There was just too much in her head right now. Too much all clamoring for attention at once, and Anna couldn't make it stop. Each memory hurt more than the last.
It had all started with such sunny days.
The very first, when she'd held her sister and they cried tears of joy when they knew that, at long last, they hadn't lost each other. Anna hadn't been able to tell whether the sky or Elsa's eyes were bluer.
The days after, when they dealt with the aftermath of Elsa's magical winter, when there should have been so much reason to worry about so many things, Anna wasn't sure her feet had ever even touched the ground. She had Elsa back, she could touch her, she was real. She could hug her. And she did, as often as possible.
It was on those days when it had started, when she looked at her big sister with eyes full of wonder at everything she said and did. She was wonderful, beautiful. She was everything that Anna had ever wanted.
Everything.
And it had been so clear that Elsa felt the same. They held onto each other too tightly to let go. No one else could be what they needed, after scars both new and old had marked them both.
There were plenty of late nights spent together, sharing all the stories they hadn't been able to after their lives had split. Spent talking until, exhausted, they wriggled under the covers, sleeping in whoever's room they happened to have been in. Anna had spent some guilty minutes that turned into guilty hours looking at her sister, seeing her in the way only she had the chance to see her, hair down and free from the mantle of Queen.
She was so beautiful, in ways innocent and in those that a sister wasn't meant to be. But Anna felt the truth in her feelings. There was love there in every conceivable way, and she couldn't imagine of how any of it could possibly be less than pure. And, on those rare mornings Elsa let her guard down, Anna caught her sister watching her as she awakened, and wondered if just maybe she could feel the same way.
When the summer sun bore down with oppressive August heat Anna had sought Elsa again. She had said, even to herself, that it was for the obvious reason, the innocent one, that her sister was the natural cure to a sun that didn't know when to relax.
That excuse didn't survive the night. Anna didn't return to her own bed from that point on.
Looking back it had been the first hug after nightfall that had started the dominoes falling. Anna, under the pretense of cooling off, had hugged Elsa from behind, tucking her face into that gorgeous hair. It had felt nice, and she'd said so. Just a little admission.
Somehow it had been Elsa who first hinted at it. She'd said, with Anna's arms all around her, with Anna's whole body curved along her own, that she was more comfortable with Anna than she'd ever imagined she could be. That she was more comfortable than she even should be.
Anna had been a little breathless when she answered that she felt the same way. That she, just maybe, wanted more than a sister should, but that she simply couldn't find any part of her that regretted it.
They had shared their first kiss that night. They probably had shared their hundred and first.
Once that door was opened no others managed to stay closed long. Kissing Elsa's lips turned to kissing her neck, her fingers, her back.
Her breasts. Her thighs. And, before the heat wave had broken, between them. She learned her sisters taste a week after that first kiss.
Anna burned with her love for Elsa in those days. When autumn arrived and the temperature dropped she hardly noticed, it glowed so warmly in her chest. She knew now why they called this 'head over heels'. She felt all turned about, only every direction was wonderful.
They were like newlyweds. Giddy, all smiles for each other, sharing the little touches they thought they could get away with. Hugging all the more, and just a little different from before. When they really thought no one was watching, kissing around corners and in empty rooms.
They learned quickly to be careful about lipstick. Just maybe not quickly enough.
Elsa had been dour that day, but Anna was so proud of her that she hadn't kept her worries to herself. It was Kai, she'd said. He'd been subtle about it, but he indicated that Elsa might want to be careful with what she left showing. There hadn't been any malice, no hint that he was being anything other than dutiful and helpful. But there didn't have to be.
Whatever he had said, however, he said it, it still meant something dangerous. They had been noticed.
Once they were warned that first time, so many other things began to look different. Conversations that hushed when she passed, sideways glances in the court. Benign comments that, just maybe, might have an extra layer of meaning.
Anna was determined not to care. Their love was a wondrous thing. No one could tell her otherwise. She vowed to defy any who would think otherwise, to prevent them from stopping her from a single thing that she would have done before.
It felt, then, all the more like the rug had been pulled out from under her when Elsa asked her to try harder with her to keep this a secret. That she was cursing herself for having been so blinded, for letting it all be so obvious. That she needed to be Anna's love and a Queen all at once, and that the latter needed the former to be hidden.
Secret. Anna grew to loathe that word.
In little bursts she could manage it. Could keep her eyes from Elsa when she held court in the throne room. Could keep her hand from Elsa's under the table, when they shared dinner in the dining hall. Could keep herself from throwing her arms around her and just squeezing until both their worries melted away.
Little bursts weren't enough, though, not for her sister. The worry would fade, and gossip would seem so scarce, and her hand would find Elsa's to hold. Anna's eyes would meet Elsa's, and they'd share a loving smile. She'd find an empty room, and urge her sister inside for a quick kiss.
Eventually, though, and faster each time, Elsa would pull her hand away, would stop Anna from sharing those little, loving moments that she had become used to so quickly. It hurt. It hurt in the same way the door that had for all their lives before stood between them had.
The hurting would fade each night, when they sought their comfort in each other. It felt almost like Elsa was begging forgiveness of Anna in the night, as though in the moonlight she were seeking absolution for driving her away under the sun.
Yes, it would fade. But each night left a little behind. As weeks stretched into months, each little bit built higher.
Anna knew in some way that her sister wasn't wrong, at least not entirely. Few people would accept their love, and the fact that it was foolish to deny such an inscrutable goodness didn't change anything. Their denial of it would create real problems for a newly crowned Queen who was already facing skepticism for far too many reasons.
She just didn't understand why Elsa felt the need to take it so far. They didn't need to give away so much of their lives to those people, there were still little things that wouldn't give them any real ammunition to use in fomenting dissent. Sharing a loving look couldn't hurt them, so why…
Why did Elsa look away?
The crown weighed too heavily on Elsa, to make her drop her eyes from Anna's. It felt like a stab in her heart. She knew all too dearly what that felt like.
They fought, then, in little ways. Anna begged her sister to not cut her out of her life again, to not give in so thoroughly to the cruel people who understood so little and yet judged so deeply. Anna was not known for tears, nor was Elsa, though each for their own reasons. Still, both now cried every time.
They ended every fight with dozens of I Love Yous, and every one of them was as genuine as the first time they'd ever said it. They just weren't enough by themselves. They couldn't entirely bandage the cut of a hand flinching away from her touch.
Anna couldn't give up. She had never been able to, not once, and she wouldn't now. When her sister had brought down a cursed winter she had climbed a mountain just to bring her back. Hateful, angry little people couldn't be worse than what she had already overcome. There had to be a way for them to find again what they'd had in the beginning. Elsa had said to stay away, but Anna knew in her heart that was wrong. They needed each other more, not less. She endeavored to prove it.
She had been so careful, so very careful, when she gave Elsa a hug where it could be seen. She had found the most private moments to squeeze her hand. Anna had left it as long as she could possibly stand before she tried to give Elsa a kiss anywhere other than in their bedroom.
She had tried. Honestly she had.
Tears are already streaming down her face from this parade of memories, and now a strangled sob joins them. The blue overhead, the beat of the sun, the cries of the gulls, all of them reflect dull, dim, and drained of life in her view, and the salted breeze does nothing to dry her face. Anna holds a hand to her cheek, certain she can still feel the sting of the memory now coming to swallow her whole.
*SLAP*
Elsa would never hurt her. Never on purpose, never for any reason other than a terrible accident.
So why was she standing there after Anna had fallen back, holding her cheek where Elsa had just struck her?
It hurt. On Anna's skin and in her heart it hurt worse than anything in her life ever had. That there were shock and tears in Elsa's eyes didn't help it to feel any better.
"Oh, gods, Anna, I didn't mean...no, curse it, they'll be able to see that...here, let me help you up." She stepped forward and offered a hand, but for the first time in her life Anna didn't reach to take it.
"Why?" The word tumbled out of Anna's mouth before she had any clear idea what she wanted to really ask. She'd tried to kiss Elsa, and Elsa had slapped her.
"I'm sorry, Anna, I am so sorry, I never should have done that, I just panicked. I've told you that we can't, absolutely can't be caught, and I panicked so much at the thought that we'd be seen that…" She faded, deflated, and stopped. The life was gone from her voice when she resumed speaking and said, "No, none of that matters. Nothing can justify me hurting you…" Tears won then, and she dropped the hand that had been outstretched since it was clear Anna wouldn't be taking it. She turned to leave.
Anna teetered to her feet, world all upside down and seconds from disintegrating into sobbing. She trusted Elsa so deeply that she would have given over her soul to her to keep. And yet she was walking away, though Anna needed comfort as much as she ever had. Even if she was the reason she was hurting so badly in the first place.
"No! Elsa, please...please, don't go. I need you, don't…" The tears began to spill then, and she couldn't finish.
Elsa didn't stop. She didn't even look back, words shaking as she said, "I've hurt you, Anna. That can never be forgiven." Then she was gone, heels clicking down the corridor. Maybe it was the tears, but Anna could have sworn she saw a few flakes of frost trailing behind her.
Elsa was wrong, that wasn't true. It couldn't be, Anna knew that she could forgive Elsa anything. In the whole wide world there was no one less capable of cruelty or malice than her sister.
The shock when she returned to their room and found maids carrying her clothing down the hall sent her staggering as badly as Elsa's hand had.
"What are you doing? Why are you moving those?" She stopped a maid carrying an armful of clothing - clothing that Elsa had given her, of course - to beg an answer. The maid seemed surprised to be asked.
"Why, the Queen has told us that you are to be given some privacy again, after all the help you've given her to console her from her troubles and ease her return. We are returning your things to your room." Anna didn't have the strength to spare towards wondering if the maid believed what she'd been told.
She had turned right back around and stormed to their room - she refused to think of it already as just Elsa's - and was shocked when the guard stepped in front of her.
"Let me in!" No guard had dared to stop her from anything for years now, and certainly none had since Elsa was crowned. How could they possibly be trying to now?
"The Queen has given strict orders that no one except the maids are to be allowed entry. She specifically said that she would call on you tonight, to ensure that you are settling back into your room." His face showed nothing that indicated he would disobey that order, and fifteen minutes spent trying to convince him otherwise proved his face correct.
Anna didn't know whether to scream or sob. She did some of both once the maids were done, and she was alone again in what now felt like a stranger's room. Her second pillow was well on its way to being soaked as well by the time there was a knock at her door.
Anna knew who that had to be. For the first time in her life she felt such a bitterness that she almost told her visitor to go away. Almost. Even now, as angry as she had ever been, she couldn't turn Elsa away. She'd lived the other side of that already.
When she entered she did so tentatively, closing the door behind her with a soft click. It was a few seconds before she said, "Anna, please, let me explain…"
Anna didn't look, instead turning and facing the other direction on the bed. Her stomach felt like it was made of lead.
"Explain what? Why you kicked me out?" If there had been any doubt left for Elsa about how Anna felt, this put it to rest.
"I tried for so long to avoid this. People have been talking, Anna. We aren't nearly so much of a secret as we need to be, and it's...it's causing real problems. I've told you about them before. I've asked you to be more careful. To stop, in public. I have fought for longer than I ever should have to keep our bedroom separate from all that. I...I wanted so badly for it to stay our space, free from all those worries." There was such a pleading in her voice that even through the anger Anna felt her heart breaking for Elsa. Anna was angry at her, but despite everything she couldn't doubt her.
"It just wasn't something we could keep getting away with. Continuing to share a room...people could put the pieces together. And I'm still too new, my authority too weak, to survive if the factions this might rile decided to work together against me. I am a Queen first, Anna. For Arendelle I have to be. I wish it could be different. Maybe once I am better established we can find a way, but until then...it's just not safe anymore." Elsa was utterly transparent in tone. She needed Anna's acceptance more than anything right now. It was something that Anna couldn't possibly deny her.
She turned over, wiped her face off, and nodded. "Can you still hold me tonight? I need you, Elsa."
The hesitation before she answered cut, but she did nod. "I can't stay until morning, but I can stay for now. I'm more sorry than I have the words to say it, Anna. I never wanted to have to do this." She meant it, too. Anna knew it was true through nothing more than how Elsa's arms clung to her once she climbed under the covers.
She stayed as a soothing, needed presence until late into the night, until even Anna's roiling thoughts settled and she managed to find sleep.
Her absence in the morning still left an emptiness in Anna that couldn't be filled.
Elsa had never attended to Anna as thoroughly as she did in the weeks after that. She came to her room most nights, and spent them worshipping her sister with a depth of love that reminded Anna of their very first days after their mutual confession. If it could have stayed that way then it might not have been so bad, having to keep separate bedrooms.
It didn't, of course. Elsa was weighted with worry as the months crept on, and her visits came less frequently. There was some sort of tax dispute near the eastern border, and from what she described it threatened to become something far worse. Anna could see that she blamed herself for it. For not having the strength as Queen to have prevented it in the first place.
Those absent nights took a deep toll on Anna. She had lived with Elsa, with the love they shared flowing freely and without interruption. Trying to dam it up now, and only let it loose on the rarer nights they had together, left her overfull and trembling with unspent hope. It ate at her, and when it bit too strongly she looked for any chance she could find for an outlet. The chances to embrace Elsa were not gone, no matter what Elsa might have said. Only rarer still.
One time Elsa even made a point to kiss her, hastily, in a room that had been closed for repairs. But she had trembled then, and not repeated it.
Anna had tried herself, in a private moment in the gardens. Elsa's recoil hurt worse than being slapped had. So did Elsa asking that Anna not try that again.
The weight never lifted from her shoulders. Anna wished she could have done anything to lessen it, but no matter how she tried she was simply unable to reach it.
There was an ache whenever she was confronted with that divide yawning between them. She loved Elsa more dearly than life itself, and she wanted nothing, absolutely nothing in the world more than she wanted to be able to give her sister peace. But Elsa, standing court in front of eyes judging her more harshly than she could have ever judged them, was again becoming a stranger to peace.
She had even eventually asked Anna to stop trying to hug her other than within their chambers. Said that she needed to be able to separate herself as Queen from herself as Elsa. As a sister. As Anna's lifelong love.
Anna had told her that she would always see Elsa first, and the Queen second, and tried to prove it with a fierce hug, but Elsa had pushed her away and asked that she stop trying to convince her.
The day that Elsa had to send a contingent of troops to the border province was a particularly bad one. When she next came at night it was clear that she had been sobbing, and Anna had simply held her. They hardly managed to speak. She didn't even have the strength to leave before sleeping, and she did not rise until morning.
Anna had seen the self-recrimination in her eyes then, too.
It was about two weeks after that she noticed that something had changed. News from the province was promising, but there were rumblings from elsewhere in the kingdom. The clergy in particular had been paying visits more frequently to the castle, and Anna never had a good feeling when they did.
The real change, though, was with Elsa.
Over the past weeks she seemed as though she had barely been holding it together. Anna didn't blame her, what with everything that had been happening. Now, though, something different had come over her. Like she had an idea that she couldn't let go of. At times she stared at Anna with a strange intensity. At others, she seemed about to tear her hair out.
Anna had felt trepidation when she asked, and the sinking doubt of dishonesty when Elsa assured that it was nothing.
It fermented through the month, approaching the late August that, as Anna had been patiently counting, would mark their anniversary, at least as she thought of it. Was that it, perhaps? Was Elsa counting the days as well? It was an anniversary worth remembering, on that would ache were it not celebrated.
Finally, on the day before it would have arrived, Elsa pulled her aside. It was earlier than she would usually have visited in the evening, though even those visits had become rarer. Anna forced a smile, hoping still that this was the beginning of a pleasant surprise. They had been through so much over the year. They deserved a respite.
They had been sitting on Anna's bed when Elsa started.
"I am going to begin where I fear I will be ending." She sounded small. She sounded as small as she had through that closed door in their childhood. As small as she had looked, hunched over on the ice as the sword descended. Fear, and exhaustion, and bitterness colored the words around the edges, but mostly they simply shrunk into themselves. Her hand, when it instinctively sought Anna's, was as cold as ice. But Anna didn't shiver until Elsa spoke again.
"I'm sorry. Anna, I'm so, so sorry. For...for everything. For all of the things I've had to do. For this. I've spent weeks trying to find a way to avoid this." Her hand was shaking.
Anna didn't dare look look at her hand right now. She didn't want to see the frost that was creeping up her wrist. She swallowed, then tried to sound brave despite the sinking pit in her stomach in response to the direction the conversation was threatening. "It's ok, snowflake. You can tell me. I'm here for you, I will always be here for you. I'll never leave you, so please, tell me what's been worrying you."
"I need you to leave."
Elsa's answer dropped like a stone into a still pond.
Anna felt strange. There was something wrong with her ears. She was slowed, stuttering, and barely choked out, "W-what?" The room was cold. Anna was cold. Her ears were obscured by her heartbeat.
"I'm trying to be two people. I've been trying. For a year now I've been torn, and selfish. I've tried to be both your Elsa, and the Queen." Even her voice was cold. It had gained confidence as she spoke, but drained of its warmth.
"Look at me, Anna." Elsa was ordering her. A command, not a request.
She wasn't talking to her sister right now. The woman sitting on the bed was the Queen. And she was miles distant, no matter how near they sat.
"I won't go. I won't leave you, Elsa." Her voice shook, but Anna was realizing finally what was being asked. It was impossible. She wouldn't hesitate to fight a Queen in order to keep her sister.
"Anna, you-" Elsa's tone allowed for no dissent, but Anna provided it anyway.
"How could you - you! - possibly tell me that and think I would listen? I came for you, Elsa. When you were so scared that you ran even from yourself, I came and got you. I lost you for seventeen years, Elsa. I'm not going to lose you for a single second more." She took Elsa's hand between both of hers now, and met her eyes defiantly.
"I'm not afraid now, Anna. I'm tired, and worn, but I am not afraid. Arendelle needs its Queen. It needs her to be the Queen, and nothing else, not right now. And I cannot be only that when you are still here." She blinked first, and ducked her head, her confidence momentarily fractured.
"I love you too much to be whole, Anna." Her voice cracked.
Anna shook her head, pigtails flying. "That can't be true. I refuse to believe it. You can never love too much. Whatever is wrong, whatever we need to solve, love will be our answer, never the problem."
Elsa took three shuddering breaths, then straightened her head and pulled her hand free, the ice vanishing. "I believed that as long as I could, Anna. But no longer. I have to chose, the two of us versus the entire kingdom."
"I would rather live as a beggar with you than a princess without you." Anna had never been surer of anything than she was of that.
Elsa sighed before answering. "Me too. But that is not the choice I face. I am not choosing between my comfort and my love. There is no one I can give the kingdom to. There is nowhere I can go to hide from this. If I tried I would be betraying every single person who lives here. If I can bear it then I must. And I can."
"You don't have to do this alone." Where was Elsa getting these ideas from?
"A Queen does. Until Arendelle is whole again, I do." She sounded so certain it frightened Anna.
"I'll find a way to-"
Elsa stood and answered, dispassionate, "You will travel to Corona. Rapunzel has written me that she is excited to spend the year with you."
Anna's stomach felt like it fell out of her. "No! I said that I won't go, and I meant it!"
"You will go, or the guards will carry you to the ship." Elsa eyes were hard in a way Anna had never seen, and it sent a shiver through her.
"You wouldn't do that to me," Anna begged.
Elsa was walking towards the door, much too soon and after the wrong decision. Anna stood to, staring after her, looking for words but finding only tears staring back. Finally, just before Elsa reached the door, she whimpered, "Will you...will you be there to say goodbye?"
That stopped her. Not long, but it at least found a crack left to reach her sister under that cold armor she had built. "I…" she started, trailing off into silence for a long couple of moments. Eventually she turned for the last time, meeting Anna's eyes.
They both looked at each other in silence, Anna through watery eyes. The quiet was broken when Elsa made up her mind, showing the slightest hesitation, and finished, "...no. It would be safest if I am not." Then she turned and set her hand on the door, not yet opening it.
Her very last words were what she promised, and she was facing away when she said, "I'm sorry, Anna. Maybe when this is all done, we can find what we lost again." That was it. She was gone.
Tears had followed. Tears spent alone.
That was how Anna had come to be standing on deck of this galleon today. Sobbing helplessly, eyes never leaving the castle where her sister remains. She's oblivious to the bustle around her, the captain having called for departure preparations some time ago. The tide is turning. Everything is ready.
Under that blue sky the last securing line is freed, and the vessel makes its first lurch seaward.
This feels like goodbye.