Disclaimer: Frozen and Tangled are both owned by Disney. Believe me, if I actually owned any percentage of either, I'd have a LOT more free time to devote to writing.
Summary: First Elsa shut her out, then her parents sent her away to boarding school. Finally, Anna can take no more, and moves in with her aunt and uncle in Corona. Set before and during the events of Tangled.
"Go away, Anna!"
I just didn't understand it. Elsa and I had been the best of friends, once. We'd done everything together: we'd played, we'd read (well, really Elsa had read to me, but she'd done her best to teach me the words, always so patient with my inevitable mistakes), we'd played, I'd sat through her lessons with the Royal Tutors (okay, so maybe I did distract her a bit now and then... Being too serious like that wasn't good for her! Besides, I'd been too young to have lessons of my own, yet), and we'd played.
Did I mention that we'd played? Because we did.
And then...
Well, I don't know what had changed. That was kind of the problem. All of a sudden, one day Elsa moved out of our room into her own... and shut me out of her life. I saw her at most meals, though she took pains to sit as far away from me as possible. Even then, she wouldn't talk to me. No one would tell me why my sister, the person I loved more than anyone else in the whole world, suddenly couldn't stand my presence, anymore.
She still talked to Mama and Papa. They were allowed in her room. She still had her lessons (which I was no longer allowed to attend), she still interacted with Kai and Gerda and the other servants.
(Hadn't we had more, at one point? I could vaguely recall far more people bustling about... though that memory also said the gates should be open, and that was NOT allowed.)
"Not now, Anna."
I wasn't even surprised. Ever since Elsa had shut herself away - had shut me out - Mama and Papa had spend less and less time with me. Even when they were around, they always seemed so distracted and troubled...
Naturally, I took it upon myself to try and cheer them up. I made myself be extra super happy and playful, reasoning that no one wanted to be in a bad mood, so they just needed a little help.
All I ever seemed to do was irritate them.
More and more, I'd noticed, anything that I needed that I couldn't do myself was being done by the palace staff. Gerda helped me with any clothing that required more than one person to put on, and supervised the small but growing number of meals that I was otherwise alone for. On the distressingly rare occasions when I was allowed outside at all (usually just in the garden), I was accompanied by Kai.
The rest of the time, I was left alone.
I stopped playing with dolls - what good are toys like that when you have no one to play with? - and took to conversing with paintings. I made up histories (for those that didn't already have them, like Joan), personalities, likes and dislikes...
When the normally friendly young girl in the pink dress whom I'd named Katherine said something bad about Elsa, I didn't talk to her again for an entire week.
I'd finally begun lessons of my own, which were SO much less fun without someone to talk to, or make faces at behind the tutor's back. At least those earlier shared lessons meant I had, as the tutor put it, "a good foundation to build on".
Still, if this was what Mama and Papa wanted, I'd do it. In the back of my mind, I was convinced that if I was a good enough girl, and learned how to be a princess well enough, they'd want to spend time with me, again. Maybe even Elsa...?
"Anna, please, I'm very busy right now..."
It was getting harder, to force the smile to stay on my face. I had to, though. Happy, sunny, cheerful Anna was the only one who got any attention beyond what was required from the servants.
I couldn't be upset with Elsa. (I couldn't! I wouldn't allow it!) She was, as Father pointed out so frequently, going to be Queen one day. It was a huge responsibility, and certainly not one I wanted (even if then people would have to pay attention to me... No! No thinking like that!), so of course she had to devote her time to preparing for it.
(I still didn't see why she couldn't take a break now and then, non-stop work like that couldn't be healthy... I could even help her! The one time I suggested that, though, during one of the extremely rare times we all ate together, something that might have been panic flew through her eyes, and she asked to be excused before she'd even had dessert. Father had sternly told me I needed to focus more on my own lessons, and leave helping about Elsa to him. He is the King, so I guess it makes sense that he'd know best how to help her prepare, but still... No, no, be a good girl, Anna.)
I couldn't be upset with Mother and Father, either. Even with my ongoing lessons, I didn't understand everything they had to do, what responsibilities they had, but there must have been a lot of them, because they were always busy. They never asked me about my day, what I'd been up to, how my lessons went... Trying to tell them anyway would just result in being told "Not now", "Perhaps later", or "Why don't you go find Gerda?"
(They were the ones who'd assigned me these lessons in the first place! Why wouldn't they- No, no. Good girl. You're a good girl, Anna. You have to be.)
I couldn't be upset with Kai or Gerda... Well, because I couldn't. They actually noticed me. Saw me. Cared about me. I did my best to stay out of trouble, because I couldn't bare the thought of either of them being disappointed in me.
(Did I disappoint Mother and Father? Was that why I almost never saw them, anymore? Had... Had I done something wrong? Something bad? Something that... That... Was that why Elsa...?)
The only good thing about the palace being so deserted was that it wasn't too hard to find a nice, secluded spot to let the mask drop, every now and then. Everyone was so used to the happy, energetic, loud Princess Anna that, if I was quiet, I could escape detection almost indefinitely. Only if I was quiet, though.
That was fine; I'd taught myself to cry silently years ago.
I tried not to need to do so often. Good girls were happy and bright and sunny, after all, and I needed to be a good girl. That was what everyone wanted, after all. The only thing they'd ever seemed to want, from me. It was like what Father had said to me that one time.
Well, okay, he hadn't been talking to me. He never really talked to me. (Sometimes, in my weaker moments, I wondered if he even remembered that he actually had two daughters.) I'd been eavesdropping (politely!), like I sometimes did when I wanted to pretend he was talking to me. It could have been Mother, one of the staff, maybe even (though somewhat unlikely) Elsa. I hadn't been able to stay long, since I'd heard Gerda coming, so I have no idea what he'd been referring to, or even how it had come up in conversation. It had just seemed to fit me so perfectly, to have almost been directed at me, that when I'd snuck away, I was happier than I'd been in ages.
"Conceal it, don't feel it," I whispered softly to myself. "Don't let it show."
And maybe...
Just maybe...
Maybe if I did it well enough...
Maybe they'd love me again.