After our parents passed away, after the funeral that I was unable to attend, my powers responding overwhelmingly to the depth of my grief, she no longer sought me out. My sister stopped knocking at my door, voice hopeful that she'd get a positive response. She no longer took to following me like a shadow whenever I was about where she could go. Some days I wonder if she even cares anymore...

I turn away from her bedroom window, glistening eyes roaming over the various items in the room, my gaze stopping on one of the posters on the wall.

A sarcastic smirk finds its place on my face. It's the poster for this one movie she's recently become fond of. It's a superhero action-heavy tale in which people are born with superpowers. I only know this because she bought me the DVD as a Christmas present. She even drew me a picture, placing me alongside the protagonists.

I had thought it cute. Even though the distance between us had grown, she still wants to share with me the things she loves. She has no idea how much it hurt to realise that she had drawn me as part of a group of mutants.

I'm her hero, even after all these years, but I know all too well that magical powers don't work that way. They don't make the world a better place, or help you fight evil. I couldn't even keep my baby sister safe from mine.

Cringing at the memory of that terrible night, so many years ago now, I turn away from the poster. I can't think of it; not now, not here. Fighting back the lone tear threatening to spill from my eyes, I march out of the room, mindful of the hint of frost I manage to leave on her doorknob as I close the door.

I need to keep my distance, for Anna's sake... but I don't want us to be distant.

I don't want to be alone.

Anna Gyllenblom

She feels bad as she pushes her bike the short remaining distance to the school. The red head stumbles as the bike bumps onto the sidewalk leading to the establishment's gates. She bites her lip, pauses, and sighs. Her arms feel heavy and weak, her eyes sting. She should have accepted Elsa's offer.

"Hey, Anna!" A male voice calls out to her, its tone light and carefree. "Gosh, you look exhausted."

It reminds her of why she couldn't. Wiping angrily away at the wetness in her eyes, she tries to give the boy a half-hearted smile. If she won't let Elsa find out why she's so tired, then he can't either.

"Hey Jack..." Resuming the pushing of her bicycle into the Arendelle High's grounds, she falls into step with him as they make their way to the bike sheds. He doesn't have a bike, but she knows he just likes to hang out with her. With a huff she shrugs off his comment. "It's nice to see you too."

Taking the hint, he just smiles warmly at her as he leans down at her side. As always, she feels a pinch in her heart as she notices how his smile doesn't seem to reach his eyes, how the sharp blue of his irises turns grey and dull. It is moments like this where she hesitates to call him a friend, despite really wanting to. He reminds her very much of her sister. They're both holding something back. She can tell by the melancholy quirk of their brows, the way they fall quiet at odd times. It is both infuriating and sad, because whenever the moment passes... She starts to doubt it ever was.

With a sharp turn of his head and a chirp, her friend Jack is back to his usual mischievous self. Rummaging in his pockets he chuckles.

"Oh yeah," he says. "I got that picture I wanted to show you!"

"No way!" Recalling the alleged contents of this much alluded to snap Anna fumbles and drops the keys to her padlock.

"Yeah, way!" Jack's smile can't get any smugger as he straightens up, whips a bit of card from his pocket, and awaits her reaction. She tries not to get too distracted by the way he leans against the bike shed, his other hand deeply ensconced in his light weather jacket's pocket. The boy is a natural poseur.

The red head gingerly takes the proffered image and, with all the seriousness of an avid art collector, examines its contents. It's a photo, taken outdoors, of two youngsters. The eldest, a boy of maybe fourteen or fifteen is gently holding a younger girl's shoulder as she smiles uncertainly at the camera. His rueful grin is uncannily familiar, and as Anna looks up, she stares in shock. It is Jack, a younger Jack, one with brown hair and brown eyes and a brown coat, but still the same infuriating class clown, moments away from giving the ten year old girl bunny ears. Anna's turquoise eyes flit between the eyebrows on the snap and Jack's before her. The same brown, the same shape, they are identical, yet... Jack Frost, the high school student before her has platinum white hair, and his eyes that crinkle with barely restrained mirth are as blue the hooded jacket he wears, its sleeves stained with white paint that he can't seem to wash off.

"I..." Anna no longer looks at the snap, staring at Jack as he takes the photo back. She is half tempted to believe the picture a forgery, a cleverly done photographic manipulation, but then she remembers feeling the corned edges, the slight crease in the back of the paper... That picture... The way Jack glances down warmly and wistfully at it before returning it to his pocket... "I don't know what to say. How...?"

"Will you allow me to say I told you so?" The eighteen-year-old before her sniggers and she goes to bat him about the head before reaching for the heavens in frustration. Picking up his satchel, Jack leans in to look her in the eye, holding her gaze with an intensity that surprises her. "My hair is white because I had an accident when I was fourteen. Even my eye colour changed. I wasn't born with it."

Anna wants to argue that his hair is platinum and silver with bits of the lightest brown she's ever seen, not just white, but she knows it would defeat the point. Jack is hammering in the fact that he isn't like her sister Elsa, who as far as Anna knows, has always had champagne white hair, a blond so light that in a certain light it would glow, the ginger-brown eyebrows they shared the more reassuring hint at their sibling bond. Yet there is something earnest and caring in the way Jack shares this information with her, in the way the melancholy has returned to his brow. His smile saddens as he steps back, before glancing towards the school's entrance and noticing someone there.

"Hey, I'd better shoot." He gives her a quick wave before loping away on those impossibly long legs of his. "I wanna see if Toothy's brought in her mice today! I'll catch you in class."

"Wait, Jack! That girl in the photo, is that...?" Anna's too distracted to even roll her eyes at Jack's irreverent nickname for Tatiana the girl in their year that always tops the leader boards. How the severe looking Tatiana manages to put up with him, she can't help but wonder.

"My sister, yeah..." Jacks voice softens as he walks backwards to answer Anna's query, but it doesn't take long for him to resume his more usual flippant tone. "And if I were you, I'd stop losing sleep over siblings."

And on that parting quip, her only friend in school runs off, away to chase popularity as he has always been wont to. Anna sighs deeply, fiddling with the end of one of her braids. If only he knew...

But he couldn't know that the reason she hadn't slept last night was nothing to do with Elsa. It was all very much to do with her more nocturnal extra-curricular activities. He would probably love it if she told him but... She didn't want him to know that she would occasionally spend the nights prowling the very streets he likes to haunt, that she knew which walls had his mark on them, his frost like graffiti decorating many a dark alley. For all his bravado and trickery, Jack hated to see people put themselves in danger, real, lethal danger. She still remembers his face when he had caught Astrid trying to convince her to walk across the thin ice of a pond, Anna meekly going along with it in an attempt to gain the bullish girl's approval.

Jack wouldn't want to know that he was the one that led her to her most dangerous hobby.

Elsa Countess of Gyllenblom

With Anna away, I find my plans for the morning somewhat derailed. After dropping her off, I had intended to stop by the library to get some coursework done before heading to my first lecture of the day, Wednesday being one of the few days of the week where the running of the estate didn't interfere with my university time. Yet I can't bring myself to drive, not after the shock of Anna not waiting for me. I could ask Kai, our head of grounds and butler, but he is busy overseeing the repairs to the west wing this morning, and I do not wish to disturb him. Feeling the storm in my gut and the goose bumps on my skin, I give in. The only way for me to focus, to calm down before I unleash any more than an armful of ice is to go there... the old store room.

It is not a room I enjoy, but when visited in the right mood, there are items of interest there that help, that centre and ground me. Leaving my satchel on the ornamental table at the top of the staircase, I trudge up to the second floor, my shoulder brushing gently against the thin wood panelling that separates this part of the castle from the public area tourists are shown in the winter season. Arendelle castle, our ancestral home, is one of the very few cultural tourist spots in Norway to be closed in summer, between the months of May and September. Only a couple more weeks and I'll no longer hear the trained voices of the guides showing people, both local and foreign, around the more antique areas of the building. For now, I only have a few short hours before the doors open and the first showings start. Hopefully my trip to the store room will prove short. I have no wish to overhear the guides tell ghost stories once more as they near the part of the castle that houses my room.

There's a reason why we do not open the doors of the castle in summer.

The room I'm looking for is in a dark and dusty part of the north wing, a floor above my own quarters. I find it impossible to recall a time of it being in use, but it must have been at one point in the not too distant past. The light switches are fairly modern, the ornamental table by the stairs is still home to some magazines less than two decades old and, having explored the wing thoroughly at one point during my teenage years as an escape from my anxieties, I know that it houses a very comfortably equipped bedroom, bathroom and study. The most remarkable fixture that would probably give many a historian an aneurism is the passenger lift fitted by the stairs. Small but clearly still serviceable, its door is locked by a key kept safe by Kai. It is only used when things need moved from the art gallery on the ground floor to the store room I'm seeking, the lift bypassing the first floor and going no higher.

I am forever grateful that no one ever felt the need to lock the door to the old storeroom.

The design on the oaken panelling before me is simple and minimalistic, a bold shield containing a single flower, its petals sharp. It always reminds me of a sword. Purple and green give the door a dark, brooding air. I push past it, my eyes hungry for the sights behind it. The room never disappoints. The shuttered windows barely let in the late spring sunshine enough for the paintings lining the walls to be seen. I flick a switch, my heart warming at the warm tones on the walls. This is one of the few places where clutter and chaos don't put me ill at ease. Things hardly ever get moved here. The haphazard piles of frames, canvas and parchment littering the floor and tables are a sign of the room's past and no more. Wide chests of drawers are home to blueprints, family trees and legal documents as well as portraits, landscapes and inked studies. An old, damaged suit of armour sits in the corner, collecting dust.

My gloved fingers gently brush at the draping covering some of the paintings on the walls. The most recent one in here is a portrait of mother and father. I can still make out the medals on father's military uniform, and the circlet on mother's head through the black gauze. I quickly divert my gaze. Their absence still causes my heart to clench, even if it is only a dull and lonesome ache now. Having their portrait here instead of in the main entrance helps me to move on a bit, knowing that if I need to talk to my memories of them, they are here, waiting.

The pictures I am looking for, however, are much older, on the wall furthest from both door and window. As I glide nearer, my thoughts drift back to the day my father found me, cross-legged on the floor before them, eyes wide and searching as I gazed upon the likeness before me. Even though they should probably remain covered, in deference to their age, the two portraits I seek have their draping swept up and held back. I never have the heart to cover them. The woman in them haunts me, her skin slightly blue and her eyes striking. They are like my own.

I recall the hesitation in my father's voice as he spotted me in this room, the shift to a more sad understanding tone as he came to sit next to me. He asked me what I was doing there. Instead of answering I just asked the obvious question.

"Who was she?"

The bigger of the two portraits, an impressive canvas in oils, shows a young woman, as regal as a queen, a silver crown atop a head of spiky midnight black hair. There's a confident curl to her lips, a commanding point to her brow. One hand is raising a sceptre up high, light bursting around it in the artist's attempt to show its power. It is her other hand, however, that always draws my eye. Resting idly on the arm of a throne, fingers outstretched as it nudges a golden orb, the area immediately beneath the hand appears to glint and sparkle... It is the same as the floorboards had been under my own hands that day, as my father answered my query.

"No one really knows who she was anymore..." His voice was soft as he hesitantly placed a hand on my shoulder. I was at the age where I had started fearing contact, where my parent's touch brought as much anxiety as it did comfort. "I can tell you what she was."

I raised my eyes expectantly towards his. Even now I can remember the pain, worry, but also loving trust that seemed to fill them.

"She was the last queen of Arendelle. Her reign lasted a week, so they say, but her legacy lived on for much longer. You know the tale of the Snow Queen?"

I smirk sardonically at the recollection, eyeing up the legend depicted before me. She is a strange one, this unnamed queen.

"She was one of our ancestors, back in the early eighteen hundreds. Her name has been redacted from the records but... What we do know, is that she had ice powers, just like yours."

Tears fill my eyes now. All twenty years of my life I have been the only one I have ever met to have magical powers over ice and snow. What once seemed to be a wonderful blessing has since proven to be a curse. Seeing that poster in Anna's room was just another reminder of what I am. I am an anomaly, an aberration, a legend born again. The only other magical person I can even get close to relating with is an unnamed relative, her likeness frozen on canvas and parchment, centuries of distance keeping us apart.

My eyes turn to the second, much smaller and more informal portrait. The parchment has yellowed quite a lot over the years, the flesh tone used once again turned blue with age. Whereas the big framed canvas showed her as queen, this piece was an insight into the snow queen as a person.

She looks happy, despite the tears in her eyes.

I wonder why this artist, clearly a different one from the canvas, less experienced but more involved with the subject, chose to depict her so. There is some writing above a signature so elaborate I cannot read it, but what words I can make out seem to say "I miss you, sis."

I can never put into words what this second picture makes me feel. I can say what it makes me stop feeling. My feelings of loneliness, fear and alienation evaporate. Something warm and welcome fills my chest, reminiscent of some long forgotten memory I can't quite place. All I know is that it gives me hope. It gives me the courage to leave the room, not a cold breeze to be felt, and face the day.

To be continued...