"In war news, Arendellian tank forces breach Weselton borders as they score a series of victories in our relentless push towards the enemy's stronghold…"
Curled up against velvet cushions - the little blonde girl strikes a figure of utmost vulnerability as she keeps one eye fixed on the enormous flat-screen television showing videos of a violent tank battle. Her bright blue eyes glimmer at the fiery explosion taking place on-screen, and she averts her gaze to the two adults standing behind an imposing glass panel. The taller of the two, a man, holds a phone to his ear in silence while the woman bites her nails and stares into the mouthpiece as she tries to coax the speaker's words into her ears.
The girl's teeth begin to chatter, not from the cold - her home is as toasty and comfortable as she could've wished for - but from the fear prickling through her skin as she sees her father's grim expression deepen with each imaginary word floating through the phone. The sight of her mother as she dips her head to their kitchen's marbled counter top sends a chill down her spine, and she attempts to distract herself with the television. On it, a red-haired man in a starched white suit shouts from a podium to a crowd of people screaming and cheering at his every word.
"How long, men and women of Arendelle, have we fought the Northern tides and paid with the blood of our children? I say unto you - the hour of victory draws near!"
As the man thumps his fist into the wood, the girl catches a glimpse of his eyes and immediately averts her gaze from them. There was something which glowed within his eyes that never failed to make her head spin. Her skin crawled at his every word, and the near-manic state of the crowd beneath him churned the food in her belly. It was like his voice dragged her closer and closer to the screen with each sentence.
In search of a distraction from the man's voice and the scene playing out in the kitchen, the girl picks up a glass of chocolate milk left for her on the living room's mahogany table. She lifts the crystal tumbler to her lips and sips, her cheeks scrounging at its lukewarm temperature.
Yuck! Hot or cold milk I like, but give me lukewarm and I'll spew you out of my mouth.
A smirk forms on her lips as she passes the glass from hand to hand, staring at its foamy brown surface shimmering beneath the crystal chandelier. She snaps a quick glance to her parents, now hunching over the phone with worry written on their faces; oblivious to the girl having her nightly milk and cookies. Convinced of their diverted attention, she tightens her grasp on the glass until it fogs from the cold. The girl purses her lips and blows a wisp of frosty air, forming a snowflake on its surface. The glass, now dripping with condensation, passes beneath her scrutiny before she lifts it to her lips, but a raspy voice cuts her off from enjoying her chilled drink.
"Elsa!" the man exclaims, nearly causing her to drop the glass, "Have you been-"
Her parents, standing directly behind her, look over their shoulders at the minuscule lens perched in the corner of the ceiling. The camera flashes an ominous point of red light once, before resuming its silent overwatch over the family. He looks at his wife, slowly shaking her head with a frown plastered on her face.
"Um, Elsa, your teacher called us," the woman says, taking the ice-cold glass of milk from her daughter's hands and hiding it behind a vase of crocuses, "we need to talk-"
He leans over his wife's shoulder and whispers into her ears. Despite the shadows, Elsa makes out his lips muttering the words not here, before he takes her by the hand.
"How about we read you a nice bedtime story?" the man says, his booming voice filling every corner of the room.
Elsa's eyes wander to the clock; it's still half an hour to her bedtime, but she knows better than to argue with her parents when they raise their voices. Bad things happen - they used to say, so Elsa allows her mother to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom. The smooth, velvet-like perfume clinging to her mother's pearls nearly lulls her to sleep, and when she lays her down on her bed - it feels like she's descending into a cloud of warmth.
"Elsa," her father says, rousing the girl from her sleep, "we had a talk with Mrs Evans-"
Elsa's eyes widen at the woman's name, but she pulls the blanket over her mouth and waits for him to continue.
"She said you played with the other kids at recess, and they were throwing snowballs at each other."
Elsa nibbles on her woolen duvet, allowing her father's words to swim around in her head, before whispering, "So?"
Her mother looks at him, and sighs, "Elsa, it's the middle of August."
"Oh."
"Look, you can't keep going on like this," her mother says, before she drops her voice to a whisper, "don't you know what happened to Sally?"
Elsa bites her lower lip and remembers Sally, the girl who could run faster than all the boys and never got tired. She had golden braids which fluttered in the sun as she strode laps around the football pitch, and her green eyes glimmered with determination every time she leapt further than her during hopscotch. One day she was sitting next to Elsa and memorizing times tables, and the next day she was gone. Just gone.
Disappeared. Taken. Vanished - Few of the words grownups said to each other in whispers behind closed doors.
Sally's parents disappeared too, and another family moved into their house the same day. No one talked, no one batted an eyelid, and she would've forgotten her name if her mother hadn't brought it up.
"Sally's gone, isn't she?" Elsa mutters, and for some reason, the memory of Sally and her big toothy grin brings a tear to her eyes.
"Shh-" the woman whispers, dabbing a silk handkerchief to Elsa's eyes and pulling her into her arms, "things like this happen."
"You mean everything to us, Elsa. You're special to us no matter what you do," her father says, running his calloused fingers through wisps of blonde hair, "but the world is a dangerous place, and it hates people who can do special things."
"Sally- Sally was special to me too," Elsa sighs, bunching up her fingers around the woman's dress, "she- she was...my friend. Why did they have to take her away?"
"Please, we know it's hard for you to make friends. But you absolutely have to keep yourself under control - at least until you're older and we can find a place for you to go."
"I don't want to go anywhere," Elsa says, resisting the urge to sob, "what did they do to Sally?"
Elsa jams her face into her mother's chest and inhales deeply, exhaling a series of sputtered breaths.
"You'll find out when you're older, hun - although we hope from the bottom of our hearts you won't have to."
The thoughts churn inside Elsa's mind in a loop; she tries to make sense of what it means, but all the can think about is how unfair it is. Another question about Sally teeters on the edge of Elsa's tongue, but her father has already started for the door. When her mother lays Elsa into the sheets, it feels like falling to her, and the emptiness overwhelms her faster than she can cry for help.
"No bedtime story?" Elsa whimpers, but the door clicks shut, and the lights go off, plunging her room into a darkness lit by moonlight peeking through her curtains. Instinctively, she reaches for her snowman plushie and sobs into its polyester fabric.
"Why, Olaf, why?" Elsa sobs, "Why does it have to be me?"
She recoils from a chill creeping up her face, and gasps at the frozen sheet of ice covering Olaf's body where her tears had rubbed off on him. Elsa tears away the frost covering her face and Olaf, casting it from her bed and shuddering at the clattering noise it makes on her bedroom floor.
"I don't want any of this," Elsa whispers, pulling Olaf into her arms, "I don't want to be special, or smart, or pretty - I just want a friend."
In the darkness, Elsa imagines Olaf's twiggy hands reaching around her waist in a hug. After countless times checking that they weren't real, she knows the feeling is nothing more than a figment of her imagination - but the sheer loneliness gnawing away at her heart rages so fiercely tonight, Elsa allows herself to believe it's real.
"I love you, Olaf," Elsa whimpers, "you'll be my friend won't you?"
Wracked by solitude and sorrow, Elsa fails to notice the light streaming through her window glowing brighter with each passing second. In the hallway, the chime of a grandfather clock resonating through the house masks the sound of scampering boots. Still, the little blonde girl presses her face into the pillow, hugging her snowman plushie to herself and hoping that sleep will come and steal away the loneliness which had invaded her heart tonight.
It isn't until the light flooding through her window burns brighter than daylight itself, that Elsa rouses from her sleep and rubs her eyes from the glare in her room. The crunching noise outside the windows fails to stir her from her drowsiness, but the sight of her father barging into her room does.
"Elsa! Elsa!" he yells, yanking her mother with one hand and scooping her to his chest, "We have to go!"
"What-"
"Now!" her mother shrieks, ending any opposition from her.
Sweat drips from his jaw, splashing on Elsa's cheek and running down her neck. The sudden buzz of activity sends a rush of blood to her head; she sees blurry silhouettes passing the windows in her living room as they pass the front door.
"No, no, no!" the woman exclaims, jamming her weight before the front door and stopping her husband from advancing, "They're outside!"
"Through the lawn!" he whispers, whipping around on his heels and sprinting through the house. The chopping noise of helicopter blades coupled with hideous barking of dogs and men sends thumping spurts of pain into Elsa's ears. As the family reaches the backdoor, the man sets Elsa down on her feet, and she struggles to stand up straight.
"Idun!" he growls, pushing Elsa into her arms, "When I open the backdoor, go into the lawn's bomb shelter and lock yourself in there."
"But they'll find her!" she scowls.
"No! You go in there alone! They'll waste their time breaking into it!" he growls, before turning to Elsa and lowering his voice, "Elsa, I need you listen-"
"But daddy-"
"Shh! Listen to me!" he commands, and Elsa's lips purse into a thin line as she takes in her father's instructions, "You're small enough to crawl beneath the hedge, I want you to go our neighbor's house. But don't wait there, leave as soon as its safe, and stay out of sight at all times, understand?"
Elsa's eyes dart between her mother's tear-filled eyes and her father's eyes glistening with rage, and she nods.
"What about you, daddy?"
"I...I'll stall them until- until- you're safe," he starts, before pushing the backdoor open.
As the door swings open, searing light burns into Elsa's eyes, sending her falling from the fury of its blinding rays. At once, she feels a pair of gloved hands drag her from the floor. Amidst the tousling and pushing, Elsa feels her hands slip from her mother's, and the separation sends a surge of panic through her tiny body.
"Mommy!" Elsa screams, grabbing and flailing at everything within reach. The blunt force of her head colliding with the ground feels like a bomb going off in her face, but worse to come is the sight greeting her when she opens her eyes.
She's seen them before, the men dressed in black, standing on street corners with things perpetually strapped to their arms known as guns. Three of them stand over mommy and daddy, pointing the guns at their heads. The burning light ceases its blinding effect on Elsa, instead turning the scene into something so unreal, she could've sworn she's in a nightmare.
But this is no nightmare: not the noise of dogs and helicopters, or the deafening bang of the men's guns, or the crimson pool of mommy and daddy's blood on the grass. Every muscle in her body twitches at the sight of the guns lining up for another burst of fire and noise. Elsa screams and screams until her lungs bleed and the grass beneath her turns to ice. She lurches towards her parents' motionless bodies lying facedown on the ground, but the hands holding her maintain their vice-like grip.
The spray of bullets tearing through their corpses sends her into a blinding rage; she whirls around and jams her fists into the soldier. Immediately, a warm liquid sprays her face as he jerks away, clutching at the icicles embedded into his torso. Elsa wipes her eyes and shrieks at the blood on her hands. On the floor, the soldier's body convulses violently before going still; his icy wounds still gurgling blood. At the sight of their comrade's death - the other soldiers surround her with shields and point their guns at her.
"No! No! No!" Elsa screams, hurling icy darts at them. The ice clatters against their shields, shattering into tiny crystals and adding to the already frost-strewn lawn. Elsa screams and throws ice until the sweat drips from her face in icy crystals, and she slumps to her knees, heaving from the fire burning in her lungs. Her tiny fingers bunch up around fistfuls of frozen grass, and she chokes back a sob at the thought that somehow this was all her fault.
"I'm sorry mommy, I'm sorry daddy," she mutters, refusing to look at the soldiers before her, "I...I shouldn't have-"
"Yes, you should have," a voice wafts into her ears, deep and slow, dripping with darkness.
Elsa tilts her tear-stained chin to the source and stares into a pair of green eyes hovering over her. His name slips from her lips right as her fists turn to ice.
"President Hans," Elsa mutters; her entire body tingling with electricity at his voice. The imposing man with red hair kneels to her height, unafraid of the ice in her hands or the dead soldier behind her.
"You're...you're magnificent," Hans whispers, running his fingers along Elsa's frozen face and tasting the frost, "real ice."
Elsa knows she should kill him, for everything he's done to her and her parents - but every muscle in her body refuses to budge under the magnetism of his eyes. Her face scrounges up in a concerted effort to resist the drone of his voice boring into her skull. Hans stares into the little girl's eyes and locks her gaze onto his, beckoning her to stand and follow him. With every passing second, Elsa feels more and more of her consciousness slipping away into his invisible grasp, until her thoughts fade away into the hypnotic hold he has over her.
A faint thought slips into her mind: the memory of Sally and her golden hair gleaming in the sun, the rush of blood to her face when she kissed her, for no particular reason other than to know what it felt like. Elsa bites on her lower lip as the thought of this man having something to do with Sally's disappearance makes sense in her mind.
With a grunt, Elsa uses the last strand of free will left within her soul to freeze her brain solid - locking Hans out of her mind and cutting off his hypnotic gaze.
"Fuck," he hisses, raising his hand high in the air.
The sting of his fist colliding into her face feels blissful compared to the horror she's just experienced, and when the soldiers start beating her with batons, Elsa hopes the pain will make her forget. However, it doesn't, but she doesn't resist when they cuff her hands and put a bag over her head. In the darkness, she surrenders to the fury of their fists and boots, allowing them to drag her wherever their cruel intentions desire.
A smirk forms on little Elsa's bloodied lips as she thinks to herself - you can kill me, but I still didn't give in to you.